FRAGILE ARTS QUARTERLY / Autumn 2009 Moongaze Publishing, Pittsburgh, PA Contact us: moongazepub@myway.com Obtain free PDF back issues at: http://fragilearts.tumblr.com All works in this issue of Fragile Arts Quarterly are the copyrighted property of the creators of said works and are used by permission.
Cover photo: Babwe by Alexander Nero
Alexander Nero
Contemplations
Motions
Gabrielle G. also known as Alexander Nero is a self-taught nineteen year old female photographer and artist who is currently working for her B.S. in film at a university. Her interest in film and other forms of art developed at a very young age and to this day she continues trying to perfect her craft in hopes that one day it will get her somewhere. Her diverse upbringing from living in Japan, a military family and an African, West Indies and French background has led her to trying to explore as many possible outlets in art that she can. Websites include: http://www.redbubble.com/people/AlexanderN ero and http://www.flickr.com/people/alexander_nero
Rages
Wendy Parkin’s
stark, personal poetry has been published in
Otherwise http://issuu.com/moongaze-publishing/docs/otherwise and in the winter 08/09 issue of Fragile Arts Quarterly. http://issuu.com/moongaze-publishing/docs/fragileartsquarterly-winter08-09
The Corner S & P by Wendy Parkin
When I was young, I was afraid of swimming in the river and shopping at the S & P. These were the reasons children disappeared and got their pictures plastered on the back of milk cartons. Sitting on front porches, neighbors passed rumors like cups of sugar or electric hedge clippers; “She burns everything she cooks over there, you know.” “He kidnaps kids and tries to give them to his wife over there, you know.” “They practice witchcraft over there, you know.” Walking down Ninth Street, I brave the S & P; open the door to crammed aisles of crooked cans, the stench of opaque, white, tank-topped old man armpit odor blowing from behind the counter, old cardboard boxes with thick, black star and triangle symbols, and music scratching skin, “Adonai li v ‘lo ‘ira….” I swipe a coke from the luke-warm cooler, crawl up to the chipped formica counter, wide-eyed his big-nosed hair waves at me. Passing him the pop, his thumb tattoo, green inked and six numbers long, reaches for my money. I run, as it collides and topples over in my mind; He is going to grab me. She is going to boil me in a soup pot. Rounding the corner, I am a town crier full of news reporting on black magic boxes, satanic chants, and the tell-tale mark of the devil engraved on his thumb. I elaborate on my bravery by telling everyone, “It’s all true about over there, you know.” At nineteen, fanning red faces with grocery fliers on a bus bench, we watch his wife wrapped tight in a dirty, down winter coat, a torn scarf, boots lurched high to skinny knee-balls, straddling busted sidewalk cracks and humming into a plastic juice jug. I lean into your ear, whisper, “There’s that crazy lady from the store.” “That’s just Sally,” you say. “Sally and Philip escaped the concentration camp.”
I imagine them in an apartment above their bakery in Bavaria, amid abandoned apple-matzo kugel and rugelach, where the Gestapo found them hiding fetal-clutched in a double oven; racks still warm from morning challah french toast. At Aschaffenburg concentration camp, after fourteen hours of forced pick and shovel grave-digging, Phillip heaved dehydrated humans onto the dead mound, so hard with rigor mortis, their bodies ricocheted and slid like small, granite slabs while Sally’s womb was knife-ripped and radiation-rotted by the Nazis, leaving her barren and fruitless as a blighted chestnut tree, unable to photosynthesize hot, summer sun. Philip’s young eyes, the fattest, pulp part of his skinny-boned body, starvation eating the meat off his skeleton like hungry teeth devouring a chicken leg, cried run or die that night. How could I have known that day in the S & P the geometric letters of Hebrew was not witch writing, the singing of Adon Olam was not satanic, but proclaimed, “The Lord is with me, I will not fear;” the permanent mark of Holocaust Jews was not Lucifer’s signature; or that, years later, Sally would drop dead of a heart attack while making lamb chops in the second floor kitchen, and Phillip would be alone now. How could I have known there is a right time and right place for running; or that, looking back, it is easy to discern what is good and what is bad because evil always chases.
It’s In Our Hands by Alexander Nero
Sammy by Wendy Parkin
You don’t care about wearing socks and shoes, whether the soles of your feet turn black as asphalt. Grass glued to your sticky fingers doesn’t keep you from holding up sagging pants falling off your skinny waist. It doesn’t matter to you your mom is burning the spaghetti on the stove because she drank too many Budweiser’s, the neighbors are sitting on front porches talking about how dirty you are, and there isn’t enough money to buy cigarettes and your first grade class pictures. It doesn’t matter to you the school nurse constantly sends you home because you have head lice, and your clothes stink. It doesn’t matter to you adults don’t understand why you spit on kids at recess for saying you have fleas and calling you retarded because you don’t talk right. Right now, happiness to you is running your little brother over with your bike in the middle of the street until you make him scream and cry. It’s good you’re too young to realize a little boy should have sheets and pillows on his bed, a bubble bath every night, and wake to prepared breakfast every morning; some hot cereal and apple juice. You don’t realize chocolate ice-cream sandwiches and flat cans of generic Cola-Bubba for dinner will rot your teeth until they all go missing. It’s good you’re too young to realize what missing is. It’s good youth feeds and covers you.
