Laughing Mouse Press

The Usual Beast is the first chapbook from Minneapolis rocker Chris Besinger. Chris is the frontman of art-punk band STNNNG, whose new release Smoke of My Will is available now on Modern Radio Records. The Usual Beast includes lyrics from STNNG’s first two releases, along with manuscript images, new poetry, and several songs from the new album including “New Black Hole,” “Slow Water,” and “The Howling Man.”

The cover art is an original painting “The Rower” by acclaimed Milwaukee artist Tom Stack.

When he’s not fronting STNNNG, Chris performs with improvisational no-wave unit Group Icky Rats. Chris was a member, with Carolyn Tuttle Hansen and Spencer Keralis, of the original Minneapolis writers’ group that gave birth to Laughing Mouse Press. Chris’s story “Junior Scratch Orchestra” is featured in LMP’s Junior High Yearbook.

The volume is a half-letter saddle-stitch chapbook with color covers and is available now in the Shop or at any of Chris’s readings or STNNNG shows in the midwest.

New Black Hole

In blackness from birth
Are without sight

At least of it
Not by this young believer

Grow his grow, a new serving man changed

With the pharaohs it was the same

A man born of an ox is not less beautiful
A man born of another animal is no less beautiful

Every solar system made to be a monument
As in the Eye of Horus

Though he has been predicted
He is weary from the nine-thousand year journey
Return to the first planet
At the close of the long-count

December 21, 2012

The ancestral home, a new black hole

Holy cleansing fire, erasing in a breath
Demolished time as the future’s history is put to sleep

I will hide among ye o ye stars, which are imperishable
My brow is the brow of Ra

Chris Besinger performing with STNNNG. Photo by Adam Bubolz

The Usual Beast
Chris Besinger
ISBN: 978-0-9843248-2-8
44 pages, saddle-stitch

Chris Besinger The Usual Beast $12.00 +$3.00 S&H
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