One Thousand Shipwrecked Penguins

July 24th 2011

A classy whore who heaved herself onto the street despite a cold that made her feel shaky, suddenly saw that she didn’t care about being classy after all anymore. She remembered when she’d been a girl and strange as it seemed to her and maybe to you, she also remembered who she hadn’t been but who she could’ve been. At some point, as she was steadying herself against a black post, a customer approached her. She noticed his empty look, his expensive shoes, his manicured hands. He held onto her with these hands as she held onto the post. She found it peculiar, even laughable that this man, who seemed but a shell of a person and who probably had no idea why he was really here, held on to her when she was the sick one. Her illness became a crystal ball reflecting not just real images around her, but fantasies, too, and while armies of bacteria were swarming out boisterously playing attack and retreat with her blood cells, she began to expand her mind with colors that she hadn’t thought existed, and with words that hadn’t made any sense before this moment. “Why don’t you say anything,” said the man, and she became aware that he stood too close and was spitting in her face while talking. She didn’t like his voice, his shoes, his stance – and before she fell down at his feet, she thought it odd that her looks had concerned her for so long.

#34/1000. Text: Marcus Speh [posted in > Language > Place Carnival #6 and in Reprint Poetry]. Photo: Brassaï (Gyula Halasz), from “Paris by Night”, 1933.

Posted at 7:50pm and tagged with: catherine davis, edge, language carnival, blue fifth review, submission,.

A classy whore who heaved herself onto the street despite a cold that made her feel shaky, suddenly saw that she didn’t care about being classy after all anymore. She remembered when she’d been a girl and strange as it seemed to her and maybe to you, she also remembered who she hadn’t been but who she could’ve been. At some point, as she was steadying herself against a black post, a customer approached her. She noticed his empty look, his expensive shoes, his manicured hands. He held onto her with these hands as she held onto the post. She found it peculiar, even laughable that this man, who seemed but a shell of a person and who probably had no idea why he was really here, held on to her when she was the sick one. Her illness became a crystal ball reflecting not just real images around her, but fantasies, too, and while armies of bacteria were swarming out boisterously playing attack and retreat with her blood cells, she began to expand her mind with colors that she hadn’t thought existed, and with words that hadn’t made any sense before this moment. “Why don’t you say anything,” said the man, and she became aware that he stood too close and was spitting in her face while talking. She didn’t like his voice, his shoes, his stance – and before she fell down at his feet, she thought it odd that her looks had concerned her for so long.
#34/1000. Text: Marcus Speh [posted in > Language > Place Carnival #6 and in Reprint Poetry]. Photo: Brassaï (Gyula Halasz), from “Paris by Night”, 1933.

July 9th 2011

17 notes |#

Short Cuts. I don’t love you anymore anyway, you can go. I loathe you. The sex always sucked. I hate all men. I hate all women. I can’t even remember what you look like. Truths: I love you so much it takes my breath away even now to think that I should have been so lucky to get you. I adore the place where you stood just now, I think the air molecules there are holy particles. Sex with you was not a revelation it was a rebirth. I love all men but how can you tell them? I love all women but how can you not tell them? I don’t need an image of you. I took your fingerprints when you were asleep and I applied them all over my body and everywhere in the hotel room where we first fucked. I am committed to covering the world with your name. Lie: I will live forever. Truth: I will die. Lie: I will never lie to you. Truth: I don’t love you anymore anyway, you should go. Leave me be. Let me take my own picture. Close the door. Take the stairs. Hold on to the railing. Go out on the street. Find a clown. Spit in his face.

#32/1000. Published in Blue Print Review (with framing story and extras). Photo: Catherine Davis; Paris, Hôtel Degrés de Notre Dame, July 2001. Text: Marcus Speh.

Posted at 7:01pm and tagged with: Catherine Davis, Short Cuts, Blue Print Review, Synergy, Collaboration, submission,.

