skip to Main Content

Per Diem Archive: A. Summers January 2014, Slip-Realism

Slip-Realism

There are two parts to this, one is about the lives and incidents on the 'peripheral': Unearthing the anonymous; avoiding the straightforward: parallel narratives in our day and night lives, and in-between: new ways of perceiving the real (after Nouveau realisme).

It’s about the 'side' of things, and 'on the edge' day-to-day life outside of mainstream public life. It's an approach focusing on subjects almost always on the periphery of our vision.

And secondly: It's also incorporating, where possible, sound as essence; an aural landscape replacing visual markers, because we are surrounded by soundscape. Think of yourself as freshly kidnapped, a hood over your head, thrown perhaps into the trunk of a car, and you need sound markers to gauge the journey, and aid your escape, or address your location to your rescuers.

[back]
Author: Elizabeth Hazen
March morning
the crackling puddles
of air
Author: Chase Gagnon
fortune teller...
the lights of a distant train
shimmer on the rails
Author: Elizabeth Hazen
walking on leaves
the road and the road ditch
all one
Author: John McManus
greasy spoon
I imagine the waitress
without her acne
Author: Neal Whitman
pea soup fog
ahead of me a revenant
who whistles
Author: Dru Marland
Elbowed by that north wind
I step aside and see it
fling the lark skyward
Author: Helen Buckingham
hunger moon
  the model returns
to her circle of chalk
Author: Amrao Singh Gill
gun-talk in the store- 
i bought another paint-brush 
to color flowers
Author: Don Baird
nagasaki . . .
in her belly, the sound
of unopened mail
Author: Shimi (Mark Brooks)
sea fog — 
the place on the sea wall 
where the suicides go
Author: Deborah P Kolodji
the undiscovered country
a cereal box full
of cupboard moths
Author: Shimi (Mark Brooks)
twilight shadows 
the outline of a child 
in sidewalk chalk
Author: Don Baird
summer's heat —
the shrapnel of
a human being
Author: Mary Weiler
the cat’s teeth
dribble oriole blood
spring equinox
Author: Chase Gagnon
night fishing
in a starlit creek...
the depth of the galaxy
around my ankles
Author: Neal Whitman
a yowling stray
the saucer of milk
iced over
Author: Helen Buckingham
taxi stand
the man in a rabbit suit
fumbles for his watch
Author: Don Baird
raining shadows . . .
the spring moon between
heartbeats
Author: John McManus
longest night– 
a box of tiny limbs
beneath her bed
Author: Chase Gagnon
distant thunder
a streak of blue
on the blackbird's wing 
Author: Mary Weiler
beneath continents
of slow moving algae
my alcoholic father
Author: Scott Terrill
humpback moon 
in a half built scraper 
a light flickers on and on
Author: Chase Gagnon
dad’s suicide 
a candle burns away
its shadow  
Author: Mary Weiler
summer heat
baby at her bare breast    
in the checkout line
Author: Shimi (Mark Brooks)
red moon 
their father's hash pipe 
between them
Author: Don Baird
shoreline . . .
the translucent sunset
of a child
Author: Helen Buckingham
wild-eyed child
figuring out
the roadkill
Author: John McManus
she shows me 
the cuts on her arms –
sickle moon
Author: Chase Gagnon
passing storm
the moon caught
in a spider's web
Author: Elizabeth Hazen
steady drip
a bucket's tone rising
with the sap
Author: Elizabeth Hazen
so much sparrow song
in the shape of a bush
falling snow
[back]
Back To Top