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Loose Change Magazine wants to go to print!

14 May

With the closures of some of our favorite publishers and literary journals over the past few months, I think it’s important we keep our chin up and focus on some new and exciting developments that are being made with other journals. Tyler brought our attention to the good stuff at Matter Monthly last week. Now I’d like to draw your attention to our friends at Loose Change Magazine.

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Loose Change is ascending! In March they released a new website and their third volume and threw a party to celebrate. Now they’re in the process of raising funds to release their first ever print issue! Read all about it their power2give fundraiser page.

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Matter Monthly

7 May

These new online mag, Matter Monthly, just catapulted its first issue into the world. In their introduction (manifesto!), the editors conclude by describing their aim as such:

Matter is space where visual artists, poets, and writers of all genders, races, and ethnicities can contribute work without first bleeding it of subjectivity and criticality (whether of social and financial institutions, the other, or ourselves).  We hope what transpires will be an evolving forum for desired change, humor, and provocative art that transcends the false binary between politics and aesthetics, as well as lyric, language and conceptual antimonies based on perceived inabilities of those discourses (musical prosody, semiotic play, and formalist abstraction, in turns), for structural critique.

In these first pages, the kickstart is proper to this. We are given poems and prose and art that collapses timidity and frankly feels like one of the rawest, most oomphed issues of an online mag I’ve read. Very much stoked about future issues pushing this aim.

EXAMPLES:

from “How My Existentially Problematic Novel Unfolds” by Kyle McCord:

Your heart maybe many bears
beating their bike chains
and tire irons together.
I can’t prove otherwise.
This is a democracy,
so it’s your word against
my science.  My science
against this feeling that we are
often not alone when we are
often alone, I fear.
We are taking out the garbage
into the desolation
of some suburb,
but we don’t want this
in particular.
I ruin everything with my wanting.

(Untitled) by Robin Dluzen

from “Party Time” by Lina ramona Vitkauskas

The juice of solidarity
has become sour! We see

Woolly Mama models
of the newest clams,

throw out two dummy
dollars for everything cancer-

cleaned, lick the film to reveal
our bones. Beneath the swells of

our nation’s un-tuned harpsichord,
the war is constantly constant.

Check out the whole first issue!

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Canarium Books Preview at The Collagist

18 Apr

The Collagist, as they do in April, have bulked up their poetry allotment for National Poetry Month. Most vouch-worthy of this month’s features are the three previews of poetry collections, all with three poems representing them here, all from Canarium Books, all set to drop this month, here this month as a replacement for the magazine’s typical Novel Excerpt features. The three books are Ethical Consciousness by Paul Killebrew, Great Guns by Farnoosh Fathi, and Pink Reef by Robert Fernandez. If these features are any indication, these books can go on your GOTTA GET THEM ASAP list.

from “Middle Name” by Paul Killebrew

I sit here sometimes and try to remember what the phone sounds like, and then the thermostat will click or there’ll be a creak or something, and I just about die.

I had worse jobs.

When I was still practicing law I remember this guy asked me if he cut a hole in his roof if he could sue the city.

I said for what?

He said I don’t know you’re the lawyer.

from “Brazil” by Farnoosh Fathi

Left a hole on fire agony or was it the sun
and love of both—
On the banks and near duets,
eagles with the white wine of the sun
clink and spill tall grass over head and heels
…Space of hell: shy, inscribed already
But alone, I think I can be that
again—a new hole in the flute
that doesn’t end.

from “[I chose...]” by Robert Fernandez

I wanted to understand
this ethos of cameras
strung through juniper leaves,

juniper lenses seeing
at the tops of the trees:

a bread
of violets
baked in

a bread
of mussels
glutting the

a cache of
roe in the
stomach

Check out the rest of these selections, as well as the whole April issue of The Collagist. I promise you’ll feel better.

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“She Says” by Brandon Amico at Sixth Finch

17 Apr

You know this, how you return to the poems, the stories, the people, the pictures on the wall, that are somehow surprising each time, a twinkle coming around the edges, a word hidden in the tiny room you didn’t see before, the way that someone bends their words towards an impossible horizon. a weird blur in the corner you keep staring at.

That’s all here in this poem in the new issue of Sixth Finch, this poem called “She Says” by Brandon Amico. I’m enthralled. I’m entrenched. I’m engaged to this poem as much as I’ve seen it lately.

Let’s take a walk. She tells me
there is a river in every town,
and I sincerely doubt this, so

I tell her so. She says she was
speaking metaphorically, and I ask
if the towns are metaphorical

or the river. Is it the same river
or a new river in each town?…

And that’s just it getting good, unshuffling the cards, and you should really read the rest here!

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NOÖ Journal and Vouched Books Collaboration HEY

10 Apr

A bitty while back, I started sending virtual envelopes and doing other duties for Mike Young (on behalf of his cool adventures Magic Helicopter Press and NOÖ Journal). Prepping our resources and brains to release NOÖ [14], we climbed a little hill to an idea for a partnership between NOÖ and Vouched.

