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Sunday Review of Joyelle McSweeney’s Book, “Percussion Grenade,” With Lines From Foxy Shazam’s “Flamingo Trigger” Album

 

OO EE  AH.  A’BIGGITY BIGGITY BOO I—got a fever.  And the only cure for it.  Is a
suicide note.  Wrapped in the flensed flesh headdress   of a book review  I criticize  I
exorcize      possess and repossess and honor mine parents at a screaming volume I am a
pretty princess and my mother is a Black Queen I am a recovering sex addict and my
father is a sex addict   I got a fever/ and the only cure for it/ is prophet nonsense/  God’s
garbled transuicidemissionary AM I I I I I missed every meal today, too busy spewing
freaked off poetry   I missed corporate worship, giving voice to the tracheo-chemical
Boom-shocka.  What?  Check the rhetoric.  The butterfly weighted down with a blast
jacket and a plunger I’m a plumber, eating the plumb-line you’ve really crossed, my
father’s a fallen barn and I am the Barf of God in a River.  Get thee back tha fraggle rock
bottom, nephew.  Be my baptism of men or heaven?  Are those my only options?  My
only burning trailer park, my entrailer pitched in the twister, my mother the decapitated
giraffe splashes like cosmic fists on the breakwaters what chyou figure?  Spellcheck
suggest I change your name to “Joyless.”  It suggests I change my own name to
“Demise.”  What corset I’m stripped of?  What headdress what chevron I’m stripped of?
What pride of lions circles the Colosseum Christians, lean and leonine, they missed every
meal, WAH don’t shoot, WAH don’t shoot, WAH don’t shoot, WWWAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII got a fever and the sound of my
heaves will be misheard as the making of a culture, stripped, I am stripped like college
student in need of tuition money, my slaughtered throat excerpts the buzzing of the
locusts I AM, which the Baptizer fed of, which the sun was blacked out by, family
ramshackle, I have a gentle cock, just axe the hammer of my glock prosody, it prosably
be fricatives indicative of prophecy I’m all McCLICK-CLACK.  I burn in festivity, soaked
in the flaming guts of Nativity.  Take a bow.  Now, take an arrow.  Now take a bullet like
a matador, the Repo Man don’ taked my hand—my mother is a crazy lake, my father is a
tired cottonwood in the storm, HeavyMetal sucks and Rock & Roll is dead my dad is a
pain grenade my mom is rocked and rolled like a boat in the storm in the ocean that scats
its pants and embraces the water through the braces of their daughter through the leg
braces I break   dance the explosive sign language of my Enthusiorgy Heavy Heavy
Heavy Metal Sucks and Rock and Roll is dead.  Dead.  Dead.  Dead.  Dead.  Dead.
Dead.  Dead.  Dead.  Dad are you God of the living or are you God of the I/ God/ a fever/
And the only cure for it

/

Nick Demske is a rogue librarian, maniac prophet, devastator and redeemer of words. His first book is titled “Nick Demske” and it lifts its voice to the heavens in such sweet, radical song. Nick was featured in 2011 as one of fifteen emerging poets to watch for by Poets and Writers magazine and his book was chosen as one of the 10 Best Books of Poetry in 2010 by a Believer Magazine reader survey. A year ago, he went on a month and a half-long, cross-country book tour that involved giving 43 readings, driving over 10,000 miles, having his vehicle searched for drugs by Kansas state troopers and sleeping in 5—count them, 5!—Walmart parking lots across the nation. Is there anything more patriotic? Probably. Nick also curates the BONK! performance series in Racine, which is basically like Christmas every month. You may visit him online sometime at his blog nickipoo.wordpress.com. In fact, you are hereby contractually obligated to do just that. Amen.

One Reply to “Sunday Review of Joyelle McSweeney’s Book, “Percussion Grenade,” With Lines From Foxy Shazam’s “Flamingo Trigger” Album”

  1. […] you read Nick Demske’s review of Joyelle McSweeney’s book, Percussion Grenade over at Phoebe? He engages with her book of poetry by writing a poem. The way Goldsmith engages with Stein’s […]