All rights to the works included in this magazine remain with their respective authors. All rights to this issue’s cover art (Untitled, 2014) remain with the artist Orion Centauri. Zoomoozophone Review is an online literary magazine dedicated to publishing contemporary poetry. It is edited by Matt Margo. http://issuu.com/zoomoozophone_review http://facebook.com/zoomoozophonereview zoomoozophone@gmail.com
Our third issue is dedicated to the memory of Michael Brown, murdered on August 9, 2014.
Wemberly Worried 4 ways to earn money (1998)
9
Joseph Victor Milford Ropes, Braids, Weaves, Bridges
10
John Pursch Lurid Alley Dusk Cop Porn Scrimmage Mudflat Scarps
11 12 14
Geoff Webb Rick Ross and his latest costume. This time he swears it’s not a costume.
16
Nathan Staplegun The Day After 9/11/14
17
Lee Costello 1024 My Name Is a Million Dead Cows and Chickens and My Face Has a Maniacal Expression
18 19
Ameen Wahba Spacious
20
Cody Cantu i’ve recently become weary of my friends’ intentions
21
Danny Ocean Beauty
22
Dalton Day To Enter or Run Peace, On My Own Among Other Things
23 24 25
Susan Sweetland Garay night breeze
26
Steve Klepetar To Stand in the Shadow
28
Gabe Russo A War Dream
29
Colin Dodds (A Night in Spill-O’s Life of Recalcitrance)
30
Rhoda Penmarq the puppy the hard yellow chair
31 33
Chuck Leary sky terror window
36 37 38
Sarah Edwards Her AM
39
Volodymyr Bilyk Poem
40
Felino A. Soriano Awake Clothe Connect
41 42 43
Erik Zepka Untitled
44
Jeff Harrison Lakes, Birds, and Observations Likely Horses
46 47
Ace Boggess The Sound of Fireworks
48
Dom Schwab Celebratory Explosion
49
Caleb Bouchard Frightened
50
Zooey Ghostly I Just Want to Show You My Knees
51
Tamara Neufeld time is a gemini
52
Bianca Martin Untitled
53
Beyza Ozer TWEETS motherfucker I’m ill
54 55
Tyler DuBois thank u based god Facebook Poem
56 57
Shane Allison Prohibited
58
Manuel Arturo Abreu #NotAllAngels
60
Die Dragonetti Aesthetics Verity 4
61 62 63
Raymond Farr There Are No Edits Left in Us Tonight The Story Is Not Uniquely Brand X’s
64 65
Hugh Tribbey Oklahoma #1 Oklahoma #2 Oklahoma #3
66 67 68
Billy Bob Beamer worddus_tP0MEadd5b91_8c8cc_1b_5e_a_t__44f_d0de1094f_6b2_f 16883ti_p_s_p_latterPOME worddust5436437apome
69 70 71
Sara Woods Dear Hairless Tadd, Dear Hairless Andrew, Dear Hairless Erin,
72 74 76
Alexander Limarev The Secret Life of Chess (in Four Parts)
78
Contributors
82
we’ll hang hammocks between our shoulders and let ideas swing. we’ll wrap a lariat around the minotaur’s horns and hold on ‘til next week. we’ll build a suspension and scaffolding and walk towards each other precarious (equals honest) yet strident. we will climb up and down in conversation the three spears of a trident. take tendon and hold it in claw and place it in mouth and no flaw in the aftermath. how we will make love. we will build a cotton gin and weave interims into our lives again. I know that the elevator falling with its broken vines has nothing to prove. we will make armor of baleen and corset too—let them lace us together into a tight wind. wind we will exhale and hope that the bungee catches us in time. we will shred the yarn the tethered threads and spill our guts like snakes. we will writhe into the Sargasso bloom slaking flesh’s nape. we spelunk into the dark wells of tomes, lustful. abruptly fleet leviathans elope.
Darkness unfolds in cricket whispers. My eyes open but see nothing; only segmented sky, clouds before the waning moon, gliding jets, rickshaws lurching through lurid alley dusk, lamps flickering to empty faces, stares of yearning hobos, hunger undeniably congealed to power-suited businessmen in poverty of feeling, needless want converging senselessly on credo companion grillwork fins of dorsal memories, subterranean demolition teams asleep at mammoth wheels, smothering earthen warriors from ancient civil unrest pleas to qualities of circus strife and stricken feline causes gone flexibly to nightfall’s urgent lullaby. How pale the noonday register becomes beneath the swollen sun in starlet filter tip of towed insinuation’s dancing daily carousel of gypsy rain and curling cataracts. Terrifying longings evoke our most passionate survival leap from metal barrier, wicker aqueduct, and grimy pedestal of common decibels in shouted anguish, raging silently against inevitable ageless death. Our unacknowledged static origin, infinity of softly sundered word by worldly wisp of causal daffodils and hummingbirds and smokestack sovereigns, scraping higher lung caresses into starkly noticed distant flash of legendary light… We navigate in skillful disregard for coral reefer succulents of all who ever joined in vocal acts, however insignificant, to touch the hand of unknown verity and quiet wizened estuary tide. Pooling empties frost the gully’s wine-soaked grass with detritus of teardrop onset, soothing fragrant wonderers before embarrassment defies their early axioms of peacetime storytelling ambience, lost for now to spinning taxidermy talons. Owls maneuver into headlight bliss, rotating other population centers down to viewport emulsifier trysts, told desperately to closing miniature endearment engines.
Justifiably fleeing sealed vilification propellers, fastidious tiddlywinkers couldn’t shift heretical giraffe emulsifier talon pacts from buckwheat polycarbonate to useful comely figureheads of intergalactic archery’s deciduous swizzle payola strudel. Gypsies spin allotted highway screw head hatcheries toward imitated yeast, squishy and actively personifying a perspectival kissing bulkhead’s sudden stitch beautician, groping through official sorrow’s copiously gentrified collision pumper. Quantized licensed mentalists fire rainy oaken screeds of salivary cashew eschewal at disbanded sickle-seeping boson quints, adjourning forty preferential plopping guardians of heady skater understudy liaisons to feistily bred aluminum clout saluters. Flouted, flaunted, flagrantly in fratricide, infanticidal febrile augurs of dominoes in faxed woe biscuits roam habitually shunted dewdrop decimation’s dosage dredge decanting dales, deflecting licentious locomotive lips in stodgily recursive amputation sweat, berating shapely segregationists on bifurcating campground aria reagent gantries. Prioritized crying surfs inaudibly from lounge sack marigold delays to soused metrician pilgrimage contestants, brushing liquid banyan salmon into polenta arse conflation guppies, uttering a slew of glossy poses. Hereford Pepto say-so resolves to stare in dish retrieval armband garb, mounting munched trilogy traduction twaddlers till thumbscrews tumble to terminal ancillary melons. Ask amortized amoebic arbitrageurs about elusive incubation inhabitants and anonymity’s rising coastal muddle wharf. Lonely thin wanderers wilt to doubted tolerance, uppity soda pages, and loosely christened scarves of stockage perfume. Born doobies sponge the cybernetic phoneme into oceanic assonance, plunger duty petroglyph inception, and scary fulgent lamp post studies of filial embarrassment’s undying clover ache.
Shaky barterers endow ineligible believers with cop porn scrimmages of peritoneal candy filets, skulking into miscible scorn.
Hyperbolic redolence emphasizes storm inflation’s lachrymose osmotic epigrams, enticing skating truckers into dorm rotunda dime store reliquary rockets, bound for heydays buried within burping feral legions, filed to withered pinball flipper silica behavior knells of sprinkler bauxite cobblers. A fox enlivens telltale wakes of tooling steamship mummery with stern vile bunkies marrying extrapolated nooses to munificent and placidly irrelevant executors of arboretum xylophones, gazebo bile, and pundit lye estrangement, lost in supercilious geraniums of oxen glow’s essential chopping scar. Cyclic humor civil hearings crop your scoured incendiary maven’s surety of Frodo blister hackle growths, cock their burger’s chimp talk halitosis wrench, and modify a sonic sponge to bullied trick varoom scrunch avatars, bending hospital ark cheering cads in vermin oculi for therapeutic postal guile. Croaking writhers signify impugning moral loquacity with deference to pale bark outhouse gunnery imposter briefs, torqued to honeyed bets in curtained gullwing vulture keepers, spelling haughty coal decision’s stoutly autocratic chasm. Industrial parasites emerge intact, coated in fabric disregard and fluid nightmare solvent seizure quips, flogging all shoed purple beasts who please the utterly demonstrative accursed vamping hosiery ascent estrangement preeners, much to teatime disarray’s elusive penthouse hip respect of shallow singers, coughed from coastal dog inflatables to mushy rheumatic saline stash flirtation crystal cryptograms of public synthesis assent.
She glanced at him, a scantily eclectic wisp of crocus glacine in her sweaty sigh just laudably inaudible before the red light leash charade imbued their feet with angular compendia of fallen audacity’s schoolyard heathen vanity in feigned reply to repartee careen occlusion spatter, softening to mudflat scarps.
rick ross with an acoustic guitar, sitting on a stool, playing painfully honest traditional country and folk. responses from media and news outlets are generally positive: pitchfork describes the performance as a sincere tribute to the legends while the rolling stone’s twitter account quietly sends out a post, ‘its pretty good.’ i was able to catch up with music industry diplomat ‘flea,’ bass player for the red hot chili peppers, between one of his flights. i decided to bring it up. “honestly i don’t think anyone didn’t see this coming. everyone knew it would happen, it was only a matter of when.” he went on to describe rick ross as the ‘hootie’ of generation y. he also made mention of rob thomas of matchbox twenty and ended on the note of, “think bare naked ladies but even BETTER. that’s what i think you should expect to see from rick ross.” of course i had to ask him about where he was headed after our conversation, what’s coming down the pipe, and this is what he had to say: “[playing] bass for children [workshops] out in rural [singapore]” wow, just wanted to give an extra thanks to flea for dropping some serious knowledge! but what do you think? will mr. ross smoothly and intelligently market his way to the top of the alternative rock and country charts or simply fade away as an obscure featured artist in NOW 69. leave a comment with your thoughts.
was hungover all day today because i had a 9/11 party yesterday that i live streamed to the internet. most of the people who attended i only knew from the internet we all smoked a lot of weed and drank and laughed i lost my battery to my flip phone in the street then retraced my drunken steps in the morning and found it on the sidewalk next to the washington state university athletics department had some kombucha and then ate half a pound of chicken sitting on the black asphalt of the grocery parking lot im currently writing this while multiple people on google plus hangouts are watching me write this i need to piss today i bought a marijuana drug test to take just for fun to see if they even work im listening to the backstreet boys rn w/ boe jussiere and literally the nsa rock my body right i hate ending poetry with needing to piss everyone does that too much it seems i’ll just end it by switching the back street boys to the eurythmics nah nah nah red corvette by prince menchie menchie menchie menchie
Earth falls through space. People spend their lives losing out to inflation. A name is given to the moment of disconnect between the physical occurrence and the experience. I eat too many bad chemicals. A person goes through a tough patch for a while. The human ability to maintain relationships collapses in slow motion HD video. A thread pulls taut, unravelling the entire jumper. A celebrated actor is diagnosed as having Asperger’s. Analogies and metaphors begin to read like controlled demolitions. I take some AQ tests and score consistently between 26 and 30. I spend a full day playing 2048, justifying it to myself the whole time as ‘practice.’ I read the wiki for Irlen Syndrome. The momentum of particles overwhelms me. A riptide converges--both literally and figuratively--as a riptide.
I want to go vegan for the rest of my life and feel less pain in my body. I want to experience being alive in a way that teaches me to feel less bad about dying. I want to understand things more intricately and feel less ridiculous. I want to no longer be limited by anything. I want my ego to die of its own volition.
The ego of the old is unapologetically sacred and loud As is the ego of the young As is the id It is an old house -- proudly leaking or peeling An attritional reluctancy in apathetic talents Moth flutters are uniform in every summer basement space Am I spacious or the void?
Befriending the void is systematically killing everyone and thing you have ever loved with an open hand and a toothless smile.
"Thirsty, I sit before your beauty, ready to drink"~Ocean pic.twitter.com/FJy2ecdGsM
You were at the ocean You were breathing at the ocean & fired a gunshot like a breath at the ocean But wait you didn’t see Horses shivering out of the foam But then you saw them You were breathing The ocean was an ocean Horses broke you apart But wait you didn’t see You broke apart You turned into horses Your limbs turned into horses Horses full of guns Firing & firing & firing You ran clear to me & I held your horses & we killed the world But wait you didn’t
Hello light hitting windows From this angle you’ve made me a spaceship You have turned me into a vehicle of possibility It’s too early for this It’s only September Where will I go Can I take someone with me I don’t want to forget anything That’s what I’m afraid of most Forgetting you Or a wrist But you make me think I am believed in By distance By people And now birds
for Emily You are underwater. And then you are not. You are breaking roses, revealing the smell of teeth. This is smoke. This is an ankle, brutal with itself. You are back underwater. And then you have been there for a century. Above you, planets have crumbled. From this, flowers come down to you. You hold them. You plan to take them to another place. You are breaking light. This is air. This is blood. You are exactly where you are heading toward. You are impossible. And then you are not.
I feel the breeze through the bedroom window on a summer night as I sit with my baby at my breast, it’s the end of summer and finally the coyotes have returned. Their song comes through the open window and in the odd hours of the early morning they keep me company in the quiet and the dark. The cool comes on quickly and autumn makes herself known as the warmth of the day arrives later and later. Daylight makes lessons learned in the dark harder to remember. There is a feeling of relief and then dismay when I realize that I am still myself, despite the drastic changes to my definition. Stretch marks, like any other scar, are a reminder of where I’ve been, a record on my body of each destination and crash. A mind may forget but the body remembers.
It is written on my bones and this body will find a way. In a time of crisis I strain to remember what coyotes taught me about the lighthearted nature of the universe— I say it over and over again in my head, hoping repetition will make it stick. Her mouth curves into a wide grin around my nipple and again I am in love.
of a willow shrugging at the Mississippi’s snowy banks on this mild morning of clouds and mist and look past the scarred face of sky recognizing nothing familiar in easy breath of wind or to be followed by something rare that you can never see, a flash at the corner of your red and tearing eye, to come so close to a touch, a pressure on your fingertips, a pungent scent of something wild that seals your tongue in flame.
A head of burning asphalt on tiger shoulders rubbing forward-puddles tinted copper reflecting potioned sky, combusted red and the eyeless egrets on algae black ribs of a once bridge where the green waves toss a little light, flashed and beaten, on a world that’s opened wide and fit inside itself another end.
Snow fell over the wedding. Spill-O showed people to their seats. The priest intoned the many cold mornings, murmured resentments, half-meant niceties and abandoned yearnings. He told the dearly beloved not to despair of the dull veneer upon God’s glory. The groom’s father was teary. The ceremony made him an old man, he said. The ceremony made everyone older. Spill-O drank and ate, vomited and repeated. He found the drunkest of the guests to drive him home. “Drive fast,” he said. “Maybe we can get this over with.”
“i’m sorry, i just can’t get this down.” “didn’t you always used to have problems with your digestion?” “yes, but not incredibly prolonged like this.” the puppy had stopped moving behind the sofa. it was one of zillions of organic and inorganic beings behind the sofa, as the hours burned in the night. they went hand in hand into the arena, without seeing the landscape at all, stimulated by their eternal love. that’s the way to live, from behind a silver teapot, not seeing the landscape at all. long ago in the quiet of the world, he did not like the governess’s tone of authority, as she led him by the hand into the arena as the hours burned in the night. he picked up the receiver and listened as the puppy stopped moving into the arena with sally and janie. the puppy had big sad eyes but were far from shaking her resolve as the hours flickered in the night. that’s the way to live, thought janie. but her resolve remained unshaken. he didn’t like her tone of authority? too bad. the hours continued to burn in the night. but nobody saw the landscape at all as dawn approached.
sources: atlas shrugged, by ayn rand; the fountainhead, by ayn rand; the prophet, by khalil gibran; the doors of perception, by aldous huxley; zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance, by robert pirsig; the motorcycle diaries, by che guevara; the dharma bums, by jack kerouac; the teachings of don juan, by carlos castaneda; the alchemist, by paulo coelho; the hobbit, by j r r tolkien; stranger in a strange land, by robert a heinlein; childhood’s end, by arthur c clarke; the case of charles dexter ward, by h p lovecraft
the judge made a great show of looking at his silver pocket watch he had left his wife tied to a chair back at their stately home the hard yellow chair which had belonged to his great-grandfather he worried that his wife, who had considerable physical strength, would somehow burst her bonds once she had been a good looking girl with flowing chestnut hair the past is always filled with brooding solitude the sunlight of the past streams through the dustiest windows and the ghosts of the murdered scratch at the same dusty panes how happy they had been together! but there was no use getting sentimental and misty-eyed for that woman, that laughing bright-eyed girl, was no more but even then, she had not been one for sentimental phrases the forthright plain-spoken girl had become the madwoman needing to be tied to chairs suddenly the sum, the sum of all he had been or ever would be, burst through the clouds a young girl in a white dress, carrying a blue parasol, appeared on the courthouse green “we ain’t keeping you, are we, judge?� asked jim ray walker the ghosts at the dusty window began to weep the boy with the fishing rod slung over his shoulder suddenly felt very alone someone had moved the hard yellow chair out on to the verandah beside the table with the whiskey bottle good old hank smith began rapping on the court house window
jim ray walker looked back from under the shadow of the double line of walnut trees and the judge put his silver pocket watch back in his vest “you should get old hank to clean those goddamned windows, judge,” observed jim ray “all in good time, jim, all in good time,” the judge replied absently as his mind wandered the young girl in the white dress with the blue parasol was almost upon them a terrible fate awaited her in the not too distant future the sun went back behind the cloud but continued to blind the judge and jim ray
sources: the making of americans, by gertrude stein; of time and the river, by thomas wolfe; you can’t go home again, by thomas wolfe; raintree county, by ross lockridge; town and the city, by jack kerouac; some came running, by james jones; a rage to live, by john o’hara; from the terrace, by john o’hara; youngblood hawke, by herman wouk; sometimes a great notion, by ken kesey; the stones of summer, by dow mossman; the executioner’s song, by norman mailer
forgotten
everything scares me
what hides beneath
The mirror never lies. The charred mouths have suppressed the fog, off-color the fog was, the dusty shawl that was visible was just so the brine, in its inevitability, would lightly carve a blotchy flesh between your good cheek. Pondering your cloth sleeves, you wonder if you’re only a bisected target, your shredded tips touch the sleeve ends that cease at the clotted skin of the elbows. You whimper, unsound and demeaning. The minuscule rims are a throng of blinded cattle, appearing in no logical line but dispersed as craved by your mortal buyer. The long gifted mouths are intimate, in vague untidiness, matched with the newly birthed rims, the difference, they burnt then, coral long before, and these spew filth now. Vile fog caressing the repugnant meat never gets used to the massacre of tissues. The mirror never lies. I wish it did, only for this, I wish my heart would lash out of my ingrate chest, ribs apart, as my brain melts into the cracks of this cellar, and I lay drowning in the stench of my futile gore. I would accept this confine, I will, if only this while, the mirror masquerades the lies.
Thin White Rope for the Thin White Duke over the Thin Blue Line and the Thin Blue Line and the Thin Red Line and the Thin Red Line Man on Wire Walks on By
body by blending bodies by bending circular spines engaging cultures of strength versus calliope symphonies encouraging listening amid the swollen positions of evaporating silences among the body’s resting and resisting momentums binding temptations
from this morning’s elongated awakening varied logics and countering apologues wear what calls syllables from cold and moving hands hands their music of warming philosophy to begin this morning’s ritual of confirmed affirmations readying roles contemplating heat as rhythm as rotating features of these hours’ momentum of garb
bridge this spatial contemplation become this space of inhabiting collective aggregations, —we’ve books’ templates (others’ renditions of behavior’s contemplation appropriateness) musical dissections of tone then tonal prior/past ←tensing objects naming re
-
naming
interpretations of paradigms plausible methods to hold in both hand and another’s fulcrum of accepting illusion as collaborative behavior !grouped by which happenstance installs instilled virtues of corporeal demonstrative
emblems
bereavement makes up the modern, sleet burial of chastened hasn’t divided into crossness and defiled occult monuments rest - in rheumatism, in hiding and adamancy, doric distal skitters in taut irate, invited momentous disasters grace, cold delve and dawdle the high holy ulcer tribune, spleen contusion, lateral wetness catastrophizes the speckle polymer, backing this rest and squeak rapt disacclamation :: reasons, scales, ecstacy
swarmcore keep in mind that this is a story for when you were alive
the torch depository hesitates taps
embow taps brink
bottom (hesitate)
unbrushed bereaver reinstatement your suitable clamour your simper inconsumable
depositories reign befallen what’s classified dazed x-o-x-o-x.com: government is our favourite type of business the least you can do is be inhuman
recognizably interposed fizz
meagerness
through light and the thatched hole irate and dewfall the greyness and slipt and dewfall
donning forces
splits unchipped, chips unsplit counting threw beauty, followed night beauty stitch gutter mountains, glossy proof of days’ injuries corpses’ thief winds up in the fallen minute moors wrong our bright voluptuously open heads new me is the shine, you’re my night Virginia prefers birds, lakes, and observations to the spiteful riddles of my tongue back it back, slash what steps feet don’t like rats bit subtle, grace gladly reports careful lest Wormswork sewer the stars, lakes, & round roses
royal quiet, farm be all stones the swine water else they’re compost (left soil March fire) gangplank notes considered succulent, my! the telephone of lip’s hurried regular continents my footnotes silence 1. laugh 2. drums 3. glyphs caprices world moon has one harrowing entwined city carries in undivined Venus Deference offerings the baby what, this new? since neither’s dead through forehead frost sleepwalkers of moon sensibility high impatient side vicissitudes of night factions - dead height axioms cadence broken bough the composition’d ones, market lost words uprooted as due donations sped surprisingly huge springs look pleasant as one own tuning dance the love no one empire solicits (the glaze with likely horses) formerly initials craved rooked dusty pulses intimate pauper counter-equals, ripening our compunction as uncomposed the good Virginia bows, eyes the neck-end of this liquid core Paris madly our green Greek bodies, trampling of bird embraces we’re Preludes dusty with neighboring strung on scores wet under me, you fraudulent fallen liquid beautiful stones each the greater to blossom big impatient drums
it’s no man’s holiday no high school ball club lifted the trophy war has neither been declared nor won so why do reports of invisible rifles voice their misgivings from beyond the canopy? night is overrun with noise: an accident at the mousetrap factory a thousand homeruns breaking every car’s windshield in some godforsaken lot I see no flash but hear armies replaying their massacres how they praise & Hallelujah! like giddy parishioners in the early pews all I wanted was silence though I didn’t know I wanted it until innocence died & the party went on as if something happened although nothing ever did
Everyone wants to be seen as attractive, and yes even me, though I know I’m not attractive(, but I am goddamn fucking gorgeous! I’d do me if I saw me in the street: If I saw my doppelganger, my antimatter me, I’d stop to say “Hello” and so would he and then we’d kiss quickly, cutely, there on the sidewalk before walking away, together, hand in hand, pleased and happy and finally content to have found The One).
The ghost at the library followed me home yesterday, carrying a fistful of foxgloves. I don’t know how it expected us to accept it, but that’s what it wanted, our complete admiration, even as it opened and closed bedroom doors at 3 am like it was the cutest fucking thing. In the morning, we made coffee, brushed teeth, masturbated, the daily pattern, and damned if I didn’t see it staring at me through the thin shower fog. Shit! I screamed, and fell backward, hitting my head on the metal faucet. Seconds later, I was a ghost, too. Hey, what was that all about? I said to the ghost as water darted through our disembodied residues. I don’t know, the ghost said, I just thought we could be friends. He told me his name was Robbie, and that he had once operated a forklift in a candy factory. Taffy, man! Shit’s heavy! Robbie says, as I melt into the mirror, wondering how am I ever going to jerk off now?
aliveperson be yr own twin peel grapefruit petals to make mosaics pretend falconry is a form of prayer windows are not to be trusted don’t seal yr chestplate— the rain knows it as the best way in
Time is a Gemini Running track of the natural state of mind I’m here, I’m there the planets aligned behind corners of the cosmos and one track blinded eyes quantum physics figures we’re us all in the moment first impressions lack time seeking components the synchronicity goes where people control it and seeing the future requires nothing but focus the death of realms presents itself with clarity we can only accept a life full of mysterious rarity
when i left you all i could smell was cancer and defeat the smell followed me home across two state lines and everywhere i went there was death in the air
british boyfriend: ONE told a british man on the bus i loved his accent and he said he loved my face. that got weird fast TWO he just asked for my facebook and i said my name was sarah palin THREE i don’t think he knows who that is FOUR got up to get off the bus and he said “goodbye mystery woman” and i said “bugger off”
confessions in less than 140 characters: 1)
whenever i’m out by myself i set my phone up so that when i unlock it your number & contact info & picture pop up on the screen. so if i’m
2)
ever shot or stabbed or kidnapped, if my life is ever at stake, i can unlock my phone & leave you a voicemail asking you how your day has been &
3)
that i probably won’t be able to see you for a while.
others:
i want halloween to be a month long holiday so i can dress up as someone who knows what they are fucking doing for 1 month
gonna try to sleep and picture a world with just me and billions of dogs
what if each star was someone’s personal heaven and that’s actually the light that we are all guided to
I WANT TO TAKE A BITE OF THE MOON AND SWALLOW DUST PARTICLES AND GLOW FROM THE INSIDE
sorry I called you motherfucker. I think it just adds a certain confidence level that I sadly do not possess. maybe it doesn’t. I don’t know. three days ago I watched our dog dig up your ashes so I’m not sure of anything lately. but I just wanted to let you know that I’m the number one dad. I’ll take care of our two lil motherfuckers and our motherfucking dog, the dog you picked out and the two lil motherfuckers you gave birth to after I refused. my body is not a wonderland. I guess it was dumb for me to bury you in the backyard. I just wanted you closer to the lil motherfuckers and me. don’t get me wrong, I didn’t kill you, you died from an illness I can’t name because I can’t get the words out. I guess the title of this should have been motherfucker you’re ill.
we don’t want the london look there is someone that loves me and he is a rapper with gold teeth
No ADP Tax Credit No Americans with Disabilities Act No Audit Tips No Boneless Chicken Wings No Box Office Coupons & Passes No Box Office Manager No Cast Cleaning No Cast Member Discounts Sign No Chicken Sandwich Quick Script No CO2 Best Practices Guide 2011 No CO2 Back-up Tank Guide 2011 No Concession Auxiliary Cart No Concession Manager No Corn Dog Nuggets No Credit Card Swipe Cleaning Procedures No Emergency Evacuations No Employee Discount Quick Script No FIFO Syrup Age Poster No Food Service Vendor Contracts No Froyo Machine Emptying No Froyo Machine Breakdown No Froyo Machine Cleaning
No Froyo Machine Assembly No Frozen Yogurt Quick Script No Green Tips No Hot Food Prep and Handling No Digital Menu Board Troubleshooting No Mobile e-Movie Cash QS No Mini Hot Dog Program No Mop Color Code Chart No Wheels Poster No Open Caption/Descriptive Audio-Manager No Pizza Prep No Popper Cleaning No Popper Safety No Quick Change/Scam Artist Prevention No R.E.G Mission Statement No Regal Online University No Regal Operations Center Online Reporting QS No Safety Message from Randy Smith No Senior Cast Member Role Rehearsal No Soda Tower Cleaning No Theatre Interruptions No Three Compartment Bay Sink System Guide No Usher Manager
Metahype: Where Have the Days Gone The America Home &Dream Is Attacked By Fire Corporate Poetry’s Not Just About A New Kind of Money It’s aBout Creating Jobs From Glocal Organic Feelings When It Smells Like Laundry Crying sHould Be Waged My Pruny Skin & World Relentlessly Tempting Me License Authentic Metanarratives Get me Out Of The Equation This Is Such What I Do It’s In My Blood What You Do I Swear To Goddess This Is A YOLO Moment #NotAllAngels Are Job Creators It;s True Seeing Through i Almost Believed & Fluffy And To Be And To Be Everybody Gasoline Dream The Pleasure, of Negotiating-- Maybes You Want Timeshares In My Relational Affective Architecture? I’ve Had The Secondhand Experience Tho I Don’t Respect Anyone For Whom A No Is A Maybe We’ve Sould Our Beach House For This Company The Impossibility of Fully Recovering Embodied Experience I Make My Money Selling Hope To Hungry Parents
I am a fucked up glamour boy. I am a fake and gay boy. I am angel boy. Make yourself unavailable. Wear crowns of fruit around your head until they rot. Try to do some good in the world. I am a divine masculinity boy. I am a safe and dead boy. I am honeysweet boy. Make yourself a conduit and a vessel. Rough-and-tumble, skinny and mean. Don’t fucking touch me. I am an asexual androgyne boy. I am a brother-in-arms boy. I am champion boy. Make yourself as alien as possible. Burn yourself down. Tear yourself apart.
The eternal footman lingers To make monstrosity of us: “I feel fucked up� is the statement Of our prime. But sometimes I see you and think You are as blind as St. Lucy And her dead eyes, Such that you are listless In your way, But cannot see the golden platter Underlying. I know you feel shattered; We all do. But trust that we are like Secrets to ourselves: Does the discretion of The moon when it is New and veiled Defile its majesty? Carry yourself in your heart: A reserved perfection, Hidden in beauty as though By the shroud of night. Identity is a truth that is ours and ours alone.
I live the death of dissonance: in two Splits one—the façade of a sister—one Like she who led virtue astray to Hamper truth: Una Vera Fides, One True Faith, One True Self. Falsehood bred in two Hides a core awry; “die is my dew” says one With a holy heart. A graceful foil, the two Compete like a fly in amber, one Struggling as the other overtakes, to Freeze in terrible, hopeless unity.
1. Jovial as cross dressing Uncle Miltie eating the rain of our plenary inhibitions in our birthday suits, our covalent will is the jet lag of a sentence, the little red dress of the teamsters describing itself a cornier wilderness. 2. If in posing as death’s burnt nervous girl we slip off our panties & piss on the greatest glass vase of verbal art flowers ever to sleep in the hearts of nefarious boys then death is something we’re doing in the form of an apology. 3. Our Saab low on fuel; our head is a glass head drowning in stupor. The troublesome sun is a splash of scarlet on the meaning of a concrete embankment. There are no edits left in us tonight just a glaring frazzle of butchered senseless sentences. Drive, he sd. For Christ’s sake, look out where yr going!
To say we’re never alone is the start of a sixth day standing in one line yelling for Elijah to bring me the dynamite. I seen, sd the man holding a pigeon. I seen real art bleeding like a martyr on Ninth St. It moved him to tears as I looked at my watch I thought we were dead. I thought I’d never see the approach of another winter or read running through the pine forest from robotic wolves of happiness again.
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I am writing you this letter as a friend no longer around & as a house still barely on fire with people running around me all in slow motion holding hoses. I tried to keep a lock of my hair in a drawer to remember who I used to be but I lost the drawer a few fires ago & what kind of animal was it that hides its young for safety but can’t always find them later? Was it an animal with a basement like mine, that keeps old military documents & blacklight posters & leaves the ground-level windows propped open for the garden beetles to get in? So their bodies collect in a dish by the sill? For using later? For making ink from? For writing love poems they don’t always care about in retrospect? If it is, find one and tell it I say “same.” Tell it I’ve got a box of fabric scraps too small to use it can nest in or make small clothes out of if it cares to. I used to pray to a meteor but it burned up without me & now I write my prayers on cigarettes I sneak into other people’s packs at parties. I don’t know who they’re to, but I know she’s smaller & less powerful that I am & doesn’t have a favorite song & wishes it was always cool enough out to wear her girlfriend’s sweater, the one that’s worn thin in all the right places & feels soft but not in a fake way.
Hairless, I’ve got some old boots you can have that always tear up the laces when you pull them tight, just say the word & I’ll wrap them up in some sewed-together potato skins & pray them over to you pronto. Just like I did for my other friends, just like I did for my parents, who didn’t need boots, but liked that I was praying to somebody, even if it did involve me smoking again. All the times I tied my hair up before didn’t take but this one will, I swear it. I hope you’re well & I hope all the colds you get are normal ones that don’t last too long. All my love, Sara
Today is a good day to not have hair. Yesterday felt like a train being driven by plants that had somehow gained the ability to drive trains & break the hearts of young women such as myself, but today feels like the train has fully passed into another city somewhere further up the coast. Somewhere in Bellingham, women are having complicated emotional reactions to a plant train but I am here writing you this letter, & I feel good about it. How long has it been since the last time we got together and compared the growth of our hair & nails & asked the sky about why bodies keep producing in these specific ways only? Was it a week? A year? Because I feel like my nails have been fully cut grown & polished a hundred times over, & have acquired the dirt of way too many dogs’ skin & I don’t own one so we’re talking casual dog encounters here.
Once upon a time I had ten dogs, five on each hand, & they worked well as a pack but as individuals were completely untrainable. Just a total mess. It wasn’t until I really put my money down on the sidewalk & watched it blow away that I understood what a dog was & how we try to understand them through sacrifice, without ever knowing what it actually feels like as a thing to do intentionally. If I showed you a series of pictures & could make you believe that each was god, which one would you be willing to leave your home, partner & all your possessions to find? Would it come down to hairstyle? Or appropriately abstract method of representation? I think for me she would have to look like the feeling I had when my mother first told me my teachers weren’t always right about everything. She would have the look my face had right then & gently be trembling the way I tremble when I can feel the right person’s breath coming back on my skin, their hand in the curls behind my ears. & by right I mean god & by god I mean holy & by holy I mean fully meteorlight & called down like whole rocks falling like weather to deeply change our most closely kept holding patterns. You know what I mean. ~~Sara
There is a woman sitting next to me who has a glacier inside her. She says she didn’t know it was there until it started to melt. She says it’s going to take years. She says I am less numb but it hurts more. She cries sometimes, at night, & her tears are colder than anything I have ever felt. It is shocking to touch one. My whole hand spasms. The ceiling here is wood sloped like the inside of a roof and I can feel my eyes roll down it toward the walls. The woman sitting next to me is a painter and there is a pile of things she has painted during her time here. These are watercolors she made from the makeup in her bag, of blooming shapes outlined into clear thingness. This is all a process, she tells me.
In the morning sometimes the woman will change clothes before she thinks I am awake & I see her & I think she is beautiful but I know she does not understand her own beauty. In the afternoon I tell her this & she says so what. Let’s say I am beautiful, she says. What then? The night here is cold & I wonder about her glacier. I wonder what canyons or mountains it has made. Love, Sara
Ace Boggess is the author of two books of poetry: The Prisoners (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2014) and The Beautiful Girl Whose Wish Was Not Fulfilled (Highwire Press, 2003). He is an ex-con, ex-husband, ex-reporter and completely exhausted by all the things he isn’t anymore. His writing has appeared in Harvard Review, Mid-American Review, Atlanta Review, RATTLE, River Styx, Southern Humanities Review, and many other journals. He lives in Charleston, West Virginia. Alexander Limarev is a freelance artist, mail art artist, and poet from Russia. His artworks are part of private and museum collections of 41 countries. His artworks as well as poetry have been featured in various online publications, including Time for a Vispo, Expoesia Visual Experimental, The New Post-Literate: A Gallery of Asemic Writing, BAA:BE:L, Nothing and Insight, FOFFOF, Spontaneous Combustion Language/Image Lab, Poezine, DEGU A Journal of Signs, exixtere, ffoOom, The White Raven, UndergroundBooks.org, ŎŎŏŏŏ, Boek861, Tip of the Knife, Bukowski on Wry, Kiosko (libera, skeptika, transkultura), Microlit, Metazen, Blackbird Anthology, etc. Ameen Wahba is 18 and grew up in Iowa. He currently lives in Omaha. Follow him on Twitter @ameenwahba. Beyza Ozer is a slightly below average hugger and Buffy the Vampire Slayer aficionado. Their work has been published in or is forthcoming from Skydeer Helpking, Electric Cereal, Holey Scripture, and others. They are the social media coordinator for The Lettered Streets Press and founder of/writer for probably crying review. @royaltenenbombs Bianca Martin is a writer and musician living in Melbourne, Australia. She plays in a feminist punk band and curates Miniatures Zine. She tweets @beeeeonka and blogs at oldcarsdontgoveryfast.tumblr.com. Billy Bob Beamer (b. 1947) works in small formats to create compositions through the use of meditational and labor-intensive techniques. He has exhibited in over 60 solo, juried/curated, and invitational art shows throughout the USA and at the Ancient High House Museum, Staffordshire, UK. His art works can be found in numerous public and private collections, including the Virginia's Governor’s Mansion, the Virginia Fine Arts Center for the New River Valley, the estate of noted art/cultural historian, Roger Shattuck, and—most recently—the Avant Writing Collection at Ohio State University. Currently, in addition to his own drawing, Beamer teaches classes in “drawing as quiet active meditation” to relieve pain and stress. In January and February of 2011, Beamer exhibited with internationally known artists at Roanoke College in Salem, Virginia. The exhibit featured work done by those who use meditation as a primary vehicle for creating. Beamer says, “My best way to express incalculable enormity is to create its contrasting opposite. At this time, I am concentrating on drawing—that most basic mode of communication—and on arte povera-like constructions, both in a small format. To paraphrase Blake: ‘the universe lies in a grain of sand.’ When drawing and creating objects from and on ‘worthless’ materials, I am paying homage to the marginalized…” Beamer, a sociology graduate of the College of William and Mary, is a retiree from the Commonwealth of Virginia’s
Department of Social Services and an award-winning trumpeter with a 40 year week-end career playing jazz, R&B, blues, and other types of music. He also explores experimental, experiential writing, often as another meditational tool, and has had several books of his POMES published by chalk editions, white sky books, and white sky ebooks. Beamer (who has a married daughter, a psychologist) lives with his wife Kathy and their cats in Bedford County, Virginia. Caleb Bouchard owns more t-shirts from cancelled Morrissey tours than you do. He lives at @imcalebbouchard. Chuck Leary lives in the United States and loves everybody. Cody Cantu is a writer and musician based out of Denton, TX, who receives as much inspiration from Minutemen as they do from Raymond Carver. When they aren’t slam dancing at a house show you can find them writing poetry on the bathroom stalls of your local establishments. You can find their writing and other fun things at kybf.tumblr.com. Colin Dodds grew up in Massachusetts and completed his education in New York City. His poetry has appeared in more than 150 publications and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. The poet and songwriter David Berman (Silver Jews, Actual Air) said of Dodds’ work: “These are very good poems. For moments I could even feel the old feelings when I read them.” Dodds is also the author of several novels, including WINDFALL and The Last Bad Job, which the late Norman Mailer touted as showing “something that very few writers have: a species of inner talent that owes very little to other people.” And his screenplay, Refreshment, was named a semi-finalist in the 2010 American Zoetrope Contest. Colin lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife Samantha. You can find more of his work at thecolindodds.com. Dalton Day is a terrified dog person and an editor for FreezeRay Poetry. He is the author of Supernova Factory as well as FAKE KNIFE, which is forthcoming from FreezeRay Press. His poems have been featured in Jellyfish, Hobart, and Banango Street, among others. He can be found at myshoesuntied.tumblr.com and on Twitter @lilghosthands. Basically, he thinks everything is cute and won’t stop crying about it. Danny Ocean: “Hello. My name is Danny Ocean, and it’s writing from my soul that gives the most pleasure, about past experiences or the way I interpret life. I try to see the essence of things in my mind and give them meaning in this world. It gives me great satisfaction to share my poetry with everyone. And I do enjoy mainly writing about spirituality and romance. There’s harmony in a beautiful flower if we really take the time to see it. Writing poetry is my main passion.” Die Dragonetti is a dead and gay angel boy. His Twitter is @aliteralwerther and his Tumblr is angelboyangelboy. Dom Schwab is a reader/writer of poetry/prose living in Chicago. His work has appeared on Tiny TOE Press, in Bravehost Poetry Review, Thought Catalog, The Metric, and, most recently, We’re Here We’re Queer Zine, among others. A former reviewer for I AM ALT LIT, his original
work and reviews of others’ work(s) can be found on his blog, DOM SCHWAB FACIAL HAIR. He can be followed on Tumblr at anxiouslollygagging and on Twitter @domschwab. Erik Zepka is a radioactive byproduct of the x-o-x-o-x.com corporation. Felino A. Soriano is a member of The Southern Collective Experience. He is the founding editor of the online endeavors Counterexample Poetics and Of/with; in addition, he is a contributing editor for the online journal Sugar Mule. His writing finds foundation in created coöccurrences, predicated on his strong connection to various idioms of jazz music. His poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net Anthology, and appears in various online and print publications, with recent poetry collections including Mathematics (Nostrovia! Poetry, 2014), Espials (Fowlpox Press, 2014), and watching what invents perception (WISH Publications, 2013). He lives in California with his wife and family and is a director of supported living and independent living programs providing supports to adults with developmental disabilities. Links to his published and forthcoming poems, books, interviews, images, etc. can be found at www.felinoasoriano.info. Gabe Russo is a filmmaker/poet from Melbourne, FL. Geoff Webb: “Located in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Sensitive artist that spends time driving pizzas around town late at night if not contemplating what kind of life is being lived, what form of expression should be pursued. Battling artistic suppression as I tug on the leash to keep my ego restrained. This is a really shitty age. I’m waiting it out.” Hugh Tribbey’s poetry has most recently appeared or is forthcoming in Malpais Review, Futures Trading, experiential-experimental-literature, Cormac McCarthy’s Dead Typewriter, and Truck. He is the author of eight collections of poetry. His most recent is Wrinkle and Mechanism, published by white sky ebooks. Tribbey holds a Ph.D. in English from Oklahoma State University and teaches literature and creative writing at East Central University in Ada, Oklahoma. Jeff Harrison has publications from Writers Forum, MAG Press, Persistencia Press, white sky books, and Furniture Press. He has e-books from BlazeVOX, xPress(ed), Argotist Ebooks, and chalk editions. His poetry has appeared in An Introduction to the Prose Poem (Firewheel Editions), The Hay(na)ku Anthology Vol. II (Meritage Press), The Chained Hay(na)ku Project (Meritage Press), Sentence: A Journal of Prose Poetics, Otoliths, Xerography, Moria, Calibanonline, Dusie, unarmed, Big Bridge, Sugar Mule, experientialexperimental-literature, and elsewhere. John Pursch lives in Tucson, Arizona. His work has been nominated for Best of the Net and has appeared in many literary journals. A collection of his poetry, Intunesia, is available at http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/whiteskybooks. An accomplished memorist, John recently recited the first 2,104 digits of pi from memory; check out his pi-related video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l33aUs7obVc. He’s @johnpursch on Twitter and john.pursch on Facebook.
Joseph Victor Milford is a Professor of English and a Georgia writer who is currently working on his EdD doctoral studies. He was born in Alabama in 1972, and he went on to receive his Bachelor’s degree from the University of West Georgia, in English and Philosophy, and then his MFA in Poetry from the Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa. His first collection of poems, Cracked Altimeter, was published by BlazeVox Press in 2010, and he is presently composing a collection of poems with Hydeout Press, forthcoming in 2015. He is also the host of The Joe Milford Poetry Show, where he has compiled an archive of over 300 interviews and readings with American and Canadian poets. He is also a member of the Southern Collective Experience. Lee Costello is a sales robot/wage zombie operating out of the NE of England. Manuel Arturo Abreu is a poet and artist based in Portland. Their work has been featured in The New Inquiry, Metazen, Keep This Bag Away From Children, HTMLGIANT, Gauss PDF, and elsewhere. Their first book, List of Consonants, comes out on Dig That Book Co. November 2014. See more work at twigtech.tumblr.com and @Deezius. Nathan Staplegun is a millennial net artist who drinks too much. “Orion Centauri is the toilet paper roll etiquette video you’ve all been waiting for. Orion Centauri is one of those classic layouts that appears rough around the edges but actually is one of the best tests in southern California. Orion Centauri is a tour de force of imagination. Orion Centauri is a city big on surprises and has an unbeatable mix of holiday sensations. Orion Centauri is waiting to be found. Orion Centauri is expecting. Orion Centauri is a symbol of history we hold dear. Orion Centauri is a product of a teen world. Orion Centauri is presented as glamorously stressed. Orion Centauri is approximately 110. Orion Centauri is through with liberating the beans from their shells. Orion Centauri is still alive.” – Jamie Mortara Raymond Farr: Ecstatic/.of facts (Otoliths, 2011), Rien Ici (Blue & Yellow Dog, 2010), & Writing What For? across the Mourning Sky (Blue & Yellow Dog, 2012). His poems appear in And/Or, West Wind Review, Otoliths, Upstairs at Duroc, Cricket On Line, & Eratio. He has a chapbook, Eating the Word NOISE!, which is slated for February 2015 publication by White Knuckle Chaps & another full-length collection of poems, Poetry in the Age of Zero Grav, due out from Blue & Yellow Dog in mid-2015. He is editor of Blue & Yellow Dog: http://blueyellowdog.weebly.com. Rhoda Penmarq lives in the United States and blogs. Sara Woods is a poet, artist, and graphic designer living in Portland. She is author of the books Sara or the Existence of Fire (Horse Less Press, 2014) and Wolf Doctors (Artifice Books, 2014) and co-author of the chapbooks stonepoems (Solar Luxuriance, 2014) and rootpoems (Radioactive Moat, 2013) with Carrie Lorig. She is online at healthydogpoem.info. Sarah Edwards is a writer and/or a poet. She likes to push boundaries of language. She has work published or forthcoming in Electric Cereal, Reality Hands, Purple Pig Lit, Jotters United,
The Sentimentalist, In Parentheses, Tumblr: http://sarahscribbled.tumblr.com/
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Shane Allison has had poems published in West Wind Review, Spork, Puerto Del Sol, Fence, and tons of others. His poetry memoir I Remember is out from Future Tense Books. He loves apple butter and reality TV. Steve Klepetar’s work has received several nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Three collections appeared in 2013: Speaking to the Field Mice (Sweatshoppe Publications), Blue Season (with Joseph Lisowski, mgv2>publishing), and My Son Writes a Report on the Warsaw Ghetto (Flutter Press). An e-chapbook, Return of the Bride of Frankenstein, has recently been published as part of the Barometric Pressures series of e-chapbooks by Kind of a Hurricane Press. Born and raised in Portland, Oregon, Susan Sweetland Garay currently lives in the Willamette Valley with her husband and daughter, where she works in the vineyard industry. She has had poetry and photography published in a variety of journals, online and in print, and her first full length poetry collection was published in 2013. More of her work can be found at susansweetlandgaray.wordpress.com. Tamara Neufeld is uncomfortable in the world but from Vancouver, BC. Follow her Tumblr: pocketskirt. Tyler DuBois is from Denton, TX. He is unpublished but has an ebook of poetry coming out soon via Blank Space Press (http://www.blankspacepress.com). His name is A Cool Shirt on Facebook. His Twitter is @FLIRTGOD. Volodymyr Bilyk is a Ukrainian writer and visual artist. His books include a book in the series This is Visual Poetry (thisisvisualpoetry.com/?p=1151), a book of asemic short stories Cimesa (white sky ebooks), Scobes (No Press), Casio’s Pay-off Peyote (The Red Ceilings Press), and VISPO AY AI AY (Blank Space Press). His works have been published in such magazines as 3:AM, Altered Scale, The New Post-Literate, and many others. His works have been exhibited on Bright Stupid Confetti’s asemic show, Yoko Ono Fan Club, and Venti Leggeri in Bologna. Wemberly Worried lives in Chicago. She likes fresh mozzarella cheese a lot. She is still trying to figure out how to make money. Zooey Ghostly is a bowl of muddled plums. Some things can be found here: http://zooeetheghost.tumblr.com.