COME CELEBRATE ANOTHER SUNNY DAY this Saturday April 5th

Stop by Cafe Passé this Saturday between 6-8pm!

415 N 4th Ave. Tucson Arizona

COME CELEBRATE ANOTHER SUNNY DAY this SATURDAY April 5th

Stop by Cafe Passé this Saturday between 6-8pm!

415 N 4th Ave. Tucson Arizona

NEW FORMAT FOR BRL ! AND A RECORDING FROM Men In Correspondence— by MEAGAN LEHR !

Hi there! I’ll be reading, recording and posting contributions from BRL’s contributors. If you would like a portion of your contribution recorded please let me know and if you don’t want a reading of your writing posted let me know. Not sure- you may come across a recording of your work by surprise!

TODAY! Give a listen to:

from Men in Correspondence— by Meagan Lehr

Read Meagan’s original post!

Valentine

ZAC SAWDEY

ReMix

So I hit this ride,
right on the street.
It’s the Music.
Music right in your face.
And I can’t stop moving.
I can’t stop feeling.
And I am up.
I am high.
And I ache with life.
And I am not taking notice of the autocracy
And it’s coming hard and it’s going hard.
I don’t have to be someone else,
not these days,
so watch yourself,
because it’s time for more time,
and this is your town.

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KATE GREENSTREET

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Something’s wrong. He hasn’t arrived, he’s always leaving.

I pitied her for loving him.

ANDREW RUSH

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The Conversation We Call Art

As a young artist studying in Florence, Italy in 1958, I happened one day into a gallery that was showing some small modest paintings of bottles and other little table objects by an artist from Bologna.  As I contemplated each work, something seemed clearer in my personal search for my own art path.  Not long after, I found a newspaper photo of the artist that I pinned to my studio wall, where it lived for years as a kind of private talisman that reoriented me whenever I lost heart or direction.

LISA SCHLESINGER

“Welcome to the Theatre of Things Are Not What They Seem. If you are willing to suspend your disbelief, please allow us the pleasure of disrupting the narrative. This is the story of Galileo Galilei. Or not. The telescope. Or not. Turn it around and look through it the wrong way.  Or not. Please consider your perspective. But don’t forget what year this is, which lens you look through, whose trial this is, and who rules. The playwright calls this the Visitation. Because we are. Just visiting. And now we are off.”– Ghost of Leonardo, Visitation 1

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Celestial Bodies

A Tragicomedy in Three Acts

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The body is a device to calculate

The astronomy of the spirit.

MMMMMMRumi

MMMMMMMMMMThe Fragile Vial

 

And calculate the stars: model heaven how wield

The mighty frame; how built; unbuild, contrive

To save appearances; how gird the sphere

With centric and eccentric scribbled o’er

Cycle, epicycle, orb in orb.

MMMMMMMMilton

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmParadise Lost viii 79-84

 

“It has often been maintained that Galileo became the father of modern science by replacing the speculative, deductive method with the empirical, experimental method. I believe, however, that this interpretation would not stand close scrutiny. There is no empirical method with speculative concepts and systems; and there is no speculative thinking whose concepts do not reveal on closer investigation, the empirical material from which they stem.”

Albert Einstein on Galileo in his introduction to Galileo’s Dialogue Concerning Two Chief World Systems

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!!SATURDAY NIGHT IS LIVE!!

W/KINDALL GRAY! MAUREEN McHUGH! JOSEPH MAINS! RILEY COX!

!!SATURDAY NIGHT!!

W/KINDALL GRAY! MAUREEN McHUGH! JOSEPH MAINS! RILEY COX!

IT’S SATURDAY NIGHT!

W/ JENNIFER HOLLAND ! WILL PEWITT ! ERIKA JO BROWN ! JOELLEN CRAFT !

Will Pewitt

Your Best Possible Move

1

Stephen could take Cynthia’s Knight with his Rook. Cynthia will probably counter by taking his Knight. This will leave her King exposed and Stephen will have her in checkmate with his two Bishops and a Pawn.

