Assembled by Mark Spitzer

All Hail the Ressurected Body Bag! That notorious netherspace where contributor corpses are lumped together because we get so much excellent stuff that we just can't take it all -- or perhaps we ran into other concerns -- or maybe the Powers That Be just didn't smile upon the misbegotten jotted down here.
     There is no shame in the Body Bag though. It is an honor to be listed here & historically recalled in the cadaverous caverns of the corpus of the Corpse. Many infamous intellects have been cast into these recesses, along with award-winning star-studded celebrities of letters. And then there are those like yours truly, who spent years and years stuffed inside those body bags, to finally claw their way out -- while others still have been unduly cast among the damned.
     Here, also, is where we showcase lines and fragments of work we believe deserve attention, hacking off limbs, displaying partial parts. We also comment on books sent in, and do quick reviews of myriad things.
     So do not be afraid of the Bag. The Bag is not rejection, the Bag is not death. The Bag is more like a lobby with comfy couches for souls to hang out and drink margaritas. And every margarita has one of those neat little umbrellas in it. As well as a virtual fortune cookie on the side.

 

THE DISMEMBERED REMEMBERED

Sharon Shahan wants...

"a man
who can screw me
over backwards
wears only muscle
smokes twenty
two cigarettes
a night and isn't
afraid of pussy."

Excerpt from John Thomas letter:

"Decades ago, when I ran with Neal Cassady and Charles Bukowski, I published all over the country. Then, in the late 1960s, for reasons too silly to relate, I decided never again to submit my work... [and the letter goes on -- it caught our attention here at the Corpse].
 

Robert Boliek informs us:

     "First Homer went blind, then he died. There's been no music since. I mean it. No music at all.
     Nothing to drown out the bitching. The endless nagging. The eternally endless nagging of the ultimate Queen-Bitch herself, my lovely wife. The Goddess."

Joan C. Kelley's "sex-sueded love:"

                                                                      "...A red-finned Chevy
Cruising the lonesome roads of Tennessee, Alabama. The ravines,

The dry pines, made us long for your greasy hair and pouty lips...
                                                  you're larger than a christ on a cross

On any hill, healing us through stains on the bathroom floor of a Tuscaloosa
Texaco station... We've

Seen you flying under bridges, standing on your head in a juice bar in LA. The cat
Writes you postcards..."

David Ruslander's Chimera:

"For a thousand dollars she'll moan and whimper,
be innocent or naughty. It's a role...
she's learned her craft. Intelligent, gorgeous,
empty, a strange and bitter crop on an exotic tree.
You smell the scent of magnolia, clean and fresh.
What she smells is sour sex and burning fetid flesh.
Her fruit hangs for crows to pluck"

Gerard Varni:

"Ishmael? Fuck that punk; call me Judas..."

"we and digital oysters and tingly/motorcycles must wobble over hair/where boys from your wife purr; and I with my/vinyl headache will hum psychotically/while cooks mash jolly kings into souffle./nevertheless, they who shat were our/blue televisions blaring encrypted..."

Joseph Aprile's history of humans in a nutshell:

     "Okay some bones were found, catalogued, measured and recorded. These bones belonged to a... female animal that walked on two legs about four million years ago. A discovery of a lifetime. The earliest humanoid walked the planet four million years ago. Four million years that's quite a few generations, about 133,000 generations. That's quite a few times around the wheel. That's quite a few times in which the same old tiring questions must have arisen in the gray matter of all those billions of individual brains. Our old favorite: "Who am I?, or "What's this all about?", or expressed in more modern intellectual terms, "What is the nature of the universe?", "Is there a supreme being?", etc. etc.
     Generation after generation we've pondered, discussed, delineated, determined, discussed some more. There have been times of brilliance and absolutely sheer stupidity. The real question, however, is... if Lucy really is one of our earliest ancestors and, in fact, mother of us all, did she suffer some major mental deficiency or neuronal dysfunction that would account for the passing down of such deleterious genes?"

                    [We at the Corpse sure hope so! Otherwise "poetry" could very well come                                                             from genetic perfection]

TURNED OUR CRANK

Nat Hardy (get a thong), Nancy Kangas, Aaron Belz, Ravikumar Menon, Indran Amirthanayagam (Good Ginsberg poem up until the Kerouac -- takes character not to pimp out a poem), Matt Hy, Steve Harris, Erin Elizabeth, Michael Baker, Lucas Cunningham, Wayne Lindberg, John Rimpington, Nan Deyo, Lad Moore, J.J. Wylie, Aimee Houser, Justin Chin, Ronald Gibbs, Archie Ray Norsworthy, Ted Brewer, Trevor Dodge, Derik White, Nan Leslie, Steven M. Weine (Please send us essays on the same stuff), Dr. Menlo, Joan Yin Cheung, Virginia Reynolds, Kimberly Townsend Palmer, Tim Cumming, Watters, A. di Michele, Jay Griswald (email us), the author of the Jonny poems, Terri Smith.
 
