“Remarks My Immigrant Mother Has Made About Babies” by Kristen Iskandrian was a wonderful addition to our July issue. She answers all our questions in 30 words or less.

1. What remarks would your mother have made about me as a baby?

Don’t be so vain.

2. What are the benefits and drawbacks in looking like Winston Churchill?

No benefits, no drawbacks. Only pinstripes, cigar, peace sign, furrowed brow

3. What is the scariest picture of you? What are you doing in it?
I think it’s from 9th grade. I’m in borrowed pajamas and doing some kind of Dougie predecessor and hadn’t yet learned what my hair was.

4. When your children have children, will you react the same as the mother in this story?
I sort of hope so.

5. How often do you blend fact and fiction?
I regularly don’t know the difference.

6. Should we be nervous?
Always.

MG Martin’s, “6,000 Miles Apart, Which Is More In Kilometers” appears in the online July issue. It is amazing. Here, he answers these wonderful questions about various things.

1. What are you living on the side of?
           
First, I would like to express my gratitude not only to God, but, to Jesus…
                
 2. Why not miss someone in centimeters or nanoseconds?
 
Because I can’t count that high or long. Don’t worry, more is revealed later in the interview. Next question.
    
3. What fruit is made out of your heart?
 
The kind that tastes like drunk mouth when you are too sober for the music. The kind that tastes like the disappointment following the phrase, “When I grow up I want to be…” The kind that isn’t, but could be, if fruit were allowed to grope blind Seeing Eye® dogs. The kind that tastes like wet glass. The kind that contains chemicals known to the state of America to cause birth canals or other reproductive machinery. The kind that wears its confidence on a sleeve of doubt. The kind that tastes like claustrophobia in a submarine on the last Sunday morning, ever. Richard Brautigan fruit. The kind that was born in California, grew up in Hawaii & lives in Brooklyn, without an idea of what it is doing. M.G. Martin fruit, of course.
 
4. Who is “6,000 miles apart…” for?
 
Real Talk (A Poet’s Movie): A few years ago, I met the electric Tess Patalano. (WARNING: SPOILER ALERT: Tess Patalano stitches words together like ‘whoa’ & will be contributing poetry to the September issue of PANK.) At the time, we were living together in San Francisco. We both wanted to become poets who were paid millions of dollar bills to write, so, we decided it would best to move to New York. However, Tess flew eastward a couple of months before I did because of a job opportunity. CUE MELANCHOLIC VIOLIN MUSIC & PABLO NERUDA VOICEOVER. Tragic, alone & looking like a bad manuscript, I was walking through Golden Gate Park one morning, when the line, ‘i’m missing you like as though you lived on the side of a milk carton,’ appeared in the front part of my brain. The rest I don’t remember. I eventually made it to New York & now do most of her dishes. The End.   
 
5. How are you pining for me?
 
Like an anabolic steroid in a world of miniature chess pieces, because I’m just an empty checker board, who will never utter: check mate, baby. Like the definition of the word ‘yearn’ in a place where languages are mute. Like a junkie in a nunnery. Like a painter with no hands who can only paint reflections. Like Wall Street on a poet’s salary during a cliché recession. Like a ghost who’s house has been demolished. Like an unemployed copy writer for just one dangling participle. Like Mr. Rogers for a neighbor. Because you are my friend & we enjoy the same kind of sandwich.   
 
6. Isn’t eating your seed hazardous?
 
Not if the person you pine for is a giant with a heart made out of a watermelon. Then it is ok. It is not advisable to eat the seeds of a scorpion. Mainly, because scorpions don’t have seeds & you will be very close to death if you are holding a scorpion to your mouth. I once tried to tongue kiss a scorpion under an avocado tree. Avocado seeds are too big for your throat, so, don’t do that either. But, yes, if you eat your own seed in public you will be quickly put into the hole. & you know who lives in the whole? M.G. Martin & he eats all kinds of f-word-ing seeds. Thanks, PANK.

Amanda Montei’s eleven poems appear in our July issue. She answers our questions here.

1. What else makes my butt look better?

Spanks and pilates, of course.

2. Why CVS and now Walgreen’s?

Actually, I prefer Rite Aid because of their audacious use of the word “rite.” Is this particular drugstore interested in exalting face wash, one-hour photos and candy as ceremonious modes of maturation and cultural passage? Or does this company just wholeheartedly believe that cleanliness is godliness?

