In case you haven’t heard of us, Free The Marquee is a collective of visual artists, poets, writers, musicians, and free thinkers who strive to give opportunity and exposure to local artists while establishing a cult of profoundly bearded, Tecate consuming, spliff suckin’, Nixon bashing, vegetable eating, flannel rockin’, acid jazzin group of radical associates we call friends.
Adobe Books, Noroof Gallery, Swell Gallery, Hotel Utah, and everyone who contributed to this issue.
please submit to: freethemarque@gmail.com
I was watching a show about cops that rescue animals from abusive homes and you were hunched over your guitar, drinking another beer, trying to will a song into existence. This episode was in the south, Louisiana, or some place where they have bayous. The cops found a bunch of baby alligators in a kiddie pool. The owners had secured chicken wire to the top, like a lid, and just left the alligators there. By the time the cops found them there were only a couple left, the others had been eaten, or just died. The water had turned into a thick, dark sludge, and when the cops picked the alligators up it dripped off of them in clumps. They kept saying the smell was awful. I turned to you and told you about this memory from when I was seven or eight, I was on this stage and I had a tiny alligator in my arms. I couldn’t see past the front of the stage because there were these bright lights right on me, but I remember a guy with a floppy cowboy hat pointing to me and smiling, and saying something over a microphone. I think the alligator belonged to him. It must have been when I lived with my dad because he was there standing right next to me, just laughing and beaming. His face was bright red like it used to get when he drank, like a cartoon character. I remember being shocked at how small the alliga-
tor felt in my hands. His skin was rough and bumpy, but I could feel the warmth of a living thing and the draw of his slow, deliberate breaths. I brought my face closer to his and he stared at me out of the corner of one of his eyes. It felt like he was trying to stay calm, trying to trust. But that’s all I remember about it, I said. You stayed quiet and then sighed, crossed something out of your notebook and, without looking up, said, that’s crazy baby. You should write. I woke up when you got back from your gig, just kind of opened my eyes really. The sun was just starting to make the purple sheet on our window glow. You closed the door, slumped up against it and let your guitar case slide to the floor. Your head hung down sloppily like it was in a noose. I closed my eyes and turned to the wall, and just when I thought you’d fallen asleep like that, I heard you push off from the door and stagger around until you found some place to sit and sleep.
The morning we were to leave Ensanada I went to look for her at Yiyo’s taco stand, down by the beach. Her voice had been drunk the night before, when she said I’ll call you later, I’ll call you. It wasn’t the first time. Yiyo chuckled when he saw me walking up, throwing more fish on the grill. He said something to his son and the boy brought me a taco slathered in white sauce. Your sister left with Hector. The cowboy, I asked, choking the whole thing down. He’s not really a cowboy, the boy said, he just wears the hat. I wiped white sauce onto the cuff of my jeans and looked out at the bay, which was really just a great big hole filled in with water. Well, she’s not really my sister, I said. I walked alone the rest of the way to the bus stop, past the cannery that reeked of so much death. Hector had said it was even worse in Summer.
“Silvia? Silvia!” Silvia shut the door of her father’s office behind her. “Silvia,” he called again till she appeared in the kitchen. “Silvia, supper has been on the table for twelve minutes! Where have you been?” In that twelve minutes she had been hiding behind her father’s desk holding a treasure map. A map she should not have discovered till her teen years. But here on cheap glossy paper was a map guiding her eyes along the lines of human sexuality, of lips, breasts, labia, and a penis. The couple lay like toppings on a sundae that was the tiger skin rug. From then on all she would ever want was sex on a tiger skin rug. On her wedding night, she scoured the city for a hotel with a tiger skin rug. All she was found was a Legacy Inn with a bear skin rug. Brown was the color of reticence her neighbor used to say, while stirring her iced tea. Still, it would have to do. The newlyweds shuffled into the hotel room. She eyed the rug while he dropped the keys on the nightstand. “Come here, you,” his big lips said while surrounding her mouth. She leaned her body toward the rug, he leaned toward the bedroom. “Let’s get into bed.” “No. The rug. Take me on the rug.” She had rehearsed the line so many times in her head it now could not come out. She mustered her impression of a sultry “Yeah,” and the two
shared a conjugal visit on the starchy floral bed cover. Anniversaries passed, more cooing, more sighing impressions of a girl in ecstasy. All the while she kept a reel of her first porno movie playing. The tiger skin rug. Teeth. Trails of hair. Sweat. One day she and her husband discovered a tiger skin rug at a yard sale. A young brunette running the show interrupted their whispering debate. “Five hundred dollars is insane,” Nancy’s husband insisted. “Please, it’s something I can’t explain. I just need it.” “Hey if she wants it that bad,” the brunette gestured with a wad of bills in her hand and plastic bracelets jingling from her wrist “I’ll give it to you for one fifty. Happy wife is a happy life.” Her laughter fell like chimes complimenting the musical way her body moved. Nancy and her husband rolled up the tiger skin rug and carried it down the driveway to their car. “Glad someone’s getting some use out of that thing!” The brunette cheered as she waved them off. Nancy would just stare at the rug while they watched TV or read. When alone, she would just lie there, experiencing the fur, following the stripes. Nothing erotic came to mind. “What’s wrong with you?” her husband said when he caught her lying face down smelling the fibers.
“Nothing. I just have a lot on my mind.”
“Let’s loosen you up then,” he grinned like a salesman and ceremoniously carried her off to the bedroom. After some brilliantly executed moaning and hair tossing, the couple showered, and went separate ways for various Sunday duties. She smiled in the car mirror, her cheeks were still rosy from sex and she said to herself, “You are a good wife.”
When she came home from the salon, she heard her husband in the living room laughing. She walked to into the hallway and heard another laugh, a familiar chimey laughter and cooing giggles like two lovers might have. With enough adrenaline to throw a car, Nancy spied from the shadows of the hall. On top of the tiger skin rug she saw their naked bodies enlaced and sighing. Her husband stole a drag from the brunette’s cigarette and said, “My wife will kill me if she smells smoke.” She ran for her keys as silently as a fox stalker and closed the front door behind her. For five minutes she hid in the side yard without moving. Her husband and the brunette seeped out of the house like steam. He didn’t touch her but looked around for prying neighbors; the two got in his red Camero and floated away. Once they were out of sight, Nancy crept from her hiding spot back into the house. She took his suits, his bowling shoes, his father’s record collection, his toupees, the Victorian armchair he treasured and stacked them in the driveway. She doused it all in Kingsford co. lighter fluid and watched as her match met the pile of possessions, igniting and illuminating the afternoon sky. As she opened her car door, ready to leave, she paused, and closed it. She’d forgotten her rug. She hefted the tiger skin rug on her back and carried it out to the yard. She laid the rug on the grass and spread her own legs, rubbed her own inner thighs, and brought herself to a climax on the rug. She laughed till she shook and rolled on one side. She smiled and lay there watching the clothes, the money, the everything burn away in the winter twilight.
I saw her when she was 16. This was Ever Thompson and she told me that she had a call but to never Ever Call her Ever. that this was some type of joke she would repeat. After we would fuck she would call me an idiot and reiterate the fact that no one likes her jokes. I keep telling her to go to the hospital to get her head checked out but she says that hospitals are only for the loony’s. I tell her to keep her shirt on when we fuck because she has a wobbly titty and it makes me uncomfortable. She brings me photos of her sisters and I thank her. After a certain time in the day, before the last rays of Sunday’s daylight there is something lost and I could see it in her eyes. I tell her lets talk about it but she keeps telling me that its nothing so now I rarely ask what is wrong with her. I’m beginning to think she’s suicidal because. All she’s got is me and I do not care much for her either. It feels strange going for such long periods without masturbating, and I am afraid that
after her passing I will retreat to the comfort of fake tits . Images shoot through my chest because I don’t care about looking at her outstretched legs going up anymore. She cries all the time now because her mother and father don’t speak to her. I tell her that mothers are for squares. She knows that I stopped speaking with my mother after I developed my addiction to corner milk. She doesn’t take what I say seriously anymore. Everything’s going over my head. She keeps telling me jokes about vegetables and asks me if, “this thing is turned on.” I say I don’t get it but she keeps repeating the joke, so I turn on my computer. Now I get it. I think I see her watching me in the corner of the outstretched projecting shining itself onto my chest. I tell her to spread her legs and watch this. She likes watching it when I’m watching her. I ask if she has done this before. She says maybe and I start to think that there’s a lot I don’t know about the people I considered myself close to. Nietzsche didn’t refer to it as the “ the most distressing of thoughts,” but I keep telling people he did. Now people believe Nietzsche said something he didn’t, so either I am Nietzsche or no one is Nietzsche. She calls me out on it one time, but she knows I’m a liar so there’s no good to it. I tell her about my dream, and how much they mean to me. She listens to me and puts a microphone in my face. I tell her to stop acting like there’s a microphone everyone but then she tells me to get the photo of Scarlett Johansen out from my wallet. I tell her that Scarlet Johansen was once in an indie rock group based out of Tampa. She says prove it, so I look it up. She cries about her mother at night and why she can’t see her. I tell her that mothers are squares and she knows I stopped talking to my mother because she started seeing another guy. She says I’m a liar so I just tell her to look it up. My mother was actually a sweetheart. I tell her that there’s no more memory left and that everything from here on out is just a PlayStation game left unsaved. Sometimes I mock her when she reached the top of Mount Olympus by repeatedly saying “she’s here, she’s here, she’s here.” There an icy
