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Table of Contents
TRANSITION LENSES, Adam Robinson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 GEOMETRIC, Kaity Davie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 DROP PIN ASTRONOMY, Izzy Jay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 BRIDGE FREEZES BEFORE ROAD, Howie Good . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 WILL IN MY WORLD, Tom Loughlin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7 MARATHON MONDAY, Donald Welch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9 CICADA, Scott Malkovsky . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11 THE 9TH WONDER, Howie Good . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 BLESSED MEMORY, Nanette Rayman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12 TURTLENECK SWEATER, Adam Robinson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13 THE GIFT, Ken Poyner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14 FOR BUOYANCY YOU DRINK WARM WATER, Simon Perchik . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15 THE BEST REVENGE, Mark Ian Gould . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16 MY DISAPPOINTMENT WITH THE FINALE OF HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER - A SONNET, Adam Kane . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17 A FLASH IN THE PAN, Eric Hill . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 SIXTEEN NIGHTS INTO JUNE, Keah Brown . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19 [INFLECTION, INFLECTION], Timothy D. Sowa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20 SONNET FOR EDISON, Chris Lee-Rodriguez . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 BUT WHY (2014), Sara Sutterlin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 GARRETT AND LETTERBOX, Adam Robinson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23 THE GIRLS’ ROOM, Shelby Converse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
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EDITORIAL STAFF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26 CONTRIBUTORS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
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TRANSITION LENSES Adam Robinson
“...and the wind whispers her name like it knows she's to blame for something, though isn't quite sure what that something might be. And the crickets quiet themselves to hear what its saying, and the moon comes in closer to lend its ear to that sound; and all is well in the world in that moment, standing on my balcony in the dark of early morning, leaning in to the whisper, I listen to the wind sing her name. I displace the belle of my thoughts to the air, and they ring upon the wings of the westerlies... because I know she's to blame for something. And I know what that something might be.”
But this is all just free-roaming thought. This isn't based on experience, and I don't own a balcony. If the wind could whisper, I damn sure wouldn't listen close enough to hear what it's saying. The only bells that ring through the night are those that ring cause for alarm; and there's plenty to be alarmed about, so you put on your headphones when the din gets too hackneyed, and you sing along to songs written the same way you write your doggerel.
If someone were to ask me for a concise plot summary of my life thus far—a short and sweet synopsis; I think I'd respond with: a long, cold walk to buy cigarettes.
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GEOMETRIC Kaity Davie
wound tighter than a string, high e, let it resonate fuck.
you had no right / no reason. wait - you had all the reason, none of the right to write these things instead of squaring your shoulders and bringing this head on
shaped like an octagon, a decagon, a icosahedron i don’t have enough earthly sides to show my shape to you
my pulse pounding through my heart, into my fingertips don’t worry, i’ll keep them both to myself
i realized i don't know what your handwriting looks like, don’t know what your breath sounds like when you sleep
‘where do you get off,’ my mind whispers where did you even get on? you never paid a fare
my skin’s vibrating at a frequency that shatters your glass, let it resonate and the symphony plays us both offstage. 4
DROP PIN ASTRONOMY Izzy Friedman
I don't write happy poems, I conversationally skip over the rocky shores of my trials like dancing on cobblestone. Until my partner looks at me like a jester.
I search for friends in ways that define insanity. I can be seen inciting laughter until I need you to stand in candlelight with me, illuminating my darkest corners, waiting for our eyes to adjust.
I count the freckles on formerly friendly backs and try the same way, over and over, to plug keyholes with company; hoping to never squint after your birthmarks.
Family ties are nice but I come from a long line of knot solvers. Not boy scouts with their bowline ropes, tangled soul-deep, anchored to medicinal roots that comfort and keep grounded.
No matter how many times you ask, I cannot drop my baggage. There is no concierge on this street corner.
What keeps me hopeful in ditches, is the point at which explorers lose themselves to the horizon. 5
I smile at dreams about disappearing, the power to leave the figures I've given power to. I figure they won't notice.
Though I hope they do because you have exactly 27 freckles on your back and eight of them are modeled after the Big Dipper. I make a wish on the last one I can see. If I told you what it is it would never come true.
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BRIDGE FREEZES BEFORE ROAD Howie Good
Fallen planes with swastikas on their tails dot the countryside. It must be Shark Week on the Discovery Channel. You take one pill for your head and two more for your heart, but can still choke on a sip of water. The dying are all forced to share the same rectangular view. There’s something moving out there, something walking in the woods, a serial killer with a pleasant demeanor and no place to make a left turn. I roll up my sleeve to show you tattoos of black parental mysteries, mother as pitchfork. They begin to breathe and glitter.
