Happy New Year everyone. I want to take a moment to formally welcome new KSP press member Valerie Witte. She has been working with us for several months already–delving into the realm of submissions and getting us organized for more tedious things like grant applications.

Many of you will know her from round-the town poetry stuff. Check out her bio:

A native St. Louisan, Valerie Witte received her MFA in Writing from the University of San Francisco. Her work has appeared in Eleven Eleven, Faultline, and Switchback, and can also be found in The Lone Mountain Anthology, published by Achiote Press. She is currently a part of the g.e. collective in San Francisco, and during her daytime hours, she edits computer books and videos in Berkeley. When she feels the urge, she hosts literary/art salons at her house in Cole Valley. Read more of her work at valeriewitte.squarespace.com

Here is a favorite poem of mine from her site (which includes exciting image-text elements, photos embedded in the poems….):

Status: Missing: Tell me the truth: Where is Valerie?

To: SV

From: VW

Subject: Re: A reason for abandonment

About that rejection I’ve already submitted, so. This is the story of my life: Disciplinarians are coming; others are packed away somewhere, awaiting execution.

About the flask or the noise from upstairs, Bellflower opened as a well Grandmother dropped down. I can close if you want. Filter so nothing enters when you forget the sound carries, modern day methods of electrocution. My speckled

hen with the crest is dead of a single-minded neurosis, thread spun down the inner side of a thigh a way of messaging. Who needs a telephone or a therapist when we all have cells.

I talked to Frost’s grandson yesterday. I don’t know if God or television made him so smart, but a decapitated turkey is our thanksgiving, birds carry a beluga, and goldfish have good memories. You can learn so much in a five-minute conversation.

And here are some fragments you won’t find on her website, new work from a a piece called A Game of Correspondence

I’m becoming virtually

unusable. how many times a person is discarded, avoided, mangled, destroyed. a matter of regeneration. a microscopic

organism connecting pieces of a self made solid, warmed and examined for damage using light. (he never leaves me dismantled, handled, explored or enjoyed.) how such a body might differ from the original. (he never leaves me long rambling voicemails.) when “advances” occur we discover revival, might

use the term “angel” for a team of deceased relatives, experts, celebrities in nature, a machine once measured

the vibration within a tabletop. (I am always sending long and rambling emails.)

(he never leaves me.)

————-

I’d like to know your method, to inflict pain so easily. alone yet solicitation

via telephone, radio, television, DREAMS and various invented devices achieved through pictures every

28 days a series of apologies over divination and orgiastic procedures. when more than two bodies coincide invisible objects can collide without

breaking. as oracles announce sensory overload. do you like this. are we OK. it hurts my eyes it hurts my throat but I don’t smell the smoke.

you can stay if you like. a cab, once called, will just drive by.

————-

then technology was the human body: a construction of circuits and levers, mechanisms placed

for continued animation. (I tried to quit smoking and now I’m addicted

to gum.) what happens to remnants of you

fused. contents of a brain scan reproduced, like a ham sliced. in diagnosing a speculative disorder where reluctant to admit to implanted memories preferred. (I doubt the gum will kill me. do you want a piece. just stop chewing before it

tingles.)

————-

I spent the morning processing turns

of phrase, winks and nodes, flirtation orbiting a flurry of hands peeling layer after layer. (I’m working on submission.) while others appeared naked in part, an invitation. piles of uneaten fruit, lines of magnetic force. an image of a tiger. and your body rocking back and forth without a sound (or have I managed to obliterate it).

as for ignoring a passage of time and emotional developments within a given dimension of reality. your room is a low

frequency banshee for building a scenario to simulate real-time communication. flat and mechanical a matrix of exhalations, excavations, exclamations, oh. can I go home now. there is nothing funny about blindness.