Nameless Frame

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09/30/26 - posted by Daryl



Name: April Ursula Fox

Location: Viva Las Vegas

Why Oceanwide Plaza as a location in your new story?
It’s mindblowing, everyone should google it if they don’t know it. I saw it in person, it’s thrilling. It represents LA so well. Fits the story for its realness and discussion of human value and human waste: “The territorial tags of those to whom the city owes its true allegiance. Blood and pain on stolen canvas.”

What do you attribute your vivid imagination to?
Things can be real, you know? :) At least in our heads! Imagination is my pair of wings. I like to exercise it. I read a lot, all kinds of texts, watch tons of movies, other artwork, travel, keep an open mind, humor possibilities. Partake in transcendental rituals.

How did you end up in Vegas?
My dad was a Pro Poker player here after he retired, I came from Europe where I was living and working to spend his last years with him, then I stayed after he passed, studying for my PhD. Was worth it, I miss him. And Vegas is cool, PhD is done. All good things.

What do you miss about Brazil?
Beach, sun, carnaval and music, joy and friendships, a Brazilian way of being chill.

What don’t you miss about Brazil?
Streets are pretty unsafe, violence is rough down there, tons of gossipers too and homophobia.  Don’t miss that. It’s getting better tho, some say.

Where do you get your freak on?
In a hot bubbles spa in my backyard; Catching rock and punk bands and goth/post-punk nights around town; checking out the poetry circles; making the best salmon-avocado-cheese toast ever.

Where can people hear/see your work?
I read poetry around Vegas; and just put together my writing website last week to get more writing out there - getting things organized! :) Looking for collabs too! :)

Contact: 
IG: https://www.instagram.com/aprilursulafox/
Web: aprilursulafox.com, aprilursula.com



09/27/26 - posted by Daryl

09/27/26 - posted by Duncan Cuervo

My Jock Friend Review

There can be a certain sameness with a lot of confessional self-published poetry that originates from rupi kaur. I’m talking about chapbooks that claim to focus on love and loss, but more often are about short-term flings that end explosively. Of course, with poetry all subjects are fair game, but it can be tiring to read poem after poem that act more as the poet’s therapy for their first “real” relationship. My Jock Friend does something a little more unique in this genre by centering not on a lover’s breakup, but a friendship breakup. One that didn’t end in an explosive confrontation, but instead had a more common, but no less tragic, slow drifting away of personalities.

This collection is the latest from Jesse Tovar, L.A. poet and editor at Mobile Data Mag, and it brings the reader into his psyche as he reflects on the loss of the titular “Jock Friend.” The poetry is raw, making you feel as if you were directly in the circles Tovar is relating to. The timeline of this college classmate encounter is told out of order, with short pieces that reflect on the aftermath of the loss, giving way to prose pieces that analyze different aspects of the relationship with the Jock. Even the term “Jock” is dissected as a word used to other people, and it’s here that I think a strong sense of care and respect for this lost connection is shown. Although elsewhere the unnamed ex-friend is called a “puck player” or a hockey fan there is always an element of consideration of his mutli-dimensions as a father and fellow writer. It’s not merely a collection of rants or poems about jocks versus nerds, but poetry reconciling a personal fallout. Tovar is also not fixated on just the one friend, but also the strange nature of colleges as a place of found community that can dissipate within months of graduation. Poems reflect on his years at a college in the South Bay, the struggle to find community as a transfer student, and the ostracization inherent in academia. Other friends have their own poems that highlight the strange intricacies and drama that arise even in good relationships. In total it is a deeply personal collection, but one that can find sympathy in many readers who’ve lost friends in the span of weeks after graduation or have had to face the fizzling out of a deep connection.

However this rawness can sometimes hamper the collection. I can appreciate how the earlier shorter pieces leave the reader questioning, as one might question the sudden ghosting of a friend. But there is too much left unsaid, too much opaqueness, that can jar an initial read. Tovar shines much better in prose where he develops full scenes and minutiae that can ground a reader. Here too however, there can be a bit too much detail. Certain pieces contain an excess, that while mimicking the pace at which one would update a close friend, can confuse the reader. This is most evident in the final poem “My Jock Friend (storytelling exercise entries)”, which while being a favorite of mine and having a cohesive ending, can be stumbling to read at times. A tightening of the prose and an editing down of certain details would have served to better engage a reader.

This fault might stem from the subject Tovar has chosen to write about. Unlike a traditional break up, where cracks are evident, and there can be a dramatic clashing of personalities, a ghosting relationship contains no easy markers for poetry. The minutiae must be combed through carefully to find any semblance of an answer for the loss. And ghost is a good term for the Jock, as he haunts the collection, but is never exercised openly, which leads to interesting but often murky poems.