SHARON OSMOND

CORA IN WINTER

MMMMMMMMMMMMMsick of weather

leansMMMMMa reed in the blind of the river

covers her ears at four o’clock MMMMMMMagainst the clash

–carillonsMMMcordateMMMredMMMthick as thighs

blue, she saysMMMhollowlyMMMand sees behind closed eyes

bottle gentiansMMMcoraclesMMMthe cloistered botany of purple vespers

she turnsMMMweeds tangle her hairMMMplankton fills her mouth

in her goddess-graceful bonesMMMabsence MMMdespair

years in a riverMMMgreen as a tiled bathroom

and fullMMMof echoed vowels

MMM

MMM

ERIC MAGRANE

Around Alpine

1. Escudilla Mountain

highMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMmeadowMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMslope

MMMMMMMMMMrocky mountain iris, wild parsley

MMMMMstand of aspen, sheltering

MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMlight

MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMhigh in Engelmann spruce, warblers—

***

MMMMMMMMMMMMon top (10,800+)

MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMhighest fire lookout in the state—

MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMthe man looking for fires:

MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM“being up here keeps me out of the bars,

MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMI’m the highest paid person in the state—”

PAUL A. TOTH

The following is the second chapter from Paul A. Toth’s 9/11 work, Airplane Novel, which he not-so-humbly considers the 9/11 novel due to the extraordinary inside-out viewpoint provided by the novel’s crucial conceit: the South Tower serves as the narrator.

In the first chapter, the South Tower introduced itself and Oswald Adorno, the first to set the towers on fire, first one and then later the other, before he was captured. This chapter continues Oswald’s story as other stories begin.

2

He Will Admit to a Fire

The fire began in the mind of a man coincidentally sharing the name of an assassin, Oswald Adorno. One Oswald fired shots, and the other fired fires. This is the start of all the conspiracies against me. Every spectacle makes diamonds of secrets difficult to differentiate from zirconia. I am adorned with Oswald and wear a necklace of conspiracy theories.

PAUL BARRETT

Untitled

When Anne awoke the sun had just set and the air held a chill and, for a moment, she wondered where she was. She could hear the surf in front of her, could taste it, even, and the tip of the lighthouse could be seen over edge of the bluff. There were trees, and the road, and the close-cropped lawn, but nothing else. Anne was alone. She blinked her eyes, rubbed them, then sat up and wrapped her arms around herself against the cold. She turned her head and stared toward where she thought she had last heard Richard’s footsteps, furrowing her brow as if displaying an air of displeasure or irritation might allay her unease. She stood up, found a tenuous break in the leaves and followed it to the edge of the bluff, digging her nails into her bare forearms. Anne gazed down at the lighthouse, the tide pounding against its western edge. For the cold, and for the silence apart from the rhythmic surf, Anne was unable to speak, to call out for her husband, and it was this impotence that forced her to believe that he was nearby. The dunes went on for miles in either direction, besides, and the forest of eucalyptus, only growing darker, was long since impregnable, and so Anne stood, half-paralyzed, watching the waves buffet the lighthouse, biting her lip and gritting her teeth, yawning occasionally and despite herself.

SATURDAY NIGHT!

IT’S SATURDAY NIGHT ! OUR STELLAR LINE-UP: ARIANNE ZWARTJES ! ERIKA WILDER ! LISA O’NEILL ! TOM NURMI !

ARIANNE ZWARTJES

EYES

The human eye is a small globe in an orbit. A bony orbit, to be clear: more than 80% of the eye’s globe is protected in this skeletal socket. Inside the eye, an irreplaceable clear gel called the vitreous humor provides the pressure to keep our eye in its round.

ERIKA WILDER

The Number of Things

There are twenty things in the room. One is a shirtdress, made of chambray, that you would like to wear at a sidewalk café sometime. You’d hold a beer to your lips in a glass. One is a braid of wheat-colored hair, your boyfriend’s, from when he cut it off. One is a thin gold anklet

LISA O’NEILL

Women’s Work

I used to collect things. When I was young, I filled Tupperware bins with my collections. With my hands, I smoothed over natural stones—amethyst, jasper, emerald—kept them in a beaded suede bag that I had purchased with allowance money at the Grand Canyon gift shop. I made my mom take me to Arby’s each week to get a different plastic California Raisin character.

