Russel Swensen: Preamble
from the happiest place on earth
I dreamed that Los Angeles had not yet been consumed by flame.
That the locusts were still there. That you could
slice open their bellies and suck the honey out. You
stretched me out and used the scalpel
Something came out of me in a flood. The population
of Los Angeles is the stripper found with the disco ball wedged in her throat
screaming fantastic
inedible
snuck out of the hospital, kind of sexual
The local economy is predominantly a lizard boy in the red dust evening.
Have you ever had that feeling. Have you had this. Have you had the new me. My temperature is flawless.
Tour Guide #2
from the happiest place on earth
The doctor says I have a Hollywood inside me. That’s why I smell like rotten oranges and cigarettes.
I pink tassled a girl in the parking lot. That’s why I puke
black felt.
I puke up other stuff for other reasons.
What’s life without a sense of occasion. Daily little celebrations like
that time I picked up the bloody Kleenex of the Queen
and pressed it to my lips. The Queen is Los Angeles and also any girl
in Los Angeles.
Queen for a day is: fucked with riot. We play it in the
parking lot. You’re thinking: this sounds menacing!
This sounds like wish fulfillment!
Gratuitous: all the metal bands in the city playing songs about the city
eating the city. Interesting: the tiny deer stickers on your ear. Why do
they look scared.
RUSSEL SWENSEN
earned his MFA at CalArts and PhD from the University of Houston. His work has appeared
in Black Clock, Quarterly West, PANK, etc. His poetry
chapbook Santa Ana was the winner of the Spring 2011 Black River Chapbook
Contest. His full-length manuscript The Magic Kingdom is forthcoming from
Black Lawrence Press (January 2016). He lives in New Orleans with his dogs Zulu and
Mazzy Star. More from this
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