Send your poetry, flash fiction/non-fiction, digital poetry, digital art, photography (digitally altered or au naturale), collage, drawings, paintings, shockwave, movies, etc. Favor given to the experimental and creative use of the digital medium; art that creatively utilizes words and language; experimental and precise creative writing that utilizes visuals to enhance meaning. No more than 5 poems or art works at a time. Keep prose under 1000 words. Video under 3 minutes. Simultaneous submissions allowed.
Escape by Aleksandr Pasevin.
Read a bit of Pasevin’s personal reflections in the feature article on page 22. Pasevin’s artwork can be found throughout these pages.
Dear Readers/Viewers/Gazers/Users/Friends, I’m not sure how all of this came together. Magic.I think I woke up one morning, and there was this Issue #02 full of all this amazing digital collage, traditional paintings, photography and this rich literature with incredible language, testiness, even humor. Amazing. Once again, the list of artists spans across the globe (New York, San Francisco, Lithuania, Spain, Ontario, Paris, even Illinois). I, personally, apologize for not getting Issue #02 to you sooner (like last month, as planned), but then I guess the Issue Fairy had yet to decide it was time. CEllA’s Round Trip is honored to display the works of so many talented artists and writers for another go-round. I would like to welcome assistive staff members Ellie Isenhart, creative writing MA seeker, and Matthew E. Smith, anthropology student and my partner in marriage. :) So cool to have so much support, and this go-round, he worked. Special thanks also go out to Corby Roberson, Elizabeth Young, and Sarah Chavez, poetry editor/co-editor, for fundraising efforts. Special thanks also go out to Barry Graham, editor for online lit journal, Dogzplot, for sharing what will be CEllA’s first AWP table, #661, in Chicago at AWP’s massive bookfair this year. Wow. When the Issue Fairy showed up, she left more than a stick of a gum under the pillow. Some cool things in this issue include an awesome poem
by Diagram editor and writer, Ander Monson and a personal interview to boot by our fiction editor, Sean Lovelace; eerily cool digital collage by featured artist Aleksandr Pasevin; prose by Peter Schwartz; funky art by Brad Pickard; flash fiction by Kyle Hemmings and Meg Sturiano; and sexy digital letter collages by Rodolfo Franco of Spain who also has a video, “Garamondo,” featured on CEllA’s website. Who knew you could do THAT with a W? On the final page of this issue, check out the “Reactive Summer Text Context.” I humbly ask you to write poetry or flash inspired by a simple photo taken by me. I pulled it from my deep, digital camera files. You can find a larger image file on the website. While you’re on the website - don’t forget to check out all the extras! Congratulations to our fab flash fiction/nonfiction editor, Sean Lovelace, who won the Rose Metal Press Annual Short Short Chapbook Contest. Coming Summer 2009: “How Some People Like Their Eggs”! Watch for it. We’ll keep you posted. Enjoy the hell out of our second issue! I know I did. I *heart* the Issue Fairy.
Peace, Rachel Hartley-Smith creator/lead editor/art editor www.cellasroundtrip.com reachcella@gmail.com
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Mouth Sleighed by Mario Scattoloni Quonset by Stephanie Williamson All is Forgiven by Aleksandr Pasevin Big Girl by Aleksandr Pasevin Needs by Aleksandr Pasevin Rest in Peace by Aleksandr Pasevin Shepherd de los Diablos by Brad Pickard Mendocino Split by Stephanie Williamson Shark vs. Gorilla by Brad Pickard Wine Women & Song by Aleksandr Pasevin Aleksandr Pasevin: Feature Unreality Show by Aleksandr Pasevin Apple-Picking by Camille Martin Byzantine Man by Camille Martin Slipstream by Laura Hruska Crow Foot by Brad Pickard Costume of Japan by Ernestt Williamson III The Irony of Distances by y mercedes vill villaneuva llaneuva Circuit in the Sky by Dmitri ri Hochstatte Hochstatter te er Space & sound by Peter Schwartz wartz Caliope 1 by Rodolfo Franco Lost by David Prisk Caliope 4 by Rodolfo Franco Somebody Watches Over Me by Ernest Will Wi Williamson il iamson n IIII II
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Portrait of the artist asking king t to o be b counted d by C. Shoup
Winter 2009 * Issue #02 * www.cellasroundtrip.com
contents www.cellasroundtrip.com
visual
Round Trip www.cellasroundtrip.com Title, site, and logo is the property of editor & creator, Rachel Hartley-Smith, Pendleton, Indiana 46064 reachcella@gmail.com with special thanks to Ball State University in Muncie, IN. All materials are original creations. This publication may not to be printed, copied and/or distributed for profit. CEllA’s Round Trip is a nonprofit publication created solely for the purpose of sharing original artwork and texts between authentic artists and authors. Editors/staff: Rachel Hartley-Smith Sarah Chavez Sean Lovelace Ellie Marie Isenhart Matthew E. Smith
Credit for some interior clip images goes to: ObsedianDawn.com & Spy-Glass.net, Some fonts downloaded at: typenow.net, www.1001fonts.com, www.urbanfonts.com. ©2008-2009 CELLA’S ROUND TRIP ISSN: 1944-9879
TEXTUAL
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Thanksgiving by Nathan Neely state of water by Peter Schwartz My Father Kafka by Howie Good Home Body by Meg Sturiano Dusty Chinchilla by Nathan Logan River by David Prisk Taste (5 kinds of hunger) by Peter Schwartz Maybe Missionary Sermon by Ander Monson I Interview Ander Monson! By Sean Lovelace Service by Nathan Neely Say by David Erlewhine Cloudy by David Prisk Slippery by Francis Gapper The Last Day by John Greiner Paranormal by Suzanne Nielsen Pringles by Kyle Hemmings I Like Teresa Wright but I Love Ali McGraw by Kyle Hemmings
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Digital Saves Save ves Paper. ve print, If you must p rint, recycle.
