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Table of Contents "We're in a muddy swamp here, man. The alligators are swimming around us and we don't even know whether they're there. You know why? Because we can't see them." As interpreted by: Samuel Juarez (klosx)………………………………………………………………………………………......Cover Danny De Maio……………………………………..…….……”Blowing Out the Autumn Lantern” p.3-4 Jon Gilcrest………………………………………………….…………………………….………..”Superman” p.5-6 Adam D. Martinez……………………………………………………..…………“Marinetti’s Highway” p.7-8 Danny De Maio……………………………………………………………………..….“Shells of Carcosa” p.9-11 Anna Escher………………………………………………………………“The Midnight Flaneur” p.12-13
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“Blowing Out the Autumn Lantern” by Danny De Maio (Co-Founder of Pour Vida Zine) Dear Reader, Is this the October Country you remember? It’s certainly not the one I fell in love with so many midnights ago. Where did the trick ‘r treaters go? And when did brutal rape and murder become the calling card of today’s horror flicks? I guess I’ve been off sowing the seeds of my own plot in the October Country too long to have noticed when the devolution happened. With the eerie season upon us, it might be worth taking stock of where we are as readers, writers, and general adorers of this special time of year. As you may have noticed, the amount of knocks you get on your door on Halloween night has steadily decreased. The children that do venture out in costume no longer mask themselves in anything creepy. Since when did Iron Man become something that passed for the macabre? Then again, how is a sexy maid’s costume even remotely fitting for the holiday? We’ve missed the point with Halloween the same way that people have been complaining for years that Christmas has lost its true meaning. Let’s keep Death in Halloween. Now, that’s not to say that we need to keep gore in Halloween. Quite frankly death and gore are two different concepts, and the equating of one for the other has been a factor in driving Halloween from its roots. The Saw film franchise has about as much to do with the October celebration as a bumblebee costume. Whether it’s the tastemakers in Hollywood shucking out bloody garbage year after year or a vastly diminishing ability for us to focus on anything for more than a few moments unless it jumps out and sprays entrails at us, ideas of “gore” and “creepy” have become synonymous when in fact they are not. The sensation of being “creeped-out” is a byproduct of tension and tension takes time. It is precisely the reason why the image of man in a bear suit performing fellatio on a waiter in The Shining will likely haunt with higher frequency than the exploding head in the any number of horror films of the last decade. On the surface it seems absurd to say that Halloween is dying. The fall holiday generated $7 billion in 2011, making it second only to Christmas. But in this case, money doesn’t talk. With the influx of cash comes a rapidly expanding market that is pushed by corporations looking to fill every niche of anything that vaguely resembles Halloween. The October Country has been stretched and pulled in a fashion not dissimilar to the Roman Empire. The borders, pushed farther and farther out, have allowed corporate entities to define what Halloween is on their own terms. Anyone that ever truly loved Halloween or Dia De Los Muertos or Samhain or anything that called to order the supernatural side of our world knows that it is personal. If we did some soul-searching we would find, once again, what these holidays, despite their miniscule differences, mean. Recognize the macabre, the eerie, the creepy, and the unsettling, and discard the gratuitous gore, rape, and brutalization that has been thrust upon this day of spirits. Perhaps soon we can look forward to the giggles of children adorned in mummy, zombie, skeleton and ghost costumes as they seek out candy on the final
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night of October, all the while respecting and celebrating the thinnest line between Life and Death of the year.
