Screen Dump 862

There's the anvil again

and the rythmic strikes of the hammer

on the red-hot steel

re-shaping the drill point

while the road crew chills with smokes

next to their idling rig . . .

And the Rhode Island Reds

with their strange, soft, drawly clucking

filling the air

milling about outside the coop

scratching for worms

with gnarled, yellow claws . . .

the clotheslines . . .

attached to the telephone pole

squeak in harmony

with a push mower

and with the bell in the cherry trees

shooing away Robins . . .

You're trying to connect the dots

hungry for meaning

now with age more interested in narrative

as the bell lap sounds

in the roll and stretch of a dream . . .

the same dream . . .

the same black and white dream . . .

fearing so many things

a terrible kind of proof

so as not be crushed

by the stupid or the vacant  or the void . . .

There's this scene in Bela Tarr's The Turin Horse

with a young woman sitting next to a stove

with its pot of boiling potatoes

looking out the window at the dust storm

imagining other worlds . . .

The Turin Horse (2011)

Screen Dump 861

The argument collapsed and you were left

sifting through the shape of water . . .

The can of spray paint

used to highlight the separate steps

was found and dusted . . .

with odysseyites analyzing the has-been . . .

A beautiful mind was awakened

to walk among and comment on

the plantings . . . a horticultural escapade

for those in the know . . .

Counting worked wonders

and in no time the path to the argument

was uncovered and made presentable

which seemed to have been part of the plan

from the get-go . . .

Paolo Roversi

Screen Dump 860

You're asking about the doors

and why they're opening and closing

and why Kafka's path - beginning middle end -

had to have been put down simultanously

as corroborated by footage

that didn't exist . . .

So a walk in the garden among the peerless

the moment you realize

the connections that the writer/director

had diligently worked out

in the late hours of their mind . . .

It's not so much the expansion

of thoughts as it is the extension . . .

the detritus of the day-to-day

with meanderers choosing happiness . . .

aloud no less so that others might appreciate

their impulsivity and the seedlings

scattering in time to the second movement

of the drama unfolding in your backstory

despite the missing pages . . .

Where to go next? . . .

But there's time . . . yes, there's time . . .

Paolo Roversi

At the Transfer Station

Rain sheets the windows of the black Dodge.

There’s a young guy in the passenger seat

and he’s giving you the thumbs up.

His grandfather is unloading the Dodge.

You're getting soaked, wrestling trash bags

out of your SUV, but you stop, put down the bags,

and give him the thumbs up.

From my Proust's New Eyes

Albertine Simonet is Marcel’s mistress . . .

Marcel is the narrator of Marcel Proust’s

seven-volume À la recherche du temps perdu . . .

In Search of Lost Time . . .

Marcel is Proust . . .

Marcel is obsessed with Albertine . . .

He wishes to possess her . . . to own her . . .

Albertine appears in three of the seven volumes . . .

Her name occurs 2,363 times . . . on 807 pages . . .

Albertine is first seen pushing her bicycle

on a beach . . . skirts billowing . . .

Marcel will return again and again to this image . . . 

Albertine is asleep in 19 percent of the novel . . .

Asleep, she becomes a plant . . .

her hair like crinkly black violets . . .

Proust uses plants as metaphors

for female sexual desire . . .

In The Albertine Workout the poet Anne Carson

notes that plants expose their genitalia . . .

Marcel observes that sometimes in her sleep

Albertine throws off her kimono and lies naked . . .

Hence, Proust’s fascination with sleep . . .

Fade to black . . .

Screen Dump 859

But more often it has to do with

insecurity or the desire to impress . . .

So they copied the painting

signed their name

and sold the painting . . .

Is this a problem? . . .

Hybridization opens a door . . .

The confluence of theory

and autobiography . . .

a no-brainer as you walk off

to look for America . . .

Would you care to elaborate

on the unique building blocks

of your interiority

all magically held together

with Elmer's Glue? . . .

But these trifles

will suck the living daylights

out of your fabrication

leaving you picking nits . . .

rearranging the colors on your palette

with ultramarine blue

in the twelve o'clock position . . .

