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Aberration Labyrinth
Winter 2017
Life Preserver Christina Vara Study in trauma Richard Weaver
Safety is not your strong suit. It is not your color or size. It clings to you with white knuckles like a weakening Atlas. And like Atlas, you bare the burden… with breaking bones and shaking shoulders you bare it.
Unsung a blue bird sings its return to a treeless earth. Wine without truth. Dregs a fortune-teller’s distilled tears. A star without fingers of light. An untouchable fruit pulped with blood. Life undone. Wind clinging to long tempting silence. It lingers even as it startles and splinters into dark then expands again to become white light. Together they burn wholly complete.
Pill popping insomnia and timidity, chasing away lingering dreams with a spoon and a dollar bill, swimming in a gasoline house, clutching the fuse for a life line.
I can see everything seeping into your veins like an IV drip. Pumping your heart, drowning reality.
Second person Tim Pilgrim You're not the first to say, someday I'll go to sleep
Dreams turning to ash and disease, choking the echoing sun you wear. Casting caution from your grasp… … watching it tilt -
and not wake up. Secretly hope you're wrong. Merely sick, depressed a bit, death-talking to yourself --
and shatter at your feet…
down a black path, admired, smiling, coffined, tan.
… reflecting bible black eyes… that gleam with security.
Staring back handsome, kissed, missed, gone. Wonder if you had friends, listened, cared a bit, maybe shared, cried, a second chance, smoother ride downhill, inside.
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ISSN 2179-8805
Aberration Labyrinth
Winter 2017
Work Until You Die Jillian Oliver “The mountains move at a slow speed. an inch, maybe two each year,” Dad once said as he drove the tractor trailer, drinking his warm beer from a Deer Park bottle as I sat behind him on his bed playing with the antenna of his broken TV.
Texting the savior Tim Pilgrim U R pissd I C but revenge can B served way 2 cold.
“It all makes me tired; The cold air, the orange moon,” He said. The harvest moon reminded me of clay and sand with grey from cigarette ash. And as he rolled lazily down the highway he tossed me his bag of fried potato sticks, Then scratched his belly, Bloated by 50 ounce coffees And quarts of ice cream. “The pleasures of the poor folk” he once joked. And with a deepened crease between his gray brows He sucked his Pall Mall and said, “When I was your age, I wondered what life was for, But now I know . . . You just work until you die.”
Was it the 30 coins thing or becuz U were naild 2 the X? I no that hurts Y now? They r ded U got out, remember? And Y the I'll b bak? WTF, U shouldn't cum bak just 2 get me.
I listened to his trailer’s cries As it screeched and rattled down the street. I bathed my tongue in salt, And watched the green mountains turn dark, As the sun, red as a cut, collapsed Beneath his dusty windshield.
Early Morning Claptrap Travis Burris Pinholes poked in velvet cover light of another day shines through vertical eyes fixed aimlessly as Pall Mall mockingly salutes shadows splinter while street dancing rejoice! All to remember at 5am a dormant succubus naked in street light embellished, provocative, surreal anticipating the weight of the world piecing reality together one stitch at a time broken down and torn in two between infinite, wrinkled hands of time and the freeze frame of a photograph idealistic in a pure rarity misshapen to an all new perfection.
Salvation Tim Pilgrim Insulation, church attic, lay out pink rolls, end to end, row by row, each fibered breath in, you dream, akin to smoking crack. Three days later, you descend, somehow know this is what it feel like to wake up dead.
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ISSN 2179-8805
Aberration Labyrinth
Winter 2017
ISSN 2179-8805
Book of Giants Jim Zola In dreams I see trees as men walking. I wake, punch the sky. Dumbness is a blessing. In one palm I hold feathers and have no idea where I got them. The boy in the lake looks up at me, muddy eyes through sedge. I want to touch him but know he has fallen for good reason. Instead, I gobble my breakfast, ten moonpies, wrappers and all.
Birds of Appetite Jim Zola
The Giant Holds a Persimmon
You are requested to serve on the committee of generalizations, to whisper sweet ohs in the ear of some other horse, to carve the metaphrase of I Am into your wife’s blue ankle, to catalog no-see-ums on the dead elk’s snout. We will not accept the usual excuses;
Snakes peek out of holes. I lick lips, listen for thunder, skull smacked. Anger comes from a pain more specific than detractors could ever imagine. Bad teeth, a back unforgiving. Mumbling apologies to furry things crushed beneath my toes, I bend to pick the one ripe fruit. So tiny, it hides in the folds of my palm. Suddenly my heart begins to ache. I know I need to be going.
there is no body to be found, feather is to summons as blood is to blister, it was in my other jacket pocket, my other skin left out. No no no no. You are requested to serve biscuits to the missing. Butter, jelly, jam. They will eat eventually. You must wait.
