SUBMISSIONS…Stop sending them. What we have, we are not reading. What we were going to use, we won’t. What we requested… well you should still write it, but for yourself.
–Bastards&Whores Magazine
Thought I broke the old machine. She’s black like everything else I purchased that dark day in December 2009. We were splitting the scene and “leaving the Farm.” The roomate would end up in the 4th largest city in the U.S. while yours truly slid down, nice&sleazy, into the Shoal Creek Arms.
I had bought these items for my move:
-black plates
-black coffee mugs
-black silverware
-and this, most mighty of black coffee machines.
Today there was a metal spring in my coffee, the little plastic nipple had come off and was floating there in my cup, too. I heard back from the zine-no contributor’s copies available and Bastards&Whores had shut down on “indefinite hiatus”-my submissions as good as gone.
That coffee maker fired over 90nights on the day job. I was working in a warehouse at Real&Alexander until I landed a bartending gig at the Whip In. I almost kissed Singhai’s feet when I got the job. That’s about the time I switched to Yerba Matte. The machine complied and churned out gallons of that good green stuff. Turns out I’d work 10x harder and have to put up with infinitely more BS working there but on my first shift I went home with the tragically beautiful Lizaveta and it never stopped raining. I knew I was trapped and it would take a little over 3 years to the day (today) until I could break out of the cycles of suffering brought on at the altars of spiritual greed&lust. Put it to you this way-give a writer, this writer, unlimited amounts of gourmet beer, saddle him up behind a bar at the up&coming hippest spot in Hippie Town for desperate&bored young ladies with drinking problems and I’ll give you 3 years, Jack. I’d probably still be there if I never got laid off. Plus, my writing suffered. It’s all angry&beerstained and largely unsubmitted. I truly appreciate the work that made it though. Those poems and etc. are stronger than time and what a fucking miracle the long hours on the sinking throne can be.
Meanwhile, I’m looking through pieces that didn’t make it into the book and some other things I’ve been working on. I’m still kicking myself in the balls for not submitting to Philadelphia Stories. I only came back from that town the day before, just in time for their Winter deadline but-no. I’d have to settle in to 11days on shift, and your wretched recanting of empty consumerism-the holidays.
I had three pieces written by the time I woke up on my second day back in town. They were ready. I wasn’t.
I just swallowed two tiny pieces of black plastic floating in my black mug of extra-dark French Roast. I got the bigger of the two pieces out with my index finger but when I went for the other it fell back in so I just called it a day and drank it down.
The Year of the Snake is upon us and this one’s been lying low in the weeds and thrush. I been caught up in the dayjob and I’ve got a bad case of the Submission blues.
I’m going up on the mountain. Won’t be back for some time. I’m learning the Analytics and mechanics of blog writing thanks to Ms. Hipstercrite, and I’m amassing and tweaking the hardware for the MAMU. I’ll be appearing in a small room under the hot lights in a town near you and hopefully on the pages of the various poetry collections printed in the Spring/Summer/Fall of 2013.
I’m breaking the longview down into days. Days like these when the old black machine breaks down but nothing is really wrong. We’ll be together again. See you on the streets motherfucker.
Going for the Throat 