Congratulations Lungfull!

I am currently dealing with a bit of a crisis of faith precipitated by my mother attempting to friend me on Facebook, but I’ll take a break from my whining long enough to congratulate Brendan Lorber and Tracey McTague for successfully publishing another issue of Lungfull! Magazine.

Lungfull! (lungfull.org) is an independent journal that regularly publishes print issues of over 100 or so pages of poetry. Lungfull’s cool because they publish the first draft of the poem alongside the finished product, lending them their tagline “a compendium of horrible mistakes.”

Painted Bride at age thirty-seven is certainly a grandmother of poetry journals, but congratulations again to Lungfull! who, at seventeen, is certainly our favorite crazy uncle. Of poetry journals.

I think I’m gonna just not respond to my mother’s friend request.

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The Lost Generation

Dorothy Parker

I am once again, sitting in Les Deux Magots. I am a nobody. But it’s one of those right time, right place moments. Dorothy Parker is inside. She’s drunk and laughing at the center of a clique of American and British expatriates. She’s singing over and over, “I like to have a martini, two at the very most. After three I’m under the table, after four I’m under my host.” This causes more laughter and more singing to the point of glasses breaking on the floor. It’s close to three and the serveur is pressing everyone to leave. There’s only about ten or so left inside and out. And I am quite surprised to be one of them. Karen and I lost our chance to catch the Metro back home, so we walked from the Violon Dingue by way of Saint Germain de Pres.

Sartre & Beauvoir

Just as we are about to leave, in walks Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. I am beside myself. The maitre di tells them the place is closing. And Sartre looks at Simone and says, “Three o’clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.” She takes a quick peak inside, notices Dorothy parading around on the tabletops drunk as her male friends on the floor hold her up and says, “Society, being codified by man, decrees that woman is inferior; she can do away with this inferiority only by destroying the male’s superiority.” Sartre then nods his head in agreeance and they leave. But not before Sartre has the chance to go over to Parker and spank her on the ass.

Of course, by this point, Parker falls off the table into the arms of one of the Americans. Simone gives her the finger. And then the serveur comes out from behind the bar and shuffles everyone onto the boulevard and locks the doors, leaving Karen and I, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre and Dorothy Parker standing on the corner wondering what the hell just happened. Karen and I decide to wait for the metro across the street at an all-night club instead of walking the rest of the way home. Sartre and Beauvoir take off toward the Latin Quarter, arguing over Sartre’s infidelity. And Dorothy Parker is scraped off the sidewalk by what looks to be the spitting image of Henry Miller, who comes meandering up the street just as polluted as Parker, shouting, “There is no salvation in becoming adapted to a world which is crazy!”

Henry Miller

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