After Four Cereal Bowls, my aunt never wrote another word or attempted to, a loss to art bemoaned by the literati of late millennial America. Unlike Salinger, Aunt Merry did not disappear so much as she entered a prolonged supernova state, attending every opening and event and party in Manhattan. She snorted coke at Studio 54 and posed nude and did a weekend of prison time after a Vietnam War protest.
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Review by E. Kirshe
Dan Tarnowski’s collection of eight poems After you say what’s true… presents a handful of highly narrative memories filled with quiet contemplation.
Tarnowski offers simplicity and intimacy in each work. Self-reflection runs through the pages, Tarnowski is open about who he is, what bothers him about himself, what he thinks about, and what makes him hopeful. Using beautiful structure- often weaving in and out of recent and past memories— and convincing imagery Tarnowski is a refreshing as well as inviting poet. He’ll often start somewhere simple then make an intriguing about face.
“i often fell to observing/small nuances that others were not interested in,/the construction of table legs where they met the tables with screws/sometimes even hurting myself on purpose, sticking pins in my finger,/twisting and folding my limbs…”
For those looking to connect with a new artist Tarnowski’s most recent chapbook presents very honest work and well worth the one sitting it will take you to complete.
This chapbook and Tarnowski’s other works are available here: http://dtarnowski.com/all/
The Year of Looking Up Friends on Our iPhones Only to Wonder Who We Actually Met
Chloe read the Magna Carta backward. I’m sure of it, whether you are or not. Please tell me we are not the last people on earth. Please tell me if I open the door I will find the mail in the box, maybe a couple bills we can pay on our meager salaries. There was a guy named Peter one of us knew from somewhere, not a support group, no, I never went to that one that met down the street from the place where somebody my parents used to know lived. People started dying long before we started living.
Freddy is not worth talking about.
Oh. Raquel is another story. Well, there was this one instance, and I only heard this from Cam, who happened to be with her at the party and eventually got her home completely without taking advantage of the situation whatsoever (considering Cam this is almost unbelievable and I don’t even need to include any euphemisms for you to know what sort of activity he refrained from that I find unbelievable yet enlightening because, perhaps, humanity has some baseline goodness left and since Cam was probably five to six rum and Cokes heavier than when he started the night that this story takes place on makes it all the more improbable yet uplifting/encouraging/inspiring). Anyway, Cam tells me stuff went down and Raquel happens to be lucky in that there is nothing worth remembering (in a good or bad sense) from the night because she definitely remembered zero of what transpired in perhaps the best possible way of not remembering zilch. Continue reading
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