SELECTED TWEETS: CORN ON THE CROSS

By Christopher Hughes  

Corn on the cross, tweeted 2/18/13 

There was a table in the kitchen that expanded from the middle, napkins made from cheap cloth dyed burgundy, and little wooden napkin rings.  It all came from my mother.  She had insisted with a kind of maternal fervor that implied both satisfaction and expectation, and I knew that any resistance to her offering would result in hard feelings.  So I took it and went to the grocery store and bought ten packages of spaghetti noodles and ran into five people on aisle sixteen.  They peered invasively into my cart.  I’m having a dinner party, I said, and they invited themselves.  When I got to the checkout line, the clerk called me Mister Hughes.  It was either a sign of respect or mockery, I couldn’t tell.  He wore a cap that said Jesus Saves.  I wondered if it was religious or an advertisement.  He scanned the noodles, the sauce, all the veggies I intended to cut and dice and sauté, with a curious look on his face, and I sensed he was going to ask.  It’s for a dinner party, I said.  Could I have the leftovers, he asked.  Sure, I said.  I like to put corn in my sauce, he said.  For consistency.  Okay, fine, I told him.  He called over the bagging kid and sent him on an errand.  The line backed up.  The kid returned with multiple ears of corn.  The clerk scanned them, grinning.

            When I got home, I put on some Bill Evans, washed a pile of dishes in the sink, brought out the half empty bottle of gin that I’d hidden away after an unfortunate evening some months ago.  I poured two fingers and dumped in the olive juice and called it a martini.  Then I mopped the floor with Pine-Sol, wiped down the table with lemon-scented Pledge, straightened the framed pictures hanging crooked on the walls, changed the litter, vaccumed the cat hair off of everything, made the bed, moved the piles of books on the living room floor to the bedroom floor, and lit a ten dollar candle that smelled like cotton candy.  People began to arrive soon after, all of them with a single bottle of red wine in hand.  I led them to the corkscrew.  We drank with purpose.  Groups of three or four clustered around my living room and chatted agreeably about whatever.  I went to the kitchen and stared at the corn and wondered what to do with it.  After an hour or so, the food was done.  I put a stack of dishes and utensils on the kitchen counter and a line formed.  I watched them as they scooped the noodles onto their plates, stirred and poured thick red sauce dotted with yellow specks, grabbing at toast soaked in butter and refilling their wine glasses.  We sat down to eat and somebody offered to say a blessing and it got awkard.  I drank more.  So did they.  My cooking was adequate. Then I remembered the leftovers, and all of a sudden tupperware became important to me, and I thought maybe I was a grownup.

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 Christopher Hughes is the author of Selected Tweets, a spoken word project and ongoing collection of prose poems based around the idea of giving context to his otherwise vague Twitter feed. He is the singer, guitarist and songwriter for The Calmative, and he produces other artists as well, out of his studio, Miscellaneous Sound. He holds an MFA in creative writing from The New School, has been published in Pax Americana, Omnia Vanitas Review and the Augury Books blog, and lives within spitting distance of Midway Mart.

LITERARY ARTIST: DARIN BRADLEY

Words by Harlin Anderson, Image by Erin Rambo

Photo by Erin Rambo

We recently cornered local novelist, Darin Bradley, as he sipped a beer by the smoker and stoked the coals under a batch of his special recipe Lemon Pepper Chicken. Talk inevitably turned to his critically-acclaimed debut novel, Noise, but damned if we weren’t distracted by the smell of that yard bird. Lucky for you, we got the whole chat transcribed all fancy like.

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Noise  is one of the most horrifying books we’ve ever read. What drove you to embark on such a dark literary undertaking?

It wasn't always so disturbing. The original idea was simple: two young men who rise to power in an unstable U.S. based solely on their wits and resourcefulness. It wasn't an overly sophisticated concept, and I carried it around in the back of my mind for several years while I worked on other projects. When I finally decided it was time to write Noise (it was called Amaranth back then), I decided that I needed to know the architecture behind re-making the U.S. (Was there a "right way" to do something like this? Should my characters follow some Plan?) As the story came together, and international financial collapse became the stage, the earliest tenets of "The Book"  began to surface (the guide the characters assemble in the novel to help them establish their nation-state). It became clear very quickly that I needed to actually write the entire "Book" before approaching the story, so I asked myself straightforward questions about what I would do to survive and protect my loved ones if the rule of law collapsed. I didn't always like the answers I came up with, but I felt they were true to the spirit of the exercise. It's this hard-line, no-exceptions, survival-at-all-costs program that made the novel as dark as it became. My characters adhered to my "Book" with dangerous, obsessive exactitude, and the results were pretty gruesome.

