All Things Pankish

A Reader’s Rapture: A Review of Maurya Simon’s The Raindrop’s Gospel, by Nicelle Davis

Highly adorned Christian churches are always good for renewing my guilt over sex. As scripture is read, my attention is stolen by depictions of half-clothed deities. The arrow protruding from St. Sebastian’s groin makes me blush; Jesus at the crucifixion appears to me as a man at orgasm. Even Mary, holding her dead son, seems to be in the throes of ecstasy. I dig my nails into my hands and tell myself to pay attention: salvation is in the word, not these images of martyrs. Inevitably, arousal wins and I fail to hear the sermon. I am going to hell, I tell myself. But it will be heaven all the way down, my body answers. I find this same state of guilt-ridden arousal in Maurya Simon’s newest collection of poems, The Raindrop’s Gospel.

The Raindrop’s Gospel is a novel in verse that explores the possible romantic relationship between St. Jerome and St. Paula. These Saints deny themselves the sexual gratification of each other in order to intensify their belief in God. In the poem ‘St. Jerome’s Dreams (I)’, St. Jerome wakes from a wet dream to:

…his erection so taut that
It throbs achingly, like a glutted, excised heart.
Tremblingly he draws his long, jagged fingernails

across his chest, tearing the older, healed scabs
and scars into new crosshatchings of lines,
blood-matted, oozing. He rises, gather the salt.

Simon’s poetic rendering of St. Jerome’s secret desires for St. Paula is erotica at its best. But like all things of quality, Simon’s erotica is not simple. As St. Jerome attempts to thwart his desire, his sexual urges intensify. Pleasure and pain make a cat and mouse game of his suffering—a suffering that is self-inflicted. St. Paula suffers from a similar affliction. In the poem ‘The Yea Sayer,’ St. Paula stumbles across mating dogs and finds:

And still this crude spectacle of fornication
Quickens me, plants an oily tension in my
Thighs, clamps hot tongs about my groin,

Until I’m drawing back the folds of my robe,
Thrusting my hand down to rub myself and
Imagining that it’s his body’s flesh grazing

God does not exist any more or less for the lovers’ sacrifice, but St. Jerome and St. Paula’s obsession for each other becomes a religion—a religion that many (including myself) struggle to locate and practice. Simon’s poems suggest that desire, with its infinite energy, may be the closest thing humans have to a “living god.” She goes even further in her theological investigations: if the face of God can be found in poetry, she means to look desire directly in its green eyes and question its purpose.

Simon removes the safe mask of religion and exposes the face of loss. In the poem ‘The Labyrinth’, St. Paula meets death several time and is amazed by its changing disguises. Death morphs from an octopus to a hermaphrodite to a husband to a maze ending in Christ. But death for Paula finally comes:

I am being shaken now, and unfasten
my eyes to find my master weeping beside me,
great sobs heaving his chest, his rough hands
gripping my shoulders as if to pull me
back to the world, his scant prayers
evaporating into smoke, his face,
his touch, dissolving…

In St. Paula’s final moment there is St. Jerome dissolving—desire dissolving. The image is beautiful. The image is disturbing.

Religion, for St. Jerome and St. Paula, softens the terrors of loneliness and death. St. Jerome never has to worry about loneliness—he has more women in his imagination than he knows what to do with. St. Paula is able to dispel her grief over her daughter’s death by dedicating herself to the task of caring for Christ. Religion, for these characters, creates peace through simplification. This creates a stark contrast to Simon’s poetry, which is dedicated to detail; Simon’s poems are a reversal of her characters’ religion.

Maurya Simon’s work strips me of my artificial understanding of the adorned church. My guilt melts away to reveal an inconsolable grief. After finishing The Raindrop’s Gospel I realize it isn’t the images of the martyrs’ naked bodies that arouse me, but their dying. Their dissolving desire makes me crave procreation. Despite knowing it will inevitably lead to more death, I long for life in and around me. It is in this desire that Maurya Simon creates a reader’s rapture.

The Raindrop’s Gospel is available from Elixir Press.

It’s Friday! Let’s Give Some Books Away

It’s Friday! We have some books and other curiosities to give away but first, watch this, love this, then come back. Soldiers! They’re just like us–very bored!

PLEASE READ: If you want a book, just say what you want in the comments, then e-mail your address to roxane at pankmagazine dot com. Please e-mail me your address. Please.