Mental Walk-In Closet by Martin Heavisides How to Watch Paint nt Dry by Matt Bell Post-Op by Chris Major jor
Winter 2009 * Issue #022 * www.cellas www.cellasroundtrip.com sro ro roundtrip p.com
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by Nathan Neely So you want to talk About dreams? I'm upstate New York and Elton John Says hey, man‌ How's it going? Damn. I say this to My wife. Hey. How's it hangin' Elton? The turkey's great. Shoveling in another yam. Eye see the white grand piano. Eye see the black banister. The wallpaper's all crimson and cream. Floral swirls and lush. He wants me to try The cranberry sauce. Says it's better than I will Ever understand. A taxi pulls up. He called it For us.
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Nathan Neely is a graduate student of Creative Writing. His work has been published in elimae and other places. He spends his free time working on a new Bio in case he is ever again published.
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Mouth Sleighed by Mario Scattoloni
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Quonset by Stephanie Williamson
by Peter Schwartz the state widower pauses by the canal. uses an old handbag to collect fish. strange dinners of voice. he pardons himself to a lady from an hour ago. they follow certain scales but still produce anomalies. he dreams of artificial light, cries in advanced algorithms. learns the odds from the wrong side of the fishbowl. rendering. he carves needful entrances and exits. or covers the mantle of his hovering. but solidity says tomorrow his lips will turn to algae. or erode. that he’ll face the pressure of nowhere looking for a crack in the aquarium. play with bandages. arch his back like a satellite. try to drain the rust. but tomorrow he’ll bleed something different. an acrobat at heart, he’ll twist plastic into a kind of struggle. or his struggle into plastic. he’ll sweat over a bag of triggers. from behind a pair of permanent curtains. they’ll open eventually. he’ll mutate from the socket. by timing his sequels. burning lyrics for the passing eels before the clouds. shapes and the everchanging vigil. this is how he’ll house the leap. another aftermath. after the last piece of waking hits his bed frame. after he sees which windows are left and aren’t. his laws go lonely. his natural vaccines fail. he’ll salt his prayers. allow himself simple choices. tea or coffee, dress or don’t, sleep or backfire. piss or shave, read or walk, eat or use the telephone. he’ll sigh like giant furniture. remember his earthly wife, write her name on a small yellow rowboat. perform, he’ll tell himself.
Peter Schwartz has more styles than a Natal Midlands Dwarf Chameleon. He’s been published in Arsenic Lobster, Epicenters, Media Cake, 5 Trope, Verdad and VOX. He’s currently working on his fourth chapbook, ‘Postcards to the Sun’. See the extent of his shenanigans at: <www.sitrahahra.com>. Stephanie Williamson is a photographer and writer. Her photography has been exhibited nationally, has graced a few album covers, and has been published recently in The Sun. She teaches photography at City College of San Francisco. Her writing has been published in Literary Mama, Common Ties, and Word Riot. A former New Yorker, she lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and two sons. You can also see her work on her blog Photo Journal <swphoto.blogspot.com/>.
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All Is Forgiven by Aleksandr Pasevin
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My Father, Kafka by Howie Good
Here’s an old photo of my father eerily alone on a city street, he’s as slim as a novella and dark as a gypsy prince, he looks like Kafka, thick, black hair slicked back and comet-bright eyes, the wariness of someone suddenly summoned to appear at such and such a time at such and such a place, the Workers’ Accident Insurance Institute for the Kingdom of Bohemia, and he’s on his way there now, hands thrust deep in his pockets as if to hide certain injuries, but, of course, this is not K., and that is not Prague behind him, and I am not born.
Howie Good, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, is the author of six poetry chapbooks, most recently Tomorrowland (2008) from Achilles Chapbooks. He has been nominated three times for a Pushcart Prize and twice for the Best of the Net anthology. His next chapbook, Love Is a UFO, will be published by Pudding House later this year. He blogs at <apocalypsemambo.blogspot.com/>. 7
Some nights she would stop in at least three s stores on her way home from the gym. Tonight sshe went to the MetFood, where she bought a box of cereal (the sugary kind forbidden in her b cchildhood), a carton of milk, a tube of cookie dough, and a pint of ice cream. She loaded her d iitems on to the conveyor belt and hoped the JJamaican checkout girl would take them for n nothing more than household staples. As she exited the store, the giant C Caribbean manager called to her, “Have a good n night now, sweetheart. We’ll see you soon.” “Goodnight, Abraham,” she said over her sshoulder, smiling and waving. Next she ran across the street to the soul-food p place. It was caddy-corner to the supermarket, but tthe cashiers and grocery-baggers could not see her ffrom the storefront. Here she ordered a fried fish P Po’ Boy, sweet potato fries, and okra smothered in butter. Then she said something like, “What did he want again? . . . I should’ve made him write it down . . . I think he said fried chicken and biscuits with gravy.” She waggled her head and clicked her tongue adding, “Oh well, that’s what he’s getting.” This made Chow Chow (“Chow Chow, boy, stop your flirtin’!”) laugh and say something like, “Dat man is lucky to have you.” Her final stop of the evening was the bodega run by the Arab who sold loosies and 40s out of the bulletproof window late at night. The store was open now, and she grabbed a bunch of 25-cent bags of chips and waxy chocolate snacks off a rusty wire rack and chucked them on the counter. “Can I come over and help you eat those?” purred the Arab as he took her two dollars. Sometimes she would go to the bakery where a beautiful Senegalese woman (who had gone to Harvard Law but gave up her practice to become a pastry chef) made desserts like Chocolate Meringue Brownies, Lemon Semolina Squares, Mini Jam Donuts, and Rococoa Cake. But she didn’t think the beautiful baker would believe she had yet another occasion—another engagement party, another birthday—to buy one of her gourmet creations.
