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1. How hot is it that we’ve got free shipping on [PANK] 7 for fall? Order here.
2. We’re settling in and returning to the submission pile. We’ve resumed the acceptance of regular submissions, send us your work here.
3. Check us out on Tumblr!
Young Bright Things
A Forsley Feuilleton: If Richard Yates Wrote A Novel Called Tao Lin. . . – Act One
Neon Glittery, Hannah Fantana, xTx, Crispin Best, Sam Pink, Guillaume Morissette, Yumbo Tuff, Gabby Gabby, Buffet Feline, Frank Hinton, Carnivorous Judy, Moon Tzu, Socrates Adams, Reginald Reginald, and Beach Sloth are all pseudonyms that belong to- as the high activity level of their corresponding social networking profiles suggest- living human beings. But these beings are neither, as I first assumed, writers behind an innovative movement in African American hip-hop nor writers behind a rebellious faction of American Indian story-tellers. They are writers. . . but they are writers behind a growing, internet-based literary movement called, by its participants, ‘Alt-Lit’- as in Alternative Literature.
The writers of ‘Alt-Lit’ do share some similarities with African American rappers and American Indian story-tellers, and it’s not just their use of pseudonyms. The Puppet Masters- you know, those crusty old white men who control and pervert both the publishing industry and the academic institution- systematically ignore, and even segregate, all three of these literary groups and the writers behind them. They try to force African American writers to the projects, American Indian writers to the reservations, and ‘Alt-Lit’ writers to the internet. By isolating these three groups and the writing they produce, the Puppet Masters- those fuckers who won’t pass the pepper- hope the mainstream masses of America will, instead of getting exposed to these writers’ subversive ideas and dangerous perspectives, continue staring at the blinding brightness of their televisions. Continue reading
We Like to Tease
While you await the arrival of your soon-to-be shipped issue of [PANK] 7, which, if you haven’t already can be ordered here, these excerpts should tide over your hunger for the delicious. If you’re not satisfied, check out our Tumblr page for more.
I collect fractured humans and store them in a bell jar for moments
I want normal. Sometimes,
I shrink myself to join the jar party.
– Eugenia Leigh The Jar Party
It’s easier to live small crisis by small crisis, to believe
if you didn’t drink so much, or slept more,
or had one frank conversation with your father,then your troubles would dissolve like frozen creeks and disappear into a muddy river.
– Mark Neely Eating Alone
You have a boyfriend now but I always thought it was cool how you would wear your dad’s old dress jackets and roll the sleeves up past your elbows and you let me borrow one once before senior prom but I was too embarrassed to wear it because I didn’t want to stand out, wasn’t ready to stand out.
– Kevin Sampsell Boyfriend
A call to the arms of love: on the love of film as a politics of film, on critique-as-love and love-as-revolutionary-force, in memory of Alexis Tioseco, Nika Bohinc and my father; or, another letter I would love to read to you in person
On September 1, 2009, Filipino Canadian film critic and founder of Criticine, Alexis Tioseco and his girlfriend, Nika Bohinc, were killed at home in Quezon City, “in an apparent burglary staged by three armed men who fled the scene.”
From Gang Badoy’s “Alexis, viola (or the death of Alexis Tioseco)”:
Alexis is dead. He was murdered on the night of Sept. 1, 2009. I know this because I saw him dead. Not in the solemn way that we are accustomed to- prepared and lying in peaceful state but face down and crumpled on their kitchen floor with his girlfriend Nika Bohinc almost beside him. Nika was a respected auteur herself, hailing all the way from Slovenia. The two met at the Rotterdam Film Festival a few years ago, both fell deeply in love and built a high-powered partnership mantled in a gentle relating together.
When Alexis died almost everyone near him focused on remembering his life, celebrating his work, reveling in his love for film and passion for saving Philippine Cinema. I suppose it is normal for human beings to ask for the cause of death- in passing- and when found too difficult to stare at- we focus our pupils elsewhere. We toast to him and comfort ourselves with the illusion that it was after all “a full and good life.”It works for a few months but not for me who saw exactly how he fell, less than two hours after his murderers left (what is now known as) the crime scene.
