Unshod Quills

on the theme of Dancing About Architecture

NO RUNNING

I went to the bank
I stood in line and looked at myself
in the security camera
a man ran into the bank
everyone turned to look at him
he ran to the little table that holds deposit slips
he got a deposit slip
he ran to the drinking fountain across the room
he got a drink of water
he ran over to the information table
he got a lollipop out of the bowl
he ran a circle around the line of people staring at him
he ran outside

I went to the library
a woman ran in the door
she ran through the lobby
past the computers
the librarians were aghast
she ran around in the magazine room
she knocked down a few books in the fiction section
a few people looked up from their reading
she ran out the door

I went to Jiffy Lube
I checked in with the guys outside
I went into the waiting room that smells like
oil and coffee
I got a cup of coffee with powdered creamer
a man ran in the door
he picked up a magazine
he sat on a chair across from me
he turned upside down and had his feet
sticking up and his head on the floor
they called my name to get my car
I went home

Author Biography

Khadija Anderson returned in 2008 to her native Los Angeles after 18 years exile in Seattle. Khadija’s poetry has been published in Pale House (forthcoming), The Ark Magazine, Unfettered Verse, CommonLine Project, Qarrtsiluni, Gutter Eloquence, Unlikely Stories, The Citron Review, Killpoet, Wheelhouse 9, and Phantom Seed among other wonderful publications. Her poem Islam for Americans was nominated for a 2009 Pushcart Prize. Khadija holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University LA and her first book will be published through Writ Large Press in 2012.

on Joan of Arc

joan

i learned about joan of arc later than i should have
she of remarkable youth and tenacity
guided by faith and madness

joan’s would make such a great autobiography
to tattoo upon my dominant hand
if i still shaved my head
and fucked with the world
if i were still 24

what was she like
before the fire
the girl on the horse
i wonder if i would think her insane
or just another human trying to make it through

i wonder what my father knows about joan
i wonder what kinds of things go through his head
as his life, measured in calendar days and timed doses
falls through the narrow net
filling the bottom until there’s nothing left on top

he raised three daughters
i feel like he should have been the one to tell me about joan
it would have helped

to empower my girlhood
and lend shape to a shifting life
instead, i always waited for the other boot to drop
waited for the coast to clear
and then searched for the straps in the rubble

my father will die soon
diagnosis means i don’t need a vision
i wonder if joan had to be told or if she already knew?

and i wonder how she felt
when the fire was lit
did that tenacity stay with her?
and when the last of the coals were raked
did she know she was gone?

Author Biography

x. joloronde is a west coast girl living and writing in boston.

two short stories on the theme of love

Test Pattern

Sarah’s white dressing gown is hanging on the nails driven into the window sash. She likes to hang it over the window by the TV at night, since there is no curtain. This way she can turn on the television and watch in peace without the intrusion of headlights or moonlight or any other light, no noise of anything moving or breathing, just her and the soft blinkering picture, the gentle hum of the various machines in her home. She mentally takes inventory, the things that hum and make noise in this room, all of them powered on for some reason, as if it’s the noise which comforts: Sharp 50 inch screen TV, which had taken three men to get it into place; Sony DVD player; Panasonic VHS player; Sony Playstation, Nintendo Gamecube; a Hewlett Packard stack with 160 gigs of memory, a gig of RAM, and a flat-screen monitor currently displaying moving pictures of fish, though the picture changes every time her mailer checks the mail, usually every two minutes; two digital clocks, one of them a clock radio that Corey uses when he doesn’t feel like coming in the room to sleep with her, so he can wake up to Howard Stern. He used to wake up to the feel of her against him. The remote feels warm in her hand from where it’s been lodged against her thigh. She’s gone through the channels and not found anything. She’s paged through the on-demand screens full of soft-core porn and other films and found nothing. Corey’s CDs are boxed in alphabetically ordered milk crates against the wall, but there’s nothing there to listen to. She remembers movies she seen that she liked, the one about the falling building with Steve McQueen, Towering Inferno, that’s it. She remembers how cute OJ was in that movie as some guy named Harry Jernigan, as if any black man has ever had that name. There was another one, a really freaky one, where the TV came alive, turned into a lurid pair of lips and talked someone into it, talked the man into getting naked, talked him into delivering himself naked into her cathode embrace, where he was promptly eaten or something. This reminds her of the cute little blonde girl from Poltergeist, which somehow brings her to Showgirls, row upon row of bare-boobed dancers being tweaked and ogled by some men who purportedly employed them, how Corey had come out with her afterward shaking his long head of hair, how they’d made love in the car after laughing at the silliness, all that bare flesh and awkward pool-fucking exciting the loins in spite of its awful putrid badness and gratuitous everything. She remembers watching some hard stuff with Corey, how his eyes had been following the actor performing the blowjob, how he’d asked her to get a boob job after. She knew it was wrong, but she liked the way these women looked, and she knew he did, so why not, as it wasn’t hurting anyone. She sits in her bra and panties, thinks of stripping down the rest of the way for Corey before he opens the door. The thought excites her, and she reaches behind her back and unclasps the hooks, and the TV goes out with a pop and the house is dark. Sarah curses, walks over to the wall and wiggles the cable connection. It seems slightly loose so she turns it a few times, her hard breasts pushed against the warm screen of the TV and that TV-eater-of-people movie comes to mind again and she moves back, fumbles for the remote on the sofa, raps it against her hands, presses first the TV button then the cable, but it simply won’t turn on. Time passes. She can’t tell how much, as she doesn’t own a watch and the sim-card in her cell-phone has gone hay-wire. Corey’s working late tonight, Sarah guesses. If she could just see a clock and know what time it is, she could guess if he was driving past the multiplex or down the street, past the video store and the KFC.  The wind stirs her dressing gown and for a moment it looks just like a person hanging there in the air, like a ghost maybe, from the Scooby-Doo movie. She moves the dressing gown aside and looks out at the completely dark, dead street. For once there are no oncoming cars. The Tom Cruise film War of the Worlds will be out soon. She wonders what’s happened. If she reaches heaven someday she wonders if she’ll realize she’s there.

_______

The Feel of My Heart

The way Misty looks is like a rumor. How they begin as one thing and end up as another. We’re all mixed up. Couples fucking each other and no one’s supposed to know. She is dealing cards three at a time, then two, for euchre. Rick and Sandy, my partner for this game, are chasing their whisky with each other’s spit. I see something dart across the kitchen floor and Rick sees it too. He grabs his .22 and shoots it and Misty drops the last set of cards, a bead of blood showing on her outer arm. She slaps at it like a fly bite.

“Fuckhead.” she says. “You shot me.” She dabs at the blood with a bar napkin. “A little.”The rat is twitching in the middle of the floor, leaving a smear as it crawls for a hole.

“But I got the rat,” Rick says, and blows across the pistol barrel like a gunslinger, and Sandy kisses the side of his neck and tells him what a nice shot he is.

“Asshole.” I say it low, so he can’t hear me. Misty shakes her head at me quick-like.

“Something you want to say, Daniel?” Rick levels the .22 at my face, a warm black eye swimming in front of me. I shake my head and feel my guts go loose.

“Clubs are trump,” Misty says. “Yours to make.” She’s holding the napkin to her arm again. Her cards are down. Sandy looks at Rick before she says no.

“Clubs it is. I’ll go alone,” Rick says, and it’s my lead. I think of the sawed-off baseball bat under the front seat of my Crown Vic. I toss out the ace of spades. Misty’s not even paying attention; she’s hitting the pipe. I look around the table, it’s all slow motion now. I can see Rick’s fingers moving slightly, tapping the table, and there’s Misty large in my vision, her head tossed back, the tendons in her neck working.

Later that night I’ll be biting her, just a little, when Rick will knock the door down and demand I leave. It will end badly. Misty will get shot at again. There will be a struggle, and I’ll wake up with her washing my face of brain and gore from Rick.

Right now, though, it’s just the sound of my own breathing and Rick in the doorway, that tiny pistol waving in our faces, and Misty’s giggle, a current broken, a connection missed, the feel of my heart hard in my throat.

