Archives

EIGHT QUESTIONS FOR MIKE TOPP by Sabrina Small

September 3, 2024

A memory of my interview with Mike Topp, which I forgot to record, and then turned into a pseudo-transcript, at which point I solicited interjections from the artist. The first thing I tell Mike Topp is that I didn’t realize who he was. That I hadn’t done any homework beyond reading his tweets and a few poems on Hobart. I tell him his name is so gay it approaches drag, so I was picturing a young gay dude who had watched a lot of Warhol films and revered Peter Sellers in Being There, a practicing naif, a retro naif even.

TRANSMISSIONS: The Collidescope Podcast

August 30, 2024

Welcome to Transmissions, an interview feature in which X-R-A-Y profiles podcasts. Rebecca Gransden: Does the podcast have a mission or manifesto? George Salis: The Collidescope Podcast has the same mission as my online literary publication The Collidescope. The goal is to shine a light on neglected literature and celebrate uninhibited creativity. Art for art’s sake rather than something commodified and packaged for mass consumption. To quote from my site, “We love to see the mental fireworks of a writer wrestling with their imagination, with language itself.” A good deal of the stories, books, and authors on the show are those

LEGATO TONGUE by Timothy Boudreau

August 29, 2024

In the mid-eighties most Prescott High band members cheat on the terminology test, since Mr. Madison can’t see past the front row. Brass and woodwinds retreat toward the percussion section, sit with answer keys on their music stands. Percussionist Colin Andrews sits alone, no cheat sheet, scores a 96%. All three percussionists, Colin, Danny Gabriel, and Liz Reynolds, live in Perch Hollow Trailer Park. Colin gets it: growing up on the poor side of town naturally makes them want to pound the shit out of something. Liz lets all the neighborhood boys practice on her in her father’s shed; they

JUSTIN ISIS RECOMMENDS – Neo-Decadence: A Wardrobe Tour

August 28, 2024

Relax, for the moment. Your enduring boredom with contemporary art, writing and poetry results not from the sirenic tug of allegedly competing media, but from the soporific stupidity/sincerity to which most artists, writers and poets have willingly reduced themselves. Is there a solution? One often wishes to fall at the foot of AI and implore: “PLEASE, dear statistical large language model, with saintly expeditiousness, render these arriviste mediocrities obsolete, financially and culturally! We’re sick of hearing their ‘raw’ and ‘authentic’ thoughts as they froth themselves into a lather of cliché over representation, compassion, empathy and all other vanities worshiped by

THE ARTIST by Ruby Zuckerman

August 27, 2024

A––––– hasn’t been anywhere, or seen anybody, since her unemployment money ran out. Iron wind chimes jangle when she knocks on the door, and jangle again when it opens. Someone named Sara leads her to a table in the center of the shop. Sara is wearing a cloth mask with a red and white geometric print, which makes A––––– feel self conscious about her own KN-95, like she showed up wearing a suit when Sara is just wearing a cozy sweater. Everything inside of the room is white, everything outside is gray. This makes any small moment of color extremely

THROUGH DISRUPTION AND DISSOLUTION: An Interview with Daisuke Shen

August 26, 2024

The burden of foresight. With Vague Predictions & Prophecies (CLASH Books, 2024) Daisuke Shen mainlines a generation’s insecurities into fiction that is at once ephemeral and psychically probing. These are stories that present longing, whether that be for a sense of solidity, a chance at connection, or a reprieve from aimlessness. Daydreams of lost days and nightmares of days lost. Shen explores how technology melds with the human, and speculates on where consciousness might reside. I spoke with Daisuke about the book. Rebecca Gransden: The book shares its title with one of the short stories you’ve included, “Vague Predictions

THE STUYVESANT BEE by Mike Topp

August 21, 2024

I WOULD LIKE TO STARTLE THE READER: An Interview with Mike Topp

August 20, 2024

I was reading my bad poems and in between bad poems I was telling some stories and Steve said I should quit writing poems and instead tell funny stories. So I followed his advice.

EXCERPTS FROM ‘AMERICAN AIR’ by Mike Topp, featuring art by William Wegman

August 19, 2024

BUY A COPY OF ‘AMERICAN AIR’ HERE SPOKESPERSON FOR MELLINGER CO., LOS ANGELES, CALIF., DEPT. 54 Friends, you’ve heard me speak before in praise of Barns for Nobles. Well I’m no longer with that company. I’m here today to tell you about a new product I’m even more enthusiastic about called Count Branula. It’s a new cereal that tastes like bran. In fact I can’t even tell the difference. THE EARLIEST SALADS Probably the earliest salads were nothing more than some greens dumped in a bowl. VASE I was at Mom’s and I dropped this

TAKE HEART by Sean Craypo

August 14, 2024

The human heart on the street wasn’t mine. It came from the crumpled body thirty feet away. Another thirty feet behind the body was a pair of boots, which may or may not have had feet in them. Just behind the boots was the sedan. The bumper was barely dented from where it had struck the man. A severed vein sticking out of the heart looked big enough to stick my thumb into. Black skid marks streaked the fat on the lower part, as if someone had plucked out the heart and skipped it like a stone across the street.