Podcasts about blazevox

In this installment of the Rock is Lit Season 4 Reading Series, Kat Hausler reads an excerpt from her novel ‘What I Know About July' and discusses its creation. The novel centers around indie rocker Simon Kemper, fresh out of rehab and riding the wave of moderate success with his band in Berlin. But lurking in the background is his stalker, a mysterious figure present at every show, sending unsettling postcards to his label and acting as though she owns him. When she suddenly vanishes during one of his performances, Simon becomes the prime suspect. What begins as an attempt to clear his name spirals into a deeper psychological journey, as Simon questions whether her obsession could have truly ended—or if it has merely become entangled in the lives of those closest to him: his bandmates, a new romantic interest, an embittered ex, and the person he thought he had left behind. Narcissistic and insecure, Simon's struggle to become a better person is central to this haunting story. Originally from Virginia, Kat Hausler is a graduate of New York University and holds an M.F.A. in Fiction from Fairleigh Dickinson University, where she was the recipient of a Baumeister Fellowship. She is the author of ‘Retrograde' and ‘What I Know About July', as well as many shorter pieces. Her work has appeared in ‘Hawaii Pacific Review', ‘34th Parallel', ‘Inkspill Magazine', ‘The Sunlight Press', ‘The Dalloway', ‘Rozlyn Press', ‘Porridge Magazine', ‘LitReactor', ‘BlazeVOX', ‘failbetter', and' The Airgonaut', among others. She lives in Berlin and is also a translator.   MUSIC IN THE EPISODE IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE: Rock is Lit theme music [Guitar Instrumental Beat] Sad Rock [Free Use Music] Punch Deck—“I Can't Stop” [Free] Indie Rock x Alternative Type Beat—“Borderline” [Free] Lana del Rey Type Beat/“Tell Me You Love Me”/Indie Rock Type Beat (Free) Acoustic Guitar Type Beat—“Need You” [Guitar Instrumental Beat] Sad Rock [Free Use Music] Punch Deck—“I Can't Stop”  Rock is Lit theme music   LINKS: Leave a rating and comment for Rock is Lit on Goodpods: https://goodpods.com/podcasts/rock-is-lit-212451 Leave a rating and comment for Rock is Lit on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/rock-is-lit/id1642987350 Kat Hausler's website: https://www.kathausler.com/ Kat Hausler on Facebook: @KatHausler Kat Hausler on Instagram: @kat_hausler Kat Hausler on Twitter: @Kat_Fiction Christy Alexander Hallberg's website: https://www.christyalexanderhallberg.com/rockislit Christy Alexander Hallberg on Instagram, Twitter, YouTube: @ChristyHallberg Rock is Lit on Instagram: @rockislitpodcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mark Hannon is the author of  Every Man for Himself, a crime novel set in the Buffalo, N.Y.  of the 1950s and The Vultures, set in Buffalo in 1970. He is also the author of the forthcoming history, The Fire Laddies, about the Baltimore City Fire Department at the turn of the 20th Century. He has had short fiction published in Peninsula, Scribble, The Wayne Literary Review, Adelaide, Courtship of the Winds, Ink and Voices, Bohemian Renaissance and BlazeVOX. He has had non-fiction published  in The Baltimore Post Examiner, The Baltimore Sun, The Maryland Historical Society Magazine, Soundings, The Carriage Horse Journal and Lekko. A retired firefighter who grew up in Buffalo, he and his family currently make their home in Baltimore.  ⁣ Make sure to check out this author! You can listen to the podcast on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcast, or visit my website www.drkatherinehayes.com

Nicholas Michael Ravnikar put the overt in overthinking. He is the originator of the new, obsessive poetic form called the Polish octave. He has self-published two collections of poetry, "Imaginary Friends" in July 2022 and "Three Dirty Sunsets" on December 1, 2022. He challenged himself to release four free full-length poetry collections during the month of January and hopes to keep up a frenzied pace leading up to the release of a complete book of Polish Octaves in 2023. Moria Press published and mailed a hard copy of his long poem, "Liberal Elite Media Rag. SAD!" to the White House for inclusion in the presidential library. His poems have appeared in venues like Sawbuck, Otoliths, BlazeVox, and more recently in Black Stone on a White Stone and Superpresent. His book reviews have appeared at New Pages.com. In addition, he has also started Paper::Knives poetry projects, the latest incarnation of small press publishing efforts, with the mission of increasing public analysis, interpretation, and critique of poetry. He holds an MFA in creative writing from Naropa University's Jack Kerouac School of Poetics and taught for 9 years as a college professor after moonlighting as a video producer and nonprofit arts facilitator until leaving a full-time liberal arts lectureship at a state university in order to repair bathtubs. Living with Borderline Personality Disorder, ADHD and Dysthymia-Persistent depression, he has been sober since 2011 and raises two children with his spouse in Racine, WI. Download his books for free at or bio.fm/nicholasmichaelravnikar or submit your work for publication by Paper::Knives at www.paperknives.art Amazon.com: Imaginary Friends: Poems eBook : Ravnikar, Nicholas : Books  

In A Single Bound was published as part of the short story collection So Different Now, which was released by CCLaP in 2011. The collection represents Part Two of the linked short story collection UPSTATE re-released in 2020 by Tortoise Books (and originally released under the title The New York Stories by CCLaP in 2015). In A Single Bound is read by Seth Berg (BIO below). INTRO/OUTRO music is Drinking of Me and was generously provided by Monkey Wrench. READER BIO Seth Berg is a hatchet-wielding forest-dweller who digs tasty hallucinatory literature. A hot-sauce-addicted pyromaniac with an MFA from Bowling Green State University, Berg fantasizes about flight without mechanisms, alien glyph systems, and snowshoeing through your nocturnal dreamscapes. He is a professor, poet, artifact-maker, and amateur astrophysicist whose mathematically coded collections of poetry will haunt, invigorate, provoke, and inspire you. Berg's first book, Muted Lines From Someone Else's Memory won the Dark Sky Books 2009 book contest. His second book, Aviary, co-authored with Bradford K. Wolfenden II, won the 2015 Artistically Declined Twin Antlers Contest, and was released by Civil Coping Mechanisms in January of 2017. Other poems and short fiction can be found in Connecticut Review, 13th Warrior Review, Spittoon Literary Review, BlazeVOX, Heavy Feather Literary Review, The Montucky Review, Masque & Spectacle, and Lake Effect, among others. Recently, poems were anthologized in GTCPR Volume III and Daddy Cool. He lives in Minnesota with his two supernatural children, Oak and Sage, and his magical better half, Kori. He loves your face. YEE-HAW, Cletus!!! https://www.tanzerben.com/blog/upstate-the-podcast

