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FRUITION
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2012 all contributors retain sole copyright of their work
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CONTRIBUTORS KEITH ABBOTT: www.reverbnation.com/KeithAbbott JESSE CATALDO: www.jessecataldo.com HANNAH RAINE BRENNER-LEONARD: www.hannahrainebrennerleonard.com THERESA DOUGLASS: tnapi003@gmail.com SAMUEL DRAXLER: www.samueldraxler.com MARCY B. FREEDMAN: mbf@bestweb.net EILEEN HILLERY: www.eileenhillery.com GORDON HOLDEN: www.gordonholden.com JACI KESSLER: www.jacikessler.com JESSE KING: namelove44@yahoo.com SAMSON CLYDE LEONARD: www.samsoncydleleonard.blogspot.com SARAH LIPMAN: srlipman@gmail.com ATHENA PAPPAS: http://shadysidereview.com/ JAMES SCALES: jwscales@googlemail.com PAUL STEWART: www.paulgstewart.com TERIN TALARICO: classicrockgrl@gmail.com AMANDA WARD: mandolin.ward@gmail.com BRIAN WHITE: brianevanswhite@gmail.com front/back cover design by: BRIAN WHITE & JACI KESSLER featured musician: KEITH ABBOTT created and curated by: HANNAH RAINE BRENNER-LEONARD GO PLACES GO PLACES GO PLACES GO PLACES GO PLACES GO PLACES GO PLACES GO PLACES
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DEAR FRIENDS, One evening settled into a couch on 7th street Sarah and I thought about the first issue of GO PLACES. Together, we wondered what ought to follow an investigation into LOST CAUSES. FRUITION is the realization of a plan or idea. FRUITION exists whether successful or not. In this issue, artists and writers offer FRUITION for the New Year. The realization of GO PLACES is FRUITION. Thank you contributors. Thank you to those who read and to those who look. Truly, HANNAH RAINE BRENNER-LEONARD
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FEATURED MUSICIAN: KEITH ABBOTT Song of Myself
Well I can't say that I know you as the one I once thought I knew and for all the times that we have been through together I know even less now what to do
And all I could do was yell at you you are the life I'd have never chose but somethin' happened out in the wilderness and I ceased to care about the clothes
But to each other we have been given and to the gift I will hold true and I am learnin' to love you as myself as the one I am committed to
And in so many ways you are a child one I'm not prepared to help grow chasin' after all of your fancies regardless of where we hang out coats
I know that I have been unkind my convictions have made me cruel and I hope the scars don't run too deep they are the lessons of a fool
And there's a time I would've beat you and I'd have not with held a stone but it's now that I am see'in you're only showin' what you've been sown.
And any faults you may bear in you I bear 'em in me too and I am learnin' to love you as myself as the one I am committed to
So if it's 'til death do us part then I'll walk with you along this road and together we will face the horizon however level she may lay her blows
See I thought we were dressed for somethin' like a house built of holy stone but quickly found we'd make due with the refused shut out in the cold
And wherever that day should find us we'll be unafraid of what we've to show for all that's past will be left behind us with only the blood left for our clothes
KEITH ABBOTT lives and works in Brooklyn. He is currently working with MELANY PIECH and JON DELORME on a new collective music project called HURRICANE STILLS.
