SF&D | Fall 2014 [Echo Chamber]

SF&D | Short, Fast, and Deadly Fall 2014 | [Echo Chamber]

ISSN (print) | 2163-0712 ISSN (online) | 2163-0704 Copyright Š 2014 by Individual Authors | All Rights Reserved

Joseph A. W. Quintela | Editor Parker Tettleton | Editor Katie Peyton | Views

Published by Deadly Chaps Press www.deadlychaps.com www.shortfastanddeadly.com DCsf&d2014| 4

Cover Photo | Amy Kurzweil

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v | CONCEPT [Echo Chamber]

Joseph A. W. Quintela | Editor’s Note // Silvia Bonilla | A May Celebration // Joseph A. W. Quintela // White Drop No. 3) // Parker Tettleton | Closedness // Blake Sandberg | Vision / Lightning / Branches // Meg Tuite | Swallowed in Limits of Hesitation // Catherine Rutgers | Nearly But Not Swallowed xxiii | Featuring Amy Kurzweil | Questions // Amy Kurzweil | Photograph // Amy Kurzweil | The Philosopher’s Diet xxxiii | Featuring Karen Schiff | Questions // Karen Schiff | Photograph // Karen Schiff | Fingerings xlii | Prose J. E. Brown | S. Miller // J. E. Brown | Ride // J. E. Brown | Galaxias Kyklos // J. E. Brown | We Lived // Yvonne Yu | Along The Dark A Trail Of Dust // Troy Weaver | Meat // Mary Renzi | Moonflower xlviii | l | Poems Anton Frost | the virtues of the extra // Craig Fishbane | Christine // Craig Fishbane | Laura // Jess L. Bryant | Power Lines // Jess L. Bryant | Yesterday among others // Zack Haber | Untitled lvii | Black Market

Joshua Hart | Fold In Needle Poke #2

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C

oncept

[Echo Chamber] Joseph A. W. Quintela | Editor’s Note // Silvia Bonilla | A May Celebration // Joseph A. W. Quintela // White Drop No. 3 // Parker Tettleton | Closedness // Blake Sandberg | Vision / Lightning / Branches // Meg Tuite | Swallowed in Limits of Hesitation // Catherine Rutgers | Nearly But Not Swallowed

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Joseph A. W. Quintela | Editor’s Note

The following contributions to Short, Fast, and Deadly were created by invitation during the months of August, September, and October (2014) using a process that is a variation of Andre Breton’s Exquisite Corpse.

Each contributor was sent only the precious contributor’s work and asked to respond to it in a different medium. While the works do not attempt to represent each other, they might be best thought of as a shout and five echoes.

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Silvia Bonilla | A May Celebration

1.

All they talk about is how their mothers died.

"Mine died from a cold, believe it or not," says Mrs. Lopez as she sits next to me. It’s kind of hard to listen when they speak under their breath, trying to respect that we are still in church.

"She took a shower at night after sweating a fever all day, el sereno killed her. Rise up Sabina," she says interrupting her story to gesture at me. Then she transitions to sign the psalm, hands on her chest. It's Sunday and while I won't ask for it, I really want to go for ice cream with Natalia. Anyway, I’m here since this is what you do when you love someone. When we finally come out, the day opens clear and refreshed like a giant eye. We stand at the entrance of the church saying goodbye to what my mother and her friends call the "regulars."

I remember that on Monday we need to visit the bank. I am turning seventeen in a couple of months and my mother needs to show me how to use an ATM and how to make deposits and transactions. She is making sure we get everything done before the day arrives. On our walk back to our apartment Mrs. Lopez brings up the subject again.

"Remember to have everything checked by the notary public, those details are important," she adds.

"Of course," my mother answers quickly. I think my mother lets them into our business too much. They never hush, except for Mrs. Clements, who is always looking straight into my eyes. She barely blinks and when

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she does she still persists on her search for some orphan secrecy she could pay under her care.

