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Stories for Nadira
“The most impressive debut 8th book I've ever been in.”
darling two hearts
“If there is one book to read over someone's shoulder this year, then let it be this one.”
e{m}ma+ the ghost orchids
"this book is filled with graffiti"
"another love letter to women who ride bicycles"
s{e}an
"how am i supposed to read a book if i don't already know what it's about?"
"why read about insignificance when you can find the real thing here?"
"of all that is written I love only what s{e}an? has written with his own blood"
the dictionary of coincidences,
volume i (hi)
"cortical."
"cough cough (silence) sniff sniff."
"a fine example of an increase in decreased latent inhibition."
the unknowed things
"what reality might be like if we look at it closely and if it is, in fact, real."
"don't forget to writhe"
still life in motion
"There are painters who put words on their canvasses these days, but you have turned the tables on them."
one note symphonies
"precisely the kind of book that an independent publisher should be championing. Innovative and yet deeply intelligent, One Note Symphonies leans far more to the side of genius than pretence."
"(an) insistent attack on the ramparts of what we laughingly call reality."
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s { e } a n ?
last updated: November 27, 2021
(©sean brijbasi/seanbrijbasi.com. all rights reserved.)
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sean brijbasi lives in america. sometimes he writes.
read s{e}an?
S{E}AN? DISAPPEARS
S{E}AN? THINKS
S{E}AN? READS
S{E}AN? WRITES
S{E}AN? REAPPEARS
On Symbolism in Jenufa
Epilogue: Coming Soon: Superpowers for Ordinary People
To know me is to know music and the bridge to heaven. In all the world and its history the mechanism through which one forgets (for bursts) the isolation and (out of fear of misshapen cartography) immolation of the self (everyone has their own and mine is self).
I understand this symphony as a woman in a lace dress, her earrings the Romanian gymnast. We make her so and her soul in paradise. The symphony comes from her tears.
The cartography of her hip and spine when she turns—they come from her tears. The harmonica written on her smooth belly in backward arcs around her naval a spiral and aloft we spy (as such aloft) the outlines of her remarkable, unconquered lands.
She cannot hate us no matter how cruel we are. She wants to do something (if just for a moment). She is more noble than we (we hear it in the singular note). She falls apart whole. She comes to pieces whole. And we are to blame.
The shoelace on one of my shoes has become untied but I don’t have a moment to stop. I drift above the pavement that’s stained by the blood of the unconvinced and the castaway chocolate sweets. The shoelace drags along the concrete and pops up and down as it collides with the pebbles on the thoroughfare and the detritus of unmindful pockets.
I think about the empty flower vase that is so empty but filled with so much power.
E. and I cuddle our life with our minds and our hearts. But we are like the detritus of unmindful pockets and the pebbles on the thoroughfare. We land where we are dropped and we go where we are kicked.
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"by happenstance or bad fortune i was stung by a caterpillar (or some mutated bee) and was confined to lying-stance and swelling for some time during which i read the entirety of this dictionary in one, possibly two and a half swoops. it's amazing how small a book can become so big. but it occurred to me that what seems to inform Brijbasi's writing is a tension between form and matter--language as containment and language as wild-eyed irreverent party girl"
--Underground Books
Underneath the glass she looks the same but her hair is different. I remember the smell of her room and the window barely opened looking down onto the small yard and how the breeze lifted her drawings from the wall. When she returned I would hear her bicycle rattle against the tree, the front door open and close, and her hurried footsteps getting nearer to our room. I always thought to myself and sometimes whispered: ‘be careful on the stairs’. That’s how much I loved her.
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read the unknowed things
"Brijbasi is the poet of irrecoverables. The shadowy figures of his skeletal world have no faces and they would not accept epiphanies. They do accept absurdities and they revel in contradictions. Brijbasi carries this to a degree that naturalizes absurdities and contradictions. The result is less fiction than a display of the mechanics of fiction that focuses on the bare minimum of expected content. This austerity, however witty it often is, brings the reader to considerations of what reality might be like if we look at it closely and if it is, in fact, real."
--Midwest Book Reviews
She felt as she sat there listening to the ocean that she loved the world again, loved everything and everyone in it, loved humanity with all of its grand and not so grand gestures and foibles, loved the impudence of life in the seemingly endless void that was the universe. And yet, she felt unable to express her feeling in any understandable way.
Go well in this world and may no harm come to you. Be happy. Love. Laugh. Live.
She often thought these things to herself but could never say them to anyone. So she left friends and strangers alike with a smile they might think out of place or an awkward gesture or phrase they shook their heads to once out of her view. What to make of her they thought? What to make of what she said? What to make of the strangely awkward but graceful way she spoke with her hands? Perhaps they thought her naïve, but they’d forget this part of her soon enough as they went on to do things—important things, vital things, serious things, things that mattered—and this part of her would drift anonymously in and out of their lives. Or perhaps they pretended not to recognize this part of her and instead addressed her as if this part of her didn’t exist because this part of her always felt out of context to them.
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read still life in motion
"Reading this book will enable you to sit still for extended periods of time while your fruit paints you. It is recommended you wear your least favorite hat while reading this. Even if you don't read this yourself (for men) lending this book to women is an almost guaranteed way to make them fall in love with you. (for women) If you're not already in love with yourself, find out why."
