Art

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"The State Of The Union, 1998" by Alison Espach

We are very excited to present work from our readers at next week’s Augury Books & Friends offsite AWP reading/shindig in Seattle. The reading will be at Noble Neon, 3130 Airport Way S on Friday, February 28th from 7:30 until we all feel like going back to our hotels. If you’ll be in Seattle, please join us! Afterwards we can all go dance at the VIDA party.

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This is an excerpt from Alison Espach’s “The State Of The Union, 1998”

THE STATE OF THE UNION, 1998

It is 1998, and everybody we know has moved to Florida.  Everybody we know is obsessed with their porch. The president is always on TV. He won’t leave us alone.

Our leadership in the world is unrivaled, Bill Clinton says.  Ladies and gentlemen, the state of our union is strong.

The President has bags under his eyes.

I am taking notes. Mrs. Klausterman is going to quiz us on the State of the Union first thing in social studies.  She said, “Write down anything you feel is important,” though I know from experience that everything I think is important usually turns out not to be important, so I decide to be safe and write down everything.

The President seems very tired.

But this is not a time to rest.

My brothers are playing Bloody Knuckles on the couch.  The point of the game is always to see who can stomach being the bloodiest, the longest.  Usually, nobody can.  It is the only game my brothers and I play where at some point, we all agree it’s better to lose.

My mother sips a gin and tonic, sitting Japanese-style on the floor. She looks like we do when we are watching Wheel of Fortune after dinner, noses close to the screen. She sits like this, so close to him, as though they are on a date.

It is a time to build a new America!

And find cures for diabetes.

(and AIDS!!!)

It’s no secret: my mother wants to fuck the President. These were my father’s exact words, last night, when my parents thought we had gone to sleep.

“It certainly is our business,” my mother said. “The president’s character is our business.”

“You only say that because he’s the only president you’ve ever wanted to fuck,” my father said.

I seized with panic in the stairwell. I had no idea there were people in this world who wanted to fuck the president. Fucking the President, I think, sounds like a kind of crime.  Something you should get arrested for.

Alison Espach is the author of the novel The Adults. The Adults was a Wall Street Journal Top 10 Novel of 2011, New York Times Editors’ Choice, Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, and Chicago Tribune #1 Reader Recommendation.   Alison’s other writing has appeared in Salon, the Daily Beast, Lincoln Center Theater Review, Fiction Writer’s Review, Del Sol Review, Sentence, and others.

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A poem by Camille Rankine

We’re happy to continue presenting work from our readers at the upcoming Augury Books & Friends offsite AWP reading/shindig in Seattle. The reading will be at Noble Neon, 3130 Airport Way S on Friday, February 28th from 7:30 until we all feel like going back to our hotels. If you’ll be in Seattle, please join us!

Photo by Dave Bledsoe of FreeVerse Photography

Camille Rankine is the author of Slow Dance with Trip Wire, selected by Cornelius Eady for the Poetry Society of America’s 2010 New York Chapbook Fellowship. The recipient of a 2010 “Discovery”/Boston Review Poetry Prize, her poetry has appeared in numerous journals, including American Poet, The Baffler, Boston Review, Denver Quarterly, Indiana Review, Octopus, Paper Darts, and  Tin House. She was selected for a MacDowell Colony Fellowship in 2013, and was named an Honorary Cave Canem Fellow in 2012. She is Assistant Director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Manhattanville College, Editorial Director of The Manhattanville Review, and lives in New York City.

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A poem by Karyna McGlynn

We’re happy to continue presenting work from our readers at the upcoming Augury Books & Friends offsite AWP reading/shindig in Seattle. The reading will be at Noble Neon, 3130 Airport Way S on Friday, February 28th from 7:30 until we all feel like going back to our hotels. If you’ll be in Seattle, please join us!

Photo by Dave Bledsoe of FreeVerse Photography

Shooting Script

I like to yank necklaces from women’s throats.

I am unconcerned

whether I break the clasps or the women.

