the
b’k
bitchin’ kitsch
Volume 6, Issue 11 November 2015
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about b’k:
The Bitchin’ Kitsch is a zine for artists, poets, prose writers, or anyone else who has something to say. It exists for the purpose of open creativity. All submissions are due on the 26th for the following month’s issue. Please review the submission guidelines on our Submissions page (www.talbot-heindl.com/bitchin_kitsch/submissions) before submitting your work.
community copies:
Stevens Point readers, sit down and read The Bitchin’ Kitsch at our community locations: zest, the coffee studio, tech lounge, and noel fine arts center.
advertising:
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donation and acquisition:
Printing costs can be a bitch, which is why we continuously look for donations. Any amount helps and is appreciated. We also sell back copies of The B’K. To do either, visit our Shop The B’K page (www.talbotheindl.com/support_us/shop_thebk).
resources
On top of being the best publication ever created by human hands, The B’K would also like to present other opportunities that may be helpful to you as creators. If you have suggestions that could improve our list, please let us know. Resources we are privy to can be found at our Resources page (www.talbot-heindl.com/bitchin_kitsch/resources).
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table of contents.
On the Cover Untitled Elena Botts Graphite on paper
18-19 – Die, Doug Hawley
30 – Aylan, Arif Ahmad
20-23 – Driving along, Christina Murphy
31 – Mirror Me, Mike Gravagno 32 – All Desert, No Sand, Gabriel Patterson 33 – Faint Into Consciousness, Heath Brougher
On the Back Cover Spock Andrew Peterson Graphite and color pencil on paper
34 – Men-tally, Anthony Ward 35 – The Night of My Death, Dr. Mel Waldman 36 – Donors and Index
In This Issue
38-39 – Calendar
4 – china doll, Katie Jeddeloh 5 – (excerpted from) Things to Ask Aunt Nikki Next Visit, Rodd Whelpley 6 – moon coma, Alison Ross
Marianic Parra - pg. 7
7 – Variation IV, Marianic Parra 8-11 – Maxine, Tommy Paley 12-13 – Click, Mike Andrelczyk
24-25 – I won’t come home again, Debasis Muhkopadhyay
14 – The Neighbors Act Funny, Cathryn Shea
26 – Tail Gate, Izzy Noon
16-17 – [Litany in which the straight white male protagonist thinks he’s special], Gretchen Uhrinek
28 – Figaro, Blake Wallin
27 – Of Course, It Means Death, Russ Cope 29 – Untitled, Electrolyte
Electrolyte - pg. 29
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katie jeddeloh. china doll
By: Katie Jeddeloh he says why don’t you be my china doll, baby? i say nothing he takes that as a maybe i’m a grown woman, not your babe so don’t “babe” me and i’m not your doll your porcelain chipped chick made in china my vagina is not your plaything i am not plastic or cheap or even vintage antique i am a woman not your doll i do not play dress up for you i do not smile incessantly for you i am not a doll not your babe, not even chinese but you don’t want a happy family you don’t even want teriyaki you want to tear this dress off me you want fried rice i want my rights you want me dolled up and put down you want me gagged and bound because that’s “what my people are into” you want a tokyo joes hoe you want a slutty soy sauce bitch you don’t know which ethnicity is which but you just know you’re coming back for seconds you want a midnight snack you want to pack me up take me out you want to know where i’m from colorado no where i’m really from you say you like a chink you throw me a wink but i’m too busy thinking too busy drinking in the fullness of who i am too busy being a woman and definitely not your china doll.
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rodd whelpley. excerpted from
Things to Ask Aunt Nikki Next Visit By: Rodd Whelpley
Item 6. Pets: A) The monkey story, as it’s come to the youngest Whelpley boys is: Uncle Dave got it – was it called BoBo? – from someone on his Free Press route who hated how it shit in the house. Tale goes it didn’t last long. Played on the phone wires after a storm. Burned its hands. Fell to its death.
B) More evidence for Jackson, the citified donkey, my brother Randy’s alleged transport to and from school in the fifties (a photo – somewhere – of them at the old elementary yard). Got in grandma’s house. Scared Aunt Rikki. Ate from the ashtrays. Same animal I saw on a farm outside town when I was five? (Would have been 1970.) Randy said so. But our family fibs.
Really, somebody needs to write this down.
