From a sea of bodies, “you” and “I” are somehow cast as castaways in the test run of primetime meets Nietzsche’s eternal return. I’m a walking-talking disaster destined to share my screen with Jack Spicer’s splice queen backslash the Tin Man’s polar opposite. We’re strangers-in-a-strange-language having an old-fashioned staring contest. Come in for a hypnotic close-up. Then flashback to a crash that was always going to happen. It’s all here in the transcripts: plot amnesia, unraveling interludes, semantic playstation Doomerology. Poetry’s been dead since An Essay Concerning Human Understanding – you heard? – but nonetheless – there’s a secret network of survivors watching us watching them collect text like cold cash from abandoned ATMs. Here’s a couple of meaninglessly meaningful pull quotes. What’s a word that precedes “the damage”? Examine. What’s the word for reading a poet reincarnate as a TV show? Great question. Not sure the creator even knows. Pilot by Danika Stegeman LeMay (Spork Press, 2020).
