Jan 11

Review by Steven Meloan: The Dead and the Desperate by Dan Denton

If you’re looking for a tale of personal purgatory but ultimate redemption, The Dead and the Desperate is the book for you. There have been many literary takes on blue collar life in America—dead-end jobs, dead-end relationships, and often mixed with substance abuse or variations of mental illness. But as a deft and brutally honest storyteller, Dan Denton manages to make such well-trodden paths not only compelling and personal, but literally a page-turner. You can’t wait to see what crazy shit will come down next.

And there is an overarching theme in the book of the soul-crushing toll that factory/blue collar life takes upon those trapped in grinding work hours and living paycheck-to-paycheck. Yet amidst challenges and experiences that might have ended a lesser person, Denton manages a wry sense of dark comedy, mixed with an almost educational take on an American middle class that has been ground down by our current corporatocracy.

Assorted short chapters of the book focus specifically on truly illuminating topics like the economics/psychology of sex work, the history of the factory as an institution, economic disparity, the rise of inner-city crack and associated incarcerations, mood disorders/SSRI’s/Big Pharma, the disintegration of “the American Dream,” and the ensuant social fallout of globalization.

But it is the all-too-human ordeals that drive the story—a descent into the depths, the road back, and then a “return with the elixir” (in the form of this book). Denton has come away with a hell of a life-tale, is now many-years clean and sober, and living the life of a full-time writer.

Not everyone has a compelling story to tell. And not everyone with a compelling story quite knows how to tell it. Neither of those things are the case with Dan Denton.

Read it and see!

—Steven Meloan, author of St. James Infirmary

Jan 08

an excerpt from RADIO WATER, a collection of flash fiction, by Francine Witte

Night is a Man

A man without hands, without feet. Night has nothing but eyes and ears and a scrap of heart.

You left ten weeks ago, and Night is what I sleep with.

Tonight, I wake Night up and take him to the grocery store. On the way there, Night looks at the moon, down to a sliver now, but still. If Night had a voice, he would tell me how the moon is his.

I walk up to the doors that whoosh open. Night doesn’t fit. He is sky, after all. He is dreams, after all.

I tell Night to wait, and thank God for his ears.

I walk inside, my slippers back home, and I pad my feet down the aisles towards the bags and bags of chips.

Since you left me, I look at food. It looks at me. I have put on the weight I was afraid to. If you still loved me, you wouldn’t now.

I pay for the chips and slip them into my jacket. They make a bump. They are the child we will never have.

I walk through the doors. The sun has shown up and pushed the darkness aside. I look everywhere, but Night has vanished. All eyes and ears of him. And like you, nothing but a scrap of his heart left behind.

 

RADIO WATER is Francine Witte’s latest collection of flash fiction stories. The title story was recently featured in the most recent WW Norton anthology, Flash Fiction America (2023.) This story, like many others in the collection deal with Witte’s recurring theme of family in the process of breakdown. Other themes are romance, growing up, and the environment. The stories are all under 1000 words, and are told with Witte’s signature mix of quirk and poetic style. These are short, short stories that have a novel’s worth of emotion.

Purchase at https://www.magicaljeep.com/product/radio/153

 

Jan 06

Review by Alan Catlin: Kiss the Heathens by Ryan Quinn Flanagan

review first published in misfitmagazine.net, Issue No. 37, Winter 2024

Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Kiss the Heathens, Roadside Press, available from www.magicaljeep.com 2023,
230 pages $20

Make no mistake about it, Kiss the Heathens, is a big ass book and true to its size and nature, it delivers the goods by taking names and seriously kicking ass. These are generally tight, clear- eyed narrative slices of life, as the poet sees it without extreme attitudes of drink, drugs, and general lack of focus. Yeah, there is a little of all that going on and some sleazy squeezing of tramp stamped women on the make, but there is nothing malicious or nasty about any of the carrying on. Who doesn’t, didn’t, want to get laid and have a good time when young? As the poems are not chronological, we share moments of Flanagan with his wife that show an intimacy based on a long term, positive, loving relationship. I might quibble that some of the later poems feel somewhat like padding on might have been best left out, but the final poem, “Arcade” dispels the less than wonderful moments with a strong closing picture of a group of heading nowhere video game addicts at play.

