Issue 4
it’s a typo waiting to happen
The literary journal that explores poetry and all its faces. Ty(poe:tic)us explores everything that is poetry. From featuring poems from emerging and experienced poets, to hearing stories and theories about poetry and the life of a poet, typoetic.us aims to show the world how important poetry is to not only its participants, but also its spectators. The idea of typoetic.us is messy, unintentional, and as beautiful as a flower. It stands out for its beauty and for the close relationship it has with the poet. It is everything that poetry is and isn’t (though the “isn’t” is not necessarily incorrect). It’s a typo waiting to happen. Editors Christina Rodriguez Corey Klinzing Christine Coonrod Ahmani DoDoo
info@typoetic.us
COPYRIGHT © 2015 Ty(poe:tic)us. All Rights Reserved No part of this magazine may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever (beyond copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the United States Copyright Law) without permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
Editor’s thoughts Hello Typoetic.us Readers! Thank you for still checking us out time and time again! We are on our fourth issue, which closes Volume 1 of Typoetic.us. It's been one heck of a ride! We've had a change in editors, big out-of-state moves, job changes, and so much more! It has not been easy, but we have made it! We've even collected submissions for our fifth issue and the start of Volume 2. When I came up with the idea of Typoetic.us, I underestimated the impact it would make. It's been a blessing to witness its growth. It's not easy, but it's a rewarding experience. I love poetry more than anything in the world. My editors are passionate about it as well. Even when it's tough to read all the submissions and communicate with one another, we push through because we love poetry. Without further delay and banter, we present the fourth issue of Typoetic.us! Thank you to our contributors and our readers. Without you, there is no us! Thank you to my editors for the outstanding job as always. Enjoy and happy reading!
III | Ty(poe:TiC)US Issue 4
What’s inside 8 Bruce Colbert Sandusky, 1970 Lake Effect
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The Race Lost
35 9 Srajana Kaikini Flame of the Forest
10 Caits meissner Zuihitzu For Becoming Animal/Body
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Mandy and the Secret Zit
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16 jessica Wiseman lawrence His Girl Could This Ever Be New Again?
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Figure Ground
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Administrative
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17 Jessica lindsley Patience of the Meteor Dedicated Predators: Samurai Aphids and Flowerflies of Japan
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18 Steven Baker The Buddha and The Matrix Afterglow
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IV | Ty(poe:TiC)Us ISSUE 4
19 fareeha khan Burnt Alive, Buried Alive
21 Yashika graham Egret for Marcus Rebirth
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Kyra
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22 lynn white In the End
23 leah mueller The Beginning of Trouble
26 joshua robinson Millenialism
32 Nate Maxson Dichotomies
42 P o e t s ’ C o r n e r
ty (poe:tic) us
it’s a typo waiting to happen
Issue 4
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Design & Layout: Ahmani DoDoo
Sandusky, 1970
Bruce Colbert
Darlington oaks in the sleepy Southern gulf town at dusk when the street lights first come on Color Spanish moss a dark grey-green like a carnival lady’s beard in the freak show I saw as a kid once in a Pennsylvania anthracite coal town And I think of Sandusky long ago, in another park, lonely and waiting For what I didn’t know, weak watery Ohio beer on my young man’s breath and the sticky sweet smell of rotten Lake Erie trapped in my nostrils. Hitchhiking from the army base only to sit alone in this darkened town square, two beers later from a friendly bartender who said he understood what it was like, overseas, the war. But you’d better go before the regulars come in, you know, and so I went, leaving him a two dollar tip, a lot then, for a recruit. A goddamn grunt is what they called us. The lieutenant from Paramus had been, told us about the heat and the stink and them, the enemy, but he liked it anyway, was going back. Wouldn’t miss it for all the world, no sir. Behind his iron rigid military back we laughed at him, called him Jumping Joe, the freaky gung-ho paratrooper. “Hey, what me worry?” Mad magazine. Couples stroll by in this Midwest summer evening, notice my brand new uniform, brass insignias shining. Some walk fast to get away, but the old men hesitate, remembering lost attic uniforms, with coiffured irritated wives pulling hard on their arms. “Come on,” the women rasp, “we’ll be late. We saw it all on television, the news,” and finally they leave. Then turning after a few uncertain steps in a fog of painful recollection, those same white-haired paunchy men sometimes saluted me, or looked back and waved their arms as they had once done bloodied on that beach littered with boys at Iwo Jima, or
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frost-bitten and frightened in the unforgiving snows at Bastogne. In that warm Sandusky night with the crickets chirping.
Flame of the forest Srajana Kaikini
Her lips were bruised, the red flame of the forest resting on her table had slowly relaxed towards her, the three pollen limbs sleeping with feet outside blanket. She could hear the sound of water gushing through her. Softly, like the little brook that starts and ends with seasons. Write on her palms, calm down his restless fingers, tap a song into her head.
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Where the story begins: I overhear a boy at the gardens telling his mother: c areful — his sister may be a monster as she snarls behind a tree. At the same age I dreamed a story about my father’s infidelity, already having learned all men are monsters from the movies. Dad laughed, the thought made him too tired to consider as he stained the front porch, my mother covering bulbs with dirt on the hill. Nothing was out of the ordinary, I was lucky. Fear exited a child’s mouth in the shape of a moth. ~ Journal List // How I Was Created As A Child Lake mermaid / seaweed hair / sea shells over tiny nipples. Stolen radio melodies / crooked voice / make me wannashoop. Fluffing pillows of pine needles / private woods to open each crevice & look. The Von Trapp family: my children / they come from here & here (belly/cunt) Lensless shades and bent paperclip braces / wanna be a teen / wanna kiss & be seen. Shirtless dad with the Playskool kitchen set / playing a prickless husband. Livingroom fly girl choreography / ride the pony / cheetah face paint / zebra skin. Rubbing up on my girlfriends until / boom! / bang! / the cosmos. ~ Journal Entry // 4.9.14 // Explosions. My husband has a vision while I am sleeping in the safety of his embrace. What does it mean when I say he makes me feel safe? What can his mortal being keep safe from embers. What if our building went down like East Harlem? A pipe of gas blown up like war. Before we’d wake with the knowledge of death, our lives would be flattened by plaster and the bodies of our neighbors. Then what would have been worth it? Not the songs we’ve written, nor the poems. Not the money stacked in the bank or even our wayward dreams choking us like an x‐ray blanket. What passageways have we walked to bring our bodies closer to the fire? ~ Post-it note, 2013: cultivate a rich internal life. Habit. Danya says I am seeking to be candid and find my truth. Direct quote. But I am so often looking for a magic spell to bring me back to my feminine self, on my back, legs bent to diamond, stuffing inside
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Zuihitzu for becoming Caits Meissner
four garlic cloves two yams diced
one large butternut squash and a yellow onion. Also: sultana raisins / peanut butter coriander / cumin / ginger / finger turmeric / cinnamon / cayenne Sizzle. Recipe for Cooking Women* pour in 2 tbsp of vinegar / do not wash to remove strong odor / add in sugar + salt + stir keep repeating / until it tastes good / flat on the back, spread / dampen the edges / don’t force it / don’t make it hurt / cut down the middle / you shouldn’t feel anything / but warm water running *edited from Wikihow’s guide to making sushi & guide to douching 6.17.14 // Crossroads Juvenile Detention Center Miss, shake my hand. (Pause.) Yo! I jerked off with that hand! Still. Teacher — What did you learn in this workshop? Boy — How not to be scared. The sun is in my throat so good but it burns. I am afraid of loss. I am afraid for their futures. I am afraid for my own heart. I am afraid for it to harden. I am afraid for it to remain soft. Come celebrate with methat I am not locked in a cell. That I will make Chickpea Masala tonight in my own kitchen. That I will dirty the tub with my own stinking body. We borrowed Lucille Clifton’s words — the ones we all agreed was the poem’s heat.
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Their poems were better than my own: Teaching Lucille I had no sisters then born in the belly of a whale my own fin fragile and stubborn what did I see to be except buried a shell of sadness here on this violent dirt too bright — squinting between the cradle of sea and sky, my one hand holding a feather’s soft skeleton to cheek, yes, come celebrate with me the voice’s sharp song finding it’s home, come, while I praise my throat breaking the morning open with her beak ~ Journal Entry 1.26.15 // Ten Observations of the Actual World: 1. It is snowing, plainly. Snow layered on the rooftops. Snow coating men’s beards as they shield their eyes from wind. 2. A shovel scrapes against pavement. The snow fills in the blank space almost instantly. 3. Keyboard clacks. My husband typing at the desk, I look up and he is looking at the computer screen at a photo of my face. 4. The plants are browning on the edges. 5. The buzzer from the building across the street is high pitched and can be heard from our living room over and over. 6. My nail polish is chipped. I am using my finger to block a cluttered view of stained wine glasses from last night. 7. The kitchen table, once Grandma’s, is red. In the middle of the table is driftwood from the mountains. Beneath it, a red and black batik that feels stiff. Painted onto the cloth are jug: the table runner from my mother-in-law’s best friend. 8. Men are arguing on the street. Wait, they are talking in loud voices. Let me backtrack, I cannot make out the emotion. That is a story.
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9. The shower water is finally hot today.
10. On the paper on my lap are questions pertaining to the dichotomy between rigidity and mutability. I can make out the word “shape shift.” (Bear with me, world. I am cranky as hell. I am trying to learn the difference between what is and w hat I make it mean.) ~ Snapshot: Winter 2014 It is sweltering in Malaysia this December day. It is 2014. We are sitting at a bar, smoking our brains out, laughing. We cannot stop laughing. We stop laughing. We discuss the Rohingya people of Burma, an entire demographic of dark‐skinned individuals who are not recognized as existing by their own government. Because of this baffling fact, they are vulnerable to human trafficking and smuggling — recently 20 bodies found in the gardens of Penang, decapitated and limbless. No one claimed them. When, exasperated, I ask how humans could treat other humans this way, Mahdar answers, “because they are humans.” Even animals kill for survival alone, not cruel enough to enact senseless, unprovoked and excruciating violence against another. I think about this thing of being human. I am not sure it is a label I want to own, but know I cannot disown it, either. It is frigid winter in the South Bronx — December is a cruel joke. Summer’s other world has slipped off my skin.
Students write 6 word memoirs: The most heartbreaking things are free. — Janee Feeling alone but surrounded by people.— Alice Not selfish, just really into myself. — Megan Tantrum on an unknown emotional train. — Tianna Interestingly, extraordinarily & beautifully fucked up.— Vanessa ~ Snapshot: Summer 2014
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Rules of Dress When Visiting Rikers Island Jail: You must not wear a skirt above the knee. Must not wear open toe shoes. Must not have exposed shoulders. Be careful with jewelry that can be pulled or torn. Must not wear colors that can be associated with a gang. Consider not wearing make up. With a beige face, in a beige outfit, I am a shapeless woman among shapeless young women — our faces floating above a flatline. We heed poet Barbara Ras’ words, - You Can’t Have It All — but you can have a window, a light switched on, a door to close. You can have the hallway’s echo, turned down in the brain like radio static. You can find a clear pool buried in the mind to dip your toes clean as a fish and you can fly away on dreams I am told, to Mexico or Paris or home’s sweet memory, for free. You can have smiles breaking across the day like a band of horses running towards water and you can make a world of poems and step into like a snow globe, all the glitter sticking to your body like a wet suit. You can remember your favorite songs, even if you haven’t heard them in years and you can sing every word, even if you cannot sing and you can say I love you to a stranger, and somehow it can be true. You can have fire, anger, dance soaked in gasoline moon if the night calls and you can hold a council for your neighborhood, built of kale and candy canes, trombones and tattoos, beards of incense and truth, sticky truth clinging to the roof of your mouth. You can spit it, sling it, cradle it, yes, you can have truth, though it may sting the heart until it swells to balloon and you can have forgiveness as medicine, and penicillin if the ache won’t stop. And the ache will stop. And it will rise again. And still, you have this. This mess of alive, this siren, this warning to the world that you are here. ~ Journal List // Ways I Have Lost Out From Not Being Vulnerable Undated. 1.) Sex. 2.) Trust. 3.) I have not listened to what the poems want to say.
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Cook the veggies until they reach desired tenderness. Add bread for bowl. A ladle is an important instrument.
When are you going to learn to cook, my mother asks. It is innocent, but I feel it’s teeth through the phone. When she met my father he made his staple tuna casserole, now Swiss chard and fish simmered in banana leaf. It is the first family dinner at our home and I finally feel like an adult, pouring out the oil for dipping. Mom works hard to make a victory lentils slopped on a plate, the lemon zesting spinach. I have arrived. When they leave the moon is a window washer. I am a pristine canvas painted with light. I pull aside my gown and from my depths: a bounty of meat, juicy, ready — I’ve been salting for weeks.
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Waves of hair teased her small face. Her freckles were lost in the sea of it. She was running in a black dress. If his gods came in easy-squeeze bottles, he would spread them across the pockmarked terrain, fill in the holes, and bring her back.
His Girl
Jessica Wiseman Lawrence
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I. Under cover of darkness, we rode neon plastic sleds down the floodwall into the trees beside the river, landing in the drifts before the cattails. The night we lost her, her sailing silver-blurred moon-lit body crashing right through them onto the ice and then through it, trailing gleaming hair, we panicked. You cried, wanted to run. Bobby called the cops from the nearest payphone, then we huddled watching as the spinning lights of the medics and the strobes mounted on the police cars and the flashing lights atop the firetrucks changed the color of the neighborhood to red, to blue, to red, and highlighted and italicized the uniforms streaming back down the steep slope as shook their heads, as they didn’t find a body, as they dredged the hole, and we still pretending that we had no knowledge, that I didn’t have pliers in my pocket, that we didn’t see her streak away from us like a meteor. II. They found her body eventually. So many bodies, celestial and otherwise, escape that way, bobbing up the river. Each year the number grows. If this Red River was a house, it would be famously haunted. It would be featured on a mid-channel cable show, with producers with questionable ethics and greedy ex-wives clamoring for alimony checks. To say nothing in consonants and vowels, just a long ice-plumed cemetery of waterlogged bodies become ephemeral and blow away, all those lonely animals that attempted to cross on the ice, had no patience to find the bridge.
Patience of the meteor Jessica Lindsley
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There’s a space between us And the space around us is A line drawn in the dust Outside walls we fill with being. We never really touch What we never truly see And only learn belatedly Through extrapolation. Like when I drink Strong rum And tower there above my feet Somehow not connected Looking down from immense heights. Or when Pumpkin and I Take our early spring walks Through leaf strewn barren woods Nearly stepping on tiny blue flowers. Some inner part of the mind Cannot stand the touch Of true perception Of real comprehension. It must stand back Observing through a pin hole Or become overwhelmed By the glowing pulse around us. We are blinded by fear Enslaved by selfishness Wary of being touched Caught in a net of alone. Yet there is one escape One tiny unguarded door Opening upon magnificence Locked but not unlockable.
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The buddha and the matrix Steven Baker
Burnt Alive, Buried Alive
fareeha khan
Burnt alive , buried alive Shattered apart, tattered apparel Monstrous , serpent tradition Chewed alive or engulfed alive Noisy silence turned deadly Altar of customs smiling wickedly Sinister aura surrounding, dim foreboding haunting Centuries ago, decades earlier Burnt alive, buried alive Traversing a long journey Panting and gasping, huffing and puffing Kept promises bruising, Whispered silence menacing Celestial aura of empowerment Preserved and embalmed forever Thinking aloud and reticently mute Alien language, identity unknown Burnt alive or buried alive Standing there, looking backward Finding nothing Scrumptious , delectable feast Yet parched and starving I am frail and my name is woman Burnt alive centuries ago Buried alive just now
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Ever since I googled uterus this morning, I’ve been imagining my head is replaced with a cleaved slab of beef. I only wanted a pink cartoon, the Barbie plastic model of high school health class. But now I cannot unsee what I am. Under our skirts we are jungle. Imagine rose petals sled down our hills, plaster themselves to the wet walls. Imagine the shock of bright white tadpoles, slender fingers racing up a salmon stream. Under our presentable bodies who come to dinner in dresses or jeans we are a violent photograph as if someone painted us of only blood. They could skin and sell us on the black market. Someone would hang us on their wall.
Animal/Body Caits Meissner
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Were there music for this feeling; a dance across the heart compound... sun chantings to house the iris of a haunted place... Were there a smile worthy of your eyes, lifted, creased toward sky, moments to set the heart on spring, egrets to map eternity into a hover of northern tide... Were there monuments to mark a single settlement of joy upon a face to light entire realms at its emergence... If there were just such miracles, coiled into ordinary things then watch life take you,
egret for
Marcus
Yashika Graham
winged on eternity into deep-sea memory to spark landlove, to plant you root-first into a settlement of freeform light, laughter. ...and on the day of happiness rise... fly...
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In the end
Lynn White
In the end I’ll be like you. Dust with flakes of skin and bone wrapped in long hair. Teeth chattering With no voice. No sense of taste or smell. No reason. In the end we’ll be invisible, impenetrable, anonymous, figments. But then, we always were you and I, we always were.
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According to Jung, flying dreams are about hubris, the grandiose belief that you are more important than you actually are, and are able to will yourself into weightlessness because your ego is top-heavy and believes itself capable of absurd things. It has fancies of floating at will and soaring above the grounded mortals while surveying all of them in an imperious manner, and it always feels gratifying to be so inflated, first, checking the earth’s perimeters like a soldier and then rising higher and not caring any more. The dreams always end with the need to return to earth as if you must pay for your flight with a moral lesson and sheepishly surrender to gravity, promising to stay closer to the ground from now on. After my mother died, I had a dream in which I was soaring above her house looking down at the Arizona desert and I finally landed on a decrepit porch
The Beginning of Trouble Leah Mueller
inhabited by a man with a long beard who looked like a cartoon prospector. He informed me that he was unable to read, but that reading and writing were the beginning of trouble and then I awakened to a day filled with words. It took years to realize the dream’s meaning which was my own inability to use language to distance myself from the sadness of letting go of someone who was never there words were superfluous,
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and would only make matters worse. Eventually, I’d have to face my pain on the ground with its face pressed up against my own, and not try to run from it with feet that couldn’t move. It has been many years since I dreamed of flying, I’ve learned to accept the consequences of gravity and the comfort of flatness, its soothing limitations. Perhaps that is what getting old is about, putting dreams of flight in boxes then placing those boxes inside closets and only looking at them in stillness. You stare at photographs of your younger self in which you’re smiling at the camera, as if the earth isn’t rushing up to hit you in the face, and feel glad for your inability to leave the ground, and for the utter uselessness of words.
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Lake effect Bruce Colbert
Mies van der Rohe glass towers ripped from a crumbling red brick past, hog butcher immigrants mute with callused hands of blood and grizzle and broken boots. Now Lexus sedans and vacation homes on the Indiana or Michigan side of this great lake called Michiana. We laugh at that ridiculous name. Warm red-and-yellow leafed afternoons gone in Southside Hyde Park, university gothic spires shadowing, with a blond and blue sweater daughter inquisitively seeing through all the vacuous thoughts Over heart-shaped sunglasses. Knowing smile. Her too-predictable secret guarded in that blossoming girl-to-woman yearning.
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We are bereft, we are lossless. We stalk the streets drinks in hand, cigarettes in mouths, drugs in every vein if we dare. We can’t shock you anymore. We are all bound for the electric chair. We might become more machine than man, before we know the end of things. The world buckles under the weight of our consumption. We have consumption. Ashley has dysentery. Ashley has died. We learned that people die by playing Oregon Trail; Someone in a country we can’t understand, can’t comprehend has died of a disease we only see in green glowing letters. We are self-absorbed. We are hopeless. We are useless. We care more than anyone born before us, and we are horrified. We can do nothing, because so few of us have anything. We are abandoned by a world that told us to follow our dreams. We are mostly American, and most of us are uneasy about it. Some of us have left permanently. We would like to know if you want fries with that. We want to know where the hell that layer went in Photoshop. We want to know if you are allergic to penicillin. We would like to know why we have to proofread this bill, when our congressmen, congressperson won’t read it. We would like to change the world, but we can’t run for president. Fuck that shit.
Millenialism Joshua Robinson
Our president won a Nobel peace prize, then directly ordered the death of more people than any president before. We would like to believe the system would one day work. We are running as fast as we can and we can’t see the end. We are tired of insane people running for office. We are, most of us, insane. We have, most of us, been to a therapist. We have yelled about our parents to a stranger.
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We are weary and weak. We have wept and we have forgiven us, for we know not what we have done. We have abandoned faith, or we have never had it. We are one with the mystics. We came back to church to challenge authority. God was dead before we showed up, and it’s not our fault. Ask the murderers. Ask your neighbor for a cup of sugar. Do any of us remember that, that was a thing? We are missing everything necessary to be whole, yet we are so earnest. We try so hard, and we care about each other, and we want what’s best for everyone, and we are all going to fail, because we are competing with each other, and there’s only so much bread, and so much money, and so much water. Let’s privatize that while we’re at it. Great fucking move. We are private about nothing; we post everything. Our necks are arching, and our backs were broken a long time ago by standardized tests. We’ve taught for America and it didn’t make the grade. We are failing you my dear. We are already in detention. We will not look up to say hello, because of our phones, or because we are in a hurry, or because we have every reason to be afraid. We are long past closing time. We are now old enough to see someone we use to know, living homeless and mad on the Red Line in Chicago. We are without hope even though we voted for it. We are working so hard, because even if the world ends, at least we won’t have done nothing. We have done nothing, we are already gone. We are here to stay, and we are worth every penny. We are a stone rippling in the oceans of time. Don Bluth raised us, we are personally acquainted with NIMH. Adventure, whimsy and all that shit, on earth as it is in heaven. When this world fades away, we will care. We cry a lot, alone and in groups. Why isn’t everyone crying? We cry, because we pay attention. We were born ready for the earth to explode any minute.
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We are the first generation to know that the Mother Earth is totally fucked. We are the only ones complacent in our rage. We want to share an apple with you, but it’s filled with Chromium10. WebMD says we died yesterday. Why wouldn’t we be neurotic. Why wouldn’t we be scared. Why wouldn’t we D.A.R.E. to do every substance under the sun. We are stuffing your guns with every flower we find, and we fight for everyone, because we want what’s best, we deserve what’s best, we give our best. We will pull the marrow from our cancer-bound bones, and let America chew us alive. We’ve given up, we’ve given everything, we have no soul to give. Every generation hates us since they started naming them, so I guess that makes us Kanye West, who walks more closely with Jesus than we do. We’ve won Olympic medals, we’ve cured Ebola, we’ve written the next great American novel, we’ve sold out our Monster’s Ball. We’ve got more degrees than the Bible’s got psalms. We’ve seen planes become bombs, and we are ready to lift the towers back up. We’ve left the pity party behind. We want you on our side. We are the future. We have our orders, we are marching, we are trite, we are overdone, we are the first of our kind. We are going to live forever. And we can see the edge of the world from here.
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The trees thrust up into the setting sun But their twisted roots dive strong below The burning flower casts its light After sleeping under winter’s snow. Watching you move in the dimness Touching your lips after you come I am every way amazed Unable to speak, barely able to think Just maintaining my sense of touch Feeling you breathe beside me My body sweetly crushed under yours Basking in the heat turning to a glow.
AfterGlow
Steven Baker
It’s a long way from heaven to earth And I hope it’s even farther to hell Let me hang here suspended with you Until the sun is gone and petals closed. I’m not used to knowing someone Willing to give so much yet take so little Like a butterfly that doesn’t need to eat But rests delicately in my unfolded hand. You call me friend yet I know you within And cannot help but feel what is in me My arms around you, hearing your voice Never wanting to lose you to the afterglow.
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I. The Samurai Aphid nymph climbs from the bamboo down aimless silken threads, Wraps massive forelegs around each white egg in the cluster, popping each in turn Leaving genocide, a swath of lifeless orbs dangling in the wind like earrings Hurrying on, for time is not on her side.
II. Allowed to emerge From drowsy and dreamless Incubation inside its pearl, The flowerfly larva must feed.
III. The Samurai Aphid nymph is a dauntless soldier, waxy coat like powdered sugar Will never produce eggs or young, a single-minded killing force, one of a vast army.
IIII. The hungry larva Hoists aphids Aloft, drinking The sweet sap Of the thorax Then lumbers On to its next Victim.
Dedicated Predators: Samurai Aphids and Flowerflies of Japan Jessica Lindsley
V. The aphids are a female army with parthenogenesis on its side. The mother births a soldier so eager to engage that pulls herself out, Seconds later begins birthing the next generation of breeding female Bearing the waiting embryos the third generation at her own birth.
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VI. Which comes first, The egg or the prey?
R e birth Yashika Graham
When the shell breaks, comfort the soft stuff of this life, lift it to high heaven and exit the space of tip toes.
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It’s an eventuality, not holding hands when we cross the street: one of us ought to have a chance to run But the children don’t play outside anymore, not in this odd age: like most of our self made conundrums, that would require a collective sigh and a letting go Exhibit B: do you think when The President handcuffs his briefcase with the nuclear launch codes to his wrist that he feels like the leader of a free world? But these things are petty, irrelevant compared to what I’m greedy for And I should be ashamed though it’s not the same as being proven guilty I really should have at least one of those alibis For wanting What I want, shutting the blinds against artificial light It’s not a reassuring electric hum of automatic doors and can openers That I have ever wanted Legitimate darkness, like the aesthetic experience of water Is the only way
Dichotomies To dream
Nate Maxson
Perchance to float In one ending to the fairy tale (and I could go over so many)
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A woman opens the door to her kitchen and there’s a man standing there taking pictures with an old camera, pictures of everything from the dishes in the sink to the view out the window In the dark (the legitimate dark) you’re there And in the water we’re together/ and in a memory of a mirror and a festival I light seven firework wicks in a row with a single match He points the camera at her and the whole déjà vu goes up in white light/ a machine punching holes in the air, taking pieces of it I lie in an empty bathtub fevering in a beige room We arch the small twitch of our backs invisible except a heatwave moving over teeth Imitative of independence days yet to burn Flashing softboiled grins, the radio goes silent to a gas jet feline hiss entering the subterranean And for a moment, a flicker/ a square of Polaroid, the obsolete technology of time against our potential liquidation A coastline doesn’t really vanish it just erodes farther and farther north, a line in the sand: a corruption of saltwater and stone But who took this picture? We run across the street holding hands in a black and white photograph many years ago with unrecognizable lights in the sky and narrowly avoid a car that speeds around the corner, big metal elicits a laugh
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I wonder how many poems have been written about olive-green eyes, honest faces, and freckled arms. I wonder how many of these poems there are, folded in boxesin books, balled up in lonely file cabinet drawers. How many lines have been typed about the legs and heels, the elbows, breasts, the tips of fingernails? How much alphabet has been rearranged, and how many lines have been drawn? How many times has this been done before? And why, with each slant of the sunset, does it feel new each time?
Could this ever be new again?
Jessica Wiseman Lawrence
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Bruce Colbert
the race lost
Brown water slaps deserted southern shore with blowing wind and holds beneath its breast four lost Who days before laughing cut sea calm amidst vows to win A race not for the fittest but the fortunate Escaping brutal fist of sky blunt hard wind mast afloat with cries, now wait for shipmate’s ashen hand with fingers still and adieu to life. No victory but for the black harsh rain unannounced their bottom guide Those lost without child on manly knee sleep with crabs and eel, and whose souls alight to setting sun And Neptune commanded from his murky deep opens heaven’s door as God’s hand beckons them come.
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Mandy had eyes like two black dots on moth wings AKA white omelette pepper mole face AKA wax-birthday-favor-lips AKA Mandy of cropped shirts revealing a belly covered in thin black hair Mandy, who I’d lug the big metal tusk of trombone up the yellow bus stairs to stand between us like a giant erection while I wished for a curtain to pull, to hide so no one could see that it was my voice punching the air with giggles because though I was uncool, Mandy was
Mandy and the secret zit Caits Meissner
white trash, which was even worse and I was afraid they couldn’t tell that the laughter was practically violated from my body against will by ape-armed Mandy, furry-bellied Mandy, taunting with the secret candy of brothers. Mandy’s brother AKA Don Juan whitey AKA whiskey-flavored chewing gum AKA black-haired Jesus AKA gas greaser Fabio AKA
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I couldn’t stop asking about Randy
(yes, that was his real name) and Mandy doled out the prizes: a bra discovered in his backpack baby blue, weed smell smeared on his clothes, late night phone sex which we imitated blushing. My own favorite vices were small, a sensation most would skim over, the satisfaction so plain and perfect: a pimple that I would pick at for hours in the mirror until my mother thought me mentally ill and posed a possible diagnosis to the dermatologist, who scoffed it away, understanding the teenage pleasure of control & relief ahhhh Randy, too, had his own private pleasure, though reversed: he preened and coaxed the pimple to surface just to live it’s life on his flawless face, siblings gathered around the cuffs of his pant legs in the land of bunk beds and no locks on the doors, he’d lean deep into his own reflection, greasing the eye’s crease to create the secret zit a precious volcano, a triumph something only his, an ugliness made from nothing but his own two hands
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You said it meant ladylike; the name we crafted then, when meeting eyes were love dancers without space between for quarrel. We called her our first, and contoured the area of belly due to rise and carry.
Kyra Yashika Graham
Those were days of promises and dreaming, our voices echoing each letter in breathless give and receive… Those were days heavied by the fullness of two, gone weightless now against the times. And we’d like to think it just a name, and shy away from saying it, would like to think us a brief banter in life’s talk-shops would like to dream you just outside my now able to touch across this ocean. I like to think I still see you, still feed the animal we planted still stand, wandering in the blanket of memories, filing away my first, my only.
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Jessica Wiseman Lawrence
Figure Ground
The walls are freshly painted mint and pure white wainscoting lines the room. A picture window completely swallows one wall, and the built-in benches underneath of it are the perfect
place to observe a beautiful crepe myrtle exploding purple against the color of June. Light filtering through the leaves fills the room with mantis green light. A worn rocking chair, reupholstered from an old, rough skirt, holds two figures.
She rocks her baby, and sings. The child’s black hair is so smooth it reflects the green and purple, and his skin is smooth with possibility. His eyes are closed. He knows nothing but this. She stops singing, and wishes he had more than these lies could give. She runs her fingers down the arm of the rocking chair, it is what could have been.
The floor is new, interlocking floor tiles. You wouldn’t know where you really are when you are in this room. You’d never know you were in a single-wide, except for the low ceilings.
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Office work is a flip of pages, a stapling thud. The carpet is blue. It is always blue. There are always ubiquitous ceiling tiles. There are always these things: A microwave, murmuring noon. Favored windows filtering a blaze from without. Successful wood veneer- closed all day. Copy machines filling staleness with weak thunder. Printers, whirring false winds. Reluctant cubicles, humming and clicking. ‌the union of impatience and apathy
Administrative Jessica Wiseman Lawrence
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C P Oo E TS ’ r n e r
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Bru c e C o lb e r t Bruce Colbert, a former journalist, is an actor and playwright in New York City where his plays have been performed OffBroadway and in Toronto. His recent work includes a collection of fiction, A Tree on the Rift (Lummox, 2014), and a novel, Lombard Street (Anaphora Literary Press, 2015).
S ra ja na K aik ini Srajana Kaikini is a writer, curator based in Bangalore, India. She has a Masters in Aesthetics and Arts from JNU, New Delhi and was part of the Curatorial Programme at de Appel arts centre, Amsterdam, 2012/13. Presently as FICA Research Fellow 2013, she is researching the 'literal' in the contemporary through elements of concrete poetry. Recent publications include texts in journals such as m-est.org, Coldnoon Travel Poetics, Art Barricade. She can be found at www.srajanak.blogspot.com.
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C a i ts Me i ss ner Caits Meissner is an award-winning poet, transformative educator and vibrant creative spirit at the intersection of art, community and justice. Seeking to complicate our ideas about humanity, Caits steps beyond binaries of good/bad and right/wrong to grapple with the gray area of a troubled world. Learn more at caitsmeissner.com
J es s ic a W is em an Law re n c e Jessica Wiseman Lawrence lives in rural central Virginia. She recently published work in the "Where I Live" series for Silver Birch Press and has been featured in With Painted Words, Lipstick Magazine, and Zoomoozophone Review. She also has poems currently upcoming in Third Wednesday, Hermeneutic Chaos Literary Journal, Gloom Cupboard Magazine, UNTUCKED, The Indiana Voice, The Gambler Magazine, and The Activity Report. Her work focuses on current events, motherhood, poverty, and nature. She also has an interest in earth science and biology.
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J es s ic a Lin d s l e y Jessica Lindsley grew up in North Dakota before the oil boom. Her work has been published in the Literary Orphans, Thirteen Myna Birds, DEAD SNAKES, cryopoetry, and forthcoming in Walking is Still Honest and Madhat Review. Visit her page at jessicalindsley.com.
S te ve n B ak er Steven W. Baker has essentially lived two lives as a poet - as a young man in college and shortly after when he published a lot of work in underground newspapers and obscure journals, most of which are probably now defunct. His second life as a poet began a quarter century later, after separating from his first wife. He has now gathered a large body of unpublished work from this period that was written for himself and his close friends, but has now started publishing work again. His poems have appeared in "Eat Sleep Write", "Silver Birch Press", and Flink.to, where his poem, "Picture of Marigot Bay" won the 2014 Poetry Contest.
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fa re e h a kh an I work as an Assistant Professor of English and also as a freelance contributor to the English magazines. The special areas of my interest are woman emancipation, social issues pertaining to injustice and inequality in the social set up of the third world countries, especially the problems confronted by Pakistan. She can be found on Facebook.
Yas h ika G ra h a m Yashika Graham is a Jamaican writer and an Executive Member of the Poetry Society of Jamaica. She has read in Jamaica; the United States; and in the United Kingdom as part of Jamaica Rising and the Bristol Festival of Literature. Her poems have appeared in The Caribbean Writer Volume 27 (2013); Susumba's Book Bag; Moko Magazine and will be compiled in her forthcoming collection. Learn more on Facebook or on her blog: yashikagraham.wordpress.com
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Ly n n Wh i t e Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality. Her poem 'A Rose For Gaza' was shortlisted for the Theatre Cloud 'War Poetry for Today competition in October 2014 and has since been published in the Poetry For Change Anthology by Vending Machine Press. Poems have also recently been included, or are forthcoming, in Harbinger Asylum's Literary Journal and 'A Moment To Live By' anthology, Stacey Savage's We Are Poetry an Anthology of Love poems, Weasel Press anthology Degenerates, Voices For Peace, Tangent Literary Journal, Amomancies, Dawntreader and various other on line and print journals and anthologies. Read more of her poetry on Facebook.
L ea h mue ller Leah Mueller is an emerging writer from Washington state. Her work has appeared recently in Bop Dead City, Quail Bell, Cultured Vultures, Rising Phoenix Review, Talking Soup, Silver Birch Press, and many others. Leah likes water, a lot. She also enjoys fish tacos and dreaming. Visit her at wackypoetlady.blogspot.com
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j oshua robinson Joshua received degrees in Playwriting and Poetry from University of Missouri in 2009 & a Masters of Arts Management in 2015. His work has been featured in DEMO Magazine, The Maneater, The Vail Mountaineer, Newcity, Life and Literature in Performance, Mizzou New Play Festival, The Edge Theatre, CommuterLit, microstory.me and more.
N at e m axso n Nate Maxson is a writer and performance artist. He is the author of several collections of poetry, most recently 'The Age Of Jive' and the forthcoming 'The Whisper Gallery'. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Steven Baker
Bruce Colbert Yashika Graham
Srajana Kaikini
fareeha khan Jessica Lindsley
Jessica Wiseman Lawrence
Nate Maxson Ca i t s M e i s s n e r
Le a h M u e l l e r
Joshua Robinson
Lynn White