AL
Aberration Labyrinth
Summer 2018
ISSN: 2179-8805
Permeating with Cockroaches Brett Stout
Serve at Room Temperature Robert Beveridge The old man lit a cigarette and walked away left a trail of workboot prints bloody with tufts of grass behind him she had agreed to meet him for a drink after twenty-five years for old times' sake he poured cognac into her wounds
Misfits Diana Devlin We sit, jagged, cracked, varnish peeling, cast aside, lopsided, feeling worn and wilted, born to hide and yet our splinters intersect melodiously: we fit.
the shower water runs constantly but only cold now, the cockroaches scurry nationalism pride parade crossing the Atlantic in plastic bottles wrapped in corporate ad slogans to Morocco prancing hand-to-thorax thorax-to-hand anointing themselves in burnt sienna oil, suicide seems like an option but someone keeps hiding the bullets, the clip is exposed like my guts the wood smells of Pine-Sol discount store variety the iron feels smooth like her legs freshly shaven greased and ice cold like her hands, red paint is scraped from my door and I committed deadly sins, a slight knock at the door no one is there though by the time I put my shorts on and open the door a greeting card in ultramarine rests against the screen is all that’s left for me it’s not a holiday though and it’s not addressed to me it rests half-sealed on my bed now driving me insane with child-like curiosity. XXX
Aberration Labyrinth
Summer 2018
Enter Alice Erica Rose The sounds of bones beneath a screaming moon, pull me into a memory, unwanted. His quivering, sweaty chest-a monster beneath the sheets. No wolfish teeth, or sharp edges really, just a man who grinds down the dreams of women. A cheap laugh gets you nowhere, but forceful muscles and a bad habit of selective hearing bakes the perfect disaster. Alice knew the type of man who took what wasn’t his, and left them shipwrecked and angry. Alice waited, the chainsaw within her humming, Time with his heavy hand awaits her. Enter Alice. Some bones snap harder than others. Alice knows she may be a damsel, but she is not distressed. No strong Batman or red caped man required. Alice awakens the beast within. In early dawn, there is nothingBut the radio silence of Justice.
Sunday Carlos Ponce It’s like we are dead. We feel, we think and we sing but only for a few years. The rest of the time, trillions and trillions of years and counting we don’t exist. In cosmic time we are virtually dead, we are practically inexistent. And we don’t know what to do next Sunday.
Misconception of microbes Kate Gillespie Biologically brilliant They read the language of elements Inked in atoms Poems so tenuous in design They are mistaken for Electric discharges Via filaments in the membrane They pass cellular Discourse in Chemo taxis Coffeehouses Reading signal Transduction Over Smoldering Enzymatic Edicts Genetic Geniuses Whose works are Lost In our Translation
ISSN: 2179-8805
Aberration Labyrinth Matisse in Mind Vickie Byron Rotary window Thin-bladed breezes Fan fat-lobed feet Philodendron Framed by a pink That flattens a nude In studio studied Quietly canvases Pigments run down my Dry white wall Patterns pooling on Oily planked floor Film and flat of form The swing of forearm Concepts Transparent over Dark blunder-colors Lost narratives The children take wigs Parents flail Steep forward Strokes my gestural Marks need limits But there’s so much Baggage in Modern Periods Lately my marriage Grows branches Takes birds Take some heart Even Matisse had a few Surprises late in life Having cheated death when they Cutout the cancer The second the second Operation succeeded He sharpened his scissors Lydia sticking his pinned-up Cutouts on World War retreating Southern French Walls Nicean Seas, Oceana murals Brushy blue and jazzy Fanfare confetti-shard seaweed Fourteen stations of narrative cross Cut to the Master
Summer 2018 His joyful wheelchair Swallows slip from darting hands Creatures from anesthesia sleep His trident topped with charcoal tip Spans bed to the Ceiling it turns out He still had the stomach To swim against currents Daedalus raising inflated Paper mittens to the sky And even Picasso Took notice
ISSN: 2179-8805
Aberration Labyrinth
Summer 2018
ISSN: 2179-8805
JMM-D Anna Magee A riddle with the smile of a junkie you see I never understood you The way you toss and turn like a flame sporadic desultory A book with no cover nothing between you and I, (I wish)
Monday Hannah Kludy For instance, the lawn is mowed at the beginning of each week and someone sweeps up the clippings. My coffee is made by my husband, who wakes up at 4:30 am, too early for me though I drink a cup and keep the burner on in the kitchen. When I thank the bearded lady who packages up my meat at the Hy-Vee she says, you too because she is not thinking and I am not thinking and neither of us thinks that this exchange is strange because we both know that we will not remember it tomorrow, and if it was truly concerning, we would meet eyes and say, I’m sorry.
Sunshine seeps through the cracks in your teeth every time you speak
IN LOVE AGAIN Lenny Lewis
I see stars, knock-out invisible bruises and hand me down scars
Yes indeed he's in love again. A rare virtual flirtation that bloomed in reality. Over time and talk they peeled back the onion. Grounded it. Knowing
my bones crunch under your tongue, now I feel dumb for trying to unravel a conundrum like you. For trying to love the last pieces of something new
and being known. Love au jus. So when they tangoed they tangled. "She wasn't going to let me go without that happening in the park. When a woman isn't worried about getting pregnant they screw eagerly. When a man is older his sperm is no good." "That depends on who swallows it"
Aberration Labyrinth
Election Night Richard Weaver The moon urges calm tonight, greater caution, and less wine. More attention to the whirling stars dancing down the street across the Inner Harbor towards Federal Hill and down the Chesapeake towards Congress, the House of Misrepresentatives, and the black hole that is DC. She Shrinks Herself Silly Chelsea Rounsley Oh poppet, my amaranthine raconteur, tell me how to become quite small. For as many attempts as i have made, i cannot cleave myself to the rind. What
Summer 2018
ISSN: 2179-8805
Cough S. Lowell the Past – germs of history and history’s sordid handshakes on haunches and filthy inseams and forgotten in chloroform dreams until it announces itself again waking in a bloody cough
The Ink Patrick Sheils The desk in the corner An immaculate conception forged ages ago In the bronze age of neatness. Orders of magnitude Delicate in complexity Contrary to chaos. The desired consequence of tidy thoughts Mapped out sequentially in razor precision. The ink stain on the wall remains Fossilized artifact of a paint-hanging gone awry Defecating on the order. He laughs. Self awareness lives only in him. He is above the pretensions The only facilitator of tangible material
does it take, little darling, tiny one, to be biteable? to be eaten whole?
