THIRD FACE

November through January

2011-03-20T05:17:00.002-04:00

I'm really bad at saving money.
I think that falls into one of the "life skills" categories.
Those are universally important usually.
I wonder how much money I spent on drugs when I was a kid.
I decided to try to make saving money more like an RPG by opening a savings account and then trying to fill it like an EXP bar.
I watch it rise on a month to month basis, but sometimes it goes down.
I probably did over thirty thousand dollars worth of drugs when I was a kid.
I wonder what kind of car I could have bought with that.

A few years ago, when I was 18.
I made a lot of money.
I spent most of it at strip clubs and on coke.
I remember not caring at all about it.
I would get more the next week and then do it again.
I hate myself.
A lot sometimes.

One of the strippers.
Well she was a waitress.
But she had to work with her top off.
I slept with her and her name was Shannon.
I called out her name in bed once and she looked over her shoulder and said 'stop that.'
Then she didn't call me back.
I heard later she got promoted to a stripper.

I got a check for Christmas this year from my grandparents.
Even though I'm twenty five.
I cashed it immediately.
I asked for my balance and watched her write it on the little square of paper.
Filling up my EXP bar.
I wanted to write a letter to my grandparents and tell them thank you.
I spend about a month before Christmas worrying about what to get for people.
I spend about a month after Christmas worrying about writing letters.
I suck at shopping.
Also I never write the letters.
The end of November through the end of January pretty much annually suck.

I had this fat friend at the time.
When I was striking out with the stripper.
We were hanging out and I went to the bathroom.
Shannon told me he asked for her number while I was gone.
It was weird.
The night I called her name out in bed he had been on the floor playing with my xbox.
It took like an hour to get him to acknowledge the hints to make him leave.
She was really tired by then and I was pretty mad at him.
I think I might still be mad at him.
I was trying to have sex with her.
He could have gone to his own house and played with his own xbox.
I don't think he had one though.

I wake up sometimes and think maybe my brain is worthless maybe.
I'm so going to level up when my tax return comes.
That part of January isn't so bad when you get your W2.

Hey

2011-02-18T12:39:00.000-05:00

Look at your faces.

Your first or second or third faces.

LAP DANCE THE YULE LOG

2010-12-21T14:52:00.006-05:00

We are looking for people to donate money to receive the E-Book on Christmas Day.

We are going to micro-finance a small business through Kiva with all donations.

Please help us to support someone that needs support.

Email editor.metazen@gmail.com if you have any questions.

Thank you. Thank you.

- Metazen Editors

Donate

here

THE PERSONAL-POLITICAL: Thoughts on "The Wall," 30 Years Later

2010-12-06T11:54:00.011-05:00

This past weekend, I saw Roger Waters, the Pink Floyd bassist-composer and principal architect of "The Wall," at a 20,000-seat arena in Oakland. The experience was powerful. Not only was this gig the most articulate, multimedia, anti-war protest I'd ever seen, but it resonated as a reminder that the personal is political.

My complete review is here. A clip from the show below.

The craziest part? Video on the wall of a scrolling list of names: civilians and soldiers cut down in War Without End. Why crazy? This exact image appears in a concert scene in "badbadbad," my debut novel (to be published in May 2011 but first-drafted more than three years ago).

Seeing that image projected onto a 40-foot wall in a massive concert hall gave me chills. When did Waters first come up with this idea for his show? Is this evidence of the collective unconscious or One Mind? Will we ever live in a world without senseless violence? Should I perhaps ask Waters for a fraction of a percent of the tour's profits as a royalty cut?

Ocean's Burnings

2010-12-01T14:44:00.006-05:00

I stumbled upon the poetry of Ocean Vuong within the pages of PANK’s June 2010 issue and I fell in love. They had the most beautiful depictions of sex, love and the desperate yearning for the love of a brutal parent. Such a voice! So, the moment I saw Ocean Vuong had a book of poetry I bought it, literally. Clicked link, bought book.

The book is called, “Burnings” and it’s comprised of two parts. Part one which has poems dealing with family history, survival and struggles in another country and part two which covers what drew me to Ocean in the first place, love, sex and yearning.

From a poem in the first part of the book, “ Song of My Mothers” which is a poem dedicated to the Vietnamese women who perished during the U.S. war in Vietnam:

“Sing
Of the jaws bursting
under boot soles,
the eyes streaked with ash,
eyes that refuse to close
beneath the earth.

Of the wives who charged
into burning fields,
who knelt and scraped
someone else’s husband
into cracked jars of glass...”

“Sing of the sisters who held hands
while soldiers took turns,
who fled by closing their eyes,
only to find their bodies
too cold to return to…”

There is something about the poems in the first part of this book that Ocean does to make so many brutal things have a sense of beauty about them, thick with reverence.

The second part of the book lifts you up a bit from the first. There is less sadness and more hope in poems that carry words of love, of sex, of beauty and longing.

In, “Ode to Masturbation,” Ocean cleanses me of every shameful feeling I’ve ever had about this vice I’ve carried since childhood. I’ve never read such a beautiful thing about what I’ve come to think of as the most selfish of acts:

“Reach down, there is music
in the body, play yourself
like a lyre, insert the finger
into sanctum, feel
the quivering of crevices, skin
palpitating ripples as if stretched
over drumbeats.”

I can’t wait to see what more this young poet will bring us...bring me.

“Burnings” can be purchased at Sibling Rivalry Press.

INSPIRATIONAL NIETZSCHE

2010-11-30T15:44:00.001-05:00

"All the beauty and sublimity we have bestowed upon real and imaginary things I will reclaim as the property and product of man: as his fairest apology. Man as poet, as thinker, as God, as love, as power: with what regal liberality he has lavished gifts upon things so as to impoverish himself and make himself feel wretched! His most unselfish act hitherto has been to admire and worship and to know how to conceal from himself that it was he who created what he admired."

HAVE YOU HEARD THE (NO) NEWS?

2010-11-24T14:43:00.005-05:00

Robert Lopez has been asking writers to guest post on his blog for a "No News Today" series of ruminations on news/not-news, mostly flash fictions, sometimes personal rambles.

Today, you can read a curious piece on self-immolation, dead-dad reflection and neighborly theft by Third Face maven Barry Graham.

This past weekend, my exploration of freedom and hunger (or something like that) came out. It's my first attempt at writing in a different style from my typical badbadbadness.

There are a lot of shorts here worth peeping, including recent posts by Roy Kesey, Elizabeth Ellen, Christopher Higgs and Lindsay Hunter.

Dzanc just released Mr. Lopez's third book, a collection called "Asunder." There's a nasty-beautiful book trailer on the Dzanc site.

Yep, just another day in StoryLand. News? No news? Either/or, as long as we're reading and writing, it's all good.

COCAINE SCARECROW

2010-11-18T14:46:00.002-05:00

Lullaby

2010-11-16T15:27:00.006-05:00

There are great story makers and there are great storytellers.

Scott McClanahan is both.

huh?

2010-11-16T13:00:00.004-05:00

When I write, I rarely sit down and think, "Today I'm going to write that story about the bird." Instead I think, "Today I'm going to write out this feeling of regret I have in my stomach that's making me miserable and twitchy."

But then, when I read, I'm wondering if I pick up those thoughts of the author. The twitchy regretty thoughts. I'm wondering if readers, myself included, just read something and say, "That bird is crazy!" instead of understanding what the bird represents.

And then I think, what if no one gets what I'm saying with my stories? They've always been a way of communication for me. A way for me to be honest without having to be honest. And, recently, I've been thinking I'm shouting in a language no one speaks.

And everyone else is shouting at me and I'm sitting with my palm around my ear saying, "Come again?"

Am I alone in this paranoia?

SAM LIPSYTE. D&D. THE NEW YORKER

2010-11-12T13:53:00.002-05:00

Check out SAM LIPSYTE's story THE DUNGEON MASTER. In THE NEW YORKER. Here's the link. Thank me later.

HOW THEY WERE FOUND. MATT BELL. KEYHOLE PRESS

2010-11-08T11:04:00.004-05:00

How They Were Found
www.howtheywerefound.com

October 5, 2010
Keyhole Press
Trade Paperback · 244 pages
5" x 8" · $13.95
ISBN 978-0982151259

Includes the story "Dredge," a Best American Mystery Stories selection, and the story "His Last Great Gift," a Best American Short Stories Distinguished Story of 2009.

DESCRIPTION

In his debut collection How They Were Found, Matt Bell draws from a wide range of genres to create stories that are both formally innovative and imaginatively rich. In one, a 19th-century minister follows ghostly instructions to build a mechanical messiah. In another, a tyrannical army commander watches his apocalyptic command slip away as the memories of his men begin to fade and fail. Elsewhere, murders are indexed, new worlds are mapped, fairy tales are fractured and retold and then fractured again. Throughout these thirteen stories, Bell's careful prose burrows at the foundations of his characters' lives until they topple over, then painstakingly pores over the wreckage for what rubbled humanity might yet remain to be found.

"Reminscent of Friedrich Dürrenmatt's The Winter War in Tibet in its calm examination and unsettling embodiment of mental and physical extremes, How They Were Found is a dreamer's chronicle of the loss and partial recovery of a world given over to the wrecking ball. Fierce, unflinching, funny, How They Were Found is just the book we need right now, Matt Bell just the writer." —Laird Hunt, author of Ray of the Star

"How They Were Found offers a world with shifting rules, described with a lovely and deceptive simplicity. This guide shows you thirteen different types of wilderness, and you can spend all day exploring before you realize you are lost." —Amelia Gray, author of Museum of the Weird and AM/PM

"You're a robot if the stories in Matt Bell's debut collection don't exhilarate, frighten, and unalterably change you. His wild manipulation of form and genre makes the bulk of contemporary fiction feel bloodless and inert in comparison, but it is Bell's recurring arrival at something sturdy and true about human behavior that makes the stories in How They Were Found so rewarding and resonant." —Matthew Derby, author of Super Flat Times: Stories

REVIEWS

"As the stories in this debut collection add up, so do the bodies, people done in by diverse, often fantastical methods and accidents: drowning, freezing, crushing, knifing, shooting, suffocation, disease, traps, saws, dismemberment, exposure, and more. Then there are the disappearances: a cartographer’s sick girlfriend vanishes, a homunculus starts shrinking. The comparatively few characters who remain alive and present are preoccupied with others’ annihilations... Body toll notwithstanding, How They Were Found is anything but bleak. For one thing, there’s the prose: generous, urgent, rhythmic.... As the collection continues and the deaths and disappearances pile up, it becomes increasingly clear that, in the various microcosms of How They Were Found, only the tales the characters leave behind can survive their fleeting lives." —Reese Okyong Kwon, The Believer

"Bell attempts and succeeds at a crucial, yet risky, concept that’s essential to great writing: the concept of fusion and hybrid. First and foremost is the magical formula that most young writers have a hard time grasping, the fusion of style and substance. The style in this case being the fantastical elements of each story and the substance being the human connections and emotions that Bell endows his characters with. While most all of the stories in HTWF could easily be filed under the fantasy section, don’t let the nerdish connotation of the genre fool you. Bell’s characters are undoubtedly human, dealing with everyday feelings of loss, change, heartbreak, hope, ambition and discovery.

How They Were Found is a triumph of a debut collection. Bell has a command over story far surpassing anyone else in his league. Don’t miss this book." —Chris Heavener, Annalemma Magazine

"Bell brings us everything: symbolism, futurism à la David Ohle, devastation, surrealism, scenic energy, fractured fairytales, consumption, struggle, claustrophobia, and family decay. But this is not to say How They Were Found spreads itself too thin or is too chaotically varied; Bell knows how to keep his world in check, his every word balanced against another, delicately, like a system of weights." —J.A. Tyler, The Rumpus

"Matt Bell’s debut collection of short fiction covers abundant ground, from the fairy-tale deconstruction of 'Wolf Parts' to the imploded tale of crime and punishment contained in 'Dredge.' Bell’s fiction is taut and surreal, and the best stories in this collection—such as 'Hold On To Your Vacuum,' with its structure somewhere between dream and video game—seem both classical in their approach and utterly modern in their sensibility." —Tobias Carroll, Flavorwire

"No matter what I write here, I cannot tell you how great this book is. In fact, I’m not even sure I know how to write a review that will do it justice. So let’s just agree on this point from the start: however great you think Matt Bell’s new collection might be after reading this review, it’s better. As I’ve read and re-read the stories in How They Were Found over the last several weeks, I’ve found myself telling everyone who will listen about it. These stories are infinitely compelling, poised exactly on the brink of explosion, the perfect balance of potency and control." —Troy Urquhart, PANK

"The characters in Matt Bell’s first full length-collection of stories, How They Were Found, often seem to be separated from the rest of the world by filmy gauze. You get the idea that a real world surrounds these folks, but they are estranged from that reality by a loose mesh that keeps them from seeing their surroundings clearly or engaging with them fully. As Bell writes of the main character in 'His Last Great Gift,' it is 'as if his ears are filled with cotton or wax, as if this is something in the way of true communication, and the real world seems just as distant, just as difficult to navigate.' Often neither the characters’ names nor their physical features are revealed. Little information is provided about their past. They are just there, searching—or, as the book’s title suggests, waiting to be found. This is not to say that the prose itself is cloudy; it allows us more than enough peeks at beauty, mystery, playfulness, and well-constructed absurdity to make this collection satisfying on many levels." —Garnett Kilberg Cohen, Triquarterly

"These stories are heavy, they are beautifully written, they are deep, they are bold, formally and thematically, yet, no matter how form busting or experimental they can be, they are always page turners in the best sense." —Robert Kloss

"The subjects who wander through the haze of How They Were Found are all horribly damaged hopeless souls who bump against travesty after tragedy. They are ugly, gnarled, deformed and maligned. And probably, this is the reason they are so affecting: they do unspeakable things both to themselves and others, and there is but a negligible delineation between them and us. Perhaps, even, they have the courage to act on their impulses, and we can only hope to be so brave." —Nik Korpon, Outsider Writers Collective

"It’s not what is grotesque about Matt Bell’s characters that transfix the reader, it’s what is so human and commonplace about them. It’s impossible not to identify with even the most psychologically disfigured of these people, and that is one of the elements that creates such urgency to read more of Bell’s stories... The span of emotional range in these stories is also astonishing. 'The Cartographer’s Girl' is one of the most affecting stories of lost love that I have ever read." —Debrah Lechner, Hayden's Ferry Review

"Bell imbues his stories with rich symbolism, and his authorial voice adds elements of calm eeriness that make his stories eminently readable." —Marie Mundaca, Hipster Book Club
"Even if Bell's universes are filled with people whose ropes are too short, time is too long, memories are too elusive, instruments too outmoded, and worlds too distant, they connect to us directly through the heart. And it's because of the heart that Bell puts into his stories that makes the intellectual exercise of them so accessible. It may not be a happy heart, but it often beats in time with our own." —Jen Michalski, JMWW

"Taken together, the entirety of this collection represents an attempt to marry several generations of literary techniques, to find common ground between the ultra-modern and the classical, the historic and the post-modern. It’s a venture at which Bell succeeds, yielding something that’s also a pleasure to read." —Tobias Carroll, Word Riot

"Matt Bell has built a national reputation on his own terms, completely outside the support system of New York publishing, on the strength of his stories and novellas, which are wholly original and singularly his own. He is that rare sort of writer whose work the reader would recognize even if were published anonymously. It is formally daring, high-stakes, languaged-up stuff, and (lucky us!), the best of it has finally been collected at book length. Here is some consumer advocacy: You will be a happier, more fulfilled, better entertained human being if you buy this book today." —Kyle Minor, HTMLGiant

FROM RACHEL HARTLEY-SMITH AND THE FINE FOLKS AT WILLOW SPRINGS

2010-11-05T16:26:00.003-04:00

"Willow Springs, Eastern Washington University’s literary journal, is seeking good fiction and prose - ASAP. Being the new assistant web editor (finishing my MFA way out here in Spokane), I have this cool little bird in my ear. If publication in WS sounds appealing or even semi-appealing, please consider submitting. You can submit online – no problemo. Improve the reading pile. :) Thank you!"

