Screen Dump 562

The paradigm shifts to a bus trip

to an deserted mall

leaving a ceiling fan on the west bank

of the Schoharie servicing

lapsed coders on alternate Thursdays

when buy-ones are put on hold

with heavy metal

for make-believers flown in

for the playalong . . .

This immersion in fantasy is less a chore . . .

a  silent comealong

drenched in line dance

sucking you into a drone's eye . . .

Maybe it's a dress rehearsal

or the beginning of a  two-step . . .

Were you told this at the outset

or after the chapter's chapter? . . .

I didn't think you'd remember . . .

Celebrate the upgrade . . .

We've yet to see beta versions

fill paradoxically . . .

Eugenio Recuenco

Screen Dump 561

I am I and my circumstance.

          - José Ortega y Gasset

Your insistence on redaction conjures the Frankensteins we create . . .

speeding the bus off the razored lot

as if OCD were a cup of tea . . .

The finer points of incidentalism last seen exiting a 7-Eleven . . .

A nine-year-old . . . LOVE imprinted on her t-shirt . . .

We are the sum, if you will . . .

If I will what? . . .

Anarchy . . . how about that? . . .

OK, go on . . .

How about anarchy as an appropriate negation of indifference? . . .

as an affront to indifference? . . .

Indifference? . . .

Catapultists cite the Order of Operations to justify smiting roadies . . .

Bystanders aim smartphones at one another

and TikTok their way into the Hall of Disdain . . .

Conversations continue . . . while awaiting parole . . .

on streets in rooms . . . if I do not save it, I do not save myself . . .

The Evil of Frankenstein (1964)

In the April 20, 2021 Pine Hills Review:

Screen Dump 504 The World Fills . . .

The world fills with Eleanor Rigbys

buried without funeral . . . without music . . .

with fossilized smiles

while looters . . . making off with paper weights

disguised as MacBook Pros

demand compensation . . .

Barricades seethe with anger . . .

Your favorite things lie smashed curbside . . .

The healing grows incredibly slow

as if cells object to expending energy

on a jalopy en route to the junk heap . . .

Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son? . . .

Screen Dump 560

The off-road drive-through

the pomp and circumstantial evidence

all mitigated by the thrum

of seeing it disappear . . .

The protocol for riding the rails

reviewed and submitted

for publication

seeks refuge in footnotes . . .

It was the least you could do . . .

A frozen shoulder barks

and is placed on the stand

sworn in by the vicissitudenous

and released on its own recognizance . . .

You try to imagine more

realizing perhaps too late that there's nothing

like putting off a journey

until some convenient interruption

falls off the edge

and walkways lined by tall spruces

install what-have-yous

in the middle of it all

making progress arduous . . .

Liliana Karadjova

Screen Dump 559

The Last Will and Testimony of A. N. Incidentalist

(clear throat)

That you are driving a car-jacked Zamboni through

a museum is a dream . . . has always been a dream . . .

despite embellishments

entanglements

despite hankerers hankering to be repercussed . . .

The blurb reblurbed on the back cover knows this

and knows that there's a motion to redirect

Court TV bingers into a state of submission . . .

or oblivion . . . I forget which . . .

Your acquittal awaits a mistrial

as unnumbered numbers

undocumented

hobbled by ataxia

are cuffed and tagged by rip-roaring

root canal specialists shadowing jut-jawed

body-cam’d body-armored Captain Midnights . . .

We have become incidental . . . and less . . .

written up, photoshopped, parsed . . .

unable to pick up the missing pieces

without being spec’d by facial recognition software . . .

Holding cells belch out closing arguments . . .

It's enough to turn the stomach of a drone . . .

to return the stomach of a drone to the sender's

unknown address . . . this unreasonable specimen

of force smartphoned . . . suspended

in formaldehyde . . . encased in a hidden panel

in a room off-limits to the public . . .

Did you say it couldn't be done or shouldn't be done? . . .

Maybe just for the heck of it by long-limbed dendrites? . . .

I can now imagine the unimaginable . . .

Jarek Kubicki

Ezra in Exile

(reposted from Friday, February 11, 2011)

His conch collection cameoed in Warhol's Sleep.
He worries the acqua alta and is in demand
as an expert witness on pencil shavings.
Retractions fog his windows.
Cantos clutter the corners.
Mornings, with Olga off to the bakery for violin lessons,
he conducts his words
while tabbies skirt the canals singing his lines.
CPAs rethink their numbers upon hearing his rants.
His blog is blank.
Sundays, he phones his mother
and tells her how much he misses her
potato pancakes and tall tales.
The Coen brothers pester him
for the particulars of his caged life at St. Elizabeth's -
a life spent helping others while pissing them off.
Vendors moor their gondolas outside his palazzo
waiting for him to pass
in cape and broad-brimmed cappello
hawking images, making it new.

Ezra Pound

Screen Dump 558

You disregard the cautionary Don't even go there . . .

blind to the blind alley

after which script in hand you dial in an offhandedness

and exit into daylight . . .

the crucial moment reminiscent

of the timelessness of the dance floor . . .

the choreography effortless

as if from a roomful of rehearsals . . .

This moment-to-moment ritual

that opened doors and eyes

on what was never meant to be

was archived . . . to be pulled out

years later . . . again and again

with a nonchalance . . .

a tribute to the resilience of the script . . .

But several times is several times, yes? . . .

The oddity of the re-entanglement . . .

Where were we? . . . ah, yes . . .

The parties engaged fulfilled detached . . .

the dead end irrelevant

the strangeness . . . fodder for documentarians . . .

Anka Zhuravleva

In April's Chronogram: 

The Dogs in the Trees

The dogs are in the trees again
and they’re barking
waving to their friends
refusing to come down
scratching shedding ordering Chinese
hounding me
to do this
and that.