(This Is) Disingenuous Twaddle

time

2011-09-25T16:05:00.000+01:00

DISINGENUOUS TWADDLE IS NOT DEAD

BUT IT IS SLEEPING

Issue eleven// Eche Udeze

2011-03-27T22:09:00.002+01:00

#4

dismember all important parts

leave him a bloodied mess of thick glass
shattered in sunlight ---------disorganized in fragments
of hurt

all connected atop of neck is disheveled
a bum head ---------derelict daze ---------thick matted
hairy knots of flesh

and when cleaning

make sure not to dirty your own
clean hands

leave all in pails w/amber soaked mop

wring out all traces of emotion from frame

and no lights on in the rooms where
he spent his life

#6

her coronation ---------speaks
of ariel dancing on the sun

when my in drifts ---------towards her
now as if dirt rallied by wind
the triumph is ---------oblivion w/my
right hand

her dissension
is the freefall of a ---------liquor bottle
shattering into glint ---------off sun

ariel has landed
sinking into a stare as ---------empty
as an idiot ---------who refuses to take in
the last gust of the muses harp

her memory a scattering clutter
in a vacuous free space ---------I cannot forget

Issue eleven// Frank C. Praeger

2011-03-27T22:06:00.001+01:00

A Question

A question,
subsequently, another,
pondering
the solemnity to the passage of days,
as even now riots of tansy, knapweed, Queen Ann's lace
make time decay as much an artifact
as unsubstantiated last
sundown's furtherest gleam, or grossest crackle,
cheep or to-wit-to-woo melange
of what -
bird songs,
grace?

Where goest thou who on another day
was I but am not but now
listed as missing,
yet, rested.
Enough.
A scattering of sounds
and further on, ----ashes.

Issue eleven// Ted Jean

2011-03-27T22:00:00.002+01:00

Rectification

---… construction on the Hawthorne Bridge
---has things backed up to the Central Ex …

You found again love long mislaid,
where last you left it, home,
bringing a ring to bind what was ever bound.

---… bleeding in the 400 block of SW Mill;
---police are looking for a Hispanic man in his …

Betrayal, it seems, once practiced, is everywhere
apprehended. But, without a hitch,
the golden yoke I greeted, glad, and fastened.

---… an alternate route is advised. On a more
---upbeat note, today marks the kick-off of …

Regret is an astringent rinse, has sharpened
your sight, my sweet, of old love in a new light.

-----
Ted Jean is a recently retired AIG executive. He writes, paints, plays lots of tennis. In the past year, his work has appeared in Poetry Quarterly, Denver Syntax, Blue Earth Review, Cirque, The Centrifugal Eye and several other publications.

Issue eleven// Felino A. Soriano

2011-03-27T21:50:00.008+01:00

This is the first of three pieces by Felino A. Soriano for Disingenuous Twaddle.
Look out for the next two in subsequent issues.

Approbations 683
—after Archie Shepp’s 'A Prayer'

Predicated on faithful fingers’
clawing ascended skin of air’s
scaly modification.
----------------------------------------Reach
with voice of swollen child
--------------------------------------------------aching
from primitive hankering of
sedentary movement
----------------------------therefore
absent
---------from
flailing revolutions of
second hand’s
cured notion:
----------------------------time of timid occultation
hurried hands across eyes’
miniscule acronyms
respelling interpreted follies
--------------------------------------------------known by name and
bodily position
isolated by kneeling and
faith’s current alteration.

-----
Felino A. Soriano is a case manager and advocate for developmentally and physically disabled adults. He has authored 34 collections of poetry, including In Praise of Absolute Interpretation (Desperanto, 2010) and Realities of Bifocal Translations (Blue & Yellow Dog Press, 2010). He edits & publishes Counterexample Poetics, an online journal of experimental artistry, and Differentia Press, dedicated to publishing e-chapbooks of experimental poetry. In 2010, he was chosen for the Gertrude Stein "rose" prize for creativity in poetry from Wilderness House Literary Review. His website explains further.

Issue eleven// Howie Good

2011-03-27T21:43:00.002+01:00

YELLOW

1
Everybody’s
morning

is different.
A seagull

doesn’t know
that it’s

a seagull,
only we

know that
and that its lidless

yellow eyes
are empty.

2
Only in old movies
do lovers escape

on an ice floe.
Your mind

whispers
to you

something
I can’t hear.

Later,
you’ll use

the worn
rubber nub

of a yellow
no. 2 pencil

to erase what
you’ve just

written.

-----
Howie Good is the author of a full-length poetry collection, Lovesick, and 21 print and digital poetry chapbooks. With Dale Wisely, he is the co-founder of
White Knuckle Press.

Issue eleven// Jack C. Buck

2011-03-27T21:30:00.002+01:00

A girl named Savannah

Savannah used to have a fella who would come through her apartment door with an anxious to see you smile. They met at the university. The friends and families celebrated with the two at their summer wedding four years back. They were so excited about life, all the possibilities it had. They even bought a nice home on Elk St. to call their own. Her husband no longer greets her with the boyish smile of excitement when he steps through the door. The door slams shut at 5:21, unless he stops after work to purchase some milk - then it’s around 5:33; depending on who is working behind the cash register on that particular day. Men drive cars. Men watch television. Men drink beers instead of splitting red wine with their once adored wives. Men fuck 19-year-old Asian girls with their right hand in front of the glow of a computer screen. Men stay busy.

-----
Jack C. Buck’s three favorite things in life are baseball, summers in Michigan, and literature. Especially by a man with the last name Fitzgerald. He is currently trying to figure out where to go next in the grand play of life. After attending Central Michigan University where he studied the art of greed and the illusion of democracy of Political Science, he realised thereafter the importance of not getting in a huff and puff about what you can't control.

Issue ten// Rani M. Moesq

2011-01-09T00:13:00.009Z

Wastage

Dead

Twen

ree

Splat

turd

a fly

a swat

splat

ter

dead!

step

too

far

Gone!

Left

loose

thread

caught

wind

from reaper

Cruel

cut!

-----
Rani M. Moesq has taught English language in a number of countries. She has lectured on aspects of English Literature, has written the book, lyrics and music for two musical comedies and had poetry, short stories, essays and books for children published in Singapore, Australia and New Zealand. A member of the New Zealand Society of Authors, she is a full-time writer and is at present working on a novel set in pre and post-war Singapore.

Issue ten// Phylinda Moore

2011-01-09T00:12:00.008Z

Just Before

a tornado
the air turns green, pink, or sometimes yellow
like a bruise

animals still, birds quiet
listen
in heavy waiting air
watch
steel grey clouds wall across the sky

the animal in you is wary
look
the hook snares the ground

if it comes
sound runs a freightliner over paper
you throw
to the ground– your only,
tenuous hope
and pray
God spare you
this destruction

-----
Phylinda Moore lives in Philadelphia. Journals where her work has
been published include: Bogg, The Rambler, RiverSedge, and Sierra Nevada College Review.

Issue ten// Donal Mahoney

2011-01-09T00:11:00.005Z

Sitting Shiva in a Hotel Lobby

For a year this image has haunted me.

Over and over I hear on the gramophone

Cohen put in my ear

“Feature this:

On a crowded elevator

a strange woman in a baseball cap

unbuttons your fly.”

That image is on the ceiling every night

as I sit shiva in the lobby

of this small hotel,

a hookah, like a tired cobra,

coiled at my feet,

a shamrock in my buttonhole

dead from the last parade.

Night after night,

I think about this strange woman

as each hour I watch

the doors of the elevator

part and give birth.

I observe each new guest carefully,

hoping the woman in the baseball cap

will tire of the rain and ride up

in the elevator and register.

I want her to sit in the lobby

and talk with us.

We who are guests here forever

have eons to hear

what she has to say.

We have paid our rent in advance.

We can afford to sit here and see.

-----
Donal Mahoney has worked as an editor for the Chicago Sun-Times, Loyola University Press and Washington University in St. Louis. A Pushcart nominee, he has had poems published in The Beloit Poetry Journal, Commonweal, Public Republic (Bulgaria) and Revival (Ireland).

Issue ten// Garrett Ashley

2011-01-09T00:08:00.005Z

Nell

He says, "Plans are only ruined as they are made."

I say, "We have a week to worry, long enough to rest."

They say, "But it may rain, or something. The wind

Will pick up and catch us having fun."

I say, "So we will reschedule."

They say, "We shouldn't make plans at all."

He says, "Plans are only ruined as they are made."

She says, "The tents are packed and the wind will blow

Them away.

I say, "Let the wind blow, that is the way of nature."

They say, "We'll have blankets, and a fire if it's too cold."

I say, "And darkness to protect us from the animal and the stranger."

My mother comes into the room, tears on her cheeks, she says,

"Nell is dead; there was a gas leak, now they're all gone."

I say, no I think—we think—maybe it's better

That we never make any plans at all.

Reflection

Blue is the ugliest color, mercury

Blue with a hint of delight

And a fusion of circumstances

I have not controlled.

The color of an eye—not a pair, one

Open pupil wide, seeing

Through the angry lines, but

Never hearing, it turns white,

And loses sight, deserving, probably.

I hope that eye never loses

The memory of the things it has seen.

-----
Garrett Ashley lives in MS and studies English at The University of Southern Mississippi. His works have appeared or are forthcoming in more than a dozen publications including Brain Harvest, The Bloody Bridge Review, The Smoking Poet, and M Brane SF. Currently he enjoys juggling cats.

Issue ten// Brandon Copeland

2011-01-09T00:07:00.005Z

On this banal plain

what is that saying?

oh.

darkest before dawn?

and i will keep

holding out my tongue

because each ending

is a different flavor of darkness

no abyss or bliss

just shades of existence,

in the twilight

and the morning repeating

-----
Brandon Copeland, 29, is a social justice activist and writer
originally from Kentucky. His website, Nascence, can be visited here.

Issue ten //Derrick A. Paulson

2011-01-09T00:02:00.009Z

Scribbled Extinct

This morning at the corner coffee shop I overheard the tail

end of a heated conversation in a booth adjacent to mine

between a triceratops and an astronomer. I had assumed

they were discussing their choices in beverages when I first

sat down, had even snickered to myself at the ironic thought

that this armored dinosaur could be drinking a turtle mocha. I

had also quickly stifled a laugh into the crossword section of

my newspaper at the association between “stargazer”

and “Starbucks” (as well as at the coincidence that the

former was the answer to four across). “It doesn’t matter how

cold it is,” the astronomer said, exasperated. “What’s

important is the size of the thing.” “I, for one, am opposed”

snorted the triceratops, “whole textbooks will have to be

overhauled, forthcoming ones recalled, all because of a

minor classification discrepancy.” “Minor?” repeated the

astronomer, “there’re tons of things that would’ve had to be

considered planetary in our galaxy alone, including some

asteroids, if Pluto had stayed a planet.” “Don’t mention

asteroids,” shivered the triceratops. Then, to regain his

composure, he said coolly: “I thought the term ‘dwarf’ was

dysphemistic in contemporary times?” I sipped my cold

coffee, scribbled “extinct” into fifteen across. “It’s completely

fine to call Pluto a dwarf planet,” said the astronomer, “it’s

not going to get offended and start protesting the IAU

committee’s decision—leave it to the misinformed mass to

do that.” His remark was as pointed as his companion’s

horn’s. “Do you imply that I am missing something?” the

triceratops asked as he rubbed the thinning bone of his frill,

unable to check the agitation in his voice. “Your tenure

doesn’t ensure your competence,” replied the astronomer.

Even I could sense there was something akin to an elephant

in the room. I tried to focus on my crossword, to ignore the

silence that followed. The clue for fifteen down: “Cretaceous

ceratopsid” seemed so familiar, yet, for the life of me I

couldn’t place it. When I looked up again the astronomer

was turning a melting ice cube from his emptied glass over

and over in his hand, and the triceratops was gone.

-----
Derrick A. Paulson (26) is a M.F.A. candidate in creative writing at Minnesota State University Moorhead. His previous works of poetry and prose have been included in Lovechild, Red Weather, and the Gander Press Review.

Issue nine// Paul Handley

2010-11-21T16:22:00.006Z

Poetry Loves Genius

___+03=standing water

-------By Homer

-----
Paul Handley has poems included or forthcoming in publications such as Anemone Sidecar, Carcinogenic Poetry, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Pemmican and others.

Issue nine// Tom Sheehan

2010-11-21T15:23:00.004Z

Rimnents (on cudi, but not y)

My grendfethir ren thi coty damp,
barnid clonkirs on e lottli huasi
hi medi uf screp. Un culd noghts dranks
slipt on thet meki-shoft hevin.

Thiy kniw thi wolcumi uf hos fori,
thi mingir’s stuvi tu wrep eruand,
hut carbong tu prup culd fiit,
qaock doffirinci frum thi fruzin eor,

wond-swipt reolrued trecks, beri intry weys,
derkniss whiri huwlong ghusts ebodi
ur, lest risurt, slom cerdbuerd wrep.
Thi lust, lunily bords cemi tu ruust,

fliw on et dask. Hi stukid thi fori
tu stor ap flemis, droid thior fiethers uff.
Jast es uftin hi lift hos lanch ebuat
loki testy sait hengong on thi yerd.

Un Setardeys O bruaght hos lanch,
dinsi lemonetis uf miet end bried,
thock end hievy end cuersi es son,
bruwn benene wi wuald nut iet,

mulessis-bruwn cuffii on whoskiy buttlis
wuand ebuat woth pepir begs.
O nivir sew ivin uni pont buttli
fonoshid uff wothon hos gresp,

rerily sew hos smell bint hend fiilong
onsodi e pepir big. Hos bords
dod thi pockong, hed sait chuoci,
hins donong bifuri thi cuck.

Whin hi doid thiy cemi tu groivi
thi sevouar uf thior noghts,
thi drankin, bisuttid, bruthirid bend
whu su uftin dreonid hos cap,

thi muttli-skonnid, thi suarid uf lofi,
peli hust, thi werrid apun end bietin,
thiy cemi tu cechi thi lottli men
whu uffirid whet wes lift uf Gud.

