Salman Rushdie
On Vlad Tepes III: "Dracula was much nastier than a vampire ever could have been."
On researching various sex manuals: "I'll share with you some research - and by research I mean...reading."
On his part with the band after writing a song for U2: "So I thought we could be called U2 + 1. I also suggested Me2, but..."
And the winner of the night: "Fiction arrives at a much different truth than journalism does. It is similar to the difference between a portrait and a photograph."
30 June, 2008
16 June, 2008
The Joy of Sex
Carrie Conners
i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite new a thing.
—e.e. cummings
Killing time before a party, I open
my friend’s copy of The Joy of Sex
while she showers and find an e.e.
cummings poem that my ex used
to get me into bed. Despite fights
and his wholesome northern accent
those words made me flush, like they
were unbuttoning my shirt. Maybe
it’s the scent of my friend’s tea
rose shower gel, but now it all
seems too sweet, artificial as latex.
Chalk it up to bitterness (it’s been
a while) but thumbing through
the sketched characters with their
unlimited flexibility, their ability
to live upside-down without risk
of oxygen deficiency, the expert
instructions of how to rub what
and where that read like a car
owner’s manual make me
wonder how I ever fell in love
with a poem especially when
Amanda’s husband stares at Fox
News for hours every night instead
of watching her body unfold
like an arched wave nearing the shore
and gym-obsessed Eileen has
forgotten what the body is for
and I haven’t been really kissed
by a man in years, making me feel
very young and very old all at once like
the first time at anything always does.
© DMQ Review Winter 2008
i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite new a thing.
—e.e. cummings
Killing time before a party, I open
my friend’s copy of The Joy of Sex
while she showers and find an e.e.
cummings poem that my ex used
to get me into bed. Despite fights
and his wholesome northern accent
those words made me flush, like they
were unbuttoning my shirt. Maybe
it’s the scent of my friend’s tea
rose shower gel, but now it all
seems too sweet, artificial as latex.
Chalk it up to bitterness (it’s been
a while) but thumbing through
the sketched characters with their
unlimited flexibility, their ability
to live upside-down without risk
of oxygen deficiency, the expert
instructions of how to rub what
and where that read like a car
owner’s manual make me
wonder how I ever fell in love
with a poem especially when
Amanda’s husband stares at Fox
News for hours every night instead
of watching her body unfold
like an arched wave nearing the shore
and gym-obsessed Eileen has
forgotten what the body is for
and I haven’t been really kissed
by a man in years, making me feel
very young and very old all at once like
the first time at anything always does.
© DMQ Review Winter 2008
10 June, 2008
Vilanelles in Her Pores
Kristen Holt
A skin that crawls with nouns
Words leaked from stranger's lips
Transfixed by toxic sounds
From petticoats to gowns
Thin wrists that couple hips
A skin that crawls with nouns
A hide that peels and browns
Revealing hidden scripts
Transfixed by toxic sounds
Wicked and doll surrounds
The curls of silken slips
A skin that crawls with nouns
A girl’s eyes meekness hounds
Which vanish, thick, encrypts
Transfixed by toxic sounds
In ink and silence drowns
The sounds of wrist and ships
A skin that crawls with nouns
Transfixed by toxic sounds
© Wicked Alice Spring 2008
A skin that crawls with nouns
Words leaked from stranger's lips
Transfixed by toxic sounds
From petticoats to gowns
Thin wrists that couple hips
A skin that crawls with nouns
A hide that peels and browns
Revealing hidden scripts
Transfixed by toxic sounds
Wicked and doll surrounds
The curls of silken slips
A skin that crawls with nouns
A girl’s eyes meekness hounds
Which vanish, thick, encrypts
Transfixed by toxic sounds
In ink and silence drowns
The sounds of wrist and ships
A skin that crawls with nouns
Transfixed by toxic sounds
© Wicked Alice Spring 2008
lines from Divisadero
The first time I read Ondaatje was in the course Readers Writers and Books with Tom Kinsella. He told me to read carefully and closely, and to pay attention, because the beauty of Ondaatje's moments is that they only happen once.
