Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Grady Manus at November Open-Mic


Grady Manus was one of the even dozen readers who stepped up to the •chance operations• open-mic at the November reading.

The next •chance operations• reading at Duff's, 392 N. Euclid, on Monday, December 5, will shine the spotlight on JKPublishing's Saint Louis Projects, including all the ladies and gents of Bad Shoe, along with their individual chapbook authors.

Doors open at 7:30 p.m., and admission is free for this special evening!

Scheduled to read are: Kelli Allen, Michael Castro, Maria Balogh, Phil Gounis, Jen Tappenden, Dena Molen, Christy Callahan, Julia Gordon-Bramer, Daniel Eberle-Mayse, and Lisa Ebert.

Also on hand will the publisher and editors of JKPublishing and Saint Louis Projects, Elly Herget, CJ Smith, & Erin Wiles.

Craig Vaughn at November Open-Mic


Craig Vaughn was one of the even dozen readers who stepped up to the •chance operations• open-mic at the November reading.

The next •chance operations• reading at Duff's, 392 N. Euclid, on Monday, December 5, will shine the spotlight on JKPublishing's Saint Louis Projects, including all the ladies and gents of Bad Shoe, along with their individual chapbook authors.

Doors open at 7:30 p.m., and admission is free for this special evening!

Scheduled to read are: Kelli Allen, Michael Castro, Maria Balogh, Phil Gounis, Jen Tappenden, Dena Molen, Christy Callahan, Julia Gordon-Bramer, Daniel Eberle-Mayse, and Lisa Ebert.

Also on hand will be the publisher and editors of JKPublishing and Saint Louis Projects, Elly Herget, CJ Smith, & Erin Wiles.

Jamilah Nasheed at November Open-Mic


Jamilah Nasheed was one of the even dozen readers who stepped up to the •chance operations• open-mic at the November reading.

The next •chance operations• reading at Duff's, 392 N. Euclid, on Monday, December 5, will shine the spotlight on JKPublishing's Saint Louis Projects, including all the ladies and gents of Bad Shoe, along with their individual chapbook authors.

Doors open at 7:30 p.m., and admission is free for this special evening!

Scheduled to read are: Kelli Allen, Michael Castro, Maria Balogh, Phil Gounis, Jen Tappenden, Dena Molen, Christy Callahan, Julia Gordon-Bramer, Daniel Eberle-Mayse, and Lisa Ebert.

Also on hand will be the publisher and editors of JKPublishing and Saint Louis Projects, Elly Herget, CJ Smith, & Erin Wiles.

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Drucilla Wall


Drucilla Wall was one of three featured readers at the November •chance operations• reading at Duff's.

The next •chance operations• reading at Duff's, 392 N. Euclid, on Monday, December 5, will shine the spotlight on JKPublishing's Saint Louis Projects, including all the ladies and gents of Bad Shoe, along with their individual chapbook authors.

Doors open at 7:30 p.m., and admission is free for this special evening!

Scheduled to read are: Kelli Allen, Michael Castro, Maria Balogh, Phil Gounis, Jen Tappenden, Dena Molen, Christy Callahan, Julia Gordon-Bramer, Daniel Eberle-Mayse, and Lisa Ebert.

Also on hand will the publisher and editors of JKPublishing and Saint Louis Projects, Elly Herget, CJ Smith, & Erin Wiles.

Bullet Dog

My dog is not a hero.
He hasn’t tunneled 100 yards
through dirt and snow
in 40 below to drag me
firmly but gently by my hands
from certain death to the road.
He might someday bark and scramble
over the bed in spite of smoke
just in time to wake us people
to get out of there.
So far, he has never treed a bear
or run off a mountain lion,
or hauled a child out of a river,
or dialed the police all by himself.

His skull is so thick his neck gets tired.
He sheds enough to clog the hoover.
He’s good at eating, but not digesting.
His farts bubble up the paint on the wall
at the exact height of his ass.
He hasn’t yet braved a four-lane highway
to drag an injured fellow dog to safety;
never used his nose to locate someone
in the rubble; or dashed under the hooves
of a charging bull to distract it
from a man knocked to the ground.

