NEAR RHYME APR 3 2014 cuss issue
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alex broadwell chris morgan yuna winter anna posey katherine osborne neal anderson leena danawala grace millard tate dorvinen gnives
4 ALEX BROADWELL
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8 CHRIS MORGAN
Channeling Something For Jesse Prado
A man is digging deep within himself, pulling forth monsters from his chest to cast over his shoulder into his room. He is channeling something, he thinks, drawing on all that he’s seen —he hasn’t found the scariest form yet. After all, monsters are his forte. A hairy thing crawls across a bubbling thing, while a hissing thing bites into a howling thing. The man notices none of this. Instead, each monster reminds him that behind each summoned form, something worse remains unseen.
10 CHRIS MORGAN
My Doppelganger, The Furnace For Bob Schofield
When my double enters a room, everything gets pulled inside his raging mouth. His maw is like a fireplace, or an oven. Or a burning building with people dangling from their windows. My double is like a nastier version of myself. Or he’s kinder, granting people removal when stuff gets awkward. I’m really not too sure. My double takes my girlfriend out when I’m not around. He makes her laugh, then burns down the diner. My double knows how to take and take and take.
12 CHRIS MORGAN
Under Control
I set my shadow loose upon the playground again. I’m sorry—never been a winner. Mothers and fathers scrambled for their little rascals. Some fell inside the darkness, swallowed like sweet potato fries. Others got trapped in endless shadow puppet showdowns with my many tendrils, only to (obviously) lose. All the while I tried to get myself under control. But the children thought the whole thing was a hoot. Can’t blame them. Little monsters.
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16 YUNA WINTER
Black Forest Ham On Crying Anthropomorphizing Things
in grade 3 i called a girl named sophie hamm, sophie ‘black forest’ hamm because she had said something mean to me and she told the teacher and the teacher made me write her a letter of apology. later in the locker room when we were at the swimming pool for the swimming portion of our PE class she told me she didn’t forgive me.
when i was 3 or 4 at kobau park near the river i was on the swings with my mom and we were talking about my dead dad and i was crying and making a lot of noise and my mom was crying silently and i told her that i wished i could cry silently too and she told me that the reason adults cry silently is because they have had a lot of practice.
when i was little i would anthropomorphize objects, specifically the residual fallen out hairs left in the bathtub. once i burned my finger on the metal of drainage hole of the bathtub trying to make sure all the hairs went down the drain together because i imagined them as a family and didn’t want the ‘baby’ hair to be left by the ‘mama’
18 ANNA POSEY
18 20 KATHERINE OSBORNE David
He’s in a tree telling my sister and I that he’s so bored,
he’s whistling. he’s throwing sticks. he’s in the car driving across Colorado drinking a beer. he’s telling me we don’t have snow tires. he’s feeling nervous going to his moms house. he’s squeezing ketchup all over himself and asking if I want him dead, and we’re laughing and I’m getting paper towels. get up, I said, just get up. we weren’t laughing. he’s smoking a cigarette outside and I watch him bring it to his own arm. he’s walking toward the river. he’s picking at his face. he’s stopping the car in the middle of traffic. he is doing a backward flip over a fence. he’s throwing me in snow. he’s spending too much time watching road work. I watch with him. he’s swearing into his palms. he’s nervous. he tells me I make him calm. he’s telling me he sees his moms’ face over road signs when he drives. he says things haven’t been the same for him since she died. he keeps seeing her smiling face in his dreams and wakes up screaming. he’s holding me or holding me down. we’re in an apartment. palm trees. I’m worried about the approaching storm. he is not. when we fight I tell him let’s drive. he doesn’t like silence so he makes up games. “tell me an invention.” I can’t think of one. he’s flicking ashes out the window. he’s saying, “fuck, katherine. you’re always somewhere else.” he’s blocking the door with just his eyes. I’m in a court room because he tried to choke a girl. I’m sitting next to him, I’m there because he asked me to be. He takes me to the San Diego Zoo hours later. he has that look again; walking toward gorillas. I’m telling him I’m not scared. I’m scared. he’s chasing me with a butter knife through the only two rooms we had. he’s eight years old with a broken arm being carried by his father across a soccer field to the hospital. he drives away. he’s at his father’s grave. he said, “would you go to my funeral?” I said, “Of course, I would.”