Regarding the Jock, while I think it’s mature of Tovar to show respect to his former Friend it can act as a double edge sword. In poems like “A Talk on Why I Canceled Inviting _______ to Wi Spa” the use of a censored name confuses in a good way, demonstrating how depressingly easy it is to erase those that once meant so much to us. In other poems like “When They Grab a Light Beer” and “Sidenote” the lack of detail allows the poetry to resonate with all of us who’ve had “ghost” friends. However I wish there was a wider range of emotion about the Jock Friend whether anger or mourning. I would have liked for Tovar to approach this topic, this person, from all kinds of angles without regard for the ghost that is no longer in his life. I would have wanted him to excise this memory in the open in all its contradictions and messiness, for I think there is an interesting vein here that should be explored further. In the modern day a good friend is a life support, and yet people can easily vanish off the face of our digital earth if we’re not careful. And though I did say earlier that some poems contained an excess, I personally would have wanted more poems in this collection. Poems about all sorts of loss and care that had gone into this friendship, because while we’re given a peek it feels there’s a lot left unsaid. Though once again this confusion may mirror the real feeling Tovar had when his friend was suddenly just a ghost.

In all, Tovar has attempted a difficult task with this collection: writing about an end that has no clear cause and no clear meaning. For all the faults that one can find in pacing and opaqueness it is something much more unique than a rehashed chapbook about lovers or exs. It’s a subject that I would like to see Tovar refine and expand upon later down the line.

My Jock Friend can be found here: https://payhip.com/b/fvysx

09/26/26 - posted by Shante Orion

“Forever Like The Stamp On Your Wrist”


eighteen months of hand drawn flyers and suddenly
everyone knows the words

but it’s August in Phoenix
so nobody sings along

because air conditioning
never opens for my friend’s band

they play three and a half songs
before the cops show up

five dollars in advance
gentrification at the door

09/25/26 - posted by Daryl

09/20/26 - posted by Daryl

09/20/26 - posted by Daryl

09/17/26 - posted by Daryl

“Punk is the New Poetry”

A backyard gig is poetry.
Asking a punk is poetry.
Sharing a 40 oz. with three people is poetry.
Drunk on the bus at midnight.
Throwing up in an alley is poetry.
The new issue of Razorcake is poetry.
Only available on vinyl is poetry.
Only available on cassette tape is poetry.
Not available on Spotify is poetry.
A faded Ramones t-shirt is poetry.
A portrait of Joe Strummer above your record player is poetry.
Your first pair of Dr. Martens is poetry.
That first Leftover Crack EP is poetry.
Revolution Girl Style Now anniversary edition is poetry.
That new Generacion Suicidia album is poetry.
The Food Not Bombs table is poetry.
The zine-making workshop is poetry.
The punk contingent at the May Day march is poetry.
A Black Flag tattoo is poetry.
An orange mohawk is poetry.
Referring to people as, “posers”
                      Is definitely poetry.

09/15/26 - posted by Daryl

Ascending the Karmic Condition
A review of Psalms for a Based God, by James Norman (Zeitgeist Press, 2025)

The world finds itself in no shortage of poetry from the view point of the wayward traveler, drifting between obligations and responsibilities. Norman himself, has written about this extensively, which maybe is why Psalms for a Based God works so well. A large majority of the work in this collection focuses around the time spent as a bartender in a dive club in Las Vegas in the mid 2020s. A roaring time for many of the young patrons, but the Samoan bouncers and aging bartenders might have a different perspective. Witnessing the core lessons being learned the hard way on a nightly basis.

    “it’s wild to bartend at forty
     in a bar where the kids
     are nearly half my age,
     and they hurt me all the time
     with their youth
     or their beauty
     or the way they call me sir
     as if they feel bad
     for the lines in my face,
     but I wouldn’t trade places
     with any on them.”

For most, the loud repetitive dance music and late nights hours and common degradation would bear down on our souls, crushing our enthusiasm for the living world, further embittering our already bitter take on the decades that have come and gone, and left us with meager comforts in which we try to find some sense of accomplishment, but Norman uses this time to reflect on the condition which plays out before him every night. The trials in the court of the dancefloor, 7-11 parking lots, and even the hotel rooms,

     “the gods were born to early.
     for all the suggestive dancing
     of the young and nubile cosmos,
     they never got to fuck in a hotel.”