Cooper Renner’s DR. POLIDORI’S SKETCHBOOK and Daniel Citro’s JUST NOW THE WALLOP (3 2del> 1 copy of this set are available and generously offered by JA Tyler from mudluscious press)

A New Map of America by Louis Streitmatter

Threadbare VonBarren by Nicolle Elizabeth

Descriptive Sketches by Nate Pritts

Whiskey Island 57

I Go to Some Hollow by Amina Cain

Disolocate 5

The Florida Review 34.2

Cimarron Review 170

The Complete Works of Marvin K. Mooney by Christopher Higgs

The Emerson Review 39 (31 copies available)

A Submishmash T-Shirt

A Ninth Letter T-Shirt

Seriously, though. If you grab something, please e-mail me your address.

Many Fine Words to Read By

PANK favorite xTx has some fine, angry words at Camroc Press Review. You can also listen to xTx read her work in the Orange Alert Podcast. Here’s something weird. I wanted to fast forward to her story so when I dragged the thing across, it stopped exactly on the very beginning of her segment. Magic. She also has writing at Metazen (look on the left right) where she is recently joined by Allura Diez, Johnsie Noel, and Desmond Kon Zhicheng Mingdé.

Oh Young Lions has nice things to say about Aaron Burch’s How to Take Yourself Apart, How to Make Yourself Anew.

Ethel Rohan’s Night Antics appears in Waccamaw. She is joined by Nick Kocz, Sheila Squillante, Sarah Sweeney and others.

You still have time to enter Robert Swartwood’s Hint Fiction Reloaded contest.

Four more [specimens] from Mark Cunningham appear at Everyday Genius.

An installment from Matthew Salesses “The Island of Epidemics” is up at Wigleaf.

The new issue of Sixth Finch includes more from Gregory Sherl’s Oregon Trail series.

I love JMWW’s feature where they talk about the origins of a given story with its writer. This week, Ethel Rohan discusses her story More Than Gone.

Congratulations to Angi Becker Stevens who graduated this past weekend! Yay college! Ryan Bradley also received good news this week!

Mimi Vaquer’s Low Country is up this week at Monkeybicycle.

At Staccato Fiction, Interim Coach by Ravi Mangla.

Donora Hillard graces Everyday Genius with her story Econony.

Bad fathers are the matter at hand for David Erlewine at Dark Sky Magazine with his story One More Thing I’d Say to My Dad (If he hadn’t died).

The new issue of Transfr includes writing from Jac Jemc, Elisa Gabbert and Kathleen Rooney, AD Jameson, and Heather Momyer. Details about ordering here.

Ocean Vuong’s poetry is featured this week at the Split This Rock Poetry Festival blog.

Frigg’s Spring 2010 issue has gone love and it features lovely work from Jac Jemc (whose story is required reading; the word play; the images; the everything), Alec Niedenthal, Anthony Bromberg, and Gabe Durham. I must say, Frigg continues to impress me with the design and the quality of writing in every issue. It was such a (NERD) thrill to read through the new issue. Alec also has work up at Night Train, with his story After My Bar Mitzvah.

Laurence Klavan with Susan Kim and illustrated by Pascal Dizin, has a graphic novel, City of Spies, out now.

On Michelle Reale’s Natural Habitat

When I was a child, my family moved around a lot, following my father to whatever engineering project he was tackling next. It was hard to feel at home anywhere so it was my family that comprised my understanding of home. When I was trying to acclimate to a new school or set of acquaintances, I would hold on to two memories–my normally very serious father taking his shoes off, rolling up his pants and climbing a palm tree to pick coconuts for us in Haiti one summer and my mother always waiting for us to get home from school and then actually hanging out with my brothers and I like we were interesting little companions when we were, most assuredly, not.

I thought about what these memories represent for me, a sense of home, a natural habitat, an imperfect perfect place where I belong, when I read Michelle Reale’s moving and formidable Natural Habitat. Her chapbook is not just a tight collection of short short stories, it is also a love letter—a love letter to the idea of home, to natural habitats as those places where we can feel most like ourselves, where we can recognize all the people, memories and moments that have contributed to our present selves.

