Vol. II, Issue V - April 2015 by The Rain, Party, & Disaster Society

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THE RAIN, PARTY, & DISASTER SOCIETY IS A WORKSHOP-BASED ONLINE LITERARY PUBLICATION THAT STRIVES TO GIVE REPRESENTATION TO NEW IDEAS AND THOUGHTS, TO CHALLENGE THE READER, AND TO QUESTION COMMONLY ACCEPTED OPINIONS, VALUES, ETIQUETTE, AND IDEAS. WITHIN OUR PAGES, YOU MAY FIND: WORKS THAT TACKLE HOT-BUTTON ISSUES, WORKS PRESENTED IN A STYLE THAT IS OUT OF THE ORDINARY, WORKS THAT PRESENT THE READER WITH A QUESTION OR DEBATE, AND WORKS THAT BREAK MAINSTREAM RULES WITHIN THEIR GENRE. ALL OF THE PIECES YOU FIND ON THIS SITE HAVE BEEN THROUGH OUR WORKSHOP PROCESS, DURING WHICH THE RP&D EDITORIAL STAFF WORKS CLOSELY WITH CONTRIBUTORS TO HONE THEIR VOICE AND HELP THEM TO PRODUCE THE BEST POSSIBLE WORK FOR YOU, THE READER, TO EXPERIENCE.

TO RESPOND DIRECTLY TO A WORK YOU SEE FEATURE IN THIS ISSUE, USE OUR CONTACT PAGE TO SENT A LETTER TO THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF. YOU MAY ALSO WRITE YOUR OWN REBUTTAL AND SUBMIT IT FOR PUBLICATION IN A FUTURE ISSUE.

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Table of Contents

Pg. 4 - COLORFUL CHILDHOOD, Sylvia Schwartz Pg. 5 - PRE-APOCALYPSE CHA-CHA: A COLLAGE, Howie Good Pg. 6 - ROBOT WARS, Ben Johnson Pg. 7 - MOVIE, Mitchell Grabois Pg. 8 - PALILALIA, Natalie Tinney Pg. 9 - ROADS, Jennifer Hudgens Pg. 10 - CREATURE FEATURE, Leah Mueller Pg. 12 - DETAILS, Oliver Zarandi Pg. 14 - WALKING AROUND THE TAR PITS WITH THE GHOST OF JACK KEROUAC, Justin Karcher Pg. 16 - THIRTEEN CANDLES, Sylvia Schwartz Pg. 18 - BECAUSE NO ONE READS IT, Tom Loughlin Pg. 20 - EIGHTY-FIVE DAYS, Dennis Milam Bensie Pg. 22 - CALL ME WHEN THE BIRDS COME HOME, Ishani Sen Pg. 23 - 15 SCREWDRIVERS, Mitchell Grabois Pg. 25 - PICTURES OF KITTIES, Lynn White Pg. 26 - USE SIMULTANEOUSLY, Trish Hopkinson Pg. 27 - SYMPATHY SYMPTOMS, Wanda Morrow Clevenger Pg. 28 - FLAT FOOT, Paul Hanson Clark Pg. 30 - CRUMBS FOR CROWS, Baisali Chatterjee Dutt Pg. 32 - HOARDERS, Mitchell Grabois Pg. 32 - LIGHT OF AMERICA, Luis Neer Pg. 34 - FINAL CALL, Sylvia Schwartz

Pg. 36 - EDITORIAL STAFF Pg. 34 - CONTRIBUTOR BIOS

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COLORFUL CHILDHOOD Sylvia Schwartz

The nights our parents are yelling, we make a fort in our room. I climb down the bunk-bed ladder with my camping flashlight in hand. You tug at our red Captain Marvel blankets until they fall at our feet. We spread your blanket on the floor, so you can suck on the corner when you’re not sucking your thumb. I drape my blanket over desk chairs, so when we’re safely underneath all the Captain Marvels marvel down at us. Our laser-bolt sky sags in the middle, but muffles the sounds. We play with toy soldiers, an army of plastic men whose arms will never break. The nights mom’s left eye is swollen and red, we whisper in our room. We color in our books. You scribble in dark lines. Then you tear out the pages, crumpling and scattering them all across the floor. I draw with greens and browns, the colors of our camouflage-striped pajamas. I tell you crayons don’t come with erasers, no way to take back mistakes. I know you’re too young to understand, but I have to teach you to stay within the lines. The nights mom’s left eye turns a shade of purple, she lets us play video games in the living room. We shoot the bad guys, over and over and over again. But they keep coming back. You rack up 100 points. I rack up 3,000. You think I’m so brave. You think I’m the winner. I go back to our room and write more in my journal. Then I tear out the pages, crumpling and scattering them all across the floor. The nights mom’s left eye fades to green, I read you a story. You like the one about Jack and the Beanstalk because you like the magic beans. Afterwards, I pretend I’m a magician. I hold a Boy Scout handkerchief over a toy soldier and pretend to make him disappear. “It’s magic,” I say. And you believe me when I tell you anything is possible, over and over and over again. The nights mom’s left eye becomes faint yellow, we watch cartoons past our bedtime. We both like the Bugs Bunny show. You like it when I say, “Eh, what’s up Doc?” and “Carrots are divine...You get a dozen for a dime, it’s maaaa-gic!” I like it when you try to say, “Be vewwy, vewwy quiet…I’m hunting wabbits!” And we both run around chasing each other until we wave our hands up in the air like Porky Pig and say, “Da Da That’s All Folks.” The nights mom’s left eye is back to beige, I say, “See, I told you those colors would disappear.” “Like magic,” you say, and you wave your hands around saying, “Da Da That’s All Folks,” like that’s the end. I nod to camouflage the truth. The nights my parents are yelling, we make a fort in our room.

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PRE-APOCALYPSE CHA-CHA: A COLLAGE Howie Good

We were strolling blinding white colonial roads when the rain came,

mountain passes gushing press-ganged sailors, eyes peeled for Moby Dick.

Tonight the stars shine good and strong long after the ragged chickens, holed up in dusty tombs, invented the concept.

" And then back to rain. " " Source: Joseph Ridgewell, Fire Island (Pig Ear Press, 2012). " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " 5

ROBOT WARS Ben Johnson

I so nearly opened by calling you Charles, surnames that are names tend to confuse me. I wanted to point out you were a better presenter than Clarkson, more enthusiastic, less sarcastic, but that wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t my real reason for writing.

