The latest installment of online experimental poetry journal Futures Trading (Issue 5.4) was published today. It includes work by many fine poets from the international scene. Somehow my work was included, a piece from my “Civilization’s Lost” series, this one called “Facets of Massacre.” You can read it and the whole issue here.
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.
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 