Less than Casual

Crouching Spider-Louise Bourgeois

2008-01-24T09:45:00.001-08:00

Crouching Spider-Louise Bourgeois, originally uploaded by kris497.

"Louise Bourgeois’s monumental bronze sculpture titled “Crouching Spider,” on loan to the City by the artist, is currently installed by the San Francisco Arts Commission on the Embarcadero at Mission Street - Entry Plaza at Pier 14

Originally produced in 2003, this cast from the artist’s famous “Spider” series was made specifically for display in San Francisco. Louise Bourgeois, 95, is considered to be one of the world’s most important and influential artists living today. She was born in Paris in 1911 and moved to New York in 1939 where her prolific career has spanned seven decades. Concurrent with the display on the Embarcadero, Ms. Bourgeois’s work is on a worldwide museum tour starting with the Tate Modern in London and traveling to the Centre George Pompidou in Paris, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles and the Hirschorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C.

The sculpture, courtesy of Gallery Paule Anglim, San Francisco and Cheim & Read, New York, will be on loan for eight months or longer. “Crouching Spider” is part of the San Francisco Arts Commission’s Sculpture in the City program, which brings both permanent and temporary sculpture installations by local and national artists to the City. This is a temporary project of the San Francisco Arts Commission and is placed on the Embarcadero courtesy of the San Francisco Port Commission. Art Enrichment funding is provided by the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission."

opposition

2007-09-06T10:49:00.001-07:00

opposition could suggest contradiction. contradiction could suggest a negation of sorts. do opposition and contradiction in fact = negation? do they oppose each other so successfully that they succeed in negating one another? wiping it out? and existance once there and then no more?

ex. "why do you have no confidence? why do you have confidence?"

why go through the energy of saying both? what is the motivating factor?

is it to have the words aligned in opposition or is it the idea of opposition that must be expressed rather than the action?

thinking.......

call for papers on poets theater.

2007-09-04T13:14:00.001-07:00

CALL FOR PAPERS for "Contemporary Poet's Theater: L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E and Beyond": A panel on critical approaches to poet's theater to be proposed to the 20th Century Literature Conference in Louisville

Please respond with an essay abstract and bio by SEPT. 12. A print project may be in the future on the poet's theater topic, so we are happy to learn of your interest.

Description of panel proposal with submission instructions:

In recent contemporary poetics, the term "poet's theater" has become linked with the "Language" group of writers and often directors of poetry-plays produced as low-budget staged performances in the late 1970's and '80's. Today, new productions of classic "Language"-orientedpoet's theater abound, by writers including Leslie Scalapino, Carla Harryman, Charles Bernstein, among others. Yet there are also many contemporary playwrights in other settings doing work that is not only aesthetically related to "Language"-oriented theater, but which might be productively critiqued in terms articulated by Language writers and others writing on avant-garde performance art. These "other" are theater writers are those who are engaging in "poet's theater," by virtue of treating a written text as an act of performance -- the drama thus emerging not from some external "signified," but from within the "signifier," the poetic language, itself.

This panel is an attempt to ground a definition of the term "poet's theater" in a potentially expanding notion of the contemporary working scene of today's American theater, both through under-financed ssm all public venues (cafes or coffee houses or art-spaces) or in venues like Off-Broadway. It is also an attempt to take the recent use of the term by the Language writers into other realms of "language"-oriented theatrical poetics. We wish for presenters to look at what the embodied stage and poetic experiment have to offer one another, in practice and/or in conceptual theories. We are proposing this panel to the Louisville conference directors (conference to take place in February '08), with the hopes that we can bring new perspectives into a discussion of an often under-considered form of contemporary poetics: that which is written to be staged. We are looking for papers that consider specific poet's-theater works and their authors, approached from some knowledge of contemporary poetics theory or performance theory (or both).

Since our topic concerns CONTEMPORARY poet's theater, please submit paper proposals only on poets of the theater who have emerged during or since the early stages of "Language" writing (including John Ashbery, Bernstein, Ntozake Shange, Harryman, Scalapino, Amiri Baraka , Cherie Moraga, Tracie Morris; as well as "non-poet" playwrights like Adrienne Kennedy, Anna Deavere Smith, or Suzan-Lori Parks -- the latter of whose works are based in a non-linear use of lyrical language). Historical influences, however, are also of interest.

Send a 250-300-word abstract and title describing your paper topic no later than SEPTEMBER 12, by e-mail, to Laura Hinton ( laurahinton12@gmail.com).

Accompany this abstract with the following cover-sheet information needed per conference requirements: * 1)Name 2) Address (preferably home) 3) Telephone number 4) Academic or other affiliation (if applicable) 5) Personal Biographical note (100-150 words)

nasal bones

2007-07-22T17:56:00.000-07:00

Nasal bones

left standing

as you dripped dry,

bones, varying

as we switch you and I

not in size or form

we shared one towel

steam/dream like movements

by their junction

your smell hung to me

a serrated, beveled chiseling of placement

cuts deep, beneath bone

placed side by side

the bridge is concavoconvex

a two faced mask looking to lie

in a paradox, anomaly, enigma,

to catch the

we of absurdity

remaining bone poems, then some new

2007-07-05T23:43:00.000-07:00

Ethmoid

you are pithy and porous

she is glistening and hard

a red feather in your cap

pompous boy playing at what?

a deviation to dip in the septum

creation of lateral masses, better yet

labyrinths

which wind and create circular masses on my belly

you trace with the tip top of a tongue

yet these are mind games played

out on paper with inked up letters

smudge proof I am hoping

so they can reach farther than me.

I remain here, lying on my side

light and spongy, maybe cubical in shape

I will slide through

Portions of all—

forever and a day

2007-06-25T18:47:00.000-07:00

been gone forever. slacker that i am. i have been doing this:

goodreads

poetry soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooon.

lachrymal

2007-02-27T22:31:00.000-08:00

Lachrymal

tear dropped finger nail

a center within a face

quick slap and then snaps, the hook is in

she thinks hardly worth the mention

bang bang shoot shoot

2007-02-08T23:21:00.000-08:00

latest. and this time it's text.

sphenoid

2007-01-28T14:11:00.000-08:00

Sphenoid

If we play you must remain clear of the base

of my skull and then yours

but ultimately

the bases of everything

wedge shaped he

she batted her eyes, you said

it was a wink brief

possibly a flutter

mouselike droppings feature a cleanup in who?

median (divides) created for fissures

of two

a great and a small, no two greats and two smalls

entrapped

until endings in –ed were contagious and things slowed

in mud and in languages spoken on 5 continents

the others remained un – in - habitable for people built of two’s

also called butterfly:

cocooned and hatched

Temporal

2007-01-13T12:27:00.000-08:00

Temporal

bones do not grow to be limitless

reigned in, set in motion

a root system is intricate, deep

We all consist of five senses:

1. of a don’t stop time

of tattoo guns going bzzzzzzzzzz stop bzzzzzzzzzzzz stop stop bzzzz

2. this waking moment, a present life

jolt to the here

3. we are temporary

4. the tense of a verb

active, static, both.

5. secular in laymen’s terms

no ecclesiastical exclamations, please

resembles

2007-01-07T19:01:00.000-08:00

Frontal

Can this bone resemble—

wrinkles and puckered lips

yet rounded into heart shaped shells with radiating ribs

you a coupling of her and other(s)

bivalve halfed and un-smooth

Have you created a cockle of me, of my heart

oh clichés!

a tin roof slammed with rain

the region of my forehead hit with drops

I recede into a further room,

a cavity closet that is all dark

parietal bone

2006-12-10T12:44:00.000-08:00

The parietal bone

tell her to brush, brush her teeth

wall of a body part

or cavity

grooves which turn into depressions,

age as an indicator

side to side

a union of sides, a fusion

2 rooftops form craniums 2 sides form a whole

irregular in shape, formation of border and angles

up and down

physical manifestation of change, a growth, a newness

numerous furrows

a cup full

in the morning

occipital

2006-11-22T16:09:00.000-08:00

Occipital bone

we are all immovably joined together

situated at back

never crowned but downward leaning.

A base a support system

pierced by an oval aperture,

protection is a hole

then

the foramen magnum, through which

we communicate

a hub of activity

you dive into the core of nerves, accessorize and attach to a ligament

a core, a pierced hole

also called base of the skull

phalanges

2006-11-05T01:14:00.000-08:00

Phalanges

much reduced in size he is a tip toe diversion a late night secret when she pivots she used the great toe to start gain leverage

First Row: always composed of a body and a head, such broad definitions leaves no room for a question.

sometimes a tracking in of rain water occurs, pools between the toes

Second Row: small short squat

this is when the slickness occurs, the slippery wet of skin on skin

Ungual: the end the support system can go back but forward reaching leaves nothing but dead air,

a dead toe nail.

and then we’re through.

called also toes, 10 total

fuzzy

2006-10-27T17:52:00.000-07:00

in an email to john entitled hmmmmm:

K: I feel fuzzy.

J: maybe you're getting sick

K: no i feel fuzzy. disconnected. like i'm sitting on the ledge of the window in my office looking at the street. never direclty at myself.

J: well you should write that down

K: i dont' think i can go running because of the tetnus shot. my arm feels dead. i think this is a contributing factor in the overall fuzziness. i think it started in my left shoulder and now it's taken over not just me but my office. it's consuming everything.

J: you're very funny

K: it isn't funny

metatarsus

2006-10-26T22:21:00.000-07:00

Metatarsus

roguish twist

a curve with the ends

down, middle up

your organ structure

has a bowl like appearance

we are bony—

bird-like and bent.

Or arch

I'm off

2006-10-10T20:24:00.000-07:00

Mendocino 10 06 021
Originally uploaded by kris497.

...on vacation!

foot

2006-09-28T19:33:00.000-07:00

the Tarsus

Cuboid

pyramidal shape

Navicular

from side to side,

subdivided

two ridges into three facets

third cuneiform

the base being uppermost

second cuneiform

wedge-like form, the thin end being directed downward

first cuneiform

smooth oval impression, narrow L-shaped surface

Also called the foot

heel

2006-09-25T22:43:00.000-07:00

calcaneus

the largest an Achilles tendon situated at the lower and back part of the foot, a paid primer serving to transmit the weight of the body to the ground, a string in the sky lost forming a strong lever for the muscles of the calf. Like in the time of movements made cuboidal in form it presents for examination on six surfaces.

or heel

talus

2006-09-20T06:55:00.000-07:00

Talus

like in the time of bicycles tenderly riding and pushing against
pulls supporting the tibia above, resting upon the calcaneus
below reflexes dependent upon bones, articulating on
either side with, and in front a myriad construction of
necessity.

