FFR 182
A word aptly uttered or written cannot be cut away by an axe.
—Nikolai Gogol
Fowl Feathered Review 182: A Dispatch from the Literary Menagerie
By Virgil Kay, Editor, Rooster, China Wok Habitué & Keeper of the Editorial Cat-O'-Nine-Tails
Greetings, beleaguered bibliophiles! The latest issue of Fowl Feathered Review descends upon you like a disoriented stork clutching a parcel of lit firecrackers. Within these hallowed (read: glue-scented) pages, you’ll discover meta-postmodern experimental fiction that contorts narrative into origami swans of questionable structural integrity, verse so contemporary it practically vibrates with the anxiety of unread emails, and Bavarian chromolithographs—violently liberated from chocolate boxes by moonlight, their gilded edges still sticky with the ghosts of Mozartkugeln.
We’ve distilled the essence of Perelman’s lexical acrobatics, Woollcott’s vinegary wit, and van Loon’s whimsical erudition into a tincture potent enough to make a stoic weep into his cravat. Consider Amber Moffat’s The Unraveling: Florence Nightingale inventories soiled bandages while Ludwig II sketches dream-castles on a chicken à la king tin, and Tesla hums Verdi to a radio tower built of existential dread. Enter Socrates, sniffing the air like a sommelier of decay: “Ah, the scent of unexamined life. And possibly, yesterday’s poultry.” Naturally, it ends with all three hurling themselves through a mud-caked window. C’est la guerre, or perhaps merely la folie.
Then, Elara’s The Great Luffa’s Lament: Godgifu drowns in Seattle drizzle at a ferry terminal while a sentient sponge (Zabava) debates porosity-as-metaphysics with Master Alaric the Etymologist. “A luftmensch floats! A luffa floats!” bristles Zabava, as Dame Ethelred the Stoic documents the spectacle, chuckling like a landslide. One imagines Flaubert, were he present, pausing mid-sentence to describe—in languorous, viscous prose—the precise method of grooming fleas for a miniature circus: the nostril hair clippers, you understand, must be held at a 37-degree angle to the thorax, lest the creature develop existential resentment and refuse to leap through the hoop of eternity. He’d then sigh, adjust his Spanx beneath mourning crepe (worn, bien sûr, to his aunt’s funeral—one must suffer for silhouette, even in grief), and return to annotating the luffa’s spiritual crisis.
The production, as ever, flirted with bedlam. Ducks drafted sonnets. Squirrels typeset with alarming indifference. An octopus (alas, plagued by sinusitis) proofread with three tentacles while the others applied hot compresses. Authors were, regrettably, affixed to the office wall via nail gun—a temporary measure, we assure you, pending revisions and the application of liniment.
As the sagacious Jules Renard mused: “Writing is the only way to talk without being interrupted.” Unless, of course, one is interrupted by a Bavarian chromolithograph of a squirrel conducting Wagner with a hazelnut baton, or the realization that one’s Spanx have achieved sentience and are composing a villanelle about structural oppression.
Dive in, dear reader. Let these pages be your whetstone for wit, your compass in the compost heap of modernity. Should you emerge unscathed, consult a physician—you may be lacking in imagination.
Yours in perpetually raised eyebrows,
Virgil Kay Editor, Rooster & Reluctant Arbiter of Porcine Aviation Attempts
P.S. Contributors remain tastefully mounted near the fire exit. They are meditating upon syntax. Do not offer them snacks—it encourages dawdling.
e-Book copy of FFR 182:
PDF is attached to this dismissible missive…mostly.
Movie: Až přijde kocour (the cassandra cat) 1963 (eng subs)
Movie: Baron Prášil *The Fabulous Baron Munchausen (1962) [Karel Zeman]
Music: https://youtu.be/XyJur8RdsNQ?si=bPalbi6q3Dn8A4Pj
Book: Greatest short stories : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