Hi there, Welcome to Creative Drive! Today we feature poetry by Januário Esteves! More from the author here: https://www.facebook.com/januarioantonioesteves About: Januário Esteves was born in Coruche and was raised near Costa da Caparica, Portugal. He graduated in electromechanical installations, uses the pseudonym Januanto and writes poetry since the age of 16. In 1987 he published poems in the Jornal de Letras, and participated over the years in some collective publications. Recently published in the Brazilian magazine Musa Rara, in the American magazine EIGHTEENSEVENTY.POETRY.BLOG, in the Brazilian Revista LiteraLivre, in the Romanian magazine Poesis, in the australian review Otoliths, in the american review BlazeVox, in the american magazine Harbinger Asylum, in the liberian Ducor Review, in the Indian Taj Mahal Review, in the american review The Writing Disorder, in the Brazilian review Acrobata in the Brazilian magazine Mallamargens, in the american magazine JMWWBlog, in the romanian magazine ScarletLeaf Review, in the 4th Literary Competition of the Vieira da Silva Editions, in the Indian magazine LiteraryYard, in the american magazine Spillwords, in the Brazilian magazine Revista entre poetas & poesias, in the American magazine Free Verse Revolution, in the portuguese review Athena, in the brazilian review Arara, in the English magazine Lothlorien Poetry Journal, in the american review Bezine, in the american review Adelaide Literary Magazine, in the American magazine Archive - the collaborative , in the Indian magazine INNSÆI, International Journal of Creative Literature for Peace and Humanity, in the american blog Pondersavant.com, in the american review ACADEMY OF THE HEART AND MIND, in the mauritian the Pangolin Review, in the Indian magazine The Criterion, in the american magazine Dreginald, in the american magazine Fevers of the mind, in the indian magazine Wordweavers, in the american review Starline of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association. Thanks for sharing your work with us! -- Read and Produced by J. Alejandro | Original Music by descheveler Creative Drive is an international podcast produced by J. Alejandro to bring visibility to poets and writers from all walks of life. If you have a sec, please SUBSCRIBE AND REVIEW this labor of love, and don't forget to tell your writer friends! For more information, visit cruzfolio.com/creative-drive-podcast/ Find out more at https://creativedrive.pinecast.co

Poetry Editor Maggie Swofford reads "Rave Haiku" by Rose Knapp, and Gerard Sarnat reads his two poems, "Far Out Space Capsule Hygiene to Avoid Primal Screams" and "Mudita." All of these poems can be found in our Summer issue. Rose Knapp (she/they) is a poet and electronic producer. She has publications in Lotus-Eater, Bombay Gin, BlazeVOX, Hotel Amerika, Fence Books, Obsidian, Gargoyle, and others. She has poetry collections published with Hesterglock Press and Dostoyevsky Wannabe. She lives in Minneapolis. Find her at roseknapp.net and on Twitter @Rose_Siyaniye. Gerard Sarnat, MD, has won San Francisco Poetry's 2020 Contest and Poetry in Arts First Place Award/Dorfman Prizes. He has published in Buddhist Poetry Review, NY Times, among many others, as well as by Harvard, Stanford, Dartmouth, Penn, Chicago, and Columbia presses. A Stanford professor/healthcare CEO, Gerry has built/staffed clinics for the marginalized, devoted energy/resources toward climate justice on Climate-Action-Now's board. Married since 1969, Gerry has nine grand/kids. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/vita-poetica/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/vita-poetica/support

Marianne Szlyk’s poems have appeared in of/with, bird’s thumb, Mad Swirl, Solidago, One-Sentence Poems, Bourgeon, Mike Maggio’s COVID-19 series, Sheila-na-gig, Verse Virtual, Cactifur, Music of the Aztecs, and Resurrection of a Sunflower, an anthology of work responding to Vincent Van Gogh’s art. Her new book, Poetry en Plein Air, is available from Pony One Dog Press and Amazon. She has also revived her blog-zine The Song Is… as a summer-only publication for poems and prose inspired by music, especially jazz: http://thesongis.blog. Recently she read her poems at the River Road Reading Series in Eugene, OR...through the magic of Zoom. She and her husband also coordinate It Takes a Community, a poetry group that brings together MC student poets and poets from the community. These days, the community is much larger, even including poets from New York, Wisconsin, Italy, and Nigeria! Ethan Goffman’s first volume of poetry, Words for Things Left Unsaid, was published by Kelsay Books in March of 2020.  His poems have appeared in Alien Buddha, Ariel Chart, BlazeVox, Bradlaugh’s Finger, Burgeon, The Loch Raven Review,Mad Swirl, MadnessMuse,Ramingo’s Blog,Setu, and elsewhere. Ethan is co-founder of It Takes a Community, a Montgomery College initiative bringing poetry to students and local residents.  He is also founder and producer of the Poetry & Planet podcast on EarthTalk.org. https://earthtalk.org/poetry-and-planet/  

Willona Sloan has published non-fiction, fiction, and poetry in publications such as AudioFemme, BlazeVOX, Bohemia, Fresh Cup, Paste, Publishers Weekly, The Rumpus, Washington Post and Words Apart. She teaches creative and professional writing workshops in the Washington, DC area at the Writer's Center and the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery and has also led workshops in partnership with The Reykjavík UNESCO City of Literature and the Reykjavík International Literary Festival. Willona is an alum of the VONA and Hurston/Wright writing workshops.

Wednesday Reading Series: Youmna Chlala & Jennifer Firestone— January 29th, 2020 Hosted by Kyle Dacuyan. Youmna Chlala is an artist and a writer born in Beirut based in New York. She is the author of the poetry collection, The Paper Camera (Litmus Press, 2019). She is the recipient of a 2018 O. Henry Award, a Joseph Henry Jackson Award and the Founding Editor of Eleven Eleven {1111} Journal of Literature and Art. Her writing appears in BOMB, Guernica, Prairie Schooner, Bespoke, Aster(ix), CURA and MIT Journal for Middle Eastern Studies. She has exhibited at the Hayward Gallery, The Drawing Center, Art In General, Rotterdam International Film Festival, Dubai Art Projects, Hessel Museum of Art, and MAK Center for Art and Architecture. She participated in the 33rd Bienal de Sao Paulo, 2017 LIAF Biennial in Norway and the 11th Performa Biennial. She is co-editing a new series for Coffee House Press entitled Spatial Species (2021). She is a Professor in Humanities and Media Studies and Writing at the Pratt Institute. Jennifer Firestone is the author of five books of poetry and four chapbooks including Story (Ugly Duckling Presse), Ten, (BlazeVOX [books]), Gates & Fields (Belladonna Collaborative), Swimming Pool (DoubleCross Press), Flashes (Shearsman Books), Holiday (Shearsman Books), Waves (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs), from Flashes and snapshot (Sona Books) and Fanimaly (Dusie Kollektiv). She co-edited (with Dana Teen Lomax) Letters To Poets: Conversations about Poetics, Politics and Community (Saturnalia Books) and is collaborating with Marcella Durand on a book entitled Other Influences about feminist avant-garde poetics. Firestone has work anthologized in Kindergarde: Avant-Garde Poems, Plays, Songs, & Stories for Children and Building is a Process / Light is an Element: essays and excursions for Myung Mi Kim. She won the 2014 Marsh Hawk Press' Robert Creeley Memorial Prize. Firestone is an Associate Professor of Literary Studies at the New School's Eugene Lang College and is also the Director of their Academic Fellows pedagogy program.

