Screen Dump 431

There was an inconspicuousness to it . . .
I mean . . . there we were . . . cresting conversations
as the clock boarded the third quarter
with little to deconstruct . . .
Of course, he/she brought it up . . . drilled it home, in fact . . .
but without exclamation . . . and so . . . it wobbled . . .
frayed . . . leaving us free to disassociate . . .
to wallow in post-time remorse . . .
Someone suggested hacking the portal . . .
but that smacked of illiteracy, if you know what I mean . . .
You see, you said, and without tweaking . . . we did . . .

Wendy Bevan

Screen Dump 430

Bedheads . . . with Roy Orbison In dreams . . .
sidestep the Procrustean parlance of machines
in the first act . . .
You worry entropic penalty . . .
and Bezos's two-pizza rule . . .
as if a common denominator . . . had been odyssied on call . . .
Mama said there'll be days like this . . .
when drones pick up . . .
and it's first and ten . . . and your little black book
seeps professional foosballers . . .
This sudden interest in flophouses, yes?
and rehab centers overridden with ants . . . and uncles
of a different color . . . a different flavor . . .
Someone somewhere is being set up for a photo shoot . . .
You may be called in for captioning . . .

Irina Dmitrovskaya

Screen Dump 429

Grease monkeys flood the yellow bricks
with Shakespeare:
a world too wide / For his shrunk shank, . . .
You measure for measure their costumes . . . and fail . . . fall? . . .
they . . . yours . . . a cache of pics . . . and then . . .
you as speedbump . . .
as pickup . . .
and a close encounter of the unkind
in the sleeper cab of a big rig . . . Again,
the cupboard as bare as the moat . . .
the drawbridge . . . drawn . . .
expecting to feature . . . Forsooth! . . .
Texts seek deep house . . . earwormed, yes? . . .
You begin profiling players' carbon footprints . . .
following them into the rehearsal space . . .
You are a central intelligence agency . . .
in a right-to-farm zone
with incidentals from soon-to-be-released boxed sets
showcasing this week's top 20 hurdy-gurdiers . . .
Form follows function . . . out the door . . .
There are no puppies in your REM sleep . . .
the dream sequence having been abruptly perchanced . . .

Double, double toil and trouble!

Screen Dump 428

Squigglers from a long-ago Saturday morning kids' show
are downstreamed by a female bareback rider
trying to recreate the exchanges
that shaped the present moment . . .
postcards from the entrance to a sideshow
do their part
but translation's loopholes
trap the emptiness
which despite your apps hold fast . . .
Something about impermeability . . . and the years
spent woodshedding with a clown . . .
honing one's craft . . . and all that
as if that was the silver bullet missing
or left out of the instructions for dancing . . .
How release carries you across the moat of time . . .
The odyssey's pull . . . its impulsivity . . .
Everything coming together . . . then not . . .
You were here . . . languishing in the inevitable . . .

William Laxton

Screen Dump 427

The soon-to-be-announced clog the airspace and, despite fluidity,
make-do with the accoutrements on tap . . .
A Bud Light . . . then a doublewide . . .
equating the lack of erudition with a sad impulse
begging someone to speak volumes . . . to deconstruct past players populating
imaginary dioramas with wannabes from Golden Books . . .
Vegetation's understory forecasts acid rain
while offshore an Orca grieves her calf . . .
Will you please google the answers before the endgame? . . .
How many minutes on the clock? . . .
He/she will be retired to a type of Walmart . . . in the high peaks . . .
Impartial, if you will . . .
Your mentoring festers in a circular file . . .
let go when downsizing seemed inevitable . . . this too Instagrammed . . .

