Donna Reed

Looking at the sky over the Best Buy tonight. We hold onto each other when things go right. On one of those tandem recumbent bikes. We don’t know the name of the city we’re leaving or the name of the city on the horizon. 400 crushed Natty Ice cans were just melted down in Britt, Iowa during Hobo Days to form a roof for our tandem recumbent bike. It shines up to God. It protects us from God. It’s so loser we ascended. Pedaling all slow. Our faces have name-brand sunglasses. Headed to Parade, South Dakota for Blood Fest 2013. We have permanent hearing loss from all the dumb things and all the years. We’re both wearing bootleg t-shirts that say “Country Grammar”. It’s a Wonderful Life.

Bull

10 years ago, a guru in Ollantaytambo had a vision we would start a poetry chapbook series, and that it would more or less incorporate DIY lo-fi rogue guerilla transmissions from the American poetry underground. We met b l u s h riding the Delta Queen to New Orleans when our bus broke down in Ascension Parish, Louisiana. It is pretty wild to see that vision realized now, so many Blood Fests later. Life is funny. Taste the rainbow.

Soft Pack

We remember it like it was yesterday. Blood Fest 2023, we had 200 people on a rooftop in Malacca. Walking around in our staff shirts, handing out paper cups of green tea. We looked like a mix between cult leader and cater waiter. Everyone drank the tea and formed into a circle. Sat down tailor style. We passed around Soft Pack by Jon Leon and had everyone read a page until it was finished, except 29 people didn’t get to read, since there are only 171 pages. How were we reading Soft Pack by Jon Leon in 2023, when it was published in 2025? Blood Fest is outside of time, baby. This shit is all-time.

Communion

Blood Fest 2011 never happened. It was the only time we ever took off our staff shirts. Our founding member had just been cryogenically frozen after Blood Fest 2010 in Davenport, Florida. The team drove the 1,239 miles from Davenport, Florida to Davenport, Iowa—the original home of our founder—to place the frozen chamber in a cave on the Mississippi River. We took off our staff shirts to bathe in the Mississippi River, basically following the prophecy to a T. Everything was going so well it was like check, check, check. The cave’s mouth opened up in tans and grays, while the sky above the cave was red, white and blue because it was the Fourth of July. Upon entering the cave, someone was sitting on a gray rock wearing a hat that said “River Rat”, along with a shirt and pants that also said “River Rat”—stacked 30 times on both of the shirt sleeves, and both of the pant legs. We thought it might have been their personal brand, but we never officially confirmed. With the frozen chamber on our backs, we said to them, “We’re about to do something really important and really spiritual, we think you should leave.” River Rat still sat silent before saying, “Well, I am a spiritual being,” so we just let them stay. The junior members always bring out the candles and the incense and arrange them, so that is what they did. Our numbers were so large in those years that we had an altar up in minutes. Then it was finally time for the big moment, and we appreciated the moment. We let it last. We painted the walls with orange clay, and just kind of let it all flow for a few months, with no shirts on. We called it communion. It was what life is all about.

Illicit

At the meetings the room is always dark. We pull chairs out for b l u s h and take off their blindfolds. The movie Chariots of Fire is playing from a hidden projector, but it’s only the opening sequence with that kick ass song by Vangelis. The opening loops 5 more times before we talk. Everyone in the room (undisclosed #) is wearing solar viewers, because the image’s saturation and brightness are turned up to 200% on the projector. Incense and candles are brought out on a candelabra. We turn off Chariots of Fire and put on “Live Forever” by The Highwaymen. We pass around a wizard pipe with something in it. b l u s h is so hyped from the music and the something they take their shirts off and spin them around like helicopters. We decide to match the moment, so we say, “There is so much illicit magic when we have these meetings. We wish it never had to end.” There is an authentic feeling in the room. Their t-shirts are spinning so fast they are actual helicopters. Then the projector turns back on and the logo for illicit zines flashes across the screen in bright red sans-serif font. b l u s h isn’t touching the ground anymore when they say, “This will be the song that never ends. A true freak-out mission. We think it could save poetry.” And they’re smiling.

CONOR

I just saw a guy in a Florida Gators jersey, and I thought about you. And losing my virginity. I can still picture the photo galleries, and the open containers. Back when hilarity ensued. Remember when we drew Larry Hoover, on the outside of that Opa-locka gas station? Across the street from Snappers, where we got hit by that car. You were right in 2017; we were best friends. Bulgarian twins. Chicago Bulls. Sophisticated, we gave out autographs. We felt like the American Slav Congress, in 1949. All the bomb pops, and weird demons. Laying on the beach, thinking in porn. We always tried to remember the Alamo. When the south fell, in that Miami heat, where was Suwannee? Or Chattahoochee? Florida wasn't even on the map. Just hell money, and the swamp. Out here, looney tunes become the highway. Haiti sits across the aisle, and shaves her knuckles with a little pink bic. Rocking up to Foster’s shack on the mountain bike. On the way to West Palm Beach. 0% battery life doesn’t matter. All the posts, from all our old accounts, are on the internet forever. Like the time the sandcastle went viral, and the ocean liner treaded water.

Nick Hedtke. If Fred Flintstone wrote poetry.