About Willow Springs: http://willowsprings.ewu.edu/about.php

Submit link: http://willowsprings.ewu.edu/submit.php

Homepage: http://willowsprings.ewu.edu/index.php

MERMAID STRANGULATION

2010-11-04T01:15:00.003-04:00

Wherein I End Up Answering My Own Question

2010-11-03T14:30:00.005-04:00

First of all, this is the best song ever. It’s catchy. The words are easy to remember, and you can dance to it.

Second of all and third of all; see first of all.

I heard that the story behind this was that this rap guy made the video before the lyrics to the song were complete. He had the actual music down, but none of the words. All of the mumbled nonsensical blatherings were just acting as placeholders until he could write the actual lyrics.

I am attempting Nanowrimo and I fear I am using the same approach. I’m sort of writing the music, setting the groove, the tone and having sexy ladies dance about showing everything but their naughty bits.

But the words… The lyrics…. Well, they’re sounding a lot like this guy’s.

I feel like I’m just writing a bunch of words to get the mandatory count down with the thinking that later, when I can go back and edit, I will be able to put in the words that SHOULD be there. I feel like a large majority of these words are simply placeholders. I am using a lot of simple adjectives and adverbs. Simple nouns and sentences. Mainly because I don’t have the time to put in the added care and effort that I normally do because of the write-a- minimum-of-1,600-words-a-day urgency.

So, I guess what I’m asking myself now is; is it worth making the song if it turns out like this dude’s?

Maybe the answer is, sure. Perhaps, it’s a good starting point; a satisfactory base for something that has potential to be good. I mean, honestly, I find myself humming the words (question mark) to this little ditty as I go about my day. I enjoy the song, as is. Maybe the addition of actual lyrics would take something away from its current charm. Maybe lyrics would make it more awesome. Either way, I guess what this is all telling me is; just fucking write, bitch.

BOOK OFFER FROM SAM PINK

2010-11-03T11:40:00.002-04:00

a book i wrote called "YOU HEAR AMBULANCE SOUNDS AND THINK THEY ARE FOR YOU" is officially out. i think it's sold out though. but i have a box of them. it's a single poem in a perfect bound book. it looks really nice. the next five people to buy PERSON and send the publisher their receipt (cameroncpierce@gmail.com) will get a free copy of "AMBULANCE SOUNDS" in the mail. or, if you just want to buy a copy of "AMBULANCE SOUNDS" off me, send me five dollars so i can mail it to you.

oh god im drunk as shit

2010-10-31T03:11:00.002-04:00

So
I know I'm new here
but I gotta say
this community is bullshit

but before I rant about that
I need to thank every legitimate writer I've met so far
who writes because they need to
and every editor who actually reads
instead of just scanning publication credits
because you've taught me everything

but these fucking pretentious
circle jerking assholes, who are
more concerned with who to suck up to
and who will publish them because of it
than giving people credit for what they have to say
and loving what they do
you're shitting all over
everything

and you writers
with your your cheesy bio's
laundry lists of every place you've ever been
self deprecating remarks
begging for compliments
internet personas
full of fake coffee shop sadness

and
it's not even your fault
because
you know that these snobby, elitist editors
won't even look at your work unless
you've already broken the barrier
with some other snobby elitists first

because if you're unpublished
you're just going to get formulaic rejection forms
in return for something
you poured your heart into

until you find some journals that don't even read your bio
or care about your reputation
until after they've read your work

and
I don't want you to think I'm writing this
because I think I don't get a fair shake
I'm actually pretty sure all the rejection letters I get
are because the submissions weren't all that good

no
I'm writing this because
I think some of these
writers, poets, humans
don't get any honest attention to their work
because of this schoolyard popularity contest mentality
and don't receive honest critiques
from their peers or people 'in the scene'

so I gotta tell you:

I don't read your bio
I don't care where you've been published
if you're good, I'll show off your work
I'll probably even read your blog
but don't publish me because
you want me to do the same for you

fuck
tell me my poem sucked
and if you got time, tell me why
even if you want in on amphibi.us

because I promise you
I find it more insulting
to publish me
just because I call myself an editor
and can get you a few more hits.

T. CASEY BRENNAN

2010-10-27T15:27:00.001-04:00

Actor Comics Presents #1 Variation A
Century, 1-Sep-2006

Fall 2006; Cover A by Joseph Michael Linser

The Day the Superheroes Quit; The Final Ka-Boom?; Dreamland Chronicles; The Mice Templar; Dirty, Pretty, Everlasting Things; I Know Everything; Hypothetical Cerebus and the Necronomicon Monks; The Sacrifice; My Hero; Puppets; The Wild One; Comes the Creaper!; For the Love of Barbara Allen; Mr. Oblivion; My Hand to God: True Tales of HORROR from the Convention Trail; No Rodeo Dough; Spot; My Favorite Super Hero

Writers: Jim McLauchlin, Stan Lee, C.B. Cebulski, Al Nickerson, Nicola Cuti, Scott Christian Sava, Bryan J.L. Glass, Danny Jalil, J.C. Vaughn, T. Casey Brennan, Ron Marz, Dick Ayers, William Messner-Loebs, Troy Hickman, Roy Thomas, Dan Wickline, Jerry Hinds, Mark Waid, Paul Dini, Tom Defalco, Frank Shaskus, John Gallagher, Scott Richard Kurtz, Charlie Novinskie

Artists: Joseph Michael Linsner, João Lemos, Joe Staton, Scott Christian Sava, Michael Avon Oeming, Bryan J.L. Glass, Jerry Hinds, Brendon Fraim, Brian Fraim, Dave Sim, Victor Santos, Dan Jurgens, Dave Simons, Dick Ayers, Dick Giordano, Rodolfo Migliari, Dave Alvarez, Julio Molina-Muscara, John Gallagher

DADDY. LINDSAY HUNTER. PRE-PUKE HOTTNESS. BIOTCH

2010-10-25T14:14:00.008-04:00

(photo - Jacob Knabb)

Check out LINDSAY HUNTER's interview over at BIG OTHER. RYAN BRADLEY asks her some questions about her book DADDY. I'll give you a little something something here then just click anywhere on any of the words to read the interview in its entirety.

RWB: Obviously you don’t shy away from overt sexuality or bizarre sexuality in your stories, which would seem to purport a comfort level with things of a sexual nature (even if not to the degree your characters are). What do you think has shaped your openness to writing this sort of raw material that others might shy away from?

LH: I’m extremely comfortable talking about sex. I pretty much take for granted that everyone is just as comfortable reading/talking about it as I am. To me, sex is a core form of communication in literature. It’s a way of showing without telling (yep, I just said that). I almost can’t help writing about it sometimes. I think, though, that the reason I feel such permission to lay it all out like that is because I’ve had incredibly supportive audiences over the years—whether it be professors or peers or people I’m reading to at Quickies!—if all those people told me to take it somewhere else, I’d probably be writing technical manuals about C++ and frosting liquid cheese onto Velveeta cubes in an apartment with curtain walls.

PLEASE SMILE

2010-10-22T19:09:00.004-04:00

This song is my Friday night mind whistle:

IF YOU ALREADY IN THE MITTEN... SUNDAY, OCTOBER, 24TH.

2010-10-20T16:13:00.008-04:00

GREAT LAKES, GREAT TIMES READING SERIES

October Reading:
Sunday, October 24th, 2010, 5pm
The Neutral Zone
310 E. Washington St., Ann Arbor
www.neutral-zone.org

Donald Ray Pollock
Knockemstiff
Donald Ray Pollock grew up in southern Ohio, and worked in factories for thirty-two years. His first book, Knockemstiff, won the 2009 PEN/Robert Bingham Award.
http://donaldraypollock.com

Kim Chinquee
Pretty
Kim Chinquee is the author of Oh Baby and Pretty. She lives in Buffalo, New York.
www.kimchinquee.blogspot.com

Barry Graham
The National Virginity Pledge
Barry Graham teaches at rutgers university and he wrote the national virginity pledge.
www.barrygfunk.blogspot.com

Scott McClanahan
Scott McClanahan is the author of Stories and Stories II (published by Six Gallery Press). His other works include Hillbilly, Stories 5!, The Nightmares and Crapalachia (all forthcoming)
www.hollerpresents.com

http://www.greatlakesgreattimes.net/

CONTEST FROM CURBSIDE PRESS... AND MAKE SURE YOU READ THIS SHITS CUZ YOU CAN WIN SOME MONEY

2010-10-20T15:57:00.001-04:00

Winter 2010 Curbside Award Opportunity

We are happy to announce the first ever Curbside Splendor short story award opportunity. It’s limited to short stories of between 1,000 and 4,000 words. We want to see urban-themed stories, however interpreted. The top three (as judged by our editors) will receive the following awards:

1st - $250

2nd - $150

3rd - $100

The top three entries will be featured in our first print journal due out early 2011 and may also be published online. All entries received will be considered for general publication.

Submission deadline is November 30, 2010. Recepients will be announced in December. Please send to submit@curbsidesplendor.com and include “2010 Award Opportunity Submission” in the subject line. Include a short bio. All entries should be included as an attachment (word, rtf – no pdfs), and should be double-spaced. See the following link for our general submission guidelines.

We’ll also continue to consider general submissions of poetry and prose during this period. We’ll try to alternate our award opportunities between prose and poetry.

Sorry, but only submissions received between now and November 30 will be considered for the awards. If you’ve already submitted and are still waiting for a response, feel free to submit a new piece for the award.

Thanks for writing. Cheers to the small presses.

http://curbsidesplendor.com/index.php?id=100

TORN PUSSY CELEBRATION TIME

2010-10-19T14:01:00.003-04:00

Today is 10.19.2010

Our own Barry Graham and Donora Hillard are celebrating birthdays.

They turned old (if you were wondering).

Here is a pic of young b putting the moves on an unsuspecting sugar bird:

& here is a pic of young d looking all alone and emotional:

Please thank them for existing. They are both worthwhile human beings and fucking rad writers.

SUNDAY SAM PINK

2010-10-17T15:13:00.003-04:00

A CERTAIN AMOUNT OF SEX ACTUALLY FEELS BAD.

With a piece of the sidewalk nailed behind my face, I'd still find a way to lift my face.

With a piece of the sidewalk nailed behind my face, nothing would change.

I'd still lift my face and keep it off the ground.

I'd still change nothing.

With two lives I would use the first to figure out how to make the next one even worse.

Do you believe me.

We can meet in the corner of space where people forget to check--where I do things I have to do with my eyes closed.

The fifth orgasm rips the groin the bestest and I am a beautiful human.

I eat jewelery and give nothing in return.

And youth is the thing that keeps ending.

Unlikely future.

No one has to protect the animal with the big jaw from the cross-eyed palsey holding a bb gun.

The cross-eyed palsey with the bb gun threatens nothing.

The ground will get cold soon and I'm waiting to be there, to freeze with it and be cold until the sun tries its best to get beneath and cook me.

I actually feel ill with how negative I have become. But I don't have any negative feelings about the carpet in my apartment.

And I don't have any positive feelings about cleaning it.

I only have interest in continuing to rub my feet on it then sending electricity through my nose to my roomate's cat's nose to give my roommate's cat braindamage (hopefully [wink wink]).

All things keep ending.

Do you believe me.

SP, Frowns Need Friends Too, 2009

The wonderful thing about Wojtek is that though he had the body of a bear, he had the heart of a man

2010-10-15T19:39:00.000-04:00

PASSIVE HETEROPHOBIA

2010-10-15T18:13:00.006-04:00

PANK forced out a new baby. Tim Jones-Yelvington guest edits. He explains the issue here. Don't be like Brandi Wells, don't be a dick, don't ignore this issue. Please go read it.

In support, a picture:

BRITISH SHIT

2010-10-15T14:36:00.005-04:00

This is literary:

THE ULTIMATE FLASH FICTION PACKAGE

2010-10-14T15:50:00.005-04:00

Hint Fiction: An Anthology of Stories in 25 Words or Fewer hits bookstores on November 1st here in the United States, and to celebrate, we’re having a contest!

First, what is Hint Fiction? Inspired by Ernest Hemingway’s six-word story — “For sale: baby shoes, never worn” — Hint Fiction is a story of 25 words or fewer that suggests a larger, more complex story. The anthology features 125 stories by writers worldwide, including such luminaries as Joyce Carol Oates, James Frey, Peter Straub, and Ha Jin. Here is what people are saying already:

“The perfect story collection for all of us with too little time on our hands is a brilliant reminder of the magic that happens when you string the right words together. A must-read for anyone who is or wants to be a writer.” — Jodi Picoult, New York Times bestselling author of House Rules

“Some of these stories suggest entire novels in just few words. So, in this small book, you have a whole library. It’s reading at the speed of light.” — Robert Shapard, editor of Sudden Fiction and Flash Fiction

“The stories in Robert Swartwood’s Hint Fiction have some serious velocity. Some explode, some needle, some bleed, and some give the reader room to dream. They’re fun and addictive, like puzzles or haiku or candy. I’ve finished mine but I want more.” — Stewart O’Nan, author of Last Night at the Lobster and Songs for the Missing

The anthology is currently available for pre-order at:

W. W. Norton
IndieBound
Amazon (USA)
Amazon (CA)
Barnes & Noble
Books-A-Million
Borders
Powell’s Books

You can follow Hint Fiction on Twitter, “like” it on Facebook, and even add it to your shelf on Goodreads.

Now what’s the Ultimate Flash Fiction Package? These eight wonderful anthologies of course!

Hint Fiction: An Anthology of Stories in 25 Words or Fewer
Flash Fiction: 72 Very Short Stories
Flash Fiction Forward: 80 Very Short Stories
New Sudden Fiction: Short-Short Stories from America and Beyond
Sudden Fiction International: 60 Short Stories
Sudden Fiction (Continued): 60 New Short-Short Stories
Sudden Fiction Latino: Short-Short Stories from the United States and Latin America
Micro Fiction: An Anthology of Fifty Really Short Stories

The total cost for these eight books is $120.00, and it can all be yours.

