Literary journal Five-2-One usually appears in print, but its daily supplement, The Sideshow, appears online. My poem “After the Guillotine” appears there starting today in text and video formats. The video features my reading of the poem, along with an electronic backing score. Warning: grim subject matter may not be appropriate for all audiences! You can view it all here.
Outlaw Poetry is an online journal comprising a who’s who of outlaw poets. So I’m very pleased to appear in their pages again, this time with three poems: “Joyce in Washington,” “On a Roll,” and “Women’s Work is Never Done.” You can read them here.
The first two pieces are based on real people and events. When I was temping at the USPS headquarters many years ago, Joyce worked there as an administrative assistant. She was a real character, very unique for DC, who I couldn’t resist writing about. One detail that didn’t make the poem was the vibrating pillow she used to sit on to soothe her back.
“On a Roll” is the second of two poems I wrote, more or less transcribing one of my dad’s rants in a New Jersey hotel room after a very long day helping my sister move from her apartment. When he’s on a roll, he’s on a roll.
Word for/Word is an online journal of experimental poetry that just released its issue #32. Lots of interesting text and visual poetry to check out. It includes three of my Gonch poems, “Cachallanog Agaal,” “Nagan Halloch Cohl Llonagga,” and “Llaanaganallo Hacla Chagalnach Aglacoa,” as well as five images from the Gonchlog. You can read them here; just click on my name in the far right column on the front page.
The text pieces come from a series of new works using a vocabulary limited to words invented from the nonsense phrase “All Gonch.” It’s an attempt to create a new language, imagining also the culture behind it through the shape and structure of the words, that might arise after the death of the current (American) culture and language.
The images are part of another phase of the Gonch project I call the Gonchlog. In this process, I search through consumer magazines and cut out the five letters of “gonch,” then glue them onto accounting paper. The source, its date of publication, and volume number are noted. The intention is to draw out that key nonsense word from these commercial propaganda vehicles in order to find a way forward.
I’m a little slow on the uptake, but just learned that Horror Sleaze Trash published my poem “Point Blank” on Friday, Oct 26. (Same day they published “Popeye Pops a Boner.”) This one too is kind of an explicit, NSFW piece. You can read the full poem here.
I’m a little slow on the uptake, but just learned that Horror Sleaze Trash published my poem “Popeye Pops a Boner” last Friday, Oct 26. Kind of explicit, NSFW type thing, as if the title didn’t clue you in. You can read the full piece here.
Always an event when a new issue of online experimental poetry round up Otoliths is published. Today, the journal’s 51st issue was released, marking Southern Spring (Australia), containing a who’s who from the international experimental poetry scene. Vispo, text works, hybrids, you name it.
This issue offers a selection of my work, including five stills from the video “Silenced Scribes” (view them here), and a selection of three texts from a new series tentatively called “Robot Speak”: “Cattle Check,” “Then It’s Time,” and “Ready America.” You can read them here.
These three texts form part of a new series of experiments inspired by the Facebook AI units that recently developed their own language using English words with different syntax and meaning. The AI units were intended to carry out customer service transactions and negotiations, and the format of their language seemed to be a powerful way to confront and manipulate the continuous stream of commercial messages invading our mental space.
Further, they represent an attempt to replicate a machine code constructed from an extremely limited vocabulary, often initiated by spam emails. Each piece develops by permutations, repetition, and sound/rhythm. It’s impossible for the human observer to know if the machine is analyzing or tabulating data, performing a calculation, conducting a negotiation, or making a persuasive appeal. Any of these functions is a possibility. In a way, the texts are a form of speculative fiction: looking at a machine narrative pulled from a future where AIs have been released to perform functions on their own. As in the case of the Facebook AIs, these instances show a machine or machines adapting human (English) language for their own ends. The repetition of the key words imitates a transactional language, as if a carnival barker is repeating an appeal to a potential audience. But the end result also reminds me of a magical incantation appealing to a familiar spirit.
Asemic writing blog The New Post-literate posted six of my asemic poems today. These come from a large stash (85+ pieces) of this alien script, all rendered with a brush and black ink. You can check out the NPL group here.
“Asemic” writing is any text that doesn’t have a semantic value for the reader. For more examples, just browse around the images and other resources on the New Post-literate site!
Online poetry journal Mannequin Haus focuses on surreal and experimental poetry. Their recently released Issue 12 includes my poem “The Second Hand of God is a Beautiful Foot” (excerpt below). You can read the whole piece here.
Each day since 2009, online literary journal Oddball Magazine has covered “poetry, art, and entertainment for the masses.” Today, one of their offerings includes my poem “Waiting for a Blueberry at the End of Time.” You can read it here.
Online poetry journal BlazeVOX is known for publishing a wide variety of contemporary experimental work. Their Fall 2018 issue brings together a huge number of writers around the loose theme of “the idea of ‘public space’ and more specifically on spaces where anyone can do anything at any given moment.”
The issue includes five poems from my “Civilization’s Lost” series: “Frozen in Babylon,” “Upon the High Castle,” “No Guiding Light,” “The White Grave,” and “Schools of Drift.” The pieces in the series were inspired by lost civilizations from around the world. Under the current American regime, it seems important to examine the fragility of languages, cultures and nations. “Upon the High Castle,” for instance, is based on the cliff side city of Mesa Verde in Arizona. You can read my contributions here.
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