Fakes: An Anthology of Pseudo-Interviews, Faux-Lectures, Quasi-Letters, Found Texts, and Other Fraudulent Artifacts
Page 16
Delia Moon had it all: riches, glamour, wit and erudition. But suddenly her Park Avenue world came crashing down around her ears. I bet you never read a book like this before! It’s about the horrible pain and turmoil of being rich and white. The Moon family has a shitload of dramatic tragedies and problems. I think there’s some incest in there. That makes the title ironic! Kirkus Reviews is going to eat this shit up.
THE ENORMOUS SWAN
M. A. McCORQUEDALE
Set against the colorful backdrop of some historical period nobody gives a rat’s ass about, The Enormous Swan tells the story of a humble craftsman who comes into contact with an emperor or some shit. To tell you the truth I didn’t make it past page 10 or so. It’s one of those books where the author spent half his life in a library looking up facts about medieval culinary techniques and galley slaves and shit, and now he thinks we’re supposed to care.
EAT THE LOTUS
MARIE OVERSTREET
I swear to God I’m going to cut my own throat. I just don’t give a shit. Husband and wife reach a crossroads in their relationship against the colorful backdrop of blah blah blah. They’re haunted by the suicide of their only son or some shit. Pull yourself together, you pussies! God I’m sick of this shit. I’d rather work at fucking McDonald’s, I swear to God. You know what? It’s not even about my career goals anymore. “Come on, Annie, this job will be good experience. You’ll make lots of contacts. I want to read your novel, Annie. When am I going to see this novel of yours, Annie?” You can bite my ass, you creepy old fuck. One day you’re going to get what’s coming to you.
22
Robin Hemley
To: Poetry Association of the Western Suburbs Listserve
From: Lisa Drago-Harse
Subject: Next Meeting
Date: July 17th
Hi all,
I wanted to confirm that our next meeting will be held in the Sir Francis Drake Room at the Bensonville Hampton Inn on August 3rd. Minutes from our last meeting and an agenda for the next meeting will follow shortly.
Peace and Poetry,
Lisa Drago-Harse
Secretary/PAWS
To: Poetry Association of the Western Suburbs Listserve
From: Michael Stroud
Re: Re: Next Meeting
Date: July 17th
Dearest Lisa,
First of all, I LOVE your mole and don’t find it unsightly in the least! There is absolutely no reason for you to be ashamed of it (though it might be a good idea to have it checked out). But please don’t remove it! Heaven forbid, my darling! As I recall, I gave you considerable pleasure when I sucked and licked it like a nipple. A nipple it is in size and shape, if not placement. That no one else knows your mole’s position on your body (other than your benighted husband, poor limp Richard, that Son(net) of a Bitch as you call him) is more the pity (if Marvell had known such a mole, he undoubtedly would have added an extra stanza to his poem). But my coy mistress is not SO terribly coy as all that, if I remember correctly (and how could I forget!). You were not at all what I had expected in bed – not that I had any expectations at all. When you started massaging my crotch with your foot underneath the table in the Sir Francis Drake Room, I was at first shocked. For a moment, I thought perhaps the unseen massager was none other than our esteemed president, the redoubtable Darcy McFee (makeup and wardrobe courtesy of Yoda). Is that terrible of me? I have nothing personal against her, really, except for her execrable taste in poetry, and the fact that you should be president, not she. And her breath. And that habit of pulling her nose when she speaks and that absolutely horrific expression of hers, Twee. As in, “I find his poetry just so twee.” What does twee mean and why does she keep inflicting it upon us! So imagine my horror when I felt this foot in my crotch and I stared across the table at the two of you – she twitching like a slug that’s had salt poured on it and you immobile except for your Mont Blanc pen taking down the minutes. Ah, to think that the taking down of minutes could be such an erotic activity, but in your capable hands, it is. To think that mere hours later, it would be my Mont Blanc you’d grasp so firmly, guiding me into the lyrical book of your body. But initially, I thought the worst, that it was Darcy, not you. My only consolation was the idea that at least I had her on a sexual harassment suit, her being my boss after all at Roosevelt. Another reason I thought it was her and not you was because I know you’re married and she isn’t and I knew that Richard is a member of our esteemed organization, too (and he was in the room, seated beside you no less!). It was only that sly smile in your eyes that tipped me off. I, too, love the danger that illicit public sex brings, as long as it’s kept under the table, so to speak. And yes, maybe someday we can make love on that very same table in the Sir Francis Drake Room, my darling. But I must ask you, sweetheart, where did you learn that amazing trick? I have seen people wiggle their ears before, but never that! What amazing talent and such a pity that this is not something you bring out at parties or poetry readings to awe the dumb masses! Would Darcy find that too twee? I think not! Thinking of you now makes me so hot. I want to nibble you. I want to live in your panties. I want to write a series of odes to you equal in number to every lucky taste bud on my tongue, every nerve ending (no, not endings but beginnings!) on my body that live in rapture of your every pore. No, not poor, but rich. I am rich. I make metaphors of your muscles, of your thighs, of the fecund wetness bursting with your being and effulgence. I must swallow now. I must breathe. I must take my leave, my darling, and go now to relieve myself of my private thoughts of you and you alone.
