insert lit mag here
issue six//november 2014
INVISIBLE WARS
from your guest editor When Julia asked me to come up with the theme, I immediately thought of “Invisible Wars”. In my government class, we were talking about how the media tends to cover stories with the biggest “shock value”, the ones with violence, fear, and deaths. They don’t always talk about the the lives lost to depression, eating disorders, addictions, or the souls lost to internal struggles. Every day, we fight against society’s expectations, and we fight internal battles within ourselves. I wanted to capture the battles we don’t hear about as often, the ones that don’t make it in the news or our history textbooks. It was such a pleasure working with Julia and being able to read poetry from such wonderful poets. -Van Nguyen (http://angryasianfeminist.tumblr.com/)
this issue is full of work on the theme of invisible wars. it's work that shares personal struggle and inner confLict. Do you love this magazine? help keep us going and listen to us speak by downloading our compilation album at chippedtoothpress.bandcamp.com
the cover art of this issue is by garrett brickell. Our Literary editor is Julia Alexander Our Art Editor is Kayla Savage
i am not doomed Andrea McEntire when i imagined what i would be like when i grew up i thought of the sea. i wanted to be gigantic--i wanted to be everything. i wanted to consume whatever i was poured into and i wanted to ingest everyone who told me ‘no’. i wanted to be the ocean blue. but things don’t always turn out like you imagine them when you’re small, ya know? tell me where it hurts he said and i tore off the skin around my chest to show my wounded beating heart. here. it hurts here. he took my heart, furrowing his brows and quickly dropped it on his desk. looks like you’ve got a case of bipolar disorder. sinking. all i remember is sinking--sinking into a deep pit of quicksand and never coming out to see the sun or the clouds or the sky or the moon. nothing. everything turned into nothing soon after that. you’re on the wrong medication for bipolar disorder. ok. you’re not living the right life for bipolar disorder--ok, like, look, can you stop saying it like cancer? like it’s gonna ruin my life? it’s not. i will get through this cloud. i will dig myself out of this hole i’ve fallen in. i will not drown in the sea i wanted to be. like, look, sometimes i’m gonna erode the land around me and sometimes there’s gonna be a drought and maybe even an oil spill but i will not let myself be any less than what i’m meant to be. i will devour you in a riptide if you tell me that bipolar disorder will hinder my chances of being loved, of being successful. yes, it will be tough, but whoever said that the ocean lived an easy life anyway? Andrea McEntire is a 19 year old living in a horrid town in Washington state. She fills the void in her life with words. She would love to move to Seattle or somewhere big someday with the one who holds her heart and a corgi. Andrea also has a writing blog, and posts when she feels like it (which is often): thesaltwithinyourskin.tumblr.com.
Road Warriors Sonia Lopez We rip East across the dirty face of town Like muddy raindrops hurtling across a rainy windshield. Speeding to our crack-of-dawn-jobs Sleepy eyed, and the first ones to arrive early. We repeat the same day To the point of exhaustion Deliberate and delusional While the whole town dreams We swerve and nearly collide Into each other every morning, Risking our legs and arms Before we ricochet into flaming ropes Driving back home across town Speeding under the blanketing darkness licking at our heels.
Sonia Lopez is a 7th grade English Teacher in Houston,Texas. Born and raised in Houston, Sonia lives with her two rescue dogs Charlie and Little Peach.
Thirsting mark dimaisip I’ve downed a bottle in less than half a minute, thinking that if I get to the bottom of it I will find my answers as quickly as I swallowed my inhibitions and pride but while drowning my sadness in alcohol, I’ve drowned myself first. I woke up with a headache splitting as schizophrenia meets multiple personality, shot glasses still lined up like elliptical ellipses running on run-on sentences glass stains from lips pronounced with questions and half-empty answers to Why? and What now? But I am still thirsting so I drank like a fish out of fresh water, never gasping for air, and each of my tentacles
reached for a solution poured them over my head, my neck and my shoulders where gills came true slugging the make-believe. Mark, 29, is from the Philippines. He is an HR Professional and a graduate of Ateneo de Manila University. When he is not conducting workshop, managing organizational change or designing communication plans, he scribbles what he calls poetry.
