My poem “All the World’s an ATM” appeared in the online lit journal Mad Swirl yesterday. Just in time for Halloween, the piece is part of a series featuring Ouija as a character, contemplating the world through the vagaries of language. You can read it here. I also have a poetry page on the Mad Swirl site which contains all my poems they’ve published.
Datura is a print and online literary journal “of deviant and defiant work” published in French and English. Datura issue 11, dated March 2021, was just released. Full contents below:
• Docteur Burz: editorial
• Jeff Bagato: Asemic Epitaph, March of the Antelops, Toothpast Comes to Town, and Lullaby for Ouija (poetry)
• Alain Lasverne: Adoption en cours (récit)
• John Tustin: Another Box, Dying in a Place, I Ease into my Seat, There will Never Be Peace upon the Streets of my Heart, and Wings Clipped (poetry)
• Stéphane Casenobe: CE QUI PERDURE POUR NOUS PERDRE, LA FACE INCONNAISSABLE DU JOUR, ET DEVIER LA MAIN QUI ECRIT !, SIGNE DE MAIN ET DEPART ?, TOUT M’EST DÛ CAR JE SUIS PAUVRE ! et DE LÁ J’HESITE ? (poésie)
• Christopher Barnes : What the Street Remembers 11 to 15 (poetry)
• Léonel Houssam: extrait de Notre République (roman)
I’m pleased to be represented with four poems: “Asemic Epitaph,” “March of the Antelopes,” “Toothpaste Comes to Town,” and “Lullabye for Ouija.” You can read them on Issu here.
I was pleasantly surprised to hear from Midnight Lane Boutique editor Johnny Longfellow yesterday, telling me he had nominated my poem “Ouija Leans In” for the Best of the Net Anthology 2019. He announced his nominations, which included pieces by Kimo Armitage and Joan Colby, on the journal’s website here.
Even more flattering was the thoughtful analysis he wrote of my work:
Despite its seemingly supernatural underpinnings, this poem speaks directly to the difficulties of not simply communicating with others, but of sometimes even finding the words to express a complete thought. Not simply a fine example of contemporary absurdism, this poem also illustrates the utility of using the so-called “pathetic fallacy” that many less daring writers would not even think to attempt. And, it does so with both sly humor and rich imagery.
Aside from making the piece sound smarter than it actually is, this note helped me understand how other people might read and understand one of my poems. It’s been over 30 years since I read nineteenth century art critic John Ruskin in grad school, so I had to google his term “pathetic fallacy” to find out it refers to the rather lazy poetic tendency to anthropomorphize inanimate objects, particularly in the work of Wordsworth, Keats and other Romantics. The sentimentality of a “chuckling brook” or a “jolly breeze” really rubbed Ruskin the wrong way. I wonder what he would have thought about using a Ouija board as a character in a poem?
Anyway, Johnny Longfellow published “Ouija Leans In,” along with two other poems featuring Ouija, in Midnight Lane Boutique on August 3, 2018. You can read them here.
Today, online poetry journal Midnight Lane Boutique published three of my poems featuring the character Ouija: “Ouija Gets Infected by Flarf,” “Ouija Leans In,” and “Ouija’s Vacation.” You can read them here.
Today, Zombie Logic Review published three of my poems: “America’s Porn Star Love,” “Life on the River, Ripened on the Vine,” and “Ouija at the Feast.” You can read them here.
The first piece has something to do with pornography. The second features Mowgli and Baloo the bear escaping civilization. The last is yet another poem featuring Ouija Board as an actual character.
Very pleased to report that online journal Anti-Heroin Chic published three of my poems today: “Taking Home the Pictures,” “Ouija Gets Bent,” and “Sorry No Obi.” You can read them here.
The lead poem comes from a cross country road trip back in the 90s with two of my best friends. I believe we were in El Paso when the TV showed footage of OJ Simpson escaping police in Los Angeles. For some reason that seemed kind of funny, but a couple weeks in a Metro Geo will do that to you.
The Ouija piece is another of that series featuring the eponymous planchette as a “real girl” having metalingual adventures. I wrote “Sorry No Obi” after listing a compact disc for sale on Discogs and realizing that descriptive phrase would make a good poem title.
I’m pleased to report that online journal Outlaw Poetry published three of my poems today: “Cosmic Convenience Store,” “The Clover Trick,” and “Discount Radio.” You can read them here.
The first one features Ouija, the metalanguage planchette engaged in some intergalactic communication–part of a series of pieces featuring this character. The others are more or less surrealistic rants about something or other.
Poetry blog Your One Phone Call published one of my Ouija poems today, “Don’t Mess with Ouija.” You can read it here.
This is one of a series of pieces featuring a character named Ouija who may or may not be an actual ouija planchette. Your One Phone Call has published three others in the series.
jeff bagato 