Julianne Moore by Peter Lindbergh

Screen Dump 426

And now the esotericism of tandem surfing . . . grounds you . . . isolates you . . .
and you're all about bragging rights . . . nit-picking
with a falsetto's exactitude . . . overwhelming the unsuspecting . . .
You're good with that . . . and other things too . . .
dissecting the lives of players who odyssied your perspective . . .
post-coital images seeping through the day's fringe . . . infinite
in their looping . . . The octagonal sign . . . full-term . . .
to fill the spaces left blank by unidentified mannequins
who of late have insinuated themselves into your hand-wringing . . .
the substance of which matters not . . .
If only you had stopped off at the corner butcher's . . .
Listen . . . time and again . . .
Why bother rearranging the decor
when, from the horizontal, every move you make will sting? . . .
What was his given name, anyway? . . .
Your dresser awaits . . . Act One Scene One: The Fall of South Troy . . .
Floral patterns will go well with the Pinot Noir . . .
easy on the palate with fresh cherry and strawberry and super-subtle tannin . . .
Even your white-wine-only guests will find a friend . . .
A dismantling of the exhausted light is one way . . .
Again, the opening line? . . .
Parlaying the quintessential location . . . location . . . location . . .
with an heirloomed rant . . .
Noteworthy . . . you managed to conglomerate on cue . . .
and returned ever-so-briefly and ever-so-quietly to the streets
of your middle period . . .
You became expert at profiling purple . . .
replaying the cinematic collage driving the bus . . . simply to taunt . . .
The normative signs of disaster
that constitute everyday life . . . humiliated . . . adored . . . continued . . .

Screen Dump 425

The rain sends you into Brief Lives of the Brontës
before you touch down . . . without flourish
as if the three sisters stepped out of dissonant voices . . .
Filigreed, of course . . .
homespun . . . without the bullpen of images
by naive writers
from the one-way streets of hometown . . .
Stay the course?. . .
You squeeze into a club . . . with your sister . . .
eyes pocketing change . . .
short stories all . . . as if . . . little matter . . .
With the right mix . . . and nothing unexpected . . .
A minor key to a door etched with algorithmic code
especially now . . . the DJ . . . pumped with smokes from
little-known addresses . . .
A welcome interruption . . .
and more . . . just beyond the breakers . . .
A friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend, yes? . . .
Objection, your Honor . . . the question spun around . . .
reintroduced . . .
There are 50 people . . . and then some . . .
Suddenly, the dialogue (or diatribe) turns weird . . .
you exit with the cast
from West Side Story at Glimmerglass . . .
A parking lot in Garfield . . . rethinking the Chinese menu . . .
the horticultural exactitude of the passing years . . .
amanuenses at your beck-and-call . . .
You are here . . . he knew . . . and you knew he knew . . .
the return trip in the back seat of a Rolls . . .
(Is this on? Please ignore the last line. It's a typo.)
Immersion-A-Plenty . . . and you're down a freebie . . .

In the Mountains on a Summer Day

by Li Po

Gently I stir a white feather fan,
With open shirt sitting in a green wood.
I take off my cap and hang it on a jutting stone;
A wind from the pine-trees trickles on my bare head.

Screen Dump 424

As imperfect a day for banana fish, yes? . . .
the editor changing fine to perfect . . .
the tale suddenly engorged
with character development on the ledge outside the window
loaded with pop-ups dealing fireworks . . .
You enter into an agreement -
an agreement with the other person in the room
he/she conflicted . . .
Costumes . . . a crapshoot bought and sold . . .
Does the name of the game mean anything? . . .
The cruelest month comes and goes and returns
as a revenant . . . with thirty pieces of silver
and a free app for tears of joy and sadness . . .
You are recruited for a walk-on

in a soon-to-be-released rom com
bubbling innuendo . . .
Gutsy and captivating, your nanosecond demonstrates
an edginess that merits a double-wide audience . . .

PJ Harvey

Screen Dump 423

Irrespective of what . . . you ask? . . .
Irrespective of nothing . . . autopiloting
across the paint-by-number peoplescapes
the great ship's casualness . . .
curbside . . . stalled in the last quarter . . .
unbeknownst to all . . . and you . . . again . . .
following up as requested . . .
But requested by whom? . . .
Do you know? . . . Do you care? . . .
Suddenly everything recedes . . .
the chapter headings blur . . .
the entrance full of afternoons . . .
you meet the conundrum head on for lunch
underwritten by unknowns
who wait for emojis to translate the moments
which fade with every serving . . .
There will be a sharp turn in no time . . .
You're ready for this, yes? . . .