Short Cuts. I don’t love you anymore anyway, you can go. I loathe you. The sex always sucked. I hate all men. I hate all women. I can’t even remember what you look like. Truths: I love you so much it takes my breath away even now to think that I should have been so lucky to get you. I adore the place where you stood just now, I think the air molecules there are holy particles. Sex with you was not a revelation it was a rebirth. I love all men but how can you tell them? I love all women but how can you not tell them? I don’t need an image of you. I took your fingerprints when you were asleep and I applied them all over my body and everywhere in the hotel room where we first fucked. I am committed to covering the world with your name. Lie: I will live forever. Truth: I will die. Lie: I will never lie to you. Truth: I don’t love you anymore anyway, you should go. Leave me be. Let me take my own picture. Close the door. Take the stairs. Hold on to the railing. Go out on the street. Find a clown. Spit in his face.
#32/1000. Published in Blue Print Review (with framing story and extras). Photo: Catherine Davis; Paris, Hôtel Degrés de Notre Dame, July 2001. Text: Marcus Speh.

May 27th 2011

5 notes |#

We were stranded between the mountains of Megalia where the fish were talking and smiling, almost as if they were no fish but enchanted people. Or perhaps, my friend Peter remarked, we were enchanted fish, caught in a shape that, from the fish point of view, was neither pretty nor practical in a water world: scattered across a few islands sitting in a vast sea between peaks of mighty mountains, who were conversing with the sky so loudly that there was never a day without a storm except when it was foggy. The fog was the friend of the fish: they came closer when it hung low over our land. They came so near that when they spoke, they could easily pass for people. Everyone in our village had had long conversations with the fish in that fog, conversations that turned philosophical in an instant and always ended with the same question: why were we here in a place so unsuited to us – without warmth or light; without love except the love that we gave each other, but none from nature, none for nature. It was also this question which would give the fish away as for what it was, and then we’d try to catch it, because nothing was as tasty as fresh fish. Peter and I often talked about giving up fish. These fruitless discussions only ended when one morning a rescue party of friendly penguins emerged from the fog, flapping their wings excitedly when they saw us. They brought us to a better, lighter, drier place where fish and fowl lived in silent communion, the one eaten by the other, without need or ability to chat.

#26/1000. Photo: Gabriel Orgrease, Rescued Penguin.

Posted at 6:43pm and tagged with: penguin, fish, fowl, eat or be eaten, island, mountains, megalia, submission,.

We were stranded between the mountains of Megalia where the fish were talking and smiling, almost as if they were no fish but enchanted people. Or perhaps, my friend Peter remarked, we were enchanted fish, caught in a shape that, from the fish point of view, was neither pretty nor practical in a water world: scattered across a few islands sitting in a vast sea between peaks of mighty mountains, who were conversing with the sky so loudly that there was never a day without a storm except when it was foggy. The fog was the friend of the fish: they came closer when it hung low over our land. They came so near that when they spoke, they could easily pass for people. Everyone in our village had had long conversations with the fish in that fog, conversations that turned philosophical in an instant and always ended with the same question: why were we here in a place so unsuited to us – without warmth or light; without love except the love that we gave each other, but none from nature, none for nature. It was also this question which would give the fish away as for what it was, and then we’d try to catch it, because nothing was as tasty as fresh fish. Peter and I often talked about giving up fish. These fruitless discussions only ended when one morning a rescue party of friendly penguins emerged from the fog, flapping their wings excitedly when they saw us. They brought us to a better, lighter, drier place where fish and fowl lived in silent communion, the one eaten by the other, without need or ability to chat.
#26/1000. Photo: Gabriel Orgrease, Rescued Penguin.

May 20th 2011

11 notes |#

Spiders were crawling up the edges of the portal into another world. Whenever a spider had reached the top, a blue light appeared and turned the insect into a flower that fell down in front of the machine. Soon the ground around Emma’s feet was covered with blossoms in many colors. The professor turned to the alien commander next to him: “What’s happening here,” he said. “We’re turning the spiders into flowers,” said the alien. He looked like an ugly lobster with pointy black knobs for eyes and a bright pink rump. “But why would you do that,” said the professor, who was a highly skilled specialist in many scientific disciplines and trained to look for hidden meanings and causes. He spoke so many languages so well that he himself sometimes wasn’t sure which one was his mother tongue. He was so erudite, so well educated and removed from his childhood that often he couldn’t even remember his own mother. “Are you doing it to bend the structure of the physical space-time continuum?” said the professor. “Are you perhaps manipulating matter itself to teach us a valuable lesson? Do you mean to suggest that spiders and flowers came from the same tree of life and that we ought to be more circumspect of them? Or does the pattern of plants hide a mathematical formula, which will help us solve the energy crisis?” The professor had become frenetic: “Tell me, my friend from another galaxy, why is this happening?” – All the while, thousands of spiders had marched up the sides of the giant, door-like structure and subsequently, exposed to the blue light, dropped to the ground transfigured into blooms. “Oh no,” said the alien commander and scratched his behind, “none of that, none of that at all, we just thought the girl would look beautiful standing in a sea of flowers.”

