Of Course

Catherine Wagner

Of Course is about burnout, and loneliness in a crowd: The lonely is a white middle-aged cis-het woman academic and the crowd is crickets. Power makes sex hurt. Harm is embedded in English. Cricket-sound is absent from concrete. The author burns out alongside world burnout, happening unevenly and much harder/hotter for many than for the author—fires and rising waters, fascism, the race-track, slowburn genocide, species death.