Monkey Puzzle #5

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ISSN 1937-8827 0

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MONkey puzzle Issue #5

MONkey puzzle

www.monkeypuzzlonline.com

#5 Fall 2008

featuring works by : Tim Skeen Margaret Randall Jack Collom Elizabeth Robinson Andrew Schelling Amy Catanzano Ben Olson Michelle Naka Pierce Ryan Clark Lisa Birman Nicholas Michael Ravnikar Mittie Roger James Kerley Renee Zepeda Olatundji Akpo-Sani L. Draaghtel Nicholas B. Morris Diane Klammer Sam Jablon Tiph Parrish M. D’Alessandro Lauren Andrews Dan Dissinger Julius Caesar And many more!

Fall 2008

monkey puzzle

Monkey Puzzle Press Boulder, CO

monkey puzzle Issue #5, Fall 2008 EDITOR, DESIGNER, PUBLISHER Nate Jordon COPY EDITORS Amy Pommerening Ryan Clark COVER ART Voyage by Samuel Jablon Monkey Puzzle is currently published four times a year by Monkey Puzzle Press in Boulder, Colorado Copyright © 2008 Monkey Puzzle Press All rights revert to individual authors upon publication.

Monkey Puzzle accepts previously unpublished prose (2,500 words), poetry (1-5 pages), translations, interviews, artwork, photography, and hybrids. Experimental work welcome. We accept electronic and hardcopy submissions. All submissions must include the writer’s contact information on the first page: name, address, phone number, and e-mail address.

Include a SASE with all hardcopy submissions if you would like a reply.

Address all queries and submissions to: monkey puzzle press 3116 47th St. Boulder, CO 80301 MonkeyPuzzlePress@gmail.com www.monkeypuzzleonline.com ISSN 1937-9927

contents Editor’s Note Darwin

Brendan Hamilton Notes of a Modern-Day Expatriate

Mittie Roger Old Monk Napping

Tim Skeen Reactive Sandalwood Mala-ic Bowling Balls (108)

Kimberlie Robinson Macaques in a Steambath

Brandon Arthur Reflections on Prayer Calls

Alexandra Lukens

vi

catching up with almost

Dan Dissinger

23

Silent Terrain

Irene Joyce

26

Inside Man

Nicholas B. Morris

28

Meta-Meta Poetry

Amy Catanzano &

Jack Collom

33

Lobotomy Buttons

Nicholas Michael Ravnikar

34

10

Multiverse

Dawn Sueoka

35

11

from Details on Photographs

Lindsay Colahan

36

When I Was Younger

Steve Kisicki

37

No. 27. When We Were

James Kerley

39

1

4 6

8

Pantoum from the Actual Diary of Christopher Columbus

Scott Alexander Jones 14 Don’t Change a Hair for Me &

Not if You Care for Me

Lisa Birman

15

Coming to Know (Annie) Oaklynn

Merrill Shane Jones

excerpt from She, A Blueprint for InterSurface

Michelle Naka Pierce 41

17

Waste Lands

Carly-Anne Ravnikar

A Wrenching Blue, a Dusty Hour Among the Vines

Yasamin Ghiasi

20

Two from Old India

Andrew Schelling

22

43

The Handwriting

Varlam Shalamov

translated by L. Draäghtel 44

an empire of coins

Olatundji Akpo-Sani Empire 101

Julius Caesar

48

51

Seven Words

Margaret Randall

52

106. to the west from The 23 Year-Old Poems

Ryan Clark

Avenue Maria

Diane Klammer

82

Dinner Music for a Pack of Hungry Cannibals

Christopher T. Schuman 84 Some Boys

Shane Joaquín Jiménez

86

54

*Memorize*

Rebecca Maillet

90

55

Seri

Tiph Parrish

91

58

The Kitchen

Stacy Walsh

93

from the fall

Kristi Yorks

61

The Play

Perry Lavin

96

Seventy Monkeys

Jefferson Navicky

65

Sometimes, the Sky in Golden

Travis Cebula

99

Lonely Like This

Mel Kozakiewicz

67

The Bus is a Van

Hillary Keel

100

Chica Chica: Forsaking Illusions

Ana Maria Martinez 68

Contributors

101

Acknowledgements

107

Submission Guidelines

108

Texas, 1872

Adam Perry Falling Asleep While Reading

M. D’Allessandro

I Dream We Smoke a Bowl in France

Renee Zepeda

72

It Splinters Through

Nathan Antar

73

from The Moonstone

Elizabeth Robinson

77

A Mouse Cage

Lauren Andrews

78

editor’s note Friends, Romans, Countrymen/women, lend me your minds

I think it’s about time I address a question I get asked quite a bit: What is Monkey Puzzle?

Well, if I let go of the goose, it wouldn’t be quite the puzzle. However, I see how an answer like that might get a smirk or two. So, hmmm, I’ll just say Monkey Puzzle is whatever you think it is. I tend to think of it as a metaphor, but that’s just me.

One of the things Monkey Puzzle wants to inspire in everyone who appears on and reads its pages is: Question Everything. Then go out there and figure it out for yourself. Same goes for what you’re holding in your hands right now. Sure it has great works of poetry, prose, translations, photography and artwork, but it’s more than that.

One of the biggest Monkey Puzzles we face right now here in America is the war in Iraq. Or is it the economy? No, it’s global warming. Wait, it’s our healthcare system. No, it’s social security. Oh yeah, actually, it’s how the new administration is going to start handling all these Monkey Puzzles come January 20, 2009. Ah, gee whiz Wally, it’s enough to puzzle a nation of monkeys.

But that’s not our mission here. We’re not trying to save the world.

And we’re not trying to save you. But it all begins with you and that process begins with a bit of internal questioning, which I believe the contributions to this issue will promote. It will, at least, promote some head scratching. And that’s good enough. Even monkeys scratch their heads when thinking.

On a personal note, many of you are aware of the problems I’ve been facing with my U.S. citizenship, deportation, etc. Talk about a Monkey Puzzle.

It’s been a long, dirty battle but I think I’ve won the war. Actually, I thought I won the war when I completed my tour of duty with the U.S. Army in 1995 - which I was forced to do in order to gain U.S. citizenship before getting deported to Germany and drafted into the German army. It’s a long, dirty story.

But, alas, I recently received my new United States Certificate of Citizenship!

Upon receiving it, I immediately applied for a passport (which got me into all this mess last year). Which, I’m proud to report, I recently received as well.

Hohoho, so my jokes about writing the next Editor’s Note from Germany vi

may very well come true. Albeit, I might choose New Zealand instead.

As you’ll come to read, some of our contributors are Americans living abroad. Some have opted to bail out of what they consider to be a sinking ship. They have their reasons, and they’re good ones, too. In future issues, you’ll come to find out exactly why.

Ah yes, the fat is in the fire, isn’t it? These are truly interesting times to be an American. And at times like these, I have to remind myself that in order to fight, you’ve got to be in the ring. If there’s something wrong or right with this country and you want to do something about it, strap on the gloves and ring the bell. You get knocked down, make like Rocky Balboa and get back up.

Don’t like the Rocky Balboa metaphor? I think it’s better than Rambo.

You should expect nothing less of a kid from the 80s. But I digress... Now I’m scratching my head.

Whoever you are and wherever you are, enjoy the Monkey Puzzle.

Holoholo,

Nate Jordon Monkey-in-Chief

vii

Brendan Hamilton

Darwin for Kevin McGowin the urge to flee is innate birds fly south tugged along invisible wires to warmer climes deer seek high ground before the rush of approaching waves the elusive Central Park coyote the lemming homo sapien draped in furs plodding east across Bering ice bridge Dusty in silver Volvo riding paved trails West listening to Matt Dillon read On the Road and then there’s John Darwin prison guard who paddled out to sea March 2002 wind across balding head they found his broken canoe empty on the shore

1

September 1986 the thylacine was declared officially extinct yet sightings even blurry footage continue March 2003 John Darwin was declared dead officially dead Darwin man with a plan bald head crowned in Panama sun free as an ivory-billed woodpecker free in his beard as a thylacine in the Tasmanian bush Darwin, my hero did you watch the helicopters circle Seaton Carew seeking after your little boat and think life is but a dream? did you revel in illicit ecstasy love and youth suddenly renewed you, fugitive boy sneaking through coffin-shaped secret passageway to your “widowed� Anne? the pin was in the map insurance money collected new deeds signed under false names old home sold

2

and yet five years gone what drove you to run away even from fleeing to stroll into a London police station and say I think I am a missing person?

3

Mittie Roger

notes of a modern-day expatriate

I am writing to you from San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato State, in the central highlands of Mexico. It sits at 6,800 feet and is known for its near constant sun and clear blue skies. But this is the rainy season.

I moved from Boulder, Colorado which has a similar altitude and weather. But in San Miguel it doesn’t snow. It rains and sometimes hails. This was what greeted me when I arrived at my new home after driving my Honda out of the Rocky Mountains, through 105 degree Laredo, Texas to cross the border, and eight hours of rolling green mountains.

The rain was falling in thick sheets, the electricity was out and I was to acquaint my rambunctious and ornery puppy, Switters, with my father’s Australian Shepard, the heavyweight champion, Augie. Switters loves other dogs, but with no lights, thousands of miles from home, doped up on doggy valium in his first real rainstorm; things were difficult. Did I mention the valium? That was one of my shining moments of preparation. The vet set me up with enough sedatives for a week of calm Switters travel.

Now, Switters is familiar with the sounds of rain. He and Augie have become intimate companions. All the water makes the high desert bloom with colors and smells of a tropical paradise. These things will be forgotten by January when the land will be full of dust and nopales cactus. The nopales themselves bloom with tunas, a red or yellow oblong fruit resembling a prickly pear, during the rainy season. I see Magenta Hibiscus, white and purple Morning Glory, jade succulents, fuchsia Mandevilla, orange Mexican Honeysuckle, Baby’s Breath ferns and pungent Gardenia. The vibrant yellow, orange, purple, pink and red Bougainvillea is prompted by drought stress to bloom year round.

How did I get here? I’m contemplating more than the miles. I’m contemplating this change of pace, of attitude, of lifestyle. Siesta closes shops from 2 to 4 p.m.

Dinner is between 8 and 10. In the Jardin, the lights of the Parroquia twinkle all night.

I am a third and fourth grade schoolteacher; in the evening I make space for writing.

San Miguel de Allende is shaped like a bathtub. Not like New Orleans or the bayou waters of my homeland, but steep and angled. Colonial architecture in tawny hues, cobblestone, narrow calles for horses and flat faced tiendas lead down a vertical descent to the Jardin. The Jardin is a small square of manicured trees and benches set in front of the central church, the Parroquia. From there, inlets of shops and restaurants flow through parks, neighborhoods and the Artisan’s Market.

Inside the market, artisans paint ceramics and bookmarks. They bind books

4

with ropes. They sell silver, skinned nopales leaves, aromatic white guava and small yellow mangos. In the street, a family wears four-foot paper-maché heads of saints.

It’s the start of September, the time of Independencia and much celebration. On the 15th, tourists from Mexico City will fill the Jardin, fireworks will crack, police on horseback will attempt to keep order, and the crowd will shout, “Viva la Mexico!”

Until then, I am adjusting to teaching in what feels like an alternate reality.

I teach at Naciones Unidas, a private bilingual elementary and secondary school. The children learn half of their subjects in Spanish and half in English. I teach five subjects: reading, writing, spelling, grammar, and science. I’m free to teach at the pace of the children’s learning. There are no absolutes. I’m not bound by the state because English isn’t mandatory for elementary school. Most of my students come from multi-lingual homes. It’s refreshing to see such openness to diversity.

In San Miguel, I house-sit. Switters loves the rotation of playmates in houses.

Currently I’m staying in a house of some friends from Texas. They have two rescue dogs: one, a geriatric toy poodle; the other, a hyperactive puppy named Suèrte. Suèrte means “lucky,” and that she is. When Sunny and Jim adopted her, they had just hit her with their car and she’d broken a leg. Healed and part of the family, Suèrte is the canine version of Richard Simmons. So this week Switters has a girlfriend...or a boyfriend… however you want to look at it.

On the weekends, I take short trips to surrounding towns: Jalpa, Alcocer, Sanangita, and Delores Hidalgo. Last weekend, I went to the church in Atotonilcan, “the Sistine chapel of the Americas,” established in 1740 by the Spanish at the site of a natural spring. The town became quite rich in silver and a lush lifestyle emerged. Being the holy catholic town that it was, this required some justification. How could God permit this gluttony? Their answer came in a Calvinistic form of penance: public selfflogging. During ceremonies, shirtless men would walk through the streets whipping their own bloody backs.

Even today, the ritual lives on. Inside the stone church, of this small and poor town, are paintings of the Christ bent over with his own whipped back, and doll-like statues of the Virgin of Guadalupe and Mary. Outside, covered stands sell blessings and relics to visitors. Thin paper flags of blue and pink string between rooftops.

Images of skulls and saints are cut in snowflake patters.

It is my eighth time to visit and this time I’m here to stay.

5

Tim Skeen

old monk napping for Sedio Ray Enthusiasms hotbunk with disappointments as his bald head reclines on a cushion.

Marriages bring children who create obligations which evoke the eternal so on and so forth.

Fatigue is but one way to describe this enlightenment.

Breath comes and goes like loose stitches on his robes.

Far-flung students speak his name with reverence.

A windup clock quietly tick tocks in another room.

Each moment is lifted up on the tiny, intricate ratchets, then let down again.

6

7

Photo by Ben Olson

Kimberlie Robinson

reactive sandalwood mala-ic bowling balls Mystical yogic bowlers scuttle to hotel van seeking the elusive perfect game of 300 mystical Icelandic and Germanic strikes they await the blessed darshan Seeking the elusive perfect game of robes of white and saffron in a bow they await the blessed darshan reaching, reach for the hand of the Mother Robes of white and saffron in a bow Yogis in heat cry, “Dude, give us some air.” reaching, reach for the hand of the Mother as plastic, platonic greenery seeps from ceramic temples Yogis in heat cry, “Dude, give us some air.”

Bowlers scream, “This is how dogs die!” as plastic, platonic greenery seeps from ceramic temples choking the flow of long dormant tri-Vesuvius Bowlers scream, “This is how dogs die!”

Icelandic cripple bemoans choking the flow of long dormant tri-Vesuvius gleaming lanes vibrate along metallic, beer stained byways Icelandic cripple bemoans the state of chemically induced bodily assaults gleaming lanes vibrate along metallic, beer stained byways of crystallized cowboy gold, yellow and white The state of chemically induced bodily assaults the driver, unlocks, locks, unlocks, locks the door of crystallized cowboy gold, yellow and white The A/C, like strikes, escapes his grasp

8

The driver, unlocks, locks, unlocks, locks the door She speaks, “No need to know what the karma is.”

The A/C, like strikes, escapes his grasp Vibrational solar flares rise to bake malas and reactive urethane balls She speaks, “No need to know what the karma is.”

He fumbles, chasing unmovable lock with keys Vibrational solar flares rise to bake malas and reactive urethane balls squeezing soft wetness from tired, dried pores He fumbles, chasing unmovable lock with keys Bowler says to yogi, “You should write a poem about this” squeezing soft wetness from tired, dried pores This aluminum box refuses to budge Bowler says to yogi, “You should write a poem about this” 300 mystical Icelandic and Germanic strikes This aluminum box refuses to budge Mystical yogic bowlers scuttle to hotel van

9

Brandon Arthur

macaques in a steambath

Just when you sit to remember one of those embalming notes from some classic rock song begin (anyfuckingthing from led zeppelin will do) Then there is a light that is hefted from the ground as the fog lifts darks from the perspectives of gravity That old bullshit of stepping away to some other thing just by stepping That image becomes an engine that is combusted in the grain running through your voice and it is this that is mistaken for imagination What school-texts point to or what points texts to schools Not quite what you’d call shooting with both pistols But it’s more than just the Janus face over a door isn’t it?

Isn’t this the will of the weight or the heft of the light from the ground?

Isn’t this that?

