Unlikely 2.0


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Editors' Notes

Maria Damon and Michelle Greenblatt
Jim Leftwich and Michelle Greenblatt
Sheila E. Murphy and Michelle Greenblatt

A Visual Conversation on Michelle Greenblatt's ASHES AND SEEDS with Stephen Harrison, Monika Mori | MOO, Jonathan Penton and Michelle Greenblatt

Letters for Michelle: with work by Jukka-Pekka Kervinen, Jeffrey Side, Larry Goodell, mark hartenbach, Charles J. Butler, Alexandria Bryan and Brian Kovich

Visual Poetry by Reed Altemus
Poetry by Glen Armstrong
Poetry by Lana Bella
A Eulogic Poem by John M. Bennett
Elegic Poetry by John M. Bennett
Poetry by Wendy Taylor Carlisle
A Eulogy by Vincent A. Cellucci
Poetry by Vincent A. Cellucci
Poetry by Joel Chace
A Spoken Word Poem and Visual Art by K.R. Copeland
A Eulogy by Alan Fyfe
Poetry by Win Harms
Poetry by Carolyn Hembree
Poetry by Cindy Hochman
A Eulogy by Steffen Horstmann
A Eulogic Poem by Dylan Krieger
An Elegic Poem by Dylan Krieger
Visual Art by Donna Kuhn
Poetry by Louise Landes Levi
Poetry by Jim Lineberger
Poetry by Dennis Mahagin
Poetry by Peter Marra
A Eulogy by Frankie Metro
A Song by Alexis Moon and Jonathan Penton
Poetry by Jay Passer
A Eulogy by Jonathan Penton
Visual Poetry by Anne Elezabeth Pluto and Bryson Dean-Gauthier
Visual Art by Marthe Reed
A Eulogy by Gabriel Ricard
Poetry by Alison Ross
A Short Movie by Bernd Sauermann
Poetry by Christopher Shipman
A Spoken Word Poem by Larissa Shmailo
A Eulogic Poem by Jay Sizemore
Elegic Poetry by Jay Sizemore
Poetry by Felino A. Soriano
Visual Art by Jamie Stoneman
Poetry by Ray Succre
Poetry by Yuriy Tarnawsky
A Song by Marc Vincenz


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My Sorrows and Disorders of the Psychiatric Kind
by George Sparling

She sat next to me listening to a professor explain Otto Dix during the Weimar years, his paintings full of loathing, depicting depravities in all shapes and sizes. That was how I met her, after my release from prison, my face glowing with delight that her name was Thorn, precocious, sixteen-year old Thorn Vinadictive. There was only one Vinadictive in Zonggone, that surname belonging to my psychiatrist. I did not give one jackdaw's asshole about screwing my shrink's underage daughter.

Walking to my place, Thorn said, "Lupus, do you think Lester Ballad is evil because he's a necrophiliac? Would you dork the dead?"

"I'd try my damnest, forgetting sexual orientation, to fuck your dad Boyd if he were dead."

"Best McCarthy I've read," she said, taking her black shirt off before we had a good and sweaty genital embrace.

Boyd's psychiatric mumbo-jumbo, prescribing medications: I took none of them. Instead I opened the capsules, poring pink powder in a bowl, grinding up the tablets, mixing them with cat food. My cat chomped this delicacy, looking weaker every time she gobbled the cat food. After going through six bottles in two months, I found her dead; puke dribbling out her mouth. Then I found another cat I could croak. Screwing her ( Thorn, not cats, although I whacked semen on one once ) was cruel. Cruelty enhanced my ego. I could hardly wait to drop the sex-bomb on Boyd, the dirtier the better.

I sought obscenity because Boyd had testified against me in court for hanging a bit too much around a Catholic church's playground. I agreed with Henry Miller who said he wanted to be obscene, not simply pornographic. Acts, not art, counted, But for practical reasons I welded, making phalluses penetrate yoni symbols from found metallic objects in Zonggone, selling to galleries. My work was not perverse but fiendish. Fiend, from the German feind, meaning enemy. Only a fiend could break Boyd. I detailed in our sessions that I was under investigation, a gargantuan surveillance network gathered evidence against me. As I strutted out after my prison release, I was guiltless, soon plugging Thorn's b-hole in Boyd's Lexus in the parking lot. The Lexus stunk of feces. Driving past us in his Mercedes, taking a lunch break, Boyd could not have not seen us.

The next appointment I talked about internet porn, how it seemed no matter what clip, full movie (German ones were the best), or image I clicked, I found virtually no female of legal age. "They all looked like Thorn, somehow," I said. I talked of clips, a girl like Thorn playing Nurse Jane, dressed in whites, pale hose running down her legs, legs I imagined even better than Martina Gedeck's in that Stasi movie, The Lives of Others. He chuckled knowingly; he had seen the film.

I taunted Boyd, regaling him with the "click abyss" as I called it, or the "click abattoir," seeing his reaction when I pointed at a blob of dim-witted colors and shapes, attempting abstraction but looking like a mud pancake, obviously done by one of Boyd's patients, signifying his or her progress.

"I bet your failures end up in Russian gulags," I said. He shot me a harsh look. "Hear that click from the middle of the framed glob? They're clicking me. It's terrorism, a warning they're on to me, all those filthy, illegal internet clips I saw. Hear that? Another one. Don't you believe the CIA and FBI are sending me messages?"

"What messages? You don't deserve punishment, Lupus," Dr. Vinadictive intoned.

"Oh yeah, and they're entering cars in parking lots, putting shit all over the inside, especially new, expensive cars?" The next time Thorn and I boinked in the parking lot, Boyd drove past us in the Mercedes for lunch. He slowed down, staring at his daughter's bare butt. After he left we brought plastic baggies, tossing our combined day's worth of excrement around, grinding shit into the upholstery, protecting ourselves by wearing latex gloves. Thorn had seen the Virgin Mary painting enlarged online, its dung inspiring her to masturbate.

I walked into Old Choots bar, sort of like one in Out of the Past, a slow-moving fan whirling above, and there stood Rumpelstiltskin. She had seen how I outlived my welcome at a Catholic school's playground, perhaps viewing me as that child-ogling Aqualung in Jethro Tull's song. What led to my incarceration was informer Rumpelstiltskin.

Now, seated at the bar talking to a greasy-looking character, I saw hairs dangle from her nose ( I wanted to torch the mucus-laden strands with a cigarette lighter ), lips virtually hidden beneath canker sores, a bloody line of pus oozed down her chin, her clubfoot, razor blades fastened to the special shoe, and her scoliosis making her look like Frankenstein's assistant, Igor: Often ugliness is simply outward appearances but regarding Rumpelstiltskin, its thoroughness revealed inner evil.

She snitched me out because she hoped I would go insane, die, or become death itself inside. Fortresses, castles, cathedrals, temples, abbeys, mausoleums could bring that on. Rumpy would have loved seeing the film Inner Sanctum, where the murderer inhabited the same shabby room as the witness to his crime. There, I imagined she kicked me with her cripple-shoe, razor-blading me to death.


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