![[PANK]](https://pankmagazine.com/wp-content/themes/pank/assets/images/pank-logo-large.png){kind=logo}
“Now I can say, you’ve got me. Just me. And I can say, take it or leave.”
Krief, “La Verite”
The act of giving yourself to someone you love, and yet having the strength to tell them to decide. Inner strength and fear; honestly and hope and powerless.
I said something similar once in my life. The crazy fight between reward and risk. It was one of the pivotal moments in my life.
On Monday night, Charlotte police officers shot and killed Michael Laney. Laney was handcuffed in police custody at the time of his murder. In nearly all mainstream coverage of this police execution, journalists have named Laney as an “armed robbery suspect,” because he was riding a red scooter apparently matching a description of one used in a robbery in the area the week before. Charlotte Observer makes a point of underlining the “precarity” of the officers’ situation (“They were in fear for their lives”), as if poor people of color everywhere in the United States (to say nothing of the state of affairs here in the United Kingdom and Europe) were not in a constant state of fearing-for-their-lives at the hands of a policy of institutionally racialized violence, in particular the systemic criminalization of Black bodies, who are always guilty, never to be proven innocent, the police execution itself serving as due enforcement of the law. “It just got to the point where the officer felt he had lost control of the situation,†[Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Chief Rodney Monroe] said [of Anthony Holzauer officer who killed Laney]. “We’re talking about a firearm. We very well could be here, talking about the loss of two officers.”
There is absolutely no mistaking the meaning of this comment: the life of a potentially dangerous Black man (and it must be understood that under the white supremacist police state, all Black men are potentially dangerous) is forfeit in the face of “the loss of two officers.” “Why didn’t they shoot him in the leg?” Laney’s nephew asks at the end of the article. Tina Laney, Michael Laney’s mother, replies: “I don’t know.” The state could not be clearer about which lives it determines to be valuable, worthy of the protection of the “law,” and which lives it deems always and absolutely killable, without impunity.
From Dion the Socialist:
First, we heard someone had been shot. This was my first thought anyway. I was kind of shaken up by the fact that I had literally missed being in the area of the shooting by about ten minutes. Then, the chatter we heard was that it was the police who shot someone. Still, I assumed they’d shot the perp they were looking for.
Some lady walked past us and said “yall look scared.†We asked her if she knew what happened. That’s when she told us that the kid was being chased by some people and the police were called to help him. Somehow, the police ended up shooting the kid. The police shot the victim when they were called to help him.
That’s when I first heard the brother yelling at the police. He was saying that they shot his brother and that his brother didn’t have a gun.The police shot him even though he was unarmed. That’s when the coroner’s truck showed up (I think) and I decided to blog it so I could keep up with what was happening. This is also when more of the kid’s family showed up. I’m assuming the kid was a teen because his older brother only looked about mid twenties. His mother was screaming and crying at this point, as well as a younger cousin of his. It was heartbreaking.
His brother had a gun at one point. That’s when Corbin and I went back to our car. The chatter was getting louder though so we got out again and got closer to where we could see the crime scene. I saw them load the body.
I was approached by two or three detectives who asked if I lived in the house I was standing in front of at the time. That’s when I told them where I lived and asked if we could get to our house. The brother came up to the detectives and started yelling about how “you’re not gonna get away with this†and “he was handcuffed when you shot him.â€
“We’re not going to let you put us in handcuffs anymore. Why would anyone let you put them in handcuffs when this is what you do? You handcuff him and shoot him in the back of the head. If you want head shots, I can give you head shots. I can put something on your head.†Detectives sent me to my car at this point and told me I could drive through and get home. As I was walking, I heard him say “one of yall cuffed him, the other said ‘he’s got a gun’ and yall shot him in the back of his head.â€
When I got home, I could still hear his mother crying and screaming.
I can’t do this anymore. I can’t listen to his mother crying anymore and his brother screaming.