Depression by Alexander Nero
Dear Therapist by Wendy Parkin
I don’t know what your other patients are like; but I feel sorry for you if they’re anything like me. Arriving at session fifteen minutes late, I lug in broken pieces of me, throw them on the coffee table like they’re dry elbows, stinky feet, or lanky legs. I sprawl them out on the sofa while my Inner Child plays with the orange pillows, crawls up in your lap, reads what you’re writing, and sings. My ego crosses its arms and disagrees with everything you say. It sits on screaming thoughts of a sad girl, blames you and gets angry you unleashed my id so that it runs around like a disobedient, hyper dog barking, digging holes, and pissing all over my life. You should be more careful when dismantling fences. You aren’t the one who has to chase the dog down the street and pay the fine when animal control picks it up for biting women. You aren’t the one who has to watch your super-ego bend it over and beat it with a long stick to get it to sit. Avoiding all this, I bring a list of safe topics to discuss; I haven’t been to the dentist in fifteen years. I can’t crap in public. My nephews are dirty. I can’t see my reflection in the mirror. This doesn’t stop my super-ego from ridiculing me. It calls my Inner Child stupid, It scolds, “go get spanked for being bad.” It tells me I’m dumb for even talking to you. It yells, “keep your mouth shut and keep secrets.” Surrounded by this arguing, awkward moments of silence with you are never silent. Watching my scattered psyche roll on the floor like marbles, I expect you to pick them up, bag them, and hand them back to me. I expect you to look at me and see I am as cracked as your ass sitting unmoved in the white, therapist chair. Scribbling observations and documenting the symptoms of my neurosis, I expect you to diagnosis me with something that explains why I feel like I have teeth growing on my inner-skin, why my loins catch on fire when I see a wooden ruler lying on a desk, why I pick holes in my skin and think deep is never deep enough. I expect you to give me something besides breathing exercises and a mirror. I expect you to give me something besides Depression.
little box what say you by Alexander Nero Remission by Wendy Parkin I am wood built, black-spotted and woolly-aphid eaten. On my head, hairs drop off like dead leaves. I try to hold them in place as if they will reattach and grow anew. I clutch hollowed breasts to my body and hope with heavy trellises and anti-fungal fertilizer , they can be saved. I get thorn pricked daily, fragile bleeding pore. I kiss it hard and wet, as if licking and sucking is a cure for these little things that cause so much pain. Dry skin scatters like petals letting go. My thin, spindly body gets pruned, extracted root balls leave holes in place of dirt mounds. I look forward to the numbness of snowflakes filling in the barren landscape of my body, and fear, like dandelions in a manicured lawn, the return of spring.
Backyard by Wendy Parkin I unwind the hose, uncoil it like a snake charmer. I hold it tight behind the head as it sways and spits venom at the crabgrass. “That will kill the weeds,” it hisses. “Good,” I say. I sit on the patio, sip lemonade and lick sticky sugar drips off my fingers. Salmon sizzles on the charcoal grill. The smoke billows as I watch dandelions passing out around me. In the cement cracks, the wonder moss yellows and spry, green spindles slowly suffocate. The pigeon coos and car horn from West Liberty Avenue remind me Pittsburgh is polluted with bird droppings and exhaust fumes. The dog scratches at the door. “No!” I tell her. The bottle said, “Wait two hours after application.” I imagine what might happen to her if she gnaws on a wet stick amid dead salmon, fainting dandelions, gasping moss and plants. I panic at the thought of her hairy body being paralyzed and consumed by the fifty foot, rubber snake sleeping soundly beside the house. How would I explain it to you when you come home? I would lie, like I always do. I would dig a hole under the fence. Pointing to the planted evidence, I would tell you the dog ran away. Slamming the door behind me, I hurry to escape the ease of my fabrications which cause you grief and the regret over things I’m killing in my own backyard.
Dirty by Wendy Parkin I hide behind closed bathroom doors tearing scabs and biting nails. I roll toilet paper off the hook, bandage white fingers soaked bright red from scar picking. I am covered with shame from being scooped as a child by the babysitter’s cooking spoon, from my father calling me bitch, from my mother turning off like a faucet. It flakes away like dry skin, sheds on the floor like dropped towels. It regenerates and multiplies, grows on inner walls like shower mold. I can never feel clean. I can never look in the medicine cabinet mirror without reaching for tweezers or a metal razor blade. I cut my curved, woman stomach; remove digesting mistakes, the time I accidentally burned your globe with a candle, the time we fought and I smashed the bedroom mirror, the times I lied to you and said I quit smoking. Like hard toothpaste, I chew it, gurgle on it, spit it out; every time I'm not good enough. I stick my fingers down my throat; puke up everything good I am fed, the times you wash and neatly fold my laundry, the times you hold me in your sleep, the times you call me hunny and sweet baby with a smile on your face. I can't accept these good things in this dirty place. I wiggle my fingers and flick the light switch; but I won’t survive the flat, silver worms eating holes in my wrists. I think I could have lived to be a hundred. I think I could have seen you gray on the peeling front porch step. I could have let you call me your darling and wash me in all the places I could not reach. I could have lived with my shame, if only I would have known, even in death, I’d be covered in so much dirt.
The Yellow Wall by Alexander Nero
The Tea Takers by Alexander Nero
Tea Time with Linda by Wendy Parkin She sets the table, folds and places paper napkins, aligns silver utensils beside delicate dessert plates. Vanilla scented warmth hides beneath a cloth, a provocation for peeking, an invitation for unveiling. She sits surrounded by preparations, like still life fruit, waiting for my arrival. I go between here and there boiling tea. Clarity bleeding brown, I try to follow directions, “Six minutes steeping brews the perfect cup,� but thirst prevails when dryness chokes the throat. I pour the tea water, Passion cracks loud over ice cubes. I can not bear the loss, the hissing, steamy surrender of hot water to ice. I can not bear the loss, the splintering surrender of ice to hot water. I drizzle sweet honey on the swelter and squirt sour lemon on the frigid to tame the violent annihilation of opposites colliding. I taste the presence of lost struggle, of missing things and critique the weakness as unbearable. I dump it down the drain, pour thick milk instead. I sit in the unoccupied chair across from her, take my assigned place like the napkins, forks, and plates. I drink nothing, nauseated by the feelings stirred in making tea, and eat nothing, preferring to be empty than to reach out for what lies covered on the dish. She refrains from divulging the desserts, eludes the offering to satiate my thirst and hunger. Idle and confident in vigil to my emptiness, Linda patiently waits for my appetite to stimulate the revelation of things concealed.
