"22nd Century Waltz" by Sean Arnold

Sean Arnold stepped up to the mic at the •Chance Operations• reading on May 10 at Duff's.

The next •Chance Operations• readings will be Monday, June 14, and Monday, July 26, at Duff's in the Central West End. Doors will open at 7:30 p.m. on both evenings.

Featured readers for June 14 are Gena Brady Allen, Eileen G'Sell, and Stefene Russell. Interested readers may sign-up for the open mic first come-first serve at the reading.

22nd Century Waltz

"this isn't bitterness, it's merely a tremor of the earth"
--frank o'hara

all these pretty women here without me in a vacated groucho-marxist room:
we pick up situations and put them down right quick
making bad decisions to the sound of white vodka crackling and
mute television movie sets big screened onto a panorama of skyline windows.
settle down, settle down, son
the river is pretty deep and there's a lot of sticks for sticking,
the cash trees are on fire and the ashes catch on children's parasols dancing a 22nd century waltz in what looks like rain.
we sow the stuff in the soft ground and reap nothing
catching the invisible sprouts in our teeth and swallowing easily.
the bartender watches this phenomenon through the window of his workaday,
he doesn't bat an eyebrow,
he's used to seeing a world drunk off its ass
kids picking the cigarette flowers and adults making bonfires out of greenslips.
he's almost used to the invented verbiage of the vulture-faced american surreal
almost
but all those frowns,
inverted and otherwise
are an intense archaic against a bad lit movie plot
the shades all drawn down.

-- Sean Arnold

City Lights on the Bus

Jacob Cohen knocked out the audience during the open mic portion of the •Chance Operations• reading on May 10.

The next •Chance Operations• will be Monday, June 14, and Monday, July 26, at Duff's in the Central West End. Doors will open at 7:30 p.m. on both evenings.

Featured readers for June 14 are Gena Brady Allen, Eileen G'Sell, and Stefene Russell. Interested readers may sign-up for the open mic first come-first serve at the reading.

city lights on the bus

bus rides
flipping thru a poetry book
the 1st anthology of published poets i actually plan on reading
stepping up my game
living a full life
there are secret conversations hidden right in front of our ears
it's moments like these---
the beautiful trumpet woman with dreadlocks boards with 3 others
musicians, yes
gyspies? maybe, but beside the point
she has a young face, brimming with all those young experiences had these days in well-placed rags about soft-skinned bodies
we both want kombucha, but settle for beer and maybe there's something to this---
don't go too far
it's not safe
and i'm not famous
saint loser with nothin but a cigarette seems a trip now, the 30 bus comes intermittently, between thoughts of cartoonish existence and dreams of broken glass shards passing thru the jugular of (insert dead white man)
inspired, well less than inspired by poetry in motion, i keep eyes glued to page, but ears trailing towards the ---
i think she & her musician friends is headed toward red & black, i have a feeling---
it doesn't matter much, who is talking, just that i probably shouldn't be listening
we missed the bus, an hour
wait now
no, saved by the honk of a horn as two white people board the wrong bus
they are not us
i serenade sean to a ferlinghetti poem he has read before
it's all been read before
it's all been said before
we've all been dead before
i wander back to internal discussion with desire
she says i need not question, knowing damn well that this IS what's best for the both of us
i keep forgetting how much i've forgotten
this close to the brink of determination
eternal stagnation
the middle of a poem IS the end of a song
and a long
drawn-out pause can pass by in a blink
the city's plugged-in, it don't have to think
the city ain't burning
the city IS a suburb
the city got the PO-lease
the city died in a freak chemical spill, but won't keep it's fuckin eyes shut
the city IS a blank white page filling with dark red drips
the city IS a poorly placed question
a poorly worded answer
the city
THIS CITY
THIS CITY
smells like colon cancer
the city thinks one thought:
that IT is some final statement.
but we all wash away in the flood...

-- Jacob Cohen

Scavengers by Felix Dowsley

Felix Dowsley pulled double-duty at the •Chance Operations• reading on May 10. Felix not only played drums with the jazz trio Udi's Refugees, who provided music throughout the evening, but also read the following poem during the open mic portion of the evening.

The next •Chance Operations• will be Monday, June 14, and Monday, July 26, at Duff's in the Central West End. Doors will open at 7:30 p.m. on both evenings.

Featured readers for June 14 are Gena Brady Allen, Eileen G'Sell, and Stefene Russell. Interested readers may sign-up for the open mic first come-first serve at the reading.

Udi's Revenge

Udi's Revenge were the musical guests at the May 10 reading.

Felix Dowsley, drums, said the trio "played all standards: 'My Favorite Things' (as done by John Coltrane), 'Take Five' (Dave Brubeck), 'Now's the Time' (Charlie Parker), and 'So What' (Miles Davis), etc." The other members are Paul Antion, saxophone, and Stefan Santiago, bass.