#25/1000. Listen to the podcast. Photo: Long Corridors by Jennifer Tomaloff. Text by Marcus Speh published in Wilderness House Literary Review 6.3.

Posted at 8:39am and tagged with: spiders, portal, universe, emma, flowers, existentialism, submission,.

Spiders were crawling up the edges of the portal into another world. Whenever a spider had reached the top, a blue light appeared and turned the insect into a flower that fell down in front of the machine. Soon the ground around Emma’s feet was covered with blossoms in many colors. The professor turned to the alien commander next to him: “What’s happening here,” he said. “We’re turning the spiders into flowers,” said the alien. He looked like an ugly lobster with pointy black knobs for eyes and a bright pink rump. “But why would you do that,” said the professor, who was a highly skilled specialist in many scientific disciplines and trained to look for hidden meanings and causes. He spoke so many languages so well that he himself sometimes wasn’t sure which one was his mother tongue. He was so erudite, so well educated and removed from his childhood that often he couldn’t even remember his own mother. “Are you doing it to bend the structure of the physical space-time continuum?” said the professor. “Are you perhaps manipulating matter itself to teach us a valuable lesson? Do you mean to suggest that spiders and flowers came from the same tree of life and that we ought to be more circumspect of them? Or does the pattern of plants hide a mathematical formula, which will help us solve the energy crisis?” The professor had become frenetic: “Tell me, my friend from another galaxy, why is this happening?” – All the while, thousands of spiders had marched up the sides of the giant, door-like structure and subsequently, exposed to the blue light, dropped to the ground transfigured into blooms. “Oh no,” said the alien commander and scratched his behind, “none of that, none of that at all, we just thought the girl would look beautiful standing in a sea of flowers.”
#25/1000. Listen to the podcast. Photo: Long Corridors by Jennifer Tomaloff. Text by Marcus Speh published in Wilderness House Literary Review 6.3.

April 27th 2011

5 notes |#

Dance. Heinz ruminated forever until his ruminations turned into a substance: it was green and gooey and stank of greasy thoughts and lazy feet. Not without difficulty, Heinz poured it into a jar that he sealed air tight. He glued a white label on the jar. On the label, he wrote “Dance of Death” and next to the word he drew a skull and crossbones. He was more proud of this drawing of a skull than of anything else in a long time. He’d always wanted to draw a death’s head but the expression on the skull had seemed either too jolly or too vacuous or even melancholic, even though the skull was finished with all of it, unlike Heinz who tended to gloominess. He was a giant who lusted after a much smaller woman, someone he’d known since she’d been a plumpish girl with the lips of the Bardot, and he a gawky boy liable to migraines. When he put his wheel-sized hands that longed for the waist of the small woman around his enormous head, he felt it again, the pain that he knew so well from long ago. Oblivious of everything around him, he moaned, turning his melancholy into a melody that only he would ever hear. Unbeknownst to him, the greenish lump in the jar jerked in time with this music, because everything was connected to everything else. If Heinz had really understood that, he’d have saved himself plenty of aggravation.

#22. Photo: Two by Bill Yarrow. (See also the German version).

Posted at 9:01pm and tagged with: Bill Yarrow, Marcus Speh, India, Pain, Schmerz, Love, Longing, Desire, Queen of Pain, Goddess, submission,.

Dance. Heinz ruminated forever until his ruminations turned into a substance: it was green and gooey and stank of greasy thoughts and lazy feet. Not without difficulty, Heinz poured it into a jar that he sealed air tight. He glued a white label on the jar. On the label, he wrote “Dance of Death” and next to the word he drew a skull and crossbones. He was more proud of this drawing of a skull than of anything else in a long time. He’d always wanted to draw a death’s head but the expression on the skull had seemed either too jolly or too vacuous or even melancholic, even though the skull was finished with all of it, unlike Heinz who tended to gloominess. He was a giant who lusted after a much smaller woman, someone he’d known since she’d been a plumpish girl with the lips of the Bardot, and he a gawky boy liable to migraines. When he put his wheel-sized hands that longed for the waist of the small woman around his enormous head, he felt it again, the pain that he knew so well from long ago. Oblivious of everything around him, he moaned, turning his melancholy into a melody that only he would ever hear. Unbeknownst to him, the greenish lump in the jar jerked in time with this music, because everything was connected to everything else. If Heinz had really understood that, he’d have saved himself plenty of aggravation.
#22. Photo: Two by Bill Yarrow. (See also the German version).

