everything comes in waves.

So much has been happening. I seem to have developed writing/internet phobia over the summer, along with a nice low frequency relapse of agoraphobia. It's been great, all in all, but the crisp Autumn air is beckoning me to become human again, rather than just this melancholy haze settling over everything. 

In any case, here I am, for now, kind of.

I am no longer editing UP magazine with Carolyn DeCarlo, sadly! But UP continues in all its sexy glory under Caro and Jackson Nieuwland's benevolent hegemony. Check out issue 5! Including a lovely interview with xTx.

I am, however, still editing at APIARY Magazine, and we're gearing up to launch our winter issue in a short while. Speaking of, there's a hip new video series called APIARY Mixtape, showcasing all the strange dirty beauty that is Philadelphian literature. Here's a peek:

That's local poet, Julia Lopez, filmed by APIARY's wonderful video editor, Nick Forrest. We're seeking more local authors to feature on the Mixtape! We want to dig your scene, follow you around, show us your Philly and give us your stories. Email ras.mashramani@gmail.com or info@apiarymagazine.com if you're interested in being a part of this project.

Also, Ima be reading at THE LASER LIFE  tonight at 7PM at the A-Space [4722 Baltimore Avenue in West Philly]. Join me and the rest of us punks for a night of queer empowered science fiction. It's always a spectacle. Here's a thing I wrote about it a while ago.

I'm doing a thing with the folks at Laser Life and others. More on that in a second. 

Also I lost that Literary Death Match Jawn. Of Course. But here is some playbyplay.
ITS AIGHT THO NAH MEAN IM STILL OUTCHYEA TRYNA DO MY THING.

Stay tuned! In general! I've missed all you invisible folk! All four of you!

TWO THINGS

of UP is live and full of  consanguine delights by the likes of:

scott mcclanahan
rufus silas wally
michael hessel-mial
ophelia
kj
 chad redden
d.m aderibigbe
michael o’brien
alice may connolly
michael koh
erica yeager
caleb hildenbrandt
jesse prado
 omar de col

Enjoy with delicious guilt. And thank editors Carolyn DeCarlo and Jackson Nieuwland for their dedication to corporeal taboo.

And submit words and visuals for issue 5. We need your bones and your lungs.

when I am broken down from the speed of hyperspace and the tenuousness of my own existence, my tumblr does something wonderful.

If one wanted to smell like my tumblr, however, one would have to climb into a bath full of female ejaculate and dissolving jolly ranchers. One would have to smoke some weed in there for an hour or so, soaking. Then one would be approaching the smell of my tumblr, who is so wonderful.

When I am lonely or a certain sort of hungry, tumblr parades vital carnal moments before me. A naked straight couple loitering on a curb in doc martins. She wears a strapon and he looks fine with it. Vital―a glimpse into a hopeful world. Strap-on and nonchalance in the same frame. I'd like to sit on that curb as well, tumblr. I'd like to watch. Or here, a woman with long eye lashes, she looks done up like she sings with the Supremes. An arm gathers her large breasts together while she presses a finger daintily against her clit. Her nipples are perfectly round, like the last few sips of tea at the bottom of two cups. I want to make a den of her legs. Her pussy must smell like doo-wop. Like Murray's hair pomade. A pair of slim twins with matching tattoos, posing with their asses touching and their arms over their heads, looking how I feel―bored, high, aroused, overwhelmed by post-modernity―Thank you tumblr, I feel less lonely.




[from 'conjugal visits with my tumblr']

tonight, we ride.

catch me at world cafe murdahring folks at the philly edition of

LITERARY DEATH MATCH

[tix there^]

CROSS POLLINATION IS JUST A EUPHEMISM

Apiary Magazine has rolled out  CrossPollinate, new feature exploring the connections between Philly artists. 

First up is Maggie 18's response to my short piece, 'And Now I am the Loveliest.'

Eat it up. And submit to Apiary before our deadline closes.

