Closely
Literary Magazine Vol. I, Issue 2 December 2015 “Simultaneous�
si·mul·ta·ne·ous [sahy-muh l-tey-nee-uh s, sim-uh l-] adjective 1. existing, occurring, or operating at the same time; concurrent Contributors: Amy Accongio Leon Bautista Angela Brittain Rand Burgess Kate Burkhardt Shannon Hawkins Bekah Krum Jay Lundy Catherine Matthews Victoria Morgan Caley O’Brien Taylor Oliver Savannah True Randall Sean Schaeffer Joshua Strim Complied and Edited by Savannah True Randall Contributing Editors: Amy Accongio Shannon Hawkins Jay Lundy Catherine Matthews Victoria Morgan Taylor Oliver Stephanie Sherwood Cover illustration by Angela Brittain © Fuck Those Bitches Press 2015
I There are two sets of clothing on my floor. We are wrapped up in breath, yours on my neck and I think I’ve found my miracle, not like you’re any kind of saint, not like I’m a virgin, but goddamn I believe in the slope of your rib cage. And I won’t be sorry for this, as we lay on my bed, bare and hungry. My Ex texts you, “YOU MOTHER FUCKER” and I want to reply, “No sir, I have no children.” But never mind the titans. I bring you coffee in my Mad Hatter mug and thank the devil, then kiss you so hard my teeth sing hymns and I sink into the symphony of your hips.
Victoria Morgan
1
Erasable Wesley I loved your bare as desert skin your little erection, the words c’mon girl, c’mon baby in my ear You attempted to put a pencil eraser against my insides and when I objected there was nowhere for my insides to go I even played with the rain on my way home pretending your image down from the dark feeling with some regret that I didn’t want to embrace your mirage on the sidewalk With a crude shift of this young winter wind you turned your shoulders from the warmth of whatever fire was our endless endlessness But from the sky, squares seen on my heart remain, no matter how coarsely you navigated their soft green fields, no matter how suddenly your footprints got lost in my blood Was it your world of three who absorbed the instant question mark, who made a womb of your wish to wield the cleaver, to mutilate the myths we were making? I only realized I loved you when you said
always will because isn’t that how shit goes? And afterwards when you pulled on your shirt talking about how everything felt deadI saw your sorry lips thick with our homemade silk and simultaneously knew two things: that when you left I’d find a twitching Ladybug dying in the kitchen and that I wanted your parched, half-uttered maybe to somehow be enough
Amy Accongio
Let Me Eat Spring Rolls Jay Lundy Your six p.m. class gets out early, so you rush to the Chinese place on Third. You haven’t eaten since you inhaled that half toasted bagel from the library café at ten this morning. The waitress knows your order, veg fried rice and spring rolls, but she still says “ladies” every time you go there with a friend who is a girl. Waiting for your food, you try to blend into nothing and might as well be a red and gold decoration. Getting home you remember Em’s sweatshirts are still piled in the corner of your closet and she hasn’t texted you to pick them up. It’s been two weeks. You tenderly folded each one and put them away, the night she dropped you off after seeing Into the Woods. She said she “wasn’t feeling anything anymore” and you are simply too much for her. Spring rolls and a koala onesie. You find comfort in the worn knees and elbows, proof you can love something for an extended time. Em rarely could exude comfort during your hard nights. She would scoot away and get absorbed in her phone, playing some game or talking to someone else. She wouldn’t let you get the spring rolls; they were “too unhealthy”. If she wouldn’t eat them you couldn’t want them. Two episodes into season 5 of Gilmore Girls, the food is gone and your stomach hurts. You might as well eat the fortune cookie so you aren’t tempted. A lot of your friends say they don’t like the cookie part. You think it’s a being an adult type thing so you say you don’t like it either. Every fortune is right eventually. Some take more than a lifetime. “A cheerful message is on its way to you.”
Machinery a fool with flailing arms gains speed on a stationary elliptical machine. brain connectivity sparks, but footsteps turn to tumbles as blurred landscapes, devoid of momentum, accompany the rapid movements of misguided, wobbly legs suspended in fight or flight. “… remember, pirouette next time around!” sincerely, the earnest fool.