3. How does prose writing affect your poems? Why did you choose to jacket your poems in prose?

I  prefer the term “sweater.” I’m interested in spaces where too many items/ideas/themes/doubts meet. Where everything feels hot and stuffy and sweaty, and still remains a little cozy. The prose block allows me to write into all sorts of purgatorial traps, and forces one pathetic grappling to abut against the next.

4. Were any bears harmed in the writing of your poems?

I imagine that in the evolutionary world of these poems bearksin rugs actually precede bear-animals. So the real question is whether any bearksin rugs will be harmed in the writing of the subsequent poems… we shall see.

5. What do you want to be?

A traveling salesman. I think it would be lovely to knock on strangers’ doors day after day, and one day be invited in to throw dirt on a rug, then clean it up.

6. What is your rug like?

No rugs at all yet. Rugs are like houses– once you’ve acquired that kind of consistency, you’ve become an official citizen. I like my feet dusty and cold.

Joanna Pearson’s “Origins of Winter” appears in the July issue.  Here, we ask her some forward questions.

1. Why are poets so fascinated by the seasons?
 
Possible obsession with any of the following: Pathetic fallacy? Greco-Roman mythology? Cycles in nature? Stanzaic repetition with variation? The pleasingly convenient way one seasonal cycle acts as metaphorical stand-in for a human life cycle? Verse and chorus? Autumn leaf poems? Bud and blossom poems? Robert Frost poems? Summer jumping-off-docks-into-lakes poems? Nature-doesn’t-care-so-forget-your-pathetic-fallacy poems?

I don’t know.
 
2. What are your limbs made of?

Very forward question. I don’t think we know each other well enough yet.  

3. What periodic element do you wish you smelled like?

Uranium

 4. What would you dance to at a honky tonk bar?

I think the key is not to mess with whatever’s already playing on the jukebox. So that’s what I’d dance to.

5. How do tangled sheets weep?

Why? Are they weeping in my poem or something?? Weeping sheets?? I hope not! Okay, good–I had to go back and check, and now I can say definitively there are NO tangled sheets weeping in this poem.   There are people who have wept in some tangled sheets, but that’s as far as it goes.

A Hades-figure can erupt from the earth and steal someone and the dead can do dance recitals in the underworld, but I’m firmly opposed to any bed linens weeping because that just sounds terrible.  And so I guess my answer to your question is: they don’t.

6. Why do we quiver so much?

Because we’re made of meat and nerves??  Actually, I don’t know that we quiver all that much.  That’s why I believe in a quiver rationing system: 0-1 quivers per poem, 1 quiver per short story, 1-2 quivers per novella, 3 quivers per novel, 50+ quivers per romance novel.  As for why we shiver so much, well… Sometimes I do get greedy with shivers.

Rachel Levy’s amazing piece “Becoming Deer” appears in the July Issue. She speaks with us here about cigarettes, inspiration and Darwinism.

1. What animal do you want to become?

I want to become a deer. I value strength and size. But, taking evolution into consideration, I’m inclined to say that the horse is a smarter choice. The deer’s ancestor was incredibly large: roughly 7 feet tall at the shoulders. It grew antlers that measured 12 feet from tip to tip. I’m talking Late Pleistocene Epoch or, as I like to call it, The Golden Age Of The Deer. The species has since slipped into a steady state of decline with respect to its strength and size. The horse, however, has evolved beautifully. Its ancestor was only two feet tall and resembled a tapir. I’m sure we both can agree that, if given the choice, neither one of us would choose to become a tapir. But, some sort of ugly duckling thing happened, evolutionarily speaking, and today’s horse is badass. Of course, by now you’ve probably realized that this whole deer vs. horse dichotomy is false. The horse is a domesticated animal. Did human intervention enable the horse’s greatness? Or did it prevent the horse from reaching its true evolutionary potential (in terms of strength and size)? I don’t know (and, frankly, I’m too sick of probing Wikipedia to find out). My point is that no one believing herself to be right in the head would willingly choose to become a beast of burden. Therefore, my final answer is deer; I would like to become a deer. Unless you’re suggesting you’ve devised a plan to liberate the horses. In that case, my answer is hell yes, toss me a gun.
 
2. What do you hide in your mattress?

Nothing. I spent the majority of my income on a plastic cover that is supposed to keep things out of my mattress, though I was advised by a trusted friend to use the space to hide cigarettes. There’s a shit-storm brewing and cigarettes are the new gold.
 
