I write a great deal of postcard fiction myself, though I am relatively unaware of much contemporary fiction that might be part of this genre or the constraints of this form of fiction as a
genre or
species of writing at all. If much of my writing is postcard fiction, it is perhaps only because I have actually written it on the backs of
postcards (including a
handmade book I recently wrote entitled
Dead Letter Office which is available
online (after
Google gets around to indexing it)). If my writing is postcard fiction, it is only because I am obsessed with postcards, with
Jacques Derrida's The Post Card, and with the very
textual structure of a postcard which lies open for all to read.
Here are two postcards I wrote for a postcard
cgi available on
a website, where anybody can post their own postcard:
sixteen
you will never guess! i met ichiro on the leidseplein last tuesday. he has brought me to tokyo, where the scented dazzle spins webs of neon and vertical text around me, a derridan nightmare of semiotic ripples and sexless flesh pinned on billboards by consumers themselves. this country is beautiful like when we were here in 1977. our friends: all still here, drinking tea with me, praising your work on benjamin. ichiro wanted to write you:
the tokyo sunrise welcomes warmth to your heart and inspires frozen smiles on my face thinking of you. you had porcelain arms. are you remembering that? i held them near the sea under moonlight and draping itself over your face my smile held you near like crab couples copulating on ocean floors. i am lobster, you are saltwater. surround me again. come to tokyo where light is bright burning as a sunday sun in mexico city. do you remember our jokes about mexico? los perros? las pajaritas? what "frog" in spanish? i have always forgotten, since you left. please return, we will together remember the past. it has been so long that my heart grows thin. love, ichiro.
his english was always more beautiful than mine. as was his life. a simplicity of form into which he forces himself, as if he were simply a symbol, abiding by holy principles, abiding by the natural light of god. give me grace. give me holy grace tonight. (my insomnia has returned.)
twenty
i have returned to france. somewhere south in the country. the hills don't exactly roll: they are more a bulging, an eruption from the earth, a prelude to volcanoes in future millennia.
on the rue saint duprey i read a children's story, sipping slowly on coffee. a woman next to me spoke your name to her companion. my body filled with sweat and i left screaming.
i should never think that i would devote so many tears to your absence.