Screen Dump 500

The room you are in fills with words . . . big words small words
color-coded . . . but the colors change as you collect the words
in your bucket for delivery to the empty marketplace . . .
The mooring of starting out . . . as good as any
while crossing Brooklyn ferry
with other swingers of birches . . . no more . . .
A line of people stretches out of view . . .
you recognize some . . . past players . . . here . . . not here . . .
fabricators of the now old New Next . . .
as well as extras for roles in a future film
that may open someday at the Bijou
in Wherevertown . . . its frayed seats having hosted
your journal entries . . .
and several of your play-by-plays . . . Becket's Krapp
listened to tapes recorded over the years . . .
mining his life . . . excavating his life . . .
with big words small words color-coded words

that became earworms . . .
mental Post-its for how a person should be . . .
Indeed, not wanting for things, yes? . . .

Screen Dump 499

You are masked and gloved . . . and socially distant . . .
orbiting the silent film Orphans of the Storm . . . gingerly
navigating the crapshoot of grocery-shopping . . .
An essential to the soundless
you eat the loss of the future tense
with its enigmatic typescript captioning
It's a Wonderful Life
for those in search of closure . . .
Someone somewhere is about to pull a ripcord
to float shamelessly and selflessly into the enveloping ether . . .
There will be others . . .

Jarek Kubicki

Screen Dump 498

There was nothing you could do
about it . . . then or now . . . as if
the back door had become unhinged over
its inability to understand . . .
The comfort of connections . . .
the connections we seek . . . and need . . .
the wet, heavy snow igniting
cardiac episodes . . .
Grocery carts roam empty parking lots . . .
Spring unsprung . . .
everyone - well, most everyone -
masked, gloved, giving
wide berth . . . not unlike
ships at sea . . . Michael Moore's
Planet of the Humans shakes you awake
at 3 AM . . . big-shouldered
extraction companies overharvesting
resources . . . to page through
yellowing notebooks . . .
for Hawking's uninhabitable . . .
This was done . . . then, nothing . . .

Jarek Kubicki

In April's Chronogram:

A Piece of Nothing

And then, again, you decide
to look at the sketches
of domes in cities
you've never visited,
and probably never will,
the domes having
insinuated themselves
into your reading
and into your life.
You don't even know
the names of the cities
and towns but they're
pleasant to look at,
and spark images of travel.
There are moments
when the armchair
you're sitting in
by the window
overlooking the park
seems to lift off
and float above
the canals in the cities.
You strike up conversations
with strangers in languages
you don't even know.
This could be a wish,
or a piece of nothing,
connecting you to the world.

Screen Dump 497

You're messing with the script
trying to dodge it
short-circuit the craziness . . . life out of balance
but the ruts are deep
and you keep sliding back in . . .
An instruction manual offers suggestions
but we'll have to wait for the next installment . . .
A lapse in the rain graying-out
the morning's options
fills your pockets with seeds . . .
Is it time to turn the soil? . . .
to add fertilizer? . . .
Last year was a bust . . . nothing . . .
Maybe this year, yes? . . .
As if elephants appear out of a nightmare . . .
downsized . . . Aren't we all . . . downsizing? . . .
Isn't everything downsizing? . . .
You decide to make matters worse by tagging the elephants
that have joined us to break bread
around an empty table . . .
You opt - quite heroically I should add -
to include boulevards in the lockdown . . .

Kate Moss

The Albany Poets, in the spirit of community, is encouraging local poets to post a video of themselves reading one of their poems. Here's mine:

One Could Do Worse Than Be A Dumper Of Screens

I dream myself a spotter of weight-bearing fantasies
of half-whispered promises laced with nonsense syllables
my dialogue a monologue of graphic comics . . .
I am on top of things . . . deluded . . .
imagining the world as mirror-image . . .
as far-fetched deadline . . . indifferent, colorless . . .
improprieties squeezing through the holes in my story . . .
paper cuts and hypotheticals
a collage of weak passwords
legacied for shadowers of REM sleep . . .
Counting to the tenth power . . . within which . . .
if that's what you want . . .
the whole truth . . . and nothing but . . .
tap dancing . . . whistling while I work . . .
taking the long way home . . .
My notebook fills with snow . . .
Four score and something . . . and something else . . .
Off-days the string quartet in my back pocket
is all but played out . . . in three-quarter time . . .
Odysseyites . . . mark the spot . . . steal second . . .
and more . . . transposing the theme of Lassie
chock-full of unclaimed funds . . .
sitting there . . . festering . . . in the laptop of jargon
with no one worth emailing
about the sinister rise . . . in temperature . . .
A pound of something . . .
Tragedians backed-up at the roundabout
conjure audience implants
with places to go . . . people to be . . .
reworking the boundaries of ancient Greek mythos
with aspiring telecommuters . . .
I brood Bacon's comment about the violence of paint . . .
the unbearable heaviness of isolation . . .
Is there no other way? . . .
Indeed, one could do worse than be a dumper of screens . . .

Screen Dump 496

So by half exist you mean what? . . .
The head boards have control of your head
and they're using it to illustrate
the ebb and flow of counterintelligence . . .
Someone intuitively selects a circle
to contain the argument which is making
its way along the rutted road
that runs alongside your dream house . . .
There's a run on everything I suppose
if you assume the unpopular stance
that there's no significant difference
at the .01 level . . . at any level
for that matter . . . but even then
hyperventilation cannot redeem
the world . . . and AI is out to lunch . . .
at least until 1:30 . . . Rewiring skin tags
begs fluctuation . . . wouldn't you agree? . . .

