(Twenty) Five Years

I had the realization yesterday that I’ve been making zines for 25 years now. 2/3 of my goddamn life. So it couldn’t be more fitting that I’m going to be leading a little Zines 101 workshop as part of this event tonight:

If you’re gonna be anywhere near Kenosha, come on out and celebrate twenty-five years of that zine life with me. Have a beer or soda, maybe learn some things, meet some rad folks, talk about books and zines, make a mini-zine. More information can be found here.

(Need some jams to help you get pumped beforehand? Listen to this zine-related playlist I made three years ago.)

This year, so far, I’ve been writing a lot but not submitting as much. This has been very good for me. I feel like I’m finding the joy in writing again and also writing better stuff because I’m worrying less about what will ‘sell’ and just writing what I feel most powerfully called to write. Despite that, I have had some recent publications and there are more forthcoming.

The biggest recent news is that my two upcoming chapbooks—forget the fuck away from me and The Girl With The Most Cake—are available for preorder. If you click the links you’ll find more information, and see some lovely things some of my favorite writers/humans said about them. You can order plain copies, signed copies, or annotated copies, and if you order them as a set you can pick out a bonus goodie (a postcard with two of my poems on it, a mini-zine I published last year, or a tarot reading!). Also, once I get six more orders (total; any combination of either or both) I will be making some videos of myself reading a poem from each book!

Other stuff:

-My poem Courtney / Persephone (one of the poems from The Girl With The Most Cake) was published in the January issue of Anti-Heroin Chic
-My poem our faithul, reckless hearts was published in the January issue of South Broadway Ghost Society
-Two more of my little lyric essay things have gone up at Pussy Magic: And I Don’t Want to Live This Life and Ritual For When It’s Ash Wednesday & Mercury Retrograde & Your Idols Keep Dying
-My short story prophet / ess appeared in issue 7 of Cauldron Anthology
-The lyric essay I wrote in January for #TheKinkedChallenge—Venus in Furs, Nightclubbing—was published in Rose Quartz Magazine

In Bone & Ink news: Pieces from Vol. 8 of Bone & Ink Literary Magazine began running on Monday (there will be one post every weekday until April 10). And the next two books from the press—Mountains of Rust by Patrick Fontes and Becoming the Bronze Idol by Rita Mookerjee—are available for presale.

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Truthfully, it’s been one hell of a Mercury retrograde for me. I suffered some pretty serious illness and injury, as did people close to me. There were trips to the ER, mysterious things going on with my car’s brakes, and a lot of sadness and anxiety. But I can feel it lifting, these past couple days. It’s finally spring. The day before yesterday, it was sunny and fifty, which to my midwestern ass felt so warm and springlike that I drank iced coffee and comtemplated cutting the sleeves off all my t-shirts (the ones that still have sleeves, that is). Yesterday, the equinox, was cloudy and a little chillier. But I drove around and looked at train graffiti, walked in the woods and got my boots muddy. I listened to the returning birds: the mourning doves, with their sad hobo winejug song, and the white-capped sparrows with their sweetly melancholy pheee-phyooooo, like tiny foghorns.

Here are some songs I’ve been listening to:
-Hozier - “Shrike”
-Jenny Lewis - “Red Bull and Hennessy”
-Sonic Youth - “Dirty Boots”
-Sebadoh - “celebrate the void”

And some things I’ve been reading/looking at:
-Ode, On Lake Shore Drive, by Felix Lecocq
-Dead Doe: I, by Brigit Pegeen Kelly
-When I Say Love, by Meredith Martinez
-Every Girl Who Got in a Car, by Cathy Ulrich
-The Selkie Wives, by Kendra Fortmeyer
-Coney Island art, by Philomena Marano
-Seen, by Alex DiFrancesco

Today, I will put purple streaks in my hair. Tonight, I will go preach the good zine word. Not too far off is April and National Poetry Month. More soon.

xoxo,
JLM