26.9.09

sabbatical

i dreamed i was skiing pregnant
i woke with blood on my pillow

i bought honey, acai,
acetaminophen, two lemons for the ill
read half of scorch atlas in a hospital parking lot
the hospital was under construction
the scaffolding was a monster's skeleton
its horns were elevator shafts in the future
this was when i realized
there is no one left in this town
who remembers the tact needed to speak to water

today i did not mistake tethered bear traps
for shoes

ankles will heal

let ferment the weathered objects

no engagements today
no people
just the only three kinds of leaves
of which one is paper

i have an idea for a literary magazine. but i think it would consume time i do not have pocketed to spend. i will invent harder about it.


i think caspian may be delayed until winter/early 2010 while bedouin books undergoes various metamorphoses. in the interim one day there will be nothing to show that we were ever here by scott alexander jones is out. i quite like this title.

some lately favourites:

- wood by shane jones
- a boy by lauren becker
- this by j.a. tyler
- this by keith nathan brown

meet me in montauk



20.9.09

drums, unscroll, ken jennings

my current gmail session displays this advertisement in the margin:


sleep apnea? play a didgeridoo.

there is a busker who plays didgeridoo and hang drums on the santa monica pier. he wears corduroy and birkenstocks. he also has a business card and a lexus.
i do not know whether he has sleep apnea.


this is a hang drum when it is breathing




there may or may not be dirt in the yerba mate i bought. nice fertile dirt full of bones and clay pots and other debris from civilizations built over. i wonder if this is what happens to fair trade in a bad economy. in lieu of money, compensate farmers with the water they would have otherwise used to clean the dirt off their product.

was wanting to delve into murakami for quite a while so i bought kafka on the shore.


sometimes i think about font. i think about it being a factor in the amount of attention i give certain words. i think words behave differently depending on what clothes they are wearing. words dressed in courier look like balloon animals. they are less dense, somehow allowing time to savour sound. they look like they live in refrigerator boxes and scream at intervals about endorphin bursts. lately i am giving arial doubt benefits. i think of arial as the lingua franca of online literature. it is best worn under flannel and probably sold at american apparel. do you enter different mindframes, or write differently, depending on font? do you have a weapon of choice? does font even matter?

unscroll numero trois is alive. the words there are dressed in times new roman and carry cocaine, percocet and dynamite in their briefcases. i am happy to have something there alongside andrew borgstrom, michael bernstein, jeff crouch, alex stolis, ben spivey, david peak, eric burke, jeanette marie sayers, and none other than cooper renner.

big fan of gargling cinderblocks by eric beeny. it is portmantotal magic. if you are asthmatic or infertile, reading this could cure that.

PANK is looking dapper. check out its makeover and september issue. it features teeth-kicking pieces by brandi wells, cami park and frank dahai, among many others.


9.9.09

so young to be tired so tired got younger

- 9 9 9. happy scorch atlas day.

- i start a new job tomorrow. am nervous. will need to relearn conversation and circadian rhythm. will need to limit tea intake to under five cups per hour. and no more snorting lines off the interns.

- there is a fan-severed fly corpse on the floor and i am leaving it there to remind me of how cliche televised funerals are becoming. i named him cornelius. i saw him happening toward death, tried to save him but he happened too quickly into the fan. pathos everywhere.

- i like this post by molly and the ensuing discussion. which reminds me of something entirely unrelated. i think wherever narrative is chronology or linearity, i am tired of narrative also. but narrative is many things. i too wonder whether the word narrative, what it wants to mean, is obsolete. i think narrative as understood sometimes becomes something elastic, and much like a label. i am reluctant to say everything is narrative and reluctant to say nothing is narrative. the word seems too easily rationalized. i considered dada. i considered whether there were words in the english language that can be placed on a page which are not anchors. like the word 'the' anchors something spatially and the word 'if' anchors something in time. maybe there are no words that are not anchors. maybe there is no answer other than just let language happen and evolve and nothing else matters. there is plenty of nothing from which many somethings will out. when there is nothing make more.

- some guy was twittering in congress. then larry king wore a rainbow pastel tie. real men wear rainbow pastel ties. except for the tie part.

- elimae and decomp this month are pocket-sized, but lethal. i like this by ravi mangla, this by lydia copeland.

- 1504. j'adore.

