Banango Lit

BY MATT MARGO

Michael Inscoe is the author of Don’t Die Alone, a collection of poetry and fiction that was originally published in April 2011 and republished in a revised second edition in March 2012. It is available as a paperback for $9.00 and as an ebook for free. I recently finished reading the book for the first time, and these are some of my favorite sentences, stanzas, and lines from it.

Sentences:

“Memory thinks often of killing herself, but knows she should wait, because she doesn’t want the act to be related to her mother’s recent death.”

“She knows she will get an ‘A’ on the paper, but she will never know whether or not Dr. Blithe actually really paid attention to it, or read it, but while thinking about her hips and small breasts and mouth forming a smirk, forming an ‘O’ shape, silently speaking the word ‘morbid.’”

“Mark is in the bathroom at work. He feels sick and he is sweating. He is sitting on the toilet. He is reading an email from Sarah. He considers responding but he doesn’t feel like he could focus. He opens the application Safari and reads a short story by Ellen Kennedy. He feels sick and he is sweating.”

“Akon walks across the street. A car swerves to miss him and honks. Akon feels angry and confused at the consequential temporary meaningfulness it gives his life.”

Stanzas:

“That was the first time I ever drank coffee
So hot it burned my tongue

And Grant made fun of me later at the Taco Bell somewhere outside of town
For complaining about the sandpapery soreness”

“Listen, I’ve had enough of the picturesque, of colors and charm
Love, its tenderness and its cruelty”

“two hours alone
the cinema
a video
my family
my car
january
i’m celebrating the incineration”

“He went home and watched the Michael Jackson Memorial with his roommate. John Mayer was playing guitar in front of a casket where Michael Jackson’s dead body supposedly was and everyone was wearing sunglasses.
His roommate was irate at the disrespectful nature of the program.”

Lines:

“I want to sneak outside and have a beer chugging contest and laugh and get a little beer on our chins or shirts and both think that at that moment we would rather be doing nothing else”

“This poem is going to sneak into your email inbox and delete some of your important emails I don’t know why yet”

“I can shop for noise-canceling headphones online and think of you and your pursed lips”

“Later, on my way to work one evening, there was no more snow, and the ice was all gone, and I was strangely able to picture all those things vividly, the blue and yellow lights, your arm in mine, afraid you might fall on the ice”

“The waiter thought the temporary tattoo on your leg was real and we all made fun of him on the drive home”

“Exhume my bones when the time comes please”

by Matt Margo

KADIAN
Jordan Castro
Hip Hip Hooray Press, February 2012
Buy from Animal Sorrow

KADIAN is a morphine sulfate extended-release capsule.
KADIAN is intended to alleviate your pain.
KADIAN can easily lead to an overdose if chewed, crushed, dissolved, snorted, or injected in excess.
KADIAN, Jordan Castro’s poetry chapbook published by Hip Hip Hooray Press, explores the human condition with regards to release, pain, excess, and longing.

It is composed of twelve notably minimalist poems, most of which are no longer than 3-5 lines, that each manage to communicate a special sort of honesty through the approach of brevity.
This honesty is not solely personal, although there is a great deal of the self to be found within such meta-narratives as ONLY WRITING THIS POEM TO DISTRACT MYSELF FROM THINKING ABOUT HOW SHITTY OF A FRIEND/PERSON I AM.
More deeply, and more importantly, it is an honesty toward the notion of destruction, toward a desire for its prevention.

The voice of this poetry is as reflective as it is instructive, and as helpless as it is hopeful.
There are recurring themes of addiction, self-loathing, and regret, and they are observed from the perspective of both he who is victimized and he who refuses to remain a victim.
As Castro’s words discern, we may recognize our faults as human beings, we may “wear [our] hangover on [our] chest like a chain,” but we must not allow ourselves to become confined to that which encapsulates us like a pill.
Instead, “it’s time we stop feeling sorry for ourselves and do something different for a change.”

Terminally Beautiful
Christy Leigh Stewart
self-published, March 2011
Buy from Amazon, Lulu

One holding a copy of Christy Leigh Stewart’s Terminally Beautiful will find that the back cover of the book seems to address the reader directly, let alone a bit scornfully:

Diana isn’t pretty like you.

