FALL 2018
JUNK DRAWER is a prompt-based art and literary magazine that aims
to both showcase what artists can produce when baited and to praise the tangential nature of creativity.
We are so inspired by the contributors’ interpretations of these prompts and hope that their work encourages readers to create something of their own. Feel very free to check the prompts at the end of each issue and send your arts our way. Thanks for giving a shit! Yours,
No part of this magazine may be used or reproduced without permission from artist. For more information, contact junkdrawermagazine@gmail.com Cover art by Ali Berry
CONTRIBUTORS
KELLY ANDERSON
filmmaker // photographer currently working in documentary filmmaking, coffee, concert photography, music video, ... @kellymichaelanderson_photo
ALI BERRY
Maker and Painter
DEREK DE VINNEY
Really cool guy putting out just like super chill vibes. https://lingerer.bandcamp.com/
CONTRIBUTORS
JOE GUSZKOWSKI
is trying to write more. He lives in Chicago and he recently joined the Y.
MAGGIE MCGWIN
grew up on a dairy farm in Wisconsin, where she spent most of her time reading books in her treehouse. She wants to go everywhere and do everything. She is currently figuring it out in Brooklyn, NY.
AMANDA MILLS
My name is Amanda Mills, I am a visual artist by the name Sunshine Acid. Photography is my form of story telling, a challenge to evoke a thought or feeling through a split second capture in time. My art flutters between reality and the surreal, and I often explore the use of in camera effects to distort light and color. I seek to reawaken a sense of wonder with my audience.
CONTRIBUTORS
CASEY O’BRIEN
writes, mostly about water and mirrors and smoochin’. She is currently out on loan to South Carolina where she’s letting the red dye grow out of her hair, trying not to get hit by cars, and wondering what the pullquotes of her life will be when it’s all said and done.
TED O’BRIEN
is a skinny old man who likes to make people smile.
N E L L I E VA N C E
artist/designer + hopeful crybaby nellievance.com
TA U G H T TO H A U N T
Frozen laughter, frozen tears, how long has their gaze been fixed.
TAUGHT TO HAUNT
1
AMANDA MILLS
TAK I NG NOT ES
you didn’t need a man to crown you the Queen of Almost, Never Quite you watched your mother skip dinners ahead of the annual Christmas card spun out imagining infinity or being stuffed in a trunk practiced this masochism on either side of the clarinet you beckoned womanhood in the dawn of the internet chatroom 14/f/WI you were taught to haunt your own damn self
TAUGHT TO HAUNT
2
CASEY O’BRIEN
TAUGHT TO HAUNT
3
ALI BERRY
TAUGHT TO HAUNT
4
KELLY MICHAEL ANDERSON
lingerer.bandcamp.com/track/guanacaste
G UANACAS T E
Howler monkeys sitting on the canopy, Singing through the night, but they’re way out of key. Oropendola free from the aviary, Sounding like a synth emitting harsh frequencies. Mangrove fingers searching below the palms, Feeling for the status of a fading pulse. Try to distance myself from ancestral flaws. Are we taught to haunt, or is it nature’s fault?
TAUGHT TO HAUNT
5
DEREK DE VINNEY / LINGERER
A TRUE I
I N STI H DE E RF I N G E R S O F E V E R Y T H I N G
MY H AN D S AR E CO L D
I measure my life in fingers lady, rum-soaked, in tiramisu that Aunt Pauli made for my 18th birthday and we watched Benny & Joon in her living room two of whiskey, rye, neat that I drank on my 21st birthday and I don’t remember much after that three to pull the dollar bills from the coin slot five to shoplift from Abercrombie & Fitch one that slipped inside my swimsuit bottoms when I was thirteen the tattoo across his back said “GARZA” and now that name makes my skin cold ten, two hands, held me down on the bathroom floor and my back was cold and hot at the same time and I couldn’t feel my hands, my own hands where are my hands one, sometimes two, to stick down my throat so I could lose another onetwothreefourfive pounds another notch on my belt another dash on the scale and my hands were cold and that was good because that meant I had less to keep me warm, right so I must be doing it right, right
THE FINGERS OF EVERYTHING
6
MAGGIE M C GWIN
I measure my life in fingers mine have tan lines from the rings I wear in the sun proof that sometimes I must be warm I suppose not always so cold I suppose mine can pick the skin from my bones I have a scar on the back of my right hand I made it with the nails of my left mine aren’t made for piano they aren’t long, exactly but they can stretch at least an entire octave at least 8 keys I measured this once, I forget the number now and they played well, so well amongst other things mine are crooked in places I broke them, probably and told myself I was a tough guy and shrugged off my wince wrinkles and pretended they were laugh lines
THE FINGERS OF EVERYTHING
7
MAGGIE M C GWIN
my hands are cold, mostly and they turn purple or gray when they fall asleep and they stab the way static does through the speaker but I don’t mind the purple and I don’t mind the gray I’d rather have cold hands than no hands than no fingers my coldlife hands my forevercold hands my own hands
THE FINGERS OF EVERYTHING
8
MAGGIE M C GWIN
THE FINGERS OF EVERYTHING
9
NELLIE VANCE
L I V I NG L E ATHE R
you dropped me off at the airport and the fingers of everything pointed at the warm space between your belt buckle and my pelvis tapped on the terrarium glass poked at our love to see how life-like it was we waited for we to do something the world doesn’t aim; it spins eyes-closed but you swore it watched that last goodbye with every curious particle of dark matter with the whole of insectkind with two billion versions of Jesus born and raised in the believing brain we waited for a god to exist to tell us “no, stop” I threw up my breakfast in the third bathroom stall of Terminal C and traded my ticket home for a flight to Cape Canaveral where girls watch rocket launches from the bright column between their mothers’ thighs I practiced cosmonautical Russian a man upholstered head to toe in living leather called me ‘legs’ yes, somedays all that I am is a walker
THE FINGERS OF EVERYTHING
10
CASEY O’BRIEN
Engulfing me no matter where I stand.
THE FINGERS OF EVERYTHING
11
AMANDA MILLS
T H E X - R AY U N D E R S
S T A N D S M EI M BA EG TT IN EE RD I T S M A L L E R
CAS T O F A CAN YO N
I had imagined it smaller, what was eating us. But even from the car I could see it sulking in left center. We marched closer, dragging our picnic. Six packs and dishes to pass and our little precious beefs. It was a yawn that screamed, a cast of a canyon awash with everyone’s bull shit. And we felt our web turning in on itself. But it was ours and it was all we had made. So we huddled in its shade and spread our blanket.
IMAGINED IT SMALLER
12
JOE GUSZKOWSKI
IMAGINED IT SMALLER
13
TED O’BRIEN
IMAGINED IT SMALLER
14
ALI BERRY
M U C H S M AL L ER
I saw other women float belly-up in his wake their small noses and tits barely disrupting the horizon I squinted palm-to-brow at the possibility that he’d weaponize my weakness too pin me up against me, a fight I’d lose/lose in the chokehold of my own contortion but like the Grand Canyon or The Birth of Venus I imagined it smaller, that chance like the military cemetery in Arlington or the radiograph image of my twisting guts much smaller
IMAGINED IT SMALLER
15
CASEY O’BRIEN
Some float slightly lighter over the Earth.
IMAGINED IT SMALLER
16
AMANDA MILLS
SUBM ISSI O NS F O R W I NT E R 2 0 1 8 D EAD L I NE N OV EM B ER 1
JU N K D R AW ER M AG AZ I N E@ G M AI L . CO M
This Is Tricks Flood And Never Stop Quiet If You Like
Jerks need not apply.