28.8.09

party like a sephardi

i bought a pocket-sized green moleskine that smells like chlorine and sex dolls.

a man in an israeli restaurant all but offered to be my sugar daddy.

i dreamed it was 321 degrees outside which is not far from the current temperature.
i dreamed i was sailing on sine waves. then on tectonic plates. then through downtown rome. the boat carved wakes in pavement. then salvador dali told me to join twitter.


currently inside:

- invisible cities, calvino
- columbia poetry review #22 (tao lin, dorothea lasky, noah eli gordon, joanne kyger, julia cohen, johannes goransson, gregory orr)
- a public space #8 (adrienne rich, mahmoud darwish, ben lerner)
- a shoegaze relapse; souvlaki by slowdive
- visiter by the dodos

currently want/excited:

this
this
this
this

heat delirium at the moment. polar shift. malfunction. considering sleeping under the riptide tonight. anemone pillows. ryan seacrest on fire.

19.8.09

zebras are reactionaries /// antelopes are missionaries

something tells me it's all happening at the ZOO
let's talk dirty to the animals


17.8.09

you are worth hundreds of sparrows

twice tried to see the perseids
twice fire obscured them
maybe october

watched lars and the real girl and liked it

listening to weather systems by andrew bird

someone gave me a voodoo bracelet with obscure black and white symbols on it. the bracelet may or may not be trying to kill me.

in print, currently inside these ---
zyzzyva (vispo issue), opium (infinity issue), tin house (appetites), redivider v.6.1 (thanks again, jason)

in electric, currently inside these ---
> kill author, PANK, the collagist, no
ö journal

if you are currently choking to death alone in your apartment and failing to self-heimlich against your desk, or if you are at a median point right now between an airplane and the ground and clinging to a laptop computer, you should read these words immediately and feel better ---

milk like a melted ghost by eric beeny @ abjective

xyrophobic me by mel bosworth @ PANK

downturn by stephen daniel lewis @ > kill author

gossamer by ben spivey @ > kill author

excerpt from human beings are toys by sam pink @ > kill author

important things to know about career girls by roxane gay @ > kill author

asdf;lkjadg;lkjxoimdfsv;slkerjowhbgs;lkcfff just read all of > kill author already

at the end of this story three months will pass by crispin best @
noö journal

sammy by jason jordan @ PANK

if you are choking very slowly, or a birdcloud has fastened its beaks to you and begun flapping its wings very hard, i highly recommend reading the above issues in their entirety because there is no lack of the what that is found in the where. ideally i hope neither of those things is happening in your direction. i hope you are safe and do not have to share your bed with spiders tonight and that someone is combing honey through your hair.

7.8.09

i go through pairs of headphones more frequently than tanks of gasoline

last night the lesbian ghost who haunts my shower came back. she is only there when i take a shower at two in the morning. she tilts her head and stares. she is maybe more curious than a lesbian. i offered to play scrabble with her but she just kept watching me.

i think everyone should read life as a crossword puzzle by noah falck. it is layered, it is enigmatic, it is linguistically and conceptually beautiful. there are little ohios inside. you can get a copy via a link in the margin of his blog.

also recently enjoyed mlkng sckls by justin sirois. it is inventive, it is original, it is beautiful the way a sunsetting desert is beautiful. there is snowing coconut, there are solar systems in the backyard, there is survival, there is uncooking. the latter is among my favourite unhappenings since war in reverse.

i am still excited about light boxes. i have been telling people who do not even read to read light boxes. people on social networking websites. people in supermarket aisles who are not walt whitman. the complete strangers who populate my sleep and live inside giant tulips with tentacles. homeless toothless men who play purple haze on banjos. i feel compelled to paint kites on myself and remind people of what to remember.

generally i think of art as highly private and most potent in isolation. good art is too mystical to involve other people. at least in the moment of processing it. maybe that is why people invented books and mixtapes and headphones. if someone walks in on you experiencing good art it should feel as though you had been masturbating. the potency is in isolation. and yet i think good art necessitates resurfacing, telling other people about it. maybe because it feels selfish and withholding to be alone in the experience. even that does not seem an accurate enough reason. what drives the impulse to share experience?

also

dear adam robinson / adam robison / adam robitussin

i think california needs to be reads. we are illiterate out here.
i would be happy to contribute scotch tape and urban exploration
california could be the next sufjan stevens album of literature

sincerely / audi suzuki

also /// delayed

relatively new decomp
relatively new elimae
relatively new ghoti
and great menagerie-al things will happen here soon

happy shark week friday

2.8.09

sub-lit. goodreads. funnels.

j. michael wahlgren kindly added speak easy symmetry on goodreads. i love that february has an account there and is trying to clear his name.

5 poems in the new SUB-LIT. themes include haunted pianos and cosmonauts-turned-island-castaways.

i had a dream about funnels.
i smell of coffee today.