FROM THE AFRO-FUTURIST AFFAIR 2011

I have provided a case study of one of the girls, *Lissa (name changed), whom I met around 3 years after the incident:

Lissa was an attractive young Puerto Rican-American woman who was working as a recreation assistant in an extended living community down the street from her house. She expressed deep satisfaction from her work, as well as the desire to one day perform extensions herself after finishing school. Lissa is the oldest of two children, and maintained close ties with her mother, grandmother, and younger brother. She had been hospitalized twice since the incident, both times for hysterical pregnancy and psychosis.

Lissa was very reluctant to speak about the abduction that occurred when she was 16. She admitted that she could not remember much leading up to the incident, except that she and her friends had wandered from a concert to throw bottles into the river. Suddenly, she said, she found herself in a darkened room, unable to move and nude. She described the Others as having vague facial features, “like if they were dipped in wax”. She said they peered at her from these veiled faces as she stood in the room, paralyzed.  She noted that sound seemed blunted by  low hum, and that she maintained some somatic feeling, though accompanied by a strange tingling in her lower limbs. The following is an excerpt from the interview as she recounts the insemination:

“I knew they wanted a baby from me. I could tell by how they were staring. Like they wanted to me to swell. They wanted to fill me with something. They all went into a corner, where it was dark and they were opening something, like a cabinet. I heard it then, like a wet sliding, like someone dragging a mop. The air was all dead so sound was funny, but I heard it coming. They had a rope around it. I was hoping for a dog maybe, but instead…

It was on a leash and it was as tall as me.  It was [inaudible]. It was like the things you fish with. The grubs. Real plump and you could see its sections. I could see its insides moving against its outsides, inside of the gray was the purple, pumping towards me. I was so scared but all I could think of was that its body looked like an aquarium. I could watch it move all day. And they had it come up to me. It had a little head at the end of its body, a brown head, like a nut. And tiny black eyes. Antenna, they felt for me, and when I felt them tickling my neck and my chest, I knew that it wasn’t a dream and that this grub would fill me with something. And it did.”

[From the Afrofuturist Affair 2011]

UP has Landed.

With kissing Argentinians and homemade fleshlights.

I'm planking on some awe and gratitude from these amazing authors:

cecilia pavón

jacob steinberg
spencer madsen
xtx
jordan castro
erica yeager
benjamin king
michael hessel-mial
daniel knowlton
meghan lamb
mallory whitten
by derek lessard
jackson nieuwland
dewitt brinson
 michael hessel-mial

Who helped make the first issue of UP possible, along with Miguel Raul and of course Carolyn DeCarlo.

can you take me hiiiiighyuugh?

UP can. It is the literary project cooked up by Carolyn DeCarlo and myself and its first issue launches soon. Submissions are open for issue 2: BESTIALITY. 

Stay tuned for our bodies and the bodies of our peers.

We love you.

[this whole post is a big ass link]

BUZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

Last month I joined the staff of the 

bizziest lit mag this side of the delaware. 

Tonight, we launch issue 3 with a 

night of dancing boozey eating beat 

poetry slamming live music jamming 

ass fucking fun shit.

So. swing by.

[Issue 3 is FREEE!!!!!!!!!!!]

Blackening YOUR FUTUREERU

Tonight, I perform here. We gonna speculate so haard. 

get yer tix here

Glistening Vaginae

DJ Berndt's Pangur Ban Party has released 


Very Beautiful Women, 


a collection of lady works of which 
I am included. 


Pretty things trickling EVERYWHERE.

Doin it and doin it and doin it well

If you haven't been over to DOWN yet, hurry up and start following. We got about a month of nasty left before we're open for submissions. Also, stay tuned for news of our print run of the summer's sexiness. What What! Check out CC Cannon's illuminating post here, and take a gander at the following taste of DOWN:

The Descent 

Sometimes coming 

is such a struggle for me.

