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Table of Contents
Pg. 4 - TYPER, Mitchell Grabois Pg. 6 - THE ABORTION, Hiromi Yoshida Pg. 8 - SUPERHEROES, Terry Barr Pg. 9 - NIGHT AFTER NIGHT A PAPER CUP, Simon Perchik Pg. 10 - CHRISTMAS EVE ON THE RONKONKOMA LINE, Sheila Tzerman Pg. 11 - NEWS, Valentina Cano Pg. 12 - ON DEAF EARS, Eliza Webb Pg. 13 - HIS/HERS, Gabrielle Gilbert Pg. 15 - SYMPHONY NO. 9, Dmitri Bailey Pg. 16 - HOME, Tom Clatworthy Pg. 17 - CLARKSDALE, Carl Boon Pg. 18 - DIVIDED WE RISE, Ross Knapp Pg. 19 - (ĭn’də-vĭz’ə-bəl), Steve Bertolino Pg. 20 - GOOD MORNING DENVER, Zane Johnson Pg. 24 - UTAH’S PARADOX, Laurel Nakai Pg. 25 - WHY DO I WRITE BACKWARDS?, Dr. Mel Waldman Pg. 26 - SHE ROILS NOW, Vanesa Pacheco Pg. 27 - THE ICONIZATION OF ROSA PARKS, Hiromi Yoshida Pg. 28 - HEIRLOOM QUILT, Dmitri Bailey Pg. 29 - A DIFFERENT SORT OF SILENCE, Luis Neer Pg. 31 - EULOGY, Steve Bertolino Pg. 32 - DENSITY, Kaity Davie
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Pg. 33 - EDITORIAL STAFF Pg. 34 - CONTRIBUTOR BIOS
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TYPER Mitchell Grabois
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She read Bukowski She fancies herself a female Bukowski She threw the laptop her father gave her out the window went to the pawn shop and bought a typewriter what she calls a “typer” made me carry it home It must have weighed seventy-five pounds She said: no, it only weighs about 55 poems and a novel and a tube of smoked bologna She said: if you drop that I’ll strangle you right here on the sidewalk heavy with old ladies and dachshunds and alcoholics and my former lesbian lovers You don’t think I will? Why the fuck do you think
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I was in prison?
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THE ABORTION Hiromi Yoshida
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placentae of Red Seatide trailing umbilical
[cordless] parallel wakes carve flora of the unknown
[deep] fetal tissue bleeds guilt flush and rinse amniotic power | plush pulsate palpable dialectic dilate [indeterminate] dimensions diacritical prognosis of urinary
dialysis split- ting atoms along a long hairy razor's edge
[Determine point of incision.
Scalpel scrapes naked goose- flesh.] surgical paraphernalia dictate premature decision & ultrasound a song of drowning seamaidens & swallow
sickle- celled moons ripple epithelial horizons bloom stigmata & wild anemone Pap smear crustaceous blood; snatch a sticky trinket
feed the vultures of time
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cancer from the diaphanous damsel's heart &
clitoridec- tomy of
cutaneous membrane
(Speculum in saecorum)
twisted DNA helix weave chromo- somes [grid- lock]
diametric | opposition race along cardinal axes [of venial sin] mutate a Petri dish of blackbirds mingling the clink of tarnished coins in abortion clinic cash registers the clatter of high heels ricocheting down mimetic corridors of memory drowning in formaldehyde & stench of oblivion.
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SUPERHEROES Terry Barr
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Super Fox played the hits on WERC-AM and then WSGN the Big 610, Birmingham, back in the 70s. A friend of his, my former college roommate who was also a DJ himself, took me to Super Fox’s apartment late one Friday night. I couldn’t believe he was actually taking me to meet Super Fox. I was surprised when we got to the building, because my aunt and uncle lived just a couple of buildings over, and even more surprised to discover that Super Fox wasn’t home that night. But my former roommate decided that the Fox would just love us to come up anyway and wait. So he lithely scaled the balcony and let himself in through the sliding glass doors. He then smoothly opened the front door and I glided in. We waited for a while, and while my former roommate patiently examined the latest Rolling Stone, I learned a few things by looking around the apartment. One, as I nosed through Super Fox’s mail, I learned his real name: Glenn. Two, he was a neat freak, though he didn’t own much, and most of his furniture was milk crates and folding lawn chairs. I thought about all the years he had been playing the hits each night: “Radar Love,” “A Horse With No Name,” “The Night Chicago Died,” “Shannon,” and “Beach Baby.” He loved “Beach Baby.” That was First Class. And then there were his comic books. He had every Amazing Spider-Man all the way back to ‘62, each enclosed in its personal polyurethane bag and board. I looked through them all, and I thought long and I thought hard. And when my former roommate said we had to go, I made my decision. Issue 121. I wonder if he ever noticed. I listened to Glenn on the radio that next night and for many nights after. And when the station went all-sports the following year, I never heard his voice again.