I was reading the account by Livy of the Roman war against the Samnites, how their enemies had splendid shields some inlaid with silver, others with gold but the Roman Generals taught their men that soldiers should be rough to look upon putting their trust in courage and iron.

I found myself reminded of the rough metallic beasts that did battle during your show, heavily plated in armour to protect their fragile inner workings and I hunted out an old video of one of your shows to remind myself what it was really like only the tape was at the end so I had to rewind it and this was what I saw.

One team in yellow pulling punches from the air, the other in black shaking their heads upwards, then a cut to Razer pulling Tornado out of the pit and back to the centre of the arena where Tornado lay still for a while before Razor inserted its beak into its bodywork patting the side panels back into place, repairing the paintwork, all the while the camera cutting back and forth to the teams labouring over joysticks to work at fixing each otherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s robots.

Finally I got to two teams picking up robots from long tables and walking backwards to their vans where they put them inside to take home to slowly dismantle before posting the parts back to various manufacturers and then sitting for long evenings slowly erasing their blueprints.

" and it was beautiful. " " " 6

MOVIE Mitchell Grabois

A woman so black she is blue wears bright red lipstick and a mass of star tats on her cheekbones. She is so disgusted with her community with its religiosity, gangsta-ism and obesity that, in protest and hope she names her daughter Anorexia. The baby next door is named Charlene Vagina, and these girls become fast friends for life. Anorexia gets a tattoo on her chest, and Charlene presses against her to see if it will transfer.

I see these girls at the movie theater. We know each other from the hood. Anorexia and Vagina greet me in synch: Aight?

I say: What can be worse than having to listen to a country song about country music when you have a bad cold and your sons have come over to watch a playoff game and bring Poppa John’s pizza, whom you are boycotting because he owns a 40,000 foot mansion but can’t find the money to provide healthcare for his employees?

" Fuck him, says Anorexia, Fuck him, says Vagina. Domino better anyways. " " Here’s some things Anorexia and Vagina couldn’t tell you: "

The USA has the highest incarceration rate per capita on the planet. Milwaukee has the highest in the USA. My family has the highest in Milwaukee. I’m the only member who retains freedom and I’m sitting next to a woman with overmedicated blue eyes I’ve brought to the movie theater, and who Anorexia and Vagina make a big point of ignoring. This woman’s eyes want to swim off her face like gulf clams. We’re watching an overhyped superhero movie in 3D.

In the row in front of us, a white trash couple has brought their four-year-old. The world is destroyed a thousand times and the kid starts wailing. The father threatens him. I tell the father to shut up. The usher’s intervention makes things worse. I should not have gone to an overhyped superhero movie in 3D with a woman with overmedicated, ghostly blue eyes because now I have joined my family in the arms of incarceration.

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PALILALIA Natalie Tinney

Black & White chrysanthemums thumb-tacked to the drywall, an arms race takes place in the waiting room.

Your name conquered my breath remorseful over misspelled names on coffee cups and perforated flower petals.

Was I thinking too hard? It doesn't matter. I can hide the sun behind a Klonopin tablet.

Among the collection of empty glass jars: a champagne bottle, unable to withstand the pressure. Satisfaction is key.

She will see me now, I tell her my problem. “You have long hair. Pretend you’re talking via Bluetooth.” That works for names, but not for nouns If you cut your finger, I will inevitably whisper "Heme”.

" What is read has seen what is spoken. " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " 8

ROADS Jennifer Hudgens

Every morning before the moon has fallen deeper into her own gloom, I pull myself from slumber, slip on worn out shoes and lay in the middle of Main Street I play truth or dare with sirens and head lights, they, like me are always searching in the dark, I disappear for days sometimes, so he understands what it means to be loved and abandoned, the screech of breaks quickly approaching red lights, call my name pull me to the flick and glimmer of getting lost, learning stillness when horns blast as cars rush over me, I hold my breath, exhilarated, I am not ready to let go, to leave this ritual to cats and raccoons, when winter comes and I fall asleep in snow drifts, do not wake me, keep me buried, secrets buried when bears finally stretch and growl toward the sun, I will be new, I will return home, he will be right where I have always left him, slipping off my shoes, crawling into bed in the morning, I will kiss the moon good-bye

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CREATURE FEATURE Leah Mueller

While other girls are applying makeup and giggling until dawn about boys whose testicles have not yet descended I am chewing the wax coverings from tubes of Halloween candy, and sucking the sugary water into my intestines. Upstairs, my three younger siblings sleep, their brains cooling off like freshly extinguished light bulbs. The television is tuned to reveal the faces of monsters, reassuring because of their predictability. It is their function to behave like monsters. The movies are from my parents' childhood, black and white, They remind me of postcards, grainy photographs of historic figures like Boris Karloff, and Bela Lugosi. These men are my fantasies, though I am never sure what I ought to be imagining. They are bland and civilized on the outside, sinister and corrupt under pale skin. I am never able to convince myself that men aren't supposed to remind me of vampires, or lumbering monsters with horrible complexions, or inscrutable mummies, their filthy bandages continually unraveling, How I love to cover my eyes, and watch at the same time. When the volume of the television suddenly increases I know it's time for the commercialsphone numbers for used car lots and plumbers blaring with a sing-song urgency, commercials at increasing velocity, and then even more as it gets later, and only a handful of people in Chicago are watching. I'm too young to imagine them spooning food into their mouths from plastic plates while fantasizing about ways to exterminate their bosses or planning to call ex lovers, who are having sex with other people, at that very moment. It is still exciting to be awake after midnight, and I don't want to take my eyes off the television for even a second. My toes curl, and my face is reflected in the screenthe imaginary world of mist that will never be interrupted by insipid sunshine.

With daylight comes responsibilitiesbreakfasts of Pop-Tarts and French toast made from Wonder bread, my parents hung over and snarling. Yes, I'll take an honest monster any daythe scars and the rage are more visible, and I am never disappointed by the facade.

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DETAILS Oliver Zarandi

Body In awkward situations, O. does not like to leave the room physically. He likes to turn into inanimate objects so other human beings can touch him.

