Bud Smith's Blog: Bud Smith , page 7

Dr Doctor Podcast, F 250 reviewed by Josh Spilker, Rain.

It’s about to storm like crazy here in NJ. Sky is dark. 

A couple things that aren’t storms.

1. The Dr Doctor Podcast had me on their show, getting into a deep conversation about my novel F 250

2. Josh Spilker shared some thoughts on the novel F 250 on his site. 

3. Last night I went to the release party for the new journal Freeman’s. It was quite a party. Check out Freeman’s for some new stories from some real war horses. 

4. It’s 99% humidity right now. 

5. I need a lap that’ll last 1000 years. 

Coral Reef

The best night I ever had with Nadine, I was hallucinating. We both were.

It was around eleven pm on a Tuesday and it was just about to snow. We were doing laps of Baygate. Just because.

This was probably when gas was 95 cents a gallon.

And cigarettes were 3 dollars.

And my hair was long, down past my shoulders, stupid long, and it stunk because I never washed it.

And before my ring finger had been bitten off by my neighbor’s doberman pincher.

Nadine was driving and I was in the back seat of her car, laying flat, sneakers pressed flat against on of the back window. I was on my back smoking a cigarette, which I hardly ever did, only when I was with Nadine.

That’s how we were, we both did things we hardly ever did when we were in each other’s company.

I smoked cigarettes, and she dated assholes. I was the asshole. She had the cigarettes.

“I shouldn’t be driving,” she said, like a wheeze.

“Well I can’t drive either,” I said.

“Neither of of us should be driving.”

It wasn’t like we were going anywhere, our destination was zilch. It was just that we were driving, to drive, to move because we could be. That’s how our relationship was and still would be, if we had both been as set on zilch destination as I was.

Orange light passed like ghostly orbs through her dirty window as I faced perpendicular to the direction of our true travel.

“I’m not driving,” I said, “It’s only you who shouldn’t be driving.”

I sat up and let her take a drag from her own cigarette, and I said, “Just think of it like you’re piloting a submarine and we’re underwater. You can’t crash into anything when you’re at the bottom of the sea.”

“That’s BS! You can crash into electric coral reef!”

“Okay, then just imagine that all the buildings are electrified coral reef.”

“Ha, I’ll do that.”

Her hair was longer then too, and it wasn’t blonde yet. I saw a picture of her the other day, her hair is short now and she is marrying a cop. This was on Facebook, her haircut, short and spiky made me think she will have two sons that will play soccer and they both will suck but she’ll cheer anyway from the bench.

It’s okay, I’m sure she’d look at my picture too say “what happened to him?” if I had a facebook, but I don’t. I was in the library and someone had forgotten to sign out of their account. Judging by my experience, 1/6 people in the public libraries of the world forget to sign out of their facebook accounts.

Cool.

I was tripping enough, this time, that when I looked out of the back window of Nadine’s car, I looked out on the small town where I had grown up, where I’d spent all of my youth and my life up to that point, but the small town looked different.

The street lights running down route 9 were brighter.

It looked like Las Vegas, instead of some podunk little blip on a New Jersey map right on the edge of the marsh.

My eyes got wider.

I saw the brontosaurus outside of Dinosaur Liquor and it was somehow catching a neon reflection, from I don’t know where and the brontosaurus was lit up like a blue bonfire.

I was about to say to Nadine, “I’m never leaving, I’m going to stay in this town forever, or be its mayor or its judge or nobody at all and I’ll flourish here, I’ll be happy, so happy, happiest of all …”

But just then Nadine turned off of route 9 and headed into the darkness on Morris avenue with the flickering streetlight and the asphalt disappearing halfway down where the dune grass starts—so I didn’t say anything.

And that feeling was gone and has never returned.

Of course, I’ve gone too, and haven’t been back to that place in so long. Maybe it’s all been flattened or boxed up in trucks and moved out to make room for nicer, shinier things.

I kept quiet.

I sucked my breath in.

I sucked my breath in so deep and I thought so hard on the backseat that eventually, Nadine said, “Are you alright?”

She’d pulled the car over and turned the headlights off and she’d climbed in the back seat with me, to see if I was dead.

I wasn’t dead.

She isn’t now either.

She’s marrying this cop I’ve heard.

Which I can’t believe.

Someone has to marry cops, they will lead you to believe.

