Monkey Puzzle #10

Literature / $10.00 #10 MONkey puzzle

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780980 165098

www.MONkeypuzzlepress.com

monkey puzzle press

ISBN-10 0980165091 ISBN-13 978-098016509-8

MONkey puzzle

monkey puzzle

MONKEY PUZZLE PRESS BOULDER, COLORADO

monkey puzzle Issue #10 EDITOR, DESIGNER, PUBLISHER Nate Jordon POETRY EDITOR Jordan Antonucci ASSOCIATE EDITOR Travis Cebula PUBLISHING ASSISTANT Lisa Dannen COVER PHOTO E. Sater

Copyright Š 2011 Monkey Puzzle Press All rights revert to individual authors upon publication.

ISBN-13 978-0-9826646-5-0

Monkey Puzzle is currently published two times a year.

MONKEY PUZZLE PRESS PO Box 20804 Boulder, Colorado 80308 MonkeyPuzzlePress@gmail.com w w w. m o n ke y p u z z l e p r e s s . c o m

contents Editor’s Note The World (JLK)

Pat Nolan

Letter from Saigon

Jordan Antonucci

The Scent that Bloodies the Wind

Brandon Arthur

Bleeding for Dollars

Philip Loyd

Bias Adjustments

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What You May Think of When You Hear the Term Eco-Feminism

Brad McLelland

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TextAsImagine

Michelle Fleck

Let Me Hold My Banner High

Laura Musselman

Here Cries Poe

Kim Castanon

Fascism in Rhyme

Paul Handley

Love Letter to the National Library of Poetry

Pep Tide

Paul Handley

Daniel Staniforth

Shlomo Yermoyahu Kristofer Whited Andrew Antar Paul Handley

Wuz Up Cuz

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Jeremiah Johnson

Pat Nolan

Dr. Bruce Bromley

Jennifer Hamilton

Double Jeopardy 21

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Clarissa Olivarez

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Blazing Saddles 21

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Michelle Fleck

Why Are There So Few Jewish Vampires?

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Hydropaddle

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Peter Terrin

Fool Pain 16

Daniel Staniforth

Dear Juris Prudence

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CG Morelli

Quiet Balance

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22

Withstanding Radiation

Nancy Stohlman

Elias Olivarez

, proof

Stacy Walsh

Kasey Perkins

Financial Meltdown

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April Johnston

My America

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Joel Parker

Rainbow Eucalyptus

29-30

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Claire Marcus

Death, Diet Coke and Bonsai Trees

David Stallings

Sober Up

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Arizona City

Aphrodite

Kicked

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35 36 43 44 45 52

Contributors

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Submission Guidelines

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Acknowledgements

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New Books from MPP

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editor’s note Aloha Enlightened People, Bleeding. America. Radiation. Dollars. Death. Diet Coke. Put those pieces together and you have the new issue of Monkey Puzzle. Put those pieces together and you have the new issues facing the United States.

Well, not that they’re new issues, but they’re issues that concern us these days and have been issues concerning us for decades. We’re in dire straits and it seems no one knows what the hell to do about it.

It seems voting has no sway—it’s just a lame attempt at utilizing a corrupt system to elect corrupt politicians who say one thing to the citizenry and another to big business. So, what do we do? Do we take it to the streets, shouting and waving picket signs? Do we boycott consumer goods produced by corporations raping the economies of less-fortunate countries? Do we sell our possessions and follow Jesus?

Do we run for the hills with hunting rifles bellowing “Wolverines!”?

What do we do?

We do our part. Our part as writers, poets, artists, and musicians is to enlighten the people. We enlighten the people through our work, through the intellectual exchange of ideas, through education and entertainment. That’s what we’ve done with this issue of Monkey Puzzle, and with all our endeavors at Monkey Puzzle Press.

The gestation period for this issue has been an interesting one. We thank you for your patience and enthusiasm and hope you celebrate its existence. But, more importantly, we hope you celebrate yours.

Holoholo,

Nate Jordon Monkey-in-Chief

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Jordan Antonucci

LETTER FROM SAIGON October 26th, 2010

Dear Nate, Last night I was asked by a small group of Vietnamese men to finish the night at a club. Then I woke up this morning with a swollen eye and a leaking bag of frozen beans beside my pillow. It all went so terribly wrong. How was I supposed to know turning down a hooker would result in the loss of a friendship that had enough money to buy me hookers and infinite shots of Hennessey?

Cultural Wisdom: When someone offers you a night out, it is custom for them to pay and treat you for the entire evening. This includes food: pineapple, meats, cheese, grapes. And girls. It wasn’t like I asked for a hooker, and it wasn’t like I asked for the knowledge that 51% of all hookers in Vietnam are believed to have HIV (I blame the latter on the uni-browed nurse shooting me up with vaccinations). It was custom, a gift, fresh bland seed. Happy pigeons in Central Park.

Ten minutes into the feast, the Manager tapped me on the shoulder. He had one hand on the hooker’s hip, the other graced her shoulder. A delivery. I didn’t mean to blow my cigarette smoke in his face but I was stoned and caught off guard. He didn’t notice. The girl didn’t catch my eye nearly as much as the creepy-ass grin the manager wore while encouraging me to drink from the offered lotus cup. He then whispered in my ear for you, friend, you dance her.

As I listened, I noticed our waiter remove the first bottle of Hennessey and replace it, smooth, done it a million times. His gig. No better job in the city.

My reason to avoid dancing, I mean really dancing, the 2005 club-hump, was simple. No reasonable dancer would settle for a humping, stiffened fish-outof-water, especially without protection. Plus the tinny music sounded like it was echoing off aluminum walls and the green, red, silver and some others flushed with too many strobe lights for any event made the scene look like a bad acid trip. I wasn’t hungry. Thirsty as ever, yes, but my morals remained strong.

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I refused to make sex with the petite Vietnamese woman with her juicy rose lips, perfect chest, short red skirt begging me to pull it up one more inch with straight almond hair combed across her timid eye shouting to the world you shy, fuck, take advantage me. NO. NOT ME. Nooooooo Way. Not once, not never.

And it was this attitude that got me punched in the face by a 5’8” Vietnamese man who apparently dropped 1,000,000.00 Vietnamese Dong (40 USD) to give me good time. The last thing he wanted was to watch me crank alone with a head full of Hennessey and adrenaline to horribly loud music. It probably didn’t help when I responded she wasn’t my type when asked why you no take gift from me?

It was a painless shot. A brief glimpse of Vietnamese hostility.

It took me two hours to find my way home. It was one of those drunk-sailor walks. A stinky-boot glide to the rail ralphing-on-the-fishing-nets walk. The city was quiet with a few greedy vendors holding their posts selling frog legs and candy. Harmless. I stumbled over garbage and urine making believe I knew where I was. Saigon, I thought, somewhere far from home, far away on some foreign escapade, looking for letters from God in the street. No luck. The only difference between here and Boulder and the dampness of Berlin was my eye. I felt comfortable knowing I was so near to arrival with a complete loss of expectation. I wore my swelling eye like a Boy Scout badge.

One step closer to becoming an Eagle Scout.

Finally home to recall and repent with a bag of green beans on my eye, my mind was clear, I realized and accepted the result of my actions: I will never talk to Huang, Guong, Hangh and the others ever again. And with them the free Hennesey.

