a storehouse for the creative output of Jonathan Bond

Here you will find poetry, fiction short and long, unsteady visual art,  and a range of other original offerings.  There are many posts listed in the right column, roughly by category, even a list of posts. Tons of writing and near-art can be found on this site, a vibrating sampler platter of the fractured universe that is:

15WattLasVegas

Below is a list of recent work, please click around or check out the many other original posts below this one, new content often.

Contact

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Poetry

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Recent Poems

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Consider the Distance: a chapbook from 2011

Impermanence – opens visual poem

Fiction

Illuminated Fools: a novel in progress

 Short fiction

  Excerpts from 2017 short story “New Prescription”

 Excerpts and thumbnail of 2016 story story “The Slab“

 Excerpts from late 2014 short story: “So, Ralph“

Impulse Control – short story 2013 (opens pdf)

Personal Space – short story  (opens pdf)

Pulling a Shift  – short story (opens pdf)

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Non-fiction, Creative Non-fiction:

Red – short 900 word memory piece (pdf)

Encounter with Paul – creative non-fiction (5,000 words in pdf)

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Art:

Sliced Sunset
Dust Jacket Collages
Jars
Up & Coming Down & Outer

Buy Consider the Distance: words on Paper by Jonathan Bond, hand made by me, each copy unique!

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“Get Born Man” image from early 90’s

 

“Illuminated Fools:” a novel in progress

Think High Fidelity meets Cloud Atlas.

Here’s a peek at the work in progress I’ve been workshopping and working on since September 2010. Here’s a thumbnail of the story, below is a longer treatment.

Illuminated Fools

Two young men a century apart are contacted by “The Adept,” a discarnate being who claims to have a message for humanity. Daniel Peachfoot, in present day Phoenix, doesn’t understand what is happening until he discovers a mysterious book from 1912 chronicling Josiah Salt’s experiences with an entity known as “Phylos Simeon,” and how Josiah was made the conduit for bringing Phylos’ esoteric teachings to light.

Josiah’s journey from farm boy to mystic and the contents of the book he scribes for Phylos helps Daniel reconcile his fears about being chosen for similar work. As the two men’s lives intertwine the question remains: who or what is Phylos and what are his intentions with Daniel?

It’s your world, with weird sprinkled on top.

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James Sallis and all the good people in his novel writing class have been very helpful in my transition from writing mostly short pieces – primarily poetry – to working on a novel. Nearly every page has been through his workshop and revised based on student feedback and Jim’s amazing critiques / edits.

 

Here’s a longer treatment of the two story lines.

Illuminated Fools has two main plot lines, both set in Arizona, one in modern day and a sub-plot in 1910. There is a third element to the book consisting of small islands of texts that seem to exist outside of the world of the novel.

The main narrative is the story of Daniel Peachfoot, a disaffected musician working in his family’s record store. He is burned out and stuck in a rut, flirting with a breakdown. He’s going through the motions of another shift when he blacks out and wakes up in the backroom of the store having penned a strange allegorical story he has no memory of composing, written in a hand other than his own.

There is no explanation and he experiences many unsettling sensory difficulties for the rest of the day, including being physically ill, passing out in the bathroom, loosing time and generally feeling like he is operating in a replica of his real world. He’s very distressed by the events and sensory weirdness, only wishes to get through the day and relax with whatever mood enhancers he can find.

In the course of the shift we meet The Boss, Bill Parks and Monday, a part time employee with a special body modification in his forehead. We also see a homeless man called the Toilet Priest who holds forth to empty space. Interspersed with the day-to-day reality of the store are fugue islands of narration that stand in contrast to the standard narration for their other-ness. There are several of these, starting with the story Daniel seems to have created while unconscious. Very different settings and points of view not yet explained.

Chapter six introduces the “Monument Valley” story-line. The chapters comprise the introduction to a book Daniel finds in the primary narrative. In this long introduction the book’s author Josiah Salt explains that he did not write the book in question, that it was dictated to him by an entity that spoke to him directly and delivered the content to him.

These chapters focus on the author Josiah’s experiences leading up to the composition of the book, before he accepts the “adept,”which Josiah claims is the actual author,  before he accepts his role and functions as the adept’s vessel for writing the book. It also explains that once he accepts his role as the receiver he starts to experience extra-sensory abilities.