It consists of a:

The Body (corpus tali).—
The superior surface of the
body presents in front it is
continuous

The Neck (collum tali).—
the constricted portion of bone
between body oval head.
surfaces are rough, like dirt
roads, knees caked with rocks
and deep grooves as a scars

The Head (caput tali).—
The head looks forward best
seen in the fresh condition
semi-oval in shape, and rests

also called ankle

fibula

2006-09-18T22:11:00.000-07:00

Fibula

placed on the lateral side of this bench by a calf skin bag connected above and below this cherry blossom branch, a sprinkle of flowers she would look up as each fell the most slender walking as if on a balance beam of all the her calf arched, pivoting in concentration her long bones stretched and released this feat is small but public, happening in a park excluded from the formation of Sunday activities her coffee cup jostles from the vibration inclines a little forward, and falls where blossoms have already claimed ground.

or calf bone

tibia

2006-09-17T23:24:00.000-07:00

tibia

you are in relation to something else
described as an aside a second best
she uses words like excepting,
oblique is such a dark word,
referencing an instance of this and that

it is situated,
it is prismoid in form,

gender differences are gender
differences between vertical leaning and horizontal.

also called shin bone

patella

2006-09-04T10:53:00.000-07:00

patella

a situation is at hand a purple bird house a joint, a knee joint a resembling of other things knotty and neat

1. being developed

2. presents a knotty outline

3. you are mainly dead and cancellous.

but as a protector you have leverage can reach out at great angles always remain posterior and anterior two dimensional is the minimum we wish three upon you.

also called knee cap

Femur

2006-08-29T18:31:00.000-07:00

Femur

almost perfectly cylindrical tightly woven part of its extent is to create a map like aperture over and underlayed separated above from its fellow medialward, compression is tense

classical latin: its genitive is often feminis

femina = woman

bringing the knee-joint near the line of gravity of the body bend at the waist so that the degree of this inclination tensions and compressions are a tipping towards shhhhhhh you will hear you are a voluminous bone

Or thigh bone

soft architecture, the office of

2006-08-07T18:04:00.000-07:00

how can you not love a book that begins:

the worn cotton sheets of our little beds had the blurred textures of silk crepe and when we lay against them in the evening we'd rub, rhythmically, one foot agaist the soothing folds of fabric, waiting for sleep. that way we slowly wore through the thinning cloth. out feet would get tangled in the fretted gap.

we walked through the soft arcade. we became an architect.

but of course this is lisa robertson

the art of stillness

2006-08-03T19:40:00.000-07:00

"The fat man said (to the wax dummy who had revealed himself as a flesh dummy), I'm afraid we must dismiss you, thank you for all your work. The flesh dummy said, But I have been working here for three year, how will I feed my family? The fat man said, Get a movement job.

We were now five."

this is where i became hooked, right here on page 16 of the novel Observatory Mansions by Edward Carey. i was so hooked that i began texting the phrase get a movement job out to people. allowing them to think ambivalent, nervous, confused, or ignorant thoughts about where this phrase had come from, what it meant, and what it would come to mean. then when i saw these people in person i filled them in on this book that i just begun to read but knew was worth it.

go and read this book!

bones

2006-07-31T22:08:00.000-07:00

Sacral & Coccyeal Verbebrae

these are the pre-formations, consisting of an early before life a separation of nine segments a unification when one is an adult a fissure of fusing five going this way and four doing that a formation complete.

Also called a pre-mediation or a crock pot

sacrum

2006-07-19T21:48:00.000-07:00

Sacrum

inserted wedge like between the two hip bones, soon four its upper part or base friction in an un-made way curved upon itself, placed obliquely, starfish spread five pressure points, cooked its base projecting a sea star is proper, a replacement forward forming an ongoing way to un-do so as to give your tube feet are radial an increased sense of symmetry a curvature considered kyphosis you are tiny and calcified growing at an un-even rate the inlet of inside

_______________________

the term kyphosis has several meanings:

a slouch

a bowing in your back

curve upward and back

yet

breath breath breath

also called center of pelvis

a few lines

2006-07-10T23:37:00.000-07:00

Your tears.....

your tears fall hotly

like salted pork along your cheek bones

sizzled and crackling in a pan

only it is easter

and I have dived into a carpeted house

with tell tale crosses

criss-crossed and alive

taciturn and quiet you lie sleeping

somewhere in the non-midwest

dreams baking

beneath a spotted bedspread at five past 9

coccyx

2006-06-08T23:15:00.000-07:00

coccyx

her tail (in theory) attached by ligaments to the margins of— when sitting, sharp like a pressure cooker is exerted acts sort of like a shock absorber to be fractured or dislocated small triangular bone centered and neat, threadbare at best

also called tailbone

__________________________________

ETYMOLOGY: New Latin, from Greek

cuckoo, coccyx

(from its resemblance to a cuckoo's beak)

Columbarium, SF

2006-06-05T20:17:00.000-07:00

I am going here this weekend. It is one of the only crematoriums in San Francisco. It's filled with the most interesting looking compartments and crevices. I know very little about it, but what I do know is that I need to go ASAP. I have been obsessed with cemetaries, crematoriums, and graveyards ever since I was little. I blame my father who is obsessed with ghosts and has a general love for the supernatural and the fact that I grew up practically across the street from Resurrection Cemetary. You know the story of Resurrection Mary don't you...

14 Hill Vol. 12.2 Release Party

2006-05-22T21:55:00.000-07:00

Wednesday, May 24, 2006 @ 7pm

Release Party / Issue 12.2

Varnish Gallery, www.varnishfineart.com/
77 Natoma Street
between 1st and 2nd St. and Mission and Howard

Join us in celebrating the release of our latest issue, No. 12 Vol. 2. Raffle and snacks to follow! Shown art and readings by the following included contributors:

Readers:

Gania Barlow is a veteran of SFSU’s undergraduate creative writing program, to which she is indebted for introducing her to the short short. She is currently pursuing a masters in literature at Mills College, focusing on pre-18th-century English lit. Her creative work recently appeared in Agni Magazine and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Tanesia Hale Jones is a graduate of Loyola University New Orleans and an MFA candidate at San Francisco State University. She is currently writing her thesis on cowboys and cowgirls. She lives and works in Oakland, where she plays trains, bakes carrot cakes, and applies action hero tattoos with her son, Harlow Raeyce.

Scott Garson teaches writing at Santa Clara University. Recent stories have appeared or are forthcoming in The New Orleans Review, Puerto del Sol, and Quick Fiction.

Julie Doxsee holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is currently a PhD candidate in the poetry program at the University of Denver. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Retort Magazine, Shampoo, Eratio Postmodern Poetry, Word For/Word, can we have our ball back, Elimae, Coconut Poetry, Denver Quarterly, The Colorado Review, Conduit, Typo, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Crudeoils, Double Room, GutCult, Versal, and other journals. She was born in London, Ontario.

David Lau lives in Santa Cruz, where he teaches at the University of California Santa Cruz and Cabrillo College. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Boston Review, VOLT, Denver Quarterly, Pool, and other magazines.

Art:

Jenny DuPont is an artist and designer living in San Francisco. Originally from the east coast, Jenny was born and raised on the coast of Maine. She studied at Parsons School of Design in New York and the Rhode Island School of Design. In 2000 she received her BFA in illustration from Parsons. In 2001, after working in advertising for a year, she left New York City for San Francisco, where she is employed as a graphic designer. Jenny is a participant in the San Francisco Open Studios and the City College of San Francisco Holiday Print Sale at Fort Mason. www.jennydupont.com

Joshua Hagler has had work selected in American Illustration, was nominated for a San Francisco Emerging Artist of 2005 award, shown work throughout the west coast, including the Museum of Contemporary Art, and has done work on children's books, novel covers, editorial illustration, concept art and storyboards for film, the web, and comic books. If you want to know about upcoming projects, releases, exhibitions, and events, please check out www.joshhagler.com

Raffle Prizes, Buy a Book get FREE raffle tickets:
10 Starbucks Gift Baskets
$10 Starbucks Gift Cards
$25 Black Oak Books
2 Tixs to Berkeley Rep

For further information visit: www.14hills.net

EM Reading Series

2006-05-17T07:34:00.000-07:00

Thursday, May 18th, 7:30

Ecstatic Monkey Reading Series at Modern Times Bookstore presents:

Poet and Novelist Kim Addonizio

with Ecstatic Monkey members
John Cleary and Jaime Robles

Kim Addonizio's debut novel, Little Beauties, was described by O
magazine as "a wonderfully optimistic, quirky testament to the power
of chance encounters" and was chosen as a Best Novel of the Month by
Book of the Month Club. Addonizio's several books of poetry include
Tell Me, a finalist for both the National Book Award and PEN USA West
Book Award; and most recently What Is This Thing Called Love. With
Dorianne Laux, she co-authored The Poet's Companion:  A Guide to the
Pleasures of Writing Poetry. She has also published a book of stories,
In the Box Called Pleasure, and co-edited an anthology about tattoos,
Dorothy Parker's Elbow. Her awards include two NEA Fellowships, a
Pushcart Prize, and  Guggenheim Fellowship.

John Cleary is a graduate of the MFA Creative Writing Program at San
Francisco State University.  He has recently been published in New
Standards: The First Decade of Fiction at 14 Hills, Sidebrow and The
Washington Square Review out of NYU.

Jaime Robles's recent books include the artist's book Loup d'Oulipo and
the poetry chapbook Appropriated Love (Woodland Editions). She also
wrote the libretto for the chamber opera Diary. She is currently the
editor and publisher of Five Fingers Review and teaches in the Writing
& Consciousness Program at New College of California, San Francisco.

Modern Times Bookstore
888 Valencia Street, San Francisco, between 19th and 20th
Thursday, May 18th, 7:30



www.moderntimesbookstore.com
www.ecstaticmonkey.com

Pelvis

2006-05-14T18:39:00.000-07:00

Pelvis

bony your structure is load bearing

located at the base of your spine I can feel it when you bend a curvature around the tip of a finger my pelvis is symmetrical each side made up of three separate bones—

FIG. 238

Diameters of superior aperture of lesser pelvis (female)*

these 3 fuse, a togetherness, a joint, a collective you will become more centered take your hand, outstretched and spread 1.lesser-a stretch of thumb and index, 2.not lesser is spread index and middle, for us our well known way of determining sex sits in the center of a pelvis.

also called hip

FIG. 239

Diameters of inferior aperture of lesser pelvis (female)*

* the upper half broad “wings”, or hip bone, a cat stretch is very over arching.

the middle top half of

the lower “loops” is a

crescent, a mirror of

an object

the bottom lower half of the “loops” or continuous, a stream an endless drink

a loop, a wing, a loop

*Click on Fig. 238 and Fig. 239 to see the images.

Vertebrae

2006-04-27T21:46:00.000-07:00

Cervical vertebrae

one of 7 heel to toe heel to toe we walk down Valencia in a parade like formation the human spine is stick straight and a locale of everyone is in place, it clicks your neck is more than a region of the body in which we are connected
the 1st cervical vertebra
the 2nd cervical vertebra;
pivot this way, pivot that
serves as a pivot for
quick turn your head, catch the blue jay in flight

also called neckbone

Lumbar vertebrae

any of them vertebrae stick straight and situated as in a car seat as in a place
there is not an in between there is only above and below
that in
that out
we are all human(s) this construct is addressing only five in number
a grand total of something, a matter of course

also called vertebral column or spinal

Thoracic vertebrae

any of the 12 stacked up one on top of the other the vertebrae of course does it matter that we are dorsal characterized by
too many particulars, an articulation with a what, a who, a now, check your voice mail
pivot and turn, turn and pivot on
a voice, a throat catch

also dorsal vertebra

Literary Panel on the Bay Area Literary Community

2006-04-23T22:45:00.000-07:00

Literary Panel on the Bay Area Literary Community
Wednesday, April 26 @ 7:30pm
San Francisco State University
Poetry Center
Humanities Building, Room 512
1600 Holloway Ave.

