This couple on the bus

     It had taken them years to find each other, but when they did they finally began to know happiness. Each had experienced a life full of the harshest trials which had etched themselves indelibly onto their faces. It was a strange ugliness however. This was not the caustic smoothing or wrinkling of years of alcohol nor the progeria of poverty (which will render a 40 year old with the face of an elder). Not the eternal exhaustion of chronic disease or the hunch and flinch of abuse. No this was a mark separate from all of these: a tiring of the very cells, a concentration of blood to strange areas of the face which gave them a wholly unique and beautiful ugliness.
     It was this, then, that had kept them alone for so long, these marks creating some unknown atavistic fear in those that they met. This indescribable and subliminal wear producing a revulsion in the very genes of the gazer. When they met each other however the mark, this untouchable ugliness, was recognized in the other immediately. And so they sit there, just down the bus from me, silent and smiling in their reward: eachother.

City on a hill (Keith at the party)

Look at this fucking done up piece of shit with his glued ass hair and white clothes I'd smash him into the ground grind glass into his faggot ass face needs some scars glistening in the moonlight probably
      -Fuck s every girl he wants with that pretty boy smile brushing twice a day with whitening toothpaste, fucking sitting in that dentist chair once every six months and I'd slip if I were drilling "Oops sorry sir! Seem to have missed there, seems to be a large hole in your face now. Well nothing I can do about it . Goodbye! So nice to see you again! Wonderful mouth really!" Even the playing field a little bit. God this shit tastes amazing
       -God this shit tastes amazing, it's...
       -I know right?!
       -It's like if 30 angels walked up and came in my mouth during some angel bukkake sesh God that was funny -Or like two angels one cup, and this is the cup. I guess two angels one can. What's with the camo on the outside?
      -I don't know, don't you love it it's so Iraqi! Like you could drink these during a war and be like "Okay!  I can drink while I fight. This is gonna be O-Kay."
      -Gonna be okay, Keith repeats this thoughtfully, looking off into the distance and stroking his chin, sprouting a meager Irish-red beard -Can I have another smokie-smoke?
      -Sure! Can your friend hook me up with a little more... A second's worth of pause as the words connect, spindles turn.
      -Yeah, yeah of course. Don't remember my fingers feeling like this, all not there and shit -So what's the deal with this little extra paper bit on the filter here, this little uh, tunnel here?
      -I heard it was so, during Vietnam, the snipers could smoke while they were looking in their little gun telescope things.
      -Wow really?
      -mmm hmmm God this chick loves it I am killing it she's getting kind of boring though and the fuck did Lana go? probably fucking some dude in the bathroom and is no one at that drink is that an unattended drink I will not allow neglected drink in my presence will not allow such alcohol abuse yoink
     -Yoink
     -Oh my gosh! I love your dance it's so funny chelsea look at his dance!
I'm on fire tonight
    -I'm on fire tonight.
Wait what's the deal? is she just ignoring me now? What the fuck happened? Where are they going? The fuck is Lana at? We came here and she ditched me and this shit tastes awful...Okay I need a goal this will be good I'm going to set a goal for tonight and fulfill that goal and fulfilling that goal is going to make me happier. Okay the goal is to drinnnnnk to drink until I can't feel anymore which, yes, this is a noble endeavor for me to undertake. what is this can number 3? and it's a yellow one which is good because I like the yellow ones sort of lemony in a floor cleaner pine-soley sort of way which covers up the piss flavor well and  I guess I'm already sort of...
    -Now this guy knows what's up! What's up guy? Double-fisting over here? Gettin' double loco I like it!
The
fuck
is this
glued ass
motherfucker?

City on a Hill (A Sun Rising)

          And then it was morning. With the amber sun shirking the rooftops low over Westham and the young families out walking in the cool air, the fathers in wrap around sunglasses and baseball caps, young mothers nervous and laughing too loud. An overabundance of polar-fleece. Babies. Too many babies.

piece in a zine

I have a piece in NADA.

