NAP 2.9

GUEST EDITOR: Janey Smith lives in San Francisco, California. She is the writer of THE SNOW POEMS (NAP, 2012) and ANIMALS (2011). She is fiction editor at Metazen and contributing editor at Big Other.

COVER ARTIST: Michelle Guintu lives in San Francisco, California.

She makes art: http://michelleguintu.tumblr.com/

NAP 2.9 YEAR 2 ISSUE 9 EDITOR: JANEY SMITH CUSTODIAN: CHAD REDDEN NAP MAGAZINE & BOOKS INDIANAPOLIS, IN naplitmag.com

ALISSA NUTTING AMELIA GRAY AMY BERKOWITZ AMY GERSTLER AMY SILBERGELD ANA CARRETE ANNA JOY SPRINGER CARINA FINN CARRIE HUNTER CARRIE LORIG CHRIS KRAUS DONNA DE LA PERRIÉRE DOROTHEA LASKY EILEEN MYLES JESS DUTSCHMANN JI YOON LEE KATE DURBIN LILY HOANG LINDSAY ALLISON RUOFF MADISON LANGSTON MEGAN LENT MEGHAN LAMB NIINA POLLARI SARAH FRAN WISBY SUSAN M. SCHULTZ TERESA CARMODY XTX

ALISSA NUTTING

HEARKEN Sandra sat straight upright in bed as though possessed, her lips sewn together with a film of red wine. Suddenly curious, she looked down between her legs and remembered to lose hope just in time. She had wet herself again. It was humiliating; she was barely forty. She decided to have a cigarette and pretend the large damp stain had come from doing something sexually avant-garde. Next to her in bed, Ray’s ascending snore sounded like a xylophone made from death’s spine. The way he could sleep through smoke being blown into his face wasn’t normal, Sandra decided. Perhaps he had a stronger death drive than she did. She envied him that.

When she stood up, her large wet panties hung like superaged skin. In the dark she could make out the profile of their shape in the full-length mirror. She would look like this in thirty more years, possibly sooner. Tiptoeing down the stairs, Sandra walked straight into the garage. She felt the need to be quiet in front of their parked cars in a way that she didn’t with Ray; the cars seemed like far lighter sleepers than her husband.

Her underwear came off. She buried it deep inside a garbage can containing grass clippings, then began to hurry back towards the door. It felt dangerous to be bottomless so close to the garage’s assortment of mounted power tools. How weird, she thought, passing by the glass jars full of long nails, the wiry charred brush grill—everyone on the block has a

torture chambers in their house but calls it a garage. For a moment, Sandra wanted to get into her car, pantless, and drive somewhere. Just to the highway intersection maybe, and then turn around. It would feel like a kind of freedom, wouldn’t it?

In the kitchen she poured a mug of warm water and ascended the stairs slowly, letting her eyes adjust. Moving towards the sound of Ray’s snore, Sandra felt like she was headed into the engine room of a massive ship. She liked the way the dark sanitized their house of its personal details each night; she couldn’t make out any of the pictures on the hallway wall even if she wanted to.

Climbing back into bed, she bristled at the damp patch on the mattress, then quickly threw the cup of warm water over Ray’s groin. She smoked another cigarette and finally started getting sleepy again. “Ray,” she yelled, repeatedly slapping his pillow. After a few moments of she came to life, his arms and legs seemingly treading water as he rediscovered his limbs.

“You did it again,” she said.

“Oh god,” he mumbled, lumbering up. He took off his wet briefs then looked down at his penis with a defeated expression, imploring it for answers. Sandra listened to him rinsing out his underwear in the sink, but what she heard was the sound of something large and indeterminate going down the drain.

Alissa Nutting is author of Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls (Starcherone 2010) and an Assistant Professor of Fiction Writing at John Carroll University. Her work has or will appear in publications such as The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Literature, the New York Times, Tin House, and Fence.

AMELIA GRAY

FLIGHT LOG, CHICAGO/ TOLEDO 1. It was a pretty flight into Chicago this morning. You would have liked it, probably. I mean it would have reminded you of yourself.

2. The sun was rising over the big lake and the Captain took the plane around downtown in a circle. We get sick of that kind of view, I mean the Captain and I, because after all that splendor we have to bring her down onto some sad tarmac.

3. Everyone thinks I’m drunk these days. Even in the morning. I’m sure you’re doing fine.

4. As the navigating pilot, I felt like it would be fine if we made a nice soft landing in the water, which looked very smooth and like dappled from the morning light or whatever. That’s not something one suggests, of course. It was an internal opinion.

5. And then from Chicago we headed into Toledo. It’s hard to leave Toledo. Just kidding.

6. I do wonder what the Captain is thinking while we’re bringing the plane into some idiot land where people live their lives.

7. It’s probably time to go back to base when every question from the flight attendants makes me make the words “Please leave me alone” inside my mouth while my lips are closed while I am smiling and sometimes nodding a little. When you make the words silently, it becomes a secret you can keep. I learned about this in the Air Force.

8. Some nights, I feel I could slip away into a hangar and live in a janitor’s closet.

9. This morning I bought a banana and left it on the counter because I didn’t like the look of it. I can’t even remember where I was at the time, if you can believe it.

10. You’re such a pretty skeptic.

11. I wonder about janitors. If when they close up shop, they go home and clean their own homes. I figure if I was a janitor I would pop a squat on the floor and make a watery B.M. every n ow and again to keep myself humble.

12. What do you do to keep yourself humble? You’ll have to remind me because I can’t think of a god dammed thing.

Amelia Gray is the author of AM/PM (Featherproof Books), Museum of the Weird (FC2) and THREATS (Farrar, Straus and Giroux).

AMY BERKOWITZ

FRENCH She was studying French at Someday Cafe and there was something about the sunlight and something about the music playing that made the sentences rush forth to reveal their meaning in a way they normally didn’t. Speaking French was easy and she was wearing her favorite pants: purple corduroys. It was in this elevated mood that she first noticed Cole. She could see him smoking a cigarette through the big glass window from where she sat on a faded velvet chair. He squinted into the sun. Then he looked at her. She tried to study her French. When he came back inside, he asked her what she was studying and she said French poetry. He said he liked T.S. Eliot and would she like to see his copy of the annotated Wasteland sometime.

He invited her to his house, which was on a pretty street, far away from campus. How old was he? Something like 26.

He was a man, and there was something rough about him.

He smoked cigarettes, he’d never been to college, he was from a lousy town outside of Boston. He wore a long black trench coat when he came to see her at her on-campus apartment, and he looked out of place. The first evening they hung out, they sat on his small couch and he put on a Joni Mitchell record. It reminded her of her mom. He showed her the T.S. Eliot book. She didn’t especially like T.S. Eliot, but she politely examined it. When they went to his bedroom, he asked if she wanted a massage. He pulled out a bottle of massage oil. It seemed so contrived. She let him massage her with the massage oil. You have all these knots, he said. They

took their clothes off. She realized this was the first time she’d been completely naked next to a man. It was also the first time she’d seen a penis. She touched it but she wasn’t sure what to do. So she stopped after a while. She couldn’t fall asleep but then she fell asleep. In the morning, he asked if she wanted some coffee. He went to make the coffee and a beautiful gray cat walked quietly into the room. She was impressed that he had a cat; none of her friends had cats, because they lived in the dorms. The cat sat at the end of the bed.

He came back in and handed her a mug. She was still completely naked, which made her nervous. She was not used to being naked around anyone. She didn’t totally want to be seen naked. She sat with her legs together and her elbows in front of her breasts. She drank the coffee quickly so she could put her clothes on again and leave. You really pounded that coffee, he said. Yeah. She put the empty mug on the windowsill next to the bed. She put her bra on, put her shirt on. I have class pretty soon, she said. The cat followed them onto the porch. They made plans to see each other again.

