Thank god for the independent press, and thank god for poet Mike
Topp. While mainstream poetry (if there is such a thing) remains the
province of flowery phrases, musings about mother, and forgotten
childhood as embodied by an idly swaying swing on the empty playground,
the independent press reminds us that a kid probably fell off of that
swing this morning. Poetry interprets how we see and experience the
world and the words around us. Sometimes this may be beautiful. But
more often than not, it’s ridiculous, profane, or tragically,
pathetically comic.
Enter Mike Topp. He’s been on the scene for a while, and continues
to impress with every new endeavor. His mini-book Happy Ending was published a few years ago by Portland’s own Future Tense
Publishing, and with his latest effort from Unbearable Books, Shorts
Are Wrong, he continues to baffle and delight.
A selection of new work paired with some previously published gems,
Shorts Are Wrong takes the curious, banal, and absurd and
renders them… well, curious, banal, and absurd. With every piece,
Topp welcomes you into his head and lets you run around, lifting up
flaps and folds to find brilliant bits of understatement, such as
“Where We Found You,” which reads, in its entirety,
X.
Topp includes the nearly opaque play on perspective, “Shopping”:
I bought some invisible tape today, I think.
Then there are the crystal-clear musings that provide an excellent
snapshot of the zeitgeist, as in “Fin-de-siècle”:
Sometimes/everything /seems /like um, whatever.
And then of course the simply, sparely hilarious, like “Dear
God”:
Please take my one dick and make it into five dicks so that my
underwear will fit like a glove. Amen.
Countless independent and “alternative” writers have found a willing
audience in Portland. Some are terrible; some are amazing; some are
Mike Topp. What most of us couldn’t articulate with any kind of
clarity, Topp wrangles and improves upon in 25 words or less. His works
are the perfect remedy for our bite-size, sound-bite world—they
may only average about five lines apiece, but they’ll resonate with you
for the entire day.