Reading Cohorts - Robin Richardson

You are so super close now. You are no more days, now only hours from it. Its gonna blow your hair back. Its going to slap you hard on the ass where it is both painful and pleasurable. It's Mental Marginalia. It's tonight. It's at the West Cafe, 379 Union Ave. It's at 8 PM. It's free. It's got Robin Richardson cohorting with us


Temiscaming
A hornet drums the lamp, red
clay, dead moth, pike smiling
from the skillet. Jin’s what I’m drinking,
I was raised on robbery. Henri taps
a yellowed thumb against the table
off time. His eyes are closed, legs
crossed, he shakes as he brings
the plastic cup of homebrew
to his lips, says he loves Joni Mitchell.

So will you won't you, will you won't you, won't you join us. Cheer

Reading Cohorts - Chris Slaughter

Here we are again ready to passeth all understanding! Keep your hearts and minds multiplied through the knowledge that Mental Marginalia is happening in UNO WEEKO as El Bloombito would say. That's right my perfect brethren of good comfort, we five marginals are offering you benediction next Wednesday's night at the West Cafe for the price of free, so adorn your sacred selves and come join us.

In the meaning whiles, preview Chris Slaughter and let the peace and glory be forever and ever

Reading Cohorts - Paige Taggart

We're on the Gravy Train. The Turkey Gravy Train, but that should not stop you from remembering, marking the calendar, creating an entire memory castle just for storing this one important fact - MENTAL MARGINALIA on 11/30/11, or if you are a Sodurinian, 11/333/IH8^3. You will have a good time. I will make you have a good time. A cheesy flip flips good time. Until then, here is impending cohort Paige Taggart

PRUDE FROG

We charted out these breath patterns on tape recorder.
We ran around kicking and screaming, blue tooth, blue tooth!
Then we swelled really low to the Earth, and impregnated it
with little bomb sockets.
Merely seconds before they were authenticated with a copyright seal.
I kept going around with stickers to preserve my idea, and you, well
you exploded with your own enthusiasm about what happens next.

You can read the rest at La Petite Zine

Reading Cohorts - Christine Kanownik

Heeeeeeeey'all,

Surmise quickly the 11/30/11 happening at West Cafe which shall put some hustle in your bustle and an apocalypse on your hips. Seriously, I expect dancing. Your call if you want it dirty. But we finally finished rigging up the new catalytic salt reactor on the roof this afternoon so the HYPE MACHINE is fully operational, and its already kicking out the buzz. First fist up: Christine Kanownik-

How the West was won.

by CHRISTINE KANOWNIK

Tyra Banks is a cowboy.
She is in the desert.
When she stands on rocks
They become mountains.
And when she descends
They become canyons.
She spits a little when she talks
And the spit becomes rivers.

You can read the rest of this piece at 42Opus

Comin At Ya!

Christine Kanownik
Paige Taggart
Chris Slaughter
Robin Richardson
myself

11/30/11
West Cafe
379 Union Ave
Brooklyn
Presented by Mental Marginalia

A Great Quote on the Future of Literature

"You know, we've had this amazing oral tradition of poetry for nearly as long as anyone can remember. The entirety of our knowledge has been adapted to this tradition. It contains everything we know and have experienced as a civilization. It is the basis for our law, our commerce, our history, and our art. Now you have these Cuneiformists who want to start recording everything. They want to translate the vast beauty of our language, poetry, and culture into symbols, into children's drawings in the sand and claim this will preserve our way of life. Hell, they claim it will make life easier? How? How could the passion of Iklad Munnur's arguments during the Tell Fara inquiry be translated in physical form? How does one capture the richness of Sonitep's voice? Mark this time. The cuneiformist way is the unraveling of our literature."

-Ensur Ugar, Mesopotamian Oral Translator and grump, 3386 B.C.
(what's amazing about this quote is that it was found via the painstaking research in 2011 by Orslo Bilgant into what he deemed Cyclical Bitching by Old Men About How Much Better the Past Was and How All of Literature Faces Imminent Finality Every 20 Odd Years. Orslo found the varied shards of Ugar's quote by reading between the lines of the frequent posts by old men about how terrible x (book, music, art) culture is today compared to the bygone Halcyon days they knew of from their youth)