Read the draft

as if it's the first time

to see if you've veered too far

off the yellow brick road . . .

If you want to remake a point

just go for it so to speak

in the moment

regardless that all hell

will break loose . . .

The normativity of stringing words

is choreographic . . . the listener

playing catch-up and enjoying it . . .

You were here . . . We were here . . .

just a moment ago . . . and now we're gone . . .

vaporized . . . poof! . . .

Anka Zhuravleva

Screen Dump 858

A voice warns not to sweat imprecision . . .

It's easy to drop names

gaslighting the insecure

into interpreting grocery lists

for identity thieves

posing as Alice . . . in Wonderland

sacking drivebys

doubletalking wordplay

cluttering walkups . . .

Just think makeshift or landlubber

and you'll be fine and dandy . . .

Numbering your thoughts

will doubtless serve the same purpose

until the Uber arrives

to take you to the neighborhood

medical pop-up for a quick look . . .

And what’s with the local chapter

of hand wringers? . . .

They seem exasperated . . . but why? . . .

Imagine everyone elsewhere . . .

What then? . . .

Overdubbing the verbal miasma

will open the floodgates

to a double header

where you'll be able to enjoy

the warning track

without hitting the wall . . .

Calling out for pizza

has again jammed the works

of this run-around-in-circles

kind of day . . .

Addenda have lost

their sense of purpose . . .

You are sliding off the edge

of the looking glass

while documenting rapid physical changes

transformative changes . . .

curiouser and curiouser . . .

Screen Dump 857

You're freighted with imaginary concerns

highlighting text for tomorrow's comealong . . .

Someone called in a lockdown . . .

Confrontational aesthetics is today’s special 

with teams of horses circling the wagons . . .

The stop-and-go is standing down . . .

You are stop-actioned by the congestion

at the roundabout and throw the dice

out the window . . . A voucher for a turnaround

has been duly noted . . . Now tell me again

what led you to this . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 856

You're calibrating a Bloch sphere

highlighting symbols in an aspiration space . . .

Cartoon characters are on deck

disturbing the peace

hammering the latest modifictions

you signed off on . . .

So it's good I guess that you've called in

for a personal day

the outer crust, the parched surface . . .

Nothing can be said

about the rhyming dictionary

that elbowed its way in

with detached conversations . . .

Someone just threw in the towel . . .

A long period of adjustment is about to launch . . .

Variable cloudiness is pouring in

with locals awaiting direction

like kites slipping along ramps of air . . .

an open-air theater

the fourth wall under construction . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 855

You are released with a nametag

and operating instructions . . .

The Best of . . . leaks cantankerousness . . .

The opening was abysmal

with a smattering

of almost but not quite . . .

Reliving the future, yes?

with outtakes stuffing the iCloud

counting on Number Theory

to turn the tide of indifference . . .

What's the ETA? . . .

You had better plan for a rewrite

in cuneiform loaded with appositives . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 854

Isn't it about time to finetune

the lawn tractor for a trip

to the seven wonders

of the neighborhood? . . .

The days when Oreos sandwich in . . .

The peeling paint on this two-story

hides a medieval mural with cryptograms

awaiting decoding . . .

You're enjoying a beefsteak tomato

from the neighbor's garden

thinking cello lessons

with the retired music teacher

down the block . . . back home

after a stroke . . . Your autofiction

pops up in a snow globe

on a piano in a doilied parlor

where a tabby kneads a dream

between bouts of stripping wax

at the elementary school

while visitors to the cemetery

across the road

place pebbles on the headstones

of little-known castrati . . .

The full catastrophe is on standby . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Gone

You have faced the final storm,

and now float, high above the seas,

guiding fellow sailors,

your last words, Goodbye, my love.
The days have begun to lighten;
the nights are open windows.
I turn the soil for a vegetable garden:
tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, eggplant.
Rhode Island Reds appear
scratching for worms

with gnarled, yellow claws.
My grandfather, a blacksmith,

is here, too, from the dead,
a stubby Philip Morris

dangling from his lower lip.
He speaks to me, in Polish, about happiness.