Catherine Matthews
Let Me Start Up I have to go relearn what slowly drained out of my blood and family a long ago. I can see them dancing on tiptoes through a blonde field, not so much singing in tongues, but telling each other how much they were in love. I was not naturally born with that dance and never will be. Drink I’m sophisticated enough to say that I have brunch everyday. Or I’ve unintentionally mastered the art of fasting from 11pm to 11am the following morning. I have my cup in hand first thing and I will continue on like I have the world in order or I’m slowly crumbling apart. Drink My car and I are in a bad relationship. He’s threatened to send me over, and I’ve threatened to smack him or find a new ride. Is this how all relationships are supposed to ride out? I have no energy for this or work. Drink I work in a building that blankets me with more worlds and
words than I will ever see in any other lifetime. Too bad I am trampled under selflessness and greed, where I am torn at the skin and mind by everyone that fights me with their own words or leaves me blind. Drink When I arrive home, there is a cork screw and a bottle. I push away the machine to use my hands to pour out something that will pull me back to those figments I left behind. Drink
Shannon Hawkins
the Smell of our Room in the Morning Joshua Stirm She took everything and just used it to keep her hair out of her face. I made her do it. It was too wonderful for me. The whole time we were together, I spent waiting for the next woman to come into my life and put her hair up like that. She took everything and now I was looking for a new place to live. I think I wanted it to end the whole time. Now, all I can see is her print on the couch in the back of my dad’s truck. I used to like the smell of our room in the morning. We used to go out on Sundays and pick up realty brochures as a joke. I don’t think she was joking. I bet she got a nice place. I wonder if she’s in love. I think the whole point of this is that she is in love.
All That I’ve Been Taught I’m Not I am weak and I crumble over tremors smaller than 1 on the Richter scale, but I can handle anything. I cry once a week and I’ve gone toe-to-toe with a six-foot-two football player. And I won. I am a master multitasker and I will get my hands dirty. I may be white-washed but I see in full color. I am the sky’s bullet and I will one day put my shamers to shame. All it’ll take is a taste. I am a little flame capable of the sun’s warmth and a wildfire’s rage. I foresee my light spreading all across my captive readers’ hearts and igniting more sparks and flames and unstoppable cascades. I am a magnifying glass. I can pick up on the smallest indicators of someone’s emotions and project them onto the massive canvas of my mind’s eye. I have a soul stronger, deeper, and more resilient than my body will ever be. I always fly on the straight and narrow but now it’s time to get some arc in my path. I move around the people in my way. I don’t step on them. Leon Bautista
Strangers Sean Schaeffer She was cool. Wore jeans that were blacker than the outfits of a Judas Priest cover band, had a face that said, ‘I could cut you’ and a smile that surprises you every time you see it. She reminded me of the kids in High School who smoked in the hills leading up to campus, where they talked about stealing dad’s rum, getting drunk with older friends you’ve never met, and listening to punk bands that weren’t punk enough for them. By the time she was hired, I had been working this custodial job for a little over a year now. It was a simple job that paid well, but it was still cleaning other people’s shit. I always wanted to work with her but I never really had the confidence. At first she seemed like the type of person who would ask you to name ten songs from any band you’d bring up in passing. We did go to the same burrito party, but by the time she got there I already had five rum and cokes, three burritos, had collapsed by my buddy’s neon cactus, and I told her she was perfect as she walked into the room. Her boyfriend ended up driving me home. I talked about how perfect his hair was. The only time I really got to know her was when we got assigned to clean a building together. What surprised me was how warm she was. She was like the hardcore punk-rock sister that I never had. I talked about music, food, and how I had no fucking idea what I wanted to do with my life. Usually I give people the same speech I give my mom and any other adults when they ask about my plans for the future, but since she was working the same job I figured she could relate. After that, we talked about classes, stupid co-workers, and the kinda shit we’d do if we just had the balls to do them. Then things started getting deep.