A poem for every 200 miles between my chest and yours Keely M. Shinners 1-200 miles The last time you kissed me, sunshine was honey and milk on our necks. You told me you loved me more than tiger lilies and lemon water and August breeze. The last time you kissed me, we did not cry. 201-400 miles When I think of you, I imagine my head against your chest, records spinning softly between forehead kisses and the coos of midnight doves. The songs are getting softer, but I remember the dull thumping of your heartbeat. 401-600 miles Between sheets, you told me my forest fire eyes set you howling at the moon. 24 nights of new moon, and you told me that what you miss most is the feel of my skin. 601-800 miles When I look to the stars for their solace, I am reminded that their light is only a memory from a silent time. When I told you you had stars in your eyes, I didn’t mean I wanted you gone.
801-1,000 miles Sometimes I feel waves in my belly, twenty-foot thrusts of water that shock me into silence. I always think of you, then. You never let me drown. 1,001-1,200 miles It is 4:08 am and I am drunk in longing for your touch. Would Eve have swallowed the forbidden fruit if she had to drive 31 hours to taste it? 1,201-1,400 miles I am holding my own hand and trying to remember the feel of yours. My bones are breaking searching for where you used to be. 1,401-1,600 miles There are bruises on the places where your hands used to fall. When will you return to heal me? 1,601-1,800 miles I am growing tired of these sad love songs. 1,801-2,000 miles Where is home? 2,000-2,018 miles The last time you kissed me, we did not cry, but there is no rain that can calm a shattering. Keely Shinners is a writer/poet based in Claremont, California. Her work can be found in [in]Visible Magazine and Insert Lit Mag Here. Contact keelyshinners@gmail.com for more information.
Double VIsion Ellen Hao moon-dust shudders under pillowed feet and they are swimming in a sea of stars pale blue dot behind them galaxies in front never looking back enveloped in a universe unknown my mom sits at the couch and dad walks the dogs every three hours suburbia slinking into the slopes of loose shoulders bit by bit, the sun takes back its mortgaged light until they are just two shadows sitting in the rays of another sunday afternoon the truth is that space is full of sound blasting symphonies and bone-thrumming rhythms the hurtling screams of forgotten shuttles plunging through a black night the glitter of tinkling asteroids like raindrops hitting windowpanes and the howling of bereft planets abandoned by lost suns my dad forgets how to say the word astronaut the english tangles his tongue, hides behind his teeth I can see the words peeling off of him and leaving for the sky
the secret is that you can learn how to hear space the catch is that once you leave, it’s gone, left, in the hollow cavern of a soundless space my mother has vertigo swears that sometimes the room tilts, drops, latches onto the horizon and lets her free-fall I can see her now: weightless plunging through cold metal shells thrusting past glittering dials pale fires in twin eyes the carpet sleeps under slippered feet and the air settles as the sun sinks but sometimes when the wind blows just so and the light catches just right I can see the dust in their smiles and the stars in their eyes
Ellen Hao is currently studying her last year of high school in Hong Kong. She’s not that into long walks on the beach but can understand why other people dig it.
Heels and Jesus rachael McGowan I got my heels and Jesus and no one else I breathe flecking fire and bruised dragon pelts, Under she stands, she is I, Under the mosaics crass glass, Cut and sharpened like rainbow dye Non Earthy delights, my Lord! I stand I stand under this shine of montage, Of medley, of mixture, of muse, Of man-tage, Of mating light In the silvered walls of this holy buildings blight, The mosaics on me and over me and in me, The fuchsia, the mulberry, the tyrian cast Like a dream on me from the sun of the past In that divine and achy assortment, the nine ashes Of Kulshedra threw a thunderstorm into the Spring Sky, a helluva bling up to the bulls eye, up Lost in Hollywood, The Opera hood, I’d withstood In Santa Monica, In Victoria, awaiting the fall of I, And now here I, I stand in the holy wait, waiting for age and wrinkles With little to amuse and move me but the twinkles Of the soul candles and Western sunset souvenirs That shout, “come on Cowboy and light the fire” Just gotta light a fire against my Hollywood Boulevard and the loomy loneliness will leave me. I stand, alone, like a juggernaut in heels losing oxygen Dressed as a nun from lesbian and gun pornography
Like a film noir flick flicking at something not the film, Well the mosaics over me asserts me Of sin and washes me, too I stand on the pulpit with nothing to do, Hoping for a bulky bullet so I can start a new This handsome heaven within Kulshedra’s wing Is glamorous, the most gorgeous thing, but, My crimes have me alone in this podium, but I have my heels and Jesus and surely that’s all I need. Rachael is an aspiring writer from England, when she is trying to not make ends meet or is on a couch crawl she often sits down to write.
