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The answer in question awaits . . .

costumed and ready . . .

There's little sense

in mapping the route

or in reconstructing the argument . . .

The cat has escaped the bag

with dissertations

waiting in the wing

to move in and have at it . . .

Just look at it differently . . .

Kierkegaard's rotation method, yes? . . .

You have passed the Driver's Test

and are finally roadworthy . . .

Advisors are at your beck and call . . .

Soon you will be off and running . . .

No need to be squeamish . . .

Kelly Boesch

Screen Dump 842

An unkindness of ravens stalks you

with forked-tongue misdirection

pulling labels, stalling the machine . . .

You fear for your inertness,

intimidated and defensive . . .

the question, How Should A person Be?

drops with forged watercolors . . .

And now word salad is being served

as placation . . . but the bigger story . . .

yes, the bigger story . . .

Abecedarian assemblages are no exception

with beauty the answer

and not just that . . .

so thoroughly disrupting

the urge to impose,

through a sense of your evolving self

despite the irrepressible narrative . . .

Sheila Heti

Screen Dump 841

A closed timeline curve plasters walls

with canary flyers opening to the fluidity

of dreamscapes . . . Everyone is inked . . .

in solidarity . . . the word out is beyond scary

looping back onto itself . . . painstakingly

slow black-and-white panning

squeezing scripts to fit the moment . . .

the experience . . . a thousand voices . . .

You raise your hand and are dropped . . .

Kelly Boesch

Screen Dump 840

Painting with a muted palette . . .

the foreboding promiscuity head-butting

to tempt happenstance

but how to do it

without intentionality, yes? . . .

Trails groomed by AI . . .

Objects of desire vanishing . . .

There is no joy in Mudville . . .

A Magic 8 Ball rolls in

with Ask again later . . .

Now what? . . .

Are you ready to click Resume? . . .

OK, maybe go with the cosplay? . . .

but what if a much of a which of a wind

{in fact} gives truth to the summer's lie? . . .

Kelly Boesch

Screen Dump 839

Getting the words out, yes? . . .

the joy at the level of the sentence

despite hallucinating chatbots

with you touting your next iteration . . .

long lines followed by short lines

saying the real say

a window into the why . . .

Is it alive? . . .

away from the non-presence

of philosophical yadas . . .

the kinship among the disillusioned

pushing the disembodied space

into something else

energized by nature’s calisthenics . . .

You can do this . . . you know you can do this . . .

Serge Barbeau

Screen Dump 838

So what's a little queasiness? . . .

This is what you wanted, yes? . . .

this staging of the ethics of representation:

who was there? . . . who wasn't? . . .

the magic . . . what sustains it? . . .

what snuffs it out? . . .

The engaging motleyness

emerging from somewhere deeper

than rationality . . .

trying not to be judgmental . . .

the menacing collage

the porosity of stalled time

the bucket list leaking indecipherables

into your playpen of dreams

the rate of polymer degradation

awaiting your inner film preservationist . . .

Implausible . . .

Would you rather something else? . . .

How then pharmaceuticals

in the throes of ecstasy? . . .

Deep discounts? . . . of course . . .

Repercussions bouncing around

the breezeway at all hours . . .

Throat singers trailing scripts, yes! . . .

And now the day . . . with coupons . . .

Can you wait it out? . . .

Blanche Sewell

Screen Dump 837

Filling in the blanks . . . especially the urge

to drop your story

doing your Shangri-La with wait staff

unselfconsciously . . . without worry . . .

shredding the shell game . . . under glass

a peaceable array of mock-ups

gradually falling in sync . . .

The outermost dunes of imagination

with character studies for those in waiting rooms . . .

You have returned in your favorite backstory

as an elementary guide

through the valley of bass clefs . . .

The moment-to-moment on the tenth yard line

with eye sockets appended to enjambments

as if ideosyncracies managed to get through secuity

without the usual disconfitures . . .

This is good . . . with you without remorse, yes? . . .

Marcin Szpak

Screen Dump 836

I suppose that's how it began . . .

odysseyites worrying the crossing

with Facebook friends 

roadmapping next steps to happiness

morning rounds interrupting

the magical mystery tour

promised by the maître d' . . .

But the sign-up sheet? . . .

Forget that, it was a misstep . . .

But you mentioned a vague disquietude,

a vexation totally unexpected? . . .

That too was part of the excitement . . .

Apparently, you didn't get the memo . . .

So many do not want to be bothered

opening Door #3, fearing what,

identity theft? . . .

You mean tweaking? . . .

Not a big deal . . . bringing

something new to the table

should help you navigate the unknown . . .

Marcin Szpak

Screen Dump 835

Stop making sense.

          - David Bryne, Talking Heads

Is it worth the effort to bring home the bacon

or release the stops and replay the collision

of fancy-pants words for odysseyites-in-training? . . .

Of course, the ramifications, allegations,

the daytrip to the photo-shoot

with clothes-horses astride the aforementioned . . .

