ISSUE 6
Letter from the editors, Everyone, it is a new year! 2018, to be exact. We are ever grateful for the opportunity to be cleansed by the sea of life, baptized as incarnate creativity, and reiterated into beauty and oblivion. You hold in your hands the 6th issue of Bad Jacket, which we pressed together from the dust of the halite salt mines and plonked into your bathtub. As you fizzle in the sitz, we hope you find rejuvination, inner peace, and a sharp vision--a vision as knifing as the one that split our heads 3 years ago when we founded Bad Jacket. Dearest reader, young Aphrodite, as you wobble in the seafoam, do not wonder what your purpose is! As you walk, flowers spring inevitably at your feet. Do not doubt whether with each step the posies will appear again. Do not cry or labor for them. It is your very fate that decides you should be so showered in petals! But...what will you do with them? We know the tides of life will send you to distant shores. Our only hope is that you treasure this present moment, beached or otherwise. Fragrantly yours, The Editors
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SEA SHELL COLLECTION Aiko Tsuchida 13 Alyssa Mae Williams 1 Anna Wermuth 36 Bethanie Reid 25 ChloĂŤ Simmons 24 Chris Zuver 10 C. J. Hugh 26 Clara Stone 35 Craig Bischof 17 David Anson 9 Emily Bartz-Mills 18 Emily G. Stremming 3, 27 Eve Maret 29 Frances Garren 16, 21 Gecko the Mad Scientist 7 G. M. H. Thompson 29, 40 Jacob L. E. Oliver 2, 10, 18, 26 John VanBranze 19 Katryn Dierksen 9, 37 Kurt Zuver 28 Lana Dvorak 25, 35 Lauren Meeso 12 Lin Ferguson 31 Lucy Miller 22 Mackenzie Thorn 34 Mariel Fechik 34 Mary Lay 36 Emilia Eller 37 Oscar Wright 11 RC Patterson 23 Ryan Glosemeyer 33 Shawn Powell 4, 5, 39 Steve Miles cover Theo Banaszak 1, 38 Zachary Lee 38 Zoe Scala 4 Contest Results 40
Antigone
Theo Banaszak I lost my brother to his own chemical narcissism, seeking the highs and finding only ghoulish low. He couldn’t handle the pressure, too much pressure; the jockeying brothers’ race to a false nirvana brought him crumbling failing crawling begging, no praise from father for this freakshow. He is dead already, he is dead. Addiction is a black hole and he is far past the event horizon. Listen to me, I am talking to you. He is my brother and he is dead already, I could not torture him any further. I have sent my brother to be with the dead, and in your anger you sent me to join him. I have freed him, but you wanted him on display. My brother is dead, not an example. I am not dead, I am among the dead.
Decay
Alyssa Mae Williams 1
Napkin
Jacob L. E. Oliver 2
!!!!!!
Emily G. Stremming 3
Petri-dish Existence Zoe Scala
White gowns all look the same from this perspective; Lying down prone, bright lights blinding. Beeps and whirls, the hustle and bustle of life beyond these walls, atoms of carbon all vibrating at a similar frequency in a sterile environment. So too as I was born, I will die in a white room with persons in white jackets. The circumstance might be different, but as people artificially put me together, they will take me apart, and hopefully find some bits they like enough to keep. Chemicals and molecules forming viscera and gore, collected with child-like wonder, like shells at the beach.