TOM NURMI

prospektr

gunmn

hird hand

LISA COLE

4
this never happened//cracked tile//dishes in the bathroom sink//so many pens//wordswordswordswordswords//so many hours so many men//so many phone calls, birds//therethere//robots are boring//anxiety is boring//cogs and lights for eyes forever and ever//ice cubes on lips//drunkdrunkdrunk//please//little griefling–

JANE MILLER

FEEDING THE QUIVERING NIGHTHAWK

As my patient’s pupils whiten

they are like comets stopped

by a severe stare

it is like feeling the jet to death

the empty billetted corridor

it is like looking at a comet

& seeing the moving stairs to it

as welcoming

& bombed

BENJAMIN RUSSACK

WATERING

We wake together, steeped in skin. Cassie rises and walks naked to the window, her legs barely plump, just enough to curve nicely. She lays her palm against the frosted window, peering through the U’s of her fingers. I can barely see through the glass, but the tree outside glistens with last night’s rain.

ZAC SAWDEY

DA VINCI’S TANK

that grey haired fuck.
the one with the cracked tooth
who reminded me of me;
the one who laughed at
the engineer’s measurements
and had to redrill 40 holes
and set the timeless invention
straight;
his latest update was the
chip in his tooth
and the beanie that
kept his brain in his head.
Hi Friends!
let’s make sure crazy, grey-haired,
future me get’s access to canons
and armor.
Over Here Sir!
the horror of it all is
right this way,
and don’t forget to take
time to listen to the
score!
(And Action!)

THANK YOU!

HI ! IM HAPPY TO ANNOUNCE THE NEW MANAGING EDITORS OF BACK ROOM LIVE ! MEAGAN LEHR and DREW KREWER !

AND IN HONOR OF THE FACT THAT it is not after all BRL’S 4 YEAR ANNEVERSARY which is actualy NOVEMBER ! I’D LIKE TO THANK YOU ! Thank you reader ! Thank you ! Javier O. Huerta ! Jenny Drai ! Stephen Vincent ! Sarah Garrigan ! Lukas Champagne ! Janet W. Hardy ! Eleanor Johnson ! Della Watson ! Ailene Sankur ! Jennifer K. Sweeney ! Chad Sweeney ! Sara Mumolo ! Jenny Drai ! Gillian Hamel ! Craig Santos Perez ! Zach Demby ! Rebecca Guyon ! Victoria A. Hudson ! Amanda Benson ! Veronica Carlos-Landa ! Linda Norton ! Ben Perez ! Ben Prickett ! Sarah Fattig ! Lyn Hejinian ! Brenda Hillman ! Graham Foust ! Geoffrey G. O’brien ! Lisa Gschwandtner ! Jack Morgan ! Jarrod Roland ! Erika Stati ! Patrick Holian! Lily Brown ! Victoria Hudson ! Clare Becker ! Evan Sicuranza ! Kathryn FK ! Eleanor Bayne Johnson ! Rebbecca Brown ! Jack Morgan ! Juliet Kinkade ! Tyler Williams ! Allison Landa ! JP Lacrampe ! Trevor Calvert ! Cielo Lutino ! Jeffrey Knutson ! Nicole Polidoro ! Pablo Lopez ! Sara Mumolo ! Barbara Claire Freeman !  Challen Clarke ! Angelo Nikolopoulos ! Teresa Hovis ! Sarah Garrigan ! Beatrix Chan ! Alicia Bleuer ! Lukas Champagne ! Adam Watkins ! Sharon Lynn Osmond ! Andrew Kenower ! Lily Brown ! David Spataro  ! Jason Sattler ! Blake Ellington Larson ! Vicki Hudson ! Jenny Drai ! Janet W. Hardy ! Hillary Gravendyk ! David Larsen ! Julie Choffel ! Scott Berger ! Thomas Cooney ! Ben Brashares ! Jane Miller ! Brian Teare ! Chris Stroffolino ! Harmony Holiday ! for reading at Mc Nally’s!