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“Superman” by Jon Gilcrest At some point you gotta realize that not only are you not someone special, but what you thought you had about you that was special was actually a lot less. So, imagine you are peeling back the steel of a building, like Superman, you know? Imagine you are peeling that steel from the roof all the way to the pavement below, and windows are popping and shards of glass are tinkling on the sidewalk and people are screaming like it’s the end of the freaking world or something. And you go, “Whoa. Everybody, just calm the fuck down,” you know? Cause you are freaking Superman! You aren’t going to hurt anyone. You just needed to vent a little. That’s how Superman vents. He fucks shit up. Lois probably broke up with you and, well, that’s how it goes sometimes, right? Anyway. At some point you realize you aren’t Superman, and you probably won’t ever be. It’s a slow realization. But what comes with it is even worse. You are like, “Whoa. I’m probably never going to be Superman. Now what?” And I’ll tell you what. The bottle. The bottle is that what, bro. I mean, some people don’t do that, obviously, and those people are out there hustling and making music and starting companies and all that. Good for them, you know? But for the rest of us, it’s the bottle, and by the bottle you know I don’t mean just the bottle, I’m no ignoramus, man. But you know what I mean. The bottle makes girls fucking like you, man. And everybody hits it! It’s just this thing that we all hit, and we all love, and celebrate, and sing songs about, and yeah some people just pretend they are into it, but the rest of us, man, oh christ, for the rest of us that shit turns us into the people we want to be. If I’m catching a buzz, I’m also catching Lois as she falls out of the top floor of the building that I’m ripping apart… all that blue glass in her dark hair. Man. She’s gorgeous, Lois Lane. And it’s all cool for a while. You can’t see the future, because even Superman can’t see the fucking future, dude. And he’s Superman! So it’s cool. Everybody is doing it. Grandma, Daddy, Mommy, Brother, Friends. Some of those Christian nutjobs stay off the sauce, but that’s their pious talking, and good for them, you know? But it’s cool! It’s fucking cool! No one is worried. 19 turns to 20, 20 turns to 21, and god damn if 21 doesn’t just seal the deal, right? Suddenly you are drinking before class, and you aren’t doing it alone, and it makes sense, and it’s cute, and this girl fucking likes you, man. But what about when you are you? What happens when you are yourself? Shit gets weird, man, you know what I’m saying? Shit gets weird when you are trying to touch her clit and she gets all uncomfortable and quiet, and you are like, “Everything OK, baby?” And it ain’t her fault. She wasn’t into this shit. She laughs more when you’re drunk, but she doesn’t want a drunk boyfriend. And you hate going to anything sober. So she leaves. And you start doing things that make complete sense. You start calling her all the time, screaming at her, driving by her house, throwing things at her new boyfriend’s car. It all is justifiable. It just… works, you know?
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So anyway. You don’t see it coming man. Nobody does. It just latches on, and you roll with it like you would a rash that just doesn’t go away. And I know not everybody is gonna run down a girl. I’m sure there are plenty of people with statistics to back that up. But some people do run down a girl. Some people just have to. Life just doesn’t make sense if someone isn’t fucking it up.
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Marinetti’s Highway by Adam D Martinez There are four lanes cutting through, winding through; pines on either side. The sun is somewhere behind me—at times above me, or to my right, and there are no passengers in my vehicle. Other automobiles glide across the pavement to my left and right and I am moving swiftly, perhaps upwards of 80 miles per hour, yet all is passing slowly by me and I am taking in the lush pines to my left and right. The deep green of the pines trails and swirls with the reds and the whites and the blues, blacks and grays of the cars cruising by me, as if I am watching time elapse in a vacuum of zero gravity into the years ahead. And the thick, sturdy trunks of the pines look