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NIGHT AFTER NIGHT A PAPER CUP Simon Perchik
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Night after night a paper cup filled with hillside and the makeshift thirst
that won't move an inch keeps damp in an invisible mouth where oceans are buried
--there's no place to want --there's only take-out and the lid is already closed
though it leaves some room to lift the shoreline to your lips --this coffee is flowing
from a darkness suddenly homesick though you don't hear the mourners or the grass splash over one hand
and with the other you open the cup just to see what's inside as if black still counts for something.
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CHRISTMAS EVE ON THE RONKONKOMA LINE Sheila Tzerman
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I sit amongst Armani suits and carats wrapping ring fingers ‘round steamed lattes, with laptops open or flipping the NY Times, or deep in Dean Koontz.
Crosby’s creamy voice spills “White Christmas” from speakers like smooth eggnog. Macy’s bags burst with tartan red and green. They brush against my ragged jeans.
I scratch my oily scalp and a quick pick ticket from my pocket, wishing for a win as we whiz past this elm in East New York.
Through the glass, the icy sun winks on its frosted bow. Is God flirting with these crystals like daylight stars of Bethlehem?
So struck am I,
I almost miss the broken bricks of blight behind it, and the scorched foul frankincense of slum soot below.
Alas a scripture is whittled in its trunk, “Some people are so poor all they have is money.”
My eyes solidify on
shivering shadows, hoodies huddled beneath, like a family festively trading gifts of, sniffing glue and puffing weed and blowing bazooka.
Above, hang tinsel trappings of worn Nikes flung as a gang dangle, married to a pink plastic bag, whipping the wind like a poor kids kite.
The elm’s blistered feet buzz with used crack vials discarded needles, empty beer cans and soiled Trojans,
opened presents of a sort.
I shiver as we pass this elm in East New York
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The pus of two Christmases leaks
 between the porous window, infecting my faith.
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NEWS Valentina Cano
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The news were delivered over the phone, on a friend’s voice, over bored electric pulses. The words were as dark as coffee, with no pinprick of fault to pick at and enlarge until light stumbled in. They were as strong and indifferent as plastic bags slipped over her head.
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ON DEAF EARS Eliza Webb
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God – I need you now God – Please make a sound
Find me, hold me Guard me, let me breathe Lift me, cradle me Above Your wild blue seas
Take my small hand within Your own Let Your sun shine down Make your presence known
They say You’re in the trees – The rustling, the bustling Found as the wind, toying with the leaves
But, Lord, my branches are bare – My season feels done There is no bud I can spare, not even one
They say Your spirit filters through – Every crack, every cranny We are never friendless, never left without You
Where must I be hiding then – Cold without a blanket woven from Your protection? Loneliness floods here, not waves pouring over of affection
Desolately – My heart hums this prayer Desperately – I am alone and I am scared
Lord – I need You now Lord – Please Make any sound
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HIS/HERS Gabrielle Gilbert
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HIS There’s something warm about the sound carried out of a woman’s throat as instinct Of an animal in heat and the humidity still on her cheeks, they flush and burn over her nose, vehemently So as to drown her wailing piece by fragile piece Can ears be trained at her will? I’m beginning to doubt this eardrum It has missed that, that vicious tongue, violent teeth themselves chattering in her mouth, writing my sins downs by name Of all the sounds on earth or beyond, beyond self and body and bone with breath and revolt in swollen cheeks See me sit, listen, try to They try to drown her out that selfish instinct of man and she wails louder, longer with the gasp of 1000 women A tongue and teeth and swollen cheek, practically impossible to remove for there’s something warm Or almost sensual as heat rising through windows before doves die on the glass Today, tonight, to her It has missed me, over my head At home, here, where instinct in constantly bred In her throat. HERS There’s something warm about the sound carried out of a woman’s throat as instinct