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SARAH LIPMAN “fruitionification” of the message as an entity as well as an answer for her
So, just wanted to touch base after the other night, after running into some of your lady friends. I had some inklings, but I wasn't entirely aware, of how promiscuous you were and just wanted to know if I have anything to be concerned about; considering the unprotected sex. Best, Kristina
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SAMUEL DRAXLER "Untitled" (Watershed | The End), 2011 found newspapers, water
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BRIAN WHITE “For May” A click and fizzle birthed the funerary scene— Camera always on, the survivors shy away the clinking pessimisms to the closet with the rain boots and the dust buster, looking a hardwood floor over for confidence. With a whip, the aperture adjusts to detailed cracks of wood where the chandelier meets the rafter, perhaps to linger with a sentimental statement. Tzzok-tok-tok. A digital hand strikes the hour and chimes a synthetic resonance. A ringing of the passing bell of a sort for May whose life we’ve come together to diffuse. It was Scott behind it all—though digital glaze and a world for a face, it was all but him. I suggest a tripod. He refuses, seeking an “authenticity.” Scott’s shaking apprehension and shy glancing lens had no excuses, but amateur piddling always seems to hold the strongest ideology. A roof to keep the rain out, and most of all, hide the clouds. Blurs come to be edges and distances collapse. Light sharpens and contrasts through gates and filters. The automatic setting jerks me from a darkness into pastel shapes. My face diffuses through the window behind it. Pure light glowing with a synthetic halo around my torso. A zoom—a lens flare crawls its information through the grain of my face. A wood-crack thud and a spin. Zara and her sons walk in—a slobbering bunch. Pixels wrap around their faces, falling flat against the shadows along their skin and the deep blues and blacks of their just-so solemn apparel. Zara floats, her legs hidden behind a love seat. The teenage mutts stand tall. Inarticulate near-obedient pillars. Snickering, with foaming spit which forms around their lips. They stare with their deep-set eyes. Their acne too, seems to take on life. Every pore, a face. A crowd of anemic tormentors gather in every patch of their skin. Zara slams her high-heels, clinching nails as she hammers a path. “Scott,” she says, addressing the lens directly, “I haven’t put my face on.” Scott blubs excuses in a deep-rooted impotence—only jargon. It’s hard to tell what he believes or couldn’t possibly. Soft hair covers his forehead, soft emotions on his lips. Zara instructs the boys into chairs. “Sit. Sit. Sit!” And with rehearsed rhythm they posture themselves with polite accordance. The flatulent rebels shuffle and giggle under their breath. Their mother rolls her eyes. Again, again, again. She massages her throat with her fingers. A curl of skin plucks from between her thumb and index finger, the stretched skin returns slowly to the form of her throat. She repeats. GO PLACES GO PLACES GO PLACES GO PLACES GO PLACES GO PLACES GO PLACES GO PLACES
A zoom. Automatic settings crackle and pop into focus. Zara’s massive lips split with a light pull from the tack of saliva. No one spoke. And, as if we had all been the staring lens in that moment, the gritting pixelation that struggled to form skin filled us all. A colony of insects collide and scatter with brazen hysteria. Colors generalize and buzz with hollering anticipation.
The screen glowed black. I paused in consideration a moment, pulling back the final shallow pool of coffee at the bottom of my mug. Soft, sour, room temperature. Light passed through sheer turquoise curtains, leaving a complex pattern across a hounds-tooth blanket. Unable to see both at once, a competitive whispering occurred between the two patterns—unwillingly, I chose between one or the other, wresting a grasp of the singular shape and the flat property shared by the two. Eyes strained, the thought is abandoned.
I heard a click from the kitchen entrance, which lead through the garden from the driveway. That was when you came in, remember? A click, then... shuffling utensils in the kitchen. Clanking of wine glasses, pinched together in harmonious agitation. I pictured you, I remember, with closed eyes. The clothing, how it hung across your waist. Your hair, in a bun, pulling the skin on your forehead just enough to change the tone of your expression. The bounce in your calf muscles with the step of your sneakers. For a moment my embellishments seemed true enough that I had no doubts about my accuracy. I saw it with all the vivid color and eager wisdom that a lie kaleidoscopes. “Wine?” Through the wall your voice felt impersonal. A synthetic sensation. I forgot to respond.
A click. The screen rekindles, camera now on a chair—Scott’s legs mingle into view, growing among the legs of other guests. He walks towards the machine, hulking an eagerness behind. Who had turned it back on? A spin—I am wearing my blazer. I smile...I don’t remember smiling. Camera faces me—expectations and smirks. I deliver. The camera swallows all my shallow gestures. The moist quacking laughter that surrounds me overwhelms the mic. GO PLACES GO PLACES GO PLACES GO PLACES GO PLACES GO PLACES GO PLACES GO PLACES
Who had I meant to be to them? I wondered. Had May even known the differences between myself and this? Me—tapshoed and sick-sad-sold as all the rest of them. A hissing snicker slipped through the wall, tsseeh-eeh, I slipped deep into the fold of my chair.
