Nicky Rainey

Nicky Rainey reading at Duff's on November 22 when Chance Operations turned the reigns of control over to the fine folks at JKPublishing.

Colleen McKee

Colleen McKee reading at Duff's on November 22 when Chance Operations turned the reigns of control over to the fine folks at JKPublishing.

Phil Gounis

Phil Gounis reading at Duff's on November 22 when Chance Operations turned the reigns of control over to the fine folks at JKPublishing.

Michael Castro

Michael Castro reading at Duff's on November 22 when Chance Operations turned the reigns of control over to the fine folks at JKPublishing.

Sean Arnold

Sean Arnold reading at Duff's on November 22 when Chance Operations turned the reigns of control over to the fine folks at JKPublishing.

Elly Herget

Elly Herget reading at Duff's on November 22 when Chance Operations turned the reigns of control over to the fine folks at JKPublishing.

C.J. Smith

C.J. Smith reading at Duff's on November 22 when Chance Operations turned the reigns of control over to the fine folks at JKPublishing.

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

Colleen McKee 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 Sean Arnold, Michael Castro, Philip Gounis, Ellen Herget, and Nicky Rainey. Doors open at 7:30 p.m., and the cover is $3.

Colleen McKee teaches for both the English Department and for the Institute for Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Colleen's poetry has appeared in publications such as Poetry Daily, Bellevue Literary Review, Flyway, and Bad Shoe, as well as in several book-length collections of poetry. Colleen is co-editor of a book of personal narratives entitled Are We Feeling Better Yet?: Women’s Encounters with Health Care in America.

Natural Causes

I had to live long enough to perfect my own funeral.
I’d saved my pennies for an open bar
at the chapel, only rail liquors,
no cheap shit. You only die once.
I’d saved my sequins
for the just-so
little black dress.

I’d spent every Sunday
of the last year of my life
rolling out rugelach dough,
that, and sewing on sequins.
It turns out rugelach
thaws very nicely.

I’d spent every Saturday night
accumulating suitors
so I would have plenty of mourners, men
to cry and shuffle their feet,
clutch the pale stems of flowers
in clammy palms,
clench and unclench their handsome jaws,
clean-shaven for once; they wish
they had treated me better.
Tattooed and virgin-skinned,
beer-bellied and svelte in their suits,
blonde and red-headed and bald,
they look sideways at each other
over my plain pine box.
They drink and hope my family
doesn’t still hate them.
My friends whisper: She really could
pick em. Some guests
get in fist fights, of course,
a few ties loosened and rugelach-stained...
But after a few tears, a little blood,
some loose petals, people sigh.

They say things like,
I’m sorry. They say,
I wouldn’t go... They say,
I have work
in the morning.
So they go.

One final man sticks around
to turn off the lights.

We are alone in the dark, fragrant
with living white jonquils,

each bunch in its world
of sugary water.

He pats my hand, the naked ring finger.
Each vase will be spilled

with the sun.

-- Colleen McKee

Ellen Herget To Read at Duff's in the C.W.E. on Monday, November 22

Ellen Herget 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 Sean Arnold, Michael Castro, Colleen McKee, Nicky Rainey, and Philip Gounis. Doors open at 7:30 p.m., and the cover is $3.

Ellen Herget co-edits Bad Shoe with Erin Wiles, and also has a chapbook published with JKPublishing entitled Thus Far. Bad Shoe was a 2010 recipient of a Kick Ass Award, given to "individuals, businesses, organizations and projects that contribute to the health and vitality of the St. Louis region." She has a cat; she plays music; she is fond of pop tarts. She is in love with the Bad Shoe project and especially proud of the current issue.

I dreamt it was the 1950's

and we were arguing in a pig's-blood-red
Chevy convertible, the old style
with fins and matching upholstery.
You were in your yellow checked shirt
and bruised blue bandana.
We both smoked, parked in a generic light-speckled overlook
that I've seen in a thousand generic light-speckled movies.
I don't remember a word of what was said.
In the morning it was 2010
(o futuristic year)
and you were gone, just like the dream,
bolting out the driver's-side door
and bailing for the woods.

Our distantly placed
fellow astronaut friends
ask after you.
I have nothing to tell.

I think on your quick fingers
attached to blunt-instrument
limbs; you were clumsy
in the way of a bear,
knocking down saplings in your haste
to delicately dismantle a beehive,
to dexterously flick the scales off salmon.

Little girls play House but we
played Boys, molded would-be
tears into laughter; dissolved
frustration with whiskey and smoke.

I think on a figure eternally
perched between now and next,
hummingbird hovering -- hovering;
twenty years I'll never know about.
Few questions cast before wasps
moved in for the food supply.
And you darted away with a dark
thrum of wings, oh emerald bird
off to Elsewhere, where you are
tasting the wind and
hovering --
-- hovering.

-- Ellen Herget

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

Nicky Rainey 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 Sean Arnold, Michael Castro, Ellen Herget, and Philip Gounis, and Colleen McKee. Doors open at 7:30 p.m., and the cover is $3.

Nicky Rainey makes zines, writes grants, stories and letters to her pen-pals. A loud talker since childhood, she represented St. Louis in the National Poetry Slam 2009 (and Madison, Wisconsin, in the Rustbelt Regional slam in 2007). Nicky earned a hearty "BA!" from Truman State in English, and also studied social justice and how to make elaborate omelets. Nicky has a new zine made out of envelopes called Let’s Talk about People. Write her for a copy at n.k.rainey@gmail.com.

Watching TV & Playing World of Warcraft with Angelito88

On Day 57 of the BP spill, I watched MSNBC & traipsed
through dungeons with Angelito88, Christopher's cousin or maybe
               nephew,
studies petroleo engineering at University & needs breaks so we
               chase gryphons.

