Happy New Year

To the following select people worthy of praise and/or acknowledgement:

Everyone...

I hope in 2010, a mere point in time which doesn’t matter at all except as a way to mark the inevitable passing of our lives into a profoundly collective and opulent emptiness, that we as a species will all come a little closer to learning how to forgive others for things they’ve done to us, intentional or un-...

I hope we can all come a little closer to learning how to forgive ourselves for what we’ve done to others, intentional or un-, as well as what we've done to ourselves in the process, the mistakes we’ve made, regrets we’ve carried like empty oxygen tanks slung across our backs...

I hope we can all come a little closer to learning how to put down and leave behind everything we don’t need and move on into a more emotionally peaceful and artistically productive time in all our lives...

I'd like to celebrate with a beat I made a long time ago, which I just found a copy of in a pile of other older things. I'm dusting this off. It's one of my favorites, to just zone out to...

New Old Piece of Poultry @ Zygote

The new Zygote in My Coffee is up, containing a new piece of old poultry called "Identical Nativity Scenes." Not exactly Christmas-appropriate, but still relevant subject matter nonetheless. Was it Kierkegaard who said that faith already implies doubt? It's good to question these things. Anyway, this issue also contains a great piece by MK Chavez called "Disney Land, Anaheim," and a great poem by xTx called "Jim Wrote a Poem."

Interview @ PANK

I have an interview (my first ever…) up at PANK’s blog today (thanks again, Roxane, and thank you, Guy, for your questions…). There's also a wonderful review of Molly Gaudry's novel(la) We Take Me Apart. Neat. That's all…

Story @ Matchbook

I have a new story called "Explaining Our Presence" up at Matchbook today (thanks, Edward and Brian...), as well as a corresponding critical thought on the text. This journal is crazy-bananas good, each author contributing a story, along with thoughts on their story or on literature itself, presented diptychally. Stories stay up on the main page for two weeks. The archives are packed with great work by J.A. Tyler, Amy McDaniel, Meg Pokrass, Michelle Reale, Michelle Droeske, Maura Stanton, and a great work of hopscotch by Scott Garson...

Matchbook also has a new blog, with many interesting goodies to check out...

And, finally, big thanks to the one and only Matt Bell for posting some of my critical thought/response on his blog...

An 'Immortal' in The Catalonian Review

The new issue of The Catalonian Review is up, and it includes a chapter from The Immortals... called "Aquariums" (thank you, Waylan and Maeve...). There's also great work by Christina Farella, Alec Niedenthal, David W Pritchard, Michael G Donkin, Ari Feld, Howie Good, Fortunato Salazar, Matt Galletta, Luke Tennis, Gideon Xenos, Salvatore Zoida and N God Savage. Peep game, yo...

An 'Immortal' in December Issue of PANK

The December issue of PANK is up, and I'm big excited to say it includes a chapter from The Immortals Act Their Age called "Living Expenses." Thank you, Roxane, for accepting and including it. You're truly one of the hardest working people I know. This issue also includes great work from the wonderful Ethel Rohan, Monkeybicycle editor Jessa Marsh, Gold Wake alum Fortunato Salazar, HaHa Clever editor Reynard Seifert, Nanoism eidtor Ben White, Sheldon Lee Compton, Kristina Marie Darling, I. Fontana, and many others...

Two Posts in One

1 /
Thank you Greg Gerke for sending me your book There’s Something Wrong with Sven. It's great...

Thank you Matt Jasper for sending me your book Moth Moon. It's great...

Mel Bosworth’s chapbook “When the Cats Razzed the Chickens” is great...

Molly Gaudry got her own book in the mail—Congratulations, Molly. I want to get it in the mail, too...

J.A. Tyler’s got some big news about The ZOO, and so much else. Congratulations, J…

2 /
I’d be afraid to take Viagra, afraid I’d begin to see in infrared. I don’t think my brain could handle seeing through walls and interpreting heat signatures. If there was another way to alleviate my fear of intimacy, I’d maybe take it. I'm afraid of everything.

I sometimes think of having friends as an adolescent ideal. I want to be a kid again. Kids have friends who like them, at least ones they don't worry about being liked by.

I don’t ever want to tell a lie again, forever. I want to be such a good actor that even I won't know I'm lying. It wouldn't be lying if I didn't perceive it to be so. I'd only be pretending to not lie.

Bill Murray is my hero. That's probably true.

If someone invents a time machine, then a time machine will’ve always existed. If a time machine breaks, then it never would've worked. Purely theoretical...