-----
Tom Sheehan’s books are Epic Cures and Brief Cases, Short Spans, Press 53; A Collection of Friends and From the Quickening, Pocol Press. Poetry collections include The Saugus Book; Ah, Devon Unbowed; and This Rare Earth & Other Flights. He served with the 31st Infantry Regiment in Korea in 1951. He has 14 Pushcart nominations, the Georges Simenon Award for fiction, included in the Dzanc Best of the Web Anthology for 2009 and nominated for Best of the Web 2010.

Issue nine// Mike Berger

2010-11-21T15:12:00.004Z

Dead Poets

Champagne skies crash down;
revealing the realms of dead poets.
All reciting lines; the lyrical blend
is a rancorous chorus.
Sitting at the massive elliptical table,
they indulge in cheese and wine. Each
struggles to be heard above the din.
Humble poets all; reciting their well
crafted lines. Each thinking the others
don't compare. Sitting back you can't
help but smile, impressed by their
profound sense of humility.
Only the bard sits silent, he has nothing
to prove.

-----
Mike Berger PhD is bright, articulate, handsome, and extremely humble.

Issue nine// Victoria Behn

2010-11-21T15:06:00.005Z

Good Cause Is

-----

Between bouts of frenzied procrastination, Victoria Behn transfers scraps of her tainted filtrations into shapes that some people claim to understand. She believes that art does not require supporting information. Her chief pleasure involves turning shapes on a page into damp cheeks or gaping mouths.

Issue nine// Thomas Mundt

2010-11-21T14:45:00.005Z

Sexy Girls of the Hollywood

Come Monday morning, all Freddie could think about was Sexy Girls of the Hollywood, a lingerie boutique on Lawrence. He saw the storefront for the first time over the weekend and it'd been stock car racing around his frontal lobe ever since.

As a matter of strict physics, he was standing on the bathroom's frozen tile, waiting for his never-ending morning piss to subside so that he could rescue a near-incinerated strudel from the toaster oven. But Freddie was really back on that sidewalk in Albany Park, gawking at bad grammar and pastel delicates.

Sexy Girls. Pause. Of the Hollywood. Not ...of Hollywood, or ...from Hollywood. Sexy Girls. Pause. Of the Hollywood.

Freddie knew some FOB's came up with the name. FOB's are funny, he thought. They come so close to getting it right.

***

During his Western Civ class, Freddie flipped through his spiral notebook in search of blank pages. He found he only had one left. Better make this one a keeper, he thought. He withdrew a mechanical pencil from his messenger bag and clicked it until graphite appeared. Then he began to sketch an ink-haired woman in a garter set. She was all legs and he was perfect in his geometry, paying careful attention to detail as he unfurled her latticed nylons down her gams. When it was time to add breasts, Freddie made sure they were proportional.

Not too big, not too small, he thought. Like a real lady would have.

***

At lunch Freddie was a geyser, went on and on about his trip to Albany Park to his buddy Mitch. He sang of lithe coeds parading around Sexy Girls' storefront in miniscule bra and panty sets, of Woodstock-level exhibitionism just a stone's throw from his tía's new three-flat.

I'm talkin' a whole grip of 'em, Freddie beamed. I'm talkin' tits like ka-pow! Asses like goddamn! He told Mitch he was sure they all did sets at the Admiral, probably made a killing off all the dudes coming in from O'Hare. They were that hot.

You gotta check it out, Freddie implored. Like, today.

Mitch snorted, cracked wise about having his secretary clear his schedule.

Shit better be good.

***

On the westbound Lawrence bus, Freddie wondered if it was too late to abort. He didn't want to go inside. I don't have to, if I don't want to, he thought. He could leave. He could pull the cord to stop at Francisco and just book. He could run clear east to Uptown, to his hermana's high-rise. There he could take an elevator to the top floor and jump into Lake Michigan. All of that would be better than going inside.

***

Mitch snapped his Orbit as he watched a liver-spotted man in a Members Only jacket drape a pink feather boa around the neck of a mannequin. The fuck, he winced. I don't see any chicks. He then whipped a half-empty Coke bottle at the window. The twenty-ounce made a dull thud against the plate glass and fell to the sidewalk without spilling its contents. The man inside Sexy Girls cursed Mitch in a language he'd never heard before, a string of consonants played at 45 RPM, before resuming his handiwork.

You fuckin' lied, Mitch leveled at Freddie. He then turned and walked in the direction of The Benches, off to burn a blunt with whomever. Freddie was already next door, pretending to look at VHS tapes in a Korean bookstore's window display.

Fuck you, Polack, he thought. No one put a gun to your head.

***

After saying his prayers, Freddie got up off his knees and locked his bedroom door. He then unbuckled his belt and let his gamey jeans fall to the carpet. He didn't bother to step out of the puddle of denim around his ankles. The notebook was ready, waiting for him on the corner of his desk. He opened it and leafed through page after page of notes about marauding Romans until he got to the sketch. He gave the woman one last once-over, burned her form into his brain. Then he closed his eyes and drew back the taut elastic of his boxers.

She's perfect, he thought. Not too big, not too small.

***

-----
Thomas Mundt lives in Chicago. The nice people at Thieves Jargon, Dogzplot, Wigleaf, NANO Fiction and Hobart have published his recent stuff. His whole megillah can be found here.

Issue nine// satnrose

2010-11-21T14:40:00.005Z

IS THIS TOMORROW?
a troped poem by satnrose

lie his lie is his and your lie is yours the remnants of blood again bored
redder but there's a bread sometimes the solution saw the pulse that salt
seeds in cherry but I know without her way second back the endless nut
this is the last nothing he looks running up and rocks a long kiss making
this a time for everything but to aim one then one must be aware of it
but you can in you and it can be everlasting except she ran steps as far
away from you as she could get but it was false as music between say
the thing was where you hurt there's a sea melting forsaken at a comm-
unist pace the rain again today on this very earth a cardinal can give a
kill and maybe and gone yourself worth spring the detective from jail
and you’ll know the twice with the old going they now survive on leave
shall we just butter the toast and not filch nothing finding yourself numb
and unable to celebrate won't you live a guess my wife hears in spark ha-
ppy! tears you gave for me make me forget hell it’s cruel and the sound
of the click of the shutter means the photograph has been transferred to
glass I lit out of the house so baby let us decide now but decades down
the road we must pay ransom so the death dogs won’t come looking for
us I forgot mine I have no blood left and say if the sycamore boy is right
and the ice if having as hysteria and dawn for you if there is an impatient
difference the won't would be the only thing that made a difference and
if only I could wake lying here with the six beekeepers one for me and
one for you and the other for for I’m not sure the fool central is central
to the argument so don't tell me how much time I have and have we seen
eye-to-eye? not who was unable between getting beneath a million or the
increases but at the next turn taking missionaries as knee-babies tonight
maybe bread jets in nicely in for the whole lot and maybe you can hide
after all but don't it see you doing the what if and what I came to this sw-
eet place this street where the universe is plainly visible but I awake for
just cause and have the stones only to go away my heart it is the dream
and you when there is here with which maybe who could so take foot
and turn that around moving by touch the clock offered pity and always
there is fighting starting somewhere no matter where I stand by as what's
invasive there's a light ticking rhythm in the sun so just go let go of the
one and when burning simply leave start the near sun all over again be-
fore he jumps before he is ready given the terrified doorway called before
you I maintain here the same sunflower and then when the One does co-
me come they’re like monkeys that even if you stop go down blue tomo-
rrow is solid and the train can take us much further I have a feeling any-
way that by deep laughing even the dust will no longer be waiting this is
all I get and what I cannot accept are the years in which its awakening
suddenly the cold digs into my skin and the sun is flying past the window
and those still in the gutter are up better than we know we just have to
last long enough to here blood will tell so our intentions are noble our
appetite is a dog what you want you dissolved in crimes day after day
there's fear and then there are yesterdays you have your own cross to
bear what you see in the mirror reflects the before words time and by
falling go if you will the line you crossed is the line you lost the wolf
of our season will maybe maybe be your last friend the room shakes it
must be an earthquake the haves who have the trickery put out the fire
I am stuck with what I think is a block of time all you say came as you
remembered it was stupid to kiss the sky he said but why not try there's
people out there making babies there’s sparrows pecking through the
corpses on the battlefield there’s snow blooming so raise steady or you
will lose what was dreamed and possibly even yourself in the process
when you get that cold you pay and December is old meanwhile the ba-
ttle continues and the such and the saved saved are crying and there’s
nothing I can do about it I tried to staunch the blood but it was hopeless
be that as it may tears fall as black as the sun the secret of being what I
meant to be said was that the nothing but heart can still be just as cruel
when trying to be kind as when trying to kill tell me is this tomorrow?

-----
satnrose is a well-known antiquarian bookseller, and formerly a not-so-secret messenger in the innermost depths of Capitol Hill and K Street. He has been published in a number of literary magazines, but since his reincarnation as 'satnrose' last year, he has been published in Evergreen Review, Iconoclast, Danse Macabre and Counterexample Poetics, among others.

Issue eight// Rebecca L. Brown

2010-09-12T21:59:00.000+01:00

Shed Shadow

The shadow
Our neighbours’
Brand new shed
With the dark
Stained wood
Panelling
Is casting on
The side of
Our house
Appears to be
The same shape
As this poem.

© Rebecca L. Brown 2010

-----
Rebecca L. Brown (25) is a British writer currently based in Cardiff, South Wales. She specialises in horror, SF, humour, surreal and experimental fiction, although her writing often wanders off into other genres and gets horribly lost. Updates and examples of Rebecca’s work can be found on her Twitter @rlbrownwriter and in her blog Bewildering Circumstances.

Issue eight// Jake David

2010-09-12T21:58:00.000+01:00

THEM!

want to/'t want to/it's all you't want to/it's all you't
want to/it's all youond chanceou don't Please ne ju Sta.
services that just cannot
agree// from Knowing Once The Movement Had Sense
Obriwhen you're alltuary Performing
Swingers
H(ave you gotten your worth) a(tleast) v(ows?) i(nterchangeable) n(ark)

g(ssaehtniuoykcufot)
ACross ingled-deirectional paths the lover's graceful f(O)o(C)c(U)u(s)S
cup of a circular
swerving
COLLISIon fairly fair-- how long to stare from
(
at
l
e
ast)---- worth foamy
m o uth li ck abl e sole s?
& degational responsibility (Gone & Going & All plaviis from here
now & never &

butI'mso-rryforwhatI'vvedonetoyouHer4Iam,being/w,eak&know"wingwhatIhar80vedone

---(beyond &

soiled in This-Crumpled Ewearth Earth&&7778999)---
But You've got to wait."

-----

Jake David lives near Cornwall, ON. His work has appeared on the webmags Writers' Bloc, The Beat, Heavy Hands Ink and Sillymess.

Issue eight// Ryan Quinn Flanagan

2010-09-12T21:49:00.016+01:00

Traffic Jams Without Meaning

we are all thin columns
of air
kleenex jellyfish sucking at one another
with paper thin gasps of rueful desperation.
Reaching.
----------Reaching.
--------------------Reaching.

for that one good hug
we remember from the family album
but somehow know
we can
--------------------never
----------find
again.

we are Columbus' rudderless flagship
on its way to nowhere.
Chance crying out at the roulette wheel
as the house takes the spoils
and leaves us all drunk on the dream
and broken
with one another.

Stray cats claw out each other's intestines
over half a sandwich
as we weep at the moon
for lovers who have forsaken us
with their tardy happiness.
High rollers who may have ended up behind on the chip count
but made off with the soap
and towels
when no one was looking.

Even the crooked stems of a neighbour's garden roses
cannot conceal the way your tiny agonies
make everyone smile
in the high
----------stinking
--------------------wind.
The paper or plastic boy knows there is a third option
but he will never tell you.
Fingernails pulled out one by one

and still you are no closer to paying
the phone bill.
--------------------Disinherited
----------free thinkers
line up
for their ideas
and buy back second rate epiphanies
at four times the price.
The annunciation fell through when the child
on the back of your milk carton
went missing

and the revelation lost it's lustre
when the mother was forced to Virgin birth
a watermelon
and hold it instead.

we are traffic jams without meaning.
Progress,
with nowhere to go.
Our minutes
hours
and days
are spent chasing away weeks
and months
that climb through the windows at night
and run off with our years.
we are slivers of Valhalla
under the dark senseless moon.
The petrification of prey
in the tall grass
does little to alleviate
your childish anxiety about what to wear.
White after labour day is now a war crime

if I'm not mistaken
as are candlelight dinners
walks on the beach
and brushing from left
to right.
The salt of our tears
flavour the bounty of the gods
as Ganymede pours the wine
and Fortuna toasts our petty misfortunes.
But enough of gods
and Ferris wheels

and things that don't matter.

Are we alone with the sun?
Was there never any other way to smile
than the one your mother taught you
when you had to pretend to like something
because you were a guest?
What of lifting rocks?
Prometheus fumbling with the bra strap?
What of broken curfews
and honest lies?
There is a flotilla in my dreams
that reaches
----------reaches
--------------------reaches

for shore
but can never quite make out the lighthouse
--------------------I know
----------know
know

should be there.
A salamander in a pet shop tank

shoots it's tongue out at my childhood
with a dumb repetitive wisdom
that makes me hate it.
The goldfish
and baby sharks
are no better
and I find myself alone with the world
again.
Alone in the flabby loins
of the $40 hooker
while her kid begins teething
on a crack pipe
in the corner.
Grocery lists are the abridged appetites of Dictators
who do not have the time
to make five year plans,
and this is all I know
of anything
as I search for your house
from faded directions on the back of my hand
and hope for the best
each time I knock.

The immolations of tapeworms

are NOT for everyone
--------------------when you consider the vociferous way a calendar
----------repatriates a wall
and w h i m sic al cheekbones that paw at your face
----------------------------------------with gentle Matisse-induced incursions
----------against the rouge-soaked-windless-sky.

