Crooked Teeth Literary Magazine #1

literary magazine

Artwork: Asha Ganpat - Aditi

CROOKED TEETH

SUMMER IN THE CITY

JULY '17

HELLO AND WELCOME Hello and welcome to our inaugural issue ​”Summer in the City​.” I am Andrew Halsig, the Editor-in-Chief and co-founder of Crooked Teeth. Over the past few months we have spent countless hours reaching out into the community, reading amazing works of poetry and fiction, and trying to blend all the art into a fun, but honest representation of urban life.

You might be thinking, why the obsession with urban life?

Our pipe dream of a magazine found inspiration in a few ways. Crooked Teeth was first inspired by a song with the same name from the band by Death Cab For Cutie. The more specific inspiration being the following line: “Cause at night the sun in retreat, made the skyline look like crooked teeth, in the mouth of a man who was devouring, us both.” In the last few years, we have seen our society come to recognize the divisions that have always kept us apart. We have seen our society grapple with its own identity and commit a plethora of injustices based on gender, race, place of birth, age, sexuality--the list of things to discriminate for is endless. Crooked Teeth is a platform that hopes to offer a place to discuss, learn, and appreciate each other through the art that we make. We live in an era where our government is not only failing us and devouring us, but is also threatening pieces of our own community.

It should be stated clearly: Crooked Teeth is not a political magazine. We are a magazine that wants to build community, explore real life, and appreciate art as a whole. While we do not intend take any specific political stances at this time, it is impossible to ignore how the socio-economic and political climates of our world affects the art produced in it. The truest moral shared among all of the editors at Crooked Teeth is a simple mantra “Truth is Sacred”. From this blurb came our tagline: “Reality falls from chapped lips and crooked teeth.” We believe that a messy, outspoken, and honest piece is infinitely more valuable than an over-saturated imitation of art that is corporate and void of life.

2

I would like to take a moment to tell you about the amazing team that put this together.

Crooked Teeth was born with four initial editors: Cori Hartwig, Estrellita Ruiz, Jaden Kilmer, and myself. Unfortunately life responsibilities forced Estrellita Ruiz to step away from the project, but not before providing us with our first-ever logo, helping us decide on our name, and putting countless hours into reaching out to the community. We know one day she will be a back to join the team, and we will always be ready to accept her with open arms. A week later we found Chandler Fitchett to join our dream, and she has been right by our side ever since.

Cori Hartwig holds a number of responsibilities including: fiction editor, music editor, visual arts editor, and deals with almost all of our social media accounts. She is a musician with an album available across nearly every streaming service including Spotify and SoundCloud. She is also a published writer of short fiction and a lover of visual art. She is one of the most intelligent, capable, and caring people I have ever had the pleasure of working with, and I am positive this magazine would not be here today without her being my partner at the reins every step of the way.

Chandler, the poetry editor, is a wonderful free spirit with a heart warming personality and a genuine love of people and writing. She is new to the publishing world, but the growth that we’ve seen since the start of this project leaves no doubt in my mind that she will continue to be an extremely valuable member of the team. Jaden, the fiction editor, is a wacky pessimist with a bit of a positive side. His blunt honesty about the quality of a piece and snappy one liners has brought smiles to our exhausting meetings. Everyone at Crooked Teeth is an artist, writer, music, poet, or some combination of all of these things. We are here for passion, community, truth, and fun--that is why I truly believe that Crooked Teeth will find a home in the world.

A special thanks also goes out to Julia Malaska from Scanned. She has been almost one hundred percent of the design team behind our magazine. Her work is spectacular and speaks for itself. We would not have been able to put our dreams together without the selfless passion she put forth right from the first moment she found the project.

While I would love to make an exhaustive list of everyone who has helped us along the way, I fear we’d have to publish a separate magazine with just names. A special thanks goes out to Asha Ganpat and Clive Matson for agreeing to be the first featured artists and for showing so much encouragement along the way.

The last person I would like to thank is you. Crooked Teeth is a community based magazine that can only exist with passionate creatives and passionate readers. By reading our first issue you have joined the revolution, and we’re honored to have you aboard. Please feel free to submit your work, give us suggestions, or even just drop us a line. You’re part of the team now and we hope to see you every step of the way.

Sincerely, Andy (Andrew) Halsig Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief

3

Reality falls from chapped lips and crooked teeth.

4

CONTENT 2 Editor’s Letter 6 8 10 13

Non-Fiction Without Maestro - Interview with Asha Ganpat Asha Ganpat - Featured Artwork Book Review: When the Crowd Cries A Reclamation of Truth - Interview with Clive Matson

16 22 27 31

Fiction Dharma of a Dope Fiend Portraits of People Working Twenty-One Sole

34 36 37 39 40 41 42 44 45 46 47 50 52 54 56 57 58 59 61 62 66 67 68 70 74 75 76

Poetry I´ve Joined the Fearful Drug Store Mantra I am the Scar Hip Thief Tenant To Hoboken Pink Minneapolis Bus Stop Bus Stop Redux If your body is a memory, mine is absence** In Queens Day Dream Untitled #1 Untitled #2 Little Fire Managing Your Meatsuit Normal House Once Upon A Boulevard Palm Lodge Hello, Paradise, Paradise, Good-Bye Gravity Melt Me Down Howling Wind Artists’ Biographies Cut Out Crooked Teeth Editors’ Biographies Black Out

5

Artwork: Asha Ganpat - Poleand Cables

INTERVIEW

WITHOUT MAESTRO

An interview with Asha Ganpat by Cori Amato Hartwig Without Maestro: an interview with artist and Montclair State University professor Asha Ganpat

by Cori Amato Hartwig

Folded away in a forest accessed through a series of roads sewn through Livingston, New Jersey, lays Riker Hill Art Park, a county-owned property that sits on one of the highest points in the state. Previously a United States missile tracking base during World War II, huge trees, bright green foliage, and old tracking structures surround the building. Sandra Anton, the president of Essex County Riker Hill Art Park tours me around the property, walking me through the artists’ studios, which exist in a converted military offices. The outside of the building appears slightly unattended to, with long patches of grass in the front and chipping paint on the main building. However, the inside of the building beams with life and the creation of art. On the forty-two acre property, thirty-eight

artists-in-residence use the spaces to create art of all forms: from glassblowing to painting to sculpture to jewelry-making. One of these artists, Asha Ganpat, comes to me through a recommendation by Sandra Anton, who speaks highly of Asha’s contemporary art, which I immediately look up on her website, ashaganpat. com, and am completely mesmerized by.

Born in Trinidad and raised in New Jersey, Asha Sara Praasadi Ganpat learned the teachings of many religions including Catholicism, Hinduism, Judaism, Rastafarianism, several sects of Christianity, Obeah, and Vodun, but practiced none of them. Instead of practicing a single belief, Ganpat was exposed to many and was told none were her own. As a result, spirituality reoccurs in her work because it acts as a “palpable wall between [her] and most of humanity. It is a barrier [she] cannot help but see, and in [her] work the disconnect emerges as a curiosity and question to the belief structures themselves.” She spent her childhood

6

absorbing Indo-Caribbean culture as well as the culture of the New York City suburb she was raised in. Despite the multiplicity of her upbringing, her hometown did not have many minorities; and she “quickly learned to pass for white.”

For as long as she can remember, Ganpat knew her destiny to be both an artist and a professor. Some of her first experimentations with art included “mak[ing] talismans and imagin[ing] that [she] could imbue objects with power, something [that she] still work[s] with today.” While she works with many mediums within visual art such as drawing, gilding, carving, etc., Ganpat goes back to sculpture and installation: modes of art that allow the artist the ability to play with the third and fourth dimensions, which allow the piece to interact with the viewer in a way that solidifies its reality. While she was confident in her future as an artist and a professor, she “briefly considered a career as a sociologist, but it did not take long to realize that a slightly unethical socio-experiment would unveil as visual art without limitation.”

Thus, art becomes more than just art; art becomes truth and symbol, in which the viewer can interact with the art and its realness, question reality through the work, and complete the work itself. For Ganpat, interactivity plays an important role in the works; she aims “for the experience to feel effortless, without maestro, and evoking solely natural responses.”

With such art comes much artistic intention. Ganpat does her best “to anticipate all possible responses and weave the most deft orchestration” as possible. Her creative process is very intentional, leaving space for evolution and growth for the piece. She leaves room for change and development, but she works with “heavy symbolism and assumptions” woven throughout the works that lay the foundation.

With sculpture, installation, and interactivity, viewers expose themselves and their assumptions, filling in the pieces and molding with it; the art both complements and challenges the viewers.

I asked Asha what it meant to be an artist. She replied, “As an artist, I see myself as an interpreter of experience and a culture maker.

I chase new experiences with vehemence and pursue all the world has for me. I force myself to run down my fears just as I give myself all the pleasures I might enjoy. As an artist, I live as hard as I can, to better understand how to create meaning from the chaos of life. Reflection, inquisition, and mindfulness have been a vital stage to process the experience into new cultural objects (art). I consider the self, the position I hold and represent and what the limited scope of my conceptual map allows me to see.”

Personally, I believe this interpretation of being an artist is extremely palpable when viewing her work. Pieces of multitudes of experience drip out of gilded paper; a dialogue of cultures comes through the carving of an album cover; something peaceful and clean comes out of something as mundane and dirty as a bidet or a sewer. There is a sense of facing fears and reality through facing the art itself; it stares back at you and requires you to participate with the chaos and corresponding meaning that inherently resides in the piece.

For more, you can find Asha Ganpat’s work on her website ashaganpat.com. (It is to be noted that Ganpat’s career is extensive, and the website does not detail her entire career, but only the past few years). Asha Ganpat’s handle on Instagram, @asha_ganpat_art_machine, keeps followers updated on recent works and installations, and where people can go to view her art. In September, her solo show called Booty (as in jewels and pirate treasure) will open at 73 See Gallery in Monclair, New Jersey. In December, Asha will be featured at Index Art Center in Newark, New Jersey, in the exhibition titled President of the Knife Club.

A special thank you to Asha for participating in this interview and allowing Crooked Teeth to feature her artwork throughout the magazine and on the cover.

7

Asha Ganpat - Car Leak

Asha Ganpat - Air Conditioner

8

Asha Ganpat - Gargoyle

Asha Ganpat - Sewer

9

BOOK REVIEW

WHEN THE CROWD CRIES BY ØYVIND JONAS JELLESTAD

a book review by Cori Amato Hartwig

As if it were a time capsule, Øyvind Jonas Jellestad’s When The Crowd Cries offers readers a chance to go back in time, back to a time at which Andy Warhol and Robert Mapplethorpe drove the styles of portrait and fashion photography. Providing us with nearly eighty pages of black and white film, the book serves as a catalog featuring the late model AnneGrethe Fuller. Jellestad shot the photos between 1979 and 1984, while he was working as a freelance photographer in Norway; the first edition of the book was not published until May 2017.

