Chad Redden's Blog

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http://lablablabs.net/

WE ARE OVER THE SPACES TOUCHING 
by Carrie Lorig & Chad Redden

It moves and junk. 

I am a super huge fan of Carrie Lorig so very happy when she gave me around 1000 words to edit/alter/add/subtract/animate into this creature. 

On Wednesday, October 24th @ 7pm I will be in Chicago reading from my (in development) ebook Erotic Shutterstock Photography with Steve Roggenbuck, Russ Woods, Cean Gamalinda, Rachel Hyman, Heath Ison, and Jeanette Gomes. 
IRL: http://www.facebook.com/events/333048396790645/Spreecast: http://www.spreecast.com/events/chicagobulls

Story of a Worm (Pages 37, 51, 89, 115 & 131)on THOUSAND SHADES OF GRAY
CLICK TITLE FOR FULL SEQUENCE(heart or reblog on tumblr because that would be neat)

View the final version of "Witches."

found the fruit between graves

Dear No, Not Today, No, I am certain we are next door neighbors. We must be. I hear you through the walls. Who is inside of your apartment with you? I can hear so many sounds from unexpected organs breathing and bleeding. I hear you both through the walls. Or is it just you, doubled into another person?  Or is it just you, creating another person? I know you love them whoever they are. That I can hear too.No, I am certain you are making pictures in my head. As funny as that sounds. As simple as that sounds. I am certain the pictures you make in my head are the pictures you make in the world. I have nothing but your sounds to go on, but they are accurate sounds of pictures in creation. Is there a place where I too can buy all of this beauty? Is this something sold in cartons or do you and you alone have the recipe?What is your definition of ‘a pinch’ and ‘a dash’? Everyone has different sized fingers so their version of ‘a pinch’ and ‘a dash’ is different. I want this recipe to turn out perfect to match the certain pictures you have put in my head. Tell me about your fingers, No. Put them against the wall to my apartment so I can hear them, No.No, I am certain that you have built an apartment style lab within my head now. Yes, I hear you inside of there. Yes, this is certain. I am glad you tell me the days of the week. Are there days in between? Do those even matter anymore? I like the days of the week. This is known probably. Maybe everyone likes that days have names. You impress them all though, even the seasons. You impress me with your names for days. I am glad the universe is unregulated.No, you remind me of this every day that is within you. Every day.No, I am certain that I have been quiet as I have listened to your phone calls from the mud. How did you get mud in this apartment sized lab inside of my head? It doesn’t matter. It is special. Thank you.  No, what I want you to know is this: I hope I was quiet enough for you to wreck all of my ideas about what ‘inconsolable’ means. How has the world gone on so long in this state? How many pinches and dashes will it take? I heard you tell the answer to whoever you are in your apartment with. I did not know what language you used, but recognized it as a language. This I am certain. Or it was yourself who you are building inside of yourself and I am listening to you like a neighbor will listen when they see a neighbor with their mattress outside attempting to sleep on every beautiful thing in the neighborhood?

No, Not Today by Jordan Stempleman

Dear Person,I read you last night. I thought I was going to die. Person, you remind me of me.Person, you have less hair and more sex than I do, but you remind me of me.I thought I was going to die because there I was inside of you. I would die after I finished the book. My limbs went numb. I thought everything was dying. I almost didn’t finish you. But. I needed to know how to fix things.I think I figured it out. I wasn’t going to write this letter. Then I heard my room laughing at me. I heard my apartment laughing at me. So maybe now something will be different when I go home to sleep later. I sleep in a different city than you. When I read you, Person, I just changed Chicago to my city. But. Everything else is the same. Sort of. Close enough.I think you should have a warning on your cover. Something like: this book will kill you if you finish reading it because you are the person in this book titled Person. And being the person in this book will lose feeling in your limbs and think you will die not because anyone dies in the book but reading about yourself will make you die. You will be invested.Dear Person,
[Attempt 2]I think I know you or you remind me of someone I know. Cool.
Person by Sam Pink, Lazy Fascist Press

My little book, thursday, is now available for preorder from plain wrap press.