Thank you ! Gillian Hamel ! Oscar Bermeo ! Wendy Burk ! Trevor Calvert ! Chiwan Choi ! Barbara Cully ! Alisa Heinzman ! Sara Mumolo ! Craig Santos Perez ! Lindsey Bagette ! Ryan Bartlett ! Oscar Bermeo ! Laura Brennan ! Amalia Bueno ! Maurice Burford ! Wendy Burk ! Veronica Carlos-Landa ! Lukas Champagne ! Chiwan Choi ! Kyle Crawford ! Rachelle Cruz ! Barbara Cully ! Jenny Drai ! Steffi Drews ! Lara Durback ! Emily Kendal Frey ! Sarah Garrigan ! Steven Goldman ! Sarah Louise Green ! Alisa Heinzman ! Harmony Holiday ! Victoria A. Hudson ! Bhanu Kapil ! John Kusper ! Jose-Luis Moctezuma ! Jack Morgan ! Sara Mumolo ! Joseph O’Connell ! Simon J. Oritz ! Craig Santos Perez ! Ben Prickett ! Margaret Rhee ! Boyer Rickel ! Frances Sjoberg ! Elizabeth Terrazas ! Franci Washburn ! Della Watson ! Jessica Wickens ! Debbie Yee ! Sharon Zetter ! Drew Krewer ! Meagan Lehr ! Hugh Behm-Steinberg ! Christina Louise Smith ! for showing up here !

It continues to be a pleasure +V.

YAY US!

IT’S SATURDAY NIGHT  ! BARBARA CULLY ! BRINGS US !  CHRISTINA LOUISE SMITH ! HUGH BEHM-STEINBERG ! and new ! MANAGING EDITORS ! DREW KREWER and MEAGAN LEHR ! HAPPY SATURDAY !  +V.

Barbara Cully is the author of Desire Reclining (Penguin, 2003), The New Intimacy(Penguin, 1997), which won the National Poetry Series Open Competition, andShoreline Series (Kore Press, Tucson, 1997).  A new collection of poems titled That Place Where is due out from Kore Press in fall of 2010.  Barbara is co-editor of two textbooks, Entry Points (Longman, 1999) and Writing as Revision (Pearson, 2002).  She is a contributing editor for Cue. She teaches in the Department of English at the University of Arizona and also in the Prague Summer Program and online for Kaplan University. Read more of her poetry on line at SOFTBLOW.

DREW KREWER

from Ars Warholica

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You were a boy with the right

to weep and wept

MEAGAN LEHR

from Men In Correspondence—

The traffic shakes her nerves in blanch light.               Nevers, I’m leaving yous.  

CHRISTINA LOUISE SMITH

Warm Carnivores

In the dry river where trees tangle

mmmmmrebar and skeleton leaves

mmmmmmmmake screens from their roots,

HUGH BEHM-STEINBERG

Waving

You replace the sky with fingerings, your shirt, your regardlessness, that’s enough.  Bring delicateness back, a light white shirt, a buttonhole.  If it’s wrong to ascribe feelings then you don’t know what you’re missing you don’t know you keep doing and undoing what you’ve done.  Come now little comet,

IT’S FRIDAY NIGHT!

BACK ROOM LIVE IS BROUGHT TO US THIS MONTH BY ALISA HEINZMAN ! W/ ! KYLE CRAWFORD ! EMILY KENDAL FREY ! SARAH LOUISE GREEN ! LINDSEY BAGGETTE !

Alisa Heinzman lives in Oakland and attends Saint Mary’s College. She co-edits CALAVERAS with Sara Mumolo. Sometimes she wishes she was Vulcan.

SARAH LOUISE GREEN

Perch

A voice on the radio rattles through
this needle-strewn morning. Some sick
pine bows in a choke of industry as a corner

EMILY KENDAL FREY

JAMAICA PLAIN, MA

I’m aiming for more if —> then trajectories
Then I can be a tangerine and still sit in this bed

LINDSEY BAGETTE

NPR report on sheep

On the mountain, in the air, under evergreen icicles,
moisture soaking their noses,
turning to snow,
turning back to pink noses.

KYLE CRAWFORD

uh

Whisker vogue. Can you imagine red? A face swathing / sweat and fit on the seat / work with it. He’d spin over and rake. Dryin’em.

IT’S SATURDAY NIGHT W/ CHIWAN CHOI!

