5 Tent City Poems

Avant-Girl 2011 (Washington Square)

The azalea,

she said,

means temperance,

passion,

sisterhood,

good-luck drum circles

and fragility.

We waited

in her tent,

smoking.

 

Minority Report

Face it, blondebeards,

waves burned

this prairie

more than twice:

Our time is moot.

The Media Materializes as a Schaffner Film

Apelike quadrupeds

with widescreen lenses

strip us in vitro.

Time to stop drawing

prosthetic crucifixes

on the sidewalk.

PTSD is So 2007 (Rubber Bullet Sonata)

                        

“The least coolest person on TV,

more interesting

than anyone here,”

sings Private Jimmy

while we sponge

his vegetable legs.

Historical Context

When asked why he felt so compelled to douse his body in flames, the elderly monk replied, “My feet hurt.”

Twitterectomy

#sometimesyouhaveto

#occupy

#butitshardwhen

Zombie Apocalypse

#remindsmeof

Ronald McDonald

#iftheworldends

Happy Birthday Madonna

#whitepeople

#neverforget

I read a lot which means I'm cool and increases my chances that people wearing glasses will like me

I fell a bit short of my goal of reading 100 books in the past year (yes, I start my years in November -- so radical, I know), still, 72 books isn't bad for working more than 40 hours a week, and I'm not even counting 25 or so chapbooks of less than 20 pages. I wanted to write a mini-review for each book, which, sadly, is far from a novel idea. So I'm ratcheting it up a notch by writing each review as a quincouplet, which is basically a five-word poem with two words in the first line and three in the second. The form was originated by Benjamin Krause of twenty20 Publications and Diamond Point Press, in whose forthcoming quincouplet anthology I'm happy to have a few of my pieces appear. So yeah, five words per book, except for the ones I've already reviewed, because I've spent enough time thinking about them. 

“The Blue Tower” by Tomaž Šalamun: Slovenia’s genius / happy nihilist trees

"A Season in Hell and The Drunken Boat” by Arthur Rimbaud: l’enfante retourne / ma tête brûle

"Gardens of Earthly Delight" by George Williams: review forthcoming / sometime next month

"Betty Superman"by Tiff Holland

"In Lieu of Hartshorn" by Travis Brown: Greying ghost / makes nice things

"Animals" by Janey Smith

"Sex at Noon Taxes" by Sally Van Doren: language games / can get naughty

"Nemesis" by Philip Roth: grandpa’s ramblings / still, polio sucks

 “Illuminations" by Arthur Rimbaud: l’enfant terrible / c’est mon favori

"A Shiny, Unused Heart" by J.A. Tyler: review forthcoming / The Brooklyn Rail

"The Indefinite State of Imaginary Morals" by RaeBryant

"In Watermelon Sugar" by Richard Brautigan: don’t, tigers / eat less parents

"Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World" by Donald Antrim: coral do-gooders / delusions from fish

"Another Bullshit Night in Suck City" by Nick Flynn: best memoir / I’ve ever read

“Brooklyn” by Colm Toibin: historically trite / well-formed but sleepy

"Emotionless Souls" by David S. Grant: how come / this is published?

"Love in a Time of Paranoia" by Howie Good 

"Rushing to Paradise" by J.G. Ballard: bored Polynesians / make nice bombs

"The Trial" by Franz Kafka: this feels / like contemporary non-fiction

"Meat is All" by Andrew Borgstrom

"The Laurel Poetry Series: Byron": this dude / got some ass

"The Body Artist" by Don DeLillo: ethereal freak / not much happens

"Wild Animus" by Rich Shapero: self-published drivel / could use editing

"Martini: A Memoir" by Frank Moorhouse: drink, drink, / drink, drink martinis!

