Pittsburgh O by Noah Wareness

Pittsburgh O

        Calvin: I wonder where we go when we die.
        Hobbes: Pittsburgh?
                               strip of 20 December 1985

    Pittsburgh, O spidered
-- like Mars! -- with
    canals, running
carb'nated milks of the
    moon -- where specters
don isinglass
    snorkels and dance upon
tensionless quicksilver
    spumes -- out in
Pittsburgh the stars
    jungle up through
the dark, like skins
    of white grape
packed with light -- but
    sweeter than grape
to the teeth of
    the throat,
and seeded
    with peridot
bright --
    Iö! Pittsburgh!
Iö! Bare-skulled
    they blow
tripletime out of
    sousaphone-socketed
eyes -- jaws
    creak with cigars and
phalanges uncork to
    that voodoo that
smoulders and flies --
    and the swinging moon
flips like a disc
       o
           O
       o
ball as it waxes and
    blushes surprise --
Pittsburgh! Each
    rooftop bends,
licks at the next
    till the street comes
apart with their
    thrusts -- Such music
unhinges bones
    musty and dry til    the
dead -- O the dead O
    the dead -- O th
              e dead O
        the dead -- O the
                      dead re
                 mem
                     ber
                        lust

Noah Wareness

Noah Wareness makes fiction and poetry by hand with scratchy black pens. He does a lot of live storytelling at DIY shows, but Meatheads is his first novel. It first circulated in the folk punk and speculative fiction communities as a handmade zine with wheatpasted cardboard covers and speaker wire for binding. He went to school for writing on the west coast, and now he lives in Toronto with some friends.