MONDAY A Journal of Poetry, Prose and Art, Fall 2000-2019, San Francisco, CA, USA

MONDAY A JOURNAL OF POETRY, PROSE, AND ART

Fall 2000 coming out 2019 Founded 1999 San Francisco, California, USA

This issue is dedicated to Suzanne Day

Cover Art by anonymous artist, San Francisco, CA circa 2000

MONDAY Journal 5515 Pacific St., #32 Rocklin, CA 95677 (415) 371-9018 https://issuu.com/mondayjournal mondayjournal@yandex.com All Rights Reserved Copyright@2019 by MONDAY Journal. All rights belong to the composers of the artworks herein.

MONDAY reserves the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

ISSN 2644-3392 (Print) ISSN 2644-3406 (Online) MONDAY Journal uses the typefaces Minion Pro and Lato.

In Memory of Suzanne Day, Tom Ivelli, Von Stinky, Susan Birkeland and countless other art warriors who did not make it to the future that we call today...

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1 2 3 4–6 7–9 10 11 12–13 14 15 16 17–18 19–21 22 23–25 26–27 28 29 30 31–34 35 36–37 38 39 40 41 42–44 45 46

Introduction Forward by Stephen Elliot CONTENTS puberty ends, Anon. Piece of Shit DOUBLE WIDE, Anon. Piece of Shit Crystal, David Kelley (Photograph) MY FAT FUCKING BOSS, Stephen Elliott “Western” Medicine, Tim Johnson Untitled, Aimee M. Patten (Ink & Paper) Mosquito Bites, Jane 69 Untitled, Dylan Birch Benedict My Mother and I and The Shrinking of Time, Syria Witt Suppose the beholder’s eye, Syria Witt Flying Pigs, Robert Dickman (Computer Art) Step into my Orifice, Ted Arvenson Self Surgery, Giselle Hate Eyes, Jesse Redpond (Ink & Paper) Terry Dactyl, Kenne Galaxy Head, Laura Stack Gravity Kills a Flower, Cleveland Wall (Ink & Paper) Bones and Lightbulbs/ My Landlord. Moses/ Teardrop, Cleveland Wall Self Portrait, Maureen O’Brian (Ink & Paper) From “The Diary of the Young Man” (an excerpt), Vlad Pogorelov Strange Reason, Mike Boner Untitled, Jurgen Trautwein (Ink & Paper) Our Food Will Eat Us, Mike Boner synapsex, Joshua Young The Sweetest Crumb, Eric Robertson Running through Space with My GOD, Sarah-Marie (Pencil & Paper) PILL HILL, J.C. Slocum Crack Head, Jeanette Rector (Charcoal & Paper) WRITE IN SWAN FOR MAYOR & ALL OFFICES! FOR FREE MONEY, MASHT RENT & WEED, SWAN

47 48–50 51 52–53 54–55 56 57 58 59–60 61 62 63–65 66–67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76–77 78–79 80 81 82 83 84 85–86 88–92 94

Angry Chinaman, Jane 69 (Photograph) Insanity Island on Fire, Katrina McChrystal Untitled, John Sorkin, (Pencil & Paper) untitled, James Asher HOOKING IN INDIA, Monique Marquisa De Magdalena Untitled, Monique Marquisa De Magdalena (Ink & Paper) Morning Misery, Midnight Mourning, Valentine Pierce Untitled, Victoria Valencia (Ink & Paper) wHIRLWIND oCTOBER, James A. La Croix Jr. #23, Shane Kraus Untitled, Susan Birkeland (Ink & Paper) The History of Blue, Susan Birkeland MISCARRIAGE/ THE HANDKERCHIEF, Eleanor Watson-Gove Party Time For Little Girls, Eleanor Watson-Gove Untitled, Rachel Gracie, (Color Photograph) RATBOY SEZ HELLO, Jim Watson-Gove AEC DOGS ON THE ISLAND, Jim Watson-Gove LUSH, Joel Barfield and Jan Tepper TWO POEMS, T.M.D.Hernandez Tony Sanchez, David Kelley (Photograph) THIS SORT OF THING, Tony Sanchez THE HEADLESS FEMINIST, Aimee M. Patton VENUS DESCENDING, Morgan Reilly Westernized Yin Yang, Nicole Zach (Acrylic on Wood) At the Diner, Vlad Pogorelov POEM FOR BOYS, Tim Donnelly Von Stinky, David Kelley (Polaroid) Bruce Jackson, Richard Fong (Ink & Paper) THE PIGS SING A LULLABY TO THE MILITANTS IN THE CROWD, Bruce Jackson BIOS SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Monday: Fall 2000

INTRODUCTION From the editor “Monday” — a Journal of Poetry, Prose and Art was first created in 1999 in San Francisco, California. The idea came from weekly Monday poetry reading at the back room of “Covered Wagon Saloon” located in SOMA district. It was originally started by Tom Iveli and David Kelley. Following Tom’s departure, I co-hosted it with lovely poetess Suzanne Day, poet Kenneth MacKillopp aka Kenne The King of Mystical Scotland and Master of The Known Universe and David Kelley, an extraordinary visual artist, photographer and producer of many spoken word and music events that were happening all over the City in the late 90’s. Nicole Zach, a talented painter and artist in her own right, joined us as an art editor as we were tinkering with the idea of starting a literary and art journal together. At the time, we wanted the local artists and writers that were active on San Francisco scene to submit us their work for publication. Many of them came to read and share their work at the “Covered Wagon Saloon” Monday night readings and we felt that we needed to amplify their voices and give them a path to literary posterity and recognition.

The issue that we are presenting to you contains the original poetry, prose and visual art submissions by 45 San Francisco writers and artists that were selected for publication in the Spring and Summer of 2000 for the release in the Fall, 2000. Many of the contributors in this issue came to San Francisco from all over the place as the City was a magnet for writers and artists at the time. Many of us were inspired by the original San Francisco beatniks, some of whom were still active on the scene and rubbed shoulders with younger generation of artists. The punk vibe was also strong among many. Some, perhaps, were and still remained somewhat obscure while others became successful and well known. The goal was not to publish the well known writers and artists of the day, but rather to give voice to those who were perhaps lesser known yet very talented and ambitious. Most of the creative work that you are about to enjoy was never published at the time. All of the writers and artists represented in Introduction

this issue were active on the incredible scene of late 1990’s — early 2000’s San Francisco. I firmly believe, that literary-art historians will have to take a look at this publication in order to understand better the time and unique atmosphere of the last breath of the late 90’s literary scene that was happening in the City — before 9/11, before the invasion of various countries in the Middle East, before the culture wars of the 21st century, before total gentrification, before the widespread advent of social networks and all things digital, before…… You fill the blanks.

While we were getting the issue for the release big changes were on the way in San Francisco that affected the art community. I am talking about the 1st dotcom boom and gentrification that eventually turned San Francisco in to what it became today — a place where it is impossible for underground or beginning authors, poets or artists to survive and thrive anymore. Many members of the creative community were being pushed out from the City by the rising rents and gentrification. At the time, I could never find a stable place to live, before being evicted from a shared house in Potrero Hill in the Fall of 2000. While couch surfing, I used the free local phone at the lobby of now defunct New College on Valencia Street to make phone calls (this was before cell phones, remember) to keep in touch with co-editors while trying to find a roommate situation and a job — an impossible task, to be honest.

The following year I ended up maxing a credit card cash advance and buying an old motor home that I parked in China Basin bad lands and later near Espree Park in Dog Patch neighborhood where I lived in it for the next few years. Nicole Zach, also, lost her studio space in the Inner Mission due to a predatory landlord and was struggling in residential hotels. Suzanne and Kenne did not have a stable living situation either. We were not an exception.

This sad situation was happening all over the City. I remember trying to apply for various grants to realize the publication of “Monday” but rejections kept coming in the mail. Being between rock and the hard place and short of funds to publish this journal we decided to put the project on hold hoping to resume it when things became stable for us.

Introduction

Monday: Fall 2000

Then, the saddest ever thing happened — Suzanne Day tragically passed away. We gradually lost contact with one another yet kept in touch loosely over the years.

What you are about to see is a true gem, a time capsule, a message in the bottle. Honestly, publication of this issue of “Monday” journal is simply a miracle, under any normal circumstances it was not supposed to have happen! Yet all of the submissions and editorial work survived for almost 20 years inside a 1970’s leather suitcase purchased at a thrift store on Valencia street in the Mission district.

It survived multiple moves, evictions, couch surfing, several years of homelessness and living in a motor home by San Francisco Bay, out of country trips, various attics, storage spaces, friend’s safekeeping and finally a dusty garage before being opened and tasted like an aged wine in 2017 and then corked back again and left to wait for it’s time for another 2 years. Finally, in May of 2019 the wheels behind the scene started to turn again and remaining co-editors revisited this unfinished project and decided to finally release it. The time is ripe and the time is now!

We are proudly presenting to you the one and only “Monday”— a Journal of Poetry, Prose and Art: Fall, 2000, San Francisco. Suzy, if you are looking at us now please be assured — we didn’t drop the ball. We did it! Through the thick and thin, we never lost the course or let the f lame be extinguished. This issue is published in your memory. We love you Suzy…

Vlad Pogorelov, editor-in-chief Original co-editors: Suzanne Day Kenneth MacKillop Nicole Zach David Kelley

Introduction

Monday: Fall 2000

FORWARD

by Stephen Elliott I want to tell you a story, about San Francisco in the year 2000, and how unlikely everything was, and how we were surrounded by magic but couldn’t always have what was gorgeous and available in the world around us. I’m talking about the role of chance, or luck and a certain madness that inhabited the spoken word events and independent bookstores and dive bars at that time. I’m talking about, by extension, the people who had arrived in San Francisco in the 90s and thought they would be writers.

I was living in a studio on Folsom and 16th Street. That studio, if it still exists, probably rents for $6,000 a month now. But at the time it was the drop-off point for the prison bus. I was going to a lot of poetry readings where I would read my poems and also find ways to understand the world around me through the poetry of others. There was an incredible poetry scene happening, though I was too young, uneducated, and inexperienced (despite already being in my late 20s) to appreciate just how special the city was right then.

It was raining a lot. So it was probably June. I was in the habit of walking to the Peet’s on Market Street, where I would get my coffee and try to write poems. If I was a better poet maybe I would have worked in the Chinese food and donut shop downstairs, but I didn’t have that kind of talent. That was for people like Bucky Sinister, or some of the lovely people in this collection.

Anyway, it had been raining, and I arrived at the cafe with my pants soaked even though I carried an umbrella. So the next day I packed an extra pair of pants and figured if my pants got wet in the rain again I would just change in the bathroom. I don’t know the genesis of this particular inspiration. It wasn’t an idea I’d had before or since, really.

The next day it didn’t rain, at least not at first. It was cloudy, but nothing happened. Sometimes in San Francisco nothing does Forward

happen. I arrived at the coffee shop and I got their largest coffee and a maple scone. Maybe it matters that this was before the “coffee craze.”

Before Ritual Roasters kicked it off, followed by Blue Bottle, and Four Barrel took it to the next level. It was also before Starbucks was allowed to operate in San Francisco because of a deal with Peet’s where I guess they got all their secrets. I don’t remember. But Peet’s, at the time, could make the claim of being the best coffee in San Francisco. I mean there was Cafe Trieste in North Beach where Francis Coppola wrote the Godfather.

And there was The Atlas and Muddy Waters, the two cafes where I would later write my best book, Happy Baby, between 2002 and 2004, zinging on Adderall back when that stuff really worked. But in the rainy summer of 2000, before the Adderall (which I was prescribed in late 2001), before the second dot com that would make the first dot com look like a small town Radio Shack, before Osama Bin Laden declared war on America and won, in my third summer in San Francisco, a city I ended up in randomly, that slowly opened its secrets to me in a way that guaranteed a certain success and a certain failure and kept me for 15 years despite all my best efforts to leave, in that rainy summer between teaching LSAT classes and writing catalogue descriptions for an (obviously defunct) website called Catalogs2Go, I went to Peet’s coffee in the morning and I tried to write poems. It was the day a miracle happened.

I was on a stool at the window counter, looking out onto Market Street. I might have been reading a book purchased from Books Inc. just down the street. I was in fact almost certainly reading Valencia by Michelle Tea. I was obsessed with that book and read it multiple times. But I might also have been reading Sorry We’re Close, by Tarin Towers, which came out the year before on ManicD Press, or Monkey Girl by Beth Lisick who I first saw opening for Lydia Lunch at the Paradise Lounge. Those were just some of the books I particularly loved by local poets that made the city, and life in it, understandable.

And then I farted.

It might have started to rain by this point but it hadn’t rained on the walk over so I was totally dry. I was 28 or 29 years old. And when I farted something happened that had never happened to me before. It might be Forward

Monday: Fall 2000

something that happens to other people but it’s something we don’t talk about so I don’t actually know. I had an “accident.” I mean, I shat my pants. I sharted (and the existence of the word “sharted” makes me think it is more common than we acknowledge). It wasn’t something I had experience with or any reason to expect or prepare for. I mean, I was young. I had no idea what was coming in my life.

I was healthy and I didn’t know what that meant either. But I did realize, almost immediately, the unlikeliness of this situation. It was my first time ever shitting my pants. It was also the first time in my entire life that I had packed an EXTRA PAIR OF PANTS. I’d had many weird times in my life. I’d spent a year homeless when I was 14. I’d hitchhiked from Chicago to California. I’d been a ski bum in Keystone Colorado and a barker for a live sex show in Amsterdam and a stripper in Boystown. But I had never experienced a miracle that I knew of. This was a miracle.

I wanted to lean over to tell the person next to me, “You’re not going to believe what just happened…” But I didn’t. I didn’t tell anyone.

I wasn’t comfortable talking about poop. Even now, 47 years old, I don’t like to talk about poop. Maybe I should have bought a lottery ticket that day. Maybe if I had a cellphone I would have texted someone. But I was four years away from my first cell phone. This was another time.

They had a bathroom downstairs and I took off the pants I was wearing, washed them in the sink, put them in a plastic bag and then in my backpack. I cleaned myself then I put on the dry, clean pants I had brought with me just in case I’d gotten wet walking in the rain, and returned to my coffee, my maple scone, Valencia by Michelle Tea, and got on with what I vaguely thought of as my life calling.

Maybe I wrote the poem in this collection.

The point of this story is obvious: Miracles happen. Times and places are unique in ways we rarely appreciate at the time. And they change in an instant. One day the world is open to anyone with enough money for a plane ticket, the next day deranged men f ly planes into buildings with the wrong president in the White House and the Forward

world closes permanently and all those places you could conceivably have visited become places you will almost certainly never go, locked in an endless war between cultures that will almost certainly continue at least through my lifetime.

I would say, try to be happy at the time. Try to understand the incredible poetry that was happening in San Francisco in the Fall of 2000. The slams at Du Nord, the street poets in the Mission, the back room readings on Sunday night, Adobe books, the Golden Elephant, the Paradise Lounge, Hotel Utah. It was an incredibly fertile time to be a writer in San Francisco, as we can see by this journal, and by all the work that came since. San Francisco would dominate the literary environment of America for the next ten years, before succumbing to its current fate.

It’s rare to experience a miracle and know it the way I did that morning in Peet’s. I don’t know if I actually wrote anything that day. I know I stayed in the coffee shop and tried. Back then I tried every day to write something that made sense out of senselessness, a stanza or a paragraph that might illuminate an otherwise impenetrable world. My pants were dry and not full of shit. I had experienced something so unlikely that I should have known beyond doubt that anything was in fact possible.

Like this journal.

Forward

Monday: Fall 2000

Monday: Fall 2000

puberty ends i rebelled, no...rejected organs emotions gifts love my body rejected them a serious incompatibility with structure, atomic structure i rejected my organs transplants from my mothers eve gifts from my fathers adam but now i want them back failing liver battered brain wheezing lungs collapsed veins pus that refuses rise kills it’s host but we all fester a little and after unutterable suffering feeling fair is orgasmic —Anon. Piece of Shit

Puberty Ends

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DOUBLE WIDE Fifty -k aint nothin but a stack of C-notes Bout ten inches high They yell out sell out And fell out Stampeding for whats behind the curtain Or the door Liquor store promise Beer soaked lottos Ashtray spills on the f loor Two broken chairs awakened by the wind banging the storm door Goddam kids throwing rocks at cars and dogs Pitbull chained to an engine block gives a little yawn Dogshit lincon logs and barbie heads make for a plush lawn It’s gonna be michelobe every night With a wide screen T.V. Black light sega saturn Glass bong a python And a brand new escort gt Fifty -k aint nothin But a stack of C-notes Money is just money You can take the poverty out of the trailer But you can’t take the trailer Out of poverty —Anon. Piece of Shit

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DOUBLE WIDE

Monday: Fall 2000

Crystal —By David Kelley Photograph

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MY FAT FUCKING BOSS The sales manager said we need to have a meeting I said I’ve never had a meeting before I must be getting old He said they want to give me two more days I studied the carpet I could not figure the color “Why not full time,” I asked “The boss says I’m informal and irresponsible Unprofessional and aloof He doesn’t like that I walk around in my socks Wear earrings Make jokes about stealing office supplies He thinks I leave early when left alone I can’t help it I have subversive thoughts Besides, I say The boss is a fat fucking bastard We sit in silence So this is a “meeting” Finally I tell the sales manager I’ll be happy to work two more shifts I need the money And the sperm banks aren’t paying enough I’ll be happy to work two more shifts The shareholders have a right to make a profit And we shouldn’t listen to music on company time My fingers are cold and wet I look into the sales manager’s sad eyes I tell him

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MY FAT FUCKING BOSS

Monday: Fall 2000

I will not mail personal letters through the company mailroom Nor wait till I get to work to make my long distance calls But the sales manager doesn’t buy it And shakes his head I run my cold fingers through my hair and wonder if I will go bald soon “I have dirty thoughts,” I confess “About the executive director” “Stop,” the sales manager pleads But I can’t I dream of her calling me into her office Stripping me naked And tying me to her busy desk “You’ve gone too far,” he tells me But I never had a chance I quietly put on my coat The sales manager stands I tell him “Tell the boss he’s a fat fucking bastard Tell him I never liked him Tell him I never believed a word he said” I walk out the doors of corporate America It’s raining and I feel like Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca The winds and the rain whip across Market Street The sky is thick, grey, and filled with clouds All the monkeys dance around in stuffed shirts Well hung ties swing from their necks The weather is a torrent of ridiculous phone calls Absurd memos And unpresentable presentations

MY FAT FUCKING BOSS

5

The weather screams like a broken answering machine Hollers at the monkeys caught in their strange dance Receptionists march in parade Carrying executive assistants Pegged into plastic crosses Operations managers toss lightning bolts at Academic Coordinators District managers lube the assholes of Marketing consultants And the bankers and the stock brokers grunt and gamble and hump against 20th f loor bay windows The rain pisses down on the monkeys And I’m the only one that gets wet —Stephen Elliott

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MY FAT FUCKING BOSS

Monday: Fall 2000

“Western” Medicine When I was in the sixth grade, one of the other kids kicked me really hard in the balls. It was one of the many things we used to joke about at that time — kicking someone in the nuts was supposed to be funny. We were playing soccer that day, and this happened near the goal.

I got kicked in the balls really hard. The pain was so intense that I couldn’t maintain — I was rolling around on the grass for a really long time. The other kids laughed at first, but as more time passed, there was some confusion. It’s like — “Okay Tim — you can get up now. Joke’s over!” — but I didn’t get up for a long time.

Tolling on the grass on the sidelines. Eventually, they started playing again, and I was still rolling around on the sidelines. The bell rang, and I got up and we all went back to class. I don’t remember anyone bringing it up after that. I didn’t tell anyone about it.

A little later, one of my nuts — the right one — started to swell up. It became quite enormous- shaped like a Tylenol capsule. I suspected that something might be wrong, but couldn’t really be sure, because I didn’t see anyone else’s nuts back then. For four or five years, I saw no naked men, and no pictures of naked men. Well okay — maybe once or twice, one of the guys would take a shower during PE, but I didn’t scope out his nuts, because, of course, if you did, it meant you were a faggot.

It wasn’t until I was a sophomore and was going on a summer exchange program. I had to go see a doctor for a physical examination. Thus, the discovery was made — I had two swollen nuts- one sort of small, and one

‘Western” Medicine

7

gigantic, about four or five inches long, shaped like a giant tictac. The doctor recommended surgery, to be done after I returned from the summer in Norway. I still have a few pictures of me that summer, of me with an enormous bulging thing “down there”. It looks like I have some strangely shaped perpetual hard-on. It really chafed. It was really uncomfortable. It’s very embarrassing.

I used to pick at it sometimes- please excuse me for saying this — even in public. I remember one time, a couple of friends sat me down and asked “Hey Johnson, why do you pick your dick?” — making fun of me. I said, “I don’t”. And my friend kept asking me that, over and over, and I just kept denying it. This went on for an hour or two. Finally, my friend gave in, saying, “Ha ha — we’re just fucking with you. We did the same thing to Dave Cadige — asked him why he shoved skateboard ball-bearings up his dick.” And so I was off the hook and didn’t have to face up to my damaged unit. I wasn’t even sure that I had anything out of the ordinary going on. I had never really had a good look at another guy’s balls, so I couldn’t see how my hideously swollen nuts fit into the scheme of things. You would think that one of the grown-ups would’ve mentioned something during that four-year period.

I didn’t really have any friends during my sophomore year — when the swelling had reached its maximum extent. It was plainly visible, through my blue jeans — as the photographic evidence confirms. I wonder now if that’s why people were avoiding me. That was also the year that I did a book report on the bombing of Hiroshima — and got into a dark gloom about that for months. And all the kids were being “sophomoric”. But

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“Western” Medicine

Monday: Fall 2000

I also think that my “condition”— figured in. I guess I had a few different reasons for not having any friends.

Now I can tell you about all kinds of herbs that would’ve taken care of this — all the herbs you can use to reduce swelling and clear a problem like that up. But I didn’t know about that then — so now I have two scars just below my Hara — the center of my person — just below the navel. The doctors cut me open and stuck a tube in my nuts. I told people it was hernia surgery. For years, friends came and visited me in the hospital — all doped up on synthetic morphine. I left the hospital stooped over like an old man — stitches in by Hara. Completely broken. Everytime I take a piss I see the scars.

My senior year of high school — I had the shits for a long time. I went to the hospital for a blood test and they found iron-poor anemia. So they had me come back week after week. I saw a lot of doctors. One of them asked me if I had been shoving anything up my ass.

I went back every week for a year. I felt completely unsettled all the time — because I had to go to the motherfucking hospital every week and get my weekly shame experience answering to a band of arrogant ignorant doctors — and thus I continued to have the shits. And I was eating a lot of junk food then, too, but none of the doctors ever asked me what I had been eating. Finally — a “western” doctor, who happened to be Chinese, put me on a three-day liquid fast. And that cleared it up.

—Tim Johnson

“Western” Medicine

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Untitled —By Aimee M. Patten Ink & Paper

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Monday: Fall 2000

Mosquito Bites The pretty lights at the palace of fine arts The sun was setting and the sky was turning pink and the lights along the duck filled pond were turning on We sat half naked along the waters edge with our bicycles drinking beer Our minds containing the visuals but not the reality of a sad truth Smacking mosquitoes you were upset that your dad just blew his brains out I listened while you talked and we slapped and scratched and drank together I told you how my dad said how great a good itch was from a mosquito, he thought it was delightfully delicious nothing like it You said nothing quite like a dead dad and I said yes I know We were quiet as the sky turned purple and the lanterns f lickered The water murmured as the ducks glided by towards the shelter of the willow trees We drank a toast to Art and ducks and setting suns and our fathers slapping and scratching at the buzzing mosquitoes we will despise tomorrow —Jane 69

Mosquito Bites

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untitled Streets will never feel your feet No more bottles will taste your lips Needles will stop stabbing And all the pain you caused is forgotten All the pain you felt is erased You will live through us Hold us while we sleep And walk the illusion together.

She never was Good at the future It was too far away Each moment had to be forever Escaping all that came before I’ve been to the ocean Several times Since Kelly’s ashes Were sent adrift It has such power The waves I’m sorry I left you When you were clean And needed me.

I miss nodding off with you Walking the streets in the rain With that annihilating desperation The complete disregard For the continuation of our existence

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untitled

Monday: Fall 2000

They are rioting in Seattle And I wish you and I Were there together again Taunting the police Breaking things Living for the moment —Dylan Birch Benedict

untitled

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My Mother and I and The Shrinking of Time Two women at length only one short generation apart Each steps off the path into her own orbit There diamonds and gold in the pinch That’s become the sprawl of life Unlonely eagles now each scours the skies to possess Her truer than previous blessings It is rebirth you know Two arrivings at the center We all had always Really known. —Syria Witt

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My Mother and I and The Shrinking of Time

Monday: Fall 2000

Suppose the beholder’s eye Suppose the beholder’s eye you hope to be ref lected by Enbogged in pain shows only strain Forewarned thereby forejailed one brave I Am derailed To drear mere practical pleading Right there the bare beginnings of a life Dare down entirely Dysfunctional f lavors of the day of many a previous year Serve up sad sprinkled Uncommunicative drafts Beers indigestible Then may the moon still unexplored to death Sweet side of eye revealer undress to Grace A spacious place for your well fed and never ending undevourable Re-Vision —Syria Witt

Suppose the beholder’s eye

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Flying Pigs —By Robert Dickman Computer Art

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Monday: Fall 2000

Step into my Orifice Call 4 dr. coyote Cawl 4 dat-ur uh kiotee Pixie fixes you right up Flying predawn down wormwood Morning an ally cat pops up Surprised as you are like A shooting star the car Engines like mustangs on meth Trampling lauries canyon off Tangle foot road is gonna be The death of us Beck, brook, brynn got him All moonburned and kelly green In the nick of time oh baby Rabbit down in grandma janes Hole out back by hollyhocks Flower garden bean pole Look Riddlin, lookie have its Doktor hype a real tiger Roar-shark man like ink Stains for brains in a cooker From Montreal, let’s listen McGill OK MK “So Mr. Avid-Sun, tell me what Do you see there in the picture?”

Step into my Orifice

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“Truthfully Doc, All I can make out Are the moonbird droppings where The eagle landed, one small step.

The John Lennon crater face and A blueprint for the Lunar Hilton” “Is that so and what else do you See Mr. Avid-sun?”

“Well, a peculiar quivering in Between the lines at the slightest Touch, a filament of firmament.

The child sticks in the canoe puddle After both current and torrent In a wanderlust meandering is all.

My napsacks on my back from here.”

“From where, Mr. Avid-sun?”

“From this giant ball of blueprint Cheese, The moon man, therefore Upshot of all this is a beautiful Thing Doc: it’s a thing of beauty.”

—Ted Arvenson

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Step into my Orifice

Monday: Fall 2000

Self Surgery She’ll cut her breast open with Kurt and plant a f lower or a vine she needs a scalpel-they need a scalpel all they have is x-acto blades they will have to cut a lot at a time starting on the inner curve of the breast she gouges it in cutting the blade into the f lesh she feels only a sting but hears a rubbery crunch this is going to take awhile they have all the time there is she has to hold the skin taught with two fingers so it will cut better the blood begins to seep outside of her body all the poison is coming out her blood smells like speed it’s the GHT a drug her body makes called Giselle High Tea she is insensed her body makes incense as she continues the incision more blood is spilling out she rubs it on her ribs licks her fingers coated with blood in various stages of evaporation then runs her f lngers through her hair to clean them

Self Surgery

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she is talking to someone no one else would see if they walked into the rooms suddenly she is poised and not hunched over like an animal a force is chiseling the outer curve of her breast she can feel Kurt inside her guiding her hand the perimeter has been cut time to cut deeper, further she is losing control of the blood the black hand towel is soaked she decides to move to the bathtub carrying a white f lower and curved needle blood is weeping down her side the f lower looks overexposed in the sunlight as she tears into the tissue she feels so much relief she is finding something meaningful she is so happy to be making f loral septicemia with Kurt fuck them, fuck them all they feel together well do something beautiful she kisses all the petals before gently tucking the f lower where the breast is separated she can barely stitch it closed the black stitches remind her

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Self Surgery

Monday: Fall 2000

of something she is not sure of she is disconnected by it when the sutures are finished she traces them with her fingertips and touches her breast to feel the f lower inside it’s just a lot harder she made a heart-shaped box with a picture of a gun pointed at you it’s painted deep blue he told her to put an orange stuffed with blood and f lowers in it they wrapped it with white thread quickly for the right spell do not open until our non-existent Christmas it’s in her art drawer in restraining order land becoming what it must a moldy candy box mold they made/ candy they made —Giselle Hate

Self Surgery

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Eyes —By Jesse Redpond Ink &Paper

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Monday: Fall 2000

Terry Dactyl Terry Dactyl Smiles Iron Smiles cloud and smoke form a sigh pitted steel a cartoon face--her image of my piercings projected a cross psychick space Nyah! Nyah! dragon baby:--oh my! y R a monster. dragon baby:--my baby, birthed on a Queen of Beyond Come to visit, snatch of wallet full of power: Rechemickalized into someone new. wipe change across yr face, lick it all over yr teeth, change yr breath Power settles into the room and form kittie --she her, near the ceiling? skratchie klaws bitey teeth Her voice crawls out --: was unable to speak for a minute. y were led astray: now y r cap-A-tured!!! what ever will they do to y? they will make y like me. “sometimes pretending makes it so” “sometimes, ... never.”

Terry Dactyl

23

falling forever into the singularity buried in the depths of every massive body the gravity in his soul the boy is screaming e!!! “it’s a beautifull, man ... “ the monster takes control of the boy Monsterizing the christians and their f labby asses back into the Lion’s Den it gives me a sick kinda kick doing all that # of the Beast “I am the Antichrist” schtick because I can --being in my person Emperor of the Western World King of Mystickal Scotland Lord of Haight Street Little Mr. Kissy Lips, Himself,-the Man. This is the poem I really want to write psychick computer King of Mystickal Scotland Me ... from the future I made nothing happen make something OUT of nothing I call IT It makes STUFF y use to make things Things that work

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Terry Dactyl

Monday: Fall 2000

it’s ok w/ me if y use IT from cliche to archetype I make IT happen it’s my job being crazy enuf to understand when yR wigging OUT—come to Kenne Acid guide to other worlds beyond beyond there is no beyond beyond--y just go there just don’t give Kenne any more L.S.D., break the 1st Rule: Never climb up on the roof on Acid SHOUT [insert secret word here] —Kenne

Terry Dactyl

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Galaxy Head O Galaxy head: Since you spun twinkling down from The Star Tree Into my arms, I am uniquely charmed In the Milky Way. Cleveland Wall Sacred Grounds On December 9, 1999, I do my space series. NASA has just sent up another tinker toy to Mars and it is a big f lop. I offer to freelance for NASA. I come much cheaper and my messages are funnier than some electronic burp. Jim Wilson yells out LOCKHEAD LAURA!!

Hmm. We have all the equipment we need to communicate with the Universe deep inside our own hearts and minds. I show the above photo of heads lined up like radio telescopes. They are receiving some transmission from a satellite. Galaxy Heads? My idea is confirmed when Cleveland Wall reads the above poem entitled GALAXY HEAD. It is about a baby’s spiraling head being born. I almost dropped out of my seat when she read it. I am usually in synch with at least one poet at the readings at the Sacred Grounds and it spooks the hell out of me. I would rather have these mystical moments than all the riches in the world.

When I got home from this reading I found an article about quantum physics in the brain. Quantum physics, where particle behavior can be expressed only in terms of probability, even bothered Einstein (“God does not play dice with the Universe”). For instance, under certain circumstances, quantum theory predicts that a change in an object in one place can instantly produce a change in 26

Galaxy Head

Monday: Fall 2000

a related object somewhere else-even on the other side of the Universe (telepathy?).

The physicists in the article John Clauser and Henry Stapp) ask if quantum effects take place on the border between the visible and invisible world (quantum effects up to now have been studied only in the unseen, subatomic world). They believe the anomalies of quantum physics deserve more investigation. Instead of building bigger and bigger cyclotrons to discover yet another tiny particle of matter, why not study this realm? A shaman would call this twilight world the liminal (threshold) world and it is the territory I have staked out. It is why I pay more attention to the f leeting image or things seen out of the corner of my eye (this is an Indian way of seeing the world). “Why not see if the elusiveness of the quantum world applies to events larger than the subatomic world,” they ask?

The day after showing this picture of Galaxy Heads I found the above image of the shadow of a hand revealing a spiral galaxy. What’s next? Galaxy Feet? (A few weeks after writing this Jerry Ferraz said something about “feet of serendipity.” Am I onto something here?)

—Laura Stack

Galaxy Head

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Gravity Kills a Flower —By Cleveland Wall lnk & Paper

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Monday: Fall 2000

Bones and Lightbulbs It’s raining bones and lightbulbs!

Eight blind bolts sing us in a barn This gibbon’s ballad, turning sine.

Rabble go dashing in; it blunts sin And is subtler in a night’s lobbing Than stinging barbs in solid blue.

Banish, sang dobbins lilting true.

It’s raining bones and lightbulbs.

Riant be limbs in standing slough.

My Landlord. Moses My landlord, Moses, is a gargoyle.

Sly old rainy dames... glamour goes.

Aye, really gods. Doors slamming.

Yearly go ordeals. Damming loss Rolls a lemon. My dear soggy dais Merely ordains madly a gloss... Go Early gloom, gay dross and smile.

Gloomy rale, sang so sadly mired Glossy lady. More alarming does Moses rally—O soggy damned liar.

My landlord, Moses, is a gargoyle.

Teardrop A teardrop can kill a million germs.

Rain smearing, calm leopard to kill; Reckon a moral ailing, pallid terms.

Darling mom, take a lacrimose pill.

A million pockets grim all ran dear, Loam-nacred milk spilling, or a tear.

—Cleveland Wall

Bones and Lightbulbs/ My Landlord. Moses/ Teardrop

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Self Portrait —By Maureen O’Brian Ink & Paper

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Monday: Fall 2000

From ‘’The Diary of the Young Man” (an excerpt) I must admit to myself and to all those who inhibit a space called posterity that upon falling asleep with a phone pressed to my ear I experienced a very strange dream which caused me to loose all my confidence in telephone company employees. I should particularly point out my finger at phone operators who precipitated this somewhat unusual distrust by harassing my already tortured psyche beyond any cognizant believe while I thought of being completely safe from any form of unauthorized intrusion while experiencing a typical post-alcoholic dream in it’s state of semi-rapid eye movements.

It happened that upon falling asleep but still being somewhat subconsciously troubled by the early conversation with my mother I decided to use services of the phone company in order to attempt another, perhaps more meaningful conversation with a women who gave me such a painful birth 29 years ago. However, realizing that I did not remember her number and being uninspired for getting up from the f loor and searching for my phonebook I made a decision to dial the operator.

“How can I help you my son?” asked the strangely familiar male voice with such an incredible sincerity that for a moment I felt an enormous desire to reveal him my deepest problems.

“So, how can I help you my son?”

“Listen Operator, you sound like someone I can trust. I need help with a terrible problem.”

“Continue my son.”

From ‘’The Diary of the Young Man” (an excerpt)

31

“My mother does not understand me. She thinks that I am aff licted by drinking problem. And, well, she does not have a single idea of who I am.”

“Her number please.”

It suddenly occurred to me that if I were to get up and search for her number I would certainly wake up and loose this kind fellow for good.

“See, operator, I don’t have her number but just look it up under ‘Mother’ with an ‘R’ at the end. ‘R’ like...like ‘rapist’”.

“I hear you my son”, responded operator without hesitation. “We can take care of this for you. I can assure you, she will be dead by Midnight Pacific Time. If there is anything else I can help you with?”

“No! Operator, if this is what it takes then please don’t kill my mother. Don’t. Kill me instead.”

“We don’t usually kill our customers.”

“Then kill yourself ” “It is generally accepted that operator must never commit suicide.”

“Then please forget the whole thing, just don’t kill my mother”, I insisted.

“We’ll make a note of it my son. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

Suddenly, this highly unusual idea occurred to me. If this operator was so powerful that he can aff lict a mortal damage onto a person by just simply dialing the number perhaps he can do something more creative for me.

“Operator”, I asked him in somewhat shaky voice, “can you connect me with God?” “Which God would you like me to connect you with?

I have five million six hundred thousand eight hundred thirty seven different God’s listed in our directory by their last name.”

“Perhaps, you can connect me with the most powerful of them all—the true god.”

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From ‘’The Diary of the Young Man” (an excerpt)

Monday: Fall 2000

“They are all very genuine gods, my son”, he replied.

“But let me see under the Almighty. Here I see it coming up on my screen. Unfortunately, it shows that this god’s number was disconnected due to his premature death caused by excessive alcohol ingestion at the gathering on mount Olympus dedicated to his son’s 2000th birthday. To put it in simple words—the Almighty was trying to party too hard.”

“In this case, perhaps, you can connect me with myself ”, I asked him being somewhat saddened by the news.

“You are talking to yourself my son”, replied the operator with very serious tone in his voice.

“Pardon me ... You mean you are me?” I asked him in disbelief.

“It is correct my son.”

“But if you are part of me why are you calling me your son?

Who are you anyway? Is this some kind of joke played upon me?”

“Please calm down my son”, he replied in a confident voice. “I am certainly not a part of you because you are a part of me. Without me you wouldn’t exist.”

I was starting to loose my patience. “Look man,” I told him, “I am going to call another long distance provider since you made things so confused that I am no longer sure about my own identity.”

“I am afraid it is impossible my son. Once you dialed the operator you are confined for life to continue to make requests for phone connections. From the moment you spoke to me I became your only Operator”, he concluded.

You could imagine my state of agitation and disbelief upon hearing this strange verdict that I immediately demanded him to get off the phone and not to bother me anymore, for which he replied that my request will deprive me of the opportunity to speak with him for From ‘’The Diary of the Young Man” (an excerpt)

33

the rest of my life. “But your life would not last very long”, he explained. “As soon as this conversation will be disconnected you shall die.”

But being determined to end this painfully embarrassing connection I replied: “Listen my friend, I would rather be beheaded and then put through the food processor than spend the rest of my existence on the phone with you.”

“Then prepare to die. I shall disconnect your services NOW!” “And being somewhat terrified by the promise he made I prepared to be eliminated at any second still blaming myself for not using plain old “Pacific-Bell” when suddenly I heard a busy tone which caused my awakening.

Still, completely terrified I hung-up the phone after which feeling relieved by the fact that I miraculously avoided almost imminent death I made my way to bed where I spent the remaining part of the night having evil thoughts about phone operators.

—Vlad Pogorelov

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From ‘’The Diary of the Young Man” (an excerpt)

Monday: Fall 2000

Strange Reason My parents never hugged me so I sold my soul to a cat My parents never kissed me so I make love to a hat The bully boys at school nailed my soul to a shoe Now my skull is stuffed with popcorn and I live in a· zoo I work for the monster that feeds on my soul I can’t afford a house. I live in a toilet bowl And yet for some strange reason I’m happy At last I’m learning how to love myself At last for some strange reason I’m happy to be alive For some strange reason I’m happy you broke my heart Sound was made f lesh. Flesh was made sound The earth was a baseball pitched by a clown The corpse that I dug up from out of the ground was smiling.

—Mike Boner

Strange Reason

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Monday: Fall 2000

Untitled —By Jurgen Trautwein Ink &Paper

37

Our Food Will Eat Us It is not sexy to starve. It’s more sexy to eat You can’t really eat a bone when it’s got no meat A bone that’s got no meat is a heart that’s got no beat Let us pray to each other, warm and moist and sweet Let us prey on each other, but love the ones we eat We love the ones we eat. We love to kiss their feet Languid licorice lobsters lick liqueurs of liquid language Barbecued baritone balloons. Spaghetti sorcery And tapestries of cheese that buzz like bozo bees My mother is a hamburger. My father is a beer My lover is a cherry pie, though she tastes like a tear, a sweet and sour mirror Our food will eat us up And when you wake up in your white glow worm infested tomb You’ll swim through the fire and dive into a womb —Mike Boner

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Our Food Will Eat Us

Monday: Fall 2000

synapsex slip sensual slit slick second cumming froth aroused bodies: of water bone and meat silk simile heat underneath sheets yes the sheets urgently sweet coencide enveloped ride as your thighs press thick stick to my hips and our lips studder the miracle of blindness: sinfonia concertante. —Joshua Young

synapsex

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The Sweetest Crumb Some people say You shouldn’t get Something for nothing But we have already Been given this life.

A Tenderloin Deli owner believes Only rich people should live on prime real estate Poor folk shouldn’t have a Presidio view.

We chop down redwoods because The right of money has become The greatest right of all Allows anyone who can get it Their own lot of ugliness.

Some people forget We humans live en masse With all creatures Brother roach and sister rat.

When only the rich get A room with a view, Instinct always comes out.

Even for those who have everything They too know Love is the sweetest crumb.

—Eric Robertson

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The Sweetest Crumb

Monday: Fall 2000

Running through Space with My GOD —By Sarah-Marie Pencil & Paper

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PILL HILL Loneliness fills my chest A dull aching weight Like drowning water I took a snort of horse The rush fills the cracks Of dispirited emotion Blood rushes to my face And genitals I think of her under me Her on top of me The smell of her on My face taste on my tongue I yell get out of my head I feel depression its rodent Teeth gnawing a hole to my Brain.

I know I must go downtown Find Johnny get my antidepressants Step off the bus stale piss fills my Head. Bodies curled in fetus positions Scattered in various nooks and doorways Suddenly a wild women squatting between Two parked cars soiled jeans pulled down To her ashy filthy ankles a six inch turd Dropping from her scared drooping ass A vacant stare on her weathered face As if dignity been absent long ago Moving past a darken door way I was Suddenly startled by a hooded phantom

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PILL HILL

Monday: Fall 2000

That lights up his face with a butane lighter Blacken tube in his mouth melting his life On a cooper brillo stuffed in the tube His eyes widen as the rush hits his brain Got good solids he muttered at me as I pass I move through the ally to the infamous Pill Hill.

A potpourri of pills orange red green Blue served on unwashed scared callused Hands. A rapture of prescription drugs Played on raspy vocal cords.

He saw Johnny standing alone Johnny saw Him shuff led through his pockets.

“The usual sir?” He nodded handed Johnny a neatly folded grant. The old man handed him a small bag filled with small gray pills “Man knows I can take my broken down black ass homes dis damp fog gots me hurting bad lord have mercy”. “Take one of your pills” The man exclaimed. “Can’t afford it I owes a Man for these spent mines rest is da mans Money.” The man took out two of the pills Handed them to the pill denizen” Here Johnny “Let sister morphine go to bed with you tonight.” The old man plopped the pills in His ragged mouth with his three remaining Teeth crushed the bitter pills to a waxy Powder killing pain from head to toe even Pain of the soul.

“Thank you kind sir god sent you tonight” “No Johnny not God the other one.”

Humbled the old man tipping his hat and

PILL HILL

43

Limped toward his seedy hotel that smelt Of curry. A palace compared to the cold Urine scented side walks.

“Well,” the man exclaimed, “I got my weeks worth of antidepressants did my good deed.” The man walked back through desperation ally toward his own place in hell.

—J.C. Slocum

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PILL HILL

Monday: Fall 2000

Crack Head —By Jeanette Rector Charcoal & Paper

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WRITE IN SWAN FOR MAYOR & ALL OFFICES! FOR FREE MONEY, MASHT RENT & WEED! A sunrise of money I see over San Francisco! Write-in SWAN all offices for Reefer City, FAT PD-FD Raises, CRUSHT RENT, No Meters, Free Bus, Feed Pigeons! No-Forms, No- deductions, Right-off-the-Paycheck FLAT TAX is the Answer ... all pay ONE TAX yearly is wide f lat fair & shallow, nicking ALL, not just a few crucified motorists. We are going to have to pay METERMAIDS retirement dental & medical FOR YEARS how lurid, on top of the cost of the NEW ONES, coming along. YUGGG. Paycheck tax hip hip to City Hall has NO collection costs; a dollar paid a dollar got. I am THE ONE CANDIDATE WILLING TO CRUSH PIG HOG GREED SOARING RENT, willing to DIE & BE ASSASINATED TO STAND VS THEM! & VS SACRAMENTO & D.C., totally legalizing HOLY WEED, Harvard Acid, Mescaline or whatever is GOOOD for you, dear Voter. LUV to give PD & FD raises for on Them we shall depend. They shall be co-mayors, practical kids. OUT with the rotten Now System. Campaign Fax Xerox, Vote, get it to all Press.

SWAN promised City Workers nice raises also. Swan is running in all cities & for all state & fed offices also.

Not-covered by paycheck tax pays Equiv. The tax is adjustable monthly as we see how much comes in. —SWAN

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WRITE IN SWAN FOR MAYOR & ALL OFFICES!

Monday: Fall 2000

Angry Chinaman —By Jane 69 Photograph

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Insanity Island on Fire The light of Death through Beauty leads to Victory, Splendor, Foundation, and the Kingdom, which is rooted in the Tree of Life with the Crown, Wisdom, Understanding, Mercy, and Severity. The beginning is the end and the end is the beginning. And Beauty is at the center.

Tina was once lost, on the sea, with no clear direction, f loating between Paradise Island, Fire Island, and Society Island in the elusive dreams of her psycho-spiritual journey, with insanity as her steadfast companion. Through transformations of pain, she has traveled.

Out of her former isolation, through transpositions, Tina is now sitting in the sand, on the beach, by a cave, on Insanity Island. The nightmares are over. Through the darkness she has emerged with clarity of mind, at the center of the three modes of expression.

She is dancing the cosmic dance of super-consciousness, at one with the universe, carefully balancing the forces of life with integration, disintegration, and equilibration.

She is wet in the sun on the beach, with her brown feet in the water, digging her toes into the sand, in the cosmic stage of manifestation.

The sand is full of crystals, ref lecting tiny rainbows across the air, refracting on the waves. It is morning, but the Moon and Venus are still visible in the sky. Her green pet serpent, Angelina, slides along her thigh, with stars in her eyes. She licks her pussy with her forked tongue for hours. Tina cums three times.

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Insanity Island on Fire

Monday: Fall 2000

Solomon and Venus are asleep with the others in the cave. She needs to keep watch for the enemy forces of Society Island’s Corporate Trade Organization, who invaded and destroyed everything. The militia only withdrew three days ago, so everyone is still afraid to go back outside. Tina was the first to emerge.

Most of their island has been leveled by firebombs, which bombarded them for months on end. The few trees remaining are smoldering, and their homes and those of friends are only dust now. Six is the number of cave dwellers remaining on Insanity Island. The number 6 corresponds with Beauty.

Of the original 60,000 inhabitants of lnsanity Island, the 6 of them survived. All of the others have been captured, tortured, or murdered for resisting the imposition of the Third Way, the Corporate-Christian re-structuring of the World Economy, which restricts natural thought processes and inhibits progressive ideas. Some victims have been subjects of painful genetic and nervous system experiments.

The numbers from 0 to 6 add up to 21. The TARO key of the World, or Universe is Key 21, which also signifies salvation. Magick and Love have kept them alive so far, as well as their adaptation. Venus comes to Tina and sits beside her. Ref lecting one another’s beauty and desire, they fall into the sand, embracing and kissing.

Tina thrusts her tongue into Venus’ mouth and they both cum from kissing, licking, and biting each others clits, tits, and necks for a while, with Tina’s pet serpent intertwined around their bodies, until Tina sees an enemy ship out at sea. She hurriedly brings Venus into the cave where it’s safe.

Insanity Island on Fire

49

Salomon, Joshua, Victoria, and Vincent are just waking up. Tina warns them not to go outside until it’s dark, and Venus starts the fire to brew tea. The others roll around some more. They have hidden out for 21 months in the cave, by digging a well and tunnels underground.

Solomon and Joshua will help her keep watch. Vincent and Victoria will only go out at night. And Venus will come out in the morning with Tina sometimes to play with her pet snake, Angelina. Venus comes to Tina and sits beside her. —Katrina McChrystal

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Insanity Island on Fire

Monday: Fall 2000

Untitled —By John Sorkin Pencil & Paper

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untitled “I sucked on some pipes today. Some shiny pipes that were underneath the sink in a Chevron bathroom. I got down on my knees in the puddle on the old rust blue tiles of the f loor. I got down and slid underneath the sink and latched my lips on to the silvery pipes and sucked and slurped my saliva. My neck was all bent and my back ached as I craned my head under the sink and sucked the pipes with the f luorescent lights shining clinically onto the puddle that I knelt in, f lies crawling around on the screen window above the door. I must have been there for forty minutes, maybe I just blacked out sort of, but after the guy walked in with his little kid to pee in the urinal I sort of realized what I was doing so I got up and walked out into the parking lot... It was still hot and sticky. My leisure suit was drenched in sweat and I felt dizzy. The shit gathered at my ankles where I had duct taped my pants to my legs was starting to itch.

So I walked into the sun for a while. I think I heard the police car radio pulling into the gas station as I walked through some bushes and out of sight across the street.

