“You Make My Assets Feel Toxic” by Marisa Crawford

“Right Livelihood” by Brent Armendinger

“Bros” by Matt L. Rohrer

“Ten Suggestions on How to Write a Story Based on a Dream” by Jamey Genna

Visit the Video Library to watch the readers’ live performances.

The fourth installment of BANG OUT Reading Series Saturday was on July 18th at Amnesia in San Francisco.  The reading featured drinks, debauchery and a full helping of fresh new work from local writers inspired by our theme “Toxic Assets.”

Truong Tran is a poet and visual artist. His publications include The Book of Perceptions, Placing The Accents, dust and conscience (awarded the San Francisco Poetry Center Book Prize in 2002), within the margin and Four Letter Words. He is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including two San Francisco Arts Commission’s Individual Artist Grants in poetry, The Arts Council of Silicon Valley Grant, The California Arts Council Grant, The Creative Work Fund Grant, The Fund For Poetry Grant and most recently, The SF Arts Commission Grant in Visual Arts. Truong lives in San Francisco in an apartment at the corner of Haight and Ashbury rumored to be the former home of Janis Joplin.

Sarah Fran Wisby (is the author of Viva Loss. She lives in San Francisco.)

Marisa Crawford grew up in New York and in Connecticut.  She graduated from the University of Massachusetts, where she studied Creative Writing and Women’s Studies, and received her MFA from San Francisco State University. Some of her poems have appeared in or are forthcoming from Invisible Ear, Big Bell, GlitterPony, Parthenon West and Shampoo. Her first book, The Haunted House, was the winner of the 2008 Gatewood Prize and is forthcoming from Switchback Books in 2010.

Matt L. Rohrer is a writer and musician living in San Francisco. His writing has appeared in Tinfish, Watchword, the Surfer’s Journal and other publications. He is a founding editor of Small Desk Press, and works as a substitute teacher. You can find his music at: www.myspace.com/goldenwestservice.

Jamey Genna teaches fiction writing at the Writing Salon in Berkeley, California and is also a high school English and creative writing teacher. Her short stories and flash fiction have been published in many fine literary magazines, most recently in Georgetown Review, 580 Split, Storyglossia and The Iowa Review. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart, and her collection Stories I Heard When I Went Home for My Grandmother’s Funeral was a semifinalist for the Iowa Prize in 2008.

Brent Armendinger is a satellite orbiting San Francisco while he also teaches creative writing at Pitzer College in Claremont, CA. His chapbook Archipelago was published this spring by Noemi Press. He is also the author of a poem contained in a can of Beanie Weenies, available for purchase at the Frankenart Mart, where he wrote on the window until he disappeared in April.

You will want to know what color the stream was on the day of the fire. That detail unfortunately was not recorded. You might want to picture the whole scene in grainy black and white: the flames shooting white from the windows, gray bodies jumping from the flames into the black foliage, the black stream.

Anyway, the reason I tell you all this is because history is invisible-without some plaque on the wall or voiced-over mini-series, you wouldn’t even know it was there, covering itself in layer after layer, like a debt that grows and grows whether you touch it or not.

The curators of the orgasm museum were not unaware of these concerns when they stumbled across the property at the public auction house. Since the mill fire, the building had been an orphanage, a school, and chocolate factory, each incarnation an attempt to bury the last, with children, with geometry lessons, with candy. And now this attempt to elevate the intangible, to display the unseen. It was the late sixties and orgasms were everywhere. The curators went out with silk nets, and chloroform, and spray fixative, and captured and captured and captured.

Once inside the museum, what strikes you first is the discrepancy in the size of the specimens. Some sprawl across whole walls or hang from the ceiling like macrame forests. Some seem to be eating away at the walls like an acid. Others are displayed perched on the head of a pin with a magnifying glass on a string nearby-these smaller specimens tend to be densely packed and symmetrical like cut jewels. Probably chosen for that reason. I mean, you don’t want to peer through a microscope at something too abstract.

The passage of time has been less than kind. Many are delicately falling apart, like lace antimacassars. Who would’ve thought an orgasm could start to look fussy? They can’t be cleaned, either by feather dusters or by sharp bursts of compressed air, so mostly what you see when you look at them are the molecules of dust that have attached to them over the years. Still, in the tattered shapes that inhabit the chambers and corridors of the museum, something remains of their former radiance.