How?

By simply linking back to this contest. Put it on your blog, Facebook, Twitter, etc. Then paste the URL in the comments section of this post (if on Facebook or any other password-protected site, paste your profile URL). The contest runs until midnight, October 31st, EST. A winner will be picked by random and notified by e-mail and announced here November 1st. Five runners-up will receive a copy of Hint Fiction.

Have fun!

http://www.robertswartwood.com/hint-fiction/the-ultimate-flash-fiction-package/

Another Chicago Magazine has a BLOG!

2010-10-13T15:43:00.004-04:00

We at ACM are in the midst of several huge projects, one of which is radically enhancing our website, which means more online content! We'll be posting archives, online only poetry/fiction/cnf/reviews/photos, and other wonderful stuffs. And we wanted to post here at Thirdface to let ya'all know about it.

But, most importantly for now, what we want to tell you about is that we're blogging! That's right, blogging. You might ask yourself, what benefit would it be to me to go to that new ACM blog? Why would I consider it RSS-worthy? My feed is already so cluttered as it is!

Well, friend, I am here to tell you that you can find such splendorous things at our blog! Oh yes! And slanderous too! Why, just two days ago we composed a dirty limerick! And you know that you like dirty limericks. I'll even include it here so you can see the delights awaiting you when you click through and start following along with the continuing adventures of ACM!

ACM's Dirty Limerick:

There once was a bellhop named Royster

Who fancied his woman an oyster

With his cock he did swirl

To recover her pearl

In the end she could not have been moister

An Old Man Walks Away in Defeat

2010-10-12T19:45:00.005-04:00

Why do I find myself sitting here at 3:30 in the afternoon, stinking and unshowered, yet tearing up over this photograph of Bobby Cox, 69-years of age, humbled one last time in the post-season, taking the long walk back to the locker room after his beloved Braves are eliminated by a vastly superior opponent? Is it because I know that he ended up moments later, standing in the home team’s locker room, weeping uncontrollably, incapable of delivering his final goodbyes to his players? Is it because I want to tell myself that time is impermanent and fickle and erodes all while at the same time actively believing that some things will not change, that the Atlanta Braves are Bobby's team, and always make the Playoffs, and always lose in some crucial way, that Bobby’s teams plow through the regular season on the backs of an unending series of Hall of Fame pitching staffs and line-ups filled with all-around athletes, and those games are called by Skip Carey, and Skip is half-cocked and cracking wise about the horrible movie slated to follow that night's game?

See I know that it's not possible, even in my most irrational moments such as now, weeping openly in a greasy pair of scrubs, for this to always be. Skip Carey died in 2008. His death was particularly moving in its own way: his wife, Paula, thought old Skip was napping, and she found herself looking out of a kitchen window to admire her yard, then noticing a bird feeder not hanging where it should have been. Paula decided to go outside to put the feeder back in the tree where it belonged, thinking it had been blown down by the wind. When she stood up, she noticed her husband lying there on the ground next to the fallen bird feeder. And that was the end for Skip Carey. He never could overcome his alcoholism, a family tradition for the Careys, and in the end he gave up the ghost like we all do ultimately, his heart stopped pumping, but he did leave his mark, and in my mind I can still hear his deadpan voice, articulating the movements of Ron Gant chasing a flyball across the outfield of old Fulton County Stadium, or Chipper Jones, blasting a rare home run while hitting righty, or teasing Don Sutton about something he'd said earlier in the telecast.

I'm certain that Skip's is but one voice that Bobby heard echoing in his mind as he wept in front of a room full of 20 and 30-something-year-old ballplayers, many of them also powerfully moved by the end of an era, by the team's elimination from the post-season, by what could have been if only certain things had broken their way. For Chipper Jones, one of the best third basemen to ever play Major League Baseball, a lifelong Brave who’d always played for Bobby Cox, it was just too much to take silently. Chipper's career is also likely over, ended by an unexpected injury. He too stood crying uncontrollably, and later said there hadn’t been a dry eye in the place. Others may have been mentally planning dinner that night or deciding if they should go on vacation as planned or perhaps to begin training earlier in order to win it all next year. There may even have been some who perhaps never cared much in the first place about Bobby Cox and who simply intended to remain quiet and wait the whole thing out due to a sense of propriety and politeness. In the end it is probably all of these things. In the end it is probably more mundane. But in the end, they all wept for Bobby.

In the end, baseball is not a poetic pursuit. It is not an artform, despite how we may choose to poeticize it with our words, articulating the ineffable characteristics that comprise a hero like Stan Musial, painting and sculpting our feelings about 'Stan the Man' as we come to terms with what his legend means. In the end, baseball is not an intellectual arena, despite how we may ponder and study the game and intellectualize it with our application of game theory to show what choices reveal the ideal strategy for victory or how statistics might afford us a glimpse into what truly makes a player like Stan Musial so impressive in the end. Baseball is neither of these things. It is a game, played with bats, balls, gloves and bases. It has complex written rules and a slew of unspoken ones as well, but the primary goal is to beat the opponent more often than not, the ultimate goal to crush the opponent, to step down on his throat and to never let up once you’ve found yourself in the position to win, to choke the life out of those that stand in the way of victory. It is stark and it is pitiless, but it can also be graceful and it can sometimes feel transcendent. There are moments of great power and breathtaking beauty, but there is always an end to every game, an end to every season, an end to every career.

So now it seems that the end has come for Bobby Cox. And now the time has come for an old man who must walk down a mud-dappled hallway, who must take off his uniform -- the poly-blend jersey and leggings, the stirrups and cleats -- who must hang them up one last time. He must give his postgame talk to his team and then he must field questions from the press. He must address his feelings about this season and he must talk of his plans going forward. And then he must go about the rest of his life. Ultimately, he must go about dying. I have no idea what thoughts really lingered in the minds of those left in the room after the manager had composed himself and said his piece. I have no idea how those who watched him leave the building and vanish into the October gloaming will remember what they've seen.

I wasn’t even there so I will never know, and even had I been my understanding would have been far from complete, but it strikes me at this moment of writing down my thoughts that the thing about this photograph of Bobby Cox that is so emotionally stirring to me is the aptness of how it captures time. Memory always turns away from us, always walks away from us, with head-bowed. Despite how we might follow along behind, convinced that we can capture that memory, that we can own that moment, that it will always be there in our minds, it still flickers, still tumbles from our grasp, still trudges off into the unknown. And this is why we cry when we see beauty. And this is why we laugh when we see pain. We know on some level that we will remember what we are seeing inaccurately if at all and our bodies are revolting from our intellects, are throttling our better selves with emotions too powerful for us to contain. They leap out of us despite what we may wish for them to do and they overwhelm our rationality. And so in this way we experience the world and we store sensations both powerful and mundane and perhaps one day they all come screaming back to us, perhaps one day the levee breaks and we are flooded. Perhaps one day we feel that we are done with time, but we are foolish if we neglect to realize the ultimate fact for us all, the fact that time is never done with us until we too fade into the dusk.

Happy Weekend, Let's Vajazzle

2010-10-09T01:10:00.000-04:00

http://www.vajazzling.com

DRAGONS NEVER DIE FROM OLD AGE

2010-10-08T18:19:00.003-04:00

SOMETIMES THE TANTRUM IS BETTER THAN THE REWARD

2010-10-07T15:14:00.004-04:00

A metaphor:

In other news, Donora Hillard used the word CUNT on Chicago public access radio. I am very proud of her.

Thing Language

2010-10-04T16:19:00.002-04:00

This ocean, humiliating in its disguises
Tougher than anything
No one listens to poetry. The ocean
Does not mean to be listened to. A drop
Or crash of water. It means
Nothing
It
Is bread and butter
Pepper and salt. The death
That young men hope for. Aimlessly
It pounds the shore. White and aimless signals. No
One listens to poetry.

-Jack Spicer

READING IN PHILLY

2010-10-04T15:06:00.004-04:00

If you're in Philly on October 16th come to the BODHI CAFE at 7pm for a kick ass reading with Philadelphia legends, Randall Brown, Matt Blasi, and Chris Bullard. And hosted by Daniel Wallace. Afterwards, it's my birthday party bitches, so follow us across the bridge for some birthdayness.

All info should be in the flier up above, but if you want / need / crave more info, send me an email.

SUNDAY SAM PINK

2010-10-03T17:23:00.002-04:00

I'M 26 AT THE TIME I AM TITLING THIS

The palm creases on a human hand are always just wide enough to hold in the air of a tightly surprised mouth.

And you don't have to do anything but have nothing to do.

And every place is a place to be a flesh-colored outline.

The trick is to leave the flesh-colored outline every place the people look for you.

The trick is to smell like everyone else.

It makes me happy to look at myself in a car window when I walk by and say, "Hey bigshot."

And I guess explaining something to someone else is the worst.

Being in a well-lit room is never comfortable do you agree.

Ok so start enjoying the fevers rather than changing them.

Sometimes I confuse myself for a discoloration on the ground.

And I have never told anyone the truth about anything.

I am peaceful in-vitro.

I am starting to think this laughing is too big for the mouth.

Too wonderful to be an individual human body weighing just enough to never unfasten from the ground.

But me is ok with using my mouth like a fan to push away the smell of a dead idiot.

Good luck to everyone alive right now.

I mean that.

And all parents are criminals and all parents are inside me.

I drop dead as a greeting.

The willingness to be good increases in me as I get more and more tired and then gone when I wake up in the same mood but a person completely different.

The people you never meet, they are unpolished trophies um.

I don't really believe that.

But it hurts to have a face that can show other people how much it hurts to have feelings.

Crouch down and cover your face and you still waste everyone's time.

I crouch down and cover my face but the laundry is still not done.

I need to settle down.

I wear a bathing suit for underwear and celebrate having a head that holds a face that hurts to have when it has feelings that something else is always eating and wearing the same clothes is the only thing that makes me happy.

The problem with accomplishments is that it takes at least you or maybe someone else to keep calling it an accomplishment.

I don't mean to interrupt but I like how my face looks in the scope of your rifle or through the peephole of your place when you're acting like you're not at your place.

SP, Frowns Need Friends Too, 2009

IT FEELS GOOD TO PUNCH CHILDREN IN THE FACE BECAUSE GOD LOVES NO ONE

2010-10-02T17:39:00.000-04:00

not literary related, no. but! fucking awesome related, yes.

He's On His Way!

2010-10-01T17:19:00.003-04:00

A few days ago I placed an order with a website that sells books.

(http://www.betterworldbooks.com )

This was my first order with this site.

Today I received probably the cutest shipping notice that I’ve ever received from an online retailer EVER.

Here it is:

Hello xTx,

(Your book(s) asked to write you a personal note - it seemed unusual, but who are we to say no?)

Holy canasta! It's me... it's me! I can't believe it is actually me! You could have picked any of over 2 million books but you picked me! I've got to get packed! How is the weather where you live? Will I need a dust jacket? I can't believe I'm leaving Mishawaka, Indiana already - the friendly people, the Hummer plant, the Linebacker Lounge - so many memories. I don't have much time to say goodbye to everyone, but it's time to see the world!

I can't wait to meet you! You sound like such a well read person. Although, I have to say, it sure has taken you a while! I don't mean to sound ungrateful, but how would you like to spend five months sandwiched between Jane Eyre (drama queen) and Fundamentals of Thermodynamics (pyromaniac)? At least Jane was an upgrade from that stupid book on brewing beer. How many times did the ol' brewmaster have one too many and topple off our shelf at 2am?

I know the trip to meet you will be long and fraught with peril, but after the close calls I've had, I'm ready for anything (besides, some of my best friends are suspense novels). Just five months ago, I thought I was a goner. My owner was moving and couldn't take me with her. I was sure I was landfill bait until I ended up in a Better World Books book drive bin. Thanks to your socially conscious book shopping, I've found a new home. Even better, your book buying dollars are helping kids read from Brazil to Botswana.

But hey, enough about me, I've been asked to brief you on a few things:

(BLAH BLAH BLAH INFORMATIONAL INFORMATION )

Eagerly awaiting our meeting,
(name of book I ordered)

So charming!

BetterWorld Books says they “collect and sell books online to fund literacy initiatives worldwide. With more than six million new and used titles in stock, we’re a self-sustaining, triple-bottom-line company that creates social, economic and environmental value for all our stakeholders. “

Maybe check them out.

EXISTENTIAL SUPERMAN REALITY

2010-10-01T11:18:00.004-04:00

I need a full-length feature film of # 3. Please.

10 TOYS THAT MADE YOU GAY:

FOREVER INSECT DEATH

2010-09-30T15:59:00.004-04:00

Above is a picture of Tony Curtis sitting against some chick with natural boobs, a mole and grease lips. Tony has been moved to the I USED TO EXIST category as of today. Another dead octogenarian. Here's some Curtis quotes which may or may not apply to the act of writing:

Every movie I've been in has ended up on television.

I can't sit around and wait for the telephone to ring.

I don't know what organically grown chickens are; I've never seen one.

I like Vegas for its spontaneity.

I look at everything in an artistic way.

I wouldn't be caught dead marrying a woman old enough to be my wife.

Its not age as much as the experiences I have had.

They gave me away as a prize once - a Win Tony Curtis For A Weekend competition. The woman who won was disappointed. She'd hoped for second prize - a new stove.

While you're doing it, you don't really know what you're doing.

Yes I'm still working, but my life's no longer filled with it.

His usual table at the Hollywood Sizzler is already growing cold and alone. We'll miss you.

I'd Like To See You In Chicago

2010-09-30T15:14:00.002-04:00

This coming Wednesday night. Series A, Hyde Park. I'll be purring coral.

http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/series-a/Event?oid=2460095

BINARY GUTTERS

2010-09-29T17:09:00.009-04:00

Here's some recycle from the internet:

Scott McClanahan is reading in NYC tonight. Scott is the bitch's bastard, a real mad dog in the rain. Here he is showing the young what being a man is about:

A human being made a short video about PANK. I am unsure why. What to expect in this video: asshole typewriter; masturbation; blazer & t-shirt; not Kristy Logan; book fragrance; park bench romantics; DR. ROXANE GAY; words; fun; overrated author; 80,000; tits on the beach; honey bear; trying not to look at the camera; dorking out; sexy answers; computers; emotional distancing.

Pank is one of the few journals I actually read. Peep the vid below.

According to facebook, xTx is now single. I am unsure what this means since she is an internet chick. I guess I/we can make believe I/we am/are in a shitty relationship with her. Yay for me/us.

Here's an alleged picture of her armpit:

Greg Giraldo is a comedian. Comedians write jokes. Here he is performing said jokes:

Greg no longer exists, but did yesterday.

In case you are wondering what passion is, I have brought an example. Someone give this sunset a pen:

A thousand people have already told him he "can't" do anything with his life. 25% of which have an MFA. Go figure.

