gritty silk//issue three

G R I T T Y S I L K

V O L 3

table of contents.

skymall part one & two

ashley yang-thompson & mikko harvey

1-20

you get a car and you get a car.

fresh and fruity gallery

21

water horror

silence merry roads & Moss angel

22-36

contributor bios

pitymilk press

gsv3

skymall

part one (general heartbreak)

ashley yang-thompson & mikko harvey

White Fur Rug I roll out this fur rug on somebody’s lawn & strike a pose.

In this way, I seduce many boys. & as long as they have sex with me for two whole minutes before they realize I’m a deer from the waist down, I get to eat their soul.

1

White Plastic Orchids I have been known to spontaneously combust over a delicate petal. & I only collect broken pottery.

But I simply can’t deal with a real orchid right now b/c I am writing a book that is literally going to change lives.

It’s called

LOVE IN THE RUINS

“Now I’m certain he’s the one!” said catdog’s Twitter feed.

2

White Pogo Stick I am told that an overbearing wife can cause a man to become a shadow of his former self, that he could develop a hunch back, or become emaciated, or his hips might screw loose from his sockets in pursuit of some eternal wiggle.

I tried to please you by remaining a rabbit in a hutch of my own creation, wearing only white mesh, & eating brown pellets & straw for weeks. & when I burst from your birthday cake at Hooters wearing nothing but frosting, parts jiggling as I crossed the room on my white pogo stick, you were staring at your phone the whole time.

3

White Windows White windows are my passion.

Instead of glass, you have a solid, white mass.

This way, your children are safe because they won’t be tempted to jump out of windows when they aren’t loved back.

4

White Tack When my husband blinds me with a white silk scarf & caresses me with the tip of a white tack, I feel as if I am upgrading to a whiter shade of white. & when he whispers “pro-white� into my ear as he binds me to the train track with floss, I am so wet that a pool forms around my body, & the children gather round with straws.

5

Salt If, when the clock strikes 11:11, you sprinkle salt on your small throw pillow, your catdog will be Ubered back to you, smoking a cigarette from both his mouth & his asshole.

“I feel as if I’ve aged ten years,” catdog wearily states, “but there’s nothing I won’t do for love.”

6

White Mini Fridge I dug a tunnel beneath my porch & that is where I store my white mini-fridge.

The squat proportions of this appliance allow me to get down on my knees and beg for forgiveness and nosh on my husband’s thawed calf or swivel my tongue in his ear which I pickled with dill in a mason jar.

7

White Inflatable Pool Slide Let’s just say I woke up atop this white inflatable pool slide with my limbs surgically rearranged to resemble a walrus.

Forty years later, & I’m still stuck in this wildlife sanctuary, translating the English in my head to a gurgling phlegm.

8

Heavy Duty White Scissor God I hate a wilting orchid.

But even more so, I need a good pair of scissors to cut up people in the basement & conduct catastrophic abortions

9

Burt Reynolds, My Life Are you a 50 year old man who gets stoned every day with with your twelve-year-old best friend, Asian Katie?

Do you have an uncomfortable relationship with your basement?

Do you eat raw cookie dough while you’re baking cookies & then eat all the baked cookies that you were going to share?

Do you spiral into YouTube?

Are you a Men’s Rights Activist?

Are tired of fighting the feminist propaganda machine?

Do you fantasize about meeting the love of your life in a jacuzzi at Spa Castle?

Do you have dinner by yourself at Benihana?

Do you think of success as a square & of yourself as an octagon?

Would you describe your life as one big dark joke?

Then you need this book.

10

skymall

part two (boyinthewoods)

Little Spoon I like going down into the basement while Wife is at yoga.

I like bringing my little spoon.

Depending on my mood, there are three parts of the basement I like to go.

Happy Room, Extra Happy Wow, and Room Made of Light.

My final reservation before I can give this little spoon a rating is that I have yet to bring little spoon into Room Made of Light.

