William Repass
Gin Fizz

What is in a gin fizz?

Dizziness to begin with

and a Mexican standoff.

Russian roulette resolves

out of bulleted innards, spins

its chambers as in

some mephitic waltz which

business isn’t all

in the wrist. Blur

one eye and the woozy landscape

switches out spaghetti

mirage for ouija séance.

Go from squinting against quartz

to frisson—bordello dimness to

buzzing gurgling murmuring static and

that’s a spritz of what, exactly?

Chin-chin! Gist

or gristle of it encrypted in

cow skull split

open into heifer crescent,

effervescent miscarriage

of or as a wish

fulfilment. Djinn, muzzle up to me.

What isn’t in a gin fizz? Migraines

wheel screeching overhead. Shots ring out,

gestalt falls spasmodic to thirsting lint.

William Repass
Transneptunian Object
Weeping gravitas we go on and glom lumps of stellar crud and scat to form spheroids, scorning bans on lumpen lurkers patrolling deeper regions of to-each-their-own. From nowhere wisps beseech us not to, no, in whispers citing adamantine law. Whose law? Our own. We lack the knout to enforce such stipulations. Mutters gloss nebulous matter, quibbles at best provisional. And the lolloping murk that auras formless masses chokes us. And outliers run in saturnine circles, contorted under oath of silence but freely circulating sketchy reaches. A black market of eyeless bodies sockets our periphery. A glimpse of far outlines lost in measures scribbled down, erased, scribbled, scratched out—chains of etching pulled apart amidst idiot motes, their outward swirl for an instant ignited in a beam of light that seems to wash us in new discipline. Soon enough it flickers off, to hazard no implosion.
William Repass
Translation Manual

in this unit you will feel free to refer to your memory of TRANSLATION MAN

reverse sequence of hairs sloughing onto the spindle (uneven and combined magical realism) and turning haywire, hair brain 𝆕𝆕 hare brain 𝆕𝆕 fast forward past instructions to subsection twenty seven, table prime


rug (machine washable): underfoot static

symbolism: déjà voodoo

canine scrub :toothbrush

pause, pause, paws, the filter’s gone rancid

rancid filter, welter of baubles fizzing in spectral rinse glitch of pearl

analysis

you must brush up on this unit

by unit’s end will you have of structure a firm grasp

and you brush up

against the burrs and stubble of words a


frisson against the velcro of mind, ahh, ahh, shhh

choke hold, phobia of plaiting static

barely a whisper: stranger, you are a stranger and estranged will you linger

hubris trance no matter

you live your life as silverfish, slithering behind the walls

in this unit you will learn how to hold an argument over whether the State is Rational or the unguent yodels graffiti your small colon. You will take the side of Hegel, your partner the side of Munchausen Syndrome


now wearing your new (polyvinyl) hairpiece, plaster your wherewithal over a honey comb of bullet holes sheened with the context of the History of the Idea of War as an extension of folk tunes


if you can’t even haggle properly, I’m sending the parrot off to another pawn shop and in your own words, conquistador

how do I write my name in your language

William Repass
Say Hello
to world class service. To the automated menu. Aerosol cheese, hello, hello ambient lint. Say hello to the news at your fingertips. To your fingertips and the sting of solvent when you lick them. Hello burst of static and half a second later your own voice, muttering hello. Say hello to your lover (deceased). To derealization, wheezing. Hello automated Vitriol registered trademark, free floating lust, hello. And mister carpet, hello mister dual tone carpet, beige and sub beige, beige, sub beige, hello crust of mold or vomit on the carpet. Say hello to rat enhancement. Pardon? Howdy, panic. You say it like your parents said it. To jello salad and rat soufflé in a tray with serving sized depressions. Say it so the implants can pick you up. I said houseplants (deceased). So the performance enhancing drugs can peel you off the carpeted ceiling. Hello, anybody there? Reading you loud and beige, over. I’d prefer to greet a real person, over. Say hello to saying goodbye. Say good. Then bye. To following directions! Say hello to fuck off. Fuck me. Say woah, woah, take it easy, pal. I’m not your pal, I’m the automated messenger service, you’re an addict! This is an inquisition. You stand accused of mistaking thought as “language” and “language” as interpersonal communication. You’re addicted to “language,” shameful! And there it goes, “language,” see, out through the bars on the window. Wave bye bye now.
William Repass
Canny Valley
Tip your lid to the man in the tofu moon, pickled high and slimy overtop this tofu flood plain. Ours a Christmas cottage cheesy hamlet of substitutions. History teachers, for instance, and painters who patent cloying glows. I didn’t say Kinkade. Town Hall has gone all mushy and the warehouse district white. No matter how lifelike those tableaux vivants, we do not go to Tofu Castle. We do carve bricks of bean curd raw and floppy from the valley floor, to earn our bimonthly fistful of inflated pfennigs. Her ladyship the tofu pop star demands perfect cubes. Daily she lubricates her waxy dermis in a bath of mylk. Soon she won’t have fingerprints. Tofu is our go-to steeple, oops, staple. Our go-to oblique, our appliqué wrinkles. Substitute politicians and substitute scientists perfect the art of cloning, perfect the art of cloning, fect the art of cloning sarcoma König, seig heil, oops. Jumbled the molds back there, the movable feast of type. Midas of tofu, Judas of go-to. Do not we all suspect, on some level, the Tofu Rush of slowing to a trickle? The tofu Donner Party was an omen. Tofu eating tofu. Can you tell the difference?