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I am 32 years old, but I am still changing. People told me I would never change. Those people are sort of right. The problem is that people only want me to change for them. Like it’s easy. Like I can just put on a new shirt and be not afraid of myself anymore. I mean I’m not entirely afraid of myself. Actually I’m pretty comfortable but it’s other people that find stuff out about me and they try to make me feel bad.
I live in New York. I have a career. I am a financial advisor, but I prefer the term, “wealth management advisor.” I think people are afraid to talk about wealth. I think too many people think wealth is a bad thing. I think my job description should remind people that wealth exists. That the wealthy exist. I am wealthy. I help people. I am here to help people become more wealthy.
I am a Roman column.
I have a secretary named Fluffy Bunny. Fluffy Bunny does whatever I ask her to. If I tell her to lick my smile, she licks my smile. If I tell her to fall in love with me, she falls in love with me. Sometimes I lock her office door and put a Paul McCartney CD in the wall stereo. Whenever Paul’s “Temporary Secretary” plays, I roll up my sleeves and I hit Fluffy Bunny. She has to smile as I hit her. If she stops smiling, we have to start the song over. If she makes it through the song smiling, I give her a hug and I unlock her door.
People don’t know about Fluffy Bunny. If they did, they would be mad. They don’t understand that Fluffy Bunny isn’t mad because I tell Fluffy Bunny not to be mad. Fluffy Bunny thought she was smarter than me when she started working for me. She would tell me that I was a bad person—that she feared that I would never become aware of my privileged state of being within the realm of white Christian male heteronormativity.
That’s when I started locking her in her office.
People don’t know about Fluffy Bunny. But God does. God is my bearded ghost. And I know as long as I acknowledge the bad things I do to Fluffy Bunny, God will forgive me. All I have to do is ask. And then I hear him in my head say, you are forgiven. And that means I won’t go to hell. People don’t know about Fluffy Bunny. People only ever want to talk about my other problem that I don’t think is a problem or anybody’s business. People are concerned about the way I act when I am alone in my house.
When I wake up in the morning, I like to lie in my crib for at least twenty minutes before climbing out of it. It’s a really big crib. I like to make funny noises and rest my hand against my chest and feel my own heartbeat. If I don’t make any sounds and listen really closely, I hear my heart make a do-do-do sound. Like a dial tone. I like to rock gently from side to side and pull my knees into my stomach tightly. I like to play with my colorful firefly nightlight that hangs from the side of my crib. All I have to do is knock my fingers against it and the fireflies light up and “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” plays.
But what I like most of all is my Fluffy Bunny stuffed animal. I like its long ears. I like its pink nose.
Sometimes my diaper has to be changed. I cannot change it by myself. That is why I hired a nanny to take care of me at home. I pay her thousands of dollars a week to change my diaper. She is very strong and I like the way she cradles me in her arms. She rocks me. She feeds me my bottle. She sings me lullabies. And when I have an accident, she changes me. She wipes me.
I like the feeling of Fluffy Bunny’s nose against mine. I kiss Fluffy Bunny over and over and over again while I rock gently in my crib. I like thinking about her body.
I like to make Fluffy Bunny open the blinds in my office so I can look down into the streets. Me and my co-workers like to refer to the streets as “the valley of the dead.” We like to watch the protestors yell and shake their fists. Most of them don’t even know what they’re yelling about. They were in such a hurry to grow up. They just wanted people to think they were important. Too bad they don’t know about me. They don’t know my secret: you don’t have to grow up.
You don’t have to live in “the valley of the dead.”
I stretch my arms and legs out as far as my crib will let me. I like when I’m in the crib because things don’t have to make sense. There is no “like” or “dislike.” It’s all feelings and smiles. Colors. I don’t have to think at all.
Fluffy Bunny sometimes cries in my arms. It makes it hard to sleep. So I squeeze Fluffy Bunny really hard and whisper, I hug you Fluffy Bunny because you are the best bunny.
Then I feel good. Then I know I am not afraid of myself and that I am a good person. -- Paul Cunningham
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Paul Cunningham Goal/Tender Meat/Tender
Horse Less Press
'Paul Cunningham holds editorial positions at Fanzine and Action Books. He founded Radioactive Moat Press in 2009 and he currently edits Deluge. His writing can be found in Spork, LIT, Bat City Review, BOAAT, Tarpaulin Sky, DIAGRAM, and others. His translation of Sara Tuss Efrik’s The Night’s Belly (Nattens Mage) was selected as a finalist in the 2015 Goodmorning Menagerie Chapbook-in-Translation contest. His poem-films have been screened in the MAKE Magazine Lit & Luz Festival, Seattle’s INCA: The Institute for New Connotative Action, AWP, and at the Museo Universitario del Chopo in Mexico City. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Notre Dame.'-- Horse Less Press
Excerpts
FRANK ZAMBONI
Eureka! Hear the fattest fifes and drums! An ice that hums! The bladewalk of the evening skatewalk has sullied the Ice Land Ice Arena yet again. But no matter! My rig and I are out of the barn and onto the post-knuckle buster rink to do some ol’ fashioned cleanup. On the by, I’m getting a bit of intense bleeding. [Radio chatter] Wholly goalie oxen bleed! You hear that?! Iris does it again! Going, gong, agog! A goal by a goaltender after my own tender heart! Record shatteringly! That’s how she does it! All those spectators said she’d never make it this far, but I know that type of joke’s-on-you jaw jacking all too well. Crazy Frank Zamboni, they used to say. And look at me now! Shoveling coal so fast I might end up feeding the bears!
(If you know what I mean.)
When he’s not busy erasing the Ice Land Ice Arena interior, he’s regaling tourists with tales of world-renown goaltender, Iris. She’s a guy’s guy’s prize for sore!
Every single light in the Ice Land Ice Arena turns on. Enter Iris, world-renown goaltender complete with a mean butterfly slide and goalholes one through five. She can cover them all, but it’s pre-season. Mating season. Glove side, high; glove side, low; stick side, high; stick side low. Fifth and final, between her armor-padded legs. That’s where she wields her slanguage blade, protecting her team from low shots and hot shots. You bet your ass there’s an I in her team. She deflects with zero regrets. When a save is made, blood is certainly shed. And she watches her own execution-style acrobatics on replay over and over and over. Another useless body another toothless bloodymug suction cupping up against the glass. Again and again. Always, always licking her frosty chops. Fava beans. A nice chianti. Slurpslurpslurpslurp.
IRIS
Call me Iris. Call me Mantis religiosa. Call me any, anytime. When the puck is advanced, the fuck is advanced, but not so advanced are these muzzled men cumming my way. I got all the talk-the-talk skateflock gamboys playing my tune. An ice that hums, viol-de-gamboys tuning me onto the stage of red and blue. Is this a stage? Or a dining hall for two? Maybe even a chapel. A confessional booth. Sounds like a honeymoon. And all these icy parabolic arches up in this auditoria! God, I’m praying for a preymate! I’ve devoured aphids, lizards, and frogs!—but lately I’ve been an injury risk to those predictable puck-controlling stickhandlers.
Game Day in the Ice Land Ice Arena marks the seasonal entrance of The Zanies. A cocky and cacti-muscled team of teamsters. Mean and green, the visored, penised bodies take to the ice wearing the appropriate padding. Each man, each body, one body with two long, curved stickblades for arms. The taller the longer. Prickly coxa bending into steamlined femur. Chunky green hookarms for puckhandling and slap-passes. Chunky green hookarms offering up a chopping block. A caulking block. Bodycheckers always bodychecking. Look at my striking cheek bones, they whisper. Look at my full-bodied hair. Sometimes someone even answers in the dark of the locker room, Nice abs.
IRIS
The Zanies are real stickhandlers. Always handling their sticks. Receiving my pucks on the blade of their sticks. Set them up with a fake pass. Send them a quick flick of my own hookwrist. Hahaha, I’ll pass! Instead I bodycheck them. Better check yourselves next time, boys. Meanwhile, I’m all box-baited by the idea of penalty!
Meanwhile, game-faced, I am hungry for meat!
FRANK ZAMBONI
She’ll blow your doors off. There’s no mercy when it comes to Iris! Any spectator who spectates from the gluteal-popliteal space of their cinema seat knows exactly what I’m talkin’ about. Trust me, no seat is comfortable when you’re eyeballin’ in the same stadia with that up-and-coming hotshot! Yes, yes. The rest of ‘em are bucket mouths compared to that big 10-4! None of their hookarm parts cause quite as much harm as the razor sharp tubercles she’s got hiding in the green of her mantis grasp! Her pseudopupil gaze is sure to engage. And distract! In no time at all, one of those jaw jackers will find ‘emselves on their back. I always suggest they bang a U-ee and call it macaroni, but what do I know?! I’m just crazy ol’ Frank Zamboni!
(I’ll prey for you.)
IRIS
Like a sturgeon. Scutched for the very first time. Like a sturr-urr-urr-ur-gin!
Forever a virgin. I never let those gamey beluga boys finish.
(If you know what I mean.)
A little caviar goes a long, long way.
Teaser 1: GOAL | TENDER MEAT | TENDER
Teaser 2: GOAL | TENDER MEAT | TENDER
Paul Cunningham Reading 12/11/14
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ABRIANA JETTÉ: What are the differences for you between writing poetry and writing nonfiction? Are there certain topics you believe best expressed as an essay rather than as a poem? Or, is your process much more organic?