Anatoly Gladkov

Screen Dump 495

Humpty Dumptyites insist survival is predicated
on accepting disappointment . . .
Even health care workers are buying into it . . .
balding boldfaced burnt-out self-quarantined
in face mask and sandwich boards
pushing a fractal approach . . . while walking on
the frozen surface of a body of water . . .
billions and billions
on a tiny pale blue speck of dust . . .
wait to be loosed into the cosmic boondocks
of the late Cornell astrophysicist Carl Sagan
who shared the secrets of the Cosmos
with insomniacs while appearing
more than two dozen times
on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson . . .
Price gouging spikes . . .
for toilet paper, paper towels, hand sanitizers, hand wipes,
cleansers, detergent, disinfectant sprays . . .
Doomsayers wander empty supermarket aisles
plugging black holes with emptiness . . .
A conspiracy of cats contacts you . . .
Aquifers bloat watersheds . . . spark confusion . . .
Why does why invite seepage? . . . something unexpected . . .
Window-shopping for answers you encounter
an urgency with no recognizable context . . . and so it goes . . .

Humpty Dumpty circa 1873

Screen Dump 494

But then in the middle of the Alfredo you break it off
running tabs aerobically . . .
effortlessly . . . on one of your cardio days . . .
The morning coffee . . . altered
the plants sprayed
the cats fed . . . and watered . . .
It wasn't on the list, was it? . . . I mean
this offset color . . .
arranged I suppose in a rainbow of personals . . .
The language . . . inside and out . . .
suppositions . . . (with addenda) . . .
There's little here for watchers
if you discount them over there doing planks . . .
breaking through the fourth wall
with Cream of Wheat oversold, yes? . . .
elevating obscurity
at least in the red white blue states
somewhere here buried in the regs . . .
You alas as such . . . no, more, yes, more . . .
cultivating an avatar with rapidographic seizure . . .
the morning after . . . and then . . .

Wendy Bevan

Screen Dump 493

It's all about degrees of freedom . . . costumes, angularities,
shadings . . . navigating an intersection . . .
midday . . . odysseyites treading water . . . again . . .
people spinning . . . accoutered with options . . . nothing makeshift . . .
private messaging their own doom . . .
highlighting with regret the ones that got away . . .
the clanging metaphor . . . laughable . . .
The colors of the day trot out . . . elsewhere
tendings accumulate . . . recalling morning breaks
and the rigmarole of the starting line. . .
iPhones punching in . . . around water coolers
with recaps of news items
that come and go . . . come and go . . .
Eking out a cover as if line-a-plenty were key to the labyrinth . . .
A practical guide . . .  at least according to some passersby . . .

Jan Scholz

Screen Dump 492

You wake to a migraine of skates, draw a rink . . .
Your brain clots false binaries . . .
worrying the next of seven levels
knowing gropings and reversals have their own weird logic . . .
iPhones snap up your moves . . . exquisitely . . .
escaping overcooked Facebook chatter with elasticized joy . . .
Someone somewhere is about to walk into a room . . .
Again, the past . . .
Odysseyites make house calls with action figures
resurfacing February's frozen pond . . .
Schools of fish swim a snow day . . .
The understanding is white coral
interspersed with coffee breaks and fine china
and magicians - yes, magicians - with brown paper bags
brimmed with magic dust . . .
You continue to finetune your moves . . .
fueling the excitement of masked goalies with ulterior motifs . . .
Your mother kept the piece, downsizing a dream come true
for those dissecting the afternoon's fallout . . .
Transfixed, you enjoy bus stops that jolt you into journaling
your life partying with snow angels more often . . .

Irma Haselberger

Screen Dump 491

The day reeks of snow . . . and lines from Gatsby . . .
borne back ceaselessly into the past . . .
The Stutz Bearcats . . . unsuspecting . . . put upon . . .
dabble chatty bangs . . .
runners up . . . misinterpreted . . . and late . . .
Daisy's white roadster appears . . .
as players are benched . . .
harvesting evidence for review . . . with a smile . . .
decades hence . . .
You arrive with Crayolas . . . the walls of your room rearranged
to better escort the inexperienced . . . drifting into invisibility . . .
into the land of prematures . . .

Mario Sorrenti

Screen Dump 490

You're paging through . . . spelling redemption . . .
sinking a bunch from the free throw line . . .
eyes on the key . . . the steroids in the back room pushing big iron . . .
amused . . . you miss a spot . . . go back . . . and back . . .
back to your OCD . . . in fuchsia high-tops . . .
receptionists-a-go-go filling in the gaps
with furniture music from a hilltop factory spewing polyethylene . . .
shout-outs to the hyperventilating . . .
You propose a scavenger hunt with nanoseconds
the door ajar to a room festooned with period costumes . . .
The length enticing . . . the game continues . . .

Screen Dump 489

You miss the exit . . . and begin transcription
the backseat drama unfolding . . .
an overabundance of footnotes . . . trolls following the dotted line
into backroom bookshelves . . .
but this is what you wanted, yes? . . .
Thinking salutations . . . sulkily, you become a minion
searching the trash for disclaimers . . .
mapping the terrain of the argument . . .
If only odysseyites had proofed the pudding . . .
nosebleed sections deconstructed, labeled, reassembled . . .
Guiding the hands of players . . .
this from your notebook jottings
embellished with promises from would-be martyrs . . .
Removing transitionals from how-tos made it seem almost real
with more than enough space for everyone . . .