Scott holds the camera over his shoulder, chatting idly, ignoring his footage. Auto-focus narrows a transitional blur, pins it down—crisping the edges between the ceiling, the support beams and the stucco texture of the wall. A voice booms over the haunting patterns of the deep wood. Guillotine rafters sway with Scott’s posture, leveling an aim, or seemingly so. The full crowd of mourners is told through the voices, if not, the clinking of so many glasses. But, mourning? It’s hard to say. May, with so few eyes on her... Peripherally I’d glance, but a shame came over me to see her in that pale sleep. The hum of the swaying voices comes over me in a wave—“No, you were...” “No, you were,” and all the “I knew you knew I knew,” and the “...had had to have...” Chattering, as so many others, idling the passages of sorrow. Through the clacking teeth, the winded conversations and the crunching mic against the side of Scott’s pants, a low cautious voice is heard with a slight sober strain: “I sat thinking about the last time I saw her. It seems so stupid now.”
I sat up at attention. You stood over me. Your face held a complexity wrapped away somewhere, where silence rewarded itself with more silence. Had had to have... You brushed your hand across the base of my neck and returned to the kitchen.
The voice again: “She took her jewelry off; the jewelery she has left behind with the empty house. And, in the garden, at the steps, she sat, I’m sure thinking of us all... And just like that...” Presumably he motions with a click of his fingers, but it is unheard. The thumping of the internal mic against Scott’s thigh frames the low serene voice of the man: “I swear I’ll never be one of the good ones like her.”
I felt my chair drop into a tailspin. My teeth were swaying with every breath I took. How long had you been handing me wine? “Thank you.” Fingers tangled around the base of the glass stem.
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“You acted like such a fool, you know,” you remarked somewhat casually. “I know. I’m sorry.” “You’re always sorry.” I nodded solemnly. Paused. “I know.” You smiled as I pinched the glass away from you. I sipped; you seemed pleased. Perhaps I’d misread the tone of our exchange. The coward core of my heart taps a clock-beat. You kissed me, remember? Your lips against my ear. Your breath passing through my skin to cool my spine. With a shallow pulse the wine is pulled into my blood. I hear you in the kitchen again. Your hair had been in a bun,
hadn’t it?
I followed into the kitchen, but the sounds were now missing. Then, in the garden, through the window panels of the kitchen door, I saw you. Your skirt hung across your waist with delicate poise. Your hair, in a bun, pulling the skin on your forehead back—scalp relaxing when you crinkled your brow. Your calf muscles bounced with the step of your sneakers. Your face in the sun was somehow unlike you—the colors of your skin mixing like pigment dropped into a tall glass of water. The voice continued faintly behind us: “She was a firecracker alright.” A firecracker? An easy term to marinade the
dead with. And him? A doorstop? Window sill? A pushpin? A paper cup?
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Wine lingered in my throat—I’d long since emptied the glass. A nap had tumbled over me, and with it I’d lost a certain sense of being. It was night now, or had it been already? I must have slept an hour or two. The screen was black, off now. I had been chasing a figure that spoke from within the flesh of the wall. Or, had it only been the peptic squishing of a meat-brain knocking about as I woke? The room... its details came over me. Parallels and tangents of furniture diagrammed—I saw the room from above, as a whole, and in details all at once: magazines folded open on the ottoman, that nasty armoire with its hulking ugly face, the paths we’d cut into the carpet. Overwhelmed, I cracked open my
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eyelids. A smile came over me thinking of the hollow lifetimes that had passed in the scuffle of a dream...such a cartoon to be alive. I shook it out of mind. Low lights struggled the details of our home. I searched for you but found only the wine. Refilled the glass. A touch above half. A salad waited on the edge of the counter. Moisture gathered at the edge of a glass, emptied of its liquid—you couldn’t have been far. Still, I searched to no result. Clicks and shuffles passed. The electricity of the television renewed; May’s face now consumed the whole seventy-two inch screen. They make them so large now, it felt silly looking at her like that. Almost pornographic. The video resumes—
May, alive now, traces the borders of the screen with sharp glances. Water gathers in pools around her eyes—sweat from an intense three-point lighting. Sharp. Bitter, bitter, bitter—licking it from her lips. She really was one of the good ones. Hair hangs from all angles, framing her stage make-up and skin. A script floats to the surface and a detached voice is heard: “From Scene 16, please. Just after the gun is fired.”
