Poems: Mark Cunningham© 2012 by Mark CunninghamIllustrations: Ivan de Monbrison© 2012 by Ivan de MonbrisonChapbook by NAPnaplitmag.com

X-rayGlassesPoems by

Mark CunninghamIllustrations byIvan de Monbrison

They led her in a circle and called it a revolution. “DNA has a real attraction to alcohol.” She told me to suspect all beginnings, and I said, “When do I start?” When he complained that the lenses of our X-ray glasses were so dark he couldn’t see through them, let alone anybody’s clothes, we told him we’d given him the new, improved set, and he was seeing through time as well as space—all the way back to before the Big Bang!

Origins are unrecoverable, but discounts for day-old donuts had to start sometime. The historian traced her ancestry back to the War of Roses through the Beverly Hillbillies. The Supreme Court ruled the suspect had to tell the police he wished to remain silent. “Everything has to be reinvented, including the morning”—the hold-up is we can’t figure out when the new billing day begins. Most of us have never been back to the room where we were born. What origins: Sal Mineo makes a good Cheyenne warrior.

When they finally arrived and found no water, they accused me of breathing in their mirage. The investment agent said we should buy futures. The pamphlet said nature is “the destination of all life,” but the researcher warned us not to base our analysis on what we observed. We put him in the box and lowered the lid, realizing it was only when we lifted the lid that the quantum event would take place and he would either accept the findings of post-Einsteinian physics or we’d have to close him in the box again.

He said his love song was about the kind of love song he’d write if he were going to write a love song. Anna O. could recall 108 instances, often including dates, of people walking into the room without her hearing them. All the Easter Bunnies I’ve ever eaten are preserved in my subconscious mind. He called it the singularity, but I still had a feeling of déjà vu.

We labeled our diet drink “new,” meaning “no longer contaminated and weight loss will not occur due to vomiting.” The sun is my quality space and if you know what’s good for you, you won’t even look at it. Our troops are practicing non-violence; they just aren’t very good at it yet. Tarantulas Help Scientists Track How Humans Respond to Fear. She was considerate enough to ask those of us who objected to visibility to raise a hand.

When I came into the room, I could feel her echo-location probe, sand or living tissue? The armadillo rolled itself into a ball so nothing could see it smoke a cigarette. The thing’s eye muscles were so strong, they could make a corn dog look acceptable. “The water with all the answers.” God’s iffy, but the satellite definitely saw you unplug that wedgie.

The box for the TV dinner didn’t have “As Advertised on TV” on it, so no way was that Salisbury steak going to be good. Food’s Latest Embarrassment. School Cafeterias Turn to Psychology in New Approach. So the alien girls plan to eat the boys’ brains after feeding them a bunch of donuts? We’ll wait until the sugar crash, and then get them. Legs are actually made of food! Embarrassing Terror Bulletin.

Meet a Really Hungry Hamster. Scientists Find Bigger-Bellied Marmot. Whale Caught on Tape Stealing from Fishing Lines. Killer Whales Fight Instincts to Storm Beaches for Food. The physicists are worried, since under the increased G-Force of blast-off, the astronaut’s body weight will increase “until he blacks out and loses consciousness.” Star May Be Heaviest on Record.

Elephant Seal Really Wants a Kiss. Utah Boy Sets Record By Keeping 43 Snails On Face. “When a costumed deer does a backflip from a ladder 10-feet above the rim, you’ve got to show him some love.” She told us to tell the animals we wouldn’t be suffering from delusion any more. Astronauts Finish Work On Hubble, Give It Goodbye Hug.

The ad said there are 29 dimensions of compatibility, but since I live in only 4, I could guess what good meeting Sherry’s friend was going to do. She said since she often day dreamed of someone new, masturbation was expanding her social circle. “The moment you love, you are unlimited”—yet she still thinks she looks best in clothes from The Limited. Only when they got to the sexting stage did he realize he’d been computer dating a lab monkey.

Further research in DNA: the splat of bird shit on the windshield looks like a dinosaur. The scientific underpinnings of humanism are so out of date that if you still believe in them you aren’t fully human. No ego, but a big head: I took steroids to write that sentence. The semi-pro players couldn’t spit right.

I argued it wasn’t a “domestic incident,” since we were outside. What a sissy: he didn’t jump off the bridge so much as he hopped. Shooting stars usually don’t hit anything—the universe, ha, ha. She e-mailed her threat to go postal, so we figured she was already running out of steam. His explanation that silence is a powerful statement struck us all as watered down.

He’s been singing along with the “No future” part of the Sex Pistols’ “God Save the Queen” for thirty years now. They said I wasn’t a zero, I was a double zero, which was OK by me, since it gave me more room to come up with something. She put her pom-pom in a splint. Though the road looked clear for miles in either direction, he didn’t make his left turn: it’s what you don’t see that causes accidents. Rain is in the air, which is the only way rain is.

She said, “You have never been more attractive than you are now,” though, of course, it took a few micro-seconds for the sound to reach me. Even in the photographs taken with the telescopic lens, she had “far away eyes.” He said, “The movement itself is the only truth,” and that stopped us in our tracks. I always fall short of the future by one breath.

That drift toward the edge of the universe when you have to say your name. They said I’d undergone image creep and I said that still didn’t make me a creepy image. Her abductor muscles turned against her.

“Art is for me the only answer in our modern world to the question of death and the fragility of human nature. Through the ages human beings have used the representation of the world as a medium to conjure what they saw has powerful elements of nature that they could not explain and which would threaten them; it included spirits of the ancestors, forces of nature, death itself etc. I think this process is still at the core of the art medium. To represent ourselves is still a mirror to our own self, and the consciousness we have of it is reflected in the very image on the surface. In a world of technology, to choose to use still a very classical medium like painting is a way to set a bridge with the past resisting the facility of technology but with the will to represent the world with a modern eye. That is why I choose to paint mostly in black and white and to represent human beings more as shadows than as fleshy bodies. They are incarnated in the canvas but not yet fully present. I hope that people who have experienced pain and loss in life as absurd and meaningless will be able to connect with these ghostly shapes as images of the sense of precarity they may feel, giving it a depth that goes far beyond the simple pleasure of the eye.”

Ivan de Monbrison 2012http://www.artmajeur.com/blackowl/

Mark Cunningham has five books out: Body Language (Tarpaulin Sky), 80 Beetles (Otoliths), specimens (BlazeVOX), and 71 Leaves (an ebook, Blaze VOX).