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WILL IN MY WORLD Tom Loughlin
As with any of life’s notable “firsts,” I can remember vividly my very first experience of staged Shakespeare. It was a rollicking, no-holds-barred commedia dell’arte interpretation of The Taming of the Shrew, complete with slapstick comedy, rude sexual innuendo, innumerable physical schtick, and a cast that seemed to have inexhaustible energy. One unintended moment sticks out among them all. At one point during the famous Kate/Petruchio wooing scene, one of Kate’s breasts came flouncing out of her low-cut Elizabethan dress. Completely undaunted and totally in character, the actress grabbed the exposed mammary and stuffed it defiantly back into its place, daring Petruchio and the audience to give even one scintilla of acknowledgement that they had seen what they had seen. I was hooked.
What you may think about Shakespeare’s work from a literary point of view is, frankly, irrelevant. Just the sheer size of the man’s output is staggering and constitutes an impressive achievement beyond its literary value. It is a feat unduplicated in all of English literature, and probably in all of written literature of any culture by one person. Consider the following statistics: 37 recognized full-length 5-act plays that run an average of 3 hours when staged; 154 sonnets; 3 epic poems of 1855, 1180 and 329 lines; and all of this written with a quill pen and ink. All completed within 22 years. All completed within a lifespan of 52 years. All done in a non-industrialized society that had only a vague understanding of “historical preservation.” Scarce reference material of any sort from which to draw information other than one’s own knowledge and imagination. No education to speak of. All done within the context of running a theatrical for-profit enterprise. In all, the most thorough literary investigation of the human psyche ever accomplished. There is no other single author whose body of work comes anywhere near this.
As an actor, what makes Shakespeare the most challenging of playwrights is the passion with which he writes. Shakespeare is the only playwright I have ever encountered on the stage into whose words you can throw all the passionate emotion you have, and the words come back laughing at you, saying, “Is that all you got?” You never, never have enough for Shakespeare. Never enough talent, never enough energy, never enough passion, never enough human understanding. Playing Shakespeare is like fucking an insatiable lover who welcomes every sexual innovation you can think of and then, when you are spent on the floor reeling from the effort, laughs at you, saying “Is that all you got?” in a way that is at once innocent, seductive, hypnotic, entrancing and mystical. It is a transformative experience, one in which an actor can truly lose one’s self. It is ecstatic in the way that saints and mystics speak about melding with God.
Shakespeare’s elixir is a heady one. It is flowing, image-rich poetry mixed with passionate human emotion mixed with outstanding storytelling. Shakespeare worms his way into your being at every level. He can get right down there and tell the cleverest dick jokes ever written (“It hangs like flax from a distaff; and I hope to see some good housewife take thee between her legs and spin it off!”), and then turn right around and speak poetry that feels as if it came straight from an angel’s heart (“My bounty is as boundless as the sea; my love as deep. The more I give to thee the more I have, for both are infinite.”) Fathers rage against daughters, sons against mothers, brothers against brothers. Eyes are gouged out, limbs and tongues are cut off, children are cooked and fed to their mother. Royalty hacks and slashes its way throughout the countryside, while common people provide the human perspective of subtle 7
irony and utter incomprehension. Lovers cavort with the innocence of children in the woods, playing pranks on each other in disguise and in the open. Murder, revenge and jealousy corrode the noblest of men, destroy the women they love. Evil has no name, no motive, no reason. The places one has to search as an actor to find these types of characters provide the deepest understanding of yourself as a human being that you can possibly possess.
When speaking of my career regrets, the greatest is never having played one of the great title roles. When you get to know Shakespeare, you long to play those top roles, for you can sense and feel the challenge they pose. You never truly “get” Shakespeare until you act his words, create his characters. Hamlet, MacBeth, Anthony, Iago, Romeo - all these roles are now for me like women in their late 20s, seductive combinations of beauty, intelligence and passion denied me by reason of age. I’ve always been typed as a character actor, doing a good number of comic roles such as Touchstone and Feste (a wonderful creature!). I’ve done Shylock, a deadly dark human being whose sorrow and anger are deep and abiding. Leonato, the father in Much Ado About Nothing, has become a favorite, an intriguing mix of humor, stateliness, and a startling moment of passion. I look ahead to Prospero and Lear, one who commands the forces of nature, and one who is ravaged by them. That’s the thing about Shakespeare; there is something for you to play at every time in your life, and something to learn by it.
