resistance is
fertile
Vol.
1 Iss. 2
June 2017
The Talent Arif Ahmad Michelle Brooks Heath Brougher Sissy Buckles Teddy Duncan Jr. Ryan Quinn Flanagan Kindall Jackson George Karos Eric Krszjzaniek Chris Talbot-Heindl
10-11 9 7 8 14 13 6 15 3, 16 4-5, 12
Eric Krszjzaniek | Live and Let Tutu | Photograph 3
Chris Talbot-Heindl | 50-100 Bullets | prose
I woke up today, and there’d been another shooting. 50-100 bullets they said. A shooting against the GOP Congressional baseball practice. My first reaction was: “at least it was a shooting against the people who can actually do something about it this time and not children. Maybe they’ll pass some sort of gun control law.” I read further and found that only one actual lawmaker was shot. The rest of the injured were staffers or volunteers for the practice. Likely, the best outcome would be another round of Hopes, Thoughts, & Prayers™ and then business as usual. I thought about how the rhetoric would be spun with emphasis on his political affiliations and his mental illness (the shooter was white). And how thankful I was that the shooter was not a Muslim or someone with skin pigmentation – a fact I had already guessed since I’d read that the shooter had been taken alive – and later confirmed. The last thing our racially hostile political discourse needs is an “other” taking aim at the old, white boys that make all the laws and who work hard to keep those with skin pigmentation continually incarcerated on trumped up charges. The lawmaker who was shot was listed as House Majority Whip Steve Scalise. I looked up his gun voting records to see what he was about. Scalise introduced the Firearms Interstate Commerce Reform Act which improves people’s ability to purchase firearms and cosponsored the National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity Act that ensures national reciprocity for concealed carry permit holders. Armed with this new information, I thought maybe he was shot on purpose and it wasn’t just a haphazard hit among the 50-100 bullets shot. I also wondered if he would stop cosponsoring bills like this. Representative Mo Brooks - who I only know as the asshole who famously said that people who are healthy and don’t need health care “led good lives” - talked about the fear, “You’re pretty helpless… We have nothing but baseball bats to fight back against a rifle with.” I wondered if he had enough empathy to think about other people in a shooter situation who don’t have the luxury of having Capital Police as
armed guards. I looked up to see if he’d changed his stance on gun laws. He had not. Yesterday, Representative Jeff Duncan Tweeted: “Very proud to be continuing to move the ball forward on this important issue.” The issue being the Hearing Protection Act that he introduced that would make it easier for gun owners to get silencers for their weapons. Today, Representative Jeff Duncan was one of the representatives on location as a loud automatic weapon was fired. They cancelled the hearing on the bill, so that at least you can hear when you’re being shot at. This morning began with the 153rd mass shooting in the US since 2017 started 163 days ago. 93 people die from gun related deaths every day in the US. These are only statistics and political ponderings. This is how desensitized and dehumanized I’ve become. I can’t get to the fleshy, heart and bone of it anymore.
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Kindall Jackson | Beware, There’s Blood Coming Out of Our Wherevers | poetry Should I start with the way they expect certain flowers to shutter themselves In the rain? The social strata of a Pepsi bong genuflect with heat, a fanatical moon and the feathery light it sends nipping through trees to nuzzle the heel of our rambling footprints? Or the once-bold, now frizzy and dyspeptic words we spun on the display case of male enhancement pills—like game show contestants, we cry: “PLEASE ELECTRIFY! WILD! PULSING! GIRLS!” Believe me, we’ve come unprepared for this. All of these guppy-faced baristas who perform runny eulogies for “Classic Women” and wind up inside of me sometimes, the fluent denim and sclerotic swagger of Evangelists trafficking into basements and Congress for biweekly craft workshops. Voices rustle with technique, perseverance as they French braid tampons to a pole and rail tearfully against autoeroticism. We get the same answer when we ask how to orgasm with a tampon. I know this, at least: The starched face I once wore to stun lovers peopling my dreams now eyes me mournfully from the closet. She is teething and gulping to latch to me. I do not need her anymore—pussy grabbers, this year we reach for you.
Heath Brougher | Transmogrification | poetry
Turn off tune out and drop in to yourself to your Own thoughts your own garden of Intellect stop following slogans and mantras that warped the brains of an entire generation of mostly dimwits who later sold out whatever shred of Integrity they might have had to begin with in order to follow that carrot strategically dangled before them, to infiltrate their minds and turn their care away from True values in order morph and become materialistic over-consuming yuppies this blight of spoiled rotten adults leaving behind the tattered vestiges of what was once a trifle of halfhearted sincerity and righteousness as over the years the hippies mutated into the yuppies.