Catherine Connolly (July 7, 1969 - April 5, 2012)

Screen Dump 853

You revisit memories

knowing that soon some will be overwritten

permanently deleted . . .

Several refuse to come out . . .

Others waffle . . .

A long ball into the right field bleachers

the runners advancing

too late now to rethink the gameplan . . .

You too had to be dragged in here

by the scruff of the neck

pockets turned out, shoes and socks removed,

trying to buy time, incoherent . . .

and then, of course,

the room you pretend doesn't exist . . .

Sorry, but the title has been reworked . . .

The scene rewritten . . .

Someone had to do it, yes? . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 852

Voiceovers of dress rehearsals

with you in the wings

running lines for passersby . . .

the moment fanning out

to memories of desire . . .

And so it returns . . .

the insistence of wind

in the guise of the lost . . .

players cast about for alternatives

losing themselves in the paroxyms of reason

grief segmenting the past

making it more interesting

than it possibly could have been . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 851

Why this urge for clarity? . . .

for lucidity? . . .

A Range Rover bloated with conceit

edges onto a logging road . . .

Shapeshifting bemusement

as you drop a bucket into the stream

and piece together the polyphony . . .

Begin at the beginning? . . .

You have traveled the island

collecting peculiarities

picking the actual over the real . . .

spending your allotment

thumbing up-close and personals . . .

The moments float by on a continuum . . .

Ducks in a row, yes? . . .

This self-preservation mode is a how-to

bordering elsewhere

like everything . . . in need of revision . . .

giving of yourself with no turning back . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 850

You inhabit fragmentation

the ins and outs

ups and downs

going through the motions

taking notes

revising scripts . . .

Everything obscured . . . obliterated . . .

layered over, as Hockney would say . . .

Matthew Brady, moving the Civil War dead

instead of the cameras . . . making it more . . . 

You talk about likes . . .

and the drama:

Call me Ishmael and all that

through however many chapters

until the Rachel appears, and finds you clinging

to drowned Queequeg's coffin . . .

A theater of lockdown drills

students huddling in the corners of rooms

doors shut

shouting sirens gunshots drones whistles engines . . .

A Day in the Life . . .

I read the news today oh boy . . .

But what of the reliability of retrospection? . . .

The eyewitnesses' embellishments . . .

unintentional yet instrumental . . .

How you enter the frame and alter it . . .

Enter the room and the conversations change . . .

You're not surprised, are you? . . .

The Doobie Brothers' Takin' It to the Streets

and you on lunch break from the bureaucracy

with a reference librarian

and they're doing a sound check

and people are beginning to segue

into the weekend . . .

he said . . . she said . . . muddied . . .

Wait . . . let's run through that again . . .

Warmify it this time, please . . .

Manipulate the image . . .

Move the dead . . .

Later, comparing notes

for the retrospective report due Monday morning . . .

In search of . . .

recording days

with a small 70's style reel-to-reel tape recorder

the loud silences

the ambient buybacks

the magic of a perfect day

convinced that there is such a thing

that it's not a fiction . . .

that there is in fact a perfect day 

not unlike the perfect day

in the film directed by Wim Wenders

about Hirayama, a janitor

who finds beauty in the world

cleaning public toilets in Tokyo . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 849

Semantic drift leaves you stuck mid-thought

on the slippery slope of your backstory

with corners folded . . .

In the last scene you redact emptiness

on the deck of a steamship

ferrying steampunkers

to an island of breakdown lanes

echoing the cacophony for multiple voices

when midnight matters little . . .

Particulates contaminate the River Styx

with the pushback taking on a life of its own . . .

Soon a moment of silence . . . Have you AI'd? . . .

Screen Dump 848

You're filming the in-between moments

with a hand-held camera . . .

You're pretty sure they mean something . . .

The power grid of your memory

is not a black hole

nothing like that at all

with crumbling facade along an overgrown path

sprouting shoutouts of Data Breach

expecting somersaults at inopportune times

begging for an unpacking of subject matter

thrown out in the last downsize . . .