A spray of pearls in the sunlight. No comment.

I smoke in the same sunlight.

Unconcerned in my underwear on an old floral chair.

My feet on the armrest. Look at me.

Little sensual snail.

Feet on the dashboard. The same sunlight.

I am a passenger in his Wagoneer

racing to a lakeside house where I will die.

In a Coeur d’Alene diner our waitress is pretty

with big breasts and black eyes.

She deserves better than this.

When she goes out by the dumpster to smoke

we kidnap her. Look at me, I say. Look.

The same sunlight on the lake house.

Grilled meat smell licking the side of the lake.

The three of us in a boat.

I am feeding the waitress slices of apple

off the side of my knife. She is wearing

my old green bikini. The boat cuts through

the no wake zone. Spray of water in the sunlight.

The droplets cling to her glasses. She doesn’t

wipe them away. She wants to tell me something.

Look, I say. We all have an imperfect past.

We swim out to the untethered raft.

He is showing off. He dives down under

the cool shadow, hides between rusted barrels.

He looks through the gray planks

into our green and cherry crotches. Sunlight.

He puts algae in his hair. He gurgles.

Look, I say. Monster. A thing goes ping, ping, ping.

His mouth. Her ear. Someone makes a wineglass sing.

I lick my thumb. I won’t stop it.

One time a body washed up in a greening slip.

It was waxen with cold and axed down

everyone’s Indian summer. True story.

You should come kiss me for telling it.

Originally published in Phoebe, Spring 2013

Karyna McGlynn is the author of I Have to Go Back to 1994 and Kill a Girl, winner of the Kathryn A. Morton Prize from Sarabande Books, as well as two chapbooks. Her poems have recently appeared in Ploughshares, The Literary Review, Seattle Review, West Branch, Subtropics, and The Academy of American Poet’s Poem-A-Day. Karyna received her MFA from the University of Michigan, and is currently a PhD candidate in Literature & Creative Writing at the University of Houston. She is the Managing Editor of Gulf Coast and coordinator for the Houston Indie Book Fest and Gulf Coast Reading Series.

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A poem by Maureen Alsop

Here is some more great work from our readers at the upcoming Augury Books & Friends offsite AWP reading/shindig in Seattle. The reading will be at Noble Neon, 3130 Airport Way S on Friday, February 28th from 7:30 until we all feel like going back to our hotels. If you’ll be in Seattle, please join us! Today’s poem is by Maureen Alsop and appears in her book Mantic which we were happy to publish last year.

Photo by Dave Bledsoe of FreeVerse Photography

GYROMANCY

divination by walking around a circle of letters until dizzy you fall down on the letters or in the direction to take

So you go wither. Go muscled in foxglove. So the surface of passionflower’s scent known

to the lungs will be touched by the mouth. So a camera’s song leans

over the guardrail. So the graffiti of circles. So lexicon is devoured by chalk

in the grassland. So omega. So bilge. So yesterday the tradition of order was left

to the entangled hawfinch. So I refused. So I am not a lady. Not your supper jug. Your

hunt of her. So dumpling, who’s your fried chicken? Even in neon-fragment. Even in

mastic-erotic-red. Your taste of me dispensed. So inconsolable keystrokes do not

withdraw from honesty, as honesty is in itself inconsolable.

So found I was without you. I do not remember how you left. Transparent, history

steeped in your head. So I held my finger to the small

blossoms of your eyelids. So I told the sun

to go. And there it spread. So flagstone. So eaglet.

Maureen Alsop, author of Mantic, available to order here, has new poems appearing at Watershed Review, Citron Review and ditch.

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A poem by Lauren Hunter

We’re happy to continue presenting work from our readers at the upcoming Augury Books & Friends offsite AWP reading/shindig in Seattle. The reading will be at Noble Neon, 3130 Airport Way S on Friday, February 28th from 7:30 until we all feel like going back to our hotels. If you’ll be in Seattle, please join us!

