First, Tha NEWS.

Hello fronds and anenomes!

Work news right up front in this edition! This upcoming Monday, the 19th, I'll be reading for Written on a Napkin as part of their annual Spooky Special! It'll be at Chique o Latte in Logan Square. WOAN's readings are always fun both as reader and as audience member because not only do the folks that run the thing have amazing taste (not a humblebrag, they're very intentional about their slates), they include a sort of salon/panel among all the readers at the end. It's always so enlightening to see how other people approach the craft. So anyway, if you're in town, c'mon down! I'll be reading mostly from 22 Cards, but may sneak a few older ones in, too. We'll see.

In the "reading" theme, I read for the Travelling Mollys series again this past Monday. You can watch a replay of the livestream here; for some reason Youtube won't start from the proper time marker, so if you'd like to see my weird face reading my weird poems, I start at 15:37. I also suggest you check out both featured readers, Cynthia Dwei Oka and M. Privitello, who did amazing work. (And of course, the other open mic folks were great as well.)

I've been doing some degree of thinking about where I am and where I go professionally, now. I don't consider myself to be a part of the academic/industrial tradition in that I don't really go hard in the paint for institutional recognition. I'm not a part of the spoken word/slam scene, which in its current incarnation originated here in Chicago. Publication in general in any form isn't a huge priority for me, despite having produced books via a few different routes, and despite having a number of journal credits to my name. And I'm definitely not part of the social media poetry scene. But there's still a certain level of... communion, I guess, that I still crave. I mean, that's part of why I moved to the city. And come next spring, I'm going to be pretty limited in my ability to be out and about for a while. Even now I just don't have the energy or organization, let alone money, to go all over town to go places/meet people/attend readings/what have you. Which leaves me a little stuck, to be honest. But at least I'm thinking about it? I dunno. So many of my peers are doing something else entirely, and here's me trying to be relevant as a poet...

I'm also thinking about how I best use both this space and Patreon. Both spaces have their own audiences. (There's some overlap, but it's not complete.) Both spaces have their own content. It's a little awkward to do the "what audience is this thing for" dance with a lot of subjects, especially news and self-promotion, but I think the separateness is part of what makes them more interesting. Having said that, I have a request to make of you: Leave a comment for me at the link at the bottom of this email letting me know if there's a little something extra for this newsletter you might be interested in paying for. Extra content, multimedia stuff, pictures of my cats, whatever. Because I'm thinking about doing some sort of little bonus like that for people who want it. I really like the format I have going here, and that won’t change at all, and it will always be free. But I might tag something on the end. Dunno. What floats yer boat?

Second, INTERLUDE.

Third, CONSUMPTION.

• Writer Richard Kadrey posted a fun little meme to Bluesky yesterday, the Top 9 Albums that made you. So here's mine. Pretty sure those top five are locked in, but after that it's generally murky. There's a lot out there! Only nine? How??

• There's a huge update to Gran Turismo 7 that just went live this morning, and I'm itching to get to that. That they're still producing new free content for a game that's nearing five years old is impressive. It's so refreshing in an industry of microtransaction gambling games, "season passes", subscriptions, and constant and crass cross-promotion. But I gotta get me that Citreon 2CV.

• It's October, so you know what that means: TYPE O NEGATIVE SEASON.

• I have 16 days to get through my reading queue of the rest of Jerusalem Vol. 2, Hemingway's Garden of Eden, and Mary Shelley's original text of Frankenstein. I can do this. I will do this. Failure is always an option.

• Picked up Maggie Nelson's The Red Parts, which is the followup to her documentary poetry work Jane: A Murder. Together the two catalogue the investigation and trial relating to the murder of Nelson's aunt by a serial killer from a deeply personal (and sometimes impersonal) point of view. I'm excited to get to it... after the above queue... heh.

Fourth, HUSTLE.

Books available:

• THE FAILURE EXPERIMENT - a serial poem influenced by 20th century sci-fi and cyberpunk, dealing with love in the age of mechanical reproduction. Novelist KB Wagers called it “a delightful electrical tangle of words and feelings.” A Kindle version is available.

• confessions from a drainage ditch - a collection focusing on growing up rural and how those experiences carry forward, both helpful and harmful. A Kindle Version is available.

• A Void and Cloudless Sky - A chapbook akin to an EP, short and experimental, and containing some of my favorite work. Musician and editor Mer Yayanos says it’s “packed with highbrow references and lofi phrases that beg to be verbalized, to be invoked.” [Note: this is my only “traditionally published” work, and I get no money from it until I hit like ten sales a year. But you get a pdf for free, just for being subscribed to this newsletter! Grab it here! It’s a beautiful object, if you’d rather have a physical copy, though.]

If you're liking this whole project and want to support it directly, here is my Patreon. All paying subscribers receive access to all content I post there, for as little as $1.

Finally, THE OUTRO.

Fall has finally, I think, come to stay. For so many years we in the west have blamed the obvious effects of climate change on whatever traditional "extreme weather pattern" seemed convenient... El Niño, monsoon season, hurricane season, whatever. But it's becoming undeniable that fall is coming later to Chicago each year. Illinois had more tornadoes this year than any state in any year since we started keeping track in 1950. Hurricanes make their way farther and farther inland. This is not normal cyclical weather.

And yet they keep trying to build data centers for AI companies to dump diesel into while still making electricity costs higher than ever. There's so, so much to be angry at these days.

So here: check out the 100-year-old Lake Street drawbridge, which carried both car traffic and the Pink and Green Line CTA trains across the Chicago River, get carried... down the Chicago River. So long and muhalo, old friend.

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