I’m never ready for the change. Usually, I’m just rocking my summer, straight green-leaf chilling in my clonal colony, photosynthesizing the hell out of the Colorado air, then we get a couple frosty nights, and BLAMMO… we’re all gold as puppy piss.

Back in the day turning yellow was awesome. For two weeks every year we were rock star gods… sort of, minus the groupies and drugs. Every tourist, retiree, pothead, and camera fondler within 500 miles camped out and stared at our ripped trunks and shimmering foliage. The nature paparazzi stalked the shit out of us. Even if our root system wasn’t intertwined we couldn’t escape. At one time, we were the heaviest and oldest living organism on Earth until that bitch Pando in Utah stole our title. I mean really, who’s counting… 6,000 tons, 80,000 years old, and 47,000 stems?

(more…)

I can see, can’t you see? Doing it to you, doing it to me. Red tape. Tax this, tax that…  The Circle Jerks were a favorite band, but a mature ear knows Keith Morris is an early tea partier. Right, I’ve been working on my taxes, and some early hardcore punk leaks in my brain. I’m complaining, I’m reminiscing. I’m like Bellow’s letters. Or JCO’s memoir. Or the 100th birthday of Elizabeth Bishop. Borders is trying to remember. The Daily leaves it longing for the good paper. We reminisce all to want while reading on the second shipwreck of Ahab’s Pollard. Want more? Get gladding Gladwells.

Horrendous, now the unborn feel me
Stalking them, usually not the slightest bit concerned. Double-teamed,
They latch to the kindness of a controlling species
With lots of sentimental
Memories about itself, and I should spank them for that someday.

It’s nice
To have happy spots of my high school sweetheart. Being
Spurns a very surreal thing in me too. I don’t really exist
Because I haven’t seen me in 100 years. But then

I experience outbursts of mold in my chest. This lasts about four
Days until depression kicks in

A fingerprint without demands
Right as I’m beginning to
Eliminate sitting twice a day.

Stupendous, now heaps of voices beep.
At least half of what I respond
Rarely mistakes my bed
For a dolphin’s dick.

_______________________

RC Miller lives in Metuchen, New Jersey. He is author of the chapbooks GORE (Calliope Nerve Media) and A Large Retailer (Ronin Press).

With islands of laundry and half-drunk cups of coffee lying around like incomplete thoughts, I feel a bit like Lemsford aboard the Neversink. Instead of cleaning, I am writing this. Life is all about balance.

November seems to be the month agreed upon by everybody, or somebody, or nobody to celebrate the mustachioed and whiskerandoed. Fact is I’m not sure who decided facial hair should be celebrated in November. But let’s be honest, today is as good a day as any to celebrate the “suburbs of the chin.” Here’s a look at some ways in which Herman Melville shows his appreciation. Twenty-six of them in four chapters of “White Jacket.”

Today we talk with J. Caleb Winters about fearless realism, how being an unpublished writer impacts one’s life, and what it takes to persist in a world so fond of saying no.

Tell us a bit about yourself. Where are you from? How long have you been writing?

I grew up in Wadesville, WV, a small community not far from Parkersburg and chemical plants like DuPont and Shell. The latter blew up when I was fifteen. I stood on my front porch and watched smog move in a perfect straight line, far too low to be clouds, inching slowly over my house while my sister and I waited for the school bus. Despite the proximity to Parkersburg and to the plants, Wadesville was fairly rural. My closest neighbors lived in a two room, dirt floor dwelling, with no plumbing. This lifestyle was an exception, but poverty certainly existed in the area. There were lots of churches and cemeteries with ancient graves slowly sliding over the hill. My father taught me how to dowse for water when I was young, and he and I witched a lot of wells for our neighbors. So there were these neat old-timey traditions still hanging on in the area. It has always felt like a unique place, which is why I base my work in a fictionalized version of Wadesville, called Eli.

(more…)