Al#14 by Jessica Gleason

Aberration Labyrinth

Aberration Labyrinth ISSN 2179-8805

November 2014

Issue #14

A Note From The Editors: This is our first issue in the new rotation. Please visit our site for updates on submission. From this point forward, AL will be publishing quarterly. The response time will slow, but the issues will be longer. Thank you for your support! -AL

A Rendezvous of Poets Heidi Bellile A poetry reading is without defenses, At home and work we guard our possessions, Our identity, our identifying numbers Our cell phones and voice tones. We lock our cars when parked And our hearts when hooked up.

Rainbow Peter Ivarson A little girl Sees life black and white She runs

In a room full of poets, a diverse Deliberation of words is set free By strangers dressed in black Wearing red fuzzed caps And coal berets with a slant, Voices spoken without emotional regulation.

An elderly women’s melancholy wailing Beautiful As the tornado brings destruction

The bold young and old stand blasting on stage, exposed. On the street this artistic indecency would be broken. A plaid suit coat with an elbow patch Speaks of weeks without direction And political oppression. An Egyptian refugee quakes With a memory dissection. An audience shakes unable to turn the page. A mother’s loss rhymes of a pain that aged. An idealistic teenager speaks Of a virgin love that he has yet to find in his mind Shot of interpretation and intoxication; Cheered on by a room full of literary voyeurs.

A little girl Sees life as a yellow brick road To reach happiness Only to find The lunatics pinkish mind In the orange yellow cornfield The serial killer’s heart beat Inside the silver cabin The savage’s roar In the dark jungle green On the battlefield In the luscious red poppy fields She is caught between Two sisters’ war Over a dead witches heirloom For a pair of ruby slippers Emerald City Where the buildings twinkle with beauty Where the people are ugly Trying to find the quickest way To be the richest one of all A little girl Wishes to wake up To her black and white Life

Aberration Labyrinth ISSN 2179-8805

November 2014

love in the days of table top puzzles Joe Quinn 1. from 1st therapy session: "we are all wild till we get caught in someone's throat. we always remember the first time we hear our mothers cry out guttural like something crawling up the esophagus the fear of seeing us fall away from the world they were" the doctor gave her a prescription the pharmacy gave her a bottle of puzzle pieces "I know it's hard to swallow but one a day and you'll move through the world correctly it'll all come together" (but who chooses the image and why the borders?) 2. from third therapy session: "we are all weak we want others to be our muscle but they have to be attached and under our control. we all want that cinematic scene of saying 'you complete me' but we know 'complete' can be defined as 'to finish; to end' (and we know that's just what they'll do)

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the doctor gave her away she's seen leaving the non-descript office and labeled like a little bottle with the death rattle of new chemical living (the pharmacy gave her a way to live correctly as an image in borders) 3. from ninth therapy session: "men they treat hearts like fortune cookies small, fragile, tasteless off to the side of the meat and the knife and upon being broken the white flag inside raised read: "this message will self-destruct"

The Mango Emily Hansen The way my mother held a mango in the bathtub, its bright burrowed beneath pleated hands, fixed and steady. She told me of her evening baths before I came to be, after her days in the Shangri-la slicing squash and juicing lemon, in the Florida heat, where water and body and air become the same temperature, a tangential world, each thing becomes the other; and only the mango, its golden liquid, flays the drear of sun, its languid, arching light undoes the brow, quenching an umber world.

ÂŠ This work is the property of the individual authors within.