Visit queenofpeaches.com for show notes! Today, I’m incredibly pleased to be speaking with my friend, neighbor, and former bandmate, the poet Tony Trigilio. Tony is the author and editor of 13 books, including, most recently, Ghosts of the Upper Floor (published by BlazeVOX [books] in 2019), which is the third installment in his multivolume poem, The Complete Dark Shadows (of My Childhood). His selected poems, Fuera del Taller del Cosmos, was published in Guatemala by Editorial Poe (translated by Bony Hernández). He is editor of Elise Cowen: Poems and Fragments (published by Ahsahta Press in 2014), and the author of Allen Ginsberg’s Buddhist Poetics (published by Southern Illinois University Press in 2012). Tony coedits the poetry journal Court Green and is an associate editor for Tupelo Quarterly. He is a Professor of English and Creative Writing at Columbia College Chicago. Today we discuss his origin story as a poet, the possibilities that get unlocked by asking a student “tell me more of what you mean by that,” building bridges between the hemispheres of the brain, how playing drums professionally helped Tony unite his practice as a writer with his work as a scholar, and why the best art feels like a friend saying to you, “I’m going to tell you something but it’s hard to say.” For more information about Tony, you can find him online at starve.org.

Of Clockwork Hearts and Metal Iguanodons By Jennifer Lee Rossman   They weren't real, but they still took my breath away. The model dinosaurs and other prehistoric beasties lived on and swam in the waters around three islands in Hyde Park. Enormous things, so big that I'd heard their designer had hosted a dinner party inside one, and so lifelike! If I stared long enough, I was sure I'd see one blink. I turned to Samira and found her twirling her parasol, an act purposely designed to bely the rage burning in her eyes. She would never let it show, her pleasant smile practically painted on, but I'd spent enough time with her to recognize that fury boiling just beneath the surface. Befuddled, I looked back at the dinosaurs, this time flipping down my telescopic goggles. The craftsmanship was immaculate, the color consistent all along the plesiosaur's corkscrew neck, and the pudgy, horned iguanodons looked structurally sound, what with their bellies dragging on the ground. Dinosaurs were Samira's everything; how could seeing them practically coming to life not give her joy?   [Full story after the cut.]   Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 76 for June 24, 2019. This is your host, Keffy, and I’m super excited to be sharing this story with you. Today we have a GlitterShip original, which is available in the Autumn 2018 issue that you can pick up at GlitterShip.com/buy, on Gumroad at gum.co/gship08, or on Amazon, Nook, Kobo, and other ebook retailers. If you’ve been waiting to pick up your copy of the Tiptree Award Honor Listed book, GlitterShip Year Two, there’s a great deal going on for Pride over at StoryBundle. GlitterShip Year Two is part of a Pride month LGBTQ fantasy fiction bundle. StoryBundle is a pay-what-you-want bundle site. For $5 or more, you can get four great books, and for $15 or more, you’ll get an additional five books, including GlitterShip Year Two, and a story game. That comes to as little as $1.50 per book or game. The StoryBundle also offers an option to give 10% of your purchase amount to charity. The charity for this bundle is Rainbow Railroad, a charity that helps queer folks get to a safe place if their country is no longer safe for them. This is a great deal, so if you want to take advantage of it, go to Storybundle.com/pride soon! The deal only runs through June 27th, depending on your time zone.     Today’s story is “Of Clockwork Hearts and Metal Iguanodons” by Jennfer Lee Rossman, but first our poem, “Shortcake” by Jade Homa.   Jade Homa is an intersectional feminist, sapphic poet, lgbtq sensitivity reader, member of The Rainbow Alliance, and editor-in-chief of Blue Literary Magazine. Her poetry has been published in over 7 literary magazines, including BlazeVOX, A Tired Heroine, The Ocotillo Review, and Sinister Wisdom (in print). Jade’s work will be featured in an exhibit via Pen and Brush, a New York City based non profit that showcases emerging female artists, later this year, along with being featured in a special edition of Rattle which highlights dynamic Instagram poets. In her free time, Jade loves petting dogs, eating pasta, and daydreaming about girls.     Shortcake by Jade Homa you called me your strawberry girl / and I wondered if it was / the wolf inside my jaw / or the red stained across my cheeks / or the way I said fuck / or thattime I yanked your / hair / or every moment / you swallowed me whole     And now “Of Clockwork Hearts and Metal Iguanodons” by Jennifer Lee Rossman, read by April Grant.   Jennifer Lee Rossman is that autistic nerd who complains about inaccurate depictions of dinosaurs. Along with Jaylee James, she is the co-editor of Love & Bubbles, a queer anthology of underwater romance. Her debut novel, Jack Jetstark's Intergalactic Freakshow, was published by World Weaver Press in 2018. She tweets about dinosaurs @JenLRossman April Grant lives in the greater Boston area. Her backstory includes time as a sidewalk musician, real estate agent, public historian, dishwasher, and librarian. Among her hobbies are biking and singing.     Of Clockwork Hearts and Metal Iguanodons By Jennifer Lee Rossman   They weren't real, but they still took my breath away. The model dinosaurs and other prehistoric beasties lived on and swam in the waters around three islands in Hyde Park. Enormous things, so big that I'd heard their designer had hosted a dinner party inside one, and so lifelike! If I stared long enough, I was sure I'd see one blink. I turned to Samira and found her twirling her parasol, an act purposely designed to bely the rage burning in her eyes. She would never let it show, her pleasant smile practically painted on, but I'd spent enough time with her to recognize that fury boiling just beneath the surface. Befuddled, I looked back at the dinosaurs, this time flipping down my telescopic goggles. The craftsmanship was immaculate, the color consistent all along the plesiosaur's corkscrew neck, and the pudgy, horned iguanodons looked structurally sound, what with their bellies dragging on the ground. Dinosaurs were Samira's everything; how could seeing them practically coming to life not give her joy? "What's wrong?" I asked quietly, so as not to disturb the crowds around us. Well, any more than our mere presence disturbed them by default. (It wasn't every day they saw a girl in a mechanical chair and her butch Indian crush who wore trousers with her best jewelry, and they did not particularly care for us. We didn't particularly care what they thought, which really didn't engender ourselves to them, but luckily polite society frowned on yelling at people for being gay, disabled, and/or nonwhite, so hooray for us.) "It's wrong." "What is?" She gestured emphatically at the islands, growing visibly distressed. "It! Them! Everything! Everything is wrong!" If Samira's frustration had a pressure valve, the needle would have been edging toward the red. She needed to get out of the situation before she burst a pipe. I knew better than to take her hand, as she didn't always appreciate physical touch the way I did, so I gently tugged at the corner of her vest as I engaged my chair. The miniature steam engine behind me activated the pistons that turned my chrome wheels, and Samira held onto my velvet-padded armrest as we left the main viewing area and took refuge by one of the fountains in the Crystal Palace. She sat on the marble edge, letting a hand trail in the shimmery water until she felt calm enough to speak. "They did it all wrong, Tilly. They didn't take any of my advice." She rummaged through her many pockets, finally producing a scrap of paper with a dinosaur sketched on it. "This is what iguanodon looked like." Her drawing showed an entirely different creature than the park's statue. While theirs looked sluggish and fat, kind of like a doofy dragon, Samira's interpretation was nimble and intelligent, standing on four legs with a solid but agile tail held horizontally behind it. And its nose horn was completely absent, though it did have a large thumb spike, giving it the impression of perpetually congratulating someone on a job well done. It certainly looked like a more realistic representation of a living creature, but these things lived, what, millions of years ago? Even someone as brilliant as Samira couldn't possibly have known what they were really like. But I couldn't tell her that. Girlfriends are supposed to be supportive, and I needed to do everything I could to gain prospective girlfriend points before I asked her out. "What evidence did you give them for your hypothesis?" I asked instead. "All we really have are fossils, right?" Her face lit up at the invitation to delve into her favorite subject. "Right, and we don't even have full skeletons yet of most of them. But we have limbs. Joints. And if we compare them to skeletons of things that exist now, they don't resemble big, fat lizards that could hardly move around. That makes no biological sense, because predators could just waltz up and eat them. They had to be faster, more agile. They wouldn't have survived otherwise." "So why wouldn't they have listened to you?" I asked, perplexed. "Because they don't understand evolution," she said, though she didn't sound convinced. "Or they don't want to be shown up by a girl. A lesbian girl with nonconforming hair and wardrobe who dares to be from a country they pretend to own." She crossed her arms and stared at her boots. "Or both. But there's no excuse for the plesiosaurs. No creature's neck can bend like that." I wasn't sure exactly how I was supposed to respond to that. Samira never complained about something just to commiserate; she expected answers, a solution. But I couldn't very well make them redesign the statues, no matter how happy that would have made her. So we just sat together quietly by the fountain, fuming at the ignorant men in charge of the park, and I schemed for a way to fix things for the girl that made my eyes light up the way dinosaurs lit hers.   Every problem had a solution, if you tinkered hard enough. After my accident, I took a steam engine and wheels from a horseless wagon and stuck them on a chair. My mum hadn't been amused to lose part of her dinette set, but it got me around town until I could build a proper wheelchair. (Around the flat parts of town, anyway. My latest blueprints involved extending legs that could climb stairs.) And when Londoners complained about the airship mooring towers were ruining the skyline, who figured out a way to make them retractable? That would be me. The airship commissioner hadn't responded to my proposal yet, but it totally worked in small scale on my dollhouse. It was just a matter of finding the solution to Samira's dinosaur problem. I spent all night in my workshop, referring to her sketches and comparing them to promotional drawings of the park's beasts. I'd be lying if I said I didn't consider breaking in and altering the statues somehow, but the sheer amount that they had gotten wrong precluded that as a possibility. This wasn't a mere paintjob or moving an iguanodon horn; they needed a complete overhaul. I ran my fingers through my hair in frustration. The day they announced that they were building realistic, life sized dinosaurs in Crystal Park was the day I fell for Samira. I'd always thought she was pretty—tall, brilliant smile, didn't conform to society's expectations for women—but the pure joy radiating from her... It was like she'd turned on a giant electromagnet inside her, and the clockwork the doctors had installed to keep my heart beating was powerless against her magnetic field. So I listened to her gush about the park, about how the statues would make everyone else see the amazing lost world she saw when she looked at a fossil. I didn't understand a lot of it, but I understood her passion. The grand opening was supposed to be the day I finally asked her out, but now it would have to be when I presented her with my grand gesture of grandness... Whatever it was.   