AMY GERSTLER: I like your choice of the word "organic." It's a nicer way of describing the often chaotic, half blind way I go about trying to write my way into or towards something. I accept and also sometimes lament that Donald Barthelme's famous philosophy about the importance of "not knowing" seems to be a necessary component of writing for me, especially in the initial stages, most of the time. I'm not very good at mapping things out ahead of their actual writing. When I try, usually everything changes during the writing / revision process, anyway. Sometimes I set out to write something that I think will be an essay because it seems that it might need to contain a lot of research, that it might require a version of my own voice as opposed to a character's and /or that the piece leans towards the discursive/factual rather than lyric/imaginative. But even as I write that sentence, I find it hard to think of any of those modes as really separate. Some pieces I work on start out as essays and turn into poems, and vice versa. It gets even messier because I love reading and thinking about "hybrid literature" in which gestures and characteristics of several genres are combined in the same text.
ABRIANA JETTÉ: Is it easier for you to use humor in poetry than in prose?
AMY GERSTLER: It may be a little bit easier sometimes because I'm slightly more accustomed to writing poems than literary prose at this point. Also, in nonfiction prose, the voice/speaker is allegedly a constructed version of me, and I might find it a little easier right now to attempt to be funny when peeking out from behind a "character" or made up situation in a poem, might find that the situation or character provide or suggest their own opportunities for humor.
ABRIANA JETTÉ: Your interest in speech pathology seems evident in your work. I'm often struck by the sonic command and enchantment each poem possesses. Because of this, your poetry is a wonderful treat to read aloud. How would you describe the difference between listening to a poem and reading a poem? Is there something different that you are communicating to the audience depending on the presentation?
AMY GERSTLER: Being read to is a primary pleasure that many of us are lucky enough to have in childhood. Then we don't get to experience much as adults. It's a shame, because it can be beautiful to hear literature read aloud or recited. Like listening to music, it can be enveloping, and if someone is good reader, very transporting. Even if you're alone with a book on your lap, reading to yourself, you "hear" the sounds of the words in your head to a certain extent as you read. Otherwise, a lot of poetry wouldn't work very well on the page, and a lot of musically inclined prose wouldn't either. If someone reads to you, you can savor their voice, their interpretation and pronunciation, the ways they animate the text. Good actors are sublime at this. If you're reading to yourself, one big advantage is that you have the text right there, and can re-read parts, stop and look words up, and go at your own ideal pace, which might not be the delivery pace of someone reading to you. Literature is a different sort of time based medium when you're reading to yourself as opposed to listening to it being read or declaimed by someone else.
ABRIANA JETTÉ: What was it like to adopt the voice of a father and of a clairvoyant? Are they original voices or do you consider them to be characters in a narrative?
AMY GERSTLER: One of the things about reading literature that is such a miracle is that it allows you to briefly inhabit other minds, and/or commune with them, learn from them, take them on, know them intimately. I had wanted to be an actress for a while when I was younger, partly because I was entranced by the idea of "playing" someone else, that kind of transformation, trying to become a character different from yourself, to really work at that over time. My interest in writing dramatic monologues or persona pieces like the ones you mentioned stems partly from that early interest in trying to get inside another character/being to see what that would be like. If I understand the second part of your question: I don't consider the various character poems I write as being related to each other, or as part of some larger narrative (although that's a cool idea and maybe something that it would be interesting to try in the future!) They're usually just attempts to create and explore a character and their world, and/or a dilemma or situation the character is involved in, just within the confines of that particular poem.
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Amy Gerstler Scattered at Sea
Penguin Books
'Amy Gerstler has won acclaim for sly, sophisticated, and subversive poems that find meaning in unexpected places. The title of her new collection, Scattered at Sea, evokes notions of dispersion, diaspora, sowing one’s wild oats, having one’s mind expanded or blown, losing one’s wits, and mortality. Making use of dramatic monologue, elegy, humor, and collage, these poems explore hedonism, gender, ancestry, reincarnation, bereavement, and the nature of prayer. Groping for an inclusive, imaginative, postmodern spirituality, they draw from an array of sources, including the philosophy of the ancient Stoics, diagnostic tests for Alzheimer’s disease, 1950s recipes, the Babylonian Talmud, and Walter Benjamin’s writing on his drug experiences.'-- Penguin
Excerpts
A Sane Life
Leaf skeletons everywhere,
denuded wings. Faces one itches
to kiss bob by every few seconds,
but one must restrain oneself or risk
imprisonment. They're all yakking
on cell phones, anyway, humming
"You'll Never Walk Alone" under their
precious, measured breaths.
Insured to the hilt, have you any
desire to be thought of in your
grave? To see your visage gracing,
say, the ten-dollar bill? To chuck
all devices and live on crackers,
molasses, and the occasional tastily
prepared bug? To slosh your toxicity
outside the alembic of self, just to see
how acidic it is? To disentangle
each task's tentacles from around
your scrawny neck? Relax responsibly
a beer ad urges. And that means
while blitzed on our hoppy product
do no harm? We swallow sunlight
in pills, outlive our wits, and ultimately
get shunted off to rest homes tended
by underpaid strangers. Clean food
costs more than the poisoned kind.
Soft, tasteful clothes in natural-dyed
hues (paprika, cinnabar, and almond)
cost more than the bright, starch-stiff
ones also made by slaves.
SALE ON PREFAB YURTS!
My opponent's attitude toward
planet Earth seems to be simply
Good riddance! Come to think of it,
dispensing random, impulse-driven
kisses might be just the ticket, a great
campaign strategy, worth a day
or two in the clink. A friend
with inside dope says every cell
downtown's got color TV. He claims
our local jailers make great pizza.
Sea Foam Palace
(Bubbling and spuming
as if trying to talk under
water, I address you thus:)
Must I pretend not to love
you (in your present bloom,
your present perfection — soul
encased in fleshly relevance)
so you won’t believe me
just another seabed denizen
vying for your blessed attention?
Some of us (but not you)
are so loosely moored
to our bodies we can
barely walk a straight line,
remaining (most days) only
marginally conscious.
We stagger and shudder
as buckets of blood or sperm
or chocolate mousse or spittle
or lymph or sludge sluice
continually through us...
I love the way you wear your
face, how you ride this life.
I delight in the sight of you,
your nervous, inquisitive eyes,
though I try to act otherwise.
Being stoned out of thy mind
only amps up thy fearsome
brain wattage. Pardon my
frontal offensive, dear chum.
Forgive my word-churn, my
drift, the ways this text message
has gotten all frothy. How was it
you became holy to me? Should
I resist, furiously? Is this your
true visage, shaken free, flashing
glimpses of what underlies
the world we can see? Do not forget me
murmurs something nibbled
by fish under the sea.
After dark you’re quick-silvery,
wet /slick /glistening. Don’t
make me chase you, dragging
my heavy caresses, a pair of
awkward, serrated claws,
hither and yon. Give me a swig
of whatever you’re drinking,
to put me in tune with the cosmos’s
relentless melt, with the rhythms
of dish-washing, corn-shucking,
hard-fucking, bed-wetting, and
the folding of bones of other loves
into well-dug graves... may we
never become lost to the world.
Amy Gerstler is the featured poet on poetryvlog.com
"Dearest Creature"
Amy Gerstler: The Best American Poetry 2010
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'When Urs Allemann’s Babyfucker took second prize in the Ingeborg Bachmann competition in 1991, it didn’t take long for scandal to overshadow the novella itself. No doubt this partly had been Allemann’s plan; his incendiary title and opening line (“I fuck babies.”) seemed almost too readymade for any puritan or politician trolling for the latest example of cultural decline or artistic bad taste. To censorship’s shrillest proponents, Babyfucker set itself up as the easiest kind of target, and it worked.
'While it made for great press, the hubbub of the Allemann Affair (as der Spiegel called it) ultimately clouded the view of a remarkable piece of writing, an insular, halting, repulsive, and often beautiful meditation on language and time. Babyfucker’s narrator, a man condemned to be surrounded by creels of crying infants who he sodomizes, rapes, and then tosses back, spends the novella self-consciously babbling through a deconstruction of his own grotesque punishment. In the process, his “sentence” transforms into both a punitive declaration from a nameless judge and the narrator’s only tool for self-articulation. As he puts it: “I fuck babies. That’s my sentence. I don’t have any other . . . My sentence. It’s what I have. It’s what I am. I have to be dragged out of it. By me.” He’s a man completely locked in by his own language, and over the course of Babyfucker, Allemann locks us in with him.
'The sentence, as both temporal horizon and unit of speech, again plays a central role in Allemann’s latest short novel, The Old Man and the Bench. Here Allemann’s protagonist has been “offered a contract,” given to him and seemingly enforced by no one, to sit on a non-descript bench and remember the past. There’s a definite timeline in sight: “From now on he’ll come here every day. It’s his place of work. He’ll reminisce about his childhood. For five months.” ...
