12.5 review: An Alternate Reality Where Mello Yello Is More Popular Than Mtn Dew by Christian Patterson

1 // These poems are addressed to an absence, an absentee, and the wreckage of love lost is everywhere.

2 // A great deal of these poems take place in or are sung from Seoul, South Korea.

3 // The title of this collection made me think of this. Remember these?

4 //

[…] I remember the night we said goodbye—
maybe forever, maybe not
it was dark in a way that cities can’t be

I saw a photo of you and a friend from Montana
on facebook. you looked like a star burst,
with blue leggings and a dress like
a floral Rococo painting, and your red hair

I remember that no photos of us
together exist, and the only mark

on this world that we know each other
are the poems I write where the ‘you’ is you

from, “starburst like the candy and also the space thing”

5 // Totally agree.

6 // I like the way these poems cast off any pretense and get down to the nitty gritty of describing the US landscape its strip malls and fast food restaurants in a loving way.

7 // Why not hunker down with a nice hot bowl of Jjamppong while reading this?

8 // The more you know….

9 // This is a collection of things remembered and arranged – much like this Raul Ruiz film.

10 // The dreamy banality of modern life bleeds through the backs of these pages – coloring everything.

11 //

[…] when I was young,
and would close my eyes to sleep
I’d imagine I was floating in a void
it would feel scary, but calming

and the air would feel like the edge
of a hardback book when the binding frayed
in my dream, I’d stand on a train platform
in the middle of the void, until
I felt too scared and woke up
I hadn’t slept feeling like that
since I was a little boy at a resort
in Mexico, but I slept like that
on the night you left
on the night you left,
after I worked at the calendar store,
we drove to the Taco Bell on Burnside
then drove back to your empty apartment,
which echoed like a church, or cave […]

from, “beloved hero cheats death”

12 // Follow Christian on Twitter or check out his Tumblr

12.5 //  Buy

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