ISSUE #4
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5 €
SAND #4
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SAND is:
SAND wishes to thank:
Becky Crook
The international literature festival berlin,
Christina Wegener
Solid Earth printing,
Chris Davis
Upstairs at Duroc for collaboration,
Editor
Spanish & Managing Editor Prose Editor
Julian Smith-Newman Poetry Editor
Yvonne Andreas Art Editor
Etsy Labs for space,
Bohemi for hosting,
Cameron Wilson and Danielle Janess for organization, and Michael Edwards for music.
"
Lorna Richerby Copy Editor
Laura Lucia Fischer Design
Susan Schulz
Marketing & Distribution
Danielle Janess
Contributing Editor
Johannes Krija Intern
Lara Konrad Intern
ISSN 2191-429X – Published in Berlin – Copyright Autumn 2011
SAND Journal – Rödelstr. 8 – 10318 Berlin
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E D I T O R I A L
Issue 4 of SAND sees a wide variety of works from authors and artists
at the bench.” Michael Spann, Return). Even if, after the attempted effort toward
together into a coherent whole that represents the newest collection of Berlin's
My Father and the Laws of Coal: “But in the end, it was too much.” We will go there
spread across multiple continents. If a single thread may serve to bundle them English Literary Journal, it may be the many-layered idea of return. Return refers not only to the title of the winning prose piece by Michael Spann, whose characters
start and end up on the same bench after a series of adventures and mishaps, but
it can also be taken in the manner of a response, of shaping and being shaped—the word's etymological roots are re- + tornāre, to turn in a lathe. We are presented, in Patricia Milch's cover portraits and Kiên Hoàng Lê's perfectly framed photos,
with individual subjects under a close lens. Who are they? we ask, and our own suppositions impress upon them a new kind of form, just as Sean Padraic Birnie's static Spirit butterflies begin to flutter, perhaps, in our minds.
The artist desires to start afresh, to “begin anew,” like Robinson Crusoe
obeying “a vaguer duty,” the return must be re-returned, as Jeffrey C. Alfier's
even if all we got to do on our journey was “Dance in a ball gown, then go home,” as James Harris' 19th century debutante. And rather than being solidified along
the way, our perception of identity may rather be liquified, as though we're looking
into Carolyn Zukowski's compact mirror. A turn of perspective may obscure rather than clarify, like Frank Roger's The Man Who Had an ID, who remains oddly ambiguous despite detailed information. But on traversing the circumference of
artistic statement and response, perhaps the reader finds that she is also like the
girl in Philip Wexler's Museum Going, who “dreams of being inside the painting” instead of in a museum (or among the pages of a literary journal), and who, coming to “rest where she started, goes back for more.”
“on a deserted island with wild goats soft and trusting,” as Steven Schutzman
writes in Horizon. This is return in the sense of the mechanism that we press on our keyboard to start another line. With return, we hit the button and arrive at a new space. This may even be a new city, just as our contributors seek to root themselves
Becky Crook, editor
in some way in the beguiling spaciousness of Berlin's art and literary scene, which,
to borrow Jan Wagner's image, is like “an empty / phial with a phantom perfume.” Just as the shelves of Jennifer Kinney's photo, PA Antlers stand bare for new use
but with indicators of a violent past, the city lies scoured but ready, “battered but intact” (Schutzman), beckoning for turn and return, to form and to be formed (and re-reformed) by new perspectives.
We wish to go and be a part of the shaping. Even if, at the end, nothing
new will have happened (“tomorrow all would be forgotten and they would be back 6
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F a m i l y
C O N T E N T S Sharif El Gammal-Ortiz ..................... The Horse Butcher's Apprentice ...................................... Michael Spann ..................................... Return .................................................................................. Rodney Nelson ..................................... Scion of a Copperhead ............................................................. Carolyn Zukowski ............................... Air Transit .................................................................................... Steven Schutzman .............................. Horizon ......................................................................................... Steven Johannes Fowler ..................... (Cygnus) ........................................................................................ (Allenopithecus nigroviridis) ................................................ Mary Buchinger .................................. The Money Game ....................................................................... Nina Romano ....................................... Butterscotch Pudding .............................................................. Greg Santos .......................................... In the New Republic of Poetry .............................................. María Salgado ...................................... el río es negro y llueve .............................................................. K A F F E E
11 12 21 22 23 27 28 29 30 45 46
P A U S E
Colin James ........................................... The Dehydrated Astronaut ..................................................... 52 Richard Toovey .................................... Instead of Working .................................................................... 54 o t o Jeffrey C. Alfier .................................... My Father and the Laws of Coal ............................................ 57 Garrett McDonough ........................... Exposure ........................................................................................ 58 Jan Wagner ............................................ giersch ............................................................................................ 67 verabredungen für die kaimanjagd ...................................... 68 ein pferd ......................................................................................... 70 laken ................................................................................................ 74 Mandy Pannett .................................... Later, all at once .......................................................................... 76 Andres Fisher ....................................... Santiago 73 ................................................................................... 82 James Harris ......................................... A 19th century debutante speaks ........................................... 85 Amy Small-McKinney ....................... Milk and Bones ........................................................................... 86 Óscar Curieses ..................................... Final o Prólogo ............................................................................ 87 Philip Wexler ........................................ Museum Going ............................................................................ 88
A R T Patricia Milch ....................................... Family Portraits ............................................. front & back cover Casper Cammeraat ............................. Family ............................................................................................ 09 Grace .............................................................................................. 51 Frank Roger .......................................... The Man Who Had An ID ....................................................... 10 Micro-Organism ........................................................................ 52 Seán Padraic Birnie ............................. Spirit ............................................................................................... 25 TURBULENCE (I.V.) ................................................................. 66 Kiên Hoàng Lê ..................................... Image 2 / 14 .................................................... ............................. 43 Barber ............................................................................................. 45 Isaac 002 ........................................................................................ 84 Catherine Edmunds ............................ Wind across the Sand ................................................................ 53 Colin D. Halloran ................................ à travers du temps ...................................................................... 65 Jennifer Kinney .................................... PA Antlers ..................................................................................... 83 Philipp Dera .......................................... 01.May.2011 Görlitzer Park .................................................... 89 Steven Johannes Fowler ..................... riverhorse I ................................................................................... 94
b y
