In their country, which is not so different from ours, when the president is elected a painter is hired to paint the portrait of the new president, dead, that will hang across from his desk.

When the president leaves office, the painting is burned. No copies of it are made, it is not allowed to be photographed. But the entire time he is president, in control of the military, the judiciary, the entire administrative might of the state, he must confront it on the wall across from him, hanging over every meeting and every decision, a singularity, a point beyond which nothing can be imagined.

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James Tadd Adcox is the author of a novel, DOES NOT LOVE, and a novella, REPETITION, and an editor at the literary magazine Always Crashing. He lives in Pittsburgh.

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