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Of an animal defending her children and the crinkle in her nose, though temporary, suggests they take heed, man, heed over her back So as to commit her by memory pieces of her she confronts, pieces only her hands can feel I’m beginning to see her It will never be something I get used to that vicious tongue, violent teeth themselves chattering in her mouth, in my mouth writing our names with the same letters Of all of us or those who recognize us with breath and revolt in swollen cheeks See us, together
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SYMPHONY NO. 9 Dmitri Bailey
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We begin with indecision: That of a rotten tongue/slow walking Down a candle-lit corridor. Two men shake hands Cufflinks glinting in the ambient light Their pupils wide, jackets Not quite black We begin with indecision: Your grandmother’s lamp falls from a bedside table, You find yourself gliding down an unfamiliar street on your father’s bicycle Mud is caked to your distressed leather boots We begin with indecision: A sedative, a powerful opiate, poised at the end of a hypodermic needle Your grandmother’s lamp crashes against polished oak floorboards as your left brain Dislocates from your right. A strange void, the entire universe patiently waiting At the end of a hypodermic needle. Two men shake hands—
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Indecision—we begin With indecision: C minor, subtle vibrato One hell of a swing there… A student of general semantics Patiently waiting at the end of a candle-lit corridor What your mother might call “an eccentric hair-do” We begin here:::
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HOME Tom Clatworthy
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I have, as you wished, cleared the front garden of all flowers, of all shrubs and weeds, leaving only soil, paving slabs, one large plastic pot and two plastic hanging trays. Your petunias, those by the garage, were shrivelled and dying, as were your begonias - I have left them by the gates at the end of the road, with their mulch, straw and plastic chains. Eight or nine of your mother’s espresso cups are laid about, for I took coffee. I urinated by the pond, as you wished, in a hole by the steps at the side door, and again, later, against the trellis by the kitchen window. I slept by the car-lift and dreamt of your father.
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CLARKSDALE Carl Boon
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This is just a Mississippi day, a walk on the reeds, a thing bred near me where mansions stood. Bill hurt Mary
here, poor Bob died, and they’ve made a prison for possible things. A grove of pines makes ghosts
pause, or else laughter. In this place prayers are stirred, children pose near accidents, and tents
go up at dawn. Omens carve up magnolias, old meannesses of women and men
to whom visions were given and again stripped back. A crow rises, a dance begins in the churchyard.
Then we know the worst is possible; it waits where old wood fell, shudders when we walk.
So make love to the girl whose eyes glisten, whose dress recalls her grandmother. I’ll go
with a guitar I can’t play. I’ll watch the silos. I’ll remember the mud. I’ll be beautiful there.
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DIVIDED WE RISE Ross Knapp
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They say it’s the only social group besides Germans that’s still ok to bash mercilessly; to stereotype relentlessly into the shadows of the closet. To outright call Nazis while everyone still laughs along with the laugh track. Popular myths even still question its existence. It is merely what confused college students who are experimenting choose to call themselves. Surely it is just a stepping stone on the way to 100% gay or lesbian. This myth is even perpetuated strongly in some of the more dogmatic homosexual circles. And so the courageous rebel once again becomes the cruel dictator, possibly afraid to lose attention or power, or just afraid of what it also doesn’t understand. But why? Why must sexuality and human love be so black and white? Even after bisexual king Kinsey, there can be no grey? What about that scientific scale he made? Has not the past century been one of great struggle and many victories for sexual liberty? For individual identity? Why then would we want to go back the Dark Ages and demonize and stigmatize a huge social segment based on their sexuality, especially when it has been so little understood or even studied? Is it not possible to love a women’s graceful figure and her soothing Sapphic words of desire? Is it not possible to love a man’s intense figure and his raw Rimbaudian words of fiery passion? So why is it not possible to love both, whether in equal or unequal degrees to each?
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(ĭn'də-vĭz'ə-bəl) Steve Bertolino
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My vices and virtues, practiced sensate and the same way, mold the shape of this body visible and reflected to one and all.