I am afraid of what will happen.

I know it is not fair to little spoon that I reserve my rating.

Each day little spoon grows closer to me.

Like a wild catdog that broke his hind legs in a car accident and grows dependent on your care.

Anything less than 4 stars may prove irreparable for little spoon.

11

Chic Fish Tail Blanket Wife lays around in the chic fish tail blanket.

Afternoon light illuminating Wife—she is one of the chosen ones.

To be chosen by a chosen one makes you a chosen one, but only for a while.

Asymmetry of Wife’s mouth and how she gets mean when she’s nervous.

How warm her toes must be inside of the chic fish tail blanket.

12

Portable Jacuzzi You buy the jacuzzi because Wife seems to like being out of doors.

You use the jacuzzi once together but the water never gets hot enough.

You use the jazuzzi one more time by yourself, and it works perfectly.

For six years nobody uses the jacuzzi.

One night a deer decides your jacuzzi is a good place to die.

You find the body the next morning, tipped off by the smaller animals that have begun eating it.

The smaller animals scatter when you come on the scene.

They know you purchased this jacuzzi.

You are lord of all that it catches.

13

Butter Dish Butter dish, how could you have done this.

Killed the catdog, trapped him in the sauna without water and watched him perish.

How long did it take, butter dish.

How long did it take the catdog to perish.

And then you just sit there like nothing happened, like you are a man.

Jesus Christ butter dish.

14

Ultimate Bounce Castle Did we really need to have the conversation about divorce inside of the bouncy castle

15

Electric Blanket It is hard to put into words the degree to which sleeping with a moving yet non-living object enhances your loneliness.

Once you have felt the warm, unnatural embrace of this electric blanket at four in the morning, you will understand why some folks would rather just live in the woods.

16

Bop-It Extreme First get a divorce.

Then set your iPhone timer for 50 hours.

Then play Bop-It Extreme for 50 hours in a row, pausing only for the most necessary human functions.

When the timer goes off, smash Bob-It Extreme with a hammer until it goes silent.

Inside that silence you can find a feeling.

17

Inflatable Pool Slide Let’s just say I woke up atop this inflatable pool slide with chunks of raccoon clinched in my fists.

Forty years later, and I still can’t quit you.

18

Flashing Laces Please God let me evolve into the style of man who wears these flashing laces to a dark warm gathering.

When everyone else was out eating shrimps and honey off each other’s neck, I was at home naming the rocks I had collected -Joanie -Mitzy -Ezekiel -Hannah -Hannah -Dave -Will -Adrianna while on the other side of the wall my parents had sex.

19

Roomba 980 This Roomba automatic vacuum cleaner literally killed my father by tripping him down the stairs.

20

you get a car and you get a car.

FRESH AND FRUITY GALLERY

The other day I was at Starbucks on Aotea square thinking about Oprah. Have u ever tried her line of teas for Starbucks? I remembered this display in Te Atatu at a pharmacy with a series of portraits of Oprah and the name/brandOprah everywhere around it. There were vitamin jars everywhere stacked on top of each other. I really liked the way they used levels and how crass it was. It was both a celebration of Oprah coming to Australia and a competition where if you spent money on vitamins you could be in the draw to meet Oprah. YOU GET A CAR. YOU GET A CAR AND YOU GET A CAR. Does money create taste? I love looking at bathroom showrooms and thinking about cleaning shower heads with chemico. I love the lighting, font and bold but tacky opulence of that house in Herne Bay that we stayed in once. It had the most cliche pieces of art. It contained bold and clashing, but very garishly patterned homewares.There was no clear sense or understanding of how to use space. It was very confused but decadent in its resolve to reflect opulence, upper middle class banality and ‘good taste’. Is capitalism the reason I am so depressed? My friend used to work in Las Vegas and she said that being on Karangahape road filled her with a sense of history and empowered her to own her body. The legendary 19th century courtesan Cora Pearl was said to have diamonds encrusted all over her shoes. Michel Foucault and his writing on the panopticon as a system of social and institutional regulation . LOOK UNDER YOUR SEAT. Every re-merchandising will be captured as a brand “moment”. Office team temps by Jennifer Nielson in 2011.

