Birds of Prey

A City of Bison

2011-12-20T05:30:00.000-08:00

I have a The Alligators of Abraham excerpt called "A City of Bison" up at matchbook that I hope you'll check out.

In other Alligator news, the official cover is up at SPD. Matt Kish, whose work I have long admired (and whose book Moby Dick in Pictures is easily one of my favorites of the year), is the artist. I'm hardly exaggerating when I say it's probably my all time favorite book cover, and would be no matter the author.

PANK 50 Word Stories

2011-12-01T05:23:00.000-08:00

A special issue of PANK featuring 50 word (or less) stories guest edited by J.A. Tyler is up. I have a little tease from HIS BLACK MOUNTAIN in the issue, but, honestly, my writing is by far the least interesting aspect of this issue. It is loaded, loaded, loaded with great writers and their even greater words. I began typing out the names of my favorites, but it really does just go on too long, so, check it out.

Mud Luscious Press 2012 Subscription Drive

2011-11-19T10:11:00.000-08:00

'And your father said, “Each night my dreams are filled with the thunder of hooves. Each night your grandmother and the stain of her tears upon my clothing. Each night my school chums trampled in the streets and the houses of those I knew ground to dust and splinters. Each night, within my dreams, I weep the way I wept back then.”'

--from THE ALLIGATORS OF ABRAHAM

Want more? The MLP 2012 subscription drive is (for the time) going. This means you can get Gregory Sherl's THE OREGON TRAIL IS THE OREGON TRAIL, Matt Bell's CATACLYSM BABY, Ken Sparling's DAD SAYS HE SAW YOU AT THE MALL, and my THE ALLIGATORS OF ABRAHAM for only $40. That is a load of literary gold and for a savings of $20. My book, alone, will cost $15 once this offer has expired.

When Are You Going to Finish Don Quixote?

2011-11-19T04:45:00.000-08:00

My story about Orson Welles as a struggling artist struggling as an adjunct at a community college, "When Are You Going to Finish Don Quixote?" is in the new issue of Crazyhorse. This was one of those "rejected 20 times" before it was accepted pieces, so I'm relieved to see one of my personal favorites finally see the light of day.

Reviews & Interviews

2011-11-18T07:59:00.000-08:00

Recently, the good Jackson Nieuwland interviewed me about writing and writers and books and so on. That review is up now at HTMLGiant. Much thanks to Jackson for putting in the work.

Also, there is a wonderful review of How the Days of Love & Diphtheria up at PANK. There Kenny Mooney writes, in part, "I challenge anyone to say they have read anything remotely like How the Days of Love & Diphtheria." Many thanks to Kenny for taking the time to write such generous things about my little book.

And, finally, Edward Mullany has a very thoughtful and interesting review of Diphtheria over at the Matchbook blog. My thanks to Edward for this bit of writing.

Everyday Genius

2011-11-16T11:28:00.000-08:00

The first page of my next book, His Black Mountain, is up at Everyday Genius. Big, big thanks to Ben Spivey for including me in what has been a terrific month of literature.

Artifice #4

2011-11-02T09:47:00.000-07:00

The 4th issue of the great lit mag Artifice is now available for pre-order. I have a story in the issue with a number of great writers. My story is some early notes from THE ALLIGATORS OF ABRAHAM. So, check it out and order, order, order.

New and Notes

2011-10-31T13:47:00.000-07:00

Some excellent reviews of DIPHTHERIA have been finding their way into the world these last few weeks. Check out this one by Brandi Wells at The Lit Pub, this one by David Tomaloff at Specter, and this one by Amber Sparks at Big Other. These are the first three reviews to be written about my little book, so obviously I'm excited and humbled that these three writers took the time to say some nice things.

Otherwise, there has not been much to report for the last little while. Other than shopping my wares, I have been hard at work on a new novel, the second volume of a projected five volume work. This volume is to be titled HIS BLACK MOUNTAIN and aims to be about the relationship between an orphan and the Almighty as the boy grows into a man and learns about the world. Summarized like that it sounds a little bland, but you'll just have to take my word for it that it is shaping up to be something I'm excited about.

Autographs N' Alligators

2011-10-02T10:38:00.000-07:00

The next 10 who order my ode to love and loss, death and life, HOW THE DAYS OF LOVE & DIPHTHERIA, will receive an autographed copy and a newly composed alligator poem. And for those of you reading this who are thinking "Well, it'll probably just be a haiku" allow me to assure you this poem will not be a haiku.

How the Days of Love & Diphtheria

2011-09-04T14:53:00.001-07:00

"Now this boy and how he lived under the soil while you—. How he mewed and dreamed under your hooves and vibrations, how he lived and slept under the burning house, the sirens. How he lived in a land blacker than your blackest masks, blacker than the sky you built from the soot and ash of his house. Now this boy, pale and ribs and trembling. How he dreamed his father’s heavy voice. How he dreamed his mother, the rip of her hair pulled, the clumps of skin dangling from roots. Now this boy and the cool damp of their world of soil. How he clawed and dug and buried and tunneled at the sounds of horses rampaging and snorting. No rivers but rivers of worms below the only world he ever knew. Now no women in robes the way he dreamed, their hands cold along his groin, the way he dreamed their dead-blue lips against his neck. How he dreamed them in gowns, amorous and rigid for the fumes. How no women but the flesh of the dead he dreamed beneath the ground. How you hunted for him with your horses snorting and kicking at the soil. How your long teeth dripped for the boy you could not find. How the blood of his mother, the blood of his father, on your knives and teeth. How the vibrations of your rampage shook his skin. Your horses and their wild greased hair, their dripping slather. How this boy and a world of soil and the excavations that followed. All the trucks and men with shovels. All the shirtless men, their burned skin flaking like sheets of Bible paper. How they dug with shovels and spades and their blazing knotted muscles, their sharp dried throats. These men and how they dug trenches. How they called the boy’s name into holes. How the house burned white behind them. All the grasses of the valley gone black and the sky filled with soot and smoke. The rumble of trucks digging into the soil. The boy who would not be found."

How the Days of Love & Diphtheria

2011-09-03T10:20:00.000-07:00

I'm very pleased to announce that my first book, HOW THE DAYS OF LOVE & DIPHTHERIA, is now available for order as a Nephew of Mud Luscious Press. I'm quite proud of this book--it's probably the weirdest and most violent and most touching of all my writing. So, click the link and check out the excerpt on the page.

The Alligators of Abraham/ MLP 2012 Subscriptions

2011-07-23T10:25:00.000-07:00

It is my very great pleasure to announce that my Civil War-meets-alligators novel, The Alligators of Abraham, will be published in 2012 by Mud Luscious Press. You can pre-order now as part of MLP's 2012 blind subscription drive (blind meaning no excerpts, covers, but you know the names etc) along with Matt Bell's Cataclysm Baby, Gregory Sherl's The Oregon Trail is the Oregon Trail, and Ken Sparling's Dad Says He Saw You At the Mall. Obviously, I'm very humbled to have my little book in such a fine company and published by one of my absolute favorite presses and I hope you take MLP up on this very generous offer (4 books, $40, free shipping, $20 savings).

Briefly

2011-06-30T13:41:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I messed around on, here, mostly because I've been so busy working on my novel--which is (sort of) excerpted in Mud Luscious Issue 16. As always, a terrific issue from the MLP folks.

Also, James Tadd Adcox and I have some of our identity/blog switch collected here: Metazen and here: elimae and here: Anti-Poetry and here:Abjective.

All-in-all these are some of my favorite lit journals and I couldn't be happier about being associated with them.

Alligator Poem #26/ I missed a day because I was at the Mass Poetry Festival and then I was tired of all things poems

2011-05-15T03:52:00.000-07:00

Q: Where was your poem yesterday?

A: Inside of your mother,

dreaming and floating and hissing.

Q: What does an alligator dream?

A: Redness,

bottomless rot,

screams like static

screams like burst pipes.

Q: What are the noises an alligator makes?

A: Crunching

hissing

scuttling with black claws along floorboards

tiles

carpeted bedroom floors

Q: When mating?

A: Low moans.

Throbbing.

Inarticulations.

A: How is an alligator born?

Q: An alligator must kill the membrane

it is born into.

A thousand beaches are littered with the ivory tissue

of an alligator's first kill.

Alligator Poem #25

2011-05-13T11:34:00.000-07:00

Television eye opens: blurred landscape, blotted clots, black rims.

Television eye opens: blurred clots, blurred--

Television eye opens: blurred and blotted clots. The yellowed eyes of alligators. The green leather of their terribleness, black and silver in television lights.

Television eye: on leather.

Television eye: on hissing.

Television eye: on yellow teeth.

On eternity.

On black and white eternity.

On blood and leather.

This entire landscape is a smear in the television eye.

Alligator Poem #24/ for Tadd

2011-05-13T11:29:00.000-07:00

This is a day late because blogger wasn't working yesterday. On a related note, poem #23 is no longer showing up. Where did it go?

Wild dogs emaciated crouch against a cancer lit skyline, wild dogs, in their foam-blood licking black claws, grizzled paws. Against these cancer lit skies, these heathen landscapes, comes the beating heart of an alligator, the culmination of these leather days of holocaust.

Alligator Poem #23/ Bison Poem

2011-05-11T19:21:00.000-07:00

Remember those prairies vivid with the black tufts of bison. Their aimless mooing and slow paced grazing. How they trimmed the prairie grasses with lazy pride while all around them clots of arrows and the horrid yelping of maniacs.

Now only the swamps of alligators. The slow feeding of alligators. On dense clots of meat. On pond scum. On the floating of what was once alive.

Alligator Poem #22

2011-05-10T19:26:00.000-07:00

Dear alligator, your deadwater fumes are wilting the wallpaper. Dear alligator, your soul is a great lagoon. Dear alligator, your skull is on my desk. Dear alligator, your eyes are glass, obsidian. Dear alligator, there is no heaven for you, only more leather, only boots, satchels. Dear alligator, the obscenity here is the bolt gun into your skull. Dear alligator you float bellyside up and are hoisted with chains. Dear alligator, you swim my floors, you hiss. Dear alligator, the cats of the neighborhood are watching you. Dear alligator, none of them trust you. Dear alligator, they will never step into your throat.

Alligator Poem #21

2011-05-09T19:16:00.000-07:00

If we could find an alligator large enough
to fit inside
the size of a city
or a house
or even a car
we could live there forever
adrift in its heat
unchanging
within the moss and peat
of its leather.

