Last Bender

  Le Ventre de Ma Mere: Blaise Cendrars   My Mother’s Belly   It was my first residence It was quite round Often I imagine What I must have been like…   My feet on your heart mama My knees tight against your liver My hand grasping the canal That ended at your belly   [...]

In the end, I have to admit, I write pornographic novels. It is a control issue. The harder I work at the craft, the more controlled I become with plot and character, voice and narrative. The tricks become choices, the tools more refined, the foresight, or lack, less of a concern. But I am hopeless [...]

the things that you wanted are in the bag grapes and clementines and a 59 cent comb (there was a full jar and I could have gotten 2) when I feel this way (your head on a pillow of snow the remote control near your spotted hand) I can’t do more than write a few [...]

Stanley Elkin’s Magic Kingdom The first Stanley Elkin book I read was The Living End (1979). I read it when it came out in paperback, in the early 80’s. He had the reputation for Joycean verbal pyrotechnics which, for some reason, I didn’t discern. I loved the book but I have to say I remember [...]

CHAPTER FIFTY                     “He’s using us,” she said.           We lay in a double ess. The heat of our two bodies pressed together radiated into the room. My face was in her hair, my arm draped across her belly. “For what?”           Evalyn sat up. “I’m not sure how, but it has to do [...]

My interest in Champa was aroused by reading about the American War with Vietnam. As I read more and more history I came to think that Vietnam is most often viewed as being the object of other nations’ foreign policy. In this formulation Vietnam is the great, anti-colonial champion of the world. Histories stated that [...]

Drift Blurb 500 hundred years from now America will be ruled by an aristocracy. Wealth and power will not be determined by ownership of land but rather ownership of DNA. Those with the rarest genes yield the greatest power and the rarest genes of all are not human, but those discovered in creatures on Mars. [...]

i was knocking about Silliman’s blog and read his August 18th piece on Joel Lewis. A great find. I’ve shelved the one book my library has of his, I’m sure, but haven’t read him. A quick google search turned up this gem: http://www.poetspath.com/napalm/nhs06/Lewis.htm and these: http://web.njit.edu/~newrev/v2s1/r.html and these: http://jacketmagazine.com/07/lewisjoel.html well, thanks Ron, a new poet to read. [...]

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE           My room was located not far from St. Claude’s suite, on level 1, which he shared with Evalyn. It was a plain glass chamber with only one head. The ambient light was the usual deep blue to turquoise, with a brighter radiation in one corner, above a white cushion. This brighter radiation [...]

 Early Indonesian Commerce and the Nanhai Trade Wang, Gungwu. The Nanhai trade : early Chinese trade in the South China Sea Singapore : Eastern Universities Press, 2003. xviii, 165 p. : maps ; 23 cm. (JOURNAL OF THE MALAYAN BRANCH OF THE ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY. (COVERING THE TERRITORIES OF THE FEDERATION OF MALAYA, THE STATE [...]