Duelling Reviews
POEMS
The Bride of Frankenstein
Late at night, I glimpse my ideal woman.
Problem is, she exists only on TV. Nonetheless,
I am smitten. Seams divide one perfect cheek
into three continents. Her impersonation
of an angry swan is so feral that I long
to fill my mouth with feathers. She walks stiffly,
this actress on stilts, as if her joints don’t work.
Her eyes dart like a prey animal’s. She’s onscreen
only three minutes, yet in that brief time
manages to channel both startled newborn
and enraged, caged predator. A crumbling
puppet, her lipstick like ink, her legs were bandaged
so tightly on set, I read, that she was unable to move
and had to be carried. When the film opens, before
she becomes monster, she wears a white net dress
with sequins shaped like butterflies, moons, and stars.
Censors objected to the neckline of that gown.
What an ultimate striptease it would be if her
bandages peeled. She could continue to speak
swan, I wouldn’t mind. On stormy nights our bed
would become an elevator, ascending the floors
of a blackened castle, bursting clear through
the roof, penetrating an electrified sky. In each
of her movies, I read, she was asked to scream.
Now, she screams without my even having to ask.
—Amy Gerstler
For E.
Pardon me for pretending I might wish
you back into existence so we could chat.
Better yet, I’d remain silent and bask
in the sound of your voice—music I’m
ashamed I can no longer quite call
to mind. I do remember your habit
of chattering your teeth in a cartoonish
manner when you got nervous or
bored. And I’m easily re-seized by how
keenly I once yearned to be your home
away from home, your quiet, tree-lined
street between the park and that old stone
church. But you slipped out of the party
too soon, just as you always threatened
you’d do. Remember being breathless
together on the observation deck of the
Empire State Building? We took the last
elevator up to the 86th floor, at 1:15 a.m.,
inhaled what drugs you had, and damn!
they were good. How dizzily I miss you
this minute in which I find myself so much
older, darling, than you ever lived to be.
—Amy Gerstler
Night Moves
This restlessness that leads
nowhere, this sense of urgency
about reaching a destination
where nothing happens, this need
to relieve oneself of boredom,
loneliness, restlessness: those parts
of oneself that increase
after a day spent entirely
in retreat, that prey upon one
more than one would prefer:
to arrive at a social hive,
where the urgent need for frivolity
can be satisfied, or just
to be out at night.
—John Tottenham
Sex
A pigeon pecks at a pair of scissors. One guy can’t parallel park and the other
is shivering so loudly people at the bus stop turn to stare. Holes are placed
at random intervals to confound the logic of the body: topologies voids creases
a finite number of symbols combined to much-little beheading consequence
Catalexis is one for of headlessness
Yes No Maybe Teeth are rendered as syllables
stuttering the architecture The kitchen is vacated
and in its wake, a goose rises with a scream
the naked crust of the Earth strumpeted
& all its endowments Here is chert
saltpeter dead martyrs from the mouths of children
one turns away to include the other
as another self
—Manal Kara
