This is the song of the barge, bobbing on the river near Hopeville.

I wore a wire for several years and secretly recorded my life. I recently produced a story about this period in my life for the radio show Wiretap. One of my ideas for the piece was to record myself calling up people from my past to explain that I had recorded them without their knowledge. This is a recording of one of those conversations.

You can hear the Wiretap story here: http://www.cbc.ca/wiretap/episode/2012/01/20/man-vs-machine/

"Nothing can stop us. Not even if they try. Not even if they want to, or ask the question why. Mr. Torino, why did you lie to me in seventh grade?" -Mark Excelle Mercer IV

Sometimes you wish audio had pictures.

Most days you can find Tim Raines playing guitar on the corner of Ninth and Olive in downtown St. Louis. He's the electric guitar player with a stuffed bear dressed in prison garb perched on the lip of his guitar case.

James Arthur’s poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The New Republic, Poetry, Ploughshares, The Southern Review, New England Review, and Narrative. He has received the Amy Lowell Traveling Poetry Scholarship, a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in Poetry, and a Discovery/The Nation Prize. Charms Against Lightning, his debut poetry collection, is forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press. During 2012 he will be in residence at the Amy Clampitt House in Lenox, Massachusetts.

Photo by: Sean Hill

When I was a kid I had this clown doll that would laugh when you pushed a button in its chest. It was terrifying. It's more the cackle of a chain-smoking maniac than the laughter of a clown but then again some clowns are heavy smokers.

I recorded this fiery sermon that I heard on the radio in West Virginia.

After a successful meal Captain Tom has no trouble patting himself on the back for a job well done.