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So tonight she would punish herself with so much garbage. When she got back to her apartment (a streetlevel railroad in a brownstone), she tightened the blinds, turned on the television, sat on the couch, and, without taking off her coat, began to eat. An episode of Seinfeld came on. Hands shaking, she opened the hot metal tins first. She sucked the crispy skin off of each piece of fried chicken and let her head fall back onto the couch. As she chewed— the mush of fish she crammed into her mouth, the salty sides she gulped in three bites, the warm gravy she downed like a shot—she sighed heavily through her nose, her chest rising and falling hard. She tore open the cereal box and crammed its sticky contents in her face by the fists-full, coughing up sweet dust. She took a slug of milk to settle all she had swallowed. Her stomach was hard and distended. Chugging noises echoed from her insides. Another Seinfeld had started. She mined through melting ice cream for chunks of chocolate that now tasted like chalk. The last of the food (the cookie dough and cheap snacks she funneled directly down her throat), she did not taste at all. She rose from the couch in a stupor. She drained the carton of milk and stuffed the greasy wrappers and empty boxes into the shopping bags. Then she walked outside (looked both ways) and dumped the bags in the trashcan of her neighbor’s front yard. Having bolted her door for the night, she stripped off all of her clothes and went into the bathroom. Though she lived alone, she closed the bathroom door. This was the part she hated. The urgent jamming of fingers down her throat. The mash that came up like cement in her mouth. The taste of sweet garbage and sour bile. The throbbing behind her eyes. The burning in her gums. The mess on the floor and all around the bowl. But she could not get enough of how she felt after Because after—after she mopped up the mess, after she flushed all of the garbage, after she took a scalding shower, after she scrubbed her teeth, after she put on a clean robe, after it was all over—she felt empty. *
Born and raised in New York City, Meg Sturiano is a high school teacher and theater director. Her play “One for More Options” was recently produced at the Bedlam Theatre in Minneapolis. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America, the Atlantic Writers’ Workshop, and the PEN American Center, for which she is a mentor in the Prison Writing Program. Meg currently teaches and directs at Hunter College High School in Manhattan and at Acting Manitou in Maine.
Big Girl by Aleksandr Pasevin
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Needs by Aleksandr Pasevin
by Nathan Logan The ultrasound results were most peculiar. It looked like a rabbit in there. Soon after, rodent noises could be heard. We consulted animal books and compared the stills to rabbit-sized creatures. After calling in a veterinarian to look, it was determined that a chinchilla was growing. This was highly shocking, as the woman’s husband joined her ten times and didn’t display any chinchilla tendencies or look like one. The hospital psychologist came in and asked if he had any lost weekends lately. After assuring the psychologist that he had been on call last weekend, he asked the patient if she had any lost weekends. When the patient
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was able to recall them, we all scratched our heads. We expressed our deepest sympathies and told her there was nothing we could do.
The patient sighed, telling us, “Chinchilla or not, this is my baby. And I’m going to love it regardless.” At that point, the veterinarian broke the news that chinchillas live an average of fifteen years. She squinted and began to cry. Her husband attempted to strangle me, but security was nearby and quashed the situation. The psychologist stayed in the room, while the rest of us doctors left for the day. I needed a break, so I went to a bar a couple blocks away, ordered a Dusty Chinchilla and downed it in one gulp. The situation was not lost on the veterinarian, who shook his head as he chugged down a tall Horse’s Neck.
River by David Prisk
David Prisk is a California native who teaches high school English in the San Francisco Bay area. He considers himself an accidental wordsmith, a graduate of Cal State Long Beach, a husband and a father of 2 (unless we start counting poems). His poems have appeared in various publications, most recently in the online publications 3Lights Gallery, Read This Magazine, Snow Monkey and Clearfield Review. He is currently working on a manuscript tentatively entitled Six Ways to Hear Goodbye. He can be reached by e-mail at Kaminarihako@aol.com.
Nathan Logan was born and raised in Indianapolis, Indiana, where anything with wheels is raced. He is a MFA candidate at Minnesota State University Moorhead. Some of his work has appeared in/is forthcoming from: Literary Tonic, No Posit, The Scrambler, and Sir!
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12 Rest in Peace by Aleksandr Pasevin
taste (5 kinds of hunger) by Peter Schwartz
I’m hungry for nothing I can say a candle in a butcher shop; a ceramic vase to mean there are still possibilities after another raw night of dog-eat-dog questions, when the world’s half over and nobody can help my emptiness. hungry for my own letters to you and you while my little desert of wishes dries like a fishbone in the mouth of so much forgetting sand and hard psychology.
hungry for anything really a spanish olive by a knife before a hurricane, the oddity of say rust on a flower the perfect difference in delicacy as in the case of chopsticks over chainsaws. hungry for grapevines loosely numbered voices and painted pillars holding very slow translations for both new beginnings
and in that hunger, I imagine separate alphabets, private jewelery to cover my poison stamps and pageantry pageantry like plums on apple trees or promises in rivers, the poetic kind of drowning we’ve come
and endings; for some final roomful of cosmic arrows and imitation rain, for what’s truly meant by taste. *
to expect on sundays.
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Shepherd de los Diablos by Brad Pickard
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Brad Pickard was born in Aylmer, Ontario, a small town that boasts more coffee shops than traffic lights. He obtained a degree in Technical Illustration in 2001and currently resides in Toronto, Ontario where he works as a digital artist. In his spare time, he likes to go back to his roots by slathering paint onto boards. Bradâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work has shown in galleries in both Toronto and New York City. See more of Bradâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work on his website: <www.ourskyhasfallen.com>
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Mendocino Split by Stephanie Williamson Ander Monson is the author of a host of paraphernalia including a decoder wheel, several chapbooks and limited edition letterpress collaborations, a website <www.otherelectricities.com>, and three books: Neck Deep and Other Predicaments, Other Electricities, and Vacationland. In 2010 Sarabande Books will publish The Available World, a poetry collection, and Graywolf Books will publish a nonfiction project, Vanishing Point. He edits the magazine DIAGRAM <thediagram.com> and the New Michigan Press.