She was sixteen years old. Almost nothing. p30
It was a tattered guitar. When she got close she could see his hands had been bitten by insects, were scarred. His clothes, which had looked formal from a distance, were unironed, muddy at the cuffs; the waistcoat had lost buttons. But it was the hands that were too lived in, overused. p67-68
Who is she? This woman who has led him into this medicine cabinet of a room where most of her possessions exist - books, journals, passport, a carefully folded map, archival tapes - even the soap she has brought with her from her other world. As if this orderly collection of things is what she is. So we fall in love with ghosts. p76
What night gave Rafael was a formlessnessin which everything had a purpose.As if darkness had a hidden musical language. p78
She would whisper something into his ear and then kiss it, to seal it there, so he could never give it away to another. p84
she was told by a dean that the best way to learn French was to take a French lover. p89
For we live with those retrievals from childhood that coalesce and echo throughout out lives, the way shattered pieces of glass in a kaleidoscope reappear in new forms and are songlike in their refrains and rhymes, making up a single monologue. We live permanently in the recurrence of our own stories, whatever stories we tell. p136
This is where I learned that sometimes we enter art to hide within it. p142
(on Asphalto): Just another place named after a mineral on the map of the world. How many are there? A greater number, I suspect, than named for royalty. p146
The three of them, she had always believed, made up a three-panelled Japanese screen, each one self-sufficient, but revealing different qualities or tones when placed beside the others. Those screens made more sense to her than single-framed paintings from the West without context. p156
We relive stories and see ourselves only as the watcher or listener, the drummer in the background keeping cadence. p158
She had a name as small as a keyhole. p163
Lucien realized the man used names like passwords, all of them with a brief life span...With such a name it would almost be possible for this thickset man to turn into a three-ounce bird or a subtle grammatical form. p182
The clockmaker has still not arrived, being somewhere in the south, correcting time along the small villages of the Pyrenees...They are a strange breed, clockmakers, some surly and insensitive to all save the machine about to whir into life, some uncertain as poets about their gift. p191
She knelt on the turned earth, they were in someone's field, he came into her mouth, and she stood up again. Around them suddenly was the rest of the world. p228
he rarely used her name when they spoke. It had always felt too normal for what there was between them. Even her simple, lovely name. p257
She bent almost in two, a naked hairpin. p259
She was sixteen years old. Almost nothing. p30
It was a tattered guitar. When she got close she could see his hands had been bitten by insects, were scarred. His clothes, which had looked formal from a distance, were unironed, muddy at the cuffs; the waistcoat had lost buttons. But it was the hands that were too lived in, overused. p67-68
Who is she? This woman who has led him into this medicine cabinet of a room where most of her possessions exist - books, journals, passport, a carefully folded map, archival tapes - even the soap she has brought with her from her other world. As if this orderly collection of things is what she is. So we fall in love with ghosts. p76
What night gave Rafael was a formlessnessin which everything had a purpose.As if darkness had a hidden musical language. p78
She would whisper something into his ear and then kiss it, to seal it there, so he could never give it away to another. p84
she was told by a dean that the best way to learn French was to take a French lover. p89
For we live with those retrievals from childhood that coalesce and echo throughout out lives, the way shattered pieces of glass in a kaleidoscope reappear in new forms and are songlike in their refrains and rhymes, making up a single monologue. We live permanently in the recurrence of our own stories, whatever stories we tell. p136
This is where I learned that sometimes we enter art to hide within it. p142
(on Asphalto): Just another place named after a mineral on the map of the world. How many are there? A greater number, I suspect, than named for royalty. p146
The three of them, she had always believed, made up a three-panelled Japanese screen, each one self-sufficient, but revealing different qualities or tones when placed beside the others. Those screens made more sense to her than single-framed paintings from the West without context. p156
We relive stories and see ourselves only as the watcher or listener, the drummer in the background keeping cadence. p158
She had a name as small as a keyhole. p163
Lucien realized the man used names like passwords, all of them with a brief life span...With such a name it would almost be possible for this thickset man to turn into a three-ounce bird or a subtle grammatical form. p182
The clockmaker has still not arrived, being somewhere in the south, correcting time along the small villages of the Pyrenees...They are a strange breed, clockmakers, some surly and insensitive to all save the machine about to whir into life, some uncertain as poets about their gift. p191
She knelt on the turned earth, they were in someone's field, he came into her mouth, and she stood up again. Around them suddenly was the rest of the world. p228
he rarely used her name when they spoke. It had always felt too normal for what there was between them. Even her simple, lovely name. p257
She bent almost in two, a naked hairpin. p259
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