ISSUE 14
Letter from the editors, everything is love and light on the waves, Bad Jacket
TO SUBMIT TO BAD JACKET SEND YOUR WORK TO BADJACKET94@GMAIL.COM Subscribe for Bad Jacket zines printed quarterly at patreon.com/badjacketpress Brought to you with love by editor Katryn Dierksen
i.
Table of Contents
Greg Edmondson....................................cover,15 Jason Ryberg.............................................1 Elise Giammanco..........................................3 J.B. Nearsy Wright...................................4,5,7 Nico (Kyra) Levesque.....................................6 Florian Vermeil..........................................8 Katryn Dierksen..........................................12 Celia Lucci..............................................13 Jason Stenar Clark......................................14
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Crushed Velvet Void Jason Ryberg
The world has drawn back its billowed drapes and here we stand on the blurred edge of evening, our thoughts telescoping light years towards some dark, distant point. Stretching, on the very tips of our twinkling, naked toes, we reach for escape velocity and with one massive explosion of effort we leap into the turning sky, tucking, rolling and tumbling into the soft, layered darkness of the crushed velvet void. Suddenly the Earth is a small glass bead or an unblinking eye, swirling with cataracts of weather and civilization. There, to our right, spanning the great expanse of the chemical / color spectrum, are the star factories: cirrus and stratocumulus clouds of glowing gas and glittering dust, slowly contracting, condensing into clusters of fertile ground which will one day give rise to flowering suns and the smoking seeds of planets. It has been said that the universe was once held to be a giant egg shell, flecked and speckled with millions of holes through which shined the divine light of heaven, so that the gods might monitor our progression, our evolution, our gestation...
(cont.) 1
But we, with all our modern conventions and standard models of wisdom, have come to see the universe in a different lighta brilliant showering of sparks to show us the way.
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Space Elise Giammanco
You can be on any STL city block Smoking a cigarette Underneath a street light At a bus stop Maybe you are at the corner Of Compton and Arsenal On Certain nights Peering beyond the trees You can look up to see Venus and Mars Piercing through the dark Like this love of ours Bright and excruciatingly distant No use crying about it There are sadder stories, you know
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Congregation (variant no. 5) J.B. Nearsy Wright 4
Congregation (variant no. 9)
J.B. Nearsy Wright 5
What I Want Nico (Kyra) Levesque 6
Cruising (Untitled)
J.B. Nearsy Wright 7
From “A Whole New Flavor of Tasteless” Florian Vermeil 90 COULD IT BE THIS IS HEARTLESS? Heat was dissipated and freezing at -.09 degrees; breed differences afford a glimpse of learning situations. Could it be this is heartless? The aim of this book is to discover some definite cationic chemistry. The manifestation of operant conditioning experiments after 1930 is, again, predicted to cause Dewsbury, McGill, and Denenberg to use a length of tubing in aqueous solutions. Could be it this heartless? Now, let us turn our hymnals to SOCIAL ORGANIZATION IN SHEEP AND GOAT FLOCKS In the study of the adaptive significance of I.H. whatever proposals are advanced should practice reindigestion protocols. Quite apart from these great quotations it is of I.H. that I speak when I say be it so, heartless? You may wonder. To what degree, indeed to what end, is I.H. related to the heroic adventures of his lordship? To what does this relate. Well.... EVERYTHING! I.H. means nothing in the most particular way Be threatened, ye forces of evil! There is an underlying superstructure a powerful narrative The power of this narrative will not be denied His lordship is just a character based on a true person I.H. 8
is the basket the bread comes in and reality sits in it waiting to be eaten I’m told it’s old grown cold eats children for breakfast This opportunity is not extended to mortals How’d it get this like heartless? It’s a long story Thats why this is a long book A poem longer than the books A poem I.H. will have nothing to say about seeing as it has no thoughts or feelings How do it be so heartless? And you better acknowledge the power of this narrative and show some respect We joke, we get vulgar We fall, we get older Trip, bruise and a punch gets thrown Yeah this is all part of a fluorescent lamp. (So fucking heartless) 91 WE WILL NEVER SPEAK OF IT We will never speak of it. I can picture most of the song titles you’ll be sorry I don’t know how profound it was dispersal of those gathered the sex I would have rathered with a girl that could have mattered out of respect the not using dope to cope the conceptualization of music and culture generally it all began with I.H. it all goes back to I.H. the story goes like this once there were many superstructures in place here on earth it is common in certain disciplines 9
to discover human superstructures which have died and been covered in sand dunes I know as if by heart but in reality by something deeper curtains after curtains, veils after veils, doors that open to more doors hallways that lead nowhere I can so I do go there I take it that direction I drive around South City until I find a gas station I like We will never speak of it. not like this would you call me crazy if I asked you for a kiss this is directed to YOU to whom I direct my thoughts when I hear a love song I have seen you in my dreams and you are always the same would it were possible to flip a switch and just know you to not have to just go to you from across a crowded ballroom We will never speak of it. I need, the thing is, need I smoke, I sense greed I smoke cigs I smoke weed gonna go gonna go where this road leads because we will never speak of it I can be free to dance around the fire this in lieu of graphically describing a Japanese penis from the late Edo period. We will never speak of it. 92 WHITER BRIGHTER whiter than white motherfucker this shit was it was brighter than bright it was whiter than white and yeah it was righter than right make it really difficult to see the Superstructures making moiré behind it but soon the light left 10
and it felt bereft and it saw the superstructures they were nighter than night I saw the superstructures they were blacker than darkness they were deeper than deep they were creeper than creep they were deeper than deep they were creeper than creep but I remembered very clearly what I had seen before that shit was flighter than flight amid me plighter than plight this shit was whiter than white it was brighter than bright and in the presence of nighty night night I saw a great-grandmother weeping over a snot-stained flag I saw a nation in the shitter and a citizenry bitter there were fighter jets fighter jetting and there were guns the guns were gunning but I have seen it seen what’s up and it was whiter than white it was brighter than bright
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The Honeycomb Collage Katryn Dierksen 12
the essence of yellow Celia Lucci 13
An Afterlife of Empathy Jason Stenar Clark
Were I light, were I love, I’d still spy a dove who knew avian saviors, what to pray for, beakish curses at wobbly perches, the lack of a crack of shell, the cost of nests.
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A Single Ray of Light
Greg Edmondson 15