She’d already seen me drunk, so I guess that’s enough to bypass the awkward small talk purgatory people find themselves stuck in with coworkers. For the past month she’d been trying to quit cigarettes or weed, maybe both, because I guess she had a panic attack where she felt her heart kinda flutter and it was almost like she forgot how to breathe. She had been seeing some doctors to get a better understanding about it. I’ve had panic attacks myself so I know how the really bad ones make you feel like one of those burn silhouettes you see at Hiroshima. I’ve never been able to handle stress well. I hope she took better care of herself than I do. She wanted to move to Portland; to be were the art is. She wanted to be in the center of all that chaos and find her place amongst the Portland hipsters and weirdoes. She was like a bird trying to find a place to nest, but isolated enough where it’d be all on her. She talked about how annoyed she was with some friends and didn’t trust her boyfriend anymore. How he didn’t appreciate her, or acknowledge that she basically supported both of them. He wasn’t emotionally present for the relationship. The only time he really opened up was when he was drunk. When she talked about him it seemed like she was convincing herself that she loved him. Like she really wanted things to be the way they used to be but it was never going to happen. I’ve dated people where it felt like you were already broken up and they had forgotten to tell you. I guess sometimes people go into things to see where it goes but after a while it just feels like a chore, like something you don’t want to get up for, but you kinda have to. I didn’t say any of that since I knew sometimes its better to let people just talk and occasionally saying, “That fucking sucks” or,
“I’m sorry” because they just need validation. I didn’t see her much after that day, despite the fact that we work the same job and go to the same school. There are always toilets to clean and classes to go to and no time to catch up. When I see her around campus now, I always make an effort to say, ‘Hi’ and see what she’s up to, but it’s never the same as that day. My guess, it will never be the same. She’s still cool. We’re still strangers. But now we’ve become strangers who wave to each other on the way to class.
Tips for surviving finals (for college students): 1. Make sure you get plenty of sleep (more than normal). 2. Eat more than normal, too. Recommended foods: bagels, pizza, pie, donuts, sushi. 3. If you plan on studying at the library, have your pizza delievered there. 4. Take a nap while you’re there, too (see Tip #1). 5. Drink coffee until you think your heart might actually explode. 6. Skip that class (to study, obviously). 7. Instead of studying, take a nap. 8. Remember the Bill Murray Christmas special is streaming on Netflix. 9. Watch that. 10. If it’s time to go to your next class, take off your pants. Now you can’t. 11. Keep pants removed until end of finals. 12. Cocoon yourself in blankets (also called, “burritoing”). 13. Now you should probably eat a burrito AS a burrito (meta). 12. Congratulations! You survived finals. And you are a burrito.
you put a candle in a slice of rhubarb pie our legs were fuzzy from days of not shaving and i claimed your left thigh as my own i bought you a stuffed sloth you named her marcella your car broke down but i was too busy to answer my phone so i bought you chapstick we traded rings to promise a future that wasn’t ours to give
i’m sorry
i put bailey’s irish cream in an almond milk hot chocolate i went to the zoo and took photos in a booth i fell asleep watching a cartoon and didn’t come home until morning i drove 400 miles claiming i wasn’t thinking instead of going to dinner i pinned pictures of georgia thinking that if i just left i wouldn’t have to explain
i’m not sorry
Savannah True Randall
Taijitu Aries by birth; by Circumstance, Gemini. A little to the left, and leaning slightly right One foot on the playground And one in a barroom; Force of Nature— Fire, burning— against oneself. The Lady and the Tiger have different options. The Lady and the Tiger make different choices And I, exhausted, fight for middle ground and at once wonder Who will win me. Peace finds no space for one is followed closely by the other I am the loner who gets lonely; The reclusive social butterfly. Epitome of Joy and Pain Caged in my mind Freed by imagination And what else is there to be— For what is the Tiger without the Lady? The Lady without the Tiger? Caley O’Brien
Untitled Bekah Krum The first time I saw him was in a diner with cracked and buzzing lights. The first time we locked eyes, he sat down next to me, looked at the crescent-moon fingernail marks in my palms and said, “You don’t belong in a place like this.” The first time we shared it was a plate of lukewarm pot roast and cold vegetables. The first time he called himself “Guns” and myself “Roses,” I knew I was in for . The first time we laid together was in his shitty hotel room in San Diego. The first time he saw under my old sweater he said, “You’re the softest girl I’ve ever seen.” The first time I touched his hands I noticed how many scars ran beneath my fingertips, as if he were the son of a cartographer who forgot how to make anything that wasn’t a map. The first time we kissed I told myself he tasted like dark magic, when he really tasted like stale cigarettes and spit. The first morning I woke up next to him I wondered if that was what it was like to feel hypnotized. The first time we went back to my apartment he smoked on the balcony while I overcooked pasta. The first time we traded anything I gave him deodorant for a promise that he’d make breakfast. The first excuse he made was “Roses, men like me just don’t work that way.” The first time we celebrated an anniversary it had been one month. He gave me a rose for each week we were together. The first time I realized none of this behavior was characteristic for him, it was already too late to turn back. The last time we celebrated an anniversary he left me twenty eight roses and bullets making a trail to the bedroom. The last time we traded anything, I gave him a kiss for a promise to come back by midnight. The last excuse he made was, “Roses, men like me just work this way.” The last time we went back to my apartment he threw up on the kitchen floor while I cried on the balcony in the frigid night air. The last time we laid together was that night, him passed
out drunk in the bed we’d bought together. The last morning I woke up next to him, I wondered what it felt like to be alive again. The last time we kissed, he caught me cleaning the floor and making him an omelet, pressing his lips to my forehead like it counted as a “thank you.” The last time I touched his hands was to push them off my thighs while I ate my toast and drank my coffee. The last time he saw underneath my blouse was before I left for work that morning and he said, “Why do you always leave me unsatisfied?” The last time we locked eyes I stood up from the table and said, “I promise I’ll be home in a few hours, it’s just a meeting.” The last time I looked at him his eyes were red like the wine he’d never replaced and his hands shook with rage.
