Bombyonder

A selection from Bombyonder is today's poem up at The Rumpus.

Also, I'm happy to announce that my novel, Bombyonder, will be published this October by Bitter Cherry Books (distributed by Coconut Books). I'm super excited that it'll finally be out. Over the summer and into the fall I'll probably be writing about it a lot here. Because that's what authors are supposed to do when their books come out.

Only two more days of NaPoWriMo.

Then I won't have to write another poem until next year.

Whew!

The Chapbook, No 3

My chapbook, The Fallacy Carriers of Bombyonder, is part of The Chapbook, No. 3 (edited by Alan May). It's kind of a sampler of my novel, Bombyonder, which hopefully will come out later this year.

No. 3 includes fiction, poetry, screenplays, and art. Other works included are Errol, Inland by Susannah Felts, Body by Corey Mesler, Algunos Mirrors by John M. Bennett, and Six Screenplays on the Nature of Collective Experience by Steven Wingate. Artwork by Volodymyr Bilyk.

It's available both in print and free online.

Drunken Boat

Excerpts from Bombyonder appear in the Debt Folio (edited by Michelle Chan Brown) of Drunken Boat (Issue 18) along with work by Anna Maria Hong, Brian Laidlaw, Caroline Wilkinson, Chris Green, Colleen Abel, Cynthia Cruz, Eugenia Leigh, John Fenlon Hogan, Kara Candito, Kathleen Winter, Kevin Simmonds, Leora Fridman, Mary Moore, Matthew Lippman, Peter Leight, Sandra Lim, Simon Perchik, Welsey Rothman and Will Cordeiro.

Here's a sample:

People with decomposing faces acting normally, like they’re not from around here, like they have to graduate from someplace before their jaws collapse, how hideous this looks, trying to get home before I overheat, right away, I mean it, I’m crumbling, crumbling, oh, what a kind bomb, what a kind bomb.

Taking the wrong way out, how to get out of the hole your blown, on the wrong side and far from where I want to be, wrong direction, wrong road, misspelled and completely wrong, the wrong version, wrong part, wrong elevator, what he’s saying is wrong, something wrong with his face, my logic rubbed him wrong.

His face as the early stages of composition. 

Was I wrong to be bombed?

Wrong again, wrote down the wrong number, paying attention in meaningful ways amounting to broader potholes, wrong side of the road, that spiral staircase is probably unsafe, wrong address, wrong contact, typing the password wrong, got my order wrong, wrong shoes, make a right, wrong turn, wrong lane, right back where I started, I said Andrew Carnegie built this, I meant Rauan shattered this and named it Rauanelot then changed it to Atlanrauan.

Rauan’s name as the streaming piss from a fire hydrant’s nightmares.

Rauan sinking all his names, sinking along the time span when I could distinguish one man from another by his name, these brand identities reflecting how he once wished to be reflected in our shields, so wrong, Rauan, trend transcendence isn’t how you impress a busy mom, you’re simply not a name she can trust.

PEEP/SHOW

(Collage by Lynn Behrendt)

Excerpts from my novel, Bombyonder, appear in Issue #6 of PEEP/SHOW (along with work by Amaranth Borsuk & Kate Durbin, Chris Piuma, Michael Ruby, Keiko Sono, Tom Beckett, j/j hastain, Nance Van Winckel, Anna Elena Ayre, Michael Peters, Cheyenne Nimes, Anselm Berrigan, Geof Huth and Dorothy Albertini).

Here's a sample:

On this meeting with this particular ancestor named Carry, I was surprised by her mask and its thickness. Hardly a way in or out. Not at all clownish but with brown scales, leather and bolts.



How strange to hear her speak through the clamp for a mouth and to be seen through her single tiny eyehole. How muffled her words sounded through the barriers. How uncomfortable to know she cried behind that foulness not because it was foul, but for the sake of her brother, an accused molester of the vulnerable.



Trouble with the law. There’s always so much trouble with laws for this family.



Who did this to you?



“The women and children, like they always do, their cruel, perverted imaginations that they just can’t keep to themselves. They have to share, and share for years, they whisper and then they group together and then they testify and allow it all to go down as record. They perverted it all, smote his perfect legacy.”



No, I mean who put that mask on you? Why are you still wearing it? What is behind it?



“My brother placed it on me, for my salvation. He’s my protector. There are so many terrible women and children spouting their wretched tales, repeating and publicizing. They let nothing go! What lies behind this mask hasn’t yet been penetrated. So little left that hasn’t been penetrated. My face is one of the last pure bastions.”



You can hardly see or speak through that mask and it smells like your skin is decaying under there.



“Yes, the decay keeps me safe. Frightens away the children and many of the women too. No one is going to scavenge me for their depraved narratives. Forever I remain unmolested.”



But her corpsed-face remained unmolested no longer.



Because now I was there, smelling it, imagining its appearance, inventing my memories.