The King
The Queen
The Messenger
Hello There Lover
Alexander Nero
Bedford Springs by Wendy Parkin Relaxing in the lobby of Bedford Springs, we recline on chaise lounges anticipating 4 o’ clock tea, individually wrapped silk-sewn pouches of flavored tea leaves. Earl Grey for me. English Breakfast for you. We stack white china plates with raspberry lemon tarts, mini-vanilla iced cupcakes, and ladyfingers. Delighting in the plush accoutrements of soft pillows and Gustav Holst, we pretend we’re rich and British. We dip in the mineral spring fed pool, soak in the spiritual healing powers of a marble blue bath. My lower back free from aching, your heel spurs no longer hurting, we take a night walk on the manicured golf course, stroll across the wooden foot bridge above the limestone spring,. You draw me near for protection from the water and dark places below. I smile. Everywhere, lightning bugs weave themselves into a blinking blanket covering the picturesque hills, the tall oak trees, the winding path. I think of a child shaking glitter on an art project, sparkling sequence of Cinderella’s lost shoe and the moment before kissing a woman’s glossy lips. I smile. Above, the moon shoots me a bright, yellow grin.
Legs by Alexander Nero
Gush by Alexander Nero
Ruined by a Fat Wife by Wendy Parkin Listen, I can't help it this morning I'm in the bathtub scrubbing my feet so hard, the skin peels off like sunburn; and it reminds me of the time you made me run to Mt. Airy Cemetery wrapped like a cadaver in a black garbage bag because you wanted to lose weight that red July, a drought warning was issued advising citizens to conserve water. When we got to your house, we turned on the hose, sprayed our sore feet and legs, our sweat-soaked heads; then we watered your brown lawn just to spite Old Man James, that son-of-a-bitch who called the cops on us when we lit bottle rockets in the alley on the Fourth I couldn't make up my mind, we sat in the shade on your back porch so that night you helped me dye drinking sun-brewed, lemon tea and cracking up my hair coal-black to make my outside match my inside. chestnuts and walnuts on paper napkins, Dawn dish liquid took my natural color down your spitting pistachio shells into a metal can mom's kitchen sink. and fantasizing about who we wanted to do Towel dried, you laughed and called me Elvira, Mistress and where and why and how of the Dark. Later, you slept with your window wide open, praying to be prey, wishing a vampire would take you away. Fang-teeth and neck-puncturing endings on a dark street was your way of dodging being devoured by teenage depression. There is something about this cold bath water, the way it shrivels hands and turns skin pale white that makes me want to ask you: What do you think of vampires now that you are married and the life has been sucked out of you by a fat wife?
Tried and True By Carol DeBusk She reached for his hand, "Honey you ate a good lunch. Are you saving room to eat a little dinner too?" He smiled slowly and I watched the weariness in his face lift for a moment "Yes, I will eat some tonight." She smiled back but looked worried ,"Your hands are so cold." Papa tightened his grip on her hand and whispered, " I'm in love." She laughed and even blushed a bit, "You've been in love a long time." "Probably about 63 years." Their whole conversation was conducted in a room full of people and the only ones in the world at that moment were the two of them. I looked down at my salad, wiped my eyes and looked back to find both of them looking at me. He reached over and patted my hand, “Don’t ever be afraid to love with all of your heart." He leaned over and kissed his bride's lips and carefully made his way back to his recliner. Mamaw sat there without speaking for a full 5-10 minutes before she looked up at me, "Your Papaw is what my dreams were made of...he is a good man." All I could do was nod. This love I witness between the two is precious. Purified through fire and strengthened beyond the understanding of man, it has endured war, depression, death and sin. The truth lies in their faith, both for God and each other. I washed the lunch dishes as my boys played in the fruit orchid, the hummingbirds buzzed about and flitted their beauty in the kitchen window and the deer and her fawn crossed the lower pasture by the garden. Comfortable and content my heart rested in this place. I don't know exactly what Heaven will be like... but, I know this day was close to it.
There is something special about a Grandparents love.
The fall of feelings..... by Carol DeBusk
Precious beauty bent Face heavy with tears of dew Standing in early morning light Seeing the world as it is Startling cool October dawn Her blooming life in jeopardy Cold winter frost will become reality And she will submit Dormant and hidden for a time Until the warmth of the sun caresses her petals And he breathes life into her being Once again to be cherished
The Hummingbird by Alexander Nero
David McLean is Welsh but has lived in Sweden since 1987. He lives there on an island in the Stockholm archipelago with a woman, five selfish cats and a stupid dog. He has a BA in History from Oxford, and an unconnected MA in philosophy, much later, from Stockholm. Details of his available books, chapbooks, and over 850 poems in or forthcoming at 370 places online or in print over the last couple of years, are at his blog at http://mourningabortion.blogspot.com. He never submits by snail mail since he has little money and since he loves, or at least doesn't have anything against, trees. Among things forthcoming is a chapbook called nobody wants to go to heaven but everybody wants to die from Poptritus Press in summer 2009 sometime. Early 2010 an anthology called laughing at funerals will be appearing with Epic Rites Publications, there's also a 50 poem chapbook from Epic Rites called hellbound which is on sale now. For Epic Rites he edits the chapbook series and the e-zines lines written w/ a razor and the thin edge of staring, as well as selecting work for the radio network.
words pervert words pervert us, especially these, since encouraging reflexivity is silly, the sun lies lugubrious like a stone hitting a pond and drowning in its deeps, words sleep tight in the cave a mind is, they twist them selves back through the light that shines from them, dull heaven, and mean something else. words pervert us till we are healthy, remembering death, when living forgets what words said to pervert us, twisted words, lies, and life curses us with words to love
the sun lies lugubrious in a sky lubricated best by stars and danger, we like it best at night when it covers every murder like a secure blanket, forgotten obligations and all the horrible resurrected abortions that wait for heaven assembling nasty smells, a complex structure much better than love. never forget to take your drugs, though nothing happened yet. it's still too much to forget independently. we need substances full of insubstantial nothing to touch the void, we need time
David McLean
the night has innocent fangs the night has fangs to rend flesh from anxious fingers, but it's a puppy that doesn't mean very much by the things it does; each suicide that might happen tonight is what might be expected, and the dead were waiting for time to join them stone and blood again, fortified by blood that might taste like salt and oblivion on cold lips. bad things might happen sometimes, maybe, but we have a void to kiss, we have eternities to forget about it, because the night has sharp teeth and innocence
stone and blood and soil scattered with stars dusting them dirty again, and light from the nipples of heaven; they are a ground for the living to stand on, among the moss that covers insipid rocks too timid to live without it. and they do not touch us or move us except insofar as we like to be beneath them trees and stars and dust and stone and blood and soil. we like them because we are alive and all pieces of this world are identical at root. trees all have similar sap within them
maybe even devils get depressed
and i do not know if my dog considers the stars as if he were a man, they smell like nothing and so many things smell better close at hand -
maybe even devils get depressed when screams get quieter and we seem to be enjoying it,
dust and blood is so much easier to understand
when anxiety becomes an infinity of self-congratulation for sensitivity and self-pity, when people don't really suffer easily, maybe even devils get depressed then. after all, they're only human
Charlotte Self “Since my work first appeared in the autumn 2008 issue of Fragile Arts Quarterly, I have been extremely busy. My new life has been such an adventure. We've been in Portland, Oregon for a year and 8 months now and have been growing our collage sheet business, selling out art work, and learning the ins and out of selling art on the internet. We just started working on our website again and hope to have it fleshed out completely by the end of this month. I've also become pretty ‘efficient’ at digital collage as an art form and have adopted the medium as my new favorite. I've always wanted to do Surrealist Art and I consider my digital collages to be Surrealist, in that they speak a language of symbolism and metaphor much like poetry and dreams. I think it is the language of the soul. Digital collage has allowed me to express myself in a way I could never do with paint and canvas or traditional paper collage. My collages are based on my own personal mythology. In October of last year I did a series of pink collages for Breast Cancer Awareness. They touched on women's issues, their strengths, and their roles in society and the family.”
Divisions The imagery speaks to the way that women are divided in many aspects of their lives. In many respects we are forced to keep the most amazing parts of ourselves metaphorically clothed and hidden away. This woman stands proudly in response to that. Is she divided or is she truly balanced?
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.p hp?listing_id=28160446
The Dragon Whisperer I wanted to express the idea of instilling in young women the confidence to overcome adversity. http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=26652771
Wings To Wind Wings To Wind speaks to me of the value of a great support system of caring, nurturing women who have the power to lift their loved ones wings to wind. My collages are based on my own personal mythology http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=25255757
A Shared Her-Story This piece is an expression of the history we share as women. Not only a personal history, but in some cases also a very real, far reaching history which affects us all as a common thread that runs through every woman's life. http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=25170420
The image of this girl was moving considering the era. This was a photograph of her communion. She has been given wings to represent her passage into womanhood, the headline appropriately reads "Threat of Disturbances"
http://www.flickr.c om/photos/bluebutt erflyart/382740274 7/in/photostream/
Girl With a Violin The Girl With the Violin is a vintage Lewis Carroll photograph from his vast body of portrait photography. This photograph is one of my favorites. The hydrangea blossoms are real.
http://www.flickr.co m/photos/bluebutterf lyart/3827402731/in/ photostream/
Felino A. Soriano (b. 1974, California) is a case manager and advocate for developmentally and physically disabled adults. He edits/publishes Counterexample Poetics, www.counterexamplepoetics.com, an online journal of experimental artistry, and Differentia Press, http://www.differentiapress.com, dedicated to publishing e-chapbooks of experimental poetry. As a poet, he has authored ten collections of poetry, including Among the Interrogated (BlazeVOX [books], 2008), Search among the Absent Found (Recycled Karma Press, 2009), and r (please press, 2009). The internal collocation of philosophical studies and love of classic and avant-garde jazz is the explanation for his poetic stimulation. Details are at his website, http://www.felinosoriano.com.
Painters’ Exhalations 417 —after Richard Prince’s Untitled After dark the tongue’s telegraphed lie levitates a star’s vertical call toward smiling gild, echo in the finding ear swirling amid wind’s token compliment. Day needn’t awaken nor attribute its silent absence solely fend off recognition of the myriad magnitude measured by the crying memories, lingering in a rest on the tongue’s next to come.
Felino A. Soriano
Painters’ Exhalations 418 —after Ronnie Landfield’s Journey to the East
Following
the fledging newness (imagine lovers’ first pre-stare [pre, the naturalistic
attire calling claim among subsequent
lips, fanned] soon to envelop selves of silken embrace near first cross. Courses taken alive via proof of dragonfly’s microscopic blur. Arriving semblance familial break apart saddened journey of a wishing bone’s predetermined focus.
Painters’ Exhalations 419 —after Jackson Dembar’s Image 5
Flame became human. Began to form emotions. Fear. Its body beautified. A leaf yellow mirror of a calling down sun. Near its center, a womb. From the contour of reactionary heat, beauty became the birthed revelation.