The title, When The Crowd Cries, conjures up lyrics from the David Bowie song “What In The World,” off of his iconic 1977 album Low, a song in which Bowie sings out to a young girl, insisting for her to “wait until the crowd cries.” AnneGrethe Fuller reminds us of the young girl Bowie sings to; this book marks some of the highlights of her modeling career and acts as her shining moment when the crowd cries for her.

Jellestad’s vision shines through the prints. The photos, while diverse, have clear consistency and interesting form. In a particular print, Fuller tilts her head back with her back facing the camera, creating beautiful lines and shape with her head, shoulders, and collarbones, emphasized by the Mapplethorpe-esque contrast provided by the black and white film. The human body itself plays an important role in creating the eye-catching form of these pieces; Fuller displays a natural sense of space

and shape, her poses and facial expressions challenging the binaries between clean and dirty, and professional and fun/flirty. While she is considered a traditionally beautiful woman, Fuller models with a genuine way about her, expressing a sense of self and quirkiness that reflects the spunky element so prominent during the time, when glam rock and new wave ran rampant and proved that beauty could be messy, fun, and different. When viewing the photographs, people are reminded of Warhol’s work with Mick Jagger from 1975, as Jellestad plays with line in his photographs. Fuller’s eyeliner stands out in a series of prints that heavily rely on line to create strong, quirky portraits.

In the second edition of the book, Jellestad has added a forward providing some information about AnneGrethe and himself.

This enhances the experience of the art; AnneGrethe never thought of herself as a model until she saw the prints of herself. Knowing that the camera made AnneGrethe transform into a different person, a model transcending ideals of beauty and fashion, makes seeing these photographs all the more special.

It should be noted that the iBooks edition has a different cover than the original version, as Apple declared AnneGrethe Fuller’s exposed breasts as “inappropriate.” In my conversations with Øyvind Jonas Jellestad, he pondered over whether or not to continue to sell the book via iBooks. He told me he was tempted to remove the book from iBooks because he felt that he felt that his art was “censored”

10

Photo: Øyvind Jonas jellestad

due to Apple’s removal of the cover photo. In my opinion, his struggle over this censorship only strengthens my perception of Jellestad’s artistic integrity; his devotion to keeping the art as AnneGrethe would have wanted it touched me. Jellestad’s genuineness permeates through the book and the art itself.

Overall, When The Crowd Cries not only stands as a touching memorial to the late AnneGrethe Fuller, but it also transports viewers back in time, back to the days of glam rock and new wave, times that shouted that beauty could be incredibly messy and put-together all at once. The second edition of When The Crowd Cries by Øyvind Jonas Jellestad is available for digital download through iBooks (Apple) and Kindle (Amazon), published in Bergen, Norway by CheapChip Publishing.

11

INTERVIEW

12

A RECLAMATION OF TRUTH An interview with Clive Matson

by Andrew Halsig

Clive Matson is a poet with a colorful past and a passion for the Beats. His work reflects the mantra, “Truth is sacred,” and he has spent more time in the literary scene than most people have spent on earth. He is the friendly sage walking through the urban streets and never fails to wear a smile. While Clive draws much of his inspiration and stories from The Beats, he does not consider himself one in the traditional sense. He first found the movement at eighteen and has been exploring the world ever since.

Clive’s literary career started at the age of fourteen with an overly enthusiastic sophomore teacher who would either praise the class highly when he was happy or throw chalk and erasers at students in fits of passion. “No one had a bland opinion of him. You either loved him or hated him. And I loved him,” Clive said. He gave the class the assignment of writing a poem, and Clive knew that he could be real. The teacher was a World War II veteran that’d been shot at and was always more honest about his experiences than the other teachers of the school. This began Clive’s lifelong infatuation with poetry and truth.

For the purposes of communicating between generations, I feel a clarification should be made at this point. What Clive refers to as “mainstream poetry” would best translate into the minds of younger poets as “academic poetry”. This distinction is fascinating because Clive lived in an era where poetry was prevalent enough to have at least three categories: mainstream, truthful poetry, and academic poetry. This comparison matches the way one can see modern music. There is pop, there is alternative, and there is the choir and instrumental pieces we would be taught in school. I clarify this because I think poetry has been in a sense stolen by academia. Therefore, when Clive says mainstream, I think it is best for those in the younger crowd to substitute it for the word “academic.”

A separation between mainstream poetry and poetry that deals with real life has been a constant battle within the craft from Clive’s perspective. In school, he was taught to think of poetry as a crossword puzzle, and each line as a hint to the answer. This con13

struction of poetry is a method that suggests that there are such things “right” or “wrong” answers in real life. That is the true fallacy of academia as a whole. Everyone is so worried about right or wrong and the semantics of form and function that the life of the piece is often sucked from its mouth.

Clive’s insight into the transition of poetry throughout the years covers decades of experience. For a long time after the sixties, he felt mainstream poetry had lost its connection to “what our bones know,” save perhaps the feminist poets. Clive delved into a big reading he attended during this time period and walked me through a seemingly interesting discussions of one of the prize winning poems at the events. He tried to figure out if the poem was meant to imply that the women loved a man or did not love a man. He couldn’t tell where the doubts were and where the strengths were.

In this contemplation, Clive was able to come to the conclusion that even he was getting swept up in the allure of mainstream poetry. Herein lies the problem: mainstream poetry is taught as a puzzle or a test of intelligence. There is a belief that only the highest professors at the most prestigious conferences are meant to decide the “true meaning of a poem.” How could any of those professors decide the truth that you or I would learn from a poem when they do not know anything about our perspectives? What makes their truths more real than ours? Poetry is not a crossword puzzle meant to give us a pat on the back for figuring out the right answer. Poetry is a message written from the author’s truth that is meant to be translated into a truth of our own.

Poetry in large feels like it has stolen from our generation. The school system shoves their overly analytical method of reading down our throats for the first twelve years of our education, and we in turn think that poetry is some kind of chore. On some level, it even feels that poetry outside the realm of academics has been hidden from us. A resurgence of people reading Bukowski, Di Prima, the Beats, the Confessionals, and a variety of other real voices from the past, shows that we are not unaware of the damage done to us by the boxing in of truth into the realm of right or wrong.

Clive states this point quiet artfully: “But that’s why I like the younger writers, the writers around Crooked Teeth. It seems like an intuitive connection. I do not think there is a direct connection to us [Clive’s generation], except you love The Beats, but largely I think it’s intuitive that they’re noticing that there is this weight of

14

the culture on us, and we want to find ourselves outside of that or in rebellion against it.”

Clive went on to talk about how our everyday life contributes to this weight. “The marketers have taken over parts of our minds, and as Herbert Hunke said there are large parts of our minds that have never known contact. Large parts of ourselves that have never been touched.”

Overall, there is a revolution happening in poetry and academia no longer has a claim to our truths.

If you would like to see more of Clive’s interview, please visit the Crooked Teeth YouTube page where the complete back and forth can be experienced via video. Clive has plans to do shows all across California, New York, and give a lecture at the upcoming Beat Conference in Paris. His topic will dive into the lesser known Beats and how the Beats have affected the writers of our modern era. He is currently seeking donations to help with travel costs. You can see his poetry here at Crooked Teeth or www.matsonpoet.com.

15

FICTION

DHARMA OF A DOPE FIEND

by Tyler Payne

It’s 10 am; there is a radiant heat illuminating off of the long line of cars waiting to get to the other side. It’s just another day on the Tijuana side of the San Ysidro Port of Entry to the United States. There is an unsettling calmness within me as I walk, like the places I’ve been and things I’ve seen don’t actually exist. I keep walking. A part of me actually may believe that none of this is happening. Dreamlike.

I have found myself at another line, a line of people. Something about it is grotesque and offensive. A line of people all waiting to get somewhere else. A line of people all unsatisfied with where they are at right now. Suddenly, I’m curious if anyone is in this country by choice.

This line of people, all wishing they were somewhere else, at some other time, where circumstances were more conducive to happi-

ness and lucidity and stimuli. I look around and I don’t see anyone, but everyone. All of these innocuous faces wanting to be somewhere else, and more likely than not, someone else. I think to myself that it must be a shame to wish your life away, to always be striving for something “up ahead,” to believe that happiness exists only in a moment yet to come, that something needs to happen in order to achieve happiness. But for a change I turn inward and see that I can relate to these lackadaisical faces. I don’t particularly find the no documentation line at the border very stimulating either. And I realize that the only reason I can bear it is because I am high out of my gourd on heroin and Xanax.

I’m not saying I didn’t spend my night in a Mexican strip club curiously named Hong Kong followed by a solitary night of intrave-

16

nous heroin use in a latin “hotel”, I’m just saying it doesn’t feel like I did. I shake the thought and take a sip of my Monster Energy drink that has a strange plastic taste, which could probably be attributed to the four syringes I have floating in it. I try to keep a straight face as I swallow my drink and approach the desk.

I smile and lather on whatever boyish charm I can muster to distract the working officers’ simple mind from accurately calculating my age, God forbid he can read me and discover that I am a minor.

He gestures me on my way, and I’m curious if he considers that it’s a Tuesday in September and that I should probably be in school. I rally up another smile and nod as I pass through the doors. Funny how a smile and nod can put even the most suspecting generalissimo at ease.

Finally, here I am, somewhere else. I breathe deeply and think about all those people in lines, waiting just to arrive here, to cross over these imaginary lines to “somewhere else.”

That is the thing with obsessing over being somewhere else, you’ll never actually get there. Don’t get me wrong, I’m guilty of obsessing over the elusive ‘elsewhere’ and searching for my happiness once I get there, but that’s just it, it’s never there. It is always somewhere else.

Then the thought strikes that I still have an ounce of heroin up my ass, and now I’m fairly certain that if I’m going to find happiness anywhere it’s going to be half way up my rectum rather than some distant foreign land.

Remembering that, I point myself in the direction of the Jack In The Box in downtown San Ysidro. There, was a sight to see, in the bathroom with my Dickies at my ankles, I squat, pulling the heroin filled condom out of my ass, and the midst of all of this I have some existential inquiry as to if this is what it’s all about: pulling drugs out of my ass in some

17

shady less than tidy bathroom in “America’s Finest City’s” border town.

With the drugs successfully retrieved from my anus, I decide to partake. I go over to the bathroom door and lock the deadbolt.

The deafening sound of the lock rattles my bones. I do not want anyone in here. I sit on the bathroom floor and lay out all of my heroin using accoutrements on some papers towels. I break off a sizeable piece of dope and drop in the small round tin cooker. Then, squirt about 40 units of water out of my syringe onto the piece of dope in the cooker.

I am so dissatisfied with where I am that the unsavoriness leaves a palatable taste in my mouth. Or maybe it is the smell of human excrement in this bathroom sodomizing my nostrils. I am exasperated and completely vexed, not only geographically and physically, but also existentially. I have been just aimlessly wandering this world trying to stifle the unquenchable thirst for heroin, with no regard of the people or resources I was exhausting. To cite the book “Ishmael” I was the quintessential “taker”: devouring and annihilating anything and everything I could, completely oblivious to everything else in the world. I had submitted to the hard truth that there had been no meaning to anything I was doing. My only purpose hitherto had been to quiet this unsatisfiable beast inside of me, no purpose at all.

