I just cannot with this national nothingness. The work-before-work, at my desk, at dusk, tracking empty packages in a gratitude journal. The work-after-work, cracking open your numbskull, scratching off lotto tickets with your unluckiest penny, bedraggledly busking, for the betterment of all words. In the middle, keep on keeping on, catching heartbreaks, licking wounds, picking skin, enduring the necessary 10,000 paper cuts. Tony takes Maggie Smith’s “Good Bones” to the home woodshop and gives it that Waldrop-y choppiness. Tony parses his personally-customized clusterfuck like he has a smart Clark Coolidge app. The colloquial is littered with booby-traps, Scooby Snacks, border walls, and cached trash. It’s ordinary to have no clue what’s happening wherefore. As an alternative, the poems broker a controlled generality. Their mantra: to compromise, to be compromised. Ask Jack Derrida if it does or it doesn’t make a difference. All the Ordinariness by Tony Mancus (The Magnificent Field, 2022).
