All rights to the works included in this magazine remain with their respective authors. All rights to this issue’s cover art (“Community,” 2013) remain with the artist Krystal Sierra. 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 fourth issue is dedicated to the memory of Xu Lizhi, who swallowed a moon made of iron.
Steve Klepetar Verdict
9
Emma Moser Glutton
10
Nic Sebastian blue dawn with lizard tattoo song of the hermit snake god
11 12 13
Steven Perez old bainbridge
14
Chuck Leary favorite only coalesce impression
16 17 18
John Lowther It does become something of a critical shorthand.
19
Winston Plowes Dear Jennifer
20
Paul m. Strohm The Vagina Appropriate Quiz
21
Krystal Sierra If Your Vagina Could Talk, What Would It Say? If Your Vagina Got Dressed, What Would It Wear?
22 23
Kushal Poddar Cowardice The Slowest Bus
24 25
Erin Gerety Catey
26
Bren Mar marmalade In late July
27 28
Hanna Rajs Lundström who knows
30
B.Z. Niditch Don’t Mention It
31
Carey Scott Wilkerson Phaethon’s Strophic Letter to Icarus
32
Kylina Matteoli The Dead Lands
33
Erin Would XI
34
Christopher Mulrooney the idol turdus
36 37
Jeff Harrison Moth Money Declaration A Speak Globe Wire Gazelle
38 39 40
John Pursch Jellied Future Plural Eyelid Wisdom Skeet
41 42 43
Michael O’Brien 9 variations on the pangram, The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
44
Mathias Jansson Impossible Literature Universe: Mrs. Dalloway by Woolf Impossible Literature Universe: Waiting for Godot by Beckett
46 47
Nettie Farris Liebesträume
48
Michael Hessel-Mial sonnet november (part 1) november (part 2)
49 50 51
Mr Gulshan Verma Kalashnikova’s Estate
52
Alex Wennerberg skateboarding through the DEEP WEB!
53
Greg Zorko these are quotes from the Bible
54
Eric Wallgren Leaving the Apartment
55
Cody Cannot A Brief History of Ambition The World Was Yours
56 57
Taylor Cooper foot fetish
58
Tyler DuBois skin a smiley pig
60 61
Alexander Limarev Pixel Prosaic Poem Sunset
62 63
Volodymyr Bilyk An Ultimate Ululative Oi-piece
64
Vimeesh Maniyur Is there any app for getting water, please?
65
Felino A. Soriano Storms Thinking
66 67
Nathan Staplegun the average american is in the prime-rib of his life breakfast invention
68 69
Catch Business cripple crow trying to be honest
70 71
Christopher Morgan Another Jellyfish Poem Magnetic Field
72 73
Howie Good Beautiful Decay Bipolarity
74 75
billy bob beamer artaud refluxPOME FhFis h POME9578scraporiginaldigitaldrawingsc rap
76 78 80
Contributors
81
So the verdict is handed down and a thousand mouths form a thousand circles. Ice hangs in long daggers from windows and eves. Hear that? A tinkling in the air, not bells, but broken glass on a cement floor. So many ghosts blowing this white smoke around the bobbing heads. A woman sits down on a high, narrow rock and cries, her lion’s body tense with the riddle of her life, how everything dangles on the right man’s frozen words, which pierce her as she leaps, wounded, into the chaos of bones below.
Eat I want Feed, feed you me With ocean spice, mountain herb Earth’s salad and wine Gorge, gorge you me Sulfur throats with candied flesh With fish clouds, veal grass I want to drown in sweet blood Taste I want, you With tree tongues, desert hairs Breathe it, incense it Keep me holy this aftertaste Nourish, you me Fill, fill I want Almond eyes, apple smile With warm savor, with me Eat. I want to Feed you, me.
the jungle mist is alive and thinking silk moth caterpillars are on the march and the begonia leaves are ragged wayside shrines are crumbling the stone tombs flooded a girl with a lizard tattoo and black lake eyes bathes alone in a sacred fountain there are not enough prayers, she says turning her soft palms upward
the leopard passed by me this morning or maybe last year I the hermit poised finely on the choired pulse of all living leopard tracks in blowing sand speak the word of my salvation I feel the ibex freeze and divine the cobra’s passage a child lies stone quiet against a warrior’s grandmother they may be dying or not but the leopard is still breathing its muscles slice from walk to canter to keening blood we decorate the landscape we are the landscape word of the wind of the child of the leopard the blowing sand yes the promise
muscles are private there are snakes in mine ruled by the squatting god in the basement they lie loop-chunked body/mouth/tail solid as golf ball elastic loud in wedged silence propitiate the squatting god, they hiss that we may live free and writhing
i drove around with sunglasses i drove i drove i drove around with sunglasses i drove with sunglasses on i drove around with sunglasses i drove around with sunglasses at night i drove i drove around with sunglasses sunglasses at night i drove around at night at night couldn’t see i mean i drove with sunglasses on i couldn’t see it was night time i couldn’t see i drove around with sunglasses i couldn’t see i drove around i drove around with sunglasses i drove around with sunglasses at night i couldn’t see i drove around you rubbed lidocaine on my palms gums and eye sockets i drove around with sunglasses at night i mean i don’t know i jus— i drove arou— i— i don— i mean i drove around with sunglasses i drove i mean— it was night time
and i had sunglasses on i drove around i had sunglasses on i mea—i drove and i had sunglasses on mother earth’s vapor in milk a man spit on my windshield i couldn’t see i drove around i drove around i drove around at night with sunglasses i drove i drove i drove i drove around with sunglasses i walked along the street with sunglasses? no. i drove around with sunglasses it was heavy too heavy i vomited mashed grain.
i, black hole defenestration is still my favorite word after all these twists and turns extraction
no more adumbration, please defy the imperious esophagus if you must perhaps coalescence is best yes, only coalesce‌
he told the story over and over again the most hardened interrogators were impressed pistachio ice cream
It does become something of a critical shorthand. Maybe it’s just one of those days when you feel like doing nothing at all, at this moment it makes me wish that I still smoked grass. I’m certainly interested in a little convention-busting. They compellingly suggest a grammar, if not an economy, of self-consciousness and cultural skepticism. This is fun and useful, let’s continue. Mostly worthless. Do as you will. Why are you shouting? As I read your piece, I must say, I eventually came to regard the subject as intriguing. Sometimes I think that I am just not that smart that I get worked up about old-fashioned ideas like decorum but that does seem to be what I’m arguing for. Still finding your fucking poems tucked away here and there. To what extent does transforming a conventional understanding implicate the conventional understanding? On a bit of a whirlwind down here, having been evicted on Thursday, we bought a house on Friday, rented another for the interim on Saturday, and will be moving next week. I’ve never heard of this, can you direct me to some documentation? I don’t really know, but I doubt it intuitively.
Dear Jennifer, How are you? I am fine. You are a stupid… Hope you enjoy… …The sixteenth, am afraid I am unable to attend because of personal matters which at this moment are required to be kept secret. If however you should wish to organise a meeting please inform me and I will do my best to attend. Yours sincerely Mr H. Bellamy has terminated his service with the y
1
Author’s note: This text is completely untreated and represents all the discernable words upon three sheets of carbon paper, which were found left in a portable Empire Ambassador typewriter made in the 1940s.
First you will need to make a detailed drawing of the Make sure to label all the major anatomical parts of the Use an additional piece of paper if necessary I look forward to some very good illustrations of the After that write a short essay on the functions of the You will want to describe all the structures of the Go into as much detail as you feel necessary You should now have an intimate knowledge of the Upon completion of the quiz on the Please remain in your own chairs I will collect your papers on the This completes the unit on the
For Eve Ensler
Put your finger at that place. Release this ambrosia— nourishment for demigods. Be the unpollenating bee. A woman waits in a room lit by infant sun, her wheat voice astir, the cool wax budding.
For my Mothers
A necklace, pearl from some sealed up clam, revealing its pink and blue and purple secrets, found at the bottom of Lake Erie, my mediterranean, woken by the lash of a storm-tyrant, slapping the west coast across the east. My mother, edgestander, the white-feathered crane prying open her own clam for the meat— words of a reclaiming.
Among the things pesticides do to a farmer lies the unspeakable. I, too, thought about it and fell short in courage or its absence, stalled myself before your toolshed, imagining you in December, years ago, lying midst those undead weeds.
To catch the last light, run after the slowest bus, wind against you both. On the temple’s tip in the poodle, your left foot, truths shiver. It’s winter. To catch the last bus in a while, ride the pale ray. Leaves part sideways, show a delta of absence.
I am with her in Bushwick blue hair all caught up in a lovebird’s song as we walk around the block, around Maria Hernandez Park I think about holding her hand her chrysanthemum petal fingers her rubies set in gold rings on the L after a few shots of Makers she laughs at how bad our sex had been I lean with the lurch of the train and she still wears cowboy boots and she still smokes reds but my back hurts from the Chinatown bus ride, overpriced cheap beer, the way she leaned her head into my waist and my body became marble my body stone, bittered bone
We woke up in the kitchen saying how the hell did this shit happen… - Beyoncé
Spoon to stir knife to beg lack luster lack luster. You toast the toast, I put butter to thaw. Chipped plates and plastic cups are placed for us. This time we are unabashed to eat off of things as chipped and plastic as our faces. I’ve stripped my citrus into zest, chopped my juices let them sit, guessed the amount of bitter white pith it will take you to ask for more. Wipe my marmalade with fingers, toast crumbs stuck to tongue. When you turned grey with sorrow or sour, what is it that you said? When I leave, be sure you will lift your head alone, toast your toast alone, my marmalade, gone— I will have sewn it back into my womb, stitched it up, licking, chanting like the tea kettle cry: I tried, I tried, I tried! Curse the chairs of lovers, brothers, who mitosis from mothers who choose masturbation over intimacy who still ask for her recipe.
Driving always driving In my last life I was a doe who mistook high beams for sunken stars in a sweaty sky. I fear fog smear, handprints on my windshield when it is dark and light swallows the eye. In bed I turn my window fan high, ceiling fan low. Their oscillation consoles. ceaseless, ceaseless.
always in bed
Memories come they always come raw chicken breasts for legs pucker as cold blows in swipes. I found a box of photos always photos under my mother’s bed. I guess at dates from their shapes one: a square matte moment between husband and wife. His cheek on her freckled neck lined with the lace of her wedding dress. He might have been crying or the square matte got smudged she believes He was a good man always was. She carried tiger lilies in her bouquet July’s wild sisters who spend too much time in Ditchwater always ditchwater. I awake to crumpled sheets Because fans are friends with humidity.
Fans on always on with motors that never tire of tracing circles that get them nowhere new. Last night the top of the hill always at the top a line of lights approached. I swerved to the wet shoulder and prayed they would pass.
When I right then you stood on the wait Shaky red-eyed, on the sole A bottle of soda on a cigarette Dirty shoes, I think you smiled Oh I remember you hug me Oh I remember I hug you Oh I want that day back Just seen this on me, on talk Play games or watch movies As long ago, something happened Please tell me you miss me Because I know that I miss you Oh I get sad when I see you Want to take your hand on me follow you Cook, sort bills Talk shit, make music If the A Me vacuuming Although I hate to vacuum Give back your movies Give you everything you borrowed to me Your shoes and your Tekken 5 As long ago, what happened Please tell me you miss me Because I know that I miss you Who knows who know how to go They play no role We can wait a thousand years On letting time heal us Who knows if the world does me up Eh they have made me me I know that everything is shit right now I hope it works out
The possibility that the street you walk on collapses in a sink hole, or a meteorite hits like a glacier on your noonday and you miss work in the inferno, or “Death in Venice� become a reality show from the riverbed flood, or your old wounds of your expressive words open up as you meet your ex-lover by the city walls running for your lives.
After Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book II
This, after all, will have been written somewhat in the style of an imperilment, that nonpareil scintillance one recalls from the frisson of middle antiquity. If then a sky is as is shimmer to dust of the known aggregates and telemetry partitioned through vistas into, thus, out from a putative inner as from lost That a father should so fully problematize the sun will have been a matter for classicists and grim theoreticians, nor have we heard the last of it: just when the Timaeus seemed once again a safe zone of inquiry Splinters and further splines, the seems or resplendent as into seven shapes of torque a hand a cloud a cut a turn a quarrel into which a drift a template and moreover It is a fatal error to imagine a world in which the chariots of received narrative are conveyed across portentous spaces without the encumbrances of that same tradition. Perhaps in arcs and cloture, a falling a round and therefore within a fraction similarly an implacement upon whom dread and doom, a creature of its own phoeban impulses knotted up in modal verbs, necessarily, an inverse portraiture in the noumenal given a family a reticulation a thunderbolt a shadow ablaze.
Nowhere are there shantytowns with cardboard windows, where city maps are drawn on skin with the tips of fingers. Nowhere are there spoken words on tombstones, where the space between lamps deadens nerve endings like shattered glass. Nowhere are there videogames played like national anthems, where a pocketful of rocks can architect future memories that fail magnificently. But here, there, and everywhere suns admire themselves with midnight eyes, remaining loyal to their choice of nightmare.
(content warning: rape/sexual abuse/sexual assault) I AM THROUGH WITH BEING ELOQUENT THIS IS THE STORY
PART I. IT STARTED WITH MY FATHER SOMETHING FOGGY MEDICALLY DOCUMENTED NEVER TALKED ABOUT UNTIL THE NIGHTMARES BEGAN PART II. THERE WERE STILL SECRET STASHES OF PORN STREWN AROUND THE HOUSE AFTER HE LEFT ONE PARTICULAR GLOSSY MAGAZINE SPARKED MY INTEREST THESE WOMEN HAD MURDER IN THEIR EYES I LEARNED LUST PART III. WE WERE WALKING THROUGH THE CHECKOUT MY EYES STAYED TOO LONG ON A TABLOID ‘DO YOU THINK SHE’S ATTRACTIVE?’ MY UNCLE DAVE KNEW THE THOUGHTS I HAD ABOUT GIRLS ON PAPER PART IV. MY MOTHER WENT TO A LAS VEGAS PORN CONVENTION ON MY BIRTHDAY AND I FELT BETRAYED I FOUND PROFESSIONAL LINGERIE PHOTOS OF HER PART V. HE TAUGHT ME ABOUT GORE AND VIDEO GAMES ADDERALL AND THRIFT STORES WE WATCHED WRESTLING AND I THOUGHT ‘THIS IS A NUCLEAR FAMILY’
PART VI. THE SHELTER WAS COLD AND RIGID HIS CONDOMINIUM WAS BETTER FOR THEM I TOOK THE LIVING ROOM COUCH INSOMNIA BECAME A SURVIVAL TACTIC PART VII. THE SPRINGS IN THE COUCH KNOTTED MY BACK FROZEN DRINKS SPIKED WITH KAHLUA AND HIS OILY HANDS DID NOTHING TO LOOSEN ME PART VIII. I’VE NEVER ACTED SO WELL IN MY LIFE ‘YOU’RE MINE’ ‘TELL ME YOU LIKE IT’ ‘I DO’ ‘WE’LL RUN AWAY WHEN YOU’RE 18’ ‘WE COULD GET YOUR MOTHER AND MAKE HER WATCH’ WHERE IS MY FUCKING ACADEMY AWARD? PART IX. I PISSED ON MY FINGERTIPS PRAYING I WASN’T GOING TO BE A PREGNANT 7TH GRADER IT WAS TOO MAURY, TOO MONTEL WILLIAMS I WAS SUPPOSED TO BE RICKI LAKE PART X. MY MOTHER’S THROAT WAS BRUISED LOOKING BACK THEY SEEM TO BE HEREDITARY WE PACKED THE CAR I FOUND DRUGS PART XI. A YEAR-LONG SPAN OF EATING COUGH MEDICINE, COCAINE, PILLS, POT, MALT LIQUOR BARELY GOING TO CLASS, STABBING PENS IN MY LEG RAPE PORN, GORE, TRYING TRYING TRYING I PRETENDED TO BE ASLEEP SO WELL I COULDN’T WAKE UP
fan fair the princess of a Losey film more than statuesque Whale’s bride wrapped not in gauze but aquamarine and jewels neck to feet high pyramid of costly aura but this is the night of Noguchi’s ballet
the admiration of the character in the crowd is a kind of expertise he knows the score with Tony Hancock a little child carefully devouring the contents of a dessert fervently ritually like the bee its flower ant its leaf
collecting what’s bursting in on that comma see — spidery sea dear for warmth & a puzzle not lacking what’s usually winked away you’ll remember my pulse by its corners by what’s kept in the blink fly, frog — Poor Time in a part for all largest stillest shadow at last talking, officer I twist apart small bodies by the hour for a clue flowers, I opined, walk the storm down their thorns are tonic for the multitudes what is face-down will no longer get oil from me
nests, the keys some far eye threaded is their off branches, the keys’ use tightens when spoken it’s not garbage that goes through one “yes” after another shame since spoken? explosion taps all the sections listening for hollows unsettled trees snow down your speaks far eye’s farthest & between unsettled trees
take a swarm at plausibility a plank picture blue upset’s tall kisses on today’s coat, coat of your unsanctioned evil bow-tie an arm in piecemeal warmth flowers print (or gate) beardless tints, jeopardizing eyes without standing sunlight drunk with public bites time wanting time humming (this is some back-up razor!) one waves at things (ex: Spring foldings in brackish course) so’s to stuff the sleep seasons bald behind thoughtlessness are a hundred clusters TWO: me, with circumference also a tree, we played at being seams
Factored sapience enacts stray casks of kindness, flashing stubbly hiccups with mushy kissing guardrail flops, turned to amulets by weakly neutral winter sneezes. Showboats stun emerging couplets into brow dismissal before roster tantrums skin terrain ceramics of their ghostly cash nap situational cheroot, smoked casually in limestone bauble cheddar stations. Cubbyholes erupt in squandered timeline sundries, glutting cavemen into turtle tower penny crates of archwise stipulation’s crass remittance poplars. Shady blobs infect bespattered sand wedge chuckers, piling cleat abuse on scruffy shirtsleeves, simmered into taboo bonfire hypodermic natal braying peacenik overalls. Heat thaws to rows of jellied future, crispy history, and fledgling sisterly bloat, savoring the endothermic waist ellipse in stupa shirk debilitation crush of bobbing hairline stylus mouths and has-been apple sundaes. Slanting crepes crackle over steamy salon bubble headers, dressing chest protector palettes in swarms of entomologists, culled in situ per pro Bondo, no-no carbo repro lectio absurdum, ad infinitum in gloria ex Capernaum.
Hawking teleological wars, pillbox artisans demurred to mossy casein canker tombs, sifting octal duffle grunge for ankle crackback crawdad sheets of supine stun-gun cavities, tuned to braying champions. Bleary feet esteem the shyest cognitive Gaelic pylon wristband above a crawling facial kitchen frock, spent cordially on dermal paralysis. Slippery azimuths report forensic dollops of tutti-high-caboodle insignia imbroglio angina mines to gurney steerage tassel men in jumpsuit ardor’s looming paranoiac gypsy merchant underwear. Slowly gravity randomizes other county pendulums in plural eyelid contests, benching carousel clots of plumbing gown peerage in shadowed harmony.
Homogenous staple guns revel in touristic polygons, slaving over caught polynomials for barristers unknown to spool fish obituary craters. Blurred to chipper stumbling, crotchety asymmetry belies an engrammic monotheist’s deep-set éclair, facing christened aneurisms with tepid atomic songs. Stream stratagems clutter grittier repayment plans, scrounging for adamantine clemency from bowers of spiny feeble peelings, speckled with itch showers. Capped by foiled fragrances, two-butt Santas spatter awnings with pitch-and-chutney’s paltry pantry grate suffusion pelf, martyring the gunman’s misappropriated wisdom skeet for ogling homeopathic credenza riders.
1 The dog 2 A band of men 3 The quick brown fragment jumps over the lazy do-gooder 4 dog 5 Th qck brwn fx jmps vr th ly dg 6 Th quck brwn x jumps vr th lzy dg 7 me wick frown box trumps rover key hazy bog 8 Quick brown fox lazy brown dog 9 The quick brown franchise jumps over the lazy dolphin
Notes: 1: Un-Redundancy 2: Google translation #1 - English to Finnish to Portuguese to Igbo to Hebrew to Irish to Chinese to Persian to Thai to Vietnamese to Somali to Chinese to Javanese to Galician to Danish to Korean to Swahili to Albanian to Greek to Malayalam to Italian to English to Slovenian to Malayalam to English 3: N+7 4: Slugogram 5: Lipogram in aeiouz 6: Lipogram in aoife 7: Isomorphism 8: Google translation #2 -English to Nepali to Azerbaijani to Javanese to Sundanese to Uzbek to Bengali to German to Marathi to English to Lithuanian to Icelandic to Chichewa to Welsh to Maori to Esperanto to Filipino to Maltese to Lao to Telugu to Hmong to English 9: N+15
lambkin Lancelot landscape lark laughter lavaliere lavender Leda lemon lentils lettuces lichen ligature light house lilacs lily pad lime linden liquid Liszt loft lollipop lotus love song Luxembourg garden
2013 recap? I don’t even own a cat. 5 days ago ...and then it was officially confirmed.) I don’t even own a turtleneck. Reply ! crying over things I can’t change. home ~ thinsquids: yeah mom im a cat tbh. Aha! (I always knew I was allergic to Florida, I Have Been Skinny-dipping. I like sleeping, Spielbergian, I don’t even own a whip. I was getting a recap of the year 2013, right? I don’t even own a bag of sugar, Or baking soda, whatever else you need to bake from scratch, I don’t do home repairs or clean my car, Topics be damned, a certain Telemarketer. a constant hassle. Call Type: paradigm.
This is the “cream of the crop” of public bikes they’re only going to skim the cream off the top Fish passed beneath him, skimming the sandy bottom of the sea. the little boat was skimming across the sunlit surface of the bay take a bit of a chance on some of the small, the ones the most interesting, poignant, cute, fascinating as far as some of the top, gear to the store, including a load problematic cases to the ‘sub-prime’ sauces, sauté, spread on bread, it is Hot or sweet most difficult to secure, gadgets, usb and smartphone catastrophe; it is not only the ceiling salaries, bonuses and stock options in the late 1990s desiring to damage, disable, and destroy a cleaner system 139,000; 4,000; 33,000; 11,000; 150,000; 53
DVDFab DVD Ripper / Blu-ray Ripper (3D Plus) A little below the fifth turn (vaguely lemony), a spicy floral eight feet of bluish, argillaceous, emphasizing dragon-like barren of fossils, next, a stratum cut a nice stone with minor inclusions, a third-party conversion 56. Greyzini, Light Green, Slight Taper of design, the forms and harmony, the feel of the metal plants came out less radioactive than the environment Almost everything you look at bright red in color with very smooth skin characters and enemies, heart shaped and green 4.1 x 2.8 x 2.3, certain elements that were touching a princess who enlists a genie’s help for the sake of his calculating awkwardly it looks like he’s storing a piece of cold steel an impediment of significance juice with a dry fresh couple of sepia glimpses a somewhat clumsy coda, in C (herbal/minty)-citric opening freshening tide of the world pale powdery people, a blind goose, and a park delicacy and bashful coquetry the subject says that their flesh is fade No, this is the IPv6 Interface ID. See RFC
I need your urgent assistance regarding my client but he is now Dead,both of you have the same last name. You might not be related directly to him but bearing the same last name with him that makes you to this claims, and also understand that this offer is honorable and must be taken very serious. Respond back to me for more information’s Yours, Mr Gulshan Verma.
swimming in chipped teeth like eggshells no scars on a perfect night no ideas clean the dishes softer than anything i’ve ever felt before nobody has any problems skrillex doesn’t have any problems
i am afraid of dark staircases, but not of the dark and not of staircases individually. i’ve noticed my blood vessels light up at certain times when i am around you. your lips are part of an emoji. somehow i am able to drive when my eyes are closed and my hands are slippery. that night, even my brain smelled like ice. under all of my fingernails i carry pieces of the happiness that stings. when i am in my apartment alone, lying on the rug i feel like Moses. there is a big thing growing up in me, and soon you will be able to see it through my skin. if you want to look for the objects you lost in my body. i am going to burst like water from a stone.
What’s the point of wearing a belt? Nobody else is home and my jeans don’t fit loosely enough to fall. If I spill cleaning solution on the couch, should I clean it up? What would I use? Water? More cleaning solution? I borrowed a gallon of milk from the neighbors and forgot to return it before they went on vacation. Should I drink it before it goes bad? Will they even want it when they get back and it’s past the expiration date?
Give me something that I have to do, so I can ignore it and do the things I actually want to do. Quit your day job and rent out a room in the top floor of my head, I could use the company.
most of the lots up and down this street used to be totally empty, some with unfinished houses you could break the windows out of with your friends after school. there were always portapotties off the curb when you had to take a shit but didn’t want to go home just yet. between 3 and 6pm the world was yours. mom drinks a bottle of wine or two a night and dad smokes a pack a day and both told me tight pants were for queers. maybe i should have taken the hint sooner.
you are telling me my feet are like lotuses in small, song dynasty-style shoes i say that i may have a syndrome but google found 0 results make sure all words are spelled correctly i look sadly at my small feet and remember that the doctor told me to be careful i look up ways to be careful with small feet try fewer keywords you tell me that you like them but not in a fetishy way i still think of what it would be like to try to stretch them in a taffy machine i look for taffy machines around me there are none there are also no youtube videos for foot stretching try different keywords you say i shouldn’t do that because there are lots of little bones that could get lost and at least this way people won’t step on me that that is the worst kind of hurt how do you feel on a scale of broken toe to stepped-on foot i’m sorry i do not know which one is worse you touched my foot with yours and kissed me and told me not to worry try more general keywords
now i remember all the times you put your feet on mine when we had no socks on or they had holes and how it felt better than kissing when i searched foot fetish google found about 3,310,000 results in .33 seconds
i find it harder every day to always see the people i know to be in photos and to talk about things that interest them to read tweets and statuses and blog posts and poems and listen to old songs with my broken ears and i hate it out here and when did it become winter, right? but im no more smug stoned in my bed stoned in my bed im one thousand years old but my skin is fresh clay and i can stretch it as far and thin and wide as i want and i stretch it in separate strands to the homes of my friends and it stretches thru ur party and i enclose everyone while theyre drunk and loud and dont notice and when im in my thousand year old skin again i enclose myself to stop breathing and sleep the show was fine but something is wrong
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Actually he is new to this institution They provide everything he wants So I think he is extremely happy about the new life One fine morning, summer is waiting for him in the new building We are quite aware of it; he isn’t I think he is on the toilet; and what’s apped “Is there any app for getting water, please?”
Amid Friday storms avenues of thrusts furcate drawing eyes toward angles where the neck cannot contain parallel comfort. Up cymbals carve synonyms for crash into darkened brick holding blinking eyes between aging mortar, between broken-edged hooves of shadows stopped by rudiments of halt’s philosophy of death. This is when music rotates into angular prose, voices oscillate preaching scream and watching rain unfold its needles into hem, arid seals and dry mouths transform maps and allegories of power’s range and pedagogical unwritten lessons.
Not an affirmation of faint silences.
or pluralized respelling of syncopated The tongue as helix as duality of hands
pulsing in preparation to push patterns from the position of noon’s royal temporal satisfaction. Can the body produce water’s angular asymmetry? True, the wind wanders. True, the voice victimizes solitude when need is the preference among morning’s earliest movements.
Waiting curls fragments of prose, wrapping notions into gifting renderings needed to compel and provide contextual hearsay to underwhelm mirrors. By the piano’s pacing, hearing vocal crows perform dedicated miracles beneath where language loses meaning among the everyday components of conversational inaccuracies. Beginning blends bend and anti-boredom. Centering devotion requires darkened contours splayed from the known and knowable mentioning of now. Retrieve.
I don’t want to hear about your life or talk about my life right now man. I just wanna be chill and stand here w/ my girlfriend. Drink one light beer. I had a long day man and frankly having a conversation for a cultural purpose sounds boring. I just want to dance to these bass beats. Why? Cuz music is chill. I like to keep my house clean bc I like to feel good. Always feel good! Why would I ever want to feel bad? That seems dumb. In fact, the reason I want to stay clean all the time is bc I actually think humans are awesome and cool and I’ll give Oprah Winfrey some money and you know what? I want to mold something into my own vacuous image to continue the human race! Why? That’s the good thing to do! I love my family. A healthy body is a healthy mind. This is the prime-rib of my life. I never drink soda. I’m the quintessence of dismissive thought patterns and I dismiss you now bc I’m an Idiot. I have behavioral problems bc I refuse to not say something when someone is blatantly an Idiot. Hey, if you got haters, who fucking cares? Have better sex.
i had a boca burger and garbanzo beans for breakfast today one of my friends is going home for the holidays and i am a rat-baby-sitter now i’m going to probably smoke hash and drink wine again tonite curating internet art for fun doing back stretches i’ve been destroying everything in my house i re-invent myself on a daily basis by looking in the mirror the internet gets boring but i understand how everyone is so lonely i’ve been yelling at people in academia open mics green-dyed hair haven’t taken a shower i’m here to cheer you up i want to make you smile look: there’s a garbanzo bean in my mouth to detract the flies always around me
still sixteen and the need to write about my spiral existence and its intersections – crossword puzzles and crows cawing at the people walking too slow and trying to shit on passing cars well, you know the feeling in your gut that’s pretty much just yours – and maybe someone else feels this way but you’re convinced if you tried to explain yourself no one would understand the sensation of opening a door and finding a fragment slow to fix its place like pixels i’ve been impatient but i haven’t become important yet despite everyone else saying ‘happy birthday’ you shared one word with me i don’t have an attraction for the date other than whatever we share all words and i want you at terms with the distance determined to complete the mandala of our moves like a dance you made up on the spot like a dream you dance to when it comes like realizing what you mean when you say i control you but not like you’d ever love me more than yourself
i’ve forgotten how to try to get to know someone even someone i already know feels like opening their closet with the understanding they haven’t been through that door in more than months i could feel the weight of them lifting but i couldn’t reach out to help when i looked at my hand hurried and then hesitant i just want to help i just want to speak to you for a moment to see if maybe you understand the patience to explain this over again i apologize first for my inattention and the ability i’ve cultivated to believe that it’s best only to listen to myself or at least a version of myself in actuality developed by you but by the time i got this far the person loses patience and i lose a friendship still unsure if that creates a deep well inside of me or more of an alarm clock sound that’s waking me up i want you to remind me when i came to and what i came here for
Abandoned on this island for my mistakes, I swam with gentle jellyfish. They bobbed their apologies while they learned to lessen their venom, but I told them the burning wouldn’t stop me. At night I sat on the beach, hating myself while the jellyfish reached for me across the sand. I think they were upset, too. Eventually their need to sting disappeared. And so did mine.
For Katherine Osborne
You resonate with magnets in your heart and hands. You can’t see them but sometimes someone shifts your polarity and you fold into them before you know what’s happening. And that’s okay. There are some you’d like to pull near. But you can’t. And that’s okay. For you are the hands caressing a television screen until it’s white as ghostly snow. You are the palms outstretched in the hardware store, calling forth all the loose nails from the floor.
From the caged porch of the psychopathic ward, children with their heads wrapped gazed disbelievingly at a splendid view of Paris on loan from a French billionaire. Later, when the hospital was being used by the military, German psychiatrists strode down long hallways lined with maudlin tears. The building and grounds are now open to the public. A world made of ghost particles isn’t just some theory, it really does exist. That was what I was thinking as I sleepwalked along. At the top of a worn staircase, there was a shattered window from which one could still watch the beautiful decay of a hanging red heart.
Some days I’m the one tooth rising up in a toothless mouth, others days France in 1184, the howl of something that doesn’t exist.
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Alex Wennerberg is a physics student at Truman State University in Kirksville, MO. 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. B.Z. Niditch is a poet, playwright, fiction writer, and teacher. His work is widely published in journals and magazines throughout the world, including: Columbia: A Magazine of Poetry and Art, The Literary Review, Denver Quarterly, Hawaii Review, Le Guepard, Kadmos, Prism International, Jejune, Leopold Bloom, Antioch Review, and Prairie Schooner, among others. His latest poetry collections are Lorca at Sevilla (Main Street Press, 2012) and Captive Cities (Presa Press, 2012). He lives in Brookline, Massachusetts. billy bob beamer continues his experimental music, writing, small drawings, installations, and digital asemia/visual poetry. He will be exhibiting selected recent works at the Fine Arts Center for the New River Valley in Virginia, in the summer of 2015. His current digital images can be seen in Jim Leftwich’s online collection at https://www.flickr.com/photos/textimagepoetry/collections/ (pansemic playhouse 2014-3). Recent graphite drawings can be viewed at The Nevica Project Gallery in Chicago (thenevicaproject.com). Bren Mar is a poetry enthusiast currently living in eastern Washington. Carey Scott Wilkerson, poet and dramatist, is author of two poetry collections, Threading Stone and Ars Minotaurica, both from New Plains Press. His play Seven Dreams of Falling premiered in 2013 at the Elephant Theatre in Los Angeles and was published by Black Box Press. His play Ariadne in Exile, published by Negative Capability Press, premiered as the operetta The Ariadne Songs (with his libretto and music by Angela Schwickert) at Stony Brook University in December 2014. He is editor of Stone, River, Sky: an anthology of Georgia poetry, due from Negative Capability Press in 2015. He has been a Writing Fellow at the Lillian E. Smith Center for Creative Arts, a Visiting Writer at Clayton State University, and a Guest Artist at the University of South Alabama and the University of Mississippi. He holds a BA and MA from Auburn University and an MFA from Queens University of Charlotte. He teaches at Columbus State University. Catch Business is co-editor of Similar:Peaks:: (similarpeakspoetry.com). Her work has been published online and in print at The Bohemyth, Electric Cereal, Be About It, and elsewhere.
Christopher Morgan is the Editor-in-Chief for Arroyo Literary Review and a Contributing Editor at Nostrovia! Poetry, growing up in Michigan, Georgia, and California. He has an MA in Creative Writing, with publications at Gargoyle, Permafrost, A cappella Zoo, Bartleby Snopes, theNewerYork, Voicemail Poems, DOGZPLOT, and Fruita Pulp, among others. He loves Tumblr, happy hour margaritas, and wasting his minutes on bullet chess. Christopher Mulrooney is the author of Grimaldi (Fowlpox Press) and jamboree (Turf Lane Press). His work has recently appeared in Black Mirror Magazine, The Nervous Breakdown, The Rampallian, The Seventh Quarry, Of/with: journal of immanent renditions, Pretty Owl Poetry, and Linden Avenue Literary Journal. Chuck Leary lives in the United States and loves everybody. Cody Cannot is an artist based in Denton, TX. They play in a band called Sexual Jeremy and write stuff sometimes. Their blog is kybf.tumblr.com. Feel free to message them about basically anything. Emma Moser is a writer, musician, art lover, and nostalgic old soul living in Springfield, Massachusetts. Her multi-genre work has appeared or is forthcoming at The Sigma Tau Delta Rectangle, Thoreau’s Rooster, Fuck Fiction, Sweatpants & Coffee, and Persona. Eric Wallgren lives with an adorably harmless pit bull in Chicago, IL. His poems have appeared in Hotel Amerika, Potluck, and Similar:Peaks::. He’s online at ericwallgren.tumblr.com. Erin Gerety holds a BA in English from Virginia Commonwealth University. She has been published in Poictesme, interned with Blackbird, and attended the 2014 Sweet Briar writer’s conference. Erin Would (Brawly Parton) is a queer artist in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Most of their work is autobiographical and based on their experiences with PTSD and personal relationships. 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. Greg Zorko lives in Indiana and studies at Indiana University.
Hanna Rajs Lundström lives in Stockholm, Sweden where she studies art and works at a café and at a flea market. She’s published one book, Fler Positioner (89plus/LUMA Publications), and two collaborative books of poetry, one about Beyoncé (Addicted to your light) and one about “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” (Out for a walk. Bitch). All proceeds from Howie Good’s latest book of poetry, Fugitive Pieces (Right Hand Press), go to the Food Bank of the Hudson Valley. Visit http://www.righthandpointing.net/#!echapbooks/c1qi1. 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 Lowther’s work appears in the anthologies The Lattice Inside (UNO Press, 2012) and Another South: Experimental Writing in the South (U of Alabama, 2003). Held to the Letter, coauthored with Dana Lisa Young, is forthcoming from Lavender Ink in 2015. John works in video, photography, paint, and performance. He’s writing a dissertation to reimagine psychoanalysis as grounded in the lives of intersex and transgender people so as to broaden our appreciation of subjective possibility. 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. Krystal Sierra’s work has appeared in Belt Magazine and The Review Review. Her piece “Burnt Sugar” (Blink Ink, 2014), was nominated for the 2014 Pushcart Prize. She edits Guide to Kulchur Creative Journal and lives with her son in Lakewood, Ohio. Born in a warm corner of India, a lone child and brought up with his shadow mates, Kushal Poddar (b. 1977) began writing verses at the age of six. He adopted his second tongue as the language to dream on. He has been widely published in several countries as well as prestigious anthologies, including Men in the Company of Women, Penn International MK, etc.; been featured in various radio programs in Canada and the USA; and collaborated with photographers for an exhibition in Venice and with performers for several audio publications. He is presently living in Kolkata and writing poetry, fiction, and scripts for short films when not engaged in his day job as a counsel/lawyer in the Calcutta High Court. He is the author of The Circus Came to My Island, and his forthcoming books are Kafka Dreamed of Paprika and A Place for Your Ghost Animals.
Having lived in five states, Kylina Matteoli takes pride in her Southern Belle roots. She was raised all over the country as a child. At fifteen years old, Kylina knew she wanted to live in California to pursue her education, so she moved to make that possible. Now she’s a fourth-year English major at UC Davis. When she’s not studying or writing essays and poetry, Kylina works for Book Buddy Digital Media Publishers as an author for a teen series titled Once Famous. She is very excited that she will be published within the next year and plans to continue her studies as a graduate next year. Mathias Jansson is a Swedish art critic and poet. He has contributed with visual poetry to magazines such as Lex-ICON, Anatematiskpress, Quarter After #4, and Maintenant 8: A Journal of Contemporary Dada. He has also published a chapbook at This is Visual Poetry and contributed with erasure poetry to anthologies from Silver Birch Press. His homepage is http://wordshavenoeyes.blogspot.se/ and his Amazon author page is http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mathias-Jansson/e/B00BTDBYBQ. Michael Hessel-Mial is a poet and scholar living in Atlanta, Georgia. He is webmaster at Internet Poetry and is the author of mspaint and heartbreak and the forthcoming VITA NUOVA II. His epic image macro sequence, Greatest Poet Alive, is in progress. Michael O’Brien is currently living in Glasgow. He mostly writes poetry but dabbles in longer fiction and music. His work has been featured in various places in print and online from the good folks at Blue and Yellow Dog, Shamrock, Up Literature, Otoliths, Lyrical Passion, Phantom Kangaroo, In Between Altered States, et al. Mr Gulshan Verma is Yours. Nathan Staplegun is a millennial net artist who drinks too much. Nettie Farris lives in Floyds Knobs, Indiana and is the author of Communion (Accents Publishing, 2013). In 2011 she received the Kudzu Poetry Prize. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Nic Sebastian is the author of Forever Will End on Thursday and Dark and Like A Web, both published under the poetry nanopress model with partner editors. She co-founded and curates The Poetry Storehouse (http://poetrystorehouse.com), which showcases “great contemporary poems for creative remix.” Nic blogs at Very Like A Whale and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Yew Journal, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Anti-, MiPOesias, Blue Fifth Review, Avatar Review, and elsewhere. Paul m. Strohm is a freelance journalist working in Houston, Texas. His poems have appeared in HuKmag.com, The Berkeley Poets Cooperative, The Lake, WiND, and other literary outlets. His first collection of poems, titled Closed on Sunday, is scheduled to be published in late 2014 by The Wellhead Press. He worked at the Humanities Research Center at UT-Austin cataloging the correspondence of D.H. Lawrence. If he had to count the number of times D.H. wrote that imaginative line, “Dear ____. How are you?” he would never read Lady Chatterley’s Lover again.
Steve Klepetar’s work has received several nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, including three in 2014. 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, came out in 2014 as part of the Barometric Pressures series of e-chapbooks by Kind of a Hurricane Press. Steven Perez is a poet and musician (associated acts: Grounded, De Nada, allscum) living in Tallahassee. Taylor Cooper recently failed the eye exam because she thought glasses would make her look more sophisticated. Her chapbook Cover with Picture and Name is available for free on Issuu, and the rest is pretty much self-explanatory @IAmTaylorNotYou. Tyler DuBois is a writer and musician from Denton, TX. He is a complicated arrangement of subatomic particles located on a large rock floating in an ever-expanding universe and he’s pretty much just doing his thing. His Twitter is @flirtgod and he wrote his own bio. Vimeesh Maniyur is an established bilingual poet, novelist, and translator from Kerala, in India. He has two volumes of poetry and a children’s novel to his credit. He has also penned stories and dramas. He has bagged many prestigious awards such as the Calcutta Malayali Samajam Endowment, Madras Kerala Samajam, Muttathu Varkki Katha Puraskaram, et al., for young writers in Kerala. 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. Teacher, compere, performer, and poet, Winston Plowes spends his days fine-tuning background noise and rescuing discarded words. These are re-sculpted over a glass of wine into poetry birds he releases by night to fly to new homes in journals and online destinations worldwide. He lives in a floating home in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, UK, where he tries to persuade his black cat Fatty that it’s a good idea for her to do the same. Find out more about his work at his website: www.winstonplowes.co.uk.