A year-and-a-half ago Habenicht Press editor David Hadbawnik moved from San Francisco to San Marcos, Texas to pursue a master of fine arts in poetry. “Needless to say I went from a bustling, hustling town of readings and events to a small village that can generously be called a college town,” says Hadbawnik.

Scott Pierce, editor of Austin’s Effing Press, asked Farid Matuk and Hadbawnik to guest edit an issue of Effing Magazine a short time later. “It reminded me of the kind of energy and exchange that such projects can provide, given the lack of immediate contact with a large poetry center,” says Hadbawnik. “So I decided to put together my own little mag.”

During the winter he asked some poet friends to get him their work within a week, and then he finished the issue this spring, calling it kadar koli, a title suggested by his wife, which means “whenever” in Slovene.

And Hadbawnik has a group of friends in kadar koli whose names just jumped out at me—Jen Hofer, Hoa Nguyen, Sarah Peters, Dale Smith, and Roger Snell. Each of them delivers their usual solid work, but it’s Nguyen’s austere nine-line gem “On and Off Rain” that stands out:

“We will love with kisses”

even when writing through you

(Basketball sticker on the coffee table)

The real pleasure, though, lies in discovering the work of those whose names didn’t jump out at me, including Susan Briante, Susanna Kittredge, Andrew Neuendorf, and Steve Wilson. Briante’s “Mid-State” is a rambling travel poem, with stops in Abbott, Dallas, Odessa, San Antonio, and Waxahachie, Texas, as well as Buffalo, Chicago, Las Vegas, Mexico, New Jersey, New York City and Tulsa. There are different travelers, locales and eras, her observations combining for a real smooth trip.

After a long drive

through central Texas I stopped to piss in an

Austin coffee shop/bakery. Graffiti in the pink

stall read: Men fall in love with the women

they are attracted to. Women become at-

tracted to the men they love. And under that,

scrawled in black sharpie: White People Suck.

Austin has a large number of white people.

To order kadar koli visit www.habenichtpress.com/publications/index.html.

David A. Kirschenbaum is the editor of Boog City.