Lucinda Holmes – HALiterature – on America

September 14th, 2011 § 3 comments § permalink

Bunny America: Drafting An Alternative Wiki Entry
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Motto – By the Bright Star Guide Us Forth to Distant Green and Plentiful Pastures.

This article is about America see We Rule  Spaceships on TV disambiguation, for other entries.

America is a feudalistic dynasty located on an island situated on the south coast of Italy to the immediate east of Sicily. It is constituted of forty-eight areas of land, with each piece of land populated by an extended family of rabbits. Each rabbit is permitted to bear arms.  The country accounts for 60% of world spending on military hardware.
Etymology :

The word ‘America’ comes from pre-historic Italian for ‘rubbish dump’, though this has often been mistranslated as ‘beautiful country’, which it is generally considered to be. However, the word in its plural form is Americasssss with four ‘ssss’ to dissociate it from any small children with similar names. In a similar way, for differing reasons, its nationals call themselves Americanssss.

Geography :

America is a small Mediterranean island with a dormant volcano at its centre. North of the volcano is an arid plain and to the south there is a humid and vegetated plain. At the base of the volcano is woodland, both coniferous and deciduous. The volcano is the source of the island’s only river, which meanders across the south plain to the sea. The climate is temperate, though the proximity of the sea gives rise to mild winters. Rainfall increases substantially in the winter, while spring and summer have occasional showers. Its land area is approximately 5,000 square kilometers when the tide is in, and 6,000 square kilometers when the tide is out. This liminal tide zone is a disputed area, with several other countries claiming it as part of their territory.

On the eastern side of the country is the Big Apple Core, the largest, rabbit hutch, high-rise, maximum capacity, dream city. On the western side is LW, or Los Warren.

It is believed that the lost city of Alaska lies submerged to the North West of the Island. The rabbit scientific community has stated that there is indisputable evidence of the lost city of Alaska, but it has been repeatedly disproved by many scientific bodies and various internationally reputable agencies.

History :

The first recorded settlers to America were an extended family of  Italian lupine religious zealots forced to leave their hometown of Piombino for their bad and monotonous religious singing. Fleeing religious oppression, they set forth with the intention of sailing the oceans to India, as they mistakenly believed that the rabbits living there were religious animals, and their lives as divine beings would finally be understood.

Instead their boat ran aground on an uninhabited island off the south coast of Italy, which they colonized and named America. In 50 AD a different breed of rabbits, the Fuzzy Lops, came to the island from Belgium and interbred creating a new subspecies. This subspecies had a distinctively different taste in food from its ancestors‘, liking semi spicy food wrapped in flour or corn pancakes. There was no tolerance for these newfangled cuisine eaters, so they were put on a ship with a couple of month’s worth of supplies, and deported. They ended up in Mexico and became Mexicans.  However, this subspecies has left their cuisine as a legacy in American culture, and, to this day, major cities have clusters of Mexican restaurants.

In the 19th Century the attacks of the Meandering Marauding Magicians and Agents of Meandering Marauding Magicians respectively commenced. Flotillas of M.M.M.s and A.M.M.M.s landed off the island, and sent in abduction squads that captured large numbers of Americanssss, which were subsequently forced to live a life of perpetual slavery.  Cyprus has long been accused by America as being a major staging post of rabbit trafficking.

Also in the 19th Century, the rabbits learnt how to swim, with large numbers of Americanssss becoming beach bums as a result. This had a negative effect on the island’s economy and industrialization, both of which lagged behind to a large degree.

In the 1960s, neighbouring Sardinia, in a strategy aimed at gaining a better understanding of the Americanssss’ mindset to enable an aggressive infiltration of their then-internally produced TV programmes, decided to capture a few rabbits each year and subject them to a series of physical and psychological tests. To avoid detection, the Sardinians, using a military base in Nuoro, invested heavily in the production a new type of flying craft, which were spaceships used to kidnap carefully chosen rabbits. As a result of these rabbit abductions and supposed sightings of alien space craft, the Americanssss now believe that America is a direct conduit for an alien nation that will make friends with the rabbit nation and enable it to dominate the world, which the Americanssss feel is rightly theirs.

Wars:

America has officially denounced the right to declare war, although it has claimed self defense in waging many seemingly aggressive and offensive military incursions.

Government:

The country is run by a small group of approximately twelve rabbits, of which each member is selected, from birth, to form the government, or the Cloud Halo Council as it is called. Those chosen then live in a desert commune and smoke copious amounts of ganja.  While their policies and directives are amazingly enlightened and forward thinking, they are under-cut by the representatives and bureaucrats who return to each feudal state after meeting with the council, and recite gibberish poetry in short, media friendly, sound bites.
There is one leader of the Cloud Halo Council, whose current leader is Bob Bunny Bush, who is chosen through a process determined  by the power plays of the various feudal states, their allegiances with each other, and the simplicity of the speeches given by each feudal state’s representative. As a result, quite often, the leader of The Cloud Halo Council is unaware that he has been declared as such.

Economy:

The export of biomass bunny poo is the main source of funds for the island country, and it is an equivalent to crude oil in terms of joules. As a result, each state is focused on increasing the population, so that it can make more cash for excrement. The various states  also invest heavily in military hardware, so they are unable to construct various public works and other such wonders.

Infrastructure:

The island is at the cutting edge of technology, with electricity being supplied in Wi-Fi form. In some districts it has leaked into the surrounding area, with the result being that the Americanssss living in these districts have particularly sticky-up hair. In some areas there are rabbits who have sticky-up hair. However,  the Wi-Fi electricity grid is actually functioning normally. It is just that the Wi-Fi electricity network affects Americanssss fitted with pacemakers differently than the rest of the population. In addition to the sticky-up hair, those affected by the Wi-Fi electrical grid’s out-put hop at a higher frequency than unaffected rabbits without pacemakers.

Military:

All Americanssss are eligible for national service, though a well-developed system of back-pawers has developed, so that the most unworthy can indefinitely defer completion of their national service. All enlistees are shipped out to Gaum, a small island off the coast of Portugal, which is inhabited by colony of Welsh Cormorants.

Amazingly, this island has a very low annual rainfall, making it somewhat dry and arid, and is littered with Welsh Cormorant guano, which has the highest sodium nitrate content of any sort of guano.

Combined with the Americanssss droppings, the Welsh Cormorants’ guano makes for an explosive combination.  Due to de-education, the rabbits are unaware of the explosive combustion of their excrement, so they spend their entire time trying to find the enemy  throwing nonexistent, but explosively deadly, bombs at them.

Under the dormant volcano at the island’s centre, there is an underground bunker which holds the world’s largest nuclear arsenal. However, the command execute button and key have been lost by The Cloud Halo Council during a re-enactment of Bob Rabbit Marley’s life and times, during which its members were wearing bandanas.

The underground nuclear base is run and supervised by an elite brigade of commando rabbits. The commando rabbits have radioactive droppings#, so they are unable to reintegrate into society, yet deny that they are in fact addicted to radioactive salts which have leaked from the Fat Man#, that they lick# at regular intervals.

The Americanssss have become pioneers in the use of war pigs, with a fully armed sty of around 500 war pigs#, each of which is armed with an AA-12, a combat shotgun, strapped to their backs and a BARZ, a silenced submachine gun.
Science and Technology:

The Americanssss are leaders in the race to mine the moon, with their motivation for conquering the moon being religious in nature. They feel that any visitation or inhabitation  by other nations’ personnel will contaminate their rabbit god Moon Lapis Goddess.  Therefore, they have built and sent up into space a series of defensive satellites armed with Nuclear War Pigs, which can be launched at short notice to destroy enemy incursions on the moon.

Transportation:

Every rabbit has access to an automobile, so that, in the case of committing a crime, they can drive at top speed, thus indicating their guilt to the local police force. Elevated highways that go around in circles have been built near each Hutch City. Anthropologists are unsure of the purpose of this.
Energy:

The countries main energy supply comes from the burning of rabbit dung, which supplies the National Grid Wi-Fi energy transfer system. Cars that have gone through a modification process in a refinery also run on rabbit droppings.
Education:

Rabbits are de-educated from an early age. This is so female rabbits are naïve and suitably impressionable during the frequent mating seasons. This process also means that most inhabitants don’t have any ‘ideas’, which gives rise to a predominantly harmonious society.
Health:

On the northern plan there is an abundance of Timothy-Grass, which is ideal food for rabbits.  Consequently, any ill or unhealthy rabbits migrate to this area to feast themselves on the grass. Unfortunately these sick and unhealthy rabbits are frequently killed-off by opportunistic and zealous Armageddonists who are determined to depopulate the country, and feel that, in doing so, they are putting the ill and elderly out of their misery.

Occasionally rabbits are snatched from the island by organic-loving giants, who use the rabbits as pregnancy test kits, in the belief that if the urine of a pregnant female human lands on a rabbit, it will immediately kill the rabbit#, thus ensuring a 100% natural pregnancy test. To ward off future snatches, the Americanssss created a giant statue, which has a pointy crown and holds a torch, and also serves as a an emblem of freedom for the rabbits, to stand just off the coast.

Amputees:

Since the beginning of time, rabbits have been snatched for their paws, or rather, a single paw.  In some countries, it is considered lucky to carry a dismembered rabbit limb around your neck.  Therefore, the rabbit population has now taken measures to counteract this violent act, and to reduce the number of hop-along amputees, though amputee rabbit pole-vaulting is an increasingly popular spectator sport.

Myxomatosis:

Myxomatosis was introduced by a high street clothing chain that wanted to flood the market with a line of confused and colourful finger gloves. As rabbits don’t have fingers, they put on the gloves, with mixed up digits, on their paws. They are then unable to breed, as they are too fascinated by attempting to touch their own genitals with the ‘confused colourful gloves’. Visitors to America can see rabbits infected by Myxomatosis rolling around with brightly covered hand gear on their front paws in a state of starvation, or acute dehydration. Once infected, a sufferer is ostracized from the community. No one has ascertained whether the infected rabbits are actually able to touch their private parts with the gloves or not. Gloves are now only dispensed from registered chemists in extreme circumstances.

Language:

Due to excessive levels of paranoia in the country, the Council of High Language meets every third Tuesday to discuss and decree the latest version of ‘Bunny Talk’, the informal name of the national language Rhinocerousfranca, which is also known as Bunnilingus because of the fact that Americanssss eat grass. This usually means that basic words such as pronouns, ‘he’ and ‘she’, for example, are often switched or changed around, as well as many other highly frequently-used words. These changes last for three weeks, then there is another decree on the updated version on the language. For example, one week ‘He’ is ‘He’, ‘She’ is ‘She’ and ‘Thank you’ is ‘Thank you’, . However, following a new linguistic decree,‘She’ becomes ‘He’, ‘He’ becomes ‘Who’, and ‘Thank You’ becomes ‘Potato”. This is highly advantageous, since it means that the TV industry is perpetually kept busy updating and changing programmes to meet the new language. It also means that outside imports into the spoken and written work industry are non-existent. Books are used as things to put coffee cups on, although Americanssss do not drink coffee. Any rabbit using an out of date version of Bunny Talk is immediately suspected to be either a spy, an alien, or an impostor of some kind. Although Americanssss who have been abducted by alien species also exhibit the same language integration problems, it is believed that many spies have lied about alien abduction to cover up their true identity.

Religion:

There are four different religions in America:

1.        The Armageddon Rabbits
2.    Followers of Iffy
3.    Bunnishism
4.    Joeism

The Armageddon Rabbits comprise a religious sect that wants the volcano to erupt and kill large swaths of the population to free up more land for the remaining rabbits. They make monthly sacrifices of the most voluptuously fertile female rabbits by tossing them off into the volcano crater. Unbeknownst to them, however, due to the frequency of this act, the crater surface is now cushioned by the plethora of rabbit corpses.

So many recent victims have survived the fall into the crater and have created their own sub-culture, with this group of voluptuous in-heat rabbits subsequently forming the religious cult of Joeism. These permanently in-heat females make bimonthly raids on villages adjacent to the volcano, which are an attempt to find males that best match their god, Joey’s, character and physical appearance,select those taken to use as sex slaves, and finally sacrifice them to their god. Any female offspring resulting from these unions are kept, while the males are turned into kebabs.

A whole genre of television programmes has been created to fulfill the religious needs of this group of female rabbits, and especially a TV show based around the daily life of their god, Joey, who lives in a loft in the Big Apple Core with his friends,which is the most popular of the lot.

Most rabbits, especially as children, follow a very symmetrical white rabbit deity called ‘Iffy’. Icons of ‘Iffy’ can be frequently found adorning children’s pencil cases. The commandments of Iffy are:

1. Thou shalt not be seen or heard
2. Japanese small cats are never to be trusted
3. Thou shalt engage in radical direct ecological action (due to intensive de-education at an early age most rabbits have no idea what this is)
4. Cute noises shall becometh thee

Bunnishism :

Bunnishism is the main religion of the island. It is in decline and Americanssss rarely give prayers to Moon Lapis Goddess, and Frank, a 2.1 meter-tall apocalyptic rabbit#, similar in standing to the devil.
Marriage:

Americanssss fall in love, marry for life, and produce as many offspring as rabbitly possible. When five or more couples want to wed, a date is agreed-upon, and a multiple wedding takes place. Multiple weddings are more socially acceptable, as in the rabbit community, interbreeding is frequent. However, this means it is difficult to ascertain who your actual relatives are. By making it a multiple wedding, the whole community is involved, and no one has to think too hard about who is related to whom. There is no aisle, again to avoid questions as to who is on the bride’s side, and who is on the groom’s. side.

The brides dress like Iffy, their childhood goddess. This can cause problems, as all the brides at the multiple wedding look very similar, if not identical, to each other.  However, many Americanssss have married the wrong bunny bride and lived long happy lives, with large litters.

Family Structure:

Rabbits form temporary tightly knit extended families. Contrary to popular disbelief, rabbits do not have sexual relations outside of the extended family.

Crime and Law Enforcement:

If any rabbit commits a crime, it is common practice for it to get into a car, and drive at top speed. This is a signal to law enforcement agents to pursue the criminal in a high-speed car chase, which, in turn,is normally filmed live, so the rest of the inhabitants of America can either, a, state that they either know, or are somehow related to the offender, or, b, know where the car is, and go to an area where they think they can get on TV.

Due to intense paranoia about alien abductions, rabbits have now started to fit themselves with their own personal burglar alarm. In the 1970s burglar alarms were only imported, so the alarm would often be larger that the rabbit itself. These alarms were considered to be the height of culture, and many marriages have been arranged on the basis of the size and shape of a male’s or female’s burglar alarm.
Rabbit Detention and Correctional Facilities:

Criminals are housed in a correctional facility, a military base which is located in Malaga Bay, on the Spanish coast, which Spanish officials have declared is an illegal intrusion on Spanish soil.  One complicating aspect to this story is that the Americanssss have been writing and sending cheques to the Spanish Malaga Chief Treasurer, and one of these cheques was mistakenly cashed. Therefore, the  bunny invaders have decided that this is a clear indication of the Spanish authorizing this Americanssss’ exclave. All subsequent cheques have been sent returned to sender, but keep ending up in Cardiff, due to an irregular zip code anomaly.

Prisoners at The Malaga Bay Detention Facility have allegedly been subjected to various forms of torture, including extended periods of Watership Downing#, which involves the inmates being forced to watch the film version of Watership Down, which is an experience so emotionally gut-wrenching for the Americanssss, that several have committed suicide.
Culture:

Each rabbit family has a television, which is their main source of culture. Generally speaking, rabbit popular TV reaches a cultural zenith, when it is a rerun of a remake of a very old story to which everyone knows the ending, the ending is a happy one, no one has sex outside of marriage, and all of the bad characters die.

Americanssss are divided into two groups. However, this division is not based on class or heritage, but is made on the basis of Americanssss with symmetrical ears, and those without symmetrical ears,with symmetrically eared rabbits being considered slightly more important than asymmetrically eared rabbits.  While some doctors on the island have modified rabbits to make their ears asymmetrical, it is impossible to do it the other way around.

Americanssss drive automobiles, but at extremely slow speeds, as there is a cultural perception that the speed at which you travel has a direct correlation to how nice a person you are, so, the slower the better. Driving fast means that you get less sex and less Timothy-Grass.

Bunny Law:

Bunny Law is a process of judgment via televised cases or case appeals, where the viewing public decides, using a red ‘guilty’ button and a green ‘not-guilty’ button on their TV remotes. Though most defendants are statistically declared ‘off’, ‘mute’, ‘standby’, or ‘rabbit porn channel’, these votes, (remote button presses) are not counted. TV companies liaise with the police to identify test cases that are deemed to be of the public interest, with ones considered uninteresting normally resulting in the defendant being automatically released, although the evidence is kept on file. Decisions of guilt can vary more on the viewing time of the case, as opposed to the actual evidence. Prime time for not guilty verdicts is around lunchtime, when nanny rabbits, who are generally more caring, watch television for extended periods of time. Cases where the defendant is found not guilty generally take longer than hearings where they are found guilty, with court verdicts being more about the viewers’ attention spans and boredom levels, as opposed to any close consideration of the evidence.
Food:

There are large expansive quantities of Timothy-Grass on the island northern side, while Los Warren is the capital of Mexican food, and beach bums eat large quantities of frozen lettuce.

Sports:

The most popular sport in America is rabbit show jumping#, followed by rabbit dressage. There are several teams authorized to organize show jumping events, though there are also some occasions of feral rabbit show jumping. However, The Cloud Halo Council is trying to clamp down on these latter exhibitions, but with little success.



Rosemary Lombard

September 14th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink

Rosemary Lombard - Original Photography - on Red Shoes

Rosemary Lombard on the theme of “Red Shoes.”
Red Shoes

Once I read—it must have been from a magazine in a waiting room—that the color red was the new neutral. I didn’t believe it then, and I don’t believe it now. Of all colors, red seems to carry the most symbolic and emotional baggage. What is the color of fire? of blood? of danger? of the heart and its Valentine? the color that makes the heart beat faster? If red is neutral, why is the coquette Musetta of La Bohème traditionally costumed in red or its close neighbor on the color wheel and the shy seamstress Mimi (the heroine, after all) given a muted color edging on drab? Why do the red shoes of Hans Christian Anderson’s fairytale represent the overblown vanity of a girl, taking on their own life and forcing her to dance until she begs for her feet—and the red shoes—to be amputated?
The eyes tend to track toward red shoes. Mine are nothing sexy: no towering heels or even open toes, just a pair of old granny boots and a pair of red and white flats; but almost every time I wear them, a pair of eyes drifts down to the shoes and I get comments. “I love your red shoes.” “Can I have the red shoes when you’re done with them?” I have never heard comments loving any of my true neutral collection, the black or brown or gray ones. I have, in fact, heard no comments at all.
In terrestrial turtles there are more color cones in the eye sensitive to red than those sensitive to other colors. The turtles in my behavioral lab seem to favor red objects, a characteristic most likely adaptive: They notice a strawberry, a hibiscus flower, the red eye of a male box turtle, my red shoes.

Neutral

Eyes drift down
and focus on my feet.
Where did I read . . .
Who was it said
that red
was the new
neutral?

Some waiting-room rag
for women (or sheep)
exploiting, perchance
inventing a trend.
What bull!

If red is so neutral,
why then do they costume
Musetta in red, Musetta the shameless coquette,
while shy seamstress Mimi
(the heroine, you know)
wears colors so drab and so muted?
And why do I
love all my red shoes?

Now I don’t dress at the height—
or the foot height—of fashion.
Foot fetish? Not that.

Perhaps it is vanity?
like the girl whose red shoes,
fast to her feet, made her dance—
and danced her off to desperation?
No, but it might be a little of that.

Why, I don’t buy things new,
and who has ever said
to me effusive ohs,
I do so love your jet black shoes . . .
your mud-tinted shoes . . .
your sweet dirty gray shoes!

But red? That’s another story.

Take my old flat granny boots
all laced up in their fire-truck red:
“Oh, I love . . . ” or “May I have
those shoes—so red!— when you are through?”
(Not when life is through with me,
but when I am through with them—the boots,
if that’s what she meant by the rave—
and that not long before the day
when my stockings stick through the soles
and pad over the pavement’s rough rocks.)

What is it, then, about color?
its emotional symbols, its signs?
For red, the color of fire, of danger, of blood,
of the heart and of its Valentine,
our senses and neurons
construct the connections.
How the links make the blood run the river!

Perhaps we mimic a bale of box turtles,
given extra color cones for sensing red,
whose choices—neither pale nor neutral,
but to turtles presumably useful—
elect the reddest, ripest berry,
the brightest bloom of Hibiscus sinensis,
the red-pepper eyes of a box turtle male, and
my
red
shoes.

Author Biography

Animal behaviorist and turtle cognition specialist Rosemary Lombard has one foot in the arts and humanities, the other in science. Her nonfiction story “Diode,” adapted from her WIP, Diode’s Experiment: A Box Turtle Investigates the Human World, just won the first place Kay Snow Award in the nonfiction division. Reading: Blackbird Wine Shop, Feb. 1.

Kira Clark

September 14th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink

Poet Kira Clark on the theme of “Red Shoes.”

 

These Red Hard Things

You and I moved to a small room for a brief time.
Our family dead stepped over our flattened and sleepy bodies.
In that room my dreams were alive and
took the shape of moths too distracted by the
light shooting off your face to do anything but hover around you.

I took my high heeled white shoes,
the pointed toes like an accusation,
the rounded heel an apology,
and covered them with tiny red heart stickers.
These covered shoes-these red hard things,
I danced on your face with them at night
and reminded myself, like a ritual
that the heart in you was just an eggshell,
the bursting and running yolk of you was something else entirely.
In the mornings I tried to be a blossom
in the center of your chest, tearing itself open to the soft milky light.
These days
you still have to rip yourself open
to the unbearable things in this world
and to the unbearable things nesting in you.
I know it is hard.

I told you
It is not good to live among so many beached whales!

You told me
“You don’t understand.
I am a beached whale and
you have crawled inside of me and died,
a dead thing inside of a dead thing
inside of a world that will sigh in our faces
like spidery little earthquakes,”
and so when we opened our mouths,
flies spilled out and
we were a gray, hushed tone.

Author Biography

Kira Clark hails from Oklahoma City, moved to Austin and has settled in Portland where she is happy with the rain and melancholy. She runs a poetry open mic, competed in the Portland Poetry Slam finals this year as well as contributes and edits to an experimental flash fiction press, Housefire. Her writing also appears in the recently published book, Heartbeats.

Jason Lasky – HALiterature – on America

September 14th, 2011 § 2 comments § permalink

My America, I am to trust. Why, what’s all the fuss?

My homeland security, my land of absurdity,
My streets paved with gold and blood.
My soaring, smoking towers, my transmogrified presidential powers,
My incendiary, far-reaching, democratic brotherhood.

My America I am to trust. Why, what’s all the fuss?
Whatever happened to that bright dream and promise?

My white neighbors strengthen, my blue families weaken,
My red suburban wasteland continually replicates.
My fingertips of expedience, my web-savvy convenience,
My fire-breathing, flag-waving, war-mongering state.

My America I am to trust. Why, what’s all the fuss?
Whatever happened to that bright dream and promise?

My media’s leftist agenda, my media’s rightist agenda,
My middle men and women all but confused.
My elected (un-)officials, my power-seekers in scandals,
My blazing words hurling all sorts of scathing abuse.

My America I am to trust. Why, what’s all the fuss?
Whatever happened to that bright dream and promise?

My lame ducks in rows, my (reality?-based) nightmarish shows,
My consumerist, conventional, guaranteed trash.
My starving fellows on the street, my land of plenty to eat,
My ever-burning, faith-valued, green-backed cash.

My America I am to trust. Why, what’s all the fuss?
Whatever happened to that bright dream and promise?

My eyes are heavy, but my fingers are mighty,
My repugnant, reviled, “un”patriotic reproof all but done.
My country shakily stands as, through the neck, slip the sands,
My words, my tools, are my only truthfully American weapons.

My America I do trust. But that’s not the fuss.
Whatever happened to that bright dream and promise?
Whatever happened to that bright dream and promise?
Whatever happened to that bright dream and promise?

Author Biography

Jason is an actor, playwright and poet currently living in Shanghai.  His original work has been performed in England (Nottingham University’s New Theatre), New York (Coffee Bean Productions) and Shanghai (Shanghai Repertory Theatre and HALiterature).  Currently, he is a patriot who is wondering what’s gone wrong. More of Jason’s work can be found at www.haliterature.com. 

Jason Mashak

September 14th, 2011 § 1 comment § permalink

On Somewhere Never Traveled, Gladly Beyond
Postscript to “Places”

(for Karolina Majkowska and her students)

Imagine a small boy lying
on the deep-shag carpet of his living
or rather his parents’ living or rather
the bank’s living room floor.

He is looking at, studying, a map,
thinking what it must be like to live
someplace else. After hearing
his grandpa say a Danish prayer,
his great-grandmother coughing out German,
his other Bohunk and Polack elders,
he realizes, young, he is of the world
and not of a country or race.

The boy soon tires of pronouncing
his name for Anglophiles — he knows it
doesn’t fit the language he was born to master.

Later, he gets a spinning globe
to accentuate his maps, plays a game
holding his finger on it as it spins
and wherever it stops is where he’ll go someday.
Cartography is therapy, he thinks, and so he begins
to listen — to really listen — to from
where came who and what and why.

In time, he’ll write a poem titled “Places.”

Author Biography

Jason Mashak (b.1973) lived in Michigan, Georgia, Tennessee, and Oregon before moving in 2006 to Prague, Czech Republic. He has two mostly Slovak daughters with whom he derives much inspiration. His first book of poems, Salty as a Lip, was anointed Most Poetic Book for Haters of Poetry in 2010 by Black Heart Magazine. An expanded, 2nd edition of the book is forthcoming by Haggard & Halloo (Austin, TX) sometime in 2011. Mashak’s writing can be found in numerous journals and anthologies, including a few in Czech translation.


Chris Leja

September 14th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink

Portland poet Chris Leja on the topic of rapture.

After The Rapture Had Passed

we drank like beaches
trying to swallow the ocean,
our voices, trapped in bottles
rising with the tide
(there was a message
behind the shouting.)
We made a bonfire in the front yard,
with papers and notebooks for kindling,

left a history of the people we had tried to be
smoldering in a birdbath,
a stone urn collecting the
chronology of unfortunate mentors
and indelicate lessons that had
made us so calloused.
We called it cremation,
and meant rebirth.

When the embers of old promises
suffocated the flames,
we breathed for them, sending
clouds of cinders swirling through the air—
with each exhale, we watched the ashes hover,
before they succumbed to slow descent,
a picturesque blizzard
surrounding some kind of Eden.

When the rain started, it was nothing like a baptism.
It was something holier. We stood like
the lungs of bonfires, reading aloud
whatever the flames left legible
(the words, coarse shadows
on newly golden pages).

We joked about apocalypse,
left the taste of rapture wrapped
around our tongues, as we drank
like saviors and laughed like thunder.

This is what I know of scripture—
sacred is just a word for that which rebirths us
into our bodies. It is not found in bibles,
just the remnants of bonfires
forming a galaxy around us.
When the fire swallowed everything
we’d once called holy,
we started breathing for ourselves again.

I was surprised at how much
it felt like prayer.

Author Biography

Chris Leja is a senior at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon. He has represented LC three times nationally at the College Union Poetry Slam Invitational, is a founding member of the Sparrow Ghost Collective in Portland, and just released his first chapbook, A Chronology of Quiet Thefts. He also has an impressive collection of snakeskin shoes and a peculiar affinity for the word “vernacular”. You can contact him at cleja@lclark.edu.

Bjorn Wahlstrom

September 14th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink

Bjorn Wahlstrom shares the digitally captured poetry of his home, Shanghai, and of other locations around the PRC.
on Somewhere Never Traveled, Gladly Beyond

Bjorn Wahlstrom, "You Are Here" (Pudong International Airport, Shanghai)

"I Am Here," Jinxian Lu, Shanghai

"We Built You a New House, Mom." Burnt down house, Jiaozhou Lu, Shanghai

"Quagmire Factory Bathroom," in Suzhou

"Escape Hatch," at home in Shanghai

"Living Out of My Suitcase," at home, Shanghai

"Neighbor's Pet Roosters," Yongjia Lu, Shanghai

"Rapture," Jiulong Lake

"The Jesus Church," abandoned village near Ningbo.

"Truck Driver's Bed," Shilong, Dongguan

"Instruction - Three Only," Kangding Lu bar, Shanghai

"Instruction - Three Only," Kangding Lu bar, Shanghai

"Shakespeare Before the Typhoon: Last Message to the World," Huaihai Lu, Shanghai

"Chai, Slotted for Demolition," Changle Lu, Shanghai

"Uighyr Noodle Man," Pujiang Town, Shanghai

"Cell Phone Numbers for Sale, Shaanxi Nan Lu, Shanghai

Artist Biography

Born in Sweden, Bjorn Wahlstrom is a writer and publisher living in Shanghai where he works, writes and prays. www.haliterature.com

Ginger wRong Chen – Groupthink – America

September 14th, 2011 § 1 comment § permalink

An American in Shanghai

Saturday night, when Benjamin Martin set foot in the JZ Club near the corner of Fuxing Xi Lu and Yongfu Lu, he found himself in a packed music box, the music venue in town, and it was already full, like every weekend.

Benjamin was in a high-spirited hunting mood.

A handsome man in his mid-thirties, tall and well-built, he believed in taking good care of himself by eating well and strictly sticking to his exercise schedule, even reading, both Internet articles and books, so he could be as physically and intellectually fit as possible. He had been trying his best to train himself into a Renaissance man, equally conversant about wine as well as baseball, the Chinese Tang dynasty’s history as well as the American Civil War‘s, and Shanghai women as well as Paris Fashion Week, all with the goal of easily passing as a perfect lover and a brilliant mind.

A young Chinese girl was looking at his direction. She was a pretty girl about 20 years old, with silky black hair, full lips, and of average height, but with lines of pleasing proportions, with a small, tight,waist that created an illusion that it could be easily held in one hand.

When her eyes saw Benjamin, an almost unnoticeable smile of desire crawled up to her eyebrows.

Benjamin deftly returned her interest.

She turned her head aside at once, pretending to be not interested, but couldn’t help laying her eyes back on him again. He took the hint and went over to her.

“Hi,” he extended his hand, “I’m Benjamin.”

“Spring,” she replied, taking his hand with much delight.

“What a beautiful name!”, for Benjamin never forgot to pay any girl a compliment, “And, may I say, you look stunning!”

She cast her eyes down slightly, however, the pleased flushing shown on her cheeks didn’t escape his observant eyes.

“Are you Shanghainese?” he asked her in the casual way that people have when
they say, “how are you?”.

“No. I’m from Tianjin, the city very close to Beijing.”

Her answer relieved him somewhat. Shanghainese girls had gained some notoriety for being too practical, calculating, and tough to deal with. For Benjamin, it was always a good sign to know that the girl he was hitting on was not a local.

Yes, he admitted to himself that he was holding a prejudice against Shanghainese women based on stereotypes. But, he also justified his prejudice by reasoning, “I’m a very busy man. I don’t have time to waste on proving a stereotype is right or wrong.”

However when it came to himself, Benjamin was more open-minded and impartial, which was also quite human, since we all tend to love ourselves a little more, and was generally quite satisfied with himself. He loved what he saw in the mirror every morning, enjoyed what his mind had to say every day, and took great pleasure in how his body performed every night.

If there was one itsy-bitsy regret, it probably would be that he was an American. Oh, please don’t get him wrong, Benjamin loved his country. Most of the time, he was proud to be a great Yankee. Sometimes, when he crossed borders, he would hold his passport in hand and confidently grin, thinking, “With a U.S. passport, the world is yours.”

But, whenever with other cosmopolitans in this oriental melting pot, he couldn’t help thinking that,were he born French or British, how much easier it would be for him to make others believe he was an interesting and intelligent person, because he would have had better stereotypes to work with in dealing with them, since Europeans are supposed to be cultured and sophisticated, unlike Americans.

As an American, Benjamin was supposed to be rude and stupid. He admitted that there certainly were rude and stupid Americans, whom even he looked down on. But Benjamin certainly wanted to make the point that not all Americans are rude and stupid, and there were also plenty of polite and smart ones, like him, to say the least. So, for him, the phrase, “You are so American” became the worst insult he could get, and he hated every syllable of it. It felt unfair, because it was such an easy comment to make, it also wiped out all of his efforts at being a true gentleman, and, worst of all, Benjamin couldn’t even argue about it, because he was an American.

“What about you,” he heard Spring asking, “where are you from?”
He flashed a charming wink, “Everywhere.”

She giggled at his answer, “Interesting!”  In fact, she couldn’t care less.

He knew very well his “everywhere” would work on a girl: it was cute, indicated an atmosphere of adventure and mystery, and girls liked that.

“Can I get you anything to drink?”

She nodded her head, “Dirty Martini,” eagerly accepting his offer.

When Benjamin came back from the bar with two dirty Martinis in hands, he found Spring had another companion by her side, a stout man in his 40s, with red skin and dirty brown hair.  When he came up to her, she introduced them to each other, “ Benjamin, this is David.”

They simultaneously said, “Hey”, and nodded greetings.

“Where are you from?” David spoke in a drawl, coming from through his nose than his mouth.

Benjamin understood his cute “everywhere” answer wouldn’t do here, as it would be too obvious that he was trying to avoid something. So, he replied, “The States. You?”

“Australia.”

Benjamin gave a slight sigh of relief inside his head. Thank God, it was Australia,  as Australians were regarded as equally rude, if not ruder, and crude as Americans.

.
Just then, a third man came up to this little group. He had dark hair and a slightly-snarled face, somewhat like a half-ironed walnut; but also looked stylish in his well-fitted suit, with a bright-yellow-colored dress shirt, and an aura of better-than-anyone-else.

He greeted Spring with a “Buona Sera, Bella!!!,” threw up his hands dramatically and hugged her like a bear crushing a frightened bird. Then, he turned to David and slapped him on the back, “Hey, buddy. It’s been a long time. How is everything?”  Finally, he noticed Benjamin.

“Benjamin,” Benjamin reached forth his hand, “Nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you! Donato. Donato Barboni.” He spoke in the romantic, singing tones of the unmistakeable Italian accent, “Where are you from?”

A bit self-consciously, “The States,” Benjamin replied in a muffled voice.
“Oh…”, Donato smiled, “the U.S.”

“Was it a smirk?”, Benjamin thought to himself.

Evidently, Spring, David, and Donato already knew each other, so they naturally went into their catching-up ritual.

Donato came first, and started briefing what was new with him, with his plans to import Italian wine to Shanghai. He was very excited about this idea, and soon began counting the restaurants he planned to contact one by one, Da Marco, Issimo, Gennaro…
“Wine is so hot here right now, and it’s continually getting hotter. I’m also thinking about organizing a wine tour in Italy next year,” and his voice rose with excitement.

Armed with the spirit of self-advertising, Benjamin realized here was the place to jump in to make the point that he was more than an average American, and was, in fact, a man of culture, “That’s interesting. At least it will give Chinese more to taste and talk about than Chateau Lafite and Great Wall.”

He was happy with what he came up with, because it showed his knowledge of the current trends in food and drink, and what tickled Chinese consumers,too.

Benjamin further amplified his statement’s effect, by rambling on, with utmost enthusiasm, about how Chinese nouveau-riche are obsessed with big names in the wine world, without really caring about the taste of the actual product, the rising price of Bordeaux wines, French culture, New Orleans, Jazz, Hip-Hop, the Taiwanese rap singer Jay Chou, the differences between the Chinese and Latin writing systems, the differences between simplified Chinese characters and traditional ones, the lack of “R”  and “Sh” sounds in Japanese, the difficulties of understanding Japanese-speakers’ accents when they speak English, how Koreans ended up with a bad reputation among their neighbors due to their claims to inventing all of the great Asian cultures, Korean barbecue, Turkish kebab, Egypt and Africa, the latter’s many wars and resources, and, finally, back to China.

All of those words and topics flew out of his mouth like a stream of lotuses, with a lovely, smooth and delicate rhythm. When he uttered the last period of his last statement on them, the other three persons around him all appeared mesmerized and stupefied.

“What were we talking about at the first place?”, they all wondered in their bewilderment.

“Was it one of my never-go-anywhere-but-good-for-a-little-talk business ideas?,” Donato recalled vaguely to himself.

“Jeez, this guy is a talker!”,  the vanquished David thought, while guzzling down his beer, which was already getting warm during Benjamin’s world-tour speech.

Overwhelmed, Spring gazed at Benjamin admiringly, “Wow, there are so many things about China he knows that  I don’t even know. What a great mind he has! And,” with a  beam spreading over her pinkish face, “what a great body he has too!”

There was a prolonged vacant pause among the four-some following Benjamin’s speech,  as if all of the available topics had been exploited that night, and now there was only awkward silence left for them to enjoy.

Benjamin again bravely stepped in, opening his mouth, “You know…”

Before Benjamin finished his first sentence, David jumped up, “Oh, excuse me, I have to go to say hello to an old friend,” and vaguely pointed at the bar area, before hurrying away like a kid escaping from his principal’s lecture.

.“Ah, I just remember I need to get up early tomorrow.”, Donato spoke as he made up his excuse.

“You do? It’s Sunday tomorrow,” asked Spring.

“Yeah, yeah, you know, the wine thing, the thing I was talking about,” he stammered, “I need to get up early to get to that, the wine thing.”

The three of them exchanged cordial farewells, and Donato left.

Now only Spring and Benjamin remained

“Do you need to get up early tomorrow, too?”, Benjamin asked Spring.

She shook her head.

“Do you want to watch a DVD with me?”, Benjamin asked her, throwing just a little sexual intonation into his voice to add to his triumph.

Spring nodded her head vigorously.

* * *

“Come on in.” Benjamin said, as he opened the door of his apartment. When it was shut, Spring turned her face towards him and looked into his eyes with much tenderness. He pressed her closer to him and gently pressed his lips on her eyelids, then on her little nose. But before his lips moved onto hers, she said in a flattering tone, “You are so American, rule them all.”

Ever on the alert, Benjamin froze still, “What do you mean?!”

“I mean you are the man of the men, the ruler of them all…”

“No, the one you said before that,”the smile had gone off his face.

“Before that?” she thought for a second. “The men I’ve dated?”

“No, the one after that.”

“You are an American?”

“Yes, right there! You said I am so American.”

“You are! You are American, aren’t you?”. Spring was innocently confused.

“I am. But when people say, ‘You are so American,’ they mean something else.”

“What something else?”, she asked, genuinely unsure, then added to clear things up, “I love Americans, they are macho and tough, I love that in a man,” and leaned in to him, tipsily and flirtatiously.

“Oh, no, no! Now, you are humoring me,” as Benjamin held Spring by the arms and pushed her away a little.

“You just told me you have dated men from other countries. If you mean what you just said, I want you to be more specific, I want you to write down the pros and cons of Americans point by point. I want you to prove to me I am the best, the most interesting, the most macho of them all.”

“Now?” she asked in the midst of intoxicated and dizzy air, “It’s three o’clock in the morning.”

“Yes. Now.” He was determined.

“I thought you wanted to…”, she rolled her eyes, “…watch a DVD.”

“Yes, that too. But this is important! Important to me!”.  To explain himself better, Benjamin went on, “Just think about this, if I had a Japanese girlfriend before, don’t you want to know who I prefer, you or that Japanese girl?”

“You had a Japanese girlfriend?”, she became curious.

“It’s a hypothesis.”

Without understanding him, she followed her own thoughts, “Where did you meet the Japanese girl? Japanese, they seldom mingle with other expats here.”

“No. It’s a hypothesis. It’s not real. What I am trying to say is in a similar circumstance, you’d be just like me.  Race envy and rivalry are deep inside us, every one of us.”

Spring studied his eyes for a long while, then finally said, “Did you just say girlfriend? You want a serious relationship between us? I thought this is a one-night thing,” she was almost moved.

“No, no, no. You’re not getting the point here. I am not talking about us. I am talking about me. I didn’t say anything about us being boyfriend-girlfriend. This is a one-night thing.”

She widened her eyes, looking hurt, as there is always something that is better left unsaid, even though everyone knows the truth.

Benjamin couldn’t believe he had been talked into a corner by this girl. Or, was it only by himself?

“You know, you are so not like the Americans I’ve ever known,” she tilted her head backwards.

Right then, he felt all of his night’s long work had paid off, and a deep relief and contentment welled up from the bottom of his heart.

Spring stood up straight  and declared, “You are so sensitive and…”, searching hard for the right word from her limited vocabulary,  until she finally found it, “weird.”

She then opened the door herself and stomped out of Benjamin’s apartment without looking back.

After Benjamin shut the door, he leaned against it, like waking from a dream, and, for the first time that night, asked himself, “Didn’t I go out to get a girl in the first place?”

“Well,” quickly brushing this fuzzy thought aside, “at least I am so not like the Americans she has ever known,” and the corners of his mouth began to curl up with self-assurance.
A charming smile hovering about his lips was reflected on the mirror hanging by the doorside. Benjamin was unspeakably satisfied with himself.

 

Author Biography

Ginger is a female writer; wRong is an incorrect writer; Chen is a Chinese writer.Ginger+wRong+Chen is a female incorrect Chinese writer, who manipulates the art of storytelling into short stories, film and TV scripts.

China vs. America: Pandemic Diplomacy – Poetry, Art and Fiction

September 14th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink

AMERICA

Superman Down - Photography - Jillian Brall of Unshod Quills

In June 2011, UQ’s sister site, HALiterature, an English language independent press and journal based in Shanghai, China, conducted an exchange program of sorts with members of the Unshod Quills Writer’s Collective.

Challenge: Panda. Write on the theme of pandas? The Shodomites went nuts, and the HALites went even nuttier, and the results were mad, bad and dangerous to know, like if Byron had been a panda, especially in some of the HAL stories.

Unshod Quills asked WM Butler, director of HAL’s own writer’s group, Groupthink, to ask his people to participate in yet another sister-lit spit swap; this time on the theme of America. Lovely, if only slightly troubled, America.

In response, a few members of Unshod Quills Writers Collective threw some letters, and a little art, on the topic, as well.

Simply follow the links next to each author or artist’s name to see his or her contribution.

Now, where the in the holy hell is Woody Guthrie when we need him?

MADE IN CHINA – Haliterature’s Groupthinkers on America

“America is a feudalistic dynasty…” Populated by bunnies!

Lucinda Holmes of Groupthink – “Bunny America: An Alternative Wiki Entry”

 
“She was so Chinese, that she was Mexican.”
 
Renee Reynolds of Groupthink – “Satellite American”
 
 
 
 
“A magnificent eagle with a broken wing.”

Mark Talacko of Groupthink – “Wings” 
 
 
 “You know, you are not like the Americans I have ever known.”

Ginger wRong Chen of Groupthink – “An American in Shanghai” 
 
 
 “A donut… an incomplete cake with a hole in the middle.”

Katrina Hamlin of Groupthink – “The Beautiful Country” 

 
 “Starving fellows on the street…”

Jason Lasky of Groupthink – “America”

LITTLE PINK HOUSES – Unshod Quills Writers Collective on America

Images from Eva Steil, of Unshod Quills

“My tongue worries.”

Wendy Ellis of Unshod Quills – “America”

 
Images of American Mythology, as originally printed in Hoardmag.

Viv G of Unshod Quills – “American Mythology”

 
“Yo yo yo turn it up. This is the best part.” 

Jillian Brall of Unshod Quills – Out of This World

 
“Bite down hard.”
 

Jason Mashak of Unshod Quills – “American History – Excerpt”

 
 
“I came home from the war..”

Mark Brunke of Unshod Quills –  Transubstantiation in America

“Stoic, I populate.”

Dena Rash Guzman of Unshod Quills – Salt Box

 
 

Mark Brunke

September 14th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink

Art and poetry on red shoes and rapture. 

 

Rapture - Mark Brunke

 

Red Shoes - Mark Brunke

 

Love and Coffee
on the theme of rapture

 

I was invited

I remember,

Accepted

Into you again, and

Again, always first

Into your smile,

Then mud-spattered in

Tart tart pale sweet

Watery drags of tired

Love, tiered on down plants,

Down blankets and tear drops

On your June balcony,

Hanging on a telephone

Wire, a memory buzz of

Coffee alone in

A tired scarf while

You turn towards

An intersection,

A receding rail, training

A fading exhaustion.

My fingers, I think,

The left ring finger,

Hurt at the

Distal phalange.

Stiff and bent

For decades.

I was

Thinking of your car,

The pink engine

With its thin chrome

And motherly exhaust. I

Was thinking of your

Lilies, underfed

In their office corner

And I was thinking

Of your brown basket,

A threadbare wicker,

Burning in its hidden

Flourescent shadow.

I was thinking about

Baking in your kitchen,

With its flavored garage

And rising goldfish,

Watching the timer

Expire and listening

To that hideous fountain

Babble

As it packs for winter

Elsewhere.

 

Author Biography

Mark Brunke lives and works in Seattle, Washington.

Where am I?

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