Monkey Puzzle #9

Literature / $10.00 #9

Different Voices for a Different Species.

Spring / summer

“Reading Monkey Puzzle is the literary equivalent to listening to Jim Morrison scream ‘COME ON!’ before the guitar solo in ‘Five To One’ . . . or driving to Woody Creek Tavern for the first time and spending the entire afternoon getting loaded while sitting in Hunter Thompson’s old chair.”

2010

- Rob Geisen, author of Paper Thin

- Shane Joaquín Jiménez, author of It Can Be That Way Still

puzzle

“Monkey Puzzle gives light to the resurgence of poetic inspiration and ingenuity.”

MONkey

“Reading Monkey Puzzle is like plunging into dark waters needleworked with piranhas, and coming away raw and stripped and blowing and laughing. Reading Monkey Puzzle is like discovering a honeyed mystery deep at the heart of your most cherished bloodied escapade.”

- Olatundji Akpo-Sani, Baobob Tree Press “Nah. I don’t read.”

- Anonymous Drunk, The Tavern, Houston, Texas

51000

780980 165098

press

www.MONkeypuzzlepress.com

puzzle

9

monkey

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

MONkey puzzle

monkey puzzle

MONKEY PUZZLE PRESS BOULDER, COLORADO

monkey puzzle Issue #9

Spring/Summer 2010

EDITOR, DESIGNER, PUBLISHER Nate Jordon POETRY EDITOR Michael D. Edwards COVER PHOTO Betty Lou by Jeremiah Johnson COVER DESIGN Michael D. Edwards Copyright Š 2010 Monkey Puzzle Press All rights revert to individual authors upon publication.

ISBN-10 0-9801650-9-1 ISBN-13 978-0-9801650-9-8

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

vi

The Boss of My Body

Kathy Conde

21

Uncle Mort

Lee Ann Grossberg

1

Notes

Ming Jung Oh

24

omne vivum ex ovo

Jennifer Aglio

3

Until That Tuesday...

Travis Macdonald

28

noisy alien mirror

Jack Collom

4

Finer Than Prayer

Nathan Antar

29

6

reversed iteration

Brandon Arthur

32

9

Yellow

Jordan Antonucci

33

Aquariums, NY

Get in the car, Helen

10

Ms. Frisky Is Expecting

Ralph Bland

37

Cracked Open

Sarah Cooke

12

Three Gods In One

Kade Alexander Jensen

41

Untitled

Kai Forrest Brown

14

Men In Uniform

Michael Cohen

44

“i.”

15

Heartwood

Jennifer Aglio

49

I Can’t Fly Fat

Bryan Jansing

17

Contributors

51

unto a good land

Jennifer Aglio

19

Submission Guidelines

55

Acknowledgements

56

New Books from MPP

57

Text One: For Dam & Corn

Carolyn Zaikowski

As If We Didn’t Know

Tim Z. Hernandez

Suzanne DuLany

Man Walking on “R”

Jack Collom

20

editor’s note Aloha, What I wouldn’t do to be sitting on a Hawaiian beach right now. Supposedly spring is here, perhaps in full throttle where you’re at, but where I’m at, I look out the window and see a gray overcast sky and the Flatirons of the Rocky Mountains still blanketed with snow. I’m ready for sunshine and warm weather. I’m ready to hit the road. I’m ready to answer this call of beckoning wanderlust. 2010 has been a busy year and we at Fort Monkey Puzzle need some R&R—but there ain’t no rest for the wicked . . . there’s lots going on in our part of the jungle.

Over the past five months, much has happened at MPP HQ. We’ve gone through a major identity recreation, picked up a new poetry editor and graphic designer, completed four new books (Cold Instant by Jack Collom, The Aftermath, etc.

by Get in the car, Helen, expired Rx by brandon arthur, and Tapeworm by Nicholas B. Morris - debuting soon), hosted an MPP table at the 2010 AWP Conference, been accepted into IBPA (Independent Book Publishers Association) and CLMP (Council of Literary Magazines and Presses), acquired distribution through SPD (Small Press Distribution) and GenPop Books, and our new website will launch in the next few weeks. Whew! Okay, just breathe.

The exposure we’ve experienced and continue to experience couldn’t happen without you. Thank you for your consistent support. Monkey Puzzle has come a long way over the last three years, and every day we learn something new, we get better, we evolve. I’ve been very lucky to have the assistance and advocacy of talented, dedicated artists in my local community and beyond. Along with publishing writers outside US borders, our readership continually grows—the only continent Monkey Puzzle hasn’t reached is Africa. We’ll get there eventually.

Until then, we hope you enjoy the fruit of our labors.

Speaking of fruit, I have a hankerin’ for some Hawaiian guava. But first, this banana . . .

Holoholo,

Nate Jordon Monkey-in-Chief

vi

vii

Lee Ann Grossberg

WINNER OF OUR 2ND ANNUAL FLASH FICTION CONTEST!

uncle mort

THE HAND RUBBING ME awake was moving up and down just between my breasts. Startled out of a deep sleep, my eyes flicked open to see Uncle Mort smiling sweetly, gently telling me it was time to wake up. He was sitting on my bed, his back to his daughter who slept on the adjacent bed. I flipped over onto my stomach, pulling the sheets up over myself and told him, “I’m awake.” A few moments passed and then the bed creaked and lifted as Uncle Mort stood up. He called to Debbie to wake up as he walked through the bedroom door of our hotel suite. I lay on my stomach for what seemed like a long time until Debbie said, “Come on. We better get up.”

It was the second day of a ten day vacation with my best friend and cousin, Debbie, and her parents. We were in Israel.

“Are you okay?” Debbie asked as we were waiting to sit down for breakfast. I hadn’t said much while we were getting ready, nor while we were all in the elevator going down to the hotel lobby for breakfast. I felt her father’s eyes on me. Without meeting my friend’s inquiring gaze, I looked at my feet and said, “I’m just cramping.”

“Do you need something, honey?” Debbie’s mom put her arm around me. I hugged my arms into myself.

“No thanks, Aunt Mimi. I’m fine.”

After breakfast we took a taxi to the archeological part of Jerusalem.

Debbie and I stooped and waded through a 2,700 year-old tunnel that once supplied water to this city. Amidst echoes of our laughter, the morning’s awakening faded into the background with the imaginary quality of a dream. Debbie’s parents waited for us at the other end of the tunnel and we walked to the Western Wall.

I wrote a little request on a small piece of paper, folded it as many times as it would fold and warmed it in the palm of my hand. When I approached the wall, I looked for just the right crevice to place it in, lest my wish not be heard. My fingertips tingled as I pushed the paper into a crack in the ancient wall.

After falafel and humus at a side café, Uncle Mort left the three of us to go meet with a parliamentarian from the Knesset and we wandered off to explore the Israel Museum. Afterwards, we regrouped on Ben-Yehuda Street and returned to the hotel for dinner, all quite exhausted but jubilant.

Before we sat down for dinner, I excused myself to the bathroom. When I came out, the only seat left at the round table was the one to the right of Uncle Mort. I hesitated a second then took my seat.

1

We were giddy after the long day and glad to be indoors sitting down with hot fresh pita and baba ganoush already on the table. Uncle Mort entertained us with stories of how he ended up meeting the prime minister, “In the bathroom of all places!” We were laughing at Uncle Mort’s escapades when I felt his hand gently touch my upper thigh. I froze. It rested there under the draped tablecloth as he drank his wine with his other hand, never pausing in the amusing tales he was telling. He turned his head and winked good-naturedly at me and resumed his story telling, engaging everyone. I didn’t hear a word that was being said, but somehow I nodded and laughed in the right places.

His hand got firmer and started moving further upwards, over the top of my long, thin cotton skirt. I clamped my legs shut and he changed his touch, patting me reassuringly on my thigh. He left his hand there, but more lightly. I looked around. The waiters were busy preparing a large table nearby, chatting and barking orders to one another in Hebrew. Debbie and Aunt Mimi were engrossed in the table conversation and the food on their plates.

I looked back at my plate and pushed around the food. I couldn’t play sick now. I’d been laughing and full of energy all day. Uncle Mort’s hand began moving again, gently rubbing my thigh up and down, a little at first, then with longer strokes. Just when his hand would go lower on my leg, I would relax with relief, only for it to venture back up even higher than before. When I looked up at him, he appeared to be listening intently to something Debbie was saying. When she was done, he smiled at me and asked what I thought of the Western Wall.

