Jun 23

JD Monroe reviews THE DEAD AND THE DESPERATE by Dan Denton

first published at https://www.i94bar.com/reviews/books/3126-disaffected-dan-denton-must-be-your-new-fave-author

Disaffected? Dan Denton must be your new fave author

The Dead and The Desperate By Dan Denton (Roadside Press)

Way back in the New Wave/Post punk era, one of my only friends was a kid with a very similar name to mine. He was really into Depeche Mode and Tubeway Army, and he had a real hardk nock life with a dead father, abusive brother and corrections officer mother,

We met at some troubled teen diversion program. He knew some Kung Fu and kinda became my protector, as I was a scrawny-ass make-up wearing Ramone who was always targeted by bully dumb-fuck Ohio males for wearing eyeliner and being like totally into Bowie and the NY Dolls.

I always tried to get the kid to work on his keyboards so he could join my dirty punk band, I thought that might give him a productive creative outlet and elevate our sorta stupidly primitive Ramones/Cramps sound. He dabbled with it for awhile, but would always get sorta distracted by girls. He saw the two of us as rivals, whereas, I saw us as more like brothers. I really loved the guy.

I remember the first time he tried to kill himself. My own first love who looked like Brigitte Bardot went to visit him in the psych ward (he was always sorta chasing whatever girl I liked.) He hung out with the preppies at the downtown high school and sorta sucked up to the Thai immigrant “Karate Kid” Catholic school bullies.

At least three times, i relocated him outta that town, cause I understood innately that anybody with any sort of unique creative spark was just gonna get dragged through the gauntlet back there if they refused to join the military, it was gonna be nothing but bullshit pinballing back and forth between factory speed, DUI’s, churchified never good enough, forgive my sins hallelujah and the psych ward again. Always more Judge Judy fire and brimstone punishments and no reward forthcoming, ever. Ohio is where they manufacture the corrections guards, you know what I mean? Just brute Tarzan dumbfuckery and 24 Budweisers a day, “Guns & Ammo” magazines, hunting, Hooters, meat lover’s pizza, and NFL forever, Amen.

For some crazy psychological reasons unbeknownst to me, he always went back to his hometown tormentors, maybe like, better the devil you know or something? He was a real good lookin’ kid, with a fabulous poofy new wave haircut. Sorta like a cross between Bono and that Cory Hart “Sunglasses At Night” dude. So he did get to sorta be the big fish, local girl magnet well into the grunge era, before losing his hair. That was another reason he probably stayed there. He was always getting a lot of girl attention, but man. I knew it was not gonna go good for any working class weirdo in that Fascist-ass tank plant town.

He ended up killing himself a couple years ago, ya know he just never found any peace or real love and it was always another probation violation, or bad breakup, another spiral of some kind whenever he quit his factory job in another fit of artistic fervor, you know the old Clash lyric, “No good for man to work in cages, hits the town and drinks his wages”? That was his bad luck story for decades. Once you’re in the system, it’s nigh impossible to escape their sticky traps, ya know? His grandparents gave him a trailer but he’d work for like three days, then crash for two, then it was always back to the grind and you can never work hard enough to please all the Ohio women folk who absorbed all the Judge Judy/Sally Jesse Rapahel daytime TV propaganda in the 90’s about how men all need to get another job, a third job, job, job, job, “J-O-B” Mcjobby job job forever, cause they don’t want no scrubs and all that capitalism slavery bullshit.

Another one of our high school buddies was a barber/old school O.G. real hip hop battle rapper and he was dying of lung cancer but still trying to hold down a minimum wage hairnet and polyester shirt job at Bob Evans, a hick breakfast joint, cause the womenfolk back there kept telling him he did not deserve love if he was not working two jobs or more. If you are poor, you are always supposed to be on the clock, working, ya know, mopping. “ABC=Always Be Cleaning”. “If you have time to lean you have time to clean”, “If you wanna get started on changing those urinal cakes and hit the baseboards of the men’s and women’s restrooms, that’d be super”, they tell you work will set you free, but that’s just some grotesque Nazi lie.

I used to have to take piss tests for dishwashing jobs back there, you know? The bloody wet apron and hairnet and all that shit, while the rich dudes sat at the bar talking about when they were on high school sports teams and looking for approval from racist old coaches. If you stay in one of those hellholes, you will always be forced to slave and eat shit and grind and grovel, they will chain you to the hot hose and make you scrub in the basement of the tumor factory until you keel over and maybe say you were “a hard worker”. That ain’t much heaven to me, really. You never even make enough to do anything much but barely get by-everybody has hardcore addictions, they come with the gig of being born working class.