Aberration Labyrinth ISSN 2179-8805

November 2014

Issue #14

her wanderlust stories / punk rock touring glory she's with the band / budapest - columbus - Dresden the working-class lads / new york - l.a. - london holidays in the sun / with bitter pints bully for them

this razor girl Jake Tringali

i am affected / she is choice first impressions / this razor girl

in that monday bar / we perch on maple stools colorless void / deep evening / in Cambridge her eyes miles wide / white on ruddy skin / cheeky the flight of spanish reds / untouched / meditate before me

bar surreal / pretty vacant / yet the rudies and herberts observe / from afar / this first date

inside / something has shifted / subtle my heart nicked / and limbs and lungs don't let's start

she fought sixty women once / this aggro pixie and lost / to prove / her worth heels / the herberts and rudies observed

a wicked wind / blows open the front door her mirrored sunglasses / shift on the bar photons reflecting / genuflecting drifting and settling on a northernly heading New England autumn / yet something blooms this / night city / affected

her elegant mohawk / crowned pink peppermint in her hair scandalous skin / subcutaneous ink first impressions / a blink she is wearing silver or chrome / this queen kink she was not

the rudies and herberts observe / from afar her dissertation emerges she is impending / and "wankers" she said

an urge to explore / those shocked tufts micron by micron / phenomenon

mod slink dress / onyx / leather peeking hungarian body / ravenous feasts on pheasant / in whiskey sauce ominous

Suicide Andrew Quick She killed herselfâ&#x20AC;Ś

she lances my bare sleeve / with a toothpick / evermore i was a conquistador / yet wounded / affected / afflicted

In the way she looked at him, the way she spoke yet was never heard. In the way she gazed at him, and he stared straight through her. Tunnel vision that never found her at the end.

glossed lips form a tight light line and she talks --

her neuro flaring / her tech wicked her lab wiz / quantum physics / bolts with rivets bytes and bits and figments / just the way she's wired controlling power / luminous stars she'll be / first motorhead on mars

She scored her wrists with words. Speaking softly, violently urging. She tied the noose with smiles gone unnoticed. A happiness absent from a heart burdened with determination.

We loved, but not in equal measure. Not with the same directive. It could have been the world. She killed herself.

ÂŠ This work is the property of the individual authors within.

Aberration Labyrinth ISSN 2179-8805

November 2014 Crucifixion Bent Wirkkala You crossed my mind today and I thought it is not often I wonder why there has been no contact in what amounts to 15 years. As a family we don’t talk about you much, your whereabouts and what you may be doing used to be cause or pause; the empty seat and silent gap in the rowdy holiday dinner-table conversation obvious. The stream of time now distances us to the point that your are vague and any reference of you scarcely peaks curiosity. Perhaps you would be relieved to know that your pictures have been set free of the family albums that detained them and like their breathing duplicate, they have scattered into a collective oblivion of diminishing significance. We live in different houses now and eat in different dining rooms. Children you have never met carry our common blood to the table. The exchange of gifts continues and holiday meals have improved vastly less the tasteless contributions which always seemed flat and un-inspired to the point of your belligerence; the potatoes are whipped smooth and the vegetables seasoned in good taste. I imagine whatever you offer to the lives you now live in is in the same vein of egocentric detachment and shallow emotional capacity that slighted those of us once given no choice but to ingratiate you. While I would be remiss not to admit that we are all subject to our antipathies, your resentments in particular appeared married to the spiritual. Certainly, you were not the first alter bound catholic girl with a cross to bear; there was at least one angry mother before you.

Issue #14 Your manifestation comes smoldering and sentiment fails me. I stop to wonder and then don’t. A ghost roaming the halls only need be told that they have departed to be set free for any measure of you remaining captive to the galleries of my reminiscence, I send this reminder that you are gone.

Callie at Thelonius Monkfish Marianne Szlyk

Spilling into the next table’s space, Callie's sister and her husband gobble chunks of rolls-some with fried chicken, some with asparagus, some with mango, even some with raw fish. They do not need chopsticks.

Perched neatly in her seat, Callie does. She picks up a piece of salmon sashimi and speculates that Monk would call this bait. High class bait. But bait nonetheless.

She is not sure about the Baroness.

But Monk would pick up his fuzzy hat and hightail it out of this restaurant this neighborhood this city.

Callie bites into the sashimi. It is delicious.