Alligator Poem #20

2011-05-08T19:03:00.001-07:00

You have known your city become a city of alligators. You have watched their shadows blacken your bedroom window. You have laid awake for their hissing and scratching along the boards and walls of your house. You have watched their yellow eyes glowing like a thousand, thousand stars marking the night.

Alligator Poem #19

2011-05-07T19:53:00.000-07:00

now those blurs and black clots

the black and silver folds

light smeared and shattered

along dense and slow fields

what we cannot remember has been

older than those pockets housed

within minds

older than those bodies, than the oldest

of bodies gliding along black seas

those leather bodies older than all bodies

now those blurs smoldered

and puckered and clotted

and their images as if smeared

in dreams

now those blurs and bursts of light

flashed within minds older than all minds.

Alligator Poem #18

2011-05-06T20:40:00.000-07:00

an alligator does not think,
an alligator knows,
there comes no end
no alligator dies
not even when it is dead.
stitched into boots
or coats
an alligator slung motionless
in flatbed trucks
and sold for luggage
an alligator infested and bleached
ribcage alongshore lines
continues from the beginning
and beyond the end.

Alligator Poem #17

2011-05-05T19:35:00.000-07:00

to the child who wonders:
this alligator wanders
the forest inside you
as you carry its rank hissing
through all of your dreams.

Guest Alligator Poem #2: Post Nile Croc by Obed Sanchez

2011-05-05T19:30:00.000-07:00

My thanks to Obed Sanchez for sending along this alligator poem (now a croc poem to retain some authenticity).

“If they could, they would eat themselves,”

a sneak attack, a shudder, primordial sounds issue forth

Spiky razors crushing bone like rubber

Now they’re everywhere

In the pool chlorine and urine

Mix with blood

The swampy stench

The slimy ooze on the sidewalks

Consuming themselves to satiation

“they feed as if on life itself”

With overfull bellies

Turning themselves inside out with desire.

Alligator Poem #16/Little Red

2011-05-04T18:14:00.000-07:00

the girl with her hair the color of the burst sun. along the forest edge with white breaths and throbbing chest. she waits for wolves, dogs, strange hounds. their wicked tongues. their dripping lips.

she waits for what will not come.

those dogs who have howled their stench against her breast lie broken and red crunched and crippled in the forest. organ meat consumed. jaws of wild flies. lone dogs yet alive and yelping from within leather chambers.

instead she will know astonishment inside a humid mouth. she will find a wilderness of horror within ancient jaws. she will become a girl of redness strewn.

Alligator Poem #15/ The Ancient Mariner

2011-05-03T19:10:00.000-07:00

bodies buried at sea
wrapped in tarpaulins
in cinders
and still they wash ashore
mottled with crabs, with sea lice,
laced with weeds
soon into the bellies
of alligators
from wherein no ghost voice
ever moans.

Alligator Poem #14/ Dear Alligator

2011-05-02T16:02:00.000-07:00

Dear Alligator, I'm too young
to cut me open.

Dear Alligator, is that my mother
scrapping and singing in your hollows?

Dear Alligators, your eyes along
the dark waters of my ceiling.

Dear Alligator, be gentle

Dear Alligator, what will you find
but that I crunch easily?

Viny Poetry #3

2011-05-02T04:03:00.000-07:00

As a writer who, more often than not lately, wishes he had some skill as a poet, I'm thrilled to have an excerpt from my upcoming novel The Alligators of Abraham up at the third issue of the always wonderful Vinyl Poetry. Makes me feel good to see my words amongst the words of so many great poets (and some pretty fine Grocery Lists, too). Much thanks to Katherine Sullivan for putting my words up there.

Alligator Poem #13/Hollywood Alligators

2011-05-01T19:14:00.000-07:00

trained alligators are on television

hissing on white sheets

and devouring beds

while nearby women apply

moisturizer to their cracked skin.

trained alligators are on television

hissing poolside

and submerged in crisp blue waters

their eyes bloodshot

and their ancient minds crazed

for the chlorine fumes.

Alligator poem #12/The First Alligator (and it was good)

2011-04-30T19:28:00.001-07:00

the face of this alligator
along black waters
in the mist of the earth
in the crouch of all creeping things
in the dream of the first man
in the flesh of his flesh
in the blood of his blood
in the sigh of his sigh
along the neck of his wife.

Alligator Poem #11/ Three Stanzas

2011-04-29T19:11:00.000-07:00

I.
we wrote your eyes
against the sky
plucked them and cast them
slurred and streaked
what dim jewels dead in the mud

II.
we wrote your leather
into islands,
wild with gulls,
dense and drifting
the skin of the seas

III.
we wrote your brain
into our scripture
this crimson become cadences
we sighed over our sons
become older than we.

Guest Alligator Poem #1 by Kenny Mooney

2011-04-29T07:34:00.000-07:00

Our first "guest written" alligator poem comes from Kenny Mooney. My thanks to Kenny for sending this one along--it's terrific, right?

They stalk these corridors, damp hisses through dry dust, tails dragging over floorboards stained with black-red. They throw shadows against flat yellowing walls in these abandoned apartments, reflections in windows ghosting their bodies, jump cutting through pools of amber light. Their bodies crawl and slide over one another; heads turning against one another; jaws opening, showing teeth to one another. They fight and kill and devour one another. In these dry dust halls, under sick-orange lamplight. They gather around her bed, their scraping claws, hissing breath and grinning teeth, a song sung in the umbra, a hot hymn on the rotten stench of their writhing bodies. They arch their backs, open maws raised to the tangle of bedding and limbs. She hears them sing, her hospital white skin awakening, blood bleeding through cotton in cold water. Her eyes open as their song builds. Neon flickers against windows frames; electricity moves through polyester uniforms. She sits upright, her eyes collapsing gravity wells pulling the light into her. Her hands stretch out to them. Her hands stretch out to caress them. In these dry dust halls, their lowing moves through stone and bone.

Alligator Poem #10

2011-04-28T16:14:00.000-07:00

If you sang songs into this alligator

if you hoisted open its jaws

and called into the cavern

if you sat within the sweltering

and caroled

holding hands with your mother

and father

your voice would collect in the weeds

and echo back in the noise

of static and screams

in the hoarse moans of your mother

in the night

and the strangled gasping of a man

whose name you remember

only because it is your own.

Alligator Poem #9/

2011-04-27T19:26:00.000-07:00

There are birds hunched inside

This animal’s mouth

Living on small cities of meat and bone.

There are rivers longer than the rivers

You have ever known

Black waters

And ancient coiling tides

Pocketed by

The carcasses of water bison

And the silent drift

Of men in their canoes

Their low sunken eyes

The tilt of their rifles.

alligator poem #8/ Untitled

2011-04-26T13:56:00.000-07:00

on television they are killing alligators by the boat full. on television a live and thrashing alligator becomes an alligator weightless and outstretched with the report of one rifle and men in sweaty ball caps and men in flannel smile on camera and their teeth are brown flecks of tobacco and their teeth are missing. on television men in blue jeans and steel toed boots, men in leather gloves, men in rubber hip waders are teaching young people how to train rifles onto the backs of the skulls of alligators how to grab hold of the corpse of alligators how to haul these into boats with nets, with bare hands. on television men in rubber aprons teach children how to sell these by the flatbed truck full to leather merchants in the pond stink of their warehouses. on television children play house in the carcasses of alligators they build houses in the legs and toy soldiers from the tongues on television children live in the cities of flies erected on the skulls and stomachs of alligators they utter commandments onto their humming and squirming. they smear them to wings and wings to the dust.

Alligator Poem #7/ Those Rough Dead Winds

2011-04-25T15:30:00.000-07:00

You there child

In the hum of your

Mother’s moans

The brass thistle

Of your father’s belt

Those rough exhalations

Yellow eyes

Immutable and peering

Through tall dead grasses--

What have you said

into these rough dead winds?

Alligator Poem #6/ Into Valleys Unknown

2011-04-24T09:17:00.001-07:00

Today a breathe of light

A blossom of sound

Today the wink and all expanded

Into shapes and cadences and

Waves of measureless static

Oceans of hissing

And villages of leather

Today the first noise shouted

Into caverns

Today the first alligator we slew

and cobbled into islands

Into asylums

mausoleums

Today the first breath and the last breath

Today these clouds we clotted into smog

Today the eyes of the alligator

A newborn north star trembling

Winking

Radiating

gesturing

into valleys unknown.

Alligator Poem #5/ A New Beast Arisen

2011-04-23T16:00:00.000-07:00

There were mothers she knew, his mother and her mother,

& all felt the rough hump & how it grew

They cooed & they brought her tiny footed pajamas &

they helped him hang mobiles of pink ponies and poodle dogs

over the bassinet.

He thought how they could do no other,

although they must have heard the hissing inside,

an echoing whine, a trapped steam

from his wife’s mound.

& they surely smelled the peat moss

like a soil turned sour & dead.

Certainly he smelled it upon her side of the bed,

her clothes in the hamper.

When they touched her mounding hump

she said “did you feel it kick”

& by kick he understood she meant “thrash.”

& when she stood nude in the bathroom light

& complained of her breasts large & sore he knew she meant

“All of this, gone to waste,”

for an alligator drinks only the fluids of the membrane it

is born into.

& in the glow of the yellow light he knew the

shadow of an alligator floating

& at the doctor’s he watched it swim & drift

in waves of white static.

& there were night he slept

lost in fever dreams, or slept not at all,

knowing an alligator kills the membrane it is

born into.

& when she felt pain he knew it was struggling free

& his heart tightened

& soon he knew the green-black fluid it had made within her

spilled into the carpets & the gathering of

mosquitoes & soon the humidity.

While her screams & her pallor & the tendons in her neck

he clasped her hand & said, “Breathe!”

& by this he meant “do not die” & he said

“You’re doing excellent” & “I love you”

& by this he meant

“I don’t know what we will be

when this is over.”

& now she before him in tears & screaming

& now before him dripped in crimson & wailing

some new creature

arisen.