Suddenly, everything feels so nihilistic.

I finish cooking up my shot, drop a piece of cotton in my cooker and draw it up with my syringe. I tie off my arm which only exacerbates the black and blueness of my arm that always ensues failed attempts at hitting a vein. I take a long hollow, apathetic look at the green and yellowness, symptomatic of hepatitis c, which is especially pungent in this moment. I find a gap in scar tissue on

Artwork: Asha Ganpat - Syringe

18

my cephalic vein and puncture. I watch, as I dig around for a moment and feel relief as I watch the blood start to register. Swirls of cloud-like red pirouette in the syringe; I let go of the tie and push the plunger all the way down. I relax and close my eyes as everything gets a little quieter.

The rush starts to trickle down my head and simultaneously engulfs my body with a warm comfort. I feel a sharp hot tingling sensation in the back of my neck and it starts to encompass my face and head. I make a conscious effort to breathe deeply and keep my eyes open. The burning sensation starts to fade and I feel comfortable closing my eyes and I nod off.

Not sure how much later I am woken up by an innocent, gentle knocking at the door. I lift my head and open my eyes, remove the needle from my arm and gather all my paraphernalia, splash some water on my face and exit the bathroom. This poor petite Latina lady looks petrified as she catches a glimpse of the monster walking out of the bathroom.

I walk out into the luminescent sunlight showering the streets of San Ysidro. I notice that unnerving, eerie, vibration pulsating through me. I feel so disassociated from myself, my life, from reality. As if I am floating on a cloud of heroin into an abysmal, sociopathic reality. I merely exist in reality but participate in a state of confusion and lunacy. My mind diluted by impure motives and dictated exclusively by self-propulsion. All of these manifestations of self-loathing only

feed my propensity to reach for another one.

I swallow hard, realizing my journey to elsewhere is not over yet. I get to the trolley station and light a cigarette as I take a seat.

I feel a shock, like someone who had just been in a serious car accident would feel, but am confused as to what this feeling is evoking from. I aimlessly stare at nothing; my thoughts become quiet and docile. I anxiously step onto the trolley the same way I would imagine a bomb squad soldier would snip the live wire. I sit and feel rather perplexed as to why time seems to just be haphazardly and whimsically floating by. I sit in a rear-facing seat on the trolley and we start moving.

This trolley ride quite accurately describes my existence in entirety: blindly rushing toward some predetermined destination so consumed by my own inner-monologue to participate in the magic happening around me right now. I have been graced with this gift of being and life only to turn around and defecate on everything I would tell you I stand for. Saturated in a thick tar-like layer of guilt and shame, I succumb to paralysis. I sit there for a while, still, crippled by the demoralization and self-pity. Somehow, I regain my bearing and step off the train. I start to seemingly float towards my neighborhood. I cannot feel the ground beneath me. I have no will to live.

I near my house and my thoughts are becoming physically depressing. I struggle to

19

fill my lungs with air. It feels like I am dragging boulders attached to my ankles, with every inch they gather matter and progressively become heavier and heavier until I am at the cusp of mental and physical collapse. I reach my front door, and my dogs are excited to see me. I open the door to an image of the purest form of unconditional love, the epitome of excitement. I have a feeling of contentment, but it’s fleeting and soon lost. I wonder if they know of the self-superimposed suffering that plagues me, if they know their love, albeit immaculate and unadulterated, still insufficient and rather paltry when trying to surmount the dark, impenetrable wall that holds captive of my true-self.

The elegant fragrance of a home-cooked meal fills my nose. I feel warm. I sit down to an already prepared plate of warm dinner. I thank my mom and compliment her impeccable hand in cooking as I look into her loving yet unknowing blue eyes. I wonder if she would make me dinner if she knew who I really was.

I feel a stale, all-too-familiar feeling of sadness It seems so bizarre and especially sociopathic of me, but I realize why I constantly feel like I’m in a half-real, dreamlike world. I spend more than half my life being the antithesis of a church boy and then come home and do whatever I can to not be just another high-schooldropout surfer grommet from Encinitas who has fallen into the life of drug addiction.

I give a gratuitous and long-winded explanation of how dull my day was and how the surf

sucked and head up to my room. As I walk up the stairs I notice the profound duality of my life. I feel cold. I walk into my room and open the sliding glass door to a quiet balcony looking out to a serene, starry night.

I take a seat and light a cigarette. I look to the universe from the grim depths of my suffocating affliction and looking back at me was the option of life, the option of perception, the option of option. No longer do I have to choose to live under the pressures of my self-massacring prophecy. The radical truth was that the stuckness, the inability to flee the proverbial quicksand, was merely and without omission due to a perception that I had been consumed by, and of course, was of my own cognition. Baffled by the fact that it was me, I had been the source of all my pitfalls and bedevilments. My inability to see a way out of the perception and to view it objectively was the crux of the problem, yet also and manifestation of the problem itself. With the shred of objectivity, I had I started to feel the atmospheric pressure being absolved. As the weight dissipated, the more objectively I could see. I could finally perceive and grasp that my affliction existed nowhere in reality but only in my thoughts.

I watched something that I would have described as an empirical truth, dissolve into something utterly non-existent.

These incredible realizations seem to levitate me. In this moment I feel connected, whole, a part of the absolute truth. I relish

20

in the weightlessness and comfort of clarity. I have a profound, yet fledgling, outlook upon life, filled with gumption and hopefulness. I have a palpable earnestness to set fire to this already burning building and escape this plague for once and for all. As the high from these epiphanies ebb and I settle back into the gentle flow of the heroin high, I feel tired. I ready myself for bed with a ritualistic burning stick of incense and lay comfortably in bed as I watch the plumes of smoke meander to the ceiling and feel nourished by my fervently optimistic resolve. The sleepiness takes over and I evanesce, off to sleep.

The clean morning sunlight washes over me as I wake up to a new day. Still vehement and proud of my brainchild from the night before, I feel prepared to run out into this seemingly pedantic world and give it all meaning. Overflowing with existential satisfaction, I have a fastidiousness about me as I shower and groom myself. I get out of the shower and am spanked by an unsolicited dizziness. Countless little goose-pimples protrude my skin like the birth of a million herculean mountains erecting from the earth’s surface. My bones, feeling as delicate as a piece of tissue paper, grind against each other like the continental plates below our feet. I am overwhelmed by the hellish nauseousness, and here I am: dope-sick. The air seemed to be literally sucked out of my lungs by some unworldly vacuum into perilousness. I hold my shivering body lying on the floor of my

bedroom as the sweat beads and drips to the small of my back, and I am almost reduced to tears as the incomprehensible wave of hopelessness and physical pain crashes over me. I can feel my high resolve escaping me and dropping off into a vast wasteland of nothingness. The gravity pulling me toward my cigar box of heroin and heroin-using vices is insurmountable, and successful. In auto-pilot, I reach for that box, similar to the way zombies, barely hanging on to their half-deadness, reach for the neck of their next patsy.

I cook up a shot with feverish haste and puncture my arm. Digging around I frantically search for a vein, the desperation grows within me into a tangible knot of angst and despondency. In midst of this heinous act I am dumbfounded, I can’t explain myself.

Just last night I was ready to rid myself of this black cloud and move on toward a much greater good. Where are the fruits of these profound realizations? But the sad truth is that there aren’t any. These realizations, though, good and pure and beneficial, still fall short of the task at hand. With no practical application, I am no further out of this bottomless pit then before. With no action or demonstration of these principles, I am without a defense against this Frankenstein.

The blood registers and in anticipation of the soon-to-be-had relief, I smile and leisurely press the plunger down.

21

Artwork: Colleen Brady - Manhattan 3

PORTRAITS OF PEOPLE WORKING IN A BANK BUILDING DOWNTOWN CHICAGO ON FRIDAY IN WINTER

by Hudson Everett

22

INVESTMENT BANKER Startled, the phone slipped from his light grasp, unfinished thoughts hung on the screen.

It landed precariously on the grate. He saw that with a single shift it would fall through, and his evening’s plans with it.

He got down on his knees, not worrying about the dirty sidewalk soiling his slacks, and whispered, “Please. Please don’t fall through. I need you.”

He put one bare hand on the concrete for balance and like the arcade game he bet his last quarter, dropped his arm like a crane and made his grab. Did he have it? Would it drop?

Would he win the prize?

He stood, shaking with victorious fervor, only then realizing he’d been holding his breath the whole time.

PERSONAL ASSISTANT Just another in the huddled mass, she drew in the smoke, exhaling it into the chilled air. They stayed as close to the building as they could, hoping they would be shielded from the piercing winds that swept through the downtown streets from Lake Michigan with devastating effect. Her long overcoat was pretty, and more expensive than she could have afforded. The undercoat was strictly utilitarian. Both covered her professional ensemble, a blouse and pencil skirt.

She sighed. Is this what I went to business school for?

Another long drag, and she dropped the cigarette butt, crushing it with the toe of her high heeled shoe.

JANITOR The old man sitting against the building, protruding like some fixture dreamt up by a sick minded architect. Sign held out, reading, “Times are hard. Spare some change?”

I am no better than him. Just luckier. I wish I had the change to spare.

But I don’t. And I don’t have time, either. Mr. Dayton said if I was late again, I’d be out of a job. And it took me months to find this job. I am not better than this man. I am hungry. I have a family.

But I have a mop and broom and a paycheck every two weeks.

And I can bring home food, and the lingering scent of chemicals mixed with my sweat.

I am not better. Just luckier.

23

CEO He had climbed the corporate ladder to the topmost rung.

And now he saw the drop. He had read the reports. He knew, that come Monday, the firm’s stock would plummet. Of course, he would fall with it.

I am not too big to fail. He sat at his desk, looked out his window to the streets below.

He resented the protesters who stood outside on the corner.

Shouting, day and night. “We are the Ninety-nine Percent!”

They did not want change, they didn’t want anything. They just felt a general dissatisfaction with the way things were.

The group was small now. The large gathering had been dwindling and now there were maybe twenty of them on a good day.

I am going down, but I will float with my golden parachute, descending gently. And for as long as I can, I will enjoy the view from above.

COLLEGE INTERN The phones were always ringing. It felt like he was juggling five coffees and sixteen files and twenty different orders.

There was no clear chain of command. Totally hectic. He was not ready for this. He didn’t think that when he graduated in a year he would be ready for this. He moved about the office, typing frantically, panicked energy filling the room.

People yelling numbers and figures, papers being handed from person to person in a sort of chaotic free for all.

He had three hours left. The endless flow of coffee and the growling of his empty stomach kept him moving. The promise of his apartment, of a cold drink and a chance to finally sit down and relax- to eat a meal without having to work through it- kept him going.

“Can you stay late tonight?” his boss asked.

He felt pathetic. “Of course, sir. No problem.”