Photos from •Chance Operations• Reading #2

Erin Quick


Brett Lars Underwood


Molly McNew Ebel
Many thanks to our featured readers, Erin Quick, Brett Lars Underwood, and Molly McNew Ebel. Thanks also to Udi's Refugees, who provided jazz music throughout the night. And thanks to our open mic readers Mary Phillips, Felix Dowsley (drummer for Udi's Refugees!), Joseph Sulier, Jake Cohen, Sean Arnold, and Tom Simmons.

The next •Chance Operations• will be Monday, June 14, and Monday, July 26, at Duff's in the Central West End.

Molly McNew Ebel to Read at Duff's in the CWE on Monday, May 10

Molly McNew Ebel will be one of the featured readers at the Chance Operations reading on Monday, May 10, at 7:30 p.m., at Duff's, 392 North Euclid Avenue, in the Central West End. Also reading will be Brett Lars Underwood and Erin Quick. Admission: $3.00.

Jazz provided by Paul Antion on saxophone, Stefan Santiago on bass, and Felix Dowsley on drums.

As a child, Molly McNew Ebel was not allowed to touch trash cans, regardless, she grew into a somewhat-normal short person who doesn’t write creatively as much as she should, but writes for the financial services industry eight hours a day. She’s the wife of a quiet video-gamer, the new owner of an old home, and the soon-to-be adopted mother of a 3-legged basset hound named Peg.

32

There was once a photographer who proposed to his model
32 times.
She had beautiful mocha skin that he wanted to sip
as the sun rose.

He would only photograph her –
any other woman would break his camera.
She energized him, roused him, consumed him…

The first time he asked her, she thought it was funny –
by 12 it was flattering.
It was not merely a case of hard to get,
but something else.
He bought flowers, puppies, sang praises beneath her window,
but she’d only agree to pose.

When 32 came, she was naked and
he was behind the camera.
He asked and she smiled, considering –

The shutter clicked.

She shook her head from side to side but all he could do
was smile. There she was on film
considering life with him.
Artist and muse, husband and wife.

-- Molly McNew Ebel

Erin Quick to Read on May 10 at Duff's in the CWE

Erin Quick will be one of the featured readers at the Chance Operations reading on Monday, May 10, at 7:30 p.m., at Duff's, 392 North Euclid Avenue, in the Central West End. Also reading will be Molly McNew Ebel and Brett Lars Underwood. Admission: $3.00.

Erin Quick grew up in Columbia, Missouri and now lives in South St. Louis. She holds a B.A. in English-Creative Writing and a Certificate in Women’s Studies from Webster University. She has been a feature poet at Saxifrage Press, and has read at the River Styx Hungry Young Poets reading series. She has a poem forthcoming this spring in the chapbook Burleycue. She is committed to social justice and building community through literature.

Salmacis

I am not a boy, though sometimes
I wish I could be for you. Sometimes

the line between a kiss in the fountain
and the beauty of one plus one

feels soft, permeable, and I laugh
instead of cry. I am not a boy.

This is not for you, though
the word love comes anyway.

-- Erin Quick

Brett Lars Underwood Reads at Duff's on Monday, May 10

Brett Lars Underwood will be one of the featured readers at the Chance Operations reading on Monday, May 10, at 7:30 p.m., at Duff's, 392 North Euclid Avenue, in the Central West End. Also reading will be Molly McNew Ebel, and Erin Quick. Admission: $3.00.

Brett Lars Underwood is a bartending gadabout who writes, promotes and produces happenings and mishaps in St. Louis, Missouri. He's quicker with the stink eye than verbal reprimands and favors the brushback pitch over preemptive warfare. He has the wingspan of an albatross and would prefer cash.

Maybe someday, but not

You glow and
I taste you in the moonlight
My tired lips remember you in a way
that
would disgust your husband
and confuse your children.
If your fruit hung on trees
populations would go mad
like they do
and populate deserts
never wanting for water or
other spices.

And I feel no shame
in these dreams.

But to make them best
we would have to
align tiger stripes on
the shade of the moon.
Shuffle logic;
Break the flying buttresses
of ancient architecture;
Finger fuck Shakespeare fans
on CNN.

All fun and reckless activities: all dangerous.

We would be better to
change society and
and inject vodka into nuns.
Or swill melted nickels with
financial analysts

So, I know that you do.
I know that I do.
We do.
As the swelling goes down,
we don't.

I hope that there is something.
I hope that there is a part.

There it is in the glimmer of a star.
I hear it in the sublime verse.
I hear your moans as my back creaks.
I hear the echoes of promises.

-- Brett Lars Underwood

Next Reading: Monday, May 10, at Duff's in the CWE

Chris Parr and Tony Renner, co-founders of Chance Operations.
Photo by Josh Maassen.
The next Chance Operations reading will be held at Duff's, 392 North Euclid in the CWE, on Monday, May 10, beginning at 7:30 p.m.