Slow Dissolve Shawn Powell
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The Shore
Shawn Powell Fade in from black. (Soothing sound of waves advancing and retreating from the shore) The following text, in white, fades in over black: She found herself alone by the sea. Dissolve to: The vast sky fills the screen in black and white tones. A few unintimidating puffy clouds meander slowly across the sky. The climate is pleasant, and cool. (Wave noise continues in the background). Cut to: Close-up of the woman’s face and shoulders. The sandy beach fills the remainder of the screen. She focuses her eyes, blinking, as she slowly wakes. She looks directly into the camera after fully gaining her sight. A shadow from a cloud passes across her face. Cut to: Close-up of her lips. She quietly whispers to herself, She “Where am I?” She has yet to realize that she is alone. Dissolve to: Birdseye view of a distant and isolated island in its entirety, with the sea touching all four edges of the frame. Wispy, semi-transparent clouds pass by from right to left. The center of the island is composed of dense, impassable forest surrounded by a ring of dunes. Dissolve to: She walks along the beach counterclockwise. The camera hovers steadily above her at a distance. The very right edge of the screen is intermittently interrupted by the incoming tide. Mannequin busts of varying types, many of which are repeated, are
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strewn along the beach around the entire perimeter of the island. Cut to: Close-up of mannequin busts as they stare off screen. They are strangely animated in a state of apathy. Cut to: Camera is looking up at her face from a low camera angle with the sky and clouds in the background. Her head is slightly tilted. While viewing the mannequins, the expression on her face is one of familiarity as if she had met an old friend she can’t quite place. Cut to: The ocean fills up the entire screen (wave noise increases in volume). Dissolve to: She walks from the shore to the edge of forest. Cut to: The dense forest fills the screen allowing only a few feet of visibility into the impenetrable foliage. It is dark, mysterious, and ominous. (The sound of leaves rustling in the breeze is coupled with wave noise). Cut to: Close-up of a small shrub of dark berries takes up most of the screen. A snail slowly glides down a leaf of the plant. The camera slightly pans out: Her hand enters the screen and she gently cradles a handful of berries with her hand, while on their branch. Fade out to black. Fade in from black. She walks along the beach counterclockwise. The camera hovers steadily above her at a distance. The very right edge of the screen is intermittently interrupted by the incoming tide. Mannequin busts are scattered along the beach. Cut to: The ocean envelops the entire screen (the wave noise is loud). Everything is fuzzy, and in double vision
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as if the past, present and future were overlapping each other. Cut to: Close-up of an imprint of a body in the sand with footsteps leading away from the impression. Cut to: She stops, frozen, and seems startled. Cut to: Her face fills up the screen in close-up. Images of the dunes and the sea are superimposed onto her face. She is confused and disoriented. She slowly closes her eyes to gather herself as her image dissolves. Overlapped images of the sea and sand stay on screen. (Wave noise cont.). Cut to: Her face with her eyes wide open and unblinking fill the entire screen. She is astonished. A tear slowly and quietly meanders from the corner of her right eye, then the left. She begins to laugh ecstatically, looking down at her hands. Cut to:
Nautilus
Gecko the Mad Scientist 7
Her hands take up most of the screen in full color. They are stained with a vibrant violet hue, slightly shaking from adrenaline. The violet changes to red, then to orange, then to yellow, then to green, then to blue, then to violet again. Her colorless world is in full spectrum now. Cut to: The sea engulfs the screen in pinks and blues and violets (wave noise continues and is now coupled with a low drone sound and a high pitch tone). Cut to: She hypnotically looks at her hands. Her hands are off camera. Her op art sweater with its tiny, tight knit pattern is vibrating in full hyper-color. Her hair is jet black with hot pink tips where the hair passes her shoulders. The background sky is a saturated light orange. She has bright bluegreen eyes. She looks up and directly into the camera still astonished, eyes wide open, unblinking. Cut to: Close-up of her mouth with bright, saturated, metallic-green lipstick. She speaks aloud to herself with hallucinatory precision. Her lips present a short sentence, but her speech is drowned out by the growing volume of the high pitch buzz and low droning noise. Her words are rendered silent. Cut to: The camera hovers steadily above her at close range. The sandy beach swallows up the remainder of the screen. She lies down in the impression in the sand with eyes wide open as the camera simultaneously pans out. A slow dissolve of transparent sand dunes is superimposed on her image. As the camera pans out, she becomes smaller and smaller in the center of the screen, until the entire island is seen isolated at a distance and the ocean touches all four sides of the frame. The dissolve to opaque dunes is completed. Sand dunes overtake the entire screen. Fade out to black.