The Bay Area Literary Community:
What small presses, literary journals, MFA programs, bloggers, and reading series are doing to foster cross genre work, support collaboration, & grow the literary community.

Featuring Panelists:

* Jack Boulware from Litquake
* Page McBee & Michael co-curators of Go. A reading series
* Brent Foster Jones & Youmna Chlala co-editors of eleven eleven {1111}
* Bucky Sinister of Last Gasp
* Stephanie Young, Blogger & Mills College Administrator

Litquake-Jack Boulware

Litquake Mission Statement: Litquake galvanizes the Bay Area’s thriving literary scene by bringing emerging, mid-career and established authors together with fans of the written word for a week of readings, performances, cross-media events, and panel discussions. We strive to foster interest in literature, to perpetuate a sense of community by making the solitary social, and to publicize San Francisco’s literary heritage, present and future. Litquake represents an ideal complement to the city’s music, film, and cultural festivals – and is unique as the only literary festival in the city. All Litquake events are open to the public and free or low-cost ($5-$10), so that all fans of the written word, from children to seniors, are able to attend.

Jack Boulware: Grew up in rural Montana. He has written two nonfiction social history books, Sex, American Style and San Francisco Bizarro, and has appeared in anthologies and won a few journalism awards. From 1989-1995 I was founding editor of the satirical investigative Nose magazine, and for several years wrote a column for SF Weekly. I currently contribute regularly to a wide variety of publications, and have traveled to many countries and throughout the U.S. in search of a cool story. Occasionally I do live readings and panel discussions, and appear on Air America Radio and in television documentaries. I’m also the co-founder and director of San Francisco’s annual Litquake literary festival.

Go. Reading Series-Page McBee & Michael Braithwaite

Go. – a monthly, curated, cross-media collaboration series. Go. focuses on bringing together a visual artist, writer, and audio artist/ musician and charges them to come up with something completely new. Go. participants only have a theme and a very short time line to guide them, and the entire exhibition is up for one night only. Go.'s primary focus is to bring together artists across lines of culture, gender, sexuality, race, and generation, to create an experience that truly blends issues of identity and medium. The first Friday of every month, three Bay Area artists will work together to transcend categorization.

Michael Braithwaite is a painter originally from Nashville, TN. She attended Massachusetts College of Art, where she received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2003. Her work has been shown in Nashville's Cumberland Gallery, the Nashville Public Library, Boston's Bakalar Gallery, Boston's Oni Gallery, and Somerville's The Someday Gallery. She also has worked on public art projects at the Travellers Rest Plantation and Museum in Nashville, and the Children's Floating Hospital in Boston. She is currently the co-curator and co-organizer of the monthly cross media collaborative arts event series entitled Go.

Eleven Eleven {1111}-Brent Foster Jones & Youmna Chlala

Founded in 2004 as an annual journal of literature and art, Eleven
Eleven {1111} is a test-site for writers and artists to risk and
experiment. A primary goal is to serve as a forum of exchange about the
creative process. The forthcoming 2006 issue will feature work by
artists Mark Bradford, Tim Davis, and Yoon Lee; writings by Chris
Tokar,Charles Mcleod, and Gemini Wahhaj; and interviews with artist Wangechi
Mutu and writer Daniel Alarcorn.

Youmna Chlala is a writer and visual artist. She is the founder and
co-editor of Eleven Eleven {1111}, Journal of Literature and Art, and a
faculty member at California College of the Arts. Nominated for a Ruth
Lilly Poetry Prize, she has been published in the MIT of Middle Eastern
Studies, among others. She is the recipient of a Headlands Center for
the Arts Residency, where she will be working on her novel about
architecture and fate in Beyrouth and Los Angeles.

Brent Foster Jones is a writer and teacher and is co-editor of Eleven
Eleven {1111}, Journal of Literature and Art. He lectures in the
writing programs at California College of the Arts and teaches for the San
Francisco Arts Education Project. He is at work on a collection of
stories set in Louisiana.

Last Gasp-Bucky Sinister

Last Gasp is one of the largest and oldest publishers and purveyors of underground comic books in the world, as well as being a distributor of all sorts of weird 'n' wonderful subversive literature, graphic novels, tattoo and art books.

Stephanie Young-Blogger & Mills College Administrator

Stephanie Young lives and works in Oakland, at Mills College, where she is the program coordinator for the English Graduate Program and teaches in the undergraduate program. Her first book of poetry, Telling the Future Off, appeared from Tougher Disguises Press in 2005, and she is the editor of Bay Poetics, forthcoming from Faux Press in 2006. Her blog, The Well Nourished Moon, (now at www.stephanieyoung.org/blog) has been up and running since 2003.

For more information visit www.14hills.net

Lifesize Mouse Trap!

2006-04-16T20:43:00.000-07:00

Giant Mouse Trap 2006 024
Originally uploaded by kris497.

Remember the game Mouse Trap?

2006-04-16T20:42:00.000-07:00

Giant Mouse Trap 2006 004
Originally uploaded by kris497.

Yup, this is a life size version. Pretty crazy.

Independent Press Spotlight

2006-04-13T13:01:00.000-07:00

Independent Press Spotlight
Intersection for the Arts
446 Valencia St. Between 15th & 16th (Mission)
with 14 Hills & Instant City
Tuesday April 18, 2006 at 7:30pm
$5-15/sliding scale

This evening provides a unique opportunity to meet some of our leading local writers, publishers, and performers and learn first-hand what drives the Bay Area's local independent publishing community.

Fourteen Hills(est. 1994) is a semiannual journal focusing on a great diversity of innovative and experimental poetry, fiction, short plays, nonfiction, and visual art; they feature Noah Eli Gordon & Pamela Ryder.

Instant City (est. 2004) is a semiannual magazine capturing the frenetic energy of San Francisco through works of fiction, non-fiction, and visual arts; they feature writers Lynn Rapoport & Bucky Sinister.

"Fourteen Hills is something of a collage itself, boasting a variety of talented writers from San Francisco and from around the world." - New Pages Literary Magazine Reviews

"[Instant City embodies] the psychogeographic map of literary San Francisco..." - SF Bay Guardian

14 Hills Featured Readers:

Pamela Ryder's fiction has been published in many litereary journals. She has just completed a collection of stories about the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby.

Noah Eli Gordon is the author of the book-length poem The Frequencies (Tougher Disguises, 2003), a collection of three long poems The Area of Sound Called the Subtone, (Ahsahta Press, 2004), an e-book notes toward the spectacle (Duration Press) and chapbooks from Margin to Margin, Anchorite Press, and Anon Books. His reviews have appeared in dozens of journals, including Boston Review, The Poker, Rain Taxi, Jacket, and The St. Marks Poetry Project Newsletter. Forthcoming publications include an audio CD from Kites Are Fun!, a chapbook written in collaboration with Sara Veglahn from Ugly Duckling Presse, work in Boston Review, Typo, Small Town and many other journals. He currently teaches at the University of Colorado in Denver and maintains a links page here: http://humanverb.blogspot.com/

Write Write Read Read

2006-04-04T08:51:00.000-07:00

Tonya Foster & Johanna Fuhrman at SPT you shouldn't miss it.

Here's why:

How about a picture of a man and a woman squatting?

&

Her teeth are still so vertical

Overheard-17th & church

2006-04-03T08:55:00.000-07:00

Hey Sunshine!

Your name's Pablo,

Remember that.

Yarns

2006-03-20T09:24:00.000-08:00

miniatures (I)

Yarn
“you never had a sister that I didn’t like” stone cold fox twisted and tucked behind an ear lobe your continuous forearm is readable on rye bread punctured yet punched into a toaster a beach house stands stoic on stilts of course it waivers, peeking out of clouds take a chance and flip flop in thongs with icing laced ankle straps slapping against pavement the fine grained remnants of city streets a creation of knitted fibers interlocked

URGENT:
I am telling you today because tomorrow is
over already and wasted

ps. this is how you convey fanciful yet futile

14 Hills-City Lights Reading

2006-03-06T11:53:00.001-08:00

Thursday, March 16, 2006 @7pm

City Lights Books
261 Columbus Ave @ Broadway (North Beach)

14 Hills: The SFSU Review, Volume 12.1
Reading

Please join us for an author reading from the newest issue of Fourteen Hills, No. 12.1, one of our best yet. This reading will feature contirbuting authors from 12.1 as well as our Ten Year Anniversary Anthology.

Pam Houston is the author of two collections of linked short stories, Cowboys Are My Weakness (W. W. Norton), which was the winner of the 1993 Western States Book Award and has been translated into nine languages, and Waltzing the Cat (W. W. Norton) which won the Willa Award for Contemporary Fiction. Her stories have been selected for the Best American Short Stories, the O. Henry Awards, the Pushcart Prize, and the Best American Short Stories of the Century. A collection of essays, A Little More About Me, was published by W.W. Norton in the fall of 1999.

Sandy Florian's other Cantos appear in elimae, New Orleans Review, eratio, Tarpaulin Sky, Gargoyle, 42 Opus, Copper Nickel, Word For/Word, Upstairs at Duroc, Segue, Versal, and The Encyclopedia Project. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing from Brown University, where she received the Francis Mason Harris Award for best book-length manuscript, and is currently pursuing a PhD at the University of Denver. Her work appears in the journals listed above and those that follow: Horse Less Review, Identity Theory, Elixir, dANDelion, The Brooklyn Rail and many others.

Geraldine Kim was born in 1983 in West Boylston, Massachusetts, and attended New York University. She lives in San Francisco, where she is pursuing an MFA in Poetry at San Francisco State University. Released by Fence Books, her debut Povel was voted one of 2005's top 25 Books of the Year by the Village Voice.

Steve Gilmartin's work has appeared in or is forthcoming from Paragraph, 3rd bed, VeRT, Syllogism, Comet, Stifled Yawn, Ribot, and Double Room. He lives in Oakland.

Jimmy Chen lives in San Francisco. He's been published in McSweeney's, Snow Monkey, Elevenbulls, and online in Pindeldyboz, Bullfight Review, Melic Review, and Wandering Army, among others.

