I have been given the opportunity to discuss some of the key inspirations behind my latest book, Basal Ganglia. Works of fiction never just appear from a magical nothing. During the eighteen

I want to spank Diane Sawyer
In fact, I'd pay upwards of
fifty dollars for it, at least
if she was wearing white cotton
panties

In my fantasy
I wonder
I stop and ask,
"Is

We’d been running longer than my memory. Our path was never obstructed, a well-worn corridor. Parallel walls of thorn-thick foliage kept us contained. 

A Theory of Blue 

Telling the truth can be done in an American way, without irony or self-effacement. We begin with the image of a flag, the vastness of space. Suddenly a hole in the sky opens

I like to believe it started with her grandfather’s blessing and a bottle of spray paint—even though it might not have. 

Halfway through The Shining, Jack Nicholson accepts a glass of whiskey from a ghost. It’s by no means the most memorable scene in the movie (or the second most, or the twentieth most). But like

Ars Poetica

I want to say this
simply: I was out
near the river; the trees
were bare, and would be.
I saw no blacksnake
in the undergrowth,
but that doesn’t mean
it wasn’t there,

And in the winter I traveled by ship to a land of copper domes and cobble roads, of shops glowing beyond frosted windows, of lampposts capped with mounds of snow, where I fell in love with a girl with an abnormal face. 

Because I can tell it's going to be a crappy day at work I dress up as Virgin Mary with my blue silk dress and white head scarf and lemon drop halo that got coffee spilled on it so it's a little warped, but it will do for one day of selling shoes.

Ochlockonee

Sawtooth palms, and the hymns of
a leftover Palm Sunday
lard the air with the gentleness
of some imagined Christ:

see the hand reaching from
the coloring book, the heavy

When my friend is upset because someone posted
about them on the internet in a way they aren’t
sure is ironic, it makes me wish I wish I lived in
olden times. Shit was real back then.

If

I

The man—Grandpa's friend—said,

Welcome to Heaven on Earth.

He wore overalls and climbed in

through the window.

Mary Kay, seven maybe, staying

with Grandpa over

When Ettore was a boy, he dreamed of puppets hovering over his bed. 

THE SKULL OF A UNICORN

It “might” be a hoax.
That’s what they’re reporting. 
“Might” be a hoax. 
Not is a hoax.
Not definitely, not obviously,
not clearly, certainly,

What came next was one long show: broken strings, smashed microphones, guitar solos without boundaries or purpose, house parties with bands in the kitchen and bands in the attic, missing kick drum pedals, stolen snares, songs we couldn’t figure out how to end and we drifted inside them, lost within our own imaginations.

like when I stand with the kitchen scissors in the citygarden, / thunderloving a green skinned fruit. // He hears my kisses, a wall grabber, the neighbors’ dog / left out in the cold.      here’s to his / soft wet nose      and a part of me / that bleeds dogblood, impure.

Z’s phone rang. He picked it up and said hello. The person on the other end asked if he was Dr. Schlesinger. After a pause, Z said, “Yes, this is he.” 

That statement, of course, being a lie. 

We crowd around the flame, we extend our naked hands, we feel the joints in our fingers warm and crack. The smoke stains our jackets and hats with its smell.

Gabriel Blackwell’s been busy. In the past two years he’s released three books, two from Civil Coping Mechanisms, and one from Noemi Press: a book of essays and stories called Critique of Pure

1. Prayer, according to the Encyclopedia of Occult and Parapsychology, is a “means for humans to make contact with the divine.”

2. The verb “pray” is a variant on the classical Latin word

I have been trying very hard / to consider the window’s pane, / but life keeps occurring beyond it. / Two gangs who were firing .45s / at each other across our busy street / inadvertently shot a lady in the forehead.

“Hello ma’am. I presume you are the lady of the house. Please allow me to introduce myself. I am Mr. Basal and I believe that I have something you’ve lost – something you’d like to get back,” he

A lady doesn’t need makeup unless it’s the war paint she’s putting on to end me. 

Juicy

            “This album is dedicated to all the teachers that told me I'd never amount to nothin'”

                        - The Notorious B.I.G.

This is the song that

White light from the television brought me here.

Everything in this store is very far away from everything else in this store.

I pass razors and products containing ephedrine or

Yesterday, Barry Graham favored us with his Top 10 Cities to Get Drunk In, numbers 5-1, and last week he gave us 10-6 and a series of guest-additions. Below are a second set of guest entries from