Wednesday, October 31, 2018

Previously Published: a rejection horror story at Submittable

Submittable is a software program that handles submissions for literary magazines and arts organizations. Mid-October Submittable put out a call for Rejection Horror Stories, promising to post their favorites on their blog.

I wrote up a story that's haunted me for at least 15 years. The folks at Submittable liked it (or it scared them). Here's a link (scroll down; it's the fourth piece on the page):

Submittable 2018 Halloween Rejection Horror feature includes "Previously Published"

Thursday, October 18, 2018

“Yes” at Quiet Lightning



The video features me performing the poem “Yes” during Quiet Lightning’s May 7, 2018 event at StudioToBe in Oakland. If the video doesn't appear above you can click through and watch on youtube

At each reading Quiet Lightning gives away a magazine called Sparkle and Blink that includes all the work performed on that date. If you go, you get a copy free. Often there are back issues for sale, too. I have picked up several that way. 

“Yes” originally published in the magazine, Askew.

Tuesday, October 16, 2018

Two poems at Courtship of Winds

Two poems in the Summer 2018 Courtship of Winds

Follow the link above to read 
“Rooted” 
“My Role in History”

Sunday, October 14, 2018

Two poems at First Literary Review - East

The March 2018 issue features: 
loyal to the unadjusted just 
The poem appears near the bottom of the page. 

The July/August issue features: 
a wind picks up a hymn afloat upon one stem of flame 
You have to scroll all the way down the page. My poem is second from the bottom.

Saturday, October 13, 2018

“The Homefront” at Crack the Spine

“The Homefront,” a poem written during the Iraq invasion back in 2003, found a place in Crack the Spine, an online magazine, issue 231:




My thanks to the editors.

Friday, October 12, 2018

Autobiography of a Book: 3 excerpts at Hawai’i Pacific Review

Autobiography of a Book is a book talking itself into existence. Every word is part of the book’s body; this is the book’s life. 

Three excerpts from the manuscript have been published in Hawai’i Pacific Review:



Wednesday, October 10, 2018

3 poems in Smoky Blue Literary and Arts Magazine


Follow the link above and advance to pages 38 through 42 to read

“Sleep, my darling”

“The Elephant”

“I would like you to go now”

Monday, October 08, 2018

5 poems in Dodging the Rain

Five poems appear in the Irish ezine Dodging the Rain.

Follow the link above to read
“universal agent of slight chaos”
“understanding equivalent difference, its happy goodbye”
“trying to dust the light off an inner stone”
“I write on enlightened dice”
“sailing in on little tips of white knives”


My thanks to H. D. Moe for the titles.

Wednesday, May 23, 2018

iPad and fleas

Has anybody else noticed that when a flea jumps onto the glass face of an iPad the flea has a hard time jumping off?

That it is then pretty easy to crush the flea with a fingernail?

At first I thought it was just when the iPad was on, but the unpowered iPad seems to be a good flea trap too.

Tuesday, May 08, 2018

Ten poems found in the UC Berkeley library database

Back when I was a student at the University of California at Berkeley I crafted a series of poems using lists of titles I generated from searches of the library database. In the last year I got them out again, worked over some, and sent many back out into the literary world. 

This winter/spring two ezines posted poems from the series. 

Zombie Logic put these five up in March:

“The Dance”
“Could That Really Be Me?”
“Above the human landscape”
“Under a mantle of blue”
and
“We are all so interdependent that every action by each one of us affects in some way or other the welfare and destiny of the rest”

And Disappointed Housewife offered these in April:

“Love is”
“We were free”
“To you”
“They were number one”
“Important Questions”



Can I say, I love the names of these zines? 

Tuesday, February 06, 2018

Eleven poems

Eleven poems posted at three ezines in January. Ten of the poems are from a series I informally call “The Moe Poems” as I titled the poems after lines snipped from the poems of H. D. Moe, a longtime Bay Area poet whose poems fascinate and exasperate me. The poems themselves were written without reference to Moe’s work. I only thought his lines would interact fruitfully with mine after I’d already written mine. I wrote these poems in 2016, the initial versions at least. Revisions were somewhat influenced by H. D. Moe, mostly in that I used his inventiveness as goad to push myself further. The other poem is from another series, a batch of poems I built from titles I found in the database of the UC Berkeley library back when I as a student employee there in 1992 - 93. 

Five from the Moe Poems appear in Mannequin Haus, issue 10.2 (see under Glenn Ingersoll):

“mistaken for its own virginity”
“feel velvet before it becomes felt”
“heapbig approximate paradox gypsy of the rain”
“your light bulb in the egg-beat of a telephone crocodile”
“a waterfall that thinks it’s machine”

Five more from the Moe Poems appear in The Opiate. Each gets its own link, its own page, and its own image. The images were all chosen by editor Genna Rivieccio. She didn’t preview the images for me so I got to be surprised. Friends have said they think she chose well.


“needled into wanting”
“where cliffs are books, their titles deep in the mountains”
“fucked hollow by green banana dollars”
”we’re always new, impossibly repeating”
”life expands up to its panda bear”

And finally there’s the UC Berkeley library found poem which appears in the January issue of Neologism Poetry Journal:


“I Saw You from Afar”