On Erica Plouffe Lazure

Erica Plouffe Lazure -- The Red Thread Anthology (E. Carolina U.)
The Green Monster Smokelong Quarterly
Evisceration Line Keyhole
Whatnot Madhatter's Review

Erica Plouffe Lazure in "The Green Monster" uses repetition in a fascinating way. The words garden, rain, soil, moist, seep, damp, come up in an almost trance-like fashion. However, the effect, for me, is not one of trance nor another result of the use of repetition, momentum.

It is a circling down and in. She creates a live thing of the garden, but it seems quite inward, almost smothering.

Does Jones even like being there (hip flask?) Or does he convince himself that he doesn't like being there because it gives him an excuse to be mean to his wife, Florine?

It would appear that he is a cranky older man, perhaps an alcoholic, who only knows to push his long-suffering wife away.

The repetition of "drink" in the final paragraph brings us back to the repetion in the first: this time it is a man smothering himself, and a relationship be smothered by him. His wife seems long-suffering.