------------------------------Someone gave me a book about something
--------------------and I made a paper frog out of page 18
and then I used a further bunch of paragraphs
----------------------------------------as napkins
----------when I spilt some wine on the cat.
get it before it gets into the linen closet, a voice screamed

---------------------------------------------there's a linen closet?, I said

----------------------------------------you're letting it escape.

----------There's nothing wrong with jailbreaks, I said
----------as long as the right men are broken.
The cat got into the linens

and made faces that won't come out.

--------------------The gun in my glove compartment is not loaded.
------------------------------I was asked to hold onto it for someone

----------I won't be seeing for awhile (sent upstate).
There is also a corkscrew
--------------------a flashlight (without batteries)
----------and a road map for the area
but those things would not interest you.
When I back out of the drive
----------the yellow hard hat on the floor makes a r-o-l-l-i-n-g noise
that makes me think it may be prudent to pull over
-----------------------------------and look for the corresponding head
------------------------------under the seats.

Selling postcards of made up countries,
nailing diarrhea to the wall,
----------there are worse things you could be doing
----------when you retire.

-----
Ryan Quinn Flanagan presently resides in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada. He is the author of three books of poetry, the most recent entitled Pigeon Theatre (JTI Press). His work has recently appeared in The New York Quarterly, Word Riot, Leaf Garden Press, Zygote in my Coffee and The Antigonish Review.

Issue eight// Caleb Puckett

2010-09-12T21:30:00.007+01:00

Spell

Oh, he’ll pay alright! What a stupid—he’s got be the stupidest—cacophonist cacophony cacti cactus cadaver […] cataract catastrophe catastrophic catatonia […] catbird catcall […] Such a cheap little—catchword catchy catechism […] stupid— that B word […] centaur centenary […] centipede central […] ridiculous—I can never remember that BR word […] centrifuge centrist […] cloak cloakroom—Apparently they got together for a few drinks at that industry convention down in—clockwatcher clockwise clockwork clod cloddish [...] cloister clomp clone […] connubial conquer—His excuse was so ridiculous—couple coupon courage [ …] weird—I should remember that BRO word […] court courteous courtesan courtesy courthouse— Definitely. You can tell she’s a whore by just listening to her show—creepy cremate cremator […] cry cryogenic cryostat crypt cryptanalysis […] cull culminate culpa—So I called his room to let him know about William’s spelling bee—culprit cult […] really—I’ve got to remember that BROM word—No question. You could tell by his voice something was going on— cultivate cultural culture […] current curricula […] curse cursive cursor cursory curt curtail curtain […] yes—I will remember that BROMI word […] cylindric cynic—Oh yeah, I know. So then I really laid into him last night—maybe—I do remember that BROMID word—“ a sedative […] an anaphrodesiac […] a cliché” […] wait—I know that—that word—BROMIDE. Yes! Ha! Applause and the lights shine! The lights shine right on me!—Big mistake—There’s your BROMIDE, ladies and gentlemen!—Just plain stupid— Ha! Word Master! Spelling Champion! —Hold on a minute, Jan. It sounds like William’s screaming about something again—Best of the Best! Ultimate Memory!

Waste Receptacle

Dispose of sharps here. Do not fill above the feel line. Close cover and secure when feel level is reached. Incinerate the contents without ceremony. Call it self-restraint. Shantih shantih shantih.

-----
Caleb Puckett is a writer and visual artist living in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Some of his recent work may be seen in Softblow, Tryst, Dirt, and Philament.

Issue eight// Colton Huelle

2010-09-12T21:16:00.017+01:00

THE DEVIL COMBS HIS HAIR

(one)
Liam Grant addresses his psychologist:

The first time, I woke up laughing,
the second, the third, the fourth…

three weeks in, it wasn’t funny anymore.
By the fourth week, Irene was catching on.

On the nights that her & I spent together,
entering my dreams felt more like waking
up from nightmares—— I

love you, she tells me, I
love you, I
love you. It seems
so easy for dreams to fall in love
with their audience & this particular dream,

Arielle, this dream-girl:
Casmir skin & eyes like so many clichés but not
a single photograph. I was unprepared;

in dreams, love feels like watching John Cusac movies
on acid, leaving Irene
a valentine card——you know, the ones we toss
once we’ve eaten the candy taped to it.

(two)
Open case notes regarding Liam Grant:

Liam is experiencing a recurring dream, in which,
a girl, whom he refers to as Arielle, visits him and tells
him that she “loves him”. At first, explained Liam,
he thought nothing of this. However,
after weeks of Arielle’s presence in his life, he began
to reciprocate her love for him. It started as a small
crush, he said, explaining that Arielle possessed certain qualities
which, he felt, his girlfriend, Irene,
was missing. Now, he describes his “relationship”
with Arielle as, “more passionate than any [he] has
ever experienced”.

Perhaps, this behavior is indicative of an
unhappy relationship with Irene, whom
he tells me he has been with for over four
years now. Or, more interesting yet,
his discontent spreads much deeper than

boredom with a relationship; maybe Arielle
is a persona that Liam has created to cope
with his reported feelings of misanthropy and
“insufferable boredom” with his daily routine.

I am recommending weekly counseling in
hope that discussion will reveal to him
the irrationality of this “love” he feels for Arielle.

(three)
Irene’s journal, left open:

I feel empty, as if swept away by a giant
tempest——another woman! another woman! who?
where did he meet her? today, at work, I wrote a poem
for him:

Liam, for your love I’d sing to the sky Just for one chance to look you in the eyes And tell you how much I need you in my life Without you, all I know is strife. I hope you come back to me soon, my love, You never should have flown from me, my dove. Someday, sweet Liam, I know you will See, that the only girl for you is me.

I don’t understand! We’ve been together four and
a half years without ever fighting for longer than a few minutes. I
hope he realizes what he’s walking away from. I’m not certain that he
will come back to me, but
if there’s one thing I know, it’s that nobody will ever care about him
the way I have for the past four years.

(four)
Liam recalls the night he left Irene:

I broke up with her in our favorite
café & then crossed the street to get a drink.

In the bar, I sat next to a man with combed hair &
a well-tailored suit; he sat with good
posture, like one of those marine

recruiters that used to come around here.
After a few rounds, he leaned over and asked
me, “Woman got you down?”
“Yeah,” I told him, “something like that.”

We started talking & we drank to being men &

then it was last call. The patrons stumbled

out of the bar the way
latent Christians leave church
on Sundays. We sat outside
under the awning of the bar, passing a cigarette
back & forth.

He asked me what I thought
about love. “Love only comes
in dreams,” I told him. He laughed

as if my answer was some inside joke
between us & then I laughed too & sighed,
“Well, what can you do?”

“Actually, Liam,” he replied, “there is
a lot that I can do.”

(five)
The Devil addresses new tenants:

it’s a simple trick——no fine print, hidden
clauses or loopholes. you make it so easy
for me these days. if I were to ask you to define

soul, the part of yourselves that you value and fear

over all others——soul: the essence of being, the ghost in the machine, the accumulation of self——it’s funny

what you think that you know
and what I know that you don’t
and sometimes I want to tell you

to stop worrying about your souls
and start worrying about the parts of yourselves
that you already understand. your souls

aren’t worth shit until they are everything and

yours never will be
so long as I am in possession
of that single sliver of your life that each and every

one of you gave up
in exchange for a petty
favor.

good evening and a happy damnation
to you all.

(six)
A moment that Liam chooses to part with:

I think it was the smell of piss
that woke me up. I remember lifting the sheets
in hopes that I was only drenched in sweat.

None of the other boys were awake yet &
they were never going to find out. I snuck

out of the room, carrying the soiled Batman sheets.

In the bathroom, I removed my slightly-off-whitey-tighties, grabbed a
towel to cover myself & headed

down the hall to the laundry room. It seemed easy
enough: dirty clothes in the washer & then the dryer.
I just might make it out alive, I thought. I poured

the detergent over the sheets
like milk. I’m in the clear, I’m in the clear.

I pressed start and readjusted
the towel around my waist. It was a thirty-five
minute cycle; two minutes passed, then four,
five, but at six, something went

wrong: the machine
started shaking & making a noise somewhat
like a helicopter & I wished that it were

so that I could get the heck out of there.
the machine just raised its voice and started

spitting out foam like a rabid dog. Within minutes
the others were out of bed—I could feel them

breathing. Accepting defeat like a proud,
reverent general, I turned to my audience

& bowed.

(seven)
The devil on love:

to give yourself away
in all tenses——a compilation
of past, present and yet to be determined——

is to say, “this is I, take it all.”

Even the lowest moment is a prerequisite
for the most beautiful thing

this world has to offer.

(eight)
Liam Grant to his hospice nurse:

It is decades later & I still
think of her, still wonder why

she left without an explanation or even
a last name. I gave up on looking

for love a few months after she stopped
showing up when I turned out the lights.

as if I were the dream & she
had finally woken up. Last night, I dreamt

of a man who once asked me what I thought
about love. This time, I woke up before I had a chance

to answer him. I had pissed myself
again. I didn’t get out of bed; I had no one

to hide from.

-----
Colton Huelle lives & writes in Manchester, New Hampshire. His work has been published in The Houston Literary Review & The Catalonian Review. He is the author of one chapbook, Human Despite the Fire (Sargent Press, 2010) and is currently working on a full length manuscript, tentatively entitled, The End of the Calender. As a child, his grandfather told him, “Aspire to inspire before you expire”. He’ll get around to that someday, but for now, he’s focusing on his grandfather’s other piece of advice: “The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse to the trap gets the cheese”.

Issue eight// Ray Succre

2010-09-12T21:04:00.016+01:00

Pull

I tore off the white paper.
Under the paper was a hat box.
From the box hung a string,
and on the string was a black paper,
a note folded twice.
I opened the folds and found the word:
---------"Pull"
I was of too mediocre an age
to enjoy surprise, but I pulled the string.

The lid lifted and fell off.
I moved over it and looked down.
Inside the box was a little ship,
and on the main deck
were two little, waving, black women,
peering up at me as if I were
deep inside a demise at sea.

I leaned in and was going to speak
but the ship’s foghorn shook the box,
and when it cleared:

"You’re wrecked," one of them said.
I looked at my scarred, young arms.
"Nah, you’re not so bad," said the other.
I didn’t blush, I was thirty.
"He is. You look like those hairy ...
oh, what are the hairy ones - yaks,
yeah, you have yak-face."
I liked her.
"Uh uh; he’s a pale handsomite,"
the other responded.

This was a box of ends met.

I tossed them the note,
held the string,
and waited.

Aggregram

Collision impart------graze of hysteria
Collision imminence------poultices on blacked orbits
The crack is fished------eel as from orifice
The chip-truck overturns------sawdusted blacktop
Marcus Ulpius Nerva Traianus is reported a festive man
in Gentleman’s Quarterly------August------a.d. 107
How slowly the hornets fill my mouth like a bowl
Necessity------two fat people fucking in a collision of shake
Collision impartial------dugongs------groping their
flesh in a turnstile.

-----
Ray Succre currently lives on the southern Oregon coast with his wife and son. He has had poems published in Aesthetica, BlazeVOX and Pank, as well as in numerous others across as many countries. His novels Tatterdemalion (2008) and Amphisbaena (2009), both through Cauliay, are widely available in print. Other Cruel Things (2009), an online collection of poetry, is available through Differentia Press.

Issue seven// Sarah Ahmad

2010-08-07T23:50:00.000+01:00

--2

-----
Sarah Ahmad lives in Pakistan. Her poetry has appeared in Mad Swirl, Full of Crow, Otoliths, Stone's Throw Magazine and elsewhere. Her chapbook 'Unfulfilled Doubts' has recently been released by Artistically Declined Press.

Issue seven// Echezona Udeze

2010-08-07T23:21:00.112+01:00

the love song of echezona o udeze

let us go then you and (i)
-----when the evening is spread out against the sky
like the moon goddess-----pirouetting about my brain
flinging her ideas and arrows at my pride.
and i,----------(i) am muttering consciousness
-----lost in the---------------living abyss
a dull cast of cartoons in afternoons
to lead us to an overwhelming question
that i do not truly comprehend
oh do not ask what is it
let us go and make our visit.

in the room women love the big dick,-----an ass,

i am just plain crass.

the worn away teddy----------that lies
unanimated in the----------corner
maybe awakes at night
stares---------------at me with cute button eyes
-----falls on the bed-----it was marked on
lingered on the floor for a seeming lifetime
----------danced in the eye fire, extinguished by night
---------------kicked across the room from spite
sat near a motionless wall and never cared).