C a s p e r
C a m m e r a a t
S h a r i f
E l
G a m m a l - O r t i z
Th e Ho r s e B u tc h e r' s Ap p re nt i ce My master hands me a bone saw, a stitching knife and a steel splitter. The horse's flexor tendons twitch. I could hurt a man but not an animal. The pneumatic gun goes off and the horse rises like a bird with the head of a bearded man. The meat saw moves in circles, around and around, and the bolt pistol opens the forelock—my master and I are covered in horse. I attend the abattoir like a peregrine falcon does the sky, I'm restless seeking rest. I help take apart the chin groove, hock, gaskin, and cannon. Bits of mane and tail stick to my person, I feel heavy, I'm a womb. The horse is a wooden barrel. It no longer smells of wind, or hay, or sun warming green fields. It is a sentry box of solitude, and I'm the horse, a spatula in the night, a cleaver neglected in a muzzle. I pass my callused hands over my face and hair, I can't feel the sleeping lamb in either. I only feel the thorns of a tamarind-tree. I ask my master how heavy are a horse's eyes. He answers: you are not the one you love. 10
11 Wi n n e r, SAND poetry competition
M i c h a e l
S p a n n
R etu r n
T
he three crumpled rummies sat like crows on a branch except the
branch was a wooden bench on a median strip and the tree a long,
wide thoroughfare full of potholes filled with muddy water which ran through the ramshackle provincial ‘city’ of Concepción, on the banks of the Rio Paraguay in North Eastern Paraguay. Motorbikes, mopeds, trucks and the occasional horse
and cart went past but really none were travelling too quickly as though afraid to
upset the delicate balance of the cut-it-with-a-machete thick haze which blanketed Concepción. The ‘crows’, Alfredo, Oscar and Carlos passed a bottle of contraband
vodka back and forth and did what washed up drunks the world over do: stare into space, talk to no one in particular, hit up the known and unknown for a little money
and rewrite their past histories in their own favour. Well that's what Alfredo and Oscar did because Carlos (they didn't know if that was his name but they called
him that because ‘Carlos’ reminded Alfredo of a Carlos he used to know) never spoke, just gave an occasional grunt as he drank from the communal bottle then let out a delighted guffaw as the small amount of alcohol let off fireworks in his
head. Unlike Alfredo and Oscar, whose working days were far behind them Carlos
scraped a living down at the docks and markets hauling goods in the trolley that sat beside the bench. Alfredo, an ex Brazilian boat captain who still wore a battered
Captain's hat, sloshed the two remaining fingers of vodka around the bottle as though trying to conjure up more. When no more vodka materialised, he waved
at the bored, barely pre-pubescent cop on the other side of the street. The cop was supposed to be guarding the bank but instead was looking intently in at an ice
cream shop, desiring both the ice cream and the woman working in it. The cop saw
Alfredo's greeting and waved a listless hand back and forth as though whooshing away insects and continued to crave. 12
One day, who knows when, Carlos had turned up at the bench and sat down
without even acknowledging Alfredo and Oscar. Their protests about this intruder
were cut short by the bottle of beer he'd produced. They would rather have had
harder stuff but beggars couldn't be choosers. A short man with almost dwarf like, stunted arms and legs and a narrow face pitted with acne scars, Carlos had been
barefoot and dressed in threadbare military fatigues. Even now, he was barefoot,
but his army shirt had been replaced by a second hand t-shirt, which featured
fake tits and said in English: Squeeze Here. In the embers of the afternoon, more people began to appear on the street for their daily promenade. On street corners, stands with meat and fish cooked on hot coals began to be set up. Alfredo, who watched the passing parade nightly with the rapt attention of a scientist viewing
an experiment, said: “Never seen them before, must be new. Do you reckon they
are Americans or Europeans? Which church are they with?” He was talking about a sweating chubby blonde couple with teeth like piano keys. Their heavily starched jeans and crisp shirts were like magnets to the dust and grit that flew around the
streets. They must have been new arrivals as they asked the cop for directions. He waved vaguely down the main drag. Alfredo, always on the lookout for an easy
new mark, quickly shoved the bottle behind him and called them over. Alfredo went into a spiel welcoming the young couple to Concepción and more importantly ascertaining what their ‘mission’ was. That done, he launched into a rambling story about how he was a member of their church (pulling a crucifix from a mat of chest hair and waving it around as he spoke), the ghosts that inhabit the furthest reaches
of the river and how difficult it was for him and his ‘brother’ Oscar to look after their mute cousin Carlito (and for all they knew Carlos may have been mute, for
he never spoke) because the medicines he needed for his raft of ailments were very expensive. Once Alfredo may have had the gift of the gab but his delivery had been
eroded by the years on the grog but still, it worked. He slyly pocketed a couple of notes and watched the gullible missionaries waddle up the street. When they were
out of view, Alfredo pulled the bottle back out and finished off the last of it with a 13
Wi n n e r, SAND prose competition
flourish. Getting his newly gained wealth out he told his ‘cousin’ Carlito with a grin
anyway as they were speaking in German or rather one of them was speaking very
he was much younger b) he only ever took a couple of small sips of whatever they
baboon whilst licking his dry, cracking lips with a darting tongue.
to go and get them another bottle. They always entrusted Carlos with this job as a)
were drinking so they weren't concerned that he would bring them back the dregs of the bottle and c) he wasn't bright enough not to return with the bottle. “And get the bottle from Doña Lola's, it's cheaper there.”
Doña Lola's place was out of the centre but that was relative as it only took
a couple of minutes to get off the concrete roads and onto muddy dirt roads that were lit by an occasional stuttering streetlight. Doña Lola's shop was really just a few shelves at the front of her house but she always had good quality spirits and
cigarettes at cheaper prices. Her son was a truck driver who always managed to let a few things drop off the back of his truck when he passed through town. Doña
Lola was a morbidly obese woman who was sweating in a chair drinking tereré
with her equally fat daughter when Carlos arrived and pointed at a bottle. Having had dealings with his silence before, she barked at him in Guaraní to show what
money he had and also gestured with her thumb and forefinger. Satisfied that he
had the readies, Doña Lola slowly unrolled her various layers of flab and rose off the seat. She handed Carlos the bottle of vodka, his money disappearing into her cash register cleavage with practiced aplomb.
calmly in German and the other was chewing and spitting out words like a crazed The calm one's flat line tone cut through the fire-storm of gibberish:
“Now I am convinced we are on the right track. Great Uncle Dietrich's journals
mentioned that we needed a ‘native’ to go before us to divert the spirits guarding General Francisco Solano López's treasure and then in your dream you saw us
picking someone up on a dirt road. Now let's turn the headlights back on,” and he rubbed his long, pale hands together and allowed himself a thin smile. “Calm down,
Jürgen, it's OK. It's OK,” he said in his detached way and he gave his thumb to the driver who sucked on it noisily, a childlike serenity coming over him. It was at this
particularly disturbing juncture that Carlos decided to open his foggy eyes. Seeing electric blonde, angular-like-ice-pick-faced identical twins kitted out in the same clothes engaging in this type of activity made Carlos blink through the fog and then open his eyes as wide as dinner plates. He repeated this and not finding the visuals
any more pleasant shut his eyes tight and burrowed further back into the corner
of the seat as though trying to force himself into the upholstery. Outside the limits of Concepción, the darkness was total, the octopus ink of the night swallowing the
dim beam of the headlights. It was slow going, the road was in a shocking state, the recent rains having turned parts of it into a swamp-like quagmire and then there
Carlos was heading back when a 4WD driving without headlights almost
were the wandering cattle and bandits to worry about, the former being the far
miraculously he pulled off a great catch to stop it smashing on the red dirt road. The
Jürgen had now calmed down and needed to concentrate fully on the road, his twin,
As he put his head up like a turtle peeking from its shell, the 4WD door connected
khaki explorer trousers.
ran him down. He leapt out of the road, the bottle slipping from his grasp, but
more dangerous as the pistols that the twins carried would help with the latter. As
4WD drive screeched to a halt then reversed back, almost running him over again.