Peculiar

2006-03-01T15:23:00.000-08:00

Peculiar Rib(s)

ribs which consider special consideration,
the special construction of character(s) are 5
in number-viz. the first, second, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth,
viz. the she, he, I, you, and we:
a tell tale, a map key, please note the instrument used in due

process of unique (ness)

1st

the 1st is one of the shortest, the most curved of all; broad/flat its surfaces looking upward and downward, its borders inward, and outward. A body mirror couldn’t cover her curves more efficiently. There are no angles, even when slightly bent, the convexity of bends go upward, so that the head is directed downward. Twisty twisty grows her body. The under surface is smooth, destitute of grooves observed on the others will she be more than reflective?

also called she

2nd

the 2nd much longer than the first, bears considerable resemblance (very) in the direction of its curvature (shared) as in resemblances to other(s) The angle is slight a man, a he that can be placed situated close the shaft is not twisted, looking upward a little outward, a peeker, a looker, a breathable bar. a can see in—a can see

also called he

10th

the 10th has only a single facet on its head; only needs one interlocking piece, a jolt into a joining.

also called we

11th

reflective than more she will be others observed grooves of destitute, smooth is surface under the body grows twisty downward directed bends of convexity bent slightly when even angles, efficiently more curves her cover can’t mirror body outward and inward borders its downward and upward looking surfaces; all of curved most the shortest the of on is 1st

a difference—has a slight angle, shallow groove
check the lowest border

also called I

[an aside]
11th and 12th have each a single commonality—
facets: of rather large size;
pointed at the extremity

12th

breathable a looker a peeker a outward little a upward looking twisted not that he a man to think slight is angle the other(s) resemblances as (shared) curvature of direction the (very) resemblance considerable bears

a slight inclination for
repetition or is it an economy of language

also called you

Rows of Hands

2006-01-27T10:12:00.000-08:00

6
scaphoid

a comma-shaped half between day light and dusk, dirt like air—is breathable and not bone, human wrist, located in a somewhere town on a somewhere beach in the first row of a memory
ship shape up like a—

also called navicular

5

semilunar

crescent-shaped for that is the middle warm breaded, broken into pieces to toss proximal row between the scaphoid and the triquetral seagulls that swoop, feathered with wind a deep concavity a dip between wing bones on the distal surface your shape is shifting and tossed

called also lunate

3

cuneiform

it is on the ulnar side the cliff bending and standing throw something off but does not articulate it wishes to be is pyramid-shaped is ledge-less, a swift drop off formed from Latin which means "three-cornered"

called also triquetral

8

pisiform

a bone little-finger side not eight but 10 or 2 counting only little resembling a fanned out existing beach, splay of— a pea in size /shape a multitude of grit a pitvotal moment, a final stage developed last

called also—

4

trapezium

a quadrilateral with no parallel sides sand dollar white and oblong a multiple star in the constellation of Orion bone on the thumb side a bone in the distal row base the thumb, the oceans edge met with dry sand tipping out, gleaming

called also greater multangular

7

trapezoid

the base of the forefinger quadrilateral having two parallel sides your juvenile plume sandpiper a small bone a small bird, long beak in the wrist daintily scurry feet do not flick it now near the base of the index finger run straight for dry ground

called also lesser multangular

1

os magnum

abruptly enlarged and globular globe like encompassing more than wet, then water a rounded, knoblike end Forming a headlike mass or dense cluster the flowers of ice plants bloom and blossom coating an articulation between stiff/spiky and the bursting through of magenta a step off a drop down

also called capitate

2

unciform

small, hook-shaped driftwood is light flight like bone of the wrist, a bone on the little-finger side, second row sucker punched and hooked on a tip

also called hamate

*This poem actually appears with the first 4 poems in a row and the second 4 appearing directly below the first 4. Therefore, when you read you can read multiple ways in multiple combinations. If I was more html savvy I would put a fancy table in and then you could see what I meant, rather than merely imagining it.

Wooden Boys with Bendable Legs

2006-01-13T12:17:00.000-08:00

Little Wooden Boy or Pinocchio or Poor Little One in a non-history city

Like when you have too much animal blood lying around
Or under a door frame, inside a tight fitting onclave
Seeping into cracks, little wooden boy legs

Bursting like flowers from so much happiness
But the Two Others were not flowering but dying
Weed tendrils focused on suffocation
Poor Little One had stolen the nutrients,
the bursting belonged to him because he said it was so.

This is the only thing he is sure of

There is no History City, there are no malnourished dogs
Little One is a liar.
Tumorous butterflies fly but they fly with swollen middles
Zig zag like

Two steps further is 200 million miles
wooden legs stained in blood can not make it
more than 1.9999 million steps before they splinter
into pieces and Others use them to play fetch

delusional, grandiose tantrums will ensue
flaying of legs and necks are close to
real limb-ful moments
but limb-ful is not wholesome
when the sky is dipping into the ocean
and the island that you have been floating on
bobbing like a cork
is really a giant fish belly
swollen and white like a knee bone

after reading Kim Rosenfield, Trama

New

2006-01-05T09:07:00.000-08:00

What's on your reading list for 2006?

I find that during a break I consume fiction at a rapid rate. In the last week or so I've finished the The Better of McSweeney's, Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee, and In the Garden of the North American Martyrs by Tobias Wolff. A large stack sits by my bed too numerous to name. But I need more fiction recommendations because school starts soon and once it starts fiction gets put on hold.

I'm in the middle of countless poetry books: Povel by Geraldine Kim, Nets by Jen Bervin, Vice by Carla Harryman, Why/Why Not by Martha Ronk, Locale by Jessica Grim, The Hounds of No by Lara Glenum and the literary journals: Phoebe & American Letters & Commentary. I know there's more but again they're sitting in a separate pile on the floor near my bed.

I often find books in my bed under the covers, books that I will end up looking for for days. Do you fall asleep with your books?

The Broken Teacup

2005-12-20T13:54:00.000-08:00

animated kafka, i bet it rocks.

in my random website hopping i came across this short film maker named Shawn Atkins who: has been developing a distinct style of handmade animation to visually narrate dreamlike journeys of inner transformation.

now i want to see one. and so the obsession begins...

this always happens when it rains. i go inside and seek out new things in cyberspace. damn the rain and its introspective effects.

in other news: i'm going to Corteo tonight!

Feelings

2005-12-20T11:04:00.000-08:00

from Andrea Bakers book: Like Wind Loves a Window

"And so I paid $2.35 for the artichoke because I wanted that type of intimacy with my husband. Though we all agree we don’t like having these feelings, I keep looking for something I can steal."

humerus

2005-12-12T09:53:00.000-08:00

Humerus

longest bone of the forelimb herringbone tights made of nylon, spandex, wool extending from the shoulder to elbow, I slipped them on over a wrist, patterned perfect along my arm, breathable holes articulating above by a rounded head with the glenoid fossa [see glenoid cavity] quick, flick your hand out no snags against fabric a broad articular surface divided by a ridge into a medial pulley-shaped repetitive and plain I wonder if they come in grey, because black is for fishnets portion and a rounded eminence that articulate with the ulna and radius respectively, with holes showing thighs, and calf bones that gleam providing modified surfaces for the attachment of muscles encased like sausages

also called upper arm

Here is—

glenoid cavity

the concavity in the head remember when we sat of the scapula thigh to thigh that receives my elbow poised at the top—red chair the head of the humerus I skimmed your wrist bone then, to form the shoulder joint and you knew it too

also called glenoid fossa

14 Hills Related Events

2005-12-08T16:52:00.000-08:00

Please join 14 Hills Press as we celebrate the release of SWELTER by
Elise Ficarra.
Friday, December 9, 2005 @ 7pm

The Make-Out Room
3225 22nd St, @ Mission St.

Swelter by Elise Ficarra
Chapbook Release Reading
with guest reader Robin Romm
Join us in celebrating the release of the chapbook Swelter that is:

"Exploratory in form yet ultimately grounded in, and devoted to,
everyday experience. Elise Ficarra's Swelter seeks to rescue te
lyric during the latest war's assault on our senses." -Brian Henry

"Where words foreshadow and mirror each other in Elise Ficarra's
Swelter, where we apprehedn their correspondences, our re-reading is
always a first reading--startling--as of a poem which can be
inhabited in multiple dimensions at once." -Benjamin Hollander

"These brilliant and engaging poems do double time as the world's
most innovative and advanced Ouija board." -Stacy Doris

About the Author:

Elise Ficarra's work has appeared in Bird Dog, Commonweal, Fourteen
Hills, Small Town, Transfer and other journals. She was awarded the
Academy of American Poets Harold Taylor College Prize in 2004. She is
a contributor to Hinge a BOAS anthology of eight Bay Area
experimental women writers (Crack Press, 2002). Her first chapbook,
Onslaught Beings, was made in 2002. She lives in San Francisco where
she has worked for a number of years as the business manager of The
Poetry Center and American Poetry Archives.

Robin Romm's collection of stories, The Tilt, won last year's Michael
Rubin Chapbook Award from San Francisco State University. Her short
fiction has appeared (or is forthcoming) in many national magazines
including Tin House, One-Story, Threepenny Review, Nimrod, and The
Portland Review. She teaches at Laney College, The Writing Salon, and
San Francisco State University. She'll be a MacDowell Fellow in spring
2006.

Visit www.14hills.net for more information.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

This Saturday! Celebrate and support small presses!

The Ecstatic Monkey Small Press Fest:
A Showcase, Reading, and Party in Celebration of Local Independent
Presses

Saturday, December 10th 7:30
at the Peacock Lounge (552 Haight St. btwn Steiner and Fillmore)

With Readings From Small Press Publications by:

Stacy Doris
David West
Jeff Johnson
April Hayley
Diana Thow
Todd Chapman
Jason Morris
Susanne Dyckman

Live musical performance by BOUND TO GET FULLER, featuring Brandon
Brown and Alli Warren

Music provided until 1:00 am by: DJ Nathan Moomaw of Fallout and DJ
EMDEE of Club Neon

Participating Presses:

Manic D Press
Kitchen Sink Magazine
New American Writing
Watchword Press
Two Lines: A Journal of Translation
Five Fingers Review
Parthenon West Review
The Skinny
14 Hills: The SFSU Review
Instant City Magazine
Eleven Eleven Journal
Cherry Bleeds
Other Magazine
Meritage Press
Lost Island Press

Free party favors donated by Good Vibrations!

Copious amounts of hors d'oeuvres donated by Trader Joe's!

Full Bar

Lovely raffle prizes generously donated by:

City Lights Bookstore, 826 Valencia, Borderlands Bookstore, Bird and
Beckett Bookstore, Good Vibrations, Cody's Books, Clean Well-Lighted
Place For Books, Dog Eared Books, Needles and Pens, Fly Bar, Fabuloid
(two $100 gift certificates!), Ruby Gallery, DEMA, Candystore, and
Fluffyco

Admission: sliding scale $5 (includes one raffle ticket) - $10
(includes three raffle tickets)

Proceeds benefit the survival of the Bay Area's independent presses
and the innovative and experimental literature they publish

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Monday, December 12, 2005 @7:30pmCafe La Onda
3159 16th St. (between Guerrero & Valencia)

14 Hills: The SFSU Review, Volume 12.1
Issue Release Party

Please join us for the release of the next issue of Fourteen Hills,
No. 12.1, one of our best yet with many great contributors including
art by Laleh Khorramian, and pieces by the following event readers:

Rodney Koeneke is the author of Rouge State (Pavement Saw, 2003) and
a work of history on I.A. Richards in China. A mini-chap, On the
Clamways, was published by Sea.Lamb.Press in 2004. His newest
manuscript, musee mechanique, reflects the rhythms and terrors of a
year spent working at the gift shop inside the Musee Mechanique on
Fisherman's Wharf. He lives in San Francisco with his wife, Lesley
Poirier, and their son Auden.

Chaz Reetz-Laiolo recently received a Writer's Grant from the Vermont
Studio Center. He has an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of
Chicago. He lives in California with his daughter, Isa.

