Preservation by Abigail Goodhart
Editorial intern Nick Hansen on today’s bonus short: Using only the power of a funny and meaningful list, Abigail Goodhart highlights the strange and cursed relationship people have with pop culture.
Preservation
The “Everything is Terrible!” Video Collective is building a pyramid of Jerry McGuire VHS Tapes in the desert after having thousands of Jerry McGuire VHS tapes donated by a man saying, “It’s totally Dada.”
The desert is my Grandmother surviving the Great Depression. The desert preserves the mangled beer cans, tied off condoms, lost pants, CDs.
Bones (from Bones) said the best way to dispose of a body is leave it in the desert.
My grandmother collected music boxes, saved them, even when they shattered and just the music was left.
Elvis Presley preserved his wife by not having sex with her.
When we cleaned out the house we found zippers cut out from decades of jeans, stacks of MAD Magazines.
My favorite GIF is the skeleton that answers “I’m dead.” when a kid asks it if it’s a boy or a girl.
Now someone sharpening a battle axe and telling me how to pronounce GIF.
She saved mountains of 70s barbie clothes, the kind of shit only drag queens wear.
Sharon Needles (from Rue Paul’s Drag Race, Season Four) writes her own songs now, one is called “The Battle Axe.”
“June is our Christmas, y’all!”
Venn diagram of people who say y’all: one circle is people from the south, one circle is lesbians.
I want to tell all my friends not to be mice, so I yell at women on reality television to quit looking at the floor.
I want to watch TV shows where the characters go to parties dressed as characters from Pulp Fiction.
I want friends who can do the dance from Pulp Fiction.
I would like black hair and bangs from Pulp Fiction.
Tom Cruise is yelling “show me the money” over and over, and the desert preserves the scream.
Abigail Goodhart is currently pursuing her MFA at Western Michigan University. She has published poems in previous or forthcoming issues of decomP, Dunes Review, and Sugar House Review. She draws inspiration from the culture of the Midwest, the absurdism of the web, and the frenzy of playing roller derby.
