wunderkammer

JFK to ORD

by Meghan Austin

The interview went really well

except for the part when the guy questioned whether my degree was real.

The bio on the website says he’s writing a novel.

Some guy wrote a novel about a guy riding the NYC subway, while riding the subway.

LIRR to Jamaica to AirTrain to Terminal 5 to Boar’s Head sandwich station.

Queens has a lot of apartment complexes that look like really tall Smurf villages.

He must have a really good computer battery. Or publicist.

I would get carsick.

It takes way too long to download Keeping up with the Kardashians in New York.

Too many white people, on too many iPhones, downloading too many Kardashians. 

It takes half as long to download a Kardashian in Chicago.

And yet, the Kardashians are the same size.

If something doesn’t happen soon

these slacks will need dry cleaning.

No one believes my diagnosis that Kimberley has Autism. She would make a really hot  spokesmodel.

The ass of Asperger’s.

Carol and Mike Brady never had a biological child?

#stoned.

soon.

Too old to have a reliable pot dealer.

Someday soon, I will live in the same city as my girlfriend

Writers as Kids: The Edge of Something

by Melissa Walker

Pictured: Paula Gilovich

At the place where muck grows on the edge of the lake, the bullfrogs used to croak long low planks of sounds, where now a tadpole may swim by, fat body trailing legs like weak twigs in the water, at the edge of the algae smell is a memory you can never quite get to. A thousand million stars above you, the bikes you never brought, your mom’s best friend’s boyfriend in his trucker’s hat. A roadie, you heard. Your dad who knows where. Just the kids and the moms and the boyfriend. No dogs, no cats no dads. The three girls two boys, and only one pair of each really had anything to say to each other. The others nothing except to say, ketchup please. Or just a strong swift smack on the back of his head, the stun, the silence inside and the look on his face when he turned around. Saving it up, he was saving it up to spend some day in another store where it wouldn’t cost him so much. You caught ten thousand million tadpoles that year. Became brave enough to just catch them with your hands in the water, you reached for their soft slimy skin. It was hard to believe they wouldn’t last and someday they wouldn’t live at all. So you caught them but then there was nothing to do with them, just hold them in a jar, till you hear your mom or the best friend yelling each kid’s name in a list. Hot dogs for dinner. Then may as well let the tadpoles go. Nothing to do with them anyway.

Writers as Kids: Invisible You

Writing by J. A. Tyler

Pictured: John Heckman Wright

Visible me, tap tap dancing, a smile on my face face. Glasses on my face face. Dark glasses making of the world a balled shadow, a fist. Us going away, the drop. You. Because there is a leg gone missing and no one laughs. Where is the thing that we had, your face erased by my face, your head consumed by my thinking. My feet tap tap dancing. My angel smile. My choking up face with kid cheeks and the hair bowl-cut and my hands magic filled. Us and our two kinds of red, and I have already taken your limbs. No one laughing when you try to ask when do we start recording and your face is half gone and it is a picture and not a camcorder. There is no recording. Jump they say jump up and dance and I do, my feet tap tap dancing on this rug that is a mute, my neck a swan, your body disintegrating. Because you stood behind all the things I was thinking and now you are only a portion of jaw. You will be the one losing your face. And I will be tap tap tap-dancing like gravestone beautiful tones, the tangle of people disappearing, the playful bodies that overtake you, the disappearing act. Our invisible, only one leg left to tap tap dance on the bones of them who still exist. Hallelujah. They clever joke and split your clenched face. Hallelujah. No one is laughing. Put the table cloth over your face and sleep. Sleep. We will hear voices and they will be asking us questions. I have the answers. You can sleep. Sleep. Me tap tap dancing. My face face face. Your face gone. My feet feet tap tap dancing. The jump as they say jump, because I will be the one who flies away, I will be the one they say visible to, I am the one they are asking questions of. Dark dark and these glasses. My face face. Feet tap tap tap. They are not laughing, Hallelujah. They get it. Letting go of these invisible hands, so hard. This visible me.

Writers as Kids: [Over here son]

Writing by John Heckman Wright

Pictured: Justin Rands

Over here son.  Now smile.  But you never do.  Just that smirk that seems wiser than you are.  How much can you know already?

 

Someday you will wear a shirt like mine every day, then it won't be special like it is today.  Someday when your arms are long and your chest broad, you may not even fit in a shirt like this.  You have your mother's features, not mine. 

 

You want to wear the shirt now, you say "Dad can I put it on again?"  in your socked feet outside the bathroom in the morning.  So I let you put it on.  You wear it all day until your mother makes you come inside and put something else on.  She's worried that you'll stain all of my shirts.  I don't care. 

 

The shirts are not to be celebrated--they're uniforms we grown men wear as we drive to our jobs in the city and back to our homes in the suburbs.  We're all playing make believe, son.

