Monkey Puzzle #6

#6 winter 2009

featuring new work by : Keith Kumasen Abbott Margaret Randall Tim Skeen Mittie Roger Travis Cebula Nancy Stohlman Olatundji Akpo-Sani LaVonne Caesar Daniel Dissinger Alexandra Lukens Peter M. Laffin Paige Doughty Rob Geisen Kona Morris Philip Meersman Amy Pommerening Nicholas B. Morris Diane Klammer Ryan Clark Tiph Parrish Scott Alexander Jones Aimee Herman Mitch Maruade Hillary Keel And many more!

Issue #6

MONkey puzzle

9

780980 165012

61200

monkey puzzle press

www.monkeypuzzlonline.com ISBN-10 0-9801650-1-6 ISBN-13 978-0-9801650-1-2

MONkey puzzle Winter 2009

monkey puzzle

Monkey Puzzle Press Boulder, CO

monkey puzzle Issue #6, Winter 2009 EDITOR, DESIGNER, PUBLISHER Nate Jordon COPY EDITORS Mittie Roger Peter M. Laffin COVER ART Taughannock by Samuel Jablon Monkey Puzzle is currently published four times a year by Monkey Puzzle Press in Boulder, Colorado Copyright © 2009 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Monkey Puzzle accepts previously unpublished prose (2,500 words), poetry (1-5 pages), translations, interviews, artwork, photography, and hybrids.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 ISBN-13 978-0-9801650-1-2

contents Editor’s Note

vi

The Edge of the Known World

Travis Cebula

1

Babinet’s Sprinkles

Aaron D. Scher

4

Open Wide

Olatundji Akpo-Sani

25

Notes of a Modern-Day Expatriate #2

Mittie Roger

28

Manifesto del Poesia XVI

Philip Meersman

31

The Lotus Sutra (or Exodus 20:1-10)

Andrew Bethke

6

Atlantic Nocean

Alexandra Lukens

Belarusian Capital

Hillary Keel

33

7

Our National Poet Haibun

Keith Kumasen Abbott

9

A Half-Day in the Life... of an Adminstrative Assistant

Amy Pommerening

38

The Bingo Halls of Arkansas

Nicholas B. Morris

11

Poetic Genius

Sarah Suzor

40

Cry Palestine

Nancy Stohlman

13

What the Water Gave Me

Kimberly Castanon

42

Soldiers Awaiting Discharge

Tim Skeen

16

cigarettes

Rebecca George

43

We Had a Meeting

Margaret Randall

17

excerpt from [text]urally transmitted dis{ease}

Aimee Herman

46

The Confession

Peter M. Laffin

20

Gradually

Lily Scarborough Heehs

48

22

Jimmy Six Pence

Scott Larson

49

selections from in the silver waste to(o) be a mirror

Daniel Dissinger

52

28. The List of Sins

LaVonne Caesar

The One-Eyed Poet Speaks in a Library Basement Two & a Half Years Post Mortem

Scott Alexander Jones 55 Erection Day

Mitch Maraude

57

Self Portrait

Yasamin Ghiasi

60

Second Hour

Richard Schwass

62

Rosa Marie Over the Rooftops of Isla del Vistoso

Merrill Shane Jones

And Juan Makes Three

Kona Morris

85

Wood and Wire

Tiph Parrish

88

As Heraldic

Michelle Puckett

90

Karma at the Egg Roll Queen

John Staudt

91

Turmeric

Jennifer Phelps

94

63

Blue

Through Her Eyes

Jessica Surabian

68

fled: light density

Irene Joyce

96

Happy Like That

Mel Kozakiewicz

69

from Unwinding Myself Whole

Paige Doughty

America, Your Penis is Stuck in the Zipper of Abu Ghraib

Rebecca Diaz

98

70

I.L.O.V.E.Y.O.U.

Rob Geisen

Another Monkey Puzzle

Diane Klammer

99

76

Haiku for Hillary

Daniela Beuren

Contributors

101

77

Acknowledgements

107

Submission Guidelines

108

Speechless

Rea Allen

78

Have I?

Sarah Cooke

83

43. beside her, giving

Ryan Clark

84

Melanie W. Kachadoorian 95

editor’s note Mork calling Orson...come in Orson,

As the field of physics continues to expand, so does the field of poetry and prose. All reflect the constant expansion of the universe. It makes sense then, that a current trend in contemporary writing and literature is an amalgamation of physics and poetry. As physics is the language used to understand the universe, so is poetry the language to understand our place in it.

Since the dawn of the human intellect, mankind has been attempting to understand who we are, where we came from, why we’re here, and where we’re going. It’s these questions that gave birth to the first science: philosophy.

For eons, both science and poetry have been used to answer these fundamental questions about our existence. But this begs the question, which came first - poetry or philosophy? It’s the “chicken and the egg” thing. And I don’t know - I don’t think any of us knows - none of these are an exact “science” - full of theories - all you can do is buy the ticket, take the ride.

These are quite heavy topics to tackle when writing in a stream of consciousness. And speaking of consciousness...

One thing’s for certain, the most abundant element in the universe is hydrogen. The stars are made of it, we’re made of it, “It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the [universe] together.” Since this is the case, that we’re part of the universe and the universe is part of us, then each of us is connected in a universal sense. If everything in the universe, including us, is made of hydrogen in one compound or another, then we might make “one giant leap” to speculate that our consciousness is made of it. And if we make that leap, we might as well take another bound and cerebrate that our consciousness is therefore connected.

Ah yes, the collective consciousness - an idea that has been floating in the ether and puzzling us for a hundred years. Does it exist? Can it be proven?

It’s a bit like hydrogen: we can’t see it, smell it, hear it, taste it or touch it but we do see signs of its evidence. It shows up in memes and other cultural ideas, beliefs, symbols, architecture, art, music, ad infinitum.

I’m going to make another gambol and say that if we all share a collective consciousness, and we all share a universal interconnectedness, then one might conjecture that I, in theory, wrote every single contribution you’re vi

about to read in this issue of Monkey Puzzle.

Eeew, did I really say that? Well, no. Actually, one might say you said it.

Wait a minute, what’s going on here?

One thing that disturbs me about the idea of a collective consciousness is it significantly belittles our individuality. I mean your individuality. And mine. We at Monkey Puzzle promote individuality. We celebrate it. We enjoy it.

The contributions to this issue definitely exemplify everyone’s individuality. I hope you enjoy both.

Whoa, I’ve used about ten bar napkins now. Maybe I should get back to the beer. May the force be with you.

Nanu Nanu,

Nate Jordon Monkey-in-Chief

vii

Travis Cebula

the edge of the known world: poetry’s journey into the soul of physics

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt

of in your philosophy.

- Hamlet, William Shakespeare

If I could sum up near-future literary trends in two words they would be “salvage” and “synthesis.” Above all the other salvage operations happening in contemporary poetics hovers the leather-winged specter of agency. In a world filled with the post-modern soup of Deleuze and Foucault, where lies the power of the author? Has it been lost forever to a never-ending stream of outside causality? So many writers and academics have turned to a Marxist view of a material world... a world in which a butterfly’s wings can waft a hurricane around the globe, but one in which the butterfly’s wings have no will of their own, only placeholder status in a long chain of cause and effect. The lace-veined membranes flutter ever so slightly and the molecules bounce, and bounce.

But such a defined world is no world for a poet; it is better suited for a lapidary.

Between the sheet rock screws society drives into citizens from the moment of birth and the singular materiality of existence there is nary a breath of space for free will, nary a breath of thought for poetry. Dream and whimsy have been successfully replaced by mortar and stone. Postmodern theorists and L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E=P=O=E=T=S alike describe a world of steel bands to be broken, but fail to see that there is no chance of even choosing to break the bonds within the rigid rule set they’ve described.

Bernadette Mayer, a noted L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E=P=O=E=T, advocates in her list of writing experiments that writers “attempt to eliminate all connotation from a piece of writing;” or, to translate, “write without saying anything.” I do not believe that deep down any writer, even one from a radical position, agrees with the implication of this statement: writing as a form of communication is wrong (due to the historical and sociological forces which built it). If that is truly the case, if humans are nothing more than emotionally hysterical billiard balls rattling through the world at the whim of physical laws, history, or society, then why on earth would anyone write?

Let me say that again. If there is no way of creating anything new, communicative, or imaginative other than making deliberately meaning-less noise - then what motivation would anyone have to write at all? How can we decide to become the strange wings of a butterfly? And yet we do...

1

A difficulty for many readers of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E=P=O=E=T=R=Y

is its preoccupation with fragments, nonsense, and unmeaning; as well its

rejection of the narrative model that has been the basis of nearly all types

of literature.

- from Poetry Previews: Language Poetry

It is my fervent belief that the act of writing is not evidence of the ignorance of writers at large, but rather a profound affirmation of humanity. Language is how we connect with each other, how we think, how we remember, and how we relate to our world. Contemporary writers are in the midst of retrieving all of the limbs of language that have been mangled, rightly or wrongly, over the centuries and are pounding new breath into the cracked ribs of dying words.

Wild that this stays America, episodic are the genuflections.

- Inelegant Motherless Child, Gillian Conoley

Amid all of the myriad examples of poets salvaging language (antiquated or cliché language by lyric postmodernists, sexually- or gender-charged language by the gurlesque, futurist themes by paraspheres writers, absurd or gross language by Oulipo and flarfists, and scientific language by nearly everyone...just to name a few) it is often overlooked that in order to pull out so many examples one basic activity must be taking place: people are writing, and writing a lot. By my calculations postmodern theory should have put a stop to this, but it hasn’t. The late 20th Century did its levelbest to argue that all the fuel and material had run out of language as it had been, and that the whole system needed to be scrapped so we could all start over (this is a gross over-simplification of the sociological position, but I believe that most of the theorists responsible would agree with it if pinned to the wall, so to speak). As we crossed into a new millennium and the universe didn’t delete itself in a flaming ball of computer code, this mode of thinking began to loosen its chokehold on the collective consciousness of the creative community.

At the same time in the world of science, Newtonian physics finally began to slip a little in the minds of common folk, allowing more room for the acceptance of General Relativity and then the completely new synthesis of quantum physics, string theory, and an eventual “theory of everything.” As noted physicist Stephen Hawking puts it in his essay, The Theory of Everything, “Ultimately, however, one would hope to find a complete, consistent, unified theory that would include all these partial theories as approximations.” A “theory of everything” would, by ontological necessity, include poetics as well. We may be close now to that theory...

The prospects for finding such a theory seem to be much better now

because we know so much more about the universe.

- Stephen Hawking

2

The commonality I have found between contemporary and near-future trends in writing, from Shanxing Wang’s Mad Science in the Imperial City to the gurlesque to Laura Moriarty’s Ultravioleta to everything in between, is that all of them feature a renewed focus on agency, authority, and authorial voice. In a word? They all feature the “I” in one form or another, a literary tool that had been all but banished thirty years ago. How does this relate to science in particular? I would argue that art, and most particularly poetry, is entering into a new symbiotic phase in its relationship with science. The new realms of reality which are opening up in physics allow room for renewed agency in art, room free of the traditional laws and controls of a unitary material world (they also could provide adequate solutions to the age-old problems of Cartesian dualism). Put simply, science can save the “I” and agency. Both fields right now are also very much concerned with the problem of “saying the unsayable.” This has always been an issue in poetry, but in the case of theoretical physics it is becoming pathological. So few people can understand or have access to the theories because of simple communication difficulties that the theories themselves have become marginalized - a prime example being the century it has taken for general relativity to enter the popular consciousness. Poetry might end up being the very language that science is reaching for, its window to lay people.

However, the most important function poetry can perform for science and humanity at large is this: it is proof of the existence of a realm beyond what we see and what we currently claim to know. Of all the activities that humans take part in, what could possibly be more beautiful, frivolous, and impractical than the creation of art? Poetry is so perfectly non-connected to any sense of essential biological survival that it must stem from somewhere outside - the writer has become the un-caused causer, much as Borges envisioned in The Circular Ruins when he dreamed a son... The unsullied human spirit is out for show in the simplest poem, as is the evidence of expanding scientific realms - its language forming the play within a play Shakespeare so brilliantly included in Hamlet. Every sentence, every word, every line that we write is a glorious affirmation of our souls, our humanity, and the world beyond.

...in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, science became too technical

and mathematical for the philosophers or anyone else, except a few

specialists. Philosophers reduced the scope of their inquiries so much

that Wittgenstein, the most famous philosopher of this [the 20th] century,

said, ‘The sole remaining task for philosophy is the analysis of language.’

What a comedown from the great tradition of philosophy from Aristotle

to Kant.”

- Stephen Hawking

3

Aaron D. Scher

babinet’s Sprinkles

Half-balding at Ottawa Intl. Airport He buys a donut & smoothes his comb-over.

Yesterday, at the Union-radio Scientifique Internationale Conference During the Q & A He asked about Babinet’s Principle When the topic was photonic band-gap structures And was cut off by a man Who looked just like him Same frameless photochromic glasses Only slightly more plump.

Now, he loosens his pianokey tie And bites into a donut sprinkled With all optical frequencies Of the rainbow.

4

5

Wooden Monkey God by Keith Kumasen Abbott

or

Andrew Bethke

the lotus sutra exodus 20:1-10 Buddha, I take your eyes with me when I leave that picture of you.

I noticed it first, when the graffiti on the pillars becomes sutras about oppression, and then the wails of the homeless man, a chant for mercy, and the torn row of posters, prayer flags with pleas for wisdom, and the old woman’s glare on the subway, a compassionate lesson in Dharma, and the broken glass constellations on Michigan, more beautiful than any in the sky.

And when on Sunday a thunderous dona nobis pacem erupts around me, I whisper your soft, strange call for maitri, Buddha, there, maybe only in my mind, is bohdi.

Thus I have heard - amen.

6

Alexandra Lukens

atlantic nocean: notes from incestuous interstates colorado to new york

I have littered a cigarette butt every sixty-three miles along the interstates between Denver and New York City and every left lane pass I made around a semi, I sneezed once at the exact moment my front bumper lined up with their rear tires.

I started the trip in a calf-length cashmere trench with silk lining and halfway along exchanged it for a flannel thermal with a built in hood and an orange ribbon at a truck stop in western Nebraska. I couldn’t get a radio signal for the first 722 miles so I read signs for roadside attractions like a novella I have titled, “Merry Christmas EAT BEEF.” Lillian was supposed to meet me on the other side, but she swallowed too many of my pharmaceuticals and moved back out West - it is true what they say about that little mountain town along the Front Range and it makes me glad I said a proper superstitious goodbye.

I sometimes wore glasses of the wrong prescription for miles at a time just to feel invincible when I removed them and when I reached South Bend I found a cassette tape in the glove box of the hits of roaring 20’s (no gloves, though) and I accelerated and braked to the rhythm of the music like my father used to until I blew out my left speaker. I became nostalgic around Kearny and composed mental vignettes of former friends I delivered to mental wards in college until I noticed a mangled carcass splayed across the breakdown lane, decided to stop and inspect it and took notes on the anatomy of victims of vehicular deerslaughter. At some point the sun came up and I felt it absolutely necessary to memorize the lyrical stylings of Johnny Cash, specifically “I’ve Been Everywhere,” and in a fit of necrophiliac devotion wrote each mentioned city/state/location across the interior of my windshield in what I thought was a dry erase marker.

Late in the night on the last stretches of I-80 I became so smitten with truck driver courtesies I found myself at a truck stop at 4:16 a.m. climbing into the cab of a Covenant Transport semi to find true romance and chivalry and instead found the man of my dreams on the receiving end of homosexual fellatio with the trucker he had exchanged more appropriate courtesies with earlier in the evening. I brought a shot of cheap brandy to christen the start of the trip and somewhere between Cleveland and Pittsburg I lost my left slipper and arrived in Manhattan just like that. I got my period in Davenport, though I didn’t know it until I hit the Western Suburbs of Chicago and wore it proud on the seat of my pants all through dinner at Grandpa’s Steakhouse. Right in the heart of Omaha I nearly collided with a speeding sedan going west on the eastbound side of the highway median and when I pulled off, found

7

a building on fire but couldn’t decide which incident to share with the authorities as I dialed 911 from a gas station pay phone until I was propositioned by the attendant and I accidentally hung up on the operator after cracking the receiver across the gentleman’s temple, so I made off with his name tag and a pack of Big Red.

I thought of my distant sister who took a bus into the city for school; she liked to tease the businessmen who jerked off on the highway to young catholic school girls. I lost my copilot to Erie (IL, not PA) when she fell in love with a paraplegic war veteran on an electric scooter in the convenience store and I kept a Bible and a book of Buddhist prayers under the driver’s seat in hopes of protection. In Des Moines I ordered a carafe of orange juice and a band-aid and listened to a grandmother tell her grandson that cooking eggs over-easy was illegal in that there town.

I landed in Manhattan, climbed thirty-three stories up at 33rd and 3rd, jammed my index finger into my gag reflex and watched my vomit slowly splash the windows on its way down until it hit the scaffolding and a lonely, misplaced top hat and I finally felt like home.

8

Keith Kumasen Abbott

our national poet haibun

In the National Portrait gallery I came upon a room devoted to Walt Whitman.