—Alan Catlin, author of Bar Guide for the Seriously Deranged and many others

Jan 05

Review by Alan Catlin: Nothing and Too Much to Talk About by Nancy Patrice Davenport

review first published in misfitmagazine.net, Issue No. 37, Winter 2024

 

Nancy Patrice Davenport, Nothing and Too Much to Talk About, Roadside Press,  2023, 86 pages, $15-

There is a lot of smoking , all sorts of substances, chilling and communing with cats in Nancy Patrice Davenport’s latest book. I guess it should be expected from a poet whose previous work includes a book called, Smoking in Mom’s Garage. All of which is cool. Davenport describes herself as, presumably echoing a child’s observation, “a cool mom.” And she is. Her poems are easily relatable, unique in that they have zero punctuation, yet she manages to make that so organic to her style, you don’t notice until well into the book. And you never miss it, because the lines fit together perfectly. As she says of her work,

 

“I break open
rigid genre
shapes

push into revealing new selves

strip myself
to the bones

consider the power
of a self that’s been
scraped clean”
(from “Monday Morning Mars in Capricorn”)

And it works.

As Davenport observes, “life is a soap opera/not a sitcom”

—Alan Catlin, author of Bar Guide for the Seriously Deranged and many others

Jan 05

an excerpt from Clown Gravy by Misti Rainwater-Lites

CLOWN GRAVY

Vanilla Cupcake was talking shit again, talking about how she would give anything to get in my bed for one hour. One hour is all it would take. It ain’t nothin’ nice bein’ the only African-American in a circus full of wack ass crackers. Sometimes I drop my g’s. Nothin’. Bein’. I’m from Killeen, Texas. Fuck y’all. But I’m educated. I know how to talk like the white man. I only drawl when I have to. The thing is, I’m not some ignorant asshole selling balloons and cotton candy. What I do takes talent and balls. I’m a circus clown. The circus is in my blood. My parents were trapeze artists. My mom ran off with a German tourist. She still sends me Christmas cards from Berlin. My dad drank himself to death. I tend to keep to my damn self. Only woman I ever gave a damn about was Sugar Delicious. Best trapeze artist since Lillian Leitzel. She wore the hell out of those sequins. But Hollywood snatched her up and now she’s married to some hot shit producer and they have five perfect kids and two or three houses. She was up for an Oscar a couple of years ago.

But Vanilla Cupcake is lookin’ better and better. Sleazy chick. Wears too much makeup even when the tents are down and we’re all just chillin’. I guess she thinks she’s got somethin’ to prove since she ain’t nothin’ but a concession stand chick. She overcompensates with the dirty talk and the drinking and the drugs. Wants the world to know that she’s as tough and sorry as any man.

“When you gonna let me have a taste of that lollipop?” Vanilla Cupcake slurred, leaning toward me at the card table and giving me an extra close view of her ample cleavage and a whiff of her cheap body spray.

“I ain’t got no lollipop,” I said, puffing on my Cohiba and studying my hand. I didn’t have shit. A ten of clubs, a five of diamonds, a two of spades, an ace of hearts and a king of clubs.

“Oh, since when? Did Sugar bite it off?”

“Don’t say shit about Sugar.”

“I’ll never be rich and famous. I’m so sorry. I’m just a circus peasant, same as you.”

“You ain’t nothin’ like me.”

“You think you’re too good for me?”

“Nah. It’s the other way around.”

“Aw, that’s the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me, cookie wookie.”

“It’s too soon for terms of endearment. Look, go get me a Coca-Cola for my rum.” …

Read the rest in CLOWN GRAVY, short stories, by Misti Rainwater-Lites (Roadside Press) available at https://www.magicaljeep.com/product/gravy/147 or other online retailers.

