Gloom Review: r

r
Peycho Kanev and Felino Soriano, with Robert Wells II and Duane Locke
2009

r is a collaboration between Peycho Kanev and Felino Soriano (with contributions by editor Edward Wells II and photographer Duane Locke). This collection is primarily concerned with art – whether that be commentary about poetry and music, or works of ekphrasis. Kanev and Soriano are brilliantly forceful and descriptive poets, which makes for an intense and engaging book.

The opening poem, “small revenge,” begins with a strophe that stunned me with its force. In just a few short lines, Kanev manages both to criticize historic, outdated, canonical poets, and provide a brief manifesto for his own work:

I don't care about the metrics, the iambus
and the rhymes – I have read the classics and then
I put them back on their dusty shelves:
we write about something that comes from the guts
and the nails as the flowers outside
explode...

As the poem continues, Kanev continuously invokes and then rejects the past, all the while emphasizing the primacy of his own voice. “small revenge” is a fantastic opening, one which leaves you cheering for Kanev as he pushes his voice into the world for public view.

Soriano contributed the “Painters' Exhalations,” are a group of ekphratic poems that are clustered throughout the collection. Soriano's work here is excellent, a definitive example of quality ekphrasis. His poems augment Kanev's discussions of poetry, music, and self; they take us out of the mind and into the art gallery. Here, what we see on the canvas is transcribed perfectly into words.

There were only two poems in this entire collection that I felt could have been excluded: “Bukowski once said that all poets die in big steaming piles of shit” and “the old boys.” In “the old boys,” Kanev writes:

I hate your old gray robes
I despise your white wigs
and most of all I scorn your
volumes of poetry full of nothing
nothing at all

Like “small revenge,” this poem is an indictment of the so-called old masters (as well as contemporary poets who make their living as creative writing professors and do not teach anything of value). But while the narrator rails against these authors, there is not a sense of his own power that there was in “small revenge.” Instead, there is almost a sense of jealousy here, bitterness that the author's own work is not respected. Meanwhile, in “Bukowski,” Kanev writes:

we get published in small
independent magazines
while the rich kids at the universities
keep writing their awful poetry
and of course they are published
in big fat print anthologies

Once again, while I appreciate the power of Kanev's indictments, I am also put off by what I perceive to be self-pity. Of course, one should be furious when obviously poor-quality work is given undue respect. At the same time, though, these poems take an attitude that does not work well, especially after the force and affirmation of “small revenge.” Neither “the old boys” nor “Bukowski” contains such an affirmation, and as a result makes these poems significantly less compelling.

Further, while I understand Kanev's perspective and anger, I think a philosophical difference is what keeps me from fully enjoying these poems. I want to say to Kanev: let these rich college kids be published in anthologies. If the anthologies are taking such bad work anyway, why would you want your own artistry associated with that? Who cares what the middle-aged creative writing professors are doing? We don't write for them. Maybe we're going to be working in factories and retail jobs and who knows what else for as long as we live. Maybe we're only going to be published in small independent magazines. But we're not writing for publishers; we're not writing for agents; we're writing for ourselves, and for the others who are smart enough to value the work that we do.

Minor complaints aside, r is a wonderful collection. My favorite piece is the meta-work entitled “the poetry is nothing to fuck with,” a Whitmanesque ars poetica. Everything is poetry: bums, madmen, punk rockers. But what really makes this poem stand out is the conclusion:

and at the end
when this world
explodes into the nothing

it will be poetry too

no more
no
less.

Not only are people poetry, but even the end of time as we know it is poetry - and what's more, it will be poetry that nobody will be able to write down and pass on to future generations, because we will all be dead. The end of the universe is poetry, and it sure doesn't care about us or the people getting anthologized. Poetry simply exists without human intervention; it happens whether humans are around to write it or not. I think that is one of the most beautiful ideas one could express.

r is available for purchase at Amazon.com.

Issue 100- Prose

Now that you've had a couple of days to appreciate the wonderful contents of issue 100's poetry section, it's time to move on to a set of short stories spanning the brief, the surreal, the deep and the beautiful. Most of them are quite brief, but they fit a lot into quite a small space.- Stuart

My Father’s in My Fingers- Bethan Townsend

I’ve always wanted a baby grand piano, though not for personal use. It should be blacker than the blackest black imaginable, with extra black for luck or another whimsical notion. When I got one, there was only really one thing left to do.

I met Beethoven on Bold Street but he wasn’t really up for Costa, wanted to see the city and I couldn’t argue. I offered a half-hearted (though informative) guided tour in exchange for piano lessons, for my father and his fingers.

I wanted 80 days and 80 nights (to avoid the stereotypical 40) and I wanted them to swap consciousnesses. He was to give my Dad his hands, through any means necessary and give up Moonlight Sonata, that’ll show ‘em.

The Moonlight Sonata reminds me Earthworm Jim, floating through caves on a speckly TV screen. It’s considered a masterpiece by many, including Beethoven himself. No complacency there Lud’ lad. They sat at my piano (blacker than black) and Beethoven spent 48 days playing repeatedly, my dad, he pretended to watch...more concerned with the surgeon slipping in and out of the room.

I knew the guy well, the surgeon I mean. He went to my high school, said he was fat ‘cause he went vegetarian, ate too much cheese and then gave up vegetarianism on this basis. We had a water fight in Billinge and he promised me another, I swapped this promise for an intricate operation.

Beethoven says his genius is in his mind, we believe it’s in his fingers. I believe it’s in his fingers, my dad covets the Gibson Les Paul promised to him; on the condition of the Moonlight Sonata.
Did I mention I can already play it? At twice the speed of Beethoven, which isn’t a talent, speed is my downfall and ruins most masterpieces, everything happens to quickly and the pleasure is lost. My Moonlight Sonata is impinged by too many Es and too much speed, don’t tell dad though.

On the 49th day my surgeon agrees stops slipping away and slips into his greens. We shoot them with tranquiliser darts (for kicks) and lay them down in what used to be my toilet but is now in fact an operating theatre. Not so much room.

I don’t like the buzz of ‘the what might be a saw’ as the hands are swapped and sewn up. 31 days left to learn. Although if learning is required, I believe his genius is in his mind.
Beethoven is complete following me down Ranelagh Street. I prance about like the perfect tour guide, the Yellow Duckmarine gets a look in and Beethoven actually squeals.

- Ich bin verzückt

I cough knowingly and force him down the steps to the Beatles Tour, where a wannabe-camp (don’t ask me why) acquaintance of mine works. I do like the Beatles, in small doses, mainly of Maggie Mae (the version off Acoustic Submarine). We have to go home, squeezing through the flurry of tracksuits and trolleys, as everyone round here (regardless of age) has one of those tartan things.

The Moonlight Sonata fills my spaceless flat my father’s fingers are healed. The Les Paul is flung in the corner and Beethoven is at a loss. He can’t play it anymore and all he wants is his own Gibson Les Paul.

- You can have a Les Paul if you learn to play my Moonlight Sonata, to my satisfaction.

My father’s smirking, Beethoven is clichéd, aghast.


Pyro-Magic- Bethan Townsend

He'll never set the world on fire. They won't let him. When we first met flames danced in his eyes but they've been extinguished. He promised me the world for a fire lighter and I obliged for a kiss from his singed lips.

We were on fire. Pyro-magical instances combine us as his jet black hair and skin smells of melting flesh. It's completely not arousing but I know I'm turned on, staring into the flickering ignition in of his amber eyes.

He hated me as much as I loved him. Touching him made him wail, scream and hiss, like a wood fire. Yet he still came back. He was flammable, inflammable and beautiful.

He trapped me, burnt me.

Made me.

Bethan Townsend is 21 and lives in North West England. She cites her favourite poets as Allen Ginsberg and Dylan Thomas and loves cats, gin, and all things Irish. She occasionally rants and poeticises at http://plasticrosaries.blogspot.com and has been published by Read This Magazine, Ink, Sweat and Tears, Conversation Quarterly and various other lovely people. Forthcoming publications in The Glasgow Review and FRiGG Magazine.





Dainty-Chloe Fields

Mother was supposed to be raised a vegetarian, but gave up at the age of four. Something about the animals at the zoo excited her to the point where she wanted to consume them. The chickens, the pigs, the cows: they weren’t cute. They were food.

We never had stuffed animals lying around the house. She looked at me as the cure to her mess of mistakes, as all she could have been, so now I’m a vegetarian, born and raised.

I’ve never tasted meat. Some say it’s a loss, some praise me. They don’t know it wasn’t my choice, a predetermined quality, a duty. It’s a realm I’ve never stepped foot in, not being able to laugh at the mysterious texture of the sloppy joes at lunchtime, or play dinosaurs with my chicken fingers.


I was eleven the last time we went to visit my father’s grave, and my mother was on edge. We drove down the Eastern coast for about six hours, during which the only thing I wanted to do was stick my feet out the window.

“Keep your feet in the car,” she said.

“Why?”

“Because they’ll fly off your skinny little legs and I’m not going to turn around to help you look for them.” Her intractable gaze was nervous and careful on the road.

When we got to the grave all she could do was pace and talk about her mother, who lay underground six hours back in the other direction. I lay on the grass under the gravestone and six feet above my father, wondering what it was that he ate last. Was it a popsicle, a carrot stick, a pita?

“Do you know that my mother was dainty and long, just like you?”

Mother had said he loved the winter. Maybe it was soup.

“She had a number of wrap dresses she left for me.”

Cheese and wine? The idea of him always seemed so regal. Maybe caviar.

“They don’t fit me. When you develop some hips you can have them.”

Steak. It must have a been a great big steak, cooked by mother, and me in the highchair, I must have been eating beans and peas.

“Those dresses weren’t made for meat-eaters anyway.”

*

On my birthdays I got to choose which restaurant we would go to. And every year on my birthday we would go to the Vegetastic Basket. Mother would put up a big stink, more to be funny than contradictory. It was the one time of year she would eat a meatless salad. It was the one time of year I found myself amongst allies.

When I imagined myself ordering a hamburger, I would mess up and ask for a humanburger, a Sally Rosenfield burger, as if I weren’t cut out for it. And sometimes when I saw mother furiously cutting into a piece of chewy beef, I imagined that she was eating Sally Rosenfield, and that I was eating her garden.

Once, when my mother was cooking dinner, I came close to eating meat. The doorbell rang, and after she left the room, she came back to find me hunched over the open oven, gripping the steaming hot piece of chicken with my hands and leading it into my mouth. It wasn’t a well thought out plan. It was a spontaneous act of rebellion. The chicken never made it to my mouth; when mother sees something she wants she fights for it. So the half-cooked breast flew across the floor, scudding like a gun she had just smacked out of my throbbing and scorched hands.

“Don’t do that,” she said. “Don’t be ungrateful.”

But I wasn’t ungrateful, not at the time. At the time I was nothing more than curious. It wasn’t the glisten of the viscous thing sitting there raw on the plate beforehand, nor had the smell seeping from the oven lured me in. It was the law of it. But I kept my mouth shut, as I was supposed to have done in the first place.

“You have something special going for you, Lucy,” she said. “But your failure to realize it disappoints me.”

And that was my pressure: a sad widowed mother only saddened by the fact that she was never a vegetarian, never had the bone structure of a frail old woman, who was resentful of her daughter for not being thankful of the delicate body she had passed onto her. Instead, mother was robust, big bursting hips and plentiful breasts.

I wanted to tell her of my resentment, of how my friend’s mothers smelled like detergent or plants or summertime rain showers, but mine smelled like chicken. And so what if she was large and so what if I were small. I wanted to tell her that I never wished to be prettier, or smarter, I just wished I could eat meat like everyone else. But she was distressed and uncollected, a pot pie gouged in the center. And I was shaking, a thin vine of carrot root tousled by the wind.

For the longest time mother would complain about her body. Later she would just curse it when it seemed to get in the way. Then she would look at me, and I would look down at myself, and she would shake her head, often times en route to the refrigerator.

She once told me that I would have more options with the body she gave me: more boyfriends to choose from, easier interactions with authorities, and a greater leeway into what I’m passionate about. She said when you’re not skinny your passions come second to your goals. She said skinny girls don’t have goals because they’re already closer to perfect.

