Dean Young's heart is rad. Even through it may not be working as well as it should, it's produced tons of poems that have helped me live my life. Dean needs a new heart. You can help by making a donation in his honor to the National Foundation for Transplants. I donated for the purely self-serving reason, that helping get Dean get a new heart will be as close as I ever come to writing a Dean Young poem, but I'm sure you will find a better reason. Also the folks over at Coldfront have a rad rundown and video of a benefit for Dean at the National Arts Club in NYC that is worth checking out. Here is a one of many poems by Dean that have helped me make my way through the ossuary:
The Invention of Heaven
The mind becomes a field of snow
but then the snow melts and the dandelions
blink on and you can walk through them,
your trousers plastered with dew.
They're all waiting for you but first
here's a booth where you can win
a peacock feather for bursting a balloon,
a man in huge stripes shouting about
a boy who is half swan, the biggest
pig in the world. Then you will pass
tractors pulling other tractors,
trees snagged with bright wrappers
and then you will come to a river
and then you will wash your face.
Birds LLC is rad. They just released two new titles: EITHER WAY I'M CELEBRATING by Sommer Browning and KINGS OF THE F**CKING SEA by Dan Bohel. Birds is shaping up to be a press that represents all the best parts of small publishing enterprises from the 60s and 70s with a dash of professional design and promotion thrown in for good measure. They are a publishing family hell-bent on supporting their own, while bringing hot hot poems to the masses. Also, Birds is having a book release party for the aforementioned titles in Brooklyn this Friday, details HERE.
The Wilhelm Scream by James Blake is rad. Can't stop listening to it and staring out the window into the snow while basking in existential melancholy. This isn't the official video, but I think the song goes way better with the kitten riding the magic carpet, anyway.
FOOD I CORP is rad. It seems like an insidious, Illuminati-type organization. They have a publishing branch that puts out a stream of truly weird poems and various other oddities. The also have a bunch of interlinked Tumblrs that spit out photos sent via the cell phones of an unknown number of constituents (CORPse, SMASH MAGAZINE, BLACK & GOLD, EAT CORP, CORPTAILS). Seems like it will only become more and more powerful as it spreads like a virus throughout the internet.