Sneak Peak of Nico Vassilakis’ Wondermental
Being old and getting old all at the same time.
An amalgam of moments and an accumulation of fragments.
Birdsong, coyotes howling, tornado warnings instead of honking,
bodega vibes and subway stops —
A true change indeed.
Wondermental is an amalgamation of musings on the changing landscape — a collection of the ways time passes and people adapt (or don’t) in response to a contrary modern world. Vassilakis chronicles the ten-year aftermath of picking up and moving from New York City to Greenville, IL, an unfolding that veered between bewildered urban dweller and a contender for farm life.
The collection entails living through the early rigors of Covid and obsessing over the poison issuing from political theater in the media — and describes it through fragmenting thoughts, mournfulness, and a hunger for something more.
Pulley Press is proud to present a preview of Vassilakis’ work, with the poems “SO EQUALS DO” and “SHAPE AS AN EVENT”. The collection releases today, December 3, 2024. The collection may be purchased from your local indie bookstore of choice, or online at retailers like Bookshop.org.
SO EQUALS DO
I sacrifice my place in line for being
somewhere else
Oh climate, oh disregard
While walking out the timber naked
and scratched
Even my own bird laughs
This is what it looks like at this time
of day when a sunbeam hits our
overhead light spraying the room
with prism fragments
It’s a classic distribution of wealth
where you’re stabbed in the eye and
kicked down the stairs at the same time
It’s turbines, it’s dials, it’s clocks
you wear on your wrist
The whole of futurity is pausing at
what happens next
Self-promotion disguised as altruism
is still self-promotion, so don’t add
flowers to make it smell better
Having gone, I’ll tell you there’s
nothing like finding yourself lost
in a place you don’t quite know how you
got there
A little schmear of dementia cream
Enter sleep
In the usual way
Squeezing between
The letters
Of the word
To get through
To the other side
It’s so hot out, you submerge into
water
So, I do
From one environment into another
She said: I’m selling my pork chops
but I’m givin’ my gravy away
She asked: Does your money fold
or does it jingle
He ate Blast Simply, little candies
from a bag, and watched the
volcano erupt across the street
It’s time again to make an alphabet
out of twigs
A bolt of Thursday filled the sky
This board game is damn warped
I can talk the way tendrils emerge
and assume other speaking avenues
of thought, but today is a spicy end
SHAPE AS AN EVENT
You’re so lost up your ass in
New York grooviness that you
don’t know what’s real
Movies on silos
And ribbons through forests
Day after day glows
And jumping off towers
Wherever it is there’s something there
There’s something out there in
space talkin’ ’bout my generation
The whole hand-holding love thing
with everybody has gone to shit
This human condition won’t
stop ruining lives
stop getting us killed
stop taking over the conversation
You should be overzealous about
something
Well, fuck that
I don’t know where it goes from here
It’s a failure in programming