Otto, removed his thumb from Jürgen's mouth and wiped it on his multi-pocketed,
with his skull, instantly creating a sizeable egg on his forehead. He hardly felt himself being bundled into the back seat. As he hadn't been totally KO'd by the car
door he heard the voices of the two men in the car as though they were being piped through a thick fog by disembodied beings. He wouldn't have understood them 14
Otto then turned around to get a look at Carlos.
“My friend, what are you holding?” he said in the same flat-as-a-pancake
tone as he reached for the bottle. Carlos, even though he didn't want to give the impression that he was awake, clutched the bottle fiercely. Trying to separate him
15
from it was like trying to separate him from his life. “Ah good, you are awake and
the insects out. It didn't work though as one of the walls of the shack had a hole
for words in Guaraní. “And we are not going to hurt you. You will help us and
it. A thick multi-coloured line of insects, some the size of small birds, circled the
don't worry you can keep your bottle, we don't drink,” he said haltingly, searching
you will be paid for your efforts, tax-free of course.” He laughed at his little joke as everything in Paraguay was tax-free. He turned back around, already having forgotten about Carlos, his eyes boring holes into the darkness beyond the beams.
Back on the bench in Concepción, Alfredo and Oscar kept looking out
for Carlos and the bottle. With every passing minute their chances slimmed. They started arguing with each other about who was going to Doña Lola's to see if Carlos had actually purchased the bottle, but it came to nothing as when they decided to
flip a coin they realised they had no coin. Finally they gave up, cursing Carlos to high heaven. They were going to leave his trolley there to teach the young scamp
a lesson but decided to take it with them. They left the ‘city’ centre, taking turns pushing and riding on the trolley, but this soon degenerated into another argument
as Oscar accused Alfredo of pushing him too slowly. Alfredo, in a surprising show of strength for someone his age and physical condition, tipped Oscar off the trolley
and stormed off with it. It didn't matter, tomorrow all would be forgotten and they would be back at the bench.
The slow going was made even worse as something on the underside of the
4WD had been damaged, the horrible clanking sound attesting to something being
in it, the shape suggesting a drunken patron had fallen or been thrown through incredibly bright lights in the bar. The customers in the bar were a group of young conscripts who had finished their time at a remote base and were following the
time honoured Paraguayan military tradition of walking the hundreds, or in some cases thousands, of kilometres to Caacupé, the most important religious site in the country. The conscripts watched a woman in a mouldy white ball gown picking at
a battered harp and delivering a melancholy ode to lost love. She performed with
such gusto it was as though she were in a concert hall in Asunción, not a bar/garage
where half the floor was covered in greasy spare parts and one of the soldiers
was trying his best to splash his piss somewhere near the urinal in the far corner. Although her performance was somewhat mesmerising, the heads of the soldiers
and the barman began to turn in a slow ripple towards the odd trio in the doorway. The paleness of the Germans combined with the harshness of the lights bouncing off them gave them an almost translucent quality.
The singer, seeing she had lost her audience, upped the tempo of her
playing and singing but it was to no avail and she stomped off the small stage (a warped piece of wood resting on four old cartons) in a huff and went to sulk on the ripped out back seat of a car.
“Who is the mechanic?” It was a question that didn't really need asking
not quite right. Carlos hungrily accepted the food that Otto passed to him and they
as the ‘bartender’ had enough grease on himself and his overalls to suggest he
the shacks were rusting cars and trucks in various states of cannibalisation. A sign
getting his knee-high-to-a-grasshopper daughter to take over from him. Otto told
having been made indecipherable by bullet holes long ago. Otto and Jürgen got out
mechanic to look at the 4WD... but Carlos, who was terrified of the brothers had
height of his abductors. Motioning for him to follow them they walked into the bar
she was the most beautiful woman he'd ever clapped eyes on. This proved that
limped on until they came to a set of shacks lit up by a noisy generator. Surrounding
was saving it up for a coming shortage. He ambled out from behind the bar after
stated they had arrived at ‘ ------ Bar and Garage’, the name of the establishment
Jürgen to wait in the bar and keep a close eye on Carlos whilst he went out with the
and opened the back door. Carlos got out gingerly, for the first time noticing the
momentarily forgotten his fear because he was staring at the singer and thinking
which was a leaning wooden shack with an out of place modern screen door to keep
Carlos hadn't looked at many women as the years of ‘entertaining’ in bars in rural
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Paraguay had knocked what little shine she'd ever had off. She hadn't come within
cooee of a dentist for a while either but the crooked smile she gave to Carlos took him far away from the throbbing in his head and the foreign freak beside him. The bad intentions flowing from the soldiers' swimming-with-booze eyeballs was too
much for a standing target. Jürgen roughly yanked Carlos onto the nearest seat. The
singer, whose lifetime of experience with men had attuned her to an easy earner,
kept fluttering her eyelashes at Carlos and suggestively raised her long white dirty dress till it showed an upper portion of shin, which caused Carlos to squirm in
his seat. A dirty and sweating Otto came back in the bar and got his brother as he needed help with the vehicle. Patting the pistol in the holster on his hip he warned Carlos to stay in the bar and not talk to anyone or else...
Seeing her opportunity now that Carlos was all on his lonesome, she got up
and motioned for him to follow her outside. He followed, tongue literally hanging
from his mouth. As he stepped out of the hole in the wall, a hand grabbed him and pulled him back against it. In a voice that was equal parts whiskey, cigarettes
and gravel she said that he was the only customer she'd ever seen bringing a bottle
into a bar and then took his hand and placed it on her rubbery breast. “My name's Isabella. What's your name, honey?” she asked but even if Carlos could talk he
probably wouldn't have, his breath coming in short, stabbing bursts of excitement.
“The strong, silent type. I like that,” as she let her hand wander to his thigh. “Now
those weird looking twins, they must have plenty of money. How much have they given you?” The hand that was on his thigh explored his pockets but felt nothing
except an erection you could have cut diamonds on. “Now steady on honey,”
with the singer threw him into a rage. The soldier screamed melodramatically, “She's mine. I love her,” and threw a roundhouse right that collected Carlos high on
the temple. For the second time that night he was stunned but this time the blood flowed as well. The soldier then started laying into the singer, who gave as good
as she got with her talon like fingernails ripping at his face and neck. Carlos got up on spaghetti legs and wafted an ineffectual blow at the soldier with his bottle but the glancing blow only landed on the soldier's shoulder. An elbow from the
soldier spread Carlos' nose across his face like an exploding rotten tomato. This
time he stayed down. The fight moved back into the bar. It must have attracted the attention of the mechanic and the German twins because when Carlos heard the gunshots through his moans of pain, he crawled away and eventually made it to his
feet. He came to a stop when he fell over an old barbed wire fence. He lay where he fell and didn't get up again.