Tina Petrakis is an MA student in poetry at SFSU, with a special
interest in translation and cross-genre writing. She has recently
translated the work of Maria Laina and other contemporary Greek
poets. Her own poetry has appeared in Talisman, Transfer, and in the
anthology, The Pagan's Muse (Jane Raeburn, Ed.). Ms. Petrakis works
as a medical writer in the biotechnology industry and is the author
of many scientific journal articles and reports.

Jason Morris is a bartender in the turbulent Haight St. district of
San Francisco. His poems have appeared in Mirage Period(ical) #4,
Salt Hill, and Parthenon West Review. Jason;s all-time favorite
Beatles song is "And Your Bird Can Sing," and he is currently reading
Rousseau's Confessions and The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym by
Edgar Allen Poe.

Joseph Moulian is a small-town kid at heart. Currently, he lives and
dreams in San Francisco, where he is earning his MA in English at San
Francisco State University. His work has appeared in Brushfire.

Luke Trent's poetry has appeared in Fence, The New Review, and Volt,
among others, and will soon be appearing in various prose poetry
journals. He is a past winner of the Joseph Henry Jackson Award for
poetry.

Visit www.14hills.net for more information.

Sternum

2005-11-22T12:19:00.000-08:00

hmmmm, i can't figure out how to post the diagram. too bad for you.

Sternum
an elongated, flattened bone, the nude model, hard wooden stool, poised forming the middle portion spine straight knees tugging to be spread, almost dropping open anterior wall of the thorax. is a spread eagle sort of day its upper end supports sometimes when she sits she thinks of sleigh bells which consists of three parts, it keeps her steady, focused on a crack in the ceiling named from above downward:

the manubrium,
red pointy triangular
& wiped clean
SEE:
the body or gladiolus, and
us vs. us. vs. them, in fact
SEE:
the xiphoid process
exhale then in and back again

Figure 1 : also called breastbone

__________________________
in early life it is slightly convex in front and concave behind; broad above, becoming narrowed at the point and is rather longer in the male than in the female
which suddenly seems not so obvious to me

Readings

2005-11-16T14:29:00.000-08:00

Come out and celebrate with us this Wednesday November 16, 7pm at
Ireland's 32 (3920 Geary between 3rd and 4th Ave.) New San Francisco
Writing published by Lost Island Press is a collection of poetry and
fiction featuring:

Amy Donsky
Corry Seibert
dom brassey
E.K. Fowler
Giancarlo Campagna
Jason Snyder
John Cleary
Kirstin Dau
Kristine Leja
Peter Orner
Thad Fowler
Torre Pena

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Monday, November 21, 2005 @ 7:30pm

Modern Times Bookstore
888 Valencia Street, between 19th and 20th (Mission)

NEW STANDARDS: The First Decade of Fiction at Fourteen Hills
Issue Release Reading

Commemorating Fourteen Hills’ ongoing dedication to innovative writing, New Standards brings together the best fiction published during the journal’s first decade, including these issue release readers:

Peter Orner is the author of Esther Stories, a Pen/Hemingway Award Finalist and winner of the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Stories have appeared in the Atlantic, the Paris Review, and McSweeney’s. His novel, The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo, will be published in March. He lives in San Francisco and is on the faculty at SF State.

Stephen Elliott is the author of the novels Jones Inn, A Life Without Consequences, What It Means To Love You, and Happy Baby. If you live in Norway the answer is yes, the Norweigan rights to Happy Baby have been purchased, so keep your eyes peeled. Same for Italy. He is also the author of Looking Forward To It Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The American Political Process and the editor of the Politically Inspired anthologies, of which there are currently two.

Nona Caspers' short fiction has received an Iowa Fiction Award from the Iowa Review, a Barbara Deming Memorial Grant and Award, and a Joseph Henry Jackson Literary Grant and Award. Her work has appeared recently in The Iowa Review, Cimarron Review, and Blithe House Quarterly. She is the author of The Blessed and is currently at work on A Book of One Hundred Days.

Eireene Nealand won the Ivan Klima Fiction Fellowship in 2004, and topped off her European tour by appearing as an extra in a rap video in London. She has work published or forthcoming in Thin Air, Five Books, Fourteen Hills, Transfer, and Tight Magazine among other places.

John Cleary lives and writes in San Francisco.

For further information visit: www.14hills.net

Phalanges

2005-11-03T10:20:00.000-08:00

Phalanges

bone of a piecemeal a finger your fingerprint etched into glass
tap tap tap

Proximal:
nearer—a point of reference take my map out, unfold such as an origin, don’t let the creases fool a point of attachment, the midline of the body: the proximal end of a bone

Intermediate:
lying in a state like red or blue why can’t we make purple? intermediate means mid, middle position or—

Distal:
situated away from the middle, the center is heartless farthest from point of origin, long faced and frowny as of a limb or bone skim my chin with the very very tip tip

also called fingers everyones’

Kris & the infamous Dead Goose

2005-11-02T12:55:00.000-08:00

halloween2005 Kris & the infamous Dead Goose
Originally uploaded by kris497.

Me in real light. Halloween 2005, the year Kris got the plague or the flu or whatever it was that was and is still going around.

You Can't beat this lighting

2005-11-02T12:53:00.000-08:00

Originally uploaded by amickboone.

WOW, i look scary as hell.

You Should be Here

2005-10-20T11:06:00.000-07:00

14 Hills Vol. 11.2 Literary Journal Reading

THURSDAY October 20
7:30pm
FREE

Valencia Street Books
569 Valencia Street
San Francisco
(between 16th and 17th in the Mission)

Wine and cheese provided.

Featuring:
Alison Stine, Erin Brooks Worley, Anne Clifford, & Elizabeth Treadwell

Alison Stine is the author of a chapbook of poems, Lot of My Sister (Kent State University Press), and is a first-year Wallace Stegner fellow at Stanford University. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, The Paris Review, The Kenyon Review, The Antioch Review, Gulf Coast, Swink, and others, and have twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize

Anne Clifford's short stories have appeared in Hayden's Ferry Review, Get Off My Wagon, and Waterfall, and have been performed by a Los Angeles theater company. In 2004, she won an AWP first prize for fiction and received her MFA from the University of San Francisco. She lives in Albany, California, where she works as a grant writer for non-profit organizations.

Elizabeth Treadwell's books include the poetry collections Chantry (Chax Press) and LILYFOIL + 3 (O Books), both 2004. Her work in this issue is from a new manuscript titled Wardolly, other parts of which appear in Pom2 and Bay Area Poetics. Treadwell earned her MFA at SFSU in 1997, has worked as director of Small Press Traffic in San Francisco since 2000, and lives with her husband and daughter in her hometown of Oakland. For further information, please see: elizabethtreadwell.com.

Erin Brooks Worley earned her MFA from Syracuse University. Her fiction has appeared in the Indiana Review, The Gettysburg Review, and Ninth Letter. Currently, she lives in San Francisco, where she is completing a collection of linked short stories.

Literary Events this Week/Weekend/and Next

2005-10-13T10:21:00.000-07:00

SF has decided to cram all things literary into a 2 week span due mostly in part to Litquake and the 4th International Poetry Festival hitting at the same time. If you're looking for things to do here are some suggestions:

Preview: Thu, Oct 13, 8 pm (all seats $8)
Evening: Fri & Sat, Oct 14 & 15, 8 pm
Thu-Sat, Oct 20-22, 8 pm
Matinee: Sun, Oct 16 & 23, 2 pm
$10 General Admission/$8 Students & Seniors
Tickets: 415/338-2467
WORLD Premiere of DONNING CHEADLE by Geraldine Kim
Little Theatre, Creative Arts Bldg
SFSU campus, 19th Ave & Holloway, SF

Fri., Oct. 14, 7:30: Small Press Traffic Literary Series ($5-$10)
New Experiments: Nada Gordon & Gary Sullivan on the Autre
Timken Lecture Hall, CCA (1111 Eight St. @ 16th/Wisconsin)

Sat., Oct. 15, 6:30:
LitCrawl: Robert Coover (21+)
McSweeney's launch of Coover's new story collection A Child Again
Elbo Room (647 Valencia St. @ 17th)

Sat., Oct. 15, 6:30: LitCrawl: SF International Poetry Festival
Christophe Fiat, Nora Gomringer, Anna Jorgensdotter, Dunya Mikhail, Kai Nieminen, Aldo Nove, Liam O Muirthile, Monika Rinck
New College (780 Valencia St. @ 19th)

Wed., Oct. 19, 7:30: USF Lone Mountain Poetry Series
Laura Moriarty
Lone Mountain 100 / USF (2800 Turk St.)

Thu., Oct. 20, 7:30: Fourteen Hills Reading Series
Anne Clifford, Aliston Stine, Elizabeth Treadwell, Erin Brooks Worley
Valencia Street Books (569 Valencia St. @ 17th)

Thu., Oct. 20, 3:30: The Poetry Center Reading Series ($5)
Donald Revell, Paul Hoover, Aaron Shurin
The Unitarian Center (1187 Franklin St. @ Geary)

Sat., Oct. 22, 6:30: Fiction at New College
Susan Steinberg
New College Cultural Center (766 Valencia St. @ 19th)

Most of these dates were obtained by visiting Sidebrow where a wonderful SF Literary Calendar is housed.

nonsense

2005-10-13T10:17:00.000-07:00

miniatures (you)

Filament

your fine twiggy legs tired. a knee caked in blues. like patty. bend at the thigh, dip into a puddle to swim. cast off shoes but not clothes. pop out all plush, all shimmery aglow. blonde roots shine gasoline purple, streaked into highlights, a tinge, a ripe reddened toe caught on the lip / dip of sidewalk. like slap. time to start spinning, you need fluff. a puffed letter jacket, can never hang out to drip-dry. direct is better than the round about post. remember that middles of packages are not hard packed but pliable. like give me a lick. when cold—

it’s never time for icicle fingertips stuck to a tongue

quick, send the wire transfer direct to your sisters left ear—
she should hear this

more middles

2005-09-26T09:54:00.000-07:00

Scapula

either of a pair like two large essentially flat I see flip flops with heels triangular bones lying one in each part of the thorax, Warhol shoes painted, done uppity up being the principal the authority of what?— in the future , bone corresponding half divided by fashion as pop art—movie star face an oblique transverse everyone will bony process as carbons as copies as big painted swaths having a hook-shaped not nose, Andy is angular providing contact with humerus corresponding clavicle don’t ruin the big—but touch them all be world famous for 15 minutes

called also shoulder blade

middles

2005-09-16T09:26:00.000-07:00

Middles

Wrist

group of eight carpal bones and associated soft parts we bump along the street forming the joint between the forearm and hand this piece of shit flies, watch out for construction cones articulating with the radius hold tight to the crease between door and window indirectly with the ulna, and with the five metacarpal bones protect from a bump at all cost

also called carpus

Clavicle

either of two slender bones your hoop skirt is lovely a delicate flounce that extend from fine tethered waistcoats sternum to scapula mauve like and neat, i’ll take mine straight laced with fine boned china pectoral girdle one of—

also called collarbone

Rib

one of a series a carton of eggs long curved bones brown for posterity occurring in 12 pairs sometimes I think you’ll ask extending from the spine to/or toward the sternum what came first there it is broken/taken out a removal of original an offset pair do you think gleaming white as it sat upon silver?

also called floating rib or false, yours

a taste

2005-09-13T14:08:00.000-07:00

a taste of brides
from Brides of Frankenstein, an exhibit
-San Jose Museum of Modern Art-

—Ouch—

life sized they hang from the back of their necks in a corridor prepubescent you are encouraged females in cheesecloth nightclothes bumping against hear them giggle laid out like a valley one may even sing to you mostly they say ouch tap tap on your back a corridor of dolls

Last minute...

