Issue
#11
/ U.S.A.
July
2016
Dear Readers and Moon Luvers,
OoOooh, say can you seeeeeeee! America the beautiful/the beer. Whether ya like it or not, ya live here (unless you don’t)! Let’s celebrate (or blaspheme) America. Grab a Budweiser, eat a corndog, and cozy up with our U.S.A. issue. For future themes, submission deadlines, and anything else, be sure to check in with us online. (See last page.) Like our previous issues, the numbered pages are original submitted content. Other pages are altered by yours truly and unique to each edition of the issue. Thank you for taking a chance and picking up our zine. Hold on to it, or pass it on to the most patriotic zinester you know, as The Moon Zine is one of a kind.
Stars and Stripes Forever, The Moon
the moon zine staff bios:
Julie Davis - I’ll calmly punch them in the fourth day of July. Allison Sissom - Got my hands up, they’re playin’ my song, butterflies fly away. Wes Harbison - ♫ somewhere in the swamps of Jeresey ♫ Lauren Kellett -Toby Keith will put a boot in your ass. Josh Saboorizadeh - With liberty and justice for all. staff picks: most american thing you do
Julie - Primetime HSN Allison - incomprehensibly loud in all situations and at all times. Wes - I love pie and Bruce Springsteen. Lauren - One time got both KFC and Taco Bell to-go cuz I couldn’t decide Josh - Distilled water with ice cubes
W hat ’s More American… by Jeffy Denight
What’s more American than hot dogs? Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln! What’s more American than freedom? I am, I am, I am! American means states rights and sequels and high school and NASCAR! Oh! What’s more American than Manifest Destiny? I am, I am, I am! We honor our nation on 4th of July, salute to ranching, ranch houses, and ranch dressing! The founding fathers gave us the NRA and NAFTA! The best of America is me, me, me! What’s more American than dense sexual frustration? It’s part of our heritage, one that’s second to none!!! Nothing’s more American than a knife slash massacre at the campfire, Except for me, me, me!
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USA Gothic by A Friendly Attendant at the American Gothic House ****************************************
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5
Texas Party (Stockholm, Sweden) by Becca Harbison ************** editor’s note: The subject of the photo featured below is apple pie and vanilla sauce.
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Private School A poem in one part by: Adam1
When we were kids, we played cowboys and Indians. Now it’s republicans and Native Americans take it back. Take it back. Take it back. Take it back. Take it back. Take these catholic schoolgirls. Take them and take their uniforms off. Dump my desk out on the floor it isn’t clean. Embarrass me. It isn’t clean. Please. Please take these talking points and little baby pictures and go protest on the highway somewhere. Someday in high school, I’m gonna fuck somebody someday. Take it back. Take in vein the name of G-d. Take it back. Take it back. Take it back. Take it back takeitback Let me go to public school. Sometimes I used to wrestle in the yard with little boys that I didn’t even like. Sundays I would fight in the bathroom with paper towels and pocket knifes and my buddy John. Sometimes I would cry in the classroom because he wouldn’t sit next to me. Somedays I write in a notebook and sometimes I cry in the sink and bleed in the urinal.
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What if they took this concrete playground and what if someday somebody took this fucking chain link fence and rolled dice on the air conditioner and drew pictures of airplanes? This story takes place in America but it’s fake. We’ve exhausted this resource and absconded with the reward. Exhausting a resource, Just to watch it die. What if someday somebody exhausted a resource and absconded with the reward? Exhausting a resource. Just to make something die. When I was a kid I had lice. Twice. When I was a kid I had lice and I wouldn’t sit next to Kelsey and she cried and I didn’t care but secretly I cared a little I guess. Maybe a lot. Her father made less than thirty-five thousand dollars a year and mine had pictures of bugs bunny and shit on his checkbook. Let me go to public school.
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US&I by Shawn Bodden *************
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Abraham Lincoln is alright. But he can be a pain in the ass. I picked up litter along the side highway, that is to say, my mind: Some quote blew around each memory being a form of success.
Quote of the Day by Henry Goldkamp
Maybe a writer wrote it, or an artist said it. Google thinks it probably has to do with ancient politics. Ancient, that is to say, so long ago. Just then a young black man called me “sir” three times while asking for a cigarette. I was at a bar, by the way. What do Abraham Lincolns drink? Because I’ll have what he’s having. I gave the guy a smoke and it won’t help me sleep. I’m drinking rum and cokes one state away from Florida. My guess is as good as yours. Your guess is as good as mine. Abe would love that. Instead I cannot find something because of his popularity, his pedestal, the hatred-water, soaked. What does a serene background do to: “No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.” Backgrounded by a lake surrounded by odorless pine. One must research violence in order to understand it—the global war of getting home later than we want. Long poem short, I couldn’t find who said the quote, so repeat its ghost, taking no credit or picture: Each memory is a success.
