Read my exclusive interview with artist JeanPaul Mallozzi for art & entertainment magazine Scene360.
Detail of “Lie With Me” by JeanPaul Mallozzi.
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Julie Marie Wade reviews An Elephant’s Memory of Blizzards (by Neil de la Flor)
21 Apr
Last week the brilliant and jubilant Julie Marie Wade reviewed Neil de la Flor‘s (my father’s or mother’s?) new collection of theoretical poetry, An Elephant’s Memory of Blizzards (Marsh Hawk Press), which supposedly has nothing to do with elephants or blizzards, so I’m aghast. In any case, Wade writes about de la Flor’s new book, “The currency of these poems is sensory and extra-sensory.They have electric blue eyes and readily self-personify.They shape-shift and spontaneously combust. They speak to us in ‘the awe-/some language of hairdo.’ I can feel these poems on my skin like a blush. I can hold them between my teeth like pearls.” I seriously hope Wade didn’t swallow those pearls cause those things are expensive. Seriously, read Wade’s compete review at the Florida Book Review.
14 Things I learned about dating donkeys
9 Feb
English: Two men shoeing a donkey. Black-and-white photograph. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
1. Donkeys don’t date. They hook up or get hitched.
2. There’s no in between because that space in between hooking up and getting hitched is mined with the awkward sound of hu(man) communication.
3. What one donkey wants and what one donkey needs are often confused.
4. Wash hands. Rinse. Repeat. Often.
5. If one attracts a donkey, follow donkey home. Exit car or whatever mode of transportation you chose to take. Proceed to ddonkey’s bedroom window and watch for another donkey (male) (or female) (or male and female) beside your donkey date in his bed with his arms wrapped around him or her or them. In lieu of an empty nest. In lieu of loneliness.
6. Donkeys are quantum singularities in a pluralistic society.
7. Bring your own condom. Donkeys are also irresponsible.
8. Vegetarian donkeys are too complicated.
9. Omnivore donkeys are too voracious.
10. Coffee is code for sex. Sex is code for loneliness. Loneliness is code for only ever wanting sex. LTR is code for “Like Truly Ridiculous”.
11. Most donkeys can’t formulate a complete sentence in real-time unless it’s a text message.
12. A white knight is never a white knight.
13. A donkey is a hoofed mammal with long ears and a braying call; an ass.
14. A white donkey is still a donkey.
An Elephant’s Memory of Blizzards by Neil de la Flor
24 Jan
An Elephant’s Memory of Blizzards
As some of you may not know, my ‘father’, Neil de la Flor, who may or not be Darth Vader, is also a writer. His new book is almost ready just like I’m almost always somebody whole. You can pre-order his new book An Elephant’s Memory of Blizzard’s & save the world. His initial goal is to donate all net proceeds for the first 30 books sold to The Center for Positive Connections where he is on the Board of Directors. “TCPC provides HIV prevention and health education, social and emotional support, mental health counseling, holistic health treatments for those living with (and affected by) HIV/AIDS in South Florida.” This organization is small yet crucial for the community at large & for the “Well-Beings that reside within us”. Without TCPC’s services and welcoming arms, the first section of his book may not exist. For real.
Cost: $20. Includes: signed copy of book, shipping, donation, any bad grammar or typos contained therein, a big hug & salvation. Please send Neil de la Flor an email or FaceBook message with your information. And, if it’s not too cheesy, please pass this message on.
Here’s an excerpt from An Elephant’s Memory of Blizzards just so you know what you’re getting into:
Ganesha
Somewhere between the Big Bang and the Big Gulp, the universe lives silent and cunning in her unstable mink suit.
Somewhere between the atoms that create us and the atoms that will destroy us, the universe lives benignly unaware of our prayers and promises.
Somewhere between the edge of the cosmos and the comic book store, the universe lives in the smile of a boy and/or a girl standing on the southwest corner of 42nd Street beneath the bearded sky. In a blizzard. In awe of the universe. Wearing white mittens and Long Johns.
Somewhere between the crucible and the last dance, the universe lives in every elementary particle that powers every disco ballroom from Heaven to Las Vegas.
Somewhere between the heavy elements and the light elements, the universe lives in our desire to be prepositioned for entry through the gates of heaven.
Somewhere between heaven and hell, the universe lives free of sin and sorrow.
Between Ganesha and Goliath, the universe lives in an elephant’s memory of blizzards.
