Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Copper Nickel 8

I got my contributor copy today for the brand new issue of COPPER NICKEL. It looks very nice. I have two lists in this issue: BIRTH LOOP and QUESTIONNAIRE. There is also cool work by SARA VEGLAHN and MATHIAS SVALINA among several others.



Some of the writing is about Hurricane Katrina. There are pictures of destruction. You can see the issue and who else is in it here.

here are two lines from BIRTH LOOP:

45. Signs of the preactive phase of death: (1) increased restlessness, confusion, agitation, inability to stay content in one position and insisting on changing positions frequently (exhausting family and caregivers); (2) withdrawal from active participation in social activities; (3) increased periods of sleep, lethargy; (4) decreased intake of food and liquids; (5) beginning to show periods of pausing in the breathing (apnea) whether awake or sleeping; (6) patient reports seeing persons who had already died; (7) patient states that he or she is dying; (8) patient requests family visit to settle "unfinished business" and tie up "loose ends"; (9) inability to heal or recover from wounds or infections; (10) increased swelling (edema) of either the extremities or the entire body.
46. Those qualities which I've exhibited in the past two weeks: 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 10.
47. Perhaps also 9, if you consider chapped lips and/or endless monological inner-commentary a kind of wound or infection.


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I don't feel like excerpting any of the rest of it or the other list.

Thanks to Jake Adam York.

I don't know what else.

Today in traffic behind a truck carrying two long blocks of wood I had to fight off the urge to drive straight into it and impale my windshield.

To receive this publication I punched a baby in the chest and collected its tears with a confederate bandanna.

3 comments:

Josh Maday said...

Nice. I'll be picking up a copy of that issue. Unless you have another contributor copy you want to send. I'm cheap. And lazy.

I've had that urge to impale the windshield, too. Don't destroy yourself, though. You haven't written enough to be allowed to die. Just take it to the point where you feel like you might and then write from it. But don't actually do it. It is harder to breathe when you are dead.

Congrats, Blake. Looking forward to reading that issue of CN.

BLAKE BUTLER said...

thanks josh. you are kind. i would totally send you a copy but they only gave me 1.

Anonymous said...

please don't die