That voice. Again, the man from the funeral. I clung to the idea of what meaning it might have. Or had it not mattered? I couldn’t tell. I pulled back a mouthful of wine with a click.
May shuffles through coffee-stained papers. “Just after the candelabra falls?” “Mmm-hmm.” There is a separation in the quality of the voices. May’s voice sits on top, full and with a warm tone. The other is tinny and distant. A deep wind passes through the mic as the boom shuffles in and out of the shot. A stickiness pervades. Wiping her sweat away and staring past the camera, May readies herself. She reaches down for a glass of water, revealing the thin walls of a temporary office covered with head shots, locations and schedules. May takes down some water—feels it fall through her body in a cool wave. The dimension of her face flattens and pulls apart with the twist of the aperture. Her hand through her hair; loose strands cling to moist skin. She stares deeply, nods. Tongue and lips exchange a moment. Deep sigh.
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With a blink, the script and the fiction is seen on her face.“Haunted? I could never call our home such a candid thing, Archibald.” Her expressions and accent are unfamiliar—Welsh? Unrefined, nevertheless. She searches for it in her pauses. There is a disdain for the dialogue in her delivery. The detached voice, untrained as an actor, clunks through his lines. “Oh.. But it is you... who in your rage.. has broken the—the...bonds of our civility. It has long since been...been our home. I find now... that...it may not have...may never had...it had never was.” May snickers and the voice too. “My apologies.” May lifts her eyes to meet the source of the voice, lips splitting slowly. “The fields. I dream of the fields in my sorrow. Fury has come down on you, that you may never touch them again.” The voice, now entirely monotone: “Archibald falls to the ground, gripping the wound at his chest.” A pause—shuffling papers. “You always were...wild...where the wild never’d been welcomed.” He coughs. “Flames reach Archibald and the sounds of the house’s destruction...are heard.” “Archibald... Oh, my sweet Archie. When I came to the steps this morning...” May’s eyelid twitched with a nervous hope of the role, “I reached into my pocket for the key to the front door. It was all suddenly made clear. The key was— ” The voice interrupts, “So, a moment for the videographers. This is when beams of the house... are seen...falling...large surround-sound crashes. All the bullshit. It’s coming from the front of the theatre. The back of the theatre. The audience is in tears, the revenge plot is coming together. So—with that...we pull back to a wide view of the house and the fire and the destruction...we see the characters only as silhouettes. Just wanted to clarify. May, please continue.” “Of course.” She leans forward. “...Knowing that you’d be waiting for me as I stepped in...I—I touched the key, which I’d thought so much about in my weeks of captivity. And, when I felt it, I knew. I knew everything...You switched my key with the governess’. You betrayed me!” May smirks at the melodrama. “T’was...” The man coughs. “T’was.. the key in my heart... it had never...left our—” Tzzztt.
May’s expression was frozen against her will, her face pressed flat to the TV. I threw the remote against the cushions of the couch. There never is enough time in this life to stop rolling our eyes. I thought of Zara and her mutt sons, sticking their hands down their pants and sniffing each others’ fingers. My glass emptied again. I waited for you. GO PLACES GO PLACES GO PLACES GO PLACES GO PLACES GO PLACES GO PLACES GO PLACES
My hearing expanded—haunted by the kiss of detail. So many voices hissed from within the house. Pinpoint ticks and once-inaudible zzzzzzssssshuk sounds emerged. An auditory map of the house had generated, with unbearable specificity. I saw the kitchen with every tap and breath of the appliances. The drink in my body tickled my face—massaging between my eyes, as with a knuckle to the base of the nose. A lull and hardy sigh gave passage to a porous mind. My breath aligned with the house, my pulse with the furnace, the air with my blood. A chill passed through the base of my spine— with wind against the kitchen door, which lead from the driveway through the garden. The door, with its floundered eyes, stared in at me—watching me wait for you. And with another eye, through the porch light, it watched the night. Somewhere in that catalog of dark possibility, you lingered. And between the two, only the door could see the composite image for what it was. I tried to see both as the singular thing, as I could were I to diagram it. It was a simple equation: my waiting and your absence. But, one pushed to the top as the other sank. As with a spinning coin—only seeing the head, the tail or the blurred sphere. With a pull, my body lifted towards the door. Through it I could see the garden. All your supplies laid out in orderly formation. I could see you, your actions vibrating in the objects. Gently biting your lip, slapping prongs to the soil, your posture bending with the aches of the afternoon at work. The ache in your fingers sympathized in my own. The phone rang. I made a shuffle through the kitchen. Scott’s name appeared on the display. Reluctantly I reached out to the receiver, its featherweight startled me, and my hand lifted it just above my head. I’d compensated for the weight of a memory. A rotary, perhaps. “Hello?” Scott’s voice distorts and drops at the ends of sentences. “Hey ther—feeling alri—?” “Fine. Fine.” I tend towards a more serious tone, for some lost reason. A thought about you replays in my mind—you called me foolish. Again. Again. Again. “Any word from Zar—?” “Not since the wake.” I stared through the window. Blades of grass waved back. Lit by porch light—harsh, sterile, unnatural. An uneasiness came over me. The night bears down with the flatness and density of a wall. “I don’t know her as well as you do.”