And also: the soul hidden and secret is, like my practice of virtue and vice, formed in ways which can be seen although I, in my subjectivity, have no solid picture to point to,
no dyadic like Mr. Wilde gave to Mr. Gray, or as Bosch gave the Haywain to the world. It is perhaps a blessing, for I am fearful that even in triplicate I’d refuse to read the signs.
Invisible and shaking, my soul feels to me inflamed, hyperthemic, on the verge of becoming
some unalterable monstrosity. It must be septicemia, poison in the blood, and I want to spontaneously abort this life within my life which feels unlike me but goads me on to accept how it is changing and changing into me, and me into it, this growth of life inalienable and demanding.
It is the truth of cytokinesis: cells divisible must once have been united, a single being, A continually equaling A with all power of latent potentiality swelling, rising, bursting forth.
Uncle Walt was very, very wrong for we are none of us large, or contain multitudes. All I do is practiced the same way, and I am fearful, for I was made whole.
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GOOD MORNING DENVER Zane Johnson
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I
I’m awake somewhere around 9th street in the intersection At Curtis. I’m awake between library And Greek place, under overpass Bridging classrooms and art studios. I’m awake harboring anxious Feeling. I feel acutely blisters and weight of No-time— The cosmos are full of the breath I’m out of. I’m awake, Eyes crazy with wild Blur of the non-obtrusive T-Shirts You find in crowds everywhere Pledging allegiance to
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Walmart department store Slave driving slave waging, The big buildings everywhere No matter how hip in all this no-time Who can’t even afford To wage their wage slaving. Out here in the open, Or somewhere between Where I was comfortably An hour ago in sleep and (I’m tired, not sure) Mobs uncouth in speech Waving papers or small screens With headlines of Muslims Murdered cold in Midwest streets. Why don’t all you cowboys Just atom bomb piety? Counterpoint: Face of American Terror.
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Listen Midwest, I herald your demise! You melting pot of vice and self Importance. When will you learn to love? Don’t you know human is The necessary condition? II Calm please, calm, I’m pleading For thought and calm! I want to go running out Into the streets and bang My calm outside the jailhouse Windows Quite obtrusively. All I get is angry, And the mean streets, The comfortable streets (For whom?) Stay there.
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But there’s something always in my backpack, Om, Om in my back pocket, Somewhere between punch cards And a $10 bill—I have little more— And Om in poverty and a Curiosity for food stamps. I have Om in uncomfortable smiles I offer in reconciliation for not knowing Which route to take in weaving Between strangers. I have Om in coffee-eyed delirium. I offer a little inward bow to the page In front of me as to not arouse Suspicion.
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UTAH’S PARADOX Laurel Nakai
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There are secrets in those mountains where the air is paper. Will you sore dopamine drenched to the next highest peak?
Will you sink serotonin siphoned where the summit means farther to fall?
It gusts up there the pines bending and I remember, when I was near the coast how the trees get smaller as if bowing to the ocean
is it the same? reverence or submission?
Perhaps it’s too soon to tell hypoxia’s effect. A tilt towards the majestic sky or the rocky valley below?
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WHY DO I WRITE BACKWARDS? Dr. Mel Waldman
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Why do I write backwards when I wake up in the middle of the night, emerging from a whirling storm, a blizzard of the wilds, a fantastic story in Scheherazade’s mind, and stumble to my feet, and stagger across the labyrinth of consciousness, and scribble notes from the underground in my blank book of nothingness, the symbol of my nonbeing? How do I decipher the secret writings and esoteric codes of my anima, the female hiding inside my male brain, who speaks to me in the ocean of dreams and promises me a cornucopia of bliss while she kisses me with full round lips, the purple lips of a femme fatale, sweet and luscious and redolent of lilacs, and the sensuous kiss of phantasmagoria that opens up my inner landscape, a multilayered universe of unfathomable revelations? How do I love my anima as mysterious as the Garden of Secrets and the multitude of sumptuous flowers rising from the womb of the earth that opens up a flourishing universe of perfumed scents and secrets as painful as Dante’s Inferno? & after the apocalypse, why do I still kiss the pulchritudinous face of my anima, the flowing flower of darkness that looks up at me from my shattered soul’s abyss? & why do I write backwards when I wake up in the middle of the night, emerging from the ocean of dreams of my anima, the unreal landscape of reversals, a post-apocalyptic universe of paradox and impossibilities, the 18th dimension of life after death and the death of death, and the ultimate metamorphosis of survival, nestled in the everlasting kiss of my femme fatale-that destroys death and all my earthbound perceptions, and welcomes me to the unfathomable nothingness of my nonbeing with the eternal kiss of my anima, a transcendent kiss more potent, perhaps, than the kiss of death?
