Thin Straw That I Suck Life Through
A serial poem about displacement, disillusion, and dissolution, handbound with a linocut cover design by David Larsen.
Excerpt
episode 10
the particular melancholy will shift
and vanish the posture
will remain
your wooden face burning
and turning away
print of you
on my fingers
my iron wedge drives to the core
Catholic into Protestant
no
punative score-keeping
only codes of productivity
accountability
boundary
of "private space"
likeness to a cellblock
simple satisfying power
of an axe head
you must know father
to kill father
must be a little bit
the father
every murder
a little bit
a suicide
I wanted to write novels when
I stopped wanting to
I was
episode 18
it's what we did that generation:
go around cities
not having relationships
this is fuel and no vehicle
this is waiting for someone
to run you down
"I was a poor impersonator of myself in public."
always almost stalling out
his death provided an occasion for us to stay on the phone
it is exact
and your own
misapprehension
swerves
synapse registers disturbance
a message
intrudes
you assume
the cheap sign on the false dome
and cardboard viscera
innovation replaced injustice as a rallying cry
we stopped feeling others' pain