SUPER ARROW

HOME/ABOUT/CURRENT ISSUE/ARCHIVE/MAKERS/SUBMISSIONS/BLOG

 

WHAT WILL HAPPEN///BASSETT

ONE NIGHT...///BASSETT

ON THE SURFACE///BYRNES

GORDON NOW///DENNIS

SUGAR///OGILVIE

[PARABLE...]///BATEMAN

CIRCA 193,000 B.C.///DAVID

GENERAL MOTORS...///ESTES

LIFE BEFORE RUGBY///G'SELL

I WISH I WAS...///G'SELL

BEGGAR...///HYLAND

A MAN-SHAPED GLOW...///HYLAND

DIRECT ADDRESS///KLAVER

A THE BEAUT///KLAVER

TWO POEMS///SOMERVILLE

MY PHANTOM STUFF///RAVEN

COME OVER...///ZAMMARELLI

CONVERSATION///COMMUNITY

 

[PARABLE OF THE RAIN ON THE LENSES] Micah Bateman

Parable of the rain on the lenses, pantomime of squinting, pantomime of you’re in a funhouse what the hell is this shit, pantomime of indying out with your black frame glasses world stirring all surrealist like, all milk and cereal O’s feeling real good on your way home from class ears plugged into just the right hipster tunes passing a cruiser in a Benzo that could be yours but silver, yours is the black car waiting on fifth in ten years after a 12-hour workout whippin tradez on 104 speaking brodude baseball stats at the water cooler coffee machine toweling up energy drink electrolytes on the mill after work, a line of C, man on man high fives in the shower then the Gucci suit for a scotch and sushi night out followed by a familiar stroll of brownstone, been there, brownstone with the gams, been there been there line of C, tricked out party, glamour, STDs.
*
Parable of the 2005 Chevy Equinox rolling sixty on a snowed over interstate, pantomime of dizzying eye, crashed up dimpling of aluminum in just the shape of a small bridge guardrail, cell phone in crisis mode on vibrate unbeknownst, third single-vehicle accident in the course of two overpasses with the kind of blacked out invisible ice Gramma warned you about, double sweatered from one too many semesters at college, slinging gut over the beltline, wallet a phantom itch absent too many ironed out ones from pushing plates at the diner chain everyone knew was in a “blighted area” but you, friend at Harvard Med, friend at Pricewaterhouse Coopers, muffler sparking fire down 44 past Tulsa through three tolls to OKC, rigged up with a hanger, then home for Christmas and back streaming filched internet video piracy on the laptop two months past the new year well into get a job territory, legal secretaries everywhere cackling maniacally  at your paltry words per minute, at your paltry unironic chili bowl haircut fifteen years past its due, at your warmed over meatloaf on the dustbag fourthhand sofa watching reruns, at your transcript full of alphabet, at your sheet white resume including interests and hobbies such as classical piano, Billy Joel singalongs, rabid antiquarianism, playing velociraptor in my blanket fort.
*
Parable of the transatlantic lover, pantomime of day in and then one small taco, day out and a hooded sweatshirt smoke break on the fire escape balcony, so sophisticated with your 1000-cals a day regimen of white candy aspirins and arms chock full of loose-leaf poetry by the likes of men you’ll later grow to hate, this many big words and only this many years old you make such a young Dylan Thomas, swapping IMs with the down the street brunette and her haremful of roomies, on the phone with your dad splitting hairs about scars, waxing nostalgic on homegrown tattoos of erstwhile mates’ initials, pantomime of evenings asleep until six then drinking at the yuppie vodka bar in the west end with the Bethesda roommate and your adorably un-en-vogue matching peacoats 25% off from the big box store scoffed at by the bouncer in his too tight faded black concert tee, end of autumn, snarky bartender insisting the next one’s on him cause you look like you’ve had a rough night, man, then the tricky maneuver of making out with the thirty-year-old married woman who boasts to the whole bar that her man makes six figures and you really don’t mean to you’re just waiting by the bathroom to throw up all the sugar that’s slugging through your brain but she’s there and it’s like you just fall on her, it’s really like that, then the penultimate pantomime of waving farewell don’t even picture the body, just the disembodied hand animated in the black of a shadowbox left beside the cardboard recycling dumpster, and maybe a postcard from your beloved iced up in her room all hours of the night subsisting on foodstuffs cooled by the windowsill melting away the winter’s accumulating fat, the formidable hours, the understandable Danish abjection and the ocean, the ocean that ruins everything.

 

*
Parable of the very fast bird in a rainstorm, pantomime of a tiny beak entry point shattering unto mosaic a large pane of glass by and by.  Pantomime of the glass is your eye the glass is your eye the glass is your eye the glass is is your eye the glass is


 

 

 

Note: The first section of "Parable..." owes its conception as well as the phrase "whippin tradez" to the entry "career decisions" from the blog goingpomo.blogspot.com.