There was a shopping cart out behind a big grocery store so I started pushing it down the alley and in to the street where traffic was stopped at a red light. I sort of ran into a truck with the cart and I tripped over the handle and fell on the pavement. And when I was getting up someone smashed a baseball bat on my neck and I couldn’t see for about an hour. So I sort of rolled around in the street for a while and tried to find my glasses but then I remembered that the kids by the school had stolen them and smashed them. And one of them threw a bottle at my head. As I lay on my stomach in the street with my fore-teeth resting on the curb holding my head up a motorcycle ran over my leg and I could feel my kneecap crunch into the pavement. Pretty soon 1t was 52

Untitled

Monday: Fall 2000

dark and I felt hungry so I went and swallowed leaves for about half an hour till I vomited on a woman feeding bread crumbs to the pigeons, then some joggers beat the hell out of me with some branches and I passed out underneath a bench. I couldn’t quite see when I woke up cause a dog was peeing in my eye. It was morning so I shuff led over to a water fountain and bent down to drink but my knee hurt so bad that I fell and smashed my teeth on the fountainhead. I found some hair spray in the trash receptacle and managed to fill an old coke can half way. I spilled some down my chin when I drank it but I got pretty high and the sun got really bright and I think I lost my hearing. I was lying in some warm dog crap and my bones felt like rotten apples in their sockets but it was o.k., even if I couldn’t move out of the way when a basketball landed on my groin. I think I’ll look for some more hair spray tomorrow.”

—James Asher

Untitled

53

HOOKING IN INDIA I was a hooker I made a lot of money never saw any of it I wore jewels and only 13 I was born in Calcutta bred to be one living in Bombay far, far away from my family Where’s this love they talk about in this world?

I see none of it I only see lust, greed, and petty fighting...

I cry a lot die a lot I live in a gilded cage You see me I look like a beautiful Indian princess dressed in red and gold satin sari with a thousand gold

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HOOKING IN INDIA

Monday: Fall 2000

bracelets around my wrists But I’m a dead girl a toy for sick men to use and abuse I will escape to another world and Kali & Shiva will save me I was a hooker one day a man came and stabbed me I bled to death and only 15 A dove f lew up into the pink-purple sky I saw Beauty for the first time I was a hooker but none of you could ever see me...

I was a hooker but that wasn’t who I was...

—Monique Marquisa De Magdalena

HOOKING IN INDIA

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Untitled —By Monique Marquisa De Magdalena Ink & Paper 56

Monday: Fall 2000

Morning Misery, Midnight Mourning As I walked back to my car, I studied the sky, Trying to determine what color I would call it When I recalled this morning.

The sleeping blue of day breaking?

The hushed blue of unwakened earth?

The eternal blue of the morning I said good-bye to my baby brother?

It was just before 6 a.m. then.

The blue-black of the coroner’s van Was barely visible as it pulled into the street.

When our mother had called, at 4:40, It was already too late, but I went anyway.

Looked at those long lashes, the tube in his mouth.

Touched his shoulder, his hair, wished for my prayer book.

Talked to a doctor whose eyes were as indescribably Blue as the morning, deep, dark, dark blue Like I had never seen in all my life.

Thought of the last suit I’d seen my brother wear, Blue, that dusky slate blue That always seemed to make his eyes glow.

Minutes later I stood on his front porch absorbing The early morning heat of a sun I had not seen rise.

Heard the silence and then the sudden songs of birds; It was a sound he would never hear again; The last sound he heard, I suppose, was the deafening crack Of the pistol that had left one bullet in his head and another In his chest, or was it the squeal of tires from the car That had left him dying on the emergency ramp Of the hospital, or, was it the faint rustle of doctors And nurses struggling to keep him alive? I don’t know.

All I know is that here, in this describable midnight blue, The last sound I hear is the thunderous crash Of the pieces of my heart falling on my pillow.

—Valentine Pierce Morning Misery, Midnight Mourning

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Untitled —By Victoria Valencia Ink & Paper

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Monday: Fall 2000

wHIRLWIND oCTOBER iT’S lATE aUGUST i wAlT fOR yOU aLTHOUGH wE wEREN’T nECESSARILY sUPPOSED tO mEET i kNOW tHAT yOU wiLL nOT sHOW i jUST cLOSE mY eYES aND wAIT aS iF iT wiLL hELP bUT i sPIRAL iNTO oCTOBER wHERE tHE cOOL bREEZE pRETENDS tO sOOTH mY wOUNDS bUT sOARS mY tHROAT wiTH bACTERIA tHIS yEAR i bEGIN tHE fESTIVAL oF eMPTINESS eARLY oR dOES iT sEEM liKE iT’S eARLY? cHEATED! cHEATED fROM hOW iT wAS sUPPOSED tO bE wAlT! hOW wAS iT sUPPOSED tO bE? i tHOUGHT mY miND tO bE cLEAR, bUT iLLUSION cLOUDED mY hEAD aLL aT oNCE liKE a wHIRLWIND wiNTER

wHIRLWIND oCTOBER

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bEHOLDS tHE dARKEST mAN ikNOW siTTING aLONE iN a dARK sWEATER wHEREVER hE wiSHES tO rESIDE i wiLL rEMEMBER yOU liKE a fADED pHOTOGRAPH aND a cLOSED eMOTION iNSIDE a tiGHTLY cLENCHED fiST hAVE I hAD mY lAST dANCE? iF sO, yOU wiLL lOOK aT mY dEAD bODY aMOUNG tHE oTHER dEAD iNSECTS iN yOUR jAR yOU diSPLAY pROUDLY aT tHE hEAD oF yOUR bED uNTIL tHEN, i bANG lOUDLY oN tHE gLASS sCREAMING siLENT aNGER iN tHE cOOL, bREEZY wiNDS oF oCTOBER —James A. La Croix Jr.

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wHIRLWIND oCTOBER

Monday: Fall 2000

#23 liftoff now, to rush over strident noise, mess of human exhaust, to babies tickling ribcages, crystalline wings catching wind arms, these emotional frequencies calling me, to come and dissolve in blackberry color and bound about arranging words in these particular orders watching you tossing soul through eyes with breath wink and f lutter of exhaling bottom lip kissing word off word, animal eyed, to lick tears from long lashes and ENRICH the anemia to ecstatic focus on how the platinum looms weaved this whole construction, and why we deserve to push our baby fingers through and sway in atomic youth feathering madness, watching you show f lip f lops telling me, “take your shirt off, let the cold go through you,” laughing of suicide pacts f lirting with the edges salt moving up through lungs speeding on swings and SCREAMING, waking the quiet cliffside tranquils, the words filled up in brain, most of which to certainly be lost and I’m trying to lose them all, let the cool move through to quiet prose and speed red rushing liquids through hips, fingers, chest, and swallow the soul to sing it to rest —Shane Kraus

#23

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Untitled —By Susan Birkeland Ink & Paper

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Monday: Fall 2000

The History of Blue Most of the time I’ve been out here I was determined to forget Austin and all the people in it. Since moving to San Fran, I’ve kept myself in an endless round of relationships—when the last one ended as badly as all the rest, rather than my usual f lood of tears, I realized I DIDN’T CARE—and THAT was SCARY—I was sick to death of the game AND couldn’t see my way through to another. You see, I know the kind of men I like ones who’ll dance that charming dance and then deliver another version of the same grim and spastic ending, a torrent of tears and a shiny new dawn to dip my old toe back into-round and round and round she goes, where she stops???—all that is to say, I decided that if I had to TRAIN MYSELF to be attracted to something different, I’d rather get fat eating Haagen Daz and see if I could learn to Paint Again.

No problem, honey child. Sitting dull as a donut with a wall of silence in my ears. To calm myself down, I patched up the holes in my smelly old paint shoes with cardboard and prayed that some tiny sliver of light could be made of the nothin’ I had left on my blade. Still one grandiose gargoyle of a girl, I stretched a Big Huge Canvas and started in. First I covered the surface in a deep ultramarine blue, then started moving slowly among the deeper shades of purple. Gradually, there emerged two vague figures, elusive in blues and greens and violets.

Sometimes they were splatters of dark ash, sometimes long smooth brush strokes of color. They wound around each other, merging and separating, none of us in control, but moving inside of a strange and silent balance of secret intimations.

I followed them as they followed each other and then they followed me, moving all over that big big canvas—the three of us, painting, remembering what painting was, at times even at peace but then after awhile I started digging into them with blatant, hasty lines—frustrated that they would not come out of the shadows and make themselves KNOWN to me.

The History of Blue

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In response to my harsh strokes, they turned away from one another and the composition read like an Accusation. This worked as a painting but I couldn’t stand to look at it. It was Intolerable to leave them like that—just another version of the same god damned story.

And so I turned to more delicate lines, shadowy suggestions, and in the tentativeness of my brush strokes, they managed to cleave together, secret lovers for one night.

So far as I could tell that’s what they wanted and so I did my best to give it to them.

Things were going along pretty jolly, countless hours of delicate precision, when some mean spirited hellion in me became frustrated with the whole endeavor. “Insipid,” I thought, “Grotesque and Ridiculous!”

That’s when it’s time to take a break, Little Girl, didn’t anybody ever tell you that??? As God is my witness, I squeezed a huge pile of titanium white onto the middle of the canvas! Jesus Christ, WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH ME? Isn’t that always what I do? Mixed with white, their bodies became Furious and Awkward— four cold eyes, all angles and elbows and knees-like a couple of porcupines fighting over the same damned chair-they stubbornly fought over who would leave the canvas first. I was terrified that I’d lost the painting completely-their ferocity was mine or his or any damn person who’s ever had the crazy mean pleasure of being in love and the ABJECT SHOCK of realizing that LOVE CAN BE LOST AND THAT LOSS CAN BE PERMANENT and then WE’RE STUCK, STUCK WITH THIS MEDIOCRE FUCKING PAINTING WHERE YOU KNOW SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL USED TO BE— It was JUST THERE 2 minutes before. I squeezed out deep purples and greens and blues, digging them back into darkness, hoping they might find each other, life after death, but there was nothing left, NOTHING. Day and night, sleeping on the f loor in front of it, painting, painting, painting, no food, just painting, and painting.

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The History of Blue

Monday: Fall 2000

I couldn’t stop until I got them to share the canvas again. But their hatred was impossible to cut through, layer after layer, him throwing her off, her throwing him off, a leg here, an arm there, but I wasn’t stopping, Not this time, Stop and Die, I kept thinking, There’s NOTHING ELSE. Who knows how much time passed—two days, three, forty-two... Eventually they returned, holding, barely just barely, one finger of each other’s hands, lying back to back—Only this—They said—It’s the best we can do. No way was I going to get them to turn around-not on that canvas and probably not at all.