The “Monument Valley” chapters will alternate with chapters from the main narrative starting with chapter six, perhaps earlier. The Monument Valley plot is now five chapters long, there will likely be more, the two plot-lines may alternate chapters earlier. The two story lines may also synthesize into an entirely new narrative beast.

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Click below if interested in the nuts and bolts updates about when chapters were finished, and what I’m working on. Thanks for your interest and support for works in progress.

Cheers

jb

Sunset Star Flower: two variations revisted

triptych two redux

Click on the image, a lot more to see than what the blog column-size shows.

Up & coming Down & outer

Owls are wise

“We Are:” New visual poem

 

We are

forever
falling alseep,
waking

forever
forgetting,
remembering.

Three excerpts from new short story: “New Prescription”

Here’s a few excerpts from a new story entitled “New Prescription.” The story is told from a ranty, unreliable narrator and is full of black humor, paranoia and confusion, a familiar psychic gumbo for me. For Gene, the story’s main character, life is unknowable, reality is fluid, the fix is in, and you never get what you bargained for. Here are the first few paragraphs, and then two other slices. Please to injoy.

Gene shook awake gasping, gulping air. After a few breaths and some quavering head shakes, he noticed his arms stuck straight out in front of him, fingers splayed. He lowered his arms, surprised to find himself on the couch next to Jeane, his wife, Magnum P.I. on the TV. She stared unfazed at the screen. She was used to his sleep apnea, felt it best to pretend these episodes didn’t happen, didn’t want to embarrass him. He looked at his phone: after midnight, but he needed something from the drug store.
“Need to go to Gud Drugs real quick, honey,” he said.
“I’ll come,” Jeane offered, looking over at him. “On the hunt for the new Dark Chocolate flavored DROP lip gloss, supposed to be out now.” DROP was her favorite, the exotic flavors hard to find, but she’d had good luck at Gud Drugs.
Gene shrugged and without standing grabbed the keys from the end table, thinking it would signal her to begin her getting ready ritual. Instead she stood up without running to the bathroom, and smiled her wan, sad smile, her dirty brown hair up in messy pig tail. Gene sort of tisked and chuckled at once, pushed off the couch with a groan and moved toward the door. Jeane followed in her adult Onesie, raising the rabbit ear hoodie onto her head, and sliding her feet into Teddy Bear Slippers waiting near the door. From the coat rack she grabbed a pink feather boa and wrapped it around her neck. He was still wearing his uniform. “Girl’s gotta represent,” she said. Gene half turned and nodded, sleepy, foggy.

As Gene parked the old chicken noodle soup colored Corolla, oversized tires of a tank like Rent-a-Cop SUV crunched on the lot’s perimeter. Outside the parking lot a light rail car ground to a gliding metallic stop and booming bass thumped from a black sports car streaking past. The Police helicopter’s blades chopped in the distance.
The drugstore glowed a sickly fluorescent, a jumbo-sized human aquarium. Cars dotted the parking lot. Fellow residents of limbo sat shadowy behind car windows, some lit with the artificial glow of devices, others staring into space, dreaming of static or bed. Best not to look too hard, Gene thought. He couldn’t see that well, anyway.

When they arrived at the pharmacy there were five registers, one attendant and seven people in line. The buzzer for the drive thru window buzzed continually, another broken horn. We live inside the husk of a once better place, thought Gene.
At the counter stood a rail thin vagabond in a greasy, holey hoodie. ““Naloxone nasal spray.” the pharmacy tech said, “$64.39.”
All Gene could see from behind was the back of the raised hood, holes in the ass pockets of the person’s jeans and their filthy, shaking right hand balled into a fist. Is that a boy or a girl? Gene wondered, defaulting to the male. The person’s hand, patches of translucent skin showing through grime, opened and a few balled bills rolled onto the counter. The pharmacy technician started un-crumpling the money. The scuzzy hand furtively darted into the mouth of a cookie monster stuffed animal he carried, into the matted plush toy’s guts. The hand came up with a few coins, most of them stuck together, as if the cookie monster were some friendly, money yielding piñata. By this method, it took forever to build a big enough pile of sticky coins to have enough.

 

The Hand of the Man: original oil pastel drawing

Eclipse Catcher – original digital collage, images from old books