BOMB Launch

1. BOMB contributors Christian Hawkey & Kim Rosenfield, and editor Monica de la Torre. 2. BOMB contributor Barbara Browning, and the “very special” (and also fabulously dressed) Clement V. Joseph.

BOMB Magazine’s fall issue just came out, and Greenlight Bookstore hosted a launch party last night to celebrate. Barbara Browning read first, and she piqued the audience’s interest with Prizes! (a framed digital photo of one of her character’s nipples) and Audience Participation! (we got to choose which character we would be hearing about — the audience opted to hear about “the most beautiful woman in the world,” a sixty-eight year old Nobel Prize winner, rather than a twenty-three year old conceptual artist). In a single paragraph of Brown’s reading, we got to hear the following words: “unitard” (pronounced yoonee-TARD), “breasts,” “panties,” “pubic hair,” “ass,” and “snakes.” This made me happy.

1. Armchair/Shotgun’s Evan Simko-Bednarski & Adam Read-Brown. 2. Katie, a dancer; Jules, a writer; & Marta, a singer. They all love reading!

Christian Hawkey read some poems next. One of them, “I am writing to inform you of what I am currently doing,” was inspired by real life actors’ headshots and cover letters. Apparently, the title is a common first sentence for the cover letters. (oh, if only everything in life was as upfront as this…) It had a disembodied, impersonal feel — which, I imagine, is a lot like browsing through a stack of head shots and cover letters.

Kim Rosenfield read last. And also sang. Her poetry was interesting, and compared women’s fashions to the orbits of electrons. But her singing hurt my head.

–Julia Jackson is working on her MFA in fiction at Brooklyn College, and is a regular contributor for Electric Dish.