The B'K March 2016 Issue

the

b’k

bitchin’ kitsch

7 Iss. 3 Mar. 2016 Vol.

The Talent

Cover: “Silence Unguarded” by Marianic Parra.

Mike Andrelczyk Lorna Brown Giada Cattaneo Alexis Danner Lenny Dellarocca Tom Hall Jack D. Harvey Jessica Hickey Maia Johnson Peter Marra Robert McCready Tommy Paley Jeri Peterson David Sermersheim David Thompson Dr. Mel Waldman Wolfgang Write

3 18-19 32 20 30 14 16-17 12-13 15 28-29 6-11 26-27 21 4 5, 22 24-25 23

Mike Andrelczyk | The Owl | Poetry She said she’d never seen an owl.

But for the past 7 years a Great Horned Owl Has been perched upon her left shoulder So I lead her to the ornate mirror in the master Bedroom – the mirror her Great-Grandfather gave us On our wedding day.

“Look,” I say pointing to the owl – yellow eyes glowing From its head which swivels on her shoulder, “that’s an owl.”

“Well, I’ll be damned,” she says.

From the bedroom we can clearly hear a drop of water Falling from the faucet in the kitchen sink Into a dirty coffee mug that’s already half-full of water.

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David Sermersheim | Homunculus | Poetry you thought it would stay in one place adopt a contented pose lounging languidly by the fire not complain nor ask for more than could be given little did you know this thing had a mind of its own and was after all you call your own soon you were working for it meeting its capricious demands with no compensatory gratuities stated or implied in an ad hoc arrangement made on its terms not yours other possibilities were pursued to no advantage most were closed to further inquiry the homunculus clung to the web of what it knew best established a routine that met his demands along with a free lunch that was not discussed soon you were out of the door on the street looking back at a brightly-lit room where visions of poignant scenes fade into misty shadows

David Thompson

David Thompson | Georgia Dolls | Photograph

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Robert McCready | A Delivery for Mrs. Grace | Fiction I counted the brown spots on the fruits as they swayed in their basket.

It dangled next to the kitchen television whose radiation had been multiplying the dots faster than normal. Papers rustled on the other side of the set and a teeny, tiny cockroach climbed out from under a power bill.

Mrs. Grace kept bug spray in the cabinet under the sink. The structure was pressboard and damp and in need of repair. To keep the whole thing from collapsing, I held one door closed while pulling the other open. The spray was hidden in a dark corner next to a small trash can lined with plastic bags from my work.

I heard a thwop. Mrs. Grace was behind me whacking at the stack of papers with a yellow fly swatter. “Dag blasted dirty sons of bitches.”

I saw a bug escape the stack and flutter to the orange linoleum, where it could better camouflage itself. Before it scooted behind the refrigerator, I sprayed it.

Mrs. Grace stopped swatting and tossed cards and bills into the black plastic bag in the middle of the floor.

“Some of that isn’t trash,” I said, walking towards her. She held a yellow legal envelope and a white one with a dying horse on the cover. A pink card, with a picture of a basset hound on the cover, stuck out between them. Mrs. Grace did not hear me and threw them into the bag.

“See there. You put a card in.”

“It’s covered in bug guts.”

“No it isn’t.”

“I killed one with the swatter.”

“It went under the fridge. I sprayed it.”

She dug into the bag. “May Jesus help you if that things gets on me when I dig through here.”

“Help me? You’re the one sticking your hand in.”

She pulled her spotted hand out of the bag, holding the card. “Did you or didn’t you get it?”

“I did right before he ran under the refrigerator.”

“We gotta shred these papers one day,” she said and dropped the bag.

Mrs. Grace displayed the card on the stack by the TV. I held her elbow and walked her to the kitchen table where she adjusted her kimono over her sweat pants and sat down. “Get something to drink.”

“I don’t have time to sit today because I came so late.”

She sipped her coffee.

I said, “Since we already started, I can go through these papers and take them back to the shredder at work.”

“I’m too tired to mess with it today.”

