Ash Tree Journal: Issue Two by Ash Tree Journal

ash tree journal issue two 1

ASH TREE JOURNAL

ISSUE TWO: “tbh” Spring 2014 staff

Writers & poets*

Marly Saunders Annabelle Goll Jordi Klein** Mirissa Leja Allison Friske Philip Gordon**

Jesse Wakesiah Brennan Burnside Alexandra Naughton Kenji Khozoei C.P. Harrison Hannah Taylor Alec Munhall Jay Fin Katherine Duckworth Bianca Martin Alexander Cisneros Russell Zintel Miscreant Loisa Fenichell Andrew Hill Vincent Philip Chris Wacker Michael Hrejsa

*Writers listed in order of appearance **Staff member is also a contributor in this issue

JESSE WAKESIAH things you should probably consider doing this month: every tuesday, put on a trench coat and go to the nearest pet store stare at the goldfish tank from noon till 4:30 pm if anyone asks what you are doing tell them this: you are distracting me from saving you call the auntyouonlyseeatchristmasandfunerals hopefully when she’s at work tell her this: you are pretty sure you might be jesus, reincarnated look up the most popular girl from when you attended high school find out where she lives arrive at her doorstep with a standup bass light the standup bass on fire dance around the standup bass tell her this: i’m going to colorado tomorrow, and there is nothing you can do about it realize the big dipper bares a striking resemblance to a question mark attempt to understand this decide, on this day, if you will do these: let go or grow your claws

Brennan Burnside Sanctuary #1 Roundhouse, twentyfour wooden beams in pinwheel, no windows, tower of fourteen black plastic chairs, metal café table, white candle halfway down, red hardcover Santa Biblia, no doors, maple flooring, crystal champagne glass of Pabst Blue Ribbon, Handel’s Messiah on iPod mini. Sanctuary #2 Kingsize bed 40’X20’, eggshell bedsheets, faded cerulean wool comforter, tower of four wooden chairs, eight stucco walls 28 feet high, white plaster ceiling, skylight, three o’clock winter sun, blue satin curtain brown New King James Version Bible, Letters of John ripped out, Schubert’s Messiah on black Walkman, headphones with no foam, foothigh stainless steel stool, square of pink lace.

Alexandra Naughton VERTIGO POEM I want to be your icy blonde but I am loud and vulgar and flawed. and not blonde

Kenji Khozoei 'at the molecular level these atoms stay hustling' experiencing and interpreting things that happen in life as isolated experiences or events is, i think, to miss the point and to deprive oneself of 'getting the most out of' the actual experience the actual experience of being a human being that does things the inseparability of being and doing i got home a few hours ago and have been eating food and catching up on the internet since i watched a video of beyonce and jay z doing their thing at the grammys and then i alt tab'd to a chat window and wrote to a friend: 'i want to be fame' i guess some things don't change but then again everything does right at the molecular level these atoms stay hustling i read a piece on newhive by stephen and i keep coming back to this line: 'it takes small movements and calm resolve to unlearn obsession and develop new habits' this morning i sat on a roof top at ~6am and the air was fresh and blue and when the sun finally rose we were laughing out loud in the cold because someone was playing that 'ah zabenya' song on their phone from lion king like, they were playing that song, from lion king, using their phone, while the sun was rising like, you can do whatever you want with your life follow me on instagram: @mfkenji during the past week i almost cried once while listening to a mother talk about her child because she had this look on her face that reminded me we're all just trying our best we're all just trying our best inside of all our hearts are all the same things right while watching videos from the grammys i felt inclined to write a facebook status that said 'sit down taylor swift' but the moment passed and i decided against it like, i don't know like, you can do whatever you want with your art like, i checked my tumblr and saw a screenshot of a tweet by 7

catalina that said 'i want 2 use my existence 2 b a threat 2 oppressive systems' sit down taylor swift i don't think you understand how many times i've started to write something and then stopped because i felt it 'wasn't important' or 'didn't matter' but i'm trying to believe myself when i say: either everything we do matters or nothing we do matters right and so we may as well do whatever makes us feel most alive right the only way to move forward is to move forward into the dark confusion of everything like, i don't know the worst outcome of doing something is often the same as the outcome of doing nothing at all right like, is this working? i don't mind actually i'm just buying time like everyone else like, you can do whatever you want with your internet as an exercise in selfactualization i've decided to commit to using line breaks in my longer facebook statuses since for a while i've considered them to be poetry anyway jokes on you for liking my poetry this whole time there's this video on the internet of a 17yearold kendrick lamar in a freestyle battle in compton at one point someone in the crowd says 'straight out the projects' and he isn't lying the first line of kendrick's second verse is 'i'm so far ahead of my time i got people 5 years from now pressing rewind' i just wanted you to know that is how i feel almost every time i post anything on the internet