Mikki Mous “My hobby is throwing knives� http://www.myspace.com/mikkimous
Enemy Camp # 5
You were a surprise I expected brutality and that was true That i would be hurt and that was true
Las Palabras
That i would be powerless and that was true
I collected the words you gave me the words you wrote and the words you threw away
That i would be afraid and that was true sometimes
I did not expect to find a friend in you wearing enemy colors Did not expect to feel close sometimes even intimate Did not expect to find truth in you where lies should be Did not expect your gentleness to cover and protect me Did not expect to trust you with my life, but i did I did not expect to like you much less love you
Washed them free of blood and pain and loss distilled them in wind and cool Pacific mist Of the tears that flowed, ripped from your living nightmare i kept but one to sting my soul Drop by drop each perfect word cleaved my spirit i strung them onto silver cords stretched between thee and me And promised to take you home
Mikki Mous Melinda’s Two Cats
Melinda's two cats loiter upon the sidewalk flipping matchsticks into the street making catly comments, sleeping in the sun and generally lending a disreptuable air to the neighborhood of pristine lawns and carefully sheared shrubs of no character
Small Petals
My words i wrote upon small petals Taken by the wind down some green allĂŠe and left in drifts of color dying upon the cool ground Taken slowly into the earth to be reborn perhaps into some newborn flower And written upon by eyes yet unborn
Quiet
give me then my quiet shell smooth and white scallop curved or some soft street linden street perhaps where green leaves shed unknown minutes fifteen thousand years of rain filling still pools deep inside dark hours unseen unseen and i shall disappear folded over and over a worn quilt packed in lavender
Mikki Mous
Lie
The sweetest lie is the one i writ myself wove of spun sugar and ice nothing suspended over nothing glittering in the morning wind
Sweet Smile
Sweet smiles fall and break like crystal upon the cracked shards of talk i break my bones in two and never let one tear fall The pain can wait and hide in the dark
Erased
Aye truth is a clean knife
The midnight clock moves slowly lingering over each second
Honesty
The dark is kind tonight quiet and warm everything is erased All the sins and failures all the hopeless pain erased One more day, one more year each write the same lines lines shaped by desolate winds Silence calls me home
In the dark and late when the bodies are counted and the pain is totaled and the loss is hard i wear my share of shame that i could not protect her That love was not enough
Crows Light stretches to a thin gold wafer the apples begin to come and the shadow of crows marks the boundary of life
Rachel Stadelmeier www.rachelstadelmeier.com
Winter Sky
Bushwick by Rachel Stadelmeier
Downtown by Rachel Stadelmeier
Mather Schneider is a cab driver in Tucson. Also a poet and story writer. His work has been seen in the small press for fifteen years.
FEELING IS ALL WE HAVE
THE NEWS, JULY 5TH 2001, TUCSON
Not everybody loves themselves the Ganges of the blood rears at the battle to be accepted and the effort not to care the heart itches and burns and scrapes sour music in the attic of consciousness the body is the universe
flash flood warning for all of pima south of town flooded power will probably fail stay inside
arroyos
29 hospitalized in fireworks debris 4th burns bruises first time for everybody
happy
flying apart an orange peel in a blender and sex one more parlor trick another avenue of feeling without truth it’s true the truth is its impossible we desire to search for what we know we will never find we want what doesn’t exist not everybody loves themselves only the young and the dumb
animal control has record breaking day as always scared pets running the streets the entire northern district will be issued new phone numbers who matters will be informed finally: flash flood warning farmlanders find high ground drive in water you’re not Jesus
GUT-ROUT lost wallets and the gut-rout of self doubt flaws buzzing around perfection trapped in a silo of future chafe polluted fat poison taffy of time lost wallets and the gut-rout of hopelessness flirting with the jack-a-lope perspiration of a serial killer aspirin days and paranoia I cuss without moving my lips
everyone
please don’t
Morning Light by Rachel Stadelmeier
The Couch by Rachel Stadelmeier
Night Light by Rachel Stadelmeier
Joseph Goosey's girlfriend is currently considering several MFA programs. He has one chapbook available via Poptritus Press and one available via Shadow Archer Press. He loves you for reading.
SUNDAY The president says something but I don't hear words I see potassium flowing out of his mouth and cigarettes are up one dollar soon they will be up two and I'll sing elsewhere. (Today I stole a shirt from lost and found. It's red and speaks of pigs.) Cronkite's dead. I'm not. My mom traipses in and talks about agendas. If it wasn't for summer rain I'd have melted months ago but the air burns down doors of my lungs and holds firm to thick walls.
AMONGST BRICKS The Pope slips on his cast in the morning. His poodle takes sips from golden bowls. Being contemporary calls for a nap under the rain in the park being sniffed at by children who want to play Frisbee but you don't know how. You didn't go to college under the sun. You didn't live amongst bricks. Frisbee is difficult. Circles, grass, trajectory; unpleasantness, all. The modern cell phone is a cucumber. If the matter matters they'll reach you by post. If the horse breaks they'll send fire.
THREE POEMS WRITTEN INSIDE DISNEY WORLD
1. Lost in Epcot Center, I found you standing outside Spaceship Earth talking to the nonthreatening Asian security guard. When I walked up, you were crying and said I thought you'd killed yourself in the bathroom. That would cause you to make that drive from Orlando by yourself. Though, I did fall asleep in the car you could still listen to the functioning of my organs while I dreamt that I hadn't failed at the swinging fragment.
2. You exercised your right to walk eleven steps ahead.
3. We couldn't stand straight and our laughter was a form one could touch, spread with a butter knife, eat, and talk about later.
FOR YOUR BIRTHDAY I quit talking of nymphs and open spaces. I bought two tickets to Epcot Center and am a fool, my car hood flew up on the interstate. You cry because Angela has shingles and your tears are now in the mouth of me.
TODAY A manic continuance took place in the courtyard today. It poured down rice and there wasn't anything to do but get fat and recline.
