a social work student in Brooklyn, Liz Afton has had the pleasure of reading her poetry at the Five College Poetryfest and The Broken Banjo Boys’ Applewood Revue. she loves the chirruping sound her kittens make when they jump, as if they were
hiding accordians or robots inside them. Michael Aird lives in the great Northwest. current musical obsession = Acoustica: Alarm Will Sound. current print diversion = Goethe: Theory of Colours. current U Tube distraction = Mercan Dede and Mira Hunter (whirling). Jeff Alessandrelli lives in the distant cornfields of Nebraska. recent work appears or is forthcoming in, among other journals, the Denver Quarterly, the Cream City Review, and Handsome. things he feigned disinterest in last Friday night include the Punic Wars and how to correctly spell the word “intriguing”. Rachel Andelman is from Boston and goes to Bard College. she wants to be in comedy. it is somewhat bananas. Shawn Arrajj is a student soon to be graduating from Medaille College in Buffalo. aside from his poetry, he is famous for discovering the largest number known to humankind: 750,000,000,000,000. in his spare time he likes to think and rethink. Joe Atkins received a degree from CSUS and another one from UCD. he likes the internet more than television, which is complicated. he thinks that sharing this moment with you has been above average. Ed Baker: born Washington, D.C. April 19, 1941 3:15 am Christopher Barnes had his first collection of poems, LOVEBITES, published by Chanticleer Press. Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal was born in Mexico. he lives and works in Los Angeles County, California. his chapbook, The Book of Absurd Dreams, is available from New Polish Beat. Lisa Beskin is the author of My Work Among the Faithful (Lynx House/Eastern Washington University Press, 2004). her current hair care product, a defining whip, smells really good, and when she applies it, she experiences a disproportionate feeling of well being. Brian Dean Bollman is getting comfortable on his edges, keeping a tight line, and hoping to podium. Eric J. Brinovec is a 28 year old man from Grants, New Mexico. he’s enjoyed writing Surrealist poetry for about three years. he’s got two small poetry books for which he is seeking publication consideration: Wednesday Squared (To the Fifth Power), Free-Form and Melodized Verbalizations..., and Disenfranchised Screams Floating on Clouds of Severed Monkey Hands in the Parallel Spheres (Bathing in a Tub of Glass Shards). he does physical art, loves the Meat Puppets, feels marginalized by his generation, and he just wants to finally do something with his life and maybe succeed enough to get away from this intellectually dead, western town of zombies.... Maurice Burford lives and writes in a giant squid’s den in Ashland, Oregon. he has been published in NOÖ Journal, Robot Melon, Cannot Exist, and Pindeldyboz, and has work forthcoming at My Name is Mud. in his leisure hours he cracks eggs and co-edits PinchPinchPress and blogs at Panda Panda Panda. Louis Bury has put his career as a pro poker player on hold in order to focus on writing. other things he will be avoiding in 2010 include fried foods, doctors’ offices, the phrase “good people,” the suburbs, fancy shampoos, family values, cars, popular culture, Facebook, excessive badinage, organized religion, the rituals of sport, and slow walkers. Craig Cady would like you to know you’re first in his mind, but not in his body. if you email him, ask for a copy of his chapbook. Stephen Carey loves words. born in Kinchasa, Zaire, raised in Ketchikan, Alaska, now living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Sten Carlson, largely undone by problems of space, is hard at work befriending time. Sarah Cavallaro is a film-maker and is founder, president, and executive producer of Emerald Film. she is a playwright and a producer of art installations (among them, for artist Cosimo Cavallaro, Cheese House, Twiggy in Cheese, and Ham on a Bed). she has degrees in social work and criminal justice and is a published poet in several anthologies. Otto Chan kicks art. Julia Cohen and Mathias Svalina are the author of four collaboratively written chapbooks, including When We Broke the Microscope from Small Fires Press. their poems have appeared in Bird Dog, Absent, and The Sonora Review, among other journals. Sharmila Cohen lives in Brooklyn. she recently graduated with an MFA from The New School. she hates the giant squid and loves talking about it. Kate Colby is the author of Fruitlands, Unbecoming Behavior, and
