laundry vans and lumber yards

Friday, 22 December 2006

The tour diary is done. Scroll down past the laundromat entry to read about the Bay Area of California, USA, Earth, Universe.Also: I have new stuff up at some familiar places. Check out Juked and SmokeLong. Sort of like winter sweaters, these places. Comfortable and fantastic. So more like winter s

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i was like: lovers are waterproof

Tuesday, 19 December 2006

Spent much of the day at the laundromat, back in Oroville.Something was messed up with my left ear. Clogged, very quiet.A blue, suspicious towel hung on the doorknob in the public restroom.I read Roy Kesey's Nothing in the World. It fit the mood of my bad ear. It made me want to wash my heart in a

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tour diary part très

Saturday, 16 December 2006

Kindness. It sizzles me. Let me explain.We left Ashland in the wee hours of the morning, waltzing down I-5 through eerie Shasta clouds and talking about National Geographic documentaries, Lemurians, power ballads, the etymology of the word emo, the Calif

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tour diary part dos

Tuesday, 12 December 2006

Glorious evening to all of youze. When I started this entry, I was in Portlandtown beside a fireplace, staying with one of T-Poe's childhood friends. The Portland show went well. We played in a converted garage. After the show, I ate a piece of pound cak

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tour diary part uno with a lot of passive voice

Sunday, 10 December 2006

Hello. I am currently sitting on a kitchen floor in Vancouver, BC. We are staying at Laura Boo's house. There is a slab of wood across the back door and a sewing machine on the table. We, the minor poets, ate artisan pastry bits leftover from a major poe

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perpetual motion roadshow

Tuesday, 28 November 2006

Some news:Between December 8th and December 16th, I will be trundling up and down the West Coast with clandestinely-named Ocho and T-Po on the Perpetual Motion Roadshow, which is an "indie press touring circuit, an unholy combination of a vaudevillian va

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nazarene keeps her earrings in a folgers can

Tuesday, 28 November 2006

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king's quest 4

Tuesday, 7 November 2006

Magic Helicopter PrayerWhich deodorant allows youto check the electric metersin that very sexy fashiondawn and doughnut crumbsprovoke?Which Mach do you usein the bathroom of Denny's?Brown towel chips in your chin,the syrup bowl a shitty mirror.Which hatchback goes bestoff the pier? Your violin insi

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bcr & tao & herman & i want to trade the game i play for shelter

Sunday, 5 November 2006

Sorry about the delay in the BCR and TAO LIN reviews. My hands and brains have been otherwise committed.So, in an effort to apologize: Andre Herman Dune & Clemence Freschard cover Leonard Cohen's "The Stranger" in one of those rooms, one of four minutes where you memorize the chinks in our bott

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i am a sloth

Wednesday, 1 November 2006

See title.Final two reviews coming today, tomorrow, whatever you call it.

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MIKE TALKS FOR FOUR DAYS ON FOUR THINGS ™ : EPISODE II: FEBRUARY

Saturday, 28 October 2006

Feburary—Aaron TiegerI got a copy of Aaron Tieger's Feburary along with Property Line, as a kind gift from Jess Mynes.February is a cream-colored book of sixteen pages, thin and tall, the right edge a little frayed (I don't know if that's just my copy),

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MIKE TALKS FOR FOUR DAYS ON FOUR THINGS ™

Thursday, 26 October 2006

As promised, over the next four days I will spout about four lovely things: Property Line by Joe Massey, February by Aaron Tieger, you are a little bit happier than i am by Tao Lin, and Backwards City Review #4.Thank you for joining me on my blog's unsal

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monday morning's no good

Tuesday, 24 October 2006

Just a quickie: Don't forget about FRiGG Fourteen.

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no, mostly, i just smell my fingernails, she said

Thursday, 19 October 2006

HAPPY 21TO BRYAN COFFELT, ESQ, pH.D, 341 RBIAs of midnight tonight.Now that he is twenty-one, Bryan can legally imbibe spirits and run for the position of Universal Well-Endowed Bovine, or Mega Cow. We are all very anxious.