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By Ander Monson
Okay. Expecting a savior but getting a sailor, a salutation, a salami, and a couple dozen sales, I regret everything I asked for and neglected to. Something needs to save me from the glory flurry of holiday benedictions greased so that they slip onto & into everything, to buy a bunch of shit for our children and our awe-inspiring pets. I am surprised to find that, as it turns out, I want my personal Jesus to be Jesus, and Christ, I am ashamed. On fire with it: pinpricks of guilt everywhere, swelling on my body like hives. A week after the holiday, I am surrounded by a chattering cluster of asses. In the locker room naked men stand and talk to me, their penises pendulums. It is weird & hard not to think of Poe. And porn. And then Lorena Bobbitt. You see the way my mind works. You can view pictures of his severed dinghy online. I don’t like Jesus or Johnny Cash. I distrust rings, fire, and bushes, loaves and fishes, bars and bread. No snow for weeks and in text I will not reveal myself. I am not open as a jar, heart surgery, or door. My neighborhood’s windows teem with unattractive naked bodies—I could use some grace here, big forever X. I walk by them at night, every night, on patrol. Spines of desiccated pines dot the curbs, and I am asked by the city to come up with a creative use for them. I hope for some evidence of full lives to come to me by telephone at night, or by motor home at noon, or with cutlasses at dawn, to my eyes via a variety of voyeurcams on the web, conduit to another simulacrum of a life that could be mine, they say, for less than a penny a day. Each day is a sieve through which almost anything could slip. What I want for Xmas this year is X is intersection, is new big sexy dream of rood, is towering powerline crosses receding into horizon, as if they were marching robots and we were on TV, helplessly, and had only the one slim chance. (If we were in Wyoming we could see another dozen miles before the light gives itself away to the next zone of smoke, to the stroke that still separates your grandfather from his language. If we were in the bright flat line of Wyoming we would be being or being beaten, being gloriously lonely, or being on our way to anywhere but here. ) So I don’t get anything at all, no religion, Furby, Constantinople, headless driver in a ditch. Thus it must be in me. I rub myself to open. I am wound like twine into a colossal ball. I touch myself like I would a wound. The epidermis splits and inside is all light and starry sky. It’s hard to say what I should conclude about this.
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Shark Vs. Gorilla by Brad Pickard
I Interview Ander Monson!! by Sean Lovelace, fiction editor
(originally published on Sean Blog: It All Relates 2 Writing <www.seanlovelace.com>.) I saw this interview in 12th Street today with Ander Monson. I thought it a bit lame. I mean where were the eye-throttling questions, the insight readers need to know? I mean this was the most softball I'd watched since the Olympics, the ones with all the pollution. I'm wondering if Ander sent in the interview questions first and told them he would only answer those 14 questions (this is his usual method; I used to date his publicist). So, anyway, since he'll now apparently interview anywhere, I called him up for my own. I don't do email interviews for the same reason I don't eat cattle caged in tiny boxes and shot up with pig endorphins, Gatorade, and eyeballs. Ethics.
S: If you had only a week to live what would you write?
Sean (big, lion's voice): I find it really fascinating you can sit there and use phrases like "dialectics in literature" and "soul of the world" and "refectory fable the way of Balzac" when discussing your work but have yet to mention nachos. You know, nachos.
A: Don't drive your house, ok? Don't live in your car. It's that simple.
Ander (dry cough): Actually, I am not sitting. I am standing in the shallow end of my pool in Arizona and throwing discs into a disc golf basket I have perched atop an Octoilla cactus. And I do mention nachos in my writings. More than once. You're one of those interviewers who haven't even read the very work of the artist you question.
A: I wouldn't write. I would Disc Holf. S: Disc Holf? A: Disc golf, on horseback. S: What are you reading right now? A: The tiny print on a very large check. S: Really? What do you stand for?
S: Finally, what do you say to all of those readers who have noticed a certain distillation in the ethical three-dimensional narrative of your writing, basically stating no difference between living, dead, and Latinate vocabulary of the one-line incomplete expressive sounds, the patterns, etc., specifically as it relates to the by-gone days of print culture, as you clearly address more than once? (unfortunately, we lose our connection here.) *
S: Let's move on. If I was to say the essay form is a liar's holiday, how would you respond? A: If you bring a cat to a yak fight you better have one wonderful cat. S: You are a member of several institutions: marriage, academia, Netflix, etc. Doesn't the institution institutionalize the writer? Doesn't it rip out the piss, guts, spleen, blood, sputum, sperm, urine of the writer's very soul? A: Piss and urine are redundant. S: Would you like to tell your audience why your car was discontinued from production?
Ander, Disc Holf
A: Two words: snow.
baja win ter
AZ
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Wine Women and Song by Aleksandr Pasevin
Service
by Nathan Neely It's only midnight And I'm wearing that last Shot of rum. I've sixteen cigarettes left. That should suffice. I could walk a block. The credit card slip through the liquor store bars Would be easy. Pacifying. Like Grandpa's grin On a Sunday. When he would dispense Bubblegum and mint Before stepping quietly out For a butt. Pew musk stirring As he'd rise And whisper: Me and you go way back.
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Aleksandr Aleksandr Pasevin was born in the Ukraine in 1985, less than a year before the Chernobyl disaster. He moved to Lithuania when he was almost a year old. He has lived, worked and studied there ever since. Today, he lives in Kaunas – the second biggest city in Lithuania. He loves living in “old town,” at the center of the city. He’s working in a place he doesn’t like much, but he still considers it to be a good place for a student. At present time, he is studying graphic design which he enjoys, but he would love to have more time for creative projects. He has studied informatics technology at Kaunas Technic University, but he felt that it wasn’t a good fit. Still, he claims that the few years he spent there were useful. Pasevin’s latest work can be seen on Flickr at : <www.flickr.com/photos/27958373@ N03/>. His portfolio is located online at : <www.pasevin.com>.
THE INTERVIEW . . . It’s not hard to remember – as every teenager, I wanted somehow to express myself. Music wasn’t enough, drawing was too hard for me back then, so I started to doodle on my PC mainly with Adobe PhotoShop. It was 5-6 years ago. I think it was popular then. I grew up with computers, and this progress from simple primitive drawing programs to complicated powerful tools fascinated me. Even as a child, I tried to draw with my old ZX-SPECTRUM PC, but it was easier to draw on paper rather on that machine . . . I must say that the digital medium started to limit me in some ways, so I started to learn drawing,
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painting, and other stuff which I felt I should know due to my speciality. I would like to also try creating with video . . . although I think I’m not quite ready for this yet. Maybe this will sound cheesy, but my inspiration is everyday life, things I see during the day, emotions I live through, and mainly the music I am listening to all the time. Yes, music is a great stream for artistic flow. I don’t think I have an official artist’s statement yet. I’m too young and too lost to have a strong statement in anything. And my works, I do not think of them as deep; they have just happened. I left a mark of emotion as hard as I could. Maybe, many years from now, I will be able to give the world an “artist’s statement.” :] Well, I would like to do a lot of things in the years to come, if only I had time. I can see how reality strikes and limits me every day. At the end of every day, I feel too tired to create something I would otherwise want to. I am an IT manager and a
Pasevin * student at this moment; though maybe in a few months, I will quit my job and have some time for me and my artwork. After that, I am planning to try my chances in some graphic design or web design company. I’ll further improve all my skills and then create something original, unique and worth remembering.