 

My father fought in the War to End All Wars.  He killed eight men in the South Pacific.  He said "It isn't hard to kill somebody.  You just pull a trigger.  The hard thing is to live with it."  He never talked about the war more than that.  You never met him but he was a good man.  He didn't talk much, so I don't know all of his stories.  When I'm gone, will my ghost remember all the stories I should have told you?  Will there be anything in my life worth telling?

 

My old man risked his life in the War to End All Wars.  I work in an office park.

 

This is the world my father left me.  What world am I leaving you, son.  What will you be when it's time to wear a white shirt, just like all the other drones, out into the world we call "real."  Is there a world for you beyond office parks and war?

Writers as Kids: On Any Given Day

Writing by Jamie Gaughran-Perez

Pictured: Melissa Walker

Weak chin, strong nose.

Strong chin, weak nose.

Strong chin, strong nose.

Belly before and after.

Lips before and after.

Breasts before and after.

 

We go to school, and the prom. We get taller and an apartment or busy or more. There is a lot of buying involved. There is a lot of eating. What would Calvin say?

 

She’s looking forward and casts a shadow and it is all flat.

 

There is fading, but further fading halted by contemporary translation. We will find something has been lost. We will keep translating. We will find something that defies gravity. It is beautiful and it is captured and it is also flat.

 

She’ll wrap the memory in caul fat and fry it.

 

xoxo

Writers as Kids: [West Tallahassee Community College]

Writing by Sean Lovelace

Pictured: Amanda Marbais

West Tallahassee Community College                                                                                                             page 3

 

Instructor Fleck, PhD.  

Art 108 Midterm Exam

 22.) Define the term juxtaposition:

You throe one thing than another you end up with a third lose thing that is different that the first two things once the right time passes. Like when I make beer at the house.

23.) Define the term perspective.                                                                  

I remember I guess I was 12 and my first remington and it said the little book their to clan the gun that the gun was packed in shipping grease and oil clean it good before you go hunting I took it to my grandpa and I say grandpa how do I do this I don’t know much I am 12 to and he put his cigar down and took my remington and walked outside and shot it right up in the air I mean both barells loud and he handed it back to me and said Boy, that’s how you clean a damn shotgun.

 ·         Using the theoretical concepts and vocabulary we have discussed to this point, briefly comment on the four images below. Please be sure to address perspective, iconography, and juxtaposition.

24.) “Sunday B Morning” by Andy Warhol

 That is a can of tomato soup. I told you everybody I know eats ketchup sandwiches has that can of soup in their pantree and you said that’s the point exactly that was my favrite class Ok.

 25.) “Hard Teachings” by Sven Pheers .

 That there a picture a Hummer truck with one of them Jesus fishes on the back. That’s a nice truck. Good winch to.

 26.) “Monogram” by Robert Rauschenberg.

 A tire stick on a goat. I have seen goats do worst things. We own goats so I can answer this one easy. A goat always wants to go up higher. Our goats always stand on cars and one time we found one on the roof. It clumb up the truck onto the cab then jump onto the roof I guess. We could not get him down so grandpa shot it with a rifle. We cooked it hole in the ground like the Mexicans. That was first time I seen my grandpa fall. He fell after he shot the goat. It scared me OK.

 27.) “Sunday Girl” by Robert S. Fleck.

You did this photo? That is cool I didn’t even know you were a big artest. That is Britney Barnes if you want to know her names. I seen her in those same boots. We were all over there fooling around with her mom and drinking beer and Britney spent the whole time out on the front porch. She always stays out there waiting. Then her mom had enough and walked out there in her underwear (she looks awesome in her bra and panties I don’t care she is 30) and she said Britney! Let me tell you something. Your dad was a sons a bitch and he ain’t never coming back! And those ain’t even his boots. Not even near so.

That’s all I know on that photo I mean my perspctive. I am done.

Writers as Kids: Road Trip

Writing by Amanda Marbais

Pictured: Aden Lovelace, standing in for his dad, Sean Lovelace

Lucas and Jill had been set up but were unsure about the conversation they would have on the drive. Their date destination was a campground-cookout with mutual college friends. Jill had nothing else going on.  Lucas thought she was hot.  He picked her up at seven, and launched into the strained conversation typical of both new love and transgressive roadside meetings.  Jill tried to break the tension with the introduction of a new pack of Altoids.

They drove fast and she expected talk of cars, raucous beer bashes, and guns. Weren’t down-home men a little bad ass and sweet? She was sort of embarrassed she thought this.  Absently, she remembered her DVD of True Blood and her couch.   

An hour into the drive, she said, “Beards feel nice.” And she felt weird for saying it.  She was thinking of beards, down-home, pancakes, plaid blankets, and rugs by the fire. Perhaps the potential sexiness of wild—untamed wilderness was in her head.

Lucas touched his beard, but did not comment.  Instead, he said, “Do you like Fraggles?” The reference seemed to come out of nowhere, but still it put her at ease.