mountain I practice going up when I’m asleep. I tell her it’s the only way I fall asleep. We don’t touch each other because sleeping is the closest you’ll get to divinity. And we don’t fuck with that shit. She sometimes says that the meetings with the Psychiatrists were good and other times they were not good. They don’t know that she’s putting on a new profile every time. Jack Hammid. Francine Luther. Omar Cummings. Sheila Jackson. Marti Olson. Please stop giving her these. Ella Fitz. Fitzie for short. She needs to stop doing this. She finished taking her medicine today. I ask how she could get more but all she says is that it, “in the bank.” I ask her if its possible to fall in love with someone I’ve never met. She tells me that no one can love me. I think that I lived another life where I was Thomas Aquinas because I associate so closely with his name. I know I was him, and I was a martyr for my faith. I tell her I’m joining the seminary. She asks to get fucked in the church. The doorbell is ringing and I tell her that I know who it is. She asked me to forgive me for cheating on her. I called her a slut but I don’t care that she fucks around. It took 3 times for her to leave the piety. I started fucking around a few weeks after with girls much less beautiful than her. I don’t know why, I think its because Arnold Schwarzenegger is a hero to so many. She grazes my arm and I feel like I am new again. The doorbell rings and I ask whose there. Ever tells me to get the door but I cant when I’m in the middle of something. I hear a voice on the other side of the door and it makes me feel unwell. I look over to her and see that she’s covered her head in sheets and even though I don’t see her sometimes I feel like the suppression of beauty is one of life’s most irresistible of obsessions. I’ve told her to dress like the Muslims because I like that. She said she would not. I became a cross dressing Muslim. Now, they can only have me for who I am. I told her that women were God’s mistake. She agreed and wished she
had never been born. The doorbell is ringing and I think it’s her friend. I fantasize about fucking both. About me fucking both. I fantasize about me fucking. I fantasize about me. I me. She said she wants a divorce, but I say we aren’t even married. Or am I paranoid? There is nothing stopping me from opening the door that is still ringing. But, even still I tell her to take care of it. She says she cant because she can’t show her face. I smile. She told me to buy a gun but that philosophically she is against the purchase of firearms. But she thought it would be something good for my soul because having a gun is like being a God. We are collectors of antiques now and we have a healthy living. She works the 9-5 and I stay home with the children a couple hours a day. Then I go to a coffee house and write my new crime thriller. The new sophisticated thing is for the dad to stay home with the kids. A lot of people don’t know this but I’m actually a feminist with a love for the Wild Side! The doorbell is ringing again and I ask whose there. A woman rests her cheek on the other side. She tells me to take it. I tell her I’ve been waiting for this since I was a boy. She’s ringing the doorbell. And I cannot open it. She’s in my area. I could see her like a blip. I tell Ever that I’m the reincarnation of the first son of Genghis Khan. She attempts to strike me. Her father taught her to play little league. Now he writes books about it. She’s got a good arm. There’s a knock on the doorbell now. I know that she’s in my area. I tell them to just take it. I don’t want it anymore.
spring comes again the same spring as last year and the year before and i fall apart at the same rate as the weeds creeping out freash among the cacti
i saw you walking and i walked right behind you and i said i told you i wanted to say hey baby baby where are you going i wanna go there but you said shut up stop following me you freak you weirdo you loko i said ya i’m loko baby i’m loko for you i’m loko for you and everything you got and i want it all. she turned around and looked at me with those shark eyes and right then at that very moment she took everything inside me she took with her pointed teeth and round face and she ate it without even breathing she took it all from me and i was so sad because it hurts so much i cried a couple tears maybe hahah just kidding i don’t cry that’s for pussys and she ate it all up and you know at that moment it seemed like she liked it but i called her the next day i mean she called me the next day and told me how much she hated it and how bad it tastes.
