You left some seeds on my touchpad, thanks. Oh, one just fell under the F2 key. I wish a cabbage or whatever it is would grow beneath my keys, popping them all off by pressing from underneath, like the keys are squares of concrete sidewalk and this is a disreputable neighborhood we’re in called Touchpad.
My favorite name for a literary magazine is NOON. NOON is really a great name–it’s a palindrome two ways, horizontally and vertically. When you are on your head and you read the word NOON, it is the same as when you are standing or sitting, when you are not trying to read things while you are on your head. It does not matter which way the spine is when NOON is on a shelf. Even if the spine is facing the wall, NOON would still look like NOON, if only you could see through objects. So much of the day gets rounded into ‘noon’. If you wake up at 11:24, you could tell people you woke up at noon. The part of the day that you do until you feel like the day has to end is talked about in relation to noon. Things fold up into noon. You cast no shadow at noon when you are at a theoretical place, the equator. Diane Williams’ writing collapses into itself sometimes when I read it; it collapses like a rich French actress does when she collapses and asks for a cigarette and a lighter from her collapsed position, straightening her garter and her gabardine smock for a camera, and I don’t know why she is wearing a smock, so I kick her a little with my riding boot while I am taking her picture. Okay. NOON covers are a black background behind the body of an animal, and the scientific name for the animal appears on the cover in sans-serif font. Scientific names in sans-serif fonts are really nice looking.
I like SIR! as a name for a literary magazine. Brian Foley said something about wanting to publish a certain kind of humor, and SIR! makes me think of a certain kind of humor, and also the words ‘wainscot’ and ‘cummerbund.’
Pindeldyboz, NOÖ Journal, and Zyzzyva–I like these names because it’s like how the hell do you pronounce them?
No Posit and SmokeLong I like because these names say something about the content and form they want to publish. So does Six Sentences, but that doesn’t seem as catchy, like it doesn’t want to grab on to me when I am running past it wearing a smock.
Lamination Colony makes me think of a sweaty clown suit and the sound of rubber clown shoes walking on gravel, and that is creepy. I like it.
N+1 and Ninth Letter sound like chance word games, and that is clever I guess.
Opium. I do not like the name Opium much. For a drug opium is passe–name it Adderall or something, or Soy Protein Powder. I am probably ‘missing the point.’
There are so many, I could do this for hours. When I think about making my own literary magazine I think, There are so many.
There are so many. But I keep thinking about the thing I would add to the heap of them, what would I call it? Something about the feeling of being about to experience a really good thing you have been anticipating, something pre-apocalyptic.
The arugula seeds are under a bag of raw cashews on top of a plastic CD spindle case.
In our absence the roommates might sit on the lawn eating cereal holding badmitton rackets.
Even the dog that shits in the driveway is polite; he turns up his face mid-shit when I tap on the window, politely goes away.
Now I am considering the moisture-wicking properties of various fabrics, the sporty logos of outer shells, that mountain is nice when it’s behind the city skyline, that monogram.
That guy who said he was sexually attracted to Mt. Everest, is he from Seattle?
Subarus with bike racks. More Subarus. Subarus.
A large tattooed woman reading a large book at a bus stop looks over at a large tattooed woman reading the bus schedule. I ride by on my bike looking pretty androgynous, helmeted.
If you have computer problems. If you are Mid-western. If you are skiing while texting. If you are into Anime and girls who look like Anime characters.
Seattle, you and California should meet somewhere in Oregon. In a hippie’s mud hut in Ashland? Maybe in Weed.
Maybe it’s because I just watched Breathless that this story by Mike Young seems like it should be starring Godard.
Mike Young recently accepted something I submitted to NOO Journal. In his email he said something I’m quoting because I think it’s hilarious and observant and is how I would like to describe his linked story:
There is something about the kind of funny that’s being written right now. It’s very careful, but if someone were to come up to it and say “I want to throw you away,” this kind of funny would agree. I like that quality. Pre-apocolypse Kenneth Koch or something.
E.B. Goodale did the illustration above for a short story I’ll have in Smokelong Quarterly. I had seen her illustrations on Brian Foley’s blog (like her illustration for a poem in Rauan Klassnik’s Holy Land) and in Oranges and Sardines, so I thought of her when an editor at Smokelong said that I could provide my own illustration for the story. I think she did a great job. I particularly like the way the wall/floor line is jagged and looks at first glance like handwriting. I also really like how an outline appears to be separating from or joining the body of the suited man (’the son’ in the story). Thank you, E.B. Goodale.