We all had to be satisfied with proximity and silence.

I lay down in front of the thing and watched it for hours.

Exhausted. Unable to move. I had no idea what day it was.

My body ached. The painting was Enormous. All I could see.

I did not want to know them but I did and I had for a hundred thousand years. I lay closer, wanting to roll around in the heavy oils and the foiled tensions in their muscles, not wanting to destroy their tentative proximity. Wondering if He ever thinks of me.

Then I got it-The enormity of love is the scariest truth we’ll ever have to face: It doesn’t end. We only pretend that outrageous actions lead to obvious conclusions. But they never lead to what we expect them to...

I closed my eyes and heard his deep warm voice calling me Darlin.’ “Fancy meetin’ you here, Darlin’ .” Fancy, I thought, and inched closer. He looked as handsome as ever—older voice, deeper lines, more ground underneath him. But still the deep brown eyes of him, the fine dark strands of his hair, the delicacy of his musician’s fingers. My attention kept returning to the half open hand on the right edge of the canvas.

In this hand were his Secrets.

—Susan Birkeland The History of Blue

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MISCARRIAGE It was a hungry mouth At the bottom Of her abundant body The mouth that took in The swollen offering Sucked the cream With pelvic muscles Grasping the half Of the helix to blend With her robust Sweet smelling caviar In the secret place A man’s fingers Cannot touch in her belly The belly which a few weeks Later disgorged the promise Of a wanted child Presented in the premature Death before life-defining Movement no frog leg kick Behind the pubis That quick twitch Easily mistaken For a small bubble of gas Instead the rich red Food falling out between Her legs vomiting From the mouth that Had so recently and greedily Received the semen

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MISCARRIAGE

Monday: Fall 2000

The belly and heart are Only connected by highways of blood The mouth and heart are Only connected by highways of blood The red vomit from the mouth At the bottom of her Abundant body left her Heart beating against The broken promise

THE HANDKERCHIEF Filled with lust we have dived into each other Touching kissing licking sucking I drank of your orgasm, you supped on mine We have seen each other naked in the dawn light Shared tooth brushes in the cold morning Held hands and tasted the same cup of coffee I still cannot reach for your used handkerchief. —Eleanor Watson-Gove

MISCARRIAGE/ THE HANDKERCHIEF

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Party Time For Little Girls Sprawled across the bed Lying on and covered by all those coats— Fox mink wool—women’s coats Wool in hounds—tooth serge all Dark colors—men’s coats With smells cigarettes moth balls Perfume sweat pipe tobacco dirt Sleeping and not sleeping uneasy With the sounds coming through The closed door always one door Between me and the sounds wondering Who will come in jiggle me Cold on the bed looking for a new nest.

Who will muss my tangled hair— will lift my arms and legs Reach for the coat under me Forgetting to pull down my dress Sometimes just stand there Quiet looking— There is the smell of wool, suit wool.

—Eleanor Watson-Gove

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Party Time For Little Girls

Monday: Fall 2000

Untitled —By Rachel Gracie Color Photograph

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RATBOY SEZ HELLO Ratboy came in, sat Down, took a hit from His beer, said “you Don’t smell like an Old man”. Remembering The smell of my father In his thirties, on those Unfortunate occasions When I had to sleep Between him & my Mother, I smiled at Ratboy, said my father Smelled that way. It’s Probably the booze & the cigarettes.

—Jim Watson-Gove

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RATBOY SEZ HELLO

Monday: Fall 2000

AEC DOGS ON THE ISLAND He believed me when I Told him we used to fuck Those dogs on Eniwetok.

He missed the irony—When An airplane full of army nurses Was diverted to the island for Minor repairs, they kept the Nurses on the plane & told us About them after they were Gone. Fuck those dogs? With Men falling off the edges of The island, & not a woman Within thousands of miles, Mistreat one dog & fifty men Would be at your throat—you Had to be there.

—Jim Watson-Gove

AEC DOGS ON THE ISLAND

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LUSH Was it not grand?

Though I’d feared you’d say it weren’t Was it not wild?

Like the eyes of a feline or Fire: orange and white Formed into the shape of f lowers or A desperado’s passion Louder than shouting could ever be Was it not just?

In deed and thought Quickly brushed—Bones so draped With honey that Even rippling f lesh could not muzzle This nectar Nights expanding into A frieze of eternity Then collapsing into A smoldering heap of just rhinestones Was it not lush?

Like the desert in bloom Dangerous and spellbinding Two lost children- kissing the cacti Burning, burning - choking the genie Holding hands and throwing the rusty lamp Lamp around a room of old pictures Smoldering ashes and Two bloody angels Rising as smoke On newfound wings.

—Joel Barfield and Jan Tepper 72

LUSH

Monday: Fall 2000

TWO POEMS

Beautiful Androgyne, Let me be The explorer of Your curious mien (An indefinable aspect—Enigma) All speaks not!

Enrapture me Fill my hollowness With you love For not to be makes you Something (other than) yes! an object but only through the soul, scopes of (not) unknowers rather searchers find the (you) one who was first or last an intrinsic worth (something) your mind —T.M.D.Hernandez

TWO POEMS

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Tony Sanchez —By David Kelley Photograph

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Monday: Fall 2000

THIS SORT OF THING Touch Is Good Love Is in All kinds Of Faces Smile When others Smile Dancing isn’t a commitment Maybe it’s not What you Think People And Flowers Grow Everywhere The sun Is always Shining Somewhere Children Aren’t always Annoying Having fun Isn’t Stupid

Tired Of being Tired A little bird Makes me Happier Than Large breasts Life Isn’t Shit Time Isn’t Running out People can Love me Without telling me There IS Enough For everybody Laughter Is Contagious It is not The end Of the world But If it is So what?

—Tony Sanchez

THIS SORT OF THING

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THE HEADLESS FEMINIST

Monday: Fall 2000

—Aimee M. Patten THE HEADLESS FEMINIST

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VENUS DESCENDING Tonight I am guided by metal stars. Diamond glitter on the frozen road as I march through the valley of the storm. Metal stars crafted by men; my salvation as I come to you.

We are one, you and I. You hover weightless and radiant.

A satellite to pull the tide of my soul. The ice and rain slick down in the dark. I cry to be alone. . . .and where have all the saviors gone. Over the savannah we can see the mighty lion- last creature left on earth. Old and weary he gapes his enormous maw and trumpets his forgotten roar. Proclaiming: I am king.

And all the children gather in unison and cry: the future is here.

We lie together in the still shadows. Your hair unfolds and presses against my face. I feel it may all end at any moment and hold your hand tighter. Your milk soft skin I say, and you are elsewhere. We lie together and something stirs.

So I said to you in cool regard, “why don’t you just go to sleep ... it’s easier than having to think about it.”

As a child I would try to catch falling stars. Later I would learn that I could never possess one: once a star falls it burns to nothingness. These days I try not to fall.

Twilight strengthens its hold on the clock. Winter is fast approaching; the dying season some will say. In the midnight hours the moon holds sway in ethereal fog and casts its light on nightshade pools far from our bed.

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VENUS DESCENDING

Monday: Fall 2000

Morning breaks with a rueful chime and we will lie for long moments before we stir. Around the table are hot drinks and talk of the future. Talk of us to be.

Lavender evenings with the sunset running mad in the horizon. I walk in fields of grain. The first star emerges and sings to me. It too longs for serenity.

An omen of things to come: a f lock of birds lies stranded in a snow covered meadow. Crippled from the cold, I could only save a few.

The kitchen lies vacant, save for a pair of stray cats.

I gather my things for the road. Pigeons form on the balcony. The cats wish for me to stay but someone else will feed them.

I feel the old and beaten highways calling to me. I yearn for the tranquil drift of travel; the solace of night.

This land has been born anew—my eyes hunger for it.

My heart, far too frail for me to stay.

I kiss you goodbye one last time and depart. —Morgan Reilly

VENUS DESCENDING

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Westernized Yin Yang —By Nicole Zach Acrylic on Wood

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Monday: Fall 2000

At the Diner There is a plate There is a knife and fork There is a bottle And it’s uncorked There is a man He picks the bottle and pours the blood into his glass There is a human ear on his plate He sits and stares at the ear He feels no guilt nor fear for drinking blood and eating well prepared human ear He says his grace in which he thanks the Devil for corrupting the human race, once and for all He eats his ear, He drinks his blood And when he is done He sits alone, digesting and contemplating on why Almighty made the man the way he is And then the waitress comes and brings his check for human blood and ear for which she has no guilt nor fear And when the man is gone she takes the dirty dishes to the back where an angel washes them in his own tears —Vlad Pogorelov At the Diner

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POEM FOR BOYS When The magic happens Your sphincter will constrict, Your penis will ooze or spurt semen (my first boyfriend was an oozer) and all the blood vessels will dilate, bringing oxygen and endorphins to all the furthermost nerve endings in the body which becomes like a field that has been strewn with Easter eggs; chocolate, marshmallow, hardboiled painted orange green red yellow purple blue. Near the center of this field is a large sugar egg with outlines of dried icing and when you look in one end the scene is a bunny wedding in a bunny church with pews of bunny congregation on either side. All the bunnies are naked except the bunny priest wears a miter. This sugar egg is the heart. At this point, further stimulation of the penis may be experienced as unpleasant. —Tim Donnelly

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POEM FOR BOYS

Monday: Fall 2000

Von Stinky —By David Kelley Polaroid

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Bruce Jackson —By Richard Fong Ink & Paper

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Monday: Fall 2000

THE PIGS SING A LULLABY TO THE MILITANTS IN THE CROWD Shut that fucking baby up.

Feed it.

Hold it.

Change it.

Do something, anything, but shut it up.

Shut that fucking baby up.

I ain’t its mama. I ain’t its daddy.

I am not the duly elected official in charge of asswhiping.

Shut that thing up.

Give it a bottle. Give it a tit. Write it a check postdated to a time when that baby has lost its will to scream just as long as that shuts it up now.

Shut that fucking baby up.

I pay my rent. I pay my taxes. I paid for peace. I want my peace. I want you to shut that baby up.