Quietly Garrett Brickell Behind hastily locked doors (we are the) shedding useless fluids (strongest souls) beneath tangled bedsheets (bearing the) suffocating in security (weakest hearts) Garrett Brickell is a budding artist from Montana. He listens to a lot of music and makes a lot of things. Sometimes he posts these things here: boringecstasy.tumblr.com
Flash Miranda Roehler Three shots were fired. The world was interrupted as it turned.
In downtown Dallas. Roses of crimson red were pushed aside to make room for pieces that would shatter.
More details have just arrived... Explosion. Commotion. Emotion.
The wounds...could be fatal. Bloodstains on pink Chanel.
The flash... a man
At 1 PM... became a legend. Miranda Roehler is a senior undergraduate student studying Creative Writing and History at The University of Findlay in Findlay, Ohio. At The University of Findlay Miranda serves as the prose editor for the university’s national literary magazine Slippery Elm. Miranda’s poetry has been published in print in The University of Findlay’s campus-wide literary magazine From the Writers’ Kitchen.
Sunday July 28th 2013 1:41am "I Am a Cancerous Nothing" brian Strauss I am Nothing Have done nothing Love nothing That’s a lie,
Because I’ve been in love all my life. I am infectiousness Lingering about the sole Spiritual sores adorning the soul Sorely missing the point Never feigning so, Only mellowing in barrels brimmed with ignorance. Annoying ignorance Childlike temperament. Oh god, how I would kill to That’s not right is it, So why do it? It’s not as if All I ever wanted was to be a Stop talking.
You must really like to hear yourself speak. Stop talking, You club me Stalking top. I am a foolish man, To have thought otherwise.
But she a foolish woman,
For some reason I can’t think of, I am dead. Brian Strauss is a poet interested in exploring the emotional spatiality of poetry through the use of aesthetic narrative and metamodernist tendencies. His poetry is steeped in sincerity and detachment, oscillating wildly between the notion of self and implied author.
limits of the patriarchy Max Mundan
Because your cunt compels us we will spill rivers of blood and spunk to paint your image in sickness and spasm
Because your cunt compels us we will bend ourselves into a sculpture of meat and defeat as a concrete panegyric Because your cunt compels us we will compose great songs and stories of hunger and frenzy to beseech your blessing We have the power All the power Except over this momentous cunt and this one imperfection is driving us mad
Because your cunt compels us we will browbeat you into submission and subjugate you to our inadequacy Max Mundan is the alter ego of poet/provocateur David Rutter . Or is it the other way around? Max Mundan is far from certain. He has been published in a slew of magazines and literary journals, including The Metric, Vagabonds, Dressing Room Poetry Journal, Eunoia Review, the Stone Path Review, Agave, Typehouse Magazine and the Los Angeles Times, to name but a few. He operates popular websites at maxmundan.com and maxmundan.tumblr.com.
Forgiveness Garrett Brickell Keep regrets in your pockets. (Mouth is numb.) Finally forgive the stars. (Heart is full.) Never roll down your sleeves. (Breathe it in.) Garrett Brickell is a budding artist from Montana. He listens to a lot of music and makes a lot of things. Sometimes he posts these things here: boringecstasy.tumblr.com
Wandering
Michael J. Duross My eyes search the stars for answers to questions I never asked, Yet I grasped with reflexes in this, a moment, Filled in blinding arrays of unfamiliar sights and sounds, In an all too familiar place and time I had waved goodbye to. Not a tear shed in the absence of days now past, yet the lingering silence of an empty day, grows stale In the face of millions too far to reach but close enough to see, Coming and going, Waiting for an arrival, of reason to grace my presence. Its embrace I welcomed, Welcomed that which I now realize I had searched for with sight but naught thought, As I forgot in a lapse of movement, when stopped by, in truth, Nothing but the cell I left myself within. Keyless and clueless of where I stood, when where I stand is exactly where I should, When and while I am here, existing. This writer lives in America. He enjoys short walks and the snow. If you’d like to read more of his work, visit: mike-writer.tumblr.com
Chardonnay Bianca Martin remember the night that i drank three bottles of cheap white wine all by myself during the floods that ravaged brisbane for a week you tried to call me like ten times stuck on the other side of the river while i had passed out oblivious to everything and when i woke up the next morning sore and sorry i saw your messages and for the first time realised that you loved me
Bianca Martin is a writer and musician living in Melbourne, Australia. She plays in a feminist punk band and curates Miniatures Zine. She tweets @beeeeonka and blogs at oldcarsdontgoveryfast.tumblr.com
