What better way to bid adieu to 2011 than with an issue that focuses on the themes of love and romantic encounters? The contributors to this issue have presented this theme each in their own visionary way. Romance is laced with poisonous rejection and the shame of the pursuit, and a few of the contributors have captured that feeling beautifully. Love also makes our heads spin with a natural delirium that some may say is indescribable. Yet several of the contributors to this issue have also captured that side of romance wonderfully. There are also chance encounters that range from meaningful to nonsensical. Thanks to all of the writers that have made this installment so interesting, clever, and inspired.

We are often judged by whom we choose to love, and little merit is assigned to why we love them. And while love might be viewed by many commentators as a mere act of madness, it is essentially the only aspect of our lives that can save us in a world that is truly insane. I came to this conclusion long after my marriage was over, decades after she had…

Reposted from: pitchfork.com

James Holden’s Border Community is a label known for its between-genre dislocation, an imprint that takes dance-music influences, warms them over on the stove, and then buries them in fuzzy pink noise. Home to artists like Nathan Fake, Luke Abbott, and, of course Holden himself, it has a habit of drenching techno in longing nostalgia and…

These alien sutures through my vision
mean business
All day I have been floating in dots
half-myself, cleared of purpose

Best rethink plans and assess
the trigger
it’s mine alone to bear
the nails, the gun
I am too pure for you or for anyone

I am Persephone, eater of pomegranates
All that the universe plans for me
no amount of Codeine
or love can cure…

In a valley of pleasure
You took it in, stuck it out, pulled it on, shot it up
Flesh red from leather and needles

A church with no roof
Rimbaud on a cross
No cloth, only loin

Puritans crushed
Prudence reviled
Drawn penises photographed

Dancing barefoot
She whirled around you
Lifted you up, she lifts you up

From the street, from the bed
Refusing your time to pass away
You were just kids along with the disease

Proud of your dust
Queer predecessors wash, rinse, repeat
Bathing…

Reposted from: pitchfork.com

San Francisco’s Desertshore ostensibly took their name from Nico‘s 1970 album, the one where she began writing her own songs and exerting more control over her sound and style. A decidedly more personal than commercial album– with a few songs in German and one sung by her son– Desertshore was not a hit, at…

“I’ll take a pint of the Wild Turkey and a pint of the 100-proof SoCo, please.” I told the grey-haired black guy behind the counter.
He started putting the bottles in individual brown paper bags and then stopped and peered at me over the rims of his glasses.  “You sure you don’t want a couple of fifths?  You’re a pretty big guy.”
“No, I need them to fit in my back pocket……

thought by sheer will  secret self
rid your contamination of color
inviting me into your personal space
your confessional booth your painting hang
dreams dominate the corner of New York
avenue where Clare Booth Luce fell from your
easel then life takes away all roads lead
back private demons monkeys
on  my back now the big braid bridges your
head to me Diego ate your ashes
your urn shakes on the mantle…