Whatever you may think of the notion that one man named William Shakespeare wrote all these works is, in the end, inconsequential. It is the works that matter, and those are indisputable. Whatever confluences of forces came together 450 years ago on April 23, 1564 to produce this singular human being has never been repeated. I would not be the person I am today had it not been for having the opportunity to speak his words on a stage. In every instance and through every role, they have provided me with the illusion that I am a better man than I am in reality. Being the “poor player” that I am, I will be forever grateful for the richness of language Shakespeare left for me to speak. I have been pursuing the heart and soul of William Shakespeare for 42 years. Without Will in my world, there is no world. Happy 450th birthday, Will. Thanks for giving me an endless world of words, a lifetime of theatrical bliss.
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MARATHON MONDAY Donald C. Welch
This is how you forget yourself.
Step 1: Get stoned. Get really stoned. Hop on a train; it doesn’t matter where it’s going, just that there’s a Chinatown stop in between. Feel the inbound subway rattle your seat like an oddly appropriate fortune cookie making you self-conscious about your existence. Then ask yourself: “If a train leaves Haymarket at the exact moment another leaves Mass Ave, and they cross paths, then what’s the distance of eventually?” Don’t forget you’re still really stoned, so none of this should make sense.
Step 2: Forget about the girl. I mean the idea of the girl. The thought that a second half is waiting for you because they might not be. That’s why fine art museums have free admission days.
Step 3: Donate to the charity the cashier asks you about. It’ll make you feel lucky.
Step 4: Buy lottery tickets when you’re drunk. You’ll feel like a million bucks the next morning.
Step 5: Keep in mind, money is only as good as the people you spend it on.
Step 6: Set the time aside to make love with the ferocity of a bar fight. Spend a night colliding like two drunk messes trying desperately to make each other bleed.
Step 7: Play in arcades often. They’ll help you remember why you fell in love. We are pointless pinballs in this world machine, but when we bounce off one another’s bumper-soft bodies 9
it reminds us there’s a momentum worth moving for, worth bruising our fingers over. I am just a sucker with a pocket full of quarters. She is a gorgeous confusion of neon lights and high scores I can never hope to reach. But I will blister my fingers squeezing all the happiness I can from her joysticks.
Step 8: Make cheap puns.
Step 9: Root for the college team your father loves. Admittedly it isn’t hard to say, “I love you, Dad,” but “Hey did you catch the Notre Dame game?” rolls off the tongue.
Step 10: Let people give you nicknames and thigh tattoos because you can’t take forever that seriously if you’re really hoping to make it the whole way through. You were a microscopic accident away from being absolutely nothing, yet here you are, you beautiful, broken, idiot. Let go of yourself. And if all you can spare is a minute, then in your favorite made-up language count backwards from sixty.
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CICADA Scott Malkovsky
You asked me how I could leave you. I left you the way it’s harder to keep a steady speed while going uphill, your foot pressing harder and harder for the same results you effortlessly attained moments before, and then the plane suddenly levels out and you’re going too damn fast, asphalt dripping ash the way a cicada burrows its way into your carpet, that one that you’ve been longing to get rid of for years now, and deposits hundreds of eggs that you’ll never be able to find, eggs that bury themselves deeper until they get down into the fabrics of your floorboards, rest in the pit stops of your mind for two fruitless years, before flying into your coffee cups, behind your posters, and around your plastic globe, until they realize that their mother is gone, sucked up in your Shop-Vac, the way you got sucked up in your own paranoia, leaving the house abandoned, for sale, boarded up. That is how I left you. I left you the way you left your windows and doors- with a note saying: “Get rid of the carpets. Trust me, get rid of the fucking carpets.”
“P.S: The lights work better in the dark.”
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THE 9TH WONDER Howie Good
An introspective man in blue came in the other day looking for the 9th wonder. I didn’t get his name, only noticed his shaved head, never realizing that wind waves don’t move as fast as speeding cannon balls. Someone will probably write a thesis on it – what, in literary circles, we call intertexuality, snippets of code gleaming and then going away in the darkness. All I see now, though, is a flock of gaunt, exhausted angels below the window, the starvation they endured for the sake of luminosity and because of which they seem to stagger just before their plumage fades.
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BLESSED MEMORY Nanette Rayman
If you don’t remember, we live In the hope of becoming ourselves. Diaspora has become rain and why are you not Quivering under the droplets? Did Ilan Halimi, the beautiful Boy lured by a Moslem think He was safe when a swift test of the streets Or any flames would be a marker of how things are In France, a home not home?
This we know is Diaspora.
This cheerless cloudburst, this agitation Sightless people’s outer hurly-burly, afraid to speak first, Inside the oldest form of hate, a tortured body, All this we Jews owe to you. True, You have calmed, though you are deaf, You are afraid. Ilan was not. Such colossal Pulchritude and future, severed By a barbarian who told the court his last Name was African barbarian army revolt Salafist. Walls of rain, body burnt. It would be January 21st’ Until the day Fofana the Salafist, said February 13th, 2006 was his birthday. They day Ilan died. An orange light of acid beneath showers A sun turned to dark, a moon to blood. The line drawn in the streets, all Happening again—NEVER AGAIN Through portico of time. Naked Handcuffed, plastered with bruises, manhood Shriveled blackened railroad tracks in Essonne South of Paris. Rain. Sun you won’t see.
