Mantis 22 (Summer 2024)
eccentric/eclectic/electric/ekphrastic
David Harrison Horton
Model Answer (Reading)
Hear the drummer get wicked. Hell isn’t for wicked drummers; it’s a
train station. You might argue that train stations are more like Dante’s
Purgatory, but that would show how little time you spend in them.
Take, for example, the Wuhan station: the noodles cost 10 times,
literally, what they should, the beer in the convenience shops is PBR
in warm tall boys, and the design makes no sense. Was an architect
even consulted? Hell is not other people, Mr. Sartre. It’s poorly
constructed places in which to spend time without purpose. Hear the
drummer get ... Hear the drummer get …
Model Answer (Environment)
Sometimes, just sometimes, you find a cold beer in the fridge that you
forgot about. Other times, you misremember Clark Gable being in the
Missouri Breaks with Brando. That’s all wrong. You’ve conflated the
Brando flick with The Misfits. What can you do? Cry in your beer?
Well, you have one, unexpectedly, and it’s cold. Or, you can decide to
grow a mustache à la Gable. Every coin, in fact, does have two sides.
That’s both scientific and definitional. Look it up if you don’t believe
me.
Model Answer (Space Exploration)
You can envision the entirety of a skyscraper in your mind; take for
example the Chrysler Building in New York. Now your brain isn’t very
big, but you can fit a skyscraper in it. St. Augustine said this proves
you have a soul — everlasting, at that. I think it proves space is
flexible. Just because black holes are fake doesn’t mean we have a
good grasp on the whole space-time-location situation. I mean, my
girlfriend just yesterday gave me the cold shoulder.
DAVID HARRISON HORTON is a Beijing-based writer, artist, editor and curator. He is author of Maze Poems (Arteidolia) and the chapbooks Pete Hoffman Days (Pinball) and BeiHai (Nanjing Poetry). He edits the poetry zine SAGINAW.