Posts tagged ‘books’

04/29/2013

Acromegaly

by Pierce Nahigyan

Had a cousin, Elbert, was a giant. Didn’t mind being called a giant; he was about eight feet tall, give or take an inch. He wasn’t above complaining about being a giant, mind, and a family reunion was always a countdown till he smashed his head on some ceiling-hung obstruction. A chandelier in a discount diner couldn’t account for acromegaly, but it wasn’t Elbert’s fault either. He was obligated to carry on in a world whose gravity, and shirts and shoes, and women, by and large, were tailored for lighter, lesser men.

For a little while Elbert held a good job as a movie extra, now and then with a speaking role, when the background called for tormented creatures. He always looked very intimidating, though Elbert, on account of his size, spent most of his time sitting and reading. It was one of the few things he could do that didn’t frighten people. Elbert complained that he frightened people.

He died young. Giants do. He did a damn decent thing for his folks by buying his own casket with his movie money, and even figured out how to get a forklift onto the cemetery grounds to unload him. A few years before he died he told me he thought of donating his bones to science, but science had never figured out a way to shrink him to a less painful stature, so they could go soak their heads. They weren’t getting him dead or alive.

“You think God’s gonna be as big as you, when you get up to heaven?” I asked.

“He better be big,” said Elbert. “He better be big, and look like Cary Grant, and dance like Fred Astaire, and smile like Groucho Marx.”

“All that?” I said.

“How else is he gonna show me how to do all that? I’d look damn silly if I tried that stuff down here.”

04/24/2013

Acrocephaly

by Pierce Nahigyan

He was called the Egghead in the circus. My father took me to him holding my hand in the circus’s freakshow, knowing that if he did not hold on I would run. Clowns did not frighten me, and I was fond of lions and tigers and elephants, and the carnies taking tickets seemed like friendly villagers from a fairy tale. But there was something about the bearded lady that unnerved my five-year-old mind, a distinct, innate sensitivity to the flip-flopped reality under the dirty crimson tent of the gallery of the weird. The bearded lady was stationed at the entrance, her two hundred pounds of flesh gathered in rolls beneath an ill-used sequined dress. She winked at me as we approached and let out a bawdy guffaw.

I tried to run, but my father held me fast. “Now, now,” he said. “It’s only a show, you little monkey.”

“Did you call him monkey?” the bearded lady asked. Her voice had been coarsened by years of circus smoke. She sped up the process by producing a cigarette and screwing it into a thin black holder. She smoked and leered like a nightmare portrait of FDR. “We have room for more monkeys in the back!”

My father laughed and ushered me inside. “Hear that?” he said. “Monkeys in the back.”

“I don’t want to-” I started. My father hushed me fast. We entered the gallery and the cages of its subnormal features.

I hid my face behind my hands as the geek bit the head off a chicken. There was a beautiful woman with a face like my mother, long brown hair and gray eyes, with the body of a snake and vestigial hands drooping from her sides. I didn’t scream because I was afraid all the bars were for show and they would come for me if they knew my father didn’t care. For all I knew if I screamed my father would just laugh and toss me away. So I stayed silent, even when the snake woman asked me my name.

The Egghead was what my father wanted to see. He had some fascination with the man. He was near the end of the gallery, dressed up like a Victorian gentleman, his cage decorated with a grandfather clock and persian carpet, and a bookshelf stuffed with books. The shape of that bookshelf disturbed me. It had been cobbled together from old boards, likely whatever they had lying around the grounds, painted with a single blue coat of paint that didn’t match the fraudulent decor or the crimson tent. The books looked like phone books turned with their pages out. As a child that was strikingly surreal; I knew, even then, how books were meant to sit on a shelf; I knew, too, that men and women didn’t live in cages but that somehow offended me less than the dirtied white pages hung over the planks.

Without looking at us the Egghead adjusted his large round glasses, set too close for his wide little eyes, and removed his top hat. He set it on a table beside his elbow. His smooth bald head rose to a point, a naked acrocephaly for me and my father to ogle. My father laughed.

That laugh remains my ugliest memory.

11/10/2012

Accessory

by Pierce Nahigyan

The Little Poppin Playset is an essential accessory to your child’s early, middle and late development. Its chief competitor, the book, is an antiquated throwback to an earlier age devoted to the savage slaughter of trees, time-consuming printing and unalterable flaws in typography. In fact, the Little Poppin Playset trumps the book on each of these points. Read on!