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SHE ROILS NOW Vanesa Pacheco
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She roils now. Hidden over here, my woes. Mamí, please, no.
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THE ICONIZATION OF ROSA PARKS Hiromi Yoshida
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When they tucked her away in a bed of roses in the Capitol Rotunda, did the Republican thorns scrape away her dignity the color of red sea ignominy--scratch out eyes that no longer saw a divided America? When she refused to rise from her sticky seat, did she think she would be queen of the Civil Rights movement in the humiliating carbon monoxide stench that clung to her, seamstress stitching together the arbitrarily missing pieces of our divided, wounded, gunshot America and her long-armed sons tilling the earth for the good salt beneath the soiled bedrock and her large-breasted daughters bending their heads to the blowing storm? She rises now from her seat of ignominy in terribly scarlet glory--into the historical ether, to the graffiti of noise behind tombstone eyelids--an articulate icon that never spoke, nor raised a dark fist against the adamant storm clouds. She is the ironic democracy silent iconoclast superintendent of dreams attended by servile roses among the marbleheaded heroes in the Capitol Rotunda.
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HEIRLOOM QUILT Dmitri Bailey
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Sit silent at the bottom of a deep crevasse, tucked in a Himalayan valley. Naked, but for an heirloom quilt draped o’er your shoulders, contemplate the universe as an egg folding in on itself infinitely, perpetually, each cycle providing energy for the next. Speculate the immense speed required to prevent the shell from rupturing and sending all of us hurtling into oblivion, the eternal void, dissolving our material bodies and leaving nothing but an asymmetrical cloud of pure light, the size of which being indeterminate, thus, necessarily infinite. You—us—one. Wonder what ill-minded demiurge would encase us in flesh—doomed to die, rot, erode with all other sentient beings, melt together, exchange carbon, and inevitably begin again when the proper conditions arise. We experience these peculiar vibrations on particular nights, gliding between dreams of unseen insects on the backs of our necks piercing skin with a filthy probiscus. We probe soft flesh of our own, sending one another through vortices of feigned martyrdom and multi-colored window panes that will never really exist. You never know which door frame to kiss. You sit across from me—naked, but for an heirloom quilt draped o’er your shoulders. I watch candles burn down behind your eyes, taste old wax beneath your tongue, between your teeth. That vile organ within your chest is an enormous crystalline structure eluding any identification. I rest my palm upon your breast, feel its pulse. Your fists diffuse into ribbons of expensive silk. You part your lips and breathe hieroglyphs upon the dirt between us. You are naked, but for an heirloom quilt draped o’er your shoulders.
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A DIFFERENT SORT OF SILENCE Luis Neer
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well, i suppose the best thing to do now would be to sit in silence, wait for the poem to come, consider picking up the phone, not pick up the phone. i haven’t cried in weeks but my face feels like it’s made of tears. stricken by solitude, i put my head beneath cold water and acknowledged it as pure bliss, a solid white feeling hitting everywhere at once. i’m sorry i still haven’t gotten over myself. i know i spend too much of my time alone but the only thing i’ve ever felt right in doing has been walking away. in my brain i am a paper airplane. i am a bird complaining on a naked branch. i can’t remember what we were before all this—
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surely something irrational. i hope that someday the mountains will fall upon the roads the rain will be colder than ever and we can walk together again as if we had been blind all along.
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EULOGY Steve Bertolino
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Secretly we all want to die by drowning, our bodies from conception given over to the slow creep of water flooding our small world. Our wrinkled shell, submerged yet buoyant, develops in a warm enclosure, lungs delicate burlap, filled with fluid, encased with fluid. We instinctively know we are mortal because we all died when suddenly forced to start breathing air. We howled as we left the only Eden we’ve known.
Water in all forms shapes our lives, provides digestion, transfers energy needed to think and move. All our body is geared towards every second is the great equilibrium between water and world. We build our civilizations around an oasis or beside the sea, or following the rivers. Many even choose to ride the waves or navigate the locks for a livelihood, or sport, or leisure. In no human culture or heritage is this false.