I don’t blame nobody for wanting to seek out some kinda fleeting relief from the gruelling, non stop agonies of their meaningless, deadend existence there. Scrub and scrub and mop and beg….All so you can become some kinda Employee Of The Month someday, or get promoted to like, lead snitch/”crew chief” or some shit, “team leader”, or like, “compliance officer”. Like that’s something anyone should ASPIRE To. So my rapper friend was mopping the kitchen of Bob Evans and collapsed there one day and was finally relocated to hospice where he died.

Ohio’s a real bad place for sensitive artistic human beings-  don’t go to Ohio, it’ll kill ya, or turn you into a cop, not much in between unless you’re like a born rich kid. I used to be pen pals with this underground punk goddess from L.A., and she used to encourage me to write a memoirs, I took a couple stabs at it, but always felt like it was “too soon” cause I never really wanted to cause harm by telling all my doomed friend’s stories, they all had kids and parents and we had a bad, battered, bruising, bloody youth.

Eventually, that lady publisher turned me on to some amazing poets-a guy named Rich Ferguson who was so gifted he made me reassess all my own song lyrics and shit, and this dude, Dan Denton, the author of the essential, “100 A Week Motel” and also this latest one, that’s miraculously even better, “The Desperate & The Dead”. I think he’s maybe funnier than Bukowski in some ways, mainly because he’s so courageous and self incriminating and all his descriptions of dive bars and dead-end Ohio factory life are just so vivid and poignant and instantly recognizable to me.

This poet soul brother, Dan Denton has a big blue collar heart and is smart as hell, and he’s been chewed up for decades by the same relentlessly damaging Honky Death Machine that killed all my childhood friends off, one by one. If you ever read Mark Manning’s (also known as Zodiac Mindwarp) laugh-out-loud books like “Fucked By Rock The Unimaginable Confessions Of Zodiac Mindwarp”, “Get Your Cock Out”, or “Crucify Me Again”, or ever read long passages of Hunter S. Thompson’s “Kingdom Of Fear” out loud to your loved ones, or if you resonated with the outlaw comedy of Bill Hicks, this unflinching truth teller, Dan Denton is your favorite new writer. He is my kindred spirit and even wrote me into the book.

He’s a genius and a semi reformed fuck-up, the unlikely product of the Divided Slaves Of Amnesia’s midwestern slavery plantations. I’m grateful he quit the factory life to be a full time badass.. Get his books as soon as you can, he’s got Eugene Deb’s soulpower and a rock ‘n’ roll heart, like a motherfucker!

Jun 22

Alan Catlin reviews INNOCENT POSTCARDS by John Pietaro

first published at misfitmagazine.net

John Pietaro, Innocent Postcards: poetry ciphers, verse, Roadside Press, distributed by Magical Jeep, also available on Amazon, 2024, 87 pages, $15

Moving back and forth throughout the Cold War years to the present, Pietaro’s unusual but affecting collection effectively renders a state of mind that was dominated by Cold War politics.  I remember as a young child watching a goon from Wisconsin conducting a mock trial of sorts as chair of the House Unamerican Activities and thinking this mealy mouth demagogue was someone to despise as was everything he stood for. I was maybe 7 then and I didn’t know what a demagogue was but I sure as hell could recognize a hypocritical, two-faced liar in a way only kids can.  Nothing that happened since has changed my original impressions.

I grew up doing atomic air raid drills, ducking and covering under desks or assembling in the hallway where there were no windows, wondering how was this going to survive as we lived well within the blast range of an atomic bomb drop on NYC. Those were the years of above ground testing in the desert, exposing troops to the aftershocks and the radiation just to see what would happen. Those were years of naivety and innocence and the worst kind of “we don’t know what the hell we are doing” years. Not really. And we still don’t. I used to think the MAGA folks wanted to return to the 50s, assuming it was the 1950s they aspired to. I was right only about the 50s, though recent events have shown I had the wrong century. Pietaro knows all this, lived through most of it and gives us a chaotic representation of the life and times of the Cold War era.  As Ed Sanders said in an informal discussion 15 or so years ago, “I’ll put my FBI file up against anyone’s.” By which he meant size and depth. And a few years later introducing a Fugs poem/song “CIA Man” that has the line “someone is tapping my phone/line….”: he claims, they are still tapping mine. The implication was the 50s/60s  aren’t over yet. I fear he may be right. Innocent Postcards is a book for anyone who shares the same misgivings.