Canapé One time, at a grand ball in Prague: everybody was wearing tuxedos and long black dresses. O. noticed that the men wore patent shoes that reflected chandeliers that hung from the tall ceiling in symmetrical fashion. The women all had veins running around their Achilles tendon. This, perhaps, suggested that they had been standing too long in high heels. There was a pianist who had a pencil moustache. He was a small, brown man and nobody talked to him inside the ballroom or outside the ballroom. He was accompanied by an orchestra of Poles. O. possessed the unique quality of being physically present and absent at the same time. Was this because of his face of indeterminate identity? Was this lack of identity enough to call him a chameleon? No. But it did allow him to be a fly on the wall. He realised how, as a human, he garnered no attention, but as a mushroom and salmon canapé he did. He turned into the mushroom and salmon canapé during a beautiful rendition of Waltz No. 2 by Dmitri Shostakovich. People fingered and swallowed O. But he was greedy. He divided up his own self into 500 canapés and managed to be swallowed by Prague's elite movers and shakers. He likened it to going on several holidays at once or, he whispered, like having an orgasm, with clear and healthy semen coming out of every orifice and follicle. Upon leaving the grand ball, O. turned into a collection of germs and passed from body to body, across roads, rivers and countries, back to his adopted city – London.

Burn O. was riding the underground for warmth when he saw a stranger wearing corduroy trousers, brown, and instantly recalled a carpet from his past. It was in his grandmother’s house and the carpet looked like it came from the body beard of Bigfoot. Seeing this mans face, O. saw a beard that would have looked at home on a burns victim. Hair grew from the stranger’s plastic pink flesh like weeds from concrete.

Children He was raised in a houseboat, surrounded by weeds. He was bullied at school by other children. They would say: your mother and father live on a houseboat surrounded by weeds! They saw the toys O. played with said how much better their toys were. He played with toy trucks, wooden dolls. So one day, O. read books on diseases. He dreamt about infecting the other children at school with influenza. He wanted to see them sweat, to see their eyes loll in their head, see their eyes turn to comical x’s and their tongues stick out of their mouths. O. settled on the French Pox, otherwise known as syphilis. This was the first time he managed to change his form. He turned into the disease and flew down the ear canal of his bullies. He entered their bloodstream and multiplied. Many years later, these school children had a transformation of their own. Their heads, once of conventional human shape, was now like a bag of oranges turned upside down. The children – now

teenagers, nearly adults – had tertiary syphilis. Noses dropped off, faces caved in, lesions appeared and bled, sores appeared so wet on their skin that it looks like their bodies were stuffed with fresh jam.

Departure There were no more young people left for O. to converse with. He was eighteen and he packed his bags. He left. Inside his bags, he took clothes, a water bottle, a book. He took on the form of various personalities to keep himself company along his journey. He fragmented his own self into little pieces – similar to the canapé act in Prague – and talked to his own selves. He never returned home, to his parents, to that houseboat surrounded by weeds.

Chairs A collection of chairs with uncommon names: divans, ottomans, poofs, Barcelona chairs, a bergère, a caquetoire, a hassock, several tuffets, a disused electric chair, a fauteuil and a throne. The house was less of a house and more of a warehouse, large and cobwebbed. O. sits in the warehouse and talks to several versions of his own self. He wants a companion in life – a woman – but is this the place to bring a woman? He thinks perhaps a woman would look pretty sat upon the far right tuffet by the window.

Bowling Solitude is an affliction best solved with constant bowling, remarked O. to nobody in his warehouse of chairs.

Forehead Just to the left of his forehead, a scar. What year did he get this? Was it 1993? Did his father do it? Does he feel it with his left hand? In his times of solitude, does he think about it? No.

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WALKING AROUND THE TAR PITS WITH THE GHOST OF JACK KEROUAC Justin Karcher

The world was beginning to change in ways of loneliness, But you never lost sight of the star-struck apes who died From complications due to cirrhosis of the pillow, When the head is unable to replace damaged dream cells Lost from too many nights of life not looking as rosy

As it probably should, like how we’re always being chased Through the streets by bankers with machetes or like how Our ears are haunted by the groans of the hospitalized Midwest Or like how a big chunk of our bodies is permanently chilled By a cold that originated in a Viking ship and spread like wildfire Into the genetic determinants of every family in the Americas.

This is a brutal wasteland ruled by intoxicated angels with clay throats, Funded by big tragic caricatures and their great white meth fields, Where the vast majority of us spend holidays alone in abandoned buildings Or attics or in caves, where the sound of the blood flow is a shush Louder than a vacuum cleaner.

Most nights I see you riding through valleys too desolate for the things you love, 3,000 miles of scrapbooking with bleeding fingers, Investing in a style bristling with shameful secrets, Just to prove that America’s still possessed by a magic, with sun, sea, and surfers, Filled with exotic flora and fauna, and although the loneliness May be more advanced these days, you can still snowboard down a firework Without blowing your arterial savings.

There’s a magical place in America’s heart full of miniatures And blissful folk paintings, some Winslow Homers, bathtubs Brimming with trout, abstract oil paintings based on Cape Cod, And this is where I’ll probably find you, toiling away amid

The looming maypoles and decaying bungalows, your lips Glued to an antique typewriter, telegram fonts drowning In your homesick saliva. Does it still hurt like hell, hurt like A bloody, festering wound – this American Dream of yours?

Because it’s hurting me I think and the antidepressants aren’t enough. The Millennial generation coming of age nowadays is on a Whirlwind tour across the dirtiest cities in America, Walking around the tar pits looking for an excellent collection Of fossils, such as shells or bones, hoping the organisms of long ago Can teach us something about happiness. We’re still in love With the American Dream.

And yet, dreaming is almost laughably predictable –

Grappling with grieving wind to find your missing parts Until itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s time to eat something.

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THIRTEEN CANDLES Sylvia Schwartz

It’s my thirteenth birthday and I’m officially a teenager, so my mom made my cake bigger. That’s supposed to be a big deal, because I’m on a diet. I’m always on a diet. This month I’m not supposed to eat white food. White bread. White potatoes (red ones are okay, ‘cause Mom said they’re smaller). No white sugar. No whipped cream. And no cauliflower (though I don’t consider this food and I don’t bother telling her this). My cake is brown, made from molasses, I had wanted chocolate. But as Mom often says, “wishing won’t make it so.”

" I don’t know where people come up with half of what they say. "

Those kids who claim “school-year birthdays are best” are all wrong. I would rather my birthday was in the summer when no one was around to know about it. During the school year everyone makes a fuss over the popular kids’ birthdays. When I was little, their parents would send them off to school with cupcakes or cookies and these cool kids would pretend to hate all the attention. But everyone knew they loved it. Everyone who’s not cool wishes they were. That’s just the way it is. Now the cool kids get sent to detention and that makes them even cooler. I tried to get sent to detention, but teachers know my mom is PTA president, so it’s no use. Besides, teachers like me. I wear granny glasses, so they think I’m smarter than I am. I wish I had contacts.

