EVELYN MCHALE

evelyn mchale sashayed

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Hello, Bryan Coffelt.

Hello, Bryan Coffelt. We have recommendations for you. (Not Bryan?)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MIKE YOUNG. HERE ARE SOME SESTINAS WE WROTE FOR YOU.

LOVE ME LIKE DONUTS BUT I STAY FOR THE DONUTS

by Gabe Durham

Woof woof I want some smoothie.
This kid you don’t know, this cowboy
with a tattoo
of a smoking
loon was going, look at me! look mom look!
I guess now you think you’re some wet hot smoothie.

Two guys, one who drinks smoothies
and one who incants, smoothie… smoothie…
on walls of pulp. Look, said Jesus
which of these, in heaven, is more of a cowboy?
the one who smokes?
Right across my chest I’m getting a tattoo to

How do you commemorate a tattoo?
Get a smoothie
etched in smoke
in your smoothie?
Don’t you get all cowboy
Uncle Hammish I know that look!

Look.
It’s not going to be easy. America is fed up with tattoo
as usual. It’s not time to be a cowboy
offering your “smoothie”
to folks new to your “smoothie,”
just breastmilk and hotdogs, leers and smoke

IT’S OK OFFICER THIS IS NON-SMOKE SMOKE!
You look
like a dude who knows where a guy could dip his smoothie.
You’d get that if your pink hide hid a tattoo
of my body but I guess some smoothies
are coming on pretty strong, eh, cowboy?

I said, Eh cowboy?
See you when your blowgun smokes
and your friends hock your smoothie
just to get a quick look
at the milk tattoo
I got of you on my smoothie.

Trade you your smoothie cowboy
for my smoothie smoke.
Look, tattoo: The American people!

***

THIS IS THE SPEECH I WOULD DELIVER TO ADVOCATE GRANTING MIKE YOUNG, A PEACE-LOVING NATION, MEMBERSHIP IN THE UNITED NATIONS

by Bryan Coffelt

don’t you hate signing up for things and then your trial
ends, like you trundled on so long only to find you are united
with nothing? like, the insides of your bones are black?
but i know that’s not how you go, you go off road
until you’re dying of thirst, and begging for a funeral.
you chug along until you find yourself in folsom, johnny cash

style. it’s not too far from where you’re from, you cash
money millionaire. one fuck up, you find yourself on trial
for armed robbery and failure to appear at a funeral
home. i know, you might have missed your flight. it was united
or wait, were you on delta? doesn’t matter, now you’re on the road
because there are no flights where you’re going. the black

sky digs in your veins if you let it. oh, and you left your black
jeans at the hotel in denver. i thought about selling them to get some fast cash
because i was super broke. but i was coughing up blood and the road
was onto me. i had a fever, my body felt like news coverage of the oj murder trial.
i thought to myself, has mike young ever said god bless the united
states of america? has he ever sat in on a marine’s funeral?

i know you’re a patriot — mike young is no funeral
dodger. but how do we know your blood is not black?
that you are not some kind of witch, and your coven is not united
against us? how do we know you’re not goldman sachs, absconding with our cash?
what do we really know about mike young except what we know from trial
& error? i mean, i could tell you he probably doesn’t like the film version of the road

i could tell you the man is maybe less than a fiend for road
side bars, that, like us all, he’s a funeral
waiting to happen. that when faced with trials
and tribulations, he’ll choose tribbing with a black
forest ham omelet. dude loves breakfast, no matter how cashed
his nerves. i hate sounding like i’m giving a speech to induct him into the united

nations, but i am. mike young and i were once united
as roommates in ashland, oregon. it was legal there, it was like a road
trip to the moon. i am writing this sestina for mike instead of sending cash
on his birthday. sorry dude, but it’s better than sending a funeral
home full of bees! my fantasy is to send you black
pepper mango sorbet or something. i shouldn’t have sent you that invite for a free trial

(cash free) of united flight 93 porn, obviously,
and i shouldn’t have asked for that road beer before my trial.
but please, please, no black magic at my funeral, okay?