22 NEAL ANDERSON
Trash Talkin’
24 LEENA DANAWALA
Words We Never Say
i told her, there are words that cause disquiet in our minds; a rebellion, a retraction into self. (some people don’t like the word ‘moist,’ did you know?) ’vulnerable’ is a shaky tremble on my lips, a lisp; can never pronounce it right; its syllables trip over each other, the lull of the “L” like heavy sugar on my tongue, pressing and holding it still, lullaby, lull, lush, hush, say goodnight. but never that word. it makes it all too real.
24 26 LEENA DANAWALA
Beekeeper
mama, there are bees under my skin, in hoards, like a hive; they long for honey, for nectar, and they buzz in frantic patterns, in frantic circles, in my head, in the marrow of my bones. itching, like some great rash; sleeping over my skin, they cover every inch of me. and i fear moving lest they sting— and mama, here they move in my ears, i don’t want to listen to all the ways, never want to hear them whisper their jeers, if i close my eyes, it almost feels like i’ve been here before. their patterns imprinted on the insides of eyelids; they flutter and ebb like the uneasiest of eyes in dreams, i open my mouth, and here they fly. darkness in swarming masses, i can feel their hives in my throat and their stingers in my lungs. mama, i am afraid to breathe. mama, there are bees in my head. they toss their small bodies against skull and tissue, and i close my mind to stop from hearing their noise.
28 LEENA DANAWALA
On Building a Home With Your Own Bones
an immigrant has to start at home but i find i have never known my starting point. is it my mother’s womb? the curl of her hand around mine, unfurling my life before me like the ribbons she used to tie in my hair. she brought forth the honey color to my skin and the width to my hips, the smile touching my lips. but she is not the beginning; i only started to find my own bones after leaving the touch of hers. two feet alone, at first, his thunder called me home; the dreary warmth of his arms, like a rainstorm in mid july. he wrecked and rebuilt me into brand new sky. and now his storm is gone, and now i am water proof. here is a clear sky, and i think it is me. forming from the foam and fog of past seasons. i am not home yet. instead, i think of myself as a lost soul, a pair of lonely feet. when i was younger, i always bought shoes half a size too big, hoping i would grow into them. i never did. this time i try to find shoes that fit.
30 GRACE MILLARD
32 TATE DORVINEN
34 GNIVES
Pollex
Index
Digitus III
. you tell me you hate the word c-u-n-t way too many times over wine fatal tropes in a plum finger don’t fuck a girl when she’s bleeding, they say don’t haul a mare to the roadside fuck her when she’s down the truth is harlots are lions but no, yr leftovers yr dirty dishes only a vessel otherhow
. ego acupuncture you poor boys she wanted to light her own cigarette so you wrote about her and it we’ll make each other angry drown in the double-take “typical masculine cultures” lexical kamikaze karmacleanse me a divine obelisk between warped knees wrap vocal keen and filter the need
. second-handed scherzo frenula i call it shock value cold water on crown chakra find a rock to live under or Apan Vayu Mudra yr fifty two in a twenty one ungrow the fuck up
Digitus IV
Pinky
. look, we’re family dinners we’re anti-inflammatory Recommended Daily Intake rhetoric understudy believe us in that appeasing is for fuckboys take me home to yr mother and we’ll wash Her tongue out when it comes to lye i’m quite the ambidex in the apply
. you and the heavy hair heavy auto-forum latitudinally loud, maledictive timbre you slunk unfucked brittled i like fodder in a honey cell buy me a cider and i’ll think about it
36 ALEX BROADWELL
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