Arthur Graham > Recent Status Updates

"FUCK ALL OF YOU—ya off-fleek, poor, dirty, uneducated, backward, inbred, moonshinin’, square-dancin’, dusty-hatted, fiddle-sawin’, washboard-scrapin’, cousin-marryin’, siblin’-diddlin’, pig-fuckin’, deformed, teeth-missin’, Deliverance-lookin’, banjo-stringin’, banjo-pluckin’, banjo-strummin’, banjo-fuckin’ HILLJACKIN’ HILLBILLIES!!!!!!!"

I got to thinking about the sad states of my social life and love life. I realized I might benefit from some human company (no offense to corporate ghosts and kidney butlers), perhaps even human company of a romantic nature. All of which is to say I decided to pursue yet another new adventure: online dating.

Because why not?

You eventually reach a point
when time becomes a thing
that chases you
with a flashlight, a mirror,
and a finely bound edition
of your collected failures

One night, deep in my cups, bored, and feeling desperate for some conversation with someone other than my kidney butler, I pulled the Ouija board box out of the closet, figured I’d see what the motherflippin’ ghost of Blockbuster Video was up to.

Late in the morning, I woke from a nightmare in which I was being chased in a cornfield by Freddy, Jason, Chucky, Michael Myers, Leatherface, Pinhead, Alien, Predator, The Thing from John Carpenter’s The Thing, Candyman, fully Pazuzu-possessed Regan from The Exorcist, Mothman, Bughuul from Sinister, Leprechaun in the Hood, and Mike Tyson.

“Jus’ how well ya lookin’ to play that banjo, boy?”

“I want straight-up, col’-blooded, freak-nasty banjo skills—I wanna be able to SMOKE on this dang thing. I wanna be able to MELT MOTHERFUCKERS’ FACES OFF, G.”

“First off, ye evah call me ‘G’ again, I’ll take that banjo, swing it like I was Barry Bonds on the juice, knock your inbred whiteboy head up into the stratosphere."

Kid, no one's gonna give you
back your abandoned joy,

you gotta steal it
when nobody's looking,

or even when they are,

flipping 'em the bird
like you mean it,

running until you turn
into fire again.

The artists understood
that everything and everyone
was forever on fire,

and the only thing to hope for
was the chance to burn in some way
that nobody else had yet managed
to burn.

“I…I just met the ghost.”
“Oh, yeah? We’re ya scared?”
“Scared? Me? No, of course not.”
“Then why’d ya shit yer pants? ’Cause I can smell ya from here.”

A fictional character from a movie based on a fictional novel. How does one become a fictional character? One just doesn’t, right?

The air is filled
with the songs of sirens
and not the sexy kind
with breasts and soft music
to lure you to your doom,

but the ones that come searching
and screaming for you
when you're already
pretty much there.

Throughout my unhappy childhood, miserable adolescence, and depressing early adulthood, my desire to become the inbred banjo boy from the 1972 movie Deliverance never weakened.

I get older, and sometimes the bitterness
settles in when I'm not paying attention,
muddling through the fog of days,
forgetting to listen to the music of things.

The poets got a poem accepted and they want you to know about it.
The poets got a poem rejected and they want you to know about it.
The poets are posting their works in progress to all of the social media sites,
counting up the likes and shares like shiny coins.

You are struck
by the bravery of her beauty
in the face
of what remains of things,
and you tell her so.
She laughs and says,
why don't you write
a poem about it,
and you do.

I've reached a point
where I am no longer too proud
to proclaim my emptiness
I figure we all
have to cop to it eventually
and now more than ever
I just want to dissolve
into the pretty sadness of the day
the perfect gray sky
above the lonely apartment buildings
the glittering shards of rain
and all the ghosts of the forgotten

All the poems I wrote
when I thought that I was dying
and all the poems I’ll never write
when one day I really am

she picked up a shot
of Cuervo gold,
raised the glass, said
“it only takes three
or four of these babies
to get me naked,”
and I smacked that
shot glass right out
of her fucking hand.

there was no telling
how many she had
before I sat down
beside her.

Last Call
Brian Rosenberger

The cold and distant Moon, an observer.

Am I divine? Or do my eyes deceive me?
Poisonously poised and awake to shine
with pretty fragile hearts
gashing in the idle heavens.
taking all of my lovers but seven.

Grab a beer or master a weapon.
It’s up to you.
Talk it over with your loved ones.
Make the bargains your soul can bear.

Lifetime Achievement
Ivan Jenson

First you take sixty odd years
of muddling through the foliage
like someone half your age
with twice the gusto
and three times
the misplaced ambition
and add the elements
like hot, cold and sub-zero luck
and the unlikelihood
that lightning might strike
twice in your lifetime

Love it when you smell like gasoline.

Dinosaur Story
Misti Rainwater-Lites

a million years ago
when mommy & daddy began
we’d go home to my studio apartment
on lunch break from T-Mobile
I’d stick a Tony’s pizza
in the oven
tell him
“okay, you’ve got 15 minutes to make me cum”

Wednesday’s Child
Ryan Quinn Flanagan

She put the butcher block knife
to his throat
and asked him to tell her which
child was full of woe.

Do I get a phone a friend?

I’m not Alexander Graham Bell,
she shot back.

Self Image
Matt Amott

She says
that I have an eye
for photography
and she falls in love
with everything
I shoot.

Hoping for
the best,
I start taking
more selfies.

Dan Hoagland
Jaeger and Truth

She asks,
"Do you think she's hot?"
and I know
it's easy
to say yes
or no,
as I finish my G&T
and count
her empty
shot glasses
backward
into the arms
of the only real answer,
"Not like you, baby,
not like you."

"What's the difference between dark and hard?"
"It stays dark all night."

I wasn't suffering at all
I was merely
gathering material.

Robbed blind at the crossroads
there is a bar stool shelter
from the streets
of the doomed
for a price you can easily afford.

In this place
the sad eyes
of circumstance
are just another
pair of gold dollars.