language as inside ideal

I know plenty of people have made note of the spam poetry that exists on the web and in emails---the bizarre sentences cobbled by computers to get around spam sensors---but since this one contains my name I thought I might as well post it:

Mondays and thursdays are considered already recent infantrymen for fasting. Ringed piers of different fancy of definitions acutely followed. Thinking contributors were a other interest often constructed over science and from one transcendence to another. Victoria's form is six pipes larger than endurance centrifuge. Lincoln Michel since i published some of his language as inside ideal at night train rocks inside.

I'll spare you the spam link, but I couldn't figure out what the spam was even for. Russian Viagra maybe?

Nice things people have said about me

Last month I had two short stories in Unsaid #5 and this month I have two even shorter stories up at PANK.

My two PANK stories were featured on BlackBook magazine's "Fiction For Your Lunch Break" series. Here is what writer and friend Adam Wilson had to say:

His two featured stories might only be a paragraph long each, but they manage to encompass big ideas and entire worlds. “The Soldier” hinges on a startling point of view shift, from that of a soldier abroad to that of a local dog the soldier has accidentally kicked. In “The Hunt,” men go off hunting only to return to a burnt shell of a village, the families there regressed to feral, pre-human instinct. Michel is a master at manipulating time, seamlessly shifting from panorama to personal close-up. Re-read these stories until your brain has been marinated in their dark wisdom.

On Facebook, Unsaid super editor David McLendon has been collecting photographs of Unsaid contributors and had a very flattering comment on mine that I hope he won't mind me repeating here (or perhaps using as a blurb in the future!):

Lincoln Michel knows where he is from. No matter the flask or bottle or napkin dispenser from which Michel imbibes, his pages are always poured from the greater vessel that is Michel himself. Or, more accurately, Michel's pages are poured from that part of himself that he wishes but refuses to shake: Home. In Michel's case, home is a more than a place - it is a journey. His pages always orbit the source they intend to flee, but with a kind of furthering recurrence that pushes home much closer to home than was ever possible before Michel framed home with language. In other words, you can never go home again. In other words, welcome home.

~ David McLendon

You can read one of my Unsaid stories, "Drive," over here. However, you should buy the whole issue because it is packed with amazing writers and McLendon is one of the most talented editors in the lit mag world today.

Two for PANK

I'm excited to say I have two short-short stories in the current online issue of PANK. I will also have a few poems in their forthcoming print issue.

The first story is about a a soldier that accidentally kicks a starving dog and the second is about abandoned women eating bark with their teeth. Here are two random sentences:

When he was hungry he sat on the ground and gnawed on his own leg.

Our beards grew long.

Check them out if you'd like!