INNOCENT POSTCARDS by John Pietaro is available at https://www.magicaljeep.com/product/postcards/160

Jun 21

Alan Caltin reviews DISPOSABLE DARLINGS by Todd Cirillo

first published in misfitmagazine.net

Todd Cirillo, Disposable Darlings, Roadside Press, distributed by Magical Jeep Distribution and available on Amazon, 2024, 84 pages, $15

Reading Cirillo put me in mind of working in the neighborhood bar and hanging out with the regulars. When I dedicate a book, as I often have,  “to the regulars as they made life bearable and you know who you are,” these dedications were not idle or facetious gestures. Over 25 years I worked the last bar, regulars saved my butt, made me laugh, never failed to tip, bought me drinks when I was drinking, hung out, and provided moral support when I needed it. While Todd was not literally one of those guys, I can see him as simpatico, as a guy who would have been someone you could shoot the shit with, talk sports, or writing, or just about anything else that came to mind. Needless to say, his poems have the same kind of easy, vernacular feel to them. None of these are overly literary or self-conscious in a way that makes you feel like you are being talked down to. When he references himself, it’s as much to make you laugh along with him or share his pain. In short, Cirillo is a regular guy and that his high praise where I come from.

Disposable Darlings by Todd Cirillo is available here https://www.magicaljeep.com/product/darlings/158

Jun 20

Alan Catlin reviews ALL IN A PRETTY LITTLE ROW by Dan Provost

first published in misfitmagazine.net

Dan Provost, All in a Pretty Little Row, Roadside Press, Magical Jeep Distribution, available on Amazon, 196 pages, 2023, $15

All in a Pretty Little Row, collects ten of Provost’s chapbooks published over the past 20 years. Some of these are rarely seen, extremely limited editions, so this recent trend by prolific poets to reissue previously obscure editions is a positive one. Dan tells us quite a bit of who he is: a common man, albeit a large one, as in a former football player (lineman), finding himself working jobs that require assertive personalities, though he is not overtly aggressive himself. Quite the opposite, in fact.  He was a kind of disciplinarian in a home for troubled youths, which is euphemism for a half way house on the road to hell/incarceration for crimes to be committed as an adult. These are vivid poems showing a means-well idea for dealing with youth in crisis that, in real life, rarely ends well. Having known people in this field, with the exact same job, who used to say, “The kids are getting bigger and tougher. One kid has a brother who is an NFL lineman but this kid is bigger and meaner. I’m getting older but the restraints are the same and they still work but it would have been a good idea to get out a long time ago.” Coaching football for 24 years was a much better alternative to thumb restraints.

Outside of work Provost is drawn to working class bars, unhappy women and bouts of insomnia that leads to more drinking,

“The sea still parts
ways with the waves
at 6:04 A.M., after an
all-night drinking binge.

Looking to the water for mental comfort

I still seem to be losing the battle.”
( from “Epiphany at Age 41”)

No doubt Provost is of a melancholic temperament, a borderline severe depressive at times, but beneath the minor keys of these odes to daily life, is the heart of a compassionate man who is driven to write, to clarify, to make the best of it, and to move on.

All in a Pretty Little Row by Dan Provost is available at https://www.magicaljeep.com/product/row/150

Jun 09

“A Circle Amuses Itself”: A Review of Gregory Corso: Ten Times a Poet by R. M. Corbin

“… he clarified his intention, which was “beat” as beatific, as in “dark night of the soul,” or “cloud of unknowing,” the necessary beatness of darkness that proceeds opening up to light, egolessness, giving room for religious illumination.”—Allen Ginsberg

In some ways, Gregory Corso represented a darkness within a darkness: a beat within the Beat. His place within the inner circle of the Beat Generation (those he called the “Beat Daddies”: Kerouac, Burroughs, Ginsberg, and himself) was undeniable, but he’s frequently left out of the movement’s critical considerations. Who can say why? Ultimately, such critical summations and anthologies often operate as autopsies for literary movements: attempts to articulate some kind of unity or clarity out of the naturally disparate materials of a generation, a life, an oeuvre.

Gregory Corso: Ten Times a Poet, a new elegiac collection of essays and poetry released by Roadside Press, is at its best when it skirts any attempt to make Corso or his generation sensible. At its worst, it succumbs to a desire to elevate Corso into posthumous order or sensibility.

