Taco Meat by Michael D. Goscinski

Aleathia says:

If you don't already know, I am in a relationship with an amazing guy and a wonderful writer. Writing brought us together and the love of the world has kept us moving forward. Michael D. Goscinski has recently started putting his work out there again and has a new blog called Taco Meat.

We have always had very different perspectives on writing both in content and process. In the last few years we have both lost some significant people in our lives which caused our writing to feel lost to us. This year Michael found his voice again and has been writing incredible, imaginative stories and poetry. I personally felt a bit jealous and stunted, but his enthusiasm for the written word sparked something in me and I have started writing again. It feels strange and different, but it is happening.

I would like you to go on his journey with him through his blog Taco Meat where he posts work from time to time, spotlights things he likes, and displays his unique photographs.

Thanks for reading!

Aleathia

Quills and Frills-7/12/2014 John Grochalski

Ally says:

Starting with the Last Name Grochalski, published by Coleridge Street Press, is the newest poetry collection by John Grochalski, author of the poetry collections The Noose Doesn't Get Any Looser After You Punch Out, and Glass City as well as the novel, The Librarian.

Here's a sample:

starting with the last name grochalski

starting with the last name 
grochalski

i could trace my lineage
down the bar

at sufak's round corner
on saturday afternoons in pittsburgh

planting roots in the linoleum floor
with grandfathers and uncles and a stray cousin or two

starting with their last names
at the other end

working my way back down the bar

beer and shots
gambling pools and stray packs of smokes

tracing the lineage of everything
that emptied generations

of family fortune 
into the rusty till



bug noir

sure enough
he was resting right there

underneath a table

right where the dame 
told me he'd be

lime green

a million legs
and a million eyes
looking back at me

trying to blend in

i knew the mug

had seen his type 
crawling across

a million walls
and a million floors

but this time
i had him cornered, see

i pulled out my piece

but then i thought better

i blew at him

sent him scurrying
across the tile

the dame
just looked at me

i knew what she expected

what all dames wanted

she wanted
blood and guts

her eyes looked hungry 
for murder

but i just winked at her

doffed my hat

killin's not my thing
sweetheart

i said

before walking away

back into 
the fog of night



inventing abstraction

she sits in the foyer
she says, you're just the man
i've been waiting for

i tell her that it feels like i've been dragged through glass

she hands me a twisted paperclip
says, take this

i tell her that i'm too old for acceptance

she leads me to a window that is open
with a gust of wind blowing in
and says, this has been driving me nuts

i tell her that the insane are closer to god in their way

she says, see if you can get that paper clip
to brace the window shut

and i tell her that there's no saving us now.

she says, a strong guy like you
should be able to jimmy-rig that window

so i tell her that i'm just no good anymore
i'm almost a month away from thirty-nine
and i've never made a dollar that didn't try to kill me
that i can't even get the neighbor across the street
to fix his house alarm

she says, a nice man like you can probably do anything

i tell her that i'm going to get drunk again today
that all those whiskey and wine bottles in the basement
are my cold sacrifices

but she says, if only you could get that paperclip in there 
then things would be so much better

and i think she probably 
doesn't read the newspapers

she says, there, like that
get that paperclip between those holes

and i try and i try and i try

i hand her back the twisted metal
and tell her that it's no use
and the world is full of broken windows

and broken people
with and without love

wind gusts and paperclips

some who understand what kandinsky was doing
when he had moscow by the balls

and the rest of us
who are just trying to get alone
with a quieter kind of death

John Grochalski aims straight for the heart of things. With equal measures of acid and awe, he lights out for territory originally assayed by the legendary Charles Bukowski. Roll down the windows, fire up the imagination, and pass the bottle: you're in for one helluva ride."

                                                                             -Don Wentworth, Editor, Lilliput Review

Amazon    Website    Twitter   Goodreads

John Grochalski has kept a daily (yes DAILY as in he writes a new poem for it EVERY SINGLE DAY) poetry blog since 2008 called Winedrunk Sidewalk.

And if you fashion yourself the lucky type, you can enter to win a copy of Starting With The Last Name Grochalski. 

Regardless, you should pick up a copy of Starting With the Last Name Grochalski. You won't be disappointed.

                                                                                                         

Art Bomb-5/16/2014 Olafur Eliasson

Aleathia says:

In 2007 I went to San Francisco to do a poetry reading and stayed with my friend MK.  During that trip we went to the MOMA to see the Joseph Cornell exhibit, but what interested me more was a series of installations in a gallery showing called "Take Your Time" by Olafur Eliasson.

I had never been to a museum in a big city and had never experienced the power of large installations.  I was intrigued by the sheer mass of them.  They were full of angles and light and textures.  Intricate and simple at the same time.

"One Way Color Tunnel"

"Beauty"

This installation was called "Beauty".  It was like walking through a misting rain forest on a great spongy jungle floor.  You were invited to walk through it or stand by and admire it.  It touched me so much I wrote a poem about it.

Beauty

for MK

Water falls smoothly like silk hair of a beast, flowing.

Fresnel lamp raises fractal prisms

in walled mist, the distant hum

coming from the blackness.

You move through,

face glistening unaffected

by hidden eyes devouring you,

distorting the water with the curves

of your body; turning our perceptions

into silence wrapped moments.

Touching without touching,

you find the answers we have all searched for,

though never found, now quietly parceled

in one tiny ray of light

on the bridge of your nose.

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

"Moss Wall"

This piece was most impressive.  With the man standing there you can understand the scale.  It was tucked between two white walls all by itself.  The smell of dried moss was cloying and comfortable at the same time. This installation also inspired me to write a poem.

Shipwrecked

It is a wall of honeyed trees;

the aerial view, density personified,

engulfing and pushing

the girl simultaneously.

Her body pulled inward

by the smell of it,

something akin to seaside,

and hay in mid-day heat.

Its branches a delicate coral,

an entanglement of water removed

from the primal habitat,

climbing walls instead of creeping sand,

and she wants to swim through it,

lie in it like a simpleton

as if she belonged there,

pretending for only a few moments

that she is a daughter of the ocean.

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

The last noted exhibition was at the Tate Modern in London, England.  If your local museum ever features Olafur Eliasson it would be worth the price of admission to go and see it.  Here is a video about one of his installations called "Little Sun".

Olafur Eliasson's Little Sun