SF&D January 2012 | [First Words] by Deadly Chaps Press

SF&D | Short, Fast, and Deadly January 2012 | [First Words]

Joseph A. W. Quintela | Senior Editor Sarah Long | Poetry Editor Chris Vola | Chapbook Reviewer

Published by Deadly Chaps Press www.deadlychaps.com www.shortfastanddeadly.com DCsf&d2012 | 1

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Joseph A. W. Quintela | A Note from the Editor

All good things must come to an end, but all great things are begun again. [First Words] launches SF&D Monthly after i100 [Last Words] brought the weekly form of Short, Fast, and Deadly to a close. Every monthly issue of SF&D will be chock full of the good stuff: classic [<140 character poetry] & [<420 character prose], [theme] sections, [word art], [chapbook reviews], a new [featuring] section devoted exclusively to one deadly author, and [more-even-good-er-stuff] (once we figure out exactly what that is). The [First Words] issue also introduces our new poetry editor, Sarah Long, freshly settled in London and tearing up the poetry submissions for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Watch out, this one’s pretty damn deadly. But go ahead, we know you’re deadly too: go give’er a whirl. So what’s up with [First Words]? Every piece in the issue is begun with words borrowed from the first four words of a work of poetry or prose. In general, the prose is begun with poetry and the poetry is begun with prose, but as always, there were a few rule-breakers amongst us. That’s okay. At SF&D, we love the rule breakers--as long as they know the rules they’re breaking and break ‘em with deadly style. And that’s enough yapping for this issue. Now go read. New York | 2012

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Bruce Harris | Italy: Now and Then

The room is filled with loiterers, workers, dogs, magazines, food and passengers (former and soon to be). The 1:01 to Pompeii was late. They played a game. He’d say a name, someone they’d both know. She’d find someone who resembled the named. They waited. They posed with a headless mime. If nothing else, they had a record. They’d wondered if the people of Pompeii played their game prior to the fatal umbrella cloud.

//first words excerpted from To the Last Mark by Joseph A. W. Quintela//

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Rae Bryant | Bitter

You do not do impressions or caricatures or mimes or shadows or any lukewarm version of a lover. You are there or you arenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t. You are cold hard, eating from my dinner plate. And as you raise fork tines, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m certain, yes I know, you will mistake me one day for sustenance. You will bury your fork inside me and raise me to mouth. You will devour me. So know this, really, please remember, I am quite bitter.

//first words excerpted from Daddy by Sylvia Plath//

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C. Martinez | Monarch

How Doth The Little butterfly float onto broken hand and not make presence known? I want to be that sort of insect. He flinched when I ran my fingers from mole to mole on his pale back, and grinned at my mouth’s twist when his quick hold became grip to bruise my wrists. I’d rather he’d not felt my first touch, and I’d not followed his first beckon. It’s those pale boys with white teeth who bite the hardest.

//first words excerpted from How Doth the Little Crocodile by Lewis Carroll//

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C. Martinez | Ano A Luve Du

Oh My Luve is a-roll aboot da flare. A peerie slap tae start. Fukall tae stoop us, clase ripped, lips met, moan tae sigh, tae groan. Da hard man du bides way would tae us doon. A mootie clip tae da coupin. Grins awe roon. Du wouldnae let it happen, bigyin. Du wouldnae let da petals fall frae da roses dee sent. Da first roses dee ever received. Dee luve du. A-do. A-do. A-do. Geez a kiss right da noo.

//first words excerpted from Red Red Rose by Robert Burns//

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Jenny Rossi | Learning to Swim in New York

Trees standing in rain, the city is just a pearl strand of lights, you said. The sidewalks are hard to remind you: keep walking, keep walking. The moon is liquid and sweet, but you canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t see it here. This place has pearls to remind you living in an oyster is hard work. Maybe you get a pearl of your own, maybe you only get sand for twenty years, and a net.

//first words excerpted from Somewhere This by Eli Siegel//

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Ray Scanlon | Thanksgiving

The brain within its groove is a freaking marvel. Dad had a stroke yesterday that would've felled an unluckier man. He sits up in his hospital bed, hands on the tray table before him. The fingers of his impaired dominant right arm want to curl. He flattens them out with his left hand, carefully separating them a hair, each gap exactly uniform. Establishing order in his disrupted life, his small gesture so moves me.