The Boy in the Lake That moonpie face stares down at me, his fallen angel. How wrong can one be? I open my mouth to call for help, minnows eclipse my cry. He opens his mouth drowning in sky. My breakfast again is downy and quacks. Distorted by a watery sun, his smile floats gigantic. The Giant Laments I poke darning needles through the loose skin of my elbows, stiff leg it down roads pocked with horse dung piles bigger than a breadbox. How small the hills appear when I squint and squat in ditches. Children skipping past make my stomach pit. Their laughter stones me. I want to return to the womb of the well, to linger in gypsum, finger the fragments. This is the way the world ends -- the giant winks.
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Aberration Labyrinth
Winter 2017
Visible and Invisible Jim Zola Lately I have been living here between the invisible landscapes, lost in the backyard gone lank with weeds. But that’s ok. What better way to help my search for cures, for roots and seeds - camel thorn, velvet bean, wild cherry. Each uncovering turns tonic, nervine for the soul.
The tears have a mind of dirt. They don’t discover the changing plain of my currents.
Who’s to say who will be the first to go, lining up, the visible, the invisible? Each day I find myself stuck in-between, where only the living wear shoes, where my mother steams wild asparagus all morning and my father sits and chews areca nuts, where I know I will become visible again after everything else has faded.
Take my waves seriously to lead the way for specs will uncover a well of beautiful bells.
My belly is full of tongues; chimes that sing and sink onto the floor. Your eyes are headed to my toes.
Authority Charges Hanna Pachman
I want more but am blinded past the navy topping.
Trapped inside a puddle of regrets for no one to understand, my laments are made of lentils.
No one look at my serpents door. This is the end, you worthless floor.
Tick-tock toxic sex.
We save dollars for sweet and savory nuts, a charity to cater the topless.
You yell trying to ask me for a question, instead of failing out of fashion into a sewn direction. To be condemned for my stolen eggs of painful sauce is too hot. To contain more means I want chocolate.
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Aberration Labyrinth
Winter 2017
Hungry for the Beat Hanna Pachman
She clears her throat to swallow the most gorgeous ghost.
No sound beneath her voice machine. A missed call is his missed calling.
One last time we cry. One last time she tells herself she can.
Jelly beans splinter in her knees. Hot chocolate spoons tremble the keys,
She sells herself one last time and she is canned.
in a melting hospital room. A cave of abstinence where have they been inside her cadence. Michigan has never screamed this quiet.
Swallow Juan Pablo Duboue
They search for ugly robots on social media, congratulating prisoners for being one another.
I swallow nostalgia like menthos. And please don’t get me wrong You know when you Accidentally Swallow the whole thing For a minute there it’s like: Am I gonna choke? And then you feel that white Sugar ball going all the way down Then you know it’s okay It’s gonna be fine All those juices will do the trick And BoomGone.
The white rooms of robbers against her diaphragm; the air conditioner tingles. Little feathers break out of the pillowcase against her strong heart. There is no food. She is cut off from the flow of what pain could undress.
It’s a forgotten memory A story to tell at a family reunion Or to your friends You may even be able to Laugh about it. After some time you learn to live with it.
Now she loses color to become a morphine moth under the covers.
It’s the whole process of swallowing that hurts.
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Aberration Labyrinth
Winter 2017
ISSN 2179-8805
DIMINISH Nandi Ayana Convoluted, claims to be all-knowing self proclaimed, locally famed as our token speaker three weeks in and her sparks begin to— singe melting my lace ends and tassel I'm on the fringes And all I keep hearing are arbitrary accusations: did you complete your reading? why did you miss our meeting? they came late because of my race your words are quite misleading. yet I'm convoluted my words, my language policed like the oppressed bodies about which she speaks preaching of a higher purpose leasing square feet tarnishing loqs, previously sleek and leaving dark metal scratched. Obsession turned sour one morning in November narcissistic tensions drag the seconds of every minute of every hour it's just past twelve and my dark shell is collapsing I'm scratching, teeth bared, palms out grasping, but forever trapped in her gaze collapsing under piled rope and flames of the South Bronx drowning in social constructs misuse of power and forgotten names long words and soft drawls as subtle attacks become norm— forced silence while others struggle for her trust orders voiced in private stop letting them speak for us grandiose delusions forced free from masks of feigned concern slip ups from dark tinted lips failed attempts to diminish on a daily basis yet, it solely reflects upon me the dark loq with the audacity to not be awed by faux eloquence and a half letter deduction.