You created sympathetic, likable characters and then put them through absolute hell. Does that take its toll on you in real life?

Absolutely. The characters in Noise are portraits of real people—myself included. Many of Hiram's memories are my own, so to revisit them under circumstances that twisted their meanings and contexts wasn't exactly pleasant. I had to surprise myself with the cold, surgical violence in order to later surprise my readers with it—there's a fine line between believable shock value and engineered shtick, and staying on the right side of it, for me, involves not really knowing what you're doing at every given moment. My characters are young (early twenties) and angry and confused—just as most of us are at that age. The apocalypse occurring around them becomes just a giant metaphor for their tumultuous inner lives as they try to make the world work the way they want it to. When the world pushes back, it's difficult to just powerlessly read about the psycho-social damage this must be doing to those kids. In the real world, I'm a tolerant, progressive Denton townie—it definitely felt weird to borrow sociopathy and Fascism as I wrote the novel.

The town in  Noise  seems eerily familiar. Any truth to the rumor that it's actually set in a fictionalized Denton?

Ha! Yes: completely true. Here's the very duplex I lived in that appears in the novel: I renamed it Slade, and I moved a few things around, but it's absolutely supposed to be Denton. I didn't want to be restricted by the actual layout of Denton, in case I needed to take creative license, so I just rebranded it. Some of the streets even retain their real names, but some were jazzed up a bit for the fiction: Carroll became "Broadway" (even though Denton already has a Broadway), and Hickory became "Meyer." In a way, the book dates itself by the portrait it paints of Denton. In Noise, there are still longhorns grazing in the old Rayzor pasture, and Fry St. looks like it did before the recent developments (including a fragment of a burned-down pizza place). If you remember what the parking lot behind Cool Bean's looked like five years ago, then you've got the perfect mental stage for Hiram's gruesome act of vehicular assault against the "Strip Rat"—see, even Fry Rats made their way in.

What’s your connection to this area?

I moved to Denton in 1999, earned all three degrees here, burned through a fair portion of my twenties, and then my wife and I moved to the Carolinas in 2007. I had just finished a Ph.D. in cognitive theory and experimental literature, so I was positively buzzing with, quite possibly, the most sophisticated trains of thought I'll ever have in my lifetime. And I was unemployed. And homesick. Noise arose from this miasma and became, in many ways, a lament for the city I didn't think we'd ever come back to. I burned it down—a sort of exorcism so I could move on with the next chapter of my life. Luckily, though, we came back in 2010, and now we're here to stay.

What items should be in everyone’s bug out bag?

Mundane things. The first thing everyone wants to reach for is an AK or a sword or a shoulder-mounted anti-tank weapon. But you're going to need water purification technology, bandages, food, and fire starters. (Unless you want to cheat, like Hiram, and just beat people up and steal their stuff.) But, to be fair, I'm not bugging out without my revolver . . . 

What are you working on these days?

I'm writing the third book of what I think of as the Noise Cluster. The books don't comprise a trilogy, but they do represent three different experiments in the worlds of collapse, depression, and identity. With each new book, I try to challenge myself to write something more compelling--more contemplative—so I hope this final title will hold to that tradition. We'll see. I'm supposed to be writing it right now, but thank god you came along with these questions because I was really just staring out the window. You know: "writing."

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EXCERPT from Noise

We got the jump because we lived near the square.  Walking distance.  Slade was like most small Texas towns--it radiated outward from the old courthouse.  At some point, someone had paved the original hitching yards and erected a cenotaph for the Civil War dead.  There were water fountains on each pillar, each with its own inscription:  White. Colored.  They both still worked.  There were pecan trees with dubious histories.

Livery posts, hardware stores, and hotels had clustered slowly around the squared avenue--the buildings still stared at the courthouse-turned-museum, the remnants of their painted-brick signs now protected by city codes.  Those businesses were all something else now--candy shops, bars, high-end boutiques.  But they had several signs each.  Meyer's Pawn was the most important to us.  Guitars and drum sets and stereos filled its storefront windows--the ejecta of the nearby university.  Its bread-and-butter music program, mostly.  Slade still lived because the university owned most of it.  Sweet Pine, Siwash, and Minnie Falls, all nearby, had dried up when they were supposed to, half a century before.  When Slade should’ve gone.

But we didn't care about instruments.  Meyer's had tools, too.

We got the jump.  We’d been watching Salvage for months, so we knew what to do. 

We knew enough.

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Novelist, Eagle Scout, documentarian, linguist, video game writer, brew master, and student of the smoker, Darin Bradley is a true Renaissance Man who makes his home right here in the heart of Denton. Keep an eye out for his next project, and if you haven’t yet read Noise – turn off the television and crack a damn fine book. We guarantee you won’t regret it.   

