American Mastodon (Brad Ricca)

Brad Ricca es un escritor norteamericano nacido en Cleveland (Ohio) y que trabaja como profesor de Literatura en Case Western Reserve University. Ricca ha publicado sus poemas en diversas revistas y el año pasado sacó al mercado su libro "American Mastodon" con la editorial Black Lawrence Press y con el que ganó en 2009 el premio St. Lawrence.

El título del libro se refiere al mastodonte americano, que desapareció hace 10.000 años y que el autor ha visto tanto de niño como de adulto en el Museo de Historia Natural de Cleveland. Y a lo largo de los diferentes poemas que componen el libro podemos encontrar referencias a este mastodonte, al Sasquatch, a perros soviéticos en órbita, a sandwiches perfectos... Muy completito, vamos. Aquí abajo dejo una muestra, "So":

Some idiot drops
have you heard this
a tuna fish sandwich into the Cuyahoga River
from a rolling, off-white pleasure cruise.
Bits of mayo and celery float
into a half-open tub of
nuclear goo
and awaken a prehistoric monster
living under
the last lake.
Who, stanza up, shakes his gills like rice
and starts picking up cable cars
and roaring
like all the bad kids.
NASA seals itself and the mayor slumps away.
From the patio seating,
I order a similar sandwich
and casually read the ads
before diving into
the greenbubble slime.
I emerge fifty stories tall.
We have it out
on the main drag.
Some guy sells popcorn
and poorly-made t-shirts.
After about twenty minutes,
the people get bored so
I pick up the giant stamp and
The monster stops, twitches
and falls like a suitcase.
So I, still too big to speak
climb under the lake
to his monster bed
and sleep it all off.
Turning off the phone.
Tuning out the tugs.
And it occurs to me, before drifting off,
under the red wet comforter,
that the only thing on
is Lawrence Welk
and that all of the original audience
for any given Lawrence Welk
is already gone.
Soaring into space
like runaway dogs.


Y lo mejor es el trailer que publicita el libro: