Total Pageviews

Saturday, April 25, 2009

Tenleytown Fix

"Sometimes I am blessed, I am just blessed, to receive premonitions of my own identity--like 'oh, this is who I am,'" I said, forcing myself on the dinner party repartee like a Peugot cutting off a Lexus. And "Like- I just wasn’t meant to wear polyester. So, we don’t live in a natural world, but more and more...."

I paused, and went for the blue tortillas. Dave quickly picked up the slack, and began speaking about a mutual acquaintance’s job prospects. I shot a searching glance to the golden retriever lying obediently athwart the hearth of the fireplace and refilled my drink.

"So you get this fake version. The rest of us, sure, can get by, I’m only concerned about those who don’t accept the nature of reality that's fed to us by pernicious, bottom-feeding media outlets that just reinforce..."

A phone rang. I waited to see who would pick it up.

--Anders Sh. Mandersson

A New Little World of Disruption

"And all I need now is intellectual intercourse; a soul to make the hole much deeper." – Alanis

Turn on the news. The economy is changing, and the number of MacBook stabbings is on the rise. My neighbors are living out long pent-up dreams: making love to beautiful women on trampolines, spraying each other with hoses, over-sampling the menu, expanding lateral pleasure. God bless.

But again, as winter quickly becomes just another idea, your defenses are struck at an unlikely moment. A kind and pretty girl gives you an ounce of attention and takes over your thoughts like a Queen Victoria river-tour of the Ganges. How embarrassing you are in this condition! If there could only be justice--her grace, this overwhelming polaroid sense of her goodness--levied onto every little thing around you. There is nothing and everything to be done. Off with your head.

--Anders Sh. Mandersson

Gallery

cvijanovich takes off

Cream cheese-cool marine air moving seafood, cotton candy, lawnmower fumes, and cherry milkshakes under the mannequin moon.

The oceans must be planes of glass colliding on horizons about to disappear.

Ford Taurus, aluminum siding, palm tree, detritus, the paparazzi—
disappear.

The way the moon always goes home.

It is said I resist.
But I don’t.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

The Hardy Boys Go Nowhere

ix.

They entered an abandoned showroom where the lights of Egmont’s twenty cars caused them no small disturbance. Between the Edsel and the Corvair a cool low fog breathed through the windows.

“Golly, that’s intense,” said Joe.
“I think I’m losing my mind!” screamed Frank.
“I think I’m losing my fear!” screamed Joe. “This isn’t right!”

Both boys undid their belts and bound each other until the fog had passed. They did not notice that a ’55 Corvette had crept out of its berth.

The Hardy Boys Go Nowhere

viii.

Turning a corner against some cushioned red walls, the Hardys found a hundred urinals leading to the stairwell. Frank asked Joe about football practice. And the urinals began to sing: “O there are tides and winds and seasons you do not understand, useless maps and darkened lanterns you are holding in your hands. I do not see a man of your father’s height or width. Go home to the girls you seem so happy to set foot in motorboats with.”

Friday, April 3, 2009

The Hardy Boys Go Nowhere

vii.

They came to a sand pit surrounded by electric fences, filled with scorpions, roaches, hot coals and nickels, and watched by an infant with a button on his back that read DANGER. “It’s some kind of sign,” Frank deduced.

Thursday, April 2, 2009

Partying On (And On and On)

Five minutes, just
five minutes.

This is all we have 
all promise no payoff.
Doing what we can
whatever comes our way--

bigger seas,
police and thieves,
China in the wings—-
whatever comes our way.

At 3 am,
let others enter.
Come in, come in
to what you know.

Gallery

ii. hockney and friedrich

One night I get out of my car.
It rains. Umbrellas bloom.
In the closets, empty clothes—cedarwood, bananas, and waffle cones.
The swimming pool a sink of shampoo.

Astroturf gets bloody when a wild pig in racing stripes appears in the garden,
clusters of war ribbons dripping from his side.

By moonlight his eyes shine like black snakes twinkling in the sun.
The beat is dropping like a shuttle out of space.

Someone shouts The splash is on!

and he dives deep in the mire, all turbo desire.

I can see him lathered even now, one tusk still sticking upright like a bowsprit under ice.

When the sky falls
I thank god I’m a pantheist.