I would have never guessed it’d be Nadine.

Oh! That night, the reason why I remember it so fondly. When we finally sobered up enough.

And the snow never showed up.

And it was 1 am or 2 am.

We went back to Dinosaur Liquor.

And get this, we sawed off the brontosaurus’ head.

I still have it.

I keep it in my room and I have it painted neon blue, it’s like stupid bright and sometimes I put it on top of the TV, even. When people come over they ask what it is, and I say. “Who knows?”

If I ever make my own Facebook profile, I’ll probably have the dinosaur be my profile picture.

And the only message I’ll ever send will be to Nadine.

Something like, “Beware electric coral reef.”

September 11th 2015

Outside the window, I hear a jackhammer. And children running down the sidewalk to the park, yelling at each other, laughing. There’s undisclosed birds in the trees.

The super of my building just came to my door and tried to unlock it, but I have the safety chain on and I yelled “What the Fuck!”. He’s hunting the building for a leak that might be coming from the roof after that heavy rain.

New York City is a guy talking to another guy down on the stoop, I can hear them talking about last night’s football game.

It’s the leaves shaking and brushing against the fire escape. It’s the sound of a spandex bike person zipping down 173rd street, the click click click of her wheels. Things are happening. People are living. It’s September 11th 2015.

When the planes hit the towers, I didn’t live here yet. I was working in NJ on this very steep hill by a river. I was pushing a wheelbarrow from the bottom of the hill to the top of the hill with stone and cement in it. My boss used to drop us off at 7am and come back around 4pm. That day, he pulled back in the driveway around 9am and yelled, “Get in the truck! We’re done here!'”

My coworker and I started celebrating. I pushed my wheelbarrow over and raised my hands over my head like I’d just won a world championship.

We climbed in the truck.

“Why we leaving early?”

He turned on the radio. Damn, isn’t it horrible when you hear about the end of the world on the radio?

New York City is bodegas open and making you a sandwich. Or bodegas closed down and no sandwich. Different days, different things.

But today, I see an air conditioner window box leaking condensation onto a dip of the sidewalk where there’s already a puddle. And I see a girl walking a white and black spotted pibull and the dog stops walking and hangs his head into the puddle and drinks. Smiling when he is done. Girl and dog walking on.

Uno Kudo Volume 5 Call for Submissions

Hello writers and artists!

Uno Kudo, an art meets lit, full color glossy print/digital is open for submissions.

Have you never seen an issue of Uno Kudo?

Here is Volume 3 as a Free PDF

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Submissions are OPEN for Uno Kudo volume 5!

send your work, NOW:

9/10/15

through

11/11/15

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SUBMIT: unokudo@gmail.com

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Writers: Uno Kudo is looking for your most vivid work: short stories, poems, creative non-fiction, to be matched up side by side with artwork that will knock your socks off.

Please send writing as a .doc file.

No theme. No holds barred.

In the subject line, please write either:

ATTN: Fiction/Title and author

Or

ATTN: poetry/Title and author

Fiction: stories under 1500 preferred

Poetry: send up to six poems (separate Word docs are fine)

short stories: send one

flash fiction: max 500 words each, send up to three (separate Word docs are fine)

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Artists: Please send art as a 300 dpi Jpeg 12″ high. Also send links to your websites. In this edition we will be using more stand alone art but we will still be matching up art to some of the stories and poems so it would be really awesome to see the expanse of your work.

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Submissions are now open for our yearly print anthology that combines art and writing in wild ways. All profits from the sales of Uno Kudo will again be donated to PEN international, a charity that fights for the rights of oppressed artists worldwide.

Uno Kudo will be published in book form, available through Amazon, and available as a digital download.

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We’d like to see something that has not been published elsewhere. We’d like to see something that is not sim. sub. We’d like to buy you a beer. All those things.

Thank you!

–Bud Smith

17 and 23

if I stomp on my glasses

the world

goes away 

but I can still 

imagine your body 

rumor has it 

every disposable camera 

is blank is open   

you carry one 

in whatever purse 

your sister hasn’t absorbed 

there is a shade thrown 

across the mossy yard 

and a swimming pool 

full of black leaves 

I’m a visitor here 

from dirt road Mars 

me, myself, I’m 

getting fucked up 

in a blue knit hammock 

swaying back and forth 

to the rhythm

of nothing 

nowhere 

never mind 

your sexy skull

today 

is no one’s

birthday

just diet-death-cola 

rat-poison-cake-yours. 