“I have lots of goals,” I said, full of vitality. “I want to paint and I want to help animals.”

“No, those are passions, Lucy,” she said. “Don’t humor me.”


I was blonde and thin and thus popular in high school, but I felt more at ease with the art kids. In the studio I found others like me, except they had made the choice themselves. Some told me that bacon was overrated, and that chicken was blander than tofu. One friend explained that her vegetarianism was spawned out of an incident involving a cheeseburger; uncannily, in a moment when her teeth cut through the patty, she heard a distant and somber moo of a cow. I laughed when I heard these anecdotes. Suddenly the meat-eaters weren’t the fortunate ones; they were the victims.

I was in college when my mother got sick. She never divulged the illness that led to her death, though it was related to meat-eating, I either gathered or decided. I opted not to probe or do the research because I felt that would be insensitive. The process of waiting to lose her was easier thinking her the victim. I took time off from school to be with her.

“Lucy,” she said earnestly, the C lingering with a buzz. It was just another day in the hospital, about four weeks into her stay, and I was beginning to feel the wait intolerable. She took her fork and jabbed it into her meatloaf. “I want you to have a bite,” she said.

I looked at it with a distinct urge to laugh: that wasn’t food. It was a mound of insides ground up and smashed together with salt and pepper and celery. It was grainy and mud-colored, the surface disarrayed with lumps of fat. The laugh got stuck in my throat, thwarting a surge in my stomach.

“I’m not going to do that,” I said.

She sighed the most purposeful sigh I’ve ever heard, her hands resting on her diminutive lap.

She was frail now, haggard and bony. “I knew you wouldn’t,” she said. “Because I taught you better than that.”

I didn’t say anything, only sat with my fist at my mouth.

“Can you ever forgive me?” she asked. “I only wanted you to shine. My mother wanted me to shine.” She then talked down to the meat. “In many ways I did, and in many ways I didn’t. I don’t want you to feel like you let me down, Lucy. You make me so happy.”

I wondered how many mothers gazed lovingly upon their child for refusing to fall under the pressure of the almighty steak. I wondered how many mothers lay at their deathbed, thinking not of how they would do it all over again, but gleaming at their second chance, live in dainty flesh.

“You make me so happy, Lucy,” she repeated, “and I only pray that I make you happy.”

And I wanted to say that she did, but I only looked down at myself, at my body, and felt the corners of my mouth curve upward.





Night Voices- Lindsea Kemp

The voices in the street were loud, as if the dark houses and smooth pavement served as some sort of echo chamber. Laughter. It was brief but jarring as a car door slammed and they walked down to the beach access. There were other noises, whispered voices and forgetting-to-whisper voices…nothing clear or with any kind of message. But the tone sounded young and the laughter was alive.

One in the morning, I lay in bed after hearing a car park in front of my house. I heard the laughter and the voices and the slam and the footsteps. Then darkness collapsed on itself once again and streetlights lit up swaying palm trees for no one. It was silent.

I recognized the voices easily. Not that I knew the specific owners of the voices, but it was more that I knew the answers to the questions that the voices posed. Why were the people walking down the street? Why were they laughing? What were they feeling?

I knew because there have been moments when my voice was released and the sound waves bounced and danced against still houses. The car doors had slammed and we had walked down the empty street laughing at nothing. The wind blew softly and I remember noticing the plumeria tree was filled with more flowers than usual. The sky was clear.

It’s a heady feeling when the rest of the world is asleep, and the street is empty save for us. Walking to my apartment we used to watch the light at the distant intersection turn red, green, yellow, then red again. Once the hush falls and the monkeys in the zoo send their last cries throughout the park, the ocean is loud enough to hear.

And then there’s the final stumble and giggle when the final destination is reached. Home, with sandy feet or smoke and sweat drenched body, I used to listen to the memory-dense space in the whisper hours, limbs spread out on a sheet-covered air mattress.

The distorted street voices I understand clearly. Each outburst of night laughter I know the source. Those people, the only ones awake in the entire world, I recognize. I can pretend to be asleep and not make a noise or turn a light on, if only they promise to do the same for me.





Gently Down the Stream-Jude Dillon


She lay back in the bow of the rowboat staring over at the shoreline. She definitely had an aura about her. I could sense a contentment when she closed her eyes. So still in the bow she could have been asleep, she spoke in the hush between my oar strokes. Yet it was not the language of the tongue.

-You okay? I asked her and she nodded and smiled.

-It’s so beautiful out here, she said. How are you?

-I’m waking up.

-Well, let me know if you get bored. I’ll take over.

-Sure you will, I said.

She smiled at the shore. I’m happy, she said, then turned to me without smiling. Can you feel it?

-Mmm hmmm…

-Like we’re breaking some law out here, she went on. This adventure….escapes me.

-Escape, I said.

-This feeling… She was insistent. We’re floating along on it, moving away…

-A bit scary, I said, after a pause.

-Well, she said. We don’t know where it will end. For a moment her face lost its brightness and her voice that languid quality that so reassured me. It was as if a cloud was passing over head.

-Let it happen, I guess, she went on. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. She turned her face back to the rocky shoreline.

-Where are we now? She asked me.

-Where ever, I said, breathing out the last word, sharply, pushing my arms out and forward with the oars, moving into the next stroke.

-Well, she said. Let’s keep going.

It was quiet on the water, except for the regular dipping rhythm of the oars, which I had really stopped hearing as you stop listening after awhile to your own breathing.

-Is there anyone else? She grinned at me.

-No, that would get in the way, I said. Throw off the balance.

The shoreline was a rocky meandering line. Scaly looking granite and crumbling shale blurred into pinkish grey. Even from this distance, I could hear the lake surf lapping quietly against the rocky ledge.

Pine trees clung together on the bluffs and further back, wider, leafier trees stood apart from each other and led away into the woods. A thousand different paths were possible there. It was very enticing to imagine a cabin at the end of one of those paths and in the evening finding your way home by the smell of wood smoke.

I felt a surge of energy. A light breeze came over us from across the lake. It was getting on in the afternoon. The wind began playing gently with the tree tops by the shore. It was like watching someone’s hair being rustled by an affectionate hand. One of my oars flipped up too quickly landing a spray of water up to the bow.

-Jesus! What!, she said.

-Oh were you sleeping? I laughed.

-All this time? She asked. I remember shoving off, but …You should have talked to me and kept me awake.

She sat up in the bow to stare at the rocky shore, the colour detail in the trees fading out now and their shape changing rapidly to silhouette.

-This doesn’t look familiar, she said.

The detail in her face was lost now in the falling shadows. The sound of her voice drew her closer and calmed me.

-Where are we? She said and her words leapt to me across the darkness.

I bent forward towards her for a deeper stroke of my oars.

-Almost there, I said.

Jude Dillon is a poet and writer/photographer living in Calgary Alberta Canada.

#100

Lyn Lifshin
ON THE STALLED METRO

on my way to ballet,
wild to dance the
voodoo wild blues
out of me while he
dreams of Audrey
Tautou and Javier
Bardem. He is
forgetting my words,
the poems he
remembered longer
than many. What
can you expect from
a man who wanted
to collect stones
and be a zoo keeper,
cage animals, paint
and trap what once
was free to have
them, like all the
women who trail him,
caught for him in
case he’s in
the mood





WHEN THERE ARE MARIACHIS

when breakfast and lunch
are martinis. When
sheets smell of rose,
Bulgarian rose, Tuber
rose, that dark rose
in a bottle on my dresser,
musky as skin. When
it’s bolero or rumba.
When we leave the
room, and there is no
cat puke to clean up,
no terror of what’s
ahead. When you hold
me, should you hold me





Carlos Ponce-Meléndez
Let the dead alone

Let the dead go wherever they have to go
Let them persist in their stubborn silence

The dead know what life is like but
None of them has returned from their mute dwelling

Even the ones who left love, friends and songs
Refuse to mingle with us

It seems that they despise us as night loathes the day
They have the secret, we have hope only

Let the dead enjoy their vicious peace
No more crying for them, no more lies about them

They have to rest
And we have to get ready for our funeral.





C. N. Bean
Freak Show

Parked in the dusty drive
the state-issued Plymouth
a time-faded dark blue
had all four windows down

to cool the prisoner
who sat chained in the back
but we could barely see
because of blinding light
sun hitting the windshield

so Rick and I joined our
three sisters at the shed
that kept our winter coal

and faced a teenager
who had a youthful face
and dark hair slightly long
and most of life ahead

except for an order
to prison once again
for breaking not a law
but only a parole

that made him sit forward
his hands behind his back

while dad talked to my mom
in half-buried basement
that had no house no top
but windows in the front

so he could see the car
and us admire his catch





John Grochalski
parade

are having a parade
down broadway
and my pittsburgh relatives
do not like this
there are no sikhs in pittsburgh
if there are, they keep to themselves
they don’t have parades
down 5th avenue and wood street
the irish do that
my pittsburgh relatives think
the sikhs are muslims
because sikhs wear
bright orange turbans
and have long beards
my pittsburgh relatives do not understand
how these muslims can parade
down broadway, manhattan
after 9/11 a man in mesa, arizona
killed a sikh
at a gas station because
he thought he was a muslim
with his orange turban and long beard
my pittsburgh relatives don’t know any muslims
neither do i
they didn’t come to new york city
to watch muslims have a parade
so they want to take taxis
away from the noise of midtown
only after they get to climb
the empire state building and roar
and look at all the people as small as ants
the tiny cars and buses caught in gridlock
my pittsburgh relatives want
to see new york city from high above
they want to look down on the parade of sikhs
as they weave their way along broadway
watch as the sea of orange turbans move along
disappearing in the haze of a hot april saturday
until the streets are clear and safe again
for the throngs of people carrying macy’s bags
trying to cross 34th street
before the light changes.





Michael McAloran
                               come closer still-

the outstretched wings shadow motions shadow

clipped harvest of the unknown

words a basket of severed skull at the base

of the guillotine

charnel burning white lightning seedlings sprung

nothingness a dreamscape of sheared flowers the

pulse running viscid-dry

skull and all that resides to taste dark wind burning a

harvest of bones

effortless death

salve of emptiness

o' to drift endless in a sea of colours untainted by

this ocean of decomposed existences

to kiss

to sever

what ties me

to this sewer

screaming out in the dark ablaze with absence the

loss the grinding of teeth of flight

my knuckles crackling electrical

come closer

still





Divya Rajan
Flaubert's babies

Clever could very easily have been
Flaubert's baby; the one
who got to tease streaks of hair on his
narrow- framed chest, and trace caveman's letters
beseeched in the warmth, the special sunshine
that tweaked amidst pourings
of rain on thatched hay, and love
for whatever it's worth, maybe nothing,
maybe an ocean of quicksand
that slips underneath one's flabby feet.


Wise could have been his twin brother;
the one who got to look just like him,
the twinkle in his blue eyes, attached
earlobes, even his sixth finger on a daisy frond palm.
But of course, he got to act a bit different
very unlike little twin brothers often do, like
ice lying stretched underneath water,
hard against wood, the water
never seeping inside, never destroying
fibers that tell the
same tales.





A.G. Synclair
Dutch

when the mill closed
and her father
went insane
took three shirts
a bottle of Jack
and moved in with a family of trees
Lucy poured coffee
and managed to smile
when his men
would ask about Dutch
and overtip
for coffee
and day old cherry pie





Alex Franco
Vivisection

Saw through the breastbone
to see what makes you tick,
other than your still beating
Times Square. Peel back
the veins and find you’ve missed
the F train, but hey,
it’s only Coney Island.
All these concrete muscles
distract from the science of it,
and the nurses are getting jumpy—
you would too if you lived here.
Funding has been cut,
so the scalpels were bought second
hand from the same street vendor
who stole your wedding china.
The anaesthetic drips dry
and you wake up staring at God
or the lights of your apartment building.
Just run through the conjugation
of irregular verbs to take
your mind off the pain.
It’ll all be over soon.
When we’re done we can stitch
you back together as long
as we can steal
the pieces from the immigrants
we bartered with, but if not, hey,
it’s only Coney Island.