C.P. Harrison Answers.Yahoo.com tlaking to yourself in loud groups weird dreams of pregnancy hairloss ashamed of the therapy in finding my bff attractive (I never blush irl, only online( Rubbing my hipfat dreaming of Christmas hate finding friends to be depressing and nipple pimples lashing out when a parent dies while vomiting on day 7 all the sex thoughts of a 13 yr old all the gray hair of a 16 yr old who has never had a relationship by 22 eyes yellowing while hating your ex and loving her too fever following a first kiss followed by acne the small holes that follow wisdom tooth extraction and finding white people attractive feeling this way working customer service and cutting myself everyday Is it normal to be in tears after my bird flew away?

Philip Gordon metaphors like bad cabbage (i am convincing a class of apathetic students to enjoy literature?????) have you reconsidered your ambivalence? i've got a slew of intractable comparisons just in case. maybe you are like a wallaby grey and australian sorry i'm not very good at . sorry. Jordi Klein

Jesse Wakesiah davey davey picks me up at 8:06AM davey only has 7.5 fingers davey is going to las vegas next week to buy a snakeskin cane davey shows me how to start the chainsaw davey and i cut down cedars along the road davey and i find a teddybear, a pepsi bottle, a toy wizard and a bag of used needles davey and i dig a hole and put the needles inside davey clears away all the wood with the excavator davey and i look at bare earth born again davey and i watch the robins swoop in the robins are happy

Philip Gordon scattered assortment i measure my life in the intervals between pizza slices. i am representative of the previous sentence: inside, you will find a dufflebag filled with granola bars and a doubleA battery to be used only for holistic purposes. i have decided i am attracted to you in reverse which is the antecedent of dismantling the difference between that, and being reverse attracted to you. (every sentence in this poem is a lie—circumstantially) i have decided to make sleeping in the shower a national pastime. i have decided to forego practice to retain my amateur status. i have decided on pizza for dinner. one more second has passed. it hurts. i miss you in reverse.

Hannah Taylor After the Performance currently: sipping wine in a bed that's too big for me it's not only too big in the sense that I can't physically use all the space it provides, it's too big in the sense that I'm afraid of tugging on the covers and a nightmare falling out I think I've been sharing my space w my terrors for a while. but maybe I'm just afraid of tugging on the covers and you falling out Oh No I spilled some wine (good think I'm sure you and/or the ghosts won't really mind) but do I give the nowstained spot to my Haunts or keep it, and how does one decide where to sleep in A Bed Too Big? I went to the Walton Arts Center tonight ((the woman who gave the opening speech misused "quote" and I wished I was in the tv show Newsroom so I could record a voiceover of the correct wording and synch it to her mouth so the West Coast Audience wouldn't have a mistake in their 6 o'clock news)) AND midway through the third movement an older lady behind me leaned to her husband and whispered "Now that's love," in reference to the conductor beating his arms and moving w the music. This has been bothering me tremendously and I suppose I shouldn't think I know any more about love than someone generations older than me but I nonetheless feel anxious that I don't have that woman's email or home address so I can send her a letter explaining: Love is not the instruments, the music, the artists, the sound, or even the conductor (Love Is Not the Symphony) The Symphony was, by the way, really Nice and Cool, I enjoyed it v much and I enjoyed getting dinner and coffee w Her beforehand which I am NotSoSurprised about because we really do love each other despite our conflicts; we get along pretty well postbattle, when the Fight!&Kill!neurons in our brains have cooled and we have momentarily forgotten the bad. I've begun to come to the conclusion that many things are better (even at their best) post whatever it (the

disagreement, show, eclipse, apex) is , which brings me to Love being: the violins tipping their hats in a Warm Thank You to the stage; the cellos and oboes resting in their cases after a grand performance. The forgotten program under the seat, Alive and Awake and ringing w the sound of applause for the great artists whose names are printed on its pages. Love is the acoustic walls still vibrating (for hours, months, centuries!) after being the cradle for masterpieces and Important Things To Come. Love is the audience home & asleep, the floor swept, the lights out and dust settled. I think love can also be: my blanket after I've shaken all the negative phantasma from it, & the quick beat of time when one realizes the Reality that fightorflight mode should be renamed to fightorfelicity but HEY who says I can't enjoy the space of time in my life that I choose to spend letting you have the winestained spot on the sheets