At 22 and 27, this game is our generation's golf, refined.
We're humans and dwarves, not fucking Orcs. We drink coffee,
type about family & politics across sea and shimmering flats --

I say:
               the dolphins are blowing oil out of their blowholes
               the dolphins are acting drunk

Angelito88's newspapers put the spill on page five next to the story about the drug cartels creating alliances with Hezbollah, can you imagine how those intermarriages will go over with the grandmothers. In his state, people have oil-wells in the backyard, owned by the government.
Angel's glad BP didn't bust a valve on an entire city.

We clear the iron forge & he changes the subject:

               you know, when they play Warcaft in China,
               there's flesh on the skeletons
               and the dead are in tidy graves

Inside my house, I see a waning crimson gryphon on one screen and blowout preventer valves on another. Two blocks away --on North and South-- sits an old Jewish cemetery where the graves look tidy, but are truly filled with swarms of little angels, myriad dungeons, our ancestors & friends wearing crowns of oil and water.

-- Nicky Rainey

Philip Gounis To Read at Duff's in the C.W.E. on Monday, November 22

Philip Gounis 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 Sean Arnold, Michael Castro, Ellen Herget, Colleen McKee, and Nicky Rainey. Doors open at 7:30 p.m., and the cover is $3.

Philip Gounis has worked as a writing tutor, editor and publisher, and for the last three decades his work has appeared in a variety of literary publications and entertainment magazines. In the radio broadcast medium he has served as both host and producer. Some Of These Have Appeared, a chapbook of poetry was published spring 2007.

Litany of the Ridiculous

life after birth is not ridiculous
it is both infinite & absurd as it unwinds
like Hank Williams lamenting in his tower of song,
Ridiculous is continually picking at the scabs of past deeds
               done in vain
plowing through the snowbank of ignorance & bias with only
lightweight sandals on; THAT is ridiculous
Ridiculous is not respecting your elders that have died
               bathed in blood,
sweat & fear for those who would follow in their path
Ridiculous is riding with the vigilante mob even
               after you realize that
they are up to no good
Ridiculous is coming face to face with a mutated frog & mistaking it
for the Prince of Darkness
it is ridiculous to come face to face, cheek to jowl with
the Prince of Darkness
& not change your course of action
Ridiculous is participating in a marathon sleep over
& then waking up in a pool of blood on a king size mattress
Ridiculous is fire bombing babies in their thatched huts
Ridiculous is giving people shit because you are
               intimidated by them
Ridiculous is not getting the money up front
Ridiculous is washing the colored with the whites
Ridiculous is falling madly in love with the Man in the Moon
even though you know that he can never be yours
Ridiculous is judging somebody by how much money they spend
Ridiculous is believing that your own urine can
               obliterate the freckles
that you have had since birth
Ridiculous is not having enough time for music
Ridiculous is not letting go of the lever even after you realize that
               you have voted wrong
Ridiculous is bundling up on the sunny Miami beach
Ridiculous is believing that “clothes make the man”
Ridiculous is clinging to the belief that form matters
Ridiculous is taking only one path at the crossroads
Ridiculous is lusting over flesh & blood
Ridiculous is looking for logic in faith,because it’s not there
Ridiculous is looking for a needle in a opium den
Ridiculous is continuing long, heated, protracted debates with
               the man in the mirror
Ridiculous is trying to threaten cowards that are already
               running scared
Ridiculous is letting your subscription to your own personal credo
               run out
Ridiculous is using ridicule as a defense mechanism
It is ridiculous to believe that in the field of ethics,
               “one size fits all”
It is ridiculous not to hold on to your ticket stub
It is ridiculous not to travel with an iron clad alibi
And it is ridiculous not to know when to stop !

-- Philip Gounis

Michael Castro To Read at Duff's in the C.W.E. on Monday, November 22

Michael Castro 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 Sean Arnold, Philip Gounis, Ellen Herget, Colleen McKee, and Nicky Rainey. Doors open at 7:30 p.m., and the cover is $3. Bush Lied

Michael Castro has been called “a legend in St. Louis poetry.” Long active as a poet and arts activist, he co-founded the pioneering multi-cultural literary organization and magazine River Styx, in operation since 1975; and for fifteen years he hosted the radio program, Poetry Beat. Castro has given poetry readings on three continents, and has collaborated in performance work with a wide range of musical assemblages over the last three decades, recording four albums. He has published six poetry collections, including his most recent, The Bush Years: A Poetic Exegesis of the Former Administration; two books of modern Hungarian poetry he co-translated with Gabor G. Gyukics; and Interpreting the Indian, a study of Native American influences on modern poets. He is the recipient of two lifetime achievement awards, having been named Warrior Poet by Word in Motion and Guardian Angel of St. Louis Poetry by River Styx. He currently teaches at Lindenwood University.

Bush Lied

Bush lied
to get the country
to support his war -—
projected fear, “Saddam
tried to get uranium from . . .
Africa!” -— uttering this word,
after a pause, like a curse --
then a pause as if to allow the silent gasp
you expected
the spooky music to start -— Blair said
Saddam’s bombers could be
bringing on the nukes
in 45 minutes
& Bush chimed in, the Iraqis had drones
could reach the states -—
fear drove the war,
intentionally generated fear
& foolish arrogance,
the delusion of the invaders
that the occupying army
would be met with flowers & hearts
& the keys to the oil fields

-- Michael Castro

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

JKPublishing Authors at Duff's on Monday, November 22

Phil Gounis, Michael Castro, and Sean Arnold.
Photo by Erin Wiles.
C.J. Smith of JKPublishing will be the guest curator of the next Chance Operations reading at Duff's, 392 North Euclid, St. Louis, on Monday, November 22.

