an online journal of voice

Fall 2015

GH
BLAZEVOX[BOOKS]
Buffalo, New York

BlazeVOX 15 | an online journal of voice

Copyright 2015
Published by BlazeVOX [books]
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the publishers written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews.
Printed in the United States of America
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Fall 2015
Table of Contents
Poetry
A.J. Huffman
Alex Archer
Barbara Barnard
Blackbird
Christopher Ozog
Dawn Tefft
Ed Makowski
Grace C. Ocasio
Heather Bowlan
Ian McPhail
Jimmie Ware
Juan Arabia
Lori Lamothe
Lus Leal Moniz
Marcia Arrieta
Matt Shears
Nicholas Knebel
Patricia Walsh
Robert Wexelblatt
Ronnie Sirmans
Sam O'Hana
Sean Burn
Stacy Mursten
Trevor Thinktank

Adam Mackie
Alexzandra Rose Etherton
Barbara Tomash
Charlene Ashley Taylor
Dana Curtis
Dilip Mohapatra
Geoffrey Gatza
Greg Larson
I Goldfarb
Jill Gamble
Joseph Harrington
Kelle Grace Gaddis
Louise Robertson
Mae Carter
Mark Young
Natasha Murdock
Olivia Deborah Grayson
PT Davidson
Roger Craik
Ross Knapp
Sandra Kolankiewicz
Simon Perchik
Sunayna Pal
Victor Eshameh

Fiction
Patrick Chapman Juniper Bing
Nick Nace from Vic
Alexander Beisel Delenda Est
C Davis Fogg Electric Jesus
Daniel Adler The Acheron
Erika G Abad Corners
Jamie McFaden Three Flash Fiction pieces
Christien Gholson Trinity-Sites Last Stand
Jessy Brodsky Vega White Thoughts
Josef Krebs Body of Work
Kristen Clanton Who are the Fantasy Girls?
Jingjing Xiao The Lives of Flowers

Text Art
Soil
hiromi suzuki

5 visual poems, asemic

Stephen Nelson

Creative Non-Fiction & Reviews

Jennifer R. Valdez Lady Liberty Meets Big Ben
Susan Wiedel Concetta
Maureen Coleman Close Observations of a Distant Father

15 Questions | Interviews with BlazeVOX Authors

BlazeVOX Interview with John Tranter on his forthcoming book Heart Starter
Jeffery Conway interviewed on his new book Showgirls
Eileen Tabios interviewed on her new book Against Misanthropy, A Life in Poetry (2015-1995)
Cornelia Veenendaal interviewed on her new book An Argument of Roots
Anne Gorrick interviewed on her wonderful new book As Visuality

Acta Biographia Author Biographies

New Releases from BlazeVOX Books

Fire For Thought by Reed Bye
The mind may move faster than the hand can write but Reed Byes poems capture the
dictates of thought as processed by the conspiratorial and wandering eye, all the light
and shadow of the natural world, the peripheral glimpses of people and places where
few poets ever go. Lucid, abstract, impulsive, beyond the paleFire For Thought is
both a summing up and a starting overwhat seems to be necessity, and
something much more.
Lewis Warsh

Explore more here

Against Misanthropy, A Life in Poetry (2015-1995) by Eileen R. Tabios

2015 marks the 20th year anniversary of Eileen R. Tabios career switch from
banking to poetry. AGAINST MISANTHROPY presents her life as a self-educated
poetfrom, as a newbie poet, reading through all of the poetry books of her local
Barnes and Noble as she scratched her head over what poetry is supposed to be to
more recently creating a poetry generator capable of making poems without additional
authorial intervention. Along her journey, she also released about 30 poetry
collections, two fiction books and four prose collections with the help of publishers
in eight countries. Ultimately, however, her so far 20-year poetry journey has taught
her that poetrys greatest gift is the means by which to forge a new life as a better
person. As one of her Facebook friends Maxwell Clark told her, and she agrees, The
best person is the best poet.

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Apollo by Geoffrey Gatza

It has often been said that Marcel Duchamp gave up art for chess. Geoffrey Gatza has
reversed the process, and produced a sumptuous souvenir program of a
performance of Stravinsky's ballet Apollo, framed by an elaborately-plotted chess game
between Duchamp and his female alter-ego, Rose Selavy. The results are stunning.
John Ashbery

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An Argument of Roots by Cornelia Veenendaal

This extra-ordinary poet is at once companionable with the natural world and
wonderfully awake to the daily surprises of the city; a poet who is almost painfully
attuned to the beauty that sustains us and mindful of the terrors that threaten to fell us.
Over and over, Veenendaal's poems cause us to stumble upon the quotidian the way
we might catch a toe on a forest snag or trip on a loose brick in the sidewalk or lurch
with the sudden braking of a T car. Once we've stumbled, each poem says, Wait a
moment Look. .... I am quietly amazed and grateful that, like the emperor's cricket,
Veenendaal is here still,/ scraping [her] colors on the hours.
Marie Harris; NH Poet Laureate, 1999-2004

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Marine Layer By Kit Robinson

Kit Robinson convects his frontal systems through Marine Layer, happy to be
enveloped in its fog while somehow always letting its poems breathe. Information
sizzles in these data dispatches from the twenty-first century: poetry as a news feed
that knows just enough to trust what happens next, lifting the fogfor us allon the
movable things of song.
Miles Champion

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The Last Place I Lived by K. Alma Peterson

In this deeply textured book, K. Alma Petersons playful, brilliant language
counterpoints very serious matterthe blunt fissures of survival and pain, creating a
tension and energy that drives these poems. They might feel like sleight of hand but
are really transformative, like alchemy. She sums it up best herself: straddling the
gap between tame/art and reckless science, they play dangerously//turning
experimentation into evidence (Trains Derail in the Deepest Woods and We
Take Positions We Cannot Defend.) It is stunning work, and it makes you want to
sing.
John Minczeski, author of A Letter to Serafin, University of Akron Press

Explore more here

Whatever Speaks on Behalf of Hashish by Anis Shivani

Startlingly fecund, culturally shrewd, grounded in bright particulars and sly
juxtapositions, Anis Shivani shows us with diamond brilliance what happens when
language takes leave of its day job to exult in its real power. No longer the bean
counter of ordinary doings, it becomes its own freedom, conscious of itself as beacon
of what we could achieve, were we to realize the wisdom of Emersons remark that
the ultimate American trope is surprise.
David Rigsbee

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Women and Ghosts by Kristina Marie Darling

Women and Ghosts is a book for the brokenhearted: "Iced over with sadness," its
speaker says (or doesn't), "I can no longer speak." In ghost text stricken from the
record, she also says (or doesn't): "I wonder how someone else's life can seem so
much my own." She means Desdemona's. Ophelia's. Juliet's. Cleopatra's. Lavinia's.
But when I read these words, I think: not theirs, hers I wonder how her life can
seem so much my own. I love this book. I honor it. I cherish it.
Molly Gaudry, author of We Take Me Apart and Desire: A Haunting

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All Beautiful & Useless by C. Kubasta

From a fresh consideration of the Salem witch trials, C. Kubastas All Beautiful &
Useless launches into autobiography rendered in a masterful array of forms, voices,
and rhythms. Re-constructed delivery methods such as sonnets, personal lyrics, and a
playlet blend with incorporations of Big Governments strategic redactions, computer
code, academic lingo, and Modernist explorations of the line to produce a book
improbably personal and deeply moving. This book knocks me flat.
Mike Smith, author of Multiverse and Byron in Baghdad

Explore more here

archipelago counterpoint By Marcia Arrieta

With Arrietas poetry, were left on the edge of understanding how to connect
beautiful fragments. Her lyrical poems play with sound, meaning, line break, and
form.she searches in archipelago counterpoint for a way to combine the
disjunctive with the personal, the tentative direction with the story, and the results
are poems that linger evocatively in ones own words.
William Allegrezza

Explore more here

Showgirls The Movie in Sestinas by Jeffery Conway

How can we know the dancer from the dance? W. B. Yeats famously asks in
Among School Children. Jeffery Conways cornucopia of poetic DVD
commentary encircles that unanswerable question. Calling to the stage the goldglittered divas of Showgirls, Conway uses the sestinas circular dance to celebrate
each frame of cinemas campiest of stripper films.
Daniel Nester

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Limitless Tiny Boat by Ruth Danon

By investigating the minutiae of lifethe stuff that anchors us, a stone and its echo,
paradoxes constructed by languageRuth Danon investigates nothing short of
Thanatos and Eros. The journey of the Limitless, Tiny Boat is fierce and fearless.
Watch out! These poems expand and contractbreatheas they are read. A
substantial achievement.
Martine Bellen

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Biennial: Poems by Michael Joyce

these poems split the seconds of daily life
into splinters that, with time, catch the light
Charles Bernstein

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Nine by Anne Tardos

What glee in the Nine, this tour de force of genius trickster complexity, all about
equipping poetry. And Anne Tardos does this accouterment-ing like a Buddhist
deity with many arms and heads. Rub together two neurons and you have a mind
and play with nines and you have a rich compendium of unsurpassed wild multilingual-mental invention and words stomping around as richly palpable (non
gendered!) masters of the universe. I got so refreshed by the wit and tenderness I
couldnt stop.
Anne Waldman

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Rain Check Poems by Aaron Simon

Aaron Simon's lines feel like strokes of a pre-CBS Jazzmaster. Not plastic. More like
rosewood with at least a Gibson tuneOmatic bridge. A brrruummm alliteration
where each word-note contains the artful play of improv and composition colliding.
Aaron Simon is a good band whose record is killing it on the deck these days.
Thurston Moore

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New City by Scott Abels

Roll into Scott Abelss gloriously fracked New City, where the vibe is fun, loving,
creating, jobs, for kids, looping our rope over / a natural crotch, growing up, in
Nebraska, looking like clip art, dont worry pee is sterile, were singing for whose
supper?, this citys, got us, altogether nowif you're a red-blooded a merry can of
worms, you need to read this.
Catherine Wagner, author of Nervous Device and My New Job

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Little: Novels by Emily Anderson

I can't remember the last time I read something so familiar and unsettling--like
meeting someone you love after they come back from a long journey wearing
differently-colored eyes. Like if H.P. Lovecraft had had a hand in writing The Book
of Common Prayer. It's playful, and frightening, and truer, somehow, than the
original.
Mallory Ortberg, Texts from Jane Eyre

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Frances the Mute / The Bright Continent (A Diptych) by Kristina Marie Darling
Frances the Mute / The Bright Continent is a love story shaped by the language of
absenceand haunted by the absence of language. In Kristina Marie Darlings
hands, the small ornaments of the quotidian are invested with a radiant significance
rustling beneath the surface of words. Only by traversing silence do we sing
perfectly, she reminds us, as if recalling and revising Keatss famously voiceless
lovers from his Grecian urn. For Keats, Heard melodies are sweet, but those
unheard / Are sweeter. For Darling, the sweetest music is that which is rife with the
uncanny.
Tony Trigilio

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Nectar of Story By Tim J. Myers

"Nectar of Story considers wildly various, ever intriguing subjects with sympathy,
passion, and self-effacing wisdom. And his prose introductions to the poems are
often as fine as the vignettes in Hemingway's In Our Time. A rich and wonderful
collection."
Ron Hansen, National Book Award finalist and author of Mariette in Ecstasy

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Patient Women by Larissa Shmailo

Larissa Shmailos Patient Women tells the story of Nora, a gifted young woman who
comes of age in New York against heavy odds. Her Russian mother is demanding;
the young men around her are uncaring; and her dependence on drink and sex leads
her to a shadowy life filled with self-made demons. Yet Noras intelligence pulls her
through the difficult timesthere are even moments of (very) dark humor here. As
well, an appendix of poems attributed to Nora lets us into the corners of her heart
and mind.
Thaddeus Rutkowski, author of Haywire

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Flutes and Tomatoes by Wade Stevenson

Flutes and Tomatoes by Wade Stevenson is a compelling story of survival, love
and resilience in the face of loss. Filled with a crackling energy these poems describe
self-discovery, worldly discovery, and the discovery of the mutability of time that
shapes the world through the ever-distancing, ever expanding waves of disorder and
randomness that are left behind after the death of a loved one.

Explore more here

The Slip by George Tysh

His engagement with the variable foot of William Carlos Williams gives a new spring
and all to George Tyshs remarkable collection The Slip. For much of the book,
especially the haunting title poem, an isolated phrase appears, then the next
descends, and then another, each open space miming the way breath appears in
human speech, as an aid to understanding and an absolute electric chargeat times
one of volcanic intensity. ... And my God, so beautiful.
Kevin Killian

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Dangerous Things To Please a Girl by Travis Cebula

A man wanders through Paris. A man wanders through Eliot. Eliot wanders through
Paris. Paris wanders through the man. And, not surprisingly, it all comes out as a
love letter. Though addressed to a missing person, these poems have no absence
about them at all. Instead, built of the fine detail of daily life, they exude a vivid
presence that coalesces into a richly nuanced sense of place, of place-as-lived. And
its a good life. And an utterly delightful book.
Cole Swensen, author of Stele (2012)

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an online journal of voice

Fall 2015

GH

Fall 2015
IntroductionIntroduction
Hello and welcome to the Fall issue of BlazeVOX 15.
Presented here is a world-class issue featuring poetry,
art, fiction, and an arresting work of creative nonfiction, written by authors from around globe.

Happy Fifteenth Anniversary to BlazeVOX!!!

Hip Hip, Hurray!!
Hip Hip, Hurray!!
Hip Hip, Hurray!!
I have been sitting at my desk typing away on my large
screened apple computer dreading what I am about to
write. BlazeVOX is now in its 15th year of operation.
We have great moments to look back upon in our
history, as well as some moments that bear careful
consideration. It seems incredible to me that we are
not merely still in operation we are vividly alive!
To commemorate who we are at 15 we plan to celebrate. We are planning to have some special events throughout
the year. We plan to have readings, videos and even a party sometime in the fall. Keep an eye out for your invitation
it will be a year to revel!
And before I go, I would like to thank you all for your wonderful support over the years. You are an important part
this press and your help makes a real difference in getting innovative works by undervalued writers read worldwide.
Your act of reading our work is incredibly helpful means so much to me but even more to BlazeVOX authors
whose work might not see the light of day without your giving us a part of your time, a part of your day! We thank
you a thousand times.
Rockets, Geoffrey

Fall 2015
Alexander Beisel

Delenda Est

Jim introduced them to the game eight years ago. When they were kids, really. And ever since, Adam
and Nate had done their best to beat him at it. The tradition was older than Elise and Jims marriage. Shed
never take that away from him.
Whats it called? Elise hated the game.
You know what its called, Jim said.
I can never say it right. She hated that he had something like this.
Casus Belli. Its Latinan act of war.
Elise watched as Jim unfurled a map across the kitchen table. He smoothed the folds with the palms
of his hands. Hed made it himself. Every location rendered in perfect detail. Each line drawn out with a
nib-pen. Black and red ink. Hed used cold-press paper and stained it sepia with teabags. Burned the edges.
It was systematically destroyed to make it perfect.
Map looks nice. Elise had showed him how. She was the artist. She didnt expect it to look so nice.
Jim always ignored her expertise. But with this hed followed her advice to the letter. It looked real.
Something youd see in a museum.

Jim didnt answer her. He centered the map under the kitchen light. When it was just so he placed a
twenty-sided die at each corner. Elise picked one up and rolled it across the map. Jim snatched it before it
landed on a clean facing.
You said you didnt want to play. Jim leaned on the table and turned to her. Hed make this face at
her. Purse his lips and shift his eyes to the ceiling. She thought it was cute before she learned to translate it:
I love you but youre pissing me off.
I dont want to play. Elise hated that face now. She hated that her husband could put so much effort
into something so fleeting. It was a gamelittle figures and dice and him a grown man. Hed take off work
and set aside a weekend a month to play it. And Adam and Nate did too. She hated those two. She hated
that once a month Adam and Nate took over her home. They stole her house and her quiet and her
husband. But that wasnt true. Jim gave himself to it. To them. To this stupid game.
Okay then, Jim said. Then let us play.
I just dont understand it. Whats the point? she asked.
The point is to conquer, Elise. Jim threw a handful of dice across the table. He smiled at the result.
It meant nothing to her. Shed seen empires forged by snake-eyes and armies routed by boxcars.
How? Its just a bunch of little figures and dice. Elise tried to disguise her curiosity. Shed played
before. Before they were married. She didnt understand it then. She didnt hate it then either.
Look, youve played before. Jim motioned to his miniature infantry line. Each player plays a
general from historyIm Marcus Atilius Regulus, Adam is Xanthippus and Nate is Hiero II. He said the
names like they were family members. As though shed remember them from her wedding. Their wedding.
Each player has an army, Jim continued, and you fight it out

But they dont actually fightyou just roll dice! She laughed.
Yeah, and the hat token in monopoly doesnt actually buy Boardwalk. Jim said. I love you but youre
pissing me off. Its a game and its fun and you said you didnt want to play.
I dont.
The doorbell rang.
Thats them! Jim shot up from the table.
Elise stayed in the kitchen. Her husbands toys were all set in rank and file. They were little Romans.
Painted soldiers all posed like they were in the fray of some important battle. She looked for the two shed
painted for him. She couldnt find them. He left the rulebook in his empty chair. It was open. There were
numbers and charts. Words she didnt understand. The opposite page was a splash-frame of Julius Caesar.
Beneath it, a quote.
In war, events of importance are the result of trivial causes.
Just like the game, she thought. No matter what you conquer, it all goes back in the box. She could
hear Jim answering the door.
Fellas! Welcomewelcome. Jim held the door open and let Nate and Adam pass into the kitchen.
They each wore backpacks and carried stacked boxes they kept in place under their chins. They set their
things down carefully. The kitchen looked like army camp now.
Hey guys. Elise hated Nate and Adam.
Elise! How are you? Nate was Jims best man at their wedding. Whenever he could, hed speak only
in movie quotes. At their wedding Nate explained to the DJ Im The Dudeso thats what you call me.

That or His Dudeness or Duder or el Duderino if youre not into the whole brevity thing. Jim would laugh.
He always seemed to know the movie.
Eliseyou look great! Adam was their officiant. She thought shed like him when Jim told her he
was a minister but an interfaith minister. When Jim first introduced them, Adam told her excommunicates,
homos, tranys, Ill marry anyone the church wont. And then he laughed.
There was a life before her, Elise knew. And she couldnt be a part of it. Never would be.
Jim walked slowly back into the kitchen.
Take a look at that map, fellas, he said. Adam and Nate were careful not to touch anything. They
didnt pick up the twenty-sided dice. They didnt move it from the light. Howd they know not to touch it?
This is fucking unbelievable! Adam said.
Really ties the room together.
Yupdont mind the sepiaits all going to be red by the end of this. Jim smiled. Adam and Nate
scoffed. She didnt think people really did that.
Red likeblood? she asked.
The three of them turned.
No. Like Rome, Jim answered. As if it were obvious.
Jim offered each of them a beer. They accepted and began unpacking their things. Jim stayed with his
coffee.
Elise watched as Adam and Nate opened their respective kits. Egg crate foam swaddled hundreds of
little toy soldiers. They had rulers and protractors and dice. Their backpacks were stuffed with books
marked Casus Belli.

Did you guys bring any clothes? Elise asked. Nate set a miniature chariot on the table and moved it
slightly to the left.
Clothes? He moved it back, deciding it was fine where it was. Adam answered in a way the other
two seemed to accept readily.
What for? he asked. Are we going out? He pulled a foam sheet from his box. There was
something underneath it. Oh! Did I send you guys the pictures of this? It was a miniature war-elephant
complete with a turret and archers. He held it under the light for them to examine. Jim and Nate marveled
at it.
Holy shit, man! Thats amazing!
Really nice, Dude.
Jim took it carefully from Adam.
Shityou even painted the archers eyes? Jim was stunned.
How long did that take? Nate was impressed.
Not too long, actually. Adam was lying. She could tell just by looking at it. It took days. He must
have used triple zero brushes. At least three layers of undercoats. Another twenty in highlighting. All under
that magnifying headlamp that mimicked natural light. He mentioned it to her once. Presents colors as
they would be seen in real life. She never used one. Her colors were in real life.
Eliselook at this. Jim offered the elephant to her. When she tried to take it he reminded her to
only look at it.

A lot of detail. And there really was. Hes an artist but not like me, she thought. He could paint
these little toys well but not in the way she could paint murals and portraits. She actually got paid for her
workhad people appreciate it and buy it and commission it. This was just a toy.
Nate used a straightedge to position his spearmen in a perfect line. When they were ordered to his
liking, he drew out a roster hed made detailing the statistics of his varied units.
Jimdid you decide on a campaign? Adam bent to the table so as to see Nates army at eye level.
Yessir, Jim said. Sicilian.
Which war?
First one.
Nate laughed. This aggression will not stand, man.
You fuckers are done. Adam motioned to his prized elephant. Donzo.
Elise looked at it one more time. It was marvelous on the table. It towered over the other armies. Fierce
and proud. And dangerous.
Whats the naval operation?
LateIm using Corvus. Delenda est, bitches.
Nate and Adam groaned. That meant something to them.
Alright, Elise said. Ill leave you boys to it. She filled a mason jar with water at the tap.
You working on your painting, baby? Jim didnt look up from the table. Too busy scouting enemy
deployment.
Yeah. You boys have fun. She left for the sunroom.
***

It was ordered chaos. The walls were papered with sketches and measurements. A six-foot canvas
dominated each corner of the room. All in various stages of completion. She set down the mason jar and
portioned out mineral spirits and liquin. She cut the spirits with water. HP Lovecraft watched her.
Shed been working on him since Jim showed her the authors photo. He had a face so strange it
needed to be painted. Shaped like pickle jar. That granite block of jaw. Shed never read his work but under
her husbands advice, shed incorporated writhing tentacles into the background to eat up the negative
space. Shed painted them pink. Jim told her they should be green. They were still pink. She turned on her
music and stared back at Lovecraft for a while. She dipped her fingers in the mason jar and smoothed the
bristles of her brush absentmindedly. It was ox hair. Strong and yet soft. She could see every brush stroke
shed make. Every hue shed blend. Every second it would take to make it perfect. Cobalt blue. Fast Light
Yellow. A jaundiced green. Something old and ruined before its time.
She set her old step-ladder before Lovecraft and climbed to the top, but she stopped before she could
touch the canvas. She could hear them over the music. She straddled the top step and turned away from
Lovecraft. She looked down at the step between her legs and absently painted little smileys on the wood
face. They were a jaundiced green.
***
Theyd been playing for four hours. The war was already being won.
Fucking right! Jim howled in victory. Run, you little bitches!
Adam groaned as the dice left his hand. They failed him miserably. Elise wandered into the kitchen
using a bag of chips as her excuse.

Did you win, baby? She watched her twenty-eight year old husband do his best Heisman as Adam
sank in his seat.
Fucking right, I did! Jim said.
Yup! Nate did his best not to laugh at Adams misery. Adams line folded and broke under one
cavalry elementone!turned and smashed into that lovely elephant of his and thats all she wrote.
They were just toys and dice. How could they know all that from a three and a one? What did it
matter? It all goes back in the box, anyhow.
So is the game over? She hoped it was. Though she knew better. Jim punched the air and praised
Mars Victricis. Adam answered for him.
Not even close, Adam said. Lilybaeum and Messana are still mine and Nate over here devoted his
entire season to what he calls a consolidation of the ground forces.
I told you, manits a defensive posture. Nate said.
Its a pussy posture. Adam laughed. Some tyrant you are.
This isnt Nam. There are rules.
The three of them laughed.
***
She closed the French doors behind her. Mr. Lovecraft was still staring at her. Shed fixed his
jawline and added a delicate sheen to his pipe. The tentacles were still pink. She was deciding whether or
not she liked them pink. The more she thought about it the more she realized they should be green.
The boys were still laughing and she could hear them through the glass. She turned her music up to
fifteen before deciding it should be an even number. Fourteen.

One cavalry element? Come on, Adam!

Theyre new recruits, thats allthe Sacred Band is on their way from Utica.
Good luck with that sea voyage. The Corvus is on the prowl!
Twelve.
***
Two in the morning and the war still raged. True to his word, Adam had rallied and put Rome on the
back-foot, and Nate had seized the opportunity to abandon his pussy posturing. It was still just dice and
paper. Right?
Im going to bed. Elise leaned on Jims shoulder. She looked on as he rolled another handful of
dice. They scattered across the table, dancing over the Mediterranean Basin.
Okay, baby. Jim was thoughtful. He collected the dice and examined his empire. Elise couldnt help
wonder what he was considering. She looked at Adam and Nate who were likewise thoughtful. It was just
paper and pen. Some dice. And what were really just toys.
Are you winning? She tried to find something on the table that would answer that for her.
Eh Jim said. Im not losingput it that way. He was so serious. Nervous almost. Adam and
Nate were on edge, chewing on pens and thumbing through books and leaflets. She imagined their terror.
Whos he coming for next? Where will Rome turn? Greece or Carthage?
Are Adam and Nate on a team? she asked. Jim ignored her. Adam and Nate looked up. The
thought hadnt occurred to them.
We should be, shouldnt we? Nate said, turning to Adam.
Its the only way, really. Neither of us can break him alone.

Oh thank you! Jim turned to his wife. Thank you for thatI thought you didnt want to play.
I dont.
Then dontstop fraternizing with the enemy and go to bed. I love you but youre pissing me off.
Good, she thought. She kissed him on the cheek and watched him roll one more pack of dice before heading
to bed. As she ascended the steps she could hear her husband forsake the gods that once loved him.
Im going to paint this fucking map red. With or without Mars help.
Nate and Adam laughed.
***
Elise woke early. She made her way down the stairs to find them at it again. Or were they still at it?
Have you guys been to bed yet? She moved for the coffee maker. It was fresh.
Nonot at all. Adam sipped on his own coffee.
How do you play that game all night? Elise poured herself a cup and brought it to her lips. She
didnt expect an answer from them. They were too involved. She took her kitchen into account. It was a
warzone. The miniatures were piled on every available surface. Field hospitals. The walls had succumbed
to still more maps and notes detailing the game. Dice littered the floor. Theyd gone rogue when someone
had thrown them across the kitchen in a fit of despair.
The boys looked like old men. Bags under their eyes. Heads hung low in exhaustion. Adam leaned
into the table. He might be winning by the look of him.
Hows it going?

Well, thanks to your sage advice, Adam said, Rome lies in ashes and Carthage is on the rise. Adam
exhibited the kind of energy that comes with an all-nighter. An engine burning up the last of its fuel before
sputtering to a dead stop. The last ditch effort of a metabolism run dry.
You burnt Rome? Elise asked.
Yes, he did. I love you but youre pissing me off. And its your fault, Elise. She walked to her
husbands side and rubbed his back.
Im sorry, sweetheart. She loved that he was miserable. Something so pointless and he was so
worked up. It all goes back in the box, honey. She watched as Adam took up his elephant and placed it at
the gates of Syracuse. Jim and Nate bowed their heads in resignation.
In the immortal words of Darth Vader Adam smiled. All too easy. Elise watched Nate and Jim
despair. It was the absolute power of arithmetic playing before them. She saw the savage delight in Adam
and the woe and fear in her husband. But not in Nate. Nate examined his notes before standing and
drawing up a handful of dice.
Fucking amateurs. Nate reached into his box and revealed another figurine, this one painted gold.
This is Sparta! Bitch. Nate placed the figure before Adams elephant. Jim howled in shock and
Adam sank back into his seat, beseeching someone named fucking Astarte.
What does that mean? She wanted it to end. She couldnt understand how there was still hope.
How there was still time. How anyone could see something other than futility at the siege of Syracuse.
Babyits the Spartans300, you know?
Oh. She knew the movie. She knew that the 300 were an immovable object. She knew that no
matter what came for them, they would never yield. They would die where they stood.

Are you going to finish your painting today? He actually looked at her when he asked.
What? Yeah. I think so. The mighty 300 would hold Syracuse against the war-elephants, against
the Sacred Bandagainst a million men if they had to.
They were staring at her.
What? she asked.
Everything okay? Jim asked.
Nothingyeah, Im fine. Are you three going to sleep today? After the war her husband would
come home a different man. Jaundiced. Ruined by time. Hed be lost after this. Will you guys take a nap at
least? Ill wake you up.
The idea washed over them. They all realized at once how tired they were.
Thats a good idea, actually. Jim knew what she meant.
Syracuse isnt going anywhere. Adam set his dice down.
No, its not, sir. No, its not, Nate said.
They laughed.
***
Nate and Adam slept on the couch together. They were too tired to be concerned with which parts
touched. Jim stayed in the kitchen with Elise.
I know its a mess, but Ill clean it up. He was hoping theyd have the conversation after his friends
had left. Elise was angrier with herself than she was with Jim. Why should she be mad at him for having
such close friends? What was the harm in him playing a stupid game? He could be doing far worse. He had
done far worse. Now that he was sober, what did she have to complain about?

I justI dont understand why its always at our place. Have it at Adam and Natesthey live
together. It would be easier there.
Its traditionthe winner always hosts the next one. Plus theres more space here and would you
really let me disappear for a weekend?
I dont care! Why would I care? She would though. She knew it, too. Elise didnt like the idea of
him leaving if he didnt have to. Thats it, isnt it? You dont want to lose him to something else.
WhateverIm going to lay down. Wake me in a couple hours, please.
Jim kissed her and left the kitchen. Elise sat at the table and sipped her coffee. It wasnt as fresh as
she thought it was. Burnt. Must have been left on too long.
***
Mr. Lovecraft was such a strange looking man. She stared at him and the photo. The painting. Back
to the photo. Shed mastered it. It was exactly him in every way. It wasnt her fault he was shaped so
strange. The tentacles surrounding him were repulsive. Phallic and sticky things that looked as if theyd
tongue anyone who drew too close. And they were still pink.
Wow. Lovecraft? Adam asked.
Yup. Thats him. Elise said. She turned from the portrait and sat atop the ladder again. Adam was
looking straight through her. He walked towards the painting with his mouth open slightly.
Unbelievable, Elisereally. Its exactly him. They smiled at one another.
Thanks.
Is it done?
Not yet. I have to paint the tentacles.

What? Adam looked genuinely concerned. You cant! They look perfect!
Jim told me they should be green.
Fuck thatkeep em pink.
Elise smiled. YeahI just want it to be accurate, you know.
Adam examined the painting in the way he examined his army placements. He combed over it with
his eyes, careful not to touch it. He measured each brush stroke and fingerprint buried in the layers of pink
paint.
Accurate, he huffed. Were talking about Cthulu here. If anything, hed be angry that you tried to
paint him accurately.
What?
Takes Lovecraft two pages to describe snow and water. The Cthulu shows up and he says its
indescribable. Pink, greenits a color out of space. Adam smiled at her. You paint it how you want it.
Ill go wake up Jim. Is Nate awake? She climbed down from her ladder. She felt too close to Adam.
Ehhey, thanks for putting us up, by the way, Adam said. He didnt turn from the painting. He
stepped back to see it at a proper angle. I know were a pain in the ass.
I feel like there was more to that sentence, Elise said.
Nope. Were a pain in the ass. So thanks.
Elise smiled again and left Adam to his vigil for the elder things. Thats what she called them
anyway. She could never say the name right. Cthulu.
She passed Nate on her way upstairs. He lay on the couch and rubbed his eyes. He stared at book
titled, Tyrants of Syracuse.

Youre awake then?

Meh. Kind of, he said, throwing down the book. Hey, why dont you ever play with us?
With you guys? No way. Elise stopped midway up the stairs.
Why not? We could teach you.
No. I dont think so. Ill leave the battles to the men.
Oh, dont give me that! Nate said. Theres plenty of women generals. Boudicca, Wu Zeitian,
Queen Dido Nate was counting them on his fingers until he realized he only knew three. Well, theres
not many but the few there are were more badass than most of the men. Boudicca burnt Londinium to the
ground!
Londinium?
LondonJoan of Arcshe was the only one man enough to lead the French. Dido built Carthage.
Good for her. Elise ascended the stairs. Boudicca. She smiled. Joan of Arc. Dido.
Hey, baby. Jim was awake in the same way Nate was. She flopped on the bed next to him and
kissed him. Your boyfriends are awake.
Coolcool. Did you finish your painting yet?
Did you finish your war yet? Dont rush me. They smiled.
She always woke first. Shed lie next to him while he slept and watch the sunlight paint his face. Hed
wake and smile. Youre a creep, hed say and shed smile.
But she couldnt see him that way anymore. He doesnt see me anymore, she thought. And she knew
why. Hed thrown out his old ways for her. Hed given himself to her. So much that there was nothing left of

the drunken, stupid rake shed married. He was something else now. No longer fierce and proud. No longer
dangerous.
She wanted him to touch her.
What are you up to? Jim said.
She saw the thing shed built and lamented it. She wanted to hurt. She wanted struggle. She wanted
bruises on her thighs.
Baby, not now.
She wanted him to notice her. If it meant she was just a thing to himshe wanted to be his. She
wanted be used and thrown away.
Elisecome on. The guys are downstairs.
Fine. And she knew she was.
***
She couldnt work on it anymore. It was finished whether she liked it or not. She smiled to herself. It
always seemed to end that way. She liked the idea. An artist had no say in the matter. A piece was done
when it decided it was done.
Mr. Lovecraft watched her clean her ox hair brushes. The tentacles behind him seemed to squirm
and fight against themselves. They were green now. He was right, she thought. She hated him for that.
The kitchen was obliterated. A war had claimed the lives of thousands and set Sicily ablaze. The
map was posted on the wall now. The statues and armies and navies had all been removed. It was
dominated by purple flag-pins. Jim stared at the map with his arms folded behind his head. He glared at it
in disbelief. Nate and Adam were packing their belongings.

Who won? Elise asked.

Carthage, he said. He turned and smiled at her.
Thats right! Adam said.
Meh. Nate shrugged. Thats why there were three Punic Wars.
Elise stood by Jim and was careful not to touch him. So its over? she asked.
I love you. For now. But youre pissing me off. Carthage and Rome are mortal enemies.
Jim walked Adam and Nate to the door. Elise waved from the kitchen.
You guys take it easy, Jim said.
The Dude abides.
Elise looked at the map posted to the wall. It would never end, she thought. Sicily has fallen but
theres still Italy. Africa. Spain. There was always more. It would never be enough. Nothing ever ends.
Jim dragged back into the kitchen.
I cant believe they beat me, he said.
First time for everything, Elise said.
Jim stared at the map posted to the wall. He braced against it. Examined every detail. She could see
him working it out in his head. The magnitude of it. The great fall of a greater dynasty.
Nah, he said. Thats not it.
Is he really still thinking about this, Elise thought. Its overyou lost. And theyre gone.
Youre weakest at the cusp of victory, he said. He was referencing something. Elise wondered if he
understood it. She couldnt look at him anymore.
That doesnt make sense, she said.

It does once youve lost.

Fall 2015
A.J. Huffman

Flying Blind
after Oppedette, photographed by Dieter Appelt
He wanted to be
like Icarus
and touch the sky, the searing face
of a star, but he was afraid
of the sun.
His own opalescence made him too easy
a target for its burning
rays.
Instead he built his wings in the cold
darkness of the caverns, modeled them
after bats
instead of birds. Weaving
them from clay and moss, he made them malleable
enough to manage
the dips
and tight curving
drops
that could never have lead
him anywhere
but straight
to hell.

Unblown Balloons
bounce around my imagination.
Flaccid almost-orbs, flattened
and docilely draped about
the fixtures in tragic portrait
of abandonment. I test
their individual boundaries,
stretching, tying appropriately placed knots.
Continued disappointment radiates
as silence. Not a single peep
or growl resonates from breathless
rubber bodies, now lying
in unanimated animal forms.

The Road to Sensory Road

is an act of consumption,
defilation by mouth
hands
eyes
ears and nose, the lesser
trespassers. Scavengers--all of them-hide behind the guise of exploration.
Discovery is never without
sacrifice. Tactility, tangibility
are merely labeled excuses
to capture
process
contain
inside vessels known as knowledge
and misappropriated understanding.

Blue
eyes flutter stutter force
themselves open. Raised
lids widen to embrace the
velvet cracked cluster covers
stretching themselves thin thinner
dissolving into graceful expanse of
sky reflecting in equaled depths.
Uncharted echoes bubble
burst belch erupt in
waves flowing with schools
of scales fins funny
faced faithful followers of tidal
pools overlook the natural thunder. Manmade Meccas for aquatic worship safely
contained. Sinewy bodies fan themselves like
feathers peacock proud prance preen
caw in ritualistic roar clutch for mate and maybe
youth all flashing back and by in blinking of

Fall 2015
Barbara Barnard

Boots on the Ground

He sat at a table in the hallway of your
high school, every day. His name was
Kevin (or John or Tom, or her name was
Jennifer). You were 17, getting ready to
graduate in your home town of Fresno (or
Freeport or North Platte, Birmingham
or Fargo). Or, you were struggling to
pay the bills and find child care, and
your employer (McDonalds, or WalMart
or Starbucks) did not pay enough to
feed little Susie or to take little Salim
to the doctor with his recurring
ear infections.
Kevin slapped you on the back, greeted
you like a man and a buddy, gave
you the high five. You had long
talks sometimes about life, about
girls, about parents, about what it
is to be a man. (Or, Jennifer talked
boyfriends with you, kids, the
salary, the benefits, the educational
opportunities.)
You signed your name a few weeks
before graduation (or when you got
laid off at your job), dreaming of the
bright future and the comradeship,
the pride of accomplishment soon

to be enjoyed in your career in the

Army (or Navy, Air Force or Marines).
You dreamed of the Christmas (or
Kwanzaa, Ramadan or Hanukkah) gifts
your mom could buy for Ricky
or Chung-Hee (or Susie, Azeriah, or
John) this year, even though you
would not be there to see their bright
eyes when they unwrapped them. You
thought of ear infections tended to, of
prescription drug coverage, of affordable
housing.
Your country needed you, he said,
and his eyes beamed with pride
as you signed on the line. You were
inducted in June and headed to
boot camp at Fort Benning (or Great
Lakes, Lackland or Parris Island) for
your 9 weeks (or 8 weeks or 12 weeks)
of training to be a soldier (or sailor,
airman or marine).
You learned the seven core values
(and teamwork, discipline, and close
combat). You practiced rappelling,
marching and marksmanship (or
swimming drills, chin ups, use of
antipersonnel fragmentation mines,
or conditioning through M9 Weapons
Live Fire).
You became proficient with the hand
grenade, the M136, and the M249 (or
the M16 and the 12 gauge, or martial
arts and bayonet training, detaching
the bayonet knife for effective handto-hand engagement and elimination
of the enemy). You call Kevin (or
John, Tom or Jennifer) but he doesnt
pick up the call as he always did before.
You call again, puzzled, and leave a

message telling him of your triumphs,

of new friendships forged through
shared challenges, of your orders you
just received to ship out. Maybe the
message got lost, so you call and
leave another. Kevin never, ever
calls back.
Its August 2007 (or March 2009,
December 1968, or June 1970), and
you ship out for Basra (or Bagram,
Khe sahn or the South China Sea).
Your mother cries and holds you
too long; your dad (if you have a
dad) grips your hand and says Go
get-um, son. Make us proud. (or
Son, its not too late; Ill drive you
to Canada. Tonight; well go to
Canada tonight, or Theyre lying
to you, Son. Its not like they say.
Son, dont make the same mistake
I did, or Honey, I know I said all
those things about serving our
country, but I meant for your
brother to go, not you. Not my
little girl!). Or, your mother
shifts the baby to her other hip
while your toddler clings to
you, Mommy, Mommy. Dont
go, Mommy! Your heart is
pounding against the inside of
your olive (or tan cammy or
olive cammy or navy blue)
uniform.
You mount the plank (I mean,
gangway) to your destroyer, the
USS Gregory DD 747 (or the
ramp of the C17 Globemaster
transport plane, or the steps
of the Boeing747). You turn
back and wave. When shipping

out for a war zone, even on

commercial airliners, families
are allowed to come to the
loading gate. Dont look back.
You look back; your daughters
face is slick and twisted with tears.
Her grandmother rocks her to and
fro, as she once rocked you. Marines
dont cry.
In the end (or middle) of this
true story, your boots hit the ground
at Camp Lejeune or Fort Dix, Okinawa
or Subic Bay or Pearl Harbor. But
youre only on one weeks leave for
R&R. Now that youre away from the
exploding ordnance (the deadly boredom,
the deadly booby traps, the dead buddy
that was talking to you just the moment
before he was hit), you dont know how
you can go back and you dont know
how you can go back and youd do
anything not to go back. Anything.
Anything.
Or, your boots hit the ground
at Lejeune or Fort Dix, or you make
your way down the gangway disembarking
in San Diego, balancing your sea bag
on one twitching shoulder, your hearing
shot; you were a gunners mate, so that is
to be expected. Or, you turn or you
think youre turning, on your sideno,
the impact turned you, youre lying on your
side now; the shell hit only a few feet from
where you rested against the tracks of the
APC catching a smoke at dusk. There had
been incoming the day before but none so
far today. You blink and blink through a
haze of red; no, its gray now, gray; your boot,
your boots on the ground nearby, one
tilted toward you, a shaft of bone, red

meat; you try to reach for it, your foot

is still in it. My foot, my foot; your last
thought of digging your toes in the river
mud, fishing on that favorite creek bank
near the spot where the rocks were jumbled
and the water trilled around them, purling
so pretty, and you dropped your line near
the rocks where the flathead catfish like
to rest. Home, home, home, Alabama,
your fishing spot where the willow limbs
draped languidly down around you, shading,
protecting. A shadeful, easeful, summer day,
catfish biting. As your brother says Give me
two more a them worms, they close your eyelids
over your thoughtful brown eyes that look just
like your mothers, as folks always said, and
they zip up the body bag.

Fall 2015
Christien Gholson

Trinity-Sites Last Stand

1. Trinity-Site plots a comeback

I was 5:29:45 AM Mountain War Time, July 16, 1945; the light seen before the embryos first dream; the
source. Everyone knew my name, grabbed at my clothes, tried to sneak into my hotel room. Now I stare out
the window all day at flying dust. My tiny room smells of old man pee.
Im going to get it all back. I have a plan. I will be the beautiful ancestor, returning to them that vague,
ineffable something they have lost. I can already see the book jacket blurb: Who looks deeper into the dark?
Who can unravel nature; reveal it in its intricacy? Who will return us to the eternal cycles? Trinity-Site.
I will be healer, scribe, talk-show circuit icon.

2. Trinity-Site and the agent

I look around the office. It smells of stale cigarettes, reminds me of a Hollywood that only existed in noir
films. Mort is in a suit he must have bought in the late forties. There are ancient photos of Mort with Rhonda
Fleming and George Sanders on the wall. Is it possible he could have been their agent at one time? Looking
at him now, I dont see how thats possible. On the desk is a more recent photo of Mortwith a clown. The
one agent who calls me back works with birthday clowns?
So I was thinking that we could start out doing some appearances in a mall or two, Mort says. The
Glendale Galleria, if we play our cards right. Nuclear power is the new green. Your comeback is in the bag.
Mort lights a cigarette, watches the smoke float toward the ceiling. Theres a fan up there, coated with lint,
grease. He probably eats Chinese take-out in here, making cold calls for his birthday clowns. (I imagine him
going through the birthday registry from some local elementary school: Hello, is this the home of Jeffy
Roberts, the birthday boy?)
Maybe we can do some kind of tie-in at a few of the cancer centers, Mort says. Loma Linda, St. Jude,
Mount Sinai. I stand up, stare down at him for a few seconds, then ask if he really understands who I am,
where Ive been, what Ive seen.
He shrugs. Well do a book. I walk out of the building, into the sun.

3. Trinity-Site writes a book

I wrote the book. Nothing about how I became Trinity-Site. No one was interested in that. I recounted
various drug habits, wicked ways with my many wives, tawdry affairs. The book reached a peak of pathetic
self-indulgence when I recounted hitting a kid on a bicycle while driving drunk down Hollywood Boulevard.
Hit and run or was it? I wrote in the book that when I woke the next morning after the hit-and-run I didnt
know whether the incident had been dream or reality. I scoured the papers for news of a hit-and-run, a dead
kid, a mangled bicycle, and never found it. It was the usual celebrity confession: hit rock bottom, rehab,
happily ever after.
All a lie. I dont even drive. But how else was I going to get anyone to listen?

4. Trinity-Site sifts through his cave, looking for the reality bone
I lift another empty whiskey bottle, swing it in a cool circle just inside the abandoned mine entrance, and let
go. The sound of breaking glass echoes off the walls. Shards fall through me. How long have I been here,
drinking, wallowing in self-pity?
I cut a petroglyph into the south wall. Its a replica of a human shadow made by the blast of thermal
radiation at Hiroshima. (No bodies were ever found near these shadows, only shadow remained.) It speaks to
me. It is not bitter, enraged, or even sad. (Because it has no connection with the body that formed it?) It is my
only friend now.
The irony is not lost on me. What are you looking for, friend? it says. Im trying to get back something I
lost, I answer. What have you lost? it asks me. I think on it a long time before answering. Its an important
question. I want to get it right.
Ive lost the mystery, I finally say. The mystery hidden in the eternal cycle: research, design, production. I
was a scientist, a mystic. Now I am a ghost in a cave talking to the replica of a shadow I made at the height of
my power.
Outside, a black hawk circles the sun. The hawks shadow skates across a small pool of rainwater sitting atop
a sandstone boulder a few yards from the mine. The water ripples.

5. Trinity-Site gives up on the idea of being the Last-of-Days-Angel and passes the baton
I have been walking along this desert rail line for days. It suits me, all this sage and black brush. The desert is
where I began my career, so its right and just that this is where I should end it. There is nothing more
pathetic in the eyes of the young than watching some old celebrity try to claw their way back into the
limelight. Lets face it: there are too many Last-of-Days Angels in the world now. They are all standing in
line, waiting for their chance to audition for nameless, faceless, low-level executives.
The world is running down slowly, too slowly. Two days ago, I walked past an old woman cradling a rag doll,
picking at the dolls eyes, and I thought this is my competition? Since then, its been prickly pear and
broken glass; wadded toilet paper where someone once squatted between the ties.
I believed for years that for any ending to last the conclusion had to be swift (and so merciful). This morning,
I watched a red-striped caterpillar crawl across lightning charred bark. It was a shock the juxtaposition of
red on black; so small, under such a vast empty sky.

Fall 2015
Dana Curtis

Lessons Learned from Science Fiction

The middle of the night and Im watching
something called Demon Seed. I begin
to obsess over whether or not anyone would be
stupid enough to have everything in their house controlled
by a desperate and insane computer. It doesnt matter.
Im awake and new scenes form outside
the window in the rain. I have to come up
with something for the actress, something
that hasnt been said before. I say no more
adaptation, no more velvet draperies and
hallways ending at my portrait. I promise
to disappear but a voice says:
you disappeared years ago.
I can hear horses in the street, and a line
of dead directors waves them down. I can
see everything as if from a velvet seat; its
the dream I would be having and I have
to admit this is a pretty bad movie, but
it beats an infomercial, is much better
than tomorrow morning on the set. There are
worse things than forced impregnation
with your own lost child.

Schrdingers Moment
The true obsession has no name,
no pretty lights surrounding its mirror,
no ceiling fan to cool it down
in a dark bar after hours,
tasting cheap beer
and declaring it a perfect
sip of intent -- late, as if
woven into the stars -greet the dawn with a piece of chalk:
tracing one moment -- genius
of the forgotten
body -- we know all
we have to know -- sick vines
open that yawning receptacle,
variations on desire,
eyes shut and we find

Lost in the Equation

How many times have I seen
the waveform? Not recently
over the rain like this temperate
afternoon, this tempo beating out
human interludes like fires that can be
predicted. (Temper temper)
my latest vision temporary,
tempest implied.
Water runs down my face
and I feel like there might be
something to all those things
I fail to understand. I think the point
was to find a future
location amid the chaos, perhaps
to line up all the sparks
as perfect pretty aqueducts and all
the fog made regimental
stone walkways. I shake off
ice like latex, drops into
the field red with unrecovered
shadows. We were born
on a planet we invented
then repudiated gone back
into all this obsolete
technology. It never was
I put the needle on the record
and I heard how to understand
the fulcrum, numbers lined up
like toys or the drumbeat,
crossing through light out
on the ocean to count
wayward particles and
make them behave.

Wave Particle Duality (disease)

The needle in my spine produces a vial of dark
matter it looks like water and the sand leaps up
toward the body's many oceans these will be
stars one day just as the fire becomes
diamonds in this blizzard, this is what I will
be in this smoke corridor, that remaining
promise gone by this park bench the dark matter
floods my nervous system and sends little pin
holes within my pores. I don't think much of
light anymore. The way the world used to
inhabit every human on a beach, monstrous
out of the sea, out of time like the empty intention
of medicine and discovery and whatever fails
to reflect light.

Fall 2015
Dilip Mohapatra

CALLING
No one laments and sings a mirthless dirge
when the magnificence of the magnolia wilts
or the glow of the marigold
fades away
and lying in a heap in a corner
of the florist's shop
they wait to be stuck in bouquets
and strung into garlands
like the stiffs in a mortician's parlour waiting to be embalmed.
In their death they decorate the coffins and the palls
their lifeless smiles stay frozen on the wreaths
and on the garlands that adorn the gold framed photos
of the dear departed
passively partaking
the aroma of the joss sticks
and basking in the reflected glory
of the candles that burn so very benevolently.
Like the mendicants scoop
holy water from the holy river Ganga and offer the same back to her
they perhaps live their lives only to die one day
and make an offering of their very own deaths to the dead
and add colour to many other dark and colourless deaths.

PHASED OUT
I distinctly remember
when in class seven
the water colour that I made
for a children's art competition
and which had won the third prize.
The highlights were the dark fringes
of the coconut frond
that slightly encroached into a
luminous full moon hanging
on a somnolent grey sky
undeterred by a thin film of
clouds floating over
the silhouette of a range of hills
while its reflection shimmered
over a flowing stream
interrupted by a black blotch
of a coracle paddled by
a lone traveller.
Now I open my window
to be faced by another window
and I crane my neck to
get a glimpse of the magnificent crescent
but a disc TV antenna stares back at me.
Not to be deterred I venture out
to the open through the phalanx of
tall buildings till I reach
the bridge on the local river
that is almost dry and that waits
for the monsoon rains in the
catchment area to fill her up occasionally.
And here also I have no joy
but to be satisfied with
a diffused translucent patch
behind the thick curtain of smog.

With romanticism sacrificed

on the altar of knowledge
the magical mystery
has melted and sublimated
over time and with it gone
the celebrations of fertility
the baying of the wolves and
lunacy has become just an
etymological legacy
and one doesn't get
moonstruck any more with love
that has devolved to an
arrangement and perhaps more
of a transaction.
The 'Eids' come and go and so do
the 'Karva Chauths' but meanwhile
the time has lost its rhythm and rhyme
and the moon reduced to
just a vestigial habit.

THE ONSLAUGHT
The glyphs from the graves
have raised their heads
and have come alive
like zombies and how
have they invaded
the inner recesses of our hearts
to depict our tears
our pains and agonies
our happiness and glee
our stoic silence
and our rolling on the floor
with laughter.
The colon followed by a hyphen
ending with one of the open
parentheses make us smile
and the other instead
shows our frown
while a zipper across the lips
makes us speechless
and the stuck out tongue
with a wink makes us smirk.
All our emotions
are encapsulated in
those mini faces
called emojis that abound
in all our net chats and responses
with the occasional
thumbs ups and downs
claps and clasped palms in prayers.

The differences amongst

The Egyptians
The Mayans
The Aztecs
get dissolved
for the distances are dead
while boundaries
have become permeably
amorphous
with the new age metaphors
lavishly spiced up with xoxo's
for hugs and kisses
tempered with the universal lol's
rotflmao's and their ilk.

Fall 2015
Daniel Adler

The Acheron
It was before dusk in late winter and a golden light covered the forests and ancient hills that had been
home to fauns and nymphs before the construction of Eleftherios Venizelos International. On the subway to
Akropoli, where I walked to my hostel, I passed pools of golden light that fell between shutters into the
cobbled streets. Behind those windows, Greeks laughed, danced and drank wine, older men carried their
wives on their arms, and the smell of roasted lamb mingled with the salt of the sea. Perhaps it was the
adrenaline of arriving in a new place, perhaps the infectious joy of the Greek people, but I felt very much
alive, despite the Aegean wind that forced me to turn up my collar.
Above, the Parthenon reigned over the ancient city; its regal lights illuminated the rocky Acropolis
like a sculpture stuck in the sky for all to gaze upon. For thousands of years it had represented a sense of self
for these people, a reassurance about who they were and how they had suffered in solidarity to overcome
and create a pinnacle of civilization, a democracy capable of both art and war. It is strange to look at a place
and understand that it is not living, that it is rock and dirt and none of it conscious, and yet feel somehow
that there is nonetheless in any land sacred or fallow an energy that shapes and forms it into what it is.
Perhaps it is an accumulation of history. Time imbues every land with a difference that the
conscientious observer can feel. Sometimes it is the presence of animals, sometimes humans, sometimes it is
the absence of life, a prehistoric emptiness, that we feel, as in the American West, where the ruins of time
have changed the landscape from a tropical playground into a barren desert. The Acropolis had for
thousands of years been a site of human suffering and glories, and remained such an acme of humanity that
still it made me and, I imagined, the Greeks around me, feel very much at home, as though the city were the

same size of twenty-five hundred years before. If a hundred humans stood arm to arm, each representing a
generation, we would stretch back to when this temple was built, a hundred lives traced directly backwards
through time would lead us to that era when families anointed stones with oil before setting out on journeys
and prayed to half-mortal creatures and gods who lived on mountaintops, who decided the fates of men
while wishing to be part of their world. I had longed for that era when I was younger, and now here at the
foot of the Parthenon, I partook of it by associating with the land those ancestral feelings of worship and
reverence that had stayed with it for so many centuries.
Around the block in my hotel, a Greek girl with thin arms welcomed me with a broad smile, teeth
that stuck out slightly but did not detract from her beauty. I paid my board and she handed me the key to my
dorm. Casting a side-look at her slender body as the elevator doors dinged open, I stepped into the mirrored
box and pressed five with a sense of relief from having reached my long-awaited destination.
Once I placed my bag near a lower bunk in the twelve-bed dorm, well-lit, spacious, with an affixed
bathroom and a window that looked north into a garden, I took the elevator back downstairs to the kitchen,
where a handful of young people were cooking and drinking ouzo. I paused in the doorway, recalling the fun
of hostel life as a young man in my twenties.
My first time in Athens my friend from New York, Karl, came to meet me in late February of that
year. He was also traveling in Europe, had come from Berlin, where it was minus twenty. He had been
staying with a young Spaniard named Antonio who had caught a chill. Together in their drafty apartment
Karl had tended to him for the month he was there, bringing him blankets and keeping the wood heater full.
The winter deepened and by the time Karl was ready to leave, the Spaniard was coughing up blood. Karl
assumed he wouldnt make it to spring. He told me about this and I laughed, thinking that he was joking,
but now I recalled how serious he was about most things, how like me, people often thought we were joking
when we were most serious, and I sent a flare of pity out to Antonio, wherever he was. Karl and I had gone
on to have the time of our lives; he was there with me when I first visited the Parthenon and together we
toured the rest of Athens. At that time there were riots against the Germans and graffiti that called Merkel a
Nazi and advocated leaving the EU stretched across gray downtown buildings. One evening, over a dessert
of strawberries and feta, a girl from our hostel asked us if wed heard about the riot in Syntagma Square. We
shrugged and Karl suggested we participate in it. I agreed. We walked down the street to buy a bottle of ouzo

and came back to the kitchen, where our hostel-mates were already gathering for the evening. We shared
the liquor and a couple of hours later, when it was empty, left for a bar with beers in our hands. At a corner,
Karl placed his empty beer bottle in an overfilled trash can. It fell with a clink and rolled in a circle around
its perimeter. He bent and set it upright. Thats no way to start a riot, I yelled. I picked it up and threw it
across the street. It shattered, scaring a Greek couple. Karl laughed; the others jeered. I kicked a cab as it was
going past. Within a couple of years after our return to the States, Karl and I drifted apart. I didnt miss him
much. He found a girlfriend and moved in with her. He stopped doing the things he said he was going to do.
I shook my head. Seven years had passed since my first time in Athens, and I felt much, much older. Instead
of meeting the other hostelites, I walked around the corner and down the block to a souvlaki place.
I had to get up early.
When I arrived at the village of Glyki the next afternoon, it was a couple of shops selling cheese and
olives, a few houses and the Acheron flowing darkly below, as it had been doing for millennia. Remote river
of the Ancient World, whose shores were the banks of Limbo on which flies and wasps chased those who
could do neither good nor evil, today this river is just forty miles long, and no Charon I could see ferried
souls across its banks. This stream was the boundary of the Greeks known world, the green waters flowing
slowly between canyon walls and rocky shores, all quiet except for an occasional birdcall and the waters
warble. A breeze picked up from the north, and I buttoned up my jacket, not knowing what else I had
expected.
A drone rose behind me, and I turned to see five or six wasps. Farther upstream, a crowd of nearly
naked people pushed and shoved, the smaller ones splashing into the cold water, trying to escape from a
swarm of black insects hovering around them, from which the stragglers buzzing around me must have
come. There came a rhythmic plashing and I turned to see a man in a longboat crossing the shallows, its
bottom scraped the rocks as he came ashore, calling in Greek to the herd running from the stinging insects.
He was tall and sickly-looking, his limbs gangly yet sinewy, strong. His face was sallow, and his gapped teeth
showed as he heckled the once-ambivalent. But they were not people; their bodies were transparent and
light; they floated, weaving and ducking, hollering, their shouts of fear echoing sharply along the river. They
stepped in the shallows and into the ferry, lips pursed, eyes big, some panting in relief.

A man in a white toga and sandals appeared out of the corner of my eye; behind him, another in a red
robe. Both had aquiline noses, wide brows and crowns of laurels. The togaed man turned to his companion,
pointing across the river. They waited until those lonesome souls had filled the boat and then the togaed
man began to converse with the ferryman. They also sat in the boat, toward the bow. Forgetting myself, I
called, Can I come too?
They looked up at me. The man in white called a phrase in Latin, and I cursed myself, wishing I had
been a better student. Though I imagined myself in their tradition, a possible third in their descent to the
underworld, time and my own ignorance had made it so that we could not understand each other. I
summoned the little Italian I knew and tried again, Posso venire?
The man with the red headdress looked sharply at me and said something to his guide, who
conferred with him, avoiding my eyes, but the boat was already drifting backward. Charon stood,
maneuvering his oars, swiveling his craft in the slowly-flowing river. I thought of swimming up beside them,
trying to climb in, but I was afraid that if I entered the waters I might remain there, my neck tilted back,
forever stuck in an attempt to breathe over the wavelets. Instead I stood, watching them cross the shallows
and disembark on the cliffside bank, the robed men wandering off together while the ferryman herded the
feathery bodies in the opposite direction. I was alone again.
How many others had come to this shore, hoping to see Charon? How many had he ignored? I felt
guilt for neglecting my Latin, being unable to utilize my learning when I had needed it most. Above all, I
wondered if my attention to the intervening knowledge from Dantes time to my own had been for naught, if
I had instead paid more attention to the classics, Virgil might have allowed me to join him and his disciple
on their descent, to walk through that walled garden with the Ancient Greats, or if now because of the
advances in science and technology, the list of men neither happy nor sad who competed for a position in
Limbo, were too many and I was yet another, born into a different tradition altogether. And yet while Dante
was born of a different tradition than Virgil, they at least spoke the same language, had the same culture. No
matter how badly I wanted to be part of what my predecessors had created, I would never be able to; my
pantheon of scientists and explorers had too little in common with theirs, more had passed between my
world and Dantes Christian one than between his era and Virgils pagan time. For me, both mens
worldviews were intangible no matter how badly I wanted to participate in them: I was literally from a world

that did not exist to either, an America still two hundred years away from being discovered for il Poeta; I was
as foreign to them in my present as the civilization of Atlantis was to their past. How vain of me to think that
I could sit in the same boat as either of those greats!
The rustic beauty of limestone cliffs and Ioannian forest was all that existed of that lost world of the
Ancients. I could only approximate the past through feeling the land; I had to do more, to experience
products of beauty made by men from their times in order to know how they lived, thought and loved. No
matter how much I thought I knew or felt of that Attic wilderness, only remnants of it remained in my
century, where the closest approximations of those forgotten eras were the curved handles of Greek hydriai,
the straight nose of a Roman marble, or the vaulted arch of a Florentine doorway.

Fall 2015
I Goldfarb

Promised Land
for IJ

Terre promise
Sous ta peau je vois couler
les sources des fleuves-mres
au-del des collines hautes de ton visage
les vallons interdits font vivre
tels fourmillements telles peuplades
Mose den haut jtreins
toute ta carte
terre promise terre refuse

Promised Land
Beneath

your

skin

see

shimmerings of sense, the simplest attraction

imagines depths from sight abstracted
as touch penetrates the skin
into invisible flesh
attributes are all you are
but capable of assimilation
one day at lunch
a chicken-wing became you
as well as several onlookers
absorbed in white flashes of teeth
taut enough to write on
surrounds her almost wholly
but the subject of the narrative
lies in the orifices
naming coincidentally the locus of the promise
cannot draw nearer its object
existing only before it
the land dissolved in mist yet unmistaken
unfigured yet compact
from that point peripheral
other to significance
the eye would commemorate
only a lash remains
of vision more than sight

flowing
process not structure
disorder self-maintained
rhythms first felt in the blood
linking river to river
the garden forever encircled
the sources

of the rivers

maternal

promise beginnings denied

ancestral lines converging
to common pursuits and places
the dance turning inward
from surface discretion
nothing is known
save that the sunken island
transfigured them to sea
paradox, self-substitution
the landscape fills out from within
like Combray from a teacup
its membrane undisturbed

At that moment she stood in the center of the universe. The sun illuminated her like a pyre. Her mouth was
open to speak. Beneath her clothing her body was infinite. I was reduced to a point.
No description of the universe could endure as long as that moment.
Beyond

the high

hills

all models of perception

stretches of absence reward
exceeded appetites
jutted crags
wind-eaten by the desert
pliant cones
await the eyes credulity
the indifferent climb
I aspire airless to ascend
imbibing with an infant tongue
sweet milk sublimed to snow

of your face

the valleys

forbidden

nourish

only the defects beckon

a sometime blemish or timeless
a smile whose wound lies deeper
as substance transcendently distant
belies its accidents
of earthly delight
are lush with the fruit of glaciers
depth from height is endowed
a womans body like language
signifies through contrast
to self-denegation
recompense ever delayed
perfection unto death
image unknowable
never yet innocent
spero quia absurdum

parched hopes of salvation

tearless eyes transfixed
on vision become sight
had we forty years more
to stand in its presence
such multitudes
surround the central pyre
unsinged by the conflagration
at an awesome distance
the fire consumes me
such peoples
whose baleful idols withhold
from us the sacred precinct
disfigure them to dust
for man to be new-molded
At the doorstep time and space are immeasurable. No dream-change from together to apart, but the
wrenching of great differences of degree. My arms held the earths circumference. I still bear the mark of its
mountains and oceans.

Moses

from above

face to face with otherness

led the anonymous race
to the sunswept expanse of desire
the sunset and the seas
an island innocent of life
its surface already quadrillated
in centerless interdiction

I embrace

the map

entire

land

promised

more than air in indifference

to know love and lands refusal
realizes our lives equidistance
lies flat upon mountains
yet creased by meandering roadbeds
actual tracks of potential
return to the center, or best
exceed the periphery
at a proper distance
hair to heels in vision
each gestural transformation
leaves desires kernel fixed
wet with tears and milk
my sons hard palms shall press
the heat of your soil
but not even in loves dry death
shall I lie within you
unique chimaera to each
her body led us forth
long arms in her hair like serpents
mouths open at her breasts
on the cinders of domesticity
we lay in alien bondage
feet twitching with lust
for the hillocks of sand

land
to which
space of
openness
windblown scent of lilies
footfalls of far caravans
sun-flashes at the horizon
refused

imaginations blasphemy
in vision too nearly possession
only ineffable absence
inspires the sightless singer

Else would cease the knowledge beyond time that death and life signify. I taste yet now too much the
sugared wine. The sole sign exceeds the fragility of the promise.

Avatars of the muse

i
I see of you but what a child could see
your hair whatever color and your eyes'
youth flowering for another and for me
verses to sing desires melancholy
But being One you cannot multiply
your infertilitys my guarantee
I love your absence absent my success
if you could love me youd love someone else
Stay frozen then forever and be mine
Yet the geology of flowing ice
is but a viscous science of decay
while in a teaspoon of unplanned recall
long centuries of dying are unlearned
reader of Proust youve not forgotten this

ii
All language writes itself a Madeleine
I learn to live from moments without life
to see by odors sightless memory
of roses shut unbloomed within your album
or love in sacrificing human hearts
to my insouciant muse so rich in time
whose love-tales all reproachful of my own
I have no heart to voice
Where immobility is permanence
absence surrounds her person like a night
I would not dare a closer view of it
changing the little that in time we must
with what new song could I recompensate
the ceaseless retrogression of the muse?

Half-sonnets from abroad

i
This spurious sweetness conceals
the dreams bad debt to the daylight
the bent of an old relation
subsists in an absence of substance
so I will speak not of love
but privation, nor even of friendship
but the wry joy of endless awaiting

ii
No more nostalgia the present
is equally gone with the past
we have grown older not closer
nor farther but across the ocean
face to face in recognition
Belongings not for us nor separation
this nameless being-fors our authenticity

iii
In the solemnity of old desire
no longer knowing physical from moral
I ask of you no token of consent
still less acknowledged reciprocity
exchanging words or silence
awaiting or receiving
our distance is our presence

iv
A cabin in the woods beside a lake
the well-worn idyll of the Suisse Romande
know I what populates your solitude
the petty comforts of your intimacy?
I would know all these things and yet renounce
all knowing but a postcard from afar
to know your landscape is to know the rest

v
Theres no love without irony
Madonnas stripped on bloody shrines
their pedestals ground down like bone
we burn what we adore
or else indifferent hearts conceal
a sacred precinct others might
call loveyou shake your head, you smile

Envoi
We sang the marvelous immortal flesh
as if it needed not our singing
regeneration's ruse deferred
in paeans of thanksgiving
Of love's young opera the music
fades but in the words
we hear the music

Fall 2015
Ian McPhail

I saw a roasted duck fly along a lemonade urine sky falling apart like meat off the
Bone
it made no sound except for the explosive releases of gas used to power its flight
it farted splintered bone it farted the body parts of babies
the smell was of
the notion that I would die in the haze of golden music note, without timbre,
I could not determine what time of the day it was
I was upside down I think
the duck long out of sight was its strategy BBQ
I ran away to my home and found sanctuary
in the bomb news
The world was at it again

gray eyes
small pan face
high temp cheek low temperature
I like you with your glasses on
They keep the calendar together
in mathematical flux
landscapes of lenses
pointed diamondly
at heat quasared
death
sure sugar
look
look

the sun is a baked apple

mirrored eyelids spying

burnt sugar each other, turn coats

of trapped soft(ness
)pastels

the sky is a cherry pit

found found
the sky is a cream pit
the further expanse
the further enthralling expanse
the further
the the further cream pit
the open the
the open open
all
open

boy egg
for breakfast boy
a crap shorty
fling forever
a linoleum shit hoot!
dancer in the hay
boy barn
chicken
boy egg
for breakfast boy
a crap shorty
fling forever
a linoleum shit hoot!
dancer in the hay
boy
barn chicken

BARK! tree mouth

noise mother root throat
swallow a pine
swallow an oak
swallow a weeping willow
swallow a maple
swallow a sequoia
swallow a birch
swallow cedar
rubber cactus
rubber grass
rubber needle
rubber blade
rubber bark
rubber skin
swallow the quiet
cut the shit!
SHHHHH!

a whole crack mouth, a subtile cracked mouth

he doesnt have a real mouth
he doesnt have a real life
hes a lifer to a real mouth
they is a mouther to a mouth cancer
mouth
like a butterfly grin of cancer
its like a short moth
mother of the black dust

Fall 2015
Jamie McFaden

Home for Thanksgiving

Dead weight is heavy, but drunk weight is fucking lead, Tiffany says as she carries my 23-year-old
sister, Reese, through my parents living room like a bride. When they make it to the yellow-tiled bathroom in
the hallway, Reese spews the Blue Motherfuckers and Liquid Marijuanas into the toilet. I think of the word
azure and fingerpaint, but am rattled back into the moment when I hear the next thing Tiffany says.
Top or bottom?
Mumble-moans from drunk baby sister.
Pants or shirt? Tiffany asks, as if this makes the best sense in the world.
It must, because Reese pats her jeans. Tiffany yanks them off with the kind of precision that only four
years in a sorority house can teach. I place seasoned oyster crackers and a plastic cup of water beside her. She
looks like shes eight years old, lying there, now passed out in just her underwear and a sweater. Im pissed that
we had to leave the bar to take her home early, so I plan on leaving her there like that for our parents to see in a
few hours.

She whines like a puppy in her boulder-heavy sleep like she always has. My mind goes back to thirteen
and staying up late with Tiffany to watch Sleepy Hollow. Scared shitless, we couldnt sleep after the movie
ended. So we found the ink daubers my mom and grandma used at Knights of Columbus on Wednesday nights.
Reeses little face became our Bingo card, spotted with blues and greens. Even our teeny-bopper bitch squeals
did not wake her.
That night, I felt guilty and rubbed off the dots with a soap-and-water washcloth.
This night, I yank her up by her arms and drag her to her childhood room. Dont care if I leave a bruise
on her. I place a black bucket on the floor and tilt her head towards it.
I feel bad for thinking Reeses inevitable hangover is well-deserved and tell myself I wont say anything
to our parents about how she nodded off on a barstool and had to be carried home.
But Im not sure I trust me.

Half-Here

Mom was just some pretty bartender with an ass shaped like a pumpkin. Dad was just a coastguardsman
docked in a town that only had draft beer available until 1am on Saturday nights. They went home together after
Mom closed the bar. Now Im here. She says hes a lousy drunk. He says shes been a slut since birth. I dont
know whos more right.
Ive seen Mom drink her share of Jim Beam. Her eyes fix on the TV while the ice melts in the Beam
and Diet Pepsi she clutches in a Tom and Jerry jelly jar. She stirs one finger in it slowly, doesnt hear me when I
ask if I can have one of her Diet Pepsi cans. She looks so happy in the glow of the television. Much happier
than when shes trying to figure out what breakfast to make the Wednesday morning man in the oil-spotted blue
jeans sitting across from me at breakfast. They must all be mechanics, these guys who have cheesy scrambled
eggs and buttered toast with us. I dont talk to them much. Instead, I trace the pattern of the wood lanes
streaking the breakfast table. I like that they all seem to end at a dark knot that swirls at my side. Mom tells me
to quit it and answer the man sitting at our table. I never know their names, but she calls them all Baby.
And Ive seen Dad bring his share of women home. They have high-pitched giggles, some louder than
others, but they all seem to have the same pair of high heels. Ones that clack clack along the linoleum all the
way back to the bedroom. I call these women one-timers. Dad says I better never bother them. If the house
catches fire, I know stop, drop, and roll then 911. They dont stay for breakfast. They dont ask me stupid
questions, either, which I like. They grind cigarette butts down into the brown ashtray in the hallway bathroom
that we share. I study the lipstick prints on the filtered side. Once, I discovered a purple kiss mark smudged

between the tip of the filter and those double green rings. I mustve missed Miss Purple Lips. Sometimes they
come in after Ive fallen asleep. When I grow up, thats what color Im going to wear on my lips.
I think since Mom and Dad met fast and did it to each other so fast that I must notve gotten time to
grow the way other kids do. Im only half-here. They talk at me, and their words sorta float through the air.
Stinky and fluttering, the way the liquor boxes spit ashes as they burn in the burn barrel out behind Dads
trailer. But being half-here, you can get away with more stuff than if you were all the way here. I try to be good,
but sometimes being bad just gets after me, so Ill steal a pack of sunflower seeds from the gas station at the
corner of Moms apartment complex. I swallow the shells so she wont know I took them. You have to grind
them down with your back teeth like a stegosaurus would so they dont jab you in the throat when you swallow.
I dont know if Mom would really notice anyway because a lot of mornings she has one of her bad headaches or
cries mascara spider legs down her face because last nights Baby wont let her make him cheesy scrambled
eggs.
If I had to pick, Id say I like it better when Mom and Dad act like what they say the other one is. Mom
just stares, and her eyes are like the living room fish tank when she sips her Jim Beam. And dads one-timers
never try to wiggle their fingers down the waistband of my pajama bottoms. Being half-here is alright. I just
wish I got to be called Baby once in a while.

The Beneath Blight

In January of her senior year at college, Sophie discovered jagged bits of flesh blossoming from her
vagina. She rubbed her hand over the space in the shower, feeling the burls that had sprouted from front to back.
Her worst enemy in high school had contracted genital herpes from fucking the boys who returned home
from college during winter break. They came back wearing new clothes and listening to new bands, their
stamens full of disease and desire. Sophie found it fitting that a girl with such a mildewed personality now had
the twat to match. As if the ugly moved from her heart down.
Sophie didnt fuck those kinds of boys. Sophie had fucked only two boys. The medical student she loved
now, and the unfaithful professional mover she had loved for the first three years of college.
The month before she sprouted the lumpy flesh, a story ran on 60 Minutes about a Mexican man who
became a tree. The human papillomavirus wildfired from between his legs to the entirety of his body. The knots
covered his skin completely, transforming him into a living willow. His flesh-bark pained him, and he wept sap
as he spoke.
She told the boy she loved that she suspected she was now marred, expecting him to evaporate as she
spoke. His hand was smooth against her burrs, but he swore he didnt care. He told her that one out of four
people had it. That it would not turn her into a tree.
They sat together on a worn quilt, its threadbare surface barely separating them from the cold earth. In
the park, with tennis shoe scrapes and moss-covered trees filling the space around them, he asked her to move

in with him. She agreed under the condition that he go with her to the clinic to burn away the ridged buds. By
now, he had them, too.
They waited in the dingy room of the free clinic. The chairs were placed in rows so the patients could
get a good view of the video that played on loop about a guy who gave his girlfriend herpes. Sophie insisted that
condoms always be worn. Flesh against flesh had been enough, though.
The boy she loved held her hand, pressing his palm to hers and squeezing the bones in her fingers
against one another. She noticed a man in a sleeveless shirt and his girlfriend sitting a few rows in front of them.
The mans skin was yellow and his back muscles tensed through the thin, dirty cotton. When the video got to
the part where the guy apologized to the woman for infecting her, the yellow man wrapped his forearm around
the girlfriends neck. He yanked her close and held her there so firmly that from behind it looked as if they were
one misshaped form.
After she was scorched with chemicals for one long hour, the boy she loved bought her a green dress
and took her dancing. With every twirl on the hardwood floor, she scanned the ground for bits of her bark that
may have dropped away.