He was woken in the morning by a goat's raspy tongue lapping at the
barbed wire cuts on his leg. As he sat up the mask of flies that covered his bloody
face rose lazily, giving the impression that a black face was hovering over his. After vomiting he got to his knees and finally cracked the bottle of vodka. After a
quick sip he vomited again but another sip got him on his feet. He looked around. He didn't know where he was. A dirt road snaked into the dark clouds that were
already gathering for the afternoon downpour. He started walking, his hovering face of flies following him loyally.
When Carlos finally stumbled back into Concepción after who knows how
she rasped as she took his hand off her breast. “Where do they keep their money,
much time on the road, his battered and swollen face included two black eyes and
put his hand back on her breast and moved it around as though teaching him to
enough mud to add a couple of kilos to his weight. But Alfredo and Oscar barely
onto...” Just then a drunken soldier burst from the hole. Seeing Carlos together
as Carlos.
you tell me and then we can have lots of fun together,” and to prove her point she
his filthy and tattered clothes were hanging off of him. His bare feet were caked in
knead particularly thick dough. “We could also open that bottle you're holding
batted an eyelid, noticing the still half full bottle of Vodka that looked as beat up
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Alfredo, as though Oscar had at one stage suggested that Carlos wouldn't
return, stated as though such a thought had never entered his head: “See I told you he'd be back,� as he thirstily reached for the bottle.
&
R o d n e y
N e l s o n
S c i on of a Cop p er h e ad
it might have been the heartache word of eighteen sixty-five that sent
my bunch riding upwind to where no other hurt would overtake
I am my great-great-granddaddy and the range is Wyoming now and I head on much as he did for the same haven of sunset
if you are wanting to track me
look there but I think you should know you will not see a picket sign or any way to my wagon
I water in fear at nighttime
and you will have to wait to find me with a bib and a drool in
a home not far outside Gillette
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S t e v e n
J o h a n n e s
F o w l e r
(Cyg nu s ) I think of a tailor who is his own fabric Valerio Magrelli
creep into the narrow reeds is beauty such a gift,
when thy father is poor?
and you are not protected by royal law? creep, and let no more be said geese are swans
and swans are geese
of both, Algerians will eat the meat I am one of seven, the youngest let them have me as they wish I am a chicken
bring out the dish
{this is a Swan}
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B a r b e r
b y
K i ê n
H o à n g
G r e g
L ê
S a n t o s
I n t h e Ne w R e p u b l i c o f Po e t r y after Martin Espada
Poets scrawl their verses onto knives, flinging the cutlery in the air, letting chance decide.
Gypsies slink through the throngs, slipping scrolls of poems
into oblivious purses and pockets. And the hungry can slip into a bordello and be fed poems until ink seeps down their chins.
We have returned to this good land, where the forest at twilight
is filled with the mingling cries of wolves and songbirds.
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G a r r e t t
M c D o n o u g h
E xp o su re
I
climbed out of the truck, dropping the clipboard back on the seat. The voice boomed from above, broadened to a sentence: If you jack my shit I’ll electrify the very ground you walk on. Fuckstick.
I looked up. It was not God. Or my brain. It was a man atop a telephone
found myself in Los Angeles. I’d hiked the hills for days, trying to
pole, in a neon hardhat. Chest strapped to the shaft, legs wrapped around the
woman in exchange for a hug. A crusty patch still marked the area of my shirt
head and arms away farther than should be possible, struggling to grab at empty
make sense of an outdated star-homes map I’d bartered off a homeless
wood. He resembled an ADD baby, secured to his mother’s chest but twisting his
where she’d planted her face, the fabric rigid from dried tears or snot. I slept on
space.
few minutes, appalled that California could be so cold. This was something no one
carrot. I removed the single binocular lens I’d been carrying since my sojourn west,
noxious funk of ocean salt crossed with exhaust and ethnic food that saturated
severed by the door to a roadside storage unit that fell violently, nearly shattering
the bottom curve of the third, final O of the Hollywood sign, shivering awake every
My eyesight was weak. I suspected vitamin A deficiency, longed for a
had ever bothered to tell me, and temperature, along with smell—in this case the
held it to my eye, emulating a pirate. The other half of the binoculars had been
LA’s excuse for air—is one of the few things television fails to represent accurately.
my hand. I had healed. The binoculars hadn’t.
offering the ecosystem a fresh start.
the end exposed—dangled it threateningly. My gut told me the juice was merely
at the end of a cul-de-sac. The houses were half-built, foundations poking out
danger impossible to imagine calmly. I raised up my arms and backed away from
on wooden stakes advertised a new development. On the driver’s seat rested a
heard a sinister laugh float after me.
section of the nervous system, strings of blue lines splitting off in all directions
in my ear canals. I napped in a collapsed treehouse, my head resting against a
make sense—electrical tracks for the region, a network of energy delivery systems.
circumcised tip of a pink stick of sidewalk chalk. I closed my eyes and performed a
did not account for recent earthquake damage, which had realigned the streets and
of the region. I painted my eyelids with the electrical tributaries that linked house
I dreamed of wildfires, their warmth and regenerative powers, their generosity in
I saw that the pole-man wore thick rubber gloves, held a black wire—
I stumbled on a truck. A box, blue and white and diesel. It was parked
broadband, but I did not want to take unnecessary risks. Death by electricity is a
of the landscape like children buried to their necks in sand. A holographic sign
the truck, taking deep, calculated steps. I broke into a sprint once I hit the tree line,
clipboard with a color-coded map pinned in its claw. At first it looked like a cross-
I ran until the cool air choked the base of my throat and sweat pooled
to the tiniest crooked strand. But as I grew used to the markings they began to
melted big wheel. Rummaging for candy and cleaning products, I discovered the
I compared it to my own star-map, realized my visual representation of the roads
memory exercise I’d learned in high school drama to recall the pole-worker’s map
destroyed certain essential intersections.
to house. I let shapes coalesce behind this omnivorous web then did my best to
I heard a shout. Just noise, wind. I returned to the maps. I heard it again.
This time a word: Fuckstick. I saw no speaker. I feared auditory hallucinations had set in, a side effect of subsisting off the oranges grown on median strips. I quickly 58
redraw the lines of my star-map with the chalk.
I trudged through a field of uprooted palm trees, never cleared away
after the quake, fallen on top of each other in an orderly line, like the masts on a 59
model ship before they snap up, filling the bottle. I circumscribed a valley of dead
the second season of Extreme Hymen Makeover. Modest fortune and immodest
foot got caught in a bramble and I had to sacrifice the shoe. Trotting lopsided,
The chum of her mutilated relationship drew the tabloid sharks, metastasizing
cars, their hoods propped open, looking hungry. Crossing a prune vineyard, my I emerged in a neighborhood, used the street signs to orient myself. I drank from a sprinkler, threw an overshot frisbee back to a group of children playing in a drained swimming pool.