An abundance of light . . . or delight, yes? . . .

You were promised a free ride but then what? . . .

The ventriloquist's dummy lost its voice

after speaking in tongues to residents of Utopia . . .

There was no turning back . . . the River Styx

if that's what you're thinking

or are about to think about . . .

Akin to moving into a loft to excavate

grainy black and white footage

from a foot locker earmarked for extraction . . .

before the scene in which briefs are filed

at a unknown law firm is dumped . . .

But that won't explain everything

being light years away from any sense

of street reality . . .

It's simply an idea . . . not unlike any old idea . . .

enamored as you are of the contemporary art scene

brimming with new or outlandish notions

in a culture punishing outsiders . . .

Mattias Bjorklund

Screen Dump 834

A playlist, yes, that’s it, a playlist . . .

rewound between scenes

and in the distance . . .

Can you believe the intermixes

of ensouled sediments à la Annie Ernaux . . .

memories the stuff of experience

confirming life's fragmentation

and the belief that one belongs

in a graphic novel? . . .

Try that on . . .

Oh, OK, to occlude the looming gloam of death

beyond the parameters of age

as if the sound of a train

steaming along the shore

will arrive with installation instructions

for your next next . . .

This is too far-fetched, isn’t it,

too ill-fitting

the range of options a word salad? . . .

You have to admit though a certain exuberance

so exuberant in fact that it applauds missteps

with A+s . . . nonsense, but yes

you can see it as well as I

and I have to admit I'm enjoying the garble . . .

the magic . . .

Annie Ernaux

In Anticipation of Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein

          for Mary Shelley

The powerful engine reanimates the commonplace
and transports you to Doug Adams's Galaxy
where you shop for food and tend the fire.
A little red helps wipe out the nightmare.
You thought solutions would drop from the sky
but instead squirrels on drifts ignite messages
from the Restaurant at the End of the Universe.
You recall taking off in secret,
traveling incognito around the countryside,
not unlike Torquato Tasso,
whose alleged schizophrenia rescued him
from a life without love.
Did Percy too stir with an uneasy, half vital motion
when you were out at all hours
with soft brush, dark crayon, and rice paper?
Were the rubbings a hit in the cabin on Lake Geneva?

Bernie Wrightson

Screen Dump 833

It was like that, yes? . . . like the obtuse angle

in a math problem posting the past

with an escape route to explain why

as if Tears for Fears:

Welcome to your life

There's no turning back . . .

Prisoner in a trap of disbelief

choreographing rewrites that clutter

your mind's forgotten transfer station . . .

Why the passport makes no sense

in this pool of adjectives backstroking

the aseptic elegance of angularities

extends into extra innings

making it almost seem worthy

of the nonsense syllables

transcribed onto a faux scroll . . .

This maelstrom of bittersweet streams

is nothing new . . . nothing you did not master

in the stairwell of the apartment building

where you had set up shop so to speak

for your clients

that has since been razed

to line the pockets of wheeler dealers . . .

Your habitual scribbling about one-trick ponies

with empty sockets

suffers a conclave of nostalgia . . .

troubling knowledge of what will happen . . .

the time opportune for boilerplate logic . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 832

Then, in the middle of it, you made a u-turn

collapsing rehearsals into autofiction . . .

labyrinthine waves promising hypnotic delights

from the seven levels at blowout prices . . .

A panhandling cat mutates

into an apothecary

the afternoon petering out . . .

bills interspersed with postcards

including one from Giza

with pop-up pyramids mimicking Albrecht Dürer’s

Draughtsman drawing a recumbent woman . . .

Women as subjects to be drawn . . .

objectification, yes? . . . 

bending the rules of perspective

leading to anamorphisis . . . mirror anamorphisis . . .

positioning a mirror to transform

a flat distorted image into a three-dimensional picture

that can be viewed from any angle . . .

the alteration an adaptation

this incompatibility unspecified

both amorous and tension-fraught

the nucleus powerplaying the realism . . .

No doubt the power of the costume
the power of indifference

channeling Schopenhauer on his 3 PM constitutional

with his puppy-dog Atma targeting paparazzi . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 831

Misunderstanding all you see . . .

          - The Beatles, Strawberry Fields Forever

Going for broke . . . essential but without

the plunging happenstance . . . colored with outtakes

from The Last Picture Show . . .

Never you mind, honey. Never you mind.

There was a moment but it doesn't matter much to me . . .

That's the Beatles . . . this too

I am he as you are he, as you are me

and we are all together . . .

then retraction or redaction

the little matters that matter little

setting the bar . . . it must be high or low . . .

On cue? . . . You costumed in praise of folly . . .

Begin again? . . . you mean with

all that David Copperfield kind of crap? . . .