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alison ross. moon coma By: Alison Ross
The moon sweats its last tear. The sun strangles the sky, poison seeping from the stars. The gravity of an inverted night weighs down on my dreams. I am master of my coma, forged in the fire of a startled oblivion. When I awake, I see butterflies, but you see only rain. I hear the earth shedding its skin, like a snake writhing through forests. Your laughter subsides as you slip into the past like the ghost of an hour. These mirrors hold complicated truths, you say, and I swallow myself whole.
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mariana parra.
Variation IV Marianic Parra Drawing
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tommy paley. Maxine
By: Tommy Paley Thank you, thank you, thank you! Please! You are too kind! I just can’t believe that I am standing up here in front of all of you having won this award. I mean, I thought I would win, but for some reason my imagination always had me winning in front of faceless, yet otherwise anatomically accurate, mannequins. Being up here right now reminds me of all of the times when I sat there, where you are, having to grin and bear it while someone else took the award that I believed was rightfully mine. True, there are always so many deserving candidates, and true, I shouldn’t have hired a carpenter to build an intricate display case complete with a small red carpet and kneeling area for guests to properly show the award the proper amount of respect before I had won. And true, I should not have completely trashed and burned the display case and had the carpenter not only deported but publicly tarand-feathered back in his home country as well which was much harder and more expensive than it sounds as they were very low on tar and I had to supply my own feathers. But here I am. Some told me I’d never see this day. Others told me not to listen to those people. Then the first group told me that the others didn’t have my best interest in mind and they were only trying to get close to me. Then the second group piped up that the first group was one to talk and that they were clearly only interested in me because of my riches. Turns out, in the end, that both groups were only very wellconstructed and super-realistic marionettes my sister bought me for my birthday. I want to start by saying just how honoured I am to receive this award tonight. Don’t worry, I’m not going to try to accurately enunciate the exact amount of honour I am feeling - though I was named “most likely to accurately enunciate something, not sure what, sorry if we are being vague, but there is just no way we could be that accurate about something so inconsequential being so short staffed” by my high school yearbook committee. My plan is for all of you to sense my feeling of being honoured based on the genuineness and syntax of this speech. If you don’t, my speech writers are clearly substandard and to blame, and if that is so, heads will roll! Of course I am joking - as those who know me well know, I haven’t made any heads roll since the 70s. The people who know me know this because their heads were not rolled.
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tommy paley (cont’).
I am standing up here in front of you having been recognized for what many have told me was the part I was born to play. While I am appreciative of what my friends all swear is a complement, I just don’t think it rings true. I just can’t see how my parents would have known when they were actively trying to conceive me that there would be a part like this that I was specifically born for. And, if you were wondering, I know all about the sordid tales of my parents and my conception as there are multiple photos albums and overly-graphic diaries, as well as a pop-up book, that I may turn into a high-brow, well-lit, all-in-good-taste soft porn film in the future. I loved this role of a headstrong woman who is torn between a life of fighting crime and a life shelving books as well as a life of mime, mostly because it rhymes with crime and involves painting one’s face white. I dove in head first, literally. Ouch. I should have asked for more clarification before using and misunderstanding the impact of that expression if followed literally. I spent hour upon hour delving into the life of this woman trying to figure out her motivations and how she could possibly ever shelf even one book. Can you imagine the boredom? As many of you know, I am a disciple of the school of method acting even though they have sent me numerous letters and left countless voice messages telling me that not only do they not have disciples, but that I am both loitering and trespassing and I need to go somewhere else on Saturdays. I decided to live the part off camera to the best of my ability and I even went as far as not only tagging along with police officers on the beat, but also assuming a leadership role and ordering the rest of those sorry-excuses-for-police-officers-despite-their-constantflashing-of-their-badges-and-placing-me-in-handcuffs around. I also learned how to mime and where to shop to dress like a librarian, as I wanted my acting to smack you in the face with its accuracy. You may be wondering what sacrifices I’ve made to be standing up here tonight. And, as I’ve told the reporters, I have never sacrificed anything, especially one particular cute little bunny rabbit that I snuggle with each evening. Let me take a moment to say how wrong I believe sacrificing any living being is no matter what sort of part or award or cover of a magazine is promised to you. Plus, it has to make you wonder about
