We’re now offering many of our sold-out titles as free digital chapbooks, including:
OYSTER by Amie Zimmerman
Poets In A Box or Pluto In Motion by Philip Good
Family, A Natural Wonder by Alex Cuff
FREE DIGITAL EDITION
WANT TO HEAR ABOUT THIS DREAM I HAD by Sommer Browning
HEART SUTRA by Adam Tedesco
FREE DIGITAL EDITION
Rembrandt with Cellphone by William Lessard
Reality Beach Issue Six Contributor Keith Moul answers a brief questionnaire by Jordan Hoxsie and Adam Tedesco.
What is your favorite breakfast food?
Egg and meat scrambles
Tell us a bit about your work in REALITY BEACH.
Somewhat earlier poems, very much re-worked through the years. The Illahee poem describes actual events, as accident involving my wife, daughter and in-laws, probably as significant a physical event of their lives, short of death.
What is your creative process?
Any sensual experience, broadening and interrelating with other senses, then an attempt at an intellectual conclusion; then as many times revising as needed. In the case of these works, I have 4-6 earlier versions of each.
Where would you like to be at the end of the universe?
When the universe ends I would be at ease where I sit right this moment, in my home at my computer working.
What is your favorite part about being human?
Humanity is the recipient of the opportunity to achieve happiness via freedom and a just society. I am appalled by those who would deny this gift to all humanity.
What do you rule over?
I do not want to rule over anything other than the limited energy I still possess to make the world better, which is the goal of my poems and photos.
How can we support you and buy more of your work?
I have books that are available. No one has ever asked this question in this way before. Any promotion, reviews, would be helpful.
What if everyone’s dreams came true at once?
Dreams come true for those who have actual dreams (which implies a very positive future) would be great as so many people would achieve peach. I don’t mean ambition, I mean what we have inside us as motivation for life. In fact, often it would not be immediately apparent that such a thing had happened.
Anything coming up in the near future?
More work. I’m looking for publishers for a chap and full length Selected Poems; and I’m about ready to design two additional works based upon my latest writing. I’d also like to think about an additional work involving photography.
Who is your alter ego?
My wife Sylvia stands most closely with me on the voyage, now having traveled together for 52 years. But I don’t consider her an alter ego, as the fact is I don’t understand women much and she has the same problem with men. But as confidantes and allies we excel. To me that means trust. We are blessed by our only child, our daughter Ianthe (check out her art at Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ianthemoul/?hl=en
Reality Beach Issue Six Contributor Denise Jarrott answers a brief questionnaire by Jordan Hoxsie and Adam Tedesco.
What is your favorite breakfast food?
Buttermilk pancakes
Tell us a bit about your work in REALITY BEACH.
These two poems were both from a time in my life when I felt vulnerable, the people who provoked that vulnerability, and the images that opened me. the germ of “blume” began when I was given chrysanthemum tea one evening, and I couldn’t take my eyes off the way the single flower opened in the hot water. that’s a little how my heartfelt at the time: a dry and brittle thing mimicking the gesture of opening. “cyanosis” was born from my obsession that winter with disease, and the fact that blood is blue unless it is oxygenated.
What is your creative process?
I consider writing to be something of an indulgence—a bad habit I don’t intend to break. I’m not disciplined at all, though lately I’m being forced into the habit of scheduling writing time for myself. I often try to steal moments—writing in my notes app on the subway or scribbling physical notes on little bits of paper to revisit later.
Where would you like to be at the end of the universe?
I think being at the end of the universe is a privilege in and of itself.
What is your favorite part about being human?
I think there are so many things to discover and be curious about, and recognizing that same curiosity and desire to know things in others, and to realize that there is so much we don’t know, that’s the most human thing to me. (Can you tell I’m also an aspiring librarian?)
What do you rule over?
This is a funny question, but I think the only thing I can control is how I feel about myself. It’s a process.
How can we support you and buy more of your work?
I think that there has to be much more of an effort to support working class artists, of which I consider myself to be of their number. Ending nepotism in the poetry community, and recognizing hard work and passion when you see it.
As far as my own work is concerned, my full-length book, NYMPH, came out from Vegetarian Alcoholic Press last year. The editor, Freddy LaForce, is the hardest working small press editor out there. He sacrifices so much to keep it running, and the books he puts into the world are so diverse. Supporting this press and other small presses is so key.
What if everyone’s dreams came true at once?
I’m wondering if the fabric of the universe would hold.
Anything coming up in the near future?
My chapbook, Herbarium is coming out soon from a great new press, Sorority Mansion. It’s hand collaged and absolutely gorgeously designed. It’s a limited run of 50 copies.
Who is your alter ego?
I have several, and if I told you, they wouldn’t be very useful alter egos, would they?
X.
And when she left me, I got
into gardening. Cabbages, Anaheim’s,
and chocolate mint.
Daily I said
the rosary, fingered beads
looked like earth from space.
I tossed the photographs;
All, but one.
Dead Leaves
Empty branches reveal a hollow
nest. Body betrays. In the river
Mio tries to wash away her
memories Ink stays. Rice paper
wrinkles like mother’s hands.
