***Opposite of Shadow, a collaboration between old friends (and former THE WOODS bandmates) LINDA SMITH (artwork) and BRIAN BENDLIN (writing), is an exploration of place, time, memory, and the natural world. It is the companion book to Brian Bendlin’s music CD 13 Groves. Linda and Brian have been friends and collaborators for almost forty years. An album of mid-1980s tracks by their band the Woods, So Long Before Now, is available from Dot Matrix / Modern Harmonic. Linda Smith began making music in Baltimore during the early 1980s with various bands. Following a move to New York City in 1984, she formed The Woods with Brian Bendlin, Peggy Bitzer, and Steven Cheslik-DeMeyer. After purchasing a four-track cassette machine during that time, Linda began to record her songs at home; from 1987 to 2001 she released music on such labels as Harriet, Feel Good All Over, Slumberland, Shrimper, and her own Preference label. In 2021 Captured Tracks released a vinyl collection of her home recordings titled Till Another Time. Since then she has returned to recording new music, with Untitled 1-10 Plus 1 (Almost Halloween Time Records), and A Passing Cloud, a collaboration with Nancy Andrews (Grapefruit/Gertrude). She received an MFA in visual art from Vermont College of Fine Art in 2008. Brian Bendlin moved to New York City from the Midwest in the 1980s. He was the first drummer for the band Crash, and has been a drummer and percussionist in numerous bands and ensembles, including Robin Crutchfield’s Dark Day,...
BK $17.25
10/27/2023
***Things known and unknown. Story as thing. The soul of things. The essence of narrative. Bare bones. Blind alleys. Unanswered questions. And poems, a few pantoums and haiku too. Forty things by Peter Cherches.
BK $9.25
04/14/2023
***Four and Twenty Blackbirds is a collection of word portraits of the people, places, and events populating the author's universe. These essays are sometimes feisty, sometimes funny, always tender, and recognizable as deeply human.
BK $9.25
04/14/2023
***Roots, Stones & Baggage is a collection of paintings and poems from Richard Brown Lethem that span over seventy years of his life. Both the poems and the paintings take many stylistic turns that mirror those of his life. Works written and painted in Missouri, Paris, Brooklyn, Maine & California reflect those surrounding sometimes taking flight into the ether and at other turns digging into the core of all things.
BK $9.25
04/14/2023
***Born and raised in desert towns hundreds of miles apart, Laura Maher and L.I. Henley found each other through poetry. Ordinary Light traces a correspondence of the growing connections of two strangers, uncovering a shared archeological dig of lost loves, regrets, questions, and other half-buried artifacts of memory. Place, both geological and historical, are at the center of these poems, as are concerns about illness, climate change, gender-based violence, and political unrest.
BK $9.25
04/14/2023
***In DENNIS CALLACI's (REFRIGERATOR, Shrimper Records) third book, Lost Reflection, the author has assembled seven short stories that are sewn together with characters whose reflections on the past are not to be trusted. Tug at the seams of the book to find the connective tissue—a clone of a character in one story appearing with an assumed name in the next, a reinterpretation of previous events here and again there. Or pay no mind to the lost echo searching eternally.
BK $9.25
03/17/2023
***Kissing the Monster Hunter is a book about monster hunters, unseen monsters, perpetual dreamers, and the creatures (human and otherwise) who love them. The unmissable prose poems and micros in this collection thrust us into an alternate reality where hope, love, and intimacy, when gone unrecognized, become a mystical force to be reckoned with.
BK $9.25
03/03/2023
***Because their lifespan is so much shorter than our own, a life with dogs involves repeated lessons in mortality. But there are lessons in love and tender care as well. With them, we have to learn to live in the moment "because a dog doesn’t spill regret throughout the house, doesn’t lurk in a life of guilt and second-guessing." Victoria reflects on the lives of five dogs and how their need for the outdoors helped to create opportunities to repeatedly seize the day. The Mortality of Dogs and Humans is a book for anyone who has ever loved a dog or needs a gift of uplift while grieving the loss of their companion pup.
BK $9.25
03/03/2023
***Victor Gastelum, known for the artwork he did for numerous Calexico releases and punk rock flyers, branches out with his first collection of abstract images. Robert Vodicka, former label manager at New Alliance Records, wrote the text. Gastelum and Vodicka used chance procedures to match the specific images to the text. The book also features an interview with Gastelum and Vodicka, conducted by Dennis Callaci of Bamboo Dart Press and Shrimper Records.