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Shellf Portrait Katryn Dierksen
Discipline
David Anson Discipline is not copying what the megaphone whispers, when twisted verses slither into the cortex, to mix with sex and alcohol on a sticky table whose surface becomes a bearer of some resemblance to suggestion, as if dark thoughts more easily stain light wood. Should such passing fancy crush the standard brain, draining it of all logic and superseding it with some fresh vessel, then dress the newfound impulse in leather, or silk as the need requires, depending on spikes or shawls as an accessory. In a cautious glance, flicker eager eyes around grounded features, their own creature comfort hidden by glittered faces. Pace yourself, this delicate waltz follows mean time, heads meekly bobbing as hips beg to be swayed. Steady yourself on the dance floor, ears sore but still absorbing moments as pulsing lights render altered reality on retinas too lost to discern the physical strain of a single note melody. This battery of senses provides timeless lapse in moments, as you ask the nearest chemical savior for suspended energy and to halt the passage of time, because real life need not apply to such artifices.
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Leviathanian
Chris Zuver
I want to fall apart in the ocean, to stop you from breaking my bones. The waves creep in, and I exhale to rest my loins. Those who seek shelter will never find a better hospitality than this. They will keep searching on foot, surrender their integrity, then tell kids in the park, balding on benches. To drift at no speed, Sifting through what sifts through you. Living and dreaming at the mercy of none, A force more ancient than the body. I want to fall apart in the sea. Let me lead myself in whichever direction I am not in. To un-segment the joints in slow mercy, to breathe in an honest season.
Existence is a Merit Jacob L. E. Oliver
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Sponsored
Oscar Wright It was a cold morning in November of 2017. Ben woke up early in Boston to catch a plane to San Diego. He put some pants on, changed his shirt and put on a hoodie that said Ray’s Boxing Gym. He poured cold coffee out of a to-go cup into a mug and set the microwave to a minute. He hit his pipe and took the coffee out before it beeped. At this point he had about 30 minutes to pack but he only needed 10. Meanwhile, in San Diego birds fed on fish, fish on insects, and insects fed on each other under the rising sun. Marina turned over in her bed. She knew she had to wake up soon but she could wait until it was a little brighter. She had to get up to pee but would sleep another 2 hours after that. She woke up late and left home late. The night before had been halloween and she was out late with some friends. She remembered dancing and drinking as she drove to work. She remembered something she said loudly on the dance floor. She worried about different things for a while after that. She entered a dark, sleeping restaurant. The word Wave was sprayed on the wall in a hand-full of colors that fit between the colors of the walls and furniture. On a warm Friday night The Wave was the place to be. This morning there was less happening. Ben blocked the sun with his hand and looked down at the city. His plane descended and behind the shimmering skyline he saw the vast ocean, but not for the first time. Marina prepped vegetables and started some coffee. She took the chairs off the tables and turned on Spotify. She hadn’t had a day off for too long. She slurped coffee and stared at the two tone floor for a while. Ben walked out the airport doors and the hot air washed over him. He had a plan to move to Southern California. He took off his hoodie and lit a cigarette. He couldn’t get a signal on his phone but before he finished his smoke he saw Matt’s Toyota. Marina saw Pete smoking at the intersection. He had a long black coat on and long black hair. He pulled his hair back 11
Glitch
Lauren Meeso
with his left hand and put a rubber band around it with his right. Marina looked at the surf report on her phone. It was high tide and the waves were small. She opened tumblr on her phone. She scrolled through some memes and laughed a little. Marina was cutting tomatoes when two guys came in. One of them was tall and was wearing a hoodie that said Ray’s Boxing Gym. “Good morning, how can I help you?” “Two small coffees, please” said the one. “Thanks.” said the other. There was a lull and Marina took a smoke break out front. Across the street, Pete was looking up at an oak tree with his hands in his pockets. There were a dozen birds, each the size of a cue ball. They fluttered around the tree until a motorcycle drove them away. Pete, Marina and Ben are all damaging their lungs, circulation and immune system by smoking cigarettes and increasing their risk of developing cancer. They are not ignorant of this, they continue because they are addicted. If you too are addicted to smoking, smoke a fresh Camel Cigarette. Camel’s real taste satisfies longer. 12