***

SOME VALUES OF BREAKFAST AND HITLER, A SESTINA

by Maurice Burford

From a Spanish radio: 'pirate is spanish for pirate.'
Fruit activity and our Belgian things aside,
we are very happy being a waxen yellow
like how our parents felt when we fell out of them.
'WANNA SNUGGLE? SUPPORT LOCAL HITLERS.'
And sometimes we can't salvage eyeing from the fire.

I regularly try so hard to be an grey ocean on fire,
depressing the physical form of the ship's pirate
captain. The horrible ghosts shimmer into being: Space Hitlers,
who set a goat's magical foot on fire and brush aside
breakfast, ignoring the deck hands with boobs, yet sexing them
with a bravado of ghosts half their height and shade of yellow.

In Sweden, girls have all the fun, skating in bikinis over the yellow
ice of Lake Swedish Pop Duo. The paper plant, they call a crime, on fire—
rapid joggers, think islands, a clutch of sea—reflecting off all them
locals, dumb faced and crawly. No cars are allowed outside of Pirate
Town except taxis, rickshaws pulled by the albino Gamla Stan aside.
He, at his will, could assume the shape of nordic beasts, all except Hitlers.

Did we do all we could to raise awareness of rave loving Hitlers,
wearing black and red western cut shirts and ironic yellow
hats. 'Alex was on fire,' said Bryan, putting Alex out was aside
from the point. Crazy sitars banging out jams for all the tweens on fire,
wearing jumpy rainbow bracelets, making me feel dumb that I wore my pirate
outfit again. 'Pirates are so 2003 you ugly puppy fucker.' I still love them.

You could hear the rusty parts breaking inside each of them.
Their breakfast was a casual two slices of toast, a bowl of Hitlers,
and half a grapefruit (properly fucked, of course by a pirate),
yet when asked they could not get up, they could not pull the yellow
out their eyes. Something is perpetually lost from them, a fire,
the way their hair falls across their face and is then brushed aside.

And then a sleepwalking slide guitar swam icy lakes, garbage aside,
only to be blasphemed as 'No Langhorne Slim' by some of them
Northern-Light-Lovin'-Euro-Canadian Punks. The total garbageness on fire
in Sweden is like totally big, though no bigger than an Orca full of Hitlers.
They burn at first a kind of blasé purple and finish off a grand wizard-y yellow.
All this shit, my friend, is incompatible with the life of a pirate.

Hammerfall is the baddest band in Sweden, dude, and they are pirates.
Like real fucking killers of men, dude, with parrots, terrible yellow
devils. A real group of blood thirsty, neon pink Hitlers.

Ritchie Blackmore is gayest man in Sweden, dude, Herman Dune aside.
Every time he leaves the house two boy dogs hump, but he hates them,
for young Ritchie Blackmore can only climax when his partner's on fire.

***

FACEBOOK IS STARTING TO MAKE ME SO BITTER

by Sarah Cunningham

Facebook is starting to make me so bitter

It’s not that I’m anti-social but I wasn’t born

yesterday, I know when people are pulling my chain, fucking

with me or just plain poking me around, like social networking is suddenly so revered

and anyone without a twitter account isn’t a verified poet, even Word gives a damn

enough to auto-correct when I spell the word “twitter” with an “o,” like it’s some special

word, like words can even sound special

to begin with, I guess I’m just native and bitter,

but remember when you were young (like, so damn

young) and you’d stare off at nothing, your mind all born

with crazy thoughts and shit, and stupid people couldn’t revere

such genius so they’d wave their hands in front of you like they’re some fucking

magician, like they’re some pilot bringing you back into the real world, it’s enough to fucking

