Behold Specter Magazine. Issue Zero (wait, what?) features Dawn West, J. Bradley and Rion Scott.

Laura Ellen Scott’s Death Wishing will be out in October. Meanwhile, check out her book’s new page.

Brett Elizabeth Jenkins has five poems in Fwriction Review.

An excerpt from Ryan Ridge’s Hunters and Gamblers (buy it) is up at Dark Sky Magazine.

Jennifer Howard has fiction at Staccato Fiction. She is just down the road from where PANK was born and edits Passages North!

At Good Men Project, Sarah Malone’s Barnegat Bay.

The new issue of Fix It Broken includes Heather Fowler, xTx, Sheldon Lee Compton, Brian Oliu, Eric Beeny, Joe Kapitan and others. Eric also has a story, The Abortion, at Metazen.

Matthew Simmons has a publishing concern and latest title is by JA Tyler. You can read the ebook online.

At Small Doggies, very short fiction from Lauren Becker.

Will you look at that? Every contributor to Issue 4 of The Reprint is a PANK contributor–xTx (whose piece originally appeared in PANK), Brandi Wells, Travis Hessman, Adam Moorad, Kirsty Logan, Aubrey Hirsch, and Meg Pokrass with an introduction by Sarah Rose Etter! Exciting. xTx also has work in Monkeybicycle.

Melissa Broder has three poems in The Awl and also something at Soft Spot Gallery. Not to be outdone by, well,herself, she also has poetry in Guernica and it’s fine work indeed.

BL Pawelek gets some nice attention over at Plumb and it is so well deserved.

Kathleen Heil has not one but two poems in the Portland Review.

In the latest issue of Nashville Review, you will find Elizabeth Wade and others.

Mather Schneider has fiction in Smokelong Weekly.

Issue Six of Corium brings MG Martin, Barry Basden, Jensen Beach, Dawn West, Elizabeth Wade and Elizabeth Wade, and Alan Stewart Carl.

In the August issue of Hobart, you will find Casey Hannan and Donna Vitucci.

We also have the August issue of elimae including Phil Estes, Lisa McCool-Grimes, JA Tyler, KMA Sullivan, Frank Hinton, Helen Vitoria, and others.

At Thought Catalog, Jimmy Chen tells of blowing zucchini.

J. Bradley has new work in Forty Ounce Bachelors. I have no idea what the magazine name is about.

In the Fiddleback, Hazel Foster, JA Tyler, and others.

Used Furniture Review has Dawn West and Elaine Castillo.

The Next Best Book Club features a story by Ryan Bradley.

You will find Donora Hillard and Wendy Xu in the August issue of Dark Sky Magazine.

What up my niggers and niggerettes?

My name Ya Girl Kool Emcee White Chicky-V, yo.

Niggers be getting that twisted an’ shit. Only wan’ take the middle part an’ don’ be tryin’ to say the whole thing. If you say any of the shit, you gotta say all the shit. My name ain’t no damn Emcee White Chicky-V. It’s Ya Girl Kool Emcee White Chicky-V, yo. And yes, the comma and the yo, lowercase, is a part of it.

An’ a niggerette like me can always tell when you fools is sayin’ it wrong. A comma denotes a pause in a sentence or a phrase, yo.

It may appear on first glance that the above is a picture of rappers Kreayshwan & V-Nasty of the White Girl Mob, but really the one on the right is Ya Girl Kool Emcee White Chicky-V, yo and the one on the left is Ya Girl Kool Emcee White Chicky-K, son. No offense, but these four rappers really do all look alike. Shortly after this picture was taken, Ya Girl Kool Emcee White Chicky-V, yo accidently shot off her tongue.

So you gotta pause. Ya Girl Kool Emcee White Chicky-V—Pause—yo. Otherwise it’s like you talking to someone named Ya Girl Kool Emcee White Chicky-V. And as we previously discussed, that ain’ me. Don’ be callin’ me out my name, yo. Say my name like my momma intended.

Yeah, that’s my real name. The one my momma gave me. Ya Girl Kool Emcee White Chicky-V, yo Smith. I’m the only bitch whose name is a dependent clause, yo. I don’t know why she named me dat, yo. I ain’ never ask her. She hardcore. Locked up in San Quentin right now. She so tough they locked her up with the men and she straight running that shit. I ain’ never ask her why she name me what she name me cuz she killed a man for asking dat shit. Dat’s why she locked up. I started to ask once when I was visitin’ her stankin’ ass and she give me this look like she was gonna break the 2-inch glass and snap my neck, yo.

