Reading Tonight

Barrelhouse Presents Coconut!

Barrelhouse Presents is back and we're bringing the presses and magazines we love to a bar near you!

On Wednesday, March 12th at 7 PM Barrelhouse Presents Coconut at Petworth Citizen with Christopher Salerno, Reb Livingston, and Steven Karl!

Petworth Citizen & Reading Room
829 Upshur St. NW
Washington, DC

Petworth Citizen is a new neighborhood bar on Upshur Street in Petworth dedicated to building the literary community through events in its reading room and through its take-a-book-leave-a-book lending library.

AWP Booty

Here's a list of what I brought home from AWP Seattle:

The Poet Tarot deck & The Poet Tarot Guidebook (Two Sylvias Press)

Sky Rat by Rauan Klassnik (Spork Press)
Blud by Feng Sun Chen (Spork Press)
All Hopped Up on Fleshy Dumdums by Lara Glenum (Spork Press)

Natural History Rape Museum by Danielle Pafunda (Bloof Books)

The Opposite of Work by Hugh Behm-Steinberg (JackLeg Press)

These Things Happen by Adam Deutsch (Dusie)

The Primer of Zinnie Lucas by Sara Pennington (Cooper Dillon Books)

Of Dublin and Other Fictions by Nuala Ni Chonchuir (Tower Press)

Only Jesus Could Icefish in Summer by Abraham Smith (Action Books)
Sorrowtoothpaste Mirrorcream by Kim Hyesoon, translated by Don Mee Choi (Action Books)
Rain of the Future by Valerie Mejer, edited by C.D. Wright (Action Books)
The Parapornographic Manifesto by Carl-Michael Edenborg (Action Books)

A Table That Goes on for Miles by Stefania Heim (Switchback Books)
Manifest by Cynthia Arrieu-King (Switchback Books)
Red Missed Aches / Read Missed Aches / Red Mistakes / Read Mistakes by Jennifer Tamayo (Switchback Books)

Grace Period: Notebooks, 1998-2007 by Aaron Kunin (Letter Machine Editions)
More Radiant Signal by Juliana Leslie (Letter Machine Editions)

In the Air by Peter Gizzi/Richard Kraft (A Manor House Monograph)
Dark Art by James Meetze (A Manor House Monograph)

Nazareth, North Dakota by Tommy Zurhellen (Atticus Books)
Apostle Islands by Tommy Zurhellen (Atticus Books)

oracular by Matthew Klane

Revisioning Red Riding Hood around the World: An Anthology of International Retellings by Sandra L. Beckett (Wayne State University Press)

Fairy Tale Review/The Emerald Issue
Big Bell No. 8
Cardinal Sins (Volume 33, Issue 1)
Women's Review of Books (Volume 39, Issue 6 November/December 2012)

Where I'll Be at AWP

Wherever my feet take me.

No tables. No panels. No readings.

Just pure nomadic bliss.

(meaning I'm not participating in any tables, panels or readings -- but I'll certainly be attending some)

Bigfoot Sighting

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.

Bibliomancy Readings for 2014

I asked the Bibliomancy Oracle for a general prophecy for 2014:

You dip the biscuit in the gravy, you dip the biscuit in the gravy,everything, everything is going to be alright. 

* 

from “Appalachian Love Song” by Clay Matthews

That was relatively reassuring.


Then I asked for a personal 2014 reading for myself:

Pick out the one
that doesn’t belong.

*

from “Advent” by Rae Armantrout

Rebecca Loudon also gave me a personal bibliomancy reading from her home library:

A wave overwhelms me, an incredible arousal that thrusts aside the slightly sinking dullness we felt for one another.

from "Cunt Norton" by Dodie Bellamy

So far 2014 has given me two wizard dreams (and no poets).

Forecast says a weirder than usual year.