If you put Andy Riverbed’s brain in a parakeet it would fly straight into the nearest wall. I once asked Andy what his real name was. “It’s Andy Effin Riverbed,” he said. As an internet sock puppet he is also known as “The Riverbed” and “Mr. Potato Head.” Considering he’s in college, none of this is surprising. The Riverbed learned Spanish and English simultaneously as a small child, and because of this he thinks himself a “linguist”. I guess 3 quarters of Arizona’s grocery clerks, gas station attendants, construction workers and landscape crews are linguists too.
The Riverbed reviews my book of poetry, Drought Resistant Strain (link), on his blog, The Instruction Manual (link: http://ylarivera.blogspot.com/). Some quick examples of his linguistic dexterity: “I fucking hate him”; “Would Mather be so real if I shot his face with a shotgun?”; and “Mather makes me vomit”. Looks like Mr. Pell Grant spit out another goober.
Despite The Riverbed’s higher education, he says, “I don’t really get the title.” Allow me: a drought resistant strain is an organism that can survive or “resist” drought. “Drought” means a period of time in which there is relatively little rain. Drought resistant strains include the plants in the desert where I live. Sometimes they look dead when they are not. Their life is held deep inside them. The title can be taken literally or metaphorically. I am comparing myself and my work to a drought resistant strain, yes. The Riverbed says, “If he’s trying to say that his verse is moist, humid, or flavorful, he’s lying.” Humid? Como? This is a trick The Riverbed must have learned in linguist school: put words in my mouth and then call me a liar.
One poem of mine The Riverbed hates is about my girlfriend, who is an illegal Mexican immigrant. Riverbed says this poem is about “stealing a Mexican’s wife” and he claims that love, for me, is simply about “convenience”. If The Riverbed thinks stealing a Mexican’s wife is convenient, he should try it sometime. He might find it a bit harder than screwing a pilled-out sore-whore on the porch of a frat house. In my situation, the most basic things became complicated because of the language barrier. It took two years, several trips to Mexico, bribes and bureaucratic bullshit to finalize her divorce. Each time we crossed the border at Nogales we were breaking the law and were lucky not to be arrested. To this day, at any time at home or work or in the street she could be stopped and deported. Her ex husband threatened me and his friends broke into our apartment and trashed it. We will get married soon and it will cost us 2000 dollars to start the legalization paperwork. Later we will have to go through government interviews, knowing that at the end of the process they could simply put a stamp on a piece of paper and send her back to Mexico. The Riverbed concludes: “Love is about convenience, and Mather has a wife who won’t leave him because she can’t understand what he’s saying, and she gets a tool included in the package deal. Isn’t that convenient?” Yes, just like water rolling down hill, it’s been a veritable bubbly.
The Riverbed doesn’t like it when I use the pronoun “I” in my poems, even if 99 percent of the poem is about someone else, and even if the “I” isn’t me. He says, “Mather does not need to tell us he’s a loser in each poem that he writes. This is obvious. How? I don’t know. Maybe it’s just an unspoken truth, like his poems, until he sticks his stupid face in them.” In the view of the academic suckling pig, anyone not in academia is a “loser”. However, even though he is incapable of articulating it, he touches on a good point. Much modern poetry is overly solipsistic, focusing on the author’s thoughts and their precious private steps through worlds magically devoid of conflict. In my poetry I try to engage the world and its actual challenges, and if “I” appear in the poem, all I can say is I am trying more and more to put myself on the sidelines and not in the spotlight.
After missing the point of every poem he critiques, The Riverbed says I need more “silly” in my work. “Mather,” he says, “the should-be-silly fuck.” That’s his advice on how to improve my existence. I need to stop being so serious. Silly is the kingpinner! Siwwy siwwy see-saw! Imagine a life, imagine an art, where being silly is all that matters. Imagine being the kind of person who makes up his own nickname. Good old giddy grab-ass brain-dead Andy Effin Riverbed. I guess talking about blowing someone’s face off with a shotgun is just his way of being “silly”.
Well, see if I ever send him a free book again.
Mather Schneider is the author of Drought Resistant Strain (Interior Noise Press, 2010, 128pp/$15).
Permanent: http://girlswithinsurance.com/index.php/columns/35-columns/226-ms-drs12
Short: http://frsh.in/bq