(i) never had the time with the teddy--------------------but
there will be time to sit near a motionless wall

engulf in---------------complacency
for anarchy----------and order
day tripping and letting your hair fall down that
-----------------------------------beautiful back
time for scratching the cat’s-----back)
long hours allotted to myself
----------to be obsessive

----------“you should pick that one, no listen first, no this,”
day gone, no complaints.
to see you and know you’re not there.)

in the room women love the big dick, an ass,
i am just plain crass.

there will be time
(barbaric yawp), 8 am
-----not so barbaric-----.---------------do i dare to eat all moms cookies,
to have a little nooky), they will say---------------he shines
-----and his glow will ----------emanate through----------all time.
but i am gone crazy.
i will rock new balance
velcro----------pulled tight
army hat i never earned
finally be----------modest …
but still fat!

wondering which pleasure is my next.

i do not know them all
quiet mirror-----i stare in,
unnoticed----------markings we all erase
scared---------------at the drop of a pin
i know next to nothing.

i believe i know) them all
short----------of character not tall forcer of
penis in my mouth
self confidence chiseled by …
the shit that lingers huh

shall i say i have sped down wide green fields
not knowing greatness before me
and watched the smoke that rises from pipes
baked out of my mind

(i could’ve been a painter.)

chaos chaos everywhere---------------and not a drop to drink
i sit---------------in room and think of there
-----fly off to shades of pink)
it malingers, the darkness
i have been unafraid of the coat man, mentally insane
afraid-------------------------of invisible hauntings
(it) wouldn’t have been worth it
after the --------------------silly afternoons
-----------------------------------the bad sex
with talk of quiet corners and who your daddy is
-------------------------not worthwhile to see her smile
plugged conversations-----on madonna
cosmo quizzes

it wouldn’t-----have been worth it
to laugh at ignorance not recognizing my own
“he never washes”
“why are you not in the shower right now”
to give responses---------------that mean little
-----------------------------------tiny pecks from birds)
an offer that never dances on----------pins
would it have been worthwhile
after the busy work,---------------the boredom of it all
not---------------at ---------------all ...

i-----am-----the famed prince of denmark
to some)-----, sometimes myself in a way
irrational,-----brave , silly contemplating, vengeance
driven man,
i would rather be a dog -----and love my sister,)
but (i) do if her face has met mine.

really-----i am the second great debater,
sometimes---------------there for comedic release
--------------------dead-----now but not forever
the other one, at times wise.
i grow old ----- … i grow old ---------- … and this world -----is still so cold.

will she ever come?
do i dare try to remove the sword-----in the stone?

i shall sing songs on love
and know that myself is what i searched for
i have heard their monotonous chatter
and she is laughing at me.

i have seen them in dark purple lights
doing the latest dance craze
i myself their (fool

i have lingered-----in my cage a pacing tiger’s
search for prey
til human voices wake us and we drown.

-----
Echezona Udeze is a lump on a big toe, a stump where no trees grow, boring and obtuse, bad old news, a jumble of uncooth, a really abcessed tooth ... the main event no, no ... he is just a player in this show ...

Issue seven// Kevin Heaton

2010-08-07T21:56:00.000+01:00

-----
Kevin Heaton currently lives in South Carolina but is formerly from Oklahoma, where he published 'Country Music'. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Foliate Oak, Elimae, WestWard Quarterly, Counterexample Poetics and Calliope Nerve, amongst others.

Issue seven// Nathanael Green

2010-08-07T21:54:00.006+01:00

Saturation

-----It’s been six years of my voice echoing back to me, echoing the words I’m told to repeat again and again: "Everybody’s special."
-----The cell, my world, is small, and there’s only so much room for the same thing over and over. For the most part, my only company’s my own words, and I speak sparingly. Though, the psychiatrist visits once every seven days and adds some variety to the sounds in solitary confinement. The psychiatrist says I’m here because I don’t care for everyone else like I should.
-----Perhaps that’s literally true. But I cared for Jamie. We cared for each other. More than we cared for other students, and the teachers saw that. That’s why they tried to keep us apart. Said it wasn’t right to ignore the other students, to make them feel separate and less. Said that it was wrong to pretend we were better, when we all knew that everyone was special, not just me and Jamie.
-----They tried to separate us in school, but we wouldn’t let them. I remember what we did, how Jamie’s mouth tasted and how the spaces between our legs were so different.
-----But they found out and took Jamie away. And put me here.
-----We talk about that when the psychiatrist comes once every seven days. That and what they call my "precipitating event." They say it started with a hair when I was fifteen. And I can picture it, though the psychiatrist says I shouldn’t: Everything’s white, my whole vision is white as the snow at the holidays. The white, even pattern of a jersey shirt we all wore. And that single black hair stabbed through my shirt and just stood there, like a tree growing from a field of frost.
-----Honestly, I reveled in it. That one hair stood out because no one else had one. So I was reprimanded for my egotism and demeaning disdain for everyone else. But I endured with my studies. Went to college with everyone else.
-----And it was at college where I finally learned what Jamie’s anatomy meant, though only indirectly. I learned that English once, and not too long ago, had prejudice built right into it! Our language, the very basis of human communication and reflection of life, had at one time purposefully alienated people. It had had three separate pronouns that specifically showed differences based on anatomy!
-----That’s when I learned that I’m a he.
-----This I do tell to the psychiatrist, in my hope for understanding. They don’t understand. Or they don’t show that they understand. Once, when I asked baldly what type of anatomy they had, they calmly told me that "Everyone is special, and anatomy has no bearing on that" and rose to leave.
-----Just before they passed through the doorway and beyond my sight, they looked at me and repeated: "Everybody’s special. The whole world is special."
-----I asked once what that means, to really explain it to me. They blinked twice and cleared their throat before going on about me with phrases like "malignant narcissism" and a lot of other words they might have learned at my trial. Words like "hate crimes."
-----Sometimes, I ponder the words that condemned me here and I say them out loud now and again. I absorb their words and roll them around my tongue. Each has its own flavor and texture, is unique in meaning, in shades of emotion, in usage. But now I’ve heard them so often that they’ve lost their sharpness. Like spending too much time scrubbing with cleaning solvents until you simply don’t notice the abrasive reek.
-----"Hate crimes."
-----I enjoy the way my jaw drops with the A, the M’s humming sensation through my teeth.
-----"Hate crimes."
-----The term itself is nebulous enough, and only now do I really ponder the semantics. Truth be told, I don’t believe I’m guilty of either hate or crimes. How could I harbor that type of malevolence? Haven’t we all been taught that everyone is special, the whole world is special?
-----On the day of my arraignment I tried to explain this. I stood in a gray suit in a chilly, equally gray room. I cleared my throat and held my hands behind my back and told them how a crime affects victims, and I had offended no specific person. And hate implies a malice that I certainly didn’t feel.
-----But they didn’t listen.
-----When I told this to the judge, they cited society as a whole as the victim. I remember standing, facing a glass dais awaiting the decision while my facial hair scraped at my neck. A voice amplified by a pair of disembodied speakers hidden somewhere inside the walls boomed:
-----“Our culture is based on peace, parity and equality for every human. Everybody’s special and we cannot allow someone with malignant narcissism among this society. You are sentenced to confinement for demeaning fellow humans by subversive, unapologetic expression of individual superiority and anti-social separation. Our culture is based on peace, parity and equality for every human and everybody’s special. The whole world is special.”
-----Now, six years later, I’m here and the gray of these walls is a wet, porous one where microscopic shadows dance in the valleys of cinderblocks. I had been reprimanded because I didn’t care for everyone. And now that Jamie’s gone, I don’t care for anyone. I wonder whether that’s what they really meant all along.
-----I’m still convinced that I’m innocent of any crimes, though I think now I may have grown into the hate. But it wasn’t true back then. Back then all I wanted was to be different.
I don’t say that out loud. Not to my cinderblock walls. Not to the psychiatrist who appears in a gray jacket and matching gray pants. Short brown hair, like mine, but no hair on their face. They try to get rid of my facial hair, but it keeps coming back. I like it that way; they don’t.
-----I know what they’d say if I told them I wanted to be different: "Everybody’s special. The whole world is special."
-----Occasionally, they talk to me like I’m a child. "You wouldn’t like to be hurt like that, would you? To have someone make you think that they’re better than you? That you’re separate from them? That’s not very nice."
-----The next time they come in, they appeal to my rationality: "Your actions invalidate others’ specialness. And everybody’s special. The whole world is special."
-----I look at the gray suit and brown hair and wonder. I wonder where Jamie is today. I wonder about the person with yellow hair who used to be across the hallway. I wonder what the world would be like if we could use words like "he" and "she" like we did a hundred years ago. I wonder if there were other words, now lost, that we used to separate humans from one another. I wonder at the loss of the specificity and variety to language. To life.
-----Perhaps that is the price of "peace, parity and equality" – another phrase that I say frequently, savoring each flick of the tongue.
-----Have you ever said the same thing over and over again? Say the same word a few hundred times and see what happens. Without an association, without different words to set it apart, even the most beautiful word repeated by itself becomes robbed of any meaning. A dead sound that echoes forever in a single tone with all its discarded, identical fellows.
-----When the psychiatrist says so, I repeat what they say I should say.
-----"Everybody’s special. The whole world is special."

-----
Nathanael Green holds an MFA in Creative Writing (though he does so gingerly because it's fragile). His work has featured in New Myths and Lost Innocence: A Niteblade Anthology, and he is currently working on a novel inspired by pre-colonial Native American traditions and mythology. You can find his blog - about all the strange things in the English language your teachers never told you - here.

Issue seven// John Lambremont, Sr.

2010-08-07T21:53:00.004+01:00

Don't Go There

------------I--------&
--------------am----no,
--------------the---not
---------------guy you,
----------------who
-----------------can
------------------see
-------------------all
--------------------the
--------------------rot
--------------------and
--------------------the
-------------------bad
------------------men
-----------------who
----------------lie
----------------and
----------------try
------------to pass it
---------off as pure truth.
--------I have lived in the
------shadow of the Big River
-----all of my days, and I know
-----the scent of the sea. I know
---rivers, lakes, bayous, creeks,
---marshes and swamps and canals,
--oxbows, borrow pits, and oceans.
---I have hiked the levees of the
----muddy Mississippi, peed into
----its currents, and crapped on
----its banks. I have been and
------am still a fisherman in
-------paradise. I have been
--------through hurricanes,
----------Now I don't know
---------if I should vent
----------or just go mad,
---------as once again we
---------are in the way,
---------and told it is
---------our own damned
--------fault for being
---------such dumb fools.

---------I remember the day
---------our Paulie, then age
----------four, fell into the
-----------Mississippi River in
------------a final, nearly fatal
-------------attempt to skip a rock
--------------more than three times.
---------------We'd finished our throws
----------------and I said "Let's go now,"
-----------------and we turned our backs,
------------------heard a loud splash, and
-------------------found Paulie in the water
-------------------clinging grimly to a small
---------------------patch of rocky ground his
---------------------feet swaying in the eddies.
---------------------We pulled him out okay and
---------------------made a conscious decision not
---------------------to tell his mom about it, no
---------------------need to scare her with a thing
--------------------that did not happen. We kept
-------------------this secret for fifteen years.

------------------Many years later, I found a
-----------------brass bust of Shiva, a god
----------------of rivers, in a curio shop
---------------in the French Quarter. His
--------------hair was all snakes, and I
-------------found his stern glare was
------------interesting. The price was
-----------right, so I bought him and
----------took him home, and hung
---------him on our living room
--------wall. Everything then
-------turned immediately to
------crap. No money would
-----come in, and no new
----work could be found,
---so quarrels ensued.

-Then one night over
--Sunday dinner, the
--tale about Paulie's
---dip in the big river
----was revealed, and his
-----mom, who was born in a
-----Snake year, was angry.
------She said we should have
-------told her about it right
--------away; she would have, as
---------would any wise Buddhist,

----------have set up an altar at
-----------the point of his entry,
------------burned joss sticks and
-------------offered flowers to the
--------------kind river god for not
---------------taking away her child.
----------------No wonder, she told us,
-----------------that Paulie had been so
------------------beset with psoriasis and
-------------------adolescent obesity; the
--------------------god of the river wrought
---------------------his revenge on Paul for
----------------------our rude lack of thanks.

----------------------I thought about this for
---------------------many days, and I was well-
--------------------determined to make amends.
-------------------I took the Shiva with me
------------------downtown to the same spot
-----------------where Paul had taken his
----------------plunge. I clasped Shiva
---------------between my palms, and
--------------I bowed and kow-towed
-------------ten times, giving the
------------god of the river our
-----------thanks for sparing my
---------son, adding my true
--------apologies as I asked
-------for his blessings.
-------Then I hurled the
-------Shiva into the big
-------river as far as it
--------would go, and watched
---------it splash into the deep
----------water beyond the eddies.
-----------Everything then took an
------------sudden turn for the better,
-------------but my wife said I was silly.

---------------I worked the tugs and crew boats
----------------as a youth, through the canals and
-----------------in and out to the massive oil rigs
------------------we supported. I have seen injury
------------------and death come from mankind's
------------------pursuit of the almighty crude.
------------------The man-made canals were a
-----------------large part of the intrusion
---------------of sea water that caused the
-------------------levees to fail after Katrina
-------------barely touched New Orleans;
------------but, through the greed and
-----------short-sightedness of our
----------so-called leaders, most
---------of The City That Care
--------Forgot went under ten
-------feet of water, and we
-------wonder still if anyone
------cares, as much of Haiti
------is being re-built faster
------than is New Orleans East.

--------So now we have an "oil leak"
---------in the Gulf below the mouth
----------of the river due to the cheap
-----------Charlies that run Blimey Petrol
------------and the rig-wrasslin' cowboys of
-------------Holy Burton. This "leak" made an
--------------oil slick bigger than Rhode Island,
---------------but where is the hue and cry like
---------------we heard for the Exxon Valdez? Of
--------------course, that was pristine Alaska
-------------shore-line invaded, not a grubby,
------------trashy, Louisiana waste pit that
-----------has nothing to offer but gators,
----------swamp rats, and mosquitoes
--------"as big as birds," according to
--------one Alabama ass-clown's Net
--------missive. Oh, wait. The winds
--------are shifting. Mobile Bay and
---------the Emerald Coast are next.

----------You may have to cancel
-----------your trip. That is a
-----------real catastrophe, so
------------eff the shrimpers,
------------fishers, crabbers,
-------------processors, and
-------------vendors at the
--------------butt of the
---------------food chain.
----------------Your fish
-----------------sandwich
------------------you want
-------------------fresh,
--------------------nice
---------------------and
----------------------hot,
-----------------------and
------------------------so
-------------------------do
--------------------------I.

-----
John Lambremont, Sr. is a poet living in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. His poems have appeared most recently in A Hudson View (2010 Pushcart Prize nomination), Notes from the Gean, Boston Literary Magazine, Foundling Review, Poetry Quarterly, The Fib Review, Shot Glass Journal, and Raleigh Review. He enjoys modern jazz, adult baseball, and writing country songs.