I set the bag next to the entertainment stand and walked into the living room. Next to the recliner was an old pickle jar filled with chaw. It had not been rinsed out in days. I grabbed it around the middle, a sturdy grip, so as not to slosh it, and headed down the narrow hallway to the bathroom.

There were no scattering roaches when I turned on the light, but the hotels I had set out were untouched. One by the toilet had collected dust. When I emptied the jar, some phlegm splashed on the rim and I had to wipe it off with a thin square of tissue.

I set the jar back in the living room on the floor next to the recliner and called out to Mrs. Grace. She didn’t hear me over the faucet. I heard it squeak off and then, “What did you say in there?”

“I said that I would be turning out soon.”

Mrs. Grace appeared in the door frame. “I hate to see you run off.” She held a red dishtowel in her hand.

“I’ll be back again in a couple of days. As soon as you run out of granola bars or Ensure.” A drop of liquid fell onto the linoleum and stayed there.

It was a deeper color than the floor.

“Mrs. Grace, what happened to your hand?”

continues 7

Robert McCready | A Delivery for Mrs. Grace

“It’s nothing.”

“That’s a lot of blood.”

“Only a scratch.”

“Let me see it.”

She lifted the balled-up rag to my eye-level. Blood trailed her arm and dripped off where it bent. The streams moved quickly down her wrinkled skin, not hesitating over the folds around her elbow. “This is more than a little cut, Mrs. Grace.”

“I know.”

I led her to the recliner where she propped her cane to one side and slumped back. She rested her arm and I used two of my fingers to tug at the bloody cloth. I lifted it up enough to see blood welling in her hand.

“This needs stitches. How did you cut yourself?”

“On the door.”

“Let me call someone.”

“I can’t find my remote control,” she said.

I walked to the TV and pressed the biggest button. The volume rocked me back. I went into the kitchen to use my phone. There was no signal out here. I looked for a landline. The sink cabinet door was open and splintered, but I could not see any blood on it. A beige phone was on the wall over the kitchen table. There was a dial in the center of the hand piece where a keypad should have been. My fingers crunched up and twisted, dragging the numbers for 911.

“Joe,” Mrs. Grace called from the other room. She said something else, but I could not decipher it over the opening of “Bonanza.”

“What is the address of your emergency?”

“Joe?” Mrs. Grace said louder.

“She’s calling for me. Please hang on. She’s bleeding.” I laid the phone down.

Mrs. Grace’s lips were moving, but I still could not hear her. I ran to the

TV and pressed the biggest button again. She got up from the chair, balanced on her cane. “I can’t afford an ambulance. You’ll have to drive me.”

“They’re on the phone now.”

“Hang up on them.” I noticed red dots on her sweat pants and old lady shoes.

“Nevermind,” I said into the phone back in the kitchen. “I’m taking her to the hospital.” I hung up and looked in drawers for a clean cloth. The first had utensils, another had screwdrivers, used ChapSticks, and pens, and the last one contained old diapers that were now used for dusting.

“Mrs. Grace,” I said, catching her in the transfer from her cane to the door handle. “Let me give you a new one.”

I placed the new rag on the clean, wide cut, and I put the bloody rag in the sink. The bug I sprayed was in the middle of the floor on his back. I made Mrs. Grace hold onto the deck rail while I got my car and drove it up to the front. After she sat inside, I kept looking at her hand, watching the rag turn red.

“Nice car,” she said.

“It’s my granddad’s. He can’t drive it anymore. He bought a new one kinda for me.”

“I won’t get blood in it. It smells new.”

“Oh, I’m not worried about that.”

What kept going through my mind was getting back to the pharmacy.

The car flashed 4:05 and in a few more minutes, if it were not happening already, the pharmacy would be slammed with customers, stopping after work. I wondered if Mrs. Grace had family I could call.

I parked in the lot, nearest a red and white sign that read, “Emergency.”