Ruven Afanador

Two by Donald Hall (1928-2018)

Her Long Illness

Daybreak until nightfall,
he sat by his wife at the hospital
while chemotherapy dripped
through the catheter into her heart.
He drank coffee and read
the Globe. He paced; he worked
on poems; he rubbed her back
and read aloud. Overcome with dread,
they wept and affirmed
their love for each other, witlessly,
over and over again.
When it snowed one morning Jane gazed
at the darkness blurred
with flakes. They pushed the IV pump
which she called Igor
slowly past the nurses' pods, as far
as the outside door
so that she could smell the snowy air.

The Ship Pounding

Each morning I made my way
among gangways, elevators,
and nurses’ pods to Jane’s room
to interrogate the grave helpers
who tended her through the night
while the ship’s massive engines
kept its propellers turning.
Week after week, I sat by her bed
with black coffee and the Globe.
The passengers on this voyage
wore masks or cannulae
or dangled devices that dripped
chemicals into their wrists.
I believed that the ship
traveled to a harbor
of breakfast, work, and love.
I wrote: "When the infusions
are infused entirely, bone
marrow restored and lymphoblasts
remitted, I will take my wife,
bald as Michael Jordan,
back to our dog and day." Today,
months later at home, these
words turned up on my desk
as I listened in case Jane called
for help, or spoke in delirium,
ready to make the agitated
drive to Emergency again
for readmission to the huge
vessel that heaves water month
after month, without leaving
port, without moving a knot,
without arrival or destination,
its great engines pounding.

Become Ocean

Listening to it we become ocean.
          - John Cage on the music of Lou Harrison

You become ocean . . . tangoing

with Joycean footnotes
an out-and-back watery trance
with John Luther Adams
at the end of the blur
the same views not the same
from opposite directions . . .
your words triadic harmonies which
despite the welts marching up your arm
attributable to the strands of poison ivy
that hitched a ride into your house
on the back of the standard black short-hair
who presides over your domain
and whose mewling will continue to crescendo
until you replenish his food dish
release us from us
into metaphysical reveries of blueness.
Your obsession
with the somnambulistic leanings
and bad press
of weedwhackers
segues to March 28, 1941
a little before noon
when Virginia Woolf
with hat walking stick overcoat
and large stone
wades into the River Ouse drowning herself.
She was an escape artist
who mapped the extraordinariness
of the interior
not unlike Anthony Bourdain
who wanted to be remembered as an enthusiast
introducing us to the wonderful world of food
in all its wonderfulness
before hanging himself
in a hotel room in eastern France . . .
so too the once-abandoned drive-in
on Route 32
now resuscitated revitalized and welcoming
with fanfares
for the common man and common woman.
Become ocean . . . all become ocean.
We hold these truths to be self-evident
prestidigitating words words words
into cauldrons of delight
the double double toil and troublers
given 24 hours to get outta Dodge
while you like Proust
for a long time going to bed early
seduce the watcher at the gate
slip past the dozing Rottweilers
in the warm fragrant kitchen
and into the hidden room
behind the stacks in the library
to gaze upon hundreds of portraits of beauty
from the comfort of a Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
white leather Barcelona chair
circa 1929
before being eyeblinked back
to Tanglewood
surrounded by shadowy strangers
plodding toward the parking lot
united in their quest
for their anxious vehicles
chomping at the bit to traverse
lonely upstate two-lanes
on their late-night return trip home.

Screen Dump 422

Feelings of linearity . . . traced back to elementary school
and your fear of fat . . . and looking at strangers . . . but not really . . .
bowing to your mother's warning
that it's dangerous to meet their eyes . . .
The woman on the subway smelled of food
and wore a brooch that you are sure had a story to tell
but no one was listening . . .
perhaps a long ago interlude of intimacy . . .
Your palms sweated onto the cover of the book
you riffled through in the bookstore but decided not to buy
and now soaking away the day in your tub
with the Kindle'd edition
you're filled with remorse for not supporting
neighborhood moms & pops' . . .
The minuscule battles which daily weigh heavily . . .
despite the profusion of irony on the logos of t-shirts
on passersby in flood pants . . .
Soon there will be something somewhere
behooving you to engage . . . until eventually those too
will quietly fall off . . . and you will be left second-guessing
your moves as you play chess against a glass of Cabernet . . .