She leaned back, feeling a speed of eighty miles an hour in a Lynchian light.  She said “Mmmhhmm”, in a slow way, as if enjoying something like a Golden Delicious Apple.  Then she realized her sultriness and felt more awkward.  “Fraggles are great,” she said. 

He said nothing and the loud car suddenly seemed crowded and pinto-like, the road similar to a blue-screen in a B-movie.  She resisted their sexual tension and got lost in cheesy puffs, Grandma’s rocker and its ugly billow of boat-patterned upholstry, the way Nips-the-Dog barked in happiness when she carried Beggin’ Strips. She thought of Fraggles—and the innocuous nature of animals and puppets.  Their creepiness.  Their autonomy.  She struggled for something to preserve the conversation.  And, she stopped repeating the mantra—I will not be setup again.   

He asked her if she would drive.  She realized she had nothing else to say, and she settled into the murkiness of her Cincinnati-childhood and floated there thinking of leap years and her Mom’s delivery of her brother.  He offered her gum, turned on Sufjan Stevens, hummed and at times he pointed out the beauty of the highway drive.   

Writers as Kids: [Some haircuts]

Writing by Evelyn Hampton

Pictured: Erin Teegarden

Some haircuts are red rooms. You walk around them feeling heavy in your blood. You are in love and you are nobody. Nobody could love you because nobody knows you. Not even the red room knows that you are you. You lie down in the red room and the red room does nothing to have you.

Some haircuts are wolverine kits. They wake up next to you blinking. There are pine needles in them and places where you could sit by a fire. You know that one day they will be too terrible to sleep next to, but for now they are just the soft parts of the forest.

Some haircuts are animations. They ride on motorcycles and get run over. Even smashed on the road they lie like someone has painstakingly drawn them on a computer.

Some haircuts cling to hulls and rocks and bulwarks. They are curl-footed and sessile feeders. With their one eye they live within a calcareous shell and have no true heart.

Some haircuts are just haircuts. They shuffle around in the wind. Their hairs break off one by one, becoming lost in the city.

Some haircuts are a madness, a green scream. They shout, Euphoria and corpses!

Some haircuts are making money. Each has a brain that's racing. The brain's thoughts are like circuits being stamped by a machine. Each hair is connected to a circuit. Inside the brain the hairs are terribly tangled.

Some haircuts are people. They are a little nothing with sky in it, then a cloud, then sky again.

Writers as Kids: [haha yes ok]

Writing by Sam Pink

Pictured: Christopher Higgs

haha yes ok.  i have control over my life in small segments and in between i'm the same thing as a housefly leaving the deepest moon crater to come back home.  my dad yells at me after my soccer games because i am a failure and when i get home i pour the water in my water bottle onto some grass because the grass deserves it more than i do.  and haha yes ok.  yes ok i get braces put on my teeth and take them off and connect them from the tops of my eye sockets to the bottoms and pretty soon the socket holes will be pulled shut.  good god it's good to be a slow motion wincer in times when i take my first push out of the deepest moon crater to come back home.  yes ok haha how does it feel to be one of the nearly invisible hairs on your back when it gets drowned by my mouth.  i bet your tailbone has static at the end of it when this happens.  haha yes look at me i have the same haircut as the oldest child on HOME IMPROVEMENT and guess what, i hide a picture of myself in my shinguards good god it's good to be nearly invisible by now.  guess what while i was bagging groceries today i almost startled myself with laughter when i went to put a wine bottle in the cutomer's bag and had a nearly irreversible urge to assail the customers child with it.  i hear 'BOOM' in my head but haha yes ok guess what that is how i will live and getting through it isn't even a concern.  haha yep.   

Writers as Kids: Wishspells & Frequencies

Writing by Christopher Higgs

Pictured: Sam Pink

We seashell seaviolent images reach tiny tendrils to tranquilate tiny human tiny humanity finding humanity tiny and tranquil.  Such grotesquery in the seafoam of seadreams and seachanting. 

Little fucking humanities, little fucking fivefingerfivetoe monstrosities.  How urgent we need to come apocalypse.  How urent.  How urrrghent, these little whiteskinned organsacks need bludgeoning. 

Rumors elongate the livingspace, we seaviolent sandharpies exclamate: eyesockets and mouthsocket blackcavern like mossyside and hygiene the index of afterlife for indexing the mossyside. 

Repeat the masterplan, the Master’s plan, the plan to end humanity.  First by destroying sandcastles and popsicles and chocolatecookies and sunnydays and family outings and happyways and the most ultimate homosapienugliness: smiling!  smiling!  Smiling must go, must exit, must soon be eradicated. 

These happyfaced trolls lampooning their human disguises.  What mockery!  What vanity! What upstaging untranquil fasten down the latch of inscantity!  My heavens, my opening of the disheveled legions of terrorific balderdash and flamboyantdestructionry.

Eat fire, little human, eat fire!