Gonzo Cupboard #1

Welcome to the first installment of Gonzo Cupboard, a periodic nonfiction-themed edition of Mr. Wink’s Cabinet of Wonders. Due to a dangerous lack of supervision (says Wink via e-mail: “I am not going to play interfering dictator, do whatever you please”), I’ll be posting bits of irresponsible journalism, oddball humor, and an occasional work of tasteless fiction whenever the Gonzo inbox once again starts to overflow with words I like. Coming soon to my other tiny corner of Mr. Wink’s house: “Gonzo: A Sort of Manifesto.” (G. Oguss)


Tim O’Irish
Le Musee C’Est Moi

When I was in school, Wednesday was Museum Day. Each Wednesday at noon, I would meet up with my boss, the Chairman of the Classics Department, and we would drive up to the Metropolitan Museum on Fifth Avenue. The chairman discouraged conversation in the car. Outside of class, he was not talkative, at least until the first drink of the afternoon. After that, there was not stopping him.

At the museum, I would unload about forty trays of slides from the car, then hand-truck them to the Met’s research library in the basement of the building. This was in the days before digital media and the Metropolitan had a huge amount of physical research material. They claimed to have a slide of every major work of art and architecture in the world. I must have lugged every single one of them over my years in school. The chairman had spent every Wednesday afternoon for more than twenty years right there in the library, pulling projectables for his next week’s lectures.

Once I had the old boy installed in the library, I was free to wander the museum for hours, until the time came to carry the new trays of slides out to the car. This meandering provided a very good education. I spent many weeks in the Egyptian wing, even more in Greek and Roman sculpture. I was very fond of the illuminated Persian books in the Islamic Collection and spent much time in the Lehman Wing (where the late financier’s collection was displayed in a detailed reconstruction of his own house). The Met’s exhausting collection of paintings on the second floor took many months to go through. I recall spending whole afternoons gazing at a two-sided Van Gogh, which was displayed in an acrylic box mounted on a plinth. I had patience in those days.

If I was tired or bored, I’d find a spot to sit and read, usually in the atrium in front of the American Wing (which had a fine casting of Rodin’s Gates of Hell) or in the Egyptian atrium by the little recreation of the Nile that ran past the tidy Temple of Dendour. I liked this spot best. It was always like the Nile Valley there, only cool, quiet and clean–and no Egyptians. Outside, the Central Park snow would fall against the glass walls in the gathering dark. But in here, it was forever bright, warm and safe.

The Met was impressive and educational. It was also stuffy, snobbish and not especially fun (in the way I find, say, Ed Kienholz or Jonathan Borofsky fun). It was elegant, tomb-like and silent—a bit too haunted by the spirit of Stanford White and the nineteenth-century notion of what art ought to be. After a time, I began to privately refer to the museum as the art cemetery.

I suppose I’d grown tired of art that was created for museums and the art done by people I knew at school in imitation of what they’d seen in museums. Still, I was grateful for the many days I roamed the halls of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

At five o’clock, I would go downstairs to collect the chairman and the new batch of slides. Once I had the car packed up, the chairman would invariably insist we go over to the bar at The Stanhope for an hour or two of serious drinking. The Chairman, in his late forties, seemed to subsist solely on Italian Art, Gordon’s Gin and unfiltered Pall Malls. He was the product of illiterate Irish immigrant parents, had been a Fulbright Scholar, and had a PhD in archeology from Princeton and Bologna (where he was the first non-Italian since Erasmus to get a doctorate in Italian Literature). The old boy avoided going home as much as he could; his wife was a socialite and a notorious bitch. Their only child was a profoundly retarded girl with epilepsy. The Chairman told wonderful stories, sang opera superbly when drunk and seemed on intimate terms with every bartender and maitre’d from The Battery to Yorkville.

On this particular night in November, after a particularly boozy session at the Stanhope, I parted company with the Chairman on Fifth Avenue. My habit at these times was to cut east over to Lex or Madison, then walk south for a ways. I’d turn west in the East Fifties, then catch the subway downtown at Sixth Avenue. Gin seemed always to require exercise. I’d never ride the subway just after gin; that was only asking for trouble.

It was past seven p.m., quite dark and too cold for that time of year. The streets were always empty in early November; they would fill up with shoppers and tourists after Thanksgiving and through the holidays; they’d empty out again in January (always the grimmest, snowiest month) and come back to life by March. I recall I often sang when I walked the empty streets after drinking (I was a very musical drunk in my youth) and I did so on this night. I believe I did a rendition of the aria “O Mio Babbino Caro,” as if performed by Jerry Lewis. It was filled with ear-splitting key changes and spurious Yiddish. (“Oyyyy—mio babbeeeeeno caro—niiiiice laaaaydee!”) As I hit a particularly acidic high note, the driver of a passing cab leaned out his window and shouted:

“SHUT UP! JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP!”

I turned down 58th Street and began to walk west.

58th Street was a chic, well-lit promenade with a wide sidewalk to accommodate shoppers, though there were none in sight this night. I did see a small dark figure, slowly strolling, nearly a block ahead of me. I was walking at a faster pace than the figure; soon, I was about ten feet behind.

As I approached, it seemed clear it was a homeless person--man or woman I could not tell. From behind, I could see that this person was wrapped up in a black cloth. He (or she) was wearing a black hat like an old Homburg, pulled down low on his (or her) head. As I drew closer, I could see the odd hair—mostly gray, brilliantine-ed curls that hung below the brim of the hat. The figure shuffled along with a cane and began to speak.

Perhaps a yard behind the dark stroller, I could make out a word or two of what he (definitely a he) was saying. It was in Spanish—Catalan actually—though some S’s were lisped like in Castillian. The voice said: “Entre lossss mariiposss-assssss de desssss-tinooo-ah--ah ha Yo-ho-ho-HAH! PERFECTA!” The speaker produced these words as if for the benefit of their pretty sounds—slowly and with enough odd stress that you’d need subtitles to know exactly what was being said.

By this point, I had a fair notion of with what I was dealing.

I walked a foot or so ahead of the man. The enormous, waxed mustache (more like bits of punctuation than growths of human hair) confirmed my suspicion. It was he—Salvador Dali—in the flesh. He was all decked out for a night at the La Scala circa 1930.

The old man wore an old-fashioned tuxedo, with round silk lapels and a black satin stripe down the pant leg, below which he sported patent leather opera pumps. What I’d thought was a black blanket was an antique opera cape, tied loosely at his throat. He had a white silk scarf draped over his shoulders and carried a black lacquered stick with an ivory knob for a handle (much like what Fred Astaire wielded when he was “Putting on The Ritz”). Dali paid me no mind whatsoever, though his mumbling (still in Catalonian Spanglish) had now increased in volume to a conversational level.

Of course I knew who Salvador Dali was. It was hard not to. My drawing teacher, the Cuban Surrealist Daniel Serra Badue, had been his friend and contemporary in Barcelona in the thirties. Serra had a few pen and ink Dali originals hung in the office corner of his studio. Painting students at school still dutifully churned out Dali pastiches—innumerable renderings of phallic driftwood melting on Death Valley dreamscapes, drippy profiles like cracked eggs frying on matrix horizons suspended in starry space—entirely derivative stuff. I’d studied Dali-as-mathematician in my Survey of World Mathematics course; the open-minded Jesuits at school had even hung a large reproduction of his Christ Crucified on an Extended Hypercube (Corpus Hypercubus) in the school chapel.

Dali had long been a semi-scandalous social figure in New York. He’d prowl the streets with a foul-smelling pet ocelot on a leash; the raucous scenes he created when a bar or restaurant refused to admit the animal were notorious. On one occasion, Dali flung himself through a plate-glass display window at Bonwitt Teller; he later claimed the beautiful, glamorous world depicted in the window was so convincing he assumed he could just enter into it. I recall one critic described Dali as having “the brush of an angel and the vanity of a drag queen.”

The old man continued strolling along, paying me no deliberate mind, though he did grow more animated now that he had company. I knew better than to approach him. Dali was known to react violently when accosted by strangers; he claimed that he was compelled to create an original work dedicated to every person whom he ever touched. With strangers grabbing his arm or shaking his hand, it would certainly make for a heavy workload.

I should point out that, though shopworn, the old boy looked pretty good. He must have been into his eighties by then. But here he was walking around on a cold night, unattended, all dolled up like a waxworks Dracula. He was walking at a good speed by this time and swinging his cane with his pace to indicate that he really didn't need it.

By this time I was certain that it was he who was engaging me. I slowed down a little; he slowed down a little. I walked faster; he walked faster. I stopped; he stopped. I spun in a circle; he spun in a circle. It was a bit like the I Love Lucy episode where Harpo Marx and Lucille Ball played mirror. The shuffling gait the old man affected when I’d first come upon him had been just another pose.

“Dondeeee esssstAAAHHH el grasssss-eeeee-osssssso?” he asked of no one.
He turned in my direction, pointed his stick ahead and said curtly (as if to an unseen person walking between us): “El Museo Dali es aqui...”

Is that where he was headed, all slicked up, I wondered? As far as I knew, the Dali Museum (in Spain) was still under construction. He’d have an awfully long walk, though they’d probably be finished building it by the time he got there.

We came to an intersection. The crossing was marked with stripes at right angles, forming a grid of white-bordered boxes on the asphalt. The old man dutifully waited by my side for the light to turn green. When it did, he dashed across the grid, his stick held high like a sword. At the mid-point of the crossing, he planted the tip of the cane in the center of a manhole cover. He then neatly paced in a clockwise circle around the cover, counting off the hours of the day (in Spanish) like a timepiece. At the count of Twelve, he dashed back to my side and resumed walking.

Everything on this street seemed closed for the night. Where was Dali really going anyway? The opera was north, the theaters were south and we were headed west. About halfway down this next block was a brightly-lit storefront. I knew the place. It was an Italian shoe boutique; over the past two weeks a crew had been shooting a commercial for European TV therein. I could see the commotion as we approached the shop-front. Within the premises was a score of dancers attired in the workout clothing of the day (ridiculous knee-warmers in fruit-stand colors); this chorus line executed a series of intricately arranged moves to a music track one could not hear from outside the store. I could hear the thump, thump of the bass tones though.

Dali found this all irresistible; “Oooohhhh—ahhhhhhh-haaaaah!” he cried as he trundled over to the shop window, twirling his walking stick like a jaunty Chaplin. I stopped to watch his performance. By now, I was also feeling a little responsible for the old loon; if he fell, got mugged or hit by a fucking bus it would be my fault. The old man pressed his face and hands to the glass. Was he going to dash thorough it, I wondered, or was he getting too old for that sort of thing? Dali then deftly leaped up onto the ledge in front of the window; it must have been about a foot off the ground and a foot-and-a-half wide.

He raised his cane and began to swing his arms in time to the beat as though he were a conductor. “Aaaa-haa!” he cried, “Si, siiiii, siiiiii!”

The old lunatic continued for a couple of minutes, complimenting his own performance while delivering it. If any inside the shop were at all aware of him, they made no sign of it. Dali then spun around on the window ledge and cried loudly “Ayyyyeeeee! El fin! Es fan-TASSSSS-tique!” The old man neatly hopped from the ledge and rejoined me on the sidewalk. For the first (and only) time in our stroll, he turned his head and addressed himself (now in French) directly to me.

“Le musee...” he said with a laugh, “C’est moi.”

A bit further down the street was the old boy’s destination. It was Regine’s. A pair of figures loitered in a pool of light near the entrance. I knew about the place—not as literary as Elaine’s or as gay as Studio 54. But more exclusive than either. If you weren’t a regular, Regine had to personally invite you. As we drew closer I could see Regine herself at the door— notable for her helmet of lacquered red hair. She wore a bronze-colored metallic evening gown and a matching wrap to stem the November chill. By her side stood a beefy doorman draped in about twenty yards of Armani suiting.

Without a goodbye or a glance back, the old man then left my side and strode purposefully toward the doorway; it flooded the pavement with a warm, butter-colored brightness. Throwing her arms wide (most theatrical) Regine advanced on old Dali and embraced him: he was definitely expected. It really was something, seeing these two characters arm-in-arm: the man who claimed he’d invented art (he really didn’t) and the woman who claimed she’d invented the disco (she probably did).