'Like Freud’s fort-da game, in which the repetitions of his nephew’s playing are read as an attempt to master painful experiences through replication, the old man’s stories recount past traumas, making them real again. But these narratives also act as trauma’s container and stabilizing frame. Allemann deftly mines this vacillation, charging the man’s dead end snippets with strange, inventive energy. Though we know his contract is elapsing, very little gets done. The old man’s language and actions remain suspended in a perpetual state of becoming, a “twaddle” (or ein fünfmonatsgequassel as Allemann calls it in the book’s German subtitle). Unsinkable desire inches along, but just barely; instead, we’re propelled forward through syntactical repetition, a weaving of sound that turns the man’s language against itself, at points rendering his twaddle into a spiraling music.'-- Michael Jauchen
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Urs Allemann The Old Man and the Bench
Dalkey Archive
'The title character in The Old Man and the Bench has a contract that requires him to write, and he feels he should focus on his past. Yet instead of childhood reminiscences, the old man dwells on a series of mini-narratives about, for example, a love triangle among concrete towers, a chaste visit by two call girls, and the joint-by-joint cannibalization of his fingers. In the middle of these absurd tales, something like childhood memories appear, only to disappear into the stream of the old man’s ramblings. Urs Allemann’s virtuosic, lyrical monologue is at once playful and disturbing, recalling Dada, Kafka, and Beckett in its representation of what language can do when it turns against itself and its speaker.'-- Dalkey Archive
Excerpt
The old man has to eat something. Everyone eats something. Him too. To say nothing of drinking well then why doesn’t he just say nothing. Whoever sits on a bench for nine hours has to deal with hunger and thirst. It’s not enough to indicate that every morning at the kitchen table he eats two pieces of crispbread. Without butter. He’s never abhorred anything his whole life as much as he abhors butter. Just soft smeary butter only soft smeary butter he’s never abhorred solid butter. To be spread all over his two pieces of crispbread the butter would have to be soft and smeary. He’d never be able to spread solid butter back and forth on the two pieces of crispbread. The two crispbread pieces would fall apart on him under the knife. Crumbled up broken to pieces he would have a fit and smash the plate with the useless crispbread dust on the kitchen floor. Good thing it’s never occurred to the butter to do anything other than stay solid in which case he’s not disgusted and sticks it back in the icebox or get soft and smeary in which case he’s disgusted and throws it in the dustbin. Icebox dustbin since when has this geezer gone for local color antiquated lingo. Since when is this old man a geezer. Since when it’s not enough to allude to the fact that every night he gets drunk in his kitchen. He never leaves the bottles he’s finished on the kitchen table. Even when he’s dead drunk he still knows that in the morning some kitchen-table space will be required for the crispbread plate. Before bed he always carries the empty bottles over into the dining room that despite what he would have thought he sets foot in once a day for this purpose. He sets the bottles down on the dining room table. Once the table is covered he’s never calculated how long it takes to cover the table with bottles it’s once again for the umpteenth time time for Winkelried the breaststroke swimmer. Short performance no audience. He stands up in front of the long side of the table bends down and stage 1 with his head tucked down between his shoulders with his hands held together to form a handpointer he advances with his arms into the sea of bottles. Space for hand arm head chest stomach must first be conquered. A few bottles fall over that’s not worth mentioning. With his forehead pressed against the table surface he retools his useless hand pointer converts it into a double hand shovel by stage 2 turning his hands outwards away from one another towards each other so that now his hand backs are touching instead of his hand bellies. Then he takes a breath then he raises up his head then stage 3 his left arm with the left hand shovel and his right arm with the right hand shovel simultaneously sweep clean the left half of the table the right half of the table the whole table surface. All the bottles are lying on the floor most of them shattered some of them unshattered. Along with tonight’s bottles for whose sake the table surface has been swept clean. Exit Winkelried the breaststroke swimmer. No applause. But what does the old man eat what does he drink on his bench. No secret there. On the way from his house to the bench he makes a stop at the baker. Ten to eight sharp he buys three pretzels. The paper bag with the pretzels goes in his left coat pocket. The soda bottle he bought yesterday is sticking out of his right pocket. On the way home from the bench he makes a stop at the grocery store. At ten past five sharp he returns the soda bottle he finished that day and in exchange takes along the bottle he’ll finish the next day. Since the grocery store opens at eight in the morning and he has to be at his place of work at eight he always has to buy his soda the evening before. He doesn’t return the paper bag to the baker. When he gets home in the evening before he gets drunk in the kitchen he throws the paper bag into the living room that despite what he would have thought he sets foot in once a day for this purpose. He sits on the bench chews the last piece of the pretzel gulps down the last of the soda screws the twist top onto the bottle screws the bottle cap onto the twist top screws the bottle cap that is perhaps called a twist top onto the bottle’s bottle neck’s bottle neck end’s glass screw thread that might be called the twist top screws curses screws curses smoothes out the paper bag folds it sticks the paper bag in his left coat pocket the bottle in his right coat pocket stands up brushes the crumbs if there are crumbs off his coat goes home. Later on he’ll get drunk in the kitchen. On beer oh the beer he can’t get it in the grocery store from the baker sothenwheredoeshe.
The old man is offered a contract. Everything he says is treated as if it were on paper. Everything on paper is treated as if he said it. Excellent working conditions. Without thinking about what the contract might mean he accepts what he’s offered by the old man.
Twaddles eyes closed twaddles eyes open twaddles.
His life. There’s nothing to say about it. Knowing he had his childhood before him he quickly had it behind him. Five months is a long time. He no longer knows how long he’s been living alone in the house.
It’s hard to answer the question of whether the old man stinks. It’s likely that he stinks but not enough to make himself nauseous. A restrained foul-smelling odor that complements the gray of his hat and coat. Anxiety alms ass abscess old ocular offal evening excretions. The old man is not of the opinion that of all the letters A O and E have the most disgusting smell. A homeowner is not going to get alms anyway. He is not at all of the opinion that sounds that letters are fragrant or stink. Whoever believes such a thing he yells should be he pauses pauses too briefly punched in the face. His tongue ripped out if he’s talking his writing hand chopped off if he’s writing. But why is he talking like that. He tries to shake his fists but doesn’t succeed. Instead an involuntary wave of rage sends ripples down his back. Pathetic body tremolo. Man and bench as gray green yolk within the fragrance egg grayly sourly housing the yolk. As a yolk in a yolk. Suddenly the wave ebbs away. The old man is busy creating order. Him the cock’s treadle the bench the yolk foul smell egg white and shell. If someone were to get too close to him greet him lean over him still clueless sit down next to him his nose would break the shell and would become aware of the vaporous clouds of putrefaction rising up from the old man and hanging in the air around him. Creating order means recognizing that the first and innermost layer often called the kernel or empty coat is made up of gray flesh and the second and middle layer often called the skin or even wrapping paper is made up of the herringbone coat and in contrast the third and outermost layer often called the imperial husk or the celestial cloche is made up of the odor coating. Unfortunately the old man ascertains that what reaches his nostrils doesn’t always remain the same. What smelled moderately foul yesterday smells immoderately foul today. Skepticism would be out of place here. The old man stinks. But creating order also means identifying the source of the stink. It’s not the coat it’s not the scarf it’s not the old man’s gloves shoes socks that stink. It’s not the hat that stinks the stink emerges from under the hat. The old man’s flesh stinks. His words stink. That’s not the same thing. New questions emerge that are difficult to answer. Does the flesh stench recur in the words’ stench. Does the word stench generate the flesh’s stench. Would his flesh if the old man were mute stink less. Would the old man’s words if he were fleshless stink even more. He eats his pretzel takes a gulp of soda. Wonders if he should think something up to fill up the empty coat. Ties his shoelaces tighter. Looks forward to his beer.
To the left of the bench there’s a trashcan. To the right of the bench and behind the bench there are bushes. Unfortunately the old man has not been granted a tree. Alder he laments oak maple October. The rustling of the names of the tree of the names of the month. Cloudssunfograinwind. Dew and no dew. The first frosts. Hoar-frost. He’s not sure. Crows jackdaws. If he has to pee he steps behind the bench and does it in the bushes. But who wants to know that. In front of the bench there’s the path the bench is on. Beyond the path a field. Beyond the bushes begins the forest. The woods. He knows they wouldn’t be woods if there weren’t trees there. No consolation. No reason to turn around. The woods behind him don’t make up for the linden tree the beech the walnut tree the chestnut.
All he has is language. That’s why he hates it. Because he hates it he’ll bite his tongue off. Some day. He says so.
Urs Allemann
'A FURTHER READING OF URS ALLEMANN'
Urs Allemann bei Sprachsalz 2011
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'Do you know those days where you stay home and you’re in your bed and you only get up to open a wine bottle but you open the wine bottle the wrong way and half of the cork falls into the bottle and so you drink it anyways but you’re pissed so you drink the whole bottle and then you’re drunk so its time to watch reruns of The Office until Dwight starts to look like Jesus Christ and then when you’re done with that you get in the bathtub because you need to play Come Thru twelve times and blow bubbles with your mouth and try to figure out what your bathroom looks like it if were underwater?
'That is what it is like to read Leopoldine Core’s first book of poetry, Veronica Bench. Depressing, but necessary and oddly fulfilling.
