New Michigan Press: A Conventional Weather, by John Pursley III

Such is the way of windows, of gravity and rock– conventional weather.
–John Pursley III, from A CONVENTIONAL WEATHER

A Conventional Weather, John Pursley III

A Conventional Weather, by John Pursley III, is  an exquisitely written collection of 19  portraits of people, places and experience, published by New Michigan Press.

Pursley writes flawlessly, with profound insight and emotional depth, of the conventional lives of conventional people in environments so compellingly drawn as to be both inseparable from, and nearly separate, characters themselves. The Ground Is Swollen & Black: the Air Not Moving at All is a portrait of Pursley‘s father fully wrought with love and pain; almost unbearable to read. The opening lines introduce his father:

Tonight, my father walks the narrow row of railroad ties, now delicate
As the dirt itself & crumbling, the way a mushroom will, when

It begins to dry & draws its moisture to the surface, like a protective skin

and our image of him is inseparable from the land the man is walking: railroad ties, dirt, dryness.

Body hack

Mongo, Mingo, Mungos

“Spacehog | Mungo City“

I tried to blend in with a car today

Waiting for it to be unlocked. According to Charles Darwin and natural selection, a few tens of thousands of years, and I might have made it. Well, not me, my descendants, maybe, but, anyway.

Achy

I am so achy

waiting for the world to come back to me

or for me to come back to the world

No one to tell these stories to

only others’ stories to tell

No way of telling where

or how

these things will always ever end up

excerpt from FOR ORTS
by Ander Monson

I think of sex & of Godzilla with the wake of detritus that trails behind
his fiery gaze—millions of extension cords, telephone line & fiber (think
cereal, think sincere & serial addictions; repeat) optic cable (so hot,
that Godzilla, that I can dial him up, that I can give into
his new sex games, that big-ass monster Yes). I am so tight
I cannot speak. This yes this rash of it this gush. Reply, then rinse.
Repeat. I think of cream & a monster foot set down on it & thus
it is in me. I am this print fossilized in Nivea. I wait to be filled in
with whatever comes next. I hope it looks like love.

Michael Jackson in happy-go-luckier times

He was easy to buy for

Homer

My first boyfriend
wore t-shirts all the time.
He had glasses, and
dimples when he smiled.

He was the first boy
I ever really
loved who
ever really loved
me.

I think he wears ties and stuff now.

Evolution of Jellyfish

Winstons

Once we got the hang of it, we
breathed circles around each other.

Skipped foreheads off
rocks, chewed
embers.

Jellyfish,
left to their own
devices, developed spines, got
religion, eschewed
risk

made Gods of sticks.

–Cami Park (me)

originally published in tinfoildresses