"Susan Seidelman’s Making Mr. Right (1987) and Other Space Oddities" by Lee Ann Roripaugh

1.  Space Oddities

Maybe this is about diaspora, about being the daughter of a first-generation Asian immigrant. Or maybe it’s about my chronic commitment issues.  Or maybe it’s because a small portion of the women I’ve dated are mildly psychotic.  (NB: If you’re reading this, and we’ve dated?  Let’s just pretend I’m probably not talking about you.)  And yes, maybe a number of the men I’ve taken up with have just been, well . . . undeniably very very odd.  (Odd as in thinking-they-can-mathematically-calculate-the-pattern-of-rain-falling odd.)  So here’s the thing.  Show me a nice rom-com with mail-getting and mistaken identities and not-sleeping in Seattle and I will probably be all meh.  On the other hand, show me a movie like Starman? In which the beloved is an alien?  Who hurtles off on a rocket ship into outer space?  Then it’s on like Donkey Kong, as in Susan Seidelman’s Making Mr. Right (1987)—a movie in which public relations expert Frankie Stone (played by Anne Magnuson) falls in love with the android she’s been coaching to pass as human (played by John Malkovich), before he’s sent out on a scientific mission to explore outer space.  How could this flick not hit that sweetly toxic trifecta of epic diaspora, impossibly doomed science-fictive relationships, and tragic absurdity?

DAY 24: LEE ANN RORIPAUGH, LET FREEDOM RIOT SING

(click for audio)

LEE ANN RORIPAUGH

let freedom sing riot

profane as wildflowers

shoving oxygen back

into the brutal

and dictatorial air

in blue-gloved airports

in locked closets

in bombed clinics

in blood-soaked schools

in the sanctuary

beneath the jaded gaze

of scopophilic saints:

wound as spectacle

wound as bloody gash

wound as commodity

bound foot’s rotten gauze

and silk unwound

crushed bones unmachined

whalebone unharpooned

ribs unlaced

jawbone unshattered

chastity belt unchaste(ned):

a box of fear

duct-taped in day-glo

slit open

oranges alert

behind the purdah

of pesticide’s sugary veil

queen bees unsealed

from collapsing tombs of wax

guitar laws unblued

into unchained melody

Andromeda unjailed

as bait to monstrous appetite

a pistol-whipped Prometheus

left as eagle carrion

unbound from barbed wire

ungash

unslit

unmuffled

chastity belt unchaste(ned):

cunt uncensored

clitoris unhooded

pussy unbarred

fist’s tight bud

diaspora’s salvo

confetti of sparks

igniting a viral riot

a chorused blaze of heat

and fire rising fierce

against the silence