Fall 2015
Jessy Brodsky Vega

White Thoughts
White, perishable light flooded the bed side and penetrated the lids of my eyes. I sighed into the side
of my arm. A few minutes passed and there were no sounds in the morning of my room. A glance at the clock
told me that it was barely eight oclock. I snapped the sheets away from my chest and rolled out of bed.
Seemed like a Sunday. I looked about the room of disheveled clothing and peeling posters. No one with me.
The quiet resounding, heavy, I bent down and nudged the needle over a record in the player on the
floor with its long cord linked to the wall, then left the room. The hallway was dark, wood creaking as I
walked, and the bathroom to the sideglaring, gathered white. I peed with a sigh into the toilet.
"Yo," I heard from behind me.
"What is it?"
"Put some fucking clothes on. She doesn't want to see that." Freddy said, with his
girlfriend sprawled across the couch. He pulled the blanket over his red curls and her light swept buttermilk
colored hair. They giggled and murmured under the blanket.
I left the toilet seat up, brushed myself off, and returned to my room to sit and
close my eyes and recoil until the hour melted into something more reasonable.
He was so close to jumping on it. Just a few inches more. I was clenching my
hands open and closed.
"God damn it, James! Get on the skateboard before it rolls down the hill!"

James let the skateboard tumble away. I threw my head into my hands and shuddered.
James had long dirty blond hair and as I stared at him now, hopefully in a
menacing, threatening way, he began to tie it backwards with a hair band. He lit a Marlboro 27 from his
golden pack of cigarettes and rubbed his rough, blond speckled chin.
"What is your problem, Dylan?"
I sighed and tried to calm myself by breathing slow but my heart beat all the more rapidly. I reached
down and picked my beanie hat off the ground and smoothed it down over my head. James stared at me
with his cigarette drawn to the side of his mouth, squinting and smiling.
"Get your damn skateboard and lets go. Can't even do a simple trick."
He laughed and stepped towards me, dragging his cigarette in and out of his mouth. He let the
cigarette drop just a bit and blew a circle of smoke between my eyes.
"Shit," I seethed and pushed him back.
He stumbled backwards but the ends of his boots caught him and he laughed. I couldn't help smiling.
The acrid smoke came into my lungs and gathered around my clothes, scenting me as it liked. I threw my fist
at him and surprised, James fell back to his elbows on the ground. The cigarette still dangled innocently
from his mouth. I stood as a shadow covering him.
James slowly got to his feet and his face was serious, the jaw set tight. He was several inches taller
than me, above six feet, and much broader in the chest. He dropped the cigarette to the ground and crushed
it under his boot. "I'm not going to go on with this because I would fuck you up much worse than you could
do to me. But you're lucky that wimp fist of yours didn't actually hit me."
I laughed with an exuberant "Hah!", the only kind of laughter I seemed capable these days of
compelling. "One day you should try me. I really hope to find out. It's my most sincere wish. A fair fight with
the honest James."
James grimaced. "Fucking mad cat you are. Stop that clown laugh. I don't know if I can deal with it for
another year."
I slapped him on the shoulder. "I wasn't really going to hit you."
James shrugged and began to walk ahead. I kicked my board down to the ground and rolled ahead of
him.

Walking down Middle Path, I dug my hands into my pockets and stared towards my feet. I was
kicking up neat little pebbles to the grass. At the end of the path stood historic dorms, stretching their
buttresses as far into the clouds as they could.
I had told no one where I was going. My suite-mates were asleep. It was probably seven thirty in the
morning. No one here would question if I'd spent the night in my bed or been in my room behind a locked
door for weeks. Boarding school had been a bit like that. I'd disappear and reappear and no one would notice
and nothing would change whether I was around or not. At the boarding school, there were skinny black
gates shooting several feet above ones head in every direction. On the college campus, there were no gates.
Fields stretched for miles. I couldn't see roads, but I could smell the pulsation of the open world. The tilled,
nearby fieldsthe old, unadulterated clusters of trees outside the path, cleared away only in certain,
intentional areas so as to suggest to the student that he or she had stumbled upon a secret enclosure.
"I. .. don't know. Just where I'm going," I sang. "But I gonna try ... for the kingdom if I can..."
"Velvet Underground?"
I turned around, startled, wrung silent. A boy stood behind me with long, white blond hair tied back
to the nape of his neck. His face was stark, pale and plain, pierced by large, blue eyes.
"Ralphy!"
Ralphy smiled and it made his pale face seem wider and more impossible. He stretched his hand out,
but I hugged his broad body close to mine.
"Jesus, how long has it been?"
Ralphy shrugged. "Three years. Not since you graduated."
"Hah!" I bellowed and slapped him hard upon the back. "I'd forgotten ... your mom called my mom.
Told me you were going to go to school here."
Yup.
I stepped back and crossed my arms and gave him another once over. "How funny. I was just thinking
of our boarding school."
Ralphy's eyelids twitched. "Why?"
I smiled. "You grew up a bit. Have you picked your classes and everything?"

He nodded. "Course, man. I just picked random ones though. I don't know what I want to be or
anything."
Yeah me neither.
Ralphy frowned. His mouth was too wide, his face glowing in youth.
"But you should already have a major... "
"Hah!" The dark pupils, stark, circled by such light irises, darted back and forth. I thought of my own
eyes, unable to discern so plainly, tiny and dark as coal. My mother said they pressed into my head, literally
and figuratively deep. Mothers always find ways to compliment flaws. "Yeah, Ralphy, I have a major. I'm
doing English."
"Oh, that's cool. Will you be a journalist or something?"
I turned away from the historic buildings, back to the little town and my little white house in the
distance. "Maybe. What are you doing up so early Ralphy?"
"I wake up early these days but I got some last minute things to do too."
I looked at him from the corner of my eye, wondering if he would smile again in that naive, simple
way. He did and I laughed until my back buckled and I was slapping my hand across my knee.
"Man Dylan... "
"I wake up early too," I said.
Ralphy chuckled into his hand and looked me over. I let him and uncrossed my arms. "Are you on
crack right now or something?"
"Hah!" I started walking down the straight path. "I wish."
Gonna miss this place, the coffee shop," Freddy said, settling back into his seat and stretching his
arms back.
"Will you shut up, jack ass. You have a whole year here still. Trust me, you won't miss it by the end,"
James snorted.
"Well, not all of us can be super seniors," I said.

James punched me in the arm and I recoiled, a smile plastered to my face. I lifted up and walked
away from the table to a counter and began reading a paper hanging on the wall about the local distribution
of apples.
"You want to order?
A freckled girl behind the counter was blinking her almond shaped eyes in my direction.
"Yeaah," I drawled. "Could I get green tea in a ceramic cup?
She turned around and I went back to reading the paper on the wall. A woman, or rathera girl
stepped into my sight. The text upon the wall became a blur. She had brown hair which rested upon bare
shoulders and a white hat pushing the hair further down. I stepped back and hit the napkin and milk stand
behind me.
The girl of dark hair glanced my way once and then turned away. She had a wide face though it
narrowed towards the chin with a delicate, sloping nose, and a full bottom lip. Her eyelashes brushed her
cheek as she looked down at a menu. She glanced back at me and her mouth curled down in a sort of
indignant frown. A white skirt flowed loosely around her thighs and she wore knee high socks.
"Hi," I said.
She looked up at me, her eyes steadying. "Hey," she said quietly and returned to her menu.
"Green tea!" The freckled girl handed me my drink and I took it, retreating as slowly as I could.
I wanted to take the knee high socks girl with my tea and sit her down next to me at the table. But I
kept her there. When I sat down, Freddy kicked me in the shin.
"What?" I said.
"Stop staring at freshmen girls, you fuck off."
"I thought I restrained myself," I said.
"What?" Freddy asked. James shook his head.
Right on the path, adjacent to the music hall, sat a bench older than the others. It tilted to the right
and one of its peg legs was sinking into a hole. Every year that I'd come back, it was more rugged and
weathered, more spent, but still allowed to sink and sink, buckle and wilt. When I sat upon it, the wood
creaked and when I lay and arched my back, it bent with me. Across from it was an oak tree planted by some

class a hundred years ago. Now the tree stretched way overhead, towering over the bench, and forever
shadowing it.
If I was a painter, I'd paint it. I'd note the colors of it and the bends and the ridges. But looking down
at my hands, they weren't soft enough. The ends of them were bitten and flattened from stabbing typewriter
keys. So, that was my affliction. But there was so much beauty in the tree. One medium couldn't possibly
cover it. My dearest typewriter...!
Someone waved at me but I was too apart to notice who it was. The sun beat down and pounded into
my chest. Class would be starting in a few minutes.
"Wait, wait! I'm in the rotation too!" Rachel stuck her tongue out and flattened her eyes.
"You look like a fish," I said.
James knocked into my shoulders.
Rachel jerked her shoulders back and made a "hmph" sound. She laughed like a child princess and
giggled when she wasn't laughing. She couldn't sit in silence. I wondered what she was doing in my house.
James moved behind her. He wrapped both legs around her waist and situated himself so his knees
touched hers and his arms dangled from her shoulders.
"Hey!" she protested, beaming.
I passed the bowl to her and she had James light it for her.
"Blow harder, girl! Harder! Suck it in."
She coughed once the tip was removed from her mouth and shoved the bowl into
James' hand. He sucked hard and passed it along.
The door opened and a buoyant "Hey" bounded through the room.
"Gretch!" Rachel jumped up from James' lap and hugged her friend.
She turned to all of us with a furred boa strangling her neck and lifted a foot, well shrouded in thick
animal hide, to the table.
"Hey baby," she said.
Gretchen's blond hair was dried in an almost dread-locked style, though without
all the products, it would have been completely straight, dead as straw. Her face was

freckled but delicately, softly. She had green eyes and a wide cherry mouth which smiled at me now
wrongly, falsely sweet.
"Hey babe."
She moved past me and went to the kitchen to fix herself a drink. The bowl was
passed to me and I lit it, swirling the end of the lighter around the ashes, and sucking the petals of smoke
into my lungs.
When she returned a few minutes later, she carried a handle and some glasses
before jumping in the rotation.
I poured myself whiskey and sat back to drink. The group kept on talking,
Gretchen as well. I watched them all as if they were part of a live portrait, singing to me. Gretchen's eyes
trailed my way every once and a while and I focused only upon her. She had short eyelashes which rounded
her green stone eyes. I wasn't sure if the conversation had finished, but the bowl was cashed and I had drunk
the whiskey. I lifted up, snatched Gretchen's hand, and pulled her away from the group.
"Dylan!" she cried, though she understood me. We meandered into the hallway and I kissed her
reddened lips. She pressed me into the wall and lifted my shirt up. I undid my belt and my pants slipped
right down, always having been too big.
I knocked the door to my bedroom open and we collapsed inside.
Bright, white light again flooding my room. I never closed the curtains. No one
ever walked by early enough to catch me sleeping.
It was very quiet. The sun moving achingly slow upon the twisted sheets. She was gone. On my back,
I reached my hands up toward the ceiling fan, swirling as slowly as possible through the spaces between my
fingers.
Gretchen never stayed the night. It had been two years and I could count on my fingers when I'd
woken up and she was next to me.
A sudden pounding made a calamity against my door. I gripped the covers and glanced at the door.
"Dylan? Dylan?"
I turned over on my side and reached my arms out to the center of the room.

"Dylan? What the hell. Open the door."

Then slithered off the bed, feet first, and settled upon the floor in an indian style. After snapping my
fingers back and stretching them out, I brought them to rest upon my typewriter, which sat upon a turned
over plastic box.
"Dylan!?"
Inspiration. Inspiration. I looked out toward the dead early morning streets
and the sunlight spreading across, illuminating the granite. My room was littered with
clothes, just thrown everywhere, and I had a skateboard mounted to the wall above rows
of posters I'd found or bought for cheap.
"Holy shit, man."
I began typing whatever came to my head.
"Oh now I can hear you typing."
It was a man talking. Probably James or Freddy. It didn't matter who. The sun
had barely dulled to a yellow. It was still so bright and high in the sky. And I was alone
in my room again.
A party was to be held in a house on the outskirts of campus, the only kind of scene in which the
underage students could drink.
I knocked on Freddy's door after slipping on an army green jump suit and tying a bow tie around my
neck. He didn't answer. I opened the door without waiting.
Freddy was crouched over his girlfriend. He had pants on but no shirt and she
was naked below him, her blond hair spread about the dirtied floor, her own discarded
clothes, and her bare shoulders.
"Freddy," I said. I kept my distance at the doorway, my hand steady upon the knob.
"What?"
"Let's go. To the liquor party," I demanded.
"Later man. Dana doesn't want to come."
Dana groaned beneath him and I caught one of her eyes, bare and wide.

"What! You are leaving... Freddy?" she inquired, breathless.

Freddy bumped his head against hers. He was either whispering in her ear or biting it.
I scanned the room, trailing past the knocked over lamp, its fading yellow light,
the clothes, the food, and the lines on the table.
"Let me do a line?"
Freddy was still against her. She was making slight sounds. "Clothes, clothes, clothes .. " she
murmured.
"Ok...all right," Freddy said. He lifted off of her and began collecting her things. She haphazardly
covered her breasts and started to shake. I didn't bother looking her over.
I swooped down to the table and used a rolled up dollar bill to snort through my nose. The powder
flew up my nostril like a bullet and I tossed my head back, not because I needed to.
Freddy dressed Dana and she collapsed against his old clothes, smiling.
"I'm going to try and sleep instead!" she said too loudly.
"Whatever, fine," Freddy said, standing up and looking down at me as I was
hunched over the table. "Let's go," he said, snatching my hand and dragging me up.
We arrived at the party rather late and most of the alcohol was spent. My hands
had started to shake and I lay myself gently against the wall as if it were a bed and had
swirled around upright. I looked for stars on the ceiling.
"Hey!"
Drunken voices.
"Hey you! With the beanie hat!"
I rolled my head around and someone was looking at me. It was a girl with brown
hair and glowing olive skin.
"I've seen you around. What's your name?''
Her cheeks were reddened, most likely from drinking. She had a cup in her hand
and her eyes were slanting. I smiled at her and thought my own eyes might burst from my head. She was a
gorgeous light, like a star in the darkness of the crowded, bustling hall.
"Dylan," I said. "Who are you?" She was wearing jeans instead of knee high socks.

"Oh, I'm Alice."

Someone snatched her arm and she was jerked away from my sight. Her head
bobbed up once more in the sea of people and I was still smiling at her, a bit taken back.
"Well, see you around!" she yelled.
I watched her disappear into the crowd.
"God, the freshmen are everywhere. Are they letting in more people than before?" James skated
ahead of me and stopped suddenly, kicking his skateboard up. "I barely know the campus anymore." I threw
my backpack on the ground and swerved past him and nearly tripped. "Jesus," he laughed. "Watch yourself."
I cursed and shrugged my shoulders back. The hat on my head had fallen off and
hair was tangled to the tops of my shoulders. "Fuck off."
"Are you antsy or something?"
"Hah!" I pointed at James for a moment until his look turned quizzical and then I
pointed towards the sky in the manner of a gun, and then lowered my hand to point at him. "No."
James laughed and shook his head.
I bent down and picked up my skateboard. "There are a lot of freshmen. I like having the new faces
around."
"Oh yeah?"
I placed my hat squarely back on my head and cracked my neck. "Yeah, yeah."
"We won't be seeing them for a very long time."
I dropped my skateboard back to the ground and slid down the hill. The wind
whipped daggers past my face and tossed my beanie with it. "Shit," I murmured and
flipped my head around. The skateboard tilted out and I went the other way, my feet
sailing to the side. I hit the ground on my elbows and rolled a foot or two before
stopping, splayed on the road as if left for dead.
James hadn't followed me. He must have stayed at the top of the hill. I lifted up and shook my head to
forget the pain and the blood along my arms. It only tickled a little. Even the hairs on my arms were numb.

Maybe I couldn't feel pain anymore. I could just toss myself down the hill, all the way down, and nothing
would happen.
I stood up and was stretching when my shoulder was tapped and the shock of it sent more palpations
through my body than the fall. I tripped again and landed on my knees.
"Oh God. I'm sorry. I just caught your hat and ... "
My hair was too dark, too long. I couldn't see anything. I stared and blinked and blinked, willing
feeling to return to my body.
The person bent like a peasant girl, crushing her skirts with one wayward hand. She took my hat and
placed it on my head, parting the hairs.
"Hey," I said. She looked back at me, a bit wide eyed. "I know you," I smirked.
She didn't say anything, but her full lips began to spread. "You fascinate me."
Her eyes narrowed. "What?"
I reached out a hand to her. She stood up, brushed herself off, and stared for a
moment. Then she gave me her hand and lifted me upwards. Or rather, I lifted myself
up by the warmth of her palm.
"You completely fascinate me."
"Well ... " she said. "You fascinate me."
"Hah!" How wonderful. "Do I? Are you a freshman?"
She cocked her hip out. She had another skirt on, a long one. Her shirt sloped loosely around her
neck, the circular cup of a bone necklace lying upon the hard, flat expanse before the small swell of breasts,
lower, hidden.
"What do you think?" she asked.
"Oh!" I said. I shook my shoulders out. My whole body tingled. "I think you're a freshman."
Her hip faded back to its usual line. "Aww, how did you know?"
I dragged my hand down my face to the stubble along my chin. "I knew... Alice?"
"Yes." Her skin was so rich in color. I couldn't place the color of her eyes. "Dylan. What grade are you
in?"
"Oh, I'm a senior."

"Oh," she said, looking a bit abashed and so I took her hand, and she swayed a
little. "Well, it's nice to officially meet you."
I let her hand go; it seemed as light as a dandelion, and sat back down squarely upon the pavement.
She brushed hair from her eyes and glanced towards the granite where I'd fallen.
The wind had begun rushing so fast that the trees were lurching around us. Alice kept
her hands gathered in her skirt and lowered her head. I let the winds blow over me, wishing for nakedness or
perhaps a softer ground.
"Here, give me another shot."
"Yeah," Freddy said, "me too."
James poured the liquor down so it cascaded over a row of glasses.
We each picked up our share and tapped glasses, smiling broadly, and tipped our heads back. Hard
rushes and I shook my head as a chaser in the end.
The door opened and Gretchen and Rachel waltzed in. Gretchen had exchanged a
fur wrap for a coat but she tossed it away to show off her orange dress again.
"Are you guys drinking?" Rachel cooed. She snatched the handle away from James who pounced on
her and took it back. They both erupted into laughter.
"Are you drinking?" Gretchen asked.
I turned to her and nodded. "Yes, Gretchen."
"How much have you had?"
"Eight shots?"
"Eight! You knew I was coming over though."
"So?''
She slapped me behind the head and I looked to Freddy who raised his eyebrows.
"Are you going to keep hitting me?''
"Are you going to get drunk every night?"
"Maybe. I only have one year left. You have two. You can take it slower."

She took the shot glass from my hand and slammed it on the table. "Well, I wanted to spend some
time with you tonight!"
"Get drunk and we can spend some time together." I batted my eyes at her and met her gaze until she
turned away.
"Let's go into the other room," she said.
"You're sober as hell."
"I'll sober you up."
She dragged me away, not even to my room. We were in the hall. She knocked me on my back,
straddled me, and then pulled me up so I'd kiss her.
"You taste of bitter, bitter alcohol," she hissed.
"Hah," I murmured, but there was no joy in it.
She pushed me down and bit my lip.
"I love you," she said.
"Yes?"
"I'll never let you go," she said.
I lay my head on its side. "Oh, no?"
"Dylan!"
I turned back to her but only to show her one eye. "What?"
"Look at you, look at you." She brushed hair away from my eyes and raked her
hands down to the splatters of hair on my chest. "Such dark brilliant hair. I can't look away from your face."
"I love your face too," I said. Her freckles seemed smudged tonight. She'd
applied too much blush. Her cheeks were reddened dully.
"Will you kids come back over here?" James called.
"Pulleeeesseee darlings?" Rachel begged. "Before I drink everything. Hey
James, I have my first test of the semester tomorrow!"
"You do?" He gasped. And they laughed, making sounds on the couches.
"Where's Dana?" Gretchen called from my lap.
"She's coming over," Freddy answered.

"Come on Gretch ... " Rachel sighed.

Gretchen lifted up from me and left the hallway.
I lay there and gulped her spit and remnants of alcohol down my throat. The hall
was so dark and my chest was so tight. The alcohol hadn't lifted anything.
"Come back babe!" I rolled over on my side and shuddered on the hard floor. "Come back!"
She appeared shadowed in the hallway, hands on her hips. "What?"
"Help me up, let's go to my bedroom."
"No," she said, lowering her head. "No."
"Does this path just keep going like this? I've never even been here," Freddy said.
"Well," I said, stretching out my fingers, "It circles the school. It's not straight
like the path through campus, but it isn't a very difficult walk. I like it out here."
"And you come here early in the morning, don't you?" asked James, crossing his
arms.
I nodded. "Sometimes."
"Why don't you take Gretchen instead?" James asked.
The sun began to wane and fade and twilight overlapped us. The sky was rushing
in lengths of purple. The clouds were puffs of smoke twisted and curled and buffed to such a degree that
color seeped through their edges.
"I've never seen skies like this. Not anywhere. I've never seen anything so gorgeous," I sighed.
"None of this really matters. I should be doing a Chem paper right now," Freddy
sighed.
"Of course it matters," I snapped, turning on him. "The sky is always above us. There's got to be some
intuition in you that recognizes the sky as eternal, and laughing at us for all of our striving which couldn't be
more absurd and meaningless."
"What a fucking nihilist," James said. "The sky is not eternal."
"It is as much as anything is."

"And it's easy to think nothing really matters here when all you're encouraged to do is languish about
and think. You're not accountable for anything. You're young and strong. Not old and muttering over your
regrets, or starving for that matter. You're just a fucking kid and you love it here. It's no wonder you don't
want to leave."
"How do you mean I don't want to leave?" I asked.
"Dylan, it's your fantasy to stay here forever. That's obvious," Freddy snorted, from the side. "When
does this path end?"
"I do want to leave. Of course I want to leave. But I'm not so young and stupid that I don't realize we're
in a paradise here."
"Ah man, come on," Freddy said.
James smiled and bending his head lit a cigarette.
My head was splitting. The day had faded so quickly. First, we were back in the
house and then it was night and Freddy or James had turned the lights on.
I sat down and I lay my head back and then I thought I was dreaming, but they
had taken me out and it was close to midnight, after midnight. I couldn't even see the
stars anymore.
The room I was in was so hot that my skin was ready to peel straight off. I
wondered where Gretchen had gone. I wondered where Freddy and James had gone off
to.
People came up to me and I smiled at them and slapped them on their backs or
they ran into me and spilled their drinks upon my feet. Apparently, I was holding one as
well because I remember it tipping and trailing down the side of my pants. Steady. The
room pulsated. People were dancing everywhere.
I couldn't breathe. My throat felt constricted. I thought I smelled smoke and
followed its scent to the door. Once, I bounded into it and again and again until it creaked open and I fell to
the ground, soaking in fresh dirt and air.
People stood above me, dragging cigarettes from peach-kissed mouths. I lifted

myself up.
"Who the hell"
I pushed past one kid, tall and skinny in the dark, and walked up the wooded hill away from the
party.
I must have had a jacket at one point though it seemed to have disappeared and I walked through the
brisk night in nothing but a red polo and cargo shorts. I jerked my hands in my pockets and threw my head
back.
Where were the stars?
More kids laughing up ahead. There were two of them. A girl and a boy. The boy
walked with his head tilted towards the girl and his hands at his sides. The girl swayed
back and forth and held a cigarette between thin fingers. She tried to hand it off to him but he refused.
I began walking faster, the cold biting at my skin and pushing me to start running. As I passed them, I
heard my name delicately pronounced.
In her white hat again, huddling under a coat too big for her tiny shoulders walked the girl who had
worn the knee high socks.
"Hey," she said, sucking with pink lips from a barely lit cigarette. "I don't smoke, Dylan. Someone just
gave this cigarette to me. Do you smoke?"
"No," I said and reached back and took it from her. I sucked in a line of smoke from its end and then
tossed it to the ground and turned my back to keep walking.
At the edge of the woods, there was a drop down to a gravel road and across was a dry, twig lain field
that stretched out before lower class dorms.
I could hear the crunch of boots in the leaves through the woods and I waited there for her.
"Goodnight Alice, I'll see you later," her companion said.
"Goodnight."
"Hey" she said coming up beside me and I grabbed her at the waist and kissed her tobacco laced,
vodka soaked mouth.
"Oh," she said.
"Where do you live? Over this hill?"

"Yes..."
I took her hand and dragged her down to the road. She kept my pace a little behind as I headed
across the field to the locked tight door of a red brick building.
"This your dorm?"
"Yeah," she said.
"I want to come home with you," I said.
"Okay," she said, her eyesclearly blue nowlowering.
I picked up her chin and shoved my mouth against hers and with my eyes open, I saw her eyelashes
flutter back.
"Inside," I said.
She turned the key and let us in upon a brightly lit, blue carpeted hallway. We wandered down to the
end and she pushed upon a door to a room that had two twin beds on either side, desks between them. Her
bed was the one shoved up beside the window with a dull green comforter and little lights strung round it.
"Turn these off," I said and she yanked the cord from the wall. "Down," I instructed.
And she lay herself down on the bed and then lifted up on her elbows. Her mouth was open and her
eyes wide.
I smiled in the dark and her eyes trailed down to my teeth. I took my pants off and my shirt and
kneeled upon the bed. She rose up to kiss me and I took her clothes off of her.
"Let's get under these covers," I said.
Daylight had begun to break outside the window in a steel grey.
She made the sounds of a resisting animal yet completely yielded to me. I turned her around and had
her that way and her hand dangled off from the bed.
In the quiet of the rising sun, which brightened as a whole in a glare, I brushed back the hair from her
temples and ran my hand down her cheek along her chin.
"You shouldn't cover up your pimples with makeup. Just let them show," I said.
"All right," she breathed.
"You're very beautiful," I sighed into her hair. "I'm glad your roommate isn't home."
"She has a boyfriend."

"And you?"
"No. Do you have someone?"
I grazed my hand down to the small swelling of her hip and her soft belly. "No."
"Girls must often be letting you in their bedrooms."
"No," I said and laughed in a snort. I turned her over.
"And you? Fucking many boys?"
She turned her head away. "No, I've only been having sex about a year," the girl said.
"Ah," I said. "Yeah, I can tell. You need to learn to relax and not think too much. I want to see all your
unconscious movements."
She studied me with her large eyes and half-smiled.
A mere handful of hours later, I walked with her to the cafeteria across from her building and we sat
at a table before the window that was long and slick with sunshine and she ate a large plate of french toast
with coffee. I ate plain buttered toast.
"You shouldn't drink coffee with milk. It'll turn your teeth yellow. Black coffee is better."
"Really?" she said. "But I do drink it black."
"I'm only telling you."
"You must never come over here to the freshman cafeteria," she said.
"No. Why should I?"
On a path which sunk down into a branch of the library and continued on through the little excuse
for a town, she paused at the crest.
"Goodbye," I said, and raised a quick hand to her before returning it to my pocket, and I turned
toward the little white house.
An arching room at the top of the school's most dated building, of wood paneled walls, thick rouge
carpets, and stained glass windows was furnished with tables of the period made of sturdy, thin wood and
carved legs. There was an open path in the middle between the rows of tables leading from one pinnacled
entrance to the other and I saw Alice standing at the far end.
"You follow me around don't you?" I called out.

"No," she said.

I laughed loudly enough that the wood pushed my laughter back towards me. We were the only ones
in this ancient study.
"Yes you do," I said and I walked towards her and her hands were stiff at her sides. I reached for her
face and cupped her chin to which she raised her eyes and then I passed by her, down stairs that were bluesheened and narrow.
I walked out of the back of my house which faced the woods and the path toward the outer fields
when I saw her pausing at the door in her running shorts and a tight sweater.
"You might as well come in," I said.
She did not move.
"I'm only running by" she began though she made no move to leave.
I went up to her and took her frigid hand. "Come see my house."
She came inside and we passed by the living room where James and Rachel were quietly smoking
and the stoned girl with the bowl in her hand raised her eyes to Alice as we passed in the hall.
"Here," I said and pulled open the wooden door to my room.
"Wow," she murmured and stepped over the clothes that lay upon the floor. She sat down upon the
little bed. I picked up a shirt from the blue typewriter and tossed it to a pile.
"You write?" she asked.
"Yeah," I said and sat down next to her on the bed. I kissed her and she opened her mouth and I
pressed into her and she fell back to the pillow. Her arms were limp at her sides like a watchful dolls'.
"I write too," she whispered.
"What do you write about?"
"I write stories," she said. "Though I haven't really figured out what I want to write about yet..."
"Oh no?"
I lifted her shirt off her head. She wore a bra which gaped a little at the breasts, was unevenly hooked.
I stood up and she watched me in thrown darkness, the dying sun at my back as I stripped off my
clothing.

"What do you write about?" she asked.

"Reviews," I said. "Some poetry. Open," I demanded. "What kind of underwear is this?" I peeled them
off of her, some stretchy, striped material.
"I don't know," she murmured and shut her eyes tight.
"I'm sorry" and I brought my hand to her face. She opened her light, round eyes. "They're better
taken off," I said and scooting them off of her feet, I gave her myself in one thrust and the sounds from her
mouth were buried in my neck.
"What are you going to do when you graduate?" she said in the settled darkness of my room. The top
of her head was pressed against my cheek.
"I think I'll go to London. I have a job waiting for me there."
"Doing what
"It's top secret."
"You can tell me."
"Spying for the government."
She started to laugh, a rolling, unconscious laughter and her hand played at the hair on my chest.
"At last I don't believe you."
I went in behind a short blond haired kid carrying his books in a sling backpack, down the blue
carpeted hall, going by freshmen who took second glances at my passing back to the last door on the right. It
was slightly ajar. I pushed into it upon the darkness of a well-heated, midnight room.
The first bed by the door side was empty and the second, along the window, contained a stirring
female under its covers. I saw the harsh light of the hallway framing her face as she rose to look upon he who
was only a body of shadow and then recognizing me, she lay back down.
I came in and shut the door.
"I wanted to see you," I said.
"I see that," she said.
I came over by the bed where she had started to kick the covers off.

"Stay in bed like that, it's fine." I reached down and shoved off my pants and tore off my coat and shirt.
"Don't follow me anymore. I know where you are and I will come and find you when I want you."
"When? How often?"
"When I can or when I want to." I kissed her lip hard and bit her. "Or maybe this will be the last time."
"Why do you say that?"
"Because it should be. Get on top of me."
She rose up from the bed and drew from her shoulders a long night shirt. Her nipples were very dark
in the moonlight, new and subtle and dark. She straddled me and began to rock slowly.
"You don't know how to have sex."
She sighed and began to detach.
"No. I'll try...and teach you. Justbe slow and don't think," I said and leaned my head back and
sighed. "That's fine... that's good."
The nearing of Christmas brought the pronouncement of white lights upon the trees that overlooked
Middle Path and out my window was the pale granite under gaze of the moon and the darkness of
uninhabited woods behind.
My door was thrown open as I hit a key on the typewriter. I drew a paper from its metal reel.
"Hey Gretch"
"Well who the fuck is she?" she asked in the doorway. "Are you telling me we're through?"
"I'm through with everybody." I turned to her. She was in a long brown coat and had her hair matted
to the sides of her face. "Look at you," I murmured.
She stamped forward and ripped the paper from my hands and tore it up and began kicking my
clothing and throwing it and bent to grab the heavy type writer and I shouldered her down to the strewn
about clothes, to the hardly seen or felt wooden floor.
"Stop it," I said. "Stop it. Behave. Stop."
She was crying unseen tears that had left her cheeks run in black lines.
"Go home. Just go home. You'll see me again. Don't be so drastic."
Gretchen rose when I released her and left the room without looking back.

I stood for a while with the fan starting to whir above me, its string having been pulled suddenly in
the thrashing. Then I bent and lifted the typewriter and brought it to the top shelf of the closet. I began to
pick up the clothes.
"Man, you want a hit?" James asked, his face disfigured behind smoke.
"No," I said walking through the living room as I shrugged on my coat and opened the door to the
cold.
"You sure?" Rachel's thin, high voice followed.
I stepped outside and began walking towards Middle Path where the trees were sighing in the wind
and to the dully lit pathway and its small pebbles, passing its rooted benches and rushing people, their heads
down, their cheeks cold. Then I turned off the path abruptly and slid down a hill with my knees bent, the
leaves crumbling and spinning as I descended to the hard ground of a parking lot.
Ralphy was there leaning against a black car.
"Hey," he said and pulled open the door.
"Hey." I sat down on the passenger side.
"Well where do you want me to drop you off?" he asked.
"By the train station."
Ralphy looked at me with his boyish, bright eyes. "Really, man? What about graduating?"
I brought out a hunk of cash from my pocket and spread it in my fingers.
"I'll come back."
He took me to the lonely track, perched on top of a hill, the sliver slip of a moon yellow and star
flanked. A flat roof reached over the platform, a dangling orange bulb hanging from its expanse.
"You want anything? A joint?" Ralphy asked.
"No. Thanks," I said and handed him a twenty. "For the gas."
"Okay. Hit me up when you come back."
"Sure," I said. "Take care Ralphy."
I got out of the car and walked up to the platform. Ralphy's black car backed up and I watched its red
taillights shimmying up the road.

The wind whistled through the darkness of the woods and shook the tops of the clinging on leaves. I
leaned against the brick of the station and crossed my arms and closed my eyes. The train came swiftly by
and sighed in its stopping, a narrow door jutting open. The inside was lit in stark yellow against the
backdrop of night. The warm red cheeks of strangers and their spread open newspapers, closed bags, and
whispering children awaited me to join their slowly moving procession. I came forward and handed the man
holding open the door my ticket.
"To the big city," I said and smiled wide.
"Be there by morning," the man with a long mustache answered gruffly.
I climbed the steps, sat my bag down by a window, and the the train gave a lurch. The platform upon
which I had stood and its single orange light became a shrinking square in the night with the inky sky above
and the silent, undriven road beside that meandered through the small towns and then the light flattened
and was gone as the popping of man's thin filament in that fragile bulb.

Fall 2015
Joseph Harrington

The Word Thing

I feel nostalgic for myself,

my human tissue + little data set
hunkered in a kozy korner, maybe,
no longer rich enough to live:
life on earth suddenly disappoints
w/its funny fungibility
1 become 0 point between
the stuff and the us. But
youre the figure from the dream
where the natural persons live,
biomass burbling up and out
to fill the space thats left
*

My body is ruled by friendly forces

beyond its immediate control,
is expert at consuming things,
will eat whatever it must to live.
(Animals are too complicated, with
their complications unavailable to us.)
To unlock successive layers of growth
power-edger sounds a human wail,
so I hereby declare the Green World
the real world. Meanwhile,
the stuffed bird looks deader
than a conjugation table;
the live bird makes the syntax
want to fly away
*

the girl, object

of the crche, the overwhelming white
space: its a craft
in a balloon, an effort
to get skyward, to send
the boy up and make
the girl go down
the flat floating
nothing of the page
is male or female &
nor mommy nor
daddy can tell you
why, so choose one
& then decide.
*

We got away from earth, downscaled to a smaller planetoid, but now

its gone dark as well; were awaiting
the snakes at the playground, but we
doubt theyll show up. Like a flight to
quality, like an escape into my own
ambivalence or height: what could
entail me at this point, slither back
collapsing unto itself, a play-doh
black hole prepared to make change
*

So, they removed the old trees

to make way for the new trees,
widened sidewalks so banners
would have more room to flap.
Drilling a little chickadee
digging a painful sun
owning were all part
plastic now. How now
to stop seeing folks in mine
tunnels above ground?
Vista like a painted scrim
always shows up variable:
its on us, or on our little screens.
I refuse to rhyme with screams.
I will see no connection, I
will perceive a future still I will.

Dear Future, you

know so much more
than we do & you
have forgotten it all

bombs sound like thunder

tornadoes feel like trains
I know a little capping
chromosome wraps under
who grows machines
out of mental flypaper;
d.n.a. for shoelace holds
the places youve seen
to tumble underwater,
fiscally or aqueously bats
the squamous toeholds
erode noticeably shorter
for corn portfolios infest
our key seed geographies,
new genetic platforms you
frenetically flee to invest in
Protein the Elder, wise old
protean lipitaur, whose oxycontinental dreamliners
make a stint in the night

names ghost out and strike

selvic, word for a thing not invented,
through sticky lemony leaves
I see students madly dropping under
shadowy sub-bodies pipette-punctured
blood-drop leaves
what you thought of as your life ended
we still believe a picture on a beach
some leaves green
they are so dumb the dumbest of bugs
green animals fake the blue part
leave the seen
*

The screen of old growth

either side of the highway
cant conceal the sunny stumps.
Plant a tree: you wont see it
grow up or grow old.
For now, a school of saplings,
razor-straight rows:
you can stare up the aisle,
see something or someone
down there, backing away
between the little trunks.
*

Another earth day,

another dollar. Owls
a mile away throw sound
when leaf blowers briefly
cease, like they know
some thing back flows
This robin nirvana unfolds
under arranged pointy
branches unhinged among
the reflexive giggling
celebrating equipoise,
time after very thin green
house April, trap Mays
sticky fingers in the soil,
reach only other fingers
per all a hand planet,
a name in the floating chill
to string green bird-lore by.
Earths demeter dumpster:
world of the keening blue
we make of her
show time

the fact that birds continue to exist

the fact that they descend from dinosaurs
the fact that they descend from trees
these are a few of my favorite things
the fact that leaf-mold continues to sediment
the fact that we sink into it each day
the universe expands so that beauty
these are a few things
the fact of the word passerine
the way we act like our moon is special
the fact the sun moves while we do
a few things so radical are being
the fact that nothing terrible happened
the fact that it happened elsewhere
a few friends factitious gardens
grow what they planted
the way the words can carry you
the mind i mean carries
the need for the word thing

Fall 2015
Josef Krebs

BODY OF WORK

It was later that night and the church bell was sounding the hour as
Mann climbed into the car he had intended to discard for winter along with
his cigarettes.

He was surrendering to his future the way a dog

surrenders to a bath.

He turned the key to the ignition, backed the car

out of the garage, and moved forward along the road.

It was a different

part of the night right now; it was the blue-black-and-white period, the
warm-streaked-with-chill time.

He slowed as he approached the area where

his initial stroll had been terminated and examined the nearby stationary
vehicles and the windows of buildings across the way.
was unobserved, he parked the car and climbed out.
niche and looked down over the barrier.
or tide.
#

Satisfied that he

He went to the stone

The body remained, unmoved by man

His eyes opened and above him was the large plaster circle.

Some

light was penetrating thick ochre curtains covering the closed windows
that stretched from ceiling to floor in front of his now tilted head;
daytime had started all over again, much to his disgust.
Why disgust, he didnt know.
first conscious feeling of the day.

It was just the way he felt as his

The man had had no dreams as far as

he knew, but he had read somewhere that he had, that in fact everybody
dreamed every night, though most people often refused to recall.

He

believed that he slept too little to dream, plunging into and bursting out
of deep sleep without stopping in the subconscious shallows long enough to
put any dreams together or let them take him apart.

He could be wrong,

but it seemed a rational explanation of the fact that . . . he had had no

memorable dreams since childhood.
Back then, he had dreamt of a crocodiles jaws closing on the globe,
which always left him in a state of howling terror, so he didnt really
mind missing out on that state of being which some would prefer to never
leave at all.

However, now it was light and his life was waiting to be

put into motion.

Mann turned back the corner of the sheet and climbed into the day.
His feet cringed at the cold floorboards that always managed to ambush the
last of his bed-warmth.

Quickly shuddering over to the wardrobe, he

pulled on a shirt, sweater, underwear, slacks, socks, shoes.

No thought

went into his dressing other than a wish to cover up as quickly as

possible.

It was autumn and survival was always his first concern.

Mann put some coffee on stove and sat down at desk.

The papers on it

were neatly organized in his mind but would seem an ill-assorted mess to
anyone who cared to break into the room.
sharpen lead.

He picked up pencil and began to

It wasnt lead of course, just graphite, but somehow the

name had stuck which was fine by him.

The point went several times before

he was able to start his day proper, but this was all part of the process
by which he filled a few empty sheets.

If he was lucky.

This day was at

that point where smell of singed rubber roused him from his reverie long
enough to take coffee pot off stove and pour himself cup of deep-brown
bean drainings.

The writer in him let it all cool awhile as he continued

covering a yawning-morning page.

His first sip of dusty-musty brew drew the sides of his mouth into
retreat.

Rubbing enervating drug onto palate, with harsh brush tongue

trying to fill mouth with memories, he examined the face.

careless.

Features all over.

Familiar as ever.

It was

The ridge at bottom of

eye-enclave climbed out onto cheekbone, rolling softly down hill into
mouth.

Skin was oily dry.

Taught.

Lips tight, layer of skin bubbling

into non-living shell that wasnt part of him.

Remains of cooling coffee,

licked dribblings, oily smoothness sucked from his teeth.

#

Mann climbed barrier, dropped down into the mud, not being quite so
careful, coming close to landing on prone figure.

Hed felt that shoe was

beyond recovery ever since it had left his foot on earlier impact with the
mud but he went through the ritual of searching, spending several minutes
hunting on ground before taking the next unenviable and inevitable step
back to the body.
Crouching beside it, he reached out and took hold of the hand that
was reaching away from him.

It felt human, not unlike the hand of a child

who had been playing in the snow.

Mann resisted the temptation to attempt

to warm it with his own and instead picked up that other hand, a lifeless
limb that lay across the corpses heart as though death had caught this
person in a last profession of faith.

He raised the body to sitting

position and took it in a brotherly embrace, pushing his hands under its
arms and down the back to its belt.

Mann pulled upwards causing corpses

upper torso to fall across his right shoulder and, raising it in a

firemans lift, carried it across to the wall.
Once there, he gently lowered the body and, pulling up his own
sweater, exposed a girdle of rope about a half-inch in diameter hed
recently wound about his midriff.

Uncircling coils, he looped a length

around the chest of corpse and tied a lasso with slip knot.

Gathering up

remaining rope he looked about him for something that could serve as
weight.

The mud seemed to have engulfed everything so there was nothing

for Mann to do but remove another shoe, this time from the other fellows
foot.

Mann tied shoe to the free end of the rope creating a makeshift

bolas and, giving himself enough rope to get sufficient swing, began a
slow pendulous arcing of it that rapidly developed into a circling which
in turn became an expanding spiral.
loose rope into the sky.

Choosing the right moment, he let

The satellite climbed, trailing tail behind.

As

it passed the upright pillar, shoe, finding itself at the end of its
tether, dropped and doubled up about post and in momentum began to swing
around it and into a new inward-moving spiral before quickly coming to a
halt at that apex.
A push.

The hefty dead fellow fell forward and rope was pulled

taught but held.

Mann climbed past the anchoring corpse up to lip of the

bank and pulled himself over.

Having paused to recover, he hauled the

dead weight up without loss of too much skin from its face.

Mann then

dragged cadaver into back seat of car, untied rope, put in boot, clambered
into front.
Starting cars engine, Mann moved them off into the light mid-evening
traffic whistling near-forgotten tune.

His plan was to take the body far

away from the damning evidence of his own lost shoe which would
undoubtedly have been found during a police search of the area surrounding
the body and eventually, inevitably, been traced back to Mann.

Since he

couldnt remove the clue from the bodys proximity, hed remove the body

from the clue.

Hed take it to another part of the river that would

equally well suit its condition and lung contents.

Everything would go back to being normal.

All alright again.

Not

all, but . . . normal.

The tune, however, was soon interrupted by a blaring horn (French?).
It sounded again and the reflection in the above head mirror showed a
flashing blue atop the roof of a car.

Inside it a seemingly disembodied

hand was pointing, probably indicating that the man should stop at side of
the road.

Momentarily Mann gave vague consideration to acceleration but

instead slowed vehicle down and brought it to halt as requested.

The police pulled up behind.
side, put cap on, and approached.

An officer got out the passengers

His companion remained at the steering

wheel, seemingly disinterested in impending confrontation.

Officer

squatted down beside mans window so as to save bending into posture

ungainly and uncomfortable.

(Car was low.)

Mann opened window and waited

for a lifetime to begin.

#
The sun was going down but he felt better, content with the workings
he had got beneath belt.

He was now charged in a way that sleep could not

accomplish, ready to start his day outside.

Pulling on old overcoat and

battered hat essential in long London autumn, he set off, locking door in
hole behind.

It was just one flight of stairs to descend to street level,

not nearly enough really to give him any exercise when he ascended but,
unlike those un-elevatored parts of Paris, the distance from ground floor
to apartment was not measure of a mans poverty.

Still, a long, fast walk

would burn off excess tension left over from his labor.

Lovers argue,

writers walk.
He headed for his favorite destination:
usually overhead in apartment above.

The River.

Lovers argue --

Then, it was certainly good to get

out and down to the river and walk along a bank in peaceful excitement
that rose like ozone from its mothers pores.

The sky was grey-blue,

tinges of pink, the sun seeming to lose all its incandescence.

Wasnt it

much more likely that this elderly heavenly orb was cooling off for the
night rather than restlessly moving elsewhere to tirelessly light someone
elses day?

That would be so . . . inhuman.

every right to be so.

It got here first.

But then again, Sun had

No, day and night, night and

day were mens inventions, yet more reassuring illusions.

knew no routine.

The Sun was irregular.

clockwork piece some would see it as.

expanding gyre, a spring let loose.
the spring at moment of snapping.

But the Sun

Not part of a mechanical

Constantly changing.

Moving in

If it were a timepiece, it would be

Through tension.

Too wound.

And he

was heading down to River and that, too, was moving every which way whilst
seeming to be still or lazing its way down to Sea in orbit around the sky
and land.

In truth, it was moving all over the place, pulled by the Moon

which in turn was being pulled about by the rushings of liquids in the
body of womankind and the arguments of lovers.
Soon he reached the riverside, his step being quick and jittery, his
insides soaked in caffeine and adrenalin of a writer in heat.

His mind,

too, twitched from thought to lamppost, walkers to lines, yellow to tarmac

beneath his feet as he crossed road to be next to River on stretch of
street that followed flow along -- man following nature.
The lampposts . . . were all pale blue.
and pinks, they painted pretty picture.

Against the skys paler blue

Around him air was warm like the

glow of a days work well done, burning off remaining chill of his
morning.

Cars passed him fast, shuttling off somewhere, people ready to

start the day, the night for some being the day but in disguise and visa
versa.

Mud flats shone brown-grey khaki, not yet reflecting the lights of

London, while incandescent illumination began to glow pinkish-orange now

completing those lamps imitation of sky, poor camouflage as Sun went down
into the remaining river.
Mann came to a halt, in a niche where the railings turned abruptly,
swinging out to circuit a flower creation -- a square cement-and-stone
pool in which red petals had been planted like pretty maids all in a row
in a row in a row as mankind attempted to take charge again, in spite of
having given ground, thus far.

He leaned down onto top of the railings.

Up ahead was a bridge . . . to the other bank . . . to the other side.

The lights of vehicles moved along the length of it, dim lights in the
half-light of the setting sun.

He looked down over the railings and there

was an arm, outstretched towards the water, vainly trying to reach the
source of all life but failing to in its deadly deathly deadness.
Mann looked at it in its muddy grey brownness and it seemed to fit.
Little waves slipping back from it, lapped against the docked and empty
police riverboats across the way on the other side.
called, Jemima the other.

Crystabel, one was

Strange names for the stocky bottles with their

undeveloped masts fingering up, pointing from star to star as the hulls
rocked from this side to that, cradled in the lapping, slapping waves.

He

stood upright, forearms aching from their contact with railings, stretched
himself easingly, and moved on rubbing absentmindedly.
#
May I see your registration and license, sir?
Mann took documents from inside pocket and handed over.

Policeman

examined and handed back.

Do you know that your nearside rear side lamp is out?
Mann thought for a moment.

He smiled.

The policeman smiled back.

Also your farside rear side lamp.

Oh! . . .

It must be the wiring then.

I noticed a bulb had gone

out this morning and changed it but . . . stupidly, didnt bother to check
. . . afterwards.

Well, you cant drive with both back lights out.

the public.

They might think youre a bicycle.

Its a danger to

The policeman noticed

the body in the back seat.

Hes all right?
Yes.

Fine.

The deathly pallor of the body sat shrouded in shadow but its
slumping spoke honestly of lifelessness.
Policeman took a closer look.
Hes sopping wet!
He fell into the pond.

In a garden.

At a party.

Had too much to drink didee?

Yes.

Much too much.

pushed him off.

He made a pass at the hosts wife and she

Into the pond.

Now hes dead to the world.

And did you have anything to drink, sir?

No, I wasnt at the party.
Hes my brother, you see.

I was just called in to take him home.

Never could hold his liquor.

But hes white.

Yes.

But hes my brother.

Different fathers.

The policeman wrinkled his nose, maybe catching the odor from the
river-soaked clothes, and retired a little way.
Well, youd better get him home quickly then.

I wont book you over

the lights as youre on an errand o mercy, but you cant drive any

further.

The policeman glanced back at the body.

doesnt catch pneumonia.

Hes already blue.

taxi to take him in that state.

Well, I live close by.

Hell be lucky if he

I doubt if youll find a

I dont quite know what you can do.

If . . . if you followed tight behind my

car, your lights could do the job for both of us.

After all, you know Im

not a bike and . . . it really wont be for long.

Just five minutes.

The policeman thought for a while and eventually nodded.

Alright then.

Cant just abandon you.

I guess one good turn

deserves . . .
Oh, thank you.

Thank you so very much.

Move off slowly then and well tuck in behind you.

strode back to his car.

The policeman

Again.
#

The sun was down and he was restless.

Agitated by a half-seen dream.

Not a nightmare, but a daymare -- more disturbing.

Mann got up from bed

where hed been thinking, staring at ceiling, wandering through memory,

stirring into turmoil and losing any possibility of finding peace.

He lit

a smoke, old, stale, crackling-dry cigarette from packet long ago

discarded.

Nicotine left his tongue feeling frazzled, puckered.

Mann

opened window to get rid of memory but in doing so allowed the city to
lurch into room.
breached.

Mann closed window again but it was too late; he was

His instincts led him to the door from whose hook he lifted a grey
tweed jacket that he dutifully pulled upon himself.

The man followed his

heart through the door but held too long to handle making it hard to let
go.

Mann let go.

Moving off along the corridor, down red carpet-covered

stairs, across brown-black-and-white mosaic floor over thick, dark doormat

sunk in brass-rimmed enclave, through thin inner door, solid outer door,
he finally took the six steps that led down onto the street.
It was different.

He couldnt tell how, exactly, but it was.

off again, heading nowhere in particular, except the river.

river.)

He moved
(Accept the

He hurried through the chill and felt cold coming on, or at least

a slight fever.
apart.

And stopped.

It happened when peace and possibilities were pulling

He reached niche and halted.

Looking over balustrade he saw that

the river had receded disclosing its stomach and messy resting place.

He

climbed barrier and, not so much leapt as lowered and let go, to slip, to
fall, to land deep in ancient silt.

Balancing back, acclimatizing before

turning at hip, he confronted and contemplated his adversity.

Lying on mud bank was figure, about six foot two inches in length, of
not too much weight, dressed in loose black trousers, dark checkered
shirt, brown jacket.

It was thin of face and aged about forty years, but

Mann could not be certain having dropped a good twelve feet from objective
to avoid landing upon it.

He uprooted his feet from mud, one at a time,

and trudged to the head of the body, careful to maintain tenuous balance.

Leaning forward over empty face he padded hand over each breast before
moving inside jacket.

Wallet was worn and redundant:

no money, credit

cards, licenses, or papers that could put identity to their bearer.

Mann

replaced wallet and retired two paces to think.

Police stations were like hospitals -- once in you could never be
sure of coming out.

Mann turned and trudged back to looming wall.

It

took many attempts and tears on flesh and clothes for Manns hand to reach
iron post of balustrade.

At first unable to raise himself higher, but

eventually scrambling made a shoe drop off, allowing toes to find hold so
Mann could pull himself up over lip of rivers barrier.

Accepting loss of

shoe, Mann limped away from encounter, a little bowed and cowed.
#
With corpse over shoulder and smile on his face, Mann gave a last
wave to the policeman and closed front door.

Climbing the stairs as quick

as burden would allow, he re-entered his studio.

Mann placed body on

floor, thought, thought, crossed to window and cautiously looked out onto
street below.

Police car was gone or at least nowhere to be seen.

Mann

went to bed and lay down to recover strength and equilibrium.

He got up again, went back to the body, and dragged it by arm to tub
in corner.

Tub had once been part of a bathroom but Mann had developed a

dislike for enclosing self in such small space and seeing no reason for
the division had knocked walls down.

Lifting body up and heaving it over

side of tub he let it slide down inside.

Mann ran cold water over face of

the bather and watched while level of water rose around it.

Body floated

a little because of gasses accumulated in guts and stomach but Mann got
most of river dirt from its clothes by hosing down and forcing it under
several few times.
Pulling plug, he went over to refrigerator and, while bath water
drained away, began to empty contents onto floor.

Mann lifted out

dripping corpse and transported it cross room, over to fridge.

He had to fight against an on-setting rigor mortis, but Mann managed
to fold body at knees and waist and, with a strength hitherto untapped,
forced its concertinad body into such a small enclosure.

After few minor

adjustments of feet, he closed fridge door on corpse, returned to bed,

undressed with closed eyes, and went sleep.
#
Mann did not wake til midday and then spent a time lying on back
thinking about dream he might have had or would likely have had or would
likely soon have at some time in near future.
man.

It concerned girl and a

Mann was carving a piece of wood while the girl leaned on his bare

shoulders.

She stood there, behind him, telling him how to carve, what

his next cut should be, what she saw in the wood.

The gouge tool in his

right hand slips, cuts into palm of his left hand and blood begins to pour
from wound, trickling rapidly up wrist and arm, defying gravity.

She

takes gouge from his hand and sticks in her own left palm and returns it
him and takes up previous posture, leaning on his back.

She continues

instructing him; he resumes his carving, getting blood all over his tools
and wooden doll he is cutting out.
chest from his shoulder.
just a feeling.

Blood from her palm runs down his

Not a dream, just a thought.

Or maybe an idea.

Maybe not his.

soggy food on the floor beside the fridge.

Not a thought,

He sat up and saw

Swinging feet over side of

bed, he padded over to fridge, pulled open door, and stood for time
holding handle frowning.

He turned and closed the door and went to get

dressed.
#
It was later that night and the church bell was sounding the hour as
Mann climbed into the car that he had intended to discard for the winter
along with his cigarettes.

He was surrendering to his future as a dog

surrenders to a bath again and. . . .

#
Having cleaned mess from the floor and put usable food in sink of
had-been bathroom, he went back to fridge, turned control inside to Full,
and closed door.

Mann sat down to work.

He wrote as he had never written

before, it was all good and flowed without any pressure from writer, he
wrote through day and most of the night that followed and in morning he

read aloud all that hed written and it still sounded good.

He sat down

to work with joyous heart and did so for the next two months.
Three months later book was published.
His previous manuscripts had elicited fine collection of rejections
from some of the . . . most highly thought-of publishing houses in England
as well as a less impressive collection from less well-established firms.
But this manuscript was accepted by the first editor he had sent it to and
had thereafter sold briskly.
His second book was equally well received and the third and forth.
Yet the sudden success did not go to writers head.

He continued living

an identical lifestyle, residing in same room, writing under the same

pseudonym, and driving same old car.

The only addition to his life was a

second refrigerator, for he was soon tired of eating the contents of tins
and found that birds nibbled at whatever he left on the window-sill to
keep fresh.

Fall 2015
Juan Arabia

Paul Verlaine
Someone left his life on the mountain
to fill with light the room.
Like moonfog its his song
to those strangers that in the wound
build themselves. Left behind: the civilized blush,
the bourgeois pen that with trickery guised in mist
the reality of the sordid flavor;
the irruption of the blue-eyed king
translates Blake who disclosed in hell
what the sea and the lion have of eternity.
He unravels intense leaves of woods.

The Man with the Wind Soles

If we are absolutely modernand we areits because Rimbaud commanded us to be.
No, thats a lie.
Rimbe never said you could talk on his behalf
From your 5-star Hotel Lautramont,
From the self-complacency of university
And Utah hamburgers.
No, No Gentlemen!
first thing first:
Ill dream tonight
That your eyes are Rimbes eyes
Like the goodness of a woman who lies
And of whom I only request a lie.

I.
Well, we unloaded the cart:
Just a few bottles of wine and Rimbauds poppies.
We grew up without realizing so, and now we wait on the road.
At least we were close to people and their land,
Even though all of our habits were corrupted.
In the beginning, the town was light-blue,
The sun woke us up and left us giddy after noon.
We were the shiny grapes of summer,
With our peel we stripped the wind bare.

II.
Its not hard to understand
That the eternal needs to spill blood.
They are only surprised of what they darent do:
And I find the sea, I see my face
In the lizard mirror
And though the night is cold
I wont die for being here.
Although they postpone the communion,
I can kill God, writing Hes dead
On a chair.

Fall 2015
C Davis Fogg

Electric Jesus

Baby Jesus big blue eyes, clicked wide open like those of a ventriloquists dummy on opening night.
They swung from side to side scanning this new and puzzling world that he was supposed put straight or at
least save from its own foibles. He was an unwilling captive in a huge painting of the nativity scene, rimmed
with blinking Christmas lights that seemed to float magically like a space ship over the altar. Jesus diaper
was dappled with many brilliant white Christmas lights. A hundred tiny points of electric stars twinkled in
the painted midnight-blue sky surrounding the scene. Mary and Joseph gazed with glowing love and
amazement, oohing and aahing at their little surprise. A stern guardian angel, massive wings folded,
kibitzed. The large, glistening six-pointed star of Bethlehem hung in the sky guiding the three magi who
were late for the gig. The smelly animals did what animals do. A life-size carving of Jesus on the cross
loomed above the serene picture. His head was down on one shoulder, soulfully looking at his infant self
thinking: Mini-me, you dont know what youve gotten yourself into.
La Parroquia is a massive seventeenth century church, dominating the central square (El Jardin) of
San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. It was gussied up for Christmas, with the usual wreaths, flowers and white
ribbons decorating its walls and pews. Extra platoons of votive candles gave a warm glow to the cavernous

interior. The long altar was strewn with a lush carpet of a thousand blinking white Christmas lights inviting
the parishioners that would soon fill the church for the joyous celebration. Strands of red, green and purple
lights edged the alter, flashing and streaming like the Times Square ticker tape when the stock market has
run amuck.
The congregation filed in for the dusk service. There were kids, barely kept under control; a number
of gringo worshipers were interspersed with the Mexicans. A few wandered in and out, choosing to get a
small dose of religion and then get on with whatever they were to do for their celebration at home. The
priest was accompanied by a somewhat competent electric guitarist belting out O Come All Ye Faithful in
a wavering, breaking, falsetto voice.
Tired of being a prisoner to convention, and wanting to get on with the jobwalking on water, water
into wine, multiplying the fishes and so on, Jesus decided to bolt. Hopping over the side of his crib, he
slithered down the green spiral-lighted cross on the altar, hopped off the altar, diaper lights flashing, and
landed on the chancel floor on his hands and knees. Raising his head like a turtle and gooing and drooling
as only a baby can, he lined up escape routes.
Startled by the Hollywood histrionics, the priest fell to his knees spilling red wine all over his white
Christmas vestments. An altar boy fainted while another chugalugged the second chalice of wine. The
electric guitarist broke into O Holy Night with a samba beat. In the meantime, half the congregation
weaved, chanted, prayed prostrate or whizzed around their rosaries at the latest of miracles. The other half
panicked and headed for the exits. Sensing bedlam, Jesus skittered on his by-now-well-packed diaper down
the center aisle, throwing off sparks like a Fourth of July sparkler. He rushed through the heavy, carved,

oaken doors and tumbled down the centuries-worn granite steps onto the cobblestone entrance to the town
plaza. He ended his routine with a standing finish, arms stiffly out, Olympic style. He was precocious.
Having only associated with angels, beasts and people in funny white ghost outfits, Jesus took his
time in sizing up the twilight scene. The square was thronged with residents, kids, families, vendors and
tourists, some taking in the sights, others staking out their places for the midnight fireworks. A mariachi
band played Silent Night. Crawling through the crowd, he was almost hit by a couple of hundred bobbing
and weaving colorful balloons strung onto sticks carried by over-fed vendors. Four tourists, looking up at
the magnificently lit church tower tripped on him, and a kid dropped hot taco sauce on his head. Three lean
dogs of the street came over, took a smell and licked his face. Uggh. Jesus miraculously crawled his way
under the forest of legs and feet toward the Promised Land of the relatively peaceful town garden. Hoisting
himself up on his legs again, he toddled up the garden stairs and streaked like hell toward the relative calm
of the street in back of the square.
He no sooner sat down to rest and rethink his game plan when a jolly deep-throated Ho, Ho, Ho
with a Spanish lilt split the air just behind him. My God, my Father, Mom full of grace, what now, Jesus
thought. Slowly, a creaky oversize wooden farm cart, pulled by an old, wise, donkey, clattered in from the
distance. It carried a man dressed in a red suit with fuzzy white beard, a floppy hat, and bundles of festively
wrapped boxes in the back. The driver said: Stop. The stubborn donkey, with half the world under his belt
and a cold-infected nose that blushed red-red, stopped dead in his tracks almost throwing Santa over the
front of the cart. Jesus flashed Hi with his lights, trying to appear politically correct and friendly to this
traveling circus.

Santa said: Christ, I never expected to see you here. Todays not your day. Its mine. I have to
sprinkle presents among all of the little urchins throughout the world in honor of your birthdayremember,
the naughty and nice stuff is out the window because, in todays PC world, everyone is supposed to be
number one, el-primo, gets a ribbon and a trophy, and passed with honors in school. So my load has
doubled. By the way, Im on piecework pay, so disappear. Come back tomorrow.
I didnt ask to be here my friend. As a matter of fact, Mom and Dad werent expecting me. They
hadnt a clue and I guess didnt know about safe sex. And if that wasnt enough, I fell out of the nest with a
wet diaper and a bundle of battery-driven electric firecrackers dragging down my rear.
Whats a baby like you doing alone during Mexican Midnight Madness anyway?
Parents are blitzed. Catatonic. Just came to Bethlehem, coach class on the redeye. Cramped, no
food, and the service sucked.
Anyone else who can look after you? Ive got to get on with my job, keep the little brats happy, and
get paid.
Maybe Grandpa
Whos Grandpa?
You call him God down here.
Call him. Use my cell.
Bzzz.bzzz. bzzz. beep. This is God. Leave a message at the sound of the beep. Im sorry because of
the high call volume that I cant answer your call. But leave a message and Ill answer your concerns and
prayers every Sunday, Friday, or six times a day as the case may be. Often, however, you can find the
definitive answer your prayers and concerns in the FAQ list on our help line: 1-800-HERESGOD.

Looks like a no go with God

Well, Ill stick around for a while kid. Lets work this who owns the day thing out. Why not repair
to Mama Mias. They have 2 for 1 margaritas on Christmas Eve, five bars, and a hell of a loud DJ. Thatll
blow our minds. We can think more clearly.
Fine
Santa lifted Jesus onto a bar stool and hefted himself, with a huge sigh and grunt, onto the next stool.
Battery low, Jesus got the bartender to plug him into an outlet while Santa ordered the drinks. Santa quickly
downed a beer glass full of pistol-power margaritas; Jesus sucked his from a salt-crusted baby bottle.
Well, as the evening went on and the midnight services commenced at La Parroquia and twenty
drinks had been served to the dynamic duo, they struck a deal. They would take the booty, skip town, and
flog the presents. This will become their own Christmas tradition and no one need ever know.
Last seen, Jesus was sitting next to Santa on the rickety wagon as they drove out of town. His diaper
flashed: Merry Xmas to All and to All a Good Night.

Fall 2015
Grace C. Ocasio

PROBATION OFFICER INSIGNIA

Dad, when you flash your badgea miniature Captain America shieldwe become
docile as chicks. We promise not to remind you of offenders who stock their tongues
with half-truths, covet freedom the way a brand-new three-year-old prays for doublechocolate layer cake on a birthday plate.
We pledge to strip our tongues of sordid words, each time you shamble home from work,
fuzzy as fog at midnight.
When we hold up our armsstraight as beamsto honor you, our tendons unzip. No,
we cannot fathom crime facts you harbor in the special collection of your brain.
All we know is that when you flash your badge at lawbreakers, they
are supposed to succumb, like gang leaders rivals, yielding to switch blades.
We revel in your badges light, best friend that keeps you from scuttling down
a footbridge thick with your kudzu past.

JACK PETERSON
One day, you rescued me from a boy prickly as pine cones.
He struck me with the spike of his hand,
tore my adolescent skin.
I startled when your breaths erupted as snorts.
You strode in front of me like the Minotaur,
hedged me off from the gargoyle the boy became.
Weeks after that bullys attack,
no amount of lotion or cream
could subtract the tracks on my face.
Six months later, I spotted you,
ambling up the front door of a neighborhood girls house
Saras. One year older than I with skin the color of flan.
The next day I witnessed how a neighborhood boy,
midday, shouted, Nigger lover
in front of Saras home.
I could only remember how you collared that mishap-boy,
waved me on, yelled, Go home, as if Gullivers Travels
and Jane Eyre kept me from dialing you on my minds phone.
I could never quite command my mind
to conjure you straddling Sara,
your bronzed hands gripping her sheets.

CICELY
Your braids intricate as baskets woven
by Charleston womenfolk,
I forgot how you wore youth bright as sequins.
Eight-year-old black girl
sporting two thick plaits, I treasured the gift
of your hue, exotic as jacaranda.
You, regal as a snowy egret.
I spotted you in subtle gowns
on TV award shows.
The night of the Oscars,
when your name wasn't announced
winner, for Sounder, my heart slammed shut.
At nine, I marveled when,
as Miss Jane Pittman your hands enacted ritual:
right hand baptized oak with a cane,
left hand arced
as if set in prayer
like an Anglican priests.
Years shot up between us, like weeds.
Still, I claimed you as kin
even as some later roles you played stumped me.
As matriarch in Mama Floras Family,
you said, Harm will come to him,
repeating a long-ago lovers warning.
I squinted into the set, the logic of this lovers taunt
lost to me. Youd adopted an accent as distant
to my adult ears as the River Thames.

Fall 2015
Kristen Clanton

Who are the Fantasy Girls?

When Audrey pulled open the steel door, one that looked like it belonged on a meat freezer, and walked
into the black box of St. Clares, she couldnt tell the difference between people and furniture: everything and
everyone was made of black leather and silver studs, scrawny Sids and puff-faced Nancys, their dark shapes of
lace, leather, and chains vibrating against the black walls veiled in electro-bright graffiti, Social Distortion, the
static soundtrack, set to two girls scissoring on a gigantic TV.
David said Saint Clares on Friday night was where hed be. He said, Bill Murrays son hangs out
there, his long, greasy hair fuzzed up against some American porn on the screen.
Audrey knew not to ask David to meet her at the airport; she knew that wasnt very cool. And she
thought the image of herselfriding in the back of a shiny black car, traveling the bridges and tunnels into the
dark, distinct beat of the city was ideal. It was like the opening scene of Rosemarys Baby, set to that lowhung melody, far below the floating, suspended view of the city, where God and the angels were watching. It
would be a time machineher direct trajectory out of dull and dusty Biloxi. Like Kim Novack in Vertigo,
maybe, all blonde hair, tight-lipped and held together, a wild-eyed lie. The Audrey she was vanishing before she
walked through a green fog and into another image of herself, in another city.
But David didnt let it play like that.
When Audrey asked, Can I get your address? Well meet at your place?
Thats too easy is what he really meant when he said, Better to throw you to the wolves, his laugh
shallow and plain.

It didnt much matter to her. The thought of another summer in Biloxi the pock-marked animals in
baseball caps and cutoffs, their facial hair wiry like catfish, clawing at her relentlessly behind the bowling
alley was suffocating. The motel rooms, air molasses-heavy and cigar-sweet, the tediousness of slow dancing
to the alarm clock radio, smoking all that weed and never feeling anything. She thought David was probably
right, even though it would ruin the image she had of herself. With his plan, she would have to drag her heavy
suitcase into St. Clares, which was evidence of her absolute novelty, her immaculateness in the face of that allencompassing city. It was embarrassing.
Though all that foresight was for nothing. When Audrey got to St. Clares at one am her blonde bob
newly blunted around her face, the heavy black eyeliner she applied on the planeno one really saw her get out
of the taxi, except for maybe some faceless dude puking in the street. And when she pulled open that meatpacking door, she knew she wasnt as impressed as she was supposed to be.
A girl at the bar screamed, Id just die! before she and her friends took shot after shot of whiskey,
which the bartender kept pouring. The girls looked like Edie Sedgewick, but with big hands and thick necks.
They looked like girls from Minnesota, from Kentucky; they looked like girls whod say they had no homes to
go home to. And the bartender was the used-to-be good girl from that one modeling reality show; she once
dated and dumped Andrew WK. She was the redhead from Kansas, covered in cupcake and cream-puff tattoos.
David said she was cool, but the way she scowled at the Edies, Audrey knew she couldnt ask to keep her
suitcase behind the bar. So she dragged it behind her, pretending it was the stranger, not her. Audrey moved
through the bar lethargically like she imagined the girls in magazines would do her black-netted legs the
rhythmic pendulums that matched the beat of the bodies still scissoring on the screen. She pretended she wasnt
looking for anything.
When Audrey finally saw David leaving the bathroom behind a pudgy, hairless man, and a woman with
leathery skin, she could hardly believe it was him. He was shorter than she thought a man should be, and he
didnt look much like the photos shed seen. Maybe older, his nose and belly more defined behind his long
black hair and Bauhaus tee-shirt. His cheekbones and chin sharper, black eyes harsher; the angles had all
changed. Audrey thought maybe it was an illusion the strangeness of the other two, the hairless man, dressed

in puffy, checkered pants and rubber shoes, the vinyl halter top on the leather-faced woman that made David
so far from what she imagined.
I thought you were into the Devil himself? Audrey smiled and put her arm around him in a strange
half-hug, as she tugged at the Silver Star of David and meat cleaver charms hanging from a rope around his
neck.
Its supposed to be ironic. David half-smiled, his black eyes wild. He nodded at the hairless man, his
hairless arm around the leathery woman, and they both turned to the bar. Theyre gonna get you a drink.
Who are they?
Raouls a molecular gastronomistgotta restaurant in the Bowery. And Genie makes films, has for a
while. Thats one a hers. David nodded at the two girls on the TV, their narrow hips still pressing in halfcircles.
Audrey laughed. "Pretty tame," she said and looked at the cocktail table, every surface covered in empty
tumblers and swollen ashtrays. Before she could think of what to say, beyond How old were those photos you
sent? Raoul and Genie returned, bearing six shots of whiskey between them.
Its all shell pour after midnight, Raoul said, tilting his hairless head toward the bartender as he set
three shot glasses in front of Audrey.
Genie shouted, Heres ta Audreys first night in tha city! the missing teeth in her mouth creating
dragging sounds around every syllable.
May it be deviant as all hell. Davids wolfish face centered between the pulsing projections of where
the two girls met on the screen.
Audrey laughed before she tipped the shot glasses to her lipsone after the other, after the other, in the
same way shed seen the Edies at the bar maneuver their whiskey.
Get her two more of these, and a bump before we hit the street, David said. He pulled a sack of
tobacco from his pocket and quickly rolled a cigarette.
Ill go easy on her tha first go-round.
Not too easy, Raoul mumbled and slapped an invisible fly against his hairless head.
David smirked, his long tongue licking the paper, and stood up from the table.

What about my suitcase? Audrey asked, hoping hed give it to that mean-mouthed redhead behind the
bar, but David didnt say anything.
Genie and Raoul followed behind Audrey, behind David, who led them all into the tiny red bathroom of
St. Clares. After Raoul locked the door, Genie pulled a small mirror and a brown vial from her halter top;
Audrey had seen both of these things once, a year before, during Homecoming on a riverboat in Biloxi.
Alright girl, on Friday nighths, we play Queenie. I play tha queen, and whenever I give outta gift, I
getta sign a devotion in return.
Audrey nodded. After all that whiskey, she thought the room could be the tiny scarred heart of the city,
the walls and floor covered in graffiti, all the lines of green-scum plumbing moving in and out of the walls so
easily.
For tha first round, ya have ta show us ur boobs.
Audrey shook her head. Can I just get a cigarette?
It doesnt really matter, David said tapping ash into the toilet. Theyve already seen your nudes.
Audrey grimaced and looked at the checkered floor; her boot stomped out half the face of a bug-eyed
alien, a gigantic penis between its teeth.
Loosin up, said Raoul. Youre face wasnt even in em.
Come on girl, be cool. I bet ya sent thosth same pictures ta otha dudes.
This was true. She had first sent them to Tom, before that homecoming cruise, and since then, she had
used them a few times at Pee Wees Grocery for free booze.
You said you were up for anything. David tossed his cigarette in the toilet. With his teeth, he pulled an
elastic band from his wrist and haphazardly knotted his long hair on top of his head. That lone ritual was
enough for Audrey: suddenly, David transformed into who she had so long anticipated seeing.
Audrey pressed her lips together. In her best fantasy girl voice, one she had refined behind that Biloxi
bowling alley, she said, Oh baby, I was just playin. As she spread her legs, one boot on the alien and the
other on Jamie likes it rough, she slowly pulled up her dress.
Hot damn, Raoul said, shaking his head. You got us a live one.
David stared at the tattoo on Audreys hip. And theres that blue rose.

With her dress hiding her face, Audrey smiled with abandon. She had long believed that anyone worth
knowing recognized the blue rose as the mysterious omen in Twin Peaks, her favorite television show. Audrey
wanted to be the harbinger of all that fantasy and shadow the blue rose gave her something to live up to.
In the street, no one really said anything. Audrey knew shed remember that moment as the image she
wanted of herself: blonde and young and sexy, walking to some party. That would be the image of her first
movements in the city. She forgot the airplane, the shiny black car, everything that happened before that walk
through the Bowery, the skeletal buildings, infinite in their ascent to the sky, but fractured and weak, bombed
out and black looking. She wanted to feel that rawness, lick the walls.
Audrey was lost in her daze-dark dream, the reckless liberty she knew was moody and forthcoming.
Nonetheless, the romanticism of becoming invisible within the city lost its luster when juxtaposed with the
immediate knowledge that she was alone on that dark street. The space and shadows were swallowed up by the
weight of the needless shops, still advertising things that had long been missing. Audrey saw her lone image
reflected in a storefront window, the glass fractured, jarring. Audreys reflection split at her waist, her face. The
opposite directions were more menacing than her dream. It was then Audrey knew she was probably into
something deep it was then she remembered she had forgotten her suitcase down the street, in the black box
full of Edies, ex-models, Danzigs, and teen queens but she kept going.
Audrey ran the block back from where she had come, back to Genies slump-shouldered shape leaning
into a large steel door, her heavy tapping echoing in the street as David and Raoul kicked at the concrete. A
small peephole slid open, big enough for a newspaper or the neck of a gun, and Genie mouthed a single word.
As the locks shifted in the door, David put his arm around Audrey.
I left all my things back at St. Clares. She thought his skin and clothes were made of cinnamon and
smoke, and she leaned further into him, as if against a great wind.
Babyll get it, David said, and pulled her into a small passage that led to the party: black-walled with
one black table, one black chair.
Audrey could hear the music playing on the other side of the door, which matched the beat of the
blinking red light in the hall. The flashes between blackouts and red-toned everything made Audrey feel a little

vertigo. She was on a sinking ship, not knowing which direction was air, not knowing if the world beyond that
hallway had capsized beneath the sea.
Age of consent, said the doorman, which was also the name of the song playing at the party, the red
light matching the hook and the beat.
Wont you, please let me go? Audrey smirked, reciting the New Order lyrics as she handed him her id.
The doorman drew two black Xs on Audreys hands and slipped an orange band on her wrist, which had
Genie written all over it. You aint got long.
Out come the wolves! Raoul yelled, and the doorman let them in.
The warehouse looked exactly like St. Clares, and mirrored the black distortion of the city Audrey had
seen, though the movie screens were multiplied, all projecting the same image simultaneouslya young,
blonde, Catherine Deneuve tied to a tree, in the opening scenes of Belle du Jour. A series of men in white
uniforms tore her red riding jacket, her dress, and whipped her harshly. Beneath the suspended screens, the
dance floor was framed with what looked like torture machines some sleek oak and steel, others all ropes and
greasy wheels. Most of the girls on the dancefloor were costumed in lace, their bodies matching the pace of the
music and Belle du Jour. It was like walking through a museum of dioramasstrange stage plays, like the Civil
War reenactments in Biloxi.
Audrey stared at the scene distractedly, thinking about how all that beauty made Raoul and Genie even
greater oddities. Raoul was punching his arms in the air, howling between the melody, and Genies wood-soled
platforms pounded loudly, completely off beat, on the polished concrete. Their peculiar parade went on until
they reached a monstrous red curtain suspended from the rafters. In the dark, red-flashing warehouse, Genie
pulled a velvet loop that parted the screen, revealing a backroom.
Secret gifts. Genie smiled, the folds of her leathery skin matching the heavy red curtains.
This looks familiar, Audrey said. The room was exactly like the Dark Lodge in Twin Peaks: a black
and white zigzag pattern replaced the polished concrete, and though the red curtains were heavier, they
obscured every wall, every escape, muffling the music in their thick flesh. Audrey felt static, absolute, like she
was role-playing her own dream.