I’m waiting

10

Alexandra Lukens

reflections on prayer calls

The air is clear. Occasional dust from the streets and the hard-packed desert sand blows up with the wind and lightly stings the eyes. It feels chilly with a breeze dancing off the turquoise water, but you have found your long pants and sweater to be too much in the direct sunlight; your corduroys are sticking to your sweaty legs and you cannot regulate your body temperature. Sun reflecting off the white dirt and sand-colored buildings is quite a contrast from the red dirt in the West and the brick buildings with black roofs. Your eyes are too big for this city and you have forgotten your sunglasses.

All the women are dressed from head to toe, covered, making you feel foreign and uncomfortable. You were warned to cover your knees and shoulders, and find yourself repeatedly touching the exposed skin, grazing the obscenities that were not so offensive at home.

“Look at those burkas,” your mother points in a shop window. “I’d love to get you one of those.”

You nod and smile, but realize you’ve been trying to be more honest lately.

“When would I ever wear it but here?”

Your mother shrugs.

You are staying in the embassy quarters. The expansive rooms and high ceilings make you uneasy.

“Why does she have two beds in her room?” you ask Mother.

“Why not?”

Fair enough. If you were home, you might have made a comment about the need for low-income housing in the inner-cities over an empty spare bed. But you are here, not there.

When you sleep, you turn your back to the other bed, avoiding the stark reminder of loneliness. Each home is excessive and flags label the countries atop flat roofs. Your uncle is the dean of a prestigious university and your mother is studying for two weeks at local churches. They’ve bought Nutella and toast for your breakfast.

When you ride in the car, you get nervous. There are no stop lights and only roundabouts and signs in Arabic which read, “Drive Safely. Your family is waiting for you at home.”

You turn to your mother and say, “I’d like to take a photo of it and put it in Dad’s car.” She laughs because she knows: he is from New York and drives like it.

You cannot get used to such a drastic time change and you’re up all night reading tabloids sent from home. At 4 a.m. prayers are read from loudspeakers on

11

church roofs and at first you are frightened by the anonymous static voice. You are alone in this place, awake while they sleep, and suddenly it is you and the prayer and you know all around you they are on their knees, worshipping.

You bury your face in biographies because you are afraid to look around.

You are rude to your hosts and especially to Mother; it is your defense upon realizing you are horrified by how little you know. Rarely speaking or making eye contact, you decide Arabic is the most beautiful language you have ever seen, until you drive by a KFC and suddenly your passion is stifled by shame. Your existence feels rude and intrusive.

Mother goes carpet shopping and everything smells like dust. They once had a rat problem and brought cats over to kill them. Now they have a cat problem, but you don’t find it a problem at all. Where your cat will eat only chicken by-product from a can and the milk from your cereal, these cats share your curry and lentils and you smile for the first time since arriving.

“They’re like squirrels out here,” your mother explains. “People don’t care if they run them over.”

“That’s disgusting,” you reply. You also think running over squirrels is rather sick too.

You go to the mall and it feels American and you feel American and suddenly you feel suicidal. You spend the next day alternatively in the souks and you feel less like dying and more like a spectacle for the men in the shops. You stop at one door where a younger man is carving a lute. He asks in impressive English, “Are you from here?”

“No. America.” You are not letting him look into your eyes because you know they’ll give you away. “What about you? Where are you from?”

“Iraq.” There is a long pause and you can hear someone in the back room playing a fresh lute. He laughs at the irony and tells you your eyes are un-American.

Upon returning home to the states, the dirt looks red and the sky seems gray, even when it’s blue. The sun feels weak and you regret your manic episodes overseas.

You would like to call Mother and ask her to send you back, promising to appreciate it this time, surprised at such sadness upon waking at four in the morning to silence.

12

13

Kali as Self by Samuel Jablon

13 October 1492, a Saturday

Scott Alexander Jones

pantoum from the actual diary of christopher columbus Their eyes are very beautiful and not small.

Their hair not curly but flowing like the mane of a horse.

At sunrise many handsome young men came to the shore.

They came to the ship in dugouts made of tree-trunks with hair not curly but flowing like the mane of a horse.

I watched closely the gold that hung from a hole in the nose as they came to the ship in dugouts made of tree-trunks.

Tomorrow we will search for gold and precious stones.

I watch closely all gold that hangs from well-shaped noses and how even the women go naked as their mother’s bore them.

Tomorrow we will search for gold, for precious stones.

When I show them my sword they cut their hands on the blade even the women who go naked as their mother’s bore them.

They’ll make good slaves for they are quick to repeat what I say and when I show them my sword they cut their hands on the blade.

They’ll make good Christians for they have no religion and they’ll make good slaves for they are quick to repeat what I say at sunrise, those many handsome young men who come to the shore.

They’ll make good Christians for they have no religion and their eyes are very beautiful and not small.

14

Lisa Birman

don’t change a hair for me

though perhaps Afghanistan though Iraq though Iran though stem cell research though the electoral college though the Department of Homeland Security though terror though terror alert though Kyoto though Defense of Marriage though distribution of wealth though G4 though WTO though phone tapping though Patriot Act though veto though commuted sentence though the wall

15

Lisa Birman

not if you care for me

though Guantanamo though executive privilege though over-fishing though 2000 though 2004 though impeachment though national security though voter-cleansing though 9th Ward though axis of evil though Multi-National Force though Focus on the Family though Abu Ghraib though Abu Ghraib though Abu Ghraib

16

Merrill Shane Jones

coming to know (annie) oaklynn

They have a girl. Her name is Oaklynn. Calling her Annie. They. The two.

The two unknowings knowing Annie whose name is Oaklynn. No Annie being part of her name. Not just girl but girlfriend. They both have a girlfriend named Oaklynn who they call Annie. But only one Oaklynn (Annie). Two girlfriends, but really just the one girl. They have grown used to having and having had but not “halving” Annie (Oaklynn). Unknown but very knowing. Knowing the fine long spine with trembling fingers. Knowing the jutting-out tailbone. Knowing the squeeze of softplump roundables. Knowing the, “Yes please, Annie, yes, simply must, must have, please pleeeeeeeeeeeeeze.” They are two “I”s that each possess a knowing of Annie/ Oaklynn, yet are unknowing of a collective they.

When the unknowing becomes known, the two “I”s become “he”s: Who is he? What does he have that I don’t have? They both make these types of comments after coming to know the other he is knowing Annie (Oaklynn) roundables—both round-front and round-back knowings. They know this now. He and he. The two “I”s who know. The theys who have reverted to calling Annie “Oaklynn” out of fear or spite. He fears, he spites, he spites, he fears. They both fear and spite collectively, although unknowingly fearing and spiting the same. They don’t realize that they, in all actuality, have Annie, so to speak, when these comments are made (not Annie, but Oaklynn—they, both and each, he [I] and he [I], have refused to call little Oaklynn “Annie” ever since plural knowing).

They now know the collective, joint and severally. “Joint and severally” is a bureaucratic term that neither of the two “I”s in question know. Oaklynn knows— she works in accounting. Annie knows too, but that is perhaps redundant. Redundant.

They, however, now know about the two “I”s that are also the two “he”s that together make the one “they.” They still refuse to call her Annie, not knowing the other refuses to call her Annie too. Each saying, “I can no longer call you Annie, Oaklynn.” Both asking, “Does he also call you Annie, Oaklynn?” Neither knowing that what is being said is the same as what has been said and/or will be said just before or after or while knowing (Annie) Oaklynn. Knowing the ankle-knocking lock, the signature (Annie) Oaklynn grasp, pull, tug, yes, oh yes, oh.

Oh, they know that they both share Annie and Oaklynn, but it is not a simultaneous sharing of Annie-Oaklynn space. They don’t know that Oaklynn, or perhaps Annie (actually they are the same, but calling her Oaklynn), is willing to share in real-time, a collective sharing. If they did, one would call her Oaklynn, the other—this is where they differ—would call her Annie. But Oaklynn, aka Annie, will

17

not tell them this because they’d simply know too much and much jealousy would surface for the two I(he)s in question: one I’s jealousy of his technique, size, amount of attention received from Oaklynn, or Annie, or worse, both Oaklynn and Annie, the one girl they know and have known but will soon come to un-know; soon to be severed jointly, yet not simultaneously, from Annie (Oaklynn) by Oaklynn’s (Annie’s) kind words and tactful use of breakup clichés. They will both take the knowing that there will be no more knowing Annie, or Oaklynn for that matter, very hard, becoming two unknowings with no one to know.

18

19 Photo by Andrew Antar

Carly-Anne Ravnikar

wastelands

Over the field the city still looms distant Water storage bulbs sprouting in every direction But this road is winding down, inching toward her final destination.

Sparse now lies between corn and a dirt field What were people growing there?

Ah, a stoplight. But it’s showing on the horizon, and after that there is the 24-hour gas station where they’d drive twenty minutes for smokes at 3 in the morning or to get some beer after bar-close.

She’d been in the city too long. Used to the sirens and wailing screams in the night.

She called the police but they came to her door instead.

No one screaming here, she lied.

Peaceful now, it’s been arranged. Here it was dirty everywhere and everyone knows that you shouldn’t drink the water.

Buses fly by in a cloud of smog. Everyone here is drivingExcept for them. We refer to them like doctors by their job title - or lack of Homeless lady. She has a cane with an eagle top. It’s the National bird, she tells me.

Now I’m listening to coyotes thinking about how we stole that word along with the continent. I want to steal a continent. I’ve been reading Moore’s Utopia, perhaps an island would suffice.

I think it would.

Every time she pokes at the fire hoping to rev some flame it falls over. If she just left it alone let it burn maybe she could warm up. Maybe she could lose this numb tingling.

I hate your exasperated words. They are distracting me from this poem.

This is not the apollo. We are not jordan.

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Oh! When will you be angelic?

There are still slaves in Wisconsin and I wonder about that farm we just passed on the right.

You could live out here without worries. I am leaving mine, now, back in that gutter she stepped over covered in McDonalds and empty Winston packs; this river is flooded. It looks like a marsh.

It’s misguided. Needs to pull it together.

Nobody wants a mess. It’s going to have to deal with it.

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translated from the Sanskrit

Andrew Schelling

two from old india

Music & poetry, Sarasvati has two breasts One’s sweet at first sip the other, well, you need to chew it a while

anonymous

Day by day goes past, and youth too.

Fuck me now if you can – Dead, who will give you along with the sesame-rice ball a sweetly shaved cunt?

anonymous

Note: traditionally a corpse is cremated with a rice ball in its mouth

22

Dan Dissinger

catching up with almost

I cling to the spoon on my left

chocolate

from my lips easily over the silver end

. . . it’s not moment anymore than it’s trance ... my skin and sandpaper ... coal

something hot like . . . red or mask . . . an edge ...really it’s only where tongue meets tea

washing broken glass down his throat sound

... ... ... only light above my head extended from hand arm eye

caught by

fishing-hook... ... ... ... ... ... ... and I’m still questioning myself about waking up at 7am and breakfast without bacon. . . and

poetry without nitrogen... ... ... ... . . . . . if I say I worked

I mean I wrote

and

if I’ve been laughing then

I’ve caught myself naked in the mirror. . . . . . . . . ... ... ...sweat on my new collared shirt become delirious sunsets ... still wet ... overly combustible

single

stroke set down from her mouth on his mouth falling over chest crotch

shape offers sound to light when light runs out of fingers . . .

true enough neck

and

hair... ...absent... inside my upside down the angle of this phrase

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dripping

glass eye... the rip in my mucus trenched in my bend arm elbow knee shook free of landscape ...

a natural almond fire . . . her bones and his intestines . . . ...

...

...explanation... when I thought silence was orgasm inside a fingernail inside a cuticle inside one . cell . organism . and . mountain . side . stream

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25 Photo by Cecilia Kunstadter

Irene Joyce

silent terrain

i love your silence and stuttering and studying that silent terrain that craves a wandering partner to explore it with again remembering she is a fraction reflection of me and what i am not she is explained in the context of this terrain you map a way to the crevices in this terrain like the wind and the branch that swing in unspoken, unbroken equation forth and back while you are staring up getting dizzy making me dizzy in your explanation of how it sways forth and back more forth even when you don’t want to talk about it you design a map for me to find [out] what you are looking for about her about no one but all of us about what? (gasping) i love your lettering, letting letter by letter speak without speaking never before have words as intimate have thoughts as whole have emotions as sharpened pierced me as yours love to and do so our fingertips converse in universal sos because sometimes there is nothing to breathe out but translations of speechlessness 26

when the nest can’t be saved because we have flown away from swaying forth and back the branch is the wind that keeps us skyward silently scanning the landscape we can’t explain from above the map

27

for Andrew Miller

Nicholas B. Morris

inside man

It started as a joke.

Jack and Hank were smoking a bowl in their apartment, trying to figure out how they were going to make a little extra cash. They were both moving soon, Jack to a downtown Boulder apartment with his girlfriend Amy, Hank back to his hometown of Seattle. They had been in their current apartment for almost a year, and after the numerous problems they’d had with the place (meddling neighbors, leaks above the stairwell, leaking gas, clogged toilets, showers, and garbage disposals), there was no desire to renew their lease. But there was also little money to move; Hank worked overnights at the Kinko’s downtown and Jack worked as a maintenance worker at a private high school in North Boulder. Between the two of them, they barely made enough to keep food in the refrigerator and eviction notices off the door. Coming up with the first month’s rent and deposit, as well as the general costs of moving, was going to be a challenge for them both.

“Too bad your girlfriend isn’t rich,” Hank said, taking in a big puff of blue smoke. “You could just hit her up for some money.”

“Yeah, and she could loan you a few hundred for gas to Seattle,” Jack said, taking the hot glass pipe from Hank. “Hey, as long as we’re fantasizing, let’s go all out.”

“We could try hooking up with one of the milfs at your school. I’m sure some of those rich bitches would throw cash at some young dick.”

“You and I both wish,” Jack said, passing the pipe back to Hank.

“Of course, there’s always the old standbys. We could knock over the liquor store around the corner.”

“Fuck, if we’re gonna knock over some place, I’d just as soon do it somewhere we had an inside man. Like Kinko’s.”

Jack looked over at Hank, expecting him to laugh, but instead, found his roommate in deep concentration.

“Hey man, don’t Bogart that pipe.”

“Sorry,” Hank said, quickly taking a hit and handing it back. “I think that’s a great idea.”

“What?”

“The register usually has about two thousand in cash in the middle of the night, and I’ll be the only one working. Just sneak in the back door while I’m facing the other way, stick me up, I’ll hand over the cash, you split.”

“Great plan, genius. What about the cameras?”

28

“You can wear that ski mask you wore when you were shoveling snow for the school. And you can wear extra clothes so it disguises your build.”

“What about my voice? The cops will ask you what I sound like.”

“We won’t have to worry about that. You’ll sneak up on me, stick a gun at my head while I’m standing at the register – like I wouldn’t know what you’d want.”

“What if somebody walks in to pick up some job they need the next morning?”

“Dude, I work the overnight all the time. Between two and four, there’s jack shit going on. Nobody will show up. It’ll be perfect. You’ll have the alibi of being home asleep. Plus, since you don’t have a car, it would take you too long to walk to Kinko’s, rob the place, walk back home and go to work in the morning. You’ll stick me up, and then tie me up so that will take the heat off my ass. Fuck, dude,” he took a hit off the pipe, “we’ll be able to split the money and walk away. I’ll be leaving anyway, so who’s gonna hold me responsible at Kinko’s?”

Jack wasn’t sure what to think. Hank might be joking around, playing it deadpan, but he was full of details. People with lists of details are serious. Details mean business.

“Sounds like a pretty crazy idea, man.”

“Crazy enough to work. You up for it?”

“If you think we can get away with it… sure, I’m in.”

“We’re cops’ kids, man,” Hank said. “If anyone can get away with it, we can.”

Jack was in bed with Amy at her apartment, staring at the late night ceiling.

He told her about his half-assed idea and Hank’s zest to see it through.

“Are you going to do it?”

“I was thinking about it. I mean, we grew up around cops, so we know how to think like they do. We’ve had to expect how they’d be looking to catch us our whole lives, so I figure that gives us the upper hand on the planning end of things, and it’ll help us be extra careful when we’re pulling it off.” Jack took a deep breath. “Here’s the thing – I’m not sure how I’m supposed to be home asleep when I’m downtown robbing Kinko’s.”

“I’ll drive you.”

“Would you really?”

Amy grinned, leaned over and kissed him. “I’ve always wanted to be part of a heist. Now I get to drive the getaway car.” She giggled. “We’ll be sexy notorious outlaws, like Bonnie and Clyde.”

“I don’t want to be like Bonnie and Clyde,” Jack said. “That story doesn’t end so well.”

“Well, sexy notorious outlaws, anyway,” Amy said.

29

Hank was against Amy joining the heist at first. Bringing in an outside party was dangerous, especially someone who had grown up without a police presence in the home. Hank thought she might crack under pressure.

Jack already had her alibi planned. They would take their cell phones when she picked him up, call each other when they got close to Kinko’s, and Amy would wait in the car with the two phones for several minutes while Jack went inside to get the money. If the police asked about it, they couldn’t sleep and called each other for a little phone sex.

Hank admitted it was a pretty good alibi. “But,” he asked, “is she paranoid enough to anticipate the ways cops might get us?”

“If there’s one thing I can vouch on Amy’s behalf,” Jack said, remembering the numerous occasions he’d had to explain some otherwise harmless action or comment, “it’s that she is very paranoid.”

The day of the heist was unseasonably warm. Only a week before, there had been five inches of snow on the ground, but a Chinook wind was blowing through the mountains, and the sun baked the foothills so that the temperature climbed up into the sixties. Jack sweated all day at work, overdressed with his thermal underwear underneath a t-shirt – the weather forecast had predicted a high in the low forties. If nothing else goes wrong today, he thought, it could be a pretty good day.

Jack got home from work about five, had a smoke and a shower. He and Hank walked over to the TexMex restaurant down the block, where they met Amy for dinner to go over the last minute details: the signal, what time to arrive, etc. After they had a few drinks and dinner, Jack and Hank headed back to their apartment and Amy headed for her apartment on the other side of Boulder, where she played loud music until eleven and shut out her lights so the neighbors would think she’d gone to bed.

About 9:30, Hank left for work. “Remember, don’t show up before two. At two, I’ll go out and smoke a cigarette if everything is clear. If I haven’t come out by two-thirty, abort.”

“Gotcha,” Jack said. He raised the pipe in a salute. “See you in a few hours.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Hank said. “I’m just going to work.

See you tomorrow afternoon when you get home from work.”

Jack played video games for an hour or so, got stoned, masturbated out of boredom. A little after one, there was a light knock on the apartment door.

“Are you ready?” Amy asked.

“Ready as I’ll ever be.”

Jack had hoped that once the sun set that the temperature would drop, but the air was still warm. Under the multiple layers of clothing he wore to pad his build, he was starting to sweat before he got in the car.

30

He dialed her cell phone when they neared Kinko’s. “Hang up in twenty minutes,” he said. She nodded, turned into the Hollywood Video parking lot across from Kinko’s. The clock on the dashboard said 1:48.

They waited for Hank to come out and smoke a cigarette, Amy drumming her fingers on the wheel, Jack sweating from nervousness and too many clothes.

Shortly after two, Hank stepped out behind the store, lit a cigarette, stretched, waving the cherry in small circles.

“That’s my cue,” Jack said. “I should be back in ten or fifteen minutes. Wish me luck.”

“Luck,” Amy said. She leaned over and kissed him. “I’ll be here.”

Jack wiped his forehead, moved across the parking lot. There was no traffic from either direction, so he crossed and crouched behind the dumpster next to the open back door.

Hank dropped his cigarette, exhaled loudly, rubbed the butt out with his sneaker. Jack slipped the Glock his father had given him as a twenty-first birthday present out of his jacket pocket, mopped his forehead again, counted thirty Mississippi, and crept around the corner.

Jack moved low through the back door, ducked behind a counter. He heard the humming of dozens of mechanical insects, smelled the hot, freshly printed paper.

Hank was at the register, fiddling around as planned. Jack crept closer and was about to stand when he heard the front door bell ring.

Fuck! he thought. It took all of his effort not to scream. From his position behind Hank, he could hear the guy’s voice, pure CU fratboy: “Dude, I dropped off a project that’s due at like eight in the morning – ya got it done yet?”

Hank stiffened. “It’s not done yet. Check back in a few hours.”

The fratboy wasn’t buying it, was getting closer to the counter. “Look asswipe, I need that project right now!”

Jack decided it was time for action. He stood and leveled the gun at the fratboy’s dyed blonde hairline.

“Stay cool and nobody eats shit,” he said in what he hoped was a hoarse whisper.

The fratboy’s eyes went wide. “I don’t want no trouble brah, I just got homework is all.”

“Gimme your wallet.”

The fratboy reached into his pocket, slid his walletonto the counter. “Fuckin’ pissed myself, man,” he whined.

Jack brought the butt of the pistol down on the fratboy’s temple, and he fell like a bag of hammers. Aware every second of the cameras on him, he pointed the pistol at Hank, motioned toward the cash drawer and the open duffel bag in his other hand.

“Please just don’t kill me, sir, is all I ask,” Hank said as he emptied the register into the bag. “I don’t want anyone to get hurt.”

31

Jack waved the gun at him to shut him up. When Hank finished filling the bag with cash, Jack motioned toward the floor, mimed putting hands on his head.

Hank complied as Jack removed the duct tape from his other jacket pocket, wiped his forehead, and began to wrap Hank’s wrists.

Jack had been gone about ten minutes when a patrol car pulled into the parking lot of the Hollywood Video. Amy slunk down in her seat, hoping the officer didn’t come over and ask her what she was doing in an empty parking lot at 2:30 a.m.

But the car turned around, parked for several minutes, and pulled back out again.

She breathed a sigh of relief, decided that sitting in an open parking lot was too conspicuous. Decided to cross the street, parking on the nearest side street. When Jack started to cross the road, she would flash her lights at him and they’d make a quick, inconspicuous getaway. She hoped he didn’t cross the street while she was moving the car. She didn’t want it to look as if she’d abandoned him.

The fratboy on the floor was groaning but not yet fully conscious when Jack finished taping Hank’s wrists. After he finished, Jack did a few quick loops around the ankles, picked up the bag, and began backing toward the open door, gun still trained on Hank. He saw Hank’s eyes get large, wondered why just about the time he backed into someone. Spinning around, Jack saw a woman wearing a black and purple Kinko’s shirt. They stood staring at each other for a few seconds, then the woman started to scream. Jack covered his ears, watched in horror as she rounded the corner and took off down the street. He ran to follow her, but tired quickly because of his heavy clothing. He wished for a second that he had actually put bullets in the gun.

Fuck it, he thought, I’m getting out of here.

He bolted across the street to the Hollywood Video parking lot, but found it empty. Someone across the street was flashing their lights, but he didn’t stick around long enough to see who it was or what they wanted. He could already hear sirens approaching, so he took off running, tearing off clothing to make it easier.

He turned down a narrow alley, spotted three dumpsters. He found the one for paper recycling, jumped in, and closed the top cover. Clutching the duffel bag to his chest, he tried to stop his heaving breath, remembering how much time he’d spent smoking pot the last few years. Vaguely, he heard sirens passing on the street.

The dumpster was hot, and he was about to climb out and go looking for Amy when he heard a car pull into the alley. He kept still and listened, w ondering if they were checking the other dumpsters. His heartbeat seemed loud enough to give his position away.

Amy called his name softly; he opened the dumpster, climbed out, and got in her car.

The cool air on the drive home never felt so good.

32

Amy Catanzano & Jack Collom

meta-meta poetry

What’s lying next to me? What awful silliness What wind through the

idea of sunfish packs the flesh so that zoom will open up miles of expansive, and the afternoon closes the sun, only moons left -- like an ellipsis between dark and dark and dark because planets make me smile, spiral arms -- all this kicked up under my bootsole, where we are found, plucking petals from their

immovEable centers, mutable like clouds --- clouds of reverie? (note the punctuation : the question-comma) ...

These inventions will be spoken on the moon! staccato by lunar stalagtites (that give milk) which feed us in the early morning, clear and crystalline dot-dot-dot We sit on ridges in the Moon’s Farmers’ Market, eating Smaller moons, edible namesakes, making us iridescent (casting the color-counting doctors into a dry, beautiful dent

33

An alluring empty bottle I have never known how to lose that can of shaving cream Some dumb tapestry here, some adaptionist crock toasted so as we must add sums for practice battle over sample exercise solutions makeup names for water remind me again why am I here won’t you yes, please this plea happened again all-clear & still conscious

Nicholas Michael Ravnikar

lobotomy buttons

if shocked

if forgotten she calls to tell him like it is

& me wondering how it is spouses find “room” for such staggering cruelty spitting into phone then weeping I hope you feel alarmed I’m simply not myself tonight I’m too well dressed and clean shaven and haircut

to make them all want me to leave and then

be something and aspiring for broadcast so that we may live more isn’t that nice of broadcast TV for a salvation that can touch us

different whole & live TV which is also dying clearly defined realities to forsake itself in a good way?

We are all hot for our believers and I would blame you as you surely would blame me should I acquiescence if only we could ever decide to do anything.

34

Dawn Sueoka

multiverse for Mel

Cantor claims that infinity reveals that slight differences in the arrangement of stars prove that inflationary cosmology ensures that the fickle universe grasps that this limited afternoon suggests that human language demonstrates that assassinated moths mumble that uncertainties acknowledge that a piece of lint accepts that illusions deny that lessons in imaginary waltzing teach that gravity finds that interrupted suppers swear that this side of space recognizes that distance assumes that our own bare hands regret that doubt loves that love doubts regret.

35

on photographs

Lindsay Colahan

from details

I saw Aunt Gloria when I walked to school. It seems like it happened everyday, but it couldn’t have. She was on top of the same building in the same neighborhood. There were curious neighbors. There were police cars and an ambulance. They wondered—would she do it this time. They were all amused.

She said, Hi Sonny. I waved, Hi Auntie Gloria. I kept walking. I went to school. No one acted differently. It was routine. It was part of my morning.

I thought everyone had families like mine.

Sometimes we visited Uncle Pat. He herded his family into the back room before we arrived. He answered the door with carrot tops in his breast pocket. He answered the door with tissue in his nose. We sat in the living room. His family watched us through a crack in the door. If we turned to face them, they slammed the door.

Uncle Pat broke a few bones falling down the stairs. I remember all of this with extreme clarity.

I remember very little.

36

Steve Kisicki

when i was younger

When I was younger, something was taken from me, something that I can never get back. I have felt its presence as a phantom of my infancy, a shameful apparition that cannot live within the confines of a certain word.

My father once told me the story of a doctor he once knew, an avid fisherman. Big mouth bass was the choice catch. He did not use jigs or lures, he did not use worms. What this man used was a piece of each and every young man he encountered.

The proper procedure for a circumcision is, I believe: forceps, snip, then foreskin into hazardous waste bin. But this doctor saw the potential in the end of each penis he violated. He knew in his heart that this was not hazardous waste, but a booby-trapped meal for a creature that tastes great with lemon, butter, and a bit of salt.

How many penis tips have fallen to the incinerator? What does it mean that “they” trim the excess of cocks? My emblem worthy of a blue balloon hanging over my mother’s day, pruned to glisten in a pornographic film. Does the flap threaten them?

My older brothers are twins, and my parents decided to run an experiment past their genitals when they were born. The executed plan involved circumcising one (the five minutes older) and to leave the other socked. I did not have sisters, therefore I did not see vagina until much later. But I do remember thinking one of my brother’s penises looking rather strange as he stepped out of the shower as I brushed my teeth before school. I vividly remember the exposure of the experiment at the dinner table, and laughing as my brothers looked at each other in horrific amusement. As to what one possessed and the other had been subjected to. Their personalities illuminated before me, along with the trimmed victim and the oversexed untouchable.

This being said, circumcision is among the worst outcomes of primates picking up tools. Never have I seen a chimp compelled to take sharp objects to his penis.

I’ve only seen him stroke it gleefully with wide lips before he ejaculates onto the chimp house window. I wonder if I had smeared shit on the doctor he would have backed off on the snipping. I wonder how the doctor’s fish tasted last night.

37

38

Photo by Luke Bennett

James Kerley

no. 27. when we were

when we were talking at the party you accidentally brushed my hand it wasn’t unsettling at first but then it happened again I thought you trying to tell me something. in the pool you said you look like your mother. our hands accidentally touched and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. you were talking all night you were talking to us but never looking at me always at the floor, or my girlfriend I turned and left, it was raining, we were divided, but not in the traditional sense, it was more like a dividing of styles, you were living at 3rd and Alameda, rode a bike with big tires, the city! You would shout. The City! And bicycles flooded the streets, hundreds of them – wearing the skin of dead relatives – you hopped on your bike and joined them. I couldn’t distinguish you in the crowd, in the skin of Uncle.

39

I never met Uncle.

Although I knew he was dead.

I knew

that the camera published all o f the pictures al l bells ring all b ells ring for the saint for the de ad we are with you now we ar e always with you.

40

Michelle Naka Pierce

excerpt from

she, a blueprint from intersurface

Anarchitecture attempts to solve no problem.

Gordon Matta-Clark

Cut (4) She every she. Not she every she every she not.

She and or of gift. Not one not one, or of her.

She one between, between her/ she. Space between her/ she.

If from structure, surface: enter the exit.

Yet she [alone] may reside indifferent to herself. Nothing may constrict this uneasiness of blind sentence. Every membrane the edifice against her occasional reflection. Or.

Cut (5) When she moves across refrain, letters strip, then recover reason. Lexicons pressing symbols in any direction.

She determines what one absorbs. As if dense color seeps into a consecutive layering of narratives: suggest inside of her inside of her deliberate memory suggest inside of her inside of her outlined kind suggest inside of her inside of her lit aching suggest inside herself and direction.1 Note: She makes the appropriate cut somewhere between the supports and collapse.

41

Artwork by Andrew Antar

42

Yasamin Ghiasi

a wrenching blue, a dusty hour among the vines Bringing in more and more infinitely thin, poignant lines blanketed with water hyacinths.

Not one mud covered eye outcast, concealed by brightness, vacant to this old shapeless grandeur.

43

translation from Russian by L. Draäghtel

Varlam Shalamov

The Handwriting

Late at night Krist was called to go behind the stables. The call came from a small house nestled by the side of a hill at the far end of the settlement. There lived an investigator of “special cases,” as they sarcastically called him in the prison camp, for there were no “special cases” in the zone – every misdeed or even what seemed to be a misdeed could be punished with death. Death or a complete acquittal. But who could tell you about his complete acquittal? Ready for anything, indifferent to everything, Krist, walked along a narrow foot path.

The light was lit in the kitchen-house. The bread-cutter was preparing to ration bread for tomorrow’s breakfast. Would Krist have a breakfast tomorrow? He did not know, and was glad he didn’t.

Under his feet he found something that looked like a piece of ice. Krist bent down and picked it up; he at once saw it was a piece of turnip peel, covered with ice. The ice melted in his hands and Krist greedily shoved the peel into his mouth.

There was no rush. He walked all the way around beginning with the first barrack, realizing that he was the first person to walk along this long snowy road today, that no one had walked here, at the outskirts of the settlement, to the investigator’s place yet. Along the road, frozen into the snow, were scattered pieces of turnip peel that seemed to be wrapped in cellophane. Krist found as many as ten of them – some bigger, others smaller. For a long time Krist did not see people throw the pieces of turnip peel away. This person must not have been a prisoner of course, but a civilian.

Perhaps the investigator himself.

Krist chewed and ate all the peels; there was a well-forgotten taste in his mouth – of his motherland, of fresh vegetables – and happy Krist knocked at the door of the investigator’s house.

The investigator was tall, lean, and unshaven. This was his workplace – an iron cot covered with a soldier’s blanket, a dirty crumpled pillow, a desk, homemade, with distorted drawers stuffed tight with papers and files. A big box full of personal cards on the windowsill. An étagère also piled with tightly stuffed files. An ashtray made of a half-can. A Hodiki clock on the windowsill. It showed half-past 10 p.m.

The investigator was trying to kindle a fire in the iron stove.

He was white-skinned, even pale, as all investigators. He had neither an orderly nor a revolver.

“Please, sit down,” he said politely, and pushed an old stool towards Krist.

The investigator was sitting on a chair, homemade, with a high back. “I have seen your case,” the investigator said, “and I have a proposition for you. Don’t know if it suits

44

you.”

Krist stopped breathing, waiting. The investigator paused for a while.

“But I must know something else about you. Please write an application.”

“Application?”

“Yes, here’s some paper and a pen.”

“Application? To whom? About what?”

“Whoever! If not an application, then a Blok’s poem. It’s just the same. Do you see? Or Pushkin’s ‘Bird’: Yesterday I opened the cage Of my flying prisoner.

I returned the singer to the groves, I gave her freedom back.”

“This is not Pushkin’s ‘Bird.’”

“Then whose?”

“Tumansky’s.”

“Tumansky. I hear it for the first time.”

“Ah-ah-ah, you need to start an investigation? Whether I killed somebody… or wrote a letter home…or faked a cheque for the blatnyh.”1

“Not at all. Investigations of this sort are not our competence.”

The investigator smiled showing his swollen bleeding gums, small teeth.

However insignificant the flash of his smile was, it added light to the room. And to Krist’s soul, too. Krist could not but look at the investigator’s mouth.

“Yes,” the investigator said, following his glance. “It is scurvy. It does not spare the civilians either. No fresh vegetables, you know.”

Krist thought about the turnip peel. There are more vitamins in the peel than in the flesh, and it was he who had them, not the investigator. Krist wanted to keep up the conversation and tell him how he sucked, and chewed those peels the investigator had thrown away, but he did not dare do it thinking the investigator might take it as an excessive liberty.

“Did you get the point? I need to see your handwriting.”

Krist still did not understand.

“Write!” The investigator started dictating. “To the Head of the gold mine.

From prisoner Krist, year of birth, your article, term of imprisonment. Application. I ask you to transfer me to an easier job… Enough.”

The investigator took the unfinished application, read it, tore it to pieces and threw it into the stove. For a second the fire was brighter.

“Please, take a seat at the desk. At the end, here.”

Krist had the calligraphic handwriting of a professional scribe that he himself admired, but his comrades laughed at him because his handwriting was not like that of a professor or a doctor. It was not the handwriting of a writer or a poet.

1 Blatnyh, blatnoy (transliteration from Russin) – mainly thieves and robbers; also other non-political criminals in the prison camp.

45

It was the handwriting of a store man. They laughed, saying Krist could have made a career of a tsar scribe, like the one described by Bunin. Krist paid no attention to their teasing and went on giving the typists his neatly written manuscripts. The typists approved of the work but laughed at him on the sly. His fingers, used to a miner’s hack and a shovel handle, could not hold the pen at first, but after all, he did it.

“It’s all in a mess, total chaos here,” the investigator said. “I am quite aware of that. But you could fix it.”

“Of course, of course,” Krist said. The stove was burning now and it was warm in the room. “A cigarette…”

“I don’t smoke,” the investigator rudely said. “No bread either. But you won’t go to work tomorrow. I will tell the detail guard.”

Thus for several months, once a week, Krist came to a badly heated investigator’s place, copied the papers and filed them.

The snowless winter of the thirty-seventh and thirty-eighth entered the prison camp barracks with its deadly winds. Every night according to the name lists they had, the detail guards roamed the barracks trying to find and wake people for the etap.1 But the prisoners had stopped thinking about all these night happenings – the work was too hard to think about anything else. They worked more hours now under the guards’ supervision, and weeks passed by, but every night Krist, half-alive, came to the investigator’s house to write and file papers. He stopped shaving and washing his face. The investigator seemed to not notice the hollow cheeks and burning eyes of hungry Krist. And Krist went on writing and filing.

The number of files and papers grew. It was impossible to fix them. Krist copied endless lists, lists of names, the top of the paper bent back, and he did not try to find out the secret though it was enough just to unbend the top of the paper in front of him. Sometimes the investigator took a stack of new cases that appeared from nowhere without Krist’s help and hurriedly dictated them to Krist, and Krist wrote.

At midnight the dictation was over and Krist went to his barrack to sleep.

He slept hard – tomorrow’s work detail did not concern him. Weeks passed by, and Krist kept writing.

One day the investigator took a file to dictate another name, and halted. He looked at Krist and asked, “What are your first and middle names?”

“Robert Ivanovich,” Krist replied, smiling. If the investigator would call him “Robert Ivanovich” instead of “Krist,” it would not surprise him. He was young enough to be the investigator’s son.

Still holding the file in his hand and saying nothing, the investigator grew very pale. With quick fingers the investigator turned over all the papers in the file – there were neither more nor less of them than in any other file. Then the investigator 1 Etap (transliteration from Russian) – transit; convicts transferred to another place were to walk a part of the distance on foot.

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flung the stove door open, and it got very bright in the room, as if the soul was lit up to its bottom where there was found something very important, human.

The investigator tore the file to pieces and shoved the shreds into the stove. It got even brighter in the room. Krist understood nothing. Without looking at Krist the investigator said, “The routine. They do not realize what they are doing.

Do not care, in fact.” He gave Krist a steady glance. “Shall we go on writing? Are you ready?”

“Ready,” Krist said.

By now, Krist’s many comrades were shot. The investigator was shot too.

But Krist lived and sometimes, not less than once in several years, he remembered the burning stove, the file, the investigator’s quick fingers tearing his case apart – a present to the condemned from the condemner.

Krist’s handwriting remained calligraphic.

47

Olatundji Akpo-Sani

an empire of coins

My gut erupts and the head is so numb and I don’t use deodorant anymore Hoping that bodily odors will once more be hip Drinking coffee and remembering that time I got my tooth knocked out by a brute twice my age He warned me but all I had was piss and vinegar waiting to be knocked around now I hear he is an advertising guru and I am caught staring at a screen numbly - as if it held some secret to being wanted desired - held in high esteem remembering who is laughing now but still unable to look away I know old men kicked to the curb for being old just want to be let back in to dance some more pretend that their bladder doesn’t leak that dignity can be found with a head high even while some stranger changes their diaper because there was that accident on the ice and bones have been fused and this is called living this is preferable to the jungles or deserts of death I can see the mall from where I sit in the morning mulling over my coffee and bagel The neon flashes looking for trouble like red lights and forbidden schoolgirl fantasies Trying to walk the walk of normalcy knowing the outcome of yesterday night’s hockey game

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laughing it all up with the boys at the bar and grinning at the red tie telling us what is important My closet is empty and I have refused to wash my clothes in months I place them in piles worn once worn twice a stain where no one can see it a stain that looks like a designer print I can wear that again and call it my new shirt These jeans full of holes I can sell on the corner as Abercrombie knockoffs for ninety bucks so I can pay my cable bill They have been threatening to go to war with me for weeks now and I fear they may be ready to strike And the old men say get off your ass while you are young do something with your life make something of yourself more than a pile of organs just before they welcome me to the only store that sells everything I don’t need I hope for another world war and a bag of Doritos to munch while I watch it The old men ask me why BECAUSE IT IS THE QUICKEST WAY FROM POINT A TO POINT B (I don’t know how much more of this I can take!)

I watch movies looking for answers I pop in CD’s of Def Leppard and mute the set for an alternative sound track so I can laugh at every bad guy murdered doing what they think is right but what is really wrong because if it was right they would be the shooters instead of the shootees I dream of Bollywood moviescapes with large choruses and thousands of dancers interrupting the halls of

congress

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The senators cannot help but leap from their seats and join in the revelry A charade is a charade is a charade‌ And I start to smell myself unkempt and disheveled laughing because tears are too expensive anymore and the only people who can get away with it are hung for the crime of being human or weak or insane or sane or a dreamer or naive There is nothing more damming than naivetÊ From the screen I see another demand to sit up straight and fly right take a shower cut my hair shave present the complete, cool, calm, collected package the nape of my neck to a mob with a guillotine and a serious look in their

eyes Somewhere across town an old man presses a panic button because his remote won’t change the channel to TV Land and Father Knows Best and I know that this whorish screen has killed me or maybe I have killed me and I remember my priest saying that I was too smart for my own good when I confessed to hating religion I keep thinking of the old men and whether or not they will get into heaven after serving in a world war and I notice the cable company has finally declared war and cut me off

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Julius Caesar

empire 101

Beware the leader who bangs the drum of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all their rights unto the leader and gladly so.

How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Julius Caesar.

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Margaret Randall

seven words

Seven words forbidden on radio or TV while innuendo abuses a name what the latest remedy can do for you and swift-boat becomes a verb that changes history.

These taunts pass the censors, embedding themselves in memory.

Embed itself a word or concept we are asked to accept, questioning neither allegiance nor source.

Reporting what men do an idea whose time has come and gone.

Flag-covered coffins erased from the nightly news but vacant eyes and severed limbs make acceptable fare as long as the dead don’t look like us and we believe the murder of an eight-year-old was self-defense.

The seven words do not include ho or heathen, terrorist applied to a child wandering into the conqueror’s line of fire.

Beep beep beep beep beep beep beep always gets a laugh while sovereign state morphs to evil empire and the line between invade and occupy stumbles and dies.

Liberate may be spoken

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but shouldn’t and hope, change and peace are reborn as holograms.  Lie. Lie if you must, if you can and repeat the lie until it closes the window on what we know.

Denial will take up the slack when evidence to the contrary kicks us upside the head.

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Ryan Clark

106. to the west from The 23 Year-Old Poems

Hollow to the morning sun, warred against the oncoming of another song’s ending, my pen lies in a new hole like another breezy leaf.

The music has stopped entirely the quadrant of what I’ve kept in my head.

The brown dress sock at the window as another disc starts up; already almost forgot the name pressed against concrete of her reflection.

on their toes for a little while

Fourteen points after the first word: school paper, assorted hairs through the window in the rain; consistently thinning, as if poetry was the second one.

Sun shining through crushed pine needles; the poetic line built around consumption and so I turn it on again; I hear, then I could say how I love.

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Adam Perry

texas, 1872

At the end of water falling down my throat, I am playing with my lover in a bed we have moved outside, near the river where the trees and animals and dirt and wind don’t realize this is all over.

But we won’t know either, in a few hours when the clouds turn black, the sky collapses and one final orgasm cries out: “our world no longer rests on the shoulders of tides and toil; now ravage a gentle beauty with sadness over the edge of the present.”

I wonder if we ever lived.

I always dream and always love in the same direction.

Would you come along with me?

I always feel music.

The natives carved out songs in America, before the white savages arrived although, I remember the last days of the the Crow, Cheyenne, Arapahoe, Sioux, Ute, Kiowa, Comanche, Apache and Navajo sometimes when I fall asleep.

I remember I tried to remove my jaw in a dream and saw a woman in the midst of fragile old trees.

A light from nowhere took her everywhere; she made music with a beam of light strung like a double-bass, her eyes big and empty but hands, bow, soul 55

talking to God, telling his secrets.

The one hole in the forest that let our light-song in played her as she played our darkness through a bright ray held up by green and love and wet grass crumbling with her little white toes.

She stood awkward in a blue dress, one set of fingers on the brown bow and one hand caressing the light until morning when the forest became sun and warmed me deeply, not unlike her song, which was gone.

But that was a white woman and the Apache fought back -a warrior-child of 3 or 4 appeared where his father had fallen, struck by a bullet from the 5th Cavalry.

The little boy stood on the edge of a canyon, sucking his thumb, staring at the mass of American soldiers below, come to “subdue” and “punish” Indians who refused to be led onto reservations like cattle.

Suddenly a bullet opened the boy’s midsection and he fell bleeding.

A chorus of laughter erupted from the troops and a scout led the boy to medical aid.

Sixty or more Apache were killed that day in the stinging Texas sun as the ground cracked and burned -women and children were not spared, either.

Lieutenant John Gregory Bourke heard “the wails of squaws and the feeble cries of children,” but the Apache men endured death in silence.

And where is the Indian here -- in silence, death or song?

He was everywhere just a moment ago, eagle-feathered headdress, death-song howling, keeping the white man’s attention by refusing to fade out.

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On one hand, White Bear was a liar; there was no place for him on Earth, no reason for him to lead the Kiowa.

He played a bugle while others raced into battle and bowed down eagerly to the white man, offering his people’s freedom in exchange for his cowardly life.

The Kiowa deserved something better, like the whole state of Texas.

But Sitting Bear was a man possessed by honor.

He sat in a covered wagon, bound in iron.

His captors spit on him and never wondered why Sitting Bear was covered in a blanket on such a bitterly hot afternoon, being led to “trial” for “hostility.”

Sitting Bear began to sing: “Oh sun, you remain forever, but we Kaitsenko must die; oh earth, you remain forever, but we Kaitsenko must die” and then stood up, free of his locks and chains, killing two soldiers with his bare hands, and killing two more with the carbine he took from them.

The rest of the Americans on hand promptly filled Sitting Bear’s singing body with bullet holes and pushed him off the wagon onto the side of the road where he died.

“The Apaches made up their mind to die,” Lieutenant Burke said.

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M. D’Alessandro

falling asleep while reading

I was in the Sierra Maestra. We cleared an area and reclined under the trees.

I propped myself on one elbow and listened to Che recount the details of our march between his puffs on a pipe and what looked like painful coughing. He recovered after each cough with a smile and more twists in the tale. His eyes wore a cloak of adventure, under which shadows were undetectable. He became my father that instant, to whom lawn care was a conquest, the same glint in his eyes while kneeling by the rhododendrons. Che pointed to the fog over the mountains hanging like smoke from an afterburner. “Their planes will never find us.” I laughed to myself and stretched my other leg.

A moment later, Abraham Lincoln rode up saddled to a mountain goat; his top hat taller than I remembered, like a smokestack on a woodshed rising ten feet in the air. He was looking for Juárez. We told him he had the wrong mountains. As he rode away I shouted: “But we have armed struggle…” The smoke stack descended the ridge, out of sight. We sipped coffee and sighed.

The sky cleared. Then planes emerged from the clouds and dropped cannonballs wearing cowboy hats, each wagging a lit fuse as a tail. Then they dropped a field array of blonde pin-up girls straddling coke bottles. Che’s pipe dropped out of his mouth and we scrambled for cover. I tripped over a steep embankment, fell backwards, and floated over the sugarcane.

I awoke to the sound of music. Muffled by the books stacked in front of the speaker, AM 720 played battle hymns. It was 10 A.M. I smelled bacon wafting in from the kitchen. I knew eggs would be included with that. André Malraux was speaking to Kafka in my kitchen while Jean Cocteau made eggs. The conversation turned to revolution and I offered that it could only be achieved through guerrilla tactics, aping Che’s conviction. Kafka criticized Malraux for having a “Nero Complex,” and said his guerrillas would be tortured to death before they ever saw their enemies. Cocteau served the breakfast and added that only a fiction as ungraspable as God itself could make his guerrilla revolt a success.

He went on, “Leave a trail of clues, weave a tapestry of unsolved riddles, have the secrets be protected until no one remembers what those secrets were. By building elaborate myths, one assures a successful following.”

“God, the Imposter!” screamed Malraux.

“How could you be certain,” Kafka argued, “that the myth won’t dissolve

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itself ?”

“You must elicit the best of Art for this… Creativity is our most bejeweled asset,” ended Cocteau presenting Kafka with a plate of bacon and scrambled eggs.

I ate the eggs while Malraux swallowed swords. He used both hands to drive the sword down his throat while looking up at the ceiling; he bowed to us three times and drew the sword out of his mouth with swift action on the third bow. I awoke when he presented his severed head on the end of the sword, his teeth clenched on the steel, his eyes wide and glaring.

I kicked the blanket to the floor and turned over. It was hot in the room. The birds outside were in full concert. I forced myself not to look at the clock. After a few moments I reached out and turned its face away from me, knocking down the stack of books from the nightstand. Then I began looking for clues of what time it was. At what angle the sun streamed into the windows was my first clue, but I decided that was inconclusive as intermittent clouds interrupted the stream. I sat up and noticed it wasn’t the clouds at all, but shadows of bodies moving beyond the white canvas that surrounded me. It was a tent, and the heavily trafficked flap at the front let in the horizontal light. A dense mud covered the ground. I heard a booming voice say in jovial fashion:

“Understand me, the foundation of an army is the belly.” The voice belonged to a tall man in a three-point hat with ostrich feathers, white bloomers and kneehigh leather boots. His wig looked worse for wear, but held its status. I followed him out of the tent and peeked from behind the flap. It was an army camp, and it was early morning. The men wore the various headdresses of musketeers, grenadiers and hussars, and all had weapons strapped to themselves: swords, bayonets and rifles. I was to fall in with the rest of the men. Instead I followed the tall soldier to his tent, one of prominence among the others, situated in the center of camp. He had left through another flap and was conferring over maps behind a partition. There was a rug of rich reds and blues masking the ground, and period furniture; no marbles, just wood frame desks and bureaus. On one of the volute carved end tables at either side of a divan was a small pamphlet titled General Principles of War: The Instructions of Frederick the Great for his Generals. I flipped the fresh pages and found this line:

“The art of conducting sieges has become a profession

like those of a carpenter or shoemaker.”

The tall General discovered me and I fled the tent falling into the mud.

“Hello?” I answered the phone at the kitchen counter. It was Che. He asked if I could make haste with the rations and bring them to the forward guard. The battle was about to begin. I had half a loaf of day-old bread and a bottle of olive oil. There was salt from the flats outside the kitchen window. The tuna boats were mooring in the harbor to the right of the shallow waters that span for miles along the coast. Some old windmill structures stood as sentinels to the bygone days of salt extraction. Piles

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of salt shaped like hip roofs dotted the flats. The workers covered them with clay roof tiles to keep the weather from spoiling the salt. The bread was tough to rip but I pulled a chunk and soaked it in the olive oil and salt. The taste was like a hearty meal of beef and potatoes. Che would be proud.

I awoke covered in sweat. Che tossed me my fatigues and said, “Its time.� I quickly dressed and felt a rawness in my stomach. My weapon was clean. I checked it again. It was like dressing for a wedding, and I was the groom. Everything was in order. We marched to our positions along the roadside, covered by low vegetation behind some tree trunks. This was where we waited.

An Armistice Day marching band appeared in the distance and paraded past us with baton twirling acts, Shriners in little cars, jugglers, the Mayor waving from a stretch convertible Cadillac and feathered floats in tow. The order was given and we opened fire on the parade, taking them in their flanks, scattering their forward and rear guards, annihilating their entire column.

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Kristi Yorks

from

the fall

in the sky I meet a man

we sleep

against the ice

he pulls metal out of his hands

locks me to the earth says

you are my home

and eats

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whatever is left in me

the mountain opens

her legs

a wetness comes and into light

she frames my words

the sky

extending

bursts

out

falls

deeper

within folded canyons an envelope of trees sticks dead leaves her body begins where the clouds touch her and grow hard

a flattened pearl she

recites me

a heap of articles scattered

chaos below

unable to find the words

I cling to sound pressing my fingers into her skin friction between us holds us together the earth coming

faster

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I did not let go of her

she bit into my fingers

I was hollow

inside

and she swallowed me

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whole

Photo by Nate Jordon

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Jefferson Navicky

seventy monkeys

I was all seventy monkeys all two bicycles

stranded in the snow.

I was the glass and the bulge.

I’m sorry, I thought you were.

I was attracted to tunnels all seventy monkeys called to me and wanted me to blink but I was blinking.

In the sky above the west above the graveyard passing noisily a green light.

I’m sorry I thought you were lost, a city, a street.

Somewhere I don’t care about a piece of glass smoothed from broken to beach glass, blinking.

I thought you were blinking at the table with sunlight I thought

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I was.

In between the music all the animals were set free.

I’m sorry I thought you knew.

I did but didn’t know where to end and so I kept going until I felt I could stop.

And I did.

66

Mel Kozakiewicz

lonely like this

as lonely as six. hours. of tele.vision. a worm. in an apple. baby. in an incubator. born early. wilted. lettuce. or rust. under the drip. as lonely as mountains: miles of mountains. or snoring. walk. in a restaurant. force yourself. say “party of one.” or “just me.” uncalculated. air. one shoe. one earring. one twin. one parent. one lung. lonely. like writing poems. in the nude. crying. in coffee. first thing in the morning. like divorce. surgery. wake up to a mirror in which your swollen face is the only reflection. or marry a pilot. speak. only to the babies. you made together. haven’t had an adult. conversation. in months. like alcohol. or bar.tenders. or choose not to. bathe. lonely. like this. like this. like this.

67

Ana Maria Martinez

chica chica: forsaking illusion

I thought I was just going in for shit paper. I’m supposed to be at a work function. Half a pint of Ben and Jerry’s later, I’m in front of the screen.

We, everyone from the office, had margaritas at the Mexican restaurant next to the gentlemen’s club on the way out of town. I’m still vexed by that: gentle man. I went in for the first time a few months ago. A newer, fancier one opened up in town and my friend and I wanted to check it out, but it was closed. So we went to this one, by the Mexican joint, and watched Maya shake her tits for us.

Everyone sat down and ordered a margarita, except for me. I’d been trying to avoid being under the influence of anything that would prevent my total awareness since it happened.

“Hey Maria, why does it say chico for a small burrito?”

“What?”

“Shouldn’t it be pequito burrito?”

“Well,” I said, attempting to be as polite as possible, “chico means small.”

“No it doesn’t. Chico means boy.”

“If you go to Mexico and buy a small shirt, there is a C on the tag. That’s because it means small.”

“No it doesn’t. It means boy.”

Jason, the other designer at work, besides myself, was asking the questions.

He’s from the South. Earlier in the day, I overheard his conversation with the owner of our very small company: “I’m glad my kids didn’t grow up knowing what a nigger is. My son, he’s got a best friend that’s mixed race. You know, there just isn’t any place for racism in the world.” The owner often does a good job of sounding politely interested.

use.

“You know how one word can have multiple meanings?” I said. It was no Greg, the PhD student studying physics, bass guitarist for a local band, and

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fiancé to my coworker, Gretchen, sat down during the debate.

“Oh, Greg speaks Spanish let’s ask him. Hey Greg…”

“Well, chico also means small. You can also say chiquito or chiquita as a form of endearment.”

“Well, I guess you proved your point,” Jason said tersely, as he glared at me over the half full pitcher.

Everyone was going out for more drinks after Mexican food. It was the second real meal I’d eaten in a month and the first social interaction. I felt obligated to go because it was David’s last day. He was leaving to go back to New York City because his mom was dying there.

When I first arrived at the office six months ago, I could barely speak to David. He reminded me of someone I once met. I was scared of him.

“I’m actually really sensitive,” he told me one day before work as we were walking through the aisles of merchandise picking orders that he would pack. I didn’t believe him. He was a foot taller than me, and about a hundred more pounds. I am sensitive.

I tried to soften up and see him for who he was or who he thought he was.

He bought me lunch at a local student diner one Sunday when he came in to pack orders. The conversation was intense. He told me about his childhood, about his overdosing, and his time in rehab. Then he asked about me. I gave him the chocolate chunks in the rocky road of the past, but nothing that would melt him. “Thanks for sharing,” he said when I was done.

“What about listening?”

“It doesn’t take anything to listen,” he said as he plunged into more about his exgirlfriend and being seduced by a coven of witches.

Tonight, everyone got drunk. I watched and laughed at some of the jokes.

My boss’ wife and I had a quaint conversation about her family, but after a while I just sat and watched the action.

Gretchen was a Pilates instructor at the local gym. She’s “really into the whole mind-body connection.” She overheard us talking about familial relationships: “You know it’s so funny because it’s just like that with me and my sister. I mean, she’s just always saying to me, ‘You’re the pretty one, you get all the boys.’ But I mean, I just love her because she’s more outdoorsy and book smart, ya know, it’s just kinda nice being interested in different stuff,” she’d interject when my boss’ wife and I were discussing sibling relationships.

“I think bonding happens – ,” I started.

“Yeah, bonding. It’s so great. Damn it you guys, I think she forgot my bean dip. I asked for bean dip on the side of my nachos…”

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I started to get bored. I wasn’t drunk and I was full. I couldn’t speak without being interrupted by Gretchen and was pretty content to observe and laugh on occasion.

“What’s wrong with you Maria? You’ve got that plastic grin on your face and are panting like a bitch in heat,” David started in on me.

“You’re an asshole,” I nodded as I turned to make conversation with Gretchen, who was busy flirting with Jason.

She turned to me, “Yeah, what’s wrong with you? You’re like a thirty-six yearold in a twenty-four year-old body.”

My body looks great. My boobs are perky, my ass is tight, my eyes are big and alive. So what is wrong with me?

I walked to get the Ben and Jerry’s: banana split. When I was in elementarychool, there was an after-school program called Banana Splitz for kids whose parents had gotten divorced. On occasion, they got the real thing. My parents got divorced when I was one, so the advisor of the program said that it didn’t affect me as much and I couldn’t join the club. She thought I was in it for the ice cream. Maybe I was.

“She’s got issues,” David said.

“Everybody’s got issues,” I chimed in. I was holding the only utensil left at the table: a steak knife.

Gretchen had been poking Jason’s sides, while her fiancé flirted with the boss’ wife. David managed to pour half a bottle of sopapilla honey into Jason’s left over carnitas burrito, and at one point Jason reached onto Gretchen’s hand and pulled off a scab from her left index knuckle, “Fucker!” she yelled.

I sat, taking it all in, tinking the steak knife on the glasses and pitchers in front of me, trying to remember how good the actress played a man in the movie I saw last night. I always thought I looked a little manish. Some people think I’m Indian. I love the name Manish.

Trying to remember to live in the moment. How do I feel right now? Is there a way to be here now? How am I supposed to interact with these people? Should I rip Gretchen’s other hand’s scab? Or maybe I should pour honey into David’s Dos Equis?

“Somebody take that knife away from her,” said Jason. Gretchen reaches for my wrist as I point the knife at them and laugh. They are scared of me.

“You’re going to hurt me with that thing,” she said.

“No, I’m not.”

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I carried a knife in my pocket when I went to get ice cream. Before I moved away, my dad got me a black serrated Fighter Plus pocketknife. I keep it with me when I’m scared. I didn’t have it with me a month ago. I went for a run on the same path Gretchen runs on everyday. At around the same time.

“Do you have the time?” he said.

“No.” “Do you know where the bus station is?”

I gave him directions.

Before he went to the bus station, he –

Everyone got up to leave, promising to meet at a bar closer to the center of town. I tapped the knife against the stamped pattern candy red apples on the plastic tablecloth. Just before she waved good-bye to me, my boss’ wife kissed Gretchen on the cheek. I waved back, looked down at the indeliberate hole in the small candy red apple, put the knife over it, got my coat, put my bag over my shoulder, got in my car, and cried.

71

Renee Zepeda

i dream we smoke a bowl in france “How often do you smoke?” I ask you, genuinely concerned.

“As often as I can,” you reply, flicking the lighter with your thumb.

Display of light and shadow on the cave wall.

You’re still wearing the Dr. Strangelove t-shirt.

“Why do you ask?” you say, raising the bowl to your lips.

“You’re so scatterbrained, only potheads are that scatterbrained,” I say.

You laugh. “I have been scatterbrained, maybe I should take a hiatus.”

“You deserve a hiatus,” I say.

“Is that why we’re in a cave in France smoking a bowl?”

“Yes, it’s nice and cool in here and I wanted to talk with you— this is the only way you would stop what you were doing and talk with me.”

“What was I doing?” you ask, amused.

“I have no idea, you were probably emailing all of your girlfriends.”

“Just as you were emailing all of your boyfriends?”

“Fair enough.” I take the bowl into my left hand and flick the lighter with my right.

“Is this a poem?” you ask me, raising an eyebrow.

“I suppose it is a poem, we’re being a poem again.”

“What happens next?” You lean in, looking for the gold flecks in my irises.

“I think we’re going to make love, high, in the cave,” I say, slipping off my shirt...

72

Nathan Antar

it splinters through

It splinters through The atomic vibration It splinters through with Electric charisma & Soul-Rattling Punctuality It splintered through On the “street of early sorrows” * Where I Scraped my knees and lost my Virginity and was beat mercilessly For entertainment It splinters through When these pages Are splattered with Blood and Piss It splinters through On the first and Last coming of Heroes & Rogues It splintered through when I called her a whore & Said her underbelly had Been exposed—and Professed my love

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It splinters through The sages and their mantras It splinters through The street-walker and her Beck & Call It splinters through The crow of a whippoorwill Through the Shriek of boiling lobster It splinters through The turmoil of lovers & the Breaking of bread With enemies It splinters through In the Bathroom, the bars, the houses Of god, in our beds While we sleep Through all modes of Thought—absolutist & yielding It splintered through My first ejaculation It splintered through The first feminine ego Destroyed By my hand It splinters through Poor logical form, cerebral Precision, the idiot’s vantage, the Drunkards ramblings, & The hard wisdom lain upon You by your counter

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It splinters through The malevolence of “good” Company & through The joy of dangerous comrades It splintered through When I sunk in stupor & broke the equilibrium It splinters through when I Rise Up…

THE ETERNAL RADIANCE It splinters through…

*from Henry Miller’s expression of his childhood road.

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Photo by Brandon Gray

76

Elizabeth Robinson

from

the moonstone

Clairvoyance The boy pours drops of ink on his palm where it spreads as a map, telling them, by its traverse, where the great jewel has gone. “Regent of the night”: moon. The moonstone glowing toward the language of its own retrieval. Others equate the map with the blindfold, attributing its efficacy to the superstition of sex, of race, “what no practical man can believe”; not truth.

Laudanum One wishes for the opiate that virtue bequeaths, but even minor players in the story admit that scandal has a way of dogging, of clinging to one’s clothing like stale smoke.

Within that faint stink, one struggles to no effect. We like our propriety. One can “set one’s affairs in order,” but this too is a sedative, not an activity but a means of avoidance. Rather the active duplicity: the physician who sneaks narcotic drops into the drinking glass so that the protagonist, whomever he or she may be, believes they sleep naturally.

77

Lauren Andrews

a mouse cage

Max Brenner opened the door to the cage and slid his arm in up to the elbow. The sleeve of his white lab coat obscured his view, disabling him from seeing where he was reaching. Blindly, he moved his hand in a gentle sweeping motion across the corner of the cage, piling several mice on top of one another. Feeling three or four mice under his palm, he seized the first tail he could find, pulling it, and the mouse it was attached to, out of the cage.

The albino laboratory mouse offered little resistance, legs splayed out, red eyes darting back and forth as Max walked across the lab to the scale in the corner.

In a series of precise and perfunctory steps, Max took the mouse’s measurements, recording meticulously in his black laboratory manual with grid-lined pages. Finally, he squeezed the skin behind the neck of the mouse, injecting it swiftly before the creature had the chance to know what hit him.

The mouse was dead and ready for autopsy in a matter of minutes, ready to have the development of its tissues surgically assessed. All of the mice in the lab had been genetically altered in an attempt to better understand the developmental processes of the cells in their central nervous systems.

The mice were born with an altered DNA splice in their chromosomes.

They were never allowed to breed on their own, and they were euthanized shortly after reaching maturity. In the long run, the research team hoped to find a cure for people with chronic back pain and various levels of paralysis.

Max had lost track of the number of mice he had processed in a similar way, but he’d been performing the same work for nearly five years in the Department of Orthopedic Surgery at UCSF Medical Center. Every mouse was assigned a number that differentiated it from all the others. Today’s mouse was F59-1014.

The rain began hammering down on the way home as Max stepped off the Muni tram at Dolores Park. Fog had settled over the city like scum on a still pond, and cold rain was lashing sideways into Max’s face as he walked up Valencia Street.

Plastered down wet, his wavy brown hair was just long enough in front to drip over the top of his black-rimmed glasses. Squinting through the wind and rain, he saw what looked like a bookstore with frosted windows on the corner of 22nd Street.

Deciding to duck out of the rain, Max approached the shop, hoping to kill twenty minutes or so before returning home to his empty apartment. As he got near, he made out the stencil of a paw print on the window and a sign that read, “SF Pet Corner.”

He scratched the day’s stubble on his chin and decided to go in anyway, even though it was a pet store and not a bookshop, thinking there might be some cute puppies to admire, to kill time.

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The man behind the counter, with a gray beard, matching gray ponytail, and tortoise shell glasses, looked up from a newspaper and nodded as the bell hanging from the door rang when Max entered. The man went back to reading his paper, an East Bay Express, while the sound of aquarium filters hummed and finches chirped in the background.

Max wandered up and down the narrow aisles looking at the variations of cat food and hamster balls, while the aroma of birdseed sharply bit his nose.

Growing bored, he started to head back toward the door when he passed a row of rodent cages for sale. “ALL Cages 40% Off,” a sign read.

Without thinking about it, Max picked up a small metal cage shaped like a house. It was a bi-level cage with a blue-painted base. The top level had a built-in nook for a critter to nest in. Max noticed it was roughly the same size as the holding cages he used at the lab.

It struck him odd that people made pets out of the things he studied at the lab. He had never really thought of mice as animals before, more as tools. They existed solely to be manipulated by the omnipotent scientists in their quest to cure the ailments plaguing mankind. In a very real way, the researchers were acting as gods, altering the DNA of a species, controlling life and death. But at the moment, Max was more concerned with how barren his one bedroom apartment was, without any plants about or pictures on the walls. Previously, he had considered getting a dog as a pet, but he knew he wasn’t home enough to take care of one. On a whim, Max purchased the cage and resolved to take a mouse home with him from work the following day.

Emily popped her head into Max’s wing of the lab. “Hey Brenner, I’m taking off. Get out of here and start your weekend already.”

“Just as soon as I finish with this,” Max replied. He was scribbling distractedly in his notebook.

“Always the last one to leave,” she teased while turning to walk away.

“Yeah, yeah. Goodnight Emily.” He was used to being called out on his long hours at work. The tapping of Emily’s heels trailed off down the hall. There was the faint sound of the door opening and clicking shut, after which the lab was filled with silence.

It was Friday, so everyone left early as Max anticipated. He didn’t want to get a hard time from his lab mates for taking a mouse, so he planned to make his move after they all left. After spending every day at work with thousands of mice for five years, they would think he had lost his mind for wanting one as a pet. He was starting to wonder if he had lost his mind.

“Brenner, you have a PhD in Cellular and Developmental Biology, and you are plotting the kidnapping of a mouse,” he thought. It was, in fact, quite unlike Max to do something so nonsensical.

Max opened the door to the cage and slid his arm in up to the elbow. The sleeve of his white lab coat obscured his view, disabling him from seeing where

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he was reaching. Blindly, he moved his hand in a gentle sweeping motion across the corner of the cage, piling several mice on top of one another. Feeling three or four mice under his palm, he seized the first tail he could find, pulling it, and the mouse it was attached to, out of the cage. The albino laboratory mouse offered little resistance, legs splayed out, red eyes darting back and forth as Max placed him inside the houseshaped cage.

“I think I will name you Albert,” Max said to the mouse as he looked into the house cage. The mouse slightly twitched his nose back and forth but mostly remained immobile. “No, that’s too weird. I’ll just name you F59-1015. I’ll call you F59 for short. How’s that?” The mouse slightly twitched his nose again. “F59 it is. Oh, and by the way, call me Brenner.”

After placing F59 on the desk in his bedroom, Max fed him little mouse pellets and gave him fresh water.

“There, the place is more lively already, F59. Don’t you agree?”

F59 was panting heavily and he was covered in sweat. He stood shivering on the bottom of the cage with his mouth open, exposing his tongue.

“If you’re thirsty, then you should drink your water, buddy.” Max tapped the water bottle dangling on the cage with his index finger, pointing it out to the mouse. “You’re probably just in shock from the trip across town. You’ll be okay after you settle down.”

Pleased with himself for his assertion, Max gathered up his keys and left F59 sitting on the desk. He walked up the street to get a burrito from Taqueria Cancun, as was his habit a few times per week.

It was an enjoyable time of night to be walking through the streets of the Mission District in San Francisco. The air was refreshingly crisp; even the homeless crack-heads seemed more pleasant than usual. Max ordered a carne asada burrito, staying there to eat while a mariachi band played in the front of the house.

Stuffed, he walked slowly home, wishing he had saved half of his burrito for lunch the next day. Every time he ate the entire burrito. And every time, wallowing in agony from an overly full stomach, he promised himself to save half his burrito ‘next time.’

Max’s apartment was so quiet when he arrived back home that he could hear himself digesting. The nakedness of his living room mirrored the vacuity of his thoughts brought on by his burrito induced coma. Turning the television on was his usual plan for drowning out solitude. Flipping on the tube, he decided to check whether F59 had paid any attention to his water yet.

Max turned on the light. He could see the feet in the air from across the room. F59 was on his back, legs straight up, rigid. Max knew death when he saw it, even from far away. He had seen thousands of identical mice die over the years, in hishands even, but this was different. A heavy feeling settled over him, rolling in like a fog. He got up close to the cage to take a closer look at F59 lying there on his back, still wet with the sweat from only minutes before, tongue slightly protruding in an icy pant.

Not sure what to do with a dead mouse in his apartment, Max resolved

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to put the whole cage down in the basement. He set it next to some cans of turpentine and a bucket of miscellaneous screws on an old wooden workbench. There F59 and his cage were forgotten.

On his way to work the following Thursday, Max remembered and fetched them on his way to work in the morning. The little white mouse sat frozen in the same position from the week before. Only now F59 had dried and his eyes had taken on a distant, haunting quality. The cage, however, remained shiny and new.

A 40% off sticker still lingered on its side. Max had the sense of something being wasted as he placed the cage in the dumpster.

“Sorry Albert,� he said.

Max walked up the sidewalk to the Muni tram. A green and white garbage truck rounded the corner and passed by.

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Diane Klammer

avenue maria

Hail, do not look for me, For you aren’t what you seem Maria.

Undeserving of your name, Maria, yours does not ring holy.

Guessing where you might be dwelling, A snake swims in your tea, Maria.

Wishing sooner I could see Your hymn is not for me Maria.

Hearing of you, praises sung Believer I became, Maria.

Fool am I, and for so long, Deceiver, you I know, Maria.

Baffled and betrayed am I, I couldn’t hold you, fair Maria.

Whispered prayers come and go.

Your love was just a lie, Maria.

Grace does not shine true today In your remembered face, Maria.

Bright eyes cannot burn me now Or pierce my soul, my space, Maria.

Ordinary, you are not, But you’re no special love, Maria.

Something, anything at all That you forgot to say, Maria?

Glories, beads and saints fall rolling, Broken, battered loose, Maria.

Your rosary became a noose Scattered on the floor, Maria.

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Fascination with you halted.

I cease to pray your game, Maria.

Dreams of you create a cold Image on my wall, Maria.

A finer heart have I than yours.

I’m certain of that now, Maria.

Other cups will catch my wine.

It splashes yet remains, Maria.

Music played, I must go home, Escaping on my own, Maria.

Another hand than yours will take Me to the promised land, Maria.

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Sir, would you kindly examine this brand new car in my gya gya gya avoid the boundless lights blur your gentle twilight of syllibified gods give to the victor ocean of benignant wine ah au om! boundless light ah au om! bohrsian shoebill ah au om! body of truth is mother of history hungers for your flabby fallacious arm is a hierophant for this era dies at your purchase of the commodity worm the gross body mind oh ah hum.

Christopher T. Schuman

dinner music for a pack of hungry cannibals

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85 Photo by Ben Olson

These people were my family and this is how they told it –

Shane Joaquín Jiménez

some boys

Budd and George Jr. were two sandy sons-a-bitches. They was brothers and best friends and all that cheese. They grown up slugging the snot out of one other, busting their noses and blackening eyes, and they was just two tough bastards by the time they was teenagers. They was my daddy’s little brothers, them boys. Budd and George Jr. was always being boys, hollering at females and fighting all them other sons-abitches. They got themselves into lots a fights. Even I remember that. They had that rowdiness in them because their blood was mixed Jap and American, which are enemy bloods. You might as well pour a bootful of molasses into a Chevy and see how that runs her.

Their daddy was my granddaddy George Sr. He was a helluva man, back when a thing like that meant something. He brought Maw Maw back from Japan after the war he waged on that place, didn’t care what anyone said about it or nothing, just brought her over and made her his wife and that was that.

Maw Maw herself was one helluva woman. She was a hard ol’ gal made from fire and iron. She had a goddamn snout for drink and could guzzle more corn whiskey than any woman I ever seen. My biggest recollection of her is that big ol’ butt she ran around with, like two pitbulls fighting under a dress. But Maw Maw don’t fit into this narration except as a hee haw piss in the creek, so let me get back to the tale proper.

Budd and George Jr. was driving around this one time drunk as Navajos, weaving the lanes in that exhaust-farting Ford a theirs. Somewhere along the way they passed Sheriff and he saw them two being fools in that automobile. He himself was a real tight bastard, part Kickapoo injun, which you could see in how his face was hard and flattened like old hash browns. Sheriff didn’t like my uncles or none of their relations no way, no way Jose. How George Sr. said it, the family had pilgrimmed down to Jonah, Texas when all them other places dried up worse than the Queen of England up in her knicker drawers. Which is just a crude way of saying the pigs come sniffing around looking to imprison George Sr. once more. My granddaddy couldn’t weather incarceration or any other stake on his God-given Texan liberties, even though he withstood marriage life for sixty seven years.

The family settled in the hills outside Jonah, Texas; all eight of them – George Sr. and Maw Maw and the girls Maybelline and Helena and Rosasharon, and my daddy Dylan and the dumb babies Budd and George Jr. Sheriff and his partner Little Sheriff didn’t like the family none at all. The family had made a thorny reputation for

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themselves, which as honest outlaws we have always been quick to do.

Sheriff saw Budd and George Jr. making roadkill practice in that ugly ass Ford, and Sheriff, the most puckered injun sonofabitch in Williamson County, got them sirens going. And he said – Let us you and I pull them drunkards over, Little Sheriff, and give them a knuckling upon their cabezas. So Sheriff and Little Sheriff pulled Budd and George Jr. over and dragged them out of that sputtering chariot of Hell sulpher. And the whiskey was so strong on them they smelled like a pair of greasy New Yorkers, and Sheriff just started hollering and bellering and one thing led to another and Sheriff made some crack about the brothers being half Chinaman and half Chink.

George Jr., the biggest son-of-a-bitch in the whole family of outlaws, said – You crazy Redman, talking on my people – and he just belted Sheriff right between the eyes and knocked him over on his ass. Well you can go ahead and guess how that went over. Sheriff and Little Sheriff went as crazy as a couple a Irishmen on payday, pulling their guns out and waving them around like they crazymen. Them pigs arrested Budd and George Jr. and hauled them into the county jailhouse, which was not an unfamiliar place for them boys. Sheriff and Little Sheriff kicked Budd and George Jr. around inside the jailhouse and threw their asses into a twelve-by-twelve cell.

Sheriff went and yelled – Where your yella mama now, you mouthy gooks.

That got them boys cursing at them pigs and bellowing no end a profanities on the name a Pochantas and Sheriff ’s other kin. Y’all think y’all so tough – said Sheriff – I’ll teach you hirsute hillbillies a lesson.

Him and Little Sheriff went out back and come out with a big riot busting hoses, the sort they used on them black boys, and they stuck the nozzle between the jailhouse bars and let her rip right into the goddamn cell. A big tree trunk a water come swaggering into the room, smacking Budd and George Jr. around. Them boys commenced to screaming and Sheriff and Little Sheriff went wild with laughter. Budd and George Jr. was awash like two piss and snot arks of Noah, as they bouncedtheir skulls off the bloodstained walls of that jailhouse. Budd was able to get the mattress between him and that water, but George Jr., a big bastard like I said, he just rushed right into that goddamn stream like a buffalo into a thunderstorm and got to the front of that cell and took hold of Sheriff ’s wrists and yanked that damn hose through the bars and then turned it back on them pigs.

George Jr. trained that water hose on them, knocking them all over that damn room. And when the pigs took retreat and fled the room to shut off the water, George Jr. turned the hose on the jailhouse itself, blasting the walls and furniture and file cabinets and fingerprinting powder and everything. He soaked every inch of that goddamn room. Him and Budd got a mighty laugh from it, drenched as sharks in that jailhouse cell.

Long story, short them boys was stuck in that gray drunk tank for a long time to come. But the family didn’t get the chance to worry none about Budd and George Jr. cause they had that damn donkey to fret about. Lord, didn’t I mention that donkey before?

The seeds of that tale go a long ways back. Back to when my granddaddy

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George Sr. went off on an overnight drunk and came back the next day missing both his boots and wearing his shirt like a cape and leading along this piss-scared donkey by a rope. Granddaddy couldn’t remember where he got the damn thing. No one pushed him on the situation, save for the matter of the gentleman’s name, which George Sr. believed to be Theodore.

That donkey was a damn thing in and of itself. No one knew what to do with the fleabag, so mainly the boys just galloped the poor bastard with cedar switches and funnel drank it whiskey. The citizens of my family didn’t have one wit of animal know how betwixt them. They didn’t even know what to feed the damn thing, so they’d just give it whatever happened to be lying around, usually leftover Chinese or venison jerky. That animal got one helluva diet. That was one gassy donkey.

The closest neighbors was an outpost of Mexicans a few acres away. My people couldn’t speak Mexican, so there wasn’t any banter between the two camps.

The Mexicans being Mexican Catholic had as big a family as my family did, maybe even bigger. No one really knew cause it was hard to tell the difference between some of them, what with the men and their moustachios. But don’t let me get off point.

The same goddamn day that Budd and George Jr. soaked the pigs in the jailhouse, the family woke up and found that donkey good and gone. Which in itself wasn’t any hippity-doo-da. It wasn’t like anyone had grown fond of the goddamn thing. It didn’t have an inch of the personality a dog has, and it sure wasn’t worth the eating, so there wasn’t much mind paid. But a couple of days later, my daddy Dylan was riding his motor scooter home from the garage when he passed that Mexican house, and what the hell do you know but there’s that damn donkey out there with one of the teenage Mexican boys. Same damn donkey and everything.

Now, it wasn’t like anyone in the family wanted the damn thing, but a donkey running off and a donkey being stolen by Mexican Catholics are two very different things. So my daddy got off his motor scooter and walked up to that big moustachioed bastard and belted him cold, Christian or no Christian, and tied the donkey to the rear of his motor scooter and took that farting son-of-a-bitch back home at a sheer gallop.

My daddy knotted that animal to a stake post out back and gave him some egg rolls and left him there for the evening. He had no assumption them thieving Mexicans had the sand to steal the same donkey twice, plus his judgment was weighed down by the row with Budd and George Jr., and the plot to break them out of the hole, which was slow going since there was a dynamite shortage in Williamson County. But when the next day rolled around, what the Hell do you know but that donkey was missing again!

Enough was enough. This was akin to Pancho Villa crossing the Rio Grande backed by a horse and holster armada. My daddy’s brothers was in the pighouse but his ol’ tomboy sister Maybelline was still around.

She was a big ol’ broad, reminiscent of a prettied-up Teddy Roosevelt, and the two of them waited until night hushed across the hills and then snuck over to that Mexican place. They knew that the old man of that clan had it tight with Sheriff on account of some old blood debt. They slunk back deep in the breasts of night, watching that house and sneaking this a-way and that a-way until they heard

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the gunshot farts of that donkey, big ol’ wet thunderclaps, which led my daddy and Aunt Maybelline to a woodshed out back.