Aberration Labyrinth ISSN 2179-8805

November 2014

Immensely Beautiful Arson Andrea Weiner Flames engulf the old rotting boards. They buckle and char and snap Sending embers high Into the starry midnight sky. And I watch the blaze with pride. My heart pounds hard and My chest heaves heavily Beads of sweat form on my brow. Warmth emanates from The old crumbling building Onto my body, so cold From a deep rooted apathy. Smoke billows up into the Deep purple atmosphere. Thickening it like oil paints Mixing together on a canvas. Seconds slide into minutes. I can hear sirens in the dark They snap me into reality Where I witness the fire. I turn away from the orange glow. My feet feel like solid lead They lead me into the arms Of the black branches. I safely lay in limbo Between wanting to watch And needing to be able to slip away My mind reels. I strain my ears and can hear The urgent hissing of hoses Turned onto full force Aimed at that old abandoned structure.

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On my stomach I breathe in Through my nose and out Through a dry mouth. The air tastes stale. I hear a loud crash Indicating to me the once beautiful Lone form has finally succumbed To the incendiary actions I made. Guilt ebbs away the excitement I had been doused in earlier. It’s almost too much for me to bear. And when I’m feeling Too messed up and too alone There is a flashlight in my face

Avant-garde Café Bards Peter V. Dugan Post-mod poets unveil a wired vat anthem of misnomer ear candy epaulets filled with alien slang sarcasm, a melodrama of cynicism and hedonism, as they wield their pens like rapiers in the hands of swordsmen slashing, stabbing, hacking and slicing through the jungle and jumble resonant in the mediocrity of middle-class life. At night, you can hear them howl, creating a cacophony of natural and unnatural sounds flowing into the jazz like euphony of existence, with words that are raw, flawed and unpolished. A primal scream, a rap on life, a static noise that echoes eloquent, powerful words ready to burst into a spectrum of colors, images and stories painted in the pastels of nature and imagination. They open woe, open wounds and peel away the scabby scars of society, while they sip coffee and ponder poems not yet put to paper, early drafts of perceptions, dreams, observations and nightmares. © This work is the property of the individual authors within.

Aberration Labyrinth ISSN 2179-8805

November 2014

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Thoughtless Act of a Single Day Patrick Warnke

Hilarity Ensues Benjamin Welton

I went outside today idly looking for things long since dead. My grandmother perhaps; or an old pet dog - the name of which escapes me now.

Klaus caught the Schutzstaffel Shuttle at 9:45 as the Frenchman lost his wine.

I found one of them seated on a park bench with hair like frozen smoke, shaking the grave dust out of her heels and smoothing her gown. I didn’t say hello and she, what with death and all, didn’t remember me.

Wendy and Davey, who's back home from the Navy, ate caterpillars wrapped in newspaper clippings about Jonestown.

She died when I was four, and the only impression I have is my father pointing at a picture in a trunk, “She was a tough piece of work.” Apparently so, because there were no tombstones under those eyes, only a building light like the grayfire of dawn. I put one foot in front of the other and try to remember that dog’s name. Winston, as in Churchill

Pulp Hero Retirement Party JD DeHart Anyone can see from the bobbing of his head that he took one too many punches, and it's obvious that the detective is no longer wearing clothes under his famous trench coat. They are all chain smokers, addicts, and pretty boy types, drunk on the dreams of their own careless narratives.

Dead sister Abigail stood up to applaud the Pope as he flew his monoplane over Milan.

Police officer Horst played the tuba in New Orleans with an Incan jazzman. They communicated in beer. And on the other side of the sea, Clement Attlee had a pink pint with the Oxford English Dictionary.