This one’s like a leaf, pulsed around a single vein.

This one is a painting of tigers, on black velvet, the tigers long gone.

This one kept coming, like clowns from a Volkswagen. Then, like knotted kerchiefs, pulled from a painted mouth.

This is the kind of place you come to alone. Couples break up here. “I’ve never had anything like that!” she says, and a seed gets planted. Anyone who walks in can’t help remembering their best orgasm. These memories rarely include husbands or wives, boyfriends or girlfriends, not current ones anyway.

This one has no center, but appears rhizomatic, like ginger root, or like the masses rising in revolution.

This one is a painting of a woman. She looks a bit like your mother. Oh my god, you realize, my mother has orgasms.

This one is a movie, an endless loop. It follows a jangling path. No characters. It’s what you see when you close your eyes. It’s who you are when you are nothing.

There are no placards next to the orgasms. Rather, there are numbers. And if you wish, you can go to the card catalogue and look them up. Each card simply lists a name, date, and place of origin. James, 1967, Brownsville, TX. Annika, 1970, Roanoke, VA. Jorge, 1969, Vacaville, CA. A map lights up in your mind. A whole other country taking shape.

You were spinning, and they took you down. You were vague, imprecise, groaning with blue. They pressed you under their thumbs, and stopped you wandering.

You are the remnant, remembering the whole. Later you will shrink back into yourself. This part is important, if you want to get things done.

There is one room you don’t want to go into, adjoining the main gallery. Small jars line many tiers of shelves. There are no numbers here to cross-reference. These are the orgasms that never were. The ladies that leaped with no hope of landing. There is a gate that swings open, swings shut. These are the birds that misjudged the distance. They flew through the gate at the wrong moment, and were crushed.

Copyright © 2009, Sarah Fran Wisby

We were listening to the Ani DiFranco song about how she forgives her father. It made Janie want to forgive her father too. We sat on her roof making up a dance between ourselves and our shadows to D’yer Maker by Led Zeppelin, and I guess I’m saying that wrong but I already have my connection to the song. I made my connection. And she had a swimming pool with no water.

Our moms both stayed in their big houses after our dads left. Janie’s bedroom was really two rooms separated by a door and I guess that one of them used to be her sister’s bedroom. After school my mom would call and she would start talking. I could put the phone down on Janie’s nightstand, pick it up five minutes later, she’d still be talking.

There was this big hippie store in Norwalk that we used to drive to once Janie got her license. We bought a million enormous tie-dye shirts and this poster called “100 Dead Songs.” There was a train with a monkey driving it, which meant, “The Monkey and the Engineer.” There was a five-pointed swirling star up in the galaxy, which meant, “Dark Star.” There was a sunflower with a glimmering bead of sweat on it that we supposed meant, “Morning Dew.” We bought the Janis Joplin album with “Cry Baby,” “Mercedes Benz” and “Me and Bobby McGee” on it.

My mom cleaned the pool and raked the leaves and shoveled the snow after my stepdad left. We could have moved to a condo but she said something about stability. My mom said, “You have allergies because Janie’s house is dusty and moldy and filled with dog hair.” After we left the police station I told Janie’s mom I’d never steal again. She said, “Don’t do it for me. Do it for yourself.”

Being “good” means eating as little as possible. My mom said, “I was so bad today.” My sister told us, “Kristen’s so good. She eats a few crackers at lunch.” But my mom said no, three crackers isn’t healthy. The way the sun shone in Janie’s bedroom window did this cool thing to the wax of the candles. How when we left our yearbooks out on the screened-in porch and the sky turned yellow, started raining, it curled and crimped all the pages.

Janie’s mom was on antidepressants so she was really laid-back. We called her parenting style, “Laissez-faire.” She let Mariah and then Pauline and then Mark Terrien stay with them for months when they were having problems at home. My mom and I got into a fight once and I left her a note that said, “I think we both need some time to think, so I’m going to stay at Janie’s.”

