horse wallpaper
a banner advertisement on horse-wallpaper.com asked Why are you so poor? I screamed I DO NOT KNOW, I'm just here for the free horse wallpaper
Monday, April 27, 2009
Mr. Peterson and the Bully Boy, by Mel Bosworth
Mr. Peterson and the Bully Boy by Mel Bosworth
“GO FUCK YOURSELF, MR. PETERSON!”
Mr. Peterson, middle-aged and balding, looked up from his tomatoes. The garden hose hung limp-dick in his hand, and the water, unguided, sprayed the crotch of his checkered slacks.
“YOU’RE A FUCKING IDIOT, MR. PETERSON! YOU PISSED YOURSELF!”
Mr. Peterson knew the boy. The abuse was not new. The understatement that Mr. Peterson had had enough was trumped only by the fact that Mr. Peterson was indeed a spineless turd who deserved to go fuck himself. So the next day, naked on his front lawn, he did just that.
The boy watched, and said nothing.
Mel Bosworth constantly pines for Mexican. Come play with him at eddiesocko.blogspot.com. Please bring him a burrito especial con pollo.
“GO FUCK YOURSELF, MR. PETERSON!”
Mr. Peterson, middle-aged and balding, looked up from his tomatoes. The garden hose hung limp-dick in his hand, and the water, unguided, sprayed the crotch of his checkered slacks.
“YOU’RE A FUCKING IDIOT, MR. PETERSON! YOU PISSED YOURSELF!”
Mr. Peterson knew the boy. The abuse was not new. The understatement that Mr. Peterson had had enough was trumped only by the fact that Mr. Peterson was indeed a spineless turd who deserved to go fuck himself. So the next day, naked on his front lawn, he did just that.
The boy watched, and said nothing.
Mel Bosworth constantly pines for Mexican. Come play with him at eddiesocko.blogspot.com. Please bring him a burrito especial con pollo.
About Mountains and Shit, by Andrew Borgstrom
About Mountains and Shit
Above 10,000 feet, you have to shit in a plastic bag and carry it out in your backpack. He's at 12,000 feet and has diarrhea. When he gets off this mountain, he will send the plastic bags to Brandi Wells. He will put labels on each bag: "Hi Brandi, this is my shit, not yours."
Above 10,000 feet, you have to shit in a plastic bag and carry it out in your backpack. He's at 12,000 feet and has diarrhea. When he gets off this mountain, he will send the plastic bags to Brandi Wells. He will put labels on each bag: "Hi Brandi, this is my shit, not yours."
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Fishhook, by Nathan Tyree
Fishhook
by Nathan Tyree
She takes my bicep in her small hand
Squeezes to create a wrinkle of flesh then
Works the fish hook through the bulge
The barb hurts the most
Her smile, wet, white, secret
Hurts even more
She tugs at the hook as I enter her
I grit my teeth and she pulls harder
Harder
I feel the skin want to rip and I
Plunger deeper into her
As I come she rips the hook from my arm
And licks the blood
Then she can come too
by Nathan Tyree
She takes my bicep in her small hand
Squeezes to create a wrinkle of flesh then
Works the fish hook through the bulge
The barb hurts the most
Her smile, wet, white, secret
Hurts even more
She tugs at the hook as I enter her
I grit my teeth and she pulls harder
Harder
I feel the skin want to rip and I
Plunger deeper into her
As I come she rips the hook from my arm
And licks the blood
Then she can come too
Death Poem, by wiredwriter
DEATH POEM
You tricked me
into thinking
you were dead
but all the time
it was the opposite
Yet what is that—
the opposite of death
is what exactly
You still tend
your garden and you
still walk your large dog
but do you
understand what I mean
when I ask
if you are alive
if you are living
It is your breathing
that stands
for something
You tricked me
into thinking
you were dead
but all the time
it was the opposite
Yet what is that—
the opposite of death
is what exactly
You still tend
your garden and you
still walk your large dog
but do you
understand what I mean
when I ask
if you are alive
if you are living
It is your breathing
that stands
for something
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Sometimes he punches me in the arm, by Jon Catron
I have a friend.
She told me about the daughter she had back when she was a he.
My friend isn't my friend.
Sometimes, he punches me in the arm really hard, but I don't say
anything 'cause I don't want to look like a pussy.
I think he likes to cut women, but only because blood turns him on,
not because he's an abusive fuck.
I am a liar.
I like just walking and bullshitting with my friend. Once we talked
for twenty minutes about how deadly it would be to have Gambit
masturbating Wolverine and charging the jizz with his gay-ass "kinetic
whatsit" bullshit. I laughed so hard I peed a little.
My friend is all my friends.
We like to drive sometimes, in his car or mine, and talk about
tentacle rape or God or the psychology of a serial martyr.
My friend doesn't know me.
My friend shows everyone else another face, none of those faces shows
the totality of my friend. I'm not sure I know my friend.
I'm not sure I want to.
She told me about the daughter she had back when she was a he.
My friend isn't my friend.
Sometimes, he punches me in the arm really hard, but I don't say
anything 'cause I don't want to look like a pussy.
I think he likes to cut women, but only because blood turns him on,
not because he's an abusive fuck.
I am a liar.
I like just walking and bullshitting with my friend. Once we talked
for twenty minutes about how deadly it would be to have Gambit
masturbating Wolverine and charging the jizz with his gay-ass "kinetic
whatsit" bullshit. I laughed so hard I peed a little.
My friend is all my friends.
We like to drive sometimes, in his car or mine, and talk about
tentacle rape or God or the psychology of a serial martyr.
My friend doesn't know me.
My friend shows everyone else another face, none of those faces shows
the totality of my friend. I'm not sure I know my friend.
I'm not sure I want to.
Ten Things Wrong (Six Through Ten), by Paula Bomer
Ten Things Wrong (Six Through Ten)
And now I have my death to consider. I blame myself. I blame the end of motion in my life, that I myself orchestrated. That’s when stagnation set it. In Chinese medicine, stagnation is the cause of many ills. Colds, pain, indigestion, infertility, cancer. Our bodies are energetic systems and the energy must flow freely and when it gets stuck, it stagnates and causes illness. Putrification. Rot. We are organisms, and just like food in a dish sitting out too long, we can go bad. When I imagine the start of my cancer, I think of a hard ball of rage, left to fester and swirl in one spot.
I don’t blame my daughter.
She looks like me. Dark orange hair, thick and wavy, the translucent, pale skin with a sheen of green to it, the veins shining through, the overly large blue eyes, spread wide, frog-like on her round face. Although my eyes are not as large anymore. As we get older, our features recede, sink into our skin. Being ugly is the sixth thing wrong with me; I am ugly, inside and out. Since I’ve been sick, my eyes seem to be receding faster, revealing the skeleton I’ll soon be before I’m dust. But my daughter is mine. There is no Jimmy in her. Jimmy is a willowy, brown-haired man. A handsome man. A kind man. He thinks the cancer is caused by blockages, too. But he focuses on our diet. Our spirituality. Our lack of proper exercise.
Because everything that is now has a beginning, no? Our bodies start out healthy and something changes them, turns them sickly. The moment of impending death starts with a poison, a rupture, a wound, a piece of bad lettuce. Unless of course, the seeds of rot are there from the very beginning, from birth. This, too, happens. This, too, could pertain to my situation.
Because I was born different. I was born very different than my sister, for instance. Born very different than my parents. The red hair and pale skin they said came from my father’s side of the family, from distant relatives that we only had black and white pictures of. I would stare at these photographs, the sepia tones, the tiny figures in them, turning the thick, ancient paper in my hand. They revealed none of the fire of my hair, the shocking paleness of my skin. And when I wasn’t much older than my daughter Carrie is now, I tore them to bits in a fit of rage, screaming curses overheard from my parents, “To hell with them!,” ripping the precious family pictures while my mother chased me, trying to take them away from me.
Later, instead of trying to comfort me, trying to make me feel like I was one of them, I got; “I don’t know where you came from.” Or, “Why God cursed me with you, I’ll never know.” And, “You are nothing like your sister. Why can’t you try to be like her? Try to be good?”
My sister was good. So good! Like Jimmy. Normal looking, handsome even, or pretty in my sister’s case. Capable of holding down a job. Shocked and confused by the likes of me. And yet, both loved me. Jimmy loves me still.
My sister, Mary, loved me and I hated her. And with that confession I reveal the seventh thing wrong with me: I am profoundly ungrateful. Mary was three years younger than me, not as awkwardly tall as I was (and still am), but not petite either, with wheat colored hair and warm brown eyes. She resembled my mother, but she had my father’s strong chin, which was perhaps her only, slight mar. My mother adored her. She was not young by then, my mother, and to be blessed with one more child seemed very fortunate. And another daughter! My mother was the type of woman who wanted daughters for themselves, and sons for their husbands, if at all. And her desires for herself were greater than her desires for my father, and I say this uncritically. To have a beautiful, mild-tempered little girl in the house made up for my ugliness, my sourness. Beauty, for some people, is a drug. My mother had used her own beauty for everything—to get a husband, to be popular in high school, to make people be sweet to her. And in return, she honored us all with her prettiness.
Mary wasn’t quite so stupidly vain. A generation later, and to use one’s beauty so relentlessly became a bit tacky. Clearly, it still counts for much, but we all must pretend to admire other qualities in girls—their intelligence, for instance.
