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I Don’t Mind If You’re Feeling Alone

by Thomas Patrick Levy

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Release Date:28 February 2012; ISBN:978-1-936919-08-6; Dimensions:5" x 6.25", perfect bound, 100 pages; Cover: Alban Fischer
Reviews: by Sean Thomas Dougherty, The Lit Pub; by Lori Hettler, The Next Best Book Club; by Laura Straub, Vouched Books; by Tyler Gobble, Vouched Books; by Carrie Lorig, HTML GIANT; by Christopher Newgent, Vouched Books; by JA Tyler, Monkeybicycle
Interviews: by Caroline Crew, We Who Are About to Die
About the Author: Thomas Patrick Levy attended a high school for “at risk” teenagers, holds a B.A. in English, and dropped out of Antioch University’s MFA in Writing. He freelances as a web and eBook designer, is a licensed automotive repossession agent, and works as the Lead Product Developer at YesYes Books. His first full-length collection, I Don’t Mind if You’re Feeling Alone, is available from YesYes Books and a thoroughly tiresome list of his publications is available online at thomaspatricklevy.com.
TOURS AND READINGS
YesYes Books and Friends, West Coast Tour 2013: Smallpressapalooza Powell's Books

Thomas Patrick Levy with Carrie Seitzinger, Susan Denning, Chloe Caldwell, Van Wheeler, Lindsey Kugler, Barry Graham, Aaron Dactyl, Nancy Rommelmann, Donald Dunbar, Mindy Netifee, Janey Smith, and Jeremy Robert Johnson
Mon, 18 Mar 2013, 6-10pm
1005 W Burnside Portland, OR 97209; PSYCCity Oakland

Thomas Patrick Levy with D.A. Powell, Lynn Melnick, Robert Ostrom, Corey Zeller, Ben Mirov
Mon, 25 Mar 2013, 7-9pm
Grand Lake Coffee House

440 Grand Ave, Oakland, CA; 851 The Squat

Thomas Patrick Levy with Lynn Melnick, Robert Ostrom, Corey Zeller, and Christie Ann Reynolds
Tues, 26 Mar 2013, 8-10pm
851 Haight Street, San Francisco; Stories Books and Cafe

Thomas Patrick Levy with Lynn Melnick, Corey Zeller, and Amanda Zubillaga
Wed, 27 Mar 2013, 7-9pm
1716 W Sunset Blvd Los Angeles, CA 90026
UCSB Lit Symposium: University of California, Santa Barbara

Thomas Patrick Levy
Wed, 30 Jaunary 2013, 4pm
UC Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA 93106
I Don’t Mind if You’re Feeling Alone Tour: Vermillion Cafe

Thomas Patrick Levy with Kate Lebo, Nate Slawson, and Jane Wong
Wed, 7 March 2012, 8pm
1508 11th Ave, Seattle, WA 98122; SPLAB

Thomas Patrick Levy with Arlene Kim and Nate Slawson
Thur, 8 March 2012, 7pm
3651 S. Edmunds, Seattle, WA 98118; Palace of Industry

Thomas Patrick Levy with Emily Kendal Frey, Diana Salier, Nate Slawson, and Julia Clare Tillinghast-Akalin
Fri, 9 March 2012, 7pm
5426 N. Gay Ave., Portland, OR; Press: Works on Paper

Thomas Patrick Levy with Meg Pokrass and Fia Maxwell
Mon, 12 March 2012, 7:30pm
3492 22nd Street, San Francisco, CA 94110; 851 the Squat

Thomas Patrick Levy with Lindsey Boldt, Andrea Kneeland, Shruti Swamy, and Sarah Fran Whisby
Tue, 13 March 2012, 7:30pm
851 Haight Street, San Francisco, CA; Stories Books and Cafe, Echo Park

Thomas Patrick Levy with Lili Flanders, Robert Krut, and Amelia Gray
Fri, 16 March 2012, 7pm
1716 West Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90026; The Big Big Mess Reading Series

Thomas Patrick Levy with Jeff Hipsher, Krysia Orlowski, and Nate Slawson
Fri, 30 March 2012, 8pm
Annabell’s Bar and Lounge

782 W Market St, Akron, Ohio 44303; The Dollhouse Reading Series

Thomas Patrick Levy with Jonterri Gadson, Nick Sturm, and Phillip B. Williams
Sat, 31 March 2012, 8pm
1850 W. Belle Plaine Ave #3, Chicago, IL 60613; Be Here Now Reading Series