He joyfully details the serenity of the rented room and its ability to craft a setting for sensuality that for some sick reason just isn’t possible in the familiarity of one’s own domestic space, and the worst part about it all is that he’s goddamn right! To quote my own work, “We associate hotel rooms with the absolute best sex / And we are not wrong!” But while the reader enviously transports themselves to the cushy temptations of a romantic escapade, three pages earlier he plopped this stanza on us in the context of being driven home after getting totally blitzed at the holiday work party:

     “for ten minutes,
     head out the window
     like a dog,
     tongue lolling,
     I realize that diminishing returns
     are just a more practical way of
     explaining entropy
     to our own disappointments,”

Within the excess of DMT pens, shower sex, and the endless rivers of alcohol Las Vegas is so proudly known for, he sits with himself, sharing his meditations that help get him through the night, generously so, as he writes about having a conversation with a friend:

     “a friend was asking me about all the drugs
     I’ve done, if I’d figured out the meaning of life yet, or any kind of wisdom at all, and I said:
    
     no, why do you think I keep doing them.
    
     and he laughed.
    
     then, I continued, but buddy, I suspect
     if you can figure out the meaning that easy,
     it musn’t have meant much in the first place.”

I have to imagine that this conversation took place with a bar top between them. Norman playing the roles that an older bartender plays. Serving the cheap drinks, a cheaper chuckle, and a little perspective where ever he can to help make the shot go down a tad bit easier. His “buddy” could be in a lot worse hands, as could the reader. The poems also have a way of following this path. A well mixed concoction of humor, gritty urban imagery, time tested storytelling, and then capped off with one of his zesty observations. Because the bartender has to observe everything that’s going on around them: who needs a drink, who shouldn’t be served another drink, who’s giving the bouncer a hard time, who’s getting socked up in the parking lot, who needs one on the house. It’s these roles that Norman plays begrudgingly well, walking out of the bar as the sun is coming up on another scorching Vegas day to return home to his chickens and think about the universe and “read books about number theory.” This is from the poem “What If God Is a Tree?”

      “and what if we are just chickens to God?
    
     what if we aren’t even important enough
     for judgment, Heaven or Hell,
    
     but just exist for the sake of scenery?
    
     what if God’s chosen children are the
     Petunias in your yard,
    
     And the complexity of their struggle,
     their grappling with morality, would
     make your little chicken head spin?”

This my friends, is the spiritual spanking that we all had coming. So consumed by our dominance over the natural world that it seemed implausible to that we might not be the plot. Perhaps this is wishful thinking on his part. Wanting to step out of the spotlight and play a supporting role as the world caves in on itself. When not describing the torrid nightlife from the staff’s point of view, he regales the reader with his journeys through the mountains of the Western United States. From Arizona to Northern California, traveling for weeks on end in his restored Chevy van. He sends us a message from a bar outside of Phoenix after descending the mountain:

     “the gates of heaven won’t be neon. perhaps
     busted (or in need of a few repairs), miles of
     barbed wire only meant to keep the cows in.
    
     the Hindus have been trying to tell us
     for centuries, how the rest of us are
     stuck here until we get it right.

     Paradise is a karmic condition.”

The tragic balance of modern life: do what you hate, so you can do what you love. Luckily for us, he can expertly write about both.

Find this release and more here:
https://www.zeitgeist-press.com/index.php/product-category/authors/james-norman/

09/11/26 - post by Daryl

09/06/26 - post by Daryl



L.A. and Ventura punk poets in a giant beer freezer after reading at The People's Slam.
This photo was taken right after I stuck my face in a beer waterfall coming out of one of the vats Homer Simpson-style.
Iris De Anda, me, and Kali Bennett


08/26/26 - post by Daryl

New release!



Pissing in the Fountain of Youth by Justin Gradin
"Pissing in the Fountain of Youth is a collaboration between the author and various versions of himself throughout several decades—a map of life, a journal of rough truths and sad times, psychic boredom, psychedelic nightmares, and lovesick daydreams. The title was penned at age fourteen and then forgotten about until a recent discovery of old notebooks. From podunk to metropolis, year after year, fragments of poems were found and finished, or rearranged entirely. These resurrected, amnesiac, solo exquisite-corpse poems are accompanied in this collection by new writing. The culmination is an X-ray of a mind being seatbelted by a woodpecker’s tongue."

“Surrealistically delicious. Abstract, funny, weird in the best way possible.”
-Lydia Lunch

https://www.toughpoetsreview.com/gradin_pissing.htm


08/26/26 - posted by Daryl


The Bloody Westerns, live at the Old Towne Pub