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Sissy Buckles | Reality Check | poetry
My dad served in the Korean war, pulled a Neal Cassady car stealin’ joy ride in Des Moines and got caught back then the judge gave them a choice of jail or the Marines. I used to love to hear his old war stories until one time he showed me a photo of his platoon row upon row about a hundred beautiful young fresh faced soldiers and told me he was the only one who came back alive, and reminiscing how Marilyn Monroe took time out from her honeymoon to Joe DiMaggio and entertain before U.S. Service members despite her unrelenting anxiety for live performance, his buddies all rushing the stage while she waved and threw kisses to a bunch of homesick guys. And there was this Colonel I worked with at my last job he surfs the Oceanside break and his best memory of Vietnam was flying his chopper over a massive dolphin pod churning through the sea. So one day at work they were celebrating the USMC birthday he pulled out this big ass sword that he was going to cut the cake with and when I told him where my dad served, his soft brown eyes suddenly darker, he said “oh, Korea, that’s a whole other story.”
Michelle Brooks | Yes We Did | Photograph
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Arif Ahmad | Golden Embolden (Houston, we have a problem) | prose APPNA is the Association of Physicians of Pakistani Descent of North America of which I am a member. Today I woke up to this e-Newsletter from APPNA and its President. It sadly mentions two ongoing issues. 1- Increased vetting of APPNA physicians returning home after traveling abroad and including a past APPNA President to a point where many are now reluctant to travel outside of USA. 2- Decrease in training and residency visas for overseas Physicians, many of whom have invested years and a substantial amount of money going through the process and exams, and when there is a clear and present shortage of the same in America. My mood went south on reading all this. I thought about my options. 1- Curl up and go to sleep. 2- It is not effecting me, stay out of it. 3- Go on with my day and try and lift up my spirits. But closing my eyes would not make the dilemma go away. Too much of this is happening and too close to home. Houston, we have a problem. We at APPNA are no schmucks. This is not Timbuktu but the United States of America in the year 2017. This is happening to American Physicians and wannabes. Am I some worried today for writing all this? Yes for sure. And no, I refuse to be intimidated and or live in fear. This is my country, and I am going to own it with all its blessings and ills. Which brings me to the phenomenon of Golden embolden. The direct or indirect influence of President Trump on fellow Americans. With all its good and bad. Imposed or implied, and unfortunately with some hatred and discord. Has President Golden emboldened some Americans to mistreat and demean fellow Americans in subtle and not so subtle ways? Are personal and civil rights being encroached upon? Is there growing color intolerance? I sure hope not, but there are far too many cries of injustice and travesties to call it a coincidence.
President Trump, you are the one most responsible for your legacy and all of this. As your predecessor rightly said, the buck stops with you. The hole some emboldened are digging for other Americans would be for all of us to climb out of. These cries are still easy to ignore, though they are getting louder. I wish you the very best, for we are in this together. May the gracious and better shades of Gold shine on all of us for generations to come. Amen.
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Guess frickin’ what Drumpf “Dana! They passed tweeted 2.0thisin the morning! ” ” Drumpfcare House!
“justice time!”
“What are you going to do about it?”
“Tweeted. posted. emailed.”
“I’m going to do what I always do.. ”
“bag of dicks - ready for mailing.”
“100% Justice is served!”
“Feel Better?”
“JUSTICE is SERVED” | Justice is Served By: Chris Chris Talbot-Heindl Talbot-Heindl comic
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Ryan Quinn Flanagan | Distance Learning | poetry resident earth dweller, this is for you, a message from the hydro company bad news I’m afraid you are a water-based organism who will be without water come Tuesday unless things are paid in full they seem terse, don’t they? a little angry even, but they want their monies and they hold all the cards. I am rooting for you, resident earth dweller, but things do not look good. Drink all the water you can before Tuesday and good luck.
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Teddy Duncan Jr. | unedited concerns of my mind’s eye | poetry To be job-less and burden our parent’s ankles, blood/money parasites or to follow the easily distinguishable bourgeois footprints of ancestral generations, knowing death on a bed of 24k gold the same as death on grass or in a mcdonald’s restroom, career criminal skimming the surface, larceny simply to eat, stealing for substances to prolong the enchanted moment of highs, When did that blatant line, bold, become impalpably transparent? When did addict and youthful experimentation merge and lose their once definite shades?
George Karos | A Man and a Horse | poetry
A man beat the face of his horse with a ragged tree branch. The man’s whipping strokes were fierce and abrupt. As if he were chipping ice from a car’s windshield. He remained immune to the pain and atrocity he witnessed.
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Eric Krszjzaniek | Live and Let Tutu | Photograph
Resistance is Fertile The Talbot-Heindls, on top of being creative types, are also political animals who love the creativity and strength of the resistance movement. And we know that people have a lot to say about the current political climate. That’s why we created the compzine project Resistance is Fertile. Resistance is Fertile is a compzine for artists, poets, prose writers, or anyone else who has something to say about the current political resistance - fact or fiction.
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