Today is tiring. Ghosts chase and in this race, the finish is back at the start. Never is the heart left even as it leaps, skips, stays silent through pursuits. Steam rises from former mistakes thawed swift past water stage. Steam ejects from pipes as pistons engage – on vapors, phantoms take comfort.
The Final Girl, Clover says, stares death in the face, and she is either rescued or kills the slasher herself. What made a film like Halloween especially unique was the way it disrupted traditional narrative structure. In analyzing structure and point of view, Clover references Laura Mulvey’s definition of the male gaze and cinematic narrative structure, specifically that the male drives the story’s action and the point of view is associated with him.
Stepping stone. Yesterday, today, tomorrow. This is accepted. Maybe one day, the love will be for feet. Until then these hands have work to do, these eyes also and what joins the four. The words, thoughts, images, sensation. Work. And more work. Let this be relief.
We wore eyeliner, after all. And when we got home, the sun set behind those ever-brown hills, the heat still dripping in big swaths between our thighs, so we took off the stupid fishnets and held them in our hands like nylon balls, with tight-gripped fists before we’d need to use them, and we covered ourselves in the long night.
Jodie, my danger, my hemlock, my orphaned sinking ship with me el capitan; Jodie, my reason, my treason, my equation for being; Jodie who left me after six months of wild bar fights, sex all night, make no money but don’t give a damn because her favorite cigarettes, her Red Dragons, had suddenly, for no reason at all, stopped selling in all of New York.
In June, it’d be an emergency. Now, it’s a nuisance,
One that merely fogs my windshield of hope.
in the clipped wind, no place
headed to.
Brother sun, sister moon, can
uncle deer hear me?
and the hatchet buried in scene 1 will return in act 3 as settlerspeak. in a colonial colloquial. a tongue left in a locked room could just as easily lead to the reveal as to be the weapon itself.
This month we're featuring some great stuff, and our Writer of the Month, Kenning Jean-Paul Garcia, is offering us work that is powerful and unlike anything we've ever showcased. I hope you love it as much as we do.
100 WORD TELEVISION REVIEWS / Undone
Undone travels well-trod territory, with a multi-layered, multi-timeline story told through the eyes of a lead character who is either mentally unwell or, in fact, gifted. But two things set the series apart from all previous TV mindfucks: the brilliant use of rotoscope animation, and the acerbic, vulnerable lead performance of Rosa Salazar (offering her second brilliant performance of 2019 which is hidden behind layers of computer animation). The chemistry of an excellent cast (including Bob Odenkirk) reveals the animation as not just a storytelling gimmick, but as the only proper way to tell this splintered and compelling narrative.
100 WORD FILM REVIEWS / Hustlers
Of all of the recent deluge of “Scorsese-as-genre” films in the past few years (a genre that is even sub-linked to the comic book genre now, with the upcoming Joker), Lorene Scafaria’s Hustlers stands above the crowd not only by offering a gender-twist on the Goodfellas formula, but in using those now well-worn techniques as ways of linking us not just to the flashy subculture of her characters, but to their interior lives, in a resonant way that not even Scorsese managed. Jennifer Lopez is at a career best, and having more fun than any actor on screen in 2019.
100 WORD BOOK REVIEWS / Knock-Off Monarch by Crystal Stone
Crystal Stone covers substantial ground—a mother’s death, poverty, addiction, Christianity, coming of age—with a surprisingly light hand and impressive formal range; included are prose poems, found poems, concrete poems, list poems, among others. Stone handles both form and subject matter with careful attention. Her poems are observant, descriptive, and evocative: “I’ll teach ‘em how to cook daddy’s squirrel potpie,/ rub pork ribs the right way,/mash potatoes like a man and baconwrap their vegetables tight.” The wry, frank voice is what pulls all of these poems together, what the person watching you on the train must sound like.
COMICS / Mr. Butterchips / September 2019 / Alex Schumacher
Hey kids! Butterchips is in a tight spot, can YOU help him out?
TELEVISION / The L Word: Generation Q: A Totally Unbiased Look Ahead / Jeanne Obbard
Jeanne Obbard is excited about The L Word: Generation Q and takes an in-depth look at the trailer.
One taking the other’s hand and leading delicate
as dandelion seed heads dispersed by a light wind
to water’s carnal grip
Start with a stream. No, a river, a rush of water, turning rocks into sand. A river wearing away its edges. A river sometimes sweet and meandering, sometimes deadly.
I'm dead. now the cat can jump up onto
the counter and drink the smoothie, but
I'm not mad about it (because I am dead
and because everyone who is dead is at
peace I am OK with it all.
FILM / The Boys, The Wrestler, His Daughter & Her Sad Poet / Donald Zirilli
Donald Zirilli explores the meaning of art after having a profoundly emotional experience watching Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler.
who he is besides this stranger
in my house, who I have to help
by informing him the chimes he
hears are real, and the white noise here
Here’s the typical Scully/Mulder setup, inserted early and amped up; she’s ever-rational, backed by science, and he’s the “spooky” alien-obsessed dude you call when you’ve just had a wolf baby.