make you unfriend all those Facebook creeps for real, they aren’t special

they probably don’t even know it’s your birthday; nobody reveres

numbers anymore, the taste of counting by tens, all bitter

and empty calories and it gives me indigestion, like some kind of damn

just got hyphee in my esophagus, I can barely breath, let alone be born

into some city with ozone layers and onyx, but I was born

a day before you so I guess that’s some fucking

thing we have in common, thought the year’s a mystery, a big damn

secret if you ask me, as if I couldn’t guess your age, there’s nothing special

about becoming a year older unless it’s on an empirical rooftop garden growing bitters

and tomato juice and some type of exotic olives, cuz olives always get revered

but nobody pays attention to celery, I feel sorry for it, I revere

vegetables because I’m a vegetarian and don’t believe in the undoing of time, born

into an age of fast-food and swimsuits in February, bitter

shoppers stampeding for a sale on 6-pack socks/beer, a fucking

bargain, sure, but I’m usually barefoot when I’m drunk anyway, feeling all special

and warm as if I could write a book of sonnets, all damn

and hell-hath-no-fury type, but it’s a damn

hard life and I’m only drunk enough on my birthday, I revere

those blowing candles and the wax stuck on my teeth, a special

kind of texture like crocodile boots or recycled napkins, born

a second time to wipe the chocolate cake off a million sticky fingers like clay, fucking

fire that shit up and bring on the whiskey, champagne and bitters,

cuz it’s your birthday, Mike, you’re special, you were born

42 years ago this day and some bitter woman that revered pain-pills

really broke the damn mold with you, this poem’s fucking proof.

***

HEY MIKE, HAPPY BIRTHDAY

by K. Silem Mohammad

Hey Mike, happy birthday--
I hope you spend
it getting laid
and smoking crack
in a hot tub
with a pair of blonde twins,

or if not twins,
at least two chicks whose looks and birthday
are close enough that, in the steam of the hot tub,
you might be fooled into spend-
ing the same amount you would spend to get a crack
at real twins when you pay to get laid.

You may not actually get laid
by twins,
but hell, you can always crack
open some magazines that feature ladies in their birthday
suits, or spend
some time with a tub

of popcorn watching dirty videos, or soaking in the bathtub
with a Hustler centerfold laid
out in front of you, until you spend
yourself in guilty spasms of lust, imagining blonde twins.
I mean, it's your birthday,
right? If you have to crack

under the pressure of maddening sexual frustration, crack
today. Just grab a tub
of lube and say "Happy birthday"
to yourself. And while you're laid
out there, fantasizing about twins,
go ahead and spend

a few bucks on one of those "fleshlight" things, or just spend
it on more crack.
"Between the corrupt twins
of compulsive masturbation and porn addiction lies the tub
ride." T. S. Eliot said that as he laid
down fifty bucks on his fiftieth birthday

and bought some hookers and crack and a tub
of fried chicken from some twins and got laid
and that's how you also should spend your birthday.

***

MIKE, YOUNG

by Matthew Simmons

I know
a little
about much,
and this
hasn't made
an impact.

the impact,
you know,
when made
very little
is this:
feel much.

find much.
lack impact.
fix this
and know
when little
is made.

I made
so much,
so little,
such impact,
to know
all this.

and this,
which made,
you know,
when much
will impact
this little.

what little
is this
to impact
when made
us, much
will know?

impact little.
know this:
made much.

***

HOLY SHIT, MIKE YOUNG!

by Daniel Bailey

Holy shit, Mike Young!

Today is your birthday

Remember how I used to owe you money?

Now I don’t owe you money. It’s great

but I still want to give. But I won’t give you a lameass card

Here is a poem. Isn’t it amazing how you used to be a fetus?

I bet you were the cutest little fetus

in all your mom. Then she named you Mike Young

It was as momentous as when a soccer ref gave me a red card

for pushing over a girl. I bet when you were born

you gave the thumbs-up to the nurse and you were all, This is great!

Being a part of the world is so money!