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NOÖ [five] is online! (and I have new poems out)

Friday, 13 October 2006

NOÖ [five] is online!Print copies coming soon.Also: Erica has posted an interview with me and done it up with lovely visuals and style.All sew: I have two (old/new/revised) poems out in the brassiest named e-zine ever: melancholia’s tremulous dreadlocks. Why is this cool beyond cool? I am in it wit

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good discussion

Tuesday, 10 October 2006

Jessica Rowan is hosting one among us Ashland tykes over at her blog. Feel free to chime in with accounts from your town. Extra points for total subscription to the authority of narrative.We need to mention, I think, the two big populist poetry beasts: cowboy poetry and slam poetry. These draw crow

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they will lean that way forever

Thursday, 5 October 2006

Blue Jeans For Sale in the Trailer Windowand pour from the parked Airstreamlike tubes orphaned off the grid.We have come with these sodasof mint and marmalade, thesesomewhat easy parallels to Rome,to blame a billion barrelsof banana pudding, wafers mixedwith cardboard and soybean oil,hours gifted t

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i am sitting in the theatre i am turning into pinball

Tuesday, 3 October 2006

To come: praiseful speakzies on Joe Ma's Property Line, Aaron Tieger's Feburary and the Backwards City Review V2 #2.

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unsuspecting liar would you park here near the fire

Saturday, 30 September 2006

More names. Name poems. Poem names.Heather Has Always Moved AwayTrust only the brisk, the spiritwith a little bit of sputter behindit, the others under the same rain.It's odd to head for another's awning.But Heather, I miss you like a roadtripleaks music, and I thread my legs throughthe fire escape

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about july

Wednesday, 20 September 2006

I spent one afternoon with two people who kept calling everything weird. A man dancing in the dollar store to a kiddie piano? Weeird! Someone's brother named Setee? He's weeird! Weather? It's weeird! Strollers without mothers? That's weeird! A pamphlet with seven pieces of advice for pedestrians? H

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dzanc books dzanc books dzanc books

Tuesday, 12 September 2006

This is an excerpt from the press release of a super-cool new organization designed to publish literary fiction and promote literature, literary journals, and literary awareness:"Dzanc Books is a 501(c)3 organization set up to operate exclusively for charitable, literary, and educational purposes.

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r u gonna find a new boy to spoon????

Saturday, 9 September 2006

Kasey, I know you'll get a kick out of this: two new songs from Herman Düne, your second-favorite HD, courtesy of Songs: Illinois (and a little hyperbole, but hey):Get new HD songsIn other news: my friend Jordaan Mason is making a chapbook of his prose and poetry. You will want to get it. I owe him

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play the piano with your tongue hair

Sunday, 3 September 2006

She in Bed and He in MorningWhen she dozes off,and he slips from thebed to meet his friendfor pumpkin bread and coffee--How wind seems rude as a faucet,how all cotton sleeves drowseaway in flecks, dandelion clocks.How strangers on bicyclestuck or wag their miles of tongueand shriek a bunch of oily

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peak oil means there is no such thing as a mission

Sunday, 3 September 2006

I've gotten over some of my reluctance about poem introductions. We don't share a brain, just a language. So: this is a poem that is not about the universe. Sometimes different narrators jump in and out, like a conversation at a party or in a chatroom. My favorite words in this poem are the rhythm

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explicit fishnet clank

Sunday, 27 August 2006

It's Sunday, which means this blog will turn into an indie pop MP3 blog for no good reason at all.The Little Ones"And the answer of the day / is you've made it"Any small bald man can outfit your day with the latest in paranoia. But The Little Ones will apologize and chime and tom-tom and press seve

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i would rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy

Monday, 14 August 2006

I have a new story, "Summer Peaches Versus Pocket Holes," up in StoryGlossia, a sweet online mag run by Steven McDermott, who loves to read short stories like us poor folk love to grill Kraft singles.I have been spending most of my time watching Tom Waits videos on YouTube and shivering upon the si

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all we are say-in - !*&%$@#*&$%

Tuesday, 8 August 2006

It's hard to make this song work clean, but this is like ice to rise in every mouth, a-go-go now.via Clay Banes

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p.s.