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Harlin Anderson is the underground BBQ champion of Denton, Texas. When he's not digging through crates of vinyl at Recycled Books or Mad World Records, he can be found manning the smoker on the back patio at Dan's Silver Leaf - or wherever there are hungry musicians. His lives with his wife, Ashley, and their three furry children: Earl, Jake, and Nanette the Pocket Beagle. He prefers to stay comfortably within the Denton city limits at all times.

DENTON LIT: APRIL MURPHY

This post is part of our monthly collaboration with Spiderweb Salon in which they show off the best of Denton's literary artists. This month, they're sharing the work of April Murphy.

Artist introduction and photos by Courtney Marie. 

​Photo by Courtney Marie 

April Murphy is a writer who strives, like many of us, to create and not starve. She writes mostly creative nonfiction, though she sometimes dabbles in fiction, poetry, and songwriting. She’s been told that her writing is matter-of-fact and tends toward black humor and sentimentality. If you’re an emotional person and sometimes find yourself looking for anatomical charts on Etsy, there’s a good chance you’ll like her stuff. Murphy is currently working on a nonfiction book entitled Shrouded. It is a collection of essays weaving together her family history, the funeral home industry’s treatment of women, and exploring life and death as gendered spaces.

Before moving to Denton, Murphy spent much of her life in rural outposts of the chilly North East and Mid-West. She’ll tell you how the four years she’s lived in Denton have warmed her heart – she has found a great community of writers and artists here, and says it’s hard not to stay inspired in such a supportive and interesting place. She is currently finishing up a PhD in Creative writing at UNT, but won’t limit her professional ambitions to the academic world. She wants to always be writing, publishing, and performing, and hopes her first book will be published in the next few years.

In cahoots with Denton’s artist collective, Spiderweb Salon, Murphy has agreed to share an excerpt of her short fiction with us. This excerpt is from a larger piece entitled “Partners.” Other accessible works of hers include “Puppy Tail,” “Vanilla Bones,” and “The Caves.” Check it out and be sure to keep up with April’s involvement in Spiderweb Salon, where she has presented multiple readings and performed her music as well. Some of her original writings will appear in the next Spiderweb zine: The Collaborative Issue, to be released this Friday!

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​Photo by Courtney Marie

-Excerpt from “Partners”

            Despite the unconventional cases he took, Mr. Percy had a strong conservative streak, like all those in the funeral industry. The only unorthodox thing about him was the fact that he was a Braves fan in upstate New York’s Red Sox territory. He’d inherited the team along with the funeral home and the Republican Party from his Southern grandfather.

            Maggie wasn’t lucky enough to have family in the business. Her parents, both English teachers, had never understood her aptitude for sciences. They had supported her through 4 years of pre-med and did the best they could to understand why their daughter was never interested in the books they sent at Christmas, why she only responded to their pages long emails with a short paragraph. When Maggie failed her MCATs, the relationship with her family strained. When she brought home Krystal, the pretty blonde she’d met in a cadaver lab, it broke completely. So much for books opening the mind.

            For a while after that, Maggie worked days as a barista and evenings as a grocery store clerk, too busy with affording her shitty apartment and paying back her college loans to allow herself to really feel as scared as she was about the rootless life she was leading.

            Krystal was there for it all, quick with a kind word but busy with double shifts and EMT training. They didn’t see each other much, and when they did both of them were usually too tired for conversation.

            Maggie applied for a temp job as an embalming assistant with The Percy Family Funeral home around their two-year anniversary. Mr. Percy hired her because of her background in anatomy and paid her enough so that she could leave the coffee shop and Price Chopper. After about six months, satisfied with her reliability and resourcefulness, he offered her the apartment above the home and sponsored her through her associates degree in mortuary science.

            She never asked him why he did it. She was nervous, afraid that if she drew attention to her good luck it would go away, she’d have to start over again.

         Mr. Percy seemed to think that adding her to the staff allowed him to start over too. He liked to joke around the office that after three generations of Percy and Sons, it was about time the funeral home had a lady’s touch. Maggie suspected that his sons, no more interested in the dead trade than she was in Shakespeare, had broken something between them too.

​Photo by Courtney Marie 

DENTON LIT - JOSEPH CARR

​This post is part of an ongoing collaboration between WDDI and Spiderweb Salon. We've previously been introduced to the likes of Walker Smart in their first shared post with us and countless others in the endless barrage of excellent live shows they have been hosting. Keep up with Spiderweb Salon, and see the great work they're doing showcasing the creative community through a series of live performances.  

​Joseph Carr reading at the 35 Denton Spiderweb Salon show.

