March 14, 2005

What Is Rock Heals?

New stuff every Wednesday!

Rock Heals is a weekly production of Narrow House, a non-profit organization dedicated to the promotion and distribution of the arts.

Sometime around 1997, Tokyo Rose (RIP) in Charlottesville, VA got a new set of matches for the smoking clientele. On one-side the name of the place and its signature drawing. On the other a simple message:

Rock Heals aims to bring you an enjoyable mix of all kinds of things -- from poetry to reporting; reviews and recipes; fiction and essay, artwork, comics, etc. We have no real content or format guidelines at this time, and are driven by our simple goal of getting good stuff out there for people to see, read, enjoy, think about and discuss.

If you are interested in sharing your work with us and from there with the world, shoot us a line and tell us what you’re up to. We’ll do our best to respond in a timely fashion, among day jobs, families, and just getting up on our feet.
Send to: submissions at rockheals.com
More about submissions >

Questions? Send 'em to:
info at rockheals.com

Posted by Rock Heals at 12:34 PM

Give it here! Don't hold back now.

submissions at rockheals.com

We want everything that doesn't suck.
Poetry :: Reporting :: Reviews :: Recipes :: Fiction :: Essays :: Artwork :: Comics :: Video and Audio :: Little Flash things (I'm sure we can figure out how to post 'em) :: Just about anything

Content-wise, we're pretty open-minded 'round here -- try us.

Drop a line telling us what your up to, or just send what you're up to. By email. And we'll figure out the rest from there.

NOTE: We hate magazines that never return mail and won't be one of them! But, we do have day jobs, families and near-weekly episodes of LOST to keep up with.

submissions at rockheals.com

Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM

Contributors

Thank these people. Now.

Rock Heals wouldn't happen without kickass people sharing kickass stuff. Be one of them by sending ideas or finished pieces of all shapes and sizes to .

This space will be updated soon to include links out to all the work contributed by these folks. In the meantime, browse through the site to find them.

Seth Adelsberger recently had work in New American Painting (April 2005), a show in the Hamptons (June 2005?) and has had recent shows around the DC Metro area. By the time you read this, he’ll be huge. More importantly Seth has a bitchin’ El Camino.

Lauren Bender on Lauren Bender, “I'm a member of the (former) mobtown writers'
collective, I write and am a contributing editor for Radar Review, and my day job is as a case manager in Baltimore. I also have the world's first dog-cat and just started eating meat. Go beef tartare.”

Brian Callandra is a shadowy figure in and around the NYC advertising community. All right, he’s probably neither. He came recommended by a dear friend of RH with a piece that made us go, yes yes yes so we published it like a motherfucker. We wouldn’t know him if we bumped into him on the street. Brian, we owe you a drink.

Ric Croyer's poetry, noted for its eccentricities of typography, language, and punctuation, usually seeks to convey a joyful, living awareness of sex and death. To date, Ric has written three poems: Horny, Horny, Dead (1995), Tush Push Death (1997), and Dung Cock Grave (2001).

Royer was recently ripped off through an ebay "pay-and-run" by a merchant named Greg Marinaccio. He payed $40 for a watch with girls on it, but the watch never arrived. Marrinaccio has failed to return emails and has been banned from further ebay commerce.

D_, Our Paramedic in the Field, is an EMT (emergency medical technician) in the Metro DC area. Names have been changed and locations generalized in his entries to protect the privacy of patients where relevant. 911 Diaries will be updated on most Wednesdays as interesting shit happens to D.

from D.
911 Diaries
Blood Mystery
I wasn't even on the clock

Buck Downs is yet another great poet working the margins of the nation's capitol/capital. When we have a proper bio for him, it will be spectacular. In the meantime buy his books, there are plenty of good ones to choose from. And go see him, cuz he gives great read.

Heather Fuller is one of those DC residents we seem to see around town a bit, but don't know so much about. We're working on it. Her work is everywhere, just look around.
Learn a lot more about Heather over at EPC >

Jamie Gaughran-Perez is the main editor guy of Rock Heals and tends to write the small bits, essays, interviews, takes a lot of the photos and generally fills in the gaps. He even writes about himself in the third person and slips into a “Royal We” when talking about RH maneuvers.

M_ Gaughran-Perez is soon to be three years old. Her interests include playing the drums, singing, running around museums, pasta and not wearing shoes or pants.

Tracey Gaughran-Perez is smart and pretty. You can find out all kinds of things about her dark soul and cutting sense of humor at her site http://www.sweetney.com

Adam Good. paraphrased from Week 17: ” Adam is DC's Anselm Berrigan. If that doesn't mean shit to you, you should get to reading both of their work. Adam's a youngin' and there is sure to be much much more from him. Unless he gives up poetry to become an arms dealer in Africa. You never know.

Mike Grau. "In a stunning development, Mike Grau continues to drink and smoke, and maintains great hair."

from Mike
from Unabomber Haiku

Raji Krishnaswami is a jetsetting DJ shuttling around the country and between NYC and Japan to spin sets while running his own technology consulting company – RK Digital. He’s a tech/IT whore in general and we get photos from him taken on snazzy equipment. Here’s the MoveOn “Bush in 30 Seconds” commercial he worked on: Bushillin Toxum 2.

