Crafting wings out of wax and poems from the underground, Zeus and the Giant Iced Tea is a dreamlike voyage through poetic narrative format, blurring the line between poetry and fiction. Exploring the frenetic lives of Mexican cowboys, robots, sultans, Greek gods, and convenience store clerks, Zeus and the Giant Iced Tea shatters preconceived notions of poetry and instead offers a more accessible strain of literary free flow.

About the Author

Leopold McGinnis doesn’t know much about art, but he knows what he likes. Unfortunately, it’s usually not the same thing everyone else likes, so he’s just had to make his own. This includes three novels, The Red Fez, Game Quest, and Bad Attitude, and a collection of poetry, Poetaster.

In his spare time Leopold roams across the postapocalyptic literary landscape in search of beating hearts as the founding editor of Red Fez Publications, the online aftermath of a bout of unemployment, rejection-induced literary cynicism, and an inexplicable optimism for artistic change. Born and raised in Calgary, he has lived just about everywhere, including Toronto, where he currently resides.

Table of Contents

  1. Why Zeus and the Giant Iced Tea? xi
  2. The city 3
  3. Robert’s Prison 7
  4. A Good Day 9
  5. The Big Shot 14
  6. Zeus and the Giant Iced Tea 23
  7. On the Trail of Ibn Battuta 25
  8. The Three Amigos
  9. El Mexicano 28
  10. The Two Xs 30
  11. The Muscle 32
  12. In the vault of the keeper of dreams 39
  13. The Secret 41
  14. Ask the ’stache 59
  15. The Method 61
  16. In the Dojo 62
  17. Who’s going to fulfill my unreasonable expectations? 63
  18. The Sultan Poems
  19. The Sultan’s Heart 66
  20. In the Petticoat’s Palace 68
  21. The Sultan’s Epiphany 72
  22. In Petticoat’s Kingdom 74
  23. By Day 77
  24. Beneath 80
  25. In Search of Another Ending 84
  26. Her Return 87
  27. Where the Garden Used to Be 89
  28. A Gift for Rats and Spiders 91
  29. The Sandstorm 94
  30. What the rat reads in the corner of the dungeon 95
  31. They Tremble 96
  32. By Night 100
  33. The Palace’s Story 103
  34. He Sees Water in the Desert 107
  35. She Leaves a Poem in His Parapet 113
  36. Look Upon This with Full Eyes, Prince 115
  37. The Sultan Wakes 121
  38. Best Before 128
  39. Just the Handshake 129
  40. The Drop 131
  41. The Big Thaw 136
  42. The Failed Experiment 143
  43. All Your Questions 144
  44. The Last Generation 147
  45. The Great Indian 148
  46. Crash landing 150
  47. Restart? 151
  48. A brief history of Gandhi 152
  49. We Love Robot 155
  50. Some Thoughts on Some Poems 159
  51. Special Thanks 165
  52. About the Author 167