BK $11.00
12/09/2022
***Do What the Boss Says: Stories of Family and Childhood is a collection of short-short stories exploring the adult-child dynamic. A daughter nervously visits her father who has now become a stranger; a young Irish girl substitutes a cardboard cut-out for her presence within her own family; a naive schoolboy is tricked by a more streetwise passer-by; a child tries to impress her village by breaking the world record for stepping in and out of a doorway. This chapbook offers you a kaleidoscopic view of the pressures, conflicts and joys of childhood and family life: from surreal fables to memoir, to idiosyncratic realism, to ghost stories about weird encounters.
BK $9.25
12/09/2022
***Like a farmer rotating his crops, Peter Wortsman periodically ploughs words back into the mulch of meaning. Romanian émigré DADA poet Tristran Tzara (aka Samuel Rosenstock, 1896-1963) gave it a name: cut-up (or "découpé" in French). Wortsman reverts to cutups when he's too distracted, depressed, dumbfounded or deranged to write in the regular manner. As the isolation of virtual lockdown during the seemingly interminable Covid-19 pandemic stretches into its third year, Wortsman, a modern-day monk, languishes in the solitude of his cell, longing for meaningful communion. Absent belief in a transcendent being, cutups take the place of prayer.
BK $9.25
12/09/2022
***In After the Dome Fire, author Ruth Nolan takes readers on an eco-poetic journey through the wilderness of California's Mojave Desert and Southern California, and the work of firefighting and raising a daughter as a single parent in a rough yet nurturing landscape. The poems also evoke a fierce and beautiful "desert" revealed as a vibrant character with its own agency to survive and regenerate from the devastating impacts of wildfires, and remind us all of the power of our desert environment to inspire and regenerate the human spirit.
BK $9.25
09/30/2022
***Lyon Street is a love letter to a perpetually reincarnating city that often fails to remember itself. Reading Lyon Street, says novelist David Scott Ewers, is to imbibe “a San Francisco of the Mind.” This art piece’s linked poems, playing as jazz solos over common changes, evocative artwork, street map design, and playfully archival elements conjure a San Francisco in which past and possibility provocatively entwine. Its poems animate a more dangerous, often tragic, yet truly gentle San Francisco lost, reckon with seismic shifts in this forgetful place, and come to embrace the enduring openness of life at Pacific’s edge.
BK $9.25
09/30/2022
***In this mini-collection of city/country poems in mostly free verse, Stephanie Barbé Hammer runs in and out of sprinklers in a Manhattan playground, picks up a slug by accident in the Cascades, reads about sequoia on 5th avenue, make an uncomfortable journey to the Hôpital américain in Paris, strolls a surprisingly sensual Geneva Switzerland at 2 am, encounters a mountain lion in Anaheim Hills, boards buses and trains In Los Angeles, and attempts repeatedly to make peace with living in rural Washington State, with the spiritual assistance of Eva Gabor. Cover art by Dennis Callaci.
BK $9.25
08/26/2022
***"Shaun was an accomplished musician, and singer. He started singing and playing the clarinet when he was young, and sang in an a cappella group in Hollywood. I started writing the poems for Missing Shaun because it was my way to get my emotions out, to lay them down on paper, and to try to leave them somewhere safe. These poems were written mostly in the first few moments and days when our emotions were raw, when it was still hard to believe that we had lost him. The last section of poems are a few small letters to you." "Thomas R. Thomas" has crushed us with his words and his love. This collection emits a raw, poignant loneliness of losing a loved one. Life is loss. Thomas dances the loss with each quipped line. His words make us tremble for that unthinkable. When they have departed and that silent room hums with stillness. He makes us feel in a time when feelings are to be buried and not to be shared. He has the courage to capture that dreaded pain. His use of time and moments evaporating makes empty car spaces, open doors, and shifting shadows; lucid. May we all have warm compassion when those pained chapters in our lives come. Decidedly well written, beautiful and brave."—T. Anders Carson author of Unfortunately, Thanks for Everything
BK $9.25
08/26/2022
***In Border/Between: A Symphony in Essays, Carol D. Marsh writes about death, addictions, and war while also exploring how written form and expression have a counterpart in music. Structured upon the 4-movement symphony and incorporating other forms such as the rock song and the Requiem, Border/Between seeks and finds its place in what lies between the sharp and unforgiving edges of ideology and judgment. In refusing to allow borders to govern her, Marsh is able to bring compassion and hope to what seems irredeemable.
