December 13-19, 2004: Christopher Mulrooney and Haley Stokes

Christopher Mulrooney and Haley Stokes

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Bio (auto)

Christopher Mulrooney (Los Angeles, California) has had poems and translations appear in TIF, Underzone, Artvilla, The Pacific Review, Another Chicago Magazine, Sleeping Fish, Brutal Imagination, etc
He is the author of “Notebook and Sheaves“.

The following work is Copyright © 2004, and owned by Christopher Mulrooney and may not be distributed or reprinted in any form whatsoever without written permission from the author.

another way to look at it if you want to say champagne in one of those fluted little off-brands if you want to say Mrs Dithers in a track suit if you want to say buying time on the local cable company channel if you want to say the Tenderloin is strictly not served here if you want to say why not serve a lie and call it government supply if you want to say the recourse is simply not in evidence if you want to say well it did not matter anyway if you want to say it did not amount to anything less than this if you want to say nowhere was a town at all for comparison then you can say it’s a city the articulations the hound dogs gather in the moonlight the grassy knolls echoing with their pooch howls catches their paws in dew dab the portraitist stands back with a smock and pointed mustache and a wide pouffe hat parsec the milky white of her ceiling faces the char the speeding vehicles mandrel-bar the streets outside it’s her and only her

Literature Literature is the hot pink sweater hanging in the closet It lifts its arms and waves Carries itself out of the closet and settles on the bed Pink reflects black ink And smells like white The strategic sweater smoothes its wrinkles Preparing to meet Terry Wolverton for tea It will wrap itself snugly around her body Literature is thigh-high leather boots Pepper pulls them past her calves Wonders where the leather came from Maybe melodramatic cows of Olympia She invites one to live in her bedroom Dresses it in garters and stiletto heels Because tall cows produce strong leather They are as austere as dandelions “It’s part of being able to name something” It’s about the pink sweater gathering moths. Time is the Old Woman Time is the old woman driving a Cadillac She pokes along because the buffet is all-you-can-eat The Chuck-A-Rama serves lunch from eleven to four The billboards sell weight-loss and chocolate The buffet is not all-you-can-eat Rita eats at the Golden Corral every day Roast beef smells like neon lights Macaroni is a grisly orange Green beans sound rancid She slurps soup through broken teeth “I can’t help until you fill out this form.” The eternal freeway of impatience Stretches as straight as a sidewinder snake She drives sideways to watch the hills She will only see the tombstone-gray concrete Of the canary yellow city The blocks have been studiously randomized The sky scrapers sing to the airplanes As the old lady meanders Chewing on corn