Alec Munhall vase i want to separate all of the atoms in my body and rearrange them into a beautiful vase that someone will put flowers in

Jay Fin 6:04 PM i wouldn’t cut my hair so I deleted my blog and looked at concerts on craigslist I couldn’t afford. i sat in silence until my ears began to bleed. we used to hold hands and set the streets ablaze with passion faces ashen in hipster fashion but now its just the hope that you clicked through pictures of me and you until your arm grew numb. that you’ll bring a daisy to my door like that guy in that commercial we love. that you play scratched records that taste like coffee and cream and all those things from another life where we never thought we’d be alone. movies suck when you’re on your own.

Katherine Duckworth Husband Slow, sad drowning in a Capri Sun. The city is a huge fan of your grievances. You are my reality karma and I could settle down.

Bianca Martin Just Watch Me

ALEX CISNEROS POEM it’s all bleeding onto the white sheets & turning them disgusting shades of copper & brown. our insides are inside for a reason. the very act of releasing ourselves into the minds of others is intellectual vandalism. i can only speak for my mind & even that is overwhelming most of the time. in spirit i exist as much as everyone & everything but in practice i am no more than an expression of what is possible at this moment in human history. i am background noise behind the stage of the world. i am red. i am water becoming vapor. you are the sky & one day i will be a cloud in your hand.

Russell Zintel A list of problems and viable solutions i want to do everything in silence with you W/r/t wanting and looking and being forward i want to do everything in ultimate noise with you i want you within a hamburger or a ice cube where eating our way out is a mutual purpose and staying put is like stepping out of time through careful thought control i want to drink you out of a bottle so deeply that I end up in a bottle and then you will drink me you are beautiful with a sideways momentum today i’ve concluded that any number of people tied together is usually a very chaotic thing except we are all keeping still If you have nylon cord at your disposal, tying people together can be done handily and   it can be a lucrative exploit Or the source of my loneliness is a physical thing within my skull, surrounded by a finite number of aphysical people and/or severely unattractive animals We all say ‘i am sorry it was dark outside and it was also too dark inside my body to see what it is really made up of, all of the contours of redness like exceptional looking steaks, therefore i can abdicate any responsibility for the harm i have done to others’ A sad and unattractive tilapia cries underwater the tears join the body the ocean None of the other tilapias notice We all say a finite sequence of things not in unison but at once in a hamburger or ice shaped bottle Alexandra Naughton I wish I could carry you around inside of me like a tampon or smuggled drugs

Miscreant if i took enough drugs to possibly turn me comatose would you still love me: an autobiography i sexually identify as the 28 degree january breeze sneaking through your cracked window at 5am one time a school of fish said to me, "everything will be fine. we promise. just hang around longer." it was mid june, i believed them one time i tweeted, "you have so much undiscovered depth. you are an ocean," referring to my gay friend who is known for being sassy and, well, gay and not for what he really is or what he's worth anyway, someone replied to it "you're a cork in the ocean" and to this day i still think about what the fuck that even means but its poetic sounding and i like it i guess we are all the butt of a great cosmic joke and i am not me anymore i'm a hurricane aftermath it swept away all the worth i had left and here i am, incompletely resolute my favourite shade of orange is the one leaves turn before they commit suicide and if that doesn't say something about my personality then i don't know what does all i'm trying to say is that the grass is green for a reason and it turns brown and ugly sometimes but it always goes back to how it was before and i need you to promise me that you'll hold on

