LILLIPUTIANS
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HOW FAR DID YOU ORBIT?
TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION HOW FAR DID YOU ORBIT? FICTION REBECCA GRANSDEN SHANE JESSE CHRISTMASS SHELBY TRAYNOR FRANCESCA ASPROMONTE POETRY JULIO DOMÍNGUEZ CANDACE HABTE ZINE REVIEWS MAD MULATTA #1 (META PARADOX) #1 IN RESPONSE TO BEING CALLED INSANE WISEBLOOD #62 INTERVIEW WITH A WRITER STEPHEN MOLES ARTWORK BOB DINGNAGIAN (with some compliments) KAREN LLAMAS (Cover art) PETROSE T.
FICTION
MILES BY REBECCA GRANSDEN She calls me Miles when I'm here and her bastard son when she talks to me through the door after I've locked it with a brass lock I didn't get the permission of the serpent who sits at the bulbous feet of the platinum god who calls down in a booming voice from his beard of nicotine to us below who do not sit and worship but fight him everyday with all our muscles in a pumping blood fantastical spasm of idiocy at even the thought of obstinence that we have all been earthbound to have on occasion as we cannot all be the throne huggers and the disciples of us leeches who foul ourselves and hide our miseries so that time won't catch us looking at the feral matters that were bestowed upon us in the moment that the first hormone of puberty took us away from all the hopes they had for us and unfurled all the fearsome secrets of our future and their past in one moment we were transformed and everything went into a silver stream of molten neurons and the strength of fathomless glorious and terrifying genetic energy like the lion in my dream that held out its paw in a parable but its pad proclaimed a gleaming and polished length of petrified wood from an unimaginable forest so I must retreat from expectation and face the incoming trial in shortened whispers and thinking I was sly for wanting it better for wanting it better for wanting it better than every way they had ever lost in a struggle to wrestle themselves from the wanton waste they crawled towards in their dreams over cyrstallised corpses reddened sad vestibules with poisoned legs for stairways and puny arms for doors we'd go through and a short man in a suit would welcome us Come in Come in he'd say and we would climb the legs and we would but I can't not ever with you not even in a dream as the bearded fellow will not allow such things will see the way my eyes see you at school and that your eyes saw me that way once too and the lock went on and I was so alone with you that time so much so that I got lost and forgot to listen for her breath by the door and her body weighted down to the floor waiting for me and my sin to help her find her beard and talk to me through the door when all I wanted was a word from you and the lion would open its paw and nothing and I could look the king in his magisterial peeking eyes and we'd have an animal understanding that only we could understand and the land would sigh beneath our feet as we'd been aching for so long with no release but at least we had each other in the well of clear water that tempted us without dirt without thirst to stay and never taste that iron tang for the path to doom was surely set along an obsidian highway to strangeways if I wasn't careful like I didn't want to be anymore but she is always at the door forever the only way to be rid of her to let her in and kill her and take her out of the room and on the shagpile in a wreck of tears that she made me cry but I'd never do that however hard I tried the only reason I have for being here's so that I can hate and find ways to capture it and exalt it upon high and do a little dance like a ritual from some far off land that somehow affects me on my bed as I imagine the top of a mountain cut off flat and me under the big sky until dinner when I'd be forced to endure the disintegration of her flesh before my eyes as we both know what I've been doing drowning in disgust as the diamond eyes of my splatters intoxicate the atmosphere leaving you so full of woe the beard abandons you after every devotional detail of your life and everything even in knowing my plan you'd fucking help me with it wouldn't you if you knew and escort me along the flash with tiny wings sprouting from your back and a look of compassion copied from the statue of mary mother of jesus from mexico via ebay that sits by your bed behind your closed door like the fool that I'm not well not any more and this house is the house with walls for eyes and you know it and so do I and in forward I go from the ache of that girl who looked me in the face but past her to The Bowl where I'll take her gaze after I'm gone where no beard can tickle me where all is red and bricks don't exist either way leaning to descend a stairway that will fizzle when I step up and into the jaws of the lion with it smiling and presenting its glittering teeth and the tongue that would envelop me as an inverse baby amniotic and psychotic and confirming all your dread I'd play it out like an invisible conductor was in my peripheral vision and leading the music as it sails across the salt flats of shining alabaster and zooms over the stucco cliffs as a skeleton turns in the unmarked earth me shoving it onto a spit and placing an apple into its mouth cavity its bones converging to appear perplexed as I turn that spit and roast the dead on the plateau as the umbral darkness glides and the flames lick through the carcinogenic ribs only to fall away and drift in panic and screaming What have I done Who have I done it to but feeling my way into a tangent laughing into the brink until there's nothing left but running into the light like everyone expects will be there and it really is and I thought it would take longer to wait for the storm but it's like a sign that it's going to come today as I'm settling on my plan but this says that I'm part of some force perhaps magnetism the bearded one probably created as a sick joke on all of us that we fell for like chumps because the opposite was worse than standing out in the rain and none of the raindrops hitting you because you are the chosen one no matter what people behind doors say with a voice so cracked and broken and full of yesterdays where tomorrows are too hard and the only way to bear them is to sacrifice today to beardy but I've seen enough of this and if beardy cares he can strike me down and lift me up and I'll apologise and everything after I present myself as the infant sans clothes and hope no one is looking even though I shouldn't care at that stage tonight I still probably will and if He ignores me and I plead standing tall with my bits for everyone to see I shall not bother with him again after all that effort and all I will think of is that the only eyes I wanted on me were hers.