He’s not as big as he ought to be.
One eye looks sideways all the time.
His hips aren’t right. We never knew
he could jump at all until that one time
he flew at that man kicking down
our door on a dark night in ordinary April.
The muzzle flash and the pop froze us,
as the bullet grooved his skull
right down the middle, ricocheting
into the kitchen, and, evidently,

the sight of my dog’s big head
shaking off the blood and surging
forward, with the rolling sideways eye,
and the streaming slobber
from the gap-toothed snarling maw,
determined beyond all sense
on a not-big-enough body
with its clattering paws,
was just enough
to make that gunman fall
back out the door and run.
My dog has a scar on his head
like the map of a river.

-- Drucilla Wall

"Bullet Dog" appears in Drucilla Walls' book The Geese at the Gates from Salmon Poetry.

Julia Gordon-Bramer


Julia Gordon-Bramer was one of three featured readers at the November •chance operations• reading at Duff's.

The next •chance operations• reading at Duff's, 392 N. Euclid, on Monday, December 5, will shine the spotlight on JKPublishing's Saint Louis Projects, including all the ladies and gents of Bad Shoe, along with their individual chapbook authors.

Doors open at 7:30 p.m., and admission is free for this special evening!

Scheduled to read are: Kelli Allen, Michael Castro, Maria Balogh, Phil Gounis, Jen Tappenden, Dena Molen, Christy Callahan, Julia Gordon-Bramer, Daniel Eberle-Mayse, and Lisa Ebert.

Also on hand will be the publisher and editors of JKPublishing and Saint Louis Projects, Elly Herget, CJ Smith, & Erin Wiles.

Chris King & Fred Friction Performing at Duff's

Chris King and Fred Friction

Chris King was one of three featured readers at the November •chance operations• reading at Duff's.

Chris was variously accompanied by the lovely and talented Fred Friction on the spoons and Roy Grokenback on guitar.

The next •chance operations• reading at Duff's, 392 N. Euclid, on Monday, December 5, will shine the spotlight on JKPublishing's Saint Louis Projects, including all the ladies and gents of Bad Shoe, along with their individual chapbook authors.

Doors open at 7:30 p.m., and admission is free for this special evening!

Scheduled to read are: Kelli Allen, Michael Castro, Maria Balogh, Phil Gounis, Jen Tappenden, Dena Molen, Christy Callahan, Julia Gordon-Bramer, Daniel Eberle-Mayse, and Lisa Ebert.

Also on hand will the publisher and editors of JKPublishing and Saint Louis Projects, Elly Herget, CJ Smith, & Erin Wiles.

Fred Friction also performed a spoken word piece all by his lonesome.

Roy Gokenback

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Drucilla Wall Featured Reader at Duff's on Monday, November 28


Drucilla Wall will be one of three featured readers at the next •chance operations• reading at Duff's, 392 N. Euclid, on Monday, November 28.

The other featured readers will be Julia Gordon-Bramer and Chris King.

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

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

Musical guests will be Roy Gokenbach, guitar, formerly of Erin Bode Group, and Fred Friction, host of FM 88.1's "Fishing With Dynamite, accompanying Chris King. Finishing out the evening with a short set will be Rooks, featuring Daniel Eberle-Mayse, Chris Deutekom, and Eric Mueller. Rooks are "three boys making 'indie' music trying not to sound dumb."

Drucilla Wall's collection of poetry, The Geese at the Gates, was published by Salmon Poetry earlier this year to positive reviews in The Irish Times and elsewhere in Ireland and America.

Drucilla received her B.A. degree from the University of Wisconsin, her M.A. from the University of Nebraska-Omaha, and her Ph.D. in English from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. She teaches poetry and essay writing, and Native American literature, at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Her essays appear in journals and anthologies.

She has earned awards and fellowships for her work, including the Mari Sandoz Prairie Schooner Short Story Award and the Western Literature Association Willa Pilla Prize for Humor in Writing.

She has spent summers with family and friends in Wexford and Galway, Ireland, since 1985.