Night fell then passed, and in the lateral slices of dawn I reached my
destination: a five-story Tudor mansion sprawled over a flat plot of land cut out of the hillside, staircase-style. A woman lived in this house, alone. She was a very public woman who claimed to be private, and these vigorous demands for privacy in turn amplified the public’s appetite for her. This was universally understood to be an intentional, strategic move on the part of the woman and her management operatives, but that truth was never discussed.
Both myself and the globe at large first became aware of this woman when
fame amassed around her, which quickly led to the collapse of her engagement. into a feeding frenzy when rumors spread of a violent episode involving her ex-fiancée and a snow machine, though nothing was officially documented.
Reports had started to circulate that she would star in a new show where men,
women, and even a transgendered septuagenarian would compete for the honor of de-re-virginizing her, but the show, tentatively titled An Invitation Inside, (when eliminating a contestant, the starlet would, radiating the agony of a human being
forced to make such impossible, gut-wrenching decisions, say, “I’m sorry, but you are not invited inside”) was on hold since the studio’s in-house counsel explained
that such a program could only legally be filmed in Nevada, and executives were weighing the costs of moving production out of state.
I knew this reality starlet was home because of the horde of tiny, European
she’d been a contestant in a television show about re-virginization—women of all
cars and motorcycles parked outside the front gates. Men lingered in groups,
and psychological challenges for the chance to win a surgery that would restore
krumping, clowning, crying, and polishing their camera lenses.
ages, shapes, and backgrounds competed in humiliating but hilarious physical their hymens. Through a series of betrayals and tearful confessions, this woman—a
leaning on hoods, playing foreign pop music out windows, swilling coffee, chatting,
In person the mansion looked so much less majestic—I could see the
young, perky Christian quilt-maker whose original husband had exploded in a war,
columns were made of cheap, goose-pimpled cement and that the spiked gates
night—won the votes (and hearts) of America and the judges, and was re-sewn to
to resemble stone walls. I thought of the first time I saw this supposedly stately
a woman who longed to give her current, newer fiancée the gift of a pure wedding her original manufacturer settings. Tearful, to a camera in her hospital room, she
reached between her legs and said it felt like her first marriage had never even happened.
The show ended, but her role in public life commenced—she arrived on
red carpets, gave tactical interviews on morning news shows, toured the megachurch circuit, started a signature line of purity quilts, tweeted updates on her
vulvic health, starred in national print campaigns for prescription medications and fashionable-yet-practical chastity belts, and once cameod as a guest judge on 60
were manufactured in precut sections, already adhered to acrylic cubes meant abode on television, when I was a teenager and it belonged to a celebrity boxer
famous for espousing how sexually attractive he found his opponents, as a means of intimidation. The camera had shown an aerial view of the grounds, the house’s four
identical wings radiating outward from the center, then making sharp right turns.
The announcer, taking pride in his metaphor, let his voice rise an octave when he said that the home resembled four hockey sticks taped together at the handles, but
I realized immediately that the house was actually shaped like a swastika. Possibly the largest swastika ever created, and wholly unmistakable.
61
But it took the media more than a year to report this fact. The mansion’s
reality starlet’s lair. Lights flashed on. Her bedroom. Then another set of lights.
flamboyant celebrity boxer’s career collapsed due to viral video evidence that he
I quickly assembled my device: the single lens from the binoculars; a
scandalous silhouette finally came to light during the same news cycle the
Bath.
had been hosting an illegal iguana fighting ring in his cottage house. The consensus
cardboard paper towel tube; two strips of electrical tape and a decommissioned cell
iguanas, reportedly inspiring him to conduct cruel eugenics experiments on the
tape to block out any openings where unwanted light could creep in. I aimed for
Behind the Dewlap, the celebrity boxer would deny even knowing what a Nazi was,
cell phone’s cracked screen. She came right up to the window, looked out. The glass
was that the celebrity boxer’s Nazi sympathies had informed the way he treated the
phone. I used the binocular as a zoom lens, the tube as a focus, and the electrical
lizards and form their carcasses into lampshades. Years later, in his autobiography,
the bathroom window, magnifying until an image of the woman appeared on the
much less a swastika, another tragic shortfall of the American public education
ruined the shot, deflecting the morning rays in a mask of glare.
celebrity halfway house—he felt like a caged animal forced to do battle, so he caged
alarm set off the louder and pitchier gate alarm. The reality starlet opened the
Each subsequent owner added a wing onto the mansion, so that now,
commotion next door. She wore an inside-out tank top and little-boy underwear,
system. His brutality was merely transference, he told his ghostwriter from the
The assembly of paparazzi gathering to investigate the neighborly car
animals and forced them to do battle. What a cruel, cyclical society!
window, set her hands on the sill and leaned out to more closely examine the
four tenants later, it was shaped into a square, the symbol negated by addition, like
hair arranged in a sloppy pile atop her head. Her face looked distorted across the
graffiti on a middle school desk.
I knelt in the bushes, not wanting to reveal myself to the looming
photographers. My bare foot had started to ache so I spent a minute massaging it
back to life, using a leaf and my spit to wipe off the grime. I crawled on my stomach to the back perimeter of the house, but spotted another set of paparazzi killing
time with a dance battle, waiting for the re-virginal reality starlet to revive after her
long night of Christian-quilting. I thought of the ants that would invade my cabin
at summer camp. How if you spilled juice they’d swarm at once on the same spot, unable to ignore the sweet stuff.
I would have to create the sweet stuff.
I peeled off a wedge of palm bark and sidestepped to the neighbor’s fence.
A battalion of SUVs lined the driveway, and I hurled the palm bark over the fence like a shotput, and it crashed onto the hood of the nearest sporty utility vehicle,
triggering the triple-tone alarm. As the siren cracked through the community, the
photographers swarmed to the neighbor’s house. I rushed back to the re-virtuous 62
cheek, running from eye to earlobe. I thought it was the crack on the cell phone, but she shifted slightly sideways, away from the screen’s fracture, and the line proved to be part of her face—a secret scar. Such an imperfection had been rumored since the
supposedly aggressive episode with her publicly shamed ex-fiancée and his snow
machine, but nothing had ever been proven or photographed. I felt a quick pump of excited blood, but forced myself to breathe until reaching a meditative state, so
as not to sabotage the shot. I cradled the cardboard tube gently, sharpening my focus. She was awoken accidentally, was still half-asleep, she hadn’t started her day
and therefore hadn’t yet donned the thick skein of makeup that normally veiled her tarnish. She reached up to shut the window, exposing a swath of mossy stubble in
her armpits, and yawned, widely, to the point where I could clearly see her uvula.
As her jaw floated shut, light haloed the scar and I pressed send on cell phone. The image clicked, saved. The window closed.