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tommy paley (con’t). those that are asking for you to make sacrifices. I mean, what is wrong with them? No, I got up here because of my hard-working, never-settlefor-second-best-even-when-offered-large-amounts-of-money attitude. I’ve been told many times that my attitude is one of my best features. I am conscious of not wanting to ramble on and on, which is a large step up from just being conscious. Consciousness, in my experience, is fleeting, as are flocks of birds when the seasons are changing. I’m not sure why I’m telling you all this, but an old boyfriend once favourably compared me to a flock of birds, but that was after he spent a significant amount of time trapped in the avian section of the local animal enclosure and also eating one too many hot chili peppers on a dare. There are so many people I want to thank, as well as a much larger group I have no interest in thanking; you know who you are! Thanking you would be as hollow a gesture as I am allowed to make on the current cleanse I’m on. Plus, you would see through my thinly veiled attempt to thank you and that would only potentially send you into a tailspin, which I’m told is similar to a whirlpool. I’m really not sure. I couldn’t have done this without my amazing manager, Sheila and my tremendous agent, Lou. Sheila and Lou will always hold a special place in my heart and my brain as well as other, random areas of my body if they so chose at a later date. You have both earned it, you really have. When I first started out in this business I thumbed my nose, quite frequently in fact, at the notion that managers and agents were needed. I thumbed my nose a lot in those days and have the photo albums of my blistered nose and thumb as proof. I’m glad I grew up and that the scabs have fully healed. I want to thank my family - you should know who you are. I am not always totally sure — I mean whoever heard of third cousins twice removed? And why do I seem to have 8 of them who are always looking for handouts? Thankfully they have recently stated that the gifts do not need to be delivered via hand. I must also thank my partner in crime, Andy, who is also my husband and is currently serving the rest of his sentence on house arrest. Andy, you’ve always been there for me in ways that other men weren’t, because they always left at some point. It was so weird, one minute they were there and the next, poof! But not you. You are literally always there. Andy, you are my rock in all senses of the term. True, I often want to throw you into a lake to see the ripples, and sometimes wish you were flatter, so I could skip you in the water, and once, when you were sleeping, I drew a smiley face on your back and cupped you in my
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tommy paley (con’t). hand like my old pet rock from days gone by. I would probably be here without you, but being here with you in my life is better, or at least different. It’s really hard to compare actually. But you know that I love you dearly and that I always will. And all of my fans, whom I love, but have nearly-debilitating allergies to, you are wonderful and you keep me going when I just want to throw in the towel and give up. Sure that has led to a mountain of unthrown towels, but that huge pile of towels sitting in my room has acted as a constant reminder, mostly due to the inconvenience, of my promise to all of you to keep acting. You attend my shows; you accost me, quite aggressively at times, for autographs; you appear in my bushes when I am sun tanning in my backyard, somehow avoiding or disabling my motion detectors and alarms, and, though initially angry and wishing I still owned a vicious guard dog that I was forced to give away partially as a publicity stunt and also due to his unprovoked attack on those girl guides, it tickles me pink that you adore me so much. Finally, I must thank the men and women of the academy for this honour. I have always been a big fan of academies in general, and this academy specifically. You do wonderful work and are doing a great service for academies everywhere. Your mothers must be proud and I imagine your fathers take a more silent, backseat role in the family dynamic. That music either means I need to exit the stage now or that they want me to perform a dance for all of you right now. Wait a second, I can see the director wildly waving his hands and jumping up and down. Does he want me to dance as if I was a monkey? In this dress with these heels on? I’d like to see him try that! Now he is giving me a throat cutting gesture, which I happen to find quite offensive and harsh. In no way is that okay, unless it happens to be his suggesting I promote my new movie which features me in the title role as a woman who is a worldrenowned pediatrician by day and a butcher by night who is a veritable expert with a meat cleaver. It’s the complex role of the child-loving, dead animal throat-cutting hero that I was born to play. My parents planned ahead on that one. Anyways, I must go as my meds are running low and I need to get back up for the after party. Goodnight and thank you everyone!
