TRAILER PARK FRAGMENTS: A PLACE CALLED WHISPERING LANES is now online!

Hi friends,

Magic Helicopter's newest e-book, Trailer Park Fragments: A Place Called Whispering Lanes by David Ensminger is now online. These poems are not clean ice. They show you what happened to the last of your bubblegum patent money. They unspool the dream sequence of doo-wap and corkscrew walls, aerosol cheese and Eskimo kisses. They put pictures of the moon landing in plastic bags. You'll want to sit all day by the swamp cooler with these poems, you'll want to throw the water of your memory onto the aluminum siding and try to make the sizzle bigger each time.

And what's more, Missouri is pretty close to Indiana, the "setting" of our upcoming full length book of poems The Drunk Sonnets by Daniel Bailey. So that's why we're offering a free copy of The Drunk Sonnets to anyone who embarks on a little music video project.

Here's how it works:

1) Read yourself the steel bathtub jitters of Trailer Park Fragments: A Place Called Whispering Lanes.

2) Make a music video for it. What this means is up to you. Here are some ideas: trailer park pictures of your own, video of lawn chair revelries, Lucero, Tom Waits, Lucinda Williams, and a few of your favorite lines from the Fragments spliced throughout.

3) Post the video on YouTube/Vimeo/your favorite online video place.

4) Now, music videos are not a chump's undertaking, so anyone who makes one will get a free copy of The Drunk Sonnets. That's right, it's not even a contest. Your video doesn't have to be the "best." It just has to testify.

5) So roll out that iMovie and score yourself a free book.

Not-so-much salt of the earth as salt on your eggs, Midwestern poetry that doesn't apologize for its fat and awkward heart: Trailer Park Fragments: A Place Called Whispering Lanes by David Ensminger and The Drunk Sonnets by Daniel Bailey.

Thanks for reading!

rad poetry #9: for tim jones-yelvington

RAD POETRY THANKS TIM JONES-YELVINGTON




WILL I GET A HINT WITH THE WHO
(as read by Dorothy)

for Tim-Jones Yelvington

Life, friends, is a very large cabinet.
And you, you must lift it by feeling
from the knees! Life does not belong to
life. Life is very much yours. Treat it as
a cake given to you gently by a kangaroo
with a pouch full of milk and Bisquik
dropped in your lap over many
nights, often the nights you do not
want to wash your face but you do.
There is, for this cake, no oven.
Life is not an oven. Life is a cabinet!
Quick! You must catch it! Even now,
blue paint for hair, mouth crammed
with lightbulbs and Coffeemate, life is
asleep in my bed. I must know you.
It is okay to be shy with your friend.