like thin toothpicks stuck between guardrails that look like braces on crooked teeth. And I imagine that from the clouds, this particular road, the way it curves with its rails for braces, resembles a smirking face mocking the heavens. And the earth is a self-centered, smug rational being, progressive and technological and self-indulgent—fully capable of existing without grace and without the need to reach out for the helping hand of God. Futurism come to life. A manifesto that is frighteningly silent presses its weight of violent air against me and I am thinking of the fact that the only thing separating me from death, keeping my body in tact, keeping me navigating the self-involved earth and out of the forgiving heavens is a thin, tiny yellow dashed line. And I am at odds with the isolation, as cars whiz passed and I want nothing to do with any body. I will honk my horn out of anger should one cut me off and I will pull up next to my offender and I will signal him to pull over; or maybe it is a woman who has aggravated me. Should they have the courtesy to pull to the side of the road, I will keep the car running, put on the emergency signal, maybe I’m listening to Yeezus, and I will pop the trunk and pull out the tire iron. And I can see the fear in the eyes of the driver or sometimes it is pure hatred, either way, as I swing the iron and smash the driver-side window in and see the specks of glass stick to the left side of the driver’s face like shrapnel, I can breathe easier and it is cathartic. It is better for me than smoking a cigarette to calm my nerves and I feel the tension leave my body as I pull the tire iron back out from the lacerated face of my offender. No hard feelings. The driver will survive, and even if the driver does not survive, I will toss the tire iron back into my trunk, slam it, get back into my vehicle and shut the door. I will fasten my seatbelt—safety first— and I will crank the A/C on full blast until my sweat turns cold. I will turn off my emergency lights and signal to the left as I slowly merge back onto the highway, leaving my past behind me in a cloud of dust. I love driving on this highway because I am far away from the pretensions of city-dwellers that breed so-called beautiful ideas and are “free” from the deathtraps they call their hometowns. There is no freedom in the city. Even art is an institution and art becomes dangerous and art needs to be destroyed and war needs to be waged. And speed is the greatest virtue on this highway, so I drive fast. The green still blends with the reds and the whites and the blues, blacks and grays of the cars whirring by at breakneck speeds with such silent resilience. I am still listening to Yeezus in .mp3 format and the title of the song crawls across a digital screen on my 7
dashboard like the stock prices or movie show times. There is no navigation and even if there was, I still would not know, nor care, where I am going, I am just driving. And Yeezus is on it is the soundtrack for our new [S(ex)In]dustrial Revolution. This is why art is dangerous and I shut it off and I am in the center lane, speeding and it is as silent as it ever was even though I see cars in front of me swerving to the left and right and I can smell the scent of burnt rubber and I am distracted by the sun reflecting off of the swerving cars in front of me until I am forced to swerve because there is a mangled carcass of an animal. As I pass closely, swerving to the left of it, time is slowed again and I am seeing it all as if I am standing next to it. It is the carcass of a deer. It has antlers. Its tongue is poking out between its teeth its mouth is chomping and I wonder how. I see that its antlers are being tugged and I follow the grip of bloody knuckles to see a bloody nude man pumping himself into the anus of the road kill in a steady motion like the pistons in an engine. I cannot tell if the blood is his or the deer’s but it is splattered on his torso like a Jackson Pollack. He looks like a meaningless animal, more meaningless than the carcass of the deer. It is a miracle he has not been run over and the fact that he does not seem to mind if he does strikes horror in me. I speed up and stare into my rearview mirror to see if some distracted driver, maybe texting, might strike him. I think I might like to see that. He deserves it. He is sick and depraved. Some people are disgusting.
