WHO SHOULD READ YOUR WORK

Eva Balco

Writers and readers a married couple

and one of the questions writers always have:

Who Will Read This and How Will They Find Out

about my story my memoir my poem.

Many Writers have Reader Desires:

I want my reader to be fully versed

in Alice Munro, Toni Morrison, James Joyce,

and some relevant young people as well as

be a lifelong subscriber to a few esoteric

publications and of course The New Yorker.

They want their readers to wear Good Shoes

and have series conversations about The Wire

and to wear silver not gold and never to drink Chardonnay

and not to take humor seriously.

My first reader was my babysitter

Eva Balco whose husband Jake worked in a factory

and so did she. I wrote a story in longhand called What Maryellen Did

(she smoked behind the Spakowski garage, and the story was

based on truth) and Eva Balco was such a satisfying reader

although she was not a devotee of the literary life

Eva Balco was such a good reader that I’ve written

for her ever since.