I watched as they turned to go inside. Wrapping her arm about Dali’s shoulder as though he were an errant son come home at last, she led the old man through the doorway, toward the source of the warm light.



DJ Jesus Christ
Random Suicide Letter to a 22 Year-Old in China

--------------------------- Original Message --------------------------
From: Klaus Dexter
Date: Feb 10, 2009 3:29 AM
Subject: greetings from the darkness

it’s a cold rainy night and i feel like reaching out to a friend in a far-away land…

i know it sounds strange but there was a huge thunderclap outside in the rain and it seemed to be urging me to write something. please forgive my randomness; I’m not usually so random. that’s really the reason i decided to send you an email. you’re someone i don't know at all...and you don't know me. isn’t it crazy?? isn’t it crazy that i can send a letter to someone i don’t even know halfway around the world?
i could even tell you me deepest and darkest secrets. now if i met someone on the street and tried to have a conversation like this they would just wrinkle their forehead and walk away thinking, “that guy is INSANE.” but am i? i don't feel insane...just a little out of place.

to tell you the truth, i really want to ask you if you think that dreams are as real as reality itself. what do you think? do you even have dreams? some people say they can't remember their dreams; then are their dreams wasted?

but here’s the biggest unanswered question of all: what the heck is the point of life??

happiness?
satisfaction?

usually the question is worded like this: ‘what is the meaning of life?’

and i always like to answer with: ‘the meaning of life IS meaning.’ it sounds silly and full of empty rhetoric doesn't it? but really, people need meaning in life to continue, no matter how illogical or crazy their beliefs. i think you understand what i’m talking about. why? because the thunder and rain outside told me so. i know it seems ridiculous, but that's just the way i feel. to me, life is an endless poem in which color battles against the absence of color: a war between passion and logic.

and usually, when i can't find meaning i write or make music. what do you do? it seems you’re an artist. you said you liked poetry, drawing, designing, and film. That’s something i can relate to.

what’s it like in china?

if you have no answers that’s ok too. Actually, I don’t have many friends. i just wanted to spend some time talking with you. your picture inspired me. the thunder, rain, and lightning pushed me to be brave and to trust in someone i don't know. in fact, i totally trust you but i still don’t know why.

-Klaus

After a run-in with some Klonopins and Scotch whiskey earlier this year, Klaus Dexter is currently under house arrest and forbidden from using the internet.



Communist Chatsex

[06:50] 天地同根: sup hottie
[06:50] 天地同根: i'm a communist
[06:51] 天地同根: really
[06:51] kathykittens: hello
[06:51] 天地同根: i'm like che guevara
[06:51] 天地同根: but less guevara, more che
[06:51] kathykittens: i like sexxxxxxx
[06:51] 天地同根: che likes sex
[06:51] kathykittens: u like it to
[06:51] 天地同根: sex is healthy but only with communist girl
[06:52] 天地同根: are you communist girl?
[06:52] kathykittens: yea
[06:52] kathykittens: wanna hav chat sex
[06:52] 天地同根: really?
[06:52] kathykittens: yea
[06:52] 天地同根: do you have picture of chairman mao?
[06:53] 天地同根: or lenin?
[06:53] kathykittens: noe
[06:53] 天地同根: hmm, this may be problem
[06:53] 天地同根: i cannot sex without picture
[06:53] kathykittens: why
[06:53] 天地同根: we need picture
[06:53] kathykittens: noe u dont jst think it
[06:53] 天地同根: you should understand what i'm talking about....hey! are you communist? you sed you're communist!
[06:57] kathykittens: so u want to or not
[06:57] kathykittens: do u wanr 2 av sex
[06:58] 天地同根: bwaahahaaaaa...you mean, with no picture of mao??!
[06:58] kathykittens: yea
[06:58] 天地同根: are you crazy??!
[06:58] kathykittens: does it really matter
[06:59] kathykittens: yes im a female
[07:00] 天地同根: ok
[07:01] 天地同根: do you like communist sex?
[07:01] kathykittens: yea
[07:02] 天地同根: do you like these pictures of chairman mao? stalin? who is the sexiest?
[07:03] kathykittens: all of them
[07:04] 天地同根: hmm, what's ur communist country of origin?
[07:05] kathykittens: i 4got bt r we goin 2 do it or not
[07:06] kathykittens: r we gion 2 hav sex or wut cuz im really turned on
[07:07] 天地同根: oh wow! oh. oh, O
[07:07] kathykittens: yea
[07:08] 天地同根: you like che huh?
[07:08] 天地同根: che makes you feel good right?
[07:08] kathykittens: yuh
[07:08] 天地同根: che gonna it give to the commune!
[07:08] 天地同根: everybody gonna get it! oh, baby, take a piece!
[07:09] kathykittens: get it babii please
[07:09] 天地同根: oh oh oh
[07:09] 天地同根: che guevara!
[07:09] 天地同根: say it!
[07:09] 天地同根: guevara!
[07:09] 天地同根: nao1!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
[07:12] kathykittens: guevara nal 1
[07:12] 天地同根: alright!
[07:12] 天地同根: was it good for you?
[07:12] 天地同根: wait, did we already finish?
[07:13] kathykittens: oh you totally freeking ruind it,
[07:13] 天地同根: wait, lets have a smoke...wait, where'd you go?



Ben Higginbotham
Farewell Tour

The van was cramped, as always. Alex Grimswold lit another cigarette and exhaled into the swirling miasma of smoke that permeated the vehicle. It was in the seats, their hair, their clothes. It didn’t matter. They were supposed to smell like smoke. It was part of the lifestyle. Besides, this was the last tour. No one was going to miss it even if they came out on stage smeared in shit and honey. He’d heard earlier in the week there were actually people selling their blood to afford the exorbitant ticket prices that Roy had insisted on charging. Alex honestly couldn’t give a fuck what they charged anymore. He already had more money than he could possibly spend in a lifetime. He was sure that Roy had made at least three times as much as anyone else in the band.

The cigarette turned sour in his mouth at the thought of the fat little prig, and he stubbed it out on the armrest next to him. Everyone else was asleep, but they wouldn’t have said anything to him even if they’d been watching. This wasn’t the first time someone had put out their cigarette on this particular armrest, as the forest of black pockmarks burned into the faux-leather could attest. Besides, who the hell was going to yell at him? He was Alex fucking Grimswold, lead singer of the most influential band since the Beatles. There were people selling their blood just to see him shaking his aging ass on stage one last time.

Fucking imbeciles, he thought, flicking the butt out the window. Who the fuck sells their blood anyway? Transients and stupid fucking college kids who can’t afford their next baggie of pot, that’s who.

He remembered saying in an interview several years earlier, “Why should I be worried about my health? Hendrix, Morrison, Joplin, all of them burned out young and left a beautiful fucking corpse. I’ll be pissed at myself if I don’t do the exact same thing.” In another interview that same year, he was quoted as saying, “Of course I want to die young. You get to bow out of the business before it starts feeling like a job. One way or another, I want to get the hell out of this place before it’s not fun anymore.”

Well, it was too late for any of that. He hadn’t OD’d, although Lord knows he’d taken enough drugs to kill a horse on more than one occasion. In fact, he’d taken enough horse tranquilizers to kill a horse, one night when they were on tour with some rinky-dink trio that had faded into obscurity months later. He’d taken them about an hour before he was set to go onstage and still put on a good enough set that the police came in and broke it up twenty minutes in.

It was no longer fun anymore, Roy had seen to that. Even the shit that they used to do for kicks, like trashing hotel rooms and taking advantage of teenage groupies looking to sleep with fame, had taken on the bland routine of a nine-to-five job.

“I ain’t never had a nine-to-five, and I’ll put a bloody bullet in my brain before I do.”

That was another of his quotes, a few years after his “I want to die young” interview. He’d said the nine-to-five thing just so he could get into the pants of some sexy little reporter, who didn’t look like she was old enough to buy cigarettes yet. The next thing he knew he saw his mean face plastered all over T-shirts, with that quote stuck like a nasty zit on the underside of his chin. After that, he’d had to look out into the crowd and see his face staring back at him on a sea of black T-shirts, emblazoned with the legend “Hendrix, Morrison, Joplin, Grimswold” on the front and “All of them burned out young and left a beautiful fucking corpse” on the back. He was tempted to start saying stupid shit intentionally, see how many of the little shits would come to his concerts with one of his T-shirts if he started quoting Mother Goose or something. The only thing that stopped him was an image of row upon row of that same mean face worn proudly on their chests with “Mary Had A Little Lamb” stenciled on the back.

The van shuddered to a wheezing stop, and he looked out the window to see where they were. Not yet at the venue, not unless Roy had finally gone apeshit and had booked a gig at a gas station. Either they were low on gas or the driver had to go drain the vein. Probably both. He lit a joint, coughing as he took his first hit. The high rolled over him like a soft, hazy sea, and he let himself drift away.

“If it wasn’t for the Jesus Complex, I’d never have started my own band.” --Johnny Crash, Johnny Crash and the Thrashers

The spread was absolute shit. Then again, so was the program that had laid it out. He looked disdainfully at what looked like Ritz Crackers and Spam lined up on a tray with something that could have been refried beans, could have been dogshit. Neither would have surprised him. He sat down on one of the couches, pulling the glass coffee table over to him. He pulled a vial out of his pocket and poured out a small mound of cocaine. He put the vial back and pulled out a razor blade, cutting the coke into small, neat lines.

He looked up to see Natasha looking at him with disgust, but he didn’t give a shit. She was now another part of the job, the nine-to-five he swore would make him put a bullet in his brain before he became a victim to it. He remembered that she had been a lot of fun in the beginning, able to suck his eyeballs out of their sockets by way of his cock. But that was all over now. He’d always been more into the lifestyle than she had. Now he looked like a dirty old man trying to get fresh with a girl half his age, even though they were both barely in their forties. It seemed like all she could manage nowadays for him was contempt, or on really good days, pity. He’d be glad to never have to see that look in her eyes ever again. I’ll snort to that, he thought, and bent over, feeling the powder rush up into his nose. Everything got brighter for a moment, long enough to think that maybe he was actually going to feel the rush again. But the cocaine was neither of a high enough quality nor was there enough of it to break through the immunity he had built up over the years. After a few seconds, the glow faded from everything, and he slumped back, too tired and too disappointed to do another line.

A technician poked his head into the green room, his eyes glancing off the glass table and then bouncing away nervously, and said,

“Uh...you guys are on in five minutes.”

Alex nodded and looked up just in time to see Natasha turn away in disgust, making a noise that sounded like the same clucking sound his mother used to make whenever he did something stupid. He felt something warm running down his face, and put a hand up to his nose. His fingers came away bloody.

Fuck, he thought. He looked around for a tissue, a handkerchief, anything. He finally found some napkins, and had just wedged chunks of them up his nose, when the technician came back and said, “Thirty seconds.”

He knew the tissues wouldn’t last, but fuck it. He had a job to do. He was going to go out there, and he was going to give them the best fucking song they’d ever heard. They were going to be on national TV sometime tonight when this piece of shit talk show aired. And by God he was going to make sure that his vocals made every girl cream in their drawers from coast to coast. He stood up, tucking the remaining bits of napkin into the pockets of his suit jacket, and stepped out into the harsh lights.

“Those guys were amazing. Listening to them, you’d just about think they invented rock and roll.” --John ‘Bonebraker’ Hannibal, Crystal Deth

The van was moving again, taking them to another sold-out show. Natasha wasn’t talking to him, which wasn’t anything new. He thought about it, trying to pinpoint the last time they’d actually been able to talk to each other without fighting. He gave up after a while, although he thought it might have been sometime in the nineties. He couldn’t remember much anymore. But he knew back then he hadn’t been any better. He’d probably been worse, actually. But then again, so had Natasha.

It probably was 1993, he realized, because that was the year that they’d had their last big album. Virgin Mary with a Twist of Lime. He hated that album.

He hadn’t spoken with either of the other two since before that. Wayne, who went by Blotto onstage because (and this was another quote, they were just full of soundbites, it seemed) “Wayne is a pussy name,” he hadn’t spoken to unless absolutely necessary since the late eighties.

