Who Built the Starbucks Chain? (after Bertolt Brecht)

Who built the Starbucks chain?

Did Howard Schultz take the orders?
His name was on the board - did he froth the half-caf fraps,
drizzle the brew with caramel, write the names of
ill-tempered customers on cups? He "gave" benefits
while workers stood for double shifts -
did the barristas give something, too?
Did Schultz build the stores from brick, grow the beans?
Didn't thousands work for a little, or a lot,
less than their labor was worth
while Schultz skimmed the rest off the top,
like grande, venti foam?
it was Schultz, the latte Trump, who convinced America
that coffee should cost $8 a cup. Of course -
he did it all by himself, and by himself
took the tax breaks that would have paid
the barrista's health care and college
as a right, not a gift.
Why would he want a nation, needless and heedless,
if he can do it all alone?

SLY BANG Book Launch on WPIX Community Calendar!

Thanks, WPIX- New York channel 11!SLY BANG on NY Channel 11!

TOWARD A NEW NARRATIVE - SLY BANG

"TOWARD A NEW NARRATIVE: SLY BANG REWRITES, rethinks, and reimagines how we conceive of narrative. This slippery novel is a major step forward towards a radiant and explosive language. - Dean Kostos, Pierced by Night-colored Threads

MICHAEL McHUGH''S (McQ) REVIEW OF SLY BANG

Larissa Shmailo's sci fi thriller Sly Bang is a twisted and compelling thrill ride of a novel that not only transcends the form of that literary genre - it blows it up. It's a novel about an attempt to destroy the universe by reverse engineering the Big Bang. It deals with taboo subjects and is raunchy, funny and brutally intense. It's available on Amazon. Book release party at The Jefferson Library in NYC. I also like that's there's a character named Brave McQ. - Michael W McHugh aka McQ.

Exciting Review of SLY BANG by K.R.Copeland

Thrilled at this brilliant review of SLY BANG by critic Kimberly Rae Lorenz-Copeland:

What do you do when there is a, “Army of serial killers, mad scientists, and ultra rich sociopaths” after you?

Why, you summon your alter, “Larissa Ekaterina Anastasia Nikolayevna Romanova, tsaritsa of all the Russias,” and embark upon Larissa Shmailo’s cornucopiac literary odyssey, Sly Bang, of course.

From Nietzsche’s “what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger”, and Lady Gaga’s meat dress, to sadistic cult leaders and space Nazis, this sci-fi, fantasy, thriller, is chock-full of surprises at every turn. I mean, the lead character, Upper West Side, Manhattanite Nora, is a multiple personality FBI agent/possible alien, with an affinity for serial killers, who telepathically communicates with giant prehistoric birds, AND as luck would have it, writes uncannily brilliant poetry (journal entries).

Yes.

There is a LOT going on in this book.

In my opinion, the (quintessentially Shmailo) Interlude is where Sly Bang lives and breathes - It is the much anticipated doorway through which the reader officially exits suspended disbelief, and enters Nora’s world - her *real* world - introduces, through beautifully crafted poems, the backstory of Nora; a tragic tale of horrific abuse, betrayal, and ultimately, survival.

This stretch of writing - which jets the reader back to World War II, Nora’s camp family history, is nothing short of masterful, and reminiscent of Shmailo’s previous offering, Patient Women. The poem, Warsaw Ghetto, itself, is well worth the price of admission.

Generously infused throughout with humor, ebullient psychosexualism, and quasi-hypothetical political scenarios, this manic mind-trip, where alternate realities collide, full-force, culminating in orgasmic fits and fantastical flurries, Sly Bang, is a bit like eating chocolate cake on a roller coaster. Crazy. Delicious. Chaos.

K.R. Copeland - author of Love and Other Lethal Things

SLY BANG LAUNCH - SAVE THE DATE!

AWP PORTLAND EVENTS

Please add my events to your AWP schedule! Both happen Thursday, March 28.

12:00 pm to 1:15 pm
Portland Ballroom 256, Oregon Convention Center, Level 2	R214. The Critical Creative: The Editor-Poet. (Marc Vincenz, Larissa Shmailo, Michael Anania, Amy King, Kwame Dawes) This panel will offer an insiders' look into poetry editorship and publication from poets who edit prominent journals and presses. How do these tandem roles, poet and editor, influence one another? Do they detract from or enhance poetry publishing? Does the critical mind impede the creative mind or strengthen it? How? Are certain poetic schools favored? Where does preference end and narrowness begin? Panelists will offer real-life anecdotes and insights on poetry selection and editing.  Check here to add to my schedule
1:30 pm to 2:45 pm
B116, Oregon Convention Center, Level 1	R223. Hybrid Sex Writing: What's Your Position?. (Larissa Shmailo, Jonathan Penton, Thaddeus Rutkowski, Cecilia Tan, Erica Jong) In The History of Sexuality, Michel Foucault argues that sex was not repressed in past centuries, but codified. How does contemporary hybrid sex writing crack these codes? Is there a relationship between gender politics and hybrid writing? How does hybrid writing give voice to marginalized gender identities? What is hybrid ecstasy? Is there a special connection between transgressive sex and hybrid writing? Panelists will discuss these questions with a focus on 21st-century writers.