I have no secrets. Some of the girls have kissed boys already. My mother saw one around the corner by the supermarket. She described it to me, how the boy's "hands were scooping the girl’s butt as if he was collecting pebbles." Then she laughed hard. I shook my head and wanted to laugh too but didn’t. "What kind of butt looks like a pebble," I said and she couldn’t help but cackle.

2.

We are Mexican, but we are not that poor, like my mother says. We are walking our miles to middle class. She always lectures, "You need to learn who you are in The United States, because it’s different than Puebla." I know that when a conversation starts like this, it ends up being about boys and how lucky we are to be "better off than the people in Puebla."

She continues as usual with "You need to study and work hard and—" I interrupt her, "don't worry about boys I know that already, I know I have to go to college." I finish her sentences now. The guy who gave me half my life lives in Puebla, and I learned from her mistakes.

3.

After church we always go back to our apartment and my mom's friends drink coffee and eat sweet bread. I go straight to the T.V. When they move to the Patrón, the radio buzzes with a salsa song and they take each other to dance in the living room. I have to switch my eyes between the T.V and their dancing.

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Mrs. Solano, one of the dancers, says to me, "you are beautiful, you don't look like your mother at all." My mother is of petite Mayan descent. Her hair is dark and long, but no one would know this because she always has it wrapped around in a bun. Her eyes are spread apart and jumpy like a squirrel's. Everything about her face says clean. She is short and I am not.

Mrs. Lopez intrudes with "that's Hector Lavoe." She pulls me from the chair and tries to show me some moves. She has being trying to teach me to dance for months now. I follow her movement, "quick, quick steps," she repeats with her hand on my waist while the rest of them watch, including my mom. The shot glass tips over my mom’s lower lip and a lemon slice is wedged in her left hand. Her momentary happiness.

Next weekend I am going to the salsa club for the first time with Mrs. Lopez’s family and her nephews who live nearby. My mother says they are Chicanos. "Not from gangas or anything like that though," adds Mrs. Lopez. "They own the Three Gorditas Taco Place, a very successful joint."

I met them once before, at Mrs. Lopez’s house. "I tell you these boys are very pretty but I don’t want them about my daughter," my mother said then. She looked straight into my eyes as she said that. Her round face was flushed and shiny, the thick skin of her neck undulated with the movement of her mouth. I knew she was trying to teach me a lesson with her eyes narrowed and her eyebrows raised.

"I am going to dance, not to get married," I tell her now. I let go of Mrs. Lopez’s hands before the song is over and walk back to the T.V. I didn't look at my mom when I said that but I could feel her eyes following me.

When I turn to her I catch Mrs. Lopez placing her index finger in my mom's lips right as she is opening her mouth. I want all of them to go away sometimes, I am really starting to hate their involvement.

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Our apartment is a studio. Which means it’s too small. We have two beds against the long wall, a desk, a T.V., and then the kitchen and a very small bathroom. Once my mother walked in on me when I was exploring with my finger, you know down there. She said "Cochinadas, donde aprendistes esas cochinadas?" Then she hit me on the arm with her hot-tempered hand and walked away.

She didn't speak to me for three days, after which she asked, "Do you need me to buy you a pregnancy test?”

"I don't even have a boyfriend. You know that, you walk me to school everyday. Anyway, what do you think is going to happen after? Are you planning to somehow come back?" I said sarcastically.

I caught her spying around the school for weeks after. Once she waited for me after violin practice, we walked in silence until she broke it by pointing at a random group of boys.

She accused, "Are any of those your boyfriend?"

"No," I said.

4.

It’s the second week of March and it is still very cold. We found out in March of last year so we took a trip to Vermont but now all we do together is prepare for the day.

"I don't like snow, I'm not built for it," she says as she puts on layers and layers of clothes. She dresses in front of me and I compare my memories of her body from a year ago, when she first learned of her problem, as she calls it. She is getting more fragile and much skinnier. But her drive only gets more forceful.

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"Are you eating?" I ask her.

"All the time," she says, brushing off my concern. I don't say more. We go on like this; sharing the weight of her news like a shipwreck we carry everywhere. We leave together and she drops me off at school, and then continues to the subway station.