Wendy Bevan

Screen Dump 488

Those least suspected moments are real page turners . . .
A blank space appears. . . teasingly . . .
Each night grayed-out . . . the same . . . the same . . .
I could be wrong but for all intents and purposes . . . frozen solid . . .
The unreliability quotient . . . quite obvious
in the face of things . . . as laid out . . .
Stopped and patted-down . . . you no longer matter . . .
as if one road rage led to another . . . and another . . .
with letters of introduction missing . . . from the alphabet . . .
Some debaters bail, decked out in madras thigh-highs . . .
no doubt to spark controversy . . .
Insignificant patter fills the aquifer . . .
adding insult to injury . . . just for the heck of it I'm sure . . .
After Dear Johning entry-level supplicants
pedaling backstory emails, you wallow . . . encrypted . . .
It's the kind of thing some would translate
but certainly not anyone from our neck of the woods . . .
Twelve stone four something . . .
The takeaway piss-poor . . . perma-grinned . . .
Allegations of usurpation shadow you . . . making it into the finals . . .
The square root of a chessboard? . . . If only . . .
Whoa! . . . That was . . .

Screen Dump 487

The hem of your story is enough
to color the afternoon . . .
but then you run . . . out of the blue . . .
eliminating the need
which becomes a metaphor
for days that pass
like false starts
on cold winter mornings . . .
You mumble cardio . . . and leave for the gym . . .

Anne Carson's Antigonick

Screen Dump 486

Your words hurry past auditioners at the gate
sidestepping bus stops bottlenecked
by Academy Award Winners Emeriti
facebooking once-upon-a-long-time-ago performances . . .
A dress-down Friday with garbled voicemails . . .
Lifespans rarely exceeding Jack Benny's 39 . . .
Unlikely sex disguised as unlucky sex . . .
Of course those who acclaim the best is yet to come
are hit with a pie in the sky . . .
You commence yet another together-once-again meal . . .
community bowls brimmed with re-stuffed fortune cookies
a train chuffing at a station
a clock running with scissors
scriptwriters blocked
keyboards smoldering
insinuators banging on the back door
demanding revisions for lapsed best sellers
whose monochrome covers speak to the mundane
and want nothing to do with blurbers
from some sideshow that blew through town
when most were out to lunch . . .
Did anything resonate with the party of the first part
whose fuel filter seems to have been clogged from Day One? . . .
Talk about backseat deadbeats
with one-way tickets to Whereverland . . .
Beginning again . . . and again . . . and again . . .
Forget about reading the palm . . . as scripted . . .
There are rhymes-a-plenty waiting for you
somewhere over the rainbow . . .
A recapitulation of the ins and outs of Eurydice
might work . . . might be just enough to jettison the one-tricks
cluttering your walk-up and maybe help you pick up
where you bailed in the opening scene of tomorrow . . .

Sarah Ruhl's Eurydice

Screen Dump 485

To ritualize the moment . . . possibly code it
for a performance piece that includes excerpts
from poems by Anne Carson
the Canadian poet who teaches
Ancient Greek for a living . . .
Silence is important . . .
In her translation of Antigone, Carson
took inspiration from Cage's 4' 33"
who said he built it gradually
out of many small pieces of silence . . .
An insinuation backburners
the whole thing . . .
When you return to it months later
you begin to obsess over line breaks . . .
An old friend calls
and you meet for drinks
at a small neighborhood bistro
filled with actors who have just finished
a dress rehearsal . . . Can you imagine? . . .
A dress rehearsal? . . .

Lilian Oben in Anne Carson's Antigonick

Screen Dump 484

Drive-by do-it-yourselfers BOGO alternate lifestyles
harking back 40, 50 years to the Age of Remotes
when you would hang with bipolars and pay homage
to the big-haired . . . Did you feel intimidated? . . .
articulated? . . . Today is not . . . it never was! . . .
Return to the eight-day grandfather clock . . .
I mean the line has been crossed . . . many times . . .
so many times in fact that the queue has begged to differ
from costume mavens nitroglycerined with dreams of Fulbright's . . .
I Want To Hold Your Hand? . . . Seriously? . . .
Making do with the cunning psycholinguist
whose foot was caught in a sidelong glance . . .

Paolo Roversi

Moments

We do not remember days, we remember moments.
          - Cesare Pavese

In Room 401, a woman takes her last breath.

Elsewhere a surgeon positions a square of mesh to repair
a patient's hernia.

A maintenance man in a supermarket scrubs the walls
of a restroom.

Cows' breaths fill the air as a farmer brushes snow
off a trough . . .

and fills it with feed.

A young girl inserts a DVD of Wuthering Heights
into a Blu-Ray player, puzzling over the author's
pen name, Ellis Bell.

A tiger cat scratches litter in a litter box.

Kittens squeeze into a cardboard box that contained
12 bottles of Pinot Noir.

A homeless person arranges a cardboard box over a
heating grate.

Snow continues to fill the gray morning as cars
chance slick roadways.

In a dream a pinstriped mannequin enters a fun house.

A short-order cook whisks two dozen eggs.

A cellist works through Bach's Prelude.

Construction workers seated at a counter remove
their winter headgear.

A waitress refills cups of coffee, mentally reviewing
the material for tonight's mid term.

A children's book author enters rehab.

A shooter racks his handgun . . .

and fires into a crowd of shoppers at a mall.

At 4 AM a snowplow driver gets behind the wheel
of a snowplow.

A politician delivers a speech written by his staffer.

An actor rehearses lines.

An addict snorts lines.

An ER nurse worries her son's DWI.

A pregnant woman brews tea.

A pregnant woman is hurried into an emergency room.

A college president applies Anbesol to a painful tooth.

A nursing home resident cleans his dentures.

A platoon leader opens a Kindle.

A painter sits in front of a blank canvas.

A personal trainer leads a group of elderly trainees
through several aerobic exercises.

Hikers pitch a tent in a heavily wooded area.