REBBECA GRANSDEN Rebecca Gransden likes to write short stories in rooms with big windows. She lives on an island in the UK and likes to watch documentaries while drinking soyshakes. Her first longer piece, called anemogram.,, will be available soon.
NO TITLE . THE LONG FLOWING SNOW FALLS AT THE SAME TIME. BY SHANE JESSE CHRISTMASS A beheading in Times Square, during the intermission of ‘The Lion King’. Shuttle busses from CUNY for people to watch. Rubber heads roll off into the East River. Head rubber-rolls off like doll’s head. Bloodied hair lock in the sewer. Flesh that smells like bromine. Earl C throws a leg bone into oncoming traffic. Burton turfs outdoor chairs. Free cigarettes dropped from zeppelins over the skyline. Foodstuffs burning in the Bronx. I cannot stand folks who want to remember. Burton hands pre-rolled joints to his friends. Their session is the best one yet. Willie does the same thing I do, drinks a vanilla milkshake. Willie tells me that if I were willing to start a war, I would have a loyal and living brother. I agree. I fall silent and look around in surprise. We make it out to Staten Island. The seaside stay agrees. Huge pacifiers blowing out from Washington Bridge. NO TITLE. The long flowing snow falls at the same time. I’m gonna Netflix all the yellow cabs on the isle of Manhattan, search for universal payoffs, prerogatives and the object of contract between two beings on the shorelines of the East River. Impact over the back of the bus seat. A giant weather balloon, I am not sure. The size of the acid tab is normal, all unsorted gravel material, all lacklustre. Earl C looks both ways. Drug material. I’m gonna head into the subway, breathe out the frosting air, light a cigarette as two police walk toward me from the other end of an overpass. She wears an Orioles cap consisting of foulbrood snakes. I am not sure. Burton thinks she hasn’t cut the acid properly. The soil’s lower than on the surface. The dunes burn and then hit the road. Burton and I are shoe-less, ambling away on ankles. “What’s your name?” Earl C asks as she twists hair curls. She notices the rope binds around my hands. I’m going to drink from the Starbucks up on Columbus Avenue and name the pharmaceuticals, the emotions of man as animal! She winds her hair right off at the base. The city, the bungalows are now a target for satirists and food fights. Earl C is the girl. She catches my eye. The edge of the crown where the girl is raw-boned, sharp-cornered and skinny. The subway takes water rapidly. Sorting and porosity. Effects in sand dunes that protect them from spilt oil. I’m going out in the November mid-morning, with body and high-arching flames rising from the remains of heavy diarrhoea on the doorstep of the Goodwill store on W 72nd Street. Similar processes. Ticket stubs. Bottles of brandy. Cocaine is moist. Can’t move it at all. Hand reconstruction. I’m going to grow up to be a recluse and a CIA detainee, obscured by basilisks and delirium. Porosity in earth sciences and the sea. Outlandish dimensions. There is no room. I lift a petty cash box onto my eaten sandwich, which usually appears orange or yellow. Armies of abdomen hidden in haversack. Earl C leaves her belongings. I strip down to my underwear. “Yeah it’s here.” “What’s here?” Earl C replies. A marionette copy, all blushed cheeked. A voice over a loudspeaker in the background. Myself on a bus heading up a busy street, draped behind a curtain, running down the hall. “Water dribbles into the subway.” Burton mentions, shaking the haversack off. I am your mom. I am the clothes your mom lays out on the bed in the morning that enclose you. Earl C hasn’t expected me to cum. All semen evolving in jaws. Narrow bodies, abandoned snakes. The calico and shellac used to provide counterfeit handbags. The spaceships take off. Those on board are destined for New York City life, a grey colour, massive in size. This immaculate condition is more than our bones. I enclose you. I’m going to photocopy your face at funerals. This is the result, a radiation of bony fish, crab mains and ballooning ocean, the factors which affect geometry. Gulf War 7. losses not reported. Burton was confused, concerned that we would suddenly become pawns of the Chinese, or some other unilateral power. Vietnam was a mistake, perhaps so the Cold War. No one sees this current conflict as a civil war anyway. Earl C was born in Kentucky. He moved around itinerantly before settling in Oakland. He believed the world had been fighting the Chinese for well over 1000 years. As the temperatures rise, so does the suicide rate. It is pushing out to 300,000 to 400,000 monthly. Half of that is failed attempts, those that end up hospitalised. Bombings over the mountain ranges. The ‘Hollywood’ sign. No amount of bombing would cure Burton’s ills. According to Burton, the amount of war was absurd. Elements of tyranny and aggression perpetrated by the New States of America. A rock on the carpet. The corridor. It fills with secretaries. Earl C heads over to the payphone and picks up the receiver. A warm summer afternoon. The meat flesh is mislaid, overlooked. A widower with his shirt wide open. Buttons popping everywhere. Willie and Burton laugh anyway. Transplants and antibodies set off in cargo holds for Northern Africa. I look over my shoulder. Nothing behind me. I have a spare key. I guess I could stay at the hotel. Earl C looks at the sculpture. The nose is missing. She attaches the nose. Willie hurries to the elevators. A squeak catches her attention. She looks across the station, nothing but a homeless person on the bus. A packet of sugar on the dresser. Parcels of meat wrapped in butcher’s paper going mouldy. Earl C hunches over, snatches the Letraset, and runs. A middle-aged woman looks at me. She ices her voice. Look at her! She’s up. Running. Peeling off into tide. Into her room. The woman looks old. Metallic typefaces on subway entrances. Woman forward running. Outlandish motion. Fidgeting. Twitching. Get me out of here. A bread roll spinning on the hotel stairs. Drawstrings undone on my pyjamas. Willie picks my pyjamas up off the floor. A friend of your slippers. Indeed, she is correct. An ambulance crashes out on the highway. Replacement hips. Tobacco, one extract. Cocaine again in the bathroom. My future. Cubicle closed by shower door. Soap in the shape of opals. Soap taste inside mouth. Dogs patting sex dolls. Hair locks. Earl C hikes up the hill. Sailors annoying me with deck chairs. Index fingers snapped in two. Offal in a bucket. Rib cages turning in serrated gristle. Hard drives made of membrane.