She isn’t smart like you, or interesting like you.

No one loves her like we all love you.

You don’t need plastic surgery on your body or therapy for your brain.

But Diana does.

Diana has to go to a rehab for ugly girls while you are too beautiful for this book.

We hope you never die.

After all, according to the foreword by bizarro author Kevin Shamel, this book “will make you…thank whatever you thank that you’re not a character in it.” Yet on the same page, Shamel then forewarns, “Get ready to find yourself inside this book—Ms. Stewart has put us all in there.” This warning does indeed perfectly embody what makes Terminally Beautiful such a remarkable read: it is a story of inevitability; of the desire to resist that which cannot be escaped and escape that which cannot be resisted.

The protagonist Diana is one of many young women voluntarily residing in a rehabilitation clinic for ugliness, which may seem like a humorous bizarro fiction premise one would expect from Carlton Mellick III, author of such novels as Armadillo Fists, The Haunted Vagina, and Satan Burger. In actuality, the ugliness from which Diana hopes to recover is not quirky and amusing but sad and intricate. It is not only physical but also (and perhaps primarily) psychological, social, and emotional. Ever since a handsome stranger “had sex on [her]” one night (rather than making love or having sex with each other), Diana has felt like a kind of ghost, an empty shell awaiting any sort of fulfillment as she drifts from group therapy session to group therapy session, from one Xanax to the next. She requires doctors to tell her what her thoughts and feelings are. She smiles with her eyes instead of her mouth. She tells hollow lies to people only to immediately counter them with the truth:

“He’s been raped,” Anna remarks about him.

“I was too.”

“No, you weren’t.”

“No, I wasn’t.”

But both the patients and the professionals at this clinic seem to carry a firm and unflinching belief that with the development of physical beauty (via “psychiatry, exercise, diet, and plastic surgery”), all aspects of inner beauty will follow. For some, such as Diana’s closest acquaintance Anna, the true pathway to the annihilation of one’s ugliness includes full gender transformation, but Diana looks and feels and is so ugly that not even a new set of genitalia can cure the vacancy and distress of her everyday existence. Thus, as Anna attempts to help her realize, Diana must take dire action in order to achieve the sense of belonging that she is supposed to want. By the end of the book, however, Diana discovers that what she truly wants is neither belonging nor beauty, but something else entirely—something tragic and wonderful and human. Terminally Beautiful is indeed an unsettling tale, but in the most powerful and skillfully told of ways.

Editor’s Note: Banango is looking for guest posters. Preferably ones that are cool. Are you cool? Email us. This is a guest piece by Matt Margo. Matt edits Cormac McCarthy’s Dead Typewriter and we interviewed him recently. We hope you learn lots of things from Matt Margo.

‘shallow’ – edited by Zachary Whalen
Recommended Reading: four poems by Marshall Mallicoat

Although the name of this webjournal may suggest otherwise, the poetry and prose collected here often evoke a beautiful and complicated existential struggle with what has happened, what is happening, and what will happen in an ennui-ridden post-postmodern iGeneration world.


Hip Hop Hooray Press – edited by Jess Dutschmann
Recommended Reading: an untitled poem by Johnny Vulpine

Originated as a pun on the equally awesome Hiphiphooray Press, this webjournal confirms the sort of equilibrium between literature and rap, offering that hip-hop is not a derivative genre of music, but rather a significant culture in and of itself.


Happy Dog Mom Litjournal – edited by ???
Recommended Reading:  Handjobs Are Bleak Unless You Have Some Lube, Then They Can Be Pretty Decent, It Mainly Comes Down to Technique, I Guess  by Michelle Whatever

This webjournal seems to have been mystically birthed by the mere will of Ken Baumann, and although many rumors have stirred regarding who the hell edits it, the identity of its creator(s) [and several of its contributors] is still unknown.


Pop Serial – edited by Stephen Tully Dierks
Recommended Reading:  It Is Okay to Feel Catastrophic  by Noah Cicero

Stephen Tully Dierks is arguably one of the most prolific writers of his generation, and his unparalleled literary sharpness and enthusiasm can be exemplified in not only his own work but also the astounding work he solicits for this webjournal.