With undying love and erotic daydreams,
Mikey
P.S. Do you think you could get away for an evening next week? Could you be called away from Richard for an emergency meeting of the Public Relations Committee?
To: PAWS Listserve
From: Darcy McFee
Re: Re: Re: Next Meeting
Date: July 17th
I am traveling now and will not be answering e-mails until I return on July 21st.
Thanks!
Darcy
To: PAWS Listserve
From: Sam Fulgram, Jr.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Next Meeting
Date: July 17th
Whoa boy! Do you realize you just sent out your love note to the entire Poetry Association of the Western Suburbs listserve?
Cheers,
Sam
P.S. – That mole? You’ve got my imagination running wild. As long as the entire organization knows about it now, would you mind divulging its location? I’d sleep better at night knowing it.
To: PAWS Listserve
From: Betsy Midchester
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Next Meeting
Date: July 17th
Hi all,
Well! That last message from “Mikey” Stroud certainly made my day. I thought at first the message was addressed to me. As I had no memory of placing my foot in Mike’s crotch, I naturally assumed that I needed an adjustment of my medication so that I wouldn’t forget such episodes in the future. Now I see it’s simply Michael (“Down Boy”) Stroud and our esteemed Secretary of the Galloping Mont Blaaaaanc who need the medication adjustments. Thanks, in any case, for a much needed lift in an otherwise humdrum day.
Betsy Midchester
Treasurer/PAWS
To: PAWS Listserve
From: Lisa Drago-Harse
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Next Meeting
Date: July 17th
This is a nightmare. I’m not quite sure what to say except that life is unpredictable and often irreversible. While I do not wish to go into details or make excuses for the above e-mail from Michael Stroud, I would like to clarify one thing: that was not my foot in your crotch Michael. But your belief that it was my foot in your crotch explains a few things concerning your subsequent behavior towards me that were up until this moment a mystery.
LDH
To: PAWS Listserve
From: Michael Stroud
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re
: Re: Next Meeting
Date: July 17th
I’m
To: PAWS Listserve
From: Michael Stroud
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Next Meeting
Date: July 17th
I hit the send button by mistake before I was ready. This isn’t my day, to say the least! I’m sorry!!!! I’d like to apologize to the entire PAWS community, and also to Lisa’s husband Richard and to Darcy. And to you, Lisa. I don’t mean to make excuses for myself, but I would like to say that I’ve been under a tremendous amount of pressure of late, at school, at home, and I am nothing if not vulnerable and flawed. All I can say is that in poetry I find some solace for the petty actions of others and the sometimes monstrous actions of which I’m all too capable. As déclassé as Truth and Beauty are these days, it is in such expressions as those of Matthew Arnold, Keats, Byron, and Shelley to whom I look for my meager draught of the Divine. And sometimes, I must admit, I seek in the affection of my fellow poetry lovers, the divinity which I myself lack. I ask you all to blame me, not Lisa for what has happened.