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mike andrelczyk. Click
By: Mike Andrelczyk As soon as I actually saw what it really looked like I felt lightheaded. It looked like pain. Pulsing red, white, pinkish pain. I felt queasy, but I tried hard to resist the urge to faint because everyone would make fun of me. If I had control of the remote I would’ve paused the VHS that wound out its slick black tape into the VCR that was connected by smooth black cables to the TV that stood at the head of my sixth grade Health class. Then the image that looked like an open mouth choking on its own tongue would freeze. I would’ve pressed “STOP” and then “POWER” on the VCR and then “ON/OFF” on the TV. The screen would go black. Whatever it was that was happening would stop. But I wasn’t in the charge of the remote. Ms. Males, who was also the field hockey coach, was holding the remote and she wasn’t clicking it. She didn’t notice me sweating in my hard plastic seat in the third row, my pupils dilated and hands clammy. Even just the narrator’s hypnotic voice saying the words “fallopian tubes” or “vas deferens” made me feel like I was slowly dying. Yet, I also knew this was good. It was something new. An exciting secret that we were all finding out about together. That it would bring me much pleasure. No matter how painful it looked. I looked straight ahead instead of at the gory birth unfolding on the classroom TV. I focused on Lauren’s off-white bra strap that was exposed in the area between her neck and her shoulder before it disappeared into her thin white cotton t-shirt. I focused on that strap. Slowly my eyes were drawn to the luster of her jet black hair and I could smell her hairspray and the soapy scent of her deodorant and the fabric softener that her mom added to the load when she washed her cotton shirts and her underpants. Then I imagined Lauren in just her white underpants. Then screams of labor came from the TV. And I looked up to see a baby’s bloody body emerging from a pulsing red raw vagina. That was when I fainted. Later, in Science, I stared at the pinkish, white patch of skin that became exposed between Monica’s t-shirt and her jeans when she leaned
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mike andrelczyk (con’t). forward to whisper something to Corrina. They looked both turned around in their seats to look at me and then they laughed. The teacher, Mr. Simen, was saying something about displacement and I didn’t really know what he was talking about. The sun, which shone through the glass in the windowpane, felt hot on my cheek and the thin red second hand on the classroom clock continued to click forward. I felt a spastic urge to smash the glass on the clockface but I knew I couldn’t reach it. Now it’s 1:46 in the morning. I can’t sleep. Tomorrow I have to get up and teach my ninth grade English class. But now I roll over and look at my wife, Anne, her closed eyes are like two half-moons. She looks calm. Under our brown comforter, her pregnant belly is like a faraway planet seen through a telescope. Soft and round. I click on the bedside lamp and look at the digital clock as the seconds pass. 56,57,58,59 and it rolls over to 00. For a moment time is erased and then it continues. 1,2,3,4,5,6.....but you know how it all works.
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cathryn shea. The Neighbors Act Funny By: Cathryn Shea
That grinding noise again. Serial numbers off bikes? Empty gas cans and hoses by the tipped garbage can. Shatterproof glasses, proof glass has been shattered. Quiet tears and a small funeral for the caged parakeet. Why do they have all those birds on their porch? In the window a cracked madonna, blue-eyed and blonde. Very Aryan. A real Hummel. The disposable past like fast food takeout. Closet jails for their kids. Somebody ought to call the cops, but the cops have been called too many times. The social worker came waving a handkerchief like a gun loaded with perfume.
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gretchen uhrinek. [Litany in which the straight white male protagonist thinks he’s special]
By: Gretchen Uhrinek
He was deep. Nobody understood him. He smoked. He once heard that one cigarette meant one hour off of your life. Since then, he smoked four cigarettes at a time. He lived in extremes. He was so deep his cigarette lit another cigarette, all on its own. He drank. Only craft beers and whiskey. His eyes were blue. Like the sky. Or water. Like deep water. He held a glass of whiskey in one hand, A mug of black coffee in the other. Somehow he was able to drink both with all those cigarettes in his mouth. Only really intelligent people can manage that. But with intelligence comes pain, Like thorns on a rose. It hurts to be so deep. He wrote a book once. Nobody saw it, but nobody questioned it. Nobody cared. That’s what happens when you’re so intelligent, You don’t belong. He was a loner.
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gretchen uhrinek (con’t).
On some level, he knew war was hell. He also knew that hell was other peopleSo he treated the public like enemy soldiers, And social gatherings like battle. Sometimes he fantasized about just, Just backpacking across the country, maybe Maybe going to Burning Man. Because the man inside him was burning. He was on fire. His blue ocean eyes were on fire. Because he hated capitalism, he had no money. He wasn’t starving or anything though Because his parents were lawyers. They were decadent moguls, They were sheep. It was so unfair. If they’d been poor he’d fit in. But because of his childhood, He was a loner. And he was deep.