Joseph Goosey
Red Spiral
Ian Boyd Walker Most of my work involves some form of stenciling, whether this be directly stenciling with paint or by creating “layer masks” in photoshop. I was born in Doncaster, South Yorkshire, England, in 1969 and first started using stencils whilst at Doncaster College in 1989. I graduated with a BA (Hons) in Fine Art in 1994 from what is now UWCN in Newport, Gwent. I began the 21st century by going back into education to train as a Teacher of Art at UWE in Bristol. I then spent several years teaching at a secondary school in Weston-super-mare, which I continued to do until the summer of 2008. Since then I have have exhibited in the inaugural exhibition of the “Graphic Expressionism” group at The Waterfront in Plymouth (Sept-Oct 2008), had work included in the “Snap to Grid” group show at the Los Angeles Centre for Digital Art (Oct-Nov 2008) and in the Doncaster Open Exhibition (Nov-Dec 2008). I have received increasingly positive responses to the artwork that I have produced which has resulted in the opportunities to exhibit my work in a range of independant galleries in the UK and beyond. Further examples of my artwork can be seen online at www.myspace.com/ianboydwalker
Portals Vells
Golden Centaur
Blue Eye Mandala
Jaq Goodyear Victoria, Australia
her collection is a fifty cent stamp
i have seen hertaller than pot plants, bundling unfinished letters (and hanging them next to her collection of fifty cent stamps). on saturdays she leaves her vista and steals samples of mauve from the local paint shop, always writing the amount due with a grayish violet pen before she leaves.
she gives right of way to umbrellas (no fool) and
on wednesdays she rides her bike through the roundabout three times - her neighbour peers from under his box, secretly desiring to make love to her every wednesday at 2.03 but she continues to find him openly dull
maybe in april, maybe even march she will re-negoiate her decision.
so much so
my frilled lizard stares into her long solitude moments she likes to move the air around my mythical reptillian bodylately i have seen her fire dim into a lean telephone pole beaming the power distribution (unusually wooden) around a town disinterested in her pet french actress (i remind her how we both love climbing, how we love to sing show tunes, how we both love to dream) - so much so that we often exchanges glances of oh! me too! me too! i dare her to knock down her isolation & raise her bright yellow lining to flag us a ride outta here she hesitates before scrubbing her smile clean - settling on my shoulder and the road is ours once more.
concertina serenade
the silent reel appears within the doorway once again squeezing- ing rays of black and white through forgotten louvres and she, who has long reaches into a woman’s bag is an absent dialogue desperate to meet a new yearning but today, today she will be a suitcase packed full of protagonist ploys Jaq Goodyear
and ready to star in her own western movie turning tequila shots into lap dances and loose change for the jukebox.
passion
her arm deletes paint from the machine world, her artificial breath falls heavily over the canapĂŠ, and the chandelier moves around the junkyard masterpiece, she picks her head up slowly walks through history- hissing at them all, Jaq Goodyear
galvanised iron for legs- caged indecent eyes - lips that perform like an elaborate japanese orchestra- mocking them and he can't help but follow her sinister-crude beauty like a snake pit closing in on a potent passionate vision, she leans closer hissing, dissolving into raspberry skin, her rubber necklace looping each chess piece hanging from her ears- swaying & tempting each other Ode’ Facebook to make the first move.
we once lived far far far from a country allotment, downloaded by three cats we once hurtled daisies across bridges where leaping people didn’t care much for their lives da- la de da da de and i am so far far far away or so i prefer me i say you have poor visibility and your light house is a silent tribute lapping at rocks you say you are a shifting museum of historic darlings, darwinisms and dull forgotten grace da- la de da da de
tomato-red board be my reactor 4
riding away with a tomato-red board I hurry past desertion carrying with her a burnt-out control room and run fingers through air like blisters
the lilac day is dreaming about my favourite ice-cream flavour again (pistachio)
freshly abandoned
so I ride on like rubble
by a pistachiogreen wall-
into my 1970 house surrounded by nuclear plant workers excavating school children exacting reactors like a farewell of gotcha and ‘no returns’ some - where in the back row a meltdown flares into fixating light and I’m wondering
Jaq Goodyear
in such an unnatural space can we still illuminate
Green Eyed Yellow Idol
truck stop, where's home
felt like measuring rain again
tell me..where’s home?
under my giant lace umbrella (sullied by
lost dingo interferes you know....
a neglected boot)
ive never missed a stranger before (chewing
lining the days with stains is counting
tyres to spit some rubber) well wild dog
on countless rigs to roll on in
… you golden and hungry?
to roll on by
wanna haunt some outbacks with a
and now there are silver flashes of
tormented western glare?
silhouettes trying to leap from the azure sky
wanna chat up cheap coffee?
rearranging the hue already in steep decline
wanna steam exits, only two
with an impatient horizon (line)
polystyrene cups away?
(if roads say
leek (I name) shakes her head
hello) I will toss my
prefer warm beer to headlights....
only suitcase open and set the feathers free
she senses the territory
dance around dusk (knowing
will always be (t)his
i’m only a truckstop mirror) crafting empty strings of roadhouse pearls can be hapless out here on the mid-far-flung frontier, so truckstop..i’m in search of food
Jaq Goodyear
Jaq Goodyear
imagine the circus horse
freeing the children from their trembling slack jaw
The ring-shaped ringmaster pours on stage
of bubbling glee~
like a symbol
Pull her down a constellation
like a cartoon
far far far
like a draft, soaring his salute past the
behind the sum of clowns (prancing
deafening roars, unshackling
around in their painted tears)
unconscious cages of audience, bringing
trading smiles
reckoning to their wide-eye
with street dancers who watch cannons
catchment of hats
toss out their dulcimer ways
And libertine floods light on her
And she will build
seat, snapping heels off her
him a galaxy of tool belt clusters &
broken screen floor, snapping away
circus-top moons, a
the circus trainers as they round enthusiasm
sugar-sweet toffee apple
over a quivering row eleven
full of teenage lust, a
(his is a vibrating hand)
percussive bird to
dumped from the oversized greyhound
fly around the trapeze wires, and
and its aging road show,
dive into their lap buckets of
to all of sudden
hushed lights and
being here or there or not anywhere
red velvet curtains
so they will hide their ugly ways
One acrobat, two acrobat,
and they will gallop his lion glare
three,
and be left gasping
and she imagines
and be left commanding
there will be a circus horse
the spare air
eventually.