'Here's the thing: I read almost everything on the train. I like the quiet buzz of people around me in the morning to mingle with the words (I also just like to have a book in my hand when a dude is manspreading next to me so I can turn pages obnoxiously). I get to be alone, but still be surrounded by people and no one gets to know what i’m thinking. But when I finished this book and looked up from my seat, I wanted to talk to everyone around me about it. I wanted them to be as excited as I was, and also just as sad. Then we could all collectively cry together and fulfill my dream of not being the only one constantly sobbing on the L.
'Her poetry ranges from short little fuck poems that make me laugh, to musings with god, to poems that seem like a drunk dream I had once on Zoloft, but much more elegantly crafted.'-- Probably Crying Review
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Leopoldine Core Veronica Bench
Coconut Books
'It's important, you know," Core writes, "for geniuses/ to be sloppy/ It makes other people brave." Well, I rolled around in her slop and found an ecstatic, fleshy tenderness. I wanted to lose whole days touching myself and reverting to my egg beginnings. Of course, these poems made me love her, made me think I was the only person in the world to ever fall in love this way. In Veronica Bench Core exposes us, out-greeds us, jokes freely with us, and speaks better than us. You should be bathing with these poems, you should rub up against them, you should examine your own monstrosity more, you should dote on your pain, you should be ashamed you ever were ashamed of being meat, you should let others record your girlhood, your infancy, your fullness, you should stop trying to be a better person before you die, you should read this book until it’s memorized and then we can all be blissed out in its captivity.'-- Jenny Zhang
Excerpts
from Brooklyn Rail
Friday
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Egg
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Morning Cocktail
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Video Tape
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Leopoldine Core - EVERYONE LIKE HER
2012 Emerging Writer Fellows Reading: Leopoldine Core
Type exercise for the poem, Hush Robot by Leopoldine Core
*
p.s. Hey. ** Jonathan, Hey there, J-ster, my sadly missing Paris neighbor. Although count yourself lucky to be where you are at the moment given this heat wave. My back is inching steadily towards unobtrusiveness, thank you. I understand the Ghost thing totally, of course. The Darger show is terrific. Visit in time, if you can. And you can ride Elaine Sturtevant's 'House of Horrors' ride in the same venue. The Chra, yeah, agreed, obviously. I need to try the Jenny Hval again. I didn't take to it immediately. Yay, about our fave bookseller's re-ensconcement. I'll head over here, and I'll wish her your hello, if she remembers me. Cake! It's so hot here that one would need to eat that cake, if I know which cake you mean, and I think I do, within moments of purchase or risk a mouth full of spoilage, but no problem. That Pure Ground video made me want to revisit Industrial. For a second I misread your sentence and thought there was a Can/Bill Withers collab album. Whoa. Come visit pronto, man! x, me. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. Really? I was just reading somewhere yesterday that 'Love and Mercy' has been a surprise success in the States. No? The French reviews of 'Carol' circa Cannes were pretty high on it, for sure. I'm not sure when it opens here. ** Sypha Hi. You remember d.l. Billy! He's doing great, it seems. Yeah, I feel like whenever you mention music that you're into these recent years, it's nearly always big mainstream stuff, although you did get the Wire album. I remember 'Subhuman'. And what are the many reasons you're glad it died in the crib? ** Douglas Payne, Hi, Douglas! Lucky you to have seen Author & Punisher live. I just discovered them lately, and now my eyes are peeled re: the local listings. The Bingham story collection is very strong, I think. See what you think, though. I want the David Rattray book a lot! I keep forgetting about it. I knew him a little when I lived in New York. He was kind of great, very charismatic and stylish in a very unplanned for way. And an excellent translator in addition to his own writings. Good to see you! ** Steevee, Interesting. Yeah, seems so, and, yeah, logical. Do you know/like that Ka/Dr. Yen Lo album? I can see it maybe being up your alley. I'm kind of addicted to it at the moment. Ah, shit, about your eyes needing more time and more help. I hope using the Wipes will speed things up. Hugs. ** Etc etc etc, Hi, Casey. I suspect that if someone from, oh, NYC or Chicago, say, were plopped down in this Paris heat, they would think we were a bunch of wusses, but Paris isn't made for high temperatures, and the combo of, at the moment, high 80s temps and the city makes it feel apocalyptic. I'm not a big Houellebecq fan, but I'm not a hater either. His writing is good, but I don't find it that exciting. His provocations don't interest me, but the way they ripple out is kind of interesting. He's kind of like the French literary equivalent of Lady Gaga or something to me. I haven't checked out the Knausgaard stuff yet, but it's high on my list. I hate Frappucinos 'cos I hate coffee mixed with dairy products, but I might score an iced coffee. Thank you! ** Bill, Hi. The Sauna Youth album is really good. It's been on repeat in my headphones. Wow, Sta Prest and Kicking Giant, yeah, cool. Oh, my God, 'Bone Abacus' is so great! Wow! I love it! I'm going to share it on Facebook. In fact, ... hold on ... I just did. Really, really great, Bill! Holy shit! What are you going to do with it? Everyone, d.l. Bill is artist Bill Hsu, as a bunch of you know, and he's made this really awesome new interactive piece that you must, must see. Go here to Vimeo. It's called 'Bone Abacus', and it's a total fucking treat! Major kudos, Bill. I really love it! Didn't end up at Palais de Tokyo yesterday, but maybe today or asap. I'll let you know. ** Chilly Jay Chill, Hi, Jeff. Things seem as okay with the actor as is possible under the circumstances, so that's very good. I am a fan of the LA Paisley Underground bands/scene still. Yeah, that Dream Syndicate album is good. Its over-resemblance to the Velvets has become more charming with time. My great favorite/hero of the PU scene is Michael Quercio, who coined the term. I'm a huge fan of his band The Three O'Clock, especially, album-wise, 'Arrive Without Traveling', which I think is their masterpiece, and also 'Sixteen Tambourines'. His earlier PU band Salvation Army is very good too. Michael and I were going to write a rock opera together with the artist Jim Isermann in the late 80s, but we never got around to it, unfortunately. Sometimes the band The Last is grouped into PU, and their album 'L.A. Explosion' is great. Game Theory is another excellent PU-related band. Rain Parade did some nice stuff too. So, yeah, I'm a fan of that genre. How did you end up wanting to investigate Paisley Underground? I'll remember to send you my address today. In fact, hold on ... I just sent it to you via FB. ** _Black_Acrylic, Billy Lloyd rocks! Or pulses at least! I think he's from Leeds, yeah, if I'm remembering. I'll check the Fischer review of the Terminator. And will see what he thought of the inescapable Kanye West perf. Thanks! ** Thomas Moronic, Your fine brain is so not deserving of that unfair clogging. Nope, I hadn't found that new Xiu Xiu page, but now I get to! Yay! You're going to see London & KP & presumably OB too. Fun. Shit, I didn't know about the John Waters and the Richard Hawkins shows, shit, or I would have made a bee line. We didn't see very much art due to time constraints. The Carsten Holler show at Hayward has fun in it, albeit a little thin. I loved the Agnes Martin show at the Tate, but you have to like what she does. We almost saw the Alexander McQueen retrospective and a Bruce Conner show somewhere. But I'm drawing a blank otherwise, Have a blast! ** Kier, Dengasm, ha ha, nice. It's very rare that I even think to try to mutate your name, so I'm glad that that one landed on the money. I apologize in advance, but, oh, I envy your rain and rain, sorry. If only I had snapchat. Dang. Someday. So chickens are actually really dumb? I mean, they seem dumb, but I always feel really bad and weird thinking that. You were busy in nature yesterday. Nice. But not nice about B's absence, although ... today perchance? My day wasn't a lot. The heat returned in the late morning, so bleah. Didn't go to Palais de Tokyo. Too bleah outside. Just worked on stuff. I have to be mysterious, but Zac and I got a yes on "LCTG' from one cool film festival, and two no's from other cool festivals, and now we're biting our nails waiting to hear from three others, one of which is our dream premiere place, although I think they'll probably say no even though we hear they're very impressed with the film. We made a difficult film, and that makes selecting it a complicated thing that ends up having to do less with our film's quality than with whether its difficulty will create a problem, and that has its ups and downs, we're realizing. Otherwise, gosh, not a lot. Kiddiepunk and I decided on September 10th as the pub. date for my new literary gif book 'Zac's Control Panel', so that's exciting. For me. And ... nothing else. I'll try for more today, but it's looking and feeling like a scorcher outside, so all bets are off. How was yours? ** Schlix, Hi, Uli! Thanks! Yeah, sucks about the premiere being canceled, and, more than that, about why. But the ventriloquist seems to be okay. And the Hamburg gig is now the world premiere by default. ** Kyler, I like 'scooched'. I'm really surprised that Google doesn't think it's a real word. Wow, well, her affair with Frankie Valli must be pretty juicy because, maybe I'm wrong, but, I mean, Frankie Valli? Are there that many book buyers over the age of 70? ** H, Glad you liked the gig and the Billy Lloyd. He used to be a distinguished local here a couple of years ago. Oh, I might have time for the Thoreau. I'll look for it. Given your stated interests, do you know the writings of Paul Metcalf? He's a great favorite fiction writer of mine, especially the later works like 'Patagonia', 'Apalache', and 'Waters of Potowmack'. Oh, sure, I would be very happy to share your list of books here and help out however I can. Enjoy your day! ** Okay. Up there are four recent books I loved, as the post's title already indicates, and I recommend that you give them your consideration as readers. Thank you. See you tomorrow.
