No News Today
The streets are quiet, the park
too, the squirrels
and the acorns the squirrels
hide.
Edward Mullany is the author of If I Falter at the Gallows (Publishing Genius, October 2011)
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
No news today - Guest Post - M Thompson
In the final months before his death, the editor, long after his publishing career had reached its disgraceful, well-publicized end and who, afterward, worked briefly as a solicitor of advertisements for the city phone book before relocating nine hundred and ninety one miles west to become a night manager at a twenty-four hour bookshop outside Hammond, Indiana that sold, exclusively, used technical manuals on circuitry and electronic device repair before that business, too, became insolvent, and he, after seven lost years in which no discernible trace of his activities has been discovered – during which time his first wife, Edie, legally changed her name back to Dalrymple and the last of his remaining relatives passed away in their sleep – reemerged quietly as a part-time assembly line worker in Paw Paw, Wyoming, fabricating inspirational refrigerator magnets from the busted apart, gray-yellowed keys of obsolete keyboards, where, on his lunch breaks and after work, at home, at the table, in his Caligari-ceilinged apartment above Jane’s Luck-O Laundromat, began composing, in notebooks and across scraps of loose-leaf paper bound together with wire, an uninterrupted, unpaginated, unindented “We Regret These Errors” -style article in which, it appears, the editor, whose influence had once loomed so largely over the publishing world and who, during what many now refer to as the Golden Age of Ink, famously declared, “When print dies, so does this, so do we, so do I,” produced approximately six thousand and fifty six separate entries worth of corrections.
Addendums are still being discovered. At the time of this pressing, pages have been found taped behind drawers, beneath the belly of a radiator, stuffed inside mugs like packing material and folded neatly into V shapes, upturned and arranged as rows of paper teeth across the smudged glass shelves of a locked medicine cabinet.
Unsurprisingly, the corrective article refers to the editor’s own periodical, Zum. The issue in question, called the “August Issue,” would have been his one-hundredth publication had he and his publishing imprint not collapsed so completely in the months leading up to its release.
Each entry follows an identical format, the number to each line changing, seemingly at random, though, so far, never repeating: “In line [x] of our August Issue, the Editor failed to adjust the following error”
And, so far, each entry apologizes for the same misspelling: “Yefterday’s fish.”
M Thompson was born in northern Michigan and now lives in Seattle. His work has previously appeared in places like Unsaid, Everyday Genius, Monkeybicycle, and Spork, among others. He is concerned primarily with fiction writing and running long distances.www.m-thompson.net
Addendums are still being discovered. At the time of this pressing, pages have been found taped behind drawers, beneath the belly of a radiator, stuffed inside mugs like packing material and folded neatly into V shapes, upturned and arranged as rows of paper teeth across the smudged glass shelves of a locked medicine cabinet.
Unsurprisingly, the corrective article refers to the editor’s own periodical, Zum. The issue in question, called the “August Issue,” would have been his one-hundredth publication had he and his publishing imprint not collapsed so completely in the months leading up to its release.
Each entry follows an identical format, the number to each line changing, seemingly at random, though, so far, never repeating: “In line [x] of our August Issue, the Editor failed to adjust the following error”
And, so far, each entry apologizes for the same misspelling: “Yefterday’s fish.”
M Thompson was born in northern Michigan and now lives in Seattle. His work has previously appeared in places like Unsaid, Everyday Genius, Monkeybicycle, and Spork, among others. He is concerned primarily with fiction writing and running long distances.www.m-thompson.net
Thursday, October 20, 2011
No news today - Guest Post - Meredith Walters
The Scribe’s Umbrella
In such a season as recalls the sun, an ashtray full of pennies,
a visit to a widow leads you to wonder:
virtue and integrity, the effort to be a great man
among bouts of neuralgia, neurosis, the rum someone slipped in your soda for which you do not remember asking,
to take suitable decisions—
where is it true to say you live, when lions pace elsewhere, terrific
and recalled from memory? A river of wine, a river of honey,
a river that sings: do not ask what is suffered elsewhere.
A bridge over the river to the Bronx.
In such a season,
two kids in a sort of strange song and dance in the vestibule
of their mother’s bank lead you to wonder
how a tune might begin that praises a widow who never touches her
dead husband’s books. A sculpture unearthed
again depicts a scribe with his case and absent stylus but does not mete
the hours that passed from task to task.
What sign to make among disbelievers? You have been called
by a singer unseen and such is your nature
that even the spaces between questions calls to you.
An apocryphal lion roams the Venetian landscape.
It roams St. Petersburg, it roams the Bronx.
Your advisors despite the distance of an era awaiting
excavation only suggest what it might be like
to leave and not to abandon yourself. Apprentice the hands to the violin
to forge a memory,
to strike a path, to be your passage from uncertainty, like building a wing
on a building.
