Asylum Annual, 1995 - Greg Boyd is the editor and Greg did a masterful job compiling outstanding works of prose, poetry, essays and art. A reader will find over one hundred authors represented, all contributing works that could be termed "experimental." So, if you are into experimental writing, this book so worth it. Likewise, if you are not familiar with experimental writing but would like to check it out. Here's the beginning of ten of my particular favorites as a way of providing a glimpse:
GRAPHILLI by Norberto Luis Romero
They are very tiny animals no larger than a capital B, which live between the pages of books, feeding on their letters, symbols, and punctuation marks. Many foreign to the science of writing or printing confuse these innocent animals with the infamous "ink mushroom"; but the latter attacks specially-compounded pigments without discerning or reacting to phrases, sentences, or paragraphs; the mushrooms lack intelligence and will. Graphilii, contrarily, are selective in their tastes. They devour any type of pigment or printing ink, since their objective is the text and, more specifically, its quality.
SOLDIER'S HEART by Cynthia Hendershot
The soldier smiles, gives the goddess back her heart, waves as he boards the train. The goddess stands on the platform, her bloody heart clasped in her hands, her terrified eyes searching the soldier's face. He lowers his eyes. When he looks up again, she is gone. A single drop of blood stains the cement.
MANNEQUIN by Skip Rhudy
The ambulance attendants are having difficulties. They can't get me to lie flat on the stretcher, they can't get me to lower my arms or bring my legs together, they can't even get me to answer their confused, frantic questions. They try to balance me on the stretcher but that doesn't work - I keep rolling from one side to the other, tripping up or down like my body is going to fall on the floor - in the meantime, while the nonplused attendants are trying to figure out what to do, the policemen are pushing back a circle of gawkers. The people are craning their necks to get a good look, they're completely ignoring the policemen's useless orders - move along, there's nothing to look at here, go on about your business - because like all good onlookers who've seen or smelled blood, they're going to stay right where they are - in fact there is blood, it's spreading across the floor, it's even formed a good-sized puddle. Somebody has slipped on it and smeared it in a broad, crimson swipe. I know that when they get home they can take off the shoe and use it as evidence. They can show it to their wife or their husband or their lover or whoever - they can shake it at them and say see, this proves I'm not lying; here's that crazy mannequin's blood.
AUTUMN HIVE by Kenneth Pobo
Most of us are already dead. The rest can barely move. Don't let anyone tell you how memories comfort in cold months. Memories kill, ice slowly forming on our wings. Snapdragons. Sedum. Clover. Flowers and bees, always on the same luxury liner captained by Falling Temperatures.
A worker, I looked like everyone else, began my days with the others, ended them that way too. Who needs variety? We don't need color television - our lives come in colors, all the variety we need.
One of your poets asked, "Death, where is thy sting?" Our stingers turn to powder. Dark skies. A sudden freeze. These sting a whole population. A child takes us to show-and-tell. She holds a cemetery sixty eyes visit, sixty blossoms.
DANCERS by Jonathan Brannen
There is a forest inside my head populated by renegade creatures, lunatic escapees from the shadowlands of popular mythologies. There are dancing beneath an oversized moon, whirling frantically around what appears to be a bonfire glowering in an unlikely clearing which appears out of nowhere amid the gnarled and suggestive underbrush.
HELL by Peter Johnson
It's probably like the excitement of your first cigarette, but it lasts forever, that dizzying nausea - the Unknown: sulfuric clouds, infernal helpers scurrying around with imitation human heads on their buttocks, bats leaping from black books, dragon tails waving, money glands everywhere, hope dying slowly like a bad marriage, " I am nobody" the only conversation . . .
But then again the damned might be as recognizable and stupid as the living: men who use condoms twice, women who let them, the degenerate who molested Spiderman - everyone perpetually suing each other, holding hands in a circle whose rim clangs like a counterfeit coin.
But more likely it's the general humiliation of being dead, realizing your own personal Beelzebub might be the least weird guy you know.
CONFESSION #17 by Jordan Jones
I joined the Church that night Dawn took me home to sleep with her mothers. Actually, I should say that I founded the Church that night, for it had not existed before.
The Church is based on the simple idea that intense pleasure or pain brings one closer to the important essences: death and eternity - and to their crux, orgasm. For members of the Church nothing is forbidden, so long as it brings pleasure or pain; ecstasy or shame.
EATING TOMATOES LIKE APPLES by Kristy Nielsen
Through the window, she watches me. I have become a beautiful woman walking the alley in a white dress that clings in the heat. She calls out, invites me for tea, then watches my tiny steps on the fire escape. I push fragile white hair off my forehead. "Let's break all the rules," I whisper. "Let's eat tomatoes as if they were apples!" I widen my eyes, giggle lightly against the back of my hands. She turns her back and practices the gesture.
GRANDMA IN THE PASSENGER SEAT by Yiorgos Skambardonis
There months ago to the day, Grandma turned the color of weak coffee, then died outright.
She was so much of a grandmother, they didn't bother with an autopsy. Imagine: five minutes before she died outright, she called us all in and gave us each a parting handshake.
Yesterday the whole clan went up to the cemetery for the three-month memorial service.
LIVING IN CODE by Thomas Wiloch
"Propaganda affects the germ cells; the word influences the genitals," according to Gottfried Benn. Perhaps few writers have this intense a faith in their art, but we all have suspicions about the intended and unintended effects of our words. Words do have consequences, after all, much as that hurts to admit. Words may have, as Benn suggests, effects that are far more serious than has hererto been suspected. The sounds of our words, the rhythm and pulse and twists of our sentences, the cumulative repercussions of our speeches - these creations might trigger vibrations that expand outward forever, filling the sky in all directions.
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