some recent reads have included a hand full of chap books.

I love the size of chap books; the tenderness which they are assembled and the time it take to read through one - fast (though that time can vary from the time it take me to take the muni to work or sitting down and listening to a CD by whoever whats their name ...)another nice thing about chap books is for the most part they are gifts, exchanges at readings, so they always take is this deep significance for me... so here is my reading list for the past _____or so..

1. Skip Fox's, Adventure of Max & Maxine. Auguste Press, 659 Fillmore Street, #4, San Francisco, CA, 94117, 2003.

I was originally indulging myself in the wonderful *what of*
book of short prose / poem / essays, pieces by skip full of language and humor; and Adventure of Max & Maxine, is just a short version with a loose theme that is a maelstrom of logic humor, as animals, zoos, sex and everything else somehow come to gather in a landscape logic.

*Pigs imagine themselves as something other than they are: rams, or bears and saints. There's a little saint in every piglet. And a little tapeworm in every saint. And unicorns bleeding into fishes, and fishes running away in united boots over green tabletops, clompity seas, broken little shanty, my head's on straight but my wings are caught in the blast known as otherwise, my face a study in erosion, carved by sunset, approximately fifty grains an hour over three-hundred-thousand years . . .*

2. Christopher Nealon,
The Joyous Ages, Ferocious Rhino Press, 2003.

I had the wonderful pleasure to read with Christopher at The New Brutalism
reading series at 21 Grande in Oakland, which always seems to crystalize the text for me (not oakland but reading with someone). *The Joyous age,* which maybe a part of a new book coming out by Chris this march(?).. any ways.. this is a wonderful piece of prose poetic prose poem text . . . and if Chris's book is anything like this I will be one of the first to grab a copy. the text is just this side of a string that ties a narrative to a narrative state, with *interesting scrapes, (and) something about twenty families hold all the wealth.* here are some bits and pieces:

*Of course, people need to be excused for everything they said in the first flush of reaction: each of us was a blithering, terror stricken and shocked person, and we shouldn't be held accountable for out remarks.*
*There are the storms of the new compassion / These are the stones of the new comprehension / This is the roll of thunder unrolling at the mouth's gate saying no one can translates this*

3. Acts, by Mytili Jagannathan, from habenicht press, 2003

Without looking up Mytili's biography,
I could hear words that reach a depth where *agitation and remorse begin to arise* and filters through the body, raising red flags at every colonialist turn this writer has encountered. Of all the twenty-one page's of poems, and half I have put little stikies on so I know I can find self amongst these pages.

*most things happen in twilight

warmed by a switch

to transport

anger through traded

lips you struck a vow

forged of wishes

a cauldron-

reporter

of small treetop

rufus-sided towhee

every sorry

drink-you-tea

knew what I knew

there's an ocean in route to

the boat re-start

your story Im talking to you


4. Nancy says- *just say no!,*(Self Published, 2003) by Masha Gutkin.

Masha also does a food column
for the Bay Guardian, that explores everything from fast food, to eating alone.. Masha is one of the best local food writers in the area, especially one dealing with items like those little stickers on your fruit, but i digress; Nancy says- *just say no!,* is a about the third or fourth chap book I have received from Masha... in some places there is a wonderful sense of humor that cuts; *She wishes her thoughts were horses, but they're hamsters, if they are anything that moves.* and in other places creating meaning out of the mundane..

* Dear H

I begin, paring you down to a letter. H though, is maybe to solid, There's something Germanic
in its no-nonsense construction*

this is a wonderful little self published chap book that you can not get unless you know Masha, that takes one to the *depths up to a point and then, like it or not, I'm brought up short by the two tines infinity converging, never meeting*