I am 32 years old, but I am still changing. People told me I would never change. Those people are sort of right. The problem is that people only want me to change for them. Like it’s easy. Like I can just put on a new shirt and be not afraid of myself anymore. I mean I’m not entirely afraid of myself. Actually I’m pretty comfortable but it’s other people that find stuff out about me and they try to make me feel bad.
I live in New York. I have a career. I am a financial advisor, but I prefer the term, “wealth management advisor.” I think people are afraid to talk about wealth. I think too many people think wealth is a bad thing. I think my job description should remind people that wealth exists. That the wealthy exist. I am wealthy. I help people. I am here to help people become more wealthy.
I am a Roman column.
I have a secretary named Fluffy Bunny. Fluffy Bunny does whatever I ask her to. If I tell her to lick my smile, she licks my smile. If I tell her to fall in love with me, she falls in love with me. Sometimes I lock her office door and put a Paul McCartney CD in the wall stereo. Whenever Paul’s “Temporary Secretary” plays, I roll up my sleeves and I hit Fluffy Bunny. She has to smile as I hit her. If she stops smiling, we have to start the song over. If she makes it through the song smiling, I give her a hug and I unlock her door.
People don’t know about Fluffy Bunny. If they did, they would be mad. They don’t understand that Fluffy Bunny isn’t mad because I tell Fluffy Bunny not to be mad. Fluffy Bunny thought she was smarter than me when she started working for me. She would tell me that I was a bad person—that she feared that I would never become aware of my privileged state of being within the realm of white Christian male heteronormativity.
That’s when I started locking her in her office.
People don’t know about Fluffy Bunny. But God does. God is my bearded ghost. And I know as long as I acknowledge the bad things I do to Fluffy Bunny, God will forgive me. All I have to do is ask. And then I hear him in my head say, you are forgiven. And that means I won’t go to hell. People don’t know about Fluffy Bunny. People only ever want to talk about my other problem that I don’t think is a problem or anybody’s business. People are concerned about the way I act when I am alone in my house.
When I wake up in the morning, I like to lie in my crib for at least twenty minutes before climbing out of it. It’s a really big crib. I like to make funny noises and rest my hand against my chest and feel my own heartbeat. If I don’t make any sounds and listen really closely, I hear my heart make a do-do-do sound. Like a dial tone. I like to rock gently from side to side and pull my knees into my stomach tightly. I like to play with my colorful firefly nightlight that hangs from the side of my crib. All I have to do is knock my fingers against it and the fireflies light up and “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” plays.
But what I like most of all is my Fluffy Bunny stuffed animal. I like its long ears. I like its pink nose.
Sometimes my diaper has to be changed. I cannot change it by myself. That is why I hired a nanny to take care of me at home. I pay her thousands of dollars a week to change my diaper. She is very strong and I like the way she cradles me in her arms. She rocks me. She feeds me my bottle. She sings me lullabies. And when I have an accident, she changes me. She wipes me.
I like the feeling of Fluffy Bunny’s nose against mine. I kiss Fluffy Bunny over and over and over again while I rock gently in my crib. I like thinking about her body.
I like to make Fluffy Bunny open the blinds in my office so I can look down into the streets. Me and my co-workers like to refer to the streets as “the valley of the dead.” We like to watch the protestors yell and shake their fists. Most of them don’t even know what they’re yelling about. They were in such a hurry to grow up. They just wanted people to think they were important. Too bad they don’t know about me. They don’t know my secret: you don’t have to grow up.
You don’t have to live in “the valley of the dead.”
I stretch my arms and legs out as far as my crib will let me. I like when I’m in the crib because things don’t have to make sense. There is no “like” or “dislike.” It’s all feelings and smiles. Colors. I don’t have to think at all.
Fluffy Bunny sometimes cries in my arms. It makes it hard to sleep. So I squeeze Fluffy Bunny really hard and whisper, I hug you Fluffy Bunny because you are the best bunny.
Then I feel good. Then I know I am not afraid of myself and that I am a good person. -- Paul Cunningham
Horse Less Press
'Paul Cunningham holds editorial positions at Fanzine and Action Books. He founded Radioactive Moat Press in 2009 and he currently edits Deluge. His writing can be found in Spork, LIT, Bat City Review, BOAAT, Tarpaulin Sky, DIAGRAM, and others. His translation of Sara Tuss Efrik’s The Night’s Belly (Nattens Mage) was selected as a finalist in the 2015 Goodmorning Menagerie Chapbook-in-Translation contest. His poem-films have been screened in the MAKE Magazine Lit & Luz Festival, Seattle’s INCA: The Institute for New Connotative Action, AWP, and at the Museo Universitario del Chopo in Mexico City. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Notre Dame.'-- Horse Less Press
Excerpts
FRANK ZAMBONI
Eureka! Hear the fattest fifes and drums! An ice that hums! The bladewalk of the evening skatewalk has sullied the Ice Land Ice Arena yet again. But no matter! My rig and I are out of the barn and onto the post-knuckle buster rink to do some ol’ fashioned cleanup. On the by, I’m getting a bit of intense bleeding. [Radio chatter] Wholly goalie oxen bleed! You hear that?! Iris does it again! Going, gong, agog! A goal by a goaltender after my own tender heart! Record shatteringly! That’s how she does it! All those spectators said she’d never make it this far, but I know that type of joke’s-on-you jaw jacking all too well. Crazy Frank Zamboni, they used to say. And look at me now! Shoveling coal so fast I might end up feeding the bears!
(If you know what I mean.)
When he’s not busy erasing the Ice Land Ice Arena interior, he’s regaling tourists with tales of world-renown goaltender, Iris. She’s a guy’s guy’s prize for sore!
Every single light in the Ice Land Ice Arena turns on. Enter Iris, world-renown goaltender complete with a mean butterfly slide and goalholes one through five. She can cover them all, but it’s pre-season. Mating season. Glove side, high; glove side, low; stick side, high; stick side low. Fifth and final, between her armor-padded legs. That’s where she wields her slanguage blade, protecting her team from low shots and hot shots. You bet your ass there’s an I in her team. She deflects with zero regrets. When a save is made, blood is certainly shed. And she watches her own execution-style acrobatics on replay over and over and over. Another useless body another toothless bloodymug suction cupping up against the glass. Again and again. Always, always licking her frosty chops. Fava beans. A nice chianti. Slurpslurpslurpslurp.
IRIS
Call me Iris. Call me Mantis religiosa. Call me any, anytime. When the puck is advanced, the fuck is advanced, but not so advanced are these muzzled men cumming my way. I got all the talk-the-talk skateflock gamboys playing my tune. An ice that hums, viol-de-gamboys tuning me onto the stage of red and blue. Is this a stage? Or a dining hall for two? Maybe even a chapel. A confessional booth. Sounds like a honeymoon. And all these icy parabolic arches up in this auditoria! God, I’m praying for a preymate! I’ve devoured aphids, lizards, and frogs!—but lately I’ve been an injury risk to those predictable puck-controlling stickhandlers.
Game Day in the Ice Land Ice Arena marks the seasonal entrance of The Zanies. A cocky and cacti-muscled team of teamsters. Mean and green, the visored, penised bodies take to the ice wearing the appropriate padding. Each man, each body, one body with two long, curved stickblades for arms. The taller the longer. Prickly coxa bending into steamlined femur. Chunky green hookarms for puckhandling and slap-passes. Chunky green hookarms offering up a chopping block. A caulking block. Bodycheckers always bodychecking. Look at my striking cheek bones, they whisper. Look at my full-bodied hair. Sometimes someone even answers in the dark of the locker room, Nice abs.
IRIS
The Zanies are real stickhandlers. Always handling their sticks. Receiving my pucks on the blade of their sticks. Set them up with a fake pass. Send them a quick flick of my own hookwrist. Hahaha, I’ll pass! Instead I bodycheck them. Better check yourselves next time, boys. Meanwhile, I’m all box-baited by the idea of penalty!
Meanwhile, game-faced, I am hungry for meat!
FRANK ZAMBONI
She’ll blow your doors off. There’s no mercy when it comes to Iris! Any spectator who spectates from the gluteal-popliteal space of their cinema seat knows exactly what I’m talkin’ about. Trust me, no seat is comfortable when you’re eyeballin’ in the same stadia with that up-and-coming hotshot! Yes, yes. The rest of ‘em are bucket mouths compared to that big 10-4! None of their hookarm parts cause quite as much harm as the razor sharp tubercles she’s got hiding in the green of her mantis grasp! Her pseudopupil gaze is sure to engage. And distract! In no time at all, one of those jaw jackers will find ‘emselves on their back. I always suggest they bang a U-ee and call it macaroni, but what do I know?! I’m just crazy ol’ Frank Zamboni!
(I’ll prey for you.)
IRIS
Like a sturgeon. Scutched for the very first time. Like a sturr-urr-urr-ur-gin!
Forever a virgin. I never let those gamey beluga boys finish.
(If you know what I mean.)
A little caviar goes a long, long way.