Generally, I don’t believe writers need to explain their work. I prefer the writing to speak for itself but Reale has made a very convincing case for an author’s statement being precisely what a collection needs to become what it should be. The strongest piece in a collection of exceptionally strong work is the opening essay, “What I Left Behind, What I found There,” where Reale intimately discusses the natural habitat of her childhood, the predominantly Italian-American neighborhood where she was raised, a place that influenced her so profoundly that, “Never had I identified with a place as much since. I suspect, at this point, I never will.” Reale goes on to explain how she has revisited that neighborhood; how she has “excavated” and spent time in the home of childhood friends; how she has written amidst the geography of her memories. The result of her efforts is a collection of twelve elegant stories that capture the idea of natural habitats and how we do or don’t fit within the place(s) we call home.

There’s a lot to admire in each of the stories. I was particularly impressed by the subtlety of these stories whose impact built slowly but steadily. In “Bonding,” we are offered a portrait of a family dinner at a neighborhood restaurant. The story is simple but the details Reale shares so perfectly capture the essence of this family, how they interact with one another, the histories that go unspoken.

My father could not eat a meal that was anything less than scalding hot. He sent it back. Twice. When it returned, it was placed before him, but we were more than halfway done with our meals, the table looking like a battlefield of a spilt soda, cigarette ash, and crumpled napkins.

While I enjoyed every story, the standout for me was “Junk,” a story filled with painful implications about a young girl and her relationship with her Uncle Jimmy. Every single line in this story contains an uncomfortable subtext. This is one of those rare stories where the less truly is more. One perfect moment:

My jean shorts cut into my chubby thighs. My “Cutie Pie” t-shirt showed my bra. Uncle Jimmy noticed.

and, after the narrator moves away from her uncle after a tense standoff, and then cuts herself, Reale writes:

Uncle Jimmy laughed hard, his thick yellow tongue vibrated. My father moved away from him, but not toward me. “Clumsy kid you got there,” he said, likt it was all he knew about me.

Go here to order this lovely chapbook and experience the honesty and intimacy of Michelle Reale’s writing. This emotional work will undoubtedly evoke within you a nostalgia for your own natural habitat.

We Rank Things Too

The Faster Times released a really interesting, useful set of magazine rankings this week and we were pretty pleased to be on the list, so I thought we would share our own magazine rankings, arrived at very scientifically.

Ultra Tier So Awesome It Cannot Be Numbered: ARTIFICE MAGAZINE

Tier 1. Magazines that say nice things about PANK.

Tier 2. Magazines that publish PANK writers.

Tier 3. Magazines that publish us.

Tier 4. Magazines that say nice things about PANK writers or us.

Tier 5. Magazines that send us thoughtful, personal rejections and also offer compliments.

Tier 6: Magazines that are cute or pretty.

Tier 7. Magazines that respond in less than sixty days.

Tier 74. Magazines that respond in 584 days.

Tier 134. Magazines that charge more than $5 for regular submissions.

Tier Mordor. Magazines who reject us coldly and impersonally. They are dead to us.

Wolf Parts Has Teeth, The Better to Eat You With

There is an unexpected intensity to the writing in Wolf Parts–a graphic, visceral quality that immerses you in a world where seemingly incompatible realities coincide. While I have come to expect solid writing from Matt Bell, I felt he was trying something different, something less controlled, with this book and in that experimentation, he has not only exceeded my expectations, he has crafted an engrossing tale that is intriguing, at times erotic and violent, and one of the most interesting reads I’ve enjoyed in some time.

Wolf Parts is not just a retelling of Little Red Riding Hood. It is a series of concurrent retellings, creating a narrative complexity that is unsettling and gives the impression that you are reading a story within a story within a story. The language of this book is meticulous and precise; not a single word was wasted or out of place. Earlier, I noted that this feels like Bell’s least controlled writing and despite the immaculate prose, I find an uncharacteristic wildness, an abandon to the story itself. There is an undercurrent of desire throughout the story that thrilled me because it was provocative and uncomfortable. The prose also had an immersive, physical quality with a great deal of attention paid to the senses–the taste of rotting meat, slick innards, breath like chalk, plush pillows, sharp knives.

The familiar characters from Little Red Riding Hood are all present in Wolf Parts–there’s a girl, a grandmother, a woodsman and a wolf, but they refuse to play their proper parts. The wolf, in particular, is at once a man, sometimes loathsome, surprisingly sympathetic. He is one and many. He is both predator and prey. What I appreciated most about Wolf Parts, in addition to the complexity that feels subtle until, by the end when it overwhelms, is the way in which Bell plays with dualities throughout the story. There are no villains and victims in Wolf Parts and there is an unexpected tenderness at times, particularly in the wolf who cannot help but be a wolf and yet, he loves.