Every artist enhances his view of some moment through the skills and talent he owns. In a digital collage, you can take many moments from other artists and combine them with simple snapshots of everyday life. They can be out of focus, even of awful quality, but you can shape something of your own, create something all together new. Somehow, it can be called a global art creation. “All is forgiven” is one of my latest works. There is not a lot of characters and action shown in a picture, but it IS a story – a story about a man who seeks forgiveness and through long life and pain he receives it, or maybe he just forgives himself. I started from a picture of an old old homeless man. His nose was broken, and he had a long beard, wrinkled face, and deep watery eyes. This picture struck me, and I imagined his life, his thoughts,the things he saw. I wanted to show how this man screams of something he had done still with calm, watery eyes. “Big girl” is more so a comic picture rather than something incredibly meaningful. I wanted to create a series of works called “Things which do not fit in to frame,” but this image wound up appearing like really big girl. It reminded me of Alice in Wonderland. ;]
“Escape” is too personal so I will leave it for everyone to find their own meaning.
“Unreality Show” is an old work of mine which simply shows a girl’s life in a “shoebox.” :] In her shoebox, she doesn’t need to think about anything. She thinks this is the only world that exists, and there is nothing more. Everything she wants just appears from the ceiling of her room. I love music – classical, especially Frédéric Chopin. If to mention visual arts from nova days, there are hundreds of people I like and who have inspired me, although I do not remember all of their names. I remember so many works I love. H.R.Giger and Salvador Dali are two of my favorite older artists. Fifteen years ago, I think I would use scissors, glue and pile of magazines to create collages. Mainly, today, it is the same thing :] In the future, I see myself still working with scissors, glue, a pile of magazines and PhotoShop ;] The world has gone crazy since internet has become available to us. A lot of trash is there, BUT I like digging in it, searching for unique stuff. A few decades ago, we had few known artists and their work, but today, we have thousands of artists, appearing from nowhere one day and crashing to nowhere another day. I think it is fascinating – sometimes, I feel this huge temp and my head starts spinning :] It is a good thing that Jon, living in USA, can collaborate with an artist from Lithuania (where is it? :] ) in real time. Art is becoming more global; there are even new terms to fit. Exciting things. And we are part of it :]
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Unreality Show by Aleksandr Pasevin
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Say
by David Erlewhine “Stop already, just stop defining yourself as a stutterer,” Paul says. “You are a lawyer, a father, a husband, a homeowner, a provider, a man who stutters. In that order.” “I’ll remember that next time I c...can’t give my credit c...card information over the phone.” “Here we go. Let’s start with the comparisons to Sir Isaac, Churchill, and the guy who wrote Alice in Wonderland.” My psychiatrist is not a man of letters. “Just go up there and tell the class what you do. Just walk up, look at your son and his classmates, and say ‘I am Kevin’s dad, I am a lawyer, I screw people for a living.’” “I review loan documents all day for a bank, mainly c...communicating via e-mail and fax. Without my stutter, I’d be at a f...firm, making five times as much.” He shrugs. “We could all be richer, Sisyphus.” “I’m no different than Sir Isaac,” I say, glancing at the clock. “I don’t care if he created gravity,” Paul says. “If Ike asked that the Parliament windows be shut while he spoke so the public didn’t hear him stutter, he needed help from someone like me.” My shrink is not big on scientific details. “We’re about out of time.” “Great, I’ll memorize exactly what I am going to say tomorrow, like Churchill. Without this malady, I could have been so much more, somebody —” Paul laughs. “I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. Listen to you.” I am standing, coat in hand. “What if I stutter in front of them? Do you know what they’ll say to my boy?” After a quick glance at the clock, Paul shakes my hand then says, “I can only imagine.”
Apple-Picking by Camille Martin
David Erlewine’s stories appear (or soon will) in Pedestal Magazine, Keyhole Magazine, Mud Luscious, Dogzplot, Word Riot, and others. He is a fiction editor for Dogzplot <www.dogzplot. com>, and he blogs at <www.whizbyfiction.blogspot.com>. Camille Martin, a poet and collage artist, moved from New Orleans shortly after Katrina to settle in Toronto. She is the author of Codes of Public Sleep (Toronto: BookThug, 2007) in addition to several earlier chapbooks. Recent work is published or forthcoming in The Literary Review of Canada, PRECIPICe, The Walrus, West Coast Line, This Magazine, White Wall Review, Rampike, W Magazine, and Chicago Review. In 2008, she received a grant from the Ontario Arts Council to complete a book of sonnets. She earned an MFA in Poetry at the University of New Orleans and a Ph.D. in English at Louisiana State University. Currently she teaches writing and literature at Ryerson University.
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Cloudy by David Prisk
organizers arrive got fight
gets public
Americans
some
sisterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sisters dead
invade grove
short protest
moments undo testimony cartoon president address billion flag war taxpayers clammy swelling sharks seniors slogans suspicions senses removed
essential
hours wrong decision stray park office dog child closed stuff revived officer evidence united surge enemy reform draw stress lucky
thousands login address
inside garden
knees
user
task
people
told win forget
examples
piglet buses view monarch going terrorist death slogans graves veteran rights money fights
competitive
people
making big
budget
waste
thousands walk
Iraq technique
cars
state
not
feet
trade
access vote
forget college
tales
step
flags
informant claims protests
surfing
child forgot
flagging
hung
charges
opinion replace
spin members
official debate
top graduate enter area attack respond lucky age adapted from Orange County Register tag clouds
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forgot
great substantial wrong
great
editorial address local
big
Byzantine Man by Camille Martin
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Slipstream by Laura Hruska
Slippery by Francis Gapper
A slipper is a helper to a housebreaker, somebody who slips through half-open windows and other tricky points of access, such as cat flaps. Something between an eel and a ghost. Girl children often make good ones. Nin was a man, though of peculiar physique. Sort of squashed – as though he lived in a jar. But no, in fact it was a semi-detached, in a respectable suburb. He’d promised Em he’d go straight, and so he did, running a crazy golf course on the seafront at Hastings. You’d be surprised how popular crazy golf is, especially with the Japanese. Then he got lung cancer – sixty a day – and it spread to his bones. Em was frightened of death – “I don’t do death”. He was scared of her leaving him, so he promised he wouldn’t, ever. But one day after giving him his breakfast on a tray, she left the window open just two inches.
