RAD THINGS OF OCTOBER

I've been meaning to do a monthly series of things I dug over and over or bought or was given or dig or laughed about or etcetera in the previous month, mainly as a reminder to myself, but I haven't done it (OBVIOUSLY). I'm a week late on the first one, which seems appropriate.


Deep Shit by Stale Champagne
No sucky sad face here. Sure, not as good as Stale Champagne, but daammmmnnnn this album wins the raucous award, dark dark in its clang. I'm sure "The Basement" slithered itself onto my favorite song list so so fast. "I've been livin' in the basement of the world. Sleepin' under a table and worshippin' Satan 'cause of a girl."

Sleeping Bag LP by Sleeping Bag
Took way long to buy this album why? Oh well, wore it out on Bandcamp, HERE LISTEN. Friend said, he mumbles a lot, and yes he does, but it's lovely. They play songs at their own pace and THAT IS SO PERFECT. I like to listen to this in the shower.

Hank by Abraham Smith
I'm stlll figuring out how to talk about this album (something I hope to do in a long essay DO IT soon) but for now, I'll post this video of Abe getting his Hank on (I know I know done that before or twice):


Cowboy Maloney's Electric City by Michael Bible
Here's my Single-Sentence Review. If I ever get my own Vouched Books table, this is one of the first fiction books I'm ordering.

Editing Stoked
We had a busy past month: finishing Volume III (see you in December sucka!), already got a few pieces for Volume IV, assembling our next chapbook (Travis Macdonald's erasure of the Wartime chapter of The 9/11 Commission Report, called "The O Mission Repo: Time"), and accepting our first full-length book for publication (more on this soonsoonsoon). DUH I'M STOKED.

Dating Sara Again
After almost 6 months of being broken up and a few months after our divorce, we decided to try dating again. People say weirdos; we say hey. It's slow and paced and cautious and loving and somehowsafe and FUN. I'm done being an idiot (I hope).

Half Moon Brewery in Kokomo, Indiana
One of our first dates this time around, Sara and I dug this place bunches. MORE THAN OUR WALLETS; too be fair, it's actually priced aightly, four bucks for a pint of beer, 10-15 bucks for an entree. We just drink a lot. Sursly yummy Jack Daniels Steak Marinade and Honey Rye Beerz.

Savage's Ale House
I can't go to Muncie nowadays without checking up on my favorite bar. Fine by me.

A Real Rad Bloomington Trip With My Parents
A two-day trip with my parents and beloved relatives at Oliver Winery, an apple orchard, a drive through the park, Apples To Apples (I WON FOOL), free beer, rad time with my dear cousinpal Darrin, MOTHER BEAR'S, Upland Brewhouse. 'NOUGH SAID:)

The World's Most Dangerous Drug
I can't stop thinking about meth and this documentary didn't help. THANKS NETFLIX.

Season 3 of Parks And Recreation
I don't know when Netflix put this up, but AGAIN THANKS NETFLIX. Burned through it in like a week and I DON'T REGRET IT. I might put my "favorite funny tv shows that I've seen all the seasons of" list as 1) Arrested Development 2) Parks and Rec 3) Seinfeld and 4) The Office. DISCUSS?!

My Job As A First Grade Teacher's Aide
Two and a half months in and I'm like okay okay I could do this another year or two. It's like being the fun goofy uncle; I get to do fun things like PE and field trips and see the neat stuff like learning to read but when the major wacky happens, I just hand them back.

there is but one fence

Abraham Smith spits up rural life in beautiful fragmented songs in his debut collection, Whim Man Mammon. Exactly where it comes from, I can’t say. I know it reminds me of my Grandpa Gobble and his porch, that old shack at the end of the dirt road in North Carolina. And his whiskey in the fridge and the stories of my Dad’s youth.

Wherever he comes from and whatever he’s been through, Abraham Smith has shaken it loose and tossed it on the page. He speaks and it’s the trembling sound of the self, of throwback, of removed in America. Smith hopes, “may we live live live/forever far from walmart, among/the husk and husky peas and husky voiced singers/who ring among rusts and thrive on good boot gals.” He is not speaking from beside me in Central Indiana but broadcasting in his loud spoken word. A removed throwback self. These poems strike the sense that beg COME OUT AND PLAY. The best kinds of poems pull me out of my apartment, off my couch, away from the computer; Smith’s poems taunt and punch me out of my comfort hole. You want experience? Take this:

in work jeans

patched four ways with pants
I ripped the ass on

kneeling to my first
still warm deer

my knife just so
my hand slid in

and all the plates
began a claim

on hopeful
blues

vultures and crows
sky-locked

waiting
to fall to steaming

Abraham Smith is not shouting the gospel of a distant way of life. He’s breaking open the bottle to prove there’s whiskey inside. In these moments, Abraham Smith knows the knife is more than a knife and the blood more than blood and those pants and their patches remind him (and us) that those bits live on. And he can pull close to himself, to others, to us remembering a grandpa:

it goes without saying
my grandpa’s head is one helluva circus
never was religious man
people say he walked with deer
tickled their chins
flipped kernels of field corn
off his thumb
in and down their dog nun hatches
alzhimer’s now sad because
never would have wished to live this far from deer
happy when he doesn’t pine
happy when is bed is
cut from skin of moon
how much you need?

This collection isn’t easy to talk about because this isn’t a man sitting down to write the next great American poem, this is the man cutting his poems from the mud and muck of the American rural. Though some of the poems blew themselves into too small of bits or rattled too far, Abraham Smith’s first collection is one to be reckoned with, the work of a man possessed by the where as much as the what.

It's always better to hear Smith read his poems.
It's always best to see Smith read his poems.

(SPECIAL THANKS TO LAYNE FOR BUYING ME THIS BOOK ON HER RECENT TRIP TO NYC)

I open my mouth

Abraham Smith teaches at Alabama and I saw him and I was nervous and I didn't say hi and I think that was lame of me and he seems a 10 on the INTERESTING DUDE GOTTA KNOW YOU chart and yeah I keep that chart and these poems all called DEAR WEIRDO are holycow and this video maybe the best reading I've ever seen and YIKES TO WRITE WITH SUCH GOGOGUSTO.