As difficult as this is for you to read and for me to write, it needs to be said that Alexis died by violent hands. It was not clean and there was nothing graceful about what I saw. I can always use euphemisms- God knows I have been- but not today. I want to cut the ribbon of The A/V Club with truth.
The truth is Alexis was beat. He was bruised and his right hand shot. His left hand’s middle finger had something around it. I stared at it for a while, thinking it was a ring- I never remembered Alexis wearing jewelry so I had to strain and look through the blood and saw that it was his house key in a ring. He was shot while he was still holding the keys to his home.
I will never be able to describe how it is to see the crime scene investigators mosey around him with characteristic city-hall indifference. All I could do was remind them over and over to be thorough. I barked orders at many of them that night in the kitchen, so much so that after a while they started calling me “Attorney.” I would ask if they’d dusted the chair or the bottles for prints. When asked why I was allowed inside the crime scene I lied and said I was Alexis’ legal guardian and that I was a student of forensics and that they should just take my word for it. In my mind, Alexis and I had a good chuckle because he is (was?) aware that all the forensics I know is from watching CSI.
I stood guard watching over Alexis and Nika pacing around them, kneeling beside them every now and then to make sure they were comfortable- a most absurd thing given that they were already dead. I am not mincing my words now, am I? I am sorry if this disconcerts you but it is the truth. And the truth is we have to be brave enough to talk about their death. I know we have to continue remembering his life and celebrating his life’s work- but f*ck – shouldn’t he be living it instead? Tonight I am angry. I am sad. I am resolved. And then I want to forever look the other way. I want to forget but I need to remember. There are reasons.
Alexis and Nika were murdered and today, over six months after, there is still no progress on the case. His sisters and brothers, our shared good friend Erwin Romulo and I have wrestled through administrative meetings with the police, a general, the former Secretary of Justice Agnes Devanadera, you’d think with all our connections we’d get somewhere-still nothing. The courtesy calls to the heads of these departments were hell. We’ve witnessed the Forensics Department go antsy when they found out we consulted a private forensics expert, the big title game- and the delay of releasing documents because of red tape and ego. All hell. All hell to all the players in this game as I cling on to my childhood belief that both my friends are in heaven.
Three Excerpts From [PANK] 7 For Your Friday
“It’s suspicious the way the world looks
in the first few minutes of morning,
the color of circumvention, scattered dots
scrambling on a signal-less television screen.”
-Excerpt from “Conjecture in Early Morning,” by Kelly A. Wilson, forthcoming in [PANK] 7.
“I am turning into my father. It began gradually. My joints began to ache in the rain, my brow furrowed into a long
canal. One night I stood on the porch for a long time just staring into the woods. I am having conversations with
the radio now, I ask it how the hell it can be on the air and still be so stupid. I rake the leaves into small piles all
around the yard. My hair is turning gray, and the names of all the trees have settled behind my eyes.”
-Excerpt from “I Am Turning Into My Father,” by Sarah Tourjee, forthcoming in [PANK] 7.
“They gravitate to my scars. Awkward
humans gasping, Yours matches mine-
Then with biblical celebrity, cult camaraderie,
Your mom was almost- My mom also-”
-Excerpt from “The Jar Party,” by Eugenia Leigh, forthcoming in [PANK] 7.
Books We Can’t Quit – A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
Chosen by: Kenny Mooney
A Clockwork Orange is, after Burroughs’ Naked Lunch, one of the most important novels I have ever read. And that is as much to do with what it led me on to read, as it is for anything I took from the novel itself. Along with Burroughs, Burgess’ slim novel showed me what it was possible to do with language and style, and more importantly, how that use of language and style could be in service of the story, rather than for its own sake. The fact that A Clockwork Orange has stayed with me for so long, is testament to the power of its prose, and the impact that Burgess’ invented language, Nadsat, had on me.
And it is not just the language of the novel that is important, it is also its structure. Told in three parts, each seven chapters long, the whole book represents the path from immaturity to maturity, traditionally reached at age 21. The final chapter, one of the most important parts of the novel, and indeed of Burgess’ own philosophy which is central to the story, is the very part that is missing from Kubrick’s film adaptation. And the reason I have never watched it.
