A writer submitted a story that wasn’t right for us. We have to say no more than we can say yes. We take no pleasure in it. We sent this writer a form rejection without further commentary on his story, a rejection we send out hundreds of times a month and the same rejection used by every magazine who uses the submission manager. He quickly rejected our rejection with a delightful deconstruction of the rejection letter. It’s simply too good not to share. We have not amended his e-mail in any way so as to better preserve the irony. We stand corrected.

learn how to write, you fool. Let’s see: we appreciate? no: we appreciated, cause it’s past tense….you read the story and are responding. Then: ‘but unfortunately this submission’ why unfortunately? who are you to decide? and if you’re gonna use, unfortunately, at least take time to tuck it in with commas. Then: …was not right for pank. Why past tense: is not right for pank, is the proper tense. Add insult to injury: if I follow your sentence structure, then you mix present tense: appreciate, with past tense: was not right. You guys are a joke, and not a funny one.

Three more bodies from Mike Meginnis appear at Everyday Genius.

Monkeybicycle features Stolen Fat Babies by the one, the only Sarah Rose Etter.

The February issue of Knee Jerk includes a story by Angi Becker Stevens.

There’s a House Fire and a story by xTx burning things down.

Amy McDaniel brings her poetic styling to H_NGM_N. She is joined by Melissa Broder, Tamiko Beyer, and others.

Nocturne, by Karen Munro, is up at Hunger Mountain. This one is strange and lovely. Do check it out.

Ricky Garni is the guest poet at Mud Job.

Weekend Fiction at The Good Men Project features Better Weather by Mike Meginnis.

Over at The Rumpus, David Cotrone has a conversation with a soldier.

Bananafish’s editor series continues with a story by Shannon Peil.

Fiction from Len Kuntz and Sheldon Lee Compton appears in Pure Slush.

A new poem from Helen Vitoria is up at Phantom Kangaroo.

You won’t regret reading this fine, fine essay by Brad Green.

Chantel Tattoli takes on the year 1609 at For Every Year.

The new issue of La Petite Zine includes poetry from Nate Pritts and Feng Sun Chen. Nate also has writing in Saw Mill, the new online branch of Lumberyard.

Alice Blue Review includes damn good writing from Katie Jean Shinkle, Thomas Patrick Levy, Reynard Seifert and Daniela Olszewska.

John Haggerty’s Shakey appears at Staccato Fiction.

Fiction from Sara Lippmann at The Northville Review.

New poetry by David LaBounty.

James Tadd Adcox is a natural wonder.

There’s a new issue of Word Riot including a list, of sorts, by Garrett Socol.

Sal Pane has a story this week up at Annalemma.

In the new online issue of Barrelhouse, writing from Errid Farland.

You will find, in the February issue of The Scrambler, a poem from J. Bradley. He is joined by Ethel Rohan, Nate Pritts, Dennis Mahagin, and Steve Subrizi among others.

Storychord features a, well, story by Anthony Jones.

From February 15 through March 30, 2011, Rose Metal Press will be actively seeking full-length hybrid and cross-genre manuscripts for consideration for publication in 2012. They are particularly interested in short short, flash, and micro-fiction; prose poetry, novels-in-verse or book-length linked narrative poems; flash nonfiction or book-length memoirs in shorts; and other literary works that move beyond traditional genres to find new forms of expression. The best way to see what they mean by hybrid is to take a look at their catalog. Rose Metal Press welcome submissions in all styles and on all subjects, and encourage a broad and expansive interpretation of hybridity.

Please email your manuscript of 48 pages or more—double-spaced for prose, single-spaced for poetry (or both, if it’s mixed)—between February 15 and March 30 with a $10 reading fee paid via our website (the payment button will appear when the reading period opens). Please also include an acknowledgments page of where individual pieces have been published, if applicable, as well as a brief author biography. They welcome submissions from outside of the U.S. and Canada, and ask that interested submitters from outside the U.S. and Canada simply use the “Donate” button on the Support RMP page to pay their fee. If you have questions, please don’t hesitate to email Rose Metal.