But if not your foot, Lisa, then whose?
Michael Stroud
To: PAWS Listserve
From: Greg Rudolfsky
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: RESPECT
Date: July 17th
Just a little bit, Just a little bit.
Sock it to me, sock it to me, sock it to me, sock it to me, sock it to me, sock it to me, sock it to me, sock it to me, RESPECT, Just a little bit, just a little bit. . . .
To: PAWS Listserve
From: Samantha M. Poulsen, RN
Subject: Fecund Poets
Date: July 17th
I do not care whose foot is in whose crotch, but I think it’s insulting and idiotic that so-called educated people would use such phrases as, “the fecund wetness bursting with your being and effulgence.” And officers of the PAWS at that!
To: PAWS Listserve
From: Richard Harse
Re: Fecund Poets
Date: July 17th
I would like to tender my resignation in the Poets of the Western Suburbs, as I will be tendering my resignation in several other areas of my life. I only belonged to PAWS in any case because of my wife’s interest in poetry. I wanted to share her interests, but clearly not all of them.
To: PAWS Listserve
From: Darcy McFee
Re: Fecund Poets
Date: July 22nd
Well, it seems that our little organization has been busy in my absence. I have over 300 new messages in my e-mail account, all, it seems from my fellow poetry lovers! I haven’t yet had a chance to read your exchanges, but I will soon. In the meantime, I wanted to convey some exciting news. This weekend, while attending a workshop at Wright State in Dayton, I ran into the former Poet Laureate, Billy Collins, who has agreed to be our special guest at our annual Poetry Bash in Oak Park. He said he’s heard quite a lot about our organization in recent days and that our board had achieved near legendary status in the poetry community. I knew this would make you as proud as it makes me.
To: PAWS Listerve
From: Darcy McFee
Subject: Twee
Date: July 24th
So this is how it is. Upon reading the 300 e-mails that collected in my inbox over the weekend, my mind is a riot of emotions. I have not slept for nearly 48 hours. Never before have I been so insulted. Yet, I also know that I am, at least in part, to blame. Had I not stuck my foot in Michael Stroud’s crotch, none of this would have happened. Twitching like a slug that’s had salt poured on it? That hurts, Michael. It really does. I didn’t realize you were so shallow. But in reading your collective e-mails, I see that at least half our membership has a decidedly sadistic bent. In any case, it was not your crotch, I aimed for, Michael, but the crotch of our Vice-President, Amir Bathshiri, with whom I have long been intimately acquainted, both of us having lost our spouses several years ago. If the seating arrangements in the Sir Francis Drake Room were any less cramped, none of these misunderstandings would have occurred. Of course, I never would have tried to fondle you, Michael. In the first place, you are the most boring, tedious person I have met in my life, and believe me, as Chair of the English Dept. at Roosevelt, I have met my share of boring, tedious people. You recite poetry with all the grace of a highway sign that cautions one to beware of falling rocks. But enough! I know that it is my errant foot to blame. Amir and I have talked this over and have decided to withdraw from PAWS as well as from academia. Early retirement calls, Michael and Lisa, and I will give neither of you a thought as I walk along the beach hand in hand with Amir in the months and years to come, listening to the mermaids singing each to each.
Yes, Michael, I find you and your crotch and your paramour the very essence of Twee.
To: PAWS Listserve
From: Betsy Midchester/Treasurer
Subject: New Elections
Date: July 30th
Please note that the agenda for our next meeting has changed. We will spend most of the meeting on new elections to be held for the positions of President, Vice-President and Secretary of our organization. Note, too, that we will no longer be meeting in the Sir Francis Drake Room of the Bensonville Hampton Inn. Instead, we will be meeting in the cafeteria of Enchanted Gardens Residence for Seniors in Glen Ellyn. The change in venue was planned well in advance of recent events, so members should not read anything into this (though if any organization’s members are skilled at reading between the lines, it should be ours). Please think about whom you would like to nominate for these important positions in our organization. And in the meantime, please remember to always be conscious and considerate of your audience.