Teaser 1: GOAL | TENDER MEAT | TENDER
Teaser 2: GOAL | TENDER MEAT | TENDER
Paul Cunningham Reading 12/11/14
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ABRIANA JETTÉ: What are the differences for you between writing poetry and writing nonfiction? Are there certain topics you believe best expressed as an essay rather than as a poem? Or, is your process much more organic?
AMY GERSTLER: I like your choice of the word "organic." It's a nicer way of describing the often chaotic, half blind way I go about trying to write my way into or towards something. I accept and also sometimes lament that Donald Barthelme's famous philosophy about the importance of "not knowing" seems to be a necessary component of writing for me, especially in the initial stages, most of the time. I'm not very good at mapping things out ahead of their actual writing. When I try, usually everything changes during the writing / revision process, anyway. Sometimes I set out to write something that I think will be an essay because it seems that it might need to contain a lot of research, that it might require a version of my own voice as opposed to a character's and /or that the piece leans towards the discursive/factual rather than lyric/imaginative. But even as I write that sentence, I find it hard to think of any of those modes as really separate. Some pieces I work on start out as essays and turn into poems, and vice versa. It gets even messier because I love reading and thinking about "hybrid literature" in which gestures and characteristics of several genres are combined in the same text.
ABRIANA JETTÉ: Is it easier for you to use humor in poetry than in prose?
AMY GERSTLER: It may be a little bit easier sometimes because I'm slightly more accustomed to writing poems than literary prose at this point. Also, in nonfiction prose, the voice/speaker is allegedly a constructed version of me, and I might find it a little easier right now to attempt to be funny when peeking out from behind a "character" or made up situation in a poem, might find that the situation or character provide or suggest their own opportunities for humor.
ABRIANA JETTÉ: Your interest in speech pathology seems evident in your work. I'm often struck by the sonic command and enchantment each poem possesses. Because of this, your poetry is a wonderful treat to read aloud. How would you describe the difference between listening to a poem and reading a poem? Is there something different that you are communicating to the audience depending on the presentation?
AMY GERSTLER: Being read to is a primary pleasure that many of us are lucky enough to have in childhood. Then we don't get to experience much as adults. It's a shame, because it can be beautiful to hear literature read aloud or recited. Like listening to music, it can be enveloping, and if someone is good reader, very transporting. Even if you're alone with a book on your lap, reading to yourself, you "hear" the sounds of the words in your head to a certain extent as you read. Otherwise, a lot of poetry wouldn't work very well on the page, and a lot of musically inclined prose wouldn't either. If someone reads to you, you can savor their voice, their interpretation and pronunciation, the ways they animate the text. Good actors are sublime at this. If you're reading to yourself, one big advantage is that you have the text right there, and can re-read parts, stop and look words up, and go at your own ideal pace, which might not be the delivery pace of someone reading to you. Literature is a different sort of time based medium when you're reading to yourself as opposed to listening to it being read or declaimed by someone else.
ABRIANA JETTÉ: What was it like to adopt the voice of a father and of a clairvoyant? Are they original voices or do you consider them to be characters in a narrative?
AMY GERSTLER: One of the things about reading literature that is such a miracle is that it allows you to briefly inhabit other minds, and/or commune with them, learn from them, take them on, know them intimately. I had wanted to be an actress for a while when I was younger, partly because I was entranced by the idea of "playing" someone else, that kind of transformation, trying to become a character different from yourself, to really work at that over time. My interest in writing dramatic monologues or persona pieces like the ones you mentioned stems partly from that early interest in trying to get inside another character/being to see what that would be like. If I understand the second part of your question: I don't consider the various character poems I write as being related to each other, or as part of some larger narrative (although that's a cool idea and maybe something that it would be interesting to try in the future!) They're usually just attempts to create and explore a character and their world, and/or a dilemma or situation the character is involved in, just within the confines of that particular poem.
Penguin Books
'Amy Gerstler has won acclaim for sly, sophisticated, and subversive poems that find meaning in unexpected places. The title of her new collection, Scattered at Sea, evokes notions of dispersion, diaspora, sowing one’s wild oats, having one’s mind expanded or blown, losing one’s wits, and mortality. Making use of dramatic monologue, elegy, humor, and collage, these poems explore hedonism, gender, ancestry, reincarnation, bereavement, and the nature of prayer. Groping for an inclusive, imaginative, postmodern spirituality, they draw from an array of sources, including the philosophy of the ancient Stoics, diagnostic tests for Alzheimer’s disease, 1950s recipes, the Babylonian Talmud, and Walter Benjamin’s writing on his drug experiences.'-- Penguin
Excerpts
A Sane Life
Leaf skeletons everywhere,
denuded wings. Faces one itches
to kiss bob by every few seconds,
but one must restrain oneself or risk
imprisonment. They're all yakking
on cell phones, anyway, humming
"You'll Never Walk Alone" under their
precious, measured breaths.
Insured to the hilt, have you any
desire to be thought of in your
grave? To see your visage gracing,
say, the ten-dollar bill? To chuck
all devices and live on crackers,
molasses, and the occasional tastily
prepared bug? To slosh your toxicity
outside the alembic of self, just to see
how acidic it is? To disentangle
each task's tentacles from around
your scrawny neck? Relax responsibly
a beer ad urges. And that means
while blitzed on our hoppy product
do no harm? We swallow sunlight
in pills, outlive our wits, and ultimately
get shunted off to rest homes tended
by underpaid strangers. Clean food
costs more than the poisoned kind.
Soft, tasteful clothes in natural-dyed
hues (paprika, cinnabar, and almond)
cost more than the bright, starch-stiff
ones also made by slaves.
SALE ON PREFAB YURTS!
My opponent's attitude toward
planet Earth seems to be simply
Good riddance! Come to think of it,
dispensing random, impulse-driven
kisses might be just the ticket, a great
campaign strategy, worth a day
or two in the clink. A friend
with inside dope says every cell
downtown's got color TV. He claims
our local jailers make great pizza.
Sea Foam Palace
(Bubbling and spuming
as if trying to talk under
water, I address you thus:)
Must I pretend not to love
you (in your present bloom,
your present perfection — soul
encased in fleshly relevance)
so you won’t believe me
just another seabed denizen
vying for your blessed attention?
Some of us (but not you)
are so loosely moored
to our bodies we can
barely walk a straight line,
remaining (most days) only
marginally conscious.
We stagger and shudder
as buckets of blood or sperm
or chocolate mousse or spittle
or lymph or sludge sluice
continually through us...
I love the way you wear your
face, how you ride this life.
I delight in the sight of you,
your nervous, inquisitive eyes,
though I try to act otherwise.
Being stoned out of thy mind
only amps up thy fearsome
brain wattage. Pardon my
frontal offensive, dear chum.
Forgive my word-churn, my
drift, the ways this text message
has gotten all frothy. How was it
you became holy to me? Should
I resist, furiously? Is this your
true visage, shaken free, flashing
glimpses of what underlies
the world we can see? Do not forget me
murmurs something nibbled
by fish under the sea.
After dark you’re quick-silvery,
wet /slick /glistening. Don’t
make me chase you, dragging
my heavy caresses, a pair of
awkward, serrated claws,
hither and yon. Give me a swig
of whatever you’re drinking,
to put me in tune with the cosmos’s
relentless melt, with the rhythms
of dish-washing, corn-shucking,
hard-fucking, bed-wetting, and
the folding of bones of other loves
into well-dug graves... may we
never become lost to the world.
Amy Gerstler is the featured poet on poetryvlog.com
"Dearest Creature"
Amy Gerstler: The Best American Poetry 2010
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'When Urs Allemann’s Babyfucker took second prize in the Ingeborg Bachmann competition in 1991, it didn’t take long for scandal to overshadow the novella itself. No doubt this partly had been Allemann’s plan; his incendiary title and opening line (“I fuck babies.”) seemed almost too readymade for any puritan or politician trolling for the latest example of cultural decline or artistic bad taste. To censorship’s shrillest proponents, Babyfucker set itself up as the easiest kind of target, and it worked.
'While it made for great press, the hubbub of the Allemann Affair (as der Spiegel called it) ultimately clouded the view of a remarkable piece of writing, an insular, halting, repulsive, and often beautiful meditation on language and time. Babyfucker’s narrator, a man condemned to be surrounded by creels of crying infants who he sodomizes, rapes, and then tosses back, spends the novella self-consciously babbling through a deconstruction of his own grotesque punishment. In the process, his “sentence” transforms into both a punitive declaration from a nameless judge and the narrator’s only tool for self-articulation. As he puts it: “I fuck babies. That’s my sentence. I don’t have any other . . . My sentence. It’s what I have. It’s what I am. I have to be dragged out of it. By me.” He’s a man completely locked in by his own language, and over the course of Babyfucker, Allemann locks us in with him.
'The sentence, as both temporal horizon and unit of speech, again plays a central role in Allemann’s latest short novel, The Old Man and the Bench. Here Allemann’s protagonist has been “offered a contract,” given to him and seemingly enforced by no one, to sit on a non-descript bench and remember the past. There’s a definite timeline in sight: “From now on he’ll come here every day. It’s his place of work. He’ll reminisce about his childhood. For five months.” ...