The sun sets.

The sun rises.

A crash slows traffic to a crawl.

Someone dies.

Someone else dies.

A pediatrician delivers a baby.

Kids take turns sliding down a slide.

A couple enters a restaurant.

A man and a woman play chess.

A skier begins a descent.

An elderly person thinks back.

A potter throws a pot.

A pitcher throws a slider.

A batter swings.

A line cook preps vegetables.

A vegan orders off the menu.

A conductor raises her baton.

A drum majorette twirls her baton.

A motorist falls asleep at the wheel.

transit by Korner

Screen Dump 483

The barking that began four years ago has moved
into supportive housing . . .

declaiming the Fine Art of the Tin Can which came
and went and is back again

at your back door in leotard and pointe shoes . . .
The Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in

a French Foreign Legion film has gone missing . . .
along with Teshigahara's Woman in the Dunes

reshot on the moors of Ellis Bell's Wuthering Heights
with Roger Ebert's 4/4 rating . . .

European River Cruises are again flooded with
escapees . . . and deservedly so, yes? . . .

the day-to-day has gotten crazier . . . and crazier
and everyone's packing . . .

Did I say that or are you quoting the cereal box's
morning diatribe on fiber optics? . . .

YouTube'd beyond the glacial evergreens of your latest
inscrutable ruminations . . .

Give it a shot . . . nothing to lose . . .
How did the audition go? . . .

Trying to finish the book
before the culvert gets your goat . . .

We both saw that in the cards
last summer on Commercial Street . . .

Kyoko Kishida in Woman in the Dunes (1964)

Screen Dump 482

This morning's bowl of Instant Quaker Oats
tried to warn you but you were busy Photoshopping
the crepey-skinned blue-penciled up-close-
and-personals shadowing you in the mirror . . .
You continue to pine for present participles . . .
the -i-n-g forms . . . the phantom-limbed future
participle . . . parsing the past . . . reviewing
rejected scripts submitted for your approval
by lesser-known wannabes from your old
neighborhood . . . To reject out of hand is a ploy
you use at last calls . . . trying to retrace your steps
to Utopia . . . pinned with a Rolodex of past players
who want to be friended - and more - on Facebook . . .
their arthritic lines as out-of-sync
as their costumes . . . You thought you'd enjoy
a respite but interlopers have begun bullying
noodles with chopsticks . . . demanding
takeaways . . . imagining the seven levels
of Golden Books . . . as if eating spaghetti
with a spoon . . . Ring Around the Rosie
soundtracks this latest craziness . . . boardwalk
castaways . . . nailing lines . . . adjusting camera
angles to entice the forgotten . . .

Paolo Roversi

Screen Dump 481

You paraphrase delusions on street corners
for pocket change . . . The eyes of beholders
diagram the angles of seduction . . .
A steam locomotive stalls mid-steam . . .
sizzling something fierce in concert
with a pig roast where locals unravel
their histories of . . . Hooliganism,
I suppose . . . in throwaways . . . Is it? . . .
channeling Stevie Nicks's Gypsy . . .
outtakes left as gratuities by troubadours
passing through backwaters . . .
Bookbinding . . . the art of chance
for personal trainers with perfect form
qua function . . . The plot agape
as she leans in with a tearjerker
about her deadbeat dad . . .
a concert violinist from Siberia
who knew the score only too well . . .
mapping the lonely corridor along
cholesterol clogged arteries festering
coronaries . . . The monologue . . .
soliloquy? . . . speaks nonsense to partners
in loco parentis as they appear . . . trailing
incomplete sentences . . .
A show of hands indeed would . . .

Stevie Nicks

Screen Dump 480

You raise the stakes . . . then flee to CVS for ibuprofen . . .
ignoring tabled warnings . . .
emergency room regulars triaged . . . color-coded . . .
A big-shouldered cybertruck roams rotaries . . .
and the rules of the game are about to change
as the pizza arrives . . . and Act 2 begins . . .
You know you're trying to dress the part
with insignificance . . . but the clock shouts-out
circumstantial evidence from the inquiry . . .
and we're out of the gate, stuttering and stumbling . . .
retracing our steps to Utopia . . .
Inner ear hair cell damage from gangster flicks
with pals De Niro and Pacino and Pesci
and another epic conversation . . . conversion . . .
on the streets of Everytown . . .
shrink-wrapped and UPS'd to an offshore laundromat . . .

Deborah Turbeville

Screen Dump 479

You worry Wonderland . . . and free shipping . . .
beta testing mantras on moonless nights
when peeling windows in SROs
look out onto playgrounds of orphans . . .
Boulevards drip off the edge of the canvas
for odysseyites tricked-out as centenarians from empty malls . . .
You surf YouTube for blue ribbon grilled cheese sandwiches
and think a field drill of sorts might help flip
the double-wides popping up in your lower 40
where answers in search of questions pester pensioners
who pine for the palisades of their entry exam
when they arrived late with bags of bags
sporting the endgame into the second
of five openings culled from a dog-eared how-to manual . . .

Anka Zhuravleva

Screen Dump 478

In nomine Patris mixes with pinot
the whole thing out of whack
sadly phenomenal with
Frankie (Relax) Goes to Hollywood
as if opening a door
and you wish for a silver bangle
to dispel the ennui so reminiscent
of comedown mornings
at archaeological digs
before being earwormed back
to the present with scenes
from Body Double tweeting
your climb up a silk rope
in some club du jour . . .
Hostile (eye)witness accounts
blur the truth . . . but it's there . . .
it always was . . .
in invisible ink . . .
under yellowing legal pads . . .
diagramming disclaimers
from headstone rubbings . . .
letters of the alphabet randomly
regrouping into images
of your odyssey
as your selfie pouts,
loses footing, tumbles headlong . . .
he said . . . she said . . . they said . . .