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doug hawley. Die
By: Doug Hawley Duke Hanley, an associate actuary, got his idea while working on a mortality study at Pura Life Company. The underwriting department gave him access to all of the underwriting and claims information for 10,000 insureds to see how best to predict their longevity. After doing multivariate curve fitting on a number of variables – blood pressure, weight, height, father’s age at death, mother’s age at death and a few other variables, he found out that he could predict the age at death within one week as long as the death was natural as opposed to accidental. He spent months trying to get a meeting with his supervisor, Larry Jones. Larry had already told him that he didn’t believe that there could be a formula that was that accurate and even if there was, regulators would not allow the insurance company to use it when setting life insurance rates. More to the point, despite Duke doing some things well, he was considered a bit mental and looked like Albert Einstein with bad hygiene and style sense. Duke had no more luck publishing “Longevity Formula” in any reputable journal than he had with “Astrological Sign Determines Blood Pressure.” Frustrated, Duke retired and set to work on his other research project using publicly available health statistics and medical research papers. One morning while discarding his used hearing aid battery into a Styrofoam cup, he noticed that the cup was about half full. He did a rough estimate on the time it would take to fill the cup and guessed it would take about three more years to fill. He had never calculated when he would die, but he thought that would be about three years also. Using his longevity calculator and the formula for the volume of a truncated cone and the rate at which he discarded his hearing aide batteries, he found out that he would fill the cup at the same time that he would die in two years and ten months. After learning that, rather than watch the calendar, he watched the cup.
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doug hawley (con’t). Given his short life span, he redoubled his efforts to finish his other project, which was easy because he lived alone and had no interruptions, but when he got within one year left to his life, he was missing some vital information. When he contacted the leading researcher on the topic, Joe Galvin, he found that it would take thirteen months to complete the study and get him the data that he needed. Crestfallen, he gave up his research, knowing that he would not live long enough to finish his project. A week after the Styrofoam cup was filled Duke was shocked to find out that he was still alive. Dumbfounded, he went back and checked all of his calculations. He realized that he had used 170 pounds for his mother’s weight rather than the accurate 110 pounds. The “1” must have looked like a “7”. He must have been really groggy when he put 170 into his longevity calculator, because his mother was petite. He thought that he would have time to finish that other research. He was so sure that he didn’t recalculate his remaining life. Duke thought that it would just take a couple of days to finish that project after he got the data from Galvin. On the day that he received the data, he died. That is why we don’t have a cure for cancer.
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christina murphy. Driving Along
By: Christina Murphy
He was driving along in his new controvertible, feeling pretty good except for his finger, which was throbbing a bit. He’d cut it slicing a pizza, and now the cut was infected and filling up with pus. That morning, throbbing finger and all, he had set up a Twitter page for his cat, Aeschylus. Within two hours, S-key, as he called the cat, had 13 followers. He had promptly followed back to all 13 on S-key’s behalf. He wondered how many of those were cats, too, with their own pages, but he figured some lonely people had sent messages to S-key telling him of their morning, how the weather was, what was planned for the day, and what they were reading. He felt odd reading messages sent to his cat— like perhaps he was violating some code of honor—but it was either that or they would go unread. And, for the lonely, it would be just another version of the dead letter office. So now, here he was, driving along and thinking of a Tweet that said, “Tell me about yourself.” This was so existentially ironic, if not divine, that he had to think about this. Should he tell them about S-key, a lovely, charming, talkative, black and white cat, or about himself—none of the things that S-key was? Should he take on the persona of his cat, or should he be himself, which was also a persona because he was not the S-key of the Twitter account but a mere pretender. Pretending was a good part of his life, so he would have a fair amount to say about that, which seemed odd, given that people were interested in getting to know the real you and not some pretense of you. Driving along in the sweet sunshine of a newly spring day, he thought about movement, and energy, and the self and its soul—or lack thereof. He was surer of the sunshine than of his soul, but he knew he had a self, however odd or ordinary it might be. He also knew he was persnickety and interested in unusual things. Some had said he was compulsive, but that, like all judgments, did not faze him. Judgments came from a round peg in a round hole mentality, and he was definitely not that kind of guy. If he didn’t fit, then so be it. Fitting was highly overrated, just like not fitting. Just this morning, too, he was thinking about feeling hunky-dory and about wherever did a term like that come from. So he looked it up on his iPhone and found that the “hunky” came from “hunk” in an obsolete English dialect that meant “home base” and the “dory” was of unknown origin. Jeez, what the hell good was it to look things up when you get info like that? So maybe he should say that, except for his finger, he was