SECURITY GUARD People always walk past him. He sits at the desk in the lobby.

His badge says “Security,” but he feels like a concierge. People stop only to ask which floor has which office or if there is anywhere good to eat around. And he knows the answers,

24

and is always polite. Why does nobody take him seriously?

“Good morning, Jim,” he says to an incoming businessman.

The guard receives a only nod of acknowledgement. Never anything more.

Except for Sue. She brings him coffee and a donut every morning.

“Hey there, Mac,” she says. “Two creams and a Splenda. And a glazed jelly.”

Glazed jellies are his favorite. “Thanks, Sue. How are the kids?”

“They’re good. Manuela is a big help.” she responds.

He is vigilant. Always waiting for something to happen. He sits and sips his drink and they chat for a few minutes before she heads to the third floor.

HUMAN RESOURCES DIRECTOR “I went to Northwestern for undergrad and Harvard Law. Graduated at the top of my class. I passed the Bar on my first try. I used to work for Nillson, Mandell and Green,” said the young lawyer.

“Good. Good. The references are good. Your resume is impressive. You seem like you would be a great fit at this company.” Harold shuffled through the papers again. “What would you say is your greatest weakness?”

The young man answered, but Harold had already stopped listening. Hiring was tedious. Lawyers are lawyers. They write contracts, they read contracts, tell you where to sign and then leave your office. Harold had held the HR job for thirty-nine years. One more and he would retire. He had seen the firm through nine CEO’s and more than one financial disaster.

“Very good then.” Harold said as he rose and shook the man’s hand. “Everything is in order. You start Monday.”

He sat back in his chair at his disproportionately large desk, in his small office, barely bigger than a broom closet, which felt even smaller stacked with boxes of personnel files always pressing in.

Two hundred and ninety-three days left.

25

Artwork: Jess Gomes - take a picture it´ll last longer

26

TWENTY-ONE BJ Fendel I’ve never been one to instill great meaning to objects, my face does a good enough job of telling my life story. the Holding onto things for nostalgia’s sake has never really appealed to me. However, I do manage to hold on to one or two things every once in a while that really bring me back to specific moments in my life. One of my most treasured possessions is a tiny slip of ripped paper that reads: Jay, I worry about you the most. You talk about how supportive everyone around you is and yet, here you are with the rest of us. You must have one hell of a poker face. ~Sydney. In her schoolgirl script, she left a cell phone number.

Every time I reread it, a pang of nostalgia wells up in my chest when I read her last name, lost to me for years until recently. I had been revisiting my old coffee-stained copy of Lolita when the scrap fell out from the page where antihero Humbert Humbert delights at his little Lolita stretching her legs across his lap. Like Humbert’s long lost childhood love, Annabel, Sydney had haunted my memory over the last few years since our time together.

She was a beautiful depressive who I met while I was holed up in the psych ward of an old hospital near where I used to live in Kalama-

Twenty. The mere sight of that dreaded number hurts like a bitch. Twenty years old in Hollywood, and every day I see more and more reminders of my failures. My bank account statements read like total savings of the most impoverished heroes in a Dickens novel. Compared to the young Instagram star who just booked a role in that pilot I read for, I’m flailing, and the gradually deepening lines on my face just highlight the fact that I can’t pretend to be seventeen forever. Eventually, and probably sooner rather than later, I’m going to have let that part of me go, and when I do, I guarantee one more of those wretched lines will make it’s way across my nolonger-smooth face.

Twenty . I can count the lines on my face like the rings of a tree. Some are deeper than others. The main line on my forehead is the deepest, getting carved deeper and deeper each time I drink away my memory. The bags under my eyes become more pronounced for every line of pure white powder I inhale. Rather than notches on a bedpost, my sexual exploits cut their way across my complexion like the scar I put on my ankle when I was younger. Every instance of unrequited love marks my skin with its own unique signature.

27

zoo, Michigan. She was the first girl I ever truly loved. She had slipped me the scrap of paper on the day I was to be released, revealing both her last name and phone number to me, an exchange forbidden by the doctors and orderlies who saw after us. It was some kind of attempt to let the past stay in the past, their idea of healing.

Though when you’ve heard every intimate detail of how every one of your fellow ‘inmates,’ as we called them, attempted to off themselves, it’s a bit hard to stay impartial to their outside lives.

I had been a patient for about a week already when Sydney arrived; the stitches on her forearms were still fresh from her night in the emergency room. She was aloof and cold those first few days, the wounds still tender. I was instantly smitten. While everyone else seemed eager to resume their old lives, it was clear to me that like myself, if Sydney continued on the same path she had been on prior to her admittance to the hospital, she wasn’t going to make it.

Our ennui was well matched. I recall sitting next to her on that first day during our “free time.”

We were being supervised by a mousy nurses’ assistant, still new to the hospital, who suggested endlessly that we partake in the activity: coloring elementary pictures of zoo animals. Being seventeen and highly depressive, I grudgingly

sat off to the side with Sydney who busily scribbled in her journal with a marker; we weren’t allowed pens.

I managed to read over her shoulder enough to know that she despised all of us already before she caught me looking and angrily shut her notebook and joined the others at the coloring table. She did warm to a few of us eventually. Like the respective high schools we had fled from, there were definite social boundaries that were never crossed and cliques, mostly formed from similar suicide attempt methods.

There were the cutters, the pill poppers, then there were the downright mentally ill ones: the girl who heard voices and swore the wallpaper was taunting her and the twelve year old girl who had two counts of attempted arson under her belt already.

Sydney and I, both being under inspection for possible personality disorders bonded over the doctors’ inability to diagnose us. We were both the same age and held similarly cynical views of every other kid in our group therapy circles. It’s been four years now since my stay at the hospital. I never contacted anyone, never made the effort. Other than Sydney, I knew none of their last names, and I had misplaced Sydney’s message before I could seek her out.

28

The rediscovery of this particular artifact from my past life brings with it the spine-tingling realization that within just a few minutes, and a few attempts at web searches, I can once again gaze upon the face of the girl who so entirely captured my attention four years ago. My stomach turns as I pull up her Facebook profile. She’s certainly Sydney, but a sad realization washes over me: she’s no longer my Sydney. Her scars have faded, her blonde curls are dyed a luscious chocolatey brown, and on the arm of the once-seventeen-year-old girl I had loved stands a man: her fiancée, a look at her relationship status provides.

I don’t feel jilted. She’s moved on. The lines on her face show as much. The fantasy I had held onto those four years melts away in an instant. Seventeen is dead. There aren’t any second chances at it. We spent seventeen together in a musty old hospital ward with suicidal messages scratched into the bedroom walls, where our sleep was interrupted every fifteen minutes by the beam of a flashlight, where we all shuffled around shoeless in a sedated sleepwalk, waiting out our respective bouts of madness. That was seventeen for us. It wasn’t romantic, or cinematic as Hollywood would have us believe. Still, time has given me the audacity to look back at some-

thing as hellacious as my time in a mental hospital through rose-tinted glasses.

I close her page without sending a friend request. The deepest line on my forehead grows more pronounced. Twenty aches in my bones again; I feel its echoes throughout my entire body.

I stare at my reflection in the mirror; the last few years in Los Angeles have taken their toll. The once bright-eyed suburbanite no longer stares optimistically back at me. I see a man on the verge of maturity, a stage he will never truly master despite his best attempts.

I unscrew the head of my GQ-approved safety razor and hold the paper-thin blade in the palm of my hand. It glints with light as it catches a beam of the setting sun through the window. I roll up my jeans and find the scar left by kitchen knives when I was fifteen. I run my thumb across it so it stands out white against the flesh of my unscathed ankle. Without thinking I press the razor blade into the scar, reopening the wound and sending droplets of brilliant red cascading over the bathroom tiles. I smile to myself: in time, the rose-colored glasses will make even the most vibrant drops disappear leaving behind just one more line on my body: twenty-one.

29

30

Artwork: Jess Gomes - heart collector

SOLE

by JT Kitchings

There’s a funny thing about Jackson in the wintertime. It’s like you’ve wasted away through Technicolor summers and all of a sudden you’re in perfect definition. The skies are saturated blue, too expansive to think about. It’s finally acceptable to go outside in jeans, and God forbid, something heavier than a shirt. Enter winter, 2010.

I saw the worst minds of my generation stark raving happy in five thousand dollar armchairs, just going.

We all went, pounding against the heat-cracked pavement because we had nothing else to do. Mississippi is a breeding ground for the creative; the culture seeps through the kudzu and climbs into our ears at night. My friends were the products of alcoholics, doctors, lawyers, and southern tycoons. Trying our damnedest to die became our business. No personal demons, or skeletons in our closets, we didn’t even do it on purpose. We wanted out of what we knew because it was all we knew. So that’s where we start, all cylinders going on the first Friday of winter break. There was a show that night, L’Espoir Plantation’s showcase, where the best and the wildest played their souls out before a hungry crowd in an old theater,. cCrafting music with such wild abandon it hurt, but in a glorious and delirious way. Unfortunately, that was in 6 hours, a lifetime for the depraved,

and there was nothing planned to fill the time.

We did what we did best: , loiter in public areas. It was me, James, William, and Martin on a parking platform in Fondren,; burning through the minutes with Marlboro Reds.

Waiting is a horrid thing to those who want to go, but we were waiting for a friend,. That friend was Jacob Ryder, the closest thing to a Dharma Bum I’d ever met. He was Zen,; a ghostly collective of philosophy and kindness all hidden behind the beard of Thor.

The first time I met him he was sitting on top of a shipping container reading a book about the impending zombie apocalypse. Needless to say, he was well worth the wait. He had been away at the university for a while, and we all wanted to hear his tales and the damnable legends he had experienced. This was the man who dropped acid and ran into the woods one night, and came out a shaman.

He was a wild, capering reflection of Kerouac insanity. Jacob was also the closest thing William had to an older brother who gave a shit. Closest thing almost all of us had, besides James.

James had an older brother who was half myth, half sarcasm; lean, despicable, our idol. Our heroes are the ones whothat society tries to forget about, the ones whothat come to parties with more than one girl, the ones who leave behind them stories

31

and quotes. Our hero Jacob had arrived. Strolling out from his Nissan, smoke lingering about him from the pipe clenched between his teeth like the whaler captain he wasis. Classic cool, unfettered by self doubt or arrogance, just resonates about him. The first words out of his mouth when he sees our motley crew were are, “Why the hell are we not drunk yet?” God, Jacob Ryder could take strides to shame any giant.

I, believe it or not, do not drink. I believe it dulls the mind and impacts too harsh an experience. I’ll stick to my smokes, thank you. But the others believe that drinking is the first step to a roaring good time. I’m loath to say it, but it does make things interesting when you’re the only one there who doesn’t partake. So we retreated to our spot in Wreath Park. This was where brain cells went to die, where I’d had my first kiss, where we’d found William after his girlfriend cheated on him with some bro from college town.