This guy told me that kicking all the sex workers off of K road was a good idea. He said K road had nothing to offer except crime and sex. He smelt like stale whiskey, mothballs and nervous sweat. He said the TPPA was a good idea. “The People’s Pharmacy of Aotearoa.” Capitalism and mental illness.

I don’t understand how you can’t think about how expensive my medication is going to be. The semiotic game. Lana Del Rey in the Blue jeans video. Will there just be lots of really mentally unwell people everywhere unable to find support. What will happen to our medical system? Broken systems.

Displacement. Erasure. Ecological apocalypse. My mum having a “brand moment” walking past the billboard size print of a smiling white lady at Life Pharmacy. Her medication is too expensive so she borrows money from me. Risperdal M-Tabs. The physical labour needed to produce expressions, ranging from the mere recognition of existing phenomena through their ostension to the production of 1 replicas and the effort to invent new expressions. The other day I thought about all of the volcanoes in Auckland exploding all at once. In the tv show Stranger Things, all of the female characters are the true aliens. Netflix is self care. Personification of self. Constructed self. Projected self. The semiotics of class and wellness. Modes of artistic production in the free market. Capitalist subjectivity. I did this performance once at a boutique window front in Dunedin where I got dressed over and over again. Changing the window display twice a week just to sell specific Nomd pieces to wealthy middle aged white women who say they live on ‘Marey hill’ (it’s Māori hill). So divorced from your body. My attachment to my body and what clothes I wear is so emotional. The genderless Gethenians living on the planet Winter in The left hand of darkness. Adopting the incentive structures of social order as our own.2

1 2

Umberto Eco in his essay ‘Producing Signs’ Rob Horning in ‘social media is not self expression’

21

water horror

click here for audio

silence merry roads & Moss angel

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contributor bios.

Ashley Yang-Thompson is the product of a Chinese immigrant and a polygamist from Fort Scott, Kansas. She is a Queens-based artist/activist and is currently a resident at Flux Factory.

Mikko Harvey is the author of Unstable Neighbourhood Rabbit (House of Anansi, 2018).

He currently lives in New York City, where he is the Joseph F. McCrindle Foundation Online Editorial Fellow at Poets & Writers Magazine.

Fresh and Fruity Gallery is an indigenous art collective based in Aotearoa. Founded in Ōtepoti as a physical space in 2014 it now exists entirely online and is run by two Māori wahine named Hana Pera Aoake (Tainui, Ngāti Raukawa) and Mya Morrison-Middleton(Ngāi Tahu). Fresh and Fruity’s work has been shown and published across Aotearoa, as well as in Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany. Fresh and Fruity is a sexy new look designed to slowly smash the neocolonial heteropatriarchy one sarcastic hashtag at a time #workbitch #livelaughlove

Moss Angel is a polynymous writer / artist / tattooist / witch / scorpio. She is author of the Sea-Witch series of books (2017-2018) as well as Careful Mountain (2016) and Sara or the Existence of Fire (2014). Her work deals with mental illness, capitalism, transness & the unreal. She lives in a black house in Olympia, WA with her wife and their two rodents.

Silence Merry Roads is a poet and witch living in Olympia, WA. They are the author of several chapbooks including, most recently, Girl Tramp (Horse Less Press 2016) and Specimen Inter-Equi (MOLD Editions 2017). They also make noise, read tarot, and facilitate workshops that explore embodied voice and text in a playful, collaborative space. They would love to share virtual space with you on Instagram: @silencemerryroads.

pitymilk press

gsv3

G R I T T Y S I L K

V O L 3