In such a season as a woman in furs puts her poodle in a cab
the scribe amends the story to end:
“And they were terrified.”
The effortless gesture, the trained arm, the hand is a voice.
The hand enthroned.
Fear and fearfulness. What you know to be
your left ventricle, where a violin awaits the accompaniment
of a provisional composition, as compassion
—what is suffered elsewhere.
What the river is like, what the war is like, what doubt is like.
The bravery to say happiness in a dark age.
We are merciless in our regrets.
Thought and thinking.
A table of friends who do not know where to begin their renditions
of all they fear they allowed to let pass.
The time spent thinking, time wasted being afraid,
knowing and responsibility, idea and mind,
thought and unknown, an actual umbrella.
Friend, have you too been abandoned?
And if so by what?
Should you, a scribe among contemporaries record them as heroes
of mystical texts?
Their fingers aren’t god.
The great permissions, the great restraints. First the songs,
then the theories.
You recover your questions:
How can the water of a lake be both clear and blue?
Have you dreamt the white flag?
To make distinctions in darkness.
A song whose only words are every way to say no.
An involuntary memory.
You praise the clear darkness.
To say no to every question is triumphant.
A great man once said, “Fresh Kills is a collage.”
A great man once said, “The mind is a mechanized Atlantic.”
To call on the widow of a great man
to be an apprentice, a scribe, to be a great man,
to be unable.
How you are seen by someone with your back toward her
in a bath of sunlight
you would be too shy to accept should you realize its presence.
And instead you turn your son’s attention to his shadow.
When the widow utters instructions for surviving a war
and likens death to bread thrown into the sea,
you understand that you do not yet know.
When your god waves from a bridge
from which he will not be talked down, the sky unravels
into a forged Venetian twilight
where you recover first one idea, then another.
The river shall gather its skirts and journey across the lion.
You are forgiven.
In such a season as recalls the sun, an ashtray full of pennies,
a visit to a widow leads you to wonder:
virtue and integrity, the effort to be a great man
among bouts of neuralgia, neurosis, the rum someone slipped in your soda for which you do not remember asking,
to take suitable decisions—
where is it true to say you live, when lions pace elsewhere, terrific
and recalled from memory? A river of wine, a river of honey,
a river that sings: do not ask what is suffered elsewhere.
A bridge over the river to the Bronx.
In such a season,
two kids in a sort of strange song and dance in the vestibule
of their mother’s bank lead you to wonder
how a tune might begin that praises a widow who never touches her
dead husband’s books. A sculpture unearthed
again depicts a scribe with his case and absent stylus but does not mete
the hours that passed from task to task.
What sign to make among disbelievers? You have been called
by a singer unseen and such is your nature
that even the spaces between questions calls to you.
An apocryphal lion roams the Venetian landscape.
It roams St. Petersburg, it roams the Bronx.
Your advisors despite the distance of an era awaiting
excavation only suggest what it might be like
to leave and not to abandon yourself. Apprentice the hands to the violin
to forge a memory,
to strike a path, to be your passage from uncertainty, like building a wing
on a building.
In such a season as a woman in furs puts her poodle in a cab
the scribe amends the story to end:
“And they were terrified.”
The effortless gesture, the trained arm, the hand is a voice.
The hand enthroned.
Fear and fearfulness. What you know to be
your left ventricle, where a violin awaits the accompaniment
of a provisional composition, as compassion
—what is suffered elsewhere.
What the river is like, what the war is like, what doubt is like.
The bravery to say happiness in a dark age.
We are merciless in our regrets.
Thought and thinking.
A table of friends who do not know where to begin their renditions
of all they fear they allowed to let pass.
The time spent thinking, time wasted being afraid,
knowing and responsibility, idea and mind,
thought and unknown, an actual umbrella.
Friend, have you too been abandoned?
And if so by what?
Should you, a scribe among contemporaries record them as heroes
of mystical texts?
Their fingers aren’t god.
The great permissions, the great restraints. First the songs,
then the theories.
You recover your questions:
How can the water of a lake be both clear and blue?
Have you dreamt the white flag?
To make distinctions in darkness.
A song whose only words are every way to say no.
An involuntary memory.
You praise the clear darkness.
To say no to every question is triumphant.
A great man once said, “Fresh Kills is a collage.”
A great man once said, “The mind is a mechanized Atlantic.”
To call on the widow of a great man
to be an apprentice, a scribe, to be a great man,
to be unable.
How you are seen by someone with your back toward her
in a bath of sunlight
you would be too shy to accept should you realize its presence.
And instead you turn your son’s attention to his shadow.