Between the belly button and the Achilles Heel, the universe lives with the secret that no one, not even God, can remove obstacles that do not exist in the physical world.
Between the real universe and the imagined universe, humans live in a constant state of humming. In a constant state of ah-ha and oh-no and WTF.
Between you and me, the universe lives in the Well-Beings that reside within us. In every obstacle and in every wound. In every chant in every bedroom. And even in the womb sealed tight from the light of the blue moon.
Related articles
- “Reading Queer Series” To Promote Miami as a Center for LGBTQ Literature (almostdorothy.wordpress.com)
- Ma: Little Black(ish) Angel (almostdorothy.wordpress.com)
A Peom about Unemployed Chicken
10 Jan
Birds on a Wire | Photo by Neil de la Flor
1. We go to war.
3. It looks as if we are going to war.
2. The angel of death wore me out with his vegetables. The war is black now.
4. I dream of his unstable crown of thorns.
6. The one who spoke vicariously in silence spelled theories in Magic Marker.
5. He is theoretically sipping a beer with neighbors on a sailboat on the Miami River.
7. They love beer.
9. The dancing bear is a dancing bear is a dancing bear and Zen Buddhists are idiots.
8. As if
10. he doesn’t care about chicken wings.
12. A pink blind horse drags itself center stage. Curtsies. Behind the horse, the past and the present converse over universal sandwiches.
11. The difference between a demon and a devil, the past says—
13. Is the difference between a mask and a mirror, the present responds.
15. The ego is a song.
14. The war is a song.
16. The song is performed by an orchestra of ravens in a foreground that is always blue–
18. as unemployed chickens disguise themselves as saints.
17. For real.
Related articles
A Poem About a Plot
8 Jan
The Red Lights of the World | Photo by Neil de la Flor
1. We bond over electronic music and make out.
2. On the dance floor, his arms are iron balls
3. destined for the seabed.
4. We pray for the abyss to relinquish the red lights of the world.
5. Adora welcomes the world batting her eyelashes like a flamenco dancer bats her abanico. She is ridiculous in her beehive wig.
6. A boy and a girl wear leather dog collars
7. as Lola spins the 80s—Cure, Depeche Mode, The Clash.
8. Two shots of tequila enter the photographic memory and each shot is a declaration of love or something close to a cross and bow. The arrow of time is a cosmic phenomenon divined in blue agave.
9. The cosmos is a black veil that quarrels with vagabonds. He reveals the history of sharing needles beneath yellow street lights—a pair of binary stars gripped by gravity fight for more space.
10. Vampires and bats quarrel behind iron bars in the yellowing twilight as I bend dangerously over in awe of angels.
11. We morph into morphs and transmit the secrets of starlets and starlight to passersby.
12. The shadow on the left puts his left hand in the right pocket of the shadow on the right.
13. We (or they) were nouns and verbs conjugated in a foreign language in a foreign landscape between time and space.
14. Each word plots a point of light in the dark.
A Prayer for a Red Room
7 Jan
Red Velvet | Photo by Neil de la Flor
1. I had my money on him like I have money like I’m sick of him trying to get to me like Jesus.
2. He walks through my red living room to the other red room wearing a jockstrap and high-heel boots.
3. He carries white roses in case it’s Christmas.
4. He is not a jock or Christ-like, but his chin is sanctified.
5. The strap pulls strangely around his cheeks looking like the jowl of a skinny pitbull.
6. He sits on the sofa and the sofa is surrounded by candles that are lit and not lit and he is lit and I’m unaware that he is.
7. He is positive yoga will solve history. And dance. And cartography.
8. Life is interesting, I say, when you become interested in life.
9. He is in the corner of the room kicking at the demons and blames me for leaving the mattress alone.
10. He shaves his or her hair and Lakshmi doesn’t want anymore children because Shiva has turned blue and cold even though he is dancing.
11. Always dancing.
12. He reads the illustrated Holy Bible in my red red room and the red room reads with him. The red velvet curtains seal the red room as the incense from New Mexico burns on the fireplace lined with paper dolls—
13. of Jesus & Mary, of all the saints & all the apostles, of the one true God–as the archangels swoop down and set fire to them.