BK $12.00
07/01/2022
***The poems in Novel are what happen when you teach a cat to type. They will lead you across a bridge made of bread, through a door in the forest, to a paddock containing stories. They will tell you that it’s not that the dead cannot tie their shoes, they just refuse to. That architects design the elements to withstand the structure. That loose ends are beautiful if not useless. If you’ve picked up this book because you like poems that know where they are going, hurry. Put the book down. You will need to run after them. "Please give Cati Porter’s new book Novel to people who say they don’t like poetry. Not because these poems are simple or straightforward, rather because they are deeply charming. They cast spells: each poem carries the reader on a carpet of words to a world furnished by Porter’s irresistible imagination."—Natasha Sajé, author of Windows and Doors: A Poet Reads Literary Theory
BK $9.25
07/01/2022
***God in a Can is a collection of flash and micro fictions that looks at life through a surreal, and often humorous lens, at various societal behaviors, perceptions at a slant, and unusual scenarios. Paradoxically, the underpinnings, at the core, can be very real in the way the stories explore how we live, struggle to live, and hope to. Robert Scotellaro’s work has been included in W.W. Norton’s Flash Fiction International, Gargoyle, Matter Press, New World Writing, Best Small Fictions 2016, 2017, 2021, Best Microfiction 2020, and elsewhere. He is the author of over fifteen books and chapbooks of poetry and fiction. His latest flash fiction collection, What Are the Chances? (Press 53) was a finalist for The Big Other Book Award. He has, along with James Thomas, co-edited New Micro: Exceptionally Short Fiction, published by W.W. Norton & Co. Robert is one of the founding donors to The Ransom Flash Fiction Collection at the University of Texas, Austin. He lives with his wife in San Francisco.
BK $9.25
05/13/2022
***In this chapbook, explore three worlds in which three brave women push against the external structures of their strange worlds that almost work the same way as ours. Not all is as it seems but courage, wonder, and preservation abound. "Three, Walking is a courageous work of poetic sci-fi-lit. A unique collection of short stories that stretch the imagination of strange worlds where women matter, where women make brave decisions, where women walk in different directions, their own limbs indicative of their power to control their circumstances, their bodies, and their existence. Nikia Chaney is a champion of explorative work, embracing the uniqueness of her own style, Three, Walking is a fantastic treat." —Ginger Galloway, author of Hope for Lunar Days and Destiny Interrupted.
BK $9.25
10/22/2021
***The 909 is a sci-fi script for a movie set in the near-future and taking the form of a reality documentary. The plot centers on a group of people who discuss the implications of “The Mesh”, the technology that replaced the ’Net. Conspiracies, intrigue, and good old-fashioned camaraderie occupy these characters’ thoughts as they try to retain a sense of individuality in an increasingly watchful society. “The 909 is everywhere. No matter where you're from or where you think you're going, the creators of Wckr Spgt have some creepily familiar news for you: This is where you live.”—R. S. Deese, author of Surf Music and We Are Amphibians
BK $9.25
10/22/2021
***Wild Embrace is a collection of poetry written by Tim Hatch (a damaged-but-resilient child abuse survivor) that explores themes of abuse, fragility, and our human obligation to one another. "On so many levels, Hatch’s poems are engaging and moving. It takes a great deal of talent to do what Hatch accomplishes in Wild Embrace; our re-lived experiences can have a kind of occupancy over us, but Hatch finds ways to share his past and dramatize intense human interactions in ways that allow us to witness what is too often unspoken, surrounded by complexities and paradoxes, and shaded with overtones. With wit, wonder, surprise, and empathy, Hatch affirms what we already know about ourselves and others in his unique and vivid collection."—Juan Delgado, author of Vital Signs, winner of the American Book Award
BK $9.25
10/22/2021
Mantz, Juanita E.