When the widow utters instructions for surviving a war
and likens death to bread thrown into the sea,
you understand that you do not yet know.
When your god waves from a bridge
from which he will not be talked down, the sky unravels
into a forged Venetian twilight
where you recover first one idea, then another.
The river shall gather its skirts and journey across the lion.
You are forgiven.
Meredith Walters curates art and culture programs for the Brooklyn Public Library. Her book, All You Have to Do is Ask, won the Anhinga Prize for Poetry in 2006. Her poems have appeared in Conduit, Spout, Jubilat, Crowd, and Subtropics.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
No news today - Guest Post - Richard Chiem
WASTE A LITTLE SHAVING CREAM
In the space ahead of her, there seems to be something. In another room the noise is more muffled and less revealing. Her identical twin sister is close to climax a few feet away from her through the walls behind a David Bowie poster. Chloe walks barefoot on the wooden floorboards back and forth in her own room in pale movements. She regrets knowing her own face so well and feels a need to shave or cut something. She wants more from her refrigerator other than subdued light and loose condiments. She says Ketchup and Dijon mustard. Because she owes so much money she stays inside her house on nights and weekends. Lately, she has been reading more stories of people trapped inside their houses voluntarily. She says, Did you know there is a man in Tokyo who has never seen the city of Tokyo. He only knows the inside of his apartment dozens and dozens of pizza boxes, a broken empty telephone. Finally her sister orgasms arms outstretched knocking the wall between them like a door in brief parched momentary pleasure. Both sisters are quietly transported, now laying motionless on either side of the wall. Although she knows better Chloe does not feel deep significance anywhere. She goes and answers the front door and of course no one is there. She says, Why hello person.
Richard Chiem (b.1987) is the author of two e books WHAT IF, WENDY and OH NO EVERYTHING IS WET NOW (with Ana C.) He is a Pushcart Prize nominee. His work has appeared in Monkeybicycle, Magic Helicopter Press, and Everyday Genius. His first collection of short stories YOU PRIVATE PERSON is forthcoming from Scrambler Books (2012). He blogs here: http://richardchiem.blogspot.com/
In the space ahead of her, there seems to be something. In another room the noise is more muffled and less revealing. Her identical twin sister is close to climax a few feet away from her through the walls behind a David Bowie poster. Chloe walks barefoot on the wooden floorboards back and forth in her own room in pale movements. She regrets knowing her own face so well and feels a need to shave or cut something. She wants more from her refrigerator other than subdued light and loose condiments. She says Ketchup and Dijon mustard. Because she owes so much money she stays inside her house on nights and weekends. Lately, she has been reading more stories of people trapped inside their houses voluntarily. She says, Did you know there is a man in Tokyo who has never seen the city of Tokyo. He only knows the inside of his apartment dozens and dozens of pizza boxes, a broken empty telephone. Finally her sister orgasms arms outstretched knocking the wall between them like a door in brief parched momentary pleasure. Both sisters are quietly transported, now laying motionless on either side of the wall. Although she knows better Chloe does not feel deep significance anywhere. She goes and answers the front door and of course no one is there. She says, Why hello person.
Richard Chiem (b.1987) is the author of two e books WHAT IF, WENDY and OH NO EVERYTHING IS WET NOW (with Ana C.) He is a Pushcart Prize nominee. His work has appeared in Monkeybicycle, Magic Helicopter Press, and Everyday Genius. His first collection of short stories YOU PRIVATE PERSON is forthcoming from Scrambler Books (2012). He blogs here: http://richardchiem.blogspot.com/
Monday, October 3, 2011
No news today - Guest Post - Kathleen Ossip
The Perfect Day
Every
penetrating
warm
I
that
pokes
is
thrilled
uproarious
August
other
like
commercial
splashing
fizz-water
white
if
spilled
of
me
the
cloud
heap
and
looks
can
like
the
smell
Kathleen Ossip is the author of The Cold War, just out from Sarabande Books; The Search Engine, which won the APR/Honickman First Book Prize; and Cinephrastics, a chapbook of movie poems. She teaches at The New School, where she was a co-founder of LIT, and she’s the poetry editor of Women’s Studies Quarterly. Read more at kathleenossip.com.
Every
penetrating
warm
I
that
pokes
is
thrilled
uproarious
August
other
like
commercial
splashing
fizz-water
white
if
spilled
of
me
the
cloud
heap
and
looks
can
like
the
smell
Kathleen Ossip is the author of The Cold War, just out from Sarabande Books; The Search Engine, which won the APR/Honickman First Book Prize; and Cinephrastics, a chapbook of movie poems. She teaches at The New School, where she was a co-founder of LIT, and she’s the poetry editor of Women’s Studies Quarterly. Read more at kathleenossip.com.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