Alligator Poem #4/ Where She Found the Alligators

2011-04-22T15:09:00.000-07:00

In garbage bins lapping the chicken slick and festering in the disease and in her underwear drawers hissing into the silk and in the fridge licking the blood from the Styrofoam and in the sink observing the pots and pans like native prey and in the cupboards and scuttling along the floors and in the shower where it waited for her with yellow teeth and in the basement where they moved slow across the cold concrete and on the pillows where they knew the vibrations of her dreams and in her yearbooks where they found her in skirts and in her photo albums where they devoured her father’s black lab and slept in the back of his flatbed truck and gnashed his tires and where they found her mother sunbathing with her aunt and the screams of mother’s murder and the screams of auntie’s murder and they waited clasped within her diaries and locked within the scrawl of her prose where no thought seemed sacred and in their tyranny all words seemed fogged with hiss and blood and all words seemed heavy with leather and all words even the words for new boys and new daydreams seemed ancient and terrible and they waited for her at the top of the staircase with yellowed skins and they waited for her at the bottom of the staircase yawning with red mouths and they knew her through all of her ages and within all of her crevices and the drifted within the flow of her blood and the drip of her soul where they seethed, expanding.

Alligator Poem #3/ Aspects of Culture and Society Untouched by the Alligators

2011-04-21T04:57:00.001-07:00

Alligator Poem #2/ The Lost Tribes of Bison

2011-04-20T04:52:00.001-07:00

Inside the alligator

there are no metaphors

only the skin & bones

of fish

& deer

only the valleys we burned

in our chemical assaults

only the lost tribes of bison

floating milky eyed

along the stream.

Alligator poem #1: There were days when none of them appeared

2011-04-19T13:32:00.000-07:00

there were days of no hissing or before the hissing. there were days between you and she below or beneath or beyond the sounds of yellow eyes, of pipes broke apart, of alligator nails along wooden floors. these sounds were not always so.

there were those feasts you made for her and ate with her, there were days eating hot dogs, boiled and dripping, of mayonnaise sandwiches, of macaroni, days when you ate food and were not eaten, days beyond the seethe and moan of monsters endless and material, days of the first taste of kiss, of the first breast, of the first moment of tongue on chest.

and you have known regions beyond the regions of thrashing teeth and a rotten kill. you have known her mother and her father, alive and not gathered in flies, limbs and torsos and appendages.

you have known her childhood bed, you have sat upon it, made love along the covers, and heard the creak of its springs. you have peered beneath and known cobwebbed shoe boxes only, and you have watched the shadows and low corners of her closet and there within no eyes. and there within no teeth.

you know these sounds were not always so. you know there were days when these sounds made scarce a low moan beneath all the sounds you heard. and so they become all the more terrible.

The Ways We Were Eaten

2011-04-18T11:00:00.000-07:00

I feel bad about the way this blog has fallen into disuse. To combat this trend I am going to write & post an "alligator poem" every day for the next few months. I am not sure what I mean by "poem." At the close of this period I will collect these poems into a manuscript called The Ways We Were Eaten. Fame & fortune will follow.

Hold me to it.

This Fog of Ash

2011-03-20T10:57:00.000-07:00

I have a little story in Emprise Review #18 that you can check out if you like. The entire issue looks stunning (and the brilliant makeover isn't exactly hard on the eyes either) but right now I'm most into Tres Crow's Stillborn, J.A. Tyler's Kill Yourself (viii), and Foust's Box.

Updates

2011-03-13T06:49:00.001-07:00

Writing:
I am now contributing the new literature and culture blog, Plumb, with a host of talented writers like Matt Baker, Matt Briggs, Charles Dodd White, Laura Ellen Scott, Kirby Gann, Sheldon Lee Compton, Lavinia Ludlow, PH Madore, and Cynthia Reeser. It is an interesting crowd to say the least.

Reading:
I've been reading mostly texts on ancient egyptians, primarily their focus on the afterlife and in preserving the physical dead. I've also been focusing my energies on texts about attitudes on death along the millenia and, lately, have begun reading about failed excursions to the arctic. This is all research for my novel-in-progress, The Alligators of Abraham. I'm 32,000 words in, with a second draft of the first 90 pages near complete, and a second draft of the next 54 pages to begin tomorrow. My hope is to finish a fairly solid draft of the novel by June. We shall see.

Of the fiction I've consumed I have to say Lily Hoang's The Evolutionary Revolution is the strongest. This is a book with tremendous structural complexity as well as an emphasis on imagination that I really appreciated. This was the second novel of Hoang's that I've read and, I'll admit, I'm a little anxious to pick up another as soon as possible. Very very talented writer.

Alligators and (more) Alligators

2011-02-07T06:29:00.000-08:00

I have some alligator based flash fiction going on today. Very exciting stuff.

First, there's a brief bit at this week's SmokeLong Weekly called "The Lives of Alligators". Love SmokeLong, of course, and I'm pretty pleased to have my little piece featured over there. I should also say how happy I am to see William Warby's alligator art alongside my alligator words.

Also, the second issue of Fractured West is now ready for order. I have a little piece called "When We Lived Inside the Alligator" in the issue. Fractured West is a great new publication and I hope you check them out (check out their submission wishlist, too. Reminds me some of Artifice mag's wishlist.)

The Dream Team

2011-01-21T13:53:00.000-08:00

Amber Sparks and I recently arm wrestled Samuel Beckett to what I consider an even draw as part of Necessary Fiction's ongoing "first footing" writer-in-residence project. Much thanks to the mighty, mighty Steve Himmer for letting the Dream Team participate in yet another cool project.

Speaking of Steve Himmer: you can now pre-order his novel The Bee-Loud Glade and I promise you the book is well worth your time and money. In fact, I dare say once you figure in $ and the time spent ordering that The Bee-Loud Glade safely chimes in at quite a bargain.

More to follow.

Recent Reading goodness

2011-01-14T03:27:00.000-08:00

A few books I've read this year:

1) Fur, Fortune, and Empire by Eric Jay Donlan was a fair overview of the fur trade and, more importantly, the habits of various mammals slaughtered the last few hundred years in North America.

2) American Green by Ted Steinberg was a very enjoyable read. It is one of those non-fiction books where the topic (in this case the perfect lawn) becomes a sort of metaphor for America and, in this case, a criticism of American indulgence (among other famously American traits).

3) Dolly City by Orly Castel-Bloom is the only novel I've finished this year and the best novel I've read in some time, although I'm sure much of the satire is lost on me. Yet any reader from any culture or country will understand the anxieties, the fears, the horrors of this novel as witnessed by its insane narrator: The baby was still lying on his stomach. I put him to sleep, even though I still didn't know where I was going to cut. I tried desperately to suppress this drive of mine to mess with the child, I tried pacifying it with a simple enema, but to no avail.

What Dolly City has going for it other than the invention and horror and humor shown on every page is that the madness of the narrator is given little perspective. What I mean is, the text then becomes an insanity, a surreal series of bloody "operations" performed with no more thought or preparation than opening a pack of gum, and the relationship between events are given with a crazed person's logic. Late in the book there is an amount of distancing that allows the reader to understand what it needs to understand, but for most of the book this is not a book illustrating the madness of a mother, but is the madness of a mother. The politics of the book aside, I found it the truest story of the mother/son relationship I'd ever read.

Also, as I mentioned a few weeks back, I am now a book reviewer at Red Fez. My first review, of Andrew Borgstrom's rather excellent Explanations, is now up for consumption.

I should note, now, how glad I was that my first book as a reviewer was a book that, from the first page, was, as you'd expect from a writer of Borgstrom's caliber, a very strong bit of prose. I encourage everyone to check out Explanations (and, of course, check out the reviews, comics, poetry and other doings at Red Fez).

The Throne of Blood

2011-01-11T05:29:00.000-08:00

Last night we watched Akira Kurosawa's Macbeth remake, Throne of Blood, for the first time in a half dozen years. I always enjoy much about this film: the Noh music, the acting (especially during moments of frenzy and guilt), the sparseness and Buddhist sensibilities, the various ghosts and spirits. What I like most, though, is how Kurosawa manipulates (some may say "destroys") Shakespeare's text into something visually compelling (therefore appropriate to film) and completely unShakespearean. Most notably: the final scene when our "Macbeth" is shot through with arrows by his own army. It is a disturbing and horrific conclusion and one that is very satisfying. This conclusion has nothing to do with Shakespeare but it has everything to do with the movie we have been watching.

Too often filmmakers stand beside Shakespeare and say "You see what a good writer he was".

Here, Kurosawa doesn't sacrifice himself as an artist before the alter of Shakespeare any more than Shakespeare sacrificed himself before the alter of Macbeth.

For me, Throne of Blood and the other Kurosawa adaptations of Shakespeare do exactly what a film adaptation of a literary work should do. There is little more dull or offensive to me than the bland Hollywood adaptations of "serious literary" works by "literary writers" like E.M. Forester. These movies "faithfully adapt" a text into something quickly and easily digested by a viewing audience, very often with completely faithful accents, attire, and setting. You are not watching a movie, but a representation of a book you do not have the time or the inclination to read. You are watching a 50 million dollar translation of a work that, to me anyhow, does as much of a disservice to literature as recent editions of Huckleberry Finn and Moby Dick do, essentially reducing literature into something safe and dull and convenient.

These versions essentially say: We know you are bored with reading, but you are cultured and interesting people, people who like interesting and cultured and dare we say literate movies. Movies about adults. Or, at least, movies about characters with ideas and conflicts. Here is a work that is highly literary indeed based upon a, dare we say, literary work.

This is why I'm all for Baz Luhrmann's remake of the Great Gatsby although I don't believe it will make for a good film. At the least, though, it will be its own thing, which is all I really ask for. I only ask for a film to stand up as a work of film, not as a visual and easily, blandly, digestable version of a book.

The choice of Gatsby itself, of course, is something safe and dull and obvious, like an Oprah book club selection of Tolstoy or Faulkner (or the choice of Shakespeare, of course, in a way), but the idea of Gatsby transformed into something other than Gatsby, into something large and bombastic with show-tunes and dance numbers and 1990s MTV editing and 3-D is something, at the least, beyond the Hollywood conception of a literary adaptation. Which sounds good to me (even if the movie sounds dreadful to me because I hate show tunes and dance numbers and 3-D).

This idea of film is one inspired by a literary work, not an adaptation that doesn't treat literature like 90 year old woman walking across a block of ice. It is an adaptation more in the spirit of Orson Welles remaking The Trial than it is in the spirit of the dull and lifeless 1970s Robert Redford take on Gatsby, a version that has effectively served as a Sparknotes stand in for several generations of high school students.

Honestly, I'm surprised this movie is being made, but to my mind if a book is being made into a film it is either: A) a book that a producer has heard of therefore a very "famous" book B) a big seller. So, with this in mind I propose two other filmmaker/"classics" pairings.