I woke abruptly to the chimes of my upcycled church organ doorbell and found a sprocket embedded in my face. Groaning, I pushed myself off my worktable and into a sitting position. "Did you let me sleep out here all night?" I said into the mouthpiece of the two-way vibration communicator prototype that fed through the wall and into the kitchen. A moment later, my mum picked up her end. "'Mum,'" she said, imitating my voice, "'I'm a professional tinkerer and nearly an adult. I can't be having a bedtime!'" "Point taken. Have I missed breakfast?" The door in the wall opened to reveal a plate of pancakes. "Thanks!" I tore a bite out of one as I wheeled over to the door. My crooked spine ached from sitting up all night. Activating the pneumatic door opener, I found George about to ring the bell again. George, my former boyfriend and current best friend. Chubby, handsome, super gay. We'd tried the whole hetero thing for two whole days before we realized it wasn't for us, then pretended for another six months to keep his father from trying to matchmake him with one of the Clearwater sisters. I wouldn't have minded being with a man, necessarily, but ladies really sent my heart a-ticking, so it was no great loss when George told me he was a horticultural lad. (You know, a pansy. A daisy. A... erm. Bougainvillea? I must confess, flowers didn't excite me unless they were made of scrap metal.) George raised an eyebrow. "I take it the declaration of love went well, then?" When I only frowned in confusion, he pointed to my face. "The sprocket-shaped dent in your cheek would suggest you spent the night with a woman." "Samira isn't an automaton, George." "No, but she's got the..." He mimed having a large chest. "And the, um... Scaffolding." "Do you think women's undergarments are made of clockwork?" I asked, amused. I mean, mine were, but that was just so I could tighten the laces behind my back without assistance when I wore a corset. Which wasn't often. My favorite dresses were the color of grease stains and had a lot of pockets, so it should come as no surprise that I didn't go anywhere fancy on a regular basis. George blushed. "So... it did not go well, then?" He came in and tinkered with me over pancakes while I told him about my predicament, making sympathetic noises at the appropriate times. When I was done with my story, he sat quietly for a moment, thinking while he adjusted the spring mechanism in an old cuckoo clock. "And you can't just go over with flowers and say, 'Hey, gorgeous, wanna gay together?' because...?" "Have you met me? I don't do romance. I make things for romantic people." I gestured to the wind-up music boxes, mechanical roses that opened to reveal a love note, and clockwork pendants scattered about my workshop. All commissions from people who were better at love than I was. "Then pretend you're a clueless client like Reverend Paul. Remember what you did for him?" The reverend had come in wanting to woo Widow Trefauny but didn't know a thing about her except that she liked dogs and made his heart smile. I thought my solution was ingenious. "I built a steam-powered puppy." George held his hands out, prompting. "So..." Suddenly, it all clicked into place, like the last cog in a clock mechanism that makes everything tick. "I need to build a steam-powered dinosaur for Samira."   Dinosaurs, as it turned out, were huge. I mean, they looked big on the islands, sure, but that was so far away that I only truly got a sense of scale when I started measuring in my workshop. Samira's notes put iguanodon, my dino of choice, at around ten meters in length. Since a measuring tape required more free hands than I had, I tied a string around one of the spokes of my chair's wheels, which had a one-point-eight meter circumference, and measured five and a half revolutions... Which took me out of my cramped shop and into the street, forcing horses and their mechanical counterparts to divert around me. "Don't suppose it would do to detour traffic for a couple weeks, eh?" I asked a tophatted hansom cabbie, who had stopped his horseless machine to watch me in amusement. "Reckon not, Miss Tilly," he said with a laugh, stepping down from his perch at the front of the carriage. He pulled a lever, and the cab door opened with a hiss to reveal a pile of gleaming metal parts. "Ooh!" I clapped my hands. "Are those for me?" He nodded and began unloading them. My iguanodon was going to be much taller than me, and even though George had promised his assistance, I needed to make extendy arms to hold the heavy parts. "Is there somewhere else you could build him?" I supposed this wouldn't exactly be stealthy. I could stop Samira from going in my shop, but it would have been substantially more difficult to stop her from going down an entire street. But where?   I got my answer a few days later, when the twice weekly zeppelin to Devon lifted off without Samira on board. She was usually the first in line, going not for the luxury holiday destinations that drew in an upper-class clientele, but for the fossils. The coast of Devon was absolutely lousy with fossils. The concept of extinction had been proven there, Mary Anning herself found her first ichthyosaur there, and all the best scientists fought for the right to have their automata scan the coast with ground-penetrating radar. Samira's life revolved around trips to Devon and the buckets of new specimens she brought home every week. "Why aren't you on that zeppelin?" I asked as we sat in her room, sorting her fossilized ammonites. She'd originally had the little spiral-shelled mollusks organized by size, but now thought it more logical to sort by age. Me, I thought size was a fine method, but I didn't know a thing about fossils and was happy to do it however she wanted. She didn't answer me, just kind of shrugged and ran her thumb over the spiral impression in the rock. "Is it because you're upset that they didn't take your advice on the dinosaurs?" I knew it was, but I had to hear her say it. "I don't see the point of it if no one will care about what I find." She sounded so utterly despondent. Joyless. The one thing that gave her life purpose had been taken away by careless men. They probably only cared about whether the park was profitable, not if it was accurate. I couldn't make them change their statues, and I couldn't make the public care that they were wrong. But I had to fix it for my best girl, because there was nothing sadder than seeing her like that. "Can I hold your hand for a second?" I asked quietly. She gave the slightest of nods and I took her hand gently in mine, my clockwork heart ticking at double speed. "You've got a gift, Samira. Scientists have to study these bones for months just to make bad guesses about the animals they came from, but you can look at an ankle joint and figure that it was a quadruped or a biped, if it ate meat or plants, and what color its skin was." She gave me a look. "Okay, I'm exaggerating, but only a little. I don't agree with the way they're portrayed, but this world is going to love dinosaurs because of the ones at Crystal Palace. People are going to dig for fossils even more, and they're going to need someone amazing like you to teach them about the new things they unearth." I tried to refrain from intertwining our fingers; just touching was a big enough step. "I need you to promise me something." Samira pulled away, and I had to remind myself that this didn't necessarily mean anything more than her just being done holding hands. "What is it?" "A week from today, be on the zeppelin to the coast." The coast, with its ample space and no chance of Samira discovering my project before it was ready. She made a face. "I don't know." "Please?" I begged. "For me?" After a long moment's consideration, she nodded. "For you."   George and I caught the midweek zeppelin. Lucky for us, most tourists went down for the weekend, so all of our metal parts didn't weigh us down too much. We did share the cabin with a few fancy ladies, who stared in wordless shock at Iggy's scrapmetal skull sitting on the chair beside us. I'd named him Iggy. His head was almost a meter long. Mostly bronze and copper, but I'd done a few tin accents around the eyes to really make 'em pop. When we arrived at the shore, we had to fight a couple paleontologists for space on the rocky coastline. Not physically fight, fun as that might have been. Once they realized we weren't trying to steal their dig sites, they happily moved their little chugging machines to give us a flat stretch of beach. Which just left us with three days to assemble Iggy, whose hundreds of parts I had not thought to label beforehand. Another thing I neglected to do: inform George of the scope of this project. "Matilda, I adore you and will always help you with anything you need," he said, dragging a tail segment across the rocks with a horrific scraping. "But for future reference, the next time you invite me to Devon to build a life-sized steam-powered iguanodon? You might mention how abysmally enormous iguanodon were." "That sounds like a you problem," I teased, my voice echoing metallically as I welded the neck together from the inside. I'd actually gotten out of my chair and lay down in the metal shell, figuring it would be easier to attach all the pneumatics and hydraulics that way. I should have brought a pillow. At night, because we were too poor to afford one of the fancy hotels in town, we slept on the beach beneath a blanket of stars, Iggy's half-finished shape silhouetted against the sky. "Samira's a fancy lady," I said to George as we lay in the sand. "She doesn't wear them, but she has expensive dresses. All lacy and no stains. Her family has a lot of money. Could she ever really want to be with someone like me?" He rolled over to face me. "What do you mean, someone like you?" "Poor mechanic who can't go up stairs, whose heart is being kept alive with the insides of a pocket watch that could stop at any time." I didn't try to think about it a lot, but the fact was that the doctors had never done an operation like mine before. It ticked all right for now, but no one knew if my body would keep it wound or if I would just... stop one day. The fear tried to stop me from doing things, tried to take away what little life I might have had left, but I couldn't let it. I had to grab on as hard as I could and never let go. In an ideal world, Samira would be part of that. But the world wasn't ideal. Far from it. Was I too much to put up with? Would she rather date someone who didn't have to take the long way around because the back door didn't have steps? Someone who could give her jewels and... fine cheeses and pet monkeys and whatever else rich people gave their girlfriends? Someone she knew would be around to grow old with her? Maybe that's why I'd put off asking her to be my gal, because even though we got along better than the Queen's guards and ridiculous hats, even though we both fancied ladies and wanted to marry one someday, I couldn't stand to know she didn't see me that way. I cherished her as a friend and didn't see romance as being somehow more than friendship, but she smelled like cookies and I just really wanted to be in love with her. "Hey," George said softly, pulling me closer to him. "She loves you. You realize that, don't you?" "I guess," I said into his shoulder. He smelled like grease. A nice, comforting smell, but too much like my own. At the end of the day, I wanted to curl up with someone like Samira. "You guess. You've held her hand, Tilly. She's made eye contact with you. That's big for her. You don't need a big gesture like this, but I know she's going to love it because she loves you." I hoped he was right.   I saw the weekend zeppelin from London come in, lowering over the city where it was scheduled to moor. Samira would be here soon. And Iggy wasn't finished. He towered over the beach, his metal skin gleaming in the sun, but something was wrong on the inside. The steam engine in his belly, which was supposed to puff steam out of his nose and make him turn his head, wouldn't start up. George saw me check my pocket watch for the umpteenth time and removed the wrench from my hand. "I'll look into it. Go." I didn't need to be told twice. My wheels skidded on the sand and rocks, but I reached the mooring station just as the passengers were disembarking. The sight of Samira standing there in her trademark trousers and parasol combo made my clockwork heart tick audibly. She came. I didn't really doubt that she would, but still. She flashed me a quick smile. "I don't want to fossil hunt," she said in lieu of a greeting. "That's not why we're here," I promised. "But I do want to show you something on the beach, if that's okay." She slipped a hand around my armrest and walked with me. When Iggy's head poked up over the rocks, she broke into a run, forcing me to go full speed to keep up. Laughing, she went right up to Iggy and ran her hands over his massive legs. "He's so biologically accurate!" But did he work? I looked to George, who gave his head a quick shake. Blast. Samira didn't seem to mind, though, marveling at every detail of the dinosaur's posture and shape. "And the thumb spikes that aren't horns!" she exclaimed, her hands flapping in excitement. And she wasn't the only one who appreciated our work. A small group of pith-helmeted paleontologists had abandoned their digging and scanning in order to come and admire Iggy. "It really is magnificent," one scientist said. "The anatomy is nothing like what we've been assuming they looked like, and yet..." "It's so logical," his colleague agreed. "Why should they be fat and slow? Look at elephants—heavy, but sturdy and not so sluggish as their size would suggest. There's no reason these terrible lizards couldn't have been similar." A third paleontologist turned to George. "My good man, might we pick your brain on the neck of the plesiosaur?" George held up his hands. "I just did some riveting—the real geniuses are Matilda and her girlfriend Samira." "Mostly Samira," I added, glancing at her. "And I'm not sure if she's my girlfriend or not, but I'd like her to be." She beamed at me. "I would also like that." To the men, she said, "I have a lot of thoughts on plesiosaur neck anatomy. I can show you my sketches, and I saw a layer of strata that could bear fossils over here..." She led them away, chattering about prehistoric life with that pure joy that made her so amazing. That girl took my breath away.   END   “Of Clockwork Hearts and Metal Iguanodons" is copyright Jennifer Lee Rossman 2019. "Shortcake" is copyright Jade Homa 2019. This recording is a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license which means you can share it with anyone you’d like, but please don’t change or sell it. Our theme is “Aurora Borealis” by Bird Creek, available through the Google Audio Library. You can support GlitterShip by checking out our Patreon at patreon.com/keffy, subscribing to our feed, leaving reviews on iTunes, or buying your own copy of the Autumn 2018 issue at www.glittership.com/buy. You can also support us by picking up a free audiobook at  www.audibletrial.com/glittership. Thanks for listening, and we’ll be back soon with a reprint of “The Quiet Realm of the Dark Queen” by Jenny Blackford.