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America, the List
by bill fishback
You know, it’s funny, I actually just got done writing this. The Spirit of America can, at large, be boiled down, diced and condensed into one and one person only: El Presidente. The Boss from E Street. El Big Queso Fresco. The one they make all the political cartoons about. Yes, that one. As you know, every four years we take an individual against their will and throw em into the White House. Since these people are picked at random, there can be a staggering amount of variation in their beliefs, values and appearance. Here is a list, thoroughly chronological and admittedly quite a pain in the ass. Okay now, folks. That’s it. Here they are — your stars from Mars: 1. The First One
2. The Second One
3. The One They Put On The $2 4. James Madison, deceased 5. James Monroe, deceased
6. John Quincy Adams, deceased
7. Andrew “ Woodpecker” Jackson 8. Martin Van Buren Van Martin
9. William Henry Harrison Fox Mulder, IV 10. John Tyler, deceased
11. James Knox Polk Out
12. Zachary “Stark Raving” Taylor 13. Millarded Fillmore, deceased 14. Franklin Pierce, deceased
15. James Buchanan, deceased
16. Abraham Lincoln, deceased
17. Andrew Johnson (robot version) 17
18. US Old Crow Grant
19. Rutherford Hayes (non-robot version) 20. James Garfield and Odie as VP 21. Chesthair A. Arthur
22. Grover “Tinseltown” Cleveland 23. Benjamin Harrison(?)
24. Grover “Tinseltown” Cleveland 25. William McKinley, deceased
26. Theodore Roosevelt, deceased
27. William Howard Taft, deceased 28. Woodrow Wilson, deceased 29. Warren Buffet
30. Calvin COOLidge
31. The Thirty-First One 32. FDR
33. Harry S. Truman, The One With the Specs
34. Dwight David Eisenhower, The One With The Chrome Dome and the Million Dollar Grin
35. JFK 36. LBJ 37. PBJ
38. Gerald Rudolph Ford
39. The Inimitable Jimmy Carter
40. The Handsome One They Tried To Kill But He Came Back Stronger and More Terrifying
41. George H.W. Clinton 42. Bill Clinton
43. George W. Clinton
44. Barack Obama (non-Clinton) And that’s it! We don’t yet know who the big 4-5 will be, but inside sources tell us there’s a decent chance the next Kool-Aid blooded rockstar we throw into the Big House will not bring us into nuclear annihilation.
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CALENDAR fun thing another fun thing oh here’s one more
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Midusa by Julie Davis
Crispy skin And fiddles from NY subways (I’ve never been there, but I’ve seen the movies) I lay in front of the only A/C And an A/Cquaintance fucks a man twice her age in a tent (I’ve never done that, but I’ve seen the movies) Boats turned up to the sky, sinking in the grass And sunflowers restless I learned a lot about money today I drank soda pop today Planned Parenthood waiting room I heard he kept his piss in jars after the divorce Where did that bird get those gumballs? Not here Where did that papaya get those pawpaws? I have privilege I have blonde hair, but I don’t have blonde hair I have a new child neighbor who is a dog, but he is not a dog I have extra blankets on 50° nights I take supplements for my knees And my bike hates me
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by Julie Davis ***********
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by Julie Davis ***********
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Bootlegger’s Orange by Raymond Holmes, Tony Bell, & Allison Sissom
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Plump, white-walled veins pump unbranded pulp, just think about it.
I'm tired. I need to wake up and take a shot.
Leafless tree branches let light through softly landing on the Honey Bun wrapper
in the overgrown grasses around our casks and mason jars
Like when a peach spout pours over filling underneath your tongue wells
coating and soaking until the turgor is too much. Senses tangling with misfired nerves and
spliced wires filled, wilting water weight.
Nervous buyers bid for their rectified spirits, the touch of their squalid hands.
I don’t want it to end here: swollen, reverse-beaded, pale
skin spread flat; topography inside out.
She thinks she's something stolen, another sweet juice underflow
of the great American times. Crude and Soft grown
from the middle Midwest. Thinks she's a commodity.
Wanted and wanted. Here among the flightless cottonwood and
willow seeds, here among the fossilized footprints of muddied
children's shoes, size five or six.
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Waves of Grain by Bob Boston ***********
Idioms by Kath Vandenberg
Hollowed out grapefruit, strung together with Grandma’s knitting yarn like neighbor’s coconut bra, brought back from Hawaii. We play, till it attracts fruit flies. Discarded in the backyard. Found shriveled, dried, barely recognized when the snow melts come Spring. Neighbor leaves for Florida. We watch her cat, and marvel at the artifacts, small statues, maps, snowglobes and paperbacks in a renovated gem on an upandcoming street. Our street, that was Grandma’s Polish neighborhood. Grandma’s idioms, translated, make me laugh. I drill a hole in her belly till she tells me more. I bring her hot dogs n’ beans, microwave cuisine. Neighbor comes home for Summer. Manicured, margaritas, parties under the pergola. Her cat finds its way under the fence to overgrown, lemonade, fireflies under the streetlight. Leaves fall down, rent goes up. Grandma moves downstairs, where there are no stairs to get to the bathroom, where her monogrammed towel hangs. A WJW, my initials too. Knitting needles clacking, rocking in her chair. We Just Wait.
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Hi Print-Your-Own-Zine folks! Dropping again in to say that we’re still toying around with this extra page to the right. We’ll likely be keeping it around, we just need to find a better way to present it in the PYOZ document. All in good time. (I've been saying that for months. Maybe it'll just stay like this?) So, when you’re done reading this, cut the page right down the middle (hamburger style) and toss this half in the recycling. Take the other half and paste it right on the very last inside page. Or wherever you want! There are no rules! Thanks for the support and have a good day!! XOXO
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Credits front cover: by Julie Davis
back cover quote: September 12, 1962. http://er.jsc.nasa.gov/seh/ricetalk.htm below: as far as the eye can see, by Julie Davis Thanks eternally to: Everyone who has helped us collage The Moon Zine
special thanks to: Maddie Smith and Jacque Davis for additional printing assistance
made in saint louis, missouri, usa
“For the eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond, and we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but by a banner of freedom and peace.�
- John F. Kennedy
fREE