Saw Mill, the new online extension of Lumberyard Magazine from Typecast Publishing. Pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty sweet, with new work from Leora Fridman, Michael Shorb, Christine Kanowick, and Jon Gertz. Start with Sky Poem by Nate Pritts.

Just passing this along…

The Best Poems would like to call for submissions for its first annual Poetry print Anthology for the best 100 poems written in the year. The deadline for submission is 25 March 2011.

All current members and those who join in advance of the deadline are eligible. Best Poems is an educational resource and Anthology and membership is free.
More informations can be found at our website http://www.best-poems.net. Submissions can also be emailed to: staff@best-poems.net.

We hope to receive submissions of creative work that deal in some way with modern poetry of any genre. The approach may be primarily sociological and inspirational, or literary in nature. What we want are submissions that address the theme(s) of Love, Life & Death, Inspiration and Human Relationships… in new and exciting ways that allow our readers to see the multiplicity of angles and issues these broad headings generate.

Submissions are open to all poets from any country and from confirmed ones to young emerging ones.

Today is Sunday and I transmit from a cottage in Republican country after having suffered the worst of a terrible bout of flu. It’s early afternoon and already I’ve worn myself out doing laundry and a few other minor chores. I may not finish this column. 

You learn stuff when you’re sick, like how bad your head hurts before you cry; like how much depends on you: the son, the employer, the coworkers, the dogs and cat.

Your paycheck. Your novel. Your short story collection. Your column. Your sanity. Your joy.

Then there’s closing on a house in two weeks and packing fifteen boxes of books along with everything else. There’s also all that cooking and cleaning stuff I do. The fucking cat box, dog poop in the yard. 

When you’re sick you think, I really need to downsize.  What can I get rid of? 

*

Thursday my head hurt so bad I cried. I had a migraine on top of a sinus headache. Also, I’d been beating myself up on top of having the flu. You’re sick? You suck. It’s bad enough to feel ill. It’s another to feel guilty about it.

I grew up with criticism, not praise. What do you expect? It’s why I went to graduate school. I’m still twelve years old and telling my father, “I can pour my own milk, Daddy” until he finally agrees to let me try and then observes with cool, sadistic pleasure as I spill milk all over the place just so he can say, I knew you couldn’t do it.

Birth of an over achiever, ladies and gentleman. What I mean is, I hate to fail. I hate messing up. It’s humiliating. The result, ridicule and/or punishment. My worst nightmare involves me and an angry mob and a public stoning.

Like an angry mob stoning me.

*

When you’re sick you experience your humanyness to the limit. Either that or you don’t feel human at all.

I couldn’t lay down Thursday because lying down made my head hurt three times worse. But I couldn’t sit up either because my body felt as if it had been hit by a truck then backed over and hit again. Also, I was congested. I finally propped myself up against a few pillows on my son’s bed so I could stream movies from Netflix onto his Xbox and distract myself. This is difficult when breathing through your mouth makes you sound like Darth Vader.

Obviously, in my weak and wretched condition, I decided to watch something called The Human Centipede (First Sequence) because you always want to compound human suffering with more human suffering. It just makes sense or makes you feel less alone, something. I mean, I had the flu but at least my mouth wasn’t sewn to a stranger’s asshole.

The sick begets sick, something. 

*

Interesting to note my favorite horror blogger, Pax Romano, didn’t review The Human Centipede for his blog, Billy Loves Stu. Once I realized this, I sort of panicked. If Pax hadn’t publicly acknowledged this movie as a horror film maestro then how could I publicly acknowledge having watched it, a horror film fan? 

Well. I could always blame the flu.

Upon more research, I discovered Brittney-Jade Colangelo didn’t review the film for Day of the Woman either, but Brian Solomon of  The Vault of Horror did, although he wrote his review on someone else’s blog. Overall, his is a thumbs up review in which Solomon writes, “The Human Centipede is an intense horror film that is short on plot, but long on shock. It may not be as graphic as it was sold to the public as being, but that does not take away from the fact that there is insanely horrendous stuff taking place, and it’s depicted with a level of emotional realness that doesn’t allow you to check out and merely have fun as a distant viewer, as, say, a slasher film might. Rather, if you understand what you’re in for, which is a very psychologically based film, it can be a very upsetting experience (which for a horror film, is meant as a compliment.)”