Frances Gapper’s stories have been filmed in Barcelona, made into art in Manchester, and displayed in a festival tent in Saskatoon. Her story collection Absent Kisses was published in 2002 by Diva Books.
Laura Hruska is a northwest Indiana native and senior photography major at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana.
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Crow Foot by Brad Pickard
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This will be the last day of the cough that you found beautiful. The pharmacist, whom I give the highest regards to, – with his messianic proclamations – has been a great comfort to me. There is no longer a necessity to bathe in these warm salt waters disowned by some ocean.
John Greiner is an American poet, playwright and short fiction writer living in Paris, France. His poetry and prose has appeared in numerous international magazines. His theatrical pieces have enjoyed successful runs in New York, Chicago and in Massachusetts. More of John’s poetry can be found at <baronandcrow.blogspot.com> in collaboration with photographer Carrie Crow.
The Last Day by John Greiner
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Costume of Japan by Ernest Williams III
paranormal by Suzanne Nielsen
Shel Mecklin knew deep down his relatives were ashamed that he became a Jew for Jesus shortly after the Clintons’ left the white house and the country became obsessed with being green.
Suzanne Nielsen, a native of St. Paul, Minnesota, teaches writing at Metropolitan State University. Her poetry, fiction and essays appear in literary journals nationally and internationally; some of these include The Comstock Review, The Copperfield Review, Mid-America Poetry Review, Foliate Oak, Identity Theory, The Pedestal, Word Riot and 580 Split. So’ham Books released her first collection of poetry titled East of the River, in December 2005, a collection of short fiction titled The Moon Behind the 8-Ball & Other Stories, in 2007, and will release her new collection of poetry titled I Thought You Should Know, in 2008. Nielsen holds a doctorate in Education from Hamline University. Ernest Williamson III is a 32 year old polymath who has published poetry and visual art in over 195 online and print journals. He is a self-taught pianist and painter. His poetry has been nominated twice for the Best of the Net Anthology. He holds the B.A. and the M.A. in English/Creative Writing/Literature from the University of Memphis. Ernest is an Adjunct Professor at New Jersey City University and an English Professor at Essex County College. Williamson is also a Ph.D. Candidate at Seton Hall University in the field of Higher Education, and a member of The International High IQ Society based in New York City. Williamson is also a chess expert with an internet rating in the 2000-2200 range. Currently he is rated 2010. View Professor Williamson’s listing in Poets & Writers Directory <www.pw.org/content/ernest_williamson_iii>.
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The Irony of Distances by mercedes villaneuva
mercedes villanueva lives in Ontario, Canada. Although it goes against her daily headaches, back aches, and constant desire to drink coffee, she is not thirty; in fact â&#x20AC;&#x201C; she is merely fifteen years old. She never writes her name using a capital letter and often describes herself as a fruit cup for being a mix of seven different ethnic groups. She enjoys intimidating people and will one day rule the world.
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38 Circuit in the Sky by Dmitri Hochstatter
After the funeral, I sat in his mother’s kitchen, watching her sprinkle cardamom and curry flakes into a large pot of soup. She turned, picked up a saltine, and munched. The crunching filled the room, the house, the way hard crackers can break or snap like deposed kings. I could see in her eyes what she really wanted to ask: Was I gay and did anything ever happen between me and Malloy? She probably thought now was not the time to ask. Or ever. In the corner sat a small black-and-white TV, the one that Malloy had always lied to me about--boasting that it was really color and much wider. It was really just a matter of adjusting one’s memory of grayscale, he always said. His mind, I imagined, full of complex calculations and fragile wave patterns, full of perfect saddle-shaped objects echoing across space. On the TV screen, some soap opera tycoon, who cheated on his last three wives because they always gave him inconsistent answers, was lying on a gurney. I asked Malloy’s mother, what do they call those rubber wheels? What? she said. I repeated the question, pointing to the screen. Malloy always asked me questions about things that were seemingly insignificant. Like those rubber wheels. “Caster wheels,” she said, and why do I ask. I shrugged and said I always wondered. Actually, Malloy, who was in a wheelchair since the car accident five years ago, said the wheels were rubber to absorb static cling. You know what static cling can do to you? he once asked me. It can paralyze you. It’s the worse fear not being able to move when something unnamable and strange is making you inert. Stuck. Mobility, he pointed out, was embedded onto his genetic blueprint. He was always up on all kinds of science and math trivia. Like the uses of castor oil, not to be confused with caster wheels. Or the smallest distance between two cars before they collide. In the last months, his face was pale and drawn, the signature of grey clouds floating by, almost speaking in their sweep. I remember this uncanny look in his eyes, as
if he were carrying some nightmare with him for weeks, perhaps the same one over and over. I think he knew he was going to die. I think he knew it and wouldn’t tell anyone. It’s like spotting some lethal comet that Nostradamus predicted but everyone else believes is harmless. Malloy knew all the lies about harmless comets. He said it made him yearn for some distraction, something light and salty. Something that could make you thirsty and giddy. Something that can make you laugh when you go snap. Across the kitchen table, I reached for a can of Pringles. I listened to my teeth chomping, the crunching and the futile attempt to chew softer. Those were Malloy’s favorite potato chips, and sometimes we would sit across the table and chew Pringles to see who could chew the loudest and who would crack up laughing first. Malloy, I said. Not now. Don’t chew like that now. It’s not funny. I can’t laugh at somebody’s expense. Malloy’s mother turned and said, What? Who are you talking to? Him, I was going to say. But I caught myself. The self which was about to snap. The old Malloy was not here. Who or whatever was sitting across from me now was invisible yet real and wasn’t who Malloy once was. The new Malloy was formless, colorless, could now move in silence and infiltrate the sulci and gyri of soft grey matter. He would cling to more than just my clothes. Malloy’s mother kept staring at me and asking if I was okay. She really wanted to know if I was cracking up. That’s what she wanted to say. She was just too polite to ask. But cracking up is something I don’t do anymore since Malloy’s death. Cracking up and pushing wheelchairs over hard one-dimensional floors. Malloy was a fractured man with almost no moveable parts, but gifted with a knack for infinite factorials, for amazing facts, such as the paradox of a ghost’s fingerprints on a potato chip. Imagine that. He always said that he never knew love more than once. *
Kyle Hemmings holds one of those MFA thingies and in his spare time, he likes to cook, bake, and tries hard not to burn food. He also wishes he could play surf guitar and and sing like Brian Wilson. He is still waiting for an endless summer. Dmitri Hochstatter was born and raised in Milwaukee, WI. He moved to Colorado, obtained his BFA at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, and studied fine arts at Santa Chiara School for the Arts in Castiglion Fiorentino, Italy. He is currently working and residing in San Francisco, CA where he has his studio at the Art Explosion Gallery 17th street, Mission District. His website is at <www.dmitrihochstatter.com>.
