There’s a job like me in every ad agency in America, I guess. I’m the project that can give it to you. Stress-induced hives, grey hairs, a bastard child conceived while working late into the night with someone of the opposite sex. Damn near anything.

I’m also the job that won’t go away. Been around this agency since 2005, making the rounds, you might say. One minute, I’m with the account executive, then the production manager, copywriter. Then back to the AE, who’s lunching on Quaaludes. No, I just won’t go away. I’m like that bad cough that sticks around for five winters. You know the one.

Sure, I look innocent enough. One peek and you might even volunteer to jump on for a ride. Won’t be long, though, before you’re jacking open the door, leaping out, even knowing I’m going 65 on one of them blind curves in Santa Monica. Even knowing the water below isn’t water at all any more. No, that water’s been replaced. By living, breathing razor blades.

Anyway, I’m what you call a collateral job. Brochure. Funny thing is, I was opened three months early. You know. Give the guys an early start. It’d be funny if it weren’t so sad. New coordinator kid damn near killed himself on me, started sawing at his wrist with the edge of my folder one night after everyone had gone home to their families. Cleaning guy came in and saw the whole thing go down, from the moment the kid started till forty-five minutes later, when the folder finally loosened enough blood that the boy nearly passed out. Kid had to call 9-1-1 all on his own. Why? Don’t know. You’d have to ask the coordinator himself. Or the cleaning guy, who was standing there the whole forty-five minutes.

I was opened in September 2005. Supposed to talk about all the different services the company had. We do this and we do that. Well, the entire thing was written and laid out by the time the client decided to kill me. That’s that, everyone thought. Couldn’t have been more wrong. I was resurrected some two weeks later, back from the dead, like Jesus ascending to heaven on Yom Kippur. But instead of breaking bread with his good friend Joseph Smith, I was about to break the entire team’s back.

You see, my services changed. That’s the simplest way I can put it. Sure, I still did This, but I didn’t do That anymore. That was old news. Now, instead of That, I did This. So they called in the surgeons, and I’m not talking about a simple Rhinoplasty. No. I’m talking severe Rhinoplasty.

This didn’t just happen one time. Or two or three or even four. No, this happened three hundred and twenty four times. You know how some people talk about how they got into the business? Well, I’m how they got out.

One guy got a lobotomy.

I hope I’ll get produced one day. I hope to be placed into a customer’s hand. I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams.

Whatever that means.

Laura Ellen Scott’s Curio, which is quite a marvel, is now available for your reading pleasure, one story at a time, at Uncanny Valley.

At Flash Fiction 500, Christy Crutchfield’s Cartesian Doubt is well worth a read.

Atticus Books features an excerpt from The Jimmy Interludes by J.A. Tyler. He also has work in Wigleaf.

Maggie Glover has three poems in the new issue of MayDay. She is joined by Corey Mesler, Gabriel Welsch, Joe Wilkins, twice, and much more. This is one of the better issues of a magazine I’ve read in recent memory.

The second issue of Wrong Tree Review is online with writing from Ryan Bradley, Len Kuntz, Heather Fowler, Adam Moorad, Greg Gerke, Michelle Reale, Jason Jordan, Meg Pokrass, among others.

Hannah Miet’s Throw the Dirt, Brother, is available from Amazon.com via Twitch.

If you read Spanish, you can enjoy Las Lecturas de 2010 from Kathleen Heil from Hermano Cerdo. She also has some funny writing in The Rumpus.

Listen to Kirsty Logan’s Matryoshka which aired on BBC Radio 4.

At Matchbook, Blake Butler’s Ricky’s Index Finger will get your attention.

Jamie Iredell has some short pieces up at Everyday Genius.

I love Filthy Gorgeous Things so I was happy to stumble upon Sean Doyle’s Big Buck Hunter on that site. They’re a subscription site but the money is well worth it.

Gabe Durham’s Wit of Winston made SplitSider’s list of 2010s best humor writing.

Little Book author Matthew Salesses is interviewed by Fringe Magazine.  In other interview news, Valerie O’Riordan interviews Jo Cannon and Christopher Newgent interviews Sean Lovelace.

Tania Hershman blends science and fiction for Comma Press.

In the Used Furniture Review, a new story from Andrew Roe.

Episode 44 of the Orange Alert podcast includes Peter Schwartz and Bonnie ZoBell.

