Tuesday, March 31, 2009

a good one...

from the padre H E R E.

octothorp reviewed...

darkness reviewed...

at The Time Garden:

March 27, 2009 11:40 AM) I have bragged before here about the little books coming from alternating current (go to alt.current.com). I stuck their beautiful black and white edition of A Sound to Drive Away the Coming Darkness by Christopher Cunningham into my jacket pocket the other day for something to read while waiting on Linda at the doctor's office. It's a lovely read. The grimness in the title is sustained throughout the poetry (from "struggling up"),

the weight of the air
threatens to
drown us

and it's no surprise to me that Cunningham's grimness turns out to be an advantageous poetic stance. It is honest as can be and intense, and it comes from a place that any human can find within herself. Because "sometimes / there is / music," grimness becomes the setting for brilliant moments of beauty, becomes the angle they can best be seen from. Look for the discarded soda can sculptures of motorcycles by the homeless vet in "the ride" for just one example.

Klyd Watkins

Monday, March 30, 2009

if you ain't got em...

this is a good package right here: C L I C K

UPDATE:
sorry, SOLD OUT...

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

check it out...

Bill Taylor, one of the small press' best poets, has a blog. read it
H E R E.

go buy this...

the new poetry chap by Jeff Fleming, editor of nibble, is available H E R E.

Jeff is a dandy poet; I look forward to this one, featuring cover art by Hosho McCreesh.

Saturday, March 14, 2009

check it out...

sean lynch at Orange Alert.

Thursday, March 12, 2009

two poems...

springtime

the rains come
and
the world
erupts.

gardenias
perfume
the wind.

green
seeds fragment
and
burst.

soon,
the longest day
of the year.

then,

the race begins.



song of a cold heart

a woman
walks past
a
set of chimes
blowing
subtle music
in the warm wind.

she reaches out
a
hand

and stills
the
shifting
notes.

there is a
second of silence
as
she
moves beyond
the missing
sound,

her back
turned
to the wind.

she
doesn't
have
a
chance.

a short story...

The Curb

Jim and Teardrop sat on the curb drinking generic mouthwash from a large plastic bottle. they passed it back and forth, quickly, until it was gone. Jim tossed it to the side after holding it up to the light, letting the sunshine filter thru the thin film of alchohol-tinted green residue. it plunked in the asphalt dust. they felt pretty good sitting there on the curb. Jim was dying of bone cancer, had lost forty-eight pounds in the last two months. Teardrop said that Jim was like a father to him. Jim was around sixty, maybe sixty three. Teardrop was probably in his forties, mid to late. he wore a ragged rainbow striped ballcap titled dangerously to one side. Jim wore a shapeless grey workshirt, open and unbuttoned to where you could see green and black tatoos, the jailhouse or army kind, all over his scarred chest. his beard was thick and dirty. his eyes were grey and electric. Teardrop often looked over at him as they sat on the curb in the sunshine in the afternoon. their breath smelled like mint. Teardrop wondered what he would do for something to drink. sometimes Jim's guts couldn't take more than a coke. at least it wasn't too hot where they were.

heh...

Monday, March 09, 2009

pix from cyn...

a few from along the Shut-in Trail (part of the Mountains to Sea trail) along the Blue Ridge Parkway:







lit shiz...

a quick update for those who care...

I have several pieces in the new Buk Scene #1, a magazine out of Canada and Amsterdam. you can find info on this fine looking mag, with great original cover art H E R E.

I've posted what will probably be the last little shorts I'm gonna post over at my Six Sentences page, since I'm working on some longer stuff, but check em out if you like.

I'm sending off my Propaganda Press ms. this week for my Pocket Protector book due out in May. it's a cool series of tiny chapbooks with some dandy poets having already been invited and published, and I'm glad to be in the ranks. mine is called Death Is My Subject and it's the END of all my work up to this point. I've retired every single thing I've writ since I started, and it's all new stuff from here on out. I'll post more as it approaches, but check out any book in the series, you won't be disappointed.

the book of letters, Sunlight At Midnight, Darkness At Noon: The Cunningham/McCreesh Letters, 2002 from Orange Alert Press is seeing some action, we've got the globe-spanning design team lined up and the CD with them Noot boys backing us reading some excerpts is finished. more soon, we're hoping for an early summer release...

I haven't been subbing shit anywhere, though I did submit a ms. to David at sunnyoutside for his Open Submission period in February called Approaching Zero and Other Stories. we'll see if it goes. maybe that'll change as 2009 moves forward and I'll get back to it; it's a necessary evil in the end, finding places to send work and packing it up and mailing it out. and I'd rather do that than submit to the millions of online "magazines" (even though Hosh and I have one too...we understand its ephemeral nature and its inherent unreality) as I really just can't stand the online publishing world. it's effortless and temporary (see rant #2690 in re: what's real and what's not), so I attempt to remain in my weird Luddite world of print while shaking my fist at the kids and their intertubes, busily twittering each other until their stupid fucking tweet holes are stuffed full of horrible banality and 140 characters of nothing. bah...

thanks again to everyone who bought a cd and/or a copy of A Sound To Drive Away The Coming Darkness; glad you enjoyed it or sorry you hated it, depending on which side of the fence you came down on...

more later...
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