Author Biography

Rusty Barnes lives and writes in Revere MA. He co-founded Night Train  and oversees Fried Chicken and Coffee, a blogazine of rural and Appalachian interests. His latest collection of fiction is called Mostly Redneck. A recent collection of his poetry, Broke, can be found  here. 

A Brief History of Cockroaches, Glitter Rock, and Inappropriate Love Objects
(on the theme of David Bowie)

Once upon a time, my nemesis was the cockroach,
that summer I worked at the Indian import shop in Brattle Square.
Their squadrons aligned for daily battle over the barricades:
drying dishes next to the apartment kitchen sink.
Whenever I got up in the night, turned on the light,
how they’d scatter, their claws a skin-skimming whisper
married to hiss. I tried every variation of the “Vegas roach trap”—
stale beer, coffee grounds, sticks up the sides of a Mason jar
and Vaseline around the lip to increase the slick.
All hail, the cockroach, apotheosis of tenacity!

It was the roaches in their 4th of July parade
across my futon, the final straw that finally
drove me into Ted’s bed (and arms)
even though we weren’t that kind
of roommates—one more who was gay not bi.
This was, after all, 1974: the U.S. still in Vietnam,
the Dead on their first tour without Pigpen,
and Bowie at the Music Hall in Boston where he donned
a Ziggy Stardust jumpsuit for half the evening’s songs.

My enemy should have been tanning
so to protect this Irish-mottled skin.
Or Camel straights because of my (future) asthma lungs.
Or bare feet on the hot tar, bottle-shard Massachusetts Avenue.
Or the guy who grabbed my crotch under my hippie skirt
that eve walking home from King of Hearts
at the cinema on Central Square.

Those days of rush and foolish trust,
any stranger might be christened “friend.”
A guy’d walk into a store, blond hair a waterfall
over his Pendleton plaid. Back-and-forth sallies
about what you’re reading (Anaïs Nin), the decline
of literacy (shameful), whether Mr. “Enemies List” Nixon
will really be impeached. Then, cosmic coincidence,
you’re both Tassajara Bread Book devotees!
The next night, you’re on the Red Line to Alewife,
a dinner of lentil loaf, alfalfa sprouts, and Something Missing
muffins. Followed by lips locked over a rickety
kitchen table then the (requisite) screwing on the linoleum floor.
After? Midnight’s T back to the Buddha
who, by the way, is not in favor of lust.

Who teaches to love, accept, live and let every enemy live,
cockroaches and all. I’m not sure I ever got to that,
that August when I watched the swans in the Public Garden
and walked walked walked those city streets, restless
to escape my awkward infestation-situation,
notebook in a messenger bag, my temporary
enemy an inkless fountain pen.

_________

Ligature
(on the theme Enough Rope)

Tie Me Down, Tie Me Up

Strips of rag, one nubby wool, one silk,
we re-arrange our cast-offs, braided, taut.
Down to what’s underneath we merge—
your strapless bustier, my Gucci jock.
Touch is our glove, our tether,
& our truss—the ties that lash,
that fret us to the bed. Oh,
lift your legs & let them wrap around
my clarinet,
my woody reed,
my head!

Licorice Stick

Jimmy Dorsey tootled “Green Eyes,”
with—oh, the power to send me ogling

your rings of amber, my cautionary hepcat.
Hell, even Ol’ Blue Eyes wanted to fly us

to the moon. Why didn’t we take him up on that?
Go go-go before Bechet blew jail, his clarinet

emptied of the gone-away blues while we two
dueled, all our wrong chords snorted out.

Likely, the reed was simply slipping,
needed a new ligature, thread or hemp.

Ampersand

Our typeset was a unit.
Two graphemes make a glyph
& letter shapes depend on circumstance.
The Latin et for “and” signs & in Trebuchet.
And per se and (ampersand):
& by itself is and.
And me myself?
I start, you stop,
I finish sentences. Fee! Fie!
Foe! Fum! Why won’t you let me
fl-fl-float, slurred ligature,
disfigured cuneiform?

And What About the Necktie?

He went crazy for the ties,
that winter of detox,
rehab, the county
psychiatric ward.

Every pattern,
every hue to match
the expensive suits
tailored to fit.

