Wednesday, August 31, 2022

Screen Dump 640

A vast someone reappears
with a memorandum of understanding . . .
You dawdle, hem, haw,
find too much air in the sonatina
soundtracking the flights of dirigibles . . .
The rudimentariness of the arrangement
a coherent jumble
the laws of attraction misconstrued
which you insist was OK . . .
What were you thinking? . . .
You make a mad dash for your new hairstyle,
your new look, your new persona,
jotting notes in the margins
translating some obscure writer as if
the time is opportune to think about what
you thought you had wasted, I mean, wanted . . .

Antonio Palmerini


Monday, August 29, 2022

Screen Dump 639

You audition for the part
parading your naiveté
as freshly-laundered linen sheets
the bed made with dreams of first times
around the block alien -
all perspective
all logic
out the window . . .
Your 180? . . . Inconsistent
and undeniably out of character
but then, perhaps not . . .
The recipient? . . . Conveniently guilt-ridden
(Would do me in!) - 
a placeholder
a stand-in
a once and future insignificant other
the security camera's fuzzy evidence . . .
a TKO in the first round . . .
And the disruption? . . .
Appalling . . . Nothing to be done . . .
You nailed it . . . The part . . .
The opening curtain, though, snagging . . .
The audience, hushed, now whispering,
clearing their throats, shuffling their feet . . .
The unwritten novel of a passion
crumbling, falling away,
replaced, most assuredly, by dry-eyed re-entry
into the world of the living . . .


Sunday, August 28, 2022

Screen Dump 638

That you disfavored substitution was well known
to those who practiced brevity
especially now in light of the upheavals in drag and drop . . .
The joking seemed endless . . .
The trip to the dump . . . a capstone . . .
Word got out and began changing the meaning
of utterances dragged in off the street
as stand-ins for what, no one knew
which was OK since it was something close to music . . .
You complained about a terrible sandwich
carrying on about the avalanche of sandwich boards . . .
a throwback to tamer times . . . with no takeaways . . .

Antonio Palmerini


Saturday, August 20, 2022

Screen Dump 637

You grow invisible hands
worrying the semantics of the morning coffee . . .
wondering whether the alphabet
can handle it . . . invisible hands
shadow-boxing invisible puppets
brought in to engage misfits . . .
then the interruption . . .
the deliberate nonlinearity
of the outer Cape
with its math and models . . .
Do the data fit the model? . . .
Welcoming interruptions . . .
Welcoming the next session's green . . .
Odysseyites mount this hand-me-down thing
on the logic of long haulers
as if Ubers have always been part
of the inner circle . . .
But what about those in the wings? . . .
What are they waiting for? . . .
At the museum you wait for an OK
but the security guards
are more interested in time-off
in the Cy Twombly room . . .
time-off before punching out
of the Cy Twombly room . . .
Did Cy ever take time off
staring at the empty canvas
for three or more hours
before knocking off another masterpiece
in 15 minutes? . . .
The audio-guide says his brain
was crammed with images awaiting release . . .

Emily Hall by Mungo Campbell (click for interview)



Thursday, August 18, 2022

Screen Dump 636

Keep going . . . with the words, I mean . . .
the paper spree boggling the metric
with autofictions-a-plenty
into the facades of north Jersey . . .
Climbing into back seats
searching for the person you were
or the person you wanted to be
as cameras spoke in foreign tongues
with subtitles thrown in
randomly for effect . . .
Knowing what and how much
challenged the cutting room floor
not unlike two roads
diverging in the yellow wood
with blue lip gloss
for the final scene
cookie cutters and all
while a voice from the back room
chimed in with something
about an Aqua Velva Man . . .
You prided yourself a documentarian
but lost altitude between the lines
tailspinning into the chaos
of single room occupancies . . .
Some of it admittedly easy . . .
And here's Ashbery, for example,
late at night in his small,
unprepossessing study
on the ninth floor
of a rental apartment
on the corner of Ninth Avenue
and 22nd Street in Chelsea
grading his poems A B C . . .
Imagine the synaptic activity . . .
Code breakers as oddsmakers
striking poses in stretch limos
called in when the air
was sucked out
and stand-ins began carrying on
about staying after school
for makeup tests making out in cubbies
to that summer's theme escaping
in colorful hot air balloons . . .