On my journey back to the city I stumbled on a college campus in the
foothills. I flashed an empty hand at the guard at the library entrance, who was 63
supposedly checking ID cards. I wandered the halls, dipping into the stacks, the
à
t r a v e r s
d u
t e m p s
b y
C o l i n
D .
H a l l o r a n
reading room, past the periodicals section. If I passed a book that was poking out,
I removed it and placed it on another shelf, sabotaging the academy’s hopeless
striving toward order. In the café I found an abandoned laptop chained to a table. I sat down, naturally, as if it were mine. I hoped my dishevelment—the uneven
scraggles of my beard, the torn clothes stained with wilderness and homeless lady–excretions, the missing shoe, what I’m certain was an unpleasant body odor
situation—would suggest an eccentric, savant-like student with an overwhelming
workload and pathological incapacity for grooming, something not atypical for institutions of higher education, rather than the deceptive and vagabond comportment of a sinister stranger.
I quickly plugged the cell phone into the laptop and uploaded the picture
to a photo-editing program. I examined this born-again virgin’s face, the confusion
of sleepiness, the porelessness of microdermabrasion, the jagged hook of the scar’s path, too uneven to be a blade, surely from some sort of messy, severe impact. I cropped out the context, excising the window and sill, blurring the bathroom in the background to a fuzzy swatch of colorlessness. The law as I understood it allowed a human to photograph another human in a public space, and that lawns and
balconies visible from the street are considered public, but that windows of private residences are not. I edited away everything except the unobstructed, unpainted face—it could have been a mug shot, a portrait. Taken anywhere, by anyone. Her
eyes were red—I considered leaving them, to throw everyone off the scent that this photo had already been edited, but what if it was published that way? It would be
too cruel. I fixed the eyes, matching her irises with the blue I found on the Internet. I emailed the picture to the first photo agency that came up in the web search.
The next week I bought a 20,000 square foot house on the beach and never
wore anything but a three-piece suit again.
' 64
65
T U R B U L E N C E
( I .V. )
b y
S e á n
P a d r a i c
B i r n i e
J a n
W a g n e r
g ier s ch nicht zu unterschätzen: der giersch mit dem begehren schon im namen – darum die blüten, die so schwebend weiß sind, keusch wie ein tyrannentraum. kehrt stets zurück wie eine alte schuld, schickt seine kassiber durchs dunkel unterm rasen, unterm feld, bis irgendwo erneut ein weißes widerstandsnest emporschießt. hinter der garage, beim knirschenden kies, der kirsche: giersch als schäumen, als gischt, der ohne ein geräusch geschieht, bis hoch zum giebel kriecht, bis giersch schier überall sprießt, im ganzen garten giersch sich über giersch schiebt, ihn verschlingt mit nichts als giersch.
s p u rg e not to underestimate: spurge, the urge already in its name–and hence the blossoms, so floating white, virginal as a tyrant’s dream. always returns like some old debt, sends its secret missive through darkness under the grass, under the field, until somewhere else, renewed, a white resistance cell emerges. behind the garage, by the crunching gravel, the cherry: spurge as frothing, as surf, that without sound
66
occurs until it creeps to the gable-top, until spurge surges over everything, in the whole garden spurge thrusts itself over spurge, submerged by nothing but spurge.
Translated by Danielle Janess and Julian Smith-Newman
67
A n d r e s
F i s h e r
P A
A n t l e r s
b y
J e n n i f e r
K i n n e y
S AN T I AG O 73 (*) i.
Hubo cuerpos al borde de las acequias frĂas. ii.
Y en las torrenteras, ya al cruzar los descampados o el centro de la ciudad. iii.
Los amortajaba la luz. iv.
Y las aguas sucias y los animales muertos que salen de las cloacas. (*) De Antonio Gamoneda, casi
S AN T I AG O 73 (*) i.
There were bodies on the rims of cold ditches. ii.
And in gullies, strewn across the wastelands or downtown. iii.
They were shrouded by light. iv.
And by the filthy water and dead animals that gushed from sewers. (*) From Antonio Gamoneda, almost
82
83 Translated by Forrest Gander
A m y
S m a l l - M c K i n n e y
Ó s c a r
M ilk a n d B on e s Do you know that in Sudan, 72 pounds means, still alive? My mother waits for me. She is starving.
She refuses to walk outside. It is a country of chance and confusion. Rests her head on the silk pillow my aunt brought from her travels.
C u r i e s e s
Fi n a l o Pr ól og o DECIDIMOS nacer nosotros mismos una mañana colgada de límpido cielo. Sabemos de la infinitud del mar y nuestro límite, debemos por tanto partir ahora, no antes. El océano nos desnuda de certezas pero nos hermana con la veracidad del viaje, la única y eterna.
Look, I know nothing about Sudan. I read its children, the diamonds they pan for scraps of bread. My mother remains another mystery.
Sabemos que el mar limita nuestra muerte, por eso acudimos a su encuentro, no deseamos vencerlo.
Here in America my mother survives where only buses have disappeared.
Sabemos también del abismo al que caen los barcos
She welcomes dying as she might brie and wine.
y recorremos su sal y su aire pues amamos la mar nuestra hasta el naufragio.
E n d o r P ro l o g ue WE DECIDE to give birth to ourselves one morning hung from a limpid sky. We know about the sea’s infinity and our limit, we must part now, not before. The ocean strips us of certainties but merges us with the truthfulness of the journey, the eternal and only. We know the sea limits our death, that is why we come to its embrace, we don’t wish to defeat it. We also know about the abyss into which ships fall and we sail its salt and its air since we love our sea until the wreck. 86
87 Translated by Lara Konrad and Óscar Curieses
P h i l i p
W e x l e r
0 1. Ma y.2 0 1 1
G รถ r lit z e r
Pa r k
b y
Ph i l ip p
D e ra
Mu s eu m G o i n g
The girl studying the painting of a black stallion galloping out the gate in front of a white church is not in the museum anymore. She is at rest
in a field, bareback on the stallion, as it grazes on violets. The steeple is barely visible. She is
in the church looking out the window at the shut gate and beyond at the girl in the field at peace
on the stallion. She is praying for the gate to reopen. The girl is on a cloud shaped like a horse, air thin. Giddy, faint, by heart she paints her desire, tosses the brush in the lake, colors it red. She comes to rest where she started, goes back for more.
88
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C O N T R I B U T O R S
J e f f r e y C . A l f i e r is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, and a
nominee for the UK's Forward Prize for Poetry. His poems have appeared recently in Crannog (Ireland) and Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, with work forthcoming in New York Quarterly. His latest chapbook is Before the Troubadour Exits (2011).
His first full-length book of poems, The Wolf Yearling, will be published in 2012, by Pecan Grove Press. He serves as co-editor of San Pedro River Review.
