No News Today - Guest Post - Luke B. Goebel

Letter to Pima County Sheriff’s Department. State of Arizona. In response to a summons. (Speeding captured by a Photo Radar Machine). Written on unlined paper. Also one ½ sheet of lined paper, roughly torn, written front and back.

Dear Person Paid to Receive this by Arizona,

I am writing to give you the business! We are, whoever you are, as a representative of legal action for the Arizona state, for some district in Tucson, and I as myself, writer, professor, fellow-state-employee from another state, etc, (The Lone Star) we are, I repeat “we are” as so much has passed from when I had written “we are” and where I have “we are” for the second time, above; again, we are engaged in a conflict, you and I, though alike in one facet, surely most unalike in many others. I mean employed by a state is how we are alike in one facet. I disagree with you—-and so here it is, the business!

You are FAMILIAR with the 5 paragraph essay, surely? I am going to tell you what I am setting out now to tell you—-then I am going to tell you (i.e. give you the business)—-and then I am going to tell you what I have told you, from at this onset I will be telling you! This will take some time—-I will likely appeal to three types of rhetoric—-ethos, logos, and pathos. Finally, I will assure you that I am correct in giving you the business! But first, know you are going after my pocketbook, my possessions, and this is wrong! As you have given me no business! This brings me to my point as to why you ARE WRONG and I am vindicated—-and here is what I will be talking (writing) about during the duration of this 5 paragraph essay (So Far You Are On Paragraph One): I am writing to inquire and prove through inquiring (both writing to prove and in inquiring so shall prove) of the last time your machine, your nonhuman photo-radar machine, was checked and calibrated for accuracy! Aha! I am going to prove you must provide record of this prior to convicting me, I.E. giving me the business, i.e. taking from my pocket, i.e. successfully completing the business of taking my money for your state/district. So begin I hereby to prove myself and my case that you cannot do me any business without providing me PROOF of recent testing and calibration of your photo-radar nonhuman machine (within the bounds of the law—-within the mandated time period of testing and calibration) prior to your stealing my photo and assigning an accusation of speeding. This is now paragraph two! As a side note I’d like to acknowledge, given our shared quality of being employed by a state of this nation (I the Lone Star: you the Grand Canyon State), I too have had the desire to slack off at my post. Especially I have desired to slack off while reading five paragraph essays written in a disembodied style, employing used up rote forms of discourse. This is why I’ve included mention of my pocket and pocketbook or billfold, to create a corporeal link through articles, through implied regions and relations of the body, i.e. rear end cheek, i.e. place of billfold, and of course implied is money—-to go further I am 31 years old, six foot four, handsome, long haired, loping, somewhat cowboy, somewhat L.A., big nose, but handsome, flat footed and I kick my right foot out when I walk! Due to the CONTEXT of this letter I cannot share what my ex-girlfriend has said is the physical reason for my doing so. I mean kicking out my right foot while I walk. Anyhow, I know what it is like to slack off but I encourage you not to slack off as this is your business and you won’t give ME the business until I have received proof proving your nonhuman machines were calibrated and checked within the required time prior to my going past and being photographed (without explicit consent). This is my pocketbook.

Paragraph three: None of us were speeding proven by my speedometer being exactly on the speed of the limit posted and no cars passing me, and the speed I was shown being incorrect attest I.

Paragraph four: I have had this happen once with a police radar gun in Hawaii which was improperly calibrated (pathos) and I got off of the business (false business) b/c he had not calibrated his nonhuman machine!

Paragraph five: So you, Sir or Madam—-I’ve been thinking of you as a female person of the state while writing, but you may of course be a MAN trying to give me the business—-but as you now see, due to my request for PROOF of PROPER FUNCTIONING of nonhuman said machine (other people not contesting, or pleading guilty, is no proof as people have grown lazy!). Therefore business is closed until you prove yourselves vigilant in checking your machines—-I.e. my billfold is closed.

Signed Luke B. Goebel 6/5/12


Luke B. Goebel is the author of the prize winning: How Many Lassos To CowboyTown, The Big Eyeball Poke, The Boot of the Boot, and Eat Your Vegetables Kids. This letter is part of a side project. It is from a collection of letters, all mailed through the U.S. Postal Service, the last great institution of the U.S. Government. The book is as of yet, unfinished, and the printing rights are currently available.

No News Today - Guest Post - Leigh Stein

DEFINITION OF ADRIFT

Adjective. Mapless, does not answer
to her married name, marooned
on a beach on which every night
the tide erases her letters home.
Can never remember what she wrote.
Last night's said: Send a fleet.
Tonight she will write: Send a fleet.
Never anchored. Like some islands,
the ones made of bulrush, or shipwrecked
love that loses its shape inside the ever after.
Distressed. Consumed with nostalgia
for copy machines, a desktop clock,
a postcard sent from one destination
to another: I'm here. I can't speak
the language, but I'm not coming back.
On this island there are no postcards.
Tonight she will write: Send pirates
in the sand. Or tonight she will forget to
write. Tonight she will try to mend the boat,
then go and sit in a grotto at high tide awe-
stricken with oblivion, motherless.

Leigh Stein is the author of the novel The Fallback Plan from Melville House Press. Her first full-length poetry collection, Dispatch from the Future, is forthcoming from Melville House in July 2012.

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