In Italian

Here are two of my poetics: Slow Trickle and Meditations> translated into Italian over at Federica Nightingale's blog.

Prettiness.

New writing up @ 'Zygote In My Coffee'

Hi. So. I'm on holiday. We have soy butter pecan ice cream (not like now -- it's 10am,) a cat here, and mountains.

And look: my toybox is spilling creepy bizarreness at Zygote in My Coffee. Go check out my bull whip, hopscotch skills, and Babysitter's Club prowess and maybe blanch a little at what went wrong with this doll. She's one of the set of three doll pieces forthcoming in Sein Und Werden.
Seriously happy to have work up here. I haven't read the whole rest of the issue yet, but go read this piece by XtX. I liked it.

Meanwhile, Felino Soriano kindly published this second piece of mine (it's teeny) over at Counterexample Poetics. I like the zine's philosophy a lot and some of what's appearing there is lovely weird brilliance.

Censored Poets have also reproduced my Not For Nice Girls poem. There mission is 'poetry that is rated NC-17 and rated X, adult oriented, depraved, obscene and indecent material....It can even be funny. Dark comedy, sick humor, shock value... I want it.' What's not to like?

It’s weird, I feel like I’m incubating stories that aren’t quite ready to hatch yet. Do people hatch stories? I’m sure they do. The way you grope around for a particular word, and partake in stilted conversation whilst you and some other person with whom you are speaking furrow about for it. The way it hits you middle of the night, 3AM, that head-thunk of the exact word for which you were looking.
A lot of the writing I do is drafting. I don’t mean it to be drafting, but often I’m drafting ideas, finding phrases I like enmeshed in the unremarkable, trying to figure out the ideas I know are there, ascertain the point I’m trying to make.
I’m a big believer in not forcing things, though sometimes, like almost everything, the logic is easier than the reality. There’s this Murakami of ‘When it’s time to go up, find the highest tower and climb to the top, when it’s time to go down, find the deepest well and sink to the bottom, when here’s no flow, stay still. If you resist the flow, everything dries up. If everything dries up, the world is darkness.’
It’s all perfectly true, of course. Perfectly perfect. There’s something beautifully satisfying in each one of those ideas, just embracing everything fully. It sounds sort of velvety, immersing.

Sometimes, it’s so tricky, I think. I find it difficult to be present fully in each moment, engage entirely without glancing over my shoulder, trying to peek at what comes next, sneak stealthy glances at the clock.

Some kind of waiting paid off, anyway, and I’m finally almost on holiday. I feel very ready for movement right now. I guess some stories might follow.

Call for submissions for translation into Italian

Federica Nightingale, an Italian poet, is looking for poetry contributions which she will translate into Italian and post to her lit blog.


Here's the call for submissions:


Looking For Authors Of Poetry


to be translated (by me) and published in my italian literary blog

http://blog.libero.it/CimeTempestose/

Of course I'd publish the english and the italian version.
If anyone interested, please send 1-3 poems in the body of an e-mail to the address:

federicanightingale@gmail.com

Wait for your contributes and thank you

Federica Nightingale



She is very kindly translating some of mine.


Send her something. Let's teach poetry new tongues.

Two stories in 'Prick Of The Spindle'

Ooh, look: the very beautiful Prick Of The Spindle has published two of my stories, The City and Orpheus Revisited. Really pleased to have work up here and looking forward to reading the rest of the issue properly later.

A Present For The Wolf

They send me in the morning. Such a bright day that I have to muster everything inside of myself to be more than a wisp of steam. I am very small today, light on my feet. By the time I am where I need to be, it is chilling already. The outermost edges of the forest exist in a climate all of their own. Today, I remember nothing. My liquer eyes are vast and searching. They wrapped me in a scarlet wool coat. They say it is how my grandmother will know me. I am a beacon in thick brown green forest. The further inside you walk, the colder it becomes. A red shawl wrapped around my head, that deep brown hair pulled back. On my arm is what I was given: a basket woven from wicker. Inside it are wheaten goods and meat for the woman they call my grandmother.

The forest echoes with thick wind that sounds like screaming. I step only on the winding path but it is overgrown. That which I cannot see slithers against my legs in poisonous whispers, and I shiver.

*

And the path winds like a snail shell. I tread it all day until I am traipsing. Mid-afternoon I sojourn, tired and hungry, and eat some of the bread and meat I have brought for grandmother. I bite ravenously into a shiny red apple and sip from my skin of cider. Beady-eyed birds circle overhead watching me.

Finally, I can see grandmother’s cottage in the distance, the very centre of the trail, and I know that I have been here before.

*

It is late afternoon by the time I finally arrive at grandmother’s door, and the light has almost completely deserted. She ushers me inside. The room is lit by the low-glow of candles. The table is set with dishes, awaiting my arrival. I offer her my gifts as supplication. She feeds me family-meat, and pours us blood from a bottle. I partake in silence. Her teeth are huge and pointed as she pours the liquid down her throat. Deep red stains the white enamel.


I curl by the fire in the cold, windy cottage. Grandmother calls me to come to bed. She is old, and she is tired, and it is so cold at night-time. I crawl in, and she is naked and my grandmother no longer. Her huge hairy body, her tree-trunk limbs. Him, him, him. I have been waiting all along and so has he. He hisses and wraps his arms around my neck, pinning me down. I do not resist. His claws draw down my white throat, carving gashes. Blood stains his teeth. A yelp falls from me and then I lie back, silent. Grandmother roars and the forest cries back. There are no words as he rips flesh from my bones, cracks open my pretty white face, my pretty white body. I become the pool of blood I have always been, and he feasts upon me. Finally, everything is quiet.