Joseph Carr is a legally deaf poet who has been writing now for over a decade. While he has very little formal education, he has been a practicing autodidact studying for years within the areas of literature, poetry, theology, technology, language, and philosophy. His writing and research stem from his personal struggles with silence, withdrawal, abandonment, transparency, and the questions of compassion, humility, the divine, and the possibility of love. Carr read his poetry aloud for the very first time at the Spiderweb Salon show that took place on the lawn of the square in February. 

Seeing as it's national poetry month, we thought it appropriate for Carr's works to be featured this month. Below, we have two of Carr's poems for your reading pleasure. Read through them, and if you have any interest in becoming a part of Spiderweb or perhaps catching one of Carr's readings in the future, be sure to keep an eye on their upcoming events page here. 

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Love is a myth

Our plans, laid at night, woken at day
to lead the way as Ariadne, with thread so fine and paltry,
if they carry us far it is to everlasting shipwreck on foreign grounds.
Our actions but the flailing of infants, the wailing of woes
to tease Persephone from her captors with a song,
one to make the Furies weep as they did, and, with us, do still.
Our efforts are jests, pokes, irreverent worship
to disenchant Arachne with that same defiant foolishness,
expending lifetimes weaving chains in exchange for freedom.
Our faces wrung of emotion, poured out in mirrors
to shed the dark as Psyche, so ugly, such revelation
makes every lover flee in a storm of feathers and shame.
Our feet, torn and bruised by a shallow and feeble torpor
to lead the blind as Ismene in a tumult of fear
when even the uncanniest care does yet cower in the last.
Our hope a whimpered prayer at a powdered monument
to steal away Alcestis from demons unawares
borrowing minutes in an immemorial chorus of dread.
Our desires fickle as wind, wispy as clouds
to lend the future wings as Daedalus, ever cautious
till, in us, fire of sun meet most abyssal waters.
And love too is a myth ancient and tragic,
belated, it slips, like so many tongues
in so many mouths, telling so many stories,
singing so many songs, reciting so much verse;
dry and arid lips, confessing parched lies
of words and worlds,
and fire and water and sky.

Piezomechanesis

You’re full of luciferase,
and I’ve been hungry ever since.

I was 5, you, a month, middle aged,
already drunk on the twilight pools
I’d barely dipped my ankles in.

Maybe it was the cold light,
the hoary frost on your lips,
but I wanted you immediately,
wielding your aether
through the scissor punctures
of a gilded mason jar lid.

2 blinks for yes, 1 for no,
or maybe it’s more complicated,
a flashing sonnet
torn from an Aeolian harp.

Maybe it’s a sacrament,
and by the time you speak,
I’ll be just as dazzling.

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Joseph Carr's Blog / Spiderweb Salon 

If you're interested in learning more about Spiderweb Salon, make sure to check out their brand new site! 

DENTON LIT - WALKER SMART - "HERE"

The following prose piece is a selection from the upcoming zine entitled Local Lore, to be released next month during the 35 Denton music festival. The zine is the fourth in a series printed by the art collective Spiderweb Salon and will showcase a wide variety of art, prose, poetry, and essays inspired by and within Denton, Texas, USA. Copies of the freshly printed and hand-bound zine will be available at 35 Denton Presents: Spiderweb Salon on March 10th at Dan’s Silverleaf. 2-6 p.m. The show will feature art, readings, music and performance pieces, as well.

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“Here”

by Walker Smart

There used to be a hospital here, the one I was born in. The grounds were donated to the city to make a park. They made the City Park apartments instead. Here used to be a pizza place where I played the Dungeons and Dragons arcade game while my dad wrote in his notebook. They tore it down and built something else, but it was here. Here used to be a school, the school where I met my two oldest friends. There’s the creek we used to explore, to us it was a separate world. Here used to be the video store where we rented the movies that desensitized us. We still see the ghost face of Piggly Wiggly through the trees driving down Greenwood. This was the theater we had our first jobs at, where we first stayed out too late. They spent a million dollars renovating it after it closed. When I saw it after I felt a part of me was gone. But you go up into the projection booth and it’s like walking back in time, they didn’t change a thing. That part of a place that makes it home can’t be changed.

Here’s the house I met your mom in. Later it became the house we lived when you were born. Then it became the house I first felt heartbreak in. Soon it will be the house another baby girl lives after she is born. The part of a place that makes it home can become complicated.

You are the place that makes hell feel like home again. You are the place that can make something old feel new again.

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Walker Smart is the on stage alter ego of Walker Smart. He's twice as weird and loves the sound of his own voice even more than the real Walker Smart. The real Walker Smart has lived in Denton, TX his whole life. You’ve probably seen him around.

You  can find more Walker here... You can get more Spiderweb Salon there and you can catch them at 35 Denton in March!