Corners Juan Pablo Duboue I choose corners cause I tend to choke on people I eat them up real fast so I never mingle I’ve learned to do better So I choose corners Most of the times It’s the best decision You go by unnoticed Smuggle a drink Light a cigarette – no one Pays attention to corners Until someone does and he knows what you’re up to Cause he’s a corner fellow himself Only he got rehabilitated or something The lights are on you and it’s a close up He wants you to cross the border Palms start sweating Heart racing and you wish you Would have stayed in the comfort Of your corner But, then again He’s kinda cute.
Playground Faye Abdulle
Come my love Permit our demons to breathe some fresh air They have been closeted in our cavities for so long Darling, Can our fiends play under the withering moonbright? Let their shadows cast over our nightly heavens So once again, our evils can marvel during the morning light.
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Aberration Labyrinth
Winter 2017
ISSN 2179-8805
October 6th Eric Dixon closed my eyes and sat upright feeling with my tentacles a cold, hard surface hands jittery, mind racing still life of monster, real intended consequences of idle hands under a stone bridge where I lay my head senses constricted and old instincts rotted, I slipped on the rails of a disused train's track where lovers meet to recognize the animals inside their skins
Narrative of a Consumer Reagan Tinney Our pliant shelter in the way of his desires is opened. Seeking eyes roam the box, selecting his next victim they land on me. Murderous, sleazy hands reach down I'm lifted Set on the edge of his lips, ever so slightly. Reaching into the depths of his jeans, his accomplice joins him. Flick Life depleting flames rise, angling unison with the wind. It's on me. Consuming me, disintegrating me, For all I was, am, ever been. He breathed my life in, exhaled it, continued with lungs fuming I tried to speak To yell To beg I was almost gone with flames reaching the ends. I was reaching the end. "You're killing me" but silence fills the smoke infested air I gasp for breath for feeling Every part of me hurts. I'm fading into ashes of his pleasure Inhaled into his womanizing pipes on last time. A satisfactory smile spreads along his handsome face. Lifeless body in hand, He twists, turns, into dirt until there's nothing left of me. Sneakers finish destroying his evidence. He walks away taking all of us with him in dark corners of denim.
Obscure Shadows Reagan Tinney You're there in the absence of light in my nightmares— I'm absorbed in the darkness where you hide where you wait for me like you did that night the night you attacked me— ruined me— stole my innocence away from me. Every wall closes in on me the side of my face imprinted with every curve, edge they posses. I'm frozen exactly where you want me to be. you're hurting me— murdering me within— I scream but no one hears. I cry but you don't care. You leave— disappearing into aphotic corners I lay frightened, exposed, abandoned, on the cold floor. You're wherever the blackness travels And I, I can't face it. The worst part— I can't wake up.
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Aberration Labyrinth
Winter 2017
ISSN 2179-8805
Influences of Fallen Angels Reagan Tinney Your life is a canvas. You choose what goes on it. You choose its nefarious.
Pete Tony Walt
It's staring at you from across the room. You ignore it continuing to focus on your vacant canvas. You still sense it staring at you you pick up a paintbrush but it doesn't satisfy. You force out the perception, painting anyway.
My friend Pete is a good man, been with the Company for 9 years, married to his wife for 7 years. He quit drinking 2 years ago and is quitting caffeine this year. He wants to eliminate gluten from his diet next year.
You paint a meadow among towering mountains, filled with violet daisies with long, luscious green stems. You life now insinuating beauty. But it's still staring at you it's pulling you in you try to fight the urge but you can't tears cascade, glistening with your aphotic past making your weaknesses apparent for the first in a long time. you moan You pray to God he protects you from it But God couldn't save the Devil and the Devil is glaring at you right now.
Never had an accident (caused a few, though), cuts his grass every Saturday at 9 a.m. sharp.
Your strength depleted, you're completely alone. You walk to the Devil with a handle, shimmering in the light stand by your canvas of false beauties, lead it to your wrist, letting it stream out Your violet daisies now stained red. You're not finished yet. You pick up your paintbrush, cover the gaps, while seeking gaps in the air for breath but you fail. Your crimson canvas lies on the table as you now lie on the floor your paint staining the wood.