Friday, 4 August 2006

While not writing honest-to-whole-milk "rants" (see below), I am working on an e-poem/hypertext toy inspired by Robert Grenier's Sentences, mantra poems of take-your-pick Beat-floosies, the testimony of my own silly discrimination, and a certain internet boredom site.It was boring and stupid until

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one day the HORS-es will have their re-VENGE

Thursday, 3 August 2006

If y'all ain't heard oh! map, youz is a missed out suckuh.

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from a decree, i sowed in yr burning coals

Wednesday, 2 August 2006

Two new poems: one containing an image that will re"appear" ("occur" might be giving myself too much credit) forever in my shit (but reoccur recursively?! that would be something!) and one in which I have no idea whom I'm trying to accuse.Is it gauche to post two poems at once? Also, is there a nif

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okra made of to-fu!

Saturday, 29 July 2006

Sorry (or you're welcome) for my string of promotions and now extended silence. I've been in Humboldt County, California, hanging out with my sister and guzzling fog. Met up with the lovely and gracious Joe Massey yesterday afternoon. We talked about all kinds of shit. Weird super-Christian outside

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looking for how to spend $3?

Saturday, 22 July 2006

Observable Readings, a free reading series which in October will host the impeccably dressed and usually beer-clad François Luong, needs yr good will. For every dollar you PayPal them, the St. Louis Regional Arts Commission will give them another dollar.Also!NOÖ Journal will soon print its super-hu

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this situation has universal symbolism and stuff like elephants having tea with ghosts

Thursday, 20 July 2006

I was bicycling down the street the other day, and a car -- some kind of white sedan -- honked at me. The driver made the "please call me" motion with pinky and thumb.But I could not see the driver.The driver was vague.I don't know who the driver was.I don't know the driver's phone number.I have so

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new elimae

Tuesday, 18 July 2006

If you're hot, you're on elimae. Not that I'm a facist or anything.The new July elimae has poems from my friends Bryan Coffelt and Paul Madore, and a story from Nick Antosca (who I think is my friend, though he has yet to submit something new to NOÖ *hint hint, Nick, after you see this through che

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an astronaut / could've seen / the hunger in / my eyes from space

Friday, 14 July 2006

Maybe Adorno would say that a turn to the testimony of interior feelings in a time of global conflict is immoral. Nonetheless, these new Mountain Goats songs end any need to ever sing about death ever again.Or maybe they make it okay.I don't know.This is not emo, because emo would never say: "I was

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michael that is a long poem the food channel is on your face is like a great big poop of face poop

Saturday, 8 July 2006

Trying to move with breath (see: Charles) and stupid bric-a-brac (see: Kenneth) toward clarity (see: sand-dune Frank) and inflate (not with nothingness, but like tires don't run if they're not inflated) relevance (see: Allen).Lordie, but what a paragraph of white men!Now .. poem.P.S. Please tell me

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dolly

Wednesday, 5 July 2006

I want a little Kasey Mohammad doll whose string I can pull, whereupon he would deliver quotes like this (gleefully out of context):"... the language, however 'poetically' elevated it is or isn’t, is carefully calibrated to accommodate that reality ..."Yep. With the dangling "that" and everything.J

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oh it's a funny little world

Sunday, 2 July 2006

Sometimes it is better to let the mirror neurons have sex with the eyes.Leave out sentences and words.Go here: http://peoplecollector.blogspot.com/.

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talking about yourself is like dancing about something else

Thursday, 29 June 2006

I know y'all can take me only in tiny doses, and I can take myself only in droplets, but my friend Sean Kilpatrick was kind enough to interview me and let me talk at length about shit.Please read my interview.I will do something for you, buy you a cake or something.P.S. I probably won't buy you a c

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SoQ repreZENT

Tuesday, 27 June 2006

I feel sleazy. I am not out in the heat doing physical labor, like my father once did, like my mother once did, like my sister does on Arcata farms, like my friends do in foundation pits and cherry factories.I feel sleazy about that.Have done it. Building sheds, canning, gutting and cleaning filthy

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stolen graham crackers

Thursday, 15 June 2006

New poems, real names, same ole same ole:For If You Burn Carol's Phone NumberGod, Keighley, we were not a cityof giant things: weeds and wordsfor sleet from a Russian immigrant.He evacuated a smirched shantytownfor your couch. He called Carola girl who sound like horse.Not horse, dude: just Caterpi

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New SmokeLong Quarterly

Thursday, 15 June 2006

SLQ 13 is out. Fine flash fiction from flash fiction fiends.

