Shopping Cart
    items

      ←

      May 10, 2021The Time Travel Tourism BureauChris Marchello

      I’m afraid the posters exaggerate—
      Yes, the Tethys Sea
      and outlying archipelagos
      of tender hellbeasts
      is an option
      for premium members,
      but consider:
      Thickets.
      You’ve seen mosquitoes,
      but have you ever ridden one?
      There’s a certain swamp,
      bubbling away at the end
      of the Jurassic,
      where the rhamporinchus dart,
      where the flowers have not yet
      evolved for the poets to sing of.
      Picture now the grove,
      humid, you and your
      Other, lost in the way
      you can never be
      here on the world,
      in this, the era of roses.
      Everything will be unknown again.
      inevitably, even language
      will fail.
      You will touch them,
      for all that has happened
      has not happened,
      perhaps never may.
      You will fall together,
      plummeting piano keys
      intruding on the guttural
      hiss of the circling
      pterosaur.
      You will watch it sail
      crisp and crimson—
      a whole shingle
      of a sunset,
      which you will be unable
      to recollect,
      but for the refamiliar
      twist of your lover’s fingers
      around yours.
      And when the night falls
      and the temptation rises,
      please do remember—
      every hour overtime
      is an extra twenty grand.
      After all, it’s not my fault
      it takes ten thousand
      plasma coils
      just to sustain an afternoon.

      from #71 - Spring 2021

      Chris Marchello

      “I am on the autism spectrum, specifically with an Asperger’s-type profile. My autism makes it stressful for me to socialize, so poetry and writing have always been ways to show people my inner life. I have a fascination with deep time and all things ancient, partly how the ancient is always present with us even if we don’t recognize it. These poems all attempt to bring the Mesozoic Era into the Anthropocene. My poetry is composed partly through stimming, which is repetitive behavior that autistic people engage in. When I hit on an idea, I feel a surge of energy, and a need to pace and flap my arms in order to work the idea out fully. For me, the act of writing is as much physical as it is mental.”

      →