Knifeandfork's The Wrench Vers. 2-43 presents forty-two conversations inspired by Primo Levi's original novel The Wrench. Each conversation documents a text-message dialogue between participants and Tino Fassone, a text-messaging robot created by Knifeandfork. Source code included.

The Wrench was commissioned in 2008 by Rhizome at the New Museum. 

The Internet is a series of poems, connected both physically and thematically, that explores digression of thought. The (actual) Internet, its hypertext, its menus, its links have supported the aimless navigations which act in caricature of the human brain's unexpected associations of ideas. In trying to learn about specific words and terms, the resulting answers sometimes broaden, sometimes dampen the spectrum of connotations. Meandering searches divert to unfamiliar reframings and reflect back again on familiar territory. Words can fit exactly where one expects them, as in a search for a famous quote or a plagiarized phrase, or find new meanings in diverse and surprising jargons.

The Internet is a way of exploring the branching and distracting search in codex form. The poem is driven by lines found within earlier sections of the poem, each time recontextualized. The lines that repeat and create the little itch around which its shoot poem forms were chosen by whim and exacto knive. The titles of each section come from the actual search engine yields of the connector lines. Both Internets are poems of reading, viewing, recording, hoarding, saving, overwhelming and possibly saying too much.

Poetry by Thera!

We want to tell you about great bike rides we had. You should tell us about yours for the next issue: ihadagreatride [at] gmail [dot] com.

Printed on hand-cut kraft paper (so some of the edges are little wonky).

For a copy of issue 1, send two stamps to 1988 Amsterdam Avenue #1, New York, NY 10032-5141.

Steve's first chapbook in thirty years!

Steve's association with Fractious goes back to the days a certain video/music store was open down the street from his book table in Morningside Heights, NYC. He combed the used CDs daily, and we at Fractious got to read his largely illegible notebooks. Then he got a computer, and we were able to read the type a lot more clearly.

With illustrations by Anna Grainer!

Hot pink cardstock cover; green band; and orange, yellow, or blue (depends on which run you have) interior pages.

“Buzz Poole is a daring and original voice in American storytelling. As they veer from the bizarre to the sublime, these short pieces display startling insight and inventiveness, as well as a thrilling ability to improvise.”
— Adam Mansbach, author of Angry Black White Boy

"A well-titled pocket story collection where the words roll out like a trek across a Texas highway and it's hard not to picture yourself eating cold beer and greasy eggs with Buzz in some dusty nowhere diner."—Quimby's

I LIKE TO KEEP MY TROUBLES ON THE WINDY SIDE OF THINGS is a 2010 Small Press Holiday Recommendation!

Quick as a spark struck from a flint, Buzz Poole’s vivid characters propel through his stories and land squarely on the windy side of things—some better, some worse for the trouble, and all some distance from whence they came. As they peer into the treasures of the soil and out the windows of the gambling train, collecting golf balls and scheming from the driver’s seat of the ice cream truck, they leave indelible marks on the worlds they navigate.

I Like to Keep My Troubles on the Windy Side of Things gathers brand new stories as well as some previously published in Washington Square, Spork, and [SIC], among other magazines. This pocket-sized book features original art by John Mejias of Paping.

Pocket-sized perfectbound book with an uncoated feltweave cover.

Prose and Poetry

• "The Last Jewish Tailor of the Grand Bazaar of Tehran" by Salar Abdoh
• "Now Things With Em Are Really, Really Bad" by Amy Berkowitz
• "Casino" and "Handbag" by Kim Chinquee
• "I Had the Catfish" by John Cotrona
• "Selected Translations" by Linh Dinh
• "Clean Shoes" by Michel Duchampbuffet
• "Smile" by Kathy Fish
• "The Sad Girlfriend" by Rachel B Glaser
• "Autumn in a Box" by Garth Risk Hallberg
• "Dead Dancers" by Pamela Laskin
• "Fall in the Heart That Heartbreak Built" by Craig E Levinsky
• "Ménage" by Sarah Porter
• "A Blanket in Autumn" by Daniel Roy
• "Pop Tatari (A Fiction)" by Christopher D Salyers
• "On Crossing" by Kate Simpkins
• "Beauty, What Can I Bring You?" by Diane Williams
• "The Missing Telephone Incident" by David Michael Wolach

Translation

• "The End of Love" by Ilaria Bernardini, translated by c huffman
• "Köln" by Hilde Domin translated by Daria Masullo

Illustration

• Junko Hanhero

“In times like these, it is difficult not to write satire.”
— Juvenal

Snatched off the street after another boring day at his copy shop job, Caleb Nell is whisked into the bowels of a secret, corporate-run prison. Caleb tries to make sense of his situation while he is fed delicious meals, endures physical and psychological humiliations, and is constantly threatened with visits to the Machine Room. Through his interactions with a strange array of guards and doctors, and the writings of an off-kilter and very dead philosopher, Caleb soon comes to terms with the confounding temporality of existence.

