Bleah, The world is ugly today, and so am I. Is that why I made Face Time a mirror?--the world is merely a reflection of my gnarly old soul.

MOST LIKELY TO

I am not your avenger,
I was never.
Look, there are no lines
on my palms, nor have I pin
to etch them.

I am slamming a door
with 1 hand & with the other,
I am slamming another.

Something sets, a chestnut
husk, between my 2
eyes; terns' wings scissor
turbulence not even
they can see.





But enough of that, it's 11:45 and I've got a class to plan.

Thanks, Jack. As I am often mistaken for a Leprechaun myself, I understand the perils of elfism.

Phil Crippen's Face Time author (reader?) photo is here. I am posting these to my Flikr account and will update the Cy Gist site sometime this weekend (I have to exhume Rachel's old PC, whose sole role in life is to run Dreamweaver (the PC that is, not Rachel), to do this, I so need a copy of Dreamweaver for OSX).

Upon seeing Jessica's cover-mirror self-portrait from Face Time, I realized that it would be fun to try and persuade all of the authors from the chap to do the same, and I will link to the photos from the Cy Gist website. It would be cool to get everyone. I suppose if you don't have a digital camera, it would be a pain in the neck, but otherwise...

Hey peeps, it has just come to my attention that I have received orders by way of my PayPal account, that PayPal never informed me of! This is pretty irksome, as I am supposed (and most of the time) do get email confirmation to my email address. The orders I just discovered will go out on Monday, and I will now start checking my actual PayPal account daily to make sure there aren't any orders that PayPal didn't tell me about!

You guys are going to start thinking that I am making stuff up, but I'm not. In another sleep-related disturbance, last night I woke Rachel up by screaming "Duuuuusssssiiiiiieeeee Chaaaaappppppsssss." Over and over again. When I yell in my sleep I do it in this sort of Vincent Price B-Movie ghost voice. Every time I think of it I start cracking up. I'm not sure if I was dreaming that something was happening to my Dusie Chaps, or that I wanted Dusie Chaps or what. If you happen to be reading this and don't know what "Dusie Chaps" is, it was a project in which 40 poets or so made chapbooks and exchanged them with each other. The electronic versions of said chaps are here. Evidently, they have left an indelble mark on me.

Limping my way to the Post Office with the contributors' copies--I won't let my sleep-related injury stand in the way of Poetry...

My Name is Luka

Apparently nightmares can, in fact, hurt you. Last night I leapt up out of my sleep and vaulted towards the door to make a hasty exit from the room for some reason or another. Problem was, the door was closed. I hit the door at full speed and velocity (I am fairly large and fairly fast) causing quite a thud and waking me out of my stupor (mostly). Fortunately, nothing seems to be damaged except for one of my toes which is black and painful. I hope it isn't broken, but given that you can't do anything for a broken toe that is kind of a moot point anyway.

About the best image I could get of the actual Face Time cover is here.

3 New Chapbooks from Cy Gist Press

"Summer's gone, but a lot goes on forever"--Leonard Cohen


Cy Gist Press is happy to announce the release of 3 new chapbooks as we bid summer farewell and stumble into autumn and everything after.

SPECIAL FOR BLOG READERS: Order all 4 recent Cy Gist Press titles for $20 ($5 each, normally $6) and I will throw in a copy of Another Night, the first Cy Gist Press chapbook for free. There are only a few copies of Another Night left, so act fast!

EXERTIONS
by Scott Glassman
(20 pp. Sewn Binding) $6

Scott Glassman's first chapbook offers simultaneously alien and quotidian glosses on the perils of existing alone and with others. Scott's take on the prose poem operates by way of arpeggios of contrapuntal phrases threatening to tear the form apart while giving them surprising rhythmic balance. For ordering and a sample poem go here.




CARACAS NOTEBOOK
by Guillermo Parra
(20 pp. Saddle-Stapled with Linen binding, B&W photographs) $6

Guillermo Parra's lyric paen to the city and the dramatically changing face of Venezuela at the beginning of this century is rife with exile and nostalgia. These are poems from between--between languages, cultures, identities and forms. Sparse, objectivist-inspired poems are mingled with direct but enigmatic prose reminiscent, to my mind, of W.G. Sebald. Like Sebald, these poems are homesick for a point of origin which may or may not have ever existed. With black and white photographs of Caracas by Isabel Parra. For ordering and a sample poem go here.




(Please note image is a reproduction of the mirrored cover which cannot be reproduced on the computer screen)

FACE TIME
(22 pp. Sewn Binding, B&W photographs, mirrored cover) $6

What do Paris Hilton, Al Pacino, Hilda Doolittle, Charlize Theron, Marcello Mastroianni and a quivering, self-eviscerated blob have in common? Find out in FACE TIME, an anthology of poets responding to stills from films. Featuring work by:

Joe Hall
Craig Perez
Noah Falck
Phil Crippen
Matina L. Stamatakis
Francois Luong
Brian Lucas
Nicole Mauro
Jessica Smith
G.L. Ford
Mark Lamoureux
Christina Strong
Michael Carr
Sandra Simonds
John Mulrooney
Brenda Iijima
and Christopher Rizzo.

To order and for a sample poem and image go here.