Shut that fucking baby up.

We have ways. We have means. This is a minor act. It has been done before. Here is a fifteen-hour marathon of the Eurkel Show and Mama’s Family. Pacify. Pacify.

Here’s three years of knowledge crammed into a twelve year public school education. Pacify. Here’s 5.50 an hour for mama and daddy to feed, clothe and house that baby screaming in my motherfucking ear. There better be enough left over to shut that baby up.

Shut that fucking baby up.

Didn’t I just give them niggers 500 billion dollars worth of crack, smack, dust, dog and crank just last year to shut that baby up, and what about the three million

THE PIGS SING A LULLABYE TO THE MILITANTS IN THE CROWD

85

dollars worth of AK’s, 9mm, and .38’s I gave them just yesterday.

The baby’s screaming. Ain’t you high yet.

The baby’s screaming. Ain’t you armed.

The baby’s screaming. Ain’t nothing coming to save you nigger.

What do I have to do. Pull the trigger myself.

Shut that fucking baby up.

Sing a lullaby. Pacify. Pacify.

If you don’t shut that baby up, They’re all gonna cry.

—Bruce Jackson

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THE PIGS SING A LULLABYE TO THE MILITANTS IN THE CROWD

Monday: Fall 2000

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BIOS Aimee M. Patten I live in Albany NY with my husband and 3 cats and still draw and paint. Got my degree, became a sex worker, an activist, got married, tackled my addictions, and became targeted. On a list. Yay

Eric Robertson Eric Robertson teaches first grade in Oakland, California. His collection of short stories, Whatever Comes of Not Knowing, is available at Freedomvoices.org.

He is a long-time member of the TIAPOS (This is a Piece of Shit) writing group.

James LaCroix Jr James LaCroix Jr moved from Boston, MA to California in the late 1990’s to experience the poetry scene in San Francisco. He made his residence at the Omni-Circus where he was a regular performer. He was also a regular reader at the Covered Wagon Saloon on Monday nights.

James has had work published in a Sore Dove Press project alongside famed San Francisco poets Neeli Cherkovski, Jack Hirschman, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

James left San Francisco in 2001 in order to raise a family on the east coast. He currently resides in Wallingford, CT.

Jane 69 aka Adrienne St. John

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Bios

Author of: Put San Francisco on your tongue, Eligibility, Pictures for your mind CDs: Alchemy of the word, Beaten to the bone Poetry host in S.F.: The Rendezvous, The Forked Tongue, 222 Hyde St Club Geographical cure to her to Natchez, MS., New Orleans, LA. Now living in Chattanooga, TN and still writing.

Monday: Fall 2000

kenne kenne returned to Earth November of ‘94. having gone BEYOND Beyond… all that was left is to find my way. home. Ohio was the first home of my Northern European ancestors, after the French and Indian Wars opened the frontier. I was born in a suburb of Chicago, and subsequently moved and never felt at home anywhere. finally bounced to San Francisco, and likely will bounce back, i hope in time for the Big One. I hope to finish my novel set in the reality where none of them died. all stored in tunnels under the Presidio. but in the meantime, i took a step back, live in Ohio, in Athens, home of the OU Bobcats.

Nicole Zach Nicole Zach is from Lyndhurst, NJ. Painting since 1995 and writing poetry since 1996, she has performed her work in Philadelphia, San Francisco, New Jersey and New York. Nicole’s art was first published in Sirens Silences and her poetry was first published in The Rutherford Red Wheelbarrow and would like to thank Andy Warhol and Allen Ginsberg for the inspiration.

Stephen Elliot Stephen Elliott is the author of 8 books including “The Adderall Diaries” and “Happy Baby”. He also wrote and directed the movies “About Cherry” and “After Adderall”. He lived in San Francisco from 1998 to 2013.

Tom Ivelli Tom Ivelli came to San Francisco from the East Coast and was an owner of “Friction” bookstore. He worked at “Forest” books located on the 16th and Valencia and at “Last Gasp” book distributor. He co-hosted poetry readings at “Tip Top Inn” and “Covered Wagon Saloon”.

Tom was a prolific poet with a good sense of humor.

Bios

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Vlad Pogorelov Vlad Pogorelov is the author of poetry books “Derelict” and “Decadent”, a CD of poetry, by the same name, plays “The Last Revolt of Nobody”, “The Smile of Death or Rigor Mortis” and “Heroic Anarchists of Donbas region” (in Russian), as well as untold number of other poems and short stories in both English and Russian.

Originally from the USSR he moved to the U.S. in 1993 as an exchange student but obviously overstayed his welcome. He worked as poetry editor at “Siren’s Silence” in Philadelphia. He founded “Monday”—A Journal of Poetry, Prose and Art together with Susanne Day, Kenne McKillop, Nicole Zach and David Kelley in San Francisco in the Fall of 1999. He resided in San Francisco from 1998 to 2008. Vlad started writing in 6th grade when his poem “No to fascism!” was rejected by the Soviet journal called “Young Pioneer”.

He had more luck since then. He lives in the Foothills of Sierra Nevada with his beautiful wife Tanya and multi-talented children Eva and Ian. When he is not writing, he is tending to his little vineyard. If you ever in Rocklin, California, stop by his house and he will treat you for a glass of awesome organic wine.

David Kelley Following his arrival in San Francisco in the spring of 1977 David Kelley majored in sculpture at San Francisco Art Institute. He attended San Francisco College of Recording Arts in 1984. He possesses degrees in sculpture, ceramics and art history.

David acted in films by Eddie Falconer, Ann Hagemen (“Lesbian Zombie Killer”) and others including several lead roles in student films. Over the years he acted in three plays for the San Francisco Fringe Festival and in “Cinderella” directed by Lucas McClure and performed at Lennon Studios.

He joined the punk band “The Renegades” as a bass player producing several demo recordings that got them signed to “415 Records” as “Wire Train”.

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Bios

Monday: Fall 2000

In 1998 together with Tom Ivelli and Whity Sims, David took over the Monday night reading series at “Tip Top Inn” located in the Mission District after prior host poet Bucky Sinister departed. When “Tip Top Inn” closed, the reading moved to “Covered Wagon Saloon” later known as “Annie’s Cocktail Lounge”.

David produced a CD of spoken word “Beaten to the Bone” featuring prominent San Francisco poets and performers. He managed and promoted several bands and continues to photograph the San Francisco underground scene today.

Monique Marquisa De Magdalena Monique grew up in Sacramento, California. She got into drawing art work at age 5. She drew and started painting in high school. She also started writing prose and poetry around that time. Patti Smith was a big inf luence during her time starting college. Monique moved to San Francisco and enrolled in the San Francisco Art Institute. She studied painting and performance art at the Institute. Monique created the “Dont’s”—a performance band without instruments.

She graduated from college with a degree in painting.

Next, she got into two bands, one an all girl band called the “Inflatable Boy Clams”. She traveled to India and lived in India for 10 months. She wrote poetry about these black crows that she watched in the garbage field. When she got back to America, Monique got into some more bands, wrote poetry and drew pictures. Today she writes poetry and lives in Elk Grove, California.

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Suzanne Day Suzanne Day was born on July 30th, 1963 in Montana.

She grew up in Medford, Oregon. Her father was German/Irish and her mother Mexican.

Monday’s editors met Suzanne in the spring of 1999 at “Covered Wagon Saloon”. In addition to being a co-host of Poetry Night at “Covered Wagon Saloon” and co-editor of “Monday”, in the fall of 1999 Suzanne together with Dylan Bartholomew and the Original Kenne (Kenneth McKillop) started a noise rock band called “deadgirl”. They recorded their songs in the spring of 2000 during Dylan’s last week in San Francisco before moving to Portland, in the living room of his apartment. “deadgirl” recordings are accessible at www.soundcloud.com/deadgirl Suzanne was a writer, singer, designer and a digital artist. She designed a fantastic cover for the “deadgirl” album.

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Bios

Monday: Fall 2000

SUZANNE DAY AKA GISELLE HATE

by Kenne McKillop Suzanne was a good time for me.

Suzanne is my dear friend who died.

Suzanne has always been my favorite.

Suzanne was there any time I needed something.

Suzanne was a toddler and walked up the mountain with the dog.

She saw a huge bear.

The dog bristled and barked.

Two teenage girls took Suzanne by the hand and ran off the mountain.

Her mother, frantic, my little girl.

No sign of the two girls.

Girls of an age of miscarried twins.

Her mother, frantic, my little girl.

“No one wants to be a junkie when they grow up.” Sez the television.

Suzanne a sinking feeling. A junkie.

A wee fairy pops out: why don’t you be a prostitute?

After a peak experience of drugs and jail and a hotel room: a little figure walked out from the wall: “Two! Doo Da Doo…” [weird sounds] Suzanne is dead.

Suzanne called me from the other side.

There were dollar bills on the ground.

No one wanted them, the future had come.

No one wanted old money, play props for a burlesque show: remember the 20th century?

A very bad experience, that lingers on and on.

Suzanne is dead.

“My dear friend. I hope that I can get that phone call.

It has been really hard since you died”.

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Submission Guidelines Our submission criteria is simple—if you created an original piece of writing or visual art and believe that it deserves a publication we would like to see it. We encourage both unknown and established American and international authors and artists to submit your previously unpublished work. While most of us are beatniks at heart we are open to a variety of styles. We accept literary translations.

We will never discriminate. Be prepared to be published among geniuses. If you’re nervous about it, take a deep breath and send your work anyway.

Submission deadlines are December 31 and June 31 for issues appearing in Spring and Fall. Please send up to 6 unpublished poems or two unpublished short stories, original literary criticism and essays, art work (no limit).

You may be invited to a MONDAY journal release party in San Francisco or other cities.

Please e-mail all submissions in doc., rtf., pdf. formats to: mondayjournal@yandex.com If you prefer snail mail please send to the address below and please include SASE with proper postage.

MONDAY Journal 5515 Pacific St., #32 Rocklin, CA 95677 2019 MONDAY crew: Vlad Pogorelov, editor in chief Kenneth MacKillop, poetry, prose Nicole Zach, art, poetry David Kelley, art, reading series, promoter Good luck!

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