I guess Big Momma White Chicky-V want me to be a rapper. Want me to get all that Gucci Gucci Louie Louie Fendi Fendi Prada an’ shit. And dat’s what happened. I’m jus’ a white girl from the hood who grew up to be a famous rapper and now niggers want to defame me. They hatin’. Straight hatin’. I be digressin’, yo. Getting all discursive an’ shit. Let me get to my point. Why I’m out here speakin’ how I’m speakin’.

Some of y’alls is mad about me using the word nigger. Like I ain’ earned the right. You don’ know my struggle. Sometimes I walk into a deli and I order a bagel an’ shit and they don’ be toastin’ it cuz they think niggers from the hood don’ like that toasted shit. Make me wan’ to get mad and start wreckin’ shit. I’m from the hood, yo. I’m gangsta. I shot more sheriffs than Eric Clapton. I’m stupidfreshdope. That’s why I got the right to say the word.

People keep sayin’ I’m actin’ like a modern-day minstrel. Like Al Jolson an’ shit. Like Al Jolson ever could bust rhymes the way I bust them, yo. I ain’ singing no nigger songs wearing no blackface. Wait, hol’ up. I need to write that down. Man, me in blackface on my album cover an’ in my videos an’ on stage? Daaaaam! Dat’s hot, son.

You know who y’all need to get mad at? Y’all need to get mad at them suburban niggers who be sayin’ dat shit. That offend me. Sometimes I hear a black person from some little fuckin’ cul-de-sac community talking about nigger this and nigger that and I be gettin’ so mad like, Nigger, you don’t know my struggle. You ain’t from the hood. You ain’t stupidfreshdope. You don’t know how to kick mad styles. What right you got saying that shit? Huh? You don’t know how my people have suffered. People like me can’t get no jobs. My people got triple the unemployment of our non-stupidfreshdope counterparts. I’m too gangsta for employment, yo. I go into fill out applications and niggers be hatin’. Lookin’ at me like I’m some alien, yo. Haters hatin’ on me cuz I’m so stupidfreshdope. Mad folks be discrimihatin’. Black folks is the ones who’s the most racist against my people. I just be shakin my head at the irony, yo.

All them black folks hatin’ on me about this nigger-word probably went to college an’ shit. Probably made the dean’s list. That ain’ being on some real nigger shit. You want to know how real I am? I’m so real that even though I wrote this shit, I can’t read it cuz I don’t know how to read. That’s some real shit.

Don’ get me started. I could stand here kickin’ mad science to you niggers all day, but I ain’ gonna do that. I’ma let you stand around and be all ignorant an’ shit. But I will say this: I got a album comin’ out. It’s stupidfreshdope. I call it: On Some Real Nigger Shit To the Extreme StupidFreshDope Chillin’ Ice Boyeee. It’s a problem. Instead of worrying about the words I say, you need to worry about that because a niggerette like me is about to blow up like that nigger Elvis and ain’t nothin’ you can do to stop it. I’ma leave you niggers on some shit like that. One. Bong. Peace. And all dat, shit. Peace.

Rion Amilcar Scott writes fiction all over the damn place, tweets @reeamilcarscott and blogs at datsun flambe.

Advertising is all about creativity, no matter which department you’re in (unless you’re the office barista). So how do you cultivate creativity? With a garden trowel? A gun? With $32.50 in unmarked bills delivered to a shadowy man in a back alley? Is it even possible to cultivate creativity? I can tell you that it is definitely not possible with the aforementioned methods. Which is why I came up with these nine methods or, as I like to call them, “practices.”

1. Relax: Try doing something that makes you happy. If nothing makes you happy, try doing something that makes someone else happy, and then immediately do something to take that happiness away. That way, you can share your misery with that person. After all, where does he get off being so happy?

2. Remember the Alamo: the Alamo served as home to missionaries and their Indian converts for nearly seventy years. What does that have to do with cultivating your creativity? More like what doesn’t it have to do with it.

3. You can skip this one.

4. Be grateful: Positive energy is hard to come by these days, but one way to harness it is by being grateful for what you have. If you don’t have anything, try being grateful for what you don’t have, like gonorrhea. If you’re reading this and have gonorrhea, then I just won a bet with my buddy Patrick, so thank you. I’m very grateful.

