X-FIGHTERS OPENING EVENT
by Dan Svatek
by Dan Svatek
Thursday
unpublished excerpts
from The Book of Pets
by Eugene Ostashevsky
from The Book of Pets
by Eugene Ostashevsky
6. The Mosquito
Puncturing skin
and drawing blood in
makes your mind go ZIZZZ,
But—alas!—
that way you can catch
a severe disease.
14.
Octopus Earl
Hugged the drowning girl.
17.
Three elderly vultures
Purchased new dentures.
Empowered, they carry on
Tearing carrion.
18.
Quick! Maul the koala
Before it holler!
21. The Paper Box
There’s an ox
In my paper box.
L.
Little bunny rabbit
Met a raccoon, rabid.
Now there's no more bunny,
And you think it's funny.
*
Eugene Ostashevsky is a Russian-born American poet from New York City. His books include the poetry collection Iterature and a volume of Russian 1930s writings in translation called OBERIU: An Anthology of Russian Absurdism.
ODE TO BOUDIN
by Kevin Young
You are the chewing gum
of God. You are the reason
I know that skin
is only that, holds
more than it meets.
The heart of you is something
I don't quite get
but don't want to. Even
a fool like me can see
your broken
beauty, the way
out in this world where most
things disappear, driven
into ground, you are ground
already, & like rice
you rise. Drunken deacon,
sausage's half-brother,
jambalaya's baby mama,
you bring me back
to the beginning, to where things live
again. Homemade saviour,
you fed me the day
my father sat under flowers
white as the gloves of pallbearers
tossed on his bier.
Soon, hands will lower him
into ground richer
than even you.
For now, root of all
remembrance, your thick chain
sets me spinning, thinking
of how, like the small,
perfect, possible, silent soul
you spill out
like music, my daddy
dead, or grief,
or both -- afterward his sisters
my aunts dancing
in the yard to a car radio
tuned to zydeco
beneath the pecan trees.
*
From Meatpaper, Your Journal of Meat Culture, Issue 4, Summer 2008.
TERRITORY OR A WOMAN LION
by Rick Benson
"Which one of you filthy pigs left this pot in the sink?” Lorie holds up the oatmeal pot that Evan just used to cook our breakfast in.
“Well I did but we’re not finished eating yet,” Evan says, head down.
“You little pigs know better than to leave a dirty pot in my sink. Get over here and clean it.”
Her skin stretches across her face as the tension builds up in her wrinkly body. She looks like a bat. She reminds me of the junkies hanging around Prince George when she gets like that.
“You useless little assholes,” she says. “Every day I have to retrain you, retrain you, retrain you.”
Suddenly my sister Marilyn stands up from the table. We wonder what she’s about to do. Lorie turns around and stares her right in the eye, right. I’ve never seen anything like that before, except for on the animal channel when 2 male lions fight for their territory or a woman lion.
“You know you don’t have to yell like that. We’re just kids,” Marilyn says.
Lorie steps towards Marilyn. Evan and I slide out of our chairs and make a break for it. We hide around the kitchen door.
“What did you say? I thought I heard something,” Lorie says.
My sister puffs out her chest. “I said. You don’t have to talk to us like were animals. We’re just kids.” Lorie takes a few steps closer in reaching distance and extends her pointing finger out to Marilyn’s chest.
“You… you don’t talk to me like that, young lady.” Lorie says. “You don’t have the right to speak to me at all you little bitch.”
I stood for years outside that kitchen to see if my sister would finally tell her how it was. “I just don’t understand why you have to be such a cunt to us all the time,” my sister says.
Lorie lunges in for the moment we’ve all been waiting for. She leans in and shoves both arms hard into my sister’s chest and throws her against the kitchen cupboards. My sister gets up and shakes her hair. She raises her fist, holding it just right like my brother had taught me that day in the shop. She hits Lorie square in the face.
My stepmother flies back a couple steps and crumples against the counter.
Marilyn, red-faced and rushing with adrenaline, looks over at us. “Come on guys,” she says as she catches her breath. “I’ll give you a lift to school.”
Manton, Evan and I hurry outside to my sister’s car. My sister gets in and says nothing. She starts the engine and we begin to pull out the driveway and onto the dirt road.
*
Wanna bowl cut? See Mister Benson about that.
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