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NOÖ [four]!

Monday, 12 June 2006

Everyone trundle on over to NOÖ Journal to check out [four]! Just released! Hot and steamy!

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jessica rowan is a good person

Monday, 12 June 2006

Jessica Rowan is a kind person.She reminds me of Emmanuel Levinas. She likes other people and what they say. She allows them their oceans, even when they're tentative and honest about the stupidity of many activities, like writing to practice for MFA programs instead of writing to love language and

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NOÖ Journal [four] is out!!

Sunday, 11 June 2006

Update: Everyone trundle on over to NOÖ Journal to check out [four]! Just released! Hot and steamy!Now, rain:"It's raining? Is it warm rain? My phone told me it was warm rain."This Oregon swamprain is crazy right now. You have to see it.When I read about things I've never seen -- a poem about a Mon

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in the bathtub with a french accent

Thursday, 1 June 2006

What's going on these days with fizzpo? Friends are writing short, sly fluff pieces about why their friends' poetry is fizzpo.Check it out here.What is fizzpo?And some more clever fizzpo rules.

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men work in fields with feelings

Wednesday, 24 May 2006

Man, everybody always posts about their scholarship. I am a scholar too. Sources have pegged me a "public theorist." Here are the titles of some of my upcoming projects, all of which will be published in TIME, Rolling Stone, Good Housekeeping and The Dayton, Ohio Electrical Appliance Quarterly:-The

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Ball of Dooshie Levitation

Tuesday, 23 May 2006

Something different. Fiction. Promise. Even though I know a guy named Daniel. I was supposed to write about an asshole, but I'm not sure who's the bigger asshole -- him or me for writing, etc. Love me tender love me true. Tell me if the ending feels dumb.Ball of Dooshie Levitation I trip whe

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hard work

Tuesday, 16 May 2006

I have been wrestling with this one for a while. It's about my mother. Sometimes I stare at the lake when a line goes wrong.Beloved Floofylimbs, How I Pine Like DamnFloofylimbs, I live in a cheery house of rafts,wherein I dwell on sex and speaker systems,all the livelong whistlin' "shlam-zee-du!"an

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um

Thursday, 11 May 2006

A Small Choir Replies to Minh-Huyen's MySpace BulletinMinh-Huyen may never ride a bull.We can't derive exactly where herbleakness bleats. We've lied ourteeth to slush concerning what wedid, shit, Friday night, so many --  We shook ginger into teenage winks.  We gabbed acorns acr

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instructions

Monday, 8 May 2006

Everybody respond to my last two poems with quotes from White Noise (the Delillo, not the Keaton) concerning nostalgia.Poetry should not service reconstruction, it should service construction, the construction of imagickation.This renders at least one entire form -- the lament -- irrelevant. Also,

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dandy wa-wa

Sunday, 7 May 2006

Ashley Yells the Once and Future Fuck YouRicky's brother Ashley in the window,dirged as an old woman of soup sleeves,shouting ignoble our baseball and Kool-Aid.She was a slut, he was less than acorn can -- me with my gloves andfriends too lotionclad for the laundromat.Sorry, I'm sorry, I'm pocked w

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not vispo, just lazy

Friday, 5 May 2006

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okay, trying for fizzpo

Thursday, 4 May 2006

Or: how to make fizzpo avoid langpo. I think we need more rules.Your Town Has Nine Nice LawnsSee Reno before you die inAlaska where your wolves slipup the lips of two apologetic girlstrading shoes for fraught shenanigans ---- win a fistful of rhinestones,but the fist of a station dwarf, soyeah. No

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everything that rises must conmotherfuckingverge

Tuesday, 2 May 2006

Langhorne Slim. Jesus Christ. What do these young men have in common? The drunken scythe of truth, that's what.This one song -- "Hope and Fulfillment" -- is like an angel gone slicing my heart my heart my heart with banjo wire and the furious love of Jupiter.This song could reconstruct the pyramids

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