I didn’t admire my sister, regardless if she was a generation less dependent on her lovliness than my mother. I never let her borrow any clothes, I insisted on using the bathroom first, she couldn’t listen to my albums (that’s what we had those days) or use the telephone if I wanted to first. I slapped her for no apparent reason if no one was around because I knew she wouldn’t tell on me. I stepped hard down on her toes under the dining room table at dinner to make her happy smile go away. I mocked her if I had the chance. She adored me, her older sister, and I hated her. If I forgot myself, and interacted with her in a benevelont fashion, she would invariably say, “I love you, Jessie” and I would glare back at her, stare her down with such a silence she’d leave the room. Strangely, she never grew frightened of me. But she couldn’t help grow distant, like my mother was from before I can remember, like my father was in a more general sense: it was a house of women and he was but a ghost with a newspaper tented over his face. This was fairly typical of his generation. Men kept themselves separate from the wet, warm emotions of a home.
My Jimmy was not like that. He was not like my mother- a bitch, essentially, and not so bright either- nor was he distant in that stern masculine way men were, and still can be, I suppose. No Jimmy was all love. He loved me. And unlike with my sister Mary, I have been unable to push him away to the extent I managed to push her away.
Perhaps, despite that I am still capable of such great cruelty, the cruelties of childhood far exceed anything adults can do to each other. More annoying, all of my slights, my rude comments and vitriolic musings always elicited compassion in Jimmy. I could see it in his face, compassion emanating from his pores like he sweat the Holy Spirit itself instead of the sharp salt perspiration of normal humans. He would never say, “oh, poor Jessie, she’s acting out because her mother didn’t love her”, but that was because he didn’t have to say anything: it was clear how he felt. All of my barbs and rages poured off him like water down his back. Just slipped off his skin, his eyes moist and tender with love. After awhile, if one doesn’t get the intended results from a certain behavior, it is hard to keep it up.
That and the cancer weakened me both physically and mentally; I have far less resolve than I once had. This I must admit. I am weak- welcome to the eighth thing wrong with me. I am weak in the limbs, weak in the gnawed, filthy organs residing in my flesh, weak in the mind and weak in the spirit, as Jimmy would say, although he wouldn’t say that because he would fear that it would hurt me and he never hurts me. But Jimmy likes to speak of the spirit, the spirit as a kind of chi, an energy inside us that doesn’t die when our bodies die, but rather, re-enters the world, fusing with some great cosmic energy of spirits, and then comes back out in another life form. I guess you could say Jimmy believes in reincarnation.
My issue with this sort of thinking is that if my spirit doesn’t die along with my earthly body, why is it such a blip of thing now? Whereas once I had a fierceness that burned and pulsed inside me, now I have so little. So little energy, so little fire, so little left. First, I stopped moving and the rage settled in me, then I gave birth to a daughter. A daughter! It’s as if I gave birth to my own twin. Maybe I birthed out my chi, me essence, when I birthed her and so now I must go. She is me, reincarnated, just a little early. She is only four. She will not remember me, but does it matter? She is me.
The ninth thing wrong with me is that I am hopeless. Jimmy is all hope. And isn’t his hope just a way of being afraid? Hope when no hope is left? Isn’t that just fearing what life is really about, from the very beginning? The End. Death.
Tomorrow, I move into a hospice. Jimmy feels like a failure. He wants to take care of me, but I pushed the issue. The hospice is in an eight story building in downtown Toronto. I have picked my room on the eighth floor, with a lovely view of a park below. I move there tomorrow because I still have enough energy to do what I want to do. A few weeks from now, I may not. And so. So I go. I plan to fly! Fly out that window and end this misery, this strange excuse for existence that I’ve been imposing rudely on the unfortunate souls that have been drawn into my orbit.
Which brings me to the end. Pride is the tenth thing wrong with me. It is the curse of mankind, the reason for the very existence of the Devil, the fall of Lucifer. I will end this life before it ends me because of my pride. I will fly, feel the rush of air one last time on my skin, feel the exhilaration, the wind and then, and then, the hard crush of the earth, where we all end up one way or another.
And now I have my death to consider. I blame myself. I blame the end of motion in my life, that I myself orchestrated. That’s when stagnation set it. In Chinese medicine, stagnation is the cause of many ills. Colds, pain, indigestion, infertility, cancer. Our bodies are energetic systems and the energy must flow freely and when it gets stuck, it stagnates and causes illness. Putrification. Rot. We are organisms, and just like food in a dish sitting out too long, we can go bad. When I imagine the start of my cancer, I think of a hard ball of rage, left to fester and swirl in one spot.
I don’t blame my daughter.
She looks like me. Dark orange hair, thick and wavy, the translucent, pale skin with a sheen of green to it, the veins shining through, the overly large blue eyes, spread wide, frog-like on her round face. Although my eyes are not as large anymore. As we get older, our features recede, sink into our skin. Being ugly is the sixth thing wrong with me; I am ugly, inside and out. Since I’ve been sick, my eyes seem to be receding faster, revealing the skeleton I’ll soon be before I’m dust. But my daughter is mine. There is no Jimmy in her. Jimmy is a willowy, brown-haired man. A handsome man. A kind man. He thinks the cancer is caused by blockages, too. But he focuses on our diet. Our spirituality. Our lack of proper exercise.
Because everything that is now has a beginning, no? Our bodies start out healthy and something changes them, turns them sickly. The moment of impending death starts with a poison, a rupture, a wound, a piece of bad lettuce. Unless of course, the seeds of rot are there from the very beginning, from birth. This, too, happens. This, too, could pertain to my situation.
Because I was born different. I was born very different than my sister, for instance. Born very different than my parents. The red hair and pale skin they said came from my father’s side of the family, from distant relatives that we only had black and white pictures of. I would stare at these photographs, the sepia tones, the tiny figures in them, turning the thick, ancient paper in my hand. They revealed none of the fire of my hair, the shocking paleness of my skin. And when I wasn’t much older than my daughter Carrie is now, I tore them to bits in a fit of rage, screaming curses overheard from my parents, “To hell with them!,” ripping the precious family pictures while my mother chased me, trying to take them away from me.
Later, instead of trying to comfort me, trying to make me feel like I was one of them, I got; “I don’t know where you came from.” Or, “Why God cursed me with you, I’ll never know.” And, “You are nothing like your sister. Why can’t you try to be like her? Try to be good?”
My sister was good. So good! Like Jimmy. Normal looking, handsome even, or pretty in my sister’s case. Capable of holding down a job. Shocked and confused by the likes of me. And yet, both loved me. Jimmy loves me still.
My sister, Mary, loved me and I hated her. And with that confession I reveal the seventh thing wrong with me: I am profoundly ungrateful. Mary was three years younger than me, not as awkwardly tall as I was (and still am), but not petite either, with wheat colored hair and warm brown eyes. She resembled my mother, but she had my father’s strong chin, which was perhaps her only, slight mar. My mother adored her. She was not young by then, my mother, and to be blessed with one more child seemed very fortunate. And another daughter! My mother was the type of woman who wanted daughters for themselves, and sons for their husbands, if at all. And her desires for herself were greater than her desires for my father, and I say this uncritically. To have a beautiful, mild-tempered little girl in the house made up for my ugliness, my sourness. Beauty, for some people, is a drug. My mother had used her own beauty for everything—to get a husband, to be popular in high school, to make people be sweet to her. And in return, she honored us all with her prettiness.
Mary wasn’t quite so stupidly vain. A generation later, and to use one’s beauty so relentlessly became a bit tacky. Clearly, it still counts for much, but we all must pretend to admire other qualities in girls—their intelligence, for instance.
I didn’t admire my sister, regardless if she was a generation less dependent on her lovliness than my mother. I never let her borrow any clothes, I insisted on using the bathroom first, she couldn’t listen to my albums (that’s what we had those days) or use the telephone if I wanted to first. I slapped her for no apparent reason if no one was around because I knew she wouldn’t tell on me. I stepped hard down on her toes under the dining room table at dinner to make her happy smile go away. I mocked her if I had the chance. She adored me, her older sister, and I hated her. If I forgot myself, and interacted with her in a benevelont fashion, she would invariably say, “I love you, Jessie” and I would glare back at her, stare her down with such a silence she’d leave the room. Strangely, she never grew frightened of me. But she couldn’t help grow distant, like my mother was from before I can remember, like my father was in a more general sense: it was a house of women and he was but a ghost with a newspaper tented over his face. This was fairly typical of his generation. Men kept themselves separate from the wet, warm emotions of a home.
My Jimmy was not like that. He was not like my mother- a bitch, essentially, and not so bright either- nor was he distant in that stern masculine way men were, and still can be, I suppose. No Jimmy was all love. He loved me. And unlike with my sister Mary, I have been unable to push him away to the extent I managed to push her away.
Perhaps, despite that I am still capable of such great cruelty, the cruelties of childhood far exceed anything adults can do to each other. More annoying, all of my slights, my rude comments and vitriolic musings always elicited compassion in Jimmy. I could see it in his face, compassion emanating from his pores like he sweat the Holy Spirit itself instead of the sharp salt perspiration of normal humans. He would never say, “oh, poor Jessie, she’s acting out because her mother didn’t love her”, but that was because he didn’t have to say anything: it was clear how he felt. All of my barbs and rages poured off him like water down his back. Just slipped off his skin, his eyes moist and tender with love. After awhile, if one doesn’t get the intended results from a certain behavior, it is hard to keep it up.
That and the cancer weakened me both physically and mentally; I have far less resolve than I once had. This I must admit. I am weak- welcome to the eighth thing wrong with me. I am weak in the limbs, weak in the gnawed, filthy organs residing in my flesh, weak in the mind and weak in the spirit, as Jimmy would say, although he wouldn’t say that because he would fear that it would hurt me and he never hurts me. But Jimmy likes to speak of the spirit, the spirit as a kind of chi, an energy inside us that doesn’t die when our bodies die, but rather, re-enters the world, fusing with some great cosmic energy of spirits, and then comes back out in another life form. I guess you could say Jimmy believes in reincarnation.
My issue with this sort of thinking is that if my spirit doesn’t die along with my earthly body, why is it such a blip of thing now? Whereas once I had a fierceness that burned and pulsed inside me, now I have so little. So little energy, so little fire, so little left. First, I stopped moving and the rage settled in me, then I gave birth to a daughter. A daughter! It’s as if I gave birth to my own twin. Maybe I birthed out my chi, me essence, when I birthed her and so now I must go. She is me, reincarnated, just a little early. She is only four. She will not remember me, but does it matter? She is me.
The ninth thing wrong with me is that I am hopeless. Jimmy is all hope. And isn’t his hope just a way of being afraid? Hope when no hope is left? Isn’t that just fearing what life is really about, from the very beginning? The End. Death.
Tomorrow, I move into a hospice. Jimmy feels like a failure. He wants to take care of me, but I pushed the issue. The hospice is in an eight story building in downtown Toronto. I have picked my room on the eighth floor, with a lovely view of a park below. I move there tomorrow because I still have enough energy to do what I want to do. A few weeks from now, I may not. And so. So I go. I plan to fly! Fly out that window and end this misery, this strange excuse for existence that I’ve been imposing rudely on the unfortunate souls that have been drawn into my orbit.
Which brings me to the end. Pride is the tenth thing wrong with me. It is the curse of mankind, the reason for the very existence of the Devil, the fall of Lucifer. I will end this life before it ends me because of my pride. I will fly, feel the rush of air one last time on my skin, feel the exhilaration, the wind and then, and then, the hard crush of the earth, where we all end up one way or another.
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Ten Things Wrong (One Through Five), by Paula Bomer
Ten Things Wrong (One Through Five)
Every person has at least ten things wrong with them. The number one thing I have wrong with me is cancer. Breast cancer.
I would say that the number two thing wrong with me is that I am a heartless bitch. That vengeance and hate ruled many of my choices in this short life I’ve had. Not that many people in this world deserve better, but still. Clearly, our problems don’t all fall in line neatly, like soldiers performing a military exercise. But, as my life lingers to a close, I look back on the way I chose to be in this world, and patterns emerge.
Once, at a book party for a hip new author whose spare prose and sensational subject matter weren’t nearly as attractive as her large breasts and dark eyes, I walked up to my co-worker’s new boyfriend and leaned upward into his ear. At the time, I worked for the agent of the hip author. My co-worker’s boyfriend was a tall man. An older man. I spoke quietly but hotly and said, “Nina talks about you. She talks about your insurance plans, your portfolios, your great vacations in the Caribbean.”
“Oh, yeah?” He said, fondling his glass of overpriced scotch arrogantly. He was the kind of arrogant man whose arrogance is in exact proportion to his insecurity about being in his forties, being bald, being old.
“Yeah. But she hates your dick. She says it’s disgusting.”
His face clouded over. He looked away, preparing his escape. But I grabbed his English tweed jacket in my damp hands.
“Why don’t you find yourself a real woman?” I hissed. “A woman who loves to have your dick in her mouth. Instead of someone who gets wet for your money? Huh?”
I wasn’t drunk, yet. He walked away, his back stiff.
My co-worker was one of those Barnard “women”, (girls really), who, having done her time studying the likes of Virginia Woolf and Thomas Bernhard, now preferred to read Cosmopolitan Magazine and the gossip pages of The Post and The Daily News. What, I thought every day, is the point? Why bother to pretend? But pretend she did. And it worked, in the grand scheme of things. I had never met someone who cared less about literature in my life. And yet, she was a vicious, back-stabbing, social climbing soon-to-be very successful agent herself. I have followed her career, although, as you can imagine, I no longer work in publishing. She has done extremely well. And she’s married to that man, the boyfriend who I accosted. They have four children.
Truth seems like such a little thing when compared to the life of my old co-worker. It seems like a small, ugly thing buzzing rudely in the ears of people who don’t give a shit. Or perhaps only if the truth is ugly, then people can’t hear it. But when is truth beautiful? Why are truth and beauty so often thought to intertwine?
I moved to Toronto the day after walking out of that party. I picked it randomly, like some people pick out a pair of shoes, or the way God picks out the children he sends you. It was far from New York, but not far enough that I couldn’t, on impulse, take a Greyhound bus there and start over. Which is exactly what I did.
So I will say the third thing I have wrong with me is I run away from my problems. I don’t face up to the consequences of my actions.
Starting over in Toronto went well. Certain non-wrong things about me made my adjustment to Canada go smoothly. I like socialism, I like the idea that everyone gets health care, that everyone deserves to be taken care of, regardless of their position in society.
So everything went well, as well as can be expected, until I settled down with Jimmy.
The fourth thing wrong with me is that I have a cunt. And I listen to my cunt and it often advises me in the wrong direction.
You see, I had always had myself, fiercely so, and I moved through people I needed—got what I needed, moved on. The rageful, hateful outbursts had always been there. I knew they weren’t cleansing, the outbursts, but they felt so, and as long as I kept moving, all that nastiness and venom never settled inside of me.
But with Jimmy, I stopped. That motion was part of what kept me alive. It’s what made me strong. Jimmy was the first man I lived with. And then I got pregnant, so we went to City Hall and were married, for our child’s sake. It made sense at the time. I wanted the child. I, unlike other generations of women, had a choice. I was aware of that choice. Now, I look back, and I think, why didn’t I keep moving? What was I so afraid of? Afraid of not giving our child a nice home, with a father and a mother. Afraid of having a child on my own.
So I will say that the fifth thing wrong with me is that I am a coward.
All those fears, irrational as all fears are, took control of me. It’s not that I was ever fearless—no one is fearless. But I never bent to my fears before. Fear presents itself any time there is an unknown. Death, drugs, birth, sex. New jobs, new people. I thought of myself as riding through it all and yet, I stopped when I got pregnant. I stopped and I listened.
Every person has at least ten things wrong with them. The number one thing I have wrong with me is cancer. Breast cancer.
I would say that the number two thing wrong with me is that I am a heartless bitch. That vengeance and hate ruled many of my choices in this short life I’ve had. Not that many people in this world deserve better, but still. Clearly, our problems don’t all fall in line neatly, like soldiers performing a military exercise. But, as my life lingers to a close, I look back on the way I chose to be in this world, and patterns emerge.
Once, at a book party for a hip new author whose spare prose and sensational subject matter weren’t nearly as attractive as her large breasts and dark eyes, I walked up to my co-worker’s new boyfriend and leaned upward into his ear. At the time, I worked for the agent of the hip author. My co-worker’s boyfriend was a tall man. An older man. I spoke quietly but hotly and said, “Nina talks about you. She talks about your insurance plans, your portfolios, your great vacations in the Caribbean.”
“Oh, yeah?” He said, fondling his glass of overpriced scotch arrogantly. He was the kind of arrogant man whose arrogance is in exact proportion to his insecurity about being in his forties, being bald, being old.
“Yeah. But she hates your dick. She says it’s disgusting.”
His face clouded over. He looked away, preparing his escape. But I grabbed his English tweed jacket in my damp hands.
“Why don’t you find yourself a real woman?” I hissed. “A woman who loves to have your dick in her mouth. Instead of someone who gets wet for your money? Huh?”
I wasn’t drunk, yet. He walked away, his back stiff.
My co-worker was one of those Barnard “women”, (girls really), who, having done her time studying the likes of Virginia Woolf and Thomas Bernhard, now preferred to read Cosmopolitan Magazine and the gossip pages of The Post and The Daily News. What, I thought every day, is the point? Why bother to pretend? But pretend she did. And it worked, in the grand scheme of things. I had never met someone who cared less about literature in my life. And yet, she was a vicious, back-stabbing, social climbing soon-to-be very successful agent herself. I have followed her career, although, as you can imagine, I no longer work in publishing. She has done extremely well. And she’s married to that man, the boyfriend who I accosted. They have four children.
Truth seems like such a little thing when compared to the life of my old co-worker. It seems like a small, ugly thing buzzing rudely in the ears of people who don’t give a shit. Or perhaps only if the truth is ugly, then people can’t hear it. But when is truth beautiful? Why are truth and beauty so often thought to intertwine?
I moved to Toronto the day after walking out of that party. I picked it randomly, like some people pick out a pair of shoes, or the way God picks out the children he sends you. It was far from New York, but not far enough that I couldn’t, on impulse, take a Greyhound bus there and start over. Which is exactly what I did.
So I will say the third thing I have wrong with me is I run away from my problems. I don’t face up to the consequences of my actions.
Starting over in Toronto went well. Certain non-wrong things about me made my adjustment to Canada go smoothly. I like socialism, I like the idea that everyone gets health care, that everyone deserves to be taken care of, regardless of their position in society.
So everything went well, as well as can be expected, until I settled down with Jimmy.
The fourth thing wrong with me is that I have a cunt. And I listen to my cunt and it often advises me in the wrong direction.
You see, I had always had myself, fiercely so, and I moved through people I needed—got what I needed, moved on. The rageful, hateful outbursts had always been there. I knew they weren’t cleansing, the outbursts, but they felt so, and as long as I kept moving, all that nastiness and venom never settled inside of me.
But with Jimmy, I stopped. That motion was part of what kept me alive. It’s what made me strong. Jimmy was the first man I lived with. And then I got pregnant, so we went to City Hall and were married, for our child’s sake. It made sense at the time. I wanted the child. I, unlike other generations of women, had a choice. I was aware of that choice. Now, I look back, and I think, why didn’t I keep moving? What was I so afraid of? Afraid of not giving our child a nice home, with a father and a mother. Afraid of having a child on my own.
So I will say that the fifth thing wrong with me is that I am a coward.
All those fears, irrational as all fears are, took control of me. It’s not that I was ever fearless—no one is fearless. But I never bent to my fears before. Fear presents itself any time there is an unknown. Death, drugs, birth, sex. New jobs, new people. I thought of myself as riding through it all and yet, I stopped when I got pregnant. I stopped and I listened.