Genie owns us all now! Raoul laughed, pulling Genie to the dim border of the room, which was
patterned with wire-framed beds, each shrouded in red gauze. On the beds were girls Audrey thought were
glamorous and beautiful, all melded together in varied stages of dress and drug use. The girls were heavenly,
smiling and whispering, sharing mirrors and syringes as their most secret diaries.
The best rooms are bleeding hearts, Audrey said cryptically, in the way the Twin Peaks prom queen,
Laura Palmer, spoke in those slow lullabies she recorded before she died.
Theres nowhere to be alone anymore. David led Audrey to the bar, its black lacquer a shiny skin.
Two well whiskeys, doubles, he said to the bartender.
You know, Im named after Audrey Horne, and though it wasnt wholly true, she was actually named
after Audrey Hepburn, like most every other girl with the same name, Audrey didnt believe that fact matched
who she was becoming. Unlike Hepburn, the skinny fawn, Horne was a cult icon; she was the doll-faced beauty,
the real teen queen of Twin Peaks.
Audrey Hornes my dream girl youre more of a Laura Palmer.
Hows that? Audrey pressed her hands against the bar, slowly tracing its knots and grains with her
fingers.
Beautiful and menacing, but easy you could convince a man to do anything.
Nothin menacing is easy. Audrey smiled and finished her drink.
David rolled another cigarette and signaled to the bartender for two more doubles. Things that are
menacing are the easiest, ever heard of Baudelaire?
Is he directing a new movie? Audrey said, jokingly.
He died in the 1800ssex and drugs, the original rock n roller. Baudelaire worshipped women, but he
only made it with the Lauras cause he wanted to keep worshipping the Audreys.
That should be on a tee-shirt. Audrey took the cigarette from between Davids fingers and put it to her
lips.
Point is, the Audreys could be anybody, theyre statues in museums. But the Lauras are mysterious.
Easy girls have secretstheyre the living fantasy.
Wild lineId almost believe it.

It goes both ways. David leaned into Audrey, pulling his cigarette from her lips and biting her on the
cheek. Audrey moaned softly.
Youve got her good, the bartender said to David as he set down two more whiskey doubles. David
smirked, put a twenty on the bar, and handed Audrey her drink.
Its about time to join the party, David turned to the line of beds canopied in red, and pulled at
Audreys hip so Audrey went.
Audrey was pulsing; her clothes were somewhere, missing on the patterned floor, and if anyone in that
backroom was watching, she didnt care. She was vibrating for that raw wonder, her body humming, fascinated
by Davids roaming and static movements. As a magnet navigates iron filings into Rorschach figures, she felt
every part inside her shift and pull, spread thin then quicken, anxious to meet every part of him.
The heaviness of Davids body, that encompassing, suffocating feeling of being absorbed between mattress and
skin, when gravity bears down, annihilating all autonomy, made Audrey feel like she was rocketing blindly into
the darkness. She was looking through the opposite end of the telescope: each part of her body was its own
universe that needed comprehending.
Staring down the dark well, into that fuzzy dream of ecstasy, she could feel herself beginning to break
inside that bright-light spectacle. Her body propelled through it all: Davids face, his shoulders and hips, the
red-gauze canopy and velvet curtains, the rafters and roof. She was living within the suspended dream, feeling it
tilt, shifting with anticipation. Finally, Audrey burst open in splendor, full petals, soft and beautiful, like the
magnolias she swore were glass-vased, blossoming on the bedside table. Her orbit was complete. Audrey was
finally in the universe she had been seeking: dark rooms and shadows, gloomy love, mysterious and incomplete.
But as fast as Audreys reverie began, it was distorted beyond all recognition. Audrey focused her
whiskey-dim skull on the shifting mattress. She had grown smaller, and so had the bed. Being thrown so far into
the void, the compression, the steady root, became smothering. At that moment, nothing made sense to Audrey.
She couldnt remember movies or names, songs or placesall she recognized was Raoul.
Thats right baby, ride it till its dead. Raouls body was slick, thick-skinned like an elephant. Pinning
her arms from behind, Raoul held Audreys jaw tightly, pushing her face, her eye-line, to the end of the bed,
where Genie was standing, camera in hand.

Shes so wet, ya can both get it in. Genie laughed, but all the sounds were suffocated, snuffed out by
the velvet curtains.
Im gonna need a minute between takes, David said, pulling up his pants.
Genie passed him the mirror and vial. Well do a few just with Raoul.
It was no longer romantic, no longer risky. Raouls hands were stronger than all of Audrey, and she was
the traveler: the mark within the suspended nightmare, still too stunned to scream, to fight her way out and
leave. I thought you liked me.
David fixed Audreys hair, pushing the wild strands behind her ears. Baby, nothing in life is free, just
make it easy.
Audrey started to cry, the tears heavy and full, turning her cheeks pink.
David sighed. You have toyou cant get out of here without Genie.
Put her bra back on so I can cut some new scenes. Genie flung Audreys bra on the bed. An keep her
head steady its hard ta see anythin.
No. Audreys whimper was muted beneath Raouls hand.
Come on girl, ya only came here fa one thing, Genie said.
Raoul laughed. Should I get the leash?
Audrey couldnt feel anything, see anything. The mattress and curtains, the backroom and warehouse,
every part of the city was spinning, and Audrey was hurtling beyond it all; she alone was being buried beneath,
and absolutely nothing remained of who she used to be. She tried to cower; then, she tried to shake loose the
weight of Raoul. But no part of her could move or scream. No part of Audrey could leave the physical world, so
her spirit attempted to do the only thing it could, and Audrey became a blank, blacked-out machine, one that
tried to spare itself the chance of remembering anything.
Sometime later, in some other place, Audrey woke to an absolute stillness that terrified her more than
what had come her way before. There was a plastic clock over the sink, ticking the seconds slower than they
should be, the time on its face only matching the hellish heat of the day. Audrey knew she was laying on
someones kitchen floor, the linoleum marred with severe gouges, and what Audrey assumed to be her puke,
which was also the only thing blanketing her body, the rest of her still nude. Audrey traced the linoleums

diamond pattern with her fingertips before she thought about being brave, tracing her own face, searching for an
escape. Her skull stuffed with cotton, puffed and swollen shapes she couldnt feel beyond the burden of
surfacing from the blacked-out consciousness which she came. She had seen that floor before. The repeated
images were sensory: Audrey imagined the taste of her grandmothers homemade breakfasts of beignets and
orange marmalade, taking shelter in the long-since memories of her childhood in Biloxi. An animal playing
dead on a busy street, Audrey knew she had to get up; she had to leave.
Using a leg of the kitchen table, Audrey slowly pulled herself from the floor. The movement was
dizzying: the shock of pain she felt in her abdomen and legs, crippling. The kitchen floor bowed and creaked,
and every step she took made her feel like she was sinking. There was one window in the kitchen, leading out to
the fire escape, but there was no way to reach it. The July sun bleached the surface of everything it could clutch
within the window frame, but the panes were nailed shut. Audrey was caged and kept thinking: this is a tomb,
this must be what a tomb is like.
She kept chanting it over and over again, like an incantation that would take her far from there: stripped
bare and new. She could walk into another light that would transport her into the space of her memories. Where
God would turn the telescope around, and look at her, down there, locked deep in a circle of hell. Hed realize
she wasnt ready; she was too young to be buried, and his hand would break through the sky, the trees, that
apartment building, and pluck her up easily, tell her the things she needed to know to keep going, and put her
back down in Biloxi. Maybe at her grandmothers kitchen table, in the middle of a Bridge game, and then
Audrey could act just like nothing had changed; that she never had to leave, that she had never, ever felt the
necessity to go looking for anything. She could forget about the things she learned behind the bowling alley; she
could forget the empty catastrophe of the world beyond Biloxi, and just pretend, for years, that she had never
left God or her grandmother.
Audrey prayed for these things as she crept towards the front door, its brass locks stacked atop one
another, mocking her from down the hall. Their laughter only became louder with the static click, click, click, of
each turning knob, each face, hurrying for escape. Audrey heard those locks still laughing as she hobbled down
the stairs, clinging to rails, still naked, still too terrified to look down.
The streets were filled with facesblack and redblistering beneath the heat. The ghouls, their hellfire
and sway, were amplified by the holiday. The whole city was in that street, laughing and screaming, lighting the

skinny tail-ends of Black Cats and Bangers, comets and Jumping Jacks exploding with great, violent barrages of
energy. The air was dense and smoke-heavy; there were no shade trees, just the crumbling buildings, American
flags hanging from the windows, bending into the street. The sun melted the pavement, the concrete, and every
step Audrey took on her bare feet was daunting. Audrey knew she was sinking further into hellshe was
descending into another place, one that was even more menacing, and God wasnt coming.
But Audrey was sure of what could save her. Her mind had never been purer. She searched for the shiny
black car that brought her there, that giant beetle on its back: the precursor to every vicious rendering she had
seen. Audrey knew if she could find that car, she could begin again. She knew if she could open that gleaming
black door, she would see herself sitting there on a leather bench seat, and if that could happen, Audrey could
leave, bright-eyed and beautiful, fully encased in the belief that she was within a world of her own creating.

Fall 2015
Jimmie Ware

Covered Expressions
Storms behind her eyes/She fights to be heard/Struggles to be liberated
Oppression must be abolished/newly written scripts must rectify injustice
Brave are the tongues that shatter silence
Fear no longer resides in the lost corridors of hopelessness
She continues to gather and educate the women/Unity/ the most sacred order of the day
Garments flutter as she scurries through broken stones/Dust on the hem of her native attire, no matter
She is pregnant with purpose/Never abandoning her quest for wisdom
Beside her sits a woman with child/Dismal expressions momentarily erased
Glimmers of optimism prevail/Sipping water/thirsting for freedom
She/Glorious giver of life /Fighting daily for her own/Contemplating the destiny of her unborn
Thunder beneath her skin/She turns another page/lowering her head only to gain knowledge
As bombs burst
In fresh air

As I am Eve
She is within me
Glorious in my evolving state
Moan for Lisa
Not for me
I am no lazy Susan
Never confused I am
She who defies convention
She who refuses to ride side saddle
Unmoved by your ever increasing momentum
Time is unfriendly and unforgiving
Yet I welcome his challenge
Fore warned by Mother Nature
I shall endure
My inner smile overshadows
Your disbelief
My thighs bear witness to your weakness
Unable to make the great escape from ecstasy
I am indigenous for there are raging storms
Beneath my skin
My hips hold treasures
I am explicit yet demure
Untamed and gentle
My lines curve with the ebb and flow
Of ethereal mysteries
I am not your sacrificial lamb
My natural ability commands respect
I am woman, human, whoa man!
Deliver me from those who marinade in ordinary madness
I am not your every day melancholy maiden
I am brighter than the northern lights
You cannot turn away my essence captivates you
My purpose stems from deep within
I challenge you
Behold the Nubian Queen!
Unique and unafraid
To color outside the lines
She speaks to you in Picasso-like hues
She comprehends Lady Days blues
You will engage Freudian thoughts to compensate

She is poised
Honor her in your fleeting moment of clarity
Being shamefully awake and blissfully ignorant of her power
Your mind holds her image tightly she cradles your emotions
She is closer than she appears and you are unable to
Deny the realism of feminism
You are spell bound until
Mercifully she sets you free

Behind her Smile

Mi Madre moved in mysterious ways
She bore a cross most of her days
She loved the earth and learned her worth
It was I to whom she first gave birth
I miss the mommy she was in my youth
In later years we called a truce
Sometimes life seems so unfair
In comes sadness followed by despair
I combed her hair and rubbed her feet
I cooked for her when I sensed defeat
The eldest child with welcoming grin
Not many knew my hurt within
Life is a picnic with splinters in the wood
Still we smile and say its all good
I know now she did the best she could
Many cant imagine what depression does to you
Her emotions were often blue
There were times when our roles reversed
How do blessings become a curse?
Too much dialogue went unspoken
As years went by, my eyes were opened
She gave me more than I realized
Strength to be wise, family ties
She and daddy were never meant to be
Only to have me
She was hot salsa and painful blues
We both loved Aretha and Celia Cruz
I carry her smile, her bohemian style
It comes together after a while
She taught me to cook from the heart
Appreciate art, feel from my soul
Truth must be told
Most of all she taught me to survive
As long as I breathe
She is still
Alive~

Black
You dutifully tell me its not beautiful /as if
You consistently inform me its not/a gift
My skin is sun-kissed
Resume dismissed
My amazing experience/Not a good fit?
I am eloquent and driven
Still I struggle for a livin
Im not Maya but I know that caged up feelin
Perhaps you too need a good healin
Im that warrior child nearly gone wild
Bohemian style/ you cant take my/ smile
I love my kinky red hair/dont stop/ dont stare
Dont YOU dare!
I pay for my own healthcare
Not on welfare life, not so fair
Still I care for those lost out there
I remember when hip hop was good
Now its too hood and I wish I could
Turn back time when unity was so fine
We stood shoulder to shoulder
Like that Greek guy with the boulder
Because Black was the thing to be
Now our young ones must know our story
Sacrifices made for her-story
Mercy, mercy me
Ah, the art of survival
Follow the tribe or the Bible
How did Queens, regal works of art
Become no more than body parts?
Nightmares pipedreams
Addiction closer than it seems
One paycheck away from
No place to stay
Stressed to the max
Monkeys on our backs
How can we relax?
Merely stating facts
Raising daughters

Troubled waters
Targets on our sons
Smoking guns
No more James Brown/ So long Motown
Just the tears of a clown/no sound
How can we turn this thing around?
We cant seem to get on track
Is it pride we lack?
Lets get back to the magnificence of being
Black

Fall 2015
Louise Robertson

Blue
Homer did not
have a word for
it. Neither
did Ovid or any of those
guys. So the
sky this morning
grew pink and
purple. What did
they say
of the
hydrangea,
of the baby
slow to breathe? Did they
say it was some kind
of green, some
kind of bruise,
some kind of a dye being
rinsed out
by cold hands
ringing it pale
and paler and paler.

Twitter
I have now
friended William
Shakespeare and WB Yeats
and Oscar Wilde's accounts on
Twitter. At first, I
thought I'd see
great writing in
140 character installments
or maybe a path
I could wander
down, see pieces
of poetical watches in the
powdery dirt. I could
pick up those tiny
gears with their tiny teeth
and think up a great machine
of words that might even keep
time or at least make
that tick-tick noise.
But no. Turns out
they mostly re-tweet cat pictures.
Right now Shakespeare
is astonished at unfortunately
spelled tattoos. Shares link.
Oscar Wilde
posts dream Disney
wedding pictures.
But Yeats, whom I've
always disliked for
being partly Romantic
and only partly Imagistic,
posts about the water
and the soul, just as I'd
expect.
Shakespeare especially, you
oughta be ashamed,
having been the ink
in many an unfortunate
tattoo. Fortunate ones,

as well. If I were running

that account, I might
try to say something of
the Internet like: your
face, a lake's
changeable surface;
we blow upon
it and it ripples; a hammer
strikes the water and it smooths.
Or I might use the man's own words
and say further, that it is our
new stage to strut and fret
upon and then we are heard no more,
but stored as a tale
on an idiot server, full of sound and fury,
signifying nothing.

Not a Muse
I have dated a few musicians
and exactly two poets. They
have all the lip and spit and finger
you might expect from these people.
They have muscle in their tongue, have
practiced the languages of eye
and breath.
Whenever they write about me,
they somehow get my name to rhyme
with "too late" or "fun in bed,
but moody." Fair enough. Because I am in fact
often exercising my poetic ligaments to craft
a piece about them and their
body with the intent of getting
the tone of their sinew
and the slope of their intellectual jaw
just right.
Here is my ode to a 20 year old
who couldn't look me in the eye. Here
is what middle age looks like with its paunch
and brow and fist. Here is how I say
their names and rhyme them with
"never around" and "likes it when I don't
move." I have dedicated
poems to specific erections, their
tight, their curve or straight, their
earnest pose. Or not so earnest. Not
so tight. Do I really have to tell
you that by erection I mean something else?
So don't write songs which catch my
weak chin and need of solitude. Or don't write
them as if I am unaware of my height,
my sweat, my curl up and sleep. I am
sick of hearing you
count the many ways I can't be loved.

Fall 2015
Adam Mackie

Madhouse
It is now clear to me that there was no difference between ourselves and people living in a madhouse; at the
time I only vaguely suspected this, and, like all madmen, I thought everyone except myself was mad.
Leo Tolstoy, Confession
In a saddle, everyone else is in
Sane, I think, I think and, therefore, I am
Mad, to see myself in the mirror, damn
It, the light destroys everything that lives
To glorify heroes and syllables,
And words of obfuscated poetry,
As this verse, here, conjures up plural Zs,
There, on a map, I point to capitals,
Prepositions, adverbs, even pronouns,
Being levitated so detestably
In context, only for synecdoche,
My mind, thinking clich and description,
Burked by a madness of name-breathing nouns:
I leave this house worse off than I found it.

Groundwater
For Michael
Whos like God? A question implying
an answer: No one, shadows, everyone
created in ones own reflection,
within those actions always acting
renders an argument arguing
against a darkness disguised as self
predicting a science of whats felt
through a shattered image ascending
the possibility thats floating
underneath two levitating feet
where nothing above groundwater rests.

Overgrown Field, with Tombstones

Ive imitated these lines now,
these lives so many times I believe theyre mine;
we both know they dont belong to you:
You look surprised with the same old stare,
while swallows sound their well-known tune,
the poetic passerine sings,
and the robin continues to chase worms.
The movement attracts me more
like grasshoppers in the weeds near a wall
quick to change colors around locusts,
quietly camouflaged sharp ovipositors,
in an overgrown field, with tombstones,
where so many hyphens and wrens rest.

Fall 2015
Marcia Arrieta

frayed dreamer
who understands
missing/found
buttons & threads
continue to wander
in the crosscurrents
red poppy blooming

interplay asylum
cereal boxes, soup
Bronte, Dickens
Dostoyevsky
Hardy, Woolf

beyond characters
language
almost
surreptitiously
an expression
subversive
extended
a certain
wilderness
temporal
tenacious
parallel
movement
golden trout
spirit bear

unrestricted, unlimited
the nobility of
rhetoric
Wallace Stevens
transcribe
the language
of the pine
outside
the
circle
within
the
wind
arrows
into
clouds

extract
outline wings on glass
a narwhal floats by
arctic dreams prodigies in ethereal
the Mobius strip is made of mixed media
the Pyrenees & subfields

on the subway
clockwise
indirect
merely these
stations
statistics
bricks
stones
corresponding
prisms
nests
matters of
concrete
perches
nets
asphalt
swords

in the space
of
dandelions & fireflies

*
the communication wires are crossed
across continents
or maybe ranches & farms
*
it is a mystery where they lead
we know nothing really
splendor is a word rarely spoken

wallpaper a few years

*
graph paper & dust
green couch, orange chair
the books outgrow the house
we bury the verbs
*
quiet connections constellations & currents
the birds language the policemans pull to the right
new characters terraced gardens the Celtic cross
the dragon as foe the dragon as collaborator
*
blue shutters
pink walls
hands covered in paint fugitive/poetry.
architect identity
inhabitant of the roses
lavender & olive trees
goldfish in the pond

redefine the ordinary

existence in the face of the sun
the stairway leads to the river
the river equals sky
there is significance in a silver thread hidden beneath the bookcase
tomorrow we will explicate the poem
or perhaps art into small triangles
which will then float us down the river away

perimeter homespun
or
the art of
The worst thing that can happen to an artist is to become a bore.
to become complacent.
Dean Young
thunderstorm
chance
exquisite
primitive

Fall 2015
Mark Young

aubade
ill
logical lines cross the
street
to follow
them would
mean
__________
a
dynasty
of drosophila
die off whilst
the screenplay is being
treated
"given the choice of two evils
I would pick the one I don't
know"
something like that
some like it
hot

The Dominatrix in Love

I will bring you bouquets of leather.
The choker you wear will be woven from my hair.
I will mount diamond drill-bits on my breasts & push them against you.
Poems will be written with your blood. Long poems.
The candles that burn you will be made from bees'-wax & cinnamon.
I will refrain from resin nails so it will truly be me that scars your back.
The shoes in which I walk over you will be open-toed to give you access.
I will suck sherbert as you lick them. I will share your lingual pleasure.
The whip I wield will be plaited from the walls of my heart.
I will keep you handcuffed forever.

adverse surgical events

An unclassified, vectorbased digital database
is threatening to wash away
many of Boston's historical
buildings, thus giving
a voice to the powerless
& luxurious private dining
in Bali to the rich &
famous. Chairs are
available for a small fee.
So, too, is democracy.

The Jesuit ficcione

As a parting gift, Ignatius
Loyola offered him either
an Antonov An-225 Mriya
or a white Gibson Les
Paul. Francis Xavier chose
the guitar. Certainly, the
Antonov would have
made the journey to Japan
far quicker than the long
sea voyage, but, as always,
Xavier was looking to the
future: & the Gibson would be
a drawcard accompaniment to
The Jesuit Word he intended
to lay down in Kagoshima.

A line from Pontius Pilate

She pulled an allnighter
which did some funky &
awful stuff to her brain
contrary to popular belief,
even positive people fall
into bad moods. How many
things could she do to set
it right? Decided, in the
end, to put a temporary
tattoo on her ankle. Her legs
looked sexier than ever. Something vaguely '80s about that.

Iconoclasm roils the sea of legal turgidity

It is clear & cool & running.
Free self-printable novelty
Worthy Words flashcards,
especially those formed by
storm-heaped glacial talus,
will open the cage. Inside
a woman & her daughter
paint beans. The strongest
criticisms of the war metamorphose from straightforward recording to abstract
clouds. All this is backlit
with a pellucid light in the
manner of an epiphany.

is / to be / rewritten to reflect
The upright ridge of
hair made things
easy for. Distinctive or
prominent, given to
a number of
guests & held
in a public
manner. Gorilla warfear. Gratifying. But
only to those who were
affected by some terminal
payment. The remainder
signed their names
to a petition. Reluctantly.

Fall 2015
Matt Shears
from Dear Everyone
lather up. Some salacious inventories
are organizational mediations? Why
lament the talisman? Consider magic
in Chicago, beyond the Global Village
or Cubism or Futurism or militarism.
All too true. Ordinarily, the flesh wound
focuses the attention. Ive transplanted
matching pairs, emptied the attic. Dust
gatherers at the road show. Nymphs lift
scattering dandelion seeds. Interference
just never tugged the heartstrings.
when the first one died. Sense blanks
on positions. Impositions refract
phases gathering context. Get the picture
or history repeats itself. Everything
endeavors to the cadaver, or leaves
for posterity. The homesteaders believed
or wagons, barrels, trailers, chrysanthemums
churns and corn husks or scarecrows. No,
further investments? The valueless
demand conference calls. Privacy is
untranslatable. Painting is untranslatable
being writing. Along the highway of the past
truncations, deletions. Down on the ground
of love. When the calls came in

predictable epiphanies. Squandering

extensions of public space: war
As for the rest? Recliners, sofas,
ornate pillows, even. Willows blowing
apart the government. Research helps
carry everything. Baskets and disposable
geographies of the self. Some saccharine
note passing, breathless, tingly sensations
or improper sharing. Delight in
illicit sex or aesthetic bliss: deliberate
stratagems for pursuing the military
clouds of dust? Time-sensitive
materials will not be returned. When
creating your past lives, responses
may undergo transformation. Cities
of destruction; systematic debilitation
the soundtrack of the past? An ex-singer
or dancer. Falsify mourning. Love
sleeps in childhood. You arise
with considerable provocation. As for
jpegs, gifs, electronic equipment:
selfies, voiceover, some petting
licking or necking. Brand new futures,
discolorations. No further questions
or intractable statements. O, love

and damage. When alarms scattered

the bodies in the street. Smoke
assures correctness, and politics delivers
screaming: My baby! My baby!
settlers, homesteaders, adventurers, buckaroos
explorers, privateers, conquerors, Pilgrims
and Hollywood. Consider the artificial lung
and Bluegrass, Country & Western, Blues
or medical dictionaries. In the postcard
graphics, captions, code. Roadside bombs
are serious business! Rednecks
need not apply. Imagined histories
in post-production mode. When internalized,
the inoculation may take decades. No,
we are beyond pleasantries. No,
poetry is not a vehicle. The pressurized clot
of the systolic. I am a star
coal-burning, wood-burning, oil-burning
and refined, well-mannered. Resolutions
believe intentions. The present
is always coughing slogans? Furthermore,
some sloppy kissing, unusable footage
orbiting moons. When the calls came in
cartographies of the self. In your letter
be sure to provide comfort, a sense of hope

or pills, prescriptions. The messenger

waylaid the barbarians. Time burnt a hole
in their whereabouts. Why admonish
dream-horses? The princess arose and wept
hexagons, octagons, dodecahedrons,
mathematical resemblance. So,
terror lies in wait. The operation is clean
in its way, or manual pumping. Disco
still matters, subsequent tissues. Jam
these halos of the few. Why torch
the Amazon? Swim the Orinoco,
depending on the discard. Trash collects
regional pastimes; following tradition
may aggravate injuries. Republicans
can sit on it, or stuff it. Teleology
seals everything, like Revelations or
return flights. Disable impermanence,
desertification. When considering
the Gestapo? Or the KGB? The police-dream
beyond efficient! Think about it:
martial arts or banditry. Descendants
carry on the conditions, brandish
jewelry or credit cards, business casual
without frosting. The symbolic realm
or deliberate mismanagement?

where love rotted! Disease tracking

procedures: spay or neuter your territorial
markings. When the calls came in
with Barbara and the other Clare,
the last vacation! The halcyon days
ravaged the organs. Someone sang
through the pain. This factory
of particular resonance. Products
question the invasion, or the eradication
or the rebuilding process. Ultra-reality
mansions, people of import. Magazines
are photogenic, and can be
easily reprogrammed. Consider
wheatgrass, lemongrass, alfalfa, gorse
and Nebraska. Holland or Belgium? Why
ask the proper questions. No,
I would not like to see your recent edit
and furthermore, calories. No business
as usual, the lackeys. And yes,
the sycophants and ass kissers,
bootlickers, social climbers and yes men.
Yes, the arrangement was delivered.
an impromptu speech? Why I believe
in potlucks, picnics, clam bakes, fish fries
and barbarism. Things to fear include:

capsizing, holocaust, radioactivity

excessive telephoning, extension cords
murder, bloodshed, mayhem, drowning
in the bathtub, airplanes, the Collective
Unconscious, leaders, followers
and lawmakers. Debutantes miss
remembering the good old days
take the trick. Argumentation synchs
Politburos and the New World Order
or orchestrations and cover-ups.
Michelangelo painted the frame
of this poem, and poetry is a chapel
or brothel. Who will say:
he is the holy sex worker of language,
or baseball, football, basketball
and bankruptcy. Cheerleaders kill
superheroes and swashbucklers. Instigators
are standing by. Bystanders die
in tense exchanges, remanded reports, too
and paper shuffling. The excessive function
of gender and sexuality. And male
strippers or the Satyricon. Greco-romans
consider the Labradoodle or genetics
and monopolies, cartels, business
as unusual. They have become white

stuck in a photo album somewhere,

or the facility. Flooding may occur
or memories return, and shock therapy
or painting at the Community Center
intellectualizing death? No,
the carburetor, the radiator, the crankshaft
and the blessed Virgin. Ordinarily,
hubristic hyperbole and backscratching
or the hell of gridlock. New myths
love delicate children, babies and reasons
can be found, like lasers or microchips.
What witch hunt? Believe
what you want. Since the onset
of symptoms and self-flagellation
or public embarrassments, apologies.
Moral fiber? With respect to
practical jokes, or disaster relief
skin doesnt last. Dream-birds nestle
in the lap of luxury. Silken sheets
for a deathbed? Spruce it up a bit.
The vagus nerve soothes cargo, trucks in
truckers and troubles. Confabulation
will pass you by. Your life is
sound-byte culture. Imagine splicing
whiskers or freckles or irises

when in doubt. Piercing belly buttons

and candygrams. Singing clowns
provide healthcare coverage
or costumes. Clothing makes
the Pomeranian, and traffic cops
offer calisthenics. The good life
is always cracked up to be
porcelain, or lost marbles, even.
Imagine a clay jar, painted in fantastic
rituals. Philistinism is fetching catcalls
and video games. When in Rome
or Tallahassee? And the panther,
bombast and bravado. Pundits
shape everything. Imagine Gandhi
coloring between the lines! Death by
sarcasm or talkshow host. Furthermore,
the sanctity of marriage, and the military
occupation. Other queer innuendos
include the margin of error, O love!
and collies, ridgebacks, shiatsus
or phantasms. Riding overland,
and Oregon. Because the calls came in
to perform the eulogy. Which music
will play? The portentous rooms
are signs. Semiotics cannot smoothe

the ongoing extinction. Or the lack

of tangible detail. Imagine the pear tree
or many varieties of shrubs. Believe
in airports, and the Econolodge
or The Radisson or the Super 8, Motel 6
or the Holiday Inn. Drifting, variation
or the hybrid? Terror is bloodless
and not guilty. But downsizing?
A symphony of correctness
may prevent clotting. Considering
ranges or territories of the heart. No,
I do not wish to receive your newsletter,
inventory of the self. For example,
stretchers, gurneys, HMOs and
coffins, pedestals, tripods, camera cases
microphones, pocket handkerchiefs
and idolatry. The pedophile
watching harness racing or poker
over-the-counter medication. An oceanic
restructuring of pleasure,
and its coordinates. When navigating
The Body, be sure to lubricate
emphatically. Pitchy fog or periods
of difficult employees / employers.
Voyeurism is the new couch surfing

the new landed gentry. Once upon

a time so isolationist? Now that everything
is the onset of symptoms. Literature
and the aphids, fleas & ticks, mosquitos
and organized religion. Burial mounds
consider the dung beetle, or caves
bats, spiders, sulfuric leakage
and Pluto. Persephone complained
to the local authorities. No,
I do not wish to receive a complementary T-shirt
or travel bag. Carryon items indicate
epistemologies, The North Wind, gumption
and a trail of the caribou. Mushing is useful.
and Teflon, silicon. In her diary entries
the silences of history. Notwithstanding
love, or movements in space. Beauty =
Radiation? Deliver the Midwest
and white flight. Things to fear include:
maniacs, terrorists, accidents, saturated fats
sugar, Iran, smokers, carbon monoxide
kidnappers, rapists, street gangs, juntas
car jackings, the homeless, boll weevils
locusts, Winter Weather Advisories
meteorites and interplanetary debris. No,
you have not received authorization

to the heart of the matter? Love

is passing, and passing through.
Now that everything has been documented
or freeze-dried. Elements include:
festivals, cartoons, newspaper clippings,
old songs, figurines, envelopes,
stamps, coins, memories, artificial
memories and ideas of time. Certainly,
safe travels! Observe containment policies
extreme times = extreme measures. When
persistence argues ineffectively, charm
may open doors. Opportunism is exciting
and sell them on a dream! Confiscate
unused urgencies, or redirect the impulses
and purchase power. The ordinance
threw a surprise party! Awesome!
In the video recording, evidence
of unity and wistful thinking. Whoa,
sometimes, I get this oceanic feeling
swelling, bloating and tremendous respect
for labor and laborers. Years of service
believe in arrangements, care packages and
client-centered protocol. In the dream
begin by erasing. Return flights never
display the proper gratitude, orbitals

cease or desist! And pageantry

or formal affairs. Insider raiding
fetish objects and social media inlets
or personalized license plates
and tempo, duration, modulation
or morning calisthenics. The yoga
of consumerism. When the life force
withers, and natural metaphors cycle
lovebirds, auks, peregrine falcons
or push-button convenience. Touch
is exceptional, like gifted children
the military and privacy school. Importance
is so stressed out! In correct assessment
as contradiction. Consider the killdeer
or mourning dove. And Hector bloodied
on the plains of Ilium. Now that
encrypted men produce nationalism,
we must harvest these rhizomes of empire
Individuality sells! Consider
the firm, the film, the advertisement,
the public service announcement
and mythmaking. Dromedary
or camel? Articulators are
standing by. Believe in screensavers
the silent majority and general wellbeing

Fall 2015
Nicholas Knebel

on losing the ability to speak

the bath-tub water is turning steadily darker
and someone dives into the ocean in the morning yellow,
a world divided by a banana peel
on the race-track: a cockpit of empty steam
reflecting opaquely: as opalescent glass defies
the refraction from the fractures
of your moon; disassembled this world
before the moon broke apart.
with no counterpart to churn the waves
someone thinks to pull the drain
they do not.

click goes the light

Amenities shifting like spinal alignments
of the ocean, undulating up into neck from the baseboard of bed
into neurons morphing around eyes as sweeping
bathroom suites the size of houses abandon vision,
replaced with operating tables, a surgeons gown, mask, gloves.
The side view from the penthouse window where we
made love, pressed against the glass, miniscule cracks in the
vertebrae, spider-webbing across the system before
system upheaval, early hues of morning light, pink
pills mixed with pastries on the nightstand transforms hazily to
darkness,
where am I?
transfer to O.R. 4 approved. floor three rings the muffled elevator voice,
like hearing things from
the inside of a shopping bag.
Pleas and restraints
no, dont make me. I dont want to lose my
hair
blood supply
air and,
forced down and gagging, the smell of
the sky turned to pure anesthesia coming down to blanket my
nose
mouth and,
layers upon layers of
fumes, nothing like your home-brewed tea
and sweaters in
wintertime, the saline is
too cold. The sunlight drops past
the horizon blurs into fog
count backwards from
ten:
nine
eig
click,
goes the light

because I never learned the names of birds

wings like wine flutter in rustling of leaves
the hustle and bustle of the featherload, unloading truck
at the bay, dock rubber red: the thirring bird, bouncing,
the deep red snapping up herring
snapping up snappers with their
branches of feet, sound a
backdrop to Sunday mornings pancakes
and syrup drip on the palette snap
the willow, wax
belabors feathers of flying marshacks,
a yellow thing with bloated legs sliding up to its rump
flies down
before a drop: a trick of the light
as the old man on the rubber red dock plays a guitar tune of paper-clipped things,
dreams in spring
white birds with blue bellies with blue beaks blue
hearts
in the sky,
in the water
soaked through.

ascension
well play airplanes into the night
with bodies vehement
shaking / arms outstretched, arms rigid
arms: planks of wood while our bodies fly
light crashing into steam
flittering in from the hall where I stand steam
rising
and Ill stand here and try
to bottle your love into words like wine is
bottled poetry like love on lips
of wine on lips of light before: steam
rises, the water
overspills the
kettle / almost puts out the flames
below before
I can turn it off.
and our weight, our ambition, our struggle through the ocean turned smoke
to the place before here, snakes wrangled in bushes constricted
ever present in the fight against history
for survival
and for survival, well offer words soaked in paper, well offer our bodies in
the type of light when one lover turns on the lamp
light dim in the previously opaque room,
and lover slowly embraces lover
with arms longed to touch
light / to touch / light increases, shining, resplendent like
the distance of sunset when viewed from points of removal
with summertime drinks in lemonade pitchers on the patio while the lovers kiss
wrap themselves standing
near the bed until it cannot be deciphered where endings and beginnings start or finish
wrapped in the night,
our bodies fly.

cobwebs
in dreams, I scatter over roof tops
of my history, a slept-in-only-once hotel
on the outskirts of bustling London, the seismic force of urbanity kept at bay by
curtained windows, glass enveloped
in grey haze. Upon reentry to sleep, I fly back
across the ocean, to New York
where even at night noise permeates our lives. then, to escape to quiet,
I eventually fly West
to where I grew up in an old home in Wisconsin,
and by perching on the rooftop of the neighbors house, ours is clearly visible / in the moonlight,
the bones of it all look tired, worn-down, rickety
as if a mouth had eaten candies wrapped in regret, then decided
to lick the well-worn siding bordering the field
to the right
weeds long overgrown, swaying in rhythm to a steady sibilance, pointing to
the gnarled tree
that has always signified home even more than
the building we called by that name
the tree, veined and bulbous, wormed with branches that point to the sky
offered freedom from
the grand clock that struck loudly every hour, even into the night,
the looming shadows and gothic halls.
I can see my younger self now hiding under the long wooden dining room table
the annual holiday party. the house no longer feels the same,
we may never have belonged there anyway anyway,
years later, curtains drawn close for the final trick,
a disappearing act. slammed doors. words shouted in the night
but, dampened, please,
mustnt wake the children.

Fall 2015
hiromi suzuki

soil
the forest was felled
the well has dried up
the summer will probably not come
I hear your merry voice
through the tunnel of drainage channel
gushing out from the spring

Fall 2015
Robert Wexelblatt

The Mendelssohn Statue in Leipzig

Let the language of music tell only of noble things
is incised on its backside, as if Leipzig
almost felt ashamed of a sentiment
too impersonal for an epitaph,
too pompous for an apology.
Most people miss it or arent sure what it means.
Procrastination is the vector of pride and disgrace;
inaction the stand-off of admirations
tug-of-war with inbred hate. Forget the
fathers canny baptisms, the Christian
upbringing, the hopefully appended
Bartholdy. Grandfather Moshe frowned on
conversions, scorned the opportunism,
perhaps foreseeing their futility.
Abraham, son of a famous father,
father of a famous son, implored Felix

to drop the Mendelssohn from his programs.

A Christian Mendelssohn is an impossibility.
A Christian Mendelssohn the world will never recognize.
On the pedestal the ersatz surname
Felix didnt like crawls underneath the
one he kept, a dropped wig of Magyar hair.
I should have discarded the name Mendelssohn,
immediately, wrote father bitterly to son.
The bronze effigy stands seven meters high
across from Bachs own Thomaskirche.
A lyre-bearing muse, looking like a
foot-sore tourist, rests on the steps below
the Master. On one side a pair of angels
scrape a violin, blow a flute; on the other,
a brace of cherubs work through a vocal score.
Felix was the Queen of Englands favorite
composer; he and Albert could chitchat in
homely German. This thing looks echt Victorian
though its not yet a decade old. Here the
the musical citys champion, renowned,
romantically dead before forty,
takes his stand; still, it took the Leipzigers
twenty-one years to appoint a committee,
twenty-four more before they accomplished
their work, thirty-eight more for the city to
cleanse itself of the result, bearing out the
fathers prophecy: There can no more

be a Christian Mendelssohn than a Jewish

Confucius. Easy to dismiss the Fifth, to proclaim
the mighty fortress someone elses God.
On November 9, 1936, Mayor
Rudolf Haake publicly declared the
Jew Mendelssohn cannot be displayed as
an exponent of a German city
of music. Nobody knows what became
of Werner Steins original sculpture
melted down, perhaps, and sent to Essen, to Krupp.
Then nothing for sixty-seven years, a
vacant rest, Mendelssohn still stubbornly
world-famous yet statueless, neither
Christian nor Confucian, until, with private funds
and at a conductors urging, they erected this.
Now he stands on the Dittrichring under trees
in greatcoat cum toga, with his receding
Yiddish curls, right forearm resting on a
music stand, left hand grasping a score, leaning
slightly to the left, head held high. His gaze
is fixed. He could be looking back to the beloved
Bach or forward to a quasi-Jewish Mahler.
Only the noble proclaim the language of music.

A Comedian
Imagine, he said, a horseradish layer cake.
It took some time to conjure that up, then
a little more to get the point, nearly.
We guessed he meant you can make something
sweet out of whats bitter, or that looks sweet,
that the best jokes are going to bite back.
We thought he was an alchemist who
could transmute leaden pain to something bright,
yellow. We forgot alchemys a cheat.
Bitter battles against bitterness he
fought, always victorious. We never
once suspected that he could lose the war.

Fall 2015
Ross Knapp

Syllogistic Parallelism Parable

Elegant spare bare predicate logic
Modal metamorphing transforming to illogical tautology
Formal deduction demolished in the fire of its own implication

London

That odd combination of the literary, rich history, hard cemented castes, financial flocks of rats, dreary rainy
streets, a Mecca mega church of cosmopolitanism, yet still some hints of the introspective repetitive rhythmic rituals
of a vast history; a right time for waking, a right time for taking tea, a right time for brunch, a right time for lunch.
Still, to some extent, that same old outdated imperial ethos of only one prim and proper time for everything under
the sun.

Freedom-Spenserian Word Sonnet

Chatty city
Laughing lights
Witty gossipy
Fuckwit shiny knights
Endless flights
Drag queens
Botox frights
Beaches pristine
Turquoise seas
Lots of Ciroc
Numb lonely
Sore cock
Not looking for a place to call home-Looking for a place to die with freedom

Good Customer Service

I want my latte
Now before my eyes
Hurry the fuck up
Memorize my name
You will be cheery
Be very merry
Or Ill report you
But dont think of that
Well act like old chaps
Where one is master
One is dependent
Enslaved mind and psyche
Where two people just
Happen to play house,
Abusive house, each
And every day.
Rage hatred scorn spit.
Have a good day sir.

Fall 2015
Alex Archer
A Cycle of Being
by Alex Archer

Fairmount Behavioral Health

i am sitting in
a coffee shop
wait
qualify
it is the fourteenth of may
tomorrow julius will be
killed and
the earth has shifted on
its axis and
the mental patients are
being served
lunch and
i can't sit still
anymore
i
can't
sit
still
Philadelphia
i am
sitting
in a
chair
in a
box

in a
world
no more
laundry
drifts
in the
wind
no more
waft
of cham
ber pots
no more
steam
of hors
es in
bugg
ies
(except
in
Penn
syl
van
i
a)
can you spare me
something
to eat?
said a thousand
times a day
to the same
faces
only in
different
suits
Sleep Clinic
i am sitting
in a
coffee shop
(again)
my sleep

doctor said
"I'm not sure
what I can give you"
as the sun
waltzes
through the
sky (only
it's really
standing still)
and the
oceans
are guarding
the moon
and the
bathhouses
drip
drip
drip
with boylove
stains the
sheets
drift in
the wind
like Victor
like Stan
oh
but you can't
drift through
the door
with that smile
sitting on
your face
begging
me
to
spread
your legs
and
come
inside
.

Birth
i
am
si
t
ing
in
a
cof
fin
in
a
to
mb
in
a
wo
mb
in
a
wo
man
in
a
wo
rld
(ex
ca
vate
diss
olve
a
che
lo
ve)
.

Fall 2015
Sam O'Hana

Inosculation
Some of the finest examples are found
in private collections; or amid the back o beyond
like a tripwire in the troposcene, or outcrop in the overpass.
Others, like colophons dont like showing
on the review copy of lifes parade, as a langourous
langoustine sketched by chuckling Ashbery.
And these imbrications slot back into my mind,
a chef reminded the waiters
art is the only twin that life has.
At times its gruesomely intimate, like finding
yours was not the only one to leave heat
on the subway handrail, this discoverys epigraph is
Ladiez and gennelmen, while my dopamine is held up
by the trains dispatcher.
In Shenzen factories, luthiers would weep if
they had the language, instead its express train
cante jondo that hitches up its jeans and mumbles
to itself, Lucero, Alvarez, Rodriguez, Cordoba
I spill through the barriers into a Home Depot;
an assistant says Donnelly & Spahr are in aisle four,
while epoxy and air conditioners are on a three day loan.

Third Rail
At first, and now seemingly forever,
thousands picked up on it.
Terror, trembling, a woodblock
chuckling or set of castanets
as moments when you lose reception
or catch coat-tails in chomping doors.
By the time we reached a nearly-there
chorus on the intercom, no here-I-am
fitted apparel or diligent pair of eyes
could keep to their own coasts.
Clattering, and shucked plastic seating
smooth as a flume
wave and wear our fabrics,
gauntlets and slats of hair wish
as amulets against the crumpling
pressure on pressure, we are vacuumed
from myths of instant death,
its a convincing 625 volts and 950 amperes
that push our bloodless knitting on forever.

Each & Every, Public & Private

Ready your clause and contract, reach,
reach out for for gold, consent and
consent to to half signed oaths
at the inexorable point of sale.
Leaders, when offered myth instead
of ounce or grains, scrawl these transactions into the
ledgers of time, a blow by blow tracking shot in 24 hr display.
Meadows, turf scrapings are first seized in theory. Your honor,
it is as if the swaps are planned in advance; pay nothing till
the hussars are ordered to clatter down the boulevards.
Meanwhile each nightly plunge and trough is named
exchange, though so clammy, without consent just deal with
how IOUs, third & final warnings blot out the sinking sun.
Troyes, goddess of fixed-term contracts and mates-rates
landgrab. Her symbol is liquid assets depicted in the West
as a Prince Philip martini; after worship the fetish is placed online, offsite.
Wallets, fat as men, scramble along a firewall, legitimate
as a golden calf. In their crinkled veins is etched a license
to spew arms, ratchet tendons; they are glyphs cribbed
to thwomp the juggernaught haggling.
In the suburbs of slang, your uncle, a hispanoblante hegemon
huffs a polvorone. Elsewhere he is a prisoner
on parole, for giving debt the slip.

Paper Trail
After breakfast that
chuckling had subsided
into slander
and our behaviours were to
be tended in the breakbeat
allotment of nods.
A saucepot huddled up to
a print-out of Broadway.
Water lay in bed,
talking about oil.
Then with a crunch,
a slobber,
time-management heaved
itself up the chart,
peaking, with a cool-down
at 6.56am.

News Chant
A migraine upon on slow walkers and library book
defacers, a nagging lethargy for non-tippers and
hypochondria on channel-hoppers. Here is the news.
Tottenham estate hackers can end deadlock with
ice fishermen of Baffin Island; both must accord,
dig their own weak spot, and harvest at the ingress.
Alcoholics who wish to sidestep the refrains of
vodou mambos, drink deeply from the
Gulf of Gonve, then gargle with coral and grits.
Tobacco addiction is a curse put on the children of
Bear Valley combatants who crushed the Yaquis,
last of them to be subdued; no cure is yet sexy enough.
In East Village carrels, the sestina ends four feet
up against the sonnet and a mid-morning
french-press drives a spike in the open form.
Down the swirling streets, a violent month
takes its stand. Without warning,
children squeal and scarper in Dodgeball, AI.
Hunger, like an in-law, can be tackled
without mercy, ninety seconds on high
holds it at bay until the insurgent regroups.
And, though it spewed not from olive-wood
despatch boxes or are hacked out in scratchiti,
a fact remains fat-free; no sustenence, satiation.
Forget these lines and be cursed to lose your
swag, may you never get enough antioxidants
and this colophon turn to tweets in your hands.

Fall 2015
Stacy Mursten

Retail Hell
Instantly assaulted by sound so large,
The electronic static vibrations
Rattling the clothes on hangers
Hung from metal bars,
Like that of a prison,
Burning in eternal flame
Overbearing,
Like the tyrannical lighting
That sees every inch of me,
Everything I strive to conceal
Under layers of makeup,
Like war paint.
And I remember when
This activity of overeager consumerism
Was actually fun.
Three prepubescent girls rush past me,
Each wearing different colored crop tops
Sporting different slogans,
YOLO,
Eye Candy,
Drop Out.
And these are the words
That youth identifies with,
And a red-faced demon,
With deep-set creases,
Much too old,
Who does not appear to be
Anyones dad,
Passes them by

Eyeing them wistfully,

Like a vulture circling carrion.
I see his illness from afar.
And no one knows
Whats age appropriate anymore.
Am I too old
For the Hello Kitty crop top?
Is neon too flashy?
Is everyone fifteen?
Is that why nothing fits?
Is this a shirt or a skirt?
Forever 21.
I feel older every day.

Holographic Girl
How can you see the world
Thats constantly flitting past you
With your blue eyes perpetually cast downward,
And your face is always illuminated
By the iridescent glow of technology
Surrounding your head like a halo?
And youre so lit up
But I cant even see you.
And your eyes, when I see them,
Arent dilated but pixilated,
Completely comprised of
Moving pictures,
Ideas,
People who arent real,
And none of them know you,
Or care,
Or ever will.
With your blue eyes perpetually cast downward
Upon this window to somewhere else,
Do you ever fear
That youre missing the point?
That youre missing out
On the real world,
On the people who want to know you
On human connection?
Could you please awaken
And live in this realm of reality?
There is so much for you
Here.

Collapse
I come out here and unravel
Blowing out my worries
In wispy strands of smoke
That waver up into the treetops
And hover for a moment
Before disappearing into nothing
And in my altered state
Among the birds and mud and grass,
I imagine things being different -That every fiber of the human race
Became contorted into something
Else.
I envision the gray and twisted corpses
Reanimating back to life,
Like in those scary movies
Society obsesses over.
And just maybe this preoccupation
With a concept derived from horror
Stems from a deep longing
That perhaps we all share
But remain unaware
Of, things and values to change.
For whether we realize it or not
The world is truly
In a state of collapse.
And just maybe
We all long for
Those lost abandoned things that truly matter
Survival, family, love -To take precedent over
All the mess and filler
We stuff our lives with,
Like the products we consume
That eventually make us sick.
For when survival is assumed
We lose sight of whats important.

In my short time away

Among the birds and mud and grass
I wish not to return
But stay among the wild
And actually know my place,
Where Im free and very simple
And priorities no longer hang
Askew

Fall 2015
Stephen Nelson

NOSTRADAMUS HAD A DREAM

THE MAGI INHERIT THE EARTH

CHILDREN, COME HOME

ASTROLOGY OF THE HUNT

THE MOON CASTS A SPELL ON THE MOUNTAIN

Fall 2015
Sunayna Pal

Evening walk
I was out on my daily evening walk
Enjoying the fresh air and the green
The route was the same I took everyday
but there was always something new to be seen
I had just come up the stairway
I saw a big fat black cat
I found it strange to see it,
I wondered if it was domestic
I was stunned by its presence
but it was unaware of me
I thought cats had sharp ears, this one didn't.
It didn't hear my footsteps nor the twigs I broke
Just then its ears got alert and it turned back
Swift was the moment and before I knew it,
It ran back up the woods
I felt insulted, It didn't even say a hi.
I was stunned to see it there
More was I at my thought power
Just yesterday had I wondered
if this place had wild animals
It felt amazing that I got to see one today
For a brief second though
Anyway, I continue my walk
To see what else was in store.

The walk went by without any incident

and I turned on my way back.
Just then I saw two pretty red birds
they were dancing on the ground
Really, no exaggerations my friends
I was praying that they would stay
so I could get a better look
but they felt my gentle steps
and disappeared in the woods
What a lovely place I live in
How blessed am I, I thought
to stay so close to nature
and be blessed with its beautiful sights.

Fall 2015
Susan Foster

How a Band and a Boy Saved My Life

Intro
I would like to start by saying that this story has never been told before, at least not in this detail. No, I've
never told this to anyone. In fact, if my parents knew I was writing about this their heads would explode. I'd
also like to say that this isn't going to be another one of those stories that you've probably heard before. You
know the kind, the stories written and told by suicidal emo kids across the globe about how a band literally
saved them from the brink of death. No, this is not a story like that. Death wasn't the concern in my case, but
rather a crappy existence of life that I'm so thankful I didn't end up with.
As a visual artist, I've found that writing about shitty things that happen to you is a lot harder than making
artwork about it. In the studio everyone is always making paintings by drawing from their personal life
experiences-good or bad. But no one immediately sees the meaning behind those pieces of artwork. You can
make a painting about the darkest pits of your existence, it can be so personal and so secretive, but yet there
it is for everyone to see and no one even knows it. Writing is more in your face. The words just sit there on
the paper clear as day, screaming to everyone about your deepest and darkest secrets. That's what's hard
about writing, it's more obvious than visual artwork. It makes this story a lot harder for me because, like I
said, I've never flat out told people about this. Here it goes.
Sunroom Sessions
Growing up in my house wasn't easy but I've never let it affect me. No one outside of my immediate family
ever knew the things I was dealing with. My dad is schizophrenic, or so they say. He got diagnosed when I
was ten years old, after spending only three days being monitored by doctors. During the three days he spent
there he exhibited signs of depression, paranoia, and hallucinations: text book signs of schizophrenia.
However, when he went into the treatment facility for monitoring, he was high out of his brain on drugs and
alcohol. His symptoms could have been temporary. The doctors even knew he was on drugs because they
ran a tox screen on him when he was admitted. Why they didn't keep him longer than 3 days will always be a
mystery to me. I've never accepted his diagnosis of schizophrenia. To me, he's always just been an addict. It's

no surprise that he's always depressed, paranoid, or hallucinating when he's constantly in some sort of drug
induced haze. The heavy medications the doctors prescribed him for his schizophrenia only make things
worse because he abuses them to get high. He will take anything to try to get high. I've seen him taking too
many allergy pills, drinking too much cough syrup or even trying to take a handful of Advil, as if thats going
to do anything anyway.
The day he was diagnosed with schizophrenia was just another day to me. He had an unruly temper tantrum
brought on by drugs and alcohol just like he did every weekend. The only difference was that this time my
mom ended up taking him to the emergency room to be evaluated. She was probably afraid he would
overdose this time.
Throughout my childhood I saw my parents, especially my dad, using drugs and abusing alcohol nearly
every weekend. I'd even seen my dad get arrested when he got too out of control on several occasions. For
my mom, it was more recreational. She would just do a little here or there at a party maybe. But my dad had
a real problem. He even tried to hide his using from my mom. If me or my brother told on him about it we
knew there would be hell to pay. Every other weekend my mom had to work. I dreaded those weekends
because we would be left alone with my dad. He spent most of his time sitting on our front sun room with a
beer and a bottle of rum.
My little brother and I would spend our days and nights out riding our bikes around the city. No one
checked in on us or wondered where we were. We mostly just canvased the neighborhood looking for cans
and bottles to return to the redemption center. We would take empty grocery bags and collect up as many as
we could find. Then we'd use the money to buy candy with. We had a lot of good times in those days.
My brother and I stuck together back then. When we were young our parents were constantly dragging us
off to parties with them and basically leaving us to fend for ourselves in a strange place. Then when we got
older we took turns lugging our drunken dad to bed when he'd had too much. We would have been lost
without each other. It's a real shame that we don't talk today.
Growing up in that house was the farthest thing from easy. I couldn't tell anyone about my dad's problems
because I had been sworn to secrecy. No one had any idea about the things I had to deal with at home. I
spent my teen years baby sitting a forty-year-old and keeping an eye out for my little brother too.
If Only You Were Lonely
When I was fifteen I watched TRL on MTV every day after school. It was my routine since I didn't
participate in any after school activities or hang out with friends. I would come home, pop some microwave
popcorn, and drink chocolate milk while watching TRL. That's when I found the band that would change
my life. To this day I am forever grateful for them.
My favorite videos on the countdown were from Ne-Yo, the Jonas Brothers, and Fall Out Boy. But one day I

saw a new video from a band wearing all white suits. They weren't pretty to look at like the Jonas brothers,
they weren't even comparable to Pete Wentz or Patrick Stump of Fall Out Boy. On top of their painfully
average looks, the music was too harsh for my liking. The melody was harder than what I was used to and
they even screamed in some parts, something I had never even heard of before. I hated their video so much
that I even muted the tv when it came on. After a few weeks of seeing them on the countdown I got too lazy
to mute the tv every time they came on. Soon enough the song grew on me, it more than grew on me
actually. I was hooked. The band was called Hawthorne Heights and they saved my life.
A few days later I went out and bought their new cd. Although I had gotten really into the song they had on
TRL called, Saying Sorry, I was still really into Ne-Yo too. In case you're unaware, Ne-Yo is an R&B singer
and Hawthorne Heights is an emo pop-punk band, the two could not be farther apart from each other but
yet, I liked them both. Ne-Yo and Hawthorne Heights both had CD's coming out on the same day. I spent
what felt like hours standing in the Walmart electronics section sampling the two CD's. It was back when
Walmart still had the old sampling devices with the dirty old headphones that probably everyone in the
county had worn. Major decisions were made that day, and I eventually went with Hawthorne Heights'
album, If Only You Were Lonely. I don't even like to think about what my life would be like right now if I
had gone with the Ne-Yo album instead.
Soon after, my mom finally got a computer with internet at our house and I started a myspace account.
Myspace was the way to track bands back in 2006. I followed every move Hawthorne Heights made. My
username was even [[I
I had been invited to join a Hawthorne Heights fan page on Myspace, which I accepted. As soon as I
accepted the invitation the page leader (who I assumed was a girl at the time) starting arguing with me
because of my screen name over who loved Hawthorne Heights more. To them, it was playful banter, but it
really annoyed me. After a while I just started ignoring the person, I figured she was just a crazy fan girl.
After a few days of not responding to the page leader I got a friends request from a boy. The boy was kinda
cute, he had long shaggy black hair, typical of guys in the pop-punk scene at that time. In fact he actually
resembled the singer from Hawthorne Heights, the only one who was actually mildly attractive. After
looking at his page I saw that he too was a big Hawthorne Heights fan so I accepted his request. Once I
accepted the request he started messaging me. It was then that I found out that he was the fan page leader, it
wasn't an annoying fan girl after-all.
The boy was 17 and was from Tennessee. I lived in New York, so that seemed like a long ways away to me.
Back then I had a lot of friends from all over the country and world that I met online. We talked on AIM and
myspace but that was about it. They didn't really know me so I could talk about anything. Sometimes it's nice
to have anonymous friends. That's how my relationship with this boy started out. We talked online for a few
months. He was the first and only person I ever talked to about my dad. Soon we started texting each other
and eventually talking on the phone or web cam chatting.
He became my best friend, really my only real friend. Sure I had friends at school but they didn't know the

real me. Having a best friend made life with my dad a little more bearable. We connected on everything, but
especially on our love for Hawthorne Heights.
Hawthorne Heights songs are mostly about love, long distance relationships, and crappy parents. The songs
just spoke to me. After I started learning more about the band I found out that the singer, JT Woodruff('s)
dad was also an addict and severe alcoholic, he had actually drank himself to death when JT was a kid.
Because of this JT had adapted a lifestyle known as straight-edge. I had never heard the term before, but
found out it meant someone who refuses to ever do drugs or drink alcohol, they don't even smoke cigarettes.
As soon as I found out about that, I knew it was the lifestyle choice for me. I vowed to never let drugs affect
me again, either directly or indirectly. It was so satisfying just to know that someone else out there made it
through the same problems I was going through then.
You Can Only Blame Your Problems on the World for so Long
Nine years later, here I am still listening to Hawthorne Heights, and married to the boy I met online. I
became only the second person in my entire family to graduate from high school and am now getting ready
to graduate from college with honors.
Right after I turned 18 I made the hardest choice I've ever made and moved four states away from my family.
I had no idea what was waiting for me in Tennessee. I had known my boyfriend for four years at that time
and we'd met in person several times. He had even lived in New York for a few months at one point, but I
had never met his family. I didn't even know where I was going to live or if I would be able to find a job. It
was the scariest thing I ever did. On a mild June day I quit the job I'd had at McDonald's for the past 13
months, packed up my Olds 88 and drove half way across the country with only about $500.
I like to think that I would have found my own way out of the darkness even without Hawthorne Heights
and my husband, but I'm really not sure if I could have. Hawthorne Heights lead me to him and he showed
me a world outside my own. He gave me a way out. I don't think I would have found the courage to up and
move if I didn't at least have him waiting for me somewhere.
My little brother is twenty now and he still hasn't found his way out. After living through the crap we grew
up dealing with, Greg has still chosen to go down a similar path as our dad. Now he uses drugs and alcohol
in the same way and hes unhappy with his career choice. He didn't have many options though after he
barely finished high school. My brother and I are sort of estranged now. We talk maybe once a year for
about five minutes. He blames me for leaving him, and maybe hes right. I moved out of that house a week
after my 18th birthday and I haven't really looked back aside from occasional visits over the summer to see
my mom. Maybe I didn't handle it the right way. Running away probably wasn't the best option, but to this
day I can't think of a better way to handle it than to just not be there.
My mom hasn't handled the situation well either. She's found herself addicted to gambling and food. She's
gained what I guess to be around 100 pounds in the past five years. Her only happiness comes from food or

being at work. She loves her job as a nurse. I keep begging her to move down here with me but she won't
leave my dad. She doesn't think he can survive alone, and he probably can't. But it kills me to see her
suffering every day.
Growing up in situations like mine is never easy. Kids who grow up in poor homes with a drug addict for a
parent have to work ten times harder than most of their peers. I've seen a lot of kids, like my own brother,
who didn't make it, or at least haven't made it yet. But it is possible. If you have the drive to break the cycle
you will. You just have to work at it. You can only blame your situation for 10% of the struggle. The other
90% is your attitude. If you have a positive attitude and outlook on life, you can get through anything.

Fall 2015
Timothy Collins

Trembled
there were holocausts
in Africa maybe that
was it that night at
the carnival the air
trembled
where have the gypsies
gathered in this life
infinitely misunderstood
I want the music to
take me to the arctic
dream chamber
swinging off the power
lines like ski lifts

Opera Eulogy
my friend said
its only the
wind that rustles
the leaves
the border where
the vigil meets
the town
Love at the
desk maintains
the rest
surrounds
the end of history
a great opera eulogy
the unlighted star
somewhere between
a promise & a
scar where the
world was created
survived Death
thru a promise
now theres
no free will
to drink the
whole Western
River for the
blessed consummation

Detheburgher
inverted neoprimitive (converted)
dressed up as scapegoat
give me industrial
strength paint thinner
says the first century
christian martyr
I burned the paper bridges
its just hope & dread
afraid of the strangers
and afraid to be a
stranger
detheburgher
to see her in
a perfect world

Condemned
the stars are
watching me in
this dumb canyon
light contrives
with darkness
teeth grow
the gravedigger
moseys on stage
pockets in hands
this place needs
to be condemned
blindness cured at
a deserted boardwalk
then this obsequious
effeminate troll
brings me a new
plague from Time

En ngre blanc
He loves to
let the script
steep in a
bitter draught
to be meek
yet unable to
serve in this
world staring
at the floor
with negro
angels
between rising
and falling theres
a grotto where
you must lie
and listen to
the river go by
culling the
nectar from
a selfimposed doom
youre ashamed
and dont know why
Rimbaud typed his
manuscript threw it
in a closet and left

Capacity Disaster
spin quest mid direction
wreck glycerin intestine
insulin infection check
pin pool section trek
inspection flex bin tool
neck reflect stool joint
point paralysis parallel fist
slick gel disk analysis twist
prick esophagus pick blister
splatter tick task blaster
gastric click mono tracker
flick nasty monitor master
flask gas capacity disaster
janitor matter ligament plaster
planet pigment plasma bladder
asthma dragnet vent hazard
parliament paid pain shatter
detain brake garment grade
torment crane shake decade
drain torpedo shook arcade
tripod train hook grenade
shock remain block blade
trade frame lame barricade
tock main insane stockade
rocket raid stock invade
socket knock aid tame shade

Fall 2015
Jingjing Xiao

The Lives of Flowers

.
There are many ways to get rid of girls: you can abort them, drown them, or leave them to die of
exposure. You can also suffocate girls, starve them, or toss them in the rubbish.
When I was young and innocent, I thought the death of infant girls the most tragic. Their loss was
absolute, because all existence rests between two points of life and death.
I know better now. There is existence the place, the person, or the object, and then there is the
understanding, the knowledge, and the memory of the person, place, or thing. As a photographer, I keep photos
that embarrass me. They are worthless objects, but they invoke valuable memories. The families that killed their
girls wait a generation, and realize their entire village has done the same. They needed girls for birthing male
heirs, if nothing more, so they kidnapped young women, women of childbearing age. The families of the second
generation of lost girls keep photos, too, images of their stolen girls.
It is most cruel to give a glimpse of what could have been, and then take it away.
.
The city is beautiful in the small hours of morning the hum of electricity softening the silence, the
cloudy smog made invisible by the darkness, the drizzle of rain polishing the windows. I pound my head against
the painted wall. Im not drunk, I swear. Not that drunk. I did become suspicious when I saw the stranger with
the lopsided gait in the lobby, and I did run when I saw the man with the sagging jacket waiting by my
apartment door. Its just the rain like oil slick it covers the city in rainbows that make the world spin.

My knocks echo in her apartment door. She the receptionists said it was a woman moved in perhaps
a week ago, into the apartment directly above mine. If I could climb back to my apartment through her window,
I may be able to grab the photos and some cash.
The door opens. She looks like my little cousin. The smile is a small bloom of blood against her skin,
the color of cherry blossoms. Its at least midnight, but she still wears a lab coat with her hair pulled into a strict
ponytail. The woman grimaces and slams the door. Too late, I realize how I must look, doubled over like a
question mark around my camera, drenched in rain and smelling of drink.
When I rap against her door the rhythm is hollow, slow, steady like the quieting beats of my heart. Light
continues to spill from the seams in the wall, and there is no sound trail of her footsteps leaving. I picture the
young woman on the other side, her back pressed against the door, the two of us standing less than three meters
above the plainclothes one floor below.
When I speak as loudly as I dare, the murmur is still too loud. It blows like a foghorn through the haze in
my head. I rest my head against the woodwork,
I live on the second floor. Im a reporter. The media police are outside my apartment.

My little cousin was still too young to understand death when we first met. She ventured onto the
rooftop garden of my familys seventh floor apartment, distracted by the cherry blossom tree, while our parents
spoke. We kept goldfish in a bathtub on the rooftop garden, and my cousin found the green nylon net sitting in
the holes for the faucet. It seemed innocuous enough, the most unlikely murder weapon, so I had left it there last
weekend. My little cousin chased my goldfish around the bathtub with the net. To exercise the goldfish, she
said, and her parents stopped to take photos because that was so cute.
The next morning half my fish floated belly up on the waters surface. I had to clean them out, scoop
them all into a cooking pot to flush one by one down the toilet. My father called hers because I was crying with
rage. She had just watched Finding Nemo. Oh, good, my cousin said, My cousin no longer needs me to
exercise his fish. All toilets drain to the sea, where fish are free and may exercise freely.
My father wisely decided to never pass her words to me. I did not find out until she told me herself,
many years later, after the bathtub had been stocked, restocked, and her uncle, my father, had grown old and
moved away.


Why? I cant hear footsteps. The second floor hallway remains empty, except for my neighbors
question hanging in the air.
Im a photojournalist. I write about female infanticide, I say, and hate the way it sounds. Female
infanticide. So clinical. I dont want to disappear. I say.
The door clicks open. Im familiar with your work. The woman says. The Lost Girls, she murmurs
in softly accented English before she switches back, Yes? I nod. She seems interesting. It is unusual that she
would know, when most doctors work for the government here.
The neighbor tosses me a towel from across the room. She has perfect aim. I dry my camera bag, drape
the towel around my shoulders, and lean against her window. The window has no ledges, only faint decorative
marks etched into the concrete, and I can see my window box two meters below.
She turns to me, sees her towel draped like a headscarf, sighs, and crosses the room in four steps to
towel my hair dry. Her fingers are surprisingly strong through the fabric. Perhaps shes a surgeon. Perhaps she
works with her hands.
Youre unlikely to escape the police if a cold catches you first. The doctor smirks. She doesnt have a
TV, so her couch faces outside. I can see her reflection in the window.
Thanks.
I press the play button on my camera and scroll through the photos of the lost girls, smiling faces on the
family altar, picture frames gathering dust on office desks, lockets worn over the hearts of friends and lovers.
The woman looks over my shoulder. The textbook on her desk shows an anatomical model, skin peeled away to
reveal blood and muscle. I have those photographs, too, tucked away in a folder I wont scroll to, not because
the pictures disgust me but because I sometimes stare for too long. Years ago another journalist caught me at an
abortion, taking pictures with my camera, trying to get the right angle and the right lighting on the glistening
little corpse still tucked in its unconscious mothers arm.
We are alike, doctors and photojournalists. We capture life when we can, and when we cant, we make
death pristine, clinical, beautiful and terrible both.
Are you a doctor?

Her hands stop in their motions, stilling against my hair. She flashes a smile at no one. The smile is an
instinctive upwards twist of her lips, directed at no one in particular.
I am studying to be one.
I take out my camera, rub the dew off with her towel and flips through the photos until I find the picture
I am looking for, a picture a father sent me of a girl in a school uniform laughing at something offscreen as she
approaches the camera in a soft shower of pink cherry blossoms. I give her the camera.
She was, too.
She skims the photo and returns his camera to me. I zoom out to the icons, flips through a few more
until I find another, a framed yearbook photo of a young women in a cap and gown set between burning
candles.
So was she. The camera passes between us back and forth until I show her the last photo in the series
and the first I took.
She looks like you, the woman observes quietly, and falls silent. She looks towards her anatomy
textbook, Do you keep all your photos on your camera? She asks.
And on photo paper, in my apartment. Ill back them up when I relocate.
Her hum is neither agreement, disagreement, nor support.
We are on the third floor. Two floors below an ever-shifting stream of cars speed by. One floor below
the police search my apartment.

Before my cousin left for America the summer of the Olympics, she shouted into the phone at me the
only English sentence she knew, Give me freedom or give me death! She had a heavy, sharp accent. She
heard it in a movie, and I dont believe she understood. I didnt tell her that. I told her about my girlfriend, who
hated our athletes hideous uniforms because they were bright red and yellow, like eggs scrambled with fresh
tomatoes: delicious, and terribly ugly.
Four years later the Olympics moved to England. Our uniforms were no less garish, but my girlfriend
and I had broken up. My cousin never answered my calls. She was too successful, too busy with college. My
family excused her, for she was a prodigious student preparing for medical school in the Ivy Leagues on the
other side of the ocean.

I drove by our old apartment and found the cherry tree on our former rooftop garden, in full bloom,
grown tall and strong without me, and I felt a bitter little twist in my heart.
..
I had seen many doctors before, visited them as a patient, knew of them as my relatives, surveyed them
at the abortion clinics, but the woman in the third floor apartment is the first doctor I observe in her natural
habitat. When she is satisfied with the dryness of my hair, she returns to her book. She reads with both arms
braced around it, hands supporting her forehead, absolutely motionless except for the slow rise and fall of her
chest.
Someone knocks on the door. She rises with military efficiency. Her eyes flicker away and glance me
towards the closet. I slide in and shut the door. Its empty, except for a few dark items.
Its late, and the voices are so soft that I cannot tell who is speaking. I catch the conversation in
snatches, Excuse us, doctor
wiped photos found in his apartment
retrieve sensitive information from his camera
return in two hours
good
The door shuts. My neighbors measured steps retreat into the apartment. Ten minutes later she knocks
on the closet door.
I think theyre gone. You can come out now. She takes the towel, Would you like some coffee? She
asks, Help with the hangover.
I thought it didnt, but I accept.
Youre the doctor. I say.
I am. She smiles, a bitter little motion. Outside, a streetlamp washes the darkness in a triangle of light.
Dust motes drift through it, like golden cherry blossoms falling.

My cousin and I, we went stargazing in July, under a summer sky. She reappeared suddenly the summer
she graduated from college, and she stuck to my side the entire season as if she had never left, the younger sister
I never had in a country that only allows one child per family.

I had gotten into photography in graduate school, and we drove out beyond the light pollution into the
highlands where it was winter all year long. My friends stayed in the car, turned on the heat, and shut off the
lights. My cousin followed me into the cold and took long exposures of the night sky. I insisted a dozen times
that she return to the car before she caught cold. She refused and waited until the last photo before she asked if
she could try. I put the camera carefully into her smaller hands, showing her which buttons to press. She stilled
with surprise as I handed her the thousand-dollar camera.
The photo was terrible she tilted the camera too far and a red glare obscured the stars. I printed it on
expensive photo paper, framed it, and kept it on my desk until the summer when she disappeared for the last
time.

I am suddenly, inexplicably tired. I cant seem to keep my eyelids raised. It is by lying sideways on the
doctors couch that I realize something is off about the doctors apartment: it is empty. There is no furniture
except for the couch, chair, table, and lamp that I also have downstairs. These come with the apartment.
Nothing identifies this room as the room which belongs to the young woman except for the single medical
textbook lying on the table.
A prop. I murmur.
No. She smiles kindly, out of reach at her desk, I am going to be a doctor next. She shrugs, In a
few months Ill be someone else.
Her fingers brushes over my eyes, the doctor shutting the eyelids of a patient who passed. Her small
hands are strong, but gentle. It strikes me then, a lightning realization that shocks me awake for a moment, that
the government cant possibly keep all the people whom they disappear.
Her reflection is framed in the window. She stands behind the sofa and gazes down at the flow of cars
outside. There is a coldness about her.
You remind me of her.
I beg your pardon? Her gaze shifts to my reflection.
First photo. My little cousin.
I shut my eyes and dream of her, of endless fields filled with infant girls and stolen brides.

I was away when she left my city for the last time. I called my father, who was with them, and asked
him to pass the phone to her. The conversation had me reciting the usual questions, asking if she had fun,
whether she enjoyed her visit. Within ten minutes, my little cousin had roped me into taking her into the
highlands that winter, to take photos of the fat, white snowflakes, which fell like petals even after the cherry
blossoms died.
As a medical student she understood why I liked photography, she said, because it preserved things and
made permanent that which does not last. She found it dangerous my tendency to capture the wild and the free
to make it last.
It was a foolish, petty thing. We disagreed over it until we shouted at each other, and finally it was I who
slammed the receiver shut and, when she called, refused to reply.
Our arguments raged like wildfires before they burnt out, but time grows forests over the ashes. I never
said sorry, because we never spoke of it again.

The sun is rising when I wake. The girl is gone, along with the mug and her medical textbook. In the
center of the space where it sat sits my camera. I check my photos and find they have all disappeared. While I
slept, the last image of my little cousin was replaced by a photo of a plane ticket with my name, bound for
America, like the flight my cousin missed years ago except I would not miss mine.
There is a shout downstairs. Three plainclothes officers scurry about below, running in circles around
the apartment complex, trying to catch the photos that fall like cherry blossoms from my window box. The wind
sets them free into the mid-morning traffic. A car stops in the commotion. A driver snatches up the photo that
has been caught on his windshield wiper and flings it away angrily, into the air.
The photo of my little cousin falls lightly to eye level, and I reach for it but the wind picks up and sends
it sailing, past the flow of cars, into the sky, and I cannot follow. I watch it fly from me and I count the steps
that take her away. It dips behind a truck. I stop in the middle of the street, between honking cars, and step back
onto the curb to wave down a cab and rejoin the flow of traffic.
In the last four years my cousin has become a myth that our family tells. At first her parents told us
stories of her to keep her real, to keep her alive, but my aunts took her canon and made it bloom. As with all
flowers, it bloomed and then it wilted. My cousin became more the brilliant doctor and less the girl who tried to

exercise goldfish, until she was no longer herself. I did not do not know what she was is? but sometimes
I still delude that a little of her had been given to me.