There was’s a creek, a product of the drainage for the neighborhood, and thus there was a creek bank. Here, the tree roots cling exposed to the faded dirt below. It was our own little gulley.

As they passed around bottles of cheap wine and whiskey, I checked the time as an experiment, because time in the company of hooligans like us is a fickle thing. Fickle, but not fleeting. We still had an unbearably long time of three hours before the show started, but of course we’d have to show up at least an hour late. We weren’taren’t nerds, after all.

Leaning against the baked bank in the mild winter sun, I asked a question of my fellows.

“Guys, what are we going to do next year?

William and Martin are graduating, Jacob will be approaching his final year in college, and James and I hate most people in our grade.” In the thoughtful silence that followed, broken only by Jacob coughing tremendously on a passed smoke., I wondered what the others were thinking. Have you ever thought about that? Trying to put yourself in the perspective of those around you, see what they see. The only response came from Jacob, who quietly said, “Well, I mean, what won’t happen? We won’t be gone, man. We won’t be gone.” Ha, simple wisdom.

The time was nigh;, the show had started. Praise be to Euphoria, we approached the theater with light hearts and heavy smiles. This theater is ethereal. When entered, all reality is forgotten. Christmas lights strung across the ceiling in a lunatic web give the lobby a carnival atmosphere, and the attendants present stand with stamps and cigarettes. New age gatekeepers; stamping your hands with the Condor logo of L’Espoir and opening the doors to the shadowy interior of the Liberty Theater. God, Liberty. I mean, the entire place is just a scene.

Old beams support the sagging roof like some wild cathedral. The floor is chipped concrete, steeping down to the maelstrom around the stage. And the stage, oh man, the stage. Rising above the sea of whirling youth like Queequeg’s coffin is a battered wooden platform,; the base lost in smoke and bodies. Towering on

32

the top are the musicians, bathed in the light of ten thousand alternating beams.

Rising above even those giants on the stage, is the Condor emblem, created by light, paint, and soul. You lose yourself; you become part of the glorious melee that dances and writhes to sound that is just too great to understand.

I lost track of all my friends except for Jacob;, Jacob was striding purposefully towards the beginning of the storm. The band playing at the time, whose name I didn’t catch, was wailing and resonating from the tower perch. It was bliss. And there he was, standing like Gibraltar with his arms crossed,; unfazed. I never understood what he was thinking, how he had separated himself from the swarm.

Watching him, it just defied what passed for reality in there. He was the antithesis to the chaos around him, and it steadied me. It was like he was Atlas, with the weight of this venue on his shoulders.

There was a break while we waited for the next band to play. When everyone pours out of their mad lair and realizes that there is a world outside after all.

We rallied out there, gathering friends, screaming stories to be heard over the massed murmurs of the crowd we were once a part of. Under the cold light of street lamps, everyone lookeds cadaverous and paradoxical. Standing outside Liberty, we talked about the future. We talked about how these moments would make us, these moments would linger, how we all were immortal now. The story of L’Espoir would make us legends in its wake, or so goes the fleeting folly of youth. I remember the feeling that Jacob was somehow beyond all this. He was

already cemented in myth,; glorious above us mortals. But the rush of feedback beckoned us back into the theater, away from contemplation and forward towards action.

It was after that band played I realized Jacob had left. He had snuck out against the tide when we were swept up in it. I didn’t think about it, Jacob Ryder worked in mysterious ways so often that to expect an average attendance was unthinkable. But there was just something so off now, without the anchor we were drifting in doldrums. The show continued, drawing us back again towards the stage and out to the curb, high and low, frantic and meditative. It was’s enough to make a teenager feel weary in his bones. At the crest of the night, that glorious post-witching hour strike, I checked my phone. I had a single, final message on it. It stopped the madness. It put a fist in my euphoria and wrenched it down. All it said was, “I won’t be gone, man, I won’t be gone.”

That was the night that Jacob Ryder, mad captain, shaman, flighty adventurer, calmly took a .357, and shot himself in the temple. He had been outside of Liberty, removed from L’Espoir, and decided that he was immortal enough.

We didn’t find out until the next morning. It didn’t hit us until a few days later when we were gathered around an imposing coffin that was bleakly obvious of its purpose. My hero had fallen, burnt out by the legend he had to uphold. The thought that he was gone never came though. He was right. He was the one man, the one mythic bastard, who lived forever.

33

I’VE JOINED THE FEARFUL

by Clive Matson Some coy trembling infiltrates joy and reverses its wires. Reverses a painting and takes its image.

A song and takes its sound.

A barn owl and takes its hoot.

Across spotted skies a madrone branch matches a swell of thigh I won’t recognize.

I forgot.

I forgot what!

I’ve joined the fearful.

I wake. I breakfast. I ride bus.

I go work. I talk friends. I play ball.

I watch movies. I no think.

Souls stay captured in adamant mesh.

File cabinets reason not to bleed their joints.

Raw tin awaits a stamp mill.

Ideas wait my smart thought’s killing.

Stream water waits my brush’s stilling.

“We swim in an ocean of love.”

How wet is it? What temperature?

Can my skin sense it? Visible in what wavelengths? How buoyant? Does it tickle?

Between limbs flashes a halo and I don’t see.

I market. I shop how town. I text.

I play ‘lectrons. I cell phone. I ‘xercise.

I no feel. I tv. I sleep.

Romance the release of sex tension only.

Big people climb into imagination when you proclaim “All those babes play in my blood.”

34

All these babes play in my blood: Cupids leering clamber over and under boundaries, ogle and vault through each other’s toddler skin, bounce off walls and vault through bodies again.

Laughter transmits plexus to plexus.

Engorged flesh rubs engorged flesh.

Silver the window and make it a mirror! Devil calls to devil

and I refuse to hear.

I won’t be summoned.

I reached a tender hand once and a boot smashed.

I expunged this.

I shed this.

I forgot all this.

The current running through my fingers burns.

What salve will ease this unapt?

My phantom shrinks and pours devotion into unshadowed trees, paths, fences, taut wires, stakes.

What’s buried under bales piled evenly in the barn buried stay.

Cattle-truck horn splits the morning gray.

A bluebird clips its wing on hayloft glass.

Madrone trunk sways in wind, branches rub and don’t echo your heartbeat.

Don’t echo. Don’t echo. Your heartbeat.

(For my son Ezra, for daughters and sons of every creature, who require more than all conceivable apologies, none of which will serve, and neither will their sum.)

35

by Mollie Murtagh

milk sugar and Jolly Ranchers (for my roommate) a dog cheese doodle curls sways its paper tongue like the walker’s ponytail a leaflet disintegrates in a puddle of— of what? it hasn’t rained (I’m not going to guess) milk sugar Jolly Ranchers my outfit choice is poor today, too many shades of navy, too unbreathable, the heat is ensnared in my stuffy shirt; I no longer smell like soap (and I should have worn a bra) milk sugar Jolly Ranchers don’t cross milk sugar Jolly Ranchers

don’t cross milk sugar Jolly Ranchers cross! a boy with hair like cottage cheese and shoes like cherry cola holds the door open for me the man before him with an accordion forehead from too much scowling didn’t for him (rude!) milk sugar Jolly Ranchers milk sugar— milk from 29th of September (ew) 3rd of October (yay!) sugar— check Jolly Ranchers— check.

36

Artwork: Asha Ganpat - Hit

DRUG STORE MANTRA

I AM THE SCAR

by Celina McManus

Serve, boy, be a man.

Serve, girl, be a host of color.

Learn, child, fill your brain to the brim with nectar and honey and milk and sweets— because when you’re grown, you will no longer remain pure.

Other is your name, not mine.

I have no name, only apricot, never bronzed. We name mystery, oceans of intellect—fruit named hate we’ve translated into other.

Yes, other is the name of sin.

Speak for my understanding.

Run to me and become purple.

Eat this tradition, hot dogs under Star Spangled Banner. Listen to the moon howl back, hungry for waves.

Give me answers I don’t deserve. Tell me of your blood.

Tell me of your horror.

When were you born.

No, I mean where.

What year.

What skin.

What hour.

Which tree did you climb and fall, giving you that nasty scar. It wasn’t a tree, it was me.

I did it.

You did it.

We all made that scar.

I call because I saw where they shot Philando Castille—I’m halfway home. they want you to be a ghost they want you to be a ghost they want you to be a ghost I am the scar that serves the ghosts. I cannot help but be alive.

37

38

Artwork: Stuart Patrick Chapin - Brain Barf

Artwork: Stuart Patrick Chapin - Brain Barf

HIP THIEF

by Ed Lujan

after Brain Barf, an art exhibition by Stuart Patrick Chapin

Screwed up stu’s

art exhibit, we all became brains sept for bitter grass screwing on the roof, respecting a museum and the obligatory newness of fabricated fire pits with the lights turned off if you had asked me what a more beautiful thing could be made with a

god tv, with moss, next to the concrete, the honors, dual palm reading hip thief, we have come to expect this stealing from the beautiful world,

now they are finally stealing from us, they knew that making art would remove us from saucer carrot smoke beguiled jail, Chapin handy sails , in Switzerland with the poles Could you believe it? Escalator, razor sharp

henna tattoo, though? and if you did lose it all you could find it in popularity the screaming mesh handicap hummus is the opposite of goat cheese, you’ll see, the BACK SEAT WHERE PLUSH. Come down these steps, an earful of buns, wrapped around pulled string, magenta chord, meant for chestnut hair, all the things are beautiful here including you.

39

Artwork: Colleen Brady - Manhattan 2

TENANT

by Anabell Martinez

you and I they do not know what to do with us that is why your children run home holding hands that is why you double check the front door when you leave your children home alone that is why you grip your steering wheel whenever you see the sirens pass on the freeway and that is why the taintless sit with their privilege unguarded while you sit in your car during the thirty minute break that is why they exclude you and I that is why we carry the taint of our histories and families like stickers on our trucks and are watched when we step outside of the borders they invisibly placed around our homes that is why they fixed us into a block where they substitute our clean water plumb-

ing with liquor stores and filled the limited breathing space with fumes of overused oil and greased excuses for dinner that is the consequence of being dragged into a reality where the truth once kissed us in the mouth promised us with better lives in locations with no sidewalks and places where only roads could reach that is how we learned to love in these boxes even though they consider these our well deserved living conditions they cover their children’s eyes whenever they spot us hanging around the corners on streets that only belong to the dead that is why we have accepted our homes in the sacred ground we once called our own that is why they hand us these prizes similar to suffocating us in plastic bags why don’t they know how to apologize.

40

Artwork: Colleen Brady - Manhattan 1

TO HOBOKEN

by Mollie Murtagh

In the mildew of New Jersey the train patters on, the sun revealing the true color of my eyelids while egg and ketchup odor wafts, courtesy of the man in row J. The one in the seat before me has black grapevine curls but I spot a crumb in it, “a crumb of love?” no, just yesterday’s toast he had in bed probably. He scratches his head at Anderson Street with one finger and it falls out but the lint still clings, maybe that is love. I wonder if I should have said something before he got off but I bite my taffy tongue instead and count how many stops before I can throw away this empty milk bottle.

