Origami Zoo Press

Reviews

Walkthrough: A Review of Level End by Brian Oliu

Level End
by Brian Oliu
Origami Zoo Press, 2012
$7.00 / $12.00 (Gold Edition) Buy from Origami Zoo Press
Rating: 8.9

Level 1: The Choosing of Attributes, of Feats; the Learning of Movement—backwards, forwards, the strafe; the Acquisition of Weaponry.

You are in a room, then another. A series of rooms is a hallway and this is where you are. There is music—do not become attached: it will change. Brian Oliu is your guide, like Virgil to Dante. To succeed, look around the room. Hear the music. Now steal everything: the water, the bodies, the swords on racks—instruments of abstraction, of breaking into pieces. These are important. Nod to Brian Oliu. Do not forget to save. Proceed to the next room.

Phantoms by Chad Simpson

It would be convenient to fly. But I can’t fly, so I read drugs and do books and wobble my way along.

Phantoms (Origami Zoo Press) is a drug. It is belly habit/super flu of 9 flash fictions. Chad Simpson ignites them tight.

The book came to me in the mail with my Bodog magazine (this a gambler’s rag with a blacked-out cover so pretty much the mailman thinks I am a pervert) and with two origami rabbits. They were cute. I didn’t know what to do with them, so set them free, atop the roof of my shed. There they crumple now, somewhere in time and space, out of most vision, out of eye, primarily in the mind.

The first flash is “Miracle.” A man is run-down by his own car. Primarily in the mind. Chad Simpson writes, “And I will imagine…I will imagine…I will imagine…” It is a collection/recollection. It ricochets internal monologue off objective scene (often primo way to present drama/calamity; I actually wish more writers would learn that sex/guns/thunk are often best written with a neutral eye). Image to notion, notion to image–dreamlike.