Peace and poetry,
Betsy Midchester
Treasurer and Acting President/PAWS
23
#SXSW hath begunne. Felawshipe is wrot amongst many fyne hypster pilgrimes. The pathwayes overflowe with dangley baddges.
As the evenning aproacheth, hypsters hath desended upon our towne, drinnking our wyne as unikornes feast upon rayes of the sonne.
O that marche daye wan the sonne shone so bryte, vishones of glorye from hypsters’ mirrored sonneglasses stabbeth at myne fase.
Crulle lokkes shoote fromme the eyes of thyne bartender. Typ welle, mashine minion. Else you shall earn a boote in youre arse.
The prys paide by a lustye bacheler is this: hypster femayles groupe like flockes of paynted chikennes. Cocques are foresaken. #sadcocques
Flocke of hypsters mightily roarred past my hoarse-carte, stampeedding olde menne offreing free memorees on stix.
Hoarse-carte dryvers watcheth mappyng devises, forsayking welffayre of inosents. Dangere hydes betwixt all lyte polles.
A nobil armye of gentil knyghts appeare to vommit in thyne alley. Alas, they forsayke cleen chin stubbel to partee forthwith. #boot&ralleye
Wat ho, goatee’d man? Thy skinnee jenes hath byrn’d my corneyas.
Fye the dregs who weareth blootooth sets upon theyr heds. Do you speeketh to me or to demones wither sleepe tween your eares?
24
Iconographic Conventions of
Pre- and Early Renaissance:
Italian Representations of the
Flagellation of Christ
Rachel B. Glaser
THE NEW TESTAMENT offers no specific description of the flagellation of Jesus Christ and very little of the rest of the Passion: Jesus’s criminal indictment, subsequent suffering, and execution. Yet this series of events received massive artistic attention in the Middle Ages and Early Renaissance, depicted thousands of times with a certain consistency of imagery. Biblical flagellation scenes in painting and sculpture from 1300 A.D. to 1525 A.D. exhibit unmistakable iconographic repetition. Given the lack of source material from which to draw, artists of these centuries heavily borrowed from their peers and predecessors.
Historical coverage of the Passion is slim. No direct description of the event exists in the Synoptic Gospels and only one smal
l segment is devoted to it in the Gospel of John. No one reads this segment lost within John. In this significant historical void, great artistic liberties could initially be taken as interest in the subject expanded. Someone once decided, for example, that Jesus had been bound to a column, and this achieved a thematic resonance with the audiences of the time, encouraging artists to repeat it. Someone decided Christ was slender, his hair framing his long face. Long like a horse and long like unhappy. Thereafter, artists followed formats proven to convey the message successfully, deviating rarely and then only slightly. It was established early on how the flagellation was to appear and no monumental compositional alterations occurred for hundreds of years.
The Latin word for whip, flagellum is also a long, slender projection from the cell body, only visible with a powerful microscope. Its function is to propel a unicellular or small multicellular organism by beating with whiplike motion. In larger animals, flagella are often arranged en masse at the surface of a stationary cell and serve to move fluids along mucous membranes, such as the lining of the trachea. Flagella increase or decrease their rotational speed relative to the strength of the proton-motive force.
This common practice of formal imitation and borrowing is unremarkable, but as the accumulation of passion-related imagery accelerates through this time period, visual history achieves legitimacy. Passion (from the Latin patior, meaning to suffer or to endure) is an emotion of intense, compelling enthusiasm for a person, object, activity or idea. The Passion quotient is used in Thomas Friedman’s formula of CQ + PQ > IQ. Curiosity plus passion is greater than intelligence.
Historical coverage is slim. No description exists. Christ was slender; his hair casually framing his long face. Long like a horse’s and unhappy. Long like a bluesman playing his blues. Like a mostly empty ketchup, a basset hound looking low with eyelids lower. His chest had some or none hairs. A beard over his cheeks because that was the style back then; only warriors shaved their beards, and that was to show how sharp their swords were. That was for fun. Also it was custom for a cuckold to have a warrior shave his beard, publicly showing his marriage as flawed, an invitation to flaw it further.