Three

“Three,” by QM Founder Rauan Klassnik. Pencil and crayon. 2012 (TS private collection.)

At Queen Mob’s Teahouse, Reb Livingston (author of Bombyonder and Your Ten Favorite Words) has posted a submissions call for “Misfit Documents.”

We tend to think of all TS texts as “misfits,” so of course we are delighted to see another “mis-” guided editor consciously birthing more aberrations into the world.

Here’s an excerpt from Reb’s call:

What is a Misfit Document?

That is a very good question. My definition of a misfit document is a text that doesn’t easily fit into any genre or category. It’s not quite a poem or short story or novel excerpt or essay. Or if it is one of those things, it doesn’t quite qualify as “literary” or sci-fi or mystery or memoir or whatever. Or maybe it’s all of those things and more. It’s something you wrote that you believe is amazing, but you have no idea what it is or where it belongs in the world. It’s something that when people read it they say, “What the hell is this?”

It’s something that doesn’t really have a label, or at least not one that is widely used.

What Kind of Misfit Documents Am I Looking For?

Lots. I want to be surprised and delighted. I want to read things that are nothing like I’ve ever read before. I want to scratch my head. I want to struggle trying to describe it….

That said, it’s also worth noting that the entirety of Queen Mob’s amounts to misfit docs. Is Queen Mob’s a “literary” site? Was it ever meant to be one? We certainly hope no one has accused it of such a thing.

If you haven’t been there, go now. It’s like walking through an abandoned mental ward filled with highly active ghosts.

Campfire

“Campfire,” by QM Founder Rauan Klassnik. Pencil. 2012 (TS private collection.)

Which isn’t to say that “texts of extreme lucidity” do not cross the astral membrane as well.

For example: a writer we’ve never heard of before, Ankur Betageri has written a long and thoughtful essay entitled “Religion: An Outroduction.”

Here’s the first paragraph, under the section “Religion and the Sacred.”

The appearance of the sacred in the world cannot be regulated by any institution or organized system. Religion is the institutionalization of the sacred that appears in the world randomly and chaotically. Dawn is sacred for the man tormented by the night; tree tops sway in a sacred light to a poet who looks up at the sky for hope. The sacred exists. It is a pure world imbued with one’s inwardness; the externalization of one’s inner life. Religion is built around this sacredness like a fortress, a fortress that makes the sacred vanish.

reb-profile-CopyIndeed. Other sections include “Religion as a Primitive Belief System,” “Religion: a Destructive Assemblage of Desire,” “The Need for a Psychiatric Paradigm to Deal with Religious Fundamentalists,” “Religion as the “Humanization of Nature,’” “Religion as the Codification of Ethos: the Hijack of Art and Poetry by Religion,” “How Religion Founds its Good Earth on Poverty,” “Pantheism is Joyous Atheism.”

We beg to differ on that definition of pantheism — but, really, who gives a biblical fig. The “joyous” part is the key. The god of science is the god of magic is the god of just-for-today-I’m-not-going-to-stab-my-fucking-neighbor-because-I’m-too-damn-happy-that-Queen-Mob’s-exists. Where else will you find earnest essays on religion next to “Tarot Spats” next to the unsourced crypto-political “Indie Terrorists” next to the WTF “Brian Williams’ Mid-Suspension Report” next to “Live at the Escritório: Navigating Lê Almeida’s Indie Rock and Noise Pop in Rio,” et al.

Go there now. Send them stuff. Be happy you did.