• audio technician

The non-profit Fishouse is a nationally recognized literary journal that publishes bi-monthly online. Fishouse mails digital recorders to between six and ten poets each issue, who record themselves reading their poems and Q&A segments about poetry and writing. Fishouse also hosts a live reading series in Maine and podcasts recordings of the live readings.

The highest echelons of the literary community—Poets & Writers magazine, the Academy of American Poets, The Poetry Foundation, the Society of American Poets, The Frost Place—have recognized Fishouse as an important new artistic, educational, and cultural resource. We find it exciting to be at the front of a new means to give audience to literature through technology, and we’re looking for students who share this enthusiasm for breaking new ground. These unpaid intern positions provide valuable experience for aspiring poets, scholars or critics of poetry, for students interested in non-profit administration, in publishing, and technology in education and the arts.

Fishouse does not have an office, so work will be done remotely—student’s own computer is required—with most communication taking place via email and instant messenger.

Audio Technician:
The audio technician will be responsible for sound editing and creating podcasts from live Reading Series recordings, sound editing poem and Q&A files as they return from poets, compiling and publishing weekly podcasts from archived material, and possibly remastering archived sound files. The successful candidate will have experience in sound editing (we currently use Audacity and GarageBand) and familiarity with Macs. Interest in poetry and literature is a plus, but not required. Dazzling technical skills are.

For more information, contact Matt O’Donnell, Editor & Executive Director: matt@fishousepoems.org

2. The little woman, next, daily, hardly perceptible is looking an-xious-ly for the
little man, next, daily, hardly perceptible. The little man, next, daily, hardly
perceptible is looking an-xious-ly for the little woman, next, daily, hardly
perceptible.

3. Both dream of constructing a camera or a vent-for-their-use in front of the toxic
substances that are produced, that are converted to gestures of aggression from all
possible points in Space.

4. The little woman, next, daily, hardly perceptible was never able to meet the little
man, next, daily, hardly perceptible. The little man, next, daily, hardly perceptible
was never able to meet the little woman, next, daily, hardly perceptible.

5. They linger without building the camera or the vent-for-their-use.

6. Both die alone in the same hospital, on the same day, at the appointed hour, but in
distinct cubicles, both contaminated by the toxic substances that are produced, that
are converted to gestures of aggression from all possible points in Space.

postscript: "Performed the autopsy, two cadavers already on the road to decomposition
were joined in the hospital’s freezer and today, their dry skeletons, their white bones, will
delight the mocking novitiates in one of our medical schools."

The old man sat in the big chair at the Cá door every morning. The sun came in through
his legs. The old man, perspiring in the big-chair, moved back to his origin. He’s a
strange old man, said the passersby, he’s a very strange old man, who sits down and
picks up the sun. One morning, the Cá door did not open. The sun comes and goes, a
white bird pecks at husks. No longer will there be an old man sitting down in the big
chair at the Cá door picking up the sun. With their rat noises they occupied
the house. Seeds sprouted, blizzards, broken glass. No longer will there be an old man sitting down
in the big-chair at the Cá door picking up the sun. A white bird pecks at husks. The big-
chair dashed to the corner of the patio, legs up, rains and other plagues go by, and rotten
it is.

that mythical left at Albuquerque and soon Sam’s big hat flaps
in the wind, his knee-high, shit kickers jerking in midair.

It’s not Eurydice stumbling into ecstasy up the moss-
tumbled steps, Orpheus erect before her;

it’s not Bugs smacking carrots as the fade circles down
around him and the cursive loops across the screen—

craft and the hero victorious in the common tongue.
All the strange grammars of success yield

the elastic cat who balloons back to wholeness
after being smacked with the frying pan,

or the duck that slips his bill back across his jaw
after eating a load of buckshot. Never the scene

when Elmer Fudd blotches his crotch with piss
when Bugs readies to take his kneecaps

with his own shotgun. In this one, Eurydice
chews on a worm of pain that sounds like farewell

to Orpheus, untuned to the choral music of Hell
and Orpheus’ head, cast aside, floats forever singing.

In this one, the Thracian women toss the broken lyre,
mangled as a smashed racket, into the fire and smile

as smoke ropes up around their throats
and the strings hiss and curl into ampersands.

ciudad juárez, a steady stream of walkers over the river. ciudad juárez, with pink
crosses for too many murdered women. ciudad juárez, with chinese food i never
tasted. ciudad, i could list all that you could do for me as so many others have lit
your red firecrackers before with pockets full of coins and none left for the picket
signs brushed by a child's hands. kennedy, did you ask your lovers what you
could do for them? did you love marilyn enough to breathe her in mornings after
make-up and perfume – breathe her in between? i want to breathe in the wet dirt
of snake paths and tortoise entrances. i want to breathe in the gulf's salt water,
that warmth now part of my consciousness. i admit, i'm a sucker for well-placed
line breaks, enjambed desire, changing the subject to prolong it or avoid it. a slant
rhyming couplet at the end of a non-rhyming effort will get me every time. i want
to ration the irrational in earthquake cans, hurricanes. x marks the duct tape spot
where windows won't break into a zillion crystals. x marks the spot where the
tree trimmer fell the wrong tree then finished off the wounded one hiding behind
the fence. red marks the spot where the possum played dead then died. i never
saw her in waking life, the big rata of telephone wires and acorns. i called you, x,
so many times in writing. sometimes i call you homey when phones tap dance
and breathe like patriots. i never woke up to feel awake or dying. i've died to
wake but not with intention or celebration.

All week before: Dickinson: “To Ache is human – not polite –”

All twilight: indio snake, javelinas, rabbit, cloudy emerald water, the sound of
frogs. The acrylic smell of carrizo. Deepish sleep and a woman we both knew
emerging peacefully from the lake. Coyote caca and light green moss on the dirt
path to the rio. Spiders making small canopies between leaves. Fire ants and
mulberries and snail shells. Mexican bluewings and lots of oxygen.