At the Last Minute Is Still on Time
This is the Ahead on Differential Daily Dispatch, issue #2
I.
I thought I'd make it at least one week before hitting the wall. But no, here I am, on issue number two, scrambling to get something down. As I'm writing this, I'm on the subway to the poetry open mic I co-host. Last I heard, both of tonight's features have cancelled. While Oops! All Open Mic Readers nights can be fun, the quality of the material readers bring to the stage can vary wildly. Coarse, absurdist story-poems get sandwiched between clumsy-but-earnest declarations of principle and unvarnished accounts of childhood trauma. You want to make extra sure the ice in your drink doesn't clink during one of those. The most awkward aspect of co-hosting an open mic is alerting the poet in the middle of pouring their guts out that they have 15 seconds to wrap up their reading. These are the pitfalls.
II.
I miss attending the local Scrabble Club for many reasons, but one of the unsung ones is the anagram puzzle that everyone gets. Solve the anagram, enter a draw to win your entry fee back. This puzzle was once the responsibility of the late, great Bernard Gotleib, the Dean of Montréal Scrabble, and is now in the hands of Connor, one of my Scrabble homies and the smartest Sooner I know. In that spirit, here's a puzzle for you to decipher, a common eight-letter word hidden in RIPER GOD. Once again, let me know if you've found it, and once again, no cheating.
III.
Mondo Tomorrow, my chapbook of speculative and speculative-adjacent poetry, is coming out in December. Right now, I'm in the middle of culling the weaker poems in the manuscript and implementing structural suggestions from my editor. One of her suggestions was to include an ars poetica, a mission statement of sorts. Here's a chunk of what I have so far:
You feel small? Friend, we're all small. We're huddled out here by the trash bin fire of a star just far enough from us not to fry us alive, trying to make a go of it, poking and prodding the edge of this and all other universes. It's big and mostly empty and contains everything that ever was, is, and will be.
It's in those gaps of space, of matter, of knowledge, where science meets fitcion, where imagination spins unencumbered by gravity and friction. Inside these possible futures are museums of the present.
IV.
No one me asks me for my opinions about current music anymore, partly because I'm washed, partly because I'll just tell them to Steely Dan or something. But I try and keep up, and while I'm not on the bleeding edge, I do find new-to-me records that become home stereo stalwarts. One of these record is last year's Clams Casino, the fifth album from Brooklyn singer-songwriter Brian Dunne. This dude has a preternatural gift for writing hooky, wordy pop-rock gems that sound like they could have been released at any point between 1977 and 1997. There's a heavy heartland rock influence, a little Dylan, a little Tom Petty, a little Billy Joel. All these songs feel worn in like an old catchers's mitt, even on first listen.