He will likely pass quietly in the night, with that "peaceful look" spread across his face.
He's always on time, and his shirts are neatly pressed At conferences, I see him grinning over the top of a cup of white chocolate mocha with soy, and I always wave my vodka in his direction. He is what women call "solid," and then they say, "well, it was time to settle down, and he was there" and I can understand that.
I often hear his loud clean laugh at parties, happy and content, as I fuck his wife in the pool room
Your life is a canvas. You choose how ugly it's going to be. Just pray to God you can be saved from yourself.
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Aberration Labyrinth
Winter 2017
ISSN 2179-8805
Love Dominic Russell Jeppi Love is a dungeon disguised as a church. How long will it be until the paint chips?
Holdout Jeff Nazzaro
How long will it be until the fabric frays?
It's front porch juts into the street, defiant, its barred windows bared teeth, Beware of Dog sign a bloodshot lower eye, Old Glory an upper, faded. They cling still.
Burnt Carpet Julia Ponder
It is not alone in the city. There are others, of course, holdouts among solid blocks of commerce, stiff-arming the gentlemen's clubs and other euphemisms, like those green-crossed dispensaries for medical marijuana, for jacking up prices, for facilitating the upward expansion of K2— watch it soar past Everest, watch them sprawl on the sidewalk in front of the little beige house on Washington Boulevard,
On Ikea rugs and “Welcome� mats our love like slow lightening pierces ignited threads and threatens to burn all the haphazardly placed furniture. In this pleasured turmoil the cogs in our brain get caught in the mess of it all; muscles tense and that sponge of electrodes becomes fried like a wet stereo falling into the kitchen sink. But we do it all again (and again) for the flash of brilliance hidden in the forgotten places (between the fridge and the counter,
upstream swimming in concrete.
the couch and the stairs). Lighting them with ten thousand bolts that reaching your big toe Extend their smoking Tendrils to the stained carpet And proclaim never another dark night.
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Aberration Labyrinth
Winter 2017
ISSN 2179-8805
Willowbrook Winos Jeff Nazzaro In the middle of a triangular patch of dirt, shaved of willows, dried of brook, at the confluence of limbs of transport, arteries, a flaccid belt of waste.
Green Line Sext Jeff Nazzaro Like the domed little camera on the ceiling I watch her over her shoulder send a text: halfway to Crenshaw.
On a commandeered love seat, poking springs and mildew, passing a bottle passing the time passing a thousand cars, trucks, trains an hour in eight different directions bikes, jets, skateboards having always already arrived.
I watch her get one back: I got u babe Made-up, dolled-up, tits-to-ass broad as one leaf of a double-leaf train door, young and true BBBW layered in black and red with little smatterings of gold.
A walkway bisects it. On one side you can sit in the sun, on the other, the shade of the overpass.
Now she double-times her double-thumbs, plum-colored acrylics going clickety-clack, clickety-clack on that crowded Green Line train.
They sit and they gorge on Cisco Red and South Central sun before they really need it, before the Christmas trees and the strings of lights push them back up against that lime green liquor store wall.
She sends: Good. I need that deep stroking you do. That make me cum several times dick. LOL. I am not laughing. She scrolls through her slate of emojis until the train rolls to a stop at Crenshaw, the doors open and she exits the train.
Rock JD DeHart
She doesn't select and send an emoji, she looks back at me and smiles a smile inscrutable I fancy conspiratorial. My lips long to smiley face smile, my eyebrows archly arch but all I manage is the twitch of an unmasked eye.
face of stone far from smooth, the years and decades and centuries will wear those crags away the creature of cement used to be human but now is an immovable transmutable stone cursed to watch the world wither and change unmoved and unmoving.
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Aberration Labyrinth
Winter 2017
Ash Cat JD DeHart feline flowing in the air after the fire once white suddenly decorated with flickers of darkness Bus Stop 69 Emma Neagu
almost-shaped yellow eyes touch of fire
The rain drips down, cold on my face, Tears from the Gods, A fixed spot on the sidewalk, To rest my eyesža pothole, The ground stretched out lazily, Ruined by a break, a hole, a cavity.
pitiful mew should not be mistaken, claws out.
And I can hear the water, Hit the roof tops, Hit the windows, Like a drunken husband beating, Merciless and repeatedly, The person who shares his bed.