2005-09-08T12:52:00.000-07:00

I'm reading with 2 amazing poets this evening:

The Ecstatic Monkey Second Thursdays reading series continues after a summer hiatus this Thursday, September 8th for a reading featuring poet:

Stacy Doris

with Ecstatic Monkey Member poets Kristine Leja & Colleen Bazdarich

Entry is FREE and open to the public

Wine and Beer available

7:30 pm

StartSoma Gallery is at 672 S. Van Ness between 17th and 18th (through the blue door and up the stairs)

Stacy Doris' books written in English include Conference (Potes & Poets 2001), Paramour (Krupskaya 2000), and Kildare (Roof, 1995). Written semi-anonymously in French are La vie de Chester Steven Wiener écrite par sa femme (P.O.L,1998), and Une année à New York avec Chester (P.O.L 2000). Forthcoming: Knot (University of Georgia) and Parlement (P.O.L). She has edited a dossier of new American writing in French for Java, and co-edited the following collections of French poetry translated by American poets: with Chet Wiener, Christophe Tarkos: Ma Langue est Poétique--Selected Work (New York: Roof) 2001; with Norma Cole, Twenty-two New (to North America) French Poets (Vancouver: Raddle Moon) 1997; with Emmanuel Hocquard), Violence of the White Page, Contemporary French Poetry in Translation (Santa Fe, NM: Pederal) 1992. She is an assistant professor of Creative Writing at San Francisco State University.

&

Colleen Bazdarich spent the summer in Dublin sifting through the
private library of Poetry Ireland, where she found gems like a 1st
edition copy of Jack Spicer's Billy the Kidd hidden in the covers of
other books. Her work has lately focused on the occult, and she hopes
to return to the Green Isle next year to study up on Yeats' similar
fascination with mysticism and maybe, while she's there, finish up the
MFA thesis for SFSU she's supposed to be writing.

Katrina...

2005-09-02T11:27:00.000-07:00

I keep thinking it's been 5 days and people are still in the Superdome, still on their roofs, still stuck in a city submerged. Why isn't more being done, why wasn't more down earlier, why didn't they push harder for a mandatory forced evacuation? But most importantly Bush why haven't you shown your face to the American people and issued a plan to help, why aren't you urging Americans to donate, or are you so disconnected from the non-rich that you just don't care.

I've been obsessively reading the news and looking at pictures from this devasting area of the country. First and foremost send money to the Red Cross ASAP.

Here's what I've found:

The mayor of New Orleans extreme disappointment and raw honesty.

Seth Abramson has a terrific post on Katrina

Because Bush likes to lie and we certainly knew that the levees were in jeapordy.

FEMA-What the hell happened Mr. President from the Washington Post

I thought the job of the President was to lead and comfort in times of national crisis.

Further proof that Bush and Washington have a major disconnect with this nations poor.

Attytood: a newsblog with plenty of opinions on the subject, it's what we're all thinking but afraid to say. well not always, but you know what I mean.

Satellite Images from the NYTimes.

And of course Common Dreams which contains much much more on the situation.

Demise

2005-08-12T15:37:00.000-07:00

Verse Press is no more, instead we have a merger.

BUT Verse Mag lives on

we both go down together

2005-08-03T15:47:00.000-07:00

from Dear Paper Flowers

I was looking at your thin stem leaning
against the wall.

propped and slightly crooked.

Little shadow lean long.

Petals shouldn’t be fuzzy but are.

They stand in circular

lines touching edges, reaching out, then up.
you are stiff,

brittle yes,

you never bend in and out

of water—the same.

Protea from the corner. How long
did you sit in the window

colorless petals, spiny and neat.

Sometimes I hate the way you’re wrapped.
Tissue paper and
twine. The tiny purple acscents woven in.

Next time come alone.

Why does your stem have no leaves

to dip and dive around

your thinness. Instead you bring filler,

crowding the base. Purple

lilacs are beady and fine—fluffy even,
try cat tails for future reference.
Note:

babies breath will grind into nothing, don’t bring those.

Your blossom is large and heady,
popping into a startling white.
fuzzy and un-flower like. When I

dry you out, will

you turn a dirty grey

or go ivory with a touch of brown?

Please—

stay stiff and never wilted.

Original Willy Wonka Kids

2005-07-26T16:07:00.000-07:00

Look at the Original Wonkakids all grown up. How crazy is that!!!!! Charlies mustache is creeping me out, Veruca Salt should not look so I don't know 80's Barbie, and what is up with Augustus? You know you're dying to know what they're up to now. Poor Willy Wonka Kids all hit their hight points on this film, well high points as actors and actresses that is.

Lost 7

2005-07-22T11:43:00.000-07:00

breathing is a necessity, but you can try it in the comfort of your living room. behind a wall or a closed door. change the course of a breath by holding it, delaying its release for a few stolen seconds. an alteration, a blip in a pattern can sometimes trigger it all. can leave you gasping, gulping for air-fulls of oxygen, an expansion of lungs, a quickened heartbeat, a change in the every day mundane.

Lost 6

2005-07-22T11:19:00.000-07:00

I would wear blue as well. sometimes I would mix my blues with browns and oranges. orange becoming the new blue. you could see me miles off. hips swinging. women have a low center of gravity. mine is somewhere near my knees.

Lost 5

2005-07-22T11:18:00.000-07:00

stacks waiting for sifting through. a filing system is arbitrary and feels forced. things remembered can come hard and fast instead of in tabbed out quarters, parsed and worked into squared away edges. a wish for the neat and tidy.

Lost 4

2005-07-22T11:16:00.000-07:00

moments, as in remembered.

Lost 3

2005-07-22T11:04:00.000-07:00

the walls are layered. work like enclosures, corrals. a wide expanse of chopped up degrees. I can fit you in, maybe somewhere in sector 5—close but with uncomfortable moments.

Lost 2

2005-07-22T11:03:00.000-07:00

your favorite sweater. the dark blue of wool, nubby and worn. the inside of my left arm imprinted with the weave. linked and locked for moments. passed off as past.

Lost

2005-07-22T10:35:00.000-07:00

You're lost to me. Now I'm just a floater something you might see out of the corner of your eye. The way the floater floats on the world, but lives somewhere inside. Floating there for about 15 seconds only to return in 10 months, 5 years, maybe 12. The walls are back, slathered in mortar not wood. Wood is breathable and bleeds.

Cloudy

2005-07-21T16:10:00.000-07:00

June 004
Originally uploaded by kris497.

I just typed my blogger login at least 6 times before I got it right. It's been one of those weeks.

This is the Utah sky in June. I miss fluffy clouds and thunderstorms. I miss the blue, I've almost forgotten that the sky is blue, I can't see anything past the fog here. Everything is misted over.

Snippets of overheard conversation:
"There was so much I wanted to show you"

"Doesn't someone miss you"

"The reason above all reasons..." hushed whispers ensue

I think maybe I've just been listening too hard to the background noise in coffee shops, but for some reason I felt compelled to record those snippets. I think they'll be useful at some point.

your arms full of lullabies, orchids and wine

2005-07-11T10:34:00.000-07:00

hot socks

sweet santa claus

top heavy with IT

If you're curious and I know you are check out IT.

I have 2 poems up at 42opus. You should read them.

Half-sies

2005-07-06T12:05:00.000-07:00

Half-sies NY Eve 2003
Originally uploaded by kris497.

Half-sies from Chicago. I think it fits nicely with the notes on remembering. Half notes, with half thoughts, half remembered and half finished.

Notes I remembered upon returning

2005-07-06T09:53:00.000-07:00

Chicago SOS

1. Irving Park/Ravenswood
More of a look, a time of day, the way ginger ale turns
yellow at dusk on the patio behind Café 28

The whooshing rumble
our elevated train-so many feet above.

My calves tip a bit,
jolt jolt.
But you expect it to be so
and lift in anticipation.

2. Wacker
Your French connection picture
blurry and abounding with details.
The movement, propelled forward.

I can see sounds, know them well
can hear:
Taxi cab yellow, dashboard gleam

3. Clark
Why would you insist on walking it,
taking buses crumbled with dirt,
crevices hinged on skin cells.

I told you this is a driving kind of town
you knew but didn’t care. The middle of the country
sleeps inhaling oil fumes,
you are west coast and took them in in gulps.

I prefer the slow silent kind,
the kind taken through tempered glass

4. Adams/Wabash
Ivan’s door seemed real enough to open—
quite large a decade of pain and preparation.

Ivan hidden
on the floor that doesn’t quite
match up, The new wing, the un-blending.
Architecture un-aligned, un-matched, yet workable.

You get to flank
the next gallery, severely nodding.
Would you have stopped and stood looking
had I not taken you
palm to palm to his feet?

I See

2005-06-29T11:16:00.000-07:00

I see chaos on lithographs*

Baghdad is burning. Smoke curling, bombed out shells, hovering plaster pieces, your concrete walls. I see this through the photographer that sees this thousands and thousands of miles away. But what I see are legs. Faces with barred teeth, the whites of eyes, turned red and inside out.

Three fire pockets blow upwards, flames licking. Orange aglow. Splintered street corners, intersections of glass. A littering of an inside. 4 cars blown upwards and out, a half circle arc. Metal pieces shot quickly.

You in your blue polka dots, house dress almost. Just off center. You reflect the blue of the window to your right, a perfect symmetry. I can only identify you by a backside and probably never again. You are turned bravely towards. Bombed out shell. Concrete erect. Black tar is blowing. The architecture is curvy, wavy with heat.

Half forward facing and half back. A colorful array of those still standing. Yet all are in a state of forward, one leg lifted. Heel to toe. Black shiny hair, grey film. Holes where windows were and the curtains in tatters. Skinny armed boy is wearing blue sandals. He stares, standing in a doorway. Half erect, a deep maroon, like saloon doors. Only they never swung. Half hinged even. Dark brown eyes mirroring images.

I’ve looked and looked and never once recalled the color of the sky. Yet, I strive to convey the minute details.

*NY Times, a photograph of Four car bombs exploded within about 10 minutes of each other in Baghdad on June 23 by Muhammed Uraibi/Associated Press

Prickly with head stones

2005-06-21T09:02:00.000-07:00

Illinois, USA

Southwest Corners

Breath holding to pass
you know the old wives tale
all of the stories piled up
spinning round me like
funnel clouds, makes me think funnel cake
roller coasters, Great America, Gurnee
and ice cream, cold and white
layers of swirls as a topping

Hold your breathe

Resurrection cemetery
I said I would take you there,
to touch the palmed over bars
to see the dead, photographs circular
popped off of grave stones
likely pocketed.
mementos hard and fast. remembrance.

