em:me magazine

em:me

issue four :: winter 2013

[hello!] brooklyn, ny

thanks for coming to the winter issue -

in here :: words / images / compositions / a sound link please read look listen - the days are getting longer

and from gertrude stein -

“A writer should write with his eyes and a painter paint with his ears.�

yours,

emmalea russo editor

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[contents]

on the cover :: sunroof garden, lauren ricciardi page 2 :: notes page 3 :: contents pages 4-7 :: three poems, lesley ann wheeler pages 8-9 :: two photographs, sarah certa pages 10-12 :: three poems, amanda deo page 13 :: composition + a link, kyle page page 14 :: one poem, april chye pages 15-19 :: five photographs, emma horning page 20 :: one poem, kara panzer pages 21-23 :: three poems, parker tettleton pages 24-25 :: two photographs, lauren ricciardi page 26 :: contributor notes

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gloved

I keep meaning to lucid dream before I fall asleep I look at the backs of my hands then the fronts but I get so caught up in my trans-canada motorcycle deliveries and extreme sexy interviews that I forget I would like to control what’s happening, can’t even think of a better way for it to go than the way it’s shipped from Dreamland to me in my bed, probably warm with my dog curled in the crook of my knees, and I shouldn’t have clicked on Gloves of Human Skin Made by a Serial Killer, I thought it would be a joke or somehow amusing but it was only terrifying, especially what with fingernails left thinly intact and the crude, wide blanket stitch that held each glove’s two flakes of skin together-- black thread chosen because it was there and it was thread.

lesley ann wheeler

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untitled/spaceship

We don't worry about the spaceship.

We are the space, we are the ship.

We celebrate forewarnings with tea on the crest of a wave.

It's an electric position, the rudder slips, our ship is lost.

From a picture next to the bed, you smile at me.

A dust layer covers the glass so that you are always caught in a you-sized squall.

On the new side of illiterate our gods are gravity and entropy.

This is how lovers end up in places like the Tenth Nebuloid.

When pieces fall, they drop quickly away from us. We struggle to watch their beautiful arcs, and feel the beginning of our descendants' spacevoid eyes.

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The last day, cloudy rainbows ended in a low chemical fog.

I breathe before I think, an involuntary breather.

I understand the appeal of endless vapor trails, neighbor ladies who wear housecoats, a dirty window with a dog looking through it.

lesley ann wheeler

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interstellar fund mountain laurel grows in special profusion new england currency

two coats and four yards of trading cloth over here on the right, the believers are entering the spoil-poised bog

their symmetrical hands grip the buck hide carving through thin branches reach black-capped stilled turbulence blood beating and berry bold

the tyranny of day staying up all night sea sunk rapidly and permanently no land alternative for the washed and shrouded (salt on the tail)

my grandmother’s dream walking the streets of Lowell looking for baby clothing

lesley ann wheeler

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_o

sarah certa

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crave

sarah certa 9

divine eros I drink the funeral in a dream. I give satisfaction in voiceovers. In an instant. I hold attention with it’s better than a lie and your eyebrows are so pretty and it wasn’t only once. Every pew has a set of broken legs and a last breath and an obvious confession.

Your jeans sag to the right. Your briefcase sits next to the door. I’m never yours.

amanda deo

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halloween There’s nobody but a train inside our living room. This week’s costume consists of everything that doesn’t suit you. In heartbeats you’re a car accident and high blood pressure. How could you? I was there for you someday.

amanda deo 11

we happen here In the bathroom at the lodge. A smile wrapped around my ankles. I’ve got a new name for everything. You were never the someone I recognized.

You were never the harvest I thought you were.

amanda deo

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part 1 of a 48 part string quartet written in 2011 listen :: http://kylepage.net/em:me.wav

kyle page

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l’amour fou There’s a siren gleaming out of you, see maybe that was my first clue.

We were in the ambulance where no one gets saved, but we weren’t using our real names anyway and once the harlequin hares turned up their toes none of it mattered anymore.

I sift through us collecting evidence, paste your hands back to fondle my phantom hair, and my wayward pulse, because in this story, you are the painter and I am the alchemist, and we were only gonna steal paradise this once. The bed was a helium beach we sank into, and the colors were so blinding you screamed I want black and white baby.

