cover image THE BUNDLE

THE BUNDLE

Steve Malmude, . . Subpress, $10 (92pp) ISBN 978-1-930068-09-4

Fantasizing, cursing, oddly lewd, sometimes rhyming, cajoling and urgent, Malmude's short lines roll unstoppably down the page, asking readers to don weird-colored glasses: "don't/ you see the frescoed// banana and the/ shaggy/ forces/ of the diesels...? at least/ the emptiness of the pharmacy?" The terrified boredom of the young draftee in an "ante-bellum Danang" is juxtaposed in this book with the grief of "that little dust blossom," the muppet Grover, over his maker's death. This is a gentler Hunter S. Thompson using choppy lines to emphasize fractured experience, whirling from activity to disconnected activity, without a sense of causality, but with palpable determination. (Oct.)