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dispatch litareview 18 July 2011 issn 1217-1948 litareview.com subscribe@litareview.com

dispatchers: Matt DiGangi matt@litareview.com P. H. Madore dispatch@litareview.com

frontcover:PHM back:"Butoh"byDavidOhlerking
left photo

Hourmad

Publishingallformsofprinted communicationwhenpossible, talkingaboutitwhennot. Submissionsreadyear-round.Letters printedinthebackofeachissue(send toletters@litareview.com).Logoby ChristyCall,circaFebruary2009. Typefaces:Magellan,Accolade,& others.

reetings from Dellwood Avenue (Hampden) in Baltimore. This is one of the shortest streets in the city, so now you know where to find me. If you were looking. I assume some of you must have been, but I wouldn't have been easy to find. Used to be you could get eighty ounces for four dollars and get change but now they want six for the same. Anyway, I broke up with her. And her. And her. And her. My grandmother passed on. The world ended briefly. In short, it's been a busy season. But I've lost the fire for this project, so again it's going on the back burner. This one could be several years. Perhaps the next one will be in print (and still free) so keep in touch.

D EAR READER,

D RUNKER' N USUAL, phm

HE FEDERAL RESERVE IS A FUCKING LIE.

THIS FREE DOCUMENTARY LAYS IT DOWN. WATCH WITH CAUTION.

he whole neighborhood was in love with Ms. Albions shoulders. Worse than launching war, the beauty of these shoulders summoned irrational sentimentality in each admirer. Philosophy, gossip, sportnone drew the intellectual effort and selfsustaining curiosity as did her shoulders. Debates raged in town hall and taverns over whether it was because of the curves of shoulders were so sexy, or wasnt it true that curves arent sexy, curves are just curves, and isnt it the shoulders themselveswhole, angular, and so rhythmically unified as they arethat are the focus of our affection?

THE G ABARDINE THRONE OF S ARASOTA

Mike Ostrov

Not affection, sentiment, a drinkless man would correct. Id trade my best coatthe beaveriest, most insulated, and least likely to shedfor the chance to skate my fingers down those shoulders just once, the hatless men would say. Id settle for one of my fingers, placed smack inbetween those blades, the coatless man would say. I bet her showers full of a million types of bottles, all different lotions, one for each day, one for each color bra strap, one for each degree of humidity. When it was too hot to go out to a tavern theyd lay, coatless and hatless and drinkless, in their living rooms, five to a couch at least, and wait. The couch, they observed, had arms and a back, but no shoulders. Groups of girls pace in front of Ms. Albions apartment and feel that somehow fingers just wouldnt do for those shoulders, as the men imagine. They are her fans. They fear fingers are not to be trusted. A fing would potentially be insulting, crude and clumsy, to risk. Where can we find the appropriate instruments of worship? They try to conjure a sense better than touch.

havent touched Ms. Albion either, but Im sitting with her now while shes making a decision. That exact decision. Its a horrible thing to watch, truthfully, but its rare enough to keep me in the room. Shes a sharp lady. In all places. Dont pretend those bonesclavichord, ulnaarent your favorite part. I knew that I couldnt slip anything sentimental past her, nothing about my sleepless nights thinking of her or my wakeless days dreaming of her. Shes suspicious of sentiment; shes an embroiderer. You can find Ms. Albions work all over town: The barbers smocks are tiedyed and have My memorys as patchy as my beard stitched in wool around the neck. The ceramicists are smockless, but Ms. Albion is brainstorming ideas for when they get smocked.

In the dugout, the highschool baseball team passes around an Albionmade kerchief on hot, cloudless days that says, Gnats are Gnasty. Shes now been hired by the bank to design the foreclosure signs. One farm house just inside town has a sign that reads, The crops didnt fail, I did. The one next door says, Sad Cow Disease. She did those just for the money. So I brought a lot less of myself. I knocked at her door and asked her what she might embroider on my shirt pocket and on my button fly. That was enough to get me inside, for her to offer me a seat on her selfupholstered gabardine sofa. Its made out of old gabardine suits and tailormade Army uniforms from the early twentieth century. While shes making up her mind, I check out her slippers. She embroidered them, of coursethe left says New Division, the right says Joy Order. I bring up the weather, comment on the torturous asphalt that rises up to sear your feet and the waterless grass. She swears she gets off on hot grass, which means that she doesnt wear shoes outside. Who cares about her shoes! the girls outside the window scream. I care about Ms. Albions shoes. Im shoeless. I get around less than the coatless and the hatless. And theyre just laying on their couches, remember. Having decided, she cracks her jaw and gets up to press coffee. Shell soon pour the coffee and let me know what my pocket and fly have been telling her. Coffee pouring is code for an answer like: Its not platonic, its not sexual, I just Im relieved, Ill tell myself. It really was neither of nothing. Which would explain my feeling everything. Theres a lot not covered by platonic and sexual.