I want ivory in my teacup and ebony on toast.

The book on the table was Sartre telling you what it is to be human.

Listen.

Here I am reviving old wounds, the pain an afterthought, and you’re still smiling like Mona Lisa on a field of rye.

You were pulling an accordion, singing love will tear us apart when tarmac hit bone, and something maybe we shone bright.

Even the sugar cubes look like gold in this light.

Meet me at the place where we walk out on sadness.

The knife, the wax and the gavel still miles away.

april chye

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mayflower, bethlehem, pa, 2012

emma horning

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broad street, bethlehem, pa 2012

emma horning

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dorney park, allentown, pa, 2012

emma horning

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bloomsburg fair, bloomsburg, pa, 2012

emma horning 18

celtic fest, bethlehem, pa, 2012

emma horning 19

the fitness of things on as if a boat, but only ground buckled by frost heaves, decorated by hoary whiskers of crystalline ice prop, crutch or cane? some certain aid for sea(weed) legs, or reeds—thin enough to tangle, but not enough to give with gentle sway, along to the movement of revolutions that brings the orb—mid-plié— around a centrifuge, separating a skeleton from the taut plum of a some-day dancer— & silver ellipsis shuttlecocks a yellow thread lets it gray in the sun, lets it crease too— relieved of moisture—elasticity—give— cracks the keystone down, clatters on more frozen rock, which only opens welcome in a numbing embrace as if on land, but only to sea

kara panzer

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may, an if The first sentence is as involved as invisible. I wear streaks & notice them where I care. Cats aren’t. No one wants to be an asshole excerpt.

No one remembers the first time they blinked. I run my everything. I am a pumpkin in heat, defrosting, leaved.

parker tettleton

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silver is polite This morning I mouthed fuckup one dream. I’d be writing if I were writing about you. The center of silence is corners, how you keep it. I love don’t leave anymore.

parker tettleton 22

you’ll want to be whatever it means It’s five minutes netting or I reflect less in front of a mirror. The second sentence flings tact over birdies, lofts Rose Bowl relatives. My feet are shoed, on your side, off a bed. There’s a day now & soon. In this way I remember I did nothing to be in front of a pool.

parker tettleton 23

hidden chickens lauren ricciardi

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lonely lime

lauren ricciardi

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[contributor notes] Sarah Certa holds an MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Her poems appear in Country Music, anderbo, The Bakery, and others.

She is the Director of Social Media for H_NGM_N and a freelance photographer. Find her online at sarahcerta.tumblr.com.

April Chye is an undergraduate at Columbia University, who spends her time coiling sentences around silver linings and fighting men twice her size in Muay Thai. She has previously been published in literary journals such as The Manila Envelope, Write from Wrong, and This Great Society Amanda Deo is the fiddler on your roof. She hunts for broken hearts.

She's too legit to quit. www.amandadeo.com.

Emma Horning lives in Eastern Pennsylvania at the foot of a mountain and holds a BFA in Fine Art Photography from Kutztown University, in Kutztown, Pennsylvania. She currently works as a Studio Manager for photographer, Larry Fink. Obsessed with color, shape, and parallel lines, her work is found on www.emmahorning.com, and she blogs at www.emmahorning.tumblr.com.

Kyle Page is a composer who lives in Coopersburg, Pennsylvania OK look http://kylepage.net Kara Panzer is an undergraduate student at Georgetown University. She interns at The New York Times. Her poetry and short fiction is forthcoming (or has appeared) in Word Riot, Vector Press, Marco Polo Arts Mag and others.

Lauren Ricciardi was born and raised New Jersey Italian. Currently, she lives in Brooklyn with her dog partner, Luna. She is therapist by day, photographer by night.

Parker Tettleton's work is featured in &/or forthcoming from FRiGG, Word Riot, PANK, gobbet, & Heavy Feather Review, among others. His grocery shopping collection GREENS is available from Thunderclap!

Press. More or less is here.

Lesley Ann Wheeler is a writer living in Kansas City. She’s not quite sure why. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and the Pratt Institute.

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