I miss driving with you at
night, sometime past safe,
our lips still wet with
whiskey.
It was snowing out that night. The wind whipped through the crisp air, stirring the movements of the car. He drove at speeds over seventy miles per hour. He didn't care. He had been crying. He was working on his book again for the first time in months. The one about her. He kept erasing lines and starting over, never understanding why he chose to suffer.
PODCASTDrunk Monkeys RadioFilmcastIt Comes at Night
The Filmcast crew returns for their first foray into horror with the ultra-slow burn of It Comes at Night. Also, Matt gives Hail, Caesar a second chance and the guys discuss post-apocalyptic movies.
Films discussed: The Stanford Prison Experiment (2015); Planet Outlaws (1953); Hail, Caesar (2016); It Comes at Night (2017); The Quiet Earth (1985); The Rover (2014); Last Night (1998)
PODCASTDrunk Monkeys RadioFilmcastWonder Woman
How does Wonder Woman fare in her first solo outing? Why does Matt hate Apocalypse Now? Who is the best Batman? All this and much more on the latest episode of the Drunk Monkeys Radio Filmcast!
When he had finished writing, and crossing out
and standing and rewriting, and looking
out his window, and feeling the sun
Gabriel: Now, when we had to leave last time, you were telling me about a Vietnam project of some kind.
Lloyd: Yeah, through the Roan group. www.roangroup.com. It has nothing to do with Troma. It’s totally separate, and my name shouldn’t be associated with Roan.
G: Okay.
I stood and watched you sleeping, had
stood there watching for nearly five minutes in
the shadow of the
hallway for nearly five minutes of circus
time before I dropped your purse on the chair, quiet as death
Racial. Barrier. Falls.
The words like a meditative mantra for Violet, a promise renewed in each breath, deep and expanding, as strong and sure and filled with hope as the sweet smell of autumn in New York. It was November 4, 2008. The news—world-historical news—flashed across every television-computer-cell phone-smartphone-website-newsstand all over the country, all over the world, each headline a slightly varied version of the one she liked most, the one from her very own hometown paper, the good ol’ New York Times, which ran the banner: “Obama Elected President as Racial Barrier Falls.”
If I could, I’d use
my recently purchased cell phone
to call the pay phone outside
the community swimming pool
in Fairview Park, Normal, Illinois,
that summer when I was eleven,
and the country 200.
It was the night we were told we couldn’t pretend we were Catholic.
The priest turned only toward you and said, “It’s between you and God.”
And you cried.
I dream of her,
childish and illogical,
straight hair and tiger-eyes.
I’ve been thinking a lot about family. My family does not talk to me.
Growing up in a traditional mom-dad-sibling household, I would often struggle with my place in the familial set-up. I am the oldest of two, and the blackest of sheep. My upbringing was filled with an underlying current of panic, my parents not wanting me to grow up too fast, my spirit desiring to grow up as fast as possible, to get out.
A clipboard staked my claim on the counter nearest the nursing station. I poured myself a cup of coffee, whitened it with a packet of powder, and scanned the to-do list on the top page. Not so bad, I thought. My co-residents hadn’t signed out too much. As the intern on call, the forecast for my night now depended on who got admitted to the hospital, but I expected it to be quiet. Around Lake Erie an advisory of sleet mixed with snow got the streets salted and kept most folks inside and out of the ER. I drew little boxes next to the things that had to get done, intending to fill them in as I went along.
Mr. Butterchips is back for our June issue!
My punk-rock gothic-pixie little sister fourteen fresh faced
We listened to The Cure during art class Made bongs and pipes
out of ceramic You taught me how to kiss people who could
never love me
About ten years ago, I was wasting my life on a shitty horror movie website. It doesn’t exist anymore. Badly run in every conceivable fashion, I quit after deciding that they were never going to pay me the hundreds of dollars they owed me at that point. I put in a little over a year. The work itself was fine. Hell, it was usually a lot of fun. I wrote reviews for dozens of films, connected with a number of independent filmmakers and DVD release companies, and interviewed a ton of really great names. Despite the appalling mediocrity of the website itself, I conducted interviews, on behalf of the site, with the likes of George A. Romero, Lance Henriksen, Jeffrey Combs, Tony Todd, Sid Haig, Bill Mosely, and many others.
In the fall of 1976, we sixth graders were thrilled our Georgia Governor Carter had been elected President of the United States and that we’d celebrated the bicentennial of our country. Our community had come together for a parade with the high school marching band, the mayor in a convertible waiving, and our church youth singing the good news on a float pulled by our song director’s Ford F-150. The next day, Sunday morning, our twelve-year-old group of boys marched into the sanctuary of the Baptist church, sitting near the back, so we could pass notes, send spitball through straws to girls a few rows down, fart and laugh at ourselves.
Supermassive Black Hole swallowed your cackle-low
Cosmos whisper pretty Come here darling and you come
I hope I never forget that pack of middle-schoolers
at the playground near my house, how they acted
like middle-schoolers, shouting their conversations
across the neighborhood as if showing off new sneakers,
the boys doing mean things to the girls,
the girls saying mean things about each other.
“Are you willing to accept spiritual warfare?”
“Yes”
“Mental warfare?”
“Yes”
“Moral degradation?”
“Yes”
“Cognitive dissonance?”
“Yes”
“And finally, death?”