
Self-Fulfilling Prophecies– A Ten-Minute Play by Sterling Arthur Leva
Author reading an excerpt of his personal narrative at the 2014 WALL Literary Journal public reading.
I invented time travel for one purpose and one purpose only: to murder Jackson Pollock.
When that glorified finger-painter hit the scene, he opened the door for every talentless dribbler to proclaim, “I’m an artist, man!” The effects of his work would be long-term and nefarious, indeed: technical skill, diligence, and honing one’s craft would become largely irrelevant as malformed clusterfucks of color gained prominence. It was nothing personal against Jackson, though: how was he to know that his drunken masturbatory experimentation would forever taint art as we know it? No, it was nothing personal; the fucker just needed to be stopped.
I knew I had to get to Pollock before LIFE did that infamous spread, in which some philistine journalist asked the rhetorical question, “Is he the greatest living artist in the United States?” Fucking LIFE, man. I couldn’t allow this to happen: I had to make sure he wasn’t living period. But I didn’t want to deprive the guy of his entire life. I’m not a savage, after all, and I wasn’t about to go back in time and off his pregnant mom or strangle him in his stroller or anything like that. I just needed to get to him before his silly artistic ambitions took hold.
Read the rest of this entry
They say this place is haunted.
I watched the news story,
saw the blue-walled backdrop of my apartment
and the last tenant insistent
about otherworldly persistence.
The ghost is supposedly a child,
a little girl,
which seems logical—
if spectors and spooks
are real,
well
what’s more real
and traumatizing
than childhood?
(If you don’t understand
then pat yourself on the back
and hug your mother
and also
congratulations on Daddy loving you.)
I leave a lamp on at night
with two bulbs
(one white one blue)
but not because I’m scared
of spectors and spooks
but because I’m scared of
myself
and my thoughts
in the isolating dark. Read the rest of this entry
Wormwood Wasn’t Here: The World Famous Doll Hut in Anaheim, California.
Mark your calendars, boys and girls! Orange County’s Weirdest Son is once again teaming up with the best blues band around to bring you an exciting evening of entertainment and enlightenment! This is going to be an especially notable night, as it is Tall Can Tim’s last show on guitar with The Salt Shakers before he moves away to pursue big kid stuff. If you aren’t familiar with the six-stringed stylings of Tall Can Tim, let’s just say he’s an electric acrobat of the highest order. So bring your dancing shoes and your party hats, because this one could get out of hand…
Original handmade show flyer is also for sale. I will write a custom one-of-a-kind poem for you on the back and sign it. Email me at inkslingerindustries@gmail.com if you’re interested. To hear music, click here.
I recently moved. During the process, I unearthed collections of poetry, satire, fairy tales, and a couple children’s books that I wrote from ages five to fifteen. I decided to start posting some of the stuff for documentation purposes and to perhaps illustrate that I may have peaked artistically around age ten. The first piece I present to you is The Little Dragon, which is basically a mini-Bildungsroman with flying lizards. Enjoy.
The moral of the story? Moving is a drag.