Flash fiction temporarily removed from this spot for submission to contest.

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NEW BOOK COMING IN SEPTEMBER :: I am proud and honored to have my manuscript Unit of Agency chosen to be the first publication by the brand-spankin’-new-and-I-mean-spankin’ Collapse Press. Tentatively out in mid- to late-September, it’s a collection of poetry and short prose that might be called human struggle/protest culture/pissed-off leftie pieces (or might be called something else). Whatever they are, prepare to be provoked. Collapse Press was founded just this spring by the ever-diligent Paul Corman-Roberts and Lynn Alexander, who are planning to produce a number of books, including a collection by Missy Church and Volume 1 of Comics for Collapse, both coming soon. They’ve been running a terrific zoom read called The Friday Collapse on the last Friday of each month, which can be found on the Collapse Press Facebook page. So keep yer eyes, ears, and nose open for more!

FLASH FICTION IN THE NEW MAINTENANT :: I’m thrilled to have a cute little fable on the hazards of capitalism titled “A Fable” in Maintenant 15, the pre-eminent Journal of Contemporary Dada Writing & Art. Should you purchase a copy to read my piece? Of course! But be warned, you’ll find yourself swimming in beauty. This issue contains a stunning array of 240 artists, writers, musicians, philosophers, performance artists unabashedly representing the counter-mind and culture of the moment. Deets and more on the Anthologies & Journals page.

UPCOMING READING :: I’m finally listing upcoming events here again, and on the, er, Events page. Have one this month on Thursday, August 26 at 4 pm PDT / 7 pm EDT. It’s Neuronautic Institute Presents zooming from the Long Island of New York State, who are generously allowing me to co-feature with the amazing George Wallace and Neeli Cherkovski, yes that is the truth. You know you need to be there, and if you’ll be working, well, you’ll just have to QUIT YOUR DAMN JOB. Deets on the Events page.

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I’ve been thinking about animals, and how so many “humans” (whatever that means) consider themselves to be separate (hubris), superior (hubris), and distinct (more hubris) from those “lower” species. I am deeply grateful that some people, however a minority, do not hold beliefs of this sort. Those who do often evince that difference as a sense of an individual self, an awareness of self discrete from others, leaving us phenomenologically at least even more isolated and alone in the vast expanse of space. On the other hand, animals, as we call them, sure will fight like hell to save their skins, but day to day, seem much more aware and merged with the world around them – the less domesticated, the more in tune. Just watch a flock of starlings, foraging deer, ants setting up shop. Then look at the internet and cringe at the stupendous confusion and irrational flailing about of our “higher” species. High, maybe, but higher? I gotta say, I’m much more impressed with the deer, with salamanders, hell, even with those obnoxious squawking blackbirds that perch on the powerlines outside my window through the afternoon, interrupting my every thought. They got it goin on, being here and moving forward, and really don’t seem in the market for a singular sense of self, for individuality and all the existential angst and easily exploited vulnerabilities that come along for the ride. In that light, the whole higher species thing comes off as just a high-level insecurity, which would simply be ludicrous if not for the fact that “we’re number one” so frequently reduces to “it’s okay to pillage, rape, and kill everyone else.” Not the most charming behavioral tendency, when it comes right down to it. But what if there wasn’t an “everyone else”? What if there was just one big “we”? Imagine that as a starting point. I suspect that those animals that we speak of so condescendingly don’t even have to.

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BOOKS I’VE LIKED RECENTLY ::

Mom Says by Peggy Morrison (self-published, 2020)

This is a heart-filled gorgeous work in which Morrison honors her mom who died in 2012, but whose voice and language remained quite present in her day to day life. Part memoir, part poetry, part family photo album, the book alternates between flash prose recollections, lists of her mom’s axioms and sayings, and photos that take us into her family’s life and history. More than that, Morrison emits an introspective, caring tone throughout that not only channels her mother’s voice and her 20th Century second-gen American perspective, but also opened the floodgates of my own memories of voices and language that carried me through childhood and beyond. I suspect that it will do the same for many others. I was profoundly moved.

We’ve Been Too Patient: Voices from Radical Mental Health, edited by L.D. Green and Kelechi Ubozoh (North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, CA), 2019

Here lives a collection of twenty-five personal stories and essays that challenge and criticize the biochemical model of mental health that reared its authoritative head in the latter half of the 20th Century. And it’s astounding. These are stories of people who’ve been through hell that’s been compounded and amplified by doctors who compulsively filled them with all kinds of new and often experimental chemicals under the guise of “treatment”. These are not reactionary tales; their telling is absolutely apropos and essential. This is not a book that says, “Never take a pill.” Rather it cries for recognition of what these chemicals do and the many intelligent, often overlooked methods for helping folks who need it. The book is split into people’s narratives and essays on alternative perspectives and approaches (which shouldn’t even need to be called “alternative”), written in personal and extremely accessible language. This book is invaluable, and anyone who has ever been challenged by mental health issues of any size and shape, or has known anyone who has, should read and welcome it.

Scattered Arils by Dena Rod (Milk and Cake Press, Hamilton, OH), 2021

“Fierce” is the word that always comes to mind when I read or listen to Dena Rod’s work, and to that this book is monument and exemplar. Radiating the queer Iranian-American experience, this first collection sets us on their journey to see clearly the complex, combative, passionate world around them, and to both place themself and defy their placement in it. Whether addressing gentrification, their mother preparing food, their coming into queerness, or the rivulets and rivers of racism and queerphobia they encounter daily, Rod’s language sears, etches and transforms their subjects in an almost Blakean manner. This book may not make the world any simpler, nor do I think it means to, but it’s assuredly a better place for it.

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Sincerely,
Richard