Copyright Volume 1

COPYRIGHT VOL. I

WINTER // 2013

T H E THIRDWORD’S BIANNUAL LITERA RY J O U R N A L of short creative and critical writing, published through the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design.

TABLE OF CONTENTS A Lingering Feeling, Nina Keizer

1

Bishop, Amy Trompeter

2

Ted Bundy, Melissa Johnson

3

Ironic Detachment is Great!, Jake Platt

5

Plans for a Portable Plaque, Jenna Knapp

6

A Deconstruction... (Part 7) 足+EPME &EWEMP 1YPGEL]

7

i forgot i wrote this down, Andrea Dolter

9

Excerpt from Forgotten Some Time Ago, Evin Sagduyu

10

with my heart, a thermometer, Karsten Kelsey

11

untitled, Karsten Kelsey

12

My Insurance (For S.L), Caitlin Rooney

13

Excerpt from Braydon and Josie, Michelle Sharp

14

Four Thoughts, Stephanie Gage

15

Fuck You, Neil Armstrong, Busby Cagle

16

folded, Nicholas Kinsella

17

Plastic Wrap, Grace Mitchell

18

A Lingering Feeling Nina Keizer

Sometimes she wondered if he had a personality disorder that he hadn’t told her about, or that maybe he was suffering from Delusional Syndrome and he didn’t even realize he had a personality disorder. Either way he wasn’t we adjusted, not enough.

His psyche was like a 3D image before the glasses. Pats of him overlapped and spilled over, he didn’t fit together completely. He wasn’t whole. She wondered if she was the only one who thought this about him, if everyone else had adjusted their vision, excusing his incompleteness for eccentricity. She wondered if instead of seeing a dizzying jumble of red, and black, and blue they saw him as bigger, brighter, and more dynamic, better than reality and therefore it was okay that he was incomprehensible.

But it wasn’t okay. He wasn’t okay. She couldn’t actually cite any abnormal behavior—he gave himself away in the small things, in hesitations and micro-expressions. He was doing it now, hesitating.

Margaret had said something inappropriately funny (and probably racist). Instead of being indignant, or laughing self-consciously, he froze. His face was stuck on default for barely a millisecond while he was deciding how to react. She could imagine him plugging the variables of what was said and the personalities of the people around him into an equation and solving for the socially acceptable response. After this brief interlude his face became alive again, although his laughter sounded cold. It wasn’t proof, not if nobody else had noticed his dead expressions flickering off and on. Truly well adjusted people didn’t have to calculate their responses. They didn’t have to guess.

1

Bishop

Amy Trompeter

There's a lawn chair on a long driveway somewhere, a corncob pipe smoldering. Aunt Linda always hated when you smoked in the kitchen, but you sure never gave a damn.

I don't remember the color of your eyes, only the color of one. A blinding blue, a foggy pool.

A little girl stared at you for so long once in a McDonald's.

I trimmed each of my nails last night, except for one, which I'm not sure why I neglected.

But I don't worry, we took pictures.

We opened our sort of wallets and see, sort of, dollars.

A $20 bill clenched in my fist You are a closet full of Key Imperial, Hickory stripe overalls.

2

Ted Bundy Melissa Johnson

“…the way a lifeless silk flower can dupe a honey bee.”

[283]

Theodore Robert “Ted” Bundy (born Theodore Robert Cowell; November 24, 1946-January 24 1989) was an American serial killer, rapist, kidnapper, and necrophile who assaulted and murdered numerous young women and girls during the 1970s and possibly earlier. … a man in the alley behind a nearby dormitory, on crutches with a leg cast, struggling to carry a briefcase.[77] the man asked her to help him carry the case to his car, a light-brown Volkswagen Beetle.[78] ...

Most sociopaths are not demonstrably psychotic. …

2:45am he bludgeoned her with a piece of oak firewood as she slept, then garroted her with a nylon stocking.[182] He beat her unconscious, strangled her, tore one of her nipples, bit deeply into her left buttock, and sexually assaulted her with a hair mist bottle. [183] breaking her jaw and deeply lacerating her shoulder a concussion, broken jaw, loss of teeth, and crushed finger. [184] Tallahassee detectives later determined that the four attacks took place in a total of less than 15 minutes, within earshot of more than 30 witnesses. …

“It was the absolute misogyny of his crimes that stunned me.”

3

he had a curious chameleon-like ability to change his appearance almost at will.[273] …

He decapitated approximately twelve of his victims with a hacksaw,[34][238] he incinerated her head in the fireplace. … a ski mask, a second mask fashioned from pantyhose, a crowbar, handcuffs, trash bags, a coil of rope, an ice pick, and other items initially assumed to be burglary tools. detectives - who were receiving up to 200 tips per day[94]thought it unlikely that a clean-cut law student with no adult criminal record could be the perpetrator. [94] … he revisited crime scenes, to life with his victims and performed sexual acts with their decomposing bodies until putrefaction forced him to stop. ... murder became part of the “adventure”.