"The Iguana Complex" by Darby Larson: dreamy mindfuck / felines elicit resentment

"The Fermata" by Nicholson Baker: epic perversion / but no boner

"Micro-Fiction" edited by Jerome Stern: short flash / some really flashy

"Story of My Life" by Jay McInerney: cocaine schoolgirls / always a hell

"Us" by Michael Kimball

“Killing Yourself to Live" by Chuck Klosterman: tragic roadtrip / culture-subverting truth monkeys

"Trust" by Liz Waldner: these poems / make me scrunch

"Burning Girl" by Ben Neihart: Baltimore love-thing / stranger than anticipated

"Drinking Until Morning" by Justin Grimbol: dude drinks / weird things happen

"The Illustrator" by James Robison: bohemian pederast / gets more bohemian

"The Rainbow" by D.H. Lawrence: modernist porn / Lawrence’s a boss

"Bright-Sided" by Barbara Ehrenreich: thinking positive: / pretty darn stupid

"Hot Teen Slut" by Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz

"Train Wreck Girl" by Sean Carswell: girlfriend dies / future looks brighter

"I Am Going to Clone Myself Then Kill The Clone and Eat It" by Sam Pink: bottled rage / seldom this insightful

"Out Of Touch" by Brandon Tietz: Emprise Review, / where’s my review???

"Ham On Rye" by Charles Bukowski: your childhood / wasn’t this bad

"Things Are Happening" by Joshua Beckman: I love / all your words

"Affluenza" by David LaBounty: weird neighbors / are probably mass-murderers

"The Maltese Falcon" by Dashiell Hammett: men once / were hardboiled badasses

"Homo Thug" by Asante Kahari

"How Can I Help?" by Ram Dass: Hindu gurus / make nice houseguests 

"Vox" by Nicholson Baker: phone-sex paradise / no plot necessary

"Naked Glances" by Carl-Henrik Björck

"The Good Soldier" by Ford Madox Ford: post-WWI masterpiece / Englishmen were sneaky

"Go" by John Clellan Holmes: Beat precursor / better as concept 

"Factotum" by Charles Bukowski: odd-job perils / booze away dogma

"You Get So Alone At Times That It Just Makes Sense" by Charles Bukowski: how sparrows / like drowning happily

"The Pill Versus The Springhill Mine Disaster" by Richard Brautigan: hippie’s lament / time to grow

"Bring Me Your Love" by Charles Bukowski: Crumb cartoons / make Chinaski monstrous

"Charles Jessold, Considered As A Murderer" ByWesley Stace

"Generation A" by Douglas Coupland: bees gone / Shytengart’s future’s worse

"South of No North" by Charles Bukowski: early drunk / before real decay

"Hello, Darkness" by Howie Good

"The Gospel of Anarchy" by Justin Taylor

"Waiting For Godot" by Samuel Beckett: god laughs / at bumbling Frenchmen

"The Suburban Swindle" by Jackie Corley

"Panopticon" by David Bajo

"Look! Look! Feathers" by Mike Young

"The Essential Numbers 1991 - 2008" by Gordon Massman: insanity is / the fucking shit

"Super Sad True Love Story" by Gary Shteyngart: near-future ache / China should frighten

"Good, Brother" by Peter Markus: mud people / fish solicit violence

"Tales of Woe" by John Reed

"My Father's Tears and Other Stories" by John Updike: Rabbit runs / out of time

"Without Wax" by William Walsh: 18-inch lovemeat / even sadder anomalies 

“Rabbit, Run” by John Updike: this guy’s / a real jerkoff 

“Fragments of Sappho” by Anne Carson: lesbian poets / write radical verse

“How It Ended ” by Jay McInerney: I wish / I’d written these

losers, lesbians, perverts

My review of Tiff Holland's Betty Superman is up at Used Furniture Review. I really loved this little 32-page book, made me wish I had a super dysfunctional childhood. Much thanks again to David Cotrone at UFR for the acceptance!

Budweisers and copyediting stole my 26th year!

You guys should check out an essay by the inimitable John Reed, “Arthur Phillips Stole My Bike,” in this month’s Brooklyn Rail. There’s a lot going on here: A heated dialogue about how best to create a new Shakespeare play using the Bard’s own hallowed (or hollowed) words; the value of community in a literary world that too often caters to isolationism; the controlled chaos inherent in being a working writer and professor; a touch of nostalgia for a Manhattan childhood and young adulthood; the complexity of getting anywhere on time in New York; a mysterious theft.