The collection’s opening essays are perhaps the most egregious examples of the latter, run through with causal platitudes (“We can only grasp Corso’s success by understanding the trauma of his childhood” [11]) and unapologetic psychoanalytic assumptions (“His memory of childhood became synonymous with his memory of defying authority” [18]). It may be that such examples are merely indicative of the biographical fallacy within literary criticism—that the narrative order afforded a dead poet cannot ever map cleanly onto the fundamentally immanent and elusive nature of their work.

This fallacy is particularly egregious in context given Corso’s own living desire to upend logic and explication. Consider the following anecdote from Kirby Olson’s “An Iconoclast at Naropa,” also in the collection:

Someone suggested we walk to a bar about two blocks away. At the bar, [Corso] began to talk about geometry in poetry. He discussed the poem by Jacques Prevert in which the disciples’ plates at the Last Supper are said to have been behind their heads. Corso began to talk about circles, and mentioned a line by Hans Arp. ‘A circle amuses itself.’ He then moved on to a discussion of Edgar Allan Poe’s poem about a moat with shadows that are infinitely deep. He said that nothing finite can be infinite. He looked at me then, and said, ‘You’re going to ask WHY? Aren’t you? WHY? WHY? WHY?’ (119)

The self-amusing circle and the infinite shadows are effective metaphors for the immense risk tacitly present in any posthumous literary-critical effort. The finitude Corso cites may be read as the finitude of life itself, out from which the poet (and his critic) stretches hopelessly toward an imagined infinity. Biographical and psychoanalytic causality are the crudest forms of the circle—uncritical and artless invocations of infinity and totality—and therefore the points at which this collection falls short. Gerald Nicosia said it best in his “Poem for Gregory Corso’s Ashes in the English Cemetery in Rome”:

That only the truly

And forever dead

Would dream of

Digging up

Someone who is still alive

Underground. 

Luckily, these engagements are few and far between. Disinterested historicity soon gives way to something more intimate.

What ultimately makes this collection special are the personal narratives from those who knew Corso and have no interest in making sense of his life or his work. Each of these more effective essays offer a little window into a moment in the poet’s life: his charged visits to heroin dealers, his comical and erudite poetry readings, his world travels, his impromptu lectures on classical art around the dinner table, his insistence on reading the works of young poets… these fragments of a life steeped in art, tragedy, and a tenuous balance of street-level empathy and bon vivant elitism feel the most true to the man himself. More importantly, they feel true to the fragments and paradoxes of his work.

Robert Yarra’s “Gregory Gave Me the World” is a fine example of this even finer mode of remembrance. Perhaps it has something to do with Yarra’s somewhat outsider status within the world of poetry: when he first met Corso, Yarra was an immigration lawyer. Yarra quickly became a kind of patron to Corso, learning to “take the horrible with the sublime”:

I had dough and never turned him down for a fix. I remember walking into the office waiting-room and seeing Gregory among my bewildered clients, head down, sweat rolling off his nose, suffering, junk-sick but very patient. I quickly slid him a twenty and, without a word, he was out the door. (152)

Such an image is important and moving: a remembrance of the criminal and humane aspects of the poet. But this image only finds its higher articulation—its place among a synchronous and impossible whole—in a later anecdote regarding the night Corso met Allen Ginsberg:

Gregory told me that, in his profound innocence, he asked Allen if he would like to watch a man and woman screw. Gregory told Allen that every day at the same time he watched a man and women have sex through an apartment window and would masturbate. Gregory suggested that Allen go with him and check it out and masturbate too. By some fantastic twist of fate, it was Allen and a woman screwing that Gregory had been watching! Allen was gay, of course, but he had been seeing a psychiatrist who advised that he could “be cured” of his homosexuality by having regular heterosexual intercourse. By the synchronicity that brought Gregory and Allen together, Gregory first knew Allen through the window. (153)

One inflection of this synchronicity has to do with the stated nature of the Beat Generation: a movement which Jay Jeff Jones called “a criminal enterprise in itself” (36). It can be easy to forget that a criminal element is always reflective of a larger system of order: the language and culture of the street are always dialects of the state: chaos is simply a different pronunciation of order. The Beats, and Corso no less, brought literary and bio-mythological representations of the material relationships between the part (the lint brushed off a lapel, the ashes of the soldier, the woman screaming in the asylum) and the whole (the epic hero, the whitewashed Whitman).

