what was that? is that all there is? who is this? this is it.

zoom in, cut out, add sound
make it feel so trippy
hung up, let down   to ground
forget the kill  it's far too sticky

"trigger hippie"

Morcheeba

We're on a ride to nowhere

come on inside

takin that ride to nowhere

we'll take that ride

maybe you wonder where you are

I don't care

here is where time is on our side

take you there

take you there

"road to nowhere"

Talking Heads 

it's Big Time time somewhere

on the road to nowhere

The AVE

The Biologist and I

by Steven Duong

We love each other to death.

It’s an improbable thing we do

each week. She might move in

with my parents, who live small lives

somewhere sunnier. Ahead of us,

she says, are decades of discouraging

winters in vast and unknowable cities.

Today, what she wants is the sun.

Okay, I tell her. You’ll have your sun.

I’ll bring it to you. While I finish

my novel, you’ll be warm, glad,

fed a steady diet of Vietnamese

by two failed refugees. Our lives

are a golden net. I love the biologist

the way I love the biologist.

Once, she separated two damselflies

from their wings and swapped them.

It was science, she said, but also

a game. They couldn’t fly anymore,

but that didn’t stop them trying.

Damselflies spend years in water

for a week of flight, a raw deal

made long ago in the deep sea

of genomics. In her lab, they fell

like torn kites. My biologist made

fools of them. She’s a foolmonger

with her good legs and business

acumen. I need her more than God

needs hell. We met in Grinnell,

where the biologists are made

to read Rilke and the sun sets like

it’s dying. It’s not dying, of course.

If this novel ever sells, I’m buying

her the whole damn thing. 

Copyright © 2026 by Steven Duong. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 20, 2026, by the Academy of American Poets. 

three cyclists walk into a bar 

Bartender says, “Welcome back guys. But I don’t wanna hear your goddamn goldilocks barstool complaints” 

Thursday I pulled a black sweatshirt from a free pile in the President’s office. No joke. I don’t need another sweatshirt. But it needed me to silkscreen some new features to distinguish it from the hundreds of others just like it wandering around campus. Now, nobody has one of these, except me.  I plan to wear it to work and show the President's receptionist my "new" sweatshirt.

While the silkscreens were slathered up, I pulled off a few postcards too. Then while I was standing around in the garage watching the paint dry, I swapped out the shifters on the Poprad. I had been using a sweet pair of Microshift barend shifters, 8-speed frictioned out for my 7-speed cassette. They worked but not very well in the context of the downtube. It wasn't all wrong. It just wasn't quite right. 

Out of the saddle grinding uphill the chain would sometimes jump a cog or two. Frustrating, embarrassing,  and annoying. So I dug around in the small parts bins and found several combinations of mismatched downtube shifters. I really wanted to use those black Suntour shifters with their satisfying clicky-clicky ratchety-feely friction. But they won’t work when they're removed from their downtube clamp. 

I was laughing to myself about times in my life when I’d never go out in public with mismatched shifters, realizing that perhaps I’ve grown out of that bike part phase.  But then I found a matching pair of old Shimano shifters shifting as downtube shifters were meant to shift,  on the downtube. I’ve had them for years and years and there was no reason for me to buy those Microshift beauties at Recycled Cycles. Now they look like store-credit to me.  

39 always says, shifting is overrated. I agree. Grant Peterson says the same thing, in so many more words. 

same shift different way

Wamsley triptych

Driveway entrance to the Gould Hall loading dock stage right ground score. But not something I’m pocketing to take home and saute in butter with onions and garlic. Take only photos. Leave only empty beer cans. Three hours later the clouds lifted. Out came the sun. Add sidewalk chalk and call it In Situ Resource Utilization, optimized. ISRU kidding me, call it art. Take a picture, it’ll last longer. Sambas added to show scale. Here you are. You are here. 

bow down

dot-a-lot

double dip

W rizz

lux sit

electric ass

life sciences

green house

post card

William Eggleston "Memphis" 1969

Mark Pilder "MERF" 2015

As an electric-ass bathtub mailman I deliver mail on campus at a large state university you might know of. An academic research powerhouse in multiple fields. However there is a lack of common sense in many day-to-day endeavors. 

The day after election day I often pick up ballots that people placed in the outgoing mail tub for pickup. I shake my head, knowing their votes don’t count. 

Why are you waiting until late in the day on election day to place your ballot in an outgoing mail tub that may or may not get picked up by some electric-ass mailman? Are you fucking kidding me? You have a PhD?

Please do not wait until Election Day, Tuesday November 3.  Vote early and place your ballot in a secure drop box. Do not blame the election results on the US Postal Service. 

true temper

exoskeleton

neoretro 

retrospect

seismic retrofit

disoriented

misdirected

counterclockwise

lefty loosey

spiral staircase

standard deviation

Doppler effect

glamorous 

gruntwork

eager beaver

orange

you glad

the new black

Q factor

chain suck

inside diameter

introverted

mental health

metric 

conversion

conversation

continuation

computation

something 

for nothing

free lunch

cost of living

quality of life

issue

subscription

renewal

parental 

control

lack thereof

sticky

finger

on the button

black & white

tattooed 

allover

poster child

prime number

random number

room number

PO box number

tracking number

phone number

delete contact

ten nine eight seven

“On one page of the book, I amuse myself imagining a society sufficiently tolerant for people to swap pornographic magazines quite happily with complete strangers in the same train compartment.”

–Catherine Millet

In 2001 this book hit the shelves, and it was nowhere on my radar. When the 20th anniversary edition came out with its New Afterword by the author, it was still way outta my wheelhouse. 