My favorite piece written about The Human Centipede is from Alison Nastasi. She calls her review “Beyond Anguish” and provides a philosophical perspective on the film that involves French writer, Georges Bataille, who wrote one of my favorite books, The Story of An Eye. Does Nastasi’s review of the film imply it’s more high brow than low brow shit?

I think that depends on viewership. 

Oh. I forgot to mention The Human Centipede isn’t one of those sci-fi horror films in which you encounter a half human/half insect thing like in that Mira Sorvino film, Mimic.

*

The reviews I’ve read at Netflix for The Human Centipede (First Sequence) vary. Viewers call the film everything from brilliant to entertaining to clever to hilarious to ridicules to perverted, gross, and sick. Someone wrote she felt dirty after having watched the film. Another person said, “Someone should kill the writer.”

Kill the writer?

Yeah. See. You can’t hold a mirror up to society without society wanting you dead. Didn’t Nazis do that? Kill writers, I mean.

Where they burn books, they eventually burn people.

Speaking of Nazis, my son once printed a photograph of Adolf Hitler then carried it outside, thumb tacked it to a fence, then proceeded to riddle it with holes using his pellet gun. When he brought what was left inside and said, “Look, Mom,” I said, “Good boy.” 

I mean, I wasn’t going to tell him he couldn’t shoot Adolf Hitler in the face. Why would I do that? Quenten Tarantino wrote the ultimate revenge fantasy film, Inglorious Basterds, and did exactly that. SHOT HITLER IN THE FACE.

Who doesn’t want to see that happen?

Anyway, my son was shooting paper with a pellet gun. I did nothing but permit a normal adolescent expression of violence toward someone who deserves it.  Nazis are everybody’s favorite villain these days. You can get shit all over a Nazi and nobody cares. Poetic justice. Kill the Nazis. Kids kill them in video games every day. It’s cool. Justified simulated violence on human beings. I mean when it comes to monsters you really can’t get much worse than them, can you, Nazis?  Of course, the kicker is they really were human beings.  We forget that. No, we ignore it. Human beings are monstrous. We are the monsters. Meanwhile, Adolf Hitler was certain he wasn’t human. He considered himself on the level of godliness. I think you’d have to be cruel to be a god. Consider what gods do. Anyway, nothing is more terrifying than a man with a God Complex.

*

Apparently to get attention these days you have to be either absurd or obscene or both. Or write Twilight.

As I sat propped against pillows in my son’s room suffering through a terrible bout of the flu and watching The Human Centipede (First Sequence) I decided the movie was stupid. Later, I realized how disturbed I felt. Maybe as I stood in the shower letting snot run from my nose and shivering.

*

Tom Six, who wrote and directed The Human Centipede, said the idea came from a joke in which he commented to a group of friends sitting around one day the best and most deserved punishment for a child molester would be to sew his mouth to a fat trucker’s asshole. Yeah. Let him eat shit.

And also, who doesn’t want to see a rape victim cut off her rapist’s dick then feed it to him? See I Spit on Your Grave for that. More poetic justice. What? Ted Bundy deserved to keep his dick? I say castrate the asshole and let him live.

Except The Human Centipede isn’t about poetic justice. It’s about dehumanization. It’s about Nazis. It’s about how Nazis dehumanized other human beings in a desperate and depraved attempt to elevate themselves nationally and personally.

It’s about a man with a God Complex.

It’s about how Germans hate Americans and the Japanese.

Tom Six claims the procedure his villian accomplishes in his movie is surgically possible. He says a real live surgeon explained exactly how it would work. During WWII, Nazi doctors performed terrible experiments on other human beings, such as one Josef Mengele. So the ultimate poetic justice would have been if  Tom Six wrote a story in which his villian, Dr. Heiter, conducted his inhumane experiment on other Nazis with Dr. Mengele cast as the “middle piece.”

But then we all would have been cheering before asking ourselves, “Who cares if one asshole tortures other assholes?”