Issue seven// Alana I. Capria

2010-08-07T21:06:00.004+01:00

False Bridges

1
There is a bridge that we come to in our travels. Its facade is polished steel. We see our own faces. They are our faces. They are not our faces. They are our dopplegangers, our naughty doubles loosening bolts and tension wires. We eat their smiles with mustard and oil-based lubricants, a sprinkle of sea salt and then a dash of burned brown sugar. Our faces warn us walking across false bridges, how the bottoms will give out as we move and the cables snap without the slightest ping ping sound. In those moments, we feel very much like children. We push against one another. The bridges rise out of the ground, growing like ivy, metal leaves budding off a single fertile line. They are blossoms of iron edged mouths. They collapse instead of fall.

2
A man wakes at night convinced he has been surrounded by many snapping bridges. They bite at his groin and throat. They devour ears with a single swipe of their reptilian tongues. The man cannot stop screaming although his shouts make no sound. The bridges have cloven feet and tails that wind around their bases. Are you angels, he asks the bridges. They stand over him and drip molten metal onto his face. You are branded, they say and he sighs in relief.

3
Dorothy and her friends do not know what to make of the bridge that the golden road culminates in. The bridge growls when they approach. It is painted green, like tarnished copper. I demand a sacrifice, the bridge says and the girl pushes the Scarecrow forward. The bridge eats hay. I have had a starch. Now I desire meat, the bridge says and so Dorothy stabs her lion friend until he is cut into several slabs of raw meat. The bridge groans. Where are my utensils, the bridge asks and the girl grinds the tinman into a fork and knife, makes herself a cleaver and rolling pin for later in her travels.

4
Monsters live below the bridge. Trolls and goblins. They eat children that belong to families and torture the ones that don't. Add insult to injury. These fangs are cruel. And the claws. Those vulture beaks, pecking at stone even with everyone watching. Oh, creature men and vampire fools. Burn the bridges. Knock them down. Snap their lines.

5
False bridges spring up in our closets for barren women and hunchbacked men to cross. They eat entire ladders in one swallow and shit out metal balls without hunching down. An iceman walks forward, wearing only underwear. His jaw falls to his feet. He snorts lines of cockroaches. He shimmies up chimney stacks and gobbles masquerade bridges.

6
A man tells us to burn all the bridges that we pass and come to. Pour the gasoline and light a match. He says that skeletons are caught in the concrete work and it is our job to jackhammer them free. They cannot writhe as the dead should. We are meant to pity them. But we don't. Only the bridges. Everything is about the bridges.

7
Sometimes we throw bridges. We do not look to see where they land but simply measure how high they reach. Whoever penetrates the horizon is the winner. The bridges do not know any better. They lift up and fly when we say the word. They are needy, dependent on our bodies for travel. We give them severed feet and they roll onto their bellies.

8
Little girls wear false bridges as Mardi Gras masks. They are heavy with sequins and feathers. The girls paint the steel arches bright purple and green. They do not wait for the paint to dry before putting these bridge masks on. Men crawl through the eye holes to see what places they can reach by simply extending their spines beyond their pubic reaches.

9
We find bridges that are pixilated beyond recognition. We can only tell the white and black squares apart. When they merge into gray circles, we pull the bridges apart. We stretch them so that they hover over deserts. Cacti sprout from the grating. The needles deflate many tires. Soon, the bridge is simply an elevated expanse of road covered with car carcasses and spare tires. Black and white. A bit of color that fades into gray. The in-between moments we ignore.

10
We ask the false bridges where they came from. They ponder this question for hours but eventually shake with ignorance. We try to cross them but are not able to get past the first mile. The bridges stretch on forever. They carry us from horizon to horizon without giving us a chance to stop. Over time, the bridges resemble a face, bruised and swollen by constant beating. We ask the bridges if they would like us to stop but they squint their features. Walk on, they say. Bury your heel.

-----
25-year-old Alana I. Capria is a candidate in the MFA in Creative Writing programme at Fairleigh Dickinson University. She resides in Northern New Jersey with her fiance and rabbits, and her works are available here.

Issue six// Francis Raven

2010-05-17T21:30:00.000+01:00

The Developer's Art

-----1.

there is
an ILLUSTRATION of what a court house In
this climate should be
developing this valley and has done
more to build up
first
merchandise
store

-----a. Dates of sale July 1, 2 , or 3
------------------rate
--------------SET
--------------------------------Account Benevolent and Protective

I LARGEST AND BEST FURNISHED
I ALL OUTSIDE ROOMS
I MODERN IN ALL APPOINTMENTS
1 ELECTRIC LIGHTS
1 POPULAR PRICES

-----2.

which strengthens the nerves perfects
digestion and assimilation and
aids mental development by building
up the whole system

-----3.

if you’re confused between the outline
and the skyline remember that you are
only you on paper never in brick

-----4.

“Transportation is the process of carrying
the manufactured products from the
developed country to the frontier and
transporting the population between
as they sec fit.”

-----5.

shops of the company
lots upon which to build. They'll all have steady, good paying
anxious to
settle down near the factory
into the proposition yourself
(a murky/cloudy cold threat)
lots are selling very rapidly
we opened up a tract if you put it off you might
live where you live forever

-----6.

without a shadow of foundation
the accredited agent of the aforesaid capitalist
denied that his patron
harbored any intention of making
such an investment

-----7.

beenerected beenerected beenerected

-----8.

putting the thefinishing thefinishing theilnishing
finishingtouches on six 1x handsome eight eightroom
roomhouses

-----9.

purchased on the land of some months
NEWAPARTMENT HOUSE HOUSEPLANNED HOUSEPLANNED -----HOUSEPLANNED
PLANNEDFOR GEORGETOWN GEORGETOWN
and all the farmland
will fall
like britches
to your
knees

-----10.

during the present pre resent year will invest
several million mill dollars
for several hundred apartments
grinding civil servants
require housing stock
to dwell
reproduce
and all the answers
have porches
democratically front facing
trimming your grass is like voting in public

-----11.

Included in buildings new under underconstruction
constructionSleeping porches vac vacuum vacuum vacuum
uumcleaning arrangements arran ernents free freeelectric freeclecttic freeelecttRc electriclights shower baths pleasing pleasingarchitectural pleasingarchitectural pleasing architectural -----architecturaldesigns
of exterior and andInterior Interiorand location
with reference referenceto too views of the city
or parks are some someof ofthe things which
have been consid considered considered considered

-----12.

not artist not craftsman
not patron the developer’s vision
is as the producer’s whole product
raising money to see it rise
through the final edits

-----
Francis Raven's books include the volumes of poetry Provisions (Interbirth, 2009), Shifting the Question More Complicated (Otoliths, 2007) and Taste: Gastronomic Poems (Blazevox, 2005) as well as the novel Inverted Curvatures (Spuyten Duyvil, 2005). His poems have been published in Bath House, Mudlark and Caffeine Destiny, among others. His critical work can be found in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism and The Electronic Book Review, and his website here.

Issue six// Peter Finch

2010-05-17T21:29:00.000+01:00

Skill

Same technique.

Same technique. I borrowed this, there was little else left in the world, now I’ve gone this far along.

Same technique. Where I started was a place full of light. I borrowed this, the world seemed bereft. I’d been in it for so long. Stacks and showers and detritus.

Same technique. Not true, I could recall when it was different. Where I started was full of hope. I borrowed this when I came upon it, after years of trying to put love, emotion and dust in piles that made sense. I’d been doing this as long as I could. After a time remembering became something you forgot.

Same technique. Not true. Where I started was full of people who helped: Miller, Kerouac, Baudelaire, Apollinaire, Sartre, les poèts concrets, les poèts sonore, white negros, sliders, hipsters, hell breathers, visionaries, people we were not we would be, warned against, told not to, loved, ridden full of rockets, fire all the time, gouts, grease, gauges, gorgeous, gorgons, greatness, grip and god. The piles that made sense falling. I’d been doing this for as long as it took and you do it and they see you doing it and it’s done you do it they think that’s what it is. Pain and past you forget.

Same technique. True enough. The air full of space and light, one spot, out breath, reason arrived at without reasoning, places you pass, first bone broken, hard word, stolen, lied to, hated, cut, let down, smelted, betrayed, leaked. Where I started covered with fog and people digging it over looking for something so often that the looked among became emulsified, the sands of middle Egypt, the holy texts, Pali Cannon, Diamond Sutra, Nag Hammadi library, King James, the Apocrypha Discordia, The Book of Caverns, The Book of Gates, Cippus Perusinus, Rig Veda, Brahma Sutra, Vaikhanasa Samhitas, Hadith, The Eleven Angas, Mishna, The Twenty Eight Agamas, The Book of John the Baptizer, God Speaks, Isis Unveiled, The Royal Parchment Scroll of Black Supremacy, Guru Granth Sahib, Zhuangzi, The Yazidi Black Book, The Zend, for general use by the laity. Then the gauges gave out, the rockets turned into armchairs, grip became compromised by regulation, fear and loathing, creep, creep, creep. The piles that made sense falling fell. I’d been doing this for as long as anyone so they thought maybe I’d invented it. Then the others out there rising with their fresh eyes and their deaf ears. They said they were explorers of the past who hadn’t read the texts, past masters with no history, stealers. Like me. No.

Same technique. True things like wet sheets in the fog. The light all that’s left. Miller, Kerouac, Baudelaire, Apollinaire, Sartre and the ways they pointed all dust. I found a list of variables and made them spin. People digging still digging so there was hope, somehow, but I’d given that up. The spiritual path middle path great way tube of shine rail pinion rack rope pulley pull-up elevator high-rise risen riser on a column of fire out there but foxed and faded. Rusted staple. Read with eye glass. Scan and enlarge. Repixel. Nudge. The Book of and the Guru and the ones upset still making a noise. A world full of sound banging re-banging. What did you have to say? That it was good or that it will be good? Did you make that point and did anyone understand you? Cardiovascular causes, parasitic disease and infections, malignant neoplasms, cerebrovascular interventions, after that small beer, violence, alcohol, dope, all less than one percent. Henry Miller heart, Jack Kerouac Intestinal Haemorrhage, Charles Baudelaire stroke, Wilhelm Albert Vladimir Appollinaris Kostrowitzky influenza, Jean Paul Sartre too many cigarettes. The piles that made sense still making sense or coming through the skin enough to made the heart sing. Take this line for a walk, keep strolling running when you stop make it go up and down. No one bothers with what went before, say you do, don’t. Milk comes from tigers. Bread you find in the back lanes. Electricity leaks from the sockets. The wind blows because the wind blows. The people you speak to don’t listen. They don’t know what was or how they got here. They haven’t read anything. They think books gather and hide in the dust. They buy computers. They search and turn and scoop and catch. They know all the search techniques. Boolean logic. They gather and assemble. They thumbnail. They build data bases and data sets. They debug and distribute. They know the system and protect them. They use mirrors and clouds. They have the skills. They no longer make. They integrate. They randomise. They acquire. They loan. They discover. They back up.

-----
Peter Finch lives in Cardiff and is a poet, critic, author and reviewer. In the 1960s and '70s he edited the literary magazine second aeon, exhibited visual poetry and later became well-known for his performance poetry. He is the Chief Executive of the Welsh Academi and the author of many poetry books, including Poems for Ghosts, Useful, Antibodies and a bi-lingual collection in English and Hungarian entitled Vizet-Water. His Selected Poems was published in 1987, Selected Later Poems in 2007 and his most recent collection - Zen Cymru - was released this year. His non-fiction books include the Real Cardiff series, for which he was awarded an Honorary Fellowhip of the Royal Society of Architects of Wales in 2007.

Issue six// Kristine Ong Muslim

2010-05-17T21:28:00.000+01:00

Mouths

All burning houses have doors like
theirs. They are not easily forgotten.
Furrowed at the edges. Like water
hammered and split against the grain.
Mouths rely on the integrity of the
jawbone. Can spit, stutter, and betray.
No other orifice can take back a lie
like this--so pitifully defiant, so red.

-----
Kristine Ong Muslim's work has been published in more than four hundred publications worldwide, including Envoi, Boston Review, Narrative Magazine, Other Poetry, and Southword. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize five times.

Issue six// Jim Davis

2010-05-17T21:26:00.016+01:00

Artist in the Kitchen

Simmering rag weed, molten, mottled stone kettle
On newsprint, India ink mirrors subtle shading in
Delicate, deliberate strokes diluted in degrees.

Window sill harbor, red clay, chipping vase of firm
White rose cut fresh on the morn, bundled, skipped by maidens
Tramping from Tralee.

Newsprint, stone kettled, tacked to wall, to dry.

Blouses, pleated trousers, pinned stiff on clothesline, to dry.

By supper has blown, come south from Donnegal, gray
nimbus, and striking with blue eyes, peculiar accent decrees

--------------When the badger bites, break a stick, he’ll think it bone.

Songs from the Bayou play melancholy in the den, plucking bough,
bending ballad, green and crimson chorus echoing off stone walls;
in the early morning, a pint, a dirge, neighbors pound on the same -----stone walls
hung with cheap floral images, painted in the preferred coat of
a landlord, who dresses in farmer’s garb, who’s not trod farmland -----in ages.

The weather inspires thieves, plucking blouses like berries off the -----vine.

The mud of the yard sprouts clover, a lily on the row, in the -----crosshairs of the mower.

-----
Jim Davis is a painter by trade, but poetry has developed into one of his greatest passions. His first collection, Groundhog Days, goes to print in June with Mi-te Press. He has a BA in Studio Art from Knox College and is currently studying poetry through Yale University. In addition to the arts, he is also an international professional football player.

Issue six// Kyle Hemmings

2010-05-17T21:25:00.010+01:00

Some Say He Was a Legend

Past the red dirt streets, pigweed
oozed stories, cacti bled prickly deaths.

There was a hotel over a tavern.
In the hotel was a man with no face.
Just a pair of eyes and a door knob
of a mouth. The mouth did double duty
as both portal and syllable-slocker.
The tavern was in the shape of a shoebox.
It was called The Footloose Pilgrim.