Christina Hoch

Screen Dump 421

Sentences parsed on off days when somnambulists gather dust in makeshift libraries where amanuenses per diem'd mine the gasps of ghosts . . . The Hall of Incidentals opens for business as usual . . . shards of glass dropped in a labyrinth wait to enter your words . . . an amalgam of riffs on emptiness . . . held back in the early grades . . . There was a window . . . is a window . . . will be a window . . . I am working in the garden with voices lining up for handouts of iridescent themes . . . I know you know the opening lines to the nights that curl around you to caress you as scripted . . . This much of course . . . But so? . . . 

David Benoliel

Screen Dump 420

Your stint as resident insomniac
coughing up night terrors
silent screen stars speeding into the valley
thick with cloudcover . . .
Interior monologues terrifying the what-ifs
cowering in the corner of your bedroom
where nightly tête-à-têtes
announce imaginary numbers
to the worrisome packaged in plastic . . .
Better late than never, yes? . . .
Buckling up . . .
the backward logic of go-betweens
infinitesimal touch-ups
the ifs ands buts of moments
otherwise known as forever . . .
Do nothing . . . the tune earworms . . .
sidewalk cracks point the way . . .
You will be badged - and badgered -
in due course . . .
nothing else if not . . .
I can't help but think about the resurgence . . .
Yes, there will be more . . .

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)

Screen Dump 419

Maybe I'm amazed at the way you pulled me out of time.
          - Sir Paul McCartney

Writing ad copy for bedside pilgrims catapults you
into an altered state filled with past players . . . while token rituals
garner support from special interest groups
currying embellishments . . . There will be no extra credit
for your appreciation of footnotes or anything encapsulating
your past escapades . . . You like most have apparently forgotten
the mandatory reshooot of your life in which icemen
are jettisoned the one too many mornings after
before footage is returned to the underperforming film crew
with postage hampered by magical thinking . . .
Taking center stage with five minutes left in the quarter . . .
this ankle boot with socks thing bodes well for idiosyncranicity . . .
When was the last time you asked yourself? . . .

Screen Dump 418

You cardio in a sea of idiolects . . . diagramming interior monologues . . .
The right stuff is within reach of  the polyvocality of recyclers

taking recyclables to a redemption center . . . Suffice it to say what? . . .
A dead zone exchanges inanimates feeding quarters to blown-glass avatars

while questioning the preparation instructions jotted down in haste . . .
Your pockets bulge confusion . . . and continue as secular entities . . .

A go-between oozing cheap cologne you rarely go into the yard
where the sundial does time . . . every once in a while . . . Of course,

this is all from Stage 1 players who smoke the endgame with lush abandon
tsking you for dealing a bag of KFC extra hot wings at the head shop . . .

The aluminum block from the melted-down cans of your childhood
triggers something . . . perhaps the shortest straw exiled just out of sight . . .

Eugenio Recuenco

Screen Dump 417

And now you're gung-ho about the suffix esque . . .
immersing yourself . . . in the other . . .
the pieces coming together effortlessly . . . bumping you up
to the next level of engagement . . .
soundtracked by the brain's 40 Hz hum . . .
That the criteria remain unmet is irrelevant . . .
That the costumes are ill-fitting . . . incidental . . .
The slippery slope slipperier as you misplace your self . . .

Paolo Roversi

Screen Dump 416

To lose yourself in the pages of a softcover . . .
the pages of a graphic novel . . .

to lose yourself in the action of a graphic novel . . .
in the one two three of a graphic novel . . .

between the stacks . . . in the sanctuary of a bookstore . . .
the sanctuary of books . . . of words . . .

someone somewhere is talking to you . . .
trying to insinuate himself/herself into your life . . .

into the graphic novel of your life . . .
into the who what when where why of your life . . .

Again . . . the same voice . . .
but different from the black and white . . .

You try to follow its dotted line . . .
along the canal . . .

leading out of here . . . wherever here is . . .
leading to unmapped areas . . . imaginary areas . . .

A patron . . . patron saint? . . . talks revitalization . . .
somewhere . . . here? . . . where points

are made by those easily led
into the dawn of a new day . . . another day . . .

beginning mid-chapter
with sun . . . then sleet . . . then snow . . .

The playbook turns on its heel spurring motion-
sickness for those taxiing . . . you among them . . .