Echo Detained is an allegorical satire inspired by the absurd practices employed in the "War on Terror." Cochran’s novel takes its cue from Kafka’s The Trial and Nabokov’s Invitation to a Beheading, before evolving into a ludicrous world resonant of Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove.

• "Forget the Swan" by Michael Troncale
• "Kongossa" by Sarah Beck
• "Amnesia" by Nikkiesha N McLeod
• "On Finding Your Brown Wool Suit" by Laura Modigliani
• "Shades" by Buzz Poole
• "Dusk in the Chapel" by Aidan Byrne
• "Car Thief" by James P Dawson
• "idiot." by Jon Udelson
• "For John" by Kaarin Von Herrlich
• "Sweat" by Casey Gordon
• "No Such Thing as a Good Whale" by Jack Fergen
• "Funeral Limousine" by Rubén Rangel
• "STURM UND DRANG" by Anna Steegmann
• "On the Death of My Most Obscure Uncle" by Gregory Crosby
• "One" from "Your Chinese Tea is Getting Cold!" by Veronica Liu
• "Three Boys Four Eggs" by Jason Tarnowski
• "Robert & Veronica" by Jason Tarnowski
• "Brief Incomplete History of a Piece of Furniture" by Jason Tarnowski
• "Transmutation" by Jill Di Donato
• "Falling in Love with the Unconquered Real" by Ezekiel N Finkelstein

Illustration

• Elizabeth Bethea
• Jill Di Donato

From Anchorage junkyards to Boston warehouses, tooling around on his Huffy (the Evel Knievel model) and avoiding fares in his Reno cab, John Cotrona sketches the moments in between the moments about which other people write. Cotrona’s first collection brings together four stories that previously appeared in Cometbus and No Duh, plus three that have never before been published. Featuring artwork by Jesse Weston.

Pocket-sized perfect-bound book with uncoated feltweave cover.

Also available at: Powell’s

This 2009 program guide for the online community radio station Washington Heights Free Radio is more like 1/14th schedule, 13/14th WHFR-related miscellany.

For a copy of this program guide, just email info [at] whfr [dot] org, and you'll get one in the mail for free.

A new comic from Jesse, the artist for Lost Positives.

Tape-bound by hand.

New York Pamphleteers is a collection of strangers coaxed into speaking to each other on the page by ringleader Brutus Lavanneus. All copies are distributed about town for free. If you don’t happen to come across one on your path under or aboveground, you can pick one up at Left Bank Books. Or, if you really insist, you can e-mail nypamphleteers@gmail.com and Brutus will send you one for a buck (for postage). For more information: http://www.myspace.com/nypamphleteers

New York Pamphleteers is a collection of strangers coaxed into speaking to each other on the page by ringleader Brutus Lavanneus. All copies are distributed about town for free. If you don’t happen to come across one on your path under or aboveground, you can pick one up at Left Bank Books. Or, if you really insist, you can e-mail nypamphleteers@gmail.com and Brutus will send you one for a buck (for postage). For more information: http://www.myspace.com/nypamphleteers

New York Pamphleteers is a collection of strangers coaxed into speaking to each other on the page by ringleader Brutus Lavanneus. All copies are distributed about town for free. If you don’t happen to come across one on your path under or aboveground, you can pick one up at Left Bank Books. Or, if you really insist, you can e-mail nypamphleteers@gmail.com and Brutus will send you one for a buck (for postage). For more information: http://www.myspace.com/nypamphleteers

New York Pamphleteers is a collection of strangers coaxed into speaking to each other on the page by ringleader Brutus Lavanneus. All copies are distributed about town for free. If you don’t happen to come across one on your path under or aboveground, you can pick one up at Left Bank Books. Or, if you really insist, you can e-mail nypamphleteers@gmail.com and Brutus will send you one for a buck (for postage). For more information: http://www.myspace.com/nypamphleteers

Zine. Out of print.

Zine. Out of print.

Zine. Out of print.