Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Current publication info:

"The Myth of the Prose Poem" will appear in Sentence 8. Summer 2010. Sentence: A Journal of Prose Poetics is edited by Brian Clements and published by Firewheel Editions.
http://www.firewheel-editions.org/sentence/current.htm

"Good Idea #3: peanut butter" and "Measurement of a Man" will appear in South Loop Review: Creative Nonfiction and Art #12, fall 2010. South Loop is the literary journal of Creative Nonfiction Program at Columbia University and is edited by RéLynn Hansen.

"Good Idea #3: peanut butter" also received an honorable mention in the Fourth Genre 2010 Michael Steinberg Essay Contest. The contest is held by Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction, the nonfiction literary journal of Michigan State University. The journal is currently edited by Marcia Aldrich; the contest submissions were judged by the journal's founding editor, Michael Steinberg.

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Befallen




A cubic stone. Lapis exillis. Stones, from a small dark cloud. Angular black pebbles. Warm polished pieces of flint. A cylindrical marble object of unknown origin. Warm oval rocks and stones, up to sixteen pounds in weight. A ball of limestone containing fossil shells and a creature like a trilobite. One half-pint of red rocks. Layered metamorphic rock.


Jack perch and sun perch. Water lizards. Living snakes. Thick sheets of white spider web. Periwinkles. Cut worms. Dead birds including ducks, catbirds, woodpeckers, many birds of strange plumage, and canaries. Catfish, trout, and perch. Unidentified living creatures. Fish. Largemouth bass, sunfish, shad, and minnows; some frozen, some merely cold, all fit for consumption. Live frogs and toads. Fish. A monkey, destroying a clothesline post. Hundreds of fatally injured ducks. A small shower of thirty-four fish, each about two inches long. A single fish.


Hundreds of golf balls. Eighteen inches of heavy chain. Two large metal balls, sixty-five pounds and one-hundred-ten pounds. A six-pound piece of charred metal, pierced by two drilled holes. A large brick of metal turned up at the ends and pierced through by two large holes.


Burning sulfur. Lumps of transparent fiery jelly that disintegrates into fine white particles. Cinders, from a small dark cloud, that set fire to the ground. Flammable sulfur rain. A fireball. Fireballs and burning cinders.


Blood and meat. Liver, brains, and blood. Strips of bloody flesh, covered in fine white hairs. Meat. Flakes of fresh beef.


Rock candy. Green peaches from a dark cloud.


A domed mass of quivering purple jelly. A very large, pale yellow object, descending slowly.