No Rose Colored Glasses Here

2010-09-28T15:50:00.004-04:00

In short, I liked David Peak’s, “Museum of Fucked” way more than his, “The Rocket’s Red Glare.”

Where Rockets fell short and fell soft, Museum came hard and came fast. However, it’s probably better that I read Rockets first and not Museum because I would’ve been horribly disappointed in Rockets instead of just mildly disappointed as I would have been expecting similar greatness that “Museum of Fucked” definitely delivered.

Fourteen shorts that paint a decrepit picture of a city that has no beauty, only things destroyed and damaged. It’s bleak. I tried to look for beauty, or even for hope, but I found none. I like that about this book. I like that Peak didn’t pussy away the hopelessness, the ugly and the broken with sunsets, a dirty child’s smile or moonlight sparkling on shards of glass shit. He just gives you the reality of a broken place with skillfully chosen words that lift the plate up, remove the rusted dome and force you to look.

I’m not sure if this book is even still available. But if you can lay your hands on it, it’s worth the read.

INTERVIEW W / GREG DYBEC

2010-09-27T12:46:00.004-04:00

Greg Dybec is founder and editor of online fiction magazine, FIX IT BROKEN.

BG: so many quality indie presses and literary journals, what is FIX IT BROKEN bringing to the table?

GD: FIX IT BROKEN’s true ambition is to further bridge the gap that exists between fiction and the culture of today. The written story, in my opinion, will always be the most beautiful and substantial form of entertainment. Perhaps knowledge is a better word than Entertainment. Of course, we hope to provide an interesting outlet for both new and established authors to showcase their brilliance. Though, we offer a fashionable twist. As of now, the winner of ‘top story’ for each quarterly issue will receive a complimentary t-shirt. The kick is that the t-shirt design will be completely inspired by the winning piece of fiction. We hope that this collaboration of style and fiction will catch on and help display the relativity and importance that short fiction still has in this fast fast world. Hopefully, as time progresses it won’t just be one story receiving a shirt.

BG: when the world ends in 2012, as the mayans predicted, and the next species takes over the earth and digs up America 1,000 years from now, what literary journals / indie press publications will they be restoring, reviving, and immortalizing, and why?

GD: Is this where I write FIX IT BROKEN? Or do I save that for the end of the list and state it in a humble manner? I would have to say Pank, for the simple fact it’s ingenious. Six Sentences for it’s unique boundaries. I’m sure even the next species will appreciate limitation as a motivator of creativity. I’d have to throw Caketrain in the mix too; they know what they’re doing. Dogzplot also, because it just makes life seem cool and colorful. There truly are way too many brilliant journals/publications to name. Oh yes, and FIX IT BROKEN, because who ever digs it up will get a free t-shirt.

BG: what is the last book you borrowed and never returned? who'd you steal it from and why didn't you give it back?

GD: I was staying a week at a house in Fire Island and took an old beat-up copy of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. I never returned it and ended up buying a new copy about a week later. A waste of a sin if you ask me.

BG: name the five best books you've read that you'd bet your balls nobody else has?

GD: There’s only one thing in this world I’d bet my balls on, and I don’t think I’ve found it yet. This is a tough question for me, only because I’m young and have only recently learned to break free from the “I must inhale all classic novels as soon as possible” phase. I’m trying to think of an odd manual or uncommon cereal box, but nothing comes to mind.

I’ve been reading a lot of shorter work by Denis Johnson, Jim Shepard, and Roland Kelts. I doubt any of that makes me unique.

BG: who is your favorite historical figure, past or present, and how have they influenced your literary journey?

GD: Jack Kerouac. That man transcended humanity through his words. I would say that’s what I look for when reading and writing; those moments, if only a few, that literally (literarily…sorry, bad joke) peel off your face and transplant it with a new one. It may look the same, but it sure as hell doesn’t feel the same.

I’ve always been heavily influenced by the Beat Generation and the works that derived from it. I appreciate the obscure form of passion for the things that we encounter each day. Also, that mentality of going out and experiencing the things that you want to experience. I can’t really think of a better way to live.

BG: BONUS QUESTION: Give us a six song playlist that tells the story of your life.

GD:

1. Idioteque - Radiohead
2. Ballad of a Thin Man - Bob Dylan
3. While You Wait for the Others – Grizzly Bear
4. All Apologies - Nirvana
5. Blue in Green – Miles Davis
6. Last Donut of the Night – J Dilla

LONELINESS IS A HABIT

2010-09-26T13:49:00.002-04:00

The Lure of Little Voices

There's a cry from out the loneliness -- oh, listen, Honey, listen!
Do you hear it, do you fear it, you're a-holding of me so?
You're a-sobbing in your sleep, dear, and your lashes, how they glisten --
Do you hear the Little Voices all a-begging me to go?

All a-begging me to leave you. Day and night they're pleading, praying,
On the North-wind, on the West-wind, from the peak and from the plain;
Night and day they never leave me -- do you know what they are saying?
"He was ours before you got him, and we want him once again."

Yes, they're wanting me, they're haunting me, the awful lonely places;
They're whining and they're whimpering as if each had a soul;
They're calling from the wilderness, the vast and God-like spaces,
The stark and sullen solitudes that sentinel the Pole.

They miss my little camp-fires, ever brightly, bravely gleaming
In the womb of desolation, where was never man before;
As comradeless I sought them, lion-hearted, loving, dreaming,
And they hailed me as a comrade, and they loved me evermore.

And now they're all a-crying, and it's no use me denying;
The spell of them is on me and I'm helpless as a child;
My heart is aching, aching, but I hear them, sleeping, waking;
It's the Lure of Little Voices, it's the mandate of the Wild.

I'm afraid to tell you, Honey, I can take no bitter leaving;
But softly in the sleep-time from your love I'll steal away.
Oh, it's cruel, dearie, cruel, and it's God knows how I'm grieving;
But His loneliness is calling, and He knows I must obey.

-- Robert W. Service

A.D. (part 2)

2010-09-25T17:05:00.003-04:00

like moonlight on crutches, we walk right

out of ourselves, goodbye for a few nights until we

boomerang back

a little bit more frostbitten than the time before

but mourning this fact only prolongs that absence

and really it's nothing new

we've been fingerprinted for extinction

right from the start

And

2010-09-24T12:58:00.001-04:00

Happy Friday, Let's Kill Them, The Hipsters

2010-09-24T12:53:00.002-04:00

Question

2010-09-23T13:19:00.001-04:00

Do we like Lady Gaga?

INTERVIEW W / ROBYN PENNACCHIA

2010-09-22T17:27:00.007-04:00

Robyn Pennacchia is a writer, feminist, noted style icon, and the creator and hostess of the quaint Chicago reading series, The Sunday Night Sex Show.
(http://www.notesfromtheunderwhelmed.blogspot.com/)
(http://www.thiswasathingthathappened.blogspot.com/)

BG: with so many quality reading series out there, what is sunday night sex show bringing to the table? what words of wisdom can it offer to the literary conversation?

RP: Well, I think we’re really the only sex positive non-fiction reading in town, so there’s that. I feel like the big difference, however, is our audience, which isn’t the typical Chicago Lit Scene audience at all. We’re like the red-headed, populistic step-child of Chicago readings, really, and I’d say that 90% of our audience isn’t even comprised of writers. Hell, half our our readers aren’t “writers.” It’s just like, people who want to be entertained and hear a funny story about the time someone met some dude who tried to pee on them. It somehow ends up being the most diverse crowd you’re ever going to see anywhere in Chicago - we have the lit community, sure, but then we have the feminist community, and the queer community, the politically radical, the sexually radical, comedians, musicians, actors, hipsters, squares, bros, etc. And no one gives a shit, and everyone gets along and it’s amazing. It’s easy to bond with people who are different from you in that sort of confessional environment, where everyone is standing around telling secrets.

I think that’s really what we’re bringing to the table as far as wisdom goes - because now, I think, a lot of other reading series - like Tim Jones-Yelvington’s “Uncalled-For” series, which focuses on experimental queer lit- are looking at what they can do to bring in different communities. I mean, not everyone who buys a book is a writer.

BG: when the world ends in 2012, as the mayans predicted, and the next species takes over the earth and digs up America 1,000 years from now, what sexual objects / books / positions will they be restoring, reviving, and immortalizing, and why?

RP: Oh god, it will probably be Heidi Montag’s new sex tape that’s coming out. That would be just our luck if that were the only thing to survive. I’d hope, however, that they’d find things like “On Our Backs,” the complete works of Betty Dodson, Susie Bright, Rachel Kramer Bussell and the Hitachi Magic Wand. I think they’ll probably figure out the positions on their own. One would hope, anyway.

BG: what is the last book you borrowed and never returned? who'd you steal it from and why didn't you give it back?

RP: Haruki Marukami’s The Wind-up Bird Chronicles. I borrowed it from this guy at the coffee shop I used to hang out with, and I just never felt like reading it for some reason (Terrible, I know. Whatever. Judge me.), and then he moved. I still have it and I still have not read it.

BG: name the five best books you've read that you'd bet your ass nobody else has?

RP: -Charm Never Fails by Antoinette Donnelly. I collect old etiquette books, and this one is one of my favorites, if only for the title.

- My Life, by Isadora Duncan.

- The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy - It’s basically this giant book that gives you a little bit of information on everything you should probably know, and it was my favorite thing ever when I was growing up. I used to read it cover to cover to ensure that I had something to add to any given conversation, because I was a smart ass like that.

- Now, Voyager by Olive Higgins Prouty - I’ve barely met anyone who has seen the movie (which everyone should, because it’s awesome, and Bette Davis is amazing. You will sob for hours.), so I doubt too many people around my age have read the book. Prouty was actually a way popular novelist in her day, until a rather ungrateful Sylvia Plath effectively destroyed her career by blatantly basing the character of Philomena Guinea from The Bell Jar on her. Then everyone was all afraid that she was (gasp!) a lesbian, and stopped buying her books.

- Madame de Stael, Novelist: The Emergence of the Artist as Woman by Madelyn Cutworth. I mean, someone must have read it because I bought it used, but I can’t imagine too many people are thrilled by reading a random feminist analysis of a totally obscure figure. That being said, Madame de Stael was pretty much one of the most bad ass ladies in the history of ever. She held salons in Paris, took many lovers and told Napoleon to go screw. We totally would have been BFFs.

BG: who is your favorite historical figure, past or present, and how have they influenced your literary journey?

RP: I have so many! I get really fascinated with random people all the time. Lately I’ve been obsessed with Judy Henske, this folk singer from the 50’s and 60’s that for some reason I’d never heard of until recently. She was/is this really bad ass lady with an incredible, Bessie Smith-esque voice who told stories and basically did stand-up comedy between songs. She was the basis, actually, for the character of Annie Hall. I’m really into the idea of combining mediums like that right now. I grew up putting all my eggs into the baskets of singing and acting and then got into writing later on, and now I’m working on figuring out a way to combine all of those things in a non musical-theater type of way. Why the fuck not, right?

BG: BONUS QUESTION: Give us a six song playlist that tells the story of your life.

RP: Nobody Loves Me But My Mother (And She Could Be Jivin’ Too) - BB King
Habanera from Carmen - Georges Bizet
Femme Fatale - The Velvet Underground
The Mary Tyler Moore Theme Song
Double Dare Ya - Bikini Kill
Second Skin - The Gits

I ALWAYS ROLL MY ICE IN CHLOROPHYLL BEFORE I DRINK WHISKEY.

2010-09-20T18:43:00.002-04:00

WOODY ALLEN on HEMINGWAY

2010-09-20T17:29:00.005-04:00

(Dempsey photograph from Encyclopedia Britannica)

I first came to Chicago in the twenties, and that was to see a fight. Ernest Hemingway was with me and we both stayed at Jack Dempsey's training camp. Hemingway had just finished two short stories about prize fighting, and while Gertrude Stein and I both thought they were decent, we agreed they still needed much work. I kidded Hemingway about his forthcoming novel and we laughed a lot and had fun and then we put on some boxing gloves and he broke my nose.

- Getting Even, Woody Allen

What's wrong with books?

2010-09-18T20:49:00.005-04:00

Do you think really short stories are "gaining popularity" because we all grew up with Sesame Street and AOL online and fast-paced pop culture figures like Mr. Rogers and now we all have really short attention spans and can't concentrate on things longer than a few minutes because we get distracted by--

Hey! Maybe novels were all written by long-winded bores who can't shut up.

“All my hummingbirds have alibis, and a hundred profound virtues cover my body." -- Max Ernst

2010-09-16T15:16:00.003-04:00

The above quote is going to be my next tattoo, methinks, most likely on my ribcage or arm. Y'all have any inkings?

DRAGON THRENODY

2010-09-15T18:35:00.001-04:00

Sam Kinison on experience vs academics:

PANTOMIME EULOGY

2010-09-15T16:29:00.009-04:00

GNU Word Riot is up. Some sentences I liked from this issue:

Chester swims, stupid.

Masculine. Oppressive.

Never let them close his eyes—

I cannot seem to write anything but porn, and the soft...

rarely do we look up.

SOME WISE WORDS FROM OUR FAVORITE DOUCHEBAG

2010-09-15T12:43:00.004-04:00

No, not THE SITUATION, a different douchebag...

"One of the facts that might come to light in this process is our tendency to insist, when we praise a poet, upon those aspects of his work in which he least resembles anyone else. In these aspects or parts of his work we pretend to find what is individual, what is the peculiar essence of the man. We dwell with satisfaction upon the poet's difference from his predecessors, especially his immediate predecessors; we endeavour to find something that can be isolated in order to be enjoyed. Whereas if we approach a poet without this prejudice we shall often find that not only the best, but the most individual parts of his work may be those in which the dead poets, his ancestors, assert their immortality most vigorously. And I do not mean the impressionable period of adolescence, but the period of full maturity."

t.s. eliot from tradition and the individual talent

INTERVIEW W / LAUREN BECKER

2010-09-15T12:23:00.004-04:00

Lauren Becker lives in Oakland, California, where she runs a quarterly reading series called “East Bay on the Brain.” She is a freelance writer and editor, health policy consultant, non-practicing attorney and former director of healthcare government relations for a number of non-profit organizations. Lauren’s fiction has been published in Pedestal Magazine, Annalemma, Opium Magazine, Pindeldyboz, Storyglossia and elsewhere. She also writes for The Nervous Breakdown and keeps a blog here.

BG: So many quality indie presses, reading series, and literary journals. What is corium bringing to the table? What words of wisdom can it offer to the literary conversation?

LB: I don’t really know how to answer. I guess I started Corium to feature words that move people. It was never my goal to generate and motivate discussion, or to critique or theorize. Corium isn’t wise in that regard; I don’t know how to do those things. I know what I like, which is very visceral, and I think the work we feature is unique and beautiful in that regard. As for literary conversation, I think Corium serves as listener. Every conversation needs that. We look for what’s beneath or behind the conversation, the feelings driving it. What it leaves behind when it’s gone.