Quick inhale

we could walk enclosed and hear the traffic
sifting through branches and brambles
our vision tree pocked
Roberts Road ringing back at us

Cemetery white is a dirty grey

family plots, neat little rows
I walked between
respectful of the rectangular shape of things
you walked in zigzags, fully absorbing
covering ground in loping circles
to my one foot in front of the other,
heel to toe and back again
plastic vases and rows of roses
marred by landmarks
the map of turns in my head fuzzy
finding them was scattered
a series of lefts and rights,
mostly back tracks

Prickly with head stones

But in the end all I could remember
was the breath holding
and how we never had,
had never gone at all,
instead I pulled and plucked from what I wished

A Cautionary Tale

2005-06-17T11:39:00.000-07:00

South Dakota, USA

i.
We tried to get to the house made of corn but we never made it. It alluded us. The town was small and squat, a barely made out outline—but it was there. The corn house was too, I imagine, along with the museum of 4,000+ dolls. Can you, can you see it? Was it really in a museum or was it a converted barn, an old Victorian, or an old wooden outline plastered over and shaped into form.

ii.
83 miles per hour. I never thought of this as running. As too fast. A loping highway pace. Ground cover

iii.
A drug store that spanned a city block. Would that be a mile? I believe the name began with a W. Maybe you’ve heard the name before. Can remember its significance.

iv.
Exited Wyoming only to enter South Dakota. A flat surfaceless place. I could see the heat which means I could see the air. W was so inconsistent, a valley of curves and dips, my toes felt cooled by the changes, curling and uncurling. SD was the cruel joke. The deflated expanse at the end of a roller coaster. That quick jerk as you slide into stop. Your slow exhale.

v.
Red tinted highways, bumpy mediums. Road construction can be so present. A turn off into a one gas station town. The bank has no ATM. The teller blinks. A fat child in a jumper is walking along the painted yellow lines.

vi.
The middles of everything are fat and dangerously round. It might be the heat. Drops of sweat are beading on my back. They fall in intervals. This feels no closer to the start or end of anything.

vii.
The spaces leaving room for the unheard, the unmentioned, the refused rememberings. The cat in the carrier meows, paws at the nylon. He is only stretching.

viii.
Recounted only in memory, found in the left most corner of your brain. The one I left along the road. The one I asked to leave the car and not come back. The yellow carbon flapping, skittish along the dash. Proof of a moment.

The things you search for on google

2005-06-15T11:38:00.000-07:00

Someone got to my site by googling: Swat Talon Robot Pictures. That's awesome.

I'm gearing up for a longer post or some poetry or whatnot. Coming soon, very soon. I feel strangly distant from my little blog. I hadn't looked at it at all while away and it's slowly coming back into focus. But for now it must be content with some short shorts to tide it over.

2005-06-13T14:26:00.000-07:00

I'm back. Leading up to my 11 day trip out of SF, cross country through Salt Lake City, Yellowstone, South Dakota (spawn of the devil state), Minnesota, Wisconsin, then down to Chicago. I intended and started a post entitled Notes before a Trip but in my haste to leave town and do a million and one things prior to leaving it fell to the wayside. So, instead I have this:

You are John Ashbery. People love your work but
have no idea why, really. You are respected by
all kinds of scholars and poets. Even artists
like you.

Go and find out which poet you are.

I love you Ajivit

2005-05-25T12:19:00.000-07:00

The other night I saw Born into Brothels, the documentary that won the Academy Award. Basically, the entire movie is about this photographer who lives in the Red Light District in Calcutta and teaches the children of the brothels how to take pictures. The effects on the kids lives and her life is amazing. These kids were so wonderfully articulate and sensitive and talented that you wanted desperately for them to get out of the brothels. The movie wasn't successful because it displayed something you don't see everyday. It was successful because these kids were given a chance to do something that they would never had done otherwise. It was honest and didn't try to hide anything or disguise things. Things were laid out plainly.

I also really enjoy movies about kids when they're done well. The other one that immediately comes to mind is Spellbound which also cast the children as themselves and how they existed outside the eye of their parents, but also how they were effected by the pressure most clearly placed on them by parental expectations. Interestingly enough both documentaries were distributed by Think Film Company which seems to distribute a wide variety of films.

The 2 kids that were really very endearing by the end were Puja-the spunky girl and Ajivit-the boy that truly had an eye for art. I just hope that as they become adults they don't lose any of that spunk and talent.

Enough sappy comments, just go see the movie.

Paper Flowers

2005-05-18T16:36:00.000-07:00

Recently, I discovered a new playwright named Egon Woolf, who is Chilean and appears to have only one of his plays translated into English. The play Paper Flowers is amazing. See for yourself:

"Love is a truce between periods of exhaustion. Love is broken teeth in a hungry mouth."

I've been thinking lately about my lack of seeking out non-English pieces of literature to read. What am I missing out on? Probably tons and tons.

Note to self, read more translated material.

Nature Tromp - iii Hill

2005-05-17T09:27:00.000-07:00

iii. Hill

let’s begin in flight
both male drone and breeding female—go
carried from every ant hill placed on the limbs of grass
wings spread out in a colony escape
not just your little ant hill, one outside your window
but all little ant hills

a lift up as wind catches wings
she pounces, cat claws attached to screen
she has no demure meow

the drones drop off, sex caught mid-flight
a fall to death
breeders are left to build anew
a quick chew to release her wings
and she’s laying it all out
first brood chamber, you’re all minors,
obey and wait it out

New worker:
here is your abrupt temporal caste
lasting days 2-4 at a time:
1 care for your queen & siblings
2 dig dig there is always nest work
3 forage for food and defend your home

the tapping of rain
beating and mashing down
your hill a swirling mudpie

minor media major (soldier)
the inescapable physicality of it all

when a pack of you climbs up my piping
I wonder who is who
if soldiers are so forthcoming?
never slipping or sliding down the porcelain smooth
but popping out antennaes through piped in holes

when I turn on the spigot full force
you crumple and curl
I watch as you
let out attack and propaganda pheremones
confuse or a t t a c k,
c o n f u s e and attack

mandible jaw working up and down
that trail behind you warm
you’ll be swarming soon
but there’s no food here
just cold tile floors

my attempts at destruction are futile, god save the queen

Nature Tromp ii - Shell (absent)

2005-05-12T14:05:00.000-07:00

ii. Shell (absent)

mucus train, wet—quickly
evaporating in the warm sun
top of the fence post—wait it out slug
reach for a leaf, take a dive down
your shell not quite absent
tucked up under your saddle-shaped mantle
little platelette, a fall can break you
after all you have no visceral mass
stacked up organs atop a foot

garden vines are thick and wirey
tomato red grow up and around your cages
flower out on top of, not through, the metal squares
carefully spaced apart, planted early
now you brush and sway against a breeze, touching

foot—thin and watery pull ahead, pedal and push-
thick and sticky yet
travel up, follow shadows, accordion movements

your tentacles are going
sensory-lower and shorter-smell and taste
optic-upper and longer you can see—
look for leaves, taste dead decaying produce
your radula is tongue tied and heavy,
quick tiny tooth like denticles are ensured
choke and strangle tight
shredded cacophony of leaves in your wake

to think just moments ago
hanging from a slime cord
you mated in mid-air
bluish swelling genitalia all pushed out
your mate wrapped tightly around
both simultaneouly male and female
taking and giving sperm
your fertilization pocket isn’t far from your food
drop out your 1,000+ batch of eggs
all laid out in a continuous string.
as you dip and dive past salt streams,
buried beer cans to drown you
eating and eating a fertile laid out plot

a scoop and you’re mine, palm centered
a push of mucus and you’ve marked me
curl and writhe under the current
salt can penetrate your delicate muscles
when poured directly on

little slug you were set to
die, the air is changing-
it’s going cold and moistureless here

Lots-o-Readings

2005-05-09T15:49:00.000-07:00

Velvet Revolution
Student Showcase And Open Mic
with John Cleary (fictionoso and poetico)
and Elizabeth Gjelten (celebrated monologuista teatrista!)
hosted by Malia Jackson Nobel Prize Winning Nuclear Poet

Tuesday, May 10 at 5:00 PM
in The Poetry Center Humanities Building, Room 512, SFSU Campus

********

Robin Romm Chapbook Release Party
for The Tilt a collection of short stories
Winner of the 2004 Michael Rubin Chapbook Award from Fourteen Hills/San Francisco State University.

Tuesday, May 10th at 7:30
at Great Overland Book Company
345 Judah Street @ 9th Ave, San Francisco
(415) 644-0126

********

Ecstatic Monkey presents:
Toni Mirosevich Book Release Party
Queer Street
Reading with Malia Jackson & Lori Williams

Thursday, May 12 @ 7:30pm
StartSOMA Gallery
672 S. Van Ness between 17th and 18th

Toni Mirosevich is the author of The Rooms We Make Our Own (Firebrand Books), co-author of Trio: Toni Mirosevich, Charlotte Muse, Edward Smallfield (Specter Press), and of the newly released Queer Street (Custom Words), runner up for the 2004 Custom Words Poetry Prize. Afourth collection of poetry, My Oblique Strategies, won the 2005 Frank O'Hara Chapbook Award (Pratt Institute, Brooklyn) and will be published by Thorngate Road Press in September, 2005. Other literary awards include the Astraea Emerging Lesbian Writer in Fiction Award,the Americas Review Poetry Prize, and for 2004-2005 fellowships with the MacDowell Colony, Willard R. Espy Foundation and Djerassi Resident Artists Program. Her work has appeared in Kenyon Review, Best American Travel Writing, The Progressive, and is forthcoming in Puerto Del Sol, San Francisco Chronicle Magazine, and in the anthologies AutoBioDiversity (Heyday Books) and The Impossible Will Take A Little While (Basic Books). She is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at San Francisco State University.

********

Fourteen Hills Journal celebrates its NEW ISSUE at
the Elbo Room
Tuesday, May 17, 2005 @ 6:30pm
647 Valencia Street (btwn 17th & 18th)

WITH POETRY AND FICTION READINGS BY contributors Aurora Brackett, AnneClifford, Susanna Kittredge, Laura Moore, Robin Romm and Margaret Ronda.

Anne Clifford's short stories have appeared in Hayden's Ferry Reviewand Get Off My Wagon, and have been performed by a Los Angeles theatercompany. In 2004, she won an AWP first prize for fiction and receivedher MFA from the University of San Francisco. She lives in Albany,where she works as a grant writer fornon-profit organizations.

Aurora Brackett is working on her MFA in Creative Writing at SFSU. Shelives in Oakland. "Cold War" won the 2004 Wilner Award.

Laura Moore's poetry, fiction, essays and photography have appeared inCoracle, Spectrum, Midnight Zoo, Danse Macabre, Limestone, 14850Magazine, The Ithaca Times, Kalliope and 14 Hills. Though she lives,works, and schools in San Francisco you can most often find her at theWinchester Mystery House. She has a season pass.

