Alan Hanson

Some writer and everything else

[alan-hanson]

what’s up is this thing on? lmao. here’s some harry dean stanton in 1975 for your thirsty ass.

[alan-hanson]

when my thumb is resting on the tip of my nose my middle fingertip barely reaches my earlobe. this message is a bit about my hands being small [i know but they're not yours they are my own] but also a bit about being disappointed that they're not yours [although you are far from me and we haven't been in touch for a while]. i hope you're finding calm.

:(

[alan-hanson]

test

[lookedlikelaughing]

180 to casper slide on freud’s grave kick-flip out to the opening drums in “hot for teacher”

all the dizzy quartz of poetry and the poems outnumber the stars so many i could drown i could swallow the sea and still not even lose my lanugo and poems you’ve dog-eared poems you’ve linked little mighty poems in the huff of your pout devastating shocks while turning right on red anthologies locked into the fontanels of my head and the best ones are shown to me like a rip like a wild kick by those i love supernaturally and i will eat each one my laughing skeleton chomp my screeching face my awful waist sunk into the pulse of your hips my heart in your tits and oh god i miss my mother yet here i am fed.

[alan-hanson]

Eating Crickets in Plaza Hidalgo

written by me, illustrated by Hallie Bateman, for Saveur. 

[lookedlikelaughing]

pacific bell

Sometimes I think you’re the only good thing out of the Valley

Circus Liquor is sad the houses drag some purgatorial place 

stretched inverted shadows of terror but you I’ve never been suspicious of

flicking bullets in the heck of your day

some people don’t need a nickname some people always have their hands on fire 

rooting around the apothecary bag and melting all your tools

frayed to fuck and hoping you would hold them

like a gouge in the soil in place of a womb

spilled over the mountains some soft and uncontainable force.

[lookedlikelaughing]

christian quarters

We drove out to the desert we stayed at the Ace a good year after it was cool

We were a handclap a ‘58 Bel Air chromium archers interstate ribbons

We drank rum until you cried because rum makes you cry and that was the only reason why

[lookedlikelaughing]

dug in

I feel healthier even with my cracks and I wonder if people liked me more when I was worse but when was that. 

One night, within arms reach of my summer boil, disaster on the stove, I watched youtube videos of Challenger news coverage and trembled.

The death of Venus, a million brittle laughs brickle behind your back, a face like I’m okay is a long term attack.

Today I’m emerald San Bernardino I’m Crystal Cathedral watching the soft glow of my living room window, wondering what’s changed.

There’s a heckle in your holster, estocada alma mater, deserts sick without the water, I do not have to die in the dirt.

[lookedlikelaughing]

casual eureka

Here I have! And hold all that I am on this perfect Saturday morning

The hummingbirds sling orbits outside my window, a dog chases the mail truck! No shit!

And how have I never seen that before, America? The mailman is the track-rabbit shimmering

Parallel my white picket fence, the dog is always the dog, our yard is dead, I’m sleeping less and I’m sure

You’ve guessed my new trajectory, space debris cutting rugs in the dance halls of good intentions and cosmic

Mistake. The sky is the blue of an apartment complex pool in a neighborhood richer than ours, steamed flat and unrippled

Begging for the wild residents to emerge like butterfly children and slap foot soles across the rough cooked concrete, leap high into the air Arc through space and time in super silence before the plop-plap slam, the skin brisks quick, the heart skips, a geyser of diamond Shoots from the drip. The orange cat is a Creamsicle melting in the yard while the trowel of time gouges my chest plate, an astronaut gone too long Touches back down to California, the static-charged cities in blue and shout tucked defiantly into the sand, a bird sings, a palm tree, a golden land. I am shotgunned and holy, my pulpit all empty PBR cans and war hero Zig-Zags, but my wicked womb, California!, where my bones are all

Telescopes, dimensions surf the burning hills, prying you open with my firecracker hands, a simple silly man, no tan lines tonight, paralyzed with sight.

[lookedlikelaughing]

finding worth in indiana

I’m reading Bolaño again in a hotel in a city I’ve never been, looks the same as the rest, the catalogue pages of cities mid-west. 

A girl with hair like upside-down matchsticks bought me Pulphead before I left but I can’t pry it open— every time I glance at it I think of her and every time I think of her I must throw the thought away knowing full well I don’t deserve to feel this great.

But it is then, on the toilet with Roberto, I think

No matter the faults and the cracks my life sucked silly into horrid stacks I’ll name my daughter Catalina and she’ll mend my screaming laugh.

[alan-hanson]

pit-stop in indy before my return to los angeles on friday

[lookedlikelaughing]

hi-lo country

Woodgrain and pitch, two tips for a smoky eye, emoting over Millers whisky-backed and nothing hushed. Sharlene’s should have a disco ball. I knead my tile palms on the walk home thinking I don’t have many more to make until my last mistake, volume knob left. Everything left, and our scars they shake up on the radio waves, why can’t I be so many things, and all at once? That’s the tip of the pencil. But the next day, nubbed once more, bought pills again, pushing fists into fistless places, daggering some knuckle-faced briar-topped shitboy at a dinner party in Boerum Hill, Saturday morning unclean, I take the skirt off a bottle of blueberry moonshine, a steady snow begins to fall.