S e á n P a d r a i c B i r n i e is a writer and photographer from Brighton,
England. He is a graduate of the Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan
University. He blogs, under a pseudonym stolen from Graham Greene, at f re d h a l e .tu m b lr. co m M a r y B u c h i n g e r ' s poems have appeared in RUNES: A Literary
Review, The Massachusetts Review, Versal, and other journals; she was the recipient
of New England Poetry Club's Daniel Varoujan Award. Her collection, Roomful of Sparrows, was a semi-finalist in the New Women's Voices Series. She teaches
writing and communication studies at the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences in Boston.
C a s p e r C a m m e r a a t has been interested in photography for over
30 years. By nature a lover of experimentation, his corpus has grown from landand cityscapes, portraits, architecture, gumprints and structures, to abstract photography and panoramas. His fascination with nature—with or without people or buildings—has always remained. The same with the simplicity of black and white or monochrome pictures. “I like to share the beauty that inspires me, writing with light is my starting point!”
90
91
Ó s c a r C u r i e s e s (Madrid, 1972) is the author of Dentro (Bartleby
A n d r e s F i s h e r was born in Washington DC in 1963. At an early age
Editores, 2010) and Sonetos del útero (Bartleby Editores, 2007), which was
he moved to Chile where he was raised. In 1990 he moved to Madrid, Spain, where
and in French (Le Fram magazine 17, Belgium). He will soon defend his doctoral
Series, collected poetry 1995-2010 (Ed. Amargord, Col. Transatlántica, 2010).
translated in part and published in English (Shearsman magazine 79 & 80, UK) thesis titled Paul Auster and the cinema: Read in the image at the Universidad
Complutense de Madrid. He is working on two pieces of prose, Hombre en azul
(about the painter Francis Bacon) and Tabula Rasa (his first novel). Icebergs will
be the title of his next poetry book. He is part of the audio performance group AMC313 with which he has performed in La casa encendida (Madrid), Festival Selín (Avilés), Galería Cruce (Madrid) and other places.
he got his PhD and started publishing poetry and related work. His last book is In 2009, his bilingual anthology of Haroldo de Campos' poetry appeared, Hambre de Forma (Ed. 27 letras, Madrid) and in 2010 he published Caballo en el Umbral, an anthology of José Viñals' poetry done collaboratively with Benito del Pliego (Ed. Regional de Extremadura, Mérida). Together, they have translated a selection of Gertrude Stein's short pieces, forthcoming in a bilingual edition in Madrid. Steven
Johannes
F o w l e r is the author of two collections,
P h i l i p p D e r a lives and works as a freelance photojournalist in Berlin
Red Museum (Knives Forks & Spoons press 2011) and Fights (Veer press
abroad, during which he focused on developing his understanding of peoples and
studying ethics & avant-garde poetry, and edits the weekly interview series,
and Kuala Lumpur. Most of his photos were taken during his extensive stays
their environment, which he has documented in his work. Recently he has started
to adapt that approach not just to foreign parts of the world but to his everyday environment. He studied Politics, Economics, Southeast-Asian-Studies and Indonesian at the Humboldt University, Berlin. Catherine
E d m u n d s is a busy portrait artist, illustrator and
photographer who has provided cover art for several Earlyworks Press and Circaidy Press publications, including her own poetry collection wormwood, earth and honey and novel Small Poisons. Her most recent illustrations can be seen in Daniel
Abelman's ALLAKAZZAM! and The A-Z of Punishment and Torture (BeWrite Books). w w w. f re e web s .com /c ather i ne e d mun d s /
S h a r i f E l G a m m a l - O r t i z is a poet and translator from Carolina,
2011). He is a postgraduate student of poetics at the University of London, Maintenant, for 3am magazine. He is a full time employee of the British Museum. w w w. s j fo w l e r p o e t r y. co m / / w w w. m a i nte n a nt . co . u k C o l i n D . H a l l o r a n is a former infantryman and public school
teacher who now spends his days travelling and leading student and teacher workshops on understanding war through poetry. Colin is an MFA candidate at
Fairfield University where he is editor in chief of the literary journal Mason's Road.
His work has appeared internationally in print and online in such publications as The New York Times, Welter Magazine, San Pedro River Review, Structo Magazine,
and notalone.com. Shortly Thereafter, a book of poetry on his war experiences, is forthcoming in 2012. James
H a r r i s hails from Nottingham, and currently writes and
Puerto Rico. His poems have been featured in Acentos Review, Sargasso, and
translates in Berlin. He has published work in the May Anthologies, Bordercrossing
culminating his MFA in poetry and translation at Columbia University. His first
and his novella The Comedy of Maria was published by Cerise Press in Summer
in Argos's little anthology, a gathering of poems by MFA students in NYC. He's book is titled Phenomenology of Brother. 92
and The Liberal Magazine. He is the Associate Editor of Comedy Studies journal 2010. http :/ / w w w. ce r is e p re s s . co m / 0 2 / 0 4 / th e - co m e d y - o f- ma r i a
93
r i v e r h o r s e
I
b y
S t e v e n
J o h a n n e s
F o w l e r
D a n i e l l e J a n e s s was born in Bright's Grove, Ontario, and received
degrees in both Writing and Theatre from the University of Victoria, Canada. Her
work has appeared in Contemporary Verse 2, Prairie Fire Magazine, and In Fine
Form: The Canadian Anthology of Form Poetry, among others. At work on a first collection of poems, she divides time with Victoria and Berlin.
L a u r a J a r a m i l l o is a poet from Queens living in Durham, North
Carolina. She is the author of The Reactionary Poems (Olywa Press) and Civilian
Nest (Love Among the Ruins). She is an occasional translator from Spanish into English of poems she loves.
J e n n i f e r K i n n e y lives, in theory, in New York City, where she studies
photography. Last spring she studied in Berlin. Now she works in tiny and beautiful Whittier, Alaska. So as far as she is concerned, right now she doesn't really live
anywhere. She writes, photographs, sings too loudly when she's drunk and not enough when she isn't. She has been trying to learn patience this year by growing her hair. She is still impatient.
G a r r e t t M c D o n o u g h lives in New York. He has taught writing
at Columbia University, where he also got his MFA. He has been published in K i ê n H o à n g L ê is a Berlin-based photojournalist whose origins are
Vietnamese. His photographic work focuses on documentary and journalistic
photography. Kiên was born in Hanoi, Northern Vietnam, grew up in Bogensee, East Germany, and has lived in the UK, India and Australia. More at w w w. k ienhoa ng le.co m or follow him on his blog at: w w w. k ienhoa ng le.co m /blo g C o l i n J a m e s has poems forthcoming in Magic Lantern and The
Penwood Review and a chapbook of poems available from Thunderclap Press. He works in energy conservation and is a great admirer of the Scottish landscape painter, John Mackenzie. 94
The Believer. He is writing a novel about the paparazzi. This story is an excerpt from that novel. He needs an agent. He feels strong, positive emotions regarding the people of Berlin.