Surveillance

It’s why you start itching if you haven’t showered in a few days—

They put all these chemicals in the soap and shampoo, addicting the body so it keeps coming back for more.

Only another fix can scratch it.

Conditioners and lotions.

The irony goes around in circles like, because we work, we get all sweaty, convinced bacteria’s doing this, causing the itch, that yucky-all-over feeling.

So we use our bodies to make money, afford sterility.

The same with clothes—dirty from work, buy detergent, do a load.

We work to pay electric bills so alarm clocks wake us up for work.

If soap’s so clean, the fuck’s up with scum?

Bus' It, Lif

Breadcrumb Scabs Issue #12

Breadcrumbs Scabs Issue #12 is out, and it includes a piece of poultry called "How Much the Jaw Weighs" (thanks, Lena...). There's also great work by Rachel Mehl, Joseph R. Trombatore, Joe Dacey, Nick DePascal, Brandon S. Roy, Brett Elizabeth Jenkins, Sean Lovelace, Drew Kalbach, C.L. Bledsoe, Shannon Walsh, Matt Roberts, Janice Krasselt Medin, Amy Newday, Charles Rutter, and editor-in-chief Lena Judith Drake. Peep game, yo...

Some Good News

I'm big looking forward to appearing in the second print issue of Pangur Ban Party along with the following cats: Nathan Logan, J.A. Tyler, Josh Kleinberg, Michael Hessel-Mial, Adam J. Maynard, xTx, David Peak, Martin Wall, Adam Moorad, Ben Brooks, Ana Carette, Greg Santos, and Mel Bosworth. Big thanks DJ...

The new elimae is live. Some of the highlights for me are David Erlewine, Kimberly Ruth, Mel Bosworth, Adam Moorad, J. Michael Wahlgren, Nora Nadjarian, David Peak, Kendra Grant Malone, Nicole Elizabeth and Joy Wood. That's a lot of highlights. This is the last issue with Cooper editing elimae solo, as I'm sure everyone knows by that Kim Chinquee, my former prof., has assumed editorship of fiction and creative nonfiction while Coop is still editing poetry, literary essays and reviews, and interviews. Cooper is awesome, and Kim is awesome, so they'll make a wonderful team...

Also, I just got my copy of Mel Bosworth's "When the Cats Razzed the Chickens" in the mail, and I'm big digging the look and feel of this chap. My favorite story, if I had to pick one, is "Leave Me as I Lessen," which was nominated for a Pushcart, though my beard would have to chose "Xyrophobic Me," which originally appeared in PANK. Congratulations, Mel...

Also, I'm big looking forward to reading Greg Gerke's There's Something Wrong with Sven. I think I have a piece appearing in Artvoice soon, so I thank Greg for the book and for scooping up one of my pieces. Too, Kim Chinquee just had a story in Artvoice last week along with Ken Sparling. Great stuff...

Perpetual Calendar / A Silly Thought / A Greeting

Nothing but rejections lately, at least when I do get mail, as the more prevalent tendency has been a big lack of responses—I haven't heard back from lots of places for a long time. It feels like forever...

I’m not sure what a perpetual calendar is, what it does. It sounds like whoever owns one becomes immortal. Maybe I’ll write a story about that rather than do school work. I’m big sick of school. I have no idea what I want to be when I grow up—I’m 28...

I wrote a sonnet for one of my classes:

THE EPITOME OF EPITAPH (Monuments)

Our life is as sincere an odyssey
Of glimpses, souvenirs from where we’ve roamed—
Revealed so vivid an obscurity
And tamed the world, a wilderness of home.

Our life is all reward but suffering,
A glowing shadow haunts our heart. We’ve sown
A vibrantly addictive sympathy
For those we’ve loved and cruelly left alone.

Our life pretends a secret shape in sleep,
The dawn, as drowsy, mimes our name in stone,
For then we’ll act our age immortally—
The children we will never have outgrown.

Abandoned to our slumbering, we choose
Cheerful furniture to rest our statues.

The iambic pentameter throughout is okay, except for the last line in which I purposely reversed the stress pattern to be as sudden as death often is...

I had a silly idea today: Rather than submitting things to journals to be rejected and/or not receive responses, I would maybe leave stories or chapters from novels or poems as comments on other people’s blogs, or any website that allows comments. That seems like a punk-ass thing to do, though, and I'm sure someone's already done it to some extent, so I probably won't do that. Just a silly thought...

Hi to everyone...