Alex Cisneros

Loisa Fenichell once i was younger our bellies stretch like animal carcasses. our flesh some new cartography. i still remember when we dug those foxholes at the beach. so many holes dotting the sand. we made time to curl up inside of each one. maybe because mother was always telling us to “make time for family.” you sang to me every night in my bedroom before i went to sleep. sang to me and hushed me and held me the way you held your organs, perfectly and in place. i was always so impressed by you. impressed by the way you ate and stood. i stood just like you, i remember. always slightly hunched over, always slightly bent, but ever so slightly. it started with just one night. i was so young, lying on the carpet shivering. i had just had one of those dreams again. one of those flying dreams where i’m flying over woods and water and places i’ve never even been to and then i see a parent and a child and suddenly i am falling so quickly. suddenly i am landing flushed and naked on the floor. then i guess you came, so silently, standing in the doorway like a ghost. i wish i could remember you well enough. part of me wishes i could remember you holding me but at the same time my stomach is dark with so many moths, just trying to remember. not wanting to remember, really. later in life it is summer and dark and i am at a party and i am hot and sweaty and sticky and there is a boy there and his thumb is on my left cheek, so close to the corner of my mouth, and his lips won’t stop leaning into mine. my eyes are closed. i am trying to remember his face, but i keep thinking about yours and am overwhelmed with the needles that are suddenly springing to the corners of my eyes. it is all i can do not to find a bed and start rocking back and forth, or if not a bed, at least the tiled floor of a bathroom. i love tiled floors so much, especially when they have been lit by winter. i lie on them when i am sick and getting out of the bath. baths drain so much energy. i picture you stroking my hair and letting me vomit and picking me up out of the tub and everything seems so familiar that i start shivering compulsively. the boy (addled mind keeps me from even remembering his name) looks at me. you are so strange, he is thinking, it is summer and you are shivering, why are you shivering, but he is also nice enough, i guess, and gives me his sweatshirt, which i don’t even need, 19

because i am not shivering out of coldness. i don’t tell him that, though. i just take the sweatshirt and close it to my neck and let my body sweat. i want to lie on the grass. i want to be o.k. with letting my head spin. a week later the boy is at home. you seem unnervingly fine. i begin to wonder if maybe i’m crazy.

Andrew Hill sinatra i learned sinatra lyrics from a dumpster on guadalupe i would dive and the italian joint around the corner set its stereo on high and strangers in the night would dance. i wished for a girl as trashy as me to clasp hands with and wade through all these things no one seemed to want. i wanted someone to want me. but i was part of the worst kind of rat pack.

Vincent Philip I’m trying to memorise your number but it’s too similar to my favourite pizza place Your brain is beautiful in your selfies I am so fucked most of the time I didn’t watch anything but everything happened anyway. You didn’t want to be a tourist. You wanted to crash that anonymous mask into everything now everything is swimming and everything is post. You had a fucked up view of forever. God grew in glasses of crystal for your science fair and you only got a C. You only got to fly. You had a fucked up leg from running. Not away just round in circles getting that rhythm right and treading protest poems into grass, and everything is blowing up achievements, and I met you and had nothing to say, because every morning has nothing to say, and at 4am I will text you and maybe you could glow

Chris Wacker breakfy i made some coffee this morning in a real coffee pot but i forgot how to drink it so i smashed the pot over my head im dripping with pure, freshly ground and extracted arabica coffee i am cutting myself with pieces of the coffee pot so that i know i tried my hardest. i also made toast, but that didn’t bring me to this hospital of a world so why would i write about it

Michael Hrejsa Forsaken Band train smelled like diseased piss and rotten meat, and we were sure someone had died in our car recently. the guitarist cut his hand like a fuckin’ idiot on the rusty edge of a door. mummified his hand with his own shirt. we all stood at the edge of the car, gazing out towards the wistful, empty trees & browning grass. fall, our first show in a downtrodden bar in the middle of nowhere. the drummer passed me a cigarette & i took a deep puff while my hair blew in the wind. i am poetic. we were ready to sing our damn dead souls out about the ‘fucked upness and shit of society’ and ‘being totally antiestablishment.’ ‘motherfucker’ i’ll scream abt 17 times, ‘fuck you’ i’ll whisper abt 10 times. we reached our show. jumped off the train, couldn’t roll with our guitars on our backs & fuked up my ankle. limped. the downtrodden bar in the middle of nowhere had no stage or mic, also smelled like diseased piss & rotten meat. the bartender gave us a growl w/ dead teeth and we set up. our drummer had to play on borrowed drums and trash cans. played the show, my A string broke. guitarist puked in bar sink. drummer learned what heroin is through a dirty needle in his arm. spit on our fans as a ‘metaphor’ for our song ‘the world (she) is dying’ the next train smelled less like diseased piss and rotten meat. we ran & ran but never made it to the train. our feet smacked hard against the gravel. drummer tripped and never got up. box (box o’ fuckin miracles) descended from the heavens (our train) and smacked hard against a railroad track. cigarettes scattered across the ground. limped my way to the mess and picked up a handful of cigarettes. smoked with enough to fill my lips ‘till my brain turned to nicotine mush & my lungs burned up into ash. never made our train, and our drummer never got up. the guitarist & i looked up into the sky as we realized the world (us) was dying w/ a whimper. 22