I Am Trying To Remember You, But It's Not Working Out The Way I'd Hoped, by Josh Kleinberg
I am blinking into a double of the cheap whiskey thinking “it's too expensive here,” but it's too early to go home. I just keep draining the cup and tapping its side, making brief eye contact and then looking hard at the chip on the bar's other end so the tender won't say "that's enough." I do not care if I am acting like self-loathing Denis Johnson or boring, drunk Bukowski. I am here and it is not my bed and I am not watching re-runs of Scrubs on my computer and that is enough.
Mark 15:34 ("My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?") has been bouncing around my head, but I don't know I've been reciting it under my breath til some sterling old buffoon sits at my side and says, "at least you're not his son."
"What the fuck should that matter, man?"
"Christ...I was just sayin'."
"So now I am his son?"
"What?"
"You just fuckin' called me Christ, asshole."
"Get the fuck out of here," he said, but he was retreating.
And that was all I could ask.
Finish off the last of my fives. Finish off my drink. Go home. Fall asleep. My dreams are never hypotheses, just weird, synthetic cobwebs of the past, shaken back out onto the floor of my room or whatever.
You and I are at a party and we don't know anyone but we're coming to know them and we seem to like them. Some kid who reminds you of an ex- gets your number. I get the number of some girl who reminds me of an ex-. No impropriety. I am still resigned to friendship with you at this point. "We tried being lovers once, remember?" you'd said at some point, so, I am resigned.
We leave and you say "I don't believe in poetry, but my God, when we met..."
And the rest is what the mathematicians—oh, who am I kidding. Those don't exist. The rest is what the college mathematics majors call the “inflection point.” And the rest, I keep thinking, has a lot in common with the big bang, in that: 1. it is messy and chaotic and it bursts brightly outward onto every detail of the dead, dark streets; and 2. I do not know what the fuck is happening and probably could not understand it if I took a class on it. But these things don't matter, and we toss each other from doorway to bus shelter, lips parting only when we pretend to think "this is a bad idea" and make a few more steps toward my apartment.
The dream combines odd, other-stories with this one, though...and it loses a lot of its appeal. There's that kid with the snarky tee from the bus ride in February, and he still says “get a room” and I still say "my imaginary friend thinks your shirt is fucking retarded" and you snort a little but chastise me later for being such a dick, and then the dynamic changes to hunting a white whale but then it's an anaconda but then it's you, and I forget to remember us sleeping together in this dream, which is a real disappointment when my alarm clock bleets me to life again.
Sometimes, when depression grips, I realize that the only reason I haven't killed myself is because I haven't yet produced anything to be proud of. This hurts me in a number of ways. There is first, of course, the possibility that I never will produce anything to be proud of. Scarier to me, though, is the thought that I will...and will then have no concession to make on behalf of life when depression grips again. The final possibility is that I will reach death's front gate and will shit out a big fat spy novel on the front porch or something and swear up and down that it's my “Venus” just so I can die in peace.
It was supposed to be cryptic, what you said earlier, because...I mean...fuck the reader.
“I don't believe in poetry,” you said, remember?—and neither did I, and I think that was clear from the start—“but my God, when we met...” it was like heaven's aborted guardian coming to save you from the Salts of the Earth, right?
Yeah.
Same here.
I was never sure, though, if that meant Lucifer or Gabriel or Rahab the harlot or Samuel or Mary or Christ. And, of course, you can be whomever of them or whatever other character you wish.
The long and short of it is, I guess, that we were so young and it was a bonfire back at Cairo—that old neutral location, where everyone claimed to be the party's host. And this, of course, was back before the cops got wind and chained up the gate. And the long and short of it is that there had been a dance—a homecoming, I think—at our high school, but I had just moved there and didn't know anyone and my date had stood me up to make out—yes, that night. yes, with my only friend—in the back of some well-kept American '80s throwback sports something-or-other. And I had waltzed off, at the very least, with her bottle of gas station vodka and held it like a boxing form and swung myself around to the odd thump of the outdoor party (“hush-roar” and so on). You were there, and you were changed into clothes and—fuck the cliche—you were “congrats on the kid, Mary” angelic, but I was just prancing outside barefoot, still in a suit, tie knot not loosened and we traded “why so glum?”s or whatever you say and the answers required a seat.
Beside you on your gnarled railroad tie, I offered every other Kamchatka swig, and we watched the fire burn and then we decided to be less shitty, I guess and we just...fuckin danced. Held each other tight and didn't care who we were, etc.
Was it gay?
Absolutely.
The sort of thing you write into a spit-shined little story or whatever this is, when you think your life would be worth living despite all those times that not even you wanted to live it.
But, even though it didn't work out just then—and never really looked like it would—I still didn't stop loving you through the rest of the night even though I kept drinking and passed out beside the IHOP, and I kept on all through those months-turned-years and haunted houses and chapped hands and that nonsense with your friend trying to die, and rolling down the hill at the Community College and our new loves and the kicking the shit out of me that time I had fallen and wouldn't get up at your graduation party. And it was still there—dormant, but still hopping around inside me—on that night we exploded into heat and voice and painful breaths and—ya know...that's where I left off, I think.
It is tomorrow and I am drunk and hungover, singing “apples and bananas” under my breath, sifting through the trash for a cigarette butt with a hit still clinging to the filter. It's less depressing than it sounds. Really.
I am showering. First, I employ only the left—the “hot”—dial (full blast, for probably a quarter hour), then shut it off and switch it to the right (“cold”) dial—ditto on the full blast, but just for a minute. This used to cure hangovers, but stopped years ago.
I lie on my mattress, stomach toward the silent ceiling fan, feeling—like a snow angel—for cum stains left over from when you loved me, but I have lost my touch or they have lost their texture or, more probably, my sister just snuck in and washed my sheets after our last phone call, the bitch.
Remember when you said you thought I was trying to subtly sabotage your life? Used to accuse me of things like pickpocketing you, and walking you directly into the raised cracks in the street so you would trip? I used to call you “my funny paranoid” with a big take-me-now smile and you would sometimes take me, sometimes not. Well, you were probably right about all that.
I decide to think about things that piss me off, because at least anger makes you feel in control. I think about goth kids and emo kids and our soulless parents and bosses and the soulless children that they build out of television sets and their bloody crotches. I think about how Family Guy isn't even fucking funny, everyone I know jerking off to pictures of themselves, how the only counter-cultural movement anyone has the option of subscribing to anymore is hipsterdom and how hipsterdom is just a contest to determine who has the audacity to look stupidest and care the least and consume things without actually even liking them, and I think about how this is not a counter-culture at all, really, it's just kind of an embrace of the worst parts of mainstream culture. I think about everything Naomi Klein has ever said and how it's true and then about that guy on youtube who lit himself on fire while wearing a banana suit and ended up with like second-degree burns or something and about police brutality and my sister tip-toeing through my apartment, trying to channel Eternal Sunshine, trying to sweep away the stupid bits of you that I cling to, and it all kind of crescendoes in me I guess, and I throw that vase you got me a long time ago at the wall, breaking it into what I later decide is between 15 and 20 pieces, but the fact that YOU got it for me bears no weight. Honest. It just never had any flowers in it anyway, and I needed something.
I am trying to go back to sleep now, but it's not working.
Mark 15:34 ("My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?") has been bouncing around my head, but I don't know I've been reciting it under my breath til some sterling old buffoon sits at my side and says, "at least you're not his son."
"What the fuck should that matter, man?"
"Christ...I was just sayin'."
"So now I am his son?"
"What?"
"You just fuckin' called me Christ, asshole."
"Get the fuck out of here," he said, but he was retreating.
And that was all I could ask.
Finish off the last of my fives. Finish off my drink. Go home. Fall asleep. My dreams are never hypotheses, just weird, synthetic cobwebs of the past, shaken back out onto the floor of my room or whatever.
You and I are at a party and we don't know anyone but we're coming to know them and we seem to like them. Some kid who reminds you of an ex- gets your number. I get the number of some girl who reminds me of an ex-. No impropriety. I am still resigned to friendship with you at this point. "We tried being lovers once, remember?" you'd said at some point, so, I am resigned.
We leave and you say "I don't believe in poetry, but my God, when we met..."
And the rest is what the mathematicians—oh, who am I kidding. Those don't exist. The rest is what the college mathematics majors call the “inflection point.” And the rest, I keep thinking, has a lot in common with the big bang, in that: 1. it is messy and chaotic and it bursts brightly outward onto every detail of the dead, dark streets; and 2. I do not know what the fuck is happening and probably could not understand it if I took a class on it. But these things don't matter, and we toss each other from doorway to bus shelter, lips parting only when we pretend to think "this is a bad idea" and make a few more steps toward my apartment.
The dream combines odd, other-stories with this one, though...and it loses a lot of its appeal. There's that kid with the snarky tee from the bus ride in February, and he still says “get a room” and I still say "my imaginary friend thinks your shirt is fucking retarded" and you snort a little but chastise me later for being such a dick, and then the dynamic changes to hunting a white whale but then it's an anaconda but then it's you, and I forget to remember us sleeping together in this dream, which is a real disappointment when my alarm clock bleets me to life again.
Sometimes, when depression grips, I realize that the only reason I haven't killed myself is because I haven't yet produced anything to be proud of. This hurts me in a number of ways. There is first, of course, the possibility that I never will produce anything to be proud of. Scarier to me, though, is the thought that I will...and will then have no concession to make on behalf of life when depression grips again. The final possibility is that I will reach death's front gate and will shit out a big fat spy novel on the front porch or something and swear up and down that it's my “Venus” just so I can die in peace.
