AlteredScale.com Issue 4 Launch Reading: Featured Artist Jonathan Brannen

The AlteredScale.com Issue 4 Launch Reading took place at Boneshaker Books in Minneapolis on July 21. The first two videos display Jonathan reading his poetry, and the third shows him singing an original Americana song. In the next week, videos by the other participants will appear.


 







"Like Birds Embrace the Sky" (words, music and performance by Jonathan Brannen)

[Sorry about the camera angle. I forgot to adjust when he sat down. But you can still hear it. --Jeff]

the FACTory

by Mary Kasimor

the breathless WHisper

BREATHless

secrets ARound my SELVEs

THE men pinnED me

down to examine LISTS TATtooed

onto my skin

I WAS

an original butterFLY

they took my WINGs

&I COllapSEd into a synthesized

SEA

there were ENDLESS products before
the wordS WERE found

______________________________

Mary Kasimor is a regular contributor to this blog.

Braille Dawn

by John Grey

oh my eyeless son

rippling flashings tell

some busted icy speeches

as supermarket brands

stuff the blind canal -

parallel sheets of wind

rock the dawn

thrash the light,

travel vibrant with your words -

sit back and watch you

wander in them –

one sharp blast

and you will shatter –

you feel like all those

who can only know

the lineal thunders –

___________________________

John Grey is an Australian born poet. Recently published in International Poetry Review, Chrysalis and the science fiction anthology, Futuredaze with work upcoming in Potomac Review, Sanskrit and Fox Cry Review.

Rorschach

by Peter Stein

(Click on poem to isolate it.)

_____________________

Peter Stein appears in AlteredScale.com 4.

Peter William Stein is a Minnesota poet and a father of four sons. His poems have been published in The Edge Magazine, Kerouac's Dog Magazine, the Planet Formerly Known as Earth, and the Zumbrota Crossings Poet and Artist Collaboration. He has read his poetry at various reading series in the Minneapolis area, and actively involved with the League of Minnesot a Poets. You can check out his work online at www.pwilliamstein.com.

AlteredScale.com Issue 4: Out and the Launch Reading is LIVE

AlteredScale.com Issue 4 Launch Reading

****At 5 pm Central Time today (July 20), AlteredScale.com Issue 4 is out and live on the Internet****

To celebrate, we will have a launch reading:

Sat., Sept. 21 at 7 pm

Boneshaker Books

2002 23rd Ave S  Minneapolis, MN 55404
(Corner of Franklin and 23rd Avenue)

(612) 871-7110

Featuring: Jonathan Brannen

Jonathan Brannen is the author of twelve volumes of poetry and five books of visual literature, including two books by TheAlteredScalePress—Sway and turning point. Recent collections include this is visual poetry (this is visual poetry chapbooks, Kingston PA, 2010), a sequence of full color word art; Mona Lisa (Avantacular Press, 2010), a sequence of visual poems he created combining computer constructed images and photocopying between 1975 and 1982; and Deaccessioned Landscapes, a collection of technically innovative sonnets (Chax Press, Tucson, AZ, 2005). His poetry and fiction have been anthologized in five countries on three continents and translated into two languages. He grew up in Florida and currently resides in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Also appearing:
Leigh Herrick
Tom Cassidy
Elisabeth Workman
George J. Farrah
Terrence Folz
Ann Bogle
Lenora Drowns
Ann Tweedy
Gretchen Marquette
& maybe more

The Smell of an Elevator

by Marc Vincenz



I’ve never known an elevator
to stink so much of garlic.


It must be Mister Huang
who’s always farting


on the way to work.
Perhaps I should have a chat


with his good wife;
though, they say


she’s a good cook
and you know


how good cooks are
about taking advice.

___________________________

Marc Vincenz is a regular contributor to this blog. He appeared in AlteredScale.com issue 2, and he edits MadHat.

See his entry at Poets & Writers.

& you off-switch director

by Billy Cancel

maintain 0 blossom 
in mood net     should be lively sequence     lunatic well
-no strings attached     massive machines watch     open mouth 
self-contained caught bullets in her hand     chewed 'em on 
lemon ave 'mongst derelict cars     chemically level hope tattoo nearly 
you unhindered rationale     amoeba's choice     day made pies 
leapt from yellow hence     she often thought of 
filling the ditch tricking     the devil not out 
of circulation into     small receptacle 
                                Wire Cutter Homage 
Reference Point Heir Apparent     Brash Strokes Through     Careful Interconnection 
Stupifying Bright Interlude *******************************************
********************************me upon demystification approach 
taking a short cut by     stadium close season     all cold turkey off     plastic planting 
trees as fence     to pen cuckoo in     so SUMMER STAYS  
bled shine     once made a thing of iron hive     addressed every dimple 
depression     real skimmer     reconfigured to eat up space     3 moves ahead 
     yet if god     permits out of some     defunct mine     shaft shall worm     
apple hill apple hill innocent     
complex little vanguard

____________________________

Billy is a regular contributor to the blog. His work can also be seen in AlteredScale.com issues 2 and 3.

