Birkensnake

WHOSE WHAT ARE THOSE

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Some friends were talking about things they’d owned that looked like breasts. One person had a lighter shaped like a female torso that when you flicked it, LEDs lit up the nipples. Someone else had a heat-sensitive mug the clothes would come off the side of. We’d just used a bottle opener shaped like a female torso to open our bottles.

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RING AROUND AROSIE by EVA HESSE
ring around

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In addition to boobs, I have news:

1. MINIMAL BOOKS has translated “Interruptions,” which is in the current issue of Denver Quarterly, into Polish and published it on their site. They’re planning to publish a translation Stories of the Things That Had No Power of Their Own” in the next issue.

2. There have been a couple of reviews of Birkensnake 2: Big Other and someone who attended the reading.

3. Tomorrow, December 1, DEWCLAW will close to submissions. Pretty soon I will have to tell you who’s in the issue.

birkensnake release reading is monday

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I’ll be reading on Monday (Oct. 26th) at Inner Chapters. Matt Briggs, Tina Connolly, and Caren Gussoff will also be reading. The reading will begin at 7:30. I hope you can find a way to appear.

While you’re at Inner Chapters, you can buy a “Ride the S.L.U.T.” t-shirt. (S.L.U.T. was the name of the trolley in the South Lake Union neighborhood. I think the signs that named it have been taken down or stolen.) I want an “I Went Down On the S.L.U.T.” t-shirt to commemorate my fall on slippery tracks.

birkensnake 2

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It’s ready, it’s done! I’ve been really excited for this to happen.

Read the second issue of Birkensnake online or as a PDF.

If you don’t already know, it’s worth buying Birkensnake for the cover alone. Only $4. You can make this happen here.

Here are first sentences from the issue:

For little girls with dirty hems and boys who scratch their knees, there is the ever-small door of the children’s factory. (Michael Stewart)

Was it shock, then, or fear, or else a naïve sense of civic duty that provoked Margaret to join the Queen’s court at Oxford? (Danielle Dutton)

In the cold summers, as the dirt rose, I’d have each child stand before me in the yard. (Blake Butler)

I clotted. (Rhoads Stevens)

I was made of string. (Matt Briggs)

I once dated a woman who kept her brother in a cage. (Christopher Boucher)

These days I’m a fucking garbageman. (Caren Gussoff)

From 144D all the way to 336G, past the 321, 322, 323, 324 all-aisle enclave whispering to a forebear each from behind, Julian kept straight and on the task at hand. (Matthew Pendelton)

Red celebrates return to consciousness by throttling doctor stooped over bed, whose pince-nez slips off to explode on white tile. (Miles Klee)

We lived in a valley of glacial till, a morass of moraine arranged by chance, as was my wedding to a man whose life was easy and brief, given up to the gods of excess and paunch. (me)

I live in tumor flats, formerly known as Taco Flats for the high percentage of Latins, even more formerly Elite Tacos, now also known as The Waste Land. (Joyelle McSweeney)

a nervous narrator

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On Tuesday I read with Amelia Gray. This was my second reading, ever, and while I think I improved slightly over the first time I read (at KGB in June for Unsaid Magazine), when I didn’t speak into the mic until I was about half finished with my story, I know I would like to be a much better reader, which for me means being able to project, using voice and gestures, the persona of the narrator, who is often not me and would move his or her body differently than I would, and use different intonation and patterns of emphasis than I do. I am too much myself when I am reading, and I think this contributes to my nervousness. For a nervous narrator, I would be a good reader.

Anyway, it was nice to be able to read with Amelia and musician Anna Lynne, and I thank Matthew for organizing.

I read something called Sag: A Saga, which will be in the second issue of Birkensnake. You can get that issue soon, and I think you will want to.

I met Stacey Levine at the reading. Stacey’s latest book, The Girl With Brown Fur, will be out in September, but it’s already out in Seattle, and I’ve read it, and it’s wonderful.

rotating around 2 centers at 1 time

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August is already happening and it isn’t August. I’m getting ready (laying out and printing a small book) for a reading on August 3rd with Amelia Gray at the Neptune. This is in Seattle and if you’re here, come! I really like what she has here. I’m looking forward to getting a copy of her book, AM/PM, at the reading.

I guess I’m a little nervous about the reading. I’ll probably bring cookies, like I did when I defended my thesis against my nervousness with more cookies than people were willing to chew.

Cookies. What else?

I got applied, and by some process was selected, for a scholarship to the Wave “three days of poetry” happening around here in August. The day before that begins, there’s going to be some sort of literary death match. Matthew Simmons, Ryan Boudinot, and Matt Briggs will try to match each other to death.

I twittered. Not sure if I will again.

A new thing of mine in The New Yinzer should be up soon. Claire Donato guest edited this issue.

Adam Robinson (Publishing Genius) said some nice things about Dewclaw. Adam contributed to Dewclaw finding a decent printer. Thanks Adam!

I moved into a house with a juicer. Most of the water in my body is now apple-celery-ginger-mint juice. It’s hot here. Seems like I stick to every surface.

We tried some honey from our bees! Adam thinks it tastes like sorbus, but I’m not so good at discerning where the bees are getting their nectar. Not yet.