forthcoming books from Litmus and Ugly Duckling Presses. she lives in Rhode Island, where you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave. Lindsay Coleman lives in Massachusetts where she teaches at Babson College. she has tried to reconcile her competing interests of gaming and poetry by writing poems about video games, so. Friday nights are pretty lame. Jeff Crouch is an internet artist in Texas. Google him. J. P. Dancing Bear’s most recent book is Conflicted Light (SalmonPoetry, 2008). his next book, Inner Cities of Gulls will be out this year. he is the editor of the American Poetry Journal and the host of “Out of Our Minds” a weekly poetry program on public radio station KKUP. he likes the shampoos and conditions that make his scalp tingle. Shira Dentz. suns are cosmic eyes. light roars like an ocean. Steffi Drewes prefers the sound of the ocean to that of a hairdryer, but finds both rather comforting. she also feels self-conscious of her height around her new kitten. soon she will visit Argentina’s gigantic waterfalls, mountains, and glaciers so she can feel small again. the hairdryer will not be making the trip. Michael Farrell is drying himself off, having himself-free time. otherwise he’s launching his new book Out of the Box: Contemporary Australian Gay and Lesbian Poets (Puncher and Wattmann; coedited with Jill Jones). likes contact. Joseph Goosey parks cars in Jacksonville, Florida. he does not have a bank account and thanks you for reading. Rachel Gruskin just graduated with her Poetry MFA from The New School in Greenwich Village and would like to find a PHD program eventually. she really likes the Village and for her hair to always smell good. she’d like to be able to write forever and be just like
her father. Colin Herd is a mystery shopper. he lives in Edinburgh and gratefully receives all interesting and unusual recipes involving quince. Uyen Hua currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area; uses dry shampoo three times a week; doesn’t understand why bowler hats are acceptable if Prague is out of style./font> poison pen, invisible ink...Crow Jane is an anonymous international all “girl” poetry collective (England, NYC, S. Korea, France). all poems are collaborations, translated by ourselves. our watchword is, Most of a good hunter’s time is spent waiting. WE ARE A BIG SECRET! Thomas Kane is a PhD candidate in poetry at the University of Missouri. he edited and co-translated Tomaž Šalamun’s recent collection There’s the Hand and There’s the Arid Chair (Counterpath, 2009). his weakness--and his strength--is salting things. Vincent Katz lives in New York City with his wife, Vivien, and sons, Isaac and Oliver. he is the author of Alcuni Telefonini, a collaboration with Francesco Clemente (Granary Books) and is the publisher of Vanitas magazine and Libellum books. Larry Kearney’s hair used to be red. he very much likes Greenwood Cemetery, in Brooklyn, as well as Moonrise, by Frank Borzage, and The Boy with the Green Hair, by Joseph Losey. none of these, he says, are conditional. KJ lives in America with his dog, Mr. Bear. says “say hi.” Margaret Konkol, who enjoys placing bets on life’s quotidian in Buffalo, New York, recommends using a knife in your toaster—it gets the bread out every time. David Dodd Lee no longer lives in the gristmill he believed would hum him to sleep into old age—he has instead
returned to his life of distributing shrubs and weedlike small trees in an effort to eradicate any hints of the American lawn in whatever small neighborhood he finds himself perched in. his three new books forthcoming in 2010 are The Nervous Filaments (Four Way), Orphan, Indiana (Akron), and Sky Booths in the Breath Somewhere, the Ashbery Erasure poems (BlazeVox). Chandler Lewis believes strongly that (1) Michel de Certeau was a bad-ass old school bank/pool skater; (2) rivers flow for no one’s benefit; and (3) “You have to speak up / to be heard over / the wind over / the water / running.” Cassie Lewis-Getman was born in 1974 and lives in upstate New York. it feels as though she always has, but really this is at least her sixth incarnation in this lifetime. the snow makes a kind of hush around her and inside of it she is able to stomp in snow boots, if she likes, or write, or just listen to the hush. Chris Lin is a sculptor, musician and writer currently living in Chicago. he was born in Taiwan and grew up in Canada, and now is seeking to score his third
citizenship status in the US. what’s next for him, nobody knows. Diana Magallón est un petit peu emmêlé par faute de ce shampoo, Diana est une artiste expérimentale très soigneuse de son hygiène. Joseph Mains was born in the Sonoran Desert. he lives in Portland. To Live Don’s Life: A Film in 15 Creams was published this year at Scantily Clad Press. Steven Manuel. living in North Carolina. paddleboats. Jennifer Manzano has deep conditioner in her hair right now. no joke. John McKernan is now a retired comma rancher and apostrophe coach. he lives most of the year in West Virginia where he edits ABZ Press. Resurrection of the Dust is the title of his latest book. T.J. Meneely. “christ. is that... is that mold? a moustache? look at that. the man is half tongue and no use...” David M. Morini sprung from the skull of the California College of the Arts MFA in Writing program and has been published in Beeswax Magazine, The Blink Zine, NameCalling.org and forthcoming in Monday Night. his first foray into the truthfulness of advertising was self-administering Johnson’s “no more tears” Baby Shampoo and has not wept since. Anna Morrison lives in Berkeley, where she works at an art museum and in a biology lab. she has red hair and is