'Like Freud’s fort-da game, in which the repetitions of his nephew’s playing are read as an attempt to master painful experiences through replication, the old man’s stories recount past traumas, making them real again. But these narratives also act as trauma’s container and stabilizing frame. Allemann deftly mines this vacillation, charging the man’s dead end snippets with strange, inventive energy. Though we know his contract is elapsing, very little gets done. The old man’s language and actions remain suspended in a perpetual state of becoming, a “twaddle” (or ein fünfmonatsgequassel as Allemann calls it in the book’s German subtitle). Unsinkable desire inches along, but just barely; instead, we’re propelled forward through syntactical repetition, a weaving of sound that turns the man’s language against itself, at points rendering his twaddle into a spiraling music.'-- Michael Jauchen
Dalkey Archive
'The title character in The Old Man and the Bench has a contract that requires him to write, and he feels he should focus on his past. Yet instead of childhood reminiscences, the old man dwells on a series of mini-narratives about, for example, a love triangle among concrete towers, a chaste visit by two call girls, and the joint-by-joint cannibalization of his fingers. In the middle of these absurd tales, something like childhood memories appear, only to disappear into the stream of the old man’s ramblings. Urs Allemann’s virtuosic, lyrical monologue is at once playful and disturbing, recalling Dada, Kafka, and Beckett in its representation of what language can do when it turns against itself and its speaker.'-- Dalkey Archive
Excerpt
The old man has to eat something. Everyone eats something. Him too. To say nothing of drinking well then why doesn’t he just say nothing. Whoever sits on a bench for nine hours has to deal with hunger and thirst. It’s not enough to indicate that every morning at the kitchen table he eats two pieces of crispbread. Without butter. He’s never abhorred anything his whole life as much as he abhors butter. Just soft smeary butter only soft smeary butter he’s never abhorred solid butter. To be spread all over his two pieces of crispbread the butter would have to be soft and smeary. He’d never be able to spread solid butter back and forth on the two pieces of crispbread. The two crispbread pieces would fall apart on him under the knife. Crumbled up broken to pieces he would have a fit and smash the plate with the useless crispbread dust on the kitchen floor. Good thing it’s never occurred to the butter to do anything other than stay solid in which case he’s not disgusted and sticks it back in the icebox or get soft and smeary in which case he’s disgusted and throws it in the dustbin. Icebox dustbin since when has this geezer gone for local color antiquated lingo. Since when is this old man a geezer. Since when it’s not enough to allude to the fact that every night he gets drunk in his kitchen. He never leaves the bottles he’s finished on the kitchen table. Even when he’s dead drunk he still knows that in the morning some kitchen-table space will be required for the crispbread plate. Before bed he always carries the empty bottles over into the dining room that despite what he would have thought he sets foot in once a day for this purpose. He sets the bottles down on the dining room table. Once the table is covered he’s never calculated how long it takes to cover the table with bottles it’s once again for the umpteenth time time for Winkelried the breaststroke swimmer. Short performance no audience. He stands up in front of the long side of the table bends down and stage 1 with his head tucked down between his shoulders with his hands held together to form a handpointer he advances with his arms into the sea of bottles. Space for hand arm head chest stomach must first be conquered. A few bottles fall over that’s not worth mentioning. With his forehead pressed against the table surface he retools his useless hand pointer converts it into a double hand shovel by stage 2 turning his hands outwards away from one another towards each other so that now his hand backs are touching instead of his hand bellies. Then he takes a breath then he raises up his head then stage 3 his left arm with the left hand shovel and his right arm with the right hand shovel simultaneously sweep clean the left half of the table the right half of the table the whole table surface. All the bottles are lying on the floor most of them shattered some of them unshattered. Along with tonight’s bottles for whose sake the table surface has been swept clean. Exit Winkelried the breaststroke swimmer. No applause. But what does the old man eat what does he drink on his bench. No secret there. On the way from his house to the bench he makes a stop at the baker. Ten to eight sharp he buys three pretzels. The paper bag with the pretzels goes in his left coat pocket. The soda bottle he bought yesterday is sticking out of his right pocket. On the way home from the bench he makes a stop at the grocery store. At ten past five sharp he returns the soda bottle he finished that day and in exchange takes along the bottle he’ll finish the next day. Since the grocery store opens at eight in the morning and he has to be at his place of work at eight he always has to buy his soda the evening before. He doesn’t return the paper bag to the baker. When he gets home in the evening before he gets drunk in the kitchen he throws the paper bag into the living room that despite what he would have thought he sets foot in once a day for this purpose. He sits on the bench chews the last piece of the pretzel gulps down the last of the soda screws the twist top onto the bottle screws the bottle cap onto the twist top screws the bottle cap that is perhaps called a twist top onto the bottle’s bottle neck’s bottle neck end’s glass screw thread that might be called the twist top screws curses screws curses smoothes out the paper bag folds it sticks the paper bag in his left coat pocket the bottle in his right coat pocket stands up brushes the crumbs if there are crumbs off his coat goes home. Later on he’ll get drunk in the kitchen. On beer oh the beer he can’t get it in the grocery store from the baker sothenwheredoeshe.
The old man is offered a contract. Everything he says is treated as if it were on paper. Everything on paper is treated as if he said it. Excellent working conditions. Without thinking about what the contract might mean he accepts what he’s offered by the old man.
Twaddles eyes closed twaddles eyes open twaddles.
His life. There’s nothing to say about it. Knowing he had his childhood before him he quickly had it behind him. Five months is a long time. He no longer knows how long he’s been living alone in the house.
It’s hard to answer the question of whether the old man stinks. It’s likely that he stinks but not enough to make himself nauseous. A restrained foul-smelling odor that complements the gray of his hat and coat. Anxiety alms ass abscess old ocular offal evening excretions. The old man is not of the opinion that of all the letters A O and E have the most disgusting smell. A homeowner is not going to get alms anyway. He is not at all of the opinion that sounds that letters are fragrant or stink. Whoever believes such a thing he yells should be he pauses pauses too briefly punched in the face. His tongue ripped out if he’s talking his writing hand chopped off if he’s writing. But why is he talking like that. He tries to shake his fists but doesn’t succeed. Instead an involuntary wave of rage sends ripples down his back. Pathetic body tremolo. Man and bench as gray green yolk within the fragrance egg grayly sourly housing the yolk. As a yolk in a yolk. Suddenly the wave ebbs away. The old man is busy creating order. Him the cock’s treadle the bench the yolk foul smell egg white and shell. If someone were to get too close to him greet him lean over him still clueless sit down next to him his nose would break the shell and would become aware of the vaporous clouds of putrefaction rising up from the old man and hanging in the air around him. Creating order means recognizing that the first and innermost layer often called the kernel or empty coat is made up of gray flesh and the second and middle layer often called the skin or even wrapping paper is made up of the herringbone coat and in contrast the third and outermost layer often called the imperial husk or the celestial cloche is made up of the odor coating. Unfortunately the old man ascertains that what reaches his nostrils doesn’t always remain the same. What smelled moderately foul yesterday smells immoderately foul today. Skepticism would be out of place here. The old man stinks. But creating order also means identifying the source of the stink. It’s not the coat it’s not the scarf it’s not the old man’s gloves shoes socks that stink. It’s not the hat that stinks the stink emerges from under the hat. The old man’s flesh stinks. His words stink. That’s not the same thing. New questions emerge that are difficult to answer. Does the flesh stench recur in the words’ stench. Does the word stench generate the flesh’s stench. Would his flesh if the old man were mute stink less. Would the old man’s words if he were fleshless stink even more. He eats his pretzel takes a gulp of soda. Wonders if he should think something up to fill up the empty coat. Ties his shoelaces tighter. Looks forward to his beer.
To the left of the bench there’s a trashcan. To the right of the bench and behind the bench there are bushes. Unfortunately the old man has not been granted a tree. Alder he laments oak maple October. The rustling of the names of the tree of the names of the month. Cloudssunfograinwind. Dew and no dew. The first frosts. Hoar-frost. He’s not sure. Crows jackdaws. If he has to pee he steps behind the bench and does it in the bushes. But who wants to know that. In front of the bench there’s the path the bench is on. Beyond the path a field. Beyond the bushes begins the forest. The woods. He knows they wouldn’t be woods if there weren’t trees there. No consolation. No reason to turn around. The woods behind him don’t make up for the linden tree the beech the walnut tree the chestnut.
All he has is language. That’s why he hates it. Because he hates it he’ll bite his tongue off. Some day. He says so.
Urs Allemann
'A FURTHER READING OF URS ALLEMANN'
Urs Allemann bei Sprachsalz 2011
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'Do you know those days where you stay home and you’re in your bed and you only get up to open a wine bottle but you open the wine bottle the wrong way and half of the cork falls into the bottle and so you drink it anyways but you’re pissed so you drink the whole bottle and then you’re drunk so its time to watch reruns of The Office until Dwight starts to look like Jesus Christ and then when you’re done with that you get in the bathtub because you need to play Come Thru twelve times and blow bubbles with your mouth and try to figure out what your bathroom looks like it if were underwater?
'That is what it is like to read Leopoldine Core’s first book of poetry, Veronica Bench. Depressing, but necessary and oddly fulfilling.