Sometimes I’m left 

with a vibrating ice axe,

clawing my way 

to the summit 

of a mountain mirage.

And if I make it I tumble

down, my back breaking

over several jagged rocks

so that I fly apart on the bed

and curl up post descent

with my abdomen sore

and my back sore

stewing

in the damp sheets I made.

Would you press your palm 

against my pussy

while I fracture?

I would break my back

a little more for you

and I would suck

the wet 

from your life line

as I fall.

<<>>

check here for updates!

Mush, Bitch.

A sled dog is built for work

and blind vision.

Bitter community.

Living with the warmth

and unity that comes with an axel.

Quiet and lonely

camaraderie

that comes with a lack of language

and ice confidence.

If I were a sled dog

I'd never be cold again

by the grace of my own body

and insurmountable existential will.

<<>>

Hello, Apiary

Philadelphia's most inspiring literary magazine, APIARY Magazine has just launched its Summer 2011 online issue.


I have something in there about a talking piece of geography. WHOMP.

Jehovah's Witness God needs to chiiiiiilll

faceless in a paper pamphlet and glowing 

you are at the end of a black and white revelation

i found you at my friend's house. he is a jehovah's witness

but we're still friends and we still get to play catch in the front yard

BUT WE CAN'T PLAY ON THE BED.

i found you  on a throne with no face

i found you and hid you in my pants

so i could see you on the toilet more closely:

the man has been boozing and in the varied company of loose women

the man has been killed unexpectedly and

the man goes to jehovah's witness heaven

which is very very literal with clouds on the ground.

the man's name is not in the book of life

the man goes to judgement because of the boozing and

the ignorance of God's love.

the man should have stayed awake during church

and  kept his dick in his pants

the man is very very very sorry

the man is dragged kicking and screaming

the man is dragged kicking and screaming

the man has his nails breaking off in the concrete

the man knows you are faceless

the man knows face

the man knows Father

 without face

JEHOVAH'S WITNESS GOD

BLINDS WITH JUDGEMENT

and this is where I learned

to tape together all

of Revelations

in case your bright blank page

would peer into my sleep

as I drifted

off,

damned.

An Old and Soapy One

Her cheekbones are ley lines.

If wind were arabesques then in its dance

I’d breathe her face. Her lips are holy lines.

A sort of sign: The motherless still chance

to catch a tendriled whiff of womb. And I

have never won a thing before, so when

she says that I am caller number one,

I’ll clutch the phone and tuck and bend so then

my limbs can fold inside her skin and bone.

I’d die inside her if it meant that we’d

saponify. In fetus fetu. Bog-

gy girls, their legs are twisting bony things

and no corrosive such as time can drop

her lips from mine. Until my wi-fi fades

I’ll praise her name and stalk her Facebook page. 

DOWN DOWN DOWN

DOWN is now live over here and ready to serve you all summer.

Protest is Illegal and Useless in Contemporary American Society.

There are small parts of me who want to live. They want a voice in the matter. They want to unionize. They want to take matters into their own boneless hands, helplessly flailing, earnestly chanting:

Hell no, we won't go.

Boneless because what holds me up is wary. The skeleton aches for rest. The armor melts in summer. The metal warps in winter. Every six months more of me dreams of obliteration. More of me googles flaming monks. More of me memorizes the levels and images of female genital cutting. The last is the safest and most beautiful. At seven I would have liked a needle and thread. I would have done it myself with wood between my teeth cursing Neptune and diving anyway. I would have taken back the waters a eunuch to safety. A sliver of wet scar. I was a smart child but did not always think outside the box or towards the future. I would have lived with a shiny faceless buddha, pink and glinting, always with me, numb when I walked instead of on fire. 

Holeless. No mercy. All mercy, all mercy.

More of me tries to sweep a tiny green grubby insect from off my leg, hoping to just move it away, not smear it. Not smear it against the stubble of my knees.

I did not mean to kill anyone, but still, 

all I do.