daubed
Reflection Pt. 3 Briana Gonzalez let the scars on my back serve as proof that not everyone deserves a second chance.
Aberration Labyrinth
Summer 2018
IN THE 140’s John Grey Some street in the 140’s. He wants to go this way, his friend, the other. Hang out at the park or outside the barber shop – the choice seems innocuous until it’s not. The bigger of the two decides. The other whines but follows. A bunch of kids in an argument up ahead. Gets ugly as a dog fight. Someone pulls a gun. Boom. One future dead. Another wounded. Bloodstain on the barbershop window. Nothing much happening at the park. A woman in a second floor tenement. picks up her baby from the cot. Doesn’t ask herself if she’s squeezing too hard.
Burning Car Rare Nova The car burned Sparks took away something Those fantasies I thought Were true Now they are here I have Goosebumps I have them That's all there is I'll play like an amplifier To translate this mishap A tale of wonderers Tread the big nowhere That we can't be I'll get it real quick While plastic is melted In our honor To cum and cum and cum Screaming for the one closest The perpetrators run wild While you try to stay sober Fuck you, you f-ing fuck! We all need it
ISSN: 2179-8805
Aberration Labyrinth Do Not Enter J. Pigno I didn’t tell her About the drive That night Where the headlights Were bleeding And bursting With anger While their flashes Like embers Trailed red Across dusk With startling Streaks Igniting these senses As the glare Kept obstructing What my nerves Knew was Fate As I braved The long distance To discover Such pathways For avoiding each Pothole Where the present Might break And spin Like an axel From bumps Unforgiving Beneath spaces With memories Left dead In the street Veering Off-center As if Someone Had grabbed me Turning direction From a siren So close
Summer 2018 Under storefronts Of neon In the shadow Of awnings Where the lamplight Pooled thickest And I found her At last Near a parking space Empty Where the dark Did unravel As that haven Once scoured For relief From that road.
ISSN: 2179-8805
Aberration Labyrinth Second Player J. Pigno I translate With these hands And the dance Of frantic fingers What buttons Can never accomplish But merely yield Through release As relief so bored And lonely I wonder If I’m even Playing Or waiting For the other controller To become A real hand I can touch.
Brain Damage Rare Nova The chair fell backwards I hit my head That's what I get For testing gravity The blue chipmunks flew With a furry of fur As the birds All of a sudden Had a real reason to scream Dinner Henry Guthrie A cigarette burns on the counter-top And she stands in the kitchen. Once a wife, now a girlfriend, She stood smoking, and always has. A dish served to confused men Who (1) used to love her and (2) does And she stands in the kitchen With smoke-tinged cafe sheers. I wonder that no heart is left in her For me, slipped that part to the ashtray, Slipped away as she does my plate alone. She has no dinner. She stands in the kitchen.
Summer 2018
ISSN: 2179-8805
I WALKED IN DRUNK John Tustin I walked in drunk On one of those nights That Buk bounced off of Poe While George Jones told Tammy Wynette That Bob Dylan was the great dark man Who holds us in the rapture Of our own darkness And they sang to us To distract themselves Between their lobs, Their volleys. The pistachio shells firing into That brown plastic bag As I listened to Bob Dylan Who told me To respect them all But to admire him Most And I do Although Buk told me Not to be impressed As the hundreds of words Became hundreds of thousands To be thrown like bread To the multitudes; The hordes More impressed By the words that mock us Than the words that express mourning you are gone Or the words that exist in the breath We breathe together With the just now alive That whisper your name, Attempting messages That die In transit But not before hanging In the air, frozen For just a moment. I walked in drunk, Sat down and continued drinking, Eating pistachios And waiting For either the dead to rise Or for me To join them At long last.
Aberration Labyrinth
Magic Saint Writer I have to write. I stare at this blank page And it stares back taunts me. It feeds off me Like a leech it Feast on my fears for breakfast and sips my anxiety like tea. Never satisfied until I write. So here I sit Staring through this open window Waiting for the magic. From a home I can’t explain Neighbor of imagination Down the block from love Or is it hate. Next to the house that always cooks barbecue. That smell that sweeps the block Through open windows Love hate relationship with your belly As it fights for something more. Yet, here I sit Waiting for the magic. Watching this orange fuck Slowly crush our stars Gathering Universal’s Minions Calling himself Gru Wasting on a par 4 Stealing candy from unborn babies From the home that he Is burning to the ground. Closing our window After only a few months He, We. Need toLook for the magic. Gather fingertips The window is still open Jump. Don’t fly We still have to fight. So Here I stand.
Summer 2018
Writing Silent page. Starting at the open window. Needing to make humans think Think twice And tell them a lie That this window Will always be open.
ISSN: 2179-8805
Aberration Labyrinth
Summer 2018
ISSN: 2179-8805