Bergamot 5 April 2010
Shoots and Vines
Shoots and Vines PO Box 489 Poseyville, IN 47633 812-483-6147
Submissions by mail only. If sending poetry, please send several pieces. If sending art, I can mail it back to you if you need the masters.
Editor: Crystal Folz Cover Art: Michael Mc Aloran
April 2010
Editor's Note So much has changed since the last issue was released. S&V only accepts submissions by mail and has moved away from posting online work. Not only has this opened up time to finally put S&V and the BackPack Press chapbooks into stores, but I'm now interacting with writers via phone and putting voices with faces. I love writing acceptance letters and sending them through the mail. I enjoy getting mail that doesn't come with an invoice and payment due date, and I know you do as well. This issue mixes some of my favorite writers from past issues and new writers I've never published before. Hope you like the mix as much as I do. Always, Crystal
A Devil Says to Me by April Bratten I stand on a pile of soot with a devil. He tells me I am the damned, a flat footed horse, a piece of hollowed wood, a great big thing without a cough. He tells me that inside my itching bones there is a flare that shoots up and needles my skin into the empty shaking sky. Empty, he tells me, empty, but I am not afraid. This is not like disaster, and sometimes it is a thing quite alright, a rain that is all and everything, all parts and all madness, a wash of cool wind, a toasty blanket of hair. But how that devil loves to feel me erupt, using the opportunity to dig inside my wave electric and find blood for pearls, peelings of nasty that flake from my throat.
He does not care that I can be something spoken like porcelain, using gray, using clear sounds, the rain that hits tin cans. He does not care for my pristine prim of entrails, me, the running underside of an ox, the quiet that persists. He just says, girl, you are a muffled sound in a box. What will that devil do, I ask, if my heart split into five, each little piece, a shriek that crashes from my fingernails, and my front teeth, a pulse to match the extracting light, a throb inside my open womb mouth, alive and ugly? And that devil, he just turns to me and he says -
lie.
House Sitting for the Psychologist by Corey Cook meant opting to eat over the sink to avoid the film of food residue on the table, and watering the withdrawn houseplants, meant scouring the house for a stash of porn and settling for several foreign films, and reading handwritten messages on orange Post-It notes, messages like tickly bubbles, taped to every reflective surface in the house, meant listening to Joni Mitchell's Blue, and flipping through a psychology textbook, heavy in your lap, meant smoking on the back stoop, and hearing the phone ring inside the locked office, and then with your ear pressed to the wood door, making out a familiar voice, your neighbor's voice, your neighbor Evelyn, meant hearing her say I lost another cleaning job, the girls are at their dad's, I don't trust myself, please call back soon, and remembering a conversation you overheard between Evelyn and a waitress at the diner months ago, More coffee, ma'am? Your mug's half empty, the waitress pointed out. Evelyn smiled widely, replied, Half full, Darling. Half full.
The Fucking Middle by Shawn Adams There are pearls of wisdom all over my fucking windshield and the slinging blades can't do shit to stop them. The outpouring of remorse is overwhelming under the axles, and I can't think to save myself for the monotonous tinny comments as they spray up from the streets. These vinyl seats touch me like inappropriate clammy handshakes. Fuck, it's hot in here. Can somebody open up a window? Headlights bare down on me with relative ferocity - - no, scratch that -- more like in-law ferocity. Sometimes I feel like I'm never going to make it to where I'm going, even when - especially when - - it's right around the corner. Can't anyone ever meet me in the fucking middle? You. I used to meet you in the fucking middle, because the fucking middle was comfortable. Never the corner "How was your day?" Never the long-distance "Tell me about her."
We met in the fucking middle all over your parents' house for three months. Where the hell were they? They missed all the best parts, But they won't miss this - "Turn your fucking brights off!" All the hot hair is steaming up the windows so I can't see the road, just shapes like old ghosts jumping out at me. I clutch the steering wheel like it's my old man's hand; not like it is now, like it was when I was young enough to accept things for what they are, and not overindulge in simile. The edge of the road is 2 inches deep of drowning. This is the fucking middle. This is as far as I go.
At Once by Robert C. J. Graves An army of lipsticks on her borough - sundry camouflage, among compacts and powder boxes. The window looks down into her neighbor's dining room; a little family - I watch them eat. I chart a geography of thought, theoretically navigate, draw new maps, re-navigate. The window is water-swollen its peeling pink paint snaps away like thin pencil lead. I watch the paint fall to the floor already littered with pantyhose peeled from her legs.
the rain and the chimes by Harry Calhoun Just before bedtime the rain kicks up again. I've been battling it all day, trying to walk the dog, trying to fight that slight depression that accompanies steady rain, depression like a black dog on a walk in the downpour. But tonight ready for bed and the rain again establishing its dominance, I sink into its mood, a melancholy peace, I decide, and the wind kicks up the wind chimes on the porch outside the bedroom. Music for sleep and the dog beside the bed and best of all my wife here beside me. And these chimes, sweet and random, kick up a gentle guitar solo over the insistent bass line of rain. Good night, some might have been better, but rarely, we are blessed when chariots of rain swing low and dip into the musical wind to carry us to sleep.
Hooker on Archer Avenue by Michael Lee Johnson Late evening, early morning, I search the night for whores, young and bloody with desires. The night streets are silent streets accept for the hookers and the Johns. One wants the pushing of groins, the other green eyes in dollar bills are sacred treasures, the snatch of the wallet, a consecrated craft. Both hit the streets quickly satisfy the needs quickly finish in different directions quickly. I'm an old buck now rich with memories more than movement, talking the trash, taking the porn pictures, peeking Tom expert with a naked eye, snooping around department store corners, and dumpy old alleyways. My hair is gray, my teeth eroding, my thoughts leaning toward prayer, A.M. Catholic mass, finishing off the early morning with a lethargic walk to pick up my social security checkcomforts my needs.