The reading will feature Sean Arnold, Michael Castro, Phil 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.

Michael Castro has been called “a legend in St. Louis poetry.” Long active as a poet and arts activist, he co-founded the pioneering multi-cultural literary organization and magazine River Styx, in operation since 1975; and for fifteen years he hosted the radio program, Poetry Beat. Castro has given poetry readings on three continents, and has collaborated in performance work with a wide range of musical assemblages over the last three decades, recording four albums. He has published six poetry collections; two books of modern Hungarian poetry he co-translated with Gabor G. Gyukics; and Interpreting the Indian, a study of Native American influences on modern poets. He is the recipient of two lifetime achievement awards, having been named Warrior Poet by Word in Motion and Guardian Angel of St. Louis Poetry by River Styx. He currently teaches at Lindenwood University.

Philip Gounis has worked as a writing tutor, editor and publisher, and for the last three decades his work has appeared in a variety of literary publications and entertainment magazines. In the radio broadcast medium he has served as both host and producer. Some Of These Have Appeared, a chapbook of poetry was published spring 2007.

Ellen Herget co-edits Bad Shoe with Erin Wiles, and also has a chapbook published with JKPublishing entitled Thus Far. She has a cat; she plays music; she is fond of poptarts. She is in love with the Bad Shoe project and especially
proud of the current issue.

Colleen McKee teaches for both the English Department and for the Institute for Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Colleen's poetry has appeared in publications such as Poetry Daily, Bellevue Literary Review, Flyway, and Bad Shoe, as well as in several book-length collections of poetry. Colleen is co-editor of a book of personal narratives entitled Are We Feeling Better Yet?: Women’s Encounters with Health Care in America.

Nicky Rainey makes zines, writes grants, stories and letters to her pen-pals. A loud talker since childhood, she represented St. Louis in the National Poetry Slam 2009 (and Madison, Wisconsin, in the Rustbelt Regional slam in 2007). Nicky earned a hearty "BA!" from Truman State in English, and also studied social justice and how to make elaborate omelets. Nicky has a new zine made out of envelopes called Let’s Talk about People. Write her for a copy at n.k.rainey@gmail.com.

JKPublishing to Guest Curate November 22 Reading at Duff's

The Monday, November 22, Chance Operations reading at Duff's, 392 North Euclid, St. Louis, will be guest curated by C.J. Smith of JKPublishing and will feature Sean Arnold, Michael Castro, Ellen Herget, and others. Doors open at 7:30 p.m., and the cover is $3.

Bruce Cohen

Bruce Cohen stepped up to the Chance Operations open-mic at Duff's on October 25.

The next Chance Operations reading will be Monday, November 22, at Duff's, 392 North Euclid, in the Central West End. Cover will be $3.00; doors open at 7:30 p.m.

"Words Lie" by Seth Grossman

Seth Grossman stepped up to the Chance Operations open-mic on October 25 and read the following poem from his cell phone.

The next Chance Operations reading will be Monday, November 22, at Duff's, 392 North Euclid, in the Central West End. Cover will be $3.00; doors open at 7:30 p.m.

Words Lie

Words lie
But one’s heart won't, or can't
It just gushes in love, hate, fear, or silence

Driven by the sun like the flow of water through roots to leaves
And the wobbling earth 10,000 years in a clip,
And the light of stars every 12 hours we see.

When words come from the brain with no heart,
They could, like the truth of the heart, reign 10,000 years
Would you forsake a moment's gain for such false light eons ever?
I speak, though as I wrote tears welled in my eyes
I ask only for your heart to beat with mine.
Or just beat out loud.

Words well from the cells of belief
They are now from mine free flown from fractures
In the shell of my visage. When one can't take it any longer
Beams of light, regardless of one’s courage or strength just shine
Through the fissures of vanity. This is the good -- this is god --
My faith is that my truth needs no censure

I love, I hate, I lust, I lie, I am
All these words just dust in a maelstrom compared to
What you feel from across the room in silence.

-- Seth Grossman

"My Daddy Bought Me Porn When I Was Nine" by Lindsey Klees

Lindsey Klees stepped up to the Chance Operations open-mic on October 25.

The next Chance Operations reading will be Monday, November 22, at Duff's, 392 North Euclid, in the Central West End. Cover will be $3.00; doors open at 7:30 p.m.

My Daddy Bought Me Porn When I Was Nine

He caught me wearing Mommy's pumps and bras
and spreading her "Rita's Rose" lipstick across my mouth.
She always got it on her teeth, but not me; it was perfect.
He walked into the room as I was in the middle of performing
"Happy Birthday" in the style of Marilyn Monroe.
I smiled at him and waved my delicate hand.
He dropped his Miller High Life and stared.
I could hear the yellow liquid fizz.
That day we went to the barber shop and he got me a crew-cut.
I used to go with Mommy to the salon.
She let the women put curlers in my hair and sit under the heated globe.
"He's so patient" they'd say and she would smile.
No one spoke to me at the barber shop.
My hair was uneven in the back, but they said it would build character.
The next day three magazines were sitting on my bed.
I gazed at the lovely bodies of women for hours.
Daddy cracked the door open and I looked up, fearful.
He tipped his hat, smiled and left me alone.
I undressed myself and stood in front of the mirror.
I held up a magazine in front of me and wondered,
When will I get my breasts?

-- Lindsey Klees

Rae Cailliach & Marie Lecrivain's "Manifesto of a Sexy Librarian"

Rae Cailliach stepped up to the Chance Operations open-mic on October 25 and read a couple of poems by Marie Lecrivain.

The next Chance Operations reading will be Monday, November 22, at Duff's, 392 North Euclid, in the Central West End. Cover will be $3.00; doors open at 7:30 p.m.