Go here to read the rest

bombyonder and beyond

Selections from my novel, Bombyonder, were recently published in Redux (an earlier version of this piece appeared in the print publication Eleven Eleven) and the Prose Poem issue (guest edited by Abigail Beckel) of Beltway Poetry Quarterly. In this Beltway issue there's also work by Paulette Beete, Nancy Naomi Carlson, Grace Cavalieri, Gail Braune Comorat, J.K. Daniels, Christina Daub, Barbara Westwood Diehl, Danielle Evennou, David Gewanter, Barbara Goldberg, Michael Gushue, Daniel Gutstein, Donald Illich, Danuta Kosk-Kosicka, Caryn Lazzuri,Flavian Mark Lupinetti, Tony Mancus, David McAleavey, Chloe Yelena Miller, E. Ethelbert Miller, Lalita Noronha, A.K. Padovich, Elizabeth Poliner, Elisavietta Ritchie, Jane Satterfield, Diamond J. Sharp, Eleanor Bevil Tipton, Jessie van Eerden, Stacia Cyrene Yearwood.

I'm nearing the point where I need to decide how I'm going to release Bombyonder as a whole into the world. There are a handful of presses I have in mind to approach. Still researching others that I think would be open to this strange book. I'm also considering putting it out myself. Pros and cons to both options. I'm calling Bombyonder a "novel" and it mostly is, although I've been publishing pieces from it as "poetry," "prose," "fiction," "hybrid" or whatever the editor wants to call it. I used to care a lot more about how my work was labelled than I do now. If you have any suggestions for presses or you are an publisher interested in seeing the manuscript, let me know.

Here's a brief synopsis:

After agreeing to her father’s request to slit his throat so his much anticipated legacy can begin, the unnamed protagonist swallows his invention, a “kind” bomb in pill form. This triggers a psychic shattering of sorts which begins with her barfing up a dead bird that she is compelled to rebirth/replace/bury (she’s not sure) by embarking on a fragmented psychic excavation where she commits an additional murder of her husband Um, meets a parrot-faced cat girl and a boy on a donkey and then creates a new lover by decoupaging her husband’s corpse with denim and other household craft items.

Throughout the novel the protagonist struggles to recognize both the roots of her malaise and why she repeatedly searches for solutions/escape through her bizarre partnerships with men. She muddles through with help from her friend, Lily, a straight-texter who lives in a box inside a box and by mysterious, anonymous notes written to her by the Carries, her long gone female ancestors and the example of Medusa, her role model. When the protagonist finally acknowledges that romantic partnerships are not the way to improve on her situation, she connects with her unconceived brother, Rauan, who never existed (due to a genetic condition affecting all the women on her mother’s side that doesn’t allow male zygotes to develop in their wombs). Rauan desperately wants to connected with their abusive mother, the Worm Queen, while the protagonist makes plans to smother her to death with a pillow. Friction develops between the siblings who clearly desire different outcomes and as Rauan tries to overcome his non-conception to become a tangible, corporeal being.

Eventually the protagonist alone must face her worm-filled mother, avenge Rauan’s non-conception, figure out how to birth her vomit bird and through personal historical revisionism create a new life for herself and those she brings with her.

* * *

You know, your typical realist fare.

new fiction & berlin

I have three short fiction pieces from Bombyonder up at Hobart. You should read them.

My work these days walks the wire between poetry and fiction. So I'm happy to categorize it however an editor wants.

For the most part.

I think.

We just got back from Berlin last night. Had a great trip. Below is Gideon & me waiting to meet Bernie Geyer & family at the Natural History museum.

This is pretty much how we look these days.

G is a tall kid. And his orthodontia bills are going to break our bank.

new work from Bombyonder

I have four new poems (?) from my novel (?) Bombyonder in Similar Peaks.

If you're interested in catching a glimpse of what I've been working on the past year and a half, there it is.

We're supposed to be getting two rounds of "serious" thunderstorms tonight and tomorrow afternoon, tomorrow being the most severe (and right during the time I pick up G from school). After the significant flooding we got two years ago (when I couldn't even make it to G's school and a tree fell on top off a school bus of special needs kids several yards feet away from the school), the derecho of last summer when several homes in our tree-filled neighborhood were damaged and Hurricane Sandy when a massive tree crushed our next-door neighbor's home (they just moved back last month after the repairs were finally finished) -- I don't mess around when we get these warnings. C is out-of-town this week, but don't worry, in case we lose power (we almost always do) 8 year-old G showed me how to use our portable generator so we don't lose all the food in our fridge and how to manually open the garage door. These days he's totally a grown-ass man. He's taller than my chin and has started calling me his "little girl" which he's not allowed to do until he is actually taller than me, which shouldn't be until about another two years, if I'm lucky. I could become his "little girl" as early as next year at the rate he's growing.

And that's what I get for mating with a giant.

next big thing

Trevor Calvert tagged me for The Next Big Thing. Here's my self-interview:

What is the working title of the book?

Bombyonder


Where did the idea come from for the book?