3. If you owned a farm, what would you do with it?

Trade it for cigarettes.
 
4. Why are we so fascinated in becoming something we are not?

Upward mobility is now impossible. It makes more sense to move laterally—across what Darwin terms “the tree of life”—and to try to live as a different kind of animal (this, too, is impossible).
 
5. Where did “Becoming Deer” come from?

I had deer on the mind. I wrote it last February, while reading Johannes Göransson’s translation of With Deer by Aase Berg. I liked the book so much that I read it again and again, etc., etc. I took breaks from my reading to walk the neighborhood while listening to Björk’s Vespertine on my iPod. The voices of these two texts, With Deer and Vespertine, blended together in my head to create something frighteningly unfamiliar and yet unmistakably feminine. That was honestly the impetus. I wanted to mimic the voice I heard. I tried to write a voice that was tongue-tied and precarious (and slightly deranged), but also muscular and destructive.
 
6. Who have you soured?

I really can’t think of anyone, and that troubles me.

Jack Nicholl’s piece “Adrian Dumpleton” appears in the special London Calling Issue. He answers questions about keepie-ups, competition and various American and non things.

1. What could you grate on your abs?

Nothing. However, I can zest a lemon using only my lower back.

2. What are “keepie-ups” and why should we learn them?

[1]
a) Take a soccer ball.
b) Flick it into the air with your foot.
c) Flick it into the air again with your foot. If you want, you can use your knee.
d) Congratulations! You have done a ‘keepie-up’.
Well, you haven’t actually. You need to do at least four or five in a row before you can really say that you’re ‘doing keepie-ups’: any less and you’re sort of cavorting with a ball and all the other kids laugh at you even though you’ve been practicing for ages at home and you still can’t do more than two or three but that doesn’t matter because you’re a grownup now, I’m a bloody grownup.
 
[2]
You should do keepie-ups because one day you will have to acknowledge that you don’t love your partner any more. Your silences will have grown less comfortable; the feel of their skin makes you want to destroy sex. You will decide to break up with them in a nice-enough restaurant that neither of you have visited before. You will look at them as they stupidly tuck into their spaghetti carbonara, and you will realise that there are absolutely no words to say that won’t make both of you feel miserable for the next six months.
 
 At this point, if you know how to do keepie-ups then you can stand up, pull a tennis ball from your pocket, bounce it on your foot or knee ten times, kick the ball into their dinner so sauce gets on their shirt and then run from the restaurant and never speak to them again. If you don’t know how to do keepie-ups, that option is not available to you.
 
3. How challenging is it to write from a woman’s perspective?

I don’t think that I have ever written from one.
 
4. Who would you compete with to get the one you love?

I’m from the fifth smallest city in Britain. We have a lot of hanging baskets and a new statue of a naked man playing a drum. When it was unveiled, the local newspaper ran a think piece on pornography. Occasionally the paper also features stories about a homeless man who defecates in the streets during the wintertime so that he can be in prison while it’s cold outside. If I had to compete with anyone, I fancy my chances against him.
 
5. What part of yourself would you want wallpapered?

I would like to cover my entire body with Victorian floral design wallpaper and then never have to wear clothes again. It would have to be Victorian floral design though, because then it would be quite formal and I could still go to work.
 
6. What American soft drink are you most hooked on?

When I first moved to America I began to miss all of my favourite English soft drinks. Where was Fizzly Popsnort? Uncle Grandad’s Sippin’ Syrup? Diet Clump? As a substitute, I began a love affair with that blue Mountain Dew, which is curiously enough not fictional.

Ezra Fox’s “Get Well Rose” appears in the July issue. He talks with us about female authors, ice cream and taste buds.

1. How do you talk to yourself?

Through my characters. I think people who don’t write fiction don’t quite get that as a story goes through your head the people in it will start to call out their own lines, they tell you what they think of the world, they argue with you and say that they love you or that you’re not worth shit. Or maybe I need to see a shrink. In any case, I learn a lot about who I am and who I’m not when my characters talk to me.

2. What Ben & Jerry’s ice cream flavor would you invent in honor of “Get Well Rose”?

Good one. It would be called “Fourth Trimester” because all B&J’s flavor names should be catchy non-sequiturs. I’d stay faithful to her shopping list in the grocery story — Cookie Dough florets, Marshmallow fluff swirls, and chocolate covered popcorn clusters in peanut butter ice cream. Only I’d add in chunks of midazolam, a drug that causes short term memory loss used by doctors to help patients forget they just had surgery. People wouldn’t be sure they’d just eaten it. You’d need a prescription.

