Greg Boyd gathers dozens of experimental writing for this collection. Here a sampling:
THE CLOSING OF THE AMERICAN HEART by Jamie Granger
One of my two housemates moved out last week and I don't blame him. He says it's great to live alone because you can get up in the middle of the night and sit on your couch naked and watch cable TV and drink a bottle of beer. When he mentioned the siting naked I was sort of glad he'd moved after all. And of course there's the extra space where his TV was. But I believe him about the pleasure of living by oneself because increasingly all my friends are finding places of their own. If you can afford not to share your mayonnaise and look at other people's hair in the bottom of the tub, why do it?
CARD TRICK by Jon Forrest Glade
In the re-occurring dream,
Death comes wheeling out on a unicycle.
He performs a handstand,
then rides through a flaming hoop.
He stands in a blue spotlight
and takes a bow to tumultuous applause.
He throws back his hood,
reaches into his mouth and produces an egg.
He cracks the shell
and a dazed bat blinks in the light,
flies around the stage once or twice,
then disappears into the wings.
The crowd goes wild.
Death walks into the audience
and stops in front of me.
He rolls up his sleeves,
revealing nothing but bony wrists.
He tells me to pick a card.
Any card.
TONIGHT by Christopher Brookhouse
the way the wind
lifts the willow branches
reminds me
of wind ruffling
my father's hair
which is not to say
his hair was particularly long
or fine: only
he died
and sometimes
words bless us
THE LAST LEAF AND THE WISE OLD TREE by Thomas Wiloch
Once in the autumn there was a single leaf hanging from a tree. All of the other leaves had fallen to the ground and lay still and brown and curled.
"Why don't you fall?" The tree was old and wise and had seen many autumns of his time.
"I don't want to fall." said the leaf. "I ant to stay on my branch, I want to bask in the sun and dance in the wind. I want to go on being a leaf forever."
AN APPROPRIATE SONG by Matt Jasper
The hand that did not obey itself now holds a funeral and quietly buries me. I look through the hymnal. I must find an appropriate song but every page is blank. I notice a broken doll someone has thrown at my feet. I look again and see only dental remains, very much like my own. My hands slide along the pew towards an old woman who has followed the threads too far into ta coat that was meant for me.
THE FOREST by Benjamin Marcus
Someone in the forest is speaking to you. His hair streaks back in rows over his head. You cannot understand him, yet he continues. Pretend to listen, for other things are going on that you feel need your attention. Look away from this guy. What is he saying anyhow? Don't let him trap you in this conversation. Look away! loners ride past you on carousel animals.
Two little children pass you. Yes, you have ditched the man, and two children are dropping bread as they go past you. You say Hansel at them, Hansel! Gretel! at them, but the sound only limps around in your swollen mouth. They move on, leaving a wake of bread behind them.
You keep walking. On past the towering oaks you go. Something is burning, it comes to your nose, you can tell. There are elves, yes there are elves baking inside the trees. Disturb them. Go ahead, it's your right. Find them there inside the oak, and . . . find them there and slaughter them. Beat them to death and get on with it.
Last night you don't remember. You were dreaming you don't remember. You were digging. The soft earth was wedged in under your fingernails, and there were certain smells. Your hair had swung forward over your eyes, it was your first day out on the terrain and things were care-free. you dug like crazy. I wept at your enthusiasm. Someone set an extra place at the table just hoping maybe . . .
Something will happen in you in this forest if you wait long enough. Sit over there under the elm. under the elm there. Go into your satchel. Open up that satchel of yours and take out an apple. Rub it. Rub it against the elm until it is a core. Lick the bark now you fool you've wasted your apple.
Remember why you're here. Do you remember why you're here? You were sleeping you might not . . . You were digging like you had decided to, you were digging with just hands and hoping that the earth might yield and you'd be touching her soft skin once again, you'd be touching the soft skin of your dead sister; digging with just hands and hoping that the earth might yield and you' be touching her soft skin once again, you'd be touching the soft skin of your dead sister; digging, you'd be touching her skin and laughing happy. Remember.
HIGHWAY POEM AFTER MIRO by Judy Katz-Levine
tears of her blood red
pear face
dancing piano wires
flute bending
in ocean haze
small woman
leaps from copper
roof to virgin moon
a lot of masks
quiver like grass
in autumn at 5:00 p.m.
chipin whistles
shakes his
head of hair
endless
walking down the highway
strings of white angora
black pearls scatter
moonshine
plum hips
newborn hazel
eyes blink
in galactic rust
WALTER'S STOMACH by Lee Nelson
One day in December the headlines "Metal-Eating Man" appeared in a local newspaper. According to the article, a week after his wife's death, a retired post-office clerk named Walter had begun to eat small metal objects. He had started with his wife's possessions - hair-pins, house keys - then turn to "other stuff around the house,'" as he was quoted saying.
RANDOM PHRASES FROM A CRITICAL REVIEW PLUS A POET'S COMMENTS by Marine Robert Warden
demystify as we will
we can not hope to develop
satisfying models of literary
idealist hymns to a constitutive subject
if there is subjectivity
it can not be attributed to thoughts'
even the perspective
within a perspectivism must be open
now the temporal and modal aspects shift into what might be called adjectival or expressive register
one time I saw a friend of mine
whose hands had just be blown off
there is no elegant way to say "bloody stumps"
ABSURD, IDAHO by Stuart Friebert
maybe not be on your map, but it's there,
all right. So are tickets, heather and
tall grass of a somber sort where you can
develop strong lungs, call everybody a fool
at the top of your voice, and get some other things off your chest as well. Soon there's
no yourself there anymore, and some birds
listen in all seriousness to noting but
the fact of you. A wind comes along now,
takes your hat off, and your impulse is to
run after it till you recall there's no need
to be funny anymore. It's all you can stand.
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