Walking away, she says, "When I pick you up, we go over the tamales, but you can always buy them, and even the neighbors would give some to you but you never know, people can turn on you at any time." “I am sure no one is going to turn on me over tamales, mom." I kiss her and turn toward the entrance.

"My mother in love herself, turned on me when I was carrying you in my stomach," she says and rubs her stomach tenderly as if she were still carrying me.

"I love you mom," I say and I know this causes both comfort and incredible sadness. I say it anyway but don't look back even when I hear her say it back.

5.

I went dancing with the Chicanos last night, and I liked it. I liked the neon lights, that Hector Lavoe guy, he sounded like a guy who knew how to love even though his songs talk about not loving anymore. He is still here on the small dance floor so many generations after his own. It's like just yesterday he was walking into his mother's house for a Sunday dinner.

His voice provokes.

Everyone had their own take on his songs and you could see it in their dancing. Sometimes they swung, a slow swing that seemed to keep

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them above the floor. All of the women's eyes were closed as they compacted their bodies. The music did not appear to come from the amplifiers, it came from within and so everybody moved in unison. Even me, when Lopez’s nephew showed me how to dance. He sweated a lot, but I couldn’t help but want him to kiss me. He had pore-less skin and wanted to look sophisticated, but his role in life seemed only to be plain and good. Good son, husband, father, whatever.

6.

My mother and I keep planning the big event more carefully. Before, we had agreed on 50 people but now we think it is going to be more than that. I keep thinking my mother needs to say no when people ask to add more guests. I think it should be one minimum per family. I bring it up while she cooks but she brushes me off.

"My counselor says I need to start thinking about applications." She doesn't respond right away, she is cooking tripe and the smell is killing her. She turns to spit in the sink.

"Are you nauseous?” I ask.

"Not from the tripe" she finally answers, “just from the smell.”

I know it is really from her medicine. I don't like tripe but lately she is being very careful with money. We have been eating canned sardines and tuna everyday. I don't like that either, but I eat it anyway.

"There is a budget for your college applications and for your college," she says finally. First her voice is stern but it breaks a little when she asks, "Which college would you like to go to?"

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"Cortland," I say knowing she doesn't know anything about college but she pretends to anyway.

"Good," she says, as a way to tell me the conversation is over because it’s painful.

"The counselor is going to help me fill out all the apps," I say.

"Good.”

7.

These days when we go to the hospital for her transfusion, we go out to Friendly's after. We like the fries there. Anyway, today, she goes in for two hours at a time and I wait outside. I read and pop into the room once every thirty minutes, sometimes her eyes are closed but I know she is not asleep, just praying. I stand by and hold her hand and watch her eyelids flutter.

I want her to acknowledge me and especially for her to stop asking for a miracle so I say, "In art class, we are learning about this French artist who practices plastic surgery as art; her name is Orlan."

My mother opens her eyes. "Her boobs?” She asks, with a weak laugh.

"Everywhere" I say, “I will show you her pictures.” "I kind of like art, you know." I tell her.

"Your father was a failed musician,” she responds.

I can't think of or imagine my father now. It’s too late for that. "Too bad for him," I say. I don't like to see her in the dialysis room imagining how it could have been.

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At her last doctor's appointment, she gets a “definitely” from the doctor and afterward we go to make the arrangements. We already did the insurance thing. I learned how to cook mole and how to grocery shop with coupons, and when and how to do the laundry and all the other domestic tasks. I am waiting on the answers from my SAT's. And she is waiting too. She wants me to go to somewhere that will cover food and shelter. She has ashy skin now, and her breathing is shallow. At night she comes over to my bed and hugs me, I am awake but I don't turn toward her, I hold my breath for as long I can and then fake snore. She prays out loud. She is so thin.

8.

I start to walk home alone. She is weak but still working a few hours and still planning for the party. Her friends have started to bring her Patrón.

She stores it beneath the kitchen table. We are supposed to go dress shopping for her and me. I want those black pleated dresses that are in style but with a bit of cut. My mother wants a long beige dress, with no sleeves. She tries it on and comes out of the dressing room; it is an Aline with a scoop neck.