When my boyfriend broke up with me I got this awful headache and the room started spinning. My mom came home and I begged her to take me to Janie’s and she said “why are you acting this way, what is she, like, your lover?” My lover? Who are we? Where are you?

Janie had this collage she made out of wrapping paper and the words from a billboard we saw that said, “Abortion Stops a Beating Heart.” Which was true I guess. And that was sad, and tragic, and depressing, and therefore art. There was a movie on TV about these anorexic-girl best friends who spoke French as their secret language and used to eat a lot and then make themselves throw up. And then one got put in a hospital and got so sick and bad that she cut a hole in her closet wall and she poured all her food in there instead of eating it.

I had a pool in my backyard with water in it. We’d walk to the elementary school, smoke pot on the swing set. We saw Cara Rizzo’s mom power-walking around the school soccer field, picking up flowers and sticks and looking at them, oh my god she is so crazy it is amazing. There was a song on the radio that went, “I want to push you around, I want to take you for granted.” We kicked off our shoes while we swung on the swings, said it was our song.

Cortney used to draw the anarchy symbol everywhere but Janie said if there was anarchy, that would mean that killers like Charles Manson would be running free to attack and murder our mothers. There was this thing that happened when Cortney went away to boarding school. At first we talked a lot and wrote letters, but then missing each other got too hard and we became, “Comfortably Numb.” We used our lunch money to buy a bag of purple Skittles and a bag of Chex Mix from the vending machine, then saved the rest for if Pink Floyd ever got back together.

We’d go to Janie’s house all the time cause her mom didn’t care when we ate all the food in the house, and she’d buy cheesecake and Bran Chex and Pillsbury Cinnamon Toaster Strudels and we turned all the bread in the house into toast with lots of butter. We made marzipan at my house for a school project once. When it didn’t work we poured it down the sink and my mother screamed that we’d clog the plumbing.

Janis Joplin did not exercise. She didn’t have to try. She drank Southern Comfort (Janie’s brother called it SoCo) She sang her heart out like a shooting star exploding in the sky. I wrote on my notebook, “If you’ve got a today, you don’t want a tomorrow, man.” I applied this lesson to swim team practice every day after school, followed the feeling in my chest. We loved the part of the song where she said, “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to do” And then, “Nothing, that’s all that Bobby left me/”

Janie and I picture ourselves when we’re grown up, raising babies alone, pushing strollers together, smoking cigarettes on a big porch with rocking chairs. At her brother’s wedding reception everyone wore tie-dye. We stared at the mountains, drank champagne, bounced on an enormous trampoline.

Copyright © 2009, Marisa Crawford

I broke apart the name from an island, I did this
                with you.
An unanswered letter, an apology, the clanging
                forks and spoons.
We did it together. We called what we did Guantánamo.
                Not with hands but with

our prepositions. We made it sink inside a cage,
                we made it sink indefinitely.
The headline ate the handwriting. The bones got folded
                on top of bones so
run your fingers along the seam – a map inside you.
                A you inside you

drifts from blur back to particular. I saw you walk
                along the empty rails.
Your kids weighing down your pockets with rocks.
                At the library
you found out their geology and put them in order,
                like misshapen books,

according to their first appearance on the earth.
                Prepositions matter.
Even when they’re made on paper. A scream that’s only heard
                on paper.
What did they do that happened or keeps on happening
                to that woman

in the bathroom? My friend calls 911, an apology that never comes.
                The police
may never come to help her, with her, for, about, beside her.
                Maybe it happened
a long time ago, says my friend, pointing to her temple.
                Or just now,

says my friend, opening her hands. Someone else’s long ago,
                I mine too much
what is not mine, an unanswered letter, an apology.
                You were telling me
after all that time it was good to sit beside him. It was painful.
                It’s been six years

since I have seen you. When he died it was a piano that plays music
                all by itself.
What ratio of news and light should a poem deliver? Like shadows
                sewn together.
To be delivered like a ratio, a kind of precipitation. Somewhere
                high above you

ice is also thawing, landing on a tongue that is not a tongue.
                I thought
I could send your postcards back to you inside an envelope
                of my words,
but I can’t, not yet. They are on my table and on their way
                to you.

