Imaginary Letter to Dillon Lions’ (formerly Panthers’) Coach Eric Taylor

by Misa Ragsly

April 6, 2011

Dear Coach Taylor,

While you’re in Dillon, Texas, being the moral center of a TV show about football, I’m at a banquet hall in Westchester. My friend Steph is getting married. She’s on the dance floor in bridal white lace with her troupe of sisters in blue taffeta cocktail dresses, the same colors as your Dillon Panthers, before you were ousted and headed east. They’ve choreographed a dance which Steph’s sister Maureen has promised to post on You Tube “Asap”. They’ve got pom poms and bull horns, cheering to that song, “Hey, Mickey, You’re so fine, You’re so fine, you blow my mind”. Guess what her husband’s name is? They remind me of your Panther cheerleaders right before a big game, except these bridesmaids are flat out drunk. You know about big games, don’t you? It seems like every week you have an important match-up that could determine the outcome of the entire season. Stakes as high as the hair you have down there in Texas. The bride’s updo, I must say, is coming real close to knocking on heaven’s door, so we can get pretty high up here too.

Your wife has told you, and I think it’s true, you are a molder of men. I’ve never had a coach. The closest I’ve come was in gymnastics class when I was about 5, and you’re not really coached so much as babysat while wearing leotards. Mine were always purple, a color I wore my whole life until my first year in New York when a homeless guy called me Barney. I loved the idea of becoming a gymnast, even if I did look like a fat round grape. But it all ended when I was stuck on the trampoline with a full bladder, afraid to jump off by myself. If you were there, you would have looked deep in my eyes and told me I could do it. Do you realize you have a thing you do? You clench your jaw, close your lips and chew the inside of your mouth. It means the truth is coming. Your eyes turn steel. You would have made me believe that I could believe in myself. If you were my coach, I could have walked out of there without pee dripping down my leg.

Is it a coincidence that the boys you take under your wing are the ones that don’t have a dad? Matty’s is in Afghanistan. By choice! And your fullback, number 33, Tim Riggins, him of the greasy-haired hangover, his father chose hustling games at the golf course a day’s drive away. And when Brian “Smash” Williams snapped his knee and lost his scholarship, you made him believe he still had a chance. You’ve drilled the Panther motto into them all, Clear Eyes, full heart, can’t lose. His mom, single with two other kids, tells him, “You listen to Coach.” It made me think that mothers teach and dads coach. As, I’ve said, I’ve never had a coach.

You must have had a good father. I see this missing from many people’s lives. Steph and Mickey applied for a credit card to cover some of the costs they weren’t expecting. Is a cake worth a couple of grand? Is a DJ really better than an ipod just because they provide you with real feathers for the Chicken Dance? That’s when Steph realized her credit was shot. I mean shot dead like that rapist Landry killed in the convenience store parking lot. I know, he used a steel pipe, not a gun, but a dead man is a dead man. That sounds like something you’d say in Texas, Coach. She realized that someone stole her identity and racked up so much debt, she had to file bankruptcy and Mickey’s family had to start a collection for this wedding to even happen. It was her father. Needless to say, he was dis-invited. He’s not here tonight to see his daughter dance, but hey, there’s always You Tube. Maybe you should consider, Coach, working on the fathers of your players? Or is it just to late to mold a man already set in his ways?

Sincerely,

Melissa Ragsly

Bronx, NY

Letter to Alexander Pope

by Radu Dima

Dear Mr Pope,

I'm on to you.

Credit where credit is due, Google did most of the legwork while I sort of stumbled along like a lame wallaby, but I'm happy to play Watson and document the case. I also have to congratulate you here, Mr Pope – keeping this a secret for so many hundreds of years is no mean feat, and even now it was mostly luck that I managed to find out; though, having read you for so long, I'd like to think that it was bound to happen.

Still, you can understand my confusion when first going through some of your digitized works and seeing, for example, beneath the title of Ode for Music, this:

Fweep the founding lyre indeed. Or something cut out randomly from the Rape of the Lock:

And these weren't just isolated occurrences: anywhere I bothered to look there was no s to see. At first, I was sure I'd stumbled over some old typographic prank, given new lease on life by the digitizers, but a bit of further digging made me drop the thought. The edition I had come across was a Collected Works from 1748. If these spellings only showed up there, I could chalk them up to a dotty editor or a myopic typesetter and go on with my life, but here they were again in 1728's Dunciad, and in the 1714 Rape of the Lock, and even in your translations from Homer. In fact, in all of your poetic works prior to 1748 that I could find online. Curiously, after 1748, the words reverted to their modern spellings. Even curiouser, none of your contemporaries followed the trend, they all spelt their words normally both before and after that date.