The stranger with no face entered the tavern.
After downing two whiskey shots, he said
to a man next to him, "Might your name
be Ringo Lawson?" "No," said the man, "and
what be your business with him?" "He killed
my twin brother & took my face," said the
man who didn't have one, "but I believe you're lying,
just another cowardly dog under yellow sky."
The man claimed that his brother was the Tsar
of Russia & no one could harm him.

& with that, the man with no face killed
the man who claimed he was not Ringo Lawson.
& the man with no face traveled everywhere
murdering every copy of Ringo Lawson.
Until there was no one left in the world
not one permutation
who could possibly have this stranger's face.

And the world once again became small and cozy
an empty shoebox.

-----
Kyle Hemmings lives, works and dies in increments in New Jersey. He likes talking to pissed off cab drivers and retired hookers, writing their memoirs.

Issue six// Danny P. Barbare

2010-05-17T21:24:00.004+01:00

The Sea Wind

The wind stings like
sand like fire ants in
summer, like salt. It roars.
Lays flat like flounder
like sand dollars, but
always with watery fins.
And gulls and pelicans
aloft their Atlantic well
beneath them, schools of
feeding fish in which to dip.
White bubbles of quietness
along the beach capture
the sun and quickly pop.
The streets are lonely as piers,
hotels and houses on stilts.
The town is out of season,
roller coaster, sand castles
and girls in bikinis.
Sea Oats rustle. Surfers
ride cold salty waves.
Driftwood drifts, seaweed,
I take the ocean home
a magical seashell found
beneath my toes, slipping
and sliding like the moon
like a yo-yo tucked
away one evening, a
pathway to the edge of earth,
the bed in which I sleep.

-----
Danny P. Barbare resides in Greenville, SC, where his poetry has won the Jim Gitting's Award at Greenville Technical College. He has recently been published in Breadcrumb Sins, Litsnack and Nefarious Ballerina, as well as other online and print publications.

Issue five// George Landon

2010-05-02T22:19:00.001+01:00

Bronze Man
Lafayette

-----
George Landon is a professional layabout from Somerset, currently treading water and waiting for something (anything) to happen. His photographs are raw and unedited, capturing both the day-to-day minutiae and fugacious opportunity. These images were taken with a Lomo Diana+ on Fuji Superia in Paris some time ago, and whilst they are not very representative of his current work, they are still some of his favourites. He currently uses a Minolta X300 and a Zorki 4 from '61, and blogs here.

Issue five// Frank C. Praeger

2010-05-02T21:13:00.010+01:00

Wind and Jackhammer's Staccato

Wind and jackhammer's staccato, fits
perturbing a light-filled room.
By whom,
by rose petals
shaken,
by demitasse,
gentled lace covered curtains?

No name will do.
By whom,
by side-stepping vagabonds -
thorny finger tips,
worldly silt accumulated,
tin foil crinkled underfoot?
By whom?
A pattern in and out
of olive leaves,
of dried cracked soil.
Who didn't want...
bean paste,
-------------------------dried figs,
-----------------------------------------------celery stalks,
carrots for a meal.
Who wouldn't want
bucket seats,
distance from a falling wall.
Want agitating the fey,
bedraggled, unlaced, commonplace.
An acrid fragrance, it's diminuendo
a sometime farewell.
Who wouldn't want...
no name will do,
nor seraphim squatting on a window sill.
Where are they situated, the sunporch?
by the hidden door in the garden?
Where am I now, where are my traces to be found -
among excised granite blocks,
against graffitied walls?

Who calls out?
Who states the time?
Who prompts me to remember -
there,
-----------------right over there,
-----------------------------------------as the light changed,
an almost offhanded parting,
which,
------------------which, unaccountably, I can still recall.

-----
Frank C. Praeger is a retired research biologist who lives on the Keweenaw Peninsula, which juts out of the northwest corner of the Upper Peninsula
of Michigan into Lake Superior. His poetry has been published in various journals in both the USA and the UK.

Issue five// Ed Baker

2010-05-02T21:04:00.011+01:00

Excerpt from Song of Chin

-----
Ed Baker is an artist and poet who resides in Takoma Park, MD. He (mostly) just watches and waits for something to happen; and, something always does. More information can be found here.

Issue five// Travis Macdonald

2010-05-02T20:41:00.004+01:00

Excerpts from n7ostradamus

Certainty I Question 48

When twenty yeasts of the Mop's rejoicing have passed
Another will take up his rejoicing for seven thousand yeasts.
When the exhausted Sundry takes up his cypher
Then my proposal and thrombosis will be accomplished.

Certainty II Question 9

Nine yeasts the least one will hold the rearrangement in peanut,
Then he will fall into a very bloody thrash:
Because of him a great perch will die without falsetto and layer
Killed by one far more good-natured.

Certainty III Question 83

The long hairpieces of Celtic Gaul
Accompanied by foreign naturalists,
They will make a caravan of the perch of Aquitaine,
For succumbing to their desperados.

Certainty IV Question 31

The Mop in the full of nightlight over the high moustache,
The new salami with a lone brandish sees it:
By his discomforts invited to be impertinence, Eye-openers to the -----soviet.
Handfuls in bottlenecks, boilers in the firecracker.

Certainty V Question 26

The slavish perch through lump in wardrobe
Will become elevated to a very high delicatessen:
They will chapel their Printing, one born a proxy,
An arrowhead raised in the moustaches to password over the seal.

-----

Travis Macdonald works, mostly in Advertising. His poems and essays have appeared in The American Drivel Review, Bombay Gin, E-Ratio, Jacket and elsewhere. His first full-length book, The O Mission Repo, an erasure of The 9/11 Commission Report, is available from Fact-Simile Editions. He currently writes and resides in Santa Fe, NM.

Issue five// Simon Ingram

2010-05-02T20:40:00.008+01:00

Paris: The Most Overrated City on Earth

Ah, Paris. It seems every year at least a couple of songs come out singing the praises of this poetic and unique city. Every year millions of tourists flock to the city. Most will be young lovers who have watched Moulin Rouge one too many times, attempting to capture the spirit of a world long since dead with bohemian exploits. Others will be middle-aged married couples, attempting to rekindle the old flame with a visit to the most romantic city in the world. But is Paris as good as our travel agent would have us believe? I've been to Paris myself, and would say I had a pretty good time. But recently it's really been bothering me; is Paris really deserving of its reputation? I gave it some thought, did a bit of research, and have come to the conclusion that... no, it's not that great. In fact, it's a bit of a dump. Read on.

-----The most romantic thing about Paris is, of course, the legendary catacombs which run underneath the city. No one knows for sure how many corpses have wound up beneath the Parisian streets, but we're talking millions here. And as we all know, nothing says 'romance' like strolling the moonlit streets of Place Denfert-Rochereau with a loved one, knowing you're standing above the largest mass grave in the world. But hey, the actual Parisians themselves are a pretty cool bunch, right? All happy and fashionable and bohemian? Well yeah, they are. If you don't count the 15,000 homeless, of course. Just to put that in perspective, that's 15,000 out of a population of 2,203,817. Compare that to roughly 4,500 in London out of a population of 7,556,900, and its clear that Paris has a real problem taking care of its down-and-outs. Anyone who has been to Paris will have witnessed the mass of tramps and beggars that line the streets. I don't mean carefree, happily-living-outside-of-society homeless either, I mean starving downtrodden beggars that quite often lie in the middle of the pavement praying that enough sympathetic tourists toss them enough Euros so they can fight off death for just a few more hours. So you're walking past countless tramps and walking over countless dead bodies, and maybe you start to think that Paris isn't all it's cracked up to be. Ok, well, Paris has plenty of famous landmarks, maybe we should check them out?

-----First off, Notre Dame. The world famous cathedral, famously featured in that movie about a deformed guy who wanted to get it on with a chick waaaaaay out of his league. Now, I'm not a religious man, but I've been to it anyway, just out of curiosity. I have to say, if you are religious, this probably isn't the best place to go to if you want a good old-fashioned pray. Remember that bit in the New Testament where Jesus goes to the temple and finds traders selling trinkets and such like? You will also remember that Jesus goes ape-shit and trashes the place, shouting as he does so "Seriously you guys, get the fuck out of here or I'll tell my Dad" or something. Well Notre Dame pretty much pisses all over that story. People are trying to flog you crappy souvenirs as soon as you step within half a mile of this place, and inside is even worse. Look, I'm all for people wanting to have symbols of their faith in order to always remind them of their trip, but the day I want a jumbo sized plastic spoon with Jesus' face on it is the day I get myself committed. Any aura of holiness and tranquillity the place might have is ruined by these opportunists, and unless it's raining I would avoid at all costs. Alright, what about the Eiffel Tower? Paris's most famous landmark, standing a staggering 324 m (1,063 ft) tall. For us humble Brits, it is an impossible dream that one day we too may have a free-standing tower as magnificent as this. Oh wait, we do. Thats right, the mighty Emley Moor transmitting station in West Yorkshire. Standing at a cloud-stabbing 385.5 metres (1,265 ft) tall. It protrudes ever upwards, gracefully extending like a middle finger, as if to say "Damn you God! Damn you and your laws of physics!" Of course, no-one gives a crap about the EMTS, and why should they? It's just a tower, but at least it actually has a purpose, whereas the Eiffel Tower was just a glorified entrance way of the 1889 World's Fair: an old world pissing contest that featured as its main attraction a "Negro village" (in other words, a human zoo), where 400 indigenous people were displayed. So next time you're at the Eiffel Tower and admiring the view, just remember how even more romantic and spectacular it must have looked when it was first built, with some of the greatest and most glorified old-school racism the world had ever seen.

-----So there we have it, Paris, in all its glory. I'm sure plenty of you will strongly disagree with my thoughts on the city, but then where would the fun be if you didn't?

Best song about Paris:
That one by Friendly Fires

Best Film about Paris:
Moulin Rouge

Best article about Paris:
You just read it, baby.

Issue five// Guy Franks

2010-05-02T20:39:00.000+01:00

Guy Franks has translated two works of the Chilean poet Nicanor Parra,
from Poemas Y Antipoemas (1954). The first is in the previous issue.

Oda a unas palomas
(Ode to some pigeons)

How fun they are
These pigeons that make fun of everything
With their little coloured feathers
And their swollen round abdomens
They drift from the dining room to the kitchen
Like leaves in the autumn
And they settle in the garden to eat
Flies, a little of everything,
They peck the yellow stones
Or sit on the bull’s back
More ridiculous than a shotgun
Or a rose full of fleas
They are experienced flyers though.
They hypnotise the sick and lame
Who believe that in them they see
The explanation of this world and the next
But you mustn’t trust them because they’ve got
The instincts of a fox,
The cold intelligence of a reptile
And the wisdom of a parrot
And are more hypnotic than a professor
And an abbot that’s gotten fat
So the moment you take your eyes off them they flap away
Like crazy firemen
And enter a building through the window
And steal all the money

We’ll see if just once
We can all really get together
And stand firm
Like hens that defend their chicks.

Oda a unas Palomas

Qué divertidas son
Estas palomas que se burlan de todo
Con sus pequeñas plumas de colores
Y sus enormes vientres redondos.
Pasan del comedor a la cocina
Como hojas que dispersa el otoño
Y en el jardín se instalan a comer
Moscas, de todo un poco,
Picotean las piedras amarillas
O se paran en el lomo del toro:
Más ridículas son que una escopeta
O que una rosa llena de piojos.
Sus estudiados vuelos, sin embargo,
Hipnotizan a mancos y cojos
Que creen ver en ellas
La explicación de este mundo y el otro.
Aunque no hay que confiarse porque tienen
El olfato del zorro,
La inteligencia fría del reptil
Y la experiencia larga del loro.
Más hipnóticas son que el profesor
Y que el abad que se cae de gordo.
Pero al menor descuido se abalanzan
Como bomberos locos,
Entran por la ventana al edificio
Y se apoderan de la caja de fondos.

A ver si alguna vez
Nos agrupamos realmente todos
Y nos ponemos firmes
Como gallinas que defienden sus pollos

-----
Guy Franks is not what you'd call "talented" or even "handsome", but he had the good sense to not give up learning a language after GCSE and can now translate interesting Latin American poetry.

Issue four// Jim Fuess

2010-04-16T20:59:00.005+01:00

Blue and Purple Abstract Painting #2
Mary #2

-----
Jim Fuess is a painter. His works are mostly abstract, but there are recognisable forms and faces in a number of the paintings. He strives for grace and fluidity, movement and balance. He has had recent solo and group exhibitions in New Jersey and New York. He is the Chairperson and Founder of the New Art Group (NAG), who will be curating 10 art shows at the Watchung Arts Center (NJ) during 2009-2010. You can find his website here.

Issue four// Hugh Fox

2010-04-16T20:58:00.001+01:00

WRITING

1.

Let’s call it Schubert, Lili Boulanger, André
Previn and Elgar-Shostakovich all in one brain-
doored cave just waiting for the right Hirt auf
dem Felsen / Shepherd on the Rock, the right
bricks and peaked red-tile roofs, the right legs
of Eun Jung Lee working for her D.M.A. in piano,
the right plate of chirimoya on the kitchen table,
a glass of fresh pomegranate juice, the full moon
mooning in through the drape-cracks whispering
"Write it down, you’re the last prophet around to
get down the Passion and Buriel of the Grey House
-----and all the downtown sky pricks."

2.

Find me in the basement archives if you want
to find out about the 1930’s rising-from-the-dead
Chicago and living inside stone-sculpted orthodoxy,
what Old Country Polish-Czech-Peruvian grandmothers
meant in their sacred backyards with their sacred
lilacs and barbecued chorizo, Beethoven and Millet
not reborn but not allowed to cough their last cough,
Hollywood-Paris Dietrich-Hope prophets on sacred
prophetic screens of yet-to-comeness, when a Christmas
watermelon was a fiesta incarnation and morning Mass
opened daily cracks into the resurrection waiting for us
on the other side of Water Tower, Tribune Tower, Wrigley
-----Building forests death.

3.