Felicity Jones in The Aeronauts (2019)


Wednesday, August 17, 2022

Screen Dump 635

Then you would become a sous-chef
slathered with olive oil for the full catastrophe,
keenly aware of the archival method
of posthumous publication
especially when the sommelier
training for the Leadville 100
would take you to the wine cellar
for a peek at his training log . . .
Chaos under the guise of calm reigned . . .
You would reciprocate whenever possible
with quick-study dioramas
and modifications to the soaking tub . . .
The tenor of those days was typically dictated
by the nature of the homework assignment
which as contracted had to be completed
after assuming three of the five yoga poses
emailed in the wee hours . . .
That confusion was always bright
in the hillocks surrounding the lap pool
mattered little . . .



Tuesday, August 16, 2022

Screen Dump 634

The daily patdown . . . a costume change
with earbuds, boomboxes tagged and repurposed . . .
Nymphets frolic in the park's pool . . .
Investigative journalists look on for miscues . . .
At Stewart's a septuagenarian, commenting
on your aesthetics, asks about online courses . . .
a cosmic unraveling, harkening back
to that winter afternoon at the manhole
when filled with footnotes
you opted out with a trustee . . .
After shedding his false-face he began pacing
the air . . . you went off-script stammering
eulogies to snowstorms, making an hallucinatory exit
while morphing into a looking glass with fruits
far off and geometric . . .



Monday, August 15, 2022

Screen Dump 633

I can't go on, I'll go on . . .
          - Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable

You begin the day with edits . . .
The incredulous insist on separate checks
tweaking their counterproposal . . .
You know you can do this, yes? . . .
The tomato plants look surprisingly well . . .
The philosophical watering no doubt . . .
The dryer is beginning to react
to the way you crank out words
and feel sure about the bespoked . . .
Walking through the undergrowth
on the way to the firewood lean-to
in dress shoes is reminiscent
of your college biology field trip
when the professor commented
on your fortitude . . . and more . . .
Then the dream of a woman with two kids
running in the passing lane on a highway
and arriving with time to spare . . .
For what, you ask? . . . This happened
and it happened while you were away
only to resurface with black-capped
chickadees and goldfinches
at the tube feeder with two cats
repositioning themselves
and deer looking on from the woods . . .
How many acts in your next one? . . .
Will there be a costume change?
a script change? Of course there's never
enough time to go on with the makeover . . .
A pint sounds like a plan . . .

Craig McDean


Monday, August 8, 2022

Screen Dump 632

And here despite the opening credits
is the turnkey scene
with all gathered 'round for takeaways
from the beloved soon-to-expire . . .
takeaways to clutter the walkups
of your immunocompromised self . . .
Cue up The Last Station
for Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy's spin
on what matters
when it all begins grinding to a halt
with a drizzle of rice vinegar . . .
Turn the page, please . . .
A bear walks into a bar on a dog day afternoon . . .
Again, please . . .
Life out of balance . . .
OK, field notes wither you . . .
You'd think they were the only ones . . .
How about a pop-up pastoral with odysseyites
waist-deep in knee-jerk conceits
dropping PEZ with the intensity of slam dunks
while sampling craft beer à la carte? . . .
You're right to worry the absence of joviality . . .
The countdown, then . . .
How about that? . . .
Is that enough? . . .
Is it enough to parse
the short attention span of Youtubers
while your double traces your moment(um)
sitting at home on a yoga mat
fingering designer beads
the requisite number of times? . . .
The book escapes your late night hands
and rewrites itself to mirror the dystopia du jour . . .
Time is running out . . .
And not because of nothing either . . .

Mirjana Grasser