This is the lone silhouette of Diaspora.
Life is made of tremors or allusion or where you should be: A tree could twine a tree and sockets askew Could trample over you until You forget your name, your neshama Just flew away bird to bird, bird to cloud, cloud To rain and your name could be broken In galut, syllables immersed in downpours Of a mother rocking back and forth in the courtroom.
This lovely voice, this woman wanted the trial 12
Public. Rain’s coming down over trees somewhere. In Diaspora.
When I get to ask you, G-d, If you loved Ilan, I know you will say you loved him true. It’s so Essential to me. Being alive is light. My eyes can strain It out. There are silhouettes drifting across windows. Blood-shade, it’s so Part of life we don’t want it so, but it is. Even though we have Not all gone missing and we won’t, the dark color of my eyes Hurts against the depth of your light.
And in Diaspora I hear that L’Chaim is the word.
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TURTLENECK SWEATER Adam Robinson
clung to my frame / & // held by the neck more secure / than the lips of / any woman i've once called a lover // i'm concealing the proof that i've been quite / unfaithful to what's been neglected; / disguising what screams i've // been caressing the holes / of threadbare sheets hung loose from the body of / a twinsized mattress / fondling crevices in the framework of thought / disheveled & throbbing; agitating / the itch there that i can't seem to satisfy. // clung to my frame, // i'm pulling my collar past / passion lines; left overt of // every uncased pillow held / close & concave to / an unconcerned / flesh.
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THE GIFT Ken Poyner
I’ve been dancing with the washing machine on afternoons around two o’clock. It’s a standing date. We meet in the kitchen. He extends his lid upright, I take the corner in my right hand, slip my left hand over his off-white body, and off we go. For such a boxy item, he manages amazingly delicate footwork: he spins me conical, and we sidestep through stray shatters of sunlight, skipping at times into the living room and through the empty dining room. Once he backed me halfway up the stairs. All I needed was a stemmed rose in my teeth, a thorn edging seductively into one puffed vermilion lip, my head tossed back to let beads of water roll off the rose’s single leaf and drop into the washing machine’s spin basket.
I am impoverished in the hips, but he balances me like a canary on a caged perch in a coal mine. I always seem more substantial than I truly am when we dance, a planet with innumerable orbits. When the dance ends, I am suddenly again the thin housewife that prefers to stay in the kitchen but has not had sex on the kitchen table for years.
I think the attraction is some stern quality the washing machine saw in me. One day I had unthinkingly drawn open the lid and dropped a jigger of underwear, a dash of socks, a roast of light-colored pants into the yawning spin basket. Perhaps the machine, for just that moment, focused past the needful clothes, past the dropping and the settling and the water already rising, and saw, looking down into his utilitarian cavern with a devilish bend in her hollowing trunk, me. Me: alive, if only qualified by the taking of serial breaths, surviving a repetitive social structure, a carbon-based complete self, a work creator, the maker of dirty clothes, the provider of detergent.
I could feel, after that incident, an enchanting hum in his cycles—an addition of purpose. I knew that whatever he planned would eventually be manifested, and I readied myself like a clown on a unicycle, swaying back and forth, waiting.
And then, one day, the lid was quizzically open already when I came to stuff in the sheets. It was then we began.
Dancing was enough for me—dancing led me to the edge of being full, to being something with a brim. But I did, on a recent morning, accidentally back into the washing machine while resigned to attending to the health of the floor, and I could feel the impudent lid ever so lightly run itself along my housecoat and test with its white façade the skin just beneath my skinny left cheek. I stopped and stood there just long enough that he would know I was stopping and standing in full knowledge. The lid ran up and down three grandly intentional times before I looked back over my shoulder to see it happily closed, as though the washing machine were a voyeur caught and looking playfully away.
These days, I have taken to doing my work in nothing more than one of my husband’s t-shirts. It’s not a bad fit—my hips move freely beneath the long train of fabric, my arms hang from the sleeves like the bones of better judgment, and the cloth lies flat on my unrestrained breasts. The washing machine and I dance emphatically, and I hike the t-shirt up into the fold of my thigh or grab it and ball it in my fist, throwing my head away from my partner and arching my spine relentlessly backwards like a fishing pole, tensed to take a life from beneath the proud 14
water.
After today’s dance—the sweat beading on my neck and the t-shirt nearly soaked from the exuberance of my effort—I stand before the washing machine. I open the sated lid and slowly, I slip off the t-shirt and drop it into the spin basket. There is no water running, there is no detergent ready, there is no cycle selected. The shirt settles alone in the basket, draped around the spindle and smelling of the parts of me that live best in the weave. I hover bare-breasted over the open lid. What exists between us is breathed in through my mouth, is prayed for by my touch upon the washer’s feral lid. My gift. My wonder. My sacrament.
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UNTITLED Simon Perchik
For buoyancy you drink warm water though there are cups that have been taught to climb
and mid-air grab your teeth gnawing the way bells never lose their place
still bleed from the same rim that left shore as snow has forgotten why your mouth
is washed, held face up and no longer closes so what stays on your lips
is trembling from under –cup by cup broken apart while the sun reaches around
as if it once could lift and room growing from flowers not yet in your mouth.
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THE BEST REVENGE Mark Ian Gould
Does it trouble you to know you are the hellfire through which my weaknesses are born? Here is why I’ve been tip-toeing on the edge lately.
My tongue grows weary in its own mouth. Our blood is pumping together to the bass line of a song I’ve never heard all the way through. But then, "This isn’t who you are, you’ve been living the fantasy far too long to ever enjoy its fruition.” I have noticed, if you hold anything in the back of your mind, it’ll begin to show up everywhere. The number two, images of the Golden Gate Bridge, the imprint of my hands on your bare flesh. Everywhere.
I have created a world for you, solely based on the dreamscape I have crafted for myself. It is there you live now. Me and my anxious fingers, you and your masterful shoulders. A setting sun. A flock of geese flying south. One last NASA expedition before the funding runs dry. These are some of the metaphors of which I have chosen to seduce you.
Left only in the present, these are metaphors for freedom. You, my sweet darling, are a wonderful creature. And I, I shall live well without you.
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MY DISAPPOINTMENT WITH THE FINALE OF HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER - A SONNET Adam Kane
I watched the show for many, many years, even though at times it really sucked. I grew, and moved, and twice I changed careers, and through it all this crappy show I stuck. The writers promised a finale so spectacular they couldn’t wait for us to see. The characters, they said, would grow. And thus in those fair writers I did trust.
And so I watched (unspoil’d) the final hour, hoping that the writers had good sense. Instead I sat there, silent, feeling dour, as characters bumped off and years condensed.
But I do feel some pain for those poor scribes, so proud of work that we, the fans, deride.
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A FLASH IN THE PAN E. Wilson Hill
He had just received his third rejection letter that day. Yes, the competition is high—we are all clamoring to give our work away! There are better things than money, like—like? People reading the shit you write? That’s an accomplishment, right? The editors will read it—well, some of it—a few words—the title, for sure. How long will this go on? Even slot machines roll out three cherries sometimes. But I’m not gambling—I’m developing a skill! There is no supernatural phenomenon! As long as I keep editing, I should be getting better—it’s in the flow—wu wei, right? He felt a shifting of his foundation, a crumbling, but he stood firm. Edit! Cut cut cut. Kill your babies. It must be fresh, clean, alive, with no clichés. It’s a science—self-correct! It’s an art—sing out! It’s a chore—clean up your mess! Maybe I should wash the dishes while listening to Verdi. I mean, maybe I should waltz along the avenue singing the praise of Satan. Climb a mountain? Maybe I should just keep writing! Damn it—it’s getting stuffy. I need fresh air—I’m suffocating! He changed the radio station and a country song blared. “If I cry a hundred years, maybe I’ll find a way to market these tears.” That’s it! He turned off the radio inspired. He put on the yellow suit he had been saving, ran down the street, and boarded the subway to Grand Central Station. I’ll go north to apple country. The flowers will be ready to bud and I, too, shall bud and bloom with them. If only I can hang awhile, long enough to become a crisp, juicy apple—well, you know the fable. I’ll be a great temptation to those editors; they shall eat my fruit and they shall know both good and evil— Should I change evil to bad?
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SIXTEEN NIGHTS INTO JUNE Keah Brown
In an apartment in Brooklyn:
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To you,
He was everywhere. He fell in pieces on the bathroom floor, immersed himself in the soil that fed the earth. He was the cab I got into last week, the old lady in the supermarket offering free samples. He as the sunset in Spain, skinny-dipping in California. He left clues at his various destinations, promises to be back tomorrow. The last place I saw him was in your eyes sixteen nights into June when I fell back head first into your satin sheets and you kissed the blood from my veins until I felt nothing. Until I was nothing.