 
 
NOT TODAY BUT MAYBE TOMORROW

Eliot Cocaine, Andrew Jagunich, John Heckman, Ellen Douglas, John & Carrie, Bovina Merde (El Head Honcho thought you was a hoax I designed), Richard Hartnett, Jason Young, Amy Grech, Larry Sawyer, Kirsten Menger-Anderson, R.L. Swihart, Woody Evans, Judith Beck, Eric Yost, Christopher D. Guerin, Steve Pisani, Paul Chasse, Jared Millar, John Slavens, Roger Fides, Laird Barron, Kevin Ducey, M. Amerrogance, Norman Minnick, Norman Lock, Stacey Duff, Smiling Bob, Daniel Greenstone, Steven R. Garnett, Michael Baker, Mark Lovas, John E. Eddy, John Marran, Mary Timmins, Dan Marks, Conrad Geller, Gregoryp(tm) (you were right: it was self-indulgent), Jennifer Calkins, Kevin Simmonds, Anna Sidak, Walter Reeves, Tracy Majka, Todd Cantrell, Timothy Lehnert, Maryanne Stahl, Joseph Faria, Ryan Benadetti, Rick Marcus, John Warner, Greg T. Prachyl, Michael Henry (we don't dream about Ashberry), Sam E. Hime, John Cross, Kathie Bender, Carlton Clark, Corwin Ericson, Anthony Dowler, Terence J. Fitzgerald, Sam Vaknin, Ph.D, D.A. Blyler, Leonore Wilson, Hillary Brooks, Helen Tarnowski, Helen Boyce, Terry Bain, Barbara Goldberg, C.C. fiskaali, William Burnette, Jeffery Scott, Breeze Khataie, J.Kevin Wolfe, Adam Perry, Erin Bealmear, Jeff Kirsch, Binx Brown, Chris Stewart, John Dooley, Jeremy C. Garland, Andrew MacArthur, Aidan Baker, Nat's friend from Prague, j.degree, Nicholas Rombes, Maxwell Borders, Joseph Lewis, William Burke, Doug Gurian-Sherman, Feldman Bonks, Gary McCullough, Jason Easterly, Valery Krupnik, Brian Howell, Charles F. Thielman, Chris Sumberg, Dennis Weiser, Joan Wilking, Christopher Karp MD (please send us a kidney or a liver), Tim Landry, Joshua Corey (too many wide-eyed children in the world anyway), Michael Desimone, David J. Rodger, Al Buono, Itumeleng Mahabane (can the subject of TV couch potatoism be beaten any more to death than it already is?), Erin Bealmear, Joe Camhi (Elvis doesn't live), Ernest Wiggins (Henry Miller beatchya to the subject), David Burch, Norman Olson (gotchyer message loud & clear), Michael Ricardi, Reagan Gibbs, Doug Tanouroy, D.N. McDougal, Lee Rossi, Tracy Kirk.
 
 
 
 
NOT OUR BAG OF BONES

Roger Fides, Amy Benson Brown, Chen Lingshan, Reanna Healy, A.M. Muffaz, Gloria Baker Feinstein (and after all that hassle too...), Laurence White.

STUFF RECEIVED/& STUFF LOOKED AT
 

A Dandy Handy Pocket Anthology of Martian Literature. By Billy Knitehawke. Pangborn Books, Ltd. A brief look at the Martian canon, written by a Martian.

Intrepid Traveller and his Merry Band of Pranksters Look for a Kool Place. Episode One. Produced by Ken Kesey and Ken Babbs. Intrepid Trips.com, Pleasantville, Or. $29.99. This is the first in a series of home movies made by Pranksters in the late 60's during them electric Kool-aid acid days. The sounds and music and tomfoolery of Kesey and co. is entertaining, especially the shots of Neal Cassady yammering nonstop while wheeling the bus across America. The modern day intrusions of Kesey and Babbs which frame the flick, however, are just plain dumb. They thrust Pokemon stickers at the audience as if this is supposed to be intelligent. Makes you wonder if they're still high, and where you can get some of what they're smoking. The best part is when the bus is stuck in the sand and all the hippies are frolicking about. Some good racial tension when they go to New Orleans. Handpainted autographed box.

The Carapace of Heaven: Chapbook of poems by T.L. Alexandria Volk, a+bend press, San Francisco: smart hip verse & cool woodcuts regarding the highway, the moon, austere sand. 5 bucks.

