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
 
My back twisted into a spiral
My ears filled my eyes empty
Tightly curled up
My head almost [...]

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 notes
and leave them on the table
at the top of the stairs
counting [...]

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 almost [...]

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 with sex.”
          I [...]

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.
Volume 1: [...]

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. I haven’t been so nuts about [...]

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 was [...]

 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 OF SINGAPORE, THE COLONIES SARAWAK [...]