I know you are going to do with this letter what you did with all the others: throw it, while laughing, into the wastebasket labeled, “Letters From Fiery Tempered Firecrotch Ex-Employees.”  But I quit another Night Stocking job at another grocery store and have so much time and anger at my disposal that I feel it is my duty as a member of the minority group referred to as Redheads, Gingers, Rustys, Transparents, etc, which only makes up one-percent of the World’s population, to use this PANK column, A Forsley Feuilleton, to call you, Night Managers of grocery stores across this once tolerant nation, out as the Anti-Gingerists you are.

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1. [PANK] Invades Portland (March 23) and Seattle (March 24th) this week! Be there.

2. The March Issue is live.

3. [PANK] will also be at the Mission Creek Festival in Iowa City, March 30th and 31st. We want to see you.

3. Submissions for the Special Parenting Issue remain open until April 15th. Get submitting.

4. Submissions for the Special Pulp Issue are open until July. Get writing.

These poems are good. They are poems that we read this week. They are poems that you should read while you wind down your week. Enjoy.

Sasha Fletcher at Notnostrums.

Nicholas Reading at Burnside Review.

Juan Felipe Herrera was the Poem-A-Day.

Travis Kurowski at H_NGM_N.

Mel Bosworth at Used Furniture Review.

Everyone’s talking about the future of the book.  Most aren’t actually ‘talking’ about it.  They are Tweeting, Skyping, and Facebooking about it, trading one-liners back and forth over the internet – that collective consciousness of search engine optimizing keyword articles, silicone made and cum covered tits, and rambling raunchy literary blogs written by humorless dyslexic redheads.  Some are still talking about it in the traditional sense, trading vocalized words back and forth over cups of coffee. . . but even these people, while they talk, stare into the glow of their smart-phones, laptops, and tablet-computers.  Everyone agrees: because of our fading forests, insect intellect, and asinine aesthetics – the book will die.

It’s only a question of: when?  And if you don’t live in a city like San Francisco, where the literati breed and your Moms and Pops got shops, the answer is: soon.  Borders is already dead, and Barnes & Noble – unless it can hide in its Nook long enough to recover from its financial stroke – will expire shortly.  Most of the country now only has two sources for books: Wal-Mart and Amazon.  Wal-Mart’s selection is horrific, and the Amazon itself is horrific.  It’s filled with flesh-eating, eye-frying creatures like. . . like the Kindle.  Continue reading →

The February issue includes our 2011 1001 Awesome Words contest finalists and several other fine writers.

MG Martin has poetry in Issue 6 of Requited where he is joined by CL Bledsoe, Gary F. Sheppard, Tim Jones-Yelvington, Alexis Pope, and others.

In NAP 2.3, you will find M.G. Martin again, Melissa Broder, Caroline Crew, Tyler Gobble, Rose Hunter, Thomas Patrick Levy, Parker Tettleton, and KMA Sullivan.

The latest issue of The Collagist is a wonder with outstanding writing by James Tadd Adcox and many others.

In Word Riot this month there’s work from Mel Bosworth and Gary Moshimer.

Lania Knight’s Three Cubic Feet is now available for pre-order from Main Street Rag.

Court Merrigan has new fiction in All Due Respect.

The WInter 2012 issue of Muzzle includes Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz, Sierra Demulder (1, 2), and Megan Falley.

At Fwriction Review, a story by Marcus Speh.

In the Alice Blue Review, two fictions by Brandi Wells and one by PH Madore.

There are two new features involving Ethel Rohan’s Hard to Say—at Word Riot, and BULL.

At Metazen, a poem by Tyler Gobble.

Jimmy Chen! Used Furniture Review! Also, Laurence Pritchard.

Marcus Speh has a short short story at Fwriction Review.

Very short stories at DOGZPLOT including David Tomaloff, Dave Housley, Ryan Bradley,

Carol Deminski has a story at Molotov Cocktail.

In Emprise Review, a poem by John McKernan.

As usual, Everyday Genius is awesome. This week, awesome comes from Kimberly Ann Southwick, Ricky Garni, and more. There’s also JA Tyler, Chloe Caldwell, and Feng Sun Chen.

March Hobart includes Corey Zeller, and Emma Törzs.

Not to be outdone, there’s a March issue of elimae with Lincoln Michel, Ryan Ridge, Parker Tettleton, Joseph Riippii, Barry Graham, Helen Vitoria, Doug Paul Case, and others.

Overalls, by Tracy Gonzalez, is live at Used Furniture Review.

Brian Oliu has an essay in DIAGRAM 12.1, the ALL ESSAY issue.

This month’s Web Exclusive at American Short Fiction features Ravi Mangla.

You can find a little something from Eric Burke at Snow Monkey.

Things we heard people say while at AWP 2012:

Your rejection letter made me so happy.

We skew in the direction of poetry and prose. But mostly we publish experimental literature.

Are they…children’s books..??

Is this appropriate for teenagers?

So it’s “Slap” and “Spank” mixed together…?

Your table is very visually pleasing. Continue reading →

You don’t think writing is like fighting, that to get intellectual you have to get physical?  You think I’m crazy for comparing writers to fighters, the lit-game to the fight-game?  Then what do you call Haruki Murakami, the acclaimed Japanese novelist, who wakes up at four in the morning so he can write for six hours before running ten kilometers and swimming fifteen hundred meters in the afternoon? “Writing,” he told The Paris Review, “is like survival training. Physical strength is as necessary as artistic sensitivity.”  Even Paul Auster, an American writer without that kamikaze discipline inherent to the Japanese, agrees: “Writing is physical for me,” he said.  “I always have the sense that the words are coming out of my body, not just my mind.”

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Keywords and oft repeated crucial phrasings of the week: hermit walk, cig break, arm wrestle, money wad, whiskey, tubercular cough, crazy dude (he’s still stalking me, Rachel Yoder), poesy fart, skinny tie, love, Geoffrey bag, lap dog, avant pose, death match, proemy, conference girl, hipster smell, word nerd, pretense fatigue, PBR, and hot dog.

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Those poets, the young happy rich people dressed like old sad poor people, spoke the truth:  after I moved from Phoenix to San Francisco and gave up the roadwork of the fight-game for the drinking of the lit-game, the only laws I had to abide by were those of unproductivity and degeneracy.  I joined a literary colony. . . I mean a literatty colony, and its members – those scavengers crawling through San Francisco’s dark alleys in search of nourishing sins and sonnets – not only disregarded but actually applauded my pale malnourished body covered in tattoos, varicose veins, and bleeding moles.  And I prospered because San Francisco is a giant dumpster filled with every rotting delicacy a scavenging rat-bastard desires – and so it inspires.

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