The earliest photograph shows a bearded Quaker - eyes dark but his young face unformed, a little lost. The next one a man on fire - his face sensual, lips and eyes afire - in New Orleans, where else?

And then, around the walls, slowly the Good Grey Poet appears over many years of photographs. One that Alfred, Lord Tennyson wrote to say he adored: eyes alight, the smile of an old man barely visible in Whitman’s white bushy beard.

Walt Whitman’s cane - deep

spiral carved out in its center supported him they say Homecoming

The Frontier flight puts me between two businessmen. Both swipe their credit cards for the max channels on their televisions before they buckle up their seat belts. I dial my screen down to zero but the Master Planner won’t let it go dark until lift-off. Passenger information intake is mandated and is vended until consumers are airborne. On my left my neighbor’s screen goes for Oakland Athletics baseball playoff. My screen goes black. My right-hand neighbor operates his laptop one-handed while surfing channels on his television senselessly. On my left the A’s fan’s laptop is only used between innings: “A presentation protocol” aka crass sales pitch. Righty orders two Bloody Marys but has only a hundred dollar bill to pay. Consternation and promises of change from our server, who observes he’s already drunk. Later, before I can open the john door in the tail, the same stewardess asks me if I can break a hundred. I can, but “What would I do with a hundred dollar bill?” I ask her. She smiles and pats my hand reassuringly a tad too long. Apparently, after this flight, she’s been cleared for landing.

At Denver the weather is nasty and cold. My Shamrock Airporter has a busted public address system so our driver discusses loudly important matters but I can’t hear a word because a cell phone user behind me is shouting various endearments to his deaf mother.

I’m the only customer for the Shamrock taxi driver who drives me into

9

Longmont. I remark on the sheets of rain. He says it’s been raining for two days.

He offers to drop me by my car, rather than the Shamrock approved Park n Ride.

Because I don’t want to drag my luggage through this downpour for two blocks I accept and mentally up the tip.

A half hour window is left to pick up my dog Kenosha at the kennel and save twenty bucks so I speed across town. I let the dog in the front door and then drive around to my driveway, so I don’t have to deal with his exuberant sloppy wet gratitude while I unload in this deluge. I’ve forgotten to turn on the back porch light, so I trundle my dripping baggage across a pitch-black patio.

coming home gloomy night dark I glance once at my lawn - carpets of white mushrooms

10

Nicholas B. Morris

the bingo halls of arkansas The bingo halls of Arkansas Are brimming full of sin Just ask the sheriff what he saw The day that he looked in “They’s fornicatin’, drinkin’ too, And gamblin’ on them games; And so I says ‘This show is through!

Clear out, old vets and dames!’”

The local paper made a fuss Because they failed to see How he had found it dangerous To play for charity.

They hadn’t seen the roulette wheels, The money changing hands, The floozies and the whiskey still The volunteers had ran At least that’s what the sheriff said When he stood to accuse (And never mind just how much bread he made from selling booze).* The sheriff ’s a religious boy And thinks his views perfection So some implied it might be ploy To secure his reelection.

How dare they question him. The nerve!

The audacity! The gall!

The folks they should go after were The ones who ran the halls.

11

“These gamblin’ types are bringin’ shame To our community” So I proposed a legal flame To dens of iniquity.”

And so, a new law takes effect In Small Town, Arkansas Now bingo charity is wrecked ‘Cause it’s against the law!

No more scholarships for kids Too poor to go to school; No food to people on the skids, Thanks to the sheriff ’s rule.

Instead of grandma’s little prize She’d get if she were winning, She gets the sheriff ’s moral eyes That see her fun as sinning.

His might makes right and it’s the law So they all go along; In the bingo halls of Arkansas What once was right is wrong.

* Author’s Note: In Pope County, AR, the Baptist Church holds all of the available liquor licenses, and the county sheriff owns the property on which the nearest liquor store is located, some twenty miles away. The reasoning for making the county dry: “We will cut down on the DWI rate,” despite the fact that Russellville, AR, (pop. 30,000) has a higher rate of DWIs than the next 5 biggest cities, all of which sell alcohol.

12

Nancy Stohlman

cry palestine

Saul screwed the camera onto the tripod, counting the bullet hole scars in the windows and walls. The family was seated on their couch, a sad tableau. The cushions were covered with multicolored afghans and white bed sheets. Saul adjusted the tripod, tested the sound. “Okay. You can begin. Just start talking about what happened.

Try to forget the camera is here.”

The Palestinian man smoothed his generous moustache, looked at his wife and two children. He shook a cigarette from a pack of generics, took a big gulp of thick, sugary coffee, and cleared his throat:

“When I hear the first shots I right away think of my father, who lives two streets over.” He pointed in the direction of the street. “My father has a weak heart, and I know it is bad for him to be alone if the Israelis started shooting. So when I hear the shots I go to his house to bring him here. When I get to my father’s house they have a bulldozer at the front door - they have been razing the houses to the ground all over the camp. I say, ‘What are you doing?’ They say, ‘There are militants here.’ I say, ‘There are no militants - that is my father. He is seventy-two years.’ They say, ‘Do you want to be arrested too?’ I say no. Then they grab me and hold me in front of them. They kick in the door to my father’s house with me in front. That night they go into house after house after house, using me as a shield. When my friends see me they know they cannot shoot, and so the Israelis come into their house.”

“What did you do?” Saul asked, picturing the street in front of their house, the martyr posters covering the crumbling buildings and dirt alleyways, new ones taped over old, fading ones.

“What can I do? I can’t do anything. Finally they ask me where I live. I don’t want to tell them because I am afraid. I am ready for them to shoot me instead of taking them to my house, but we are too close and that is when Yasmin sees me.”

The woman nervously took a sip of tea, smoothed her white hijab. Her eyes were rimmed with shadows. “I look outside because my husband has been gone for many hours now and I begin to fear the worst. Then I see him being held by soldiers and having guns pointed at him. So I scream, ‘No, Wadi!’ She looked guiltily at her husband, as if they’d replayed this scene many times. “I was not thinking. I was just angry to see Wadi like that.”

Wadi looked at her softly, patted her hand. “So now the soldiers know where we live, so they come into the house. They put us all in one bedroom and lock the door. We can hear them making a lot of noise - I am afraid they are bulldozing the house. It isn’t until the next day that we see they have made a big hole in our wall.”

13

He gestured towards the wall, which indeed had a hole big enough for several men.

The remaining plaster around the hole was decorated with red and blue and green spray-painted Stars of David and a plethora of obscenities like “Die Arab Scum.”

“They want to make a passageway from one house to the next so that they can move around without being seen.” Wadi lit a cigarette, reached for the already-full ashtray. “I have heard of this happening before but I had never seen it for myself until that day. Then when the soldier guarding our room sees me looking he hits me in the head with the butt of his gun.” He parted his hair slightly to show the scar.

“How long did the soldiers stay?” Saul asked.

“Many weeks,” Yasmin interjected. “We still fear that any day soldiers will come back through the hole and hold us prisoner again. When they don’t find any guns they just destroy everything, take all our food, and take Wadi to jail.”

“How long were you in jail?” Saul asked Wadi, watching the two younger children fidget on the couch next to their parents. The older one, a girl, fingered a hole in her white tights and watched Saul with dark eyes right out of a Victor Hugo novel.

“I am in jail thirty-six days. Most of the time I have a bag on my head and my hands and feet are tied with a rope. It is hard to breathe and the bag smells of urine.

I have to go to the bathroom in my pants, I try holding it the first day but finally I cannot. I don’t know how many days I am like that, maybe a week or two, with barely any food or water.”

Saul shook his head. “You were tied with a bag over your head for a week?”

“Yes, and they give me only half a pita and some water every day, and I cannot use the bathroom. It is the Israeli way of torture. Then after many days I am moved. I am hoping that things are going to get better but they are not. They move me to a box where they tie me up but there is not room to sit down.”

“A box?”

“I don’t know what to call it - a closet?” Wadi and Yasmin exchanged some Arabic. “Yes, like a wardrobe or small place where you can stand but not sit down.”

“How long were you there?”

“I think another week, many days. By now I am very weak, I have a rash from having to go to the bathroom in my clothes, I am trying to lean against the wall to sleep but it is very hard. I just wanted to die,” he confessed. “I wanted them to come and shoot me.

“After many days they take me to a place where they take the bag off my head and give me cigarettes and water. They keep asking me, ‘Who is the leader of the resistance?’ I say I don’t know. They hit me. They ask me again. I don’t know, so they put me back in the first place, where I can sit. Many more days pass.”

Saul swallowed. That was the million dollar question, wasn’t it? “So did you know?”

“Who is the leader of the resistance?” Wadi waved his hand and made a clicking sound. “Not in the way they are asking. I know many leaders, and many others that would be good leaders. We are all resistance, you see. Just to be Palestinian is to resist.”

Saul turned to Yasmin. “What happened in the house when your husband

14

was in jail?”

“The soldiers stay,” she answered. “Not all of them, but some stay and they guard the hole and sometimes new soldiers come from inside the hole, that’s why we know it is a passageway for them to move among our houses. They steal all our money and they eat all the food. Even now I am scared that we are sitting here and a soldier comes into the house through the wall. Nijmeh is very scared all the time,” she said, putting her arm around the smaller of the two children hovering by her mother’s legs.

“When did they let you out of jail?” Saul asked.

“After they question me they take me back to the first place. I think it is the first place, I cannot see because I have a bag over my face but the sounds are the same and the light feels the same. I stay there again, same thing. They take me to be questioned three more times. Always the same. Finally they come to get me one night.

They take all my clothes but keep the bag on my head and they put me in a truck. I can tell there are others in the truck, too. My feet are not tied but my hands are and I cannot see. Finally they unload us from the truck. It is very cold. Then the truck drives away. We are able to take the bags off our faces and see each other. We are in the dark, in the middle of a field. We do not know where we are. We stay there in the night, close together to stay warm. In the morning we walk until someone sees us.

When I am finally home I see the hole and Yasmin says that I have been gone thirtysix days.”

“InshaAllah,” the man said, smiling. “You tell George Bush, okay?” He laughed and shook his head.

Yasmin gathered empty cups and overflowing ashtrays and carried them to the bullet-scarred kitchen, returning with strong tea steeped with sage leaves. The two children climbed on Saul’s lap; they brought out their toys, their books, their plastic guns. The smaller girl held a doll in her hands and pointed it at Saul’s face: Bang. Bang.

Bang. Bang. Her mother shooed her away, embarrassed. She continued: Bang Bang.

An explosion answered her from outside the window. Yasmin made a clicking sound with her tongue. “They are just children but they are frustrated, too,” she said to Saul.

“They grow up with this situation. They don’t remember before. This is normal for them. Throwing rocks at the soldiers is a game. There is not basketball, not video games. There is only playing ‘Hit the Israeli Soldiers.’”

She paused to take a sip of tea. “Nothing hurts me more than the death of a child.”

15

Tim Skeen

soldiers awaiting discharge Even cleverness seems now to belong to earlier years.

- Paul Fussell

How many of them have heard the jokes: the housewife who says the happiest day of her life was when her husband came home from the Pacific with his discharge in his hand; Martha Washington, who, on a visit to Valley Forge tells her husband she brought the men many a load of good, hard wood? The soldiers carry their records to out-process Medical, Personnel, Benefits.

Some of them have been injured by what they’ve seen and done, some by what they haven’t seen, haven’t done. Each initial on the 201 Files means another step closer to whatever’s left of what they left behind.

In this excitement, how can they be interested in the old jokes, the Arcadian symbols of the rose and the poppy, when on every street the parked cars seem so dangerous they could kill you?

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Margaret Randall

we had a meeting

So we had a meeting to decide how many meetings we could have without jeopardizing meeting viability in periods designated peaceful though we knew we were at war with the status quo, the world - ourselves?

Productivity was up, we were told, even if we were producing less of what we needed: statistics, like the Bible, can be shaped to support any thesis applaud any top-down decision billed as what the people want.

Of course she has a point, he is right, they defend truth but we mustn’t lose sight of the ultimate goal.

These issues can wait for less dangerous times.

Let’s put our (straight) shoulder to the wheel.

But wait, you say, your shoulder isn’t straight, it is queer or brown or hunched your identity wasn’t cut from the mold, can I move over, you ask, will I make room for your gender, color, smarts?

Remember. You need me now and tomorrow, I need you despite my righteous indignation.

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We can only do this together looking each other in the eye especially if all that meeting time is cleansed of profit, freed from sophistry.

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19 Solitary Confinement by Kimberly Castanon

from Tumble Down the Rocks

Peter M. Laffin

The Confession

Most people find long lines at the Confessional annoying. Not me. It is the ultimate experience in people watching. Some folks inch their way up the line on their knees in extreme piety. I don’t trust those people. Others, usually teenage girls, huff and moan and look at their cell phones while they wait, denigrating the Holy Sacrament into a cold mechanism.

I do my best to print faces into my memory, especially the people who choose to confess through the screen instead of face-to-face, even though I myself confess through the screen, usually beginning with a ramble on my tendency to be judgmental.

“I’ve been carrying a heavy sin on my heart, Father,” I said.

“I promise God loves you still.”

“I had a sexual encounter with a man.”

“I see,” he said. “And was this the first time?”

“My third, Father.”

“Have you come to accept the fact you might be gay?”

“I don’t think I am.”

“Yes, yes. Of course.”

“It’s just an impulse really. I couldn’t love a man like I could love a woman.”

“But you commit the act of love with a man?”

“I wouldn’t call it love at all, Father. It’s just a sexual release.”

“Everyone, I think, has a certain amount of attraction toward the same sex.

You sound young, so it’s reasonable that you are searching for yourself.”

“I’m not gay, though. I’m sure of that.”

“But even if you are, son, God loves you.”

“Ok, but really, I’m not.”

“More than any attraction you will have ever had toward anyone, woman or man, God is attracted to you. He is in love with you like you will never know. You must not hate yourself for being what you are. That is just what Satan wants.”

He reflected on this point. My knees became uncomfortable on the thin carpet, and I squirmed a bit.

“Did you use protection?”

“No.”

“From now on when you fall to lust, you must wear a condom.”

“But I thought the Church…”

“Those dinosaurs in Rome... You have an obligation to protect your health.”

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“OK. I will.”

“And what else do you have to confess?”

“I also had sex with a woman in Las Vegas, a virgin.”

“Was this after the incident with the man?”

“Yes.”

“Is it possible you were trying to prove to yourself that you aren’t gay?”

“I’m not gay.”

“But were you possibly trying to prove that to yourself ?”

“I guess it’s possible, but I don’t think so.”

“Hate yourself not, my son. God loves you as he made you.”

He didn’t give me any penance that day.

I disguised my New York accent, and I was almost certain he didn’t know who I was. The English teacher at the Church elementary school was retiring and I wanted the job. Father Bill was a hip Priest, for sure, but even he wouldn’t want the scrutiny of hiring a gay teacher. Even though I’m not, and never have been, gay.

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1. Uncle Bernard On My Sheets

LaVonne Natasha Caesar

28. the list of sins

my side of the bed is cold, soggy with blood urine, tears and feces.

Look – I shit myself on the bus A grown woman wanting so desperately – (you know the word) R E S P E C T who scarred the question to the back of each marked letter?

I curl my disappearing body into the fetid floor.

who could see me now?

2. We Are Sorry Ma’am There Is No More Baby (or) Do Not Make The Vow/Oath To Die (and) The Things You Cling To, They Slip Away I have been hunting for abandoned dolls on railroad tracks bike paths, dog parks bleak alleys, sunlit sidewalks, black/wet streets.

The cracked eyes/stringy skulls of tattered pink-lipped homeless.

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to line my walls: an altar a fortress.

3. Joshua On My Sheets: Now :the clock is a mirror / a tunnel / a vortex: Headline: The Poet Draws A Chalk Outline of Her Body with red pen and Abandons for Dead.

4. The Unnamed (or, The List of Sins) Pedophile Minister Prophet Priest Father Lover Neighbor Police Murderer Pilot Landlord Lawyer Brother Homophobe Boyfriend Teacher Doctor Roommate Husband Christ Officer Plumber Salesman Mailman Therapist Counselor Accountant

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(count them!)

Thief I strangle your unborn sons names gurgled in throats I slice their tongues siphoning their names from my belly a dark and shrinking umbilical chord pinched between fist and memory.

So that they will have no stories.

I am naming all your true names.

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Olatundji Akpo-Sani Maybe we just need

Filled with questions

open wide

Big bug eyes

Big eyes The better to see you with Big eyes

View truth through A dark lens

That is our life

Our parents’ lives

Our grandparents’ lives Cheap sunglasses

Big black frames Big eyes Looking Calling Being

Or

Big ears

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Like a child seeing Fresh baked X-mass tree explosions In the morning That first site of jazz Being blown Falling to its knees The sound of wailing

It was the sight of that Vietnamese brain blown

It was not a horn Out of its own head That monk Dead down gasoline Alley alright? Alight...