What did we say to each other that now we are lips Who touch And come apart at the same time to push a sound Into a continuous string of lies, That escapes with a gust of wind Like a crazy kite.
its not the end, when our eyes are forever shut, even then I will keep you as close as possible , buried beside me under the ever changing sky . I will keep you, like a secret forever embedded, with the twisting of our bodies we may forget, but constantly being reminded from our earthly fragments. we lived our dreams, separated by the halos of man, as different as we were we always smiled, but we buried our love within our insecurities I’ll remember you, sung like a childhood lullaby , with the melodies tattooed inside me, diminishing like notes sustained and forever released. -bidi
Walk to Work Day @21st&Valencia A man and a woman read palms, For 40 dollars a month Over a two year Annually contracted term. Speaking in light waves Familiar rings blare knowledge From the muse in hand At whoever. About whatever. When one or more parents Come rushing past, The inevitability of it all Progress and differences, laid out, Against aloneness. Some minimize the allure Thrashing about for letting the TV run too long. Others just don’t care. They know it will comes fast, Too fast at its pace. @22nd&Valencia A man and a woman didn’t notice. Reading their palms for $40 a month. They did not look up.
----Digital Weekness Wake up. Piss. Smoke. Water the bones. And stare at you, Endlessly there and seen Courageously. You tigerlily, You strong portrait, you. You glimpse, you fixation You force of thoughtful summersaults, A mess of loose wires. To splice and cut And fit together as able. As needed. When there is nothing to loose I can get lost And I am - writhing. Staying in bed beneath the sheets Staring @fragments: Forest scenes and beaches Tents and bands you liked. Copy. Paste. Highlight excess. Backspace. Stare. At every bit shared publicly. ----Spoken Word Gathering, We stacked our phones Like janga blocks In the center of the table. No one dares topple them. Playing other games instead, All together now, With spoken words.
i. We left Beatrice when I was three – Somewhere between the paranoid anguish And the loss of vision, Where some new comfort came In that aching, ululating way: Jon, will you touch the pain out before Spouse&Offspring See? Don’t Show me the ones that I love. No doubt, he complied Benevolently. His gentleness overcame her. Or his dumbly woven representation of a new world – Whetting the urge for pleasure, or comfort, or companionship, Which, for him, rarely involved a consideration for the future Or the fragile, Intersecting lives of a cat’s cradle. He was lonely, or he was sad, or he was none of these things. He was human, Beatrice, as you are. For this and this alone, I do not Villainize you. Nor do I Idealize you. I’ve read Dante closely: An ideal Diminishes A reality. ii. For years, mother, I’ve longed for that strange comfort of evil.
The chased shadow; a leopard in the woods; your kitchen fly. Nothing so simple materialized. I found a contradictory lover, Fond of horror Movies, and that familiar narrative arc Pitting possession against the best intentions. I called her “Gremlin” for the way she ate, The way the crumbs lingered In the folds of her shirt. Ironic – or maybe apt – that she hurt me. If the cause was a spirit, a specter, a Sin, I thought; I could cast it away, Get to the divine end of that empyrean arc – But her possession (like yours, mother) was human; It was history, it was pain, it was Me. Mother, Read me closely: let nothing possess you But you. Bad people don’t hurt people; Hurt people hurt people. iii. When I was two, my dad noticed a glowing light In a photo of my eye. I’ve seen the picture – As if the thread forgot to follow the last needle point of God. That flaw of divine light became a cancer – One America could “heal.” Guatemala Struggles still against it. Any survivor will tell you: Chemotherapy cures The way that flight, sex, and substance salve Betrayed hearts – it brings you to the brink Of death. Most of you does die. The rest Wishes for it. Luckily, I was two. Most of me doesn’t remember it. The rest of me Does. iv. I hear my dad crying at night while we leave Guatemala. It continues in hard G’s, which go quietly in the stomach,
Then gurgle up into the throat, get groaned out of the mouth. Guttural comes from the Latin guttur, for throat. In our tongue, It starts with the gut: like sex, but fear instead. My mother’s fear, my mother’s Fear: Love, Beatrice, is half-blind and sacred (scared?). Beatrice, love lies In a cradle down the hall; It swaths the house in echoes Where our ghosts loop Old dreams… How so many strokes of your palm On his forehead Could diminish The heartache, Possession, Loss: You in a linen skirt on the shore with no shirt on, Breasts the human corollary to a mountain range, The lake: your full womb. v. To imagine A loss worse than death has become an obsession. Stories of cuckoldry, catalogues of fictions, Start to answer: Why Is discovery an act of tragedy? How fear could move a body so numbingly to undiscovery. How fear begets fear. How I carry The weight of possession Inside me. Jon, the ambiguous Euro-American. My father, the Nord. Beatrice, the Pipil, the invaded. How little allegiance I hold. Mother, conquered, I am their colony of flesh. vi. […] rubs the semen across my stomach like she’s painting Something beautiful. Consternation on her brow as her fingers hit the
scar Ridges on the left side of my abdomen. She asks, “What Are these from?” I tell her. She stops, says I smell like a pool. I smile. […] traces the three short keloids with my semen As if to heal something in both of us. Or maybe she’s planting Something for one of us. I doze as she starts the shower, sings to me or to no one, “Woman needs no man – woman Needs woman. Woman needs herself.”