So yesterday . . . Anyway, so yesterday,

Don't you think the joker laughs at you? . . .

for going out on a limb

tallying The World to Come

with Abigail and Tallie

battling hardship and isolation 

in mid-19th century Schoharie County, New York

where husbands reportedly poisoned their wives

in record numbers

irrevocably drawn to each other

comforting one another in the afterlife

taking the Queer Lion Award

with Norwegian filmmaker and actress

Mona Fastvoid at the helm . . .

but not Back to the Future

storyboarded soundboarded waterboarded

beyond the yellow brick road

with lists aplenty streaming on Netflix

in the guise of The Stranger . . .

or at least sounding out every other line . . .

Mona Fastvoid

Screen Dump 830

But then the time out with roadies loading inuendos

while you as self-appointed architect

began mapping an esplanade for extra credit and rumor . . .

It seemed lots of fun . . . at least that was the impression

with footsteps sounding as backstories unfolded . . .

Antonio Palmerninio

Do you believe in magic?

Of course you do.

Antonio Palmerini

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You used to do this . . . the self you were

used to do this . . . a sort of trickle-down

not unlike what just about everyone's experienced . . .

but now a different game

with lapsed free-throws

reminding you It's not the content, it's the form . . .

OK, you can shapeshift as well as anyone, yes?

but you chose elsewhere

and I'm thinking line judge . . .

Night-sitting and all that . . . radiant night-sitting . . .

the water slow-lapping the shore . . .

fingers walking . . .

Not overrated! . . . despite the catechism's insistence! . . .

Leila Fores

Twenty years teaching psychology condensed . . .

Wolfgang Kohler's ape, Sultan, snaps together two sticks and snags a banana from the ceiling of his cage. The whole in Wolfgang's theory is greater than the sum of its parts. Pavlov's dogs drool to the tintinnabulation of bells, happy they won't be rocketed into space for at least 40 years. Fred Skinner's pigeons play ping pong for food pellets during the day, launder money at night in the school's photography lab. John B. Watson, Behaviorism's father, beds down his lab assistant and is given his walking papers. He stumbles into advertising and rises to VP, writing copy for cigarette ads. One of his grad students, Mary Cover Jones, counterconditions four-year-old Peter's fear of animals using scoops of ice cream. She sells her idea to Ben and Jerry. Sigmund Freud smokes cigars, collects Egyptian artifacts, wears out 306 couches, bifurcates humans into those who wish for a penis and those who fear for their penis. He sees no happy medium. Clifford Beers jumps out of a fourth floor window into a mud puddle, foiling his suicide and priming his pen for a "A Mind That Found Itself," while Gustav Theodor Fechner's opus "The Mental Life of Flowers" withers and dies. Harry Harlow tricks rhesus monkeys into falling in love with stuffed animals. They hide his booze, sending him over the edge of a visual cliff. Alfred Binet puts together a test to measure intelligence. He should have stuck to law. Hermann Rorschach spills a bottle of ink and markets his accident for countless James Joyce wannabes. Karen Horney argues that basic anxiety is the root of mental illness. A stick of dynamite drives a crowbar through Phineas Gage's frontal lobe. He becomes a sideshow sensation, and prefrontal lobotomies become the therapy of choice for society's square pegs. Ugo Cerletti and Lucio Bini compare notes with Mary Shelley, use an electric current to induce epileptic seizures in patients with mental illness, opening the door to electroshock therapy. Erik Erikson studies art, comes to America as an art therapist, and promptly loses his identity. Leta Hollingsworth gifts us giftedness. Jean Piaget and Bärbel Inhelder chart the growth of logical thinking and abstract reasoning. Philippe Pinel unchains the insane in La Salpetriere; they join SAG, and get bit parts in J. L. Moreno's psychodrama, "King of Hearts." R. D. Laing maintains that the world, not people, is mad, drops acid with patients, dies of a heart attack playing tennis in Saint Tropez. Mary Calkins helps us remember memory. Tommy Szasz argues that mental illness is a destructive social construct, a myth and nothing more (or less) than “problems in living.” Carl Jung has a midlife crisis, explores the occult, publishes "The Red Book"; Alfred Adler strives for superiority; Carl Rogers remains nondirective; Abraham Maslow actualizes himself in full view; Tom Harris assures us we're OK; Kubler-Ross stages death snd dying. The sixty-minute hour turns out to be fifty-minutes long.

Screen Dump 828

The religiosity of the morning coffee

spills onto hexagonal bolts in the hardware store

as if the street were cupping

under the weight of cringeworthiness

with you again out there . . . elsewhere . . .

vetting an assemblage of somnambulists

drowning in cartography

while sommelier-wannabes detonate

algorythmically-generated stoppers

slapdash in effect 

inadvertently deployed for schlock value . . .

then the hybridization of clippings

encased in resin

paleontology's breadwinner

form following form following form unmitigated . . .

a rendering . . . without transposition or apologia . . .

Ruven Afanador

I buy lots of books. I begin lots of books. Finish some. Maggie Nelson's Pathemata is one. OK, so it's only 80 pages, but - uh oh, cliché - I couldn't stop! See what you think?