Thanks to Marie Lecrivain for letting us post her poem. You can click here to order a copy of her book, Antebellum Messiah.


Manifesto of a Sexy Librarian

“Sexy Librarian.”
a name I’ve heard since who knows or cares when.
It’s what you say to yourself when you first gaze on me,
bespectacled, a solemn look upon my face,
at war with the inviting hips and plentiful breasts
you fight the urge to explore.
You’re not sure what to make of me,
this dichotomy of a woman
with the body of a whore and the mind of a terrorist.
I will be trouble, with a capital "T,"
and you don’t care, because I am different,
not a bimbo, chanteuse, or ingenue,
or even a lonely spinster waiting for her Harlequin Romance.
Just someone different, a novelty.
So, you probe the layers. Peer with your magnifier
into the myriad facets of who I am,
those you choose to see, anyway,
Sometimes pleased,
sometimes unpleasantly surprised
by my soft glitter or sharp edges,
that say, “welcome,” or “fuck off,”
when my feelings are tested, validated or failed
by your actions or words to my person.
You can’t seem to get past that first impression,
which is,
you think it’s okay,
to screw me at your leisure
and talk to me like I’m one of the guys.
I know your heart is not in this journey we are taking,
only your dick and
your idle curiosity at what you consider me to be:
A gorgeous freak!
But, I 'm not
a freak.
I'm the girl next door.
I 'm the hopeful romantic.
I 'm the would-be wife and mother of some future family,
and I will not be trifled or played!
Like a librarian, I know of many things in life,
many experiences, many people and what they think,
especially, all about you,
who was too busy telling me
about yourself,
and not even listening when I told you,
loudly and clearly,
I am a WOMAN!
I have FEELINGS!
RESPECT them!
When things get difficult,
I say these things,
and you run away from me,
fearful and not understanding you broke a rule,
one I established in the beginning,
and you leave me in the quiet.
What can I do now?
I cannot change WHO I am.
I will not shift my appearance to something
more uniform to your plebian eyes,
and I will not speak lies to comfort you
when we fall into the dark spaces of each other.
I don’t have all the answers,
like the librarian you want me to be.
My heart and soul are not an institution.
But, you will NEVER get another chance,
because you are trapped in the narcissism
your isolation provides.
I feel sorry for you,
and really,
it’s a shame.
You see,
I am the woman all you men want.
even if I'm just a “Sexy Librarian.”

-- Marie Lecrivain

"Communion with Cash and Rubin" by Dena Molen

Dena Molen stepped up to the Chance Operations open-mic on October 25.

The next Chance Operations reading will be Monday, November 22, at Duff's, 392 North Euclid, in the Central West End. Cover will be $3.00; doors open at 7:30 p.m.

Communion with Cash and Rubin *

Sunday morning Johnny Cash rattles
in my head, his train rollin' round the
bend, spittin' sparks of accepted
imperfections, wrapped in wayward black.

I find lightness in the black. Heavy-
Lightnes. My father scratches a
precise spot on his head. It's raw. He
half-grins.

"What's that scar from on
Johnny's face?" I sing. We sing
together, and it's better than church
by myself.

Years later I sing again, with Rick and
Johnny this time. A sacrament conjured
of my own, drunk by noon then sober
by six o'clock mass, and underestimated access
to redemption.

I'm managing the host of new life
in my palms, harnassed by these
contumacious cowboys, they're telling me
I'm not dead.

Their song becomes a tabernacle. A place
where honesty prevails over consideration.
Johnny rumbles: "Sin is a shy crack. You won't
fall through. Your soul has edges." My pessimism
faithfully insists: Not true.

Scratched and worn, Gospel fades out. The
record needle was lifted, my daddy's soul was not.
Still I hear the chicka-boom, chicka-boom and I
know the atheists are searching.

The sinners have faith, and Johnny's "Sweet
Chariot" carries me home, somewhere between
idealism and Buddhism. Tell the man in black
I'm a-coming his way.

-- Dena Molen

* This poem originally appeared in Bad Shoe #3, and is reprinted with permission.

"a small part of me fell in love with your italian girlfriend" by Jim McGowin

Jim McGowin stepped up to the Chance Operations open-mic on October 25.

The next Chance Operations reading will be Monday, November 22, at Duff's, 392 North Euclid, in the Central West End. Cover will be $3.00; doors open at 7:30 p.m.

a small part of me fell in love with your italian girlfriend

it's a pending catastrophe
that part of us that exists
in those narrow passages
where no one really ever hopes
to hear their own foot steps.

we can see,
it's so obvious
where the path is well lit
but there is that other at times
inevitable way
which will always serve to entice us
pay heed to our vices
remind us how nice it is...

manifested
in the curve of a neck
the flip of a curl
a shared breath
a cool pair of glasses
tight pants
the old familiar song
pulling toward the rocks
'it's in our nature' i heard you say.

self destruction
in a simple undulation.

maybe some of us have always been doomed
to want to climb
forbidden hights of someplace
stimulating

and by wanting
we are already guilty
of doing,
succumbing,
to that which realistically
should never be achieved
besides in metaphor,
beyond that which is ritualistic
all because of a shade of lipstick.

the potter's clay is not perfect
but it strives to be.
and, so it strives,
but for the kiln.
sometimes the heat is too much.

and sometimes doom is doom
and sometimes love is love
and sometimes the deed
isn't really what we need.

and there the ingress is ignored.

the destination
diverted and rerouted
into something else,
something safer
but maybe not quite as much fun

something like
a poem.

-- Jim McGowan

Colleen McKee

Colleen McKee was a featured reader at the Chance Operations reading at Duff's on October 25.