I’m sorry it had to be this way
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To us,
The last place I saw him was in your eyes on that night sixteen days into June. You wrapped me up inside of your blankets and lay still behind me. I listened to you breathing when you noticed; you got so quiet I thought you stopped. It may seem like I am comparing the two of you but he was mine and you are yours and so I could not possibly give you anymore of me. Your words cut me like the pieces on the bathroom floor. Your laughter leaves me empty. I wish to travel to Paris and love like he loved me, love like I am my own. Let’s not do this or we could start all over again. Given the circumstances, I think I deserve a second chance.
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In an apartment in California:
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To them,
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To a different you,
This is getting out of hand. If you two don’t want a forever don’t have one. Don’t assume that we care, we don’t want your story we want our own. Please stop fighting and putting us in the middle we are tired of trying to mediate. There was a time when you loved her and she loved you. Three weeks ago you promised this was the end of the fighting and yet, here we go again. We don’t want any more of this, of you, of half-asses apologies and promises. Go take a bike ride in the park, and stop asking for our opinions on shit we shouldn’t take part in. I won’t let you ruin us we have we have our own lives to live fighting will get us just as far as it will get you.
The nights are colder than they used to be. The weatherman said it was supposed to be warmer this weekend but he’s a liar who lies. It’s colder here where you are not. I keep walking in circles, I have nowhere to go and I hope it leads me to your front door. I want nothing more than your lips on mine, chocolate covered pretzels at 10 a.m., you watching me watch you type on that old beautiful brown typewriter. I wrote a story about us a week ago but the ending got lost in the mail, the way that I was lost in your eyes. I’m glad you never cheated and held me 19
close. I love you so much I am afraid, too much. I finally got the letter you sent three weeks ago. You didn’t want to break up with me and I was so happy I ate. I ate half of a sandwich and left the other for you, I even gave you my tomatoes. You know how much I hate them. I am as lost as you are and I should tell you to come home but I don’t know where that would be. So I would tell you to please come to me.
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[INFLECTION, INFLECTION] Timothy Sawa
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[Inflection, Inflection] It is late fall. They share a cigarette. He offers a shoulder for the cold, She offers wine and a firm press Back [into the night] Another drag [closer] and she dies The aura of his aches A stream- she holds his breath. The smoke curls around [her] lips And [he] unfurls from within. Sleek of a fox, Light of a fire, Mouth of a shark, Hands of a flowerA love so foreign, Fusing, fusing and [the colors] refusing The depths of [their] light And breaths shared in late fall.
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SONNET FOR EDISON Chris Lee-Rodriguez
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1. Today, I performed poetry for a 6th grade class, young people of color filled with ELLs, IEPs and emotional states fractured and wrinkled like a junkyard.
2. ELL means English Language Learners.
3. An IEP is an Individual Education Plan.
4. Today marked the first day since I was in middle school where a middle schooler laughing and pointing at me while I was performing almost made me break down and cry.
5. The IEP would list this behavior as disruptive and request this child to be placed in a smaller class.
6. Another girl so cleverly called me, “Mr. Faggot.” One would argue that her IEP should include “English Language Learner.”
7. This was not the first time a child cursed at me. This was the first time I looked at an IEP. This was the first time that words on a computer screen made me break down and cry.
8. Education reform is advocacy for larger classrooms and standardized testing.
9. Every student at this school reads more scantrons than poems. Their IEPs do not source their dried eyes and wrinkled brows as probable causes for their anxiety. These are not problems from home, so therefore they are not real problems.
10. To be fair, I probably made the 6th graders feel uncomfortable when I started yelling a poem about race and being brown while moving my body.
11. In a poetry class in college, I read a poem I wrote about race and being brown and made the entire class feel uncomfortable. Everyone was white. No one laughed and pointed and called me Mr. Faggot. No one said anything.
12. It’s easier to pretend you don’t care in silence.
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13. My IEP reads, “Stress, Anxiety, Depression. Request to keep doing poems in front of middle schoolers.”
14. After the poem, I told the students that this world wants them to act this way. It wants them to fail. They didn’t listen to me. It’s not their fault. They’re still in ELL.
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BUT WHY (2014) Sara Sutterlin
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GARRET AND LETTERBOX Adam Robinson
Mm, no, darling, you wouldn't recall the time I tattooed the word 'no' on my wrist with a sewing needle jammed into the end of a number two pencil, and for a couple of reasons:
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1.
2.
I never finished, and I barely started. Two pokes in, I guess I lost the motivation, realized the futility of it all. No, not in regards to marking myself with my favorite word, but I suppose I found myself thinking on a larger scale; y'know, past the needle and past my wrist. Do you understand what I mean? Sometimes I worry no one quite understands what I mean... but most of the time I wouldn't have it any other way. Does that make sense, dear? I hope not. No... I hope so. Indecision runs rampant today. I'll suffice it to say: I hope it makes sense to you, but nobody else--and that's that. You weren't there.