As personal essays written by NYC fiction writers are wont to do, I found myself considering my own situation as it pertains to literary things (solipsism alert!), and realized that this year has been somewhat of a setback. Sure I’ve tinkered with my novel a bunch (which hasn’t slowed the slew of rejections), published a bunch of reviews, an e-chapbook and a few poems, but I could have done so much more. I’m not talking about writing 2,000 words a day and finishing a novel and two books of poetry in six months, I mean in like, life.

Like, it probably wasn’t the best idea for me to sit on my boxered ass all day every day taking six hours to complete freelance work that could easily take three, thereby destroying any time to do work I actually wanted to do. Like, going to the same seven or eight bars and making no effort to look on either side of the Budweiser pressed to my rotting lips. Like, feeling fine continuing as a doorman for way too long when other opportunities have continued to slap my jaw and I do nothing but shirk. Like making, uh, not much effort at trying to meet girls and forming what could be considered the loosest of interpersonal post-friend-level bonds, and heroically sabotaging anything that might actually be good for my lonesome ass. Like, failing to immerse myself in the many coteries of writers this fine city offers (What John’s saying about the need for community and collaborating, duh) and remaining a mostly anonymous curmudgeon.

This ineptitude, coupled with the fact that my freelance contract of 1.5 years has ended without much of a warning (putting the “starving” back into my job description), has me feeling better and happier than I can remember. Spending one’s time working alone can only be justified by meaningful work, not mind-numbing “editing” work for a major corporation that will probably tank within the next few months. What my week now lacks in a nifty paycheck, it makes up for it with TIME. Time to write what I want, to finish/start projects I’ve been brooding over for months, to work on the literary magazine that I know can do big things. Not as much money to decimate my once-youthful body with toxins and lard, and I've never felt so fucking energized, baby!!!

Events will be attended, group projects will go down (including a Monkeytown screenplay collab I’m not at liberty to discuss)! Time to get excited, 2012 might actually turn out OK. Until December 21.

Also, I just wanted to mention that Short, Fast, and Deadly in its current incarnation has put out its final issue. I am eternally grateful to SFD for publishing many of my flash fictions and poems in the magazine and in the 2010 Anthology. I’m more stoked that I will be the staff chapbook reviewer at the bigger, badder Short, Fast, and Deadly Monthly, dropping this January. Watching the empire grow from within.

Stay posted, and stay fulfilled! Hoo-ah!

so, like, y'all do jaga bawmbs n champang, dog?

A few observations working the door in the West Village during the Halloween parade:

*  I can’t look at girls wearing 1920s flapper costumes without thinking about Nucky Thompson’s Gollum-like sex scene in this week’s Boardwalk Empire. Thanks for ruining Prohibition for me, Buscemi.

*  Seeing Pokey without a Gumby is a very real sadness.

*  Manhattan high schoolers are ballsy. Sorry kid awesomely dressed as MacGruber. I appreciate your ID that’s not only printed on a sheet of China-grade cardboard but also has been expired since 2006, and the $200 of your allowance you’re offering to get you and your generically slutty teeny bopper friends with no IDs in the bar. Come back when there isn’t a police blockade grilling me from across the street. You’re probably undercover cops aren’t you, little shits…

*  Being “sober” on Halloween sucks. Being sober while wearing a costume would be worse, I guess.

*  There is an inverse relationship between wearing a costume and enjoying oneself at a small, intimately lit bar where mellow jazz is being played. If you are wont to ask doormen, “Yo B, how much it cost to check out this fly downstairs club, dog?” you probably won’t have a good time. I’ll take $100 though.

*  Haven’t seen this many Impalas on two wheels since the last time I YouTubed Dr. Dre.

*  Best costume award goes to a girl wearing a parasitic twin dressed as a vampire from Twilight. I’d like to think that this is apt satire commenting on Twilight’s – and junky YA in general – suckling of America’s collective diabetic teat, but even if she’s just #TeamJacob, it’s still hilarious.

*  200-lb black lesbians dressed like Scottish warriors from Braveheart are some of the very nicest people.

*  More of a general thing, but it’s really obnoxious when people walk up to me and ask if we’re closed. Yes, because most drinking establishments employ guys to stand outside just to tell people that they aren’t open. I’m a humansignpostipede!