Three mini-chapbooks from Mud Luscious Press arrived today (link here to JA Tyler’s ml press), consisting of “Isn’t This What You Were Looking For?” by Ken Sparling, “Molting” by Aaron Burch and “Those Bones” by David Ohle. Excerpts after the jump:

From “Isn’t This What You Were Looking For?” by Ken Sparling– this was the strangest of the three, a very mood driven piece:

I suddenly realized, everything in my life was about to collapse. The woman in the seat next to mine looked over when she heard me talking to myself. I turned my head. Look at the woman.  I was in the aisle seat. People in other seats were looking at me, too. I tried to smile.

From “Molting” by Aaron Burch, the editor of Hobart– this was the most entertaining to me and I think I learned something about Burch, like how he knows how to use a saw:

I walked in our front door and noticed a feather or two on the floor. Then I noticed more, everywhere, lining the hall and scattered like a cat had carried a bird into the apartment and played with it, chasing and swatting until it finally escaped.

PENNY, I called. PENNY?

And lastly, from  “Those Bones” by David  Ohle- a wonderful excerpt from a memoir (nicely straightforwardly told)  from a man who is not rehashing his drug abuse and is older than 40 ( two things I like in a memoir, generally speaking):

Both survived,  clinging to newly  creosoted wooden pillars that were to be the cabin’s foundation. After drifting for two days, their arms were badly burned by the creosote. I remember them visiting one Sunday for dinner. Thier arms were bandaged, and I didn’t fully understand then what had happened to them, but the reek if iodine and mercurochrome and the odor of burned flesh made me sick. I vomited all over the table.