George Anderson
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Sometimes Suicidal by Aimee DeLong
Sometimes a suicidal person fixes her hair. Sometimes she looks in the mirror to smooth it. Sometimes she goes four days without washing it.
Last Night at Southport by Justin Hyde
tell her i'm a butterfly
with sixteen wings
beating in
succinct
anarchy.Categorical Imperatives by Maurice Oliver
Try to imagine a small room where the only/ furniture is a TV. The TV has a hundred/ channels and two sets of memories.
1. A canoe full of moose meat
2. Beerwigs
3. The Great Vodka Massacre
4. The Bootlegger & the Professor
5. Puke-O-GramVisual Art by Claudio Parentela
Popular Culture
I have never read Tolkien
Harry Potter The Da Vinci Code
Homes & Garden Women’s DayI’ve never ordered
Gnocchi
Broccoli
or GuacamoleI have never owned a mobile phone
Never owned a 4 WD
Never traded on the stock market
Never owned an investment property
Never hired a spin doctor or a personal trainerI’ve never watched Dances with the Stars
Never watched Big Brother
Never followed football or basketball?
Never played Gameboy or NintendoI have never voted
I have never drunk Coke
I’ve never had an enema
never had a colonoscopy
never had plastic surgery
I’ve never attended church
Never been excommunicated
Never been exorcised
Never did pilates
Never watched the Titantic
Never taken ice
I’ve only wore a bra once
And that was in a dreamI’ve never tried to understand poststructuralism
Foucault
Post menopausal women
BeerwigsI examine again the list
of possible titles for short stories
written 8 years earlier & recently
found haphazardly
in a cook book in Vancouver:1. A canoe full of moose meat
2. Beerwigs
3. The Great Vodka Massacre
4. The Bootlegger & the Professor
5. Puke-O-GramI decide to write a piece about beerwigs-
it has an unusual & perhaps catchy titleI have no idea how the poem will be constructed
how I will be able to infuse it with muscular imaginative language/
layered meaningsIn the morning I awake as usual at 6- a Google
search identifies 10,500 beerwig entries in .26 secondsOne important site provides a variety of beerwig definitions:
beerwig (noun) 1 the thinkers and drunkards of the halfling
race. They talk very quickly often clip or invent new words. They often lapse into random association, known as ‘Chutter’ thus making their speech unintelligible. 2 similar in appearance to the wormwood. It was often placed in alcoholic mixtures by the beat writers of the 1950s in order to evoke wild and frenzied dancing or love making. (verb) 1 Is thought to be an ancient ritual performed by the Micmac First Nation of Nova Scotia in which a colourful wig is put on the scalp of a drunken person who has blacked out through the over consumption of alcohol: ‘He was beerwiged for his stupid behaviour’.the poem which follows attempts to synthesise the use of the
various mediums alluded to above:"The Beerwig"
He glanced up uninebriated from his glass
& a stream of words
fluttered from his halfling orifice
like the random flight of incorrigible angels:‘The density of wooden porridge
the impossibility of writing blankly
the stud bucket seeping of stars
ripped upwards it all takes much hommosafter swimming with glittering denial
the polysyllabic poet floats in the woods
glued to the twig, red cordial diving endlessly in space
it takes much green cheese and sunburnt nosesalone he sat, his insides clashing clouds
playing on-line air hockey
opaque nothingness whispering half-time
buzzing oodles of constipated duck’This is what it sounds like
When beerwigs fly
Just Another Fan Email
A
What first attracted me to your poetry
Was the fact that we shared the same nameBut after close scrutiny- I don’t really like your work
It appears to be driven by egoWithout due reverence to the masters
Nor semblance to traditional rhythmsIn fact, your line spacings are illogical
& everything you write is actually in proseFurthermore, you seem obsessed with profanity
And sex and death and drugs and madness
By the way- when is your next chap book released?B
Dear ReaderWhy do you keep explaining my work to me?
Why do you insist on attending all my readings?
Why do you always show up at my poetry clinics?
Why do you keep sending me your angst drivelling rhymes
expecting feedback?Why aren’t you the same sick fuck who pointed a gun to my head
Who said he was gonna blow it off in retribution-
In retribution to all the poems I had not yet writtenNOW FUCK OFF & LEAVE ME ALONE!
Biography:
George Anderson was born in Montreal and presently lives in Wollongong, Australia. He has published widely in mainstream and alternative magazines in many countries over the last five years. He edits the student poetry journal Ephemeral. These poems are a self reflexive attempt to demystify the repositioning of the relationship between the writer and reader as seen in Calvino’s If on a winter’s night a traveller. ‘Beerwigs’ is part of a 4 page poem called ‘Identity Theft’.