She walked to class and felt dizzy. In French class, she felt dizzy and fell asleep. She sat by the window and watched the leaves fall. She fell asleep and let the French wash over her like static.

Amy Berkowitz is the author of Listen To Her Heart, forthcoming from Spooky Girlfriend, and Lonely Toast (What To Us, 2010). She is a founding member of the Washtenaw County Women’s Poetry Collective & Casserole Society and the editor of Mondo Bummer.

She lives in San Francisco, where she drinks Rolling Rock and listens to Tom Petty.

AMY GERSTLER

RAW PEASANT SONG plenty of dumplings, loads of potatoes. that boy ate so many turnips he’s started to look like one. don’t let the fire go out again. earn your keep, open up, let me in. it’s cold out here. who’s been blowing the candles out and the hurricane lamps and making the chickens sick? who’s been breaking my china plates? dry bread of affliction, stale, butterless. rope, stake, churn, hoe. sheep dip and shearing, sheaves bound tight. bar the door. wait for daylight. I’m tired too, he said, what with all my wandering, and crawled under the covers with me. she whimpers all night but ma, someone’s calling and I gotta follow. her shame is our shame. even the goats know.

MEDUSA My sole wish was to be beautiful, however temporarily.

To have my face obscure mens’ thoughts like shore fog.

Every runt or luckless slut is hero of her own life, right?

So why not a religion based on me? I could be your patron saint on bad hair days, regale you with tales of snake bracelets, Perseus’ ratty sandals, his bragging, how he didn’t even wear underpants half the time. Some god.

ATTENTION DEFICIT .each moment upholstered in zillions of pimplelike speedbumps! untranslatable unstable Braille .hey, wait a sec, hold up, let me buckle my pond shoes! while lakes of concentration evaporate . listen! distant mooing= deep green consciousness chewed to cud . too many pots boiling over on badly encrusted stovetop! fat scums bubbling thoughtbroth, no one to skim it . head teems with swooping Mexican pelicans! they chase boats all day, dive for glinting scraps of distraction . juddering synapses of unransomed stammerer: I have repented this minute, please now just give me the drugs

Amy Gerstler’s most recent books of poetry include Dearest Creature, Ghost Girl, Medicine, and Crown of Weeds. She teaches in the Bennington Writing Seminars Program at Bennington College in Vermont and in the MPW program at USC. She lives in Los Angeles, California.

AMY SILBERGELD

four poems from

NEW ENGLAND GOTHIC Rounds of shiny plastic, pocks, the top of mermaid Dora’s yellow tail.

Dora, known to sleep for days, was originally a ballet.

Dora spun and, sure, she was graceful until Dora’s arms lost in kimono sleeves when Father needed her.

Outside, women like Dora finger wet eyes in every SUV imaginable.

Dora’s rounded off, and knows it, Father no lover worth bleeding out.

Given this, she wreaths in.

Pisses herself, then dries.

+ Adult spasms.

Dora, blanket clutcher.

Biting on her hairpins, She is those templates of dying grace. Doctor talks until it’s said father drew them. + Doctor if iconic navy blazer, stretch twill crotch.

Sheepskin driving gloves to clench, scalp to drip on cotton vest. + Like all babies, Dora is part bird.

To prove this not a play about children dead and waiting, there are no children here.

Some experts believe “the father loves.�

Dora says the father loves; his covered pelvis heaves.

Gathered in his body are pink writhes.

Amy Silbergeld’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Fence, Shampoo, Gertrude, and No, Dear, among others. She is the founder and editor-in-chief of DEATH HUMS.

ANA CARRETE

SAW A GIRL FROM HIGH SCHOOL AT COSTCO she was with her husband and i felt so happy thought something like ‘being single is great’ also i feel younger also life is sad and lonely and good sometimes also does anyone wanna marry me right now we can get a prenup i’m okay with prenups prenups are super okay in my book but you need to be rich and handsome just kidding lol at me thinking a rich guy would ever marry me no no no rich guys like hot dumb girls one day i saw a guy wearing a net on his head and was like lol what are you doing with your life cause i don’t know what i’m

doing with mine another day i saw a woman carrying a baby louis vuitton and a

human baby she looked like a grandma just thought ‘you look like a grandma’ might be one of the worst

insults ever because being a grandma is a bad thing because look at the magazines

are grandmas in the magazines no sir sir sir sir please make me a hot grandma and put me on the cover of a zine photoshop me and make me the hottest grandma ever on the cover of all the fucking magazines that i hate just imagine the best joke ever the hottest grandma ever on the cover of seventeen magazine the magazine that ruined my life

Ana Carrete has a blog about unicorns and a blog about ice cream and flowers and other blogs where she posts poems and things.

She tweets a lot and you can follow her if you want: https://twitter. com/#!/ana_carrete. Her first full length collection of poetry Baby Babe is forthcoming from Civil Coping Mechanisms (2012).

ANNA JOY SPRINGER

THIEVES REBUS

Anna Joy Springer is a writer and artist in LA who works at the intersection of the sacred and perverse, which is oddly hilarious and sometimes traumatizing. Her recent book is The Vicious Red Relic, Love. She played in the bay area punk bands Blatz, The Gr’ups, and Cypher in the Snow, and now teaches writing and literature at UC San Diego where she is the director of the MFA Program in Writing.

CARINA FINN

ONE DREAM father, my love, and my body are sitting at a floating table flickering above a duck pond. the waitress brings us a screen on the screen there flash many desserts to which we are trained to be non-responsive. there is an image of a caramel brownie tart with hazelnut shortbread crust and I do not even make a gesture a deaf person woud notice. a busboy brings a tray heavy with black cocoa french toast and heaps of devon cream and a pumpkin cheesecake enveloped in gingerchocolate and nobody blinks not even my body. a waiter dressed as my lover gets down from the table goes into the field and comes back with a plate and on the plate there is one slice of apple pie with butter crust and the apples have been picked from trees which were planted and on top of the pie there is a melting white orb and my father says THAT THERE IS ONE OF THE MOST BEAUTIFUL THINGS ON THE PLANET THE REASON I STAY ON IT and when he lifts his fork I faint immediately and wake up.

Carina Finn is a poet, playwright, and multimedia artist. She is the author of MY LIFE IS A MOVIE (Birds of Lace) and I HEART MARLON BRANDO,which was published in a limited screenprint edition in 2010 by Wheelchair Party Press. Her play, EVERYBODY, LET’S BELIEVE IN THIS IMAGINARY CURRENCY, premiered at The Bowery Poetry Club, and THIRTEEN WAYS OF BREAKING was workshopped and premiered thanks to the generosity of the Film, Television, & Theatre department at The University of Notre Dame. She a graduate of Sweet Briar College, has an MFA in poetry from Notre Dame, lives in New York City, and blogs at www.ladyblogblah.wordpress.com

CARRIE HUNTER

ATOMYSTIQUE 1.

How unity’s specificity splits. Wrote on my thigh, in the bathroom at work, “secret/ knob/ thistles/ thanking.” Forgot to email a bunch of people,

2. have a headache, feel like dying. Haptocentricism. Watching the lit candle in the next door neighbor’s bathroom. Inverted word 3. order/ inverse floater. Clock ticking. Covered up in transparencies. Whether or not my life is just a collection of texts. What you just did in my 4. daydream was kind of dramatic. In real life I make a lot of typos. The unrepresentable. The fear of the other’s existence overtaking one’s

5. own. Not Robert Duncan’s birthday. The letter where the damned have holed away their hearts. Clockwork tracings on the headboard. Theater in 6. parenthesis. Or in art how the superfluous is not superfluous.

You have to have a process if you don’t have a narrative. In an effort to save the 7. stupid koala temps. Opposition that erases difference.

Aladdin’s lamp’s wish. Writing through waiting. All conclusions provisional. No 8. idea what to do with lace. Beverly is absent. To deliberately reverse perspectives. Plotting to have nothing happen. The hapax is located here.