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by Kyle Hemmings Ali, you are Catholic and I am Jewish and the sky is starless. We drive to the ocean, not far from your Ivy League college, the same one your father graduated from and his father, the one that boasts plaques and monuments to war heroes who died disillusioned and hungry in French trenches, foxholes. In the backseat, we shiver and I make rueful promises. Impossible. In the distance, the water laps and laughs at my seaweed dreams. Does a dream ever stutter and take notice? You have nice fingers, you say, as I undo assumptions and your buttons. I don’t think you’re a virgin. You’re not nearly nervous enough and your eyes twinkle like so many actresses I’ve seen in movies about stardust and gaslight. Groping at love, I think of a future as a piano tuner. But when it comes to you, I’m tone deaf. I’m always saying the wrong words, or the right words at the wrong time. If only we were like musical notes drifting, caught in a vibrato. Stop, you say, I like you but I don’t love you. If only you could be more like Steve McQueen. Why? I say. More dangerous? A man who can rob banks? Kind of, you say. Your fingers are too soft and your hands are too smooth. I like men with rough hands. A man who can build and take down a house. If you were married to Steve McQueen, I say, would you spend more time in the attic or the basement?
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Neither, you say, speaking from one side of your slick small mouth – I’d spend most of my time in the bedroom. I wish I could pull a star down from the sky. A policeman’s flashlight sweeps across the window. With a button missing, you open the window and offer a courteous, preppie smile. Everything alright, ma’am? Peaches and cream, you say. We drive off and along serpentine roads and under burnedout street lights. I can no longer see your face. But your legs, I imagine, are white and lithe and brittle. Like actresses who’ve spent lifetimes in the wings of a dark movie theater. *** Many years later, my life grows to be a revolving door of faces, clients whose names I can’t remember after a negotiation, and a series of numbers that I punch from a keyboard. I always double-check my numbers. At night, I watch movies, especially the old ones, black and white. And there I am on screen, sitting in the front seat with Teresa Wright. I tell her that my favorite movie with her was the one where she discovers her uncle, played by Joseph Cotton, is a lady killer, a real lady killer. A killer of old ladies. She smiles. A wide beaming smile that can hold the heart of
space & sound by Peter Schwartz
post-war America. Her hand in mine is warm, lighter than forgetting. One of the nice things about dating an actress like Teresa Wright is that the sex would not be rushed. It wouldn’t happen until after we were married. She tells me there’s a certain glint in my eyes reminding her of Marlon Brando, her wheelchair bound fiancé in The Men. I refrain from asking if she ever slept with him. In a perky tone, she invites me, along with her family, to see the Marx Brothers in Duck Soup. It’ll be so much fun, she coos. I’m sorry, I say, this is hard. But I think we should break up. I thought about this for a while. Her eyebrows squeeze together, as if reading an X-rated script. Why? She says. I really like you. You’re a real gentleman and know how to treat a gal. Make her feel special. That means something to me. Is it somebody else? Afraid so, I say. I’m in love with Ali McGraw. Who’s Ali McGraw? That cute little thing at the . . . Does she work at the drugstore? No, I say, she’s an actress ahead of your time. Well, she says, pouting, her words coming out in forceful puffs of air. What can she do that I can’t? I lower my head, then look up. The night outside the window shield becoming a puff of blue light smoke. I turn towards her and answer. My throat burns. Teresa’s the only woman who can make me unreel in fast forward. She searches my face, her eyes are poking needles. Abruptly, she takes a pencil and paper from her pocketbook
and jots something down in maddening speed. She crumples the paper and drops it next to where I sit. I listen to the door slam, the sound of her high heels up the driveway growing distant, distant, fading. The crumpled piece of paper reads: You’ll be sorry, Mister. I’m the only gal for you. *** This morning I shaved my head. I’m not sure why I did. Perhaps to get attention, but I always tell myself that I don’t want any. Perhaps some other reason, some submarine of a thought. The thought turning to a torpedo. I can’t sleep at night. Sometimes, I’ll go into the kitchen of my apartment and fix a sandwich. A temporary fix. Then I’ll switch on TV, watch some info commercials. You’re sitting behind the screen, Ali, sitting next to several women who are perfect and smiling and who have us believe they never scream at their husbands or lovers. You are selling anti-aging products, special creams that can allure or fool strangers. Now you’re looking straight out at the screen into my face, telling me how this cream can do me wonders like it did for you. On another channel, Teresa Wright pushes a crippled Marlon Brando in a wheelchair. She is so dedicated and sacrificing. He is so defiant and self-destructive. I stand, walk over, and turn off the TV. I won’t buy that anti-age cream, Ali. I won’t. I don’t think I have a single wrinkle in the back of my nicked head. *
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The Mental Walk-In Closet by Martin Heavisides
Some days you want to dress Not so much in clothes as in costume Maybe a pirate costume Maybe a monkey suit Maybe you want to change your whole life on the twirl of a thread This makes you look like Sophie Tucker This makes you look like James Dean This makes you look like Daffy Duck This makes you look like Heidegger as a young man I know it makes you look old Heidegger never looked like a young man This makes you look like Marie Curie It’s that soft radium glow This makes you look like Janis Joplin on speed This makes you look like Claude Rains as the Invisible Man Not only doesn’t it show your best profile It doesn’t show any profile at all Have you got the voice though? Think Captain Renault in Casablanca This makes you look like Rahab This makes you look like Joshua This makes you look like their illegitimate twins Are we having an Old Testament day? This makes you look like Kali Wait, let’s arrange the nest Good! Now it’s more Medusa
Calíope 1 by Rodolfo Franco
This makes you look like Abraham Lincoln’s running mate I know, I can’t remember the name either But recollect the face from the History Channel