How To Make An Omelet In Five Easy Steps: 1. Crack your eggs, scooping out any shells (don’t eat that shit) 2. Add milk and stir with fork or other stirry object 3. Put in pan that you’ve gotten warmish (the eggs, not the stirry objects) 4. Add whatever veggies and stuff you’ve got in your fridge (this is a good time to use your Mexican leftovers) and lots of cheese (cheese is important) 5. Make scrambled eggs because seriously who makes omelets
townhouse when we moved i found a wrinkled piece of paper on my nightstand this note you left me it was on a tiny slip of paper worn by time and dust and it looked like it had been turned over and over in hands so you know it felt like fabric but i had barely touched it over the course of almost a year for a year and a half we lived in a townhouse together and you have double the amount of memories there than i do and how strange is that like there’s the candle wax that took away part of the carpet in the middle of my old room we just moved into separate places and while our townhouse got torn apart and our stuff
disappeared into boxes and eventually from the place itself i was mad at you and you thought i was evil some kinda devil some kinda cold heartless thing out to get you and i thought you were evil some kinda devil some kinda cold heartless thing out to get me the day i moved my stuff into n’s truck i put the tiny wrinkled piece of paper away into the red messenger bag and you put the note on the nightstand back then in the winter when i was at work, maybe i always left my door open back when we drank so much carlo rossi and the wine stains didn’t show up on the filthy brown carpet back then the only thing that pissed me off about you
was that you didn’t clean up your ferrets’ shit and the carlo rossi bottles hid behind the trash can in that nook by the sink and you read your poems and i read mine and we smoked a lot of cigarettes in the backyard and we called carlo our lover and took videos of each other making out with the bottle my lungs felt full, satisfied, a temporarily quelled anxiousness and my memories smell like that lotion you gave me and my arms felt cold and the heater didn’t work but it was home and it didn’t feel like it was time to leave yet when it got below freezing we decided to smoke all our cigarettes in the bathroom with the window open just a crack and then p and i did that a lot too and p and i weren’t in love yet and you didn’t know m yet
and b was a dick and b didn’t respect you and you hurt but you pretended that you weren’t hurt by him that it was whatever just frustrating but it was just a frustrating whatever so i finally put the song on youtube just now, and the song said ‘i needed no one but myself ’ ‘cause we both wanted to pretend that we didn’t need the shitty guys we thought we needed and in the spring civilians felt heavy and sad and k sucked and you knew it but you didn’t want to care you were really nice to her and i was pissed and you showed me plains in the backyard while she sat on m’s lap in some stupid k outfit she’ll probably never wear again and you drank sake and i drank angry orchard and now the title track is something i sing along to when i don’t feel ok
and you’re sad and i’m sad but we are too angry to forgive and laugh together and still know we’re sad together we were nice to each other today i hope that meant something real
kate burkhardt
[Crunch] By Rand Burgess The escape has failed, is failing. It failed when they caught you trying to flee the city by foot, run-warping toward the county line. It continues to fail as they, the authorities, muscle you into the elevator. You could run again, and they would catch you again, and you could, but you don’t. You ride the box up and up as some far away clock heats up its final coil. Running away from the end of the world is impossible, has proved impossible. Even in its approach there is no solace, there is never any solace. So there you are on the bench, alone, hopeless, awaiting the end of the world, of this world in particular because you are sure there are other ones. The bench is stiff and you’re waiting to be called into an office. It’s hot and you know what the inside of the office looks like, it looks like failure. You warp down to the street. It’s boiling outside, pleasantly boiling. The handcuffs are gone and your arms are swinging, you’re running again, to the end of the world. The street is long and not so busy. An Olympic