Untitled
Aiko Tsuchida The sea is too hot Hot, and forever silent The surf churns green As the moon removes A silken glove And drags their hand Through aggregated scum To cast a funerary, Impotent tide. It carries fossil-bones And bottlecaps To polystyrene beaches Basking in the fallout glow Of an abandoned recycling plant Where the windows are all shattered And the lights are all still on And the machinery still whispers The names of the laborers Stratified into ritualized subservience To its owner. The last great bad decision Echoes out across this graveyard, Shouted from high grounds Announced across airwaves Institutionally air conditioned By a chauvanistic, pecuniary Looking-glass self: The sea is dead. The land will follow. Men will take More than is offered. Now, 13
The sea and the land Don’t stand a chance Against patriarchs and chauvanists, So that scene Looks damned fine To the wrong men Who performed. The sea and the land Don’t stand a chance Against patriarchs and chauvanists So that scene Looks damned fine To the wrong men Who performed scripts. The sea and the land Don’t stand a chance Against patriarchs and chauvanists So that scene Looks damned fine To the wrong men Who performed scripts Of masculinity that Offered no opportunity For consent. Who performed scripts Of masculinity When they pumped Deep water injections Into depleted wells And dumped Radioactive loads Onto white sands. Who performed scripts Of masculinity and beat 14
Your mother country for being A mouthy little bitch. Who said, “She had it coming, bro” When he invaded. You should’ve seen how that Oil field glistened In the crude reflection of his malice The avaricious green Of night vision Captured his first volley In real time For an alt-tabbed audience. He insists: It wasn’t his fault -It was what the region was wearing! If it didn’t want to be invaded, It should have covered its assets According to patriarchal standard. It should’ve never explored What is enticing In the first place. Abstinence is the key To prevention. It should’ve laid still And taken it, And it would all Have been over. It should’ve lain With the man God chose for it. 15
And here is the problem: He thinks he’s a man He thinks there’s a God He thinks God chose him He thinks God chose him for this. The sea and the land Don’t stand a chance Against patriarchs and chauvanists Because the sea and the land Cannot consent. The sea and the land Don’t stand a chance Against patriarchs and chauvanists Because these men seek control Not consent.
Untitled
Frances Garren 16
Untitled
Craig Bischof
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Astral Projections Emily Bartz-Mills
Practicing in the Mirror Jacob L. E. Oliver
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Nazis and Neanderthals John VanBranze
Sasquatch. Yeti. Bigfoot. Bigots. Evolution. Let’s start out inflammatory, maybe we’ll get a steroid shot. One thing the nazis got right? Well, besides the leather and skull uniforms that have become the standard trope of evil, and with good reason, was a belief in evolution. And “right” is being generous to those far right racists. Albeit, those Natzis involved a hollow earth theory, racial theories too fucked to even begin to discuss their wrongness (because, duh, Nazis are wrong), a cosmology that thought outer space was ice( world ice theory), oh, and a belief in sasquatch/yetis and the possibility that they were a missing link to us regular humans; and probably nazi “aryans” too. Prior to hitler’s birth, it was a German, Johann Carl Fuhlrott who initially theorized that the bones german limestone miners found in the Neander Valley were actually an extinct type of human, or hominid. Oh, and he was Catholic. Significant? only anecdotally to me, you see, I went to catholic and jesuit school. One time a student asked my Jesuit math teacher if he believed in evolution. The Jesuit priest’s response? “Am i fucking idiot or can i tie my own shoes?”. Thank the lord my religious educators believed in evolution and science The Nazis believed in evolution and science too, but come on, they were nazis, so it was all wrong, right?...Right. No twist surprise here, the nazis were bad at science, good at killing with science (industrial genocide,fighter jets, etc). Their, what I’ll call ideological science (propaganda), was so intent at and on discrediting Jewish academia (think Einstein and relativity) that they grasped at straws so wild to prove their aryan blood was superior throughout history. Case in point, there is an infamous expedition the SS undertook to Tibet in the late thirties. Infamous because it has become fodder for every crackpot mystical/occult investigations, this one included. One of the more interesting theories of the reason for the expedition was to find a link to Tibet as the cradle of the nazi aryan “civilization”. The nazis themselves were quick to point out the shared use of the swastika, despite it being an ancient symbol used by a multitude of cultures before the nazis tainted it with their scientific racism bullshit. But the nazis also
