{"id":443,"date":"2012-10-02T02:00:32","date_gmt":"2012-10-02T02:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sporkpress.com\/poetry\/?p=443"},"modified":"2012-10-02T02:00:32","modified_gmt":"2012-10-02T02:00:32","slug":"epistles-from-the-guild-of-lost-angels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/2012\/10\/02\/epistles-from-the-guild-of-lost-angels\/","title":{"rendered":"Epistles from the Guild of Lost Angels by Cody Todd"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Epistles from the Guild of Lost Angels <\/strong> <\/p>\n<p>***<\/p>\n<p>Reno is a Woolworth\u2019s that withstood<br \/>\nJudgment Day. The plastic maiden<br \/>\nsaw my face, and<br \/>\nthe moon is made of bone.<br \/>\nRobotic landscape of the desert.<br \/>\nI grab a mannequin\u2019s severed arm<br \/>\nand scratch my back clean of dirt.<br \/>\nAn escalator melts into itself<br \/>\nand whispers: No poem.<br \/>\nI want a theatre<br \/>\nwithout faces. <\/p>\n<p>***<\/p>\n<p>Everywhere I walk: dolls.<br \/>\nSome broken, others intact.<br \/>\nPuzzled by the pose,<br \/>\nI pick her up by the wig<br \/>\nstitched to her scalp.<br \/>\nEyes flop open.<br \/>\nDirt cakes her eyelashes.<br \/>\nShe has won in the end, after all. <\/p>\n<p>***<\/p>\n<p>Some necessary logic<br \/>\ndraws me to the weapons cache:<br \/>\nfirearms for sale, just thirty yards<br \/>\nfrom the baby cribs. With advertisements<br \/>\nand money, the syntax<br \/>\ngets forever shrinks. Exclamation<br \/>\nmarks reign supreme. I could spend a lifetime<br \/>\nhere and never spend a dime.<br \/>\nThis capitalist, who designed flesh-colored <\/p>\n<p>stockings, only to be trumped by that one<br \/>\nwho envisioned them in black. I try this<br \/>\npair on wishing for the neighbor to spy on me<br \/>\nas I slowly take them off.<\/p>\n<p>***<\/p>\n<p>More than that, I want my palm read<br \/>\nand instruction of some invisible map.<br \/>\nI want tarot card number thirteen.<br \/>\nA burglar alarm,<br \/>\nand then my laughter.<br \/>\nWhen the rains turn to steam, the paint<br \/>\non these mannequins\u2014this sisterhood of wood\u2014<br \/>\npeels, cracks and fails. Of what liberty<br \/>\nis this wooden mouth that cannot open,  even <\/p>\n<p>when I peel it into a smile<br \/>\nwith a penknife? <\/p>\n<p>***<\/p>\n<p>The hydrogen bomb<br \/>\nwas nicknamed,<br \/>\nLipstick Lesbian <\/p>\n<p>by some naval joker.<br \/>\nThe moon: when a face<br \/>\nis a face and no longer. <\/p>\n<p>***<\/p>\n<p>Night comes, and all is the milk-white scabs<br \/>\nof my eyes. No hound to shout like a fan<br \/>\nat a football game. No cat to peddle<br \/>\nwith its affection and leave me empty<br \/>\nin the night. I play solitaire under<br \/>\ncandlelight, and wait for mayflies to fill<br \/>\nthese nostrils and two-thousand peculiar<br \/>\nNevadan bats to swoop in their fine <\/p>\n<p>twilight collective<br \/>\nthat ignites me,<br \/>\nuntil I perish like every star. <\/p>\n<p>_____________________________________________<br \/>\n<strong>Cody Todd<\/strong> is the author of Graffiti Signatures (forthcoming, Main Street Rag) and lives in West Hollywood. His favorite haunt is the Formosa Cafe, where Lee Marvin is reputed to have set fire to the entire block between Willoughby and Santa Monica Blvd (aka US Route 66). You can find him pacing around the Venice boardwalk to catch his bearings at least once a month. He is also the Managing Editor &#038; co-creator of the online literary journal, The Offending Adam (<a href=\"www.theoffendingadam.com\">www.theoffendingadam.com<\/a>). <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Epistles from the Guild of Lost Angels *** Reno is a Woolworth\u2019s that withstood Judgment Day. The plastic maiden saw my face, and the moon is made of bone. Robotic landscape of the desert. I grab a mannequin\u2019s severed arm and scratch my back clean of dirt. An escalator melts into itself and whispers: No [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,2],"tags":[26,35,110],"class_list":["post-443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-things","tag-cody-todd","tag-epistles-from-the-guild-of-lost-angels","tag-the-offending-adam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}