Hannibal, Missouri

Someone cracked this café window,
and no one really cares anymore.
You can get six kinds of burgers,
but they don’t serve french fries here.

Tom Sawyer tips his cap, trotting by,
on his way back down to 1844.
Hannibal, Missouri, has more cars than people,
even counting tourists rolling in on Highway 61.

Becky Thatcher strolls down Main Street
with a smile and a pistol in her hand.
She turns in at the river where the setting sun
makes halos on her white lace parasol.

And the purple martins scatter,
knowing better than to ever hang around,
while the eagles claw the fish up from the water
just to pierce their silver skins here on the sand.

They put locks on the river, and they’ve run
the flooding streams all underground
through sewer pipes big as freight trains
where the lilies and hellbenders never found

a home among those waters that used to feel
the wind and rain quick marching over stones.
Finn came home today, his second tour of duty done,
after leaving both his legs on a road back in east Afganistan.

Beulah looks around the town from her grave stone
up on Calvary Hill. Ten more houses dark for dinner
with for-sale signs from the bank by every porch,
but the ghost tour never tells you how the living

are much better for a haunt, while the kids out
by the Dairy Queen prefer their cherry vodka
mixed with ice cream in the blizzard of the month,
and the lovers hope for jobs at the Walmart Superstore.

I’m going to get my friends together and roll down to the sea
on a paddle boat lit for Christmas just the way we wish
it used to be, and we’ll slide past St. Louis, with its car parks
and monuments, all the way to New Orleans, where the dead

know how play those old time tunes. Big Jim’s bar
is open with the flood stains high on the walls.
We can dance under the water with all the folks
wh ever passed away, and by the parish levee,

I can finally get up off my knees.

-- Drucilla Wall

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Chris King Featured Reader at Duff's on Monday, November 28

Chris King reading in Noah Kirby's sculpture "With Solid Stance and Stable Sound" at Laumeier Sculpture Park's "Poetry in Place: Platforms" (October 2011). Photo by Sean Collins.

Chris King will be one of three featured readers at the next •chance operations• reading at Duff's, 392 N. Euclid, on Monday, November 28.

The other featured readers will be Julia Gordon-Bramer and Drucilla Wall.

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

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

Musical guests will be Roy Gokenbach, guitar, formerly of Erin Bode Group, and Fred Friction, host of FM 88.1's "Fishing With Dynamite, accompanying Chris King. Finishing out the evening with a short set will be Rooks, featuring Daniel Eberle-Mayse, Chris Deutekom, and Eric Mueller. Rooks are "three boys making 'indie' music trying not to sound dumb."

Chris King is a multi-media artist and producer based in St. Louis who earns a living as a journalist. He co-founded Poetry Scores, which translates poetry into other media, and serves as its creative director. As a poet, he works in the 7/11 form innovated by St. Louis poet Quincy Troupe.

Chris says:
These poems are cast as 7/11s, a poetic form innovated by the St. Louis poet Quincy Troupe. Troupe’s form calls for alternating lines of 7 and 11 syllables, with 7-line stanzas when the first line has 7 beats and 11-line stanzas when the first line has 11 syllables. My 7/11s start with 7-syllable lines and then alternate stanzas of 7 and 11 lines, starting with 7; though I break all of these rules whenever the poem asks for it.

Happier Days Ahead

Music was sarcastic, and
nasty. It wore pink shoes. It was a bear on
a bicycle on its way
back to New Mexico. It made comfortably
sweet just one girl, with sagging,
cuffed pants. The banjo, actually, was the bear,
the bear in the pink shoes, pink

sneakers, as a fact, daintily laced and tied
with meticulous care as
a child unravels a lollypop. It’s sad
to say, but the people were
anything but equal to the music. They played
bartop card tricks, fed cigars
to their beloveds. Was one lad, danced, badly,
loudly, with all that bloody
bellowing from your man in the treble clef
hockey jersey. The barman,
only a boy, dispensed his abundant youth

to regulars, strangers,
snorted a wee bit of coke on the breaks with
the bands. --John’s got a new shirt
for Christmas. --Actually, I’ve had this awhile.
--But you’ve washed it!
Music raised
a toast: Coal slaw! that’s happier days ahead,
and music really meant it,

happier days ahead, for you and for me.
For music was far from home,
again, on a cold night after Christmas, in
a bar and working, again.
Once more, lads, to the whiskey, and then attack,
again, the enemy in
your hands your instrument has become. Music
commits suicide early
every morning at the proper, appointed
hour, adjusted, of course, for
bar time.