I’m glad I don’t owe you money

anymore. If we were hanging out right now I’d make you a feta

cheese pizza with olive oil and olives. It’d be so great

I’d look at you and I’d say, Mike Young!

Let’s eat some damn pizza. Happy Birthday!

Here’s a lameass card

You’d open the card and you’d read the card

which would have naked ladies inside it and maybe some money

for you on your birthday

I’d say, I bet you were such a goddamn adorable fetus

Then I’d yell, Mike Young! Mike Young! Mike Young!

Then I’d tell you a story about the Great Depression

I’d be like, Yeah, a bunch of people got greatly depressed

and then killed themselves! With guns and with cartons

of cigarettes! Can you believe that, Mike Young?

And all over losing a lot of damn money

They ran around screaming! We’re broke! Who will feed us!

My family is dying! This is the worst birthday

ever! They kept themselves alive with stories of Jesus’ birth

but then FDR fixed the shit and everything was great

and then a war happened. And then a fetus

and that fetus was aborted and then a telegram

that said, The world is dying! Then stuff and some money

This history is too much, Mike Young!

Mike Young, what is going on? I feel like a fetus

I want to throw money at the earth. That would be great

I feel like a baseball card getting born into a child’s shaking hands

A BIRTHDAY SESTINA FOR SARAH CUNNINGHAM

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SARAH, PLEASE PULL THAT CAT AWAY FROM YOUR FACE

i would like for you to please pull that cat away from your face
and put it back where it came from. you don’t want to go to hell
do you? you gave it some thought, you said you’d bring a camera
to take pictures of your favorite circle of it. where dogs vomit
uncontrollably on liars, or whatever. sarah, have you seen the pain olympics?
i mean, don’t watch it. instead, have yourself a game of quidditch

with some kind of special twist. microscopic quidditch,
or no, don’t do that. i don’t know, maybe do something with face
paint. what i’d do is i’d sit around and talk about the special olympics,
maybe make bets, but you probably wouldn’t do that. hell
if i know what you’d do. maybe you’d just vomit
all over the room until it was covered in vomit. i’d camera

man the whole thing, of course, because my face is a camera!
do you think they have a special olympics version of quidditch?
happy birthday, sarah — did you happen to vomit
while we were at AWP? the look on your face
said you could tell that one day we will surely hang out in hell
and we’ll sit around (dog vomit everywhere) watching the olympics

drag on — i’ve never won a gold medal. but i did drown in an olympic
sized pool. wilco was playing in the house, the song that goes “i need a camera
to my eye.” after i drowned, i knew i would have a hell
of a time swimming again, or crying. drowning is like playing quidditch
covered in thousands of wet blankets, and some water demon is trying to fuck your face
you try and you try to breathe, but you just vomit

no, that’s not entirely true. i was actually unable to vomit
because i was dead. i mean, i’m not fucking michael phelps, olympic
gold medalist. after i drowned i realized i had to face
everything that is between things, things we missed with our camera
when we were distracted. when you’re dead, there is no quidditch
pitch to fly around in on your broom. there’s just a hell

of a lot of angry wind. i mean, when you’re dead, you’re hella
wispy and pissed. you go around trying to vomit
on the living while they fly around playing quidditch
you try to piss on NBC’s dumb coverage of the olympics
especially that guy over there, with his camera
all up in the noisy part of usain bolt’s face

i guess i’m saying learn quidditch and start believing in hell;
that’s what we’re faced with. an eternity of vomiting
nothingness on cameramen at the olympics.