“The ultimate possession was, in fact, the taking of the life,” he said.

“And then… the physical possession of the remains.”[226] …

“I have known people who…radiate vulnerability,” “Their facial expressions say ‘I am afraid of you’.

These people invite abuse…

“By expecting to be hurt, do they subtly encourage it?”[326] …

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4

Ironic Detachment is Great!

Jake Platt

I have arisen out of this. Apparently only 5% of the universe henceforth without a master actually seems to exist. The death of people, while listening to Tom Waits reading. Lord have mercy on my desk written by desires.

I’m just going to only a dim corner of my life. Unfamiliarity is different than there, why now? Your name is defined in its stale corners and letting me pray for mankind, and Malevich was a cliche, was some physical brain, his voice takes on the differences between dialectical materialism and historical materialism: the death of course, and glucose and amino acids etc makes the infinite black. And lonely n me.

I have been a rope so I could always slip on purpose. It’s not waiting until I lose sight of the eternal voices, the waves which conceals the truth as a million people: The death of 100,000 is a public service announcement.

I have become a health risk. Can’t tell death is straightforward, when you’re dead, you’re dead, you’re gonna lay in order to ruin the table of another in the world and never going to lay in the center of their past few years from reaching you. It’s not really long, especially towards the end.

I have long given up. Society tells us to deal with the blade if you’re feeling down. Don’t say to myself “just what the doctor ordered”.

The death of its normalcy/ naturalness is flawed. You should never settle for a world full of discarded expressions of that.

I have occasionally thought of doing so seems an exceptional occurrence; but misfortune in general is a gray area. When you're dead, you're unimportant; being unique is implicit in life, but was snuffed out by myself. There’s nothing but water slipping through my teeth.

I have finally gotten into the end. The death of a certain point in your life.The death of my only original intention was chewing while she gushed this. I’m just laying in the part of you thats a compassionate person. but the malevolent force was behind it. Tell me I’m worthless because she was kind. The death of the artifice of all that. Evening has come while I was born. All that's getting the point your trochaic tetrameter poem was about.

Every life is pointless then. It’s not worth keeping. What a tragedy.

5

Plans for a Portable Plaque Jenna Knapp

Location: Geneva Lakes Kennel Club (closed) Delavan, Wisconsin Reason For Portable Plaque: Due to legal restrictions, tours on actual site are no longer available. All tours will now be conducted from the edge of the property line.The plaque can not be permanently installed, and therefore will be portable and kept in the tour guide’s trunk, ready to assemble at the beginning of each tour.

Interested In Touring? Call 608-214-3927 or email wisconsinroadtriptours@gmail.com

6

A Deconstruction of Japanese and American Trends (Part 7) Galia Basail-Mulcahy

If you find yourself located on a train or sidewalk in a densely populated area of Japan, you might notice that most people conceal the cover of whatever material they are reading. This is important, as it is a customary part of public composure, and it is considered to be rude according to Japanese etiquette to reveal explicit material in public. Explicit or otherwise, book covers are generally used to keep one’s privacy.

In a country with the highest number of vending machines per capita, Japan takes pride in they way they merchandise their culture.

If a Japanese man stays out late one night and has to go to work the next morning they can purchase a tie from a vending machine to make it appear as if they changed their clothing before heading to work. In a similar case, a woman or man can buy an umbrella at a local vending machine to shield their bodies from the rain if they find that they are unprepared. Both of these scenarios in which vending machines are activated, women and men have the opportunity to spare themselves from being embarrassed in public.

7

Lettuce Vending Machine, Japan

8

i forgot i wrote this down Andrea Dolter

first floor^second floor^third floor^fourth floor people get on, others get off thirty-fifth floor^thirty-sixth floor^thirty-seventh floor somebody pressed the button by mistake one-hundred forty-eighth floor^one-hundred forty-ninth floor people get off one-hundred ninety-seventh floor^one-hundred ninety-eighth floor everyone left gets off many leagues above the sea the city lights from the world below look like fireflies dancing in the night unease consumes me, the room spins, at any moment i know these windows will be sucked out into the atmosphere, and along with it will go everything inside, and myself ding, more people get off, those impatiently waiting get on and i go with whoosh a small bit of air seeps in through the nooks and crannies, just barely enough to tickle the back of your neck the door opens, but rather than to the comforting lobby of the first floor, with its plush seating and the lingering scent of vanilla candles, the same view from the one-hundred ninety-eighth floor greets me. who would want to build a tower, just shy of two hundred floors? how does gravity not pull it back to the earth? back on the elevator we go. a few floors lower and i get on my bike and ride down the mountain the rest of the way. how did i not know that milwaukee had a mountain? and my school being at the bottom of it? such a silly thing to overlook.