So what was going on? Were all your publishers taking a typographic stand? Was it an error that people liked the look of? I said above that anywhere I looked in the digitization I could see no s, but that wasn't exactly true. The titles of the poems made perfectly confident use of the letter, according to all modern rules of English, which meant that its omission from the body text was a conscious decision – most likely on your part.

Which could only mean one thing.

I say that you, and I am confident this is the first time it has been said outside the cramped offices of popist scholars, yes you, Mr Pope, had a lisp. And not only had one, not only spoke with one, which wouldn't be a big deal since I can probably find a lisper in any Wal-Mart today, but wrote with one.

You eschewed one of the bathic thoundth of the English language – I needed to know why. The physical presence of a lisp was a reasonable explanation, but an unsatisfying one, since there must have been plenty other writers through history who didn't spell their lisps out. What convinced you to embrace it as a literary device? Laziness? Boredom? Both? I eventually found my answer by going back further in time, in an uncharacteristic fit of overzealousness, and digging up the first edition of Milton's Paradise Lost. Or, as it was actually called, Paradife Loft. Since, as you well know Mr Pope, Milton too was a lisper (something recognized even by the Commonwealth's jocular Council of State –which named him Secretary for Foreign Tongues). In fact, he was probably the first literary lisper, and Paradife Loft is unquestionable evidence of this since it was almost entirely dictated. What this means for me is that Paradife Loft will have to be re-evaluated under lisp-light, with even a cursory examination showing that it serves as a foil to Milton's grandiloquence, and reveals the poem to be, in fact, a work of powerful satire. For instance:

High on a throne of royal state, which far

Outshone the wealth of Ormuz and of Ind,

Or where the gorgeous East with richest hand

Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold,

Satan exalted sat.

now becomes:

High on a throne of royal ftate, which far

Outshone the wealth of Ormuz and of Ind,

Or where the gorgeouf Eaft with richeft hand

Showerf on her kingf barbaric pearl and gold,

Fatan exalted fat.

But even more importantly, it shows the satirical hoofprints you were stepping in, and it brings two of the greatest English poets even closer. It even explains your passion for the Iliad and Odyssey – no wonder you were attracted to a language no one knew how to pronounce correctly: your lisp felt at home on Homer's lips. People once knew this about you, Alexander, but then it was forgotten. How? Why? The how is easy: through the concerted actions of your scholars and editors after 1747 almost all traces of your lisp were eliminated. Why? That answer was trickier, but it has to do with Thomas Vermilion Herring, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1747 onwards, a fiercely patriotic man and powerfully anti-catholic, who seems to have fostered an intense dislike of your speech impediment and your catholic background, but who nevertheless recognized your talent as a poet. He seems to have commissioned the change, and your editors rose up to the challenge.

Ever since I found these things out, I've been noticing middle-aged men in mournful tweed politely tailing me wherever I go, and throwing me sad glances whenever I meet their eyes. There's such an inconsolable air about them that it pains me to undo the work they've been adding to for so long, but I think their efforts are misguided. I can understand why they believe you should be shielded from ridicule, and, truth be told, ridicule following such a revelation would nowadays be likely. But I think they've forgotten the kind of man you are: back in your day you would have thought nothing of someone making jokes at your expense. Hell, you even started, with Swift, a society entirely devoted to satirical punch-ups (that ended in actual punch-ups): the Scriblerus Club – no prizes for guessing who came up with that name. Alexander, the anger of dunces kept you in good spirits, and today you wouldn't run dry for a moment, as long as you keep turning all that-ire into satire like you did before. I admit, death is an inconvenience even for a man of your stature (about four feet on a good day), still, the ones coming at you for being dead and white and male should be easy – the ones picking on your lisp would just be grasping at thraws.

Now I know I've kept my distance through most of this letter, but we're running out of time here so let's talk straight. Alex, Al baby, it's ok. Own up like you did before, the world needs you. Think of the many people ashamed of their lisps, think of the good it would do to have you and Johnny Milton on their side. Come back up and climb on a stool and tell everyone: "Screw the sibilants, some things should simply be said straight: Yes, sir, I lisp!" Trust me: it would be glorious.

Until then, Alexander, stay safe.

Radu Dima

PS : I always had a hunch you were the only Pope worth lispening to.

