title: The Face: A Novella in Verse
author:  David St. John 
description: St. John's ninth collection is roughly plotted around a midlife crisis: "Each day, in the mirror, that face smeared a bit more brutally/ Across the glass." In order to push the narcissism to its limits, St. John confronts his speaker with a forthcoming biopic of his own life, complete with poor scripting by an ex-, "Infanta," and a young cinematographer "with a pierced dick." Fuguing around writing process-oriented repetitions of "assembling" and "dissembling," the speaker utters an Eliotic <i>cri de coeur</i> ("I have invented a whole philosophy of shatterings"), complains about the script ("That tapestry of travesty") and alternately fantasizes about and feels revulsion for the "hot" young woman cast to play him, with "a certain angel-butch Joan-of-Arcish kind of thing." September 11, as a key recent event in the speaker's life, is presented as a set piece with "flakes of flint falling/ Through long fingers of flame. Black leaves. Feuilles de noire." Faulty cell phone communication, straight talk on cultural decline ("remind us why anyone gives a shit, OK?") and a lengthy diversionary prose poem listing varieties of masks follow, until, at the premiere of the movie of his life, the speaker "hurls," crawls outside and sees a vision of his own face assemble in the sky. Despite some entertainingly arch moments (on literary couples: "all that flesh made word") and anecdotes of self-abnegation, most readers will have put it together and walked out long before that. <br />Copyright  Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
zlib_text: FACE THE MUSIC
  JB SALSBURY
  
  Copyright © 2020 by JB Salsbury
  All rights reserved.
  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and
  retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
  Cover Design: Pixel Mischief Design
  Edited by: Joy Editing
  
  “A new commandment I give you:
  Love one another.”
  - Jesus
  John 13:34, The Holy Bible
  
  Contents
  Prologue
  Chapter 1
  Chapter 2
  Chapter 3
  Chapter 4
  Chapter 5
  Chapter 6
  Chapter 7
  Chapter 8
  Chapter 9
  Chapter 10
  Chapter 11
  Chapter 12
  Chapter 13
  Chapter 14
  Chapter 15
  Chapter 16
  Chapter 17
  Chapter 18
  Chapter 19
  Chapter 20
  Chapter 21
  Chapter 22
  Chapter 23
  Chapter 24
  Chapter 25
  Chapter 26
  Chapter 27
  Chapter 28
  Chapter 29
  Chapter 30
  Chapter 31
  Chapter 32
  Epilogue
  Acknowledgments
  
  Also by JB Salsbury
  
  Prologue
  Three weeks ago
  Staples Center
  Los Angeles, California
  Ashleigh
  I know the moment it happens—the second the a