Nhin thay ban sau nay, Nooch

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Brandon Arthur

THE SCENT THAT BLOODIES THE WIND

Friday combed a nation of shattered glass and stains Amid fears militants have melted into civilians Borders cleared Villages quarantined Communities burned as heavy arms fire and explosions Forced corpses into streets, evacuating schools Air strikes hit bridges and hospitals House to house raids have left walls splattered Roads choked with rubble Knocked-out electricity and no water for weeks Official reports underestimate the dead Limbs, babies and grey matter litter the markets The shadow of a ruined building A mother and two splayed brothers Army forces fanned out fortifying polling stations Barbed wire checkpoints and blast barriers Getting them close to God is difficult because of the stink

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Philip Loyd

BLEEDING FOR DOLLARS

“I’m bleeding, I’m bleeding to death,” the woman screamed. Blood was spewing everywhere. Somehow she’d gotten all tangled up in the intravenous tubes and the hypodermic needle had slipped out of her arm. She was panicking, and that was only making it worse.

What had begun as just a trickle of blood had turned into a real horror show with the woman falling off her bed, knocking over the IV stand, rolling across the floor crying “I’m dying, I’m dying.” Blood was gushing from her arm like a fountain; the catheter had snapped in two and now it was squirting red juice everywhere. I thought, now that’s entertainment.

Giving blood plasma, they tell you in the video, goes toward helping with illnesses like hemophilia, hepatitis, multiple sclerosis, even more immediate conditions like burns, infections, shock, and trauma. But let’s be honest; there’s only one reason anyone’s ever walked through the doors of the IVAN Biomedical Blood Plasma Clinic and it’s not to help anyone but themselves.

They come here for the money. And you can make some steep cash here too, as much as $280 a month. One month I made $340.

It really isn’t that painful. After they poke you in the arm, it’s as though the needle isn’t there at all. Yet there’s this unmistakable feeling, like something’s slipping away. Then you realize: That’s just your pride.

The entire process, from walk in to cash out, takes only about two hours.

There’s an AIDS bulletin, a questionnaire, you even get a free physical. There’s a doctor on site as required by law, but you only have to see him once. At the IVAN Biomedical Blood Plasma Clinic the physician on call is Dr. Khundi.

Then one of the nice attendants, outfitted in scrubs with a stethoscope around his neck, takes you to the back to your own recliner chair. His official job title: phlebotomist. You might even think he’s a doctor, that is until you notice the flip-flops on his feet. After some waiting, they hook you up to your very own machine.

The first thing you feel is a cold metallic rush that begins at the back of your throat. It works its way over the roof of your mouth through your teeth and into your lips. It’s a really cool feeling.

Then the blood starts to flow, coming and going between man and machine in a spinning cycle that separates the plasma from the red blood cells. You see, that’s what they’re really after, not your whole blood, just your plasma. Your blood spins around in a centrifuge until the red blood cells fall to the bottom of the tube. The plasma is then drawn off into a plastic IV bag

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that looks more like a sack of yellow piss than a pot of gold. When you think about it, it’s actually quite gruesome. When you’re done they patch your arm and send you to check out carrying your own warm baggie of piss-looking plasma. There’s no charge for the OJ on your way out the door.

Important: Do not remove your bandage for at least two hours. Once I took it off too soon and went swimming. When I got out of the pool I noticed everyone in a panic. They were getting out of the water as fast as they could. Then I realized they were looking at me. They came running at me with towels and shirts and someone had a first-aid kit. I looked down.

There was a pool of blood at my feet. There was a trail of red water in the pool leading up to me and blood was pouring from my arm. I began feeling light-headed. They had to close the pool for two days.

Note: When they remove your plasma they are also removing vital bloodclotting proteins called fibrinogens. I’ve been banned from that pool ever since.

You can always spot newbies. They get special attention. The guy next to me was a newbie; I could tell by the way he was pretending to read his book. I knew he wasn’t really reading by the way he kept looking up every half minute or so.

The majority of donors are mostly alcoholics, the homeless, and the unemployable, with some college students mixed in. These are the regulars.

The attendants know most of them by name and they’re all like one big happy family.

Once there was this big fat woman, and when I say fat I don’t mean overweight, I mean fat—hippopotamus fat. Her arms were all rolls and they could barely find her vein. But you see, payments are scaled to weight. The heavier you are the more yellow gold you put out and the more cash you take in. I bet she cleared forty bills that day. I heard two of the guys talking about waiting for her outside.

One time there was this guy in a shirt and tie and he didn’t look like he belonged here at all. He looked like a guy with a job. Did he lose everything in the stock market? Had his wife taken him to the cleaners? Perhaps he had a child with multiple sclerosis. Or maybe he was just a Good Samaritan. I saw him here a lot.

One day I finally asked him and he told me, “I’m the AM manager at Burger King. I make $26,000 a year. If I max out here twice a week, that’s 104 times a year times $35 per donation, that’s $3640. Then there’s the monthly bonuses of $60; that’s $720 a year. Plus the quarterly prize of $100, plus the Christmas bonus of $200, plus if I win just one monthly drawing per year that’s another $100. That comes out to $5060 a year, tax free. When you figure that I bring home $20,800 after taxes from the King, that $5060 increases my annual income by nearly 25%. Factor in the 104 nights a year I’m not drinking beer, about $1500, the same nights I’m too nauseous to eat,

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about $1000, and another $100 for the free physicals, that comes out to over $7500 a year. Hell, I even get to watch free movies. Here I make almost 37% what I do flipping burgers, all for doing nothing more than sitting on my ass watching movies. Hell, man, this place pays my rent.”

So much for the Good Samaritan.

But you see, that’s what it’s all about: money.

IVAN Biomedical sells every liter of blood plasma for $215, I’ve heard.

They sell it to hospitals and clinics but mostly to big pharmaceuticals who just can’t get enough of the yellow stuff. That means for every $35 they pay out they turn a whopping 600% profit.

I’ve never been here when every bed wasn’t taken. Assuming full capacity 10 hours a day 6 days a week, with 50 beds at 2 hours per donor, that’s 250 liters of plasma a day. At $180 profit per liter that’s $45,000 a day. That’s $270,000 a week, $14,040,000 a year. No, I did not stutter, Fourteen MILLION dollars a year. And they only pay out $35 apiece. If the regulars ever found this out there would be a riot. They might even unionize, there could be a strike, and where would that leave me?

But what were they going to do really? Would they break in at night?

What would the homeless do with 250 liters of blood plasma anyway? Can you imagine three or four winos wheeling 250 IV bags of yellow piss-looking liquid down the street? Who would buy it? After all, they were just a bunch of bums.

When you figure in costs, well, let’s just say IVAN spends a million dollars a year on expenses. Even if you triple that, whoever owns IVAN is clearing at least ten million bucks a year. Again the working man giving all his blood and sweat, again the working man getting the short end of the stick. Well, not working men, exactly. But it is their blood, at least.

It’s all about dollars. It’s all about bleeding.

And that’s where you came in, at “I’m bleeding, I’m bleeding to death.”

She was still rolling on the floor crying “I’m dying, I’m dying.” Apparently she wasn’t dying fast enough.

All the bleeders were laughing it up and none of the attendants were in any hurry at all. After considerable effort they finally got the bleeding stopped, then told the woman she couldn’t come back for a month, something or other about health regulations. That’s what you get when one of these minimumwage phlebotomists screws up your IV: you get banned for a month. Where do you go when you’ve sunk so low even the blood bank doesn’t want you anymore?

The same thing happened to me once. Of course, without all the drama.

It was quite scary. But now watching it happen to someone else, it was pretty funny.

The fellow in the bed next to me didn’t think it was so funny, though.

He seemed a little nervous already; now he looked downright frightened. He

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wasn’t even pretending to be reading his book any more.

“Does that happen often?” he asked.

“More than you’d think,” I said. “Happens whenever they miss the vein.

After about a month or so you get a pockmark on your arm like a bull’s eye.