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“It’s jus—” He searches for his breath. “She kept talking abou—About the way May... went. How poetic it wa— ” He sniffles. “I don’t know if it’s that simple, Scott.” My tone is deep and obtuse; the intimate setting of a call puts strange ideas in me. “It’s not as if all suicides are meant to be meaningful.” I listen to Scott’s throat open and close with staggered breath. The receiver crackles and crunches with hhhsszzsshhhh sounds. “She’s taking it pretty har—” “Who?” “Zara!” “Oh.” The significance of her sorrow was lost on me. The implications entirely unnoticed. Drugs maybe? It’s usually
drugs with the clever rich women...booze with the ugly ones...Pills beget metaphors, metaphors beget metaphors within metaphors. Probably pills. I smirked. A pause—Scott’s breathing hastens. He asks reluctantly, “Have you seen the footag—?” He figures if I haven’t mentioned it, compliments aren’t likely to follow. I pause—which expands beyond my intent. I expect myself to talk. But, can’t. “Oh, I figured you’d say more...” I bluff. I’m sure he notices. “Have you ye—?” “Of course.” My voice raises nearly half an octave. It must already be obvious I’m about to lie. “It’s strong groundwork. Very strong.” He warms up, “Thank Yo—” The compliment melts his suspicions. “The other footage on the video...” I lean into a question. “Oh, the screen tes—” His voice brightens further. “May’s director gave it to m—Says he’s interested in my projec—” “Wonderful, Scott.”
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Caverns unfold into canyons. My tired eyes generalized the grain of the wood on the kitchen cabinets. Granular flicks of ultraviolet, or a faux-ultraviolet, fill the lost information. I see tomorrow. Explicit details flush through me, pushing aside the wine, pushing aside the air.