After the mother and grandmother both passed away, the wolf took their places, so that the girl he secretly adored would not have to go without.

The girl in this story, Red, is burdened with terrible responsibilities and choices. She knows things. She is no naif. In one moment:

She waited, polite and acquiescent, and as soon as the wolf forced himself inside her, she sprung her trap, showing him that she too knew what it meant to consume someone whole.

By the end of the book, you come to realize that in a story told with no clear beginning, middle or end, there was still an inevitable fate.

When she would not love him as a boy, he went into the woos and became a wolf, the better to take from her what he wanted. If only he had waited until later, when he was a man and she a woman, their fates might have been different.

Wolf Parts was released as a limited edition so copies will be hard to come by but if you weren’t one of the lucky people who bought Wolf Parts during the pre-sale, you can enjoy the story in Bell’s short story collection, How They Were Found, which will be released by Keyhole Books in October.

Ask the Author: Mindy Hung

Mindy Hung’s The View From Below appears in the April issue and she talks with us about archetypes, dream jobs, and the burdens of a bad haircut.

1. What would you kill to start fresh in your life?

Killing my plants wouldn’t do me much good. I like my husband and, for the most part, I don’t wish him any harm. What I would like to quash are some of my own urges and desires, which sounds terribly earnest and Buddhist of me, but isn’t really.

2. Are hipsters so skinny in order to fit in their natural environment, which is the bar? What would Darwin say?

I once saw a bunch of hipsters jumping around in a mud field in McCarren Park in Williamsburg. A few of them had brass instruments and they played some fun klezmer music. But the self-conscious, pseudo-exuberance of the mud-stomping dance spoiled it for me (although it probably explains the hipster skinniness).

I’m a member of a pudgy, lesser species. Maybe I’m envious of the jackrabbit metabolisms of hipsters? Darwin would probably fit right in, with his sideburns and extensive world travel.

3. What is the worst haircut you’ve ever had?

Right now, the coif is not so good. It’s growing out, as they say, so it’s like an adolescent: awkward and laden down with a bad attitude.

4. What archetype do you play in your gaggle of girls?

I wish I still had a gaggle. In recent years, my people have moved to, like, Nicaragua and Manila and frickin’ Minneapolis, and I am too old to be the Eager Beaver Newcomer in any group. So maybe I am Grumpy Woman Who Shakes Her Stick at Everyone.

5. What job would you like to have, even if it doesn’t exist?

I’d like to be the person who knows a lot of stuff, but doesn’t go into it too deeply. Like The Human Almanac, or The Dabbler. Taken to extremes, I’d be a superhero who overpowers enemies by annoying them to death.

Ask the Author: Jennifer Pashley

Enjoy Jennifer Pashley’s Magic in the March issue of PANK and then listen in as we talk about bad pick up lines,
magical powers and so much more.

How would the tone of “Magic” change if the story was written in first person or third person?

They’re complete different stories: in one version, I tell you about something I’m doing. In the other version you are doing it. When a story is first person, it’s basically voyeuristic, but in second person the reader is complicit. It changes the participation of the reader entirely. I use it sparingly, for that reason, but when I do use it, I really like the effect it has on you.

How was “Magic” received when you performed it live originally?

I got a great response, and a lot of laughs, which is great, because for what is really a dark and problematic little story, it also tells a little like a joke. I also performed it in a bar, with a giant photo of a girl in a cowboy hat projected behind me. (It’s David Jewell’s photo; he’s a regular at Five Things Austin.) But because I was a girl in a bar, reading a story about a girl in a bar, you get a lot of “Can I buy you a drink? Can I walk you to your car?” (or 10-speed maybe) afterward.

If you could only have one magic power, what would it be and why?

Flying. Doesn’t everyone say flying? Maybe not. Maybe everyone says invisibility, but really, invisibility just seems like a shitty feeling. Flying is awesome.

What have you pretended to be in a bar to confuse men? Did it work?

A scotch-drinker. It did not work.

What is the worst pick-up line you’ve ever received?

“We should write a book together.”

What is the worst pick-up line you’ve ever used?

“We should write a book together.”