They hardly ever miss after that.”

“But they’re doctors.”

“They only look like doctors by day,” I said. “By night they look like alcoholics.”

“Is she going to be all right?”

“She’s just overreacting. She’ll be fine. You have to lose about five pints of blood before you actually die. Honestly though, when my time comes, that’s the way I’d like to go. I’d think from all the blood loss you’d catch a really cool buzz. Seems to me the only downside would be deciding on the when and where.”

“I take it this isn’t your first time?”

“Not my first.”

“Does it take long?”

“Only about an hour once they stick you. Takes longer for them just to get to you.”

“Does it hurt?”

“Nah. Once the needle’s in you, you won’t even know it’s there.”

“So explain to me, how does it work?”

“Well, you see those intravenous tubes running everywhere? Those suck out your blood and it goes into that spinning glass thingy down there. That’s called the centrifuge.”

“What’s the centrifuge do?”

“That’s where the plasma gets separated from the red blood cells. It spins around at about 3000 rpm until all the red blood cells drop to the bottom.

Then they siphon off the good stuff and give you back what’s left. Same theory as Dracula, only they give you back just enough so you don’t die. If Dracula would’ve had one of these machines he could have kept feeding over and over on the same people. He could have kept them like cattle. He could have harvested the excess and made a nice tidy sum selling it to his fellow creatures of the night. But then I guess he would have got fat and lazy and what would have been the fun in that anyway? I guess Dracula was more a romantic than a businessman.”

“I guess so,” he said. He was looking a little pale himself. “You a student?”

“Business major,” I said, “with a minor in gothic studies.” I’d dropped out of college six years ago. “You?” “Pre-law,” he said.

That’s all we need, a lawyer screwing things up.

“Say,” he said, “why do they have to go through all this? How come they

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don’t just take out all your blood, separate it, then put it back?”

I thought, if this guy ever changes his mind and goes to medical school, we’re all screwed.

“It’s not an oil change,” I said.

“Oh, right,” he said. “I get it.”

Over in the far corner two bleeders were getting ready to make it a little interesting.

“Ready, set, go,” said one of the attendants, and they started both machines simultaneously.

“What are they doing?” said the newbie.

“It’s a game, a race to the finish. The more you squeeze your fist the more it pumps your veins and the faster the blood flows. The faster your blood flows the faster the good stuff collects and the faster you finish.”

“And what are the attendants doing?”

“Betting on it, of course.”

“Betting on it?”

“Sure. So are the two drunks. One of them is gonna walk out of here a rich man. I got my money on the guy on the left.”

“Why him?”

“Watch closely. When the machine quits drawing and the centrifuge stops spinning, the guy on the right will still be pumping his arm.”

“So?” “So? So when the machine starts pushing the blood back you want to relax. If you’re still pumping your arm you’re going against the flow. Besides, without any rest that guy’s not gonna make it halfway through before he wears out. The guy on the left is gonna beat him by at least five minutes. It was almost ten last week. Some people never learn.”

There was a girl in the bed across from me. She was skinny, like Olive Oyl from the cartoons. I remembered thinking when they brought her in, if they draw too much from this girl she may just shrivel up and blow away. She hadn’t said a word all this time and I’d forgotten about her.

But now her head had fallen to the side. Her eyes were beginning to close and that was a violation of the rules: no sleeping. She began to drool and one of the attendants spotted her. It took a few moments but finally he woke her up and when he did he said, “Shit.”

I hadn’t seen it before but now I noticed her right arm had ballooned up like Popeye the Sailor. It was turning green and blue. Two more attendants came over. They were standing at the foot of her bed, blocking my view. The last thing I saw was them helping the girl across the floor into the doctor’s office.

“So, who wants to go first,” said an attendant as he walked up between our beds. His name tag said John.

“Be my guest,” I said to the newbie.

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“OK,” said John the attendant. “So which arm do you want it in? You right or left-handed?”

“Why?” said the newbie, and the look in his eyes had gone from fright to downright terror.

“Say, John,” I said, “what was going on over there?”

“You mean with the girl?”

“Yeah.”

“The needle slipped out of her vein. When the return cycle clicked on it started pumping blood straight into her arm.”

“Ouch,” I said, “never seen that before. Who rigged her up?”

“Paul, the new guy.”

“Hey, John,” someone shouted from the doctor’s office. “Come here.

Need your help.”

“Sure,” said John. “You guys sit tight.”

John the attendant disappeared around the corner.

The look in the newbie’s eyes was now that of horror.

Another attendant walked up.

“Hey, guys,” he said. “So, who wants to go first?”

The name tag on the attendant said PAUL. I never saw the look in newbie’s eyes again, but if I had I bet it would have been the look of complete panic. He was up and out before I could even say goodbye.

“What’s up with him?” said Paul the attendant.

“Don’t know. Guess he’s not much for the sight of blood.”

Paul laughed. “Newbies.”

The majority of donors at the IVAN Biomedical Blood Plasma Clinic are alcoholics, the homeless, and the unemployable, with some college students mixed in. And me, which classification did I fall under? While I was at the time without an official residence, I was by no means homeless. I wasn’t in school at present. And although I was currently unemployed, I was by no means unemployable. I guess if I fell into any category at all it would have to be: journeyman philosopher.

I knew every blood plasma clinic from Jacksonville to LA. I used to hit them twice as often as was allowed, but now they got this new bullshit involving your thumbnail and an ultraviolet light. Still, collecting bottles and cans is a good business, a bit competitive nowadays, but still a nice supplement.

If you’re one of those who prefers to give at the Red Cross, if the money’s not important and bleeding’s your thing, you can save yourself a whole lotta time by ducking down past the railroad tracks where all the transients stay.

Walk up to the biggest one you can find and hit him in the face.

Whether or not you donate blood will depend on what sort of mood he is in. And the amount that you give will depend on the size of the man.

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David Stallings

BIAS ADJUSTMENTS

When my mother and new stepfather moved from Nashville to a southern Alaska town, I spent fifth grade trying to make new friends, rid myself of Southern drawl, and avoid getting beat up. And so, to help my classmates decide which candy bar to eat first, I suggest, Eeny, meeny miney moe, catch a nigger by the toe...

What’s that?

No one has heard the word.

My accent quickly disappears.

I soon learn to feel smarter than the tough native kids with parents in the TB sanitarium.

Seward, 1953

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Brad McLelland

SOBER UP

We got one for Women’s and one down in Men’s. Only we don’t call them detox cells, we call them Whoop-Ass Tanks. Every county jail’s got one, maybe two or three depending on the population.

What you do is, you leave the cuffs on when the bad ones come in. The bad ones like to wrestle, and sometimes they try to bite. You don’t want a bite from a detainee. Human bacteria’s worse than a dog’s, and detainee bites got everything from HIV to hep B to syphilis. So you leave the cuffs on, behind the back, and push them on their knees face down in a corner. They scream and spit and call you things like pig and shit heap, but that’s why the WhoopAss Tanks ain’t got cameras. The cameras was up there one time or another— you can tell from the big black screws still up in the walls—but Sheriff knows what it’s like and doesn’t want no cameras in the Whoop-Asses. He tells us, Just put ‘em up against the corner, they’re going to holler, but nothing you can do about that, so just push ‘em down and let ‘em yell it out. And Christ they do.