9.

Resisting to bide time. Everyone jealous of puzzle pieces.

Knowledge is substitution. The thing with why are there helicopters, no one is saving us. To

10. write an impoverished poetry. If thoughts without speech are not true thought. Wary acquaintances. Eating apples until all this is over. Oppositions are 11. accomplices. Fearlessness as an attribute of the suicidal.

Standing in the space where a wall used to be, pretending I’m a ghost. How incapacity feels like 12. non-existence. My utopian intention. Fear of who just walked in behind me. Maze of upholstery. Dequiesence. All of us coming to the one fate.

13.

Seeing a woman fall down in the rain, watching the rain fall down a drain, seeing a letter, posted on a window: “we all fall out of the sky.” Having fallen ill.

Carrie Hunter received her MFA/MA in the infamous Poetics program at New College of California, edits the small chapbook press, ypolita press, and has published seven chapbooks, most recently Angel, Unincorporated, out with Lew Gallery editions.

Her book The Incompossible was published in 2011 by Black Radish Books. She lives in San Francisco.

CARRIE LORIG

SCATTERSTATE cuds can build a thing too. i have done it. made blurwords that amble right up to the porch screen and moo god ruts. they scrape it out loud to us. cowboy, i hear everything behind insects. there’s a lot to herd under it. under your face. and there’s cold tomatoes on your breath. cowboy, all mudded i love. with ocean dirts. with all my clumps. with little bones of fish stuck in the moving rock. the moving rock wept. i saw it happening in my own face. i have questions near the bottom about love. how mud is that? my face collects during this part of your body, tension. tight muscles are better at throwing light back at the light. the sun leathers are veins we crawl under. the sun leathers are a dig site for our faces. a place where we can see our chests blur. and a place where we can whack them for sound. cowbody, i only see that you are covering yourself with muscles. there should be more on this skin. more mud on this skin. more paint on this skin. more eyebrows. more hair out of this face. more fabric out of this face. your upper body brightness. you dissected every cell without touching them. without kiss in other words. there was some unnervingly clear movement. some dancing. shine damps and shine cramps and shine amps, amps, amps until the bridge drops to its soft gums. the bridge is always wet and moves mud with blood in it. the moving rock wept again. we laugh into our carefully trained legs. they shoot noise into the corner. the noise tangles like a sheet with our us inside. boy cow, my face collects around the leather buried up to your wrist. boy cow, i move across the plains under my sheet. boy cow, it is my eye growing through the cloth.

boy cow, i’m going to kill your ride and wear its cut ribbons. if you sit there tight, i will be on top of you pretty. one hoof was buried under the other. one hoof was buried inside a choked sheet of paper. the other was buried, was about to ash. i have known there muscles. the horizon sometimes looks like a horse trying to lay down. if you know horses you know that it’s not easy for them to do. as soon as i wake up, i remember i know horses. that i know muscles. that i know when you cowboy you call me steaks. i know that sometimes i can feel the stage moving and that when it is moving rocks sometimes they are weeping on the dead floor. i think this is what the male dancer is supposed to wear, the beautiful cowboy. just the bottoms. just the bottoms of the cow. the parted body has a rough glass. the parted body has a swinging for your face. for the sound your face might make should it touch. i write all the way up to your body and then i turn around and head out. some parts of this make me want to dance and some parts of this make me want to fuck other people and some parts of this make me want to slam piano heads together and some parts of this make me want to stuff my mouth with plaid pieces and most parts of this make me want to put garbage bags over my hair because those are also measured in gallons. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ look at all these beautiful teeth i have eating. all these beautiful teeth i have sitting on top of each other in the grass. aren’t you tired of them? our saddles come out on the shore in shapes we don’t recognize. they have been washed long into glass. into leather suns. all the letters are dying longer. all the sides of the words are fogging with breath. i say all my letters into the sea of other seas. i amaze to barely understand what it is i tried to love you about. i amaze to barely understand i am rolling over your body at any moment thinking crowd, thinking herd, thinking more rock.

Carrie Lorig is made from gullgaulgall and Midwest scraps. She will write you mushcroons in exchange for gushpuppies.

Here is a blog: http://carrieabigstick.tumblr.com/

CHRIS KRAUS

excerpt from

SUMMER OF HATE If she’d been smart, she would have stopped trawling BDSM websites after the Toronto dog collar adventure. Besides, she’d already reported on these experiences in her last book of art essays, juxtaposing the extreme, nuanced presence of BDSM games with the blankness of academic neo-conceptualism. These faux-naive arguments shocked most of the art world but received knowing laughs from her fans. The idea that anything – let alone the old thinking-cunt routine – could shock the viewers of SKY Cable amazed her.

As if Germaine Greer, PhD, Cambridge, had never posed for a beaver-shot in Suck magazine, using her body as proof that one could write feminist scholarship and want to fuck. “If there’s a whore in the world, let them call me a whore,” Greer had said blithely. Another one down the memory hole.

It occurred to Catt that the epistemological groundwork for the war in Iraq had been laid by Paris Hilton’s anal sex video.

Like the great Easter egg hunt for WMDs, the question of whether the soft-porn not-quite-home video had been posted by a sleazy ex-boyfriend, as Hilton claimed, or by one of her publicists, was irrelevant. The only point was, it was there. Once anything entered the media-scape, it was unstoppable.

Still, as a rhetorical strategy, Catt’s miles were used up in this area. She knew she wouldn’t be sharing the dog collar adventure with the next generation of cutters … the whole thing had started to bore her. Logging in to CollarMe.com

was a guilty recidivist pleasure she indulged in, winding down from the tour. But one night she saw a post that made her think she’d found her soul mate.

DOMINANT REALM I am a single but integrated and strict dominant; although with a highly developed imagination, I am safe, sane, self-aware, and diverse in spirit and energy--fully in the headspace of Dom, not switch or conflicted. My life balance is achieved from a multitude of creative pursuits, verifiably accomplished, which originate in the same intuitive space where the BDSM identity resides. A background in neuromedical research is combined with creation of music and the visual arts are key aspects of my life.

My approach is based on an informed sense of timing and pace in progressing an active or latent submissive to higher states of experience and responsiveness from mild to advanced and demanding activities. I insist on discretion -- and can encourage married, separated, divorced, sub-curious women 18-45 to respond as no risk or threat of disruption will result from any liaison which may occur. I do understand and am empathetic to the particular challenge of submissive women as well as submissive couples ‘trapped’ in their rational head about this recurring and enlarging need for surrender with facets of degradation, humiliation, and body training for usage by the Dom as he wishes.

I also have considerable experience with the dynamics of outwardly assertive independent female personas - executives and other types - seeking a path of surrender and loss of control to achieve an essential

balance which is central to real self-fulfillment. This also applies to women in relationships where their submissive nature and need to be fully controlled are alien concepts to their mate.

You should be refined, poised in demeanor, gracious and professionally formidable; as well as truly conscious in recognizing that any posturing and pretense will be a profound waste of time. You must be evolved enough to confront your recurring need for more than a ‘play’ dialogue. You must be truthful and not delusional-not overweight (this means not ‘full figured’, ‘plump’, ‘ample’ ‘pudgy’ or ‘obese’). No druggies, or out of control drinkers. Not interested in any cyber-masturbatory pretenders, and will only respond to those willing to go offline mutually recognizing the possibilities of direct contact by phone to transcend email smokescreen and verify sincerity.

Prefer you are located in Los Angeles area.

Catt studied her killer’s ad carefully. Back in LA, there was not much besides work to look forward to. Hank, the 60year old maverick lawyer who’d been her partner in sexual friendship, had recently gotten together with Becca, a nice, divorced woman nearer to his own age. Given these facts, the Dominant Realm post struck Catt as extraordinary. Not only was its writer highly intelligent, he was intelligent in the same way as Hank and Michel and people of their generation she’d grown up admiring.