It was supposed to be cryptic, what you said earlier, because...I mean...fuck the reader.
“I don't believe in poetry,” you said, remember?—and neither did I, and I think that was clear from the start—“but my God, when we met...” it was like heaven's aborted guardian coming to save you from the Salts of the Earth, right?
Yeah.
Same here.
I was never sure, though, if that meant Lucifer or Gabriel or Rahab the harlot or Samuel or Mary or Christ. And, of course, you can be whomever of them or whatever other character you wish.
The long and short of it is, I guess, that we were so young and it was a bonfire back at Cairo—that old neutral location, where everyone claimed to be the party's host. And this, of course, was back before the cops got wind and chained up the gate. And the long and short of it is that there had been a dance—a homecoming, I think—at our high school, but I had just moved there and didn't know anyone and my date had stood me up to make out—yes, that night. yes, with my only friend—in the back of some well-kept American '80s throwback sports something-or-other. And I had waltzed off, at the very least, with her bottle of gas station vodka and held it like a boxing form and swung myself around to the odd thump of the outdoor party (“hush-roar” and so on). You were there, and you were changed into clothes and—fuck the cliche—you were “congrats on the kid, Mary” angelic, but I was just prancing outside barefoot, still in a suit, tie knot not loosened and we traded “why so glum?”s or whatever you say and the answers required a seat.
Beside you on your gnarled railroad tie, I offered every other Kamchatka swig, and we watched the fire burn and then we decided to be less shitty, I guess and we just...fuckin danced. Held each other tight and didn't care who we were, etc.
Was it gay?
Absolutely.
The sort of thing you write into a spit-shined little story or whatever this is, when you think your life would be worth living despite all those times that not even you wanted to live it.
But, even though it didn't work out just then—and never really looked like it would—I still didn't stop loving you through the rest of the night even though I kept drinking and passed out beside the IHOP, and I kept on all through those months-turned-years and haunted houses and chapped hands and that nonsense with your friend trying to die, and rolling down the hill at the Community College and our new loves and the kicking the shit out of me that time I had fallen and wouldn't get up at your graduation party. And it was still there—dormant, but still hopping around inside me—on that night we exploded into heat and voice and painful breaths and—ya know...that's where I left off, I think.
It is tomorrow and I am drunk and hungover, singing “apples and bananas” under my breath, sifting through the trash for a cigarette butt with a hit still clinging to the filter. It's less depressing than it sounds. Really.
I am showering. First, I employ only the left—the “hot”—dial (full blast, for probably a quarter hour), then shut it off and switch it to the right (“cold”) dial—ditto on the full blast, but just for a minute. This used to cure hangovers, but stopped years ago.
I lie on my mattress, stomach toward the silent ceiling fan, feeling—like a snow angel—for cum stains left over from when you loved me, but I have lost my touch or they have lost their texture or, more probably, my sister just snuck in and washed my sheets after our last phone call, the bitch.
Remember when you said you thought I was trying to subtly sabotage your life? Used to accuse me of things like pickpocketing you, and walking you directly into the raised cracks in the street so you would trip? I used to call you “my funny paranoid” with a big take-me-now smile and you would sometimes take me, sometimes not. Well, you were probably right about all that.
I decide to think about things that piss me off, because at least anger makes you feel in control. I think about goth kids and emo kids and our soulless parents and bosses and the soulless children that they build out of television sets and their bloody crotches. I think about how Family Guy isn't even fucking funny, everyone I know jerking off to pictures of themselves, how the only counter-cultural movement anyone has the option of subscribing to anymore is hipsterdom and how hipsterdom is just a contest to determine who has the audacity to look stupidest and care the least and consume things without actually even liking them, and I think about how this is not a counter-culture at all, really, it's just kind of an embrace of the worst parts of mainstream culture. I think about everything Naomi Klein has ever said and how it's true and then about that guy on youtube who lit himself on fire while wearing a banana suit and ended up with like second-degree burns or something and about police brutality and my sister tip-toeing through my apartment, trying to channel Eternal Sunshine, trying to sweep away the stupid bits of you that I cling to, and it all kind of crescendoes in me I guess, and I throw that vase you got me a long time ago at the wall, breaking it into what I later decide is between 15 and 20 pieces, but the fact that YOU got it for me bears no weight. Honest. It just never had any flowers in it anyway, and I needed something.
I am trying to go back to sleep now, but it's not working.
Friday, April 17, 2009
I Want To Fuck Brandi Wells, by P.H. Madore
I Want To Fuck Brandi Wells
(only draft, 04/17/09 / 02:42:15 AM)
by P. H. Madore
I want to fuck Brandi Wells.
I know, I know, it's really nothing. These are things I'm not supposed to say.
Still, though, I want to fuck Brandi Wells.
Brandi Wells is the only person with a magazine that publishes everything they receive. I was thinking about this and I realized that because of this I want to fuck Brandi Wells. Not only that, but I want to see if she will publish a story where a stranger insists that he wants to fuck her over and over again. This is not all. I had visions of fucking Brandi Wells. I lost sleep thinking about fucking Brandi Wells, but I did not masturbate over fucking Brandi Wells because that always ruins my fantasies of fucking smart women like Brandi Wells.
Some people probably think Brandi Wells looks plain. I've only seen one picture of Brandi Wells, I think, but I think she looks clever in that picture. I'm trying to think if she is the girl in Canada on the Facebook. Right now I'm going to conclude that she is not. I want to fuck that girl too. She said all Canadian girls are dirty. I thought that was hot. I want to fuck a lot of women. I'm not going to name all the women I want to fuck. However, I will name the Canadian women I would like to fuck. That Canadian girl from Facebook. Amanda Crew. Ellen Page. Avril Lavigne. Canadian girls seem to be naturally alternative styled. I love that. I don't think there are a lot of people willing to write about who they want to fuck in a public forum.
This might be sexual harassment, I don't know. All I know is that Brandi Wells' blog magazine called the Brandi Wells Review makes me want to fuck Brandi Wells.
Brandi Wells would invite me to her house in wherever. I would be on a bus for weeks because I prefer to travel that way. I would arrive off the road all sweaty and dirty and tired and she would be listening to Semisonic or Motion City Soundtrack. She would say, “Come in.” She would say, “Can we fuck now?” I would tell her that I was too tired to fuck and I would not fuck Brandi Wells just yet. We would drink some box wine and look at her hipster vintage record collection, which would include “Give Up” by The Postal Service. This would turn me on for some reason but I would just smile and listen to her talk, she would say a lot of things and we would get each other. Then Brandi Wells would get bored and pity fuck me. First she would say that she wants to fuck me. I would get bored at first, so we would switch positions. We would both have all our clothes off at first but then she would say she is cold and put her bra back on, mid-fuck. I would find this wonderful and fall in love for a minute. She would complain about how her best friend won't stop biting her breast and how she thinks that makes her ugly and I would tell Brandi Wells that scars are what make us who we are. I would sing songs she never heard before and she would do the same. We'd have literate sex. Like in that book from Concord Free Press. We'd just sit there reading books keeping distracted, attached to each other by our sex parts. Brandi Wells would fall in love with me soon. I would leave then because I'm stupid and I always do that.
We'd fail to keep in touch for a few months, and then Brandi Wells, somehow one day she would discover that I was in jail and bail me out. Then we would get a motel room in Brooklyn, Baltimore and Brandi Wells would beg me to fuck her. I would be too tired to make it (again) so I would ask her to go and get some crack or uppers or a giant pot of coffee or something. Brandi Wells would do everything I requested because Brandi Wells is a good girl who does everything her lover requests. But Brandi Wells and I would never fall in love. We just wouldn't know what else to do with ourselves; boredom would drag us across the country to see each other. Brandi Wells would be an outrageously good kisser. I would have dreams about her just sitting in the bathtub, doing her thing, and I would wake up hard. Brandi Wells would get more beautiful with age and we would see each other from time to time, as little as once a year some years, as we both wrote and published more things. She would experiment with being a lesbian and I would masturbate a lot because my projects would keep me out of the game too much. Then one day I would wind up married and so would Brandi Wells. We'd have joint weddings.
While our spouses and friends were getting drunk at the reception, I would want to fuck Brandi Wells one last time. And so Brandi Wells and I would fuck one last time. It would be rough and athletic, hidden away, her slapping my face repeatedly because she is into that kind of thing. Her new husband would catch us. His name would be Jereme Dean but he would not be that Jereme Dean. He would not be the Jereme Dean who's salivating to lambaste me over having written something as creepy as this. He would not be the Jereme Dean who hates me without ever having met me and thinks Pessoa was a good writer. I would explain to him that Brandi Wells and I had been fucking for a long time and it was necessary for us to fuck one more time. He would be a soft white guy who drives a Ford Focus and he would be okay with that. I would get a divorce the following year but Brandi Wells would not. Brandi Wells would love her husband for having been understanding that last time we fucked. Brandi Wells would send me e-mails sometimes to say that she got a dog or gave birth. One day I would sober up and write a story about how I want to fuck Brandi Wells and submit it to the Brandi Wells Review.
P. H. Madore is trying to build a cult of beautiful literate internet women followers through his madoreable blog (madoreable.com). Any woman wanting to fuck him may contact his mom and ask permission. Brandi Wells could not take one word of this piece seriously, but if she did, worse things have happened in his life, and he'll recover.
(only draft, 04/17/09 / 02:42:15 AM)
by P. H. Madore
I want to fuck Brandi Wells.
I know, I know, it's really nothing. These are things I'm not supposed to say.
Still, though, I want to fuck Brandi Wells.
