Under justin-bieber-haircuts, they giggle like the bachelorette, bouncing, swaying to Bananarama, covering their mouths with hands that were unable to keep him away.
~
At the Arcade, they watch videos of cops chasing criminals with weapons while playing video games competing to crush their opponent, then maneuver the 405 six lanes, blitzed, KROQ blasting back to Reseda.
~
We are all going to Reseda: model, cop, Tabitha, Justin; in some way or another, going to Reseda, someday, to die. And the radioman laughs because he fucks a model with Bieber hair, too.
i love this. especially the last stanza and the repetition of going to Reseda, and the reappearance of Bieber hair. A coworker used to say Bieber was her favorite lesbian. This reminds me of a dream I had about Bieber while working with her… He was courting me, but he was a life-sized cardboard cutout (probably going to Reseda).
this comment is epic
Hi RV.
I felt like I could see everything in your piece, the scenery and the characters, everything nostalgic and breezy until you drop the hammer with that last stanza. Yowzah. I also love “radioman.”
Great job!
Love the spacing of these and the breath between them even as my brain wants to move them closer together and connect them entirely. And of course, the last one really does seem to connect them like a jazz trio. Also, the dropped in the middle of something — that got in late quality — is really pitch-perfect.
I chuckled in the first one that “justin-bieber-haircuts” is undercase and “Bananarama” is (as it should be) capitalized, as an honorific!
Robert, I admire the breathlessness of these, like speeding along the freeway in a convertible, and the wind sucks your breath away…
These are great, Robert! A whirlwind of a triptych. I was curious about Justin Bieber not being capitalized, as well as The Bachelorette, but capitalizing Bananarama and Arcade. For the second paragraph, I’d like to see a double down on weapons — “they watch videos of cops chasing criminals with weapons while playing video games with weapons” – love the vocabulary of ‘blitzed’, and love the usage of ‘radioman’ as one word here. Makes me want to write a poem just so I can use ‘radioman’. The ending, tying it back to Bieber, is super effective as well. Playful snapshop vignettes! I could read a slew of these.
snapshot** although, now I guess ‘snapshop’ is a new word / new prompt for you
“Everyone dies in Reseda” is what I got from this. I also think that could be a cool title. Reseda is where people go to die is funny to me. I love the repeated elements in this piece.
i love how effectively the first stanza/section/sentence gets very, very dark at the end. It works very well, I’m successfully misdirected by the bounciness of the rhythm and the situation before that every time, great use of “covering their mouths” to reveal the many possibilities of what that could be …
i love the second sentence too, i think you could actually keep going before you get to this third section, and build up the tension even more, especially with a name as lyrical in sound anyway as Reseda. but that brought me right back to my high school days in the arcade!