Portrait of a Deputy Public Defender (or, how I became a punk rock lawyer)
Bamboo Dart Press
***"What do the Talking Heads and the Clash have to do with the Post Conviction Justice Project Clinic at USC? Everything. Music is not just the soundtrack, but indeed the grounding inspiration for Juanita E. Mantz’s depiction of her evolution from punk princess drop-out to deputy public defender in Riverside California. Mantz’s hybrid memoir makes hard left turns and arrives at surprising destinations; after a toxic stop in corporate law, the author returns to California, rejects the big dollars and elects working with poor clients, many of whom are categorized as mentally incompetent. Mantz's book forces us to consider our past and our future: why bail doesn’t work and how the murder of George Floyd challenges us to do more to transform the criminal justice system, and our relationship with each other. An irresistible, thoughtful, and inspiring read." —Stephanie Barbé Hammer, author of The Puppet Turners of Narrow Interior, and Rescue Plan
BK $9.25
08/13/2021
***A collection of notes, poems, past blog posts, and lyrics that explore the playful morbidities associated with daily existence by WCKR SPGTS's Joel Huschle. The writings will bring you into crematoriums where groceries are incinerated as well as caves full of dead NPR reporters. Witch babies align with black ops interlopers and reservoirs are filled with sentient brown trout and Irish estrogen. Cover art by Dennis Callaci.
BK $9.25
08/06/2021
***Words Become Ashes — An Offering takes you on a pilgrimage in tunnels, on the ground and under Waning Quarter Moon Tear out dead leaves and listen to the vibrations of the river. Ashen trauma transmutes into music in this book that marries Rinne's poetry to her fiberverse works presented in full color. Much for you to discover in the elements, layers, and textures of fiber art and poetry collaged together.
BK $9.25
08/06/2021
***In April 1983, Upland High School senior Anna Marie Bachoc was brutally murdered by her boyfriend, sending waves of shock and disbelief through the quiet city that had branded itself “the city of gracious living.” 17 & Life is a meditation on her life, the life that might have been, and the loss that still haunts the community three decades on.
BK $9.25
06/11/2021
***“Each of the black boxes contains white pages, typed, one or two pages each, stapled at the top left corner. 300-500 word stories; all quite true, unfortunately. These are poetics of chaos. These are the stories I said I’d never write. The kind of stories, once heard, you can’t erase from your mind. Scenes you wish you’d never seen. Sensations you wish never to feel again. When I began writing, photography, and painting, I adopted what is rightly or wrongly termed the Hippocratic Oath that medical people are bound by: simply, do no harm. I’ve held these stories back.” “Kendall Johnson has been a firefighter, trauma psychotherapist, Vietnam War veteran, and mountain climber. He is also a writer, painter, and deep thinker. He is someone who has been drawn to painful places and many moments of the worst kind of violent rage and hatred. Black Box Poetics explores the worst moments of a life and draws us forward into a world where even after one has been shown darkness, light is possible.”—John Brantingham, author of Life, Orange to Pear
BK $9.25
06/11/2021
***In Every Bend, Gail Butensky's photography from a variety of colorful venues is on display, as are intimate photos the artist shot outside of the music scene that she has documented for decades. Every Bend is a collection of photographs sequenced by Butensky to resemble a road trip with diary entries for each encampment that is presented here. A fascinating journey and a feast for the eyes. “Artists hit their mark when they find their voice. Gail’s photos have unmistakable personality. Every Bend collects a sample of Gail’s documentary photographs, many from the early days and nights of “indie” rock when New York and San Francisco were thrilling and gritty, before massive gentrification and cell phones became ubiquitous. Whether in candy colors or black & white, her photos pour out the heat of live shows and warmth of nature’s spaces.”—Barbara Manning, musician
BK $10.00
05/21/2021
***In these mini memoirs, Peter Cherches revisits musical experiences, pleasures, and obsessions that have punctuated his life. A singer and lyricist as well as “one of the innovators of the short short story” (Publishers Weekly), Cherches writes here from the perspective of a voracious listener for whom music is a constant companion. Whether reminiscing about the joys of musical discovery or paying tribute to musicians who have inspired him, Cherches shares his passions with verve and wit. From an early baptism in Beatlemania, to adolescent encounters with free jazz, to expeditions for local musical treasures around the world, this collection of singles in prose is a testament to the sustaining power of music in our lives.