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thought they were descendants of Atlantis, and for some reason they thought Atlanteans passed through the Himalayas. What else lives in the Himalayas? the Abominable snowmen. the yeti. sasquatch. The missing nazi link. The nazis didn’t find the missing link in Tibet. Instead, they slaughtered millions of people, Hitler shot himself in the head high on speed, and the U.S. dropped nuclear bombs. But unlike the inconclusive evidence on the existence of Yetis, it is beyond unfortunate that there are still nazis and racists. In popular culture, the Neanderthals are still mostly scene as more animal than man. But they’re smart enough to buy insurance, a lowest-common-denominator necessity for anyone that wants to legally and bureaucratically drive a vehicle. Neanderthal has also become synonymous with someone of low-level intelligence that acts aggressively even if that aggression escalates the situation. To put it bluntly, Neanderthals are seen as boneheads. In my little slice of american pie culture, bonehead often means someone that’s a racist. But Neanderthals weren’t racist. No, they, and modern humans enthusiastically intermixed. Fucked. New conclusive DNA evidence proves that modern homo sapiens, US, certainly fucked our way through the hominid family tree. This DNA study lays to rest the debate on what happened when we met, and though we most certainly must have fought, we most certainly did fuck. And now, even though the Neanderthals no longer walk the earth, their DNA still does. It’s debated how much DNA modern humans have inherited from Neanderthals. Based on genetic testing, the Neanderthal percentage of our DNA varies anywhere from 2-4 percent, or even 4-8 percent depending on the genetic sample. Remember, Neanderthals inhabited a vast stretch of Eurasia. From grave sites that show evidence of ritual burial of elders in modern day Israel, to caves in Spain where the remains of a hybrid child were found in Lisbon. It was in these sites that Neanderthals met their hominid cousins newly arriving from Africa. And it is in small populations, exclusively Sub-Saharan Africa in origin, that do not show any evidence of the Neanderthal genetic package. Everyone else on earth has some Neanderthal DNA, and some even have a DNA package from other hominid ancestors named the Denovensians. But the largest inheritors of Neanderthal DNA are Europeans. Also known as white people. Though it’s laughable to imagine the nazis on their
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quest for the holy grail of aryan evolution, the intolerance that nazis preached is not funny. Do you know what I find funny, and scary, but I try not to think that way so I don’t wanna cry at the shitshow that is humanity, but funny(it’s easier to fight funny, rather than scary to me)? Racists and bigots. I especially enjoy protest signs spouting misspelled hate speech. Kind of deflates those assholes a bit, yet the hate they preach is very dangerous. Organized, or at least vocal, white supremacists mimic nazi party propaganda, and babble pseudo science about the supremacy of the white race. How pure their blood is. I’ll avoid the obvious kkk hillbilly incest joke, because racists aren’t just a poor white trash caricature. But white supremacists of all stripes love their pure blood. Remember our hominid kissing cousins discovered in a german valley? And just like the fans of sad acoustic guitar music, the largest percentage of Neanderthal DNA can be found in white people. Do the math. Homo sapien plus neanderthal does not equal pure HUMAN. Mostly because there’s no such thing. But this means that white supremacists are not biologically pure “human” because of their ancestors mixing it up with the neanderthals. WHITE PRIDE HAVER’S ARE THE LEAST HUMAN POPULATION ON EARTH.
Erectile Dysfunction Frances Garren
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I’m a Fresh Cut Lucy Miller
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A Trans Valuation RC Patterson
In a trans valuation is man’s salutation to the damned values pity amalgamation.