As I tried to focus my mind and formulate some kind of answer for everyone, I had unconsciously relaxed my legs apart and his fingers quickly sneaked their way up between them, my thin skirt and cotton panties the only thing between his groping hand and my privates. I stammered something about the Wall and clenched my legs tight, accidentally trapping his hand even closer against me. I opened my legs to reach down to claw his hand away and he leaned forward in his chair, getting a better angle to push his hand and fingers more firmly against my soft places, while looking to others as if he were leaning forward in earnest interest of what I had to say.

“It looks like the Wall made you emotional,” Uncle Mort said to me in a fatherly tone. Then he redirected the conversation away from me and just as I was about to make another attempt to pull his hand away, he gently took it away himself, patted my leg twice, and brought his hand up to sip his glass of wine.

I slowly picked up my fork and ate my dinner.

2

Jennifer Aglio

omne vivum ex ovo

bodies form by division en(gender)ed in

mi} to {sis

daughter

mei} o {sis

assert ownership /c/e/l/l/s

[marys solitarily confined]

syntactic relations parsed gamete to gametes fused til death do us part

ALPHA-amino acids fold into native state

blocks build

[a][n][e][w]

language breaks d(own) macerates m u s t a r d [seed]

o

/ \

cracked pr te n matrix

\ /

i

mineralized carbonate burgeons

3

split

Jack Collom

noisy alien mirror

1. As the napkin soaks, I

2. think of reading;

this dollar

3. bill could the the the

tip of

4. the iceberg, let us say What I heard

5. about opposition pressurizing (giving birth to)

6. collaboration, viz. “Big O�

4

7. carrying on, ingesting, tire-

8. lessly, if you were even “sorta”

9. with him,” & effluvia :

10. but

11. then Collaborator points out

12. stops the stretch, butt

13. dedicated & frivolous) we order

14. another array of alterants and “see what we can do”

5

to sever is to stretch mo re

text one: for dam & corn

Carolyn Zaikowski

2ND PLACE IN OUR 2ND ANNUAL FLASH FICTION CONTEST!

I. The Buddha struts across the earth-bridge like a fat fairy without wings, telling no tales.

The lethargic muse, who lives two streets away, calls me on my cell. She has a cold. Sniffling, she says, “Your heart is autumnal. Mine is, too. The shape of our remedy is the width of an apple, the depth of a portal, the length of a long time.”

The fairytale shuffles, slants, rocks in strange positions under the earth-bridge.

The wind in Massachusetts is many things—beacon, fright, freight, whore, beat.

II. There is an arsonist living in the neighborhood. In the past year there have been five car fires, including the one two nights ago, right across the street from my house. Our corner was bustling with cops and fire trucks. It was late and I was coming back from a Zen retreat when I encountered the commotion. Despite those hours and hours spent checking my breath at the door of my insidious mind-habits while feigning to be a lotus, I panicked, immediately sure one of my housemates had died or something completely unreasonable had exploded.

But when I stepped onto our porch they were all sitting there, four white faces reflecting red and blue sirens.

III. Here’s the spot on the dam where you and I tried to find meteors. I’d seen one the night before, but this night was too cloudy and, as is our dance, for the one millionth time, you wouldn’t see me the way I always dreamed you seeing me, wonderful as a tempest, full of worth and time-space.

Today is not late enough in September for the bugs to have gone away, but it is cold. I’m wearing the only sweatshirt I can find, which has a sailboat on it and is

6

embroidered with the phrase Cape Cod, Massachusetts! Also, my shoes are falling apart.

In two weeks, you will leave with or without saying goodbye. Hopefully, either way, I will cut off your power instead of being electrocuted. You, my master of intermittent reinforcement, are omnipresent. I don’t know where you’ll be or when, so the idea of you is everywhere, like food to a famine. Even this cornfield, like all angles of my chest, bears your handprint, though it will soon fall away into the knobby dirt, give itself to next year’s crop or whatever else wants to arise and dissipate. What does that make of you? Of me? Are we just crops and dirt? Are we so blessed, so strange that we get to be crops and dirt?

IV. Two houses have burnt down, too. It’s strange, because this is an otherwise quiet neighborhood. I guess it does lend itself to sketchballs because it’s situated between railroad tracks and a dam, surrounded by cornfields. You can run away quick if the police are on you, or hide in all kinds of dark if you want to do drugs or have culturally inappropriate sex. Since the car fire, they think they finally caught the arsonist. He’s fifty-one and may or may not live in a group home for people with mental illnesses.

V. My strange body is inclined toward the ground at all times. Even when I jump, the verb doesn’t last and soon I am still. Even when I swim I must exude great skyward effort not to sink, coated by water, into the mud and crust. Things just seem to go downward, towards a primary point which eludes me.

The birds either know about this or they don’t, or neither or both. They may be before, beyond, during, post, and pre. The birds fly and land and are loud sometimes and other times they are silent.

VI. It would be nice to be a bodhisattva but I just don’t think I’m cut out for it—look at this mass of “I”s, look at me with this hill, clinging with my potentially, my probably, false self. Is there anything that is not an arbitrary, or at least a wonderful, or at worst a domineering, illusion? Fuck this cornfield. I call the lethargic muse back and say to her “Fuck this cornfield” then I hang up and throw my phone through an invisible wall that has my name on it beneath a hologram of a body

7

that isn’t mine but is supposed to be. Put me in the cornfield’s place. Then, in my place, put a body that never stands, that has nothing to do with positions, nothing to do with whether or not this thing, this image, this tyrant, this love, is the moon or the finger pointing at the moon.

Photo by Andrew Antar

8

Tim Z. Hernandez

as if we didn’t know

that fetal death too could be performed by the workings of crop dust impregnating space with anti-jizm stirred in the loins of a laboratory cocktail delivered by appliquÊ to the foreskins of sons who have labored among the stone fruit doula’s open venous blossom.

9

Between the orgy of yellow sunlight and brown coffins bugs beat the living shit out of each other and then spend the next seventy minutes buzzing around their own beaten out shit like bugs do

testily oblivious listening to track 4 of Chinese Democracy over and over again yapping about how the world is neither round nor flat it’s pile-of-shit shaped

while at the same time sitting at a small table off to the side our daily tombstones drink Bloody Maries and talk about

the last time they were all together and went spelunking and fought about history and made love all night long like an angry Bob Barker dressed up in a cowboy shellacked thong

Get in the car, Helen

aquariums, ny

10

They talk about all of these things and smoke cigarettes until the bill comes an event which causes everything to go uncomfortably quiet like a dirty fish tank beating off to an old postcard of the sea

forcing the sentimental pile of shit around which all the bugs have been spinning to mumble something about the stubby miracle of hope as it exists in the age of dead romance

and being that the tombstones are such cheap unshakable bastards and constant acquaintances

the waitress should stop waiting for death to do the right thing or be chivalrous and just put all their drinks on shit’s tab instead

which she does, almost begrudgingly

as the fish tank beats off to the sea

11

cracked open

Sarah Cooke

3RD PLACE IN OUR 2ND ANNUAL FLASH FICTION CONTEST!

IT FINALLY COMES OUT on the Pennsylvania turnpike (with jazz accompaniment). She says I never forgave her. Says it like a song. Rhythmically.

And it resonates in me. Harmonizes like a dream that’s so vivid you know it has to symbolize some unspoken psychic upheaval. I know it’s true.

The argument started two hours earlier, when she was helping me pack (or repack) my car. We were driving from Vermont to Colorado and we stayed the night before in a motel in Scranton. Standing by the side of highway 70 this morning, in front of a Pizza Hut-Subway-gas station, she arranged one of the boxes in the back of my hatchback with a purposeful swiping of her hand. Cut me off at the knees. She was always doing this, or so it seemed. Taking charge as if she thought I lacked the sense to take charge myself. Relating to me as her perpetual child. Last night, for example. I left my purse in the car and was walking out the door to retrieve it when she said, Don’t forget to lock the door. It infuriated me. Why would I forget to lock the door? Didn’t she know I was an intelligent adult who didn’t need to be reminded of such things?

Sometimes I feel my mind controls my psyche. Or my mind controls . . . myself. Ideas manifest of their own will, and I see them as me. I think a thing and it becomes who I am. Completely takes over. Lately, though, in the name of awareness and consciousness and enlightenment, I’ve made attempts to sever the death grip of thinking. The uncontrollable cascade of ignorance that grabs and shakes me when I think without consideration. And so forgiveness.

We are discreet without discretion. Apparently unique manifestations of the same. As sunbeams relate to the sun, I’ve heard it said. We are radiation. Radio waves. Ultraviolet. We are the complete spectrum. Together. Crevices fill with us.

And we all must fill. It’s how and when that change (or seem to). Only that. Just so.

And so – forgiveness. Could it be as simple as that? And yet – as finely ground? I forgave my father. Forgave him his infidelity. His insensitivity. His indiscretion. All of it – I had to. He would not forgive me if I withheld. If I held a grudge. So the burden was on me. Complete forgiveness or complete loss.

But my mother – she was different. I burn my tongue now, trying to drink coffee while heaving up tears. Or holding them back only to be overcome by a repulsive belch of saltiness. Of course it’s raining. Almost too cliché to mention here – the parallel between external and internal conditions. But there you have it.

12

I have been coddled. I admit it. But at no significant cost. My mother always helped me. Always and with everything. Such a worrier she was – always inflating the worst possible scenario in her mind a million fold. To her credit, she now admits the detriment of her worry. Always fighting the universe, resisting the moment, the flow, the course. Forced into staunchness by fear. So I was never to take a risk. Never, even, to undertake anything unpleasant. She’d do it for me – so her fear wouldn’t be realized. Her fear that I would experience pain, even of the slightest variety. And here’s the kicker. Because she was terrified that I’d endure pain, she never demanded anything from me. Never before, anyway.

And then adulthood. I think adulthood, or the possibility of living as a fulfilled adult with some sort of meaning or purpose (whatever you call it) is a process. One of experiencing heartache and learning how to turn it into wisdom or happiness. Can only be undertaken by oneself. And must be. But being surrounded by fear and pain aversion, stripped of agency – this becomes an impossibility. This is the cost I’ve paid. This is what makes me a victim.

But also a victimizer. I’ve regained most of my agency – at least I like to think so. Lived in many cities on my own, earned multiple degrees, pursued multiple career paths. But old identities persist, and I cling to the familiar chords my devious thoughts play over and over again. The ones telling me I’ve been wronged. And so . . .

Old grudges are not let go. Amends not made. Reconciliation not offered.

Progress by the other, attempts to change ingrained patterns of destruction – ignored and belittled. Though all of this festers on a primordial level. Beneath understanding. Below comprehension or presence. Left to grope in the bog, hidden by sand and humid air. Only a vague stirring of . . . something isn’t right. That’s all that’s detected. Until the simple words are finally said. Openly and unadorned.

You never forgave me. And then . . . then ignorance becomes intolerable.

This could be grace. To hold the past in delicate fingers but only briefly. To thank it for its havoc. And to smile at it the way you smile at the mischievousness of a child. Not to be it – but to cherry pick from it the instances of peace, or the suffering that brought you some kind of knowledge. And then to take the next step in the walk ahead that isn’t really moving on, but is just the moment of where you are.

13

Kai Forrest Brown

The man who died with his wife grew the trees with beauty Photo by Jennifer Hamilton

14

Suzanne DuLany

“i.”

my father

was

confused

mother needed (etc. etc.)

“play?” “play?”

curiosity

devoid

of

prying

lucid

I turned

15

Is he dreaming?

memories

(scene without)

another

Forest

far

Photo by Jeffrey Spahr-Summers

16

Bryan Jansing

HONORABLE MENTION FOR OUR 2ND ANNUAL FLASH FICTION CONTEST!

i can’t fly fat

“THIS FOOLISH LIFE’S GOT me pacing like a caged animal crazy with dreams of flight,” I’m ranting to my wife.

Every night for eleven years I envision my flight. From every window in every house, apartment, ship, hotel, train; any place I’ve ever laid my head since I left Vicenza, Italy has been stained with this image of me jumping out of that window and flying. Where I go is often mysterious. In the Navy I saw myself as a ball of fire flying at will at tremendous speeds, faster than Navy jets and radars, always rocketing away from my ship, my life in the Navy. I fade to black never reaching that point in the dark, always drifting over the threshold of this dimension into a dream I never remember.

I think that’s why I find myself here in America. I must have slipped into the distance and found my body racing after me. Now my body is bloated with years of drink; that foul habit that gnaws constantly at a bone of a once meaty dream. Dreams today see me sleek, strong, beautiful.

“Ti sei veramente ingrassato,” my cousin says, “You’ve really fattened up,” and I adjust uncomfortably.

“Yeah, that happens when you live in America.”

“No, really, how did you get so fat?” she continues.

“Well, you know, working at a pub, drinking beer all the time; it adds up, you know.”

Her husband isn’t so kind. I can only shrug, rub my belly with a grin and pretend it doesn’t matter. But it does, it bothers me so deeply that I can’t control myself. I’m repulsed by myself and promise to be better, later. When I’m in Italy, every aunt is like an Italian Richard Simmons, “Ti sei ingrassato un po`,eh? You’ve plumped up a bit.” No kidding, I think to myself. “It’s the bar, the beer, the American lifestyle.” The very one I despise but won’t leave. I’m perplexed that I’ll be leaving Italy soon and heading back. I’ve become paranoid in America, fat in Italy.

This all has me pacing in my apartment, rubbing my nappy head: where are the words, where are the words? I’m looking for the images of some far away place I left, flew right over because I was so slim, too thin to stop myself. I had to fatten up, weigh down my dreams of flight, catch up to myself. I’m here in another strange apartment that reminds me of Rome. I’m looking for Italy here in America. It’s not here, of course, there is no such place here.

“That’s why I’m here, because there is no work in Italy; the unemployment

17

is high, there is no work for me in Italy.”

“What a shame,” they say to me in America.

“But, I’m going back, we’re going back, my wife and I; as soon as I get something started here, as soon as I write this book.”

“This book. It’s got me pacing like an animal and I keep having dreams of flight and I don’t go anywhere, I never land,” I’m saying to my wife.

It’s the same story, the same craziness in my eyes; she’s heard it many times and she can’t figure me out either, but patiently waits for me to wind down.

What’s really driving my crazy is that I’m here in America and I can’t seem to find my way back to Italy; only then do I become quiet. Tonight, I’m going to fly back the way I came, to see if I can find my way, find myself. I’m finally still, but my mind isn’t quiet, just numb with sadness. I’m not going back I think to myself; where are the words, where are the words?

Blue by Samuel Jablon

18

Jennifer Aglio

unto a good land

distilled tears fallen from constellations and rainbowed arches meli maenomenon

meli chloron

the maenads wield dripping staves careen in frenzied enthousiasmos an aphid’s trail the skirt of a vine hopper these honeydew secretions are sun spit manna poured over thresholds open wounds black sea

deli bal

spoonwood fed alkaloids skin turned cyanotic swooning whirl of lights toward tunnel vision acetyl andromedol trance

and like

intoxicated

madmen

we immobilized

are transported

hypnotic

19

Jack Collom

man walking on “r”

20

Kathy Conde

HONORABLE MENTION FOR OUR 2ND ANNUAL FLASH FICTION CONTEST!

the boss of my body

WHO CAUSED THE WAR Joey will think it was his fault. He always does. Even when it has nothing to do with him. When his mom stubs her toe and cries out, he rushes over to her and says, “I’m sorry, Mama. Was it my fault?” He’s only five.

He’s still trying to figure out how to make it up to his Uncle Ron. Ron falls asleep on the sofa when he visits. Wakes up screaming and sweating. Joey’s mom told him it’s because he can’t forget what happened in the desert last year.

“What happened?” Joey said.

“People were fighting and hurting each other,” his mom said.

“Like we do at school?” Joey said.

“But they were killing each other,” said his mom.

Joey puts Pooh Bear beside his sleeping uncle, hoping it will help.

Joey’s mom and dad used to fight. He never thought they might kill each other. Now he’s glad he made them stop.

During one of their screaming fights he stood between them and yelled, “Stop!”

Joey’s friend across the street doesn’t have a father any more. He moved away and never came back.

“Mama, why did Georgie’s daddy leave?”

“Because his mommy and daddy didn’t agree.”

“But why did he leave?”

“Because they didn’t agree and they couldn’t stay together.”

“Was it Georgie’s fault?”

BEGINNINGS

There are reasons I didn’t have a child until forty-two. I won’t go into them.

I was seduced by my husband of twelve years into thinking I could have a child and it would all be okay.

What a shock to find I loved the roundness, the swish-swish of amniotic fluid when I walked, the little galloping heartbeat on the monitor, the way delivery cut through all the crap to the core, where I was.

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Eating his cinnamon toast loaded with sugar, Joey gets an inner rush and flings his hands out and shouts, “Happy. Join us.”

“You mean joyous, Sweetie?”

“No. Join us.”

My husband is irritated by my frantic rushing around—I’m late and unprepared. At times like these, he sings at the top of his lungs to drown out any sensory stimulation from me. He sings songs whose lyrics imply the criticisms he would like to throw my way.

Joey waves goodbye as I leave him at day care. He comes running to me for one last kiss. He hugs my neck, then pulls back a little and says, “I’m still super duper duper duper duper mad at you.”

“Oh really? Okay.”

His face is so sweet I want to scoop him up. I want to wrap myself around him and protect him, but I know that would ruin it. He reaches up and hugs and kisses me again.

“That means I love you,” he says.

The first day I took my son to preschool, he came home and started smashing his trains into each other, shouting, “Bad boy.” It went on and on.

“Where did you hear that, Sweetie?”

“At school after a boy bit one of the kids.”

DANCING

My mom went to a class last week and came back talking about bodies.

She taught me the names for things, like anus and vagina. I already knew penis and testicles. She asked me who’s the boss of my body, and I said, “You are, Mama.”

She said, “No, you are, Sweetie.”

This morning I asked her why she hated me yesterday. She said, “I didn’t hate you, Sweetie. You hated me.”

“Oh yeah.” I usually don’t remember things very long. But now that she reminded me, I do remember. Her making me go inside when my friends were out was the worst thing ever. I hated her. I told her I did. And she didn’t get mad.

She kept acting like I was saying I love you.

My dad is a salesman. My mom is a dancer. We used to all dance together in the living room. We danced wild. Then my mom got something wrong with her body and she stopped dancing.

I like to dance with the Talking Heads playing loud. She watches me and I can sometimes make her laugh. She was happier when she danced. She says her body hurts.

22

THE WAR GOES ON

My Uncle Ron was in a war. He talks about it a little, but he won’t answer my questions. I ask him if he shot anybody. I ask him why he would shoot somebody. He says our country is not helping guys like him. He says they should lock guys like him away when they come back.

Uncle Ron takes me to the park when he’s here. He sits on the bench and tries to stay awake. He’s tired all the time because he can’t sleep at night. I asked him why not and he said his body is not his own anymore.

The other day at the park I met a boy. He was older than me. I wanted to play with him. We played chase. He kept calling me person, even though I told him my name three times. I didn’t like that. It felt bad when he called me person.

I told Uncle Ron about it when we were walking home. He said, “At least he didn’t call you private.”

Byrd & Johnson by Nate Jordon

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Min Jung Oh

notes

“the fragmented self, the lonely, keening self . . . The self of all selves”

- Thomas Glave, Words to Our Now

“It is the dimension of absence that remains to be found.”

-- Robert Smithson, qtd. by Olga M. Viso,

Ana Mendieta: Earth Body

The domesticate may be produced in three generations of organized fucking between submissive foxes of wild identity, which is to say recognition.

Correctly/Scientifically speaking, all foxes are cousins with your ferret. The carnivore which nibbles my toes as I sleep.

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We contain our sticks in a knot of black thread. We affirm repetition. recognition. reiteration. We build a structure of contraction. a collapse of construct.

What questions excluded from the conscious vernacular.

What hilarities of self-knowing.

I touch you with an inventory intimacy.

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It only happens every two hundred and fifty years. We cannot help but take advantage, distracted by the palpitations of snowflakes melt across warmth of glass. Acrid grit of snow silt enters the nose. Sears.

I am silent: I cannot trust. I cannot be with.

I am silent: I am angry.

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I half see. I recognize possibility.

Half an eye lash upon and during cheekbone tremble. I nudge the words between lips how audible air may or may not flatter. Wipers fling droplets of spring with a squeak dragged across glass to pavement where tires ruminate through the slush.

I have put all my eggs in a basket of capacity for contact.

I want to write without words.

How my cheeks crumple under salt water.

How to lift a rooted tip into the sky.

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Travis Macdonald

until that tuesday in november when she finally realized it wasn’t her snowflake of a soul he saw when he looked longingly into her eyes but rather his own miniature reflection gazing back through her horn-rimmed glasses

It was the kind of love you’d leave your therapist for.

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Nathan Antar

finer than prayer

IT HAS COME TO light, through recent introspection, that there is a chance I may be racist. If I am, it is only due to the blessed account of being polymorphously perverse. Obviously that is an absurd connection, though to illuminate what I mean to say—to clarify the points of connection—it seems that my polymorphous perversion has taken a strange variation: not only do I derive pleasure from being touched anywhere, but in turn derive pleasure from touching women any- and everywhere—from toenails right up to the follicles in their hair—and, of course, all points in between. That being said, it is now necessary for me to expose another link in the chain, another point of departure.

To investigate further, and take full advantage of, this quote-unquote perversion, I cannot limit myself to specific types or categories of women. The only proper way to explore these phenomena of gratification would be to explore all the variants of the female sex without bias or apprehension.

I cannot discriminate when it comes to women. Many is the form the body can take; and with every possible modification there is offered new and differing realms of sensational rapture: the wide array of curvature and textures one can drag their fingers and face across on the young and old, the heavy and thin, the distorted and graceful, all manner of imp, demon, sylph, seraph, troll, and ethnicity. However, this pursuit can bring about elements of the fantastical, and I have found myself in places I’m scarcely proud of—and scarcely believe.

Whitman Interlude (Song of Myself, #24):

I believe in the flesh and the appetites, Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a Miracle.

Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am Touch’d from, The scent of these arm-pits aroma finer than prayer, This head more than churches, bibles, and all the creeds.

I was once taken to a whorehouse in the Chinatown sector of Philadelphia, aptly disguised as a massage parlor and bathhouse, more commonly known on the lecherous circuit as the washy-washy. But no matter how well they clean you, you can’t help but feel dirty when you leave. I wasn’t there for need of sex, but

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for experiential curiosity. Not for the experience of the Asian prostitute in the stereotypical washy-washy, but more simply, for the Asian woman herself. Up to that point I hadn’t had the fortune of having one in my hands, and with their small, nimble, hairless bodies, the opportunity and inevitable delight was too overwhelming to pass up when a f(r)iend half-sarcastically suggested the idea, knowing I was a bit bashful of it. His nefarious smirk took on the countenance of shock when I quickly accepted his request of: “Hey, Nate, you want to hit the wash tonight?”

Surely I was exploiting, and therefore perpetuating, poverty among a large sect of oppressed immigrant women; but what is the fantasy, where is the exploration, without the physical Asian woman? Certainly I could have exercised patience and taken the conventional route of courting or womanizing on the Penn campus, but that assures nothing and leaves everything to chance.

Furthermore, with a prostitute I could dismiss certain aspects of humanity, in terms of inhibition, and what is often deemed respectable, and allow the sentient experience to proceed unfettered. Inadvertently though, I was dismissing larger aspects of humanity. As the common story goes, these women fled to America to escape the depths of poverty and communism and to help support those of the family who were left behind (which, it should be known, that even in terms of prostitution, depending on specific culture, is still considered honorable).

Being discriminated against as immigrants with no fundamental knowledge of English, not to mention the already existing poverty in Chinatown and its difficult conditions, they find themselves subject to a new system of oppression with perhaps even less doors open than in their homeland, and must resort to a life of sexual servitude.

This brings me—uneasily, I might add—to a crossroads. By exploiting the position of these women for my own pleasure, am I upholding a system of vicious cycles and discrimination? However, if I did not exploit their position, would they not be worse off ? I would think that most women wouldn’t voluntarily choose this particular means of support, but, if they must, could I not make the presumption that they would want clients? Would they not want as many as they could have to hopefully alleviate this struggle? Is it really any different than hiring a housekeeper or buying a pair of Nikes, aside from the obvious difference in social norms? I didn’t force them into the desperate life of whoredom; I only acquired a service that is there to be acquired. Though the problem still remains: am I dismissing all existential responsibility?

The paradox of the situation is that the remedy is also the cause and there is little hope for alleviation: their poverty and lack of options forces them to submit to this life of prostitution, needing people to exploit them for money and therefore perpetuating their poverty. They need the money, but by virtue of giving it to them, it supports the very system which made them need it to begin with. Though it must be said, couldn’t one make the argument that they are exploiting me, exploiting my perversion? Believe me, that half-hour is not cheap.

Though, most likely, that’s irrelevant.

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It is difficult to determine whether in fact my perversion did support a discriminatory system and racial injustice. It is difficult to say that, yes, I am racist in sight of these facts. All I can be certain of is my polymorphous perversion— and racism is nothing but a perversion of the mind; the only distinction being that sexual perversion concerns what turns you on, whereas racial perversion concerns what turns you off.

I cannot think of any viable solution to this dilemma, notwithstanding, a good whore will only give you her body and never her heart. If she can make that division than she may be able to save herself.

