effing blog

from Hot Autumn

1
i feel it in the eyelids
supplanting notes & frags
where feet fall and buildings
pass by me either side
outward this body moves
while musician(s) inside
gather(s) toy(s) to trans-
form into song(s)whatever
can be strummed, plucked
and pressed to the lips

2
these mental headphones
grip a glowing spore
it floats like a mint leaf
on the surface of your tea
this body strides
til the vision is thigh-level
then leaves its feet
and dives as if to swim

3
where polis is surface talk
surface where beer is made
culture is not to bash in heads
or is it - let us watch baseball -
let us wear cleats / stirrups
from batboy to govenor
suddenly we love some colors
this smoke break will last
the best of seven games
as we make poems for tv
cameras that pan the crowd

after a quiet effing summer...

Effing Press proudly announces the release of PLOTS by David Meiklejohn.

PLOTS
44 pages
7" x 7"
hand-stamped covers
$5

"The work in PLOTS falls somewhere between flash fiction and prose poetry. 30+ stories of sorts less than a page a piece, David Meiklejohn weaves together scenarios like a gypsy tells fortunes if given 90 seconds or less... you might not be sure what to believe. What you can believe though is the precision in which David manipulates the very notion of plot and the fine line between humor and horror. Laugh, cry, wash your hands - that's your business. Either way these words will stick somewhere in your mind, promise."

click here for ordering info.
Review copies available, please inquire.

Anna E

The lovely effing poet Anna Eyre is p.o.w. at Chris Murray's Tex Files this week

god i rode the tractor doug's tractor at the ranch a surprise for my b-day up the hill and into a load and dumped the load in a pile and it was great doug says next time can try the bobcat if i've got beer and am up for it which you know i will be tractors i love like books don't know why it's old stuff maybe a ride on a lap as a kid or an ancient clip from sesame street or something in my DNA makes me love these beasts these wrecking lifting digging beasts

Take Take

Take 

Take


For that one

an armload    for that one

a snifter

               later   take flight

(flogged w/ handbag)

                      later

       a lie 

             re: falling off 

the bed    

           you lose

                             the fuckload 

the white noise

            and burst 

                           

   morning times

              slapping a leg

      slapping a head

pinching a hero   hard 

                   on the 

          nipple

interesting rhetoric at the Possum Pouch.

glittery desert notes

Rio

slip past man on stilts confronting Filipino wedding party . a choice of elevators is simply too much . scampi : stomach ache :: chardonay : creme brulee . like a twister into our rooms we fling our clothes . smoke tobaccy mixed w/ greens . skip through the channels while fifth floor palm fronds sway, the strip glitters . then call a cab, take us to ceasar's for drinks and faux sky .

The Work

unpack crates, handle merchandise
eat $15 lunches and $40 dinners
paid at the end of the day with cash
and lose most of it literally on a casino floor
(the bill that never makes it into the pocket)
rage in a room before thick indica sleep
lightning behind the mountains in the dark

Song

rip the lever & win the lemons
a thonged girl will arrive w/ drinks
know your curvy corridor
know your elevator
singing ice machine, cable tv
singing room service
trace shrubless mountain crags
on a dirty desert window
you try but cannot feel it
move like it should
the tower and a movement of people
and things to be eaten by people
bet on the time bomb o boy
bet on simultaneous transfers of energy
occurrences on the plaidy floor in jazz light
the toothy grins
& elbow skins

TRUFFLE SHUFFLE at CAMP FIG

new work by :

Jonathan Marshall
P. Ferdinand von Zeppelin
Christine Badollet Gray
Jacob Borndal

New paintings, drawings, and videos from four up and coming locals.

Opening : Saturday October 16th from 7-11 PM
Show runs through November 6th.

CAMP FIG
305B East 5th
Austin,TX78701
512.698.0327

Joshua Clover at Zero to Sixty Reading Series (UT)

From Susan Briante, curator of Zero to Sixty Reading Series at the University of Texas at Austin:

Poet Joshua Clover will read from his work at 7 pm on Friday, October 15, in the North Atrium on the First Floor of the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center on the UT Austin Campus.

Earlier on Friday, Clover will offer a talk entitled "pop/art, or what we talk about when we talk about poetry." at 2 in the Atwood Library (Calhoun 300).

Jorie Graham touted Clover as “part metrical magician, part avant-gardist mathematician.”

John Ashbery remarked that Clover’s voice “is truthful, tender, caustic, and elegiac all at once; the results are breathtaking.”

Clover’s first book of poetry, Madonna anno domini, won the 1996 Walt Whitman Prize. His poetry has appeared twice in the Pushcart Prize anthology and three times in Best American Poetry. His new book of poems The Totality for Kids is forthcoming from University of California Press. Since 1995, he has been Senior Staff at the Village Voice, where he writes about music, film, literature, and riots. He teaches at the University of California at Davis where he is director of the Program in Critical Theory.

The Zero-to-Sixty reading series brings emerging writers to The University of Texas at Austin. If you have any questions, please contact Susan Briante.

see ya

Going to Vegas for the weekend for some work. The reading last night was great - glad to see those of you that made it. I'll bring you all some hotel matches in a couple of days.

picture of yours truly courtesy of Justin Ulmer