Jesse [jes-se]

--noun (pl. Jesses)
1. Someone--typically male--who invents popcorn subs at The Subway six days per week, 52 weeks per year. Jesses may or may not smoke cigarettes and be good listeners.
2. A friend.
3. An arch-nemesis or lover of a Noah, or a Noah-Bitch.

--verb (intransitive)
1. To invent a popcorn sub: For years, I Jessed in isolation
2. To defeat a Flying Demon: In 1862, a Thai Noah found himself unable to Jesse.

--verb (transitive)
1. To mock a Sivens: Guys, quit Jesseing me!

--adjective
1. To be an expert at making sandwiches for The Subway. *See The Subway.

---

Matt [matt]

--noun (pl. Matts)
1. A man or boy who steals alcohol and/or homework from people. He may or may not be drunk at the time of theft: Help! A Matt stole this boy's homework!
2. A philosophy scholar.
3. A relationships scholar.
4. A good friend of Papas. Papas and Matts may or may not have the same mother, depending on the schematics of Dad-History for the Papa/Matt complex in question.

--verb (intransitive)
1. To drink alcohol: have you been Matting?
2. To smoke smoke cigarettes.
2. To study philosophy: have you been Matting?
3. To study relationships.
4. To study the philosophy of relationships.

--verb (transitive)
1. To befriend a Papa: Papa, I am not Matting with you.
2. To be hostile toward a Sivens. *See Sivens.

--adjective
1. To be drunk: are you Matt? Look at me. Are you?
2. To be belligerent.

---

Dad-History [dad-his-tory]

--noun (pl. Dads)
1. The totality of fathers who have disappointed a particular man or boy. In rare cases, the subject of a Dad-History may occur as a girl. Such cases are to be forgotten immediately upon inception. *See father.
2. The essential link between a Matt and Papa, or a Noah and Jesse. Without a Dad-History, either pair will find itself extremely vulnerable to a Noah's Mom (Aunt Mara) attack. *See Aunt Mara.

---

Question: If I hypothetically had a ~15k word manuscript--let's just say I had one of these, this fact kept discreet between you and me--would anyone publish a novella so short, or would I just go ahead and serialize the child?

Any thoughts to ease my mind. Hypothetically. Let's just say.

When I was little, I knew a boy who used a wheelchair instead of legs. When we turned into men, he moved away, to Wisconsin, a safe and snowy state, and brought his wheelchair along. We would sit on his house's red slate roof and toss rocks, lift our legs up under the gutter and flutter them back and forth like wings. I carried him there, through the rancid rotted attic, his small broken body bent in my strong arms. Up there, the wind tearing at our hair, we would stare at the blue sky and scream. In my head, I would pummel clouds to the ground with the beat of my bony brittle fists.

new stuff online

piece in the latest smokelong here

excerpt from my novella on spork here

interview with the great rudy wilson here

story at the catalonian review

i have a story at the catalonian review here

it's a short one, no worries

reading RAY backwards

i have an essay on reading barry hannah's classic RAY backwards, on HTMLGIANT, here

hey assholes

would someone please respond to my blog posts?

it would make me feel happy and real.

excerpt from novella-in-progress

picked this bit at random:

Fletch's house I won't describe, everything is so goddamn clean in there. The bathrooms were dressed with red eyelets, the living room with hoary castered chairs. The rotted brick walls were written with the black of cigarette ash. The shingled roof tucked in a steel-grey trim. I don't know much about houses. I suppose it was a bungalow. What little I do know, I have learned from reading books until things have spoken their natures out to me. My head invites a clear picture. My head and heart both go wild when this occurs.

I have spent long, hot days driving by that house to see how no one was home.

Sometimes I took the car when I wasn't meant to and it was a disaster.

I tried hard to pass my love around that house. My love teetered and someday it just nodded off.

This whole time I was afraid. I thought Fletch would leave me, weak and hollow, for Orlando. I had trouble staying in my bed at night. I wandered the house, I would open and close doors. I would yell through hallways, my hurting voice gone unheard. I developed trouble breathing. Sometimes I awoke hitting the fingers of a fist into my chest. In my dreams I hurt myself and other people. I developed lesions on my arms from so much of my dreaming. Langston wrapped herself around myself and asked about it. I said problems at work. There were problems. Certainly, there were problems, but I couldn't make my mouth stop lying. Langston worried herself asleep. I held her hair and spoke gibberish into it. Then I walked the halls some more. I would fold my nose into windows and wait for the sky to change.

"the red truck"

has anybody read this book?

i am fifty pages in, but would it be crazy if i preemptively lauded the red truck by rudy wilson as one of the most unique and extraordinary books i've read?

the book is majestic. the book is a little peter markus, a little barry hannah, and absolutely there is nothing else like it.

i'll snip something out:

Alan jumped. His shortness ran, his shadow crouched toward a tree that got two small bullet holes in it, one that came through the boy's head, coated red. The blood was on his neck, it dripped down there, past the sun-brown to the sun-missed whiteness of his body that pulsed and then stopped. he had tiny hairs on the nape of his neck and on his back. His mother ran her fingers there. He lay, now he curled up last into a circle on the ground. His lips touched the dust in the grass. In his throat was a lump of air connected by nothing to a point of being.

how am i supposed to respond whenever people say things like 'peace' and 'word' at me

recent writing

lately it's been rejection after rejection. i got a longer story accepted by night train. but the coldness of form rejections has stymied my writing, trapped me in my head a little.

i'm working slowly on a novella. it feels like stringing together flashes, and the experience is sometimes nauseating; this one might be doomed. i am constantly worried that i won't be able to make it long enough for book form, which seems extremely vain.

is worrying about length vain? do you ever feel pressured to lengthen? perhaps it's just another form of inspiration, which is itself a vain anguish.

what do you think about multiple narrators in a work? is it outdated? should 'outdated' even apply to aesthetics? no, it shouldn't, but it inevitably does. i suppose i am not brave; i guess my voice is just weakening. but multiple voices: how do you manage them? what if the voices sound the same? do they have to be radically different? what is the nature of "voice" in an artwork?

etc.

"correction" by thomas bernhard

i don't think i'll ever finish it

but i knew it was about heidegger, i fucking knew it.