Andrea Lukic’s Journal of Smack

“I have fallen through a window of time, captured and written down on the screen. My name appears everywhere, but I cannot go home.” Journal of Smack, Andrea Lukic

Branches drag across the window pane; shifting shadows on the floor reveal secret truths in Andrea Lukic’s fifth installment of Journal of Smack. Flipping the pages of Lukic’s lunar-psych poetry, we feel our way through a dark room we’ve visited before, but where? A memory engulfed in flames, Vault 7 storage facility, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Los Angeles. The life’s work of silent-film star Lon Chaney, “man of a thousand faces,”  goes up in smoke. Somewhere in the ashes of this infamous MGM fire, we find Lukic’s imaginary beings. Like a carnival of scars, Lukic’s demonic cartoons depict a terrible dream haunted by Tinseltown’s silent stars, lonely women, and burnt out angels. Journal of Smack is available here, selected excerpts below. -Claire Milbrath