For me, for instance, theres this inner lesbian folksingerism that I wonder if she caught onto. The lesbian folksinger loves a woman in a certain way, notices distance in a certain way. That part of me is crushing on her shoulders, hard. When I look at Ms. Albions shoulders, its that part that falls breathless and starts thinking in delicate and destructive guitar licks. Normal, shoeless me keeps breathing. Theres more between Ms. Albion and me than platonic. Theres more distance than the sexual. The lesbian folksinger turns sentiments into just the way it goes. Hats and coats have started flying through the windows and I should go. The others are protesting my proximity, that I should be so lucky to even have a coffee answer. I should go. Should I leave something? She put cream and sugar in my coffee without asking. I ask her for honey. Should I leave something for her to remember me by? I need a failsafeI quickly inspect her selfembroidered throw pillows for clues. She sees me looking and tells me the theme of her living room is Imitation of Life: REDUX. The gabardine sofa makes more sense now. Ill leave something small somewhere, between the cushions. No, under the pillow, the corner of my small thing sticking out. An earlobesized silver button saying, Push For What Comes. Then, she pours me more coffee.

hat could be worse than if someone looking back said that I was not grateful? I tell you, I am grateful. Nothing is merely nothing. This nothingness between me and Ms. AlbionIm grateful that theres a between. I thought I could rely on her to not mistake gratitude for desperation, but I was wrong, and its hardly her fault. Those shoulders, theres more weight on them than eyes. I should say how heavy eyes are. There are no eyeless men or women in this town and blind men just wont do for Ms.

Albion. She wont go barefoot in her own house. Shoeless as I am, it hurts me that Ms. Albion is so fond of her slippers. Theyre boat shoes, really, she says. I dont always mind that Im shoeless. I have nice enough feet. Theyre the feet of a lesbian folksinger, Im proud to saytough and dusty, swollen from standing so long, but cornless and arched enough to keep some of my sole off the incinerating asphalt. I mind being the only one shoeless, though, sometimes. I dont play football with everybody. I do well on beaches. She is always sleeveless, of course. She was made for 80s workout videos. Over our second coffee, she tells me a secret: she has no secrets. The coatless and hatless invent truths for her. They handle the concealing also. Why dont you just wear a shawl? I ask her. Why dont you wear Wonder Bread bags on your feet? she responds. I dont think that really answers my question. She has options, I dont. She must think the opposite. She wishes that she lived in a less sentimental town. She points to the statue of the young sailor kissing a young nurse that stands in the park beside the bay as a prime example, and also the fact that we have not one, but two fine arts colleges. The sentiments are built into the town, we cant undo that. What we can do is decide not to be tragic anymore. Although the fact that she wont let me convince her that she deserves to not be tragic leads me to face my own tragicness. But I remember to be grateful. I would rather be generous than grateful. After our second cup, she stands and says shes now coffeeless.

oatless, shoelessthe voluntarily touchless marchers outside the windowwed all be fucked come winter if winter ever came, but wed remain pitiable.

HOLIDAY

Russell Jaffe

Shoulder pads. Smearing rain. A brick effigy of your aunt that bought you a Nintendo, then a Turbo Grafix, in the hole where the store was. The XMen cards in the basement truck. Survival. The smell of yellow. The dust. Alien action figures came with Facehugger plastic rings. Wear them today proudly. Wear a cape of your tattered blanket. Its not a surrender rag, its a hoisted picture of you briefly before its nothing. Isnt that always the way. Record a moment for the vault. Safety. The vomit in the corners. The saliva in your Snoopy sheets. Clothes items with the word power in front of them. Hard bookshelf edges and what they would say to the edge of your forehead. And the shoulder pads. The slope, the fall off. Land in a pile of cassettes. The broken driveway under your Huffy. The neighborhood boy and the T2 Sour Meltdowns he offered like the huddle of a textbook picture community in a strange land. Sour Warheads. The way they galvanize your mouth and the trickles of milk. You land in lunchboxes and cassettes. Everythings getting smaller but you. The most beautiful landscape youll ever see is Giant World in Mario 3. You stomped around your parents room in moms heels because it was so weird. One more day atop mountains of 8 track tape. Well rule the world of the strewn just one more time.

THE MECHANIC INVESTIGATES A LEAK

George Moore

nside where warmth is a matter of matter bursting forth, the mechanic investigates a hissing leak that detonates his mind, particles of which spin off into the mechanisms of a universe lockstep with the fates and the falling of unseen stars. He explores a self reversed into the metals of the earth cautious of the transformations and combustions of time and equally as hungry for the simple explanation, something above the noise of the radio which is left on, that will make his private life as easily managed as this 392 Hemi. The mechanic uncovers the solar eclipse of air cleaner's heart and words in the ear of the tire, and whispers deep in the cave of the half empty tank, and so

uncovers the memory of his first real combustion, the displaced punishment of his mother's crash, the siren of the gears as they whine his long road shut. And the leak goes on, as if a hotspring in a natural wilderness, somewhere behind the left eye, goes on finally into his sons life, and maybe now his sons sons, all the body work done together and yet still leaking, the hands just not quick enough to stop up the hiss and whine, or the world unfixed even with the best chimeric wrench.

GeorgeMoorehas published poetry in The Atlantic, Poetry, North American Review, Colorado Review, Orion, and internationallythe last couple years, with poems in Europe and Asia.

Russell Jaffe lives in Iowa City. His chapbook G(*)D is forthcomingfrom Pudding House Press. He edits the online poetry journal O Sweet Flowery Roses and collects 8-tracks.

Mike Ostrov doomed himself to being a writer by listening to too many Townes Van Zandt, James Brown, and Ferron songs as a kid.Heaimstodie in Denver, Colorado.

(P. H. Madore & Matt DiGangi 13 October 2006)

Returning Fall '11 / Spring '12 for a fourth round. It's the whole promotion/building a buzz thing nobody tells you is the hardest part. Please do pass the issues around. The louder the buzz in that particular inbox, the more likely we are to get that next episode rolling the credits for you. Thanks for reading this far.