--The Obliterati
I tell Sasha okay from time to time because okays are good hiding places. The first step I take implies my long stride and impatience.
"Wait", she says.
She sees how strange the day is. Better than me. She says she sees well because of a child-hood catastrophe (insert insect) that destroyed her pupils (insert tacheon). She says she sees the molecules that make up a circle. She says that all circles are not the same.
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read one note symphonies
"Each fragment of Brijbasi's reality has the pregnant lack of connection that we find in dreams. He is able to assemble the dream states in evocative and poetic ways that give a wry twist to the human condition."
--New Book Reviews
The Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte often went to his mistress’ apartment as what he called a bicycle (the old Corsican word for secret or two wheels).
‘As a bicycle’, he often said, ‘I can mingle with the common folk and go unnoticed.’
And as a bicycle he was exiled to Denmark after Josephine mistakenly rode him to the market to buy some eggplants and a chicken. She leaned him against a fishmonger’s stand, but his mistress was at the market also and thinking that Napoleon had come to rendezvous, hopped on his back and rode him to her apartment on Rue de Voltaire.
Tragically for Napoleon, Josephine arrived just as his mistress was in the act of dismounting him.
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darling two hearts (december 2017)
“If there is one book to read over someone's shoulder this year, then let it be this one.”
--The 6 Cities Sun Times
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I wait until everyone else gets on the train. I can’t read my book while the train is moving because I get dizzy. I soak up as many of the words as I can so I’ll have interesting thoughts while I’m going home or going to work or going to meet friends. So I wait until the very last second when the train doors are about to close. I never know what the words will do to me or what interesting thoughts I’ll have and I don’t want to miss a single word.
cover art by stratos
cover art by stratos
cover art by stratos
cover art by stratos
cover art by stratos
cover art by stratos
cover art by stratos
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Stories for Nadira (july 2018)
”The most impressive debut 8th book I've ever been in."
--Lelolah (Le-lo) Vespertina
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On that summer morning the sun, bright and orange, also arrived—like an orb of fire to destroy a world it learned too late to love. A half-dream of the days of pogrom and the dialogic which, in accordance with the herbs and salts of a riven earth, goes something like this: there are several paradigms to be argued and there are many mutations.
--from 'this is not the dream i had'
cover art by stratos
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Play Championship World-Class Tennis with Bjorn McEnroe (december 2018)
”This book is damn near perfec"
--Man Who Walks Slow
"t."
--Darling Two Hearts
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Sometimes I had to take little footsteps to victory but those little footsteps were adjustments at the point of contact with the ball when the wind or invisible moisture affected the movement of the ball so that all the predictions I made as to the speed and final position of the ball were skewed by unseen outside forces I had not (and humanly could not) take into account.
cover art by stratos
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the world that destroyed the world (october 2019)
”Like the dream you've never had."
--Riot Felice
"A world where Remember is...what is it?"
--Former Miss Alice 2018
It was a darkness that made him want to drop down right where he stood and fall asleep as a door was being closed to block out the last photon bursts of light reaching his pupils or (even better) as he was being buried so he could feel the insect-like texture of dirt on his face as his eyes became too heavy to keep open (in the first instance he could hear the door hinges creaking and in the second the shovel stabbing the soft earth).
cover art by stratos
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ENTROPALACE (dec 2020)
“ENTROPALACE is water for those who aren’t thirsty, food for those who aren’t hungry, and shelter for those who have many homes. In short, a 5-star hotel. A must read for those who have a large library of books they have never read, do not read now, and will never read. Also, a must read for those who don’t have such a library but do occasionally read when they feel like it.”
--6 Cities Sun Times
A word that is a poem. Not for people of conviction or distributors of serious paraphernalia. A spider’s dance through a field of wild poppies. Agent Aphrodite’s secret code name. Or distilled to its metaphorical essence: a neatly trimmed bush with a single raspberry.
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cover art by stratos
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the book of lashonda (june 2020)
”You won't know what you're thinking
while reading the book of lashonda."
--The Journal of Algebra and Trigonometry
"Do wanderers ever cease? Not in this book."
--6 Cities Sun Times
1. Of the children who found Lashonda’s body, a girl remembered the white sheets of paper
2. strewn halfway down the slope of the hill, forming a path to Lashonda,
3. both physically as material substance like pavestones leading to her tangible existence (her legs, her face, her hands)
4. and metaphysically as immaterial substance, the story told on those sheets of paper, leading to her intangible existence (her mind, her being, her soul),
5. either incomplete without the other
cover art by stratos
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NO ONE CAN SEE THE WORLD I LIVE IN (nov 2021)
“You get the feeling that NO ONE CAN SEE THE WORLD I LIVE IN is the kind of book inspired by people who will most likely never read it.”
--Rail Drinks Magazine
“Unlike the same different books people read these days.”
--Mathematica
in Maria’s mind the observer never failed to convince her, after brief but intense arguments, that it was she (Maria) who became disconnected and that if she wanted to survive the disconnection she should place herself—not just mentally but physically, her whole body and all of its hidden parts—in a circumstance that provided the possibility of making her feel the opposite of departure
cover art by stratos