29.7.09

gold wake

i have an electronic chapbook up at gold wake press called speak easy symmetry. definitely check out some of the other collections there if you are inclined. or even if you are level. i like eric beeny's wounded rainbows, j.a. tyler's when the height of you outreaches me, kristina marie darling's opera: prose poems, j. michael wahlgren's modern candy, andrew borgstrom's people i haven't seen in years that i will attempt to eat lunch with next week. i am happy to have something alongside the likes of these authors.

also enjoyed david peak's poetry series at pangur ban. i like when a lot of distance is traveled in a small amount of space. i like when movement outweighs thing.

halfway through pear noir! #2 and it is ace. such a great and varied collection of talented writers.

often feel confused about whether creating is supposed to necessitate critiquing. also wonder whether sharing and dialoguing about creating is a natural part of emotional survival.

beginning to have recurring lucid dreams involving lightswitches which then cease to be lucid and quickly devolve into more quietly apocalyptic things.

i won something here and am excited. thanks, jason. you are wicked awesome for doing these.

met jarvis cocker monday night. he had drawn eyes on his palms and performed what appeared to be a dance interpretation of a scene from pan's labyrinth.

poisoning myself with television lately. i had replaced the void left by six feet under with big love and dexter and am now replacing the void left by the latter two with weeds. tomorrow i will be watching reverend al sharpton and ann coulter fight with knives.

23.7.09

zygote, atlas scorched, boxes of light, staples, porn

two poems at zygote in my coffee. one about ice cream and death, the other an ekphrasis of a dream i had wherein gandhi and einstein make slow love.

for some reason nothing but solid winter keeps coming out my pores and mouth. my body doesn't know it is summer and i don't have a calendar i can hold and point to in front of my body. i drank the ouzo in the fridge but before doing that i set the glass on the counter and stared at the milk cloud that happens when you add water. i am not a traditionalist. i just wanted to see a chemical reaction.

book news is reverberating. blake butler's novel scorch atlas can be pre-purchased here. you can see him rape and set fire to his own book here then partially ingest his book here. ever was an experience unlike anything and i devoured it. i expect to do the same with scorch atlas. afterward however i will treat it kindly. maybe pour champagne on it.

shane jones's gorgeous light boxes is being adapted for film by spike jonze and ray tintori. on hearing this i said oh my god mantrically for several minutes. i danced a little. i dreamed about shane jones and electricity and woke with the chorus of ready, able in my head. i plan on leaving my cave to attend the premiere. i want to be there when hollywood is (tenderly) violated by independent literature.

i like getting things in the mail with staple qualms. staple qualms are sexy.

you can view reverence, art and porn courtesy of pear noir! here. i will say the porn is the most riveting porn i have ever viewed. i am glad pear noir! is no longer suicidal.




15.7.09

word // riot

4 poems in word riot. excited to be in the company of j.a. tyler, brandi wells and tirumal mundargi, among others. brandi wells has a badass piece in decomp by the way. plus you can play the what parts of my bio are still true? game. kind of embarrassing. kind of notorious for outdated bios. i would not be surprised if the next one alludes to the recent reagan election. if i am honest this one is still true. except i cannot watch the situation room in its current time slot and california will not be on fire again until next month.

14.7.09

david lynch brand coffee

dreamed up honeycombs and doorjambs last night. have been out of town. visited a nice institution called book soup and spent all my money on litmags. missed david lynch by two days. was distressed by this. there was a display for david lynch coffee cups (see below) built by david lynch and his son. witnessed an aristocrat car crash outside this institution. took photographs of graffiti warning of robot invasion. stopped and asked a star map vendor how to get to alpha centauri. have cultivated an obsession with this american life. and anything else within three degrees of separation from philip glass. will have the place to myself for 9 days. debauchery, voodoo orgies, pyromania, reading will follow. still need to submit things. still feel insecure about them. have an interview soon. self-induced neurosis. will submit things after the interview. a fuller maybe or more patient maybe return to literary themes will follow after 24 hours.



good words lately:

toast by darby larson at keyhole. the way i love this is by cutting with scissors a hole in the bottom of my heart. not sure how else to make room for the infinite. read this now.

barry graham's minimize me; i'd be terrible in ex cathedra, page 71. holy fuck.

new pank. ethel rohan, xtx, ricky garni, more goodness.

new clockwise cat. eric beeny, adam moorad, luis cuauhtemoc berriozabal, peycho kanev, more goodness.

new jmww. justin sirois, jac jemc, james iredell, meg pokrass, j.a. tyler, non-stop train of goodness.

eat hell by joseph mattson from narrow books. a $5 injection of goodness. a bonus being how infernally tasty is its wallpaper.

i need to re-learn how to speak and shake hands and say positive things about myself. not sure why these behaviours are encouraged.