An excerpt from Mel Bosworth’s FREIGHT can be found at Vol. 1 Brooklyn.

Writer’s Block (Canada) #7 includes work from Jamie Fountaine.

DOGZPLOT has flash fiction from Helen Vitoria.

Nickolas Butler has a poem in New Verse News.

Stymie has a story from J. Bradley and one from  Ryan Ridge.

The new issue of TriQuarterly has four stories from James Tadd Adcox, an essay by Michelle Valois, and other writing you’re going to want to read.

Garrett Socol has a short story in the new issue of the nth position.

There’s a new issue of Blip Magazine with writing from Mel Bosworth, Rae Bryant, Andrew Roe, Bill Yarrow, Eric Smetana, Nick Ripatrazone and Alicia Gifford.

Laura Ellen Scott’s Curio, which is quite a marvel, is now available for your reading pleasure, one story at a time, at Uncanny Valley.

At Flash Fiction 500, Christy Crutchfield’s Cartesian Doubt is well worth a read.

Atticus Books features an excerpt from The Jimmy Interludes by J.A. Tyler. He also has work in Wigleaf.

Maggie Glover has three poems in the new issue of MayDay. She is joined by Corey Mesler, Gabriel Welsch, Joe Wilkins, twice, and much more. This is one of the better issues of a magazine I’ve read in recent memory.

The second issue of Wrong Tree Review is online with writing from Ryan Bradley, Len Kuntz, Heather Fowler, Adam Moorad, Greg Gerke, Michelle Reale, Jason Jordan, Meg Pokrass, among others.

Hannah Miet’s Throw the Dirt, Brother, is available from Amazon.com via Twitch.

If you read Spanish, you can enjoy Las Lecturas de 2010 from Kathleen Heil from Hermano Cerdo. She also has some funny writing in The Rumpus.

Listen to Kirsty Logan’s Matryoshka which aired on BBC Radio 4.

At Matchbook, Blake Butler’s Ricky’s Index Finger will get your attention.

Jamie Iredell has some short pieces up at Everyday Genius.

I love Filthy Gorgeous Things so I was happy to stumble upon Sean Doyle’s Big Buck Hunter on that site. They’re a subscription site but the money is well worth it.

Gabe Durham’s Wit of Winston made SplitSider’s list of 2010s best humor writing.

Little Book author Matthew Salesses is interviewed by Fringe Magazine.  In other interview news, Valerie O’Riordan interviews Jo Cannon and Christopher Newgent interviews Sean Lovelace.

Tania Hershman blends science and fiction for Comma Press.

In the Used Furniture Review, a new story from Andrew Roe.

Episode 44 of the Orange Alert podcast includes Peter Schwartz and Bonnie ZoBell.

An excerpt from Mel Bosworth’s FREIGHT can be found at Vol. 1 Brooklyn.

Writer’s Block (Canada) #7 includes work from Jamie Fountaine.

DOGZPLOT has flash fiction from Helen Vitoria.

Nickolas Butler has a poem in New Verse News.

Stymie has a story from J. Bradley and one from  Ryan Ridge.

The new issue of TriQuarterly has four stories from James Tadd Adcox, an essay by Michelle Valois, and other writing you’re going to want to read.

Garrett Socol has a short story in the new issue of the nth position.

There’s a new issue of Blip Magazine with writing from Mel Bosworth, Rae Bryant, Andrew Roe, Bill Yarrow, Eric Smetana, Nick Ripatrazone and Alicia Gifford.

Sidebrow Books is going to (if they haven’t already) become a seething force in the mouth of indie lit. Take a slim volume like City, this unassuming book written in collage, covered thick in words, & it is apparent that what exhales is deeply literary & wholly interesting:

[City] was curated by Sidebrow, culling from contributions to The City Project, one of several collaborative projects evolving on the Sidebrow Web site. We invite you to extend, reimagine, and respond creatively to what you see developing in this book and on our Web site.

With the publication of the Sidebrow 01 Anthology back in 2008, there was no question as to whether or not Sidebrow was doing something creative & intriguing. They were. But then 2009 came & went: no new books. So when this press ensemble enflamed 2010 with 3 new titles (Sandy Florian’s On Wonderland & Waste, Joshua Marie Wilkinson’s Selenography, & Sidebrow’s first multi-author chapbook, City), we become reassured that what was happening, is happening again.

