I was reading Jessica Sequeira’s debut novel, “A Furious Oyster” (Dostoyevsky Wannabe, 2018), when the 30 August London Review of Books arrived in the day’s mail. A book review should reveal something unexpected, but to do that the book under consideration must be heard in a whisper. I turned to the review of Zadie Smith’s…
The Bananafish
A popular fish in some schools the deep sea swallower called the bananafish: Sansjawdsalumpigus. Though it lives on the floor of the aphotic zone, it is not bioluminescent; in fact, it’s invisible. Rising to the surface with changes of tide, mind, and mood, it’s worse by tens than the burbling Jabberwock. A bananafish is never…
Hermit Crabs
A hermit crab leaves home for a new dig again and again gig after gig sea busker. From her mitt he falls web of empty shell on the beach combs a low tide husker. In a shell in a cave floor of the sea hermetically rich rarely distressed he.
Too Much of Nothing
You say too much too much you lose the way and the universe seems too much for you. Not to make too much of this to make much of time, of hot, of cold, like a year in Chicago. Say you see her eyes move like stars way too slow and too much of nothing….
Words of Love
Honey, I’ve looked everywhere for the lost words telling your love for me in the kitchen compost bin in the basement of my heart in the attic of my ass (what a Fantastic Voyage that was!) through the crawl space between my breasts in the curls of my hair in the fishnets between my legs…
Around the point at high tide
…picking up somewhere we left off… The past is not enough to live on to make ends meet. what test passed avoids stays to wheedle this incessant urge past the tinnitus still sings proof below like wave bounce go easy under the sheer cliff and around the mossy point to the bay where the dolphins…
Scrap start with a comma
, and the Doodles on the radio just before the power grids out sing of the last rhino ringed. The past is not enough to live on to make ends meet. The colony runs consistent lanes running in opposite directions like lines of ancient text the queen home her future near but never quite here.
The Good Earth
Let’s make our planet good again think pigeons their T Rex origin. Oh wings of flesh and steel to fly you must first grow feathers. What cares the sloth slug squished by dino or sprayed with Ortho? As for Anthro won’t he be petrified up to his waste in his own coprolite? Rid us our…
Survival Manual
I was walking in Mt Tabor Park the other day, on a path rarely taken, steep on the south side, affording views of the college campus, its low buildings in the shade of the giant trees, the wide swath of grass between Gray and the cafe green but empty. I paused to reflect, praying peace,…