BG: When the world ends in 2012, as the mayans predicted, and the next species takes over the earth and digs up America 1,000 years from now, what literary journals / indie press publications will they be restoring, reviving, and immortalizing, and why?

LB: They'll probably be speaking a different language; I think they might restore, etc., the ones with the prettiest pictures.

Again, I don’t know how to answer. To me, writing is so much about relatability, about seeking commonality in some way. I’m not trying to evade the question, I just can’t say what will resonate with the passage of time, even brief.

BG: What is the last book you borrowed and never returned? Who'd you steal it from and why didn't you give it back?

LB: I no longer borrow books or loan them. They are cursed practices. For some reason, those friendships or acquaintanceships end or ebb, and I really do feel like I stole. The last book I borrowed and didn’t return was Norwegian Wood, by Haruki Murakami. I borrowed it from a girl I didn’t know well. She moved and we lost touch. I still haven’t read it. I feel guilty. When someone tries to loan me a book, I tell them to give it to me or I’ll buy it or check it out from the library. I do the same. If I can’t part with it, they get a recommendation.

BG: Name the five best books you've read that you'd bet your ass nobody else has?

LB: I swear I’m not trying to be contrary, but I can’t answer this question, either. Partly because I have no idea what other people have read, and partly because it implies that I have some kind of superior knowledge. So, no ass-betting. If I read a book I think is great, I want people to know about it. Best I can do is to give some recommendations of books I don’t think have been widely read, though I could be wrong: The Book of Proper Names (Amelie Nothomb), the only good thing anyone has ever done (Sandra Newman), Vernon God Little (DBC Pierre), Wrong Information Is Being Given Out at Princeton (J.P Donleavy), and anything by Ellen Gilchrist (especially Victory Over Japan) who everyone has heard of, but it seems like nobody I know has read. These aren’t necessarily the five best books I’ve ever read (except for the Gilchrist, probably), but they’re not beaten path books and I think people might like them.

BG: Who is your favorite historical figure, past or present, and how have they influenced your literary journey?

LB: Good writing is brave, I think. Where the writer sets aside ego and channels experience, including the bad stuff – loss, pain, fear – into creation or progress. There are so many writers who do this; it’s hard to think of just one. Dorothy Allison comes to mind. Bastard out of Carolina is so stark and brutal, vulnerable and honest, and it’s no secret that the book is largely autobiographical. In an interview with Salon, she said something that resonated with me, challenged me. “Some days, when I feel really tired, I kind of believe in God because it would be easier. I don't believe in fate, except some days. And I don't believe that fighting really hard and sacrificing necessarily makes a difference, but sometimes it does.” She chooses the challenge over the easy, but is honest about the temptation. One of my favorite things I’ve written is a piece for The Nervous Breakdown, called The Things We Would Not Be, which deals with how writers (especially me) use fiction and/or humor sometimes to edit or make sense of those scary or horrific or embarrassing things that helped form us. It actually scared the hell out of me to post it. I liked that fear.

BG: BONUS QUESTION: Give us a six song playlist that tells the story of your life.

In no particular order:

Swan Dive (Ani DiFranco)
California Stars (Wilco)
Court and Spark (Joni Mitchell)
Talk About the Passion (R.E.M.)
Polyester Bride (Liz Phair)
Revelator (Gillian Welch)

SIT RETICENT WHILE I EAT YOUR PUDDING CUP

2010-09-14T14:06:00.007-04:00

PANK announced their nominations for best of the net 2010.

I am going to be honest, I have no clue what this nomination is for.

I don't really care either.

But! The raddest internet chick I know is listed as one of the nominated authors.

Check it out here.

Kizz, Tell

2010-09-14T09:19:00.005-04:00

This topic has been raised at HTMLGIANT (ahem), but to phrase it slightly differently, how prevalent is social climbing in independent literature? Is there even any point in protesting?

IT'S MONDAY AND WE ARE ALL OPPRESSED.

2010-09-13T17:37:00.004-04:00

The present author is no philosopher, he has not understood the System, nor does he know if there really is one, or if it has been completed. As far as his own weak head is concerned the thought of what huge heads everyone must have in order to have such huge thoughts is already enough. Even if one were able to render the whole of the content of faith into conceptual form, it would not follow that one had grasped faith, grasped how one came to it, or how it came to one. The present author is no philosopher, he is poetice et eleganter [to put it in poetic and well-chosen terms], a freelancer who neither writes the System nor makes any promises about it, who pledges neither anything about the System nor himself to it. He writes because for him doing so is a luxury, the more agreeable and conspicuous the fewer who buy and read what he writes. In an age where passion has been done away with for the sake of science he easily forsees his fate – in an age when an author who wants readers must be careful to write in a way that he can be comfortably leafed through during the after-dinner nap, and be sure to present himself to the world like the polite gardener's boy in the Advertiser who, hat in hand and with good references from his previous place of employment, recommends himself to a much-esteemed public. He foresees his fate will be to be completely ignored; has a dreadful foreboding that the scourge of zealous criticism will more than once make itself felt; and shudders at what terrifies him even more, that some enterprising recorder, a paragraph swallower who to rescue learning is always willing to do to others' writings what, to `preserve good taste`, Trop nobly did to The Destruction of the Human Race, will slice him into sections as ruthlessly as the man who, in the service of the science of punctuation, divided up his speech by counting the words and putting a full-stop after every fifty and a semi-colon after every thirty-five. No, i prostrate myself before any systematic bag-searcher; this is not the System, it hasn't the slightest thing to do with the System. I wish all good on the System and on the Danish shareholders in that omnibus; for it will hardly become a tower. I wish them good luck and prosperity one and all.

Respectfully,
Johannes De Silentio

Here's an online version of fear and trembling. I don't like the translation much. But it is free.

Jereme Made Me

2010-09-13T14:39:00.003-04:00

ZINE-SCENE is a new site dedicated to spotlighting litmags as well as authors and today they go live with a breakdown of decomP; a fine zine run by the awesomely bearded Jason Jordan.

PLEASE TO ENJOY!

SHAVE YOUR PUSSY IN THE DARK

2010-09-13T14:00:00.005-04:00

Interview with Paula Bomer up at Dark Sky Magazine. Once, I told Paula I wanted to make a mold of her vagina and place it on my mantle. She wrote something about me soon after. It was the most beautiful thing written about me.

She's one of my favorite birds. Check her wing.

I CAN FASHION A SWITCHBLADE OUT OF TWO POPSICLE STICKS, A RUBBERBAND AND THE SIDEWALK.

2010-09-10T19:29:00.003-04:00

Man, I feel like a supreme shit. Sam Pink is reading. Like now. Some other dudes tomorrow.

I am bad at promotional efforts. I am not a worthwhile human being.

OHIO:

THROAT POUNDER

2010-09-10T15:48:00.003-04:00

fuck.

sententia2.

tits out of my mind:

ML PRESS. 2011 BLIND FAITH SUBSCRIPTION DRIVE

2010-09-10T14:32:00.004-04:00

Mud Luscious Press is offering a ‘Blind Faith’ subscription deal: If you are willing to trust us on the titles & authors of our 2011 catalogue without any cover takes or blurbs, then we’ll reward you by knocking the price down. So until mid-October, we’ll give you all the 2011 titles for $35, including

GRIM TALES by Norman Lock, THE HIEROGLYPHICS by Michael Stewart, I AM A VERY PRODUCTIVE ENTREPRENEUR by Mathias Svalina, [ C. ] an mlp stamp stories anthology, plus handmade chapbook volumes from Jessica Newman, Stephen Gropp-Hess, Neila Mezynski, Kristina Marie Darling, John H. Henry, Andrew Borgstrom, Ani Smith, & others

Get in on this deal here: www.mudlusciouspress.com/subscribe

Thanks and thanks and thanks again. If you have questions, email me anytime.

J. A. Tyler, Founding Editor

www.mudlusciouspress.com

Happy Friday, Let's Go

2010-09-10T12:58:00.000-04:00

see more Poorly Dressed

BE MY MELVILLE GIRL

2010-09-08T16:03:00.005-04:00

Q: What do you think about your films?

A: I don't.

Academia

2010-09-08T10:49:00.000-04:00

In my PhD seminar last night, I said we're fucked. Are we fucked?

BOOKS I READ THIS WEEK

2010-09-07T17:11:00.014-04:00

I gotta say (and if you know me you know it pains me to say this, but if you know me well you know it doesn't), out of this bunch, Indian Killer was the big winner. I mean, there's nothing literary about it. Pure pop-fiction. There were times when it even felt a little Scooby-Dooish, but holy fuck. When I got to the end I was completely satisfied. I felt good. I felt ready to read more Sherman Alexie.

Although currently, I'm not a runner, I did a lot of it the six or seven plus years I spent in martial arts and boxing, so I got into this book quickly. I love how Tanzer was able to weave domestic relations, his sincere feelings about being a writer, and the zany affairs of his officemates, alongside valuable lessons in breathing, foot work, and pacing. Tanzer is careful how much information he gives out and when, sometimes I wanted to know more, to go a little deeper, but that day's run was over, and I was left craving his next insight.

This is a pretty beautiful book. I learned a lot from it. I can't say what I mean because I'm in the student lounge and it's loud and so many college girls in south jersey shorts, its not a good environment for intellectualizing. It's a solid look into the lives of 1950's semi-elite/celebrity. It feels to me a lot like some of Hunter S. Thompson's better stuff, but I prefer the quickness of Thompson. Sometimes Mailer drags on and on. He says in 400 pages what could be said better in 250. He can take three or four pages to describe one feeling. Which is alright I suppose, but it's not my preference.

I can't even think of one good justification why this was even published. A long way from some of Alexie's early stuff that had an abundance of flavor (Indian Killer, Tonto and Lone Ranger, Business of Fancydancing) This is lifeless.

I'm much more familiar with Hank's prose then I am poetry, but this seems to be typical of what I've read of his. The stuff I really loved broke my heart and the stuff I didn't felt like a shitty rant from a high school kid. But say what you say brotha, the man's got soul.

I hope

2010-09-07T16:45:00.000-04:00

There's a wildfire burning in the hills, north of my cubicle and over my car and across the parking lot and above a few streets and currently a mile south of my house. I, like many other twenty-something failures have moved back into my father's place, about a month ago. I can still afford to pay a landlord for rent and pay all my bills, but I decided not to. I let a lease run up at the beginning of August and tucked my tail back between my legs and asked dear old father if I could live with him.

I borrowed his truck for a weekend, filled it with repeated loads of furniture, books, electronics, and clothes. I gave 3 couches to the Salvation Army. I threw out a lot of bullshit I decided I no longer needed or had the energy to donate or sell. I packed my childhood room with expensive bullshit and technology I would have creamed myself over at the age of sixteen when I had originally left, and I looked around and felt nothing.

I moved everything I owned and loved and believed I needed into this house and a month later I can see the fires pushing over the hills and down the canyons and over the mountain and I can almost smell my flatscreen burning. I can almost hear the whir of my harddrives failing in intense heat and choking on smoke. I can almost imagine watching the manuscript to my novel disappear forever.

Yesterday, I skipped out of work on a long lunch when the fire first started threatening my bullshit I love and my 'life' and everything I was so convinced I needed. I walked out of my cubicle and jogged through the courtyard and ran through the parking lot to my car. I drove across the parking lot and through a few streets and over some hills and arrived at a road block as thick smoke poured over the canyon. I argued with a cop and was promptly turned away. I didn't try very hard to argue with him.

I turned around and headed into a parking lot and behind a warehouse and over a median and through a neighborhood and past the roadblock and drove up the hill as fast as my four-banger could take me. I kept the windows tightly rolled up and watched the sky turn steadily more and more brown and I could stare into the sun without discomfort. I reached my house pretty quickly and called out to my cat, and ran across the deck and flung open the door and hopped down the steps and looked around at my bullshit.

I thought about taking pictures of everything and then ferrying my most expensive possessions up the driveway to my car, packing it full and then collecting doubles from the insurance anyway. I thought about pouring gasoline all over the place before I left. I thought about where I was going to go.

I ran my fingers over my flatscreen and listened to the low hum of my quadcore and kicked my lovesac and ran my eyes over the harddrives and ps3 and games and books and clothes and called out for my cat again. He woke and lazily walked up to flick his tail across my shin and I thought about what I could carry to the car and how many trips I could make before the road block got more strict and without thinking about it any harder I picked up my cat and left.

I hope it fucking burns.

I hope it all fucking burns and I hope it's tragic as fuck.

I CAN HEAR THE FILTH OF YOUR ORGAN

2010-09-07T12:00:00.012-04:00

Pank has an interview with Gena Mohwish.

Her photography is like a fallen viking in the snow:
(click on each picture to make it go oreo)

The War in Iraq is Over, Baby! Everything's Good Now, Right?

2010-09-03T18:32:00.002-04:00

THE GAKULAN RIDER OF YOUR VIRGIN SECOND ORGASM

2010-09-03T17:15:00.003-04:00

LET'S GET NAKED AND FEEL ALONE TOGETHER

2010-09-02T15:24:00.004-04:00

"ZARATHUSTRA HAD gone to the mountains in search of aloneness. In the crowd you can find yourself lonely, but never alone.

Loneliness is a kind of hunger for the other. You are missing the other. You are not enough unto yourself – you are empty. Hence everybody wants to be in the crowd, and weaves around himself many kinds of relationships just to deceive himself, to forget that he is lonely. But that loneliness erupts again and again. No relationship can hide it. All relationships are so thin and so fragile. Deep inside you know perfectly well that even though you are in the crowd, you are amongst strangers.

You are a stranger to yourself too.

Zarathustra and all the mystics have gone to the mountains in search of aloneness.

Aloneness is a positive feeling, the feeling of your own being and the feeling that you are enough unto yourself – that you don’t need anyone.

Loneliness is a sickness of the heart.

Aloneness is a healing.

Those who know aloneness have gone beyond loneliness forever. Whether they are alone or with people, they are centered within themselves. In the mountains they are alone, in the crowd they are alone, because this is their realization: that aloneness is our nature. We have come into the world alone and we will be leaving the world again alone.
Between these two alonenesses, between birth and death, you are still alone; but you have not understood the beauty of aloneness, and hence you have fallen into a kind of fallacy – the fallacy of loneliness.

To discover one’s aloneness one has to go out of the crowd. Slowly, slowly as he forgets the world, all his awareness becomes concentrated on himself, and there is an explosion of light.

For the first time he comes to know the beauty and the blessing of being alone, the tremendous freedom and the wisdom of being alone."