The concept is that it's a "psychic memoir" meaning that it reads as a personal record of a mental/supernatural phenomena. Since it's a "memoir" the memories recovered are treated as truth, there's no question as to whether or not something "really" happened. The protagonist doesn't wake up and go "oh, it was just a dream" and it's not a hallucination. The book works under the belief that the mental/supernatural spaces we move in and out of are indeed quite "real." The veracity of the events is not what's in question, but the perspectives/motivations of the characters and what the protagonist extracts and concludes from these recovered truths. These psychic events expand, overlap and evolve as their own spaces. It's these events and experiences that are accounted for by the protagonist.

The influences for this idea come from everywhere: bibliomancy, Tarot, books, films, memories and fragments, physical experiences, dreams, fantasies, the news, religious and mythological texts and on and on.


What genre does your book fall under?

Fiction. I read somewhere that people like to read novels, so I thought I'd give that a try since I'd like for people to read it. Also, even though it IS a memoir, I don't want to be in the position where I have to PROVE something REALLY HAPPENED.


What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

Lena Headey, Cate Blanchett or (in 15 years from now) Jennifer Lawrence for the protagonist. Amy Sedaris as Lily, the straight-texting friend who lives in a box inside a box. For Rauan, the unconceived brother, maybe Patton Oswalt.


What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?

Lady swallows a bomb in pill form (invented by her father), barfs up a dead bird and embarks on an excavation layered with murder, sexual politics, patriarchy, matricide and ancestral torment along with a parrot-faced cat girl, a boy on a donkey, a terrifyingly handsome lover, an unconceived brother, a straight-texting friend who lives in a box inside a box and Medusa.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

I'm still writing it, so 14 months and counting.



Who or what inspired you to write this book?

My unflinching desire to set the record STRAIGHT and then blow it to SMITHEREENS to see what's inside.



Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

I haven't thought too much on that yet. Right now I'm focusing on finishing the manuscript. I'm open to both possibilities, but there's probably a slightly higher chance that I'll publish it myself because I tend to want to be the one who makes the decisions. Sometimes I have trust issues.



I'm not sure who hasn't been tagged yet, but I don't think I've seen a selfie by: Rauan Klassnik or Hugh Behm-Steinberg. Anyone else want to be tagged who hasn't been?

new shoes

A happy summer and hopefully a more productive autumn (for me) now that G is back in school -- 2nd grade!

Grown a** man. That's all I got to say. Or all I can say. Now that he's a GAM, I need to be respectful of his wishes and privacy. The days of bodily function updates are long past and hence I'm in the wishy washy position of lacking a standpoint. Ok, that's an illogical leap, but there is a shifting standpoint going on and what once was is no more, in many ways. I keep having dreams that I'm walking outside barefoot, my feet cut and infected or I'm trying to avoid stepping on a cobra, but I'm pulled down and freak out as the snake goes up my back under my shirt.

I have a number of drafts, poetry and some fiction, but little ready to put out there at the moment because much of it is waiting for something: a new standpoint since my old one slipped away. So I keep working and try not to worry. Eventually I'll get my ruby slippers.

While I don't have a great deal of "finished" work, I do have some, including a new poem in issue 13 of Eleven Eleven along with work by Azra Abbas, Sarah Bartlett, Aleksandr Blok, Michael Boughn, Eduardo Chirinos, Saehee Cho, John Colburn, Victor Coleman, Daniel Curzon, Sophia Dahlin, Molly Each, Joanna Fuhrman, Amy Glynn Greacen, Judy Halebsky, Matt Hart, Gretchen E. Henderson, Ashaki M. Jackson, Lindsey Lee Johnson, D Sprung Kurilecz, Travis Kurowski, Sean Labrador y Manzano, ali lanzetta, Rebecca Loudon, Saadat Hasan Manto, Kyla Marshell, Clay Matthews, Myron Michael, Kishwar Naheed, Mónica Nepote, Linda Norton, Naomi Buck Palagi, Diana Park, Mira Pasikov, Tami Cox Rasel, Eugenia Rico, Lee Ann Roripaugh, Judy Roitman, Sarah Rosenthal, Thaddeus Rutkowski, Benjamín Alire Sáenz, Floyd Salas, Metta Sáma, Mary Ann Samyn, Sommer Schafer, Gregory Sherl, Kedarnath Singh, Dayana Stetco, Esther Tellermann, Ryôichi Wago, Valerie Wallace, Udayan Vajpai, Al Young and Zarina Zabrisky, plus interviews with Kay Burns and Chitra Ganesh.

Also, although it's from some time ago and a previous standpoint (snort!), my first collection, Your Ten Favorite Words, published by Coconut Books in 2007 is now available at SPD along with the rest of the Coconut catalog. Take a walk down memory lane and buy it, why don't you.

I looked back on my handful of posts over the summer and they were all about the Bibliomancy Oracle. Well, I did a lot of work and am really proud of it. So far there's 850 prophecies taken from literature, mostly poems. My goal is 1200 prophecies by the end of 2012. What is the perfect number of prophecies? I think it's one of those you'll know it when you see it type things.

How do I get my ruby slippers?:

Little fish, you would never, would you, simply

give up and fall back to the water, limply?

*

from “Exercises” by Bill Coyle

Well then, I shall not go limply back into that water.