Feliz Lucia Molina - Part Valley strip mall heaven memoir, part encyclopedia of transistor feelings, part lonely caregiver, part philosopher pen pal, and so totally the book the 90s owe the world:Movies employed our legs / we bought tickets to watch ourselves through actors / A warm and silvery masturbation— / your image on top of your image

Feliz Lucia Molina, Undercastle, Magic Helicopter Press, 2013.


Part Valley strip mall heaven memoir, part encyclopedia of transistor feelings, part lonely caregiver, part philosopher pen pal, and so totally the book the 90s owe the world, Feliz Lucia Molina's genre scuzzing debut "povel" Undercastle is a deft and defiant A-B-Up-Down combo of curiosity and intimacy that chews up all our screens and heroes and fills our breath with glint.
Cover photo by Haruhiko Kawaguchi 

"Really wonderful and important work. A great writer writing in the most contemporary of mediums." — Kenneth Goldsmith

"My address is these poems. It's amazing here! Dear Feliz, this is a love letter saying we're about to give your book the Pulitzer Prize without the committee's consent! Feliz Lucia Molina is the best kind of genius, she's a poet, she believes in our phoenix rising!" — CAConrad

"Feliz Molina's Undercastle examines our collective experiments in image and knowledge production, on the Internet and in 'real life.' As we navigate distance and intimacy in these unknown space-times, Undercastle develops a poetic and political epistemology of real and phantom limbs. With a tender and honest wit, this book gives verse to gendered, racialized, and nationalized bodies, their memories and meaning making. As Molina puts it, 'It's possible now to live in a world that doesn't exist. / Is this a relief or is it the Internet?'"— Alli Warren

UNDER CASTLE
Some daydreams are prettier in words than the object itself.
Font-types are types of attitudes.
I’m browsing for abandoned castles in “luxury real estate” to occupy a small castle to convert it into the Hologram Lover Hotel somewhere in obvious France. I can already smell the place. It smells of old stone, rose, pomegranate, jasmine, sunflower seeds, geranium. Purple and red butterflies get caught on a chandelier, bees wax drips on a stone staircase leading down toward the wine cellar. A lover keeps tying and untying a cravat back into an ampersand. I am on the dining room table wedged between a pair of legs laughing hysterically about my Bank of America account being empty. A door slams. A lover jumped out the window into someone else’s daydream. The sun is still out. It’s 7:41pm. The sky turns a pale orange sorbet ice cream that goes on for acres and heartaches. You’re so happy because there’s no Internet inside this castle and run around barefoot through the wireless pear trees. I keep laughing at my own broke-ness. It is something I keep giving birth to. Negative. Decline. Overdraft. Everything is beautiful. We don’t have jobs. We haven’t worked in years and haven’t written a poem for hours. The castle is bugged with sensors that play music depending on how we walk. The backyard is filled with holographic lovers from the past and future. The present disappears every time I think about it. It disappears before I even get to see it. A future lover hologram motions toward the swings by the pond dotted with black and white swans. You shuffle through every lover from the past and future like songs on your iTunes. I am lazy and shuffle through sentences, hardly whole books. We fall asleep on the laps of those holographic lovers.
The following morning I ask you to order more holographic lovers from the internet. I make you orange juice. I can make you anything.

PETCO
In Petco I held a small guinea pig
and stared into its eyes as far as it would allow
It had no conscience and I dropped it
poor thing
has to exist during a financial crisis
like the rest of us though this animal
Is more cute and more vulnerable
gets away with being those things
And has a home the rest of us fight to keep.

LOVING THE SUNDAY OUT OF YOU
Keith Haring was real caring about AIDS but not aging and I’m returning to so many things while thinking about you its reasonable to wonder what you’re doing far far away, so far away while I lay in bed not crying over so many things we could be dying about but basically remembering little faces of Brooklyn brunches when we went broke from too much buying of god knows what and Giorgios at the bodega ATM machine laughing, just laughing about being negative beyond nothing and how he went throwing money at us on the street walking home and how we couldn’t see from all the pouring of tequila Patron shots, yes, yes, that’s it, that’s what he was doing: making us drink so much in the patio of Maggie Brown’s and remember how day it was, how day and bright, how happy the lighting was, how we sat on the concrete staring through eggs and space, sharing cigarettes and smiling at everything, everything, and we stopped believing, for once, for once we stopped believing in anything and how light we felt, how everything was floating, how we made it to the bathroom laughing, how we laughed at ourselves crying we could have laughed straight into dying we could have died straight into flying we could have flown straight into the bar television, but Giorgios, Giorgios kept us on the ground, he was piloting the day that day, he was the drunkest of all and I was probably bleeding somewhere from my cunt or thumb; I must have been biting myself without knowing, must have been praying for the fun of it far in me, and we drank so much we started praying, we prayed so hard those fucking angels came and we laughed so sweetly we, we went to peeing from all the angels stuffed in our shot glasses that Giorgios kept buying, and oh how we kept forgetting we had cell phones that kept ringing for we couldn’t hear a damn thing or see a damn thing while puking and climbing the fire escape thing and someone came into the apartment: It was Joe from days of painting, it was Joe after weeks of texting, it was a good thing Joe came by while we sat on the couch hair flipping, we needed some food after hours of shit talking, we needed more quiet after doors of knock knocking, and what happened to Giorgios, poor poor thing, he got locked outside for hours watching kids double-dutching and we missed all his calls with our phones vibrating, because where were you, where were you in the bedroom fingering and loving, fingering and hugging, and I paced around the apartment looking for something to eat, not wanting another pizza, not wanting to watch a movie, for we had it all right there, that Sunday had it all there while we did nothing nothing nothing.