Confirmed readers, so far, are Brett Underwood, Molly McNew Ebel, and Erin Quick.

More details to follow.

Lauren Keefer to Read at Debut Chance Operations on April 12 at Duff's in the CWE

Lauren Keefer will be one of the featured readers at the debut Chance Operations reading on Monday, April 12, at 7:30 p.m., at Duff's, 392 North Euclid Avenue, in the Central West End. Admission: $3.00.

Lauren Keefer is a Saint Louis transplant, hailing from Huntington Beach, California. Lauren recently graduated from Washington University with a degree in women and gender studies. She debuted her poetry at the Get Born series in summer of 2008, and since then has read at the River Styx Hungry Young Poets series, Voices from the Underground, the Speakeasy, Bad Shoe, and at the Day of the Dead Beats (as Amiri Baraka).

Likes: love letters, making lists, calculus, the Star Wars saga, and the Mississippi.

Dislikes: the patriarchy (really, exploitation of any kind).


SPILL YER GUTS.

i once turned to lips for answers to all life's questions
i drank sweet saliva and relished
filmy traces left on collarbones and breasts.

and when lips held me no more, i looked to hands
i saw from whence they came: exquisite shoulders, broken wings.
ancient spine supporting tense sinews of muscle and mannish flesh.
his ragged arms bear the weight of too many lovers
above me, always, this wounded beast of mine.

each finger told stories of all the skin it'd met before
fingers spoke more to me than his lips would ever permit.
and i found hope in the gentle caress of pleasure-driven digits.
your hands, they're blinding me, darling man!
that's why it took me so long to realize:
it's neither lips nor words and definitely not fingers or touches
that break my heart
because love, really, is only made up of guts.
guts are all i've ever got -- everyone else's, spilled without end, and mine own.
but never yours.

i imagined myself a surgeon and i cut you open in my dreams:
under flesh and warm viscera i found nothing. i dove deeper into silence.
yes, your sweat continues to pour hard and fast down my stock curves
but the weight of your silence is suffocating me.
your scars are heavy, and your guts are gone!

and your fingers trace each droplet a bullet. and because i once welcomed lips and then hands
i no longer have armor to protect my fragile flesh.

i have no more skeletons to support it all, dear sir
and my skin's bruised and taut.

-- Laureen Keefer

Readers' biographies:

Elly Herget and Erin Wiles, from Bad Shoe, St. Louis' only literary magazine featuring entirely women writers and artists.

Matthew Freeman, author of the recently published Darkness Never Far, his third collection of poems.

Chris Parr, performance poet who has read his work at art spaces, music venues, and poetry events, in his native New Zealand, as well as in Boston, New York and St. Louis.

Lauren Keefer, a veteran of both Get Born and River Styx's Hungry Young Poets series.

Love from the Riverfront Times

Leave It To Chance

By Paul Friswold

Last week we bid farewell to the Get Born poetry reading series. This is April, which in addition to being spring's most fecund month, is also National Poetry Month, and so it's little wonder that a new reading series has cropped up from the heaving earth. Chance Operations, the bloom of Tony Renner and Chris Parr's mind-gardens (and here ends all plant-based imagery), debuts at 7:30 p.m. at Duff's Restaurant (392 North Euclid Avenue with readings from Elly Herget and Erin Wiles (both of Bad Shoe literary magazine), Matthew Freeman (author of the new collection Darkness Never Far), Lauren Keefer (hey! she's a Get Born vet!) and Parr himself. It is safe to assume that Renner may also have something new to recite; the man's nothing if not industrious. Admission is an arts-lover friendly $3, and bring some money to take advantage of Duff's well-tended bar.

Elly Herget to Read at Debut Chance Operations on April 12 at Duff's in the CWE

Elly Herget and Erin Wiles
Photo by John Moynihan
Elly Herget will be one of the featured readers at the debut Chance Operations reading on Monday, April 12, at 7:30 p.m., at Duff's, 392 North Euclid Avenue, in the Central West End. Admission: $3.00.

Elly Herget is a poet from St. Louis, Missouri, who is Mary Poppins by day and hollers the blues all night. She is co-editor of Bad Shoe, a print forum for female poets in St. Louis published by JK Publishing. Elly has been published in the University of Missouri-St. Louis' Litmag and Bellerive, and in spring of 2009 released a chapbook with JKP called Thus Far.

Persephone (Winter 2009)

Dusk comes as a guest at supper
and there are no poems in me.
I blow shameful idle chatter
between spirit puffs
and can’t begin to tell the truth
anymore, even here amongst friends
and handsome drunks.
I sway half-lidded,
in this refracted light,
in these silly boots,
in this body that I couldn’t identify
in the street,
if I were sprawled right in front of me.
I have always hated the word lonely,
though I think on it often.