41

Artwork: Sacha Stancic - Societe

PINK MINNEAPOLIS

by Celina McManus

She wakes up to eat inside the lines of her crossword puzzle, plate on top of newspaper, Queen blank Beyonce, she mouths, bee. She is gloriously late, a psychotic masochist.

She drives. Two-hundred and fifty languages mock her incompetence, I had no idea that avocados grew on trees .

She drives back. When they ask her what she wants, she says, give me those little potato slivers. They give her a pity laugh and a steaming hot bag.

And then she takes a road away from home so she can live

42

the dreams of all the others and yet she can’t see the difference, not until she goes too far.

You might rest your soul on a night stand, but on the weekends, she’ll suck on the lemons from her water glass just to remember what her taste buds feel like. She purses her lips, but she will not kiss you. Not yet.

She doesn’t smile, but don’t you see it’s out? Here she comes, pulling into the driveway, but if you look real hard into her eyes, you can see trees she used to climb. Her mama would tell her she can go anywhere, be anything, and she counts her toes for all the places she wants to see, all the countries they’ve been to but she’s just had this one to hold on to as fake natives, pale ghosts stuck for all eternity in embarrassed shame. But mama how come they get to go? Oh, honey you can, too.

Her mama used to tell her, you can be anything you want to be, but she didn’t want to let her see, see that maybe she doesn’t want to be Irish and Dutch, just so when she says I’m sorry , they’ll believe her.

Her mama’s stuck in traffic back then. They’re not listening to music. Stillness, confusion, and the sour scent of warm French fries mark the space between two generations of 500 years past hills and hills of brown people underneath the earth. The bag still steams now, too, and that’s what reminds you of real time, not past.

Because she’s older now, and she reads for fun and for life, and she’s not sure where to run, but she feels like she should.

She washes your dishes. You read weekly reports. Where the cog is, the girl will come sweeping after, but only until the sun sets.

There’s nowhere you can be that isn’t where you’re meant to be, it’s easy . The radio plays when she tastes that pink Minneapolis.

What she didn’t tell you is that she saw the sky that night. It was pink and made her mouth water for candy more sweet and light than any she’s ever tasted. She smiled then, but it was too fast to see. She’s a gem, but don’t use that word lightly because there’s only a few who feel comfortable living among worms and caked mud.

43

BUS STOP

Bus Stop The bus stop at S. Homan Ave and W. This is the ^ C street / o corner. n g Where I bled r for my wallet, e and phone, s and idealism. s W a y A man walking on the sidewalk south on Homan Ave did not stop when I cried out maybe 7, 8 feet from him.

He walked on the salty concrete, I knelt on the icy asphalt.

Begging or praying or pleading; no mercy.

There were casualties: A bible, lightly used; 2 christian self help books (en route to a white elephant party I would attend later that night); one light, grey knit cap (referred to colloquially as a beanie); my sanity; some of my blood.

A bus turned right, from W. Congress Way onto S. Homan Ave. He was off duty. He did not have to stop.

He was 3, 4 feet from where I now lay in the street, bloodied. He stopped.

I got to my feet. I struggled to get on the bus.

He reached out, helped me onboard.

They grabbed my jacket and pulled.

There was a moment when the driver stopped, looked, saw me, saw them, he did not have to open the doors.

He could have continued North on S. Homan Ave, and I don’t know what might have become of me on that street corner.

But he did. He opened the doors. His thanks: a lightly used bible thrown at his head.

I rode the bus to my destination, a stranger’s napkin stopping up the blood in my mouth and that I coughed up. My blood, pumping faster than ever, adrenaline filling my veins, my heart earning its overtime for the week.

I went to church. Then I went to a Christmas party. Then I went home.

Then I did not get out of bed for a week.

It was a month or two later. I was alone, 3am, in the snow, on W. Congress Way, walking home, past the intersection at S. Homan Ave, when it struck me.

I could die at any time.

And I was inundated with a sense of calm, happier than I’d ever been.

Afraid? Anxious?

Constantly, but I refused to be paralyzed by what we have always known.

By the certainty and unpredictability of death, acceptance means freedom.

by Hudson Everett

44

BUS STOP REDUX

by Hudson Everett

It opens me.

There I become duty: to home.

Then a mouth, walking did the heart set self onto icy death, sanity; was bloodied. inundated.

Constantly, unpredictability doors ajar.

My adrenaline destination, attend the sidewalk casualties Refused calm, some me, and I lightly coughed a bloody street corner. A stop.

Step out to idealism: duty.

The napkin stopped blood.

A happier him. He coughed asphalt.

Begging stopped, mouth mercy.

I turned pleading; I’d knelt before.

Afraid? I struggled, went lightly, bled.

Then the street, concrete, concrete, adrenaline, mercy.

The corner, used; blood, on the sidewalk opened me, from sense I pulled.

There went duty, to home, to mouth, to wallet, Welcome to a party.

The walking heart thanks: was bloodied.

He refused predictability for doors unopened.

Remain calm, some me, and still idealism.

Begging stopped, man was me.

I turned off my stranger’s phone, 3am, head full of sense I saw the bus I used; the street, concrete, concrete, adrenaline, mercy.

There maybe was a route I used, and then light.

45

Artwork: Max Galo - Pull Your Pants Up Boy

IF YOUR BODY IS A MEMORY, MINE IS ABSENCE**

by Sophia Tempest Parsons

We did ketamine in your bedroom and compared sob stories at three in the morning. You thought you’d won because you’re better at telling stories, but I hadn’t pulled out the big guns yet. You kissed me the first time we watch Norwegian Wood and I should have taken it as a warning sign that you think it’s a perfect adaptation. You were so sincere it made me uncomfortable.

The first time you realized you love me was in Toronto when I got blackout drunk and called you a misogynist. You were embarrassed of your dry skin but it I loved it because it reminded me of my

mother. When I told you that you didn’t take offense.

Being with you made my father like me more, because for once I wasn’t fucking a drug dealer. I recorded you saying “You can have whatever animals you want” so in twenty years you couldn’t complain when we have twenty cats.

You said you’d be lying if our relationship wasn’t your single largest source of anxiety. On the way to the hospital you told me that you would be there for me and then you turned off your phone for three days.

46

IN QUEENS

by Mollie Murtagh

counting the street signs lit by the blush of brake lights, passing brick houses packed together with screen doors and lawns the size of flower beds, the bus driver is lost and a cop car parks illegally on the corner of 220th while a lady in white ruffles with a shrill voice brags about her daughter and taints the gentle rumbling

47

48

49

Artwork: Ornaments - InĂŠs Fung

DAY DREAM

by Inés Fung

I didn’t realize how loud seagulls could be.

We were strolling down the boardwalk, the stops had just began to open.

We burnt red and golds, harbouring the sunrise. All around us the world shifted: Glittering turquoise waves melted with the spotted azure sky.

The seagulls were joined by children on their first excursions, friends and loved ones gathering to share their lives in the delicate morning air. In the distance the carnival played a tune, bells jingling, a seduction into a kaleidoscope of innocence.

Your smile was ever present that day. God, I could stare at you all day if you’d let me. You’d stop to gaze out into the horizon every so of-

50

Artwork: InĂŠs Fung - Picnic

ten as though in disbelief of the simple beauty that surrounded us, allowing me moments to unashamedly study your features. While I searched for a spot to lay our heads, you returned with an ice cream cone, having caught me stealing furtive glances at the ice cream truck. I devoured it in a matter of seconds as you looked on, laughing. Oh how I wish I could feel you as closely as the sun touches your skin and the breeze tousles your hair.

The cold water barely stung as you held me tight, your hands roaming around me as though the sea could obscure your passion.

The air was tinged with salt and so were your lips.

I couldn’t hear the seagulls anymore, only the slow synchronization of our hearts.

51

UNTITLED #1

by Kaira Loving Passing time to rid the room on both of our part of any existing judgements.

Who is god?

Since we’ve yet to meet, is it too late to invite him to my table humbly asking permission to share a cup of tea and drink from my Grandmother’s china set?

The pantry is secured with a brass lock of stubbornness and collects just dust but I’ll slash my palms taking down the barbed wire that surrounds chances to reconcile and pour him a warming cup.

My real agenda, the reason for our meeting, I tip-toe around, I don’t dare touch directly.

Interference of my empathetic body.

Unsure if the almighty is used to direct bluntness and also evidence of a hint of cowardice that I disguise as sensitivity.

I’ve been running on empty, and now care for some clarity, do I want there to be room for me if I’m convinced to potentially rely like the masses on worshipping?

Who is god?

He’s looking at me at first a bit pretentiously with an equally cautious gaze, us never having met before.

I first met his ego and ask for a quarter-cup so I could bake a welcoming brunch and fill the room with the odor of nonsense.

During this life I’ve assembled a defensive and obvious lack of faith in those offering to take on the problems of others.

But worried that my shedding of my words won’t be received honorably in the presence of this stranger, I just need a moment to compose my exposure

He’s sitting, waiting, curiously at the dining room table.

I’m multitasking.

Vacuuming like a housewife with OCD to calm the jitters and to fill the silence.

52

it’s easy to get dismissive of the junk mail.

“You’ve got prayers”.

“Inbox is full again “.

The sorting situation is desperate.

The secretary is out on vacation.

These rants producing a five-o-clock shadow on god’s cheekbones, prematurely.

without an undertone of facetiousness so I can casually disassemble my doubts in joining: god’s participation in halting shifting ideologies by means of religious control and human supremacy.

But surprisingly, sharing space with god in the morning over a cup of tea, I come to the conclusion, with a closer look, that he’s maturing off of his immediately perceived celestial arrogance.

Showing up disheveled, feeling too comfortable in new company.

With drooping eyelids, another night without sleep.

Still smelling like yesterday’s martini.

And he tells me that he’s unable to meander through the demands, gracefully.

There’s a surplus at the overstock warehouse of superficial wishes.

And no employees to take on the received abundance of entitlement and confusion and lack of perspective.

God’s hand has been folded and now sip by sip, we are agreeing.

Nothing to be done but pray for those praying and pass off the responsibility.

When the world’s already convinced it is impregnated with the suffering of suffering of suffering of suffering.

As the

whole damn world Is intently listening, he speaks loose words that he doesn’t mean.

And loose words When spoken un-carefully, develop into a collection of collective loose thoughts.

He’s loose enough to confide in me, that his words, honestly, mostly shoot blanks and honestly, 53

UNTITLED #2 Who hands are these?

I didn’t put them there.

Ripping, tugging, pulling.

Whose strange hands are these?

by Kaira Loving With a hand over my mouth he couldn’t hear me mumble my womanly amendments.

Ones I shouldn’t have to mumble.

Whose ravage hands?

Uninvited.

Forgetting to ask permission.

Like a rabid animal,

I claw, I bite.

Room was as bland as his blank stare.

Eyes I didn’t try to look into.

But once, with a quick glance, I saw nothing lurking in their brown shallowness.

