Earlier this year, Frankie Metro contacted me about doing a reading in Denver in August. It would get me back to the Mercury Cafe. I had always wanted to go back. I just didn’t know when I would get the chance.
Suddenly, given the chance to go back, I felt the weight of failing two years ago. It was an instant match for the anxiety I almost always, immediately feel, whenever someone asks me to read or perform.
And we’re gonna fly, as well? The first time I’ve done so in eighteen years? Lovely.
Here I am wearing June on my fingers,
earrings on my ankles, skinny dipping
in a public pool regardless of awe-struck
children, writing a note between gillyflowers,
slurping breakfast on the ice veranda, braiding
lavender though it’s long been brown.
Mr. Butterchips returns for Drunk Monkeys Volume 2, Issue 3!
You are in a new house. It is your fifth birthday.
The Charles River shushes your tantrums,
infrequent as they have become. The moon moth
is an introvert. Her wings light up the night like limes
but she prefers her Sycamore hollow.
Lay your head down to sleep with word for word transcripts of murder trials still ringing in your ears. One thousand stories from neighbors of lawless men. Their mouths open like baby blackbirds spewing out ink, instead of tiny songs, a river into the corridors of the dead.
1. For instance, forsythia catch April on fire and this is when babies learn the color yellow and adolescent girls carry their new chests like medals, momentarily. By May, the fuss has diffused and branches shiver without flower while dumb daffodils gab and lilacs diva the garden.
The holiday we think of as Presidents Day is really a bit of a misnomer. Celebrated on the third Monday in February, what we today know as Presidents’ Day was first established by Congress in 1879 in recognition of President George Washington, and is still called “Washington’s Birthday” by the federal government. The holiday became Presidents’ Day in 1971 after Congress and the Nixon Administration moved to change it to the third Monday in February as part of the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, an attempt to create more three-day weekends for the nation’s workers.
The Filmcast crew returns with a look at the first big hit of 2017, Lego Batman, as well as other advertisements masquerading as movies.
Films discussed on this episode:
The Handmaiden (2015)
Pit Stop (1969)
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
The Room (2003)
Lego Batman (2017)
The Garbage Pail Kids Movie (1987)
Clue (1985)
Mac and Me (1988)
The Filmcast crew, and special guest Will Link of Will Sean Podcast, break down this year's crop of Academy Award nominees! Can anyone stop La La Land? Will Matt ever stop complaining about La La Land? Why does an Oscar Preview Special contain so much discussion about Tommy Wiseau's The Room? Answers to these questions and much more in this episode!
How did you guys get through December and January? Well enough?
I guess we should be pleased that 2017 hasn’t destroyed us all yet. We can still go to the movies. We can still try to get excited about everything that’s coming out this year. There a number of 2017 movies that I’m at least curious about. That counts for something. The ongoing hells of 2016 made it difficult to focus on cinema. At least, that was my problem. Beyond the real world making it difficult to even pay attention to trailers, too many actual 2016 movies left me underwhelmed.
Can Mr. Butterchips fight his urge to scream at strangers on the internet? Well, can any of you? New strip from Alex Schumacher.
Rainbows in a puddle reflect the triangle over Kenmore.
I took a shower with a boy, we poured
parabens through our threads. In some places
the tap water catches.
He’s the most amazing &
already they take him, fate
beautys up the mirror, wonders
how ever one gets used to tighter.
Everything seems to be falling apart at a fantastic rate.
As I sit here typing this letter, Trump (I will not call him the President) has fired the Attorney General, Sally Yates, for saying what we’re all thinking— that he is a lunatic unfit to run a washing machine, let alone a country. People have not stopped resisting, protesting, for ten days. Longer than that, I guess. It seems there is no end in sight. Have you been making calls to your representatives day in and day out? Are you exhausted?
In her body—
Each night a secret circus.
The roaring tiger wears her pink tutu,
reaching her arms fiercely out in front of her
revealing her nail polished claws,
doing precisely and perversely
as she was trained.
You’ll never bring yourself to enjoy the actual
sparrow, only its sound, the idea, its chip,
the pluck to stay when friends migrate.
Julie leaves the coast for the lakes
Cultural history as it begins to be written in the years after 9-11 reveals that the fault-line along the American psyche has become seismically active again. The right-wing is sounding its irrational depths, and suddenly this great National Buddha stirs from its hibernation—out of the blubber of historical lullaby and the sugar plums of paranoia. The collapse of the Twin Towers was a terrible suction event, in which any remaining intelligibility was evacuated from national discourse, like oxygen in a conflagration.
You are tracking a veery
you realize you have always been
after the singing near the excellent sea
You turn on your television in the middle of the night – you can’t sleep again – and start flipping channels. You haven’t been sleeping well lately and you’re not sure why. Yes, you’re quickly approaching your fiftieth birthday and no, you haven’t published that novel or collection of short stories. But you have friends and loved ones and a nice place to live and a job with a health plan. You should be sleeping.
The cows got out again, so Dad drives his rusted bronco through the neighbor’s orange groves.
Headlights catch a spotted haunch of meat; his revolver squeezes juice from unripe, yellow flesh.