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“Shells of Carcosa” by Danny De Maio “Goddam it, Therman, keep your head down!” Captain Pulver seethed through gritted teeth. “You’re going to catch a face-full of it.” “There’s no one there, Cap,” Second Lieutenant Marcus Therman whispered, his back to Pulver. “I don’t see anyone, anyway.” He was exposed up to his chest above the threshold of the trench. “Which is why you need to keep your head down. If you don’t see them then they see you.” Captain Pulver sipped cold coffee from a tin cup. His rifle was heavy on his shoulder in the night air. He had not anticipated France to be this cold, especially on the coast in June. A thin fog had settled along the beach and ascended up to the bluffs, but that was where it stopped. Had it not been for the flash of the mortar shells it would have been nearly impossible to know that the fog was hanging, clouding their vision. The darkness was all encompassing. The moon hid behind clouds and the three men only knew how close the other was in the muddy trench by the sound of their voices. First Lieutenant Travis “Jackie” Jackson had been silent for a long while. “Jackie?” the Captain wondered through the pitch black. “Where are you?” “Here, Cap,” Jackson acknowledged. “Tell Therman to keep his goddamned head down.” A flash of white illuminated the trench. The shells were lumbering closer. Scents of gunpowder and the sweet saltiness of the ocean air battled for superiority. “Cap’s right. Keep quiet and low unless you want me to be picking your face up off the ground.” The report of the mortar shells came like waves on the beach. The tide seemed to pull the exploding shells to a distance and then come crashing in close again. “Wait,” Therman hushed the other two men. The mortars were approaching closer. “I see something.” The Captain perked up. “What is it? They have tanks? Can you see how far off they’re firing from?” He waited for an answer from Therman that didn’t come. Every ten seconds a flash of ominous, searing light was cast over them followed immediately by a rumble that would squirm at their feet. “Therman, what do you see?” the Captain repeated. “Someone is coming this way.” Therman’s voice seesawed. “Ain’t no one coming this way,” the Captain said dismissively, pouring out the rest of his coffee. “I swear. I saw his silhouette.” Another flash came over the trench. “He’s there still, but he looks like he’s getting closer.” A calm voice came through the dark. It was Jackson’s. “Cap, how long you think our boy has been up?” referring to Therman. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” desperation oozing from Therman. “He didn’t go to sleep with us last night either, Cap. I woke up at four this morning. Saw him in the same spot as he is now.” 9
“I’m right here, you dumb sonofabitch.” Jackson ignored him. “He’s delirious, Cap.” A mortar blew ten meters from the mouth of the trench, digging out a cavity on the beach. “Goddam it, he’s still coming this way,” Therman said through his teeth. “Therman, you little shit, don’t be yanking us.” “I’m not, Cap!” “What’s he got then? It’s just the one? Just one?” The barrage was quickening and the shells were gaining accuracy. In the darkness the Captain imagined a dragon rolling steadily across the open beach towards them, occasionally breathing fire to illuminate its own path. “He’s got a – a robe on.” The young lieutenant’s voice cracked. “A yellow robe!” “It’s not a robe,” the Captain said irritably. “You must be seeing a trench coat.” “It’s not anything,” Jackson said in the dark. His voice was unaffected and steady. “Jackson, shut up and be ready,” the Captain instructed, pulling his rifle from off his shoulder. A blast of six mortar shells landed in rapid succession only meters in front of them. “They’ve landed behind him,” Therman said. “The shells – just behind him! He’s got a rifle with a bayonet on the end.” Therman’s near hysterics drove a chill down the Captain’s spine. He cocked his rifle and dug his boots into the side of the trench, prepping to pop up and fire. Empty the entire clip. He watched Therman’s head bob above the trench. “Get your head down,” the Captain yelled and pulled the young lieutenant down into the filthy trench, but Therman resisted. “He’s got a white mask on.” He was hysterical and his voice shattered at each syllable. He jumped back to his feet and thrust himself above the threshold again. “Jesus, Jackie, you want to help me here? You’re his supervisor, too!” “No sleep,” Jackson said in an even tone. “He’s been talking to himself all night.” Therman jumped up out of the trench and made a run across the open beach in the darkness. The wind kicked up off the ocean. The mortar fire went quiet. In the short distance a shell exploded and lit up the night for a moment. It was like the Captain had blinked his eyes in front of a floodlight and then clenched them shut again. Therman screamed out in the fog. The screaming got louder and then fainter with the changing direction of the wind. Then it was only the wind and the distancing rupture of mortar shells.
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The Captain whispered to Jackson in the black. There was no answer. He pushed his back against the trench wall, gripped his gun, and clenched his eyes shut. The dawn was still a few hours off.