Factory 798, Beijing by Alexandra Parsons

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Brandon Arthur

reversed iteration

We allowed the bones to curve that way, to cut lips into names.

Now it is reversed, night littered with black spots and our toes kicking the hollow shotgun slugs of the dirt. But quilts were already smeared with this & the wind smelling new. We loosened, first our necks then our hearing, into the colors already smoothed with fingerprints & breath.

Or was the first memory a street? or fur against legs & back? A flagpole straightened our fingers, pressed food into cavities, made speech porous as concrete the light pulls minerals through. Now reversed, turned and aiming at us.

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Jordan Antonucci

yellow

four horses find movement

The story of yellow is beautiful.

Grown children gather to stare at our sun. Our sun gave us hope, placed world as second to saviors, held children eternal.

Within our sun there is always a child, always a larger, a deeper.

Yellow gave us submission from saviors. Submission allowed transference, energy found in new skin tone.

Scent of air, displacement, the one you once gave me. I no longer want to hold you.

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If I gave you up I would find yellow, envision Helios in chariot breathing.

I know what this means, that yellow skin can bless oceans, child dressed in yellow pigment. I will tell you what I found within dreaming, yellow soldiers, lost red-skins. I fear y(our) fever swelling. A body wrapped in symmetry, claws without bloodshed.

skin glossed in yellow ochre minerals found in arsenic blood

There is a source found deep in black curtains, origins, whispers wrapped in dried leather. In yellow I found the importance of arrival.

This one is not beautiful. He asked it to be this way.

it will help you to know i felt his tongue upon entrance

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Urine taste in stale orifice, reach for white air within yellow. This should have been easy, like birth. We should have remembered our beginning and held our opinion of arrival. Would it confuse you if I told you your end never existed? That the air you failed to breath would not bring you closer.

grass enough for new pigment nails within scrotum thought to pass alter stones to save knowledge

Let me into y(our) prism.

Ra as arrival gold ochre our yellow place where he found our thought as revival

Twelve inches to my left has changed color, minus the blue, we hold yellow.

Hands within pockets hold sight in fogged distance.

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dragged across four new ideas heavenly fermented bare skin calloused for slumber

bones sink within sandstone gold strings in song of our future soft presence found Vala i offer you our blanket entropy fibers yellow found our departure

here we go round

sunset as a future

here we seek god

gold bone absent specters

it was faster then expected harps strung with infinite lace

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Ralph Bland

ms. frisky is expecting

I’LL TELL YOU ONE thing that’s nothing but the truth – I’m not one of those career-oriented fellows you see out in the workplace everywhere you look. I’m a couple years out of college now, and the last time I looked I’m not on the fast track to anywhere. For a couple years I worked at a Tower Records in the mall to help with tuition, then, after I got canned with about three other jokers for toking up at work, I had jobs at a Dillard’s and at a Publix stocking shelves at night. I ended up getting my worthless degree in Business Administration along with about twelve thousand other clones at Tennessee Tech, and then it occurred to me I had no earthly idea what I was going to do with the rest of my life, or at least not until my Uncle Fred got me on with Tennessee Automobile Insurance, a big-ass operation that connects people with car insurance needs and a bunch of companies all over the state that try to get every consumer buck they can. I got hired as one of those faceless telephone voices who some poor jerks that just got a DUI or had about fourteen wrecks to their credit had to call to present their sad plights to just so I could charge them roughly ten times the going rate on insurance so they’d be once again legal enough to drive to the store and get a twelve-pack and motor around and be available to maybe kill somebody all over again.

I had to wear a shirt and tie to work every day, although for what reason I was required to be so goddamned formal I still haven’t figured out, since what my duties mainly consisted of was sitting in a cubicle and talking on a headset to people who were probably two hundred miles away and had no idea what I was wearing, but since this was the hardest part of my new job I went ahead and did it and tried not to bitch or rock the boat. I figured I was only doing this for a little while until something that paid twice as much and was twice as easy fell conveniently into my lap.

Not that I had any idea what that something could possibly be.

Other than the office managers who were always on computers or having meetings with each other and a couple of other fellows stuck in cubicles here and there, who were generally more feminine than the goodly majority of the women scattered around them, I was about the only real guy in the whole place. It wasn’t like I could go in and talk about Monday Night Football to anybody or remark about who got the living shit knocked out of them at the hockey game or which babe in the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue was the hottest – hell, at first I was about halfway afraid to even open my mouth at all, other than to say yes or no or

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the obligatory good morning to everyone, since it was this big company maxim that everybody in the place was an associate and a pal and a comrade and anybody who clocked in was in this with everybody else as a goddamned team. Teammates.

I was supposed to have this unbridled enthusiastic belief that I and my “team” were going to make the world a heckuva lot better place by selling the poor jerks on the phone high-priced automobile insurance.

Now I did my best to act enthusiastic and give the impression I was hellbent for leather to excel at this job, but it didn’t take very long for me to realize I was working harder acting like I was working hard than I was just actually doing the damn job. Because this job basically required very little in terms of diligence and effort, it was about as next to nothing as a livelihood could be and after two weeks it was hard as hell not to bring a book or Game Boy to work just so I wouldn’t doze off and leave somebody uninsured, so I had to do whatever I could to remain conscious. I made coffee. The ladies loved me for keeping the coffeemaker fresh and clean and acted like I was some sort of prince for doing so, but mainly my efforts at this task were done to stretch my legs and stay awake and avoid entering Zombie Land, from which, in that boring atmosphere, there was no easy return. These forays into the break room to make coffee also afforded me the opportunity to scout the female population in the office, gave me the means to decide who to look at and who to ignore and, as I was want to do in those days, who to imagine with no clothes on and how they might react to my charms and advances. For an office that large there were sadly only a limited amount of feasible choices for my fantasies, but, as fate would have it, all I eventually had to do was look to my neighboring cubicle and eye its inhabitant, and I was able to advance in my mental improprieties quite nicely.

Her name was Amanda Hoffman. She had jet black hair and sharp blue Liz Taylor eyes that took you in in a fun-loving animal sort of way. She had a real coed’s body, slim and tight and long with no traces of flab on her arms or legs or rear end that I could spot, and I know it was so because I checked her closely for flaws several times each day to determine if this was true. Her smile and manner were almost insinuating and mocking, as if she’d looked you over and detected something humorous only she could recognize, and so she grinned at you, and you kept wanting to sidle up to her to find out what exactly it was she found so damned amusing. She never would tell though; that was part of her game. She’d smile and laugh out loud like I had food stuck on the tip of my nose, but she never would come right out and tell me what was making her laugh. Finally I had to try and convince myself it was just her way, that it wasn’t me, it was just how she acted when she was happy and feeling her oats. And this was the way she acted most of the time – she was just a frisky kind of girl with a lot of spirit.

And so, in my mind, she became Ms. Frisky. To everyone else she was Amanda Hoffman, but not me. In that same corner of my mind I also wondered and theorized if she were this frisky on the job in real life and fully clothed, how exuberant might she be in another setting with all her garments removed and her spirit set free.

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After engaging in this line of thinking a couple of times it occurred to me that I was never going to accomplish much in the way of work as long as they kept me in that cubicle beside Ms. Frisky, but I didn’t care. I also knew I wasn’t going to be the one asking the powers-that-be to move me so I could do a better job.

I wasn’t planning on doing anything except eying this babe up and down like a wolf over a lamb chop when it got too tediously boring during the day, but after a week or so we started striking up conversations and emailing each other useless crap off the internet and eating lunch together in the break room and finally leaving the office altogether, first with other workers, then by ourselves, to go and eat at every fast food franchise imaginable, where the increasingly desirable Ms. Frisky told me of the dates she’d had with various loser types of guys and the expensive avant garde places she’d got herself taken to, and how, if there was no date on one of those few and far between blue moon nights, how she and her wild girl buddies would go out on the town and milk complete strangers for drinks and die laughing at the desperate measures these characters would take to try and get them into bed.

“There are so many horny guys out there you just about have to carry around a laptop to keep track of them,” she told me.

She’d give me that smile and I’d sit there wondering if she was including me among that multitude. I didn’t think I could much argue with her if she was.

The tantamount questions in my mind was, did Ms. Frisky like and desire me in the same manner as I liked and desired her? I found myself being drawn back into that old high school state of mentality where I didn’t know if she wanted me to ask her out or not. If she did, then I was wasting valuable time by not picking up the gauntlet, but if she didn’t, well, I might as well turn in my notice right after she finished turning me down, just go on and slink right out of sight, because, just like in high school, I couldn’t stand looking at her and being around her every day and always having the fact repeatedly hammered into my brain how I couldn’t have her now or ever – that big Never always etched in my head every time I’d regard her face, her body, whenever I heard her laugh.

Tennessee Automobile Insurance didn’t have enough money to pay me to come in and deal with that kind of sad and depressing fact every day.

So being the chicken that I was I contented myself with sending her emails and looking at her nine hundred and eighty-seven times a day and going out to lunch at the Whopper and McDonald’s and Taco Bell and Arby’s and any other place that could get you processed and fed in an hour’s time while I waited for her to take the initiative and ask me out so I could get the old sexual ball rolling. I couldn’t tell if this was a double-edged sword or not, if she was waiting for me to broach the subject at some time or the other, but she never gave any broad hints, and she sure as hell didn’t ask me out herself either.

The summer passed and fall came around and events remained exactly the same. One day Ms. Frisky didn’t seem quite so exuberant as usual. Her smile

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was weak and her color was pale, and for a few days she declined lunch and chose to talk on the phone through her lunch hour. I wondered who it was on the other end who was all at once so important, and even though I had no claims on her time and attention I quickly began feeling jealousy take over my heart and soul.

Weren’t our lunches and sarcastic conversations sacred anymore? Had Ms. Frisky grown weary of my emails and our daily quests for heartburn and indigestion? I didn’t want to make a federal case out of this abrupt change of our routine, but didn’t my presence matter to her anymore?

When the reason for the conclusion of our brief but noteworthy dalliance became clear, through the swelling of Ms. Frisky’s stomach and the appearance of maternity clothes, I felt myself plummet from the unaccustomed heights I had soared to for such a short while in her company. It wasn’t Tracy and Hepburn or even Jennifer and Ben, but I had at least believed we had a small bit of something between us. I thought there were some sparks. Maybe, like in a lot of things in the past and certainly in the foreseeable future, I had interpreted something into the whole experience that was not there to begin with, if for nothing else to add some drama to my life and make my existence in this world seem the slightest bit necessary.

About six months into her pregnancy Ms. Frisky didn’t show up to work for a couple days, then a woman came around and took down her Sponge Bob Squarepants calendar and squired away her coffee cup filled with Tootsie Roll Pops that she used to suck on while she grinned at me, and in a couple more days her cubicle was inhabited by a plump little Church of Christ girl who was overwhelmingly thrilled to be there. Nobody knew whether Ms. Frisky was getting married or not, and after a week or so nobody even talked about it anymore.

I lasted about another month before I quit. I eased into a job at Wal-Mart and got myself issued a smock with “May I Help You?” stenciled across the back.

Now I help this old hippie put together bicycles and trampolines and portable basketball goals back by the loading docks. On our breaks we go out to his pickup truck and listen to music and blow a number to kill the tedium.

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Kade Alexander Jensen

[THREE GODS IN ONE]

[FATHER] a knowledgeable and readable history of the period of transition from the old religions to the new god/money/stabbing someone’s grandmother not necessarily because of her race but more for her seventeen white people dollars, not unkindness so much as a desperate attempt to drown our own conscience, so important that it is yet another reason on which we can base our assurance, a cult as old as the book on which our faith is based, the progressive creationist’s belief that the days of creation in genesis can be legitimately understood, included on the website for christian growth through praise songs, part of the oldest prayers addressed directly to mary, not to call for fighting with weapons, rather being adequately voiced as the united nations declaration on human rights of 1949: reshaping society, walking in the light, not causing anyone to stumble, not doing the things the scripture tells us to do, based on the book “our father abraham” or simply indulgence, the white american continually criticizing catholics, blacks, jews, especially towel-head freedom haters, how troubled they all are and how they need special psychiatric clinics, all available from your local christian bookstore

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[SON] a person who treats people differently solely on the basis of race, also noted as one who stands upon nationalistic principles and enjoys french imports, meaning you love your race and are loyal to your race and are just being honest, being offensive to my face: use of the word nigger, not necessarily relevant maybe irrelevant, when you won’t get in the cab because the driver has a turban on or government white supremacists burning crosses on lawns, a person that is intentionally cruel to others, a testament to the powers of psychological warfare and a youth for youth resource, deeply entrenched in the minds of many people but hardly shocking, how the victims of the proposal perceive a kkk member in bed sheets burning crosses, generally not interested in arguments, not racist if it’s true, an issue for people who haven’t given up hope for a better past, aesthetic realism, the philosophy of surface, of now, of here, of fuck you, back on the agenda, not a crime, not hate, a way of life to destroy life, our sin, the ultimate blasphemy, the fear of being inferior, a joke, a man with a tiny little dick, the focus of nineteen ninty seven presbyterianism, overt turning of us into cockroaches, approved of and practiced by god, humans missing the point, a conservative problem, cherished democracy, an ideological construct based on attitude arranged as natural order, based on stupidity, excellence in performance as broadway’s hottest ticket, alive and well in the south carolina death house, a disease which has taken on epidemic/academic proportions and has become accepted everywhere, urban but should not be too selective especially referring to chinks/gooks, civic leaders putting spotlight on ethnic tensions, the responsibility of the entire society, the species to species cultural degradation of other, the intentional or unintentional use of power to isolate now being spread via the internet, shown by the blue light on buses, mainly but not really about white skin privilege, more so about itty-bitty pricks, the political or ideological application of the concept of race, an ideological construct that assigns a certain race and/or ethnic group to a position of power over others on the basis of god, killing for god, and/or a politically correct crime: classic tactic of bigotry, in and of itself grounds for divorce in most marriages, a ministry of first wesleyan church in muskegon, not to worry about the details of emerging history as much as to evidence for trust in the god of history, made with black beans and rice

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[HOLY GHOST] a dragging murder, unhelpful unless it is a small part of a wider context which labels all nationalism as a struggle with the belief that all people are equal, being found not guilty of all charges stemming from kkk rally/police riot, the relative weak quality of the recording of the tape is not contingent on the presence of people of color nor should people of color be expected to provide leadership, but rather a technique to silence arguments, apparently anti-nigger, one who considers other races to be inferior to his own, normal to america, a new god who makes the soul perceive that he is only good, only right, that repentance and reconciliation are essential components of any act of racism, but mainly a way to get some fucking attention from the media just for saying nigger or implying that someone you call a nigger is in fact a racist, meaning that saying nigger is the christian thing, therefore right, therefore true, therefore the foundation of ig hoc signo vinces, therefore the chi-rho literally anointed with oil like the cross burned into the brain of every dead tom, dick, harry, nigger, chink, and jew killed to do right by god.

Buddha by Brandon Gray

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Michael Cohen

men in uniform

As they observe, “What does it signify how we dress here at Cranford, where everybody knows us?” And if they go from home, their reason is equally cogent: “What does it signify how we dress here, where nobody knows us?”

—Elizabeth Gaskell, Cranford

ONE OF THE MANY reasons I am glad to be male—right up there with never having to deal with menstruation and usually being able to get my carry-on out of the overhead compartment by myself—is the clothes. I don’t feel the urge to express myself creatively through clothes, which is just as well, since men’s clothes are now and have been for the past couple of centuries devoid of originality. Like most men of my age, habits, and condition, I am content to wear the same sort of costume worn by other men. We very often put on what amounts to a uniform.

Wearing the same clothes as other men and not thinking about making a statement with my clothes means essentially never having to think much about them at all. Are they clean? Do I have them on right-side-out? That’s pretty much the extent of the questions I have to ask myself about how I’m dressed most of the time. Dave Barry talks about “Basic Guy Fashion Rules” and says one example is “Both of your socks should always be the same color, or they should at least both be fairly dark.”

I was interested, though, to run across a little book by Nancy MacDonell Smith called The Classic Ten: The True Story of the Little Black Dress and Nine Other Fashion Favorites (2003), which discusses parts of women’s wardrobes that have some staying power against the changing force of fashion. She talks about pearls, about cashmere sweaters and trenchcoats and other perennials of the female wardrobe. I was so struck with this book that I stood in the aisle at Barnes & Noble while I finished the first chapter, on the “Little Black Dress.” This fashion favorite interested me because it seems to deny the advantages women’s clothes have over men’s: color and variety. The LBD, as Smith abbreviates it, works by what she calls “refusal.” It gestures away from the privation and sadness of mourning—if not the ultimate origin of the Little Black Dress, mourning costume is at least an allusion made by it. The absence of color is a kind of

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deferral—and a promise—of gaiety.

If several women are wearing little black dresses, they invite a comparison, which will quickly go beyond the dresses themselves to the women wearing them.

The LBD partakes of the male tendency toward uniformity while it reveals a paradox of uniform dress. On one hand, sameness of costume is a place to hide; I won’t stand out because I’m dressed peculiarly. On the other hand, if all of us are dressed alike, you may look at each of us more closely to see the person under the costume, and thus frustrate any wish I may have for anonymity.

All of these thoughts led me to ask whether a list like Smith’s could be made for men’s clothes. Are there “classics” of male dress? Certainly there are a few dress combinations that keep showing up.

Consider what is called by most people the “tuxedo,” but is known in tonier circles as “evening clothes.” From one point of view, how dull: every man at the ball or the banquet is dressed the same. But from a more reasonable point of view, how brilliant! I need only pack one suit for all the formal gatherings on the cruise. Notice in this respect that the tuxedo trumps the Little Black Dress; while Audrey Hepburn got away with wearing the same one in scene after scene of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, it is unlikely any woman I know would show up two nights in a row wearing the same frock. But I need never worry whether my costume is going to look expensive or exclusive enough to keep me in countenance when I’m given the once-over (note that the “I” there is only a convention; I don’t actually own a tuxedo). I can attend all the inauguration balls all week without bankrupting myself on my getups. And the tuxedo works for every degree of formality from the Tinyville Charity Ball to the White House Gala.

These days, tuxedos can be bought ready to wear, jacket and pants separately sized to your proportions and needing no alterations. Where once the shirt, with perhaps a detachable front and certainly a separate collar, had to be boiled in starch, these days the customs have softened. All that a man needs is a shirt that accepts studs and links, the black, pleated sash with the delightful name cummerbund (from a Hindi word meaning “waistband”—apparently a modification of British military dress uniform first adopted in India), and mastery of the slightly tricky art of the bow tie.

Some misguided souls sell or rent tuxedos in garish reds and blues, as well as cummerbunds and bow ties that are striped or plaid. These clown costumes are fine for high school proms, but they are made by people who have missed the whole point of what formal dress does for men: it makes them look alike, which means they can be comfortable while their penguin-like uniformity serves to highlight the spectacular gowns of the women they accompany. The classic here is a dark coat with satin or grosgrain lapels, black pants with a stripe of similar material along the outside seam, a white shirt with links in the French cuffs and studs replacing the usual front and collar buttons, a black bow tie, a black, pleated cummerbund, and black, usually patent leather shoes.

The tuxedo was introduced as formal wear in Tuxedo Park, New York, 1886. The tobacco-rich Pierre Lorillard, imitating the Prince of Wales (who liked

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to wear a short dinner jacket rather than the traditional tailcoat) brought the style to the States, and his son Griswold and a few friends wore the short, dark coats to a formal autumn ball where all the other men were in white tie and tailcoats.

To increase the effect, they wore red waistcoats. The waistcoat that was worn with tails and originally with the tuxedo eventually gets simplified to a pleated sash—just an abbreviation of the vest—that we know as the cummerbund. The moral of this history may be that men’s clothing evolves toward the simpler and more comfortable, although, as we shall see, it may also move toward other evolutionary purposes.

At the other end of the scale of formality, another men’s classic consists of khaki chinos, a blue button-down shirt, and a pair of brown loafers without socks. The premier college outfit of the 1960s, this costume was the showcase of the 1980 satire The Preppy Handbook. It survives because of its simplicity, comfort, and versatility: I can wear this outfit (this “I” is not a convention but really me) into most restaurants as well as into the grungiest student bar. Nowadays this combination may identify me as being of “a certain age” because it was most favored by the generations before and after the Baby Boomers came of age, but I see younger men wearing it, too. The advent of wash-and-wear fabrics made the chino and button-down combination even more convenient, especially since a few wrinkles seemed to be acceptable, although the combination can be sported with knife-edge creases and perfectly ironed shirt front. As with most male uniforms, there is room for minor differences in appearance and huge differences in price. The younger and more affluent will favor plain front chinos and Brooks Brothers shirts, often without pockets. Older wearers may have pleated pants and shirts from Lands End or a mass-market department store. The shoes may vary as well: although Bass Weejuns were the usual choice in the earliest decades of this costume’s history, coastal wearers modified it with the cut-sole boat shoes developed by Paul Sperry in the 1930s and known as TopSiders.

Other variations include a polo shirt or a Hawaiian print shirt instead of the button-down, and in warm weather the chinos can double as shorts. The biggest variation came when technology addressed the growing popularity of running and suddenly brought us shoes more comfortable than any we had known before. But some would say these variations, especially the running shoes, which involve putting on socks, so dilute the original combination as to take it out of uniform status.

If you add a blue blazer to the chinos and loafers, you attain the first stage of male formal dress. Add a tie and you can get into even the snootiest restaurants. Of course, you may have to put on some socks.

Notice how incursions keep being made on the next level of formality: tuxedos invade the white-tie-and-tails compound; blazers and slacks intrude on the sacred territory of the suit. Suits, though, have not been relegated, like tails, to near extinction. Many consider the suit the quintessential male uniform.

A man’s suit, according to Anne Hollander’s book Sex and Suits: The Evolution of Modern Dress (1994), reveals the articulation of the body beneath

46

but at the same time pads and regularizes it in order to flatter. Its form is thus a compromise between fashion—that is, a clothing dynamic that is considered to gather favorable attention to its wearer—and comfort that adapts to body shape.

But the suit has not always made this quiet compromise. Seventeenth-century examples sported huge ballooning upper arms, codpieces, and large knickers that attenuated into tights, the whole colored in the brightest of hues and made of expensive fabrics. Costumes in Shakespeare’s day flattered and flaunted the wearer’s sex while they also allowed for the display of wealth. The suit has evolved toward a more modest—and some of my gay friends insist a much more boring—presentation of the outlines of the male form. As it has simplified its lines, the male suit has also moved toward concealing rather than revealing, by cut, color or attachments, what rank in society its wearer occupies. Anne Hollander, again, says that this ideal begins to be realized in the eighteenth century with Beau Brummell, who “was known to have wished his clothes unnoticeable.” Thus, she continues, “the Neo-classic costume was a leveller in its time.”

Modern suits can reveal to the careful observer when they cost fifty times more than the one JC Penney sells; the markers of sartorial not-so-conspicuous consumption make up one of the obsessive themes of Brett Easton Ellis’s American Psycho. But a careful eye is required to appreciate the lawyer’s fivethousand-dollar Armani. Male suits now admit a fairly limited number of styles, cuts and tailoring—so limited that the features which respond to fashion are relatively inconspicuous: the width of lapels and of ties, the flare of a pant leg.

The biggest thing that has happened in male suit fashion over the last fifty years is the strange movement of the double-breasted suit into and out of fashion. But double or single-breasted as the case may be, the suit is not primarily designed to assert itself as fashion, as attention-gathering. And thus the male suit-wearer has a psychological advantage over the female, however closely hers may model on the male uniform. If I take my one suit to the three-day convention, I have no hesitation about wearing it several times, merely changing my shirt and tie. For women, the suit is a costume rather than a uniform, a day’s choice rather than a three-day wardrobe.

Nowadays my warm-weather uniform consists of a t-shirt or cotton-knit golf shirt with shorts, wash pants, or, less often, Levis. The key to this costume is that no part needs ironing. Oh, the wash pants would probably look better if they were ironed, and once in a while I send them to the cleaners to be pressed. In the summer I often wear boat shoes with no socks, but all year my normal footwear is white cotton tube socks and walking shoes. The whole getup is the extreme version of comfortable and convenient.

What I do not want is an emotional investment in the clothes I wear, and many men feel the same. A man’s version of Ilene Beckerman’s Love, Loss, and What I Wore (1995) is unthinkable except perhaps for gay men: straight men do not ordinarily associate their affective lives with their clothes or shoes. I tried the experiment of remembering what I was wearing the day I got the news I’d passed my PhD exam, the evening when I proposed, or the night when my first son was

47

born. Nope, nothing there. Of course I must have been wearing something. If I were very inappropriately dressed for an occasion, I might recall the offending outfit, but one of the governing principles of male sartorial design is making inappropriate choices hard to blunder into. A tuxedo will do for every formal evening, whatever the occasion; a suit takes over for the next half dozen levels of formality, but often a blazer and slacks will do for all of these as well. And so it goes all the way down the clothesline, making wrong choices rare as possible, right down to the socks or no-socks decision. There are deliberate, huge overlaps in “suitability.� In my clothes nightmare, I show up naked at the ball, not wearing the wrong shoes.

