Friday, March 11, 2011. A woman in large sunglasses and chunky jewelry, straight out of a movie’s end credits as “Arts Patron Doyenne,” plants her heels in front of me, as if hitting a mark. She looks down on the desk, up to the lamp, plant, and card file in front of me. “Just what […]
Daniel Nester
The PBQ New York Reading Series
Everybody has the story of their first New York apartment. Mine involves a sublet in SoHo, in the same building where Scorsese’s After Hours was filmed, followed by a dubiously unleased two-bedroom in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where my rent checks would go uncashed for months, years at a time. Both pads were humble abodes, places where […]
Daniel Nester: Leslie Nielsen Signs Autographs, Comments on His Disaster Movie, The Poseidon Adventure
Splintered, with metallic plastic shards, the ray gun a Leslie Nielsen fan brandishes is the genuine article from Forbidden Planet. “Just point it at me!” he shouts, squinting, chunky girlfriend standing ready with the Polaroid. He refused to hold it, but posed nonetheless, ever the trooper. I walk up to him. Too cheap to buy […]
Daniel Nester: Pay-Per-View Étude
When we see old actors play roles past their prime, why do we not swell with the sunrise of pity? Perhaps we pick out terrible infants hidden beneath their vivid fitted suits. Time’s gracious wooden stakes could straighten them, like tomato branches stretching for the sun. Or think of Monet, his late-life flowers. Fingering our […]
Daniel Nester: Poems from God Save My Queen
Flash Gordon (Soundtrack) In The Space Capsule (The Love Theme) They look at each other. Your very own roustabout*, a cosmos, a Kosmos bullied by timpani. Remember Flash and that Chams du Baron, sweating, bandanae around his neck? An animal’s glance, so diagonal and quizzical in its wonder at the closing dumpster walls. Porno and […]
Daniel Nester: Rodinesque Triptych Plus
I. December in the Delaware Valley and the boy daydreams of joyrides, limp crab apples chucked from car windows. His legs are trembling! II. —He sleeps in a township beyond commonplace, beyond get-outta-here. The boy can bend his elbows into his arms. III. And then there’s this one part when wet thuds on late-model hoods […]