'Here's the thing: I read almost everything on the train. I like the quiet buzz of people around me in the morning to mingle with the words (I also just like to have a book in my hand when a dude is manspreading next to me so I can turn pages obnoxiously). I get to be alone, but still be surrounded by people and no one gets to know what i’m thinking. But when I finished this book and looked up from my seat, I wanted to talk to everyone around me about it. I wanted them to be as excited as I was, and also just as sad. Then we could all collectively cry together and fulfill my dream of not being the only one constantly sobbing on the L.
'Her poetry ranges from short little fuck poems that make me laugh, to musings with god, to poems that seem like a drunk dream I had once on Zoloft, but much more elegantly crafted.'-- Probably Crying Review
Coconut Books
'It's important, you know," Core writes, "for geniuses/ to be sloppy/ It makes other people brave." Well, I rolled around in her slop and found an ecstatic, fleshy tenderness. I wanted to lose whole days touching myself and reverting to my egg beginnings. Of course, these poems made me love her, made me think I was the only person in the world to ever fall in love this way. In Veronica Bench Core exposes us, out-greeds us, jokes freely with us, and speaks better than us. You should be bathing with these poems, you should rub up against them, you should examine your own monstrosity more, you should dote on your pain, you should be ashamed you ever were ashamed of being meat, you should let others record your girlhood, your infancy, your fullness, you should stop trying to be a better person before you die, you should read this book until it’s memorized and then we can all be blissed out in its captivity.'-- Jenny Zhang
Excerpts
from Brooklyn Rail
Friday
Egg
Morning Cocktail
Video Tape
Leopoldine Core - EVERYONE LIKE HER
2012 Emerging Writer Fellows Reading: Leopoldine Core
Type exercise for the poem, Hush Robot by Leopoldine Core
*
p.s. Hey. ** Jonathan, Hey there, J-ster, my sadly missing Paris neighbor. Although count yourself lucky to be where you are at the moment given this heat wave. My back is inching steadily towards unobtrusiveness, thank you. I understand the Ghost thing totally, of course. The Darger show is terrific. Visit in time, if you can. And you can ride Elaine Sturtevant's 'House of Horrors' ride in the same venue. The Chra, yeah, agreed, obviously. I need to try the Jenny Hval again. I didn't take to it immediately. Yay, about our fave bookseller's re-ensconcement. I'll head over here, and I'll wish her your hello, if she remembers me. Cake! It's so hot here that one would need to eat that cake, if I know which cake you mean, and I think I do, within moments of purchase or risk a mouth full of spoilage, but no problem. That Pure Ground video made me want to revisit Industrial. For a second I misread your sentence and thought there was a Can/Bill Withers collab album. Whoa. Come visit pronto, man! x, me. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. Really? I was just reading somewhere yesterday that 'Love and Mercy' has been a surprise success in the States. No? The French reviews of 'Carol' circa Cannes were pretty high on it, for sure. I'm not sure when it opens here. ** Sypha Hi. You remember d.l. Billy! He's doing great, it seems. Yeah, I feel like whenever you mention music that you're into these recent years, it's nearly always big mainstream stuff, although you did get the Wire album. I remember 'Subhuman'. And what are the many reasons you're glad it died in the crib? ** Douglas Payne, Hi, Douglas! Lucky you to have seen Author & Punisher live. I just discovered them lately, and now my eyes are peeled re: the local listings. The Bingham story collection is very strong, I think. See what you think, though. I want the David Rattray book a lot! I keep forgetting about it. I knew him a little when I lived in New York. He was kind of great, very charismatic and stylish in a very unplanned for way. And an excellent translator in addition to his own writings. Good to see you! ** Steevee, Interesting. Yeah, seems so, and, yeah, logical. Do you know/like that Ka/Dr. Yen Lo album? I can see it maybe being up your alley. I'm kind of addicted to it at the moment. Ah, shit, about your eyes needing more time and more help. I hope using the Wipes will speed things up. Hugs. ** Etc etc etc, Hi, Casey. I suspect that if someone from, oh, NYC or Chicago, say, were plopped down in this Paris heat, they would think we were a bunch of wusses, but Paris isn't made for high temperatures, and the combo of, at the moment, high 80s temps and the city makes it feel apocalyptic. I'm not a big Houellebecq fan, but I'm not a hater either. His writing is good, but I don't find it that exciting. His provocations don't interest me, but the way they ripple out is kind of interesting. He's kind of like the French literary equivalent of Lady Gaga or something to me. I haven't checked out the Knausgaard stuff yet, but it's high on my list. I hate Frappucinos 'cos I hate coffee mixed with dairy products, but I might score an iced coffee. Thank you! ** Bill, Hi. The Sauna Youth album is really good. It's been on repeat in my headphones. Wow, Sta Prest and Kicking Giant, yeah, cool. Oh, my God, 'Bone Abacus' is so great! Wow! I love it! I'm going to share it on Facebook. In fact, ... hold on ... I just did. Really, really great, Bill! Holy shit! What are you going to do with it? Everyone, d.l. Bill is artist Bill Hsu, as a bunch of you know, and he's made this really awesome new interactive piece that you must, must see. Go here to Vimeo. It's called 'Bone Abacus', and it's a total fucking treat! Major kudos, Bill. I really love it! Didn't end up at Palais de Tokyo yesterday, but maybe today or asap. I'll let you know. ** Chilly Jay Chill, Hi, Jeff. Things seem as okay with the actor as is possible under the circumstances, so that's very good. I am a fan of the LA Paisley Underground bands/scene still. Yeah, that Dream Syndicate album is good. Its over-resemblance to the Velvets has become more charming with time. My great favorite/hero of the PU scene is Michael Quercio, who coined the term. I'm a huge fan of his band The Three O'Clock, especially, album-wise, 'Arrive Without Traveling', which I think is their masterpiece, and also 'Sixteen Tambourines'. His earlier PU band Salvation Army is very good too. Michael and I were going to write a rock opera together with the artist Jim Isermann in the late 80s, but we never got around to it, unfortunately. Sometimes the band The Last is grouped into PU, and their album 'L.A. Explosion' is great. Game Theory is another excellent PU-related band. Rain Parade did some nice stuff too. So, yeah, I'm a fan of that genre. How did you end up wanting to investigate Paisley Underground? I'll remember to send you my address today. In fact, hold on ... I just sent it to you via FB. ** _Black_Acrylic, Billy Lloyd rocks! Or pulses at least! I think he's from Leeds, yeah, if I'm remembering. I'll check the Fischer review of the Terminator. And will see what he thought of the inescapable Kanye West perf. Thanks! ** Thomas Moronic, Your fine brain is so not deserving of that unfair clogging. Nope, I hadn't found that new Xiu Xiu page, but now I get to! Yay! You're going to see London & KP & presumably OB too. Fun. Shit, I didn't know about the John Waters and the Richard Hawkins shows, shit, or I would have made a bee line. We didn't see very much art due to time constraints. The Carsten Holler show at Hayward has fun in it, albeit a little thin. I loved the Agnes Martin show at the Tate, but you have to like what she does. We almost saw the Alexander McQueen retrospective and a Bruce Conner show somewhere. But I'm drawing a blank otherwise, Have a blast! ** Kier, Dengasm, ha ha, nice. It's very rare that I even think to try to mutate your name, so I'm glad that that one landed on the money. I apologize in advance, but, oh, I envy your rain and rain, sorry. If only I had snapchat. Dang. Someday. So chickens are actually really dumb? I mean, they seem dumb, but I always feel really bad and weird thinking that. You were busy in nature yesterday. Nice. But not nice about B's absence, although ... today perchance? My day wasn't a lot. The heat returned in the late morning, so bleah. Didn't go to Palais de Tokyo. Too bleah outside. Just worked on stuff. I have to be mysterious, but Zac and I got a yes on "LCTG' from one cool film festival, and two no's from other cool festivals, and now we're biting our nails waiting to hear from three others, one of which is our dream premiere place, although I think they'll probably say no even though we hear they're very impressed with the film. We made a difficult film, and that makes selecting it a complicated thing that ends up having to do less with our film's quality than with whether its difficulty will create a problem, and that has its ups and downs, we're realizing. Otherwise, gosh, not a lot. Kiddiepunk and I decided on September 10th as the pub. date for my new literary gif book 'Zac's Control Panel', so that's exciting. For me. And ... nothing else. I'll try for more today, but it's looking and feeling like a scorcher outside, so all bets are off. How was yours? ** Schlix, Hi, Uli! Thanks! Yeah, sucks about the premiere being canceled, and, more than that, about why. But the ventriloquist seems to be okay. And the Hamburg gig is now the world premiere by default. ** Kyler, I like 'scooched'. I'm really surprised that Google doesn't think it's a real word. Wow, well, her affair with Frankie Valli must be pretty juicy because, maybe I'm wrong, but, I mean, Frankie Valli? Are there that many book buyers over the age of 70? ** H, Glad you liked the gig and the Billy Lloyd. He used to be a distinguished local here a couple of years ago. Oh, I might have time for the Thoreau. I'll look for it. Given your stated interests, do you know the writings of Paul Metcalf? He's a great favorite fiction writer of mine, especially the later works like 'Patagonia', 'Apalache', and 'Waters of Potowmack'. Oh, sure, I would be very happy to share your list of books here and help out however I can. Enjoy your day! ** Okay. Up there are four recent books I loved, as the post's title already indicates, and I recommend that you give them your consideration as readers. Thank you. See you tomorrow.