The last time we spoke was through video, before she disappeared, before when she was supposed to
leave for America. My cousin complained that her parents wanted her to drop med school and settle down. She
refused. Her life was hers to give and to take, not theirs. Then she vanished from our capital, where the old
Olympics stadium still sat, rotting, the day before her flight.
I wonder still if she had fought for her freedom with her hands or her heart. In my heart, I believed that
she would have won because I knew her as the girl who withstood the cold of the highlands at night to take
photos with me. But in my mind I know that the world is cruel, that she had caught a terrible cold that left her
bedridden for weeks afterwards.
The last time we spoke, my cousin plucked a flower from a tree behind her on the other side of the video
feed. The flowers were unresolved in the video background, but in her hands I saw they were cherry blossoms.
Her small hands gently brushed the petals, and then she crushed the flower between her fingers until it bled,
staining her fingers with shiny sap.
I dont like cherry blossoms. Did you know? she murmured as she tore it apart, petal by petal.
I think theyre beautiful, but too short lived.

Fall 2015
Alexzandra Rose Etherton

Ardent
With enough investment of
your energy
adoration can become
yearning to be adored
We exchange
love like it has a price
I would like to hold you
Every you
I want to hold all those
of you
that
I love
I want to
remember some of you
Be surprised by some of you
Most of all
I want to be
comfortable with most of you
When you feel
everything
for a person,
you are giving
yourself
reason to feel nothing
for anyone in the future.

Your Metonym
Companionship
comes to me
like water from hole in a boat
quite unexpectedly
then slowly
until it fills my entire vessel
I am forced to be
within its entirety
Lying to please others
What does it say about you
And your inner thoughts
if they are not nice enough
for other people
When I have bit
my tongue
then
asked to voice what I think
I have found
blood will come out
more
often than words
It concerns me that I can
look at a large storm
forming
on my long walk home
Think that I have suffered
worse
I normally do not
quiver
Not with fear for the future
but in fear of the
past
Knowing I have suffered worse
and can't go through any more of the
same.

Male Haze
There are other
things
I could be doing
other than
stripping
I had swum well
forever
even as a very little
girl
in the sapphire
haze
of swimming pools
I lost those skills
breathing
techniques
some things from
school I still use
upper body strength
on the pole
equations
and math
formulas
percentages for the
house
bouncer and
bartender
I could be
swimming
like when I was
a little girl
swimming beside
her
like a whale calf
with its mother
safe
from danger
what makes me stay
in a demanding job
like this

her strength was slaughtered

when her step-father
took from her
a girls' honor
swimming against the current
in a desperately rough sea
I remain in danger
but profiting
from the male
gaze

Fall 2015
Blackbird

Crow Tree
It is time you came back home Old Sam,
come on home to crow tree,
where the crows are thick,
like overripe melons on the vine.
And sink your feet in the quicksand
of honeysuckle and southern pine.
I thought I would make it in this world,
I thought I would do just fine,
but little birds can never fly
when their wings are wrapped with twine.
Alone I sit inside my house.
I rock both night and day.
I stare at the walls, and at the ceiling too.
There is no other way.
And I sit atop the highest branch
in that weather-beaten tree,
and caw at the moon,
when the sky grows dark
while Old Sam answers me.
So come back home to crow tree
to the hoodoos that are there.
They will bind your legs and your hands to it,
and no one ever cares.
(Port St. John, 2014)

The Lost
So pure they were of heart, the essence of all
that was true.
The innocent ones who dwell no more in the land
that was known as Middle Earth. Plucked out too soon like a child that was
taken at birth, like a child taken at birth.
The Balroy chased them all, all of them
into the western sea.
And now they are just a memory, only a memory.
Some say that they followed a star west to the
realm of Valinor.
But then others will tell you that their legs
fell off while traveling north in the sea.
Guided they claim a light from afar.
They seek out eternity, in search of eternity.
(Port Saint John, 2003)

Fall 2015
Charlene Ashley Taylor

Lost in Translation
Hay una constelacin sobre sus sbanas enormes
Suficientes para acoger un cadaver de gigante
Alguien me dijo que
No sabemos
aqu, en occidente
Lo que es un gigante
Pero enseguida ri y de su boca salieron rosas,
Llenas de espinas recorriendo los tallos,
Para llegar a mis pies
There is a constellation on his huge sheet
Enough to welcome a giants corpse
Somebody told me that
We dont know
here, in the west
What a giant is
But then he laughed and of his mouth came our roses,
Full of thorns covering the stems,
To arrive at my feet

Clam
Here is Clam, lathering his saline tongue over a rough grain of sand. Savoring this small token of the beachs
love. Never would this creature have experienced such comforting dryness under normal destinies. Yet, here
he is; a tiny, crystalline statue inscribed with the details of a life that he would never have known otherwise.
Clam reads the Braille with his tongue, smothering and tumbling it around; making love to the ocean in his
own way. Just as the ocean cradles Clam in its vast, sinuous arms, Clam envelops his lover. Many twentyfour-hour cycles chased themselves across the earth, and yet for Clam they passed like a few flicks of the
tongue. And with fresh taste buds, Clam temporarily stops lapping to realize his lover has metamorphosed
without his admission. Here, sleeping in his bed of flesh is this rock, this mature mound silken with age.
Rock is impassive, Rock is cold, Rock yields not even a hint of the flavors that used to describe Clams world.
Clam shudders, shaking off the layers or long-dead guilt. Expelling dust and crumbs and remnants of stale
love with every tongue-scraping slide against his shell. All that remains of the relationship are the imbedded
lines of old tales sand used to tell. This too Clam would soon shed, for every time he shifted he could feel
these tattoos writhing within and throughout him. This gesture, which was intended to dissolve the past,
simply made those days more prominent. Just when it seemed that Clam would never feel relief from the
daily abrasions, Rock was gone.

Peaches
shadows drool in my garden
like milk and honey
smearing beneath the skin
and swimming through the rock
like eggs to eat a rose
bitter with diamond petals
I tongue the smell of rust
and watch the water moan
ripping hair from my throat
but I do not scream
as the lather licks my forest red
the blood on the moon
sweats quick up my dress
like a peach boiling juice into rain
it shines raw above me
and burns my bed bare

Grapefruit
I sang to you hot and hollow,
a distant rhythm.
My own pulsing howl at night.
You flew to flush my face,
beating heat between wings.
My own cicada summer.
You were my own sweet and sour
seasonal hybrid. My own
acidic forbidden grapefruit.
You shed your shell
held back your peel,
with juice in ripples.
My own
fingers sticky with sap.
I gripped your skin,
tough with moist tart.
Dripping again and
again. Shaking, you jerked away.
I drag you back to lick the bark bare,
scratching to silence the fire alarm.
My own fight for the burning feed.

The Girl From Hazard, Ky

I reluctantly walk in your room
to repair the damage
but Im left
to pick up the pieces
of trash and scattered ashes
loose threads etched in the floor.
A kaleidoscope of abandoned fragments.
I think of the paint on your jeans and
markers without caps
how youd stomp around the room
like a kid / I knew you were happy
on one toe to pirouette down the hall
your arms up to hug the ghost that led you
heel toe spin heel toe spin again
and again until you spill your high,
stumbling with a smile.
A kaleidoscope of abandon fragments.
A clean void paints a silhouette where your dresser was
and I can taste the antique grime that caked its mirror.
The moment I saw the boxes
I became the candle wax on the tv,
the cat piss snuggled on your pillow.
I became the mold in the coffee pot,
the starved ball python that stunk
for a week until you noticed.
Trash and scattered ashes.
When your smirk mimicked my pain
I became the flame reflected in your cold eyes,
the memory of the heat they once held
Extinguished by the smoke you blew in my face.
The weight of your memory
latches on to my heavy heart
The harder I fight
the deeper I sink
into the sand carpet.

Loose threads etched in the floor.

A clean void paints a silhouette where your dresser was
and I can taste the antique grime that caked its mirror.
Even vanity refused your reflection.

Fall 2015
Greg Larson

Back Dimples
There is a line of back skin showing
between her tight pink tank top
and her black leggings
as she climbs the Stairmaster.
I can see the dimples on her lower back
undulating with each step
and envision my thumbs in each indentation
grabbing for dear life
grabbing for something that cant be caught
in her exposed slit of skin.

You old bagel fucker, you

There is an unopened, light blue wrappered condom on the ground
Between Einsteins Bagels and the bathroom
on the first floor of the library.
What are you doing there, little guy?
I ask of it.
Everyone pretends its not there
As they step over it
On their way between bagels and bathroom.
Who left this condom here?
Maybe he was a skinny white freshman boy
With glasses and a sparse mustache.
Perhaps he stood in a 25 person line at Einsteins,
His heart thumping against his ribcage
With the condom in his hand,
Eyes glued to the baked goods in the display case,
Wondering which one he will fuck.
Blueberry bagel, he says with a shiver.
Extra butter, please.
His penis stiffens when
He reaches over the counter and grabs the bagel,
Condom in the other hand.
And on his way to the bathroom, in his frantic excitement,
He grabs the bagel with both hands
And accidentally drops his condom.
When he realizes this he proceeds
Undeterred, sure that he can go raw without repercussions;
He trusts the bagel.
As he stands in the handicap stall,
pumping his penis through the bagel hole,
The boy imagines the Einsteins logo:
Those two dapper men holding bagels to their eyes like monocles
He imagines himself thrusting through those monocle bagels
Jabbing their eyes with his dick,
Alternating bagels and brothers with each thrust.
Charge me two dollars for a bagel now, you greedy fucks.

Beauty in the Garden

A girl with snaky golden locks
Flows through the garden;
She is the effortless wave of an ocean.
Every move predestined
By cosmic force
Granting her movement as a gift
Through the marble Labyrinth
Weaving the garden path.
She knows Im watching.
She yearns for me
To lay eyes on her
And write these words.
She is the energy
That inclined ancient men
To carve the bare bronze beauties that pepper
The garden she walks;
Mere mortals reflecting
Her stellar radiance
For generations to come.
As she disappears from sight
I can still feel her
With the power
Of my open heart.
In the rushing fountains,
The soft summer breeze,
Even in the tiny lizards
Scooting in her wake
On the marble path,
I feel her.
As she leaves my sights forever,
I know I will see her again.
She will be with me
For the same reasons
The statues in this garden
Stand hot in the summer sun:
She is the endless feminine radiance
That will inspire the gifts of men
For all time.

Fall 2015
Jill Gamble

Thank God for the bug on my window

Theres a bug on my big glass window fronting Georgian Bay
The bug is small like one of the spots I see when I stand up too quickly
or push too hard on the toilet seat
little bubbles opening and closing before my eyes like mango moisture beads suspended in body wash
The bug on my window doesnt move
maybe hes dead
staying on the window because of some super powered slime that earlier spewed out of his abdomen
just before he perished
The wind can rattle the window and the bug doesnt move
Minus twenty degree snow storms whip outside and the bug clings on
Hot sweltering sun roasts the back of my neck but the bug doesnt fry
Heavy downpours with hail can try their best but the bug doesnt slide away
Tomorrow if I look out the window and the bug is gone my heart may cease beating
my red blood may turn blue
and Ill stiffen cold
Ive come to know that the bug
that pest
that affront to an otherwise perfect waters view is the reason my heart keeps beating
my mind keeps working
my hands keep giving with the full knowledge there will be nothing given in return
Angels claim to save us in the afterlife
but I know its the bug on the front window that sees me through
this otherwise bottomless life

Eat me, or better yet, dont

Dont watch me eat
Dont even ask me what Im having
Kindly shove that medium-rare steak in your mouth, chew, swallow and be done with it
Ill go home and eat away from you
Nourishing my body with nuts and gluten drained grains
Keep your distance from me in the deli
I hate the way you watch the rotisserie chickens
skewed
turning on their silver stakes
little baby bodies with chopped off heads
Dont tell me theres pesticides
on my organic bananas
let me chew them vigorously
until their phallic wonder
is a pile of mush
Put your face in your custard
bloating with dairy goodness
let me drink my soya milk in peace
without noticing the vile pudding still left on the corners of your mouth
I hate the way her scent still clings to your beard
Dont watch me eat
you can order out
or better yet
Leave
the waitress will smile with her boobs
while I stay home and read
My tea is getting cold
so hurry up and dont forget to touch
the smeared chocolate
on my door

Ive got suicide in my back pocket

Ive got suicide in my back pocket
Just in case I need him
Kind of like a rainy day penny
only more potent
When I was born I came into a
can full of tomatoes stacked on top of one another
happily squished like family should be
Now the cans almost empty and Im almost alone
a mouldy yesteryear sun-fried tomato
perhaps longing for a final fast release out of some ketchup bottle
You and I are like diamonds
cutting each other
jockeying for position
to get our prism rays out into the world and into each others heads
You know best
or so you think
I sit at the table silently while our child pulls out fistfuls of my hair
ADD, ADHD, OCD, whatever acronyms Society wants to use
our sons name to us is LOVE
But what is your name for me?
Once it was dumb and stupid
Has it changed?
After all these years do I finally reach the level of sunshine
like the sunlight Im now looking at
sparkling off Georgian Bay
The beloved family cottage
Are we still a beloved family?
Ive got suicide in my back pocket
Just in case I need her
But I wont

Fall 2015
Victor Eshameh

1. Darkroom [chambre f noire]

Beauteous
Not even when the body is debilitatedi
The spirit will talk to the soul
And the soul
Respond despondinglyii
Who can bear this strait?
Quandaryiii between the three-folds
Not the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit
Like Jesus said
In the Holy Book
But of the gloomy spirit
Dejected soul
And the downcast body
God is not a man that HE should lies
In this world
You shall find trials and top ranked tribulation
But be of good cheers
How?
The testy soul questioned the spirit
You are closer to the father
So tell us how this could be possible
The shabby body listens
How long will it be for the plight to rest?
If only the earth still swivel and spin
On their axis and orbit
N importe quoi!

Why then do birds sing better than man?

And men coo like the distinct birds
Fiendish!
Dont blame me
I never did say so
Ask them
Havent they sold it allTheir soul, spirit and body to the devil for nuts
Dieu men garde!
My spirit refuses my soul to lead my body into temptation
And when my soul ask me where are we marching to
My puissantiv body remains dumb
The gallant nature in me had since been slaughtered
Killed into confusion and loneliness
Go,
Ask a lonely man how many times he had died
One thing does keep us restoredIts the gift of the spirit
Not even with so much bearing down on us
Ce nest pas grave!
Who can explain this abeyancev my body and my soul taste after
In the future
When valiantvi spirit has been lashed hatefully
Severally
I had to cry said the gentle soul
Not you alone
We all cry joined the spirit and the body
My cup of tears runneth over
If goodness and mercy shall follow me
All the days of my life
Why not start now
The hocus-pocusvii have made mess of us dans lobscurit
Because we were young
And they call us children
And we call them fathers
The father we never had
If the earth be for the lord and its fullness thereof

What is then the reward of the virtuous?

Why then should I blame my garrulousviii mind for not minding it business?
When the beatitude is been stolen from us by the fussy ones
So furious that they want us
Intoxicated with backwardness
11
Only cauchemarix gives us joy
With your heart praying
That you never wake up again
Those who bear severally on us
Are not yet ready to repent
Yet they call thee, lord
While we await their call to glory
Cause our glorieuxx gloire
To shine in the face of deceit
Speak to our cheated, tricked, hoaxed spirit, soul and body
nergiexi get-up-and-go
So that our great-grandchildren
Sons and daughters
Will glamour in our gifted grace

weakened
hopelessly
iii dilemma
iv strong
v nonoperational
vi steadfast
vii conjurer
viii talkative
ix nightmare
x glorious
xi Revolution/determination
i

ii

Fall 2015
Patricia Walsh

Cave Canis
Inspire yourself, a dog's bite of a sentence,
that serves to magic the doorways shut,
a catalogue of errors serving purpose.
Nobody want the fight the good fight anymore,
sated with staring into a boxed machine,
for hours on end, entertained somewhat.
Wait for the ships to come in. It is only then
you will find if the cat is still alive
uncertainty poisons you otherwise.
God did create all manner of things,
a rotten hierarchy to go and multiply,
male intervention reigning supreme.
Plagiarise beauth, a sawn-off manifesto,
that aims to chill sorrow skin-deep
this is our world, a wreckage binding.
The break of the day betrays its promise.
A gallery of small things, a keepsake
for what it is worth, a decree of a sample
Oxygen for your enemies is paramount
enough to burn all semblences of poison
natural selection garottes your greed
Sleep while you can, a glorious failure
Rotting secretly, a dying inbred
trying to communicate a dire need.

Infinity
"You cannot divide by zero"
I write my own jokes, too.
A big fat nought, gibes amiss
Miss the target, shred the opposition
seated in front, baiting my life.
"You can eat yourself slim, you know".
Gorge on the good things in life.
Temperatures dropping in a private oasis
skinning wind your only reward.
Brave the cold, since you have to.
"You're intelligent, but you don't work".
Rip out my brains and
give it to someone who needs them.
Cold storage for independent reference
future genius is standing by.
"Don't mix paper and plastic"
recyclable ideals catch on, for the better,
as long as you abide by the function
sleeping the sleep of the just,
sated by righteousness, a godly heart.
"There's always someone worse off than you".
Wipe clean the record collection, resurrect the iPod,
and burn the earholes with preferred music.
Stand-offing boredom, watching through windows
the burning adventure of genuine life

Machine Made Bread

May we ever celebrate our road to perdition
glancing skywards at our fate outlined,
focus on our limits, smashing the roadblock
through which we struggle to enter in.
We've bettered ourselves, with want of reason,
soundbytes still call the doomed masses,
"Three quarters of the world never made a phone call",
slight, sated, our brains are our temples.
If the power is out, where are the candles?
If the server is down, how will we live?
Sit back and be still for at least five minutes,
service will be resumed, although found wanting.
Eating terabytes to keep up with the pace,
memory, though sorrowful, remains outside,
inside the Neanderthal mind, we shoot survival,
hunting and gathering too de rigeur to work.
Getting old and senile. The bad cops sweetly sing
barricade knowledge to a click and drag
from our homes onto the street. Condoning
implicit violence, by assignation. Glory be!
Give us this day our daily bread. Manufactured
with sleight of buttons, passed in time.
Processed with uniformity, blandly produced
to our homogenous taste, a programme worth watching

Broken Devil
Silence! My sisters and I
measure perfectly your transgression,
hunting furtively your future mistakes.
The steel wheel remains, nondescript
an accomplishment, fuelling your feat
crows' indefinite feet spay a miracle.
A secret-keeper, a division bell,
chimes to inform us of misdeeds
committed by morganatic tua
rituals of sorrow, self-inflicted wounds,
taking the fall for eternal sunrise
war-torn classroom, a blossom rent.
Flest upon flesh, a zero-made hour
death abounds in its influence of silence
lapping up the gods' cream in the last days.
Sorrow-bound, unexploded, fine.
Other women upstairs, tend to your need
feeding sparrows like tomorrow didn't exist.
Dream of Celtic twilight, blind, a dark place
miseltoe crumbs litter the carpet
like banned confetti, pointless, obscure.
Some matriarch you were. Files are missing
cover up your crass mistake, a longing
to weave shadows, a dark water.
So what if you're broken? Rumour has it
to the very marrow your unease lies
a dead thing, season's ritual gone.
A house of flesh still lives, autonomous
Your face is tomorrow, a peroxide bump
a hard place and a rock, resting awhile

Unexploded
Loaded information, in my right hand,
makes no difference, as you found out.
The warpath paces itself, following and
fires on all cylinders, a privy to anger.
The loss creeps down my spine
through to my fingers, prompting to
declare all and eradicate doubt,
but I buried my talent, afraid of retribution.
It made no difference in the end. Hurt pride
and a bruised ego, gobbles up the peace
we once shared, confidentiality aside
over pre-bought pints in each other's faces.
Rolling cigarettes is an acquired joy
the smoking area comfortably lit,
heated discussions abound, secrets ready
to explode, say nothing, diffuses all duties.
Clocks go into reverse, for the time of year,
shadowing the past, a death of sorts
a syringe of truth went very amiss,
side effects hit the fan, to mildly say.
Kiss me first, a safe valve.
Historic breakups are no fault of mine
if I say so, which I won't
regrettably, I protect my sources.
Murdering doubt, rampantly so.
The silence breaks over chaste coffee
retributions scream hard, an angry alarm
natural causes are no longer an excuse.
Rituals of the broken pulverise your fate.
A stone boy with a limp to his name
vaulting through death, a binding oblivion
returning to form with a dream that matters.

Fall 2015
PT Davidson

Poem 2430

this
poem
has
no
margin
for
error

Poem 3004

this
poem
is
only
going
to
say
this
once

Poem 3538

this
poem
was
written
before
a
live
studio
audience

Poem 2614

this
poem
is
a
victim
of
circumstance

Poem 3385

this
poem
should
be
seen
and
not
heard

Poem 2911

this
poem
is
not
normally
like
this

Fall 2015
Natasha Murdock

Empathy Porn
Imagine his thick dick/
in my mouth,
his rugged abs, his cum/
on my face, no blemishes,
imagine everything you hate about yourself
perfected
imagine his cock taking me from behind/ hes young
& good & great hair, hes a throbbing member/ right up my ass,
hes a/
moaning, asking, begging for
more,
imagine him
Loud & unexpected
imagine him giving it/ oh giving it/ as long as I want it,
hes never finishing/ first over and over again I want him
anyone, really, but not you, not you downstairs
working, not you downstairs rocking the baby,
not you downstairs folding laundry, imagine anyone fresh
& new & hot & ready & telling me I like it & pounding me
real good/
harder, harderclearly not about you
I do it for mefor me
sorry

the wasteland
breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land -t.s. eliot
blown-out / big&floppy / hallway / loose / gaping / wide-set / beef-curtain / baggy / black hole
c-section yeah but there was still a whole hand up there
like a crime scene like a kidnapping like a hotel sign no vacancy like a pancake/no butter like do not walk no
turn on red literally like no double coupons like after a short commercial break like dont touch that dial like
some forgotten jelly fish swallowing itself
now you're a milf as in no I will not take off my shirt
after six weeks, exam, speculum, etc. this may hurt a little, a little pressure
okay, okay, looks great

from derivative
sometimes I do what you tell me to and I like it but its still what you ask me to do so I am being what you
want me to be and I get confused like when I like you to tell me to bend over the kitchen stool and show you
my assI do it. I bend right over. I spread my cheeks. I show you the parts of me even Ive never seen. You
tell me to tell you I like it and so I tell you I like it & I like it. I like it so much that later, the next day, I ask you
to tell me to spread open, to tell me to like the way your big hard cock slides right in. I ask you to tell me and
so you tell me to ask you & I ask for it. I ask for it & I like it. Like you tell me to. I am so wet.

Something is Not Right

whatever it is, its eating us,
ripping through our forests like fever,
enveloping us in new sadness
it is a hard moon, missed light
the old itll be different this time joke
volatile as a salted pot
whatever it is, its quick turning
our palms to dust and shards,
the cat pissing on everything
the old this is what you wanted joke
we buy the grapes and we do not eat them.
we say more to ourselves than each other.
the laundry sits in the basket for weeks.
youre so angry
all of our jokes are true & mean.
we cant see the future
we dont even bother.
we never wear our glasses in the house anymore.

No Head in Oven! He Says!

I sleep on his side of his bed.
I leave my book on my side of his bed.
I web-cam masturbate on his side of his bed.
this is not a joke. . .
I had glitter! I was not live!
I was real; I had to fake it.
I drooled on his pillow in his bed.
I pet his cat in his house in the morning.
I put on his underwear!
I watched his Bill Maher!
I am hung-over to death from drinking to death from missing him to death!
I am sick to death of missing him to death. . .
I dont even live here. I dont even bake here.
I took a shower and used his soap!
I smell like an Irish Spring now!
I do not remind me of him!
I do not want to miss him at all!
I do not want to clean his litter!
I do it, but I do it.
I do.

Fall 2015
Sean Burn

someone who in the midst ov others silence, uses his own voice
(fundaci joan mir, barcelona)
make a nest ov salt on a stool / push egg tender into this denting ov grain / sweep off all but the smallest
scattering needed to keep egg balanced on end / use a careful paintbrush in this / one childhood trick ov
mine // now cast this in bronze / yu have a miro sculpture
*
dream a red rung ladder
the balance awkward off
caress this flight ov birds
these touchpaper nights
late hyacinths blood
these fields ov toil
jazz these stones pollen
alone & un-gunned
newspaper fragments
forever threatening war
black lithograph ov birds
beaking their correlates
where sickles & rims
are found inflamed

there are more than

five staves to music
yu cant make a bairn
look the way yu want
not always & sometimes
there are explosions
pinpricks ov lights
& pricks in darkness the dictator chiefly ubu cannot
exhibit his-self publicly ubu cannot
& we are all ubu's daughters
we are all ov uz ubu's daughters
*
the blue star
& the green
the nocturnal bird
ov red & black
not flagging
more a raised fist
aidez l'espagne
the suns iris
gorging on bone
these lifelines
faint az brush
ov fabric on arm
no rush
how tall can
a flower grow
on blood & bone
oh blood & bone
salver moon
& salvo

savage
salvage
arrow like whale
balancing air
on the flense
ov her tail
the scavenging
brainstorm stolen
isolates fireworks
the consoling
constellation
a string ov yellow
eggs on the rebound
the ultramarine line
the carmine sun
not boxed in
beguile the colours
down kiss & drink
& lose an eye
in the blink
ov a market
coming ov rage
ascend
the ladder
ov ribs
the heart is
the blue star
& the green
*
a rake leans against ochre railings / theyre fighting over tools in the sandpit / axe heroes all / strut / give uz yr
gauzy shadow boxings / lure wings against forearm / the allure ov ascent / & then some
*

can i sit?
these legs
are not getting
any younger
pearl earring
sags in this heat
bird beaks are
currency here
the gloves
missing a digit
paint bombs
far beyond
thresholds
hands dont
so much fly
to constellations
but are
brief asterisks
ov life flung
lung gaspings
lines black
az the moon
red az the sun
split my lips
smiling
bring me air
bring me air
spiralling
no longer
wary & weary
but great
gobbeting tears
ov ecstasy
big mouthings
the stars get bent
on the anvil ov sky
sign to the manifest
the weighing ov colour
*

sparrows dust-bath
ahead the storm
at heads ov the storm
leaves & loaves
all uz feathereds
wearing scrubs
raise glasses to the frac
turings ov water in mouth
clouds refracting munificence
sandbags gaffer-taped row by row
& we're on top this hill
- some deluge
how
bone vowels fall
so many explosions
when we sleep it will be az sparrows
- the winners here
agiling beyond our scope
*
& the untitled
inky explosions
so much
jackdawings yack
seen off those
blinded in
soapy chat
we yr shadows
outliving yu
get up close

so the birds eye

fills our entire gaze
the birds eye ov
yellow chasing
green chasing
red chasing
black in deed
containing
the universes
ov bread still warm
on these streets
that perfumed waft
sweeping on by
a faun
playing
too close
to the blue
ov a bayonet
experiences
the weeping
melancholia
az wings suiciding
gain dominion
ov our chicks
those curious
crevasses
ov tattooed skin
after the lens
diamond smiling
& suckled
tear navigates sickle
immediately before the fall
*
neck contorts thru
so many degrees
the eyes distort
becoming teardrop

rolling
roiling
there are no palls ov smoke
in this dry day
teardrop
rolling
roiling
dignity/in
to be trodden on
this constant passing
ov dray horses
the clip-clop thigh boots
seeing beyond & thru
these other lifeforms
also twisted & blistered
into pursing lips:
pursuing but is it art?
skewed & skewered
poses among the roses
a brief receiving in negative
black where light shone
this the perfect storm
the perfect storm
& so much spew
poised to soar & sear
this totem ov shoes
these feet for a wheel
jailbirds revealed
in the streets
the spine over & over
riding shotgun
*
talk is sometimes cheap
paint cheaper
bells cry out
television remotes
require a hefty deposit
we are not screen

we are not screen

but we may just be
air-conditioned foot soldiers
one step from the prat-fall
face buster keaton grey
but somehow more gay
my heads a bonfire reading ignite
sparks thrown upwards
we sleepwalk to
violence & violations
in the dark ov day
in the light ov night
crabby walking sideways
looking for that nip which tells
where the horizon is
- all thoughts are cold
except those poised to soar
the chair-back is a birdcage
but who is on the in?
the well comes late to the chair
the mouth vomits handprints
land is sandpaper
the ribs slow bleed
fire into the cowl
the need is for handling light
keep shouting & reverse time
for the poets not yet assassinated

*
cigarettes for nipples
anarchy for mouth
smokers play the long game
needing three double espressos just to wake

ferns hang in the undergrowth

not every day a man in a dress
yu are welcome here a bringer ov luck
& scars on arms tattoo valour
& since when wz it wrong to listen to
songs on the death ov children?
the skipping rope is a little long
but never mind tattooed to
the upper arm - a bitten apple
posing az flowers birds stars
bark is bronzed
the sails are set
fly a green flag
for zig-a-zag-zig
raise a middle finger
& moon soon fuses
bird to this
arms are armatures
for whole seasons
set apart playing
w/ sweet blossom
ov & off almonds
the ladder ov
the escaping eye
throwing its shadow
& a woman has a teardrop
carved from her torso
the pain entirely bronze
by now she is used to
this weaving ov space
this loaf ov bread
this pitcher ov refracted mist
each / every bottle wine
contains a small volcano
could sink into azure blue
the circle enfolding
dont step on this my gaze

*
so easy to lose
beyond all proportions
off all rails
kick in just kick in
some poor sods head
boot it up to a heavy heady mush
yu cd kick a kids head in
one instant thats all it takes
but unwilling
to unearth civil war
one moment ov transgression
so precarious this shelf-life
never turn yr back on
fascism ready for the grab
subvert skin for we are all
blood beneath
we are all daughters ov ubu
*
by blue star
by reflex ov eye
by cold chair
by black gravel
by bronze sting
by eyes ov volcano
by the secret life ov
a box ov matches
a vox ov marches
democracy is more
than each five years
a peachy torn cemetery
the pain ov laying
an egg w/ corners
gargantuas symmetry
& yr sense ov

encircling worth
shadowy fatigue
the spinning top
searches for a feather
the feather searches for a churn
the onion wears a thimble for
the threading ov the lights
bird is a length ov wire
c/oiled for flight
fights downstream
the pollution ov light
& orange is
a rarity circling
the hand grab
the blood-thirst
a lithograph ov truth
in black white yellow
red blue green
the grave goods
trampled to dearth
we are split infinitely
between the desire
to kick heads in
& the offering ov
a helping hand
why cant we be
sunbirds all?
the dust-bathing
ov uz feather
spread to the wind
poised to soar?
posed to soar
yu have to graft
unscrew this
*

one last coffee / melted wax has chrysalised multitudinous wine bottles / someones signed themselves stack o
lee in the toilet for hombres / & i used to have tennessee three singing / still have dylan singing that blues / &
the sixties play over the speakers / cymbals on splash / a shirt to be worn lightly / knife grinders on overtime /
sparks flying towards the light / the loveheart i am handed reads crazy

Fall 2015
Lus Leal Moniz

Headless cigarettes
Leaving home just hoping to have another pointless day
And be bright in this empty place
Where goals dont exist
And be brilliant
Where everything is vain
And be astonishing
Being nothing
Nicotineless cigarettes just for being smoked
Headless cigarettes
Painless drinks
Drinking without forgetting
Just having sex
Just walking
without a trail
Just breathing
Leaving home returning the same, dining and sleeping
Awaking and leaving home again
Just to exist

only dreams
Socialist
dreams of equality
Liberal
dreams of freedom
Democratic
dreams of fraternity
Nothing but money instead
Health is nothing
Education is nothing
There is no opportunity
In the motherland of civil rights theyre equally stupid, equally dumb, equally soldiers of terror
They are the capital of the free world
They are the Capital
They are the market and the guns
They are the Capital
The stock and the new suns
They are the Capital
And what are we?
We the clever no ones
The poor
The hunger
The floor crumbled by their feet
Intellectually tired
Intellectually sick
The garbage countries
Full of risk
Were only allies
With nothing to win
Only infantry
With nothing but death
Only slaves
With nothing but handcuffs
With the right to talk
But without the media

With the freedom of speech

But no culture
With the right to live
But no medicines
Just like Americans
But with no flag to wave on the wind that passes by

Fall 2015
Barbara Tomash

From PREmidthe dialects of midriff of temperate zones deep

where new crust forms
extended darkness

a womans garment that exposes

or some part of the body articulated

with the arch of the tongue a deep blackish blue

desire for:

INNERMOST:

or some part of the womb

tone change

the central vein of a leaf

midnight horizon

where new crust forms corpus

restory as a seismograph
free in rhythm and tempo to fly back when released
as a hawk
an account
given by a singer in solitary
speaking aloud as a grooved track
magnetization of fine wire to kick back
when fired
or as in solitude
a dialogue
to move from the last toward the first word
repose

twias a trailing vine with red berries : initiation : anesthesia & semiconsciousness : as a constellation : as a world lighted by more strands
being twisted : round and round in the water : in which boys rotate lightly
idly flutter the eyelids mingle by interlacing : also : twice-told : sunlight &
its airglow [Rare] : the ends of used rope symbolizing rebirth

twithe same plane of atoms that share

the light between
the subdued just after
to weave the yarns without its leaves
without its ribs
born with one other
to produce an intermediate
state of counterpart
or as if by twilight
to play negligently in a necessary
half turn dance
you and me must twine
Archaic: tremulous excitement of a bird; chirping
stipulated meander
subdued with fingers

Fall 2015
Christopher Ozog

Rafters Of Time
Even
Nostradamus
Couldn't have
predicted,
That your
seismic heart,
Would quake
into one
last release.
A wheeze
into Obscurity,
We thought you
Would renew,
We thought
You were non-fiction,
We thought fan
Fiction was silly,
We thought
You penned
One last sequel.
A short story
Was all it took,
When you
became a fable,
That never
Boomeranged
Back to us.

Over The Plaines

Time's wormhole
recycles this past.
Our dust
reminisces,
then disintegrates.
As we spend
this years
monotony
lividly
backtracking
into re-runs
of yesterdays
apparitions
and into fleeting
memories,
eternities
safe will brake,
and these
years will split.
You'd give
anything to charge
your respirator,
for an eternity.
Even when
these lights
display decay,
and you're
still scavenging
for that
renaissance,
yearning for
this revival
of youth,
when time
was benign.

Wasted Pasts
We Dined with
decayed Ruins,
And watched the
Years swing
By,
like a pendulum.
A frenzied fall
Into frailties
Vulnerable
Ensemble &
Down The
Rubbled chute,
So we could
Retrieve the
Archived
Caskets of
Golden aged
Souls underneath
The Ball room lights,
Where Victorian
Phantoms united.
Guzzled down
Aged wines of
Yesteryear,
As time
traveled
to the past,
& Revived those
Anecdotes buried
With our kin.
Danced with
skeletons,
and surveyed
the royalties.
But time was
a minority,
and in a second,
sobriety intervened.
Slapped to the present,

those ghosts
forever vanished
into uncertainties
Blackened night.
In a mind
that split
a sigh,
a seizure
froze time.
They stuck
to the clouds,
but sometimes
their shadows still bare a crown.

Golden Years
The way this mother
in central park,
carries her children
into adulthood,
and grows into
this great dane
that soldiers on,
and enlists
in rife's trench hole,
seems to know
that one day,
it's time for this
decrepit turtle
to climb back into
the apparitions
mouth,
and get
swallowed
by the morgue
that declares
each inhabitant
of the world,
a time capsuled
boomerang.
You watch these
years evacuate,
as life slowly
decomposes,
your spirit
sinks beneath
the soil.
You're
no wandering
youthful blaze
scavenging
for the spotlight,
you no longer
reign like a
thunderstorm

rains
in the forest,
replenishing
watered souls.
You are a
puddle that
forges on,
ever so slightly,
until these
windows
start to close.
we know this
terminal cradle
will be one day
stripped of it's youth,
and robbed for the
reapers throne,
and you will
canon into
time's wormhole,
and turn to dust
just like the rest.
but once eternities
safe has broken,
and the years
depart,
you'll always
be searching
for that
grandfather clock,
that never
phones back.

Fall 2015
Heather Bowlan

Birthday
Ive lived 32 lives
and in each one Ive been a panther.
I startle myself awake each morning
with my baby-cry.
I hide in trees, the poplar, the white oak,
mark the clearings
and the wild things too in love
with the open to leave it.
Then in the gloaming
I let my all-over cloak down,
rasp at each corner with my sandy tongue
until it seals itself over
every inch of skin.
I leap into the valleys dark corners,
look out from the overhangs veined
with the bloody memory of copper,
find the deer and timber-rattlers.
Shake them awake. Let my eyes go green
in the hunters way. Watch the stars
like candles, marking time.

Tall Tales
The summer comes when the swing
on the Japanese maple breaks, and that fall
the bees sting one by one until the nest wont hum,
no matter how many times we hit it.
When we run away, we find a fountain
in a flower shop three blocks down
and wish hard for a hat made of perennials, but the crones
running the joint are wise, they call the cops.
Customers stand around and whisper instead of buying forsythias
while we loiter by the orchids and count pennies greening
in the fountain water. We hate forsythias. Who remembers this?
We grew up in houses too big or too small,
in love with our dresses and grand displays
on staircases until our hair dulls its baby-shine.
Cue a few feet taller and we do so much to forget,
amphetamines and gin, but when the acid
kicks in all we see are white bears marching down the street.
They say you remember it wrong, your glass house,
you forgot the blue, the purple, the green.

The Miraculous Neil Diamond

Dear M, I visited your rose garden,
and now Im back home, jonesing. Forget orchids
and stargazer lilies. Ive got the afterimage
of Mercury Rising on my eyelids, coral paling
to white at the core, or how about Grand Amore,
Technicolor fist-sized clusters beaming like
Dorothys shoes. Send me just a few citrus petals
of Sheilas perfume for a midnight snack
or the resin buried in the Rainbow Sorbet
for the bedstand. A second look at Neil Diamonds
fuschia whorls & crisp white petals and maybe
Ill taste the flowers in your names.
Familiar, then forgotten, then sumptuous strange.

Benediction
The first word of this aching morning:
surface. The second is blurred
even as it forms, but it could be sift, or bridge,
or pivot. I taste concrete.
As surely as if Id bitten my tongue
it wells up, begins to harden into another day
of not moving from this bed. Hair slick
as tarp on the pillow. If theres only the order
of the twisting streets in London and Pittsburgh
in the maps taped over the aging stains
and godawful paint on the walls,
and the thrum and moan of Nicos harmonium
buzzing on repeat through blown-out speakers
in the corner, that will keep me safe.
I say this to myself, never looking away
from the blank ceiling blotted out by pallid light
as though a few minutes before, a storms blind eye
crept in to force stillness onto my minds wild windings,
so full of solid and broken lines theyre leeching
out of my skin. My eyes open against
the labyrinth that bends and tangles outside the door.

Fall 2015
Vernon Frazer
Killing the Message

industrial python reparation

broken catechism reflex betrayed
secret momentum wagons
sour deletions recur
deltoid factotum rage
breeds
sure
voltage fire
as a surly
charged
dimension surfaces
the irrevocable tirade
price of retention surfing
waves against the kettle pretense
flagged
to charging suffix votes
the sorrow of a wet declension melt
left behind at the social counter ball
a modicum assembled
slow as a winter mutiny
when radar bagels mirror
their sense of the pseudo-replete
no flagon left to dull the company
their presence
desired
more greatly as absence
a
writhing
urge

revelation caught
a private moment

suppressed
compassion

to
swallow the whole
factory
factotum or no
big cigar left
behind the leaning back
each broom seated contempt under their own assembly wickets
a baffled montage
in search of
aching couriers

Career Moves

r
ls g
al ot
eb sl
ey me
i
ng t
ki e
in th
cl to
in

impression strand
chromed through instant remix
palatial seizures

disengage

dispatched

APPLAUDING
THE RISE
OF SMOKE
TO POWER

un
sr

t
en

a
crime
against
the nuance
breathing down
the vaunted corridor

am
ok

amid
regurgitation fits
denying
empathy

in

behind the lurking cavendish

g
ilot rent
cop eter
ter
ent e d
de
terg elag ne
-de fus
i
non the
er
the red
yc
i
a
gl
rep

tentative
fencers

r o
te r y
ut b
sh em
on nt in
ag ge ta
w er s
et

the cored plume

dismembered in filigree circuits
a transom layer

its surcharge

-1-

the harrowing foxes

taunt a ghost of an
ancient yerby penned
to the facile memory
forgotten yesteryears
seeding
the tidal
crescent

to

po
tr
a
ne
ve rt a
ce
r
ss sing sho
ity
cr re
ch ud
e
ar
ts

stigmata in arrears
left unclaimed, no beverage
filter applied
largesse

determined

a
cataleptic
diction

as leverage plies

gored
sufferage
ignored

suffering

legends of future postage stamps defunct

no tart reply
tending to conciliate
the implication
of its tactical eyeballs
grim

as the sonic fusion misplayed

te
om
r
noi
a
n
c
o
re c k
quic k
as
i a rd

ey
mon h of
earc
in s ocket
ap
dinero man

ill
m
a b n the
o
ing ue
n
r
tu esid
st r
f la

)
eyeballs linked time
into a clamorous shot

Appending
the righteous
joke they empower
an upending

cornered

tra

-2-

a cumbersome veneer

N
M

wafting slowly

down the velcro dawn

the stick
of benched glue pits
avenue triage
against
forced retention

g
lin
p
m ed
tra ew
re n

S
R
O
D
A
T
A
M

(
))

N
9
I
NT

s
al
en
utt g
d
b
re kin tion
e
s
r stoc ten
a
o
re
fh
al
o
e
e
a d se
pin
sh our
ac

E
T
DIS

k
dar c
i
mag ent
er g a
t
e
d
tr
m an k
am o

ge t
a
nd igh
e
p d r ing
p
A ne er
tur rpow ion
t
e
n
v
e
o nt
i

E
R
O

patio flakes

in matters of slow insurgence

the destitute ride a desperate font
short of ammo
or fusion pellets

n
oo
ing he
n
n
t dy
e
ck ver
a
i
sh
o
th

a chronic
detergent
attuning
to motion

penned ghosts harrow the fox

a tenson left unfelt, no leverage unclaimed
or notion tuned impression

-3--

no merchant left to carry

deadly weight as frontage
while the shady noon attuned itself
to
renewed trampling
where footage rests
benched veneer flakes
in
a bay

CANNED
ENIGMA

(no tuna added)

detergent mantra intoned

clinking eyeballs at the time slot link
distending its arrears
a blustering notion

carom glance

gly
ce
r

ha

sh

or
the ing
ve
-n
ots

de

nie
ine its d
de
ter
ge
nts

of

an emotion
detergent
attuning
to chronic

MATADOR VENEER

a career
as a motivational seeker

-4-

Fall 2015
Maureen Coleman

Close Observations of a Distant Father

Almost as far back as I can remember my dad was in and out of the hospital. There were a variety of
health problems and a number of surgeries; totaling roughly 13 hospitalizations in 12 yearssome long, some
short. He was steadfast in his desire to continue living as he always had and would draw the lines as to which
treatments he consented to and which he didnt; allowing him to maintain some sense of control over his
deteriorating body. He survived scares with his heart, skin cancer on his left forearm, and a disease that affected
his brain and was usually not caught until after death. In between all of those issues, he lost a toe, then a foot,
then one leg, then the other; each loss of limb coming with its own oozing-puss, foul smelling infection. His
kidneys had started to fail, but he refused dialysis. He seemed to be unstoppable, a sort of unbendable steel or
unbreakable wall. Because of all this, the debridement surgery scheduled on the below-the-knee stumps that
were left after losing his legs seemed like a minor occurrence, but my dad seemed to know something that
everyone else didnt.
The surgery went off without a hitch. He was moved from the recovery room to the post-operative unit
on the 5th floor, arriving there alert and oriented. He smiled and joked with the nurses and was a pain in the ass
to the phlebotomists who would wake him up for blood sugar checks and lab work at all hours of the night. In a

serious tone, he tried on numerous occasions to talk to me starting out with things like, I want you to know
something or Your mother is going to need help or Ive got this feeling that, but each time I cut him off
saying, Stop talking. Right now. Your implication is that youre gonna die and thats not happening.
The day after surgery, he became incoherent at times and would drift into a deep sleep-like state. The
doctors came and talked to my mom. They told her that his body was not clearing the anesthesia given for his
surgery. She was a nurse and knew what that meant. She called my sister, Marion, and me, beckoning us to the
hospital. By the end of the next night, my dad was completely out of it, talking nonsense in a slurred voice
whenever he wasnt lying there unconscious.
At one point I grabbed him by the shoulders, tears streaming down my face, and shook him violently;
repeatedly screaming for him to wake up and telling him that I loved him. For just a second and for the last
time, he opened his eyes and with a perplexed look on his face he stared at me rather incredulously and said, I
love you too, Mo.
Then the unsinkable ship sank, the unbendable steel bent, the unbreakable wall broke and he was gone.
_________________________
I sat quietly on a stool at the island in the kitchen and watched my dad as he stood at the stove checking
on the Litl Smokies making sure there was just enough maple syrup on them to make the mini-hotdog
imposters taste good. As good as theyre ever gonna be, he muttered under his breath. He went to the
refrigerator and pulled out the deviled eggs that my mom had whipped up for him before going to work that
night. Next he put the chips, dip, cheese, deli meat, and rolls out. The final step was the most important to him
as it included the essential ingredients required for a successful poker game: spiced rum and Coke.

It was about 7:00 p.m. when the other players started showing up. This card playing Motley Crew
consisted of Kenny, a close friend/longtime gambler who eventually lost his house because of his habit; my
Uncle Louie (who wasnt my real uncle); Dave who was a family friend/my dads anesthesiologist; Charlie,
who was about 68, 280 lbs. with hair down past his ass and an inability to not give me a big squeeze when he
arrived, which despite his imposing appearance was always welcomed and enthusiastically returned; and finally
there was sometimes a man named Tim whom my dad knew from baseball card shows and who couldnt pass
up any chance he had to tell people how impressed he was with me because I knew what the pituitary gland was
when I was in 4th grade. They started their evening the same way they always did: picking at the food and
making drinks. By 8:00 p.m., they had all taken their designated seats and placed their money in front of them
in rows by denomination like players gearing up for a long game of Monopoly.
Following their settling-in routine, the first cards were dealt. The bets were always minor, but the
laughter ringing throughout the dining room where they sat huddled around the table was majorespecially my
dads. He loved when this small clan of wannabe poker pros assembled together for a night of camaraderie.
Like reckless rebellious teenagers, all of them held the understanding that they would break the rules they were
given by the women in their livesJimmy, I mean it, no smoking in the house! Louie, you better keep your
shit together and stay away from the liquor! Charlie, dont you come back here if you lose all that money!
By roughly 10:00 p.m., Id still be posted up by the island in the kitchen, watching intently as they threw back
drink after drink before upping the antes and lighting yet another round of cigars to add to the smoke that hung
heavy and gray all around them before slowly creeping out the now open windows into the cool night air.
The games were friendly, but filled with biting sarcasm.

Screw you, Jim! I had to wait a half hour for you to decide to fold. So, if youre gonna take your sweet
ass time, then Im damn sure gonna take mine.
Take all the time in the world, Louie, but know that its gonna end the same way: you losin all your
cash!
This small group of friends was so in synch with each other and each added something to that table, but
it was my dad who brought the most vibrancy to the room. It could have been the liquor or perhaps the relaxed
atmosphere but as those nights wore on, his endless jokes and teasing seemed to shine brighter and roar louder
at that table than most days.
Come on, Kenny, just bet already or do you need to go remortgage the house again first? You better not
be laughing, Charlie! We all know if you dont lose your money at cards youll piss it away on junk thats
gonna make you a fortune one day!
For just a little while, it was as if there was no diabetes, no pain. His personality, beaming smile and the
sparkle in his eyes combined to be his ace up his sleeve and with a simple sleight-of-hand he was always the
winner at that table.
_________________________
My dad was an old school Irish guy from the Bronx who had a work ethic like no other; sometimes even
holding down four jobs at a time like when he was a shipping/receiving supervisor at a local lumber yard; drove
a truck for Polar Cup selling Italian ices; aided a private detective firm by participating in fake thefts from
department stores in order to test their security; and had a booth at a flea market where he sold overstock and
rejected items from shipments, which he purchased from contacts made through his shipping/receiving job. At
some point he must have realized that his mouth and strong attitude would continue to get him in trouble at

times and so he decided to become his own boss; eventually owning two bars in New York by his late thirties.
The one he held onto the longest was the Pot Belly Pub where there was a sign on the wall that always read
Free Drinks Tomorrow. Its also where my mom met my dad. Seven years after divorcing his first wife and
marrying my mom, my parents ended up in Virginia where my dad eventually opened a new businessa
baseball card store. My dad hired friends and family to give them their first crack at working. He would take the
oddballs and misfits that came in under his wing; giving them jobs anywhere from cleaning the display cases to
sorting cards in an effort to help give them a sense of purpose, something he knew everyone needed in their
lives. To make use of and some profit from the pinball machines he purchased from one of these
nonconformists, he organized pinball tournaments with cash or merchandise prizes. He sold single cards,
plaques with everyone from Mickey Mantle to Bo Jackson displayed prominently as their centerpieces,
gold/silver/bronze replicas of cards that came with certificates of authenticity and sealed sets of cards from
Topps and other manufacturers. Even though he would talk and laugh with anyone who came in, he wouldnt
put up with any bullshit, which is why those sealed sets of cards from Topps became an issue on some random
Saturday.
I was standing behind one of the display cases sorting cards as instructed by my dad that day when a
man walked into the store, milling about for a few minutes while other customers listened to my dad describe
how to take care of their cards. Once those customers left, the man who was walking around looking for
nothing, came up to the counter and started a conversation that couldnt be taken back and was most likely
cause for regret for years to come.
Hey buddyyou think its ok to rob people? Because thats exactly what you did to me and youre
fuckin wrong if you think Im not gonna do something about it!

In his typical fashion when confronted (yes, there was a typical fashion due to the aforementioned
mouth and attitude), my dad smugly tilted his head, crossed his arms, and smirked before he responded, Why
dont you go ahead and tell me what the hell youre talking about?
The man went into a high-pitched rant about how he had bought a set of Topps baseball cards from my
dad and that all the money cards from that set were missing. Not getting much in the way of a response at that
point, the man screamed,
Dont you think about tryin to bullshit me neither! You know what Im talking about.
My dad turned around and took down another set exactly like the one the man had supposedly purchased
and calmly explained to him that the sets came sealed from the company and if he had a problem with what
came in that set, he should call Topps directly.
This was clearly not the answer the man was looking for as he immediately launched into a diatribe
filled with veiled threats and expletives. Other customers had filtered in and were cautiously walking around the
store, occasionally stealing glances at the exchange taking place between my dad and the irate customer. My
father stood firmly in his place behind the counter, never flinching or gesturing in any way beyond an amused
half-cocked smile until the man finally shrieked, Im not leaving this goddamn store until you do what I say
and give me my money back!
With that, my dads smirk disappeared and his arms unfolded as he walked around the counter towards
the irrationally angry man who was still screaming, What?! You think youre going to intimidate me? Huh, big
guy?! You think youre tough!?
By now my dad was in front of the customer and an icy glare had overtaken his otherwise vibrant green
eyes. Then that boyishly mischievous smile returned to his face and he grabbed the man by the back of the neck,

dragged him to the front door which he flung open with one hand while simultaneously throwing the man
through the doorway with such force that the former shit-talkin redneck tripped over the sidewalk and fell into
the middle of the road. Before closing the door and allowing the man to scamper off with a severely bruised
ego, my dad yelled, No, you piece of shit, I know Im tough.
___________________________
My relationship with my dad was complicated. His health had been in a state of decline since I was
eight. He was often irritable, in pain and obsessed with the idea that he would be dead by fifty-eight because
thats how old his own father was when he died. It was at least in part because of this obsession that he
purposely kept all of his children at arms length. He felt that if he never got too close to any of us it would be
easier for us when he died. I tried and tried and tried over the years to get to know him, but was constantly
pushed away with heart-breaking insults and belittling comments.
It became clear to me at an early age that my dad saved up his largest doses of being angry, bitter, mean,
vulgar, and violent especially for me. The emotional pain this dance with him caused me was only amplified
every time I heard someone say that the real problem with our relationship was that my dad and I were too
much alike. That comment, like the one that my father and I were oil and water and therefore just could not mix,
did nothing in the end, but get me as pissed off and angry at the world as my dad.
When I was around 12, my dad and I got into an argument over nothing Im sure, but the scene that
played out set the stage for a war between the two of us that lasted for the better part of a decade. Ill never
remember what it was that started that fight, but I do remember that because our arguments were happening so
frequently I felt well equipped to handle the sparring with words that was unfolding. Little did I know when it
started, I was not yet even close to a worthy opponent; the true extent of how drastically ill-prepared I was

became clear at the end of our exchange. I concluded my showing by storming up the stairs to my room when I
heard him say in a measured tone, Maureen, let me tell you something.
I spun around on my heels at the top of the steps and looked down at him defiantly.
Ill piss on your grave when you die.
All expression left my face and I stood there shell-shocked, while he turned and walked away.
_____________________________________
My mom would often remind me that my dad was in constant pain and I should try and understand how
that affected his mood and reactions. My ability to feel empathy for him waned every day because he was an
insufferable asshole. Our fighting over the years intensified, but up until I was 16 it had never turned physical.
There was always a prelude before the outburst of screaming and yelling, offering my sister and my mom an
opportunity to retreat to other areas before it came. By 16, I felt that I had grown into that worthy opponent that
I was not when I was 12, but again in an unmistakable fashion, he proved me wrong.
I had just gotten a bowl of cereal with my sister and we were heading back upstairs when I heard my dad
faintly call my name from the basement. Before I could swallow the mouthful of Fruit Loops down and
respond, he was upstairs. I was a little stunned at his sudden act of agility in getting up the stairs that fast, but
quickly became transfixed by the look in his eyes. It was like that of a caged rabid wild animal. I dont
remember if he said anything before he grabbed my throat because I was mesmerized by the unexpected rage
and violence that stared back at me. I know now after a few emotional and painful discussions with my mother
the particulars of what was going on while I was frozen in that tranceterrified, unprepared and helpless.
My mom was in the driveway unloading groceries when she heard a commotion coming from inside the
house and came running into the kitchen to see what was going on. When she stepped into the room, she was

confronted with the scene that I was lost in: my dad holding me up by my neck, feet not touching the floor. I
remember seeing her come through the door out of the corner of my eye and hearing her screaming at him,
although I dont remember what she said. Then he let go of me and I feel into a heap on the floor. My mom
dropped to her knees beside me as I was coughing and gasping and then as abruptly as hed come, my dad
headed back to the basement; sneering, snorting and slinking off, cussing the whole way down the stairs.
__________________________________
My dad wasnt always a good father, but despite that there was really no question in my mind that he
loved us; always wanting to know more and more about our day-to-day lives as he grew older, but never giving
up much information about his own past. Perhaps he thought it didnt matter or no one usually asked because of
his aversion to providing personal details, but it always seemed to take him by surprise when his youngest, me,
would approach him in the garage while he sorted sports cards or in the kitchen while he cooked one of his
famous breakfasts and ask an endless barrage of questions about his life. This especially rang true when my
fourth-grade self approached him one morning asking questions about his favorite things: favorite food, favorite
movie, favorite color, and eventually favorite song.
Hmmfavorite song. That brings back memories. My favorite song is Riders in the Sky. Guy named
Vaughn Monroe sang that back when I was kid. Damn, I havent heard that in ages. Doubt I could even find it
anywhere now.
Most likely, he thought this conversation was made up of the mere frivolous ponderings of my
elementary mind. He had no idea that everything he said, even then, became central to my life. Every bit of
information I was able to pry from his mind was a way for me to get to know him even while he tried to keep
his distance.

About a month later, it was Fathers Day. The evening would be spent just like every other Fathers
Daya nice meal with the whole family at his favorite restaurant which changed every year, but also stayed the
same (he was a real sucker for buffets with not-the-best-but-not-the-worst food). My mom picked my sister and
me up from swim practice and we met him at his store. He hopped in the car and started the beginning of what
would have been his dramatic retelling of the day when my mom quickly shushed him, telling him that I had a
special surprise this year. She pushed in the cassette tape and cranked up the volume. As the deep, mellow voice
of Vaughn Monroe filled the car, I stared at my dad without taking a breath, just waiting for a reaction. He
smiled and said in a softer voice than Id ever heard him use, I cant believe it.
I leaned forward and kissed his cheek as a tear fell from his eye.
__________________________
Much by his own doingeating boxes of powdered doughnuts and drinking 2-liters of soda in one
sitting my dads body was slowly deteriorating from the effects of diabetes. He was angry with himself, his
loved ones and the world almost every day. His mood swings kept everyone on edge, but didnt stop us from
loving him. My mother was constantly saying, I hate that we have to walk around on eggshells, but thats just
how he is.
As the years passed and the sickness spread to the point of lost limbs and failing organs, he spent most
of his days in the basement that had been remodeled to be handicap friendly after his second amputation
surgery. The remodeling resulted in a practical apartment with an entryway into the house that didnt require
stairs. His prosthetic legs and willpower left him perfectly capable of handling the stairs most days, but then
there were other days, days where the stumps that never healed oozed with infection and kept him wheelchair

bound. Even on those days though, he put on a brave face and would tell us he was fine before getting frustrated
by our concern and yelling, Leave me the hell alone!
At night when the house was quiet and dark and he had removed his prosthetic legs, he would lie in bed
and drift off to sleep to the sounds of the TV. When he slept, he lay perfectly still occasionally letting out a
snore. Each night he was able to sleepreally sleepa peaceful look would creep over his face and make it
evident that for just a little while he was able to escape the cold, hard, everyday world in a way that only dreams
can provide.
He didnt know that most nights there was someone watching him. I couldnt help it. I would stand in
the hallway with my head peering slightly in the doorway for five minutes, ten minutes, an hour or however
long was needed to comfort me in knowing he was still there, still alive. If his breathing slowed even for a few
seconds, I would want to go shake him awake or bring him back to life, I was unsure which it was, but I never
did.
Nights when he couldnt sleep, my ritual was interrupted in an almost wordless exchange. He would see
me peer into the room and say, I see you there and I dont know what youre doing, but just come in.
I would sheepishly round the corner into his room and then stand staring at him. He would offer up a
half-crooked smile and then motion with his hand for me to come next to him. Id crawl into the king size bed
and snuggle up to him. He would spend the rest of the night flipping through the channels while I lay there with
my head on his shoulder.

Fall 2015
Ed Makowski

Daniel Scooter
A friend of mines
girlfriend
was always getting talked at
by men
while waiting for
and sitting on
the bus. At first
it felt nice
But after every day
trying to read a book
or during telephone conversations
it got old. My friend
didnt mind that other men
found his woman attractive
but it bothered him
that she was uncomfortable,
an unintended hostage,
going about her every day.
When the snow melted
he came home one day
with a brand new scooter.
Her favorite color. Said,

Here babe. Now you wont

have to ride the bus for awhile.
He told me about his plan
to do this
a few weeks ahead, but
I figured it was just bar talk
and didnt take it seriously.
The following winter
he died in a nighttime
calamity of heart attack, tucked in
like a forever sleeping baby.
I just walked past that scooter
parked in front of their house.
I wonder, watching the street lamp glisten
across the still shining paint
how people will feel
when they look at
what I
leave with them
someday.

Lutheran Country
I remember the only
black teacher I ever had
before college
Forgot about her entirely
until the other day
somebody mentioned Mardi Gras
She was at our school
as a student teacher
only a few weeks
but it was the most fun day of 3rd grade,
learning about Fat Tuesday, the
binge and excess and
dropping and stomping on doubloons
while listening to music
and dancing, and eating
beignet donuts, then the Ash Wednesday
Lenten cleansing of
going back to other teachers classes.
The last time I saw her
Id left class for the bathroom
and she was trudging down the hallway
crying furiously, too engorged with anguish
for me to ask what was the matter
her high heels clattering unrhythm
I stood my hands hanging at my sides
as she walked past our
hanging book bags
Now I remember her and think
She could have been
any one of those details
young or Southern
or from Voodoo New Orleans
or beautiful or black
or full of song and dancing,

But all of them at once,

all of her at once
was too much
celebration

Warning Shot
The rattlesnake evolved
portions of its tail
to possess hard scales
attached to muscles which shake
50 times per second,
alerting other animals
who they do not desire for lunch
of their deadly venom
After centuries of this
arms-length alert
and humans responding
with shovelheads, shotguns,
and machetes,
snakes with operational rattles
are leaving the gene pool
and snakes with non-functioning tails
are procreating.
When those snakes rattle
their tails have no voice
and they strike
in silence.
Humans took a creature
kind enough to warn us
and made them more
dangerous
to ourselves

Tadpole
My six year old told me
that my dad is a tadpole.
He told me precisely,
Your dead dad is a tadpole.
My father wasnt a very humorous man
and I dont have a lot of humor
about a person
who I took
many times to the bathroom
but never fishing.
I responded
with irritation
that I had no idea
what he was saying
and he explained
that my dead dad is a tadpole
in a river
waiting to
turn into a frog, who will
hop into the forest
so we can pick him up
and hold him
and pet him
and give him kisses
the next time were in the woods
looking for a deer
to catch
together

Nava Fader received her masters from UB Poetics Program,

writing her thesis on Adrienne Rich. She is the author of All
the Jawing Jackdaw (BlazeVOX), and several chapbooks.
Recent projects include a manuscript of fake translations
from Dantes Inferno, poems from Garcia Lorca, and work
with Wikipedia.

64

Fall 2015
Roger Craik

TEACHING PRIMO LEVIS IF THIS IS A MAN

Someone sneezes, whereupon
five or six in unison
bless the sneezer.
I soldier on (en passant taking in
Him in abstentia
governing the subjunctive mood).
Book and pad splash to the floor.
Im also used to this.
Its not their fault the desks are small.
Still, theres the reaching down. And talk.
At the front a woman yawns
voluminously.
Soon the rustling will begin
and theyll be trooping out in force,
cell phone in hand, to Christ knows where. . .
The boring Jews.
The boring war.
Boring literature.

Fall 2015
Geoffrey Gatza
words spoken movingly of loss

The word for ending

is named: beginning.
Time ticks thinly forward
Expanding waves clang
Change as bells do ring.
Circles radiate
us father away
from the moment.
People
have suffered,
families have
been bereaved,
and we all seek
our time to heal.

Ill be honest with you,

I was shocked
There you were
Lying, as if asleep.
Lifeless.
I looked at you
and I thought,
Didnt we have a splendid life together?
I thought we had made a mistake
But no, you were no longer there.
Here.
In the two weeks since you left
I still call out to you, come home.

Spending sleepless
nights summoning
the dead, I wonder
where
the other
has gone
have
gone
I am
tired
Life is
exhausting
without you

The towels
are still
under your
pillow.
I smell
them
and
imagine
you
are
still
here.
No area
of our lives
are unaffected
by
your
death.

When I saw you lying there

on the floor
dead
and then in the morgue,
I remembered thinking
that you would be cold
and that I should take you
some warm clothes and a blanket.

When your remains were ready

We walked to retrieve your ashes.
She opened the white linoleum desk door
Under the countertop and pulled you out.
Inside a pine box placed inside a folded
and stapled white paper bag.
I placed the bundle into my backpack
And brought you back to our home.
When I can manage to gaze
upon our many now disused
cigarette trays and empty home
I cry
for all
of our
yesterdays

I took the bagged lunch

that we prepared for that day
We froze it
it is still in the freezer today,
waiting
for something
for someone
for something
that even I am not sure of
to happen
to forget
waiting

You were the finest friend

in every way; the finest
and most decent of souls.
I loved you with all my heart
you made me happier
than anyone else
in the world.
life was once vividly
richly colored
now all is splintered
shards of black
and white sparkle
We are devastated beyond all measure
Nothing I can do or say can bring you back
undo the horror
the precariousness
of life, almost instantly
death
caused

Fall 2015
Dawn Tefft

Eventually We Will All

Eventually we will all be doing what we want to be doing. Magazines and horoscopes say so.
I fear my body. The way it's crisscrossed with maps and struggles with location.
Men in khaki shorts and Cubs hats surround us in the otherwise free zone known as Damen Ave.
Soon I won't be able to afford a car, because it's always getting towed.
Invisible electric fences follow us wherever we go, our bodies constituting foreign trade zones.
There's a skate park under the overpass. I know some kids who love freedom.
We ask for water in tall glasses. The water is free, and the tallness seems a luxury.
I am always just exiting Regal Cinemas, wishing I could go back to the show.

When Your Brother, Who Is in Jail Again

--a poem written from myself to myself

when your brother calls to say his fists are turning into thieves
and your niece is a sweet collection of thrushes and wrens
you should take notes so that you can understand the curve
of his reasoning
you must accept that indeed you come from a long line of wounds
return to your village and open up The Book of the Mumbling Dead
reading is
your last good way of saying your name without it hurting
your name: all the flowers that are edible
after all you come from a line of chefs
open to the page lined with
there are always
already and only
three true outcomes:
the fox to the hare, the splinter to the sea, and the unsure thing
eventually you will understand the voices of the sand in the rocks
and theorize houses as an attraction of bricks
there are so many things that don't make sense
like the timid girls wandering onto the private beach
like your body, irresolute and shaped by food
if you can accept your deceased

if you can accept the rain as just another pattern happening

you can begin to indent your belief
after all you come from the sea

Some Things Last a Long Time

A poorly-lit joy rolls once on its back in the green grass. It gets up and stalks forward on shotgun legs as if it
is an old joy or there is something up the butt of this joy. In the light, a golden-brown joy squeezes its butt
cheeks between two green bushes. The butt of joy is a photo framed in a pale wooden fence.1 A panorama of
trees and middle-class houses in the middle-class sunlight. Light here is so tilted, it could make you sick. Joy
is sniffing, no eating, something in the green grass. Joy is consuming the world.2 Blue sky, boring house
behind boring fence. Joy run-stalks, circles a tree. Joy lifts its leg to honor the tree. Joy tells the tree: You
belong to me, Tree, we are wedded in joyous urine. Grass is running, trees are flying, there are blocks for
sitting and for playing. Who would sit when you could be a pair of butt cheeks staring at the world from
between green bushes? Or a whole joy stalking as if an old joy or there is something up the butt of this joy.
A bow-legged joy. Feet moving up and down and forward at the same time, which is a sort of miracle.3 The
walking, the seeing. A sniffing of shadows, while a shadow watches joy from behind. The shadows stay a
long time. The face of joy opens, dropping a pink thing into the world.

Fall 2015
Simon Perchik

*
You teach this rag how, fold in
its corners, edges, to close
and afterwards wood is everywhere
lies down inside you
as if there is still a place
no longer rising to the surface
though all dust is patient
smells from dried-up riverbeds
one above the other
the way these shelves
were left behind to bathe you
with roots and harbors
you teach this rag
time, cover each board
lowered slowly into a floor
that is not years later
for the first time its brightness
turning to footsteps and further.
*
Not the paper you write on
yet your arms are warmed
the way each mother all night

will feed her childs first cry

open one breast for food
the other without a sound
though you can still make out
where the flames are coming from
once these flowers are unwrapped
and singing all at once
as cradlesong you almost hear
the hot coals freezing in midair
closer and closer to one another
you never forget this hunger
and in your mouth ice.

*
Always more stepping-stones
scented with the slow bend
in a river burning itself out
they tire easily
are lying on the grass
winding things up
though sometime the sound
comes from the small rocks
breaking off for the dead
then left where snow is expected
from your shoulder and hers
there is so little room
and she is just one person
turning back a long time
without anything to lose.

*
You approach from above
expect the sun
at your back, the sink
blinded by spray
the way every stream
is born knowing how
scrapes bottom
till its stones ignite
explode into oceans
then islands broken apart
for the skies still following
a rain thats not here
youre used to this
the same cracked cup
rinsed till its glaze
cools and its safe
to dry your arms
the floor, the walls.
*
This dirt still mimics sweat
lies down alongside, unsure
your lips would quiet it
though the finger that is familiar
probably is yours could be enough
has already learned to point
in time it will silence
even your shadow
without pulling it back down

as sunsets passing by
no longer some shoreline
unable to stop for these pebbles
struggling to rise together, take you
by the hand and without a sound
recognize the gesture.

Fall 2015
Nicholas D. Nace

from [Vic]
CHAPTER XXIX
The Spanish Prisoner

How much less in them that dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust, which are
crushed before the moth?
(Job 4:19)

Charles Primrose <vicar@wakefield.net>

To: Nicholas D. Nace
Re: the equal dealings of providence demonstrated with regard to the happy and the
miserable here below that from the nature of pleasure and pain the wretched must be
repaid the balance of their sufferings in the life hereafter
_____________________________________________________
my friends my children and fellow sufferers when I reflect on the distribution of good
and evil here below I find that much has been given man to enjoy yet still more to
suffer though we should examine the whole world we shall not find one man so
happy as to have nothing left to wish for but we daily see thousands who by suicide
show us they have nothing left to hope in this life then it appears that we cannot be
entirely blest but yet we may be completely miserable
why man should thus feel pain why our wretchedness should be requisite in the
formation of universal felicity why when all other systems are made perfect only by
the perfection of their subordinate parts the great system should require for its

perfection parts that are not only subordinate to others but imperfect in themselves
these are questions that never can be explained and might be useless if known on
this subject providence has thought fit to elude our curiosity satisfied with granting us
motives to consolation
in this situation man has called in the friendly assistance of philosophy and heaven,
seeing the incapacity of that to console him has given him the aid of religion the
consolations of philosophy are very amusing but often fallacious it tells us that life is
filled with comforts if we will but enjoy them and on the other hand that though we
unavoidably have miseries here life is short and they will soon be over thus do these
consolations destroy each other for if life is a place of comfort its shortness must be
misery and if it be long our griefs are protracted thus philosophy is weak but religion
comforts in an higher strain man is here it tells us fitting up his mind and preparing it
for another abode
when the good man leaves the body and is all a glorious mind he will find he has
been making himself a heaven of happiness here while the wretch that has been
maimed and contaminated by his vices shrinks from his body with terror and finds
that he has anticipated the vengeance of heaven to religion then we must hold in
every circumstance of life for our truest comfort for if already we are happy it is a
pleasure to think that we can make that happiness unending and if we are miserable
it is very consoling to think that there is a place of rest
thus to the fortunate religion holds out a continuance of bliss to the wretched a
change from pain but though religion is very kind to all men it has promised peculiar
reward to the unhappy the sick the naked the houseless the heavy-laden and the
prisoner have ever most frequent promises in our sacred law the author of our
religion every where professes himself the wretch's friend and unlike the false ones
of this world bestows all his caresses upon the forlorn the unthinking have censured
this as partiality as a preference without merit to deserve it but they never reflect that
it is not in the power even of heaven itself to make the offer of unceasing felicity as
great a gift to the happy as to the miserable to the first eternity is but a single
blessing since at most it but increases what they already possess to the latter it is a
double advantage for it diminishes their pain here and rewards them with heavenly
kiss hereafter
but providence is in another respect kinder to the door than the rich for as it thus
makes the life after death more desirable so it smooths the passage there the
wretched have long familiarity with every face of terror the man of sorrows lays
himself quietly down he has no possessions to regret and but few ties to stop his
departure he feels only natures pang in the final separation and this is no way
greater than he has often fainted under before for after a certain degree of pain
every new breach that death opens in the constitution nature kindly covers with
insensibility

thus providence has given the wretched two advantages over the happy in this life
greater felicity in dying and in heaven all that superiority of pleasure which arises
from contrasted enjoyment and this superiority my friends is no small advantage and
seems to be one of the pleasures of the poor man in the parable for though he was
already in heaven and felt all the raptures it could give yet it was mentioned as an
addition to his happiness that he had once been wretched and now was comforted
that he had known what it was to be miserable and now felt what it was to be happy
thus my friends you see religion does what philosophy could never do it shows the
equal dealings of heaven to the happy and the unhappy and levels all human
enjoyments to nearly the same standard it gives to both rich and poor and the same
happiness hereafter and equal hopes to aspire after it but if the rich have the
advantage of enjoying pleasure here the poor have the endless satisfaction of
knowing what it was once to be miserable when crowned with endless felicity
hereafter and even though this should be called a small advantage yet being an
eternal one it must make up by duration what the temporal happiness of the great
may have exceeded by intenseness
these are therefore the consolations which the wretched have peculiar to themselves
and in which they are above the rest of mankind in other respects they are below
them they who would know the miseries of the poor must see life and endure it to
declaim on the temporal advantages they enjoy is only repeating what none either
believe or practice the men who have the necessaries of living are not poor and they
who want them must be miserable yes my friends we must be miserable no vain
efforts of a refined imagination can soothe the wants of nature can give elastic
sweetness to the dank vapour of a dungeon or ease to the throbbing of a woe-worn
heart let the philosopher from his couch of softness tell us that we can resist all
these alas the effort by which we resist them is still the greatest pain
death is slight and any man may sustain it but torments are dreadful and these no
man can endure to us then my friends the promises of happiness in heaven should
be peculiarly dear for if our reward be in this life alone we are then indeed of all men
the most miserable when I look round these gloomy walls made to terrify as well as
to confine us this light that only serves to show the horrors of the place those
shackles that tyranny has imposed or crime made necessary when I survey these
emaciated looks and hear those groans o my friends what a glorious exchange
would heaven be for these to fly through regions unconfined as air to bask in the
sunshine of eternal bliss to carrot over endless hymns of praise to have no master to
threaten or insult us but the form of goodness himself for ever in our eyes when I
think of these things death becomes the messenger of very glad tidings when I think
of these things his sharpest arrow becomes the staff of my support when I think of
these things what is there in life worth having when I think of these things what is
there that should not be spurned away kings in their palaces should groan for such
advantages but we humbled as we are should yearn for them

and shall these things be ours ours they will certainly be if we but try for them and
what is a comfort we are shut out from many temptations that would retard our
pursuit only let us try for them and they will certainly be ours and what is still a
comfort shortly too for if we look back on past life it appears but a very short span
and whatever we may think of the rest of life it will yet be found of less duration as
we grow older the days seem to grow shorter and our intimacy with time ever
lessens the perception of his stay then let us take comfort now for we shall soon be
at our journeys end we shall soon lay down the heavy burden laid by heaven upon
us and though death the only friend of the wretched for a little while mocks the weary
traveller with the view and like his horizon still flies before him yet the time win
certainly and shortly come when we shall cease from our toil when the luxurious
great ones of the world shall no more tread us to the earth when we shad think with
pleasure on our sufferings below when we shall be surrounded with all our friends or
such as deserved our friendship when our bliss shall be unutterable and still to
crown all unending
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Fall 2015
Kelle Grace Gaddis

Chasing
Speaking of rainbows, todays was magnetic. Of course,
absent the rain shouldnt it be called a hallucination?
We fell over ourselves trying to get to the end of it.
The gold! You cried, Is utterly unverifiable, like Don Quixote,
except he chased windmills. I stuttered into numbness
wanting to say, Im here! in spite of the lie in it.
Something was not right about today, rainbows, or plain-bows,
arent supposed to set people on edge, yet this one did. At the closest point, you were red, a deep-hearted, open-veined
geyser. I was orange, not a spray-tan snafu, but naked,
moist, like a skinless peach. Oh how the others squealed! Their empty hands holding tight to leprechauns, delirious,
drunk on green and blue charging like donkeys in an indigo dream. Until we fell, spilling our serpents, crawling after
spare change, choked and empty things,
discarded wrappers, broken bottles, evaporated quixotic arches of ephemeral glee. There's not enough left in us to say
Goodbye. So, we lay here in the melting sun, remembering as if we were together, having left without saying a word.