From OSHO's Zarathustra: A God That Can Dance

GRANDPA HY

2010-09-01T19:27:00.007-04:00

My grandpa will not be remembered in any history books. He did nothing society particularly values. He sold suits in a modest men's clothing shop and listened to his wife verbally abuse him that he didn't have more ambition to give them a better life. I remember sleeping over their house on the softest mattress I had ever felt then waking up in the morning to a lavish breakfast of eggs, bagels, and cream of wheat. I have no memory of him ever scolding me or even raising his voice. Not once. He was nice to me and if I took his hat and put it on my head, he let me. He accepted me. My heart swells with love every time I think of him, but also sadness because: what little boy ever really shows his appreciation for his grandpa? It's only as an adult that I've come to realize just how great a man he really was.

He also had terrible O.C.D. and eventually lost his mind and died from lupus, but I never saw any of that. I never once thought he was weird. I think he must have hid that from me out of love. But it wasn't even his actions that touch me the most. It's something almost too simple to put into words. He smiled at me a lot. Like in this picture. He loved me and I knew he loved me because I could feel it. Rest in peace, Grandpa Hy.

ABANDONED LUGGAGE

2010-08-31T19:06:00.006-04:00

I go through fits of insomnia. No matter what I do, I simply can't sleep. Sometimes sleep will come but within 60-90 minutes I'll be wide awake, staring at a ceiling I don't really care to stare at.

Last weekend was one of those times.

The sun began its ascent. I felt restless as the light illuminated the grease of the Hollywood horizon. The restlessness comes and goes too.

At its worse I feel like grabbing a shotgun and going for the cure.

This particular morning I borrowed Gena's camera instead and headed out my door towards the morning.

I followed the sidewalk to the rural area below the Griffith Observatory. It is some sort of weird park. But like everything in Hollywood, it feels subnormal.

My original plan was to take pictures of the sun. I'm not sure why, it's a dumb thing to take pictures of, but that was my goal.

Instead I stumbled upon two homeless guys waking to the crushing daylight.

They seemed nice enough so I talked to them. We talked about weed and homelessness. Capturing genuine people on film is on of my hobbies. They were nice enough to oblige.

Down farther I found two more homeless men sitting on a blanket in the grass. A tent was constructed behind them like some sort of warm weather igloo. I explained the same sentiment about my desire to photograph them. They obliged also.

The guys I met that morning treated me like a human being. Something I have not experienced much when meeting "literary" people.

Some like to treat the homeless like an undesired plague. I never understand why. They have the same beating heart the rest of us do.

The only designation I see is alive or dead; anything else is ego.

Luanne Rice's Pony Story

2010-08-30T18:39:00.002-04:00

Copycat

2010-08-30T17:36:00.004-04:00

When I taught, my students used to ask me about the dangers of people copying work. They thought that if a story was published online, it would be really easy for someone to steal it and send it to some other place to be published. The thought being the Internet is so huge no one would notice.

I would always respond to that question by telling them not to worry about it. Not because it's never happened, maybe it has, but I told them not to worry about it because if they are strong writers, they can brush that theft off and write something ten times better. I don't know, if you're rich you can sue or something. But if you're us, it's more of an emotional bruise than a financial one.

But, here's the thing, have you ever been writing something and said to yourself, "This is familiar." And dug through books, or your own damn memory, and realized it's familiar because someone else wrote it?

Or have you ever read something by someone else and thought, "I already wrote that," and dug through your shit and found that yes, you wrote it and read it out loud and now something similar is in print with someone else's name attached. And maybe that person didn't consciously "steal" anything. Maybe, while they were writing it, they thought, "this is familiar," but they continued on writing.

When that happens, it's hard to take your own damn advice. It's hard to brush it off. Seems the remedy is to sit down and bitch about it on a blog and then drink some coca cola and write some new shit that's ten times better than the old shit.

INTERVIEW W / BEN TANZER. (YEAH, I GOTTA DO IT) THIS INTERVIEW WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE.

2010-08-29T11:46:00.005-04:00

I have long said that if anyone in the small press game has a chance to make it on OPRAH in the next five years, its BEN TANZER. Women love him, men wanna be him. It seems like he dabbles in everything from writing and blogging to racing stock cars and selling red beet eggs on the side of the road, and even if the latter isn't technically true, it should be. So here he is. And when you're done check him out at THIS BLOG WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE.

BG: so many quality indie presses and literary journals, what is the THIS ( ) WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE dynasty bringing to the table? what words of wisdom can it offer to the literary conversation?

BT: This is such a good question, because there is a level of overlap and even groupthink in the lit zine/press world, which isn’t even a bad thing, but from a market perspective, you have to ask what’s different about what you do and why should I care. I think with This Zine Will Change Your Life we try to do one thing in particular, which is to try and explore how literature, art, street art in particular, and music can both enhance and build off of one another, that the experience of reading need not be limited to one sense, that it’s possible to mash things together and try to create a different experience, not better than others necessarily, just a version of something you sort of do all the time, but in this case driven by what we think works, or maybe what we like and so hope you will as well. Soon enough we will be expanding our offerings beyond the zine, the book reviews, and podcasts, to food, drink, denim and cosmetic lines and after that we will be able to truly envelope you in all things TBWCYL, Inc., sort of Martha Stewart, the literary version, which was always the goal to begin with.

BG: when the world ends in 2012, as the mayans predicted, and the next species takes over the earth and digs up America 1,000 years from now, what literary journals / indie press publications will they be restoring, reviving, and immortalizing, and why?

BT: Fuck, where do you begin? No really, where do you begin. The question for me may be, who is or was capturing a slice of what’s going on at this time and in this place and doing it in a way that someone will say, man, I hadn’t thought about it in quite that way. Which maybe is your point? And if so, you’re pretty smart. Anyway, from this perspective, two now defunct journals/magazines come to mind for me, Punk Planet and Clamor, and for any number of reasons, but mostly for their efforts to combine music, literature, film, DYI aesthetics and progressive politics. It may say something about what we value as a society that they are defunct, but either way they both did some wonderful stuff, not the least of which was send the message that you can start something from nothing and your passion can get you pretty far if you think big enough, and don’t care about sleep or making much money.

BG: what is the last book you borrowed and never returned? who'd you steal it from and why didn't you give it back?

BT: My wife tells people not to lend me things because apparently I am not good at returning anything. And she is right, though I don’t think it’s a stealing thing, I don’t want to keep the things I borrow, I just don’t get to them quickly, that’s the primary problem, and then I need some second surge of something to remember that they actually belong to someone else. Now with that caveat in mind, and with the understanding that this could actually be an entire list of books, I will say the last book is The Road by Cormac McCarthy, which I borrowed, sort of under duress, meaning, I wanted to read it, but was worried about borrowing it for all of the above reasons which have since played out, I didn’t get to it immediately, and now I can’t remember that it needs to leave our house and go home. Well, I guess I can’t say that anymore.

BG: name the five best books you've read that you'd bet your balls nobody else has?

BT: It’s hard to imagine such books exist, which is good, right? How about I list five books that have had an impact on me as a writer, which I know people have read, and are probably even popular in certain circles, yet never seem to get mentioned enough, if it all? Would answering the question in this way make me a dick, well more of a dick? Whatever, I’ll risk it. Thanks.

(1) Cruddy - Linda Barry
(2) Andre Dubus - Meditation from a Movable Chair
(3) American Skin - Don DeGrazia
(4) Vacation - Jeremy C. Shipp
(5) Beautiful Piece - Joseph G. Peterson

BG: who is your favorite historical figure, past or present, and how have they influenced your literary journey?

BT: I know I should state someone who had some progressive or social impact on the world, like Alex Kotlowitz or Jonathan Kozol, but ignoring that, and the fact that I also really want to say Ray Bradbury, I am going to go with Jim Carroll. To this day, few books have affected me like the first time, strike that, the first ten times, I read The Basketball Diaries.

BG: BONUS QUESTION: Give us a six song playlist that tells the story of your life.

BT: Killer. We’ve talked before, right, and having done so, you must know that all these limits and short lists are very tough on me. It’s like you’re forcing me to edit myself and be thoughtful and more self-aware. Oh, okay, I get it now.

(1) I Wanna be Sedated – The Ramones
(2) Folsom Prison Blues – Johnny Cash
(3) 99 Problems – Jay Z
(4) Sabotage – The Beastie Boys
(5) Highway Patrolman – Bruce Springsteen
(6) Just What I Needed - The Cars

NEW FLASH FICTION JOURNAL. FIX IT BROKEN.

2010-08-28T19:02:00.007-04:00

FIX IT BROKEN is an online literary magazine dedicated to publishing outstanding and quality fiction. We are interested in pieces that truly separate one's voice from the countless others out there. We like our authors to prove to us, in 1500 words or less, that they are masters of their own style and design. We kind of have a thing for genuine fiction. We look forward to immersing ourselves in your stories, and encourage you to always do it your own way; or as we like to say around here, fix it broken.

Fix It Broken is looking for previously-unpublished works of fiction that range between 500-1500 words. Fix it Broken will publish a well-crafted online issue quarterly. However, our inaugural issue is slated for publication mid-December. We urge you to be a part of it.
Specific submission dates and deadlines will be listed below.

For the time being we cannot pay authors any monetary funds. However, the author of the Top Story of each issue will receive an extensive bio attached to their piece, as well as a complimentary t-shirt. Each design will be directly inspired by the winning piece of fiction.

Submissions now OPEN for FIX IT BROKEN’s FIRST ISSUE. The submission period will end November 15th.

A FEW UPCOMING READINGS

2010-08-28T12:46:00.007-04:00

Both readings are in the BALTIMORE / DC area. The first one wll take place SEPTEMBER 11TH at 8pm in Baltimore at Normal's Bookstore. So if you are in the area, come on down (say it like Bob Barker, you'll like it better). The second reading is happening at AWP, which is a little ways away, so mark your calendar. Details are above.

Selling Out

2010-08-27T22:15:00.002-04:00

Night Owl

2010-08-27T16:21:00.002-04:00

A few years ago everyone was doing their own versions of Brandon Scott Gorrell's, "Night Owl." Most of them were written.

I did a video.

INTERVIEW W / STEFAN and SANAZ KIESBYE. HIPPOPANTS

2010-08-26T10:32:00.008-04:00

This time around I asked some questions to STEFAN and SANAZ KIESBYE. I first met Stefan as a student in his graduate fiction workshop at Eastern Michigan University. My favorite memory of Stefan took place there. He assigned us an Aimee Bender story from an anthology of Ann Arbor writers (I don't remember the name of the anthology but there were Furries on the cover) and the next class we were supposed to talk about it. Well when he started pressing us about it, nobody said anything, and he immediately jumped out of his seat and he either threw the book or slammed it down on the table, I can't remember because memory is funny like that. But he yelled out "EVERYBODY READ THE FUCKING STORIES." Then he calmly sat back down and smiled and said, "okay, let's begin." Ahhh, good times. So yeah, that's my favorite Stefan story. Also, he wrote, NEXT DOOR LIVED A GIRL, which for my money, is the best novella I've ever read.

BG: so many quality indie presses and literary journals, what is hippopants bringing to the table? what words of wisdom can it offer to the literary conversation?

STEFAN & SANAZ: It's a conversation between art and literature. We publish short work that is visual but also has a literary component. We don't limit the forms of expression -- we accept comics, illustrated prose poems, paintings that make use of poetry. We're looking for short forms, graphic flash, but we make exceptions. For example, we published Long beach artist DAVE VAN PATTEN's book "Raul and the Revolution," which is dark and phantasmagorical, and just genius, and right now we're serializing MIKE ALBER's graphic novel "The Baby Jar," which is a work of absolute beauty. And to the first part of your question: no one has pants bigger than ours.

BG: when the world ends in 2012, as the mayans predicted, and the next species takes over the earth and digs up America 1,000 years from now, what literary journals / indie press publications will they be restoring, reviving, and immortalizing, and why?

STEFAN & SANAZ: Hobart, because it's eternally cool and it has this sweet trailer logo; and Hippopants, because it's just weird.

BG: what is the last book you borrowed and never returned? who'd you steal it from and why didn't you give it back?

STEFAN & SANAZ: Shakespeare, Richard III. We stole it from the library and replaced it with an identical copy. It was just the greatest book and we had become attached to that very copy. So we ponied up the money and bought a new one for the library.

BG: name the five best books you've read that you'd bet your balls nobody else has?

STEFAN: Arthur Schnitzler, Anatol (a play)
Wilhelm Hauff, Fairy Tales and Novellas
Eugen Herrigel, Zen and the Art of Archery
Dave van Patten, Black Candy
Otfried Preussler, Krabat

BG: who is your favorite historical figure, past or present, and how have they influenced your literary journey?

STEFAN: Gertrude Stein -- she created meaning beyond words' common usage.

BG: BONUS QUESTION: Give us a six song playlist that tells the story of your life.

STEFAN: Anne Clark, Sleeper in Metropolis
Fashion, Dressed to Kill
X-mal Deutschland, Stummes Kind
Autechre, VLetrmx
Stephan Eicher, Des Hauts, Des Bas
Philip Boa and The Voodoo Club, Kill Your Ideals

Please tell me:

2010-08-24T15:07:00.001-04:00

What's the difference between prose poetry and flash fiction?

TREE SEX (3)

2010-08-24T13:18:00.002-04:00

You can't cheat on a flower - you can only pick one - that's honesty.

Flowers are pretty but boring.

And belong on graves.

TREE SEX (2)

2010-08-23T20:04:00.002-04:00

You can’t cheat on a tree - you can only chop it down - that’s honesty.

Sex is when I get chopped into little pieces and think:

This is nice.

I Love Everybody, Especially You

2010-08-23T16:20:00.002-04:00

What's the greatest intentional (or unintentional) insult your writing has ever been given (by an editor, spammer, spouse, whatever)?

INTERVIEW W / CHLOE CALDWELL. SLEEP.SNORT.FUCK.

2010-08-23T14:56:00.009-04:00

I really loved doing this interview because I got to chat with Chloe while she was answering the questions, so we got to exchange little insights, and she even asked me some of my own questions. And I'm sure my nerdy responses freaked her out, like fuck, this guy's a dork. But yeah, I first came across Chloe (see how I did that... nice), when she volunteered to be a guest blogger. READ HER POST HERE. And what she said was pretty amazing and heartbreaking and endearing so I read everything of hers I could find and I loved it and you will too if you read her shit. So after you're done reading this, CLICK HERE. Here's the interview:

BG: so many quality indie presses / literary journals, what is SLEEP.SNORT.FUCK. bringing to the table? what words of wisdom can it offer to the literary conversation?
CC: Sleep.Snort.Fuck. is a place for verbal diarrhea. I want it to be a therapeutic place for writers. You can be vulgar. You can be emotional and personal and high when you write it. It can be a journal entry. SSF is a place to connect. You don't have to be embarrassed. You can play around with writing styles. In fact: Please do play around with writing styles. You can give too much information. Why hide anything? We are all going to die. And may I just put it out there that I absolutely hate the expression TMI. So, in a nutshell, SSF is the opposite of TMI.

BG: when the world ends in 2012, as the mayans predicted, and the next species takes over the earth and digs up America 1,000 years from now, what literary journals / indie press publications will they be restoring, reviving, and immortalizing, and why?
CC: None, they will be dead. I am a realist. R.I.P. Lit Zines. R.I.P. S.S.F.