This is some heavy shit, Catt thought when she read it. Intense, but in a good way. The conjunction of powerful keywords (intuitive space, alien concept, profound waste of time, transcend

email smokescreen, verify, truthful and not delusional) with the imperative voice established very high stakes. His use of the phrase “female personas” implied an awareness of the cyborgean nature of gender. Her face tingled with pleasure.

And “informed sense of timing” … The micro-magnetics of timing; the art of speaking your lines just after the peak of an audience laugh, was the only thing she’d really learned as an actress. Catt realized her killer was smarter than her. She was hooked, even before “poised in demeanor, gracious and professionally formidable” spoke to her vanity.

Later, after they’d met, once she surmised the black BMW was most likely her killer’s primary residence, she longed to protect him. His situation was doomed, but she was moved by the way he occupied space. His autodidactic achievements in highly technical fields like electronics to neurobiology, his archaic use of the prepositional who instead of the dehumanized that, his accomplishment as a pianist and daily practice of yoga reminded her of the Asberger’s boys who attended her readings. He was someone who could not quite live in the world. Mind stretched to a point that can’t be conveyed without an effort involving physical pain … Sitting beside him, she watched his actions and speech unfold at a second remove, as if he’d been forced to watch himself in a mirror.

Well, this was the life of the mind in present America. Ninetyfive percent of the students she met had no information or sense of any historic continuum. The rest were autistic.

After leaving the restaurant, Catt takes Stretch for a walk on the beach and then a long nap. She dreams she’s in the car with her mother in upstate New York. Charged with first-degree murder for advocating abortion, she’s about to turn herself in. They go into a church and browse through

some books on sale in the nave - reading material for those about to be killed - but they only have cookbooks: Plan Your Last Meal. She thinks: I don’t want to die at the hands of these people.

The sound of the generator kicking on wakes her at 5 p.m.

She gets up and opens the curtains to a parking lot softened by pinkish-gold light. The sun’s already dropped behind the rock hills.

Chris Kraus is the author of the novels I Love Dick, Aliens & Anorexia, and Torpor, and two books of art criticism. Her next book will be Kelly Lake & Other Stories, forthcoming from Companion Editions. She is a co-editor of Semiotexte and lives in Los Angeles.

DONNA DE LA PERRIÉRE

BLIND GRAPH (x- and y-intercepts)

X is in the room, & X is tossing it away.

Y who is impenetrable—Y, a trounced flower, Y who has been here before so has been here before. X is on the bed with, is in the bed in the room where.

Y thinks about this, falls into the lapsed space of the bed.

X is full of cigarettes & hurt & money.

X is full of speed & beer. Y is empty & Y is sorry & this will not make any difference.

Y is hidden & full of holes. Y isn’t made yet, is sparking, open, is being erased by the spaces around things. Y is the track, the path that will not be taken, that will chart the course of the wreck; it will go on like this.

Donna de la PerriĂŠre: www.donnadelaperriere.com www.bayareapoetrymarathon.com

DOROTHEA LASKY

WHAT’S WORSE What’s worse—a cheap man or a cad What’s worse—a man who eats the fingers or one who does not What’s worse—doggy style or up the ass No, what’s worse—his face or the face of the individual I mean, what’s worse—knowing you or knowing later Knowing nothing Oh Alligator I just want the eyes Up to my eyes What’s worse To never have them To have them only in part What’s worse To be endlessly waiting To be endlessly waiting What’s worse—nothing or nothing What’s worse What’s worse than nothing What’s worse No, what’s worse

ASTROLOGICAL SIGN POEM

Aries, we are just a couple of brutes Taurus is a figment of Nostalgia Gemini, you have the courage to not love anything Cancer, you love your fantasy, too Leo is a brute, too, but a gentle one Virgo, you bore me Libra, you are insane Scorpio, you are meaty, but you are also very mean Sagittarius, could you just keep going Capricorn, you are nothing if not hell Aquarius, I love you Pisces, I love you, too

WHAT ELSE MATTERS BUT THE STAGE Nothing matters but the stage I don’t do anything if not to show it off What is that eye if not for to be looked upon I breathe and it is to be applauded for I learn these things, so that I can retell them What is memory If not to remember so that Another can recall O life goes endlessly endlessly down a blue ravine But I am back And I got your attention So what else matters I moved this arm And leg Just so that you might look at me

Dorothea Lasky is the author of AWE,Black Life,and Thunderbird, all from Wave Books. She is also the author of several chapbooks, including Matter: A Picturebook (Argos Books, 2012). She holds a doctorate in creativity and education from the University of Pennsylvania.

EILEEN MYLES

RESPONSIBILITY feet are weird I mean mine are bony so many little bony parts I’m writing for myself but instantly this is one of those foot thoughts for you and you have feet too.

PEOPLE should care that you’re pregnant because they are humanity & have a relation ship with who is in your belly. So who is it.

END WAR It’s a wispy white font green building not a poem but a photo graph the tree flourishing to its right tipping to shake and tingle on the sunny day I growl at each man who sits down at my long table. He climbed up there at night & in wispy script foretold a July afternoon in here was it even there. We fold our experiences distributing these words and others who are also trying to shake the language tree receive our letters and come. I watch your glowing backs when you were so young late at night with lipstick. We shuddered till you went. Years later

you came back selling some thing. I pick things up in this long bright room scramble the words so their hopeless order has landed in a comic book so far away. The violence of porn was the mortar. Killing kids.

Eileen Myles is from Boston and moved to New York in 1974 to be a poet. Eileen has published 18 collections of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction most recently Snowflake/different streets (poetry), and Inferno (a poet’s novel). Also The Importance of Being Iceland: Travel Essays in Art (2009) for which she received a Warhol/Creative Capital art writers grant. She is a 2012 Guggenheim fellow. She lives in New York.

JESS DUTSCHMANN

WHERE YOU WENT you told me you spent evenings in hot grassy air whittling dogs from bricks of soap they stacked against your window softened as morning made big floods of light at sunset it got so cold they cracked On the phone you said you needed money they didn’t care for you I wanted so badly to call back later tell you that I loved you

Jess Dutschmann is a writer. She originally grew up in Bergen County, NJ, only to move into a log cabin in her teen years. She attended Ramapo College and earned a BA in Literature and a concentration in Creative Writing. She has read poems and stories to folks on three of her favorite coasts. She is very thankful the world is as big as it is.

JI YOON LEE

IT WAS LESS THAN DESIRABLE It was less than desirable that I defecated on your

broken windows It was less than desirable that you tried defecting Defecto is never a di certo Desserts are never covered in blood Vomit with untraceable amount of blood I’m uncertain if you were ever here It’s unclear if windows were ever there I want to kiss you on the kisser, but I’m not sure

if you ever had one Your puckered eyelids & swollen tongue are pretty

pink however

Ji yoon Lee earned a poetry MFA from the University of Notre Dame.While at Notre Dame, she was an editorial assistant at Action Books. Her chapbook IMMA is published by Radioactive Moat Press 2012. Her first book Foreigner’s Folly will be published by Coconut Books Fall 2013.

KATE DURBIN

FOXY KNOXY Amanda Knox is in the courtroom. Her brown hair is in a greasy ponytail. Her forehead is furrowed. She is not wearing makeup. Her skin is blotchy. She is smiling. Her mouth is closed. She has on a blue shirt. There is a yellow sun tattooed on her upper back.

Amanda Knox is in the courtroom. She has on a blue sweater.

Her hair is dry. Her eyebrows are knit. Her eyes are clear blue. She is not wearing makeup. A man with white hair, spectacles, and a black uniform has his hand on her shoulder.

There are more black uniforms behind her. Amanda Knox’s mouth is wide open.

Amanda Knox is in the courtroom. Her hair is really short.