Disparate Thoughts
Later well learn that the dogs foot was caught and bleeding in a trap.
For now, a murder of crows has captured my attention as they swoop at the grey-eyed goat thats eating whats fallen
under the apple tree.
Beyond the evergreens, workers have put tape around the trunks of trees,
soon well see the cars we hear rolling on the road.
I stand over the sink looking out the kitchen window, steam from the dishes obscuring your form as you walk the drive
to get the mail. Youll gather that waste of advertising and our bills
and youll come back with a letter written in your brothers hand, news from Ireland, some good, some sad.
After a bottle of wine well laugh and call ourselves country sophisticates. But, in this moment
Im alone and dreads invisible hands have entered my chest.
It is reasonable to believe that everything will be all right, even as tears fall, even with you disappearing from view,
even as I place my hand on my heart to make sure that I am alive.

Hung-over
My last glass went down
on the top note of Il Dolce Suono Lucia di Lammermoor.
From there I fell upward to the cat cloud
my mouth fur-thick, thick with furI can't even say it.
For a second the sunlit tabby arched high,
reaching for invisible stars,
I ask, Why daytime?
This diva's done, consumed by fire and sun,
over here, adrift on sweat island, miles from any ocean, Im
still looking for that note. I hear myself say, "Can't be no place"
and imagine that sky-cat's claws in motion, kneading
the air into tendrils of vapor, distilling breakfast like a good kitty.
Such a pity that I don't make sense anymore,
praying to an empty glass,
in case God helps those that fuck themselves

Fall 2015
Thomas Osatchoff
SHAKE THE FRAME
After cake thrown in face
Sitting in trembles
like a human
who resembles
a railway track
aware of itself
an animal become
super average:
severage to leverage;
reassemble an ensemble.
If only he could
affect her somehow.
If he could bow
a cold beverage
to her equator lips.
Sips of pleasure
is all between
pain dips between
a bland dinner
while the rain
treasures down
vanity stains into lumps
our wall-paper skin
pulled thin again through
our true eyes from inside.
Wanting to lie, fall, jump
into a deep lake. Baikal,

he didnt want to
shake her as much
as he needed to hide
well something below
the shaking of the frame
of their earthquake scene
underneath going by
sewerage to tip its mean
out toppling through
itself a lean mixture
of its own ridge sort
(sifting fixture)
of salt and pepper.
Shaking the shaker
untilwere able
to have our cake
and eat it, too.

THE DAY BEFORE SCHOOL;

SLIDING, SWINGING, KICKING
IN THE MOMENT
with brightness not always light
bliss: snow lacks perfect whiteness
falling a blanket barely covering the black
fire galloping its seductive confidence
inside the castle quantum automatic
children both miraculous and monstrous
learn to desire the crocodiles outside.
While they pee in the melting snow . . . .
Steering our bikes we might stop to hear
a factory stop sound clear the space between
helms peering from wetlands a lawn mower mows
near sprinklers around late summer elms we hear
chimes in the cumshaw wind seed blows to grow
through gear fear to cheer lost it flaw thaws into mist
passed over to here where we breathe out law resist
outlaws into the playground where none saw us
on the slide sliding. Our dapper knees do not even ache;
our backs as though liberated from their stakes, their spines
seem to let us lift off the ground like Mallards
we win then lose gravity in nearly one bound
of flight down to a rusted iron drain at its slight slant
to grant without fight its fill of mottled lighter leaves:
a formidable web without its spider from which grieves
we wont see what spills or believe its shadows pleas.
Even though its fills all there beneath our sugar teeth
smiling their fair mirror wreaths dabbling about blame
in caustic shine we speak rank in adverts good luck
in a wild weak way no other creature has before

(toxic apple shore neophytes to our garbage truck tank

mouths forcing rigor from glottal greenhouse realms).
With laughter we open a wrapper.
How we do reproduction these days.

MARILYN MONROE (BETWEEN PINK AND RED)

We are relations with no color clue or every color in shires made of divisions of desires that look
like the land
of what's between pink and red on lips makes no difference dips but every difference
rips. Prints
of few views to sip then quickly zip. Paper cut mud shudder designs. My mom's mom
is still alive,
my mom's mom is still alive, my mom's mom is still alive, my mom's mom is still alive,
my mom's mom
is still alive, my mom's mom is still alive and she thrived when Marilyn did; and we are
functions at
relay junctions at free functions eating clichs and clich croissants making us feel fluorescent
vaunts up a tree
of taunts today in our winking wants or we are functional shifting haunts in a state of drift
lifting no crescent
frame of reference rift like we had before we had but disposition and only disposition
now: nothing to resist
wishing except how the inability to wish and to wish we could still fish makes us
us even though we can
we can't or won't be able to soon which is now, relation, being being that my mom's
mom
is still alive shes not
immortal in the sense of a movie star but just plain immortal which isnt really plain
except that it belongs
to everyone under the gun and my father's cuter mother who has never used a computer
is in a state
of cant drive: we 2015 arrive everything past future into what is now some sort of soother
and/or suture
which is a crabric (a sort of hard cut-sounding fabric thats invisible without being invisible)
station that has never
been blanket but is a blanket but cannot be seen usually as a shank it sank it cut cannot
have been but is
folded in its green has never been. There are no hands, no knees. There certainly are brands
and we are
inflating ours. We are on our hands and knees without even having them. Counting the hours.
Without
even having them. Existence relations. What stars give. The space between petals on flowers and bikes
gives us the likes of a metal
elation which is a power many of us refuse, confuse, lose, bruise, accuse. We are used
to being used by our nation; we banish nations. We are resistance
resistanceless
compared to what were once
called what was gleaned in comparison to what wasn't
computers
and are now compared to what were once called
computers and are now from where no more
wires will tip us into who shooters indexed in neuters games
sowed of tires in fiending fires. Then gone into the row; square again. Right
before we knock off we will look absolutely radiant because somethings got to give that glow right
before
we go. Into the mountains fountain.

NO PRAISE
1
You may always count on our dog to shake off the water.
I didnt always count on every breath in thanks. Still cant count on not one word from tanks
praise. Hearing the rank-less wind as it says be afraid to matter don't be afraid of how
it matters. Breaking the shut window through your open palm after thinking of how sure we were, how
it saysshatters intoyou're the only onethere are manybut you're the only one. Now
nothing to steer but steer itself. Across radial nerves cut. And grass on the golf course. Toward
as much as could be a daughter. How you carried that tray. How it reflected almost all the light. Trying
to cut through the bright bought pain then caught hot in numb fingers fishing for forms through water.
Sprinklers near the green. Then in the shower: sought you clean while wondering about climbing the badder.
How there's been a lot bad stuff happening. Not really worse because it's always been like that
but our hysterical representations making it seem so sometimes and maybe even actually
sometimes too how who's house was it was destroyed by that hurricane hit Louisiana or was it elsewhere
on Christmas Day? There's been a lot of hurricanes lately. But always, really. Many images of them
making us pay. The rates are what we believe them to be. Silly paces that never stay. Baking in the kitchen:
you're wearing lace and making silly faces; cats and dogs and frogs are falling from the sky
over the hills from crying stars remaking your face from far away. I stare at the aura left in your place
like it's the only diamond. Asking why as I swing at it up the fraying stairway like a broken fairway.
The crime on my mind, the gunshot. Got you different than how the grass is cut by a loud machine
but also the same. You had escaped through the sieve shiver of life. Our dog didn't shake off the water.

2
And even the moon is not certain. Floating in the pool. Distil it to will you otherwise, steal
the bent of your fingers touching me from a disordered red Pluto that lingers near the for real.
It came swiftly to me just then like a MiGunlike that old deciduous tree. The fold realization that Id be less
affected to see actual animals flying in the sky. Even if they were falling on spinning logs like the sky were a river.
Someone said no one could blame her as your keys kept smiling deliciously, jangling judiciously in hands
impossibly juggling everything like rubber bands. Even the leaves moving like keys in landfill time trying
to unlock the mystery of the list free from grocery store misery;
buying together every easy hard time piece of history
such a school of fish cannot still stand. How you walk like swimming. How you walk like my wish
carrying that plate of delish with trimmings and beverages. Still waving to me to stop my start. Your laughter.
Your hands: crafters from and of whats not. The photo of the event like a heart attack shouting your name
over again. This power never spent. Stronger than the most powerful drug of all: the raise and fall leverages
of praise shaped like our days. Shaped like sticks and what rabbits eat. Wilted, it's some averages sort
of insidious dry religious non-selective slaughter (the frame for sure that caused it all)heart like the chamber
for the bullet unravel. To claim pure againpray like a spool loosening. (Check to see how only the impossible is
certain.) If not to stop . . . to delay. Stay there. In the wreck, pray whatever be there to make choice care. Unmake
lairs. Unknot one word moist. Not one world. Not one word of praise. Every bone cracks. I don't need friends
to fray around my neck; I need my curl. I send myself soldering for the tree of life like an ancient fern from what might
have been. Call it seen what it is from isn't. Averting hurting. Cull it a wish full of it. Interstitial, make a call to a voice
thats sure through the screen on the phone again. All things springing unsewn from your scream as it genuflectsI stand
up to go deftly back in time by making it a relay. So that nothing could ever be late. To understand
the whys of these effects rippling through these shy textures, to understand the whys
of these effects rippling through these wise textures by conflating our story into no longer dealing fates
armored with sandbags to block the cries with help from the guise of locally fabricated steel armor plates.
More like a dog shaking off the water while we're getting wet and laughing in the freshness. In the new nude
an echo: nothing is impossible; nothing is a fossil. Nothing certain. And even the moon is not. Curtain. Fine.

CADRE
Lit unlit people and the white crow writ rest are dressed pellets and a framework
is a tightly-knit group of zealots looking for rest. The rest are depressed
pellets can also be small and hard balls of food, medicine, etcetera.
Something small youre glad or sad to see like a small come-get-her-rah!
metal object that is shot from a gun by a person feeling tall or small.
Doesnt matter but the pallid patter. Around the moot nest, viewing it:
Something like a tiny equestrian sun (both good and bad) originally compressed.
Dressed up like your friends in such a way that it suspends awareness to make
a trained professional who has not confessed. Whose being to hold depends
on if it can be sold. Get to the crest. Work harder! Go farther. Circuit dont short-circuit.
Burp it up to behold best and be bold but dont shirk it. Wear your bluet proof vest.
Compadre? Got your caught to tryst in? You can say God what a day. Thats okay
and litwhat we meant is flower proof not bullet proof. Blue not blew. So its okay
to bend because its okay if you blend in with the sky to belong to the same crew to mend
from some recommend. But the only scent for the rend of our vacuum is fruit perfume.
Fending from the sand, sucked up.
Theres so much money to be made in places like Iran. To have lotus, tulips.
For friends, there is nothing wrong
about wanting to move along faster to a world gone from snow, rain, heat, darkness.
Who gets their shoes fixed anymore? Amid offers of payments for acceptances . . . .
Your feet so soft, delicate and gentle: protected by the color of night. Your mouth
made for eating light
pinkish yellow things, roses. Prunus persica
the name of our winning horse from Persia. Persisting personas to cures youre
going down along the stony path to swim in the salty azure. Malty head like a pillow
filled with powder down hatched to a new noble crown no matter the weather.
What is a better way to describe what happens when glass breaks? How is glass made?

Why bother with the tombs false indemnity? Blade tongues. Grit, as it absorbs
bits of lords, our skin. Fades. I bite into yours to fit. Apple of my pores.
Fruit to suit like I bite into your black boot to wound it me. Broken teeth roots lost to the desert.
I try to bite into work but it bites into me like the greatest sea we fight to be.
It has no pod to plea from except the one from which we are coming to be. Quit,
yes we dont. See beneath. Have a heart. Blind orbs knewing it. Peach pit.
Heres a riddle: how to make a smoothie without a blender? Another kind of tender.
Outlasting repeated wolf attacks. Caspian old, gasping. The lip of your lily.
Imagine frost on your teeth in a bowl beneath somewhere.

Fall 2015
Lori Lamothe

Reading
at the Peabody-Essex Museum
On the other side of glass
a band plays marching songs
and the leaves
flicker green fire.
The poet tries to ignore what everybody else
isnttries to fasten our attention to the words;
drapes cadence
over the chandelier,
the podium, the folding chairs.
But its spring and the world shines like a new puzzle
each window pane a promise
that this is the year
were going to solve everything.

To the Guy Who Posted about Kittens

On His Doorstep
Take care of the kittens jerk ass.
Craigslist reader
You can forget about the girl.
Nobody admits to adding more tape
to a box of cuteness
and expects karma to issue a pardon.
Youre on your own now. Better
to make use of your box cutter
and watch them scatter
across Darwins concrete.
Why not? At first the lightness
of the box will astound you,
and for once the silence wont
remind you youre single.
But its never that easy, setting
mistakes free. At night, in dreams,
they always find their way back
tails flickering orange fire,
little eyes aglow, little sandpaper
tongues licking at guilt
like candles that wont blow out
or riddles you cant solve.

The Explorers Dream

In 1820, Arctic explorer William Scoresby arranged these shapes into a formal classification scheme, which
included, in addition to the six-pointed stars, such forms as needle-like hexagonal prismatic columns . . .
--Philip Ball
After so much winter
it was impossible not to think of snow
as a blank page
the mind numb to everything endless,
the world an unwritten letter,
a silence unbroken.
My wife at home before fires burning,
our sons vanquishing imaginary.
What was there to say?
This eternity a monster without name.
After enough time anybody
can fall into a tunnel of zeros,
slide down absence and emerge in a landscape
where logic blooms upside down.
It wasnt until it happened I understood
there are seas where depths are warmer than surfaces,
that a single sheet of white
can shine fields of infinities.

Fall 2015
Erika G Abad
Corners

Another break up to explain to another therapist, Cyn thinks as she buttons her camel coat. Break
ups tend to happen in the winter. After the holidays. Before Valentines DayGerri, Lisa, Ella and now Rhea.
As she slips her black leather gloves over her hands, she asks herself, was it the four letters in their
names? was it the snow seeping in through their shoes? These questions and their probable answers distract
her from securing her keys, her phone, her wallet and her purse before she gets to her front door. So she
turns around. Fuck time. She needs to be safe. So again, she checks the stove: touches each turned knob and
recite the date and the time; replugs then unplugs the hair straightener; empties purse and pockets until keys
are found. She does it again and again until she can, by memory, recite the status of every key, every knob
and every empty outlet.
At the door, she grabs each set of keys in either hand and tells herself, Today is Tuesday, January
twenty-third, eight a.m., and I am wearing my camel coat which, she adds looking down at her feet, match
the color of my uggs.Making sure to put each image in each crevice where anxiety wants to leak from she
explains to herself, and my purse holds my phone in the secret zipped pocket, right next to my wallet and I
am putting my keys in each coat pocket and I will hold them in between locking the door and unlocking my
car.

She repeats, Today is Tuesday, January twenty-third, eight a.m, once the front door is locked,
unlocked again to check the back door and then relocked. As she walks down the stairs of her building and
out to her car, she recalls how her past girlfriends reacted to her morning routine. Gerri would grumble at
Cyns effort to diffuse her own tension. Lisa never saw it. Ella, though, would wait outside and let her do it by
herself. Rhea would stand to the side and sigh, pursing her lips and smiling through the frustration using
high-pitched insincere forms of encouragement that Cyn would barely tolerate.
Cyn gets to the car relieved that she made it to her car without turning around because of what other
memories were lining up in her head. That, that morning, she didnt have to worry about someone elses
pity. or frustration. or passive aggressive impatience. In the end, none of them understood what she needed
to feel safe, secure and stable. She usually found that days after those relationships ended. Things returned;
messages deleted; unwanted gifts from them donated. Easing out of the parking, at least she has her senses
about her to differentiate between what Rhea did wrong in comparison to the others.
Despite the delay of rewalking her morning exit routine, she arrives to her appointment early. She
sits in her car, watching the moving cars go ahead of her and contemplates rereading the exchange she and
Rhea had before Cyn cancelled the moving truck. Cyn reabsorbs the words, the defeat that finally gave her
the release she gets at the end of every messy relationship. Rhea asks for change. Change that challenges
Cyns safety. Safety is the word she uses when trying to explain what she needs before she moves in closer
and deeper, which is why she insists on space and time. Time that translates into walls for Rhea. Rhea uses
walls to not listen, to ignore where Cyn is and where Cyn needs to stay until she can move. Rhea then writes
Cyn pushes people away for not being there right when she says they need to be there. Rhea forgets; Rhea,
like always, forgets the why behind Cyns feelings. Rhea wants to bypass, to contain, control Cyns shouts

and cries and explains about the why she pushes, the why she walks away. Rhea wants to heal and fix and
file away the childhood where bathroom corners were the safest corners for Cyn. She wants to bubble wrap
and ship out Cyns sorrow and suspicion of flashbacking to bedroom corners that were the most dangerous.
Bedroom corners that needed lights and warmth and sweet smells to get Cyn to open up, to lie down, to love,
to reluctantly yet hungrily love. Wounds and holes still unraveling inside her, pulling and leaking the more
she tries to love. Rheas words sting, even as she rationalizes the need, the survival strategy of pushing away
before she loses. Cyn wants it to stop, needs it to stop but doesnt trust how.
Walking out the car, she remembers the last sessions conversations. The ones about Rhea wanting to
move in together . The ones where Cyn wanted to do what was right, what was courageous and optimistic.
The ones about Rhea wanting the stories no one else wants. The ones where Cyn still did not know how to
share those stories, the stories that kept her heart and her body from braiding what fears and feelings they
contained in a way that could be held, warmed and melted away. The ones where Mina, her therapist,
wanted more for Cyn, wanted joy and hope and possibility, The ones where Mina, her experienced therapist,
didnt push or cry or frown or reach out to pick Cyn up from the shattered pieces she would sometimes
become. Cyn knows that much in each sessionthat her messiness could be hers.
Messiness with no reason- but trying to make sense of the pain and evade the possibility of a more
deeply punctured soul-flesh. Messiness only corners could cushion. In what they softened, Cyn, with time,
could come out of corners like love. But if wrenched, jolted from their refuge, Cyns defenses would emerge
swinging, clawing to another room, another building, another city. Those consumed corners keep asking her
to move, to seek more solace, to unravel more scars, to crawl without the claws that scratch out others who
couldnt keep more scars from coming.

Cyns shared those stories in all sorts of rooms with social workers and psychologists and
intervention workers. This time, though, she reflects on how, in all those conversations, in all the attempts to
get over and grow more, she still doesnt know how to live or move without those claws, without her arms
swinging out for the temporary cuts of space that cocoon her from the loss that wanting more than bruises,
shouts, more than broken glass and the scars words and unwanted hands still left. Not enough to look for
love without the smell of stale beer or the dark eyes or stretch marks that others would say told them love
me more than I love myself. Love me more than you love yourself so she holds them at arms length till what
they would, whatever they at the time, let her know she could be enough with or without them. Blinking
back into the present, darting her eyes between the cream-colored walls on either side of her, she finds her
preparation to tell the Rhea story reveals truth she doesnt want to admit. Rheas words remind her she is not
enough yet; not enough because more is wanted and expected, the more that keeps, still, so many who were
there longer and deeper, away.
When her body meets the crimson-framed frosted glass door of office 307, Mina Thermopolis LCPC,
her gloved hand knocks the door. She takes in a deep breath, trying to find another way into letting Rhea go
that doesnt end in her worthlessness. The door opens before she can.
When dark-skinned, curly long brown hair streaked silver Mina opens the door, Cyn is already
holding her leather gloves in her hand, smiling through what she has already accepted for herself. Hello,
Cyn says as she unbuttons her coat, how are you?
Mina steps to the side, giving Cyn room to enter the office, and answers, Im doing well, how are
you?

Cyn takes in a deep breath. Her eyes sweep the closed door to the kitchenette where Mina brews her
tea, the warm canary walls of the closet size lobby before Minas teal walled therapy office. Walking in to
the sea foam green room, whose windows fog opposite the cold winter air outside, Cyn hangs up her coat,
sits in the arm chair closest to the door as Mina follows and sits at the armchair in front of her desk. After
Mina sits down, Cyn begins, How am I, Cyn repeats, now thats a hard question to answer, and after
filling her chest with warm dry air adds, did you read the emails? Cyn meets Minas gray eyes wanting her
words to direct the day. .
Mina nods, beginning, Yes, she adds as Cyn looks down, I can see Rhea was trying to see what she
could do to keep going and you werent. You were having two conversations.
Mina waits for Cyns eyes or words. Theyre at the point of their working relationship where seconds
of silence contribute to important conversations.
As the pause becomes more pregnant than Cyn can stand, she nods. She nods because she agrees so
she says, I need to know I can hurt people, adding with a sigh, and I know that giving her what she
wanted would mean she thought that it wasI was okayand so I didnt. I wanted her to make sure she
knew that there was no going back. Cyn stops there. She looks to Mina for direction.
Minas eyebrows furrow in that way that lets Cyn know she is not making another judgment. An
expression that says no, no staring game today. Cyn changes her focus from Minas eyes and stares out at
the window wondering if the predicted snow would fall. She breathes in the foggy window, remembering
how, as a teenager when left alone, shed put her fingertips to the frost of her bedroom window, wondering
why poreless glass could turn water into ice despite the heat against it. When Cyn sees, from the corner of

her eye, Mina opens her mouth to begin asking, Could you elaborate on that? Cyn meets her eyes again
and answers.
What I mean is, Cyn takes a beat. She has let Mina look at her eyes too long. Eye contact makes her
leg twitch. What I mean is, Cyn then turns to focus on the lamp hood reaching up above between the
window and Mina, is that when I get scared; when I get paralyzed by whats going on, when too much
happens all at once, I need someone I can push away.
Mina softens her posture and, pulls out the printed exchange, Could you elaborate on that?
Cyn takes in another deep breath, remembering the routine. Panic sets in and I gotta get out of it
faster than, than when I was five, Cyn pauses, when my cousin came into me the first time; or when I tried
to get him to stop, she swallows and offers, or when mywhen others didnt stopand the only way out is
to grab on to something or fight back, right? So I begin reaching, and I know I need a healthy reach. I know I
need an available reach. So I reach but if I reach and land on the floor, crawling. Crawling till someone
finally responds and when someone finally has time, she digs her nails in the arms of her chair as she
continues, I begin pushing with words. With unanswered phone calls. With crossed arms. With downwards
stares. I push with anything that will make them go away. Because I know I know I get there because no one
was there; no one could be there; no one wanted to be there because Im not important enough. So I push; I
push despite their persistence, despite their apologies, in apologizing for whatever else came up, I push
because, for me, for all the ways I have been blamed for being weak and being in need, I cant hate myself for
that, she takes in a deep breath as she says, so its easier to hateeasier to blame someone else for not
being there, for never being there, than it is... Cyn meets Minas eyes after answering her question; the rush
of water in her chest stirs something she cant and does not want to name, than it is to forgive them.

Mina asks, How come?

I dunno, Cyn surrenders knowing this where she tends to get stuck, but I need to know I can be on
my own. That I can save myself, she confesses, but decides to start talking about moving, moving because
Rheas memory asks why Cyn doesnt like moving. Moving around as much as I have; looking for home, for
belonging, being able to have me grounds me. Because I move, because I grow, because I no longer need
people dont last for me. Theres a limit to how much needing we are all allowed, you know When Cyn
meets Minas eyes, she sees answers Mina is not speaking. The moment in therapy where she tends to start
breaking open and going deeper. But, taking in Minas concern and Minas questions crackling in the heated
air, Cyn does not know how to move forward because these are the questions, the questions she can answer,
questions she does not know how to predict. Cyn looks a streak of silver on Minas head to feign eye contact
but keep...keep the tears Mina has, for a year of working with her in therapy, grown to expect when they talk
about need.
Mina finds Cyn at her breaking point, the point where Cyn doesnt want to need because of her
history of neglect. History shaped by what her body meant to others and what, in being attracted to women,
Cyn tried to make it mean for herself. She waits for Cyns effort to challenge herself. She doesnt provide
answers because Cyn doesnt want answers; Cyn moves away from people when they provide an answer, so
she asks for more clarification. She asks for what Cyn wants to give. I hear you trying to claw your way out
of corners because you can save yourself, but I wonder, she begins leaning in which prompts Cyn to inch
back in her chair, if you could elaborate on the limitation of being able to need.
When I was sickWhen I was on meds, it was easy because all I had to do was pop a pill for a long
period of time and wait...wait till I didnt come off as clingy or crying or angry, but then I got fat and no one

could love me fat. So I had to stop the Prozac, she says as she adjusts her sitting position, but then the
Welbutrin kept me from sleeping, from seeing anything clearly. Withdrawal or getting off of both was
another bit of crazy. Which is why I moved here couple years ago. Found a place where the crazy wasto
find a place where I could keep busy to keep the crazy out of me. To see if keeping busy and insured could
let me let others love me without needing too much or pushing too quickly.
I see, said Mina when Cyn pauses for a few beats to catch a breath in the middle of a reflection that
speeds up her talking. So you move to see if you can find others?
Yes and no, Cyn blurts, its more than that. Back then, when getting off meds or switching, Cyn
says trying to control her heart rate, I cried a lot; I cried and then all whoever was around had to do was hug
me and tell me their story. And then it got to the point that, to keep their attention, all I had to do was cry
and get angry. All I had to do was need. Because if I didnt need, then they wouldnt be there...but then, then
I began to get angry. Angry at myself for needing. Angry at myself for suffering, for so many things. Angry
because the only people I could keep really close, I mean, really close were the ones who, looking back,
would need to save me to keep me around, Cyn explains leaning forward, gathering forces from
remembering how asking others to let her give, to let her in would result in them pulling away.
Oh, Mina catches a glimpse of Cyns confusion, contradicting her inability to need with the hunger
to be needed, which she then thinks out loud to Cyn, So you dont want to need people who dont need
you?
Cyn continues speaking without really letting Minas question sink in, I couldnt listen; I couldnt console; I
couldnt be present in a way that was what they needed; from what I could see and feel. But they insisted;
they insisted that I neededI needed to let them in to listen and heal and save and at their time, even

though I could never. I would neverCyns voice trails off and she focuses her eye on a rip she catches in
the carpet under the long sofa.
Mina, catches on Cyns frustration, bringing Cyns attention back into their presentation situation in
the room as she asks, How did that make you feel?
The need to push, to get control, Cyn answered, the need to remind them that I was only good
weak or that I was tired of being on the sidelines; I was tired of not being around for them or because of
them. When I feel like being different is the reason they cant or wont love me...I push away because I need
to love myself. Because they wont. They cant.
I hear that you feel being different is the reason family, friends, girlfriends have not been able to
love you the way you need. I wonder if and when you have told them that, just like you told me right now.
I havent, Cyn answers almost shouting. She catches herself fails to keep the anger in, I try and
then they get confused and angrier and I cant get through to them.
You have talked a lot about how you have worked to change; how youve worked to move and be
more than you feel others see when they see you and come near you. What do you feel confuses them? How
do you know you cant get through to them?
Thats easy, Cyn answers crossing her arms, They tell me they give up; they walk away; they say
Im too much; they ask for what I cant give. And thats when it happens. Thats how I get to a bad place.
With no one to hold on to, with their anger, their hate, their grief I cant rest; because I am not good enough.
Then I get in that room again. Im pinned down and cant get out. Doing everything they asked but still have
to hide, still have to be ashamed. Still have to be ashamed of what I missed. Of what they didnt understand
about the voices or the pills or the aftereffects or the clothes or any of it. And when I feel that way, when I

feel Ive done what was asked but still have to hide and wait and beg, then thats not love. Thats not self-love
and when I am in a point in my life where nothing can make it or make me better, where who I am matters
less than what I do. I push. I push. I push until it does. And pushing leads to moving. Getting out. Switching
jobs. Switching cities. Switching states. I push until getting out has to, until getting out needs to be enough.
Until I can be enough for myself.
So you have moved a lot. I remember you telling me you have lived in a few places. That the last
time you had move across the country to here, right?
Cyn nodded blinking her eyes and clenching her jaw.
And then, Mina asks leaning towards Cyn who recrosses her arms, then what?
Then I find freedom; then I can build relationships with people who can need me as little as I am
allowed to need them; then I can do anything. Then I can love myself because I have time.
You have time for what?
Time, Cyn says feeling a tear slip down dangle on her chin, to just, she chokes on her words as the
tears line up under her eyes, because Id love to just

Fall 2015
Olivia Deborah Grayson
The Smoking Mirror Will Express Things As They Are
At 13, you will start hating your body;
it will be perfectly normal, horrible,
& spontaneous.
Fortunately, you will have your first
Cigarette on the cracked calcium
Carbonate of your bathroom floor-A Camel, that promises to never
Get on your nerves.
At 17, you will date a much older
Man to whom you will lose your
Virginity; it will sting, then pound,
Like a cymbal falling on your foot forever.
When you complain, he will say,
I've been trying to find a nectarine
in this town for approximately
290 Hours!*
There will be boys your age you want to kiss.
When you are 19, e.e. cummings
Will die: Lets live suddenly without
Thinking [!]*
You will switch to Tareytons because
You will be hungry for flavor.

At 23, you will wear rings on all

Your fingers & sing about mothers
Forced out of their villages. In quiet
Protestation, you will remove your
Top at Howard Johnsons, then order
Red Jell-O with whipped cream
& a cherry.
When you are 28, Neil Armstrong
Will land on the moon & you will
Have a mystical experience while
Taking a perfectly elliptical shit.
At 30, you will get married.
Finally! your mother will yap,
Yap. Yap.Yap.
You will adore/despise her.
He will be a madman, which
You will learn too late, means
Madison Avenue, not madcap,
Irreverent, witty, or thrilling.
Together, you will sip coffee
In orange & pink cups, & go
To EST where it will be confirmed
Your body is disgusting, you are
Your body, & should be grateful.
At 35, your husband will have
Affairs with girls named Debby,
Dawn, & Sunshine, you will
Sit Indian-style on your marriage bed
& memorize lines from Sylvia Plath,
I am not cruel only truthful **

At 36, you will have a daughter

& name her Debby, Dawn, or
Sunshine.
You will yearn for her creamy skin,
Shiny eyes, & impossibly glossy
Hair, which just smells so good;
You will fret & wonder why
Your hair doesnt smell so good.
As payback, you will constantly
Send her to her to her room where
She will brood & smoke Tareytons-The taste worth fighting for.
At 43, your husband will
Leave you for a tidy blonde
Of 22.
You will go to singles bars,
Wear hot-pants, & smoke Kools
Because theres only one way
To play it.
Rapidly, your skin will become
Craggy & people will call you
Maam. This will sound like
Theyre reprimanding you,
But only because they are.
At 50, you will consult with
A therapist who will inform you
That your crucial authenticity
Is existential, & you do not really
Exist; not really.

This will not be the advice you

Were hoping for, so you will
Get cats. They will know
You are authentic; your place
Will stink of authenticity.
Your daughter will visit with her
Much older husband. She will no
Longer be glossy, & will have
Developed cellulite.
You will decide you love her.
She will despise/adore you.
When her hubby makes grab for you,
You will be giddy with delight--who
Wouldnt be? (You still have it).
Nevertheless, you will scold him.
How dare you!
Later, on the ruptured mollusk shells
& flinty corals of your bathroom
Floor, you will give him your body.
At 58, you will be diagnosed with
Invasive ductal carcinoma & have
Your breasts lopped off; being
Flat chested is wildly exhilarating,
Like being a kid again.
At 67, you will buy a little condo in
Queens with the money you will get
From half your husbands pension plan.
Finally! Your mother will yup,
Yup. Yup. Yup.

You will look down & see she is falling

Apart; you will feel responsible.
At 75, you will experience heaviness
At the center of your chest. This will
Last for more than a few minutes.
You will ignore it, although youve
Broken out in a cold sweat & feel
Lightheaded, like being drunk
On a snowy day.
At 86, your abnormal cells will
Divide uncontrollably, & you will
Join the Hemlock Society where
You will meet many kind, interesting,
Dying people.
Bedbound, sedated, & on truckloads of
Barbiturates, you will reread old favorites-Bertha, the mad woman in the attic, finally
Offs herself, & Rochester, now blind & with
One hand is free to marry Jane. Later,
He will recuperate, which you will
Find unfair and unreasonable.
Dorothea, on the other hand, will marry
Handsome Ladislaw. That took you long
Enough silly twit, you will say, & really
Mean it.
Your hospice caretaker will think you are
Talking about her as she feeds you those
Last blasted handfuls of Secobarbital.
You will be grateful, grateful, so very grateful.

*Frank, David. Facebook Post. 2015

**Cummings, e. e. Lets Live Suddenly Without Thinking. 100 Selected Poems. 1959
***Plath, Sylvia. Mirror. The Collected Poems.1961

Fall 2015
Patrick Chapman

Juniper Bing
Frost cracked on the street outside like a crme brle gone wrong. The forecast was for a sub-zero night, the kind of
weather that defeated armies. Jeffrey Bing did not want to leave his warm office but he had made an appointment.
In the lift to the foyer, he caught sight of a particularly ugly guy. Here was a fat loser in a pea coat and a tartan scarf
over a Louis Copeland suit. A morlock dressed as a womble. Jeffrey blinked at his own reflection and looked away. He
watched the numbers light up in sequence until the doors parted and he stepped out. There was no concierge. The
consulting firm Jeffrey worked for had signed the lease in anticipation of a new city quarter that was no longer
expected. From his sixteenth-floor cubicle, the view was of this buildings stillborn twin. He liked the austere beauty of
that skeletal tower, its floors but no walls giving it the aspect of something unearthed.
Jeffrey shivered as he left the building. He had taken the lift because there would be enough stairs later. He knew
he was not classically fit. Too lumpy, he over-existed. Smoking did not help him lose weight, though it had given him
the chest complaint that now sawed away at his innards.
The previous morning he had felt a little weaker in the abdomen than usual and he made an appointment to visit
Doctor Stone, who would not be surprised to see him, for Jeffrey was always popping around. Stone was himself a
man of considerable girth, and appeared to have both a scalpel intellect and a blunt manner. That could be tricky. The
doctor didnt do denial. He was a denial denier. Whenever Jeffrey grumbled up to his clinic, Stone would trot out the
customary advice to shed a few kilos but he seemed disinclined to lead by example.

Jeffrey got a tram to Mayor Street and crunched down to the clinic. There were no other patients waiting and the
receptionist told him to take a seat. After ten minutes, the doctor popped his head out.
Bing.
Jeffrey put down the copy of Irish Tatler in which he had been browsing the social pictures at the back. It was in this
column, many years before, that he had first seen Juniper. Now he looked for her there. These days it was the only
place he was likely to find her.
He got up and followed the doctor.
In the surgery, Stone smiled and shook his patients hand. Take off your coat and sit down. Theres a good fellow.
Without speaking, Jeffrey did as he was told.
Doctor Stone sat and called up Jeffreys record on the computer, studied it for a minute, then turned to him. Now
what can we do for you?
Chest infection, I think. Jeffrey was surprised to hear that his voice sounded like that of a well man. His throat felt
as though he had swallowed a very small jellyfish that refused to go down.
Doctor Stone looked smug. He rubbed his hands together and stood up.
Get up on there for me, he indicated the exam table.
Jeffrey did as he was told.
The doctor checked his pulse and shone a light down his throat, then into his ears, and listened to his breathing
with a stethoscope. This routine made Jeffrey feel properly inspected. Hed had to pull his shirt up and the doctor had
seen his stomach, its furry corrugations.
Chest infection, the doctor said, and sat at his computer again while Jeffrey got off the table and tucked his shirt
into his trousers.
The patient was relieved that there was actually something wrong with him.

Plus, the doctor continued, youre unfit. Otherwise, everything is fine. All the signs point to stress, except the chest
infection, which points to cigarettes. You can sit down again.
A cold mass settled inside Jeffrey as he sat.
Doctor Stone made out a prescription for antibiotics and cortisone. He wrote a request for blood tests. Tell me this.
Do you ever intend to have children?
No. This approach was new.
Are you going out with anyone?
Not that Im aware of.
Be serious. You might want to have children one day, right?
No.
Work with me here. What age are you now? Forty?
Thirty-four.
Right. So let me tell you this. Say you do have kids, if you dont give up the fags you wont be around to see them
grow up.
Jeffrey deflated a little. Was that another smug look on the doctors face or still the same one?
How much would you go through in a day?
Twenty, max. Jeffrey fidgeted.
Well, as I said
I should be around for my children.
No. They should be around for you.
Excuse me?
Doctor Stone leaned forward an inch. Let me put a little scenario to you. Youll meet some lovely woman and youll
have kids. Then youll work your considerable butt off to provide a home and education for the little rug-rats, so youll

never see them as theyre growing up. But then when theyre finished school and youre retired, then will you get to
see them? I dont think so. When you should be able to enjoy the company of your children, youll be only a photo on
the wall. Why is Daddy a Polaroid, Mammy? they will ask.
And heres the kicker. Here comes the bad news. Say your wife is still a relatively young woman, still relatively
attractive, right? Now, to coin a phrase, its a truth universally acknowledged that a youngish, good-looking woman in
possession of a small fortune in life assurance must be in want of a husband. So whats to stop some Johnny-comelately moving in and taking over everything youve built up? You see what Im saying here? Your wife wont be
sentimental about it, believe me. Shell soon be sleeping with some randomer in your bed as if you had never existed.
Hell get the benefit of everything you sacrificed for the sake of your family. And all because you didnt give up
smoking now. Doctor Stone sat back again and folded his arms like a genie.
Christ.
No, think about it. Sure, shell look back on you fondly but youll be dead. Its up to you. If you dont mind having a
short life, go ahead and smoke. But if you do, give up now.
Iwill.
That said, I suggest you dont give up until you really want to.
But
You have to want to, and when youre ready, heres a little plan to stick to. Doctor Stone clapped his hands
together. Make a list of the reasons youre giving it up. Lung cancer. Chest infections. Poor circulation in the wedding
tackle. Take out that list every time you feel like a smoke. Save up the money youd be spending on the fags for six
months, as a little incentive. Tenner a day? After half a year, when your physical addiction is gone, youll have a nice
tidy sum. Take that money and blow it on something for yourself. A new sound system. A weekend in Paris. An hour
with a very good hooker. Something fun. You have to treat yourself.
I thought thats why I was paying you.

The doctor didnt hear him. He was concentrating on his spiel. Then you can enjoy being more than a sperm
donor, and a lump sum when youre dead.
What else is there?
Doctor Stone smirked. Youve got me, there.
Jeffrey coughed and tasted blood.
The doctor watched him with mild interest as the rattle died down. He seemed to be waiting for a decision from his
patient.
Jeffrey sighed, straightened in his seat and pulled on the lapels of his jacket. Look here, doctor. None of what you
say is relevant to me. There was someone once but only that one. No one has touched me since, not intimately, which
is just as well. Women find me revolting, and theyre right. Men too. So Im sorry but the scenario you paint is one I
have no real interest in pursuing.
Jeffrey smiled uncertainly. Tears formed, uncalled-for, in his eyes.
Jesus, man. Doctor Stone put out a hand and almost took Jeffreys but hesitated then withdrew. He picked up the
prescription and the request form and gave them to the patient, who took the paperwork and folded it into his pocket.
They both stood up at once, moved by the same weary spirit.
Call me in a week or two after you get those tests done. The doctor said. In the meantime, get some exercise and
put some bloody elbow grease into it. Man up and lose the flab.
Jeffrey felt a new stillness. Theres something else. I think I want to talk to you about something else. I just
mentioned there was someone, once.
Doctor Stone frowned. Sorry, Jeff, but youll have to make another appointment.
But I really need to
Ask the girl on the desk, theres a good man.

Jeffrey nodded slowly then turned for the door and the doctor stepped in front of him to hold it open. Stone held
his other hand out to shake but Jeffrey didnt take it.
Outside, the pharmacy next door to the clinic had just closed. He stood in its doorway to light a smoke, so that the
wind would not thwart him, then he walked off slowly, determined to enjoy this final cigarette.
The chill in the air made his bones feel exposed like a sculpture made of X-rays.
At the tram stop a young couple, wrapped in fleeces, generated an aura of being newly in love. They held hands
and played casually with each others gloved fingers. Jeffrey regarded them with pity. One day, my friends, all this will
not be yours.
He got the LUAS to Spencer Dock and crossed the road. A slice of light, his office floated above in the dark. He
strode past it and over to the aborted apartment building. There he found a gap in the perimeter fence that he had
made two nights previously, when hed broken in to have a look around. He pulled it wide and squeezed in. Despite
the state of his chest, he ran wheezing to the door that he knew would give. Now he started up the service stairwell,
huffing all the way, one step after another.
Three times on his climb, he stopped for a breather, the air becoming icy in his lungs. It took him ten minutes to
reach the sixteenth level, where he wandered out into the frost-covered concrete floor of what would have been a
master bedroom. There was fluid in his throat now and a rising pain in his arm. The wind slapped his face and he
surrendered to the assault so that he no longer felt it. The exertion of his climb had dulled his perception. This room
had the city for walls but he barely saw it.
Jeffrey undid the buttons on his pea coat and shucked it off. That felt better. He dropped his tartan scarf. At the
edge of the concrete floor he stopped. Jeffrey looked over at his office and concentrated his vision but could see no one
there.
After shaking off one shoe then the other, he bent and rolled his socks down and tucked them into the shoes and
god, how the cold stabbed up his bare feet into his shins, how his body hollowed itself out.

The doctor had said to sit so Jeffrey did as he was told. He sleepwalked back into the almost-room and sat down in
the centre of it. His suit felt too thin against the icy air.
He could not feel his fingers any more. Nor could he now feel his lips, one lifting from the other, even as a word, a
weightless word released at last, evaporated through them. Juniper. The name hushed into the gloom of this
darkening city.
The sounds of night itself were becoming faint now. The sirens and bells faded, the shrieking of gulls flying level
with him grew distant, and the jagged music of the city softened into one brittle note that played out on the air and was
gone.

Fall 2015
Jennifer R. Valdez

Lady Liberty Meets Big Ben

Im kidding, I told Dara after saying she could keep the guitarist as long as I got the drummer.
Dara got us tickets to see Coasts, an indie band from England, play at Bowery Ballroom in New York
City. She had seen the band play months before. Thats when she fell in love with their music, and the
guitarist.
We stood in the front row, watched the boys take the stage and took our pick of whom wed go home
with if we were those types of girls. We put our bags at our feet, just under the stage and let our hands dance
freely in the air. I got lost in the tempo and danced with my eyes closed, feeling the base in my fingertips.
When the final song came to an end, I opened my and looked at the drummer. Our eyes met.
Thats it, I told Dara. He stole my soul.
After the concert, we headed to the basement lounge where the band would be signing memorabilia
and taking photos. One by one they started showing up, but there was no sign of the drummer. Dara talked
to Jimmy, the guitarist, and told him she was at their last concert.
Are you from England as well? He asked, noticing her accent.
Yea, Im from Kent, she said.
Its so strange to hear another English accent in the States. But its nice. It makes me miss home. His
manager had come over to tell him to stay by the table so they could sign autographs and be out within the
hour. I have to go, he said. But what are you girls doing after this?
Nothing, Dara answered.
You should come out with us. Just hang around. We wont be long.

Dara was overjoyed at the fact that Jimmy. Just asked us. To hang out. But I did not share her
enthusiasm. I was not about the play groupie for the night, especially considering I had a boyfriend.
Whats wrong? Dara asked, noticing my lack of zeal.
I think I should call Nate to see how he feels about it. I stepped outside to make the call and told
him about the invitation at hand. Well probably just hang out for another hour, I said. He surprisingly had
no reservations and told me to have fun.
Dara and I sat at the bar as the crowd dwindled down. Still no drummer. Jimmy came over to tell us
they were going to a bar called Fontanas down the street, so we made our way to the exit. Then I saw him.
Oh! Dara screeched. She wanted to meet you.
He looked at me, reached out his hand and smiled. Hi, Im Ben.
Jen, I replied, taking his hand. He had a boyish quality to him with his soft brown eyes and quirky
smile. He had curly dirty-blonde hair that he probably didnt comb. You could run your fingers through it
and itd be all the same. Tattoos peaked out from his sleeves and crept up his collarbone. I wanted to see
them all.
When we got to the bar, the band arrived with a trail of girls behind them. I told Dara we could only
stay for an hour. As soon as we grabbed a seat, Ben came to sit with us and started small talk. Dara and Ben
bonded over being Southeast London kids and I sat there mesmerized by his accent then joined the
conversation after he mentioned they had just performed at Coachella.
Im from Coachella, I said.
Really? What brings you to New York? Ben asked.
Grad school. Im getting my Masters at Sarah Lawrence in Creative Writing. Nonfiction.
No way, he said. Thats what I went to college for. I wanted to be a journalist.
We talked about writing and music and how we got to where we are now.
So do you ever think youll go back to California? he asked.
Well, it depends on a few things.
Like what?
Like if my work will transfer me.
And if what we talked about earlier happens, right? Dara asked.

I looked at her hoping she wouldnt say anymore.

If what happens? Ben asked.
Shes hoping her boyfriend will propose by the end of the year. Theyre both from California so then
they could move back together.
Thats just what everyone thinks will happen, I said.
But you were just telling me that you wanted Nate to ask you. Dara looked confused.
I dont know what I want, I said.
Youre boyfriends name is Nate? Ben asked. As in Nathan? My little brothers name is Nathan, he
said, and I was grateful for the subject change. But we call him Shirley, and suddenly we were on a whole
new topic. We shared stories about our siblings and I dont remember the last time I laughed so hard.
By the time I checked my phone it was 1:30. We had been there for two hours. I suggested we leave,
but Ben asked if we wanted to play pool. So I took off my black leather jacket and picked up a stick. Ben
partnered up with the keyboard player and Dara asked where Jimmy was.
He left with some girl, the keyboard player said.
Jimmys always getting the girls, Ben said with his hand on his forehead. Last week he hooked up
with some PR lady.
I saw the disappointment on Daras face. Welp, that sucks, she said. Lets play. Dara is somewhat
of a secret weapon at pool. We were up the whole game and wouldve won had she not missed the eight ball
shot.
After the game, Ben asked if there were any places still open to get a bite to eat.
We hopped in a cab and took him to the fanciest twenty-four hour restaurant in the city. Time no
longer existed. After we ordered, Dara began telling us about the restroom. Theres a neon sign inside the
stall that says You Are Here. Its so cool. You have to see it. We have to take a picture, she said, pulling out her
Polaroid.
All together we abandoned our table and headed to the restroom. Dara was right. It was cool. Ben
grabbed a waiter, handed him the Polaroid and asked him to take our photo. The waiter laughed the whole
time as the three of us crammed into one stall trying to keep the door open while not touching the toilet but
still squatting low enough to read the sign overhead. Right before the flash went off, the automated toilet

flushed and we all laughed, nearly falling over. It was an epic snapshot, which Dara let Ben keep to
remember us by.
Just before Ben left we took a photo together and I wrapped my arms around him like we were old
friends. Dara and I jumped on the subway around 4am with nothing more than a good story to tell about a
boy well never see again.
Its a shame Jimmy turned out to be a slag, she said. And I think Ben kind of likes you. But you
have Nate.
Yeah. But Id take London over California any day, I said.
Dara looked at me in complete shock.
Im kidding!

Fall 2015
Ronnie Sirmans

Our Daily Bread

Instead of the obligatory

Mary or Jesus, I saw
Andy Warhols image
(or maybe it was more
wild-haired Einstein)
in a slice of marble rye,
but no pilgrims came
to my front door, no
one knocked seeking
any blessings from
this countenance.
I proffered no physic
toward any ailments
or screened imaginings.
Instead, Andy made
a really good sandwich.

Like Stars, Like Gold

Your eyes are like stars

and your hair is like gold.
What I mean to say, of course,
is your eyes are like stars,
the stars who wear makeup
but wind up on tabloid covers
with the headline See how they
really look without their makeup.
The stars, like you, ascend
into our shared consciousness
but then descend amid booze
or bad drugs or egoism into
a galaxy peopled with novae,
burned-out stars who might
even get caught shoplifting
a not-so-costly piece of jewelry
that glints as brightly as a star,
maybe 24 karat jewelry, the gold
like your hair that is like gold.
Which I mean to say, of course,
is like the gold in a rappers
grill, the metal fronting a smile
that menaces and dazzles at once,
just like your eyes and your hair.

Younger Addictions

A meth moon bright, seems

to dissipate as I tongue it,
then inhale dark sky.
I try to hold it in
too long and exhale
a cloud of nuclear winter.

Nightly Prayer

When I crawl into bed,

I kiss your bare back,
but you dont kiss me back.

Fall 2015
Trevor Thinktank

I still believe Words Are Awkward

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Another Another Another Sunday SundaySunday ), the last line ), the last line), the last line), the last line
), the last line), the last line
the order orderorder of chivalry of chivalry of chivalry of chivalry of chivalry of chivalry of chivalry the
Order of chivalryrder of chivalryrder of chivalry rder of chivalry rder of chivalry rder of chivalryrder of
chivalryrder of chivalryrder of chivalryrder of chivalry
# Stanza 5 (starting with # Stanza 5 (starting with # Stanza 5 (starting with # Stanza 5 (starting with #
Stanza 5 (starting with # Stanza 5 (starting with # Stanza 5 (starting with # Stanza 5 (starting with #
Stanza 5 (starting with # Stanza 5 (starting with # Stanza 5 (starting with # Stanza 5 (starting with #
Stanza 5 (starting with My love may beMy love may beMy love may beMy love may beMy love may be My
love may be My love may beMy love may beMy love may be My love may be ), Line 2 ), Line 2), Line 2 ),
Line 2

what in the world what in the world what in the world what in the world what in the world what in the
world what in the world what in the world are wordsare wordsare wordsare words are words are wordsare
words what in the world what in the world what in the world what in the world what in the world what in
the world what in the world what in the world words are words are words arewords are
# Stanza 5# Stanza 5 # Stanza 5# Stanza 5 # Stanza 5, Line 3 , Line 3, Line 3, Line 3
But I still believe I still believe I still believeI still believeI
still believe I still believeI still believeI still believeI still
believeI still believeI still believe I still believe
I still believe I still believeI still believeI still believe I still
believeI still believeI still believeI still believeI still
believeI still believe
PagePage
PagePage

Fall 2015
Mae Carter

Before the Suburbs

That day, Katies mother had a psychic flash, sprinting into the street barefoot, tripping on a broken piece of
sidewalk chalk, scraping skin clean off the top of her delicate veined foot, unaware of tripping at all.
Katie was hit while riding her banana seat by a blue-haired teenager driving a Buick LaSabre. Katies mother
knew the parents of the blue-haired punk when they were all young and happy, smoking hash and talking
Ginsberg deep into the Kansas night, back when they believed the earth was a kind mother, before children,
before the suburbs.
Katies mother started howling before she left the house, before she reached her own front door. Her cry was
an endless lowing- monotonous, inhuman, a siren echoing down block after identical block. Her cry was a
wish for a long, uninterrupted landscape, verdure stretching clean and vast,
a wish for a field ravaged by a fitful sky, rich earth untilled and teeming with teeth, leaf, thorn, the earth dark
and oily black as a crows wing,
the fields air swollen with animal sound-- crescendo, a sound living in the spaces beyond feeling, an ancient
stridulating unconcerned with the stuff of nightmares, the naming and parceling up of territory, the spilling
of any animals blood.

Learning Love
Dad palmed the fuzzed skull of his two hours
old daughter like he was picking the ripest
cantaloupe at the grocery. He cradled her head, listened
to the hear the thuds of her inner workings, sniffed, sniffed again,
full of a childs hunger for something immediate,
full of thirst for that too fragile body, the soft skeleton
still hardening, his chest full as a ripe fruit and
as bruised.

Apocrypha
The Black-eyed Susans planted last spring watch me through my bedroom window. They can see the bible
never opened, the erotica under my pillow for when the house falls asleep and night spreads its mercy. The
flowers see to the pit of me, see back to the time freshman year when Mary snuck into my room, rum on her
breath, to kiss me in the blackness, and we undressed, her nakedness a silver-blinding annunciation that
knocked me kneeling. Mary of the slight thigh and doe-down, Mary, her tongue to my clavicle, my calves,
her tongue unraveled at the root, her tongue finally unhinged, flex and velour muscle, mapping out
forbidden- Mary, the thrilling dark of her eye staring at me as if she knew me, as if she knew exactly what I
was.

Autopsy
To witness; to be present at the very end,
to drag a scalpel down your torso
to deliver your lung, to know that strange grey
fishs blind prerogativeto stay afloatto insert;
to interlace my fingers through the shipwrecked
lattice of your ribs, darling, to pull you to me like I never
could in life, to dive into your Challenger Deep, openeyed despite the thick bluing of your blood, to have; to hold
each organ to my ear, to hear your conchhearts last private
incantation which is a frenzied beating divorced
from my will, your will, oh to finally know you, to get close
enough to hear the last resounding of our love.

Insect
The new pastor talks and talks about gays
and pagans going to hell, about the overwhelming
love of God, about Gods far traveling
heart alighting in all believers.
There is a red carpet leading to the pulpit.
It is the straight path to Jesus heart.
To me, a heart is a winged insect, boneless,
bulbous, anyones to catch, thorax filmy,
slick as an eyeball, full of a bittersweet
juice that stains, sustains.
The night before baptism, I dream
I am walking the red path, the pastor
on his knees in the baptismal pool.
Im hungry, so hungry, for his manic
pulse. I take his chin, I bring him
to my face. His bitter coffee
breath fills my mouth, his quick
tongue, a furred moth, quivers
against my palate. I bite
down, freeing his tongue, hot clean blood
tar black and swirling wild
down my throat, filling my chest so that deep
in me something awakens, thrumming and
desperate for light. Under the water,
the pastors droning prayers a muffled song
to burst my fatted heart.
When he pulls me up,
I throw myself against his hard beating chest.
He pushes me away, I learn to hate.

Fall 2015
Sandra Kolankiewicz
Neck
Lets begin with the neck, how it has changed
front and back but still supports the head, bone
spurs momentarily stopping you at
times when you turn to look. Not about how
collum is not equal to cervixthat
on which your head is perched is not the same
as the neck of an organ. Or is it,
head the most confounding organ of all?
No wonder the flattened disks, collapsing
spine if this has been the sole path of thought
into and out of the brain, roadway for
peptides and insistent organisms
that arent supposed to be there. Oh, blood brain
barrier, how we wish authorities
would defend your borders, create some back
up line of protection when nature fails,
the narrow opening from shoulder to
stem like a flexible tunnel letting
our enemies in and secrets out as
if nothing is meant to stay in place, all
boundaries absurd, column held up just
by collar bones and sinew, muscles the
only reason you can hold yourself high.

Up the Only
Since the comet, I no longer stand the
taste of things, canned nor frozen, the street signs
written in Chinese or Arabic, up
the only direction, there being just
one top where the roads converge. So we keep
climbing, occasionally a face to
wave at, someone elses journey to the
same destination. More than anything,
we think of how wanting a baby to
carry would then alter the nature of
the days, as would a dog trotting beside
us, though we know neither. Even when the
mind is made up, we think nothing happens,
the day slow to rise, the night too far off
to make a difference. Thats when we know
someone put a stone in our shoe for us
alone, come to understand the stone is
all that matters. For this were verbose on
events that dont count, believe if we go
barefoot well somehow avoid the journey.

Well, Of Course I Am
Well, of course I am beautiful now even to
myself though that still takes practice: all
that forgetting becoming remembering.
When you hit it right, you express the
reason they build driving ranges one on
top of the other and charge by the hour.
How odd to have passed a week without
spending money though I just jettisoned in
on an express, embarking unto the
expedition of the most important question:
what has become of my lettuce? After all,
who else is expected to water but the one
who planted the seeds, and I have been
gone a week. Look. Lets switch
metaphors. After all, were in the 21st
century, and if you think anything can be
sustained, you live in a homogenous town
where the streets are even paved with
bricks. Your neighbors still care enough to
walk across the street to help someone.

Tunneling Just Under

And what does the terrier do? Ask the
wife or the husband. All I can say is
theres holes all over the yard. If you walk
in the dark, say goodbye to an ankle,
the moles the real problem, tunneling just
under the surface, scent unmistaken,
the reason we have pets in the first place,
to survive on what we own but dont want.
Simultaneously, our features are
collapsing into upside down baby
heads just passed through the canal, the light too
bright, all our creases exaggerated,
lumps on the plane of our faces too used
to define themselves, the spring in our jump
lessened, preoccupied only with the
ground, nothing completed until its done.

Love Poem
I looked and
so you will
disappear.

Fall 2015
Susan Wiedel

Concetta
Sitting on my host sisters bed, I was excited to finally be able to Skype with my mom and my brother David. I
looked at the Andes Mountains through the bedroom window as I waited for the connection to reach New Freedom,
Pennsylvania. Notoriously slow and unreliable, the Internet made these calls to home rare.
When the ring, ring finally stopped, I turned my face towards the screen and saw my moms and Davids
faces in the warm yellow living room. I felt relief that they were in my presence again: their faces, on a computer
screen surrounded by the llama wool blankets on my bed, were a reminder of my life in the United States. I had been
living in Cochabamba, Bolivia. Although it felt good to see home, I did not want to be reminded that my six weeks in
Cochabamba continued to dwindle.
For the past three days they had postponed this Skype session for a variety of reasons: Mom had to work late;
David had plans with friends. We had some catching up to do. I asked about work. Busy, as usual, said Mom. An
accountant at a local accounting firm, my mom never had a shortage of work. David continued to spend most of his
days playing League of Legends with his friends. Not much seemed to have changed back home.
How is Aunt Concetta? I asked. One thing about going home that I most looked forward to was a visit with
Aunt Concetta. I had tried to see her during the week between the end of the semester and my flight to Bolivia, but she

was not well enough for visitors.

They both became quiet. They averted their eyes from the screen. Silence.
What? How is she? A hint of panic began to creep into my voice.
My mom looked back at the screen, and said, Im sorry Susan.
My head felt heavy. Thunder sounded in my ears, and water filled my eyes.
She died on Friday. That is why we couldnt Skype with you yesterday evening; we were at her funeral.
For a few moments, I couldnt say anything. My face quickly dampened with snot and tears. Im so, so sorry,
repeated my mom. I wish I could be there with you.
Why didnt you tell me when you found out? When were you going to tell me? I asked between gasps.
We wanted to wait until you got home, since youve had such a rough year and are enjoying Bolivia so much. I
didnt want you there by yourself when you found out.
Im not by myself, I argued. I have Alana, and my friends and my host family.
You know what I mean, she said. And I did. My instructor, Alana, and my fellow Pitt classmates were a link
to home; my host family was generous and inviting, but they were not family. I became slightly indignant. But I just let
it go.
We talked about the funeral. She was laid out perfectly bald, just the way she wanted. For a woman in her
seventies, Aunt Concetta had had naturally thick, dark hair that hid her age. Only slight slivers of gray said otherwise. I
tried not to imagine her in a casket.
The conversation eventually diminished, and we exchanged our goodbyes. The video call beeped off, and they
were gone.
The sun had set behind the mountains. The room was lit by the yellow-hued streetlight across from the bedroom

window. I got up, closed the curtains, slapped the laptop shut, and buried myself in the pile of llama blankets.
I didnt even get to say goodbye.
www
Dr. Foerster's conclusion is that Italians should stay at home, and that conditions should be improved
so as to keep them thereIt should be a paramount policy of the Italian government to remove those
disabilities, social and economic, which have led to the depopulation of entire regions of Italy and the
ejection into a mainly unreceptive world of masses of predestined derelicts.Dr. Dino Bigongiari,
Professor of Italian at Columbia University

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the port city of Baltimore, Maryland was known as the Other Ellis Island. By
some estimates, Baltimores port claimed the second largest number of immigrants to walk off the boat. Poles,
Russians, Czecks, Ukrainians, Germans, and Italians arrived every year by the thousands. To most, Baltimore was the
beginning of the end, the first stop of many before reaching their final destinations; but for some Southern Italians
(especially Sicilians), Baltimore was the last stop. Vincenzo Frettita DAnnaAunt Concettas grandfathermade the
trip from the town of Cefal, Sicily to Baltimore in 1900, when he was just 18 years old.
Cefal, like Baltimore, was on a coast and therefore had a visible fishing industry, but thats about where the
similarities end. Looking at up-to-date photos of the ancient town, which is situated between turquoise water and the
edge of a behemoth rock, I feel as if I would be less inclined to leave than my Sicilian predecessors were. But the
Cefal of their day shares little resemblance to todays touristy, Mediterranean paradise. The agricultural industry that
the people of southern Italy so depended on could no longer support southern Italian families; drought, disease and the

misuse of land brought agricultural production almost to a halt. Animosity between the northern and southern regions
of Italy did not help matters. Not content with a divided nation, northern Italians had been attempting to unify the
country since the 1860s. The North, with modernized and industrialized economies, contrasted to the South, with
almost feudal-style systems of landownership and laborers that left little room for middle class growth. In order to
unify the Italian states, Northern Italians wanted to bring civilization to a South that to them was a perverse realm of
social disorder and moral degradation in which human existence cannot be conceived of according to the standard
measure of European civilization.
So instead of remaining in an Italy where their place of birth made them socially inferior and economically
paralyzed, thousands of Italian immigrants like Vincenzo DAnna decided to give life in the United States a go. Like
many other southern Italians, Vincenzo came to the Port of Baltimore in search of better economic opportunity, and
while other natives of Cefal also settled in Baltimore, no family joined Vincenzo on his journey.
Luckily, Vincenzo did not get caught up in the masses of predestined derelicts. On the contrary: he sold
produce at the Lexington Market, where he would chastise customers for squeezing his tomatoes too hard; he found a
wife, Rosaria Marguerite Glorioso (a first-generation Sicilian-American whose parents hailed from Cefal); he had,
with Rosaria Marguerite, seven sons and two daughters: Maria, Pete, Sam, Carmen, Joseph, Vincent, Angelo, Anthony
and Concetta.
The DAnnas lived in a row house at 503 W Mulberry Street, in downtown Baltimore. Although Vincenzo only
completed his education through the 8th grade, he was hard-worker who took pride in his work and became known as
the Tomato King in Maryland. Vincenzos success as a businessman allowed him to buy his own house (in 1930 the
house was worth about $10,000 dollars).
Less than a block away, at 515 W. Mulberry Street, lived Vincenzo Alascio, another Italian immigrant, who

arrived in Baltimore in 1910. Along with his wife, Minnie, who emigrated from Italy in 1908, he had three sons and
three daughters: Shaif, Anthony, Celia, Joseph, Theresa and Samuel. According to the 1930 U.S. Federal Census,
Vincenzo Alascio had no years of education and occupation; despite this, his industry of work was denoted as Fruit.
In large Italian families, frequent repetition of names is an unavoidable, albeit sometimes confusing,
phenomenon. (In fact, the more generations that separate you from your ancestors, the more confusing it gets.) So
Concetta (daughter of Vincenzo and Rosaria) is the aunt of my Aunt Concetta (who was actually my great aunt).
Two large Italian families with first-generation American children who live less than a block away from each
other on the same street are bound to cross paths at some point; and cross paths they did.

Pete DAnna grew into the body of a stereotypical swarthy Sicilian man: a full head of dark, greased back hair,
a strong jaw, and skin that appeared darker than it actually was because of his thick arm hair. With his brothers Joseph,
Carmen and Angelo, Pete worked as an executive at Mars Supermarket (named after the airplane the Mars Flying
Boat), which Joseph founded. Petes area of expertise was the produce department. In his time off, Pete enjoyed
spending time with women.
Theresa Alascio was very concerned with appearances; her clothing always reflected the style of the day. She
had attended school, but she was not the brightest flower of the bunch. By the age of 18, Theresa became the young
bride of Pete DAnna, and gave him their first child: a daughter named Rosaria. Four years later came another daughter,
Concetta. And a couple years later, a son named Vincent. Together they lived at 314 Greene Street, about seven blocks
west from their families on Mulberry Street, until 1948, when Theresa and Pete got a divorce.
www

My first memory of Theresa Grandmom DAnna is from my fourth birthday party. I sat at the oval wooden table in
the kitchen with my brothers; surrounding us were many elderly, unfamiliar faces. But the most distressing to me was
that of Grandmom DAnna; although she was in her 70s, her concern for looks had never faded. Her long hair was
dyed bright red; matching her hair were her lipstick and manicured nails; light-blue eye shadow dusted her eyelids; her
customary high-heeled shoes made her tightly-panted legs seem intimidatingly long.
As we sat there waiting for the cake candles to be lit, she thrust her face in mine, touched my hair and squeezed
my cheek. Up close, I could see her eyes slightly drooped with age and her slightly slanted smile. Disturbed, I began to
cry.
Her kids and grandkids were used to it. As children, they would get their cheeks pinched and their faces kissed
and their stomachs full of completely homemade pizza (hers was the best). All Grandmom DAnna wanted was to love
and be lovedand look good doing it.
For the last 30 years of her life, Grandmom DAnna went out dancing every week with her boyfriend Mr.
Howard. (She never married Howard after her ex-husband Pete died; as long as she remained unmarried, she received
his social security payments.) On weekends, Howard and Theresa would get all dolled-up and go to a big band club and
dance. At family weddings, Howard spun Theresa so that her body was parallel to the ground (a photo of them from
Theresas grandsons wedding verifies this fact).
She died of a heart attack at the age of 81. At her viewing, her bright red hair sat perfectly coiffed on her
shoulders; the shiny casket covered the bottom half of her body. As a four-year-old, I did not understand the situation in
which I found myself: an odd smelling room with that scary red-haired lady lying down in a box.
I did recognize her daughter (my great aunt) Concetta from the throng of well wishers. She kneeled down in
front of me and reached out her arms to me. Please give me a hug, Susan. She was my mom. Please, I need a hug from

you. Her voice slightly quivered and her eyes filled with water. I shyly retreated into the protective folds of my
mothers skirt.
www
As a little girl, Concetta grew up without a father in her life. As a young wife, Concetta lived in a once-but-no-longercomfortable house in the DAnnas Villaa house long neglected by her relatives and infested with ratswhile her
husband, Ken DeCrette, was in the service. After Ken returned home, he and Concetta bought a small one-story house
at 3456 Liberty Parkway. As a new mother, Concetta took in her father and two half-siblings, Pete Jr. and Patty, after
her stepmother tried to hurt them in a drunken rage (Concetta was only about 21 at the time).
I remember every second of it, said Patty, Concettas half-sister. It was a Thursday night. Before we went
over there, I was home with my father and my mothermy mother was an alcoholic. She was drunk at dinner, and she
threw a glass at my dad and then she pulled out a knife; he got us out of there. When we got to Cettas, The
Untouchables was on TV. The next day was my birthday, and John F Kennedys inauguration day, and it was snowing.
We went out that night in the snow. Saturday, I was supposed to have a birthday party at home, but Cetta had it at her
house and all my friends came over.
Ken, Concetta and their daughter lived in the small one-story house. After Ken and Concetta had three more
children, nine people (including Pete, Pete Jr. and Patty) were living in a two-bedroom house. Butting-heads were all
too common. Daddy tried to rule the roost, but that wasnt his job, remembered Patty. Daddy was tough; hed tell
Cetta what to cook, and if she didnt get it right hed yell and scream; they had had just about enough.
But they all managed to stay together. Pete expanded the tiny kitchen, and refurbished the attic and basement
into bedrooms and extra living space (as a child, I was unaware that the basement playroom was my great-grandfathers

domain back-in-the-day); he taught Concetta how to cook. Family dinners were a daily occurrence.
Concetta absolutely adored her father. She used to say, Nobody loves Daddy like I do; nobody loves their
father like I do. She admitted later on that she raised Pete Jr. and Patty for her father, to have her father in her life
again. Patty believed She would do anything for him, even raise his children.
According to Patty, Pete did not know how to be a father; he could not easily show affection for his kids. She
remembers him crying only twice. One night before we broke up as a family and my mother threw him out of the
houseshe threw his clothes out in the snowand I saw him crying when he had to leave us. The second time was after
he returned from the hospital where his eldest daughter, Rosaria, died of cardiac arrest.
Like her father, Concetta had a hard time expressing herself; even with her kids, it was hard for her to show her
emotions. Only years later, after her grandson Aaron died young of cancer, was she more outwardly loving; the latter
the sweet great-aunt who lived in the little white house on Liberty Parkwaywas the only Concetta I ever knew.
www
I knew Concetta as a woman with whom I shared some genes; I knew her as a woman who had my photograph on one
of her living room shelves; I knew her as a woman who gave me love that I didnt quite understand, and also happened
to make incredible pasta (that for some reason she called basta).
In most respects, Concettaand by default my Italian predecessors she representedwere strangers to me. My
dad never told me stories about his dance-loving Grandmom DAnna; Concetta never told me about the struggles of her
father or the achievements of her grandfather Vincenzo, the Tomato King of Maryland. So when I found myself
ambling around the massive Loudon Park Cemetary350-acres, to be exactwith my dad, looking for Aunt Concettas
grave, I felt out-of-place. The cemetery did not have a map or guide to help point us to her, and my dad could not

remember the graves location from the funeral. The grass had been cut recently, and it had rained earlier that morning.
We had been walking in circles, looking at graves, for the past 45 minutes. My gray canvas shoes had become green;
the multi-colored flowers in my hand had not yet wilted due to the gray moisture in the air.
I was beginning to give up; there is only so much death you can look at in one morning. Frustrated, I wandered
into another section of graves: nuns, priests, firefighters, and eventually servicemen. Each branch of the military had a
flag flying on a flagpole. Below them rested men and women distinguished by partially grass-covered plaques. Flowers
at my side, I perused the rows of names and dates. In the second row near the grassy edge, I was surprised to find
Kenneth Lloyd DeCrette, 1937-2003.
Hey Dad, I said. I found Uncle Ken.
You did? You found her!
what? I did not understand.
She was buried with Uncle Ken, my dad said. That is how most servicemen and their wives are buried. Did
you not know that?
I cleared some of the wet grass covering the bottom half of the plaque with my free hand. It read, Concetta
Theresa DeCrette, 1939-2014.

Fall 2015
BlazeVOX Interview with John Tranter on his forthcoming book Heart Starter

Tell me about your book.

My book is titled Heart Starter. Thats a phrase I owe to a friend I asked him in 1974 why he always
drank a bottle of whiskey at night, and why he always left an inch of spirits in the bottom of the
bottle when he went to bed. Why not finish the thing? He was a schoolteacher. He replied Mate, if
you had to get up in the morning and go to my school and teach those kids all day, youd need a
heart starter too.
What influenced this book?
Well, it contains a hundred and one poems, and its made up of three sections: some poems related to
The Best of the Best American Poetry 2013 (Series Editor, David Lehman, Guest Editor, Robert Pinsky),
some poems related to The Open Door: One Hundred Poems, One Hundred Years of Poetry Magazine
(Don Share and Christian Wiman, Eds., 2012), and thirty or so poems, mainly rhymed sonnets,
written by me in recent years.
In the first two sections, I chose to write Terminals; that is, I started with drafts which borrowed the
end-words of each line of some poems in each of the two books concerned. So I guess you could say
that for the first two thirds of the book, the poems were influenced by the models they drew on. For
example, theres a poem titled Three Lemons which began as a draft using the end-words of Three
Oranges by Charles Bukowski. Theres a lot of Bukowski in the tone of that poem. And theres one
titled A Pompeiian Aristocrat Considers the Future which began as a draft using the end-words of
Self-portrait as Four Styles of Pompeian Wall Painting by Henri Cole. I met Henri in New York in
1985, and again in Italy in 2009, and I feel theres a little bit of Henri in that poem. Just a bit. And that
applies generally. Mostly the poems are mine, of course.

And the rhymed sonnets often take off from Rimbauds famous sonnet Voyelles,which deals with
the supposed colours of the vowels, though with a more variegated palette in my case. I mean, there
are millions of colours, arent there? Taupe, for example, and bisque, and cadet blue And I often
borrow his rhyme scheme. I should note that Rimbaud chose to sequence the vowels AEIUO, not
AEIOU as is usually the case in French and in English, perhaps to coincide with the Biblical quote I
am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.

Where does this book fit into your career as a writer?

Its my twenty-fourth book of poems, and Im getting on now, so I guess its an old mans book, full
of wisdom, the fruit of reflections on a life well lived and masses of bullshit. No, Im kidding. It
borrows and argues with a lot of other writings and art works, and I seem to have been doing that all
my life, so in a way its more of the same. And it uses rhyme and strict metre, which is something
unusual in the poetry scene. I mean it is unusual now; once it was common, a hundred or so years
ago, and especially common in popular music lyrics. Thats unusual for me. So far I have mostly
written in a kind of free verse, though I have always been interested in poetic form.

If you had to convince a friend or colleague to read this book, what might you tell
them?
I would say Youd be crazy not to read this wonderful book! It will change your life! Okay, if you
read this book, Ill give you a hundred dollars!
Tell me about the last literary reading you attended.
Gee, there have been so many, from Stockholm to Saint Marks Place the last one was at Sappho
bookstore in Glebe here in Sydney, packed with crowds of keen young people reading and listening.
It was like the old days: wonderful. Among many other good poets, I read a general selection of my
poems and people seemed to like them. When I choose poems to read out, I have learned (from my
experience as a radio producer) to choose ones that people will get at one hearing, because thats

the only chance they have to hear the poem. Some of my poems are quite complex and invite you to
look back through the printed version and think a bit about all the complexities and references in the
writing: they dont work at all at a reading, as people just dont get them. I have found that audiences
are sometimes shy; they dont always let you know how they feel. They usually just sit there. They
might be amazed and thrilled, or they might be bored to death and waiting for you to get off. You
cant tell.

When did you realize you we're a writer?

I knew I had a talent for writing during my adolescence. When I was about nineteen my clever
grandmother asked me was I going to be a poet like that Dylan Thomas fellow. His biographer
Constance Fitzgibbon wrote that he Thomas could say no neither to a drink nor to a woman! I
hope youre not going to be like that! she added, with a wicked smile. And thoughtful teachers and
fellow-students at my various schools encouraged me. But I liked drawing, too, and other things, and
for a while there I thought I might be a cartoonist, or an artist, or a painter, or a musician. I didnt
really decide against all those other talents until I was in my late twenties, when I realised that
writing was the only thing I did really well.
Tell us about your process: Pen and Paper, computer, notebooks ... how do you write?
Well, I do have an obsession with good fountain pens and good ink and paper. So I often sketch out a
poem, though a few drafts, with pen and paper. Though I have found that a really expensive fountain
pen only makes me more aware of my horrible handwriting, and money cant improve that. And I
sometimes begin on a computer keyboard, using a program like Scrivener, say the program Im
using now that allows you to arrange and rearrange your thoughts quickly and easily. And
sometimes I set up a computer program that does part of my first draft for me Brekdown, for
example. That can be fun. But in the end, what you use to write with is irrelevant. A pencil and paper
are all you need to be a poet, really. Dickens wrote over five million words using a steel-nib dip pen
and a bottle of ink.
How do you handle a bad review of your work?