Brandi Wells is the only person with a magazine that publishes everything they receive. I was thinking about this and I realized that because of this I want to fuck Brandi Wells. Not only that, but I want to see if she will publish a story where a stranger insists that he wants to fuck her over and over again. This is not all. I had visions of fucking Brandi Wells. I lost sleep thinking about fucking Brandi Wells, but I did not masturbate over fucking Brandi Wells because that always ruins my fantasies of fucking smart women like Brandi Wells.
Some people probably think Brandi Wells looks plain. I've only seen one picture of Brandi Wells, I think, but I think she looks clever in that picture. I'm trying to think if she is the girl in Canada on the Facebook. Right now I'm going to conclude that she is not. I want to fuck that girl too. She said all Canadian girls are dirty. I thought that was hot. I want to fuck a lot of women. I'm not going to name all the women I want to fuck. However, I will name the Canadian women I would like to fuck. That Canadian girl from Facebook. Amanda Crew. Ellen Page. Avril Lavigne. Canadian girls seem to be naturally alternative styled. I love that. I don't think there are a lot of people willing to write about who they want to fuck in a public forum.
This might be sexual harassment, I don't know. All I know is that Brandi Wells' blog magazine called the Brandi Wells Review makes me want to fuck Brandi Wells.
Brandi Wells would invite me to her house in wherever. I would be on a bus for weeks because I prefer to travel that way. I would arrive off the road all sweaty and dirty and tired and she would be listening to Semisonic or Motion City Soundtrack. She would say, “Come in.” She would say, “Can we fuck now?” I would tell her that I was too tired to fuck and I would not fuck Brandi Wells just yet. We would drink some box wine and look at her hipster vintage record collection, which would include “Give Up” by The Postal Service. This would turn me on for some reason but I would just smile and listen to her talk, she would say a lot of things and we would get each other. Then Brandi Wells would get bored and pity fuck me. First she would say that she wants to fuck me. I would get bored at first, so we would switch positions. We would both have all our clothes off at first but then she would say she is cold and put her bra back on, mid-fuck. I would find this wonderful and fall in love for a minute. She would complain about how her best friend won't stop biting her breast and how she thinks that makes her ugly and I would tell Brandi Wells that scars are what make us who we are. I would sing songs she never heard before and she would do the same. We'd have literate sex. Like in that book from Concord Free Press. We'd just sit there reading books keeping distracted, attached to each other by our sex parts. Brandi Wells would fall in love with me soon. I would leave then because I'm stupid and I always do that.
We'd fail to keep in touch for a few months, and then Brandi Wells, somehow one day she would discover that I was in jail and bail me out. Then we would get a motel room in Brooklyn, Baltimore and Brandi Wells would beg me to fuck her. I would be too tired to make it (again) so I would ask her to go and get some crack or uppers or a giant pot of coffee or something. Brandi Wells would do everything I requested because Brandi Wells is a good girl who does everything her lover requests. But Brandi Wells and I would never fall in love. We just wouldn't know what else to do with ourselves; boredom would drag us across the country to see each other. Brandi Wells would be an outrageously good kisser. I would have dreams about her just sitting in the bathtub, doing her thing, and I would wake up hard. Brandi Wells would get more beautiful with age and we would see each other from time to time, as little as once a year some years, as we both wrote and published more things. She would experiment with being a lesbian and I would masturbate a lot because my projects would keep me out of the game too much. Then one day I would wind up married and so would Brandi Wells. We'd have joint weddings.
While our spouses and friends were getting drunk at the reception, I would want to fuck Brandi Wells one last time. And so Brandi Wells and I would fuck one last time. It would be rough and athletic, hidden away, her slapping my face repeatedly because she is into that kind of thing. Her new husband would catch us. His name would be Jereme Dean but he would not be that Jereme Dean. He would not be the Jereme Dean who's salivating to lambaste me over having written something as creepy as this. He would not be the Jereme Dean who hates me without ever having met me and thinks Pessoa was a good writer. I would explain to him that Brandi Wells and I had been fucking for a long time and it was necessary for us to fuck one more time. He would be a soft white guy who drives a Ford Focus and he would be okay with that. I would get a divorce the following year but Brandi Wells would not. Brandi Wells would love her husband for having been understanding that last time we fucked. Brandi Wells would send me e-mails sometimes to say that she got a dog or gave birth. One day I would sober up and write a story about how I want to fuck Brandi Wells and submit it to the Brandi Wells Review.
P. H. Madore is trying to build a cult of beautiful literate internet women followers through his madoreable blog (madoreable.com). Any woman wanting to fuck him may contact his mom and ask permission. Brandi Wells could not take one word of this piece seriously, but if she did, worse things have happened in his life, and he'll recover.
Monday, April 13, 2009
Batman, by Dave Erlewine
Batman
I used to take the bus to my job bagging groceries. One time, two guys a few seats over kept staring at me. One guy told the other one about his friend meeting two women at a bar a few nights before. The women took the guy to their apartment, tied him up, and left. A few minutes later, a guy dressed as Batman emerged from the bedroom closet and grinned down at the tied up man. Batman's dick was huge.
I had to get off the bus to go bag. The bus doors closed on "huge". This was in the mid 80's, a couple of years before Nicholson and Keaton and Wuhl. I told the other baggers about what I'd heard. They rolled their eyes or laughed or called me a faggot. None seemed remotely concerned about the tied up guy's fate.
It's nearly 25 years later, and I still think about that bus ride too often. Did Batman make him try to talk with a huge cock in his mouth? Did Iron Man and Captain America join in for a gang bang? Was the whole story a joke? Did Batman rape him and then leave him, but not before putting on a VHS tape of old "Batman" episodes playing in the background?
Recently I saw the newest "Batman" movie. Yeah, Heath was okay I guess but really most of the movie I debated what was wrong with me. Why couldn't I watch the movie without thinking about some guy who probably never existed? Even right now, I'm wondering whether the raped guy, probably now in his 50s if he even existed in the first place, ever jerks off in his basement, thinking about that night, wondering why he never again let himself bleed that way. END
I used to take the bus to my job bagging groceries. One time, two guys a few seats over kept staring at me. One guy told the other one about his friend meeting two women at a bar a few nights before. The women took the guy to their apartment, tied him up, and left. A few minutes later, a guy dressed as Batman emerged from the bedroom closet and grinned down at the tied up man. Batman's dick was huge.
I had to get off the bus to go bag. The bus doors closed on "huge". This was in the mid 80's, a couple of years before Nicholson and Keaton and Wuhl. I told the other baggers about what I'd heard. They rolled their eyes or laughed or called me a faggot. None seemed remotely concerned about the tied up guy's fate.
It's nearly 25 years later, and I still think about that bus ride too often. Did Batman make him try to talk with a huge cock in his mouth? Did Iron Man and Captain America join in for a gang bang? Was the whole story a joke? Did Batman rape him and then leave him, but not before putting on a VHS tape of old "Batman" episodes playing in the background?
Recently I saw the newest "Batman" movie. Yeah, Heath was okay I guess but really most of the movie I debated what was wrong with me. Why couldn't I watch the movie without thinking about some guy who probably never existed? Even right now, I'm wondering whether the raped guy, probably now in his 50s if he even existed in the first place, ever jerks off in his basement, thinking about that night, wondering why he never again let himself bleed that way. END
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Balls, by Meg Pokrass
Balls
It's April.
He is sniffing,
hoping for Ernesto
the Corgi with the large balls,
to bark, to pee,
to roll over.
It is hard,
on the curb,
to reason with him.
It's April.
He is sniffing,
hoping for Ernesto
the Corgi with the large balls,
to bark, to pee,
to roll over.
It is hard,
on the curb,
to reason with him.
Autopilot, by Greg Santos
Autopilot
Sometimes I feel sad,
or rather I feel unwell
without really knowing why
but knowing you are out there reading me
makes me feel like dancing.
Not the type of dancing you do
when you’re in a bar and everyone around you
is dancing to music you don’t really like
but they seem to be having a good time
and you don’t want them to think
you’re not enjoying yourself
like that sad guy over there in the corner
who looks like he was a sea captain
who lost both his crew and his ship
to a giant squid
but still wants to go back out to sea
so he can avenge their deaths
but who is now terrified of the ocean
and will not step foot outside when it rains
or bathe or even have a mouthful of soup.
No, you don’t want to look like that Killjoy McGee.
So you dance a little more eagerly
and although you’re a little stiff, that’s ok,
because you’re trying to do ‘the robot’
and your moves are supposed to look stiff.
You don’t win any prizes
but people respect your effort and enthusiasm.
Some of them even pat you on the back,
slap you a couple of high-fives,
and ask you where you learned your dance skills.
Prompting you to answer,
amid some heavy breathing from all the exercise,
that you’re an autodidact. They, of course,
mishear you and think you said ‘autopilot’
so some of them smile and nod politely
but many of them aren’t as forgiving
and they blow you off
because they think you’re a tool
but you’re cool with that
because people who judge others that quickly
aren’t the type of friends
you’re interested in befriending in the first place.
Knowing you are out there reading me
makes me feel like dancing.
Not in the way I just described
but it comes close.
Very, very close.
Sometimes I feel sad,
or rather I feel unwell
without really knowing why
but knowing you are out there reading me
makes me feel like dancing.
Not the type of dancing you do
when you’re in a bar and everyone around you
is dancing to music you don’t really like
but they seem to be having a good time
and you don’t want them to think
you’re not enjoying yourself
like that sad guy over there in the corner
who looks like he was a sea captain
who lost both his crew and his ship
to a giant squid
but still wants to go back out to sea
so he can avenge their deaths
but who is now terrified of the ocean
and will not step foot outside when it rains
or bathe or even have a mouthful of soup.
No, you don’t want to look like that Killjoy McGee.
So you dance a little more eagerly
and although you’re a little stiff, that’s ok,
because you’re trying to do ‘the robot’
and your moves are supposed to look stiff.