Five pieces of interest from authors with writing in the upcoming [PANK] 7, to be released September 1, 2012. Pre-order here.
1. Reunion from Matthew Baker in FRiGG.
2. Excerpt from The Ancient Book of Hip by DW Lichtenberg.
3. Poetry from Elizabeth Cantwell at Splash of Red.
4. An interview with Scott Pinkmountain at A Public Space.
5. Bread Alley from Sarah Tourjee at Anomalous Press.
[PANK] 7 will be released in September. You can pre-order it here. Have you seen the cover art from Elena Duff? It is gorgeous. Below are works from five contributors with work in [PANK] 7.
1. Casket is an American Euphamism, poetry from Rebecca Morgan Frank at Bat City Review.
2. Poems from Sommer Browning at Spork Press.
3. Excerpts from This is Between Us by Kevin Sampsell at The Atticus Review.
4. Notes from a Tuesday Traffic Jam, by Mark Neely at Hunger Mountain.
5. Of Brains Or Bowels Or Lungs, Leopards, Finches, from Nathan Blake at The Doctor T.J. Eckleburg Review
Marking the first of our move to bi-annual print issues, we are proud to announce the scheduled release of [PANK] 7 for September 1, 2012. [PANK] 7 is a yearbook of literature, a dense periodical filled with the author’s you need to remember, to watch, to meet up with again, to re-read the hand written notes of; not afraid to put next to one another the traditional and the rebellious, the senior and the amateur.
Issue 7 features new writing from Matthew Baker, Rusty Barnes, Jeremy Bauer, Nathan Blake, Sommer Browning, Elizabeth Cantwell, Sérah Carter, Rebecca Cook, Brandon Courtney, Michelle Dean, Alicia Erian, Rebecca Morgan Frank, Alia Hamada, Kathleen Hellen, Caitlin Horrocks, Kathryn Houghton, Simon Jacobs, Hilary S. Jacqmin, Eugenia Leigh, DW Lichtenberg, Michael Martone, James May, Mark Neely, Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz, Terrance Owens, Scott Pinkmountain, Kevin Sampsell, Cheryl & Janet Snell, Dennis James Sweeney, Sarah Tourjee, Jordan Wiklund, and Kelly A. Wilson.
152 pages of awesome. Much better than your high school yearbook, a remnant, but certainly not one to be stowed away. Read sample pieces here. Pre-order your copy here.
(Note: Having not written at the [PANK] blog for nearly a year, I apparently thought the best way to make up for that absence would be to stuff an entire year’s worth of posts in one. I am definitely doing the Internet wrong. Also, this is failed essay is something of a throwback to the two failed essays posted here at [PANK]. I did say “failed.â€)
Trinh T. Minh-ha, “All-Owning Spectatorship”:
To say red, to show red, is already to open up vistas of disagreement. Not only because red conveys different meanings in different contexts, but also because red comes in many hues, saturations, and brightnesses, and no two reds are alike. In addition to the varying symbols implied, there is the unavoidable plurality of language. And since no history can exhaust the meaning of red, such plurality is not a mere matter of relativist approach to the evershifting mores of the individual moment and of cultural diversification; it is inherent to the process of producing meaning; it is a way of life. The symbol of red lies not simply in the image, but in the radical plurality of meanings. Taking literalness for naturalness seems, indeed, to be as normal as claiming the sun is white and not red. Thus, should the need for banal concrete examples arise, it could be said that society cannot be experienced as objective and fully constituted in its order; rather, only as incessantly recomposed of diverging forces wherein the war of interpretations reigns.
Seeing red is a matter of reading. And reading is properly symbolic.
Recently I’ve been thinking about the color red. It started, in a way, by reading Derek Jarman’s essay “On Seeing Red,†from his book on color, Chroma. But what held me, reading Jarman’s essay, was his mention of eczema. I’ve written about sickness and eczema here at PANK in the past, but Jarman’s essay, in connection with various current political events, made me feel that I needed to write about it again. Feel it again.