14. An effigy of the burning boy burns in the red room of paper dolls.
Related articles
- A Prayer for a Red Room (almostdorothy.wordpress.com)
A Poem About a Flood
6 Jan
You Are Standing Here | Photo by Neil de la Flor
14. The poem on the left is not a poem. It’s a car.
13. Cartography is the shortest distance between the breath of life and the breadth of life.
12. I met a mouse in a van wearing sunglasses.
11. The bottle-nosed priest excommunicates the clan from kin. He calls me Sally as Mars turns into a water sign.
10. The water inundates the landscape.
9. The trees are mere shadows of trees.
8. The crabs who walk sideways across Belle Isle are submerged by rising waters.
7. The earth is round and the children across the street are home.
6. We stand on guard, on tippy-toes, and kiss beneath the crescent moon. We kiss like we used to kiss with our vampire teeth.
5. We kiss like we kissed in my dream of kissing.
4. When the plumber arrived I thought the dream was real.
3. The water rises and we are on high alert as the neighbors find shelter in burned out Cadillacs.
2. Lilacs won’t grow in Florida.
1. Fabricate dreams out of mud, won’t you?
14 things ma resolves to do for 2013 in alphabetical order
3 JanChicks | Neil de la Flor
1. Ma resolves to solve the unresolved issues that plague her nanosphere with grace and humility as she tiptoes across the front yard barefoot wearing her pink biking shorts and “I Had Sex With Jesus” tee shirt.
2. Ma resolves to brush her teeth on first and second dates.
3. Ma resolves to have sex at least twice a week (with humans).
4. Ma resolves to have sex at least twice a week with the windows closed with at least 2 humans in the same room at the same time with or without sneakers and resolves to have each client come back for seconds so the neighbors don’t think she’s only into one-night stands. One-day stands don’t count, she says.
5. Ma resolves to stop reading self-help books with titles that suggest she’s half of this or half of that.
6. Ma resolves to hurl herself into the delta quadrant and kick species 8472′s ass.
7. Ma resolves to use protection even when the men of her dreams offer protection with their super powers and magic tricks. A condom, she says, is more important that the Second Coming.
8. Ma resolves to Kool-Aid.
9. Ma resolves to hug and kiss me twice a day even when she feels like punching me in the face.
10. Ma resolves to wipe from front to back (at least 3 times a week).
11. Ma resolves to be intelligent, competent, reliable, responsible, honorable, trustworthy, centered, grounded, coherent, sympathetic, empathetic, less pathetic and soulful; and she resolves to live by the code of justice even if it means wearing underwear in the most obvious places.
12. Ma resolves to fill her half-empty heart with ginger and jasmine while she drains the other half of Tabasco sauce and curry; and she resolves to stop buying into the scheme that a heart can be half of this or half of that because if it weren’t full 24/7 she’d be dead. Only the non-living, she says, believe in this symbolic bullshit.
13. Ma resolves to make fun of angels and everything holy because nothing is sanctified.
14. Ma resolves to celibacy, but I think she really meant sobriety.
14.5 Ma resolves to reveal what’s inside.
14 things I resolve to do for 2013 in no particular disorder
31 DecSaint Louis Cemetery 1 | Photo by Neil de la Flor
1. I resolve to love ma more and everyone more even when I’m all monsters because when the room becomes a spectacle of neon madness hugs work like magic.
2. I resolve to have sex before my 14th birthday so that I will know for certain the meaning of sex and I resolve to determine my sex.
3. I resolve to set fire to the rain and prove that Adele ain’t all that.
4. I resolve to disorder the cosmos and create quantum singularities in specific locations around the universe so that no one, not even god or his gay disciples, will lose sight of the importance of quantum pluralities.
5. I resolve to rename Buddha, Ganesha and Shiva…Ernie, Bert and Oscar.
6. I resolve to get a full time job manufacturing light and laser beams.
7. I resolve to resolve things in my solemn prayers and to keep my mouth shut and slalom.
8. I resolve to lie more or less.
9. I resolve to be one with the universe and ma’s purse.
10. I resolve to be one with humanity; one with the plants & the animals; cars & trucks; shoes & socks; tears & laughter; the trees & the rocks; ghosts & ghouls; archangels & demons; vampires & thieves; doctors & shaman; nurses & gay men; the gods & one true(ish) God who stumbles across the cosmos in high heels and leggings in our (dis)honor. I swear.
11. I resolve to (dis)honor.
12. I resolve crash & burn & dance & sing & levitate in my most ridiculous elf outfit.
13. I resolve to be one with you and one with me so that there is no one and no thing left in the universe but us—that elusive cosmetic singularity where TWO will enfold into one embrace and never ever be alone again. Amen.
14. I resolve to prophecy.
