Catch it if you Can: The Sad Meal, by DJ Dolack
I met DJ Dolack for the first time a few weeks before Christmas, at a party. Turns out we’ve both written for Coldfront. So okay, nice to meet you, DJ. Then the next week I’m getting ready to give this reading for Hexed, and notice that I’ll be sharing a bill with–among others–one DJ Dolack. Also, now that I think about it, weren’t me and dude both in the Fall 2008 issue of diode? (Yes.) Weird how much your life can overlap with somebody else’s without either of your even knowing it. Well, anyway, when we were at the reading, DJ gave me a copy of his 2005 chapbook, “The Sad Meal,” which was published by Eye for an Iris and distributed through Black Ocean. It’s a gorgeous little book, on nice paper, about the size of a thank you card (it came in an illustrated envelope) and bound with a single staple. I have no idea how many were printed, or how to get one (Eye for an Iris’s site seems to not have anything on it, and the Black Ocean page for “The Sad Meal” doesn’t exist anymore) but I have one and I think it’s pretty cool.
Here’s a poem from it:
“Thought the Driver”
All of it. Sand on the heels of my jeans
picked up from Coney Island and tracked
back through Jersey into the country.
My busted headlight trilling through the dark
like an aching fighter. Brother paralyzed in bed,
cancer’s acid vanishing his stomach.
His spine twisting like a joist: a house
growing over itself. His hips: a pier buckling.
At times I have introduced myself
as an only child. When he dies, I will shave my face
and follow him until he is put in place.
My one eye closed to mimic the car,
I drive off the road
and into a tree three miles from home. It’s nothing.
The two of us sing together in the time
before someone finds me.
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More DJ Dolack on the web:
Tags: black ocean, DJ Dolack, Eye for an Iris, The Sad Meal
I’m going to give this a better look when I’m not jetlagged and drinking.
I’m going to give this a better look when I’m not jetlagged and drinking.
i like his poems, it would be great to find out if the chapbook is still “gettable”
i like his poems, it would be great to find out if the chapbook is still “gettable”
slow new day guys/gals?
“news”
slow new day guys/gals?
“news”
what the hell happened to mean monday? you biotches went soft.
what the hell happened to mean monday? you biotches went soft.
am i the only one who can’t see the picture here?
everyone is busy. i am not. i was. now i am not. i am trying to think up a mean monday post but am not brave enough to do the ones i really want to do, which would burn bridges man!
barry, i am home but didn’t get anything? hi barry! yoyu spoil your girls this xmas?
burn bridges pr…i got 20 minutes till work’s out…
burn bridges pr…i got 20 minutes till work’s out…
I’m trying to muster up some courage here- i am a pussy for hte most part- i like to make people like me. but here i go to do some thinkin-
pr,
the picture isn’t working for me either, on any of three computers.
pr,
the picture isn’t working for me either, on any of three computers.