writers & poets Jesse Wakesiah was born April 7th 1985 on Vancouver Island. More of his work can be found at jesserwake.tumblr.com Brennan Burnside lives in Upstate New York and works at the U.S. Postal Service. More of his work can be found at bbburnside.livejournal.com Alexandra Naughton writes and publishes books in Oakland, California. More of her work can be found at thetsaritsa.tumblr.com Kenji Khozoei has been alive since 1994 and lives in Sydney, Australia. He is indefinitely working on his first collection of poetry, ‘Everywhere Are Green Icebergs’, which will be released in the next few months/years. He writes a lot of sentences on the Internet and will probably accept your friend request.More of his work can be found at kenjikhozoei.tumblr.com C.P.Harrison is a poet living in Austin, Texas and tumbling at flarfku.tumblr.com Hannah Taylor is a lit candle and there is wax dripping down your cheek. More of her work can be found on twitter @mothwyngs. Alec Munhall is an 18 year old college student alive in Chicago and sometimes in the woods in Massachusetts, he writes poems. More of his work can be found at quietlywithoutconfidence.tumblr.com Katherine Duckworth has dropped out of three colleges, is currently unemployed, and her car got broken into last night. More of her work can be found at ratclub.tumblr.com and houseplants.tumblr.com Bianca Martin lives in Melbourne, Australia, writes, and plays drums in a feminist punk band. More of her work can be found at oldcarsdontgoveryfast.tumblr.com Alexander Cisneros is dumb and from Illinois. His work can be found at fuckfuckhorrorsodomydeathfuck.tumblr.com Russell Zintel “I haven't been able to help but occupy the same amount of empty space for much of my life so far, (although losing a limb is never outside the realm of possibility), mostly in Warwick, NY, a little bit in Burlington, VT, and now Copenhagen, Denmark, 21 years, in a good mood now but this is likely to change multitudinously throughout the day, afraid of deriving only mere life from the air around me, there is a sun outsideI feel as though most things in this world have nothing to do with me.” More of his work can be found at russellzintel.tumblr.com Miscreant is a ball of molecules dancing and can be found at spokenmiscreant.bandcamp.com Loisa Fenichell is an 18 yr. old girl currently residing in a small suburban town called Nyack, NY (located in the US); she loves textures, surreal imagery, and oddly structured sentences. More of her work can be found at polyphemuse.tumblr.com Andrew Hill lives in Austin, Texas. His writing is often inspired by the two years he spent serving with AmeriCorps in San Antonio, Texas. He owes a debt of gratitude to Carole Long, his high school poetry teacher and mentor of many years, and to his parents for encouraging him to experience the world and to write about it. More of his work can be found at declarativehill.tumblr.com

Vincent Philip is a journalist and student based in London, UK. More of his work can be found at vincentphilip.tumblr.com Christian Wacker is a twentyone year old studying Theatre and Creative Writing at Truman State University in Missouri. More of his work can be found at thewackadoo.tumblr.com Michael Hrejsa’s work can be found at dogculture2001.tumblr.com Jordi Klein is but a single blade of wheatgrass, blowing gently in the wind and can be found at usbtoaster.tumblr.com

Contact Us ashtreejournal.com ashtreejournal@gmail.com ashtreejournal.tumblr.com facebook.com/ashtreejournal twitter.com/ashtreejournal ygg d r a s i l what miracle is this? this giant tree. it stands ten thousand feet high but doesn’t reach the ground. still it stands. its roots must hold the sky O

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