P a t r i c i a M i l c h was born in the southern German town of Heidelberg
and now lives in Berlin. It was in Berlin that Patricia received a PhD in Law and also studied Photography at the Ostkreuzschule under the tutelage of Sibylle
Bergemann. Various positions and study visits have brought her to destinations such as Tel Aviv and New York. The portraits presented on the Cover of SAND are taken from the series Family and were captured with a Polaroid camera set to
SX-70 time zero. Besides using analogue medium format cameras, Patricia also enjoys using her iPhone to take photos.
95
R o d n e y N e l s o n ' s work got into print long ago, but he turned to
Island, Gulf Stream, Grain, Dimsum: Asia's Literary Journal, and Southern
See his page in the Poets & Writers directory: http : //w w w. p w. org/conte nt /
from Rock Press, submitted for a Pulitzer Prize, and Coffeehouse Meditations from
fiction and did not write a poem for twenty-two years, restarting in the 2000's. ro dn e y _ nel s on. He has worked as a copy editor in the American Southwest and now lives in his native northern Great Plains. Nelson has translated poetry by the Berliner, Ron Winkler for American journals.
M a n d y P a n n e t t works as a freelance creative writing tutor. She has
won prizes and been placed in competitions and her poetry has been published
in international journals and anthologies. Recent work has been translated into German and Romanian. She has also acted as selecting editor for South and been a judge of national poetry competitions including Build Africa (Excel for Charity)
and a recent Sentinel Literary Quarterly poetry competition. She has had three
poetry collections published: Bee Purple, Frost Hollow (Oversteps Books) and Allotments in the Orbital (Searle Publishing). Her novella The Onion Stone is being published in November 2011 by Pewter Rose Press.
F r a n k R o g e r was born in 1957 in Ghent, Belgium. He's an artist
mainly doing collages and graphic work in a surrealist and satirical vein, as well
Women's Review. Romano is the author of two poetry collections: Cooking Lessons
Kitsune Books. Romano has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize and the SIBA Award. She co-authored Writing in a Changing World. MarĂa
S a l g a d o (Madrid, 1984) has published two books of
poems (ferias and 31 poemas); her third forthcoming book will be titled ready. She runs some lo-fi poetry projects such as zines, readings series, and punk
bands, for example, the Contrabando project (an exchange of Pan-American and Spanish books and reviews) with the Argentinian poet Gabriel CortiĂąas: w w w. l a l i te r atu r a d el p o b re . w o rd p re s s . co m She writes the blog w w w. g l o b o r ap i d o . b l o g s p o t . co m G r e g S a n t o s is the author of The Emperor's Sofa (DC Books, 2010).
He is the poetry editor of pax americana and is on the editorial board of the Parisbased journal, Upstairs at Duroc. See his blog at m o o n do g g y. b lo g sp o t . co m
S t e v e n S c h u t z m a n is a fiction writer and playwright whose stories
as a short story writer. His first story appeared in 1975. Since then his stories,
and plays have been published in many literary journals including The Pushcart
in magazines, anthologies and other venues, and since 2000, his story/graphic
Cafe Irreal, Third Coast, Night Train, Gargoyle and Underground Voices. He is also
w w w.f rank ro ger.b e
for his writing. Find out more about his work:
collages and graphic work have appeared in an increasing number of languages
Prize, TriQuarterly, Alaska Quarterly Review, Post Road, Painted Bride Quarterly,
collections have also been published, also in various languages. Find out more at
the recipient of five Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Grant Awards
N i n a R o m a n o earned an M.A. from Adelphi University and an M.F.A.
in Creative Writing from Florida International University. She has taught English and Literature at St. Thomas University and writing workshops at Ft. Lauderdale Main Library, the Sanibel Island Writers Conference, Bridle Path Press in Baltimore
and Florida Gulf Coast University. Her fiction and poetry appear in many reviews and journals, including: The Rome Daily American, The Chrysalis Reader, Whiskey 96
http ://my s i te . v e r i z o n. ne t / s te v e n s chu t z ma n A m y S m a l l - M c K i n n e y ' s second chapbook, Clear Moon, Frost,
was published in 2009 by Finishing Line Press. In 2004, her chapbook, Body of Surrender, (Finishing Line Press) was showcased at Poet's House in New York.
She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2004 and again in 2006. Her work has
appeared in a number of journals, including The Cortland Review, The Pedestal 97
Magazine, ForPoetry, Blue Fifth Review, Arabesques Review, Rio Grande Review,
recently Achtzehn Pasteten (“Eighteen Pies”, 2007) and Australien (2010), and
The Pedestal Magazine and interviewed Pulitzer Prize nominee poet, Bruce Smith,
the Ernst-Meister-Award for Poetry (2005), the Wilhelm-Lehmann-Award (2009)
and Wild River Review. Small-McKinney was guest editor for the June 2006 issue of for their April 2006 issue. In 2011, she was awarded the Toni Brown Memorial Scholarship for her poetry. She was recently named 2011-2012 Montgomery County Poet Laureate. She presently resides in Blue Bell, PA.
J u l i a n S m i t h - N e w m a n received his BA from Columbia University
and his Masters from the Warburg Institute (University of London). His poetry and works of prose have appeared in the Greenbelt Review, Literary Laundry, and Chamber Four, among others. He is currently the poetry editor for SAND, and has recently established a Berlin program for Context Travel (contexttravel.com),
a network of architects, historians, art historians, and specialists who organize walking seminars in cities around the world.
M i c h a e l S p a n n ' s fiction has appeared in Gargoyle Magazine, Inkblot
received various literary awards, among them the Anna-Seghers-Award (2004), and the Friedrich-Hölderlin-Award (2011).
P h i l i p W e x l e r lives in Bethesda, Maryland, where he also works at
the National Library of Medicine. He has had close to 120 poems published over the years, and read his work publicly in the Washington, DC area. He coordinates a literary and music series, called HearArts, in Rockville, Maryland.
C a r o l y n Z u k o w s k i is an American who lives in the Czech Republic,
runs Hostel Krumlov House, edits The Literary Bohemian, and works towards
an MA in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University in the UK. Her poetry has been published in The Foundling Review, Literary Mama, and Perigee and is forthcoming in RHINO.
Magazine and Kiss the Sky: fiction and poetry starring Jimi Hendrix (Paycock Press 2007). His non-fiction has been published in Death Cults: Murder Mayhem and Mind Control (Virgin Books 2002) and Guns, Death, Terror: 1960's and 1970's Revolutionaries, Urban Guerillas and Terrorists (Creation Books 2003). He currently lives in Brisbane, Australia.
Since the birth of his son, R i c h a r d To o v e y has discovered the creative
benefits of being half asleep when writing poetry. Work from his pre-somnambulist
period has appeared in recent issues of Orbis, Poetry Salzburg Review and The SHOp.
J a n W a g n e r , born 1971 in Hamburg, lives in Berlin. Poet, translator
of English poetry, literary critic, co-editor of the international litarature box Die Aussenseite des Elementes and the comprehensive anthology of young German language poetry Lyrik von Jetzt. He has published four poetry collections, most 98
99
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