FAQ - A One Act Play

Cast of Characters

Q. The Questioner
A. The Answerer

Act 1
Scene 1

SETTING: A web page on a lit mag lists the following categories for submission:
        Poetry
        Not Poetry
        Not Not Poetry
      Q and A appear as text beneath.

Q: What do the categories mean?
A: Poetry means poems. Not Poetry means writing that isn’t a poem. Not Not Poetry means writing that isn’t a poem or not a poem.

Q: So Poetry means any kind of poem?
A: Yes. Any kind.

Q: Does Not Poetry mean fiction?
A: Fiction is a kind of writing that is not poetry, so yes.

Q: What about creative nonfiction?
A: Yup.

Q: What about...
A: If it’s not a poem, then it’s Not Poetry.

Q: So, what about Not Not Poetry? Wouldn’t that mean hybrid experimental poetry?
A: No.

Q: I’m confused.
A: Hybrid writing is still a category. Not Not Poetry isn’t a category.

Q: ???
A: !!!

Q: Right. So. Uh. What kind of writing do you publish?
A: Yes.

Q: You’re very helpful.
A: Thank you!

Q: Can you give me any guidance at all? You know, for writers who want to submit.
A: We would not not accept... haiku written in an invented language containing no syllables; short fiction requiring advanced degrees in particle physics to comprehend; sonnets encoded in protein RNA sequences; knock-knock jokes; narrators as rocks; living snails; spreadsheets as poems; poems as spreadsheets; et cetera.

Q: So you would accept those things?
A: We would not not accept most of them.

Q: That means yes?
A: It doesn’t not mean yes.

Q: Is there anything you won’t publish?
A: Yes, we have no restrictions.

Q: What makes you different from all the other “weird / outsider / wtf even is it” lit mags?
A: Fuck around (then tell us when you find out).

Q: This is starting to feel artificial. Like, maybe my questions are too convenient. Am I even real?
A: Do you want the easy truth or the hard truth?

Q: Are they different?
A: Not really.

Q: Okay, I’ll take the easy truth.
A: Your questions are real, but you’re just a character in an FAQ larping as a one act play.

Q: If that’s the easy truth, then I’m afraid to know the hard truth.
A: You’re just a character in an FAQ larping as a one act play, but your questions are real.

Q: Isn’t that the same thing?
A: No. The words are in a different order.

Q: You must be fun at parties.
A: I wouldn’t know.

Q: That’s sad. So this whole thing is just a way of asserting your presence in a world that’s full of noise and contradictions, and acceptance feels like a mirage, or an infinite nesting doll of nothing, so you’re making this lit mag as a way of giving yourself a little hope and sense of control, maybe even a place to share the work of likeminded writers who also find the world mutually incomprehensible, and hopefully, together, make the world a bit more inclusive and coherent, ironically through a publication dedicated to playing at the edge of incomprehensibility and incoherence?
A: That’s a lot of hogwash from someone who doesn’t exist.

Q: That wasn’t an answer.
A: Was that supposed to be a question?