3. What challenges are there from writing in a woman’s perspective?

Oh, a serious question. It’s true that I’m not a woman, nor have I ever been pregnant. The challenges of writing a woman’s perspective are similar to the challenges of having a real relationship with any woman, which is to say that every woman (like every character regardless of gender) is their own person. Knowing someone else is the hardest thing in the world. Knowing yourself is hard enough. The main thing is to let characters write themselves (see question 1).
In this particular woman’s case, the idea behind the story as I see it is that we all try to get rid of parts of ourselves that we don’t want, but you can’t just do that without there being consequences, without losing something you want to keep. Everyone can relate to that sort of loss, I hope. A pregnant woman seemed like the perfect way to talk about something inevitable that I could make not happen. In terms of gender, I think everyone has feminine and masculine aspects, and to limit yourself to only one side is to lose half of your potential as a human. I guess the challenge was letting my female mind loose.

4. Who is on your to-do list?

First, Isaac Babel. He’s not well known enough and everyone should read him, especially his early and late stories. “Get Well Rose” is an older story of mine, but my new work will deal a lot with Babel’s influence on me. Second, this year I really want to connect with visual artists in Boston. Visual artists tend to be more open about their work than writers, and somehow more into big ideas. I have a lot to learn from them, and I want to tell them all their work has “a lot of raw sexual energy.” I think that’s important somehow.

5. Which fictional military branch would you serve in? What would be your rank and job?

I know I wrote about someone with military connections, but boy are you barking up the wrong tree with this question. Could there be a branch of the military that deals with dismantling the military? I’m a peacenik through and through. I was born this way, I can’t help it.

6. When do taste buds bloom into taste flowers?

Years ago I saw pictures of a condition called black hairy tongue. You can look it up if you want, but it’s truly nasty.

Gary Percesepe’s “Something” is included in the July issue. He speaks to you about stopping, cities, stalking and other somethings.

1. How did you know “Something” was complete when writing it?

The music stopped.

2. What city has your favorite subway?

New York. The Paris Metro a close second, for the art deco signs lit against the lavender sky.

3. Who would you stalk? How would you do it?

Pari. The dream went by this way: Speed Off piste, in a snowfield, after skiing Telluride’s double diamond gonzo Gold Hill Chutes below 13,320-foot Palmyra Peak. On my birthday. She’s hot enough to melt February snow. I catch up to her at last and remove her size 5 ski boots. That’s size 35 in Italia, but it doesn’t sound nearly as sexy.
In real life, no one. A friend of mine in New York was stalked a while back, and it creeped me out. I wanted to find the guy and rearrange his aspect.

4. Who got served?

We both did, at Pastis in the meatpacking district one night in June. She had a hamburger and beer, I went with the steak frites. But she stole half my fries and slathered them in ketchup. A guy’s girl. After, the walk to the 14th Street station. Sometime later, the poem. She was something. Also, gone.

5. What city has the best hiss?

New York. Prague by the Castle. It’s Kafka, crying. And the ghosts carry the rest away.

6. Where’s the body?

Brooklyn, of course. I’d say by the bar on the water in Red Hook, to tease her, but she’d clobber me.

Brian Laidlaw has two poems in the July issue. He answers questions regarding steampunk, style, and spills.

1. Where are your elegies for steampunk?

Steampunk isn’t dead, but it used to be. I should have elegized it when I had the chance.

2. Are you digital or analog?

For the purposes of this series, I was thinking of “digital” and “analog” in terms of music recording – so it’s a distinction between the tidy (binary) process that happens when you record on a computer, and the chaotic unpredictable process that happens when you record to tape. I identify with the latter, the analog, for sure – but the world around me is obviously pretty digital. For example, I write all my poems longhand – but to submit them or publish them, they have to be digitized first.

3. What’s with all the lowercase in the poems? Is this a stylistic choice or does this add something to the poems we’re unaware of?

Yes (that’s me rejecting a binary question) – it’s a stylistic choice that, I hope, adds something to the poems. Getting rid of the capitals meant that each sentence didn’t have a concrete beginning and ending. To my ear, that opened up a lot of possibilities for the sound and the logic of the poems. Also I secretly think capital letters are ugly.