Copyright © 2009, Brent Armendinger

Copyright © 2009, Matt L. Rohrer

2. While you are recalling the dream, try not to add or delete any facts. It’s just a dream, after all. For instance, if you dream that you had sex with the seventeen-year old boy who works at the library, and when he took his cock out of his boxer shorts, it looked like a fudgsicle, don’t leave that out. Resist leaving that out. Conversely, if you started to have sex with a younger, better-looking man than your husband, but the action petered out for some reason before the two of you could do it-try not to change that. Try to resist embellishing or finishing the dream in your half-awake state. For example, let’s say you’re lying in a field, no, it’s your parent’s pasture. You walked over there with this slender, good looking young man, and you were lying down together in your pasture. You were young and beautiful again. You didn’t care how much your stock was worth. You weren’t saving for your children’s educations. In the dream, you and the man lie down. You’re surrounded by barbed wire, though. Then a song started playing in your head called “Love is a Battlefield…” You probably woke up then with that song in your head and that was the end of the dream. Don’t leave that part out. Be real.

3. When something happens in the dream that doesn’t make sense, don’t try to make it make sense when you write it down. If the woman in the dream who is you is suddenly Sally Field, don’t explain that. You are in a field after all. That doesn’t need explaining.

4. If all your dreams take place at your parents’ house, don’t be annoyed. This is a natural dream phenomenon. Everybody dreams they are at their parents’ farm and that their brothers and sisters are turned into pigs that are trying to eat them. Everyone. Even in our forties and fifties, sixties, we are all still struggling with the fear that our siblings could’ve murdered us in our sleep when we were children.

5. If you have a sex dream about Brad Pitt while you two are doing it on a wooden floor; if you wake up and your dog has his paw in your crotch, don’t use that as your dream story. That’s funny, but it’s an anecdote, not a story. Nobody wants to picture your dog’s paw in your crotch.

6. Blend imagery from your waking life with the dream imagery. Use examples from your own real life if necessary. Think of something that is going on in your life that could account for the bizarreness of your dreams. If you are having trouble deciding how your waking life affects your dream life, answer the following survey:

a. Are you getting enough sex?

b. Are you anxious about being late for work?

c. Do you have road rage because people are still holding their cell phones in their hands?

d. Are you anxious about the size of a body part? Either too large or too small?

e. Are you anxious about the size of anything in your life? For example, your house, your car, your wife’s breasts, your husband’s gut, your yacht….you get the point. Anything upper middle class.

f. Are you unclear about where your life is headed? (Don’t be, by the way, death is ultimately the answer.)

g. Did you eat too much for supper?

h. Did you watch too many reruns of Project Runway?

i. Are you getting enough exercise?

j. Are you worried about what class you are now in, socio-econimacally?

k. Are you concerned about the billions of dollars the government is still spending on war?

l. Are you concerned about the billions of dollars the government is going to spend bailing out the banks?

m. Are you trying to figure out how this all trickles down to you?

Lumberjack?

Housekeeper?

Hat factory worker?

Radio parts factory worker?

Starbucks worker?

Teacher?

Maintenance man?

Plumber?

Contractor?

Musician?

Writer?

n. Is you house held together by newspapers?

7. While blending the realistic images from your daily life with the dream imagery, try to make a point. What purpose does this dream life serve? What is the purpose of dreaming your life away in a story? What is the purpose of your reality? What is the purpose of walking through life like you are in a dream?

8. Write an imagined ending to the whole scenario-something either tragic or comedic. Tragedy lasts, but comedy sells. So make your choice according to your taste. If you want a happy ending, write it. It should exist somewhere.

9. Use one dream per story if possible. This is consistent with the fact that you only get this one life.

10. Go to sleep if you can and keep dreaming. Sleep is good for you. Remember, you are going to die anyway. Later is better, of course, so try not to lose too much sleep over the state the world is in.

Copyright © 2009, Jamey Genna

Marisa Crawford reads “You Make My Assets Feel Toxic”

Truong Tran, Part 1

Troung Tran, Part 2

Brent Armendinger reads “Right Livelihood”

Matt L. Rohrer reads “Bros”

Jamey Genna reads “Ten Suggestions on How to Write a Story Based on a Dream”