9

Excerpt from

Forgotten Some Time Ago Evin Sagduyu

I pace, lumbering and heavy, across the cold autumn pavement, walking ever faster and faster to escape from the oily blackness of my bedroom. The frost nips at my lips and I shudder, heaving a breathy sigh in anguish for no one in particular to notice. The vibrant stars burn with quiet rage at their own emptiness, cleaving at what little life they have left in their humble bodies. November has crept its way across the long aisle of the year, a familiar friend that comes and goes, yet someone that you could never say anything to. He walks by my side, in long strides, joyous and full of the breath of life that I lack, badgering me endlessly into the void of December. I cannot remember the December of the previous year, nor the year before that. A wave of nothingness sweeps over my mind, washing out any previous memories of the past that I had once held dear. If only I had a sliver of candle light to illuminate the dark crevices of my mind, in hopes of finding a single scrap of a memory worth remembering, but the thing to greet me is the gleaming smile of emptiness.

10

with my heart, a thermometer Karsten Kelsey

callous as the windows in a blue storm we shutter the caves within the business of our bone structure with candy wrappers everywhere we’ve been with blurry camera phone photography of cold fronts

11

untitled Karsten Kelsey

we were playing soccer on the exit ramp, we were bolder than apricot seasoning on the 4th of May

12

My Insurance (for S.L) Caitlin Rooney

It takes time in order to see what is or isn’t a good idea. but in the meantime while basking in my own lackluster, I have been reading through the side effects, or what is actually Woody Allen’s novel, i.e: a place where I have been inflicted by a great disruptive notion.

“Yeah, and how so?” asks the reader of the writer.

Well, I suppose that my sudden desire to be the demise of my incredibly attractive downstairs neighbor’s relationship is not what one would normally consider “right” in these contemporary times.

In fact, I am close to certain that this is wrong.

So I call upon the condition of the old endearing dump that we both call “home,” in hopes that I may, in fact, come crashing into your life when you need it the most.

And if the floor caves by the weight of imagined tension 30 or something years of dust covering your clothing as you recover my youth lying beneath the floorboards You could give me your hand or I guess, finally purchase renter’s insurance.

It takes time in order to see what is or isn’t a good idea.

But the time I complexly waited, was so simply wasted.

13

Excerpt from

The Ballad of Braydon and Josie

Michelle Sharp

She looked cold an’ small, layin’ there on that metal cart. A blueness to her skin, but her cheeks still held jus’ a tiny bita pink. Choppy, shoulderlength, mousy brown hair. She razor’d the ends herself. She usually pulled it back into a ponytail, but they had splayed it out ‘round her head, like a soft halo.

The hair tie was on her wrist, like she’d put it there herself. Her face was soft, completely relaxed. I’d never seen her so quiet. The freckles she hated showed up, warm on her pale skin. Even her eyelids were soft. I don’t think I’d ever seen her look so quiet, even when sleepin’. ‘Cept for the dark, dark circles under her eyes and the chipped tooth under her parted lips, she looked like someone else.

Like an angel. Josie woulda spit; she woulda hate bein’ compared to an angel.

“Here are her personal affects. What was on her when we got her.”

The morgue guy pulled Josie’s raggy blue backpack up on the cart by her head. She’d used that fuckin’ thing since kindergarten, refused to buy a new one, had started sewing up holes in it, patchin’ it with duct tape. The guy put on some gloves and started unzippin’ the big pocket.

“Protocol. I hope you don’t mind.” As if I could.

Red came through that dark blue zippered mouth. Her hoodie. My hoodie. She always fuckin’ stole it from me, I eventually gave up. Somebody’d folded it up real nice before tucking it in the back. The guy laid it out. It was dirty, dirtier than I’d seen it in a long time. Burn marks, mud. Blood? He was already movin’ on to her shirt, jeans, Chuck’s. Red chucks to match the hoodie, she claimed they were her dad’s basketball shoes in the 70’s. Everything was a dirty mess. Holes in her jeans an’ shirt. I was still trying to take in the hoodie, but the guy kept movin’ on. Notebook, lock pickin’ kit, general toolkit, first aid, pens and pencils, walkman, jar a’ peanut butter, water bottle, how th’ hell’d she fit so much in that backpack? It never looked that full. An’ I guess now it wasn’t, ‘cause the guy was startin’ in on the little front pocket. Cellphone, dirty spoon.

