Rich Smith: “Ordering A Skinny, Sugar-free Vanilla Latte on the Cusp of Natural Catastrophe â Tod Marshall’s Bugle”
Bugle Tod Marshall Canarium, 2014 All of our friends are dying or dead and the world is melting, but that doesnât mean you have to give up on jokes and poetry and a general sense of wonder, right? In Bugle, Tod Marshall answers that question by saying: âWell, itâs complicated.â Marshall looks on our urban world of skinny lattes, naked meth freaks and plastic bag fees and sees in it the human impulse for (self-)destruction. He sees how we express that destructive impulse in the way we interact with the natural world and with each other, and he does not like what he sees. So he does what any concerned, motivated-but-slightly-disheartened citizen might do: he puts his lips to the mouthpiece and sounds out this admonition: Letâs just watch a rerun on Nature: âThe Funkiest Monkeys.â What mother spewed us out? Vagina slime then tubes, semen from a spout. The speaker who emerges from Marshallâs horn is bleak-funny, obsessed with the past, powerless against the encroaching natural apocalypse, partially to blame for that apocalypse, and …