All the Best on Monday
1. The [PANK] August Issue is alive and you should live it.
2. [PANK] is currently accepting submissions for the third annual Queer Issue, but only until September 1, so get your submit on.
3. [PANK] is looking for a second interviews editor, to apply send five questions for a writer in the August Issue to awesome@pankmagazine.com. Your email must be sent by Wednesday, August 22.
4. Check us out on our fancy new Tumblr.
5. Only 11 days left to pre-order your copy of [PANK] 7, which releases on September 1. You know you want it waiting for you.
The August Issue and We’ll Tumbl For Ya
Check out our August issue featuring Jen Knox, Rhoads Stevens, Kejt Walsh, Ross McMeekin, Emma Smith-Stevens, Michael Lupi, Becky Kaiser, Owen Duffy, Kimberly Bunker, Christopher Shipman, Jacob Victorine, Quinn Wolf-Wilczynski, Rion Scott, Ben Tanzer, Jane Otto, Emily Howorth, Amy Benson, and Ruth Howard. Start with Owen Duffy’s story, Dead Girl. You will not be disappointed then check out Jen Knox’s compelling Getting There, and Rhoad Stevens odd but wonderful Pork Pie. The whole issue will pull you in. Once you read one…
We’re also on Tumblr now so we’d love for you to follow us over there, too.
A Forsley Feuilleton: I Can’t Watch Another Ape Shit Without Going Ape Shit
The seventh and newest installment in the Planet of the Apes franchise, The Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011), has been rotting, unwatched, at the bottom of a duffle bag filled with a year’s worth of my dirty underwear. There are two reasons I hid the flick, immediately after the Capitalist Hype-Machine brainwashed me into buying it, beneath layers and layers of my stench. This is the first reason: since reading that news story about the pet ape that went ape shit- gouging out its owner’s eyes, eating up his testicles, plucking off each of his fingers, and munching on his ass cheeks- I’ve been terrified of apes. And this is the second reason: The Rise of the Planet of the Apes takes place in San Francisco, where I live, and I fear that the visual of apes going ape shit on the very streets I walk would force me to stay inside, forever, never to walk those streets again.
But I’m a hermit and rarely walk the streets anyway. Instead, I stay in my little roof-top apartment drinking coffee, smoking weed, and giving my dog belly rubs while indulging in books and flicks. And last Sunday- probably because I was too ambitious from too much coffee and too delusional from too much weed- I decided it was time to face my fears and indulge in the seventh and newest Planet of the Apes installment. In preparation, I spent that sunny San Francisco Sunday watching the first five flicks in the franchise- Planet of the Apes (1968), Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970), Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971), Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972), and Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973). Then, as the sun went down, I watched the Marky Mark remake of the original, Planet of the Apes (2001), with a plan to watch The Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) just before falling asleep. Continue reading
Suggested Readings
Dennis Mahagin’s new collection, Grand Mal is now available for pre-order.
Kathleen Hellen has a new collection of poetry Umberto’s Night that is a ghost walk through the post-industrial landscape. It won the Washington Writers’ Publishing House Poetry Prize and will be published by WWPH in October 2012. Included are the short works “Neither Shall You Steal”and “He Opens Doors, He Closes Them” first appeared in Pank spring 2011 and summer 2012, respectively.
Birkensnake 5 includes Tracy Gonzalez.
Wendy Ortiz has an essay in The New York Times.
At Used Furniture Review, a letter from Bryan Furuness.
In Northville Review, Sal Pane and J. Bradley.
JP Dancing Bear has a poem in A Minor.
First Stop Fiction features James Valvis.
At Everyday Genius, Shane Jones who also has a book out this week, Daniel Fights a Hurricane.
Ravi Mangla’s Blurb is available from Artistically Declined Press.
Elisa Gabbert will have a poetry collection available from Black Ocean in 2013.
In Wags Review, Jonathan Callahan writes about Lebron James.
At Used Furniture Review, a story by Lauren Becker.
Sheldon Lee Compton appears in Metazen.
Sinclair by CL Bledsoe is featured in Untoward.