She is raising her eyebrows. Her eyes are crystal blue. She is not wearing makeup. Her lips are parted. She is wearing a yellow shirt. Behind her is a blue uniform, and a plaid sleeve.

Amanda Knox is at a party. She has on a white, strapless gown and elbow-length satin gloves. Her hair is in an updo. Amanda Knox has dangly rhinestone earrings and a rhinestone necklace. Her eyebrows are plucked. She is wearing some makeup. Her mouth is wide open. Her cheeks are flushed. Amanda Knox is making a backwards peace sign with one hand. With the other hand she holds a red plastic cup. There are five guys surrounding her, holding beer bottles and plastic cups.

Kate Durbin is a Los Angeles-based writer, performer, and transmedia artist. She is author of The Ravenous Audience (Akashic Books), E! Entertainment (Blanc Press Diamond Edition, forthcoming), and the conceptual fashion magazine The Fashion Issue (Wonder, forthcoming). She has also written five chapbooks, including, most recently, FASHIONWHORE (Legacy Pictures) and Kept Women (Insert Press, forthcoming). Her projects have been featured in Spex, Huffington Post,The New Yorker, Specs, Salon.com, AOL, Poets and Writers,TMobile’s Your Digital Daily, Poets.org,VLAK, Lana Turner: A Journal of Poetry and Opinion, Black Warrior Review, Joyland, berfrois, SUPERMACHINE, Drunken Boat, NPR, Bookslut, 1913, LIT, Fanzine, and The American Scholar, among others. She is founding editor of Gaga Stigmata, an online arts and criticism journal about Lady Gaga, which will be published as a book from Zg Press in 2012.

LILY HOANG

TWELVE FAILURES 1. I wrote you fan mail that called you a failure.

2. I tried to write a poem about our failed love affair, but it never materialized.

3. I wrote you fan mail detailing every lack in your fiction.

4. I tried to write a poem about materiality, but I lacked material, by which I mean substance, by which I mean words and plot and line breaks and character and metaphor and hyperbole and meter and punctuation and grammar and you. I lacked you.

5. I wrote you fan mail that called your failures: severe, bold, simple, unearned, elucidating, permanent, eloquent, genius, elegant, a fucking tango.

6. I tried to write a poem that revealed you as you are – burnished with artifice and intelligence – but either I bore too much of you or you disappeared entirely.

7. I wrote you fan mail that called your fiction a cowardly front for your many insecurities.

8. I tried to write a poem that conflates you with me, that way, my adoration might finally be reciprocated.

9. I wrote you fan mail that was full of puns and epigraphs: yours.

10. I tried to write a poem using every single word that you’ve used, but I don’t even know how you speak, I don’t know the tenor of your voice: is it similar to your prolix prose or encased in vernacular?

11. I wrote you fan mail addressed to myself. The letter addressed my fiction and its manifold problems, addressed my own neuroses and spectacle, addressed me as me, and then I crossed out my name and put in yours.

12. And then, finally, you responded. Years of fan mail, and you said – wrote in swelling cursive – typed using just your right index finger – dictated – engraved, old school – deleted, deleted, deleted – whispered: thank you.

Lily Hoang is the author of four books. She edits for Puerto del Sol, Tarpaulin Sky, and Starcherone Books. She teaches in the MFA program at New Mexico State University.

LINDSAY ALLISON RUOFF

excerpts from

SEVEN VEILS V.

wholesale she looked up wholesale smiling wedding dresses when he tucked MP3 player in the blanket wholesale mp3 around her legs wholesale Mp4 you know digital camera wholesale “I’ve been wondering consumer electronics what it’s like” mp5 player she said “memory cards before we’re born car video players I mean it’s too bad we can’t remember gps devices”

she opened her robe and pulled up the bluetooth headsetsweater she wore underneath revealing an Mp3 Wholesale-belly as round and hard as an

Mp3-Wholesale melon Mp4 Wholesale She ran her hand across its smooth surface Mp4 Wholesale firelight playing across her skin casting reddish gold onto her hair.

VI. They are making an ocean She has a two-fold tool A butcher knife, a whore’s mirror Silver under her tongue

If you go to the edge There will be silence But stay with me please The last kiss tastes like blood

Her fingers are in her cunt She’s opening a world to you Letting another one escape All willy nilly and horsedrawn

VII. maybe we don’t have to worry about the shape of darkness, light too is strong and fast when you die, I will resurrect you as a sparkling hologram, and we will rap together.

Lindsay Allison Ruoff lives in Portland, Oregon. She edits and designs for HOUSEFIRE. She had a dream we were all roller skating in sync.

MADISON LANGSTON

MY FAVORITE SEX POSITION IS A STROBE LIGHT I think I’m becoming obsessed with myself but I can’t help it. I want to get drunk for eight days straight until my body is rejecting my body and I just lay on the floor for an entire day talking about it. I don’t have a kitchen I have a sex drive. Is this a love poem or me fucked up on a shit ton of cough syrup? When I go to LA Lindsay Lohan forces me to do coke and I like it. I don’t have a drug problem my poems do. This sentence is inspired by a high level of anxiety. Seems like it’s time to just admit I have an emotional attachment to latex. Is this poem about cough syrup or addiction? I need to get laid.

Instead of getting laid I write a poem about Lillith Fair. I swear to god a R Kelly song about sex is better than having it. Insomnia feels the same as getting a lot of attention from people you don’t want attention from. If you’re not okay then what are you?

I’m trying to be creative but I’m too busy googling Chris Brown. I think being attractive means getting fucked by someone with a thick Russian accent.

My hangover deleted all of my emotional text messages and now my phone is an alcoholic doing body shots off of underage girls. I want love to feel the same as doing things without telling people. I want to literally see someone taking it for the team. Don’t worry, I am just masturbating to Rob Zombie images online. Don’t worry, I am just waiting for this orgasm to turn into a feeling of overwhelming despair.

Madison Langston lives in Tuscaloosa.

MEGAN LENT

THE SATANICS Harriet was first. It wasn’t a surprise to anyone. She’d spent the past seven years cultivating a thick straight mass of bottle-black hair, stroking swaths of onyx eyeshadow over her lids and collecting those thin plasticky bracelets teenage girls wear to communicate their prowess and domain to each other, silent lionesses ever on the defense. All in all, she was a poster child for suicide.

According to Phyllis Goodman, 15, neighbor and sophomore (and sole Jew) at Harriet’s corporeal institution of education, St. Ann of the Mountain’s School for Girls, when the body was rolled out she “looked like one of those wax people, like she was just gonna shoot up any second all undead-like.”

She had none of the pale repose and raven-black hair of one of Poe’s dead girls, that’s for sure. She’d downed a bunch of drain fluid and a few Valiums, anyway, but what really got her was when, in the throes of a last-minute grasp at life’s fleeting visage, she’d attempted to vomit out her guts, only to choke on the acidic remnants of an old tuna salad sandwich, resting her little head on a pile of goo on the bathroom linoleum.

Then there was Rose Ellen. Three nights later, a Saturday night, she was discovered in a bathtub clutching a Krueman Vecto-40 brand toaster, the Herbal Essences still fresh on her head. She was on track for a volleyball scholarship from several universities in New England.

“Rose Ellen hadn’t been to Mass in weeks, you know,” her mother explained while dipping a Berger fudge cookie in a glass of hot Lipton tea, surrounded by a collection of googlyeyed cat clocks and plastic-covered furniture. “That long without receiving the blessed body of Christ, why, it’s only a matter of time you-know-who decides to get a go in.”

The father shook his head with sadness, adding, “And the sugar. Eating a lot of sugar. You know how that makes kids.” +++ Within the next two weeks, seventeen more corpses formerly enrolled in St. Ann of the Mountain’s School for Girls had been found in suburban Baltimore. Martha, Janice, and two separate Anna-Maria’s hung from trees with the assistance of jump ropes embracing their necks. A whole gaggle had slit their wrists with pink Lady Glide razors. A few of the braver girls had taken buses to the harbor and thrown their bodies into that watery stew.

