NATURAL WINE, Jo Barchi

Natural Wine, Jo Barchi.

“To say that Jo Barchi’s Natural Wine is one of the horniest books ever written about going to work would be an understatement. The more I lived with these poems—their intelligence, wit and music—the more I savored the grim underbelly of the scene proffered by their coy, outrageous, brilliant server.” —Brandon Brown

“It’s ramp season which means all the chefs are ovulating Gays / talking abt toxic pesticide gainers, DDT and macros, and tren and gyno and /
worms in perfect pink lady apples, 4 woods, no 5, and 1 white light, Gay Guy / Friday, 60% chance of rain,”

Restaurants after the rev? Hope not. Will my server fuck me later (cage free)? Do they hate me? Sort of. Can I fuck this polenta? Is this a community space? 86 Your Dad? Barchi’s written a book so pornographically social and psychedelically paratactic about the best worst place on earth that you’ll wish you were waiting on a table, then wish you were talking shit about yourself at the service well. Maybe remove a few ribs so you can 86 yourself to completion—“No small talk It’s the turn”

Rainer Diana Hamilton: "In Natural Wine, Jo Barchi takes the unnatural language that occupies the worker's ears and mouths and spits it back out. In this poem, a voice carries across a restaurant, drowning out the bad tippers, the menus recited by heart, the kitchen jargon, and other profitable falsehoods to insist, stubborn and sore-footed, on desire."

Kay Gabriel: "Jo Barchi has written a breathless, feverish, "hysterical materialist" satire from their final boss fight at level whatever of the service industry. The drop from the boss? A "new ugliest sentence yet." Natural Wine arranges its crop of pithy one-liners and damning overheards into a masterfully hideous collage worthy of Holly Woodlawn's manic brilliance. Everybody's losing this game, but you sure as hell know who to root for."

Natural Wine, Jo Barchi. 27pp. $15, plus shipping. 8.5”x11”, stapled “Angel Hair style.” Covers printed on Safety Orange French 80# cover stock, interiors printed on Cougar Natural Vellum 70# text stock. Printed, bound, and assembled in “Kingston, NY,” the unceded and currently occupied lands of the Haudenosaunee, Mohican, Munster Lenape, and Schaghticoke. First printing, edition of 200. Designed by The Aliens.