The third meeting of a new literary series in which writers share and reflect upon their work. Michelle Sierra Laffitte is a Mexican-born writer, journalist and editor based in New York. Her fiction work has appeared in Joyland and Evergreen Review. Her non-fiction work has been published in magazines and outlets including Reuters.com, The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post, CNN, Expansión and MSNBC. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from The New School and a Masters of International Affairs from Columbia University. She lives in Brooklyn. Lena Valencia's writing has appeared or is forthcoming in CRAFT, Joyland, The Masters Review, and elsewhere. She is the managing editor of One Story and has held positions at A Public Space and BOMB Magazine. From 2014 to 2017, she hosted the HiFi Reading Series in Manhattan. She has an MFA in fiction from The New School and is the recipient of a 2019 Elizabeth George Foundation Grant. Mary Newell lives in the lower Hudson Valley. Her chapbook, TILT/ HOVER/ VEER was recently published by Codhill Press in January 2019. Her poems were published in BlazeVox, Dispatches from the Poetry Wars, Spoon River Poetry Review, Entropy, Hopper Literary Magazine, Earth’s Daughters, Written River, About Place, etc. She has also written reviews and essays, including “Shades of Melancholy: Darker Moods in Dickinson’s Poetry” in Melancholia: Hinge as Innominate Limina, by Will Alexander, Heller Levinson, and Mary Newell. Dr. Newell (MA Columbia, BA Berkeley) received a doctorate from Fordham University in American Literature and the Environment. She has taught literature and writing at Fordham University, West Point, and other colleges. She has a continuing interest in spiritual and ecological resonances.