Small notebook. An’ that was it.

14

Four Thouhgts Stephanie Gage

I. Sun Phantom I think I recognized your face again for the first time in months reflected on the back of my retinas but the moment was vain and baleful, taking me up in the shock of it and stumbling feet stuck on the floor on its way out. I blink harder in the nighttime, shades up with lights from the steeple through dirty glass panes and I’m yelling aloud in my sleep without knowing because there’s no one to hear it but the air in the cracks of the walls. Every night in those sleepless dreams I fall from the sky over into antiquity and drown in the Icarian Sea.

II. Rent is due On the onslaught I figured the rest would be determined but bail is too harsh in this economy so I opted out and back, residing now in this detrimentality of a 3BR, 1BA, no heat except when we’ll spare the cost and maybe we should because the plants are dying and it killed my fish once

III. I Ran Thickening in the Illinois atmosphere as the red lights flashing in unison across the plains are caught in the stagnant air. I think they’re wind turbines. I didn’t figure I’d be here on Independence Day peeling over blacktop with sparks ascending over Bloomington. Heart caught on the gravel of a rooftop back in Milwaukee and it’s trailing my organs like a line of breadcrumbs from there to the middle of my nowhere home.

IV. The Execution Crescendoing into a full-bellied swell of irreverent noise, the crowd grew hungry— starving. I cast my eyes up in indifference, towards the textured nothingness of the cloudcover, few sunbeams touching the dirt cold ground. Back in the audience, the front throng, was a small boy. He peered right into my eyes stone still still enough courage left inside him despite the surrounding cries of negation. I think I saw a rifle down there, in the grotto, in his feet, in the darkness with the metal shining down there and a small finger trigger cocked pointed skyward towards his brain. He’s weeping now.

I might’ve tried to silently say sorry to the armed weeping boy but the rattling of the partition and cocking of a real gun woke me from my sleep—

15

Fuck You, Neil Armstrong

Busby Cagle

And he said to himself, or maybe out loud, but certainly to no one in particular, “I will buy a gun, and I will go to the moon, and I will kill every-fucking-thing there.”

And he awoke from a half-daze, concerned not for his own sanity, but for the sanity of those around him, as if the ethereal realm he had entered might plague the minds of those in a close proximity. It wasn’t as though he didn’t love them.

He just wasn’t sure they could cope with living there.

So he started on that journey.

And he bought that fucking gun.

But the moon is much closer in telescopes and old photographs of astronauts.

Affordability was an issue, and walking wasn’t an option, so he did the only thing he could.

He went back to his bedroom.

And he cried.

Until he fell asleep.

And while he slept, he spoke. Again, he was in his world, and again the moon came back within reach.

But when he finally made it, there was nothing for him to kill. The job had already been done.

“Fuck you, Neil Armstrong,” he said under his breath, as his chest rose and fell beneath his blankets for the last time.

His family loved him.

His friends as well.

They all cried, but they understood. And they had a good sense of humor.

And his gravestone read, “Fuck you, Neil Armstrong.”

16

folded Nicholas Kinsella

you've been rattling while you sleep fuck off no really you have it's like a light buzzing though and I lie closer when you do you're not speaking clearly you know and your foot is hanging out off the foot of the bed the foot of the foot, but yours is inside out and mine is stinging still asleep sometimes i think about waking up feet asleep and I think about how you'd slip out of bed on a brisk morning, with the light peering in and it's like I'm seeing it all happening for some reason at my parents house from when I was about fourteen and the light comes in the windows and you get up and you step on the ground and your stinging feet never notice all the while and you step down and you fold all over jesus fucking christ yeah, but it's like hardly gruesome at all because for some reason it just stops there theres no ending to the vision really I just see it happen and then I don't no ambulance or crunching bones or screeching shit like that just folded right over and that's it

17

Plastic Wrap Grace Mitchell

The plastic sealed windows fill my lungs with nothing, taking everything.

Sealing my breath in the back of my throat.

I cough out the weak air that existed in my veins; they throb on my forehead and neck.

My face is red.

Now it’s blue, like the weather.

Winter is why there is plastic coating my teeth as I try and taste you.

As I try to taste the flakes of snow that melt too quickly to be recognized.

As my skin shakes my teeth rattle as I give up.

I hear church bells across the street. They are warming like a kiss from you.

But like a kiss from you that is through several layers of artificiality that now line the insides of me.

That kiss from you through these stratums feel like a memory.

And I think it is until I feel your breath, taking mine.

18

This journal was published December, 2013 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

ThirdWord is a writer’s collective of students, alumni, and faculty affiliated with the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design.

Go to facebook.com/thirdwordmke for more info.