The Literary Review
DISJECTA MEMBRA
The erector set we are hard-wired to conceive
Leaves something to desire.
Like anything good?
Which made us feel “disjected.”
It gathered our low self-esteem.
“It wasn’t anyone’s fault,” I said.
“It was somebody’s fault,” he replied.
The surrogate monkey mother fur post experiment
Was seen in the distance
Between nature and nurture,
Which each have their own shrines
And signs and justifications.
No waiting room. You had to wait on the porch.
Another shrink with whom not to be seen.
The invisible couple
Made love not war. And too much of it.
A startled stare from
The construction workers on lunch.
We were all trussed up. We were glowing, like radium.
Then there’s growing up:
The “I hate my husband” club, what
Was I supposed to do with THAT information?
It wasn’t rocket science,
But it wasn’t easy.
A feverish deluge of ticker tape.
But some people are never happy.
Every grasping moment where the stock
Market is a well-known meathead
Climbing the corporate ladder.
Bring me the amphitheater.
- Ian Ganassi
YOUR CHANGE, SIR
Bedazzled by gadgets, the TV was lucrative.
Or vice versa.
The spokesman repeated it from behind his briefcase.
The salesman seconded the motion with his gavel.
Freud said, America is a mistake.
But we have to live with our mistakes,
Like burning the bridges to heaven.
An empty figure gestured in the white room.
Urges and Demiurges keep us green.
And the leaves that are green turn to brown.
It wasn’t an emergency
But it was an urgency.
There were too many of them to count.
I think there’s something wrong with my health.
Sloppy copy gets you fired and doesn’t pay the rent.
Too many alternate prepositions.
“You need to do something that makes me look good,”
Said the art director. That’s the nitty gritty of it.
He was a “prince of a guy.”
But he ended up inheriting nothing.
A smell of urine
In the wrong place
At the wrong time.
His overcharged scintillation betrayed him,
And the remedy for a pink giraffe.
- Ian Ganassi
MISPLACED ENTHUSIASM
“Never do that again,” said Tonto.
The William Tell overture.
It had distressed surfaces.
I purchased it for my kitchen.
Importers of fine head cheese.
And studied Latin with the grand usher
Whose house fell to the tune.
Just wake up the demimonde,
Something will come of it.
A servant girl, a saucy sweetheart.
“Or a columbine. And it
Made her smile.” “But I usually let Pandora
Choose my music.” Is it postmodern?
Amusingly strange, comical, or clownish.
Deeming it some island
As was her “wont.”
And they din’t and they shoun’t and they couln’t.
It’s a waking nightmare out they-er.
Too many visiting hours for too much?
But a digital blind. My kidneys
Deceive me. Anyway, something is nibbling
At my conceit. I remember
That he didn’t like conceits,
In a conceited sort of way.
And he never picked up,
Which seemed par for his course.
I am neither a sailor, a cyclist, nor a golfer.
- Ian Ganassi
UNKNOWN OBSTRUCTION
Your fortitude
In the face of adversity
Outshines me.
Still and all,
It’s a long way to Tipperary.
Just put one foot in front
Of the other, as you would say.
Mental illness and failure keep one young.
Fail again, fail better.
Terrifying for some.
The edge of a sharp sword is dulled by a beautiful aspect.
And sometimes a little bit is all you need.
This all sounds like some sort of popular heresy.
But there needs to be some degree of equivalence.
“Tit for tat.” “Tit for what?”
What for tit? Without which nothing.
Who thought they were digging
To profound depths.
We’ll arrive eventually,
Maybe even in China.
It just needs one more stone, but I can’t find it.
And I’m talking about a wall, not a ring.
- Ian Ganassi
APPROXIMATE DEVIATION
A somber portcullis marched out
Under its own duress.
This I can do.
It was a long-rehearsed drama
Featuring goats and sheep
And artisanal cheese.
The piano player
Borrowed my nail clipper:
“Do you wash your hands after you pick your nose?”
He was clever, in a stupid sort of way.
The pure products of America
Are swinging from the rafters like velociraptors.
And he proved me right.
Wanna fight?
I tripped him up on the stairs.
He fell hard, but his optimism saw him through.
Also
People who can read
Minds and do all kinds of crap.
Like bending spoons
And your ear.
Send me a postcard, send it by mail.
Include catachresis,
And zeugmas.
I’m too busy zero-tasking
To pay attention.
Good idea for a mystery thriller
Type of thing.
Exactly.
- Ian Ganassi