It's the in-between moments, again, yes? . . .

the in-between moments

that have to be filled

with something, anything? . . .

How about the box of loose ends? . . .

The latest opening was cringeworthy

made more so by the late start . . .

You were perfect for the backlot scene

before you went underground with hobblers

following a trolley loaded with ho-hums

reimagining how it might have played out

if happenstance hadn't happened along

with innuendoes roaring over you

like an unscripted mudslide . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Outtakes

(reposted from Friday, June 15, 2012)

I am not now that which I have been.
          - Lord Byron

You befriend a Chinese Puzzle Box,
walk through scenes of over-rehearsal and exasperation.
The (mis)direction is good for both of you.

This time without the backdrop.
You begin to lose interest, yes?
Nonetheless, proceed as if smearing paint on canvas.

Forget the image. There is none.
Wing it.
Let yourself be enveloped by the drama

of the moment, the spontaneity
of the lens, the elements of time captured.
Bemoan the loss.

Again, this time with tension.
The method is beside the point
resurfacing as binaries

which down the road will have their say
striking a chord with many.
(Pretend an audience.)

See how far you can take it.
The surprise will be costumed in the next chapter
however oppositional.

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 847

The edge of a conversation

a word here a word there

trying to piece together the fragments

trying to follow . . .

Then in the courtyard

somnambulists exchange dreams

but again you're out of the loop

so you retreat to the next chapter

of an instruction manual

filled with asemic writing

but the way in is the way out

adding to the mixtape

with tattlers exposing Easter eggs

for ventriloquists

in the throes of a talkout . . .

It's the same old same old infinite loops

from the first act breaking stride

sending the dappled engagement

off on its own golden goose chase . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 846

Has reading between the lines helped? . . .

What about the blank page? . . .

Is it the intimate interiority

of a different life floating in

at all hours . . . covered with snow

that keeps you young, yes? . . .

keeps you moving across

the mind's moors . . . visiting

metaphysical what-ifs, haystacks,

brick-and-mortar clock towers

the inevitability of the postponed

as you try to fit into place

the last piece of the puzzle . . .

The dropdown menu of possible endings . . .

The wherewithal coming into view . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 845

Can anyone die without even a little bit of poetry?

          - Mark Strand

A sudden anticipation . . . this routine of words

portending immortality . . . however fantasized . . .

A dialectic with obscurity and belatedness

participating in various dreamscapes . . .

weather mounting . . . offshore . . . rain moving in . . .

Apollo clutches Daphne . . .

You clutch a mug of morning coffee

and you get it, yes? . . . this parallel dimension

where you appear . . . unannounced

in dress rehearsals for your present waking life . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 844

The rustic earworms of your fantasies

storyboard Paradise Found

as you review choices made

in your past shuddered life . . .

eroticisms whispering Etch A Sketch images

infusing your DNA with new ways

into your days . . . without which

but that would be what? . . .

impastos unshackled? . . .

the clock continuing . . .

this unnecessary cupping of hands, yes

awaiting a sign . . . on this snowy night

traveling through the secret air

down the steep, down the stops, down the deepenings

until asleep . . . dreaming . . . mirrors, faces, all . . .

Kelly Boesch

Screen Dump 843

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 out . . .

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 discomfitures . . .

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

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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 Holden's

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

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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.

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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?

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But what if it's all made up? . . .

Yeah, that too, I suppose,

as if the time spent doomscrolling

during a funeral service

for an ex-something or other

is a gambit for a throwback

to your elementary school

where a paperback writer

hawks Endurance

gazing over Edwina's shoulder

to peek at her page numbers

while Sister Edward

bedridden but not brainridden

insists Growing old is for the birds . . .

your cremains sit on a mantle

in a silver vessel

staring down the vultures filing through . . .

then the moment refills

and the class visits classmate Billy

in his albatross of an iron lung

and later that summer,

handing over a quarter

to a carny in a side show

to walk through a trailer

for a look at a young woman

in her own iron albatross . . .

eyes wide open

upside down in the mirror . . .

the day slamming air brakes

on the momentum of life

in a one-horse before dawn's early light . . .