But this synchronicity transcends materiality, which may speak to our opening inquiry: why is Corso’s name not carried on the same lips that would invoke Ginsberg, Kerouac, or Burroughs? And, subsequently: why does a critical and elegiac work about Corso run up against the risk of banalities of historicity? I feel that Corso’s own poetry, sometimes highlighted in this collection, offers not an answer but at least a meditation in response:

Existence as seen & felt by godhead

manhead analogous to it—

i.e., each part reflects the whole

god mind the mirror-man mind the reflection

each mind is like a cell in god mind

each cell of man mind

 

The whole can never be given whole

part cannot give whole (238)

Arriving at the end of Gregory Corso: Ten Times a Poet means arriving at the conclusion that there is no clear image of Gregory Corso or his Beat Generation. Biographers can psychoanalyze, literary critics can enact their exegesis, and archivists can unearth new details of a man’s life… but the poet and his works cannot be crucified on a cross of any such design. Read this collection—enjoy it as old friends around a fire relate memories of the dead. At the end of things that is all for which we can ask.

Gregory Corso: Ten Times a Poet (Roadside Press) is available for purchase at https://www.magicaljeep.com/product/corso/165 or most online retailers.

May 24

Susan Ward Mickelberry reviews: These Many Cold Winters of the Heart by Ryan Quinn Flanagan

Ryan Quinn Flanagan’s These Many Cold Winters of the Heart begins with an epigraph from Emily Dickinson “I am out with lanterns looking for myself,” a perfect depiction of this collection. You will be riveted from the opening poem, “I Grew Up in a Brewery Town,” where the Molson plant closes down but “people survived, they usually do” although “everyone had to pay for their beer now/and they were drinking more than ever” to the powerful “wonderful bloody magic” in “The Butterfly Hunter” near the end. Flanagan has no shortage of acute observations on everything from a humorous pair of crows and the homelessness of tents in winter, to Bob Dylan and Lawrence of Arabia. A plentiful array of humorous, everyday usually irreverent pieces, also stunning moments of awe, and sometimes addressing tough subjects without flinching, from unexpected violence and death, to family mental illness, the loss of a brother, and the suicide of a childhood friend and an uncle and its after-effects. These latter poems will sneak up on you and take your breath away. Stylistically, Flanagan is firmly in control, breaking rules when he feels like it, sliding into a staccato surrealism, and dropping back into more traditional form when he swerves toward the profound. And he does that beautifully. A favorite poem “A Giant Bear Jumps Up the Rockface Outside Sudbury, Ontario,” begins “You never realize how helpless you would actually be/if the cards came calling.” I highly recommend These Many Cold Winters of the Heart and look forward to having the book in hand.—Susan Ward Mickelberry, author of And Blackberries Grew Wild

Cover Art by Shona Flanagan
Purchase your copy at https://www.magicaljeep.com/product/winters/172

May 03

Roadside Press Unveils Gregory Corso: Ten Times a Poet, an Unprecedented Tribute

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Roadside Press Unveils Gregory Corso: Ten Times a Poet, an Unprecedented Tribute

Release Date: June 20, 2024

Available via magicaljeep.com, Amazon, Ingram, and Major Online Book Retailers

In the annals of American literature, the Beat Generation remains a luminous chapter, resonating with the harmonious blend of rebellion and creativity that defined an era. After Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William Burroughs, Gregory Corso emerges as the fourth “Daddy” of this socio-literary movement. His life, like his poetry, was a tempestuous journey, marked by resilience, defiance, and an insatiable thirst for expression.

Gregory Corso: Ten Times a Poet, published by Roadside Press, stands as a monumental homage to this enigmatic figure of American letters. Authored by luminaries of the Beat Generation including Anne Waldman, Gerald Nicosia, and Neeli Cherkovski, among others, this book transcends mere biography, offering a kaleidoscopic view of Corso’s life and legacy. Edited by Leon Horton, this collection weaves together the diverse voices of those who knew Corso and his work intimately.

From his turbulent childhood in New York to his sojourns in Clinton Prison, Greece, and Rome, Corso’s odyssey is chronicled in vivid detail. With contributions ranging from memoirs and interviews to literary criticism and poetry, Gregory Corso: Ten Times a Poet provides a multifaceted exploration of Corso’s enduring influence.

Douglas Field, author of Walking in the Dark: James Baldwin, My Father, and Me, reads the book as a celebration and exploration of “the contradictions and brilliance” of Corso. Victor Bockris, acclaimed author of The Burroughs-Warhol Connection, hails it as a testament to Corso’s dual nature as both a wild man and a serious intellect.

Critics and scholars alike have lauded the book’s comprehensive portrayal of Corso’s life, from its gritty realism to its transcendent beauty. Jim Burns, contributor to Beat Scene, praises its unflinching honesty, while Gerald Nicosia, author of Memory Babe: A Critical Biography of Jack Kerouac, heralds it as the most significant contribution to Corso scholarship to date.