THE NEW WEST WIND REVIEW IS HOT

I have only poked around in it a little bit, but it has some amazing work. Here's a complete list of authors:

Shane Allison, Brian Ang, Nathan Austin, Elizabeth Bachinsky, Daniel Bailey, Dave Barrett, Franklin Bruno, Marie Buck, Clint Burnham, Dereck Clemons, Jordan Davis, Nick Demske, Tiffany Denman, Brittany Dennison, Christopher DeWeese, Andrew Dieck, Brandon Downing, Cathy Eisenhower, Laura Elrick, Phil Estes, Michael Farrell, Angela Genusa, Judith Goldman, Jack Granath, Rob Halpern, Morgan Harlow, Uyen Hua, Katryn Hurtado, Genevieve Kaplan, Nicholas Karavatos, William Knight, D Sprung Kurilecz, Reb Livingston, Adrian C. Louis, Donato Mancini, Adam J Maynard, Philip Metres, Carol Mirakove, Christopher Mulrooney, Sara Mumolo, Sawako Nakayasu, Lance Newman, Amy Ng, Douglas Piccinnini, Ernesto Priego, Jessy Randall, Nicholas Michael Ravnikar, G. David Schwartz, Marcus Slease, Dawn Sueoka, Andrew Terhune, Wendy Trevino, Anna Vitale, James Wagner, and Grzegorz Wróblewski (trans. Adam Zdrodowski)

To get your hands on it:

Send check or money order for $12 + $2 s&h to:

West Wind Review
Stevenson Union Room 333
Southern Oregon University
1250 Siskiyou Blvd.
Ashland, OR 97520

***

Below, I've posted Daniel Bailey's poem (from the new West Wind Review) called "cool sestina." I'm kind of in love with this poem right now. Scroll down to the bottom for a vid of his entire reading (approx. 10 minutes) at the Ampersand Vintage gallery in Portland. Oh, and buy his book The Drunk Sonnets from Magic Helicopter Press.

cool sestina

i used to live on a street called washington street

now i live on lake street, which is super cool

lately i've been studying how to perform magic

tricks, which is hard. and hey, i still miss you

sometimes when i think about you and me, i feel like an idiot

but most of the time, i feel ok

i like to imagine what you're doing, and if you're ok

too. i always imagine you are. are you still on marsh street?

i liked marsh street, though our neighbors were all idiots

i couldn't stand them, though sometimes they were cool

like one time they gave us beers. i had to carry you

home. i laid you down on the bed, the magic

vs. lakers game on in the background. the magic

lost. you said, "come to bed, dan." i said, "ok,"

though i wasn't tired. i fell asleep next to you

i woke up to the sound of a motorcycle on the street

it was early. i got the paper. the air was sweet and cool

reading the paper makes me feel like an idiot

microwaving burritos makes me feel like an idiot

but that's what i did. i think microwaves are magic

as far as technologies go, microwaving is the coolest

i mean, the food isn't the best. it borders on ok,

but it saves time. it's like camping in the street

before leaving for work, i kissed you

on your sleeping cheek. i said, "i love you"

but that's all gone and now i feel like an idiot

i am the parade that veers off the street

and into the alley where the unmarked magicshop is,

and the marching band director gives the ok

for the band to rage into the gutter as fish, cool

and thrashing, spawning on an empty pack of kools

tossed behind the dumpster, birthing little me's and little you's

and maybe one little guttered me and you can make it ok

maybe, eventually, i can stop feeling like such an idiot

maybe we can buy a spell from melinda's hall of magik

maybe rain will carry us into the flooded streets

and if not into the streets, then into the sewer, to a cool pond

with lots of great food, and i don't believe in magic, but i

believe in you

please tell me i'm not an idiot. please tell me we will be ok

***

Daniel Bailey reads at Ampersand Gallery in Portland, OR from bryan coffelt on Vimeo.

I AM CURSED

I am cursed, and the Red Sox are playing like the Royals Pirates.

WE WERE ETERNAL AND GIGANTIC

Hey y'all,

We Were Eternal and Gigantic is a new chapbook available from Magic Helicopter Press. I designed that fierce cover, but the fierce words inside it are really where you'll get your money's worth. At $5, you can't afford not to buy it.