Jarman:
I’m coming back from the blast furnace of St. Anthony’s fire, an eczema which turned me red. Violent red soreness. I turned almost purple. My skin no longer welcomed the world, but shut it out. I was in the solitary confinement of the senses. For two months I could not read or write. Work stopped on this book. The red eczema spreads across my face. ‘Where have you been on holiday?’ passers-by asked. A short stay in hell.
Skin that no longer welcomes the world; yes, that’s right. But it’s more than that. As an eczematic person you no longer welcome the world, but at the same time, in spite of yourself, you become hyper-porous to the world, excessively open, flayed, (hyper-hospitable? eczematic ethics? who or what is the eczematic other? what about the self-othering that happens in illness; how many times did I weep to my husband F., “I’m trapped in this skin, my body isn’t mine, why is it like this, why still, why always, don’t understand, it’s beyond me, what is it reacting to, what does it want, why, can’t, can’t?”).
For Jarman says the skin shuts the world out, but is that so? Or do you shut the world out because of your skin; does your skin shut you out of the world; does the world shut you up into the world of your skin? Is the eczematic a shutting out of the world at all, or is it in fact a radical irrupting into the world, and a radical irrupting of the world into the body? A visceral mutuality and exchange between the social and the biological, the political and the personal, between two sicknesses that are one sickness. The biopower of sickness. Twenty-first century immunology: the place where the world becomes ever more intolerable, while forcing our bodies to tolerate it–and the place where we stop being able to tolerate it.
No, what am I saying? It’s not just the twenty-first century. Immunology has always been about this. About the red no of the red blood. About saying, often without being able to say it: I can’t take this.
1. Have you read our June Issue yet? It is amazing and filled with greatness. Take a peek.
2. There’s still time!…but not much, Â submit to our Special Pulp Issue, guest edited by Court Merrigan, Â until July 1.
3. Keep your goggly eyes peeled in our direction and watch out for [PANK] 7, to be announced soon.
There aren’t many like you – members of that almost non-existent subculture of Americans who practice the ancient art of reading words – and the few peers that you do have aren’t reading these words. They are reading the words in the comment section below that internet video of three beautiful women making raunchy love to Sasquatch under a waterfall. You – yes you – are the only one reading this Forsley Feuilleton.
I don’t know why you’re reading this. . . maybe your WiFi connection isn’t strong enough to play the rapidly thrusting Sasquatch video. . . maybe your laptop has been on your lap too long, burning your crotch. . . maybe big feet and all they suggest threaten you. All I know is that you won’t be here for long: Call ‘them’ what you want – Illuminati, Big Brother, Powers That Be, Shadow People, Puppet Masters – but ‘they’ have something on the internet even for your Sasquatch ass avoiding ass. This something is called gambling, and if a video of three beautiful women sucking Sasquatch’s big feet won’t stop you from reading my Feuilleton, then gambling will.
The leopard pattern spandex and rusted tinfoil sailor hat wearing street schizophrenic said, “Franz Kafka should have spent his time rolling dice with confidence on the corner instead of writing letters in confidence on the paper,†for a reason: us writers, us writers not in cahoots with the Big Publishers and the idea controlling leaders of the New World Order they front for, should – unless we have big feet and a web-cam – be practicing the ancient art of gambling rather than writing for those who practice the ancient art of reading words. Then maybe, just maybe, we could make a decent enough income to afford green enough vegetables – and our brains would become active enough to realize that this lit-game is impossible to win. Continue reading
Last weekend saw the annual CLMP Lit Mag Marathon Weekend. The two day event began with a “Magathon” reading at the New York Public Library’s DeWittt Wallace Periodicals Room on Saturday afternoon. It was a pleasure to read with so many other great magazines including: Mandorla, Conjunctions, Diverse Voices Quarterly, Moonshot, Ep;phony, St. Petersburg Review, Bellevue Literary Review, The Literary Review, The Dirty Goat, The Common, A Public Space, NANO Fiction, and  The Cortland Review.