unwilling to disclose the name of her shampoo. Brane Mozetič, Slovenian poet, has three books published in English translation: Passion (a book of short stories, 2005), Butterflies (2004), and, last year, Banalities. Seth Oelbaum goes to the library a lot with Piper. Eddie Paterson lives in Melbourne, Australia, in a terrace house, which is falling down. it is lovely. Doug Ramspeck, author of a book of poems and a chapbook, would like to thank everyone for taking the time to visit him inside this contributor’s note. please stay as long as you would like. no refreshments will be served. Jessy Randall knows someone who, just to be funny, pronounces the shampoo brand Suave to rhyme with wave. she has been collaborating with Daniel M. Shapiro since the sixth grade. here’s her website. Sam Rasnake writes and edits but is always certain to shampoo his hair twice daily: once for reading purposes, and the second time for the world - or at least the weather. Ryan B. Richey grew his hair out on the sides so he can use shampoo again. it gives him supershine, superbody, and he smells fresh as a meadow. Matthew Rotando’s first book of poetry, The Comeback’s Exoskeleton, was published by Upset Press in 2008. he’s at work on another manuscript inspired by conversations he’s having with Paul Klee’s paintings. he enjoys kimchee on his cornbread and the syllable “mer” in “America”. Tomaž Šalamun is widely recognized as one of the leading Central European poets. he lives in Ljubljana and occasionally teaches in the USA. his recent books translated into English are The Book for my Brother, Poker, Woods and Chalices, and There’s the Hand and There’s the Arid Chair. his Blue Tower is due by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in Fall 2010. and yes, he’d love to be “a freshly showered rubber ducky for my readers” (to quote the editor). Daniel M. Shapiro loves to stay at five-star hotels and leave with some fancy shampoo in little bottles. his poetry collaborations with Jessy Randall are everywhere, including in your collective unconscious. Amy Silbergeld’s work has appeared in Gertrude, Humble Pie, and ReWrite. when she first meets someone, she usually asks them if they believe in time. Mike Smith admires those who remember to use shampoo, but too often finds himself using the hand-soap in the men’s room before work. his book of anagrams, Multiverse, is just out from BlazeVOX Books. Tamara M. Soban, born in Ljubljana, Slovenia in 1962; BA in English, the University of Ljubljana. started working as a translator in the late 1980s. most literary translations published in anthologies of contemporary Slovenian prose. three book titles: Andrej Blatnik, Skinswaps (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1998), a collection of short stories; Feri Lainšček, For Whom Does the Flower Bloom (Ljubljana: Društvo slovenskih pisateljev/Slovenian Writers’ Association, 2002; Litterae Slovenicae), a novel; Brane Mozetič, Passion (Jersey City, New Jersey: Talisman House, 2005), a collection of short stories. Mathias Svalina and Julia Cohen are the author of four collaboratively written chapbooks, including When We Broke the Microscope from Small Fires Press. their poems have appeared in Bird Dog, Absent, and The Sonora Review, among other journals. Michael Thomas Taren translates. Shelly Taylor has authored three poetry collections: Peaches the yes-girl (Portable Press at YoYo Labs), and Wide to Get a Hold Lost In (Dancing Girl Press, early 2010), and Black-Eyed Heifer (Tarpaulin Sky Press, Spring 2010). also, the self-proclaimed 500 casserole queen of Tucson! Joseph Torra is a novelist and poet. his most recent books are They Say and Call Me Waiter. he lives in the Boston area. check out his website. Thomas Trudgeon wears powdered wigs, goes to school, and often works on stuff. inspirations: Love, jogging, Pantera, proposing marriage, punching the air or bushes, yelling at a cat on the street. stuff is around others . . Ashley VanDoorn has recently published online in Word For/ Word, Pinstripe Fedora, and BlazeVOX Ellen Welcker suffers from triangle hair, an affliction more commonly attributed to bad haircuts than bad ’poo. she welcomes suggestions regardless. she has poems in Tinfish 19 and an essay in The Quarterly Review. Sarah Wetzel lives with her dog in Israel where she writes poetry and yearns for New York. she maintains a stash of Rusk Sensories Calm Guarana & Ginger Nourishing Shampoo in lockers at all major international airports and Penn Station for cases of quick getaways. Cyril Wong’s last poetry collection was tilting our plates to catch the light (firstfruits 2007). he lives in Singapore. his favourite shampoo is his lover’s hands. Sharon Zetter is skeptical about solid shampoo, but certain on the rubber duck debate. she writes words between co-editing the journal Retired Unicorn, book binding, and building a dacha with five other humans. her poems have found home in or are forthcoming from Monday Night, The Greenbelt Review, Sorry for Snake, Soft Skull, and Blood Pudding Press.
here Washington, D.C. Sept 24, 2009 2:54 pm
everything in between .... boring