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The Midnight Flaneur by Anna Escher Today marks the five month anniversary of the day we first arrived in Paris. Our flat overlooks the picturesque Eiffel Tower, the pointless emblem that it is, where empty people cast their idealistic dreams of romance. I have a café au lait every day and a pain au chocolat when I can stomach it. I come home to a loving man. Five months ago today, we got trapped in a claustrophobic, dysfunctional red elevator between the third and fourth floors of the Tim hotel in Little Italy. We made love loudly in that elevator and the concierge found us two hours later, my shirt was on backwards. At night we lay in a four-post bed staring at the cigarette smoke that swirls and vanishes above us. We laugh as the thunder claps outside and the hot European rain beats down on the corner beggars outside. Buried somewhere in the wires of the Pont Neuf bridge over the Seine is a lock with our initials on it that I clasped on the chain links. We have strong, dizzying red wine and hold hands at the open-air markets. The men gutting fish at Marche Raspail frown at me when I talk too loudly and stare deliberately into my eyes as they chop the heads off of fish. They don’t scare me, and nothing is wrong. I’m eating and drinking and living; Paris is as lusty and hedonistic as hell itself and I cannot get enough. My cheeks have been red for weeks and my hair is as untamable as it’s ever been. It’s midnight in Paris and I’m starving, but I don’t know what for. So I kiss his sleeping forehead, throw on a red coat, and silently lock the door behind me. I go to the Shakespeare and Co. bookstore. It’s a dismal old tourist trap shop consisting of a few conjoined rooms with puce green carpeting and sliding wooden ladders attached to the many bookcases. The store is packed with young bourgeoisie and flirtatious Parisian youth. I flip through a copy of “Le Petit Prince.” “You mustn’t forget it. You become responsible forever for what you’ve tamed.” My heart sinks as I picture my sleeping lover in our four-post bed at home and I slam the children’s book shut. I need a drink. I continue my secret dérive into the Latin Quarter. Couples are silently eyefucking each other at uncomfortably small round tables outside of a brasserie. They can’t wait to get home. Perpetually restless. 12
I enter the Caveau des Oubliettes, translated for the American expatriate as “the Vault of Oblivion.” The bar is nicknamed by the Parisians who frequent it as “La Guillotine” because it used to exist as a torture chamber during the French Revolution. Prisoners were beheaded in the dark room, floor stained with revolutionary blood. I see my friend Adrienne. She is swing dancing with another woman in a knee length dress, they pull me in and thrust a glass of Bordeaux to my lips. An hour later I am intoxicated and sweating and clinging to an anonymous French man, we’re swirling and smiling and I cannot control my laughter. Handcuffs are nailed to the wall above us. I spill wine all over the front of my shirt and we are all part of a laughter so deep, no sound comes out at all. Or maybe it did, but I’m drowning in sound waves, bass and drums and piano and the thick air and the wine and the singer’s indecipherable jazz vocals. We move to another location, an impossibly small tavern in the 3rd arrondissment. The walls are covered with stickers and graffiti and they serve beer by the pint. They let me smoke inside. The bartender makes me a weak whiskey ginger. I tell him in French that I could make it better with my eyes closed and slide it back across the table to him. He is infuriated in the way only the French can get; he grabs my wrist. Suddenly I’m behind the bar and he is blindfolding me with his tie. I hear a crowd jeering and calling to me, laughter and words I can no longer make out. Adrienne hands me the whiskey and with one hand, blindfolded I pour the bottle straight into a glass and down it on my own. They cheer and I imagine the bartender smirks at me. We always want what we can’t see, what we cannot have. That is enough. I kiss my friends, old and new, goodbye and begin the walk back to my flat. The moon is peeking out behind clouds and my ankles are twisting on the cobblestone. Somewhere near the Bastille statue, a dark Romani pickpocket targets me, squinting. I raise my chin and gaze above his forehead. “Not me, not tonight.” I inform him nonverbally and continue walking. I turn the key, praying he won’t wake up and catch me in my wine drenched blouse, question me for my absence. He is sleeping silently. We are responsible for what we have tamed, and we must not forget that.
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