As for Jimmy, well, it wasn’t too late for Jimmy to stick a knife in his back, was it? It hadn’t always been this way. They’d known each other nearly twenty years now, ever since they’d all met in a coffee shop and just kind of fell in together. Back then, they’d all been stupid idealists, convinced they were going to make the world a better place with songs like “Underage Pussy” and “One Week, Seven Drunk Tanks.” He also vaguely remembered they’d been communists, or at least had pretended to be. Everyone had done their share of drugs. But he’d always done more than his share. And then Jimmy went and got married, and he found religion, and blah de blah blah. It was all very nice for Jimmy, he was sure, but that didn’t mean the little prick had to go rubbing his face in it all the time. Like he was a fucking Bible-thumping preacher addressing a congregation of sinners. Well, Alex happened to like his particular sins, and if Jimmy couldn’t accept that, then Jimmy could take his Bible and shove it up his ass.

Natasha was the only one who could even make eye contact with him anymore. He could always tell when she was judging him, could almost hear her thinking, “What went wrong?” Well, fuck her, he would think at those times. Fuck the lot of them.
Other times though, he would catch her mood, and it would depress the hell out of him. He would look back over his life and think of all the things he’d done wrong. But those moods wouldn’t last long, and he’d usually blame them on a bad line, or a bad joint.

The motion of the van was putting him to sleep, and he had one last thought before it took him. I’ve wasted my life, he thought. I’ve spent half of my life in this stupid van, and for what? Before he could think of an answer, he was asleep.

“The Jesus Complex came out of the British punk scene along with other influential bands such as The Clash and the Sex Pistols, carving out their place in the already overcrowded scene in huge, brutal chunks…” --from I, by Andrew Thompson

He was alone in his dressing room. The spread was much better here, but he no longer had an appetite. He hadn’t eaten in three days, unless you counted snorting coke as eating.

He was falling apart. He realized that now, had always known it back in his mind somewhere, but now there was no escaping it.

He looked up again at the ghastly image staring out at him from the dressing room mirror. His nose had a sunken look, as though it had collapsed in on itself. His face was drawn like a rubber band stretched to the breaking point. He thought he could see his skull through the thin layer of skin covering it. Jesus Christ, he looked like a skeleton. I need something to calm me down, he thought, patting his pockets. After a moment, he found the vial, and started going through the familiar ritual. A few minutes later, his head was buzzing slightly with the rush of cocaine, already fading out. He looked around the room, and came to a decision. He searched around for a pen, then a piece of paper. After a moment, he put the pen down and walked out. After all, the little shits had sold their blood to see him, hadn’t they? He couldn’t disappoint his adoring public.

“The Jesus Complex gave their final show on January 21, 2006, in front of 10,000 screaming fans. Of course, none of them had the slightest idea what singer/songwriter Alex Grimswold had in mind for an encore...” --from Leaving a Beautiful F*cking Corpse: The Rise and Fall of The Jesus Complex

God damn, he thought. Now that was a show.

Apparently the fans agreed. Looking out, he saw rows upon rows of screaming fans. His angry face stared back at him from several rows, parroting every stupid soundbite he’d ever said, drunk or sober. Many in the audience were in various states of undress, including three angry kids stomping around in the pit as naked as the day were born. For a moment, it felt like old times, and he’d even caught Natasha smiling at him. He thought about backing out. But then he felt the vial in his pocket and realized that there was no way out of it. He was in too deep. If he chickened out now, he would never do it.

He tapped the microphone, sending a wave of feedback bouncing off the acoustically perfect dome of the auditorium. “All right, listen up you little shits.”

There was a moment of loud cheering. Then they calmed down.

“Listen up, you bastards. I just wanted to thank you for one fantastic farewell tour.”

Another roar washed over him, and he rocked back with it, feeling it like an actual physical force.

Grinning now, he said, “Without you wankers, I would’ve eaten a bullet long ago. Sometimes, I almost wish I had.”

The three down in the pit were brawling now, and the crowd was nearly rioting. “Now, I just want you to know that right now is the best I’ve felt in years. My God, this might be the first thing that I’ve felt, period, in years.”

They roared.

“But it all ends tonight.”

The shot silenced the roaring of the crowd immediately. The only sound was the feedback of the microphone, squealing around the arena and bouncing off the walls.

“...It took police over three hours to restore order and even get the paramedics on stage. By then, Grimswold was long since dead.” --from Leaving a Beautiful F*cking Corpse: The Rise and Fall of The Jesus Complex

Natasha looked out the window of the van, feeling slightly nauseous from the night before. She had gotten way too drunk at the funeral and had a serious hangover. She would’ve traded everything just to see him again. She’d spent the last two weeks crying, even though she had thought that she couldn’t feel anything for him anymore.

The van felt different now, emptier. It hadn’t seemed like he’d been doing much more than just phoning it in, but now she realized that he had been the glue holding them all together. Without him, there was no band. They were no longer the most influential band since the Beatles. Now they were just three people who had lost a friend.

She sighed and looked out the window. They’d come to a stop. She looked around for a moment, experiencing a feeling of deja vu. It took a moment, but then she realized that this was the same gas station they’d stopped at a few days before...
She stepped out of the car, feeling tense. She stretched, and walked around to the restroom.

A few minutes later, she was at the sink, splashing cold water on her face. She caught sight of herself in the mirror, the glasses too large for her face. They made her look like some horrible bug, and she took them off and threw them in the trash can. Her eyes were puffy, but they looked better to her somehow. She smiled, taking a moment to straighten her hair and smooth her skirt.

As she did so, she felt something in her pocket. She pulled it out. Alex’s note. The tears came all over again, and it took a minute for her to recover. Finally, she straightened out, wiped her eyes, and walked out of the bathroom, leaving the note on the sink. The note simply read,

Fuck this. It’s not fun anymore.

#99

Ivan Brkaric
Accordion

After a few beers out comes the accordion.

“Uncle, play us those songs you use to sing.”
Beautiful songs from when you were small.

The notes you did not know,
but the tunes your mind will never forget.

Oh how you played an instrument of zeal
that held our family together.
How we would sing and dance
to the sweet sounds you’d create.

And now the seasons have passed.

Some of us have died.
Some of us have grown too old to sing and dance.
Some of us have moved away.
Some of us were too young to care

Oh uncle, how your accordion use to keep us together,
but now we have ‘grown’ in all different directions.

Uncle it is sad to see.
Your accordion stored in a closet.

It will soon collect dust for eternity.
Only to be played in our memories.
But uncle when you pass,
who will play the accordion that made our family last?




Bobbi Sinha-Morey
The Fourth

On the fourth of
July when everyone
gathers by the river
a righteous man holds
up a sign listing all
the traits of sinners.
I notice two of them
apply to me as I sit
on my lawn chair with
a neighbor beside me
who thinks Marilyn
Monroe's death was
a conspiracy. Lilacs
bud on the path and
at my feet. Lazily I tear
a reed off a lonely clump
of crabgrass, stick one
end of it inside my mouth
as I listen to my friend
speak. She is obese with
a statue of liberty crown
on her head, the lean
branches of a maple
above her still holding
their leaves. A bicycle
behind her lays against
the trunk of the tree.
Soon a twenty foot flag
is reared tilted like a
telescope when starlight
appears.




Vincent Turner
On Stopping Beneath an Inner City's High-rise

Take a look skywards
and you will
see
that
hell is much closer to heaven
than you
ever dared
to
admit.




Burgess Needle
EMPTY BOX

in the speck of a town on the khorat plateau
wisps from glowing charcoal touched
the foreigner beneath asia¹s
dim moon as her face emerged
hovering through humid air
nurtured by rice fields
banana fronds bent with dew
could he be her destination
pale feet on macadam
himself one more meat-stinking
farang            shown nose to nose
by the last bright filament
edge of swamp       she hooked
his small finger in tow drew him
over pavement even beyond
burnt wicks to an opaque world
discarded planks barely held him above
mud even deeper to brambles
oh yes he felt fear yet the insistent tug
that erotic grip kept him more aroused
than afraid to a large stained box
one end opened where a refrigerator had slid
forth to some rich citizen but this one¹s
faded cotton cloth was delicately drawn
aside to reveal her home            a miniscule
oil lamp barely alive showing comb
curled photograph mirror
sheet of sorts lying dank
was he really going in with her to strip
first time feeling cardboard running
along his body            her sinewy form
next to him leaning to blow
out the weak flame            snap went
some twigs and snap he was up in terror
man in uniform gun in shaking hand
screaming at her and out
she scrambled            the cleft of her buttocks
his final image of the night¹s fantasy
the foreigner tried to form words like
jesus christ don't shoot before being
enveloped in a light that took
him from it all with the pistol¹s last explosion
muffled by an empty box
and a soldier crying for his sister




Michael J. Solender
Black Breeze

he only grew in the nocturne
barn owls shared their hunting rhythms

routines learned
by seeing what others saw

bleak augured
and he revelled

searching for lights
lost ember to

illuminate paths for
the storied master

darkness enrobed
in black offered

felicitous tidings
daytime belonged to

those who mocked
virtuous ways

he lay with
the saturnine

nether region
home was there




Michael Kriesel
Dreaming in Black and White: Wisconsin Noir and the Justified Poem

Crossover poems are increasingly popular in Wisconsin’s thriving poetry community: a member of my online writing group is churning out a series of great science fiction poems, pithy vehicles for social comment; my own manuscript of occult-themed verse is making the rounds of the book contests; and at a recent writing conference a Milwaukee poet handed me his latest chapbook, Misadventures of the Paisley Cowboy.

Then there’s the hard-boiled crime genre being worked by Madison area poet John Lehman, who recently published a book of verse noir—Acting Lessons, Parallel Press, 2008. Filled with murky mazes and existential ambushes, the work is in a short form devised by Lehman a few years ago, called the Wisconsin justified poem.

Looking like cubes of newspaper column, the poems are defined not just by their form, but also by a noir-ish feel and tone. They usually explore Wisconsin topics, are often rural, and at heart “inspired” by Wisconsin winters.

Here’s a taste, from Closed Until Spring:

This is the season of Ed Gein
and Jeffrey Dahmer. Sleep days,
fish through ice, pry firewood
from frozen mounds of snow.
Buy wine at the gas station. Court
darkness. Speak to no one. This
is winter in Wisconsin. Write
horror stories. Embrace the cold.

-John Lehman, Acting Lessons

“They give the impression of a rigid form,” Lehman explains, “so that the language within the poem can be casual and conversational…more Midwest, and yes, more Wisconsin. They resemble their larger cousin, the prose poem.”


Magic Lunch Box

If you’re unfamiliar with prose poems, here’s a quote by Louis Jenkins, an acknowledged master of the form:

“Think of the prose poem as a box, perhaps the lunch box dad brought home from work at night. What’s inside? Some waxed paper, a banana peel, and half a peanut butter-jelly sandwich. Not so much, a hint of how the day has gone perhaps, but magic for having made a mysterious journey and returned…the prose poem is a formal poem because of its limits. The box is made for travel, quick and light. Think of the prose rectangle as a small suitcase. One must pack carefully, only the essentials, too much and the reader won’t get off the ground. Too much and the poem becomes a story, a novel, an essay or worse…the trick in writing a prose poem is discovering how much is enough and how much is too much.” (Nice Fish: New & Selected Prose Poems, Holy Cow! Press 1995.)

The prose poem has a dual nature, as its name implies. “On the one hand, there’s the lyric’s wish to make the time stop around an image, and on the other hand, one wants to tell a little story,” comments Charles Simic, a former U.S. Poet Laureate. “It must dazzle, and it must also have a lightness of touch. I regard the comic spirit as its true Muse.” (The Poetry of Village Idiots, Verse 13, no. 1, 1996)


The God Of Flow

All of the above holds true for the Wisconsin justified poem. But John Lehman cites an additional element—flow. It’s what gives poetry its real dynamic, claimed Robert Frost.

“Most poets break lines by phrases or concepts,” says Lehman, “but Frost carries us with his flow from one line to the next, then stops us in our tracks. ‘His head carved out of granite O, / His hair a wayward drift of snow, / He worshipped the great God of Flow / By holding on and letting go.’ (These are lines about Frost by Robert Francis.)