Paolo Roversi

Screen Dump 415

The day unfolds flat prompting you to engage Death
in a game of mumbly-peg, channeling Scrooge

with the tiresome . . . But does it have to be? . . .
The barleycorned life and times of, yes? . . .
Will the plug be pulled? . . .
Will it morph into an Oscar Week? . . . an Oscar Wilde? . . .
Will your knight advance to the podium
your head choked with streaming videos

of the good old days . . .
some of which were indeed good enough
to fetch an Oscar . . . had they been nominated? . . .
You ride the crest of here/not-here
filling the concave mirror

in the Fun House with mothballed
dress-down-Friday costumes and brittle unkept promises . . .
your entourage feeding your rock-and-roll role . . .
But the center - as expected? - doesn't hold and
I don't give a damn is a wet towel

tossed into the ring at the end of the ninth
when amid the full catastrophe

you are ticketed for rambling . . .
for drifting off-pointe at the barre . . .
with a bullseye henna'd onto your unlined forehead . . .

Caught

I caught a tremendous fish.
          - Elizabeth Bishop, The Fish

But then the little engine that could couldn't
and you were set adrift . . . on opening day . . .
crib notes . . . encrypted . . .
a tale of blue cities in your creel
on life-support no less . . .
but this time time stops
as you reel in Liz's tremendous fish . . .
battered and vulnerable and lonely . . .
and examining and inspecting his sullen face
and five-haired beard of wisdom
you are awestruck by the rainbow, rainbow, rainbow
and by the happiness of happenstance
as it parallel parks
your day . . . and you too let it go . . .

Screen Dump 414

The queue gluts with auctioneers of language . . .
of stage directions with backstories of childlike mischief
high-topped and burqa'd against the wind
not unlike the polyglot introducing your next odyssey in
the language of your dreams . . . the language of your past self . . .
You have tried to flee recognition . . .
but there's always someone . . . somewhere . . .
with a memory of your bedroom's glass menagerie . . .
untouched . . . memorializing the tongues of insinuators
who GPS your movements for YouTubers poet lookalikes and reenactors
about to embark on a journey into the heart of some darkness . . .
It's all SRO . . . for a while at least, yes? . . .
at least until strangers begin sexting strange images . . .

Monika Ekiert Jezusek

Screen Dump 413

You as mirror-image examine the usefulness/uselessness
of strung words . . . of words qua words . . .
words riding shotgun with ambivalence . . . the hours
spent with muted palette keynoting a declaration of independence . . .
a declaration of co-independence . . . co-dependence . . .
Your articles of confederation . . . of clothing as Exhibit A . . .
await sleep's hum . . . which may never come . . .
Your costumes of engagement rarely
uninteresting . . . especially now . . .
cutting along the dotted lines for the new you . . .
looking at the looks . . .
dull pencils dry brushes . . . sketching
nothing to memorialize the past . . .
your past as retreat into decaffeination shelved . . .

Monika Ekiert Jezusek

Screen Dump 412

Again you pantomime escape . . . sparklers crackling . . .
wading through shallows as if clarity
was chomping at the bit . . . to enter the frame . . .
the blameless obfuscation
of your notebook jottings pinning the tail . . .
How to explain the fascination . . .
the tacit approval of your blue books
brimmed with proofs of migratory
thoughts crowding out others
in the takeaway box of your imagination . . .
clocks desperate as once . . . oh so long ago . . .
You are plain-spoken whenever you enter
the ring . . . eyes focused on the prize-
of-the-moment . . . filling some gap
you don't remember from where despite
which you continue to go through the motions
matching the self . . . in the mirror
when with the sun you sign into your life-is-OK life . . .

Peter Lindbergh

Screen Dump 411

You're choreographing steps in the snow
despite a front heading your way . . . to be followed by another
on your heel toe toe heel . . . looking for the definition
of recalcitrant . . .
Pinterest pics color moments
of the biomechanical
outlined by Henry Gray in his 1858 Anatomy . . .
We each . . . reach . . . at some point
sketching caricatures with the straws we've drawn
pastels at sunset soundtracked by a tap routine
peddling elixirs while cheering barnraisings for startups . . .
The steps will eventually come . . . indeed . . .
scaffolded by drop-dead paradiddles . . .
Messages from elsewhere seem to have guided you thus far . . .

Chloe Arnold's Syncopated Ladies