Reunion

You wanted to get the old band back together.
But we didn’t even have a band.

All we did was
sit around and drink
and talk
and smoke.
We played music
but it was music other people recorded
onto compact discs
and then sold to us.

Yeah, we’d go to venues.
There were crowds,
not drawn by us.
And there’d be bands there,
but not our band.

None of us wrote any songs.
None of us sang.
We didn’t even have any instruments...


Read the full poem and the slightly longer original version here...

We Saw Brightblack Morning

by Adam Edell                 Need to get out to the desert this year.                New Mexico? Arizona? Nevada?                Sand, arched wolves, a full-bellied moon, eclipsed… They touched their instruments like sacred objects,notes floating upon an ashen incantation.What I heard was "yeah, yeah"but what I saw was my father at my age,a wife and a child on the way.Saw a … Continue reading We Saw Brightblack Morning

Anti-reality Sketch

by R.L. Wisdom

          I am on a bus with my wife.  I am talking to a tourist’s camera; saying, ‘The second time I died was because of a trolley.’
          A trolley races past, off its tracks.  The front of it misses the bus but by over-compensating our driver clips the rear of the trolley, sending the bus rolling, rolling.
          The rolling stops.  Everyone is startled for a long moment but people soon begin to move about and collect their bearings.  I can begin to hear sirens in the background.  Upon reaching the scene, emergency workers start to help passengers loose themselves from the wreckage.
          The workers keep walking past me as I lay there, still stunned.  This worries me.  I have died once before and the way I feel now is eerily familiar….
          Living people cannot see dead people.  And, being dead, I cannot see dead bodies.  My wife asks me what’s going on, so I explain.  We walk away from the wreckage and begin traveling down a side street.
          I must warn you that, at this point, I am not sure if my wife is dead or not.  I do not know myself whether I have been killed in the crash.  All logic is suspended.
          My wife asks me to walk back down the block to get some napkins from the take-out counter of a restaurant we’ve just passed.  There is a cut on her nose.
          I turn around and head back.  I come to a storefront with a big glass display window.  It is there that I become disoriented and almost lose myself in the mirror-like glass.  It takes all of my mental faculties what seems like a dozen minutes to extract myself from its reflective pool/pull...
Continue...

Watching Twin Peaks

A: You know that painting I was talking about at the coffee shop?

J: (John has a quizzical look)

A: Nevermind. I’ll show it to you at some point, but we’re not going to talk about it. I’ll fuckin have to write that down, otherwise I’ll forget about it. They took down my favorite painting in that place. It’s gone.

J: (Burp)

(From the television, the idyllic “Twin Peaks” theme starts up)

A: I looked up shit on Joan Chen. She’s pretty much been like a standard actress for like the last three decades.

(Both of them laugh)

A: Hasn’t done anything of worth, but ah, like, she did some shit on cooking last year, for the holidays…(laugh) I’m gonna get this out before this comes on. (laughing) Oh shit. But she directed something that’s supposed to be really good. That’s all I really wanted to say. Ok.

(The show is now in progress)

A: That’s that old lady, the log lady.

J: No, that wasn’t the log lady.

A: Fuck it, I really am not going to be able to watch this.

J: That’s…

A: Directed by Tim Hunter…? Fuck.

J: Who’s that?

A: Did you ever see that before? Maybe it’s just this episode.

J: It’s probably…

A: Fuck. Do you know who Tim Hunter is?

J: No.


Go on ...