Checking-In: Not a Newsletter

~ Greg Beckman ~ 1 Comment

Halfway through summer here in the Greater Los Angeles area. We haven’t been hit too hard by hot weather but there’s still time to join the club.

I hope you are well, grand, and finding yourselves adventurous. Stories are my way of staying all three. I’m especially fond of micros, a new playground that keeps me honest and under-300-words-succinct. Find them here.

A few new that bought a wow:

Pomes! Just like poems, only without the pedigree. If you’ve ever adopted a dog rather than bought a breed, you’ll understand.

This time, I’m happy to report I was invited to a reading for a pome published in the latest issue of Sortes. Jeremy Tenenbaum kept ten writers to ten-minute time limits AND played some of the most eclectic interlude music I’ve heard. Only glitch: I guess I move around a lot when just sitting still and the Zoom camera did a great job of repeatedly inflicting my video feed on unsuspecting viewers. The whole evening was NOT about me; it just seems that way in the beginning.

Soooo….if you would like to see me fidget AND read four or five poems in a great shirt AND hear some other fantastic work, hit the link to the Youtube video HERE. (I show up at 1:14.55, but really do take a listen to the others. Julia Yong is especially cool.)

And just because it’s easy to get lost on the internet, I’ll re-direct your attention to a few pomes that have been published off-site. Tap a mag below and fall for words again.

That’s it! Play around with the website’s buttons. Thank you for your follow, your thoughts, your care. Until later, best of life and love to you.

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Sortes 18 — A little night reading

~ Greg Beckman ~ Leave a comment

Writers published in Sortes 18 gathered July 7 to read recent and previously published work. Stories, poems, musical interludes, artful inspiration — is there a better way to spend the evening?

The writers/poets/artists (in order of appearance):

  • JULIA YONG
  • MARK RUSS
  • DANIEL RABUZZI
  • MARTE CARLOCK
  • CHARLES ALBERT
  • JAKE SHEFF
  • MICHAEL THÉRIAULT
  • DIPTI ANAND
  • GREG BECKMAN
  • ROBERT POPE

Enjoy! With thanks to editor Jeremy Tenenbaum for the invitation and awesome atmosphere.

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My reading included poems from Beginning Middle Man, So…What Do You Do?, and Late-Night Lucid. Each is available HERE. Or you could just hit the BOOKS menu button up-top.

Checking-In: Not a Newsletter

~ Greg Beckman ~ 2 Comments

A way to accomplish two hugely important goals:

  • avoid spamming your email every time I connect a couple of words
  • let you know what I’ve been working on — maybe something will tickle your fancy

I’ve been writing some micro-fiction, stories under 300 words that take a minute to read but hopefully stay with you longer. If you want to try a couple, just click:

Then there are a couple of new pomes on the site I think you’ll like. Pomes are just like poems, except they love Jim Beam and leave Chartreuse — the color, the liqueur — on the shelf. Waiting. Alone.

I’m still trying to get the novel published. Thoughts, prayers, and magic gratefully accepted. Until Fate and Fame decide to show me how really, really happy I was before they knocked, I’ll direct your attention to a few pomes that have been published off-site. Tap a mag below and fall for words again.

That’s it! Until later, best of life and love to you.

*

Ray

~ Greg Beckman ~ Leave a comment

“You’re just going to have to come with me,” she said as she put the final touches on her eyelashes.  She brushed the top ones up and the bottom ones down.  “There.”

We left.  I sat in the back seat.   “I should leave him there to stew.”  She always said this and we always got Ray out of jail.  Mom would pick up the phone and talk for a while and then we’d get him out.

Ray stood outside the police station smoking a cigarette.  He leaned against the brick wall, tall and alone.  Mom said, “What the hell?”  Ray opened the door and got in.  His face was cut.  He smelled like cigarettes and something else.  

“Fine example for your brother.”  

Ray turned halfway and winked at me.  

“You stop that right now, Raymond!  I have half a mind to march you right back in there.”  Ray changed his face and sounded contrite.  “You look nice today.”  She reached across the seat to hold his hand.  I saw his jaw muscles set.  

