The experts agree

YOU DON'T SAY.

The Elbow

Today I woke up to find an elbow sticking in my face. It was just a normal elbow at the end of a bent arm, kind of rounded, kind of knobby, with a slight white dryness to the skin. It actually squashed my lips a little bit. Pulling back my head, I cupped my hand around the elbow and crankily pushed it away, preparing to confront whoever was sticking their damn elbow in my face while I was trying to sleep. But no one was there. So I got out of bed and made coffee, sitting down at my desk. There was a flicker in my peripheral vision and I looked to the left just in time to see the elbow sailing at my face again. It zoomed in quickly and then stopped short inches away, swaying slowly, in lazily precise figure-eights, like some kind of probe. I could almost count the little hairs on it. I shoved it aside roughly and turned back to my computer, intent on finally getting some work done. I typed for a few minutes before I felt the soft pressure of something moving up my thigh, and looked down just as the elbow rocketed up under my chin, pausing just as its tip pressed into the soft flesh there. I grabbed it with both hands and hurled it away. But after a minute or so, it floated up right between my eyes again, as if it had been hiding in my lap. It started to come back more quickly after that, from every angle, as if I'd pissed it off; sneaking around my body and squinting right into my face like a creature that was both nearsighted and indefatigably curious, pink and tuberous, something from underground. Now when I shove it away, it reappears almost instantly. Even as I push it to my right, I feel a presence falling over my left cheek, and the elbow slides right back into the center of my vision. I can see fragments of the room in the corners of my eyes, but the elbow shifts with my gaze so I can’t see over or around it to find out whose body it’s attached to, although I have the vague impression of a body behind the elbow somewhere, a mass of flesh and attention. I'm just learning to live with it.


Now, I have to mention, this isn’t an allegory for some existential condition or the conventional assault upon individual agency, like that Russian number about the nose, although I can definitely see how it could appear that way. I’m using this first-person, “it really happened!” rhetorical strategy because it’s convenient and legible, and there is some pleasure to be had in watching systems elaborate themselves to their logical conclusions. But you really shouldn’t read anything into it. This is just a rather dry description of a reality in which an elbow imposes itself upon one’s face, and does not leave. It only seems metaphorical and strange because I’m writing myself into it, rather than just being there, where the notion of a ball of fire pulsing down from the sky, vanishing and returning without fail, might seem as allegorically potent and strange and contrived as the simple reality of an elbow floating in one’s face. That would please me. But this isn’t about that either. These systems are pretty random and don’t mean anything except what they contain. When this notion came to me--"wouldn't it be strange if that were my reality, an elbow always floating into my face"-- at first I kept trying to see something behind it, like what does this idea about the elbow mean? When I should have just kept my eye on the elbow, like the entire scenario was telling me to do. I'm just saying it's funny, how far out of my way I'll go to make things that are obvious seem mysterious, things that are ineluctable seem diabolical, things that are physical seem metaphysical. And yet I still worry whose face my elbow might be in.

Time to break out the summer jams

Jahdan Blakkamore feat. 77Klash: "She Said"


Kenny Chesney: "Summertime"


Montell Jordan: "This is How We Do It"

Wax Wroth reading videos: Salerno, Tonelli, Fletcher, Leon

I'm back from Atlanta, which was such a quick trip that it feels like a dream in retrospect, a stream of disconnected images. In one, I'm standing at the edge of a coffee shop counter reading from Wolf Intervals; in another, I'm trying on some Nike hightops with ill gold details at a secondhand store in Little Five Points as Pearl Jam's "Nothing Man" mournfully blares over the P.A. I came back home with those hightops and a book brought to me by James Sanders. Big thanks to Casey McKinney and Laura Carter for their hospitality.

After a few days of playing catch-up (and battling a particularly tenacious piece of malware that sneaked onto my machine), I've finally gotten around to uploading the videos from the last Wax Wroth reading, which you'll find below. Apologies for the truncated clips; we forgot to bring a fresh tape and had to be thrifty with it. Stay tuned for details on the next Wax Wroth reading, which will feature the inimitable Tony Tost!

CHRIS TONELLI:
 


CHRIS SALERNO:




JOE FLETCHER:
 


JON LEON:

Creative Loafing plugs my reading this weekend

I used to write for a Creative Loafing paper, and I'm sympathetic to the difficulty of writing these blurbs based on info one can pillage from the Internet. They got the name of one of my chapbooks a little wrong, but they did pretty good! Hope you can come out to see me if you're in the Atlanta area this weekend, I promise to read rude and fun stuff.

Reading with Casey McKinney in Atlanta

This Saturday, May 15, I'm going to be reading in Atlanta with my editor at The Fanzine, Casey McKinney. It's at The Hot Spot (749 Moreland Ave., Suite 101A) at 7 p.m.; I've never been there but it sounds hot. Laura Carter put this joint together. Last time I went to Georgia for something poetry-related, this happened.

Wax Wroth Reading and Music Series, #2

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE--SPREAD FAR AND WIDE

What:

The Wax Wroth Reading and Music Series, #2:

RALEIGH INVADES DURHAM Edition

Who:

poetry by Chris Salerno, Chris Tonelli, Jon Leon, Joe Fletcher

electro-acoustic music by Brian and Ashley

organized by Brian Howe (brian.g.howe@gmail.com)

When:

Sunday, May 9, 8. p.m.

