Hey. My name is Ben. I'll be posting all week about things I think are rad. The first thing I'd like to tell you about is a small journal slash reading series based in Brooklyn, called SUPERMACHINE (disclaimer: this post is vaguely self-promotional, because SUPERMACHINE is publishing a small chapbook of my poems in early 2011, but I also just think they are dope and I want everyone to know about them and send poems etc.). SUPERMACHINE is a modest conglomerate of poets, editors, and book makers. They have an impressive reading series and a classy journal. Probably my favorite thing about SUPERMACHINE is the sense of taste that prevades both the reading series and the journal. The design of the journal is a mix of affronting, contemporary graphic elements, and straightforward yet reverential treatment of text. Poets featured in the journal and the reading series are more often than not, a relatively nascent generation offering fresh visions, but many more established writers are included as well (the brand new 3rd issue, includes the likes of CAConrad and Tomaž Šalamun as well as a younger upstarts like Andrew Gorin, Mark Leidner and Amanda Nadleberg).
If you are like me and you love fresh, high-quality literature with a locally grown flavor, you can reach out and help the folks at SUPERMACHINE by contributing to their Kickstarter campaign. If they are able to raise $522 more dollars by February 1st, they will have reached their fundraising goal for 2011. The minimum pledge is $15, but if you pledge $30 you get:
"a one year subscription (2 issues) and signed copies of the first two SUPERMACHINE chapbooks planned for 2011: Ben Mirov's VORTEXTS and Genya Turovskaya's DEAR JENNY."
Your contributions will go towards supporting one of the most progressive, revolutionary journals I know of. Here are some poems from the current issue. Please contribute, you won't be dissapointed:
Joseph Calavenna
[our shower sometimes looks like Los Angeles]our shower sometimes looks like Los Angeles
smells like steel when the water’s hot enough
when I’m hot enough I smell like oranges
I open the windows and take my shirt off
when you put the coffee on this morning Kat you forgot it
when I found it all over the stove
I opened the kitchen window halfway
and the clothes line did nothing original
Kristen Kosmas
from “H”
I walked all the way here I didn't expect
I didn't expect it to be made of sugar.
I didn't expect this house this hut to be made out of ginger
bread. I'm tired. I tried. The door. I tried. I tried and I tried and I'm tired. I just wanted
I just wanted to
I just wanted to go down
across that
river. I just wanted to
put it into words.
I just wanted to take that green dress off her.
Rip that green dress off her and put that whole thing
in my mouth.
A mouthful. I just wanted a mouthful. Of that. All of it.
I just wanted to
rip those green leaves off. The trees. Rip those green leaves off and take a mouthful.
I just wanted to bite into the earth and say thank you. I just wanted to express my
gratitude. Fall off the edge of some dirt clump, tilter into some sky clump I just wanted to
get the fuck out of there.
Tomaž ŠalamunFace
Was your mother catholic? Did you put
your hand in Špina? I grabbed white legs
in silence. All of them were effective. You,
the last one to see the czar when you
were a kid, will you die? Why didn't you die
before? How come your eyes are flaming
and voluptuous? The virgin is twice kaput.
The dawn is twice kaput. ( ) is
twice kaput. The sun is twice kaput. If you
eat grapes it disappears. It will disappear
in any case. It disappeared as I was late.
The competing engine doesn't climb the vine.
The eyes are make-upped. I drank a dark
vase from the spring, 'till he bewitched me.
Amanda Nadelberg
from Regardless of Rivers, Aggression in the Driveway Is Unlovely
By razor blades
I’m bleeding.
I love London in July!
The Riviera!
But I am serious.
A stand off.
And if something fell
into my arms
I would take it.
I know boats
and you’re no boat,
and this, what to say:
little wild orchard.