He was alight

I was aghast Big eyes

Blown open on pages of

Emancipated discourse

Intrepid allegory

Arrogant alliteration

Rolling over stones

Clogged minds

Clutter clutter

Rattle rattle

Them chains Big eyes Read

See

Feel

The pain of these lenses Big black frames

Yellow looks

From behind blue bonnets

Blank black stares out of Big Eyes The rhythm of verse

More blues

More jazz

More life

Bubbling over inner city walls

Dressed in razor wire for a night on the town Big ears

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Changing social morays into

Eels slippery electric

Booming breaking barriers

Being life that is forced into acceptance

Sound

Through white washed pickets

Big mouths Busting boom boom ba-boom Taken back from skeletal hands Dead still gripping like a vice Ignorance Of our boom boom ba-boom We are still in trouble Always in trouble Even beyond the veil of color If only we could see Had the use of each others’ tortured vision Boom boom The jazz could save us in its intoxicated struggle Slap crack Biddle ding vroom zing Who’s that rat-a-tat-tat Through the drive by door Furnace fire Bubbling bubbling Rising rising Bring it to the forefront Bubble over the brim Even if we don’t agree Truth needs no lens Only Big eyes

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Mittie Roger

notes of a modern-day expatriate #2

Mexicans are some the most festive people in the world. Their party-tillyou-drop attitude is fueled with constant fiestas. Besides holidays, you might hear fireworks on a Wednesday night from midnight ‘til seven a.m. By seven, I’m usually up making breakfast for four dogs, about to go teach third and fourth grade, but the fireworks will not have stopped.

My hypothesis is they work in shifts. One guy pulls the late-night shift till four-thirty or so. He’s got it easy. Those hours are commonplace, even with work the next day. The other guy must be a loony bastard, taking over from four-thirty till seven. I imagine the first guy lights a round with the second guy waiting to slide into his spot. The fireworks are rhythmic and never miss a beat.

It’s not just Colonia San Antonio either. My parents, living in Colonia Guadiana and before that in Colonia Las Palmitas, hear them often. They’ve assured me the best thing to do is not try to sleep through them, which will never work (they sound like a bazooka blowing open an eighteen wheeler), but rather get up and join the festivities. I’m not quite there yet. I’m still trying to sleep through them.

So imagine that, then up the ante. That’s the holiday season we’re nestled in; a crew of ex-pats who once thought Americans could party, but now see that old Unkie Sam is shy of merry in comparison. The holidays that I despised in the states, after working through many such seasons as a teeny-bopper in a mall watching old ladies smack each other with gift-stuffed purses over the last set of jeweled barrettes, has new meaning.

Christmas in Mexico is different. Instead of Jingle Bell Rock over loud speakers, they have traditional pasadas in which horse-drawn wooden carts are followed by lines of people who stop periodically to carol. When they stop by, you better have a handy drink to offer. If you’re really itching for some Jingle Bell Rock supermarket style, just visit the Mega, a Wal-Mart subsidiary decorated like an American nightmare, in San Miguel.

On my street, Refugio Norte, people set up piñatas between songs. Blindfolded children play in the cobblestone street, swinging at the candy-stuffed Christmas star.

And, naturally, the carolers may be accompanied by the tequila burro. Needless to say, I drive as little as possible. But in the event that one has to drive, they raise the piñata cord and mothers usher children and donkeys off the street.

Each year in the Jardin, they construct a thirty-five foot tree of poinsettias. A Christmas parade takes the Virgin Mary and Joseph through town looking for a place to sleep. They knock on door after door, but each time the answer is the same.

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Finally they arrive at a designated house, the manger so to speak, where the host invites them to stay. A wicked party ensues. It’s a whole different attitude.

My favorite holiday, Dia de los Muertos, celebrates death. People of all ages go to the cemeteries with buckets of marigolds, which are decorated in photos and sugar-skulls. They drink the favored booze of their dead ancestors in the graveyard.

The Jardin is decorated with elaborate rice, corn and bean mosaics, sugar-sculptures and live Catrinas.

Guanajuato state is the Catrina capitol. Catrina’s depict skeletons in extravagant finery: women in large skirts with trains over petticoats and fancy wide brimmed hats. They come from the 1913 zinc etching by José Guadalupe Posada, called La Calavera de la Catrina. The elaborate and stylish clothes on the dead were a criticism of high society. The Catrina flaunts the notion of disposable wealth and fashion saying, “su cuerpo decaerá en esa ropa hermosa” or “your body will rot in those lovely clothes.” It’s interesting how privilege may reassign death.

Hurricane Katrina is an obvious link for my family. That’s ultimately how we came to live here, in San Migual de Allende, Guanajuato, the capitol of Catrinas. Dad and Paulette lived east of New Orleans, off Chef Highway, out in the bayous where everyone has a boat. A twenty-two foot wall of water enveloped their house like a mouth, tongue pushing out windows and doors, pulling out furniture and objects. It was time for change. Done with America, nothing but road.

It took me almost three years to follow, though my ninety-four year old grandma (Big Mittie) and Uncle Phil got a head start. But enough story. It’s time to get back to drinking dragon’s blood tequila with my family. Hail the dead.

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Photo by Mittie Roger

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Philip Meersman

manifesto del poesia xvi

Creation en el XVIe festival international de poesia de Rosario, Argentina.

Gracias para Rozalina, Sebastian, Paula, Maria (cáliz), Marta y Mercedes (take a chalice, fill it with white strong peppermint chewing gums. While reading the title of the poem, hold the chalice above in front of your head. Like a priest saying grace for the cup of Christ. Before starting to read the poem, take one chewing gum, put it on your tongue and start chewing it. Give the chalice to the person to your right and let him/her take a chewing gum and let the chalice be passed on so all members of the audience can take a chewing gum. Go back in front of the audience and start reading the poem) ( tomar un cáliz, llenarlo con menta blanco sólidas chicles. Mientras lee el título del poema, mantenga el cáliz anteriormente en el frontal de su cabeza. Al igual que un sacerdote diciendo gracia para la copa de Cristo. Antes de comenzar a leer el poema, tomar una goma de mascar, ponga en su lengua y empezar a masticarla. Dar el cáliz a la persona a su derecha y deje que él / ella tener una goma de mascar y dejar que el cáliz se transmite de modo que todos los miembros de la audiencia puede tomar uno de mascar goma de mascar. Retrocede en el frente de la audiencia y de iniciar la lectura del poema) Poetas del Mundo Sommos hermanos nuestra lengua La Sagrada Familia.

Grammamadre Vocabupadre Y La Paloma – la phantasia del carniceros historicos – continua cogiendo.

Los rios rojos – fecundos con la rabia del triunfo – (next piece is sung as a Gregorian Kyrie) (siguiente pieza se canta como un Kyrie gregoriano) enrojesen mas enrojesen mas enrojesen mas

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una ves mas

una ves mas

una ves mas

(look to the side and as barking to a boy say) ( mirar hacia el lado y ladrar como a un niño decir) Filio (look to the side and as barking to a boy say) ( mirar hacia el lado y ladrar como a un niño decir) Filio (look to the side and as barking to a boy say) ( mirar hacia el lado y ladrar como a un niño decir) Filio

enrojesen mas enrojesen mas enrojesen mas (preaching) (predicación) Perdona, Los ab-originales estaban aqui antes antes antes estas tres putas caravelas estas tres estas tres estas tres (take the chewing gum as a thread out of your mouth. Throw it onto a piece of paper and fold that piece of paper before throwing it into the paper bin. Sing next piece as a Gregorian Kyrie) (tomar la goma de mascar como un hilo de la boca. Tira que en un pedazo de papel y tapa que pedazo de papel antes de tirar en la bandeja de papel. Canta próximo como una pieza Kyrie gregoriano) Amen

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Hillary Keel

belarusian capital

Minsk is a gray city, a normal place.

Whenever I looked out my window, it snowed and people hurried by crossing avenues, catching buses or tripping through slushy puddles.

Minsk is a snowy city.

The snow never let up.

Minsk is a city with dangerous drinks ask before you try them!

Apparently they eat dog meat in Minsk. At least that’s what the poets said one night. “Maybe it’s dog,” they said laughing but eating it all the same.

Minsk is a city of gold teeth.

Their wealth is in their mouths.

Minsk is a city of school kids who don’t always button their jackets because they’re too busy throwing snow balls.

Minsk: a city of automobiles and colossal statues, of metro lines with glorious chandeliered halls, ceramic-tiled columns with motifs of archetypal Russians - no two are alike.

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Minsk - your name reminds me of death.

Minsk - I woke up in you feeling like death.

Minsk is a city of policemen covered in snow. The smell of the bread factory elated me.

Minsk is a city of athletes because the country’s president is a “health fanatic.”

Minsk was practically wiped off the map during WWII - after that they had to start from scratch.

Minsk has been re-constructed.

Minsk is a construction in the president’s eye.

Its river, the Svislach, has an unnatural curve, the city library appears to be taking off into outer space.

Minsk is a utopian dream.

Minsk is science fiction.

It’s a Hollywood set of a Hollywood set.

Behind the backdrop are more blocks of flats.

People wear fur hats in Minsk and wrap scarves around their necks in a Russian style.

Though Minsk is not in Russia, nor Poland, nor Lithuania Minsk is more Russian than Moscow.

A journalist explained to me that Moscow is not actually Russian at all, but Finnish. A truer history of the world is being revealed in Minsk.

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Minsk is a city of people who don’t look each other in the eye at least not on the street or in a shop unless you know each other.

In the privacy of the home they look, smile, kiss each other’s hands and toast.

Minsk drinks something wicked.

The president provides its citizens with heating and vodka to keep people warm and happy.

I was happy in Minsk, too.

Minsk is a city of talented people.

One woman I saw had such a twisted body she looked like a Chagal angel who at any moment would fly right out of her wheelchair.

She was a talented woman of Minsk.

Minsk is a city of actionists performance artists who prick themselves with needles and wrap themselves in toilet paper while showing black and white videos and playing industrial music.

Then they lie on the floor, wrestle and recite poems in a room of insect paintings.

People get fed up with the cold in Minsk. I heard a poet scream a poem about it.

Minsk is a brutal place.

I stretched my arms out to its lit night sky; I played in its snow, laughing,

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but then fell into a dream in Minsk everything went fuzzy and I heard them speaking Russian.

I think they were talking about what to do next.

They lifted and walked me, put mittens on my hands took me to an apartment the walls shimmered in green; I wanted to be there but couldn’t awake from my dream. A sort of out of body experience I could see myself not waking.

Minsk spoke to me in a Russian accent, told me I was the greatest, told me it was time to throw up I watched myself throwing up.

Thank you, Minsk, for putting me to bed.

The next evening fat snow flakes fell onto ice-skaters at October Square and I gave my son a birthday hug.

We went home, wrapped ourselves in blankets and huddled in front of the computer, watching a DVD on vampires in Moscow. Fell asleep to images of crows swirling around apartment blocks - wherever the vampires went, the crows flocked along, too;

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and I awoke at dawn to screeching crows right outside my window, making the same swirls, but this was Minsk, not Moscow.

All wrapped in my blanket, the president had just turned on the heating and I was warm and happy in Minsk.

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Amy Pommerening

a half-day in the life of an administrative assistant [names have been changed to ensure I keep my job in our troubled economy]

Fred, my boss, saunters to the Fredrick R. Smith & Associates door at 10:24 a.m. from his red Volvo SUV. He walks as if he keeps a rubber band tightly cinched around his balls. Susie, Fred’s Airedale Terrier, accompanies him shaking from old age like a spastic meth fiend.

The car, the walk, the dog, the phone ear piece, leaves no sprinkle of doubt that Fred is in love with himself in a not so healthy way. Standing about 5’6’’ but wanting to be 6’3’’, Fred devotes himself to aggressively reversing the signs of aging.

He’s fifty-four but works out two hours every morning in his home studio, which has a wide variety of weight lifting equipment surrounded by floor to ceiling mirrors.

For motivation, Fred hangs a picture of himself from the late 70’s on his refrigerator. At the Christmas party, a legal secretary saw it and in a half-joking, half-serious voice said, “Nice six pack, Fred.” Instead of responding with the polite and socially anticipated, “Thank you,” Fred looks up from his Don Julio and replies, “It’s an eight pack.” The work-outs coupled with the casual Friday’s metrosexual fitted jeans, which only emphasize his rubber-banded ball sack, make him look forty (and I do not mention the ball sack twice because I admire it…I mention the ball sack twice only to highlight the ridiculousness of Fred trying to showcase his ball sack. I have never seen such peacockishness).

Fred is the person who drives around a parking lot looking for other expensive vehicles to park next to because “those owners understand the hazard of parking lot dings.” He’s the person who, as I have learned, takes new employees out to a “Welcome to the Team” lunch and spends forty-seven of the sixty minutes allotted to be away from the desk on his cell phone. I wasn’t sure what to do or how to look interested at the TGI Friday’s décor, but I had to since this man has just given me a job. And he reminds me of this at my three-month review, saying his accountant had advised him against adding someone to the payroll; but he, being the great man he is, took a pay cut to hire me. Fred is that guy.

These flashbacks hit me like a mallet in the teeth as he walks through the parking lot to the front door. I see two divergent scenes in my head at this moment: one, me crumbling in terror, scraping at my eyes and gnawing on my bottom lip under my desk hoping I can make him and my job go away; two, me laughing out loud in Fred’s face at his plasticity - his crafted persona. However, when he opens the door, it is lights on. It is taking care of his every need…licking his ass with enthusiasm.

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Yes, of course I’ll put your ice pack in the freezer…of course I’ll look for a pen you put in your briefcase…make you a single serve cup of decaf French vanilla coffee...oh, I just clocked out, but of course I’ll go get you a six pack of Sam Adams.

I understand men like my boss, it’s not hard: five-year-olds who have built their own throne from stolen Lego’s. And even though the sense of entitlement that emanates from his spiked hair is only his creation - his paradigm - Fred is too self absorbed to realize that others may not think his throne is worth kneeling to.

After exchanging morning, almost afternoon, pleasantries pretending to reinforce how charming he thinks he is, I move to get Fred tucked into his office contently sucking his thumb. Fred throws tantrums. Real adult tantrums. Every day a tantrum is avoided is a small professional success.

It’s usually at this point when I plot my lunch: a trip to the liquor store for three UV pink lemonade shooters and a $3.49 bottle of Hot Sex Liquor - the additive to my sugar free caramel lattes. Then I will sit in the Cub Food parking lot, not doing anything, not even listening to music. I watch the people moving from their cars to the store and back again as the Salvation Army bell ringer continues her annoying reminder for donations. The alcohol acts as fuel for the approaching afternoon. It makes me less angry and gives me something to look forward to during the work day.

When it’s time to move out of the parking lot and back toward work, I hope for a smooth afternoon, for nothing to fall apart, for mistakes that I may have made to remain unexcavated until I can experience this same nightmare tomorrow.

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Sarah Suzor

poetic genius

A degree to which some thing can become applicable.

Let woman be womanly she gains nothing by striving to become more like man.

The strife in fact there was nothing she wanted less.

And science the way it retracted itself at will that kind of genius one can be made into.

No inch a man she was no length less than her surroundings.

Rain water and a step down resonating in their sparse environments.

*

Some wondered what her

worth would be

while others wished

she wouldn’t have waited till the end.

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41 Photo by Cecilia Kunstadter

Kimberly Castanopn

what the water gave me

Raised by the waves her museum was tossed in the sea but she will collect time her ears are conch shells and to me she sings our ancestors’ hymns of iron hands and silken ribs a century of torn gospels her empire, charred her stolen language cut out of stone and never returned heiress of a thousand suns Her verses written on tides

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Rebecca George

cigarettes

i remember my first cigarette and second and third. stole a pack from my sister’s purse, and me and andy and dave snuck out to the cornfield near my house and finished the pack. i didn’t inhale at all but i liked the way it felt in my mouth. i liked the taste. dave said he always thought he was meant to smoke, was going to be a famous musician and smoke cigarettes with pretty girls in dirty alleys behind dirty bars. i thought of him, skinny legs in leather pants, twirling drum sticks instead of pencils. i watched him carefully stick that cigarette between his chapped lips, shiny braces. i couldn’t be sure if he was inhaling. andy looked like a natural, with his cigarette dangling he looked like james dean, only korean and more awkward, or maybe more cool. he was always so cool, even when he talked about math. he was always so good at math. now dave is doctor dave, and andy is almost doctor andy, and now i am something, or maybe nothing, with a pack in my purse and i still think i like the taste very much.

goodnight kisses always smelled of stale cigarettes and coffee. i could hear daddy and his heavy daddy feet coming up the stairs to tuck us all in. first my brother then my sister then by the time he reached my room i was shaking with excitement with shivers up and down my spine just so excited to get a bedtime story and a kiss good night. or maybe a bed time story and then daddy would check for monsters in the closet and under my bed and behind the big dresser and then he would kiss me good night on my forehead and when he turned off the light i could still smell the stale cigarettes on my face.

in the movies they always make it look like post coital cigarettes are the best like the cigarette was the first thing everyone should want after a good fuck, like the cigarette made it even better, or maybe all better. those movie women always with their lipstick untouched as they smoked their cigarette after a fuck. a boy named john once told me that i look prettiest after sex. he said that and it was better than a cigarette, until i remembered it the

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next day and wondered if i ever looked pretty before sex, and wondered if i looked pretty right then when i blew smoke into the sunrise.

my grandpa used to use the barn to hang tobacco. a hundred years of tobacco hung in that barn that didn’t really look like a barn. tall and green instead of long and red. soft wood that kept in all the flavor. the scent. still smelled like drying tobacco twenty years after the last tobacco was harvested. smelled like tobacco and blood that day. grandpa hung the carcass from a big chain that hung from the tin ceiling. he handed my brother and me a knife and said cut now. cut. so we cut the deer. grandpa then told us to wash up. wash the blood off and i washed and washed my hands after we cut up that deer and my hands still smelled like tobacco when we sat down for dinner that night and i liked the way it smelled. i remember that and wonder if i was meant to like tobacco. i wonder if it is in my blood since it is in my family. that barn and those fields are part of the family.

i slept with an artist who told me his cigarette was a magic wand. it was five minutes of inspiration. it was what it was. when the dark is just right i like to think about painting that color orange. that bright orange red black grey light. i would mix and mix and mix and never get that color right. i then think about that painting at the museum. the one of the girl with the scythe standing in a field with the sunset and the sun setting is bright and perfect and orange and pink and a lot like the end of my magic wand. maybe that artist also liked cigarettes. maybe he saw colors better than i ever could.

it could happen tomorrow says the weather man behind his blue suit at three a.m. on a sunday. what could happen? i said out loud behind my striped pajamas, to the flickering screen to my cigarette. disaster is on its way he answered back with a nice little chuckle that slid under my skin that he masked with his brow.

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isn’t it tomorrow? i thought behind the caffienated eyes that looked to the cigarette that looked to the remote.

i met a man on a street in turkey and he gave me what he called a real cigarette. dark sweet tobacco in a hand rolled. he lit it for me in an unusual way this way with his hand i can’t really replicate but he lit it and took a drag and thought i was going to pass out. i remember thinking that i must not be a real smoker if i can’t handle a real cigarette, but he winked at me and chuckled a bit and said now you know don’t you. the taste was great and it smelled like papa’s shirts when he sat in his rocking chair at night. the man walked away he left me teetering on that street and i still remember his name it was jemil.

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Aimee Herman

[text]urally transmitted dis[ease]

excerpt from

12/ I called myself an atheist because it seemed unattached to rhythm and commitment.

There was no bending involved.

Theory meant sitting with words and thoughts.

My skin grew too many calluses and conditions to remain still.

13/ She called herself an environmentalist.

My mother.

Mental. List.

How do I describe a place that has been glued so many times from mishandling and ripping, much of the original text has blurred itself away?

So much of her has blurred me away.

14/ My mother would let her fingernails grow long, then snap off the length with her teeth.

In the bathtub, she would hold her amputated nail and run along my skin like a sliver of the moon or miniscule boat swimming along my dead skin.

Then, she’d suck on it.

The fingernail?

46

Yes. The taste of your cells beautiful, but hysterical.

She spoke about seeds.

The rapture of apple cores.

Her movements became so metaphorical it is hard to say no to a gesture whose intention is not how it appears.

My mother, placing secrets and keratin so far inside me remnants are still found today.

When is today?

Today can only be defined as the memory I remember.

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“Gradually” “I perceived” “that” “each person” “was surrounded by

a ghostly” second image” “was encased in it” “& each”...

- Alice Notley

Lily Scarborough Heehs

gradually

television remarks. secular in tone, in television breath. those girls. with their allamerican. are sprite. the watching eyes of the walls. or the plaster of diet-soda. the refill of the television. the journey to the mall. the sprinkling of traffic. some double-decker bus. imagined city in Europe. the romantic cause. forgetfulness. the only one left. the discovery that love is dirty underwear, too. coat hangers un used. soap smell, along with perfume and diet soda every therapist now mentions diet. soda a second dimension of DSM-V manual she holds in her lap like a cat.

315.1 uterus reports. the blood colored stains on the wall at the gynecologist. sipping water. afterwards, waiting. the unpleasant. don’t feel this girl. be strawberry. marriage and rose scented. babies. all the holy water antidepressants can offer. and running naked through a strawberry patch. she forgets the walls. the watching. six o’clock news. headlines. the indigenous macaroni station. weather of the intestines. indigenous blazer. tweed and barbie hair-do. the heather valley. of california. orange county. and all those newscasters on fox. are in trouble. as the weather shuts down. in the tissue box. and the nyquil is aghast. the boyfriend drinks the nyquil. the phone rings caller id 44 66 77-endocrinologist. the text message undeciphered by the boyfriend in the weather, in the car and the blowjob. the phone call. the intestinal reports.

some large lump

fee like $725.00

and remember to wax. witness. all the phases of a lunar cycle. as seen on the news. at the nail salon. a small cell phone . the waiting room. the doctor’s office. the cold hands. the pen.

48

Scott Larson

jimmy six pence

Central Park alive with the scurry of New Yorkers sponging last physical enjoyment before the dreary days of November come gliding on clouds of rain. Autumn blue sky, leaves in Fall splendor. Taught, tan, tight-shorted women, fat bottomline business men - jogging, biking, strolling, rollerblading. This is the scene in Central Park to give an idea of a joyous day. But the story begins on a New York City street corner amongst tied executives, skirted women make-upped, laughing evening questions and statements: “Where are we going to eat?” “Wanna catch a play?” “I need a drink.” “Did you see the tits on her?” “They’re not real.” “Who cares I’d like to...”

The usual sounds of NYC abound: honking horns, curses, shouts for cabs, street construction - listen closely and hear a pigeon piping, 200 dollar heels scuffing, white noise of cell phone chatting. The walk sign flashes, the hordes stride resolute - purpose burning a hole in their souls.

If you wanna find the guy in the cave ask the nun.

What nun?

Sister Madeline.

Where do I find her?

At Saint Benedict’s.

Sidewalks glimmer in early morning sun, hosed down and washed clean of city scum accumulated overnight. I go to the church and open the big wooden doors with a solemnity that surprises me, step into the damp dark - candles flicker. I put a dollar in the donation box, grab a candle and walk toward the alter. Pews on both sides. An old woman kneels turning her rosary beads and prays with a devotion and hope that I’ll never have. I play my gothic holy role and light a candle, then make my way to a stiff collared priest who I already hate. He walks haughtily not humbly - a hypocrite.

Where can I find Sister Madeline, Father?

You’re here in regards to...?

I’m a writer.

A journalist? he asks in alarm.

No. I’d like to find out where the...um, man in the cave lives.

Fine, fine. You’ll have to excuse my abruptness but the way things are

49

lately we’ve seen more journalists than members and well... I thought you may be here in regards to the boy...well yes, yes I’ll send Sister Madeline right away. A lovely lady, been here for... We could use some good press for a change.

Sister Madeline walks slowly over threadbare floors, worn from the feet of the repentant. She is self contained, sure in her beliefs and at peace.

I’m Sister Madeline.

Nice to meet you.

You’d like to speak with Jimmy.

Yes Sister.

I won’t have him exploited.

No, of course not. I’d just like to tell his story. Perhaps he may be able to...

To what... get the help he needs?

Um... yes Sister.

God is not enough?

No, I meant to say...

No matter, very well then.

She gives me directions.

Noon day streets are alive with activity and shouts of people who still care, who still believe. A grocer argues with his delivery driver over the quality of his tomatoes:

My customers expect the best. That China Man paid you off. You’ve been giving him the freshest... I’ve been in business for...since before you were born.

God, there’s fear in his eyes, in his quavering inflection - the louder he yells, the more he waves his hands, the easier it is to see. He’s blinded by banal trivialities; if he plays his role to the full he can convince himself of his worth, block out the taptapping of time’s steady march. Yes, these petty arguments will carry him till the long night enshrouds him in truth.

I meet Jimmy by the entrance to his cave where he’s feeding cats that he calls his little soldiers. He’s tall and wiry, his clothes are clean - t-shirt and jeans. He doesn’t look like a homeless man.

Somehow he already knows who I am. He greets me with a hand shake and a Hello, Mr. Writer. Jimmy, Jimmy Six Pence. I notice his arms are riddled with bug bites. He scratches incessantly but seems to accept them as part of the deal.

So, how long have you been living underground?

Twenty-one years. I ran away when I was a teenager.

He’s munching Cheetos and chasing them with garlic cloves. He says they bring out the flavor. His speech is quick and sharp often breaking into rap...

There’s no place like home and home is mom and dad. Not home my own or whatever. Mom and dad that’s home. No kid should leave home before his time, never drink no wine before it’s time, and never leave mom and dad before it’s time.

Now home is an underground cavern beneath an abandoned train station.

I ask him if it’s true that he was given the opportunity to live in an apartment.

50

Yeah, it’s true but I couldn’t handle it... Slept with my boots and leather jacket on, couldn’t crawl under the covers. I didn’t deserve it...everything just bothering my conscience. How can I ask God for forgiveness when I don’t forgive myself ? So I’ll torture myself and go to the cave.

On all fours I follow him to the small room he’s fashioned. Its pitch dark and damp - smells of raw sewage. A candle is lit. He sleeps on a baby mattress wrapped in a garbage bag. He keeps it off the floor using milk crates and has a ragged quilt for warmth.

A draft, dank and rancid, makes the candle’s flame dance. The air is stale and the temperature stifling. He sits on the bed and gives me a crate. Rubbing alcohol to clean himself and nurse his bites, he sits on a stack of New York Times next to a Bible.

Are you a religious man?

I don’t believe in God. I know God. That’s the difference. He speaks to me on this radio.

How do you know its God and not Satan?

The Great Tempter comes in the night and sometimes I’m weak, I can’t resist, I need a way out so I sink to the pipe. I try to imitate Sister Madeline. She imitates Christ and I imitate her.

Why would God allow you to live like this?

Satan has hold of my soul. The more I suffer, the more I deprive myself, the closer I’ll be to God. God can’t punish me enough.

So you’re here to suffer?

God could go to sleep for a million years and let me live and I’d still be trying to figure out what I’m doing here - but Jesus suffered at the hands of his own Father and was raised from the dead so I’ll suffer willingly and maybe someday I’ll rise free of my tomb.

Orange-gray sludge drips down the wall - a continuous stream of the city’s refuse and excrement. I’ve had enough of the cave and we leave - glad to be above ground where the trash and squalor has yet to reach the state of total disintegration when all living and inanimate objects ooze into each other. At least here in the open things are solid, still recognizable shells of themselves - and there’s some hope in that.

I head Up Town to get drunk. On the stool beside me sits a brunette - long legs, red heels. I’d like to lose myself in her but I don’t stand a chance, so I order a double whiskey instead. I drink and despite myself think about the man in the cave alone with his demons. Why doesn’t he just drop his illusions, lighten his burden - this life’s hard enough as it is.

I order another. The woman next to me rambles on her cell phone. She reminds me of the grocer - drowning death’s cry in useless banter. Jimmy has it pegged...the greatest thing God ever made was tomorrow. Tomorrow can’t come soon enough.

51

in the silver waste to(o) be a mirror

Daniel Dissinger

selections from

1. he looks ...up where we’ve been walking through something to(o) bright

inside my mouth and his crashing noise... that city one more time

and he runs his finger across that wet ...hood of a taxi

2. the poem is residential

this misuse of staccato over the low note inside vocal collaboration fabrics flesh as soon as we run out of ink imagine the center this manipulation ...table-salt...

I couldn’t begin I

lost

too much time and

complacency.

nowhere 3. ...the line

more

. .across one universe to(o)

than...

4. yet less of course important

the feeling of rain and

how it

slips off in the distance

52

5. it’s as if once more

where my eye meets

...singed

...my I...

handfuls of hair made a difference

the wait and

height of the view...glued to the table... and made to represent the stirring sound of cyanide in his mouth

this isn’t the reason for my distaste with your point of view these arms up against a wall grope this soft space

. . .pounding in your chest. . .

between each brick

6. birds

stop complaining about wine stains from last night

(moon)

7. forget the nickel on the sidewalk

24. this is a song I like to(o) his hand...

feathers

53

under my chair

with the weight of things

but

in the trees

left over

leg

stuck in the sugar

pick up her skirt from the bed

in the morning

sing cans crushed plink of change in her back pocket... all of it falls like so many polished shoes and red and

59. my knees

and I’m still

are islands lost at sea (?) my tongue buried in sand irritations around my genitals supposed to write

84.

I hold his brittle

83. my hands

...dry...

sunflower...

her face

in the winter

in my chest

1. but it’s really my body that adds the salt it’s original shape he can’t remember...

in the end

nothing returns

to(o)

where one foot steps around a garbage can next to a lit cigarette ...I look up

54

Scott Alexander Jones

the one-eyed poet speaks in a library basement two & a half years post mortem Lullabying one pair of sleepwalking eyes your voice via headphones crossing from shore to shore as I shelve books in the dim morning underground.

Until you choke on I am with you & on I too lived I forget you are speaking.

I forget it’s you who is speaking.

I forget it’s you who is speaking to me.

I forget you’re reciting Whitman’s poem about a once ferry-crossed river now a subway-pierced river.

Now a river spanned by three bridges.

I waded out last summer to some dockside remains as the glass palisades of Manhattan blushed into dusk.

I heard a girl with an arm like Sandy Koufax whose stepfather is Sandy Koufax accuse Shane of stalking or telepathy when he said where Sandy Koufax lives in Brooklyn.

I watched her pitch a stone past the farthest rotting pillar.

I’m less aware of the Whitman who makes you cry the deadman who makes you cry the deadman who makes a deadman cry than of the sniper Charles Whitman.

The Whitman who spared two young lovers atop a clocktower for mistaking blood on his boots for varnish.

For asking if he’d come to shoot pigeons & albino squirrels.

The Whitman who took the very elevator I loaded with watersoaked volumes of Gray’s Anatomy scouring smudged muscles & eyeballs for what’s been proven false about our bodies.

55

As I shelve Days of War, Nights of Love I forget you’re reciting Whitman across the street from where I drove to drop off Nora’s clothes and inhaler & she yelled at Aaron: You’re not invincible, my love & whispered to me: You’re not invisible & threw a peppergrinder at his windshield & reminded him her name in reverse spells his & his name in reverse spells hers.

As I shelve Other Names of the Heart I forget it’s always the summer of ‘86.

That a tape machine traps you in the summer of ‘86.

Perhaps by now you know by heart how in one lingering silence your hand will reach into your pocket for a cigarette & return to the podium with an empty pack & you no longer fight it.

Perhaps by now you know by heart the exact wavering of air passing thru your larnyx as you read: Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky... by heart the creak of chairs, the paper rustle the span of silence it takes to say so I felt.

56

Mitch Maraude

erection day

The people take to the streets drooling, screeching, clutching at their crotches, faces bursting with carnal anticipation and idiot group think. Painted all red or all blue - chanting, shouting in legions, marching forth from their camps.

They meet in the middle on neutral ground. Here they stand facing one another, stepping into opposite ends of a pegboard booth. Each pulls a lever - a privacy curtain snicks shut behind them. Advertisements featuring Red and Blue spokesmodels flash on a small screen set into the divider. At the image each finds most arousing, the Red or Blue hits a button, halting the cycle and opening one of an array of drains set into the floor (generally speaking, Blues pick Blue spokesmodels, Reds pick Red spokesmodels, and a scandal erupts in the case of any deviation).

They masturbate furiously - savagely - tearing, abrading skin - open - open - towards climax. Blood and orgasm splatter against transparent plastic sheets lining the walls of the booth, and flow downwards through grooved channels into the open drain.

Beneath the booths, the spokesmodels from the advertisements - Red and Blue - are locked in tanks - cylinders of soundproof four-inch thick glass. Spouts run into the booths from the drains above: Red drains into the Blue tank, Blue drains into Red. The spokesmodels wait naked and anxious as above them, the people groan and squirm, writhing in masochistic ecstasy - milking themselves for masturbatory juices.

Many clench at their sides, shrieking as their cremaster muscles cramp and lock. Fanatic to produce fluid, they tear at their wrists with grinning animal teeth, opening their veins, spraying sanguine against the plastic.

Dozens die in the booths as their fluids drip down the drains to drown the opposition’s spokesmodel.

The ordeal has been building for months - the entire process something like a tremendous social orgasm. Reds and Blues who have moved away from their camps masturbate, foaming at the mouth, into hermetically sealed cups. They receive these empty, fill them, sign them, and return them to their people to be poured down the drains.

For weeks, the Reds and Blues have been clambering up walls, scaling mountain faces, rappelling from helicopters in order to airbrush vast unblemished nude images of their spokesmodels on any large vertical surface not already covered.

Packs march the streets pounding drums made from the skin of the past contest’s loser, chanting bawdy songs evoking images of their candidates in bestial erotic romps.

57

Gangs of young Blues corner a lone Red - they force him down an alley and pin him to the pavement, stomping and kicking him. A pair of Blues tears their belts off, looping them around the Red’s neck and pull, forcing the Red’s mouth up and open. The others drop their pants and masturbate, spurting down the Red’s throat, drowning him in a torrent of hot coppery fluid. The Red chokes and gasps. As he turns purple, the Blues climb a dumpster and hoist him by the belts, his eyes red as his painted chest from the blood vessels bursting inside them. A Blue unfastens the Red’s pants and positions an absentee cup to capture the spurt of bloody semen that fires off the Red as his neck snaps. Blues sneak these secret cups into the booths and pour them down the drains.

The Reds force their way into a Blue nursery. They batter scores of infants into sticky hot soup, and form a bucket brigade to transport the slop to a line of overcoated Reds who wait for their turns at the booths. The Reds sneak the buckets under bulging overcoats into the booths.

The candidates are poised nervously inside their tanks. The first sticky pearly pink slop trickles down the drains.

The Red spokesmodel recoils in disgust as the goo splatters on his liverspotted shoulder, matting itself into his wiry white back hairs. The Blue spokesmodel, looking upward to avoid the hot flow, catches a trickle in his eye and curses the sting.

The Red observers around the tank giggle, watching him like a TV on mute.

The confection of humanity floods into the Red tank. The spokesmodel attempts to stand on tip toes to avoid the morass of fluid.

The level rises to Red’s knees.

He attempts to scale the slick glass walls, slips and falls into mess, spitting and coughing Blue blood and semen as he gasps for air.

Blues around the tank exchange high fives and hugs, smirking with relish as they count down to the Red spokesmodel’s expiration.

The trickle into the Blue tank is gentle - the neutral Observers, head to toe in immaculate white, have gotten wise to the Red bucket brigade, and patrol the booth lines with rubber gloves and high voltage stun guns, alert for fraud.

“What’s that under your coat, fella?”

“ ‘smy lube, Copper - step off!”

“Let’s have a look, smart guy.”

(The Red panics, looks to run. The Observer jabs the metal prongs of his stun gun into the Red’s neck. His eyes melt, his tongue swells, and he chokes to death in a seizure that smells like burnt flesh.)

The Red spokesmodel doggy-paddles, trying to keep afloat, but his strength wanes. His Blue counterpart stands contentedly in pink up to his naked navel.

Desperate to survive, the Red spokesmodel begins slurping at the DNA broth - coughing as it burns his throat. His stomach distends, widens - he refuses to surrender - will not drown - slurps and slurps for dear life.

The slurping stops. The Red spokesmodel clutches at his swollen stomach, and collapses into the acrid solution.

“What happened?”

58

“Looks like his goddamned gut bursted! The old bastard is drowning on the inside!�

The Observers unlock the tanks, and the Blue spokesmodel ceremoniously hauls the Red out of his tank, reaching for the skinning knife on the table beside them.

59

Yasamin Ghiasi

self Portrait

She is everywhere, flies all around. Being here askew, sudden as night. Old and crooked with drug again so focused on editing. And those cracks in her chest of a million star depths, it is as if they are laughing. Today, she wanted to hear what I would say about what happened, if I could listen without cringing as slim as dusk.

What new ripple at keel: the presence between nothings. Trapped by comparison or structure or sophistication. These bullets bury deeper than logic, than marshes of incidental proximity. She crawls to the edges to ponder, complain, creak. A good voice of emergence, the landscape has changed her. Like gray stone, crudely set in page and air, milky absent air. I try to compose myself, clambered on a cairn of her own mythology. Her oblivion. Not again, her spectral spectrum belted, pale in its ghost-nimb. I at the half-mile of unblemished blackness lifting her dÊcor of ridicule, chaos, mirage. But so do all things doing caveat escape as incrementally as wind and shaped syllables. Today, I think the word permeated oil a little. Knotted chain. I wait however, in a completely obscured perspective for the woman blooming out of that poem, lonely years, explaining the words. How many times she trods delicate petals and crushes them with power balanced between brown thighs. She doesn’t belong this far west. Crushing songs, simple nymphs between white sheets of paper. Obedient words, obligatory words. But who remembers at this point to nourish potential? To feel strange. I reduce her ungathered rapture to the confinement of complications.

She of the romantic, and evasive, and bored. It doesn’t matter if you want the nudging chants of her region. Believe me, this will not pass, her uncanny knowledge of wind where everything intersects. She sang so it fell down, so cold, so pretty on which to be naked cast until her three jagged graces came.

60

61 Photo by Luke Bennett

Richard Schwass

second hour

Awaiting an eventual tide a blind dog calls the second hour first lock on the flower that closes for morning you know the third hour isn’t coming short his call and the milky moons swimming in the drawers of his eyelids’ drumming the love of evening meets the quirk of a vagrant program’s circuit first insured liar, second busted tire since daylight’s faulty wiring undid the night mechanic’s work dull the edges of free hours longing can’t cut both ways blind cur calls the number seven passes by the lintel of its tenant no absurd walls climb this valley city sun takes possession of secret desert warrens still searching for something that doesn’t exist out hunting sphinxes your cock in your fist join the ranks of recent ghosts scorched and banished by eleven

62

Merrill Shane Jones

rosa marie over the rooftops of isla del vistoso

I implored my husband,

“Alejandro!

We must plant our pale rose in the garden.”

- St. Lourdes del Vistoso

Alejandro Arroyo y Soto paraded his wife through the streets of Isla del Vistoso. The procession of islanders led by Alejandro was on its third and final round of the downtown square. Alejandro’s wife, Lourdes Pena Flores de Arroyo, sat within a giant seashell lined with velvet cushions atop a pedestal carved and now carried by Alejandro. It was the prospect of a new life that had given Alejandro the strength he needed to prepare for this day - the strength he now used to balance Lourdes by wrapping his arms around the base of the pedestal and hugging it tightly to his chest. He proceeded carefully, keeping Lourdes’s wine where it belonged - in her glass.

Lourdes’s auburn hair, which at all times appeared to be lit by the dawn, now rode the zephyr from the sea like the winged flames of a spirit’s ascent to heaven. Alejandro could sense her essence from below the pedestal: an intrepid nature unusual to a Vistosoena that presented itself through her every action and every word without apology. Where most women in Isla del Vistoso kept their concerns limited to what hundreds of years of convention had determined acceptable, Lourdes never hesitated to express her opinion no matter how controversial the subject. It was Lourdes who had the audacity five years earlier to dispute The Curse of Barren Shells, saying it was “as imaginary as God himself.” They had called her a heretic, and many suggested feeding her to the hungry volcano to end the curse on the islanders. “There hasn’t been a sacrifice in more than a hundred years,” she had said. “We have been wanting for less than twenty.” It was impossible to argue with her logic, even for the most dogmatic. But look at her now, Alejandro thought, admired by all. Recently, Alejandro felt so much desire that he couldn’t sleep at night, and he had used these sleepless nights to prepare for today’s parade.

He had shaped Lourdes’s pedestal from the largest Paratecoma tree on the island. After tearing the tawny bark from the tree, he carved the pedestal from a section of the trunk more than four feet in length and two feet in diameter. Alejandro also stitched the velvet lining of the seashell with Lourdes’s preferred cross-legged position in mind. And there she sat, higher than anyone in Isla del Vistoso.

Dr. Horatio Ramirez had confirmed the miracle that Lourdes was with child

63

a few weeks earlier. None of the islanders had been able to conceive for almost twoand-a-half decades, and many theories had been set forth as to the cause. Some said it began the day dry thunder first cracked over Mt. Belladonna and the rainstorms followed without a single flash of lightning. Without that electric stimulation, they said, the water that fell to the island didn’t hold the life energy necessary to nourish the womb. Others said God was punishing them for their wastefulness. When divers began to surface with oysters that didn’t have even the slightest hint of a sand granule on their meaty tongues, many claimed that The Curse of Barren Shells was upon them. It was said to be the natural consequence of taking the pearls and discarding the oysters all those many years. Dr. Ramirez and the top Vistoso scientists had tested many islanders and, inexplicably, the zona pellucida of the female proved impenetrable.

It seemed the male gametes lacked the enthusiasm necessary to burrow their way through the membrane. Older islanders said lack of respect and indolence in the younger generation had become a contagious disease that had infected the core of all men. Many had lost confidence. Until then.

In less than six months, Dr. Ramirez would deliver the first baby born in Isla del Vistoso in twenty-four years. As he had told Alejandro on many occasions, the irony was not lost on him. Dr. Ramirez’s last delivery, twenty-four years earlier, had been none other than little Lourdes Pena Flores. Because the doctor was getting on in years, it was decided that a few of the younger generation would need to be trained in the art of midwifery. Over the previous few weeks, Dr. Ramirez had interviewed more than twenty prospective trainees for delivery practice. Only two were chosen, and they had their place in the procession with Dr. Ramirez, directly behind Alejandro.

The procession stopped when Tercero, the roaming prophet from the sea who walked the shores of the island listening to the sea within the murex seashells, wandered into the middle of the street holding a shell to his ear and a fortune on his tongue. The cheering of the crowd became a confusion of mumbles and whispers. “Let the man speak!” Alejandro said. The crowd noise subsided as the islanders waited for Tercero’s news.

“She brings the baby to term, so sayeth the sea,” Tercero shouted, and the islanders cheered.

“Does the sea say if we will have a son or a daughter?” Alejandro asked.

“It does,” Tercero replied, his peppered hair glistening in sea water, glimpses of salt flashing like dying stars with each turn of his head.

“Out with it!” Alejandro demanded.

“She is the most beautiful girl to ever breathe your island air, so sayeth the sea.”

“Will there be others?” someone asked.

“Yes, tell us. Will there be more with life in their bellies?” called another voice from the back of the crowd.

“I have heard the key is Rosa Marie,” Tercero replied.

“Rosa Marie?”

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“Rosa Marie Arroyo Pena,” Tercero said. “Alejandro and Lourdes’s daughter.

She bears this name because of her rose-touched hair, so sayeth the sea.”

“Is there anything more?” Alejandro wanted to know.

Tercero pressed the shell to his ear and brought a shaking finger to his lips before speaking. “Rosa Marie can deceive you if you choose to be deceived.”

“What does this mean?” Alejandro asked.

“Although her cries are brief, they are cries of hope. The first to see her must look with eyes and listen with ears, so sayeth the sea.”

“Is this not the way these organs have served us since the beginning of time?”

Dr. Ramirez asked.

Tercero listened long to the shell and spoke again. “If you see and hear Rosa Marie as she truly is, you will understand the message of her cries, and your people will thrive for centuries to come; if not, you will wander blind and deaf until her magic winds you down.”

“Is there anything more?”Alejandro asked.

“There is a change in the heart of every Vistosoeno, save one, so sayeth the sea.”

“What change?” Alejandro said. “Is what you say a good or a bad omen?”

“The first to see her decides for every Vistosoeno, save one.”

“Decides what?” Alejandro asked.

“Decides how to see Rosa Marie, the pale rose of Vistoso.”

“Who is the one?”

“The truth changes the one who does not see as the others see.”

“These riddles are pointless!” the doctor cried.

“They tell us nothing!” another shouted.

“So sayeth the sea,” Tercero said. He took the shell away from his ear, turned, and walked back to the shore.

After the final round of the square was complete, the islanders followed Alejandro and Lourdes back to their home. While they awaited his return, Alejandro wrapped Lourdes in silk sheets, kissed her on the forehead, and crossed himself while reciting a prayer of thanks. He then returned and led the islanders to an area on the beach where he dug up and set before them a warm and succulent boar. He told the story of how he had wrestled it to the ground and snapped its neck two mornings before. “My timing could not have been better,” he said. “A boar of this size must roast for a minimum of thirty-three hours. Let us eat!” The doctor was the first to raise his wine glass in a toast. “To Alejandro and Lourdes,” he said. “And Rosa Marie!” someone shouted.

Her nails upon these dungeon walls,

her fear in my belly.

- St. Lourdes del Vistoso

In expectation of the coming baby and the possibility of more expectant mothers, the islanders celebrated every day and night up to the day Lourdes’s water

65

broke. The streets, cafes, and bars were very lively during these months, and behind closed doors, concupiscence was rewarded. Although Alejandro and Lourdes did have their fair share of love-making during this time due to Alejandro’s unsurpassed affection for his wife, he spent much of his time creating. His first task after the parade was to build a crib - wide, long, and well-fashioned from corner to corner and leg to leg.

All the cribs on the island had been used as firewood fourteen years earlier during an abnormally long winter. The winter had lasted three years and was thought by some to be the result of a new invention Alejandro had created for climbing the towering coconut trees. At the press of a button, the contraption, known as the Sotolapsus, would shimmy right and left, coughing out tiny sparks and grayish exhaust that smelled like the corpses of broad-snouted Caimans, and roll the climber up and down the tree. A group soon formed that tested the effects of this foul-smelling exhaust and submitted a grievance to island authorities claiming that the oppressive nature of the exhaust caused it to rise above the cold mountain air and force the cold air slowly down to sea level. It went on to claim that an extended winter would soon be unavoidable. The group also called attention to the possibility that other technologies invented by the Arroyo family over the past century were the cause of infertility among the islanders. This had angered Alejandro so severely that he used his unlimited reserves of political power to have the group dismantled.

To build the crib, Alejandro used much of what was left over from the Paratecoma tree. And by grinding the yellowish bark into a fine powder, he was able to mix a solution - Paratecoma-bark powder, egg white, Ficus elastica, frog innards, jellyfish tentacles, and bamboo leaves - that when heated at the right temperature for the right amount of time became strong and elastic. It was more flexible and more durable than any material on the island, and he used this new invention for many projects.

The wire clothesline in their backyard had been drooping for years and all pants and dresses dragged the ground, so Alejandro surprised his wife with a replacement clothesline made from the new material. He called it Sotosclerityne. Alejandro made many useful things for his wife and their coming baby during this time: a baby swing with Sotosclerityne rope and a rubber seat, a baby bottle with Sotosclerityne nipple, a floor cleaner that Lourdes could strap to her feet, many tiny outfits for Rosa Marie, and a beautiful dress for Lourdes that she looked forward to wearing every day she counted down to Rosa Marie’s birth.

The day arrived at last. Alejandro rang the bell in the St. Fernandez church seven times in succession and Dr. Ramirez came to the Arroyo household right away.

Soon, the whole village stood outside. Tercero had the best view of all, for he was there before the bell had even rung, informed by the whispers of the sea.

I could not discern the quake of their hearts.

The darkest knowing eluded my sight.

- St. Lourdes del Vistoso

Lourdes passed out from exhaustion after giving birth to Rosa Marie, and Dr. Ramirez was the first to lay eyes upon the baby. Although Tercero had predicted it,

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Alejandro was shocked by the abrupt end to Rosa Marie’s cries. He leaned over the doctor’s shoulder and tried to get a glimpse of his firstborn

“Is she okay?” Alejandro asked.

Dr. Ramirez turned to him with tears streaming down his cheeks. “She is magnificent!” he exclaimed, and he presented Rosa Marie by lifting her body within Alejandro’s sight.

The islanders had gathered at the open windows, and when they heard the doctor’s exclamation, they leaned in and climbed over one another in order to see Rosa Marie as Alejandro saw her now. At first, her silence frightened Alejandro, wrenching his heart from his body. But the doctor’s words seemed to animate Rosa Marie, and when Alejandro’s heart returned to its proper place, he saw her as Dr. Ramirez had described.

Her red hair reached from the roots down to the backs of her heels in fullbodied waves with a scent of fresh strawberries and the first lilies of spring. She was at least twice the size of any newborn ever recorded in the history of Isla del Vistoso, and she had a fully-formed woman’s body. There was no afterbirth to speak of, and she glistened in her powder-white nudity with sparkles of silver and platinum flickering in the light on her skin. Alejandro and the doctor agreed it was merely a natural phenomenon. Rosa Marie smiled coquettishly, as if aware of the power she had to bring about uncontrollable sexual desire, and both men fell deeply in love, Alejandro in a most unnatural and inappropriate way. But the islanders would quickly forgive him, admitting that it could not be helped, for their hearts had also been wrenched from their chests, cracked, reinforced and replaced as they gazed helplessly at the undeniable beauty of Rosa Marie.

When free of the womb, Rosa Marie rose and hovered above her mother supine on the living room floor. Dr. Ramirez let her go when he felt the sky pulling at her, and she floated at the end of an umbilical cord made of gold-braided strands.

“Cut me free,” Rosa Marie said, in a voice Alejandro thought might have once belonged to the Virgin Mother herself: a reverberating voice that circled the room and gave the house a gentle shake. Only when Rosa Marie made scissors with her fingers did the doctor oblige. Like burnt paper over an open fire she ascended, her back bouncing up against the vigas in the ceiling. She turned and grabbed a beam and shimmied toward the front door as if climbing to the top of a coconut tree, then she asked Alejandro to get the door, and he complied without question, for he’d do anything for Rosa Marie, anything she asked, anything at all.

Rosa Marie floated up and out, into the sky of Isla del Vistoso, and the islanders gathered in wonder and love-struck awe. It was said that her body weighed no more than six feathers of a Macaw, as Rosa Marie, the one they all loved so dearly, obsessively, and terribly, turned into a tiny dot in the sky and disappeared.

I took our pale rose to the ground

as they searched among the clouds.

- St. Lourdes del Vistoso

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Jessica Surabian

through her eyes

Observing, studying, the lonely buildings once well-known to many.

She wanted to recreate the past, connect it to the present.

How could she bring this past to life and give recognition to their names?

She held the instrument firmly in her hand.

The lines began to flow thinking of the events held, the people who once walked their lengthy floors, the decorations that graced their walls.

Windows, doors, and brick walls quickly form, so light and flat along the crisp, white surface.

She begins to enhance it, make it come to life darker and darker, bringing form to its solid exterior.

Framed and ready, The first piece is complete the simple masterpiece, the work of art, that means so much.

A talent not gone to waste.

A building remembered and drawn.

A past created‌ in the present.

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Mel Kozakiewicz

happy like that for emily

and she is as happy. as s.pool.s of red ribbon. dusky gold trim. clean. tidy. gift wrap like Christmas. like new lipstick. greysmoky eyes. aren’t really hers, but nonetheless fabulous happy. like. a swan.ky rug. or a private train-car. making stops. only in Milan and Belize. happy. enough to give back, even though she hates this part, but loves the way he smells so she fancies it happy. like dimples shine. on the long walk home. happy. like the television is. always off. so happy she’s not sure. if she’s sober. sing car songs happy. notice license plates. happy like boun.ci.n.g. happy like waking. realizing. she hasn’t died. in her sleep. or jumped. off that old barn. in Brockport. or encouraged her sister. to buy. a handgun. she doesn’t want or can’t control. happy. like finally. finish the den. sit. in the new. easy. chair. like tuna-melts. kisses behind the knees. hot tubs and bikinis. that look terrific. like big.

California. blends. or Troop Beverly Hills. happy. like finally. meet the man. she loved her whole life. without. knowing. him. like obedient children. raise their hands to ask curious questions. about science. and Barack Obama. happy like kicking. crispy leaves. on our way. to the bookstore. happy like hot. pancakes. like watching. the game. and they win. happy. like Emily happy. happy like that.

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unwinding myself whole

Paige Doughty

from

1

Funny things start to happen when you write your life. When your words, and the sound of the pen on the page become the only thing you can trust, when the truth is a shifty shadowy thing, always slightly out of grasp, always told differently by someone else. Always there. Never there.

It’s an unsettling feeling to find you are no longer sure of anything. When even your own memories are called into question, when you are told your perceptions are slightly off, or that things didn’t happen that way, you’re just a sensitive person.

You start to think maybe you’re not made for this world, of hard reality, asphalt roads cutting swaths in straight lines, classrooms and offices full of insecurities and fears, which you can feel palpably in the air while the rest face forward and seem to notice nothing. Nothing out of the ordinary anyway. Are they half dead? Or are you half crazy?

You start to ask questions that no one can answer: if I’m not cut out for this world of hardness, a place where lofty idealism and plans for a magical life don’t fit, what is the point of my existence? You wish you could pull out the contents of your brain and lay them in a stark white room for examination, like reorganizing before a move.

“This can stay. This should go. Put that in the give away pile.” Between your fingers you are holding the ribbons of your life. This pink one, it’s your birth. That blue one’s been misplaced, is it your father’s eyes?

“Oh definitely hold onto that it could be useful if I ever have kids.”

You attempt to wipe clean the corners of your mind. The places hidden from view, the closets long forgotten and still full of stuff.

“Simplify your life,” you think, but you can’t access all the rooms at once, if you do this you’ll overwhelm yourself. So you keep pulling, one string of thoughts at a time, one string of moments, one string of memories. You smooth each one out against your hand like pulling on ribbon after it’s been curled, you press it between two heavy books so that later you can organize your life into some recognizable pattern, grouping yourself into questions, and stories, themes and overarching ideas. But like any organizational project, it always gets messy before it gets clean. Soon you are drowning in yourself. You want to give up. You can’t. You’ve gone too far. And you don’t know where to begin, so you just do.

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The Beginning

I’ll start with the question which started this book: Why did I, amidst so many others in the world, decide at the age of fourteen to slowly and intentionally kill myself ? Not just a bullet to the brain, which would be swift, easy, and over, but rather through a slow drawn out, public process of starvation?

Because I didn’t really want to die?

Because I wanted to have some fun on the way out?

Because nothing in the world made sense?

Because I knew as a young person, who hadn’t yet been confused enough to lose sight of the truth, that I was living in a world of lies. With that knowledge I could only see two choices for my life: live forever on the periphery for wanting truth or just turn off. Tune in to unplug.

The truth is all of these. The truth is as a teenager my parents controlled my life.

“You are a teenager and you are my child! You have to go to school.” This is your mother speaking.

“But it’s eating me alive!” you tell her.

“It’s the law.” Her response.

“Fine then! When I’m fifteen I’ll drop out.” You’ve heard somewhere that once you turn fifteen you can drop out without your parents’ consent. You have no idea if it’s true.

“Do you know how lucky you are young lady!” It’s your father’s voice coming out of your mother’s mouth. His childhood was different. He reminds of this often, how poor he was, how lucky you are in comparison.

But the reality is you don’t feel lucky at all. Every day is the worst day of your life. You cannot remember the last time you truly laughed, feeling it fill you from the gut. This is something that healthy, jolly people do. You are starving.

School is bad. Mind numbing, terrifying. Home is slightly better until your parents get home and the fighting starts. About what? Not doing what they want, not being on a sports team, not joining any clubs, small things. Battles of will nonetheless.

You can’t seem to find words they can comprehend in order to explain that doing all these “activities” to look good on your college application would only prolong the torture of the too long school day, the unsafe school day, the hours of clocks ticking until you can leave.

You lock yourself in your bedroom at night. You finally join the cross country team, mostly because it’s the only sport your parents can’t come to watch. You feel terrible because you love them somewhere, but you also hate them. They have made your life hell.

It’s the cross-country practices that push you over the edge. Conversations in the locker room range from how much fat is in a Snickers bar to what size dress

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people will be wearing to homecoming, a dance you will not attend.

But I love Snickers bars, you think. A friend shows you how to read the nutrition information on the brown and blue plastic packaging. You grow quickly obsessed. You want to be “better.” A better daughter, better student, better person.

It’s a vague term but your life is saturated with the idea of “bettering” yourself. It fills the void of meaning in the rest of your life.

By the time you enter the hospital you can recite from memory the numbers on the backs of all the major product groups from you family’s cupboards and refrigerator. Not that any of this is actually “food” but that realization won’t come until much later. You are still a teenager. You succumb easily to marketing. Your mother buys the food you eat, but soon you will seize this, vehemently as if not accepting the food that she provides for you can let her understand how her choice to stick to “the rules” is ruining your life.

With the help of “the media” - Seventeen Magazine, Young and Modern, The Real World on MTV, Ariel - The Little Mermaid - and her perfect little waist, you will waste yourself away in service to an ever shrinking image of what is good enough.

When you go into “recovery” you will learn from the nurses and other medical staff that an eating disorder is a disease. You will learn to separate this “thing” from yourself. You will give “it” a name. “Shithead.” You choose the name that as a fifteen year old seems crude enough to represent that which you hate. You give it an image. Yours is one of the most terrifying representations the staff has seen, you can tell by their reactions, by the force in your voice when you talk about it.

Shithead is a shadow. It has spindly thin arms and legs and is shaped like a human. You cut it out from black construction paper and it hangs dangling in the sunny window of the “common area.” One day another girl walks into treatment.

She is angry to be there, but over eighteen - a voluntary admission like you. You see her and think, “My god she is a walking skeleton. She looks disgusting.” It is this, the realization that you could look like that which seals completely the fact that you want to gain weight.

In the hospital you struggle to eat your allotted amount of calories. Slowly the staff increases your consumption so you will put on the pounds needed for “health.”

The hospital food is delicious, at first, because you are starving. You learn how to enjoy food again. But then slowly you realize the food is actually terrible. One night you almost cannot finish your meal because the dessert on your plate, some semblance of pie, is so nasty you think you will vomit just at the thought of consuming it. The nurse threatens you with Ensure, a dietary supplement in its place, but this is double the calories. You cannot stomach the thought of double calories. You gulp down the piece of pie, tears streaming your face.

Some girls are tricky. After lights out they creep onto the cold floor next to their beds and do sit ups. Others bounce their legs when they are supposed to be sitting still. You aren’t interested in burning extra calories. At this point you just want out.

The hospital is full of strong women, although you notice that it is still a man who is the “head” doctor. One day as part of your counseling you and the other

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in-patients look through magazines from the 1950’s through today. You examine the way the images have changed over the years. You meet Karen Carpenter, a singer from before you were born whom people have remarked looks similar to you. Her gaunt haunted face stares from the page. She died of starvation.

You and the other girls are shocked, then enraged.

“These images! These magazines! They are the reason we are sick! They are the reason, the thing that is wrong. And they are everywhere!”

You leave the session empowered and angry. Finally there is someone to blame - “the media.” The media has done this to you. You aren’t ready to face the fact that the media is a product of your entire culture, that you are a product of the media, that your father works for a company that makes advertisements to plaster all over the world, that “the media” is people thinking up ideas based on what are culturally accepted ways to view women, and human beings in general, in the world. That oppression is alive and well.

You “recover” faster than anyone ever has at this hospital. The nurses praise your progress. You explain to your boyfriend that things are going to be “different” from now on. He cries with the threat, though you don’t really know what you are going to change. You know you want to have more fun, more friends, more things to do which are fulfilling: music, art, writing, all that you gave up when you moved and started attending Apple Valley High School.

After a month you leave the hospital clasping a key chain which holds small laminated colored pencil drawings with affirmations scribbled on the backs:

“You are beautiful.”

“You can do it.”

“Beat the Beast.”

“Will Eat for Boobs.”

And armed with phrases like: “social constructions” and “image obsessed media.”

You have set goals with the help of the hospital staff. To eat out at a restaurant. To walk in the rain. To buy new clothes to fit your new body. Your mother diligently covers all the nutritional information on all of the boxed products that she purchases. One day at school you get your period for the first time in over a year. You rejoice alone in the fluorescent lit bathroom stall in the “A” wing and wonder if you will ever be able to have children. You are getting healthy.

You think about starting a support group at school - you know there are others out there “like you”- but the interest wanes swiftly when you experience the way people look at you, the cautiousness with which you are approached, mostly by boys - the fear in girls’ eyes keeps them completely at bay. You didn’t think people would notice your absence, didn’t think you were important enough to be missed, but they have. You are branded. “The girl with an eating disorder.” The support group never happens, you are afraid to differentiate yourself further.

One afternoon, shortly after you have been released from St. Louis Park Methodist Hospital, you are hanging out with some friends in a dark basement. Three boys and two girls. The basement functions as both the weight room and bedroom for two of the boys, they are brothers. One is several years older than the rest of

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you. It is known that he has “problems.” His dad beat him when he was young and so you are used to tolerating his meanness when it arises.

“So,” he says addressing you. “What’s wrong with you anyway?”

“What do you mean? Nothing’s wrong with me,” you reply.

“I mean what the hell? Why did you starve yourself ?” he asks, his tone taunting.

You launch into your understanding of what has happened in your life. The phrases from the hospital come out of your mouth. You even feel a surge of power as they exit your lips: “socially constructed body images, reinforced by the media, women bombarded by oppressive patriarchal images.”

“So what, are you some feminist now?” He spits the word feminist at you, the way he would say cunt or whore, clit or tits, sharp edges on the “t,” intended to pierce.

He smirks when he sees you balk.

“I mean don’t you think you had something to do with it? You’re the one who didn’t eat. You’re the one who starved herself.”

You start to get angry.

“No,” you sputter. And then his brother is at his side.

“Yeah, I think he’s right. I mean come on, it was your choice. You did it.” The younger brother’s heart isn’t in it in the same way but the words are worse because he is supposed to be your friend. You understand then that this isn’t the first time these “friends” have talked about you this way. You look around to find that you are alone with these two young men in the basement. Your best friend, the other girl, and your boyfriend are outside smoking. You continue to try to explain your position. But the words don’t make sense to you anymore, they are a cluster-fuck, a jumble of jargon.

Of course it is your fault. How could you not have seen this earlier?

The older boy sees that he has cracked you. He waits before he says the next words, pauses to be sure they will sink in amidst the stale carpet smell and the dingy basement light.

“I mean I don’t know why you had to starve yourself. You’re super hot anyway and at least now you’ve got boobs again. That boyfriend of yours is a lucky man.”

He ends his sentence with a whistle and rapes you with his eyes. The younger brother intervenes, suddenly uncomfortable with what is happening.

“Come on, let’s ahh, see what’s goin’ on upstairs.”

When you step outside from the murk of the basement the sky is brilliant with sun. It is freezing, a perfectly clear, crisp winter day. You blink to get your bearings in the dazzling light.

“What’s up?” your best friend asks you. You fight back tears.

“Nothing,” you reply with a shrug.

The two of you stand on the stoop smoking cigarettes while the boys jump into the older brother’s tiny red car and spin donuts in the snowy cul-de-sac. The air is broken by the rev of their engine. The smell of gasoline fills the air.

Slowly you realize that although your “whole world” changed while you were in the hospital, though within those safe walls you were a confident empowered young woman with important truths to share, out here nothing has changed. You are dif-

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ferent, but the world is the same and it doesn’t like “different.” You understand thatthere isn’t really any help. You can cover up nutrition information and avoid looking at magazines but this does not erase their existence. This doesn’t change anything really. And so you welcome into your life something which is perhaps worse than your illness, something more subtle and more painful than starvation or hours of exercise.

Like a Faustian deal you know it isn’t the best decision but it seems to be the only one you’ve got. It’s called acceptance.

75

Rob Geisen

i.l.o.v.e.y.o.u.

my love is a loving love can you see that? it is loving your love is a hard-hearted I don’t care about children love and that’s wrong but my love is right civil right I believe that in order to make society as hopeful as it possibly can be you should want me but you do not want me it’s a wholesale crime that you don’t want me what the heck-I..of course there’s a lot... look, my love should be taken seriously it needs to be taken seriously and I take it seriously why won’t you take it seriously?

I.L.O.V.E.Y.O.U-get it? lot of initials from a guy who’s not from Washington isn’t it? anyway-it’s important to be credible but I don’t think that’s important you have unilaterally stated that you don’t want me and I think this is an issue

76

Daniela Beuren

haiku for hillary

in her apartment she nails roses to the wall and lets poems grow

77

Rea Allen

speechless

Sometimes when asked a question, I just stare. It is usually just a moment or two, but the person waiting for my response usually develops a questioning look when I don’t reply quickly. It is not to say that I don’t understand what is being said, or that I don’t know what is going on around me, because I do. It’s just that I cannot speak. Recently I read an essay, “Recalled to Life,” by Oliver Sacks who writes about Patricia H., a woman who suffers from aphasia due to a stroke. I related to the story immediately because, like Pat, I also have aphasia, although mine is in the form of an epileptic seizure. I’ve had epilepsy since I was four years old.

In the early 1950s my younger siblings, Donnie and Carol, and I were playing in an open field next to our house in Compton, California. I had just turned four, my brother three and my sister was two. Three children having fun and frolicking in the afternoon sunshine, throwing dirt clods that crumbled into the yard on impact. And like all kids we threw them at each other, picking them out of our mother’s flowerbed full of hydrangeas. My sister discovered a large dirt clod and came running towards my brother and I, when it became too heavy for her and she dropped it, stumbling on top of me.

Unfortunately, the dirt clod turned out to be a mixture of cement and rock disguised by the dirt around it. The rock dropped right behind my left ear, causing a large bump to surface followed by a concussion. After a couple months of putting ice packs behind my ear and visiting the doctor almost weekly, the bump was still there.

Our family doctor was concerned and wanted to monitor it, but after a month my family’s routines began to fill our time. Nothing seemed to be happening to me, so I stopped going to the doctor. I really can’t remember when the funny sensations in my head started, probably about six months after the accident.

Just before I fell off to sleep a tingling sensation would start on the right side of my face, continuing all the way to the back of my head, followed by numbness, a feeling like just before a hand or foot falls asleep. I called it a buzzing feeling because it vibrated. Soon these episodes would occur through the day while I was awake.

Even at four-and-a-half I could feel them coming on. It always gave me time to hide because I felt I was doing something wrong. I felt I had done something to bring this on and I didn’t want to get in trouble, so I hid in the closets and sometimes in the back yard, bathroom, or even behind the doors, while I had my less violent Petit Mal seizures.

As hard as I tried to control the buzzing the uncontrollable shaking got worse, until one Sunday, early afternoon, I was walking toward my mother from the

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backyard when a Grand Mal seizure hit with no warning. I heard my mother screaming hysterically for my dad. He reassured my mother that it would be okay, to call the doctor (back then the doctor usually called the ambulance). I remember smelling the grease from the car he had been working on and the odor from the cigarette he must have thrown out of his mouth just before picking me up, comforting me with a promise he would protect me. I don’t remember anything else till I awoke, lying in my folk’s bed, because the doctor wanted my mother to monitor my seizures through the night. The room was dark, because of the blankets hanging over the windows. The house was quiet. I did not hear my brother or sister, or our barking dog Frisky.

Doctor Lowery, a slightly overweight middle-aged man, walking up the driveway behind the ambulance, was shaken by what he was witnessing. After I stayed a week in the hospital, he advised my folks to eliminate anything that would cause me to get excited. My brother, sister, and the dog were farmed out to the various relatives for the next six months. The doctor’s orders were “complete bed rest in darkened rooms and nothing to incite excitement.”

Dr. Lowery was a country doctor. He made house calls and usually traveled to all his patients. He wore a dark blue pinstriped suit that looked as old as he did. It was not unusual to see him walk into the room with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, usually looking for an ashtray to put it in or put it out. He would carry his large black bag, which snapped together at the top, into the room and bring out a stethoscope to hear my heart. He examined the lump behind my ear and asked my mom how many tremors I’d had. The doctor referred to my illness as “the tremors.”

The tremors had veered off to a sizable degree, and I was allowed to have company. I saw relatives I didn’t know I had. I even got to see my Great Grandfather Fellows, on my dad’s mother’s side, from Missouri. They all brought me presents; I became very spoiled by all this attention, to the point I became a demanding child.

This had to be hard on my folks and my younger siblings.

I don’t recall taking medicine at this time. This disease called “epilepsy” was usually not treatable outside of an insane asylum. It was considered incurable. At five years of age, I would average one hundred Grand Mal seizures a day. There are periods of my life I cannot remember because of the exhaustion brought on by the severity of the seizures.

My parents were a part of that 1950’s-on-into-the-1960’s mentality, where they were led to believe a mental institution was the only way to protect me from outside dangers. Fortunately for me, my dad was not afraid of a challenge. He was the kind of father who went into debt to get me the best doctor there was at the time.

Dr. Fitzgibbon, a pioneer neurologist, did not believe in sending anyone, let alone a five-year-old, to an institution. His knowledge and training gave me the capacity and understanding to combat the disease on my own terms. My father, whose only priority was to protect me, did not like Dr. Fitzgibbon at first. The doctor told him under no circumstances was I to go into an institution. I was going to learn how to deal with my disease, and that meant living a normal life in spite of it.

School was difficult to start at first. I only have brief memories of kinder-

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garten because I spent a lot of time at St. Mary’s Hospital in Long Beach. I am sure, when I think of the treatments I was given, that they must have been a new technology and I must have been one of many being tested. At my young age, it was like being tortured and punished for having the dreaded “epilepsy.” I went through several different types of electroencephalograms (EEG).

Just as the activity in a computer can understand multiple levels, from the activity of individual transistors to the function of applications, the EEG can describe the electrical activity of the brain on relatively small to much larger scales. The EEG has three purposes: it measures the currents coming into a single neuron and at the same time collects the electric voltage fields from millions of neurons, and then measures the activity.

Using metal clamps with pointed teeth at the ends, they dug deep in the scalp.

The so-called “scalp EEG” would use tens to hundreds of electrodes positioned at different locations on the surface of the head. The data from the scalp EEG was used for clinical and research purposes. My hair would be saturated with disinfecting gel and blood at the end of this type of testing. In neurology, the main diagnostic purpose of the EEG was to determine the spikes and waves of the brain, and to decide the severity of the epilepsy. The medical staff would stick needles in different areas of my head, again saturating my hair with blood.

The EEG was just being explored by cognitive neuroscience at that time. It was used to investigate the neural correlates of mental activity from low-level perceptual and motor processes to higher-order cognition such as attention, memory, and reading. I didn’t mind this test because I could lie down and close my eyes and the testing would bring on a kaleidoscope of colors and designs to entertain me.

After the entire test was analyzed, the doctors determined that I had suffered major brain damage to the central nervous system and had exposure to all three types of epileptic seizures (they have identified many more since then). They were Petit Mal (Absence), Medi Mal (Atonic), and Grand Mal (Tonic-C lonic and Myoclonic). As time went on and with the help of prescribed medication (11/2 milligrams of Phenobarbital and later 1 milligrams of Phenytoin, Carbamazepine), my childhood days became normal.

First, second and third grades proved to be harder on my teachers than my parents and I. They had to monitor my behavior and seizures. It must have been extremely difficult for Mrs. Whortley, Mrs. Melon and Mrs. McFarland to teach and nurse me at the same time. However, they too contributed to making my childhood life as normal as possible. Nevertheless, I still suffered from night seizures and it was at this time (about ten years old) that I determined to conquer this dreaded disease on my own.

I began to learn relaxation exercises, not realizing they closely resembled the concepts of Yoga. When I would feel a seizure coming on, I’d empty my brain of any thoughts and relax my body. I would start at my toes and work my way up to the mind. I discovered when I did this, my seizures would peak quickly. I soon learned to do this automatically and stop the seizure from coming on altogether.

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Before Dr. Fitzgibbon died, he asked for one more visit with him. I was about sixteen and had completely freed myself from the bonds of medication and, more importantly, my seizures. He wanted to let me know how proud he was of my success and that he would always refer to me as his “little miracle girl.” He explained all the symptoms I would experience with different degrees of epilepsy, and not to be afraid, but to look at the different episodes (different kinds of seizures) as brain burps (fluid slipping through the brain canals, causing shortages of electricity to the brain).

He told me I had the power to control them and live a normal life.

We each have the ability and power to shape our own destinies. The blessings from these deformities sometimes allow one to experience sensitivity to others and their needs. I am responsive to pictures, face gestures, body movements, and others’ disabilities. I respond to words as well. Math is my difficulty, but I have also conquered that (I got through college math) without any “special needs” help. I have been forty some years free from medicine and violent seizures. The only thing I experience today is a moment of speechlessness.

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82 El Capitan by Nate Jordon

Sarah Cooke

have i?

Think you know the moon of my body?

so you do

you have

known me

prophet

my sweet-air ratification

in crowds

in clubs

downtown motifs

scraps of poetry

anonymous

on barstools

known me

in country houses pockets of nighttime

known my firefly center

gently rhythm

soft

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but still I ask

folded

Ryan Clark

43. beside her, giving from The 23 Year-Old Poems

My once covered eyes to the cold are moving between molecules and layers of cold water, and we are again pushed back gently relieved, tangling and untangling the freedom of a cozy bed.

To every girl thinking to themselves up over her knees there is the attraction of a more lovely painting.

Just a beige thumb and you there over the tree-line view, dirt on the nose and already doggedly ill of the shoulders.

You had tasted good before it broke, black hair spilling over into rants and cupped mouths.

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Kona Morris

and juan makes three

Ristorante Giannino’s. Harvard Square. Set back in the glorious courtyard of the four-star Charles Hotel. The off-street location especially ideal for the frequent business of famous persona. No sidewalk passersby or paparazzi to worry about.

Also intended for the illustrious patronage, a waitstaff manager adamant on forcing her employees to pretend they don’t even notice (other than the hand-over-feet slave servitude) when they’re waiting on someone that carries a buzz. No chatting, no questions, and absolutely NO AUTOGRAPHS. Ever.

Of course, it’s understandable why. Brenda (bitch manager) did have a point: it’s only because of the no-hassle service the eminent guests receive with their gourmet Milanese cuisine that they keep coming back for more and spreading the word within their highly acclaimed circles. Perfectly sensible, perfectly respectable. Right.

I never had a problem with it. Rather, I actually enjoyed the practice of speaking with the rich and famous as if they were no more special than any of my other “guests” (as Brenda forced us to call customers). The only problem with this protocol being the undying love and adorable fanaticism of a young busboy named Juan.

He was a thin, baby-faced teenager from Brazil whose mother, Fatima, worked in the kitchen. Juan had an explosive infatuation with all things U2. Everyday sporting his black baseball Bono cap (oversized picture of Bono’s face, mid-sing, in the spacey Star Trekian shades that seem to have been glued to his face for the last four decades) and one of his many rotating U2 tees.

And so one bright Sunday morning, who should stroll into Giannino’s for an early afternoon brunch but Bono, his wife, and a small entourage of important U2nian faces.

Nicest couple ever. He didn’t want tomatoes on his Frittata del Giorno and one of his legs was noticeably longer than the other (made apparent by the different size heels of his platform sandals). She didn’t wear any make-up and helped bus the table after each course. He ate with his shades on. They were casual, friendly, and as sharp as the cheddar they grew up on. Completely unpretentious and engaging, which promptly caused me to stop any and all shit-talking about U2 I might have been inclined to indulge in, considering I hadn’t liked anything they’d put out since Achtung Baby.

Juan wasn’t there that day - cruel plight of humanity - but every one of us knew someone had to call him.

As a matter of fact, about two seconds after Bono and company walked in and were seated and brought specials and menus and fizzing glasses of Pellegrino,

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all on-duty waitstaff and busers met together in an empty side room.

Nearly in unison, “Holy shit, we’ve got to call Juan!”

Manager bitch knew right away what was happening. An instant later she found us. “If any of you call Juan, that will be your job. And I mean it.” Evil serious eyes scanning our faces until satisfied with her imposing threat. Exit Brenda.

“Ahh fuck her. We’ve got to.” We were all in agreement. Quickly deciding that there was no question about it, he had to be called. We made a pact that when confronted we would each say we did it. Like in some strength in numbers scene from a heart-tugging high school drama where everyone joins forces to overcome the corrupt fascist authority. There was absolutely no way she could fire all of us. She would be forced to swallow her own ugly foot.

So Max did the deed. Less than five minutes later, Juan showed up. Bouncing with joy. Complete with his hallmark Bono hat, Bono t-shirt, rolled-up Bono poster, and ridiculously large camera hanging from his neck. I’d never seen anyone gleaming with more excitement in my life.

But Brenda saw him coming. She met him in the doorway with a broiling glare and grinding teeth. Smoke escaping through reddening ears. “Go away, Juan.”

Through the tightness of her clenched jaw, “Go away right now or YOU ARE FIRED.”

His face filled with terror. Mouth dropped. Eyes searching the dining room for just one tiny glimpse of his long time hero. “Go away NOW, Juan,” she repeated.

With panic and agony, he turned himself around like a kicked puppy, continuously looking back over his shoulder for any possible sign of pity. But there was none. Not from Brenda. Rejected, he had no choice but to retreat. Forced his deflated cheer to walk back across the vast courtyard. Our hearts sank.

After a long and leisurely brunch, the Bono party finally finished. They playfully bickered for a moment over who was going to pay the bill and then, after one of the managerial men won the battle and an excessively generous tip was left for yours truly, they headed for the door. Brenda, myself, and several other starry-eyed waitstaff casually walked them out of the restaurant and across the outdoor patio. They turned around to wave one last goodbye. Six of us were standing there smiling, waving, a happy family, back at them.

We stood frozen for several seconds watching as they made their way across the fifty or so yards of exquisite flowerbeds and exorbitant roman pillars of the courtyard. And then, just as they were almost to the end, only ten or fifteen yards to go, out from behind a large well-pruned bush, popped our beloved little Juan.

We could hear Brenda boiling under her skin, mumbling curses and threats under hot held breath. Every one of us stunned by his audacity.

But, after leaping out, Juan did nothing. He stood in utter shock of his own impulsiveness. Staring. Wide-eyed. A frightened fawn.

Then suddenly, aggressively, Bono stepped forward and tore the camera out of Juan’s trembling hands. He looked pissed. I imagined Daddy Warbucks violently hurling the camera of his nameless reporter into a cold marble stairwell. I was so

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appalled by Bono’s hostile behavior. We all were. Poor Juan. Out a job and a hero the same day. Devastating.

Then Bono jerked the camera away from Juan. He held it up high over his head and looked as if he was two seconds away from throwing it to the ground. Instead, he pulled the neck of his shirt open with his other hand and, much to our surprise (especially Juan’s), shoved the camera down his shirt and began snapping away.

He took a couple more shots of his naked chest then threw an arm around Juan to bring him in for a picture of them together. Bono took it at arm’s length.

His wife joined on the other side of elated Juan. Speechless elated Juan. They did a series of pictures with Juan in the middle, including one with both of them kissing his cheeks. Then hugs and signatures and witnessing heaven on earth for this little busboy angel. Brenda let out a deep and constipated sigh followed by a few more breathy grumbles before turning around to go back inside. After a few more minutes of jovial attention, Bono bowed his goodbye and continued on his way.

Juan looked up at all of us watching him, his face white and exuding shock, and then he leaped off the ground. Entire body. Both feet. Smiling with an oversized open mouth pounding thumb-up fists into the air in sailing victory. Long live U2.

Long live the sunglasses.

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Tiph Parrish

wood and wire

blues picker singin’ tunes at midnight in the crossroads Esu in Africa be the Devil in the south wanna keep those slaves fearful wanna keep those slaves drugged on ignorance told ‘em the Devil is at the crossroads so they don’t run Freedman’s sons knew better Johnson was one sold his soul for blues pickin’ fingers and got the hell out of town. built his first guitar of wood and wire sold his soul at midnight

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for blues pickin’ fingers Esu in Africa be the devil in the south wanna keep those slaves fearful wanna keep those slaves drugged on ignorance told ‘em the devil is at the crossroads so they don’t run Johnson a Freedman’s son and got the hell out of town.

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Michelle Puckett

as heraldic

The hill of glass, the fatal brilliant plain.

- Muriel Rukeyser

promissory, proof for reward excuses written in italics. this vanity

taint’d of role, imprisonment confinement, an ode. the method to retain a correspondence in cursive

a wind shakes the bay glazen) the way the wind rocks it the manner) balances the wind to oscillate the bay (a section) (a haint)

still, beside the conversation o, nearness of written word! a queue. an embellished emancipation

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John Staudt

karma at the egg roll queen

The most talked-about crime in the history of this neighborhood took place just blocks away from Van’s Newsstand at the Eggroll Queen Chinese restaurant. It wasn’t elaborate or particularly depraved, and most people in Houston say the only tragedy was that the Queen had to close her doors as a result of the thing. There had been plenty of murders in this section of the Southwest side, at least in the twenty years that Van had spent here. This one was different. This one was real.

Van was part of a wave of Vietnamese immigrants that had crested in California in the seventies and washed all the way to Texas. From the minute he got here he knew he was home. There were Vietnamese neighborhoods, communities, churches - all had been established by his predecessors who had flourished and earned the goodwill of the locals. The Vietnamese community had grown to be as much a part of the city as the Astrodome or Frenchy’s Soul Food on Scott Street. The only thing Van had to do was work.

The newsstand was Doan’s idea. She had been here longer and knew the intricacies of business, and since her family had the start-up money Van decided it was a wonderful idea. He would’ve opened up a manure refinery if she’d only suggested it. Doan was the angel, the person in his life that reaffirmed his existence.

The fact that she had reciprocated his love and agreed to marry him will always be an unexplained miracle to him.

“Why do you want to be with me?” he had asked her one night a couple of weeks before their wedding.

“I don’t know. My parents wanted me to marry Jerry Tran.”

“Jerry Tran? He don’t even speak Vietnamese!”

“So what? You can barely speak English,” she said beaming at him.

“Hey this language easy, I love English. Couple a years I’ll sound like Burt Reynolds. You’ll see.”

“That’s why I want to be with you.”

Not long after the wedding the newsstand took off, and soon there was enough money to get a space in the strip mall off Bellaire and Richmond. Even Doan’s family started to fall in love with Van after he gave them a granddaughter.

Things were coming together as if no obstacles had ever existed. The little one was their perfect American citizen. Van would come home and ask her questions about her day just to hear her talk, often ignoring Doan’s pleas to leave her alone, “Your daughter is not an English teacher. She’s only five.”

“You can be a teacher if you want. You can be anything,” he’d tell his

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daughter.

“I know, Daddy.”

Van could not have ever conceived a more perfect hell than the one he would be forced to endure.

Ten years later he still had his newsstand, but nothing else. No wife, no daughter. They had been taken as easily as they had been given. He worked hard to pay off Doan’s family so he could keep the business. They were cooperative. They wanted to wash their hands of him and the whole ordeal to eliminate any connection with the accident that killed Doan and little Mae. Van handled the funeral costs, the medical bills, the police reports. He had done his best. He didn’t anger when the police closed the case, he didn’t curse Doan’s family for blaming him, he even tried forgiving the unknown person who took his family. After ten years the wounds had just started to scab over.

It was a Thursday when the door opened and the bell rang announcing the arrival of a heavy set man wearing a black pinstripe suit. He wore shades. He walked up to the counter, “Van Lee Duc,” he said as if informing him of his own name. Van didn’t recognize him.

“Yes?”

“You don’t remember me?” the man took his shades off. It was Jerry Tran.

“Hey, yeah I remember you. How are you?” Van stepped down from his perch behind the counter and went down to ground level to greet him. “Come, we’ll have some tea. It’s been so long. You look good.” He led the man to a quiet corner of the shop with a little table. There was a hot plate, kettle, some cups. Van smiled as the man took his seat.

“Doan’s family sent me,” he said. Van’s face turned to stone. He released his smile.

“Sent you for what?” he asked, revealing a tone of seriousness Jerry had not expected.

“They think they know who did it.”

Van crossed his arms and looked at the ceiling.

“They want you to know. They want you to do something.”

“What, Jerry? What? Ten years! Ten years, Jerry! I don’t hear from you, from Doan’s family, from nobody. I’m like an outcast. I come to work every day, I smile at the people, give them their magazines, I go home and think about my family. After ten years I’m still dead,” Van beat his chest in anger.

“If you don’t do it I will,” Jerry said putting on his shades and standing up.

This was unconceivable to Van. This could not happen. He could not let someone else take action on behalf of his dead wife and daughter. The thought brought back old feelings, old hatreds.

“Sit down,” Van barked in Vietnamese. “I’m gonna need some things. I’m gonna need some time to get things in order.” He looked at his hands that had not held a gun since he had been in this country. He was cornered.

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“I’ll tell them. Do you want to know now?”

“Write it down,” Van pulled a pen from his shirt pocket and slid Jerry a napkin. He wrote something on it and slid it back to Van who immediately recognized the name. He looked up. Jerry was already on his way out.