Pinned down beneath a weight I didn’t recognize and didn’t want to become familiar with.

I didn’t look again.

I stared at the ceiling.

There was a small crack that painted the left side of the wall.

It was off-white, like a coffee stained napkin, crumbled from use, over and over again.

And with every thrust, little pieces of plaster or whatever would fall and shower us.

In this crack I imagined an entire family of termites resided.

Hoping they would chew me out of this situation.

My left leg becoming quite numb.

His shirt was still on.

I always appreciated efficiency.

Whose hands are these?

Callused in the crevice where the palm meets the fingers, like a good ol’ boy who spent his day shovel in hand and spent his pocket change on the passing ice cream truck.

With a mother who’d be concerned about his whereabouts at this hour and with his hand over my mouth.

54

He asked me,

“Don’t you like it” in a tone that didn’t have intentions of receiving a response.

There was a maroon lampshade and a pile of junk mail sitting on the night stand made of cheap wood, maybe even plastic that someone painted to disguise as wood.

There was a picture frame, face down.

I wondered who was hiding underneath.

The carpet held in odors.

This didn’t seem to be the kind of place that anyone minded.

Piss, week-old pizza, cheap cigarettes.

Lettuce, carrots, snap peas, beets.

Shredded into a turquoise ceramic bowl.

I went over the list once again.

Wanting to run down the street, arms flailing as I scream, but these strange hands now had a hold of my speaking capabilities.

And too sore to run, handled like a piece of tenderized meat, un-tenderly.

Instead I curled up in the sweaty poison.

In a bed full of regret and excuses, hiding under the shame.

In the stale, hot, air.

I lie, abandoned.

I lie, hoping to absorb into the heat and disintegrate.

At one point, I even tried to enjoy myself.

Psychologically attempt to convince myself of consent.

I thought about what I made for lunch today.

Lettuce, carrots, snap peas, beets.

55

LITTLE FIRE

by Whitney Bard

The November moon blowing the cold scent of algae over the lake how lovely to walk alone in the circular dark, later learning how you hung yourself in your studio how sweet you were, your eyes pale, turned down at the corners the warmth faded from the world, a scathing rain tormenting our windowpanes as we walk through your why, extracting fade-creased maps from our corners to retrace the hows we got there and the some hows we got out of there, our lips dry from tasting the way you woke up this morning with your death in your mouth, how she waited for you in the afternoon as the mist rolled down the avenue, as the golden leaves dripped and fell, as all the moments in your life stopped moving forward in time with everyone else’s moments, as the light in your throat flashed a riot and faded, you’re a tide going out

56

MANAGING YOUR MEATSUIT

by Dominique Hua

what no one has told you is that your body is rock hard armour of soft flesh and balled up tiny fist against the sharp dark night that you have no agency over. weak at the knees and sight going like static on the telly you weed yourself after you fainted, cold urine seeping through a body out cold. you curled up into a ball when you realised you’d outgrown your mother and marvelled at the speed of your own body to hurt itself in regards to the ingrown betrayal of a toenail that was picked at for an accumulation of eons (planets shifted, umbilical cords rotted and collapsed, a civilisation tumbled) until it healed unknown to anyone. we have known limits. nights are for poison anaesthesia to the ownership of matter and mornings for owning up and taking responsibility or be told someone wants you all to himself. my body, yours; someone reaching into your womb that is not yours. we have various crevices and orifices and they are all connected: touch your feet and someone somewhere sneezes, or something. call it 气 or vital energy. call your body a home call your body a cab your body is rock hard yielding your body is sweet soft resistance curled up against the unknown limits of the night.

57

NORMAL HOUSE

by Ed Lujan

Traveling is when you cannot get off the couch to the pinnacle christmas tree unicorn melting head. The head quarters, which is my band name, Bob Dylan, The Band, their waltz. Life is a witch. Rainbow of wine bottles scenic painting project, the sevenelements, gutter Lagunitas, mickeys on the shelf, Band Master Ruckus on new years eve R.I.P quail oak , ravens wood , flickin scenic portrait of a tree on a cliff, caked with smoke.

Red Sauran fan party bulb acid loops, old moon.

Happy face, bulbous with thick black and hideous yellow, tiki alcoholic god of drinking in groups talesman, waste-ah-brah was his name. Bunny ears, a frog face afro mister mouse faced ripped from the arch, scarface, the antlers, these pull up bars my new room. Some guy who’s name starts with be, but we have no idea. Black flag march, Elvis.

Surrealist baby with mischievous plans. The road to broadway, cellar door, house bass guitar, everybody’s amps, recording arts studio in the basement, where I wrote last night before we passed out from whip-its. You can buy them at the liquor store.

The foyer which I won’t talk about, the foosball wasted house, nothing is as wasted as we. I exhale for the first time in my life in this room, I wonder if everybody else’s life is like this.

58

by David Samuel

There is a TV somewhere always Adding static to a room Unilluminated otherwise.

Crumbs in the carpet Bury deep into your elbows And don’t say sorry or you’re welcome That the wood grain Venir is cheap On the walls. Nobody calls To say is so-and-so Home? these days, No one spends the night.

59

Artwork: Asha Ganpat - The Tower

ONCE UPON A BOULEVARD

60

Artwork: Julia Masalska - Scanned Nr. 1106 “Infant Paper”

PALM LODGE

by Andrew Wetmore

You have no money so you grow your hair as a past time, sell your watch for arcade tokens.

Hourly it’s more humid here, valley of valleys, tar sticks to your shoes. This is the sister of fog, holding down your clothes, chapping lips, a confidential informant, rots button holes, mildews exposed plaster.

The gloxinia wilt, Dali’s clocks, your face flushed redden than your rosacea, redder than Renoir.

61

HELLO, PARADISE, PARADISE, GOOD-BYE

by Clive Matson

62

Power poles and buildings line up in rows, crosses and tombstones in the twilight glow and people crowd the streets below from school to work to market to home

and bedroom ease, from church to bar to restaurant to car

and doorway cubby hole.

Yes, we can preen, we can don our grubs and city clothes,

promenade the tile-paved walks and sashay through spinning doors into the sugar air of shops routinely stacked with ribbons, glitz, and gold.

We can glide by plate glass windows, dressed and cleaned-up, tidied skeletons with wide open astonished eyes,

stunned, bloodshot, wise.

Oh my father, why have you forsaken us?

My blood father, our multitude of fathers, myriad ancestors, spirit guides, gurus, why have you abandoned us?

Eighteen-wheeler over Donner crest twenty-foot visibility and snow blind.

One spot in featureless white

illumined by a flashlight.

When dawn creeps up the ancient sky and touches mountain peaks with fire, eases down in valleys and chases night across the fields,

when dawn begins its dance across rooftops on silent feet, what will be revealed?

Will we see first light enfold the skyscrapers and shacks, rowboats and marina yachts with ubiquitous arms?

Bend to highway underpass and caress tents and humans wrapped in blankets old and under houses, singed hair and bludgeoned souls and knit hats?

Light touches everything everywhere the same.

Oh my mother and father,

how can these frayed, sky bright glimpses fit together?

However can we navigate this chaos’d profusion?

63

What enlightened being would cast us here adrift in frank confusion?

Not Jesus, not Buddha, not Mohammed, not Black Elk, not Lao-Tsu, not Calvin, not Rumi, not Ali, not Shakespeare.

They’re not all-knowing.

They don’t know.

We know,

and we don’t know.

Hello, paradise. Paradise, good-bye.

The darkness surrounds and what the hell, “Buy a goddam big car and drive!” he said.

Smoke, she said. Screw, he said. Fly, she said.

Can we believe our eyes?

Believe splendor approaching from all sides?

Receive resplendence everywhere encroaching?

Everywhere reproaching?

This is paradise.

Paper trash and tree branch shadows flicker on Eden’s sidewalk, trellis roses and jasmine climb Eden’s bowers

and festoon an urban stream, passenger jets blink white and red in Eden’s night, city towers drape strings of lights green and blue that blur in teared-up eyes

to necklaces of radiant hues.

Paradise. Paradise here and now.

Not later. Not a dream Not a book. Not the afterlife.

Here and now.

“This is it. No gimmicks. No limits.”

Hello, frost glittering on basement window.

Hello, cloud and sky reflections on high-rise glass.

Hello, elevator hum a counterpoint to Bach.

Hello, rumble of traffic criss-crossing city streets, Hello, taking bike trails at a tilt, hair streaming in motion wind.

Hello, squatting on the running board.

Hello, air streaming in motion wind.

Hello, hello, spoked wheel spinning slow in the rocky stream.

64

65

Artwork: Julia Masalska - Scanned Nr. 1522 “Mind Make-Up”

MUSIC

GRAVITY

by Louise Noble Don’t tell a lie I can say that I need you And this feeling might last me for more than the night But your gravity pulls me when I want you to push me away You’re not here But I’m glad I stayed Take me away Hold me closer than yesterday Yeah, I’m afraid of what I’ll be without you You pull me in You pull me in

66

MELT ME DOWN

by Cori Hartwig the full moon is out with the stars i float & admire them from where we are i feel your eyes admiring me instead of the dipper or the stars or the evening the way you look at me could make me melt into the galaxy i melt into shades of the navy sky into crystals that twinkle in your eyes melt me down melt me down melt me down i hear your voice echo inside of my head saying beautiful things i could never forget your words shine bright with little sparks stars are the brightest before they go dark the way you look at me could make me melt into the galaxy i melt into shades of the navy sky into crystals that twinkle in your eyes melt me down melt me down melt me down the rain has stopped but god put the stars away i don’t know why i expected you to stay melt me down melt me down melt me down

67

HOWLING WIND

by Asha Ganpat “Recently I’ve been thinking about a sound piece from 2008 where I looped a track of howling wind on the grounds at an old monastery. The transformation was seamlessly magical! Any day, no matter how brightly the sun shone nor how blue the sky, the howling of the wind overlaid eeriness and fearful encroachment. Somehow the sound didn’t seem out of place. Visitors checked over their shoulders and behind them. Even as the maker of the piece, I was vulnerable to the air of discomfort. It was fun to get freaked out by my own work.”

-Asha Ganpat To listen to Asha’s sound piece visit our homepage: www.crookedteethlitmag.com

68

69 Artwork: Asha Ganpat - Sirens

ABOUT

BIOGRAPHIES Our artists introduced

Whitney Bard is a writer living in Olympia, Washington, where you can find her swimming in the phosphorescence all summer. She has been published in zines such as Iris and Hooligan Magazine.

BJ Fendel is a twenty-something writer, actor, and Oxford comma enthusiast living in Los Angeles, California. He likes television cartoons, Superman comic books, and black coffee. He writes because he cannot draw. He can be contacted regarding questions, comments, and blind date offers (he’s 5’10” and three-quarters!) via email at jayfendel@gmail.com.