Body Double (1984)

Screen Dump 477

Your costume walks out in the middle
its voice climbing to falsetto
as the mechanisms of relationships reach that point
where yesterdays audition for tomorrows
and you begin to lose track . . .
pining for buybacks
reposting blank pages
leaving everything to the imagination
while outside an Uber driver lays on the horn . . .
The table of contents grows silent
despite the book's shortlisting . . .
its labyrinth gutted . . . replaced by a dayglo condo . . .
Sideshow castrati are again using . . .
can you blame them? . . .
You know all the 3x5" index cards by name
and are smug in the commonplace
but not sure about the mapping
or where the choral group left the planchette
for the ouija board . . .
You agree to become a Ticonderoga #2
to have a go at drafting an intro
for the next installment . . . of your life . . .
Meanwhile you lose yourself in cascades
of coloratura . . . Who are we to deprive
the outer limits where players stationed elsewhere
engage overheated proofs
meant to placate the giddy? . . .
This too as if the body were a deliberate portion
charged with finalizing the recorded remarks
of those with magic lanterns
tattooed on their triceps . . .
The momentary arrives and will be with us shortly
its voice not unlike the cathedrals
of childhood where every nuance was bronzed
as a piece of the puzzle . . .

Wendy Bevan

Screen Dump 476

The inability of all the king's horses and all the king's men
to stay within the lines of code . . .
the lines . . . encrypted . . . taunted . . . tainted
by a rainbow of Crayolas . . .
Insensitivity defaults inept players . . .
and landscapes . . . and peoplescapes . . .
as frontal lobectomies mix dread with inconsequentials . . .
Bezos's Are you lazy or just incompetent? . . .
continues with It's really nothing . . . refusing
to be taken down to the sea
with the Ahabs . . . of Coney Island . . .
as if the shoe has yet to drop . . .
laboring . . . again . . .
under the conundrum . . . 8 / 2 (2 + 2) = ? . . .
Procrustean? . . . Daniel Day-Lewis's My Left Foot . . .
The lines as written . . . are drawn . . . delivered . . .

Mathematician Emmy Noether (1882-1935)

Here's my winning entry in the Hudson Valley Writers Guild Dear Herman Contest, celebrating Herman Melville's 200th birthday. The four winners - Susan Carroll Jewel, Mark W. O'Brien, Dianne Sefcik, & I - will read our winning entries Saturday, October 12th, from noon to 2 PM, at the Melville House in Troy, NY:

Melville's Sister

I'm talking with Melville's kid sister
a scrappy towhead
with eyes like deep water
who signed on for a tour of the high seas
with her brother
but ended up here
in New Bedford
pierced, inked, in mauve coveralls,
slathering mustard and meat sauce
on footlongs for hard hats
from a shiny aluminum vending cart.

She communicates with great whites in trees
tends a small garden of hooded flowers
whose petals hold charts of whale migrations
collects harpoons she uses as pokers.

She talks about her brother
writing a novel about a mad hunt
for a fearsome whale
in a room on the second floor
overlooking distant mountains
in a farmhouse
on 160 acres in the Berkshires
that he named Arrowhead
after the relics he dug up
with his plow.

Her eyes darken as she mentions his demons
the locks on his writing-room
his pacing to escape the mind’s maelstrom
the ungodly boredom
his endless digressions
his obsession with privacy
that led him to destroy nearly all his letters
his dislike of photographers
(“to the devil with you and your Daguerreotype!”)
the so-called “failed” scribbling –
“The Whale” . . . too ambitious, too long, a leviathan –
despite its marks of “unquestionable genius”
the accusation of madness
prompting his postscript “I ain’t crazy.”

She chuckles as she tells me
how much her brother likes to watch
the farm animals eat,
especially taken by what he calls the “sanctity”
of the way the cow moves her jaws.

I too am taken, with this strange woman
whose costumes mimic the South Seas,
whose toenails match the color of noctilucent clouds
whose hands are music.

Off hours, she fulfills fantasies

her voice like billowing sails
guiding Ishmaels through narrow canals
spellbinding them
with the sounds of humpbacks
note for note
measure upon measure
before releasing them
drained yet sated
into the morning commute.

Herman Melville

Screen Dump 475

A kid on a red Stingray pops indifferent wheelies . . .
hits the ground with a three-point
far back enough . . . bulges the slot . . .
Did she say 40 percent . . . uniformed domestic violence?. . .
Netflix? . . . Unbelievable is unbelievable . . .
Milton scribbles in Will's margins . . .
in a Lost and Found Department . . . in Philadelphia . . .
Let the guy in booth #4 finish his two eggs over easy
while the monkeys of impeachment
get juice . . . for the miles to go before we sleep . . .
and you can forget about targeting the streets
with pinch hitters . . .
The count . . . three and one . . .
and the lopsided scales step up to the plate . . .
A memorial service . . . a wedding . . .
a bus making a left turn . . . stopped . . .
at an intersection . . .
a car speeding through . . .
and the scene shifts . . . precipitously . . .
The color of the year? . . .
Naval (blue) . . . Sherwin-Williams . . .
First light (pink) . . . Benjamin Moore . . .
Didn't they intimate as much
while you were locked on
Carson's The Beauty of the Husband:
So why did I love him from early girlhood to late middle age?. . .
Beauty. No great secret. . . . Beauty convinces. . . .
But what of late middle age . . . and beyond . . .
The falling leaves drift by my window?. . .
Let's open to Chapter 19 . . .
You'll smell land where there'll be no land . . .
And on that day . . .
Elijah?. . . Moby Dick?. . .
The movie . . . in the movie . . . not the book . . .
YouTube it . . .