I helped Mrs. Grace get out of the car, and I closed the door as she made her way through the shrubbery. She was steady without her cane, but when we sat in the waiting room, I brushed leaves off her sweat pants.

continues 9

Robert McCready | A Delivery for Mrs. Grace

“Oh, my,” she said.

“It’s from the bushes. You walked through them.”

She placed her hand on top of mine. Her skin was transparent, thinly covering a system of blue veins and bones. Their softness surprised me. Mrs. Grace’s watery eyes grew red. She looked at our hands as she rubbed the hair on the back of mine. “Oh, my.”

“Mrs. Grace, are you in pain?”

She rubbed the back of her hand, the one holding the diaper, under her eyes. A spot of blood got into her grey bangs. She patted my hand and cleared her throat. “No, honey,” she said. “Not that kind of pain.”

My phone vibrated in my pocket. Mrs. Grace didn’t notice.

She sighed. “I’m an old woman now, walking around with a cut hand.

When you get old, your skin tears as easily as paper. I’m covered in dead leaves like a fool.”

I didn’t know how to respond.

“I wasn’t always like this you know.” Her eyes seemed different than they had before, like she was looking through me.

“Mrs. Grace?”

“It goes by fast. I used to be in pageants. I was pretty. I never thought I’d be an old woman.”

“You’re still pretty.”

She flushed. My phone buzzed again.

“What was that?”

“It was my phone. I guess work is looking for me.”

“Do you have to go?”

“I’ll need to call them back.”

“Grace?” A nursed called from the double door. I could tell from her tone that this was not the first time she had called the name.

“Right here,” Mrs. Grace said. “It takes me awhile.”

Mrs. Grace hooked her arm through the nurse’s. “Don’t you want to come back with your grandma?”

“Yeah. I need to call work. I’ll find the room.”

I stepped outside and checked my phone. All the missed calls were from the pharmacy and the four texts were from one of the techs whose number was not yet saved into my phone. I called and pressed 2 twice for the pharmacist.

“Joe?” “How’d you know—“ “Where the hell are you? We’re swamped and all I have are new people.”

“I’m at the hospital. Mrs. Grace cut her hand.”

“Is she okay?”

“I drove her here.”

An ambulance pulled in. The siren covered what the pharmacist said.

I walked to the smoking area. “Yeah, yeah,” I muttered. But I had no idea. The siren stopped. I watched paramedics move to the back of the ambulance and open the doors. They pulled out a stretcher with a person on it. The person did not move, arms strapped under a belt, under a blanket.

“Are you still there?”

“Yes,” I said. “And I may be here for a while.”

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Jessica Hickey | Picasso’s Diary | Poetry “Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.” –Pablo Picasso Monday I painted myself Eating cereal.

But all that came out Was a bowl and spoon, Floating oddly above and below An empty table.

Tuesday I painted A beautiful woman Who rode on horseback Past my window.

She smiled at me.

In the painting she looks Like a cube and her horse Walked right off the page.

Wednesday I painted two men Smoking cigars, talking Over the village news.

My brush thought it looked more like Trees dropping leaves Onto dry sand.

Thursday painted me.

I didn’t care for it.

Friday I stayed in my room all day, Reading old volumes I’ve read many times before.

So I painted a large book, Its pages flapping Open in the middle.

That one turned out.

Saturday I painted a sunset, A startling and lovely day’s-end.

My orange paint was shy And the page showed only dark blue With streaks of black.

Sunday I gave up On painting, For the night.

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Tom Hall | Arising Again | Poetry Comes a time in your life when you face the rude thought you’re as smart as you’re going to be.

You’re now middle-aged and it cuts like a knife, but you don’t grasp what that guy is braying.

But within yourself you’ve felt something wrong. Your mind’s not the “Dead” but “Black Sea” And you’re clearly as quick as the fellow that speaks, only he’s adept at conveying.

At times we all make the foolish mistake of mistaking loud talking for thought.

Or we’ll swallow what’s cruel, arrogant and untrue simply ‘cause the facade is good-looking.

Humanity reigns as the dominant gene, the Golden Rule’s gold can’t be bought.