Review: We’re Getting On by James Kaelan

Flatmancrooked is gaining quite the reputation for innovative book marketing. Last year they launched Emma Straub’s novella, Fly-Over State, by asking people to buy a “share” in the project, which includes a signed first-edition copy of the novella. This year they tried the same approach with Alyssa Knickerbocker’s Your Rightful Home, with equal levels of success.

As well as being part of the Launch project, James Kaelan’s short story collection, We’re Getting On, is also part of the new Zero Emission Book Project which aims to offset the environmental cost of book production. Each first edition of the book is made of 100% recycled post-consumer paper, with covers made of seed paper. This means that if you were to plant the book, it would grow into a tree. Such beautiful circularity. But presumably you will want to read the book before you plant it, so first of all you need to figure out whether you will like it.

We’re Getting On consists of four connected stories focusing on hipsters after the apocalypse. It is exactly the sort of book that would be sold in Urban Outfitters, though like most books sold in Urban Outfitters it mocks the people who shop there. The collection’s first story, ‘A Deliberate Life’, takes place in a hellish land where everyone rides bicycles just because some guy does, and wears glasses they can’t see through, and spends a lot of time picking out quirky t-shirts. As Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho contrasted lists of music and clothing labels with graphic violence, ‘A Deliberate Life’ connects Palestine and Saddam Hussein’s trial with a meaningless cycle of bands, bars and booze.

The characters in We’re Getting On are not nice people: when told that the women he’s just gone home with might have a contagious disease, one narrator thinks: “Whatever I might contract from her, I thought at the time, would be a small price for the boost in status.” Other characters start fights, have hate-sex, and generally think stupid and unpleasant thoughts.

It’s not fun to read stories about horrible people, but there is a point: “In my circle,” says the narrator, “you’re only allowed to worry about things that don’t matter, like bands and trials and fashion.” Although I hated these characters, I still felt a little cheer rise in my throat at the end of ‘A Deliberate Life’, when the protagonist makes an attempt to escape from this awful non-existence.

For me, the high point of the book was the second story, ‘You Must’ve Heard Something’. Here we are treated to a handful of uncomfortably intimate snapshots of two people trying to connect in a mysterious world they don’t understand. These characters may be struggling through an apocalypse, but like all the best TV dramas they still make time for witty banter:

“I’m Charles,” said Charles.
“I’m Jane. I’d shake your hand–”
“But I’ve already seen you change.”
“And we’re standing in different buildings.”

Again, it’s hard to sympathise with them: after describing having sex with an unconscious woman who then presses charges against him, Charles says: “I suppose she was just ashamed for having not paid attention”. The message of the story seems to be that the basic exchange between men and women is sex for food: Charles watches Jane undress, and in return he gives her some rotting apples. The focus of the story is kept tight, and this claustrophobic tone allows the dynamic between the two characters to heighten to a beautifully chilling conclusion. The characters in these stories are ‘getting on’ with each other and with their lives, but just barely.

We’re Getting On is the sort of book that will be sold in achingly cool shops, next to cult novels and Beat poetry and photography books of urban graffiti. If you like that sort of thing, this is the sort of thing you will like. And if you don’t like it, you can always plant it.

Ask the Author: Leah Bailly

Leah Bailly’s Stampede Queen is featured in the April issue and today she talks with us about capers, Calgary exports and much more.

1. What caper would you pull off in an attempt to get a lot of money?

I’d start a feisty religion. Maybe in a private moment, an angel would slip down heaven to tell me the Lord’s special message: that I was the Mighty Prophet, and my millions of followers should give me ten percent of their earnings and donate their best looking sons for me take as my plural husbands. Helluva racket, if you ask me.

2. Other than professional wrestlers and hockey players, what else does Calgary export to the world?

Calgary exports crap-loads of dirty crude oil. Also, Calgarians supposedly invented Ginger Beef and the Caesar (a Bloody Mary made with Clamato. Yum)

3. What would you call a man’s “blowjob hole” if the man was heterosexual?

The Salamander Saddle (for mustache rides, of course).

4. What was the significance of using the Talking Heads in your story?

Everybody in Vegas hates the Talking Heads. Especially the junkies. They’re all, “THAT’S NOT CELINE! TURN THAT SHIT OFF!”

5. Is poor grammar in text messaging a pet peeve of yours?

I love it. It’s our new lingua franca. In the parlance of our times: I’m LMMFAO.