The next Chance Operations reading will be Monday, November 22, at Duff's, 392 North Euclid, in the Central West End. Cover will be $3.00; doors open at 7:30 p.m.

"listening to pharaoh jackson blowing..." by Kelli Allen

Kelli Allen, managing editor of Natural Bridge, was a featured reader at the Chance Operations reading at Duff's on October 25.

The next Chance Operations reading will be Monday, November 22, at Duff's, 392 North Euclid, in the Central West End. Cover will be $3.00; doors open at 7:30 p.m.

listening to pharaoh jackson blowing...

you can’t just pull
up out of it when inside
our seeds expect
to be born
twice. You can’t exhale
like a worm and fog-up
the inner lips
of this cabbage. Notes
have to come
with brass wrapped
around and under
each bump on the tongue
because otherwise
why are we swinging
hips and rolling r’s
when you blow
the molded metal
into nothing but tracks?

-- Kelli Allen

"Untitled" by Ken Brown

Ken Brown was a featured reader at the Chance Operations reading at Duff's on October 25.

The next Chance Operations reading will be Monday, November 22, at Duff's, 392 North Euclid, in the Central West End. Cover will be $3.00; doors open at 7:30 p.m.

Learn, Artist! In Performance at Chance Operations

Robin Allen and Gena Brady Allen
Learn, Artist! provided the musical interludes at the Chance Operations reading on October 25.

Learn, Artist! to Provide Musical Interludes at Duff's on Monday, October 25

Robin Allen and Gena Brady Allen
The next Chance Operations reading will be held on Monday, October 25, at Duff's, 392 North Euclid, in the Central West End.

Featured readers will be Ken Brown, Kelli Allen, and Colleen McKee. An open-mic will follow the featured readers. Learn, Artist! will provide musical interludes. Doors open at 7:30 p.m.; cover charge $3.


Tony Renner by Dana Richard Smith (in process).

Kelli Allen, Ken Brown, and Coleen McKee Featured Readers at Duff's on October 25

The next Chance Operations reading will be held on Monday, October 25, at Duff's, 392 North Euclid, in the Central West End.

Featured readers will be Ken Brown, Kelli Allen, and Colleen McKee. An open-mic will follow the featured readers. Learn, Artist! will provide musical interludes. Doors open at 7:30 p.m.; cover charge $3.

Speaking of the open-mic, here's a poem by Colin Michael Shaw who stepped up to the open-mic, making his debut public reading, at the June 14 Chance Operations reading:

Prez

Really deep love, the kind that carries the kind of urgency
Like it’s your fist time feeling that, not like when you are
               middle-aged, jaded
You remember that?

I suddenly did as she tugged at my chest, looking into my eyes
And I let her kiss me full on the mouth
She doesn’t belong to me, she doesn’t belong here at all.

Long forgotten, so ancient or foreign or out of context that I
               kinda almost didn’t know what was going on
A heartache so sweet, because I know
I’m in the wrong place, doing the wrong thing.

Now Prez, he comes stomping over the hill looking for us
I snap back into my civilian shit and realize the lie
When he grabs her by the wrist and slaps the fucking shit out of her

I start to plead for my true heart, I start trying to talk it out
And Prez pops one in her head without missing a beat
Like he’s swatting a fly or something

She just falls away and he coming right at me
The whole time looking right at me
Putting the piece back in his belt

“Whatcha say, Loverboy -- you look tongue-tied man!”
“Oh no, not YOU, Poet! Show me how fuckin’ talented you are
with yer big fancy words, now… huh!?”

I stutter something, in the horror of it all,
the thought of finishing what we came to this damned place to do
with that bad, bad man

I pull the pistol from his belt and put the barrel into my mouth.
And Prez chuckles, “That’s gonna be hard for you, man…
That’s gonna be real hard to do...”

-- Colin Michael Shaw

Ken Brown to Read on Monday, October 25, at Duff's in the CWE

The next Chance Operations reading will be held on Monday, October 25, at Duff's, 392 North Euclid, in the Central West End.

Featured readers will be Ken Brown, Kelli Allen, and Colleen McKee. An open-mic will follow the featured readers. Learn, Artist! will provide musical interludes. Doors open at 7:30 p.m.; cover charge $3.

Here's Ken's bio courtesy of Flood Stage: An Anthology of St. Louis Poets:

Born in Missouri- left town at nineteen...Returned twenty-one years later after Minnesota, Maine, and Mississippi in a tent,

Montana, Morocco- where he lived with a prostitute afflicted with polio. Normandy, Madrid, Grecian Islands- despondent- to upstate New York across the country in a Honda- through

Mexico- Vegas- Santa Monica for four years doing laundry for a living then dog-sitting at the Ding Dong... Wound up in

Australia-Perth- the out-bush for nine months- Hell’s Angels blew up land- went broke- made ten thousand dollars on Karma Kards- fell in love for the thirteenth time- engaged-

Kicked out of Australia- published in 45 periodicals- wound up back where he started.

You’re a Whore Now

Cars criss crossing caustically -–
you’re never gonna be my friend.
As a matter of fact I hope you croak:
It’s all based on the Zen of when...
And why were you so silent
after showing me resilience?
Your greed, your need for getting
what you think you’re worth
is less than ken.
Your promises, like vomit,
were like rockets in my pocket.
I offered you a future: You said yes…
But where was virtue?
You’re a vulture.
Where was culture?
I’m a statue, yes,
but you’re a whore now.

-- Ken Brown

Reprinted from Flood Stage courtesy of Walrus Publishing.

And here's another poem that Ken just sent Chance Operations. Ken says, "Hope you like it. Took me years to write.":

It Goes Like This

Ditzy Betsy --
stoned and spacy:
Never let's me
make her crazy.