Blame it on the manic—
he must have draped
one hundred
by the end.

When his landlord walked
the rooms with me
an empty rack,
all that was left.

Where Mandrakes Grow

Estragon: What about hanging ourselves?
Vladimir: Hmm. It’d give us an erection.
Estragon: (highly excited). An erection!
Vladimir: With all that follows. Where it falls mandrakes grow.
That’s why they shriek when you pull them up. Did you not know that?
Estragon: Let’s hang ourselves immediately!

—Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

Pressure on the cerebullum from the noose.
Forensically, postmortem priapism is an indicator—
death was likely swift and violent.

Lynch me, hog-tie, jute my carotid,
cinch it closed. All I wanted was
to merge—the font, the fount, the godhead.

Angel lust.

Suicide Vaudeville

Way out on Sapsucker Road,
a sidewalk to shovel and snowdrift
steps to reach the song & dance.
Rifle behind the door,
a wineglass shattered on the stairs.
Daisy-chained neckties lassoed to beams
in the living room where the radio
belted the “Best of Broadway,”
Ethel Merman and Everything’s coming
up roses, her mezzo soprano clobbering
every tenor within reach.
Better Gypsy than Sweeney Todd,
the ambulance driver said. Meat pies
and a trail of blood would have been—
let’s face it, a little too burlesque.

The Final Inamorata

That tightening loop,
a failed
meridian.

Un-
blessed the bruising ties.

They bind.
They rend.

Author Biography

Born in the coal country of northeastern Pennsylvania, Nancy Flynn’s writing has received a James Jones First Novel Fellowship and an Oregon Literary Fellowship; her second chapbook, Eternity a Coal’s Throw, will be published by Burning River in 2012. A former university administrator, she now lives in Portland, Oregon. In 2004, she happily reclaimed www.nancyflynn.com from the realtor in Massachusetts who had it first.

on the theme of Childhood

5 poems from For Coming Forth By Day

FOR BEING ANY SHAPE ONE MAY WISH

FOR NOT PERISHING AT SUNDAY LUNCH

Mother kills my joyride in the new red Opel.
Says his breath stinks. He roars off without me—

With my last stick of Juicy Fruit and a thin mint.
I drink more sweet tea, pout and wait

For my grandfather to finish banana pudding
And the story of Mother baptizing kittens.

Rescue lights race us on Raleigh Road, as red
As the car flipped in the fallow field.

Mother jumps the ditch in church heels,
Her daddy right behind.
We wait.

PSALM 43

I rustle the bulletin to make a fan;
Mother shoots me the eye, shushes.

Why cast down thine eyes?
Sweats the preacher. His chins jiggle.

Why so disturbed within,
Put hope in Him. I stare down.

Lace socks, white patent toes.
Where does hope hide?

I ask me, eye scuff marks.
I find lost keys with him.

MAKING A THIRD-GRADE SOUL
WORTHY TO MRS. MINNIE LEE LONG

Mrs. Long doesn’t like erasing.
Any mistake, I copy the page again.
Even if at the last sentence.
Even if my hand cramps.

If I erase, I need to know
That very second
The ghost of the pencil
Leaves without a tear.

Eraser shavings smell
Like forgotten socks,
Cling dingy to lined paper
Or scatter across my desk.

She holds up bad examples:
Messy math, crumpled spelling,
A hole in history.

THE PUMPKIN MAN

As I land for my father’s funeral,
My first plane ends in an orange orb:
Dawn lifts off the runway.

More poems by Ms. Woodard

MY STORY FOR THIRD GRADE
(After Mrs. Long Fixed the Spelling)

Slaying dragons requires lots of planning and practice. You must listen very carefully in dragon school. Dragons hide themselves. Sometimes they pretend to be kittens and just when you stroke their fur they snap back into dragons. But as long as you pretend they aren’t dragons they cannot eat you. That is the rule. You have to pretend hard even if your head hurts.

Other times they look like dragons, pretend to sleep outside your bedroom. I tiptoe to bed, guard against dragon thoughts. If I sleep before they creep in, I am safe until dawn.

MY DIARY, AGE SEVEN

My Diary, Age Seven

I am in a bad mood.
I get sweet. I help Daddy
fix supper. Daddy makes Mother
a pretty birthday dinner.

***

My nose bleeds at my cousin’s wedding.
I am the flower girl. The white dress is itchy
Hot. Mother pulls my head way back,
holds tight with a big wad of wet tissues.

***

My pillow has a problem.
The feathers lump up.
Mother says it’s been loved
Too much. Was her pillow too.

FAMILY ALBUM

My parents run
Through wedding rice.
She is 19. Hopes her linen suit
Makes her look mature.

***

My brother at three plugs a gap
Between holster and hips
With a bear plucked of fur.
He stuffed his nose and ears
Till Mother bribed him with guns.
His pistols drag the ground.

***

I am starched at four
In pinafore and smocking.
A hand cups my chin.
I stare where the photographer asks.

Author Biography

Catherine Woodard lives and plays basketball in New York City. She swerved to poetry in 2001 after an award-winning career in journalism. More poems about a Southern family miming Egyptian death rituals have appeared in Poet Lore, Southern Poetry Review, RHINO and other journals. She co-published Still Against War/Poems for Marie Ponsot. Woodard has a MFA in poetry from The New School and is a 2011 fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She is a past president of Artists Space and a board member of the Poetry Society of America, working to return Poetry in Motion to NYC’s subways.  Her recently launched website can be found here.

On David Bowie and Dancing About Architecture

What Grows In Its Place - David Tomaloff - Dancing About Architecture

DAVID BOWIE

hey kid,
look up at the stars;

do you think
one
of them
is david bowie?

go ahead
, make a wish:

dear david bowie,
I wish I had more
facebook friends

Author Biography

David Tomaloff is a writer, photographer, musician, and all around bad influence. His work has appeared in fine publications such as Mud Luscious, >kill author, Connotation Press, HOUSEFIRE, Prick of the Spindle, DOGZPLOT, elimae, and many more. He is the author of the chapbooks A SOFT THAT TOUCHES DOWN &REMOVES ITSELF (NAP), Olifaunt (Red Ceilings Press), EXIT STRATEGIES (Gold Wake Press), and MESCAL NON-PALINDROME CINEMA (Ten Pages Press). He resides in the form of ones and zeros at: davidtomaloff.com

King Kong - Sugahtank John Roubanis - on the theme of love

Dragons Do Exists - Sugahtank John Roubanis - on the theme of Childhood

love card poster - Sugahtank John Roubanis - on the theme of love

Bestial Love - Sugahtank John Roubanis - on the theme of love

Dancer Out of Gravity - Sugahtank John Roubanis - Enough Rope

Melancholic Silver Surfer - Sugahtank John Roubanis - on the theme of Childhood

Wonder - Sugahtank John Roubanis - on the theme Joan of Arc

Artist Biography

Sugahtank is a graphic artist and illustrator born in Athens, Greece. See more of his work here  and hook up with him here

on the theme of David Bowie

Labyrinth

Author Biography

Kevin Sampsell is the publisher of the micropress, Future Tense Books, and author and editor of several books of fiction and nonfiction. His latest book is A Common Pornography (Harper Perennial). He lives in Portland, Oregon.

Cake
on childhood

The little boy and I were at his house. It was just after his birthday party (it was just him and me) and we were standing on the picnic table because we were about to stomp around on his cake because we thought it would be fun. His mama came out screaming, “What’re you two doin’?

We jumped down off that picnic table and he ran one way and I ran the other.

She had a stick in her hand and she was swinging it. It was a small branch, she called it a switch and I could see why cuz when she waved it, I heard it say, “Switch, switch.”

She was screaming and saying things I couldn’t understand. That little boy and I ran and ran and ran.

Then my mama came over the fence. I had never in my short life seen her do anything like that. My mama was big with comfy arms for resting your head on and she grunted whenever she stood, but she was over that fence.

She went at that little boy’s mama like my dog went after a squirrel.

That boy’s mama went down and limp like that squirrel. That fast. And she was like a sock on the ground.

My mama sat down on the bench. She sat and looked at the moon over the trees – a sliver in the midday sky. She sat like that breathing and breathing, like me when I play real hard, until she was normal again.

