mark mcmanus

THINGS TO DO IN LARGO, FLORIDA

Lower sugar intake.

Get off of work.

Eat a bowl of Miso Soup.

Swim.

Read Jules Verne.

Read Jane Bowles.

Take a break.

Drive over the bridge to Tampa, Florida.

Think of how driving over the bridge into Tampa
is just as exciting as riding in a boat
over to Tangiers-- when you are a writer.

Play pin ball.

Ask the bartender when his band is playing.

Mull over the selections on the jukebox.

Listen to King Tubby.

Light a candle.

Stand outside of the Tampa Museum of Art and think of
how some of the paintings on display in there,
probably are quite good: You don't really know.

Whistle past the ATM, not even bothering to stop at
it.

Think up an image for a poem:

"Hungry Ghost Laundromat."

Drive home over the bridge from Tampa.

Really appreciate the way the raindrops
glisten as they drift across the windshield.

Roll down the window.

Make a mental note to write a poem
about your scuba diver's wristwatch,
how it glows a nautical blue/green in the dark
and was given to you by your sister.

Think of the way you might paint the vehicles
on the highway on a rainy night.

Think of how you might render your painting in the
style of Winslow Homer-- if you had the patience to do
so.

Drive home.

Read Jules Verne.

Wonder if in the late 19th century, Jules Verne could
have predicted that Jane Bowles would eventually write
a short story named "A Guatemalan Idyll" in the
mid-20th Century.

Wonder if Jules Verne was really any good.

Write a few lines for the beginning of a poem:

"My hometown
was the port of call
I was always sailing
away from it."

Decide to not finish that poem.

Start a new poem on that same piece of paper.

Take out a map of your port hometown and consider
all the places you haven't yet been.

mark mcmanus has work in few other journals & zines. A chapbook "typewheel" is available in the fall-- if you can find it. He's also a musician and a there are a couple of recordings. As far as influences go, he likes a little bit of everything.

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