Sgt. Stacy Randall had been a cop on the Southwest side for nearly forty years.

Partly due to environmental conditions, and partly due to a lack of any kind of moral standards, Sgt. Randall’s career had been riddled with scandal and suspicion through the years. The man was not perfect. There were addictions, alcohol and otherwise.

There were women, most of whom were either underage or prostitutes. The hallmark of his tenure, however, was his talent for, and liberal use of, unnecessary force. It was no small feat that he had managed to keep his job.

There had been an accident. Ten years ago, a mother and little girl were killed.

He’d tried to help them, but they died at the scene. The image of the little girl’s broken neck was what set him straight. He sobered up and decided to finish his time sitting behind a desk at the precinct.

One night after work he rounded the corner and came to the stoplight at Bellaire and Richmond. Lucy was on the median as usual with her embattled smile and coffee can full of change.

“What’s the deal, Lucille?” he rolled down the window and asked her as she came over.

“I think you already know, Sergeant.”

“How bout some Moo Shoo tonight, sound good?”

“That sounds just fine, just fine.”

The light turned and they exchanged smiles. This was tradition. On Thursdays Sgt. Randall went to the Egg Roll Queen for dinner, and on his way home would stop by and give Lucy the leftovers. It was something that added meaning to both of their lives.

Dinner was the best. He sat there waiting on the check, leftovers packed up and ready to go. He thought about his plans for the weekend. Maybe he’d go see his son up in College Station. When Van Lee Duc walked through the door Randall instantly recognized him. He still shivered with panic every time he saw him. He fought to maintain his poker face, but couldn’t help but pat his rib cage to make sure his service piece was still there. Van turned and walked towards his table. Randall struggled to avoid eye contact. Van slowed and came to a stop in front of him. Randall felt a bead of sweat roll down the side of his face. There was a lump in his throat.

“Tell me why,” Van said in a measured cadence.

Randall was shaking, felt he might lose control. It was useless trying to lie.

“I was drunk…. I didn’t see them.”

When he put his head in his hands and broke down into a sobbing mass of apologies, Van calmly pointed his gun and fired twice. He didn’t hear the shouting when he sat down at the table to wait for the police.

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Jennifer Phelps

turmeric

She called today to ask if I knew anything about Turmeric.

She wants to add it to the pot of turkey soup simmering

on the stove.

I think it is an Indian spice.

It gives curry its color,

we agree,

after she explains it improves memory, helps one prevent Alzheimer’s, and is good for one’s health in general.

I wonder how much one must eat for the health benefits

to take effect and imagine mounds of powder

lining her kitchen in hundreds of spice bottles.

Add a dash to beans, or a pinch to salad.

We decide on two teaspoons for the soup.

She doesn’t want it to be too strong and

turn everything yellow.

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Melanie W. Kachadoorian 95

blue

If I could paint you I would have a field day with Picasso your face and body abstract like your truths exaggerated the lines blurred not knowing where one ends and one begins the colors of your character bleed into one another distorted through shades of blue and gray If I could paint me I would splatter streaks of reds oranges and yellows across a canvas with Pollock in a fit of doubt and confusion looking for any line to console it If I could paint us.

Irene Joyce

fled: light density

if the moon did trace a ring of light around your head, would atmosphere in place still be a concentric reflection of shadows glowing with left over fire from poor times and poorer decisions? when the reigns hold, in spite of how right you saw then, in resin, pacing synchronized to your cycles and bifocal sight, the tighter the rounds wrap, the deeper incisions are made, pending death like circular inscriptions that carve you head-long from your crown down in spirals. stacking dolls are illusory and centrifugal force is a next-season stop causing compulsions that flush you out. stepping on the end result from between the sneaky, vesicae-piscis, vaginal-lip-speaking-service species, and their first-born son’s; (blank stare) decidedly, shining, slicked by almost still pulsing…more than kinda paralyzing. the sacred, geometry symbols (who will ask once more if you can man the center or dig in for a groove or a pin-prick or punch-hole or a record player needle with no pessimism or loosening belt) both in a single second sound, that primary resonation comes within a tin can permission where they hold years old fruit, and hear like aging folks, selectively… halos, having faded, take root for falling angels in a back drop of night the stars are known to “shoot-” up super novacaine urges for heaving throwing ancient, flaming, gruesome pains into cavernous cessation. trade-out in play-by-play festering,

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at locations on a relief map demarcating exes in the legend, to read as a storm cellar at max capacity.

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Rebecca Diaz

america, your penis is stuck in the zipper of abu ghraib

America looked for a new stop loss after 9/11. Now he writes stress positions to mom every Christmas. The road to Ar Ramadi, he paved with Kansas and Kentucky.

How he ached for a badge of Baghdad. One night, America prayed to ill-equipped Humvees. In cluster bombs, he found enlistment. Two years went by, and deep in his Fallujah, he found Halliburton on his hands. He asked for forgiveness because Iraq burned in his eastern Montana. In his dreams, a glowing bisht concealed his piece in the zipper of Abu Ghraib and burkas curtseyed in mouths of Mississippi. He knew in curtsey Tennessee’s foot burned for sand of Iran. With a bandaged Arkansas and a forgotten Afghanistan, he rode home on an old Titan II. The family celebrated in gunshots, in oil-line smiles of Texas. Grandma baked Syrian Desert dust into his apple pie. He watched home float into the Tigris. America brought grandpa a keffiyeh, which he then used to wipe down the wheels of his Chevy. Receiving the Eucharist each night, and with his Mecca faced down in Stratofortress Sutras, he asks for peace in his leftern South Dakota.

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Diane Klammer

another monkey puzzle

What if the stanzas were rewritten the day the seven Virunga gorillas were killed that seventh month last year?

What if the leaders declared a party, filled coconuts with fermented bananas and the tribe lost judgment, lost fear but remained skilled with hands of power, bodies of strength and willed the kingdom of the small overtake the kingdom of the large ?

If that kingdom defended itself from the kingdom of the ruthless and erased the violence sketched in coal when the murderers came and turned tables, did them in as seven sacraments?

Would there still be any gorillas left in all of Africa for anyone to puzzle about or believe in today?

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100 Photo by Luke Bennett

contributors Aaron D. Scher is an explorer, amateur astronomer, and random corporeal expression of his genes in the eternal life and death struggle for existence. He also holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of Colorado for his work on electromagnetic metamaterials.

Aimee Herman is fixated on the body - transforming its shape through fondling it with filed words. She is contributing writer for Spectrum Culture and Weird Sisters West and managing sections editor of erotica for Oysters & Chocolate. Aimee has been featured on radio, in various clubs, cafes, and poetry festivals. She can be reached at writerslashpoet@gmail.com

Alexandra Lukens was born and raised on I-95. Formerly of the Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, she now attends Columbia University in the city of New York for Creative Writing. She is currently experimenting with the fusion of the arts and social action, as well as exploring border narratives of her own. She is currently featured in the online literary journal Beehive Magazine and has been living where Harlem meets the Heights.

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

Andrew Bethke is working towards his BA in History from California State University, Fresno. Following that, he intends to pursue the ultimate prize: donning the tweed coat, argyle sweater, and gruff but lovable demeanor of a professor of medieval British history. As much as he loves the melancholy of residing in the city of his birth, he hopes to one day escape to anywhere.

Daniel Dissinger is a recent MFA graduate of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University. He is the co-founder of the online zine In Stereo Press which specializes in audio submissions from musicians and writers alike. He currently resides in New York where he is fighting his way financially towards the City from Long Island.

Daniela Beuren was born in Vienna, where she lives and works as an author, translator

and designer of crossword puzzles. She writes English, German and multilingual pieces which she collages and performs alone or with grauenfruppe, a group of four women authors based in Vienna. She got to know Monkey Puzzle at Naropa University, where she participated in the Summer Writing Program as a two-week visitor.

Diane Klammer is a native of California now living in Boulder. She used to be a biology teacher before becoming a therapist for the chronically mentally ill. When she isn’t writing, she works as a naturalist for Boulder County Open Space or singing and playing guitar for seniors.

She loves the biosociopolitical emphasis of Monkey Puzzle.

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.

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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.

Jennifer Phelps is a poet and writer currently refining her craft at the Jack Kerouac School

of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University. In her spare time she writes. When she is not writing, she thinks about writing. Recently, her dreams have told her to write.

Jessica Surabian is from Fresno, California. She graduated with honors from San Joaquin

Memorial High School in 2007 and is a second-year Smittcamp Family Honors College Scholar at CSU, Fresno where she majors in chemistry. She enjoys spending time with her family and best friends, reading, drawing, listening to music, and recently began writing poetry.

John Staudt is from South Texas, where many of his stories are based. He teaches English at a high school just south of San Antonio.

Keith Kumasen Abbott’s essay “Rhythm-A-Ning: Philip Whalen’s Rhythmic Inventions” will appear in The Beats and Philosophy from the University of Kentucky Press. Astrophil Press will reprint a revised Downstream from Trout Fishing In America, A Memoir of Richard Brautigan in 2010.

Although making the tastiest fideo and artistic cakes comes naturally, Kimberly Castanon is unnaturally good at mixing pigments, once blending the perfect shade of Nuprin yellow.

She is happiest when writing in colored ink and is a semi-accomplished violinist, she also enjoys hangnails.

Kona Morris is currently working on her first fiction novel, she’s in the MFA Creative

Writing Program at Naropa University, on the editorial board of Fast Forward Press, and is co-founder of the Write Trash writing group in Fairbanks, Alaska. She received the Redwood Empire Mensa Award for Creative Non-Fiction in 2006 and has most recently been published in Toyon, Be Brave Bold Robot, The Bathroom, Fast Forward, and Bombay Gin.

For more information on Revolution, Part 1.

LaVonne Natasha Caesar, buy her book, The Black Pussy

Lily Scarborough Heehs graduated from the poetically prestigious Naropa University, nestled in the bosom of Boulder, Colorado. Colorado suited Lily’s poetic process because of its pervading aimlessness, which dictated that people should definitely come and go unexpectedly; Lily wishes people would wander in and out more.

Luke Bennett is a photographer from Arkansas. To see more of his works, please visit: www.lukebennetphotography.blogspotcom.

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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.

Melanie W. Kachadoorian was born in Oklahoma and is currently a student at California State University, Fresno. She enjoys writing poetry and prose. She has two dogs, four fish, one turtle, and one husband. If forced to choose between cake or death, she would most likely choose cake, depending on the day.

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 Puckett, a native of Dallas, Texas, earned her BA in Writing from Naropa Uni-

versity where she spent a semester abroad in Prague. She is currently working toward an MFA in Poetry from Mills College in Oakland, California. She writes about the way Texas haunts her no matter where she goes. Her work has appeared in the Naropa Summer Writing Program Journal N.U.T.S. and is forthcoming in Bang Out San Francisco #2.

Mitch Maraude is a writer of paranoid splatter-noir with a literary bent and a fanatical

vendetta against tame prose. Originally from Dirty Jersey, now living in Boulder, Colorado, he has published two chapbooks of short fiction and is currently hammering the final nails into the coffin of his first novel.

Mittie Roger. An unruly expatriate. In her spare time she’s an elementary school teacher.

She enjoys facilitating the creation of comics.

Nancy Stohlman’s first book, Live From Palestine (South End Press), was nominated for

a Colorado Book Award in 2004. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared or are forthcoming in Fast Forward, Resist, The Bathroom, Zero Ducats, Snowline Poetry Journal, Counterpunch, CommonDreams, and the anthology Peace Under Fire (Verso). She is currently completing her MFA degree at Naropa University and finishing her first novel. She lives in Denver.

Nate Jordon’s recent work has appeared in the The Pulchritudinous Review and The Bathroom with recent interviews appearing in The Daily Camera and Zero Ducats. He is the 2008 recipient of the Jack Kerouac Scholarship and the same year appeared on a televised interview with John Allen Cassady about The Beat Generation. 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.

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Nicholas B. Morris was born in Arkansas but fell in love with Colorado. He’s dabbled in a number of mediums, some of which have seen the light of day in places like Fact-Simile, Cliterature, Fear Knocks, and The Arkansas Literary Forum, as well as previous issues of Monkey Puzzle. He currently lives in west Denver with his partner Alyssa Piccinni, where he’s learning to play the guitar in anticipation of disturbing his downstairs neighbors.

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.

Paige Doughty is a freelance writer and environmental educator. What does that mean?

She’s still figuring it out and it’s a hell of a ride. She is currently writing a book, Unwinding Myself Whole. She loves dancing, sunsets, and red wine. Check out her life and work at www. paigedoughty.com.

Peter M. Laffin has this to say: “I am a 25-year-old American patriot and practicing Catholic. Gotta problem with that? Want to fight about it? I play folk music. My first solo record, The Still Point of the Turning World, is available on iTunes and elsewhere. I eat a lot of steak and I recycle. I am an elementary school teacher in Boulder. I have a patent on a particular kind of car horn called The Happy Honk and I’m waiting for someone to make one so I can take all that person’s money. I recently began smoking again.”

Philip Meersman writes in NL, EN, DE, FR, ES, multilingual and sound forms. He

creates improvisation, sound and poetry installations and performances using current affairs, socio-political and environmental issues in BE, NL, FR, IT, AT, BG, MK, RO, IL, AR... He’s been translated in AR, BG, EN, ES, FR, IT, IW, JP, MK, RO, RU. He’s been published internationally in magazines, anthologies and on the web. He’s the co-founder of DAstrugistenDA and artiestencollectief JA.

Rea Allen is an independent and self-reliant entrepreneur with over forty years experience in professional services, retail sales, and now a Bachelors Degree in History and Creative Writing from California State University, Fresno. Rea begins to reveal these experiences, perspectives and a lifetime of learning in her writings.

An observer from birth, Rebecca Diaz did not speak until she was three. She began with a complete sentence in support of Ronald Reagan. Two decades later, and a walk across the political spectrum, she has seen the error of Reaganomics. She’s currently working on dismantling the military industrial complex, one poem at a time.

Rebecca George is, was, and will be something. Someday. Whether she ends up playing

center field for the Chicago Cubs, mining for gold in the foothills, or training monkeys to brush her teeth for her, she will be something. In the mean time, she is an educator, writer and editor, with an unhealthy obsession with college and professional sports and bright shiny objects.

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Richard Schwass is a recent graduate of the Masters program in poetry at the Jack Kerouac School. He enjoys chocolate-covered homosexuals and once interviewed Grace Slick.

Rob Geisen is the author of eleven books of poetry. Along with friend Olatundji AkpoSani he runs a weekly open mic Wednesday nights at the Burnt Toast in Boulder, Colorado.

He’s also a coeditor for Baobob Tree Press and poetry editor for Illiterate Magazine.

Ryan Clark is taking a year off from doughnuts and other sweet, absolutely wonderful

foods. Somewhat ironically he hopes soon to become the poetry version of Candy Cummings.

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.)

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.

Sarah Cooke is a low-residency graduate student in Naropa University’s Creative Writing

MFA program. She predominantly writes poetry. She’s an assistant teacher at the Bellwether School in Williston, Vermont. Her work has been published in journals such as the Black Mountain Review and Whrrds and is available in audio form at instereopress.com.

Sarah Suzor’s poetry has been published in Hotel Amerika. She is co-curator of the 3+3 Poetry reading series.

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.

Scott Larson lives, plays and writes in Colorado. He would like to take this opportunity to thank Beethoven, Dostoevsky, Van Gogh and Kerouac for their moments of lonely suffering – his world is the better for it.

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.

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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 currently resides in Golden, Colorado with his lovely and patient wife, Shannon. He is an MFA student at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, a program last seen hovering somewhere above and slightly to the right of Naropa University. His poems, photographs, and stories have appeared in The Talking River Review, Apothecary, In Stereo Magazine, Bombay Gin, and The Strip, as well as recent editions of The Bathroom and Whrrds. Last spring he was honored to be named a finalist for the 2008 Third Coast Poetry Prize. His first book, Some Exits, is due out this spring from Monkey Puzzle Press.

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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acknowledgments 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.

Mittie Roger specially thanks - Switters, Jared Diamond, and Richard Dawkins.

Peter M. Laffin specially thanks - the Bic company for producing quality red pens for many years.

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SUBMIT TO:

monkey puzzle #7

SPRING/SUMMER 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:

monkey puzzle press 3116 47th St. Boulder, CO 80301

MonkeyPuzzlePress@gmail.com

www.monkeypuzzleonline.com DEADLINE

March 31, 2009 108

#6 winter 2009

featuring new work by : Keith Kumasen Abbott Margaret Randall Tim Skeen Mittie Roger Travis Cebula Nancy Stohlman Olatundji Akpo-Sani LaVonne Caesar Daniel Dissinger Alexandra Lukens Peter M. Laffin Paige Doughty Rob Geisen Kona Morris Philip Meersman Amy Pommerening Nicholas B. Morris Diane Klammer Ryan Clark Tiph Parrish Scott Alexander Jones Aimee Herman Mitch Maruade Hillary Keel And many more!

Issue #6

MONkey puzzle

9

780980 165012

61200

monkey puzzle press

www.monkeypuzzlonline.com ISBN-10 0-9801650-1-6 ISBN-13 978-0-9801650-1-2

MONkey puzzle Winter 2009