That depends on the review. If its stupid, I laugh and laugh. I wish I could say I did as Liberace said
he did with bad reviews: he claimed he cried all the way to the bank. Alas, theres no money in
poetry, so I only go to the bank to withdraw my paltry savings. But if the review is clever and
considered and thoughtful and devastating, I feel terrible, and like most writers I remember the
insults for years. Isnt that awful? Imagine being that reviewer and knowing that something you
wrote made someone feel terrible for years. Youd shoot yourself.
Which writer would you most like to have a drink with, and why?
Frank OHara, I guess. I never met him, but I hear he was a wonderful gossip, and gossip is a natural
accompaniment to a drink. And Elizabeth Bishop, because I believe she was funny and clever and a
bit shy. And Barbara Guest, whom I met once, because she could be so beautifully ascerbic. And John
Ashbery Ive had a few drinks with John, and hes great fun and extremely intelligent.
What's the biggest mistake you've made as a writer?
Oh, becoming a poet. I should have been a banker, like T.S.Eliot, or an insurance man, like Wallace
Stevens.
What's the worst advice you hear authors give writers?
Write about what you know. Write dangerously. Join my creative writing class. God, theres a lot of
bullshit around. Is it getting worse, or am I imagining it?
What scares you the most?
Have you read Nineteen Eighty-Four? Do you think Im going to tell you? What do you think I am,
crazy? But for the sake of this interview, I might say that I am afraid of public speaking, as most
people are. I used to have a terrible stammer, and I am always afraid it might come back when I least
expect it, and humiliate me. And here I am, a poet, with hundreds of public readings under my belt! I
must be crazy!

Where do you buy your books?

I dont buy books so much now. Yes, thats unfair, I know. But I have thousands of second hand
books already, that cost heaps to buy new, once upon a time, and guess what? Theyre worthless! I
tried to sell some the other day, and the guy just laughed at me. I like a good bookstore, but most
bookstores these days only keep a single copy, or even no copies, of the books you want. Oh, we can
order one in for you, they say. Sure! I feel sorry for bookstores, in this age of the Internet, but they
think very little of poetry. Theres nothing they love more than a best-seller, however awful it is. And
publishers are little better, generally: they always like a money-making trend. Except for devoted
publishers like BlazeVox for example. I hope you dont go broke soon.
Who are you reading now?
Old things I am re-reading some old John Ashbery, and re-reading a newish Ashbery: his version of
Rimbauds Les Illuminations. Ashbery lived in France for a decade, and has fluent French, and only
a fool would criticise his new versions of Rimbaud; they are intense and colourful, and occasionally
unusual. And theres a wonderful old book by John Malcolm Brinnin, titled Dylan Thomas in
America. It was first published in 1955; this reissue by British publisher Prion has a new introduction
by Drew Milne, a lecturer at the University of Cambridge. The fussy and uptight Brinnin shepherded
the shambolic and ferociously alcoholic Thomas back and forth across America during the poets last
three years, and the story he tells is a fascinating one: better than an episode of The Odd Couple.
What is your favorite TV show at the moment?
I watch less and less television. I used to watch Callan, once. Though television has had the
accidental effect of reviving lots of wonderful old movies: Doctor Strangelove, The Third Man, the
Maltese Falcon, Vertigo currently I enjoy the Antiques Road Show from Bristol, in the UK (Archie
Leach, a.k.a. Cary Grant, was from Bristol) and the serial Foyles War, about Britain in the 1940s.
What do you want the world to know about you? Make it juicy ....

I dont think I want the world to know anything particularly juicy about me. I could say that I was
raised in a harem by a pair of lesbians and had seventeen lovers by the time I was twelve years old
and I dont remember much about the experience because I was generally stoned on opium most
days, but none of that would be true. The reality involves an isolated farm in the Australian bush, an
agricultural high school, a few aborted courses at the University of Sydney and a year on the hippie
trail through Europe and Asia and lots of hashish, but that may not be entirely true either. As for
what the world wants to know, I really dont care: as long as they all buy my book Im happy. I could
say theres more mystery in a well-turned rhyme (Degas and gay bar, for example, or rescue and
fescue, both of which make an appearance in my book) than in a drug-crazed night in a transvestite
brothel, but that may not be quite true either.
END

Fall 2015
BlazeVOX Interview with Eileen Tabios

Tell me about your book.

ABANDONING MISANTHROPY is many things, including my latest
attempt to subvert the genre of autobiography/biography. The book does
so through poetry, essays, a collection of blurbs Ive written for others,
interviews and even an essay by my mother. Disrupting the (traditional)
form and genre of autobiography and biography is one of my interests,
primarily because it amuses me. But theres certainly many reasons why
one (or I) desires to disrupt auto/biographyfrom the general factors of
how one may or may not ever know the true story, how one elides the true
story, and how I believe identity is both constrained by inherited
circumstances as well as fluctuates such that any life story narrative is at
best a snapshot narrative rather than something that can hold true over
time. I call these general factors because they can apply to everybody,
thus how *knowing ones self* is one of the most difficult goals to achieve.
But then when, in my case, one is forced to grapple with immigration,
diaspora, minority/POC positionings in the land where the migratory
transplant ends, then the memoir, by being a genre that posits it can
present an accurate life story, becomes a landscape fertile for disruption.
What influenced this book?
My attempts for Poetry as a way of life. A book can be many things, including a concept. This book was
written in a day based on a concept I thought of in the morning. The individual pieces that make it up
werent created in a day and, in some cases, required years. But the organization of those individual elements
into a book was conceived and manifested in a day.
I began 2015 with five manuscripts and the two that have been released so far both were conceived and
manifested in one day. These periods, which require a temporary environment of magnified resonance, are
giftsand I believe are possible because Ive tried to structure my life to be open to such moments.

Awareness. Education. Mindfulness. So when an idea flits by, I am able to discern it and (if I like the idea)
then manifest it.
Where does this book fit into your career as a writer?
Nowhere. I have a lifenot careeras a writer.
(A life approximated by http://eileenrtabios.com )
If you had to convince a friend or colleague to read this book, what might
you tell them?
I might say, If you read my book, you will discover something about yourself.
Thats a statement, of course, that can be applied to any book. But since, as the author, I choose to answer
your question in this way, theres an added significance that might intrigue a potential reader.
Tell me about the last literary reading you attended.
It was a reading/panel featuring various Filipina writers. Each writer discussed or presented their works. Its
always satisfying to connect with other Filipina writers; many are writing wonderful works. But my favorite
reaction was from an audience member who expressed gratitude that I expanded the notion of Filipina
writer. She apparently had felt disconnected to the Filipina community as she herself was writing works
that didnt fit in with what many publicly-lauded writers were doing. So she appreciated my contribution
for encouraging her to continue her creative attempts her own way, with her own voice.
While I appreciate her response, her response in fact shows that what Im doing also doesnt fit with what
many would consider to be Filipino literature. Im used to that, though; a Filipino reader once said I or my
works were not authentically Filipino. But the more important point may be that what I am doing generally
isnt a replication of whats out there. And for a poet (or any artist) isnt that a good thing?
When did you realize you we're a writer?
Ive long loved words. In the beginning, though, I thought I was a writer as a journalist and journalism
indeed was my first profession. I didnt begin poetry until my mid-thirties. My mother, though, apparently
knew otherwise. She wrote an essay about methe last prose piece in AGAINST MISANTHROPYthat said
I, as a young child, was already interested in creating books. She said I made my first book at age fivea
visual narrative with the help of Crayola and generous use of stick figures. I discovered this essay among her
papers two years after her death. You can imagine my astonishment

Tell us about your process: Pen and Paper, computer, notebooks ... how do you write?
A few years ago, I began trying to do drafts of poems only in my mind. The risk, of course, is that I might
forget something when I finally write it down (whether by computer or paper is not significant to my
process). But Ive long thought that if the thought isnt compelling enough to survive the road from my
mental conceptualization to the actual writing, then its not compelling enough for me to chase the thought.
More recently, I created a poetry generator (part of my Murder, Death and Resurrection project). This
MDR Poetry Generator has a database of 1,146 lines. Its conceit is that one can randomly combine any of the
lines in any length between couplets to a long poem of 1,146 lines, and the result would be an effective poem.
Since I created this generator, Ive only written one new poem thats not crafted from its lines. So, to answer
your question, my current process of writing a poem may be one of pointing at various lines at random from
a print-out of the generators database. It seems to be working as its generated acceptances from various
journals, two published poetry collections and three other poetry manuscripts. At some point, of course
and I may already be thereIll stop relying on the generator for making new poems.
How do you handle a bad review of your work?
I initially thought to say, I try to learn from it. But, to be more truthful, I handle a bad review with sadness.
By the way, I havent received bad written reviews (most written reviews have been positive). Its just that
some of my books have received indifferencethat, of course, is the most negative review of all.
Still, any sad reaction goes away swiftly because Im usually well on to the next projects. An effect of being so
prolific is not over-dwelling on reactions (positive or negative) to prior books.
Which writer would you most like to have a drink with, and why?
Because I havent seen him in over a decade, the poet Eric Gamalinda who just came out with a luminous
novel, THE DESCARTES HIGHLAND. Also, hes Pinoy which means our drinks may just be accompanied
with pulutan (various Filipino small dishes).
What's the biggest mistake you've made as a writer?
According to me, none; all steps and missteps have been useful.
According to others, I have made mistakes. One is releasing more than one book each five years as that
supposedly limits a poets career. Another is when I transitioned from conventional to more experimentallyfocused writingthis is according to a poet-editor who stopped publishing my works when I ceased linear
narrative (about 15 years after this incident, Im looking at linear narrative today with different eyes).
What's the worst advice you hear authors give writers?

Dont publish more than one book every five years. Stick with accessible writing.
Just kidding. Id say the worst advice Ive heard are those that emanate from the advisors thought that his
experience and/or opinion is the general determinant for how things should unfold for other writers.
What scares you the most?
Exposure to others lack of compassion.
Where do you buy your books?
Direct from authors and publishers. Bookstores, especially used bookstores. Amazonyes, I sometimes
rely on them because I live in an area where there arent many booksellers.
Who are you reading now?
Tons of poetry review copies. I dont assign myself poetry books to review; I just try to read as widely as I can
and then review those that compel my reviewing attention (a list of such books is available at
http://eileenrtabios.com/with-the-community/selected-reviews-and-engagements/). As well, Im currently
reading TOMORROWS MEMORIES: A DIARY 1924-1928 by Angeles Monrayo and GIRL DRIVE: CRISSCROSSING AMERICA, REDEFINING FEMINISM by Nona Willis Aronowitz & Emma Bee Bernstein.
What is your favorite TV show at the moment?
I dont watch TV. But I Netflix- and Youtube-binge. Among TV shows, Ive binged on THE WEST WING,
HOUSE OF CARDS, SCANDAL, LIE TO ME, LEVERAGE, the cooking show CHOPPED (though I dont
cook), NUMB3RS, HAWAII 5-0, HOARDERS, DANCE MOMS, the real estate reality shows THE
PROPERTY BROTHERS, HOUSE HUNTERS (& INTERNATIONAL) COLLECTION, SELLING NEW
YORK among others. Im currently binge-ing on Alaska: love YUKON MEN and now am on ALASKA:
THE LAST FRONTIER.
Bonus Round:
What do you want the world to know about you? Make it juicy ....
My poems can make you wet: salivate, sweat, cry and
Having said that, I dont want the world to know anything about me except what they imagine/extrapolate
(correct or not) from my words. AGAINST MISANTHROPY is a perfect exercise for this because I believe if
you read it beginning-to-end, a profile surfaces that could define Eileen R. Tabiosyet itd be a profile
where the reader is as much the author as the one attached to the books bylin

Fall 2015
BlazeVOX Interview with Cornelia Veenendaal

Tell me about your book.

These poems are like bag of letters to various readers, and myself, about my
life in Dorchester, a neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts.
What influenced this book?
Walking, public transportation, wonder and awe, the encouragement of my
workshop friends.
Where does this book fit into your career as a writer?
The book covers a long middle part, culled from what could become more
collections, still unpublished.
If you had to convince a friend or colleague to read this book, what might you tell them?
I hope the poems will speak to you, and that you'll find me growing.
Tell me about the last literary reading you attended.
I live in the North Country now and don't get to readings as easily as I did when I lived in Boston.
Last summer I went to some of the readings of the Frost Festival, in and around Franconia, N H.

When did you realize you were a writer?

In college I wrote poems and sent them to the student magazine. The students said, You're a poet. Writing
poems helped shape my career as a teacher; it brought me friends and colleagues, peer workshops and the
cooperative press, Alice James Books.
Tell us about your process: Pen and Paper, computer, notebooks how do you write?
A poem begins in my head and locates itself in distance; has its own way on a page of my notebook;
sooner or later gets typed on Olivetti or laptop. Risks being read in a writers' group, where it is met with silence,
useful suggestions, sometimes with celebration. Back to the keyboard. For some poems, years of revisions go
by. Then, to my surprise, I find some first drafts are not so bad!
How do you handle a bad review of your work?
My friend Jean Pedrick used to say that there is no bad review. I remind myself that the attention can
be good.
Which writer would you most like to have a drink with, and why?
Chekhov. Janet Malcolm, for her book on him. Ian Frazier and Elif Batumen, for their New Yorker pieces I've
saved.
What's the biggest mistake you've made as a writer?
Not risking enough, among all the other mistakes.
What's the worst advice you hear authors give writers?
I draw a blank on this one.
What scares you the most?
Most scary things are pretty bad; speaking in public is probably at the top of the list.

Where do you buy your books?

I buy books on line, or at library sales, but I'd rather buy them in independent book stores if they're
nearby or available.
Who are you reading now?
Essays by Joseph Brodsky. My Life as a Foreign Country, a Memoir by Brian Turner. A Village Life, by Louise
Gluck.
What is your favorite TV show at the moment?
Charlie Rose's conversations, especially with actors and (some) politicians.
What do you want the world to know about you?
I believe the world will get it right.

Fall 2015
BlazeVOX Interview with Jeffery Conway

Tell me about your book.

Showgirls: The Movie in Sestinas is a book of poetry for people
who love trashthat is to say, for people who love trashy
movies. Its also a book for people who love trashy poets (e.g.,
me). To appropriate reasoning from a character in Showgirls:
Maybe you like Showgirls [Paul Verhoevens 1995 Camp
masterpiece], or maybe you like me [a poet who, lets be honest,
is kind of a Nomi Malone himself]what difference does it
make? Have a readyou can learn about trashy/campy films,
the poetry world (and this poets climb to the middle); you can
learn about celebrities, tangential trivia, and you can have the
experience of reading an entire book that encases its miracle
within the straightjacket of poetic formsthe sestinawhile
(hopefully) not even realizing it! The book is hypnosis through
sestina. Relax, breathe. Open to the first poem in the book and
begin the ride of a lifetime with the stripper/wannabe Vegas
dancer of your dreams.
What influenced this book?
Well, the 1995 film Showgirls, obviously. After youve watched a film about a hundred times over the course
of eight or nine years, there comes a point when you need to sit yourself down and ask: so, what the hell?
Also, my love of the sestina form, which Ive been experimenting with for twenty-five years; a form I
embraced fervently, with a vengeance, about twenty years ago when it was revealed to me that some poet
referred to me as that sestina queen. In 1991, when I was studying at Brooklyn College, Allen Ginsberg (my
esteemed professor), said he thought I was a natch with the form, and he suggested that I try writing a
whole book of sestinas. It was Ginsbergs voice I heard when I started my Showgirls: The Movie in
Sestinas project in March of 2007more than fifteen years after his suggestion.

Where does this book fit into your career as a writer?

As Faye Dunaway playing Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest (donned in huge puffball fur hat and shoulderpadded business suit and skirt, poised at one end of an enormous boardroom conference table flanked by
PepsiCo stuffed shirts): This aint my first time at the rodeo! I had written about a movie (the 1950 film All
About Eve) once beforein Phoebe 2002: An Essay in Verse (2003)along with two collaborators, Lynn Crosbie
and David Trinidad. Showgirls: The Movie in Sestinas was my first attempt at inhabiting a movie alone. My
last book, The Album That Changed my Life (2006), was filled with many personal, autobiographical poems.
Yet even in that book I included a long prose poem detailing my encounters with celebrities during my
incarceration as a bartender in Los Angles and as cater waiter to the stars in New York City, so clearly I still
had some karma to burn off with this Showgirls book. I am also writing another collaborative mock epic (with
Gillian McCain and David Trinidad) about the 1967 film Valley of the Dolls. Weve been working on it for
nine years so far, but were more than halfway through! Its a joy because Im doing it with two great friends
who also happen to adore bad movies. And we choose to take our time and savor each and every frame of
that gloriously trashy film.
If you had to convince a friend or colleague to read this book, what might you tell them?
Appeal to his sensesmimic Crystal Connors (Gina Gershon) toying with Nomi Malone (Elizabeth Berkley)
over a bottle of champagne at Spago: I like great tits, how about you? Too non sequitury? Inappropriate?
Hey, Ive piqued his interest. For my female friends, I might explain that this book of poems takes on one of
the most atrociously misogynist films of all time and that she owes it to herself and her entire sex to read it.
Or, I might just be honest: this obsessive queen I call me relishes, analyzes, and celebrates one of the worst
films ever made frame by frame in the obsessive sestina form. I write one sestina for each DVD chapter of
Showgirls. I borrow the titles of the DVD chapters for the titles of my poems: Switchblade Nomi, Its the
Show, Girl!, Cristal Magic, Lap Dancers Delight, and so on. My sestinas function as DVD
commentarydescriptive, informative, insightful, self-revealing, and (I have to admit) pretty funny. There
are rhyming sestinas, double sestinas and triple sestinas. Theres a variation of the form (that I think I
invented) where I replace each of the six end-words with an end-categorybody parts, for instance, or
characters names, which change from stanza to stanza: breasts, vagina, hand, etc.; Nomi, Cristal, Zack, etc.
There are floating sestinas, a parody of rap lyrics, a jab at ivory tower gay poets, and even a sendup of Faye
Dunaways infamous voicemail diatribe as Mab Lib. Open the book anywhere and youll find red lace
panties, the clink of champagne flutes, backroom lap dances, bumps of coke, and lots of bare breasts.
Tell me about the last literary reading you attended.
Well, it was a literary reading featuring Matthew Burgess and yours truly at Columbia College Chicago.
Matthew was great; hes a real poet, and a generous man. He read from his wonderful book Slippers For
Elsewhere. I read poems from Showgirls: The Movie in Sestinas, which was a good experience in and of itself.

However, the added bonus was that I got to show clips of the film on this huge screen behind me. There was
like a twenty-foot Nomi right behind me! I mean . . . we have the best higher educational system in the
world. What could be more instructive for a group of undergrads and MFA students than a survey of scenes
from the greatest movie ever made? God, I would have killed to attend a reading like that when I was in
school. Wait, does that sound egotistical? So be itits the truth!
When did you realize you were a writer?
In my very early twenties, I moved into an apartment on Sunset Boulevard at La Cienega in Los Angles with
two friends. It was a cool, two-story, mid-century building with a swimming pool in the center courtyard.
The lore of the place was that Marilyn Monroe had once stayed there briefly . . . but Im not sure if thats
true. My bedroom was at the back of the building, facing a very steep hillside, or cliff, really, where rocks and
small boulders would tumble down at random moments. There was a huge Seagrams 7 billboard planted in
the lot next door that lit up the corner windows of my room. There werent any blinds or drapes included in
the deal, so Id wear sunglasses to bed. Shortly after I moved in all of my stuff (a foam futon, a framed Calvin
Klein poster, some bedraggled clothes, a candle, my New Wave records), I found a paperback copy of Death
in Venice by Thomas Mann on the shelf inside the closet. I had never heard of the book before; in fact, I had
little interest in books at that point in my life, I had always assumed that the coolest things were never in
books. But for some reason, I started to read Death in Venice little by little, soaking up every drop of its
gloomy atmosphere. Eventually I got to a page where a particular phrase had been underlined with what
looked like a blue pencil: some strange, rash, bewildered dream. I skimmed the rest of the book. It was the
only thing underlined in the entire text. I became fascinated, read it again and again, pondered its meaning,
its message. I wondered about the hand that had underlined it. Who was this being so moved by this cryptic
thought? What compels a person to make note of a particular string of words? I had never been aware before
that moment of the relationship that the writer and reader engage in when one agrees to write and another
agrees to read. Some strange, rash, bewildered dream. I wrote it large on my bedroom wall, painted the phrase
on a T-shirt, copied it over and over again on countless sheets of paper. It was my first obsession with
words. Not long after, I got a job at a Beverly Hills bookstore where expensive coffee table books were the
order of the day. But inside that Hunters Books on Beverly Drive I discovered a well-stocked, decidedly unbrowsed Poetry section. I found Love Is A Dog From Hell by Charles Bukowski and Live or Die by Anne
Sexton. Need I say more? Those two books changed my life, showed me me inside other writers lives. And
just like that: voilaanother writer is born.
Tell us about your process: Pen and Paper, computer, notebooks ... how do you write?
I write in different ways at different times: sometimes I write/compose right on my MacBook; sometimes I
write in whatever journal is current (with blank pages available), and I write a whole poem there (or I may
later transfer what I started in the journal into my computer and continue or finish the piece with the keys).
Occasionally I will write the first draft of a poem on a collection of Post-it Notes and eventually assemble

them in what appears to be the right order, and then type the poem on my computer.
How do you handle a bad review of your work?
With grace (I hope!), or at least with acceptance. One time when a reviewer wrote something negative (in
retrospect, and to be completely honest, the whole review wasnt bad, just a few sentences of it were), I
pulled out one of my favorite books, Powers of Ten: A Flipbook by Charles and Ray Eames. A few minutes with
that book helped bring my reaction back to right size. As you flip and watch, the journey begins one billion
light years away, with every two pages of the book representing a view ten times larger than the view two
pages earlier. You descend the dimensions of the universe, through our solar system, down to a park on
earth, then into the human body, its cells, DNA and finally a single proton. Powers of Ten shows us not only
the relative size of things in the known universe, but also our place in it. This book helps bring proper
perspective to all things, especially ones own egoand all with just a few easy flips!.
Which writer would you most like to have a drink with, and why?
Gosh there are so many dead writers Id like to hang out with for a bit, though Id have to wait till Im in
Spirit, which (Ive been assured by two psychic clairvoyants) wont be for a long, long time. Heres my list (in
no particular order): Charles Bukowski (though Id like him semi-sober for our sit down), Anne Sexton,
Frank OHara, Sylvia Plath, Raymond Carver, Jane Austen (I know, what can I say?), David Foster Wallace,
Emily Dickinson (though I bet that would be some fraught teatime), Walt Whitman, and Jacqueline Susann.
But if I had to pick one, a living one, Id choose Toni Morrison, because I think chatting with the person who
wrote Beloved would be, like, fantastic.
What's the biggest mistake you've made as a writer?
Mistake? I dont believe thats possible in terms of my writing. That may sound grandiose or flippant, but
its really how I feel today. Everything Ive ever written, even last weeks shopping list, seems like it was
exactly what I was supposed to write when I wrote it. When I first started yoga a few years ago, the teachers
would say Namaste at the end of each class. I thought they were saying no mistake, which I thought
beautiful and profound. I had never heard Namaste before starting yoga, but I was totally on board with
the concept of no mistakes. There are, really, no mistakes. Im kind of in love with reality at the moment.
So, no mistake for me as a writer. Ive always felt that the act of writing is intimately connected to my
spiritual growth. Benjamin Saltman, a professor I had in college for a senior poetry seminar, wrote on my
first manuscript of poems: I see a vibrant Spirit longing for union. Those words have always been my
compass, I guess, as I navigate and write my way through life on Earth. Im here to grow and learn, and
writing, however it comes, aids me in that quest.

What's the worst advice you hear authors give writers?

Write what you know? Gosh, I used to think that was so astute and sound. But at this point in my life, I
wonder. . . . Maybe authors should tell writers to write what you dont know. If anything, it might shake
things up a bit until we get mostly bored again.
What scares you the most?
For years I would answer raisins to that question. Ive always thought they are the queerest little things.
But today, I say unconsciousness. That scares me. I want all people, myself included, to be conscious
beings, to be present, to be awake to our true natures.
Where do you buy your books?
My two favorite bookstores in New York are St. Marks Bookshop and Strand Bookstore. Online I like Small
Press Distribution.
Who are you reading now?
Right now Im finishing The Complete Dark Shadows (of My Childhood) by Tony Trigilio, which is so great.
The next book up is Storyline: Reflections of a Hollywood Screenwriter, a 1973 autobiography of Lenore Coffee.
She wrote the screenplay of Beyond the Forest, one of my all-time favorite bad movies from 1949, starring Bette
Davis as the Vampira-bewigged Rosa Moline, who is just a hilariously awful person.
What is your favorite TV show at the moment?
The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. And practically any show on TLC. There, Ive said it.

Bonus Round:
What do you want the world to know about you? Make it juicy ....
(See answer to previous questiontalk about confessional!)

Fall 2015
BlazeVOX Interview with Anne Gorrick

Tell me about your book.

As Visuality is a book in two parts that seeks to reconcile and erase a line
between the textual and visual. I often cant tell the difference between
looking and reading, finding myself reading landscapes and visual art, as
much as looking at text.
The first part of the book began as a series of unbound artists books. Each
book is a series of 16 pages of encaustic monotypes with typewritten text,
and collaged and drawn elements. After I made these books, I realized
that I could transcribe the text from each one to make a blocky, vaguely
sonnetty shaped poem. The text for each poem is vandalized and
furiously repurposed from various art history texts mostly dealing with the
artists Johns, Mitchell and Rauschenberg. That each artists book could
simultaneously exist as a transcribed poem seemed a revelation in
quantum poetics, or a poem existing in two ways, in two places at once.
The second part of the book is literally love songs to paint colors. For
many years, I curated a reading series, Cadmium Text, at the Gallery R&F Handmade Paints in Kingston,
NY, a paint manufacturer of indescribably delicious encaustic paint and oil sticks. The reading series was
again an effort to connect the textual and the visual by floating poetry in a gallery setting. In these poems, I
took all the text describing R&Fs paint colors, and processed it, and made poems out of it. Structurally,
many of the poems resemble the work I did in Kyotologic, a rewriting/revisioning of the Pillow Book of Sei
Shonogon.
What influenced this book?
All the readers I heard at Cadmium Text, the work of Jasper Johns (who famously worked in encaustic, one
of the paint types manufactured at R&F), friends who were doing innovative work in various disciplines
(Lynn Behrendt, Geof Huth, Maryrose Larkin, Scott Helmes, Steve Cotten). I remember boring the pants off

some friends at MOMA during the time I wrote this book; I was hypnotized by a small show of Picassos
guitars - painted ones, collaged ones, sculpted ones. Its my favorite thing ever: working in variations on the
same form. I was also trying learn Johns cross-hatched usuyuki marking making at the time, and a
Cadmium listener gifted me with a bottle of handmade walnut ink, which made it into the artists book.
Where does this book fit into your career as a writer?
Its part of a long investigation into a particular strain of mysterious poetic forms that I am not quite ready to
give up. I play with them one more time in a manuscript of poems Ive been working on about different
perfumes: a block of text that hugs the right side of the page, with scroll-like text cascading on the left,
broken up by text that bridges both margins between sections. In some ways, I think I them as polyvocal
musical scores and have read the poems this way.
This book also closes the circuit on the texual and visual for me. Im not writer or artist. Im both, and the
book is both.
As for my career as a writer? I work in educational administration, and poetry has always been something
I love and could do all the time, but its not something I could ever afford to quit my day job for. So I sneak it
in wherever I can, which can get very tricky, difficult sometimes. The sense of not enough time is always at
my back.
If you had to convince a friend or colleague to read this book, what might you tell them?
Ive been pleasantly surprised with this book that friends who are non-poets are enjoying it too. Maybe the
color plates of the artists books help create an in to the work. Read it because your sensibilities of
curiosity and wonder are still revving, because the book is filled with text and art bodies, fields.
You might see a sudden long vista in a gallery of closed woods.
Tell me about the last literary reading you attended.
I just saw Bernadette Mayer and Clark Coolidge read, and George Quasha perform (with Clark Coolidge on
drums, Charles Stein on voice and David Arner on piano) at Bard College. I live nearby.
When did you realize you we're a writer?
I always was. It wasnt something I became. As soon as I acquired language I wanted to write it down. Ive
been writing seriously for a looooooong time. My parents are word game people - my mother is a Scrabble
goddess and my dad likes New York Times crosswords. So maybe its not so weird that I fell from their

tree. When I was six years old, I wrote my first novel, having filled up a college-ruled piece of paper with
writing. College-ruled paper was a huge thing to me when I was a kid.
Tell us about your process: Pen and Paper, computer, notebooks ... how do you write?
All of the above. The FOLIOS in this book were typewritten on an old green 50s typewriter, and then
transcribed onto a computer. The Chromatic Sweep section based on paint color descriptions was heavily
processed on a computer. I keep notebooks, a notebook of things I want to Google search to make poems out
of, lists, stacks of old books to make into new objects. Im fussy about pens. I like Muji notebooks. I like
fountain pens, but I dont use them. Im not particular about my writing space, and am glad not to overritualize it. Im often working on overlapping manuscripts, with a beautiful row of black document boxes
lined up on a shelf above my desk. My desk is an old, massive oak one that my husband used to rebuild
motors on when he was younger. Its very scarred, which is pleasurable.
How do you handle a bad review of your work?
I try not to believe the bad ones too much or the good ones. I just want to do my work.
Which writer would you most like to have a drink with, and why?
Im not sure he drank, but Id love to hike and chat with Vladimir Nabokov in the Chiracahua Mountains
chasing butterflies during June of 1953 when he was writing Lolita. I think it might have been a late spring,
so the butterflies were elusive. He stayed in Portal, AZ, where a good friend of mine lives now.
And I would definitely have a drink with Frida Kahlo. I DID have a drink at her house in Mexico City, but
she wasnt there anymore.
What's the biggest mistake you've made as a writer?
Im not gregarious enough. Im usually happiest writing, being outside, moving through the world, hiking,
biking (or it was tennis, running).
What's the worst advice you hear authors give writers?
I hate it when people say write what you know and be specific. Theres so little magic in that. I dont
believe that language is solely photorealistic and utilitarian. Why CANT language be like paint? Im

waiting around waiting to hear what language comes to tell me. Magic happens for me when I dont try to
control things too much. Could be a big mistake, but it is joyful.
What scares you the most?
Not doing the things Im scared to do, so I try to push myself.
Where do you buy your books?
I try to buy books from publishers first, then SPD, and then Amazon. I also buy a lot of used books, because
my appetites exceed my budget. Plus Im always finding things that are out of print.
Who are you reading now?
1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann; poetry by Joy Harjo;
Bombyonder by Reb Livingston; Sun Stigmata by Eileen Tabios; Fire Season by Philip Connors; a book
about indigo dye; a book about plants of the Northern Chihuahuan desert; a book of images of the
architecture by Luis Barragn.
I always have a lot of things going at once. Clouds of books settle on me.
What is your favorite TV show at the moment?
We dont watch TV. When we asked our cable company to come out and remove the cable line, they said
they never got that request before. We do have a TV though to watch movies, etc. I am liking Girls, but
havent seen the recent ones.
Bonus Round:
What do you want the world to know about you? Make it juicy ....
Juicy hmmm. That would be about the juice. Im a little overly interested in perfume, which they call
juice. Being aware of scent is like being able to see another dimension and it makes the world so much
richer. At this moment, Im wearing Amber Noir by the Sonoma Scent Studio, a drenched liturgical scent.
Poetry is as much a sense to me as smell. A way of echolocating to find the edges of the world.

Fall 2015
Acta Biographia - Author Bios

Adam Mackie
Adam Mackie was born in Anchorage, Alaska, fell in love with Margaret in Upstate New York, and fathered
Noah and Hazel in Ft. Collins, Colorado. Mackie composes songs and poetry, as well as prose. He has
performed original, acoustic sets at coffee houses, received multiple honorable mentions for his formal
poetry, and published a poetic readers note in Ruminate Magazine. Mackie currently teaches college writing
at the State University College at Buffalo, and previously taught composition and literature at Colorado
State University. As an academic, Mackie published a dictionary titled A New Literacies Dictionary: Primer for
the Twenty-first Century Learner and co-edited a publication titled Ethics in Higher Education: A Reader for
Writers. Mackie has also worked as a journalist and editor, publishing numerous newspaper articles and
magazine features.
Alex Archer
Alex Archer is a freelance short story writer and poet from Los Angeles, California. Their work has appeared
in LitroNY and Offcourse. They attend Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where they are
helping to start an undergraduate writers collective. They currently live in (and wander around in)
Philadelphia with their camera. Their work has been exhibited at the Philadelphia Photo Arts Center and
the William Way LGBT Center. They have also lived in Bristol, England.
Alexander Beisel
Alexander Beisel lives in the New River Valley of Virginia where he teaches writing at Radford University.
When he's not writing--he's grading papers or else scouring dungeon depths and dolling out justice to the
foes of Pelor.
A.J. Huffman
A.J. Huffman has published eleven solo chapbooks and one joint chapbook through various small presses. Her new
poetry collections, Another Blood Jet (Eldritch Press) and A Few Bullets Short of Home (mgv2>publishing) are now

available from their respective publishers. She has two additional poetry collections forthcoming: Degeneration from
Pink Girl Ink, and A Bizarre Burning of Bees from Transcendent Zero Press. She is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee,
and has published over 2200 poems in various national and international journals, including Labletter, The James
Dickey Review, Bone Orchard, EgoPHobia, and Kritya. She is also the founding editor of Kind of a Hurricane Press.
www.kindofahurricanepress.com

Alexzandra Rose Etherton

Barbara Tomash
Barbara Tomash is the author of three books of poetry, Arboreal (Apogee 2014), Flying in Water which won
the 2005 Winnow First Poetry Award, and The Secret of White (Spuyten Duyvil 2009). Her poems have
appeared or are forthcoming in Colorado Review, New American Writing, VOLT, Bateau Press, Verse, Jacket,
OmniVerse, ZYZZYVA, Parthenon West Review, Third Coast, Five Fingers Review, Witness and numerous other
journals. She lives in Berkeley, California and teaches in the Creative Writing Department at San Francisco
State University.
Barbara Barnard
Barbara Barnard's poetry and fiction have appeared in such magazines as The Cimarron Review, New
Letters, Off the Coast, and Eclipse. Three of her poems appear in the anthology Songs of Seasoned
Women. She earned her MFA from the University of California, Irvine, and has taught creative writing and
literature at various colleges in California and New York. She is currently Associate Professor of English at
SUNY Nassau Community College.
Blackbird
Blackbird (PAW, 1956- ), the first of four children, grew up beside the Banana River. She adored Yeats and
Blake as a child, but the initial influence on her own verse was Poe. Later she was drawn to Plath. Today she
enjoys Tolkien. She also loves the nature writing of her grandmother. She is one course shy of a bachelor's
degree in art. She has collected data for the phone directory, and has also worked as a babysitter (as a teen), a
waitress, a floral arranger, a delivery truck driver, and a store clerk. She has three children.

Charlene Ashley Taylor

Charlene Ashley Taylor has a BA in English from the University of Louisville. She is a mentor for the
Sarabande Writing Labs and recently released her first self-published book of poetry and fiction titled
escapism. (Available on Amazon, B&N, and Lulu)
C Davis Fogg

C. Davis Fogg has written three business books, one, a classic, still on the market after 21 years. A
number of his short stories have appeared in literary journals. He frequently writes opinion pieces
and stories for Rhode Island and Boston Newspapers. He is currently working on a murder mystery.
He resides in Wakefield Rhode Island.
Christopher Ozog
Christopher Ozog is a 23 year old writer who resides in Ann Arbor, Michigan. His work has previously
appeared in Burningword, The Commonline, Crack the Spine's 2015 Spring Quarterly Anthology, and
HelloHorror. He currently edits Lavender Wolves Literary Journal. For more information, please visit
http://chrisozog.weebly.com/
Christien Gholson
Christien Gholson is the author of the novel, A Fish Trapped Inside the Wind (Parthian, 2011) and a book of
linked prose poems, On the Side of the Crow (Hanging Loose Press, 2006; Parthian re-issue, 2011). His latest
book of poems, All the Beautiful Dead, won the Bitter Oleander Press Library of Poetry Award, 2015 - to be
published in the spring of 2016. He lives in New Mexico, among the living and the dead. He can be found at
http://christiengholson.blogspot.com/.
Dana Curtis
Dana Curtis second full-length collection of poetry, Camera Stellata, was published by CW Books. Her first
full-length collection, The Body's Response to Famine, won the Pavement Saw Press Transcontinental Poetry
Prize. She has also published seven chapbooks: Book of Disease (in the magazine, The Chapbook), Antiviolet (
Pudding House Press), Pyromythology (Finishing Line Press), Twilight Dogs (Pudding House Press),
Incubus/Succubus (West Town Press), Dissolve (Sarasota Poetry Theatre Press), and Swingset Enthralled (Talent
House Press). Her work has appeared in such publications as Quarterly West, Indiana Review, Colorado Review,
and Prairie Schooner. She has received grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board and the McKnight
Foundation. She is the Editor-in-Chief of Elixir Press and lives in Denver Colorado.

Dawn Tefft
Dawn Tefft's poems are forthcoming or published in Fence, Denver Quarterly, and Witness, among other
journals. She has two chapbooks forthcoming: Fist and The Walking Dead: A Lyric. Her chapbook Field Trip to
My Mother and Other Exotic Locations was published online by Mudlark.
Daniel Adler
Daniel Ryan Adler has lived in Brooklyn, NY and Portland, OR. He is currently on sabbatical abroad, at work
on a novel about rivers.
Dilip Mohapatra
Dilip Mohapatra (b.1950), a decorated Navy Veteran started writing poems since the seventies . His poems
have appeared in many literary journals of repute world wide. Some of his poems are included in the World
Poetry Yearbook, 2013 and 2014 editions. He has three poetry collections to his credit, the latest titled
'Another Look' recently published by Authorspress India. The latest of his books titled P2P nee Points to
Ponder, is a departure from his poetic passion and is a compilation of his thoughts on various life and social
issues in point form, which may act as points on one's compass to help one navigate better on the high seas
of life. He holds two masters degrees, in Physics and in Management Studies. He lives with his wife in Pune.
His website is dilipmohapatra.com.
Ed Makowski
Ed Makowski lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. During the week he poets around a nature center and on the
weekends he's a doorman. Ed enjoys riding motorcycles, shooting arrows, rum, and hats.
Erika G Abad
Erika Gisela Abad Merced has had her fiction published in Outrider Review, and Read Vitality. Her essays
have been featured in The Feminist Wire, Black Girl Dangerous and Centro Voices. She can be followed
@lionwanderer531.
I Goldfarb
Born in the Bronx in 1940 and educated in the East, I Goldfarb spent most of his long professional career on
the West Coast in preparation for a second career as a writer. His K: A 21st Century Canzoniere was published

by BlazeVOX in 2015. A number of his poems from the Canzoniere and elsewhere appeared in the late
Kenneth Warren's House Organ.
Grace C. Ocasio
Grace C. Ocasio is a recipient of the 2014 North Carolina Arts Council Regional Artist Project Grant. She
won honorable mention in the 2012 James Applewhite Poetry Prize, the 2011 Sonia Sanchez and Amiri
Baraka Poetry Prize, and a 2011 Napa Valley Writers' Conference scholarship. Her first full-length collection,
The Speed of Our Lives, was published by BlazeVOX Books in 2014. Her poetry has appeared or is
forthcoming in Black Renaissance Noire, Rattle, Court Green, and Earth's Daughters. Her chapbook, Hollerin from
This Shack, was published by Ahadada Books in 2009. She is an alumna of The Watering Hole Retreat, a
Soul Mountain Retreat fellow, Fine Arts Work Center and Frost Place alumna, and member of the Carolina
African American Writers Collective. She received her MFA in Poetry from Sarah Lawrence College, her
MA in English from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

Greg Larson
Greg Larson is a second-year MFA candidate in nonfiction at Old Dominion University. When hes not
watching baseball Greg likes to take the stairs instead of the elevator, he likes to eat pepperoni and sausage
pizza, and he likes to stay hydrated.
Gregs work has appeared in Ruminate Magazine, Bell Reve Journal, and Switchback. His college
memoir, Learn How to Not Suck, is available on Kindle or in paperback from Amazon.com
(http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00NR53IMC).
Heather Bowlan

hiromi suzuki
hiromi suzuki is an illustrator, poet, artist living in Tokyo, Japan.
A contributor of Japanese poetry magazine "gui" (Running by the members of Katsue Kitasono's "VOU").
Author of Ms. cried' 77 poems by hiromi suzuki (kisaragi publishing, 2013 ISBN978-4-901850-42-1).
Her works are published internationally on "Otoliths", "BlazeVOX", "Empty Mirror" and
NationalPoetryMonth.ca 2015.
hiromi suzuki's web site : http://hiromisuzukimicrojournal.tumblr.com.

Ian McPhail
Ian likes Chaim Soutine. Call him to talk about it... 716 715 5689.
Jennifer R. Valdez
I received my bachelors degree in Creative Writing from the University of California Riverside and my
masters in Creative Nonfiction from Sarah Lawrence College. I've been published with Bustle and the Metro
Newspaper and currently work as an Editor for Rewire Me, a health and wellness website based in New York
City.
Jamie McFaden

Jeffery Conway
Jeffery Conways books include Showgirls: The Movie in Sestinas (BlazeVOX [books], 2014), The Album That
Changed My Life (Cold Calm Press, 2006), and two collaborations with Lynn Crosbie and David Trinidad,
Phoebe 2002: An Essay in Verse (Turtle Point Press, 2003), and Chain Chain Chain (Ignition Press, 2000).
Current work can be found in the anthologies Dream Closet, Rabbit Ears: The First Anthology of Poetry About
TV, and This Business of Words: Reassessing Anne Sexton.
Jessy Brodsky Vega
Jessy Brodsky-Vega is a twenty-nine year old woman; she writes prose in the early morning. She recently
published a short story in Wilderness House Literary Review and is presently at work on a novel. In 2014 she
self-published and hand-bound 75 volumes of her earliest work with help from a grant, awarded to her by a
non-profit called Arts by the People. This volume, which had been written and stowed away since 2008, is
called "Diary of the Seduced" and was read at various events about town. She is married to a blues-folk
musician and they have two children. She lives in New York City.
John Tranter
John Tranter is Australias leading modern poet. He has won many Australian poetry prizes and has
published over twenty books, including *Starlight* (UQP Australia and BlazeVox Books, Buffalo, USA), and
*Heart Starter* (Puncher and Wattman, Sydney, and BlazeVox Books, Buffalo, USA). Hes the founder of the
*Australian Poetry Library* at <www.poetrylibrary.edu.au>, of *Jacket magazine* at <jacketmagazine.com>,

and of *JPR* at <poeticsrearch.com>. He has a WordPress journal at <johntranter.net>, and a static HTML
homepage at <johntranter.com>. All these sites are free.
Joseph Harrington
Joseph Harrington is the author of Things Come On (an amneoir) (Wesleyan 2011), a mixed-genre work
relating the twinned narratives of the Watergate scandal and his mother's cancer; it was a Rumpus Poetry
Book Club selection. He is the author of the chapbooks Goonight Whoevers Listening (Essay Press 2015), Earth
Day Suite (Beard of Bees 2010) and Of Some Sky (Bedouin, forthcoming), as well as the critical work Poetry and
the Public (Wesleyan 2002). His creative work has appeared in Bombay Gin, Hotel Amerika, Colorado Review,
The Rumpus, 1913: a journal of forms, Atticus Review and Fact-Simile, among others. Harrington is the recipient
of a Millay Colony residency and a Fulbright Chair.
Josef Krebs
Josef Krebs poetry appears in Agenda, Bicycle Review, Calliope, Mouse Tales Press, The
Corner Club Press, The FictionWeek Literary Review, and Burningword Literary Journal. A
chapbook of his poems will be published in November by Etched Press. Hes written three
novels, five screenplays, and a book of poetry. His film was successfully screened at
Santa Cruz and Short Film Corner of Cannes film festivals. The past seven years Hes been
working as a freelance writer for Sound&Vision magazine having previously worked at the
magazine for 15 years as a staff writer and editor

Juan Arabia
Juan Arabia (b.1983 in Buenos Aires, Argentina) is a poet, translator and literary critic. He studied Social
Sciences at the University of Buenos Aires and is now the director and publisher of the House Publisher,
Buenos Aires Poetry <http://www.buenosairespoetry.com/> . In the course of his work he has interviewed
many poets including John Ashbery, Dan Fante and Robert Darnton; translated several works into Spanish
and collaborated on the production of several publications in conjunction with the Department of Modern
Languages at the University of La Rioja (Spain) and other academic institutions.
Jill Gamble
Im 40 years old (b. Oct. 15, 1975). I have two beautiful sons, Riley and Chad. For a number of reasons Riley
went to live with my sister when he was 19 months old and he has been raised by her. He is now 10. I am
raising Chad (who is 5 years old). Riley and Chad have different fathers. Even though I was not able to raise
Riley, both Riley and Chad are my heart and my soul. I am a sole practitioner (lawyer) and I do a lot of
criminal law and family law. I enjoy the courtroom work, particularly the big criminal trials. I also love to
run and have done quite a few marathons, including, Boston, New York, and Los Angeles. I have also
completed one ultra-marathon (50 mile trail race). I am currently training for the Canadian Cross-Country

Championships to be held in Kingston, ON at the end of November. I have always loved to read and write. I
am a huge fan of Margaret Atwood and Joni Mitchell (strong Canadian female icons).
Jimmie Ware
Jimmie Ware is a freelance writer and community organizer. Her poetic writings are published in several
print and online publications, including Vox Poetica, Clean Sheets, Open my Eyes Open my Soul which was
the brainchild of Elodia Tate and the late Yolanda King, daughter of Dr. Martin Luther King. No More Silent
Cries and F Magazine in Alaska also showcase her poetry. Jimmie is a dedicated mentor for youth, an
advocate for womens empowerment. Many of her inspiring writings stem from growing up in Chicago, her
southern roots from Alabama and her amazing adventures in Alaska. Connecting cultures is her forte. She
currently resides in Phoenix with her lovely adult daughter Mercedz-Nicole also gifted and creative soul.
Kelle Grace Gaddis
Kelle Grace Gaddis is the author of MyMyths (Jouissance Press, 2015). Her work has appeared in Knot Literary
Magazine, Shake The Tree, Entropy, Writing For Peace Journal, Blackmail Presses 37th Edition (2014) and Dove
Tales The Nature Edition(2015) and elsewhere. She is one of 4Cultures Poetry on the Buses contest winners
(2015), and the winner of Jouissance Presses Chapbook Contest (2015). She earned her MFA in Creative
Writing from the University of Washington, where she lives and works. Ms. Gaddis is also honored to be a
part of the official program of Lit Crawl Seattle in October, 2015.
Kristen Clanton
Kristen Clanton was born and raised in Tampa, Florida. She graduated from the University of Nebraska,
earning an MFA in poetry, and currently teaches English at the University of Nebraska at Omaha and is a
mentor for the nonprofit organization, The Seven Doctors Project. Her poetry and short fiction have been
published by Bicycle Review, The Birds We Piled Loosely, Burlesque Press, MadHat Drive-By Book Reviews,
MadHat Lit, The Mangrove Review, Midnight Circus, Otto Magazine, The Outrider Review, Ragazine, Quilt, and
Sugar House Review.
Lori Lamothe
Lori Lamothe's second poetry collection, Happily, is due out in December from Aldrich Press. Recent poems
appear in failbetter.com <http://failbetter.com> , Painted Bride Quarterly, The Literary Review, Saint Ann's Review,
Verse Daily and elsewhere.

Louise Robertson
Louise Robertson has earned degrees (BA Oberlin, MFA George Mason University), poetry publications
(Pudding Magazine, Crack the Spine, Borderline among others) and poetry awards (Mary Roberts Rinehart,
Columbus Arts Festival Poetry Competition among others). Her full-length book, The Naming Of, is
forthcoming this year (Brick Cave Books). She is active as a poet and organizer in her local Columbus, Ohio
poetry scene. Someone once said about Robertson that, underneath it all, she is kind.
Lus Leal Moniz
Lus Leal Moniz was born (1993) in Coimbra, Portugal. He is studying Economics in the University of
Coimbra. In 2014, he published his first book, "Sobre Linhas Tortas" (Lua de Marfim, Lisboa).
Maureen Coleman
Maureen Coleman graduated with an MFA in Creative Nonfiction writing from Sarah Lawrence College.
She is currently working on a memoir that explores her experiences with mental health issues and the selfdestructive behaviors she used to cope with them. Maureen currently lives in Massachusetts and makes
frequent trips to Walden Pond in an attempt to channel her inner-Thoreau. She remains open to the
possibility of living a secluded and simple life in a cabin in the woods pending there is Wi-Fi and that it
allows her to dodge student loan repayments.
Mae Carter
Mae Carter lives and teaches in New Orleans, Louisiana. You can most recently find her poems in Quiddity
and Lana Turner Journal.
Marcia Arrieta
Marcia Arrieta's work appears in Moss Trill, Fourteen Hills, Spillway, Wicked Alice, Altpoetics, Otoliths, Futures
Trading, Osiris, Eratio, Little River, and Posit. Her second book of poetry archipelago counterpoint is recently
published by BlazeVOX, while her first book triskelion, tiger moth, tangram, thyme was published by Otoliths
in 2011. She edits and publishes Indefinite Space, a poetry/art journal.
Mark Young
Mark Young is the editor of Otoliths <http://the-otolith.blogspot.com/> , lives in a small town in North
Queensland in Australia, & has been publishing poetry for more than fifty-five years. His work has been

widely anthologized, & his essays & poetry translated into a number of languages. A new collection of
poems, Bandicoot habitat, is now out from gradient books of Finland.
Matt Shears
Matt Shears is the author of Where a Road Had Been (BlazeVOX) and 10,000 Wallpapers (Brooklyn Arts
Press), His manuscript Dear Everyone will be available from Brooklyn Arts Press in 2016. He lives in Berkeley,
California, with his family.
Nicholas Knebel
Nick Knebel is a young poet living in New York City. He is currently in training to become a nationally
certified yoga teacher. In between writing and savasana, he enjoys reading, playing in the ocean, drinking
absurd amounts of tea, and spending time in Washington Square Park. Former publications include two
poems in Straylight, a literary journal published by his alma mater, The University of Wisconsin-Parkside.
He can be found online at his website, https://dreamsofadistantland.wordpress.com/ or through twitter
at https://twitter.com/vossnk
Natasha Murdock
Natasha Murdock lives in a tiny suburb of Phoenix, AZ. Some of her recent work can be found in Four
Chambers Magazine & The Cobalt Review. Currently, she spends most of her days chasing her newly
walking son & trying to get food out of her hair.
Nicholas D. Nace
Nicholas D. Nace is a poet and critic living in rural southside Virginia. He is the editor of two volumes of
essays devoted to the art of close reading: Shakespeare Up Close (2012) and The Fate of Difficulty (forthcoming).
His essays have appeared in The Burlington Magazine and The Book Collector among other journals. He is at
work on his first collection of poems, portions of which are forthcoming in Fence, Maggy, and LitHub.
Olivia Deborah Grayson
Olivia Grayson is the author of the chapbooks, Cat Lament and Being Female, although you may be more
familiar with her as the Beauty & Style Writer Olivia Neko (-- and other stealthy pseudonyms). Shes
currently working on a group of timeline poems to be published sometime in 2016. Olivia teaches expository
writing and fundamentals of critical reading at The Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City.

Patricia Walsh

PT Davidson
P.T. Davidson is originally from Christchurch, New Zealand (pronounced Noisyland), although he has spent
the past 24 years living abroad in Japan, the UK, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates. His current posting
is at Zayed University in Dubai. His poetry has appeared in al dente, ulcer, Pre-Text and Otoliths. His first book
of poetry, seven, is due out soon.
Patrick Chapman
Patrick Chapmans books of stories are The Wow Signal (Bluechrome, 2007) and The Negative Cutter (Arlen
House, 2014). His seven poetry collections include A Shopping Mall on Mars (BlazeVOX, 2008), A Promiscuity of
Spines: New & Selected Poems (Salmon, 2012) and Slow Clocks of Decay (Salmon, due 2016). He has also written
an award-winning short film, a Doctor Who audio adventure, and lots of childrens television. In 2014 he
produced an adaptation of Ray Bradburys The Martian Chronicles for BBC Radio 4, featuring Derek Jacobi
and Hayley Atwell. This won Silver at the 2015 New York Festivals Worlds Best Radio Programs. With
Dimitra Xidous he edits The Pickled Body. http://thepickledbody.com/ He lives in Dublin, Ireland.
Robert Wexelblatt
Robert Wexelblatt is professor of humanities at Boston Universitys College of General Studies. He has
published the story collections, Life in the Temperate Zone, The Decline of Our Neighborhood, and The Artist
Wears Rough Clothing; a book of essays, Professors at Play; two short novels, Losses and The Derangement of
Jules Torquemal, and essays, stories, and poems in a variety of scholarly and literary journals. His novel
Zublinka Among Women won the Indie Book Awards first-place prize for fiction. Another fiction collection,
Heibergs Twitch, is forthcoming.
Ross Knapp
Ross Knapp is a poet, novelist, short story writer, multimedia artist, and music producer. He has an
experimental novel forthcoming and various poetry publications in Commonline Journal, Blue Lake Review,
Poetry Pacific Magazine, Indiana Voice Journal, Shot Glass Journal, Chicago Literati, and many others. He
currently divides her time between Brooklyn and Minneapolis.

Ronnie Sirmans
Ronnie Sirmans lives and works in metro Atlanta. His poetry has appeared in The South Carolina Review,
Gargoyle, and Hoot.
Sam O'Hana
Sam O'Hana is a US-UK Fulbright Scholar studying on the New School's graduate writing program in New
York. He can be found at @samuelohana and tangential-poetry.co.uk <http://tangential-poetry.co.uk>
Sandra Kolankiewicz
My poems and stories have appeared most recently in New World Writing, BlazeVox, Gargoyle, Prairie
Schooner, Fifth Wednesday, Prick of the Spindle, Per Contra, and Pif. Turning Inside Out won the Black
River Prize at Black Lawrence Press. Last fall Finishing Line Press published The Way You Will Go. When I
Fell, a fully illustrated novel, has just been released by Web-e-Books.
Simon Perchik

Stacy Mursten

Stephen Nelson
Stephen Nelson's books include Lunar Poems for New Religions (KFS Press) and Thorn Corners (erbaccepress). A Xerolage of visual poems is due out soon from Xexoxial Editions.
Sunayna Pal
Sunayna Pal, born and brought up in Mumbai and moved to USA after marriage. She has PG degrees from
XLRI and Annamalai University and worked in the Corporate World for five odd years. She quit it in 2009
and embarked on her heart's pursuits. She started Art with Sunayna (artwithsunayna.wordpress.com
<http://artwithsunayna.wordpress.com> ) to teach and sell art for NGOs. She is also a certified handwriting

analyst (sos4graphology.com <http://sos4graphology.com> ) who helps everyone to understand themselves

better by using a mix of graphotherapy, healing and affirmations.
In midst of all this and being a home maker, gardener and photographer, she also finds the time to write and
actually loves to write from her daily life experiences. Many of her articles have been published in TOI, New
woman, Women's era and she is a proud contributor at many other e-magazines and sites. Many of her short
stories and poems are published in Indian and international anthologies. In her little spare time, she also
maintains a blog at mannkiwindow.wordpress.com <http://mannkiwindow.wordpress.com> and can be
contacted at sunayna.pal@gmail.com She is currently writing a novel of 51 stories of people who are of South
Asian origin and have an experience to share of USA.
Susan Wiedel

Sean Burn
sean burn's third and latest full volume of poetry is that a bruise or a tattoo? is available now from shearsman
press. www.shearsman.com/browse-poetry-books-by-author-sean-burn
sean burn weaves a seamless integration of the experimental, the lyrical and the political invariably served
with large dressings of humour and with such blazing intent as no other contemporary poet, not even
benjamin zephaniah, is able to convey jeremy hilton, review of is that a bruise or a tattoo? tears in the fence,
no 60, autumn 2014
Trevor Thinktank
Trevor Thinktank works as a coal miner during the day while completing work on his dissertation, Deaths
Derivation and deviation through Magic: the Poetry of Heaney, Stein and Yeats. He lives in Cornwall but his
mind is in Oxford.
Timothy Collins
Timothy Collins is a poet, scholar and educator from Buffalo, NY. His poems appear in a number of literary
magazines and academic journals, most recently The Waggle and The Quint. His scholarship appears in
refereed academic journals. An article entitled "Wu-Tang Clan versus Jean Baudrillard: Rap Poetics and
Simulation" will appear in The Journal of Popular Culture this spring. He also is a frequent contributor to the

online music magazine, EQLZR.net. Poetic interests include: the beats, Blake, French symbolism, the
Language poets, and hip-hop.
Victor Eshameh

Vernon Frazer
Vernon Frazer's Selected IMPROVISATIONS is the most recent publication of his many books of poetry and
fiction. Frazer's work has appeared in Aught, Big Bridge, BlazeVOX, Drunken Boat, Exquisite Corpse, First
Intensity, Golden Handcuffs Review, Jack Magazine, Lost and Found Times, Moria, Otoliths and many other
literary magazines. His web site is http://vernonfrazer. <http://vernonfrazer.com./> net. Frazer is married.

NECTAR OF STORY
POEMS

TIM J. MYERS

BLAZEVOX[BOOKS]
Buffalo, New York

Nectar of Story: Poems

by Tim J. Myers
Copyright 2015
Published by BlazeVOX [books]
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without
the publishers written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews.
Printed in the United States of America
Interior design and typesetting by Geoffrey Gatza
Cover Art: The Nazca hummingbird, a geoglyph found in the Nazca Desert, southern Peru;
photo by Cornell Capa, from Magnum Photos
Cover design: Tim J. Myers; composition by Geoffrey Gatza and Ellwood Mills
First Edition
ISBN: 978-1-60964-202-0
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014957784
BlazeVOX [books]
131 Euclid Ave
Kenmore, NY 14217
Editor@blazevox.org

p ublisher

of weird little books

BlazeVOX [ books ]
blazevox.org
21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10

INTRODUCTION

A powerful story, whether actual or fantastic, is a landmark in the

psychic world, that human interior so endlessly swept and cross-lit by
darknesses and luminosities. Just as the Aboriginal peoples of
Australia memorized the outcrops, ridges, billabongs, or delta channels
of their homelands--giving each a story--so we too use stories to fix our
cultural and spiritual locations, to know where we are and where we're
going.
But perhaps in some cases this metaphor is too dramatic.
Although many stories are holy places, others are lighter in tone and
design, such as comic tales (though these provide their own kind of
crucial nourishment--and even comedy, of course, can be profound).
From this perspective, stories can perhaps be seen as flowers scattered
across the wilderness of the world. The beauty of a flower is selfevident, our recognition of that beauty instantaneous--but, like bees or
hummingbirds as we seek to live and grow, we can do more than
merely behold the flower of a story: We can enter it, push deep
toward its center and find sustaining nectar there--as well as the pollen
we inadvertently carry away and scatter wherever we go.
And we never know what a story might do as it comes into our
lives. "A narrative line," Eudora Welty says, "is in its deeper sense, of
course, the tracing out of a meaning..."--and I can only add, often of

many meanings. In some cases, a particular story will work in a

conventional way--we'll feel a certain moral insight, for example, or
laugh ourselves clean. But other stories can have less predictable
results. We may heartily dislike a story, or something in a story, and
yet in our negative reactions find different kinds of insight. A story may
11

lead us to a sense of irony, or of satire, or of human triumph or

depravity, or even to something like spiritual vision--and some stories,
of course, do all this and more. It's even quite human to react in
different ways, at different times, to the same story. But in general,
stories often go straight to the roots of our being, and keep lifting
meanings up out of our fundamental silence.
As a professional storyteller, I feel all this keenly in my own
experience. I continually put my lips around stories, feel the ghosts of
them trooping through my mouth. And this brings an intimacy that
shapes my life, how I think and feel, how I love and fear. Sometimes I
can feel it shaping my listeners too. My own intimacy with stories,
then, has naturally spilled over into that other most passionate and
fundamental form of verbal intimacy: poetry. The poems in this book
are examples of what I took into me, and what then poured out of me,
when I found myself at the heart of a fascinating story.
Anthropologist Marvin Opler reports that it was customary among
the Apaches, after a night of storytelling, for a listener to paint his face
with red ochre. This showed that the sacredness of the stories was still
with him, still warm in his heart. I can't think of a better way to explain
what I intended these poems to be.
I often feel a forceful desire to make stories more real for myself
by imagining further details; I "enter" the story and look around, trying
to create a whole world out of a single narrative strand. It's as Tolkien
says:
"What really happens is that the storymaker proves a successful
'sub-creator.' He makes a Secondary World which your mind can
enter. Inside it, what he relates is 'true'; it accords with the laws
of that world. You therefore believe it, while you are, as it were,
inside."
12

This has always compelled and delighted me--to go "inside" like

that, and be there, in those strange, amazing places. It's something that,
Paul Zweig says,
"...all stories have...in common: they beckon us out of the visible,
providing alternative lives, modes of possibility."

But when I return, I find an equal longing for some kind of bridge
between visible and invisible, between the story and my actual life. The
paradox of powerful narratives, even the fantastic kind, is that they're
usually so utterly practical, so mysteriously relevant to the world they
sometimes seem blithely to ignore. "If the world were clear, art would
not exist," Camus says; "Art helps us pierce the opacity of the world."
Powerful stories act in exactly this way. Barry Lopez praises the
Inuktitut word for "storyteller," isumataq: "the person who creates the
atmosphere in which wisdom reveals itself."
So I always find myself hunting for connections between real and
unreal. Talking animal characters, for example, make me wonder
about animal linguistics; a character who can fly must, to my mind, still
follow certain rules pertaining to the magic of flight. Part of this rather
strange and sometimes silly tendency, I'm sure, is the simple and
overwhelming pleasure it gives my story-making heart. But it's also
related, I think, to our modern spiritual crisis, resembling the problem
Keats faced in writing Endymion as he tried to combine myth and
psychology in the character of Apollo. The question can be stated
simply enough: How can we effectively blend our mythic and spiritual
traditions with our powerful modern sense of realism?

13

Neither, to my mind, can be denied. As evidence, consider the

now-famous statement by Einstein that "The gift of fantasy has meant
more to me than my talent for absorbing knowledge"--and Ursula
LeGuin's assertion that "There have been great societies that did not
use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories."
So I often go into stories and imagine realistic "infrastructures" to
support them, seeking to balance the story's deeper truth with the
realities of my society and my own psyche. Sometimes such musings
lead nowhere; I have to remind myself that "it's just a story." But
sometimes they lead to fruitful extensions of the stories. Many of these
poems are such extensions.
I suppose what moves me most, though--aside from the pure
gorgeousness so many stories grant us--is, again, how real they already
are, just as they've been told. Anyone who thinks about art knows this
paradox, and feels, with Picasso, that "Art is a lie that tells the truth." In
the stories I tell, art's gracious mystery seems to go even further, since
so many of them are based squarely on the most improbable fantasies.
And yet that seems, somehow, only to clear away irrelevance, to offer
glimpses of fundamental truths. I think of Kipling's statement that
"...fiction is Truth's elder sister."
And it's strange for me, as a twenty-first-century American, to feel
the astounding immediacy of what are often ancient and sometimes
seemingly obscure tales, and to watch how images, ideas, and
archetypes keep repeating themselves in the ongoing flow of human
culture. It's as if some form of chaos theory also governs the
relationships between our wildly varied lives and the wildly varied
stories we tell each other. At the moment, for example, a lot of people
in my culture are forking over good money for books, videos, trinkets
and whatnot about angels--those ancient and certainly pre-Christian
14

figures--in a spiritual fad that nonetheless demonstrates how powerfully

stories and figures from stories can move us.
This is not to say the influence is always positive; sometimes it's
quite the contrary, as we in the West have seen in certain cases where,
for example, biblical stories are concerned. But as deep a thinker as
Rilke could believe in angelic presences. And it strikes me as true
miracle that the real world we all live in, with its city centers and
farmfields, its pigeons huddled on stone facades, its dams and suburbs
and landfills, its offices, churches and temples, its villages and windblown litter, its addicts, bus-drivers and business people, its mountains
and beaches, nursery schools and factories--that in this enormous,
uneven, lovely, and sometimes bleak place, human beings should so
often be visited by powerful and compelling images such as we find in
stories. We might almost believe that these images themselves are
invisible beings whose aim is to teach, strengthen and purify us.
The Chaga people of Africa, I've read, teach their children that
songs are "a means of controlling the emotions," a practice, the writer
says, also common to Native Americans. In some ways our
contemporary American culture is in a similar state--like someone
losing control of himself. Stories are one form of the song we sing to
find balance and inner peace. And this can be as true for "negative"
stories as for "positive" ones. Consider some of our modern urban
legends--like the one about Liz Claiborne creating perfumes designed
specifically not to smell good on African-Americans, or the one about
Dizzie Gillespie and Charlie Parker creating be-bop specifically so
white musicians couldn't play it. As unlikely as these stories are, they
reflect some deep truths--and deep emotions--about race in America.
They can be a way of facing the problem, a necessary step in the
process of regaining our balance.
15

I don't mean, of course, that we should indulge our collective urge

to fantasy without restraint; many of us waste our lives or sin heinously
because we've given ourselves too readily to airy narrative constructs.
Self-righteous war-mongering, the Inquisition, and the Heaven's Gate
suicides are salient examples. Stories are ways of looking at life--but
they're not life itself, and they're far from infallible. In my head, I have
no trouble distinguishing these fictions from the real world. But in my
heart I'm often richly confused, and it's that confusion I can learn from.
Modern Americans have only recently begun to show renewed
interest in traditional storytelling, though most of us even now have
little or no experience with it. But human beings are storytelling
animals; our love for telling and hearing stories is endless. And with so
much besetting us at this point in history, it's an especially good time, I
think, to walk again what storyteller and writer Joseph Bruchac calls
"the roads of breath," to explore the way stories let us think, feel, and
examine our lives--often with far more depth and freedom than direct
rational analysis allows. My friend Wally Ingebritson says it another
way--that we must "re-enchant the word." As I put this volume together,
for example, I was surprised at how often some of these stories led me
to crucial ruminations about existence, death and immortality--topics
that haunt us today as surely as they ever have. The poems became
intense personal projections and continuations of the stories, the kind
we all discover and construct, individually or in groups, when stories get
down into us and begin to work--and which can thereby become a basis
for something else we certainly need more of right now: shared civic
life.
Beyond that I can only quote Tolkien once more, who in Tree and

Leaf wrote words I've come back to again and again: "Fairy [s]tories,"
he says, deny "...(in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal
16

final defeat...giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the
world, poignant as grief."
A final note: These forms of the stories, on leftside facing pages,
are of course unsatisfying to me, given that they're only tight, hard
seeds--not the flowering trees I try to make them when I stand before a
group to tell. The "stories" in this book are really only departure
points, not to be confused with the wild, unpredictable, and charged
utterances that emerge when we're "beckon[ed] out of the visible"--that
is, when a good storyteller and a good audience come together for this
most spontaneous and social of rituals.

Tim J. Myers

17

NECTAR OF STORY
POEMS

Among the Apocrypha is the story of Daniel

and Susannah, in which the prophet's great powers
of insight were once again active in the service of
good. Daniel, second son of David, was taken with
other gifted Hebrew children to Babylon in 605 B.C.E.
by Nebuchadnezzar, where he was taught "the
learning and tongue of the Chaldeans." But he and
the other young Jews steadfastly refused to become
idolaters. Daniel's prophetic powers, which led him
to visions and the interpretation of dreams,
impressed the successive Babylonian kings he
served, as did, of course, his deliverance from the
lions' den.
But before the consummate vision that
came to him near the end of his life, he was also
able to see into a smaller but equally mysterious
darkness--that of the human heart. Susannah,
accused of promiscuous behavior by the old men
whose advances she'd rejected, brought her countercharges to Daniel, then a high-ranking official in
the Babylonian government. Although she was
outnumbered and had only her word to defend her,
she was vindicated: Daniel ferreted out the truth
and decided the case in her favor.

20

W hen Daniel Judged Susannah

I will not say the prophet was a coarse or venal man-but when the elders had threatened that virtuous woman-whose body even in clothing
awoke their lust, made them
sick with love-longing-when they threatened her unless she submit to them,
she refused, accused them in turn,
all was brought to the prophet Daniel,
on whose judgment Susannah was depending-and standing before him she recounted
how the old men, peeking hot-eyed through swaying ferns,
had watched from green shadows as she bathed,
white form in womanly fullness,
breasts, hips, eyes dark and beckoning
(though she thought she was alone),
and Daniel in his wisdom saw through the elders' lies,
rebuked them, confined them, restored to her
the esteem of the people. I will not say
he did less, nor
accuse him of hypocrisy or baser motive.
Only I find it worthwhile to mention
that as he turned to go,
he found himself suddenly possessed
by a vision of water streaming over
her shoulders, her nipples, water
dripping from the arch of a perfect lifted white foot-and for many days this shadowed him
with a sweet and continuous trouble.

21

The human craving for stories is satisfied

nowhere in so regular and quotidian a way as in the
daily newspaper, and the almost addictive
attractiveness of "reading the paper" attests to this.
Editors know, in fact, that whatever other functions
a newspaper serves, one of its prime means of
attracting customers is through engaging narrative.
And the newspaper is a strange cornucopia,
representing as it does the immense and
unimaginable range of stories that reality itself
creates. Some are painfully predictable; others
cause even the wildest of writers to throw up their
hands in amazement. In the worlds behind newsprint,
we see much of the astounding variety of human life:
endless jockeying for power, the constant flow of
economic forces, nature jabbing paroxysmally at
civilization, flare-ups of crime or scandal, the strange
dance of diplomacy, the outbreak of riots or war, all
the struggles of greed and love and hatred and the
will to survive--sometimes acts of shining selflessness,
sometimes people like ruinous shadows trying only to
injure or destroy each other--and, of course, ordinary
citizens just trying to live their lives.
This poem is based on a true story I read
years ago, the kind of crime we hear about with
surprising frequency. As I sat with the paper in the
quiet of my house that night, I felt the same
fundamental power all newspaper stories carry, which
I seemed almost to whisper to myself as I read: This
really happened. It could come crashing off
something right into my life, right here, right now.
This is real.

22

Reading the Papers at Night

Somewhere in Texas a guy killed lots of people.

Having a beer in the kitchen, I see
how his face in the papers is saying
that a child kept swallowing terror,
ate his own suffering, because
there was nothing else for him to do
and they'd hurt him more if he didn't.
He's grown up now, bones close to the skin,
eyes in sick grim helplessness set.
One he left headless and mutilated,
and a young boy in underwear beside his naked mother.
I check my sons before I go to bed.
They're safe tonight--were not chosen.
Others were:
some to feel the terror driven into them,
one to bear it in his body till it worked his hand.
There's a little boy on our block
with scabs behind his knees.
He hits the other kids a lot,
runs down the street in dirty diapers
as cold rain falls.
And who is it coming toward us now
in a rusted Chevy, driving all night through Kansas,
the chosen one, his knuckles
white against the wheel?

23

Orpheus the minstrel exacted such music

from his lyre, and had sung the blood into so many
cheeks, that no door was ever closed to him. And when
he took the beautiful Eurydice as his wife, his
happiness was complete. But Eurydice, walking in her
garden one day, was stung on the ankle by a little dust
snake and died.
Her husband's sorrow was so violent he could
barely contain it. Vowing to bring her back to the
world of light, Orpheus descended through Acherusia
to the gates of the Land of the Dead, and sang his grief
so powerfully there that even those dread guardians
wept and allowed him to pass. Coming at last to the
thrones of Aidneus (Hades) and his Queen Persephone,
the singer, having disturbed the hosts of the dead
with the passion of music and memory, asked that
Eurydice be allowed to live again, then sang the
death-song he'd made for her. As the song unwound,
the unflinching faces of "they who walk in darkness"-the vengeful Furies--were wet with tears for the
first time since the world began. So achingly
perfect was his music, in fact, that Hades, weeping
with his own love for Persephone, agreed to let
Eurydice return with her husband--on the
condition that Orpheus lead her out of the
underworld without looking back.
But when the desperate young man first
stepped into the light of day, he turned to share it
with Eurydice, not realizing she was still in the
cave. All he could do then was watch her phantom
form slipping back into the depths, as with a fading
cry her pale spirit fell again to its place among the
dead.

24

At Night

This lover in the young man's dreams

as he lies fitful:
the shimmering holy lust she visits
upon his young body,
oh unreal! And yet,
and yet,
when paling dawn begins to spread,
unraveling his sleep,
as if Eurydice she draws away,
arms outstretched,
her eyes with shining tears

25

Khajuraho, in central India, is famed for its

temples, with twenty-five of the original eighty-five
still standing. The facades of these temples are
covered with some of the finest sculptures ever made.
And Khajuraho--though its carvings taken as a whole
depict and celebrate a stunning variety of human
behaviors and moods--seems to have been from the
beginning a place of sexual union between human and
divine: Stories say that a brahmin's beautiful daughter,
naked as she bathed in a forest pool, was seduced by
the Moon God a thousand years ago, their son the
founder of the dynasty that dominated Khajuraho
and built its temples.
The story of sexual ecstasy opening onto
union with the divine--or simply representing it--is an
old and continually repeated one in India. Rama and
Sita, Krishna and the milkmaids, the worship of the
lingam, and Tantric sexual rites are all considered
transcendent spiritual images or practices and never
mere concupiscence. The story itself is so basic and
universal that, like a Hindu god, it flows easily
into countless versions, avatars of the One. This is
why so many of the carved figures at Khajuraho are
couples wrapped together in various sexual positions,
a general presentation of sex in all its forms--but
also of the searing adoration of lover for beloved,
which is at depth the featureless bliss of God.

26

At Khajuraho: A Line from a Guide Book

Above the world of human beings, carved

along a temple frieze by hands now far
beyond the sun's light, they stand: above
frenetic marketplace and dingy square,
above the trampled blossoms and the stores,
above the crowded lanes and river waters:
"the quiet rapture of divine lovers."
Down in the world--to which their loving gazes
never wander--under their feet of stone
made delicate as flesh, bus or car passes
along the street, flies rise from the sand-and, always seeking something, woman, man,
the millions clash or cling or fall asunder:
beneath this rapture of divine lovers.
And here from age to age, money flows
like another Ganga. But for them,
their almond eyes unblinking, bodies posed
in sinuous attraction, her to him,
desire passionate to point of dream,
the world exists so that it may discover
this quiet rapture of divine lovers.
His arm around her doe-like shoulders, and
his hand upon her breast; and she
looks up into his face as if it stood
the moon itself upon her life. And we
glance up at times from all our vanity-for they are more like us than we are, ever,
in quiet rapture, these divine lovers.

27

Just after a recent eclipse I read a

newspaper account of the reactions of some South
American tribal people to the darkening of the sun-and realized I was overhearing the deeply important
kind of story we humans tell ourselves when our
world suddenly changes.
During the eclipse, the Associated Press
reported, many Indians in the Andes followed the
traditional practice of lighting fires to warm the
benighted Earth, and, in the belief that a great
moon-puma was trying to devour the sun, sought to
frighten off the beast with various noises, including
the screams of children and the cries of beaten animals.
The ancientness of this belief is attested to,
experts say, by pre-Columbian stone carvings. The
Yuracare, Chiriguano, Mojo, Chiquito, Guarani, Inca,
and other South American peoples all believed in the
voracious moon puma or jaguar. In Central America a
similar belief led to shouting, the beating of drums,
and the building of large fires. Many North American
tribes did the same: "[D]ogs were made to squeal by
twisting their ears or beating them; people shouted,
struck a plank or canoe...babies were taken outside
to howl..."