BK $9.25
05/21/2021
***Purgatory Has an Address is a dream state woven of origin myths, it is the search for birth parents; and it is the sober reality of living in a beautiful, pungent, red-lined neighborhood. Washington’s collection of poems speaks to the powerful desire to belong and be in community. It is an homage to the rugged determination of tumbleweeds and an encouragement to keep asking questions even if the answers do not magically appear.
BK $9.25
05/21/2021
***In the New England town of Narrow Interior, 15-year-old cancer survivor Gomer Faithcutt prepares for the practical Junior Life Saving Test while exploring both his own sexuality and the spectral secrets of a forgotten religious sect that once flourished in the town. As his father worries about his son’s health, Gomer learns about desire, friendship, and self-preservation. He glimpses who he can become because of (or despite?) his parents and forges a surprising connection with a mysterious neighbor.
BK $9.25
03/05/2021
***Five Ghost Stories is a collection of five meditations on isolation and absence, each with an abstract connection to the ghost towns that were quickly built in all of our hollowed-out cities over 2020. These stories drive through these new spaces in first gear, flash lighting, searching. Survivors carry those lost within them, in their rib cage, in their heart. Here are five ghost stories, the first one before you and the other four memorized by heart and waiting in their chambers. 36 page paperback. "... these ghost stories are different. Ranging in point of view from the stance of a very young protagonist to a very old one, these stories tell tiny but complex miniature epics of encounters, sightings, construction projects, defense manoeuvers, and – of course – disease. We travel from supermarkets, to living rooms, to embattled township perimeters and laboratories, to highways, to the street outside a strip joint. All in the space of about 45 pages. It’s quite a ride. But the writing is always lyrical, often self-deprecating, and alternatingly fierce and tender.”—Stephanie Barbé Hammer
BK $9.25
01/29/2021
***Life, Orange to Pear follows a man and his daughter Cyndi as they deal with life, the occult, Santa Claus, boys, and death. This universe is a strange and rich place, and sometimes it takes booze and a surreal understanding of sex and The Rockford Files to get through life. Mostly though what it takes is a deep and abiding love for the richness of oranges and pears, how their scent can take you over and make everything in the moment all right. 45 pages. "In an age of superficiality, mediocrity, and sound-cliches, John Brantingham is a genuine throwback to when Men of Letters roamed the literary prairies: a scholar, novelist, poet, essayist, scriptwriter, public speaker, reviewer, professor, mentor, and festival organizer. He is first-rate in everything he turns his mind and hand to. His poems benefit from the breadth of his life experiences as well as his formal academic training. His creative and intellectual emanations brim with his enthusiasms, his versatility, and the depths of spirituality and social conscience at the core of his soul. There is no one of whom I could speak more highly, as a writer and as a person."—Gerald Locklin, poet "John Brantingham’s ability to convey the essence of his characters is unparalleled. The emotional truths on the page resonate deep within the reader. His ear for dialogue, his ability to render just the right details of a scene is an impeccable balance of control and sensitivity. Effortless authenticity. What a joy to read his...
BK $9.25
11/27/2020
***Set in coastal California, The Loss Detector is a funny/sad portrait of teenage blues and of a small, transplanted family of non-conformists. The flawed but lovable characters in MEG POKRASS' novella remind us of how the world's most beautiful places are not always the easiest in which to thrive. Moments of giddy, perceived freedom set against resignation dot the narrative in such a way that will leave you changed. 46-page paper back. Split release between Bamboo Dart Press, Pelekinesis and Shrimper. "Meg Pokrass is the virtuoso of the weird, a specialist of the out-of-the-blue. Her stories take the unexpected route every time, so that with each line the reader is bumped out of her preconceptions. Sometimes even the end of a sentence cannot be counted on. Her narration is confiding but marvelously unsettling. The Loss Detector follows Nikki out of the familiar comfort of family, hurls her into its breakup, and then follows Nikki, her mother, and brother through a series of attempts to remake that family or substitute something else for its loss. Every step along the way is straightforward, poignant, sometimes tender, often funny. It’s everything you never knew a novella-in-flash could be."—Mary Grimm, author of Left to Themselves (novel) and Stealing Time
BK $9.25
10/30/2020