This one lady, a meth junkie with a stack of priors, Drug Task Force boys haul her in one night around 2:30 and toss her over handcuffed to the deputies. I’m working at the booking counter but the deputies need a hand at the sally port. This lady, she’s bawling, yelling, screaming about her kids, the rent, light bills, Social Security. Not even twenty-three and cussing about Social Security—but that’s what they do, they yell like red devils about everything. Deputies shove her in the Whoop-Ass Tank with the handcuffs still on. She skids on her face and a deputy waves me over. Wendy, watch that shit for us. They got her boyfriend in the car and he’s tweekin’ hard. So I leave the booking counter and stand at the door of the Whoop-Ass and watch her.

She wipes a busted lip on her gray t-shirt and I stare at her bony body.

Seventy, seventy-five pounds max, and needle-spotted arms that don’t look like they could hold up a grocery sack. I try to get my hand under the junkie’s arm, to pick her up off the floor, but she don’t take to that and that’s how I learn about the biting. Damn near takes two fingers right off and when I pull back to see if she broke skin, she spits at the uniform. I try to tell her it’s only a job, a paycheck every two weeks, a place I come to help feed my kids, but all I get is fucking bitch over and over again, fucking bitch, like it’s stuck in her black throat and she’s trying to gag something out. So I slap her.

She looks at me, her dead-white face, skull-dead eyes, bulging. You hit me, she says.

Sober up, I tell the woman. Don’t you see you’re killing your kids?

I’m gonna call the Law, she screams.

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Listen to yourself, do you even know where you are? I say, and then I hit her again, knuckles this time. The hand with the ring, even though I’m not supposed to be wearing one. Hurts when I do, and in the back of my brain I think, Smart, you don’t want a bite, but you’ll hit her face bare-handed. But I know this has got to be done. That’s all I think. This has got to be done. And then I stop thinking and swing again. And again. I feel skin split open, and my brain screams, What the hell did you just do? But then I realize it ain’t my fist that’s just broke open, it’s her bottom lip.

My seventh swing, I hear men laughing behind me.

God damn, Wendy, a deputy shouts. Everybody look at Wendy.

I swing and swing. Men are standing behind me and I see a black boot appear and give the junkie a hard kick to the stomach. There’s a whoosh and a small crack, and one of us pulls out a Taser and hits her in the left leg.

There’s a choking sound, a garbling on spit like someone drowning in a lake, and another deputy shouts, Look at that. I think she’s sobered up already. God DAMN, Wendy.

I look at her legs. The junkie’s done pissed herself. There’s a puddle in the floor, and the air smells like burnt chemicals. The junkie opens her black, bloody mouth. You—she starts with a wheeze, but another deputy steps in and gives her one last kick and she curls up like a baby and doesn’t make a peep the rest of the night.

Until daybreak. That’s when I hear her start to cry. You stupid bitch, I hear, but it’s only a whisper, a wet whisper on the dingy, pissy floor. Oh, God, what did you do this time, she says.

I wish I could tell her something. Explain something I can’t quite figure out on my own, but I’d be able to if I could walk to the bars and start talking.

I pace the floor a dozen times and stop near the Whoop-Ass and peer inside.

The junkie’s facing the wall and hitching like she’s got a bad case of hiccups.

Stupid bitch, I hear her cry again. What did you do, what did you do.

That evening, an hour after my next shift starts, Sheriff pays a visit to Women’s. He walks the hall with nice black shoes and we all stand up straight like we’re at attention. I fold my stinging hands behind my back and look up at the ceiling.

He stops in front of me. Heard about last night, he says. Heard about your detainee. Pissed herself, huh? You ever see that before, Wendy?

I feel a throb in my blue hands, a pulse under my knuckles like a heartbeat.

I don’t say anything to him.

Sometimes, Sheriff says, it ain’t pretty. What we got to do here. Understand?

I nod, and Sheriff pats me on the shoulder.

You’ll be fine. Just fine. Keep up the good work.

Then he walks off, whistling.

I think about my kids, their faces staring up at me. About skull-dead eyes looking up from dirty black floors. A bloody mouth in a dark corner. And something I can’t get out of my ears, something cold and loud whispering in my brain, What did you do, you stupid bitch.

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Laura Musselman

LET ME HOLD MY BANNER HIGH

Fact: On July 16, 1954, construction workers began to clear out the orange and walnut trees inhabiting 160 acres of land in Anaheim, California. Exactly 365 days later, Disneyland opened its doors to thousands of invitation-only guests, not including the thousands of eager park crashers who possessed counterfeit admission tickets.

Fact: July 16, 1955 did not go as planned. The temperature reached a sweltering 101 degrees Fahrenheit, uncommonly hot weather for the usually fair Orange County, causing ladies’ heels to sink into the not-quite-dry asphalt of Main Street. Due to a recent plumbers’ strike in the area, a decision had to be made between the use of the park’s water fountains, or the use of the park’s bathrooms. Walt Disney chose the bathrooms, remarking, “People can buy Pepsi-Cola, but they can’t pee in the street.” A gas leak caused rides, and even entire lands of the park, to close. Vendors simply ran out of food. A section of glass from a steamboat window fell on the head of a US Senator.

Fact: If you travel to Anaheim today, you are bound to see fireworks.

They happen every night, at 9 o’clock exactly, except in cases of rain or especially gusty winds. The freeways, Interstate 5 in particular, offer an especially breathtaking view. I would often watch the fireworks from the balcony of my apartment, considering the ability of the fireworks to inch underneath my skin and burst there, planting infinitesimal and enchanting seeds in my blood cells. Their spores lingered, thundering through me for hours on end. I would sit there, on my balcony, and consider how I got there, how it was that I came to live so close to the “happiest place on earth.”

Admittedly, I wasn’t big on Disney as a child. Road trips to the park weren’t a fixture of my childhood, and I don’t recall wanting to dress up as Cinderella or Snow White for Halloween. Disneyland, in all honesty, never made me that happy, never brought me the enviable burst of excitement that it seemed to bring to most other children. And yet during my time in Anaheim, when I worked at one of the biggest theme parks in the world, I sat on my balcony nearly every night, at exactly 9 o’clock, except in cases of rain or especially gusty winds, pondering Disney’s smoke-free sky explosions, feeling content, letting those explosive tingles touch my each and every nerve.

Happiness is a contagious disease.

The job was easier to get than I’d expected. My success in acquiring this

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particular job, however, seemed to be more dependent on my height than any legitimate job skill I might have had at the time. That and my stunning propensity for making a fool out of myself in public which, like my stature, isn’t a trait one can really acquire. It came down to dumb luck, or at least that’s what I told myself following the six-hour-long audition process. I met the requirements by just happening to be between the ranges of 4’8” and 5’½”, but to this day I’m uncomfortable with the reality that was brought to my attention that afternoon in May: the reality that suggested I had the capacity to act more foolish than at least 500 other people in Southern California.

I’m also uncomfortable with the fact that the combination of height and my capacity to act silly beyond reason landed me the role of Mickey Mouse.

Fresh out of college, it seemed appropriate to take a year off and do something “fun” before further contemplating graduate school. I’d been told to “have fun” by parents and professors, by friends and therapists. I felt as though I had it all “together,” and I was conditioned to believe that once “togetherness” had been achieved, “fun” was permissible. Feeling like I finally “had it all together” was wonderful enough, but I knew I’d need a job to justify any sort of “time off ” being taken. Finding a “fun job” to accompany my “fun time off ” was my goal, and as my new apartment was situated only three miles away from the biggest theme park on the west coast, the choice to seek employment there seemed like a no-brainer. I put two and two together, and went to an audition.

Originally I’d wanted to dance in parades, since the one thing I knew I could do was dance. Twenty years of experience and training had to be worth something. Being a parade dancer, I would later find out, automatically blasted any entertainment employee at the park to the virtual zenith of the performance hierarchy. Parade dancers were glamorous; they were the most beautiful people I’d ever seen in real life, despite their obviously heavy makeup. They all had the whitest teeth, the clearest skin, the shiniest hair.

Watching a parade travel down Main Street was a bit like watching a beauty pageant. But they were talented, too. They could flash bigger, more genuine smiles. They had sharp, concise, but graceful movements. And because of all this, they terrified me.

My parade dreams, however, were dashed once I looked at the audition schedule. According to the audition website, dancers weren’t needed, but I needed some sort of proof for myself that moving to Anaheim would lead to something worthwhile, that I wasn’t simply engaging in an extended, postcollegiate vacation. What the company needed, however, was a bright new crop of atmosphere characters. The company affectionately referred to these characters as Fuzzies.

But this job, however easily it dropped into my hands, required nothing less than an intensive nightmare of training and preparation. Those of us who had been cast spent days at the park, discussing needless trivia and receiving lectures about tedious safety protocols. My fellow fuzzies-in-training and I even spent a day learning how to correctly give and receive high-fives to

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ensure that our wrists wouldn’t weaken or become injured by overeager guests. But we also absorbed fascinating tidbits of information.

We learned that no one, technically, has ever died inside the park. Times of death are not registered until the body of the deceased is removed from park grounds. We learned that when guests board the train that travels the circumference of the park, they hear the ticking of a message in Morse code, a message first delivered over half a century ago that promises joy and hope, which seemed to us to be a subtle way of planting happy thoughts into their subconscious. Was Walt Disney really an anti-Semite? someone asked. That’s just a rumor, our guide told us, acting as though the Disney cartoons we’d seen earlier that showed Mickey Mouse himself holding a swastika-imprinted lighter were no big deal, or purely coincidental. We learned that yes, there is a basketball court snuggled into the peak of the Matterhorn, but it’s really only a half-court and therefore nothing to write home about. And those delicious smells that glide up your nose upon entering? They really are pumped through vents in the gutters of Main Street USA, meant to convince you that you’re hungry and should spend your hard-earned cash on overpriced churros and foot-long corndogs heavy with batter.

Training also consisted of surviving through a number of what seemed to be ridiculous scenarios involving park guests that didn’t seem likely to ever happen. One day, us fuzzies were instructed to suit up head to toe in our assigned costumes. We stood together in a large studio in the backstage area of the park, armed only with pens, while our trainers, armed with autograph books of all shapes and sizes, bombarded us like mosquitos, overzealous to get the signatures my comrades and I had been trying for weeks to emulate.

Briefly, I considered jamming my pen into their jugulars, one at a time, but then I thought better of it. This type of training proved to be necessary, however, as I found myself face-to-face with a crowd of at least a hundred guests on my first morning of work. Children, thumbs sucked into their tiny mouths, the morning’s breakfast splattered over their look-a-like princess dresses, hats and ears atop their heads tilted at a slight, messy angle. Adults, holding said children, looked just as electrified. And me: the boss, if only for a shift, of the entire operation.

Months went by and I slowly began to adjust to my routine: wake up, eat breakfast, and pick out each individual piece of my wardrobe, including the pièce de résistance: the head, valued at roughly seventy grand, cost more than a luxury car. “Hand painted,” a head costumer once winked. The last thing I had to do before getting fuzzy was stretch, which could take up to an hour on some days, depending on the manager for that shift. Some mangers liked to watch. They had probing hawk-eyes, and would peer at me through their reflection in the mirror, ensuring that I was completing every stretch thoroughly. Their attention to detail would never let up, and some supervisors were notorious for blowing up and sending ill people home with disciplinary points. Other managers worked with less scrutiny, spending their

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days sharing stories with other cast members, never once getting up from behind their desks. These stories would often range from harmless banter to cases of “too much information,” depending on the person or break room.

“So I took this girl to my apartment the other night,” I overheard a supervisor say once. He was sitting back in his chair and he nonchalantly tossed his navy blue tie over one shoulder as he relaxed into his narrative.

The story he was about to tell had actually begun earlier, but other cast members were coming in from newly completed shifts, and the expression on my supervisor’s face suggested he found it necessary to get them caught up. Clearly enjoying the attention and his growing audience, my supervisor went on. “And we had this great night. A great night, I’m telling you. And we start to get it on, and I’m hitting it doggy-style,” he paused, to let my male coworkers chuckle, costume heads in their hands, “and the girl tells me to donkey punch her. Can you believe that? It was some crazy shit.”

“You didn’t do it, right?” a male voice called from behind me.

“Of course I did it, dude. I mean, I hesitated for a moment, but she just kept begging, man, begging. She said it was alright, you know? So I did it, softly ‘cause I didn’t want to hurt her, and she called me a bitch!”

Disapproving mutters echoed from all around.

He continued. “So I was like, ‘Damn, you can’t let this girl call you a bitch.’ And I punched her so hard in the back of her head that her forehead slammed against the headboard.”

Laughter. And then, “Was she okay?”

“She got knocked unconscious, dude!”

More laughter.

“I mean, I got up and left after that. I don’t know why, it just seemed weird and I was kind of freaked out and pretty terrified that she’d wake up and kick my ass.”

“You inadvertently knocked her out and left?” I finally, and incredulously, chimed in.

“Yeah. But get this—this is the killer. She called me the next day and left a voicemail saying that the other night was just great, and she can’t wait to do it again!”

High fives all around.

I put on my head and walked out, back into the park to greet the children.

Throughout any given week, we’d get a certain number of visits from terminally-ill children who were allowed to meet with me privately, one-onone. It was their ultimate, final wish. And sometimes, I left my meetings feeling good; a sad kind of good, the sort of conflicted feeling that manifests when you know you’ve done all you can, that you made someone very happy for one day, though their days are numbered.

In Mickey’s Toon Town abode, I stood with a host and a photographer, waiting for one-such Make-a-Wish visitor, preparing for the hundreds of

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camera flashes I was about to endure. Finally, a small boy was wheeled in, all the anticipation in the world concentrated in his two, shining eyes. For a brief second, our eyes met, direct communication barred by the screens over my eyes and a few feet of space. I held out my hand. And then he saw me, really saw me. He saw me as the oversized mouse I was, unable to speak or genuinely smile, at a loss for words both by choice and by force. There was a void between us: a mask between our faces, a costume between our touch.

His face crumpled, his two shining eyes shut tight to barricade his tears, and his screams, wrought with terror, echoed within my luxury car of a head.

The hosts and his parents did their best to comfort him, to reassure him that yes, I really was who he wanted to see, and wasn’t he excited? The screams intensified. He started shaking. And eventually, they exited. No pictures. No autographs. No wishes.

I walked backstage, defeated. A few janitors and food service employees walked by, wearing the exact smiles I’d hoped to see on the boy, waving and shouting, “Hey, Boss! How’s your day?” I smacked a kiss in their direction.

Fact: Since the opening of Disneyland, approximately thirteen deaths have occurred. I imagine the death certificates of these certain unfortunate souls read something like “Harbor and Ball Avenues” next to the space that asks for “Place of Death,” rather than “the Happiest Place on Earth.”

Fact: It has been reported that at least three births have taken place inside park walls. It has also been reported that no kidnappings have ever taken place.

Fact: On my last night as an employee of the park, management asked us to stay late and rehearse. Again. Even though I’d earned a coveted fiveday-spot in the annual Christmas parade, even though I got essentially what I’d wanted in the first place, I was drained—emotionally and physically. We’d already run through two parades that evening, accelerating our heartbeats past any healthy number, sweat loosening our caked foundation and seeping through our costumes. But the beauty was that we had the park to ourselves.

The Christmas tree, reaching sixty feet in its massive height, was ours. The nearby castle lights flashed and sparkled just for us. The artificial snow fell onto our noses, lodged itself into the curves of our clammy necks. This park was ours, if only for a few hours, and it really did appear to burst with an undeniable sense of childhood wonderment. And when I exited the grounds for the final time that night, I couldn’t help but think of all the irony in the world, acknowledging the crashing of that evening’s leftover fireworks, and the persistence of a famous anti-Semite’s Morse code message tick-ticking above my sleepy head.

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Paul Handley

FASCISM IN RHYME

The dilemma in this poem is that poets are inherently oppressors, firmly tamping down, as fits a poetic mien, verses onto the oppressed, tampering, however so slightly with the attributes of words as forged by the reader over a life of signifiers.

Particularly, if the receiver is who we think they are.

Thus, invisible ink never revealed is the answer.

- Michel Foucault

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Nancy Stohlman

LOVE LETTER TO THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF POETRY Dear National Library of Poetry,

It is my pleasure to inform you that, after reviewing the details of my life since I first received your glowing acceptance letter in 1995, it has been determined that you are directly responsible for the publication of my recent novel.

My poem of “rare talent” you must remember well, the one without a title that began with the very original “I lie my curls on a bed of red roses,” the one you published in a hardback anthology called Between the Raindrops.

I have to officially apologize for not buying the anthology at the time, I just couldn’t afford the $50 working as a Ruby Tuesday’s waitress, but I vowed to someday go to DC in person instead and see my work displayed.

“You should be genuinely proud of your accomplishment,” your acceptance letter told me. “We receive thousands of poems each year and we choose only a very few for publication.”

And just like that I was a published author.

Had I never received your letter back in 1995, I might never have completed that first notebook, each poem growing less tentative. And if I hadn’t finished multiple notebooks, I might never have started calling myself a writer—in fact, I might never have gone to Colorado at all. And if I hadn’t gone west, I might never have gone to those coffeehouses where people wearing berets read poetry worse than mine. I might not have decided to go back to school, which means I might never have written “The Phantom of the Waffle House,” my first short story and the earner of my first official form rejection slip. And if I hadn’t started writing stories and submitting my work for publication, I might never have tried to write my first shitty novel.

Or my second shitty novel, or my third slightly less shitty novel. In fact, I might never have written a decent word.

And so you see, the National Library of Poetry is directly responsible for my recent success.

You might be wondering if I ever did make it to DC to see my work in person. Yes, several years ago I finally went on the pilgrimage to see my work at the National Library of Poetry. I imagined the National Library’s domed ceilings where doves fluttered across beams of sunlight. I imagined Between the Raindrops as a thick, weighty book and my name in golden scroll.

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I went through the metal detectors and proudly approached the information desk: I’m looking for my poem.

Who’s the publisher?

I pulled out the old, yellowed acceptance letter with the glossy font.

Oh, the National Library of Poetry, she said, distain hanging from the final syllables. That’s a commercial library.

What do you mean?

I mean it’s not part of the National Library of Congress. It’s in Silver Springs, Maryland. It’s a commercial library.

National Library of Poetry—you swindler, I had thought all this time that I was special; you really convinced me that I had rare talent. But you say that to all of us, don’t you? I guess I’m the one to blame. I offered a shitty poem to the Great God of Vanity Publishing, and it was taken with the option to purchase the hardback for $50.

But, really, I can’t thank you enough. Sending you that terrible poem was the most important decision I ever made. Who doesn’t want a letter in the mail saying, “Congratulations. You should be genuinely proud of your accomplishment.

We receive thousands of poems each year and we choose only a very few for publication. It is our pleasure to publish fine poems such as yours in our anthologies.” That your praise was contrived and formulaic made no difference in the end. And later, when I realized the truth, it could no longer crush me.

My most sincere thanks, Nancy Stohlman P.S. National Library of Poetry, seeing how your publication of my first poem was so crucial in my trajectory of becoming a writer, I would like to offer you the opportunity to own a signed copy of my novel, Searching for Suzi.

Let me make one thing clear . . . I am selecting you as a receiver of my signed novel solely on the basis of merit. You are under no obligation to make any purchase of any kind. Of course, many people do wish to own a copy of the publication that they have had such a hand in bringing to fruition. If this is the case, I welcome your order—and guarantee your satisfaction. If you wish to own a signed copy of Searching for Suzi at my special gratitude price, please complete the enclosed order form.

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Daniel Staniforth

PEP TIDE

Dorsalin love

The Acroppoline surge

Stone recalcitration

Rivers unbended

Half light of umbrage

In seething straights Past strychnine choirs

Beveled rejoinders

Aft mortification

Fuselage fears

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Dr. Bruce Bromley

WITHSTANDING RADIATION

“Hey pretty guy, you got a boyfriend?” the cabbie asks in the rear-view mirror, his eyes flooding its rectangle with that green, bruised light belonging to all the storms I waited for in our Rockland County house, nose stuck to the window, the smell, rise, and whoosh of air squeezing in through the geometry of the screen, while outside everything somersaulted in answer to forces it could not see. I don’t say that the laminated taxi license has offered me his name, Malik, though he will murmur the gift of it after the long curve home from west to east to the Little India where I live, just off Lexington Avenue. That will happen on my building’s top stair as I am deciding whether or not to unlock the front door, sniffing the musk of him next to me, hearing the cab below us huff because Malik will have left it running, unsure of the “yes” he thinks he wants from me yet certain enough, almost, to insist, leaning in: “I can fuck you and still call myself a man.” But now, jostling against the back seat, not yet pronouncing the “no boyfriend” he wishes for, I want to tell Malik how I visualize his return, say every six months, to Karachi, to the village-girl he married when she was on the cusp of sixteen, to the three boys she produced for him, who recognize their father only as that man who comes back, the one who speaks too sternly to them in the dark, at bedtime, since he yearns to lie with the near-woman who can’t quite know the man she must call her husband. I wish to say: Safiyyah, your wife, knows more than you guess, and she learns it from the gently waving way in which the waters of the Arabian Sea lap and lick and exercise care for the land, bolstering it, propping it up, defining it as not-water, even if, millennia ago, all this ground was liquid, heaving. On a few late afternoons, she walks to where the earth ends, while her sister from the village that Safiyyah continues to feel taut in her bones watches over the boys, steams their rice; and, at the place where sand gives way to sea, Safiyyah knows that the water eats what it struggles to support, knows that the ground humps itself up behind her in order not to be swallowed by the fluid weight that braces it. She turns her head, sometimes, to look back, thinks that the land would rather be aflame than become this element that will always be its origin. More than once, during his many home-visits, when he comes to her later than she has ever hoped, Safiyyah finds another man’s sweat, acrid, dried quickly to a kind of ash, lingering among Malik’s chest hair, in his armpits, on the fingertips he shoves between her teeth as, down below, he pushes into her. I wish to

