THE COOL ZONE is the first in a series of anthologies from Camp Elasticity Productions, including work from several writers, artists, and photographers. It’s being published at the end of a disordered year they’ll remember forever, and is a disorderly yearbook introducing the new enterprise. Contributors:Aram Saroyan, Angela Black, Zack Kopp, Mari L. Muhle, Tuwayne Foster, Neeli Cherkovski, Dylan Wolfram, Elizabeth Ianacci, Raoul Vehill, Lauren Tivey, Rob Plath, David S. Atkinson, Cortney Collins, Richard English, Aldo Quigliotti, Becca Michalak, Kewpoet, Joules Craft, Douglas Mallon, Steve Biel, Lauren Tivey, Mark SaFranko, Catfish McDaris, J.D. Nelson, Keith Dersley, Joe Cervelin, Stephan Donohue, David-Ivar Herman Dune, Niles Reddick, Elliot Rosewater, Zoe Anastassiou, M.A. Blickley, Gerald Nicosia, Maggie Dubris, Tamra Lucid & Ronnie Pontiac, Howie Good, Clem, Heather Fowler, Jake Riley, Carl Papa Palmer.
Words and Art by KEWPOET
Available now at the link above, and look for this hot number in your local cool bookstores sometime in November. Add it to your list.
I Do Not Regret-
Tonight at least I can say
Twain’s death bed Nihilism
sank you full. As all dream not dreamy
disappearing and your farce; toil willed
to silent two breaths, days of breaths even flashed across the gorge of the universe, quantum that.
Reality Stars is a dark joke about the common ground shared by the verbage of market research surveys and most, if not all, human belief systems, including religion, law enforcement and the government. It’s a satire of dogmatic thought and the human need for proof with religion politics and popular culture as the players. As such, it has the potential to offend, but never loses sight of the nuts and bolts of humorous presentation, for all its metaphysical conjecture and taboo subject matter. Lifelong outsider Howard Plumber leaves his job at Zylon Research in Denver after an apparently psychic respondent to one of his nightly survey calls commands him to, “Write the novel!” Aspiring writer Howard sees this as a dare from God and accepts the challenge. He convinces himself that “God” is behind all wars in human history—since acts of war are generally caused or attended by sincerely-felt religious beliefs, particularly evident in the ongoing Christian-Muslim-Jewish endless three way war. On the Greyhound bus out of Denver, he conceives of a book called The War on God, making war on everything in a well-intentioned if reactionary way, as a sort of desperate peace-protest, beginning a series of false starts in this cross-country adventure.
Modern life is a problem contest and deadbeat freelance writer Al Lamp’s adventure in this book looks at this essential argument. Social media connects him to all his friends throughout the bug scare and lockdown. A website called The Rotten Edge pays to host his interviews with rock stars and writers. Dating sites take the place of bars and parties, for the most part. A lost book he read years ago and forgot the name of has predicted many recent global events except the fake alien war that’s probably coming next. Are the actions of his obnoxious upstairs neighbors in a building without insulation in southeast Denver analogous to Al’s place at the bottom of society’s problem contest as a creative artist? When that lost book comes true again in the form of race riots all over the country, Al is forced to confront the racial symbols placed in him by decades of media brainwashing, transcending his tormented life in the basement and ascending finally to a new cheap apartment up the street just before the 2020 election results are called. What will happen next? PULL TAB TO OPEN.
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Cloud Punchers by Henry Alarmclock
Reformed supervillain Henry Alarmclock broke hearts with a series of public breakdowns in the 90s Denver spoken word scene. He was thought to have been defeated by enemy forces years ago, but has recently resurfaced with a series of prose shorts designed to defuse the galactic control algorithm, simultaneously providing comfort and joy to all the other disenfranchised deviants who never meant no harm. PULL THIS TAB.
Camp Elasticity 