Selected Poems

BLACK DOG SONG
Lisa Jarnot

BLACK ANIMALS
Aase Berg

TOPOGRAPHICA
Robyn Art

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ISSUE NUMBER FOUR

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ISSUE NUMBER SIX

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ISSUE NUMBER SEVEN

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ISSUE NUMBER EIGHT

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ISSUE NUMBER NINE

AMERICAN CINEMA

Fine. Let's go into psychotic territory
as a people, as a globe: all holding hands
and humming the theme to Pulp Fiction.
Let's entertain ourselves with those witty
dismemberments we've become so excellent
at implying, at portraying, at building suspense around.
And let's remember, as Americans, to take all those
pathetic sheep to whom we have the foreign rights with us:
no one else can hold a candle to our ability
to create the illusion of moment and meaning
where there is only a face and a curve
and the stark moment of terror:

the moment when it becomes increasingly clear
that nothing good is going to happen. When the little bad guy
rolls all his littleness into an extra evil bit of nastiness
that we've never seen before. We've never seen anything like this:
we’ve never seen such callousness so well acted before,
we’ve never seen assassins so perfectly cast against type,
we’ve never been treated to such delicious, digressive dialogue;
we’ve never been so startled by an act twist as when Travolta’s shot
and we’ve never seen anything like the “The Bonnie Situation” and the towels.

This, we say for a few years, is really fresh:
a fresh mix of domesticity and violence and cool.
The soundtrack gets played everywhere.
The disconcertingly funny Reservoir Dogs gets legs.
For years, development offices are flooded
with scripts that understand the new rules of editing:

you can’t go back,
it’s such bullshit to pretend anything else is reality,
we’re so far beyond convention and the self-imposed end of a scene

we know the violence is fake
we just want a ride
we want a guide for the ride

And, from now on, and for evermore,
Quentin Tarantino
--that little video store fuck Quentin Tarantino is Ezekiel.

Marc De Palo