Welcome to Tata Nacho 
Click on the author’s name to get to the contribution.Go to the Tata Nacho Contributor’s Page to read a brief biography of each of our contributors for this issue.

POETRY

Jake Berry

The Mill Road

James Cervantes

Crab Oscar: A Biopic, Tour Bus

Andrei Codrescu 

The Broker

CT Fritz 

Peter, Rhein

Valerie Harbolovic 

Granada

Bill Lavender

Soon, Pastoral, Fair Play

Shelley Puhak 

Yevgenia’s Pick-up Line, Lida and the Swan

Sarah A. Rae 

Beyond Columbus

Sarah D. Reith 

Maxwell meets the Gases, The Learned Professor Speaks of Faust, Tuesday

Tad Richards

Zone, Late Scene

 

NON-FICTION

Claire Martin Finley

298

Grace Fuller 

Companionship

 

FICTION

Sonja Livingston

Jubilee

Ann Elia Stewart 

Caseload

 He has published 14 books of poetry, including The New Spirit, Elegies & Vacations, Days, and a new collection of essays: Lyric & Spirit. He is known for collaborations with jazz musicians and painters and is currently working on a poetry-video installation project. With Charles Bernstein, he edits the Modern and Contemporary Poetics Series for the University of Alabama Press.

From The Notebooks (of Being & Time)

[VII / 96]  

odd music  the music  of time  dividing

time into intervals of exploratory sense

sense of  time  as a way  into being   as

a  way    to sense  being   as  it  is  only

in  time   music  amusing   or  arousing

causing    being  &  time   to  be    for a

moment    palpable    as music     as the

recurrence    a watery currency    call it

water music   the page   the barge upon

the  river     mark it      remark  upon  it

where you are music mark it with an X          

 9/8/08

 

 

 [VII / 100] 

            return     to      where     you    are

            hands        cannot      hold    water

            for long

 

                                    what exactly is

            is-ing       it has no name       we are

            in it          we are it

 

                                                           return to

            what you are        a round         around

            the bend       no getting around it     in

 

            any moment       you say just a minute

            where is that time  &  where did it go?

 

 9/12/08

James Cervantes’s fourth book, Temporary Meaning, was published in March, 2006, by Hamilton Stone Editions and was nominated for an L.A. Times Book Award.  He is editor of The Salt River Review and splits his time between San Miguel de Allende and Arizona.  James Cervantes work, Temporary Meanings can be ordered from: http://www.hamiltonstone.org/catalog.html#temporarymeaning

Cone of Uncertainty

 

 

The cone of uncertainty extends from the eye

to possible landfall: a tiny port in the fetid south

and eastward to another tiny port in the fetid south

which reminds me of a blue wheelbarrow,

one point on the circumference of its wheel

firmly planted where I last left it waiting

to be steered by the arc made by my arms

and my hands grasping the handles, but that

is no cone of uncertainty and somehow geometry

backwards since an arc could not steer an apex

just as possible catastrophes cannot maneuver

their cause though they be within sight of the eye.

 

 

 

* “cone of uncertainty” defines the outer edges of an area

within which a hurricane’s eye might make landfall.

 Jake Berry’s latest book, Brambu Drezi (Barrytown/Station Hill, 2006) includes revised versions of books one and two and the first publication of book three of the long poem. The Blood Paradoxes / War Poems was published in 2005 by xPress(ed). He is author of more than a dozen other books and chapbooks. Berry has been widely published in magazines, journals and anthologies for more than two decades. He edits several blogs including, 9th St.Laboratories and Conversari. As a songwriter and musician his CDs are available at Front Porch.

Elusion Rising

 

The hotel room with sallow walls and red mirrors. The vanity with a row of fingers twitching, sawdust on the floor. Wrapped in the sheets on a bare mattress she remembers the volume of drugs left on the radio and reaches back across the pit of her death for one more dose. Years that culminate in tragedy find their way home. Almost raised to voice, the radio almost receiving a signal. For a moment the air was painless, then the war returned, clothes hung in the shower to dry.

 

Penumbra 

 

 It begins

   as cobwebbed eye

     Designer men

     without instruction

 

Welcome to the capital.

 

These are your membranes.

 

This is your plasma.

 

Tiny spaces inside the fruit

    where you will live

   long tedious orbits

     with insects smothering

   before thought is.

 

                                

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Tata Nacho baffled and entertained us in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.  We didn’t know what it was. Mitch wondered if it was a cheesy, crunchy, breast shaped snack!  I wondered  if it was too strange of a name to use for a press. After hearing about the need for more venues for writers, we decided to start a venue, start small, but grow.  We would like to publish an anthology of Tata Nacho and want to create a yearly rag, or a non specific interval.  

 

I grew up in East Los Angeles and now reside in Winters, California with chickens, dogs, kids and a garden.  A veteran of two marriages, I have lived with a magician, fire-eater, midget, and have castrated sheep with my teeth.  

My poetry can be found at Exquisite Corpse, Yawp, New Virginia Review and other publications. I co-edited two anthologies, “Mourning Sickness” a collection about miscarriage and infant death, and “Bombshells: War Stories and Poems by Women on the Homefront,” a collection of homefront tales spanning WWII to the present. I am a graduate of UC Irvine, and MFA graduate of UNO.  

 

(Picture taken by Amanda Boyden… Jim Grimsley over left shoulder)

Sincerely,

Jesse Loren