Writers never do anything by accident. Every word on the page is there for a reason. Every scene, every nuance counts.

Ultimately, The Human Centipede is about just how fucked women really are. We get it coming and going. Adolf Hitler used to refer to Jewish women as “sows.”  Tom Six takes the insult further. Women are insects. Women eat shit. Take that.

I’m not saying Tom Six hates women. In fact, most reports claim he was very careful with his two actresses on set, very respectful. I’m simply stating he wrote a misogynistic film. Like the misogynistic film. I can take it. I listen to Eminem. 

Anyway, a great deal of horror films objectify, demonize, and/or dehumanize women.

One time, a male student in one of my fiction writing classes wrote a story in which his male protagonist jacks off then comes in the face of a girl passed out at a party. I didn’t tell my student he couldn’t write that kind of story. I said, “Write that kind of story in a way I understand misogyny better. Why does your character hate women? Show me a human being and not just a misogynist.” In Six’s film Dr Heiter doesn’t say he hates women. He says, “I hate human beings.” And he hates women most. Sure, you could say the young Japanese man in the film isn’t having a fun fest, but you have to ask yourself why Tom Six made sure we know the reason one of the women is “the middle piece” is because she defied the villain; she almost got away. 

“You,” Dr Heiter says with cool, sadistic pleasure, “are the middle piece.”

*

Throughout The Human Centipede (First Sequence) one things rings poignant. The bond between the female victims. Tom Six shows us more than one shot in which the two women seek out then grasp each other’s hands. This is what we see: hands finding one another, holding on. I wasn’t alone this past week. My son played sick on Friday to stay home with me. He says he had a sore throat, but I know the truth. He wanted to stick around and keep an eye on me. He let the dogs out to poop. He brought me water. He fed the cat. He asked, “How are you, Mama?”  My friend Judy sent me a text every day to ask if I needed anything. My boss called and offered to bring me Nyquil and green chili. Green chili! Of course one might say my boss was keeping tabs on me, making sure I wasn’t in Mexico, but I think she called every day because she was concerned about me. 

And then there’s my friend, Rich, who’s a licensed RN. He came by the cottage with a specific combination of over-the-counter remedies and told me just how to take what and when. He also brought me tissue, lip balm, and Carmex for my nose. He brought Gatorade and popcycles. He brought my son and I lunch and dinner.  Rich took out the garbage.

Wow.

Writers hold a mirror up to society and sometimes what we see is horrible. But what we see is also beautiful sometimes. What a responsibility, this thing we do. And an honor too. I’m lucky. To my friends, XO.

De rigueur, I guess, given the number of these things I’ve seen posted this past week. Anywho, [PANK] went, of course. It saw, things happened, there were readings and bars and dancing, a pinch of mayhem, a dash of naughty, and we returned triumphant if a little bruised and roughed up around the edges. As with past AWPs, some was good, some great, some hilarious, some a little unbalanced, and some of it we’re not tellin’ to no one, especially not you. Much of it, though, remains blurry and a little hard to make sense of (as we’ve come to expect of any truly worthwhile AWP). But as the swelling subsides and our shoes cease to hurt, a few lines of sense begin to reconfirm themselves in our addled minds. Here’s my shortlist of the obvious:

CITY OF WORDS. Oh, AWP Bookfair, whereat the wurst gets made. And it’s pretty much all I did during daytime AWP. The following became an almost painful muscle memory, all tongue and lung: “[PANK] is PANK Magazine, pankmagazine.com, and the PANK Little Book Series. We’re about five years old. We publish primarily poetry and short-form prose and like work with a little bit of dirt under its nails, but if you shake the bush hard enough, all kinds of snakes crawl out.” At the end of Saturday, saying this began to make me angry. I hope I didn’t get angry at you. On the plane home, the guy sitting next to me asked me about [PANK] and I got a nose bleed, all joking aside. This and the MOUNTAIN of books I brought home. So, so, so overwhelming. In a good way. But still.