It’s a feast of morals worth the least of kernels popped under the heat of the inferno of the day. The decadent sought weakness in the lower classes, calling individuality malevolent and odious, leaving them flaccid. I demolish paradigms with polished pares of rhymes, dropping solar flares. My relativism’s deconstructionist Quelling all isms stemming from Aknaten. Deep as the fucking Marianna’s trench. I use to blunder in the contradictions of the decadent. Equity is the resolution to this reverse evolution, the fetters of the lewd moral sense. I’m not a rigid Hierarchy. Decisions by and large be forged by my many parts. Me is an accumulation. For clarity assume me to be a nation state, which is composed of states of states. Always active no intermission. Realize now that the unity of self is a decadent fiction. But this fiction may well fester. This original sin. But what makes the powerful so powerful? It’s the priestly! Privileging the deceasing in poverty. Telling them their disgrace is a balance. “Yours is the kingdom!” This prevents them from thinking the kingdom is on earth, in them. They are prevented from linking freedom to self-mastery. Overflowing power, no plastering passion behind false notions. But gathering all admonishing values that precede from weakness and abolishing them. If you ain’t ready to end yo lie get a Cenobite from every religion. Get holy relics,
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knives, candles. All the shit you maggots embellish. Surrender wont effect my decision. Planning hellish forests of gored paradigms. I demolish paradigms. Smart as Edmund Husserl. Dropping solar flares. Quelling all isms stemming from Aknaten. Kept the psychologism. Hot as lead in Aleppo. Shook you with cinematic texts I bled. Now look who gets psycho. Demonic abbadon! Verse richer than Abbasids. Deep as the fucking Marianna’s trench. Traumatizing reluctant fuckers. Surgical verbal murder. I need another exorcism. Fuck it! Let me finish my mission. Giving lyrical tummy tuckings. I put my soul on the line like Nik Wallenda. Appalling assaults sent me to Ptolemaic vectors. Back like Bacuala from my star trek. So F the heffer that challenges my facts. Fool run! Lest you want your paradigms on the line like Nik Wallenda. If you ain’t ready to end yo lie get a Cenobite from every religion. The lie is a condition of life. Get holy relics, knives, candles. All the shit you maggots embellish. Surrender wont effect my decision. Planning hellish forests of gored men. I have no enemy in him I respect in this assembly.
I Print on Toast Chloë Simmons
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Adult Purchase #2 Lana Dvorak
My migraines fuck each other & I become over-caffeinated from my remedy. This Day and Age gave me too much to drink I watched myself submit myself and my safety with a fake trustworthiness towards the Facebook market place He carried the mattress up my stairs and my dog did not bark $120 has, since the purchase, rhymed with soggy mattress bad dreams maybe fleas among others Mom says Dad and I are similarly eager for quick fixes rooted in impulsivity I wanted a bigger bed for my lover.
Passivity Pinned Herself Against Me Bethanie Reid
Passivity pinned herself against me, an answered prayer, almost, but when has fire ever remained still? Her bonds were broken in the weeping sobs that racked my entire body until I was exhausted. I’d begged for movement, prayed for change shouted desperately to the sky, “Please just let me feel something, anything” and it led me here, floundering in fear, marinated in the stench of stale cigarettes and cheap beer, hands clenched to the glass as if it were an anchor. If I can smash the glass in my hands and feel the shards break flesh will that prove I am real? Emotions are seldom pretty in a broken brain that imagines ulterior motives with every kindness. I hate myself for being like this, even as I struggle to find within myself a measure of love, an ounce of comfort, a glimmer of hope. I know I’ve been searching in the wrong places, but you’ve got to start somewhere.