You don’t win any prizes
but people respect your effort and enthusiasm.
Some of them even pat you on the back,
slap you a couple of high-fives,
and ask you where you learned your dance skills.
Prompting you to answer,
amid some heavy breathing from all the exercise,
that you’re an autodidact. They, of course,
mishear you and think you said ‘autopilot’
so some of them smile and nod politely
but many of them aren’t as forgiving
and they blow you off
because they think you’re a tool
but you’re cool with that
because people who judge others that quickly
aren’t the type of friends
you’re interested in befriending in the first place.
Knowing you are out there reading me
makes me feel like dancing.
Not in the way I just described
but it comes close.
Very, very close.
Monday, April 6, 2009
Parasitic Aches, by Alec Bryan
Parasitic Aches
Each evening the sun grows tired of consuming itself
Cloud’s spiral staircases lead to nothing but thin air
No ransom from the ignominy of a mortal cross
Leave it for the worm to settle life’s last question
Falling acorns think not to atone their father
Guilt-ridden roosters rouse the waking and the dead
No contestant claims earth’s winning ticket
Decaying leaves and bat droppings have the final say
Night simplifies. Day exaggerates. Time multiplies. Winter
hesitates….on the brink of life and death, separating marrow from the
bone, flesh and blood coagulates…between the melting and freezing
point all gets blurred, runs into one: It was a whisper came to me at
night, the raven and robin visiting simultaneously, perching upon the
limestone sill—how to decipher codeless words? Crazy to say the moon
speaks to me.
Petered out, cocooned in a hammock, staring into blank blue sky
It is then I become America. America I am thee:
Shining headlight on a loaded coal truck slithering through dark
canyons. Oxidation on a worn down 55’ roaring across ringent
interstates. Then, She drops me, lets me descend like the aspen leaf
into the mouth of the mighty Colorado. Following the meandering river,
impatient at each checkpoint, eddying my time away until Hoover
thrusts me forward, drying up, desiccated before ever reaching the sea
What I wouldn’t give to be a curled branch on Klimt’s forever tree
Or a swirl of light in van Gogh’s starry night…I would then unfurl,
unravel myself in majestic fright until I reached the frayed end of
what was me.
Each evening the sun grows tired of consuming itself
Cloud’s spiral staircases lead to nothing but thin air
No ransom from the ignominy of a mortal cross
Leave it for the worm to settle life’s last question
Falling acorns think not to atone their father
Guilt-ridden roosters rouse the waking and the dead
No contestant claims earth’s winning ticket
Decaying leaves and bat droppings have the final say
Night simplifies. Day exaggerates. Time multiplies. Winter
hesitates….on the brink of life and death, separating marrow from the
bone, flesh and blood coagulates…between the melting and freezing
point all gets blurred, runs into one: It was a whisper came to me at
night, the raven and robin visiting simultaneously, perching upon the
limestone sill—how to decipher codeless words? Crazy to say the moon
speaks to me.
Petered out, cocooned in a hammock, staring into blank blue sky
It is then I become America. America I am thee:
Shining headlight on a loaded coal truck slithering through dark
canyons. Oxidation on a worn down 55’ roaring across ringent
interstates. Then, She drops me, lets me descend like the aspen leaf
into the mouth of the mighty Colorado. Following the meandering river,
impatient at each checkpoint, eddying my time away until Hoover
thrusts me forward, drying up, desiccated before ever reaching the sea
What I wouldn’t give to be a curled branch on Klimt’s forever tree
Or a swirl of light in van Gogh’s starry night…I would then unfurl,
unravel myself in majestic fright until I reached the frayed end of
what was me.
fucked like you, by Adam Showalter
'fucked like you'
superman concentrates too hard
on watching a woman
undress
accidentally cooking her from
the inside out
then casually sails to her
apartment
and drags her somewhere
into space
where he keeps the rest
superman concentrates too hard
on watching a woman
undress
accidentally cooking her from
the inside out
then casually sails to her
apartment
and drags her somewhere
into space
where he keeps the rest
Snow Justice, by Harold Pumiceous
Snow Justice
Raymond Ritter opened his blinds on the day of his arraignment to an Alaskan neverland of snow. Around him, families barricaded in their homes gazed dumbly from their windows, lock-jawed commuters exhumed cars from their ice graves, and prancing adolescents sank into punnets of quicksnow to meet their frosty deaths.
Raymond walked over to the kettle and tried firing up the power. His electricity was out, but he had no need to despair. Although the power cut would ruin his perishables, today he had an excuse to avoid being sent to jail.
The previous month, Raymond was caught raping a small woodland pixie named Jess Sartre by the vending machines at work. Unsure whether it was proper conduct under Section 7, Article 2 of the vending machine preservation act, co-worker Philomena Rice bottom reported him to his boss.
His boss dismissed him after an in-house meeting where the four general managers agreed by unanimous vote that employees who rape woodland pixies during office hours have no place in their organization.
So, helping himself to a bagel, Raymond put on four fur coats and drank some Soy milk.
No courts.
No judgments.
Snow justice.
Raymond Ritter opened his blinds on the day of his arraignment to an Alaskan neverland of snow. Around him, families barricaded in their homes gazed dumbly from their windows, lock-jawed commuters exhumed cars from their ice graves, and prancing adolescents sank into punnets of quicksnow to meet their frosty deaths.
Raymond walked over to the kettle and tried firing up the power. His electricity was out, but he had no need to despair. Although the power cut would ruin his perishables, today he had an excuse to avoid being sent to jail.
The previous month, Raymond was caught raping a small woodland pixie named Jess Sartre by the vending machines at work. Unsure whether it was proper conduct under Section 7, Article 2 of the vending machine preservation act, co-worker Philomena Rice bottom reported him to his boss.
His boss dismissed him after an in-house meeting where the four general managers agreed by unanimous vote that employees who rape woodland pixies during office hours have no place in their organization.
So, helping himself to a bagel, Raymond put on four fur coats and drank some Soy milk.
No courts.
No judgments.
Snow justice.
Poet Holds his Breath, by Nathan Klose
Poet Holds his Breath as Doctor Explains the MRI Result Sheet
Nathan Klose
So let's say you don't restrain from saying fuck work at
at work today, to a boss,
or improv on an instrument
you've never played, or just not plan
something like, I don't know, something big, and then just
go go go no stops all out with it -- this is a function of your
dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, here, the brain-center
for self-censorship, here, in all the whites and yellows and reds
leaking like hot candle wax from
the forehead back and curling around the ears. See that?
I'm afraid it's gone
haywire, it's got
way more activity than any DLPFC I've ever analyzed.
Right now, you should be
afraid of even breathing wrong.
Nathan Klose
So let's say you don't restrain from saying fuck work at
at work today, to a boss,
or improv on an instrument
you've never played, or just not plan
something like, I don't know, something big, and then just
go go go no stops all out with it -- this is a function of your
dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, here, the brain-center
for self-censorship, here, in all the whites and yellows and reds
leaking like hot candle wax from
the forehead back and curling around the ears. See that?
I'm afraid it's gone
haywire, it's got
way more activity than any DLPFC I've ever analyzed.
Right now, you should be
afraid of even breathing wrong.
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Haiku Poem, by David Fishkind
Haiku Poem
I don’t even give
A shit if your parents read
This haiku I wrote
I don’t even give
A shit if your parents read
This haiku I wrote
A brief history, by David Miller
A brief history of two people that would go home later and look each other up on Google and be vaguely disappointed but also vaguely relieved that neither of them had made it as an artist
David Miller
http://miller-david.com
when they met:
she was into painting giant cartoon faces
he was in a noise band
she would load canvasses into the back of her Volvo Station wagon
he would load amps into the back of his Chevy Blazer
she remembered him as being kind of a jock in high school, but in AP classes
he remembered her as being a kind of goth chick, but in AP classes
when they hooked up:
it was after an art show where he got drunk on free wine
it was her art show and she'd eaten a couple valium
after going out a few days:
he thought: ‘i’m going out with a girl with armpit hair’
she thought: ‘i’m going out with a guy who asked me three times if i've ever seen a dick bigger than his’
the words that eventually led to them breaking up:
he said: “how come you always paint hands with perfect fingernails?”
she said “i dunno,” then looked away, then bit her fingernails.
15 years later:
He saw her in the airport. She still had her hair cut the same way, and similar glasses. She was still lanky. He smiled at her. She walked over. As she walked he remembered how she’d never worn a bra and how hes tits slung around all over the place.
“How you doing Jenna?” he said. “You still painting?”
David Miller
http://miller-david.com
when they met:
she was into painting giant cartoon faces
he was in a noise band
she would load canvasses into the back of her Volvo Station wagon
he would load amps into the back of his Chevy Blazer
she remembered him as being kind of a jock in high school, but in AP classes
he remembered her as being a kind of goth chick, but in AP classes
when they hooked up:
it was after an art show where he got drunk on free wine
it was her art show and she'd eaten a couple valium
after going out a few days:
he thought: ‘i’m going out with a girl with armpit hair’
she thought: ‘i’m going out with a guy who asked me three times if i've ever seen a dick bigger than his’
the words that eventually led to them breaking up:
he said: “how come you always paint hands with perfect fingernails?”
she said “i dunno,” then looked away, then bit her fingernails.
15 years later:
He saw her in the airport. She still had her hair cut the same way, and similar glasses. She was still lanky. He smiled at her. She walked over. As she walked he remembered how she’d never worn a bra and how hes tits slung around all over the place.
“How you doing Jenna?” he said. “You still painting?”
