Pulver Maar

Surreal fables, staccato vignettes, and sardonic hilarity foment into a work of bafflement and intrigue in the fifth book by Schomburg (Mammother). Throughout, Schomburg uses humor and absurdity as a means to amuse while eliciting feelings that might otherwise not fully emerge, such as when he describes the freedom of overcoming hardship: “It feels good outside of the burning car./ Things look newly like a taco./ Even the flowers bloom.” However, in other moments, the absurdity—enacted through minimalism, wordplay, or muddled semantics—can interfere with otherwise clear impressions: “The enemy wears/ yr uniform. I eat/ a yellow orange./ Real life is/ the easiest kind/ to fake.” In “Sadder Than You” he comments on the current age of universal angst and the spectacle it has become: “For my birthday party/ I want to impress everyone/ by standing at the bottom/ of a giant vat while it fills/ with concrete.” In “The Last Leg,” he strings together brief moments of disappoint and irony, the poem’s apex leaving the reader with a guilty grin: “The cat fell/ asleep on/ top of me./ When I woke up/ it was dead./ (True story.)” Schomburg is a comedic king, his work, a rabbit hole of innovative, whimsical darkness. [em](Apr.) [/em]