5. Tickle your imagination: Perhaps you’re thinking that this is a metaphor, but you’re be wrong. Your imagination is actually not located in your brain, but behind your bottom right molar. Stick your finger back there, gently rub the gum in that area, and get ready for an imagination explosion. Go ahead and try it right now. Put your finger back there. To vary things up, you can also do it with your eyes closed, or maybe have a friend or your wife’s sister do it for you. The possibilities are endless.

6. Repeat Practice #3 above. You didn’t skip that one, did you?

7. Keep all doors open: Be open to any and all ideas that come your way, even if they seem ridiculous. One time, I was working on this TV job and the idea of a flying squirrel came to mind. Did I dismiss it? No. I wrote a TV spot about a flying squirrel. The spot ended up not getting produced and I lost my job. Also, my kid got the stomach flu, which made the house smell awfully bad, which is why you should keep all doors open. To let the stink out, you see.

8. Make notes: Have a few pieces of scrap paper around. Start jotting down anything and everything. It can be stream of consciousness, too. Stream of consciousness is an easy and fun way to break into your subconscious. Chest, razor, wax(?), Jersey Shore. See: easy.

9. Stay calm: I know this is easier said than done. When the creativity just isn’t flowing, it’s easy to want to do something irrational, like giving your dog only one cup of food instead of his normal 2-cup serving, or setting your house on fire, or pinching the palm of your hand so the physical pain replaces the mental anguish. But stay calm. The creativity will come. Or it won’t. There’s no telling really. I guess if nothing hits you after a while, you can try the garden trowel thing. I don’t know.

At Good Men Project, you won’t go wrong with Christy Crutchfield’s fiction.

Pedro Ponce and Steve Himmer have stories in the anthology Art from Art (Modernist Press). Pedro’s chapbook, Homeland: A Panorama in 50 States, has just been published by Seven Kitchens Press.

Issue 16 of Mudluscious includes work from MG Martin, Thomas Levy, Ashley Farmer, and others.

Matt Bell’s Cataclysm Baby will be released by Mudluscious Press in 2012. Subscribe to their 2012 offerings now for a great price.

Over at The Rumpus, Bess Winter writes about the last book she loved.

Helen Vitoria has eight poems in the new issue of Frigg. She is joined by Randall Brown, Alicia Gifford, and others.

There is a new issue of Emprise Review with writing by Erin Fitzgerald, Sutherland Douglass, Aubrey Hirsch, Jason Jordan, Brett Elizabeth Jenkins, and others.

The Warmed and Bound anthology is now available and features Matt Bell, Blake Butler, Kyle Minor, Richard Thomas, and others.

Recently at Metazen, Andrew Roe, Hazel Foster, and Tadd Adcox.

Joseph Quintela has a new ebook you should check out.

This week at No Tell Motel, Sheila Squillante.

From Yascha Mounk’s article “Rebellion Against Pluralism”:

It is alarming that Breivik fed on ideas that are now fairly mainstream in Europe. Remarkably, he does not hail from the hard core of Scandinavia’s neo-Nazi movement. Even when he did post on Nordisk, a neo-Nazi internet forum run out of Sweden, he was careful to call himself a conservative nationalist.

Nor is Breivik, as media reports at first suggested, a religious fundamentalist. Though he at times donned the cloak of Christianity as an easy way to explain why Muslims should be driven out of Europe, he has also admitted to not being a very religious man.

Instead, Breivik’s extremismis rooted in the recent backlash against the supposed threat to Europe’s identity. He doesn’t want to turn Norway into a Christian theocracy. Nor does he long for the heroes of fascism. On the contrary, he simply hopes to roll back the changes that have taken place in Europe in recent decades to return to some imagined idyll of what secular, democratic, mono-ethnic Europe was like in the postwar era. Worryingly, that is an aspiration many Europeans share.

*

Unable to forget how much it still hurts, to be a brown girl in Europe. To still be stared at on the street like an exotic plant or animal.

How did I know I was in Rome on Friday morning? Because the first language I heard getting off the plane, the language I expected to hear everywhere, and did indeed hear everywhere, was Tagalog. I was handed a cup of supposedly famous gelato by a Filipino boy no older than my youngest brother. And just as sullen. Sullen not for lack of beauty but suspicion of beauty. Fatigue of beauty. Of that certain kind of beauty that makes a tourist ooh and ahh. Me, too. Have always been suspicious of that beauty, too. Everywhere another aristocrat’s treasure. And where are the maids to maintain it. The slaves to pay. The flesh inside some kinds of beauty, a flesh which is not marble-white.