Reading for The Cortland Review. Photo courtesy Cortland Review.
You can listen to a podcast of the event here, courtesy of the New York Public Library.
Reading for PANK. Photo courtesy The Cortland Review.Â
Reading for NANO Fiction. Photo courtesy The Cortland Review.
Sunday afternoon was the literary magazine book sale at HousingWorks Bookstore Cafe, where shoppers could pick up copies of all the participating magazines for only $2. The event started at 11 and [PANK] was all sold out by noon! It was great to see so many people enthusiastic about [PANK]. I was enthusiastic about you too.
Thanks to everyone who came and supported CLMP, [PANK], and HousingWorks.
Gene Albamonte, one of our favorite columnists, has compiled his columns into a book, for sale now, with new material. Details here.
Congratulations to the PANK contributors who were recognized in the Wigleaf Top 50Â and Kristen Iskandrian, in particular, for her work in these very pages.
Jonathan Callahan has work up at The Lifted Brow.
New fiction by Alan Stewart Carl at Used Furniture Review.
Up at Metazen, a story by Sheldon Lee Compton.
There’s a new poem by Dennis Mahagin at Everyday Genius.
DIAGRAM 12.2 includes Claudia Cortese, Dan Gutstein, Gary McDowell, Rose Hunter, and more.
Amber Sparks has fiction at Good Men Project and her short story collection, May We Shed These Human Bodies is available for pre-order.
In the May issue of Thrush, two poems by Eric Burke. He is joined by Suzanne Marie Hopccroft,Amorak Huey, Andrea Kneeland, Tess Patalano, and Karen Skolfield.
The Spring 2012 issue of Third Coast has writing by Aubrey Hirsch, Kristina Marie Darling, and Claire Burgess. Aubrey also has work in Cedars and Whiskey Island and at The Rumpus.
Molly Gaudry has a beautiful list as story in the Spring 2012 issue of Barrelhouse online.
The latest issue of Lumina features Chloe Caldwell among other writers.
Expeditions, by Tracy Gonzalez, is a story you do not want to miss in the 15 year anniversary issue of The Barcelona Review. She also has a story about trolls in the May issue of decomP, where she is joined by Vallie Lynn Watson, Megan Falley, MG Martin, Alexis Pope, Kimberly Ann Southwick, Â and others.
At Fwriction Review, we recommend Sara Lippmann’s Fun and Games and Haunt by Ethel Rohan. You can also enjoy Ethel’s fine writing in Metazen, Booth, and Eclectica.
Newly relaunched Fanzine includes a deleted excerpt from Blake Butler’s Nothing.
The May/June issue of elimae has words by Helen Vitoria, Farren Stanley (with Jessalyn Wakefield), Â Robert Alan Wendeborn, and Eric Beeny.
Everyday Genius brings Berit Ellingsen and Russ Woods.
Lincoln Michel has flash fiction featured at Tin House.
Four poems, from Carrie Murphy’s amazing collection, Pretty Tilt, are featured at Two Serious Ladies.
Northville Review has an awesome new design, and writing by Thomas Kearnes.
Salvatore Pane’s “John Starks,” is the May Web Exclusive for American Short Fiction.
Vanya, by Alex Pruteanu is one of the excellent fiction offerings for May at Guernica.
Francine Rubin’s Geometries is now available from Finishing Line Press. The chapbook contains poems that originally appeared in PANK.
Amber Sparks has a very short story at Matter Press.
New Collagist, new work from Alan Stewart Carl, Matthew Salesses, and Allyson Boggess.
In Bathhouse 9.1, a story from Matt Bell.
Sean Doyle has 100 Holograms in Vol. 1. Brooklyn.