Gregory Corso: Ten Times a Poet arrives as a long-overdue tribute to a poet who, despite his towering influence, remains a perennial outsider.

For media inquiries, review copies, or interview requests, please contact Michele McDannold at roadsidepress01@gmail.com.

About the Author: Roadside Press is a leading publisher dedicated to preserving and celebrating the legacy of the American literary underground. With a diverse catalog spanning poetry, fiction, and non-fiction, Roadside Press is committed to honoring the voices that shape our cultural landscape.

Apr 24

Excerpt from THE DEAD AND THE DESPERATE by Dan Denton

1.

I never intended to live in Ohio again in the first place. After my first divorce, and all the ensuing debacles; a rehab here, probation there, a dab or two of homelessness, or years of barely clinging to a roof over my head, and I found myself drunk and alone a lot, watching the free PBS channel in a shitty apartment, in a shitty southern town that had grown just as tired of me as I was of it. I’d been banned from three of the five dive bars that lived in my desperate subdivision of rotting trailer park, slum lord haven, and the other two bars weren’t making me feel like I belonged anymore. Sometimes when the moon is full, or when Mercury is in retrograde or some shit, just sometimes I can be hard to get along with I guess. I always seem to get tired of somewhere just as they’re getting tired of me, and I was feeling the urge to move again. Seven states in seven years. Might as well find another one.

I was staying home. Drinking alone. So I got the internet in my shitty apartment. I came up with enough scratch to get my phone line turned on, and downloaded one of those 100 hours free CDs.

I was supposed to be a writer someday, and I’d just gotten through 21 of 30 days in another rehab before I had to split. I was working and staying away from the hard shit, and laying low and drinking at home.

I was supposed to be a writer someday, so I’d called this guy some other guy told me about, and that guy came over, and for $20 and an old printer I had, that guy fixed my computer tower up, and debugged it, and got it limping back along again.

I could never afford to keep buying the ink cartridges for the printer, and I hadn’t written shit in a long goddamn time, so there wasn’t shit ever to print.

I planned to write, and save it on these hard plastic disks, and if I wrote anything worth much, I planned to take the hard disk over to the town library, and use their computer, and print it for a quarter a page.

I don’t know what I was going to do with it then, and it didn’t matter much. I had the internet in my rat trap apartment, and I was working and keeping my head down. Plenty of money for 12 packs and half decent whiskey once in a while. Plenty of evening time to listen to music on the radio, and write a little, except I never did write much.

The internet then wasn’t the internet now. It ran through the phone line, and was slow. There were a lot of naked pictures on the internet, but never any videos. Porn then wasn’t like porn now. But there were naked pictures and there were chat rooms. I never wrote much, I just listened to music every night, and looked at naked pictures, and jacked off, and talked dirty in chat rooms, or argued with people in chat rooms, or tried to get women to email me naked pictures if they had a digital camera.

I remember once in high school, this girl I knew sent me a Polaroid picture of her titties in a card once. I had that picture for a long time. But I had the internet in my kitchen-sink-has-been-dripping-since-Reagan was president apartment, and girls could send me naked photos in a matter of minutes to my email, if I could get them to, and sometimes I could.

But jacking off to an unlimited library of nude photos is not the same as fucking, and I could only ever lay low and drink at home for so long before I got bored, and started running around town looking for a good time in all the bad places. I was getting stir crazy.

One weekend I was drunk and bored, and I stayed up all night talking to this chick in a Midwest singles chat room I’d found, and we’d exchanged some emails, and I didn’t have a digital camera, but I could type 50 words per minute and I’d spent a lifetime reading books, and you’d be surprised about how far a Neruda stanza can take you in a chat room. Already into the 21st century and most everyone I knew had never heard about ole Pablo Neruda. Quoting poets no one ever heard of makes you seem learned in a 2am internet chat room, and wait til they have a rough day, and you drop some Bukowski on them.

One thing leads to another and I’d just gotten a cell phone for the first time, because I had some money in my pocket and everyone was getting cell phones. Cell phones then were not cell phones now, and mine was about the size of half a brick and didn’t send text messages or have a high def screen. It just made phone calls, and those phone calls were free after 7pm and on weekends, so me and this late night chat room girl started calling each other and talking every night, sometimes for hours.

She’d had a few long-term relationships, but nothing had ever come of them, and she’d been single for a while. She was back in college and living at home, and she was fierce and independent, but she was lonely, too, and she didn’t really know how to meet people. She was mid 20s and older than most of the college kids in her classes, and her job as an activities coordinator at a local nursing home offered nary a bed warmer, either.