Merritt Wever and Toni Collette in Unbelievable (2019)

Screen Dump 474

Your oversized straw hat smirks innuendo
as it tunnels through an off-key dream sequence . . .
Hard work . . . when you can get it . . .
Can you imagine the mixup
highlighted for future reference chomping along? . . .
The rest was nothing much despite the normative inflation
which of late seems to have become your thing . . .
as if strengthening your core
curriculum with tacky math problems
and anti-static sheets
will translate into an anaerobic Dean's List . . .
The placeholder . . . confrontationally aloof . . .
pontificating in a faint, hippy-ish voice
that makes it hard to tell if he/she is joking . . .
It's kind of like repeat after me
as the concrete gargoyles refuse to dry
and this after the rigmarole of YouTube . . .
Time and again . . . something or other . . . Which is it? . . .
You have become adept at reconfiguring passwords
into anagrams for the keto set . . .
Here's that mountain of prejudicial evidence . . .
At one time funeral parlors, yes?. . .
Driving through a downpour, pinging . . .
Again . . . what's your IP address? . . .
Just checking to see if you have incorporated the go-betweens
into your bid for bluebook collectibles . . .
Ribbons and bows . . . of course . . .
and pedal-to-the-metal instances
when playing Spin the Kiosk with neighborhood pranksters
who know enough to wait in the wings . . .

Screen Dump 473

Everything seems to be happening out there . . . not in here . . .
the life of your interior monologue
sucked dry by the black leather overly-zippered motorcycle jackets
parading the catwalk . . . the pretend-pudding pop-up
all augmentation . . . the recipe shouting out ingredients . . .
Trying to please uniformed players . . .
free agents force-fed the how-to manual
while side-stepping backstory politics (Unfair?) . . .
You were back-and-forth for a while . . .
juggling schedules with having-to-be-there-then . . .
tripping over the dynamics of being in-the-moment
while regressing to the convenience of taking dictation
with rubberized accoutrements . . .
finally escaping to the Cape for what some would consider
a ploy . . . but the logjam was such that
the entries were botched . . . and first-responders were on break . . .
You could have at least called it in
but that would have in effect amounted to an admission of something
as the sloop slips through the harbor . . .

Serkan Alpsar

Screen Dump 472

Color-coding the alphabet is a nice touch
with your dreams tweaked to fit
and the marina stacked with tall ships . . .
The method . . . as demo'd in the studio . . .
Decades since you assumed the position
leveling the playing field
pulling down the visor
to use the mirror to apply lipstick . . .
your forward-facing eyes spelling predation . . .
on a sweltering August afternoon
all ribbons and bows
(at least for some)
welcoming auditioners with downward-facing-dog . . .
The day written up and played with gusto . . .
I'm sure it meant something . . . to someone . . .

Jan Scholz

I Continue To Get Older (Performance Piece)

I continue
I continue
I continue
To get older   

I continue
I continue
I continue
To get older

It's not fair
I'm losin' my hair
First it turned gray
Now it falls away
Each and every day

Other hairs appear
Uninvited
Unannounced
Unwelcomed
In unexpected places

They've begun to colonize
My ears, nose, and eyes

I continue
I continue
I continue
To get older   

I continue
I continue
I continue
To get older

I can't see
what I'm doin'
I can't taste
what I'm eatin'
I can't hear
what I'm sayin'
I can't say
what I'm thinkin'
I can't think
what I'm sayin'

My nose grows
My chest is recessed

My teeth decay
They fall away
Gum has become a verb, OK?
I don't go out to play
Much anymore

I continue
I continue
I continue
To get older   

I continue
I continue
I continue
To get older

I can't get it up
I can't get it down
In bed
I'm Bozo the Clown

I shrivel
I shrink
I piddle
I stink

My crepey skin
Is all done in
It’s a sin, a no-win
This shape I'm in

I can't see
I can't pee
There is no glee
Left in me

My wrinkled face
Stares into space
My final frontier
Is here!

i c u by Tom Corrado

Screen Dump 471

The skeletons in your closet gloat their Harleys
as a bobber dips below the surface
and you imagine a plate of crêpes with an old friend
in a seaside town
catching up on interpersonals
the who what when where whys
of your collaborative one-acts . . .
You consider skipping the chapter
(you've done this before with little consequence)
but step down . . . tiller glued to your palm
as if guiding a sloop through a narrow canal
within arms reach of kids fishing off the pier . . .
The clock flusters
wringing its hands which must resume
their pantomime of stuttered signage . . .
words infinitely looped to storm ignorance . . .
Again the palette complicates . . .
Perhaps you should use ultramarine to color
the major and minor keys
soundtracking your tête-à-têtes
on rain-soaked afternoons . . . in rain-soaked sidings . . .

Fabio Chizzola

Screen Dump 470

La Traviata speaks to you subliminally
at Glimmerglass . . . while a summer breeze
directs the wind section . . .
the churlish conductor having become expert
at rewinding graphic novels
whose magic realism spins gesticulations
that levitate a group of prestidigitators
enjoying a month in the country . . .
Lakeside, naysayers badmouth
a visual cliff . . . It may have been Chaucer's
Widower's Tale . . . the pothead dialing in
your height at Stewart's . . .
his accomplices re-reading the backstory
of Joe Green Investment Strategist
who flips houses for émigrés qua enablers . . .
as the morning's comeuppance
tilts the pinball machine playing footsie
with footloose mannequins brought in
out of the rain to decompress . . . Coincidentally,
the townhouse's address . . . These are a few, yes? . . .

