Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Catherine Rankovic Featured Reader at Tavern of Fine Arts Monday, September 30


Catherine Rankovic will be one of three featured readers at the debut •chance operations• reading at Tavern of Fine Arts, 313 Belt Avenue, on Monday, September 30.

Also featured will be Matt Freeman and Eileen G'Sell.

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

Catherine Rankovic says, 

Formerly a full-time newspaper reporter and magazine editor, I taught creative writing at Washington University from 1989 to 2010, currently teach in the online MFA program at Lindenwood University, and developed a following as an independent book and manuscript editor. 


I've written and published five books, including Meet Me: Writers in St. Louis (PenUltimate, 2010), nominated for a President's Award from the Missouri Writers Guild, and have worked with large and small publishers and Kindle Direct ebook publishing. Awards include the Missouri Biennial Award, an Academy of American Poets award, first place in the 2009 Midwest Writers Center poetry competition and first place in the 2010 St. Louis Poetry Center competition.

I have been honored to be a judge for many literary contests. My poems and essays have appeared in Boulevard,Gulf CoastThe Iowa ReviewThe Missouri ReviewRiver StyxDelmarUCity Review, Umbrella, many newspapers and magazines, and several anthologies including Flood Stage (Walrus Publishing, 2010) and Are We Feeling Better Yet? Women Speak About Health Care in America (PenUltimate, 2008).

You Weren't There


You weren’t there when I killed ’em in Vegas
with my “open the door Richard damn you or kiss
my white booty” routine. You were – I dunno – drinking
Boone’s Farm Strawberry with some easy nonthinking
airhead underage blonde while I was up for
the Grammy for best comedy record of the year,

nineteen-seventy-nine, I believe, and only Richard 
Pryor had released a better album: Was It Something I Said?
In nineteen-eighty I recorded a underground hit 
with Marianne Faithfull; that’s me on the drum kit,
you didn’t know? My mentor Ringo, I call him Rich,
taught me at Apple and told me what a bitch

Paul laying down the drum tracks on Let It Be
had been. I engineered his cover of “Act Naturally”
and produced it, and where were you, dickhead,
when at twenty-three I was already a celebrated
ghostwriter for Norman Mailer, and had a cameo
in a Woody Allen movie; you didn’t see it, I know,

too busy tripping on Captain Morgan’s Spiced Rum
with fellow burnouts, dousing your buzzard breath with gum
so your parents wouldn’t kick your pitiful natural rear.
While I was toasted as the Little Richard of literature
and modeling Guess, you, fool, were choking your chick-
en, and when I was in a limo refusing to partner with Mick,

because I was busy buying stocks with MacArthur 
grants, and reviving Keith Richards with a fire extinguisher
every other day in palaces and Learjets,
your TV showed you me, through your haze of pot and Cheezits,
and now through a haze of video games and Internet porn 
you send an E-card with regards and regrets. Get born,
                                                                               jackass.

-- Catherine Rankovic

Eileen G'Sell Featured Reader at Tavern of Fine Arts on Monday, September 30


Eileen G'Sell will be one of three featured readers at the debut •chance operations• reading at Tavern of Fine Arts, 313 Belt Avenue, on Monday, September 30.


Also featured will be Matt Freeman and Catherine Rankovic.

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


Open-mic will follow the featured readers.


Eileen G'Sell teaches at Washington University in St. Louis and is cofounder of The Hinge, an art gallery and event space. Recent and forthcoming work can be found in ConduitNinth Letter, and the Boston Review.  She is the winner of the American Literary Review's 2012 prize for poetry, and her chapbook will be available through Dancing Girl Press in spring 2013.

I Love You Like a Good Game of Skee-Ball
First of all, I never said that.
Second, if I drove a stick
I sure didn’t do it for Jesus.

The manuscripts are warm and the salary
depressing. Behind the stars are blue
and bold, hearts we steer toward bluer skies.

No one knows the speed of joy, and no one
speaks of sinking. I lived the way
a sailor lives, and I’ve seen swallows

starve. For I smell of love
and Suavitel, for I love the way
the sailor loves. For every second

past, a silver captain listens. If this
is the gift, and this, the giver,
then this is the sea you were meant

to receive. This is the rain
you were meant to forget,
this, the star that will not forsake you.

My handmade hypotheses are legions
on, yet no one speaks of drowning.
If I have drowned, then let it be

with you, for you, and fallen birds.
First of all, I never said
that it wasn’t something worth saying.

You were the game
I was meant to lose. But the game
was sweet, and soft, my friend,

and my hand still warm from the weight of it.
-- Eileen G'Sell
Thanks to Ink Node.

Matt Freeman Featured Reader at Tavern of Fine Arts, Monday, September 30


Matt Freeman will be one of three featured readers at the debut •chance operations• reading at Tavern of Fine Arts, 313 Belt Avenue, on Monday, September 30.

Also featured will be Eileen G'Sell and Catherine Rankovic.

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

Open-mic will follow the featured readers.

Matthew Freeman woke up to find himself a poet while a still lovelorn teenager in Dogtown, St. Louis. After an irregular journey he found himself back at St. Louis University, where he was twice given the Montesi Award for his poems. His fourth collection, The Boulevard of Broken Discourse, was recently published by Coffeetown Press. Matt teaches at Adapt Missouri, and is proud to be in the MFA program at University of Missouri St. Louis.
I Know What Girls Know
I had to become the ugly friend—
I owed that much to the universe—

and I was desperate for the phone to ring,
and I dreamt all night after an accidental
breast grazed against my elbow in the
crowded lobby of Powell Hall.

I was hated by hipsters for wearing
my frumpy SLU shirt; I was ridiculed
by hippies for trying to remain chirpy
when I was freaking out; I was hunted
by hoosiers for recognizing how bored
and unhappy their wives were.

When I met Lesbia she touched me first;
she took my hand off the steering wheel
and put it on her inner thigh; I thought I’d die.
And when she asked about my model friend
I knew I had to bring this ship to shore --
it was easy, I just pretended
I didn’t really like her anymore.
-- Matt Freeman

•chance operations• Moves to Tavern of Fine Arts, Monday, September 30


The debut •chance operations• reading at Tavern of Fine Arts, 313 Belt Avenue, will be Monday, September 30. Doors open at 7:30 p.m. Admission is FREE.

Featured readers will be Matthew Freeman, Eileen G'Sell, and Catherine Rankovic.

Open-mic will follow the featured readers.