ICYMI, Part XI
I'm fucking bawling tears… I send my (adopted) Dad a photo of my granddaughter inside the womb, and when I say, she got my nose, he replies:
Okay.
Gotta get off here. Gonna eat lunch.
I keep hearing the oven click when nothing is actually baking- aside from my concept of reality and that’s well overcooked by now. I pick up empty bottles and hold them as if there were something to drink; find myself naught and bone dry, a voidless tremor in the shallow space between mouth and brain.
I’m not even paying attention to the Wrestling Observer’s spoiler happening behind my back: CM Punk winning the Undisputed WWE Title from Mr. Zero Charisma, Sami Zayn in Chicago: 10:33pm MST on 7/6/26.
I’m just watching a replay episode with my right ear…
What the fuck keeps clicking in my kitchen?
My (adopted) mother has said that I'm like an old man since I was 10. I recently changed the age search settings on Bumble to 45-53, because I'm struggling with immaturity, and I'm not looking to go on travel mode with zero income.
Is there a version of reality where LL and I stayed together? One where we had the baby?
Maybe. But how happy are we with our mutual decision when all's said and done?
It’s so hard to care, to think that nothing is real, and everything matters; to feel nothing for everyone and care more than anything at the same time. Unconditional love is so hard for me to recognize and I may be developing dyslexia/dementia as a result of ever-expanding grey matter/scar tissue, a weak stomach for the future if such a thing exists.
***
Knowing more about the progression of this book, reading ‘Castle of the Eye II’, I completely overlooked the theme of describing the busts in front of you, as this poem felt very personal and something you wanted to say to Michaela. As not everyone knows your recent loss and the onset of grief that you’re dealing with, do you think the interpretation of this poem is altered by the descriptions of the sculptures? Does metaphor weigh heavier than literal stone in this book?
JP: Ooh, good question. I kinda assumed that people who aren't visiting the garden wouldn't be interested in those descriptions, and that people who are visiting the garden would use them to navigate. I didn't even think of the descriptions being part of interpretations, but of course someone's bound to read it that way, especially if they skip the introduction and learn the specifics of my grief. I kinda like the idea of someone reading the book and wondering what all the grief is about, or wondering if "Castle of the Eye II" is in the voice of a jilted lover or something.
"Diana" was the only sculpture I read up on before writing. I imagine that a lot of the sculptors found their own metaphors heavier than stone. Some of them have obvious interpretations that can be very heavy.
The cover is lush and stoic, marble busts and grandiose topiary work. Obviously a real time expression of your surroundings while writing; is that a fair assessment of your narrative in ALNM; the narrative is contemplative and hyper-aware simultaneously?
JP: I kinda hate the word "neurodivergent" because Internet people use it to mean a variety of inaccurate, and even conformist, things, but I think it fits here, in that I'm hyper-aware of specific details in a piece and often miss the point of the sculpture entirely. I talk about that in the introduction, where I connect "incorrectly" with the untitled Kapoor piece, but it applies often, especially with the last poem, "The Labors of Alexander" by Magritte. I like to think that it's very contemplative --it's certainly cerebral-- and hyper-aware of the "wrong" things.
I think that makes it fun, or at least different.
In your last poem, ‘The Labors of Alexander’, you talk about the essence of neediness, loss of memory and dysphoria as its strongest attributes. You say that these are ties that are solidified by ‘patterns we will not remember’. Having just walked home from Colfax avenue and being accosted by a gang of kids who don’t understand that it’s a sidewalk, not a sideblock, and smelling the breath of today’s hotheaded youth, knowing that cameras are watching my every move and hesitating to make an example of a young man breathing too hard with his shirt off, I hope that I can forget the interaction within the next day or so, but my anger is much like the oak tree you use as an analogy.
How do you compromise with the ‘failed actions’ of the past? In my case, I walked away knowing that I wanted more and not for the sake of best interest…
JP: Oh, yeah, I've experienced that, children who want to flex by harming adults. My first wife was once accosted by what appeared to her to be a group of 10-year-olds. I wasn't there. It's much easier to see this as a solvable social ill when they aren't in your face threatening you. Did you ever read "Rite of Passage," by Richard Wright, in which a white man, upon being mugged by the protagonists, begs them to stop on the grounds that he loves their race?
Anyway, as for how I cope: I don't. I just don't. I'm pretty much an open wound regarding my daughter's death. It's so hard for me to understand that suicide has continued over the past three years, and that parents have lost children more recently than I have. It's amazing to me that some of those parents have poured themselves into anti-suicide activism. I couldn't possibly manage that.
I hope the last two lines of the book reveal a philosophy of pain, but I wouldn't say that philosophy helps me cope.
Jonathan Penton is the Editor-in-Chief of Unlikely Stories Six. Check out his personal web site.
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