1) Wes Anderson remaking Moby Dick.
2) David Lynch remaking In Search of Lost Time.

Others?

Returned from [the blackness of] His throat

2011-01-03T07:30:00.000-08:00

Happy 2011:
So ends December and so too ends a month of collaborative projects. Many thanks to James Tadd Adcox for being me and for allowing me to wear his prodigious skin.

Also, thanks to Steve Himmer at Necessary Fiction for allowing me to spend a month working with a truly brilliant crew of writers. Thanks goes, also, to those writers who participated in (really, you all carried the entire show if I'm honest) what I believe was a successful month of remixes.

So now I'm back to the man I have ever been. Returned now to the voice from my own black.

To that end:
I'm in the midst of a new novel, although this novel is mostly a revision of an old novel. Yes, I believe this book is essentially a more traditional version of my novel in stories from last year, The Ancient House. By more traditional I mean I am thinking more in terms of Pynchon's Mason & Dixon (a book I am forever laboring through--I mean, it's a tremendous read but I simply cannot fit the physical structure of the text in my book bag) and Faulkner's Absolam, Absolam whereas the first version was a little closer to Blake Butler's Scorch Atlas and the novels of David Ohle.

To prep for that project I'm reading about embalming, the history of death in our culture, the fur trade, Abaham Lincolin, Sarah Palin, alligators. I essentially want to write the strangest, funniest, most disturbing work of literary fiction... ever. Or at least since Rabelais walked the earth. We will see.

Finally, in other news:
I'm also going to be doing some reviews for Red Fez. Should be fun. I'll update as that happens. Should be interesting as I've spent the last year or so developing a style of writing that is in every way anti-antalytical. However, I do have opinions.

the death and funeral pyre of

2010-12-31T08:23:00.000-08:00

I.

the death and funeral pyre of your wife and boy WE ARE FINE wife the static and dead air of the television BE CALM wife, crouched in the basement, skin alive with “near misses” a nightmare of cold blue concrete floor BE CALM you are my son and you are my wife WE ARE FINE WE ARE who may yet live, their strange hearts, who may have been BE CALM WE ARE FINE BE CALM BE CALM are fine, my wife, be calm, our strange hearts, the death of our cold wife and boy BE CALM my heart, my wife, my nightmare of blue concrete we are crouched, we are alive, we are in the basement skin alive, you are my son and BE CALM you are my wife, firm and large in the ways he once knew in the mother “Please I want to see” WE ARE FINE “Please I want to BE CALM BE my wife, the mother, the death of our strange hearts, firm in the ways he once WE ARE we are fine, we are calm, our hearts static and cold, concrete BE now pulling and unraveling and unsnapping until these, pink and erect and what he so long BE CALM WE ARE FINE BE scurried, exposed, free and how, lips, hands, out of consciousness WE ARE FINE pale pale pale pale WE ARE FINE BE CALM WE ARE within the walls, ghosts, voices “Please I FINE WE ARE CALM WE ARE concrete ghosts, these voices we so long FINE BE CALM WE ARE FINE WE ARE FINE WE ARE CALM you are my son and you BE CALM BE CALM are my wife, pale pale pale and fraught, so long free, so long these voices, firm in ways he once FINE knew once alive, we are calm, WE ARE CALM, we are calm and we are calm, we are pale pale pale and we, we, we, BE CALM WE ARE FINE BE CALM WE ARE FINE BE CALM WE ARE FINE BE CALM WE ARE WE ARE WE ARE WE ARE WE WE WE WE WE WE WE WE WE WE WE WE WE WE WE WE WE WE WE WE WE WE WE WE WE

II.

Be calm.
We are fine.
Be calm.

2010-12-30T10:11:00.000-08:00

James:

You dream your skin gone. Do not worry over it. Most artists worth your time were not exemplary people.

Your skin would hold the pain that you didn’t have strength for.

It’s always easier to blame the other person isn’t it? Failure is an intimate process.

An experienced writer can quickly observe your tricks, their effect, aimless, competitive, petty. There is of course no accounting for taste. Fighting for control with asides and personal reminiscences, snickering… this imposter only verifies what I’ve felt. There’s a flatness. One incident of people being bad or getting punished after another. But empty. I hardly remember. We both knew I didn’t have plans, I never had plans.

Your voice, echoing inside your cavernous skull. Even with eyes we get too isolated.

Different subjects infect your mind.

I am on the outside watching all of this. I am Robert. I am now x years old. Something happened and here I am.

you must learn to appreciate Robert for what he is, a blind man who is more than the sun

2010-12-29T13:38:00.000-08:00

Hunched over and pulled off a strip of white birch bark like onion skin because he laughed, apologized. Silence of skin on skin. I’d had opportunities, she said, that J. had never had because he had dedicated himself to the farm. And then I always take my first two fingers right to the skin, damp, the soap film still there, and then them down along the side of my leg, down to the bubbles, and down then further. Because you think someone might get a little drunk. In the washroom and soon my skin was rife with gooseflesh. Maybe he thought because he’d died once he was exempt from any real fear. Only J. could do anything for himself and sure enough he came stumbling out of the smoke with his pants half smoldering and his skin burned away. Gone into the cloud or was that smoke, gathered and gray.

Because my food is gone and starving cats yowl from my stoop. Because we have seen it, he will wake chained to the bed-frame. You dream your skin gone to ash—

J. exonerated for his crimes, no mention of guilt, of horror, of night-sweats for our “hero.” No mention of the heat of my skin, of the sun, of my lips upon his chest. Now the tightness of your breath as we stretched over each other, gutless skins, empty bodies, spread further, devouring, what is it you clasped? Under shifting outlines of bodies, under ticker tape, under stolen names, “on the run,” “hidden in the most absurd and childish places,” “sorcerer.”

Because it is death to live otherwise. By ‘against the law’ I mean this boy and the cool damp of their soul. Now in those days a city, a burst of light. Now a woman vibrated into her own shadow. Now no women the way he dreamed, cold lips against his neck. He woke and crawled to me from within, he, what a lit match does to canvas.

I’d told J. in the same words. Thrown to the ground, palms bloody. There was only that heat: you are dying, you begin to scream. J. knows nothing but strange fictions. Eat nothing, curl into a worm, kick if you like, drown, figureless and beneath. Scoundrels, I will shoot them in the face. Here they will make soap of you, here you are just as quickly a man with a shovel as a gull or dog, and only smoke is returned. For now legs arms nipples tongues pink painted toe nails giggles and smiles, for now dozing, shouts and moans, for now musk ducts and long teeth. J. quickened with blood and limbs. Men call out “buddy.” Men call you “buddy.” You don’t have to explain anything to me.

“two boxes of pages I assumed were his new novel and the various film scripts he stooped to work on”

2010-12-28T11:05:00.000-08:00

Every day scientists are making new miracles happen. I like the flashes out of time—the idea of them more than the actual demented realism.

One of the big problems has always been getting the alien to do something or mean something. We run into him and drive away and then run into him again.

Several times you say ‘we’ instead of ‘they.’ I guess you are slipping into remembering, a wonderful scattered sensation like air.

Should someone have died?

If I was afraid I didn’t know it.

I sometimes distrust a person who goes out of their way to let you know they appreciate your pain. It’s realistic but it isn’t hungry, if that makes sense. Imagine getting this far only to die of malnutrition.

Strange animals, massive when Pedro suddenly shows up, awkward with everyone. As if hypnotized by a circus fortune teller the ones that make you do things that you wouldn’t normally do.

I like the impact/horror of being kept locked up for eternity with the self. Everything in one voice.

Where there would have been a ceiling was a desire.

Where there would have been a desire was intoxicating.

stories of his dreams, a larger than usual

2010-12-27T14:52:00.000-08:00

This new man, the phony I, coming to Robert saying, “Listen here we been talking, her and me, and we’ve been thinking maybe it’s worth considering—now don’t take it the wrong way—but I was thinking of our potential, how we can work wonders.” He tells stories of his dreams, this phony Robert, this new me, of larger than usual ambition, of the unspeakable. His dreams: shirtless aged father’s gnarled nipples and hairs white, horror and confusion, stripped to undershorts and shivering, spindly arms. Of course in these visions Robert cracked the asshole good and then gave a boot to the eyes (the man, the phony me, no clear face but expression of hurt and fear and eyes express this fear in the way all eyes open like a trout soul shouted with absolute terror). Maybe kill the son of a bitch then, brown blood-stained towel round Robert’s neck, breathing old air. The gravestones. By evening too drunk to walk. Thinking, There are too many memories here. Soon we’ll fit into the skin of better men.

I (almost) wish I had a young child or two so I could put this knowledge to good use

2010-12-25T12:26:00.000-08:00

Christmas miracles in neat red ink. The route by which you imagine the murderers escaped, shackled to the idea of wife and child, home. Some peculiar sensation lighting up inside me like dozens of little Christmas bulbs. Recall: a “rather attractive brunette” hauling “enormous suitcases” up the winding stairs. Later found under the floor boards in the basement, alone, fat with kid, gasping and eyes. Six hundred in cash split between us. Christmas in the background, the head lights through the snowfall like moon beams. I lay there engulfed, listening to Bing Crosby dream of a dam split and devastation. A crowd formed around me. I’d been reduced to infant size by the city. Wreathes coiled with green and red lights from every street lamp and phone pole, lighted garlands across the street at the end of every block, dipping under the weight of our new small love. White Christmas and other animals. Businessmen with arms full of secret packages. A code. The lights making me think of Ma and Dad and how we used to drive around the rich neighborhoods on Christmas night, to admire.

Recognition of the forces that make us different is a clear step towards experience

2010-12-24T13:30:00.000-08:00

Yes, we were both mostly happy and in love except that her personality may have been suited to a lifestyle of animal butchery. An island. Before your people. She came in, her face red from exertion, all the intelligence and misery of the human balanced within her skin. Would you like a glass of water? No reason to speak, each understand simply without thought the quickening of the other’s breath. We will examine these lives, the highest splendor…they disappear, they always disappear. There is no reason to speak even if awe and fear did this, shrouded in curtains. We learned to not breathe heavily. We learned the slightest flinch—we

The girl clearly states what she is not.

When the wolves were gone she switched to mother and wife.

The Good Young Man

2010-12-23T08:32:00.000-08:00

I.

Charlie laughed.

Pete: Watch it Charlie—

Charlie: —women?

Pete: Charlie…

Charlie (his eyes black): Shhh.

