The spring semester auditions for The Excelano Project will be Sunday, January 22 from 8-10pm at the Kelly Writers House. Please bring 3-4 minutes of original material to read for us. It doesn’t have to be memorized.

Please bring copies of your poetry to leave with us (even if it’s memorized).

9:00-11:00 pm

Harrison Auditorium (Penn Museum)
3260 South Street
Philadelphia, PA

Tickets are $8 on the walk, $9 online, and $10 at the door.

Online tickets are available at http://www.excelanoproject.ticketleap.com/opiate-utopia

A group rate of $7 per person will be available for groups of 6 or more. Please e-mail group rate requests to excelano.project@gmail.com.

Ticket sales on Locust Walk will begin on Monday, November 28.

My mom never understood why.
Sometimes, she’d flip the switch on the wall to “help me out.”
And I’d scream, “No, Mom! The colors!”
Orbs of glowing colors appeared on the insides of my eyelids.
I formed them into shapes. Most often, Jesus.
Like that optical illusion where you stare at the four dots, then close your eyes and stare at something bright, then Jesus’ face appears.

Also, ghosts.
I knew they were evil because they spelled out ‘Booooo’ in Comic Sans.
With Helvetica, they might’ve stood a chance.
But with this as my nightly routine, I certainly never did.

So, I’m a little strange.
I don’t like drawing attention to myself,
but don’t mind telling secrets to 600 of my closest friends.

Like how I often woke up home alone when I was little.
I feared everyone went to heaven without me.
I still fear being left behind, but I’d rather be right than happy.

II.
It is always brooding males who understand this.
Introspective loners who view life through a lens and write how things could be.

I’ve always admired the minds of men brave enough to create stories.
The type of men who only know conversation as character development.
The type of men who fall in love with Manic Pixie Dream Girls.

Manic—the A-side of self-loathing.
Pixie—delicate, yet supernatural.
Dream—Altered consciousness has never felt so real.
Girl—The only explicit thing about her.

She’ll ease your pain, tell you to be spontaneous,
to frolic through Ikea, to change your life with mediocre indie pop.
Through her quirks, you’ll become well-adjusted.
You’ll filter your troubles through her like she’s a pair of rose-colored glasses,
which makes sense because she’s always been a spectacle.

You’ll claim you can see through her, unaware that reflection is her pastime.
And past times love shifting shapes.
She’s as long as everything and as widespread as goodness,
but still there’s little depth.

She is a fantasy, who assigns herself your peace of mind,
but no one cares about her story.
She is easy to miss.

III.
I am easy to miss.
Even on Broad Street in a gold “Shakespeare is my homeboy” T-shirt
and a neon coral sweater.
I never said I was nondescript,
Just that you’ll aim for me, but never quite get me.

I am easy to miss.
Because somewhere in your mind, the idea of me will complete you.
You’ve scripted me as your foil, written me as what you’re not
instead of what I am.

I am not your Manic Pixie Dream Girl.
I have struggles of my own, and it’s not my job to charm away your fears.
It’s funny that you think of me as a character, but refuse to acknowledge my flaws.
Right now, you’re too wrapped up in your own
to see I’m queuing up the credits from the director’s chair,
and I intend to fall asleep properly.

Every memory you have of your mother’s hands involves watching them. How she’d oil her cuticles before pulling on her cleaning gloves. The way she dangled her one wrist, like a praying mantis at rest, with her other hand on her hip. When this happened, you loved how her gold bangle rattled. She never took it off.

After she hit you, she told you not to call for help, or there’d be consequences. She gulped down another sip of the drink you’d been sharing. She left the rest for you. It’s a shame you don’t like cola.

I bet it was like a film.
The lead actress has gorgeous blue eyes;
that’s why everything’s blue when it doesn’t have to be.

A friend once told me, God is a withdrawn rock star.
It made perfect sense to me because we all know Jesus was an introvert.
Sure he hung out with whores, but he found it draining.
Sometimes, people are draining.

When I look at the inkblots, all I see are combinations of giants and windmills.
If I had to guess, I’d say the hybrids are morphing into giants,
so I’d better prepare for battle. I’m on the side defending virtue.

Sometimes, we can only define things based on what they’re not.
That’s how I know prosaic injustice is a coddled masochist:
self-entitled, yet devoid of self-respect—
icing the same bruises that once made her toes curl.

My toes always stay straight, and they are marching
into this inky battle that no one else can see.

The Excelano Project Presents: Inverse
Friday, November 5 and Saturday, November 6
Dunlop Auditorium, 8:00 p.m.

Tickets $7 on the walk, $10 at the door.
Contact us for group discounts.

T-shirt. The one where she leans over turntables, arms covered in tattoos. The geisha,
that is, not the girl. Though she does want sleeves someday, the day she fools
herself into thinking she’s willing to spend the money. I can’t believe
people pay for pain, she ponders. Thoughts run through
her head of justice and her drama teacher’s kid sister. She wore overalls and had black roots.
She’s probably married now, dreams on hold, sorting through piles

of laundry. Maybe she thinks back to a past that didn’t involve compromise or piles
of clothes to hand-wash. She’ll find lipstick on her husband’s collar, red like a geisha’s.
Everything jerks. The girl barely remembers how she got on this train or scrolled to The Roots
on her iPod full of songs and the cough syrup she knocked over on her nightstand. Foolish
of her not to stand the bottle up once she noticed it had fallen. She runs
through songs on shuffle. Some remind her of him, none remind her of her. It’s unbelievable

how many songs have swearing. In high school, she wrote a “This I Believe” essay
supporting edited music. Why pay more to buy music how it’s marketed to you? People pile
onto the train. A woman steps into a puddle of spilled coffee. It runs
across the floor beneath the seats, milky, but no one’s crying. A man eyes the geisha
on her shirt, or rather, her breasts. The girl’s, that is. She folds her arms, wishing this fool
wouldn’t ogle her so shamelessly. He averts his eyes to the map of the train’s routes.

Strange people take public transportation. Like the woman quoting Roots
who says she knows her Malcolm X, eyes desperate with doubt, like she can’t believe
in sound advice. Like the boy who thought the girl had fooled him.
In Biology class, she told him lobsters scream as they die before diners pile butter sauce
onto their tender flesh. He said he wouldn’t fall for such a “gay” lie.
Words like “blatant” are above his reading level. He writes in run-ons

and is the type to leave his car windows up during a tornado. So she ran with it—
too exhausted to protest, too naïve to be offended. She prefers root canals
to confrontation and ideas to people, but loves aesthetics most and wants the geisha
to exist. She’s not sure whether she wants to look like her or be with her, but she believes
she’ll meet the person who’ll make her trust in love. She piles off the train
two stops too late. It’s the third time this week. She doesn’t know who she’s fooling.

She’ll never be served runny eggs in bed by a hip-hop loving geisha,
her foolish heart will never find the one—it will settle, only to grow like roots anchored into soil.
She’ll compile a list of ways to happy, but won’t believe enough to try.