sized diving platform erupts through the blacktop. Bullets whiz past and hit the mosaic of reality in front of you, slurping and spilling the colors all wrong. The blacktop superheats, sticks to the bottom of your sneakers like marshmallow goop. There is a roar from the oil slick kaleidoscope that has begun to swirl into non-existence before you with massive radio chatter. This is it. You climb the ladder but the platform sinks with every step. Beyond, the pavement is falling in chunks into the maelstrom with cloud tops and a group of kids on roller skates, half a car, several buildings and a flock of geese. The diving platform remains solid, the heat rises, evaporating your clothing and eyebrows. You walk out, test the board, haunch your legs, swing your arms, throw your weight. The board shatters, you get sucked into the end of the world like
puke down a drain. Your organs catch fire and the tips of your nerves blister and hyper extend as the cosmic bear hug flattens you across time-space. The universe becomes your history, and you’re getting bigger with every nanosecond, every atomic crunch. As long as you’re eating, your dopamine receptors multiply and nourish, expanding neuropathways like fucking rabbits. You’ve never been so relaxed, so loved, so warm, so fuzzy. And you’ve never been so hungry.
Recipe for Candied Orange Peels 1. Buy as many oranges as you can, the sweeter the better 2. Grate the thick skins until you forget what you’re doing 3. Put the sugar on the stove to boil and call your mother so she can remind you not to burn it 4. When the sugar is a translucent goo, resist the urge to drip it onto your lips, resist the urge to call your ex-lover 5. Add the orange peels to the sugar and watch them slide slowly below the surface the way the two of you used to slide beneath each other 6. Read the next instruction on the recipe sheet instead of drafting a text you know you’ll regret 7. Cook the peels until they look like slices of stained glass 8. Drain them, but catch the syrup to sweeten the tea you now drink alone 9. Leave the peels to crystalize, get in your car, and drive until your phone is out of range. 10. Don’t come home until your sweet tooth can’t bear it, till your heart has settled down.
Seatbelts I’m tired of working with my scars and this belly of bruises When they told me there were line breaks in his lungs and these diagnoses were arbitrary, he wouldn’t be able to breathe clouds again the seatbelt in my car held me tighter than you where did you go with her où étais-je pas vivre sans mourir peau ces espoirs inutiles périssent je voudrais une catastrophe mourir de ces bras vides et j’ai aucune sympathie pour vous son pathétique combien je veux arrêter d’essayer I don’t know which gut to trust when there’s a dwindling supply of softness His vocal shivering unnerves me to the point of stalling charges I can’t organize my life or make lunch around apologies that waver la valeur de la chaleur il est perdu quand vous essayez d’amour faussement me convaincre de votre dévouement où es tu The memories of meeting his lung-y broken smile energize my shaken essence I am overtaken by the euphoria in sweeping up forgotten damages He initiates me with a smile in warmth washing my intention with his name
Jay Lundy
Bat Country She rolled her eyes at me “I always hike in my yellow dress� So with work boots around her bony ankles And a black ribbon securing that straw hat to her head Maddie plunged into the canyon the color of Mars Carved by centuries of raging lunar tides Followed by my lover, bronzed and barefoot with a daisy tucked behind one ear And a friend from a past life Cottonball clouds hanging low above us, a sentiment of our transience, I descended into the red planet Angela Brittain
What’s Inside:
$5.00
I by Victoria Morgan...page 1 Erasable Wesley by Amy Accognio...page 2 Let Me Eat Spring Rolls by Jay Lundy...page 4 Machinery by Catherine Matthews...page 5 Let Me Start Up by Shannon Hawkins...page 6 the Smell of our Room in the Morning by Joshua Stirm...page 8 All That I’ve Been Taught I’m Not by Leon Bautista...page 9 Strangers by Sean Schaeffer...page 10 Untitled by Savannah True Randall...page 13 Taijitu by Caley O’Brien...page 14 Untitled by Bekah Krum...page 15 Townhouse by Kate Burkhardt... page 17 Crunch by Rand Burgess...page 22 Seatbelts by Jay Lundy...page 24 Bat Country by Angela Brittain...page 25
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