The whole of eternal Rome is cared for by Filipina women. Like everywhere else, but Rome especially. One of the things you don’t get to forget. One of the things you don’t get to not know.

Continue reading →

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how much of my life slips into my fiction. If I look back on a previous manuscript I can see in it rhythms of songs I was listening to at the time, snippets of dialogue or phrasing I recall hearing, echoes of significant and immaterial events happening to or around me. I don’t do this on purpose and usually I don’t even recognize it until the writing is complete and there is distance between myself and the work. No matter what I am writing, it is cathartic, and there is no doubt a strong relationship between my contentment while writing and the involuntary embedding of one’s own existence into the text.

This notion of our personal life unintentionally inhabiting our books, is an idea I keep coming back to in Ben Tanzer’s latest novella My Father’s House. This is a book that thrives on sadness and intimacy, following a father’s journey to death and his son’s somewhat reluctant trailing behind, putting both cancer and relationships on vibrant display. And while Tanzer is best known for his pop-culture references and quirky dialogue, My Father’s House is much more straight-laced in its approach, more refined in its handling of a narrative that is entirely genuine.

It’s all so confusing and somewhat deceiving, self-deceiving anyway, being here with him. Because aside from the thinning hair and the need for all of us to constantly wash our heads and avoid kissing him on the lips, he looks a lot better than he has been looking, almost normal really. His energy seems up. His fatigue somewhat lessened.

And I just can’t help but get wrapped up in speculation about how much of this book comes from Tanzer’s personal life – which is not to say I am morbidly fascinated by a father’s death, no, not at all – I want to know because My Father’s House has the ring of testament, the sound and feel and grip of a book that was born from truth, of stories that were as much written as they were experienced. Rest assured, fans of Tanzer, that there are still a handful of spliced music lyrics and bouts of clever dialogue in My Father’s House, but the overall tone is more serious than eccentric, more grounded than irreverent, and I was happy to be caught up in the grief for a little while.

I want to believe that means something and maybe it does, especially when he wakes up in the hospital and looks happy to se me. But then as he looks up at the television, he gets nostalgic as we listen to a news report about the Outer Banks in North Carolina because it takes him back to a long ago family trip, and a beat-up ferry that had a hot dog stand. And the memory makes him sad, and the tears start to well-up, first for him, and then for me, and then it’s not so deceiving. Reality hits and I Have to ask, or at least wonder, how long do we really have, because it can’t be too much longer.

My Father’s House is available from Main Street Rag Publishing Company.

J. A. Tyler’s reviews have appeared in The Colorado Review, Rumpus, and Tarpaulin Sky, and his most recent novel A Shiny, Unused Heart is now available from Black Coffee Press. For more, visit: chokeonthesewords.com.

Rep. David Wu (D-Ore.) in his beloved tiger suit just before stepping onto the House floor.

Dear Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and my Colleagues in the House,

I’d first like to apologize for my behavior. I realize that it has become quite erratic. I will explain that, as well as the enclosed picture of me in a tiger suit.

When you have heard and understood my explanation, I am certain that you and the Democratic caucus, as well as many members of the Republican caucus, will support my decision not to step down.

I did indeed have sexual contact with the teenaged daughter of a long time friend and campaign donor, but you can rest assured that it was consensual. As an older woman Madame Pelosi, I’m sure you can understand my attraction to a young hot number. Being a man gives me the chance, no, the responsibility to follow through for all the people who are too caught up in the rules of “society” to act on the desires that burn at them. Imagine being 56 and getting the chance to score with a young chick. I’m sorry if you’re not able to do the same. To you and all my fellow members of the house and senate, as well as all the finger-wagging moralists out there judging me, I say: Stop hating!

How many of you have the guts, after seeing your friend walk into your house trailed by a hot young thing, to send your friend to the store, don a tiger suit, approach his daughter and say: “Hey baby, ever got it on with a T-I-Double-Ger-Er?”

The wonderful thing about Tiggers is that Rep. David Wu is the only one.

I will spare you the details of what transpired next, though I will say that it was indeed consensual, unlike that time back in college (sorry about that). And we all know that sexual contact by a 56-year-old man with the teenaged daughter of a good friend is just fine as long as it is consensual.