 13 Leah, captivated with the lore of the center, questioned whether anyone had ever been inside the wall at night.

14 By day Central Park was open to everyone.

15 By nightfall the gates were closed, even to the men that tended the earth.

16 Trapped between two worlds of immense darkness, Isaac and Leah dreamed of passing through walls and finding light

City is a meaty paw raising up to call I, a book in attendance at our presses-doing-sick-literary-damage roll call. The table of contents is relegated to the back pages, so that we must first read & then learn the identities of our authors, which segments they specifically authored, who wrote what. & even those assignments are not linear, with Dutton’s pieces spread throughout City, yet the narrative gait that City easily holds is quite astounding in its cohesiveness. Reading City doesn”â„¢t feel like reading cullings, & there is a clear magic in that:

When you enter the city in the dark you enter with your life in your hands. When you enter the city at dawn, where then is your life? In your throat? The city will sing for you. At dawn, a golden faintness, rooftops hum. A glimpse of river. A pattern of gulls. But in darkness, through a grove of trees, alone, voiceless, or talking to yourself, in your own ear, in another’s, the fog, the wet grass, a fox, moving through darkness, through the grove of trees, the grass, the wet grass, then cobbles are under your feet. Where did the wet grass end? When was the moment at which the city had you?

City, and by proxy the genius Sidebrow editors, is rampant & good. They have made a book here that sparks new conversations, investigates old ones, & re-envisions the now of writing. What is a book when it is written by four distinctly different authors? What is a book when it is culled from an online journal? What is a book when it invites new authors anytime, anywhere? City.

City

Tyler Flynn Dorholt, Danielle Dutton, Matt Hart, & Shane Michalik

Sidebrow Books, 2010

$12.00

Sidebrow Books is going to (if they haven’t already) become a seething force in the mouth of indie lit. Take a slim volume like City, this unassuming book written in collage, covered thick in words, & it is apparent that what exhales is deeply literary & wholly interesting:

[City] was curated by Sidebrow, culling from contributions to The City Project, one of several collaborative projects evolving on the Sidebrow Web site. We invite you to extend, reimagine, and respond creatively to what you see developing in this book and on our Web site.

With the publication of the Sidebrow 01 Anthology back in 2008, there was no question as to whether or not Sidebrow was doing something creative & intriguing. They were. But then 2009 came & went: no new books. So when this press ensemble enflamed 2010 with 3 new titles (Sandy Florian’s On Wonderland & Waste, Joshua Marie Wilkinson’s Selenography, & Sidebrow’s first multi-author chapbook, City), we become reassured that what was happening, is happening again.

 13 Leah, captivated with the lore of the center, questioned whether anyone had ever been inside the wall at night.

14 By day Central Park was open to everyone.

15 By nightfall the gates were closed, even to the men that tended the earth.

16 Trapped between two worlds of immense darkness, Isaac and Leah dreamed of passing through walls and finding light

City is a meaty paw raising up to call I, a book in attendance at our presses-doing-sick-literary-damage roll call. The table of contents is relegated to the back pages, so that we must first read & then learn the identities of our authors, which segments they specifically authored, who wrote what. & even those assignments are not linear, with Dutton’s pieces spread throughout City, yet the narrative gait that City easily holds is quite astounding in its cohesiveness. Reading City doesn”â„¢t feel like reading cullings, & there is a clear magic in that:

When you enter the city in the dark you enter with your life in your hands. When you enter the city at dawn, where then is your life? In your throat? The city will sing for you. At dawn, a golden faintness, rooftops hum. A glimpse of river. A pattern of gulls. But in darkness, through a grove of trees, alone, voiceless, or talking to yourself, in your own ear, in another’s, the fog, the wet grass, a fox, moving through darkness, through the grove of trees, the grass, the wet grass, then cobbles are under your feet. Where did the wet grass end? When was the moment at which the city had you?

City, and by proxy the genius Sidebrow editors, is rampant & good. They have made a book here that sparks new conversations, investigates old ones, & re-envisions the now of writing. What is a book when it is written by four distinctly different authors? What is a book when it is culled from an online journal? What is a book when it invites new authors anytime, anywhere? City.