In the parking lot, while Scott adjusts his tie in the mirror of a car, I’ll wonder where you went. Scott and I will step into the non-denominational chapel attached to the civic center. My mind will cluster. The room has an instant familiarity. I was
meant to be here, or, I was meant to believe so. As in a dream—Had had to have been here before. The service will have already started when we arrive. Music will steam from a stereo at the end of the alter. “I can’t see anything,” Scott will moan, pushing the camera above the heads in front of us. “Shit, what do I do?” He’ll fidget with his thoughts, impotently. “I don’t care.” I’ll say. A sigh—the parking lot will linger in my thoughts. I’ll turn around. An older woman will match her eyes with mine—her attitude spilling off the edges of her face. Her hair, matted to her head, the pores of her skin clogged with the stink of perfume. I’ll assert a sense of superiority, which will cause me to straighten my spine and adjust the muscles in my shoulders to a relaxed position. Had she really stepped in later than we had? My thoughts will cloud, glancing at the side of Scott’s face, or thinking a hole through the urn at the center of the room. An urn filled with May—who yesterday could be held, but now only spilled. I turn away from the woman and the thought. A blip-beep chimes from Scott’s side, signaling a ‘record’ prompt—he’ll execute, satisfied despite his poor vantage point. There, I’ll see the pastor for the first time—a trembling matchstick of a man in the viewfinder flip-screen. His voice, heard from within the walls through hidden speakers, will preach staccato thoughts: “Not long on this earth... forever burns her candle...” His elderly legs twist in knots at his knees. The body in the screen and the voice in the walls converge and separate, flickering with my strain to combine them together. “And so we pray...” Drywall screws buzz in the walls with a treble. “...And here, in the house that god has made, May has found her peace.” Scott’s eyes will fill with a pool of tears. I’ll be surprised. The small pastor in the flip-screen will quake with Scott’s blubbering sorrow. The pastor’s voice in the walls will strip its tension, a nervousness slipping away. Sorrow and divinity glow in the mourners—he will hide a smile, content at having sang for his supper. I will battle to see beauty and meaning in May’s death but a winding impurity will overtake me. Such capable deceptions and unmatched fathoms tunnel from within. A ping in my stomach will tighten, pulling my groin muscles and my heart to a point to be pinned together. GO PLACES GO PLACES GO PLACES GO PLACES GO PLACES GO PLACES GO PLACES GO PLACES
I’ll think of you. Turning around again, the woman’s face will unfocus, the world behind her sharpening. Weightless shapes and blurs will become cars. You’ll wait for me—I see you, just visible, in the humidity, lying across the hood. From my perspective you amount to three pinholes, but in those alone I could swim in a lifetime of thoughts. I’ll step out of my chair into the aisle. Zara will look up at me and I will fill with shame, averting my eyes from hers. In the gray sparkle of air that gaps the space between us, I sense she’d do anything to follow. The ceramic urn anchors my anxieties, seeming to grow as my field of vision narrows around it. Scott will capture footage of my taking leave, though the drama will be unseen. No sweat, no tantrum, no hysterics, no nausea—after all, what good would my actions have been, knowing that the world will have survived them? I’ll step out. A surge of light will have temporarily blinded me. The car, your legs hanging over the headlights, the pavement which fills the spaces between and around the shapes of your silhouette—they’ll all have disappeared in the moments passing through the chapel doors and down the shallow steps. A squinted world will rebuild its structures from lost information. Peeling your body from the hood, you will have stood up and walked three quarters of the distance between us. Your arms lifting from your sides in somber sympathy or exhaustion, your eyes lifting the weight of its lids with a flutter. Hair will fall from your shoulders as you walk—I’ll watch it bounce with your step.
“You ther—?” Scott’s voice pulls me from the thought. “Yeah, I’m here Scott.” The door stares in at me, smugly.
Hhhsszzsshhhh. A long breath. Scott pulls a thought from his throat: “She kept telling me in those last few days tha—Well, that she didn’t recognize anything anymor—” His breath became hoarse. “I can’t wrap my head around i—How she just flickered ou—” The refrigerator buzzes. Keys lay spread like petals on the kitchen table. A dark manner of life surrounds them— a mocking glow. How long had you been standing in the hallway? A romance of a thousand strangers blurs through your expression. Where your legs met the floor, a pool of shadows held you up. GO PLACES GO PLACES GO PLACES GO PLACES GO PLACES GO PLACES GO PLACES GO PLACES
HANNAH RAINE BRENNER-LEONARD online dating
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AMANDA WARD Secret Garden Every day she is in the backyard Clipping branches and Raking leaves into little piles even if it’s raining and Offering sangria. She is smiling and Cooking pork shoulder in an odorous garlic sauce and Planning parties and Hanging Christmas lights and paper lanterns in the yard. She is going back to school and Buying a convertible and Getting drunk, drunk, drunk in the City (Where she will lose her voice for three days) and She is coming home to herself. She is coming home to thumping house music (Sometimes singing to an ubiquitous Puerto Rican dance beat) and Staying up until 5 AM and Waking up at 6 AM and Calling her sister in the middle of the day (When she thinks her neighbors are gone) and Screaming. Screaming in Spanish. Screaming in Arabic. Sometimes screaming in English (less comfortable, less fluent). She is fighting her (ex)husband for possession of her dog and Crying out for friends and sisters and uncles to visit and Always, always clipping branches and Cooking pork shoulder in odorous garlic sauce and She is making it on her own. Just like when she ran away from home. Almost exactly like when she ran away from home.