Ian Boyd Walker
Green Man
Clifton Kong
Magicant is a very shy, very headless creature who is fascinated with humans. His initial attempts to mingle have awarded him one broken pinky finger and four bullet holes in his chest. He consequently tries to keep to the outskirts of society, and, in his spare time, writes poetry about his broken pinky finger and the four bullet holes in his chest. His interests include going for long runs at three in the morning and talking to butterflies. You can discover more about Magicant at: www.myspace.com/magicantmagicant
Surface Tension
Seรกn Tierney
The Truth About Dew
Raindrops Even The Forefathers Believe In You are tiny fat men coming home i miss you from work i missed you when you were here i missed you when i swung i miss you all the time i miss that tiny white dress that hung like a flag Lawnmowing In Paradise
across your thin perky chest you haven't worn it since that day we had dinner in Providence
here, we got
when the shepherds pie was steaming
giant grasshoppers
and made small orbs of sweat form
big enough
on your neck and forehead
to bring a palm tree to it's knees
i want to raise that dress in my front yard and salute it under your thin perky chest i trust there are good things in the world
Seรกn Tierney
Your Sounds Oh, Pink Radio you make sounds in my head when you're not around.
oh, pink radio play 3 chords over and over
tiny sounds
E - seashell A - charm C - driftwood
your sounds
and rule the sea
like fleas jumping in my ear and doing road construction on my soul
Sick With You, But Not Of You
heres the thing i have a lot of people who think they love me but i don't understand their way of life and they don't understand mine and they've never tried
(i am a bad friend and i'm sorry)
and there are a lot of people i love because i think they are brilliant in every way their words are brilliant, their faces their breasts, their views their hearts and souls are brilliant
and I always turn into a fool when they're around
(i'm sick with you, but not of you)
Duval Street
the dancers on Duval Street all have this rubber skin. the black girls smell like wilted coconut roses and the scent always tries to send me back in time when things had mystery and danger was everything.
Seán Tierney
i almost got beat up there. sailing through the outermost lips like a desert viper (on the crest of a sand castle?) i had gone too far felt powerful on alcohol she said i looked like Jekyll but wandered like Hyde and oughta be taught a lesson.
so i said “one of these days the sun will rise straight up through the earth you buffalo”
Ricky Garni is a graphic designer and musician who gave up his instruments a long time ago and then sadly decided to look at pictures of the sorts of instruments that he used to own on the Web and wept inside with longing and if that wasn't bad enough now there is a documentary out there on the Mellotron. Instead of all that, though, he writes poetry for various publications these days and tries not to weep with longing so much. (Ricky Garni's work is available at both amazon.com and lulu.com; some of his recent rough drafts are available at http://tortillaexmachina.blogspot.com)
IF YOU MEET LOVE, WHAT DO YOU DO? You walk right up to him and give him a big kiss a kiss, right on the lips You lift his sunglasses to see what his eyes look like You ask him if he is going to stay around for a while If he says ‘yes’, you can say, ‘Perhaps then we can have dinner together’ (If he says ‘no’, be thankful for the courage your bright green dress gives you– ‘Stay, you shall, buddy’ you say, ‘you shall stay’)
And pay no attention to the men staring at you from across the room for God’s sake waiting in line, Shirtless, big bellies distended, their arms thin, their eyes just like you would estimate, hollow as if They were hungry, as if they were starving, mouths open Like the dead, like the ready to speak, scary, yes–but they are OK gents and they are waiting, too, they are waiting for something too.
READING GEORGE ELIOT TODAY I watch with joy as she describes Fred, the cuddly reprobate, as “3 and 20.” Lydgate, new to Middlemarch and eager to make his mark as a progressive practioner of medicine, is “7 and 20.” And so I thought I would try it out on myself. Is George Eliot in the room? No, she’s not in the room. The coast is clear. OK, then: I am 1 and 50. The man seated uncomfortably in aisle seat 15-C on American Airlines flight 2189 to Panama is talking to a woman in seat 15-F who is from Africa en route to Panama on American Airlines flight 2189 about duty-free shops and he Appears to be healthy and bonny, moreso than me, in fact, and he is 8 and 60, if he is a day, with small amounts of grey Chest hair eluding the top button his his shirt as they shilly shally here and there, somehow, surprisingly adding a youthful lustre to his appearance when suddenly he says “That was, of course, a while ago, when the euro was much stronger” And she laughs, and strokes his knee, surprisingly, really, I mean, after all, she couldn’t be more than 3 and 30.
OLIVER STONE'S RULES FOR SURVIVAL as told to Playboy Magazine 1) Blow your claymore 2) Throw your grenades 3) Use your M-16 so as to prevent detection of your fire pattern 4) Forget everything you ever learned 5) Don’t just stand there like I did
Ricky Garni
THINGS I LEARNED OVER MANY DAYS Thank you, Netflix Patty Hearst ages well. Steve McQueen is confident, and seems to know what he is doing. It was 14, not ten days in October, Cuban-missile wise. If I am feeling old, it is a good idea to take a nice long look at Edith Piaf. Little boys wore wide, beautiful striped ties in the Soviet Union in 1960. The Man Who Came to Dinner is not who you had to guess was COMING to dinner. That was Sidney Poitier. The Man Who Came to Dinner was Monty Wooley. If I had to say who had a better name, Sidney Poitier or Monty Wooley, I would be stumped. Cat Women have seductive and secret powers as long as they are on the Moon. James Cagney probably had a very interesting heart rate. If anyone could produce a legion of atomic superman through a series of flesh-burning radiation experiments with his crazed man-beast servant, it would be Bela Lugosi. Emily Dickinson had a lot of ready cash. I don’t know why I never knew that. Ernie Kovacs was supposed to be a genuis, but I think that must have been have a mistake. I think that Zero Hour! is the only movie I have ever seen with an exclamation mark in it. I don’t know for certain if anyone ever called Tyrone Power ‘Son of Fury’ just as a joke but you must be careful when you choose to act in certain movies with certain titles. It’s easier to watch Shirley Temple if you can watch Joseph Cotten at the same time. If Claudette Colbert enters into the room, however, Joseph Cotton is outnumbered and it is hard to keep watching with both eyes. It is inevitable that Doris Day ends up in a convertible at a car wash.