Then there's Kristen --
never kissed her
though she's frisky:
We drank whiskey.

Fuckin' Jackie --
way too wacky...
L.A. glitzy-
born in Dixie...

Last there's Lizzy:
Never boring,
always busy --
way too risky.

-- Ken Brown

Kelli Allen, Managing Editor of Natural Bridge to Read at Duff's on Monday, October 25

The next Chance Operations reading will be held on Monday, October 25, at Duff's, 392 North Euclid, in the Central West End.

Featured readers will be Kelli Allen, Ken Brown, and Colleen McKee. An open-mic will follow the featured readers. Learn, Artist! will provide musical interludes. Doors open at 7:30 p.m.; cover charge $3.

Kelli Allen is an award-winning poet teaching, studying, and writing in St. Louis. She is the managing editor of Natural Bridge, a journal of contemporary literature.

Evolving

Intention is one wing.
The nest will always be
too distant from the ground—
             there is no going back
or up. Falling is our book
of nights, letters to cousins
written on someone else’s fur.

Stories we sing
to each other shade
and creep around
the intricate margins, sometimes
infectious, sometimes running
             loose, all wildness
             and teeth. I am
             nine syllables
             from my knees
and I cannot do
what you do.

-- Kelli Allen

Colleen McKee to Read at Duff's on Monday, October 25

The next Chance Operations reading will be held on Monday, October 25, at Duff's, 392 North Euclid, in the Central West End.

Featured readers will be Ken Brown, Colleen McKee, and a reader to be determined. An open-mic will follow the featured readers. Learn, Artist! will provide musical interludes. Doors open at 7:30 p.m.; cover charge $3.

Colleen McKee says:

I am the author of My Hot Little Tomato, a chapbook of poems about food and the erotic, published by Cherry Pie Press. It has a real fishnet flyleaf.

I am also co-editor, along with Amanda Crowell Stiebel, of Are We Feeling Better Yet? Women Speak About Health Care in America. This is an anthology of personal narratives, mostly from the perspective of being a patient. It's not exactly a policy book or medical textbook; it's more the human face of the the women trying to navigate the system. It's published by PenUltimate Press.

I write poems, essays, and a little fiction, and do some freelance editing. I also teach writing at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, and Lindenwood University. I write most of my poems on public transportation; I dream frequently and in color; I spend a lot of time in Portland, OR; and I can probably kick your ass in Scrabble. I write every day and try to be a nice person. When that fails, I try at least to be honest.

The most recent places you can find my work are the current issues/editions of the following: Criminal Class Review; Women Artists Datebook 2010; and Untamed Ink.

The Letter Opener

As I peruse the Black Cinema
postage stamps, a woman
with an everywhere Afro
and gold lame tunic rushes in,
a fistful of mail, to yell,
“God loves you ladies! I
love you ladies! God bless you all!”
then runs away from the darkness of the p.o. boxes
into the urban summer sun.

“She does that every day,” sighs
the matron in blue behind the counter.

The skinny girl ahead of me in line,
a butter knife stuck in her greasy blonde hair,
says, “Some people just got the sunshine.”
That’s when I notice, she does,
and I smile up at her on one knee
as I hold up the line to pick up the mail
she drops like a white handkerchief.


-- Colleen McKee

Dave Stone

Dave Stone performed improvisations on soprano and tenor saxophone and alto clarinet before and after the featured readers and following the open-mic at the Chance Operations reading on September 27.

The next Chance Operations reading will be Monday, October 25. Featured readers to be announced. Musical interludes by Learn, Artist!

"Terminology" by Susan Lively (Spit-Fire)

Susan Lively, aka Spit-Fire, stepped up to the Chance Operations open-mic at the Chance Operations reading at Duff's on September 27. Also reading were Tiffany Mayet, Erin Goss, and Matthew Questionmark.

The featured readers at the September 27 Chance Operations reading at Duff's were Sean Arnold, Julia Gordon-Bramer and Byron Lee.

Dave Stone performed improvisations on saxophone and alto clarinet before and after the featured readers and following the open-mic.

The next Chance Operations reading will be Monday, October 25. Featured readers to be announced. Musical interludes by Learn, Artist!

Terminology

The good war,
the forgotten war,
the other war.
There is no such thing
as a good war.
Almost every war
is a forgotten war.
How many other wars
do you think there really are?
You have no idea how far they’ll go,
how far they’ve gone.
You have no idea how far.

The good war --
what an honor,
to be killed by a suicide bomber.
The forgotten war --
forgotten by all,
the writing is on the wall.
The other war --
in that other place.
You know the one,
in that other race.
The race to the death,
the final test,
let’s see who can die the best,
let’s see who can lose the most numbers.
As long as we don’t have to face,
the man whose foot we’re under.

The good war --
what a privilege,
to give your life for the privileged.
The forgotten war --
because no one cares,
no one cares what happens there.
The other war --
the one they left behind,
it was all just a side effect of your mind.
Where it doesn’t even matter,
how much we cry.
Here it doesn’t even matter,
how many will die,
in the good war.

-- Susan Lively (Spit-Fire)

"Untitled" by Matthew Questionmark

Matthew Questionmark, stepped up to the Chance Operations open-mic at the Chance Operations reading at Duff's on September 27. Also reading were Tiffany Mayet, Erin Goss, and Spit-Fire.

The featured readers at the September 27 Chance Operations reading at Duff's were Sean Arnold, Julia Gordon-Bramer and Byron Lee.

Dave Stone performed improvisations on saxophone and alto clarinet before and after the featured readers and following the open-mic.