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THERESA DOUGLASS Holiday Portrait/ 12 weeks
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SAMSON CLYDE LEONARD You look just like a sunshine to me Your flower dress is a pretty dress and the dust storms only make it nicer flapping like a dirty rag You look just like a sunshine Your hair of curls and your ruffed up fingers feel nice to me the dust storms only make you prettier ragged with a dirty flap of skin
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ATHENA PAPPAS It’s a Sunday Afternoon Drive The kids packed into the car like index card recipes, each one in its designated place. Cindy and Michael in car seats, too cozy to understand. My mother in the front seat examining the dark. It’s a Sunday afternoon drive on a Saturday night. Let’s go find Daddy, her mother says. Maybe she makes it a game: spot his car at the one pool hall or that woman’s house. My mother still thinks he might come home at night. Maybe she drives: make her babies still as the leftover meatloaf still warming in the oven.
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EILEEN HILLERY
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JESSE KING Fruition no one taught me to write, i've learned through the pain of self-correction; it's the same way with love; i can scratch something out but it still exists. maybe after i've died this will become beautiful and a joy forever
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GORDON HOLDEN
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JAMES SCALES Night I. There is a hunt always itching at the boundaries: like being born, it is like a thing you say but can’t take back. You’re always talking. If you go outside consider the stars, forever getting heavier with silence, pregnant with fury, with volume, too distant to make tonight any warmer. II. You want to hide your tricks a little bit, hide yourself in that other face, inside. Aren’t you always running in to it, to eyes that cancel your expression because they didn’t match up to parts already written by your head? It’s not that cold out yet, although the wind in the city gets big down the streets, and maybe the thrum of the neighboring highway adds a chill. Maybe it’s time to go somewhere near less people:
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PAUL STEWART Red Agenda
It started with good intentions, simplify things, pair complications down to the bare shape. It was going well till one day I went out to talk to the shape, lovely how we were getting along, the relationship seemed to be progressing. I did the usual wind the machine up to turn the shape on and the nice round shape decided to not be round, the fucker bit me. I pulled back, but not before my little finger on my left hand was severed, dangling by a flap of skin. Now don't ask why I should fall for a shape that would turn on me like that. It's not like that really, there is love we were just refining the way we get along, and the finger was sewn back on, quite well actually. Being out of round was a temporary situation, I put the shape back to round. But I took the opportunity to paint the shape with my blood, there was so much, the shape liked it and I found the color red quite becoming, the way red complements the back spots. Shape and I have a bond now that was unforeseen when we started.
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TERIN TALARICO Heart Pillow Two things I've never had: a boyfriends tee shirt and an obscene Valentine's Day present. Northglenn, CO: 18 May 2010
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Ocean Beach “And the sky grew bright as tin.” Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping Self portrait, Ocean Beach, San Diego, CA: 4 July 2011
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SARAH LIPMAN
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MARCY B. FREEDMAN Oranges and Bananas
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JESSE CATALDO Satsuma These seeds are like gravel, Picked out of worn heels; Birdshot tweezed from greasy wounds, Plinking tooth-heavy in the bowl. Juice colorless and sticky. Pulp clinging like moss On waterlogged stones And so the tangerines failed Invalidating the sale price Erasing the sunshine promise of their skin Joining other cursed products Of a defective earth Loquats pregnant with rotten pits Prickly pears. Papaya struck with jungle rot. I give you the rest In a cloth bag, printed with other produce, Friendlier fruits with pristine flesh And you line them in a row On the shelf above your bed The sharp smell of citrus Hanging in the air
In these quiet moments And others Awake at 7 with the light frail outside Your head under my arm It’s important to remember them there To recall that We are not pomegranates With syrupy grenadine blood Baubley crimson arils Tissue that smudges soft when pressed The things inside us are hard Flecked knobs of bone, Lost tabs of gristle rattling like marbles through a maze The dying nodes that teeter In time-bomb equilibrium On either sides of stomachs, Like fat seatmates on International flights Their heads lie on our shoulders Their breath heavy in our ears But they are not asleep
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