Microscenes issue 1: Birth
for www.altlitgossip.com
CONTENTS AS ESACHE 1 BAD CHILD 2 BEFORE SPRING 3 UNTITLED (CHUCK YOUNG) 4 RAMBLINGS OF A COMPLACENT ORGANISM 5 DIORAMA OF ICE 6 3 POEMS (ALAN KEIT) 7 I BEGAN IN A WINDMILL 8 PREGNANT 9 UNTITLED (MURDOCH LAMARCHE) 10 THE DEEPEST PLACE ON EARTH 11 ALIEN 12 KITTY BABY 13 SATELLITE OF LOVE 14 AN EXCITING ADVENTURE IN PUNITIVE REBIRTH 15 THEOS EIRAPHIOTES 16 BIRTH 17 SYMPATHY FOR THE MARIONBERRY 18
AS ESACHE (LANGUAGE DETECTED) he came out as a caricature of his dads dad sdads dad. she came out as a caricature of her dads dad sdads dad, only shortly after. barely alive and more alive than ever catch a first glimpse of the stars that would portray 7090 average years of existence but shared Esache
BAD CHILD We had such high expectations for the child but he let us down so we punished him. Bad child! Bad child! We had such great plans for you but you ruined it all by becoming yourself. James W. Harris can be found at www.amazingtemple.com.
BEFORE SPRING Before Spring arrived the land saw great floods. Fearing the worst she cast her womb into the rising tides. My cave was above sea level. I wrote grand books. I wrote essays critiquing them. Her womb drifting further and further away. Resting now in eternal looms of buttery wrath. The wilderness pure. History forms a figure eight. The evening skies were gaining depth in their reddish hue. I often thought of her womb floating across the oceans. My loneliness was exasperated by the shadow play of the hand. I didn’t handle loneliness well. A soothing blindness settled one evening. I felt myself as pure mass. In this state I found myself pretty. I cursed existence when sight returned. I tried to die in that lonely winter. One night I smashed my head repeatedly into the wall in an attempt to end it all. With each sickening blow the wall pixelated in languid black rhythms. Only embers remain. Something mumbling vibrating madly with the scent of birth. The town a new machine rises where the flood rescinds. Winter slowly leaving. Spring roars metallic and racing. My heart is space. The crown of thorns an infinite reprise of cosmic mugshots. The crows make grand lovers for the emancipated land. Soft downy grass. Mammals. New hope of sustenance. I wash my face in gentle brooks. No mistakes, I finally have it all. A fleeting breeze of footsteps. The womb returns with children’s laughter. Michael O’brien
UNTITLED The page has a number of creases and folds; its gloss chipped and dulled. A woman riding a bike is shown. Her head is turned. She is glancing at the camera over her shoulder (the picture having been taken from behind). The look she gives is coy and forgiving. She wears nothing but a short khaki trench coat, her nude backside propped up slightly, hovering over the dark brown seat. And there, hugging the smooth round cream of her buttock skin, fighting to contrast itself against the blur of the background, is this small line of splayed out brown hair that seems to split her perfectly into two halves. It’s the mystery and the taboo of that hair that excites me. As a child, I have no way of knowing what kind of physical pleasure can possibly be derived from such a sight. I just know instinctively that something larger than myself exists there. We all start somewhere. Chuck Young
RAMBLINGS OF A COMPLACENT ORGANISM Might begets might. Hate begets hate. Beget begets beget. If The Bible is to be used as an accurate source of information then the word ‘beget’ translates to ‘gives birth to’ with 100% accuracy. My thoughts on the holy book gave birth to thoughts questioning the very existence of our being. Everything gives birth to everything else. The flow of time since the beginning has been an enormous patchwork of birth and rebirth, much like the humble fractal. The natural mathematical marvel of the fractal is something to be admired. Each section of these shapes is given birth to by the previous shape in the chain, with slight alterations each time. What are we if not just shapes begotten of the shapes before us? We share the same features our parents had but with our own little twist. What if the Milky Way is just a single shape in the giant fractal we refer to as the ‘universe’? What if we’re part of a giant alien being’s own painting of his own race giving birth. We could be part of an intergalactic drop of paint that is waiting to dry on the largest easel we can possibly envision. Once our fossil fuels expire, we dry and are reborn as part of a masterpiece unbeknown to anyone. Ivan Laidler
DIORAMA OF ICE Son, I’ll apologize for my part in your birth later. First, you need to understand time. Look at this bowl of ice. The red ball is you. I wanted to use a housefly instead, but could you understand a housefly? Balls are early shapes. You probably feel like a ball. I could roll you. You will roll before anything, so in this diorama you are a ball. Houseflies come later. I wanted to pull off the housefly’s legs and wings so you could understand the comparison. I don’t want to confuse you. Right now, you don’t know arm from leg from wing. You are a red ball, because that is a bright shape. I want you to feel bright throughout all of this. Imagine yourself as the red ball as a housefly with two legs instead of six, arms instead of wings, and a peach painted face with two blue eyes instead of a strawmouth face with compound eyes. A housefly would work perfectly for this. The ice is time and ice makes a housefly’s nine hearts slow. Time will make your heart slow. As ice melts, your heart will speed, but there will be less time, because it becomes water. Water is time and water will drown a housefly with or without wings. Not all balls will drown. When you get older we’ll have another diorama of ice, then a proper housefly. For now, know your heart is slow and time wants it to drown. Chad Redden blogs here and tweets here.
