Dink Press is growing and changing, something that I have resisted from the company's inception seven years ago. I had a specific idea on what publishing was, and how I wanted to go about doing it. The world is constantly changing, and so should this press. 

Next month Dink Press will (finally) be issuing the print edition of Problématique Volume One. We will also be releasing a new volume before the end of the year, though the magazine has gone through some changes as well. Each volume will now feature a smaller collection of contributors (3-4), but with much more work from each so that we can provide a better introduction to their work. 

Over the next few months we will also be issuing three new books- a collaborative art book by Kaleigh Maeby and myself, a collection of poems and photographs entitled "Carolina Lost", and a book of poetry entitled "Bathwater". 

We will also be launching our Vulture Pamphlet Editions early next year, which will be a series of short-run, handmade chapbooks. More information will available soon. 

Tim Kahl has five poems in the debut issue of Problematique. The poems are included below along with recordings made by Kahl himself.

​Tim Kahl [http://www.timkahl.com] is the author of Possessing Yourself (CW Books, 2009), The Century of Travel (CW Books, 2012) The String of Islands (Dink Press, 2015) and Omnishambles (Bald Trickster, 2019). His work has been published in Prairie Schooner, Drunken Boat, Mad Hatters' Review, Indiana Review, Metazen, Ninth Letter, Sein und Werden, Notre Dame Review, The Really System, Konundrum Engine Literary Magazine, The Journal, The Volta, Parthenon West Review, Caliban and many other journals in the U.S. He is also editor of Clade Song [http://www.cladesong.com]. He is the vice president and events coordinator of The Sacramento Poetry Center. He also has a public installation in Sacramento {In Scarcity We Bare The Teeth}. He plays flutes, guitars, ukuleles, charangos and cavaquinhos. He currently teaches at California State University, Sacramento, where he sings lieder while walking on campus between classes.

I report not one blade handle that is sorry enough
and not one path completing the loop through the center of gravity
But a "Wait Here" sign is added. The shorter yuccas direct coyotes
to the waters of empty lots where granite figures settle into the city streets
The contents of our illuminated interiors impose fun at great angles
but the highways slowly transition into events without brains
while the body continues to feature its platform of being beautiful
and plus-size models assemble to engineer a bike swap off the grid
The consciousness camp is filmed amid the happenings in the gardens
companion plants are sprawling: beans and peas, okra and amaranth
sunflowers and cucumbers. They all convene at the Hotel Congress
where illicit couples splash against each other like bugs against windshields
The dark-haired white-winged angels tame the breeds of wild lightning
that planters call yartsa gunbu, summer grass winter worm, larva of the ghost moth
child learning language at a rate determined by the axon's bandwidth
so where did all this claw foot and carbon come from?
To where is it driven during the dream of its motorized hermitage?
The violent planet ascends to the sea surface and becomes Bread Rocks
crowding out the nomads and the goat carcasses the fortunate flayed
while the glow of memory faded and flooded my endless regard for the blade

The eulogy for Alabama begins when machines are orphans and poisons
during the Nigerian summer and its burning banter churning in an unknown furnace
the blood and bone of a child stands in a single stained glass window
the mirage of just causes revolving in a hideous Lutheran bottle
Dasein opens to the strong seismological ale of the seasonal peasant
Yoga breeds walk around in slow motion trying to quantify reasons for agua
Can anyone dance with sincerity in the parking lot of consciousness
Is the starving carnivore's workbook filled with pages of panic
The run-up on the alternate take makes Miss America squint
not quite neutral gloss of monitored eye blink at the static
then blame it on the blues and tones of fog jumping over mountains
hacked — nothing sticks to the ribs, nothing heals the time limits
The spoiled meat of the system exists next to the polished corpses
There's always one more river for the man of Georgia red clay to cross
from cape to camp to a rhythm of freedom hidden in the sacred ashes
the burning investigated along the broad arc bending to justice
Tumbleweed spirit is razored by oxide and positron and osmosis
Stick a thermometer in the persona and measure the imprint of passion
The inherited appetites slide into quickly learned language
Nightspells of compassion and anguish shine in the Birmingham dirges

