Screen Dump 287

Period is too final . . .
          - Anon

Dylan's One Too Many Mornings greets you . . .
Ghosts carry on about the arbitrariness of hookups . . .
Feckless endangerment? . . .
You miss the subway stop of your childhood . . .
run through a run-through of the street scene
with homegrown players
table-reading not-so-modern versions
of Orpheus and Eurydice . . .
A traveling geometry
brings angles to the encrusted . . .
trawling shallows . . . stocked with unnatural monuments
to the ones that got away . . .
trawling shadows for 3D printings
of Shakespeare's First Folio . . .
But did they? . . .
In this poem, you are milking one too many mornings
as an homage to Dylan's tweaking . . .
You were enough . . . and then you weren't . . .
But it's coming around again . . . so . . . sit tight . . .
in your hallowed domesticity . . .
I've seen the farther reaches . . . exceed your grasp . . .
Study it . . . parley it . . . sauté it . . .
Figure this: you were entropied . . .
and you were entropied without permission . . .
And they were pissed? . . .
Few could have imagined the fiasco . . .
Please submit profiles of those few . . .
But I'm sure it was there . . . especially on moonlit evenings
when caramelized onions trumped caramelized apples
and minions engaged in repetitious acts of contrition . . .
the phoniness overwhelming . . .
So . . . where does that leave us? . . .
Please beg the next question
with your bedroom eyes aglitter? . . .
Of course, there was a semblance of whatever
but he/she left the mancave (womancave?)
without a paper trail . . . without a paper cut . . .
We'd like to hear about it because . . .
as with Fence Books we like to be stopped dead in our tracks
by challenging writing distinguished
by idiosyncrasy and intelligence
rather than by allegiance with camps, schools, or cliques . . .
Parlez-vous . . . the global language we all share? . . .
The suddenness of disclosure . . .
You have mapped the downstate venues of your travesties
where back seats were retrofitted for come what may . . .
and you came . . .
and that's when you arrived . . .
and that's when you were memorialized via Super-8 . . .
and someone's stubby Ticonderoga . . .
You decided you wanted to do this . . . and you did . . .
So there . . . charming bus stops in the Old Country
irrespective of their downtrodden heels and flimsy facades
await you with bated breath . . .
Might there have been another way to go about this? . . .

Anka Zhuravleva

Screen Dump 286

[and with that the paradigm shifts]

Why now . . . after all these years? . . .
No idea! . . .
Please continue . . .

OK, as I was saying the court stenographer is off the charts
so don't expect a transcript any day soon . . .
Just a thought . . .
We all have them . . . occasionally . . .
Distance yourself . . . see if that makes a difference . . .
Perhaps the eroticism of stomping grapes? . . .
What? . . .
I kid you not . . .
You mean like Lucy and Ethel . . .
on the round-screen Stromberg Carlson
in my parents' doilied parlor . . . circa 1956? . . .
No, no, no! . . . I mean like Anne Carson
in The Beauty of the Husband . . .
her fictional essay in 29 tangos . . .
about a woman paralyzed with desire
for her feckless but beautiful husband . . .
After driving a friend to Montreal for eye surgery . . .
I went to McGill where Carson was teaching ancient Greek
and picked up a copy in the bookstore . . .
Anyway, in Husband Carson and her then husband Law
are stomping grapes . . .
His name was Law? . . .
Yup, here's Carson . . .

You cannot imagine the feeling if you have never done it –

like hard bulbs of wet red satin exploding under your feet,

between your toes and up your legs arms face

splashing everywhere –

It goes right through your clothes you know he said

as we slogged up and down

in the vat.

When you take them off

you’ll have juice all over.

His eyes moved onto me then he said Let’s check.

Naked in the stone place it was true, sticky stains, skin,

I lay on the hay

and he licked.

Licked it off.