Just before my birthday, my mom took me out shopping for a new bra. I haven’t “developed” any since our recent training-bra shopping days, but Mom thought it will be good for me. Like somehow my chubby boy’s body will transform at the sight of padded C cups. She wishes I looked more like her. I like that boys don’t look at me the way they do other girls. She says this will change some day.

" I’m never sure what to believe. "

My teacher said I’d be perfect for the leading role in our school play. It’s about a shy, awkward girl. Even my few friends tried to encourage me. But my father was worried I’d blow my lines. And Mom said there’s nothing worse than failing in public. So I didn’t take that part. I took the other part. The one with more lines. The role of the woman who helps the shy girl out. No one thought this was a good idea. But in the end, everyone clapped. My father told the teacher I took after him, that he had acted in high school. Mother wished I’d worn a different dress.

Sometimes when I’m alone in my room, I think about what might have been. What if I’d grown up with different parents or had aunts and uncles and cousins or even grandparents. What if I had brothers and sisters and I was the big sister—the high school cheerleader with my skinny body posed up in the air doing the splits. My thick blond mane, clear skin and toothy smile beaming down a single, burning ray of sun. And then, somehow, I’m rising higher in the sky that has become night, and I’m now a star: the beginning of matter with all the particles we are composed of in its purest form—before everything, even the beginning of thought.

Back on earth, though, I hear my father say, “make a wish.” My thin candles are dripping and if I don’t blow them out soon wax will clump at the bottom and Mom hates that. The candles were lit at nineteen hundred hours. My father likes military time. He wishes everyone would adopt it. Mom and I are supposed to say seven o’clock only when we mean a.m. Father claims to be confused when we say dinner is at six.

At nineteen hundred hours and thirty seconds, I haven’t thought of a wish. Not that there aren’t things I want. But it’s hard to find that one single wish you want for the whole year, especially when thirteen candles are dying. I don’t want to make the wrong wish, so I blow them out without asking for anything. In my head I hear my mother’s voice, “wishing won’t make it so.”

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BECAUSE NO ONE READS IT  Tom Loughlin I have been searching in vain lately for some inspiration, something that will punch through this writer’s block, something that will spark in my brain and set me to the keyboard, pounding away at it like it was a Las Vegas whore. But when something does come to mind, I get to that keyboard, get maybe a paragraph or two in, and pfffftt - my brain goes limp-dick on me, and I can’t perform. At least the keyboard doesn’t ask for $100.

It wasn’t until maybe a week or so ago that I began to get a glimmer of why this has been so. It’s because I feel that my stuff doesn’t matter, and that’s frustrating and depressing. No one will read it. I don’t mean “no one” in the absolute sense. Some people, of course, will read it. The editors will read it. Some of the other writers in this publication will read it. So when I say “no one reads it,” what I mean is that no one outside of my small circle of acquaintances reads it. There is no larger audience for my stuff.

The major issue facing art and artists today is that we are creating art for no one other than those like ourselves. As a result, art is losing any currency or value in our larger society. What I see happening today is that we have decided that we, as artists, should be our own audience, and we make no effort to contact those with our work beyond our familiar circle of personal artistic acquaintances. All we really want to do these days is impress our artistic friends with our art or plays or poetry. There is little interest among artists of any stripe to reach out and find some way to connect with people who do not have art in their lives, who are outside our lives. It’s just become a matter of scoring points with our artist colleagues.

If you’re reading this, the chances are you’re an artist of some sort - poet, writer, musician, actor, painter. But I wish you weren’t. I wish you were an auto mechanic, or a baker, or a WalMart employee, or a butcher, or ran a dry cleaning business. Because that’s really for whom I’d like to write, or act, or paint, or sing. I would like any art I create to affect those whose lives need art of some sort to help them ponder questions they have about life, distract them for a few hours from their troubles, help them put the world they live in into some sort of context. To be sure, artists need these things as well, but so do the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick-maker. Yet they are not the people artists are primarily thinking of when they create art.

It is discouraging to realize at some point that nobody reads your stuff, nobody comes to see your plays, nobody comes to hear your songs. But I think it’s symptomatic of a larger social transformation that is taking place. I grew up at a time when there was an actual audience for art. There was a time when people could read a piece in Life magazine written by Ernest Hemingway. The Saturday Evening Post with the Norman Rockwell covers had everybody from John Steinbeck to Louis L’Amour. If your tastes were just a bit higher or more ambitious, you had the New Yorker with John Cheever, Alice Munro, Eudora Welty, or Kurt Vonnegut. Whatever you may think of the term “middlebrow,” there was at least a passing acquaintance by most Americans with art.

Because today we refuse to create art for audiences other than ourselves, they are naturally drifting away. The data bears this out. The National Endowment for the Arts has conducted a periodic survey for many years entitled Survey of Public Participation in the Arts. The latest one was released in 2009, and this past February a document came out summarizing the decade from 2002-2012. Some quotes from the executive summary:

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Since 1982, the SPPA has tracked adult attendance at jazz events, classical music performances, opera, musical plays, non-musical plays, ballet, and art museums or galleries. These activities are called “benchmark” because participation in them has been tracked since 1982, not because of any differential significance or value to the arts. Since 2002, adult attendance rates have declined for [the] core set of arts activities tracked consistently by the NEA. Thirty-three percent of adults attended one of those selected activities in 2012, compared with 39 percent a decade earlier. The declines were steepest for non-Hispanic whites, adults from 35 to 54 years of age, and higher educated adults (those with at least “some” college education).

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Older Americans emerge as the only demographic group to have experienced increases in attending live visual and performing arts activities over the last decade. (bold in original)

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71 percent of Americans used electronic media to watch or listen to art

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Poetry-reading has seen a sharp decline (from 12 percent to 7 percent over the decade)

As noted, the one place where arts participation has increased is through use of electronic media. But that is a broad measurement, and it includes television and radio as well as the movies. What kind of art they are watching on electronic media is also a bit unclear.

Two thoughts hit me when I consider this question. One is that this is generational. Art was a rarer commodity when I was growing up. There wasn’t that much of it, relatively speaking. Today, art is everywhere, and mass media makes the distribution of art ubiquitous. Perhaps I am sensing that no one will read my stuff simply because it will just get buried under the mountains of stuff out there. In this day and age, what would ever set my stuff apart to make it worthy of reading beyond the goodness of friends or the kindness of strangers?

