among other things - his guidelines request that all work must, [verbatim] -- “have something to do with love… Maybe a man falls in love with his pencil, or the moon pines after the spicy kisses of the sun. Or you could tell me about your boyfriend’s nipple hair. This part is really up to you.”
after rereading these guidelines it's clear i had no real business sending anything for consideration to a place where "the spicy kisses of the sun" is a guideline. anyways - at least it wasn’t a form rejection:
____________________
From Alex <*******@****.***>
To Adam Moorad
Date Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 5:51 PM
subject Re: Submission - Adam Moorad
Dude, this has nothing to do with love. Please add a highly emotional bum love scene if you are looking for consideration in this book.
-Alex Buck
Esteemed Editor & Nobleman
PS
Decent short though. What's cooler than being cool? Bum cold!
______________________
my submission follows. so read. or whatever.
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Wildlife (413 words)
There are two parks near my apartment: a nice one and a bad. The nice one has a playground shaped like a carnival carousel. The bad one is always damp and smells like a Midwestern river.
Once at the bad park I saw a bum dragging a shopping cart with a broken wheel. He asked me if I had seen his refrigerator and laughed. White stuffing puffed out from the torn sleeves of his jacket. When he smiled there were two sets of broken teeth.
“No,” I said. “Sorry,” I wanted to tell him.
**
The best kind of wildlife is the type you can feed by hand. My favorites are swarms of pigeons in any city park. I have watched old women and young children feed hungry flocks cheap bread by the sleeve.
I wonder what pigeons ate in this country before Columbus crossed the sea, when there were no old women or young children or parks or birdfeed. Birds must have been skinnier and healthier then, proportionate to their natural bone structure, eating only the original things their feral bodies intended.
**
Sometimes, at the nice park, I buy a hot dog from the hot dog man and stand, watching the soccer teams practice or play matches. I walk to the far side of the field, and I wait for some kid to kick a ball over the fence. I get the ball when it happens and try to kick it as hard as I can back over. I make a poor connection and the ball rolls slowly back. So I just pick it up with my hands and throw it back. When I do, it feels like soccer isn’t even an actual sport people play.
**
I saw the bum again with the shopping cart parked beside a bench about a month ago in the bad park. It was a chilly morning and he blew warm air into hands that looked like steaming clams.
“Feels like a refrigerator out here,” I said, as I walked by him.
“What’d you say?” he asked.
“I meant – it’s cold outside today.”
The bum just stared, and then turned his head away from me.
“It’s always cold here,” he said.
**
Sometimes, at the nice park, I don’t even try the soccer thing. Sometimes, I just eat my hot dog and watch all the young mothers cheering on the sidelines. Wildlife is all sorts of different things. This is what I usually think.
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in other news gigantic sequins 2.1 will be available soon and will contain an excerpt from my novella oikos. other contributors will include: Tom Laskow / Anne Marie Rooney / Jeremy Schmall / F. Daniel Rzicznek // Ian Carlos Crawford / Alayna Frankenberry / Alicia Case / Darren Frey / Mark DeCarteret / Erik T. Johnson / Howie Good / Elizabeth Hoover.
rambling now.
just add a one-liner to the end of the short that says, "i love bums" and then resubmit...that's about as much substance as loving your boyfriends nipple hair.
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