from ‘SOUSVEILLANCE PAGEANT”
It Looked Like What You Needed And Then It Needled You Sousveillance Pageant has one older brother who is in lock-up and one ex-lover who is there. Within any single given year, the Pageant also has anywhere in the whereabouts of four to eight companions who rotate in and out of an assortment of state-enforced […]
Three
His letters were not loss JUNE 10th 6:42 A.M. His letters were not loss or no less lucid and corrupt no more than trails of dust his livid torso a creature cultish and furious There was one there was one who reached […]
By Kelman out of Pessoa
The study of literature isn’t generally thought of as a course to make you rich, so when a wagering system sprang from the pages of “A Wide Runner” by James Kelman in Not Not While the Giro (London: Polygon 1983), I was skeptical. Readers familiar with Kelman’s workhorse characters might question whether sensible investment advice could ever come from men who live in pubs and die in vats of acid. A work of art, moreover, does not exist in order to provide tips for how to beat the races; and, particularly in Kelman’s work, the delusions the archetypical loser exploits so as to pursue his shabby dreams must, in all artistic and intellectual honesty, result in failure.
Coupling
A woman and a man were standing in front of a sculpture. The sculpture was in the middle of a park in the town where the woman and the man worked. The sculpture was a block of bronze and long as a moving truck. Its surfaces were smooth, mostly, but in places the shapes of hands, faces, and feet pressed through the sculpture from inside. It was the afternoon, sunny but mild, wind out of the east. The woman and the man were on their lunch break. They had a half hour.
Carolina Wren
do i want to go to prague? maybe.
it is always a matter of lunch with clotheslines.
these small things we need.
Night, Open Field
I’ve hit the wagon again, that time,
overestimated. Breathing egret. The peace
of coral, the color, feeds artist borrowers,
the recent manmade smoke and mirrors
Critique of the Metaphysics of Bees
Bees are tactile spots of disbelief in a field of air. The idea of them is almost exhilarating. Amid the dogwoods of nearby suburbs, banks in acute distress are closed. Phenomena in the wake of those who are cold become pellucid. The principle of a held breath is no more a god than a person altered by existence.
White Tone
I think I prefer now being unloved
and listening for my footsteps in the dark.
Bill
Bill said: In the evening, the sky gets all red and soft behind the fence near the crapyard on Last Street where Lorraine’s mother flew. I wanted to give it the twice-over, but Lou wouldn’t take me. Lou is a prick.
The Man On the Stairs
It was a tiny sound but it woke me up because it was a human sound. I held my breath and it happened again, then again; it was footsteps on the stairs. I tried to whisper, There’s someone coming up the stairs, but my breath was cowering, I couldn’t shape it.