Claudine Nash lives and writes in New York. She obtained a B.A. in English and Psychology from Wesleyan University and later went on to obtain two master’s degrees and a Ph.D. in Psychology from Connecticut College and St. John's University. Heavily influenced by her background in psychology, her poetry frequently delves into such topics as loss, healing and the liberation of releasing the past. Her most recent writings have focused on the power of connecting to our authentic selves and true inner voice. Her collections include her full-length poetry books The Wild Essential (Aldrich Press/Kelsay Books, 2017) and Parts per Trillion (Aldrich Press, 2016) as well as her chapbook The Problem with Loving Ghosts (Finishing Line Press, 2014). She also edited an anthology of writing by people living with mental illness entitled Destigmatized: Voices for Change (Madness Muse Press, 2017), as well as the book In So Many Words: Interviews and Poetry from Today’s Poets (Madness Muse Press, 2016). Claudine’s poetry has earned numerous literary distinctions including Pushcart Prize nominations and prizes from such publications as Eye on Life Magazine, The Song Is..., Thirty West Publishing House, Avalon Literary Review and Lady Chaos Press. Internationally published, her poems have appeared in a wide range of magazines and anthologies including Asimov’s Science Fiction, BlazeVOX, Cloudbank, Haight Ashbury Literary Journal and Dime Show Review among others and have been integrated into various dance, visual and musical art forms.

