Zombie Logic Review published three of my poems today: “Eat Your Own Dogfood,” “Resistance to Extinction,” and “Plastic Love by Design.” You can read them here.
I first heard the phrase “eat your own dogfood” used by my wife Raquel, who’s a fountain of many pithy sayings. I think it means that one should have to clean up their own messes. It’s such a good line I wrote this poem around it.
Nonagenarian. Perennial candidate for Mayor of DC. DC Statehood activist. Burlessque dancer. Actress. Comedienne. Cabaret performer. Faith has done many things. Once upon a time, she was a key component of the Broadway musical Gypsy, in its original run with Ethel Merman, as well as the film version with Rosalind Russell, Natalie Wood, and Karl Malden. Faith developed the role of Mazeppa, an aging burlesque dancer who blows a bugle while doing her bumps and grinds. She schools the young Gypsy Rose Lee on the necessities of stage life in the song “You Gotta Have a Gimmick.” Contemporary reviews of the stage version and YouTube views of the movie version show Faith stealing the show with sassy hip snaps and a voice that could peel paint off your wall.
I first met Faith circa 1998 when she was doing her Campaign Cabaret performances in various nightspots around DC, adopting show tunes and calypso numbers to serve as self promotion, accompanied by her husband Jude on guitar. Film auteur Jeff Krulik (of Heavy Metal Parking Lot fame) was acting as their manager and booking the gigs. It’s hard to forget such a magical entertainment. Some images are more indelible than others. Like seeing a 75-year-old Faith rollerskate onto the stage in a nude body stocking to blow her bugle.
Recently while at work in George Washington University’s Burns Law Library, I ran across a book called Choreographing Copyright: Race, Gender, and Intellectual Property Rights in American Dance by Anthea Kraut. The back cover blurb mentioned Faith’s lawsuit against the producers of Broadway’s Gypsy for infringing on her copyright to Mazeppa’s dance routine. She had developed the number during her time on the actual burlesque stage, and reprising it during audition got her the part in the play. The climax of her performance made it a unique signature and brought the house down: bending over to blow her bugle between her legs, derriere facing the house. This “derriere pose” was deemed too risque by the film’s director, so she did a deep back bend instead, which is what you see in all the pictures. The case turns out to have been an important one in the struggle to gain copyright protection for dance choreography. But Faith was unsuccessful in gaining damages. The judge ruled that her dance–and the story it purported to tell of an ex-military woman now earning her living on vaudeville–was not significant enough to warrant protection, being both too low-brow and created by a woman.
I interviewed Faith extensively back in the 90s, writing a short article on her for The Washington City Paper (you can read it here), and later publishing the full transcript in my fanzine Mole. Over 30 years after her lawsuit, she was still angry about the copyright rip off, But it was hard to tell if the story was just a part of her self-myth. It was great to see it confirmed in a big way.
Using the article in Kraut’s legal monograph as a hook, I put together an exhibit for the display case in the Burns Library about Faith, her copyright lawsuit, and her mayoral candidacy. Included are vinyl LP copies of the soundtracks for both stage and screen versions, photos from her 90s cabaret shows, campaign ephemera, and a dented and warped old bugle I got on eBay. In fact, Krulik told me to get a beat up horn “just like the one Montgomery Clift gave her.” You see how the legend of Faith just seems bottomless? There’s always another amazing story about her. If she makes a visit to the exhibit, I’ll let you know.
Black Poppy Review recently changed its name to Night Garden Journal. Today, my poem “Another Broken Home” appeared under the new banner. You can read the whole piece here.
The story in the poem is based on a legend from Tinian Island in the Marianas archipelago, one of the ancient homes of the Chamorro people. Guam is the southernmost island of the group. The mushroom stones in the poem are actually called latte stones. The mythological king Taga built a large house on foundation of latte stones, today called the House of Taga. The story explains the origin of the foundation pillars.
While this piece is not technically a part of the “Civilization’s Lost” series I’ve been working on, it continues my interest in lost lands. Under the current US regime, it seems more important than ever to examine the fragility of languages, cultures and nations.
Underground poetry blog In Between Hangovers published my poem “Another Alarming Trend” today. You can check out the full thing here.
Online literary journal The Five-Two focuses exclusively on poems about crime. Today, my poem “Like That” was published in the journal. The poem is sort of about a romance gone wrong. You can read the whole piece here. There’s also a clip of me reading the poem you can check out.
Issue 112 of Danse Macabre was released yesterday, titled “Ricordi.” Among the stories and poems of a darker nature–including reprints by Ambrose Bierce and Maksim Gorky–are four of my poems: “Black Pages of the Last Death,” “Go My Incubi, Fly My Lovers”, “Happy Monsters, Happy Ghosts,” and “Lone Cloud: Spells for a Moment.” They all involve ritual incantations usually directed against consumer culture. You can read them here.
The first Otoliths of 2018 was released today; this is number 48 for the journal, and as usual it’s packed with innovative texts, visual poetry, and imagery from all over the world. The issue also includes some of my work: “Drowned Lands I-V” and seven film stills. The text work is part of my “Civilization’s Lost” series, examining the fragility of languages, cultures and nations. This piece is in five parts, each based on a different lost city, civilization or continent. You can read the full poem here.
The film stills can be found under another link here. All seven images come from a video that has yet to be edited into its final form. Some of the text was drawn from a spam email and reads “Feel the call of your body.” Other text comes from the captioning on the source footage. I recently recorded some new music, so perhaps that will motivate the final assembly of the video.
One of my favorite online journals, Midnight Lane Boutique covers underground and outlaw poetry with great features and graphic style. So I’m pleased to report it has published three of my poems: “Why I Love Ouija,” “Buying a King for the Price of a Twin,” and “About Our Entering a No-Sex Era.” You can read them here.
A few notes on these. The Ouija poem is part of a series featuring a ouija board as a character. “Buying a King” takes a mattress ad and hopefully blows it up into something bigger. “No-Sex Era” was originally accepted by Verbal Abuse magazine back in the 90s, but the journal folded before it put out that issue. Kind of a bummer, as it was a pretty rad mag.
One more poem in venerable underground journal In Between Hangovers. You can read the complete text of “The Karmic Ladder Wheel and the Little Boom” here.
The second issue of Angry Old Man was unleashed on the world last night. A massive issue of experimental works in many media, this one contains my text poem “In the Engine Room with Bettie & Andrea” and six video stills. You can check out the full poem here, and the vispo here.
jeff bagato 