The ethics you hold are, by and large, the ethics that keep the brew cooking.

So write a new play, play a twist on the old, you’re the music that keeps the world dancing.

Shakespeare stole “Hamlet” from an old piece of coal and he found the diamond in the dust.

But it’s not the changes we change overnight, but the whispers you add are enhancing.

Our world resembles ourselves at fourteen when you still had to squeeze out the pus.

It’s wrong to forget what our elders have learned, to disregard is to swallow your tongue.

Just by using our resources we can advance a world understood by the young.

Maia Johnson

Maia Johnson | Untitled | Photograph

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Jack d. Harvey | That’s All folks | Poetry Donald Duck is dead as Kelsey’s nuts, deceased in the magic kingdom; not ten tons of old celluloid can bring him back again.

Mickey Mouse, black-eared in his big black prideful shoes, sweats like Porky Pig, pink-slipped with Minnie at the last.

Zoot-suited Hollywood plays ducks and drakes in all sizes and shapes instead of swans; yellow beaks that speak and speak long before they die.

Bambi and Bombast, two more such at the right time couldn’t find Chang or Chen so General Ching’s chicken was shat upon; reds and blues went down by the light of Chairman Mao, rising like a new Sun Yat-sen.

What a day!

Or call it on the long march, a nice night’s work.

The play’s the thing to catch the commune’s conscience, cartouche to cartoon.

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Disney, dubbed a fink by the forces of labor spoiled the kinder rotten with Schneeweiss and such, forced sugar down their throats for years.

The hell with it.

The duck died; that’s awful but done is done.

So set your face against the reruns; not ten thousand Adalusian dogs can charm him back again, out-strutting Hitler behind the Pathé news.

Sleep in peace duck of dawn, in the long night dead and nailed to the wall now, cold as Eskimo sleds or witches’-broom.

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Lorna Brown | A night fare | fiction At arrivals, huddled figures scuttled out through automatic doors. The woman was ahead of the rest. She was tall and thin. Her long dark coat hugged her frame. In the white lights and shadows of the airport she waved me down and looked like a bird trying to fly. She was a sharp featured elderly woman. Her hat was black and her head appeared to have been pushed deep into it. Beside her was a humpty dumpty figure of a man with a face full of cheeks. The suitcase was by his side. I put it in the trunk. The passengers settled themselves on either side of the back seat. The woman gave an address in Dorchester. The radio was low. The DJ’s voice was barely audible.

I didn’t expect the passengers to speak, not with the distance between them and their faces by the window. But on West 90, a highway of high walls and service stations, the woman surprised me. “There are some people who aren’t supposed to go. I can feel it everywhere, the wrongness in it,” she said.

“You mean injustice?” the man said and she told him not to be stupid, that wasn’t what she meant at all. She was a shuffle of bones on the seat. She said, “Injustice is a human weakness. I’m talking about the bigger picture.”

“You’re talking about God then?” I asked.

“Maybe,” the woman said.

I wanted to laugh, “You think He’s just?”

The woman sighed, “I don’t know. I’m not talking about right or wrong.

There’s a great big hole left in the world and I don’t know how to describe it. Give me a better word than God and I’ll use it.”

“Grief,” I said. In the rear-view mirror, I met the man’s gaze. His eyes were small and they held surprise, maybe a little scorn before he looked away.

We drove past empty playgrounds. The sea was out there somewhere.

Houses were dark outlines. Then there was nothing but grey space and beyond it were the neon lights for Mac Donald’s, Cracker Jack, and the empty Stop-n-Shop car park. There were always trucks on this stretch. A constant rumble of noise went by us now.

There was no need to speed. I didn’t think these people were in a rush home. The woman might have been crying. I heard something from

that end. To open the line of conversation I needed to ask who they’d lost. I could imagine the man turning from the window to tell me. Then the quiet would ease and the woman might stop crying to say a few things, but I couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to think of another son or daughter gone. The months had been dark and quiet enough already.

The only time I felt capable of moving forward was when I was behind the wheel at night, blinded by headlights. I refused to drag these people with me.