The eroticism of stomping grapes, yes? . . .
Carson . . . now remarried to Robert Currie
aka The Randomizer . . .
does this collaboration masterclass called EgoCircus
a writing workshop in which there is no writing . . .
Imagine that! . . .
Exactly! . . . Imagining performance pieces
that will make writers better writers . . .
Anne Carson: The Poet of Perversities . . .
that's Laura Passin writing in The Toast 2015 . . .
But . . . I digress . . .
Hookups "R" Us . . .
our raison d'être, if you will . . .
And I hope you will! . . .
Nothing wrong with that . . .
Rejoinders . . . now there's a paradigm shift for you . . .
Rejoinders make for accomplished bedfellows . . .
Sweating through the final paragraphs
I was convinced that the ventriloquist's dummy
was about to deliver the 12 soliloquies
from Shakespeare's lost plays . . .
Huh? . . .
Go ahead . . . google it . . .
You even checked Strand's rare book section, yes? . . .
As if I would know one bowling alley from another . . .
Yeah, right, like Wittgenstein's grammatical confusions:
If you have nothing to say, say nothing . . .

Ellen von Unwerth

Screen Dump 285

Happenstance happened . . . igniting a firestorm . . .
the screen door ajar . . .
letting in the flies . . . and what not . . .
The door to the mind springing open . . .
to poetic freedom . . .
to artistic integrity . . . washed down with a Red Bull . . .
hearing a cacophony of stories . . .
trying to sort through the morass . . .
of random acts of so-called kindness . . .
Those on the clock suspicious . . . as expected . . .
But he/she is not wrong . . .
Oh, really? . . .
And what will you do after the dust settles? . . .
Ha, I read in your other poem
that the dust never settles . . .
when it comes down to
the eternal sunshine of the spotless mind . . .
or the spotted mind, or the spot-on mind . . .
I forget which . . .
especially now . . . with all sales . . .
final I should add . . . being extended . . .
Arguably . . . an insufficient amount of airtime
on getting the word out . . . to the shortlisted . . .

Philip Messmann

Woman XLVII

She consorts with puppets . . . no strings attached . . .

in a room filled with bobby-soxers

where she is subjected to the free passes

of agents who feign muteness

to fake Stradivari's signature

while playing stoop-ball with bassoonists smoking joints.

Weed is dressed to kill.

She loves basement bashes . . . un-posing . . .

and underclothing worn out.

The streets criticize her player-piano introductions

bottlenecked on bridges during rush hour.

Her wherewithal has caught on

with post-coital interviewers

who tweet at double-headers

where triple plays are as commonplace

as nosebleeds.

Costumed for night . . . she seldom rides shotgun

saving her literary lollipops for footnotes

and phony phone numbers floating in her wake . . .

her long legs spanning one and a half sidewalk cracks.

Gisele Bundchen

Screen Dump 284

Your Elements of Style are not my Elements of Style
are not her Elements of Style or his . . .

The dust never settles! . . .
I came to this aha moment as if by steam train . . .

as fool-proof as the watering can sitting out there on the deck . . .
which reminds me . . . It's time to turn the soil in the garden . . .

I await a transcript of the testimony . . .
an oblique view of the events as they unfolded . . .

"Do not color outside the line"

warned Sister Aloysius Joseph, my first grade teacher . . .

I got whacked on the knuckles with her twelve-inch ruler

when I colored outside the line . . .

I erased Humpty-Dumpty's name with such anxiety

I put a hole in the paper, and got whacked again . . .

The naughtiness of assignments sparkles the redundancy

of the day-to-day . . .

The naughtiness of Chekhov's Olga . . .
atop Seattle's Great Wheel . . .

rain-soaked . . . Facebooked . . . body parts color-coded . . .
accoutered with L. L. Bean relaxed outerwear . . .

Why sweat the backdrop? . . .
The Elements of Style await an out-and-back road race . . .

I think I'll wrap them up . . . in brown paper . . .
before the deer return to the wood after their morning feed . . .

