THE BOTS

We bandy about this

faded aquarium. The

winter park. Ice thick

like layer cake. Uniform

tattered at the seams.

We trample like

paper on a mission we

shred the missing

persons pages, talk

jargon, finally, launch

a sleepwalker’s pilgrimage

to rename the continents.

Do not put off your sailing lessons any longer.

Pack your duffle bags.

Vista footfalls, no complaints desk –

you can get pregnant in the tent.

Pilgrims! Start your engines, waiting

for the light in last night’s empty

parking lot. Waiting on loose change.

The bullhorn on the pickup cries

political slogans en espanol and

the posters hardly look real.

To my fellow wanderers

(stuttering like vending machines):

We will quit our whining.

Enough with the pull tabs and plastic wrap.

We will walk from this humid,

disintegrating strip mall.

We will walk like abandoned machinery

into the pale, collapsing dawn.

People For Black Metal

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/489619181/cascadian-black-metal

The Museum of Eterna's Novel

The Museum of Eterna's Novel (The First Good Novel) is the very definition of a novel written ahead of its time. Macedonio (known to everyone by his unusual first name) worked on this novel in the 1930s and early '40s, during the heyday of Argentine literary culture, and around the same time that At Swim-Two-Birds was published, a novel that has quite a bit in common with Macedonio's masterpiece.

In many ways, Museum is an "anti-novel." It opens with more than fifty prologues—including ones addressed "To My Authorial Persona," "To the Critics," and "To Readers Who Will Perish If They Don’t Know What the Novel Is About"—that are by turns philosophical, outrageous, ponderous, and cryptic. These pieces cover a range of topics from how the upcoming novel will be received to how to thwart "skip-around readers" (by writing a book that’s defies linearity!).

The second half of the book is the novel itself, a novel about a group of characters (some borrowed from other texts) who live on an estancia called "la novella" . . .

A hilarious and often quite moving book, The Museum of Eterna's Novel redefined the limits of the genre, and has had a lasting impact on Latin American literature. Authors such as Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortázar, and Ricardo Piglia have all fallen under its charm and high-concepts, and, at long last, English-speaking readers can experience the book that helped build the reputation of Borges's mentor.

Ecstatic Truth

coming soon