Gee, you're just so ephemeral

It doesn't seem I can write and read at the same time.
I never was much good at multi-tasking.

In about January time I started writing. I want to say writing 'again,' but I had never stopped in the first place. But peaks and troughs and empty cliches like that. All of a sudden, something came back and I started writing with ferocity. And heaps of that was chaff, white noise, but still, this sudden word-gush. Like having sprung a leak.
Arterial gush, maybe.

I stopped reading books around January or February. Rereads, sure. Graphic novels, yep. Zines, oh yes. But my new book-desire temporarily sealed itself over. This happens occasionally. (When it doesn't, I'm a chronic reader.) I also got busy with life at some point and that probably entered into it.

And this strange thing happened, has happened. All the writing I particularly liked (because I sent out a lot of chaff, too.) A couple of old pieces, and all the scribbled pieces I actually consistently felt good about (and a couple I turned out to like less) of the last few months - all got 'taken.' They are all published in places I like, or will be. Bar one poem, which I hope will end up somewhere.

And I think I'm ... done. Not that I have stopped writing, or that I will stop writing. But whatever that was has tailed off.

I've stopped writing for now. Not on purpose. It's just not there, and I have no urge to force it.
I'm reading again.

I'm sure I'll keep this updated with bear pictures and links to where the remaining pieces are up at anyway.

I'm on holiday next month, so maybe a change of air will give my brain a spring-clean.


In the meantime, I do have one little literary project in mind.

'Lily' @ Outsider Writers Collective

My gentle romantic story 'Lily' has gone up the Outsider Writers Collective site.
If you have been reading me a while, you have maybe read it before.

And if you write, why are you not a member of this site?

This Story Speaks Portugese

This is really fun:

You know I blogged this story a while ago?

Beto Palaio, king of the haiku, has translated it into Portuguese.


Et voila, This story going all bilingual:


ESTA ESTÓRIA


Esta estória aconteceu trezentas e noventa e três vezes antes. Esta estória está indo para trás. Não há nada parecido com andar para trás nesta estória. Esta estória está se revelando como um soco bem dado. Esta estória é choro, luta, blasfêmia. Esta estória está acendendo um cigarro. Esta estória está rastejando de volta para dentro de sua mãe. Esta estória está presa num corredor infinito de dominós feitos de estórias. Esta estória é empoeirada. Os globos oculares desta estória são reflexões cintilantes de uma garrafa de vinho. Esta estória começou quando um cromossomo oval escorregadio se abriu e, tenteante, deslizou em uma natação lânguida em direção à sua família flutuante. Esta estória sempre existiu. Esta estória está sacaneando a biologia. Esta estória é um poema. Esta estória tem uma falha de di-discurso para que você não a compreenda inteiramente. Esta estória tem tendências auto-referentes e proclames narcisísticos. Esta estória está caindo de cabeça numa poça de lama. Esta estória está quase se afogando. Esta estória está escarrando uma placenta. Esta estória é atada a todas as estórias do mundo através da tubo de Falópio. Esta estória é sufocante. Esta estória gosta de sufoco. Esta estória morreu pelos pecados de Jesus. Esta estória se repete bienalmente. Esta estória renasce como uma fênix. Esta estória arrasta com pé de chumbo. Esta estória ganhou uma caixa negra de trufas cor-de-rosa amarradas com uma fita de seda creme. Esta estória mergulha como uma vírgula numa luminosa piscina de água Perrier. Esta estória é feliz triste acoplada apática comprometida exaltada estática acendendo um cigarro. Esta estória é prematura, muito madura, co-dependente, independente, malversada, pixelantada. Esta estória surge de uma incubadora cercada de vidro de lenta-respiração. Esta estória é a incubadora de seus pensamentos. Esta estória está rastejando de volta para dentro de sua mãe. Esta estória morre e é fecundada por dentro. Esta estória cabe como uma luva do pelica. Esta estória é provavelmente a sua estória.




This Story

This story has happened three hundred and ninety three times before. This story is going backwards. There is no such thing as backwards in this story. This story is opening out like an unfurling fist. This story is crying, fighting, blaspheming. This story is lighting a cigarette. This story is climbing back inside its mother. This story is stacked in an endless domino hallway of stories. This story is dusty. This story’s eyeballs are shimmering reflections off its wide-brimmed wine glass. This story began when a slippery oval chromosome opened up, oozed and slid in a languid swim towards its free-floating family. This story has always existed. This story is failing biology. This story is a poem. This story has a s-speech impediment which is why you might not fully understand it. This story has self-referential tendencies and narcissistic proclivities. This story is falling head-first into a mud-puddle. This story is almost drowning. This story is coughing up a placenta. This story is tied to all the other stories in the world via fallopian tubing. This story is choking. This story likes choking. This story died to save Jesus’ sins. This story observes Lent bi-yearly. This story rises like a phoenix. This story drags like a heavy foot. This story receives a black box of rose truffles tied with a cream silk ribbon. This story dives like a comma into sparkling Perrier pools. This story is happy sad elated despondent apathetic engaged unmoved lighting a cigarette. This story is premature, too mature, co-dependent, independent, malcontented, pixellated. This story surges from a glass walled slow-breath incubator. This story is the incubator of your thoughts. This story is climbing back inside its mother. This story dies and is climbed inside of. This story fits like a calfskin glove. This story is probably your story.