GET ON A MIC. If the bookfair is where the sausage gets made, it’s the outside readings where the sausage gets cooked. All I’m going to add is three words, Divination in DC. I’ll retro-add the video of that very kick-ass PANK/Annalemma/Mudluscious reading tomorrow (aka Monday, 2/14) because I need a faster connection than I have at home to upload it and because it will then be like a Valentine’s day present to you whom I do so love.

ALIASES, NAMES, FACES. Hang out at the AWP bookfair long enough, attend enough outside readings and magical things happen. For instance, news flash, xTx exists! Or I think she does. Maybe that woman was a paid impostor (I think I read that on Facebook). Roxane knows for sure, but she ain’t telling me shit. Simulacra or no, xTx is smart and funny and nice and super pretty and she can dance, too. Who knew these things? This may be the main thing the conference facilitates for me, particularly as an editor who is not the public face of the magazine. So, so happy to have made your acquaintance, you writer you, too many to name. Someday, AWP will facilitate my meeting Frank Hinton or catching a unicorn by its tail. Either one. Which brings me to…

SMILING AT MOLLY. Really just another variation on the theme of networking, which is a common thread here, in case you haven’t noticed. But unlike the bookfair, the outside readings, or connecting the dots, SMILING AT MOLLY (Molly Gaudry, that is) is a simpler pleasure unto itself, stripped of any greater meaning than simply seeing writers you adore in close proximity to one another, in situations you don’t normally get in your workaday life, and watching the madness ensue. It’s different for everybody, different on different days, and really requires nothing of you except paying close enough attention. While it seemed that every day was SMILING AT MOLLY day for me (thanks, Molly), I also had a DAN NESTER AND HIS WHOOPEE CUSHION day as well as a MICHAEL MARTONE KEEPS RECOMMENDING PEOPLE TO MY TABLE? day. And an acquaintance of mine had an I JUST KNOCKED JOYCE CAROL OATS TO THE FLOOR day (seriously!).

PARTY PEOPLES. My friends, this is where the sausage gets eaten. Don’t like the sound of that? Me neither, but I started the unfortunate metaphor up above and I ain’t turning back now. Lit Party, or as I’ve come to refer to it, White People Dancing to Footloose, was a good, nay, great example. There were others, too true, but Lit Party was where I rocked my overbite the hardest, thumbs up on the dance floor, grinding it out just off the beat. Yup, that was me. Actually, that was most of everybody else, too, maybe even you. I was assaulted while in queue for the bathroom (you know who you are, wink, wink, nudge, nudge). I was leapt upon, beer was spilled, beer was replaced (thanks for that). Good times for a good cause. Second in the running, the conference hotel bar where the after party was always interesting and reliably sleazy. Which brings me to…

CONDOMS. This probably doesn’t deserve its own bullet, except that I simply had to share the following with you: (1) At [PANK]’s bookfair table on Friday of the conference, I asked one browser how their AWP was going, to which they replied, straight as an arrow, “There’s two great reasons to come to AWP, the bookfair and sex. I’ve got the flu so I’m only getting half my money’s worth.” (2) On Sunday morning there was a very beleaguered woman working the conference hotel’s little convenience store. I was buying aspirin, located in close proximity to a very depleted supply of condoms. Before I could stop myself I asked, “Do condom sales go through the roof during these conferences?” To which she replied, straight as an arrow, “They did at this one.”

And there you have it, PANKsters, my paltry little AWP wrap up. Glad to have met you if I met you. Hope to see more of you in Chicago next year.

Jaded Ibis Press, publisher extraordinaire & home to slick now & coming books by Lily Hoang, David Hoenigman, John Dermot Woods/J.A. Tyler, Janice Lee, Anna Joy Springer, Christopher Grimes, & Davis Schneiderman posted this in-depth interview today via Forbes.com.

Chalk one up for team indie press.

Jaded Ibis Press, publisher extraordinaire & home to slick now & coming books by Lily Hoang, David Hoenigman, John Dermot Woods/J.A. Tyler, Janice Lee, Anna Joy Springer, Christopher Grimes, & Davis Schneiderman posted this in-depth interview today via Forbes.com.

Chalk one up for team indie press.