Every single shit-eating grin in the World

Consider the valuations of styrofoam castles, so we can adequately insure the property at it's Real value.

Rip Torn in a swarovski choker and cotton candy wig

Rip Torn is a face without a name. Recognizable in classic movies of the 90s and early-aughts, but his filmography dates back to the 1950s. I taught a language class last semester that utilized pop culture videos to engage students’ active learning skills. The curriculum’s problem though is the video clips are dated (heavily pixellated), and they rely on the TV show Friends. While discussing a unit on space exploration, I began playing the movie Men in Black, just on a whim. A girl in the front row enjoyed it, so she asked to continue watching it. At the end of class, we got to introduction of Agent Zed, played by Rip Torn.

Men in Black’s plot centers around an alien bug’s hunt for the jewel of the galaxy found on Orion’s Belt. Orion happens to be a cat of one of the galaxy’s most-important extraterrestrial beings. In the picture, he’s the man seated on the right.

The alien bug (dressed in white) kills the galaxy’s VIP. Actually kills both restaurant patrons. Later at the morgue, the man’s face opens up to reveal a tiny extraterrestrial being, who dies before revealing the jewel’s location to Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith’s characters. Even though Rip Torn’s character does not feature prominently in the movie, this story plot excellently encapsulates the poem’s shape-shifting, dissociative qualities that focus on a marble bust that decays into a dilapidated Styrofoam castle.

Could I keep bread fresh for longer without molding if I kept it under argon?

- a Quora user

Liner Notes concerning Stevie Howell’s “Rip Torn”

Stevie Howell’s “Rip Torn” was originally published on October 26, 2012 in The Walrus. The poem mythologizes Rip Torn’s life in a way that viewers skitter down the London tube and receive telegraphed images of the Queen’s jowls.

The opening stanza places the people en masse (hoi polloi) as Medusa gazing at a almost marble lithic production of the Queen. The poem uses stone-imagery throughout, and the idea that things are transpiring, changing, or surfaces can be deceiving.

After reading the poem, I turned to Wikipedia to read about lithic flakes. Copied here is the intro paragraph from the lithic flake entry:

In archaeology, a lithic flake is a "portion of rock removed from an objective piece by percussion or pressure," and may also be referred to as simply a flake, or collectively as debitage. The objective piece, or the rock being reduced by the removal of flakes, is known as a core. Once the proper tool stone has been selected, a percussor or pressure flaker (e.g., an antler tine) is used to direct a sharp blow, or apply sufficient force, respectively, to the surface of the stone, often on the edge of the piece. The energy of this blow propagates through the material, often (but not always) producing a Hertzian cone of force which causes the rock to fracture in a controllable fashion. Since cores are often struck on an edge with a suitable angle (<90°) for flake propagation, the result is that only a portion of the Hertzian cone is created. The process continues as the flintknapper detaches the desired number of flakes from the core, which is marked with the negative scars of these removals. The surface area of the core which received the blows necessary for detaching the flakes is referred to as the striking platform.

Basically the people perceive value in a shit-sandwich. Throughout the poem the people unblink and drool over useless, shiny things. The people perceive a diamond, and don’t realize they’re getting fleeced.

The Poem’s Text: “Rip Torn”

Almosted into marble by medusa-eyed hoi polloi
The Queen's stone jowls, eraillure of crow's feet,
are freshly quarried — fifty years late,
her face is lithic flaked into a lustrous, toothy smile,

as electricity excites mercury vapour, she is lightboxed,
backlit, mounted every few paces in the chambers
of the London tube. Her cumulonimbus-hued
bust, the size of Easter Island moai,

is shit-grinning over diamonds, on exhibit for the great
unwashed to grub up and drool over. Jewels encased in
UV-proof acrylic vitrines, whettingly
argon sandwiched, cannot be made stonier by our

countryside-bred, dazed un-blink. We share our sheep's 
hypoxic shrig at the Lorenz curve of the earth.
We leap magpie-footed, shriek obsidian
disbelief tidings, fervent for useless, shiny things.

The Janus of the Jubilee and Olympics has her visage
pinned to the bricks and loitering in tunnels; a tattered
flag to the proclaimed, uncharted
country of herself billows above the footbridge —

the gammon display is reminiscent of Styrofoam castles,
glue and sand. Mickey Mouse and the Magical Kingdom, Iraq
under Saddam. But my companion says, No,
she looks like an albino Grinch. She looks like Rip Torn

in a Swarovski choker and cotton candy wig.

Back to the Commentary

Returning back to the first stanza, appearances are late. The bust’s marble facade is revealed, or equated to a Styrofoam castle. The reader or viewer in this case arrives fifty years late to the party. The adhesive has worn, so the styrofoam structure is visible.

Perhaps it’s too late to wake up. To realize the Grinch has arrived at the party. We’re in a stupor upon the balustrades. The Grinch is downstairs steal something from somewhere. All the seriousness earlier in lithic flakes; the technical language of cumulonimbus and UV-proof acrylic vitrines is underpinned with a cartoonish charicatures. The Janus-faced visage grins at us as we walk across the bridge. We’re enamored with the intricate reliefs. The details of the crow’s feet around the eyes. Too awe-struck to see the tattered flags for the things they reveal.

I don’t know if it’s intended to critique the hoi polloi’s electric excitement and pulse resonating in this cult of personality they’ve built, but it’s there. The last line delivers the punchline of Rip Torn, face without a name, in a very cartoonish appearance. A halfway Ronald McDonald that echoes the almost marbled mispoken line of the Queen’s Jewels.

---

---

Submissions Call

Chapbook and full-length manuscripts published with Osmanthus. Our editors prefer poetry, but submissions are open for fiction, lit-theory, memoir, or anything else you’d like to submit. Our editors read year-round.

Poetry suites published with Earshrub. Send up to six poems in a Word or PDF document. Our editors read year-round.

Liner Notes or other essays published with Earshrub. Send an essay about your experience with a poem, a travel essay, or any other type to our editors. Our editors ask that you keep essays to a 600-1200 word count. Our editors read year-round.

For questions, refer to our Submission Guidelines or ask our editors. Email all queries and submissions to editors@earshrub.tv