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christina murphy (con’t). feeling “home base” today and “of unknown origin.” That seemed to capture the mood he was in although it would not please the round peg in a round hole guys, who would want something more mundane and much clearer for an explanation. He had discussed some of his concerns with S-key, and there was some interest. S-key would look at him and meow at times, and that made him feel good. At least S-key understood that humans made noises and that it was a good thing to make some noise back. He wondered if he could substitute meow for hunky-dory so that if anyone asked him how he was feeling, he could say, “I’m feeling meow.” That might get some looks. He found himself getting agitated; annoyed by how people were always asking other people how they were feeling today. Like they cared, which they mostly didn’t. No more than they were sincere when they wrote Sincerely at the end of a letter before signing off. All of it was just some customary way of talking without saying much. A meow would be better. Or a how are you meowing today? He blew his horn at a driver who was still sitting there while the light had turned green, and he shouted “Meow” at the driver as he passed by. He could tell the driver was trying to figure out what obscenity he had shouted, and that gave him a chuckle. He had to go to work today, which he did not care for, but it did not rise to the level of dislike. It was a boring job—mostly copy editing—and he could do a lot of it mindlessly, and he did. His thoughts wandered away, and it took a while before he realized he had read two or three paragraphs and had no idea what they said. So back he went and read them again, usually not catching any errors or making any changes, so he thought what a waste of his time this all was becoming. Today’s piece was on Barbados and what a wonderful place it was for tourists. He had the feeling that this had all been done before, that every person in the world had traveled somewhere and written a travelogue about it. People with money enough to travel and to write about local customs, foods, and wines, and exciting things to do. Most of them took cruises to get to wherever, and the ocean was not of much interest to them, apparently, but the casinos and buffets were. He would be much more interested in the ocean and the sense of waves going on forever in response to some rhythm unfelt except by the waves. But that was probably why he was not a travel writer; that, and he had no
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christina murphy (con’t). interest in being in buffet lines with so many people eating their way into midnight. The day had largely wound down by the time he was in his car again. He’d decided he was going to get another cat and name him Pascal or P-cal for his Twitter name. He started the car and listened to the familiar rumble of an engine on the ready and waiting for that shift from P to D. He was unenthusiastic about going home to another night of frozen pizza and TV, but most of all irritated that he would have to sleep that night. If he got eight hours of sleep every night out of the 24 hours in a day, he was losing one-third of his 24-hour day. And if he lived to 90, that meant he was spending one-third of his life, or 30 years, asleep. He had mentioned this to a friend who had said, “Well, that’s less time for people to do evil things.” Which had made him think, “Yes, but it’s also less time to do good things.” One damn third of his life asleep! He couldn’t believe it still, and he wanted those years back for something other than going through “a temporary loss of consciousness” which was how he had read sleep described in an article. S-key greeted him at the door, and he told S-key he empathized with S-key that he too lost hours of his life to sleeping, and what the hell was that all about? S-key was gracious enough to meow as if he understood, and that was a comfort of sorts. He opened a can of tuna for S-key and then checked Twitter. S-key was up to 29 followers, one of whom had tweeted, “Are you an Aries?” He tweeted back, “No, I’m a cat.” To which the response was, “Oh, a Leo, eh?” That was enough of Twitter for the day. He followed back all the new followers and then signed off. He disliked his own astrology. A Cancer. What a sign to have. And when some people changed it to Moon Child that was even dumber still. “Moon Child,” he said to S-key, who ignored him and took his usual after-dinner spot on the sofa. The light was dim in his apartment with just the last fading bits of an urban sunset coming through the drapes. Maybe he would order a pizza tonight versus cooking a frozen one. Maybe he would just have a beer or two and go to bed early so he could spend even more hours in a temporary loss of consciousness. Maybe he would just maybe himself into oblivion and never have to deal with his life again. Maybe—but then who would take care of S-key? He got a beer from the fridge and put his sixth pepperoni pizza of the week into the oven. He got back on Twitter and sent a message to all of
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christina murphy (con’t). S-key’s followers: “If my owner died tonight, would you feed me?” He wondered if Aries would answer or anyone. It was likely no one was on Twitter because they wanted to feed someone else, especially as the result of an owner’s death. He waited a while, watching the screen, until the timer on the oven went off, and then he got his pizza—a 4-Cheese pizza with all four of the cheeses managing to taste like just one. In his absence, there was one Tweet: “I’m in the same situation. Would you feed me?” “No,” he Tweeted back. “I’d be sleeping a lot, like a third of my life. How about you?”