Release these men from fishing on Lake Useless where they waste
their days and save their mandatory fatigue for both folded hands
the hips of these stiff Europeans are grafted onto nocturnes
their courtyard wings unfurl in the style of blood red hibiscus
sweet nothings gathering force like prickly pear people
their faces weary from the gypsy self thrown out to the airport
and the woman God uses to trivialize the councils of nature
as they stand in their unspoken thoughts more visitor than resident
across the train tracks and among the hothouse flowers
their Esperanza is whisked away by clerks and immigrants
their passport of the one last chance attempts a better adventure
where they are called to battle with a ragged fart in public
they are never happy with their names said incorrectly by the masses
becoming adults in blanket forts, eating Jell-O with chop sticks
naked snipers in the night, ghosts in the ponchos of the peasants
proud of the language learned in their 9 to 5 portraits
a blueprint truer than birthday praise and a white face
not just some guy trying to be internet famous who can't
understand that no explanation dizzies more than regal titles
so they cast into Fruit Ales Falls with the wonders of their hearts

A statue of a woman with stone breasts rings a bell for truth.
She intercepts the packages of salt on the Avenida where the Madonna stands,
a sting of mint in the rain that shocks the Portuguese El Camino.
Then a century of exodus begins with lost husbands in front of screens,
sparrows commanding the untamed donkey whose horoscope is surprise, surprise.
Cypresses work from sun to sun and clean the pollen off the bee.
Balls of yarn hang over the doorways in Ireland. The wolf moon hunts
a stranger with Chesterfields who burned through the black
and hides in the chaparral blessed by the barn owl’s grace
and is cradled by a cone of starlight shining down on him.
The wind chimes startle a pale moth and the soft ash is kissed
by the fallen angels. The tourists knock the rust off the rose.
They play their erotic badminton and the ballad of the new blue spruce.
A hundred mornings flare then disappear during the dance of the plague.
The shape of a human is turned into an idea of a cloud,
odd in its tiny white uniform the botanists have groomed.
The houses of meaning are improvised to threaten the daylight in its depression.
Go ask a dog what madness is and it will bark three times.
The engine of language cranks out its squeaky little sentences
and arranges them in sheets to slowly grind down into the propaganda machine.

When spit becomes spittle and reaches the middle
of the horn and sound is born as warning to
the walking and the gum chew clicks of the trap
the landscape of taps and pops and cymbal shimmers,
then the band wanders into funderland. So then it undoes
injury and surgery, extends majesty and mystery,
kisses the impossibility of wind dressing as image.
Can everyone see the blowthrough, count out the beat
of one-two-three — Sweetly Sings the Donkey.
And you and me sit in half-wonder at every blunder
sounding a little like a bitten kinder who'd bray
all day if given an inch of imagining. Aw-righty then,
no inhibiting a hee haw here. Just snort and rip
a note to beat back neglect both far and near.
But over yonder where the clarinets will ponder
where their silhouettes will dare to squeak
and interrupt the will to speak like firecrackers
or a sonic boom shooting out the baritone. Oh boy.
The melody is pilloried with joy, and it jumps for
a general sense of loyalty among the flutes and tubas
and trumpets and tractors as well as other new recruits.

These poems are featured in Problématique Volume One. A print version is forthcoming. 

Willed into the state of a desert
Through absorbing piecemeal cures for uncertainty,
Impatiently, romantically, whimsically.
Attached to the humiliation of living as if I don’t need,
The lines blurred between barrenness and secrecy.
Greet me with a talisman or two,
Extinguishing artifice on flammable surfaces,
Shedding decorative safety blankets and
Relinquishing in mammals melting.
My stomach turns nervously at the fight of the scene.
Until erosion becomes commonplace,
The bounds of my body
Promise enraptured treachery.
One day scattered dust opens its eyes
And feels the surface beneath, fluctuating.
Faces wind and its abrasions:
Bids it,
Do the carving for me.
To touch and be touched anew. 

A friend brings up a question regarding the chemical derivations of bugs no longer sticking to windshields. I visualize my dashboard and no image comes to mind of using my wipers without rain. I worry that I don’t relate enough. I worry that I can’t relate. When we become lucky, our minds have a way of rearranging worries into misguided imaginations. We worry about our imaginations, then. On days when I’m especially worried, I grow weary of talking about the weather and prefer to notice it. I’ll reject umbrellas but I don’t expect cleansing, look into the sun to remember why I can’t. Savor beads of sweat and wet cloth over the perceived comfort of a fan, but move into the wind if given the chance. If the only self is all of us, if every generation rewrites itself but our stories contain the same myths, if love is attention without consumption, a surrender to the object, then the symbolism I impose has never rang true. Simone Weil says there is only a single fatality: the inability to let the light in. I am not attached to the idea that I’ve tried. I wonder what would be more frightening: hitting a wall and being forced to cling, or being bounced back into oblivion. ​

