First, I reviewed the strange and wonderful Thai film Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past lives. Then, a little while later, I checked out Outwards Books, Milwaukee’s first and only LGBT bookstore.

Very busy lately. Started a new band (featuring current and ex-members from Disguised as Birds/Mother Orchis/Stock Options and Bored Straight), been writing music, trying to work on fiction, and just in general enjoying the Milwaukee summer. How’ve you been?

Here: a song for charred blackened flesh
for reclamation by earth and sound
helicopters buzzing like electric bonesaws
teeth biting sucking bittersweet marrow
watching sunsets with hopeless fervor
hollowing out homes beneath great dark trees
sap like ogre blood dripping down arboreal tongues
clenched fist tight around thoughtless mind
harrowing heartbreaking in a world without
sandworms or heatsinks broke down highways
all things made of glass shall too come
no one rides but might sing loudly nightly
for dead soldiers and dead doornails
for fathers everywhere with tongues like snails
slimy fingers calloused thick yet manicured
flowers exploding from lips like pink fire
eyes like rotary dial telephones
or seas under starless skies

Swim in the ash of old settlements
manufacture resentment that could be grown naturally
act hard for the sake of your daughters
smile broadly for other men’s wives
your backyard is a desert
your body is a coal mine
birdsong is breathed through miles
of carpentry and compulsion
each lie an interstate
each soft sigh an exit
each chance to forget
ensures you’ll remember
each long day praying for the night
waiting for the heat to break
waiting for a dog and his boy
to come rescue you

When they do finally come
the boy makes the sign of the cross
and kisses you good night
before syphoning your petrol

2010

Hiccough Soup

in eternal foglight bathes redemption (maybe)
basketball choirs in hopalong robes
looking insectoid and teething (of course)
buster in the cornfield again
all appointments cancelled
radio plays transmitted in technicolor
12 ¢ moustache rides in hell

2010

In the weeks since writing this review, I’ve become pretty much obsessed. Her entire oeuvre is amazing, and her Stridulum EP will lodge itself in your brain permanently. To wit:

At some point it occurred to me that I could use Twitter to write stories. I believe I was sitting at a bus stop. A lot of great ideas come while waiting at the bus. Anyway, a first line got lodged in my head, as they often do. I needed to write it down, but I did not have my notebook with me. I did have my phone. It occurred to me that so long as I kept my paragraphs or lines short (under 140 characters, anyway), then I could continue on in this fashion for as long as I needed.

Obviously, writing in this way isn’t conducive to any work of particularly great length. But it’s rather perfect for flash fiction–where you build a story quickly, relying as much on what isn’t there as what is–and vignettes, where story building isn’t really necessary at all. In this way, I’ve found Twitter to be an incredibly useful tool for my writing, but this also means sort of eschewing what Twitter is actually meant for. Frankly, I couldn’t care less whether my followers actually read my tweets for not; since I’ve started using Twitter, I’ve used it more as a place to deposit ideas–funny little one liners, first lines, titles, characters (and of course to talk about pooping). It’s used more as a very tiny notebook.

Still, this all does bring up an interesting question, since not everyone uses Twitter the same way I do. In fact, most people don’t. So if you were to have a Twitter that was used primarily to deliver these ultra-short stories, how would people treat it? Would it be easy to follow the action, or would you likely be distracted by the next tweet from one of your other friends? For writers, how do you should that one story has ended? I always feel awkward tweeting anything after I’ve finished one of my stories, because I feel like it’s going to be tied to the story somehow. If a Twitter is a constant narrative, there are no real end points. There aren’t any chapter breaks. It’s just one sentence that follows from the next into infinity.

I realize that I am of course not the only person experimenting with Twitter Fiction, and I’ve got some serious exploring to do. Does anyone know of any good Twitters focusing on ultra-short fiction? Does anyone have any thoughts on Twitter Fiction? Comment here!

He sits, he stares, he empties the contents of his nose into a wad of already-damp tissue. He crumples the wad. He considers saving it in his pocket for later use. Could the tissue withstand another attack? He puts it in his pocket. He thinks about churches. He still smells her on himself. He thinks more intently about churches, then railroad ties, gravel pits, house fires.

Briefly, he forgets where he is. He is at home, at his desk. No, at the office. No, the grocery store.

He is, in fact, at home. Trying to write a story about a moped-riding bigfoot. What a stupid premise. He calls it ‘Paul & the Piaggio’.

He sits and stares at the monitor. He begins plucking individual hairs from his head. His bottom teeth hurt. They are small, like baby teeth, and they are crowded and crooked and with the occasional sharp edge. He tries writing about the sasquatch’s teeth. He imagines the teeth of bears, badgers, dogs. Their teeth are small also, but yellowed and far more sharp. Does his yeti eat meat? He is uncertain.

He only writes about neon signs any more. The signs and their flickering. It depresses him, makes him think about jumping off a bridge. These days, it seems, he even thinks in cliches.

In his mind, however, he does not die upon hitting the water, nor is he dashed on a sharp, stony crag. The water is deep and warm. As it fills his lungs, it revitalizes him. He is made strong in his drowning.

When he finally wakes from his fantasy, he makes a decision. To move on, to leave everything behind. To go somewhere devoid of neon lights and bristlefaced men and other hardboiled cliches.

He knows he has only moved from one fantasy to another, but it doesn’t matter. He knows also that by day’s end he will have settled back into his tired routines, probably. But for now he dreams of South America. Jungles. Unpaved roads. Little brown children with mud on their faces. These thoughts sustain him.

Outside his window, a neon light flickers in the dark night. He closes his blinds and feels the water fill his lungs. He is made alive in his drowning.

2009