ONLINE FEATURE-SOMATIC COMIC REVIEW OF “RAT POISON #4”

Somatic Comic Review of “Rat Poison #4” by Louis S. Whiteford

Louis S. Whiteford
"Rat Poison #4"
Self Published, 2014

For this one, find a primo back alley. The grimier the better. There should be plenty of trash on the ground, broken glass, oil-slicked puddles, abandoned needles; the whole lot. Plant yourself by a dumpster, preferably overflowing, with the most repulsive odor that you can possibly find. You should be unable to avoid deep whiffs of rotting produce, mold, decay. Take a quick look inside, there should be slime: if there’s no slime in the dumpster, move along and find an even filthier spot. This is a gross, dirty comic, and the environ should reflect that.
Light a cigarette. Even if you don’t smoke, just for the ambiance, as an incense of sorts. Light a whole pack on fire if you can, the air should be thick with gray, cancerous fumes. A 40 oz. would help too, getting a good buzz on will probably help with your enjoyment of the comic, but otherwise just sprinkle some malt liquor in a circle around your reading spot, as a sort of ritualistic sealing of the space with the scent of spilled beer, garbage, and smoke.
Now that you’ve settled into the most disgusting, gross space you can find, it’s time to crack open the comic. You’ll immediately be swept up into the wyrd tales contained within: Kelsey Grammar leading a bleak existence on a secluded vineyard; pissed off queer punks yelling at bourgeois children; fucked up scientists creating murderous, mutant animals with an insatiable thirst for beer and cocaine. Really gross, disgusting stuff; if you were able to manage to keep your dinner down over the sights and scents of the back alley haunt you’ve established for the reading, good luck making it from one cover to the other without retching at the contents within. The stories all tangled up with each other, no victories for any of the characters, misanthropy abounds, great for a wistful punk on a quiet evening who digs hanging around trash and being a trash person.

REVIEW BY ROBBY FRIEDLEN

Online Feature-Somatic Book Review of The First Bad Man

Somatic Book Review of Miranda July’s The First Bad Man

Miranda July
The First Bad Man
Scribner
$16

Before reading Miranda July’s The First Bad Man, set up an airbnb or couchsurf account. Host someone younger and more attractive than yourself, preferably of the same sex.
The night before they arrive, put on a pair of sweatpants. Sit on the sofa and eat half a box of Oreos. Feel gross.
Put on a kickboxing video. Watch it while eating a few more Oreos. Watch another. Eat more Oreos.
Open the book. It is preferred that this reading takes place in one sitting. If one is to get up, it should only be to further stuff his or her face, to further the feeling of self-disgust. Occasional longer breaks may be taken, but only if they are used to watch another kickboxing video. Or, if that gets tiring, watching Jillian Michaels is fine.
Fall asleep on the couch in your own filth.
In the morning, be sure to arrange the house or apartment very meticulously. Put everything in its place. Make sure it is spotless. Have more fitness/fighting videos on in the background while this happens. Make sure to be constantly eating junk food. This is important.
When your guest arrives, act very awkward. Eventually, start a fight. Use the moves you learned in the videos. Be jealous of how attractive they are. Feel inferior.

REVIEW BY SHY WATSON

ONLINE FEATURE-MICRO BOOK REVIEW OF GO FIND YOUR FATHER/ A FAMOUS BLUES

Micro Book Review of Go Find Your Father/ A Famous Blues by Harmony Holiday

Go Find Your Father/ A Famous Blues
Harmony Holiday
                                                       Gold Line Press 
                                                       $16

Harmony Holiday’s Go Find Your Father/A Famous Blues is a curious compendium of mesmerizing montages derived from memory, nimbly memorializing a melodious, near musical-refrain, “imagining is remembering”, that creates an indelible, sonorous and syncretic impact on the reader’s mind. Holiday injects a generous modicum of vigorous energy in the text by tracing the roots of the Black myth through the ages and compiling a mythopoeic, subtly revelatory web of entrancing yarns, gutting and riveting in equal measure, authentic, raw, polyvalent and streaked with glorious nostalgia. Holiday’s various moods as borne by her authorial persona, her delicate, dexterous, deifying epistolary epistles, despite mythologizing and edifying her father, Jimmie Holiday, to at times caricaturish and stilted proportions, imbuing the ongoing psychodrama with unnecessary bathos, magnificently succeeds in evoking the grandeur of a bygone era. It is in the meticulous creation of a fascinating world of blues, the contextualizing of a girl’s psychic journey in the intricate tapestry of a surcharged musical ethos, that Holiday transcends the spatio-temporal limits imposed by the text on the page. Holiday effortlessly weaves together a world out of the ambiguous fruits of mutative memory, enthralling the reader with anecdotal references, charming poetic fallacies, paeans replete with fantastic lore, and a synesthetic text that bleeds into music.

REVIEW BY ANEESHA ROY

GROOVY TIMES WITH BOMBAY GIN! FUNDRAISER EXTRAVAGANZA 11/24/15

LIVE MUSIC * REFRESHMENTS * PRIZES

Come through and help support Bombay Gin!

Raffle Items include:

-$25 gift card to Trident Booksellers and Café

-signed copies of Brooke Gessay McNamura’s Feed Your Vow: Poems for Falling into Fullness, Sarah Schantz’s Fig, Richard Froude’s Fabric, Reed Bye’s Fire for Thought & The Lune, Vol.1, No. 5

-records donated from Bart’s Record Shop

-Sean Fields Magazine copies

& more!

Silent Auction Items include:

-1:1 writing consultation with Anne Waldman

-2 hour card reading by Selah Saterstrom

-One Saturday in either Ritual Winter or Elemental Spring Workshop

-1:1 writing consultation with Reed Bye

-Custom essential oil blend (perfume,spray, or tincture)

-Life Skills coaching session for stressed writers

& more!

Online Feature-Micro Book Review of My Struggle

Micro Book Review of  My Struggle by Karl Ove Knausgaard

My Struggle
Karl Ove Knausgaard
Translated by Don Bartlett
Originally Published by Forgalet Oktober (2009)
English Translation published by Archipelago Books (2012)
$14.40

As many readers have stated, Knausgaard may be the progressive Proust of our century. He weaves an intricate web of day-to-day life without batting an eyelid. From divorce and the hatred of his own children, My Struggle achieves the honesty of the human heart, the absolutism of a daily rhythm that is locked within the bodies of any modern citizen of the world. While Knausgaard’s life story may seem petty and exceedingly redundant, it provides a wide scope of relativism and subtle criticism of the travails of the first-world human condition. It is difficult to place this book on the coffee table, it will make your thoughts tick and your mind hungry for more.

REVIEW BY CAMILLE CRAIG

THIRD 2015 BOMBAY GIN READING SERIES 11/17/15

RSVP ON FACEBOOK HERE!

ONLINE FEATURE : “A TASTE OF GIN: ISSUE FOUR”

A TASTE OF GIN: issue four

curated by Marie Conlan, Bombay Gin’s Web Co-Editor, Poetry Co-Editor, 2015

Featuring work by: Sally Lawton, Eva Carlini, Samy Sabh, and Spencer Hendrixson

A Taste of Gin Online Editorial Feature

Each month (or so) Bombay Gin Literary Journal presents an online feature by one of our editorial board members. We call this: “A Taste of Gin.” These tastes give us, as editors, the opportunity to share our individual artistic and aesthetic visions. We split our Bombay Gin third-mind temporarily in order to show you the nuances, quirks, and concerns we, as an editorial board, comprise. We hope you enjoy these future tastings.

SECOND 2015 BOMBAY GIN READING SERIES 11/10/15