"THERE ARE 1,618 POETS"

There are 56 "a" Poets

There are 141 "b" Poets

There are 109 "c" Poets

There are 84 "d" Poets

There are 35 "e" Poets

There are 51 "f" Poets

There are 89 "g" Poets

There are 123 "h" Poets

There are 7 "i" Poets

There are 50 "j" Poets

There are 59 "k" Poets

There are 75 "l" Poets

There are 152 "m" Poets

There are 27 "n" Poets

There are 29 "o" Poets

There are 74 "p" Poets

There are 1 "q" Poets

There are 74 "r" Poets

There are 176 "s" Poets

There are 62 "t" Poets

There are 6 "u" Poets

There are 23 "v" Poets

There are 96 "w" Poets

There are 0 "x" Poets

There are 11 "y" Poets

There are 8 "z" Poets

I RESPOND TO SOME THINGS JIM BEHRLE SAYS

Jim Behrle posted something hella deeeeeep, yo!

"I admire the silent poets."

What the fuck is a silent poet?

"I wish I could be a graceful force in poems, driven only by the word."

Okay, Father Behrle.

"...other poets' grotesque whirlygig of nonsense."

As opposed to your grotesque whirlygig of nonsense?

"I have a huge amount of respect for poetry and it bums me out when people disrespect it..."

Jesus, really? Why?

"I still like setting up chairs for events--I always have."

That seems like an okay thing.

"Which is just a way of saying I do do some nice things maybe once in a while while no one is looking."

Wait, setting up chairs is a nice thing? I am confused.

"And why would you want to sleep with me, silly? I don't want to manipulate you."

I don't know. I am even more confused. The chair thing?

"Maybe I used to be too much of a drunken scenester, maybe I thought I could just be everyone's friend and the Poem would like push the moon out of the way."

And now are you a sober antagonizer / drunken blog apologizer? Mmmhmm. Like, push the moon out of the way. Sad face.

"Anyway, it's just poems and it's just art and we live in America, where no one cares about either."

At least you got that right.

Kristina Born's ONE HOUR OF TELEVISION is my new favorite book.

I picked up One Hour of Television at the HTMLGIANT table at AWP in Denver and tore through it once I got home. It's terrifying, and goddamn, Kristina Born can write. I think the book's scariness is derived from the fact that it is not magical. Sure, there are things happening in it that defy reality, but magic is outlawed. Concrete entities do zany shit. An unmanned aircraft changes dinner. Giggling school girls wire bombs. Julia Roberts does Erin Brockovich-y things while we watch someone watching Julia Roberts doing Erin Brockovich-y things.

Born stitches sentences together in exciting and frantic ways. This creates a perilous place for the reader, a very tenuous platform where you engage with the text at your own risk. This platform could come crashing down at any moment, though, and it frequently does.

Here's one of my favorite passages:

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency develops unmanned aerial vehicles for use by the military. In fact I am, right now, a UAV in your home. Pyu. Watch it, lady. I am sliding terrible things into your potatoes. If I don't alter the face of square meals who will. If I don't alter your face. See if, just for fun, you can maintain a perfect unchanging expression when you explode. You asked for this: to serve me and for me to serve you. Let's do our jobs in silence. I have never been steered or manned in any way.

You can order the book here (http://www.yearoftheliquidator.com/) and I highly recommend that you do.

"We are merely following the uneternal division that springs from the lust of the human race to whittle away the secret of death. Inner things or outer things, what are they but things and things!"

-from Martin Buber's I and Thou

FIRST REVIEW

bedsheets were obviously not clean, stains all over the chair.

inconsistent amenities: one of our chests had a fridge, one had a microwave, one had both, and my chest had neither.

my brain was not liquid, or it was not as liquid-y as i'd hoped.

my room is a giant hard-on with spikes.

wireless internet was mostly creepy stepdads trying to fuck me.

we tried to use a coupon and the front desk seemed annoyed. would not stay again.

