Here’s an excerpt:
The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 29,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 11 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
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I had the pleasure of recently attending a book launch in Dublin in The Winding Stair, an independent bookshop where books were hung like wind chimes or dream-catchers in the window, exceptional for its picture-window view of one of the capital city’s most attractive landmarks, the Ha’penny Bridge. Garlanded with icicle-blue Christmas lights, the view stretched over the dark waters of the Liffey, reflecting the festive lights back at us on the double, while inside the store it was warm and companionable with red wine flowing freely; the air rose with the melodies of flute and harp in accompaniment to a poet’s reading. It was one of those evenings where people say, ‘You should have been there’. It was a brief reading but one that would leave you with a desire to read more. They say good wines don’t travel, that ambience is inseparable from the experience – but Michèle Vassal’s A Taste for Hemlock is one of those rare exceptions. Continue Reading »
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I was standing in front of Bar 107 on 4th Street in Downtown Los Angeles, smoking. A man approaches me, admits he’s homeless and asks if I would like him to write me a poem for a modest contribution. The idea struck me as sad and beautiful (although, admittedly, if you are going to offer your services, writing poetry for strangers is probably not the most sought after service; maybe if he could sew or cook, he’d be better off, but, alas, some talents you do not ask for; they follow you forever like an unwanted child). Continue Reading »
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Issue 129 of fabulous fiction brings you great distractions. From life’s misfortunes to frightful fortunes, these stories take you away from the here and now. Sit back and let Neil Robertson, Andrea Danowski, and Eric Hawthorn take you on an out-and-back that may just leave you out there.
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Fortune Cookie
Eric Hawthorn
That woman across the restaurant—dark hair, eyeliner, velvet blouse—yeah, her. She’s been watching you for the last 20 minutes with a mix of curiosity and desire.
Thomas sits more upright in the booth of the Chinese restaurant. He reads his fortune again, just to be sure: dark hair… velvet blouse… watching you
This may be the most specific fortune cookie ever.
The restaurant resembles an airplane cabin. On the other end of this noisy fuselage, the woman in question—Velvet, he’s named her—is sitting with her friends. She and her friends are finishing their meal and laughing about something. Lacking anything better to do, Thomas polishes his glasses on his faded Iron Maiden t-shirt. With his glasses off, the woman is a velvety blur. Glasses on, she’s—incredible.
Thomas works to fit his glasses more comfortably along his temples. He needs new glasses. Not a new prescription, but a new frame. As Mother puts it, he’s “gained a little weight around his head.”
Thomas doesn’t usually read his fortune—he’s just here for the orange chicken—and he only read it this time because he’s waiting for Mother. Still, he’s never known a fortune cookie to display such awareness. How could a fortune cookie know who’s looking at him, let alone what she’s wearing? The fortune is 100 percent correct: dark hair, eyeliner, velvet blouse (skin-tight, plunging neckline, Thomas confirms with another glance). Maybe some bored members of the kitchen staff enjoy spying on the patrons, printing out custom fortunes and slipping them into the cookies right before the waitress, who’s probably in on it, brings them out with a quartered orange and their check. But if that were the case, how would these pranksters know which cookie Thomas would open? There were two: one for him and one for Mother, who’s using the ladies room. Thomas is dying to open Mother’s fortune cookie, but she’ll want to do that when she gets back.
Thomas reads his fortune once more:
That woman across the restaurant—dark hair, eyeliner, velvet blouse—yeah, her. She’s been watching you for the last 20 minutes with a mix of curiosity and desire.
Curiosity and desire? What does that even look like? Thomas imagines Velvet gazing in his direction. Once they lock eyes, she’ll do something really provocative, like scoop an ice cube from her water and roll it across her tongue (which is pierced, Thomas decides), the melting ice dripping past her so-red lipstick and down her chin and neck, over her bosom.
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The leaves are turning, the winds of fall blow colder and yet the protests in America are staying put despite eviction notices, arrests, one death and disagreeable weather. Poets who do not write poetry sometimes make better poets than the ones that write as if it were a career. The collection in this issue shows the vast range of the poet’s mind: from blunt, cold realism to soft and cushy surrealism.
Fuck the world.
Yours truly,
Luis Rivas
Henry Ajumeze
Amber Bromer
The Editors of Poetic Gloom
—
All that fall
By Richy Campbell
In the midst of the
puddle, where she had been pushed
Mary leaned forward
to face him, as moist
brown countries soak into her
legging cloth. She sits,
supporting self with
palms, eyes yellowing, serpent
like. Billy watched as
arms grew from her back
and purged down into her throat,
deeper, reaching for
her spine which crashed to
the puddle like a tower
into a lake; skin
floating above the
pave. In noon wind, skin-Mary
wraps around his small
head like a dispelled
shopping bag, and as shaking
recedes, arms going
limp, she lets go, and
her spine enters where left
to fill the floating
flesh-phantom. She stands
over him, thick sweat lacquers
the yellowing, air
deprived stripes on his
forehead; his hands on knees, spit
seeping through teeth on
the granite. She smiles
before leaning over close to
whisper in his ear
stands, leaving him, ropes
of phlegm swing and rattle in
his throat with wheezes.
Bio: Richy Campbell is writer and musician based in Staffordshire, England. He has been published in a few journals and works as a freelance indexer.
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Welcome to the non-fiction section of the Gloom Cupboard, temporarily edited by yours truly, Alan Garvey. There’s a right grab-bag of writings selected for you, from the lives of ordinary people – take your pick: sobriety is under the microscope for an estimation of its worth, there’s a piece examining attitudes towards breast cancer and those who are enduring its effects, we also have the first published piece by a new author detailing some of the worst things she’s ever seen, heard, and done, and an interview with Australian poet and cartoonist Mark Niehus. Enjoy. Continue Reading »
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If you must know, Paul Rogov is from Minsk, Belarus, lives in southern California, and will blog for you about war, art, and trauma. But he’s not giving up his biography. Not that it’s important. With narratives populated by men with Saussurean scars, failed fathers, and gawky boy soldiers disfigured by adrenaline, how much could any individual’s biography matter? If, as Kierkegaard describes, we become ourselves through our actions, then Rogov’s characters determine themselves, and their relationships, through their traumas—self-inflicted or otherwise. “Trauma unites people,” explains Rogov, the third author featured in the “The New Xорошо,” as he weighs in on spirituality, femininity, and the impossibility of shooting heroin like a gentleman. ~T.M. De Vos
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