City

Tyler Flynn Dorholt, Danielle Dutton, Matt Hart, & Shane Michalik

Sidebrow Books, 2010

$12.00

My Kiddo was  sick today. At seven a.m. this morning he said, “Mama, will you stay home with me?”   I called my  boss and  left a message then lied down with my son on his bed and rubbed his back until he feel asleep again.

He slept seven hours.

I live with a constant nagging  fear  I may cease to sustain  the precarious balancing act that’s my life: kid, work, writing.

I’m always tired. “Worried”  is my second middle name.  

I once had a boss who said I might not have a job to return to the next day if  I stayed home with my sick son. That was 2005. My son was eight years old. Not only did I have no one to babysit at the time, nor do I usually,  my son was covered with a rash and had a fever. Panic stricken, torn between the  fear I’d lose my job and my very real maternal instincts,  I called  my grandmother.

What my grandmother said was, “You get out of that place right now.” And I did. Because she made it possible.

I keep seeing women lying in beds incapacitated, struggling for their lives.  Brave women. Strong women. Women I respect.

I see Gabrielle Giffords. I see my grandmother.

This week, I felt compelled  to change my  profile picture  on Facebook. It’s simply words written in marker on a piece of  paper. “Sarah  Palin doesn’t speak for me. ”  But then she never spoke for me. I’m not a Mama Grizzly, and  I resent anyone who might mislabel me one. Look, I’d love a woman in charge who  spoke on my behalf.  I’d love that. I’d. Love. It.

I’ll tell you who’d have my vote for President. Susie Bright. She’d have my vote in a New York Minute.

I transmit from a cottage in Republican country. We’re out numbered. But I haven’t once felt threatened here. Perhaps offended. Perhaps pissed  the day a man  marched into my office  and claimed he wished he could kill President Obama.

“I wish I could get away with it,” he said. “I hate that sonofabitch.”

The other day I saw a rude anti-Obama bumpersticker on the back of a car while waiting for a  light.  

I said  to my son,  “I want  to  flip this guy off.”

“I know,” my son said, and he sat forward in his seat.  “I’m sick of all this anti-Obama stuff.”

The night Americans elected Barack Obama the 44th  President of the United States,  my son and I  fell into each others arms and wept. We stood to our feet and danced about our living room.  We danced holding hands. We smiled and cried and danced.

I remember I looked at my son and said, “I’m so happy.”

The Kiddo  said, “Me too, Mom.”  

At school, my son says his classmates boo everytime President Obama comes up except for this one kid who doesn’t. Wonder which kid that is?   Same kid  never cheers  for Sarah Palin while the rest of  his classmates do.

So I sit at a stop light the other day wanting to flip the bird at this guy ahead of me for his rude anti-Obama bumpersticker, and my son sits forward in his seat waiting to see what I’ll do, and like so many other times since he was born, I recognize  a moment to teach my son something about diplomacy.  Something about what it means to live in a free country.

I say, “I want to flip this guy off, but what good would it do? I don’t like his bumper sticker.  So what? I get rude.  Then  what? Anyway, he has just as much right to have that bumper sticker as I do to have whatever bumper sticker I want. Right, honey?”

“Right,” my son  said.

Childen are monkeys. They mirror us, they mimic.

Last fall,  while visiting an ex boyfriend  in Denver, a nine-year-old child told me she hated President Obama because he’d said America wasn’t  a Christian country.

“It’s not,” I said.  “America is a free country in which we can believe and worship any way we want.”

The look this child  gave me  indicated  she believed I was the Anti-Christ. Or worse, a liberal.  Sure. I’m going to Hell.

I’m sure her parents told her I would.

Opportunities present themselves, you know,  when you wish you could instill empathy and intellect in other people’s children. You wish you could meet them in the eye. You wish you could shake them.  Like the other day, I wanted to tell another parent’s  homophobic child,  “There’s nothing wrong with homosexuals. It’s human, it’s natural, it’s as beautiful as any other expression of human sexuality and love.”    But the situation wasn’t appropriate. And so I felt  worse than impotent.

What do I do? I write a column. I write other stuff too.  I’m doing  as best by my  kid  as  possible.

But I’m no Susie Bright, people. I’m no Gabrielle Giffords. I’m not my grandmother.

I love you.

Are you a writer, small press, nonprofit, or small business, with a chapbook in need of a designer? Do you need a brochure designed? Do you need a poster designed?