‘IT IS O.K.’, ‘JOURNAL ENTRY DATED TODAY’, AND ‘WHAT ELSE’ If I ever learned anything by birth I’d tell you whispering it in your ear breath winding your cochlear you’d keep it forever the secret of life being born was a life altering experience that forever changed my life and I’ll never forget it (the end) when I was born I screamed the sight of reality frightened me Alen Keit blogs at realityishell.com.
I BEGAN IN A WIND MILL i began in a wind mill harnessing the raw energy of her breaths each and every word sung into the air at 3 knots twenty, thirty years later losing my grip on the crags of a cliff mountainous earth hungry for my bones i know too well we will meet the fate that existed before we began Austin Islam
PREGNANT Hi, I’m Pregnant. Nine times out of ten I get congratulated. Nobody wants to be the judgemental critic who disapproves of my situation, but that one tenth is what I look forward to because I’m not pregnant, I’m Pregnant, it’s my name. So, nine times out of ten I have to watch excited faces transform to curious, and then into sympathetic expressions as they try to grasp the facts I have just laid before them. But that rare tenth, how sweet it is, I get to explain my situation and watch disapproving, judgemental faces turn into shocked and then relieved faces. It’s quite uplifting. We then have something to talk about, because we both agree that I should not be pregnant in my current life situation. I do not look forward to meeting people. They just aren’t very inviting after I tell them that I am, and always will be Pregnant. Mike Stanley blogs as unnaturalmind.
UNTITLED I feel sorry for every baby delivered via cesarean section they never got to experience being forcefully expelled from a human body through a short, thin muscular tube followed by bloody mass of worthless material screaming gasping for air I feel like maybe I still have some deeply buried memory of being smothered by a vagina It’s just too bad none of those cesarean babies got that and they can never experience it it’s really difficult to convince a stranger to let you crawl headfirst into her uterus just to recreate a vaginal birth so the feeling of being smothered by a vagina can never truly be recaptured past birth this is what we’re missing I don’t know Murdoch LaMarche.
THE DEEPEST PLACE ON EARTH When they pulled the baby out of me the doctor turned and proudly said it was the Marianas Trench. I rolled it up in blankets. I held the Marianas Trench real close to my face. I had never seen a thing so wide and deep. It was full of iridescent fish. It looks just like me I said, and my voice echoed off the coral. The doctor agreed. The Marianas Trench agreed too even though it could not understand words. I whispered a story to the Marianas Trench about how it grew inside me, about how dark it was and how hard it pulled my insides by the weeds and the sea rocks. I told it how my stomach became endless with blueblack ocean. I told it that for hours I fought to push the ocean through me. Then the Marianas Trench waved its small fingers in the air and I raised it to my breast. I dipped myself into the freezing water. Schools of fish made delicate circles around my nipple. I became ice and broke into many pieces. I taught myself to nurse the Marianas Trench. I saw myself living the rest of my life with half my body floating inside the Marianas Trench. I saw myself filling up the Marianas Trench with paper boats. I saw a whale coming up to greet me with a lantern on its head, its fins overflowing with hundreds of unexpected presents. Bob Schofield at bobschofield.tumblr.com.
ALIEN In a stunning to the dead but undramatic to the present return to form elected officials now prepare for their campaigns from birth. Even in the womb, 3D images of the candidate are commissioned and edited by professional photographers. Campaign managers are hired directly after completing college from either Harvard or Yale and work with the child as early as possible to build an appropriate ageless narrative that will resonate with the electorate no matter what the economic situation of The State. Luckily, unending war, and very real threat of coup d’etat allows for a very simple and aggressively patriotic stance on the military. Running for class president at the first opportunity is far from the beginning of practical political training. At this point in a child’s development it will be trained to coerce even competent and intelligent adults into compromising situations in the name of perceived and real power gains. Most likely the 4.0 grade average is earned through a series of trades in money, sexual favors, and violent threats opposed to “hard knowledge.” In fact many will be more respectful of achievements gained through these methods as opposed to traditional. Direct access to social networks is never allowed, and if it weren’t for the already rigged nature of the system, it would be a blossoming politician’s weakest face. Staff will attempt to curate machine intelligences that can effectively simulate “humanity” and the current “narrative,” but without a real personality to be based on it is always clear that no human could be behind messages such as, “The present is the future of the past. The past is the future of the present. I am all the one there is what will be.” fartsinlove
KITTY BABY i googled water birth and filled up the kitty pool with water it’s not warm but i can see you sweating the video camera is all set up darling won't it be wonderful when we’re a family? you can squeeze this rubber ducky i believe in you, i want to kiss you so bad right now but i’ll let you work on your thing here he comes i’ll grab the kitchen shears and a chip clip he’s so beautiful even if he doesn’t have a penis our little dickless boy our first family photo our happy happy family twitter.com/Jacobchauss.
