effing blog

i leave you with this

in this video i am retelling a harrowing tale of ordering hamburgers from a short order cook who refused to cook them without onions.  pictured as the camera pans left are philip trussell, eric furbish, doug warriner, dale smith, and roger snell.  this video brought to you by lucas anderson.

so 2005, year of the dog chicken, was a real bitch.  let's douse it with some heavy juice and get on down the road.  let's move our machinery to new ground and dig big.  let our jawline cut the wind and let the eyes learn to see through the smoke and sand and dark.  i got your back now and forever.  may the heart beat announce itself at the surface, babe.  we got fat and we got skinny.  we got alone and we got played.  we fought, fucked, loved, hated.  we cried in our rooms like animals.  press the flesh into the mouth with a fist and suck the fat. put those eyes out under the sun and come on with me.  put on your shoes, you, we got miles to go.  miles and miles and miles to go. 

back from my tour of the grass fire states.  i saw a few of those fires in east texas where the prairie meets the pine belt.  men in boots stand near tail gates and wipe sweat from their brows and watch the nature.  little fire birds warble from tree boughs and flicker to the ground and to lower branches. earth and root sizzle and smoke.  get a lungfull with the windows down.  push it up into the nose holes.  pat the hair down with it.  talk radio talking about it and i travel without a camera but nod along and squint through the smoke curtain draped across the farm road.  cows blink into the clouds a field over where big sky holds the smoke down and to the sides.  dry december with the winds this warm.  90 mph through the sparks and embers, 90 mph through the char fields, race it. 

up up and away

i'm currently in oklahoma city with all of its flatness and steeples.  land of big hair, big trucks, big crosses. 

i motored by night wednesday from austin to wichita falls, tx where i spent the night at my grandmother's house.  my  cd player in my truck is busted so i had to surf the fm and am and not finding much between metropoli i belted out my own noise.  i sang a pretty amazing version of O Night Divine and accentuated all the high and low notes so well that my truck wept.  i made it last about 30 minutes it was awesome.  i get a little stupid in the car not unlike gabe gudding.

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the reading at 12th street books the other night was a good time.  it was great to see Dirk Michener and Charles Potts read and to get in some hangtime at the bar with them afterward.  thanks to travis catsull for arranging it all.  good times.  great too to get some scotch drinking in with dale and the hot whiskey peeps jennifer and michael as well as Friedrich of small fires press (our newest transplant to austin.)

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note, fries and scotch and beer do not provide a daily nutritional regiment, try as you might.

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my boy Lucas has a blague.  check it.

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the rats are getting hardcore in my house and i am happy to be away from their invasion in progress(floyd is staying with a friend while i'm away).  fucking rats.  i saw a dead one that a neighbor killed and it was the size of a coke can and black as night.  when i get home i am going to take the war to the rats.  any suggestions from you NYC peeps?  or anyone that has done battle with these devil spawn?  i'm transitioning from frightened to pissed off.

i am about to hit the 3 week mark of quitting cigarettes.  i have cheated a few times after a few drinks (and once before I read the other night) but i'm feeling pretty good about it all.  not out of the woods yet (are you ever after quitting?) but i know this is going to stick. 

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merry kwanza to all my friends!  (raises glass)

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pictures from my xmas youth are coming.  mema hooked me up with some photo albums as well as some pecan pie.

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so okc.  i've never liked this city.  but it's good to see my mom and my other granny.  and for the first time in many many years it is not freezing and cover with ice and snow while i'm here.  but it's windy.  it's always windy in oklahoma. i'll be in houston by sunday night and will see the other side of the family including my sisters and my bro and his wife.  haven't seen them all in far too long. 

05 family pain tour is in full throttle. 

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and you you you: i hope you cry.

from Dale Smith

December confessions at the Possum Pouch.

POETRY AT 12th STREET BOOKS

for info on Charles Potts check here.

for info on Dirk Michener aka Cavedweller check here .

for info on Scott Pierce look behind you.

for info on the Charles Potts Magic Windmill Band check here.

SHOTS Magazine

I never tire of this magazine. It's on its 3rd editor and has gone through a few format changes over the years but for the most part it is still the same great zine printing compelling black and white images by knowns and unknowns a like.  I have always admired the layout of the spreads and the quality of the printing.  Black never looks so good as in this rag.  Kudos to editor Russell Joslin for this outstanding publication.

Click the cover image to go to the SHOTS website. They have a call for work for the Spring issue.

it's quiet on this plain.  wind blows trash and leaves around this awkward sky where birds have forgotten how to work their wings.  these marbled clouds sit on the land and those oranging sycamores lean into this mist.  a fuzz corodes the scene from this 5th floor window.  that flag out there slaps its cold gray pole. 

new issue of H_NGM_N

#4

From H_NGM_N editor Nate Pritts:

Greetings True Believers!

Not a dream!  Not a hoax!  Not an imaginary story!  The new H_NGM_N (an
online journal of poetry, poetics, &c.) is ready to rock & roll!


#4 features:

poetry by Shane Allison, Ariel Beller, Anne Boyer, Tim Bradford, Stoney
Brown, Oni Buchanan, Bruce Covey, Josh Hanson, Matt Hart, Jennifer Michael
Hecht, Jnana Hodson, Hank Lazer, Alex Lemon, Jon Leon, Sarah Mangold, Clay
Matthews, Matthew Mulder, Kate Schapira & Rachel M Simon.

selections from longer works by Noah Falck, Matt Henriksen, Steve Timm, Jen
Tynes & James Wagner.

an exclusive look at The Pre-History of the Pines.

EPs from Anthony McCann & Ethan Paquin.

fiction by Elizabeth Downs.

essays by David Saffo & William Heyen.

art by Marc Brotherton.

comix by Nicholas Gurewitch & Matt Madden.

& lots of reviews!


Like a bull in the heather, H_NGM_N is gunning for you.  New submission
guidelines make it easier than ever to be part of the first fully
interactive revolution.  Get on the bus, baby, because we're taking you to
school!

Watch the site in the near future for information about H_NGM_N B_ _KS!  Our
first offering will be MUFFLER, a chapbook by Clay Matthews.


Best--

Nate Pritts, EIC.
H_NGM_N Intergalactic.

Skanky Possum Reading Series

Joe Hoppe teaches English and Creative writing at Austin Community College. His work has been published in the anthologies Stand Up Poetry and How to Be This Man, in the magazines Analecta, Borderlands, Cider Press Review and various others, and on the web at Gumball Poetry. A poetry collection titled Galvanized Poems is in the works from Dalton Publishing in Austin.

Dale Smith edits Skanky Possum Books with Hoa Nguyen. His work has appeared in the Chicago Review, Damn The Caesars, Effing, and other magazines. His book, Notes No Answers, was published recently by Habenicht Press. He studies poetry and rhetoric at the University of Texas and teaches creative writing at ACC.