Scholastic Carcinogens

By Elias Sassoon

The collection begins in high school, but ends somewhere else in life. We begin with this: “Experiences as a Substitute Teacher. Public high school of higher education but never higher than God. Sitting there, the pedagogue without authority real. Never seeking the real authority. Taking attendance. Giving assignments. Sitting there. Looking up at the ceiling, Sitting there. Students sit. Ignore. Time goes. Sitting there, students. Past and present. Sitting there. Writing the poems of the displaced, poems of: The tired, The bored, The alienated, The dysfunctional. Alienated.” Another excerpt: “Barbed wire. Invention of meticulous quality superimposed upon placid fallacies that move the human spirit toward predestination theocracy. Barbed wire. Invented for? Cows out there in the pasture. Sheep. God. Humans. Barbed wire. Invented why? To keep out. To push out. To prevent. Barbed wire to have and to hold. Holding in ideas and various manifestations of grandeur. Barbed. Painful. Hurtful.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Mar 11, 2014
• ISBN: 9781304931290

Elias Sassoon

Elias Sassoon is the author of approximately, roughly, terminally twenty-five works that include short story collections, novels, poetry collections and non-fiction, essay collections. While producing his writing by night, he has earned his daily wage in honest labor that ranges from professions like teacher/bathroom attendant to a door-to-door bible salesman/fish cleaner and everything in between. Elias continues to work hard, grinding out the words and turning them into literary gems, or if you prefer, literary pearls of wisdom. He lives with his wife, two children and a dog-named Brandon in a suburban area in the vicinity of the great Metropolis known as New York City. There he prepares barbecue dinners for neighbors and friends, roams the area for yard sales, watches flies and other moving insect life die in his backward where he also sits on a metal beach chair deciding on the future of the world as we know it.