"Hello? Hello? Hello"
My mother is Scottish and my father is floating somewhere. It’s where I get the Irish, which I am American, respectively. And I am Irish which I american. And I american.
I read a wonderful story today about a man whose father died of lung cancer. He shot himself in the head to meet him in heaven but his father wasn’t there. An angel told him that there was lung cancer in heaven too, and it had gotten his father again. I thought this was the funniest thing I’d read in years.
My mother works in a predominantly school Mexican which is to say that they are all Americans. So for this job (that she had to take because my father had started floating and quit working) she had to learn Spanish. Not Spanish Castilian. But on the contrary Spanish Mexican. My sister and I inherited an interest in America Latin. It’s a coincidence grand.
My stepfather Joe is German and I think a Jew.
He's good with cars too.
My stepfather Joe is German and I think a Jew.
He's good with cars too.
My sister doesn’t really like Joe and I feel
bad for that but families are difficult.
For instance my mother’s side has shaky
hands and I can't reach my father’s side .
But I’ve always had a good relationship with Joe
who I have taken as my father.
How would Hitler have
bad for that but families are difficult.
For instance my mother’s side has shaky
hands and I can't reach my father’s side .
But I’ve always had a good relationship with Joe
who I have taken as my father.
How would Hitler have
Died were the Russians not
To have won Stalingrad and
Pushed all the way into
Berlin to take down
The old city and make it rubble?
To have won Stalingrad and
Pushed all the way into
Berlin to take down
The old city and make it rubble?
It was lung cancer that would have killed Hitler because all that smoke from the bombs and bullets of the last stand in Berlin that failed and led him to put a gun to his head and say, “eins, zwei, drei!“ in lovely little iambs so the Russians wouldn’t do googly
things with his body
For Hitler, he won't be there
Because of what he did in Poland
There's lung cancer in heaven too.
3 comments:
I really dig this. It makes sense to me even though it doesn't progress logically (by which I mean it's another kind of logic). But I understand the associations, I can see how the thread weaves itself in and out, the connection between the two discernible narratives (that of your family lineage and that of WWII) being death. The lung cancer motif is awesome.
Wow. The skewed syntax, unexpected word choices unsettle in an effective way, keeping the reader a little off-balance, casting a slightly odd light on what might otherwise appear banal. Incredibly ambitious, or ill-advised, to add not only suicide but WWII (Hitler, Stalingrad, Mussolini) and concrete poetry as concrete ruins. I think the heart of this is in the family, the missing father ("For instance my mother’s side has shaky
hands and I can't reach my father’s side.") I'd like to see more on that and perhaps and cut WWII, unless there is a connection there with the father, the family other than Joe's possible Jewish heritage.
I like the structure of the piece, both from the literary perspective and the art perspective. I think you creative a really cool esthetic element to your piece by adding in that poem type thing.
As far as the writing goes, I would like to hear more about your family and background and less about WWII and it's dictators. I think there is more that can be said on that topic so try to expand it.
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