Hic-to-the-Ippity-Ups

  Noon moon, city sidewalk a gyro draped in aluminum. The child holding his coat aloft by one arm is held aloft by one arm. Park leaves breaking into color. Two blind men compare dogs. Even the old dog in snow wonders at its breath. The cow under dogwood is the glove nuzzling away the […]

Chron*OS

First published in Art World (UK), 2009. The editor was looking for an ekphrastic poem. I had written a poem inspired by Olafur Eliasson’s 360 Degree Room of All Colours (2002), which she accepted. I had walked into the Eliasson art space & was immediately freaked out by how easily time became unhinged for me […]

No Exit: a Short Story (full text)

No Exit We stood together in a church emptied of its fellowship. I was eight and practicing a hymn for that night’s Wednesday prayer meeting. My father had quit attending church altogether but allowed me to participate in the choir practices because it was so close to home and cheaper than daycare. As I finished […]

No Exit: a Short Story (a foreword)

Skip ahead to THE STORY if you want to begin reading the actual story “NO EXIT.” Also, this was serialized the first time I put it up online, a few weeks ago, but now that it’s over, & my database was erased, & everyone already read it, I’m going to put it up in two […]

What’s in a Name?

Letters & histories, lovers & leftovers & livelihoods, lies & enemies & anomie, amphibian symphonies cresting with anapests crashed upon the rocky crags of spondees. My wife’s middle name is Pan. Pan’s only name is Pan. I like the global stretch of pan-. I like its involvement. I like that in radio communications “pan-pan” repeated […]

Joe Pan–The What that Is the Why & Why I Heart Ert

& what is this space for? How should I approach it? As a platform for speaking to potential readers? As a way to lay out my thoughts as they arrive (the last being “these syncopated occupations occupied by post-ink letters…posting clutters…thoughts as Occupied Moments in Sequence…the colonial manifest of memory…the future as crossbreeding possibilities, a […]

Operating System: Eg*OS

I published this poem with Scapegoat Review not this spring but last. It was one of my first Operating System poems, which I already thought of in terms of being another form of autobiomythography (read past poem to learn a bit more about what these are). It feels a bit sparse now. Jabby & rabbit-punching, […]

NYC Marathon

I love living in Williamsburg, Brooklyn for reasons too various & manifold to name in a single post, but one of my favorite Autumn experiences is to wake up to chanting & well-wishers screaming a few doors down on Bedford Ave as the tide of NYC Marathon runners make their way past the 11th mile. […]

Jonathan Allen’s Big Show

Last night was Jonathan Allen’s big solo show at the Lu Magnus gallery in the LES. JC Hallman was in town, & we met Adam Courtney & some friends at the gallery, where Amelia & Lauren had worked hard to put on an amazing show. Having published Jon’s work in book form, we brought along […]

Voyeurism & a Subway Suicide

I’m just going to get this post out of the way. A Ride on the L, Disturbed by Blood on the Tracks http://eastvillage.thelocal.nytimes.com/2011/09/27/a-ride-on-the-l-disturbed-by-blood-on-the-tracks Before you ask: Slasher title not my own. The history: About six weeks ago I was at the Charleston again for Tuesday night trivia with Cook. I’d made my debut at the Bowery Poetry […]

The New Newer

  How can I put this? Star Wars is the new Odyssey. No new news but still news. No? If one believes in a populace representing their own beliefs & choosing new characters as heroes. If not, there’s always academia. There’s always an -ism, which means an earlier stab at dominant theory revived into council […]

Each Day, a Crumb

  So I’m going to try & post something new each day. A poem piece, a little nugget of text, fragments of a story in progress, something. So today, four hiccups (haiku-like poems) that began & ended my last attempt at blogging: onward, upward, forever westward eyeing eastly, uneasily & perhaps awkwardly, but openly, hopefully: […]

Ode to the MQ-9 Reaper

I spent the summer doing many things, including traveling to South Africa and writing an ode to a killing machine. This is the first of nine sections of that ode. It will be one of the “Operating Systems” poems when I figure out which *OS best suits it. Ode to the MQ-9 Reaper (EDIT: I’ve […]

Tree Fort Blues

Tree Fort Blues (an excerpt from the novel Midnight & I’m Not Famous Yet) I am thirty-five years old & I live in a tree fort. The fort sits perched inside an enormous loft space in Williamsburg, which is still considered for the time being a section of Brooklyn, one subway stop in from Manhattan […]

The Three Soothsayers of Holopaw

Chapter One (an excerpt from the novel The Inevitable Death of Hap Ilkarmen) Hap Ilkarmen knew when he was going to meet his maker—his death had been foretold on three occasions by three separate soothsayers. First by Madame Tawnbisawls, known throughout four counties for her accurate forecasts of the weather; then by Orba Terrocca, the […]