SHANE JESSE CHRISTMASS Shane Jesse Christmass is the author of the novel 'Acid Shottas' (The Ledatape Organisation, 2014).. He was a member of the band Mattress Grave, and is currently a member in Snake Milker. He firmly believes that the future of the word, the novel, will be in synthetic telepathy. An archive of his writing/artwork/music can be found at www.sjx.digital
PETROSE T.
Petrose T. works with photography and printed matter (collages) to explore, to transmogrify, our common experiences of the art of Every day life.
THE MONSTER UNDER HER BED BY SHELBY TRAYNOR It happened in the bathroom. The first time, at least.The water was running and she was on her tiptoes to reach the basin. As she let the water pour over her hands she could swear she saw something move in the corner of her eye. Darkness, like a shadow. She squinted and splashed water over her face, letting it drip down onto the basin and the bathroom tiles beneath her feet. It was cold. When she opened her eyes, expecting to see her reflection in the mirror, she found that she was standing, tiptoed with her face covered in water, in a huge cave. She couldn’t rebalance herself in time to avoid falling onto the slippery stone ground. She threw her hands just out in time to soften her fall. She could feel her heart beat thundering in the palms of her hands. The blue hue of the cave shone of the wet stone. It glinted and glistened like crystal. There was water dripping like a tap in the distance. She twisted and tried to regain her footing, staying low to avoid another collision with the cold, hard stone. Rays of sunlight streamed into the cave from an invisible source, colliding with the lake of water that she had been lucky to miss when she fell. She wasn’t really sure how that had happened. She was standing in front of her basin, she was sure that was where she was standing. Right in front of her basin, next to the bath tub, and on top of the outdated tiled floor. She had only covered her eyes for a moment. Yet there she was. She was standing—well crouching and hoping not to fall—on a sliver of stone, backed by a wall of the same rock, staring at the other side of the cave. It stretched out into a darkness that she didn’t wish to explore. The expansive pool in front of her, though unfamiliar, seemed a lot more interesting. Clinging to the stone around her, she looked down into the water that separated her from the rest of the cave. Was it possible to get vertigo in such a situation? She wasn’t sure, but when she looked down into the pool her stomach clenched and the walls drifted. The water was so clear that the stones forming the pool wall were visible until it got so deep that they dissolved into darkness. She could see the sharp edges that pointed inwards, even the small crevices from which seagrass poked out, quietly swaying. She could see herself on the surface too, the water so still it was like a mirror. Her dark hair was even frizzier because of the dampness of the air. There were still drops of water over her face, and her brown eyes lit up as she giggled. She was still wearing her pyjamas. A drop rolled from her face and fell onto the water, disturbing the silence it was exuding, and rippling her reflection. Each wave that came off the single drop slowly built and then dispersed. The movement quickly ended and her reflection returned to normal. She blinked, and when she flashed open her eyelids she was staring at her own reflection again, no longer surrounded by space and cool air. She could still hear drips, but they came from her tap and not from a cave. She stared blankly at the mirror in front of her, eyes wide and mouth gaping. Slowly, she reached for the tap and twisted it tight to stop the dripping. When she left the bathroom her wet feet almost made her slip, and her hands stung red. She was getting into bed, on a different night and in different pyjamas. She wasn’t a child that was afraid of the darkness beneath beds, though maybe she should have been. As she peeled back her blankets and prepared to climb onto her mattress and dream, she felt a hand grab onto her ankle. The long fingers curled one by one, each one so cold it burned. She looked down before it yanked her under. It was the shape of a hand but it looked like nothingness. Nothingness in the shape of a palm and five fingers. She was winded as she fell onto her back and was dragged under her bed. The dragging continued, though where she should have felt carpet she felt prickling and scratching. At some point she draped her arms over her eyes, blocking the golden sun for her line of vision. There was no longer anyone dragging her from her ankle, and though she still felt the ice cold clutch of the hand, as she peered out from under her arms she saw that it was no longer there. She breathed out in relief and let her head fall back. She was lying on something uncomfortable and itchy. Though it cushioned her head it also dug into her sides. It felt like needles sticking out of soil. It was a never ending field of dead grass, dried out from a summer of no rain. There were some patches of green where it had held onto life, but green blades were few and far between. The smell that accompanied it was pleasant though, warm and clean, like an autumn afternoon. The sky was dominated by clouds, with some glimpses of blue peeking out. There was rain in those clouds, she knew. The soil was calling out for it and the clouds listened as they darkened. She propped herself up onto her hands, staying in her carved out spot in the grass, and waited for the rain to come. The wind came instead. It was warm enough not to freeze and she sat against it and let it comb through her hair, watching as the grass moved stiffly along with it. She heard a flapping behind her, fabric moving in the wind. She turned where she sat, carving out a semicircle in the stubborn grass until she faced the direction of the sound. It was fabric, but better. The flapping came from the worn out orange fabric of a hot air balloon. She sprung up, abandoning her home on the ground. What lay before her was a whole lot more interesting than rain, or grass getting rained on, even if it was for the first time in a million years. The basket of the hot air balloon stood erect with no signs of damage, and though the fabric looked torn as it whipped like streamers in the wind, she still wanted nothing more than to sit in a hot air balloon. Functional or not. She ran towards it for what felt like an eternity, the balloon looking closer than it actually was from where she stood. The clouds had darkened and there were booms of thunder coming from behind her. She didn’t know why, but it felt like a race. A clock booming in the sky, her chances ticking away.
She reached the basket and slammed into it, her hands gripping the edge. The thunder was more frequent and she could see a faint wall of rain in the distance closing in on her. Holding the edge of the basket she used all her strength to hall herself over the edge. With one last push she hoisted herself over, expecting to fall onto the bottom of a straw basket.She shut her eyes, anticipating the landing. There was a squeak of springs beneath her. She still had her eyes closed yet they flew open when she registered the pillow beneath her head. The growing clouds were replaced with a cream coloured ceiling and a mobile of stars. The rumbling of thunder no longer existed, though she strained her ears for it. All she could hear was the distant sound of a TV down the hall. The only thunder came from her chest. She felt a jab in her side and lifted herself up to pull the dried out piece of grass out from under her. She was clambering up the shelves of her pantry, reaching for something. Her fingers were outstretched, inches away from the cereal box, when she felt an arm pull her from behind. If the arm hadn’t felt like a zap of cold she would have assumed it had been her father pulling her from the shelf to warn her about falling. It took only seconds for her to be dragged into another world, a world where she was also reaching for something, but this time it wasn’t a cereal box. This time it was a handhold on a blackened mountain ridge. One that she missed. As she fell she saw the sharp ridges of the rock that made up the mountain. She burst through clouds that lay just beneath the mountain tops, and they left her cold and disappointed that they didn’t cushion her fall. Before she squeezed her eyes shut in fear she gawked at the turquoise sky that seemed so unreal and magical that she wanted to keep looking as she fell further and further down. She didn’t fall far, but she landed on her backside with a thud. Her arms were clutching a cereal box, now crumbled and dented from her squeezing it too hard. She didn’t cry out or complain. She couldn’t, who would have believed her? She just put the cereal back in the pantry on a lower shelf. She didn’t really feel like eating it anymore. She found him huddled in a corner on her back porch. She had spotted a corner that the moonlight should have touched but didn’t. He looked scared, though no expression was visible. All he was was blackness shaped like a man. A space where nothingness had morphed into a person and that person was now cowering in a corner at the sight of a little girl. “Hello,” she said. She didn’t want to scare him. All she wanted was to know who he was. “Hello,” he repeated in a cautioned whisper, his low voice like an echo in the night. He was more scared of her than she was of it, like a bee or a fish. He was trying to make himself small, hoping to disappear into the corner that backed him. She stood in the centre of the porch, her arms swinging by her side. She gave him a small smile, trying to tell him it was Okay. “Thank you for the cave. And the hot air balloon,” she said with gratitude, the same way she would reply to an aunt buying her books or treats. “I’m… I’m sorry you fell,” he replied. He looked down at his feet. Or it could have been his belly. He was big in that way. “Oh… that’s okay,” she lowered her voice in understanding. “It was still pretty. I’d never fallen through a cloud before.” He hunched over more, ashamed and sorry. “I just… didn’t want…” he attempted, unsure, possibly afraid, to say what he wanted to say. He looked at the small little girl, her hair a halo around her and a smile on her face. She blinked at him, waiting for him to say what he needed to say. “I just didn’t want to be….a…. monster…anymore.” he finally got out. She giggled at him, a high pitched squeal of delight and appreciation. “You’re not a monster!” she said, keeping her grin but raising her eyebrows, giving him a matter of fact look. “You just have really bad timing.”
RED PEPPER FLAKES BY FRANCESCA ASPROMONTE Write on the chalk board: “Today is Wednesday. You are in Golden Dawn Center. The weather is sunny and cool.” I did as instructed, wrote slowly and deliberately, taking a sort of pleasure in the chalk dust littering the freshly vacuumed carpet. It wasn’t sunny nor was it cool, but I certainly was at Golden Dawn and had been for the past eighteen days. Time was something I had become transfixed on, time etched into my mind; the dials on the clock never seemed to move in the direction I needed them to. Sitting back in my chair I looked over at Lady Doctor to see if she was satisfied with my answers. She seemed to be, as she smiled briefly, looking up from her notepad, for a moment. This exercise took place at the beginning of every morning session. I was instructed to write three statements on the chalkboard in Lady Doctor’s office; two true statements and one false one. The purpose of the exercise, as it was explained to me during our first appointment, was to distinguish truths from non-truths and examine my motivations behind choosing the latter. “Now Lorrie, how did you feel when you wrote that the weather was sunny? You do know it is February and we are in Milwaukee.” I looked down at my nails and shrugged. That sentence was no more a lie to me than it being Wednesday. It felt more like a Tuesday. Escape seemed improbable on either day. “Well, it seems as if you’re less than cooperative this morning. I must advise you that this will only prolong your stay here. If we don’t get to the issues surrounding your pathological need to lie and how that caused your depression, you will never get well.“ She barely glanced up as she spoke. In fact, I had never seen her eyes, but I imagined them blue and engrossing. “You may be excused to begin your social hour.” Social hour was a strange time. Part of what made Golden Dawn unique was their approach to curing the patient, which was complete isolation. Besides the 15 minute meeting with Lady Doctor, patients were kept in their rooms and away from one another. The Center’s website reads: “We don’t want our patients to pass along their neuroses to each other. We believe that tracking all interactions through computer log will ensure the quality of the interactions” “Being able to embrace the silence, the boredom, is key to focusing on one’s immediate circumstances." “The individual benefits through embracing privacy and personal space as a source of healing and transcendence”. Physically we weren’t free, imprisoned by our mealtimes, bed checks, and daily sessions. As I walked toward my room, I stretched out my neck to see if I could hear any of the other patients hidden away in their rooms. Not one sound was detected. My bedroom door automatically closed behind me as I sat on the bed. The computer on the other side of the room beamed up brightly, rebooting, and displaying the neon words “Welcome Lorrie”. My phone had been taken away from me and this allotted hour was the only time I was allowed to connect to anyone. I sprung up quickly and took the wicker chair as close to the monitor as possible without tipping over. The computer glimmered as if to summon me: Here I am. Here you are. Come to me. In order to keep track of what each patient was doing during their stay; Lady Doctor explained that we would only be able to access one program during our time, MOTH (Mirrored Observation towards Health). Outside influences could and most certainly would derail our progress. It would be in our best interest to utilize this program to begin our socialization back into Truth. MOTH, the virtual platform, was designed to have participants use their creativity and re-create memories of the past, learning how to differentiate between false memory and pathological lies we had told ourselves. She would be the administrator of this virtual world. The program was simple enough, on the day of admittance into the Center; the patient was given a choice of three avatars to choose one. I chose the one that looked the least like me. My mousy brown hair quickly replaced with a golden mane. In this world I lived in a high-rise, where it was Tuesday and sunny and I had non-chalky hands. All shiny, all new, and better. I slowly began to scroll through my online profile, playfully toying with my tongue and gliding the heat of breakfast’s leftover pepper flake up and down my tooth. I began to grow tired of the perfect images that I had created, much more settled on the side of myself who lied frequently and burnt herself with lit matches on occasion. This is real. I am real. Someday I will unplug, and it will be lovely.
FRANCESCA ASPROMONTE Francesca Aspromonte holds a BA in English Literature from SUNY Binghamton and currently resides in Berkeley, California.
JULIO DOMÍNGUEZ
JULIO DOMĂ?NGUEZ Julio Dominguez con sangre Cubano, teine la fuerza para crear. He runs the Tallahassee zine library project and studies environmental science.
SANDWOMAN BY CANDACE HABTE learn how to become invisible hide behind eyelids make friends with synapses send signals to their bodies make sweet dreams wet dreams wicked dreams like the sandwoman you are
CANDACE HABTE Candace Habte is a writer and artist (well, a doodler really) and a proud 80s baby. Her work has been published inBlackberry and The Liberator magazines. She lives in Maryland with her husband (a proud 70s baby). Find her at candacehabte.com.