Interview about Chapbooks

I talked to Laura Madeline Wiseman, author of Drink about my books and about making DIY chapbooks, specifically the free ones I give out at my readings that are ‘sets’ of what I read. 

Check the interview our here 

Psalm to Kim Davis

there is no light bulb here

the old ways have been outlawed

I’ve loved like a demolition derby crashing through the walls of a wedding chapel

here is twenty two thousand dollars I kept it in my shoe

give it to my widow

when she is no longer my wife 

and I am filament and I am glass

I am humming light 

the new ways are not knocking 

will not have a key either 

will kick apart the 

cathedral door.

$1 Extra To Gaze Upon Alligator Boy

the salesman explains

how to walk across

broken glass

he says be kind

to your bus drivers

paint your house

what you’d call a normal color

keep your feet flat

your weight equally distributed

ddd

years ago, I dated a girl

who ate light bulbs

not all the time

just sometimes

she’d put a 120 watt in her teeth

and crunch down

her name was Laurie

one time she saw me swallow

a piece of sugar free gum

that’s as heroic

as I ever got

ddd

my neighbor

hammered a spike

into his skull

just the naval cavity though

after saying

‘hold my beer boy

now watch this’

he got a werewolf pregnant

one night

and the child walks

across the clothes line

strung between two

flourishing trees

apples falling

on the perfect

lawn

ddd

I have illustrated

various bodies

in exchange for

an electric dryer

two microwave ovens

lessons on how

to better

spit

fire

ddd

now here’s some additional tricks:

1.) chew slow and keep

a regulated diet

so the glass

slips through you fast

2)  if you have to borrow

any money, pay

it back quick

also gift a blueberry pie

3.) only use dull spikes

and toy hammers

kiss whoever you kiss

with minimal teeth

4.) try to be an electrically

beautiful individual

ddd

bad news:

the police

in this town

have a quota to meet

as per murdering

anyone

deemed

a freak

dddd

good news:

we are experts

at whipping

sharpened knives

through

convenient

cover of

fog.

Interviewed at Literary Orphans

Today Literary Orphans interviewed Brian Alan Ellis and myself about our split book Tables Without Chairs. 

We are not serious people. 

So you might laugh. 

Read it here  

New Book Out Now: Tables Without Chairs

Today is the release day of Tables Without Chairs!

  

The book is a three way collaboration I was involved in with Brian Alan Ellis (author of King Shit, and Something Good, Something Bad, Something Dirty) and the illustrator Waylon Thornton. 

I have a story cycle in the book called CALM FACE which is a weird tour of my neighborhood in NYC that owes less to literature and more to an episode of Seinfeld if the cast was all Robotrippin’. 

Here’s a piece called Reviews of My Corner Bodega that is on the site Electric Cereal. 

Brian’s part of the book is so good. He has a section called SAD LAUGHTER that is mostly anti-writing advice tweets and status updates. And also a section called SPOOKY HOUSE which is all about a guy who is depressed and tries to fight off the depression with copious amounts of casual sex and drugs. Fun stuff. 

  

Waylon drew some rad as hell monsters. There’s nothing better than monster drawings in a book as weird and crazy as this. 

This is the true story… of two writers [BUD SMITH and BRIAN ALAN ELLIS]… picked to fill up their own sections of the same book… sometimes having to solicit work from friends [WAYLON THORNTON]… so they can all party together… and have their work published… to find out what happens… when art and literature stop being polite… and start getting real…

“[TABLES WITHOUT CHAIRS #1 is] wilder than any animal at any itinerant circus in the world… and in terms of lexical acrobatics, a real high-wire act. Sit back and enjoy the show.”—RYAN RIDGE, author of American Homes

“BRIAN ALAN ELLIS and BUD SMITH are both great and uniquely themselves. Together they are even more hilarious and reckless than they’ve ever been. Reckless in a good way. Like two dudes flipping cop cars after a basketball game. This book is a riot.”—TROY JAMES WEAVER, author of Witchita Stories

Here’s what This Book Will Change Your Life said: “Tables Without Chairs #1 is a platform for what [Brian Alan Ellis and Bud Smith] do so well – revel in characters who are scraping by.”

The book is available on Amazon now