“Frost believed we further enhance the dynamics of the poem’s flow by stretching the spoken sentence over the line of poetry,” Lehman explains. “Frost’s famous narrative poem The Death Of The Hired Man is a classic example.”


Pulled Around The Corner

The Wisconsin justified poem, unlike the standard prose poem, pays attention to line breaks and their relationship to sentences. It pulls the reader around the corner and only stops movement when the end of a line corresponds with the end of a sentence. In addition, the lines seldom end with prepositions or articles, but with nouns, adverbs and verbs.

As forms go, it’s a soft one. The rules are few and fluid: conversational style, noir tone and Wisconsin topic. Keep it short and justify the text.

“I think its informality seems particularly suited to the voice of a Wisconsin narrator who might romanticize a little more if the winters weren’t so long and so dark,” muses Lehman. “The mutterings of someone in a farmhouse kitchen alone, late at night listening to the wind.”


Film Noir’s Influence

Film noir’s a big influence on the poems. “In a way the noir films were not realistic,” observes Lehman, “but a kind of theatrical romanticizing of the forties. People enjoyed them partially because they were escapist.”

That escapism sometimes bleeds into a comic surrealism, as in The Nut Bread Murders:

A friend sends a loaf of nut bread that’s dense
as a kiln-dried brick. I tell my wife it reminds me
of something my first wife would bake. Is this
a mistake? No, because upon hearing it she
makes me a fluffy coffee cake with a brown-sugar
and chocolate-chip topping, and I deduce there
may be a lesson about women here (how one
can be played against another). So I call my
first wife who asks what the hell I want. Hmmm.
Later, I decide to put her in a novel I’m plotting
as a character out to poison everyone with her
goddamn nut bread while I, the hero, am saved by
a stripper named Brown Sugah. Writing comes fast.
It’s February in Wisconsin and I am going nuts.

-John Lehman, Acting Lessons


Transcending Landscape

The Wisconsin justified poem transcends regionalism by combining a specific form with a specific tone. The form’s uniquely suited to the tone of the material expressed. But it’s the tone most of all that gives the poems their distinct character—not unlike the dialogue in noir films.

These poems work the way haiku and watercolor do to capture the mood of a place, expressing the way our lives resonate with our state and sometimes finding In the Middle of Nothing, Greatness:

I pass a sign on Highway 26 that states
Juneau is 5 miles away, Oshkosh 53.
I saw the same sign just ten minutes ago,
but listen, when I check my gas gauge
(then, it had been a little below a quarter)
now, I swear, it shows half full. And there,
around a curve, against the steel November
sky, in a field of cornstalks far as a crow can
see—are you ready—rises an assemblage
of grain elevators more magnificent than
the Cathedral at Reims.

-John Lehman, Acting Lessons

In Sprecher’s Tavern Lehman observes: “Living in Wisconsin is a lot like the tavern that sells rifles and beer. It doesn’t make much sense but it feels right when you’re there.”

That’s how these poems work. But how well do they work? Does it feel right? That’s the final test…and something only poets and readers and time can decide. The best test of any form is whether the force it contains could manifest as well in any other shape.

Here’s hoping more Wisconsin poets add to this new genre—a form and tone unique to where we live.

Acting Lessons
By John Lehman
2008; 38pp; chapbook;
Parallel Press, University of Wisconsin-Madison
728 State St., Madison, WI 53706. $10.
ISBN 978-1-934795-04-0

Shorts: 101 Brief Poems of Wonder and Surprise
By John Lehman
2005; 96pp, paper;
Zelda Wilde Publishing
315 Water Street, Cambridge, WI 53523. $11.95
ISBN 978-0-9741728-2-8




Michael Estabrook
Completely in my own mind

Looking at myself in the mirror at work,
I breathe a sigh of relief, literally,
say to myself, “It’s been 8 weeks since he’s
been to dance class, maybe he’s not coming
any more.” Then I smile to myself.

Finally, finally, maybe I can relax a little,
not be so concerned about competing
with him, dancing better than him. Maybe now
I can stop worrying about him
swooping in and sweeping my wife
off her feet. He has a wife of his own, but
she’s nothing compared to my wife –
he likes watching her, likes dancing with her too
whenever he gets the chance. He thinks
she “moves smooth as a river.”

My wife claims my jealousy is completely
in my own mind. She’s not interested in him,
not attracted to his tall, debonair presence whatsoever.

As soon as we get to the dance studio
our instructor declares, “Guess who’s coming
tonight?” And my heart sinks, it does,
drops like a stone to the bottom of the sea.
But I admit I am not surprised,
guys like him never really ever go away entirely.

But what does surprise me is that immediately
upon hearing the news, my wife,
by reflex really, turns, stares at herself in the mirror,
pats her hair and says, “Oh my hair is such a mess
and I didn’t put much makeup on either.”




Akili Amina
What Am I?

What Am I?
Without your entering
Into my life, in a way
That was the sweet,
Epitome of smoothly

Without your joining
Of hands, in wedded commune
to a young woman whose
cries soon; rained monsoons, on the altar

Without your wiping
Tears, salted; spite publicly,
On greatly more, these occasions
And many more, the weepy occurrences

Without your non-caring
For the thoughts of gapes
Or the glancing of eyes on face
Cleansed; by five-fingered, handkerchiefs

Without those precious sharing
Moments in the world
Of you and I; we subsist,
In love’s mere couplet

Without your refusing
To give up on we;
To let go of, not so easy
To stand in shoes, man
To bring wholeness,
To the door of brokenness
To our exchanging of hope
To my awaking of adoration’s, awoke
To the children; whom deem you dad & papa
To the rock, that shields life’s suffer
To no other; un-selfishly, I wont release their connection
To no man; the title to land
To you, my love’s expression
To you, I demand the question,
Without you, my husband,

“What Am I?”-




Joseph Goosey
HIATUS IS WIDESPREAD AND THICKENING

Stop signs abound and disgust.

While composing a symphony in the dark,
my mother and father waltz into my bedroom
and begin ordering me
to feel a pile of cashmere
while listening
to a Tibetan sound bath.

Can't you see, I bark at them,
that my concrete is mixing?
That I am rolling sushi
with a rice you couldn't fathom?

They never leave.

They talk about the weather.

It's going to rain, my mother says.

It rains.

My father says,
it's raining.




DIFFICULT TO SEE THE BICYCLISTS THIS TIME OF THE EVENING

Screaming in the car
on the route back from Taco Bell,
I listen to National Public Radio
and know
that I would have been better off
as a London born
statistician.

Pall Malls have gone up
nearly a dollar but no notice
was given via post.

The ninety pound Russian who asks
for my identification tells me
she recently recovered
from a very harsh
urinary tract infection.

The sun is hardly logical.

The sun comes down again
and just once,
it could stay up there,
staging a sit in.




Eric Schmaltz
A sparrow’s bones

A sparrow’s bones crushed into the pavement.

Talons

           and       beak
                                    scattered

           like
                an impossible
                     math equation.


Is that the
                rib
                     cage?

Is that a
                     wing?

                               And where’s the hollowed skull?

A wind lifts the dust like
breath on piano strings.

The Snob Report #1

Greg Oguss
Nobody's Special and So Are You: Synecdoche, NY

He was born, he suffered, he died.
--Stan Brakhage

I come, I shoot, I return.
--Tsvetan Todorov

The above epigrams are two of the formulas that theorists have proposed to express the Grand Master Narrative of human existence. As these samples suggest, most GMNs boil down to a few basic humanist propositions dressed up by their interest in the ‘deep structures’ of civilization, i.e., we are all the hero of our own tale, with the same essential hopes, dreams, frustrations, frailties and neuroses. For adherents of GMNs, all great works of art must somehow evoke the profound tragedy that is the life of the common woman or man. If many great anti-humanist works quickly spring to the mind of the contrarian (from Oscar Wilde’s sophisticated satires to the scabrous nihilism of Gaspar Noé), humanism’s penchant for romanticizing the fight against middle-class anomie has at least fueled many of America’s treasured stage-plays dating back to Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town” and Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman.”

In Charlie Kaufman’s directorial debut, “Synecdoche, New York,” the acclaimed screenwriter reveals himself as a faithful acolyte of the Grand Master Narrative school of drama. The film is one of the few recent American movies worth discussing in some detail, which isn’t the same as claiming that it’s consistently entertaining or even very good. Throughout its sluggishly paced two hours of running time, it is both, intermittently. But it is also precisely the kind of ambitious, playful think-piece that cineastes and critics are given to waxing philosophical over. Upon the film’s release last October, lyrical tributes bubbled out of Roger Ebert, Richard Corliss and Manohla Dargis, among others. But audiences found its mannered charms mostly wanting, in contrast to their embrace of Kaufman’s equally unconventional scripts for films like “Being John Malkovich,” “Adaptation” and “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.”

Philip Seymour Hoffman stars as Caden Cotard, a successful theater director in—where else?—Schenectady, New York. Caden happens to be staging a production of “Death of a Salesman” while suffering from a mysterious degenerative condition and the usual romantic difficulties of the sensitive artist. Typecast in another shrewish role, Catherine Keener is his cynical painter-wife Adele Lack, whose trip to Berlin with their four-year old daughter Olive allows her fledgling career to leapfrog Caden’s modest, small-town success. In Germany, Adele raises Olive with her stoner gal-pal and possible lesbian lover Maria (a sexily dissolute-looking Jennifer Jason Leigh). For Caden, the years pass in general unhappiness. Or maybe they don’t. The narrative progresses with a purposeful fuzziness, like his malady, which is probably a hypochondriac’s response to the natural aging process.

Adele and a now heavily-tattooed teenaged Olive are written up in flattering feature stories in highbrow magazines. Maria and Olive develop thick German accents. The trio’s casual, uninhibited attitudes about drugs, sexual partners and cultural exchange become a symbol for the glamorous world of celebrity culture which contrasts with Caden’s flabby physique and drab life in the entropic prison that is “Synecdoche, NY.”

But “there’s more…so much more,” as Dargis’s rave in The New York Times notes (random snippet of her ecstasy: “To be here now, alive in the world as it is rather than as we imagine it to be…a lesson hard won for Caden. Life is a dream, but only for sleepers“). Some of this “more” evokes the oddball humor of Kaufman’s earlier scripts in a slightly muted key. Samantha Morton gives an engaging performance as Hazel, a plain-looking box office clerk who attracts and briefly wins Caden partly because her social ineptitude even exceeds his own awkwardness. Hope Davis pops up in a deliciously smirking parody of a self-help therapist, ministering ineffectively to Caden and Adele’s marriage before turning her attentions to his personal failings. When Adele asks, “Can I say something awful?” during a session, Davis replies with undisguised delight, “Please do.” She isn’t disappointed, as Adele confesses to being filled with relief following a fantasy about Caden’s death.

Caden scores a success with his “Death of a Salesman,” which Adele dismisses as a bone to the “blue hair” crowd while challenging him to risk putting his true self on display in something. Winning a MacArthur ‘genius’ grant, he seizes the chance to prove that his true self can do something “tough” and “true” and “honest,” as he whines to his therapist. From this point, the narrative turns increasingly surreal as Caden becomes obsessed with staging a massive trompe l’oeil play built in a preposterously spacious New York City warehouse, filled with his troupe of actors and a host of doppelgangers from his life as well as the lives of everyone else in the film.

If you are apt to be annoyed by the obviousness that christens the unloving wife in the story “Lack,” your patience will be sorely tested by the increasingly baroque hi-jinks Kaufman trots out once Caden and his company start rehearsing the play, which bears a series of pretentious names before being wryly dubbed “Infectious Diseases in Cattle.” By this point, in academic terms, the film has transformed itself into a mise en abyme construction, with the story-world of the play commenting on and freely intermingling with Caden’s ‘real life.’