Baptism does impart true grace, but also cannot move beyond symbolism. Air is too shallow and thin, but we’ve come to need it now. Anointing suffices, but does not surrender the will; immersion collars you and gives another authority to pull back the chain. Water cleans, purifies, adapts, dissolves, overcomes; we chose well the entryway of our common faith. Yet we stop too soon or add extra steps in our rituals.
In reality we live in a world upside down. We plunge under water’s surface, feel its weight, die, knowing as we do that those who went before are there, the cloud of witnesses holding fast, bringing us down, deeper within, to behold the rise of water without end. All this time, what we thought to be biology’s trick as the brain grows euphoric in undertow’s embrace is but a welcome return, signal of life, sighting of home from the main mast, back in our proper element.
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DENSITY Kaity Davie
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consider this: we hoard feelings in our bones, i expose sentiments in the long lengths of my fingers there are entire days i go without touching someone, entire months i build up the tension of my muscles keeping secrets for you
i’ve shown my spine to lovers who didn’t truly deserve it in a moment of what i thought was strength (it was powerful / i / am powerful but it wasn’t the strength to be proud of)
i consider space i consider the spaces between us each inch another marathon, each graceless stumble another lifetime
your skeletal structure is continuous, i’m seeking all the feelings you’re holding onto these bones ache to go deeper i want to read the maps that your veins make each river pulsing, each estuary demonstrating the perfect storm of your blood and my sweat, where one flows into the other
consider this an invitation to evaluate my density
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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 a having 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 briefly experimented with playwriting (The Reunion Cycle - 2011 Buffalo Infringement Festival) and her mother's primary caregiver for over two years. She has been running a caregiver's blog on her experiences since 2011, as well as publishing essays on the topic. Now, Jordan spends her daylight hours arguing with her boyfriend's cats and at night takes on the identity of Pyro & Ballyhoo's sassiest critic, The Lady J. When she's not watching pro-wrestling 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, comic book plot lines involving Harley Quinn, The Twilight Zone and the proper spelling of braciola.
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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.
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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. 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).
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Contributors 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.
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Hiromi Yoshida recently spent a substantial portion of her tax refund on bicycle tune-up, and returned approximately ten James Joyce literary criticism books to the Wells Library after nearly seven years. She holds a Master of Arts degree in English from Fordham University, and a Master of Library Science degree from Indiana University Bloomington. Winner of multiple Indiana University Writers' Conference awards, Hiromi Yoshida's poems have appeared in Borderline, Evergreen Review, Bathtub Gin, Flying Island, and the Matrix anthologies of literary and visual arts.
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Terry Barr loves Due South coffee and was sad that Foxcatcher didn't win Best Picture. His essays have appeared in The Museum of Americana, Red Fez, Rougarou, Red Truck Review, Grounded Magazine, and Belle Reve Literary Journal. He is a two-time Pushcart nominee and teaches Creative Nonfiction, Food and Literature, and Southern Film at Presbyterian College. He lives in Greenville, SC, with his wife and daughters.
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Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, The Nation, Osiris, Poetry, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. His most recent collection is Almost Rain, published by River Otter Press (2013). For more information, free ebooks and his essay titled “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities” please visit his website.
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Sheila Tzerman is an emerging freelance poet, short story writer, and essayist whose works have been published in the Boston Literary Magazine and caregivers.com blog. She has studied at SUNY Farmingdale State, CUNY Brooklyn College and Central Piedmont Community College . When she's not tickling the page, she's kayaking, doing downward dog pose, digging in the dirt and trail blazing. Although she hails from Long Island, she now resides in Charlotte, North Carolina with her husband, Marc and genuine mutt, Amber.
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Valentina Cano is a student of classical singing who spends whatever free time she has either reading or writing. Her works have appeared in numerous publications and her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Web. Her debut novel, The Rose Master, was published in 2014 and was called a "strong and satisfying effort" by Publishers Weekly.
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Eliza Webb is a corporate trainer and technical writer, finally prepared to pursue her creative works with diligence. She was born in the "Jambalaya Capital of the World" but escaped and now lives on Florida's Emerald Coast and spends her time trying to avoid the beach. Her work has been posted recently in Tryst Online Literary Magazine.
