justin taylor does zachary german

homeboy justin taylor lays out zachary german's new book here. it's a remarkable little essay.

this book demands unpacking, y'all

new story up at corium

alongside greats like Stephen Elliott, Sean Lovelace, Adam Moorad, Donna Vitucci, Kathy Fish, Scott Garson, Beth Thomas, Kim Chinquee, Sheldon Compton, Ryan Ridge, Julie Babcock, Eric Beeny, Andrea Kneeland, Christina Murphy, Laura Ellen Scott, Shaindel Beers, Corey Mesler, Sam Rasnake, Rusty Barnes and Cami Park.

hope you enjoy

fantasy

You appear in my fantasies. I will let you have sex with the girlfriend. Who will I be in the fantasies?

I am tired of you in my fantasies. You are the same actor as anyone.

I fantasize that your bodies adhere--about them adhering. I imagine you are talking about me in a strange and new way. I think you might no longer appear in my fantasies in the morning.

In the morning, my fantasy is new. It is no longer you who adheres to the body, but me. But I am adhering to my own body, or somebody whom I cannot imagine. Because I know what is actually happening in my life, and I introduced you in a manner of speaking.

Night, I look at pictures of you and investigate her email.

I imagine you have actually had a son or daughter together. I adopt the thing. It delights me for you both.

Will you please send her more emails?

Send pictures.

I am tired of living this way. I am tired of living with you. I hope you are fired from where you work. I am not sure we are necessarily thinking of the same person.

RIP Barry Hannah, and thank you.

stories

piece up at the2ndhand

piece up at pank with some great folks, like Maureen Alsop, Andrew Borgstrom, Doug Paul Case, Mark Cunningham, Geordie deBoer, Sutherland Douglass, Dave Housley, Stephanie Johnson, Carolyn Kegel, Thomas Patrick Levy, Amy McDaniel, Carrie Murphy, Joseph Murphy, Ani Smith, Janey Smith,

the best and most complete thing I've written in two weeks is:

I know of no way to stop anyone who thinks I am a sexist, except by putting her to sleep.

I lately think: why should I be a writer. There are hundreds of people--some just as young, some further along, some honed and ready--reading the same books as me, thinking what I'm thinking, who write more, write better, and won't indulge in self-reflexive blogposts like this one, who won't give their time and name to the void. Like I will; like I do.

What gives me the right to say: I write fiction. Because I like to think that writing is democratic. Because it's something I do sometimes--even though I haven't learned how to write a successful story; perhaps, with patience and grace, I will--and look, I'm doing it the stupid way, the way that might have abandoned, let shrivel the work itself, the way that pays no heed to the work, to doing the work, to having done work I can account for, and say: I write that. This is writing, and I am somewhere in here. My voice--if there is one--precedes any letting-speak. If I keep going, I might silence myself.

Someone once had the right, the worry, the taking-to-task to say:

supply the word "vulnerable," please, when I pause.