Taking up Stephany’s challenge:
In this condition: stirred by the twain into a soupçon of solicitude; by pinching pennies and damning dollars; by sending purty li’l packages for a pittance; by denying lucre and limning love; by considering clauses to clear in two months and deposits and Type A tyros; by maintaining a half-true smile and sending a courteous note when they offer declarations that seal a sunny door shut; by pounding on these doors and feeling the bruised impact of brick walls; by not giving up and planning pirouettes in one fell swoop, the dim light of a borderline fall from grace dappling upon my shoulders, the nutty Kenny Rogers sixties song in the back; by anything which upgrades current beta test into something rosy and spurting; by anything darn tootin’, notwithstanding the frigid fingers icing my warmth, fools unwielding muzzles and cashing blood in at the bank; saying no to anything that cuts down my soul, dodging rash motions of machetes, the jaws of crocodiles; saying no even when they hear yes, clearing the brine and chastity belt, keeping spry; anything warm and equal, any hinterland where no one gives a dam, allowing rivulets to burst and grand dreams to happen.
The Call by Yannick Murphy: The always interesting author of Here They Come and Signed, Mata Hari returns with a novel that whips up a worldview from a rather quirky set of limitations: namely, the call logs that a veterinarian maintains as his son is unexpectedly put into a coma and an unforgiving economy denies him work. What emerges is a surprisingly optimistic, often funny, and very moving account on how one family uses acceptance and forgiveness as a way to atone for hard knocks. (
Birds of Paradise by Diana Abu-Jaber: Forget Franzen and Eugenides. If you're looking for a social novel that counts, Diana Abu-Jaber is the author you're looking for. Building from the free-form exploration of consciousness and identity in Crescent and the gripping procedural structure of Origin, Abu-Jaber's latest novel is her finest, equally fluent with gutterpunk culture and smarmy real estate men. It has been suggested by The Washington Post's Ron Charles that you will likely gain some pounds while reading this novel. This is certainly true. Abu-Jaber's description of food is so precise that it often made me want to do more cooking. But I very much admired the way in which Abu-Jaber presents all her characters as unwitting victims of rough capitalism, which permits them some dignity even as they perform terrible acts.
The Last of the Live Nude Girls by Sheila McClear: This memoir isn't so much about the decline of the Times Square peepshow, as it is about one young woman's efforts to pull herself up by by her bootstraps when presented with few economic options. Filled with self-introspective candor and a quiet dignity, McClear's story is one that might befall any of us in these volatile times. While McClear does get back on her feet, her book leads one contemplating the terrible fates of other young women now moving to New York and falling into deadlier vocations. (
Men stand on street corners from Singapore to Baltimore with their pants around their knees asking questions without answers. The magnolia bush has spilled brown petals onto the ground and the branches of the willow tree sweep magnolia petals into piles day and night and day and night I absolutely hate your fucking guts and always have and always will you darling sweet angel for whom my purest love will never end. Some dark morning when the moon is in Brazil and Uranus is uninhabited, unbeknownst to either of us, I’m going to climb down your throat and eat your adenoids. Creepy crawly across Chianti teeth, small as a spider spore, I’ll play me a tune with a spoon on the silver fillings in your teeth, prop myself against your tongue and rape your snotty sinuses one by one, then slide down your windpipe, swing on slick vines through the smoke black jungle of your lungs, singing ape songs out your nose. And when you stir in your slumbers I’ll hop an artery to the bustling terminal of your brain, pick a bunch of purple dendrites to feed the starving synapses, take a leak behind a dying axon and dive headlong into the sweet stream of your consciousness to see what swims there, to watch when slimy seven-headed envy hidden in philodendron shadows springs at pity in a pink dress gathering fallen sparrows’ eggs, to be there when rage with its tongue cut out, waiting among dead mimosa blossoms tears at sorrow with steel claws walking weeping untouched and unmoved head down in her white gown, to float there myself on an inner tube with pink patches, playing a ukulele and singing merrily merrily merrily merrily, life is but a dream to show you I love you but in the meantime I never want to see your shitty face again and want you to know from the bottom of my soul that I wouldn’t puke on your head if your life depended on it and find it inconceivable that the God who fashioned tarantulas and toads could have made a creature so ugly and cold-blooded as you, sweet thing, shining jewel in the crown of creation, whose breath is lilacs whose love lights the world. Yours ever faithful, I remain, groveling at your dainty feet, licking the ground you contaminate, choking on the air you breathe, ever truly in love with you, me. Oh, and p.s., everything I’ve ever told you is a lie.
Eat your adenoids? Damn, Gerard, hook me up with those juju beans.
They’re from so long ago and so far away I doubt they even make ‘em anymore, but I’ll see what I can do. G.