Small Press Release – Howl Revisted (an excerpt)

written by Jacob Singer September 29, 2019

Howl Revisted by Mike Corrao
194 pages – Orson’s Publishing

i had a dream last night, that i came back to howl and all that was left were the dying animal sounds. all of the pages had torn away, and the binding had begun to rot. out of the source came sorrow or longing or regret. something was distorted, and yelling out. it wanted help. death or medicine. its leg had a gash, the pads of its feet were sanded down to nothing. each step was delicate and painful.

ah uh ah uh ah uh ah uh ah uh

aroo aroo aroo aroo aroo aroo

barkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbark

in newark, colorado, and india, ashes rise out of the ground. they crawl up through the small pockets of space between each molecule of dirt, and they hover for a moment. looking out to the central point, an origin, where they had all been before. memories resurfacing and colliding. flashes of light and symbol. they fly through the sky to this singularity and coalesce. original forms at the origin point.

i witnessed the ginsberg revival.

man is made out of ashes. when he goes to bed, his body remembers this, and begins to fall apart. when he wakes up in the morning, the organs and flesh forget again. on the outer layer is the body that returned to ash in the night, that did not forget what it truly is.

for twenty years ginsberg’s body knew what he was, now it is unsure again. it has returned to its rigid and asymmetrical shape.

he screamed hysterical mad. stark and raving. stuck with his feet still in the animal soup of time. he could only remember the things that he was given on the way back up. lying across the wooden floorboards of my apartment, splayed out like jesus christ yet to die. cigarette burns speckled along the palms of his hands: the beatnik stigmata of a false prophet.

where are we now?

have you ever been to minneapolis?

i think so.

that’s where we are.

how did i get here?

who’s to say how these things come about.

[pause]

are you okay?

i’m fine.

frayed wood strands curling up from the floor as he wept. sunlight fractured out of the droplets, casting long and colorful shadows, depicting new mythopoeias, images wandering between god and gaia. they wrapped around him like unkempt vines, moss grew over the cracks in his skin, fertilized by the ashes, like foliage in the shadow of the volcano.

all his kids were gone, their being still looming as specters in the residual landscape, with halos around their skulls, and wings sewn onto their backs. he cried out:

holy holy holy holy holy holy

he sat at the windowsill, overlooking the street. densely packed sidewalks, anxious bodies at each corner. chain restaurants. small cafes, not family owned, but familial in their image. the untrue icon. a large intersecting river. ropes across the clifftops. he let his cigarette buds fall into the dumpster below. they tumbled gently along the brownstone walls. i think i found myself at the end. where i’d like to go now, and make something new. he curled his back around the frame of the window and let the weight of his hips drag him from the apartment. his body slouched into the dumpster below. among the discarded, and still smoldering buds. all my kids were holy.

holy holy holy holy holy holy

he fashioned together old rolling papers and used coffee grounds from the trash to make a joint, hesitantly licked the edge and lit. he inhaled the caffeine and held it for a moment. he closed his eyes and tried to sleep as i checked his pulse, his bones, his eyes. he climbed out of the dumpster in a cloud of ash. they trailed behind him. up and over the can. all along the wall. a small pile in the windowsill.

bodies laid on the floor, all of them formed from the same reassembled ashes. my eyes began to ache in their sockets. smoke rose from the floorboards, out of the windows. the low choral humming of the resurrected began. i closed my eyes and new images arrived. a vision branded the inside of my skull. sounds tapping the bone. i felt a paranoia. singular and arriving.

MONGRELS HOWL MIXED CRIES, YELPING, WHINING

QUQUQUQUQUQUQUQUQUQUQUQUQUQUQUQUQU

NEW SHAPES ARE FORMED OF THE ASHEN FRAME

QUQUQUQUQUQUQUQUQUQUQUQUQUQUQUQUQU

VOICES BEWARE, ALL WILL FALL INTO THE AETHER

QUQUQUQUQUQUQUQUQUQUQUQUQUQUQUQUQU

i’ve spread myself outwards from empty bodies of text that desired nothing, felt nothing, did nothing, that were nothing, and so now i’ve been left in the void of their durée, set upon the grave, set against this moloch city landscape. spread out, yet dense and aging, there are new bodies, built in the scope of their predecessors. with rebar skeletons, and sleepy eyes.

i found ginsberg back in the apartment, squatted down in the space between the wall and the mattress, held up by stacks of the old chapbook. he looked at me.

i think i’ve killed my art.

i can’t come back to it anymore.

there’s nothing there for me, except memories and associations.

they’ve lost their poetry. they’re only poems now.

and all i can do is lament them, and try to forget.

although, i don’t know how to go about forgetting them.

who’s risen from the grave since the old jew fell back asleep? anyone? duchamp, didion, stein, whitman? i’ve seen lesser faces. trails of ash are swept into the storm drains every night. only the resurrected live their lives in the predawn. they roll around in the dust and coat themselves, turned invisible in the night, demonic in charcoal.

we arrived at a gallery where each painting was defined as the manifestation of some emotion. anger was ripped through the canvas, frustration was blank, anxiety had jagged lines. the host sold the artist’s work discreetly from the back door.

whitman appeared in drag, kissing ginsberg on the lips and guiding him around the room. they bought paintings from the host, and colorful cigarettes from the clerk.

they ended up together in a nearby supermarket, drunk and stumbling. laughing and crying. covered in soot, dripping dust. an anxiety, or some foreboding sense, lingered behind on the sidewalk, opening and closing the automatic doors. i think i’d like to stop now.

Jacob Singer

Jacob Singer’s work can be found at Orbit, American Book Review, Rain Taxi, and Quarterly Conversation. He can be found on Twitter @jacobcsinger

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Small Press Release – Howl Revisted (an excerpt)

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