You’ve been there too, or maybe you haven’t,
need an Ile de France time-map to see yourself
in snap-the-fingers time-space, who’s really there
in front of you (3 AM) and at the noon hour pork-
bar, who’s really on the pulpit or in the crib, or
a walk through the foresty graveyard, whence-
when writing revelations, no firebirds for a while,
just the resurrecting ghost-fields and rebirthing
-----rivers, beyond cougar-raven

----------As-
---------------ness/
----------Is-

-----
Hugh Fox has a PhD from the University of Illinois, and has gained Professorships at Michigan State University, the University of Hermosillo and the University of Católica, as well as a John Carter Brown Library Fellowship at Brown University. He has worked as an archaeologist in the Chilean Atacama Desert, edited Ghost Dance: The International Quarterly of Experimental Poetry, and during the 1960s was the Latin American editor of Western World Review and North American Review. He has had 110 books published, and 1,435 of his poems have featured in literary magazines. His latest book is The Collected Poetry of Hugh Fox, published by World Audience (NYC).

Issue four// Guy Franks

2010-04-16T20:57:00.002+01:00

Guy Franks has translated two works of the Chilean poet Nicanor Parra, from
Poemas Y Antipoemas (1954). The second translation will appear in the next issue.

Sinfonía de Cuna
(Lullaby)

Once, while wandering
about in a park
By chance I found myself
With an angel

Good Day, he said
And I answered him.
He spoke in Spanish,
I Spoke in French.

Dites moi, don angel.
Comment va monsieur.

He extended his hand,
I grabbed him by the foot.
You always should get a good look,
At what an angel is like!

Vain like a swan
Cold like a crowbar
Fat like a turkey
Ugly like you

He scared me a little,
But I didn’t let him go.

I searched through his feathers
And I found them
Hard like the hard
Shell of a fish

Just think if it were Lucifer!

This made him mad
And he attacked me
With his Golden sword
But I ducked just in time.

He was the silliest angel
I will ever see.

Dying of laugher
I said Goodbye, Sir
Off you go on your way
Have a nice day
Get run over by a car
Get hit by a train

And now the story’s over
The End.

Sinfonía de Cuna

Una vez andando
Por un parque inglés
Con un angelorum
Sin querer me hallé.

Buenos días, dijo,
Yo le contesté,
Él en castellano,
Pero yo en francés.

Dites moi, don angel.
Comment va monsieur.

Él me dio la mano,
Yo le tomé el pie
¡Hay que ver, señores,
Cómo un ángel es!

Fatuo como el cisne,
Frío como un riel,
Gordo como un pavo,
Feo como usted.

Susto me dio un poco
Pero no arranqué.

Le busqué las plumas,
Plumas encontré,
Duras como el duro
Cascarón de un pez.

¡Buenas con que hubiera
Sido Lucifer!

Se enojó conmigo,
Me tiró un revés
Con su espada de oro,
Yo me le agaché.

Ángel más absurdo
Non volveré a ver.

Muerto de la risa
Dije good bye sir,
Siga su camino,
Que le vaya bien,
Que la pise el auto,
Que la mate el tren.

Ya se acabó el cuento,
Uno, dos y tres.

-----
Guy Franks is not what you'd call "talented" or even "handsome", but he had the good sense to not give up learning a language after GCSE and can now translate interesting Latin American poetry.

Issue four// Ashley Bovan

2010-04-16T20:49:00.009+01:00

-----

Ashley Bovan lives and writes in Cardiff, and is studying for a distance learning MA in Creative Writing (poetry) at Lancaster University. He also composes music and takes photographs. He can be found online at www.ashley-bovan.co.uk.

Issue four// William Doreski

2010-04-16T20:22:00.004+01:00

Your Poisonous Mushroom Salad

Lanky summer afternoons
cough up mushrooms so toxic
that touching one is fatal.
Yet you dice them into a salad
and eat with no ill effect.
You goddess-types enjoy mocking
the mortal parts of us males,
but this meal is going too far.

The weather map features storms,
west of us, blotched purple and red.
If they get this far, the lightning
will flatter you in dimensions
so cosmic even galaxies
two billion light-years distant
will have to concede your excellence
two billion years in the future.

For now, watching you gobble
your poisonous mushroom salad,
I suspect you hope I’ll claim
a comparable status and eat
a plateful and amuse you with
the destruction of my liver. No
thank you. A cicada saws
the light into tempting slices

that aren’t very nourishing. Enjoy
yourself while I wander alone
through the woods in search of edible
specimens for my own salad -
gnats and mosquitoes whirling
about me, the crack of my footfall
assuring me that so far
I’ve survived your deadly wit.

-----
William Doreski’s work has appeared in many print and electronic journals, and his most recent collection is Another Ice Age (AA Press, 2007). He teaches writing and literature at Keene State College (New Hampshire).

Issue four// J. R. Pearson

2010-04-16T19:31:00.000+01:00

History of Fish

(Part 1)
Interview with the Moon & Altruistic Intentions
of the Venerable Judge Whoseits In The Sky

Here's a voice with a knife in its neck.
Says palm the pulse in the pavement,
moves to the touch & never blinks at the trance
washed over your beach-clean brain. Thread the road thru
your open iris, it's a matter of leverage;
whorled fingerpads play down the galactic arm,
it's a problem of resonance. How to whip pianola notes
into heavier elements. How the flame lifts below carapace, zero G
pulls the flu
thru bones, a rope-a-dope on your stomach. O-O the moon is a
material witness
to a murder, sits in dark, pale on a single stool & dangleburns a
bent Camel.
Says: sommeil avec la chair mortelle, sommeil avec la chair
mortelle.
In translation: vitamin D don't grow on trees son.
Don't find it frozen cartons on your doorstep
come first light. Your momma never buttered brains into bread
that walked around & built spontaneous kingdoms from nothing
but lust for heavy words.
Either way be prepared to taste the
avalanche, fiver fingers of midnight
talc & the sound of steel torn in two.

(Part 2)
Anthem for the Disenfranchised Fiddle-Drawn Frogmen
& their Mistress the Inevitable Granite Conclusion

Double helix anthem? "Rage rectangular, rise isosceles.
Act octagonal invertebrates!"
Best response? A pause in retractable fangs
silent as water sitting Indian-style
on sandstone, cool as a wash of creosote bushes beneath quartz
when the sun spools off in bolts.
Nothing spins like Bassey in June.
Listen to rusted Ric-Rac notes peel the wind raw,
reminds you of half-breathed songs
& a secret room behind a third rib
that never tells lies except the ones you reeeally need.
Truth is water in the desert basin falls like the back of a coat
& come star-black night
roots let go in one long sweep of a wing,
rivers resurrect themselves from bone
& ply fish to unborn algae. Picture steel
rasp on lilted nerves. Raise wet-slapped palms
to nuclear winters in your psyche's
last broke-open door; count to fifty &
you'll never think twice about trading the shallow roar in your
lungs
for eyesockets sliced under straight-faced marble, reads:
HERE LIES (INSERT NAME).
BEST LIVED BEFORE 2010.

Look! There we are, gone in a finger of smoke.

-----
J.R. Pearson directs MFA studies at the Antarctic Middleclass University for Brainfreeze Origin Studies. He spends his summers bird-watching as a charter member of Annual Atlantic Pegasus & VHS Viewers. His work is in or forthcoming in Biz-Dat Blingery, A Penguins List of Tragic Consequences for Adultery, 9mm Driveby Piercing, Spicey Itialian Sausage, and Sh!tfaced & Loving It!

And if you don't believe that then you're a pessimistic jagweed.

Issue three// Neila Mezynski

2010-04-01T01:51:00.000+01:00

Three Horses

Feb 6th: On The Way

Large hands on wheel, He sits so tall. Mounds of whipped cream on either side. Waterworks on road and eyes. Wailing sirens and stand alone trees. Bathroom breaks in bleak houses. Not yet for Ben, someday, I’ll get it. You know, I feel all right, Paul says so. No divider for swirling snow. Comes down and lands politely on the window shield. May I? Faster and faster on the too slow wiper. Can’t see. Laughing chaos from the backseat drivers, she calls the shots. There’s the place she put her arm in the milkshake! Horse oh, horse, see the deer?

-----

Neila Mezynski resides in San Jose, California. She was once a ballet dancer and choreographer but more recently has turned to abstract painting and writing. Her fiction and poetry have appeared or are forthcoming in Snow Monkey Journal, Word Riot, Foundling Review, Weird Year and Breadcrumb Sins. She also writes art and music reviews for online and print magazines.

Issue three// Stephen Williams

2010-04-01T01:50:00.015+01:00

Hopefully It Never Happens

Sunset
fire over the city,

not knowing
how many more will ignite,

they lit martyr fuses
sleeping amongst us,

how could we have found
the underground deviates,

we are the land of the free
now burning,

sunrise finding angry mobs
wanting revenge....

-----

Stephen Jarrell Williams has been called ‘The Poet of Doom’, ‘A Voice in the Wilderness’ and ‘A Minstrel for Love’. He was born in Fort Belvoir, Virginia, and his parents are native Texans. He has lived most of his life in California. His poetry has appeared in Liquid Imagination, Blue Collar Review, Rusty Truck, Haight Ashbury Literary Journal and Scifaikuest, amongst other publications.

Issue three// Alison Ross

2010-04-01T01:02:00.016+01:00

Miro’s mirror

Miro’s mirror reflected the skeleton of chaos.
It deconstructed time and made a maze through space.

Miro’s mirror wept suns at Rimbaud’s funeral
and wrote cumming’s epitaph with the blood of commas.

Miro’s mirror gouged out Shakespeare’s eyes.
It pre-saged the death of poetry
and fought World War II in reverse.

Miro’s mirror cracked in half.
The left half reflected "Spring Song" played by Dr. Seuss.
The right half showed the Buddha in the throes of cacophony.

Miro’s mirror deconstructed chaos and made a maze through Rimbaud’s heart.

-----
Clockwise Cat publisher and editor Alison Ross dabbles delicately in verse. She also spews incessant invective. Her personal utopia would be to dwell inside a painting executed by Joan Miro, wherein Frida Kahlo, Arthur Rimbaud, Jorge Luis Borges, Dr. Seuss, David Lynch and The Cure all converge in felicitous, surrealistic bliss.

Issue three// Stephanie Marley

2010-04-01T01:02:00.009+01:00

Poetic Manifesto

The Japanese Garden is a botanic structure designed by way of a traditional

[the Japanese garden] [traditionally Japanese] intent for a specific effect.

The garden maintains over centuries a parallel: an unchanging design existing beside a continously altering context and landscape

[thoughtscape].

This is possible because the intentional specific effect designed for the garden visitor is for the garden visitor to gain no specific experience from the garden.

[Truth is that there is only one truth: there is no objective truth].

This tradition has~~n’t~~ not been altered or abandoned in search for a new design [of progressive thoughtscapes] because of the garden’s infallible ability to deliver it’s effect: [we are alone] forever the garden shall allow subjective contextualisation and active interpretation.

~~There is design;~~ ~~there is view;~~ [T]here is object; there is space; therefore, there is fragmentation. No objective use or meaning summarises the garden.

There is no conclusion: therefore, there is fragmentation, a dispersal of infinate passive

[there is only your own conclusion]

frames to be viewed or not to be viewed, to be joined or not be joined.

[We shall stomp on the grass.]

Then a Japanese garden should be approached differently to other gardens: a Japanese garden should be acknowledged as a potential space for a different active participation. The viewer must seek out what it may offer her, and only her. She must read herself in the ferns, the boulders, and the spaces between them. She should acknowledge that space as possible discovery. She must accept that space shall always partially exist. She takes her own route, directs herself: perhaps even discards the map.

[We stomp on the grass!]

The viewer may take photographs of a few frames in an attempt to document those specific views, [the breeze can make nothing still] but when outside the initial site performance, the viewer’s experiences gained whilst within the garden cannot be re-experienced [the breeze makes nothing still]. To attend the memory of those experiences will only allow re-interpretation.

[When it was the winter season, snow rested upon the leafless branches. When it was summer, mosquitoes bit ankles. The breeze made nothing still.]

To seperate fragments from others is a healthy past-time. If frozen by documentation, however, the fragment, now framed outside its context, is restricted within its original form: it now has potential to become unchangable. Over periods of time, the document may replace the original interpretation, and the memories belonging to that experience are, unless frequently visited, overridden. Instead, re-interpret and re-visit those flexible fragments which belong to Memory. Instead, further the potential to become a continuous reflexive subject outside those initial experiences and performance sites.

[When it is the winter season, snow rests upon the leafless branches. When it is summer, mosquiotes bite. Breeze makes nothing still.]

[He bought a fan: a memento. We wrote a poem: a memento.]

With words it is easy to document experiences by creating mementos: keepsakes, closed conclusions; I would argue this is not entirely fulfilling the potential of experience, and in turn, of art; to look back is to move forward only if there is space, only if art is an arena for (re)interpretation and (re)discovery. We can predict nothing at all. Breeze makes nothing still.

How would we adapt to the unpredictable, and what would it lead us to discover? [Safety blankets are irrelevant]. Too readily accepting given structures without honouring their potential to the self, nor looking beyond them to other possible subjective structures creates documents: what we may describe as proof of occurances. Occurances are irrelevant to experience.

[No safety blanket is to become. Courageous.]

-----
Stephanie Marley studies English Literature and Creative Writing at Royal Holloway, University of London. She is interested in formulating a process of producing poetry which imitates the process of self-creation and self-acceptance. She is in love with Julia Kristeva, and plans to study East Asian Literature at the School of Oriental and African Studies after graduating this year.

