Tom Bradley

Tom Bradley's latest books are Bomb Baby (Enigmatic Ink), Even the Dog Won't Touch Me (Ahadada Press), Hemorrhaging Slave of an Obese Eunuch (Dog Horn Publishing), Acting Alone: a novel of nuns, neo-Nazis and NORAD (The Drill Press), My Hands Were Clean (Unlikely Books), Calliope's Boy (Black Rainbows Press) and Put It Down in a Book (The Drill Press), which was named 3:AM Magazine's Non-Fiction Book of the Year. Further curiosity can be indulged at http://tombradley.org.


Excerpt from Bomb Baby, pages 30-31:





In the middle of Hiroshima's Peace Park, standing at full attention among the barbecued cuttlefish booths, is a platoon of male college cheerleaders, Sam’s students. These junior fascists are dressed in WWII-style military uniforms of dark-blue wool. They’re rallied under giant radiating-sun flags and banners emblazoned with reversed and righted swastikas. Their boom-box blares martial music and racist propaganda. A couple of these cheerleaders hold up a big placard which reads, in both Japanese and English--



WE ARE A DIVINE NATION

WITH THE EMPEROR AT OUR CENTER!



One bulldog-like cheerleader screams into a megaphone, "Japan is a tiny rice paddy! America is a treeless peak! Flood control is paramount!"



Everyone is terrified of these fanatical boys--everyone except Sam, of course. He barges through their ranks.

Among the cheerleaders is a thin boy with glasses, who looks frazzled. He is Sam’s most nervous student. Sam shouts at him, "Why aren’t you at home studying your English? It’s a required course, you know!"



The nervous student almost faints from embarrassment. He gobbles some pharmaceutical amphetamines from a little prescription bottle. It looks as though he’s got quite a habit.



Feeling really holy now, Sam prances further into the A-Bomb Golden Anniversary Celebration, heading toward Ground Zero.