 |
June.
2005
Former Feature Review
|
 |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
| semantikon,
summer 2005, former feature review, aralee strange, patrick
sebastian, michael crossley, nathan singer, bess rose miller,
t.m. weygand, willie smith, krista franklin, poetry, essays,
short stories, novels, fiction, cut up poems, novels, audio |
|
 |
Update:
|
Nathan Singer |
| Since
Nathan’s feature in April 2004, Nathan has been writing
performing across the U.S. and touring in support of his first
novel, A Prayer for Dawn, which met with award nominations
and critical raves nationwide. June 2004 saw the world premier
of Chasing The Wolf based on novel of same name (excerpted
here) and again, June 2005 saw the world premiere of his play Woyzecked
and Left for Dead or the Killer Whispers and Prays, a decontrustruction
/ reply to Buchner's Woyzeck. Look for Nathan’s book Chasing
The Wolf available January 2006 from Bleak House Books. |
New
Works:
|
Chasing
The Wolf
|
The
Zero Collectors
|
Blackchurch
Furnace
|
excerpt
from forthcoming novel: Chasing The Wolf
(available from Bleak
House Books in
Jan 2006)
Then, out of the blue, this gigantic man appeared
on stage. He glared out into the audience with his eyes rolled up like he was
possessed . . . hypnotized . . .something . . . The veins in that man’s
neck bulged and throbbed. His massive fists clenched. Lips locked, eyelids now
locked. Jaw locked. A polytonal hum began to vibrate through the speakers with
a steady crescendo. Louder now. Louder still. Steady. Steady . . .
Somebody hollered, “Brang it, boy!” “Brang
it on home!” “We’s needin it ‘ bout now!”
Wolf pursed his lips and from somewhere deep in the center of the earth,
a thousand coyotes howled.
The reverb from the PA buzzed, squealed, popped, and craaaackled . . .
“Whoooahh I axed her fo’ watuh’/
Whoooahh an’ she brought me gasoline/ dat’s duh terriblest woman-ooooo/
dat I evuh seeeeeeeen!”
The whole room swayed one-and-two-and-three-and-four-and
Wolf howled. Everbody howled.
“Sang da song, chile! Sang it!” they yelled.
“Whoooahh da chu’ch bell tonin’/
Whoooahh da hearse gone drivin’ slow/ I hope my babeeeeee/ Don’ leave
me no mooooohh’!”
This moment . . . Don’t never forget it .
. . |
The Zero Collectors
The world is flaming gasoline.
God is scarred, burned, naked in a drain pipe.
Something in the medicine is keeping us sick.
Fearless and terrified.
Another needle raping our veins
And all is quiet along the sand here.
And there is just enough medicine to keep the disease
alive . . .
When you call genocide the cure and
you’ll scorch the earth clean again–
When you set the air on fire for liberation–
You know you’re just killing
to score digits for The Zero Collectors
The Zero Collectors
You know we’re just dying
To score digits for The Zero Collectors
And all is quiet along the sand here tonight.
All is
right with the universe
and God is scarred, burned, naked in a drain pipe
Keep the disease alive. Needless and terrified.
And all is quiet along the sand here.
Amen.
|
excerpt
from the novel Blackchruch Furnace
Exhibiting
titular wisdom, like Tituba at a witch burning, MeShayle stood
pointing fingers at other dead-ringers and hangers-on. She lived
on her own, where Countee Cullen met Geezer Butler for pagan prayers
and H-bomb bass tone. She lived on her own. Alone, where lost poets
guzzle Jack and go deaf to thrash and blind from dirt crank (and
there are no old brothers here.)
“There’d never be a blast beat without
Art Blakey,” she thought. “Street corner rhymin’ set to tin
cans rolling down an alley. This just ain’t loud enough. It just ain’t
loud enough. TURN THIS
FUCKER UP.”
MeShayle was a no-nonsense baller, ya heard. Played
the streets like a violin, like a Shaolin, her body was the temple where the
lonesome and the loathsome came to worship. Worshipping as they came. Her thighs
the gateway to the garden. Or so she kept ‘em figuring, triggering
hot-spot guilt rides when suburbanite suitn’tie albino cockroaches come
to town for conventions and a taste for the unconventional. To go to town on
a lil sista who’s been down here before. Fever producer, tension reducer,
she’s a street walking medic holding the world’s oldest cure-all.
Keepin’ a steady
beat blasting.
“This all you got?”
And she’s fourteen years old.
“You cain’t fade me!!!!”
Did I mention that she’s fourteen?
She fourteen years old, and she ain’t never owned a pair of roller
skates.
Turn it up, girl. It just ain’t loud enough.
She
ain’t never been to a school dance. Never had a first date or bum-rushed
a show.
Ain’t ne’er gonna crush on no body her own age. Her peers are
zombies, wash-outs and ain’never-beens – young enough to know
better, too old to care. Rocking a tune at the edge of the world . . .And
it’s flat, ya heard. Flat.
The tune, the world, the rock, the edge
It’s flat, ya heard? It’s flat, ya feel me.
Feel me. You feel me?
It’s flat. Turn it up.
She
ain’t got no delusions that it ain’t all flat and dry like
a drought-choked wheat field in July. Whores burn like witches out here.
Burn like fading stars, like little Black girls in an Alabama church basement.
(MeShayle, my bail, someday won’t you play your ver’ own
song? Tre bien ensemble.)
But for now she just fittin’ to let ‘em
all burn. And keep a driving beat on old trash cans and thrash a hunk of old
furnace and rusted drain pipe and scream at the night–
“This all you got? This all you got!?!! You
ain’t fadin’ me! This ain’t loud!!! It ain’t loud at
all. This ain’t LOUD enough, ya heard!?!! TURN THIS FUCKER UP!”
|
|
