Screen Dump 529

With the seating chart on hold

it's tough to figure out

where the subway gives way . . .

She drills a hole in the ice

with an auger on YouTube 

eases into the water

talking nonstop about altruism . . .

an alien concept

to the gaggle of egocentrics

raising hell in the voting line . . .

You are t-boned by snow

as if in someone's crosshairs . . .

Backburnering the registration form 

has put the grocery list

on a slippery slope . . .

If only you had switched majors

when the light changed

you could have been

a multitasking grandmaster . . .

Just think of it . . .

imagine a loneliness

peppered with salt . . .

the salt and pepper alternative

to randomization . . .

That was quite an aside, yes? . . .

Do I think what? . . .

Yes, funny you should ask, I do

and hope only for the piggybacked

smidgen of truth . . .

But then of course there's Wittgenstein

who took a year to design the door handles

for his sister's house in Vienna . . .

It's kind of like the Queen's Gambit . . .

c5 to e4, if you will . . .

Someone pulled a sticky wicket

out of their pocket

in the produce section

on the security cam . . .

We had all we could do not to

break out the musical chairs . . .

Everyone was masked and socially distant

and on their way to a leveled playing field

where the comealongs

were first and ten . . . or thereabouts . . .

Platon Yurich

Intermission To Boredom

Head-to-head with kneejerk channel surfing

like a magician's patter

misdirecting the eyes of beholders

intent on mapping unlined terrain

you open with the Queen's Gambit

to control the board's center

gleaned from years of analysis:

Have you considered Hotel Management? . . .

Eyeballing your bloated dance card

you hype a pretend candlelight din-din

and hightail-it to the No-Tell Motel

backpack stuffed from 7-Eleven:

chips, salsa, 12-pack of Natty Light . . .

In that moment of ecstasy-in-training

echoing Bernini's three-dimensional take on Saint Teresa:

head thrown back, eyes half-closed, lips parted 

the chorus ascending the stairway to heaven . . .

you are this . . . and more . . .

feeding momsy and popsy's A+ delusions of the good(er) life

until tomorrow's all-too-soon re-entry into Acme High . . .

from the '90s . . .

Varsity

The leaves would tell us, 

changing their colors,

patterning the ground.

And the crisp Saturday

afternoons.  Sweaters.

Great-looking cheerleaders.

Steaming coffee.  The din

of the marching band

mixing with the Icy Hot

in the locker room.

Joking around.  Towel

swatting.  And Coach

listen up ladies

with his righteous,

almost reverent, words. 

Heads bowed.  Awaiting 

the anointing with tongues.

The circle of hands. 

Helmet smacking.  Head

butting.  Getting psyched.  

Chanting.  Running through

the dim, damp tunnel 

into the roaring brightness.

Prancing across the field

on coltish legs.  Nerves

bursting.  The national

anthem.  Waiting for the

kick, the pigskin bullet.

This holy grail spiraling

toward us, sending us,

charging, at the armored

visitors, under the 

scoreboard's mocking glare.

 

Screen Dump 528

The talking heads in your dreamscapes

masked and bottlenecked

disappear into Chopin's études

insufficient funds barking the background

escorting you to a misandristic moment . . .

Of course you're out there with the wherewithal

holding the key the code the answer

in full Sphinxian getup . . .

Look on my works, ye mighty, . . .

Perhaps this aura brings you pleasure . . .

a respite from the unsettling . . . such and such . . .

the entire about-face shape-shifting slowly . . .

slowly . . . counterclockwise . . . a throwback . . .

time sucked into a maelstrom 

but not, yes? . . .

You as supplicant . . .

playing the field as it were

ticking off ifs ands buts . . .

It wasn't enough that you knew this from the get-go . . .

It wasn't enough to shore up the rationale . . .

You had to go weird-ass

with a conglomeration to boot . . .

And now the ruinous global circumstance . . .

the tide wearing away the details of your sandcastles . . .

your one-hundred-and-ninety-seventh attempt . . .

Platon Yurich

 

Screen Dump 527

The history of this . . . fitful, spasmodic

with a soft spot for irreverence . . .

an easy mark for spit-shiners . . .

lunging, irrepressible, desperate . . .

squandering any lasting claim

to noteworthiness . . .

An epic melodrama of legends of the fall

with colorfast etchings

recording the elementary logic

of remorseless joy

despite your images littered with loss . . .

To confess boredom, yes? . . .

Daily upticks of virtual victims . . .

The spinning out of control

and the return to humdrum

notched with fantasies of truth or dare

in the middle of a bridge

spanning there to here . . .

It was enough to reassume the position

no need to feign forgetfulness

with gestures reminiscent of decades past . . .

Reach into your toybox

and remove the circumstantial evidence of interiority . . .

of being you and not you

of being here and not here

of being then and of being now . . .

Felip Mars

Screen Dump 526

There was an off-handed knowingness . . .

an instability to the morning

that ran red lights and took corners at unsafe speeds

and yet the arrow didn't budge

in fact it seemed to egg on odysseyites

who had been flown in at the last minute . . .

You were landlocked

with reams of paper

and a willingness to map the contours

of life . . . unrolling the record . . . smoothing

it flat . . . turning autobiography

into cartography

no doubt dressed for the part

which had been reshaped to fit the fork in the road . . .

moment . . . or moments . . . palpable . . .

seemingly seamless . . .

This was not about loneliness . . .

the murkiness of loneliness . . .

It had been written up as such

but then a call came in from above

and the wording was changed . . .

We had no idea where you were headed

with your thesis . . . but after a while

it didn't matter . . .

There was something about the journey into the interior . . .

something about the interior design of a mind

that seemed to be plotting a way around . . .

or better, a way out . . .

Paulina Otylie Surys