28

Dangerous Things
to Please a Girl

Travis Cebula

BLAZEVOX[BOOKS]
Buffalo, New York

Dangerous Things to Please a Girl

by Travis Cebula
Copyright 2015
Published by BlazeVOX [books]
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without
the publishers written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews.
Printed in the United States of America
Interior design and typesetting by Geoffrey Gatza
Cover Art by
First Edition
ISBN: 978-1-60964-186-3
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014943803
BlazeVOX [books]
131 Euclid Ave
Kenmore, NY 14217
Editor@blazevox.org

publisher of weird little books

BlazeVOX [ books ]
blazevox.org
21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10

Selected Poems

my dearest Angel,
my one back
at home
few things are more
perilous, pitiable,
or lost
than
[I am]
a poet
who wanders
these streets
of Paris,
summer
alone
with only one
book,
one T.S.
Eliot, strangely selected
for company.

17

Smoothed by long fingers

I will write you
a little
letter from Paris,
in hope
that you will
follow me here.
just a note.
it will say
dear Angel, or
my love,
I cant wait
and
Im sorry, but
all this
and a blank bit of
page, the age of this
Rhne wine goes right
for my head.

18

These fragments I have shored against my ruins

I have been
observing necks, and
cold, and it seems
I must find myself
a scarf, Angel.
I imagine it could
be crimson for you,
and long. what could be
warmer? or will it billow
blue and be a match
for all the broad sky
beyond these scudding
clouds? its silk will not be
white or anything like.
for white silk
adds no heat; it is
a memory of new snow.
we both know April
snow melts shortly after
it succumbs to soot.

19

The endless cycle of idea and action

dear Angel,
you asked me to explain
myself, to explain why
I am here. perhaps,
why the streets are
so empty and the buildings are
so uniformly grey. perhaps
you do not remember.
there are eight stories
to every one, and every one
begins, it is Sunday.
for now it is Sunday and
the cafs are closed.
four men in chartreuse coveralls
hose down sidewalks.
cigarettes and stones shine in June almost
as if it were cold. and it is.
for once a fireplace makes sense
from this cracked leather chair I look back
and forth between the soot on bricks
and the inkboth feel warmer
than clouds. or water that plummets
piece by piece. the movement
of hands over paper provides a bit of

20

relief, like rubbing tombstones

in winter, but a less eloquent form
of friction. less true than a thousand twisted
scarves. all blue. Angel, I am here to write
this perfect cerulean, yes, and to speak
only to you of this and these.
these clouds and these leaden roofs
and geese and their river sliding by the Ile
Saint Louis like photosynthetic oil.
no one else swims here, and could I
blame them? even their ghosts would
freeze, perhaps sink, clean
of such slimy bodies. weeks
later the bouquinistes along the quays
would wipe some residue of splashing
rain from their plywood stalls.
and it would also be green,
written that way just for you.

21

from the market:

TP.
laundry detergent.
milk.

22

I know the voices dying with a dying fall

Miss Stein claimed
Guillaume was never the same
after bandages.
so the story goes, there is no
lever to enlarge
a broken bell. it clamors

constantly off the cobblestones.

or not at all. this bicycle
is bent nearly in half
from the rust of old accidents.
this bicycle is
silent otherwise.
a wheeze when stopping,
so the story goes
on, engraved in brass plaques, sunlight,
names, and clutter
on buildings left
and right. Joyce.
Stein. Fitzgerald. Barnes
sipped coffee two blocks down.
Eliot Pound Miller Nin.
Beach. Hemingway.

Hemingway.
Hemingway.
Hemingway.
when he liberated the Ritz Bar

23

he ordered
Seventy-eight dry martinis,
so the story goes,
and not one tarte tatin.
that was Paris during the war.

this bicycles brakes clench

with the trees; it slows
into the quiet breeze and chestnuts

linger more.

I say
Guillaume was never the same
after wind.
and one day, Ernest
bought a shotgun.
so the story goes.

24

In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust

Notre Dame, Our
Lady, she rings
her manic bell.
I cannot tell
who answers her
from this alley.
I must go out
to the river
first. I must go
see the bright quays
and whoever
goes there walking,
and whatever
Sky is trying
to keep unseen.

25

from the market:

two bottles of red wine.
one bottle of white.
madeleines.

26

Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening

dear Angel,
I found
an electric
fan, 220 volts,
in the white cupboard.

now
the nights may be
lonely
but theyll be
cooler, too.

27

The sickle motion from the thighs

prop the glass doors open at
Caf Panis. shine the brass to spite
the drizzle not-so-hidden in a summer day.
prop a trapezoid of slate on the wet
tile and wait. [enter the scarf] beyond
all hopes of chalk scribbling,
the scarf enters. and is he cobalt
like some remembered sky
hung midway between the quays?
he takes five long steps, dent to dent
to the zinc bar, orders a caf noir.
one euro, he clinks change. he
sips to his reflection in a gilt mirror. this
is the age of the slow walk, Angel. for this I give
you the river, the hydrangea, and the castiron bridge. I give you this patchwork
blanket of noon light on the pagea tipped hat
to the deep blue that peeps between green
fingers of trees. this light is not mine, even though
it shines in lines. Ill steal it for you, steal this one today
and stitch it into the shape of mulberry
leaves with strands of ink and Chinese
silk. Ill stitch words for you to climb.
for you always upwards into my

28

wandering avenue, a view of a river

whose soft bed is longer than any
shadows that might shroud the limp of
a lonely afternoon. make no mistake,
a woolen scarf is not for show. it warms
my leg in a cold and otherwise empty bed.

29

I have not made this show purposelessly

dear Angel, I had every
intention of
an early night,
but your eyelashes
appear everywhere. lampposts, trees.
come here,
now, come to me,
kiss me
in the cool grass
of evening,
or on the gravel
just kiss
me, now, like you
mean it,
pressed together from shoulders
to knees.
your hand in
my hair.
so deep it curls
my ears
to the back of
my head.
then finally I
can sleep.

30

from the market:

four croissants
two chocolate,
two almond.

31

Departed, have left no addresses

five steps
from the
curb, horns
sound. five
hours from
noon, a
jacket
hangs off
his arm,
battered
briefcase
from one
gnarled hand.
is it
divine
purpose
or a
madness
older
than trees,
Angel,
that prods
this lone
human
to stride
into
traffic
again.

32

After the dooryards and the sunsets and the sprinkled streets
my dear Angel,
and I choose you
for my own,
I want to visit
so many other Sundays
with you.
they built fine benches here,
and a fountain with walls such
that ducklings might
never leave.
that they might never challenge
blue flowers in rows.

but you can

come to me between
hydrangeas,
and sit.
here I have and here
you can
pour out a river
of blood from your mouth.
just like the saints,
it is a solemn promise
like throwing
bread to the young.

33

The wind under the door

distant Angel,
heat and
heat. I have
opened all
the windows
on the night.
no breeze,
but Paris is
coming in
crowds of
smoke in
darkness, in
drums, and
this chorus
of green
bottles
thrown as
trash against
concrete. in
midnights
ash.

34

Leaned out, leaning, hushing the room enclosed

I lost my self in the

festivals thousands. and
what does that mean, to lose
all self? I heard many
hard notes, and different
on every block. I saw
hundreds of hands stretch in
the air. I felt the dark
behind the dancing, more
than mere night. in the Place
St. Michel one ancient
woman ate pistachio
ice cream and even her
scuffed shoes looked happy. but
then, it is only those
who cannot dance who get
naked. three drop their clothes
in mounds as they climb in
the fountain. heres a bent
photograph for you, my
love, and handful of glass:
only half of it is green.
the rest is fresh as all
water falls on marble.

35

I think we are in rats alley

night-borne Angel,
shards of
wine bottles
embedded
themselves
in my boot
soles, the
same for
smoke in my
hair. and
well, Ive
been
dancing on
the shells of
these
shining
streets since
sunlight
sputtered
out.

36

from the market:

antacid.
a brillo pad.

37

Past the Isle of Dogs

Angel, if only
mad dogs and
Englishmen, then
which am I?
I who plods
the ridiculous.

the white sand. and sweat

dribbles off my neck
in tiny lenses
that magnify
the sun. that collect
dust. I have

no fear of rivers.
but try as I
might, with my
fountains and books,
in this lush
gardenthis
afternoon, this hill
as the light strikes
olives from
green to grey,
like Eliot, I am no
Englishman.

38

THE SLIP

GEORGE TYSH

BLAZEVOX[BOOKS]
Buffalo, New York

THE SLIP
by George Tysh
Copyright 2015
Published by BlazeVOX [books]
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without
the publishers written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews.
Printed in the United States of America
Interior design and typesetting by Geoffrey Gatza
Cover and interior art by Janet Hamrick
First Edition
ISBN: 978-1-60964-217-4
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015937798
BlazeVOX [books]
131 Euclid Ave
Kenmore, NY 14217
Editor@blazevox.org

p ublisher of weird little books

BlazeVOX [ books ]
blazevox.org
21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10

The Slip

sometimes
set or whole
a quiet fear
wears
sleeves of death
dancers au pair
a piano
sounding
the song
we wish to hear
"All Mysteries"
rumbles
in evening air
of rain tracing
snow trails
to
which we turn
and ringing
interrupts the dance

17

"the separation
of movement from
steady rhythm"
an embryo
from an impresario
plowing
salting
and then no matter
"far from breaking
up the whole,
false
continuities are"
still there
a quiet fear
wearing sleeves
of death's
elegance
aprs tout

18

2.

open palm
above the cup
emanate waves
of oolong
peripheral
glimpse of wool
cap as letters
arrive
resisting the
impulse to move from a
state of lesser
to greater complexity
accidentally
a leg posed
on this narrow
plane of sun
we (incomprehend)
in the space
between words
tracing
steps

19

3.

pursuit and capture

confinement
and restraint
the pleasures of the spirit
are inexhaustible:
to be stolen
from a room at
night
and taken to a
faraway land
to be held down
somewhere
what love
that has such people
if we have it to explain
the surprise
is "dutiful"
as it drifts into
further
reaches
unspoken

20

4.

quiet rains
over nothing
and back to
solace
save the mode
water
falling on iron hills
a dragon sips
welcome peace
its icon arranged
on the bottle
a product
of a particular
malady
that thus
one may fear
the throes of
a "moist sweet"
muffled by clothes
or a distinct
teardrop
in underbrush
a hailstorm
through brambles
the sighing of
a penis
in some forgotten
hell

21

5.

what is it
of the untried
American
partner
that would lead
"at this evening
hour" to unseemly
delight
"I will leave
you by yourself
white dream," it
seemed to say
the words were
hardly out of
place in our
murmuring
and "shut the
closet to conceal
the strange, wraithlike
apparel it contained"
who would believe
"now, I thought"
these wrappings
this incessant
rain
of longing
and stirring

22

6.

"stepping forth"
(an angel
on a sidewalk)
from clouds
the notyet-scandal
of the thing
shown
its gai savoir
of
specters in heels
thrown
into illicit
becoming
as they undo the
"specimen dream"

23

7.

the top of his head

flies off
in response to some screams
it matters not
that she
inflates a divan
with every breath
their storm
widens across the tranquil
earth
the heart throbs
before the
screen goes dark
under formal eaves a fan
turns slowly
to bubbling brooks of laughter
what is it
that she
now knows more?
"or perhaps she rules through
the beauty
you sometimes mention"
at night

24

8.

abstraction
soaked
in vinegar
23 seconds
smoking weeds
of an illusion
rising with the sun
in showers
there is no
doubt
and floods
the heart

25

9.

"sophisticated women"
brush
unthinkable hair
and stare
wildly at calamity
as if playing with moss
"illusions are
more common than changes
in fortune"
says the lady
who "would stop you
as you went by"
and "continue painting
after the end of
painting" pink
lips and toes

26

Nothing by You

strange brew
smoky surface
and mahogany
depths
your
love-lone-liness
after midnight
to hear it
in my sleep
"We move with ease
from one to the other"
nothing by you
omitted without discomfort
that aerosol
in the face of
thought
(precisely
what occasions)
a persistent odor
of whatever you like
between women
this our doing
as night falls
into night
out
of
sleep
(gender, femmes, "race," etc.)

27

building casts a partial

shadow
there are cars and sun
evidence of ignorance
hooks in stays
a voice in darkness calling
id to idiot
wanter to wanker
to my place
at the
farther wall
(modr)
noble
sentimental
supple
elemental
practiced
joy
"Along the way
our lives...
repeatedly
changed"

28

PATIENT WOMEN

LARISSA SHMAILO

BLAZEVOX[BOOKS]
Buffalo, New York

Patient Women
A Novel by Larissa Shmailo
Copyright 2015
Published by BlazeVOX [books]
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without
the publishers written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews.
Printed in the United States of America
Interior design and typesetting by Geoffrey Gatza
First Edition
ISBN: 978-1-60964-201-3
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014957783
BlazeVOX [books]
131 Euclid Ave
Kenmore, NY 14217
Editor@blazevox.org

publisher of weird little books

BlazeVOX [ books ]
blazevox.org
21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10

Preface: Patient Women

Je suis une femme de lettres et je gagne ma vie.

Colette

Out of the blackout Nora hears a voice: Dont die baby dont
die baby dont die baby dont die . . . .
Eyes rolling, head thrashing, her back arched on the
gurney, Noras scream rips out: Get the fucking needles
out of my mouth . . . .
What are they doing? They are pumping her stomach they
are giving her charcoal she is hooked to an I.V. again . . .
Which flight deck which tank St. Josephs. St. Francis St.
Johns . . . Oh Mother of God shes conscious shes conscious
shes still alive . . . .
Nora was never late; she either came on time or didnt
come at all. Her lover drinks a scotch he doesnt want and
waits for Nora to come, Nora who is never late. From the
window, he watches a young couple kiss; they are
seventeen, perhaps eighteen years old. He turns away,
suddenly uncomfortable, and starts calling hospitals.
Her lover finds Nora in St. Lukes. She is pissy and her face
is swollen. She recognizes him. She smiles, then grimaces.

11

Make them take it out of my mouth, she whispers.

Please. Please. Make him take it out of my mouth.
Theyre pumping your stomach, her lover tells her,
crying, Giving you blood.
Noras voice rises and carries down the white halls: Thats
the last damn thing we need around here, new blood.
She tries to laugh but whimpers instead, then whispers, so
softly that even her lover, his earnest crying face pressed
close to her cheek, cannot hear her:
Im choking . . . Doesnt he know? Make him take it out of
my mouth . . . .

Finished, the trick asks Nora the usual questions:

How long have you . . . ?
Nora sits on the bed and crosses her legs. Been doing
this? she asks.
The trick nods, eager.
Eight months. Yesterday till three. Today Ive been here for
eleven hours. I had conjunctivitis last week and couldnt work. I
had gonorrhea in October; I worked till Billy got it, too. Ill be
here tomorrow and Thursday and Friday and Saturday. Ill
probably be here Sunday, too.
Nora smiles at the trick. How long have I been doing this?
Let me see now . . . .

12

Nora walks through Riverside Park. Drivers curse her as

she walks in front of the cars to cross the highway. She sits
at the waters edge, feet dangling in the Hudson. It is
drizzling; the sky is pink and brown.
Across the river, billboards and Jersey factories light up. A
Jersey boy drowned in the river the last time she sat here.
Nora remembered vaguely: she bought the bottle of
scotch, and dragged him out of his dormitory. He didnt
want to come, had to study, he said, but finally, in a
moment of abandon, surrendered.
They crossed the highway and sat on the rocks by the side
of the Hudson, the George Washington Bridge in the
distance. Nora told him that she was depressed; the Jersey
boy said he liked her that way. They drank to that, and to
the dismal twilight.
After that, the blackout: like a curtain dropping, Nora
remembered nothing. She came to on the grass, flat on her
back, wet. Stumbling to her feet, she whispered Matthew
into the deep night, and ran from the park to the city
streets. Somehow, she convinced a cab driver to take her
to Queens. Mrs. Nader answered the door, paid for the cab
and put her to bed without asking.
For three days, Nora prayed and hoped against hope that
he had run away, left the city, gone cross country, was
even now heading to the home of a relative or a friend.
13

Nora spent three days with the detectives from the 26th
Precinct before his body came up near the 14th Street pier,
looking for a bottle of scotch on the rocks.

Miss . . . miss . . . can you hear me? What day is it? Miss?
Miss, wake up . . . How many fingers am I holding up,
Miss? How many fingers?
In Mexico, in the mountains, I could see the rainstorm, thirty,
forty kilometers away. I saw it moving in the central
mountains, clearly defined and distant rain. Dancing rain. I
stood and watched it dancing.

Nora buys a bottle of scotch on the way home. She has a

drink in the elevator. She catches her reflection in the
mirror. Her fluid eyes dart away, scared.
The cat yowls as she unbolts the locks. He sits smiling and
blinking at her as she opens the door. Touched by his
simple affection, Nora picks the cat up. Hugging him to
her breast, she starts to sob. The cat is frightened by the
sudden attention and struggles to get away. He jumps out
of her arms, runs a few feet, then turns and sits on the
floor. Noras tears stop as abruptly as they started.

14

Pouring eight ounces of scotch into a tumbler, Nora goes

to the bathroom. She leans heavily on the sink, looking in
the mirror. Her lips move; she is startled to find she is
talking to herself, answering an unseen interlocutor.
Nora paces the apartment, drinkinga second tumbler, a
third, a fifth, anything to still the senseless chatter in her
brain. She lies down on the bed, hoping to pass out
quickly.
Long moments go by, and she is still conscious .
She lies in the darkness until she realizes she is talking to
herself again, justifying herself to the same bathroom
inquisitor.

Around here, theres no such thing as premature

ejaculation. Believe me.
With the young ones you just have to do it again.
You can suck them off.
Id rather fuck.
The less time theyre inside me the better. The way some
of them hold you is frightening.
Sam sweats.
He doesnt like me.
He talks too much.
Id rather listen to them talk than touch them.

15

Nora downs her drink. As long as they dont ask to see me

on the outside, I dont care. Or try to hold my hand.
The Mexican children beg, chanting un peso da me peso da
me un peso da me un peso . . . I gave one little girl a coin and
she started to cry. She was saying beso, not peso. She wanted a
kiss.

Nora goes to the bathroom. She takes a handful of pills

with a gulp of water. She contemplates her silly, guilty
expression in the mirror. She stands there for a long time,
staring at the red patches on her face, averting her gaze
from the dilating eyes in the mirror. Eye contact is
strangely embarrassing. When her eyes meet those in the
mirror, she smiles a weak, unpleasant smile. The woman
in the mirror looks back vacantly.
She breathes with perceptible heaviness. She thinks about
another drink. She reaches into the medicine cabinet and
takes another handful of pills. As she empties the bottle,
she notices her hands are shaking.
Im dying, she tells the stranger in the mirror. What
for?
The red-patched face in the mirror smiles weakly,
embarrassed.

16

In the life, Shekinah became Cleopatra, Billy became

Heather; Nora Nader from Queens became April Easter,
and everyone respected her. Even the pimps deferred to
her. She knew how to talk to men. April Easter was the
best blow job in New York: everyone respected her.
The ocean, that huge, sentient ocean, and the mountains. You
walk for miles without seeing a human being, without seeing
anything made by men, only cows, trees, cactus.
I walked along the beach at night. White sand, ancient sand.
The ocean there, immense. You feel it there. You feel the power
of it more at night when you cant see it. The edge of the water
is clear in the moonlight, the ripples on the sand shifting
directions, running into one another under your feet. But
beyond that, blackness. Breathing blackness.
The fisherman found a tortuga skull, the enormous skull of a
giant tortoise. They said the tortuga lived for five hundred
years, lived before the white man came. They gave it to me for
my wonder and some cerveza.
There was a storm that night. I wrapped myself in a blanket in
my hammock to watch. The wind was incredibly strong. I
couldnt hear the thunder at first for the wind and the water.
My body was beating against the porch wall like a drum.

17

I heard a series of loud cracks, unmistakable: lightning, clear

loud light. The first word I learned in Spanish was relampago,
lightning.
The ocean, white and turbulent. The tortuga alive, its empty
eye-sockets full of lightning.
From the World Trade Center people look like swarming
insects; in the mountains, from the ocean, men are a part of a
vast and beautiful continuum. Here, men are either God or the
Devil or nothing.
How true, sir. Every prostitute is a fucking man-hater.
Did you say you were a lawyer?

Nora comes to in the bathtub. Fear fills her. The water is

cold but she doesnt remember how she got there. Nora
hears the cat yowl. She starts to cry. Im coming, Furry,
Im coming!
Nora grabs the towel rack and pulls herself out of the
water. She stands in the bathtub shaking. The weight of
her body is too much for her and she falls back into the
cold water. She cradles her head in her knees and rocks
and cries, rocks and cries . . . .
Help me.

18

Chapter 1: The Wrong Woodstock

The first and simplest stage in the discipline, which can be taught even
to young children is . . . the faculty of stopping short, as though by
instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought.
George Orwell, 1984
You
Who are on the Road
Must have a Code
That you can live by.
Graham Nash, Teach Your Children

Nora lied a lot: she told elaborate and peculiar lies. Nora
had an imaginary boyfriend who was twenty-six and beat
her; shed lost her virginity in the sixth grade; shed been
to the Woodstock festival and the Apollo Theater. Shed
experienced a lot for a thirteen-year-old white girl from
Queens.
Nora was born in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Her family
moved to Middle Village when she was a year old. When
people asked her where she came from, Nora answered,
Brooklyn; Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

19

Nora attended a school for girls in Manhattan, commuting

by bus and subway every day from Queens. From where
she waited for the bus every morning, she could see the
red-tinged skyline of The City, as people from Queens
called Manhattan. Shed been commuting to Manhattan
for almost two years now, since the beginning of the
seventh grade, and the sight of the skyline filled her with
yearning. Queens, on the other hand, was the valley of
ashes: Nora had read The Great Gatsby and blushed to
realize that the gray, ominous, soulless land described by
Fitzgerald was her home, Queens. Queens was a horrible,
embarrassing place to live. It went without saying Zelda
Fitzgerald wouldnt live here or know anyone who did.
Archie Bunker lived here, and other vulgar men: racists,
minor characters, people with no imagination lived in
Queens. Cemeteries, packing plants, two-family houses
her parents thought this was a wonderful neighborhood.
Noras friend Joey was also from Queens, but from further
out on the Island. She was a well-built girl with a big nose
and bad skin; she wore long, torn jeans that trailed over
her boots. Joeys real name was Melissa Feldman, but it
didnt matter: when she talked, you could almost hear
Janis Joplin singing Piece of My Heart. Nora and everybody
else at school considered Joey profoundly cool.
Joey lied extravagantly. Shed slept with John Fogerty and
had helped him write Proud Mary, and had jammed with
20

Taj Mahal at the Fillmore East. Joey had taken mescaline

and acid, all kindspurple haze, orange sunshine, white
cross, blotter, even the mind-blowing brown dot.
Shy and bookish in Queens, Nora became funny and
extroverted in Manhattan with Joey. She told Joey about
Steve, the 26-year-old Queens guy who loved her so much
he actually beat her in fits of jealousy. Joey just nodded
and smoked Noras cigarettes.
Nora liberated things from stores that year. She was
finally caught at the Third Avenue Woolworths. A young
Puerto Rican guard gripped Noras arm as she watched
Joey move smoothly down the store aisle and out the exit.
The guard took Nora down to a small office and made her
empty her handbag. The cheap makeup and candy bars
shed lifted spilled out onto his bare gray desk. The guard
wrote down her name and telephone number; he told the
sobbing Nora that he wouldnt call the police this time,
but that he would call her mother. Nora would have
preferred it the other way around. She waited in agony for
the dreaded phone call. It was months before she realized
that the guard had only meant to scare her. She never
shoplifted again. But Nora would have gone to the
Womens House of Detention for her friends.
Nora left early for school each day to meet Joey in Central
Park, taking the Broadway Local to the Fifth Avenue stop.
At the entrance to the Park, she walked down the steps to
21

the Duck Pond. Joey was already there, drinking coffee

and feeding the ducks potato chips. Nora joined her,
dropping her big, floppy bag on the rock, and pulling out
her hairbrush and cigarettes. The girls sat together quietly,
smoking and watching the ducks as Nora brushed her
long hair.
The late spring morning air rarefied the park air,
illuminating the paths and trees with a clear light
ordinarily found only at high altitudes. Sunlight and
shadow played over the rich new greens in the water, on
the phosphor necks of the ducks and the opaque algae, on
the grass and the leaves. A smell of horses wafted from the
hansom cabs. The drunks on the benches woke up and
energetic mothers wheeled their little children to the zoo.
Earth Science and Mr. Pumpys home room seemed small
and far away.
Nora felt a stabbing pain of anxietysuppose she couldnt
intercept the postcard from the attendance office this
time? Suppose they called her mother?
Nora looked at Joey, who was placidly chewing a peanut
butter sandwich. Her friends face betrayed no fear of
authority, no craven need to conform.
Im going to cut, Nora announced to no one in
particular.
Okay, Joey agreed.

22

Leaving the rest of Joeys peanut butter sandwich for the

ducks, the girls packed up their gear and headed uptown
toward the Bethesda Fountain and the boat lake. Nora
carried Joeys guitar with pleasure, proudly displaying its
battered case covered with skulls, roses, and Grateful
Dead insignia. She hoped people would think the steelstringed instrument belonged to her.
Swinging west, they approached the long aisle of park
benches at Poets Row. Nora tried not to be obvious as she
looked over her shoulder for the tall red-haired man. She
winced as she recalled the incident. The first time Nora
had met the tall red-haired man, she was with Joey. He
was walking his dog, cleverly named Tripper. Tripper, an
intelligent and friendly black terrier, was born at
Woodstock on the third night of the Festival. The man, a
musician, regaled the girls with stories about Hendrix and
the Who, the Doors and Janis Joplin. Each time they met,
the red-haired man told the girls the story of his little dogs
birth and baptism at Yasgers farm; entranced, the girls
listened like children to a beloved fairy tale.
One morning Joey met a guy and went off to smoke a joint
with him; Nora, left behind to watch their school bags,
knew that the boy had not invited her because she was fat.
It was then that the red-haired man came by, walking
Tripper; he stopped to talk to her. Nora was thrilled; the
red-haired man had mostly ignored her up till then,
23

concentrating on Joey, who was thinner and coolerlooking than Nora. The red-haired man was especially
friendly today, asking her questions, and remarking how
mature Nora was. He asked her how old she was. Nora,
who was thirteen, usually said fifteen, but today told the
red-haired man that she was sixteen. To her surprise, he
invited her home for tea. Nora hid the book bags, and
went with the man to his apartment.
Nora could not overcome a feeling of disappointment
when she first saw the red-haired mans apartment. The
apartment was small and shabby, cramped and dirty
around the edges. When she used the bathroom, she saw
that the red-haired man lived with a womanthe
makeup, creams and tampons were too much at home to
belong to a casual visitor. She squelched her
disappointment and joined the red-haired man in the
living room.
Nora returned to the small grainy living room and sat on a
mattress draped with Indian cloth. The man poured her a
glass of wine and filled a pipe with hashish. Nora
pretended to drag deeply, but didnt inhale for fear of
coughing and acting like an idiot.
The man gently but firmly shoved Nora back on the faded
bed spread. He tried to tongue kiss her, but could not get
his tongue into Noras mouth. Nora tried desperately to
24

relax, go with it, as the man was suggesting, but could not:
whether it was the hashish or the wine, Noras teeth
clamped shut, and would not open.
The red-haired man made annoyed noises. Disoriented,
Nora staggered to the door, feeling clumsy and disgraced,
praying that Joey wouldnt somehow find out.

A girl in a paisley dress stood on the band shell stage,

singing to the empty rows of chairs, as Nora and Joey cut
under the street to the Fountain, and climbed to the west
side of the boat lake. A wooden pier stood at the edge of
the lake, hidden from view by a large, dramatic willow.
The little structure, shaped like a house with no walls,
held two facing benches; four people could sit there
comfortably; teenagers kissed there at night. Nora loved
the little pier; she felt less anxious here. At the pier, she
enjoyed the park. She forgot her mother, forgot how many
classes shed cut this year, forgot everything about home
and school.
Nora had cut over half her classes this year. She had been
a good student, was still pulling good grades, and, despite
everything, the teachers still liked her. At Parent-Teacher
conferences, the teachers told Mrs. Nader that Nora was a
gifted girl. Mrs. Nader had always enjoyed Parent-Teacher
conferences. Her huge bulk swelled with pride. Unable to
25

listen to anyone for more than a few moments, she would

interrupt the teacher and begin describing her own
rigorous education in the Soviet Union. A high school
degree there was equal to college anywhere else. At home,
everyone read. So it was logical that dearest Norachka, or
Nora as the teachers knew her, was a good student, given
her home environment.
Good example, good nutrition, shed conclude, as the
teacher nodded uncomfortably.
But nowadays, Mrs. Nader did listen, contritely, as the
teachers described Nora as a behavior problem. She still
got good grades, but she didnt come to class. When she
did come, she was late, or disruptive. Lately, she even
argued with the English teacher. And then, a truly
aberrant incident: Nora threw an inkwell at Miss Taffeta,
the seventy-three year old art teacher. Nora claimed she
wasnt aiming at her, but the old lady was terrified.

Joey was playing Suzanne. She stopped often to tune her

guitar and puff on her cigarette, which she kept in the
neck frets of her guitar and carefully repositioned after
each drag. This made for frequent interruptions, but Nora
sang with feeling anyway as leaf shadows danced across
Joeys face. When Joey grew tired of playing, she

26

surrendered the guitar to Nora, who played A minor

chords.
A tall boy in a fringed jacket with a flag on the back
approached the pier. Nora looked away and sang louder as
the boy listened. As she started to strum the minor chords
for The Cruel War, the boy cleared his throat.
Can I hold your guitar? he asked politely. Joey and the
boy passed the guitar back and forth, playing Beatles
songs, blues riffs, and anything else they knew. Red-faced,
Nora sat next to the boy, singing too loud. She didnt want
to seem desperate, like her friends from Queens. If one of
her girlfriends from Queens so much as talked with a boy,
Nora heard about it for weeks afterward. They sifted and
sifted through casual, unimportant conversations that
clearly meant nothing, nothing at all to the boy: Then he
smiled, and I think he thought I meant I liked him . . .
What do you think he meant when he said his school was
nearby? Do you think he likes me? Dee Ann Distefano
called every Miller in Queens to hunt down a boy she
talked to once; when she and Nora finally got her boy on
the line, Dee Ann got scared and hung up.
Girls from Queens were bores. Girls from Queens were
awkward and shy. Girls from Queens were vulgar and
loud. Girls from Queens wore their sweaters too tight,
wore too much makeup, wore the wrong kind of pants,

27

their faces were zitty, and their tits were too big. Girls from
Queens turned out like their mothers.
Some boys in a rowboat were calling to the boy in the
fringed jacket. Nora watched the long-haired boys stand
straight up in the rowboats, then belly flop into the lime
green algae. The boy in the fringed jacket explained to
Joey that his friends had dropped acid cut with speed. He
lit a thick joint and offered it to Nora, who coughed until
her face turned red. Joey politely interrupted a story about
Eric Clapton to wait for Nora to finish coughing.
Embarrassed, Nora ran to the lake and threw herself into
the water fully dressed. She heard applause and hoots
behind her. She swam, cold and embarrassed, thinking, I
have a pretty face, prettier than Joey but I am fat and my
breasts flop in my wet shirt. I am embarrassed: It is too much to
throw yourself into the water dressed in Central Park, it isnt
hot enough in May and my jeans and shirt and shoes take too
long to dry . . . .

School was letting out when Nora returned to the pier.

The boy with the fringe jacket was gone. A small,
hardened man with blue eyes and thick blue-veined arms
was holding Joeys guitar. Joey was smiling stupidly at
him. Nora stood knee deep in the water watching them,

28

shifting her body back and forth as though she needed to

pee.
All I know, the man was saying, strumming the guitar,
is that the lady was thirty-seven and I was showing her
things she should have been showing me!
Joey laughed. Nora joined Joey and the man, smiling
woodenly. The bantam man took Noras hand in his,
trailed his middle finger across her palm, and introduced
himself as Rick.
Rick had been to Mexico. He spoke at length about
Woodstock and San Francisco and hitching. He had even
been to Marrakesh.
Nora saw that Rick was coming on to Joey, and that Joey
liked that. The man looked like a bum to Nora. He seemed
more hustler than head; there was something suspicious
about his short hair. Nora detected a faint Brooklyn accent
under his southern drawl, like the smell of day-old booze.
So . . . Rick grinned, putting his arm around Joeys waist,
what do you girls want to do?
Joey giggled. Nora felt anxious. She searched her mind for
a good reason to go home.
I guess, Rick drawled, reading her mind, that yall
wanna go home. He pulled on the word, making it
disgusting: Hohome.

29

We want to go to Haight-Ashbury, Joey said suddenly,

her voice sounding high and strained. We want to go to
California on bicycles.
Rick paused, taken aback. He squinted at Joey, weighing
her possibilities. After a moment, he smiled. Youre
shitting me, he concluded amicably.
Joey, suddenly shy, looked down her big nose. No, she
said as Noras heart sank into her bowels. No, thats what
we want to do. Go to Haight-Ashbury. On bicycles.
Rick grinned like a proud father. Still holding, Joey, he put
his tattooed arm around Nora.
Well, honey, he chuckled, not believing his good
fortune, thats just what well do.
Nora smiled numbly as Rick and Joey planned their trip to
San Francisco. The idea to run away from home had taken
force swiftly and suddenly, changing Noras world with a
word. She stood listening and nodding, wet and miserable
in her damp sneakers. The day was supposed to be
ordinary: she was due home for dinner, she would watch
Star Trek. Then Joey had made this stupid joke, and the
stupid joke was now a dare. Nora could never refuse a
dare.
The first stop, Rick explained as they walked down Fifth
Avenue, is East Third Street. My friends have a pad on

30

East Third. We can stay there until we get the bread for
the bicycles.
Crowds of unsmiling office workers pushed out of their
offices into the subway. Rick panhandled, mocking the
people who gave him money with his servile tone.
You girls could work for a couple of weeks, he suggested
I know where to get papers easy. Most of the time, girls
like you dont even need papers to work. Nora was
uncomfortable, but was too conscious of her breasts
bobbing beneath her wet tee-shirt to notice much else.
Joey was in her element, grinning and greeting Ricks
remarks with a peace sign and a power salute. Nora
walked quietly, keeping a little apart, feeling as though she
didnt want to know where they were going.
They turned east on Fourteenth Street. The girls followed
Rick to the door of a large building, Salvation Army
Headquarters, waiting for him outside. After a few
minutes, he reemerged with blankets and a can of peanut
butter the size of a gasoline drum. Nora felt ashamed, as
though she had stolen something from a very old poor
person. Laughing too loud, she accepted a blanket from
Rick, wrapping it around her shoulders like a cape.
Still, Nora was surprised: apart from a small nagging
feeling of guilt, she felt pretty good, even excited and
happy. There was momentary remorse as they entered the
East Village and Nora saw the old, hobbling, wrinkled
31

Ukrainian woman that had been left behind to die in this

neighborhood by her ungrateful children. But when she
passed, Nora immediately felt better. Nora was
surprisedshed expected to suffer more.
Night was falling and night gave Nora a sensation of
freedom. She had never been to Manhattan after dark
alone before. Now she was roaming the East Village, in the
company of her peers, free and unconstrained by a fat,
domineering woman telling her how to walk, talk, act,
dress, eat, sleep, think, look, and feel. Nora was enjoying
herself. There would be changes in her life now, she
thought, finally, painful but necessary changes. The idea
filled her with excitement and dismay.
Feeling happy, Nora began panhandling. As they passed
the Fillmore, Nora drew the army blanket close around
her. She stood under the marquee, laughing and reaching
her hand out to the crowd with a flourish.
Alms for the morally handicapped, she called, finding
encouragement in the disapproving looks of the older
people.
Joey and the others chimed in cheerfully.
Alms for the morally handicapped, they howled. Alms
for the morally handicapped.
A passing young man smiled and pressed something into
Noras hand. To her delight, she saw it was a dime.

32

The crash pad was not what Nora imagined: It was

shabbier even than shed expected, a walk-up furnished
with discarded mattresses and crates. The pad was next
door to Hells Angels headquarters and was secure; the
Angels protected their own. There was a broken window
and no door. A defunct kitchenette without oven or
refrigerator connected the two small rooms.
Rick introduced the girls to the pads unofficial leader, a
leathery young blonde man named Mike. Mike slept in the
front room in a makeshift loft with Mary, a plump, dreamy
girl who was five months pregnant. A tall lanky man
named Chris who worked nights at the docks slept in the
loft during the day. Rick, Nora, and Joey made camp on
the floor with Kenny Sunshine, an acned young man who
spent his days shooting crystal meth and his nights talking
about art and crying.
The inhabitants of the crash pad seemed vague and
enervated, lacking the energy Nora expected from the
counterculture. They were politically apathetic, which
shocked Nora more than a little. Neither Mike nor Mary
seemed to understand the basic issues of the Vietnam
War, even though Mike had scrawled Nixon pull out
like your father should have on the bedroom wall.
No one paid much attention to the girls. Joey fit right in,
making herself useful by cleaning and dishing out the
33

Salvation Army peanut butter. Nora felt uncomfortable,

but tried not to show it, remembering Queens.
By tacit agreement, Mike was in charge of the pad and its
inhabitants. As the acknowledged father of Marys unborn
child, the seventeen year old assumed a mantle of
authority that caused the older men to defer to him. Mike
was slight, a wiry junkie with sleepy eyes. He wore gold
religious medallions when they were not in pawn and had
actually been taken for a ride by an Angel on his chopped
hog, a mark of extreme favor that Mike was careful not to
presume upon.
Every day at noon, Mike brought home three cases of
beer. Presiding over the distribution of the six packs, Mike
sat in the loft with Mary, drinking tall boys and instructing
the girls in the code of the street.
Respect, Mike said, nodding significantly. I show
respect for people; they show respect for me. Thats
beautiful. Mary and the girls smiled beatifically. After a
few beers, Mike insisted on respectful treatment and Mary
made special efforts to avoid any affronts to Mikes
dignity.
Noras first night, Rick staggered into the outer room,
clutching a bottle of malt liquor. Seeing her there, he took
a sudden sexual interest in her. Shoving his unshaved face
into her cheek, he took her hand and pressed it to his
crotch.
34

Ya wanna get me off? he mumbled.

Nora was dimly aware as Rick grabbed her breast that this
was the first time hed ever spoken directly to her.

Nora lost her virginity to Rick that night in the empty

outer room. The splintered floor was dirty and cold, and
she was on the bottom. Rick was ready and she didnt have
time to put down a blanket. It hurt. It hurt terribly. She
tried not to cry aloud but couldnt help it, couldnt stop
crying because it hurt so much. She kept hoping it would
be over, but it went on, and she bit her hand, trying to
muffle her cries. She knew that Joey and the rest were
next door and could hear clearly.
Now Joey would know that shed lied when she said that
shed had sex before. Now they would all know what Nora
had always suspectedthat she was frigid.
The next morning Joey said, It was your first time, wasnt
it? Nora nodded, burning with shame.

The next night, Rick slept with Joey. He ignored Nora,

who thought this was appropriate after the way she acted
the night before. It was just another vitally important
thing shed messed up. Nora slept with Chris, the dock

35

worker in the loft, that night. He was gentle. Nora was glad
not to feel anything.

Nora was returning from the East Street Mission with food
for the pad when the Hells Angel Mario called her over.
Terrified, she crossed the street slowly.
Mario looked Nora over.
How old are you, kid? he asked.
Nora froze. She looked at Mario; the Angels bullish eyes
were bloodshot.
Twelve, she lied.
Mario closed his eyes and fell silent, lost in thought. After
a long moment, he opened his bovine eyes.
Can you go home, kid? he asked.
Nora was taken aback. Sure, she said.
The Angel held her cheek between his fingers and shook
his head sadly.
Go home, kid, he said. Go home.
The girls went home after a few more days. Joey called her
sister who said there was a thirteen-state All Points
Bulletin out for the runaways. This was standard
procedure for missing persons but the sound of it
impressed Nora.

36

Joey was determined to stay. Nora held out for a few days
but finally decided to go home. Joey felt betrayed and
disgusted.
Youll tell them where I am, she sneered.
I wont, I wont, Nora swore.
Panhandling the price of a token, Nora rode the subway to
Queens and walked the bus route hone to Middle Village.

The Naders were in mourning, convinced that Nora was

dead. Mrs. Nader refused to believe that her daughter
could leave home of her own free will. When Nora
arrived, her mother hugged her, and immediately called a
gynecologist to look Nora over.
Nora never knew what the doctor had told her mother, but
Mrs. Nader told Nora that she was still all right down
there, which confused Nora, and to make sure she didnt
tell her father anything.
It would break his heart, Mrs. Nader insisted.
Mrs. Nader blamed Joey for Noras running away, despite
Noras protests that she had chosen to run away of her
own free will. Mrs. Nader considered Joey an especially
pernicious influence and spoke of the girl with genuine
hatred.
The little bitch hates her mother, Mrs. Nader would say,
almost spitting as she talked. Listen to how she talks
37

about her mother. She veered her bulk on Nora. And

you talk the same way, telling everybody what a bitch your
mother is.
Nora tried valiantly not to tell her mother where Joey was,
but Mrs. Nader grew more furious.
The love of a mother for her children, Mrs. Nader
screamed, is the most powerful love on earth, a love more
powerful that you will ever know. Because, Mrs. Nader
proclaimed, You dont love anyone.
Nora held out until the day Mrs. Nader ended this tirade
by collapsing on the kitchen table. As she lay there,
moaning and clutching her heart, Nora told her the
address of the crash pad. Mrs. Nader sat bolt upright,
looking at Nora like an alert raptor. Nora thought she
discerned the hint of a smile.
The Naders soon began to refer to Noras adventure.
My troublemaker, Mrs. Nader said affectionately. Since
you were small you have always found some mischief to
get into. When you were little I would say to Olga, Go
look next door, Nora is too quiet. And how your father
loved you. He would wake you every night, every night to
play with you. Nikolai, you devil, I would say, dont
molest Nora.
Mrs. Nader started telling the neighbors that her daughter
had a bit of Huck Finn in her.

38

When Nora and Joey were allowed to go to school again

unchaperoned, they decided to run away to the
Woodstock commune. Joey had fallen in love with Kenny
Sunshine, the speed freak. Now Joey wanted to follow her
man to Yasgurs farm, where they could work the land and
love freely.
Having betrayed her friend once, Nora felt obligated to
accompany Joey this time. On the day chosen for the
runaway, Nora left for school in a skirt to mislead her
mother. Her family was abnormally nice to her that
morning. Her father spoke to her. Her mother stopped her
as she was leaving. She kissed her and called her little
sun, small chicken, dearest, dearest little daughter in
Russian.
You are such a good soul, small one. Mrs. Nader looked
proudly and lovingly at her daughter. Come straight
home from school, Ill have dinner. Okay, dotsinka?
Nora nodded, feeling treacherous as she hid her jeans in
her book bag. She took eleven silver dollars, coins her
grandmother had given her before she died and the only
money Nora had, and wrapped them up carefully so they
wouldnt jangle. A feeling like heartburn mingled with her
tears as she left home, never to return.
Joey and Nora hitched out of New York City. In her
poncho with her breasts covered, a trucker took Joey for
39

Noras boyfriend. This misconception pleased the girls;

after the first ride, they no longer tried to set the drivers
straight.
Joey was better equipped than Nora. She had brought a
sleeping bag and thermal underwear, and even an extra
blanket for Nora, who had only the jeans she was wearing
and an extra short sleeved shirt.
They stopped the first day by the side of Route 22 in Jersey
or Pennsylvania, Nora wasnt sure which; Joey naturally
took charge of the maps, deciding the route and rests. That
night, they camped out by the side of an industrial stream,
and decided to drop acid.
Nora had never taken acid. She sat patiently, her heart
beating, for something to happen. Nothing did.
Joey spoke first. We are not getting off. Weve been
ripped off, she said angrily.
She gave Nora another three-hit tab of purple haze and
took one herself; they sat down to wait again. Again it
seemed that nothing was happening until Nora saw the
colors hit on Joeys neck and Joey chortled, The sun . . . .
For Nora the stream is covered with spider webs she cant walk
her legs are dead and cant move cant walk cant be afraid the
worst thing is to be afraid so scared she wants it to stop thats
wrong that spoils everything.

40

A fish is struggling in the webs she is walking she is caught

across the stream the leaves of trees are moving like small
squares on pendulums, tick-tock.
Nora realizes with embarrassment that Joey is feeding her
cold beans to bring her down.
Jeans dont dry fast it is cold in May to sleep outdoors in wet
jeans on stones near streams in sleeveless shirts it is cold . . . .
Two good old boys picked them up next day. You girls
want to party? Joey is not frightened; she has a knife.
Nora figures they must look a lot older than thirteen.

Big man comes barreling out of a fast car, moving down

the highway like a streak in the night. He tumbles and falls
onto the shoulder of the road, rolling down the grass fast
and drunk. He lands like a billiard ball on the knoll where
Joey and Nora sleep. He lies down on top of Nora, making
himself comfortable. Nora lies about her age again:
Please dont do this to me mister Im only twelve years
old . . . .

They came to Woodstock. It was a small town and there

was a parade going on, a patriotic parade. The drum and
bugle corps were marching down Main Street. Young girls
were playing glockenspiels. Young men in crew cuts and
41

uniforms were pulling the town cannon down the street to

general applause. Nora and Joey were in Woodstock,
Vermont; it was Flag Day.
Nora and Joey got a hitch out of town to the highway,
where they slept the afternoon away beside an
intersection. At night, they caught a long ride with a
taciturn trucker back to New York. They sat up front in the
cab, Joey singing Grateful Dead songs for the man; Nora
sat watching the road and the veins of her hand, still
pulsating from the acid, and tried to comb her hair, which
seemed hopelessly tangled. A hip young couple drove
them into the town of Woodstock, New York, but by that
time, Mrs. Nader was already there.
Joeys mother put her in a psychiatric ward in Jamaica,
Queens for eight months. When she got out, all she could
talk about was the hospital. Joey became the social pariah
of the ninth grade.
Nora decided she would try to be a better student and
daughter. One of her classmates, a girl with hairy legs,
confronted her in the hall.
I really looked up to you, the girl said quietly. I really
did.
Nora often related the anecdote of how she hitched to the
wrong Woodstock.

42

LITTLE:
NOVELS BY
EMILY ANDERSON

BLAZEVOX[BOOKS]
Buffalo, New York

Little: Novels by Emily Anderson

Copyright 2015
Published by BlazeVOX [books]
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without
the publishers written permission, except for brief quotations in
reviews.
Printed in the United States of America
Interior design and typesetting by Geoffrey Gatza
Cover Art by Abbey Scheckter
First Edition
ISBN: 978-1-60964-132-0
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015930368
BlazeVOX [books]
131 Euclid Ave
Kenmore, NY 14217
Editor@blazevox.org

publisher of weird little books

BlazeVOX [ books ]
blazevox.org
21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10

Preface
These little novels have been extracted from Laura
Ingalls Wilders Little House books. I erased
paragraphs, sentences, words and (occasionally)
individual letters from each of Wilders novels to
create an alternate series. Here and there Ive added
an s or an and, but I largely refrained from adding
letters and words, with the exception of footnotes. The
text appears in the order of the original books.
Erasure (or writing the negative space of the story)
reveals new aspects of a text and allows familiar
narratives to resonate differently. Part parody, part
homage, I see my process as parallel to that of Wilders
pioneer characters: like Ma and Pa, I appropriate the
resources I findin my case, words in a given order;
in theirs, sod, trees, stones, waterto reshape a
landscape. Writing this book allowed me to spend
time reveling in the imaginative possibilities Wilders
delightful and frequently troubling books propose.
Geoffrey Gatza observed that Garth Williams iconic
illustrations of Wilders novels merited a visual
response. While I collaborated with Wilders text, I
invited artists to work with Little House and/or my
writing and contribute images. The diversity of their
responses to these narratives helps me to see this
projectand the books Ive loved since childhoodin
new ways.
Whether their contributions took the form of
illustration or interruption, each artist approached

this project differently. Michael Robinson generously

contributed a still from his extraordinary Hold Me Now
(standard definition video, 2008), while Nathan
Anderson, Brad Farwell, Brieanne Hauger, Adam
Martin, Jen Morris, Abbey Scheckter, and Anne
Straarup created new work.
I especially want to thank Brieanne Hauger, whose
literary and visual talents and ongoing support helped
me ford this river.

List of Illustrations
Table of Contents . . . Found marginalia
Little Woods . . . Found marginalia
Little Woods Drawings . . . Nathan Anderson
Farm . . . Adam Martin
Our Air . . . Brieanne Hauger
On Banks . . . Brad Farwell
Silver . . . Anne Straarup
Long . . . Brieanne Hauger
Michael Landon Laughs . . . Brieanne Hauger
Hold Me Now . . . Michael Robinson
Years & Years . . . Jen Morris
Cover . . . Abbey Scheckter

11

LITTLE

Little Woods

16

Chapter 1. Little Woods

He sprinkled salt.
Never interrupt.

Chapter 2. Winter and Winter

Up on its legs, her little cup.

Chapter 3. Rifle
Dark ravines, calling and looking.

17

Chapter 4. Christmas

The ravine was asleep beautifully under the

blankets.

At the same momentbits of silk.

18

Chapter 5. Sun

The boys walked slowly, tanned.

19

Chapter 6. Two Bears

(She wasnt afraid).

20

Chapter 7. Snow
The sap boils.
The sap has boiled at last.
Keep the sap boiling.

Chapter 8. Dance
He blew his bugle & they braided snow.

21

Chapter 9. Town
Little leaf cups fastened across the rabbits.

Chapter 10. Time

The empty pail, jumping with excitement.

Chapter 11. Harvest.

A shock. Yellow jackets?

22

Chapter 12. Wonderful

Berries, purple-topped turnips and bubbles for

supper.

23

Chapter 13. Deer

He sprinkled salt. He took his gun, her little
chair. The sky climbed down out of the tree.

24

NEW CITY

SCOTT ABELS

BLAZEVOX[BOOKS]
Buffalo, New York

NEW CITY
by Scott Abels
Copyright 2015
Published by BlazeVOX [books]
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without
the publishers written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews.
Printed in the United States of America
Interior design and typesetting by Geoffrey Gatza
Cover Art by Vince Hazen
First Edition
ISBN: 978-1-60964-222-8
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015940922
BlazeVOX [books]
131 Euclid Ave
Kenmore, NY 14217
Editor@blazevox.org

publisher of weird little books

BlazeVOX [ books ]
blazevox.org
21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10

NEW CITY

Nebraska Fantastic

Nebraska Fantastic
I make a Nebraska mule
from a bucket of meth-size hail.
Think about the data and the line
and the big wigs that indicate
the Midwest and the West.
Out of sorrow,
entire wolves have been built.
This story is very scary
for the mountains and history.
I beef out my body.
I make a little heart
out of salt and an onion
peel and
pee on it.

15

Somebody pay me to watch this plane crash.

I go to Bomgaars shopping for pellets.
I am ready for anything
in the Professor job interview.
I imagine Nebraska.
Underpants, underpass.
I am the striding man
on Johnnie Walker.
The sky is skill
and the final interview is a fistfight.
Tremendous explosions of
what we know now.
Somebody pay me
to watch this
barn crash.

16

The only way to survive in this competitive environment

is to be a specialist.
I write that you have 30 minutes on the board,
and after 10 minutes
I write that you have 20 minutes.
They think I am punishing them.
Satanists, please do not write a list.
I come to teach college.
They say that Grimace from McDonalds
is a shake, and I dont know that.
Remember the Hamburglar
with his prison uniform
before he steals the hamburger.
This outlaw shit is getting out of hand.
A tiny seismicity machine in Nebraska.
Famous, come to this place.

17

This is the first time a faux hawk gets used.

I have my night class
draft homestead acts.
Jed does a flood control project, and
Clown of Vaseline has chapped lips
for years. There is pee flying into
a pail in the grain states.
I put some heartburn
into my soft water.
I say, students,
did you know this sock
used to be puppets?
Tomorrow, I will do a pun.
The daylight is coming
quickly on.

18

I wont go to work today.

I wont go to work.
During the commercial
for drinking coffee with Ronald Reagan
we brush our teeth in the river
with a hundred neighbors.
My trousers are just butterflies.
Your legs look long
like long eggs.
Fresh cut grass.
Something lucky follows,
and when you look
into his whipping cream eyes
they sell a lot of coffee.
You just cannot bomb mud.
There is work to do. Wake up now.

19

This is a chili making competition, not a chili eating competition.

Students, gravy isnt
an ingredient.
It is 10-15 minutes
of big secret.
The chili making competition will be
up to twenty percent of your grade.
An average can of stewed tomatoes
will give the deterioration you need.
Three or four
ingredients per dish.
Thats your strategy.
If you see a gray bird
with a red tail
call Julie.

20

Course he can write and he can read, but some problems

with word order.
Peter went out without talking.
As a teacher, I am going to call
my friend Million Meter Peter
to make him feel better.
At school they say to him,
you are Millimeter Peter.
You make terrible choices when
it comes to women. They say his picker
must be broken. This story helps explain
why Americans stare
at the river
looking for patterns.
M. M. Peter can make butter
out of hard water.

21

In a panic, the family scatters.

Fantasy Nebraska
is dying to leave.
A border of great ice comes apart.
In food, this is called
a deconstruction.
Take out all the things
that make it good,
and change them,
and bring these back together.
Bring back fun.
What kind of hot dog chef is there?
Good luck mean world.
I serve the students hot dogs,
and I feel good.

22

Doorbell somebody I will meet and remember.

Very much the first thing
a European man ever looked for in America
was your fountain for youth.
This was one of the oldest and worst
experiences of losing
the country of origins.
No one comes here to calm a crisis
in their faith. Exxon, Extend on.
I bet Texas looks like France.
Fake accents that are not a reference.
Students, you will find that fourth thing,
and thats what its about.
I wonder if we can do that
with this good life.

23

RAIN CHECK POEMS

Aaron Simon

BLAZEVOX[BOOKS]
Buffalo, New York

RAIN CHECK POEMS

by Aaron Simon
Copyright 2015
Published by BlazeVOX [books]
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without
the publishers written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews.
Printed in the United States of America
Interior design and typesetting by Geoffrey Gatza
Cover Art by Jessica Dessner
First Edition
ISBN: 978-1-60964-216-7
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015939195
BlazeVOX [books]
131 Euclid Ave
Kenmore, NY 14217
Editor@blazevox.org

publisher of weird little books

BlazeVOX [ books ]
blazevox.org
21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10

TOUCHED AND GONE

We searched the wrong places
forced air, equivalence
outside the appendix
in dispassionate leaves.
But time never stopped
recusing its deniers
and Decembers dusky wash
brought us to our knees.
The first vintages are here
all the way from Kentucky
Its key-stroke or bust
Light box blues.

13

SKY STORY
1.
I wont pretend to know the secret
its hard enough to think out loud
flying over the spotted coast
with no ideas of my own
Who said its harder
to give up love than life
the smallness and the greatness
like scattered parts of Icarus
that floated back to earth
Was it Cline
in a nod to the hpital
knowing one cant write with blood?
First do no harm

2.
Theres a lake in my imagination
only distinguished by its pinkness
I mustnt forget I didnt exist once
its the height of all sensation
But this is not my story
the airspace is controlled
small roads go to the lake
and those are real roads down there
My Titos Vodka is from Austin
Watsons Tonic is from Xiamen

14

follow the cloud procession

with half-shut eyes
its why I pick a window

15

BITTER HALF
The last word begins
like a poorly scored pill
I cant speak for you
cherry picking is one method
a frame within a frame
where the past is heavy with hidden costs
and you cant get out of the way
we dont need another hero
to return us to point A
the end of our transparency
is the beginning of composition

16

RAIN CHECK
for Bill Berkson

1. I left early to get a table

Instead I ate dirt.
2. I'm not late, I'm lying
naked in the street.
3. Recall the heart witness
tyrannical purple sky.
4. The principal feeling:
The sky is straining to pee.
5. O Fates! O Body!
Rude sirens cause a scene.
6. Lightning gown.
When I resurface I'll breathe.
7. Olive oil. Alum?
I smell wood-smoke. Or wool.
8. Red light distracted
I sleep, you dream.
9. O memory! You're here,
with license to grow roots!

17

10. Paragons, baize

night birds, heat.
11. Where was I? The dawn
air inside a basket.
12. Plan of circumstance
sidelined by a tree.
13. Outside the Palace,
with a bottle and a snack.
14. Forces collide. It happens.
I'll feel better once I eat.

18

NUDES
More or less a vandal
I was turning a corner
wet with footnotes
couched between noons
You were there but not really
inside the lacuna
peeling tape from windows
readying a squeegee
We must talk before we write
or read in front of mirrors
commiserate with bodies
still learning to be naked
I don't like it either
especially on a Wednesday
after listening to voicemails
from a guy named Thad
Light crawls across my desk
then rests on my calendar
sensuality for some
a mere punch-card for you

19

VERTIGINOUS DETOUR
Like I was saying, we the profligate
deserve every break we get
even now, dodging a storm
while dining al fresco under the bridge
And the wind carries your napkin away
My greatest fear is our only hope
that someday well learn
to sit up straight without speaking
Do you recognize this language?
Your eyes havent changed
since weve been here
I see myself in them
I look like a pigeon

20

SOME HISTORIES
for Jessica Dessner

The world was bigger then

she was older
Death was known
his name revered
Fevers werent made to be broken
Love flipped on with a switch
We walked to the movies
trees gave shade
brothels spilled their light
The Orpheum was filled with orphans!
Crocodiles wept
Hearts and rivers overflowed
Never dull or glac
Incense burned on corners
wherever men tossed dice
Present meant something
like the variegated moon
and the suns infidelity
unnoticed in a crowd
Magicians and clowns weren't mocked
Actors slept in tents
Cars were only for gods
The solemn ones without kids
Promise moved away from the cities
insistent on fair-trade
poets kept baseball to themselves
Beauty never pulled away

21

POEM FOR A ON INDEPENDENCE DAY

Are you my portmanteau?
Most mountains are nameless
pings from a giant
white cross in the smog
Donner Summit traffic
Youd be amused by the picnic sign
but youre in Paris
where its late
and symbols are tragic
Are you wearing black stockings
and nursing the void?
Drink up
then come home
the water is getting warmer

22

SKY STORY 2
Forgetting to breathe
in fluted light
she redacts the sky
high over the terminal
like a bronze bust of Mercury
grounded by design
What does she know
of takeoff and landing
where language becomes pressure
a story of clauses
both profound and inert?
This doesn't need to be rhetorical
fog gives the perfect cover
a classic disappearance
she'll make up the time in the air

23

HYPNIC JERK
The sensation starts
when I slice my thumb
opening a letter from Fannie
I don't know her
though she reveals the pain in anonymity
The thunder stops then it hails
the rent check bleeds
through my breast pocket
I'm lost in a roundabout
indecent to the naked eye
I pick up her tracks
outside the pharmacy
where a shrine has been extinguished
the natural world on index cards
reflected in oily puddles
What moves Fannie through the night
assuming she has substance
and are her words colorless when pure
like a fluorite?

24

TYPE VECU
for Genet

Ive seen you here before

ordering the counter
but I never stick around
for the eventual display
toothpicks flanking mints
buttressed by a notepad
a pencil (for color)
its charming point and line
you finally take a risk
disappear into the freezer
smoking with the grill cooks
as the brunch line grows and groans
and like you Im lost
party to a phrase
taking tips from strangers
clearing more than plates

25

OPPOSITE SIGNS
Its necessary for me
to dislike certain people
the ascetic especially
I cant do much for them
other than set the record straight
De Chirico was an accomplished dreamer
a man among puppets
the only bright-side
of a dimly lit room
Space affords curiosity
when the past becomes providence
something to read in the evening
just before turning in
This strange iconophilia
flings me into despair:
Fire God and Wooden Boy
embracing under the moon

26

NINE
1-126

BY ANNE TARDOS

BLAZEVOX [BOOKS]
BUFFALO, NEW YORK


NINE 1-126
By Anne Tardos
Copyright 2015
Published by BlazeVOX [books]
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without
the authors or the publishers written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews.
Printed in the United States of America
Interior design and typesetting by Geoffrey Gatza.
Cover art: Found by Anne Tardos, photographer unknown.
First Edition
ISBN: 978-1-60964-226-6
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015945384
BlazeVOX [books]
131 Euclid Ave
Kenmore, NY 14217
Editor@blazevox.org

publisher of weird little books

BlazeVOX [ books ]
blazevox.org
21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10

NINE WORDS PER LINE

NINE 1

Nine words per line and nine lines per stanza.

Pink fluffy underwater kangaroo fuzzy free manic rabbity thing.
Sense and nonsense similarly writers block clogged and unblocked.
Happiness nothing really blue so you can start living.
Laptop immersion fools your brain into thinking whatever needed.
Gazebo-tranquility-ragweed, condemned to live with the Self.
Find yourself totally isolated strict exile a common ploy.
Like you, Im impatient as we become each other.
Bright green primary features evolving societythe age thing.

21

BECAUSE SIGMUND SAID SO

NINE 2

Sleep being slept, a bird has something to say.

Reality flip flop artistic failure extremely hard to explain.
Foggy zendo vigilance gendergap understanding the desire to live.
Levitating underbelly slime, dengue fever ankle deep, vilification zigzag.
I love you too dearcount your chickens carefully.
Echo chamber plant life, cellular reality, yellow rent abatement.
Quiet knucklehead comradery a thousand hopes subject to change.
Infinity appears in repeated mirror images perceived as reflection.
Zealous devotion to waxwork sex, because Sigmund said so.

22

THE WAY OUR TWIGS BENT

NINE 3

Birthing velocitys snapshot-like nature, pushed to the extreme.

It is Racine not Montaigne for most lovers discourse.
To suddenly fall upon the old dialectic of enlightenment.
And what is masturbation if not a homosexual act?
A role to play must have a visible function.
We are being categorized in the realm of tonality.
A counterintuitive yearning for the quiescence of pre-birth.
The way our twigs bent is how we grow.
Empty thermos, unkissed nose tip, text rotation, marsupial nesting.

23

KERCHIEF LIGAMENT WRONG

NINE 4

Kerchief ligament pirouette darkness jettison mother of invention boy-toy.

Zany foxy smoke alarm tremolo evacuation juniper ginger dimple.
Zinguer je je zinguer je, mich dich Villa nicht.
Every thought first thought in the visible universe, strange.
Zendo cushion run for it go. Long ago Labrador.
Swift recollection tired Daphne just like our overheated relationshit.
Something has changed I felt giddy I felt sick.
Since women. Forget it. No way. Barbaric and inhumane.
Learning a lot here: Im wrong in being wrong.

24

DJIBOUTI LAPTOP MIND

NINE 5

Djibouti laptop polyrhythmic stevedore imagination for example people die.

Yeah yeah yeah listen to the music around you.
Plagiarize and cannibalize yourself by mining your own work.
Counter-sadistic anti-suffering vraiment triste fach becoming real.
Dont think for a minute that you dont exist.
First, get used to the sound of my voice.
Bob Perelman knows what Maisie knew about her parents.
Katy Lederer didnt have money. She was a poet.
Mitch Highfill keeps a pet moth on his mind.

25

DIRTY LOVE YOU

NINE 6

Dirty birthday, suntan-benevolence of impenetrable and incendiary nature.

Vibrations and particularized energy formations make some sense somehow.
Mind-independent reality: Haleys Comet exists even if we dont.
Hold your lovers hand, and tomorrow will be yesterday.
When in ill thoughts again, stop everything but breathing.
Life is cool. Nothing need be done about it.
Jewish reconstructionism in Mamaroneck, why just a minute ago.
When out of context, nothing will ever make sense.
Now I understand you because now I love you.

26

MIX OF FUNK AND GEMATRIA

NINE 7

Mix of funk and freejazz Miles Davis musical response.

Lucretius saw the universe as something having a nature.
Bernstein: Estrangement is our home groundYukon bullfrog flu.
Barely arrived, it seems, and almost time to leave.
If narrowness were the price of intensitynot necessarily.
Adeena Karasick textacy and her rules of textual engagement.
Segue Zen coffee house Segue haunted lightning Segue offerings.
Place holders and temporary solutions require tolerance trust imagination.
Rachel Zolf Israeli-Palestinian Lesbian writing methods her Gematria.

27

FILLING WHAT I DONT KNOW

NINE 8

Filling what is emptyit does keep getting better.

Dubious fanatical relationship-focus brilliant thinking interesting, I write.
Cleverly observed in retrospect via dark tunnels to New Jersey.
Honesty because its easier and honesty because its easier.
All of a sudden we cant be far behind.
Together we can be keen, intelligent, well-meaning, and visible.
Like two shadows, never to be overtaken by anyone.
I quietly become agitated like a storm-tossed ship.
Now Ill confess something to you: I dont know.

28

HOW TOTALLY BATHWATER

NINE 9

How totally awful. How can anyone be so callous?

That cute smile and that glimmer in ones eyes.
Bill Luoma uses the word raw as a noun.
Just look at all that raw covering his neurasthenia.
How his neurons respond to stimuli with exaggerated force.
Let me listen to me, and not to them.
Thinking of you brings me to my knees with longing.
Life could be seen as some kind of spasm.
Smitten in mid-spill the baby and the bathwater.

Gertrude Stein

29

FIRST YOU PRACTICE THIS MINUTE

NINE 10

First you practice nonviolence on yourself then on others.

All events that occur are caused by earlier events.
An idea for a form originates from another form.
Some might say, being alive means defending a form.
These phone calls are strong enthusiastic and uniquely restrictive.
Anguish chagrin discomfort despair grief depression guilt and remorse.
A group of gentle friends and their mixed emotions.
Is Nothing the inertia of Something, asks a friend.
Im confessing that I love you, now, this minute.

Friedrich Hlderlin

30

SUBDIVIDING SPACE AND TIME

NINE 11

We try subdividing space and time into infinite segments.

Our apparently random behavior fits within a deterministic system.
We run around like titillated and tantalized windup toys.
We feel and we know that we are eternal.
If we understood infinity, suicide would have to fail.
We know nothing as uncertain as a sure thing.
Feeling happy can be as gentle as sipping water.
Even a hedonist must have some concern for others.
How they managed to dirty the very word liberal.

Baruch Spinoza

31

MARXIST BEAUTIFUL
NINE 12

Marxist writing, Marxist writing, womans work is never done.

My view of reality is vague if Im vague.
Why cant scientific research ever reach a perfect truth?
The purest moment of perversion and its clandestine sites.
Tranquil moment in the life of a northern town.
I look at the page and I start writing.
Dog drives carbreaks the ruleswrinkle, Volvo, sniff.
I loved you in the middle of the afternoon.
Careys 6-word poem: Oh Mom, it is so beautiful.

Steve Carey

32

PEACE IS THE WAY

NINE 13

Theres no way to peacepeace is the way.

Miles Davis says play what you dont know.
Everything we seek is guided by what is sought.
Sources of my knowledge are sensation, memory, introspection, reason.
Every thought is first thought, and also best thought.
I feel obligated to live as excellently as possible.
A phony Somali passport and a screechy mythological gargoyle.
This elasticity is overrated, so dont mention it again.
Dripping with compassion, oh honey, I love you, too.

A.J. Muste

33

OBEDIENT DAUGHTERS
NINE 14

Obedient daughters eat their dinners aloneand harshly isolated.

Kaufmans amputation pornography, she was exactly like her Stein.
Her sleepy sea urchin could only lose ten pounds.
Miltons Paradise Lost in the realm of spinal amalgamation.
The musculature of a daydreaming animal lost in thoughts.
Retallacks magic rule of nine and the decimal system.
Umlaut behavior and the massive clat of somnambulant cowboys.
The bio mimicry of elliptical ice terriers parallel curves.
Terrifying and reciprocal alterity actually happening in real time.

34

ALL LIFE HAS BEEN A POEM

NINE 15

All life has been a preparation for this moment.

I look at the canvas and I start painting.
Now I am a solitary loner, barely denying it.
If silence is a form of speech, then speech . . .
Demand openness and open doors with another open door.
Blessings will come again soon, lets graciously not complain.
Every moment matters, we were lovely, the lights on.
California Dexedrine Las Palmas, I will not be sick.
Stop-the-car-near-the-ocean-goodbye-forever poem.

35

AN ESSAY CONCERNING ZIMBUDAH

NINE 16

An essay concerning human understanding John Locke volume two.

The supposition that words have a certain evident signification.
Ideas, also of substances, must be made of things.
A gentle and kind orangutan represents my personal death.
Avoiding constriction of internal formations by limiting ones options.
How two different beliefs occur in two different heads.
We eventually calm down without understanding the mechanism involved.
Yentsia bakoondy eeleck, ta-dee-doo-dah, bentsey la cozy fen-fen.
Bit baloon timi zin zah, timi zin zah, zimbudah.

36

IM A CONDUIT BETWEEN OTHER SELVES

NINE 17

Im a conduit between my surroundings and my output.

We all operate simultaneously and together on different levels.
Thoughts clear enough to land on paper do so.
Understand me as a continuity rather than a changelessness.
Im going to the store, do you need anything?
A slumbering kangaroo who is capable of wordless thinking.
Nothing compares to the bubbling of a blubby blabber.
One thing is certain: use it and lose it.
Invent a Self who will then invent other Selves.

37

CERTAIN FORMS ARE BECOMING

NINE 18

Certain forms are available to us only in discourse.

The thing is that we all just fall apart.
Overexposed concretized language, primary writing, a caress was enough.
Happiness is just one of those words people use.
Intense project feminist critique progressively pissed them off greatly.
Was it a business move reinforcing hierarchies, Rons blog.
Esteem recognition salute honor rave regard appreciation notice value.
Imagine the intersection where language and reality might meet.
Fluctuating life caught in the endless flow of becoming.

38

BIENNIAL: POEMS

MICHAEL JOYCE

BLAZEVOX[BOOKS]
Buffalo, New York

Biennial: poems
by Michael Joyce
Copyright 2015
Published by BlazeVOX [books]
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without
the publishers written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews.
Printed in the United States of America
Interior design, cover design and typesetting by Geoffrey Gatza
Cover Art by Michael Joyce
First Edition
ISBN: 978-1-60964-215-0
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015937799
BlazeVOX [books]
131 Euclid Ave
Kenmore, NY 14217
Editor@blazevox.org

publisher of weird little books

BlazeVOX [ books ]
blazevox.org
21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10

4.3.12
To start with two lines then in black and white
and continue to see a way in them.

4.4.12
Across the street the dog barks at something beyond
the line demarcated by the invisible electric fence

4.5.12
How to ease these excitements of mind
the crow now gone mute, the morning empty

4.6.12
They talk after breakfast in the room below
while I have slipped away to this.

11

4.7.12
Seeking to widen the horizon that divides itself
between what is called the true and what the visible

4.8.12
ostre comes up the hill this morning in her holiday attire:
platinum hair over striped chemise, wobbly on high heels

4.9.12
In the blur the far-off figure
fading or coming into view

4.10.12
My mother died this day three decades ago,
how much more here can I be than this moment?

4.11.12
Still life: white brick rectangle of Breuers Ferry House
afloat against a backdrop of dark fir and cedar.

4.12.12
The patient blink of the cursor a mark now that the irrevocable
can be reversed by something less tactile than erasure was once.
12

4.13.12
settles despite complaint
poem (rain) against itself

4.14.12
Curiosity an irritation, the wayward, the way words
come to you and go away a narrative, a way to go

4.15.12
The space between seen differently each day, or so I wrote before
my assault makes the trapped wasp thrash between the panes

4.16.12
this awaiting, this
momentary calm

4.17.12
The first day of an illness as if setting out on a journey
hoping to meet yourself upon the way.

4.18.12
desire destabilizes form in its longing
what flower shall I name as an instance?
13

4.19.12
Two women laughing at the intersection outside,
I go to the window but do not see them.

4.20.12
Add a parenthesis and the word, this, is
housekeeping, the house where I live

4.21.12
Weekend noise of machines contra naturam
retracing imperceptible margins

4.22.12
Begin with an article, an action follows
the stone amulets in my pocket I keep losing

4.23.12
A riddle is a form for this difference:
is what a fast slows a thing?

4.24.12
A carved stone bear, its back arched, an invoice, a blue cloth for polishing a screen. Yeats
as list maker, P. Muldoon. what life isnt dailywhat poetry isnt everyday? B. Mayer.

14

4.25.12
Such silence
le bien-tre

4.26.12
I think myself
alone here in my body.

4.27.12
Here the heart of things
is the heart of things

4.28.12
vagrant silk of the dreamers dissilience
issues forth from the hospital night

4.29.12
my resurrection spent
in stage business

4.30.12
Qu'est-ce qui s'est pass? marks that
which puts both itself and what is in question

15

5.1.12
a light rain garlands the lilacs
the girls once wove into crowns

5.2.12
grey Providence
a siren disappears into its own echo

5.3.12
maiden cellists lip coll'arco, smile suppressed,
whilst she waits to pluck the satyrs score

5.4.12
a week exactly after a walk-through of his own passing
he remarks his dead fathers birthday

5.5.12
the here, the the, this this, the mark of this inescapable rhythm that
Creeley and Basho both trod better long before

5.6.12
tell how far are
you here where you are

16

5.7.12
nowhere yet the lack of separation; I recall a photograph
placid pewter sea and overcast, horizons bead a solder flux

5.8.12
he bid me come
the man on the shore

5.9.12
in the parable the servant waits outside the kitchen in the shade of the thin tree in the courtyard
its dark pool already shrinking under the suns ascent, shadow swallowed into its vortex

5.10.12
last night and this morning
come differently to a man who has sons

5.11.12
abidance and collimation
inflected, interstitial light

5.12.12
It is not true to say I have walked back to smooth the stones along this path before going on
for here are neither path nor stones, nor a before or after moving
17

5.13.12
four copies of a journal publishing three poems arrive
where they lay on the table, crisp and as yet unread

5.14.12
as we sleep, houses and in storms, trees according to Transtrmer,
wander from their places, for a time distorting this platted village
5.15.12
he peers into the screen as if a well
your name scribbling itself upon its surface

5.16.12
ache of dawn follows the clamoring of birds
rain lingering, moan of a long train resounding

5.17.12
deformation itself a pattern discovered
dcollage and appliqu this much alike

5.18.12
stone drill rattles on iron treads
iron pterodactyl pecking bedrock

18

5.19.12
is this involute rhythm a form of me
or the metric of a studied symmetry

5.20.12
today we commence in sunlight
leon: tous se termine

5.21.12
emptied caravanserai
deserted carnevale

5.22.12
Taihao, fashioned from baby's first cut hair, Shuxu, Wang Xizhis rat whisker landscape brush,
Shanma, of mountain horse mane, Dong Langmao, winter wolf, good for forming chrysanthemums

5.23.12
a name in a poem Andrew said
carries great weight with it

5.24.12
in the morning Times comes word
American poetry has changed overnight

19

5.25.12
mourning
dove, dove, dove

5.26.12
not quite able to awake after stupid dreams
unable to fold a fabric squarely, still there on return

5.27.12
the faces behind the headlights along the highway at midnight remain
now that the early morning fog has dissipated, lovers gone home

5.28.12
cellphone as an ontological device, txt to&from a body not ones own,
in service of a constructed self, future a fleeting transcription, lost
5.29.12
alone with ones ambitions
as if in a room of strangers

5.30.12
distant motor ceases
finch song remains

20

5.31.12
a lone poppy this spring
not visible from here

6.1.12
the red of it
seen today

6.2.12
once long ago watching sky writing disperse behind a twisting bi-plane,
hand to brow a visor against the glare, Jones Beach windless below

6.3.12
empty thump of car doors as the church-goers disembark
then make their way in sunlight to enter the wooden ark

6.4.12
where have I gone I ask at the station
the platform is empty, sky threatening
6.5.12
draw a line from nowhere to here
then another, parallel, at a distance following logically from the first

21

6.6.12
a rail ticket to a far shore comes from SNCF in an email
I would be as a nun dedicating her morning to absence

6.7.12
wait quietly for
the hour to pass

6.8.12
sweeps the stone floor then sweeps it again
two separate acts for the one who attends

6.9.12
in her dream she says she discovers what seems an unknown fact:
that one can be with her and at the same time be somewhere else

6.10.12
where doubt locates itself is
what differs this from prayer

6.11.12
A day that begins backwards continues so throughout:
lines written on the previous day's account debit decollage horaire

22

6.12.12
Au lit like Proust, but in the wrong district and a century after, in a two star hotel
Plus heureux however, even waking at six to that number and its doubles

6.13.12
The tourists hurry along the Seine in the in-between hour through cold rain,
Notre Dame dark, bullies taunt one another between bank and bateau-mouche

6.14.12
Rabbi on a bicycle, son in a basket, along rue Saint Paul
Clack of heels on the cobblestone collonade of rue du Prvt

6.15.12
Wake again trying to recall
how to tend to one self

6.16.12
After a thump and the howl the plump woman in pink lay on the rainy pavement of Rue Rivoli,
the taxi driver argued his innocence in the night, the blond witness having crossed to shriek at him.