You're like, "oh, okay Chad that is pretty cool, but I need a little more to get me interested."


I'm like, "oh, okay wonderful person who is at my blog, here are some blurbs because people like blurbs."

"Chad Redden has written an elegy in which the said and the unsaid have equal presence. Though quiet and unhurried, it has a cumulative power, and a mood that is distinctly American."  

Edward Mullany, author of If I Falter at the Gallows
AND

S-M-A-R-T. S-A-V-V-Y. L-E-G-I-T.

 J. A. Tyler, author of In Love with a Ghost
AND

"Thursday is a lovely and unexpected collection of poetry that tells a moving story with wit and heart—a winning combination. More than that, Thursday evokes a powerful sense of place and self—a home and self lost, a home and self that can't really be found, a woman trapped within herself and the narrator trying through carefully chosen words, through the careful carrying of memories, to set her free."

Roxane Gay, author of Ayiti

Dear The Oregon Trail is The Oregon Trail,You left my bones to sun at the river. I tried to keep up on The Oregon Trail, Oregon Trail. I tried. I prepared. Before our trip, I skinned all the stray cats I could find, because stray cats were all I could find to skin. There are no wild animals here. There are stray cats. I took their pelts and shaped them into a bear. I skinned the bear and wore the new pelt. You told me the trail was too hot to wear a bear pelt. I wore nothing underneath. I wore only the bear pelt. I traded my clothes for 20 rusty bullets. I traded my rifle for 20 rusty bullets. I thought bison would be slow enough to screw the bullets into their hearts. They look slow in drawings. I practiced on drawings of bison. I thought I was ready for The Oregon Trail, Oregon Trail. I did.Who owns the rivers? I want to complain about their frequency and color. There are too many. They are too green. We must fjord them every page - even when the pages are between pages. Who designed the rivers? They work against us. They should make us lightweight. Why are your full of rivers of sex? Why doesn’t the sex make us lightweight? Why doesn’t the sex flow from shore to shore instead of north to south? Why am I not full of sex? Even the oxen are full of sex. Even the bullets are full of sex. Oregon Trail, you remind me everything in the world is full of sex, even if everything is in 2D.I started leaking after a river. I’m sorry, Oregon Trail, I can only remember a river not which river, because The Oregon Trail is full of rivers. I started leaking. I think I slept on a rusty bullet. It screwed itself inside me. It missed the practice of bison drawings. I missed the practice of bison drawings. I started leaking and this continued long past the burials of children #3 and #5. I started losing teeth. The heat had something to do with it. I started with 29 and then with each river they became loose. My bones have 7 teeth. That is not enough to eat bison. This may be why I am bones too.I did not know there were so many bees on The Oregon Trail, Oregon Trail. When I started losing my teeth, the bees found my throat. They stung. They made hives and honey. We moved so fast in the wagon. We moved so fast and when the air moves fast against my face I can’t breathe through my nose. I must keep my mouth open to breathe. I became full of bees. You couldn’t tell, because after a certain point you thought I was just a bear along for the ride. You didn’t bother me because you thought I was talented bear and could haul many pounds of bison. You thought I was a talented bear who thought I could screw bullets into bison. Or, you knew bears were limited and knew only of bullets, but not guns. I should have spoken more, but I was full of bees. I am glad you didn’t trade me to the bankers from Boston for new children and bullets. I know you wish you would have now that I am bones.Oregon Trail, there is so much world within you. You showed me The Oregon Trail on a map. It looked like a river. It moved northish so we went against the current. Did we move uphill? Why did gravity make things more difficult? Was it because we left home and home puts a hook in us and pulls until we make a new home and call it home so that the new home puts a hook in us and asks the old hook to ‘please, release this person from your gravity’? Or, was it because I wore a bear pelt and the trail was too hot for a bear pelt made of cat pelts and I truly dressed for the wrong century for this trip?I wish we could be other greens. I wish my bones were other greens. I wonder what your face looks like in 3D, Oregon Trail. The Oregon Trail is the Oregon Trail by Gregory Sherl, Mud Luscious Press