Self in Rubble by Peter Wortsman

Issue 9

not many
sustain
perception
thrown into
gloom and disrepair
the aftermath
vapor
trails
aimless
floating
seething
undernourished
to the end

Source: The New York Times

Method: I revert to cut-ups when I am too distracted, depressed, dumbfounded or deranged to write coherently and just feel like letting loose. I circle the words that catch my eye for whatever reason and then cut them out and rearrange them on the page. My method is to read a text vertically, latching onto words and phrases as the eye runs down the page and linking them together by what I would call magnetic imminence. I let it lead me with little intent. The result is often amusing, sometimes irreverent, occasionally poetic.

Peter Wortsman is the author, most recently, of a novel “Cold Earth Wanderers” (Pelekinesis, 2014); a travel memoir “Ghost Dance in Berlin” (Travelers Tales, 2013)—recipient of a 2014 Independent Publishers Book Award (IPPY); an anthology which he compiled, edited and translated “Tales of the German Imagination” (Penguin Classics, 2013); and a collection of short prose “Footprints in Wet Cement” (Pelekinesis, forthcoming in 2017).

Two Dudes by Daryl Muranaka

Issue 6

I wanna do a great American road trip
Take the car and drive away
Yeah, I got my bag
I’m re-evaluating my life
I don’t know how to get a non-science degree

That’s your fault.
You go in with a clean slate.
You got into a really bad deal.

I have good prospects
I want to sleep
Oh my God!
I’ve had like 3 or 4 cups of coffee
I have a grande chai latte.
I need it today.

What do you call it—
things that make you?
I know I didn’t look.  I didn’t see it.
It’s just that you’re inside

I don’t know, yeah, I feel like
pretty girls in t-shirts. It’s a little feminist.

It’s so stiff
He comes over sometimes
Yeah, yeah, tall white guy
He sued him

This kid was supposed to be my best friend
I’ve never missed a payment in my life

It’s a basic thing–you pay the rent.
Obviously this building looks different
from what we saw half an hour ago
We don’t actually have to go through the building.
You need to be living in some shitty apartment
You owe it.

That’s what I’m pissed about
Besides that, everything is going great
Still in Cambridge
It was about 10 degrees.  10. 10 degrees. 10 degrees.

I just mentioned it.
Chelsea is a dangerous city
It’s a hot bed for drugs
cinco ocho

Hit me up sometime, bro

Okay, thank you so much for calling. Awesome.
Source: cut-up of conversations heard in Cambridge, MA 2015

Daryl Muranaka lives in Boston with his family. In his spare time, he enjoys aikido and taijiquan and exploring his children’s dual heritages. His first book, Hanami, was published by Aldrich Press and his first chapbook, The Minstrel of Belmont, was published Finishing Line Press in 2015.