Ella Rennekamp is an undergraduate student at the New College of Florida. She is originally from Louisville, Kentucky. Her interests lie in the interconnected relationship between psychoanalytic and critical theory, self-actualization, film, and writing for revealing the depths of individual experience.
These two poems are featured in Problématique Volume One. A print version is forthcoming. 

start's upward fall,
deep-known question's triple gallop
in loving key
sea of glass, arm-reviving
root's possibility of blessing
unbearably brighter than self.

sky-cornered blossom's comprehensive dazzle
bridging the way to will
the base of a cross lit from behind
wishing to be gone
golden-silver-white script’s
conquering sign.

Michael Lee Rattigan (Caterham, UK) has lived and taught in Mexico and Spain, and translated the first complete collection of Fernando Pessoa's Alberto Caeiro poems (Rufus Books, 2007). His first poetry collection, Liminal, was published in 2012 (Rufus Books). He contributed to the Selected Writings of César Vallejo, published in 2015 (Wesleyan Press). His latest collection, Hiraeth, was published alongside its French translation in 2016 (Black Herald Press).
These three poems are featured in Problématique Volume One. A print version is forthcoming. 

​new melody I drink
disco fizz on my tongue
to strawberry ballet
chime of magic
down my spine
when you bless me with whispers
first time swimming
cathedral where echoes
make new constellations
handful of sunset
hundredth bouquet of thanks
look how you made room in your shadows
( for me )

​new coat
soul free
till your rise
from white sleep
invent veins of runes
frozen breath parcels
garden enamel
your morning photo flash
leaf plink and dribble
window peck shiver
squeak and drool
off from your rooftop
there in the heart
of your hand
my noiseless bleed
goodbye

Reece A.J. Chambers is a 26 year old writer from Northamptonshire, England. He is currently an MFA distance-learning student in Creative Writing, specialising in poetry, through Manchester Metropolitan University. He previously attained a degree from the University of Northampton in the same subject. He has had work published online and in print, and the majority of his poetry can be found at hellopoetry.com. He also maintains a blog (reeceajchambers.wordpress.com), and occasionally writes prose as well as poetry. Influences include Sylvia Plath, Simon Armitage, E.E. Cummings, William Carlos Williams, and a variety of prose writers.
These two poems are featured in Problématique Volume One. A print version is forthcoming.

​inside of your mouth,
on the underside of
your tongue,
i am safe
between the teeth and
the way you breathe
‘holy’,
i am known
under ultraviolets and
the promise of
thunderstorm skin,
i am whole
--we always swallowed
just the right way

​cry, that sick dog,
with the rock ‘n roll epilepsy
and constant angel of
dying
to the maker of windows,
the birther of the drunk-
did the weight in your chest
fall into your
stomach?
do the doves still sing
your liquid
praise?

Kaleigh Maeby is a designer/illustrator from Melbourne, Florida. She spends her time creating glimpses into other universes and finding the beauty in this one. She hopes you look upon these words and find something- a connection, a joke, disgust, even joy. She is in love.
Click here to order a copy of Kaleigh Maeby's Something Akin To, the collection that these two poems come from. These poems were also featured in Problématique Volume One. A print version is forthcoming.

R. Keith works in poetics, fiction, visuals and exophonic writing. His latest books include the novel Wild Rose Country (Cajun Mutt Press) and FLOP (Rust Belt Press) His visual art has been presented in galleries in Canada, Russia, Malta and Italy.
This piece is featured in Problématique Volume One. A print version is forthcoming.

Rus Khomutoff is an experimental poet in Brooklyn, NY. He has been published by San Francisco Review of Books, Pro/p(r)ose Magazine, Silver Pinion, and Hypnopomp. In June he published a chapbook called Radia from Void Front Press. He can be reached at @rusdaboss on twitter.
These two poems are also featured in Problématique Volume One. A print version is forthcoming. 

Something Akin To is the debut poetry collection by designer, illustrator, and writer Kaleigh Maeby. It has been described as "Odd, local, and sovereign, the work is a fragmentary gathering of thrice-lost things, to include the repetitive body, the faceless child, the knee of the ant." by Barton Smock at isacoustic, and novelist George Salis has said "As this collection proves, Maeby is as great and evocative a poet as she is an artist." on Goodreads.

The collection can be purchased here.

George Salis' online magazine "The Collidescope" published a selection of these poems, which can be viewed here.