The next Chance Operations reading will be Monday, October 25. Featured readers to be announced. Music interludes by Learn, Artist!

untitled
see the difference in your defense
cloaking your dagger
knives the dark toothed fear
this mortal wound!
no time like the present
giving dirt for love
boxes of scorched hair scattered along your highways
making you have a three-toothed smile
as your mouth hits the pavement
this is as real as it gets
monetary notes flutter from your flatulence
pictures of jesus wearing skinny jeans
on the cover of your rolling stones
his hair all echo'd by bunnymen
!these great purveyors of modern times!
witnesses cream their corn
grope their mothers
scream and fall to the floors
pissing themselves with epileptic fervor
you cover these counts with your dirt
and say meaningless words
looking upward into the skyless stars
why do you cry when you have a cravecase to eat?
why do you cry when radiohead hasn't broken up yet?
grope your remorse
knives in your hot piss box
making mamma scream for pestilence
hip new screeching bounces in yer brain
this immortal world!
lava as blood!
trees are cunts!
let them suffocate from meat farts and factory toxins!
just sit there gumming your iphone
like a giant sour gummy worm
lazarus rises from behind the couch
only to blow his brains out five minutes later
teevee flashes before you
test patterns
indian head fades to allah
then to obama
screen goes black
the muffled weeping commences.

-- Matthew Questionmark

"Mythomania" by Erin Goss

Erin Goss stepped up to the Chance Operations open-mic at the Chance Operations reading at Duff's on September 27. Also reading were Tiffany Mayet, Matthew Questionmark, and Spit-Fire.

The featured readers at the September 27 Chance Operations reading at Duff's were Sean Arnold, Julia Gordon-Bramer and Byron Lee.

Dave Stone performed improvisations on saxophone and alto clarinet before and after the featured readers and following the open-mic.

The next Chance Operations reading will be Monday, October 25. Featured readers to be announced. Music interludes by Learn, Artist!

Mythomania or foxtrotin’ on ladies night

For she is a doll: weeping, pouting or smiling, running or
reclining, she is a doll. She is an idol. -- Germaine Greer

Old storks gossip like heretical nuns about a girl
She’s conger-like tavern walls slippery
Daisy Mae cancering the hearth home mammary
Soft rubber hips gorge on pints and preachers

She’s trauma from an ax an up-like crevasse
Lake Baikal in August warm colder Marco Polo
Something guttural yeasted
An afternoon soirée around the neighborhood. Oh

Or projector perfected
Giving head hands on the helm
With three sulky emerald beats
She hams ghost penis ghost penis ghost whoo whoo!

-- Erin Goss

"Waiting" by Sean Arnold

Sean Arnold was one of three featured readers at the September 27 Chance Operations reading at Duff's. Also featured were Julia Gordon-Bramer and Byron Lee.

In addition, stepping up to the Chance Operations open-mic were Tiffany Mayet, Erin Goss, Matthew Question Mark, and Spit-Fire.

Dave Stone performed improvisations on saxophone and alto clarinet before and after the featured readers and following the open-mic.

The next Chance Operations reading will be Monday, October 25. Featured readers to be announced. Music interludes by Learn, Artist!

Waiting

shots ring out
jesus christ there's a lot of fires tonight
click clackity pen on grated steel like a song
a revolution
in that it's all,
as in the swinging hips of the thing,
in the nervous twitch,
to a beat machine,
hammering on the impulse
hammering out the impulse,
christening some new dawn with a tap,
flick of a match and smoke smoke
-- the wind brings upheaval,
thoughts are starving dogs wilting on the sidewalk,
the propaganda for the goods falls on sewn shut ears
coarse and beautifully sewn as everyday language,
fuck that motherfucker in the ass to hell
-- and so on.
steep and drawn out,
impending.
two men kissing goodbye (almost).
suspended in the lush impending,
sit
sit
sittin' in the waiting room,
the moon nearly cresting over light pollution,
nearly having a purpose.
the hanging man tow and a half seconds before the bucket kicks,
the suspended orgasm,
smattering across air like someone in the midst of CPR,
nearly coming to
finding it, finding it,
finding.
the word meander, at the E.
near suspended,
the corpse dangling across the dead body of theater.
mid-crash
-- a spinning out like a top
-- glass shards flailing in the middle of air,
nearly arms out.
a conversation just beginning.
the object in an acrobat,
brick on window,
again glass flailing,
stop motion in the act itself,
nearly arms in the air,
lighter to rag but just getting a whiff of gasoline,
taste it,
taste it,
the difference between an epic an a romance,
feeling less epic and more that last one,
waiting for her,
on the tongue tip,
the shots unfire and the fire truck takes back its sirens,
st. louis sleeps for now,
a tingle and stop
at the feeling.

-- Sean Arnold

[from Soliloquy From A Freight Yard Open Summer Window, 2010, the Saint Louis Projects.]

4 Short Poems by Byron Lee

Byron Lee was one of three featured readers at the September 27 Chance Operations reading at Duff's. Also featured were Julia Gordon-Bramer and Sean Arnold.

In addition, stepping up to the Chance Operations open-mic were Tiffany Mayet, Erin Goss, Matthew Question Mark, and Spit-Fire.

Dave Stone performed saxophone improvisations before and after the featured readers and following the open-mic.

The next Chance Operations reading will be Monday, October 25. Featured readers to be announced. Music interludes by Learn, Artist!

Right Now

Right Now

I want to see you. Peruse your
Present. Take in what will
Never pass your lips. Stumble with you towards
Shared sacrament and lie
With you among the wreckage.

I want to know you.

Right

Now


The Missing

Cigarette-toasted voice
Wielding wit that
Left me
In stitches.

Dimpled face between
Autumn strands
Seared in psyche.

I'm missing the point of not
Missing you,
Raging down a one-way
Street, wishing
Dead End would appear.