Corinne Winters as Violetta

Screen Dump 469

It was the lowest common denominator . . .
A safe harbor of sorts
odysseyites waiting for the right moment
ship-shape and what have you
interested parties with protein drips . . .
How did we lapse into forgetfulness? . . .
The bar set higher . . . and higher . . .
only to see it through to the next chapter
if in fact that . . . The sprockets
jammed when the games began
with return receipts requested . . .
Too much to expect a banana plantation
or a blue lagoon for that matter . . . managing the scene
as if players opened wide for the next transit strike . . .

Paolo Roversi

Screen Dump 468

You worry the pot boiling over . . .
fallen arches . . . tick-borne illnesses . . .
gingivitis . . . while
the Snellen Chart at DMV
broadcasts your password to DUIs
drying out in cursive . . .
Eyeballs eyeball you up and down
wasting time . . . waiting . . .
in the waiting line . . . with wait staff . . .
There is little chance to buy into it
with this blind date
who seems engrossed . . . and then some . . .
but what to do, yes? . . .
A minute ago a disinterested party
slipped through a portal
inadvertently left ajar by a do-gooder
who will be written up . . .
docked perhaps . . . as a one-act
in the local theater group . . .
Is it wrong to remain non-committal
at this archaeological dig
cluttered with dusty appendages . . .
to hesitate ramping-up the ho-humness
infecting the meadow? . . .
You have a full box of Crayolas
waxing philosophically . . .
somewhere . . . over the rainbow . . .

Screen Dump 467

Banging on the keys of an ancient Remington
you try to craft poems immune to dissection
yanking words letter by letter like teeth
from your own River Styx . . . the boatman quietly urging his Evinrude
with yelps from the middle of an estuary
igniting the survivalist in weekend L. L. Beaners
stringing franks alphabetically across a fire pit . . .
They make the six-o-clock news . . .
Does this help? . . . I mean . . . what is it? . . .
I mean are you ready to dazzle with a minor French ditty
within walking distance of the Arc de Triomphe
the flight over . . . scrambled . . . lowercase letters
with smartphones gag-ordered? . . .
Odysseyites living in yurts in the 'Dacks . . .  undergo drawbridges . . .
drop blurbs like bread crumbs . . . invent metaphors
for trees whose bent limbs backstory crepey skin . . .
I'm with you all the way . . . though truth be told . . . I'm having a blast . . .
though I couldn't think of a proper go-between
so the induced quail from his poem was summoned . . .
You seem unaware of your whereabouts . . .
the voices from the air as loud as a triage of cats . . . soliloquies
with ancient cuneiform symbols kayaking with ice bats
which Carson . . . superstarishly influential enough
to assume the mantle of dabbler . . . was quick to say don't exist . . .

Mario Sorrenti

Screen Dump 466

The caption read stick-in-the-muds
with Happy Hour promises color-coded for Slim Jims
with night vision . . .
the participants . . . again . . . flipping houses
location . . . location . . . location . . .
the psychodynamics of water coolers
tweeting yesterday's easy access . . .
But the last coat overlaid the patter . . .
backstroking towards Brooklyn . . .
the words rearranging themselves
to fit the scene . . .
several gym bags, backpacks, what have you . . .
You studied the script . . . waited . . .

Marcin Szpak

Screen Dump 465

One after another . . . after another . . . one . . . after . . .
the scene opens . . . jump start a late-model coupe? . . .
Trying to stay focused on the endgame . . . lately, always the endgame . . .
The months . . . One month later: enigmatic, if nothing . . .
You had to jump start a late-model coupe . . .
Ring it in with the weight of water . . .
Scene after scene . . . filling with water . . .
Of course, that was then . . . of course . . .
Illogicality and intentionality . . . strange whodunits . . .
Traverse, as in, I traversed the pristine moment . . .
The innate structure of the moment when you, for example, encounter
the other . . . adrift, alphabetizing . . . hitting the pavement . . .
drip-dried . . . as if off the end of Pollock's stick . . .
after which he/she took it on the chin in a pop-up panopticon . . .

Steven Meisel

Screen Dump 464

Reenactors reenact the Battle of Woodstock '69 . . .
It was here . . . The happening was here . . . George C. Scott . . . again . . .
First, do no harm, yes? . . . despite the hiss to litigate . . .
We're off . . . while someone somewhere is sequestered . . .
Is this how happenstance happens? . . .
You have been approached to put together a skit for retirees
who worry the fixed sitcom's bottom line . . .
This is only the beginning of cats in Aviators . . .
The free throw line chows down . . . as if in another life -
your other life - the overture degrades to dissonance . . .
The afterimage of your ticket to go beyond . . . in the metro window? . . .

Katerina Plotnikova

Screen Dump 463

How else could he know what I know?
          - Maya Angelou

You windowshop for a one-way ticket to immortality
as the bell opens Round Seven
to a color field measuring eight-feet-by-six-feet . . .
footnoting the 600 square feet  Rothko reneged on
while Vivaldi's Four Seasons follows
the two-point-five mil as it disappears
into someone's backstory
demonstrating for arts majors the phenomenon
of the Rothkovian blur . . . Lady Macbeth's
Come, you spirits / That tend on mortal thoughts,
unsex me here . . .
Enter, stage left, Somnambulist 1:
I jaywalk out of a lobotomy . . . I mean, c'mon . . .
with lines like this? . . . Soliloquize me! . . .
A woman wrote Shakespeare? . . .
But didn't we already know that? . . .
Perhaps the archives bubble with happenstance
and Little Miss Whatsherface shadows the Bard's ghost . . .
This too will be stuffed into a time capsule
as soon as . . . Enter, Somnambulist 2:
I texted "Taming of the Shrew" Katherine
who blurted "My tongue will tell the anger of my heart . . ."
The boxed set wins, yes? . . . especially
in those moments of fine-tooth combing . . .
the beach at best . . . the least we could hope for
in dawn's early flubbed lines . . .
Whoa! . . . here's Somnambulist 3
with Othello's Emilia: Let husbands know /
Their wives have sense like them.
You trace the circumference of the argument
centuries later bolstered by hard-core gas canisters
spewing death . . . the exits sealed . . .
the moments lapsing into forevermore . . .
The bell ending the round? . . . Of course we knew . . .