Ricky Garni
SOMEDAY I WOULD LIKE TO TAKE A VACATION IN BATTLE CREEK, MICHIGAN The mailman came and brought me a little box! I love you, mailman, and I always have. Even when I was a little boy, and even though there are a million of you. I can’t wait to see you again! What will you do next? I hope it is what you always do. I especially like it when you have silvery hair and a little limp. And now I will open that box again. The box you sent me is filled with foam. Filled! With foam! Thank you! Love? There you go, limping away, with a smile. He’s waving! Mailman, how I love you!
THE RECKONING
Ricky Garni
I knew the day would finally come when I couldn’t wear clothes anymore. It was on a Monday. Like today. I got out of the shower, as I always do, and went over to the dresser, and paused for a moment at the underwear drawer before walking downstairs and fixing myself a bowl of corn flakes with a thinly sliced banana atop and two teaspoons of sugar after I had already poured a small amount of milk on the corn flakes (so that the sugar wouldn’t get lost in the milk.) I ate the bowl of corn flakes with no clothes on. Usually I read the paper when I eat breakfast, but I decided that it would be a better idea to spend my time making a list of all the things that I would have to do differently since I wasn’t wearing clothes anymore. I really wanted to read the newspaper because I wanted to know what was going on. Here’s the things that I was interested in: Nothing. Frankly, I can’t think of a single thing. Here is the list of things that I couldn’t do because I was naked: • Answer the door (unless it was a good friend calling and I could see them through the peephole.) • Get the morning paper (which I didn’t read today because I was working on my thoughts about being naked.) • Water the crabapple tree (Spring is here and I should do this, I feel bad if I don’t but I am naked so there’s not much chance of me doing this I don’t think.) • Prune the crabapple tree (Who am I kidding? If I am not watering the crabapple tree because I am naked, then I am certainly not pruning the crabapple tree when I am naked.) • Wash the car (it’s an old car anyway so I don’t think that it would really matter to anyone, unless clean cars run better than dirty cars, and if they do, I imagine that the difference is rather marginal and certainly not enough to make me want to put clothes on.) • Buy a new car at the new car store.
Here is the list of things that I can do even though I am naked: • Answer the telephone (I can even use a French accent as a kind of joke.) • Answer my email (any and all email) • Look at the crabapple tree through the window (as long as I am an appropriate distance from the window.) • Do some ironing (the steam feels good on my naked skin but I try to avoid spraying my groin area with spray starch because I read an article that said that this can be very painful and you should be careful not to do it by accident.) • Dance to my Frank Sinatra records (but not near the window. Of course it doesn’t have to be Frank Sinatra. ) • Watch television by myself with the lights out (What else is new?) • Get drunk and throw up into the kitchen sink (if I have taken too many anti-anxiety pills and drunk something highly acidic, like freshly squeezed orange juice.) • Take a long, hot, soapy shower and wash my hair with shampoo that smells like cloves and hazelnuts. (To relax from a long day and a new outlook on life which can be both invigorating and anxiety provoking.) Just as I was writing ‘hazelnuts’ and 'anxiety-provoking' and thinking about how delicious hazelnuts are and how soothing anti-anxiety pills can be, and I was just beginning to realize that there were so many things that I could do naked and so relatively few things that I couldn’t do because I was naked that being naked definitely won hands down and I couldn’t see any compelling reason to ever wear clothes again. But then, suddenly, just when I was feeling so good about everything about being naked forever, the doorbell rang. I remembered that my first rule of being naked was that I could no longer answer the doorbell, although I could look through the peephole, just to satisfy my curiosity. And so I looked through the peephole and said DRAT very loudly. Right there on the other side of my door, looking in through the peephole so that her face was distored and funny looking, was the girl of my dreams! HELLO HANDSOME! She said at the peephole, and my mind began to race. The girl I knew I was born to spend the rest of my life with was right there, and I felt as though I had known her all my life and maybe for all eternity and there she was just outside my door finally and she was waiting for me to answer it and tell me that she felt the same way and that we would be together forever for the rest of eternity! WHAT'S UP? she asked. And as I gazed at her visage, which was, truly, a very beautiful visage, I thought two things: 1) I know her face doesn’t look funny like it does through the peephole, that this was just some sort of optical illusion, and 2) I knew in my heart, as I had always known, that the most important thing in the world is to stick to your guns, and so I stuck to my guns, my very naked guns, and walked very very quietly up the stairs so that you could barely hear me moving as I went from the stairs and into the shower and turned on the water until it was deliciously hot and I could almost smell the cloves and hazelnuts of regret drowning like tiny little rats in the steamy shower of my bathroom and also of my desire. Being naked was the first day of the rest of my life, and I was OK with that. And as I listened to the sound of the meaty part of her fist knocking on the door again and again, I wondered what kind of life this new life would be. It would be a life that I knew could be anything, anything at all, maybe even nothing at all, but no matter what, it would absolutely and positively be one thing and that’s for sure: it would be naked, I thought to myself, naked, I said aloud, and then JUST A MINUTE, as loud as I could, over the sound of the hot, steamy shower and the water running furiously down my legs.
from the editor: As I was taking one of the following photos and talking to a passerby about the rooftops I was shooting, she made the comment “It’s so Pittsburgh!” She is so right. Raymond Sapienza
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