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Cuts on a C.J. Hugh
Cut on my finger Onion peel skin substratum at the tip of bone squelching burning Numb to a cut like a child’s cry in a home of bellowing strain of squealing pain All callous replay without a real name Droplet carved indent unnoticed in the outburst of going out reaching out Still no ringing in reverb! Lurched into night snow white drizzled flight With only a fear of holding too tight How the verity knows dread self fulfilling prophecy- in your head- almost dingy as a fed A cut for the tears I never shed Lazy as a drunkard in the turn Like a beat-up prostitute that never learned O how my body aches and churns
The Contrast
Jacob L.E. Oliver 26
Untitled
Emily G. Stremming 27
Untitled
Kurt Zuver 28
Thread
Eve Maret
Ursula
G.M.H. Thompson When days are gray & wolves creep up onto the oars above the houses when will they know you want to see the lotus bloom inside mermaid caves? When dusk chills the heart & the wreakers are all out with hooks and lanterns 29
where will you go? Down to the seashore to collect fossils & oysters?? What will you hear? Tales of Old Ahab madly raging across the South Pacific?? What will you see? Visions in the shadows of sea monsters & succubae, Scylla & Charybdis?? What will you smell? The bitter sea brine duskily drinking the deck amidst a sudden night squall?? What will you taste? The blood of your enemies as you lunge at them with cutlass, crimson murder blazing fiercely in your eyes, offsetting the flowering midnight?? What will you touch? Tentacles of the deep, fiendish arms of nether demons wrapped wrapped wrapped wrapped around wrapped around YOU and dragging you down, down, down down into the dark, down into the eternal dark of the ocean’s floor. 30
A Man on His Sword Lin Ferguson
I should have warned you; Could have saved you if I wanted to But, I cried As you marched Off to war Now, the horns play a familiar tune As your men do their* war* cries like wolves to the Moon And, I watch As you charge With your sword. Now, you’ve fallen to pieces And I’ve run out of reasons Why I could not beseech of you, “Stop this battle for me!” I was true To my promise to him But, not you. I would die for this lust If such could bring back your trust But, your armour is broken and your body is crushed; You’re dying, Irony killing even me. I got what I wanted Even if it cost[ed] Me more than before. The man I adore Fought for what was not his. My heart sold for much more More than he could afford. But, did he deserve To suffer the curse Of what he now died for?.. When his shield shattered And his valour Was all he had left Nothing did matter 31
My love letters Were still on his breath. Ancient prophecy He said to me Revealed his vows kept. But, I aided to lure, Immortal before, A man on his sword. I tried to tell him To explain my efforts weren’t as grim As they seemed. I truly wanted to be All a woman could be. I know I deceived. But remaining in regret led you to believe You would win. Was it, then, all I could see When I foresaw our future... When our skies became bluer... When I said I loved you And wasn’t telling the truth?.. I would take those mistakes Back if I could. I would die for this lust If it would bring back your trust. But, your armour is broken and your body is crushed. You’re dying, Irony killing me good. I got what I wanted Even if it cost[ed] Me more than before. The man I adore Fought for what was not his. My heart sold for much more More than he could afford. But, did he deserve To suffer the curse Of what he now died for?.. When his shield shattered And his valour 32
Was all he had left Nothing did matter My love letters Were still on his breath. Ancient prophecy He said to me Revealed his vows kept. But, I aided to lure, Immortal before, A man on his sword.
Victorian Princess Ryan GloseMeyer
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I Miss Dopamine Mackenzie Thorn
I miss dopamine Like I miss ketamine kisses Sun dresses drape over confessions of patracide If you got something to say Just come out And Say It Play It Over and over Till the tape burst like the levis in the 9th ward My genereation has only known tragedy We were all born under a bad sign Billowing smoke tickles helicopter propellers only to be dismissed by the bright gawky word of god Stop groveling he says He says Im a mistake and so are you So are you
what to do when google yields no results Mariel Fechik
begin by grounding yourself / in the knowledge that not everything / is contained / in cyberspace / that what you are looking for / might be in your mother’s jewelry box / where she stashes her anger and grief / and therefore your inheritance / of these things / if you cannot find it / after sifting through the class rings / and fake emeralds / exit the room slowly / have a cup of tea with honey / and wind yourself down / with the rusted key / to the back gate
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Chrysalis
Clara Stone Somehow, out of nothing, a caterpillar makes his chrysalis. Softest blue-green, like translucent jade, or still, deep waters. Rimmed with golden dots, sparkling and twinkling in the light, a sweet beautiful jewel of promise. A sweet beautiful jewel of death with the promise of a life unthought of. How do they do it? Make this chrysalis, die, and yet come back to life? Who knows? Not I. The butterfly emerges, well-named monarch. A glowing, living, orange traced with velvet black. A flying, dancing bit of living stained glass. Like an old cathedral window left it’s perch and flew into the deepest blue forever skies.