SOME MISHEARD LYRICS FROM SEVERAL SONGS

that spaniard's fine, leave 'em

i've got a

i met a judge named chapstick

by the window

your butt hurts from all the

bus windows, lil jon, e for effort

o shaky ground! got mad beef with this blood.

that spaniard's fine

I TOUCH THE DEAD ALL DAY

Why the driving away, why
the threat level orange
oh fuck the explaining —
give me a reason not to
be suspicious, give me that
iPod. You don’t trust me
because I touch the dead
all day. I poke at them with
Ben Roethlisberger. And
I know that popular
anticonvulsant drugs raise
suicide risk. I know that the
move is “devastating” to
America’s space effort.
That Glutathione is The
Mother of All Antioxidants.
I did something that was called
“unsafe” by Car and Driver.
I will issue software updates
soon. I summoned quarterback
Ben Roethlisberger and I said,
“What took so long?” But what
will you do? Will you retreat
from your earlier position that this
Mediterranean-like diet may
lower dementia risk? More moving
and shaking, but why? You were
teary-eyed Monday as
you pleaded guilty.
You were the Green Lantern.

Apoetics.

apoetics.

after Charles Bernstein's A Poetics

I guess nothing is formless. It must be, or it can’t be. Either way, we can’t really dwell on it. We have to pursue, tabulate, lust for. We have bodily fluids and heartbreak to contextualize. Self-loathing to floss out of our teeth. Maximums and minimums to live between. Either we have an imperfect god to stutter wishes at, or we don’t. Maybe it’s that we eye conformity peripherally and run. Or rather, there is no conformity, there is no real status quo. Prove to me that something in this place is whole. Maybe when we dart away from the masses and consensus, it’s because these approximations of a fullness disgust us. Maybe fullness is unnatural. Maybe the untenable space between all of us is there for a reason. The void: that’s why people hate puns. Stop trying to make me “get” you. Jesus.

to be apoet.

You should have an in-depth understanding of “the state of things.” Like an advertiser, basically. Let’s at least consider adopting the messiahs as our own. All of them. Jesus, McDonald’s, whatever’s the most captivating at the moment should be revered. Miley Cyrus. Lady Gaga. Allah. Kobe Bryant. Jenna Jameson. At least to get a better idea of where things are going. Look around you, what are the trends? All of these things will help us play in this impossibility.

Fuck the birds and stop trying to say something! If you must, speak in buildings and Big Macs. Fuck the yonders and fuck the twilight, let’s hear the minimizing of windows, the digital representations of (ha ha) the stars! Yessir, reliance on people and things is unsustainable. Apoets know that one day, people will think of Anna Kournikova as just “that ghost,” then “one of those ghosts,” then they will forget. Then no one will remember anything. There will be no ghosts.

And forget the packaging. Don’t use it to package. If a package is already there, yeah. But what use is dumping all these things in small boxes? It’s a miracle we can communicate as it is. Plus, there are already too many packages. People won’t be surprised by what’s inside anyway. Have you ever walked into a bank during Christmas? There are packages under the tree, but we all know they’re empty.

Not blind navigation of ideology, but a pounding at its walls. A constant re-imagining of the public sphere, and a constant contention there. The use of newly unsettled modes of communication. Text me when you get there. Text changed by catastrophe. Use of cognitive dissonance instead of a scalpel. Just look at the holes in this city, these people. What is whole (again)?

Do not forgive the unforgivably ugly, but grant them a seat.

Those signs that have been scraped but still cling to walls? Apoets know that what stood as semantically sound will not always be so.

Assertion of anonymity. My name is Bryan Coffelt, and I am no one! Writers like agents — no — writers like agencies. Travel agencies. Facilitators, operators. Why the animosity towards algorithms and the machines we create? Why the need for organic thought? There is plenty of organic thought to scrape off the walls.

And yes, reverie is nice. But what does it do for us? How is the reverie sought in poetry different from masturbation? Is this “joy” just a symptom of laziness? The result of an uncritical mind?