This idea leads to a second thought, and that is that art has no impact today. It does not seem to matter how important artists may think art is. The fact is that art has little impact on anything today. It skims around the edges of society like fringe on a pillow; decorative, but of no value. Artists have, whether they are aware of it or not, surrendered their ability to have any impact on society by disengaging themselves from their neighbors, and not considering at all what kind of art they could produce for them. We have surrendered our audiences in favor of praise from our peers. We have surrendered to the segmentation and polarization of modern culture.

So it is that every essay that forms in my mind these days goes limp because the answer to the question “Why write this?” is always “Don’t bother. It doesn’t matter. No one will read it.” Like sex with that Las Vegas whore, tapping the keys seems pointless, useless, passionless. Best now just to slink home, curl up with a little Sam Beckett, and...wait.

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EIGHTY-FIVE DAYS Dennis Milam Bensie

I guess you could say it was planned. The UPS man brought me the package while I was still in my nightgown, but I was ready. Inside the small shipping crate was a custom little baby boy named Lyle, painstakingly airbrushed and rooted by an artist so he would look like the real thing.

He was a perfect blend of me and “Van’s” skin, eyes, and hair. I call the man from the van “Van” now. He wasn't going to be around to help me raise the baby and I refused to answer any questions about him. My focus back then was on being a good mom.

Once I had Lyle, I put my family and friends are on the back burner: no calls or visits. If I didn't understand what was going on, how would they?

I believed in Lyle from the moment I opened the box. I remember swaddling him in my arms and taking him into the spare bedroom that I just turned into a nursery. I had painted and made new curtains. The crib, changing table, and rocking chair were from Ikea. A nice young man had to help me load the stuff into the truck I rented. People are always so helpful when you’re shopping for baby stuff.

In the beginning, I bonded with my baby boy twenty-four hours a day. It was a rewarding experience for me to bathe him and change his diapers. I loved to sing cute little songs. There was a tiny closet full of tiny clothes. I had plenty of knit booties in happy colors on hand.

The point of Lyle was to appear normal. I paid special attention when I put him in his car seat, or when we went out in his stroller. One day at the park, an older woman came up to admire my baby. She cooed him (which I wanted) but she saw the paint and rooting and gave me a dirty look. It didn’t register in my head. The same thing started happening in the grocery store every time we went. I wasn't exactly pretending; I really did believe I was a mom and learned to block out anything to the contrary.

Things were always rough for me at night. I couldn’t bear to put Lyle down in his new crib so he slept beside me in my queen sized bed. I could hear him cry and it made me cry. It was soothing in an “if a tree falls in the forest” kind of way. My son was already teaching me new things.

I know you think I'm crazy. I can own that now. The things in my head didn’t always connect or make sense, even to me. I think it’s good now for me to share my story.

You see, When I found out I was pregnant two years ago, I was in denial for a while; almost too long. Only recently did I look at a calendar and figure out that I carried Van’s child for eighty-five days before I got an abortion. The next thing I knew, I was pretending to be a mom to Lyle. I guess I needed to have the baby I didn’t have. I got lost in the “what if’s”.

It took a while, but I started seeing Van in the doll’s rooted eyelashes and glass eyes. I saw the face of the man who beat me and raped me in that van. That must be why I bought a doll that looked like Van, but I didn’t know that yet.

Something blocked me from getting angry at Van. I was hollow and confused right through the abortion, which I barely even remember. There was no rage or any grieving and things weren’t getting any better. I actually thought for a long time that I didn’t have an abortion; I thought I imagined it.

You know what’s funny? I didn’t even like dolls when I was a little girl. I was going through this rewind and redefine process. Does any of this make sense?

So one day, I caught myself squeezing the doll’s head without really knowing it. Air came out of a seam around it’s neck —just like Van choked and tried to squeeze the air out of me. I became completely furious with the baby, and it felt right. I kind of woke up with a doll and a room full of baby furniture. All of a sudden, I could feel everything I didn’t get to feel before.

I remember Van spitting on his hand before he raped me. It was disgusting and I threw up in my mouth when he did that. Standing there in the nursery, I almost threw up on the baby doll.

I went from loving the doll with all my might one moment, to wanting to kill it the next. Suddenly I was this angry woman I had never met. I went over to the window and ripped the baby curtains down as hard as I could and left the nursery. I was done with all the denial and pretending that men put me through.

That’s my only explanation for that period of my life. An explanation isn’t an apology, is it? I don’t apologize for anything I did.

It was easy to donate all the baby furniture to a woman’s shelter and repaint the room. But I was left with this doll. I couldn’t just throw it away. I didn’t want it to go to a thrift store where it’ll be given a price tag and thrown on a shelf with a bunch of other dolls. There was more to this doll than that.

" This doll needed to be reborn. "

I carefully dress him in the best outfit he had and placed him in a discreet box with a blue ribbon. I drove to a nearby firehouse and secretly placed the box on the front steps. I was sure they’d know what to do.

" " " 21

CALL ME WHEN THE BIRDS COME HOME Ishani Sen

Can you feel it? The cutting Edge of gilded cardboard crowns Base theories and complex laws Built with towering spires intended to last An age.

Echoing rings of silver bells Remembering flushed cheeks gaunt And slaughtered lambs And the ripping of flowers from Gentle, dewy soil.

Speaking of ethics and laws And rights and freedom Yet every shadow torn Choking, throttling, clawing Smoke from a fire penetrating Bursting lungs.

Devoid, bereft, Empress of a perishing land. Leaden clouds and smothering walls, This Is paradise.

" "

" 22

15 SCREWDRIVERS Mitchell Grabois

Rodney’s kids come, son and daughter, obviously in hate with all humanity, both hurlin’ eye daggers at me. I escape across the road to Dan Connolly’s bar, not wanting to get nicked, my pitiful wrinkly body needin’ all its blood. Walking rap sheets, those two.

Connolly sees me come in, starts up with the O'Danny Boy, then slides quick into Irish Eyes, and when he finally stops I’ve downed the first of the Old Bushmills he sets down on the house, on account of me being a widow and him pals with my dead husband.

" What's up, he asks. " I say: Rodney's kids upstairs, bangin' 'round. "

We look out the window at the daughter pushing a blue dumpster direct under my apartment window, puttin’ her broad back into it. Then the torrent begins, the son throwin’ his dad’s comic books out the window. Dan Connolly rushes to the door, throws it open, yells, Hey! Them's worth money! Your dad collected thirty years.

Fuck you, you worthless old fart, yells the son from the window, throwin’ out another armload, missing the wide mouth of the dumpster. Even the possibility of money is not enough to keep the oaf from trashin’ his old man, now he’s finally got the chance free and clear.

Dan Connolly rushes down the bar, grabs his sawed-off, but I head him off, say, Whoa Seabiscuit, you get put in jail, who pours my Bushmills?

He stands there breathin’ hard. I start countin’ the breaths. When I get to 38, he lets the gun slump like erectile dysfunction, goes behind the bar, changes the TV channel. I dislike that Judge Judy, he says.

Then the door flies open, the son standing there all lit up from behind. He yells at me: I want your saggy ass out of that apartment by sundown.

" That's my apartment, I scream. Been payin' the rent from the get-go. " As I finish, Dan Connolly comes out from behind the bar with his sawed-off. " "

So after Connolly’s closes, I start frequenting Bill McNalley’s, a dark, sour joint. Dick the bartender keeps my emptied glasses on the bar, tryin’ to prove to any stranger that this old lady is a drunk and a loser and anyone could beat me at bumper pool. 15 screwdrivers, down to ice and o.j sludge. My attention hung crystalline on the red and white balls, my bag of quarters keeping Roberta Flack my bitch, killing the bastard softly on and on.

My opponents clunk, like balls down the hole, red and white. My empty glasses line up on the bar like bums at Salvation Army, waiting on a meal. McNally’s regulars strong-arm the losers if they think they can welsh on a barely standing drunk, and an old lady to boot. I’m buyin’ drinks for everyone off my

winnings, as usual. Amazing how many losers come in off the street. I switch the box to Marlene Dietrich.

" "

" 24

PICTURES OF KITTIES Lynn White

Look at all the people marching and waving, waving pencils and pictures of pencils. Millions and millions marching with pencils, asserting their values, showing their power and paying their respects to the drawers.

But it's not what it seems. say the sideline snipers, the underminers, the false flag wavers, the pencil baiters, Je Suis Fuck All-ers.

They're pencilled pawns, just part of the plans of the Old Pretenders, the liars and haters, the manipulators, the plotters and schemers, the money makers. The bullets were blanks and, the dead, if dead, not heros. Say the sideline snipers, the underminers, the false flag wavers, the pencil baiters, Je Suis Fuck All-ers.

Look who's leading from the front line. It's the Old Pretenders, the liars and haters, standing together to protect each other. Proof enough? What more do you need. But it's not what it seems. It's a trick of the camera, another pretence to diminish the distance between them and us, between them and the leaders behind them the pencil wavers, the movers and shakers, the history makers. Not so say the snipers, the underminers, know better than you-ers, Je Suis Fuck All-ers.

They say nothing of Gaza, those pencil wavers, or climate, or oil, or this, that, or those.

And if they can't speak for all things, then they are speaking for nothing, so it won't matter if, tired by the baiters they go home and draw cats till their pencils are blunt and all is back to where it was with a bit more hate around.

But look at the smiles from the Old Pretenders, the liars and haters, the leadership fakers, Je Suis Fuck All-ers who love to look at pictures of kitties.

" "   "

USE SIMULTANEOUSLY Trish Hopkinson

Malleable mountains of data, like Tetris blocks, squeeze, stack and reorder as the un-seeable, the branching logic structures of tiny people—numbers of educated consumers, slickly rendered technology. That weird, beautiful organism of information carrying capacity, of top ten lists, of Oscar winners, and bullshit detectors. It makes you gasp. The inkblots, the NYC foot traffic, the trinkets, the empty calories, the inbuilt ability to parse only some of life’s problems— the parody of rationality. The visual seduction and the welcomed excuse, the pleasure of data sets, the thrill of infographics things, in four-page foldouts of glossy magazines. The geek rapture and the danger of losing, of being burned by flowcharts and figures… (We don’t use Rolodexes anymore.) Hidden patterns found in blocks and bloodstains, things and concepts turn to visual metaphors by any other means, by no other medium. Self-evident and simply disarming, in a rainfall like hard liquor, like instant revelation, it snakes into the senses, importing the worldview into its root system, the decision tree.

SYMPATHY SYMPTOMS Wanda Morrow Clevenger

there’s a settlement in our future that will make your black lung money look like gumball change I remind between the antidepressant and Ativan

the side effects make me queasy and my legs ache

the first time you stood, on legs stripped to the bone you puked

it’s almost like you’re the pregnant one and I have sympathy symptoms

and I’d laugh and maybe you’d laugh too if we could

so let’s make a pack I survive you survive and we laugh ourselves to death

" "

" 27

FLAT FOOT Paul Hanson Clark

i like to lie freakishly still when i realize there is a sky

the ocean around me keeps getting bigger & deeper & blue tell ira what a stone should say

like i wonder what my stone should say like i wonder how hard a stone is & i cry

" because i stayed "

under the sky another summer with all these buckets of water

& i stay in my bed

my face is very salty now i am a well seasoned goose

however you tell people about me don't ever call me

by my name there are too many

like paul or like anyone in my mind

listen-i-was-screaming in my car, about

" about it all being a black wall of noise " i was screaming about my nerves fucking up everything

about being alone about hating ointment

the truth is my buckets are a stack of memory cards

things that feel slippery & sharp

they burn being poured

like a very tiny boy because i thought he might have a gun

each time i said anything i thought i might have a gun

i'm obsessed with everything & the stars i see them in

but here i can only feel that motion is stupid

" " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " "

CRUMBS FOR CROWS Baisali Chatterjee Dutt

I remember my dad feeding the crows religiously. Every day. He was not as fastidious with his daily prayers as he was with their feeding.

Puffed rice, stale rotis, slices of bread, even bits of his own biscuits... Every morning, before he sat down with his morning cuppa and newspaper, he would first feed the crows.

Some say they – these crows – house the souls of our ancestors. Some say they are our dear departed come to live with us for a year before they move on to a new body; like watchdogs from purgatory.

Baba said that they were just hungry creatures who needed a few crumbs. That’s all. Just a few crumbs.

" I agreed. " But he never sounded too convinced. "

A few days after baba died, I remember crying myself into a state of hunger. I went to the kitchen looking for biscuits.

A crow came and sat down at the window sill. It didn’t caw. It didn’t scratch.

It didn’t make a peep. It just sat there looking at me with soulful eyes.

I gave it my biscuit. I gave it my biscuit the next day and the next, and the next, and the day after that as well.

Sometimes I would give it cake, sweets pizza crusts. Once, I even left some biriyani for it outside.

And it would always look at me with soulful eyes before swooping down and carrying those few crumbs away.

A year after my baba died, the silent crow with soulful eyes, stopped coming.

Is there life after purgatory?

Will the answer cost me a few crumbs?

