Poetry. Taking its title from a song by the Memphis musician Harlan T. Bobo, ZIPPERS AND JEANS tells the story of a man who upon having his heart broken finds that he can commune with inanimate objects. At regular intervals, the real world leans in on our loveless speaker, cajoling him through the language of Anglo- Saxon riddles, plying him with snapshots of the past, pushing him on his search for the simple life. Along the way, the reader will find a series of short essays on the aesthetics of vernacular culture, which focus on topics such as mass-produced musical instruments, professional wrestling, and the history of deadpan comedy. Like the story of unrequited love, each of these topics relate back to the central trajectory of the book, a descent into the cultural mythology of Memphis.

Zippers & Jeans

Literature & Fiction

Moore, J. Peter

Poetry

selva oscura press

Poetry. Edited by Aldon Lynn Nielsen. Hugh Walthall (1948-2015) was born in Roswell, New Mexico, and lived his adult life in Washington D.C., where he was active in the regional poetry community. He worked variously as a taxi driver, dispatcher for a clown service, blueprint copy machine operator and law librarian. In addition to his work as a poet, he was a member of D.C.'s theater community and both appeared in plays and had his own produced. This is his collected poems.

A Spell in the Pokey

Walthall, Hugh

Poetry. Reprint of Nathanial Mackey's first book of poetry, selected by Michael Harper in 1985 as a winner of the National Poetry Series, and published by University of Illinois Press. With a new preface by Joseph Donahue.

Eroding Witness

MacKey, Nathaniel

Poetry. New poetry from Erica Hunt, author of LETTERS TO THE FUTURE: BLACK WOMEN/RADICAL WRITING (Kore Press, 2018), TIME SLIPS RIGHT BEFORE YOUR EYES (Belladonna*, 2015), LOCAL HISTORY (Roof Books, 1994), Arcade, Piece Logic, and A Day and Its Approximates.

VERONICA: A SUITE IN X PARTS

Hunt, Erica

Poetry. "The score is the written -- a list of appropriated sources, the notes, is listed -- and Jeanne Heuving plays upon, plays under, her instrument, the pen with which she begins, dragging it across the page. Weaving together real and speculative histories of plants, dyes, and papyrus, she creates a loose tapestry of septets that accumulate into ruminations on the network of histories binding transatlantic seafaring, trade, colonialism, agriculture, and slavery. MOOD INDIGO reminds us that beauty and cruelty, human ingenuity and human barbarity, are inextricably linked. We love the aboveground seen: MOOD INDIGO asks us to consider those invisible roots beneath the field."--Tyrone Williams

Mood Indigo

Heuving, Jeanne

Poetry. Asian & Asian American Studies. LGBTQIA Studies. "History is really an invitation / by way of arranged language / to read the occulted / in plain sight:/ a poem. // This book is a commingling of archives / with copious attributions / without peer review or a known market. / A history in which the document / is contemporary nonfiction / represented in verse // language's contemporaneity taken back / from archive-as-Empire's governance / and my poem journals are archival."--from "CODA"

why letter ellipses

Alidio, Kimberly

Violently Dancing Portraits

Villars, Arvo

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