Its Work JD DeHart
High heels jab at the pavement, A leather skirt, Riding up to high places, Where red lingerie and expectations, Were ripped up and ruined by many, Reused, worn out, and ruined by many.
broken down old home rusted car, the remnants of a life that used to be worth living monster time makes his (her) creeping rounds, taking down the vines and leaves, mere detritus
As the bus crawls forward, Farting out black smoke, I fill my lungs with airžhard, It stings good, And my feet slowly shuffle on board, To take my usual seat, At the back.
this is its worth, the slow turning of age, making normal men transmogrified making kind words rattle with ceaseless age.
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Aberration Labyrinth
Winter 2017
ISSN 2179-8805
Friends Thom Young he walked into the school told the teachers and the boys to get out. then he shot the girls one by one in the back of the head then put the cold steel in his own mouth the next day they all forgave him and when his widow needed help they took up a collection and they didn't boast or tell anyone about it they say the killer used to drive a milk truck and did a good job of keeping everything cold.
YOUR HEROIC CANNIBALISM Timothy Sharp You tear skin from me and they cheer The lights illuminating your shock of hair White-hot under the loving billion-eyed gaze Of cathode rays and curved lenses You crack the bone, suck the marrow And they weep in sympathy, each moment perfect Tuned to a narrative of loving consumption A devouring eruption of static orgasm Next, your blade, hand-crafted on local islands Cuts into my skull and opens me A hush falls across them, in reverence For the knotted fibers of all dreams You take me into your mouth, and chew The roar from the crowd is deafening Desperate screaming, blended in waves of light All secrets now revealed, all stories ended
I Dream in Circles A.J. Huffman Symbols of fluidity haunt me, mock me with their constancy. They amplify my discord, the brokenness that screams from inside my skin like a ghost of a thousand deaths. I know I will relive them all as I hang like a halo in the middle of nowhere, dissolving in time to a clock that has forgotten to chime.
The bye Kim Michener Rubber hands strangle the slick neck of the knob he shreds his vocal cords saying goodbye to the biteless spider plant, squinting through streaked windows sticky with wind honey to the cherry hammock twisting between two trunks like licorice muscles flexing blinds crash into tin cans
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Aberration Labyrinth
Winter 2017
Look at me Kim Michener Her hand over his head Wrist elegantly bent with frozen drips of long fingers Interlacing his hair--Blackbird feathers in winter sun Pajamas pleasantly rumpled Snow falls faster She hopes for an avalanche His skin luminescent, Earlobes shaped like half-hearts The first time they slept here it was a Friday And the apartment smelled like spaghetti She thought he had a beautiful heart Even if sometimes his brain went a different way He tore at life Viciously, lovingly And she makes excuses Because he’s the brightest part Of her darkest shadow.
Bones Thomas Fassett
I want your bones in my mouth the sweet taste of your skin on my tongue Your stringy flesh pulled from the bone with my teeth Dripping down my face your body’s nectar I want to devour you heart, lungs, and brain Take you in through my throat All that you have to offer Become a part of me my passive anarchy tear you down to see your innards how they steam in the moonlight My goodnight’s howl screams through the air “You are mine to devour, Mine to pass! I hunt you! And you are good!”
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Aberration Labyrinth
Winter 2017
Maybe tomorrow Kim Michener Show me to the door that is mine My rubber soles seal me to the earth Somehow I Trudge a path to Tuesday Now I run Catching time like an out-of-socket arm Nevertheless Follow me to Thursday Where rockets prepare for journey Aphids prepare for feast On the blood of Tuesday’s rose Send your tears to Monday When we can finally talk, talk, talk About Something Nothing Save for the purgatorial wait on Sunday When clouds roll in and coffee comes Again, again, again. At The Publishing House Richard King Perkins II James Franco’s credit card was declined just a few years before he hosted the Oscars. Art Linkletter once called in just to remind anyone who’d listen that he used to be someone important. A royalty check from the Ted Hughes estate arrived at Nick’s home the day after his suicide and was later returned. When Leonard Nimoy phoned to consent to a change in his play, his ill-fitting dentures rattled around in his mouth. I prank-called the company one day, pretending I was an author who hadn’t received a royalty check. I told the office manager that they were all assholes and to get me my damn check. They scurried around with bulging eyes and flushed faces until I laughed and hung up. But secretly, I really wished that I was that kind of an author.
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