It was starting to snow when I stopped at their narrow house. The curtains in the living room were open. I saw the bare outlines of a life, the shape of a television, a table, a couch. They waited in the car while I took out the suitcase, and opened the woman’s door. She didn’t look at me as she got out. By the time I was in his driver’s seat, the living room light was on. I still have the image of the woman at the window with her arms outstretched.

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Alexis Danner | Aborting My Sister | Memoir When I was nine years old I told my mother to have an abortion. Well not exactly, although the term “abortion” was not part of my vocabulary, the concept was present.

Allow me to explain. I had been an only child up until this point, and was very well taken care of. Since I was the sole child of the house, I had ownership of the spare bedroom, therefore giving me two rooms. One for business such as sleeping and dressing, and one for play. My “toy room” as I called it was adorned with bright colors, enthralling items and matured as I did. It went from containing blocks and stuffed animals when I was a toddler, to a closet full of dress-up-clothes that any little girl would dream of.

Although I was pampered, I was extremely well-behaved and had never thrown a tantrum until that fateful day in February of 2007. When I replay this memory in my head, I like to imagine it as if it was one of those spooky horror Halloween movies they play on television during the Fall season. I envision myself walking shakily down the long hallway of our home, floorboards creaking under my feet. I then enter the bathroom where an eerie supernatural green glow illuminates the scene. Next, I discover my mother hunched over the vanity pointing at something. The camera zooms in and you realize it is a pregnancy test, and the shriek of my tiny nine year old voice can be heard in the background, but just as you are about to see the result on the stick, the show goes to commercial. Spoiler alert: after the commercial break it is revealed that the sign on the test was positive. Except this was not one of those movies, it was real life, and the terrifying positive sign on the pregnancy test was real as well. Following this revelation, I wept so much that my parents thought the weather channel would issue a flood warning for the surrounding area.

Eventually, the tears ceased and I pulled myself together. In that moment, I knew what had to be done if I wanted to maintain my lifestyle of being the sole recipient of my parents’ love. I sat my mom down and told her she had to get rid of the baby. To my surprise, she was not a fan of the idea. At this point, I slipped into a deep-depression lasting for approximately forty-five minutes. I sat in the middle of my playroom and held a figurative funeral for my old life. While staring out of my window questioning why life had to be so cruel, I noticed the trampoline in my backyard. My head immediately began brimming with thoughts regarding if my new sibling would enjoy jumping on it as much as I did. I was filled with excitement over the idea of being able to teach my new sibling how to flip on a trampoline, skateboard, and do all of the things I loved. As I wiped the remaining tears from my face, I realized maybe having a sibling would not be so bad, but as a precaution I kept the abortion strategy as a backup plan.

Nine months later, the most beautiful baby to ever grace the nation was born. As I sat in the hospital cradling the newborn in my arms, I realized that I had failed to convince my mother to have an abortion. I had failed at something for the first time in my life, but it taught me a valuable lesson. Sometimes even when we fail, we are still rewarded, and on October 23, 2007 at 1:14 P.M., I was rewarded with the best gift the world could have ever given me, and her name is Shannon Elizabeth.

Jeri Peterson

Jeri Peterson | Have you heard about our savior, jesus christ? | oil on canvas 21

David Thompson | A Million Times Before | Poetry I’m in a little Chinese place in a strip mall off the Interstate just east of Louisville, waiting for my spicy kung pao chicken with two extra egg rolls to go.

To kill the time, I’m reading a pocket-size New Testament I picked up in the motel lobby next to the coffee this morning back in Ohio. Jesus is preaching his Sermon On The Mount – Blessed are the pure in heart: For they shall see God - and a waitress is serving egg drop soup in clear plastic bowls to a couple with gray hair and red sweaters at the table closest to the door.

When my order’s ready, I’ll hand my credit card to the tiny woman behind the counter, remember to grab some plastic silverware and extra napkins. I’ll drive back to my motel, stop at the gas station next door for a 6-pack of Coors Light.