Station Wagon: A short movie on video by Colorfast Films, Portland Oregon. Underground filmmaker Lars Larsen directs the story of a whacked-out freak named Clowny who picks up two foreign hitchhikers, leads them into an odyssey of violent verse, and Crashes Smashes Bashes into destruction in the end. Some Danish transvestite cleans up the mess, singing ye old songs. Entertaining et noir, all thumbs up. Write the filmmaker at 2430 SE 52nd St. Portland, Or. 97206 and send him 10 bucks.

A Book of the Book: Some Works and Projections About the Book and Writing. Jerome Rothenberg and Steven Clay, eds. Granary Books, NYC. $28.95.

Chicano Chicanery: Stories by Daniel Chacon. Arte Publico Press, University of Houston. $11.95

The Adventures of Don Chipote: Or, When Parrots Breast-Feed. By Daniel Venegas. Nicolas Kanellos, ed. Arte Publico Press, University of Houston. $12.95.

Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport. By Mark Jonathan Harris and Deborah Oppenheimer. BloomsburyUSA, NY. $24.95.

America's Back Porch. By Daniel Jeffreys. International Publishing Corp. NY., $24.00.

Liberty's Excess. By Lidia Yuknavitch. FC2. Normal, Il.

Voodoomation: The Book of Foretelling. By Garfield Linton. Karu Press. Norcross, Ga.$9.95.

South Central Review, Summer 2000, vol. 17, no. 2. South Central MLA. Yikes!!! And then there's another one: Rethinking 1968: The US & Western Europe. No comment.

Liberte: sur un plateau, 245 & 247. 6$ & 8$.

Nebo. vol. 18. Fall 1999. Plastic cover!

Zyzzyva. Winter 1999. $9.

Black Widow's Wardrobe. By Lucha Corpi. Houston, Tx.

Falling Dark. By Tim Tharp. Milkweed, Mpls., Mn.

In Seven Languages. By Floretin Smarandache. AIUS. Croatian, I think. And in 7 different languages.

The Truth About Them. By Jose Yglesias. Houston, Tx.

Appendices Illustrations & Notes for The Black Box. Complied [sic] by Terence Gower and Monica de la Torre. Smart Art Press. Big red "REJECTED" on cover. whacky art inside.

Ragged Lion: A Tribute to Jack Micheline. John Bennett, ed. The Smith Publishers & Vagabond Press, Ellensburg, Wa. Looks inneresting.

Vagrant Grace. By David Bottoms. Copper Canyon Press, Port Townsend, Wa. Tight stuff.

What You Have Almost Forgotten: Selected Poems. By Gyula Illyes, William Jay Smith, ed. Curbstone Press, Budapest. Yellow paper!

Putere Absoluta. By Traian Pop Traian. Marineasa, Romania? Cat on the cover.

Beethoven in Denver and Other Poems. By Burton Raffel. Conondrum Press, Crested Butte, Co. A pompous book by a pompous man. Blah blah blah blah blah. A waste of ink and paper.

What Ever Happened. By Tim Reynolds. If Publications, Palos Verdes Estates, Ca. Stuff about Ed Sanders & Bush & Patti Smith & James Joyce bound at Kinkos (?).

Aching for Beauty: Footbinding in China. By Wang Ping. University of Minnesota Press, Mpls. Look, we requested a book on Minnesota architecture, and you send us Wang Chung? Do we look like we want to read about footbinding in China? Thanks for the free book, but we don't care.

 

Sometimes People Freak (a typical exchange regarding the Cyber Bag)

Dear Mates, Standing out here at the edge of the plank for so long gave me time to think. I've decided to jump, rather than wait to be shoved off by a band of crazed pirates who might otherwise take great pleasure in the ritual poet-necrophelia known as your "Body Bag". Ay! Had I known the practice was being brought back from the dead I never would have set sail toward the little Isle of Corpse. For the price you ask, I'd rather bare my wares in Greece. Translation: Please remove my poems from consideration. I do not wish to appear in your cyber-fucking-space known as "Cyber Bag" or "Body Bag" (or whatever it is you might decide to call it). Cheers. - Ryan Able.

We'll think about it. - Sptzr.

I suggest you do. I have officially notified you than [sic] my work is not in submission to Exquisite Corpse so I do not expect to find my name or my work mentioned anywhere related to Exquisite Corpse without my express permission. When someone submits work to you, it is based on the submissions guidelines you have posted at the time of submission. There was no "body bag" or "cyber corpse" or any other public reference to your recent plans regarding rejection-notification at the time I sent work in, therefore I neither explicitly nor implicitly gave permission for the possibility of receiving a PUBLIC rejection letter or any other public references connected with my name or work in case of rejection. I will certainly mention the same to others who are displeased with such tactics. - Ryan Able.

You could've asked politely but you contacted us with a trashmouth. One more crack out of you and we'll list you in the belligerent section of the cyber bag, so I suggest you work on your manners and not tell journals what they can and cannot do because they can do anything they want to do with anybody's name. Free speech, you know. Thanks for your concern. - Sptzr.