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Gabrielle Gilbert floats between Alton Bay, NH where she grew up and Brooklyn, NY where she is currently studying at Pratt Institute as a Creative Writing major. Her work has yet to be published but she keeps a collection of such on her website.
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Dmitri Bailey is a 17 year old aspiring writer, currently attending school in Central Ohio. Dmitri is greatly influenced by a variety of writers from Walt Whitman, to the early French Surrealists, to the Beat writers of the 1950s. He has been published in previous issues of the RPD Society.
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Tom Clatworthy is a London based artist. He graduated last year from the Royal College of Art, where he studied MA Photography. He is now writing.
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Carl Boon, a native Ohioan, directs the English Prep Program and teaches literature at Istanbul Yeni Yuzyil University. He writes in the evenings on his balcony with the hills of Maltepe visible to the east. Recent or forthcoming work appears in The Adirondack and Posit.
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Ross Knapp is a recent college graduate with degrees in philosophy and literature. He has an experimental literary novel forthcoming and various poetry publications in Commonline Journal, Blue Lake Review, Poetry Pacific Magazine, Indiana Voice Journal, Shot Glass Journal, and others. He lives in Minneapolis.
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Steve Bertolino lives in Middlebury, Vermont, where he works as an academic librarian and serves on the executive committee for the New England Young Writers Conference. His publications include poems in Right Hand Pointing, Bone Parade, Written River, Northern Cardinal Review, Uppagus, Mead: The Journal of Literature & Libations, and others.
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Zane Johnson is a poet, musician and Zen practitioner from Denver, Colorado. His work has previously appeared in The Rain, Party, and Disaster Society, Writing Raw, Ourglass, and The Animal Liberation Front’s Activists+. You can find more poetry and meditations on his Tumblr.
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Laurel Nakai is a contributing writer at onmogul.com and DPlife.info. Her poetry has been published in The Rain, Party, & Disaster Society and Red Fez. She lives in New Jersey with her husband and two sons, and bares her heart on her blog and twitter. Current addictions include: caffeine, the beach, and NaNoWriMo.
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Dr. Mel Waldman is a psychologist, poet, and writer whose stories have appeared in numerous magazines including HARDBOILED DETECTIVE, HARDBOILED, DETECTIVE STORY MAGAZINE, ESPIONAGE, THE SAINT, DOWN IN THE DIRT, CC&D, PULP METAL MAGAZINE, INNER SINS, YELLOW MAMA, and AUDIENCE. His poems have been widely published in magazines and books including LIQUID IMAGINATION, THE BROOKLYN LITERARY REVIEW, THE BROOKLYN VOICE, BRICKPLIGHT, THE BITCHIN’ KITSCH, CLOCKWISE CAT, CRAB FAT MAGAZINE, SKIVE MAGAZINE, ODDBALL MAGAZINE, ON THE RUSK, POETRY PACIFIC, POETICA, RED FEZ, SQUAWK BACK, SWEET ANNIE & SWEET PEA REVIEW, THE JEWISH LITERARY JOURNAL, THE JEWISH PRESS, THE JERUSALEM POST, HOTMETAL PRESS, MAD SWIRL, HAGGARD & HALLOO, ASCENT ASPIRATIONS, and NAMASTE FIJI: THE INTERNATIONAL ANTHOLOGY OF POETRY. A past winner of the literary GRADIVA AWARD in Psychoanalysis, he was nominated for a PUSHCART PRIZE in literature and is the author of 11 books.
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Vanesa Pacheco is a Bostonian wanderlust. She recently graduated from Wheelock College where she received her BA in Literature and Communications. Her poetry has appeared on Delirious Hem’s 2014 advent calendar series; she will also be featured in an upcoming piece on The Conversant. Vanesa currently writes for Bustle’s fashion and beauty section and runs a literary citizenship blog.
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Luis Neer is a young writer of poetry and prose. He has work forthcoming in Right Hand Pointing and The Write Room. An alumnus of the creative writing program at the 2014 West Virginia
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Governor’s School for the Arts, he attends high school in New Cumberland, West Virginia, where he lives.
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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 public libraries by night. Currently, she makes magic happen across a number of social networks for a number of bands, brands, and writers, including The Rain, Party, & Disaster Society. Kaity keeps her sanity by writing rambling lines of prose and celebrating the seasonal flavors of Polar Seltzer. You can find her on the internet pretty easily.
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