I know I’ll eat the chicken sitting on the bed in my boxers, flipping through the channels like I’ve done a million times before. When I finish, I’ll take a long swallow of beer, then look for my fortune in a stale cookie at the bottom of a white plastic bag.

Wolfgang Wright | Suck on This, Magritte | Prose

This is a circle.

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Dr. Mel Waldman | Outsider in the snow | Poetry Above, out of a turquoise sky, the snowflakes begin to fall & I taste the scattered crystals & saunter off, through the seething minefields of my mind & moribund Brooklyn, lost in a merciless labyrinth, unendurably lost & the snow falls while my wounded eyes dart & flit across an antediluvian landscape, the snow falls incessantly & I meander around my place of birth strangely unfamiliar now & the snow pours out of the harrowing Heavens & covers my circle of becoming & un-becoming, the hissing ouroboros of an outsider’s maze & I trudge through chaos & cacophony & the heavy snow of this bestial place, a saturnine stranger staggering in the wasteland

of Brooklyn, an outsider in the snow & I disappear in the deep snow that covers Old Brooklyn, I vanish in the ominous snow that covers me, an apocalyptic trace of the past buried in the whirling whiteness never discovering who I really am, never feeling the celestial butterflies coming forth from my beautiful spirit & blessing the world always a stranger to myself & the cannibalistic snow eats my dissolving self, a melting sphere of despair on the last day, the last seconds, on this prophetic day of my death, an outsider in the unforgiving unending snow & the omnipotent snow covers all

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Tommy Paley | The Drum by the Window | Prose He badly wanted to lean on someone for support, but despite their best efforts, his wall did a better job and never let him hear the end of it.

She stepped over the line. She stepped over lots of things, including lines. Her trusty pencil and her walking shoes were her two most prized possessions.

He hated bonsai trees and all that they stood for.

She decided to ignore her best judgment and, instead, took her best friend’s advice by putting “that� in her pipe and smoking it. Aside from the near-debilitating cough and occasional disconcerting thick black drool and series of hyper-annoying facial ticks, she was loving every minute of it.

He spent the day peeling potatoes, drinking mulled wine and plotting revenge, or in other words, Thursdays.

She always preferred the path of greatest resistance because, although it was very slow and full of friction, she felt that it built character and she was in desperate need of more character especially after all of those years travelling on really easy paths.

He climbed to the top of a tall hill and enjoyed a long, good laugh at all of the smaller hills nearby.

She spent considerable time each morning grooming herself, then grooming her cat, and finally spending a large amount of time looking at herself in the mirror just knowing that the person looking back at her was finally starting to look more and more like her cat. And now, on to step 2 of the plan.

He arrived at the party and checked both his coat as well as his ego at the door as he just loved the combination of being slightly chilly as well as being incredibly selfless.

She bolded and italicized a large number of words in her word processing as she believed it helped the words appear more thrilling and practically leap off the page. In her quieter moments, she often escapes to a fantasy world inhabited by bolded and italicized words that, while thrilling and leaping up and down, were incredibly boring to hang out with.

He spent the better part of his teenage years walking to the beat of his

own drum. It was the drum his mother had bought him when he was 12.

It was the drum that was always sitting there, in its spot, by the window.

It was the drum that, when struck just so, created a beat. A beat that, after all of those years, he could finally walk to. A beat that gave him life.

A beat that made him a man. A beat that made him whole again. It was that drum. The drum by the window. Thanks mom.

She cut out strips of black paper. The next day, she cut out strips of white paper. The third day, she cut out strips of gold paper. “There. Who has more strips of paper now, dad?” she remarked with jealously as she knew he still had more.

He walked into the building hoping that they had removed and placed their shirts in a pile as asked, to make his weekly “literal taking shirts off their backs” collection easier. He once figuratively attempted this, but ended up on a small plane headed for Brazil.

She spent her days admiring her golden locks, just longing to be fleeced knowing full well that she had no real idea what that really meant.