No Vacancy Lana Dvorak
Despite having rooms unattended, currently there is no vacancy. Leaves room for short-term guests, the ones that get the best of my heart for a night before leaving a check unsigned that will bounce, surely. But I let them in, anyhow. Tenants become family. Faithful. Unwavering, despite spells of manic that would, in any other reality, force me out of operation due to poor reviews. Benefits of being a terrible host include but are not limited to: peace of mind, contentment, the ability to move forward. Benefits of being a good host to these houseguests: my monsters get breakfast. Poached eggs cooked on surfaces so pristine they must have been barter for my sins. Get the one over there with the guitar a napkin, please, he hates to get yolk on his hands. Wouldn’t want to make a mess in a dining room purchased from earned dollars I traded my secrets for.
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Untitled
Anna Wermuth
The LightHouse Mary Lay
deep dreams interrupted by quiet clamor snake slips under the door frame to make a nest by your bed. scales scythe dignity remove garments undress consent pick it apart like dinner reptile has made its home inside of you now shut your eyes the tears are waves & the dim hallway is a light. reach a hand out for the safety of shore & the illumination that calls you home.
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Militant One Emilia Eller
Emilia
Katryn Dierksen 37
My Given Name ZachAry Lee
Damn right I look dapper in a twopiece suit and collar-tie combo but do you know how much of an itch I have to rip off this coffin by the buttons and put as much as half an inch of mascara under my eye? You call me a bastard, but call me by my given name: I’m a bitch.
polyneices
Theo Banaszak a chain link fence of a molecule that i cant even pronounce paddles around my brain these are views you cant imagine but wait a bit and ill be at the bottom of the nearest gutter the world is hazy and my vision is clouded and the hour is ungodly and i am ungodly but i could really use a smoke and a break i wander a realm filled with the living and she lies with the dead sharing our improper existence silently i reach for the water and pour it down my throat and as it cascades past my ribs, down my spine listless wanting for more than what i deserve but it could be exactly what i need who are you to tell me what i need i am in need sinking into the depths of the hot black i know that i am not entering paradise but i am going where i belong she has freed me by calling me dead i am dead i am dead i am dead
38
Mirage
Shawn Powell 39
THE REAL BAD JACKET CONTEST WINNER
The Spirit of New Years’ Resolutions The spirit of new year’s resolutions is a spirit of fake revolutions, the spirit of overeducated idiots talking to psychiatrists about how they feel that their lives are mist, all while ignoring how good they’ve got it, ‘cause all their lives, they’ve lived vegetated, which is why they wait until the new year to make little speeches & vain gestures about how they’ll change their middle-class lives, like Pavlov’s dogs, like an eight-year-old’s lies, they perform their tricks like a sad jester, all while posturing ridiculously about things I knew before I turned three. A month’s disappeared, but you’re still the same; the faster you run, the more you stand still— the gym is forgotten, but not your shame the mirror reflects, or your memory of ancient days of sun & daffodils when you were young & thin & misery was just a word you couldn’t understand, along with lying, employment, & death, for to children, there aren’t resolutions— : they eat ice cream or it melts in their hands; they grab everything before there’s none left;— they don’t daydream some final solution, gibbering dementedly as a fiend regarding the idols you’ll never leave. New years’ resolutions are myths of death, flawed beliefs in some messiah scapegoat to free us from ourselves with Heaven’s breath & ferry our foibles on Chiron’s boat, resurrecting the primal tradition that murdered kings at the year’s funeral that queens might choose with carnal precision a lover yearly to renew the soil, yet it was mirage, a ruse to control the primitive mind, & when the crops failed the lie was killed & kings became royal, damning the Goddess to amnesia’s veil; thus, new years’ resolutions in spirit are false cairns to savagery rightly quit.
40
G.M.H.Thompson