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Though neither surprises me, because I don't even know who you are, love. But I can't get enough of the way you sign your name in red lipstick stains.
But why exactly am I writing you? Why are you writing me, and how long is this going to last
Baby, how did you get this address?
I don't want to break your heart, but I'm moving out next week.
I've gotten noise complaints about my noise complaints; I guess they've gotten tired of my broom handle/ceiling routine; and it's funny how life works, isn't it?
I've been thinking, and I might mail you a postcard and I room key
(once I've gotten back on my feet). 23
THE GIRLS’ ROOM Shelby Converse
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Editorial Staff
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Jordan Rizzieri (Long Island, NY) is a 26-year-old caregiver and writer. After graduating from SUNY Fredonia with a B.A. in Theatre Arts and a minor in English, she spent over a year in Buffalo, NY honing her playwriting skills. In 2011 she saw the staging of her first full-length play, The Reunion Cycle, as part of the Buffalo Infringement Festival. Upon her return to Long Island, she began blogging about being a young adult caring for her ailing mother, as well as publishing essays on the topic. As she prepares to return to the work force, Jordan spends the evening hours writing, watching WWE wrestling with her boyfriend and listening to spooky podcasts. On the weekends she drinks a lot of craft beer, listens to the radio and has arguments with her boyfriend's cats (which she almost always loses.) Feel free to contact her with questions about flannel, grunge, The Twilight Zone and the proper spelling of braciola .
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FICTION EDITOR Kay Kerimian (Buffalo, NY), just freshly turned 25, has gone from Long Island native & bagel aficionado to hippie-dippie Hudson Valley student before ultimately taking a chance on The Queen City as a professional go-getter. Holding degrees in Performance & Gender Studies while carefully considering a literary escape route, Kay currently resides in Western New York with her partner in crime; the two share plans to explore the great unknown together by this time next year. After hastily publishing a small collection of short stories independently at the ripe old age of 17, Kay quietly abandoned her lifelong ambition of becoming a celebrated writer for an equally quixotic career in the performing arts while adopting a new name. When not on stage or on a proverbial soap box, Kay spends her free time reading (a lot), traveling (as much as possible on an artist's income), & thinking up the next big project (currently attempting to try something new every day for a year). She prefers using lower-case, enjoys coffee, whiskey, & sweets (respectively & in no particular order), & pines for never-ending libraries. Always interested in a dialogue, Kay welcomes discussions involving disability awareness, heteronormativity, & hypothetical super powers.
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NON-FICTION EDITOR Jennifer Lombardo (Buffalo, NY) is 25 years old and 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.
POETRY EDITOR Bee Walsh (Brooklyn, NY) is a 24-year-old New York native living in Bed-Stuy. 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 scoffing at people in each of them who ask her about her "career goals." An Executive Assistant in publishing by day, you can find her most nights stage managing non-profit theatre, eating vegan sushi in the West Village or causing mischief on roofs with her boyfriend, Brian. 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.
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Contributors
"Adam Robinson is a 20 year old student currently residing in Western Michigan and scuffling into obscurity with little to no sense of direction. You can find him on Tumblr.
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Kaity Davie is a sassy and enthusiastic gal making her way in the music industry. Writing rambling lines of prose when she's not haunting clubs, venues, festivals, and dive bars across New York City/the greater United States, Kaity is a proud resident of Queens who is always down for karaoke hangs featuring Ja Rule/Ashanti duets and parties with unlimited juice. She can be found on Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram.
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Izzy Friedman is a poet, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist originally from Buffalo, NY. Her poetry came to her as kismet. While co-writing songs during her early years in bands, she fell in love with baring her soul through lyrics. In her time between associated acts she began to move away from daily lyricism and live under the maxim "write one poem per day." Izzy currently resides in Queens with her boyfriend and is gainfully employed as a marketing and promotions assistant at the record label Razor & Tie. She can be seen reading poetry occasionally at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe or with the Hip Hop ReEducation Project. She is hoping to publish a collection of her poems within the next few years. Find her online through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr.
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Howie Good's latest poetry collection is The Complete Absence of Twilight (2014) from MadHat Press. He co-edits White Knuckle Press with Dale Wisely, who does most of the real work.
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Tom Loughlin is Chair of Theatre and Dance at the State University of NY at Fredonia. He also works professionally as an actor in the city of Buffalo, NY. He has written extensively on the state of American theatre and theatre education on his site. He also currently keeps an irregular blog. Other social media outlets include Twitter and Tumblr. He is not on Facebook.
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Donald C. Welch III lives in Allston, Massachusetts. His current project @SocialLit explores new forms of poetry derived from Social Media. His work has appeared in Passages North, Concrete, Rare Breed Magazine, Catharsis, The Emerson Review, and his collection of children’s poetry Who Gave These Flamingos Those Tuxedos? was published by Wilde Press in 2013. In his free time Donnie searches for the best Eggplant Parm sub.