September 21, 2011 11:08pm EST

Fuck Fucker buckets Fuck buckets of rum. The rum in the punch
or the punch and then the rum
to numb the cheek and letters to
Abraham fathering three religions, though
they were rejected by Albert Rosenfield who unbeknownst to you
until this instant
was in fact
the son of the Padishah Emperor
Shaddam Corrino IV (real life true story time
trials conducted entirely under the supervision
of his holiness the Dalai Lama and the Kwisatz Haderach
to induct the veracity of his claims under perjury of spice regarding
the origin of the twine used to bind Laura Palmer’s body
and the shells fired into Mark MacPhail), the art of war
scarring the face of Arrakis
your hands holding hands
touching the metal waiting
for the shock sure there will come rains
to test the faithful not in
vain appreciation of the tragedy
become innocent and martyred
on the ground outside a burger joint
or in the halls of doubt and recantation
justice served and justice denied
a stay of execution
appeals denied, rappers and Jimmy Carter
talk-boxing again around the signal
lights along the shore
shallow rocky spears upthrust
against Davis’ prow
the assassin’s needle
seeking Atreides' life
Muad’Dib bends like a reed in the wind
which I guess you cannot do when you are strapped to a table
the state has laid out and prepared for with body and the blood
the Shadout Mapes had her blood mixed by the hunter-seeker too
an ultra short acting bartiturate here
a chemical paralytic there
passed into law by a Reverend
which fact lends us only a greater question
of the irony all this culture
can bring to bear
which we cannot stand
to watch, put off thinking
of, sit quietly as we take in
the beauty of this life when
it turns toward the onset of terror
admired as it destroys
society’s angel with head bowed
the killing word silently spoken
Troy Davis and Mark MacPhail asleep
inside the bullet, cheek to cheek
rest now, in peace
dreaming no more of the heroes
who let you down

One Wonders

if employees at Marvel Comics and Marvel Entertainment and Marvel Under-roos Textile Concern are required by corporate mandate to consume this:


Inspired by the upcoming movie. It's big, it's heavy, it's good, but um, yeah. Thankfully the Chicago Tribune was able to provide me with that picture. WHo only knows were they got it from, what murky alleys they skulked through and what manner of shiftless, broken shell of human misery PR rep sent it to them (I assume it was emailed, these sorts of rich, nuanced human interactions are becoming a thing of the past). Speaking of human interactions, this:



We are, after all, only human.

Wise Man's Fear

So this was released today, the sequel to The Name of the Wind. You can buy it right now. You should. If you have an ipad or a kindle or a nook, you can literally be reading this in a matter of minutes.

I was loaned the Name of the Wind a couple of months after its release by a member of the D&D group I played with. It was good times. We were all professionals, we drank coffee or beer while we played, as opposed to the little debbie snack cakes (strawberry shortcake rolls were my particularly insidious vice) and mountain dew of those summer days of AD&D youth. Activists and teachers and publishing people living in the fading dream of the Brooklyn renaissance that our too-slowly rising salaries afforded us in Greenpoint. I never got that book back to the owner unfortunately. He stopped being able to make the games. Then he moved.

But man am I happy I still have that copy. I've had 4 or 5 other copies over the years as well, Rothfuss joining Tolkien and Vonnegut and Winterson in the pantheon of writers who I can't help but pick up multiple copies of. And the book was a stunner. Literally, like One Hundred Years of Solitude or The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, when I finished The Name of the Wind I have only the vaguest recollection of where I was, as if I had been shot through with light and separated from my mind while the vast, sleepy realms of thought and the deepest reaches of my awareness churned far from my waking consciousness. It was like a magic spell.

It was as if the book had channeled a wormhall into my brain that I could only access by separating from myself. I am convinced Grant Morrison does this kind of thing, implanting alien thought into your mind through language, and Warren Ellis is very forward in putting his disease textually.

And of course, it all feels as good as it sounds, hence the allure. A book like this is a drug. It takes root in you, and begins to change you from the inside out.

Rush out, rush out now, and get your fix

Beavis and Butthead. Jersey Shore. Politics. Sherbet.

Beavis and Butthead. Jersey Shore. Politics. Sherbet.

Somewhere there is a thought in all of that. Threads to be tied together. Understanding and appreciation to be gained.

Sherbet is really more about the appreciation. Its just yummy. I've cultivated an appreciation for earl grey lately, but I still prefer, and am currently out of, oolong. Oolong is the tea of memory, of The Dragon House, which was THE treat of early childhood. The egg noodles, the oolong tea in the little cups, and the fried rice.

Quite tired, too tired of late. The damned weather. And much work to do. Much to try and finish, much to achieve. Only one thing stands in the way.

Me.

Let's go work on that.

Be OF the Fiction, not just ABOUT it

By going here: http://postcardfictioncollaborative.blogspot.com/2010/11/rudolph-ii.html

It is the capstone to our first full year of PFCing, and we've PFCed the hell out of it, so go ahead, check us out, browse yourself some archives, and give us that ooey gooey rich and chewy love in the comments section.

Kablammo, we're off in 2011 like a shot, with guest writer Barbara DeCesare