Claudine Nash lives and writes in New York. She obtained a B.A. in English and Psychology from Wesleyan University and later went on to obtain two master’s degrees and a Ph.D. in Psychology from Connecticut College and St. John's University. Heavily influenced by her background in psychology, her poetry frequently delves into such topics as loss, healing and the liberation of releasing the past. Her most recent writings have focused on the power of connecting to our authentic selves and true inner voice. Her collections include her full-length poetry books The Wild Essential (Aldrich Press/Kelsay Books, 2017) and Parts per Trillion (Aldrich Press, 2016) as well as her chapbook The Problem with Loving Ghosts (Finishing Line Press, 2014). She also edited an anthology of writing by people living with mental illness entitled Destigmatized: Voices for Change (Madness Muse Press, 2017), as well as the book In So Many Words: Interviews and Poetry from Today’s Poets (Madness Muse Press, 2016). Claudine’s poetry has earned numerous literary distinctions including Pushcart Prize nominations and prizes from such publications as Eye on Life Magazine, The Song Is..., Thirty West Publishing House, Avalon Literary Review and Lady Chaos Press. Internationally published, her poems have appeared in a wide range of magazines and anthologies including Asimov’s Science Fiction, BlazeVOX, Cloudbank, Haight Ashbury Literary Journal and Dime Show Review among others and have been integrated into various dance, visual and musical art forms.

Dennis Etzel, Jr. lives with Carrie and the boys in Topeka, Kansas where he teaches English at Washburn University. He has an MFA from The University of Kansas, &an MA & Graduate Certificate in Women and Gender Studies from KS State U. He has two chapbooks, The Sum of Two Mothers (ELJ Publications 2013) and My Graphic Novel (Kattywompus Press 2015), a poetic memoir My Secret Wars of 1984 (BlazeVOX 2015), and Fast-Food Sonnets (Coal City Review Press 2016). His work has appeared in Denver Quarterly, Indiana Review, BlazeVOX, Fact-Simile, 1913: a journal of poetic forms, 3:AM, Tarpaulin Sky, DIAGRAM, and others. He is a TALK Scholar for the Kansas Humanities Council and leads poetry workshops in various Kansas spaces. Please feel free to connect with him at dennisetzeljr.com www.DennisEtzelJr.com & http://DennisEtzelJr.blogspot.com

PBQ is back with the first episode of 2017! In this episode we talk about two poems by Taylor Altman and one by Heather Sagar. First, we discussed Taylor Altman’s poems, “How to Break Without Falling Apart,” and “Contra Mundum.”   PBQ is back with the first episode of 2017! In this episode we talk about two poems by Taylor Altman and one by Heather Sagar. First, we discussed Taylor Altman’s poems, “How to Break Without Falling Apart,” and “Contra Mundum.” Taylor Altman taught herself how to juggle while studying for a calculus exam in college. She won her school district's spelling bee in 4th grade (the youngest student ever to do so) and was excused from spelling homework for the rest of the year. She has synesthesia, so she sees letters and numbers as being different colors; for example, "D" is green and "7" is purple. Find her on LinkedIn, Medium, or Blackbird.   Next, we read Heather Sager’s poem, “Green.”  Heather Sager finds happiness in reading the Russian Symbolists and in spending time with her outgoing son. Feeling mildly adventurous, she might wander out to snap a too-close photo of an ornery snapping turtle, an oversized praying mantis, or a suspiciously quiet pigeon. You can find her poems or stories in places like Bear Review, Fourth & Sycamore, Naugatuck River Review, BlazeVOX, Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, NEAT., Minetta Review, Untoward (forthcoming), Jet Fuel Review, and elsewhere. From the global to the personal, from surviving terrorist attacks to kissing frogs as a child, this conversation had all of us thinking critically about the relationship of a writer to the world around them, or, the world against them.   Were these poems accepted or rejected? Did Kathy ever kiss a frog? Listen and find out! See Tim’s novel, The Soju Club, here. Check us out on Facebook and Twitter and let us know what you think with the #kissingfrogs Thank you for listening, and read on!   Present at the Editorial Table: Kathleen Volk Miller Marion Wrenn Jason Schneiderman Tim Fitts Sara Aykit Miranda Reinberg   Engineering Producer: Joe Zang ----------------------------    Taylor Altman How to Break Without Falling Apart She trades in antiques at the end of Adeline Street. Her shop is like the inside of a dream, with carpets and African masks and rings and earrings encased in glass as though within a tide pool. From the armoire of her mouth all sorts of things come out in the Kentish accent thirty years in California hasn’t shaken— what lives she has led, what other people she has been, how she learned to break without falling apart. A cool breeze comes through the back door, from the alleyway, and she says she works as a nurse for the elderly to afford a new passport with her maiden name, and to fix her teeth, small spans of darkness between gold.   Taylor Altman Contra Mundum Under the burnt-out tree where the nightingale sings, where a magpie made its nest   of wedding rings, the singed olive trees that once bore waxy fruits, where are you?   John Walker Lindh, now called Sulayman, rocks back and forth, reading his Quran   in Terra Haute. The tile halls of the madrassa are empty, the fountain stopped. Somewhere you are just waking up, in some other city, someone else’s skin. Our house was filled with books, corners of pages   torn off for gum, small surface wounds that bloomed like carnations. Everything is   complicit. A bird goes up the scale, notes like glass beads crushed underfoot. It’s you and me   against the world. In the bazaar, we passed the birds in cages, seedcovered, shitcovered, the white bars   scratched to copper. Clocks going off in every direction, faces faded and filled with sand. You read the papers   every morning; the news was neither good nor bad; you had been in Srebrenica. IEDs exploded   in the streets, bombs full of nails. A little boy was breathing blood. There was nothing we could do for him,   his lungs expanding like balloons. You proposed that night, gave me the ring from the magpie’s nest,   then disappeared. So many nights I watched you fight sleep. So many nights you woke up drenched in sweat   as the imam’s cry flew over the rooftops and minarets. You said, Lindh’s father visits him in prison. He believes   in his innocence. I watched your hips grow wider, the age spots appear on the backs of your hands.   I painted and painted this fragment of window. Finally, the urgency of lovemaking   left us. But our names remain on the lapels of your books, hybrids of our names, Punnett squares.   Heather Sager GREEN After staring down those amphibious creatures, their sad-mute eyes dimly reflecting my own, I picked one up, and smacked him on the lips.   Into woods, ponds I’d chase, collecting and admiring tone of skin, angling of protuberances, the feel of shifty, leggy treasures. Nearby,   Hard-shelled soldiers rose, showing dilapidated orange mouths.   My father ran at me with a shovel, once, to free a pinched limb— I wiggled free, he tapped the large shell. Still, there I remained— watching my parade, sentient, croaking, green.    