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Scott Malkovsky is an actor living in California who found a love for poetry after taking Creative Writing classes in college. On occasion, you can find him on Twitter.
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Nanette Rayman, first winner of the Glass Woman Prize for writing. has two poetry books published: Shana Linda, Pretty Pretty and Project: Butterflies from Foothills Publishing. Nominated for two Pushcart Prizes, she has published in The Worcester Review, The Berkeley Fiction Review, gargoyle, Pedestal, magnolia, Oranges & Sardines, Sundog Lit, brickPlight, Up the Staircase Quarterly featured writer, new work in Up the Staircase Quarterly, Arsenic Lobster, Stirring’s Steamiest Six, carte blanche, Wilderness House Literary Review, deComp, grasslimb, Prick of the Spindle, Carousel and Sugar House Review where her poem, One Potato, Two, was mentioned in Newpages.com. A story was included in DZANC Books Best of the Web 2010 and a poem, “Shoes” was included in Best of the Net Anthology 2007. Her poem, “hope” was nominated for Best of the Net Anthology by Glass Journal in 2010. Upcoming work:: MadHat Review, Metazan. A portion of a one act play she wrote was performed for her in Israel 27
in 2013. She attended Circle in the Square Theatre School and the New School. She has performed in many off off Broadway shows.
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Ken Poyner often serves as unlikely eye-candy at his wife’s powerlifting meets. His latest collection of brief, quizzical fictions, Constant Animals, can be located through links on his website, kpoyner.com, at amazon.com, and at a number of impressionable bookstores; but, so far, it is about 49 clicks short of competing in sales with Fifty Shades. He has had recent work out in Analog, Asimov’s, Poet Lore, Sein und Werden, Cream City Review, Menacing Hedge, and a few dozen other places. In the meantime, he and his wife strive to be responsible cat and fish parents.
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Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, The Nation, Poetry, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. His most recent collection is Almost Rain, published by River Otter Press (2013). For more information, including free e-books, his essay titled “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities” please visit his website at www.simonperchik.com.
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Mark Ian Gould graduated from Montclair State University with a degree in English which graces his wall. He currently is a licensed massage therapist in New Jersey, working with the body while struggling with the mind. He is a believer, a lover, and can't hold a conversation without quoting cartoons or 90s songs. For proof, follow him on Twitter.
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Adam Kane is a pop-culture enthusiast, essayist, and recovering actor living and working in Boston. You can follow him on Twitter, where he tweets about the Red Sox, Syracuse basketball and the line at Starbucks.
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E. Wilson Hill is an artist living in New York City with his wife Helen and two pugs. He has always been fascinated with word structure, from Kabala to etymology, and placing words together to form sound, color, rhythm, and content. Poetry has always been a central focus of this interest—words magically charged. Recently, he has been published in Ijagun Poetry Journal and Behutet.
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Keah Brown studied Journalism and minored in Creative Writing at SUNY Fredonia, where she wrote weekly for the school newspaper both News and Reverb. She is currently a staff writer at www.geeks4thewin.com. Her poetry is often about loss, natural disasters and love and when she isn’t writing she is falling in love with fictional characters. Keah currently lives in Lockport N.Y and you can find her at her writing blog and on Twitter.
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Timothy D. Sowa studied Economics and Music at Bowdoin College, where he also led a slam poetry collective. His first book, Mirror Staged by Casey Hayes (penname), was published by Maine Authors Publishing and received Honorable Mention at the 2013 New England Book Festival. Find it here, and follow Tim on Twitter.
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Chris Lee-Rodriguez is an Asian/Latino poet, musician, and educator currently based in Boston. He has served on many slam teams, taught writing and performance workshops all throughout Boston, as well as in New Jersey and New Hampshire. This is his second published poem through RPDSociety. You can follow him on his Facebook page.
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Sara Sutterlin is a published poet and curator of two zines. She also publishes ebooks. Her more recent work can be found in the newly published e-book I WANTED TO BE THE KNIFE. 28
She lives in Montreal, Quebec. You can buy her ebook “I wanted to be the knife”, read her zine, “Harvest Spoons”, and of course, check out her Tumblr.
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Shelby Converse is a recent graduate with a minor in Creative Writing of SUNY Fredonia, where she was inspired by (and partially based her poem upon) the graffiti in the girls’ bathroom at SUNY Fredonia, McEwen Hall during November 2012. Aside from toilet literature, she has also written as “The College Theatre Dork” for The Green Room Blog, The Trident, and Inn House Review. You can follow her on Twitter.
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