NOÖ has always chattered about the books it loves. And seeing how Vouched exists because of its founders unstoppable urge to chatter about books they love, we were like UH-HUH let’s bring that together. So in order to offer a wider variety of reviews and reviewers for NOÖ, Vouched now has an umbrella stand in those pages, writing some of these presentations (reviews for those of you wondering at home).

That big chunk of work that started all this talking, NOÖ [14] is out and about officially, both online and in a sweet FREE print edition available in neat locations. We at Vouched couldn’t be more stoked to jump onto this riverboat.

Take a look at this new issue featuring stellar work (poems, prose, pictures, presentations, ALL GREAT P things), featuring:

Nalini Abhiraman
Jeremy Bauer
Anne Boyer
Rick Bruns
Meagan Cass
Lisa Ciccarello
Elizabeth J. Colen
Marit Ericson
Ashley Farmer
Russell Jaffe
Rachael Katz
Joe Kmiecik
John Kolbek
Lisa Kostrzynski
Mike Krutel
Gene Kwak
Nicholas Lockyer
Tony Mancus
Erin McNellis
Elizabeth Mikesch
Rodney Nelson
Claudio Parentela
Morgan Parker
Michael Parsons
Hai-Dang Phan
Meghan Privitello
Fabio Sassi
Kelly Schirmann
Ben Segal
Katie Jean Shinkle
Julianna Spallholz
Emily Toder
Chris Toll
James Valvis
Ron Winkler
Wendy Xu

And of course of course, the presentations by Vouched ATL supergal Laura Straub (two even!), Vouched contributor Scott Daughtridge, and myself.
So stoked about this, the return of NOÖ, the collab of here and there. Please please please check it out okay okay okay.

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I’m a spectrometer between worlds — Alexis Orgera in the new issue of interrupture

22 Feb

Another GORGEOUS issue of interrupture. Another thumping poem by Alexis Orgera unfurled into the world.

On FB world the other day, Alec Niedenthal called it a “hymn to science.” WOW. That’s the truth out of a mouth.

A pulsing poem, a truth-grasping hymn, a dying human body, all pieces of the same weirdo puzzle reminding us we are both alive and dying and living and dead, pieces of us flaking off, pieces of us rubbing together, pieces of us flaking off and rubbing together. Ain’t nothing better than that reminder, sad or joyous, pornography or stroll through the park.

Now, go on flickering (in and out) and read this whole thing.

Pray the fools don’t eat our micro-
cosmos Sanctuary from low
pressure, this ain’t
the science of emergence electro chair’s
your uncle mad heliogram warns
not to siphon Satan’s bed
Glory be the boat-hat a wayward
molecule in the gap
between its own front teeth
when it sighs, Syringe me, darling
I’m a spectrometer between worlds

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What a mighty goodbye–The awesomely HUGE last issue of red lightbulbs.

15 Feb

Sad to see this, type this, feel this, but red lightbulbs, one of those magazines I genuinely whoop for each time, one of those magazines I actually return to, to show people this is why online magazines are cool/matter, red lightbulbs is flipping the off switch (well, I’ll assume here the archives will stay well-lit, but new issues are no longer a thing over there is what I’m trying to say).

But boy oh girl, they said goodbye with a mighty backdrop of fireworks, a real proud showcase of the goodness they do. Wow, seriously this thing is HUGE. I say, CHECK OUT THE WHOLE THING, but to get you jamming that way, here are a few of my favorite moments of this final hoorah.

So many people who have been vouched before and/or whose books model on the Vouched tables, like Sasha Fletcher, Zachary Schomburg (with some translations of Rebotier), Diana Salier, Carrie Lorig (another scatterstate!), Blake Butler, and many more!

Also, be sure be sure be sure to check out some of these awesome pieces:

Two poems by Justin Carter

from “my father catches a live alligator”

& says stab this knife into her spine & I say do alligators have spines then Google it. I return to the yard & my father is inside the alligator’s stomach. How terrible: being swallowed before you are ready to be swallowed. Hello Father inside the body that does not belong to you.

“the house that stole the moon” by Cassandra de Alba

A bunch of kids lived there and they kept it in the attic. At parties they would lead you up the sagging back staircase a few at a time and let you touch it, how at other houses people would fade off to the attic in threes and fours to split sheets of acid or hit homemade bongs that nearly grazed the low ceilings.

“the recorded world was set on fire” by Curt Miller

two poems by Jordaan Mason

from “the sound of mandolins”

lest we remember how time brought us here: walked from
plateau to plateau in grotto gowns, planting plans into our
living room furniture, the spice rack, the refrigerator filled
with rotted vegetables, leftovers—washing my hair in the
sink with silk, sun barely coming in through the bricks, his
science in the next room singing current events


But what in the world am I talking about, showing you, etc.? Go read the HUGE GOOD thing.

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How To Make A Magazine–Booth 4

4 Feb

Booth Cover

The Vouched Indianapolis table returned to its book-slinging duties this past Friday for the area’s monthly First Friday Art Walk, and the table had a top-notch journal addition: the latest from Booth, Butler’s lit mag. As I’ve come to expect from this crew, this new one soars out every piece to create one stellar literary robot–crisp, thoughtful design (this blue that flows through the issue, bordering pieces, illuminating excerpts, making the titles pop), a variety of types of printable art (your poetry, fiction, and essays, of course, but also also also stellar comics, drawings and new pieces to their ongoing Winesburg, Indiana series), and the turned-up quality of this work.