//first words excerpted from Poems, Series One Life:XXVI by Emily Dickinson//

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Quinn Martin | teenagers

how do i love youth? reiterate suede shoes and dreams where you fuck a chimera of teachers and relatives and wake up laughing and heat curled hair and sundays and oxycodone jags and talking instead of knowing or seeing until tongues lie still. the habit that sticks: divulging stale secrets that aren’t ours, that don’t titillate. “how are we not old yet?” you ask. don’t make me count the ways.

//first words excerpted from Sonnet 43 by Elizabeth Barrett Browning//

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R. Matthew Burke | Childhood

That's what misery is, the simmer of tomatoes, the absence around the house. Then it bursts, the entrance, the precipice bows to keep him out, but he breaks it effortlessly. That's how we learned to hide in our rooms, how to ignore the tears, how to finish cooking dinner for ourselves, how to be a good sport about it all.

//first words excerpted from Poetry Is a Destructive Force by Wallace Stevens//

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R. Matthew Burke | Commute

That's what misery is, the residue left by hair-oils on the commuter-rail's plexiglass window at 5:30 am to be recovered by the same head fourteen hours later leaving the city whose overall panache won't permeate the clusters and hives of its component factions. For that head to look at you, but be too tired to see you, but to be there with it, seeing it.

//first words excerpted from Poetry Is a Destructive Force by Wallace Stevens//

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R. Matthew Burke | Out of Touch

That's what misery is, I heard recently that an old friend of mine had had his right hand thumb transformed into a talon, that's what misery is, I heard he hides it in public with a leather glove he replaces daily, sometimes twice in one, that it's ghosts and guilt that caused the pathology, that he's considering having it removed, that he's not handling the stress.

//first words excerpted from Poetry Is a Destructive Force by Wallace Stevens//

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Carol Deminski | White Meat

So much depends upon the white chicken. Eating white meat for dinner is a start. What about breakfast and lunch? Fried white meat on biscuits. You get it from a red and yellow store in a cardboard box. White meat. You eat it and and eat it until you can eat no more. You sleep. A chicken comes to you in your dream. It says eat more. You eat more white meat. More. In the morning you find a white feather on the pillow.

//first words excerpted from The Red Wheelbarrow by William Carlos Williams//

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Jonathan Byrd | Filming

Once upon a midnight dreary the cameras rolled on two lovers on a couch. The people in the gloom gurgled for more. They wanted to see passion and shared sea monkeys. The confrontation between the two over heated. The film in the camera melted. No one noticed. Everyone enjoyed watching.

//first words excerpted from The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe//

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Mike Shattuck | What the Floor Said

So worn with passing through the bars, Gus ordered his last pint. I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by careers in advertising, he said, draining it. So gather ye rosebuds while ye may, because itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s all fucking rosebuds. Sure thing, Gus, said the bartender, looking only at his crossword. Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, wait, maybe they call them something different, said the floor.

//with excerpts from The Panther by Rainer Rilke, Howl by Allen Ginsberg, To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time by R. Herrick, and Funeral Blues by W.H. Edward Auden//

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Craig Towsley | One Last Time

Spry, wry, and gray was the way he described himself to the thick-lipped girl at the coffee counter. Although maybe rye is the better spelling he said and laughed at his joke as if it were the first time he told it. Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re pretty, but not much for conversation he said to the girl, are you. His paper robe lifted in the gust caused by the police and nurses coming inside to bring him back to the long-term ward.

//first words excerpted from Among The Narcissi by Sylvia Plath//

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Sean Ulman | Pushkin (1)

I’m tired friend, so float a cobble. We’ve times n amiable tempos to talk on, tropic brine to snort. Gyrfalcons spooling alpenglow balconies. G’day sand ware man, 1 monocle wand, 1 hr glass. Obliged, owe u a joke. Av a look. Always more to see than say. If block sparkles R ★ deflections salting peaks then chasm’d ranges must span my mind. & u, quicksand-quiet, bet u imagine major-er marine/Mtn majesties in ur curbed hush.