Feeling Down Joshua Ray Graetz Back to back games of TetriS Autumn back to school aromA Copperline James Taylor earworM Knotted existential return to bluE Have to wrap up tight in a warm scarF Elsewise the cold draft will integratE Regretfully through the corpsE Embalming this returned fooL Over and over again, it’s new sortA Now I have new excuseS Cept I know this sad’s no enigmA Every so often I still have this falL Maybe next time I’ll have the knowhoW Overcoming sorrow in a prison pyjamA Refusing to leave the bed, face the daY Entangled in suffocating blanketS

Aberration Labyrinth ISSN 2179-8805

November 2014

Time Machine Me Emily Forand I want to write about bass in the bathroom and sharing lip gloss with a stranger, but I’m so far from that night and that iteration of myself. My cells have swapped with newer versions of me microscopically. I’ve altered on a meta level, too, trying out a blonde bob, and my breasts like two empty leather penny pouches. What did I wear that night, speeding down the 25, snorting powder off a CD case? Those little blue dots that made me dance. Was it me, tiny intoxicated dancer, that some big man placed on that towering speaker? Or, was it her and my vicarious desire? Menthol, vicks, chewing gum. Grinding teeth. We moved the earth. And when it was time to come down, I did. With sadness, I let that free me go. Those strange souls who’d pop another pill just to puke it up behind the truck. Silly kids. You can’t just run back in line when the ride ends. This time, you have to find some place to sit in the dirt, sink your fingers in and resume humanness gently.

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This is the way you can go back: years later, in the afterglow of one ecstasy after another, in smoke clouds, red wine rusting your tongue, warm bath, the new boyfriend smell, dessert. Each one engenders tinges of that night in the desert. That part of me is still there, arms raised to the stars, dancing the drugs from my skin.

Pick Up Ag Synclair neon messenger advertising a French film morse code through the blinds Ivan your neighbor doing his best moan and wail Inner City Blues naked, glistening dissected, bloody dermis your tongue finds my mouth a baptism in blue your bones were made for this let me swallow you

Aberration Labyrinth ISSN 2179-8805

November 2014

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Pyramid in Swain Nancy Jorgensen Barging through the door. He was reckless. Still, undaunted, he swayed as he walked. Mirror eyes. Thoughts dropped out of him like so much water below. A picture perfect fool. Two tone. He wore a belt around his heart chastity from love. At night he wandered those murky corn fields. Lost in time. Lost in mind. Searching every hole, Every nook. Every nest. A burgeoning beginning to a frightening end. Aware he is. Wearing his ignorance like a shiny badge of courage. At once, he sees her. Skeletal tears raining down, dripping.

VODKA Ashok Niyogi I wish he knew how to write the geometry of life because I have been told he would piss and stand defiantly like a quadrilateral to threaten the maid mock her into again and again mopping up after his lordship and then pretend to read the newspaper with me along with coffee but he was his motherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s boy on her he wrote geometry with paws diagrams in which my wife found divinity he howled with her music her television her horror films he loved her perfume coveted her jewelry mauled her hair ravaged her sanity licked her nail-polish and understood at a relatively tender age that loud fathers who shout at television anchors are best avoided except when they are reaching out for unadulterated love

ÂŠ This work is the property of the individual authors within.

Aberration Labyrinth ISSN 2179-8805

November 2014

Issue #14

The men on stools, there were only men, spent more time looking at their beer and shots than at the woman dancing. She did not seem to mind. She went on with her routine, Her eyes silently saying “God let them tip me at least enough to pay for the baby sitter.”

Bachelor Night Joseph Farley My brother Frank did not like slick go-go bars with expensive drinks. No, he liked the dives down on the avenue, regular bars where women danced on a makeshift stage one or two nights a week, places with cheep beet and a bartender who looked old and worn out as if the man and not just his clothes had been salvaged from a thrift store.

She gave me a begging look when Frank threw down a tip on the counter and said, “Lets go,” We had finished our drinks, and there were three other bars he wanted to try before the night was out, each promising delights equally unimpressive, as if my brother’s true purpose was to tell me, “Hell, you could have done a lot worse.”

That described the place where my brother took me the night before my first wedding, a dingy place with dollar beers and a gapped-tooth woman with one eye and one breast larger than the other gyrating in exchange for grocery money on top of little more than a card table nailed to two by fours next to the bar.

All artwork for this issue has been provided by Ben Mohr