I am looking for projects for the students in my design class.

You must be willing to consult, as a client, several times, via e-mail or phone, with a student or student group, about  your design needs as a client. If there is content such as document copy or logos, etc., you must also be able to provide those materials in a timely manner.

If all goes well, what you get out of this, other than my eternal gratitude, is a nicely designed (if all goes well) product for free! If you’ve got something, hit me up at roxane at pankmagazine dot com.

This week’s Last Words (Last Shots? Last Frames?) comes from Wong Kar-wai’s Happy Together, one of my favorite films of all time (“of all time!”).

I knew that next week I wanted to feature the end of another film, and this month (year?) I’d set myself the somewhat vague goal of trying to watch more films, and in particular to take advantage of all the free ones available either online (illegally and gloriously), or at my local BFI Mediatheque—and, perhaps, to actually make use of my languishing LOVEFiLM (the UK equivalent to Netflix) subscription. So I thought one way of making sure I watch more films would be to make all of my Last Words features this January about film endings.

That said, this week has nothing to do with the goal of watching new films, because it’s a film that I’ve loved for a long, long time. I don’t remember the first time I watched Happy Together; I don’t even think it’s the first Wong Kar-wai movie I ever saw. It’s an early work, though not as popular as his earlier others, like Chungking Express or Fallen Angels, and definitely not as well-known as his noughties successes In the Mood for Love and 2046. I haven’t seen My Blueberry Nights, but I do look forward to his upcoming Ip Man movie, The Grandmasters. Tony Leung is one of those actors (along with Tadanobu Asano), where, if he’s in something, I’ll watch it. Actually, no, not one of those actors. That actor.
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Our first special issue was such a success (and we will be doing another Queer Issue in 2011) that we thought we do a special issue featuring writing from or about the United Kingdom. This issue will be edited by Kirsty Logan, PANK’s amazing Reviews Editor and will be published in June 2011. We are reading submissions for this special issue until May 15, 2011.

We are open to anything that you think we would like. If something you’ve written immediately popped into your head when you read that, please send it to us. If not, here are some suggestions:

• Writing by people who were born, currently live in, or have previously lived in England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, or Ireland (including any and all islands).
• Writing set in the above places.
• Writing concerned with British themes (we will let you decide what exactly British themes are).
• Writing that questions or explores ideas of Britain in terms of home, family, heritage, geography, history, island life, patriotism, Europe, globalism, the self, etc.
• Anything PANKishly good.
• No London buses, no Mary Poppins accents, no haggis, no Morris dancers, no Glaswegians knifing each other. Seriously.

If you have questions, please query the guest editor, Kirsty Logan at kirsty at pankmagazine dot com. In the meantime, go here to submit, and be sure to use the Special Issue Submission category.

If you’re interested in proposing and editing a special issue, e-mail us your proposal and a potential call for submissions to awesome at pankmagazine dot com. We love your ideas!

The first elimae of 2011 includes Eric Beeny, Lucas Southworth, Steven Fowler, Troy Urquhart,  and Helen Vitoria.

Brandi Wells has three fictions up at Monkeybicyle.

In the new issue of Requited, you will find writing from Jac Jemc, Andrew Farkas, Thomas Patrick Levy,  and more.

Mud Luscious has been redesigned and the 14th issue  includes Alec Bryan, David Peak, and Alan Stewart Carl.

The January issue of Dark Sky Magazine has writing from Kyle Hemmings, Michelle Reale, Jamie Iredell, Christy Crutchfield, Amber Noelle Sparks, and others.

CL Bledsoe has two poems in Blast Furnace Press (scroll down).

Enjoy an interview with J. Bradley, where once again the tables are turned. He also has a story up at Amphibi.us and is PicFic’s featured contributor.  You’ll see four micro-stories from him on the site normally each Thursday in January.  “Closure“ is the first one.

Alan Stewart Carl has fiction in Hayden’s Ferry Review 47, and also writes this thoughtful essay for their blog. He is joined in that issue by Mimi Vaquer.

McSweeney’s Internet Tendency features Daniela Olszewska. You will be fascinated, so read this one right away.

Jimmy Chen has been very very busy.

Mel Bosworth reads xTx’s Standoff for Dark Sky and oh, xTx has a collection of 23 stories due out in March. (Yes, totes pimping my baby here a little bit.)