6.17.12
Dark-eyed Ariane, the utterly pure, presides behind the bar along Parmentier
squeezing orange juice and making caf crme for her quipe of brusque devotees
23

6.18.12
angry for another
anger for oneself

6.19.12
The afternoon an expanse between appetite and hunger
walking in the dust and sunshine of Brooklyn piers

6.20.12
upriver awaiting the boat to nowhere, the tide favorable,
offering brunch to the aging sailor and his bride

6.21.12
outside the heat
no escaping the heat

6.22.12
dream a damp cavern beneath a stone walkway through which chinks of sky and sunlight:
life, I knew, my heart filled with gratitude and loss in witness of even these few fragments

6.23.12
rakes wave pattern
adds back the sea

24

6.24.12
a day lost in the arithmetic
solstice as simple as that

6.25.12
A case of mistaken identity: Joe Goulds pages, not Joe Brainards, in Estlins notebooks
among the daily studies of Marion I catalogued that summer in the Patchin Place attic

6.26.12
it is impossible to ready everything
for where we are eventually going

6.27.12
river gilt in last nights twilight through a thin curtain of bamboo,
then just beyond the cedar fence a fawn haunch passes slowly below

6.28.12
the silence of animals
no different than this

6.29.12
staticky Telemann for two clarinets as I wait on hold
until a woman in Maharashtra wishes me good morning

25

6.30.12
for the djinn of vestibules
the day is a garden

7.1.12
In my brother's poem our mother celebrated New Year's on her birthday in July before we were born
Now 30 years after she died, she waves from en liten segelbt this sommarmorgon on Lake Malaren

7.2.12
Duncans question of where the sun is vis vis each poem
vivid here this Swedish morning, distant shore through trees

7.3.12
In the rossengrden the black-capped parus major flit among the columns
snatching crumbs among the woven reeds of wicker armchairs

7.4.12
What and by or to what are these birds called
who put the light to sleep these hours after midnight?

7.5.12
sommormorgon light floods the edges of the shades at four a.m.
and I don my sleep mask to return till drmmen maskeraden

26

7.6.12
the scent of a lioness lingers
among the sleeping fig trees

7.7.12
puts words before his desires, as on an altar
or the way the stitch domesticates the dithyramb

7.8.12
all night the rain in the cour intrieure upon the green tables
a Swedish perturbation spinning southward sur Lle-de-France

7.9.12
along the Gironde the mourning doves sing their low desire in Charentaise
as a choir of ten thousand hlianthes turn their faces vers le crescendo du matin

7.10.12
swallows swoop and twist in the garden courtyard after rain
the buzz of a moto unraveling the morning along the estuaire

7.11.12
Port-Maubert to Royon and back in a crooked line at 00:31 a.m.
the creatures in order: hedgehog, owl, hawk, two rabbits, two cats, lone fox

27

7.12.12
Think to draw a line, top to bottom, upon the travelogue,
then live on either side of the place this mirror describes

7.13.12
Friday le treizime
Bon chance everyone

7.14.12
Deux grands cigognes circle the bull en point in the field on the edge
of the marsh near La Grange des Marais this holiday morning

7.15.12
juste avant minuit
mugit le silence
just before midnight
the silence roars

7.16.12
Dome of blue serene above the reeds of the marais
at the end of the chemin yawns the rivers expanse

28

MY SECRET WARS
OF 1984

DENNIS ETZEL, JR.

ARTWORK BY ELAINE M. RODRIGUEZ

BLAZEVOX[BOOKS]
Buffalo, New York

My Secret Wars of 1984

by Dennis Etzel, Jr.
Copyright 2015
Published by BlazeVOX [books]
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without
the publishers written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews.
Printed in the United States of America
Interior Design and Typesetting by Geoffrey Gatza
Cover and Interior Art by Elaine M. Rodriguez
First Edition
ISBN: 978-1-60964-223-5
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015944621
BlazeVOX [books]
131 Euclid Ave
Kenmore, NY 14217
Editor@blazevox.org

publisher of weird little books

BlazeVOX [ books ]
blazevox.org
21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10

[envoi]

366 sentences as 1984a leap-year progression as "the progress

of a line or sentence, or a series of lines or sentences, has spatial
properties as well as temporal properties." 1984's secret wars
raged inside comic books, movies, dungeons, and dragons
"pressing back against the pressure of reality" of our
neighborhood against my mother coming out.

17

[A couple of amazing things]

A couple of amazing things just happened. A large TV

transmission tower collapses under the weight of the ice, along
with many trees and large tree branches. A mark of their life
without protest, without rage. A nightmare on Elm Street.

18

[A phrase of absolutism]

A phrase like "I advocate" does not imply the kind of absolutism
that is suggested by "I am". A tool / made out of thought. A
totalitarian dictatorship over my childhood is over, so now what?
A transition from middle to high school, from thirteen to
fourteen. A transition that crosses through the unknown X.

19

[A wave of sheer force]

A wave of sheer force. Accustomed to Topeka's customs. After a

radioactive spider bites me, I develop superpowers of fragility.
All molecules obey my every whim. All through the night. All
week, I've been seeing my bear in my dreams. Almost paradise.

21

[Alphabetized to represent]

Alphabetized to represent the mind's organization of what is

found. Although dungeon or wilderness adventures are fun,
consider the characters' reasons for being. America has a way of
blanketing out things. An aftershock of the aftermath. An
alphabetized collection of comics, role-playing adventures, and
music on tapes, as representation. An inker inks over the debris
adding details.

22

[An unspent lunch money]

An unspent lunch money becomes a sustenance of comic books.

And a number of pages were excised by that agency head there,
the man in charge, and he sent it on up here to CIA, where more
pages were excised before it was printed, says Ronald Reagan.
And as soon as we have an investigation and find out where any
blame lies for the few that did not get excised or changed, we
certainly are going to do something about that, says Ronald
Reagan. And as the heroes watch, they are watched in turn. And
each evening the pace back home matches the sun's setting. And
I start high school at my lowest. And now we are putting up a
defense of our own, says Ronald Reagan.

23

[And suddenly somebody]

And suddenly somebody says, "Oh, it's got to be up there, and it's
Star Wars," and so forth, says Ronald Reagan. And the
experience of using it, which includes the experience of
understanding it, either as speech or as writing, is inevitably
active. And I fail to protect
from the night.

24

[Anywhere I walk]

Anywhere I walk I wear my Walkman. Apparently, any

manipulation of these controls activates this apparatus, which
senses the intent of its user and accomplishes what is desired.
Are we ourselves? As a matter of fact, there are some pretty
scientific and solid figures about how much space there still is in
the world and how many more people we can have, says Ronald
Reagan.

25

[As a scholar]

As a scholar of origin stories, I research each superhero I know.

Assembly is my favorite, moving around the room of others. Beat
Street. Because we have language we find ourselves in a peculiar
relationship to the objects, events, and situations which
constitute what we imagine of the world. Because we're off in a
strange land, up to our ears in a little secret war that may decide
the fate of the universe. Better to say nothing and hope he slowly
discovers the truth for himself or hides from it forever.

26

[Between women]

Between women and men, sexism is most often expressed in the

form of male domination, which leads to discrimination,
exploitation, or oppression. Between women, male supremacist
values are expressed through suspicious, defensive, competitive
behavior. Bordered labyrinth, with dragons to guard the
boundary, as my fighter centers. Breakin'.

27

[But if guilt]

But if guilt is established, whoever is guilty we will treat with that

situation then, and they will be removed, says Ronald Reagan.
But no one knows whether Armageddon, those prophecies mean
that Armageddon is a thousand years away or day after
tomorrow, says Ronald Reagan. But these things do not affect the
adventure or the game. But when you keep star-warring itI
never suggested where the weapons should be or what kind, says
Ronald Reagan.

28

[By drawing a panel]

By drawing a panel for my story, a box surrounds me. By level 25,

the "home base" has become either a strongly fortified castle
complex or secret stronghold. By using unarmed combat rules,
characters are free to perform acts of heroic fantasywrestling
huge opponents to the ground, or escaping from imprisonment
when no weapons are available. Challenging sexist oppression is
a crucial step in the struggle to eliminate all forms of oppression.

29

[Closes]

Closes. Cold wars everywhere. Comic books continued my

dialogue with language as I sought my story within costumes.
Coming out of a bad marriage, my mother comes out. Crackling
up / like a wall of prairie fire / in a somersault silver / to climb
blank air. Cruel summer. Curled over for the walk back home,
my pages touch the landscape until, hooked by the wind, they
detach from my staples.

30

[Dancing in the dark]

Dancing in the dark. Daydreams of fighting supervillains

surround while unsure of those around me. Delay: The victim
automatically loses initiative for the next round. Destruction is
widespread throughout the city, with Gage Park in Central
Topeka especially hard hit. Do they know it's Christmas? Doctor,
doctor. Dune. Dungeon adventures are common, and a few short
wilderness journeys usually occur.

31

[Each illustration]

Each illustration holds potential for intensity, for intensities that

require several word balloons. Each moment stands under an
enormous vertical and horizontal pressure of information,
potent with ambiguity, meaning-full, unfixed, and certainly
incomplete. Each superhero has an origin story for
misunderstanding what makes a power. Each time, the image is
more distinct. Each written text may act as a distinction, may be a
distinction. Elections with margins.

32

[Electric dreams]

Electric dreams. Electricity is not restored in some areas for over

a week. Entangle: The victim cannot attack, cast spells, or move
until a Saving Throw is successful. Even words in storage, in the
dictionary, seem frenetic with activity, as each individual entry
attracts to itself other words as definition, example, and
amplification. Eyes without a face. Fans, especially young fans
often suggested to me "one big story with all the heroes and all
the villains in it," so I proposed that.

33

[Feminism defined]

Feminism defined as a movement to end sexist oppression

enables women and men, girls and boys, to participate equally in
revolutionary struggle. Fits and starts, half stars. For cover, he
holds up his indestructible shield. For me, a central activity of
poetic language is formal. For monster summers / slammed wind
/ on weighted bough.

34

LIMITLESS TINY BOAT

RUTH DANON

BLAZEVOX[BOOKS]
Buffalo, New York

Limitless Tiny Boat by Ruth Danon

Copyright 2015
Published by BlazeVOX [books]
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced
without the publishers written permission, except for brief
quotations in reviews.
Printed in the United States of America
Interior design and typesetting by Geoffrey Gatza
Cover art: I See You by Gary Buckendorf
First Edition
ISBN: 978-1-60964-209-9
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015937802
BlazeVOX [books]
131 Euclid Ave
Kenmore, NY 14217
Editor@blazevox.org

publisher of weird little books

BlazeVOX [ books ]
blazevox.org
21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10

IF THE POEM ANNOUNCED ITS ARRIVAL

on a limitless, tiny boat,
would you demand white linen
on the table? a glass of water?

15

I.

THE ARCHITECTURE OF WIND

SOMETHING LARGER THAN THE SELF I DONT

UNDERSTAND
Going out is something a boat does
leaving a harbor. I cannot explain
many thingsfor sure not why the boat
goes out. It is often this way for me, and
the harbor is as puzzling a place as any
with its ropes and anchors and greasy piers.
It smells of mortality, dead fish against
pilings and salt and always the impulse
to flee. The waves go chop chop against
the sides of the boat. The predictable storm
ensues. No one remarks on the loneliness
of disembarking, arriving at night, way too
late, in a shadowed town and no one
thereglad and waiting.

19

OUTWARD
1.
I would never build a house
on a steep inaccessible cliff
nor in a solitary desert
neither upon the eggs of
birds nor upon a field of
acorns.
I did not say this exactly. I said
I am alone. I am ashamed.
I said I am so thirsty I
want something to drink. And
I said there are small shells
crushed beneath my feet. And I
also said one simple thing.
(Never to go against the
grain.)
Think of this as a random series of facts.
The real trick is to say it out as flat
as possible. Really the trick is to estimate
from here, the journey outward.

20

2.
We begin at a fixed point,
deprived of light.
The tradeoff
begins at the limits.
Desire is a random fact.
Think of it. Desire
is interfering with me.

21

3.
I threw the china out the window
and the glasses and cups and all
the pictures of him I had
around the house. I laid out
the tarot cards and the tea.
I hopped on a slow boat, gave it
a ghost of chance to get there.
(All white stone is softer than red.)

22

4.
Consider the simple tools.
The ax. The ax
making its own handle.
(Never to go against the grain.)
I do
not understand you
or your alternatives
I said primly.
(I am pinching my pennies.
Eventually
this house must fall and fall.)
(Mousetalk)

23

5.
Under the old paint, brass
and glass, wood, the original
gleam. Light and air.

First
I strip everything.
Then
I paint the walls.
I have lost something I said
and I want it back.
I did not say it, but it is true
that doors should imitate the windows.
From whatever side
we take in light
we ought to have free
sight of the sky.

24

6.
I could simply start,
could count myself
lucky knowing
that everything tends
to a particular moment.
How to account for it
without falsifying the record.
Talking is talking.

25

7.
I can take
a hard line when I have to.
I is not a name.
A name not claimed
is no name. I will argue
the point since I have
no choice.
Something is there,
a boat in the water
just beyond the horizon.
You cant feel the boat moving
but somehow it gets there.

26

8.
A vision. The colors
of an attitude. The sea
rolling up. The boat
on its path. We are
neither of us
where we think.
You, the one who listens, you
are a steady customer
and you wait with your hands
cradling the cup of coffee.
Truth is in details.
Trust me, you said suddenly,
trust me.
(What am I building?
What house is this
that we must work
so hard?)
And that great stretch
of the water still to cross.
But heres this. Acute.
This certainty.
Every other possibility
has exhausted itself.

27

archipelago counterpoint

Marcia Arrieta

BLAZEVOX[BOOKS]
Buffalo, New York

archipelago counterpoint by Marcia Arrieta

Copyright 2015
Published by BlazeVOX [books]
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without
the publishers written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews.
Printed in the United States of America
Interior design and typesetting by Geoffrey Gatza
First Edition
ISBN: 978-1-60964-214-3
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015937800
BlazeVOX [books]
131 Euclid Ave
Kenmore, NY 14217
Editor@blazevox.org

publisher of weird little books

BlazeVOX [ books ]
blazevox.org
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quest for/adaptive to environment

wild domestic like sun bear polar bear and how they grew
controlled free modernism in a sewing machine meadow tundra
upholster intellects like couches books boundaries to climb
trees claws sharp ripping seams tracing patterns cut the edges
berries sweet grass insects nourishing warm against the body passages
into quilts quiet rivers with salmon existential rosemary threads
which cannot be knotted

19

intermixed

nebulous insurgent
you dream your life
into invariables
tidal friction
astronomical friends
illegible
you plant trees
the days are void
in conversation
you find a postcard
Timeless Auras collages,
sumi paintings, paper sculptures
thereafter solemn
books become situations
at any moment you might disappear
intuitive
a thread will unravel
sword, shield, owl, rose

20

to some extent
*
the letters seem to be disappearing
*
my feet become the roots of the oak
*
i am looking for a satisfactory conversation & then a bit of silence
*
oblique seizures in an attempt for consciousness
*
the designs are in a shattered clock
*
bewilder imagine enclaves sober
*
there are gaps
*
a strange person made of bags stranded on the freeway encourages me to move on

21

the bookcases need cleaning or sometime life is exhausting

outlaw
document walks stunned embankments cathedrals outside dust
exclamation displaced offshore wildfire contingent outline peace
nomad existence in the dunes in the castle bridges & windows
landscape paintings monasteries abbeys remember astronomy

architect
holes envision eclectic trees translucent isles rocks winds & calm
captured patterns designs thus preventing build the light infinite
reconstruct possibilities rethink mountains inside the square
cyclical motion the poetics the construction imagination memory

22

tenuous the threads

clock threads indeterminate language wash the clothes balance the socks
the reindeer is tied to a lamppost
equalize the perimeter between/around two heads semblance of eagles
semblance of pines white blanket in winter
extreme the responsibilities green light red light blockades tapestries
wander down tranquil equate absence with denial unravel illumination

23

reading muraki on a calendar. trying to understand time.

*
the light comes in slowly. gradually. not always.
subtle realization the surreal. dreams. desires. instincts. dramas. survival.
*
we go shopping for trees.
*
birds & thoughts.
the owl is hidden on the island.
*
the rim of the world.

the street of miracles.

the wind tunnel.

a wireless grid.

*
travels within/
travels without.
*
through the empty corridors.

24

clocks & dragonflies.

small drawings of time.

within the cries of the subway

bach. "the elf king."
water sprite.
how does complication
exactly work?
could you define your life?
remember to plan for your next trip.
imagine mountains. gardens. walls lined with books.
avoid trifling conversations.
know the island & the gyrfalcon.
exit to the sea.

25

refraction ideal
Refraction of a Spherical Wave at a Plane Surface
Robert E. Wood
Physical Optics
the container of pink paint is upside down.
Suppose a spherical wave originating at 0 to be refracted at the plane
surface AB.
blue waves on canvas. yellow suns.
The evolute of the hyperbola is the caustic of the refracted wave, in this case
virtual of course.
the red paintbrush floats.
wave-front. radiant point.
concept time. concept space. unconventional.

26

letters

paper boxes. cabooses. long rides in the night.

today rilke appearshis face collaged as a mirror.
we discuss the earth in spring. metaphor reflection.
short journeys of the soul. abstraction the ordinary
quite unordinary. like trees in a meteor shower
or old poems found in a book of art.

27

walking through content

pleasure hidden art words falling water theorems & abstractions
zero times two silent configurations analyze dust threshold sun
far think something speak internal/external annihilating juxtaposition
clouds without moons taste one another conscious to leap disguised
sheltered window & light edge dynamic symmetry water balancing
terraces & grace rhythm & spirit the twigs the leaves the feathers & stone

28

parallel forces & their effect

orange butterfly on the planes wing.
the wind. the waves.
old footsteps. the japanese poet & italian philosopher.
alleys of glass. alleys of broken books.
are the eclipses of the sun & moon
the result of shadows?
real. inverted.
real. virtual.
farther away.
behind the mirror.
bird footsteps.
refraction.
pebbles. sticks.
branches.

29

one red blossom/moving clouds

i read of intrigue. runes. the clock manual appears. i have no clock.
dandelions & winter. the origin of spectra. there are questions i wish to ask you .
the answers are unimportant. we play word games. nothing compared to the wind.
or the snow even. last time i saw youyou were surrounded by incredibly bright light.
perhaps it was because the corridor was dark & deserted. was the apple left in front of
my door symbolic?
my head has become a daffodilit is bent by the force of the rain. i have no idea
what spectra is. perhaps spectra is a secret, which combines all & nothing. are we
an experimental test? you mentioned surreal. i mentioned light. in between there is
sculpture & a thousand poems & drawings. the trees bend in wind.
Studies of other spectra by Kayser and Rung, Rydberg and others showed that the lines
could be sorted out into overlapping series, converging to heads on the short wavelength side. Some of the series had a common point of convergence.*
like a ginkgo leaf or snowflake carried in a birds mouth.
*from Physical Optics by Robert Wood

30

revolution
pensive chaos. love.
indeterminate.
we travel to the andes.
einstein speaks of how the starlight bends around the sun.
i wind a strand of hair around my finger.
you look for a yellow pencil.
squares triangles paths
around & through we must travel.

31

avalanches & snowdrifts

minutes & hours
snowflakes
where is my golden ratio book?
tonight i will go in search of the moon

32

continual
rationals
irrationals
poetry
space
islands
iceblink:
a glare in the sky
over an ice field
imagine
sun

33

a broken pencil. taped.

*
i read about the string theory & gems from madagascar. there are blue
stars pasted here & there. i remember x/y. descartes attempts to speak
to me. i do not understand. is cognition necessary? we never speak.

34

ALL BEAUTIFUL & USELESS

POEMS / C. KUBASTA

BLAZEVOX[BOOKS]
Buffalo, New York

All Beautiful & Useless

by C. Kubasta
Copyright 2015
Published by BlazeVOX [books]
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without
the publishers written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews.
Printed in the United States of America
Interior design and typesetting by Geoffrey Gatza
Cover art and interior images: Mollie Oblinger, diverted to fructify, detail
Cover art photo: Daryl Stinchfield
First Edition
ISBN: 978-1-60964-228-0
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015947879
BlazeVOX [books]
131 Euclid Ave
Kenmore, NY 14217
Editor@blazevox.org

publisher of weird little books

BlazeVOX [ books ]
blazevox.org
21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10

An Extant Version of this Text

Casus Belli [Redacted]

My father calls me bitch sometimes:
It means great cutting comeback or you got me or even glad to be the target of that
attack.
We are very close, my father & me. We are each an author of an autobiography, whose
adventures [hew] closely [ . . .] but [are] blessed with the gap that inevitably arrives between
the present-self scribbler and [hir] various tawdry or gallant past selves,
a chasm also known as humor, irony, or forgetfulness.

Apparently, that high-styled, poufed & pompadoured poodle, who so easily dominates the
dog show industry achieves its blistering white with talcum powder. In fact, each and every
dog with a showy white patch has been so dusted.

Heres something: my fathers new wife makes him look sober by comparison.
Heres another: my seven-year-old half-brother desperately trying to get away from both of
them.
Im afraid he will ask me questions and that I will tell the truth.
At some point, I began calling my father Father. Like me, he appreciates the formality.

An appoggiatura is a little discord, little grace note, little descant impulse, off-key, before the
melody resolves into a main note. Apparently, its the reason people well up during songs.
In the appoggiatura, we long for resolution. Once resolved, we ache for the appoggiatura.

An apocryphal story: the time he put my little brother, two years old, into the tub, filled it
up, then went down to the basement to rip boards on the table saw [To rip boards on the
table saw? He cant build a birdfeeder. But sometimes you need to rip boards.]
My mother returned hours later, her boy upright and blue, cried-out; her husband barely
upright.
[This is just a story Ive been told; a story

13

I shouldnt have ever been told.]

This storys true: waiting on a visa, I went down to the basement to build frames for some
old unstretched canvases. [Build frames? I can barely rip a board. But sometimes you need
to build frames.]
The visa arrived at 8:30 the next morning. My flight left at noon.
Without the context (above) this supposedly true story means nothing.

Even the phrases we reach for using or mining our relationships imply attachments
turned to commodities, [ . . .]
an entire landscape of emotion turned
to hollow earth [ . . .]
everything weve ever seen
or forged
or felt.

Alcoholics are like wallpaper, nothing like the stories of books (the brilliant misanthrope;
the beloved broken thing).
Im full up.
A few years ago, I gave a guest lecture and invited my father. The Cinderella cluster, with
Cinderella and Donkeyskin and Thousand Furs. In each, a girl is cast out; redeemed. She hides
in rags, in cast-off pelts, in the skinned hide of a donkey.
In each, the explicit danger is a parent.
At lunch he said nothing: no bravado, no jokes. What is most him in me is the bravado, the
jokes. To be stripped of that is to be stripped of everything.

the most compelling stories

are without ending, without
closure; riddleless riddles; boxes in boxes
with empty center; there is

14

a version of this text without redactions. there was

a version of this text without redactions. there may be
an extant version of this text.

15

all of the things of this world I loved: stones and seeds, the long beans of locust trees, the
lacework of sycamore pods. I had hid my loving of, lest desire burn in my body

Elizabeth Parris, nine, the youngest of the original accusers but her father sent her to live
in town, among the non-elect
The rest had passed from playing with homemade wagons, to sewing and washing and
cooking, mostly in other peoples homes, until married, and then they played with
the scapegoating of Tituba was a long year of lessons

16

becoming flame, signaling to the Devil I was ripe as pepperberry, half-gone already

As for pepperberry
There are two varieties colloquially called this: Schinus molle native to Peru, and now found
often in Southern California. There are/were no pepperberries in Massachusetts.
Schinus molle looks like weeping willow
a girls unpinned hair fraught with brambles
though not evergreen and not hardy
thinned blood a lacework of cerulean blue delicate treachery of teeth
north of Illinois. Berries ripen in late summer
(the trials began early Spring, the timing all wrong)
and can be dried quickly to retain color.

17

When Mother caught me playing these useless games, she scattered my treasures, raised
her hand to strike, but Father stepped between. He said, She is doing the work of the Lord
on earth.

Crytocarya obovata is native to Australian rainforests. And I am dreaming Ophelia.

Schinus molle sports red berries, appropriate as symbolic colors of lust, and desire, (and
thus sin), and despite their heady presence are poisonous. (Think red as the Churchs robes,
red as Duessas cunt). Cryptocarya obovata has black berries, edible to certain larger fruit
pigeons. The Australian pepperberry is a tall canopy tree,
delicate veins and cilia on each oblong leaf. (Obovata echoes shape)

18

You say I knew, I must have known, there was no devil in that room.

February 1692: The devil, of course:

Sometimes it is like a hog & sometimes like a great dog
Not long after, Tituba was to blame. After the trials mounted, then subsided, after pardons
and release and bills paid, it was Tituba. They recorded her testimony in painstaking detail,
her yellow birds. She disappears. She was sold to pay for her confinement. These two
persons [Tituba and John Indian] may have originated the Salem witchcraft. They are
spoken as having come from (
) and, in all probability contributed, from the wild and
strange superstitions prevalent among the native tribes, materials which, added to the
commonly received notions on such subjects, heighted the infatuation of the times, and
inflamed still more the imaginations of the credulous.
February 1692: Mary Sibley was never to blame, though she mixed rye and urine and baked
it.

19

Our names Children of the Lord in weeklies and pamphlets from Salem Town.

1696: The Reverend Parris, for encouraging local vendettas, for paying too much attention
to children, for cultivating strife to enhance his own station (these accusations from his
parishioners, and the leadership of his church)
(here the girls are still children, used and led astray)
Soon it would fall to them.
1706: Ann Putnams apology:
Though what was said or done by me against any person I can truly and uprightly say, before God
and man, I did it not out of any anger, malice, or ill-will to any person, for I had no such thing
against one of them; but what I did was ignorantly, being deluded by Satan
I desire to lie in the dust . . .

20

He sent me away. The Devil takes a seat where there are too many women under one
roof.

What they promised my father:

Sixty-six pounds annual salary
collected by a ministers tax
The village parsonage, barn and two acres of land
deeded to Samuel Parris and his heirs. Me.
A supply of firewood from the village,
delivered to the parsonage
Ordination by Nicholas Noyes,
associate pastor of the church in Salem Town

21

I will endure the knowing that Satan has fingers long and gentle, and he beckons me.

What they gave my father:

A partial payment for the years 1689-1690
A suspension of the ministers tax from 1691-1694
A partial payment for the years 1695-1696
The local constables refused to collect the tax
Town stood against us
By the winter of 1691, our woodpiles spent,
a scattering of bark and splinters,
kindling
New church memberships dwindled,
then ceased, only women beseeched my father
Blame for the witch trial from the Colony
Letters from Pastor Noyes, Pastor Hale, Increase Mather, Cotton Mather
My face absent to town for a long year
My mothers illness in the spring of 1696
Her death in July

22

I could hang for this. For the smug one I had a fit beyond sense, drooling on the floor, they
bade her touch me, and relieve my torment.

What we finally took:

Seventy-nine pounds back salary for all those years

23

or I, translucent, luminescent, transmogrified, and from my mouth

What they took from us:

The parsonage, the barn, the land
My mothers grave
My faith
My loves Father, Mother, Tituba, Abigail
Desiccated wood left uncovered through winter,
frozen stiff to frosted ground,
dry as chaff by spring,
a sudden flare in the stove and gone
My childhood, inciting hangings

24

KRISTINA MARIE DARLING

BLAZEVOX[BOOKS]
Buffalo, New York

Women And Ghosts by Kristina Marie Darling

Copyright 2015
Published by BlazeVOX [books]
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without
the publishers written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews.
Printed in the United States of America
Interior design, Cover Design and Typesetting by Geoffrey Gatza

First Edition
ISBN: 978-1-60964-219-8
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015939196
BlazeVOX [books]
131 Euclid Ave
Kenmore, NY 14217
Editor@blazevox.org

publisher of weird little books

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DAYLIGHT HAS ALREADY COME

In Shakespeare's Hamlet, Ophelia drowns under the weight of her own dress. I had
never imagined before that plain white silk could kill.
A year and a half ago, I put on my best clothes. I boarded Flight 2682 to nowhere,
watched the clouds tremble and swoon.
I arrived in the heat of the day and finally, he met me at my door. All I could do was
stare. He looked me in the eyes and said, I'm so sorry.
*
That unmatched form and feature of blown youth
Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh...
When we first met, in a lush garden at the end of summer, I thought I would bear his
children. First the bouquet, then crisp white linens, and eventually, little silver spoons.
It is indeed expected that we accumulate these things. No one wants live in a strange
house, opening and closing the same empty cabinet.
A man is still standing with his hand against the doorframe. He clears his throat. He
stutters.
*
And I, of ladies most deject and wretched....
At first, I didn't quite understand the question. Define closeness. Define empty.
When he smiled, I felt my whole body grow colder.
*

13

The glass of fashion and the mould of form.... Blasted with ecstasy.
If a man turns his head in such a way, who or what is shattered?
In Hamlet, characters take knives to the heart, only to be survived by small fragments of
their former selves: a courtier, a soldier, a scholar.
We hear their footsteps in the corridor, never in unison. The floorboards swoon beneath
the weight of their many feet.
*
Th' observed of all observers, quite, quite down...
He would watch as I tried to make sense of train schedules. I wanted to be alone in the
church, so that I could ask something of the marble statue, the milky-eyed saints.
Even then, I searched for the right word. Alone with my thoughts, I felt as though I had
fallen asleep in a strange bed.
I looked out at the platform. It was always the same woman, boarding the same train.
*
When the chapel door closes, what will I be left with?
The dress was too heavy for me to carry. I set it near the altar, folded in a perfect square.
From the aisle, the window looked as though it had been repeatedly fractured. I wanted
to finish the ceremony. I wanted so badly to leave.
*
Th' expectancy and rose of the fair state...
In Hamlet, Ophelia loves without regard to her station. The daughter of Polonius, and

14

sister of Laertes, she is a young noblewoman reaching far above her magnificent,
ornamented, fully submerged head.
Throughout the play, many characters hint at the unsayable: a torn dress, an empty glass,
the same bells ringing in the distance.
But what does it mean to give one's consent? We are led and misled by those we love, an
expectant white backdrop shuddering in the distance.
*
The courtiers, soldiers, scholars, eye, tongue, sword....
After loss, we are survived by small fragments of our former selves. A neatly folded
gown, a heap of dead lilies, a silver earring.
In the film version of this story, Fortinbras, Horatio, and Osric are spared. We see in
each them some of Hamlet's features: the dark blue eyes, a cheekbone, a freckle.
What would it take to hold together the pieces? I undo the buttons on my dress. I pull
back the sheets. I try my best to sleep.
*
What a noble mind is here o'erthrown...
Was I the victim or wasn't I?
On the very last night, he tried to tell me I was pretty. He opened a book I had read, but
didn't understand. He read aloud from it.
I felt myself getting drunker. He kept telling me, drink.
That was when I looked out the window. I saw my crystal shot glass gleaming in his
hand. He quietly set another in its place.
The room grew colder and colder. I began gathering my things to go.

15

*
What does it mean to give one's consent? Throughout Hamlet, Ophelia keeps
misunderstanding the question.
No more but so?
Do you doubt that?
I do not know, my lord, what I should think...

We are led and misled by those we love, the same bells ringing in the distance. After loss,
death, and madness, she wonders how the world can look so much the same.
She enters stage left.
She exits.
*
That sucked the honey of his music vows...
If a man changes his mind, who will be sorry for you?
I try to call home from the airport.
But everyone there is so happy. My sister-in-law is finally pregnant.
I feel my dress grow heavy. I think of a lake.
*

16

T' have seen what I have seen, see what I see...

I keep remembering the landscape, the way he seemed a part of it. The room still colder
than it was before. The same bells ringing.
I try to think about the weather.
I board Flight 2682 to nowhere, watch the clouds as they tremble and swoon.

17

ESSAY ON FAILURE (I)

I. OPHELIA
do you doubt that no more but so I shall th' effect of this good lesson keep as
watchman to my heart but good my brother 'tis in my memory lock'd and you
yourself shall keep the key of it so please you, something touching the lord
hamlet he hath, my lord of late made many tenders of his affection to me I do
not know my lord, what I should think my lord he hath importun'd me with
love in honourable fashion and hath given countenance to his speech my lord
with almost all the holy vows of heaven I shall obey my lord o my lord my lord
I have been so affrighted my lord as I was sewing in my closet lord hamlet with
his doublet all unbrac'd my lord I do not know but truly I do fear it he took me
by the wrist and held me hard then goes he to the length of all his arm no my
good lord but as you did command I did repel his letters and denied madam I
wish it may good my lord how does your honour for this many a day my lord I
have remembrances of yours that I have longed long to re-deliver my honour'd
lord you know right well you did and with them words of so sweet breath
compos'd my lord what means your lordship could beauty my lord have better
commerce than with honesty indeed my lord you made me believe so I was the
more deceived at home my lord o help him you sweet heavens o heavenly
powers restore him o what a noble mind is here o'erthrown the courtier's
scholar's soldier's eye tongue sword th' expectancy and rose of the fair state the
glass of fashion and the mould of form th' observ'd of all observers quite quite
down and I of ladies most deject and wretched that suck'd the honey of his
music vows now see that noble and most sovereign reason like sweet bells
jangled out of tune and harsh that unmatch'd form and feature of blown youth
blasted with ecstasy o, woe is me t' have seen what I have seen see what I see
no my lord ay my lord I think nothing my lord what is my lord you are merry
my lord ay my lord nay 'tis twice two months my lord what means this my lord
belike this show imports the argument of the play will he tell us what this show
meant you are naught you are naught I'll mark the play for us and for our
tragedy 'tis brief my lord you are as good as a chorus my lord you are keen my
lord you are keen still better and worse the king rises where is the beauteous
majesty of Denmark how should I your true-love know say you nay pray you
mark he is dead and gone lady white his shroud as the mountain snow larded all
with sweet flowers well god did you they say the owl was a baker's daughter
lord we know what we are but know not what we may be god be at pray let's
have no words of this but when they ask you what it means say you this indeed
la without an oath I'll make an end by saint charity I hope all will be well we
must be patient but I cannot choose but weep to think they would lay him i' th'
cold ground they bore him barefac'd on the bier you must sing 'a-down a-down
and you call him o how the wheel becomes it it is the false steward that stole his
there's rosemary that's for remembrance pray you love remember and there is
pansies that's for thoughts there's fennel for you and columbines there's rue for
you and here's some for me we may call it herb of grace o' sundays and will
he not come again but as you did command I did repel his letters and denied

21

Whatever Speaks on
Behalf of Hashish

Poems
by Anis Shivani

BLAZEVOX[BOOKS]
Buffalo, New York

Whatever Speaks on Behalf of Hashish

by Anis Shivani
Copyright 2015
Published by BlazeVOX [books]
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without
the publishers written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews.
Printed in the United States of America
Interior design and typesetting by Geoffrey Gatza
Cover Art: Heinrich Vogeler, The Island of Peace, ca. 1918-1919, oil on canvas, 41 1/8 x 38 in.
Courtesy of the Yale University Art Gallery.
Illustrations: The illustrations are all images of woodcuts by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, part of the
collection at the Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies at the Los Angeles
County Museum of Art, and are reproduced here courtesy of the museum.
First Edition
ISBN: 978-1-60964-227-3
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015948504
BlazeVOX [books]
131 Euclid Ave
Kenmore, NY 14217
Editor@blazevox.org

publisher of weird little books

BlazeVOX [ books ]
blazevox.org
21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10

Illumination
We hurt the pianos backbone, we revert to the nuisance of commuters on ischemic
trains. Fate, a novitiate marker of swollen blue feet in the petite morgue. Do you
believe in turtles shedding light? I was in a hammock, stranded in threads of sun,
numberless. One should welcome the positively dynamic chairs whose unseen thorns
we inhabit in a cerulean morning of surpassing ceremony, whereafter we proceed to
the seminar of abstraction where criture fminine occurs at last to the shifting glances
of open windows. Acrostic, make water heavy, turn in your canceled checks: lavish
with cartons of cigars, fine wines beloved of the caricatures of bestiality, trombones
splashing out a migraine of obsessive love, feet that got burnt at South Beach when no
one was looking. Everyone falls in love with their own wrong side. I will let you
through, this one time, but there is the broken turnstile, do you see the angry morning
come to a crest? Pornography is nothing if not the febrile curves of the sun in decline.
Or I should say a possibility of kidnapping, and the nose, curmudgeonly all through
the fascist years, is suddenly a delicate instrument of joy. This is a television of
bankruptcy. I am not getting through to you, it is impossible when you are listening so
intently. If you had been a spectator at the Black Death, you would have been
surprised at the sheer amount of noise: nostalgia for things unknown, unseen, for the
row of poets who stand condemned by the arsenals of democracy, their bald heads
itching from the tortures of summer. If you come to me in the best hours of the night,
but you never do After the death of the fly all noise ceases. The quiet extends from
the beginning of human history until the end. The age of the worker becomes opaque
through unequal tempo. To have been Lorca in the moment of surprise! To have
descended into Granada on the wings of sturdy morality, forever immune to petty
thievery! For being queer. For being a waffler. For the hyperbole of folklore. What can
I say about you thats new? Montaigne thought it is a matter of thinking things out,
like a porn star in retirement, looking back over the ups and downs of a career of
entente. The clerk in me clinches the argument through muscle strain. The sound of
the sparkling souvenir, supplement to human rights, every chalky supper changing me
imperceptibly into chamber music, a conscript outfitted for originality. Pest, your
perversions are insignia for rocks metamorphosed into black squirrels, agouti, pocket
gophers, the too soft colors of socialists in sitting rooms.

11

I.

December 31
bernadette mayer
how did you live through the bush years
i didnt win any prizes
but winter surprised like a second childhood
to the tenebrous nursery a decade late
wolf spoor kept woman awake
in the far cabin
snowy light falling mute
to the clomp of the bearish
moon oh its been all right
i know my length in meters
i have my magic marker
and you your forest
this line makes it a sonnet

15

the death of frank ohara

came like shampoo on coconuts, or no,
i meant like a laughtrack lost on the moons
gravityless surface, everyone leaped aside,
frank! frank! the dune buggy, fender sticking out,
like a gunmans silent gesture, hand in pocket,
or no, out there where the moon hits it in silver
coin, mangling the liver, poor franks already
dying liver, or no, not dead yet just damaged,
which is to say days and nights of hallucination,
grace, jane, bunny, i am talking fast now,
faster and faster, this is what happens at death,
at last all my inhibitions are at rest, or no,
it is like this disco summer on fire island testing
arbitrageurs souls, riffing off the citys parlor
games of art and art worship and worship of crudeness,
in man-woman embrace, or no, limp penis to penis,
john, ken, bill, this is what happens at death,
at last ive become a surrealist hit by sense.

16

Dear Kenneth Koch

my street of poets (pink crevasse) tumid volcano
firing jets of lyrics on Sunday afternoons
when i put you aside, kenneth, eager
to entrail caesuras from your thousandth
unknown play, for barbies doused
in gasoline, yes, thats the metaphor i want
to steal from your snail of a bed,
virgin oaks dying suddenly in my yard
on the very day i check
microscopes for efficiency

17

Averroes
1.
Ahead of the moving company, whar your gwine,
aha, said Adam, my God I warm myself and our eye
has seen it. But the stomach, when shall all men good
be sudden fits of ague, now the mighty Centaur seems
to lead: the astronaut is going to find he was only
twenty dolphins ahead, sheer Africanity, aformosia
in common with consumers paradise of transistors,
food mixers, and but a faint struggle with servants.
If you look out my window at the superlatives of haze,
thrice does she sink down in deadly snows: all foods
are out of their wits, alleged rocks or minerals, yet
you draw not iron, not rhetorical names, but Adams
stylemy governor this morning, colonist of interests
as old as hydrocarbon, things intended to be heard.
To what is to be attributed the extinction of the mystic
orgies of the East? Grown together by adhesion of
voyages, under stones, dead leaves, eruption of fine
arts, abstinent bridegrooms, two of whom were curtailed in the handles. Cross a pike, water, provision
of epitome; representation of some parts of plaintiffs
demands; abrasive on the sea bed; the place where I
stop; seamen and carpenters employed all night to take
the average of opinionsinto which we return at death.

18

2.
Au pair yielding gold, ask aunty to come and cut it
for me, sometimes with the idea of instrumentality.
I have arisen to vigor, heroic aspiring, careless rage,
the eastern languages failing to express the vowels.
Why chew leathery beef in the aspidistral bliss, the
weed of life grows where air is hot and winnowed.
Machines of ostentation, a wooden beam, a missile
on land, on board ship, thus apocalyptic visions are
made to seem very trim and express: this polluted
chancellor, horrid blasphemer, another system of
telling fortunes, present in pure arithmetic. Barefooted predestination, bohemians at the Parthenon,
the alks built upon rocks, it was a cold dagger au
naturel. The likeness of stone weight youve seen
in the literature of amputation, whenever surfaces
become sore. By attrition of ceremony, the kindle
flames around the solar disk; practically every man
is an atheist, heir apparent to the throne. Sufferings
which fit me for future happiness, hang no weight
upon my heart, the design afterwards used as flag.

19

3.
Or quiet, busied in appeasing, grim appearance in
your favor, all the lines represent judges like the
lesser sort of birds eggsa phantom or apparition
to secure worldwide political appeasement. The
apartment has an elevator. These foolish things, a
tinkling piano, your phosphate of lime, animals
mimicking human form, ten days ration should the
moment come. There would be the semblance of a
general retreat from the apex. Can you ante up?
You pay as you enter, you whose business is to walk
in front, as an usher, an ant-eater, a bird of gray
plumage, the axle-tree of the antarctic. Lantern of
subtleties, I want arithmetic: sequence of numbers
in which popes power aristocracies of reason and
virtue. If she would apply to his request, she would
be set to liberty. A deaths head grins like an antic,
behind this drum are several vaults, hybrids, macroscopes, humiliation of fractured limbs. The doublemindednes of the word dux, burlesque writing
filled with nonsense, brave assassins stabbing in the
dark: this house is restored of hearth, of astral lamps.

20

dear foucault
imitation of discourse
twin trips to harmony gendered firewalls
water she said gurgling along canals
of intestines bees-worlds duped in
nephrous sentences balloon-like
sun-diagram in ruffian drums pinned
internet grapes yagodas bluish
and believable eyes
of butterblue taffeta
mimicry of unseatable guests

21

Three Poems After Po Ch-i

Bookcase
Once assembled, it keeps challenging me day and night
as though I needed to learn the names of useful officials.
I want metaphysics to be a rounded number, a fitted jacket,
I want my friends not to worry about the lost caskets of wine.
Bird
When parents die, children often fall in love with given names.
They are like holiday bells, jangling happiness long after sunset.
You hop on my palm, tickling me, stretching your tiny beak,
and I extract grain after grain from my pocket, teasing you.
China
My lover claims her poet grandfather, a true man of the people,
lavished care on servants, a patriarch who was rightly mourned.
It is he who believed in food as magic, inviting enemies over,
trusting each morsel would burn its way to their waxing hearts.

22

Gertrude Stein
The sash is not like anything mustard
Called to the telephone six times during this effort
If lilies are lily white if they exhaust noise
Horseshoe nails, pebbles, pipe-type cigarette holders
A blue coat is guided guided away
As stupid, as barbaric as successful barbarism demands
If the speed is open, if the color is careless
Ive done some discovering and some propaganda
A color in shaving, a saloon is well placed
Fingernails which, daily, she trimmed and polished
A winning of all the blessings, a sample not a sample
Paragraphs are emotional, sentences are not
Cough out cough out in the leather and really feather
Since her time, oily tides of kitsch have continued
A shawl is a wedding, a piece of wax
Ridiculous miniature alabaster fountains

23

Dear Colm Tibn

Except, in Barcelona,
Ive heard Francos ghost still haunts
the middle streets
in search of noumena
flattening the illicit
lovers first glimpse of morning
with rows of corpses near
as the eyelid, so you can feel
the last breaths of your compatriots
hurrying out,
lusting to leave the gossip-city.

24

THE LAST PLACE I LIVED

A COLLECTION OF POEMS
BY K. ALMA PETERSON

BLAZEVOX[BOOKS]
Buffalo, New York

The Last Place I Lived

by K. Alma Peterson
Copyright 2015
Published by BlazeVOX [books]
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without
the publishers written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews.
Printed in the United States of America
Interior design and typesetting by Geoffrey Gatza
Cover Art by
First Edition
ISBN: 978-1-60964-197-9
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014954646
BlazeVOX [books]
131 Euclid Ave
Kenmore, NY 14217
Editor@blazevox.org

publisher of weird little books

BlazeVOX [ books ]
blazevox.org

21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10

BlazeVOX

Acknowledgments
Thanks to my circle of writer friends, who gave me, and these
poems, help and encouragement: Charisse Gendron, Cindra
Halm, Terri Ford, Kath Jesme, Maeve Kinkead, Cheryl
Ekstrum, and Rosemary Jensen. Thanks especially to Kath
Jesme for skillfully helping shape an unwieldy manuscript
into this book.
The author gratefully acknowledges the following journals for
previous publication, as follows:
"Sleight with Homage to Linen" and "Principle Trainer" from
IthacaLit online Spring 2015
"Coyote" from Thirty Days: the Best of the 30/30 Project's First
Year, published by Tupelo Press, copyright 2015
"Collective Sense of Sleep" from E.T.A, published by
Wesleyan University, 2014
"Divertimento" appears in Kestrel Issue 34.

Table of Contents
Part 1 ......................................................................................................... 13
Securing the Tent ....................................................................................... 15
Inelegant Human Form ............................................................................ 16
My iPhone Channels Sal Dali on Delray Beach ............................... 17
Dead Tree as Central Figure in Icy Dream ........................................ 18
The Great Moot .......................................................................................... 19
Impersonal Impersonation .................................................................... 20
Cat, at Length .............................................................................................. 21
Blue Bowl Ringing .....................................................................................22
Contortionist ............................................................................................... 23
Mind Reader ............................................................................................... 24
Florida ........................................................................................................... 25
Mabel, formerly Mary .............................................................................. 26
Sea Cow ......................................................................................................... 27
Stage Name (rocket) ................................................................................. 28
Canter ........................................................................................................... 29
Handler ........................................................................................................ 30
Wardrobe ..................................................................................................... 31
Reader of Second Thoughts .................................................................... 32
Walking on Stilts ........................................................................................ 33
Aubade ......................................................................................................... 34
Eastern (anything but) Standard Time ................................................ 35
From Shore ................................................................................................. 36
Trains Derail in Deepest Woods and We Take Positions We
Cannot Defend ........................................................................................ 37
Playing With Magic .................................................................................. 38
Chiropractor to the Clowns ................................................................... 39
City of Domesticity ................................................................................... 40
Boomerang ................................................................................................... 41
Principle Trainer ....................................................................................... 42
Triolet for Static Trapeze ........................................................................ 43
Florida Historic Hotel .............................................................................. 44
What We Dont Know Wont Become Us.......................................... 45
Separation, with Residential Shifts ...................................................... 46
Sleight with Homage to Linen ................................................................47
Alligator in Retirement............................................................................ 48

Part 11 ...................................................................................................... 49
Collective Sense of Sleep ......................................................................... 51
Seeing It Coming ........................................................................................52
Not Quite Quits .......................................................................................... 54
Silo in the middle of town: settled grains true enough ................... 55
No Tomorrow ............................................................................................. 56
Pastoral for One Mistaken ....................................................................... 57
A little rain, then. Less ............................................................................. 58
Dear Now-youve-gone-and-done-it,................................................... 59
Not a Muscle Moves Me Any Longer .................................................. 60
Ghost Work .................................................................................................. 61
No Clouds Passing..................................................................................... 62
Vespers ......................................................................................................... 63
Living Room ................................................................................................ 64
Once We Fly ............................................................................................... 65
Month of Sun Days ................................................................................... 66
Passage.......................................................................................................... 67
The Nomenclature of Pain ..................................................................... 68
Coyote ........................................................................................................... 69
With the Cold Moon Came .................................................................... 70
On the Long Life of Sound ...................................................................... 71
Clearing House ...........................................................................................72
The Salt Works of Random Chemistry................................................ 73
Divertimento .............................................................................................. 74
Investigations of a Made-up Mind ........................................................ 75
More of the Same Morning .................................................................... 76
Dame Fortuna, Id Know You Anywhere ............................................ 77
One of the Birds ......................................................................................... 78
Of Late the Prescient Palms ................................................................... 79
Span ............................................................................................................... 80
Dame Fortuna On the Limits of Gratitude ......................................... 81
Debate Among High Clouds .................................................................. 82

THE LAST PLACE I LIVED

Part 1

Go into yourself and see how deep the place is from

which your life flows.
Rainer Maria Rilke

Securing the Tent

My circus is in town. No tickets are for sale

and a flap about why not is underway, starting
with a woodpecker insisting that a tree give succor or
it will take its tapping elsewhere.
All the acts breathe free. I zip the door shut
and tack a note to the oak, thinking the ringleader
might buy a ring. I dont need three. Promising to listen
doesnt guarantee my offer will be met.
Dollars on the penny Id give to make a home
foldable and fireproof, makeshift and shiftless.

15

Inelegant Human Form

Coaxed from a block of softwood
only so far. Glitter for bruises, snaps
for bones. I concentrate
on the face: grim determination
slash-mark for the mouth. Xs for eyes
(dont make me look)
like a folk art doll.
A leg turns the wrong direction, a hand
unsteady on the ledge
pulls her costume off. I wrap her
in my shredded clothes, remove slivers
as if pine was not a feeling
(dont make me think)
the air cracks and trees fall
ill

16

My iPhone Channels Sal Dali on Delray Beach

Ah, little wonder: the beach way
slant, breakers melt
away the sand. Nimble we wouldnt think
of grasping
tonal nuances slipping through a split-screen
past. The star avatar
depicts himself slicing sky. My shadow
tours his muse
amusing us no pixel bend. Chisel/Click
technically stark
mistakes dark matter
for a gulls reprint. Our weight triangulates
If we pivot nothing
stands without
its edge. Unless of course we walk
upon Unearth.

17

Dead Tree as Central Figure in Icy Dream

after a photograph by Kirsten Miles
It was cold when I was planted
a common sprig
near a family of graceful foreign transplants
my gnarled heartwood knew a city would
grow up around me
we would watch each other alter
by the brush and tan of unplanned

refurbished

passage. Demolished or let stand.

In my final leafless pose I am the negative
of lightning, caught and held.
An afterimage
glassily repeated in the hawks beveled eye.

18

The Great Moot

Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment ---- Rumi
I can make the bed in no time flat, your flat
is my fitted. Murphy has a law and a bed in the wall,
a walls worth of posters to be taken down or
papered over. Lost forever in the stick-together.
We fish the unexplored majority of brain, reel
across the barrier, out the synapse, and come to drift
beyond neural tides of information you can never use.
Blue is for befuddlement among the yellow lures,
green is the guileless worm among the reeds.
Your reed, her bassoon, my reedy memory plays
more tricks than a baton has waves. Conducted
when the Octopus of Pain brushes my ankle
with its tentative tentacle, the privilege is all my
sensation. Is my ration of discomfort a seahorse
or a manatee? My wild side would like to know.

19

Impersonal Impersonation
Jars of jeers in my glove box
& the Buddha mask secured.
The din of many fenders bending.
In my sleep Im halfway down
Aisle 6, scanning sugared sneers,
frosted snorts, minted sorries.
No ideal retort exists. I rue
therefore I err.
Tomorrow I will box and sip
my skills set, sans instructions.
Tines and sporks included
in the picnic pack.
Appetite ships separately.

20

Cat, at Length
She outstretches

arced and arched

human in size
and attitude.
The furniture is hers to claw.
Im on the arm of the divan
absentmindedly

she touches

making sure her smaller self is shredded

evidence.
We cant tell if transmigration is the old
minds word or deed.
The cat bites me lightly

shutters her reptilian

eyes restores this

painstaking world.

21

Blue Bowl Ringing

Overflowing light
reveals filaments of dark
left from my shadow
Cormorants gather
in the manmade lake no less
than ten all altos
Gecko by gecko
twig after twig springs lizard
lightly to shade
Gumbo limbo trees
evoke Ganesh reaching
low to clear the way
1 is robins egg
10 is morning glory
your level of blue?

22

whats

Contortionist
In rehabilitation I sewed my hankering
between twelve layers of resolve. Blue as wonder
was the tug of sailfish on my line. Release me
back into the brine. In the historic village
fishing lines and lunch lines merged. Squared
might be a better word than cloned, my efficiency
expert opines. Ghostly holy is my third-rail charm.
I bet my last bitcoin on an internet evangelist
who turned out to be an avatar. A sympathetic
green-thumber reduced my dust-to-dust anxiety.
In yoga class I balance on one leg until the tide
comes home and the roosters chicken out.

23

Mind Reader
Couldnt door less. Prying
into soulless windows, crowbar
to the eyebrow valance
painless. Crows chortle uh uh
in amusement. Their muse
and mine canary on inside
the coal bin. Its been weedy
on the premises we whack.
A gardeners heart lies bleeding,
her whip in petals. Pity, its own
nemesis. Whichever chamber
dominates her morel ears
tips his tympanic sense of time.
They make a better stem
than system. Trusses constitute
a small component of the big
attraction. Say no more be done
about betrothal. Theres a catch
in every roof. Gutters clog.
I wear down at the melds. Hold
the handrail on ascent. I see
your lantern swaying.

24

Marine Layer

Kit Robinson

BLAZEVOX[BOOKS]
Buffalo, New York

Marine Layer
by Kit Robinson
2015 by Kit Robinson. All rights reserved.
Published by BlazeVOX [books]
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without the
publishers written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews.
Printed in the United States of America
Interior design and typesetting by Geoffrey Gatza
Cover Art by Kit Robinson
First Edition
ISBN: 978-1-60964-229-7
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015948505
BlazeVOX [books]
131 Euclid Ave
Kenmore, NY 14217
Editor@blazevox.org

publisher of weird little books

BlazeVOX [ books ]
blazevox.org
21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10

BlazeVOX

Acknowledgments
Big thanks to Ted Pearson, Ted Greenwald and Geoffrey Gatza.
Some of these poems have appeared in Across the Margin, Annex Press,
Banqueted, Dreamboat, Ladowich, Memory is a Kind of Accomplishment,
Oversound, Poetry is Dead, Prelude, Sprung Formal, The Recluse and VLAK.

for Tom Raworth

CONTENTS
Irish Beach ...................................................................................................................... 13
57 Varieties ...................................................................................................................... 13
Those Recently Met ..................................................................................................... 17
Running on Empty ....................................................................................................... 19
Marine Layer .................................................................................................................. 21
The Idea Takes Time ...................................................................................................26
10 Things ......................................................................................................................... 27
No Such Thing as Silence...........................................................................................28
Destroyed Work ........................................................................................................... 30
Transistor Radio ........................................................................................................... 32
Eventual Lispector........................................................................................................ 34
Turn on All the Receivers .......................................................................................... 36
The Corporation Yard ................................................................................................. 38
Construction Is the Love of Coffee ......................................................................... 40
Cloudy and Cool at the Car Wash ........................................................................... 41
Nights Flicker, Feelings Well Up .............................................................................42
In the Curvature of the Moment .............................................................................. 43
Several Seconds Later Another Letter.................................................................... 45
Neighboring Vessels ................................................................................................... 48
Signal Strength .............................................................................................................. 51
States of Mind Fit Together ....................................................................................... 53
Put a Notebook on the Nightstand .......................................................................... 54
This Written Record Is an Enclosure ..................................................................... 55
Rhythm of the Logs ...................................................................................................... 56
High Dudgeon ............................................................................................................... 57
The Something that Comes out of Nothing .......................................................... 59
Familiar Faces under Soft Lights ............................................................................ 60
Construction is the Noise of Spring ........................................................................62
Time is What We are Given ...................................................................................... 65
Relaxin at Yorkville ..................................................................................................... 67
Mistakes Are Normal .................................................................................................. 70
No Time like the Right Time ..................................................................................... 73
Dreams Are as Real as We Are ................................................................................. 75
Far Be It from Me .......................................................................................................... 77
The Turnstile of the Present...................................................................................... 78
Where Here We Grind ................................................................................................ 79
In My Guise .................................................................................................................... 81
A Transom Window .................................................................................................... 83

The Line in the Sand ................................................................................................... 86

The Poem Is a Reversible Jacket .............................................................................. 88
Daydreaming in Icelandic ......................................................................................... 89
We Keep Saying They Though She Is Gone ........................................................ 91
The Dandelions Are Out Again This Morning ................................................... 93
The Sky Is White Because Its Fog .......................................................................... 95
The Star Inside the Rock ............................................................................................ 97
Walking and Talking................................................................................................... 98
What a Beautiful Thing ............................................................................................ 100
Internal Combustion ................................................................................................. 102
For Selling Cigarettes? .............................................................................................. 104
Lane Shipping ............................................................................................................. 106
A Stones Throw ......................................................................................................... 108
Like Birds in Air ........................................................................................................... 110
Every Time We Say Goodbye .................................................................................. 112
Raspberries in January .............................................................................................. 114
Unconfirmed Reports ................................................................................................ 116
Master Class .................................................................................................................. 117
The Avenue of Kisses ................................................................................................. 119
An Old Signature......................................................................................................... 121
Stars over Mongolia ................................................................................................... 124
Weather......................................................................................................................... 126
The Lost Steps ............................................................................................................. 128
The Rose Quartet ....................................................................................................... 130

Marine Layer

IRISH BEACH
Satellite dish picks up signals
Part for the whole
Sound waves ocean jetliner
Similar to drink of water
Cleanses the Paleolithic
Local color is gray
Non-specific waves thru fog
Enter two bikes
The way south is strewn
Falls over onto the side of talk
Somewhere between landscape
Ampersand portrait
Art hugs the coastline
Car door closes on air
Chew on time
There is a football field of it
In every direction
Dark undersides of leaves
Psychological hummingbird
The clock strikes Great Horned Owl
Fog strokes the coast
Build local shake back into place
Hire contractors to write this

13

Message in light breeze

Animal action elsewhere
Load up on little color
Some pink there
A bit of orange
Establish ongoingness of objects
Sandals comma hand weights comma
Driftwood like whale or arm
Mind drifts until big truck
Cant see waves at moment
Similar to being on slow
Think thru combination of things
Page flips in wind
Motorcycle monograph day
Up or down hill all
Right at edge
Hear almost everything else

14

57 VARIETIES
Place short introductory paragraph here
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.

Passages of light
As much time as you like
History unhooks
A truck bed is a sentence
What comes before goes before
No one likes this
The future is standing room only
Police your immediate area
It is exceptionally bright
Wind in the pines
Fatigue of nations
One thing Ive been meaning
Brilliant critters
The length of hose
Sail way out
Click mid-flight
17 things we do every day
Logical board feet
It is a far, far better thing
I spy with my little eye
Something beginning with
Concert e
Voices behind hedges
Duration inestimable
Walking the dog-eared copy
Could be happy here
Minding stakes
Man up and do the time
Girl is keen for travel
Light poem for
Who answers to
15

32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
50.
51.
52.
53.
54.
55.
56.
57.

16

Unnamed sources
Is there a beginning, middle and
Barracuda Rackstraw
The quiet before the store
Implement or die
Piece of quiet
Boil the ocean
Explain behavior
Interlocking existentials
Can do altitude
A taste for the obsolete
Game show dinette
In this chapter the character does an about face
Waves when not looking
Cartier pigeon
Class dismissed
The swallow and the jay
The year approacheth
Waves crash far below
Nothing is known
The person is transparent
A vested interest in wheels
A load off
The whole list is only one item
The fractals bend in the wind
The rest goes without saying

THOSE RECENTLY MET

Derogatory apartments
No sentence unlasted
Differences scratch bottom
A whether of doubts
Table tennis to the jars
In plain representatives
The skins of apples are repaired
By the blind surrealist
Cooped up all these years
Like it or not
Go hungry and multiply
It only takes a few minutes
Lives unfold like camp chairs
The story of the story
Fire in the belly of the beast
Patterns print generations
Out of whole cloth
Dream narrative makes better sense
Echoes arrive early
Do voices echo thought?
Each tribe makes its own breakfast
Ladders are propped against buildings or put away
Thumbs up if by sea
Cross currents etch the surface
Essentials unwind into common sense
Those recently met
The roadside installation artist
The lighting technician
17

The proprietress
The ceramicist farmer
People not otherwise encountered
Full of life of place
Landscape with hawk and sparrow
Roads pointing this way and that
Limits to what can be said or done
Such imaginary orange boundaries
Stand in for gaping fear
About face
The dawn tingles
Syllables drop like weights
Interior space is deep
Empty as eyes in a blink
Charged particles give off heat
Faster than thought
The community is cool
The road is narrow
The situation is normal
All fucked up
Yet perfectly fine
Well which is it?

18

RUNNING ON EMPTY
Lift the situation off its face
Under cycle not known at this time
Seriously didnt know that
Explore tree-lined grottoes
Wait, that cant be
Over the shoulder remnants tow a wake
Become ok
Lead underwater legions to the light
Not commenting on anything right now
Burrow into hole in time
Running on empty
The sky is beautiful
Goes without saying
When I see the glory
Become ok
Be along in a minute
Somebody bouncing a basketball one yard over
Why wait?
Each thing comes with its color
The life is full of them
Ellingtoniana
Allusions to the cresting of Harlem
Drum battles at 4:38
Morning is afternoon
Water on television
When did you become so strong?
Wait for plot to catch up
Bass player is mad cool
Music via window
Get your ticket at said station

19

You have the patience of a santo

Buy the next rhomboid
Cloud the shape of an elephant west to east
Now clear sky as far as the eye can sleep
Awake to a posse of hill dwellers
This speech is inside out

20

MARINE LAYER
Marine layer
Top of the morning
Familiar ring
Lost in thought
A percentage of
Off and running
You hold the key
Time to go
They also serve
Stand and deliver
Chopping block
Time and time
Serious ladies
Arm around
When in the course
Open the gate
Swivel hips
Likely story
Dead by rights
Certain to impress
A nice feel
Built from scrap
Smoke at sunset

21

Imagine this
Nothing but space
Light emanates out
Captured in crystals
Too weak to hold
They break
Spilling everything
That hurts
Truth in fragments
On uneven ground
Your job
Repair the damage
A little today
The wide world
Come into focus
Light the lights
Gather here
Simply marvelous
Hi-de-ho
Clever comedians
This rough magic
Characteristic
On the cuff
Off the clock

22

Sun comes through

Touches a nerve
Speaks volumes
Tribal reports
Deep in studio time
The song is handsome
Writing you a letter
When the air brightens
No trees in forest
Only words
They sometimes say
What cannot be said
Or so we thought
Come to find out
Theres gold in them
There in the hills
Chunks of meaning
Fall through fingers
Rough integers
Without number
The joy of it all
Get to see
Get to listen

23

Ecstatic angles
Mondrian floor
Cat on a homemade fence
Interruption rings
Cup-and-saucer tingle
Buzz-saw day
Like it or not
Nothing more important
Get to work
Sorting flames
Universal joint
Sky sail common
Sympathetic vibe
World full to bursting
Hands on deck
Much as like
Size fits all
Something missing
Too much of a thing
Good on you
Thanks a lot
See you in the middle
Biding our time
The breeze stirs
The leaves sway
24

Electric training
Think and be thunk

25

THE IDEA TAKES TIME

To write these words as if someone else
Would be a pleasure the quick release
Perhaps possible as each is multiple
Not knowing how things will turn out
Until the fumble end of any oxcart
Bumps down the road to one front porch
After another has pulled up stakes
Light at the end of the tunnel turning on
Life in batches mixed with strong air
A line of thinking straight to the heart of matter
Dont forget to breathe while drinking coffee
The next instant a wild caribou how to connect
Fabulous organizations print money in midnight cathedrals
Simplicity favors the blonde in the pin-striped idea
Late comers bunch up in alternative tea-room vantage points
So long in coming so loathe to go
A paraphrase of World War II
Kicking up sparks on the road to Tucumcari
Your wristwatch a 20th Century atavism
You think you know where you are and are wrong again
This sense of displacement is vaguely familiar
The idea takes time to grow from seed to flower
Meanwhile you live and its not just for humids anymore
Stand at attention outside the gate
Brandish complexity the subject is not white
Not black, not red, not green, is virtually colorless
Changing light bulbs inside and out
It would be very nice to be here again
The banks are muddy that hold the rapid times
A painter captures light on water time of day
A song the only point of contact rushing home to meet them
26

FIRE FOR THOUGHT

REED BYE

BLAZEVOX[BOOKS]
Buffalo, New York

Fire For Thought

by Reed Bye
Copyright 2015
Published by BlazeVOX [books]
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without
the publishers written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews.
Printed in the United States of America
Interior design and typesetting by Geoffrey Gatza
Cover art: Latest Reality by Bobbie Louise Hawkins, collection of
Anne Waldman. Printed with artists permission. Photo by Ann Klein.
First Edition
ISBN: 978-1-60964-234-1
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015954033
BlazeVOX [books]
131 Euclid Ave
Kenmore, NY 14217
Editor@blazevox.org

publisher of weird little books

BlazeVOX [ books ]
blazevox.org
21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10

BlazeVOX

Table Of Contents
How it Begins, with Steps ............................................................. 11
Go to it, Every Detail ..................................................................... 12
One can Hardly Sit Straight Enough ....................................... 13
What is in the Wind ...................................................................... 14
Fire for Thought ............................................................................. 15
Hows the Flame? ........................................................................... 16
Greetings ...........................................................................................17
Coming to a Boil ............................................................................. 18
Say it was All Understood ........................................................... 19
So much Impulse Now Encloses .............................................. 20
Same Day ......................................................................................... 21
My Own Heart Certainly Sank .................................................. 22
Mind and Body ............................................................................... 23
Cutting Board .................................................................................. 24
Succession ........................................................................................ 25
This and That Met ......................................................................... 26
A Funny Cataract of Pattern ....................................................... 27
Soar Kestrel, Eyeing Fur .............................................................. 28
Summer 2014, Missing Anselm .................................................. 29
Yeah You Said That Did You Mean It .................................... 30
Soon but the End is Long ............................................................ 31
Flavors of a Single Taste .............................................................. 32
Keep on til You Make the End-Around ................................... 33
Cant Stay as Long as I Wanted ................................................. 34
A Joyful Strain A Wince of Pain ................................................ 35
In an Instant .................................................................................... 36
Point of Recognition ..................................................................... 37
In that Look She gets it Right ..................................................... 38
Washes her Hair............................................................................. 39
Increments and a Finale ............................................................. 40

One Something Makes Another ................................................ 41

Good Clear Seeing ......................................................................... 42
Well .................................................................................................... 43
What Consort and Range of Play ............................................. 44
Entrance Based in Feeling ........................................................... 45
Melancholy Lines the Basket..................................................... 46
Like a Rugged Mountain of Glass ............................................. 47
And Thats the Good News ........................................................ 48
In Threads of this Web ............................................................... 49
Somebodys Cracking the Whip................................................50
Rapture Plough ...............................................................................51
I Know we Say this But................................................................. 52
From the Brow of this Ridge ....................................................... 53
Day Wears on and Mind Grows Wide .................................... 54
When will we Knit some Dragon Underwear ....................... 55
What PlaceIn What Place ....................................................... 56
Work Precedes the Miracle ......................................................... 57
Like the Last Day of Summer ..................................................... 58
Not Much of a Hold Perhaps ...................................................... 59
Heres Something to Do .............................................................. 60
Because Burns has been Sung, and Shakespeare Too ........ 61
Bittersweet ....................................................................................... 62
The Last Imputed Voice Came from a Cabin ........................ 63
This Day Fell From ...................................................................... 64
Thus we are Real ............................................................................ 65

Acknowledgments
Several of these poems have appeared in the following
magazines and journals: Denver Quarterly, Fact-Simile,
Summer Stock, Embodied Poetics, and Bombay Gin.

FIRE FOR THOUGHT

for Jill

HOW IT BEGINS, WITH STEPS

into the unknown. A thin skin
leads us on, one who can see the way
a fox does and has felt the wind
collapse his home. What is left?
A length of wire and when that runs out
a tender dream stands above
breasts bared, smiling
The sun was sharp
Bits and pieces shared its course
What was then discovered? The job one has
to do. It lit the way
that flowed in currents, adjusting
balance side to side
How does one get rid of the lumps
with heart of previous day intact
or with a new one starting? Breath
reads symptoms, makes its diagnosis
and prescribes what truth to take
Flag flaps, spoon stirs. Lift and
swallow

11

GO TO IT, EVERY DETAIL

of the surface, pond and cattail
mountain, sky, and limb
Just below their feelings for each other
what can I doHearts of geese incline
and land on water, a sure sign
we have this power growing through our fingers
that into others in the scene enroots
a system inter-animating logic
Water guides our footprints
Lip and tongue talk down that avenue
that leads to whats becoming sorcerous
Come, everything that seems to be implores
to bed, and feel a kindred flame
These kinds that grow together in the night
A mind like bindweed
forms a saddle
rides on turtles, landing in the evening
woven into time-threads
thinking and forgetting
what it is to rise and bob and duck and go

12

ONE CAN HARDLY SIT STRAIGHT ENOUGH

The shell already cracked
Who knows whats breeding in that core
A new generation
Who knows how time will warp genes
this time
running up and raising lumps
hauled by trucks
through basements and
across the cornfield
taking down phonelines with
a copy of Ode to the West Wind
in one hand
and something from Leaves of Grass
stuffed in the other pocket
Be careful
about that bulb in your projector
and the newspaper shifting its beam
whose point of view, already late
for the next frame
is a tiger pacing. A millisecond
later
it bounds into the present
Last scene: Fred and Ethel
standing at the door in wide-eyed wonder

13

WHAT IS IN THE WIND

Coming from so many directions at once
to frighten and set the stage for
more discomfited angels
spreading feathered seeds
A toss-up dirty work
testing strength of stem, armed to
depth of root in clay
Is it narrow with a purpose?
What is to be protected from such
fleeting motivation
and what is its relation to inevitability
and power?
We supplicate the wisdom of space
Chokyi Gyatso. What will become of the lore
this ore
if adharmic forces win
this breeze, so fresh and sharp
and what it seeds

14

FIRE FOR THOUGHT

for Anne and Ambrose
Pleased and re-pleased shocked and dragged
life finds itself bumping against the V of a fork
misunderstanding, swirling
into a side channel, popping out
with deeper currents folding underneath
Something opens and closes
Occasional pieces form a puzzle
Questions swirl habits
breeding more delusion ecstasy and
disappointmentGoing along
in my twenties and then life comes up big
with marriage and a child, lives on either side
nudging Altered momentum
Happy accidents Meeting the dharma
Living persons Primordial wisdom
Life and its problems Sit on the bottom
Get with the breathing
Enter the world bigger than thought
Native condition bigger than I thought
Feeling the value Insight of non-thought
Part of the current Mind that can know
How is it possible Knowing itself
beyond what can know it Consort of learning
Unending tether Out from the flame
Into the ether Into the stream

15

HOWS THE FLAME?

You know what you have taken in today
looking at an eight-legged specimen
standing and playing harp in a group
Punctuation as
point of entry
Sailing off into the branch
of a neuron
inescapably, teeth
rattle at the intersection
Brain encased by a skull
with holes
larger than theaters
Bus after bus
full of the guilty
Now there you go
Fire the editor! Cool morning flagstone
magenta lichen
adjusting ones socks
Get it togetherrein in thinking
Put the bigger cauldron back on simmer

16

GREETINGS
everyone associated with the pure present
A salutation!
So full and alive in the arteries
Whatever you do next will
climb continental shelves
to get back home
Come
indigo moon
lean out from your divan and lend
a floating light to each one
being washed up on the shore
As flares explore artifacts
raked from grasses, cast your glance
on tide pools
Blame and remorse stand delivered
in waves overlapping
These clans and countries you have known

17

COMING TO A BOIL
A veil, smokeproof
hanging in the midst
Is that a problem?
Yes, according to the soothsayer
No, opposed the poet
Think of it as brave
milk
where Heidigger comes from, lots of leaves
caught in his hair
so-going, finding a way
through
warp and woof. How else
sun appearing to be gone
stay eclipsed?
The rest aglowdappled leaves
exchanged for patience
Giving names a
desolation, through whose veil
things disperse
lids flapping up and down

18

SAY IT WAS ALL UNDERSTOOD

There was this church and it was
crow child squawk for
fresh fallen snow
A congregation
lapsed by limbs that
knew the stairs but couldnt find the
sanctuary
When empty tracts once neighborhoods
that now no longer do what things
one did who had the grace but lost the drift
of what was said that used to
catch the light and
set aglow its rays
The world time forgots
remembered on a thread
The colors that produce a tear become
a palette quaking
Nothing that was said before
Whos holding this vast puppetry
aloft?provides a handle
Dont you want to get it going?
Cock on a walk, gray day
Sun stuck in its lock

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SO MUCH IMPULSE NOW ENCLOSES

Earth jelly
Sorrow but no concern
Too much inside, nothing out
risen with the sun
See the battered leaves of squash
evening-influenced, dressed in sincerity
spilling forth. Things respond
with simple
elegance
angling
into orgasm
Only a little
style moves into confusion
Cant understand them
Arent humans much? There is no limit
to what they think and
try to understand
Appearance at one edge
squashed
and joy, the
open-hearted renovator, at the other
an angled jackhammer
bringing it all back up

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