Potential Lovers I can only imagine the ways In which you would say my name. The ways that you would hold me, Play games. I can only imagine the textures Of your lips. The ways your hands would Touch me and slip. Imagine the times you would call me, A morning greeting, And evening wish. I can only imagine the ways
It would feel, Unreal, Potential Lovers. ----New York City I wanted to bring you here with me, To taste the way the city breathes. To smell old rains on concrete. The suffucating of stars in city lights. To hold your hand in crowds, Unable to hear you say my name out loud. ----Night Darkness falls upon my eyes, I’ve yet to sleep, to think tonight. Purple Ruins cross my mind, Into blindness, White lights will dance on me tonight. White lights take me, to the night. Night, night’s alright. Such a gentleman is the night tonight. The breeze is kissing my knees and rouge rest on my cheeks facing towards the sky. Softly flowing down my waist, A dress to hold me tight. Stockings running up me, To have me, and to hold me Is the night. Night
Darkness falls upon my eyes, I’ve yet to sleep, to think tonight. Night, night’s alright. Such a gentleman is the night tonight. Stockings running up me, To have me, and to hold me Is the night.
The stale smell of cigarettes Falls from your lips Like spitting out burnt toast I like to lick the crumbs from the edges of your mouth Even through the taste is bitter And you are dying ----The curious moth Drawn to the lighted wick of my candle Knocking on the table Controlling chaos Perceiving ecstasy Yearning for my light
Inching closer Seductive and dangerous heat The moth flung itself Joining light Its once sporadic body shrinks in its decreasing energy Lying in the hot wax I blow out my candle ----Your smells worn off the sweater I’ve washed my sheets Since you’ve last been around Why can’t you respond or ever Keep a promise Just make a sound I’m well without you__there To confuse Or hold me down I heard you stumbling by Held back the need to cry It’s all for me now I’m well without you__here To wipe away the tears Or hold me down Hold me down. ----Wake up pull your head out of water You’re choking on ideas too large to swallow Keep up pretend you have power Waste your favors on barefoot followers
Sleeping prodigy lay next to me Grant me dreams and prophecies Sleeping prodigy lay next to me Bury my body beneath ancient trees Sleeping prodigy lay next to me Lay next to me So I can be ----It’s funny to be lovers and then never friends But it’s so damn good to see your face again Take me back to times when My mistakes were meaningless And I could not conceive Of the regrets I would commit And deaths that would Promise me to mortality It’s funny to be lovers and then never friends But it’s so damn sad to see your face again I miss the child I used to be And the levity of responsibility I never knew life could do this to me Promise me to mortality It’s funny to be lovers and then never friends I’ll never see your face again I’ll never know your love my friend ----Walking on these heavy streets Heady shoes lay in too deep Hit the ground beneath our feet Walking on these heavy streets
The rats run by, the raccoons cry The windmills chime by no ones time The trees lay still, the ocean’s thrill Walking on The mountains rise Brick and stone stands for lives Then one day we all shall die Walking on these heavy streets Laying in these souls to keep Plants they move And still are we Trees are tall and buildings creep Higher to another sky And here I stay until I die Laying in and laying deep Bricks and stones are here to keep Some may call and some may scream But here I stand so quietly The metals folds, the clouds they cry And through these streets So am I
This plastic patio chair this dull deck chair is leaving its imprints on the backs of my thighs I used to have a large bamboo lawn chair With a tall back that could reach the sun surrounded by sago palms and philodendronsparakeets would cry at my shoulders and my hair was made of fur It was nothing like this fake chair structural and poorly-made It’s not even whiteit’s more like a linoleum kitchen floor once your mother stopped washing it. I don’t let anyone sit in it I am sick at the idea of someone fingering the layers of dust the collected years of dirt I can see it clinging to their carefully ironed pants. Best not to mention the chair in polite conversation
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