The Mexicans had him stashed like an old pickup that was missing its tires.

Daddy and Maybelline waited in the brush a long time and didn’t see a soul, so they went to liberate that donkey. But all of a damn sudden from the butthole of nightcame them Mexican boys, three big bastards, and there was a big ol’ cutthroat scuffle which raged back and forth with fists and boots and teeth and brooms and bottles and plumbing pipes and two-by-fours. But there in the end was my daddy and his sister riding that bewildered beast home with three beaten boys lying in the dust behind them.

When they got back home my pa was holding a mighty anger in his gut over the whole affair and when he saw that his sister had received a bloody nose and two black eyes by them Mexicans, he went and tied that donkey out front of the house.

By his view, he was putting up the stars and stripes in the sands of Iwo Jima. Then he went inside and got his pistolero. He watched that a-cursed donkey from the front window for hours, until night became dawn and dawn became bright blue morning.

But somewhere in that time he dozed off a few minutes and when he woke up, it was a bright and beautiful day and that donkey was plain gone, the cut rope left in the dirt. That tore something in my daddy, something very small and hard to notice, but something important still. And it is my opinion he never did get that thing back again.

He took his pistolero, hopped on his motor scooter, and sped off toward them Mexican marauders. That donkey was tied out front of the house to an apple tree. My daddy screeched that motor scooter up to the front of the house. That entire family came out, the head Mexican leading the way. He was a big Rock Hudson looking bastard but my daddy was a hard shot of wood grain from the womb to the tomb and he just walked up to that front porch and he pulled out his pistolero and he shot that donkey right through the brainpan.

The animal didn’t make any sound, he fell straight like a sack of horse feed and lay there in the dirt it shat in all morning. Its brains had come exploding from its mouth and they covered the six feet a dirt between my daddy and the Mexicans, laying across a good part of the papa Mexican’s snakeskin boots. Everyone just stared at the mess. Then my daddy pointed his revolver at the old Mexican and said – Messican, I could shoot you and every one a your kin dead where you stand. I have all the cards in this hand cannon – he said – and I’m calling it even right now.

The Mexican didn’t say anything to that. But he cocked his head and looked at my daddy different and my daddy realized that was all he was gonna get out of the man.

So he got on his motor scooter and went back home and that was that. But that wasn’t that. Because that was the beginning of the end as far as a lot of things was concerned. Because everything went awful and coldblooded after that thing my daddy did. But for the smallest moment there, when no one had a donkey and everyone was a loser, it was all good. Good enough at least.

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Sometimes southern kitchens are just cafeterias noisy demanding turns in these mun-days lives gone too fast like your fading reflection I see from the sink TV screen it’s the morning wishing on split bouquets orange tulips bring unity so pink’s the moon over water Lake Oconee river’s have the oldest names around so we stew and stir this mixing bowl of familiarity absent in new limbs long and conversation deeper than last year’s Christmas card Watch fish jump into water I want to be one and linger in the space where the air collides my head on the pillow soft so we set off to see the next casino pay booth boys for better seats don’t matter where you rub them because all you really want to do is take speed smoke butts feel high alive in trees looking down counting piles of dogshit drop

Rebecca Maillet

* memorize *

pennies into styrofoam cups marked with scribbled help from fingernails forget how to smile Under sheets I’m sometimes aroused in water shower in see-through glass boxes naked and goose-pimple-y like mid-august nights next to the hairs standing tall where your breath is feeling all over the highways for hours just to make sense of the minutes you left me So yeah eighth grade was a series of questionable make-outs and I used a lot of tongue learned how not to now next to you and your freckles still where I remembered them held tight on a Monday morning slide my legs behind yours safe know how the hair smells on the back of your neck the way my nose fits in the crease of your shoulder blades poking through skin white sheets and sanity says close your eyes and jump.

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Tiph Parrish

seri

Yr liver is failing you You never bleeding

Yr liver is failing you

stopped

drinking

Yr liver is failing

Even when yr esophagus started

Ammonia. Ammonia. In yr blood Bleeding from both ends.

You could not stand up straight Could not stand up Could not How many garments did you bleed through?

How many times did you look into the toilet and know that you would die soon?

How many times had you tried to— Quit. Gone to rehab Sobered up, long enough to celebrate…with You never told anyone, lived in yr own death

another

stand

drink.

alone

And yr little girl in the next room screaming, crying wants her mother back her mother her mama, mama, mama can’t imagine what she’s seen when you, her mother, was a liquor fiend and what kind of a life, what a life for you, who was raped three times before you were sixteen.

Four years of cirrhosis Hep C, jaundice was yr diagnosis now on yr death bed and comatose Is not the way I want to remember not the way I want to not the way

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not the way I want to remember you

I saw yr fading light watched you slowly die a product of pain 46 yrs old and you drank yrself to death

numbed yrself

to all else

My mother’s muffled voice on the other end of the telephone.

‘I think Seri stopped breathing, yea, (sniff) her heart just stopped beating and I can’t forgive you yet, can’t forgive you yet, yr slow suicide and yr three young children had to watch you die for them and for I

can’t

forgive you yet.

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Stacy Walsh

the kitchen for Donald & Shirley

I. The Scene

Hazy smoke at the ceiling, oscillating fan at the back door, always summer, hot, humid and suffocating. The smell of potatoes boiling, TV on, news, soap operas, M*A*S*H, People’s Court, and more news, the card table set up for us kids, paper placemats, ice cream cups with wooden spoons, yard stick behind the trash can a constant albeit silent threat, the faded wallpaper paneling, the yellow rotary phone mounted to the wall, the secret spot in the cupboard near the floor with a pot full of candy bars, the dull scissors in the top drawer, the constant back-and-forth bickerbanter between you two.

II. The Reality

I’ve lived my entire life in this kitchen. I know no other room as intimately as this. This is home.

How will the memory live on once she’s gone? The room will close up. Will the space disappear from my mind? Will the idea of home cease to exist?

The space used to whir, a constant swirl of people, voices, smells. Dysfunction butting up against dysfunction, but we were all there. We moved in familiar patterns.

I clung to the fringes. Squeezed my way to the Adult Table to observe penny poker, proud to throw pennies in for my grandfather. Took my knowledge back to the Kid Table, where we bartered with M&M’s over our Uno cards.

III. The Unraveling

Do these people even love each other or are they simply bound by blood and duty? I didn’t realize he held it all together, that things would fall apart so completely after he was gone. Did he know he was the glue?

The kitchen will never be the same; it’s difficult to move through.

It looks the same. It smells the same. But it’s darker, a constant sense of loss, the swirl of activity halted, the overhead fluorescent light harsh and blinding. There

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is no glass of milk on the table at dinner time.

We continue to come home. We keep moving, for awhile. Then it happens.

One by one they fall away, no longer part of the kitchen. Do we remain related? We don’t know each other anymore, wouldn’t recognize each other on the street. I keep going back. It feeds the hole, the place that will never be full, never be satisfied. I want as much as I can get because soon the kitchen will be closed and I’ll have to stand on the outside looking in.

I don’t care about the others anymore. If they don’t want to come here, I cannot concern myself with that. I am hungry and can only feed myself now. This only connection to home. My lifeline.

IV. The Aftermath

He’ll never know. The tearing apart of his kitchen, defenseless to the deafening roar of pain that has torn through the space. No one talks about it, wants to believe it can exist. Maybe this is why no one returns to the touching stone. The stone is hot and burns whoever dares to come near. My burns run so deep I can embrace the stone and still shiver.

What would he think if he could see the kitchen now? Would he collect us one by one and return us to our rightful place? Would they return if he was here?

He comes to me still, in my dreams. Even then, I cannot tell him about the destruction. He can’t help me, can’t protect me. He would have at least believed me.

V. The Final Gesture

I rub my face on the worn carpet, lean back in the rolling kitchen chair, stare at the smoke stained ceiling. It is home, for at least a little longer.

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95 Photo by Luke Bennett

Perry Lavin

the play

For a life in the past cannot be shared with the present.

Each person that gets stuck in time gets stuck alone.

Alan Lightman

You’re in a lightless, soundless room, but you know there is a stage at the front. There are others in the room. People you can’t see, smell, hear, or feel.

An invisible switch flicks putting a spotlight in the middle of the stage where a tree rests in a red wagon with cement wheels. For a while, you are curious about the tree and what will happen next. You lean forward placing your chin on your fist and you wait. You wait a long time. You wait so long you become bored and flop back into you chair, dissatisfied. You try to give the person next to you a look that shows your feelings of boredom and dissatisfaction, but you can’t see them and you don’t want to break the silence. So you slouch, play with your fingers, bend your chin to your neck and look up at the stage through rolled eyes. Your head swivels back and forth, stretching and cracking your neck. It has been a long time, but the tree remains in the red wagon with concrete tires.

A second spotlight shines onto a brown wood, black steel park bench. A man walks out on stage. He is old and fat with a huge gray beard, baldhead, large framed glasses, cane, and navy pants pulled higher than his belly button and pulled even higher in the back. His smile reminds you of a ripple, caused by nothing, which stretches across a lake made red by sunrise. Each eye is the moon in appreciation for the sun; is youthful and soft like a baby’s foot in tiny, blue socks.

He stands for a second looking at the audience, and you fall to intrigue and love. It’s as if he’s the only man you have ever seen. For a few seconds his smile fades to a look showing compassionate sadness. On an in-breath, he smiles again. He stands at the bench and looks down at his cane. It takes all his concentration and effort to lower himself onto the bench.

Even though he is only sitting and looking, it’s obvious he’s putting as much energy into his activity as a team of ten-year-old football stars. You sit and look at him in amazement. Your thumb rubs your forefinger and you notice you have many new wrinkles, that your skin is much looser and more papery than when you first came to the theatre. You try remembering, but you can’t think of how long you’ve been there, or what show you’re trying to see. You don’t even remember buying a ticket.

You begin to panic and fidget in your seat; trying to calm yourself, you look at what you know is a peaceful stage, but your mind only becomes more confused. It races back and forth between fear and attempts to be peaceful. You think about talking to the person next to you, but what do you say, where do you begin? The darkness feels weighted.

On the brink of breaking your silence, the old man dies, falls off the bench.

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On the thud, someone in the audience jumps up and yells, “Eureka!” and runs through the door, out of the theatre allowing just a sliver of light to creep in. You try to make the most of the light; to see as much as possible, but you’re so frantic you can’t decide where to place your focus. All you see are many expressionless faces.

You almost run after the man, but decide that would be foolish, that he was just an actor in the play and the old man isn’t dead. You take deep breaths, relax into your chair, and put your arms on the armrests making sure you don’t touch your skin.

You believe it isn’t possible that you’ve gotten older since entering the theatre, and that the old man will soon get up, signaling the end of the play. But when you turn to look, there are flowers where the old man had fallen. You look with horror and wish the flowers would quickly disappear and the old man would get back on stage. In your nervousness, you forget control, and your left arm reaches across and pulls the skin of your right forearm. The skin peels far from the bone creating a circus tent of flesh.

You drop the skin, feel it hang, then slowly regain form while you clench your fists.

Wishing you could see yourself, you turn to the person next to you and say, “Please. Tell me what is going on? When will the play end?”

She answers, “I’m not sure. But I hope soon.”

“But I need to get out of here.”

There was no reply.

“Hello? I just said something to you,” and you reach to grab her arm, but all you touch is a skeleton.

“What’s going on?”

You go to a fetal position, close your eyes, and begin weeping. Your mind tells you you’ve been fetal for only a few moments, but your body feels like it has slept for many days.

The second spotlight has returned. You pray for the old man to get back up on stage and return and take away the impossible and the confusing. But the old man that walks into the spotlight isn’t the same old man. It takes you a second; but soon, you realize this new old man is the young man that had yelled, “Eureka!” He looks at the audience with unconditional love; then, as the other old man had done, he looks sad. On the in-breath, he walks over to the bench and sits.

Hopeless, bewildered, beaten down, you stare, expressionless. Open for any suggestion, you will take any answer. And, after a time that feels short, but logic says must be long, this old man dies.

You yell, “Aaaaahhhhhhhhhhh I’ve got it!” and run over everyone’s legs, not noticing that many of them aren’t legs at all, but bones. You run down the aisle. You run to the door. You blast it open and run outside. The wind is blowing through manytall trees. The grass is wet and soft and you know with all your soul that it’s the start of a new day. You look at your skin and it’s young, vibrant. Tingling hairs stand up all over your body and you love life, you love life, you just love it. And you sit under an orange tree and suck the juice from the most beautiful, tasty oranges. There is a fountain. You run to it and drink and it quenches you like you’ve run a thousand miles. Then you stop, look around, and sit.

With complete appreciation, you take it all in, while at the same time,

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knowing what isn’t right. You remember how you had aged, and the woman who had so quickly turned to skeleton. Turning back to the building you see a door with a sign above it saying, “Help Only.” You know where it leads. You walk to it, go in it, and step on stage.

You look at the audience, and you love them all so much. You wish they would join you outside for tea, food, wine. You see how many skeletons there are, how many people have become dust. You see the old people dying, confused; the young people, unaware of what’s to come. You almost begin to cry. You want to tell them to walk through the door, that they must leave the theatre. But you know they think you’re just an actor, that they’re supposed to stay seated and silent. All you can do is show them how easy and wonderful it is to look at a tree. You die on an inbreath.

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Travis Cebula

sometimes, the sky in golden appropriate, a chill wind should be the one to draw first leaves from high cradles in this clipped and dappled enclave of meticulous comfort and knee-high fences whisper it’s the season of the hard moon hung two fingers above the skyline, wearily I watch the rock mesa rise to it some say harvest moon, which sounds soft, but it cracks our pond—shatters into our kitchen in the hours before dawn the only thing that ever made the dog growl whether out of rage, domesticity, or innocent fear on this morning my exit makes wood ducks warble as the door clacks shut behind me they are soft golden still, young round leaves, and have not yet begun to snap and scuttle until raked into black sacks somewhere beyond these yards and glistening spider webs I see the flat blue face finally sink as a single coyote howls

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the bus is a van

Hillary Keel

from

I notice how in the United States people yell alot.

At the airport, someone stands, yelling, “U.S. citizens over here! Other passports over there! Have your forms ready!” They yell out orders in restaurants. They yell out names and numbers. I often hear my name yelled out in the United States.

People I have never met before yell out my first name in public places. They do it in an informal voice, as if they know me. I guess this is because the country is so vast people just have to yell. There is a novel by Graham Greene called The Silent American. This is a good title because Americans are not known to be silent. At least not in an international context. When abroad, people expect me to be loud. I usually do not fulfill these requirements. I think about Graham Greene and how he portrayed various nationalities: the British, the Austrians, the French. In English we have only one word for ‘you.’ Sometimes I like that, sometimes I don’t. Though, it does simplify things.

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contributors Adam Perry was born & raised in Pittsburgh, PA and spent 2002-2008 playing music in San Francisco before moving to Boulder in January to lose himself.

Alexandra Lukens was born and raised on Interstate 95. She currently attends Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. Her most recent project has been putting together a 1000-piece kitty cat puzzle with Francis and Douglas. It’s difficult.

Amy Catanzano is an adjunct faculty member and the administrative director of the

Department of Writing & Poetics at Naropa University. She is the author of two books: iEpiphany (Erudite Fangs, 2008), published by Anne Waldman, and the forthcoming collection Multiversal, selected by Michael Palmer for the Poets Out Loud Prize with Fordham University Press. Amy’s poetry has appeared in literary magazines such as Conjunctions, Fence, Volt, Denver Quarterly, American Letters & Commentary, and Colorado Review. She also has poetry included in the forthcoming anthology, A Best of Fence. She has an MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a BA in English from Colorado State University.

Amy Pommerening lounges in Anaximander’s palace, Apeiron, and infrequently vacations in the Black Forest.

