Sophisticated Cruelty

A two-line aphorism written on corporate letterhead from a Pittsburgh music distributing company, declaring that sophisticated cruelty is Satan's finest hour.

The poem is two lines on a piece of corporate stationery — a Wurlitzer and billiards distributor at 2001 Fifth Avenue, Pittsburgh — and the juxtaposition is the entire statement. Sophisticated cruelty is Satan's finest hour precisely because it arrives on letterhead, through commerce, with a phone number you can call. The address echoes the collection's recurring 2001, linking jukebox capitalism to the cosmic and the demonic in a single gesture.