One face – death. Opposite
face – resurrection.
Cindy Rinne creates art and writes in San Bernardino, CA. She brings myth to life in contemporary context. Cindy is the author of several books. She is a published translator and a founding member of PoetrIE, a literary community. Her poetry appeared or is forthcoming in Sea Foam Magazine, Blue Heron Review, Gulf Stream Literary Magazine, Driftwood Press, The Honest Ulsterman (Northern Ireland), The Whirlwind Review, Birds Piled Loosely, and others. www.fiberverse.com
Stephen Langlois’ work has appeared in or is forthcoming from The Portland Review, Gigantic Sequins, and Big Lucks, among other places. He has been nominated for multiple Pushcart Prizes and is the recipient of a 2015 NYC Emerging Writers Fellowship from The Center for Fiction. He also curates and hosts Brew: An Evening of Literary Works, a monthly reading series held in Brooklyn.
Reality Beach is now open for video submissions! Submissions may include video poems, video essays, snapshots of lived experience, hallucinatory montages, film and text, letters etched into celluloid, fast and loud videos, videos without sound, homages to film directors, subtitles for a film that was never made, black and white film or oversaturated–the punctual and always late, or videos that never arrive. The real, hyperreal, fantastical, and otherwise. Please submit videos of any length via our Submittable page and include a link to your video online.
Poetry submissions are now open! Send us work through Submittable.
Poetry submissions are now open! Send us work through Submittable.
Poetry submissions are now open! Send us work through Submittable.
Poetry submissions are now open! Send us work through Submittable.
Poetry submissions are now open! Send us work through Submittable.
Poetry submissions are now open! Send us work through Submittable.
Poetry submissions are now open! Send us work through Submittable.
Poetry submissions are now open! Send us poems through Submittable.
We are thrilled to announce that Julia Madsen has joined the REALITY BEACH editorial team as our editor of video submissions, which will open soon.
Julia Madsen is a multimedia poet, teacher, and tutor. She received an MFA in Literary Arts from Brown University and is currently a doctoral student in English/Creative Writing at the University of Denver. She has shown video poetry at Outlet Gallery in Brooklyn, NY, and her work has appeared in VICE’s “The Creators Project.” Her poems and multimedia work have also appeared or are forthcoming in Jubilat, Drunken Boat, Caketrain, Flag+Void, Wo
CARTOGRAPHY
Perhaps it’s time again to consider hiring a new cartographer. With Google Maps and a star chart, a fifteen-year-old boy found an Ancient Mayan city, and I still struggle to understand why I needed to take tenth grade geometry. Overlaying constellations onto the cities, far from the seacoast, away from the riverbeds, he knew the system needed to be completed. He saw that the world didn’t end in 2012 but wanted to know why. Maybe we should start to redraw the maps—time to reset and clarify the lines that divide us. Africa is too small, and we still don’t use the metric system. The Mercator projection has failed us beyond belief and we all know it. If we start over, maybe we’ll see what we’ve been missing all along. Maybe we’ll recover all we’ve lost; the abandoned seaports and the missionaries trying to gather converts, the Las Vegas watershed and the Worlds Fair. Everything was bigger then, Paxton’s Crystal Palace only standing for a matter of months, the frame solid and the exterior ready to shatter. There wasn’t time to waste on preservative acts. Instead, the fire took it away and everyone just moved beyond the cast-iron skeleton, dancing instead in the vacant pool halls and laundromats, the washeteria in Fort Worth bringing in most of the business. You and I, we can look at the maps over hamburgers and milkshakes from the twenty-four hour diner and consider where to go from here. Our hometowns only ever look alive at night.
DOCUMENTARY POETICS
Think of the filmmakers and the artists, the videographers and boom-mic operators—the conjurers of depth and cinematic dust-light. But where do the researchers find their subjects? Dana says that documentarians can live to be one-hundred-and-twelve, but I’ve learned to recognize a reliable resource when I see one. This is not it. When the lights dim in the theater and the screen stays black, we know enough to be complacent and amenable. The end will never come at this rate, or so we like to think. But now we’re in your basement and the lights still aren’t coming on. I’ve seen enough film to predict what happens at the end. I can even write the lives before they happen.
I only want to feel happy, like Ponyboy leaving the Paul Newman feature. Where is my ride home? I’ve learned, though, that the best directors leave themselves behind on camera. Ineffable, but substantive enough for us to feel them plotting. They find the darkness of the movie house to be soothing in a way that reproduces natural darkness, but the kind that is only available in select locations. Not in the city lights and suburban plazas, but in the open ocean, salt water and sea air divided.
I have a habit of leaving the movie before it’s over. Not before I’ve figured it out, but before the credits roll. I’ve never seen the lights come on at the end. I count previews and check my phone to see what remains, always something else to do. Dana says I need to dedicate myself to the film, to focus on what the director is trying to show me, but I can’t. The medium is manipulation, and these American eyes can show me nothing else.
Kevin Bertolero studies literature, philosophy, and art history at Potsdam College. He is the poetry editor for Mixtape Methodology, founding editor of Ghost City Press, and the author of From the Estuary to the Offing (2015). He tweets @KevinBertolero.