ZINE REVIEWS
Review of Mad Mullata #1 by Brittany Details: 16 pages, light blue cover, hand drawn pictures It's been a long time since I've gotten a chance to buy and read a zine in its physical form. I've had this zine in my wish list for quite awhile. What attracted me was the cover itself, her artwork is freaking adorable. I love the curls and the glasses and the overall girlish and the disapproving eyebrows look. The self-portraits, they look a lot like the artist, and a lot of the cute pictures either show a contentedness, an annoyance at someone or a sort of angst. They are wonderfully expressive and they fit with the writings very well. I loved them. The glasses on the cover actually remind me of the heart shaped glasses of Marilyn Manson, but I'm pretty sure he wasn't the only one that wore them. So I guess that analysis was pretty useless. The glasses on the cover actually remind me of the heart shaped glasses of Marilyn Manson, but I'm pretty sure he wasn't the only one that wore them. So I guess that analysis was pretty useless. The writings are all typed in Helvetica or Arial font. The font is easy on the eyes. I will admit, probably due to the ink, that Times New Roman can be a bit hard on the eyes sometimes. Am I the only one who feels like this? And all of the writings are at least 2-3 pages long. Which means that she is not the type of writer to constantly wonder in their thoughts. Most of them are short rants, one of them was about the annoying quirks of wearing glasses, which I could relate to because I wear them and without them I wouldn't be able to read anything or see anyone's face. And I've had people do all of the annoying things, like try them on without my permission and I've had my glasses knocked off a few times by hyperactive people (it was an accident, but it's still annoying.) There's a few feminist rantings. And I will admit that I am in for feminism, but I tend to ignore a lot of the ones written by White women since I know that their feminism never supports me. And unfortunately, a lot of feminist writing online are by White women. So it is a breath of fresh air to finally find a fellow Woman of Color's feminist writings. I've never read Audre Lorde or bell hooks yet, something I don't like to admit. There is a book by bell hooks lying around on my mom's shelves, but I think it might actually be her autobiography and not feminist writing, but I should pick it up at some point. That book is called Bone Black. It's always amazing to find the writings of a not only a fellow woman of color, but someone who is mixed race, like me. It's awesome. And I loved how she used quotes in her writings, which is where she uses the words of Audre Lorde and some others I can't remember at the moment. And what else can I say. Mad Mullata is definitely mad, with cute curls and chic glasses, with intelligence and a big loud crystal clear voice in Arial font. Rating: 5/5 I love the color of the cover. She has wonderful taste in colors. Available here.
Review of In Response to Being Call Insane By Marissa Louie Details: an E-zine with a faint light pink or red color, colored photography that takes place in an apartment, and possibly Euphemia font. It's a short E-zine consisting of photography and typography. A zine about a relationship that had ended due to a fuck face's cheating. It's feminist and criticizes society's view of women. How men always call their exes "crazy," and manipulate other women's feelings while cheating on and manipulating on those other women. I don't really have much to say, other than the fact that I like the color she used as a background and the prose she writes, which were possibly the spiraling thoughts she had about her Ex as she composed them in a word processor. There's something about this I think is so revolutionary. It's very rare to find art made by women that is honest and raw, not covered over in sugary frost because they fear someone will find them unladylike. It's also serves as a good representation of East Asian women in art and media, emotional and hurt, flawed, defeated, carefree, but winning somehow. Since East Asian women are always displayed as nothing but sexual and submissive, thin, pale, and conventionally pretty, this destroys those stereotypes, since Louie is definitely none of those. I can also say it makes a statement about trust and mental illness, for the reason that I stated in the first paragraph. Women are always called "crazy" and "deranged" when we feel that someone is doing us wrong, for stating the truths, and questioning our relationships, all because everything we do "makes men look bad." Sometimes, it just feels wonderful to rip the flesh off of enemies with your nicely manicured nails. Especially if that person is abusive. Rating: 5/5 Link to the e-zine
Review of (meta)paradox #1 by Olivia Details: Printed black and white, cut and paste zine, Times New Roman font, 80 pages. This is probably the longest zine I have ever read. But that's okay because it's definitely one of the most interesting perzines I have read so far. Everything was made from pure labor, cut and glued, no Microsoft Word copy and paste clipboard. Which isn't a bad thing. I do it myself. It was just something to mention. The writing is typed up in Microsoft Word with Times New Roman. I keep mentioning font. I like fonts. I don't know where Olivia gets all of these backgrounds. But the whole entire zine is decorated to the point where it looks like those surrealist graphic design collages I see online. They're quite beautiful and it also fits the science aspect of some of what's written in the zine. Space ships, moons, hot air balloons, insects, shells, compasses, Leonardo da Vinci's stuff, and old paintings from Western painters I don't know the name of. I notice that perzines are kind of like the coming of age genre of the zine world. Which is probably why I enjoy it so much. Because I'm still growing too. I notice that perzines are kind of like the coming of age genre of the zine world. Which is probably why I enjoy it so much. Because I'm still growing too. (meta)paradox ranges in topics such as asexuality to atheism to pulp science fiction to paranormal experiences to chronic illness and being on the autism spectrum. The zine's topic variety is one of the A+s. A lot of the stuff she talked about, I honestly didn't know much about, such as Synesthesia and asexuality. I know what asexuality is, definition wise, but I didn't truly understand what it meant, other than the dictionary definition. Does that make sense? It's kind of weird to say since this zine isn't meant to be a science lesson. But I learned a whole lot of stuffs from this little novella length tome. She asked a question about the unexplained experiences. Which were definitely one of my favorite writings of the zine. And honesty that smoke one is literally the creepiest thing ever and I can't help her there. That is some Sci-Fi channel shiz. The shadow figure things, I can probably explain. Although, I'm not sure. She asked a question about the unexplained experiences. Which were definitely one of my favorite writings of the zine. And honesty that smoke one is literally the creepiest thing ever and I can't help her there. That is some Sci-Fi channel shiz. The shadow figure things, I can probably explain. Although, I'm not sure if atheist or agnostic people believe in this, but coming from two cultures that are obsessed with this stuff, I will probably say those little shadows are visitors. That's what my mom says usually. It might be a late family member saying "Hi," or somebody else that has previously lived or died in the house paying a visit. It could also be a prediction of something good or bad coming your way, that shadow might be a warning. My mom and sister have mentioned seeing shadow figures or blobs during times such as the holidays like Christmas or All Saints Day and around spring time when my late father was ill. And because my dad was Chinese, maybe even Chinese New Year. They could also be a guardian spirit making sure you're okay. There's so many explanations, but it's all up to you what you believe in. That smoke thing, depending on how young you are, they say kids are more sensitive or prone to seeing weird shit, paranormal or unexplained. So it could've been anything, maybe a hallucination. But uh, yeah. What else can I say about this one? I can say that (meta)paradox is one of my favorites. It's astronomical, beefy (because it's long), and mind opening with all of it's cut and paste glory. Rating: 5/5 Available here.