I was born of February;
I must dwell there half-year,
like Persephone.
It’s comfortable, the old
lack of smells,
lack of texture.
We pen ourselves inside
and shutter the windows with music.
We scritch and scratch at paper
like wee pepper-colored chickens
settling to roost.
And this is where
and when we pair--
to speak, to bed down
in the snow--
caves of ice are warmer
than bare air, these days.
But I see respite will be found
in empty spaces,
for these calloused fingers,
for this tangled hair.

Dear Winter,
I am ready.

I ate those seeds slowly,
with relish, and they planted
in my belly understanding of your cold.
They chipped my teeth
and soured my gut
but once begun there was nothing
to do but keep chewing.

I know your secret.
You were my best professor
in transience.
You will pass
and come to pass.
True, you wear at my bones
and skin like water over a rock.
True, you twist my sleep
into a foreign imposter
that offers no succor.
But we pink apes can wait
and dream and fight your claim.
The earth will warm
and call me to take my chances.
Until then, I’ll not apologize
for the crusted grey ditch I am in.
I was starving and naïve
and I have eaten my seeds.
-- Elly Herget

Readers' biographies:

Elly Herget and Erin Wiles, from Bad Shoe, St. Louis' only literary magazine featuring entirely women writers and artists.

Matthew Freeman, author of the recently published Darkness Never Far, his third collection of poems.

Chris Parr, performance poet who has read his work at art spaces, music venues, and poetry events, in his native New Zealand, as well as in Boston, New York and St. Louis.

Lauren Keefer, a veteran of both Get Born and River Styx' Hungry Young Poets series.

Chris Parr to Read at Duff's on Monday, April 12

Photo by Jamie Ford
Chance Operations' co-founder Chris Parr will be featured at the debut reading at Duff's, 392 North Euclid Avenue, in the Central West End, on Monday, April 12. Admission is $3.00, and the doors open at 7:30 p.m.

Chris is a performance poet who has read his work at art spaces, music venues, and poetry events, in his native New Zealand, as well as in Boston, New York and St. Louis.

© 2010 Christopher Parr

Readers' biographies:

Elly Herget and Erin Wiles, from Bad Shoe, St. Louis' only literary magazine featuring entirely women writers and artists.

Matthew Freeman, author of the recently published Darkness Never Far, his third collection of poems.

Lauren Keefer, a veteran of both Get Born and River Styx' Hungry Young Poets series.

Erin Wiles to Read on April 12 at Duff's in the CWE

Erin Wiles will be one of the featured readers at the debut Chance Operations reading on Monday, April 12, at 7:30 p.m., at Duff's, 392 North Euclid Avenue, in the Central West End. Admission: $3.00.

Erin Wiles is co-editor of Bad Shoe, a print forum for female poets in St. Louis published by JK Publishing. Erin hails from Ohio, where she earned useless degrees in English and French. Since moving to St. Louis, she has become marginally employed, started the St. Louis Projects, and has performed with many spoken word artists. She has written two chapbooks, Fractals (2008) and I & Apopcalypse (2006) both available from JKP.

No Waiting Hands

As my belly churns to swell
& fill the heated vacillating space
where I once clutched you
& my petty sometime gods
to my breast, I cross
my hands over my newly
blue-veined chest & faith-fall
into no waiting graspful hands
below me. This fear is not alone

as the homeless are alone. It is not
the endangered lonely of bag-lady
burying cans under the overpass,
stuffing shat-upon tee shirts
beneath her housedress, hoarding
her layette of broken bric-brac
in a grocery store's perambulator. It is not
her crowded lonely of streetside
defecation, her working and embellishing

that smell of the piss
of the heartsick, creating the stench
to say: go away! stay away! Unless
you have something for me . . . My alone
is not her alone but like her,
I am begging,
we must carry these signs,
they are body-written,
they cannot help but say:

One, you didn't love us enough
to stay. Two, we are too proud
to ask for this anyway. And three,
this is the struggle without which
we cease to exist, a.k.a,
I want you to owe me.

Streetside, we wait
and watch lumbering city buses
locked and loaded with explosives
trying to become people. Thirty weeks
have passed since we have fallen:
it is too late
to unpack these bags, we are
too far along and gone
to change course, so we rest
to rewrite
the signs.

-- Erin Wiles

Readers' biographies:

Elly Herget and Erin Wiles, from Bad Shoe, St. Louis' only literary magazine featuring entirely women writers and artists.

Matthew Freeman, author of the recently published Darkness Never Far, his third collection of poems.

Chris Parr, performance poet who has read his work at art spaces, music venues, and poetry events, in his native New Zealand, as well as in Boston, New York and St. Louis.

Lauren Keefer, a veteran of both Get Born and River Styx' Hungry Young Poets series.