Where:

715 Washington in Durham (just off the intersection of Washington and Trinity, very close to the old baseball field)

Why:

All four of these rad Raleigh-based poets have new books coming out, and the Chrises are launching their book tour. It’s the second installment of my new reading series, the first of which featured Heather Christle, Joe Donahue, and Josh Moore. It’ll be fun. Nobody is going to read for a drainingly long time. I’ll provide some booze which will vanish almost immediately, so please bring some. Ashley and I will perform a brief musical piece to wind down the night. Contact me for directions or more info. Support local art in a non-commercial  environment. Make merry. Bring yr mom.

Bios:

CHRIS SALERNO is the author of Whirligig, and a new book, Minimum Heroic, selected by Dara Wier for the 2009 Mississippi Review Poetry Award. His poems can be found in journals such as: Denver Quarterly, Boston Review, Jubilat, American Letters and Commentary, Black Warrior Review, Octopus, and elsewhere. He is co-curator of Raleigh’s So and So Series, and co-editor of So and So Magazine. Currently, he teaches Writing at North Carolina State University. He occasionally blogs at http://christophersalerno.blogspot.com/

CHRIS TONELLI founded and co-curates the So and So Series and co-edits  the So and So Magazine. He is the author of four chapbooks, most recently No Theater (Brave Men Press) and For People Who Like Gravity and Other People (Rope-A-Dope Press, forthcoming). His first full-length collection is The Trees Around (Birds, LLC), and new work can be found in upcoming issues of The Laurel Review and Fou. He teaches at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, where he lives with his wife Allison and their son Miles.

JON LEON is an American poet and vignettist, the author of, most recently, The Hot Tub (mal-o-mar editions, 2009), Hit Wave (Kitchen Press, 2008), and Alexandra (Cosa Nostra Editions, 2008). Additionally, he has released a voluminous set of limited-run artists editions, including: Tract (Dusie Press Kollectiv, 2006), Right Now the Music and the Life Rule (Hathaway, 2006), Drain You (High Street Originals, 2009), Mankind  (Foreign Court Artists Editions, 2009), Kasmir (High Street Books Los Angeles, 2010), and finally The Painting Show (Legacy Pictures, 2010). In 2008, La Camera Verde in Conjunction with The Felix Series in Rome brought out a bilingual edition of his Diphasic Rumors. From 2005-2006 he edited and published the short-run poetry magazine Wherever We Put Our Hats, publishing excerpts from the most lauded poetry books of that year. His poetry and criticism have appeared widely in periodicals such as Fence, The New Review of Literature, Soft Targets, Octopus, LIT, Vanitas, and Art in America.

JOE FLETCHER's chapbook, Sleigh Ride, was published by Factory Hollow Press. Other work can be found in Jubilat, Octopus, Slope, Poetry International, Hoboeye, Gulf Coast, and elsewhere.

Organizer BRIAN HOWE is a Durham-based poet, journalist, performer, and multimedia artist. His arts and entertainment journalism appears regularly in Pitchfork, Paste Magazine, The Independent Weekly, and The Fanzine. He is the author of three chapbooks, and his poems and sound art have appeared in many print and online journals. His video work (with Ashley Howe) has screened at various festivals and showcases, like the Asheville Fringe Festival and the Minor American series. He maintains his multimedia project Glossolalia at http://glossolalia-blacksail.blogspot.com/, and blogs at http://waxwroth.blogspot.com/

On Joanna Newsom

If you're in the mood to read something long and fraught about Joanna Newsom's long, fraught album, Have One on Me, you're in luck: My article for TheFanzine.com went up today.

So and So #38

A couple friends of mine are reading in the So and So series in Raleigh on Saturday night--a fun series!

Details:

Michael Carr * Guillermo Parra * Ken Rumble

Saturday * April 24th * 8pm * Morning Times * 10 E. Hargett Street * Raleigh, NC

Michael Carr is the author of the Out Another, Softer White, and Platinum Blonde. Necco Face, a chapbook co-written with Jess Mynes and Aaron Tieger, came out from Editions Louis Wain last year, and a collaborative chapbook with Micah Ballard called Poems from the New Winter Palace is forthcoming from House Press this summer. He lives in Cambridge, MA.
 
Poet and translator Guillermo Parra is the author of Caracas Notebook (Cy Gist Press, 2006) and Phantasmal Repeats (Petrichord Books, 2009). His poems, essays and translations have been published in 6x6, The Can, Fascicle, Effing, and The Brooklyn Rail, among others. He lives in Durham, NC where he writes the blog Venepoetics and is translating the poetry of Juan Sánchez Peláez and José Antonio Ramos Sucre into English.

Ken Rumble is the author of Key Bridge (Carolina Wren Press, 2007) and an installation artist and musician based in Durham, North Carolina. 

Coming soon: Raleigh invades Durham

Please save the date of Sunday, May 9, for the second installment of the Wax Wroth poetry and music series. (The first installment featured Heather Christle, Joseph Donahue, and Josh Moore.) The theme of this reading is "Raleigh invades Durham," as it features four Raleigh-based poets: Chris Salerno, Chris Tonelli, Jon Leon, and Joe Fletcher. A special musical guest will be announced soon. The reading begins at 8 p.m., at 715 Washington in Durham, a space familiar to those of you who've attended installations by Ken Rumble and Megan Stein or the Minor/American reading series. Please watch this space for more details, and plan to come help the Chrises celebrate the start of their reading tour!