//first words excerpted from Eugene Onegin by Pushkin//

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Sean Ulman | Pushkin (2)

The past unfolds before it’s past. A scarecrow hexed our air harvest. Its past’s puffed w/ straw & strain. Rain’d bloat it. Heat’d whet its weepy will. Twas fine & fallow. Waterfowl boated tallow grains, terns turned shucked soil, dewy haystacks gleamed. Til a kid (or crow) packed orbital sockets w/ pyrite, plumped pockets w/ coal. Now, dummy slumps dumpy. & my imitation tries to land sea birds on sidewalks R tardy.

//first words excerpted from Boris Godunov by Pushkin //

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Sean Ulman | Pushkin (3)

My critics, pedants of (the word) pa-toooey! pedestrian soap-less bathtub bathos. I sprung a battle blog: critiques of Criticsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; critiques of art to slow a fart w/ barf, to Tartuffe the petty few aloof. Reviewers. Ooff-da. Y surgery Dada data? Y detract inventive tracts? Could critics crank â&#x2020;&#x2018; stakes, expose fakes, lurk in mantle w/ sleepy quakes? Nah, subtract the diction sharks, learn to swim, or get lacked.

//first words excerpted from Ezersky by Pushkin//

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Sean Ulman | Pushkin (4)

No 2nd class Don Juan flies 1st class or 1st mate or lacks class. Scab crabber legions puke mutiny, Capnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sea lion liaisons trench fjord-deep, roily seas nip numb digits, yet our hero greenhorn narrates elatedly as he baits cages, of narwhals, green herons, hairpin heirlooms (lupine lace, pinecone bowties, cowhide tents, a brass toy sax) looms to flax musk ox hair & how south winds will mellow classless callous men.

//first words excerpted from Ezersky by Pushkin//

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Bryce Livingston | Untitled

My demure foot bursting, lighting, flashing, storming, appearing, assets that to choose is but to enjoy fullness. My craigslist client asks me to undo the strings and straps on my stilettos a bit more slowly, please. My exalted stripe striding, devoting, denies that to play is but to project darkness.

//first and last sentence created using Sentence Program by Joseph A. W. Quintela, contained in the Word Art section of this issue//

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ord Art

Eryk Wenziak | jpeg(((2_))(txt//;; - // Joseph A. W. Quintela | Sentence Program

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Eryk Wenziak | jpeg(((2_))(txt//;; -

//this excerpt of code was produced by converting a .jpeg of Marcel Duchampâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s In Advance of the Broken Arm to a .txt file. The single conversion elicited over 77,300 characters. //

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Joseph A. W. Quintela | Sentence Program

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eaturing

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David Tomaloff | Artist Statement (Footnotes to a Radio Enthusiast)

[1] For me, the work begins with a phrase or a sentence that feels electric. [2] I tend to write best when I’m able to stand out of my own way. [3] I firmly believe in the Spicerian concept of the poet as a radio—a receiver of transmissions—regardless of the medium. [4] Everything I learn from other writers, or through daily practice, becomes part of the process. [5] The work itself informs the method. [6] Repeat.

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David Tomaloff | Photo

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David Tomaloff | He Usually Came Late

Listen to my last with the knife & he said, I will drown & no one shall save me. This device, &any device: The pest detestable to usâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the boy thighs &sad, a bankrupt expression. Suppose there is no enemy to fix against skin. The gentleman is everyoneâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;is neither, &none. +blessed / but for action / his speech marked with scorn

//created from words excerpted from Nova Express by William S. Burroughs and The Elements of Style by Strunk & White)

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David Tomaloff | Red &Rum

Two little whos, the he &her will. She the might spider, the words at last echo; at long last a swallow; this muddled, brackish breath. Quiet room for her softening, the cattle &muscle creep. Knives that sharp from walls, how the brighting of eyes that gleam. Kitty, sixteen, 5'1", &white wine. A sluice for little sparrow, making dinner plans for he. +how the blood stiffens / &her / the dashing of light

//contains 2 sets of first words excepted from poems found in 73 Poems & Chimneys by E.E. Cummings//

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David Tomaloff | Without Gravity

a squat grey building , the cracked fingers of a saint’s ghost a cup, &now a snake breathe deep, &we’ll be gone

