Anniversary [9 Snapshots on Expired 35mm], Split Screen, Alex Wasalinko

ANNIVERSARY [9 SNAPSHOTS ON EXPIRED 35MM]

Alex Wasalinko

1 I fell out the window while reaching for money catchers, to crush their wispy spindles into a wish

2 How do I find the tools to mark a new year when time itself has stopped several times over hell has frozen only to melt, each time filling our air with carbon gas trapped in permafrost

3 From my window I watch the boys pile into their polished Benz with ski goggles and snow boots, decoration or protection, a designer getaway car (I think I’ll sit and wait this one out)

4 I keep an empty chair by the door leave the guestbook open with a pen nearby – my passive record for any partygoers who received the invitation while I tuck away in my bedroom

Anthology 7 260

5 He tells me about shooting groundhogs held in the backhoe’s cradle with BB bullets (a one-time-on-the-farm occurrence) I criticize the fountain’s skeleton its designer rolls in his centennial grave

6 The bottom of the bag of freeze dried mangos smells like gasoline. Reminds me of gas station bathrooms in Central PA, the car with the AC blown out, the boy who sewed pockets into the inside of his zip up hoodies

8 You ask me my age and my body my mind betray me I am at a loss, no amount of finger counting can give us the answer

9 The wind did not carry me the way it carries bursts of pollen geysering from the perennials and trees shaken awake by the earth’s hand.

261 Mixed & Matched

SPLIT SCREEN

Alex Wasalinko

I’ve spent so much time without another body in the room and I am forgetting

NORMALACY NOR | MAL | A | CY

Split apart at each vowel, I inhabit the space between syllables

I look up from within those gaps and canyons – from the distorted vantage point where everything feels quote fineunquote

What if I smashed the words together said it so fast so tight there was nospace, no light, no breath breaking through

just a dark mass of spitting S’s screaming E diagraphs.

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What if it all cracked because we threw it full force onto concrete

from our rooftops. from our third-story walk ups.

because it too grew too tired under the pressure of always being on on on

as the only way we can not be the only body in the room.

too tired of feigning. too tired of being the floating talking head.

delivering yet another tired monologue.

263 Mixed & Matched

Rachel Wenrick