Extending Boundaries

George Anderson

1

She wants to know

why he drinks so much

‘Doesn’t it affect your

memory?’ she asks

2

He tells her, ‘I’m trying to

extend the boundaries

of what a poem can or can’t be’

3

‘Sounds like a load of shit to me’

4

He tells her he uses everyday

experiences to delineate

the rhythm and subject

matter of his work

5

‘You mean you get pissed

and stoned and then turn

on the fucking computer?’

6

He tells her not to be so cynical

so elitist in her view

of what contemporary literature

can or can’t be

7

One day she offers to leave him—

‘That’ll give you

something SUBSTANTIAL to

write about for a change!’

8

He explains to her it has been done before

He tells her he is an automatic writer

He composes spontaneously

That he has absolutely no desire to artificially

construct an experience- that is, to have her leave him

‘The act would represent a corruption of the creative process’,

he argues

9

‘DOH! That’s fucken obvious!’ she says

10

She leaves the room

He twists open another beer

and types more words onto the page

He imagines that he is in a public

street flogging a horse but it is

actually a Corolla & he is thrashing

it up a steep embankment & as he throttles it hard

the blood  seeps from a wound in his lungs and he

is reminded of the endless vicissitudes of how

badly his health his writing his life is going

 George was born in Montreal and presently lives in Wollongong, Australia. He has been published widely in mainstream and alternative magazines over the last five years. In early 2008 you will find more of his work on My Favorite Bullet, Lit Chaos, Literary Tonic, Red Fez , and others. He edits the student poetry journal Ephemeral, now in its fifth print edition.