David Trinidad's newest book of poems, Notes on a Past Life, was published in 2016 by BlazeVOX [books]. His other books include Dear Prudence: New and Selected Poems (2011) and Peyton Place: A Haiku Soap Opera (2013), both published by Turtle Point Press. He is also the editor of A Fast Life: The Collected Poems of Tim Dlugos (Nightboat Books, 2011). Trinidad lives in Chicago, where he is a Professor of Creative Writing/Poetry at Columbia College Chicago. (Photo by Alyssa Lynee.)

Geoffrey Gatza is an award-winning poet and editor whose most recent book of poetry is Apollo, published in 2014 by BlazeVOX [books].  His books of poetry include Secrets of My Prison House; Kenmore: Poem Unlimited; and House Cat Kung Fu: Strange Poems for Wild Children.  He is also the author of the yearly Thanksgiving Menu-Poem Series, a book length poetic tribute for prominent poets, now in its tenth year. His visual art poems have been displayed in gallery showings such as Occupy the Walls: A Poster Show (AC Gallery, New York); Occupy Wall Street N15 For Ernst Jandl—Minimal Poems with photography from the Fall of Liberty Square; and in Language to Cover a Wall: Visual Poetry Through Its Changing Media (UB Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY).  Gatza is the editor and publisher of the small press BlazeVOX, whose fundamental mission is to disseminate poetry, through print and digital media, both within academic spheres and to society at large.

Jeffery Conway's most recent book is Showgirls: The Movie in Sestinas (BlazeVOX Books, 2014).  His other books include The Album That Changed My Life (Cold Calm Press, 2006), a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Poetry, and two collaborations with Lynn Crosbie and David Trinidad, Chain Chain Chain (Ignition Press, 2000) and Phoebe 2002: An Essay in Verse (Turtle Point Press, 2003).  His work appears in a variety of magazines and journals, including The World, The Portable Lower East Side, B City, Brooklyn Review, McSweeney’s, and Court Green.  His poems can be found in many anthologies, such as The Incredible Sestina Anthology and Rabbit Ears: The First Anthology of Poetry about TV.   

Larry Sawyer curates the Myopic Books Poetry Series and is also the co-director of The Chicago School of Poetics.  He was recently voted Best Poet by The Chicago Reader in its readers' poll for a second year. His books include Vertigo Diary (BlazeVox, 2013) and Unable to Fully California (Otoliths, 2010). His poetry and critical reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in Boston Review, Chicago Tribune, Coconut, Court Green, Exquisite Corpse, Forklift Ohio, Jacket (Australia), Matter, NY Arts Magazine, Paper Tiger (Australia), Ploughshares, The Prague Literary Review, Skanky Possum, Tabacaria (Portugal), Vanitas, Van Gogh's Ear (France), Versal (Holland), Verse Daily, and VLAK (France). He also edits www.milkmag.org with Lina ramona Vitkauskas.

Welcome to Cold Reads, Episode 19. Cold Reads is a weekly podcast read by Nathaniel Tower. Each week, Nathaniel invites an author to send his or her wildest, funniest, most twisted story. Without reading the story ahead of time, Nathaniel records an audio version, trying to maintain his composure as the author takes the audience on a wild ride. Week 19 brings you "The Happiest Place on Earth" by William Lemon. William Lemon received his M.A. in Literature and Writing at California State University San Marcos, then began teaching English at the Community College level. For the past several years, he has taught at Santa Monica College and Irvine Valley College. He has been published in BlazeVOX, Drunk Monkeys, and the Eunoia Review.

Utah-based poet and singer, Lara Candland and composer-performer Christian Asplund have evolved a unique style of performance involving an ethereal and lush mix of speech, singing, live sampling, looping, layering, drones, and electronics. They will draw from poems in Candland's recently published Alburnum of the Green and Living Tree and her recently completed chapbook about surgery Physic at the Table.Lara Candland’s book Alburnum of the Green and Living Tree was just released from BlazeVox. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Fence, The Colorado Review, Barrow Street, Greatcoat, Fine Madness, The Quarterly and other journals. Her pamphlet, Tongue Child was published by the University of South Carolina’s Palanquin/TDM series. She has been a finalist in The Motherwell, Hudson, and St. Lawrence book awards. She has also been the recipient of an AWP Intro Award, She is a founder and the librettist for Seattle Experimental Opera, and a finalist in the Genesis Prizes. Her opera, Sunset with Pink Pastoral with husband and composer Christian Asplund, was performed by Almeida Opera in London’s Sadler’s Wells Theatre. Candland has taught poetry, college writing, food writing and fiction writing at various colleges and universities around the country as an itinerant grad student/follower of a grad student, and is currently exploring the intersection between written down works and live improv with electronic sampling. Christian Asplund is a Canadian-American composer-performer based in Utah where he is Composer-in-Residence at Brigham Young University. He has degrees from University of Washington, Mills College, and Brigham Young University where his teachers have included Stuart Dempster, John Rahn, Joel-Francois Durand, Alvin Curran, Chris Brown, Thea Musgrave, and Meyer Kupferman. He cofounded Seattle Experimental Opera which has produced seven of his operas. He has performed with such musicians as Christian Wolff, Eyvind Kang, Larry Polansky, Daniel Good, Francois Houle, Michael Bisio, Robert Reigle, Gino Robair, and Phil Gelb in a variety of venues and recordings in the U.S., Canada, and Europe. His scores are published by Frog Peak Music. Asplund is also an active scholar and has published articles and chapters on music theory and critical theory.