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debasis mukhopadhyay. I won’t come home again
By: Debasis Mukhopadhyay
“I should have hanged myself yesterday Or thrown myself under a train today” I was still at home I thought misfortune will pass us by I paid for it in cash I waited before the barbed wire I thought I won’t come home again To live under the gun In a land of wrath packed with death and cries coiling To wake up every morning to read we-will-screw-you-too in their eyes To see them kneading the innocent blood No hell just my home I didn’t care to hear the sound of our own voices at home anymore I paid for it in cash To open before us the road The road that does not lead us home The road that does not lead us home I paid for it in cash To flee from home into the waters into the night I wish I were still drawn there Nothing behind Nothing ahead A Noah’s ark With no sunrise I paid for it in cash I rushed our fate What could I have done
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debasis mukhopadhyay (con’t).
And they slipped though my hands into the mouth of the sea Rehan my dear wife this is what you get You had always expected from me more than our daily bread Galip my son I used to dream with you to become a river This is what I get my breath also drowned with you Aylan jigar mine I see your silent face You had never been a crying kid and I will too never cry Three years was not just enough to say father don’t give up save the boat What boat Noah’s boat never rolled over And they washed up dead upon the beach That brought the sunrise I can’t go home, back I can’t leave home I can’t spit in their faces “I should have hanged myself yesterday Or thrown myself under a train today”
*The quoted lines in italics in the poem are from Anna Akhmatova (“In the corner an old man resembling a ram...”)
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izzy noon. Tail Gate
By: Izzy Noon
whoo-hoo, they say on a Saturday backyard bourbon night little Leila’s got her shirt off and the party really starts Leila’s the child of grand-pappy who stands on the porch with his gun metal grey belly pronouncing eructation of judgment he’s only thirty-five but they call him grand-pappy because he’s been around so long the cousins are trying their gunshot and telling stories about fucking each other in the woods there’s a pig slowly turning but it never gets cooked before a fight breaks out and grand-pappy has to go get his sawed-off and settle the matter and this is all why I love football season so very much.
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russ cope. Of Course, It Means Death By: Russ Cope
A mention of the tunnel, a few words about a bucket, a metaphor about the “end of the road,� a sound of croaking, the sense of winter, of course, it all means death when you get right down to the matter.
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blake wallin. Figaro
By: Blake Wallin Crashing down enough headspace To qualify as a genius, the man With battered glasses looks Down an ever expanding road, Desperate search for unknown gold. In dithyrambs he speaks fluently, And I’ve seen him perform in front of Hundreds of people, struck by awe, Taken by his performance. So he took One girl backstage, literally and figuratively. We figured the master maestro would Eventually show up for rehearsals But never expected the band to play on After the curtains lifted and the two were Seen fucking like the two conjoined bunny Dolls your brother used to play with, Feverishly trying to make two inanimate Objects become something more for a little While. Pared down to essentials, he swiftly Pulls his dick out and zips while she pulls up Her panties, now compromised by Circumstances, now unglued by chance, Forever changed as a simple garment. And don’t you know it, someone was clapping, Some sonavabitch keister with hands outta Pockets turned out and with coins dripping Onto the linoleum flooring like the plink Down in the heart and pride of the conductor, The one who pulled and zipped, the one who Gripped his pants with a penitent’s fervor. Just as you think to yourself about the ending Of the dreadful play, and the beginning of the Evening tonight, it is there that the conductor Joins you in an ongoing show of nakedness, Barefaced in shame despite the obvious headspace.
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electrolyte.
