Long Nose Pinocchio Bitch

No long-john sense of humor
is gonna long for this room.
Are water balloons good or evil? That’s what
Italian tai chi is asking you, boy,

in your sleeping bag with your Pulitzer Prize
attached at the grunt and push, stepped-
up nose like the biggest icicle you never
saw in the mirror, no matter how hard you rubbed.

The bitch rooster’s on TV until
the pink gorilla sprouts headfirst from
his pink rabbit jacket painted pricks and
the man’s face in its pirate mask

sees Pinocchio with his broken cucumber.
"Whoa," he says, but the earplugs keep
the lies pulled through and gagging.
That eyebrow’s definitely made of pine.

Freckles are sprayed all over and swept away.
That sad throat, that long perk
is a deep black e-mail nursing her
in Pinocchio’s actress hands.

Ringlets: extremely shallow.
A stale patriotism spirals up
long-distance to the conscious nose,
clawing like it missed what she’s made of.

Sally’s stomach was long and tall,
like a sharp soldier made of e-mail
or a blogging silver spear.
Close up [close-up]: a national valentine.

The thing about a hairstyle is it can catch on fire,
say Inspector Gepetto and General Melanie,
working hard at the zoo
for an iced coffee and Shelley’s alias.

That long-haired inseam’s my Barney dog,
reading horny lollypops with its nose like Winnie,
a starchild prostitute, a Scorpius pumpkin pie:
my arch-enemy Jimmy, my Pinocchio face.

[Stephanie's] [Kasey's]

I started over & over. Not this.

I couldn't resist this one, either:

In Midwinter, an Odd Thing Can Happen Halfway Through a McDonald Sandwich
Luis Cabalquinto

I am eating a sandwich at McDonald’s.
It is in a large empty patio, white space.
It is midwinter, and cold.
A sparrow flies in suddenly—
Hops about under the tables.
I throw a crumb which lands at his feet.
He sees the piece of bread, takes it.
He looks at me, blinks, and flies away.
The rest of my sandwich tastes like birdshit.

More from the Winter 1983 issue of Bridge:

The Pulse
Arthur Sze

A woman in a psychiatric ward
is hysterical; she has to get a letter
to God by tomorrow or

the world will end. Which root
of a chamisa grows and grows?
Which dies? An analysis of

the visual cortex of the brain
cofines your world-view even as you
try to enlarge it? I walk

down an arroyo lined with old tires
and broken glass, feel a pulse,
a rhythm in silence, a slow

blooming of leaves. I know
it is unlikely, but feel I could
find the bones of a whale

as easily as a tire iron.
I shut my eyes, green water flowing
in the acequia never returns.

The creepiest thing in this week's New Yorker isn't the article on Gertrude Stein that has Michael Magee all in a huff. It's the moment in the article on movie remake maven Roy Lee in which he's described has having been "self-conscious about his appearance" as a child ("another boy, in high school, would tug down the folds of his eyes and chant, 'I dropped a bomb on you!'")--as if being Asian American were like having an embarrassing elementary-school haircut.

California Tim now also comes with a dog.

Her name is Terra and we just picked her up from the Peninsula Humane Society. She's a 3-year-old yellow Lab. She was just spayed this morning so she's mostly been lying down between bouts of wandering around listlessly.

I've never had a pet in my house. My family did have a Rottweiler puppy during the year we lived in Taiwan but it was pretty much an outdoor dog and when it was inside we were terrified of it, probably because the dog we had in our house back home was a porcelain Dalmatian (think Wheel of Fortune). It's strange having an animal--another living thing--inside the house all the time, being semi-alone but never quite.

She's doing everything she can to allay my fears, though, by being about the sweetest creature imaginable (albeit with one of the saddest faces I've ever seen).

She is phenomenal at catching tennis balls.

Cynic Tim comes with googly eyes that swirl around but always revert to a rolled-up position, as well as a clipboard, a sharp pencil tucked behind his ear, and a copy of the New York Times he is stuffing into a trash can.

From the Winter 1983 literary issue of Bridge:

Two Voices for Li Shang-yin
John Yau

First Voice
Tonight, I would rather stay up than dream,
For I can no longer bear to meet you
In the only room we share.
And yet, I do not want to share
Myself with anyone but you,
Who left me imprisoned in a dream.

Second Voice
Your perfume still floats through the house.
If only you had been a ghost and kept your name.
If only you had been like the leaves
And drifted quickly past my house.
To the children I am an old and foolish man,
I talk to the shadows gliding through my house.

Josh, I say stick with the title. It's mathy with a cryptic air. Descriptive. Whirls and nectarines are so 1913.

Gasp! Ron Silliman has exposed me for the heartless cynic that I am!

Stanzas Beginning with Some Lines of Rumsfeld

People study things all the time that don't lead to things

and it is not pursuing
us down the back-
alley procedure—an
elevated
state of why

and it is not developing
horns, tumors, or other
old-growth failings
in the results drawn
from a scoured trailer

it is not building
white cities in the
civilized silt, ran-
sacked and hard
against blistered skin

it is not manufacturing
the closed-up case
of sugar water, its
fizzy lust
for the tongue

and it’s not deploying
freedom across a
flooding plain, one
stop-dike finger,
one scrabbling hand

and it is not using
what it knows of us
for pleasure—only
caring what
can be made of it

Hello, Colet foot fetish.

Jim, you are an interesting newcomer. (#21.)

It also appears that Kasey and I deserve some of the credit.

I'm getting away from myself.

Walking by a bookstore this morning I see a book in the window: Tim in Danger.

Then driving around campus seeing paper plates with "TIM [heart] MOLLY" scrawled on them in crayon, with arrows pointing the way.

And don't forget to look in a store near you for Darth Kasey.

I am your flarfer.

Suburban Chicagoland Tim would have aviator-frame glasses and carry a copy of the Penguin edition of the complete poems of John Keats, with the impressionistic cover showing a lounging shepherd facing outward at all times.

Look for Urban Chicagoland Tim coming in Fall 2003.

I'd have to come in several models. Boston Tim would have to have the Tealuxe thermos (cream Earl Grey) strapped to his belt because he'd have a Pinocchio's spinach slice in one hand and Tommy's garlic bread in the other.

California Tim would have a cell phone and rollerblades and a backpack shaped like a beetle.

Both come standard with nondescript composition book filled with nonsensical verse.

Another problem. We were recently actually looking for an action figure that might vaguely resemble me (long story) and it turns out there's really only one.

I was hoping my action figure would have something a little more glamorous, like a lightsaber. Like those old Luke Skywalker ones where the lightsaber was actually implanted in Luke's arm and you moved a little tab up this groove on the underside of his arm and the piece of orange plastic would gradually emerge from his outstreched hand.

Hmm.

Actually if I had an accessory it would probably be a sad duck.

Everyone in motion--Stephanie from one Oakland to another, David leaving (sorry) Las Vegas, me (soon) to be departing these shores for what we natives like to call "the Chicagoland area." Only blogs endure.