VIDEO GAME
I pushed the bold button to make the character move
Something shuffled overseas and shuffled hard
a body cycled forward successfully
Sonic the Hedgehog,
a blue tumbling punctum
where do I live what should I love who is with me
Or its enough to say all uncertain hearts are hedgehogs
moving recklessly outside the body
Who is the Patron Saint of video games—
of the invisible wall; left arrow / right arrow
Silvery navigation will have its way—
while memory slides from either end
in a frame that feels unforgiving.

Hoodrat on a Greyhound

As we rode through the border I pressed softlyto make a friend appear though where does the country endif not when you blink. Ghosts in the hazeof identity formations how else can I keep track of youin LA do you like it more than oncewere they finger fucking insteadevery girl is that sorrowful hoodrat Veronicaweeping into the Shroud of Turinwith a dirty American Apparel t-shirt

The Movie

Movies employed our legswe bought tickets to watch ourselves through actors

 A warm and silvery masturbation—your image on top of your image

I kept watching strangers in search of youasking the difference between anyone

Paris, Las Vegas

In this city young-girls hold hands with ghosts of flâneursTheir ethos combined, their bodies becoming-desiring machinesI’ve no money for roulette, only generative tourettes searching for outlets to produce narrativescuz’ I’ll make you crazy I’ll make you crazythe ownership of bodies is not exhaustingI’ve compassion for her ass and breastswe are not meat, we are lovers infinitely subtractablebecause of our fathers and mothersso what if they say you’re a holder of commodities they have no love for you, but I do I doYoung girl get out of my mindmy love for you is way out of linebetter run girl you’re much too young girlcuz’ of modern conditions of productionlove has never been more possible

Indigenous Strip Mall American

Flipping hair and tails like it’s the truthshould we get up and rent a movieshould we be productivespend little money 

Pointless truths, softand rubbery, a fuck it rubbery

We stood famous as front yard flamingosin a foreclosed Blockbuster, we could have diedfrom too much Pamela Andersonwe would have been alright with that

because she’s so many thingsmade of all that beach and silver screen

Feast Day of St. John of the Cross

Clothes cycle and spin below breaking newsof an elementary school shootingon the phone my mother sayswhy don’t you have your own poetry tv show?& I say mom you can’t just have your own tv showit takes a lot of hard workyou have to know a lot of thingsI don’t know a lot of thingslike how to have a tv showhow do you even begin to have a tv show?& she says you know how to use the computer, what about the youtube?& I say
what
the
fuck
are
you
talking
about
why don’t you and dad move to Manilasocial security will go far thereIs there a place in the world we don’t have to riskbeing alive
being in kindergarten
being virtualess
could we do laundry in Luzon hot springs and laugh compassionately at all theAmerican horror
& the president glows above beautiful bottles of cheer tide and snugglewipes his face and says no set of laws can prevent evil in this world& I say mom what’s a mass shootingand why do they happen all the time& she says today is the feast day of St. John of the Crossyou should bring money to offer a candle after Mass& I say I
have
no
more
quarters
my clothes are still wet
and the parking meter is
running out of time

Origami Casket
slut bags panorama city love lights
palm tree electric
post-heart, I told you the wind was horny
Thunderclaps— I clap at your bravo face
the day you shot yourself on video
the day you made bells ring us all back home
*
hiccup parade
december skittles shit go home bells
gunshot glitter goodbye
afternoon sleep paralysis
a black cloth blew and harked back I thought you were calling
from bullet hole from brain dead from ambulance corvette
*
Dude, that must've been rough
all shaking all cold from cartoon blood
no different from cloud computer to none.

Because That Light Is Hella Holy
from Undercastle Radio

(the story gained popularity through washed up
memory stains)

or because the light outside is holy digital
the window behind is behind behind

football stars flicker and die
you walk further into hella useless

collapse of everything in swimming pool everything

American dollar afterglow, young graduates grew beards
moved to the Middle East to pay off student loans

Is this the way to move through everything.

(babe I tried to find you on Skype
babe the phone and friend died
babe lets apply to this and that
babe lets buy lotto tickets after mass
after mass, babe)

the sun spins Fatima making Fatima anywhere

cheese puffs in hand lets throw
quarters at birds and bury our laundry

see where we could live, see where in the world they'll pay us to live

Just like that bitch Carmen San Diego
in heels and red trench coat like she always knew where to go.



Feliz Lucia Molina a Letter to Kim Jong-Il Looking at Things 2012     PDF