Track him down at the Crobar or on Sirius (satellite radio) where he spins a show.

Jon Lee is a crazy mug. Not too recently he got back from a 2+-year stint with the Peace Corps in the Dominican Republic (we call it “The DR” affectionately). Since being back he’s spent a lot of time writing and painting cuz he’s able to prioritize his shit like that. And he’s been doing a bit with WIT (the Washington Improv Theater). We’ll send him wherever we can whenever we can to act as one of our foreign correspondents. Well, when he goes places we’ll ask him to write for us from those places.

When we first met Jon he was a vegetarian, but would take the occasional “meat holiday” which was more like a binge on a buncha hot dogs.

Bob Massey splits his time between music-making and writing. Writing for people like Spin, The Washington Post and other publications that pale in our shadow. Music-making with people like Jean Smith, Telegraph Melts, Tsunami, and his current band, the Gena Rowlands Band. More music-making on scores for film and dance and what have you. Recently he left DC for L.A. to pursue some kind of movie-related writing career that will undoubtably crush his soul. Bob knows his way around conviction. He's not afraid.

Ryan Nelson (aka R. Carroll Nelson) is a man of many talents. When he’s not writing and illustrating fab comics large and small, he’s playing in any number of bands. Outfits past and present include The Most Secret Method, Beauty Pill and the Routineers. He put out Count The Ways years back with Bill Colgrove (above) and Thomas Crawley – he should be putting out more stuff for general consumption, but the bitch is way overbooked (a Nelson family trait, methinks). Here’s an old old article about The Most Secret Method that I randomly googled.

Mel Nichols writes and teaches. She smokes, drinks and eats food. She walks and drives. We can not confirm the rumors concerning her role in Travelgate.
She is part of the editorial hive-mind behind ://English Matters, an online hypermedia journal. Check that shit out>

The People’s Peaceable Assembly Line. Thus spake PPAL, “We have no mission statement, no hierarchy. We are merely cowed and terrified citizens acting as we see fit under the directive of the signs: Report Suspicious Activities.”

John Shanchuk is a list of contradictions: a BS in Physics but an MFA in Painting and New Media; born and raised in Louisville, KY, but now lives in Jersey City; IT dork by day, sometimes carpenter and house builder, and banjo player for the M Shanghai String Band by night (well, not every night).

John’s once talked a New York City cab driver into letting him drive. And then drove a Brooklyn Beer truck to a Ween show in the same week (and no, he’s not employed by Brooklyn Beer).

from Shanchuk
Buttermilk John

Justin Sirois kicks it in Baltimore where he runs Narrow House Recordings -- a record label for contemporary poetry putting out all kinds of cool shiznit. You can find more of his poems on/in Poets Against the War and several chapbooks by New Lights Press, as well as www.thepixelplus.com. His experiences as a social security employee and night club promoter find their way into writing about politics, film, late capitalism and dinosaurs. You can never have enough about dinosaurs. Somehow he manages to find to be Black Square Editions web administrator, and to run a poetry reading series in Charm City.

from Justin
to the woman in Wendy’s wearing the purple & black jersey listening to pop country.
merrie melodies & the role models of termite terrace

Rod Smith is to poetry in DC what Sonic Youth was to rock in NYC. He coordinates the Bridge Street reading series as well as managing the store – and through both brings a steady stream of writers through Chocolate City, in person and in print. And then there is his poetry, which keeps coming, keeps evolving, and keeps us inspired – spanning (at least) 9 books and chapbooks and a slew of magazines over the years.
Learn a lot more about Rod over at EPC >

Kevin Thurston purees a mixture of poetry, lecture, song, theatrics and calisthenics into a delicious performance confection that we highly recommend. We always meant to video a performance or two for the site, but kept dropping the ball. So we go with his no less excellent visual work... he’s been obsessively cutting pieces out of magazines – at least when he was holed up in an apartment he’d already moved out of. We look forward to seeing what becomes of it all, but he’s still a little pussy-bitch for moving out of Baltimore.

Joel Tyson isn’t super talkative, but in a laconic-hang-on-his-every-word kinda way. His musical tastes are far-ranging musical tastes and he knows what he’s talking about, has a beautiful daughter and can take the shit outta some photos.

Ryan Walker. Oh Ryan. Every time we bump into you, you are much taller than we remember. Last time we saw Ryan read, he had made little paper footballs out of poems and was passing them out. Fucking brilliant.

Mark Wallace has been up to good things for a long time. His latest books include the novel Dead Carnival (Avec Books, 2004), the New American Poetry Award-winning Temporary Worker Rides A Subway (Green Integer, 2005) and Haze: Essays, Poems and Prose (Aerial/Edge Books, 2004). I first came to his work when this poem knocked me on my ass:
How To Finish A Story, or My Correspondence School

Much more about Mark Wallace at EPC >

from Mark
from PARTY IN MY BODY

Rupert Wondolowski. from Week 15: “Rupert has been running the Shattered Wig Review and the Shattered Wig nights in Baltimore since the closing days of the Civil War (‘Recent Unpleasantness’). With the growing popularity of moving pictures many thought Rupert was ‘shit out of luck’ (an expression from that time) -- but he and his folk persevered by doing it their way.”

Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM