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mere harrach larry iles rhi conry kim ramos olli sure lauren frazier lynn connell rowen conry p. 4 p. 5 p. 6 p. 8 p. 10 p. 11 p. 12 p. 16

by mere harrach

Howdy Imee,

I’m s’posin it’s now my turn to apologize for the delay in conference. The world is mighty wacky where i’m at. You see, I was so astonished to receive such tender, beautiful, sinful photographs from someone like yourself, i rushed atop my hunky steed Rosebell to the nearest town’s busiest alcohol-servin’ establishment, which happened to be Casper’s Toe-Dip Saloon on Wagonbench and Warnoll. Well, the Angry Troup, a gang of travelin wayward rebels, had tumbled into town just the night before unbeknownst to myself and Imee, let me just say: “I OWE THEM $800 AND A JAR OF LINGONBERRY JAM FROM MÄRNE THAT I DO NOT HAVE RIGHT NOW” and leave it at that. Long tail chopped short, they found where i was camping from Watersnake Jeff, that guy, and came and nabbed me of your fine images! I was so pissed in the hole, you coulda swam in it. Pardon my french, but you coulda got third-degree burns from the amount of heat comin off my clenched fists. However, there was nothin i could do. Of course I wanted to protect your honor with all my heart, however I begun to thinkin’— maybe $800 and a jar of lingonberry jam from Märne were worth the trade? Then I started to think, “NO, THAT AIN’T SITTIN RIGHT WITH ME.” I scrambled right back on top of Rosebell in to the Toe-Dip on that very night and aimed my ‘37, 46” barrel silken lady pistol right in the spot i knew they’d be sittin. You shoulda seen them scramble out the door. I guess that made us a buncha eggs. You see, they were scramblin’ because Casper’s has a “guns-at-the-door” policy. Well, they surely ran me right outta town and into the next until I really fell in a hole. A 16ft deep one, bless me. Took Rosebell 7 days and 11hrs afore she finally caught whif of my hide. She’s a smart girl. Had some rope on her that she was able to throw down, plus a gatorade and some soup tucked away in her satchel. Long story short Imee I am so sorry from the bottom of my cowboy heart, but i do not have your filthy, heavenly images and gifts no more. I ain’t got a hand for drawin much, aside from drawin’ my pistol in a dire moment, but I can repay your kindness & patience in me with an answer to your question in the last note: My favorite song is the one Rosebell lady herself is named from. An ol’ cowpoke tune sung by the singer Conroy Marx. I recorded a version of his tune myself, and it would be my honor to pass it along to ya.

https://tinyurl.com/y3m2rh4p

Please take some sympathy out for an old dusty heart as mine. I am direly in love with you as a flowering yucca aches for a spring drop of water, I should like to keep hearing from ya Imee, if you’d do me the honor and reply soon. I promise to be less hory horny.

All my love & every star I couldn’t count for you my dearest Imee,

Clem Zimet

NIXIE 63 CE 1 2203/11/21 …..RETURN TO SENDER…….

…...NOT DELIVERABLE AS ADDRESSED………...…UNABLE TO FORWARD…………………… BC: 50314166010 *0976-00661-28-37

My Dearest Imee, I hope you do not think i have forgotten you. That Express Man fella told me that you din’t exist! That you’d never even set foot in the building i’ve been sendin my heart in letters out to. I do not trust him. I know he loathes my jobless, care-free lifestyle— the way time touches me gently and while crumpling up his heart and skin like bad poetry. He resents my partnership with Rosebell. His own horse, Michael, is nothing but an ugly mophead who bites to him. Old, flea -ridden, and simply a tool. The years have destroyed any kind of friendship they could’ve had. After all, how could a horse who is only a vehicle feel any love for a man who is just his owner. My Pony Express man is nothing but an employee, and I weep for him and michael both, truthfully. But trust them, I do not. I think they like telling me wicked falsities. That my mother no longer remembers my name, that the vegetable seller can no longer give me discount, that you have never received even one of my letters… I know it’s untrue! You are my angel, not a ghost in my mind. You exist to my east, no coincidence that you are my Eden. And one day I will travel to you and we shall take off on my Rosebell to the north or the south or any other way, babe. You’re my compass, I’m your wind.

With all my cowboy love, CLEM ZIMMET P.S. I AM 32 YEARS OLD, HOW OLD R U?

Notice

by Larry Iles

PLEASE NOTE: TWO LOSSES IN KIRKSVILE---GEORGE BARLOW AND, IN SWANSEA WALES, ANOTHER RADICAL, PHOTOGRAPHER TO HIS ELECTRICAL REPAIRER OCCUPATION, RHYS JONES. BOTH DIED SUDDENLY, TO IMMENSE FAMILIES’ AND FRIENDS’ LOSS, IN LATE 2020. THEY STOOD FOR KINDNESS AND TOOK ANTI CONSERVATIVE STANDS GLOBALLY, OFTEN MORALE RAISINGLY. THEIR WORKS CAN BE WELL FOLLOWED IN PUBLICATIONS IN THESE AREAS WHICH THEY GRACEFULLY ACTIVISTLY FIREFLAMED AND TO WHICH THEY BOTH INSPIRED LIFE AND HOPE AMIDST APATHY. MAY THEY REST IN PEACE AND LOVE TO ALL LI and BLMI

rot is not the absence of you but the presence of small lives in spite of it— do you hear all the small mouths chewing down the house?

my mother is the bellow of a church organ, my father the precise movements of a skink. my youngest sister a beheaded tulip, my middle sister a sturdy spoon. i am the dark and empty space beneath the couch.

listen, i am going to escape myself. you can come along, too. bring a mirror, a pen, and a pocket knife. oh, and don’t forget your toothbrush.

either/or will kill me, eventually. i forget i’m not flat, a coin spinning in the air, the wall between two confessionals. remember when sin was small? gauzy veil, fuzz-fluff of dreams, take me to clear cut memory and let me drink it like freezing water, a sharp cut, a sobering slap—no more distortions of long-stemmed flowers.

the end…or is it? cheap trick as if after end credits you’ll be on the doorstep with a bouquet of question marks bent in your hands.

stop sipping the sorry out of other people’s cupped palms. what a sweet demeaning thing. pardon, my throat is blooming so many roses and i don’t know where to put them.

kool aid critters! look at all the sweet-rot. not long before the whole body goes, synapses widening, neurons dying, rickety bones and slanted floors. i was a fluke to last this long.

socrates goes to a house party

by Kim Ramos

i. who let this socrates bitch into the house party no, i don’t know what the gods want. my cup is full of pride and hubris, a caustic warmth in my belly. i imagine i was split off from something in the beginning: another person, a floor of clouds, a bright gold sound. and this is why i’m stupid and smoking like it’s a part-time job, just something before my photography takes off, you know? hey, you’re not so bad my guy. you’re ugly and you ask too many questions, but you’re not so bad.

ii. oh shit, socrates died at the house party cover the body in a white sheet but not before we mistake his stillness for sleep: death in sunglasses, death on the floor, death with a sharpie-covered face. we’re not heathens, just very far from what’s sacred. we feel closest to the gods when we’re stumbling, half-blind, prophet by the sea: run through the woods and fall for a beautiful deer. your children will be half-spirit and not belong anywhere.