Published Work — Alex Behr

Planet Grim: Stories

ISBN: 978-0998409221
Distributor: Ingram

In twenty-eight stories that draw blood while making you laugh, Alex Behr’s debut collection Planet Grim is a vivid, unsettling portrait of the gritty fringes of San Francisco and Portland, where complicated characters long for connection just out of reach. Behr is an idiosyncratic, unpredictable prose stylist with an edge and willingness to cut to the bone that makes her writing truly original.

Described by Lidia Yuknavitch as “stories of eros and ids getting loose, inner contradictions and desires crashing into each other like marbles, brutal instances of violence up against a moment of tender beauty, the people and lovers and mothers and families in this book are carved from the guts of us.”

Planet Grim: Reviews and author interviews

Cold Plum Wine

“I tested stress. I am stress. That’s what my wife told me. I stressed her out. Airplane wings have flex. They have to. Otherwise, the planes wouldn’t fly. At LAX, when I crossed the threshold to the 737-MAX, I paused, almost the last one onboard, and peered into the cockpit.” Along with a story with the same name by John McManus. Published by Picture Frame Press. Available at Up Up Books.

Month Three

“I met a stump. I nestled by its moss.
They told me to pour honey on it.
I nestled by the stump of Chris’s soul,
dandruff everywhere,
toothpaste stain on the
glass container by
the Henry Miller porn.
The box of his wilderness.
The sparkplugs and feathers.
His ashes, still white,
still enplasticked,
still zip-tied.”

A ritual poem for Chris, Ghost City Press

Chasing the Train

One of many “take-home” books Alex wrote to accompany reading / language arts lessons and stories. This historical adventure tale is set in the 1800s.

"Spectacles"

Kithe published five “Spectacles,” micro memoir poems, including one about my late partner, Chris Hartman, when we first dated in early 1990 (shown above at Stinson Beach).

“The Game of Stupid Poly”

“The Mad One keeps locking the bathroom door from the outside, especially when I’m in a hurry. ‘Tenth paper clip this week,’ I say to her, my daughter, ‘And it’s only Wednesday.’ I say it, like, no big deal. Paper clips are free. I take them from work.” Vol. 1 Brooklyn.

“Swingers”

“I want an easy swing, that parabolic arc over grass, weeds, garter snakes, grubs, snapping turtles, beer cans, rotten logs. My legs out, my head and chest back. My arms taut. My thighs and ass pressed against the ball of rope: extending joy.” Cleaver

Stranged Writing

Stranged Writing is an anthology of defamiliarized creative writing published by Gravity of Thing, which includes my poem “I of I.” Gravity of the Thing has kindly published the flash fiction story “Angel Dust” and two poems: “About a Girl” and Pacify Her.”

“The Problem Was Starting”

“The problem was that photo of her on his phone (and hers), where she sits on his kitchen chair with orange peels balanced on her nipples. Her tits look fine, but she has bags under her eyes and looks demented. What is happy? This?” X-R-A-Y.

“Wet”

“‘Mom, come out.’ The son, twelve, shirtless, in shorts and sandals. He runs into the night, now white, like a healthy uterus, its tissue open to life. Flakes cover the harm: the cat’s grave, the thorns. The suburban failure machine.”Nailed.

More Writing

“Some of his cells left the placenta when he was inside his mom. His cells will forever pepper her brain, her tissues, and her blood. On his eleventh birthday he asked me, ‘Has she forgotten me?’ I said, ‘No, never.’”
— “Raising Yu Zheng, Raising Eli”
“You wanted to believe you’d lived through something. That the music wasn’t empty. That the muscles and blood and skin were put together for some reason beyond a pissing match between the bartender and one singer with a chipped tooth, now breathing heavy, having been punched in the stomach by a skinhead.”

— “The Passenger”

Cold Plum Wine, short story, Picture Frame Press

Matthew Dickman, interview, Maggot Brain (issue 11)

Lidia Yuknavitch, interview, Maggot Brain (issue 9)

Seymour Glass, interview, Maggot Brain (issue 9)

Lidia Yuknavitch, interview, Oregon Humanities

A Nation of Bombs, fiction, Heavy Feather Review (print)

Liz Asch, interview, The Rumpus

Age of Anxiety: Create More, Fear Less, article, Oregon ArtsWatch

That’s the Way of the World, fiction, Cosmonauts Avenue

Be Like the Baby; Be Like the Man, Submission Reading Series poetry chapbook

The Passenger, fiction, VoiceCatcher