Michael Diehl, Einstein
How I Spent My Summer Vacation
Pull out the specimen drawer
see how I spent my summer vacation.
I have been chasing butterflies from sunup to sundown
hands full of pins and cardboard mounts
covered in silvery dust from careless blunders.
When I hang up my jacket for the night, my pockets
are taped up tight, sealed against any intruders lured
by the scent of flailing wings or accidental bloodletting.
For the rest of the evening, spiders follow me around the house
as if they can sense the carnage
still clinging to me.
______________
Holly Day
Review by Jared Pearce
The way the speaker merges with her project is keen—but that’s what we do, isn’t it? We get an idea or an assignment, and as we get into its flow, we become the project, even if it’s cataloging and killing so that those we’re after seem to be wanting our attentions.
Review by Massimo Fantuzzi
Once more, in this issue, we find the theme of recording, classifying, dating, locating; in the hunt for experience, in the name of that hobby/obession of ours: knowledge and transmission of knowledge.
Are the flailing wings the pages of our books? And is the bloodletting the precious ink, the saliva that oils the cogs of our speech? Whatever you think, this business is making a killing. And so we go, kissed in the summer sun, searching for truths to nail down, draw up. Carnage.