Photo by Jon Olsen

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Jennifer Aglio

heartwood for Christie Poteet In coves of smoke and pine:

cambium like skin

stretched with age a sapling borne

of sanguine, turns

transverse, becomes layer

upon layer

fundamentally divided.

It is a pale saturation to

retain such

mettle. Just under tissue,

bark to pith,

parabolic rays cleave and

a core slowly hardens. The fibers

dark and inert. A name, an

ascription – what is given to

a derivative of something

taken. But a tree can thrive

with its heart fully

decayed.

49

contributors Jennifer Aglio received her MFA from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. She lives in Longmont, Colorado with her partner, Megan, and their dogs, Indigo and Kona.

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.

Nathan Antar - “That’s what she said.”

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

embodied 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.

Brandon Arthur is the author of expired Rx (Monkey Puzzle Press, 2010). He currently resides in Denver, Colorado.

Ralph Bland is a long-time resident of Nashville, Tennessee and a graduate of Belmont University. After wasting away his youth in riotous living, he is now happily married and residing on the outskirts of Music City, USA disguised as a normal person. He’s the author of three novels: Once In Love With Amy, Where Or When, and Past Perfect. His web address is www.ralphblandlitworks.com.

Kai Forrest Brown is a vivacious five year-old who loves to explore the natural world. He’s working on his first garden, and has an ever changing collection of pet bugs. Kai has always enjoyed having poetry read to him. One day he scribbled a drawing and asked his grandma to write down his poem.

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Michael Cohen used to write academic books; his last was Murder Most Fair:

The Appeal of Mystery Fiction (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2000). Now he writes personal essays. He and his wife Katharine live on Kentucky Lake and in Tucson, Arizona.

Jack Collom is a poet, essayist, and creative writing pedagogue. His most recent

collection of poems is Cold Instant (Monkey Puzzle Press, 2010). His major collection, Red Car Goes By: Selected Poems 1955-2000, was published by Tuumba Press in 2001. Other volumes include Little Grand Island, Arguing with Something Plato Said, 8-Ball and Entering the City. His work has been published in countless magazines and anthologies in the United States and abroad. His essays on teaching and anthologies of children’s poetry appear in Moving Windows and Poetry Everywhere.

Kathy Conde’s work has appeared in Calapooya, CutThroat, Pearl, Underground Voices, Word Riot, and others. She won the Hemingway Festival Short Story Contest in 2008 and her short story collection was a semifinalist for the Iowa Short Fiction Award. She holds an MFA from Naropa University and is past fiction editor of Bombay Gin. Sarah Cooke is a low-residency graduate student in Naropa University’s Cre-

ative 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 Black Mountain Review and Whrrds and is available in audio form at instereopress.com.

Suzanne DuLany is a poet, visual artist, and environmental activist with roots in Austin, Texas. She is currently an MFA candidate at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics and Associate Editor of Bombay Gin. Her most recent projects include the blog Humans for Wolves, and an anti-memoir about her father, Endangered Memory.

Michael D. Edwards - “If you don’t know, now you know.”

Brandon Gray was born, raised, and is still stuck in California. Known to oc-

casionally take a great photo or write a masterpiece only a baboon would understand, he spends most of his time traveling and entertaining children through his business Wild Child Adventures.

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Lee Ann Grossberg, MD lives in Houston, Texas. She’s a forensic pathologist and mother of five. “Uncle Mort” is her first piece of fiction to be published.

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.

Get in the car, Helen began writing shortly after discovering Helen, the woman he loved more than anything, had been secretly fucking a guy named Craig.

Since being dumped by Helen, he has published a book of poetry, Avenge Me. (Baobob Tree Press), and is a frequent contributor to Illiterate Magazine (illiteratemagazine.com). His new book, The Aftermath, etc., will be published in 2010 by Monkey Puzzle Press.

Born in Binghamton, New York, Samuel Jablon learned to paint and mosaic from his mother Susan, founder of both Rude and Bold Woman and Susan Jablon Mosaics. While in Binghamton, Samuel studied freeform music with avant-garde composer Eric Ross, one of Samuel’s most influential mentors. He left Binghamton for Boulder, Colorado to study poetry, meditation, and painting at Naropa University. He now resides and has a studio in Brooklyn, New York.

Bryan Jansing moved to Italy at an early age, graduated from an American high school in northern Italy then served in the US Navy. Flash Fiction has been his passion for over a decade. He’s been published in journals, magazines and newspapers in both Italy and America. He currently resides in Denver, Colorado.

Originally from Iowa, Kade Alexander Jensen is a Graduate Student at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. He holds two Bachelor’s degrees, in English and History, from Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois. He is currently working on a collection of experimental translations of Matsuo Basho’s Haiku as well as a collection of poetic essays. He lives and works in Boulder, Colorado.

Jeremiah Johnson lives on Oahu, Hawaii. He surfs.

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Nate Jordon is addicted to life. He holds a BA in English from California State

University and an MFA in Writing & Poetics from the Jack Kerouac School.

Travis Macdonald’s work has appeared in Bombay Gin, Court Green, ditch, House Press: Source Material, Jacket, Otoliths, Requited, Wheelhouse and elsewhere. His experimental translation, Basho’s Phonebook, is available from “E-ratio” (www.eratiopostmodernpoetry.com). His first full-length book, The O Mission Repo, an erasure of The 9/11 Commission Report is available from Fact-Simile Editions.

Ming Jung Oh worships the sunlight, finds empathy in water’s gaze, and dreams

of becoming a male peacock in her next life. She’s currently an MFA candidate at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics in Boulder, Colorado and received her BA in English and philosophy at the University of Maine, Orono. She has works forthcoming from Tidal Basin Review and The Anthology of the Awkward (Fast Forward Press).

Jon Olsen was born in England and grew up among rednecks in Northern California. He travels the world and makes films with inexpensive camcorders. Check out his YouTube page at: www.youtube.com/olsenberg

Alexandra Parsons lives, writes, teaches, and learns in Manhattan. Aside from

being a middle and upper school English teacher, she obsesses about Shakespeare and hopes to have her children’s book manuscript published one day. Photography is a hobby that follows her around the world.

Jeffrey Spahr-Summers is a poet, writer, photographer and digital artist in

Colorado. He’s the editor and publisher of Poetry Victims, a contributing editor of Sketchbook (a journal for Eastern & Western short forms), the new webmaster of Simply Haiku, and part of the Linchpin Collective. Jeff has published eight books of poetry and photography (Cherry Productions). His poems and photographs have appeared in numerous print and online journals, recently Poetry Super Highway, Kritya, Media Cake, Houston Literary Review and Unlikely 2.0.

Carolyn Zaikowski is a writer, performer, and social worker living in

Northampton, Massachusetts. She is the author of the chapbook Ouch, Humans, and her work has appeared in Fact-Simile, NOÖ Journal, Apothecary, Monkey Puzzle, Meat for Tea, Doom Zine, and Scar Songs: An Anthology Articulating the Terrain of Trauma and Resilience (forthcoming, The Icarus Project). Find her at www.liferoar. wordpress.com.

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SUBMIT TO:

monkey puzzle #10

FALL/WINTER ISSUE

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, 2010 55

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

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

Michael D. Edwards specially thanks: emptiness and Camel Lights.

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new books from monkey puzzle press “For only a very few of us, making poems is as natural, as inborn, as breathing. Jack Collom is such a poet. These poems bring it all together–‘profusion, extravagance/ invisibility/ holiness’– proving that ‘each tiny direction’s a universe.’ His gift to us is to demonstrate that play is the form of wisdom we most urgently need.”

- Elizabeth Robinson, author of The Orphan and Its Relations Poetry / $16.00 Paperback: 86 pages Published: May 2010 ISBN-10: 0-9826646-0-5

“The Aftermath, etc. is a rare look at the broken man in his natural environment: a wasteland of pizza, shark flicks, porn and beer . . . his only escape is through the pen, and if it were not so, the fine art of handmade explosives.”

- Andi Todaro, author of Why My Penis Is Bigger Than Yours Poetry / $15.00 Paperback: 104 pages Published: May 2010 ISBN-10: 0-9826646-2-1

“Brandon Arthur has the uncanny gift to be both Personist . . . and Archetypal . . . in his works. Looking OUT at the phenomenal, looking IN at the possibly even more phenomenal (but not immediately accessible to others), his poems truly ‘own’ their sound/vision/intelligence. expired Rx is a book unlikely to expire in the coming millennia (given, of course, the survival of writing).”

- Anselm Hollo, author of Guests of Space Poetry / $15.00 Paperback: 70 pages Published: May 2010 ISBN-10: 0-9826646-4-8

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Literature / $10.00 #9

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