We wrote in our intro that "our fabulous Willie Smith is back! His new book "nothing done" is out from Honest Publishing (2012)," but while it's true that the fabulous Willie Smith is back, the title of his book is not "nothing done," but "Nothing Doing." We misread the title to read almost hopefully (and uncharacteristically for Smith's work) that things are unfinished and thus, possibly, could, one day, be done (albeit in lower case.) Correcting the error, Mr. Smith wrote:

"All right! Thanks kindly for making space in the electronic coffin! I am already inviting folks to the viewing. One minor item, though: the title of the newly-released book containing 22 of my parables, fairy tales and longwinded, lewd jokes is NOTHING DOING (http://www.amazon.com/Nothing-Doing-Willie-Smith/dp/0956665896/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1340677963&sr=1-1&keywords=nothing+doing+willie+smith). "nothing done," as it shows in the previous intro works, too, and might invite controversy, touch off orthographic duelling and otherwise stir up interest. But I like the phrase "nothing doing," because it and it's synonymous riposte "no soap" were gangster talk from the thirties; my high-school dropout innercity father used both phrases regularly: "Daddy -- can I have a dime for some baseball cards?" "Nothing doing, kid;" or "Say, Dad -- could I have the keys to the car tonight so I can take my girlfriend to go see WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? and afterwards fuck the poop out of her in the backseat?" "No soap, son." I guess I could have titled the anthology NO SOAP. But I've already used No Soap in some of my stories and, besides, there is something appealing about the juxtaposition of two words ending in "-ing," one a noun, the other the present participle of a verb. Or am I just full of shit? Well, of course I am full of shit. That's beside the point.   Regards, Willie 

DAY 4
The glass implies the bottle,

Avant Garde Class Reflection -- May 20, 2011

All day....

I daydream of people falling down  the stairs. I daydream about a 12 little old ladies dressed in pink dresses farting in a small elevator and giggling in perfect harmony. I daydream...

They began on the porch.  My daughter saw them first and she said they came in all sizes and they were goats, but my son said no they were deer, perfectly formed deer who had come in from the forests and their coats were immaculately clean pelts of Irish setters but they were certainly not dogs, and I wondered what happened to my son’s and daughter’s eyes, because I could see they were horses, and possibly Egyptian animal deities of revenge and resurrection, and I wondered why these live statues had settled here on our porch in days and nights of dark war in far continents, live gods in our house in 1942 when our people were also contending; and while we were descending the porch the animals we just spotted vanished yet we were all now in the sloping fields, family and many more animals or maybe deities, and we were walking slowly up these meadows of grass and wildflowers, and I was frightened, not of the still horses who were certainly figures of grace but of my own body, because suddenly they took all the juice out of me...

by Ruxandra Cesereanu
translated from the Romanian by ALISTAIR  BLYTH


The men a woman twists around in words are post-males. As a rule, all that is left of them is flayed skin laid out to dry. But sometimes they leave behind visions, phantasms, sensations and emotions.

The man of whom I shall write at the beginning of this series of men of every variety was a cat. Many people might think he was a tomcat, but no, he was a green cat, with piercing eyes and a well-trimmed bushy moustache. A hussar-cat, with strange desires, about which he once told me, as we were sitting on the steps of a pavilion. He had a warm voice, albeit rugose from tobacco, a colonel’s voice, half Prussian, half Polish. He was a short man, striding softly or even slightly swaying, his eyes a little inflamed by alcohol, like a merry frog. That was why I liked him: he was both a cat and a frog.