He really wanted to run away and join the circus, but it just seemed too obvious and stereotypical as EVERYONE he knows had already done that.

She badly wants to scream out “ME!” whenever her roommate inadvertently calls out “Who let the dogs out?” or “Who keeps on screaming?” or “Who borrowed my phone without asking?” or “Who got blood all over my phone?” or “Who called for an ambulance?” or “Who got da funk?”

He had an overwhelming desire to prune something, anything, just not those plums that were, for all intents intents and purposes, begging to be pruned. It just seemed wrong and a bit disturbing.

She took a long walk in the woods on a cool, crisp winter’s day leaving fresh footprints in the white snow. She was surrounded, on all sides, by tall, majestic trees in all of their beauty. As she walked on, she breathed in the delicious mountain air and felt at one with the nature all around.

How she loved the woods on a winter day such as this. Closing her eyes, the world seemed to disappear and time slowed to a halt and she smiled, as she felt so at peace. And then, she became acutely aware that she was the only one in the woods at that moment who was not covered with bark.

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Peter Marra | a fugitive from the long mirror (1-1-2016 03:00 a.m.) | Poetry “i think i’m sick and i wanna go home. it’s true/ i always feel more comfortable in the flicker of a screen, door behind me shut, 4 x 4 space muffled outside sounds. enclosed in a box.” source of strength from lonesome looks hazy recollections of successful assassinations squirming in the theater underneath layers of minds and layers of vacant smiles i’m supposed to surrender to a world of pain to become a shocked figure in the glare there were fakers that kissed the slaves from hell condemned to remain by ourselves identity re-inserted turned inside out peel off the future and re-examine the past pulling down the bad thoughts submission is almost never the way home from here she magically removed vulnerabilities their purpose was masochistic tendencies subconsciously pushing their agendas things didn’t look too promising for our heroine she had qualms about living unhindered splitting the atom to her taste and for her waste

(this caption is their best: the profound clocks incorporating straight razors squirmed under sweating skins) hidden faces in each seat of the abandoned movie theatre (watch my lover) waiting for the stroke of midnight when all will be erased: Cinderella infernal rebirth under your eyelids we will taste the touches of frightened screamers what have you done to me? my senses have been enhanced what are the words that i crave? raise my eyes, leave the basement fears were created in our own image by her own hands she would kill an hour or two but not in good company you were resolved by the ghosts of faces she enjoyed peculiar kissing once or twice but soon she was overcome by sleep and darkness answered and punished by dire consequences a prisoner of our own myth she wanted to run

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Lenny DellaRocca | Serious Poet| Poetry I’m running out of money.

Soon the lights will dry up.

The phone will clog up with silence.

My car will laugh when I try to start it.

I’ll be stuck here, workless.

I’ll eat oranges rotting on the ground.

Walk to a friend’s house miles away for supper.

After awhile my friends will move away.

Cross birds will wait outside my door because they know I’m almost done.

The stench will rise from waterless drains.

Weeds and grass will grow over the roof.

The dark will seep into my home like an oil spill.

I’ll write only during daylight.

History — The B’K

The Bitchin’ Kitsch (2010-present) or The B’K is a compzine edited and published by The TalbotHeindl Experience, LLC in Stevens Point, Wisconsin.

The Bitchin’ Kitsch was created as a monthly zine for artists, poets, prose writers, or anyone else who had something to say. It was born out of a necessity to create an avenue for editor, Chris Talbot-Heindl, to remain artistic after school, with her subversive style, while continuing to live in Central Wisconsin.

It exists for the purpose of open creativity and seeks to be an outlet for people who may not otherwise have an opportunity to show their work.

Although the idea was created as a “what-if” brainstorm between the Talbot-Heindls’ whilst in bed and sort of groggy, it has since blossomed into a legitimate publication that has gone international Through the grace of the Internet, The B’K has had the opportunity to create a juried book and the opportunity to publish two juried chapbooks.

Here’s to the past five years, and hopefully many, many more.

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Giada Cattaneo

giada cattaneo | il matrimonio (the marriage) | mixed media