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This makes you look like a troubled amnesiac This you look like a paraplegic whose smiling countenance inspires us all This makes you look like a psycho nobody suspects “He was always the quiet type” Either that or the third banana on a cop team This makes you look like Joan Crawford’s last thirty years Let’s get away from the stereotype hangers ok? This makes you look like a Renaissance artisan This makes you look like a hewer of wood and chopper of water Chopper? I meant drawer, sorry What’s in this drawer? >>
Lost by David Prisk
Martin Heavisides’ most recent publications are a flash fiction piece, “It Just Massively Multiplies the Difficulty,” in Dog Oil Press, a study of the work of Peter Barnes, “I AM BEING EVERYBODY THEY CRIED” and a full length play, “EMPTY BOWL,” both in The Linnet’s Wings. Other publications include “Cubist Torso” in Mad Hatter’s Review, “Courtly Love, a tail” in Gambara, “New Earth and Heaven” in Black Cat Review, “Serpentine” (a one sentence story) in MonkeyBicycle (an improbable transportation device), “3 Vignettes of Life in the City” and other columns in Metro, and “Homeless Project” in AdBusters. He also publishes two blogs, The Evitable <theevitable.blogspot.com> and one on Open Salon.
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>> This makes you look like death warmed over Might get you sympathy scaring up change on a street corner Might yield a nomination as best supporting actor Won’t get you sex though This makes you look like Marlon Brando Unfortunately late in his career We’re talking the role he played like a fat Truman Capote What’s the diff? You’d have enough money to buy sex Or an island This makes you look like St. Sebastian I’d get those arrow wounds looked at This makes you look like the Coney Island Ferry How the hell did you get that effect? This makes you look like the Hubble Telescope Snap a distant galaxy for me This makes you look like an animated feature Why you picked the receding chin I’ll never know This makes you look like a Flying Dutchman It’s a little known fact that one in 50,000 Dutchmen are born with wings And one in ten of those Grows into a workable pair The ones that don’t have to be Surgically removed, otherwise they fester This makes you look like you haven’t a clue Adding the deerstalker hat doesn’t change the impression This makes you look like a mirror My guess? It’ll make you irresistible This makes you look like nobody’s business I doubt that’ll have the same effect This makes you look twice before crossing A safe look but far from bold
>>
Rodolfo Franco is an anthropologist by formation, graphic designer by profession, and poet by vocation, also with the pretension to become a magician. He was born in Brazil but has lived in Spain since 1989, where he published, among other things, the visual poetry books 22 Corazones and Album de Cromos and co-edited the magazine Delta Nueve. He collaborated with several other magazines, collective books, catalogs, websites, exhibitions, encounters and festivals, meetings and conspirations. He has participated in over 300 artistic events and publications across fourteen countries. As a poet, he works on several fronts: classical, haiku, concrete, visual, and performance. He is also a writer of songs and practices ludolinguistic procedures with palindromes and anagrams. He is also a member of the band, Comando Macondo, and a cultural agitator.
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>> This makes you look like the North Star This makes you look like a master’s thesis This makes you look like a stoplight This makes you look like a deep dark secret A pentangle A cashbox A flying wingtip An apple complete with twig A representative minority A woodwind section An artful dodger A horn of plenty A Matterhorn A tea cozy A girl in a Freudian slip A bank tower A decree nisi A mounted head An avalanche A bottomless fund for topless dancers A four car collision at a five corner intersection A race to the top A game with chains and whips A game with words and cluster bombs I don’t know how you look like all that But isn’t computer generated imagery amazing? That makes you look like a perfect twat You’re right, I am exaggerating Nothing’s perfect in this life That makes you look like a bushel of apples Each with its own peeping worm We may be reaching a point of diminishing returns here At least insofar as dressing How’s if you slip into your birthday suit?
Calíope 4 by Rodolfo Franco
That makes you look like dynamite Let’s blow this place.
*
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Somebody Watches Over Me by Ernest Williams III
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How To Watch Paint Dry by Matt Bell The Internet says that seven layers of paint will hide a bloodstain from UV detection, and so seven it is. The first coat is obviously inadequate, but the second looks better, the third more so, and by the fifth coat youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re actually grinning through the soreness in your shoulders. The sixth you do as fast as you can, then you slow down for the seventh so that you can savor each brushstroke, each flick of the wrist as you reverse direction. Afterward, you sit down with your back against the bed you once shared with her, content to watch as the last shred of evidence disappears beneath the field of perfect, pristine paint, the wall white as a wedding dress, white as frosting on a cake, white as calla lilies bound into a bouquet on the last day of their lives.
Matt Bell is the author of two chapbooks, How the Broken Lead the Blind (Willows Wept Press) and The Collectors (Caketrain), and has appeared in magazines such as Conjunctions, Meridian, Barrelhouse, Monkeybicycle, and Keyhole. He is a web editor for Hobart and can be found online at <www.mdbell.com>.
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Post-Op by Chris Major
Chris Major has been lucky enough to have poetry in many print/online mags. His E-chapbook Concrete & Calligram is free to download at <www.whyvandalism.com>
C. Shoup is a visual artist, writer and musician who currently earns his living as a public school teacher in Illinois.
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Portrait of the artist asking to be counted. by C. Shoup
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submit.
reachcella@gmail.com
see complete submission details: www.cellasroundtrip.com/submit
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