[hnicolemartin-blog]

You have broken up with your boyfriend. You now go out with men who, instead of whispering ”I love you,” shout: ”Do it to me, baby.” This is good for your writing. Sooner or later you have a finished manuscript more or less. People look at it in a vaguely troubled sort of way and say, ”I’ll bet becoming a writer was always a fantasy of yours, wasn’t it?” Your lips dry to salt. Say that of all the fantasies possible in the world, you can’t imagine being a writer even making the top 20. Tell them you were going to be a child psychology major. ”I bet,” they always sigh, ”you’d be great with kids.” Scowl fiercely. Tell them you’re a walking blade. Quit classes. Quit jobs. Cash in old savings bonds. Now you have time like warts on your hands. Slowly copy all of your friends’ addresses into a new address book. Vacuum. Chew cough drops. Keep a folder full of fragments. An eyelid darkening sideways. World as conspiracy. Possible plot? A woman gets on a bus. Suppose you threw a love affair and nobody came. At home drink a lot of coffee. At Howard Johnson’s order the cole slaw. Consider how it looks like the soggy confetti of a map: where you’ve been, where you’re going - ”You Are Here,” says the red star on the back of the menu. Occasionally a date with a face blank as a sheet of paper asks you whether writers often become discouraged. Say that sometimes they do and sometimes they do. Say it’s a lot like having polio. ”Interesting,” smiles your date, and then he looks down at his arm hairs and starts to smooth them, all, always, in the same direction.

Lorrie Moore, How to Be a Writer (via graceandvictory)

[alan-hanson]

I just published a long essay about my depression, its deepest dive, and what happened because of it. You can read it here.

But I wanted to write this as well:

I would not be here in the relatively healthy shape that I'm in, nor would I have been able to process and document these events and turn them into something that will, hopefully, help others, without the following people:

My editor, Leah Beckmann, my sister and family, my understanding coworkers, JW & AM, HP, TI, EP, MA, SF and all of the Squids, AH, EW, AG, ME, EC, MB, MP, CW, every single person who in one way or another put up with my messy, selfish, jabber-jawed self during any period of this, my grandmother, and most of all Cran, for saving my life more than once.

Have you ever heard "One of Four" by Aesop Rock? He did a wayyyy better job

I want you all to know that I'm scared out my fuckin' crooked soul and never faced a monster like the last few months ever in my whole life. I wish I could explain this better... (I can't) But the pieces won't formulate into anything even close to cohesive so I guess this is my feeble way to thank you four soldiers that extended something sacred out of the purity of kindness. I owe you all my life and please don't argue with that statement cause without y'all I may not have a life to offer; take it. … I guess it is kind of funny when you look at it from a step back: how one man can literally buckle under the same pressures other men operate normally under. I have scoped this out from all angles, multiple times. I have been over everything in my head 'till I can't think anymore. But I guess sometimes when you can't breathe there are people there to breathe for you. I am lucky enough to have those people around me.

Thank you for helping me to not die Thank you for helping me to not die.

Thank you.

-AH

[alan-hanson]

The Shooter

"Who me? You think I can't shoot that jug? Listen pardner I've been shooting objects around here for'long as I can remember, as you very well know. Yeah, I can shoot that jug. Chipaw! Give me something else, I'll shoot the salt right out of anything. Toss me that salt shaker. Chicrack! Come on, this is butter bricks! Give me a challenge! I'm the god damn shootin' man! There, light a match under that ostrich's ass and I'll plug him squaw betwixt the soul searchers. Yee-haw! Kerpow! We're burgin' tonight, brother! Oh you're not impressed? What we got here, a Shania? I William Tell you what, how about you fetch your wife and a big juicy red apple. None of that green shit, no serpentry here."

He provides his wife, then exits once more to procure an apple.

"Look lady, you gotta help me bust out of here or else he's gonna force me to shoot things for another twenty fucking years.

Also I love you. Always have, darlin'."

[lookedlikelaughing]

no christmas in corona

there will be no christmas in the circle city this year maybe one of her sons, in riverside, temecula, but no tetris driveway of visiting vehicles on kendall st. the stucco home silent, absent its prickly matron.

no tamales, no couch pew congregation, no cathy and christy cussing in the kitchen. they pulled the linchpin from the axle and it all sucked into swallow.

though i could let it coast into the clouds of san bernadino for all of time and further to have a black friday with you eating turkey sandwiches and wearing heavy cottons in your father’s kitchen.

but you, gone now too.

[alan-hanson]

fun holiday content

[lookedlikelaughing]

cassidy all made up

i follow this older writer she only comes to twitter to mourn her peers, these days

i think all the things she sold all the things she wrote inside of her were once seed-like cell-sized little homes

she had to give away so they could become real on their own

and she, still living, without

and without a doubt she’d love anyone more

her television show burns in background all bright and echoless  in the soft still of her night.

[lookedlikelaughing]

epilogue 1

drunk draught in the photomaton you’ve got your new glasses on and your father’s leer burning rubber to cover some fear the suicide ward at your back now all slugging cactus coolers flexing cacti cool and desert drool baking coyotes scorpions happy dans and minivans cul de sac horror in feature doubled over like won’t this mojave ever stop no you’re forever palm-eyed and neon cigarette even after your wrists have healed you wonder infinite repeat and damn good damage and if you’re not living then why’d you kneel before norma talmadge?

she looks like she’s on her death bed and she will be soon her sons already wiping her back to front pulling her pants down and up and alone in the dark in the house of hate nicknamed grandma’s place she whispers her worry she praises your razor’s failure she says mijo i’m glad you’re still a playable character but she’s eighty pounds now her bones all full of santa anas and maybe she’s catholic again lord willing sure as you sit there weeping holding her hand sweetly thinking here you are living and isn’t it just killing her.

[alan-hanson]

oh look another shitty poem from that guy, me.