//first words excerpted from A Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. Remaining text excerpted from that book and Fear of Days by Jim Carroll//

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David Tomaloff | Stepping out of Days

when the shooting broke, the boys sang a flashlight against the dead their horrible song of small fish flowering on your heart

//first words excerpted from Just Visiting by Jim Carroll. Remaining text excerpted from Fear of Days by Jim Carroll and A Brave New World by Aldous Huxley//

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David Tomaloff | Rain Song Dash Board, We

My exalted choir flashing storming combining denies that to fall is not to attempt emptiness. A simple repeated silence, a car stopped in traffic holding kiss. Pass, passing, &mouthful irregular, your past tense sunken slight [re:] ver [b.] nacular. You ask of the statue in the park &its ominous confession: MY WOODEN STAKE STRIDING WHEELING APPEARING DENIES THAT TO CHOOSE IS NOT TO PROJECT DARKNESS. â&#x20AC;&#x201D;& / we / rain

//first and last sentence created using Sentence Program by Joseph A. W. Quintela, contained in the Word Art section of this issue//

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David Tomaloff | The I As an Opening to We, Scene II

You are manufactured in atoms although I raise &torture them. I use you & I loosely to hold shadows to the wall. I, the pleated river you waded as a girl. You, the nights remind meâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;how you would rather you had drowned. We are coronated in refrains whether you sink or murder them. You use I & you to separate dust as it tumbles to the ground. The hole in was. We swelter. +a blooming concerto / a pause / an assassination

//first sentence created using Sentence Program by Joseph A. W. Quintela, contained in the Word Art section of this issue//

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oems

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Nicolle Elizabeth | The Plate

The woman returns from the kitchen with a plate of strawberries. The plate is best, she thinks heavy, solid. She sits, she peels at the strawberry leaves with her teeth.

//first words excerpted from Stories for the Nighttime and Some for the Day by Ben Loory//

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Lois Elaine Heckman | Dear Body

For a long time you and I have traveled together, going from soft peach roundness to dried prune degeneration, with numerous pit stops in between.

//first words excerpted from Swannâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Way by Marcel Proust//

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Zack Lopiccolo | Skip

When she was home from work she didn’t speak, she only eyed me from our bed, still pissed from last night’s duel. A scratched CD stuck at 2:03.

//first words excerpted from The Collector by John Fowles//

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San Merideth | Edge

time is not a pair of boots it wears them I saw its bootprints in the snow the snow was falling into the canyon and I was falling with the snow

//first words excerpted from Catâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Eye by Margaret Atwood//

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Teresa Nash | St. Paul

Here down on dark earth The hypocritical band of actors Forsake their noblesse And play with dirty people As wantonly as whores

//first words excerpted from Lonesome Traveler by Jack Kerouac//

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Eryk Wenziak | After “Chapter A” of Bok’s Eunoia (A Code Poem)

PK! Ýü•7f [Content_Types].xml ¢ (´TËnÂ0¼Wê?D¾V‰¡‡ªªú8¶H¥`ì XõKöòúûnDU A*å)YïÌììÄƒÑÚšl a¼ƒ’m ±Ñðúj0Ù Hu»T²9bxà<É9X‘ ÀQ¥òÑ ¤×8ãAÈO1~ÛëÝqéÃk

//composed entirely from code produced by opening a .docx file in WordPerfect Office 12. The original source text is the first line of Christian Bok’s Eunoia: ‘Awkward grammar appalls a craftsman.’//

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eview

Chris Vola | Roadside Savants by David e Haase

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Chris Vola | The Crunch of a Bleeding Image

David e Haase’s Roadside Savants shotguns the reader on a fractured tour of post humanity’s macabre dregs. Though there is the rare beauty of a placid ripple, not much escapes violence in a rugged byway strewn with nary a dead bird’s hope and the crunch of bleeding image: "teenage ganglion raw/mass of pulsating/hormonal fireworks/exploded.” The genius of this road lies in the irresistibility of its desolation.

//Roadside Savants by David e Haase is available as a free eBook from The Red Ceilings Press. More of Chris Vola’s weekly chapbook reviews can be found on Short, Fast, and Deadly’s facebook page//

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