Voices: “Charlie?” “Charlie?” “Charlie?”

Boy it was cold.

Pete: Probably, man.

Charlie: Never you mind woman.

II.

Imagine if a man don’t do what God says. Certainly his hand never shook and his eyes never teared.

Pete: What man?

Never. I’m a little boy. Eyes. White.

Washed his hands without the hand soap. The old man put a hand on Peterson’s neck. Charlie’s eyes shifted to Clarence. The old man half turned away and whistled.

Old Man: An honest man owes money to no man, Pete. You got your mother’s eyes.

Hands on hips. The old man spat and again.

The Dead Man: You boys mind if I sit with you?

Linda: You’re an old woman, Nick. Please Nick. Old! Never mind. Nick! Slow night? Charlie! Charlie!

The old woman nodded.

The Dead Man: —You’re an old woman, Nick.

Linda: Please Nick. Old! Never mind, Nick. Slow night. Charlie!

Charlie: The old woman nodded.

III.

The boy steps back. This boy who needs help? The boy speaks up.

Boy: We’re— (The boy pauses. Eyes lined the walls—)

Pete: Ah my boy! My boy. Dead…

Old Man: Sailor boys huh?

Pete kissed the boy’s forehead. Pete rested his hand on the boy’s shoulder.

IV.

The old man wore his Bin Laden mask. Jarry stood before the old man and the old man laughed. Faces lighted by fire.

Old Man: Your little boy! Preferable to dead boys or dead dogs. —The old general… The old general—Oh if only, if only, he must have thought. “Dead?”

Pete: A boy Orson—he’s—

Father laughed. The man’s face was a grayed smudged. Soon, almost a man.

V.

How the boy watched the mother in the lighted windows. Who are you, little boy?

Boy: You old idiot.

The boy nodded and held the man’s hand, faint and moist. How the boy cooed and stroked the man.

Boy: Oh Father!

Then Father returned. Poor Mother.

Father: Don’t.

Then Father spoke.

Father: All right, all right.

Boy (my eyes on his face): Wife! Father!

Father: Hardly, young man. (His hand shook, however.)

Boy: Never.

Father (as sophisticated men): Boy.

VI.

“Wife? I thought. “Charlie?”

Charlie: The man cried.

Women: Charlie?

Charlie (smiled): Mr. Jack big man.

Young Man: Yes, I. Your father’s older. Pete?

Pete: Even if he did. Old, old man, I saved American boys and I shot gooks.

Young Man: Pete—

Pete: I’m gone, man. A big man.

Young Man: Pete?

Our hands entwined. Pete… If only mother knew!

Mother? Old cow.

The old man brought me home a birdcage. The old man might hear, after all.

Nick: Nick. Nick cried. Nick opened his eyes. Nick nodded. Nick nodded. Nick?

We shook hands. Black. Charlie shook my hand. Falling face-down. White-faced, sweating.

Nick: Pull yourself together.

2010-12-22T17:23:00.000-08:00

Recall apparitions doomed to watch you at play.

Recollect the end, the past, in fits of anxiety. Discuss Robert in a relationship with his unnatural and devious lusts. Oppress the ghost and ash of the first wife, the first child.

Stagger through what’s at stake: tender accusations of infidelity, inversion, the smell of dead fish, raw nerves. Factor in their/our constant quarrels, the punching and cussing and biting: “dreadfully abused”; “nearly took the ear off.” Recollect certain scenes between the girlfriend/wife/whatever and the moment he/“he” disappeared.

Explain “Animal Lover.” Explain “Anne Frank.” Explain a little more about trying to figure out why. Explain how dialogue is the skin of a large dangerous animal, a white pink thing, trembling and mewing. Explain how tension is a disease.

A toughness born of obstinance. Coddled skin is easily abused.

Crimes of passion are common on these brutal outskirts and powerful enough to crush bone.

what am I known for

2010-12-21T05:10:00.000-08:00

What am I known for, do I have an allegiance to a particular critical school, am I known for my work on a particular story/author or am I known for other works? Am I worth the rope, his skin, the accident? How could I face my wife and in-laws with any story? No more to the face: everything cut and busted up too easy, the eyes with the lip and the nose. Certain hack work takes an amount of polish and vision, yes, that ridiculous shout of “ !” and the crack of the flashbulb: I know what you did you lousy b—— and I’m gonna get my life back no matter what. I was angry, frustrated, sometimes belligerent with my writing failures, she was tired from working all day, I took her thin, frail wrist and pulled her toward the frightening stillness of my failure. She’s drunk and a fool and he’s abusive, merciless. Pulling her thinly covered breasts in close to me and then the rest of her figure until we were crying, a fun thing, a happy fucking moment.

"Drunk Girls"

2010-12-20T11:27:00.000-08:00

Cheap terror tactics disintegrating the Hulks and the Fantastic Fours, strange alliances snapping off and writhing like snakes when they’re electrocuted. Several thousand miles from France, “the monument of all your stupid smoldering nightmares and collapsing horrors,” the Café Enchante was obliterated by what the papers assumed was a pipe-bomb sewn into an infant. The bakery La Madeleine was exploded by two pipe bombs tossed from a bicycle. Perverts and vandals are caused by a breakdown in the American character, by “love” and “diphtheria.”

the screams of decadents, vague glitches and clicks (beautiful in the night air). —Flickers of electronic language.

into the peaty water, and then I awoke

2010-12-17T08:54:00.000-08:00

…an illumination, with a subtle destructive composition.

When referring to _____ or _____ it is important to remember the definition of a hero.

Many recipients of satiric ridicule laugh along with their tormentors and survive the event by being in on the joke.

Our heroes become dust and our fathers long to be dust.

On the other hand, a target who is without any sense of humor or sense of their own pompousness is going to get the wind knocked out of them; which is totally the point.

The illumination of a person's windbag hypocrisy via satire is the whole purpose of the venture.

2010-12-16T11:55:00.000-08:00

…children laughed together without suspecting they were being watched, children with wide scared eyes and then on a baby sleeping in its mother’s arms, children should go someone said, children whispered to each other & children we lay rigid in our beds, sheets pulled taut to our chins, staring upward at our glow in the dark constellation, mentally gauging the strength, the solidity, of the earth far below, children be serious, children frankly quite bad, children you know nobody nowhere is entirely quite safe ha ha children take heart!, children grinning, circling gulls, children as we imagined them, children wept for burst eardrums & children will watch faces curled like roses, children trained by those hallowed methods long preferred by the old man, methods long a secret, now free to all: “Use the method judiciously, children, bust open the New World and impregnate mountains,” children long ago grown and died, the dens where the jackets and the leather bound volumes and pipes of fathers lay, children and news stations, the death and funeral pyre of your wife and boy, the narrow escape into the winter cold by your wife and boy… children devoured, smoldering on the news, children from forty yards off—their backs steamed before their hair burst to flames!, children will soon fade to nothing, children stalking along our floorboards, lingering as shadows outside our windows, when we wake screaming, children washed along the beach, small as birds, children but especially shrunken men, ah, children’s names— children’s rooms, in their closets, on their beds, children, your children, taller houses, children gone: children who fled up the ladders, now visited these museums and prayed to the bodies of these…

Everything I Have Ever Written about Alligators, Clowns, Redacted

2010-12-15T10:49:00.000-08:00

I’ve grown concerned about the alligator problem. The skins and skulls of alligators, a billion years old, swishing and growling and hissing. Always a funeral: men, banished, born into the full articulation of crimes, the only monster older than briefcases and the nests of birds. You understand—he dreamed grey dust, open mouths, black lives allowed to shape us. How those men rode along obliterated streets. Screams spread along the walls of a crimson house, the father, the ghost, the last sounds of your old world. The death of your crops and your dead fathers. Their mouths, grown wild, may fend for themselves, most of the time, teeth, mist and blood staring and screaming into the mouth of day. Glenn Miller, as if made of lead, as if our “eternal boy,” digging holes as deep as bodies. Children in your walls, under your porch, wedged into your doghouse, crawling up your chimney, sleeping on your wife, smearing her lipstick, stuck and hanging under the floorboards and in the basement, covered in fat gnats and leaches, flailing in stagnant pools, hissing nonsense, hissing backwards. On your recliner we found the father and mother, eating maps and cameras, leaving the remains, the skulls, the faded angels. The lost father peering from from dank places; the mother, fat on birds, feathers, tongues and bones. When you were a boy you woke to fire, moans, and ash. You knew nothing of how all land emerged from our alligator streets.

Everything I've Ever Written about Alligators, Clowns

2010-12-14T14:10:00.000-08:00

“Don’t tell your Mother,” your father said from his lawn chair, “but I’ve grown concerned about the alligator problem.”

A city of flatbed trucks brimming with the skins and skulls of alligators, with the black and green and brown figures of leather and flies.

A given alligator is a billion billion years old.

A given alligator is a billion billion years old.

—alligators swishing and growling and hissing—

Always a funeral with clowns, always a clown show with mutes in white face and polka dots, with men banished beneath the ruffles and the soundless gestures of mimes.

An alligator must murder the membrane it is born into.

By the explosions of oxygen tanks and rye whisky you see, finally, the full articulation of alligators wandering and swaying in the dust and soot, their red mouths.

Everywhere clouds of dust and ash, the walls of what was once the aviary grayed with soot and dust, and where the old general once sat articulating the nature his crimes, now, alone and hissing, the only monster older than he, the green armored alligator.

Flatbed trucks overstuffed with the carcasses of alligators shot through the back of the heads or brimmed with those skins of what were once alligators, now the figments of shoes and boots and briefcases and the homes of rats and the nests of birds.

From the old general’s eyes you understand he knows knives would break against the alligator’s eyes.

He dreamed alligators, gray dust smeared on their green lips—

He forces you to watch the alligators below, their red open mouths, their lazy gliding along the black sewer waters.

How different our lives would have been if we had known the alligators, allowed them to shape us.

How his skin seemed the skin of an alligator and how the kitten alone knew him.

In those days men with skin like blackened alligators rode bicycles along ancient obliterated streets.

Later, your mother and the alligator, the rhythmic squeaking of the mattress, her screams as it consumed her.

My wife wore her hair in curlers and spread the wallpaper along the alligator’s pink flesh walls, while down the river floated the husks of murdered bison and antelope.

Not to think of the man who moves his family into a crimson house—of the father who drifts his family into the mouth of alligators.