Ana Maria Martinez is a poet, writer, and artist from Santa Cruz, California. In her art she seeks to gracefully unravel the intricacies of what it means to be human.

Andrew Antar paints with colorful oils and turpentine; he is also a photographer and

violinist who secretly writes poems. Originally from Penn Valley, Pennsylvania, now at Brown University, Andrew enjoys strong coffee and red wine. He believes that art, in all forms, either conveys a feeling, captures an essence, stirs emotion, inspires self-consciousness, expresses the sublime, acknowledges the outer reaches of the mind, or all of the above, which is the best kind of art.

Andrew Schelling is a poet, translator, and essay writer. His work is steeped in natural

history, wilderness explorations, ecology, and the literatures of Asia. He has published six volumes of translations from classical India’s poetry, and he edited The Wisdom Anthology of North American Buddhist Poetry. Recent titles include Tea Shack Interior: New & Selected Poetry, and a volume of essays, Wild Form, Savage Grammar. In June 2008, Dropping the Bow: Poems from Ancient India was reissued by White Pine Press, and a new book of poems, Old Tale Road (Empty Bowl Press, 2008), was just released. He lives in the Southern Rocky Mountain bioregion and teaches poetry and Sanskrit at Naropa University.

Ben Olson was born and raised in north Idaho, in a small mountain town of hillbillies,

realtors and hippies. He has worked as a dishwasher, busboy, bartender, blender salesman, gas station clerk, golf pro, photographer, journalist, reclaimed lumber specialist, researcher, production assistant, producer, boat captain, propane filler, and finally, author. He used to live in a small cabin by the lake, where he wrote Wanderlost in 37 days, but was evicted for non-payment of rent, and is now living in total poverty, roaming around America trying to figure out what the hell to do next.

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Brandon Arthur is a poet and graduate of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics and currently resides in Denver, Colorado.

Brandon Gray was born, raised, and is still stuck in California. Known to occasionally take a great photo or write a masterpiece only a baboon would understand, he spends most of his time traveling and entertaining children through his business Wild Child Adventures.

Brendan Hamilton is a writer. Every day, in every way, he’s getting better and better.

Carly-Anne Ravnikar, aka Theo Dorable, is a professional Drag King at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside. She was born and raised in the Midwest, currently living in Racine, Wisconsin. Her poetry has previously appeared in The Bathroom (It’s a Good Place to Read) and she was the graphic designer for UW-P’s Straylight in the Fall of 2007.

Cecilia Kunstadter grew up as a nomad and now lives in Boulder. Her life is filled with snowboarding, adventuring, photographing, and using the metric system. She is currently on a mission to finish school and save the polar bears.

Christopher T. Schuman was born to Martian parents on Planet X. Following Planet

X’s unfortunate destruction, Schuman was rocketed to Earth as an infant, where he crashed and was found by a couple of kindly farmers, who raised him as their own. He now writes poetry and fiction, and occasionally takes out the trash.

Dan Dissinger – words that either become stanzas for poetry or paragraphs for stories.

He enjoys staring at the sun and the calming sounds of lawnmowers. His favorite food is a chicken burrito with hot salsa, guac, lettuce, cheese, sour cream, and black olives. Yummy!

Dawn Sueoka’s work has appeared in fastforward. She is from Hawai’i but is now based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where she works in a library and lives with a hamster and a band.

Diane Klammer Monkee Milkshake: Take one part mixed up Boulder poet singer add to furry wife mother biologist psychologist shake well consume at Naropa SWP in four weeks.

Elizabeth Robinson is a recipient of the 2008 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant

to Individual Artists. Her new book, The Orphan & its Relations, will soon be out. She also has work forthcoming in a new Norton Anthology, American Hybrid.

Hillary Keel studied German and English in Virginia before embarking on a life abroad.

She lives in Vienna, Austria and manages to keep herself busy and enjoys throwing parties.

She has just begun the MFA low residency program at Naropa.

Irene Joyce is currently in her second year at Naropa University. Her writing experience includes insomniatic jotting of incessant thoughts, transcribing songs from the wind on walks to and from, e-mails that play dress-up as poetry, and creating text for spoken elements in collaborative, multi-media performance. Finding the “honing of academic skill” a mighty and welcome though arduous challenge, Irene is working to expand the beneficial reaches of weaving her words through creative studentship.

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Jack Collom is a poet, essayist, and creative writing pedagogue. His most recent collection of poems is Exchanges of Earth & Sky (Fish Drum, 2006). His major collection, Red Car Goes By: Selected Poems 1955-2000, was published by Tuumba Press in 2001. Other volumes include Little Grand Island, Arguing with Something Plato Said, 8-Ball and Entering the City. His work has been published in countless magazines and anthologies in the United States and abroad. His essays on teaching and anthologies of children’s poetry appear in Moving Windows and Poetry Everywhere.

James Kerley is a noted scholar of thermodynamics, and co-founder of Mixtape of the Month Club. He currently resides in 1988.

Jefferson Navicky graduated from Naropa’s MFA program in 2005. After graduation, he

worked as the archivist for the Estate of Djuna Barnes. Currently he teaches writing at Southern Maine Community College & The University of Southern Maine. His chapbook, Map of the Second Person, was published in 2006 by Black Lodge Press. Some of his work has appeared in Octopus Magazine, Tarpaulin Sky, Quickfiction, Sliding Uteri & The Beet.

Julius Caesar (July 13, 100 BC – March 15, 44 BC) was a Roman military and political

leader. He played a singular role in the transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire. His conquest of Gaul extended the Roman Empire to the Atlantic Ocean.

Kimberlie Robinson is a writer and massage therapist originally from Georgia and has been slowly working her way west in hopes of living at some point in of her life in a blue state.

An avid reader since a child, she has recently come to know and love the craft of writing.

Kristi Yorks considers herself to be a gypsy of sorts. She wanders. She writes. Which

makes her, by some definitions, a poet. She seeks open spaces, snow, the color blue. She currently lives and writes in Boulder, Colorado, working towards an MFA in Poetics from Naropa University and one day, hopes to write herself deep into the mountains.

L. Draaghtel was born in Russia and holds a PhD from Minsk Linguistic University in

Byelorussia. Since 1997 she has resided in Canada. She has been teaching linguistics and writing classes as well as ESL for over twenty years in Russia, the United Kingdom, and Taiwan.

She is presently an Associate Professor at the Department of Applied English in Ming Chuan University, Taiwan.

Lauren Andrews is a writer and editor living in New York City. Upon receiving her un-

dergraduate degree in Biology from UC Berkeley, Lauren spent extensive time out in the wild studying ducks and observing bears. Though she currently works at a literary agency, the occasional duck, bear, or monkey has been known to make an appearance in her works of short fiction and poetry.

Lindsay Colahan is a recent graduate of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. She is a poet, critique, and gossip. In 2005, she founded Ruining Your Vacation Press. She is committed to exposing the world to promising outsider artists. When Lindsay is not gossiping, writing, or critiquing, she worries about the mental health of her cat, Grace Hartigan.

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Luke Bennett is a photographer from Arkansas. The editor wishes to thank him for contributing the photos of his nephew. To see more of his works, please visit: www.lukebennetphotography.com.

Lisa Birman’s chapbooks include deportation poems and o-a conversation. She is coeditor of Civil Disobediences: Poetics and Politics in Action, and her work has appeared in 26, admit2, Square One, not enough night, and Thuggery & Grace. Her new book, For that return passage: A Valentine for the United States of America, is forthcoming. Lisa is from Melbourne, Australia, and teaches for Naropa University’s MFA in Creative Writing and Prague Study Abroad Program.

M. D’Alessandro currently lives on Kauai where he can balance the ph in 15,000 gallons

of water. When he’s not there he can be found at Patty’s Warren in San Francisco. He has degrees in Architecture, Art History, and Creative Writing, has worked in varying interests from cattle rustling to inn keeping, and edits the semiannual literary journal swap/concessions for Bedouin Books.

Margaret Randall is a feminist poet, writer, photographer and social activist. Born in New York City in 1936, she has lived for extended periods in Albuquerque, New York, Seville, Mexico City, Havana, and Managua. Her book To Change the World: My Life in Cuba is forthcoming from Rutgers University Press in fall 2008, and Their Backs to the Sea is forthcoming from Wings Press in fall 2009.

Mel Kozakiewicz is a poet/performer in Jersey City, NJ. There is no place in the world she would rather be.

Merrill Shane Jones is a Texan who lives in Boulder, Colorado where he studies disembodied poetics and writes fiction and poetry. He also writes hillbilly rock with his imaginary friends, Murphis and Tucker Jim.

Michelle Naka Pierce is the author of two books: Beloved Integer (2007) and TRI/VIA (2003), co-authored with Veronica Corpuz. She teaches at Naropa University.

Mittie Roger, though amphibian, has taken up residence in a primate body to attend the

one and only Jack Kerouac school of Naropa. Having slithered from the bayous and floodplains of Louisiana, she decided to attempt a hominoid existence. So far, she has been successful in cooking jambalaya and crawfish etoufee upright.

Nate Jordon’s recent work has appeared in the Denver Voice, The Pulchritudinous Review,

and The Bathroom. He is the 2008 recipient of the Jack Kerouac Scholarship and was recently interviewed with John Allen Cassady on Studio 12 about The Beat Generation in Denver. He holds a BA in English from California State University, Fresno and an MFA in Writing and Poetics from Naropa University. He is the founder of Monkey Puzzle Press and Magazine.

Nathan Antar: I recant my philosophy and retract my statement... Godspeed to all in this veritable labyrinth of sub-human jackasses...

Yours in earnest anticipation, and with opposable thumbs,

The Demon Poet of Monkey Street.

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Nicholas B. Morris allegedly graduated from Naropa University, but doesn’t have the

cardstock degree to prove it. Work has appeared in Cliterature, The Arkansas Literary Forum, Fear Knocks, shanghaiSMradiator, The Gut, Species, and elsewhere. His story “Going Retro” was the winner of Monkey Puzzle’s Flash Fiction Contest. He is half of the filmmaking team Lobotomized Monkey (with Michelle McKinney), and is currently working on a comic book called Superazzi with illustrator Caleb Hicks. He lives with his partner Alyssa Piccinni in Denver.

Nicholas Michael Ravnikar lives well below the poverty line in Racine, Wisconsin.

His moderately evolved hominid brain has managed to squeeze out some things made of words. When he’s not pursuing such ends, Ravnikar has been known to sustain himself by working in videography, nonprofit programs, and plasma donation. Like we said: well below the poverty line.

Olatundji Akpo-Sani is a poet. When not writing poetry, he runs Baobob Tree Press

with friend Rob Geisen. He lives in Colorado with his wife, Lisa, and stepdaughter, Sierra.

When he’s not being bookish, he’s into good beer, good jazz, and good whiskey.

Perry Lavin’s favorite quote is, “Overcome your fear of goo. Come and taste goo goo stew.” He currently lives on Shakedown Street.

Rebecca Maillet is a graduate of Emerson College in Boston, current resident of

Northampton, Massachusetts. She spent her formative years growing up in Orange, Massachusetts and thinks living through New England winters makes people more inherently cynical. She thinks beer and books are the God(s) intended food and thanks Mom for pushing her to put some words on paper every now and again.

Renee Zepeda has been published in Exquisite Corpse, Past Tents Press (Detroit), The Residential College Review, and the Daily Camera, among others. She is the founder of the rare & highly desirable Pulchritudinous Review.

Rocky Balboa. Southpaw from Philly. He didn’t contribute anything, he just belongs here. (ed. note – it was either that or he was gonna break my thumbs.)

Ryan Clark is an MFA candidate in poetry at Naropa University, although please let’s not

restrict him to verse. He’s locked himself in a closet and says he’s not coming out until someone asks to read his short stories. He is quite the stubborn Stu.

Samuel Jablon was born and raised in Binghamton, New York, where he learned to paint

from his mother, Susan. Currently he’s a student at Naropa University studying in the Writing and Visual Art Departments. To see more of his works, please visit www.samueljablon.com.

Scott Alexander Jones is a poet from Texas, currently in the MFA program at The University of Montana. His poetic spacetime coordinates include past, present, and/or future incarnations of: Third Coast, Forklift Ohio, Bombay Gin, Camas, and The Cape Rock, as well as a travel article in Brave New Traveler. He is currently teaching himself the Tuvan art of throat singing.

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Shane Joaquin Jimenez grew up in San Diego, most recently lived in Brooklyn, and has lived in various points between. He’s in the Writing & Poetics MFA program at Naropa University. His fiction has appeared in Bat City Review.

Steve Kisicki originally hails from Lincoln, Nebraska but now resides in Boulder, Colorado

where he is a student of the Jack Kerouac School. He is terrified of the ocean and has an affinity for grilling steak. t just so happens that his favorite car is orange, and he would like to paint the ceiling the same color.

Tim Skeen’s poems have appeared in many magazines and journals including the Antioch

Review, Mid-American Review, and Prairie Schooner. His book, Kentucky Swami, won the 2001 John Ciardi Prize from Bk Mk Press at the University of Missouri – Kansas City. He currently lives in Fresno with his wife, Pam, and daughter, Iris, teaching in the MFA program at California State University.

Tiph Parrish is a student at Naropa University working on a double major in Writing and

Literature and Traditional Eastern Arts. She is originally from Houston, has lived in Hawaii, and now resides in Boulder, Colorado. She is a bi-sexual, poet, artist, woman of multi-ethnic descent who is also left-handed therefore right-brained. Her loves include the ocean, writing, activism through poetry/performance and pointing out the elephant in the room.

Travis Cebula is a classically-trained chef specializing in Irish cuisine and an aspiring poet.

If anyone can think of any careers with less earning potential, he’s open to suggestions.

Yasamin Ghiasi is a poet. She currently lives in Boulder with her daughter, Oriana, and

attends the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. This is all she is willing to admit at present; stay tuned for further updates on her previously undisclosed delinquent endeavors.

She still insists, however, that she was nowhere near the scene of the crime when Sylvester the guinea pig was discovered dead, having been drowned in the orange plastic tub.

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acknowledgements THE EDITORS WISH TO THANK: Contributors, Friends, and Families

Nate Jordon specially thanks - John H. Jordon, John L. Yates, Jack Kerouac, Charles Bukowski, Hunter S. Thompson, Daniel Quinn, Robert Pirsig, Pearl Jam, Eddie Vedder, Rocky Balboa, Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Mahatma Ghandi, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Rosa Parks, Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama, Michael Moore, George Carlin, Chris Rock, Marjoe Gortner, Dr. James Walton, Ruth Jenkins, Tim Skeen, Junior Burke, Jack Collom, Shy Mukerjee, and Fact-Simile.

Nate dedicates this issue to his little sister, Betina Goettl, who’s kicking the hell out of leukemia right now...

LOVE YOU SIS!

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SUBMIT TO:

monkey puzzle #6

WINTER ISSUE

Submission Guidelines Monkey Puzzle seeks submissions of prose (2,500 words max), poetry (1-5 pages), translations, interviews, artwork, photography, and hybrids. Experimental work welcome.

Monkey Puzzle appreciates work exhibiting intelligence and creativity, with a bit of socio-political awareness and humor.

We accept electronic and hardcopy submissions. All submissions must include the writer’s contact information on the first page: name, address, phone number, and e-mail address. Include a SASE if you would like a reply.

Address all queries and submissions to:

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MonkeyPuzzlePress@gmail.com

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December 31, 2008

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MONkey puzzle Issue #5

MONkey puzzle

www.monkeypuzzlonline.com

#5 Fall 2008

featuring works by : Tim Skeen Margaret Randall Jack Collom Elizabeth Robinson Andrew Schelling Amy Catanzano Ben Olson Michelle Naka Pierce Ryan Clark Lisa Birman Nicholas Michael Ravnikar Mittie Roger James Kerley Renee Zepeda Olatundji Akpo-Sani L. Draaghtel Nicholas B. Morris Diane Klammer Sam Jablon Tiph Parrish M. D’Alessandro Lauren Andrews Dan Dissinger Julius Caesar And many more!

Fall 2008