She talked quiet and calm the way she can when she wants to and the little boy and I went to her. I sat on her lap and the boy leaned on her leg with his head against that comfy arm.

She went to touching that little boy’s bruises and cuts. He had bruises everywhere. I had never once touched those bruises.

She talked slow like a river of honey to that little boy, “I used to talk to your mama. I thought we were the same about children, raising them up right with manners. With discipline.”

The little boy backed away from her then. Fear made his shoulders rise and his face go hard and sad.

Mama looked at him like she was the angel who picks people up when they die and takes them to heaven – sad for them cuz living is good.

She said, “But I didn’t mean that the way she did.”

“She means spankins’,” the boy said.

The boy and my mama kept looking at each other with a silence of understanding like birds and small things when they all know their places.

“I didn’t know your mama had the devil whispering in her ear to put you in your place – he puts people in hell and that’s what your demon mama did.”

That little boy and I said, “Puuaa,” with our breath and then mama remembered to say, “God rest her soul.”

She picked me up off her lap and knelt down at the boy’s feet and I don’t know how, but it looked like she was gonna pray to him.

“Will she hurt me when she wakes up?”

“She’ll never wake up again,” mama said with her eyebrows thick and fallen down tree branchy.

That little boy smiled. He whooped and hollered like a little boy again.

My mama grunted and stood. “Now, it’s time for you two to go inside for awhile.”

She turned to the little boy and said, “I want you to call your daddy.”

The daddy came home and the little boy and I watched while he dug a big hole.

I never did see that little boy again.

Somebody else moved into the house.

The boy grew up, as we all did. He sent my mama letters. Photos. No return address.

“We don’t want any connections, you know.” That’s what mama said about that.

On his birthday, every year till I was grown, my mama made a big cake and we danced in it in our bare feet.

______

Writer’s Block and The Imaginary Phone Call
on the theme of Love

I say, “I’m writing a book about you and mom and I.”

“Uh-huh.”

My brother isn’t one to talk to fill the air. Well, yea, he is, what’m I saying. He totally is.

So he fills the air with his words. His rage. His…well, I’ll let him tell you.

Not that it matters, but you’re almost always wrong. And you went to college and got your head messed with – liberalized. You haven’t ever been to war so you don’t know anything about life and death. You’ve never pulled the trigger. You’ve killed, but abortion’s not the same and you know it. The wife already hates you and if you say anything bad about her, we’ll sue you. And I’d be careful cuz some of her relatives are mean as the day is long (and I mean that in a good way) and they’ll find you. Or your daughter. You should think of Emma. What’s she gonna think of what you have to say about yourself. You can’t tell her about abortion cuz then she’ll have one. You can’t tell her about your boyfriend in high school cuz then she’ll have sex. And my kids. What’ll happen to them if people find out they’re related to you – could cost them. We don’t live in a place where it’s ok to talk like you do, telling people shameful things and being ashamed of your ancestors and telling history wrong. We just can’t say things like that. And you know about our cousin, but you don’t know how he’s hurt our uncle – how he went to Vietnam and then had to raise a gay son – do you know what that was like. No, of course you don’t and you don’t spank. Your kid’s gonna grow up cussing and acting like she can do anything she wants and how’s that gonna work out for her. You know she’s a girl, right? And how’s your husband John gonna feel when he knows what you did and what you were like and he’s gonna feel so cheated.

And you never had a son either while we’re talking.

You don’t have anything to write about anyway. I don’t know why anyone should listen to you.

If you write anything about me, I will sue you.

Yea, so…

Give Emma my love. Tell John hello.

Author Biography

Jenny Forrester was the 2011 winner of the Richard Hugo House New Works Competition contest and the runner up in Indiana Review’s 1/2K prize. Find out more about her writing at Trailer Trash Writing on Facebook.

On Childhood

Nick Who Became Max - by Terry Faust - on the theme of Childhood

Artist Statement/Biography

My son Nicholas posed for this photo illustration that was for an article about the connection between music and math. He later decided he liked his middle name, Maxwell (Max for short), and changed it. Thus, Nick Who Became Max.