I lay in bed without makeup.
I lay my cheek on bible leather.
TV shows are waking life.
Commercials are dreams.
I steal Mom’s necklace.
We trip on down the road.
Hands on Dad.
I suffer the tiny crown of life.
I suffer my ponytail.
A locket keeps a small gas star.
Light moves all over my Jordans.
By the sea we all hug.
By the sea a hand sifts through mine.
Jellyfish boil in the spume.
My hair whips out.
We saw away my ponytail.
Captivity #1
How our temple brightens these young hills. We of Saxon strain. We of the Lord. We learn of heathens only when gunfire clatters the house. Out our window homes are burning in the snow. Our neighbor runs into the woods grabbing his organs in. The snow is loud with fire. They are so many strong even our dogs do not rise up. Still I wait on the Lord’s will in the kitchen with my child and my knife. Still the heathens shoot through the glass through my arm. I get dark with hate and pain. They come to us. They walk us gory through the rocks and ice. They walk most of us dead. They leave us in drifts where we drop. Still the angels feel thick around us in the half-light. My child fouls herself astride the pinto. She growls at me. The smell of us. Still I trust the Lord might set His hand to heal my wound. What they call their village but a strew of twigs. What they call their homes but errata. The swollen hole in me that leaches white. They guard us in a muddy hut. Still our nights and days full of the peace of the Lord. Overnight my child expires in the filth without a noise. Still the Lord says not to weep but keep an eye to His relief. Still the Lord says justice is mine. The pale horse. They wrap my bluing arm in oaken leaves. They grouse around their fire. They smoke a weed. I watch the hills for English steeds. I want their heads to break. I want the snow to dark. I want the Lord.
Joe Aguilar lives in Missouri. His work is in Puerto del Sol, LIT, Caketrain and elsewhere.
Earlier today, Tao Lin tweeted an entirely non-meta tweet.
in ~’93 in ~5th grade, i think, there was a ‘meme’ at my school of throwing things at (or ‘simply’ hitting) ppl then saying ‘ricochet’
Notice the lack of self reference or promotion, reference to the nature of said tweet, bracketed ambiguous/conceptual “thought[s],” esoteric ongoing commentary of [something] semi-contextualized via hashtag.
Last month, The New York Observer reported that, for his third novel, Lin was working in what he describes as “Lorrie Moore’s prose style and tone.”
This tweet seems to suggest that very notion. What I mean is, I could see a thought like this appearing in the inner monologue of a Lorrie Moore character, is what I mean. Or I guess even that it seems like something from Bed.
Diary As Sin
by Will Alexander Skylight Press, 2011
172 pages / $18 Buy from Amazon
I. RAINBOW VORTEX OF THE ANIMATED BREATH
The Ancients, who believed in their dreams, believed in the meaning of their dreams, they did not believe in the forms they took. Behind their dreams and at varying levels, the Ancients sensed forces, and they immersed themselves in these forces. They had an overpowering sense of the presence of these forces, and they sought throughout their entire organism, if necessary by means of a real vertigo, the means of remaining in contact with the release of these forces.
– Antonin Artaud, “Man Against Destiny”
I think of myself, the poet sending signals into mystery, and having them return to me with oneiric wings and spirals, so much so, that I forget my prosaic locale with its stultifying anchors, with its familial dotage and image reports, with its dates inscribed in trapezoidal feces. I am only concerned with simultaneity and height, with rays of monomial kindling, guiding the neo-cortex through ravens, into the ecstasy of x-rays and blackness.
– Will Alexander, “On Anti-Biography” READ MORE >
To further the conversation, here are two things about “community” and bookstores that have influenced my thinking on the subject.
First, above, is video of a talk by the amazing Matthew Stadler. In it, he discusses the future of the brick and mortar bookstore. It’s the source of the title for this post.
So here’s what we need: a fairly large bar, nothing fancy, not too expensive. Open almost all the time. Maybe a typewriter here or there for ambience. Ratty books on shelves. Some sort of an area that can easily become a stage. Chairs. Tables. No TV, no Wi-Fi. No nattering blogs or flickering videos to distract from the words you’re writing, speaking, or reading. A jukebox stuffed with Edith Frost, the Magnetic Fields, and the Pogues. That’s about it for the hardware.
I want to start from the premise that a student can learn innumerable things from taking a creative writing course. Accepting this premise seems to me the only way to get anything done when we talk about pedagogy—otherwise we aren’t discussing pedagogy, but philosophy. I’m most interested in how we can decide what’s teachable out of the huge amount of learning material available in creative writing, and how we can hold ourselves accountable for having taught it afterward.
Taking the most common structure of the creative writing course as a guide, it seems that most teachers have decided on a few central skills that are “worth learning” about creative writing: reading, discussion of reading, writing, and discussion of writing. And the learning we intend our students to get out of practicing these skills is as clear-cut as in the study of any academic field: Reading is important for gaining information and expanding awareness about the field. Discussing reading is important for coming to a more critical and independent understanding of the field. Writing is important for communicating with others in the field. Discussing writing is important for learning to analyze and evaluate writing, with the goal of communicating more effectively in the field. There are of course many other potential purposes for teaching these things, and it’s hard to argue against the learning value of any of them—but I would argue that as teachers, we need to be much more attentive to these purposes, and much more vigilant about providing the rationales that tie them to the study of creative writing as a whole. There’s no inherent rationale, for instance, that reading has to be a part of learning writing—not until you decide what happens during reading that enhances the skill of writing, and how you can structure a class to provide the practice in and measure the acquisition of that skill. READ MORE >
The Broken Plateis open for submissions until the end of October. This magazine is run by undergraduate students in a literary practicum class at BSU. I can personally vouch the end product as a glow print artifact for holding your words. Think of it this way: service. These are students learning to edit. You could help them along their way. Do send.
Stoked Press would be, uh, stoked if you would submit. Tyler Gobble likes to wear sleeveless shirts in the spring and you wouldn’t want to bring children to a Layne Ransom reading, if that helps you get mouth-feel for the pub. Submit like a vertebrae.
The International Algae Competition in Algae Landscape Design is only open until Oct 11! Get growing, I advise. I bet some of you knowledge base hydroponics.
Hobart needs more stuff about luck. Think of this way: If they accept you, you kick dino-ass. If they blar your work, no worries. It was just bad luck. Here is a pretty epic “wish-list” and I wish more editors would do this, announce what they are thinking, on a rolling level, week to week–I feel it germinates a writer. This list has made me write. I see a future where editors throw out sparks like such as this. Glow.
Can someone confirm or deny that Brautigan left a suicide note saying “Messy, isn’t it”? It smacks of mean, lazy urban legend and sort of pisses me off.
Creative Nonfiction would like your “True Crime” stories. All of my favorites are Morrissey songs. No, no, here’s my favorite: I’m a Memphis teenager. I shoplift Pac-man cards. I walk outside the mall and 5 kids surround me, threaten to go exponential on my spleen, rob me, of my stolen cards. Irony? I hate that dumb word. This: welcome to Memphis.
John Dermot Woods–drawings or words or source material–is bad-ass right here, right now. Just saying.
Betty has collected 11,020 labels from bananas. In a hundred years, we will know Betty. Us? Never. It makes you wonder.
Airplane Reading is surprisingly OK, these little flashes about flying on airplanes. They want you. Fly.