BG: what is the last book you borrowed and never returned? who'd you steal it from and why didn't you give it back?

This is a broad subject for me, as I am obsessed with other people's things. I have Prozac Nation from the last guy I dated. Never read it. Never returned it because I haven't seen him since. Also borrowed as of today: The Kind Diet by Alicia Silverstone. The Ab Diet. What Happy Women Know. The Highly Sensitive Person In Love. When Things Fall Apart, These have all been borrowed by people that I work for. Is it obvious I love self-help books? Damn. The library tells me I have a copy of When You Are Engulfed In Flames by David Sedaris and that I owe them forty dollars but I cannot find it. I could write a full piece on all of the books I own that are not mine. I will not bore you with it. But once I took my brother's copy of Ginsberg's HOWL and collaged it with letters and pictures of a guy I loved. And I am constantly giving books away that are not mine to men I love. Bukowski and Fante books mostly. Guilty habit. I feel better now that I said it though. And now no one reading this will ever lend me a book. That's okay.

BG: name the five best books you've read that you'd bet your ass nobody else has?
CC: The Ultimate Sex Test by SMITH and DOE is extraordinary. My friend out here got it at Value Village and gave it to me. The best chapter is called 'How to determine whether or not your man privately feels that your vagina is revolting.' There is an actual math equation in there.

Bullshit Rodeo by Misti Rainwater Lites is one of the best creative non-fiction works out there. Seriously. Bullshit Rodeo is off the fucking chain. One of my many favorite paragraphs:

"I wanted to give him eternal sunshine of the spotless mind. But I think he wanted eternal moonlight of the scrawled mind, like me. That is one thing I think we have in common. It tortures us but we like to remember where we’ve been and whom we’ve loved. We wear our hearts’gaudy mistakes like wine stains and wave away offers of lemon juice or bleach."

Elaine's Black Gigolo is a book I bought at The Strand off of the dollar carts and it was pretty entertaining.

The Ethical Slut is eye opening for people that enjoy sex and don't always have run of the mill relationships. It's very straightfoward and talks about things that a lot of people think are taboo, which I appreciate.

Oh and god, I love Aaron Cometbus. I really do. The book Despite Everything, is a compilation of twenty years of his punk zine that he started in Berkely, CA. He is so inspiring and such a great read while drinking coffee.

And I am going to sneak one more in here, another book off of the dollar carts: Notes To Myself by Hugh Prather.

Oh, and Everything Was Fine Until Whatever by Chelsea Martin is one of the most dynamic things I have read in years.

BG: who is your favorite historical figure, past or present, and how have they influenced your literary journey?

CC: I don't know, dude. The Rum Diary by Hunter S. Thompson did a number on me. As did every Judy Blume and Lois Lowry book. As did every Bukowski book. But Judy Blume made me feel less alone, before I knew what feeling alone even felt like. And that is what I would like do do for people. So I choose her.

BG: BONUS QUESTION: Give us a six song playlist that tells the story of your life.

CC: Gypsy by Fleetwood Mac. Duh.

And, not to go, like, totally Lilith Fair on you, but Martha Wainwright's Bloody Motherfucking Asshole, because I like this one lyric about wanting to be a man: Oh I wish I wish I wish I was born a man, so I could learn how to stand up for myself, like those guys with guitars, I've been watching in bars..

I also like how she begins with: Poetry is no place for a heart that's a whore.

I have always felt a kinship for Martha, like my heart always went out to her, because she has a brother that is a genius at everything and she is "okay." I have some sort of hang up about that myself.

Fireworks by Animal Collective has been my prozac for a few years now.

Amity by Elliott Smith because two important people in my life have told me that they think of me when they hear that song and also I like when he says, "Hello Hello Kitty Happy in New York City" because I always heard it as: "Hello Hello Can you be happy in New York City?" And I always wondered to myself, can I? Can I be happy in New York City?

Old Man by Neil Young because I want to dance with my father to that song at the wedding I will have one day.

Tower Of Song by Leonard Cohen. Because Leonard Cohen just has the best words sometimes.

No Service

2010-08-23T06:33:00.001-04:00

When I wake up tomorrow my vacation will be one day from over. I will pack up and I will drive drive drive and drive until I get home. When I get home I will have as much internet service as I want. I will have bucketsful. I will be swimming in wireless. I will bathe in web pages that load within seconds. I will rub the internet all over my body. I will feel elated at the sight of four solid bars.

I’m not sure if this is a good thing.

You see, for the past week I have been in Buttfuck, California. Don’t get me wrong, I love Buttfuck. I’ve been coming here since pretty much birth. I love that there is a lot of dirt. I love sitting on a choice of porches, listening to wind rustle the trees and birds doing bird things. I love hardly hearing cars. I love hanging wet laundry on a clothesline and taking the clothes down a few hours later, jeans stiff from the sun. I love the slow pace that is really a no pace. I love being forced into the Now and not having to constantly think three steps ahead.

But what takes some getting used to is being unconnected.

No reliable internet service makes one realize just how much they depend on the internet. In my case, I might as well have been coming off of crack. Okay, I am exaggerating, but still, maybe not as severe, but close. I feel sick with just how much I check my email, my Sitemeter, Twitter, Facebook, Google Reader, etc. I mean, seriously. It’s gross.

But in Buttfuck, you can pick up your iPhone and you can try clicking to these sites and if you are lucky you might get the page to load. It might take three to five minutes to load, but, thank fucking God it was worth the wait! Right?

No.

Half the time when I went to check my Gmail, I had nothing. No new emails. Within the first two days I slowly started to learn, like an idiot child, that perhaps it was completely worthless to keep wasting time checking my email for the lack of results I was getting.

On the first day I would walk out on the acre of land I am staying at, holding my iPhone out in front of me like a dowsing rod, waiting for bars to miraculously grow in the upper left corner of my phone’s screen. I found that the best reception was in the very back of the property between a large grapefruit tree and some tomato plants and there I would stand silently begging pages to load quickly because the dirt was so fucking hot it was burning my feet because I forgot to put flip flops on before I left the back porch. I kind of felt like I was turning tricks for drug money or something. I felt stupid.

The running joke became, “Hey, look at how many bars I have.” And in the upper left side of the phone it simply read, “No Service.”

But being unplugged did a lot for my writing. I quickly realized why it always takes me so long to finish a piece; I can’t stop checking the internet.

I write a few sentences, I check the internet.

I re-read what I wrote, make a few changes, I check the internet.

I go back, I add a few sentences, I re-read what I wrote, I make some changes, I check the internet.

Oh, look, I got an email! I respond to the email. I check the internet some more.

I go back to my piece, I make some changes, I re-read, I make some changes, I check the internet again.

And what the fuck with, “check the internet?”! I mean, how much could change during the time it took me to write a couple of sentences? “Check the internet.” It’s completely mental.

So, do you know what happens when you are writing and you have no internet to check?

You get shit wrote.

I wrote shit. When the ‘feeling’ of ‘checking the internet’ came over me, (usually after I completed a paragraph or a few worthy sentences) I would pick up my iPhone. My iPhone would tell me, ‘No Service.’ I would feel frustrated and then I would put it down and I would continue writing.

Lather, rinse, repeat until I simply stopped picking up my iPhone.

It was weird to just write without distractions. I felt ‘grown up” or maybe like how a real “old-timey’ typewriter writer wrote. Like Nike, I just fucking did it, and it felt good. I felt less bullshitty and trivial. I felt mature. I felt focused. It felt good. I got shit done.

But now, on the eve of my return to the land of four bars, I am begging my future self to remember what its vacation self learned; that you can NOT check the internet and survive. That nothing on the internet will ‘change’ in the time it takes you to write 33 words, and even if something does, it can wait. I hope I will remember how good productivity felt and how asinine it is standing on hot dirt between grapefruits and tomatoes cursing a slow-spinning circle to bring your non-existent new emails faster.

TREE SEX

2010-08-23T03:21:00.002-04:00

You can’t cheat on a tree - you can only chop it down - that’s honesty.

I’m overpowered by myself almost constantly.

Nothing chops me down.

INTERVIEW W / SCOTT GARSON. WIGLEAF

2010-08-22T13:54:00.005-04:00

I am honored to bring you an interview with SCOTT GARSON, champion of flash fiction and editor of WIGLEAF, a journal I have admired since it first began. Check out the interview then check out WIGLEAF and you will know why I am a loyal fan.

BG: so many quality indie presses and literary journals, what is wigleaf bringing to the table? what words of wisdom can it offer to the literary conversation?

SG: So many ways to answer this question.

Because we're not like 'monetized' really—because it's not a job—there's no hiding the question of why we do it in the first place, and I do it because I love reading great stuff that's new to me and working with the writers and also getting to know those people in the way that you do over the internet.

But I like to think Wigleaf brings something to the table. Hard to say what. We were fortunate, early on, to have readers. Does everyone have readers right away? I don't know. But we did, and they helped me imagine the journal through their response, and in what I imagined I saw the possibility of a kind of niche, though again it will be hard to articulate that.

One angle: on the internet a journal is a place, not a thing. I've always wanted Wigleaf to be a good place, an alluring one. There's a big range in the writing, in terms of aesthetic, but I've always wanted it to have immediacy. I think some editors, maybe lots, underrate immediacy. Just considering print journals: my usual percentage, for liking the stories and finishing reading them, is maybe in the fifties or sixties (and that percentage is bloated by the inclusion of my favorite mags). Obviously taste comes into play, but I also think there are editors who aren't interested, in a primary way, in the reading experience, or who understand that term—'reading experience'—differently. What I want as an editor, as a reader: I want a story to be a like a face if you imagine that face rising up through depths of water into the shrieking light.

BG: when the world ends in 2012, as the mayans predicted, and the next species takes over the earth and digs up America 1,000 years from now, what literary journals / indie press publications will they be restoring, reviving, and immortalizing, and why?

SG: They will wear the wigs of leaves yo.

I don't know, will all the electrics be lost? The current vogue for imagining the apocalypse is no electricity. It's like, we lose electricity and we're cut off from our entire legacy of advancement: everything we've ever learned is lost. If that's the case, I guess a journal like Everyday Genius has it right: don’t bother much with the interface, or with your identity as a journal; just send out those vanishing transmissions.

BG: what is the last book you borrowed and never returned? who'd you steal it from and why didn't you give it back?

SG: Usually it's a case of me spacing—forgetting that I have the book until I've moved away or the person I borrowed it from has moved away. One book I've felt guilty about: a collection of Yiddish folk tales I checked out from a public library in Rockville, Maryland. I never lived in Rockville, Maryland but I worked there and I had to leave in a hurry after punching out the pig-faced man I worked for. Still I could have gone back to return the book. I kept it because I loved the humor, which is really singular—tight-lipped and spare but sort of infantile too.

BG: name the five best books you've read that you'd bet your balls nobody else has?

SG: I'm not betting my balls on anything, though I guess they've completed their historical assignment.

Here are five I haven't heard people talk about in indie circles, so we'll see:

1. Borges' Doctor Brodie's Report, translated by Norman Thomas Di Giovanni.

When I read this in the Andrew Hurley translation, as part of Collected Fictions, I was kind of like, What was I thinking? Why did I think I loved that? I went back to the Di Giovanni translation and it was really interesting. My bet is that Hurley took fewer liberties with the language. Whatever the case, the Di Giovanni is better: finer sentences, more authoritative, more cleanly askew. The story ordering is also different: Di Giovanni's starts with "The Gospel According to Mark" and "The Unworthy Friend"—two of the stronger ones, and they get me right away into that season of high retrospect.

2. Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker.

Probably somebody has read this; it was celebrated when it came out in England, in 1980, and an expanded edition came out about ten years ago. I have an old Summit Books hardcover, with review copy and a fanciful landscape illustration on the front cover. They were marketing it as sci-fi/fantasy, but it's not really that, and it's not really revolutionary in its language, as some people were saying; Hoban messes with spellings more than syntax. But a good read. One of my favorite novels of the apocalypse.

3. Wright Morris' Real Losses, Imaginary Gains

This is an out-of-print volume of selected stories, from 1976 (the later Collected Stories, from Godine, is still in print, I think). Morris was a more or less conventional literary fictioner, though one of high standing (the individual stories were originally pubished in The New Yorker, Esquire, The Atlantic, Kenyon Review, The Southern Review, etc.). I include him here because he meant something to me when I was coming up. He's a super-fine stylist. The language is alive but has a Midwestern plain-spokenness, an easy precision that I still really admire.

4. Patricia Highsmith's The Tremor of Forgery

I was thinking that the easiest way to go on this list would be genre novels. I like genre novels when they don’t suck. They usually do suck. But then so do most other types of novels. Highsmith's novel spins away from genre, and so probably isn't as satisfying as a perfect genre work (my standard: Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd). But from another angle, it's more satisfying: when I think back on it, all the strangeness of the early chapters remains vivid, undischarged.

5. Czeslaw Milosz, Road-Side Dog

Probably someone has read this too; dude was a Nobel laureate already when he wrote it. But I had to get something vsf-related on here, right? The jacket-copy writer didn't know what to do with this book—called it a "memorable collection of poems and essays, aphorisms and anecdotes." That makes it sound like a rocky mix, but it's not at all. This is a book of shorts, and one that has natural movement and progression. Milosz was old when he wrote it; I think he was at the point where he didn't really give a fuck how people would categorize the thing; it wasn't about meeting anyone's expectations. He was just writing; he was making small things.

BG: who is your favorite historical figure, past or present, and how have they influenced your literary journey?

SG: Oh man. I'll say Thurgood Marshall. He's a hero of mine, for sure. Even as an insider, towards the end of his life, he was an outsider: not surprised by the bullshit and evil that some were championing, and not resigned in his opposition to it. How does this relate to me? Well, if Wigleaf ever gets to the top, I won't sit fat on my sense of natural privilege.

BG: BONUS QUESTION: Give us a six song playlist that tells the story of your life.

Not really in chronological order—first six that come to mind:

• "In a Jar," Dinosaur Jr.
• "Are You Experienced?" Jimi Hendrix
• "Some Kind of Love," The Velvet Underground
• "I Hate Myself and Want to Die," Nirvana
• "Where Was You At?" War
• "As We Go Up, We Go Down," Guided By Voices

Virtual Reading

2010-08-21T02:33:00.005-04:00

What the fuck? A while ago I read this piece I wrote called 'Letters to Air (part 2)' for The Nervous Breakdown Literary Experience at Happy Ending Lounge in NYC and totally lost my shit and don't even remember doing so. I'm the last one to read but please listen to this: http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/podca

sts.

WHO ON THAT JESUS SHIT ??

2010-08-19T12:46:00.006-04:00

Stole this link to EARLY CHRISTIAN WRITINGS from KYLE MINOR. It's pretty solid.