&

My love, I see myself in a fur coat lying face down, drunk,

on the floor of the subway train, one heel lost, & I feel a

hardened man raping me, my virgin soul frost, & awards

are easy, mama says, & they may pick and choose you, but,

they don’t know you, Ms. Boss, & my father says that I am

sexy & the time after that is lost & I know I am fat,

that I cost, & before she dies, mama says she wishes

I was never born, my death in my mother’s eyes, crossed,

but my love, see this chasm & wall here & be brave for me,

come swim the swamp around me & trust it is not within me,

or if it is, come love this swamp creature until it is drained,

and look at the dead in the moat, for here they will remain,

& sit here, still, with me & I will haltingly explain

I still love, beyond scars, beyond wounds, beyond pain

My "Best of 2018" Picks in Sensitive Skin!

The Sensitive Skin Best of 2018 issue is out! Thanks to publisher Bernard Meisler for including me!

SENSITIVESKINMAGAZINE.COM

Sensitive Skin Best of 2018 - The Editors - Reviews - Sensitive Skin Magazine

Welcome to the fourth (fifth?) annual Sensitive Skin Stuff We Liked From Last Year! Remember, it’s not limited to items that were released in 2018, just thangs we dug the most in 2018. Of course, there will be disagreement – you might love some of the below choices, you might hate some of them ....

Learn More

My Review of EDJU by RW Spryszak

The Surrealism of War, Politics, Religion and Everything Else

By Larissa Shmailo

RW Spryszak;s Edju is a compelling, thought-provoking read, possibly one of the best antiwar novels since Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun. Its eponymous unreliable narrator is certainly as odd as Trumbo’s and every bit as opinionated. Edju’s point of view is skewed, we suspect, but the surreal world he encounters is undeniably more so. Populated by fantastic saints, monstrous war machines, and fatalistic animate metaphors of death, the world of Edju threatens us with the core horror of humans systematically killing one another for questionable ideas.

Reading Edju, I saw elements of the original picaresque novel in the adventures of its Quixotic, but always truthful, protagonist. But his story—a hagiography, perhaps, if Edju’s time-warping memory serves— is a continuing exercise in excess, an attempt to trump absurdist and surrealist writing of past several centuries. There are loud shout outs to Gogol’s nose and Kharm’s corpses, and more than a few scenes that are reminiscent of Kafka and even an absurdist Robinson Crusoe.

All of this is done in a slow reveal—we learn the name of the narrator, an old man mocked by children only in the eighth chapter. We assume Edju is mad, hopelessly odd, a compulsive-obsessive religious fanatic, a kook who thinks his dead lover is strangely and selectively alive in a sack. As his Nordic world unfolds in subsequent chapters, we come to believe this limited being is the only sane man on his dystopic nation.

The central conceits of the novel, Edju’s windmills, are surreal metaphors for war and competition in reduction ad absurdem: war machines fueled by human bodies, a Mountain of Flesh all are eager to climb, factions absurdly fighting over table cloths which have become their last banners, a Maze of defense. The path to war is depicted accurately, starting with pamphlets and the rise of fascism and inevitably followed by

Leftist Agrarian Front. Rightist National Unity. Holy Orders of the Fist of God. The Liberal Party. The Conservative Party. Liberal Conservatives and Conservative Liberals. The Armed Hand of the Nation. Nuns. All armed. All vying for power

And:

Évitez les faux, they shouted. Libérez nos bébés, they called. N’accepte pas les substituts. It seemed like a full-scale rebellion was at hand. I had no idea if those phrases were in any way grammatical and correct. But in times of revolution even the commas get misplaced.

Religion fares no better than politics. In nomenclature reminiscent of David Foster Wallace’s Year of the Depends Undergarment, faith in Edju’s universe is represented by Bibliana, saint of headaches and hangovers, Our Lady That Didn’t Tumble, Saint Fomildehyde, and extremely peculiar paths to canonization.

The writing of Edju is synaesthetic and witty, replete with eyepopping detail, zinger similes, and wise one liners:

Death makes everyone an outcast.

.

There was a tan gray moon, a pure slice of venom in the blood, floating overhead.

Climbing up the em­bankment was a struggle, but her perfume reached out like a muscular ghost that held me close to its face of vapors. As wrong as elephants.

Left to the devices of nature all things decay. Why is this not the basis of the theory of everything they search for?

The rain fell so hard it opened graves.

.

If you are not them, you are the other. It’s in the Constitu­tion now.

Firing a gun is like fucking a ghost.

.

RW Spryszak’s unusual hero’s journey belongs on your reading list. Like many fine works that eptly mine and mime our culture, it is novel, in the first meaning of the word.

You can find the book here:

http://www.spuytenduyvil.net/edju.html

In-depth Interview about My #METOO Poem "&"

An in-depth interview about the emotional and creative process leading up to my poem, "&" which appeared in a recent edition of SHREW guest edited by Michael T. Young. Thanks to Christal Cooper for this kind write-up.

READ FULL INTERVIEW HERE

About this website

CHRISRICECOOPER.BLOGSPOT.COM

#55 Backstory of the Poem "&" by Larissa Shmailo

Chris Rice Cooper caccoop@aol.com https://www.facebook.com/car.cooper.7 *The images in this specific piece are granted...