June 19th, 2012 § § permalink
On the themes conspiracy, leftovers, slut, and the last word
Last Sunset
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2lWo7oLyrI]
About Mine
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtpdfbR6HHE]
Juke Bird
Irish whiskey and fanny sweat
Stale wine like turpentine
Sky white blight
In the late blue night
Red hide so slightly hidden Forbidden
Vaseline and penicillin
Tip the waitress
Save the Donkeys
To learn
The good lie
The face
And then a smile
May be genuine
Or not
That Day Over the Belva-Straight Creek Mine
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlZUPg2GSI0]
Author Biography
William S. Tribell is an American poet living in Budapest, Hungary.
June 19th, 2012 § § permalink
On the theme of leftovers
This Is How We Illuminate
Our skin trembled
Plastic bag in a jacket
On the cold slide
The world yellow’d with goose shit Butterflies bursting
We imagined
A prettier picture
Than this
Let’s chase geese
Until their bodies explode Pepper our dreams
Let’s not tell our parents
I wait for the sun rise Walking to school
It happens over the ponds A thickening of wings Pulse of light
Her husband will not go As elegantly
Rising swiftly
Her brain releases its fruit Inside her a tiny pocket Opens
She climbs through and Goes swimming
For the last time
The juice she tastes is Pure they say
She takes mouthfuls of Light
The geese so tiny
Like they don’t exist That’s how it works
Air allows me
Follow their flight up up With thrusting legs Giving wind
The thrill of that gap
The body’s give
Back into release Shutting my mouth Around air
She no longer needs
A hunger
Left behind
Author Biography
Katharine Hargreaves lives in Minneapolis. She is the Artistic Director of Whole Beast Rag and blogger PUPPETMOUTHE. Her work can be found in Paper Darts Literary Magazine, Notes from the Underground, INK NODE, Decadent Selections: A Collection by the Bitter Enemies, and Whole Beast Rag.
June 19th, 2012 § § permalink
On the themes of conspiracy, cigarettes, and leftovers
photo – Ryanne Hoogeboom
conspiracy
photo – Ryanne Hoogeboom
cigarettes
photo – Ryanne Hoogeboom
leftovers
Artist Biography
Ryanne Hoogeboom is a naturalist and photographer living on Whidbey Island. This is her first publication. Her work can be viewed at Buffalo11press.com
June 19th, 2012 § § permalink
On the themes of Amelia Earhart and slut
Ballet
People laugh when I tell them I took
ballet, as if to say, you?! As if to say
the son of a high school dropout, the son
of a US Marine Corps DI, the son
of an unschooled lummox and general
brute of a lumpen thug could never lift
into the air and soar above
an audience. Well, I didn’t soar, I
didn’t climb into the air, but I
fluttered the wings the teacher told me I
had, and I felt their feathers extend, I
saw the dust motes swirl on the floorboards
below and dance dizzyingly into
shafts of light pouring over the rooftop
of Klosty’s Hardware before floating
back down to the polyurethane.
To the Best Friend of the Girl in the Mr Peanut Costume, Halloween, 1986
Thank you for agreeing to come with me
into the men’s room of Original
Ray’s on 82nd & Columbus
while the pie we ordered with the olives,
extra cheese and anchovies baked
in the brick oven. And thank you
for opening your blouse when I asked you
and for kissing so passionately, like
you meant it when I lifted your ass on
the dirty sink and hiked the school-girl skirt
over your waist and jammed you like
I meant it, and did, and still do. Christ, I’m
seeing stars here just recalling the way
your saddle shoe rested against a mop
bucket filled with scummy water reeking
with disinfectant and how the smells
we made together in the sewage funk
swirled into the raunch of the room with
the roaches crawling across misogynist
graffiti and the lock half on a door
we couldn’t close. And thank you for saying
thank you when I sunk it in and thank you
for making me feel what I haven’t felt
in so many years. You were from, what, Maine?
I loved the way your best friend in
the Mr Peanut costume waited for us
to emerge, the bubbling hot pizza
cooling below the cigarette she smoked
in a holder, like she was the one just come
from the rest room. The pizza was so good.
Sometimes I look for you on Facebook but
I don’t have a name. Sometimes I walk on
Columbus Avenue, but the Ray’s moved
on. Have you? I know I have, but still …
Author Biography
Tim Tomlinson is a co-founder of New York Writers Workshop, and co-author of its popular text, The Portable MFA in Creative Writing. He is the fiction editor of the webzine Ducts. Recent work appears or is forthcoming in Asia Writes, The New Poet, the New York Quarterly, Pank, Prick of the Spindle, Salt River Review, and in the anthology Long Island Noir (Akashic Books). He was featured poet in Saxifrage Press (Dec 2011). “Blue Surge, with Prokoviev,” in Sea Stories was nominated for Best of the Net 2011.
June 19th, 2012 § § permalink
On the themes of Amelia Earhart, slut, cigarettes and the last word
Becoming Amelia
After the crash, sea turtles ask god the big questions. I toss them day-old katydids, stale slices of moths’ wings, my dented zipper pull.
Always indecent, the river lowers her hem another inch, invites married men to slap her banks.
Her fish flash their scales for the fan dance,
but anyone can tell they’re on their last grasp.
Are those searchers or leapers lined up on the bridge? Distance over water refracts the angles,
makes the river lick the sky. If she tastes
like lace, I’m climbing up there to kick her ass.
There are no rocks in the air pockets;
this is not one of those times. Death does not become anyone, least of all me. I’ve sewn my lungs shut in case the sky gets wild,
and tosses her hair. Clouds stick to the soul
but don’t leave the patterns you expect.
I’ve heard there are women who behave,
walk backwards, never show their knees to strangers.
My legs are criss-crossed with tying down. Silver
at throat and hand at hem. A compass always points north, but sand dollars hide five bone-bleached doves. When I break them open, their beaks will carve me wings.
It Wasn’t a Red Riding Hood
It was a crimson corset, leather and laced tight.
But don’t tell mom that—hard enough to talk her out of pink.
Dads, on the other hand, always know which way their daughters lie. Don’t hurt each other, he said. But he gave me the axe anyway.
The rope I found in Grandma’s closet—she always did
have a dark streak tucked beneath her bonnet. Listen, she told me once, there is nothing about prey that you don’t already know
in that mossed space between your thighs.
Again and again, I find him in the woods, that clearing where paths wind figure eights around fragile trunks.
When he turns his lips inside out, bone needles pin
me to the pines, scratch the skin from the blades of my back.
Beyond the hedge, the washerwomen spread stained
clothes in the current, hearing nothing by their own dirty song. A single shirt, tattered and torn, breaks free,
runs red as a tongue to lap wild at the river’s bend.
Look, I say to him. I unweave the skin laced
through my breast bone, wrap it taut around his throat. You’re a dog. You’ve always been a dog.
Tomorrow, he’ll growl and sniff at the damp slit of my skirt.
I’ll clench his leash in my mouth and beg to be dragged through thorns.
|
|
Cigarettes mourn the loss of your mouth.
The first chapter of a matchbook tells the whole story.
My coughs wake the neighbors. They think I have a dog child purpose.
|
|
There is nothing to filter me from these dangerous substances.
My nails curve black with the skin of your ash.
I have forgotten how to suck.
That cherry glow is only a prettier will-o-wisp. Astray isn’t even the word. Gifts of antique ashtrays in the shape of donkey’s asses.
|
|
Endings are hard.
Sometimes endings aren’t endings at all.
Just burning too close to the fingers. You forgot to let go.
|
Ancient Chinese Secret
Used to be how to get clothes clean, no, white. How to remove the stains of your life with a smile and a closing
of the big square door. Sunday mornings tasted like cartoon explosions and cereal-coated decoder rings,
smelled like the hiss of the hot iron
on a vodka-sprayed hem. Somewhere
in TV Land, a woman smiled for a camera.