Now, the only illume from the yellow eyes of alligators, the ghost wane of gases and thereafter, the last sounds of Pierrots echoed throughout the valleys.

Of your old world, only the alligators survived and after the death of your crops and industries, your sole occupations became the growth and development of alligators.

Soon the dead fathers and their respirators descended by their rope ladders only when they desired your alligators for their parades, their circuses, their amusement parks.

The alligators prodded the meat with sticks, their mouths grown wild.

The birds—if they don’t try to live in the alligator’s mouth—may fend for themselves.

The guy’s a real clown, most of the time.

Then I, without regard for the teeth and humidity, the mist and the blood, the birds clawing and staring and screaming, moved my family into the mouth of alligators.

This alligator digests a buffalo a day.

Through the days, radio blaring dead noise and static, radio flickering into life for a sparkle of Glenn Miller and then sputtering out, as if an alligator were made of lead, as if no possible noise of life were allowed within our eternal creature.

We did not have alligators when I was a boy.

We found alligators digging in the warm soil, digging holes as long as trenches, as deep as their bodies.

We found alligators in your children’s rooms, in their closets, on their beds, shoes laces and ribbons dangling.

We found alligators in your walls, devouring each other and hissing, so much hissing your house seemed a house of steam, of burst pipes.

We found alligators in your yard, under your porch, wedged into your dog house, crawling up your chimney.

We found alligators sleeping on your wife’s side of the bed, on their hind legs and rifling through her underwear, smearing on her lipstick.

We found alligators stuck and hanging out your chimney, wheezing and dying.

We found alligators under the floor boards and in the basement, swimming in the oil furnace, eating the plastic Christmas tree.

We found the alligator asleep in a ditch by your house, covered in fat gnats and leaches.

We found the alligator flailing in stagnant pools, murdering the names of you and your dead brother.

We found the alligator hissing nonsense, hissing backwards.

We found the alligator, fat and yellow, bulged on your father’s recliner.

We found the alligators digging holes in the soft dirt of the cemetery, where your father and mother lay.

We found the alligators eating the maps and cameras and shopping bags the tourists carried.

We found the alligators eating the tourists or murdering the tourists and leaving the remains to putrefy.

We found the alligators under the yellow moonlight, piled and shot through the back of their skulls.

We found the alligators wandering ancient cemeteries, hissing at the chiseled names, the faded angels.

We found the bleached skins of alligators, the skulls of alligators, the lost bodies of our alligators, where your father left them all these years.

We found the stray eyes of alligators peering from apartment windows, from dreams.

We looked for the alligator in dank places.

When found the alligator was eating old portraits of your mother, crunching the frames into splinters, into twisted tin and steel.

When found the alligators rowed past the dead-men, floating in the black pond, fat on peat and lily pads, frogs and guppies.

When found the alligators were fitting birds into their throats, lips bulged and a forest of feathers behind their teeth, soaked and clotted black and red, while from the timeless depths, clucks echoed like barking or screams or mothers wailing.

When found the alligators were swallowing does, digesting does by the nubbins, by the velvet, by the eyes and the black tongues, and from the hollows of a dank valley, fell the whisper of bones.

When you were a boy you woke to the alligator as it swam the black-waters of your floor.

Where once sat the old general with elephant gun, waiting to fire, now moans and hisses the ash covered alligator.

You knew nothing of how all land originated from the body of alligators or that the heavens emerged from the exhalations of alligators.

You should see our alligator streets.

Why we must keep our heads down

2010-12-13T13:30:00.000-08:00

That head, she’s symbolic. She’s what the devil watches, stupid with eagerness, his snorts like the purrs of an over-affectionate cat. For two weeks now, I’ve been trying to figure out the transition from media representation to brutes and leg-breakers. Father studies the head, licking pork grease from glistening fingertips. The head is led by a rope from the straw bed to the outdoors, no horror, only a wild-eyed cheer. Wherever the head goes, alarm clocks come unplugged. “The head will see you now, Mr. _____.” I apologized for my tardiness. The shrieks of the head bring hoots and laughter. She [her dead eyes] wanted you to get a real job, not ambition, not lusting after, not tight blue jeans, full movie-star ass. The head, fantasized with erotic clarity: the warmth of the mouth, the firm fullness of those somehow pink lips…

The head living in absolute solitude. The head near catatonic three years now since the death. The head gleams in the sun before it [she] slides easily into devotion or love. I will tell you anyway: that which was once the head, a beautiful apple, the children’s delight—stuck, roasted, blinks back the humiliation. And we wait for some insect to confuse beauty and craftsmanship with something close to love and tenderness.

Robert and the Blind man

2010-12-10T11:29:00.000-08:00

Robert is like a lot of people who have always imagined that blind people use youths starving in orphanages to make up for their lack of eyesight. It is not that they could not hear. They can easily discover youths from their sensitive feelings of the environment. At the beginning, Robert pressed tight to the basement walls, silent except for his breathing. Most people cannot imagine being blind, and that they would have the courage to go outside on their own. Or, like this blind man to take the train to somewhere else.

Plastic containers filled with maggots and grubs in sawdust. People have the ability to feel pain to help insure their survival.

In addition, the Blind man has a great opinion of life when he says, “O Father—I cry out to you and yet offer no judgment—I repent what I have done—If you made it so I never killed them—O Father—O Father in heaven—” Rusting fleshless hands of wire feel the skin of the head, trembling and mewing in his hands. There is no doubt that Robert was jealous of how his wife spoke to the Blind man about so many things about her lonely life in her first marriage and how the Blind man touched his wife’s face in a way that he never could. In these situations, an evil will invade some men’s hearts, intolerance will twist some men’s minds. Robert is the person who has a very sensitive mind but just does not know how to show it to other people.

If I Could Convince You to Not Write This Book, Either of Them, I Would

2010-12-09T16:37:00.000-08:00

What is my belly for but growing new animals? What is it you clasped, dripping blood? What is said: all dust comes from the skin of infants. What is a man and woman together without new life between them. What is after. What is that? What is. What is it called? What is this I hear about you and our friend? What is and is not the country in that voice of yours! What is at stake. What is he then? What is it? What is it? What is it called again, Daisy’s what?

"a latex mask using [James's] death mask as a model"

2010-12-08T12:18:00.000-08:00

You asked me what I was doing. I felt my heart in my throat like a kick. You first noticed how the material world seemed like a ghost, pale, worse than me or anyone. I started to say tremble, but it came out all-different. I shook my head. I shook my head and the world was the threshold of the unknown. Everything acquirable is part of a ghost, neither of us could touch or love or hurt and we’d be better for it. Of course we were scared. We are always scared of the monsters we tried to open.

Film into Writing

2010-12-07T08:56:00.000-08:00

James: I am ripped at the seams, I am slowly torn to nothingness. A projector is lit. Vagrants, the only audience, watch, slumped, drunken. So why this desire? What is missing that should be there? Break it to parts—an anachronism, his chivalry, his love of reading fiction.

…writing toward something…Kate’s story, Paul’s story, Miriam’s story, Tommy’s story…x’s story:

“After Tim broke up with him Jason fell into a deep miserable trance. Paul was just sick. Finally, as he always did, Tommy arose from his depression to gorge on food. Gorging always made Donald feel better. Kate returned home to find Robert in a disgusting state. ‘Clean yourself up,’ Miriam said. ‘I’m glad we’re through you pig.’”

What makes it good for you? Into its component parts: what is there that should be accentuated? You made love in the afternoons, slept with a wife, a woman who insisted upon no name but the name you gave her. She pulled away, coughing—the shape of her figure, her pink brassiere, through the lighted window. How she would look strewn. Are you frightened? Do you miss me as I miss you?

You’ve Avoided the Problem Nicely, the Problem Is

2010-12-06T10:24:00.000-08:00

She has some sophistication of thought—jealousy and these jealous stirrings, tied up with much discomfort and the pleasure/pain of extraordinary images and details. As I said before I think it’s a really good example of the duality of any passion. Was there a television on? What music was playing? Was it even in an apartment? What was he like? She’s there but the thought process is off somehow: “Next time you make sure she don’t run around on you.” Nice, clean, her boyfriend very very charming with an eye on one of the roommates. The bile at the end—something floating in the floating water. You may want to consider that he’s not totally on the mend. You focus on the magic of pity and mourning, a thief and an outlaw and a homosexual, just to spite society. Just long enough to breathe real air, for once. Getting sick on juice. Repeating “we” for the rhythm. Maybe he could be distant? They seemed prepared for that life, an escape into goodness and sainthood, dwarfish and wrinkled bodies, white milk pressed against those bloody cracked lips—only what the structure allowed them. I hope you experiment. It’s X’s term—and if you look X up you see it’s…

Some Mornings They Woke in an Entirely Other Flesh

2010-12-03T14:50:00.000-08:00

The Terror: Photographic, in a way, healthy as black ash. Sabotage, tonguelessness. A book of matches. Miriam buried to her neck, irretrievable, and Paul crawling across the yellow mud on his belly. I did not burn this one. Empty: Sockets, her gums, a fashion much the same as memory. A buck knife or what he called a Bowie knife. My Intentions: Cussing and behind them, a speck in the fields. Up to his haunches in water turned to steam. At my chest, tantalizing. Their usual fashion, sometimes Miriam was Paul, sometimes a blowtorch, the sour poison crusted to their cheeks. I carried a loaf of white bread, Paul managed to scrounge canned goods, extra sackfuls of corn, beans, peas, rice, tomato sauce. Like Donald Trump the blood cooling and opening and closing to the sky. Black Ash: The blood photographic in memory, much the same as a buck knife or what he called Miriam. My chest, healthy as a blowtorch, cooling and opening. Tonguelessness turned to steam in their usual fashion: irretrievable, tantalizing, poison.

To _______:

2010-12-02T15:02:00.000-08:00

I never slept with Robert Kloss and I never wanted to. Robert left for Japan and now I’m a country boy at heart so whenever I have the opportunity I remind you all of cryonically frozen bodies, scalped, beheaded, mangled steel and busted glass, populating a vast shimmering ocean of deadened grass. We became an insatiable fire. I've heard my book called a derivative novel but I disagree—my novel combines a sort of hard boiled The Da Vinci Code with such brutal fury that the last of our science and our natural urgings are snuffed. We killed every last savage impulse from our veins. Snuffed them on these wild fields. This is somewhat similar to my book though mine deals more with parody and adaptation and has a more complex set up.

Tommy was wearing the yellow shirt I made him.