Photo by Dave Bledsoe of FreeVerse Photography

BE CAREFUL WITH THAT

tried to make a map out of you

sugar, thought you’d be a simple machine

to manipulate. i put my hands on the stars

daily, tracking burns down the stairs. you have

a lot of nervous intentions. we could be dolphins,

fireworks like us splashing against the northern sky.

what would i want? transparency. a little weightlessness,

some pools of oil refracting the entire reach of

“up there.” out here, no trees or rooftops framing the view

and i like that. like if i stood up, all of heaven’d crash

down around us. and don’t you wish.

Lauren Hunter is from North Carolina and lives in Brooklyn. She received her MFA in poetry from The New School and works with the team at Telephone Books as their Managing Editor. Lauren is the co-founder/curator of the Electric Pumas, a reading series/revolution in New York City. Her chapbook, My Own Fires, was released by Brothel Books in 2011.

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A poem by Patrick Moran

We’re happy to continue presenting work from our readers at the upcoming Augury Books & Friends offsite AWP reading/shindig in Seattle. The reading will be at Noble Neon, 3130 Airport Way S on Friday, February 28th from 7:30 until we all feel like going back to our hotels. If you’ll be in Seattle, please join us! Today’s poem is by Patrick Moran and is the title poem for The Book of Lost Things, winner of the first Augury Editors’ Prize.

Photo by Dave Bledsoe of FreeVerse Photography

The Book of Lost Things

In the book of lost things you appear on page twenty-

seven.

The text next to your picture doesn’t dwell on details

as much as it tries to capture a mood.

You also appear on page forty-one as a charm bracelet

and page ninety-nine as a tooled cowboy belt.

Read in quick succession the entries begin to form a

composite of a more expansive definition of loss.

The authors, as you would imagine, are a society of

scrupulously devoted ne’er-do-wells.

Inevitably, a significant portion of the Book of the Lost

is perceived as the Book of the Found.

This inherent duality creates cross-references problems

of nightmarish proportions.

Just think of it, on page three you and everyone you

know is missing a brain cell.

And on pages nine and ten your virginity smiles impishly

for the cameras.

from The Book of Lost Things, Augury Books Editors’ Prize Winner 2012, available for order here

Patrick Moran is a 1995 graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. He is the author of four books of poetry, Tell A Pitiful Story, MWPH, (2011), Doppelgangster, Main Street Rag Press, (2012), The Book of Lost Things, Augury Books, (2012), Rumors of Organized Crime, Poems & Plays’ 2013 Tennessee Chapbook Prize winner. He is also the author of “The Ampersand: Casual Vortex or Engraver’s Shortcut,” which appeared in the 2013 September issue of The Writer’s Chronicle. His poems and translations have appeared in many journals including the New Republic, The Antioch Review, The Prairie Schooner, The Southern Review and The Boston Review. He is currently an associate professor of creative writing at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.  His lives in Fort Atkinson, WI, with his wife, the painter Bethann Moran, and their three children.

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A poem by Alicia Jo Rabins

We are very excited to present work from our readers at the upcoming Augury Books & Friends offsite AWP reading/shindig in Seattle. The reading will be at Noble Neon, 3130 Airport Way S on Friday, February 28th from 7:30 until we all feel like going back to our hotels. If you’ll be in Seattle, please join us!

Photo by Dave Bledsoe, FreeVerse Photography

 Chute

Each time a baby is born
the universe squeezes itself
through a chute,
the same chute
into which
suicides squeeze themselves.
Its mouth
is lined with small iron teeth.
When you bathe your father
who has become like a child,
you feel the teeth
on your fingers.
When your father asks
who you are,
it means his legs have been
sucked in.
For you the tunnel’s
mouth is closed;
for him it is open
and oiled.