Colleen Brady is a student in the NYC area who drinks far too much coffee and is constantly pulling her hair out at whatever script she is currently working on. She enjoys involving all mediums in her art, including writing, painting, photography, and filmmaking. If you want to see Colleen’s adventures through cities or otherwise, you can follow her on Instagram @cucumberapocalypse.

Inés Fung is a psychology student currently based in Hong Kong and has been an avid writer since the age of 6. She draws inspiration from her experiences struggling with mental illnesses, an intrinsic study in romantic relationships, and living as a third culture kid. She has a deep appreciation for the collaboration of old and new, and is deeply interested in the subtle beauty of human interactions. She is heavily inspired by the works of Raymond Carver, Charles Bukowski, and the films of Wong Kar Wai.

Stuart Chapin is an aurora borealis flapping across a crisp night sky. The lights wiggle and waver. They seem to be forming letters. You can make out a few words. “I peed in your shoes.”

Asha Ganpat is a multimedia visual artist and an adjunct professor of sculpture at Montclair State University who was born in Trinidad, WI and lives/works in New Jersey. Ganpat has shown at institutions such as the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Insitituto di Cultura, Exit Art, The Noyes Museum, The Queens Museum, The Jersey City Museum and the Nathan Cummings Foundation. Her work was cited as one of NYC’s top 10 art installations of 2012 by Complex Magazine.

Hudson Everett is the Senior Poetry Editor for San Francisco State’s Transfer Magazine, and he writes poetry and prose constantly. Occasionally some of it is good.

70

Max Galo is originally from Joondalup, WA; Galo grew up in a suburban beach town before a small transitional move to the mid-north coast, NSW in 2005. From a young age he was exposed to art through his mother, his aunts and their variety of medias from textiles to drawings to installations.

The majority of his works are influenced by the power of femininity and exploring aspects of sexuality and gender normalities through primarily photography and drawings. Along with art Galo also sings, acts and dances outside of schooling, with some test modelling on the side, Currently studying his last year of schooling, Galo plans to explore Melbourne in the next year hopefully making it into a creative arts school or a club full of drag queens‌Galo hasn’t decided yet.

Dominique Hua is a student currently studying for her BA in English Literature at University College London. She wrote, bound and published her first book aged seven, which explored the complexities of living as a rainbow mermaid.

She has been unpublished ever since, something due, on the most part, to the advent of Twitter, where you can find her at @cockolatespread having a natter about literature, feminism, politics, living in London and the Struggle.

Ă˜yvind Jonas Jellestad is a retired freelance photographer from Bergen, Norway. He was originally a lithograph printer, then got into graphic design and freelance photography, when he met AnneGrethe Fuller, the model in all of the photographs in his book When The Crowd Cries, which was published in May 2017. Jellestad currently runs a blog and is working on writing a cookbook.

Jess Gomes is a multimedia artist from Beverly, MA. She draws inspiration from the cosmos, ancient symbolism, and the human form. Her art aims to reflect lived experience through internal feeling, conveying the inherent fantasy of the human brain.

71

Anabell Martinez is currently an English (Creative Writing) Major and Art Minor at San Francisco State University. The first time she volunteered to read one of her first written stories was in Elementary school at the age of seven. Anabell Martinez had found fruit writing and painting about her culture and her experiences as a Latina and a woman living in California. She is first generation born in the United States and first in her family to go to college. She is the eldest in her family and loves her two younger sisters who have reminded her to keep her identity unhidden with pride.

JT Kitchings was born in Jackson, Mississippi, and proceeded to spend his formative years there. After living in Yellowstone National Park, and a brief duration in his car along the Pacific Coast, he now resides in the drastically different climate of Montana. His story-telling family life serves him well as a bartender at Lone Peak Brewery.

Ed Lujan: Gone with the wind, and just as romantic. This Poet, named after a coastal whirlwind, resides in Chico, California, and is a student of their renowned Departamento de Teatro Y Musica. When asked, hobbies include, walking, dancing, and living a healthy, ghost dog, singing menudo peaceful life. Did I mention dancing? He is the king of hips, look at him go!

Favorite song to dance to- I beg your pardon (I never promised you a rose garden) by Kon Kan.

Clive Matson began his career as a poet among the Beats in 1960s Greenwich Village. He was mentored and influenced by Allen Ginsberg, John Wieners and Herbert Huncke. His first book of poetry, Mainline to the Heart, was published by Diane di Prima’s Poets Press. Matson has published nine volumes of poetry, and has two more books in production.

A fixture in the Bay Area for over 40 years, he is also a Creative Writing teacher and author of a popular textbook on writing, Let the Crazy Child Write. He frequently performs his works in Bay Area reading venues with the accompaniment of cellist Gael Alcock, a tradition employed by many of the Beat poets. http://matsonpoet.com/

Kaira Loving’s poetry is the spawn of many years on the road. Her inspiration is primarily drawn from a deep connection to the natural world through her time working in gardens. She hopes her words will evoke a profound appreciation for the planet, but also will help to bring others back to their own raw and honest emotions. If nothing else, she plans to keep writing just for her own spirit’s sake and an unquenchable craving for creative, cathartic experiences.

Celina McManus came from the hills of East Tennessee to Twin Cities, Minnesota to further strengthen her poet brain. She writes fiery and strange poetry, children’s books with okapi lead characters, and reads too much Ray Bradbury and not enough Ntozake Shange. Her current writing life consists mostly of a picture book project with Saint Paul Public Schools in collaboration with Marvin Roger Anderson on Saint Paul’s historic black neighborhood, Rondo.

72

Mollie Murtagh is 20 years old and currently studies film, queer studies, and creative writing at Pace University in New York City. She is a filmmaker, an editor for Aphros literary magazine, as well as an award-winning and aspiring poet. Her motto is “always have an attitude of gratitude”.

Tyler Payne grew up in the small town of San Diego where he made a living off basket weaving to help feed his dyslexic nephew until his journalism skills matured. Today Tyler can be found avoiding objects that reflect his image or deciding if he should wear black or pigeon-ash grey shirts that day. Currently looking at his 24th summer of singleness he believes he is ready to wake up next to something other than a body pillow this fall.

David Samuel Meyer is from Northern California, and is currently working on a PhD in philosophy and education at Yonsei University in Seoul. David writes mostly poems and songs, but occasionally vandalizes bathroom stalls with crudely illuminated text as well.

Louise Noble has been singing since she can remember and playing piano since she was 9. She grew up singing in church choirs, and singing, playing, and writing music have consistently served as her creative release. When she’s not working on her own music or performing, Louise works as a private voice and piano teacher with students of all ages in the Bay Area. You can find her new single “Gravity” on Spotify, Apple Music, and all other streaming services. Check out more of Louise’s music on her Bandcamp page: louisenoble.bandcamp.com.

Sacha Stancic is a twenty-five year old digital illustrator from Paris, France. He is a rebel and a defender of freedom and the respect of others.

He did an applied art school and then experimented in the system of work in the accounting sector; after 2 years of enslavement, his soul demanded a return to freedom, so he withdrew from this system to position his mind on good thoughts. Art was a way to achieve it.

Andrew Wetmore is a poet and musician based out of Anaheim, California. His work has appeared in The Pink Attic Review, City Brink, Vagabond City Lit, Four Cornered Universe, and The Insomniac Propagandist. For further info see social media pages for his band The Gold Harvest.

Sophia Tempest Parsons is a student, poet, and Sagittarius based in Austin, Texas. Her interests besides poetry includes collecting porcelain dolls and not knowing how to swim.

73

Help crooked teeth grow and win a free issue by submitting a photo of yourself hanging this cut-out in your city to our Instagram

literature magazine

CROOKED TEETH

Instagram: @crookedteethmag Crooked teeth is a literary magazine based in San Francisco. www.crookedteethlitmag.com Submit your artwork to get featured in the next issue Like us. Share us. Read us.

74

Submit your artwork to: crookedteethlitmag@gmail.com Submit your artwork to: crookedteethlitmag@gmail.com Submit your artwork to: crookedteethlitmag@gmail.com Submit your artwork to: crookedteethlitmag@gmail.com Submit your artwork to: crookedteethlitmag@gmail.com Submit your artwork to: crookedteethlitmag@gmail.com Submit your artwork to: crookedteethlitmag@gmail.com Submit your artwork to: crookedteethlitmag@gmail.com Submit your artwork to: crookedteethlitmag@gmail.com Submit your artwork to: crookedteethlitmag@gmail.com Submit your artwork to: crookedteethlitmag@gmail.com Submit your artwork to: crookedteethlitmag@gmail.com Submit your artwork to: crookedteethlitmag@gmail.com

Crooked Teeth Biographies

Cori Amato Hartwig is a co-founder of Crooked Teeth and currently serves as Crooked Teeth’s fiction, visual arts, and music editor. She is also the fiction editor at San Francisco State University’s Transfer Magazine. Cori enjoys coffee, dogs, playing music (people can listen to her debut album Not For Nothing on Spotify, Tidal, Apple Music, and all the other places musicians sell out to. Google her), over-sharing about her life through art, and writing all the time. Fuck Donald Trump.

Andrew Teudis Halsig grew up in the city of La Habra in Orange County. At seventeen with a love of Allen Ginsberg Diane Di Prima and Jack Kerouac, he made his first life adventure up to San Francisco State University for college. After a year of Twin Peaks midnight drives and Japantown days he found himself on his way to Seoul, South Korea. He spent a year studying at Yonsei University and traveling around the nearby countries. He’s done poetry readings around the Bay Area including readings for Bay Area Generations and The Browning Society. Andy is a co-founder and current editor-in-chief of Crooked Teeth.

Jaden C. Kilmer lives with one foot in the Bay Area and one foot in New England. He is a walking dichotomy of rural and urban, realism and fantasy, avocado and chowder, Raiders and Red Sox. He is an editor at 14hills magazine, and his story “Empty Spaces” was published in Transfer.

Jaden is a co-founder of Crooked Teeth and currently serves as fiction editor.

Chandler Fitchett is the head poetry editor of Crooked Teeth and also currently serves as the co-poetry editor for San Francisco State University’s undergraduate literary publication, Transfer Magazine. She has resided in San Francisco for the last four years and has loved every minute of it- so much so that she has found herself using the word, “Hella”, unironically. When she’s not tinkering with the crafting of experimental poetry, she enjoys creating collages, watching horribly dubbed episodes of Sailor Moon, filling herself up with copious amounts of coffee, sipping on Piña coladas, getting caught in the rain, and resisting the patriarchy.

Julia Masalska is a designer and visual artist born in Ukraine; she migrated to Germany and is currently living and working in San Francisco. She has been working on various design projects in China, Germany and India where she worked for a year. Her artistic side came out at a very young age. She can remember standing out as a kid and intensely observing the world around her. Her art is showing the result of exploration of objects in her environment. Instagram: @scanned_art Facebook: @scannedart

75

BLACK OUT

black out and create your own poem

76

77

731 La Vereda Dr. La Habra, CA 90631 www.crookedteethlitmag.com

78

Artwork: Asha Ganpat - Aditi

Crooked Teeth Literary Magazine