She is drawn to the living room. There on the couch, in the perfect moonlight, rests the basketful of eggs. She glistens. Tom stands above, palms dripping, oh yes finally Tom oh God how lonely these

I kept going and going and my side hurt and my legs were heavy and hard and it didn’t seem like I’d got any closer. I sat on the steps. Cold and wet through my blue jeans. Then I heard a twig snap. Or thought I did. I thought I heard a twig snap somewhere out in the forest. So I held my breath to hear if there was any more. Often, in the darkness, I thought of her. Her nude form bathed in fire light. Included with this letter is a speculation on my wife—Wife?—Oh yes, in the darkness, my wife. She stitched this outfit herself. And she’s back to blushing and sputtering. Her breathing tube. The bandages barely covering the burned skin. Nothing about her dead family.

I am a good man, of high values and great courage.

You don’t want to marry him.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

Robert Kloss
Salem, MA

topics later touched upon more eloquently

2010-12-01T09:12:00.000-08:00

to read:

Anne Frank (cut)
Napoleon Bonaparte
Micky Spelane
Barack Obama
(the dream was his father)
Ronald Reagan
William J. Broad
Homer
Tolstoy
(Baby, what was my name?)

that first night rats skittered past their windows

Be calm. We are fine.

The warmth on my arms and neck, impossible to imagine. We can work wonders together.

“No we can’t,” one sullen face says. Who knows but we all went crazy for the goon. I never thought about this before, but you got other clowns nobody really thinks of as clowns but they’re clowns all the same. The camera cuts to a longer shot, your soul, his cell phone, the guest, a question in regard to racial harmony. More controversial policies held my wrist all through the city: a sad clown, a happy clown, a buffoonish clown. The Confidence Man by Herman Melville. The Blacks: A Clown Show (play) by Jean Genet.

Really I don’t even think of myself as a businessman. I have no publication history but I hope you consider the threshold of death, you suckers and primitives.

I Just Know You're on the Edge of Your Seat

2010-11-21T16:36:00.000-08:00

I have a couple collaborative/ large theme projects set to go off in December. Both should be pretty exciting, I think. More on those, later.

I just know you're sitting on the edge of your seat.

Until then--any suggestions on writers I wouldn't know? Books to check out? I'm thinking something in a David Ohle/Ben Marcus/Samuel Beckett/Cormac Mccarthy shade. Something wild and big and strange. Something that'll drop my jaw.

Recent Reads: Lutz and Salesses

2010-11-20T11:46:00.000-08:00

I continue to be a not very productive reader. Still, here are some books that I have recently read and enjoyed.

Throughout my reading of Gary Lutz's reissued I Looked Alive I continuously thought, "This is the strongest, smartest, most distinctive" prose by an American probably since Saul Bellow's Humboldt's Gift in the late 70s or some of his novellas in the mid-80s. Lutz is certainly highly regarded and almost deified in certain circles, but its a shame that he isn't more well known.

An excerpt from a random page: "The youngest of the girls had proposed herself out of the least promising of bodies and had ever after let her life take its line from the coercive slants and downturns of her sisters" (from "Spills").

Matthew Salesses' Our Island of Edidemics is a bizarre, warm, smart, lyrical, and fantastically creative little book. It is the sort of book I've often wanted to write, but couldn't find the ability within myself. Matthew is such a talented writer, a writer to be envied, for sure, and I look forward to his new works as they continue to emerge.

A random excerpt from "Island", this from the very sharply rhythmic (and grotesquely funny) "Our Organs Would Explode Inside Us", "We gained weight, and cramped from overeating, and feared our organs would explode inside us. We hobbled around our island, our bodies pumpkin carriages waiting for midnight. We ate and grew and ate. We wished death on our hunger as our bodies inexplicably lived. We didn't know how to make our bodies stop."

In the Shadow of the Darkness (redux)

2010-11-19T08:16:00.000-08:00

You remember all those crazy thoughts Raskolnakov had in the fugue of delirium? Well, lately I've felt a little like that mad old boy. Today I took a walk wherein I became feverish and strange. Luckily I had a pen and paper with me.

From within the mouth of madness is born a weird bliss. Here's what I'm thinking: I've decided to combine the 13 best stories from my two novels-in-stories, Birds of Prey and the Ancient House, plus my chapbook, "The Lost Bodies of Our Alligators", plus my novella, "How the Days of Love and Diptheria--", plus two other stories into a 50,000 word collection entitled In the Shadow of the Darkness of Strange Animals.

Done!

Now my only question is, what does one do with a 50,000 word story collection?

The Orange Eats Creeps

2010-10-27T06:31:00.000-07:00

Grace Krilanovich has a written a beautiful, deranged, hallucination of a novel.

Behold, the landscape within: "The land had spilled out as organs from the giant mammoth-type creature. Slashed by a human, it rotted on the ground many, many years. Its liver sank gradually into the earth, and still lies as a petrified engine spinning in its tomb. The animal's other body parts, its tusks and paw scaleds, formed a craggy topography. Its spine, the mountain range that holds the forest softly in its lap" (113).

Lamination Colony

2010-10-26T03:59:00.000-07:00

Blake Butler, who is the best sicko we have right now, says this may be the last issue of Lamination Colony. I've just finished reading the majority of the issue and I have to say it's the best collection of writing I've seen in at least a year. The list of contributors is impressive but even more so is the writing itself, piece after piece has a deranged energy, a beautiful shattered lyricism, like a sea gull lost in flight and broken against a windshield. If I was teaching creative writing now this would be the only text book we would need. I hope this isn't the last issue of Lamination Colony but if it is, it has gone out very impressively.

How They Were Found

2010-10-23T05:32:00.000-07:00

I've had less time to read this semester than years gone by--less time commuting, more classes, more time revising and editing my own material--but I always make time for books by writers I admire most. The book I enjoyed most recently was Matt Bell's collection How They Were Found. In fact, I devoured the book during my Thursday commute. I don't often write about what I read, but I was so impressed throughout, that I was compelled to jot some quick thoughts.

Many of these stories I had read before. Some, like "Wolf Parts" and "An Index of How Our Family Was Killed" are studies in adventurous form, in how humor and heart and horror are meant to be mingled. I taught "Index", a story that first appeared in Conjunctions, in a creative writing class last spring. My students articulated the experience of reading that particular piece as taking a direct dose of pain and horror and, really, the suffering of the narrator. The experience was deeper than reading a mere first person account. Here they found no filters, just horror. They were pretty impressed. They were also surprised by how funny, at turns, "Index" is.

I wish I would have had this book to dip into back then. Other stories, like the 19th century science fiction of "His Last Great Gift" read like a wondrous conflation between Brian Evenson and Ray Bradbury. Or Mary Shelley.

Elsewhere "horror" and "suspense" writers like Peter Straub and Stephen King often come to mind. I will admit the impulse to lay these genre tags, these comparisons, is likely due to limitations on my part--the comparisons are thin and, really, inaccurate. I suppose what I mean to say, when I invoke the most famous and best of our "horror" writers that, like Evenson's work, there's rarely a moment in Bell's writing that strays from what would be considered literary (in style or in depth of meaning) yet elements of what we consider "genre" fiction are apparent on every page--mystery, horror, suspense, sci-fi.

These stories are heavy, they are beautifully written, they are deep, they are bold, formally and thematically, yet, no matter how form busting or experimental they can be, they are always page turners in the best sense. Here's a brief section from "Dredge", a story whose pages moved very quickly in my hands, that illustrates, I believe, the best elements of the grotesque, of horror, where the elements of terror are infused with significance, while retaining their power as pure images:

"He's careful as he lays her in the freezer, as he brushes the hair out of her eyes again, until he holds her eyelids closed until he's sure they'll stay that way. The freezer will give him time to figure out what he wants. What he needs. What he and she are capable of together."

Blind Faith

2010-10-16T15:12:00.000-07:00

The very generous mud luscious press "Blind Faith" offer ends 10/20/10. Not only are mud luscious titles always the best, but this may be your only opportunity to get a hold of my first chapbook, "The Lost Bodies of Our Alligators". Act fast and, according to the mlp bulletin, you recieve:

"Every book in the 2011 MLP season for $35 & free shipping. Titles include:

GRIM TALES : Norman Lock
THE HIEROGLYPHICS : Michael Stewart
I AM A VERY PRODUCTIVE ENTREPRENEUR : Mathias Svalina
[ C. ] an mlp stamp stories anthology

plus handmade chapbook volumes from Jessica Newman, Stephen Gropp-Hess, Neila Mezynski,
Kristina Marie Darling, John H. Henry, Andrew Borgstrom, Ani Smith, Sarah-Jane de Brito Martin, Robert Kloss, & Ben Spivey"

Beneath the Light of an Exploding City

2010-10-15T08:29:00.000-07:00

Caketrain issue 08 is now available for pre-order here. My story "Beneath the Light of an Exploding City" will be featured along with some of what are no doubt your favorite writers (check out the list of contributors if you don't believe me). Of course, Caketrain is always very good so there's no need to take my word on this one.

Much thanks to Amanda Raczkowski and Joseph Reed for including my story and for all the hard work they put into making it look good. It is one of my favorites of my work and a version of this piece concludes my book The Ancient City.

News and notes

2010-10-13T09:23:00.000-07:00

Some news will be upcoming regarding a remix project I'll be heading up in December. Some really excellent writers will be helping out and so far the results have been stunning. More on that, soon.

In other good news, Erik Wennermark says some nice things about Valley of Alligators at the >kill author blog. Of course, I'm terribly flattered and pleased to have the story compared to William S Burroughs, one of my favorites.

I liked Erik's story "Humberto Figueroa Urquiza" too. A perfect bit of shock and dark humor.

New >kill author

2010-10-05T12:39:00.000-07:00

My story Valley of Alligators is up at the new >kill author. >kill author is always excellent, of course, and I'm humbled and thrilled to once again have work up on that mysterious site.

Mud Luscious 13

2010-10-04T15:04:00.001-07:00

Guest edited by Andrew Borgstrom the new Mud Luscious is up and raw. My story "There Was Only This Ever" is there. As always, thanks to J.A. Tyler and Adrew Borgstrom for including my work.

Other good reads lately: Artifice #2 is especially fine. My eyes were immediately pulled to Molly Gaudry's brilliant "Love, Wolf" but the entire issue, of course, contains wealth upon wealth. If you don't already have a subscription you should go and do yourself a big favor.