red Keely M. Shinners A woman knows the color red better than an astronomer knows Orion’s belt. Red is the first color a woman knows— her first glimpse of life is the crimson shelter of her mother’s womb. Red is the last color a woman sees— her heartstrings unravel in glorious shades of scarlet behind her tired eyes. There is red cascading from a woman’s thighs, red in a ring of fire around a woman’s eye, red in the roses blooming on a woman’s cheeks as she works her bronzing hands in the hot sun. There is red on the naked woman’s typewriter and red in the sand between the artist woman’s toes. Whether in acrylic paint or in warrior’s blood, red gleams triumphantly on a woman’s fingernails. Still, after thousands of years of a woman’s savage war, a woman’s ferocious disease, men with no faces tried to soften the woman’s legs. They gave her corsets to tighten, gave her casseroles to cook, and, worst of all, tried to paint her red hands over with white. They splattered carnation all over her crimson heart and wrapped her daughter’s blood-soaked body in rosy satin. The painted her walls and her lips and the curve of her hips with the softness they expected from underneath her tongue. Centuries of strong women drenched in pomegranate juice and they told woman that her color was pink. Women, reclaim the red pulsing through your veins—
wear it proudly beneath your knowing eyes, paint it in blood over your doorways, smear it across your loud lips, pour it unashamedly from between your legs, howl its words to the full, orange face of the harvest moon. Paint the sunset with the sanguine nectar of your arteries. Never let them forget the color of your blood. Keely Shinners is a writer/poet based in Claremont, California. Her work can be found in [in]Visible Magazine and Insert Lit Mag Here. Contact keelyshinners@gmail.com for more information.
feeling
Garrett Brickell
drawing
nostalgia-ing Garrett Brickell
Driveways, tire swings dead trees, fresh paint smoke rings & skinny jeans ash marks & bleach stains poor talk, poor thoughts long faces, long years the people & places the fears & the shit that clogs up your throat.
Garrett Brickell is a budding artist from Montana. He listens to a lot of music and makes a lot of things. Sometimes he posts these things here: boringecstasy.tumblr.com
h2o
If you hold me, I will sift through your fingers.
mark dimaisip
If you let me be, I will drift away to the sun. I am falling. I am falling. But not for you. Mark, 29, is from the Philippines. He is an HR Professional and a graduate of Ateneo de Manila University. When he is not conducting workshop, managing organizational change or designing communication plans, he scribbles what he calls poetry.
Scared Grace Tallmadge The scariest thing about anorexia Is not the look. It is not shoulder blades jutting out, knives that could slice meat It is not xylophone ribs, doorknob elbows It is not teeth going soft Lips cracked like a wine glass and skin Awash-and-pockmarked with self-hatred It is not rosy scars on reedy wrists Or flower-stem thighs, growing so far apart You can see the galaxies in between them; It is not empty eyes, deer in dim headlights Watching the life in the mirror fade And wishing it would just go faster. The scariest thing about anorexia Is not the feel, The aching cold that permeates your hips And dances on your flesh, It is not the wrathful tears That pour from every orifice At midnight or noon Or when the sun refuses to rise again – It is not the voice That sometimes sings, sometimes whispers, Always screams YOU’RE NOTHING It is not the fear, the shaking, bone-crunching rocks in your mouth I’ll have an iced water, please The way your friends blink at you,
“You gonna eat that?” It is not the absence of hunger That sits like lead in your stomach, It is not the absence of color That filters through your every word You’re nothing It is not the crippling, gasping, head-over-porcelain panic That someone knows you’re ugly When nobody thinks to tell you That the person is yourself — You’re nothing — It is not the loss Of your bloodstains, your white-knuckle fight, your brokenness and hope So you just smile, I’m fine But you’re nothing It is not the shivering in your own bedroom Or the sink overflowing with all thoughts you can’t hold back Or the hair detaching itself from you, Escaping from the body that you can’t and Swimming down the shower drain, It is not the words cut into your skin and written on your cheekbones Nothing — and that’s all you want to be, Disappear when you turn sideways Nothing It is not the way your mother’s voice slips As she flings cans of pasta sauce at you And cries after you slam the door; It is not the way your father never laughs, Or the way your sister edges around you, fingertip-to-fingertip Like if she touches you, you’ll break It is not feeling like you are already breaking every damn second
And just holding yourself together With a gorgeous fucking lie You’re nothing It is not losing everything That used to make your life yours, The boy who listened to you sing and kissed your forehead at prom The friends who trusted you with eyelash wishes The family who never had a reason not to trust you – Now it is only the strangers who tell you They wish they were as thin as you And you just bang your head against the shower door Screaming “no, no, no, I take it back I take it back” But you can’t go back Because you’re lovely now, it’s better now You’re nothing YOU’RE NOTHING
YOU’RE NOTHING No. The scariest thing about anorexia Is standing in the kitchen, Two years clean Two years free With an orange in your hand, Thinking, It would be so easy To do it all again. Grace Tallmadge is a seventeen-year-old aspiring writer from Milwaukee, WI. She likes long baths, caramel lattes, and gender equality.