Screen Dump 462

You enjoy nuance . . . worry that neither
science nor religion adequately explains the world
as you think you know it . . .
the simultaneity with its information overload
kicking players to the curb . . .
The concert of minimalist parentheticals
made for an interesting respite
with its backstory on the inner life of trees . . .
And here comes the anxiety over broken links
catapulting you into a message room of sorts
where you try on different what ifs
following each to its logical delusion
which is a must . . . if you must . . .
Perhaps the augmentation can be repaired
effecting no less than a faux tectonic shift in paradigm . . .
If only life were a smidgen more palatable
especially in those moments
when the rubber fails to meet the road
and warmongers load their styluses . . .
Meanwhile . . . a bed of flowers . . .
spirited away by the porosity of sleep . . . a portal
to past liaisons . . . your mother offering to pay your way . . .
a phone call . . . grays-out the options . . .
dreams of indifference eventually elbowing in
as you review the video of summer's fiber deployment . . .

Sia and Maddie Ziegler at Apple Launch

Screen Dump 461

The matinee chides your hypothesis
bulking the theorem into oblivion . . .
Early arrivals arrive . . .
captured on security cameras . . .
he said . . . she said . . . they said . . .
sample bags brim with notions from ATMs . . .
fingers finger finger food . . .
count doubloons . . . worry
the quivering idiocy of disintegration . . .
Instead of pampering the chef, perhaps? . . .
By the time the opposition dismounts
the case will have been opened and shut . . .
The alleged victim . . . vis-à-vis
camera-shy sommeliers . . .
It's all in the sealed indictment . . .
at least according to Wikileaks . . .
Perhaps we shouldn't go there? . . .
Yes, let's not go there . . .
Perhaps we should relapse into past roles . . .
play it safe . . .
play the parts as written . . .
Of course you remember how much fun we had? . . .
You could have been a consumer . . .

Screen Dump 460

Of the world's estimated 7,000 languages, one dies every two weeks.
          - K. David Harrison, Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages

You hawked the installation with misunderstanding . . .
a French press with a migraine . . .
while your cross country junkets cameoed on Facebook . . .
intriguing tongues . . . trying to fit into the holes
dug into the script by a misdirected director

whose profile you later learned had been lifted
from a table of contents . . .
Pasts spilled out . . . time borrowed . . .
You began dropping clues with the insistence of a night out . . .

This happened, yes? . . . and continues . . .

After the alphabet, abutments were tuned to a minor key . . .
Roundabouts tried to round you up
but you loaded your brush with paint and insignificance . . .
You were told it had all been written down . . .
every last nuance . . . every misappropriation . . .
every identity theft . . . circling like a flock of kites . . .
The sketches you made in a ledger went undiscovered for over 150 years . . .
Undisclosed players hung out at a neglected ball diamond . . .
falling into the wrong chapter . . . losing face . . .

Marcin Szpak

From the Docudrama: Can't Blame Them, Can You?

(reposted from Tuesday, April 30, 2013)

I have no idea what you're talking about.
No idea what the reader is reading.
I don't understand.
I should be able to understand.
I don't like it.

I ordered the special, and expected enough for a takeaway.
It wasn't easy ordering in the middle of this chaos.
The wait staff can't hear us.
They can't hear what we're ordering.
Everyone seems to think that's OK.
It's not OK.

Grow up! Life is not a takeaway!

But I love to start the day with a takeaway!

Someone just texted me: take your time.

Yeah, OK. I'm always on the clock. We're always on the clock.
Is there an innocent bystander who could take the hit?
Doubtful.

Everyone's trying to hide
not necessarily to shirk their duty (isn't that a cool word?)
but maybe because some feel untrained and humbled.

(A statue of a police officer appears.)

Now what?

You're becoming curmudgeonly.

I'm becoming curmudgeonly? Is that a Maslowian stage?

Yes, the cardboard people on stage are paintballing the audience.

On top of that many are being stepfathered in.
Everyone is Facebooking like crazy.

And that surprises you?

From Alix Pearlstein's Moves in the Field

Screen Dump 294

(reposted from Tuesday, May 31, 2016)

You step into an autofiction
having taken a lateral to customer service
the engagements
just out of reach . . . by the practitioners of deviant art . . .
chattering incessantly about their memoirs
on and off clipper ships . . .
You have written up many . . . in the wee hours
detailing their feigned interpenetrations
in the common room
and bedrooms of your third chapter . . .
Several fade on their own
Facechatting others
worrying unannounced site visitors
who insist on rummaging through cupboards
for late-night munchies . . .
But what's the backstory? . . .
There is no backstory . . .
The backstory doesn't matter . . .
There's just this bubble into which we are dropped
and it goes from there . . .
A temporary job chalks up years . . .
and before you know it . . . you know . . .
Please excuse me . . .
I must continue recording the dreams of insomniacs . . .

Alina Lebedeva

In April's Chronogram:

Woman XXXIX

She says she wants to ride
and pulls up on her Harley.
I roll my Schwinn
back into the garage.