Alicia Jo Rabins is a poet and musician currently based in Portland, OR. Her work appears in American Poetry Review, 6×6, Boston Review, Court Green, Ploughshares and The Collagist. She tours internationally with her band, Girls in Trouble, a song cycle about the complicated lives of Biblical women, and has performed fiddle music across Central America and Kuwait. Residencies and scholarships include Bread Loaf Writers Conference, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and Bucknell Seminar for Younger Poets.

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PICS: 2014 Launch Party for BEAST and THE FAMILY CANNON at Berl’s Poetry Shop

A sincere and enthusiastic thank you to everyone who came out on Friday night, despite bitter cold and hazardous ice, to celebrate the launch of Augury Books’ 2014 poetry collection, BEAST, by Frances Justine Post, and debut fiction book, THE FAMILY CANNON, by Halina Duraj.

A special thank you to Berl’s Poetry Shop for an ideal venue, friends and family who traveled far, photographer Dave Bledsoe, and guest readers Timothy Donnelly and Ely Shipley, who added their considerable talents to a wonderful evening.

Enjoy the pics! THE FAMILY CANNON and BEAST are both currently available on Amazon.

 

THE FAMILY CANNON author Halina Duraj  /  Photo by Dave Bledsoe of FreeVerse Photography

BEAST author Frances Justine Post  /  Photo by Dave Bledsoe of FreeVerse Photography

Frances Justine Post signs copies of her book  /  Photo by Dave Bledsoe of FreeVerse Photography

Halina Duraj signs copies of her book  /  Photo by Dave Bledsoe of FreeVerse Photography

Ely Shipley reads and introduces friend Halina Duraj  /  Photo by Dave Bledsoe of FreeVerse Photography

Timothy Donnelly reads before introducing friend Frances Justine Post  /  Photo by Dave Bledsoe of FreeVerse Photography

Frances Justine Post reads from BEAST  /  Photo by Dave Bledsoe of FreeVerse Photography

Halina Duraj reads from THE FAMILY CANNON  /  Photo by Dave Bledsoe of FreeVerse Photography

Frances Justine Post, Ely Shipley, Timothy Donnelly, Kate Angus, Kimberly Steele, Halina Duraj  /  Photo by Dave Bledsoe of FreeVerse Photography

Berl’s Poetry Shop / Photo by Dave Bledsoe of FreeVerse Photography

 

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Halina Duraj Preview: Read Excerpt from THE FAMILY CANNON Then Pre-Order!

Photo and THE FAMILY CANNON Cover Art by Dave Bledsoe, FreeVerse Photography

From “Tenants,” THE FAMILY CANNON by Halina Duraj

My mother scrubbed the blood all evening. She dipped the hard-bristled brush in a bucket of ammonia while my father ate pork chops and sauerkraut at the kitchen table. She came downstairs to make him a cup of tea—he’d never made one for himself—and she turned on the TV for him while he put his feet up on the coffee table. Then she went back upstairs to paint. She painted that same night so the room could be advertised the next day. I didn’t have to sleep in the trundle that night, because she never came to bed. I crept up the stairs, and at the top, I rested my chin on the banister. On the other side of the wall, I heard the slap of the brush against the plaster and my mother crying. A strip of light appeared under Don the Barber’s door, and then I heard bedsprings and floorboards and I turned and went down the stairs. From the darkness at the bottom, I watched him cross the hall, and I heard murmurings and mumblings and then my mother’s voice a little louder, a little firmer, then a shushing noise. ‘Please,’ I heard my mother say. ‘Don’t.’

And then Don the Barber walked back across the hall, shut the door. His light didn’t go off, but I went to bed anyway. I woke up at six o’clock when my mother came downstairs and made my father breakfast and packed his lunch and carried it out to his car and went down to the Tribune to place a new ad: Room for rent. Just painted. Please inquire.

In the afternoon, she painted a second coat, and then you almost couldn’t see the stains.”

Don’t forget our launch party with a reading by Halina Duraj, on January 24, 2014 — RSVP now or simply save the date. We will see you there!

Order Now on Amazon — Look for it new from seller Augury Books

Thank you!