She’d had a few Friday night one-night stands, from going to one of the half-assed dance clubs cities in the Midwest they’re always trying to keep open, but that wasn’t enough.

She liked to fuck she said, and I told her I did, too.

Next thing you know she’s driving down south, and I’m taking a four-day weekend. We drove around to different places to eat every evening, but mostly we drank and we fucked. We fucked and fucked all weekend, like you do when you just meet somebody that likes to fuck in all the same ways you like to fuck, and neither of you have fucked much lately. If you don’t understand that last sentence, I hope you figure it out before you die. It is one of the most magical things I have experienced in my sad ass life, and chasing those weekends has nearly ruined me, and killed me a dozen times over.

Lover girl goes home, and we keep talking late at night, me half drunk all the time, and her just lonely. She drinks, but she doesn’t understand why I need to drink every day, and all the time, but I work hard, and “I miss you” and “I miss you, too” and the fucking, that was some of the best fucking ever, and maybe I’ll just drive up to Ohio one weekend and we can fuck six times a day again for four days. See how quick I forgot about hating Ohio? That’s how women have always worked for me.

I can’t fully explain it, except for the obvious, being a fucked up dude trying to survive a fucked up life. It’s what we do. We drink and fuck and fight. You see us on Cops and Jerry Springer every day.

Before I could get back up there to do all that fucking again, lover girl calls me and says she’s pregnant.

The Dead and the Desperate is coming out in hardcover. Reserve your copy at https://www.magicaljeep.com/product/desperate/169

Step into a world of grit and survival in The Dead & The Desperate by Dan Denton. This poignant novel takes you on a raw and unflinching journey through the life of its main character, who becomes an accidental father while grappling with untreated mental illness, addiction, and the grueling reality of low-paying factory jobs in the heart of the Midwest. Denton’s evocative prose paints a vivid picture of a life under the poverty line, where desperation and resilience coexist in a landscape of broken dreams and shattered hopes.

Amidst the chaos of a struggling existence, the protagonist navigates the shadowy corners of dive bars, forges unlikely friendships with a diverse cast of characters, and grapples with the weight of homelessness, divorce, and the specter of overdose. The Dead & The Desperate is a haunting portrayal of the challenges faced by those on the margins, offering a unique and unvarnished perspective on a world often overlooked.

This book has garnered praise from literary voices and readers alike, heralded as a return to authentic proletarian literature. Critics acknowledge Dan Danton’s unapologetic honesty and courage in baring his soul through this harrowing yet beautiful narrative. The novel’s exploration of life’s struggles and the quest for love and connection resonates deeply, making it an unforgettable read that lingers in the mind long after the final page is turned.

If you’re seeking a powerful and moving tale that delves into the depths of human experience, The Dead & The Desperate is a must-read. It’s a story that gives voice to the voiceless, offers solace to the desperate, and reminds us all of the strength to keep going, even when faced with the darkest of circumstances.

Apr 21

2 poems from ANOTHER SATURDAY NIGHT IN JUKEBOX HELL by Alan Catlin

Parallel Lives

Every city has one, a block God
forgot, some unofficial war zone,
demilitarized, but alive and active
with all the usual suspects cops roust
on periodic missions to clean up after
some particularly rowdy disturbance,
something so embarrassing, around
election day, even the mayor is moved
to act. After the votes have been counted,
results confirmed, the war goes on as before.
911 calls come in and cars are dispatched,
later rather than sooner, except, in cases
of extreme cruelty, events that make
front page news or, on occasion, CNN;
‘Fraternity hazing involved terrorist
techniques, pledges for unchartered
frat subjected to punishments, not unlike
water boarding, until they were forced
to beg for mercy.’
The cries from basement/ dungeon so loud,
so horrific, even cowed neighbors
could no longer endure the noise, could
only imagine what must be happening inside.
University officials assert they had
‘suspicions banned fraternity was still
accepting new members,’ as they had been,
banding and disbanding time and time
again, for fifty years, only the names
and faces changed.
Over time, the block is modified,
buildings burned out, abandoned,
strafed in territorial feuds, boarded up
or razed, salt sprinkled on the mounds left
behind, for sale signs riddled with bullet
holes, gang graffiti ornamented, relics
no one cares to recall or revisit.
All the former denizens, drug dealers,
and their whores moved on, occupying
new digs that soon resemble the old:
from Odell to Kelton, from Elberon to
Quail to Washington; forsaken places,
reclamation projects so far past due
only those with no future go there.
Time Has Come Today