April 9th 2011

10 notes |#

They don’t look at each other when they fuck, Ernö and his wife from Sweden, the blonde Malín. They share this not looking like other couples share thoughts, beds, colds. Malín peeks at a painting of the Swedish king when he still had his good hair while Ernö pounds away as if anything depended on it. Just in case this moment turned into history or something. He looks at the photo of a Vietnamese woman standing in a pad without expression, or if that’s not possible, without discernible expression. Or perhaps it’s just that damned abyss of being that stops us from seeing anyone else but images of ourselves, our image repeated in everyone around us forever. Ernö also keeps his socks on at all times, even when he takes a bath. Malín is afraid to ask about the woman in the field. She really does care about Ernö. She feels that Ernö has known the other woman and would prefer her to Malín’s more austere demeanor. Malín is like a birch, pale and bendy. The other one is like a grain of rice, petite and fertile. But whatever acrobatics Ernö and Malín perform – and they are as good at it as if they were circus artists, as any connoisseur will tell you – she must gaze at Carl XVI Gustaf and he must gaze at the woman whose real name is Bich Lien Truong Thi, and none of the four knows where their inebriant routine will lead, this love that is sandwiched between obsession and obscurity.

#20. Photo: Frankie Sachs. (German version.) Published in Metazen and nominated for a Micro Award.

Posted at 10:35am and tagged with: sweden, carl xvi gustaf, bich lien truong thi, vietnam, love, couple, sex, prose, story, flash, submission,.

They don’t look at each other when they fuck, Ernö and his wife from Sweden, the blonde Malín. They share this not looking like other couples share thoughts, beds, colds. Malín peeks at a painting of the Swedish king when he still had his good hair while Ernö pounds away as if anything depended on it. Just in case this moment turned into history or something. He looks at the photo of a Vietnamese woman standing in a pad without expression, or if that’s not possible, without discernible expression. Or perhaps it’s just that damned abyss of being that stops us from seeing anyone else but images of ourselves, our image repeated in everyone around us forever. Ernö also keeps his socks on at all times, even when he takes a bath. Malín is afraid to ask about the woman in the field. She really does care about Ernö. She feels that Ernö has known the other woman and would prefer her to Malín’s more austere demeanor. Malín is like a birch, pale and bendy. The other one is like a grain of rice, petite and fertile. But whatever acrobatics Ernö and Malín perform – and they are as good at it as if they were circus artists, as any connoisseur will tell you – she must gaze at Carl XVI Gustaf and he must gaze at the woman whose real name is Bich Lien Truong Thi, and none of the four knows where their inebriant routine will lead, this love that is sandwiched between obsession and obscurity.
#20. Photo: Frankie Sachs. (German version.) Published in Metazen and nominated for a Micro Award.

April 2nd 2011

6 notes |#

Jacqueline. As a teenager, I went across the Iron Curtain every year to spend the summer in pioneer camps for boys and girls. I had a diary, a thin book wrapped in red cloth, which I loved. I painted the first letter on every new page rather than write it. My life seemed boring to me: this book was going to be about calligraphy. It wasn’t even a book, it was a sign in itself, a sign of my flight to the stars. The camp management had always lots of activities planned for us. Gladly, they involved males and females. They observed us doing our exercises, playing ping-pong, walking about the grounds as young people do, and eating together. We slept in separate quarters, of course. Everything that we did was recorded, which somehow did take the spontaneity away. We were never told what to do or not to do though it was clear, kind of, that we were not supposed to fall in love or respond to our crushes. I fell in love each summer. Once, I was crazy about the camp nurse: she was fat and friendly and she smelled exquisite, not like a nurse at all. Best of all: she’d read everything that I was reading and we could actually talk about things using the books between us as bridges. My happiness was complete when an older boy broke my nose – he was a lot more brutal than I thought possible – and I had to go to the infirmary which was run by the nurse. I’ve forgotten her name so I’m just going to make one up: Jacqueline. Whenever I fell in love, I got my heart broken. Every summer.

