Trigintiphobia

[scraps]

Ancestry

take our deoxy-
ribonucleic acid

give us our story
something meaty

with some hair on it
built the railroad

or robbed it
it’s all the same

just tie us
to something

[Janelo]

This is almost a signature piece for you, scraps. Sneak in with this innocent sounding reference to 23 'n me, stack up some juicy clues and then land the relevant solid gold hurtin kernel of it all like a flippin Olympic gymnast.

Love.

[scraps]

Jane,

Thank you. I needed that.

Steve

[scraps]

What you’re suffering from

there are so many parts of us
that we forget to check

the winter without hot water
the clack of typewriter keys

always at description’s edge
you just don’t remember it?

we want you to let it go
we want it to let you go

[SP Singer]

Hey Scraps, hope you are faring well, for some reason i always imagine you in physical motion, rarely seated....if that's true, what a toll...on the other hand there's the whole bodies in motion rule.

I like Ancestry, and the shape of it ....meant to be a little DNAish? I like it anyway. I know all the center strophes hang together, but the one: with some hair on it/built the railroad is my fav.

In What You're Suffering From i like most the close's release from 2 sides. So often i find the more i let go the more i get, and of course life helps a great deal with there actually being no other way to survive.

Thanks much and Today is half-way!!!!!!!!!!
SP

[Donner]

Hi, Steve,

"What you're suffering from" - Because of the reference to "typewriter keys" instead of a keyboard, and the loss of memory, "always at description's edge, I read the suffering in the title as referring to dementia. S4 flips the focus to those who are caring for the person suffering, which includes them, too.

Donna

[scraps]

Thanks SP and Donna for stopping by!

SP: Your impression is so interesting. It made me think that I know what about three people on this site actually look like in real life. But I have a picture of most everyone to some degree. It would be a trip if everyone's collected impressions of one were revealed at the end. Like one of those cards everyone signs when you quit your job, lol. And yes! to half-way - thanks so much for your many visits.

Donna: Thank you for your intuitive reading and your many visits - it is very helpful!

Steve

[scraps]

How to eat when you have no food


Long before the trouble with bears

strangely like a man with no eyebrows

searching for an accent you spell your name

letter by letter looking into the camera or

the mirror the people fall away in packs

the epitome the indistinct chatter the more

or less difficult deboned shaking out a match

[Jee Leong]

Hi, Steve. "Ancestry" compresses a long and complex story into a strong plea for inclusion. These lines—"he clack of typewriter keys/ always at description’s edge"—set up the final couplet effectively. Every line in "How to Eat" has something to visualize and think over. The spacing allows for it.

[Scrow]

Hi,


I have severe title envy for ‘Vagina Machine’, and I enjoy the disappearing elephants backsides, the disappearing everything into a giant fecund hole.


Ancestry is probably different depending on the particular space/place but I love that idea of before/after the second industrial revolution as a railroad, and the thing embodied. We all want a good story, and if we don’t have one, we’ll make a cultural myth out of nothing.


‘What you’re suffering from’ speaks to me directly of a writer/maker’s obsession with making/writing. And everything else is outside of the claw of that strange world, including our frozen limbs. But would you be without it? I wouldn’t.


‘How to eat’ feels like an exploration into new writers territory - I like it - it’s more narrative and less acerbic than some of your work - and it has an alluded-to-narrator in there, too - I like how the voice runs on, too - the long sentence, and mirrored feel to the writing - the latinate language that isn’t afraid of modifiers. Nice one. Interesting one. I like the surreal film noir quality to the start, too.


Onwards!

Sarah

[Janelo]

There’s a scene in Better Call Saul where he’s supposed to be safe under the witness protection program working as Gene as the manager of Cinnabon. I don’t even know yet what landed him there because I just started season 5 but then this Omaha cab driver walks up and recognizes him.

In this scene Gene is reading a book titled The Moon’s a Balloon by -- of all people -- David Nivens. Check it though, the title of this book refers to a poem by ee cummings.

who knows if the moon’s a balloon
E.E Cummings

who knows if the moon’s
a balloon,coming out of a keen city
in the sky–filled with pretty people?
( and if you and I should
get into it,if they
should take me and take you into their balloon,
why then
we’d go up higher with all the pretty people

than houses and steeples and clouds:
go sailing
away and away sailing into a keen
city which nobody’s ever visited,where

always
it’s
Spring)and everyone’s
in love and flowers pick themselves.

(I figured you’d give me the ee cummings reference.)

Thing about Saul is, he taps into the fact that we want the earnest bad guy with a heart of gold to win. I come back to your thread time and again to see how this guy is doing.... and what constitutes a win can change, moment-to-moment. To quote Saul, in one of his more confident moments, “It’s life’s rich pageant, who are we to judge?”

It’s a carnival of fun houses and haunted houses in here, with old school freak shows and rides teetering on whether they meet safety code, and guessing games with the prizes built-in. And of course, cotton candy to die for.
Because guys like Saul, losers they may believe themselves to be, do fall in love, and guys like Saul from time to time, actually do hit it big, and when they do? We want them to win.

Onto specifics.

I wanted to ask, did you use a number to drive the repetition in mom milk pepsi… some sort of a number or calc or attempt to establish a visual pattern? I like how it changes when you zoom in or out.

The endless chain of the SLAA trailer is like one of those Made-in-Mexico Jacob’s Ladder toys: Letting the blocks flip and fall over, one to the next, can feel weightless. Because of gravity. Because this is how sex and/or love happens. In the background, while other events pretend to be at center stage.

In this way your work speaks to the slippery slope awaiting any unwitting criminal who lies in wait, almost like the moral to the story is baked in for the addict who believes his own story? It almost suggests, and I would argue that we all live on this cusp. The bad guy is actually the good guy who can’t get a break because he does not possess the privilege, power or resources to easily dip out. So he finds the loophole, games the system, plays the rube.

the audience gives a nod to a self-effacing component of this voice. I’m here to please, to entertain. Let me make you a sandwich, This poem aims to serve.

There is a recurring theme of “what’s the grift?” that invites your reader to become an accomplice, a colluder. Not always a comfortable proposition, but who can say no to the adrenaline?

The men who wind extension cords are somehow a thing to be envied for the normalcy of their routine and yet obviously ridiculed for being so basic. The keenness of your poems’ observations justifies a bit of resentment for these douchebags but somehow can’t help but believe that in reality they do have it all buttoned down in their mainstream world. And therein lies the rub. Sooner or later the black sheep has to relinquish their futile childish rebellions and admit that the all too human traits of the white sheep hold a certain undeniable value. And so the perpetual motion machine of strange events swings on like a metronome marking the spectrum of the normals and the freaks.

Never underestimate the freaks. They can always get freakier.

It's all so damn good Steve.

That's why I keep coming back. To check on your anti-heroes.

Jane

[kristalynn]

Wow, I love your poem "my mother" , so good, so few words and so much impact.

[scraps]

Hi Jee, Sarah, Jane and kristalynn - thanks for your thoughtful comments and taking the time to write them down for me. I owe you all - big time.

Steve

[scraps]

A list of questions asked of the interviewer

what?
what’s there?
is there anything there?
is there really anything to understand?
could you tell me?
like what for instance?
who’s that?
isn't that true of all of us?
is that all?
does that make it any clearer?

----

From ‘An old interview with John Ashbery’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYdTRHxeFkM

[scraps]

Your person

could be a lover
but doesn’t have to be.

Your person
is the Magnificent Animal

who simply understood
your emanations

wherever you were.