Gabrielle Rigon

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Moment-to-moment wheeler-dealers

intent on closing

argue Two-Factor Authentication . . .

But what's your plan

bulks up innuendo

despite the lowing of livestock

in fields of AI . . .

You had it all . . . well, almost

but at this iteration,

it doesn't matter, yes? . . .

Think volunteer sentences . . .

banal placeholders

for the actual thought

you wanted to express . . .

Disengaging social media

while assessing the pies

of local pizzerias

on crust, sauce, grease, cheese,

and holistic impressions

will buy you more than time

but is it worth

the loud, cavernous, out-of-sync brewpubs

you set foot into? . . .

And don't forget

the self-pitying pessimists

whose cynicism blankets all . . .

Costumed, you choreograph highs and lows,

ins and outs

redefine the niche,

juxtaposing hodgepodge

for transgressors on sabbatical . . .

Mario Stefanelli

Eight years ago today, a little over a week before his death at 90 on September 3, in his home in Hudson, NY, John Ashbery handwrote this poem, his last:

Climate Correction

So what if there was an attempt to widen

the gap. Reel in the scenery.

It’s unlike us to reel in the difference.

We got the room

in other hands, to exit like a merino ghost.

What was I telling you about?

Walks in the reeds. Be

contumely about it.

You need a chaser.

In other words, persist, but rather

a dense shadow fanned out.

Not exactly evil, but you get the point.

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You board a bespoke shuttle with questions . . .

The morning splits into high and low

for skateboarders of different ilks

cresting airwaves in anticipation . . .

An aria would be nice . . .

Pensioners in rent-stabilized apartments

join newsworthy influencers

to discourage weekend narcissists

from bullying nature

with cairns for selfies

as a hydrangea fills your head with words

Rent-a-dove sees it all . . .

Katerina Plotnikova

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Memories trod the corridors of backstories,

a renewed connection to a lifetime of incidentals

demarcated with wax pencils

as the elements of style voice irrecoverable

from Fritz Lang's 1927 Metropolis,

with Brigitte Helm staging a robot's

seductive power foreshadowing the dangers of AI

as a portal into space-time's loosey-goosieness . . .

Shockingly blatant . . . the iffyness

feathering far too many nests

flopping around in culverts

trying to alert gandy dancers

and knock-knock jokers to the reality

of flesh-eating bacteria invading

kettle holes and streaming services

causing massive fragmentation

and higher-than-high rates of confusion and dementia . . .

Pick a flick or enter the water at your own risk

and be sure to arm yourself with a designer duffel bag

though I'm not sure why . . .

John Ashbery, who would have been 98 today, had this to say about understanding poetry: I don’t quite understand about understanding poetry. I experience poems with pleasure: whether I understand them or not I’m not quite sure. I don’t want to read something I already know or which is going to slide down easily: there has to be some crunch, a certain amount of resilience.

John Ashbery by Allen Ginsberg

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Voices bounce off buildings slated to be razed

puncturing thought bubbles

in the latest episode of your theatrics

about the one that got away

pieced together and understood, yes? . . .

The tape rewound back to the backyard

and the stairs leading to the basement

where words accompanied costumes

in arrays that spun into constellations

of engagement . . . We were young . . .

The age-old drama

with you waving your magic wand

because if they can I can, yes? . . .

when all this and more were dished out

on paper plates with plastic utensils

that the resident hoarder insisted on keeping . . .

his life aclutter . . .

You have since applied for a sabbatical

to study abroad the waywardisms

of the porcelain-skinned . . .

a Proustian moment as indifferent as the runoff

riding a scattering of crumpled-up

brown paper bags . . . the instant Doppler

technology out to lunch . . . crossing a creek

on moss-covered stones, slipping into the current

with words resurrecting the events that shaped

the moments reopening the cold case . . .

Tim Walker