Wiseblood #62 by fishpit Details: printed in black and white, with comic book inspired artwork and collage art throughout, and varying styles of fonts. Wiseblood is a zine written by a fictional person, well the writer is real, the narrator might not be real. He’s a punk rocker that talks about his life and reminisces about past girlfriends and his deviant antics. He talks a lot about drugs and the consequences of using them, past girlfriends who are addicted to drugs and struggle with mental illness, and the struggles he goes through himself with drugs, and general suburban boredom. Throughout the zine, you will find some delightful, quirky, collage artwork. Lots of cats, pills, White punk rock dudes that I have no idea who the hell they are, and copy and pasted women. I will admit that I didn’t really like this zine too much. I’m not the greatest audience for satire and honestly, even if it’s satire it’s still pretty offensive. The narrator is racist and sort of makes fun of mental illness and is an overall jerk. Sometimes I don’t mind jerks and sometimes I do. Some jerks are likeable, because they’re fun to read, and some are down right disgusting. This sort of reminds me of my occasional annoyance at the Noir fiction genre where most of Noir fiction is about lowlife guys who do pretty shitty things and this is exactly what genre this zine falls into. It’s entertaining, but the grossness of the main character turns people off, I happen to be one of them. It’s not particularly something I will enjoy, but some other people out there probably will. Like I said before, I’m not the best audience for satire. Rating: 3/5 I was sent this zine for an honest review. You can get this zine by contacting him on WeMakeZines.
INTERVIEW WITH STEPHEN MOLES 1. What do you think is the best in the process of writing? Just going through with it, slamming keys, getting everything down, or reading and editing? It’s rare that I write even a single sentence without redrafting it at least once, so I progress very slowly and then go back for more redrafting once the manuscript is complete. I’m definitely not a key slammer. 2. Who is your writer crush? I’m polyamorous (in a literary sense), so I have many ongoing writer crushes, but the most intense is probably William Burroughs. After all these years, he still makes me go weak at the knees with his “right-brained” interpretations of “left-brain” phenomena. 3. Do you have a soundtrack when you write? If so, what albums or artists? If silence, where's your comfy writing spot? As much as I like listening to music, I’m far more productive if I minimize potential distractions, so I usually go to a library to write. My soundtrack is therefore the sound of strangers whispering and coughing. 4. What is that one book you read over and over, or read portions of? That one book you will save from a fire? If a fire broke out in a library or somewhere like that and I had to go in to rescue one book, I probably wouldn’t make it out alive (due to indecision). I doubt I’d even get past trying to decide which Kobo Abe novel should make it into the running for best book before being overcome by fumes. 5. Who's that one writer(s) you wish everyone would shut up about? Most people accept that because the average mainstream celebrity is incapable of expressing an original idea or even forming a coherent sentence, their “autobiography” has to be written by someone else, but the idea of celebrities having other people write novels for them is a step too far (I’m thinking of the novels “of” Katie Price in particular). When Salvador Dali signed thousands of blank canvases so that forgers could create “authentic fakes” it raised some interesting questions about notions of authenticity despite the fact that it was done primarily for financial reasons; but it was only made possible by the fact that Dali’s signature conferred some kind of artistic worth to the product because he was an expert in his field. The idea of someone with no experience in a field trying to confer worth to something they played no part in creating is either the nadir of creativity or a postmodern joke so sophisticated that I’m unable to appreciate it. 6. What book-to-movie adaptation disappointed you greatly? Every single one except for The Wizard of Oz. 7. What book(s) is on your current reading list? (It could be your Goodreads list, on your night table, in your book bag, in your purse, etc.) It’s a very long list, with books being added quicker than they’re read, but next up it’s Frances Yates’ Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition. Bruno suggested in the 16th century that the stars existed in an infinite universe and could be suns surrounded by planets fostering life; he also denied certain Christian miracles and was burned alive for heresy. It’s sensible to consider whether certain ideas in existence today which seem outrageous and result in persecution when expressed (such as the idea that human beings don’t need to be controlled by a government) could in fact be the modern equivalent of this. 8. What was the worst thing you have ever written? I wrote a lot of bad stuff when I was younger, but the thing that haunts me most is a poem I composed around the age of 15. It’s the only teen angst poem I ever penned, but it somehow won a competition and was read out to loads of people at an awards ceremony. As I sat in the audience and listened to it being recited, it dawned on me that it was a pile of angst-ridden crap, and I vowed never to write anything like it again. After that, I enthusiastically embraced surrealist writing techniques, so it was a useful experience. 