Then one day recently, reading Maggie Nelson’s  Bluets   she refers to a line or two from Millet’s book. That got it on my radar, got me a used copy on eBay and got me into reading it on the train. 

if

only if

if and only if

if then

what if

as if

if only

Jiffy

muffin mix

Tuesday is Surplus day. 

I spent $3.33 on these three little academy awards and three 7-sided weekly pill reminders. 

gold is the new gold below behold sevenfold gold + 3 more gold components. Currently seven of the ten members in this group are from UW Surplus. Composition continues continuously. 

On Tuesday November 1, 1988 I went to a Van Halen concert in Ames, Iowa with a few college friends. That much is true. 

The concert was not very memorable. I do recall that Alex Van Halen’s drum kit was HUGE and rose up and down about 30 feet on a mechanical lift.  And I remember getting hit in the head with a lighter that someone hurled across the coliseum. I pocketed that lighter and kept it for years. 

On the drive back to Grinnell, we did not wait out a hail storm in a 7-11 parking lot. But we could have. I can almost see it. Selective memory. Recombinant recall. Phantom nostalgia. Fictional nonfiction. 

This hail storm photo I found in the Atmospheric Sciences recycling bin turned into a postcard that evoked that Van Hagar concert. I sent it to Professor David Gerard in Appleton, Wisconsin. He sent it back as a component of a care package. Long story short, there was no postmark or cancellation on the stamp, so I silkscreened some more features on the front and mailed it back to Appleton. Round trip and a half. Out & back & out again. 

A second chance to make a first impression. 

"give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it and I shall move the world"  

–Archimedes 

grinding home uphill out of the saddle on the Poprad, there was a disturbance emanating from my bottom bracket area:  a cricky creaky icky squeaky unpleasantly embarrassing sound. 

I finally got around to it this weekend. 

However, when I first took an 8mm swing at the non-drive side bolt that holds the crankset together, I found it to be wicked-tight. After a very brief youtube check-in, I was reassured that I was on the right track. The youtube dude propped the driveside crank on blocks of wood to gain leverage on the nondrive side crank bolt. I took a different approach.

give me a cheater bar long enough and I will bust that bolt loose. Pig Boy would be proud if he could’ve seen me utilize the Cannondale Police cheater bar set. One over the crank arm, one over the 8mm wrench…  …easy peasy like Sunday morning. That bolt broke loose. I pulled it all apart, removed the cranks and bottom bracket and greased the shit out of it, all of it. Then I put it back together and took a little test ride to the tennis courts with Junior Junior. 

had a slow leak

for a week

pump it up

once a day

perhaps today

will be the day

it goes away

ONE WAY

or another

fifteen years later

caught in time’s incinerator 

seein’ things clearly

I thank you so dearly

There are books piling up here and there. Today the mail carrier delivered The Sun and The New Yorker and another used book from eBay, adding to the pile. There are other back-burner piles too and a little pile at the mothership as well.  There are not enough coffee breaks and train rides in my day to keep up with it all if my attention span for written material hovers in its current state. Fortunately it cycles through cycles, phasing in and out, now and then, more or less.  

here you are

you super usurper

you are here

please take a moment

to locate 

the fresh hop

nearest you

keep in mind

it may be 

behind you

however

happy hour

begins at 2

hands

little Big Time hands

reachin’ out

touchin’ me

touchin’  you

Pilder, a regular-regular, approaches the bar and signs the bunny ears with both hands to his head. No words are spoken. 

Yo-Adrienne smiles and says “shit yer pants” 

Pilder smiles and thinks, “you read my mind” as she pours him a Citra Pants. 

Big Time Brewery’s 

Citra Pants 

fresh hop IPA

checka checka

check it out

hands

tomato hands

reachin'   out

touchin' me

touchin' you

This recent work from the prolific Palo Alto artist, Thai Bui, speaks to me on several levels. Thai’s creativity, productivity and resource utilization are all top-notch. His work inspires a scrappy artist like me. I like the way he combines various elements and materials for an end product like no other. 

"Free Beer Tomorrow" signs always bring me joy. Toss in a crab and a forklift and it’s quite a concoction. 

As I smiled and stared at this work my mind travelled to a forklift photo. Not just any old stock photo, but one I took one day while I was standing by, kicking rocks at Two Union. So I reached into my photographic memory to find it, and then I found it. It’s all coming back to me, 17 years later. Full circle. Full disclosure. Full on Kevin’s mom.  

Q: Why'd you take a picture of a forklift?

A: because it was there

What if you saw a forklift moving a large FREE DRINKS TOMORROW sign down Union Street and there was a giant crab waddling along next to it holding a tether?

Would you take a picture? 

Many moons ago one of my neighbors put a stack of Klosterman books in the little free library and I snagged all of them. I read Sex, Drugs & Cocoa Puffs and then passed it on to Russell. Then I read a couple stories in this collection before stashing it away in my book collection at the Mothership.

Today thumbing through the pile for some reading material, this book called out to me. Ideal subject matter  for a dark, gloomy, overcast Seattle morning with a 167% chance of rain. 

I sincerely appreciate Klosterman in small doses. Short stories are just the ticket. His wide ranging intellect is impressive, from music, to football, to science, to crime, history, geography, psychology, cats, food, sex, alcohol, you name it. I wouldn’t want to be in the car with him on a long road trip. But I enjoy his short stories. Fictional Nonfiction is right up my alley. 

repeat after me

as often as necessary

fishes of the Salish Sea

raised in captivity

repeated repeatedly

repeat after me

"popdresssitting" by Diane Olivier 2010

We were browsing in a used bookstore yesterday when Junior-Junior found these shit-list tags to help me - and to help you too - get the hint. 100 cute little post-it notes with arrows and various shit variations. 

$1.49 well spent. 

U WON’T

BELIEVE

THIS SHIT