-- John D. McGurk's Pub, St. Louis, Missouri

December 27, 2007

-- Chris King

Monday, November 14, 2011

Julia Gordon-Bramer Featured Reader at Duff's on Monday, November 28

Julia Gordon-Bramer reading at the Firecracker Press (November 2011). Photo by Ellen Herget.

Julia Gordon-Bramer will be one of three featured readers at the next •chance operations• reading at Duff's, 392 N. Euclid, on Monday, November 28.

The other featured readers will be Chris King and Drucilla Wall.

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

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

Musical guests will be Roy Gokenbach, guitar, formerly of Erin Bode Group, and Fred Friction, host of FM 88.1's "Fishing With Dynamite, accompanying Chris King. Finishing out the evening with a short set will be Rooks, featuring Daniel Eberle-Mayse, Chris Deutekom, and Eric Mueller. Rooks are "three boys making 'indie' music trying not to sound dumb."

When Julia Gordon-Bramer reads next for •chance operations•, she will have just stepped off a plane after a two hour flight, had a three-hour drive before that, and God knows how long in airport security.

Here's what her Playboy Playmate bio would be:

Occupation: writer, Plath scholar, tarot card reader. She also teaches English at St. Louis Community College and Humanities at Lindenwood University.

Turn-ons: Sylvia Plath; cats; Kabbalah; the Buddha; correct use of subjunctive form

Turn-offs: Fascist dictatorships; airport security (same difference); winter
Guilty pleasures: satellite radio (XMU, Lithium, and AltNation)

Achievements in the last month: reading tarot cards on Great Day St. Louis; reading at the Firecracker Press, with a print run of her poem, "Airplane Rules"; turning another year older

Latest passion: weighing the evidence as to whether William Shakespeare was really Francis Bacon

Anti-Gravity

The stars have learned to trust us
moving warily on their course
counting on the last astral
status quo.
But what if we decide
one day to just let go-- Release!
the beat of twenty-one guns!
What if we revolt and explode; blast
raining into space, flak
speeding from every snowy peak,
every curve of the greened
empty Earth?
A great loosening of shoes, doors,
hard cars, flowerpots, lions and keys.
Everything
that wasn’t attached
banded in the red
tie of gravity?
Pennies rushing like the bullety drop
off of the Empire State
Building. Our bodies becoming
missiles – all failing
to do the job of staying put.
Smiles into shrapnel hurtling
through space to puncture the dead
peace; to litter the cosmic clean
with debris. We’d fire and drill
holes of light in whatever we hit,
shooting into that solid, soft dark.
A pom-pom pummel
proving our existence;
An ack-ack-ack of final flash, leaving
trillions of celestial wounds
against a silk purple sash.
The steady nova tread with dread.
They fear us, you know. These souls.
Those holes. We are
full of them.

-- Julia Gordon-Bramer

Saturday, November 5, 2011

Electric Garden Musical Guest at the "Howl"-O-Ween Celebration

Dino Spumoni, Brandon Creath, Peter Noire

Electric Garden were the musical guests at the "Howl"-O-Ween Celebration.

The next •chance operations• reading will be held at Duff's, 392 N. Euclid, on Monday, November 28.

Featured readers will be Julia Gordon-Bramer, Chris King, and Drucilla Wall.

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

Musical guest Roy Gokenbach, guitar, formerly of Erin Bode Group; played LeRoy in indie movie classic A: Anonymous.

Dino Spumoni at "Howl"-O-Ween Celebration Open-Mic


Dino Spumoni not only stepped up to the •chance operations• open-mic on "Howl"-O-Ween to read his poetry but also to sing a song.

