THE COMPLEAT LUNGFISH - GRANT MAIERHOFERThis World. This world as it is right there now. Some instruments behind it there. The abrasive throat against it. Where to put it? Where to align these things with these other things? Patricia Lee Smith screaming. Who is there screaming now? The figure still standing, hovering over the microphone, and the room is circling around him in a sweaty fugue. Someone of the people. The ones there needed this release, we’re not sure who. I try to write to someone, I try to create this construct of writing to someone to tell them about this thing, and I’m not sure how exactly to explain it. Dear Al, from rehab, have you heard about this? Are you still living? Were you the one in the Jeep that flipped and killed you? Was that someone else? I want to show him this clip but I don’t know why, I don’t fully understand myself. I want to say something to this person to give them light or levity. I want to put myself out there in the world and go walking for ten hours straight. Ten hours, listening to the music over and over and over again, listening to the repetition until it becomes something else, something not repetition, something pushed through repetition, indifference, or difference, or caring, or disinterest. The drugs in Baltimore. The drugs in Washington D.C. The disparities there. The places being torn open there and made to rot there on their vines. Grant Maierhofer is the author of Works (11:11 Press), Peripatet (Inside the Castle), Drain Songs (FC2), and others. His next book, Shame, is forthcoming from FC2 in 2022, alongside an experiment whose title is far too long to print here, on Inside the Castle. His shorter work is available via New Sinews, Terraform, and elsewhere. He teaches at Washington State University and lives in Moscow, Idaho, with his family. ISBN: 978-1954899049
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