SATELLITE OF LOVE From within the silky walls of the womb, there was something incredible about to occur. The mass hysteria outside was starting to effect the entity, encapsulated within feminine walls, awaiting the imminent moment of existence which lay around the corner. That moment, where theory and mental visualisation become a reality, as you exist as nothing, yet everything in an instant. The moment as the light hits your fresh corneas, travels down your virgin optic nerves, molesting you with sensation and neural stimulation. Where has the safe place gone? What happened to security? That insignificant entity in a cosmic infinity is ready. Entrance to the ritual of life is beginning. The smoke starts to enter the protective cocoon from every angle. It is time. From the velvet crevasse life has emerged. Falling into its rightful place, everything is aligned in a state of supernatural bliss. The ecstasy in the building so great the foundations themselves are shaking. Ordinary one moment, legends the next. The rebirth of a musical sensation is the sweetest thing to cherish. Kick, snare, kick snare kick kick. He drums with the precision of a man with two arms. Def Leppard are definitely back. The arena goes wild as the heavily compressed hair metal power chord rings out over a sea of people stretching as far as the eye can see. Rocket, yeah, satellite of love. Rocket, yeah, satellite of love. Rocket, yeah, satellite of love. Rocket, baby, c’mon, I’ll be your Satellite of love. Chris Brown blogs at formidableopponent17.tumblr.com.
AN EXCITING ADVENTURE IN PUNITIVE REBIRTH i don’t make very much money and this makes me feel as though i’m not productive, i don’t want to do the things that could make me money. i want people to give me money for writing things like this. i want to feel a sense of obligation to these people. i want them to influence my work. i want my work to become static and cliche as i try to reproduce what got me money in the first place. i want to sabotage myself by doing this until my benefactors abandon me in favor of someone/something more relevant. i will wither away without them and burst into flames to be reborn as a phoenix. everyday i am reborn as the same person. Eric Sanderson does not know what he is doing at myusernamesux.
THEOS EIRAPHIOTES The triumphant smirk did not last long. Oathbound the lover revealed himself in Olympian glory, pulverizing his stubborn paramour to her very core. Her once glorious tresses of golden hair were the first to catch fire. Her despair lasted but a second; the carcass fell to the marble, thrashing in agony before the helpless divinity. The babe he rescued from her charred womb, sewing him into his thigh. Regressing to his celestial kingdom, the expectant father took his place on the throne again. His wife and sons were illpleased by the unwelcome guest growing by his loins. The child could not remain among them, they said. They would not permit it, the mongrel halfbreed son of a mortal. He said nothing. There was no need. Even he was bound by powers greater than his own. The laws he himself put in place, for a start. Chaos must be avoided at all costs, this he knew well. And so he bowed to their pressure, quitting the throne and taking to the mortal world once more. At the foot of Mount Pramnos the naked king of the gods prepared himself for the throes of the hour. Mad with wine and consumed with holy frenzy, the god delivered his son. Wrapping him in a bassaris, a foxskin, he washed him in the best wine. He commended the babe to the care of the rain nymphs and satyrs, to raise him as a girl in the greatest secrecy. This time he would live. Guilherme Joshua Fantini Blake’s writing can be found at hefferstrynafront.
BIRTH we were born to have existential crises and express ourselves through art we were born to be the instagram generation we were born to rise up in the educational and corporate game and give our parents bragging rights we were born to fail in someway or another we were born to reblog our favourite quotes on tumblr we were born to say nothing remotely memorable we were born to order a medium pizza because “it won’t hurt” we were born to put a couple pounds on this week we were born to impress ‘cute people’ we were born to maximise our last.fm scrobbles we were born to forget about poking on facebook we were born to spend hours on the internet we were born to criticise and dismiss every match we get on mediocre dating websites we were born to masturbate and feel terrible about it immediately afterwards Sarah Sahim is on twitter and tumblr.
SYMPATHY FOR THE MARIONBERRY She would be 22 next month and felt old. It was because the endless cycle of new meat moving in, that replaces, and will be replaced. She had grown to enjoy the role of the camera in her performances along with validation from an audience who desired to sit and watch behind it. She returned to her family in Montana where she first came from. The eldest of her siblings welcomed his first daughter and second child. The baby was given the name Marion. “She’s sweet,” said her brother. “Like the berry?” She asked as the baby was placed in her arms. She looked down to the tiny person adorned in a white lace headband and bow. Marion was bundled in material decorated with bunnies, flowers, and polka dots. The baby was fast asleep. She observed how pink the skin appeared and the few blonde hairs glimmering on the child’s head. The blonde hair would turn red like the mother and brother. She wondered if Marion would grow up to be like her, wanting humiliating sexual experiences. This concerned her. She pictured the free porn she recently made the moment she took the new baby girl into her arms. Marion’s older brother asked to hold her, so she placed the baby on the pillow of his lap. He stroked the side of Marion’s cheek with the tip of his index finger. The adults crowded around snapping photos. Marion’s brother placed his hands over the baby’s face, shouting, “No!” Kayla Martin
microscenes1.tumblr.com facebook.com/Microscenes Compiled and edited by Lee Costello