"What do you think?” She asks looking at me through the mirror while she turns to look at the back. Her arms are very thin.

"I would like a bit more color on you," I say.

"That's what the make up is for, they are going to make me very pretty."

I feel the shipwreck again, screeching inside my chest, crushing the bones in my ribs. I bite the inside of my cheeks to hurt myself, to only think about that hurt and to not cry.

"I like it on you," I say

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"It’s not like I’m going to be cold," she says. She is the skinniest I have ever seen her. A size zero now. I settle for a black V-neck dress for the first day and a black sweater and black pants for day after that.

At the register, the lady calls us girls. My mother smiles and says "Look at these yellow teeth," while looking at herself in the mirror on back of the register.

"You look great," says the woman. I wonder how she knew. Then I realize it is so obvious, it has been so obvious.

9.

Mrs. Lopez says she is bringing some friends from Rhode Island. "You met them twice," she tells her. My mother says its fine and adds their names to the list. There are six boxes of Patrón now and seven boxes of hors d'oeuvres in the fridge, three pork legs, and everyday after school someone comes with more chips and sodas. Seltzer too, they add, for el trago.

My mother stacks everything where she can. At school people have started to ask me about it and I tell them they can come if they want to.

I say I will tell them the day when I know it but then I don't tell my mother. I ended up scoring a 2000 on my SATs so my mother celebrated.

She bought flowers even though she hates them, and she gave me my first shot of Patrón. I liked it. Then we sat in silence watching T.V. Later she said, "Listen, the ancestral beauty of crying for death is an art. But when I die, don't cry over my tomb." And then she fell asleep.

I have been corresponding with one of the Gorditas guys. Not the one I danced with but the very thin one with receding eyes and a roman nose.

I really like him. When we say goodbye he kisses me near my mouth. He,

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Joseph, is the kind of guy who gets things done. This is the guy I mostly think about now, when my mother says I do cochinadas.

10.

There is a week left to the countdown. There is pressure for my mother to make a decision about what college I am going to go to. There are four I could take. Everything is in my name now, the bank account and the small Gerber insurance. Even Joseph is coming to the party. I hope my mom likes him. She likes good people and he is a good guy.

11.

"Death is something you are going to do but not what you are doing," she says every morning when she opens her eyes. So we keep doing our morning routine. It’s May now and it is beautiful out with a sun like a half peeled orange and birds flying blindly in ecstasy while people buy flowers. We don't cry.

12.

The party lasts 48 hours. It starts on a Thursday and finishes on a Saturday morning, it is a grand party and people come and go as they please. My mother's friends, Mrs. Lopez, Mrs. Torres, Mrs. Solano, they all seem happy. The music is a constant slap. On the sofa my mother drinks and drinks as her kidneys shut down.

13.

What a beautiful image, her hand lifting the glass, and clashing it against sixty others, some of them unknown.

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No one is allowed to say goodbye though they are allowed to say, “May your transition be as beautiful as this moment.� My mother wrote those words. She printed them on the stamps I am going give out after the funeral.

My mother dances with everyone, the music as loud as it has always been, competing against the memories, her thoughts of abandonment, against her pity for me, against her worries for my future, the radio is always steady and crackling. She stood all those years against the kitchen sink, mumbling underneath her Capri pants, mumbling the words as if they were borrowed, as if she was not allowed to have her heart jump again. I never knew another man in her life. Expect for the delusional crushes she held for the men in novellas.

14.

When her friends spoke of her, they said she was feisty. When I come back to the apartment everything has already been cleaned by the neighbors. How did they know which memories to hide from me? As I lie on her bedspread I feel her nibbling my ears with her kisses. Manuela, mother, you were some brave woman.