At the epicenter of both worlds are Caden’s twin fixations: his idealized memories of the young Olive, stolen from him by her globe-hopping mother Adele, and his disgust at his pitiful body and ‘womanlike’ emotions (a desire to feel beautiful, to be mothered by his lovers). Like many of Kaufman’s male leads, Caden’s self-loathing is an obstacle to his happiness with women of varying types. He’s apt to begin blubbering or fail to perform in the sack with the doting Hazel. On the rebound, Caden marries the radiant Claire (Michelle Williams), a self-absorbed actress who starred in his version of “Salesman,” cast with younger actors to heighten the tragedy since the audience, he claims, will visualize the performers heading for the same fate as the Lomans. The marriage fails because of Caden’s sense of physical inadequacy and Claire’s insincere star-worship of his inchoate intellectualizations (“It’s Karamazov,” she breathes in awe, following his insipid explanation of the new play). Adele may be more intellectually compatible and attractive enough without being too threatening. But her castrating success has Caden fantasizing that he’s nothing more than an elderly cleaning lady scrubbing Adele’s chic downtown loft clean.

The formal devices which confuse and poke fun at the reality-fiction divide are often inventive. Olive’s diary, left behind on the trip to Berlin, continues to keep us and Caden informed of her progress, with new entries magically appearing to detail (suggest?) her life abroad. The spectral-looking Tom Noonan appears as a stalker eventually cast as Sammy, the play’s fictionalized Caden, after his amusingly nonsensical explanation that the stalking was character research (for a play not yet conceived). The play’s endless rehearsals lead to comedic confusion between actors and the people they’ve been hired to portray. Sammy becomes romantically involved with the real Hazel. In a tit-for-tat, Hoffman’s Caden has a tryst with the performer cast as Hazel’s counterpart (Emily Watson).

Other touches are more heavy-handed and less illuminating, including a succession of flatly-staged funerals when the characters begin dropping like flies (before committing suicide, Sammy chastises Caden for being an utterly self-absorbed artist, a charge viewers could easily lob at Kaufman after this film). But the accumulated devices offer a more layered construction than the simple alterations of dream sequences and ‘reality’ that mark well-known mise en abyme films like Fellini’s “8 1/2.” The film and the play-within-in-the-film are both capable illustrations of the concept of “synecdoche,” i.e., a part which stands in for the whole. As Caden sets out on a futile quest for “total literature” (as Budd Schulberg once termed a story encompassing all facets of human existence), Kaufman’s tale illustrates that artists must inevitably settle for a representative hunk of narrative which refers imprecisely to an infinitely complex reality.

As the rhapsodic reviews suggest, Kaufman has created an intricate and fully articulated rumination on some revered dramatic themes: the ultimate potential of art, life’s fleeting nature, human frailty, the universality of suffering and loneliness. Which begs the question…Why is it so much more fun to argue about and ponder the movie after the fact than to sit through it?

Any number of explanations may suffice depending on the viewer’s tastes and temperament. For all its blurry indeterminateness, “Syndecdoche” doesn’t offer intellectuals the pleasures of puzzle-films like “Last Year at Marienbad,” where, as Susan Sontag once noted, the only meaning behind the elegant plot obfuscations is the opportunity to contemplate the ‘meaning’ of the possible films suggested by the trickery. It doesn’t take a famous dead intellectual to discern that the tale hidden inside Kaufman’s complex mise en abyme (or the ‘synecdoche’ of “Synecdoche”) is a very simple one. An approximate synopsis would go something like this: Feeling that life is passing him by, a fortysomething theater director divorces his first wife, becomes estranged from his daughter, has a romantic liaison with his assistant, marries and divorces his leading lady, and spends the rest of his days pursuing artistic ‘truth’ at the expense of personal happiness before dying with-a-whimper-not-a-bang in his dotage.

By the film’s second hour, the novelty of Kaufman’s assortment of reality-blurring techniques has worn off. In its place, we’re left with a thoroughly navel-gazing spectacle: the slow disintegration of an artist who fancies himself a twenty-first century Willy Loman. There is a kind of humble nobility in the tradition of soldiering on through the unhappy epiphanies of mid-life: the knowledge that, for all our sensitivity, we are no less ‘special’ than the sad sack of humanity next door in all our mortality and regret for lost youth. But these would-be epiphanies remain fairly pat answers to the questions provoked by life’s unceasing ups and downs (unlike Kaufman’s philosophical script for “Eternal Sunshine” which was content to raise questions with no answers: about memory, fate, identity, etc.). Espousing the idea that we are all just one degree of separation away from a Willy Loman trainwreck is a quick-fix cure for liberal guilt (another ghost in Caden’s/Kaufman’s angst machine). But the individualist delusions that some are more special than others and immortality through art remains possible have long been the spark behind exuberant flights of fancy like “Being John Malkovich.” Which, for some of us, help keep the middle-class anomie at bay.

#98

Allyssa Kasoff
Generation

Here’s to the generation
of daisies yanked from ground left to
rot behind waxy ears overloaded with
whispers of I, you, them. Ornamented,
punctured with peace signs.
Disco balls that spin and sparkle above
boys and girls summoning each other
with sunken eyes.
Alarms that siren our bodies for morning
class. Mind stuck between 3 and 4 A.M. Caressing
bellbottom dreams that hug and flair out
past thighs. Angel sleeved blouses, marshmallow
heels and Candies that dress innocence in labels.
Clogs clacking down Bowery streets delivering
in soles next minute’s fix for junkies who
shiver and shake for a packet of pure white.
Tie die shirts streaked with blues, reds, yellows that
bleed into each other. No room for blacks or whites.
British flag shirts protesting stars and stripes in favor of
crowns and queens. We hide behind
horn rimmed glasses, because
we cannot trust our eyes to see.

Reinvent ourselves
in bloodshot eyes that avoid graffiti glaring at us
as violence sprayed in pinks and greens. Braided hair
intertwined with Marlboro Lights and secrets. Last night’s
mascara that drips and sticks to skin like leggings. Begging
for Little Red Corvettes zooming down Fifth Avenue
fast enough for us to forget who we are. Snorted from
mirrors lined with cocaine. All that remains are reflections.
Painted lips, blue eyes and pink cheeks make us statues.
We do not see the homeless babbling to strangers
about life inside of paper bags and vodka handles.
People thrown out of homes like rotting apples.
Streets blanket them with their rocky coldness.
We are warm inside.
The elite is immune to AIDS. Reganomics.
Fucking family values.

Exist
as searing lattes whose steam clings to air
like ghosts held in hands that strum black
guitars until they splinter and bleed.
Raspy miseries trapped in blue
eyes. Unwashed hair greasy with the memories of
Hamptons getaways, overdoses, nirvana.
Traffic lights blink red, yellow, green, green, green.
Bohemia clings to skin in peasant shirts that
hug and dangle like semicolons.
Stomachs grumble for bagels and boredom.
Feet stomp on dreams tucked in pavement’s cracks.
Lips tuck romance away in storybooks that rot
in attics. Addicts of burning lights, benzene drips, blurry truths.
Hipsters parade down Bowery streets in
tight flannel shirts exposing midriffs and bones. We see
the world through vintage Aviator glasses, as if
flying away is a fashion statement.
We have been to Tokyo, Milan, Barcelona, Rio and Paris, but
how far do we have to travel to escape ourselves?




At Home

At 7 AM every morning,
when she diffused her hair,
the dryer hissed and crackled with electricity.
She’d turn it off and inch toward him.
Place her mouth lightly against
his forehead. Forcing her lips to do the kissing
for her.

At 7 PM every night,
when he watched television,
he slurped down last night’s leftovers.
His paunch bulged like a bowling ball.
The dog knocked over the cable box, but
he didn’t like moving or fixing things, so he waited
for her.

Today she didn’t come home,
so he stared at static.




Lyn Lifshin
THE MAD GIRL FEELS LIKE A PRAYING MANTIS

about to leap, bite
the neck of her prey,
put everything she has
into him. She is wild to
paralyze him, keep
him as her slave.
Don’t call her Jezebel
or Medea, don’t
look at her with a
sneer. She’s been
waiting, his body a
taunt, a lure. It’s
nature, it’s not fair.
And even if she has
to die soon after,
she will have him
on the sheets
of paper




Gail D. Kelley
Lessons

I sit here trying not to drown
in this last pile of bones and
radiographic hieroglyphs
listening to your mundane conversation
while that star dangles from her throat and
the words roll from her tongue
I want to slip a Viagra
in your decaf Americano
because she has more to teach you than words
throw that dictionary in the trash
if you want to learn




James Gapinski
Paris is Dark

Even Paris is dark to-
night. Billow-
ing pitch, soot and
sin—sinew.

(cartilage, bone,
cartilage, bone)
; Geneva is dark too—
rough : burlap
sin—sinew.




John Rocco
Reading List

We began by reading
about the Italian guy’s trip
whacked on Medieval Acid
guided by a Roman ghost
in the high style
through the intestines
of sweaty smoky HELL
packed with crazy stuff
the lovers in the whirlwind
the Boiling River of Blood
and jerkoff Satan’s Tears.

Then Dr. Moriarty’s plot foiled
the cursed Scot and the invisible dagger
and Mary Shelley got the Monster
in a dream and kept Shelley’s
heart in a box for thirty years.
After fishing with Hem
we smoked with Spade
and chased the Black Bird.
Then Deckard fell in love
with Rachel
his beautiful toaster
and slammed her against the wall
to kiss her.
I am Deckard
and you are quite a reading list.




Daniel Romo
Beautification Efforts on the 605

The dolls were dead.
And their button eyes
And calico limbs
Congested the freeway
With wonderment,
And memories,
Maybe.

Miniature apparel
Bright.
Flattened.
So pretty.

Woven entrails chic,
Rubber neck disbelief.
And those incredulous cars
Made them scatter
Like foggy recollections
To be savoured
On tips of impatient tongues.

Perhaps fallen from a tractor trailer
Someone forgot to lock;
You don’t see that everyday.

      Caution:
      Potential nostalgic
      Haphazard ahead.

Who knew?
The dolls were dead.




The Other Side of Town

It’s 1 a.m. in September.
Three witches walk towards me
Down Artesia Boulevard
Armed with eyebrows like
My father’s temper.

I become uneasy.

I fear witches more than heights,
Clowns, and spiteful waiters.

And they’re a month early.

I’ll tell them it was an accident.
I simply forgot to wash the dishes.
And I pulled out all the whiskers of
The black cat in the alley
Because he bragged of his many lives.

My father had one.

Death and poetry
Are related in life.
Bloodlines of realism so exaggerated,
It makes sense.

I decide to cut across the street,

Pushing too real reveries
To the side,
Like yucky vegetables.




Mather Schneider
BEAR HUNTING

I drive my taxi to Mr. Cooper’s house. 1436 N. Olsen. Mr. Cooper takes my taxi once a week. The difficult thing about Mr. Cooper is the fact that he’s 98 years old. He’s about 5 feet 3 and narrow as a bird in his gray cotton pants and blue flannel. He uses an aluminum walker and watching him move is like watching the seasons change.

I can’t believe it’s October already.

In tired agony Mr. Cooper climbs into the front seat of the cab and gets as comfortable as possible on his frail old bones. His hands are twisted red claws and his left twitches sometimes and when it does he brings it up to his breast pocket. In his pocket lives a bottle of prescription medication and when he feels the bottle he is reassured and his hand lowers calmly back to his lap.

It’s 11 a.m. and the Tucson skies are blue and warm.

“Morning Mr. Cooper,” I say. “How are you?”

“Fair to middlin,” he says. “Nice weather isn’t it?”

“Better than Minnesota?” I say.

Mr. Cooper was a high school math teacher in Minnesota in his younger days. His wife died many years ago.

“I lived in Minnesota for 65 years,” he says.

I pull out of the driveway and tool through the old man’s neighborhood. It’s one of those rare Tucson neighborhoods that doesn’t pretend to care for the typical architecture and color scheme of a desert town. There is no puppy-shit stucco, no lonely cacti, no rock gardens, no ocotillo fences, no terra cotta tiles, no courtyards. Instead, simple red brick houses ho-hum along gently curving streets. The houses have small tidy yards covered in real honest-to-goodness grass, bordered by miniature white painted fences and decorated with an American flag, a fake deer and a birdbath.

I stop the cab at a stop sign and Mr. Cooper and I watch a toddler walking down the side of the road. All he has on is a pair of diapers. The road is otherwise deserted. The fact that he’s a boy is apparent in the square wobble of his strut, the tousled hair, the fat little arms at the ready.

I pull up slowly beside him. He scowls at me through the sun.

“Hello there,” I say.