New England native Susanna Kittredge is currently pursuing her MFA inCreative Writing at San Francisco State University. She enjoyscooking, crochet, and watching the ocean from a distance. Her poemshave appeared or are forthcoming in the journals Diner, Sahara,Transfer, and Shampoo, and in the upcoming Faux Press anthology, _BayArea Poetics_.

Margaret Ronda received an MFA in poetry from Indiana University. Herpoems have appeared in Bellingham Review, Faultline, Seattle Review,Prairie Schooner, and other journals. She is currently pursuing a PhDin English at UC Berkeley.

The Hansel & Gretel Forest Series

2005-05-06T14:31:00.000-07:00

With the last posting of the Hansel & Gretel series I feel relief. I'm glad I've finally committed this idea to paper. This is my first draft pass of the series and I still have plenty of work to do on it: cleaning it up, tightening it, and making sure the narrative line doesn't get lost in all of the description.

I think I've hit upon something that I think will make an intersting chapbook or book idea - placing fairy tales in the bay area with modern concerns. Next series: Little Red Riding Hood meet Mission Dolores. I think I'll have her check out various churches and religions rather than going to see her grandmother.

I'm in spring mode, lots of finishing of projects going on and more new ideas than I can possibly handle.

The Hansel & Gretel Forest 10-The End

2005-05-06T11:18:00.000-07:00

10
the whole thing is sucked down
turned inward and under
a flip flop around
the ground is green kissed. dewy. grackle free
an absence of past
a return to the car, an exit out, a long drive home

The Hansel & Gretel Forest 9

2005-05-05T13:24:00.000-07:00

9
The tap of his finger
against the squawking of the birds
produces a beat
rat a tat
rat a tat tat tat
pim-pom,
pim rat a pom tat tat
an S.O.S. with substance
Gretel only notices because the roof has flown off
something about refusing to
relinquish its chocolate core
the insides of the house are swirling
the triangle shaped room
comes out whole
air born, perched atop the bramble bush
amidst glass jars, red cloaks, a liquor cabinet

the beldame is last—
speared through vertically with a poker
landed in the fire pit
a click and the spit is turning
gas engulfed
licking her legs lovingly

Hansel is all punctured through
a punched out boy
Gretel knows it won’t last
the beldame will pour through
seal him up when she takes a last breath

The Hansel & Gretel Forest 8

2005-05-04T14:17:00.000-07:00

8
The ground has shifted into puddles
with thorny middles, little O’s everywhere
broken with thin walkways
the grackles are bathing inbetween
jutting necks around thorns, little squawker
Gretel sits on thick heavy roots
and waits
for a crack, a breaking open, a something soon

The Hansel & Gretel Forest 7

2005-05-03T14:18:00.000-07:00

7
meanwhile,
Hansel has pushed Gretel
she is on the outside-the edge
of his mind, this story, this tall tale
a Flit-in and out, a sometimes blink

the beldame has
slid inside, soaking up the
edges, thick heavy sponge.
she feasts/flirts—leaving
bone shells—she goes for marrow
a seeker of sorts, maybe

cocooned in a triangle shaped room
Hansel is strapped
he taps lightly with a finger against the
wall, holding out for—
anything besides a beldame
her eyes craving insides
the ends of his toes sucked clean
on the pristine floor, the deep inner core
pointy hollow room
spic and span clean

Mutability

2005-05-02T11:28:00.000-07:00

This poem is a central component to my thesis and I'm thinking that I will rewrite the poem several times to indeed include the various aspects of seeing this image. Giving and taking a little more or a little less with each version. Then I will scatter it throughout the entire manuscript.

The Mutability of the Eye

i. Playbill

Sitting in the middle of the auditorium
my eyes fall at stage level
defying the architectures stacked appeal—
a perfect seat throughout the house

i. 1st Possibility

a shoe, table leg, corner of book, [see stage right]

not high heeled shoe, 3 legged table,
mahogany streaked wood-appears odd-
fourth leg fake, chopped prop—very faux

chunk of hair—my own—falters, flops
tickling my eyelash.
Momentary—brown out.

ii. 2nd Possibility [see stage left]

on a table stands a vase
oblong in shape a bluish
tint glows from within, it radiates
along its pear shaped middle,

lighting box has caught a corner
twinkle
blue light shards everywhere

iii. 3rd Possibility [see stage center]

stage, then curtain
stage light sweeping horizontally
shoes, then legs
swollen calf muscles
pleated hem of 1950’s skirt
standing next to bobby socked
girl of eight years
who should be
made up to appear poignant—they are
pointed replicas of self,
painted on face, contrary expression of—

iv. 4th Possibility [see stage]

Bobby socks legs are dancing
in the blue lights

Pleated skirt is perched
atop a settee flaking red paint

The table is dearly missing its fourth leg and
mahogany isn’t any sort of wood at all, at least not here.
Here it is streaked paint.

v. Possibility Over-
Curtain Cued

It’s all red velvet now—

embraced shoulders and a slight lift
it all seeps underneath
reflecting back up, shiny wooden floors absorb
dark movements

a swish back, low bows, clasped hands
red velvet swinging into place

again and again

Superstar Poet? or not...

2005-04-25T09:23:00.000-07:00

Upon reading the NYTimes, which, as you can see I read with quite regularity. I came across a book review and article all rolled into one on Jorie Graham. The article was a discussion of poetry’s sort of subtlety and the way in which certain people sneak onto the syllabi of MFA students everywhere, start popping up winning awards, publishing books with major publishing houses, and therefore seem to earn the title of Superstar Poet; Graham of course being that person. Jorie Graham has a considerable resume, winning many awards, a Pulitzer and MacArthur Genius Grant included, and she teaches at Iowa etc. But the journalist wants to know how this Superstar status came about, and frankly, so do I. Is she a superstar because of her accomplishments, and if so, then shouldn’t her poetry reach these epic heights and reflect her awards? I personally have never been a big fan of Graham’s work and mostly enjoyed her poetry for its risk taking and unwillingness to conform to the status quo. But one can only read on that enjoyment for about 10 pages or so and then must take a break, put the book down and return to it for another 10 pages or so another day. You appreciate her work in small doses and move on. Graham’s books are not books that you take to bed and snuggle up with, refer to again and again, and lend out to other friends most deserving of a good read. (Ex. Sarah Manguso-The Captain Lands in Paradise, Mary Jo Bang-Louise in Love)

The reviewer in this article equates her new book to tinfoil, well ok, he doesn’t exactly do just that but he comes close. He closes his review with this question: “So have we gotten a little ahead of ourselves in appointing our Major Poets? If we think such writers should embody their times, then maybe not: the haze at the center of Graham's work neatly reflects the current confusion and fragmentation of American poetry. But if we think a Major Poet is meant to be more than this, then maybe we should be arguing over these matters more often -- and more publicly. Because if the books the poetry world leaves in the laps of its slumbering audience are compromises rather than necessities, isn't it likely that readers will wake only to rub their eyes, thumb a few pages, sigh and go right back to sleep again?” This is a question that I most thoroughly want answered. What do we want from our Major Poets? How do we unify a seemingly fragmented world of poetry with all of its dips and divides and fizzures?

Outraged

2005-04-19T12:45:00.000-07:00

This is not a Hansel & Gretel post.

I'm outraged. Pharmacists, not all, are balking at filling morning after pill prescriptions. This enrages me to no end, restricting women's options and choices are just wrong. The morning after pill does not cause an abortion to occur. It stops the egg from being released which in turn stops impregnation, no fertilized egg, no fetus, no baby, no contact. How is that abortion? Why is it that women's issues are constantly berated in courts when a man can walk into a pharmacy and purchase viagara to increase his libido and not a single person is opposed to that. Why is that a man's sexual drive is more important than a women's right to obtain and use birth control or the morning after pill? A man can walk around with a full on hard on but a woman can be harrassed and told "no not today" because she made a choice not to be pregnant. Who left that responsibility to a pharmacist? Why do pharmacists believe that they don't have to comply when a prescription is handed over? It's sad and so sick.

The Hansel & Gretel Forest 6

2005-04-19T11:00:00.000-07:00

6
Gretel reaches for a candy apple,
it twists and writhes on the branch
little weasel eyes, it bites—
runs away on 4 legs, a caramel back striped

Oh where are the grackles and sea gulls now?
the yard is built upon something
besides graham cracker, a bubbling in the far west corner
the start of disintegration

sleep in a liquorice roped hammock
but really it’s a breakable and bitter bramble
thinks she can swing
it’s airless here and never breezy
a whoosh and fall to the hard packed dirt

in fact, everything is hard
eye-candy-days are over
the house is a sealed up
rounded and well worn—a boulder
a lost lover entombed

The Hansel & Gretel Forest 5

2005-04-18T16:17:00.000-07:00

5
the owl has alighted on the smoke stack
the ribbon goes down—
but

the house is upon them, just then
Gretel is nibbling away
running a quick flick of her tongue
around the red swirls
Hansel has ventured in
picking lollipop flowers
stuffing M&M walk ways in his pockets

she, the beldame, has donned a red cloak,
covers the blood stained arms
blue hair ribbon round her neck, neat bow
she is intrigued by Gretel’s latch bone
a skin graft magician
can smell the way they embrace blood
young and not tough but pillowy
she heard the chainsaw, the dog jaws,
the clamp down of the neighborhood
the phone call to catch the intruders
she has free reign should she just touch
a soft formed elbow
the interior of the 17 mile drive, hers
when a dog goes missing it is all the more cause for revenge

her appearance—
“my dears, please feast away”
startling in crimson, alluring at best
the hood runs deep, shocking violet eyes
swimming in black

Hansel at the window pulls off a shingle
an offering for their/his beldame
promptly accepts a bed, a loose button clasp
spit fire grill of pig, roasted rosemary potatoes—
a hard on is ensured.

The half eaten house has begun to mend itself
has swallowed hostess and Hansel whole
she leads him in by the crook of his elbow
a tightly sealed front door, molded shut.

The Hansel & Gretel Forest 4

2005-04-18T11:02:00.000-07:00

4
pop out down a rabbit hole
a quick shake a transferring of tales
an ignoring of reason and it’s believed
take liberties, borrow

wide eyed owl has snatched a hair ribbon
scalp, skin, hair, and blood caught in a talon
waiting at that rabbit hole for a bit of blue

through all of this closing in Hans & Gret
have been moving steadily ahead
catch the thief, quick

of course, the house is still waiting
half blind inhabitant, sugar cookie sides and all

coming to the gate of candy canes
red and white striped stickiness, they’re hooked

The Hansel & Gretel Forest 3

2005-04-15T14:18:00.000-07:00

3
hand to hand they race
abandon the saw
use the tip to prick a vein
faster and faster the blood is streaming
mottled leaves sticky as paste

what if the wind picks up?
watch the sea gulls head towards the ripple of water
then you’ll always know east

until the canopy of dead brambles
entwined with thick arty edges,
reaching fingers, tips, elbows
crooked and ever, over reaching. the leafy greens
have slipped off creating hardened ends reaching beyond
blocking out the sky
the underneath is only more—
weathered in a spider web. No sun.
mossy flower beds, mud puddles

Hansel tries to kick through,
but the earth falls away, slippery shoe shod
where are your sea gull feathers now?
so whitewashed, gleaming smooth