Untitled Electrolyte Drawing
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arif ahmad. Aylan
By: Arif Ahmad Wash away the washed up Aylan from our conscience Pretend that it never happened And somehow undo this stirred up hornet’s nest Anything that helps prevent bursting our bubble If this is the Arab Spring It has to get better than this Or some other galaxy’s Armageddon For ours would need to wait its turn Dog eat dog Never on this planet, not on our watch Shall we gather our pieces and do it better all over again For all of them Aylans who are not going to have a picture taken
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mike gravagno. Mirror Me
By: Mike Gravagno I stare at the mirror for a long time, trying not to blink, un-focusing my eyes randomly. The last time I did this I swear I saw the mirror-me move out of the corner of my eye, looking forward when I turned to the side, probably glaring at my freedom when he didn’t have any. Nothing today. No movement. Yet I scrunch the top of my lips so they fold in towards each other, jutting my jaw forward like a monkey or monster. Not like a scary monster, but one you’d be friends with, like Ludo from Labyrinth or something like that. Mirror-me just copies the face—lame. I try to flip my eyelids up so the gross pink part stays out and only the whites show on my eyeballs. My dad does this all the time, but I haven’t gotten it yet. But I can twist my tongue upside down and he can’t so I guess we’re even. The eye thing is cooler though, even if it did used to scare me. Bored with mirror-me, I dim the lights in the bathroom and whisper in a chanty sort-of way, “Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary,” but after the third one I can’t stand the creeping slivers up my spine and run out of the bathroom. I think I forgot to brush my teeth
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gabriel patterson. All Desert, No Sand
By: Gabriel Patterson
As yellow jumbo letters become hoisted onto Ikea’s patented blue Las Vegas is in danger of becoming all desert, no sand across the valley workers kick up constant dust within mazes of skeletal lumber no pyramids just a myriad of mediocrity — similar to how sparrows dive between slivers of symmetrical stucco homes humans drive over a mixture of sandstone and toil an artificial cactus erected in the median.
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heath brougher. Faint Into Consciousness By: Heath Brougher
There is blood on the flowers; purple tulips turned into temporary roses; seemingly eternal, at least until it rains; that is unless it is angelblood but I’m pretty sure angelblood is opal/alabaster; I have trembling eyes ever since I ripped out my own lungs; but not devil eyes—for the devil is not in the details, the devil is in the dollar signs; money will work its way through the tiniest of cracks to pillage an entire community; even hospitals are rife with bureaucracy, the culmination of all your nightmares; the joke of intensive care; the half-hour wait after pressing the distress button; the sheer supine of the bound and begging sick; the numb nurses; nothing to do when hooked up to breathing machines but watch the clock tick away for 24 hours in a row and occasionally stare at the moon in a jar on the table, and that blood, that sweet ethereal angelblood; flowers covered in angelblood outside the hospital while inside I try to fall asleep by counting my own red blood cells jumping over veinfences like sheep.
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anthony ward. Men-tally
By: Anthony Ward I’m living in a mental asylum Speaking incoherently to myself Talking nonsense to nobody in particular My concave personality drawing people in Congregating convexly Hoping to figure me out Their distorted countenances rumpled into fists All laughing and jeering Like madmen heaped up on the floor Until I’m doubled over and ironed out By those who like to button up As opposed letting it go.
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dr. mel waldman. The Night of My Death By: Dr. Mel Waldman
The night of my death, the sky opened up, like the womb of a mad woman, & the frozen rain, a merciless flood, pummeled the city, pounding the poor humans trapped in the storm. The night of my death, I was out there, drowning in the ocean that dropped to earth, in monstrous diagonals, exploding like a bomb. & as I wandered through the rain-battered streets of Brooklyn, I was blind and lost in a biblical labyrinth, tasting the raw chill of the Flood, & the wet shattering of my old self in the tempest that transformed me forever, the night of my death.
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donors, index. artists Ahmad, Arif
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Andrelczyk, Mike
12-13
Botts, Elena
cover
Hawley, Doug
Brougher, Heath
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Jeddeloh, Katie
Cope, Russ
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Mukhopadhyay, Debasis
Electrolyte
29
Murphy, Christina
Gravagno, Mike
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Noon, Izzy Paley, Tommy Parra, Marianic Patterson, Gabriel
18-19 4 24-25
Peterson, Andrew
20-23
Ross, Alison
26
Shea, Cathryn
40 6 14
8-11
Uhrinek, Gretchen
16-17
7
Waldman, Dr. Mel
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Wallin, Blake
26
Ward, Anthony
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Whelpley, Rodd
5
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Spock Andrew Peterson Graphite and color pencil on paper