He keeps walking. He’s determined to get somewhere. I slowly inch along hanging my arm out the window. Mr. Cooper strains to look.

“What’s your name?”

“Ranny,” he says in a little boy voice, growling with irritation.

“Where’s your mom, Randy?”

“Don’t know,” he says.

“Where’s your dad?”

He looks at me as if I’m wasting his time.

“Don’t know,” he says.

“Aren’t you scared to be out here by yourself?” I say.

“Nope.”

“Where do you live?” I say, looking around for any sign of a parent. He narrows his eyes.

“Don’t know,” he says. He’s wise to me. It’s taken him an hour to break out of the house and he isn’t about to be taken back home so easy.

Mr. Cooper leans toward me, listening to every word. He has a huge grin on his wrinkled face.

“Where are you going?” I say to the kid.

“Goin’ bear huntin,” he says.

“Bear hunting?”

“Yup.”

“What?” Mr. Cooper says. “What’s he doing?”

“He’s going bear hunting,” I say.

“I think you forgot your gun,” I say. “What are you going to kill the bears with?”

He stops walking. I stop the cab. He looks at me as if he’s studying the theory of relativity. Then he shrugs and keeps walking.

“Widda a rock,” he says.

“A rock?” I say. “How far can you throw a rock?”

He leans down and with his tiny chubby hand picks up a small rock from the side of the road. He rears back and with the whole of his 40 pound, 3 foot tall frame, hurls it toward the horizon. The rock sails about 5 feet and lands quietly. He looks at me to judge my astonishment.

“Good one,” I say. He dusts his hands together in satisfaction and keeps walking.

“You know,” I say. “I think I saw a bear up around this next corner, so you better be careful.”

He stops again and looks up at me. His eyes are wide as an animal’s and his mouth is hanging open. Mr. Cooper laughs his old man’s tenor laugh and thumps his skinny knee. I wink at him.

Then we hear a woman shrieking.

“RANDY! RANDY! RAAANDYY!!”

She runs into the road, feathers flying, and swoops him off his feet. She glares at me.

“What are you doing out here, honey?” she says to him, hugging him and rocking him side to side. He looks at me as if I was responsible for everything.

“He was going bear hunting,” I say.

She doesn’t respond, just turns and races back to her house with Randy in her arms.

I drive on.

Mr. Cooper has a smile on his face all the way to the grocery store. The grocery store is the only place Mr. Cooper ever goes.

“You ever hunt any bear up there in Minnesota?” I say.

“No, no,” he says.

When I pull up to the grocery store I get out and get Mr. Cooper’s walker out of the back seat and open his door and stand the walker there for him. He grips the walker with his gnarled red hands and stands up and slowly heads for the store’s front door.

“Watch out for bears,” I say.

“Will do,” he says.

One time a few weeks ago I was waiting for Mr. Cooper to come out of the store, and I had to go to the bathroom, and so I left the cab and went inside. Inside I saw him standing with his walker which had a little basket hooked onto it; he was gazing at the deli with its hot yellow lights and good greasy smells. He looked carefully and happily at all the foods, the brown and crispy fried chicken and the pink ham and black and pink roast beef and the red and orange and green salads. He stood there and watched all the people pick out their favorites, nodding in affirmation each time. Mr. Cooper always spends at least 30 minutes in the store, and he always comes out with the same thing: a small sack containing a box of saltine crackers and a quart of skim milk.

Today I watch him inch across the walkway and finally disappear inside the grocery store. The meter clicks higher as I wait in the sun. Somewhere out there is a bear with Mr. Cooper’s name on it, and one with my name too. Another cab comes up behind me, so I turn my hazard lights on. The lights blink and blink until he gets the message and drives around me.




Michael Cuglietta
Breakfast with Her

I grew accustom to the smile she made when the smell of freshly fried hash browns carried her out of bed. I’d kiss her on the cheek and tell her, “Coffee will be ready in a minute.” I’d call her sleepyhead, giving her a hard time for sleeping in.

We always listened to music while we ate. I’d leave my IPod on shuffle and tell her interesting facts about the songs that played. I use to come up with clever alliterations for the menu. Mike’s Mushroom Mozzarella Melt was her favorite.

In the beginning I had only one frying pan. I’d be a nervous wreck trying to get all the food on the table while it was still warm. “These damn potatoes take so long. My biscuits are burning and I’ve not even started the eggs.”

Eventually she grew tired of my neurotic behavior and bought me a second frying pan. I became proficient at timing everything just right. The alarm on the oven, signaling the completion of the biscuits, would ring just as the potatoes turned a perfect light brown and the eggs became fluffy.

“Breakfast is served.” I divided the eggs, half on each plate. She was sitting on the balcony with her cup of coffee. “Could you please grab the potatoes? I can only carry so much. I’m not an octopus you know.”

“Take it easy. I’m coming.” She stood up. “Do you have any Advil? My head is killing me.”

“I’m not feeling that well either. Nickel beers at The Tavern will do it to you. Do you want orange or apple juice?”


The night before we met a few of her friends for nickel beers. Five dollars at the door got you a souvenir plastic mug with the name of the bar printed on the side.

The place always filled out on nickel beer night. Waitresses in sexy outfits maneuvered around a packed house with pitchers of Miller High Life, the champagne of beers. From six to eight, if you had a souvenir mug, you were treated to unlimited refills.

I hated hanging out with her friends. Most of them were, like her, marine biologists working at Sea World. It was easy enough for me to fake interest when it was just the two of us. But a dozen marine life fanatics sharing their war stories was unbearable. I sat by her side, my face buried in my mug, unable to add anything to a drunken discussion on the mating rituals of Indo-Pacific Humpbacks.

At eight o’clock, when the free beer came to a depressing halt, the aquatic group decided to head to the basement where there was a D.J. spinning records. She wanted to join her friends. I wanted to go home. I was drunk and it was getting late. She could sense how grumpy I was.

She gave in. We headed back to my apartment. It was a five-block walk. I was filled with guilt.

“I feel bad,” I said. We were walking hand in hand.

“Why?”

“You wanted to go dancing with your friends but I made you leave.”

“You didn’t make me do anything.” She tickled my palm with her index finger.

“I still feel bad.”

“Don’t feel bad.”

“I’m holding you back.”

“Don’t be silly.” She kissed me on the cheek.

I wanted to say more but I was afraid if I opened my mouth to talk I’d start to cry.


“Everything on my goddamn IPod is slow and depressing.” I headed over to the IPod, determined to find a better record for us to eat breakfast to.

“Would you just sit down?” She swallowed three Advil with her apple juice. “I don’t wanna have to listen to you bitching about your eggs being cold.”

“We need an up tempo song, something to set the tone for the entire day. This is important.”

“What are we doing today anyway?” She spoke through a mouthful of eggs.

“I’m not sure. Do you want ketchup for those? I have ketchup.”

“I’m fine. What about the Bob Dylan album you were talking about last night?”

“Blood on the Tracks? That’s a breakup album. It’s one of the best breakup albums of all time. But, still, it’s a breakup album.”

“These potatoes are good.” She ignored me.

“Of course they are. I’m a genius in the kitchen.”

“You’re full of shit.” She rolled her eyes.

“I know,” I declared, pointing up to the ceiling, my eyebrows reaching for my hairline.

“You’re crazy.” She laughed.

“You like Van Morrison? I don’t mean 'Brown Eyed Girl' or 'Moondance' or any of that greatest hits bullshit. I’m talking about real Van Morrison.” I took a forkful of eggs. They were icy cold. I spit them into my napkin.

“I’m not sure I know what real Van Morrison is.” She gave me a dirty look for spitting out the eggs. I felt the biscuits with my hand. They were just as cold. I placed the entire basket in the microwave.

I put on the 'The Smile You Smile' from Van Morrison’s Bang Masters.

“What’s wrong with 'Brown Eyed Girl'? I love that song.” She asked.

“Shh, listen.”

“I’m listening.”

“You’ve got to really listen to the lyrics. They’re the greatest.” I closed my eyes and began dancing around the living room.

“Last night you refused to go dancing and now look at you.” She threw her arms up.

“Listen, listen, this is my favorite line.” He sang about how his girl’s laughing eyes were a whirlpool where he could be in paradise. “Did you hear that? Let me rewind that part.”

“Are you going to eat your breakfast or can I clean it up?” She started the dishes.

“Just listen to this part.” I rewound to the beginning of the verse and sang along.

“Mike,” she shouted. I turned up the music and continued dancing. “Would you please turn that down?” She stopped the IPod. The room became quiet. I felt silly.

“Sorry.” I was winded. I brushed past her to get to the fridge for a bottle of water. “I just really love that song.”

“Listen, I need to go to Target today. Do you want to come with me? Maybe afterwards we can go to the lake, take a walk or something.”

I was sulking on the couch, my IPod in my hand. I refused to acknowledge her.

“I’m going to hop in the shower. I’ll be ready in a minute.” She kissed me on my lips. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Go take a shower. I’ll finish cleaning up.”

“We’ll have a nice day. It’s perfect weather for a walk.”

“Yeah.” I spoke without taking my eyes off the IPod.

“I liked that song.”

“No you didn’t.”

“How do you know what I like?” She went into the bathroom, closing the door behind her.

I was, all of a sudden, in the mood to listen to Blood on the Tracks. I unplugged the speakers, attached the headphones my mother had bought me the previous year for Christmas and laid back on the couch.

My favorite song off that album is 'You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go'. In one verse Dylan sings, “You’re gonna make me wonder what I’m doing. You’re gonna make me wonder what I’m saying. You’re gonna make me give myself a good talking to.”

In-between songs I heard her getting out of the shower. I turned the record up as loud as it would go. I closed my eyes, laid my head down and pretended to be asleep.




Cole Nowicki
Honesty

I really enjoyed the play
he lied.
Yeah, me too
she lied.

Dinner was great, thanks
she lied.
Pleasures mine
he lied.

I had a good evening
he lied.
I did too
she lied

I’d like to kiss you
he lied.
I’d like that
she lied.




Dorla Moorehouse
We Keep Starting Over

And no resolution ever comes
except the act of giving up
and creating another beginning

We have yet to make a choice
that leads us to stability
just another city,
another apartment, another job,
another set of strangers
who take their time
enfolding us in their history
until they are almost too late
until it is almost time for us
to quit and try our hands at
a different story.

Perhaps the error is in
assigning significance to
each changing, in expecting
new movements to create meaning.

Perhaps we should just be
content as urban nomads,
drifting, and let go of these
intentions, the seeds we
keep expecting to take root.




Falfurrias, Texas

Making awkward conversation and avoiding eye contact with my boss while dining at a breakfast-served-all-day French-Texan fusion restaurant in a double-wide trailer, I theorize about video games because we don't have anything in common so I might as well keep myself entertained. Every time we eat together it's a bad first date. Her fish tastes microwaved. My omelette does not have cheese, but I am grateful to have found a restaurant here that has any vegetarian option at all. She is not amused by my analysis of Guitar Hero as a method of artistic oppression. I am not amused by her lack of opinions. I am homesick for conversation. She says she hates being out here but she's so bland that really, she belongs. I think I would starve here, and I don't just mean in terms of nutrition. She orders a second glass of wine, I show my northern roots by requesting unsweetened iced tea. She tries to sound like she's still in college and tells me there isn't a story to this place. I chuckle and nod because disagreeing would make this business trip even more unpleasant. But how can she not read the story? A rancher married a French woman (how did she get here?) and they managed to save enough to open a restaurant in their retirement, and they've somehow kept it open for over a year. That in and of itself must be worth a minute of history.




Audri Sousa
the financial district

we laced the city hall fountain with morphine and grew concentric from the navels of each other. we moved in moon waltzes in a petroleum-filled swimming pool. we grew older with milkier breath. keyholes of vision blending as one blur. everyone we had ever known was a passerby. everyone we had ever known licked a postage stamp and pressed it onto our bodies. dressed us in saliva and little paper squares. the little paper squares meant we were outbound. later i lay on my ear and slept. a spaceship hummed through the bed coils.




the last headline before print news media dies

with newspaper shards i have made
a carpet of things in decay
a papier-mâché mountain
cracked like an egg
whose summit is hatching
a revolution