Dear Mother Kibble

by Michael Angelo Tata

The streets are like streets—
only now and then rollerblading
fools auto-combust in the
tropical heat.
Banquettes fill with Pucci
chiffon and moleskin. Micro-
phones screech high-pitched bat
jive to perforate tympanums.
Pierced body parts dangle
synthetic diamond chips—
an arrow through an aureole
is all that remains of a
teenage hustler, a faux-ivory
snaggletooth through a lip
the only proof that Bam-Bam
pumped iron on South Beach.
Or pumped Pebbles.
This beat is Technototronic.
Pancake makeup and blow
mix into an indiscernibly
homogenized cumulonimbus cloud
which seems to guarantee a
downpour—not rain, but some
other liquid, perhaps Chanel
No. 5 or the new Issey Miyake,
the stuff that smells like Froot Loops.
Chalk drawings on the integument
of secluded alleys live out their
final moments, the outlines of
collapsed bodies and blueprints
for a hopscotch grid glowing
incandescent beneath starry
pulsations and unabsorbable
nervous energy.

(from Social Disease)

.

MICHAEL ANGELO TATA is the Executive Editor of the Sydney-based electronic journal of literature, art and new media nebu[lab]. His ‘Andy Warhol: Sublime Superficiality’ arrived to critical acclaim from Intertheory Press in 2010. His essays appear most recently in the collections ‘Neurology and Modernity’ (Palgrave Macmillan) and ‘Passage to Manhattan: Critical Essays on Meena Alexander’ (Cambridge Scholars) and in the British journal ‘Parallax’ (Routledge). Forthcoming poetry and graffiti will appear in the British journal ‘Rattle’.

Letter from E. to Vladimir

by Diana Voinea


Quiet and meaningless as wind in dry grass

Dear Vladimir,

There we are.

Here I am.

Nothing to be done.

Life’s vicissitudes have proven to be quite unbearable for my poor feet and me. I am standing next to a ditch, waiting. Nothing changed. It is you who is not anymore. Come to think of it, I somehow missed waiting. These days have been so hectic and I barely got the time to breathe, always on the run and busy. I am an actor now, you know. It may sound strange to you, as I would always say that people are ignorant apes. I am the same misanthrope, my dear Vladimir, I can only assume that I am cured of my madness. Came instead the cold and piercing lucidity.

I must confess that it turned out to be of great difficulty to break away from you, and the moment we left that deserted street, that godforsaken crossroads, with the weeping willow that stopped weeping, each of us on his way threw me in an even more uncertain incertitude. Nothing is certain. Nothing is certain – that is how I would begin my day, looking in the mirror and repeating this line until total depersonalization. My attention, then, would fall on something and my whole being would cling to that thing, to the point that nothing would be uncertain anymore. I must think I finally found something to give me the impression I exist. Have I?

Nothing to be done. Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes. The awfulness of it. Space is round and movement restores the circle. But it’s the circle of life! It would have been a goddamn bad idea to hang ourselves. (Would it?) Don’t let’s just do anything, Vladi, it’s always safer. Movement has always been my instinct. I have now the uncertain stability of this reality I’ve thrown myself in. Space is filled. Our enfolded silence that was like an echo is inhabited now by rustles and voices and whispers and cries. I am the Voice now, I am the Truth, I am the Essence and the Form, I, I, I and only I, my dear Vladimir, am G. now. Am I?

Letter to My Unborn Child

by V.O.


If you’re reading this, it means I’ve gone back on a few important convictions I used to have. Like having children is something to avoid, for instance. But that’s fine, because convictions are often meaningless pap, and need to be changed once in a while, as you grow. It also probably means you are a pretty messed up young person. I’m sorry about that, it’s the best I could do for you. At least please know I didn’t do any of it with malice.

If you’re expecting this letter to contain advice, you’re right. But I’m a relativist too, so remember every statement is accompanied by a shrug, meaning, that whatever I’ve just said may or may not be so. Which leads me to the major point of this letter: you are you, not me, nor anyone else. You are a human being, and you are alive, which is usually better than to not have been at all, or than to be dead. So you are, to a great extent, free to extract your own convictions from the subject matter that is life. So much so that maybe this letter is pointless. Still, I believe something is usually better than nothing, so I’m plodding on.

As you are probably already starting to see for yourself, this world offers a lot of possibilities. Hopefully your world is just as free, or even freer, than mine. Possibilities are generally good for you, because they can keep you away from the desperation of boredom. Still, they make for something which is very dangerous, and that is temptation. This is an important stumbling stone for any person, except fictional characters such as Jesus, and, if you are anything like me, and suffer from a deficit of attention, the danger for you to take bad turns is compounded by sheer inattentiveness. And it’s not even that simple. Sometimes you will be tempted to do things that are actually better for you and others in the long run, only you will not know it for sure until maybe years after the fact. But remember, just because these choices come to you in the form of temptation doesn’t necessarily make them wrong. You’re sure to make your fair share of wrong decisions that you’ll end up regretting. The answer to this question is not easy, and a lot of it will be answered by luck, so let’s hope you’re lucky, or at least let’s hope you have a lot of power to overcome bad stuff.