See: the poems by the magazine’s 2012 Poetry Prize winner (selected by Linda Gregg), Aubrey Ryan.

from “How To Make A Beginning”

Wedding gowns are hard to sink
in creeks. They float downstream

like bloated geese. They sag
in knuckled reeds along the bank.

Pretend that it’s a skin. Pretend
that it’s the slit belly of a wolf

and lay the pebbles in. [...]

See: the comics, c,over art and illustrations throughout by Dustin Harbin

See: “Constance H. Wootin” by Michael Martone in the Winesburg, Indiana section

And there, there I am on my paint can stool, an egg, looking over Bart’s soft cotton shoulder. I am in profile, depicted as some antique muse, attempting to sketch the artist’s, Bart’s, own profile I alone can see. It seems I am whispering into his ear, a flash of a pearl-pink tongue, a kind of spark between the synapses, rendered between my lips. Still wet, the image glistens. I dismantle all my lenses and glasses and goggles. I lean into the point of paint, the picture closing in on me.

See: “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding” by Joshua Unikel

Cookie Monster doesn’t need to keep up appearances or save face. Though his eyes meander and bounce, his gaze is subtly fixed on what he wants. His spherical eyes sit like two dense stars above his dark ellipse of a mouth, and all of it with its gravity pulling everyone to love him. It pulls everyone into forgetting how differently they see the eyes of puppets and the eyes of people.

And this is just some snippets! Seriously, the whole thing bumps WOW. I’m putting it on my coffee table now.

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“They say the pleasure is the image. You trust?”– Tamiko Beyer in the new Octopus

28 Jan

Lots to get stoked about (AS USUAL) in the slick Octopus Magazine, this their 15th issue. There’s Emily Kendal Frey and John Gallaher. There’s Yvette Johnson and Daniela Olszewska. There’s MORE and MORE.

But the work that I keep chewing on, or maybe it’s chewing on me, is the goodness from Tamiko Beyer, these sections from “Dear Disappearing.”

Just scooted past the inauguration of our dear President again, it’s great to feel hopeful. Yet reality bites, that’s what I hear, and that’s what Beyer reminds, in this fantastic, gut-punching way that stretches beyond the boo-hooing, the same old lack of answers, and jumps right into the rut.

Sure, the best country this once and always was.
The best one, the worst, it’s just a technical matter,

definition, clarification. Let us try: Did we not build
the bomb, the big one, the one to end all ones?

They watch while we wilt and flourish, wilt and flourish,
then grow a third eye. What miracle, what curlicue.

Go get walloped by the whole dang thing! 

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Aside

Back Again With Some Sixth Finch

23 Jan

Sorry to sound like the windmill always yapping about that same wind, but gracious, Sixth Finch sure blows some major energy our way, no? Yes! Issue upon issue has me going GOTTA VOUCH THIS. And THIS turns up to be that and that and that. So here I am again, spinning for the new issue of Sixth Finch.

Here are my tip-top wahoo favorites:

Allison Corporation by Julia Bloch: I love how it writes and rewrites itself, twists and turns itself, the poem, I mean, but also the speaker and the situation and the purpose. Mid-poem, it says, “I’m rewriting the plan,” says it twice even, and this, I feel, is key. This poem is that plan, The Act of rewriting the plan. Then, the end, the admitted emotion of it all: “This is a love poem/and I did not do any research.”

The Grip of All We Cannot Grasp by Sean Patrick Hill:

The moon comes on like a cloud of dead whales.

I lie in snow at the curb, and doves build nests in my sleeves.

Baby Toss by Julie Blackmon: This is one of those photographs one returns to, at first enjoyable in its common connection, it’s field and sky, baby being tossed and caught, as is infancy, but why do I keep returning (as the baby might wonder)? It’s the sky doing its magical bluing, it’s my own wonder what happened to the baby as gravity yanked it, or wait, did the baby drop from above in the first place (the magical red shoes and striped leggings), it’s the I’ve-been-here-before-ness of the kid in the green hat. I’m in love with the space this photo provides.

Worthy of It by Nick Sturm:

[...]Wherever you are awake

I want you to know the barn is falling down

slow enough we can sleep on it. It will be

raining, then it will be snowing, then

we will be wet, soaked, swollen, shore

in a way our bodies deserve. I mean

our mouths, our state shapes, our hair

in the morning. The dirt changes color

the closer I get to you. Like I said,

it’s snowing. It’s snowing just enough

it holds together.

We Claim To Be The Only Species Aware Of Our Own Mortality by Amorak Huey:  Wow at the power of these “We” statements, how they jut into, press holes in, strip apart, shine clear our understanding of our limited time here. Second wow at the power of the He coming to do his thing at the end, though we all should have known it was coming, maybe even hoped it so.

Smoke Bomb by Alex Roulette: WOW YES WOW

Read/look at the whole thing now!

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