A neighbor of the girl who’d stuck her head in an Easy Bake oven, Ramona Carter, age mid-50s, was quoted in the Sun, saying, “It’s awful hard to be a teenage girl these days.

Whether this is all connected or not, it don’t matter. It’s hard for them, hard all around.” +++ Lenny Canter, age late-30s, private detective, was fat, and wore his clothes too tight, so that he resembled a ham crisscrossed with twine. He was struck by reading this quote underneath the headline of the Sun article: “It isn’t a myth, if everyone believes it,” attributed to Tawney Malone, junior at St. Ann of the Mountain’s School for Girls. Lenny Canter

didn’t know that Tawney’s quote was chosen arbitrarily from a pile of others plucked from the mouths of virginal babes: he believed her to be speaking some kind of divine truth about recent events.

“These dead girls, they’re the horsemen, they’re the victims of our centuries of evil – and this girl, this beautiful girl, Tawney Malone, she’s our new Messiah,” he recorded into his Radio Shack AudioBot. In truth, Tawney Malone had grown annoyed with the coverage of the recent suicides, mostly because she had also attempted to off herself several times during adolescence, to absolutely no media attention. Months earlier, she’d grown to be an integral part in an online poetry stratum that set itself apart by including the numbers ‘666’ and a pixilated inverted cross in most of its publications. “I’ve been a nihilist since I was 6, when I saw my cat having sex with a squirrel,” she later explained. Due to these sentiments, she found it sociologically imperative to scatter the fauxSatanist propaganda around St. Ann of the Mountain’s School for Girls.

She did not think to tell Lenny Canter any of this when he came to visit.

“Catholic school can be very soul-crushing. I’d blame it on that.” she told him, standing in her kitchen, a Go Girl in hand.

“You said there was a myth they all believed in. A myth of an afterlife? Of something stronger than the strings of Earth?

Symbols of our future?”

This made no sense to her. She’d been stoned when she gave the quote, and was referencing the fake-Satanist poetry,

more or less. But she was pretty and bored and the detective had come all this way, so she invited him into her parents’ bedroom and gave him half-hearted head for a while. He then left feeling very accomplished. +++ A month later, Tawney stood in line at the mall for cheese pretzels with a few friends. Her phone buzzed again. Third call that morning from Lenny Canter. She was getting sick of this and that afternoon she turned herself into Baltimore PD, claiming all of the girls had been victims of her own elaborate plot. She was charged with two life sentences and went to bed happy every night to be out of St. Ann of the Mountain’s School for Girls.

Megan Lent (b. 1992) is an occasional college student with writing at Metazen, Pangur Ban Party, Keep This Bag Away from Children, and Sadcore Dadwave, et al. She conducts interviews for Housefire.

She lives in California. She is the mother of dragons.

MEGHAN LAMB

HAUNTED WAYS Inside the Egg This is how we play the ocean game. Here we place the hamper boat upon the waterbed waves. Here we lay down all our pillowy pods on the shag carpet shores. And here, you build your nest with me. And here, you lay an egg. Inside the egg, the locket with a picture of our grandma.

Now we take the locket, close our eyes and count to 63.

(That is how many days its been since we both died.) We take the locket, count down, and open our eyes at the same exact moment. We look in each others eyes, smile, and say the word “envelope� over and over again. Then I hold out my hand. Then you hold out your hand. Then we press them together as hard as we can. Then we whisper and whine til our words become whimpers of loss.

Haunted Dress You’re wearing something special for your second date.

You wear your thong, your French lace stockings, and the haunted dress. The dress that dips down low, showcasing all the dimples of your spine. The dress that sometimes summons spirits to speak through you.

The spirits order red wine, which you drink too fast. The spirits tell a story about 1935. Your date looks puzzled, but your cleavage is enchanting him to laugh. The spirits tell him that they think he is the one.

That night, the spirits spread his arms across your headboard, curl his wrists, his fingers through the iron scrolls. That night, the spirits blossom from your lips the smoky taste of decades buried and the fragrance of their yearning. Your date looks like he doesn’t mind. Your date just thinks you’re sexy.

You think, no, no, please stop, and you try to calm the spirits.

You tear off the haunted dress. You look down with a sense of relief and elation. Your veins hurt. Your stomach is pulsing.

You feel so alive. Your date says “all right!” in an idiot voice and you can’t help but wince at yourself. You always take the dress off just in time.

The Forest for the Trees

She looks out at the forest. She left something there, but she doesn’t know what. He says come back to bed, and she lies in the dark and imagines the trees. She diagrams the trunk, the bark, the hollow holes, the shallow grave. She diagrams the taste of leather boot, the smell of gun smoke. She maps the crisp clean thrill of what she wants her final words to be. She imagines her life as an “X” and a red dotted circle.

Meghan Lamb is the dumb little light speck you see when you squint when you stare at the sun. meghan lamb is the sound of your zits popping. she is the sound and the smell of your elbow grease. meghan lamb is also the sound of all your orgasms. more to the point: she is the sound of your orgasms remixed and voice-mailed to mock you forever.

NIINA POLLARI

FOOTBALLS Footballs are flying through the air.

Each football is partnerless and hesitates Wavering Til a second one comes from the atmosphere.

Footballs are hitting children until they cry.

For now, begin every line with feel like feeling was something you actually did very well Footballs make me feel real.

You’re three-week-old and the footballs don’t stop

and you’ve got to walk Past the signs So significant Your wrinkles showed themselves just this year It’s hot like November the sky happens to be

unreliably tossed

Try to not Be a wordless failure and you will make it through the football rain Through the mess But hurtling through any kind of space yes there are

always footballs to dodge So dodge them Obstacle map

some money and tools

You will need

The higher the difficulty level The more vaguely inspiring the ending

Niina Pollari wrote two chapbooks, Book Four and Fabulous Essential. A translation of the poet Tytti Heikkinen is forthcoming from Action Books.

SARAH FRAN WISBY

THE OVERNIGHT GUEST As soon as the sun was up and a few birds had chirped, my overnight guest was up and moving around the room, putting on his clothes.

You’re not staying for breakfast. It wasn’t a question, though I tried putting a question-like lilt at the end.

That’s not my style, man.

As soon as he said this, he giggled, acknowledging its ridiculousness.

Which didn’t make it any less true.

After he pecked me on the cheek and left, I drifted back into sleep, and woke with a half hour to shower and pack for my flight to Florida to visit my grandmother.

In the shower I sang, “I ain’t gonna study romantic disappointment no more, ain’t gonna study romantic disappointment no more, ain’t gonna study....”

I enjoyed the awkward challenge of squeezing seven syllables into a slot meant for just one.

I am always trying to squeeze too much into life, or out of it, or whatever.

I read too much into little things. For instance, last month, when a boy left a thread torn from the cuff of his denim jacket wrapped around the window crank in the passenger seat of my car, I thought it meant Wait For Me. What is the difference between a keepsake and a souvenir?

Doesn’t remember me mean the same thing as return to me?

Sometimes futility is a good teacher.

For instance, I once learned a lot trying to explain my gun tattoos to a Quaker I happened to be at the beach with.

Basically what I learned in that situation is that I am full of shit.

Actually all my tattoos have taught me that at one time or another.

Basically any statement of bravado I have ever made has come back to bite me in the ass.

All my tattoos are statements of some form of bravado, bragging, tempting fate, biting off more than I can chew, putting on a strong face, wishful thinking, or sincerity ruined by irony.

And yet I can’t wait to get more, because they make me seem interesting, and to some degree, tough.

In case you can’t tell, I am not tough, unless a marshmallow encased in titanium is tough.

While my overnight guest was fucking me he kept checking in with me to see if I was alright, because it was dark and he thought I was crying, but those are just the sounds I make.