Review of "Cityscapes" an anthology

        Jacob Steinberg is putting out this anthology called "Cityscapes" and I was given the chance to review it ahead of release. The collection ostensibly centers around the writer's cities and the experiences the environments form. It has a November 9th release date and will be available for free. Info can be found hereabouts. In a community that seems to has major international centers in New York, New York and New York the chance to get a sense of what people are doing in Chicago, Miami, Wellington, Dubai and the rest of the world is absolutely refreshing. Steinberg has done a nice job gathering pieces from the well known (Noah Cicero, Frank Hinton, Sam Pink) and the currently less well known (at least to me), as well as writers with a range of experience. As with any themed anthology the adherence to the theme varies considerably between pieces and ultimately has little correlation to the quality of the piece. The quality of the pieces does vary, though the majority are at the very least engaging, and a decent number are of high quality. I'll focus the review on the latter.  I will admit that my attention to the poetry was sparse, certainly not because I found the verse lacking quality but simply because I do not feel as adequately equipped to judge poetry.
        One of my few complaints with the anthology (and this isn't with the anthology so much as with the writers themselves) is that some of the pieces are woefully short. Some of these writers are the sort where a short piece can be a bad thing. Some of these are teases, leaving the reader (me) wanting more, wanting the thought to go on, develop, become something great when they don't. My other complaint is Steinberg found no one to rep Seattle.
       As for the writers...
       Frank Hinton's writing is in excellent shape here, hands down the best I've read from her and in a different style from her pieces I've seen in the past. This short story is down right terrifying: she depicts a descent into hell, a movement from the sterile comfort of the city to a hedonistic confused rural scene from which the narrator does not emerge unscathed. No punches are pulled and she avoids over-dramatizing the events that occur.
       Mira Gonzalez has a nice poem in which she whips the reader through the extremes of scale, replicating the enormity and isolation of city life. Breif and disorienting.
      Morgan Lent's piece is a series of vignettes of Los Angeles from different views narrated with an excellent voice and merciless wit. Within LA she encompasss the world from pole to equator and works the city theme for all it's worth.
      Mike Bushnell drops a breathless metaportrait of New York, switching voices on you without warning and replicating the driving ghost of the city.
     Janey Smith, a writer I had as of yet not heard of,  has a really nice piece of strange realism in which the narrator prepares to attend thier father's funeral. This is the sort of piece that has a quality that can't be adequately put into words, suffice it to say that it definitely stands out from the rest in it's degree of cohesion, development and heart. Certainly a writer I'll be looking into.
     Irene Gayraud's piece, translated by Caitlin Adams, is written with an ease and grace that hints at considerable talent. The fact that the setting is a pretty run of the mill relationship scene (one which could be portrayed a hundred different ways, 90 of them uninteresting) makes her piece that much more impressive.
      Noah Cicero predictably blows it out of the water with a trifecta of tiny funny poems. Just read them.
      Vivek Nemana's piece is one of the longer of the bunch and is socially and personally aware. This might be unsettling for those used to the often pathologically self-centered bent of internet writing, and Namana's piece certainly stands out for better or worse. I loved it.
      Viktor Iberra Calavera has these eye sharpening, fucked up word salads reminiscent of, though separate from, Sean Kilpatrick's style. I'm often lost in this style but Calaverra (with the help of Steinberg's translation) drew me in and shook me. It's all about the sounds.
      The pieces in "Cityscapes" are framed by a peroxide clean layout and Steinberg's terse and thought provoking introduction this is a well done anthology, definitely worth the money (it's free, duh) and your attention. Bask in your favorites, expand your horizons authorially and geographically.

New Art

Received two new pieces from Seattle artist Brandon Vosika:

George Washington

and Celly

Strange things I believed as a child

I was a weird kid, I guess maybe no weirder than any other kid but I had some strange beliefs which I've recently began to recall.