Other books of recent note: Andy Devine's Words is one part Pale Fire and another part Tender Buttons.

The Man Suit by Zachary Schomburg is a terrifc book of poems--weird, inventive, moving, and very skilled.

And, I finally finished Joshua Cohen's dense word feast Witz. I savored it over three months. Was worth it.

Unsaid 5

2010-10-01T14:50:00.000-07:00

Unsaid #5 is now on sale and, as always, stocked and loaded with the very best writers working now--you want Blake Butler? Anne Carson? Brian Evenson? Amber Sparks? Michael Kimball? Andy Devine? Sasha Fletcher? Matt Bell? it keeps going and going. You want to know what living, vibrant contemporary literature is? Buy Unsaid

Much thanks goes to David Mclendon--for taking my story on, for his advice, for his hard work. Clearly he has the best taste and the best publication so it is very humbling to know my story "In the Shadow of the Darkness of Strange Animals" will be featured there...

The Heracles House

2010-09-14T16:52:00.000-07:00

The Heracles House, from my novel the Birds of Prey, is up as part of the Collagist issue #14. Much thanks to Matt Bell for taking the piece on and for all the hard work, all the time.

I probably won't get a chance to check out the full issue until the weekend but I'm sure it's beautiful as ever.

We can only do the best with the trauma we are dealt

2010-09-12T05:47:00.000-07:00

I have two stories coming out this month. "Heracles House" will be at the Collagist on the 15th of September and "In the Shadow of the Darkness of Strange Animals" will appear in Unsaid 5 (pre-order today!)

I'm very proud of both stories--I believe they are two of the three or four best pieces I've done to date.

"Heracles House" is from my novel-in-stories Birds of Prey. The idea for the piece came from Anne Carson's Euripides translations Grief Lessons as well as some painful, personal experiences I won't go into. So, initially "Heracles House" was to be a novel in three parts--the murder of his wife and child, the life on the run from the murder, and then a sort of surreal/cathartic final section. I spent the majority of the 09 summer writing a first draft and only got as far as the end of the first section before I lost interest. To be honest, I didn't know how to write the book and I quickly became frustrated with the quality of my prose. I wanted something like the Old Testament and Sophocles and this ideal was the furthest from what I was mustering. I shelved "Heracles" for my long suffering story collection (it was my mfa thesis back in... 06. The first story was written in 03/04 when I was 24 and Brett Favre was a mere 34) which was slowly coming together as a mixture of revised stories about Jay Gatsby, Napoleon, Gandhi, Chaplin, and Don Quixote from the MFA thesis (3 years in the filing cabinet without a single sniff of a publication) and new stories about Orson Welles and Herman Melville and Young Goodman Brown.

Eventually I decided to rewrite the Heracles novel as a 20 page story and during this process I learned more about writing than I had in most of the previous 20 years or so that I had been serious about becoming a "writer". One of the things I learned from this story was that my idea of being a "writer" is different than the "pros" I read about growing up in "how to be a pro" and "how to write like a professional author" books.

In those days I was using a collage technique and the form seemed perfect for what I had in mind. I focused more on the prose than I had previously and I also forced myself into some difficult and awkward narrative positions. In short, I had to teach myself how to write the story in order to write the story. This may not be apparent when reading the story but I had to retrain myself entirely away from everything I knew about telling a story.

I think a few of the most difficult lessons for a young writer to learn, and the hardest lessons for me, were how hard to work, what is "good enough", and (most importantly) what is important to me in a story. I had to admit there is a good chance that each new story I write will earn me no $, no kudos, and probably no publication credit. There must be some other reason. Some less tangible purpose. This is a tough one to soak in, I think, for someone who grew up in America wanting to be a writer and especially someone who attended a MFA program where accomplishments tend to be weighted in gold. It is part of a long process of trying to separate personal vanity and ego from art and it is a difficult process, a very difficult process, in part because many of us started writing when we were praised as children for our abilities. We learned quickly that writing was a way to recieve approval or attention that otherwise went to other children. Or, at least, this is what I figure happened.

"In the Shadow of the Darkness of Strange Animals" is probably my favorite bit of writing. It is, essentially, based off my senior year of high school and how my parents fell apart. Most of my writing comes back to that last year and I suppose always will. Specifically the fires, the madness, and the perversions came from those months.

In some ways I am grateful for those months of my life and for those grotesque and awful things I saw, those loved ones I ultimately lost. For the dreams I still have. Those events soaked into me in weird wasy and I'm proud of the writing they have led to. So many stories i could not have written without seeing the people I loved and trusted became weird and twisted in the autumn of my 17th year.

2010-08-29T07:27:00.000-07:00

First, we learn Amber Sparks, one of the best, will be writer in residence for September at Necessary Fiction. I have been following the Necessary Fiction 'writer in residence' progam since it was instituted a few months back and, I'm sure, this will lead to yet another momentous series of events.

Second, I think my next project will involve clowns somehow and I would like to find some decent books about the history of humor and the history of clowning. I have looked around, over the years, and have never found anything terribly interesting. Suggestions of texts would be appreciated... I will say I have no interest in anything post-1920s, give or take.

Yes, in my mind, we have images of clowns and alligators, churches and towers, radio broadcasts and circus tents. We will see what we see.

Latest Moans

2010-08-28T05:30:00.000-07:00

After some long days of only writing and only reading my writing. Time to do something new and see something other. The next writing will be playful and light with edges. The next writing will be poems and prose poems. Just overbooked myself for the upcoming semester so I will only a little time for little works anyhow.

Saw Haneke's The Piano Teacher last night. Some surprising dramatic moments, I thought, some very nice fluctuations in mood and emotion. Of the three or so I've seen, Haneke's films don't interest me so much visually, although there are some nice shots, but there are always nice touches in the acting and the writing. The acting in this movie was very nice especially the paino teacher herself.

Reading Thomas Bernhard's Woodcutters. As always it was nice to find a nice copy of a Bernhard I have not read. He always seems to know what's on my mind.

How the Days of Love and Diphtheria--

2010-08-26T13:23:00.001-07:00

The new book is finished. How the Days of Love and Diphtheria-- is surely not for every reader in America, but it is for readers in my America. The book is roughly a story of an orphaned child who travels in search of his parents' murderers, but it is mostly the collage of Hiroshima, diphtheria epidemics, various fires and pyromanics, kittens, eagles, and several families in the midst of disintegration.

As per my policy of open sharing of unpublished work feel free to request an electronic file of this book for personal amusement.

where are you going, where have you been

2010-08-24T05:02:00.001-07:00

Spent the last month getting in touch with some issues. Spent the last month writing this short book about diphtheria, love, pyros, family, kittens living inside of walls, houses burning and always burning. To me it seems a very hurt and damaged book, but who knows.

Right now the lack of a title is nagging me. Suggestions are welcome.

Mostly for the last month I've been reading about atom bombs, Hiroshima, and various diseases and epidemics, but here are a few books I recently enjoyed: Ben Spivey's Flowing in the Gossamer Fold, Christopher Higgs' The Complete Works of Marvin K. Mooney, The Drop Edge of Yonder by Rudolph Wurlitzer, and Scary, No Scary by Zachary Schomburg.

The Loam

2010-08-02T15:55:00.000-07:00

I have returned to the scene of my first publication with my story "The Loam". Much thanks as always to the fine folks at Thieves for letting me ride along. The site is looking good.

On a side note: The bio under the story is actually from that first publication. A little sad to see now-- we lost a member of our little family a year back. Miss him now.

An Ancient House/ Mud Luscious

2010-07-02T17:26:00.000-07:00

Mud Luscious is one of my favorite places for lit so I'm very pleased to have my "An Ancient House" piece included in Mud Luscious 12. As always, some really strong writing has been gathered and I'm pleased to believe my humble writing holds up.

As everything stands, "An Ancient House" will probably be the lead section in my novel "The Ancient House."

New Dead Families

2010-06-25T03:20:00.000-07:00

The first issue of New Dead Families--and the introductory essay by mastermind Zack Wentz, made my soul sing. Therein resides the sort of literature I believe in.

As an ex-MFAer, I've spent serious time amongst those who regard non realist and experimental fiction as ... less than savory. Write a non-realist piece for a workshop and you may as well cut a red "E" into your forehead with a utility knife. We all know how many MFAers there are out there, too, and these MFAers are only bound to have children. Naturally, I worry about the state of our lit. New Dead Families, I think, is Zack Wentz's answer to this particular ruination of our peculiar species.

So, much thanks goes out to the man himself for the work he does, and for making my story "Wherein the New King Speaks on the Subject of the Flesh of Whales" a part of this wonderful second issue of New Dead Familes which features great works by Amber Sparks, Alvaro Zinos-Amaro, David Backer, I. Fontana and more.

Check it out, please. Much strangeness and horror resides herein.

Another

2010-06-18T14:09:00.001-07:00

Saramago has died.

Holy smokes!

2010-06-16T12:29:00.000-07:00

Just read and re-read and am re-reading J.A. Tyler's "All These Violent Children (An Episode of Hills)" up at Word Riot. What sick images. Twisted, writhing rhythms. A work of great horror and greater beauty. Yes, I wish I wrote this. I'm burning with a jealousy now.

Then I read here that this is a tease of a 80,000 word novel he's calling Water. The description nearly caused me to give up my own writing in a fit of gnashing and weeping. It sounds absolutely brilliant. A masterpiece.

Days like this I think of my own meager, unpublished little books and I ask of them, What can you make of yourselves, out in the world, when such wolves slink low along the hills? My poor little books, so pink and bemused admidst a gray terror.

Summer Reading: Dear Everybody by Michael Kimball

2010-06-15T13:51:00.000-07:00

"Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if our house had really flooded. Maybe we could have started our marriage over again."

Good stuff

2010-06-14T11:55:00.000-07:00

The June Pank is a real killer. Still working my way around the words but the first two names I clicked proved really rewarding--

the poems by XtX are esp. fine. Some of these line breaks are really nasty.

I've only recently been catching up on James Tadd Adcox but he's fast becoming one of my favorites. His story Diseases, Disorders, Breaks is strange and beautiful in all the best ways.

Intuition

2010-06-13T07:52:00.000-07:00

How much do you work by intuition? Do you feel the need to understand on an intellectual or analytical level the events in your story, or do you allow yourself to know them, on a gut level, an intuitive level? Do you intentionally construct thematic layers to your stories? Do you add scenes and character traits and events so the story will mean something? Do you write with your conscious mind or with your belly?