Thomas Patrick Levy with Ashley Ford, Matt Hart, Layne Ransom, and Nick Sturm
Mon, 2 April 2012, 9pm
505 N. Dill Street, Muncie, IN 47303; Important People

Thomas Patrick Levy with Matt Hart and Lisa Summe
Tues, 3 April 2012, 7pm
Occupy Cincinnati Community Warehouse

2023 Dunlap Street, Cincinnati, OH 45214
Sixth Finch and YesYes Present: An AWP Offsite Event

Emily Kendal Frey, Ally Harris, Matt Hart, Mark Leidner, Thomas Patrick Levy, Ben Mirov, Metta Sáma, Nate Slawson, Leigh Stein, Gale Marie Thompson, Phillip B. Williams, Angela Veronica Wong, and Matthew Yeager
Fri, 2 March 2012, 7pm
Center for Book and Paper Arts (CBPA)

1104 South Wabash, 2nd Fl, Chicago, IL 60605

from SOMETIMES

And when it’s cold the tires grow raw against the freeways. You say YOU NEVER STOP TRYING TO KNIT MY INSIDES INTO THE SHAPE OF A HEART. Later, while I touch your face with the side of my face, you touch me with your own pretty finger stretched through the cloth of a pretty glove. I think about a patterned heart growing damp with all the messy mush inside my chest. I want to tell you how soft I want my heart to be. I tie my first two fingers together with a piece of string, I say I LEFT MY BOOTS TO DIE IN THE CORNER.

Sometimes garages are made to look through shadows and sometimes I cannot move across the driveways made of street.

Sometimes there is too much light and the leaves are crushed across our linoleum floor. I fold your dough into itself on the counter. I whisper I AM GOING TO TRY TO FIND OUT WHAT IT MEANS. Your eyes watch the strays chase children across our lawn. Your eyes know what it means to sleep through the smallest hurts.

from IOWA

When my heart is the wind the sweet kernel corn is born into me like a splintered two by four. You can’t tell how I bleed each sack of skin into a paper flower. You can’t see my heart which frays like sun-burnt cloth. When I put my arms into the clouds my fingers are crushing leaves. My fingers come through you to whisper YOU ARE THE END OF SADNESS. Your soft ribs rub like aloe against the hard sheets. Each bit of corn so significant. I can tell you that I will never turn into a glass of water but instead I say IN A HURRY ONE DAY MY HEART WILL DISAPPEAR.

from A MORE PERFECT ARCHWAY

Sometimes I touch your face with the moisture of my tongue, I press my fingers into your hair while I do this. You are not a desert. Like a puddle I come together around your toes. In your eyes of terrycloth I cannot pretend I don’t exist. I try to come apart again, a bathtub or windowpane. I concentrate on you as if I were stepping on a hill of sand. I touch you again, my tongue of branches, my touch of cracking leaves. Little hairs like feathers, little hairs of teeth. Daily I am punishing you. I come apart very slowly as I lie down. Your eyes tightly closed, the sun whispering.

These pieces fold in on themselves, light but sharp and sensual too; sexy little papercuts from the inside of an origami box.
—Amelia Gray

The world in Thomas Patrick Levy’s I Don’t Mind If You’re Feeling Alone is rusty and diesel and nighttime and lonesome. But lonesome doesn’t always mean lonesome because there’s so much glowing. Objects glow, poems glow, and Levy glows. The wreck is the heart where the glow comes from. Everywhere there’s light, heaven is not a truck. The pavement is a bed. The bed is a river. There’s so much beauty because beauty is like roses and glass and jail. I Don’t Mind If You’re Feeling Alone is a jail I am breaking into. I am breaking into Levy’s heart because he is breaking mine.
—Nate Slawson

Thomas Patrick Levy’s poems evoke a darkly lit American otherworld filled with withering cornstalks, rusted tractors and pulsating shadows. The narrator of these poems is an amorphous Nowhere Man, one whose desperation and longing crystallize in passionate non sequiturs and moments of heartrending tenderness, often towards an equally shadowy female presence. Reading I Don’t Mind If You’re Feeling Alone is a singular experience that is as haunting as it is touching.
—Ben Mirov

Limited Edition Tour T-Shirt

T-shirts are Gilden 4.5oz SoftStyle Ringspun and 100% cotton. They are super soft and come in unisex S, M, L and XL. If you are between sizes we recommend you go up rather than down a size.

I Don’t Mind If You’re Feeling Alone — Cover by Alban Fischer

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