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tell Malik how this preference for burning is the backstory of my “no, no boyfriend” that parts, that hefts his lips to the moist W of a smile; that all the men with whom I have chafed and rubbed fire into fact have been outdone by a virus that is its own sort of blazing; that, compelled to burnish, spark, and flare, together we chose cinders over re-emplacement in ancestral waters, just as Safiyyah’s earth would, if it experienced the capacity to choose. I want to describe for him the ways in which my lovers were fevered, wasted, snuffed out by what their blood could only go on carrying, to confess that I remain here, in the back seat of his cab, due to the democracy of latex in combination with my seeing, in the flesh of every man edging close, the ashes that must come after, to add that the irony of envisioning death in all of them has allowed me to escape the wasting and fastened me to the living “no” I was unaware of having chosen. But the taxi swerves on to lower Lexington, Malik greets it with a hail, and I am thinking of the sudden blazes that shot through those houses neighboring ours in Upper Nyack, under the shadow of Hook Mountain, one late September, when my mother met me with her car outside the grammar school. She is not going to detail my father’s appetite for the woman with the saffron-colored hair, his longing for the tributary veins that collect at the seam above her yellow lashes, his noting their duplicates in a whorl around her ankles, so that the skin seems to forecast what he might claim to be his, if he were to eat her. She is not going to indicate that my father would have abandoned home, wife, child in favor of these alimentary couplings with a personal assistant in his textile firm, had the former not declared: “wifehood doesn’t interest me.” She will not explain that my father stands suspended between the marriage he thought he wanted and a freedom for which he will finally be unprepared or, her belly heaped against the steering wheel, present my brother’s forthcoming birth as proof that something can be made of suspension. Yet she will, on our drive to the Hudson, brake swiftly at a traffic-signal, raise her right hand, point through the windshield at what she calls the “albino boy” whose radiance quivers within the crosswalk, about to combust, to restore him to the sky, this generator of heat and air and late summer fires that appear to torch each roof on either side of us. I rethink that restoration before my building’s front door, unlocking it now, while Malik aims his “take all of me inside you” at my ear, while I touch the meeting-place of his lips with my hand, while afternoon sun descends in angled wands between us, invoking the luminescent boy who tells me that we survive radiating light, without combustion or dispersal, by remembering how the earth that once was water sustains us, its continuity of motion not to be mistaken for seeming stasis, its always moving the “yes” we live by, regardless of our ability to uphold the saying of it.

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Paul Handley

DEAR JURIS PRUDENCE

The narrative/opinion expounds the joke.

The dissent provides a flaming forum, never to be deleted.

- Antonin Scalia

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April Johnston

DEATH, DIET COKE AND BONSAI TREES

We are sitting at our kitchen table, as we do on Saturday mornings. Preston is reading the New York Times on his cell phone; I’m reading the nutrition label on my newly purchased package of English muffins, wondering what percentage of my daily value of carbohydrates I’ll use if I clog the nooks and crannies with blackberry jelly.

Preston glances up at me. He says he doesn’t believe in labels, nutritional or otherwise, which is why we’ve lived together for two and a half years but don’t call each other by anything other than our names.

“Have you ever realized,” Preston asks me, “that English muffins are defined by what isn’t there?”

I stare at my breakfast. I want to say to him: Do you realize how ridiculous that sounds? This is what comes from reading the New York Times too early in the morning.

But I say nothing and, maybe because I’m perpetually bored or maybe because the blackberry jelly has thrown my carbohydrate intake out of whack, but it starts to sound profound, and I begin to silently list everything I can think of that is also defined by what isn’t there.

Bikinis.

Miniskirts.

Visits to the psychiatrist.

Non-fat lattes.

My relationship with my mother.

Bad facial hair.

“What?” Preston asks, dropping his cell phone onto the table with a heavy, what-now sigh. “Why are you staring at me?”

The Grand Canyon.

Swiss cheese.

Any song by Jon Bon Jovi. The entire basis for the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

“Kate, what is wrong with you?”

Death. Diet Coke. Bonsai trees.

The vast majority of U.S. history books.

“Kate?”

“Us,” I yell. “Us.” “What?” Preston pulls his body back from the table like he’s been slapped.

“Us! Our relationship. Did you hear me? Re-la-tion-ship.”

I know I’m not making any sense to him. I’m not wearing shoes and I don’t have keys, but I grab the package of English muffins, throw open the apartment door and walk down the hall. The elevator comes as soon as I call it, but before I step inside, I take one look back at our open door.

Preston hasn’t bothered to come out or to close it.

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Kasey Perkins

WHAT YOU MAY THINK OF WHEN YOU HEAR THE TERM ECO-FEMINISM Showering together to save water, or even better, just not showering and letting your legs resemble that Sasquatch from the beef jerky commercials, you know, the ones you try to ban, replacing our packaged meat products with small tits and granola, with women who eat flora and not fauna, if you know what I mean, the kind of woman who douches with river water and burns her bras as a thermo-energy source, women with tight asses and loose recycling bins, ones that unplug every electrical item in your house because you were playing Grand Theft Auto and they cut down trees in that game, or something like that. An eco-feminist sleeps with you and doesn’t call the next day, but she will leave a heaping tub of hummus in your vegetable drawer, no, that’s not a metaphor, just a gross side dish to eat with pita chips.

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CG Morelli

MY AMERICA

Life is not always fair.

Adults are always whipping this line out like a pair of twin pistols. They fire shots at your feet and make you dance like you’re in one of those predictable, old Westerns where the hero always rides in on the sunset and rifles down an army’s-worth of evil-doing gunslingers before taking a seat in the saloon like nothing ever happened.

Except justice never works like that in real life, which is the irony of the whole thing. In real life it’s the preppy rich boy or the football jock or the teacher’s pet who taste their own sweet version of true justice. If you’re a gangly thirteen year old with pimples and a loud Italian family, you’re probably left to taste something a little more sour . . . and I’m not talking about pasta fagiolo.

But the worst part is you never realize just how unfair the world is to gangly thirteen year olds until you’re a jaded adult with a receding hairline and a decade’s-worth of six packs hanging from your gut. That’s when you start to notice that, instead of the preppy, rich boys and the teacher’s pets, it’s the boss’ childhood friends or the Mayor’s distant relatives or the trust fund cases that get all the perks.

It’s the bankers floating gently to Earth under golden parachutes. It’s the politicians lining their pockets with the blood of enemies we’ve never met.

It’s the lawyers who find pleasure in other people’s pain. It’s the insurance moguls who find paying their customers to be a mere inconvenience in their business model. It’s the business owners who think their employees will find a way to magically heal themselves without health care. It’s the forefathers who never saw it coming.

And as the beer gut slowly recedes into what the general public will simply recognize as your “structure,” you start to realize that it’s not life that’s unfair.

It’s just my America.

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

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

April Johnston spent nearly a decade writing long-form narrative for newspapers and magazines. Today, she teaches her students in West Virginia University’s PI Reed School of Journalism how to write those stories. She has an MFA in creative writing from Carlow University, and her flash fiction was recently published in The Mix Tape by Fast Forward Press.

Brad McLelland is a third-year MFA student at Oklahoma State Univer-

sity in Stillwater, Oklahoma. An Arkansas native and former crime journalist, he has published stories in Staccato Fiction, The Harrow, and Fear and Trembling.

His chapbook, Bruisers, is forthcoming from Monkey Puzzle Press. He lives with his girlfriend Amanda, a 70-pound lab, a 20-pound cat, three birds, one tortoise, two snakes, and a 55-gallon tank of fish.

Brandon Arthur is the author of expired Rx (Monkey Puzzle Press, 2010).

He currently resides in Denver, Colorado.

Dr. Bruce Bromley has performed his poetry and music at the John

Drew Theatre (East Hampton), the Berklee Performance Center (Boston), Shakespeare and Company (Paris), The Village Voice (Paris), and at the 1986 Edinburgh Theatre Festival, where the Oxford Theatre Troupe performed his play Sound for Three Voices. His work has appeared in Fringe Magazine, Pif Magazine, Journal of Speculative Philosophy, Women and Performance, Fogged Clarity, Word Riot, and The Battered Suitcase among others. He is Senior Lecturer in expository writing at NYU, where he won the 2006 Golden Dozen Award for teaching excellence.