Jan 04

Review by Alan Catlin: Resurrection Song by George Wallace

review first published in misfitmagazine.net, Issue No. 37, Winter 2024

George Wallace. Resurrection Song, Roadside Press, available through www.magicaljeep.com 2023,
250 pages, $20-

Make no mistake about it, this is a massive tome that feels like a compilation of a life’s hard work, living, traveling, reading, and contemplating life and literature. The collection is not only large in size, but it is impressive in its scope, and stylistic variations. There are brief pieces, long sprawling ones, short lines, long lines, a little bit of everything. My personal favorite is “Mayakovsky in New York” (not be confused with the equally as impressive “Lorca Doesn’t Live Here Anymore”) where the author enters the mind of that wildman poet and makes us feel what he feels in a totally alien civilization,

 

“Mayakovsky
wanted to mount
new york city like a
French whore—legs astride
the Woolworth building…

….the great
iconoclast was
holding
the future
in one
hand like
some
movie
ape”

If there is a subject to be written about or a place to go, odds are Wallace has read about it, written a poem there and/or traveled through it.

—Alan Catlin, author of Bar Guide for the Seriously Deranged and many others

Jan 02

Review by Alan Catlin: Under Normal Conditions by Karl Koweski

review first published in misfitmagazine.net, Issue No. 37, Winter 2024

Reading Koweski’s latest collection is like a heavyweight fight with life, language, and poetry. In fact, one of my favorite poems in the collections evokes the image of “the lifeless eyes of sonny liston.” The former champion who lost his crown to then Cassius Clay, soon to be Mohammed Ali, after a phantom knockout punch. Many in the sports world thought Sonny took a dive, which stands to reason given his associates and tragic end to drug abuse. Koweski doesn’t pull any punches or take a fall. Watching his four-year-old play Grand Theft Auto is one of the most chilling poems I have read in quite some time. The boy relishes death and destruction and Koweski concludes, “my little psychopath.”

His “High life of the low life” is a hoot featuring a guy who claims he can recognize a porn actress by her coos and gasps.( which is totally absurd as those are often dubbed in by an off- camera voice ) He cites Nina Hartley as a blonde who I always thought had dark hair but you don’t watch those movies wondering about whether the star’s hairs is bottle blonde or not. The low life would snort at the idea of even noticing the actresses hair, no doubt. Koweski’s contention that poetry readings are a kind of spoken word masochism is inspired but it is “We are all fools here” that sums up the small press poet’s life as a writer,

“the poet can retire
a legend,
a small press mainstay,
an underground hero.

never really dying,
only fading
into greater obscurity.”

Welcome to the club fellow poets.

—Alan Catlin, author of Bar Guide for the Seriously Deranged and many others

Jan 01

Review by Alan Catlin: A Room Above a Convenience Store by William Taylor Jr.

review first published in misfitmagazine.net, Issue No. 37, Winter 2024

William Taylor, A Room Above a Convenience Store, Roadside Press, available from www.magicaljeep.com 2023, 88 pages, $15

Taylor’s latest collection spans the pandemic years and a time of personal health crisis involving serious heart surgery. Perhaps, the most effective ones involve people he meets during his recovery after the surgery. These pieces are both surreal, oddly funny, and totally believable. Taylor sees a young woman, a pretty girl as he says, reading a big volume of poems on the train he is commuting to work on. He wistfully thinks of how alive the poets words are even now and that maybe someday he might be worthy of that kind of audience. Mostly what Taylor is, is a keen observer of modern life. San Francisco is microcosm of the country filled with tourists who look at stuff but don’t see anything, who don’t understand are the barbarians at the gate ordering complicated drinks at the bar they don’t give tips for after they get them. His wandering through the Tenderloin at 3AM yields an evocative picture of how even the lives of low lives, miscreants, petty thieves and the homeless have changed over the years. A man is riffling a parking meter that only takes credit cards, for coins, says it all.—Alan Catlin, author of Bar Guide for the Seriously Deranged and many others

Dec 31

Review by Alan Catlin: Street Corner Spirits by Westley Heine

review first published in misfitmagazine.net, Issue No. 37, Winter 2024

Westley Heine, Street Corner Spirits: poems and flash fiction, Roadside Press, available from www.magicaljeep.com or your favorite online retailer, 2023, 146 pages, $15

Street Corner Spirits is the second Roadside Press publication for Heine following his novel about trying to make his way as a street musician in Chicago, Busking Blues. While Heine claims not to be a poet, there are some great moments of pure poetic fire as Heine here. He can turn a phrase and rip off amazing lines with ease. From AA meetings where he talks of pouring booze in his inner child, to his time on the street, he represents what he calls the “missing chromosome generation.” My favorite of these is “Sugar Skull” which resounds with the breathless authority of Howl on acid,

“She was sure she could
lead the homeless army
over the wall of the
Hollywood Forever Cemetery
to dig up the Pharaoh
and use his skull
like a radio to free
the internet slaves.”
(from “Sugar Skull”)

There are four distinct sections of Street Corner Spirits, which could be summed up as follows,
1-Youth
2-Somewhere between teenaged and adult
3-Mature and more settled
4-As we live now in a Brave New World. I have seen the future and it is Apocalypse Now!

