In the early 1980s when I transferred to Dalt’s restuarant in Miami as an opening team member, I never imagined I was beginning a life in the restaurant business that would last more than a decade, that I would invent an entire category of health drinks for TGI Friday’s that are still on their menu thirty years later (and for which I would never get credit–ever drink a Silver Medalist?), nor that my experiences in the service industry would comprise enough material to jump-start my writing career. The two years I spent behind Dalt’s bar in Miami, however, would afford me more boredom, horror, and glory than I would ever again experience inside or outside the restaurant business. (more…)
Archive for August, 2011
May You Live in Interesting Times by JP Reese
Posted in Nonfiction on August 27, 2011 | 17 Comments »
Lilting at Windmills — a review of Stacia M. Fleegal’s ‘Versus’ by Jason Lee Miller
Posted in Reviews on August 21, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
At Don Quixote’s house, before his journey, there was nothing more dangerous than a poet. Centuries later, one wonders if a poem can still cause any real movement—if a protest poem read from the steps of a capitol can cause any chip in the marble, or in the windmill across the way. Stacia Fleegal’s Versus acknowledges one’s doubts about the real efficacy of political verse before owning that disbelief and sending out marching orders to poets and artists everywhere. This work is unabashed, bitingly witty, sarcastic and unapologetic—the work of a self-described pacifist feminist that needs a better word than “ballsy”—and the poet’s target would be shocking to a mainstream American audience that likely will never read her: the beloved American mythos itself. (more…)
Хорошо 1.1: Chuvash Folk Songs
Posted in Editorial, Interviews, The New Хорошо on August 16, 2011 | 1 Comment »
English version by Valery Petrovskiy
after Russian translation by Alexei Prokopyev.
Requiems (2)
1/ Eh, the miserable wide world -
There is the only sun, and the only moon.
There is at least some of the wide world around!
Eh, the miserable other world—
There are seven suns, and there are seven moons there,
But no light.
***
The First Хорошо: Interview with Valery Petrovskiy
Posted in Editorial, Fiction, Interviews, The New Хорошо on August 11, 2011 | 3 Comments »
Valery Petrovskiy is the author of numerous short stories—published both in English and in Russian—and IнтимNОе, a collection of short stories in Russian. I made Petrovskiy’s acquaintance online, after reading several of his short stories in English: struck by his symbolic language and compact narratives, I contacted him, and we soon developed a literary friendship. As we corresponded, I became more and more curious about his work, its national context, and the Chuvash Republic, his birthplace and home. In the ensuing interview, Petrovskiy, the first featured author in “The New хорошо,” discusses jazz, publishing, anthropology, and the most comfortable city in the Russian Federation.
~T.M. De Vos
Poetry # 136
Posted in Poetry on August 10, 2011 | 1 Comment »
If you squint hard enough, everything is beautiful–except you. A squinting face is fucking ugly.
Poems. Here. You are welcomed.
Luis Rivas
Henry Ajumeze
Amber Bromer
Poetry Editors, Gloom Cupboard
the girls
By John Grochalski
the girls sit on the bus
making each other laugh
they are doing
strange voices
entertaining each other
caught up in their own world
they are not aware
of the puerto rican boys
watching them giggle
or the old men
watching them kick
their creamy legs
in catholic skirts
the girls
are not aware of their breasts
of mankind’s hunger and cruelty
they are sharing ear buds
and laughing out loud
the girls are sending
text messages to each other
discovering expression
working out a routine
that only they know
they whisper
i love you
to each other
and hold hands
pure
untouched
laughing the whole time
the girls
the evening doesn’t
want them to leave
but when they do
they leave
with cackles of youth and joy
and when they are gone
a cloud settles over the night
those of us remaining
are left with nothing
but this world
the hum of the bus
and the slim hope that something
better awaits us all. (more…)
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