First, the Little Poppin Playset requires no printed material of any kind. It is assembled in the most advanced factories in the world, composed of high end silicon and rare earth metals, capable of computing, searching the internet, playing video and recording sound. When switched on, it emits a constant radiation that bathes the child in a soothing light, illuminating their work late into the night. They can begin their homework in earnest, and as they grow older, carry the Little Poppin Playset with them wherever they travel, to college and beyond. Neither lamp nor sun nor candle is required to mark the passage of time. Instead, a clock is built directly into the module. Your child will be lost without it.

Second, this compact device can store the equivalent of your local library in its slim, metal frame – with room left over for the contents of your once local record store! Documents can be received instantly, with no waiting at all. With a battery life of 6 hours, not only can your child read their teacher’s assignments on the Little Poppin Playset, they can also use the screen to watch educational seminars, physics demonstrations, and the latest contemporary must-see programs – all on the same screen – with no waiting at all! Just like Play-Mo’s Big Poppin Playset, the three-in-one dinner table, office desk and queen bed, the Little Poppin Playset is your one-stop shop for education, computation and entertainment!

Third, the Little Poppin Playset instantly updates your document libraries with the latest editions of your classic favorites. No longer will your cherished novels be marred by the errors of physical printers. The Little Poppin Playset is always connected to Play-Mo’s central literature matrix. Whether it’s a missing “q” from your copy of Moby Dick or an archaic phrase fallen into disuse, the Play-Mo Matrix will upload the corrected version directly to your Playset, automatically, with no waiting at all. You’ll never be behind on the latest trends in entertainment again!

Your child deserves the chance to step into the twenty-first century. Print is a dead medium because it lacks the convenience of your all-in-one solution to modern living. Instantly search for your favorite chapters, highlight important passages with the wave of a finger, bookmark pages to read later, and store your collection in one easy to reach place – where else can you do it all but with Play-Mo’s Little Poppin Playset?

Buy your child a Little Poppin Playset today. The reward will last a lifetime.

Do not drop the Little Poppin Playset. Damage to the casing will cause immediate void to warranty. Do not ingest any part of the Little Poppin Playset. Please make sure to recycle your Little Poppin Playset in a county-approved electronic disposal site. Failure to dispose of your Little Poppin Playset will result in fines (please consult your state and local statutes for details). All software bundled with the Little Poppin Playset or downloaded after purchase is subject to the policies and terms of the copyright holders.

05/31/2011

Abecedarian

by Pierce Nahigyan

An abecedarian lounging on the stair,
abandoned his studies and turned to thin air;
an incorporeal phantom gave him a fright,
extemporaneously freed from the alphabet’s bite.
From the book’s weathered spine out popped the ghost
bent on foulness at least, a kerfuffle at most,
and set about haunting the poor student forthwith
howling and moaning and indescribably glib
sarcastic, bombastic, ironic, trochaic!
Alarmingly witty, and unwholesomely prosaic!
The abecedarian fled from the hall,
batting the shades taunting his eyeballs.
“Help me! The words! They will not stop coming!”
But halfway across campus he went down stumbling,
bumbling, haphazard, knees knocking apace
he scrabbled in the grass for earthly embrace.
The ghost, all manic and mad and very, very eerie
took pity on the lad and blew away cheery.
Poltergeist gone, the student reclined
safe (maybe) he hoped from meter and rhyme.
Yet pockets of poetry haunted him thereafter,
dangling icicles of verse in metaphoric disaster…

That night over the country alphabet rained good and hard;
twisted similes hit the ground like blood on the sward.
Funky weather filled with letters plopped, splattered and burst
It was purple for days. The worst weather, I durst.

01/07/2011

Abate

by Pierce Nahigyan

After the sirens abated and the car alarm died, the woman and I laid in bed awake with the dull light of the garden lamp pouring through the blinds. A few pops rang out in the neighborhood and it could have been gunshots but there are so many crappy cars around here that it could have been a crappy car going pop, and not gunshots.

I got up from the bed and went round the bedroom. “Where are you going?” she asked.

“I’m going to brush my teeth,” I said. She let that go and curled into a humid 10:30 sleep.

I brushed my teeth and spat in the sink. I turned off the light. I circled out of the bathroom and sat down on the couch in the living room. But I wasn’t tired. The sound of the car alarm kept ringing in my ears even when I would focus and know it was gone.

But there were still cars passing outside like fast hawks over the suburb. And I didn’t smoke anymore.

So I pulled out a book of Bukowski’s poems. Not the good ones from when he was young. The mediocre ones from when he was fat, married, and successful.

Bukowski was always a little fat. But I didn’t have anything better to do.

Except read him.

And pretend I had something to say, too.

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