There is a great deal of raw energy in the first two sections as Heine throws words on a page and seeks a voice to channel all the memories of bad choices made and lived with. As he settles into a less peripatetic, more focused life, marries, and moves on with a sense of direction, he finds a new sense of personal peace. Heine expresses his vision of the society as a festering boil about to explode by writing songs, performing, and painting. The energy that went into living the life that is expounded upon in the poems is often chaotic and so are the poems which vary in effectiveness from knock your socks off amazing to nice try, better luck next time. His work as a poet feels like a work in progress but this collection clearly shows he is well on his way to getting there.

It should be noted that there are a few brief prose stories included that parallel the poetic work. While they feel almost incidental compared with the energetic poetry, the rent party, “Keep Your Shirt On” has a manic quality that suggests partying with Pynchon and the bright young things. I am on board also with his idea of a “Pay Per View Apocalypse.” Live streaming the heat death of the universe seems like the coming thing.

—Alan Catlin, author of Bar Guide for the Seriously Deranged

Dec 31

Review by Alan Catlin: Born on Good Friday by Nathan Graziano


Nathan Graziano, Born on Good Friday, Roadside Press, available at www.magicaljeep.com 2023, 80 pages, $15

I was reading the recent anthology from Nerve Cowboy: Selected Works 1996-2004 ( a best of the early years of long running print poetry zine) that featured four poems of Graziano’s from that era, reminding me how long I had been reading work by this poet. Besides feeling old, the realization, re-enforced by the tone of his new collection, is that Graziano is now middle aged, settled and maybe not “still crazy after all these years” but still alive (as the peasant says in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, “I’m not dead yet.”) Which probably says a lot about me as well as an officially, much older than Graziano, well settled poet.

The Nerve Cowboy poems are signature Graziano poems that were the hallmark of his early work: lots of lost nights and down days after, the kind of Carveresque dissipation and hooking up that made his novel, not long out of print ( yes, I still have my copy) Frostbite, memorable. Some of the poems in Born on Good Friday reflect a looking back ruefully and wondering, “Why the hell did I do these things to myself. And how did I survive.” Been there and done that. Throughout his many collections of writing, Graziano has maintained a tone of engaged in this life style but not taking myself all that seriously. He always seems to successfully strive for, and find, the humor in the most outrageous and ridiculous things that he does. The key point is he knows they are ridiculous while so many adult children don’t.

Born on Good Friday is roughly chronological beginning with his upbringing in a traditional American Catholic family proceeding to a rejection of his upbringing and later antics of a young and not so young, adult. Like many of us who lived through an engagement with Sister Harridan of the Tricornered ruler with the wrath of God on her side, much of the education and indoctrination didn’t take root except to reject the tenets brought up in the faith. I guess I was reminded of the old cliché last told to me by a very Irish Colleen, “You can take the catholic out the church but you can’t take the church out of the catholic.” Proving her point, The same young lady was married in a church and she hoped, maybe even prayed fervently, that we would all survive the service without being struck by lightning from above given her wanton ways as a young adult. We did.

Graziano seems to prove his point that mellowing does not necessarily mean giving up or sinking into a near comatose middle age in front of a TV with packs of Marlboro Lights and cans of Budweiser mindlessly watching what passes for a sporting event on 24/7 sports TV. Not that he doesn’t like sports, he is a fervent Red Sox fan, but there are other things in life. Other things like loving his wife and children, writing clean well narrative poems, some recalling his crazy days and lonesome nights, and more contemporary ones; still rueful after all these years.

—Alan Catlin, author of Bar Guide for the Seriously Deranged

review first published in misfitmagazine.net, Issue No. 37, Winter 2024