“You don’t know what pain is.”
Buffalo Bill

Somewhere along the line,
someone had put him in a metal cell,
a kind of prefab hurt locker,
and forgot to let him out. Maybe,
pounded on the sides to like, rattle
his cage every now and then,
never letting any unnecessary light in,
no food, no water, no human contact,
nada for days, so that when the family
business, literally, went up in smoke,
a mobile home, meth lab, defoliation
death trap, only he would survive
the fast-burning fireball suffused with
strange colors, sick smells of chemicals
and bad meat, a black hole where
the concrete pad had been.
He’d feel no remorse for confederate
flag ensemble wearing dad, a former
weightlifting skinhead gone to fat,
not completely weaned yet from his
Rebel Yell and his emaciated, toothless
straw haired, unwashed, skank of a woman,
something like thirty-nine going on
seventy, maybe his mother, maybe not.
Where he was going time was measured
in scorched spoonful’s of street, ampoules
and syringes, black market product mined
from god’s black earth.

Another Saturday Night in Jukebox Hell by Alan Catlin is now available at https://www.magicaljeep.com/product/jukebox/162

The smartass bartender, narrator, is locked in a bar with thousands of uninvited guests. The jukebox is virtual which means it is practically infinite and people can and will play music Loud for hours while the hapless, somewhat hard of hearing bartender tries to make the best of this “disco inferno” ( though the music is rarely if ever remotely disco like). Our bartender refers to the jukebox as the infernal machine and the guests are demons with unlimited credit. Snarky, irreverent and based on actual firsthand experience.

Alan Catlin worked for the better part of 34 years in his unchosen profession as a barman in and around the greater Albany, NY area. He has published dozens of chapbooks and full-length books focusing on his work and the people he met while laboring in the trenches of bar warfare.

“Like a sequel to his previous collection of bar poems, Bar Guide for the Seriously Deranged, Alan Catlin’s new collection begins, appropriately, in Hell, among those condemned to short, sad, violent lives of pain, humiliation, and self-destruction. There are many doors to Hell, he confides. “The one you choose is always / the wrong one.” The whores, the drug addicts, the gang members, the “karaoke killers”: they’ve all walked in through different entrances but wound up in the same place. Fate? In “Maybe it was meant,” Catlin philosophizes: “to be, to end this way, / a life spent on the edge / always playing a loser’s / hand but pretending /otherwise, and fooling / no one.” Another Saturday Night in Jukebox Hell has moments of humor and scenes of poignance, all so familiar, all so human, all so doomed, all so damned. Belly up to the bar, have a seat. Drink it all in!”—Charles Rammelkamp, author of The Trapeze of Your Flesh

“This the kind of place the children and grandchildren of the Dead-End Kids would go. They’d call themselves something like the Wild Bunch or the Wrecking Crew and the bartender, good to his word, would be taking notes and writing it all down. If you see yourself in these poems, it’s your own fault.”—Elenora Fagan, poet, lyricist

“If hell opened up all its’ gates, gave every good citizens a couple of hundred bucks to spend at happy hour; they’d end up at this bar, super-charged and ready to go, making up for lost time.”—Patrick Allen, occasional poet

Apr 20

Review by Alan Catlin: How to Play House by Heather Dorn

Heather Dorn, How to Play House, Roadside Press, 2023, 116 pages $15

“Heather Dorn is a real mom with real life issues. She’s more Journal of a Mad Housewife than Kate Middleton, though she’s not a stuck at home mom going crazy with her kids but a PhD in English Literature who teaches at the University in Binghamton. She has real health issues (a pacemaker to cope with heart failure) whose wild days of youth are way, way back in the past and can never be, even remotely, repeated. She (and no doubt most of us) reveled in crazy, bad choices who made total fools of ourselves during them and Dorn recounts them convincingly with wit and humor. Most of all, Dorn has a strong, readily identifiable voice; a mother we’d like to know, voice.

“Drawing a contrast between herself and the aforementioned Kate Middleton, Dorn is the mom with spaghetti-o’s on her blouse, coffee stains too, no doubt, while Kate looks beauty parlor fresh after giving birth. Heather confesses she looked like, well, she just gave birth after all three of her children. As Dorn says, Kate doesn’t give interviews. She doesn’t speak. She’s not a real person. Heather Dorn is most definitely a real person and it goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway, a real poet.”—Alan Catlin

first published in Misfit Magazine