Food

It’s my
Drug

Better yet, it's
Everywhere.

I head to the break room to
Tie one on.

AA meetings in the gym.
(I get nowhere without a
Sponsor.)

I get the
Munchies without the
Smoke, but I'm just as lazy,
After the hit.

When the world beats me down,
I take it out on
The bag.

Krunchers, Lays, Ruffles.

Any one of 'em will do.

They're all the same.

No matter how many I
Pick up, they never get jealous.


Dilemma

Should my pants peak at my thighs?

Should I dangle participles?

Should a smile be rubber-stamped on my face?

Should I broadcast every thought unfiltered, or should a bitten tongue clamp
          down every concern?

Should my neck snap to the drums, or should my head bang to the riffs?


Should I choose between store-bought brands of black and white,
          or should I mix my own gray?

"Feng Shui" by Julia Gordon-Bramer

Julia Gordon-Bramer was one of three featured readers at the September 27 Chance Operations reading at Duff's. Also featured were Byron Lee and Sean Arnold.

In addition, stepping up to the Chance Operations open-mic were Tiffany Mayet, Erin Goss, Matthew Question Mark, and Spit-Fire.

Dave Stone performed saxophone improvisations before and after the featured readers and following the open-mic.

The next Chance Operations reading will be Monday, October 25. Featured readers to be announced. Music interludes by Learn, Artist!

Feng Shui

Splinter-friend, where are you
hiding within your own
hoarded creations: wedged in the waiting
to live, under the skin of the paint,
the fleshy space between the words
in the sorest forest of books? The impossible
sure for the eye to set and rest
on just one clean thing. I mean,
it hurts. That paper scatter of thoughts
and the cluttered piles of lack,
burying the faith you hold so dear;
It is rusting under the table. Here,
it’s hiding beneath the hair,
breeding in the dirt and lint
like a dirty sailor. You, virgin-girl unclean,
still trusting in an uninterested God. You asked
me once if I wanted
to rescue you,
if my intention was Hero. No, fair
maiden, I know I am
as safe as your old food;
too ripe, a Petri dish
of a million micro deaths. I know
I am tempted to lean
toward the edge, the black dots of toxic
mold on your window ledge.
I know that I’m fascinated
with the Biblical lies
evil tells, with the false
pictures of light,
with the blood wet prayers
to cold, dead air. I
know our hearts
are pure, and yet
I watch, rapt: you
tumbling through
a cluttered, junky heaven
where the too-bright closes its eyes
to the shine you force on the dust
and He will gloss and grant
your every careful, withheld plan.
He will reward your
everything that you’ve prayed-for,
He’ll give you room
to store, and store. He collects
every healthy vice because you
believe. Believe
you’ll find the right words in a magazine,
the right Pantone shade of green,
the perfect note
in a song you won’t sing,
and you hoard what you can
bear because
you know, you know, you know
He’s in there.

Somewhere.

-- Julia Gordon-Bramer

Dave Stone Providing Musical Interludes at Duff's on Monday, September 27

Dave Stone by Dana Smith
Saxophonist Dave Stone will be providing the musical interludes at the next Chance Operations reading, Monday, September 27, at Duff's, 392 North Euclid, in the Central West End.

Featured readers will be Julia Gordon-Bramer, Byron Lee, and Sean Arnold. An open-mic will follow the featured readers. Doors open at 7:30 p.m.; cover charge $3.

Already signed up for the open-mic are Matthew Questionmark, Shane Signorino, Spit-Fire, and Erin Goss.

Freedonia Music says:

Whether it's jazz improv or free improv, Dave Stone's playing is known for its passion, intensity & inventiveness, a genuine and personal voice, a consummate musicality, and a propensity for singeing eyebrows and twisting knickers on a regular basis.

Sean Arnold to Read at Duff's on Monday, September 27

The next Chance Operations readings will be held at Duff's, 392 North Euclid, on Monday, September 27. Featured readers will be Julia Gordon-Bramer, Byron Lee, and Sean Arnold. An open-mic will follow the featured readers. Doors open at 7:30 p.m.; cover charge $3. Musical guest will be Dave Stone.

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.

$1.37: The Cheapest Cup of Solitude Yet

$1.37: the cheapest cup of unsustainable solitude yet tucked in
               the armpit of an acoustic breeze,
& folks with twice my eyes on a semi-back street unearthed by
               brick red wings.
making digging motions in the armpithairs of loneliness,
an open invitation to sing loud if it at least rustles the hairs.
and if i’m lonely what the fuck are the young people supposed
               to do without me?

fuck ’em. They can keep their society, belligerence,
i need a smoke and a gray prairie.

if you want a poet, i’m yr poet, but otherwise i’m a papercup
               half-full of desolation out the window. you can have yr
               air-conditioner culture,
the wind is hot but it’s nice, it tickles my arm hairs, these tiny
               tallgrass blades, each one a different story, each story
               a scorched desire to be different.
transformation is each throttling cartwheel of the wind.
i couldn’t write fast enough to catch it, but it’s still in my mouth,
               fragmented, snagged in spit,
each dry accent a staccato breath,


it is knowing what you want in a world wasted off its ass
               in post-post-modern superironic indecisiveness,
too cool for nothing is nothing to cool for.

sweating the devil out in its own wind, supergodless supergod
a steady forfeit of time to bones,
protestant anti-wind-ethic, bone grind annihilation, too slippery
               for it, bursting clouds in the argument for a transient sort
               of god,
the highrope of synaptic burn of not knowing what the hell
               yr saying.
having time like i have nothing,
fighting off redundancies with a heavy sword,
hammering out the nothingness,
into a flat sheet of wind.

-- Sean Arnold

From: Soliloquy from an Open Summer Window
Saint Louis Projects 2010