See his webpage.

Open Season

by KT Gutting

I want you to put on 

your red jacket. Grab

your smokes. Let's go 

out back and set 

the Pontiac on fire. 

_________________

Anxiety-ridden San Diego poet KT Gutting is a member of the 2013 graduating class of the MFA program at Saint Mary's College. She very strongly believes in prepositions, the personal I, and enjambment. This is her writing's first public appearance.

Witch Creek

by Kathryn Gutting

The land burned outside-in 

as I watched palm shadows 

shift in the barbed light of flame,

feeling your demons braid

through my blood. Not yet mine 

for a day, and already I wished 

to slide the night open, to throw 

them back where they belonged. 

___________________________

Anxiety-ridden San Diego poet KT Gutting is a member of the 2013 graduating class of the MFA program at Saint Mary's College. She very strongly believes in prepositions, the personal I, and enjambment. This is her writing's first public appearance.

Sand between the Toes

by Richard Martin

  

I am a cabaret of pure joy

A bungalow under siege

Last night the moon wept into a wet rag

Language leaps from the mouth

Into a collage of destiny

The sun rises in an airplane window of regret

I have a friend named Daphne

I could sleep in the excessed memories

Of our brief encounter with meaning

The clock is a storyteller

It narrates the edge

The news is on

The universe came from nothing

There is no way to accept the death of children

A bird in the ivory tree of the soul sings

I might exchange my mind for the graffiti of hope –

Hitchhike under a sky of infrared stars

Hurray for bread and the maker of religiosity

The past strapped to the present

The inescapable gorgeous line yet to be written

Drifts in the sea of a poetic moment

The ecstasy of repetition stretches a silver wire

Across the crystal chasm

I’ve waited too long in the hipster rain

This way or not a prophet shouts

In the wake of a wave of lathered horses

In conjunction with the final ATM

Senselessness has been accomplished

The ontological pancake of dreams suspended

Love is now

The spontaneity of heartache discloses

________________________

Richard Martin will be reading at SubText books in St. Paul on Oct. 26 at 6:30 pm. He will be joined by Leigh Herrick, George J. Farrah, Elisabeth Workman, and Ann Tweedy. 

Richard Martin is the author of five books of poetry, including White Man Appears on Southern California Beach(Bottom Fish Press, 1991) and Under the Sky of No Complaint (Lavender Ink/Fell Swoop, 2013). His work has appeared in Fell Swoop, ACM, Exquisite Corpse, Gargoyle, Artichoke Haircut, Shattered Wig (post) and unarmed. He is also the author of boink!, an antimemoir, published by Lavender Ink (New Orleans, 2005) and four chapbooks. A past recipient of a NEA Poetry Fellowship, he founded and coordinated the Big Horror Poetry Reading Series in Binghamton, New York, from 1982-1996. He lives in Boston.

AN ANTHOLOGY OF ASEMIC HANDWRITING is out and for sale

Published on Aug 12, 2013

An Anthology of Asemic Handwriting (Uitgeverij Press, Amsterdam) is the first book-length publication to collect the work of a community of writers on the edges of illegibility. Asemic writing is a galaxy-sized style of writing, which is everywhere yet remains largely unknown. For human observers, asemic writing may appear as lightning from a storm, a crack in the sidewalk, or the tail of a comet. But despite these observations, asemic writing is not everything: it is just an essential component, a newborn supernova dropped from a calligrapher's hand. Asemic writing is simultaneously communicating with the past and the future of writing, from the earliest undeciphered writing systems to the xenolinguistics of the stars; it follows a peregrination from the preliterate, beyond the verbal, finally ending in a postliterate condition in which visual language has superseded words. An Anthology of Asemic Handwriting is compiled and edited by Tim Gaze from Asemic magazine and Michael Jacobson from The New Post-Literate blog. 

Uitgeverii Press

Amazon Link

__________________________

Tim Gaze is from Australia, and Michael is from Minneapolis. Full disclosure: I appear in the anthology, and Michael and I are friends as well as art colleagues.

in the comfort of angles this parallel

by Leigh Herrick

effects

this stream of red

this dawn drawn experiment retarding window and apertured relief for slitting the sheet

          the opened door

          the bottom swarmed loose

          the night taken to stare 

                              cased for red

                         cased for sub

                     structure

                 d ing s

and have you found an ess for that in the swivel of time  

have you found the upper and lowering of gratify

              when in the crimson

      when in the nest of it

when in the egg

the swallow and sea ethereal spin to save their IF

                                                  that whirls itself to wander and the split of it  

spins to swarm the warnings—

and for the cave of your heart

what blood now                                                 

spelling the muscle of form

______________________________

Leigh Herrick contributes regularly to this blog and has appeared in AlteredScale.com 3. She will also appear in the next issue. Her latest book is Without, Haiku.