Liliana Karadjova

Screen Dump 283

I am my own derivative . . .
my own non-sequitur . . .
A committee of one . . . pocketing delusions . . .
sweating square pegs in round holes . . .
retrofitting my Facebook presence  . . .
Far be it from me to emulate . . .
let me think . . .
to emulate a postulate taking final vows . . .
how's that? . . .
I vow to eat my spinach . . . but that's about it . . .
That we should all have evidentiary moments . . .
moments when we are knocked off our high horse . . .
moments when selfies
bleed through . . . the paper
and let go a Whitmanesque yawp!
that shakes the condiment aisle
condiments flying off shelves
condiment-missiles targeting fast-foodies
aisles where vicious circulars clutter
the faux-cobblestone floor
and florescent lights
induce close encounters . . . of the text kind . . .
with Language Nazis . . .
out for a night on - or off - the town . . .
harkening back to a time when . . .
A time when? . . . A time when
harkening back was Punch and Judy orgasmic . . .

Liliana Karadjova

Screen Dump 282

Everything, indeed, is at least double.
          - Marcel Proust, The Captive

You draw a line . . . in a sandstorm . . .
recalling moments when everyone seemed a double
when you wished everyone was a double
when rehearsals were contagious
and life was lived . . . by connecting dots . . .

I tried this . . . it didn't work . . . so I tried that . . .

No problemo, dude! . . .

I come here to hide
to try to connect the end to the beginning . . .
naming names to avoid confusion
intimating nothing . . .

There is a loneliness here
an underwhelming
warped facades . . . forsaken by cameras
aimed to capture the day-to-day . . .

The line shape-shifts . . .
into a world of understudies . . . with benefits . . .
wheeling dealing free agents . . .
with unfair trade promises . . . and closed source stories . . .

Stories begin and end in oblivion . . .

Players run amok

skipping paragraphs
chapters

crossing lines . . . willy-nilly . . .

You learn your lines . . . inside and out . . .
enter the scene
deliver them . . . in a panel truck . . .
without embellishment
without the unsolicited recap
without the blithering omniscience . . . of those in the know
without recrimination . . .

You manage this . . . despite the swirling madness . . .

Paolo Roversi

Screen Dump 281

This then is the episode we salt and pepper . . .
Like listening to Chet Baker sketch out My Funny Valentine
through a mouthful of metal and plastic
after drug dealers knocked out his front teeth . . .
It's the behind-the-scenes that grabs us . . .
How things are versus how they seem . . .
Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight . . .
the opening scene like the other day
hurling us back into whiteness . . .
O. B. Jackson driving six horses . . .
trying to get to Minnie's Haberdashery
before a blizzard eats them alive . . .
a ball-peen hammer striking a lovely bunch of coconuts . . .
sucking us in . . .
as when in the penultimate moment we collapse . . .
in awe of the world . . . in all its wonderful imprecision . . .
Always something, yes? . . .
But . . . it's all good! . . .
like being ignited by Lucia Perillo's poem Foley . . .
where everybody has a story
about intimacy's lowest common denominator . . .
and love's faulty disposition . . .
as if phone sex . . . across the fourth wall . . .
reminding us that
the body tells a story / mostly about loss . . .
Do you know it? . . .
But I am at my best when . . .
Of course, of course, you are! . . .
Especially after the black screen . . .
again . . . at the beginning of The Hateful Eight
Ennio Morriccone's notes coming from somewhere . . .
out there . . .
stopping us in our tracks . . .
and we forget . . . where we are . . .
we forget . . . everything we were meant to forget
when we agreed to enter the ring . . .
only to find ourselves asking
Why couldn't things be like this? . . .
that strange alchemy
of black . . . and white . . .
of what we expect . . . and what we get . . .
of what we have . . . and what we have not . . .
and . . . of the world . . . in all its wonderful imprecision . . .
in spite of . . . or . . . because of . . .

The Hateful Eight (2015)