Monday, January 4, 2010

a new book of documented wanderings by
CAConrad & Frank Sherlock


cover photo by Zoe Strauss

TO ORDER PLEASE CLICK HERE

FOR REVIEWS & INTERVIEWS CLICK HERE

for reading EVENTS click HERE

this book is published by the good people at
Factory School as part of the Heretical Texts series




BOOK SAMPLE:



"I had wrist surgery
so I wouldn't have to
cut them myself."
—Allene Steinberg,
poet & friend

if I removed
my shirt to
hide their
bloodstains I
don't remember

Love and
Revenge
have no
separate
lists of
gods

can you
remember
September 10th
2001?

it's chaos
who gets the
earmark
never the
Daily
Beauties

a LOVE
where each
human cannon
breaches fear's
illusions

near the bank machine
feel cameras
focus overhead

he says I have
a problem with
authority
my mother
winks and
smiles

I was happy
Matisse was
a painter when
my friend could
pay her rent
selling hot
dogs outside
the show

watch them
purchase those
homosexual
home essentials
as though
Stonewall and
other American
Revolutions
were fought to
guarantee
purchase
power

funny how
everyone who
tells me they'd
rather live in
centuries
past is
rich
and
white

dare to compose
a terrible LOVE
for constitutional
stay of execution

dare to compose
a terrible LOVE
for those in
the song
with you

and to
see finally
from a sudden
pair of stilts how
"could've been"
never served
us once

               So the attempt


                                  to reduce us to



                                  seductive packaging has failed     Now what


               In each body

rests every sin of the world that translates as        shots
                                                                                     off the
                                                                                           mark


I am here to be new to


                    the city that birthed me & new to

                    this case that has carried me through


                                                  Red

                                        petals on a

                                                  red rug


                              blur


          the dialectic but

                    bread doesn't usually come in

                                                  primary colors


          Meanwhile here is a theater


               for the archivists to test

                    their nerve
                                             Stilted figures

                                             play-act mass

                                             acres Slick

                                              effigies return

                                              as mock enter

                                              prise models


                              burning

                         before a crowd of silent

                           witness


          An acting troupe addresses
          ethnic cleansing in the waning
          nights of the Fringe Fest. "Of
          course they talk about genocide.
          They're Polish." The show ends.
          Everything burns. A new set
          is built for tomorrow.


               Great & Greater Satans

                         follow our movements from behind

                  the glass that houses the Wooden Shoe


                                             The smell of warring

                              fundamentals that cook themselves

          is     all     over     the     magazines


     Their     pain     Our     pain     I thought I

            might be they          Do they know

     they might be       me                      Nothing says

                                                      terror like a boy

                                             w/ a black eye


                                        I recognize the cover
                                        photo of Clamor Magazine
                                        as the work of Greg Fuchs.
                                        It's an elegant portrait of
                                        his elderly neighbor Delores.
                                        I know I'm too young
                                        for her. Will I be forever?


                    We get our vitamin D

                       in the sunlight

                  frozen in

    this absurd act of urban planning           (also read as big kids
                                                  taking a walk)


     Conrad lets the water

                    ice girl pick his

               flavor     I poke a hole in the cup bottom

                              leaking mine          Lug
ice around


                         long enough it will
become liquid


                                        An essential

                         return tempts me

                         to take a nap on

                         the sugar-water pavement


          A portrait of a rebel leader

                         double-crossed in rugged terrain is captioned

                                        REMEMBER

                                   & I remember again that

                    everything has an anniversary          Like today

A wish is

          caught off

the milkweed &     blown way


---------------------------
CAConrad is the recipient of The Gil Ott Book Award for The Book of Frank (Chax Press, 2009). He is also the author of Advanced Elvis Course (Soft Skull Press, 2009), (Soma)tic Midge (Faux Press, 2008), and Deviant Propulsion (Soft Skull Press, 2006). The son of white trash asphyxiation, his childhood included selling cut flowers along the highway for his mother and helping her shoplift. Visit him online at CAConrad.blogspot.com or with his friends at PhillySound.blogspot.com

Frank Sherlock is the recipient of the 2009 CAC Sexiest Poem Award. He is the author of Over Here (Factory School 2009) and a collaboration with Brett Evans entitled Ready-to-Eat Individual (Lavender Ink 2008). Other publications include Daybook of Perversities & Main Events (Cy Gist Press 2007), Wounds in an Imaginary Nature Show (Night Flag Books 2007) and Spring Diet of Flowers at Night (Mooncalf Press 2006). He is a co-founder of PACE (Poet Activist Community Extension) and a native Philadelphian. You can visit him online at FrankSherlock.blogspot.com or with his friends at PhillySound.blogspot.com

Frank Sherlock (left), CAConrad (right)
reading The City Real & Imagined
for NEXUS Radio