And pleasant is the faerie land
But an eerie tale to tell,
Ay at the end of seven years
We pay a tithe to Hell;
I am sae fair and fu o flesh,
I'm feard it be mysel.
— YOUNG TAM LIN

And malt does note than Milton can
To justify God's Ways to man.
— A. E. HOUSEMAN,
"Terence, This is Stupid Stuff"

Coercive as coma, frail as bloom
innuendoes of your inverse dawn
suffuse the self;
our every corpuscle becomes an elf.
— MINA LOY, "Moreover, the Moon,"
The Lost Lunar Baedeker

The stones were sharp,
The wind came at my back;
Walking along the highway,
Mincing like a cat.
— THEODORE ROETHKE, "Praise to the End!"

A cigarette is the perfect type of perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?"
— OSCAR WILDE, The Picture of Dorian Gray

Prologue: Kaye took another drag on her cigarette and dropped it into her mother's beer bottle.

Ch. 1: Kaye spun down the worn, gray planks of the boardwalk. The air was heavy and stank of drying mussels and the crust of salt on the jetties.