" " " "

" 31

HOARDERS Mitchell Grabois

He was a hoarder. Among all the other shit, he kept every birthday, Father’s Day and Xmas card I ever sent him. There’s my signature a thousand times, under Hallmark drivel, a sixty year river of empty sentiment, emptying into the dead ocean in which his ashes now live.

My sister Cheryl has forgotten her life as a homeless person, how I found her sitting on the damp sidewalk, leaning against the grimy brick side of a factory, cradling an old black dress shoe, size fourteen, as if it were her dead baby.

" " " " " " " " " "

LIGHT OF AMERICA Luis Neer

" "

for William S. Burroughs

hatred and pride which we were created to inflict upon the earth will flow into the lungs and mouth with the unruffled serenity of cigarette smoke eternally born, the human mechanism to follow

thus millions of men and women and children engineer their own prophet, from fear and the numb brain of multitudes—

a poison Christ: America.

I’m feeling insecure. I’m out of coffee, world behind a cage the pagan emperors are dancing their fire dance.

see this terrible battle: America at work and the American millions singing their ‘Great American Men’ their sleeping Hitlers and 143,000,000 Hitlers undiscovered

" I cry my love for the frostbitten flowers, "

soldiers of beauty under that cruel winter: America America, Cold mechanical God America.

" " New Cumberland, WV 2015 " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " 33

FINAL CALL Sylvia Schwartz

Last night, a friend jumped off the George Washington Bridge to say enough is enough. The extended spin cycle is on and the Maytag washing machine wobbles and bangs against the walls. It feels like it will go on forever. Lazarus, my shelter cat, slowly wakes. His lithe body stretches farther than humanly possible. There are some things humans are not meant to do. Not supposed to do. Just moments ago he was a ball, curled up, happily, on the window’s ledge. When my friend called last night from New York, he said he wanted to reminisce about the old college days. To laugh about goofy times. But they didn’t seem funny to me any more. I was glued to my work. I was worried about a deadline. I said, I don’t have time. He told me he was drinking a beer. Imported. From Germany. I told him I was drinking wine. Domestic. From California. We laughed. My TV was droning on in the background. I meant to get up to turn it off. I kept looking for the remote. Why are we always losing things? The Maytag has finally stopped, everything’s wrung out. One day it will die. I don’t care what that repairman commercial says. Commercials lie. It was a Heineken commercial that aired while we talked. I told him, I like the music. He said he knew the tagline: Open Your World. It was the beer he was drinking. He said, it’s good. I believed him. My cat jumps down from his perch. He lands so gracefully. Barely a sound. I have my TV set to mute. I told him, it’s hard to hear him.

He said it was his cell phone reception. He said he was outside. He said, it’s windy. I told him, it’s raining here. I was happy. It hardly ever rains in LA. It’s not raining now. It’s sunny. You can’t even tell it rained. No trace of it anywhere. The cell phone call dropped. I left a message for him to call me back. To call from his landline when he got home. My cat has come to curl up at my feet. I pick him up. He lets me. He knows I’d never let him fall. But what does he really know? He’s just an old shelter cat.

" "

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Editorial Staff EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Jordan Rizzieri is the 90's-loving, extremely tall founder of The Rain, Party, & Disaster Society. After having a brief love affair with Western New York, Jordan now resides on Long Island, NY. She holds a degree from SUNY Fredonia in Theatre Arts (aka lying before an audience) with a minor in English (aka lying on paper). Jordan became her mother's primary caregiver in 2011, a role she held for for three years. She has been running a caregiver's blog on her experiences as well as publishing essays on the topic. Now, Jordan spends her daylight hours working on RP&D and arguing with her boyfriend's cats. At night she takes on the identity of pro wrestling's sassiest critic, The Lady J. When she's not trimming her bangs or trying to decide what to order at the local bagel shop, she is listening to Prince and writing letters to her pen pals. Feel free to contact her with questions about the Attitude Era, The Twilight Zone, comic book plot lines involving Harley Quinn, and the proper spelling of "braciola".

NON-FICTION EDITOR Jennifer Lombardo, Buffalo, NY resident, works full time at a hotel in order to support her travel habit. She graduated from the University at Buffalo with a B.A. in English in the hope of becoming an editor. When she isn't making room reservations for people, she reads, cross-stitches and goes adventuring with her friends. She is especially passionate about AmeriCorps, Doctor Who and the great outdoors. Ask her any question about grammar, but don't count on her to do math correctly.

FICTION EDITOR Adam Robinson is an aspiring writer and barista languidly skulking the wetland void of Western Michigan. Following acceptance in 2012 to Grand Rapids' Kendall College of art and design in pursuit of an education in graphic art, his love for language and literature was made priority. Now, an English major on sporadically perpetual hiatus, you can most often find him pulling shots of espresso, keying long paragraphs in the dark, secluded corner of a local café, or taking lengthy walks through the dense Michigan woods conveniently placed in his own backyard. Monotoned, fond of the semicolon and existentialist literature; listen closely and you can sometimes hear him beseech advice from the ghost of Dostoevsky (who tends not to reply).

"POETRY EDITOR Bee "Internet Coquette" Walsh is a New York-native living in

Bedford–Stuyvesant. She graduated from SUNY Fredonia in 2010 with a B.A. in English Literature and a B.S. in International Peace and Conflict Resolution. Reciting her two majors and two minors all in one breath was a joke she told at parties. The English Department played a cruel trick on her and pioneered a Creative Writing track her final year, but she charmed her way into the Publishing course and became Poetry Editor for the school’s literary magazine, The Trident. Bee has spent the past three years trying different cities on for size and staring into the faces of people in each of them who ask her about her "career goals." An Executive Assistant in high-fashion by day, you can find her most nights working with the V-Day team to stop sexual violence against women and young girls, eating vegan sushi in the West Village or causing mischief on roofs. Run into her on the subway, and she'll be nose deep in a book. She holds deep feelings about politics, poise, and permutations. Eagerly awaiting winter weather and warm jackets, she’d love to talk to you about fourth-wave feminism, the tattoo of the vagina on her finger, or the Oxford comma.

ASSISTANT POETRY EDITOR Wilson Josephson splits his time between the backwoods of New Hampshire and Northfield, Minnesota, where he attends Carleton College. Wilson spends the majority of his waking hours swimming back and forth over a line of black tiles, so he spends any dry hours he can scrounge up flexing his creative muscles. His prose and his poetry have appeared in Carleton’s literary magazine, he regularly performs in the student dance company, and he even directed a play once. Wilson is also the laziest of all the founding members of Literary Starbucks, and he still writes jokes about obscure literary figures when he has a little free time. His newest passion is making people laugh, usually by making himself the punchline, occasionally via the clever deployment of a slippery banana peel.