So many great places to start: GOSPEL OF THOMAS, GOSPEL OF JUDAS, GOSPEL OF MARY, INFANCY GOSPEL OF JAMES, SECRET MARK, DIALOGUE OF THE SAVIOR.

Really easy to spend hours, days, months, a lifetime there. If you're lucky...

O MINE EYES HAVE SEEN THE COMING OF SOME SHIT I JUST DON’T GET

2010-08-18T23:24:00.004-04:00

I’ve seen big girls kill their little girls because they thought it’d make them bigger.

And then their hearts shrink correspondingly.

I’ve seen boys get crushed under the weight of their own toys.

I’ve seen everyone I’ve ever known at times lose their cool over a blender.

I’ve seen books on toxicology, but stubborn me, I’ve passed them by.

I’ve seen lepers become heroes inside of Wal-Mart shopping carts.

I’ve seen babies catapulted through time and space, land, get up, and become fully-functional, minimum-wage workers.

I’ve seen mellow murderers take on the features of their elderly victims.

I’ve seen those victims take on the form of green planetary ooze.

I’ve seen black holes I may or may not have had something to do with (no really, I myself don't know).

I’ve seen people beat up just for living on some old high school shit.

I’ve seen busty college grads smoke the good stuff, hallucinate, and turn to elves.

I’ve seen mammoth barbarians cry over a teaspoon of heroin.

I’ve seen armies of ants and roaches parade away my last hotdog bun.

I’ve seen life suck the fun right out of the party.

And been blamed and never invited back.

I’ve seen singers forget lyrics; their faces freeze and readjust.

I’ve seen men in ski masks scream for me to come outside.

I’ve seen other cars smash through my windshield and thought: man, this movie stinks.

I’ve seen burning toy stores and felt the tears of a thousand children burning in my liver.

I’ve seen poison bubbles and held my breath as not to pop them.

I’ve seen man-eating sharks trapped in goldfish bowls.

I’ve seen near microscopic crumbs of love hurling through very real tornadoes.

I’ve seen the gorgeous go ugly because they couldn’t find their make-up cases.

I’ve seen women fucked while they were unconscious.

And I’ve seen women fucked unconscious.

I’ve seen bad, bad hospitals the exact size and specifications of my fist.

I’ve seen the other side of Oz, and the overpriced ticket stubs of a forgotten Disneyland.

I’ve seen random rabbits appear mysteriously when I needed a sign.

I’ve seen more ideas fail than seems possible.

And I’ve seen a whole lot of seeming that I now know never happened.

I’ve seen new-to-that-school boys get rubber bands snapped in their faces repeatedly by an entire classroom and the chickenshit teacher go on teaching her “lessons”.

I’ve seen a democratic friend shake so hard she’s left stains on the floor.

I’ve cleaned those stains, if only in my mind.

I’ve seen dudes mainline raw sewage because their mothers told them no.

Or once upon a time their fathers didn’t care.

I’ve seen a thousand stupid fads die like the pet rock and sea monkeys.

I’ve seen suckers gas themselves over the tiniest of tiny time-things.

I’ve seen creatures without names or fingerprints, the odd alien with a human heart.

I’ve seen both men and women faint out of sheer anger or heartbreak.

I’ve seen a lot of things I couldn’t afford.

I’ve seen the dawn.

I’ve seen the silence take on so many forms it’s made my soul blur.

I’ve seen myself bite on beautiful shoulders and slice open my brother’s lips.

I’ve seen a falling and then a falling and then a falling I could never explain here or anywhere else, not in a trillion light years.

I’ve seen the insides of outer space.

INTERVIEW W / RYAN BRADLEY. SENTENTIA. ARTISTICALLY DECLINED PRESS

2010-08-18T14:47:00.007-04:00

My first attempt at interviewing folks here on THIRD FACE. I'm gonna start with 1/2 of the SENTENTIA / ARTISTICALLY DECLINED PRESS (other 1/2 is the amazing PAULA BOMER) dynasty, RYAN BRADLEY. I'm kicking things off with Ryan because he is an intelligent, creative, charming, insightful, good-looking fellow, but most importantly, because he was the first one to respond to my email and answer the questions.

I have two lasting memories of Ryan, one of which I will share here and one which I will not. I had the honor of sharing a table with him at this last AWP and I will not soon forget his ability to sell so many goddam books. He was blessed with one of those infectious personalities that makes people wanna buy things off him. I'm sure he sold quite a few copies of STINKY POO BUTT, simply because he was the one selling it. He reminds me of AARON BURCH in that sense. How many fucking HOBART's get sold every year just because it's Aaron selling them. Exactly. So yeah, Ryan is that guy. So next time you see him online, say hello, next time you see him at a table at some obscure literary event, stop in and say what's up. But be prepared, you will be ten dollars lighter and in possession of a new book.

So yeah, here's the interview:

BG: so many quality indie presses and literary journals, what are sententia / artistically declined press bringing to the table? what new words of wisdom do they have to add to the literary conversation?

RB: I'm not sure that we are bringing something more than any other journal or press. We are bringing a passion for great writing, which I hope any other press or journal is bringing to the table as well. My greatest hope for what we do is to always present each project we do with beautiful design to match the work. More than anything I want to do our authors proud, and to add to the community of literary arts.

BG: when the world ends in 2012, as the mayans predicted, and the next species takes over the earth and digs up America 1,000 years from now, what literary journals / indie press publications will they be restoring, reviving, and immortalizing, and why?

RB: Most certainly McSweeneys, which even at its most pretentious are always an artifact to behold. Fence, Caketrain, and Annalemma will be there. I think the breadth of Ken Sparling's work will have an exhibit in a museum of Earth literature. I think more than a single press it could be about individual canons of small press writers, like Sparling. Ben Tanzer is quickly building an empire of words as well. There are so many, really I could add more to this on a daily basis depending on what I'm reading at the moment.

BG: what is the last book you borrowed and never returned? who'd you steal it from and why didn't you give it back?

RB: I've never not returned a book. I rarely borrow books to begin with. I like to own books, I like to have my own copy. I have problems borrowing or lending books because of a laundry list of OCD issues I have surrounding them.

BG: name the five best books you've read that you'd bet your balls nobody else has?

RB: Well there will always be other people who have read them, but here's my top 5 books that are under-read and I believe should be on every booklover's bookshelf:

The Journey of Ibn Fattoum by Naguib Mahfouz
Minotaur by Benjamin Tammuz
Wanting Only to Be Heard by Jack Driscoll
Night Swimming by Pete Fromm
Long After Hannibal Had Passed With Elephants by Alan Jones

BG: who is your favorite historical figure, past or present, and how have they influenced your literary journey?

RB: My favorite historical figure's always been Abraham Lincoln. Since I was real little. I minored in American history largely because of my love of our 16th president. My 2 year old is named Lincoln. But I don't see that he's influenced my writing. One historical figure and writer who has influenced me more than any other (beside Hemingway) is Langston Hughes, whose poetry touched on the themes of tenuous coexistence between people of many differences (not just racial), has always held a place in my heart. And he did it with such beauty. I am obsessed with how we, as humans, manage to get along, but I deal with the theme without his level of grace.

BG: BONUS QUESTION: Give us a six song playlist that tells the story of your life.

RB: This is a dangerous question to ask an audiophile, so I'll try not to over-think this and just go from the gut:

"Why Can't You Be Nicer To Me?" - The White Stripes [Childhood]
"Cure for Pain" - Morphine [High school & college, the great search. For what I didn't know]
"Caribou" - Pixies [My home state of Alaska and my time working in the Arctic]
"Rearviewmirror" - Pearl Jam [Growing up, becoming an adult, letting the past go]
"On & On & On" - Wilco [My wife]
"Across the Universe" - The Beatles [This song I hope will be my continuation, a journey full of love and soul]

(By the way, this playlist works oddly well together if you take the time to put it together for real... told you, compulsive...)

GUEST BLOGGER: CHLOE CALDWELL "THESE ARE THE THINGS"

2010-08-16T19:51:00.012-04:00

Snow on the ground. Riding the A train uptown. New York is the only place I can read the back of a pregnancy test while eating Smart Food popcorn and be invisible. Having second thoughts. Afraid of moving. Even more afraid of staying. Afraid of myself. There are things I can’t let go of.

The people of my past. The people of my past don’t know that I sit on floors in New York City listening to music and thinking about them. They don’t know that I smoke cigarettes while staring out windows thinking about them. Standing outside of bars, thinking about them. Sleeping on floors. They don’t know that all I do is think about them—write about them.

Last night I couldn’t sleep. Last night I lit incense that my friend told me smells like hamster shavings and smoked the rest of my friend’s TOP tobacco and listened to Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks all the while staring out the window at the snow.

Windows. All the different windows. Rooms. Perspectives. Views. Incense flavors. Lovers. Candles. Music. Anxieties. Seasons. Treasons. Jobs to wake up for. Bras to unfasten. To fasten. Cell phones of different men on different nightstands. Cell phones to drop in margaritas while trashed. Cigarette preferences. Cigarette addictions. Glasses of water after sex. Different lovers saying can you get me some water? Do you want some water? Can you pass me the water? Futons. Flannel sheets. Silk sheets. Snowflake pajama pants. Alarm clock noises. Different CD cases on different tables with white lines of different powder on them. Lucky lighters. Unlucky lighters. Someone told someone that the white lighters are bad. Unlucky lovers. Lucky lovers. Books on the subway. Books at the bar. Books in bed. Books in my bag. Books on my head. White powder on the books into my nose. Socks. Sweatpants. Scarves. A cigarette outside after a fight. A cigarette at a bar after a fight. In the kitchen after a fight. Cars. Car crashes. Different penises. Different hands. Drugs in the morning. Drugs in the evening. Drugs at suppertime. Different handwritings on the different letters they write when we break their hearts or after they know they have broken ours.

And New York. I can’t let go. I loved New York so much last night that I had to tell myself inside my head: yes, it would be weird if you humped that store front, yes it would be weird if you lied down on the sidewalk masturbating, yes it would be weird if you rolled around on the street like a kitten with catnip. I’d walk around with a constant hard on if I were a male. It’s like the city is fucking me on a regular basis. How bad do you want it? Bad! I answer. Hard! Fuck me off! Fuck me until I hate you and you hurt me. Fuck me until I am tired and burnt out. Fuck me until I leave you. The money game, the train game, the making breakfast game, the drinking game.

These are the things I obsess about and I do not think the average person does. These are the things that make me question my stability. These are the things that are important to me. These are the reasons I need to write:

Sun. Fire escapes. Drugs. Mannerisms. Powder. Apartments. The words people say to me in the sun on the drugs on the fires escapes off of different apartments. Kisses hi and kisses goodbye and dank bar bathrooms and insufficient sun and insufficient funds and arms around waists and hands around necks and hands around cocks and trains and tracks and third rails and you buy the first round I’ll buy the second and sweat and sobs and sadness.

I want everyone I love to live in one place. I want there to be just one place that I love. They will never all be in one place. There will never be one place that I love. I want to dissect my friends' beautiful hearts, take the parts that I love out and into my own heart. I want to have a little red wagon with all of the people I love inside of it following me everywhere I go. I want to pick up new people in new cities to go into the wagon. But I don’t want to have to lose any of the old people to get the new ones.

I want to keep them all.

THIRD FACE

November through January

Hey

LAP DANCE THE YULE LOG

THE PERSONAL-POLITICAL: Thoughts on "The Wall," 30 Years Later

Ocean's Burnings

INSPIRATIONAL NIETZSCHE

HAVE YOU HEARD THE (NO) NEWS?

COCAINE SCARECROW

Lullaby

huh?

SAM LIPSYTE. D&D. THE NEW YORKER

MORE STUFF TO READ

HOW THEY WERE FOUND. MATT BELL. KEYHOLE PRESS

FROM RACHEL HARTLEY-SMITH AND THE FINE FOLKS AT WILLOW SPRINGS

MERMAID STRANGULATION

Wherein I End Up Answering My Own Question

BOOK OFFER FROM SAM PINK

oh god im drunk as shit

T. CASEY BRENNAN

DADDY. LINDSAY HUNTER. PRE-PUKE HOTTNESS. BIOTCH

PLEASE SMILE

IF YOU ALREADY IN THE MITTEN... SUNDAY, OCTOBER, 24TH.

CONTEST FROM CURBSIDE PRESS... AND MAKE SURE YOU READ THIS SHITS CUZ YOU CAN WIN SOME MONEY

TORN PUSSY CELEBRATION TIME

SUNDAY SAM PINK

The wonderful thing about Wojtek is that though he had the body of a bear, he had the heart of a man

PASSIVE HETEROPHOBIA

BRITISH SHIT

THE ULTIMATE FLASH FICTION PACKAGE

Another Chicago Magazine has a BLOG!

An Old Man Walks Away in Defeat

Happy Weekend, Let's Vajazzle

DRAGONS NEVER DIE FROM OLD AGE

SOMETIMES THE TANTRUM IS BETTER THAN THE REWARD

Thing Language

READING IN PHILLY

SUNDAY SAM PINK

IT FEELS GOOD TO PUNCH CHILDREN IN THE FACE BECAUSE GOD LOVES NO ONE

He's On His Way!

EXISTENTIAL SUPERMAN REALITY

FOREVER INSECT DEATH

I'd Like To See You In Chicago

BINARY GUTTERS

No Rose Colored Glasses Here

INTERVIEW W / GREG DYBEC

LONELINESS IS A HABIT

A.D. (part 2)

And

Happy Friday, Let's Kill Them, The Hipsters

Question

INTERVIEW W / ROBYN PENNACCHIA

I ALWAYS ROLL MY ICE IN CHLOROPHYLL BEFORE I DRINK WHISKEY.

WOODY ALLEN on HEMINGWAY

What's wrong with books?

“All my hummingbirds have alibis, and a hundred profound virtues cover my body." -- Max Ernst

DRAGON THRENODY

PANTOMIME EULOGY

SOME WISE WORDS FROM OUR FAVORITE DOUCHEBAG

INTERVIEW W / LAUREN BECKER

SIT RETICENT WHILE I EAT YOUR PUDDING CUP

Kizz, Tell

IT'S MONDAY AND WE ARE ALL OPPRESSED.

Jereme Made Me

SHAVE YOUR PUSSY IN THE DARK

I CAN FASHION A SWITCHBLADE OUT OF TWO POPSICLE STICKS, A RUBBERBAND AND THE SIDEWALK.

THROAT POUNDER

ML PRESS. 2011 BLIND FAITH SUBSCRIPTION DRIVE

Happy Friday, Let's Go

BE MY MELVILLE GIRL

Academia

In my PhD seminar last night, I said we're fucked. Are we fucked?

BOOKS I READ THIS WEEK

I hope

I CAN HEAR THE FILTH OF YOUR ORGAN

The War in Iraq is Over, Baby! Everything's Good Now, Right?

THE GAKULAN RIDER OF YOUR VIRGIN SECOND ORGASM

LET'S GET NAKED AND FEEL ALONE TOGETHER

GRANDPA HY

ABANDONED LUGGAGE