9. When working on whatever writing project you're on, do you focus on a schedule of words counts, pages, or just finishing that one chapter? For example, I've read that most writers would just write 1,000 words a day. Since I’m two metres tall and usually write in a public library while hunched over furniture that seems to have been designed for Lilliputians, I usually stop writing when I come to a natural break in my spine rather than a natural break in the text. I suffer for my art in a variety of ways. 10. What's that one book you wish you wrote? There was a guy, I don't remember his name, but I heard somebody talking about him, who rewrote F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, every word. Just so he could feel what it is to write a hit novel. That’s an interesting idea, although I prefer the excitement of not knowing how a work is going to be received while I’m writing it. I did have a similar idea that I started working on a few years ago, which was to read a classic novel and then try to write it myself from memory while drunk. I started doing it chapter by chapter with Jane Eyre, getting extremely inebriated in the name of art before each writing session. It was an experimental project, but since I set myself the rule that I wasn’t allowed to edit the writing it in any way whatsoever, I envisaged the end result being an amusing, semi-coherent, typo-filled piece that could be read as a simulation of what Jane Eyre would have been like if Charlotte Brontë had written it while drunk. I didn’t get very far with the project… for obvious reasons. 11. How long have you been writing? For as long as I can remember. I wrote my first book at the age of ten. It was about a boy who gets abducted by aliens and taken to a planet in the shape of Mickey Mouse’s head. It wasn’t exactly a masterpiece, but it was better than my teen angst poem. 12. What do you prefer in reading and writing? A character-driven or plot-driven story? I prefer a language-driven or ideas-driven story. Plot is the least important thing to me as a reader and a writer because I see it as just part of the basic structure of the story. If there’s no meat on the bone in the form of the development of characters, concepts or metaphors, then it’s lazy writing. If you’re skillful enough as a writer, you can dispense with the plot altogether.
13. Do you write during the day or night? I like writing at night as I’m a night owl, but if I want to be really productive I have to go out to do it, which means writing earlier in the day to fit in with the opening times of libraries. I pray that one day a library near me will announce it’s opening at night (with a bouncer on the door to keep drunk people out) and updating its furniture. 14. Have you self-published or traditionally published a book (small press or Big Four publishers) or are you in the process of doing that? If so what's it about? If you haven't published anything, but were published in a literary magazine or anthology, talk about that. I’ve had stuff published by literary magazines and small presses. My most recent work is Paul is Dead, a novella published by CCLaP. The process of getting the book ready for publication was very thorough and professional thanks to Jason Pettus. The novella is about a man whose life is robbed of meaning because he has the same name as Paul McCartney, but he slowly begins to reclaim that meaning after discovering a big red button that causes the death of a celebrity whenever it’s pressed. 15. And finally, what's your quote or motto? It could be one by a favorite writer or your own. One of the few mottos I find really useful is: “The only thing I know is that I know nothing.” Since we can’t know everything, it’s a mark of intelligence to be able to factor your ignorance into an equation like a mathematical x rather than remain ignorant of it. When someone is certain about something, they’re closed to new information, which creates cognitive dissonance and irrational behaviour when that information inevitably comes knocking on their door. Knowing your ignorance is a form of knowledge.
BOB DINGNAGIAN
BOB DINGNAGIAN I wrote stories and poems in my Okie youth in Hugo, OK but I didn't consider the medium seriously until a series of misfortune events left me bankrupt and angst-ridden in Chicago. While traversing this rock-bottom patch of life I rediscovered a passion for drawing and writing. Namasté or Nematode was developed during this time, but I set the manuscript aside to focus on career-oriented stuff (janitor). Believing there was no town as familiar with despair as Chicago, I absconded to Southern California, where I quickly discovered how wrong I was. Circling the drain, as it were, I re-acquainted with some old friends: bigR(better known as: The Rastafarian Single Father of Slum Diego), Shane, Lipps, Opie Rabbit, and last but not least, Mo'Pleeze.
The first comic strip is called “Marathon” and the second one is called “Saving Food.”
COVER ARTIST KAREN LLAMAS Karen Llamas is an illustrator living in New York. She enjoys long naps and origami. http://sleep-ran.tumblr.com
THE END It’s a little odd to write apologies in any sort of medium for anything that honestly can’t be controlled. This was a lot more fun than doing the second issue. I actually took my time and this one has a lot of wonderful art and writings. I thank all the contributors. I also learned a lot from compiling this one. But I hate to say that this will be the last issue for a long while. Who knows, it might come back with a different name sometime in the future. So thanks everyone and adios. The alien picture on the “Fiction” page is a free public domain picture. Some of the writing in here is single spaced and has no paragraph spacing, that’s not my doing, that’s part of the experimental writing form. And Thanks to Stephen Moles, I felt like Lilliputians sounded better than Lilliputian. He’s a cool author, check him out.