The speaker tells us
Olive trees look like
they never wanted to
be trees at all.
You do not know the names of the blossoms. Her breath is the smoking radiator overheated car she turns to laugh & neon hits the dye her hair full of colors
The mall is perverse. It’s a haven to me. Teenage girls look at teal thongs. Young guys with too much cologne offer to massage my hands. I sneak a Cinnabon when I’m supposed to be on a diet. I always see a father at the mall, secretly wishing his toddler would grow up and leave the house. I feel safe. Everything hidden is predictable.
Walter Bumpus was forty-three days shy of his eighty-first birthday when his calendar finally ran out. His last words were less than poetic.
“Not too shabby,” he said, placing his empty dish on the counter. “I think I’ll have that again for dinner. Leave it out and I’ll fix another plate when I get hungry,” he told wife number three, as he shuffled across the linoleum floor stabbing the tile with his cane for traction and stability.
I watched it all. I looked up and saw the whole thing and I didn’t move because I thought it wasn’t real. It just didn’t look real. I watched as one of them fell and when the first cloud of smoke and dust flooded the street, I jerked awake and got inside my truck. But all the soot and ash were too fast and some got inside and I looked outside the window and all I could see was gray. My eyes started stinging and I couldn’t keep them open and I wanted to get out and run, I didn’t want to stay, but I couldn’t leave so I sat there breathing in the remains of the city. Then I heard a boom and the next one fell.
OK, look, about this new administration in Washington D.C…I know it’s frustrating. A lot of you are mad. A lot of you are disgusted, weary, disheartened, bewildered; you want to turn away in despair, turn off the television, stop watching the news, get off social media, retreat from the turn reality and our society appear to be taking.
PLEASE DON’T.
I considered myself a knowing college sophomore. In my world literature survey, out of a class of thirty students meeting once a week in the evening, I understood the homoerotic love on display in Mann’s Death In Venice. I remember my professor’s keener interest when I raised my hand that Monday night and suggested that Aschenbach’s interest in the beautiful Tadzio was more than aesthetic. I was sure I had impressed my classmates, though most of them were taking this particular class just to keep the required English credit to a more harmless weekly event.
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Is The Founder really one long McDonald's commercial? Who are the best film anti-heroes of all time? Also, a disgusted Ryan Roach spoils the ending of Split and much more as the Filmcast crew breaks it down in the latest episode of Drunk Monkeys Radio
Films discussed on this episode: Split (2017)(with spoilers), XXX: The return of Xander Cage (2017), Moana (2016), The Founder (2016), Cool Hand Luke (1867), Nightcrawler (2014), Citizen Kane (1947)
PODCASTDrunk Monkeys RadioFive Answers, One QuestionScott Waldyn
We debut our new feature, Five Answers, One Question, with an interview with Scott Waldyn, Editor-in-chief of Literary Orphans!
PODCASTDrunk Monkeys RadioFilmcastBest of 2016
The Drunk Monkeys Filmcast crew counts down the Best Films of 2016!
We discuss: Moonlight, Manchester by the Sea, Fences, Silence, and much, much more!
COMICSMr. ButterchipsAlex Schumacher
That mean little monkey returns! Another installment of Mr. Butterchips by Alex Schumacher.
ARTHere's Looking at You, KidIllustrations by Helen Burke
Helen Burke graces Drunk Monkeys with a set of her 60's inspired illustrations.
FICTIONSmoke RingsKeith Buie
The cabinets clash with the countertops. Matching mahogany-stained floorboards and cupboards accentuate black granite countertops and backsplash tiles. The intention: a dark, bold appearance. The result: the kitchen looks like a giant Hershey bar.
POETRYThe Alligator ManJohn DorseyWriter of the Month
a bernese mountain dog collects dust
in the livingroom
as fox news hammers home
the integrity of relics
POETRYDrowned in Numbers: Along the Turkish CoastEmily Strauss
The names of the dead—
absent: 42453
etched on a slab of wood
POETRYThe Prettiest Girl in Moscow, KansasJohn DorseyWriter of the Month
pumps gas with a farmer’s bicep
and sells off brand energy drinks 2 for $4
tallying the state tax
to determine her own worth
FICTIONUncomfortable AdventuresNathan Tompkins
Yoshi hated being old. Her joints and the rest of her body were stiff and sore with age. She slept a lot, so at times it wasn’t too bad, except when she woke and had to rise after many hours. It was difficult to get her legs to cooperate. She’d slip on the hardwood floor or even on the ramp to the back yard.
Hooded among night drifts as September sweats out summer
Taken to walking, reading
my mind, mine and these sweet streets
strip sunsets, while Sativa burns-- blended in
Diesel--through my nostril, because my inseam keen
FILMCaptain Canada's Movie RodeoGabriel Ricard
Captain Canada rides into 2017 with a look at Fellini and horror.
FICTIONThe Disappearing ActorNick McGinley
He couldn’t quite explain it, but Aidan felt that if he didn’t look at himself in the mirror, to really look, to shore up any and all doubts, to burn the motivation coming from his eyes into his psyche, if he didn’t have a proper stare to recharge his identity, oh about, once every twenty minutes or so, he’d disappear.