“I’m going in there.  Make sure they clear up this nonsense.”  She shut the car off and looked at her face in the rear-view mirror.  “Back in a sec.”  We watched a policeman hold the door for her and keep looking.  She walked in with her purse under her arm.  Ray turned around to me.

“How’d you get that?”

“Got into a rumble, SmallFry.”  He asked if I wanted to go to the pool.  We talked about the high diving board.  After a while Mom got back in.  She checked herself in the mirror and started the car.

“What do you want for dinner, Raymond?”

Ray raised his eyebrows.  Mom hummed a song.  I sat in the back and hoped for macaroni and cheese.

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The Pontiac

~ Greg Beckman ~ 1 Comment

I was the first punk not afraid to walk up the driveway. I saw him smoking in the front seat of his car, one leg in, the other leg out. He shifted his head and watched me walk up to the car door and ask if I could look inside. “I want one of these.”

He nodded. “You know what this is?” He stared straight at me. I said it was a 1967 Pontiac LeMans with all-original interior from the look of the dashboard and door panels, dials and chrome knobs and the dual-gate shifter in the center console. I touched the split-bench seat behind his shoulder and felt hard black vinyl. He lifted the cigarette to his mouth and took a drag and exhaled smoke through his nose.

We sat in his car until it was dark, smoking cigarettes and listening to the oldies station that he sometimes tapped the steering wheel to. I asked if he was born there. I told him I couldn’t wait to get out. “It’s a good town and all but nothing that hasn’t been done will ever get done.” He flicked the cigarette away from the car and we lit up again.

“You want to take a drive?”

I said sure and asked if I could take the wheel. He looked sideways at me and blew out smoke fast. “Sure do got a pair,” he said. I knew he was going to let me drive, not out of the gate but later. “She’s got a lot under the hood.” I knew he couldn’t wait. He fired her up. I never heard such a sweet sound before, not from the inside. The floorboards rumbled. I could feel it through my feet. This car had balls. We growled down the driveway and into the street. The car was hungry for the pedal, itching for it, edgy. I threw my arm across the top of his seat behind his shoulder. He grinned and asked if I was ready. I nodded and gripped the door with one hand and the back of his seat with the other before we jumped and that untamed devil roared away from his house and his life and we yelled and whooped over the engine and the wind and the darkness as we blasted out, out into a suddenly wide world.

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Power

~ Greg Beckman ~ Leave a comment 
Montecito.  Atascadero.  Paso Robles. 
Monterey. Santa Cruz. Your smile.

Places more magical than real,
more past than present,
traveled through.
They live in my memory.

I write them because I miss them.
And I was told naming something 
gives you power over it,
fixes it in place.  

Well, then:

money wealth recognition words
anonymity hands night sky
ocean breeze sage and iceplant 
arches 
Redondo
quick intake
you.

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I went looking

~ Greg Beckman ~ Leave a comment 
I went looking for a feeling today,
that one special feeling I once caught
somewhere, maybe a river in Wyoming
slipping by wild grass or a night when,
still studying philosophy, I looked up
from my book and noticed the soft-light
of my little dorm lamp and loved it.

I hunt this feeling, trap it with 
Grandma's plastic tablecloth that was 
padded so no waterglass could be placed 
on it without almost toppling over
and her tossing a tennis ball to a dog
in the backyard, the distant sound 
of a train rolling down dark tracks 
as I slept.  

I surround it and demand its name.
It smiles at me and slips through the
gaps and the hunt is on again for that
feeling I'm looking for today,
maybe walking down a dusty road in
Sacramento and seeing a lizard dart 
off into the bush and then my shoes
seemed quiet under the hot-white sky and
for a moment I forgot where I was going.

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Such a cool thing!

~ Greg Beckman ~ Leave a comment

Alternate Route (Winter 2024)

Click on the pic and you’ll find some of my words on page 42 of this gutsy beat journal. “Rebellious, transgressive writing with attitude” in the tracks of Kerouac, di Prima, Ginsberg…all my heroes.

Print copies of Issue 12 available soon.

Spend some time with art that feels like something’s still real and alive in the world. Previous issues (print and digital) available here.