I liked him for being concerned, but the fact that he had to check in made me feel even farther away from him, or from anything that would ever understand me.

You might want to think that having sex with a person is the closest you can get to them, when really it is like anything else, playing cards or eating pizza.

When he tried to dispose of the condom, it was no longer on his person. After some searching around, it turned out to be deep inside my person, wadded up like a piece of chewing gum.

I’m not going to worry about that, I said emphatically, throwing it in the wastebasket.

And then proceeded to worry about it, going all the way down the worry road.

I’m over forty, have never been pregnant, and have one remaining ovary. Therefore, that road is more one of fantasy than of actual fear. Still, my theory of why I have been so boycrazy lately is that my body is making its last-ditch effort to become pregnant before my eggs are hopelessly scrambled.

I decided I wouldn’t tell my overnight guest about the abortion, because it would only make him sad, and he is so deeply sad already.

Then I decided to keep the baby, and raise it with another, better man. I had someone in mind, and it made me smile to think about him while lying in bed next to someone else. I try to have at least three men in fantasy rotation at all times, so I am never without someone to think about while lying in bed next to someone who has just disappointed me.

Then I decided it would be a mistake to keep the baby, and that the better man would likely leave me for a better woman who would never ask him to raise someone else’s child, and who would still be young enough to have his baby, if that’s what he wanted.

Yup, abortion was the clear path for someone like me in a situation like mine.

Then I remembered the men I saw that week in front of Planned Parenthood carrying signs that said Men Robbed of Fatherhood.

But the overnight guest is already a father, so no one can rob him of that.

Of course when I saw those men with those signs, I did not feel compassion for them. I thought, So go knock someone up who wants to have your baby, fuckheads!

Going through it all in my head, I began to cry a little, for my own lost motherhood. Though I’ve never been one of those people who wants to have a baby at all costs, to the point where they would do it alone, in a cave, or on public assistance, I have sometimes thought I would do it with the right person if we had plenty of money. I made sure to cry silently so as not to re-arouse the concern of my overnight guest, at least until I heard him start to snore.

Sarah Fran Wisby is the author of Viva Loss, a book of prose poems and short stories published by Small Desk Press, and a forthcoming novella, The Heart’s Progress, to be published by Plain Wrap Press. She works at Rainbow Grocery, selling organic food to the masses. She can be found at www.sarahfranwisby.com.

SUSAN M. SCHULTZ

excerpt from “She’s Welcome to Her Disease:

Before and After the Hyphen”

KING LEAR ENTERS THE LITTLE PRINCE It took me a long time to understand where he came from.

King Lear, who asked so many questions, never seemed to hear the ones anyone else asked him. It was things he said quite at random that, bit by bit, explained everything. For instance, when he first caught sight of an airplane . . . he asked: “What’s that thing over there?”

When told that the plane had fallen out of the sky, he asked what planet it was from.

“Of course,” he said of the airplane, “that couldn’t have brought anyone from very far . . . “ And he fell into a reverie that lasted a long while. Then, taking a sheep out of his pocket, he plunged into contemplation of his treasure.

“You see me here, you gods a poor old man As full of grief as age, wretched in both.”

Something about his daughters was amiss but he would not draw them, nor even the castles they lived in. Another, I suspected, was houseless, wandering in a foreign (oh hardto-spell!) land, exiled in more than word.

Lear liked the fox and the flower, but not the drunkard or the vain man who looked only and ever for approbation. He was vain, but he was also wise like the fox, lonely like the flower; his sense of place was a dark planet (“cerebral and dark,” according to Netflix) on which he propped himself, bare and unforked. The drunkard and he could have talked

story: What is it about shame? I’d have asked them, but neither drunk nor King could look beyond his bottle or word hoard.

For a demented man, Lear sure seemed to carry around a lot of language. Paranoia’s a fertile muse, but she also enters the drought years, rendering earth a cracked slab unbefitting a sovereign’s looping locution.

The master sees himself not so. “Here I stand your slave, / A poor, infirm, weak, and despised old man.” He cannot count the stars, nor possess them, because he owes them his jangled moods, his love of piercing light, his debt to eyes that stay in his head. Sad news about his buddy Gloucester: the dead holes in his head, the failed (if ably assisted) suicide, the inability to die even when you or he ordain it. If to be sovereign means you get to choose, then neither Lear nor his friend are so.

Enter the lamplighter. We more than suspect he’s Edgar, playing another’s self (ragged beyond nounship), cold in the vog of a farther micro-planet. He cannot not light his lamp; his lamp cannot not go out in the dark. Does Gloucester know this? Gloucester cannot see, but Edgar is a more than able narrator. “Father, for you are that, this planet’s always on the limn of darkness, save the man who cannot sleep for lighting the lamp.”

Lear abhorred snakes, took refuge on mountaintops. He fancied himself a thinker, unprovoked by daily needfulness.

But the snake kept slithering, and two daughters passed notes from desk to desk, conspiring to wreak havoc. They were not flowers, at least not those he wanted on his nightstand. So many thorns, as if they needed protection from him. From him? He was just a sojourner, a man who gave things away, making inheritance while the sun shone on his white beard.

The railroad seemed one way out, though it hardly crossed the planet borders without enormous slings. Bad engineering made them slingshots, and trains transgressed the very skies, bearing screaming children, angry commuters, releasing coal as acidic rain in tunnels between stars. Don’t tell the businessman; he might become more generous with his constellations.

Lear got off at a distant station. No one worked in the building. A water fountain had died long ago. The filing cabinets were full of old teaching aids: How the Pilgrims Came to Plymouth Rock, The Pioneers in Wagons, one with a picture of a sad chief. This did not seem right, nor did it satisfy any thirst he had. He left the station and its paper heaps and walked out into sand fields. A pilot appeared, accoutered in cap and leather flying bag. He too was lost.

There was a happy ending, at least for a time. Using dowsing sticks, they found a spot, unmarked by stone or twig, dug until they reached a vein of water. They drank from the same bucket, sharing more than the cold water. But then the daughters came, and their retinues, and their resentments, even the youngest one’s recovered love. There were swords and bitter words, nothing water could wash away, not yet.

Only the pilot escaped, muttering something about ripeness, about extremity, about trumpets. He took with him what memories there could be, left the stage a motley fool.

And no grown-up will ever understand such a thing. Never.

Susan M. Schultz does not surf, though she boogie-boarded before the ocean taught her to show more respect from the shore. She is author of Memory Cards: 2010-2011 Series and Dementia Blog (both from Singing Horse Press), as well as two volumes from Salt in the UK and a previous collection of Memory Cards from Potes & Poets (may they rest in peace). She founded Tinfish Press in 1995 and blogs at http://tinfisheditor.blogspot.com She teaches poetry & creative writing at the University of Hawai`i-Manoa.

TERESA CARMODY

ANGIE WARBLER excerpt from Diary, a novel

Angie is overweight. That’s the #1 thing about her but none of the girls will say so to her face. It’s the boys who tease her—they call her Bird Dog or big Bird because her last name is Warbler, that’s a kind of bird. Angie used to be skinny and nervous, in first grade we called her Angie Baby Bird because she was so shaky, her skin was so light you see blue veins in her neck. But something happened in 4th or 5th grade, she gained weight and even more weight. I can still see Angie Baby Bird beneath that fake weight, but if something doesn’t change soon, the fake weight will become permanent, she’ll be a real fat person. She must face this problem with the next two years or it will be too late.

Wow! I don’t even know where that knowledge came from, but as I was writing about Angie, her situation become so clear. I feel like I just prophesied or something, like my words are already true.

