Shane Signorino Featured Reader in August

Shane Signorino was one of three featured readers at the August 22 •chance operations• reading at Duff's.

The next reading will be Monday, September 26, at Duff's, 392 North Euclid, in the Central West End.

Featured readers will be Katerina Canyon, Elly Herget, and Matt Paul.

Doors open at 7:30 p.m.; admission is $3.

Advance sign-up for the open-mic following the featured readers is encouraged. Click here to sign-up via e-mail.

Daniel Eberle-Mayse Featured Reader on Monday, August 22, at Duff's in the C.W.E.

Daniel Eberle-Mayse will be one of three featured readers at the next •chance operations• reading on Monday, August 22, at Duff's, 392 North Euclid, in the Central West End.

The other featured readers will be Erin Wiles and Shane Signorino.

Doors open at 7:30 p.m.; admission is $3.

Advance sign-up for the open-mic following the featured readers is encouraged. Click here to sign-up via e-mail.

Julia Gordon-Bramer says:

Daniel Eberle-Mayse's greatest career obstacle may not be his prison record, tendencies to hang with ne'er-do-wells, or the fact that Facebook has tagged pictures of him drunken and unconscious under a coffee table. No, his big challenge is probably going to be surmounting his ridiculous cuteness, kind of in the way that David Cassidy, a pop star well before Daniel's time, would never be taken seriously as a musician. The fact is that this young man's scarily good poetry and prose will likely hold its own with any ugly and respected writer long after he is gone.

It's an easy connection to relate Eberle-Mayse to the beat poets like Ginsberg and Kerouac. With a closer read, however, one can glean that this boy's got about five decades of reading, writing and life experience packed into his slim emo jeans and mere 22 years. Read Daniel Eberle-Mayse and you'll find the dark weirdness of Kafka, the humorous watchfulness of Vonnegut, the confessional tones of Lowell or Sexton, and the smart word-play of Plath. Right now, Daniel is a student at St. Louis Community College-Meramec, where he is studying writing, acting, and life.

Bedroom Window

Ghost-crows play on powerlines. Shoulders
smooth sparkle planes, charcoal wings,
undulate on the edge of half-sleep
like a sick child's tummy as he heaves
but still soft.
Platitudes we can't recall.
Breathe in night wind.
It's poison like no other nostalgia.
Gliding backwards,
the breeze doesn’t go clockwise,
and the current runs both ways

-- Daniel Eberle-Mayse

Erin Wiles Featured Reader on Monday, August 22, at Duff's in the C.W.E.

Erin Wiles will be one of three featured readers at the next •chance operations• reading on Monday, August 22, at Duff's, 392 North Euclid, in the Central West End.

The other featured readers will be Daniel Eberle-Mayse and Shane Signorino.

Doors open at 7:30 p.m.; admission is $3.

Advance sign-up for the open-mic following the featured readers is encouraged. Click here to sign-up via e-mail.

Erin Wiles hails from Ohio, where she got useless degrees in English and French while helping JKPublishing -- a homegrown, independent publisher of handmade books -- get on its feet and prosper. In 2006 she moved to Saint Louis, where she became marginally employed, started her own publishing division of JKP called the Saint Louis Projects, and had the pleasure to meet and perform with STL’s finest spoken word artists. She is co-editor of Bad Shoe, STL's only lit mag dedicated to the work of local women. She has written 2 chapbooks: Fractals (2008) and I & Apocalypse (2006), both available from JKPublishing.

10,000 Best Baby Names

Glancing at the bedside
stack of books he said he didn't know
any other girls who dug
on Rimbaud while researching
baby names. I thought there
was a good chance he hadn't ever known
any other pregnant girls at all
cuz if he had

he'd have seen the quiet hopscotch
between mortal options when one young
breeds young alone. And now that you've done
come here, baby, on your trip made so
frightfully alone, I can't say I did
quite the best thing, baby, in leaving
you live in a world that will forever leave
you, it will slip from your grasp
as easily as that first time

you will lose a helium balloon
to the shifting sky, baby. The world becomes
a pinprick that ellipses
so quickly you can never
be sure you saw it at all. People, too,
will leave you, baby, I won't wool your eyes

to say you will be all
she ever wanted, some one thing is always
wanted, and, like caught fireflies,
beauty flickers and dies
in possession. I read you
Rimbaud in utero, baby, maybe
in forewarning or bad taste, or

lack of anything else to say
but this: it will matter less
the choices you make than how
you make them, baby, and shame
is uglier than any nightmare
or four-lettered word. I can only
name you, baby, and spin this pinwheel
for you, baby, and maybe someday
I'll buy you a looking glass
and a mockingbird. Just be sure
to smash the glass,
baby, and let that bird fly free.

-- Erin Wiles

Shane Signorino Featured Reader on Monday, August 22, at Duff's in the C.W.E.

Shane Signorino will be one of three featured readers at the next •chance operations• reading on Monday, August 22, at Duff's, 392 North Euclid, in the Central West End.

The other featured readers will be Daniel Eberle-Mayse and Erin Wiles.

Doors open at 7:30 p.m.; admission is $3.

Advance sign-up for the open-mic following the featured readers is encouraged. Click here to sign-up via e-mail.

Shane Signorino is a poet/spoken-word artist/actor/director who is currently enrolled at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville's M.A. Poetry-Writing program where he also teaches ENG 101/102. He has won numerous slam competitions in the St. Louis area, has performed with many professional theatre companies, and is working on completing his first book of poetry entitled Bughouse Bound. He dedicates this poem to his passed-on mother who continues to inform his passion for the printed word.

XIII

There are coincidences and chances from which you die laughing, and there are coincidences and chances from which you die. -- Enrique Vila-Matas

I
gotta bad luck burn needled in black on my neck's back in one forgotten roadstop shop. three-toothed tattoo artist with rough workman's hands and spaghetti western fuman moustache, dressed like a west texas cowboy who'd done his share of cattle-herding long ago, laughs: you ready to be branded, boy? boy, oh boy, am i. tilt cranking the hi-fi stereo to johnny cash moanin' through his rendition of thirteen, singin' slowly bad luck winds been blowin' at my back, i was born to bring trouble to wherever i'm at.

II
mama held midwife’s marbles and sioux indian superstitions, once handing me one silver ball medallion, first shaking it in front of my ear so i could hear the jingle jangle of tiny stars called headache charms. mama said i was cursed from birth, wrong place wrong time nursery rhyme, but this talisman could save you, son. it holds all your evil thoughts inside, chiming demons reminding you to watch your step, beware the cardinal, beware the venial, beware little white lie sins. mixing catholic, native magic, and gypsy myth.

III
stamped the bad luck familia syndrome by mama, years spent playin' endless games
of grabass with this omen monkey on my hunched over back, i quickly came to believe
mama had been onto somethin' when she warned me of crossing paths with black cats
or when she spanked me thrice for shattering her makeup mirror, or when i stumbled on my old as the hills parents mid concourse. time to walk the believer's walk straight into high-noon sun, black XIII tattoo seared into my neck flesh, leaving forever-curses behind.

IV
be careful, my boy, keep watch on that first stepping away, mama karma-whirl whispers

-- Shane Signorino

Click here to hear Shane reading XIII on Soundzine.