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Joseph A. W. Quintela | White Drop No. 3

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Parker Tettleton | Closedness

Light the light inside of light with the curves the ghosts of us the ghosts in us the swallows the lightning left on the branches of swallowed, lightened

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Blake Sandberg | Vision / Lightning / Branches

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Meg Tuite | Swallowed in Limits of Hesitation

Unacquainted with right turns, the past is a present map that includes happenstance bruises and head-butts with objects that appear inanimate, but place themselves like ankles on skates, awkward mirrors that expose frightened angles, haunted and ever-changing items left exposed, yet dulled by slatted blinds, keep paranoia close to the chest, arnica slathering skin, and corked memories sifting out in stratus-shaped patterns which clench a day into stale repetition of the many before it that lead it like ants to their mound, a place called ‘I, me, my, mine’ which include photo albums of alternating wistful moments never captured by film, cliffs that mistake death for school days, swatting flies, only to find they are guests or holidays or baby showers, until absurd posterity pushes two stalks out of a checker board morning, Century plants, climbing up or down, depending on which eye is left open, created out of some undisclosed yesterday not marked on any calendar, huge trees prefaced as seeds, two seeds given as a gift and stuck in a pocket, fragile, almost slivers of sunflower shells that now invade edges of life with green, raging beauty as more and more ass drags itself out of bed, the window, a blast of blue and green cover the yard like some weaver's shop filled with tapestry of sky on wings. Everything before it shatters into trifles titled job, backache, divorce, virtue, secrets, nightmares. There is green to lay in and blue to stare at as white sharpens the heart into forgetting and remembering that yes, I can fit inside this day, yes!

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Catherine Rutgers | Nearly But Not Swallowed

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F

eaturing

Amy Kurzweil | Questions // Amy Kurzweil | Photograph // Amy Kurzweil | The Philosopher’s Diet

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Amy Kurzweil | Questions

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Amy Kurzweil | Photograph

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Amy Kurzweil | The Philosopher’s Diet (#1)

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Amy Kurzweil | The Philosopher’s Diet (#2)

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Amy Kurzweil | The Philosopher’s Diet (#3)

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Amy Kurzweil | The Philosopher’s Diet (#4)

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Amy Kurzweil | The Philosopher’s Diet (#5)

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Amy Kurzweil | The Philosopher’s Diet (#6)

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F

eaturing

Karen Schiff | Questions // Karen Schiff | Photograph // Karen Schiff | Fingerings

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Who? Who...me?

Yes. In this portfolio, all the photographs are selfies.

What?

These fields of color are iPhone photographs of my fingers.

They may be called “Fingerings.” Or, collectively, “In Our Hands.”

Where?

Here, there, and anywhere.

(My fingers are always with me.)

When?

In 2011, by accident...my finger was over the lens when my iPhone took a photo. When I saw the small screen glowing red, I was enraptured.

I started taking deliberate photographs of my fingers, at different distances from the camera lens, and in different lighting conditions. I created a Blurb book of the photos this year. The time frame for the project is ongoing.

Why? So much is in our hands.

We use our fingers to perceive, to click keys, to touch, to act: to create and to destroy.

We can use our fingers to kill.

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The tiny movement of one finger can, in an instant, stop a life. I’m talking about guns.

Short, Fast, and Deadly...

I’ve been thinking about Ferguson, and guns, and the “trigger response.”

I've been thinking about Staten Island, and chokeholds, and raising hands in protest.

Now I'm thinking about having a hand in the language of political response: handwriting signs, typing articles and tweets, and composing this text you're reading.

All with our bare hands.

We've got the whole world in our hands...

How? Slower, slower -- . . . -- we have no time.

With a heart that is both heavy and bright.

Look ever more closely…

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Karen Schiff | Photograph

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Karen Schiff | Fingerings (1)

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Karen Schiff | Fingerings (2)

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Karen Schiff | Fingerings (3)

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Karen Schiff | Fingerings (4)

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Karen Schiff | Fingerings (5)

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Karen Schiff | Fingerings (6)

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P

rose

J. E. Brown | S. Miller // J. E. Brown | Ride // J. E. Brown | Galaxias Kyklos // J. E. Brown | We Lived // Yvonne Yu | Along The Dark A Trail Of Dust // Troy Weaver | Meat // Mary Renzi | Moonflower

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J. E. Brown | S. Miller

S. Miller married his wife twice. The first time wasn’t quite right. (She was making her rounds at the hospital and he was in love with another woman). I was there. It was in the cool, rarefied air with spring snow and mud on the ground. They sang: I am an orphan, on God’s highway. I couldn’t sing. I went to bed in my room. The whole mountain, the entire night, heaved in the dry muted expanse.