#19. Photo: Michael J. Solender. (German version.) Text published in Wilderness House Literary Review 6.2.

Posted at 10:24am and tagged with: wall, east germany, west germany, love, youth, teenager, Jacqueline, happiness, heart, submission,.

Jacqueline. As a teenager, I went across the Iron Curtain every year to spend the summer in pioneer camps for boys and girls. I had a diary, a thin book wrapped in red cloth, which I loved. I painted the first letter on every new page rather than write it. My life seemed boring to me: this book was going to be about calligraphy. It wasn’t even a book, it was a sign in itself, a sign of my flight to the stars. The camp management had always lots of activities planned for us. Gladly, they involved males and females. They observed us doing our exercises, playing ping-pong, walking about the grounds as young people do, and eating together. We slept in separate quarters, of course. Everything that we did was recorded, which somehow did take the spontaneity away. We were never told what to do or not to do though it was clear, kind of, that we were not supposed to fall in love or respond to our crushes. I fell in love each summer. Once, I was crazy about the camp nurse: she was fat and friendly and she smelled exquisite, not like a nurse at all. Best of all: she’d read everything that I was reading and we could actually talk about things using the books between us as bridges. My happiness was complete when an older boy broke my nose – he was a lot more brutal than I thought possible – and I had to go to the infirmary which was run by the nurse. I’ve forgotten her name so I’m just going to make one up: Jacqueline. Whenever I fell in love, I got my heart broken. Every summer.
#19. Photo: Michael J. Solender. (German version.) Text published in Wilderness House Literary Review 6.2.

March 10th 2011

10 notes |#

Post war poem. When I was young I received luncheon vouchers instead of pocket money. Every Sunday, I got a poem written by my mother’s hand and decorated with florets even if the verses were desperately unhappy and depressing. Bachmann, Celan, Plath were served as a matter of course alongside cake, usually Frankfurt crown cake, because once my mother had mastered making it, we could no longer wrest the butter cream syringe from her. I had to read the poem out loud. She’d look upon me with pride while my dad looked like the young Thomas Bernhard: somewhat repugnant with his half-open sulky lips and large, protruding, yellowish eye-balls. He slowly, rhythmically opened and shut his eyelids like a breathing toad. The final event of every Sunday family event was the waltz that I had to dance with my pygmy sister while my parents felt each other up on the couch as if we weren’t in the room. I usually closed my eyes and tried to escape to the inside of my head. I always felt like the envoy of another, braver world, who’d only come to cancel the show and to send them all home, knowing that their homes were gone: the whores and schlehmihls, the wasted poets and post card painters, who had survived the war. I stuffed myself with cream cake and longed for better days, quietly burping Beethoven’s Fifth between mouthfuls.

#17. Photo: Heike Reichenwallner. (German version). Text © Marcus Speh, published in Wilderness House Literary Review 6.2.

Posted at 3:36pm and tagged with: Beethoven, Sylvia Plath, Paul Celan, Ingeborg Bachmann, Thomas Bernhard, Frankfurt crown cake, waltz, submission,.

Post war poem. When I was young I received luncheon vouchers instead of pocket money. Every Sunday, I got a poem written by my mother’s hand and decorated with florets even if the verses were desperately unhappy and depressing. Bachmann, Celan, Plath were served as a matter of course alongside cake, usually Frankfurt crown cake, because once my mother had mastered making it, we could no longer wrest the butter cream syringe from her. I had to read the poem out loud. She’d look upon me with pride while my dad looked like the young Thomas Bernhard: somewhat repugnant with his half-open sulky lips and large, protruding, yellowish eye-balls. He slowly, rhythmically opened and shut his eyelids like a breathing toad. The final event of every Sunday family event was the waltz that I had to dance with my pygmy sister while my parents felt each other up on the couch as if we weren’t in the room. I usually closed my eyes and tried to escape to the inside of my head. I always felt like the envoy of another, braver world, who’d only come to cancel the show and to send them all home, knowing that their homes were gone: the whores and schlehmihls, the wasted poets and post card painters, who had survived the war. I stuffed myself with cream cake and longed for better days, quietly burping Beethoven’s Fifth between mouthfuls.
#17. Photo: Heike Reichenwallner. (German version). Text © Marcus Speh, published in Wilderness House Literary Review 6.2.