Angie has pale, thin hair she calls strawberry blonde. Her hair is red, not blonde, everyone can see it’s the exact same color as iron streaks in the bathtub or sink. I hate the smell of iron water. Angie’s skin is very pink, her eyelids are almost red, she wears blue eye shadow on the top of her eyelid only, she doesn’t know anything about blending eye shadow. One time in 7th grade, she suddenly charged at Jenny Hartman and bit her. Right on the arm. It was the weirdest thing ever, we were on the sidewalk in front of school. Jenny Hartman was walking with Amy, Angie was 15 feet behind them, walking

alone. When suddenly, Angie started running, she ran up to Jenny Hartman and bit her on the back of her arm, just below her shoulder. Denise and I had been walking behind Angie, so we saw the whole thing. It happened so fast. That’s when the boys started calling her Bird Dog. Angie lies about other things too. She says her mom will buy her anything, but her clothes are generic. Jenny Hartman is only girl in our class with Guess jeans. Angie wears the same headband everyday, it’s thin, plastic and rainbow-colored.

Angie is an only child, that’s why she’s so spoiled and babyish.

She gets mad if we don’t do what Angie wants, like sit at the blue cafeteria table just because it’s blue even though it’s right next to the trashcan. Jenny Hartman used to tease Angie about wanting to sit there, but now Jenny acts like that’s the best spot ever and they’ve always been friends.

One time, Angie told me that if she had a sister, she would never share a room. If Angie had a sister, she would die, she wouldn’t be able to handle it. She lives in a long, skinny mobile home that’s set on a cement foundation, there are only two bedrooms and you can hear everything through the walls, even sneezes. Angie won’t let you touch anything, including her bazillion cabbage patch kids. Those cost so much money and holiday-shopping moms fight each other for them, Angie has five or six or seven of them at least. The last time I went to Angie’s house was last year. Her dad said don’t touch the stereo, so Angie waited for him to leave, she said let’s dance in the living room. I didn’t want to, she said don’t worry, she knows what he means, she does it all the time. We played Chubby Checker’s “The Twist,” it was really fun until her dad got home and caught us. He locked us in her bedroom, he wouldn’t let us out. We played about ten thousand rounds of M.A.S.H. and our future houses and husbands and number of children kept changing, I really had to pee. Finally, Angie’s mom came home and her mom and dad had this super big

fight. At first, Angie’s mom was mad at Angie, but then Angie’s dad shouted that he’s sick and tired of Angie and her mom, they’re liars and sneaks, both of them, I tried not to listen, he said Angie is just like her mother, a spoiled, fat bad word.

He said that word right in the house, everyone could hear him. Jenny Hartman says Angie’s dad isn’t her real dad, but Angie calls him dad so maybe he is. I never told anyone what Angie’s dad said. Angie kept laughing and making jokes, then her dad left so her mom unlocked the door and drove me home. Her mom was being really nice, we even stopped for doughnuts, giant sugar-glazed doughnuts with raspberry jam in the middle, the jam was sticky, if you squeezed the doughnut, the jam squirted out the other side, you could lick it, all the way around. The doughnut was so good, I remember, Angie’s mom said we could pick anything we wanted. Angie and I got the exact same thing.

Teresa Carmody is the author of Requiem, a micro-collection of short stories, and three chapbooks, I Can Feel (Insert Press), Eye Hole Adore (PS Books), and Your Spiritual Suit of Armor by Katherine Anne (Woodland Editions). Other work has appeared in other places. With Vanessa Place, she is the co-founding director of Les Figues Press.

XTX

THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU EAT CAKE FOR THREE DAYS This is what happens when you eat cake for three days. This is what happens when the girl finally reaches the mirror and finds her head bulbous, expanding. This is what happens when the coffee runs low and nobody cares to hear you coming. This is what happens when the meadowlark screams like a human from your shoulder before its tiny brains explode its skull. This is what happens in a time warp where your father comes home every night sober, his shirt always tucked into his pants, always loving. This is what happens at the all you can eat buffet when you wear child-size Spanx.

This is what happens when the dogs fight and you pull them apart at the muzzles instead of the hind legs. This is what happens when he thinks everyone is prettier than you and you know he is right. This is what happens when his back is turned, when you don’t turn away. This is what happens at the bottom of the well in the muddy darkness that smells like farts and shits where nobody should ever have to die.

This is what happens when you show your love with balloon bouquets and you wonder how many colors is enough or too much. This is what happens when your body is made of scabs and the men are paid to peel them, one at a time, which is how you like it best. This is what happens when your fingers are coated in black coated in black coated in black. This is what happens every time a bough breaks, your mother screaming while your brothers applaud. This is what happens before every new launch, a drumming sound and then space imploding towards you until your breath is gone. This is what happens under false pretenses, where you

stupidly trust. This is what happens behind the couch, close to the ground where Skippy used to play before you saw everything. This is what happens inside the footsteps left by a giant, where you build your house, raise a family. This is what happens each day of my life, me wanting anything else.

This is what happens between cat calls and her going into the nearest bathroom stall with a knife. This is what happens no matter what you try and how you incorporate each failure into your being as part lung, part pore, part follicle. This is what happens under the growing dirt and how it lifts up in a hump then bleeds. This is what happens when you catch the ranch hand behind the silo with your four year old daughter.

This is what happens after your knuckles bruise. This is what happens in an altered state, barefoot and scared. This is what happens tomorrow and the next day when all the water drains from your swimming pool and everything at the bottom is what you’ve always wanted. This is what happens tumultuous and tremored like pirate’s gold sewn into your skin. This is what happens at ground level when the seedlings burst through, their new green spreading and embedding.

This is what happens when you don’t listen to your mother, your skin-threads pebbled with asphalt stones you could paint into a pretty necklace. This is what happens in the morning, where new beginnings stay. This is what happens underneath make up, before the streaking of debasement.

This is what happens under the table, with five hands, with your enthusiasm. This is what happens before what happens, happens. This is what happens when you inhale a cloud of fruit flies. This is what happens in acceleration of timidity, in the ways we take ourselves apart. This is what happens further than we can go but the trolls won’t let us stop. This is what happens in the canal, where the father with the face scar saves a boy who doesn’t drown. This is what happens in the field behind the house where the boy pissed into a new toilet, lay in a new tub, wanting. This is what happens on a

table in an Irish bar, in the back room with the line out the door and so many belts unbuckling. This is what happens when Roger finds you after all of these years. This is what happens at the top of the mountain where the men brought you. This is what happens in a frenzy with clumps of hair ripped out and nobody taking responsibility for the burning.

This is what happens Saturday when Caesar fails the tests and everyone has to walk home and pack their things and nobody cries anymore. This is what happens in the face of the glory of God, when the light lifts you up into the forever and ever. This is what happens when you try to kill all of the rats, hitting garbage bags with sticks and running after them like a boy. This is what happens when you can’t see anything anymore and your sense of smell only brings in anything that can be referred to as “stench.” This is what happens up on the neck of the man you once knew, his basketball arms.

This is what happens beside every bed you’ve ever slept in, soaking sheets in shit you wouldn’t let your mother clean up.

This is what happens if every monster you’ve ever hunted turned out to be real. This is what happens when you are so sick of eating berries, when you can’t stomach the thought of even one more. This is what happens after every lie you tell gets swallowed and eaten and shit out again. This is what happens when you want to wear short skirts and knee-high socks and polka-dot panties; white with red dots. This is what happens when you cup your breasts with both hands, run your hands down the curve of your waist, your hips and then hold your ass the same way you held your breasts.

This is what happens during the part in the film where they manipulate you into thinking you should be sad. This is what happens if all of the officers questioned you one at a time instead of all at once. This is what happens when you break all the way down. This is what happens when you die.

xTx is a writer living in Southern California. She has been published in places like PANK, Hobart, Puerto del Sol, Smokelong, Monkeybicycle, Storyglossia, >Kill Author and Wigleaf. Her new story collection, Normally Special is available from Tiny Hardcore Press. ( http://www.tinyhardcorepress.com/) She says nothing at www.notimetosayit.com