Sean Arnold to Read at Duff's in the C.W.E. on Monday, November 22

Sean Arnold will be one of the featured readers at Duff's, 392 North Euclid, on Monday, November 22, when Chance Operations turns the reigns of control over to CJ Smith of JKPublishing.

The reading will also feature Michael Castro, Philip Gounis, Ellen Herget, Colleen McKee, and Nicky Rainey. Doors open at 7:30 p.m., and the cover is $3.

Sean Arnold is currently a poet, anarchist, MC, visual artist, roustabout, and bread delivery truck driver living in St. Lucipher, MO. His writing chronicles the pretensions and directions of everything and nothing at the same time but, most importantly, often straddles the line between idleness and revolt of thought. His goals in life are thus far both grand and minute. Arnold was first transfixed with poetics as an angsty preteen. Now 22 years old, he has with his first book of poems, Soliloquy from an Open Summer Window, taken these inclinations to their most logical conclusion yet. However, this first book is just a stepping stone in one vast open letter to those left indignant and smarting from current political pastures, but also optimistic and secretly in love, convinced another world is possible.

Signs on Cherokee

kick back and look at the signs on cherokee street
colorful handpainted banners
chipped hieroglyphs
mantras filthy with capitalist sleaze
infinite mismatched combination of numbers
beautiful illogical as
cracked slow summer
car doors falling off onto the street itself
dudes ride by on old bikes with orange peel in their faces
rinds in clumpy hair.
pale blue word birds hung so carefully
thin straight letter script
“drug free zone” on yellow plastic.
(oh really, this must be the only one in america)
the OPEN neon
fresh pasta!
white reflections cross white reflections
SALE/ LEASE/ money in 10!
CASH/ BACK/ FAST
drab blue o’er hang street gray w/ segment bursts of yellow lines
bars in the windows
(don’t take my shit please!)
unseen banners
times verbal dinosaurs
beaten senseless by brunt erasers
slow mountain bikes climb cement non-inclines with wide treads
parking ticket nazis,
stencils=bright propaganda,
all graffiti is propaganda anymore,
cartoon character political rhetoric is unavoidable
all hallucinogenic real colors
slight blue sky.

-- Sean Arnold