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J. E. Brown | Ride

“He must be waiting for his own Nausea or something of that sort”

As I stepped out of the streetcar and walked away the men inside were still talking about how they knew the people they did and what they’d eaten earlier. They were going on to a place at which they would probably arrive. I watched the train speed from the station, on an escalator in a deserted tunnel under sallow lights. The cold wind was ripping in mid-summer and I thought: but I do want to live. The evening was broad and flat, as always.

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J. E. Brown | Galaxias Kyklos

We were lined up on the beach in the dark as if we’d been ordered to.

That’s how we fell about when we reached the spot after meandering unguided through the eroding sand path and overgrown brambles. Your head was next to mine; I could hear you sigh. “You’re a misanthrope,” I said as we all gazed up at the placid stars in their midnight. Someone asked why something was so bright and Walter said it was our galaxy, the long trail of nebular debris, cast off into black holes, unresolved bodies.

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J. E. Brown | We Lived

We lived in a sweltering heat, a bright dry heat burning the life out of the day. You could hear the high whine and hum of people running the air conditioning. We ran in and out of their houses. No one walked outside, just some soundless teenagers sometimes, in t-shirts. The streets were empty and glaring. The canals rushed and sparkled.

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Yvonne Yu | Along The Dark A Trail Of Dust

Next to the bed he draws all the windows tight closed. Beer drips into my empty belly. “Are you clean,” he asks. His voice full of grit.

Everywhere I touch my finger sinks deep into. Suddenly his body is too large and too close. “Are you clean,” he says again. All of me starts spilling off the spit.

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Troy Weaver | Meat

My brother killed the cat in the freezer at three. Toddlers can be so ambitious. Every time I think of ambition I blow a cold whistle and forget how to breathe.

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Mary Renzi | Moonflower

Each second of the reception seemed a small, lost war. The boys laughed at Ellen's homely face, at the razed sear of acne. In her bedroom, she avoided mirrors and wrote blazing poetry. She flowered privately, unburdened by eyes, and was certain she'd be the first girl to live forever.

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P

oems

Anton Frost | the virtues of the extra // Craig Fishbane | Christine // Craig Fishbane | Laura // Jess L. Bryant | Power Lines // Jess L. Bryant | Yesterday among others // Zack Haber | Untitled

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Anton Frost | the virtues of the extra

war is just a movie the way love is just a movie. and then shit, suddenly you’re the star and it's not what you thought it was.

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Craig Fishbane | Christine

Like paradise our evenings together were an accident masquerading as an ideal at the carnival of the damned.

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Craig Fishbane | Laura

She had a fixation with broken mirrors.

Each one showed another reflection: different cracks in the same face.

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Jess L. Bryant | Power Lines

I walk above you, watch your body hit the floor Send smoke signals to call girls Ask them for money. I wonder what it’s Like to make a living.

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Jess L. Bryant | Yesterday among others

I syncopate the elegy draw you scribbles on moleskin I’m only good at portraits, found your body on my hands and wrapped it in organic cotton.

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Zack Haber | Untitled

what bureaucracy never discloses is all masks fall there's no state outside of time and love's choking on need to reconstruct beyond placing

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B

lack Market

Joshua Hart | Fold In Needle Poke #2

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Joshua Hart | Fold In Needle Poke #2

Dirt and flakes of skin shocking dimebags collect in cakes under the street they were squashed again where they made Coltrane a saint again and he squeals over English.

//written entirely with words excerpted from “The Basketball Diaries” by Jim Carroll, “The Third Mind” by William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin, and the “Saint John Coltrane Church Website About Page” by Franzo King//

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