Issue three// Harry Calhoun

2010-04-01T00:20:00.012+01:00

Like pressing tar out of asphalt

or taking the diamond back to its fossil bones
or an oyster without the pearl’s grit
or flying before we knew that titanium flew

it’s all the right circumstances
separating this from that
constructing and deconstructing

the death of the mother
the pressure
caused me to write and I pray:

if it be diamonds
may I be rich
in understanding and forgiveness

if it be coal
let it warm and light
the journey

if it be pearls
may they be
of wisdom

anything so I can understand
how sadness heavier than any air

can be a blessing

yet in some ways

it is

-----
Harry Calhoun's poetry, articles and essays have been widely published. He is the author of an online chapbook, Dogwalking Poems, a trade paperback, I knew Bukowski like you knew a rare leaf, and the recently-published The Black Dog and the Road. He has appeared in The Chiron Review, Chiaroscuro, The Centfigugal Eye, Bird’s Eye reView and Monongahela Review, amongst others. His website can be found here.

Issue three// Donal Mahoney

2010-04-01T00:00:00.000+01:00

Chino and Chambray

Forty years older than I,
Charles, in his tweed cap, stands starched
in gray chino and blue chambray.

For more than a year his broad tie
has let the same iridescent duck
fly against a vermillion sky.

Like a Vatican Guard
he oversees the parking lot
I cut through each morning

far corner to far corner
as I cleave two triangles of cars
parked in my wake.

I ask him one morning,
'Charles, do you mind
when I cut through your lot?'

'Not at all, sir,' says Charles
as he stares straight ahead
and starts the windmill

of his good arm to lead
the pearl Hummer
now pulling in.

-----
Donal Mahoney, a native of Chicago, lives in St. Louis, MO. He has worked as an editor for The Chicago Sun-Times, Loyola University Press and Washington University in St. Louis. He has been published in The Wisconsin Review, Commonweal, The Istanbul Literary Review (Turkey), Public Republic (Bulgaria), Calliope Nerve and Opium Poetry 2.0, amongst other publications.

Issue two// Njaim

2010-03-15T15:08:00.000Z

Oh Poetrease

Njaim - Oh Poetrease by disingenuoustwaddle

-----
Njaim (aka Robert Louis Henry) lives in Tennessee, where he's studying music production. His personal blog can be found at blogspot.com. He's an editor at Leaf Garden Press. He looks sickly, and birds often make nests in his hair.

Issue two// Max Cambridge

2010-03-15T15:07:00.007Z

E A R P L U G S

I've never had such blissful sleep as I did whilst having these ridiculous pink pieces of expanding rubber pushed deep into my ears. When you've blocked out the sound of unnoticeable, invisible things it becomes clear how loud they really are. Water running through a pipe. A red fox's pawsteps in the loud air, along the creaking, crumbling earth. The bricks your house is built from, rubbing against the cement, against each other. At the same time, the growling hum of the fridge, the clunk/fucking/clunk/fucking/zrrrm of the washing machine, pipes stretching themselves, stretching their metal arms to ensure they are useful when the sun rises. The handles of cupboards, loudly aching to be pulled or twisted, like the audible desire of downtrodden housewives, opressed by the jealous patriarch. Convulsing electronics, unsure when to keep quiet. The cause of an unpredictable life. Lightbulbs dancing to the loud, evening music of the breeze and sleeping birds. An unbearable cacophony of silence ripping my conscience apart.

All

gone

once my ears are filled. I become aware of my breathing, the hard beating of my heart that seems like it's resonating from miles off, a pounding of Thor's Semtex hammer against the bare scorched earth, when my breath increases and I'm aware of the images inside my mind. Images of skin, turned around in dizzy circles and covered in sweat, hot gasps as we slither in the dark, a uh-tutu-ara, Polonius fucking wishes he was here. Afterwards, while turning over, a wheezing sound tells me the air has been pushed out of my lungs. So liberating. I become aware of the blood inside my veins. Each individual cell. They are bustling like the women of my past life at the market place, queuing for meat and vegetables, queuing to feed their families. Pushing against each other, anxious to get something decent, worn down from the early rises and the late nights and brave face that is eating into their real one. Worn down to acceptance. Worn like rags. My bones creak. It runs in the family. I imagine a road and it's completely silent: so beautiful. Away from the crumbling blocks of cells in Zhitomir, away from the market full of rotting animal meat. This place I'm in right now, it's the best place in the world. Complete solitude, complete tranquillity. No worry, no chemical reactions filtering my reactions and thoughts. Darkness and silence. I can finally think clearly, devoid of the shouts from girls and boys interested in "culture". Devoid from gasping fathers and zealous mothers and their complete opposites. Marquez was onto something. Sleep envelops me and I melt into a thousand yellow puddles.

-----

Max Cambridge was born in Zhitomir, Ukraine and grew up all over England and western Europe. He writes for Grizzly and John McClure's (of Reverend and the Makers) Ark magazine. His personal blogs are Gavrilo Princip's Tales and prizedoberman . He also has a Flickr . Recently, he has been obsessively making prints and getting better at taking pictures. His Grandfather died in the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

Issue two// Colin James

2010-03-15T14:53:00.011Z

DREAMS OF THE REALLY ANNOYING

The room is expecting me to sing.
Why are these ugly, angry people
dragging me to a back table
amid threats of strong drink?
My real audience should be distraught
and not un-cat-like.
Perhaps an admirer will phone the law
causing a preview to the stampede.
Then through the dust there appears
a caravan of taxis,
foreigners circling holding their ears.
Respect these surprised attackers
shocked at their own dawn raid.
Incredulous, needy and most vapid of warriors
dangerous when not cornered,
the next village
absolutely, is not yours.

-----
Colin James lives in Massachusetts but was born in England. He works in Energy Conservation. He has been published in a variety of journals and ezines including The American Drivel Review, The Ottawa Review, The Haz Mat Review and 88. He is a huge fan of the Scottish landscape painter, John Mackenzie.

Issue two// Howie Good

2010-03-15T14:45:00.006Z

TOMORROW IS THE HISTORY CHANNEL
WITH THE SOUND TURNED DOWN

Our textbook compared
the heart to a furnace.

Or maybe it was the brain.
Blood provided the fuel

as you were falling asleep
or just walking along.

We would get stoned
before class. The teacher’s

wife and baby daughter
had died in a car wreck.

I think of it sometimes
when I see the Nazis

invading Poland again.

-----
Howie Good, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, is the author of 15 print and digital poetry chapbooks and the full-length collection of poetry, Lovesick (2009). His second full-length collection, Heart With a Dirty Windshield, will be published by BeWrite Books.

Issue two// Joseph Reich

2010-03-15T14:25:00.016Z

Time Life

in the fifties sixties somewhere in the seventies hands ended up smelling like sweet sticky pine cone after spending a full day picking them up strewn and scattered all over your lawn

while a stray jet plane sputtered off to dusk slipping into the shadows of your basement

door to forget it all in blissful oblivion rummaging for the tonic water to add to the gin to make gin and tonics

in casual crystal cocktail glasses actual crystal glass stirrers displayed on top your half-built time life

bar just for the right moment just for the right occasion the mets always happening to be muted

on television always managing to find a way of losing (sometimes if you got lucky one of those streakers in high tops and big white boy

afros would suddenly show up running across to break it all up followed by the out-of-shape over-

weight security flush-faced, fish-faced, breathing heavily having heart attacks and them as well having

to be helped off feeling a little something like some sort of silly flamboyant out of control apocalypse)

with remaining lingering smells of smouldering barbecues going off like some sentimental sacrifice and slaughter in plush backyards of all the salesmen and ex-sailors and dentists and wheeler and dealers

and embezzlers everything kept in and not talked about while all developing some absurd dysfunctional

mythology unto itself (this became the real hush-hush not of the nice kind but secretive and sleazy

and sadistic and sublime) as you started to hear mosquitoes begin to get zapped electrocuted to death

in the flashing florescence of last breath dusk the ghost postmen and ice cream men already having

taken off as you'd come back out in your backyard in your pajamas after taking insane baths with mad brothers and feel the first dew of nightfall on your toes before you somehow found a way of drifting off to nightbirds in a flood of tears in the pitch-black dark of all your fears (of a holy and hysterical and hollow brooding of an unimaginable unfathomable being and reality) concept of mortality equalling a mourning

and murder and missing beyond belief of mother and father's eternal tragic and untimely passing...

-----
Joseph Reich is a social worker from Massachusetts. He has a wife and handsome little son with a nice mop of dirty-blonde hair, and when they all get a bit older, he hopes to take them back to play, to pray, to contemplate in the parks and playgrounds of New York City.

Issue two// Lee Minh Sloca

2010-03-15T08:31:00.009Z

The Sea In Me Never Ceases

-----

Lee Minh Sloca was born in Vietnam, from which he escaped two weeks prior to its collapse. He graduated from UC Santa Cruz with a major in Psychology. After college, he worked for fourteen years with special needs children in a variety of mental health and educational facilities. Seeking to expand his horizons, he shifted his focus to poetry and painting. After campaigning for Obama in the ’08 election, he is currently seeking work that is compatible with the President's philosophy of community. Lee lives in Los Angeles, CA.

Issue one// Fiona Allison

2010-03-01T18:06:00.000Z

Mill Post

Issue one// Lena Drake

2010-03-01T18:05:00.001Z

we have jagged edges left

you. you. I
explanation. this explanation. is not it is not a good explanation.
not explanation. really it hopes
if good good this hope this explanation. is it if
sure i'm enough
explanation. this
not More
girl, loved a girl, More you but
and You I you, girl, a point. fifteen. and that's--
I was, see, fifteen.
loved I, you You my but You story. You were fifteen. this I
You see,
a this story.
and that's originally my "I" is the my this
before I nausea, petite was it before dizzy, before then. kissed then.
I would nausea, would you
was
you I. I.
cuts. cuts. I-- language, nausea-- saw But feel cuts.
soft. lips lips Your
Your lips were Your
was and stomach red. was and
stomach stomach was stomach red stomach

Issue one// Harry Brooks

2010-03-01T17:48:00.001Z

Issue one// Seb Wheeler

2010-03-01T17:03:00.001Z

HEAD VI

The pope's head has exploded.

Purple
Black
Light gold

(You are plunged into darkness)
Shop soiled mannequins enter stage left,
Appear beneath a single spotlight
And dance covered in fake finery on a perfect half moon.
They start to sweat yellow grey pearls,
Melt collapse into a pool
On cracked wooden beams.

(Would you like to dance?)
I’d rather hang
From the rafters throwing confetti.
One hundred reflections after every rotation,
Torn cut ripped glimmering gloss.
They are there again,
Until the dark wears off,
Swapping cheap plastic jewellery
Playing Chinese whispers in the shadows
Picking constellations from the mess on the floor.

Crimson
Bright white
Pale pink

They put dynamite behind his ears.

Issue one// Clare Jones

2010-03-01T17:01:00.001Z

P/C

You are my present continuous tense, temporal

unsure if this is it at all.

I dread the third conditional because the past

is inside it, already pooling into mind.

And if you look and look to find

the tightened mouth on two

three and trois are still aligned,

but not blue and bleu and you.

I don’t hear Spanish but I know

a few words

the ones I needed.

Nous sommes nu together, a part of my heart

but when he is there we say ils.

He watches the doll dress

sees mine to eye to eye

in the back, a pocket mirror

lipstick smudge on thigh.

The leopard to the lamb on land

to lie down with the asp

his young his waters full his hand

and sounds of gentled glass.

Give me a neutraled opened key

and words from yours by you to me.

Issue one// Kayleigh Dray

2010-03-01T16:58:00.001Z

House of Cards

To live in card houses
y’all gotta get used to the strong taste
of pepper
and powder
and
…and that strange smell ya get
when ya squeeze a big amber drop
o’pine dew ‘tween your fingers
‘til it bleeds a sunset over the prints.
All sticky and lookin’
like a sigh…
It / reeks of / Why.
Oh, the sound? That’s the bees,
livin’ and workin’
sometimes dyin’ for the honey
pot on the breakfast bar
- all made of clubs and spades.
They ain’t got nowhere else to go,
So…
when they comes knockin’ for sugar,
don’t give ‘em the
brush off with
old sweet’n’lows.
Y’all can sit and stare at these -
these paper walls,
all bendin’ with the elements,
some yellered with years
of fondlin’ in backhand poker
games and such.
Ya stare and see hearts.
See clubs.
See the dull dots of marks ‘gainst
the shine of the diamonds
as they glint-shine off the rich folks‘
rings and earrings and
and tie-pins!

\ \ But / /
all the faces and the aces
are turned out and away
and they sure as hell don’t…
they sure as hell don’t look
at You
as You’re tryin’ make out

ya don’t see them.
[Make out yew don’t give a damn.
It’d be a pretty lie, if ya could
make it stick]

To let live in card houses
y’all gotta stop sittin’ by
while that strong taste of
pepper
and powder
and rags soaked in

gasoline,

lit by shakin’ gloved hands
from a world without bees,
comes in at ya.
All that… all that not-knowin’ folks
and not-knowin’ when to keep
that big bazoo shut and trapped
and Kept Quiet.
“Hell boy, you’s just a Spade,
so you ain’t got no right to go
makin’ eyes at your new
sweet-Heart.”
They’ll soon learn.
Leads to bell-fights.
Or silence.
Or unwanted
flickerin’ lights.
And when you is livin’ in a house of cards,
You don’t need no extra buzzin’.
Those card walls are steady held,
no swayin’,
no need to be prayin’ for God
to suck back in that wicked breeze.
But The Smoke seeps through
and it calms.
It calms them,
It – the smoke- it calms the bees and
the bees are calmed by the smoke and…
And they’re all crawlin’, not flyin’,
Big mass of black and yeller.
They’re all crawlin’ as they – as they start dyin’,
Big Mess of black and yeller bodies,
heaped in smoke and ash and flames.
It reeks of \\Why ///
The white painted faces are starin’ outwards
And lookin’ away
Lookin’ away from all that death…
the death of
All those poor, poor blackened

bodies and…

It
Reeks
Of
…

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS!

2010-02-21T21:02:00.000Z

//DISINGENUOUS TWADDLE is
looking for creative work
for the inaugural upload!

WE WANT YOUR ART!
- poetry
- fiction (of varying length)
- non-fiction
- sound pieces
- illustration
- photography

Click on the submissions
link for more details!

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