Who knew a woman could smile like that, white boxes of her teeth lined up like machines. Chew, chew, chew, rinse, spit. Repeat.
Now Sundays sound like a cycle of despair
and fragrance-free soap. Everything’s washed in
cold and rinsed in lukewarm. Even Monday’s panties.
The secret is the coverings don’t matter. This shirt, these pants, that sock,
you can’t read the language of their seams.
The secret is written on my body.
It’s not ancient. It’s not even that secret. Come closer. Spin the dial. Pull the wet truths from my gaping mouth.
***
Author Biography
Shanna Germain is a writer and editor. Her work appears in Absinthe Literary Review, Best American Erotica, Pank, Salon and Storyglossia. www.shannagermain.com
June 19th, 2012 § § permalink
On the theme of leftovers
Left
(for Maurice Sendak)
Our room keeps some spirit of the congress we held inside, trapping ghosts
who hang in the air like far-off birdsong.
I cannot disperse these dybbukim,
I cannot open the windows.
I can only peel the poster gum from the walls and sweep the sugar from the countertops.
I can only clean so long before crying
like an old man cries
for his friends whose departure he cannot delay.
Is there lamb’s blood on the lintel?
I almost look, wondering
at the quietness that lingers
like lipstick stains on a wineglass rim.
Author Biography
Patrick Bahls is a mathematics professor and a writer. He makes use of poetry in teaching math. He lives in the mountains of western North Carolina with his wife and pets.
June 18th, 2012 § § permalink
On the theme of last word
Writer At Home
She mocks me
as she returns from teaching.
I sit at my computer, writing.
The Chinese word for writer is a cruel joke—
zuojia—
work at home.
It’s not a culturally practical profession.
She likes to replace the first character of the word
with a Chinese homophone,
changing the meaning to sit at home.
I go for a walk
to think and write
and drink Tsingtao at a restaurant across the street
where waiters don’t mock me with their language.
Author Biography
Matthew Lubin is an ESL instructor in New Jersey. He spent almost four years in Shenzhen, China. He writes about his travels at http://BoozeFoodTravel.com. He is also publisher and editor of Terracotta Typewriter at www.tctype.com.
June 18th, 2012 § § permalink
On the theme of the last word
Editor’s note: the following snapshots are the artist’s survey of her mother’s battle with stage four lung cancer.
dado gyure – The Last Word
dado gyure – the last word
dado gyure – the last word
dado gyure – the last word
dado gyure – The Last Word
dado gyure – the last word
dado gyure – the last word
Artist Biography
dado is a visual artist in the chicagoland area. she is raising two children. www.dadosite.com
June 18th, 2012 § § permalink
On the theme of the last word
The Apologist
Orange lilies are not an apology. Maybe crimson columbines, if you picked them naked,
were caught by a ranger in your all-together, and given a ticket, yeah, then maybe it’s an apology.
If you offered your herbarium of pilfered wildflowers you’d pressed and labeled: “Flowers of the North Fork of the American River, of which I am most proud,” with taxonomic rank penciled in next to each entry: class, subclass, order and species, then maybe it’s an apology.
A recognition somehow of effort, not a florist phone call delivering flowers unseen.
Orange lilies are not an apology. And don’t even think about roses–don’t–no matter the color. A rose is just a weed in the cornfield of this argument.
Author Biography:
Maria Garcia Teutsch is a poet and editor. She has published over 20 journals of poetry as editor-in-chief of the Homestead Review, published by Hartnell College in Salinas, and Ping-Pong journal of art and literature, published by the Henry Miller Library in Big Sur, California. She has forthcoming work in the Whole Beast Rag, The Porter Gulch Review, Women’s Arts Quarterly, and the anthology, “Where Nothing Happens, the Best of the Henry Miller Library.” She is currently working on a manuscript titled, ‘American Poet Living in a Muslim Country.’ For more: mariateutsch.blogspot.com
June 18th, 2012 § § permalink
First on the theme of slut, and then conspiracy
Pre Natal
to anyone 24ish years old or younger
this is a good news bad news situation
the bad news
I fucked your mom
or more accurately she fucked me
You see before the chickens in the yard before the knitting club and the vintage dress store before stepfathers
before life partners before communal living before she knew how to call you out on your shit
your mom
was a powerful
beautiful
slut
her band van pulled up in front of my sad excuse for a group house with a letterpress in the basement
and a witches coven in the attic
Scrawled in gold spray paint on the side of the van “Abandon all hope ye who enter here”
the band was the Cunning Stunts they played in our living room they trashed everything including us
your mom put a leash around my neck and walked me through my paces
though I knew I insisted I was not her breed she said I could be her companion animal for awhile
how I ended up in the back of that van is beyond me
but there was a button on the dashboard that said Diamandis Hyperdrive
they hit that button so many times
until we took off like the Millabian Falcon passed through the Orion belt and into the Midwest
where we fucked in fields we fucked in the bathroom of a Denny’s, a Motel 6,
a game room at Oral Roberts University,
we fucked wherever your mom told us to
because she had my balls in her hand
and like my grandfather always told me “Son, when a woman has your balls in her hand she decides the game
and all you can do is try to rack up the highest score possible”
your mom made GG Allin cry
Courtney Love cried uncle
your mom drove the moral majority out of the state
your mom stands for reproductive rights
your mom stands for herself
your mom stands for no shit from nobody especially her punk kid who she loves with all her heart
so I say this good news to you dear children as you go out into the dark night
find yourself the girl with the torn fishnets and a pretty pink satin shirt that says high-voltage
because the sluts have everything to teach you
and sluts
make
the
best
moms
Spectrums
On the light rail
Who are all these drunken middle aged dental hygienists and sheet metal workers?
Why are they singing?
Then like a portable tri-lateral commission
awareness spills over me
The Rolling Stones concert.
Saw a ghost last night.
After several Spanish Coffees and talk about tent revivals
and moving to Hong Kong to install 4.6 miles of stainless steel pipe
painted incrementally different shades of pastels at the new airport
In the perfectly apportioned cigar bar
an amber light jetting out over everything
mosaic tile patterned emanating
Steven, the bartender, mixes and delivers
he has the assuredness to advise a student waitress
not to buy a piece of radical Ukrainian art,
it’s a slow night
advantages and disadvantages to this
boredom creeps in from everywhere, and it’s hard to ignore
the ignorant
if they choose to find their way into your spectrum.
We are that uncertainty
The two tipsy males, striking impassioned
fake flower and sublime cherubic
manic melancholia,
“I want to sell my paintings for a million dollars,” you say
“Buy a loft in Greenwich Village and the whole thing.”
Steve says, “It’s just that easy.” with a sly over-sexed smirk to his lips.
The muse lights up your head on stage.
“Say that again, but this time don’t wash away.”
“You sure do have a lot of butt rockers up here. Is there some kind of special school for them?”
Turning knobs on the microwave turning suburban kids into pansy covered photons as Paul came over and everybody watched his new dance. Smoked some pot and laughed.
Morrissey finally arrives. The door will open by itself, letting in the ancient delirium, well, not really that ancient, just since Queen Is Dead.
Swaying teenage drunk and totally out of whack with the Catholic school girls.
David Foster Wallace is alive and writing the latest Aaron Sorkin novel. He is tooling through the Malibu hills in his 66’ Morgan, looking desperately for Deepak Chokra’s party. “Where is that Hindi bastard?” he belts out scornfully pulling yet another hit off the jug of Dexedrine and Ether.
Waking in your seat as the Amtrak pulls into Vancouver
you see people being loaded onto the train in plastic bags marked center for disease control.
And you think to yourself, those must be some really cheap seats.
Author Biography
Reuben Nisenfeld is a writer/performer living in Portland, Oregon. He is member of several comedic organizations, has written one man shows, taught theater to children, and has been writing poetry and fiction for 30 years. He says he was recently awakened from a 10 year poetry hibernation by Unshod Quills and thus owes them a huge debt of gratitude. Unshod Quills says, pshaw.