SOCIAL MEDIA MISTRESS Kaity Davie is an overly enthusiastic gal taking on the world of the ever-evolving music industry, talking music by day and lurking venues, NYC parks, and pubic libraries by night. Currently, she makes magic happen across a number of social networks for a number of bands, brands, and writers. After having several poems published in The Rain, Party, & Disaster Society, she began managing their social accounts in early 2015. Kaity keeps her sanity by writing rambling lines of prose and celebrating the seasonal flavors of Polar Seltzer.

" " " " " " " " " " " " " " " "

Contributors  Sylvia Schwartz is a marketing consultant who lives in Hoboken, NJ, and is studying literary fiction at the Writers Studio in New York.

Howie Good, a journalism professor at SUNY at New Paltz, is the author of several poetry collections, including most recently Beautiful Decay and The Cruel Radiance of What Is from Another New Calligraphy and Fugitive Pieces from Right Hand Pointing Press. He co-edits White Knuckle Press with Dale Wisely and plays the ukulele with enthusiasm if not inborn ability.

Ben Johnson is a UK poet based in New Milton on the edge of the New Forest with work published online and in print at "Ink, Sweat and Tears, Ghazal Pages, Kwartalnik, Antiphon, Not Only the Dark, Making Contact". In 2013 Ben was one of three poets to win the Fermoy International Poetry Prize and more recently his poem 'Selkie' was Most Highly Commended in the Bristol Poetry Prize 2015.

Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois has had over seven hundred of his poems and fictions appear in literary magazines in the U.S. and abroad. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize for work published in 2012, 2013, and 2014. His novel, Two-Headed Dog, based on his work as a clinical psychologist in a state hospital, is available for Kindle and Nook, or as a print edition. He lives in Denver.

Natalie Tinney is 50% Canadian, 50% Peruvian, but was not born in either of those countries. She is in her fifth year of medical school at Cayetano Heredia University in Lima, Peru. Natalie is an avid backpacker and aspires to complete a residency in either Ophthalmology or Psychiatry, either of which she believes will help her patients improve the way they see the world.

Jennifer E. Hudgens, originally from Oklahoma City has been published in some stuff and is currently pursuing her Bachelor’s degree in Creative Writing at the University of Central Oklahoma. She thinks life is poetry if you’re paying attention. Jennifer watches the sky the way most people watch television. She is terrified of clowns, horses, and animatronic toys. She genuinely hopes you enjoy her poems.

Leah Mueller is an independent writer from the rain-drenched woods of western Washington. Her work has appeared in many publications with doomsday names: Dirty Chai, Bop Dead City, Crisis Chronicles, Terminal Books, and Writing Raw. She was one of the 2012 winners of the annual Wergle Flomp humor poetry contest, sponsored by Winning Writers. Leah enjoys yoga, off-season travels to places like Cleveland in March and Tucson in July, and anything water-related. Oliver Zarandi is a writer and editor of Funhouse Lit. Most recently his work has appeared in Potluck, The Quietus, DrDoctor, HTMLGIANT, Hobart and thenewerYork. His work can be found on his website.

Justin Karcher lives in Buffalo, NY. Recent works have appeared in Crab Fat Literary Magazine, Mixtape Methodology, Maudlin House, and Every Writer. He is the winner of Just Buffalo Literary Center’s 7th Annual Members’ Writing Contest & Reading.

Sylvia Schwartz is a marketing consultant who lives in Hoboken, NJ, and is studying literary fiction at the Writers Studio in New York.

Tom Loughlin lives in the economically depressed city of Dunkirk NY, on the shores of beautiful but polluted Lake Erie. He works on occasion with the theatre community in Buffalo NY. He has a few more

years left teaching at the State University of NY at Fredonia.

Dennis Milam Bensie has two books published through Coffeetown Press (SHORN: TOYS TO MEN and ONE GAY AMERICAN). His short stories and poetry have been featured in numerous periodicals. He has also contributed to The Good Men Project and The Huffington Post. His third books, entitled FLIT: A POETRY MASHUP OF CLASSIC LITERATURE will be released next October. You can learn more about his work on his website.

Ishani Sen is a 17 year old aspiring writer currently based in the Middle East. She enjoys writing and aims to have a published collection one day. She is passionate about instrumental music, sleeping and fantasy fiction. Read more at http://ishanisen.com

Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality. Her poem 'A Rose For Gaza' was shortlisted for the Theatre Cloud 'War Poetry for Today' competition in October 2014 and has since been published in the ‘Poetry For Change Anthology by Vending Machine Press. Poems have also recently been included, or are forthcoming, in Harbinger Asylum's 'A Moment To Live By' anthology, Stacey Savage's ‘We Are Poetry an Anthology of Love poems’, In The World Of Womyn’s ‘She Did It Anyway’ anthology and Weasel Press anthology, ‘Degenerates: Voices For Peace’ an various on line and print journals.

Trish Hopkinson has always loved words—in fact, her mother tells everyone she was born with a pen in her hand. She has two chapbooks Emissions and Pieced Into Treetops has been published in several anthologies and journals, including The Found Poetry Review, Chagrin River Review, and Reconnaissance Magazine. She is a project manager by profession and resides in Utah with her handsome husband and their two outstanding children. You can follow her poetry adventures on her website or on her Facebook page.

Wanda Morrow Clevenger lives in Hettick, IL – population 200 give or take. She has published over 300 pieces of work in 114 print and electronic publications. Her debut book This Same Small Town in Each of Us (Edgar & Lenore’s Publishing House) released in October 2011. A full-length poetry manuscript is currently stalking unsuspecting presses.

Paul Hanson Clark is from Nebraska. He tweets at @paulhansonclark and tumbls at http:// uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.tumblr.com/.

Baisali Chatterjee Dutt is a writer, theatre artiste and children's drama facilitator, living, loving and working out of Calcutta, India. She blogs sporadically, which is code for 'in sudden fits of unlazy-like behaviour'. Her blogs can be found on Blogspot and Wordpress.

Luis Neer is a young writer of poetry and prose. His work appears/is forthcoming in Right Hand Pointing, The Write Room, Verse-Virtual, and previously in The Rain, Party & Disaster Society. An alumnus of the creative writing program at the 2014 West Virginia Governor’s School for the Arts, he attends high school in New Cumberland, West Virginia, where he lives.