from Tyger Burning Literary Journal Issue 1 (Marick Press, 2010)

Maggie Mangual

On Maggie, as later appeared in Beams.

Deep Red (The Hatchet Murders)

The liquor store in Apparition Poem #1488 is the one at 13th and Chestnut, "center-of-center-city" Philadelphia, right across from the Adelphia House where Mike Land lived in the mid-Aughts. The incident transpired in 2008; Julia Brodsky is the poem's muse. App #1488 is one of the Apparition Poems series with the most impressive diaspora; from Seattle and back to Philly. J.B., coast to coast.

Harrisburg 'Burbs

The story of Jennifer and I, in the Harrisburg 'burbs, on the Main Line, or in Center City Philly and State College, all in the skewered summer of '96, is a long-winded one. This vignette attempts to capture one of the most emotionally affecting moments; but leaves an important element out, as it must. The center of the state of Pennsylvania is covered with a patina of "earth magic"; a sense that the elements of nature are alive and dancing around a usually-fumbling human race. The earth magic was there in the Harrisburg 'burbs, too.

A Match For A Match

Of the two new lyric poems I have out in Ex-Ex-Lit, one of them, "A Match," has a neat counterpart in Apparition Poems. The counterpart is Apparition Poem #1543:

What could be more crass
than a round-trip ticket to
Los Angeles? Nothing but
beds of starlets, flawless in
perfect color harmony but
vomit stains in the toilet, I
don't know what could be
more crass, in fact I don't
know anything anymore, I
think the sky is marvelous.

The sublime gets sucker-punched by the ridiculous, and vice versa.

Perma Multi-Media (Otoliths 16)

This archived version of the Otoliths 16 essay, On the Possibilities of Multi-Media Readings, by Adam Fieled, puts the Philly Free School shows at the Highwire Gallery in 2004/2005 in an entrenched position. 

Julia Brodsky

Mike Land: South Philadelphia: 2004

Dada Circus: Adam Fieled: Outlaw Playwrights: September 24, 1998