Tree Surgeon Buried in a Tree, Maybe by Ryan Holden we didn't really bury him in the tree we built a platform the branches supported the sky it was our job to grind bones to ash left in piles next to the strips of flesh & each organ there was a symmetry of vultures receiving alms from the strength of the first tree he had saved ~~~ we were unsure of ourselves then the laughter of the morning & what the vultures were too full to consume there was still a ladder to climb down the trunk to the small square cleared of bark to tattoo its flesh a living tombstone & we told the mother pushing her child in that expensive blue stroller ~~~ he is comforting the tree speaking with it as it suffers the carving of his name
his dates of birth & death the epitaph written by his only grandson -- here rests a man of great joy and all the tress of the field applaud the memory of his life-~~~ & we have never performed a service like that again most folks prefer a cremation so we watch the grandson's children talk about how the ashes fertilized the tree the platform -- at times a tree fort & the grandson's first child was conceived up there
A Grown Man by Cattie-Bree Skye Price told me he liked my laugh today. He said he was disappointed when he missed it and that he loved to hear it very much. He called it "the golden laugh" in a beautiful African accent. I just lay there with a smile on my face half asleep eyes closed (flowersbehindthem) against the sudden sunlight (not to keep it out but to hold it in and fall asleep inside it). He said my laugh was lovely and he asked if I had laughed today and i've never felt so wholly beautiful in my entire life
We Had To Put The Foot Down by Joseph Gant we tore our eyes to stop the blindness, scarred our face with knives of shame, choked our breath to stop the screaming. we lay in dirt to feel the timeless warmth we took, mistaken for the kindness sought beneath the son. we did not care nor did we bleed the tears— the taught contrition for the longing to escape the generation of the sickness we were spreading.
Self-Confidence by Lawrence Gladeview a reader asks me mr. gladeview, why is it you never write about love? plucking a marlboro and frisking for a light i gruff "i want to avoid having you as my audience."
April Bratten - is a writer currently living in North Dakota. Her work has appeared in journals such as Kill Poet, Full of Crow, The Poetry Warrior, Prick of the Spindle, and many others. She co-edits the online literary zine Up the Staircase.
Corey Cook - Corey Cook is the author of two chapbooks: Rhododendron in a Time of War (Scars Publications) and What to Do with a Dying Parakeet (Pudding House Publications). His work is forthcoming in Hanging Moss Journal and Willard and Maple. Corey works for a not for profit and edits The Orange Room Review with his wife, Rachael. They live in New Hampshire with their daughter.
Shawn Adams - I currently write and edit for the ABC Network's Entertainment Marketing Division, a world apart from my creative writing and poetry days. I graduated from the University of Cincinnati in 1994, where I studied playwriting with Edward Albee ("Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf") and poetry with Terry Stokes ("Crimes of Passion").
Robert C. J. Graves - lives with his wife, Emily, in Emporia, KS, where he teaches general education classes at Flint Hills Technical College. His poetry and fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous journals, including 491 Magazine, Bijou Poetry Review, Boston Literary Magazine. A former bartender and freelance sports writer, Robert hold a Ph. D. in English (Rhetoric and Writing) from Bowling Green and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing (Poetry) from Wichita State.
Harry Calhoun - has had recent publications in
Chiron Review, Chiaroscuro, Orange Room Review, The Centfigugal Eye, Bird’s Eye reView, Abbey, Boston Literary Magazine and many others. He has several chapbooks and new releases on the way (one of which I read that is utterly fantastic) Find out more www.harrycalhoun.net.
Michael Lee Johnson - is a poet and freelance writer from Itasca, Illinois. His new poetry chapbook with pictures, titled From Which Place the Morning Rises, and his new photo version of The Lost American: from Exile to Freedom are available at Lulu. He is also editor/publisher of four poetry sites, all open for submission, which can be found at his Web site: http://poetryman.mysite.com.
Ryan Holden - is a graduate student in Creative Writing at Arizona State University. He has been published most recently in The Blue Guitar and received Honorable Mention for The Katharine C. Turner Prize of The Academy of American Poets in 2009. As part of an international travel fellowship, he will be teaching creative writing at Sichuan University in Chengdu, China this summer.
Lawrence Gladeview - In 1983, Lawrence Gladeview was born to two proud and semi-doting parents. After two middle schools and losing his faith in catholic high school, he graduated from James Madison University, majoring in English and having spent only one night in jail. He is a Boulder, Co poet cohabiting with his fiance Rebecca Barkley. More than thirty of his poems have been featured in various online and print publications; you can read more of his poetry and prose on his website Righteous Rightings.
Cattie-Bree Skye Price Michael Mc Alorn - cover artist Michael Mc Aloran was Belfast born, (1976). His most recent poetic works have appeared/ are forthcoming at: Fashion For Collapse, Carcinogenic Poetry, Gloom Cupboard, Why Vandalism?, Clockwise Cat, 1000th Monkey, Danse Macabre, Graffiti Kolkata, & Pratishedhak, (India). In the past year he has authored five short collections of poetry: 'In The Black Cadaver Light', (Poetry Monthly PressU.K), 'The Rapacious Night', (Calliope Nerve Media), 'The Gathered Bones', (Calliope Nerve Media), 'The Redundant Pulse', (Back Pack Press-forthcoming), & 'The Death-Streaked Air', (Virgogray Press-forthcoming). His art-work has appeared/ is forthcoming at: Fragile Arts Quarterly, Calliope Nerve, & Arterialize. It has also been used for the covers of several chapbooks from Calliope Nerve Media, and appears on the present Poetry Month Anthology from Virgogray Press...Other pursuits include cigarettes & alcohol...