The next •chance operations• reading will be held at Duff's, 392 N. Euclid, on Monday, November 28.

Featured readers will be Julia Gordon-Bramer, Chris King, and Drucilla Wall.

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

Musical guest Roy Gokenbach, guitar, formerly of Erin Bode Group; played LeRoy in indie movie classic A: Anonymous.

Friday, November 4, 2011

Basmin, the original Queen B, at the"Howl"-O-Ween Open-Mic

Basmin, the Queen B, stepped up to the •chance operations• open-mic on "Howl"-O-Ween as her own bad self!

The next •chance operations• reading will be held at Duff's, 392 N. Euclid, on Monday, November 28.

Featured readers will be Julia Gordon-Bramer, Chris King, and Drucilla Wall.

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

Musical guest Roy Gokenbach, guitar, formerly of Erin Bode Group; played LeRoy in indie movie classic A: Anonymous.

Chris Parr as "The Rogue" at the "Howl"-O-Ween Celebration


Chris Parr, co-founder of •chance operations•, stepped up to the •chance operations• open-mic on "Howl"-O-Ween as "the Rogue."
The next •chance operations• reading will be held at Duff's, 392 N. Euclid, on Monday, November 28.

Featured readers will be Julia Gordon-Bramer, Chris King, and Drucilla Wall.

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

Musical guest Roy Gokenbach, guitar, formerly of Erin Bode Group; played LeRoy in indie movie classic A: Anonymous.

Thursday, November 3, 2011

Elizabeth Trevor as Sara Teasdale at the "Howl"-O-Ween Celebration


Elizabeth Trevor stepped up to the •chance operations• open-mic on "Howl"-O-Ween as Sara Teasdale.

The next •chance operations• reading will be held at Duff's, 392 N. Euclid, on Monday, November 28.

Featured readers will be Julia Gordon-Bramer, Chris King, and Drucilla Wall.

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

Musical guest Roy Gokenbach, guitar, formerly of Erin Bode Group; played LeRoy in indie movie classic A: Anonymous.

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Erin Goss at the "Howl"-O-Ween Celebration


Erin Goss stepped up to the •chance operations• open-mic on "Howl"-O-Ween to share several poems by Cesar Vallejo.

The next •chance operations• reading will be held at Duff's, 392 N. Euclid, on Monday, November 28.

Featured readers will be Julia Gordon-Bramer, Chris King, and Drucilla Wall.

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

Musical guest Roy Gokenbach, guitar, formerly of Erin Bode Group; played LeRoy in indie movie classic A: Anonymous.

George Stair at the "Howl"-O-Ween Celebration


George Stair stepped up to the •chance operations• open-mic on "Howl"-O-Ween to share a poem by X.J. Kennedy and several short pieces about his time as a cab driver.

The next •chance operations• reading will be held at Duff's, 392 N. Euclid, on Monday, November 28.

Featured readers will be Julia Gordon-Bramer, Chris King, and Drucilla Wall.

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

Musical guest Roy Gokenbach, guitar, formerly of Erin Bode Group; played LeRoy in indie movie classic A: Anonymous.

African Woman

Newly transferred from Atlanta, she was going from a North County restaurant to her motel. I flirted, "You didn't learn to talk like that in Atlanta."

"I'm from Nigeria."

We chatted, normally, I thought.

At the motel: "Why don't you come see me on Saturday. We could have a good time." She gave me the room and phone numbers.

Finally, a line I've never heard from an American woman: "I don't want to have to masturbate myself."

-- George Stair

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Tony Renner as Stephen Crane at the "Howl"-O-Ween Celebration


Tony Renner, co-founder of •chance operations•, stepped up to the "Howl"-O-Ween open-mic as Stephen Crane.

The next •chance operations• reading will be held at Duff's, 392 N. Euclid, on Monday, November 28.

Featured readers will be Julia Gordon-Bramer, Chris King, and Drucilla Wall.

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

Musical guest Roy Gokenbach, guitar, formerly of Erin Bode Group; played LeRoy in indie movie classic A: Anonymous.