4. What spills do you cry over?
 
Oil spills – those are the ones I literally cry over.
 
5. If you spend a fifth of your time being miraculous, what do you do with the rest of your time?

I think I was inflating my numbers a bit there… I probably spend more like a twentieth of my time being miraculous (which is still pretty good, in my opinion). That’s what I consider my art-making time. I guess you could say that it’s “analog” time: no divisions, and infinite chaotic possibility. The other nineteen-twentieths of my life are mostly regenerative and functional, eating and sleeping, and taking care of digital business. But it sure would be sweet if those percentages were to flip.

6. Are you the DJ? Are you what you play?

I love this question. I wish I were the DJ, but it’s more like I’m the radio single: I can express myself to myself, but the DJ is the one who can make people listen. But both the musician and the DJ are making choices about what elements, and in what sequence, to include in their orchestration… and if they’re fully (mortally?) invested in those choices, they definitely are what they play.

Hobie Anthony offers three short fictions to the July issue and takes a moment to discuss roadtrip mixes, the influence of Portland and the fictional car he’d love to drive.

1. Why did you break “Three On The Road” up the way you did?

Good question. When I write one of these triptychs, I usually start with an image which kicks off the first of the set – something that just won’t let go. Sometimes the resulting piece conjures another, related idea or image. In this case, the relation was a series of road trips and the images/thoughts/etc which I recalled from those journeys. So, the break was inherent to the process, I suppose. In a short story, each element must necessarily flow into the next. In this triptych form, the relationships aren’t always so defined and I don’t feel tied to the notion of a narrative to tie it all together.

2. What is on your roadtrip mix tape?

For summer trips, I dig a lot of Stereolab which is a smooth, poppy groove to drive on. Wilco is a mainstay and I also like a lot of 1970’s African psychedelic rock, which seems totally appropriate when I’m blasting through California’s Central Valley in July and the temps are in triple digits. When I roll up the windows for the cold and rain, I find myself reaching for Jazz, often Mingus but Sun Ra, too. You’ll also find the occasional Robert Pollard, Built to Spill, or Black Sabbath tune blasting from my beat-up Honda.

3. How has living in Portland influenced your writing?

Portland has a great literary community, which is inspiring in itself. That we keep a store like Powell’s alive is a testament to our appreciation of reading, learning, and exploring. Since I’m still new here, I’m mostly an outsider, anonymous. That opens my eyes in ways that don’t always happen when you’ve lived in a place for a long time and have a multitude of connections. I also have the opportunity to reflect on places I’ve lived before, especially Chicago, which is the focus of my (as yet unpublished) novel-in-stories.

I love how easy it is to live here, how I have all the benefits of a major city but few of the drawbacks. There’s a thriving creative community, but also a hard-rock of industry and commerce. I overlook the Willamette River and all day I hear ships coming into port, then the train whistles blow as they carry the goods elsewhere across the country.

Oh, I also love the coffee, clouds, and rain.

Ultimately, the true human spirit of Portland is what is most inspiring. Here, people are willing to try new things and will go out on a limb to explore ideas and passions where elsewhere there’s not such a culture of YES. Portlanders start their own businesses and the question “what do you do?” is most often pointed towards your true passions – whether that be gardening, painting, unicycling, or writing. One Portlander started a restaurant by cooking food in his driveway and selling it to passersby. He didn’t have the cash or credit to start up, so he just did it in this illegal way. Now, he has one of the best Thai restaurants in the city. That’s inspiring to me when the rest of the world sends discouraging messages to writers, artists, and other “outside the box” people. Here in Portland, we say YES to possibilities and we make them happen. Other parts of the country rely on the bullshit of positive thinking; Portland relies on positive action.

4. What fictional car would you drive?

The ’55 Chevy from Two-Lane Blacktop

5. Who takes your wheel? Who is your co-pilot?

That’s a hard one – maybe Ganesha, though Shiva would surely destroy me for saying that.

6. What is the best road trip movie?

Probably my all-time favorite movie, across the board, is the road-movie classic, Two-Lane Blacktop. As understated as it was, the minimalism was more subversive and effective than any other 60’s/70’s road trip movie. The characters were not stereotypes for the audience to categorize and objectify. They were regular guys in blue jeans who really and truly defied the conventions of society without resorting to fashion. If you haven’t seen it, you must. If you have seen it, watch it again.

I’m also keen on Harold and Kumar, Wild at Heart, and Kill Bill.