Pig River: A Noir LA Prose Poem in 1182 Cantos

Pig River: A Noir LA Prose Poem in 1182 Cantos

Lou Anomic, poet and private investigator, drives the shadowy streets of the City of Night, hanging onto the bottom rung of both art and gumshoeing. When the compelling Connie Park hires him to find a mysterious piece of rusted metal buried in the desert east of LA, Anomic draws upon his uncanny ability to use writing to predict events. “When I write about things, Anomic says, they become true…or at least distinguishable.” The disturbing properties of the rusted metal object draw Anomic into a sequence of events put in motion years before by Connie Park’s father, the murdered Aeronym scientist Sook Park, when an experimental rocket launched across the desert’s night sky. The case becomes personal for Anomic when the evidence recalls for him the long-submerged memory of a brilliant rocket screaming above his childhood home on the banks of the desert’s Pig River . To navigate the enigma—and write the poem that might help him do it--Anomic must find his way through the strange conspiracies and plots of the water miser Eunice Goth, the art collector Rafik, the Dutchman, and fleeting glimpses of the always-dripping girl from Creve Coeur. From the Rose Bowl Parade equestrian staging area, to the Nike silo on Condor Mountain in the San Gabriels, to the Ta-Ta Dance Club, to the illuminated manuscript room at the Getty, and finally to the ruins of the Cobb Mansion above the fire-ravaged slopes of Altadena, we follow Lou Anomic across the wide geography of Los Angeles and into his own pointless memories and unreliable imagination. Can Anomic solve the mystery of the rusted metal object and Sook Park’s rocket before their dark secrets unleash on LA…and the world? Probably not. This darkly comic narrative, told for no very good reason as an overly long prose poem in 1182 unrhymed two line “cantos,” will most likely never become a new and permanent part of Los Angeles’ rich and storied literature.