THANKS FOR THE WRITING! AND THANKS FOR READING +V!
CHIWAN CHOI brings us GRIGOR PANKOV ! ALEXANDRA KOSTOULAS ! STACEY MANGIARACINA and !J.I.G.G.S.A.W!
Chiwan Choi is a writer, editor, teacher, and publisher. He has been a member of the Los Angeles Poets & Writers Collective since 1989. His poems and essays have appeared in numerous journals and magazines, including ONTHEBUS, Esquire, and American Book Jam in Tokyo. Chiwan’s first major collection of poetry, The Flood, will be published by Tia Chucha Press in April, 2010.
He is a regular in the Los Angeles literary circuit, often invited as a featured poet at readings at the Hotel Cafe in Hollywood, the legendary Beyond Baroque in Venice, and the Los Angeles Central Library. He also leads two writing workshops, one in downtown and one in Santa Monica.
After a two-year stint in New York, where he received an MFA in Dramatic Writing from the Tisch School at NYU, Chiwan returned to Los Angeles where he and his wife, Judeth Oden, launched a new publishing company to feature Los Angeles writers, Writ Large Press, in March of 2008.
He lives in Downtown Los Angeles with his wife and their dog, Bella. You can follow his writing on his blog, www.chiwanchoi.com and keep up with his publishing company on www.writlargepress.com.

!J.I.G.G.S.A.W!

TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS

I know this redhead,
she scratched her dome when asked 2 groove—yes
we hyphy danced, her passion grow’d,
but when I blew breath she went back 2 brunette.
Confused yet?

Alexandra Kostoulas

The F-word

I learned my first cuss word when I was five
and got to walk to the end of the block
for the first time.

Grigor Pankov

a few lines composed toward the end of the war  
 
the room is small
the lights
the fridge

Stacey Mangiaracina

Drowning Pool

There are days
when the sun shines
bright against a big blue
sky filled with
white cotton clouds.

THIS SATURDAY NIGHT ! POEMS ! BY GAIL ANNETTE EASTERLING

One of my favorite things to see is a star-spangled sky, through the leaves of a tree as I lay on my cot in the still of the night.  God surely created a beautiful sight!

It’s SATURDAY NIGHT Brought to us by OSCAR BERMEO!!!

Thanks so much for coming out! And Oscar for connecting us w/ Amalia Bueno ! Rachelle Cruz ! Guillermo Parra and Amir Rabiyah !  THANKS FOR THE POEMS !   Hope you all enjoy the show +V.

Oscar Bermeo: Whenever I say poetry the next work that leaps right into my head is community.  There’s no way around it for me.  I know that writing is a very solitary act and that no one can come in and write the poem for you but that’s only where the poetry starts.  Or maybe not, maybe the poem–even for the most reclusive of writers–begins in community as well.  In some form of sound, experience or thought that has made some connection with that writer, and, from that connection, the desire to make another connection.

I’ve been told this is a very idealized vision of poetry.  That poetry is a business–the grind of publication, the staunchness of the workshop, the hustle of live readings, the deadly serious pursuit of authenticity.  Yes, all those things are part of the rigor of poetry and they should never be taken lightly. But what about the joy of opening your circle of poetics?  Finding new audiences and encountering different poetic viewpoints?

The poets presented here believe in the value of community.  All the poems here happen in the wild open air with interactions as varied as Radiohead in Venezuela, a trip on the Bx1 in the Bronx, communion with the dead, and conversations with God.  These poems bristle against the unexpected, invite conversation and (in my idealized world) spread out to create connections with their poetry.

Word.

Oscar is the author of three self-published poetry chapbooks, including Heaven Below. He lives in Oakland, CA, with his wife, poeta Barbara Jane Reyes.  For more on Oscar and his poetics, please visit his website: www.oscarbermeo.com.

AMIR RABIYAH

Beirut Achilles

his new leather shoes broke open the back of his heel

RACHELLE CRUZ

Poem in the Time of Recession
For Thomas

I’ve sold my brain
and its’ dimpled container

GUILLERMO PARRA

Kid A

You will not write the honest
version of your life

AMALIA BUENO

 

The Ramshackle Garden

I remember your bougainvilleas bloomed
their hottest pinks and most vivid yellows

STEFFI DREWES

VILLAGERS AT THE ROUND TABLE

Did he throw the branch to me? to the scorpion? or did he sink the statue for someone else?

Happening!!!

Happy Day +V.