CG Morelli sometimes misses the city, but never the subway. His work has

appeared in Highlights for Children, Chicken Soup for the Soul, Jersey Devil Press, Long Story Short, House of Horror, Ghostlight Magazine, Blood Moon Rising (forthcoming) and Fiction at Work. He is the author of the short story collection In the Pen (2007).

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Claire Waters Marcus is a painter currently based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She holds a BFA from The San Francisco Art Institute, and has exhibited in the US and abroad. Her work explores archetypes, mythology, and the relationship between the everyday and the divine in contemporary society. Her work can be viewed at www.clairewmarcus.com

Clarissa Olivarez holds a Master’s degree in Literature from the University

of Colorado at Boulder and currently lives Hyattsville, Maryland. Her writing has been published in Haggard & Halloo, Blood Lotus, and Fogged Clarity and is forthcoming in Midwest Literary Magazine, and CC2K. Clarissa’s photography has appeared in inscape, Juked, and joyful!. She has taught at American University and Northern Virginia Community College.

Daniel Staniforth is an English writer and musician currently residing in

Lafayette, Colorado. He occasionally works at Naropa University and is a member of the English faculty at the Metropolitan State College of Denver.

His written and multimedia work has appeared in various small press journals and webzines. Information about his music compositions and recordings (including “sonic poet-scapes”) can be found at www.flowforth.com.

David Stallings was born in the South, then raised in Alaska and Colorado

before settling in the Pacific Northwest. Once an academic geographer, he has spent many years promoting public transportation in the Puget Sound area. His poems have appeared in several US literary journals and two anthologies.

E. Sater lives in Boulder, Colorado and enjoys painting, traveling, hiking,

camping, and anything outdoors. She recently started taking photography classes after receiving her 35MM Nikon camera as a gift. She spends as much time in the dark room as she can.

Jennifer Hamilton is a liver of life, a manifesting goddess who creates with the divine while passionately dancing through life, soaking up the beauty all around her. She expresses herself creatively by sharing gifts and love with others while capturing the ever-changing scenes in photographs, paintings, and words.

Jeremiah Johnson lives on Oahu where he surfs with his growing tribe.

He’s currently in Africa, and may never come back to the US. He lives more than you.

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Joel Parker is currently writing this bio. Finding time in between to wander around his side of the globe, taking occasional jaunts into photography, food, sun, sound, love and the unreasonable. . . . Virgo, loves to cook and the outdoors, currently single and auspiciously poor, so all interested women need apply!

Jordan Antonucci is an MFA candidate in the Jack Kerouac School of

Disembodied Poetics. An artist of multiple mediums, his textual work can be found forthcoming in Freaklung Odes out of London, Anthology of the Awkward (City Lights, 2010) and his art exhibit with collaborators Joshua Antonucci and Min Jung Oh can be found online at www.sen-sing.com.

Kasey Perkins is an English Masters student at Truman State University in Kirksville, Missouri where she hosts poetry slams. Her poems have been published in Lumina, SLAB, and Windfall. She is currently teaching freshman composition at Truman and writing a chapbook based on the works of Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Raised by the waves of Corpus Christi, Texas, Kimberly Castanon received her MFA in Writing and Poetics from Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School. She enjoys yoga, snowboarding and painting into the dark hours of the morning. She and her husband David live in Colorado.

Kristofer Whited was born and raised in Wheatfield, Indiana. He lived nearly a decade as a union carpenter and bar-band guitarist, got his BA at Purdue University in 2007, and is now in his final year in the MFA Program at California State University, Fresno. This summer he was lucky enough to ride 8,400 miles on his motorcycle across this incredibly gorgeous country.

Laura Musselman is wrapping up an MFA in Creative Writing at California State University, Fresno, where she teaches creative nonfiction and works as an editorial assistant for The Normal School. When she isn’t busy staring at blank pages, she enjoys eating, breathing, and losing herself in the narratives of others.

Nancy Stohlman has five books to her credit, including Searching for Suzi: a

flash novel and Fast Forward: The Mix Tape (FF>> Press), the latest in an annual series of flash fiction released by Fast Forward Press. She’s currently on the writing faculty at the Community College of Denver.

Nate Jordon has a love/hate thing with words. He occasionally publishes those written by others. Occasionally he burns his own. He points to the moon.

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Pat Nolan’s poetry and prose have been published in numerous magazines and anthologies in Europe and Asia as well as North America. He was coeditor of Life of Crime: Newsletter of The Black Bart Poetry Society in the ‘80s and which were recently collected into one volume as Life of Crime: Documents In The Guerrilla War Against Language Poetry (Poltroon Press, 2009). He has published over a dozen books of poetry including a selection of prose poems, Intellectual Pretentions, from Editions de Jacob (2009). He lives among the redwood wilds along the lower Russian River in Northern California.

Paul Handley has poems included or forthcoming in a full length collection from Punkin House Press, on-line chapbook for Silkworms Ink and publications such as Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Pemmican, and others.

After graduating from Providenciaal Technisch Instituut Kortrijk as a Textile Designer, Peter Terrin embarked on a journey of self discovery. He has traveled extensively for the past fourteen years, living and working in Ibiza, Austria, Venezuela, The Dominican Republic and Mexico. He now lives in the jungle of the Yucatan, Mexico. In this tranquil environment, he is able to share his unique view of the world through paint, canvas and pallet knives.

Discover more of his work at terrinart.com.

Philip Loyd lives in Houston, Texas and is the author of over 200 poems and 44 short stories. His work, including essays, articles, poetry, and reviews, has appeared in 84 publications in 8 countries with one story even produced for radio in Australia. Included in his many awards is the Hemingway Center Short Story Prize.

Shlomo Yermoyahu likes to make people laugh and often succeeds with

his name alone. In addition to a few published stories, he has authored novels for young adults (I Was a Teenage Television Addict), plays for young adults (Just Say No to Home Cloning), and the occasional essay. He resides in Philadelphia where he clings to the dream of one day making people laugh so hard that they finally start to take him seriously.

Stacy Walsh enjoys daydreaming about her pseudo-rock band, devising intricate plans to travel the country living out of her car, and putting words into pleasing orders. None of these admirable endeavors, however, pay off her mounting student loan debt. Donations accepted.

Travis Cebula currently resides in Golden, Colorado with his lovely wife Shannon. He is an MFA graduate of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics and is the author of Some Exits and Under the Sky They Lit Cities.

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SUBMIT TO:

monkey puzzle #11

Submission Guidelines Monkey Puzzle is seeking submissions of prose (2,500

words max), poetry (1-5 pages), translations, artwork, photography, and hybrids. Experimental work and multiple submissions welcome.

Monkey Puzzle appreciates daring work exhibiting intel-

ligence and creativity, socio-political-cultural 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 an SASE if you would like a reply.

Address all queries and submissions to:

monkey puzzle press PO Box 20804 Boulder, Colorado 80308

MonkeyPuzzlePress@gmail.com

www.monkeypuzzlepress.com DEADLINE

August 15, 2011 57

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

Nate Jordon specially thanks: Moonie Dannen, Travis Cebula, John H. Jordon, John L. Yates Jr., Pearl Jam, Eddie Vedder, Jack Kerouac, Henry David Thoreau, Charles Bukowski, Hunter S. Thompson, Jim Morrison, Henry Miller, Daniel Quinn, Robert Pirsig, Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Mahatma Ghandi, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama, Michael Moore, George Carlin, Rocky Balboa, and Fletch.

Jordan Antonucci specially thanks: Becky Thatcher, Berlin, Fryderyk Chopin, Miiles, Phaedrus, Herman Hesse, Cheap Vietnamese Cigaretts, William Blake, William B. Yeats, Japan, Amadeo Modigliani, Truong, and Francis Bacon.

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