someone has placed tears in their eyes Ellen hao it is 10:31pm and i am ready for bed somewhere in central a girl is washing tear gas out of her friend’s eyes and kenneth hasn’t moved for 4 hours he is stuck where the gas first bloomed and the tears first choked but there is the silence of a photo balanced between bun the cutest dog and a beluga smiling behind the glass screen someone has been shot they have been shot the rubber leaves scars its signature its mark a circle of police around a circle of students around a tree eyes balanced on blue collars watching a girl take a piss the road is rumbling and clouds are bursting from the ground billowing out into night skies swarming through men and encircling lovers she is just trying to see his face trying to get him to look her in the eyes ‘look at me’ she says ‘stare me down before you shoot me down’ and then — red, red, red it is 10:31pm and i am ready for bed Ellen Hao is currently studying her last year of high school in Hong Kong. She’s not that into long walks on the beach but can understand why other people dig it.
Conversations with a Mathematician mark dimaisip
You are a statistic. Everybody is. Exactly. How many days have you lived? 10,332 days. Of those, how many have you truly lived? How many times have you loved? Including family and friends? 20? 50? I never counted. How could you not count the people you love? How big is your world? What do you mean? Same as yours. We live in the same universe. I meant your world. How big is it? A soul weighs 21 grams. That was discredited. A soul should weigh more than that. In that case, what is the weight of your soul? What is your number? I don’t understand. Everybody has one. I don’t want to be quantified. You are a statistic. Everybody is. Exactly.
Mark, 29, is from the Philippines. He is an HR Professional and a graduate of Ateneo de Manila University. When he is not conducting workshop, managing organizational change or designing communication plans, he scribbles what he calls poetry.
N. Keely M. Shinners You are fifteen and the world has never lied to you. Your body is filled with blooming promises and you expect the sun to rise every morning whether he is tired or not. When your older cousin asks you to come to Montauk for the weekend, you say, “Yes.” When the New Jersey woman at the cash register asks if you really want a dress so short, you say, “Yes.” When a tall man with an Ares bicep tattoo asks if you are twenty-one, you say, “Yes.” When the bartender asks if you would like another round of Schlitz, you say, “Yes.” When a businessman with fighter hands and hurricane eyes asks you if you would like to dance, you say, “Yes.” When the night is wrinkling and the driver asks if you would like to go home, you say, “Yes.” When crisp, moonlit bedsheets whisper their dreamy oaths to your headaching ears, you say, “Yes.” But fighter hands and hurricane grab you by the hair like pulling tiger lilies from their flower beds. He says, “You came here to see me.” You try to say no. He says, “You wore that short dress for me.” You try to say no. He says, “You lied about your age to impress me.” You try to say no.
He says, “You got drunk for me.” You try to say no. He says, “You danced with me, you came home to me, you slept in my bed. You owe me.” You try to say no, no, no, I owe you nothing, but you are fifteen and the world has, in fact, lied to you over and over since the day you were born, cutting the tendons of your tongue since they wrapped your dirty, crying body in rose and satin. No one ever taught you how to say no. Keely Shinners is a writer/poet based in Claremont, California. Her work can be found in [in]Visible Magazine and Insert Lit Mag Here. Contact keelyshinners@gmail.com for more information.