Now, I realize that I am a bit iconoclastic in my thinking. Always have been. My Furrie-ous (ha ha, get it) stand on the issues has earned me many enemies on the other side of the aisle, which is why I have been singled out for attack now. I also realize that because of this situation, I have shed many friends on Capitol Hill. I walk the halls and everybody averts their eyes. I stick out my hand to shake and people just walk by as if they have never seen me. Perhaps it’s because lately I’ve taken to wearing my beloved tiger suit to work.

And yes, I have argued in favor of many bills dressed as a jungle cat. So what? Is a solution to the debt limit crisis any less valid if it is voiced by a man dressed as a tiger? Of course not!

None of you have walked in my shoes. For 10 years, from November 1985 to December 1995, I worked for a young blond boy with a big mouth and an even bigger imagination. His name was Calvin. That young man was the most amazing artist I have ever met. He too was an iconoclastic thinker. Working for him was the best preparation for Congress. For instance, we played a game called Calvinball. At the time, it seemed nonsensical. The rules changed minute-by-minute. Sometimes we wore masks. The scoring was erratic. My young friend once beat me Q to 12. We played it frequently and never played it the same way twice. It could be a bit frustrating, but I see now what young Calvin was trying to teach me. In fact, the thing the game most closely resembles is the workings of the House of Representatives.

Madame Pelosi and members of the House and Senate, I am not leaving. I was built for this.

I’ve discussed this situation with my therapist as well as my friend and mentor, former Rep. Anthony Weiner, and we all decided that resigning would cause more harm than good. I will stay until every congressman and woman is dressed as his or her favorite animal on the Congress floor. And if I have to be the lone tiger walking amongst and preying upon mere humans, so be it.

Besides, resigning would leave me nothing else to do, but sit around in my basement wearing a tiger suit–bare skin rubbing against the suit’s soft fur–waiting for teenaged girls to come by and keep me company and I don’t think you want that.

Sincerely,

Rep. David Wu

Rion Amilcar Scott writes fiction all over the damn place, tweets @reeamilcarscott and blogs at datsun flambe.

“Every time I closed my eyes, I saw God pull mother through a black hole in the sky.”
Ethel Rohan, Hard To Say

When I was younger and closed my eyes, I would cry of the dark – the science of black holes crushing me and swallowing me down. Trillions of miles away but so close.

As the years passed, it changed. Now when I close my eyes I see lights, and the people I love, they try to jump from star to star.

Many people think the brain of someone in advertising looks exactly like the brain of people in every other profession: grey, lumpy, lightening bolts down each side. But actually, our brains look quite different.

Take the shape, for instance. An advertising executive’s brain is not shaped in the traditional way, but rather in the shape of either a super-fast racecar or a racecar that is merely fast. The type of racecar depends on what day you were born and whether you were born in the daytime or at night. At what time were you born? If it was after 8 p.m. on a Saturday, then strap on that seatbelt, Mr. Andretti! Right?!

Most people’s brains are split into two sections: the right side and the left side. However, the brain of an advertising professional is split into three sections: the West, the East, and, between those two sections, Switzerland. Switzerland helps us speak a special language. I could teach you the language, but then I’d have to alregatate your stzpuretak.

Did you know that every advertising executive’s brain smells like maraschino cherries?

What is everyone’s favorite part of the human brain? The cerebellum, right? Well, believe it or not, we advertising professionals do not have a cerebellum. Instead, we have what’s called a cerebelum.

When an advertising professional is asked what he or she would change about his or her brain, the answer is usually the compass embedded in our hypothalamus because that thing is constantly breaking.

If you remove an advertising professional’s brain, put it up to your ear and listen to it, you probably need help.

I remember the first time I learned that my brain was different. My department head took me into one of the stalls in the bathroom, pushed the toilet handle three times, and a wall opened up before me, revealing a secret room. What was in the room, you ask? I can’t tell you, it’s classified. All I can say is that there was an entire team of scientists surrounded by mason jars filled with unusual specimens. The scientists were mixing liquids and turning them into steam. One of the scientists accidentally breathed in the steam and fell to the floor in a sweaty heap. He ended up being okay though, which is a good thing because I was told he was the Shaman. I noticed many of the beakers were labeled by species, some of which didn’t seem familiar to me. I was told that they were new species. I have pictures. I’ll try to post them later.

Obviously, the brain is a very complex organ, and we should all be thankful that we have one. Imagine if we didn’t!

In the end, I guess what we can take away from this is, in some ways, we’re all a lot more alike than we think and, in other ways, we’re not very alike at all.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: I’ve just been notified that I am not allowed to post pictures of the secret room.