#torch ballads

[rustbeltjessie]

Torch Ballads, by John-Vincent Greco (undated)

Ballad of Hella Oakland

Stories whisper through the Internet. A human screams in Berkeley, rides through Oakland, across the East Bay BART, people talk, under San Francisco, up through 16th & Mission we’re struck: A child lit on fire The bus home from school, a human being, breathing, fell asleep, then was lit on fire like a piece of garbage—even a scarecrow or warehouse in Detroit burnt would be Arson. This was a high school student, lit on fire so the crime was Hate and Mayhem—such a polite charge: May I hem your skirt with this torch? Don’t answer, I won’t let you be. He’s a kid, kids joke around, said the mother of the mayhem arsonist who set a kid aflame to St. Francis Burn Center.

You don’t like their skirt or what’s underneath doesn’t fit the image mommy prepared you for. So while they sleep, burn the freak?          On earth there’s always a feeble mind labeling deadgod constellations from a dark sky alive with stars perfectly natural in their undefined bodies. Weak minds & tiny hands clutch and fit everything in order To reduce a burning human being to a remembrance candle for some ancient constellation to count then ignore. FUCK THAT.          But Oakland is hella tough, especially its kids, even on a bus to Berkeley, they staple weapons into zines there. Fight fire with fire?     No, burn words that don’t identify you. Burn braver images into the feeble minds that settle on weak images for gods          and don’t understand stars.

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(more: x / x)

[jv-greco]

Blacked Out My Zines

hey, so Pioneers Press re-ordered some of my zines. think they'll be selling them later today. i'd like to say thanks to anyone who's ever bothered to read them, or requested them re-stocked. you blow me away. 

these Torch Ballad zines are blacked out now. black covers. black cloth bookmarks and matchtips. i made this collection earlier in the year - little personal narrative poems that either happened to me, my family/friends, or in communities where i've lived, but all in all, it's a community zine of sorts. folk tales. that being said, some of the most poetic moments i've witnessed lately in the area where i live have been people taking direct action (like the BlackOUT Collective)  to disrupt 'business as usual' in oakland, berkeley, on BART, market street in sf, shutting down the 580, the opd station, even though it's been dumping heavy rain for the last 2 weeks. it's inspiring as hell (like the open letters and poems of Danez Smith, damn) & to not acknowledge that powerful energy in some sort of way just feels wrong to me. zines are what i've got, so this is my way of acknowledging. especially during the holidays when people who are made uncomfortable by change & protest & disruption are hoping it will all get swept under the rug, and that the voices speaking to racism & brutality will be drowned out beneath the sound of carols. nah.

i think there comes a time when people either have to engage with the language of protest or realize they're willfully ignoring it. and why be ignorant? it's a week from 2015, who can afford to live like that while people are out there going hard for change?  any change ($) i make back from the Pioneers distro sales for these blacked out zines will be donated 

be safe out there. 

~JvG

[wearepioneerspress]

TO SAY THIS IS WORTH YOUR $4 IS A GRAND UNDERSTATEMENT. THIS ZINE IS A GAME-CHANGER. SO. FUCKING. GOOD. HOORAY!

$4

http://pioneerspress.com/catalog/zines/4438/

John-Vincent Greco's Torch Ballads is one of the best things we've read all year. A goddamn riot of ideas and story and life, it kicked our ass and made us rethink a lot of big things. Total stunner. Total rule-breaker. Solid throughout. Unlike a lot of poetry (these are more like urban folk tales as verse), Greco's work gives you a lot of substance and delivers it in a clean, smart, unpretentious way.

Across these densely-packed 64 pages, no word is wasted and you come away feeling like you've just read eleven Great American Novels. Excellent character writing. Big, visual, richly emotional while retaining a good sense of humor.

Here at Pioneers Press we don't read a lot of poetry. Or more so, we don't come across a lot of poetry that's all that satisfying and we most definitely don't carry much of it in our catalog (almost as a rule). But then something like this comes along that just bowls you over and changes everything. Outstanding.

Also recommended: Greco's Death in a Rifle Garden.

[jv-greco]

Make Zines &

when you make zines & your gf's cat jumps on the desk while you're brewing more coffee and their paw drags through your painted covers. when you make zines & cut and tape the texts onto a piece of paper and there's a cat hair stuck in the tape and you don't have excess money to just scrap it all and start again so the cat hair stays and when you print it the cute damn cat is in every single copy forever. & that's real. & that's as real as it gets. Publishing houses aren't doing that.  make zines & that cat is real, as real as those words are to you and your imaginary friends

[jv-greco]

Torch Ballads zine in SF

thanks to Breezy at the great DIY shoppe Needles & Pens, my zine Torch Ballads finally has a local home here in San Francisco for the summer. go buy a copy while they last. $4  16th St. btwn Guerrero & Dolores in the mission

s/o to Breezy for hooking it up. she carries the zine Asswipe here too, 5 issues

[wearepioneerspress]

This note that came along with one of our orders totally made our day

"ORDER NOTES: No need to gift wrap; that $5 is a donation for the animals. Keep it up, and keep the Baiocco/JVG stuff coming!"

Made our day in a huge way. Five bucks might not seem like much but it's half a month's worth of dry corn for the sheep/goats/ducks/pig/chickens. In "country money" it counts massively.

The "Baiocco/JVG stuff" in question is the incredibly excellent Torch Ballads zine. Now funding rescue animals in the greater Leavenworth, KS area!

[rustbeltjessie]

In the beginning they rhymed words to make memorization easier so people could carry by heart, thru towns & generations & ages, epic memory. Lighter than digital tablets are rhyming verses, and cheaper than a book of matches is a single, forgettable flame. Well, at least burn the rhymed poets if not the rhyming poets. Here's a torch & here's a forgettable ballad to burn away the easy memories. With what remains talk a plain, unrhymed song beside our violent history, like a scar but less personal, the truest voices divide us like a natural coast. Force us to walk with or cross them. There's enough room to crowd the earth if we disappear the toxic bullshit & carry all our proof in stories called songs. Put the name of a city in it. I mean, if it meant something real to you - a city - then please write that song. Let it be known some place exists because it's sung about. Marty Robbins sang about 'El Paso' and El Paso means something to me even though I've never been. Know all about the freight trains leaving Cheyenne, and I did terrible in school, in geography, right? Barely been outside my own apartment this winter, but can name a song for every city that's been written about. Keep going on about how small America is, how every town is the same, has the same stores, the same-looking movie theaters, the same food - and it's honest. But think of every state you can name a song for - I think of every song & America is immense. & all the songs we haven't discovered yet. Think of all the other countries out there people with their own songs with their towns in them, that meant something to somebody in words I can't decipher. Only emotions & gestures melodies we can hum.

John-Vincent Greco, "Amtrak Ballads vs. Bolt Bus songs (what is country, what is folk?)" (from Torch Ballads)

[wearepioneerspress]

Zine Excerpt!

"It's embarrassing

 to want to be essential, but it's only embarrassing

not impossible"

-from "Norfolk Train Jumper Song (aka Ballad's Ballad)" in Torch Ballads by John-Vincent Greco, available here.