Abandoned lyrics to a song concerning dining establishments and procreation, by Jimmy Chen
Abandoned lyrics to a song concerning dining establishments and procreation
[Verse 1]
There's a Red Robin
in an Olive Garden
There's a Red Lobster
printed on my apron
[Chorus]
Every one is going to eat tonight
Every one is going to fuck tonight
[Verse 2]
(something about Burger King)
(something that rhymes with 'king')
(something politically provocative)
(something that rhymes with 'king')
[Chorus]
Every one is going to eat tonight
Every one is going to fuck tonight
[Guitar solo]
[Chorus]
Every one is going to eat tonight
Every one is going to fuck tonight
[Feedback and screaming]
[Verse 1]
There's a Red Robin
in an Olive Garden
There's a Red Lobster
printed on my apron
[Chorus]
Every one is going to eat tonight
Every one is going to fuck tonight
[Verse 2]
(something about Burger King)
(something that rhymes with 'king')
(something politically provocative)
(something that rhymes with 'king')
[Chorus]
Every one is going to eat tonight
Every one is going to fuck tonight
[Guitar solo]
[Chorus]
Every one is going to eat tonight
Every one is going to fuck tonight
[Feedback and screaming]
Primary Classification of the Family Sciuridae, Blissfield, Michigan, 2006, By Barry Graham
Primary Classification of the Family Sciuridae, Blissfield, Michigan, 2006
Rock squirrel
Forrest's rock squirrel
Fox squirrel
Flightless scaly-tailed squirrel
Scaly-tailed flying squirrel
Scaly-tailed squirrel
Four-striped ground squirrel
Franklin's ground squirrel
Fernando Po squirrel
Persian squirrel
Peter's squirrel
David's rock squirrel
Asian striped ground squirrel
Asian montane ground squirrel
Asian striped squirrel
Asian pygmy squirrel
Asian giant squirrel
African giant squirrel
Slender-tailed giant squirrel
Samar squirrel
Sanborn's squirrel
Pygmy scaly-tailed flying squirrel
Pygmy flying squirrel
Spotted giant flying squirrel
Small flying squirrel
Small green squirrel
Golden mantled ground squirrel
Gray-cheeked pygmy flying squirrel
Gray's four-striped squirrel
Hose's dwarf flying squirrel
Hoogstraal's squirrel
Horsfield's flying squirrel
Horse-tailed squirrel
Splendid-tailed squirrel
White-tailed antelope-squirrel
Round-tailed ground squirrel
Ring-tailed ground squirrel
Red-tailed squirrel
Red squirrel
Red bush squirrel
Red giant flying squirrel
Red-and-white giant flying squirrel
Red-bellied sculptor squirrel
Red-bellied squirrel
Red-cheeked squirrel
Red-cheeked ground squirrel
Red-cheeked pygmy flying squirrel
Red-hipped ground squirrel
Red-legged sun squirrel
Orange-headed squirrel
Orange-bellied ground squirrel
White-bellied dwarf flying squirrel
Gray-bellied squirrel
Arizona gray squirrel
Mexican gray squirrel
Mexican fox squirrel
Mexican ground squirrel
African ground squirrel
African bush squirrel
African pygmy squirrel
Mindanao squirrel
Afghan pygmy flying squirrel
Ruwenzori sun squirrel
Sunda flying squirrel
Sunda squirrel
Sun squirrel
Gambian sun squirrel
Anderson's five-striped squirrel
Leconte's four-striped tree squirrel
Montane three-striped ground squirrel
Swinhoe's striped squirrel
Cambodian striped squirrel
Three-striped ground squirrel
Himalayan striped squirrel
Coastal striped squirrel
Unstriped ground squirrel
Temminck's spotted squirrel
Tassle-eared squirrel
Tassle-eared ground squirrel
St. Thomas' flying squirrel
St. Thomas' tree squirrel
De Winton's tree squirrel
Bocage's tree squirrel
Striped tree squirrel
Striped ground squirrel
Kaokoveld ground squirrel
Perny's ground squirrel
Richardson's ground squirrel
Collie's squirrel
Barbary ground squirrel
Striped bush squirrel
Huet's bush squirrel
Vincent's bush squirrel
Smith's bush squirrel
Swynnerton's bush squirrel
Texas antelope-squirrel
Steere's squirrel
Texas oil tycoon squirrel
Least pygmy squirrel
Tufted pygmy squirrel
Long-nosed, pig squirrel
Southern long-nosed, pig squirrel
Mollendorff's squirrel
Northern long-nosed, pig squirrel
Northern Amazon red squirrel
Amazon dwarf squirrel
Davas squirrel
Deppe's squirrel
Douglas' squirrel
Northern palm squirrel
Northern flying squirrel
Oriental giant flying squirrel
Laotian squirrel
Indochinese ground squirrel
Japanese squirrel
Japanese flying squirrel
Japanese giant flying squirrel
Chinese flying squirrel
Philippine pygmy squirrel
Chinese rock squirrel
Philippines flying squirrel
Philippines squirrel
Sanghir Island tree squirrel
Selangor dwarf flying squirrel
Southern Amazon red squirrel
American red squirrel
American flying squirrel
Central American dwarf squirrel
Central American montane squirrel
Central American dwarf squirrel
Bornean mountain ground squirrel
Bornean ear-spot squirrel
Black-eared pygmy squirrel
Bornean black-banded squirrel
Black-banded squirrel
Black flying squirrel
Black giant squirrel
Kinabalu squirrel
Kintampo squirrel
Irawaddy squirrel
North African ground squirrel
North Sulawesi tree squirrel
South Sulawesi tree squirrel
Cooper's green squirrel
Cream-colored giant squirrel
Complex-toothed flying squirrel
Grizzled giant squirrel
Hairy-footed flying squirrel
Yucatan squirrel
Yellow-footed squirrel
Yellow-eared giant flying squirrel
Giant forest squirrel
Sulawesi giant squirrel
Sulawesi tree squirrel
Mountain tree squirrel
Mountain ground squirrel
Mohave ground squirrel
Mearn's squirrel
Cascade mantled ground squirrel
Great basin ground squirrel
Alashan ground squirrel
Arctic ground squirrel
Arkansas Clinton squirrel
Chickaree squirrel
Slender squirrel
Lady Burton's squirrel
Noble giant flying squirrel
Namdapha flying squirrel
Kashmir pygmy flying squirrel
Parti-colored pygmy flying squirrel
Pale squirrel
Palm squirrel
Common palm squirrel
Layard's palm squirrel
Jungle palm squirrel
Junin red squirrel
Jentink's squirrel
Javan flying squirrel
Indian palm squirrel
Indian giant squirrel
Dusky palm squirrel
Dwarf squirrel
Dwarf flying squirrel
Cuvier's fire-footed squirrel
Colombian dwarf squirrel
Emilia's dwarf flying squirrel
Hodgson's giant flying squirrel
Hagen's flying squirrel
Sipora Island pygmy flying squirrel
Mentawi Island flying squirrel
Mentawi squirrel
Tropical ground squirrel
Neo-tropical pygmy squirrel
Palawan pygmy flying squirrel
Palawan squirrel
Plaintain squirrel
Prevost's squirrel
Perote ground squirrel
Washington ground squirrel
Winston Churchill's flying squirrel
Western gray squirrel
Eastern gray squirrel
Western dwarf squirrel
Whiskered flying squirrel
Woolly flying squirrel
Vordermann's flying squirrel
Squirrel glider
Bartels' flying squirrel
Travancore flying squirrel
Phayre's pygmy flying squirrel
Phayre's squirrel
Rabor's squirrel
Ratufa squirrel
Richmond's squirrel
Townsend's ground squirrel
Thirteen-lined ground squirrel
Belding's ground squirrel
Cape ground squirrel
Columbian ground squirrel
Colombian squirrel
Venezuelan squirrel
Variegated squirrel
Variable squirrel
Brazilian squirrel
Bolivian squirrel
Brooke's squirrel
Sculptor squirrel
California ground squirrel
Geoffroy's ground squirrel
Snake River ground squirrel
Sierra Madre mantled ground squirrel
Smoky flying squirrel
Siberian flying squirrel
Southern flying squirrel
South Indian giant flying squirrel
Eurasian flying squirrel
Temminck's giant squirrel
Eurasian red squirrel
Black and red bush squirrel
Blissfield black squirrel
Boehm's bush squirrel
Alexander's bush squirrel
Allen's squirrel
Ant eating squirrel
Antelope-squirrel
Harris' antelope-squirrel
Insular antelope-squirrel
Nelson's antelope-squirrel
Rope squirrel
Baja California rock squirrel
Wyoming ground squirrel
Idaho ground squirrel
Uinta ground squirrel
Spotted ground squirrel
Thin-toed, long-clawed ground squirrel
Guayaquil squirrel
Guianan squirrel
The Lord’s squirrel
Low's squirrel
Rock squirrel
Forrest's rock squirrel
Fox squirrel
Flightless scaly-tailed squirrel
Scaly-tailed flying squirrel
Scaly-tailed squirrel
Four-striped ground squirrel
Franklin's ground squirrel
Fernando Po squirrel
Persian squirrel
Peter's squirrel
David's rock squirrel
Asian striped ground squirrel
Asian montane ground squirrel
Asian striped squirrel
Asian pygmy squirrel
Asian giant squirrel
African giant squirrel
Slender-tailed giant squirrel
Samar squirrel
Sanborn's squirrel
Pygmy scaly-tailed flying squirrel
Pygmy flying squirrel
Spotted giant flying squirrel
Small flying squirrel
Small green squirrel
Golden mantled ground squirrel
Gray-cheeked pygmy flying squirrel
Gray's four-striped squirrel
Hose's dwarf flying squirrel
Hoogstraal's squirrel
Horsfield's flying squirrel
Horse-tailed squirrel
Splendid-tailed squirrel
White-tailed antelope-squirrel
Round-tailed ground squirrel
Ring-tailed ground squirrel
Red-tailed squirrel
Red squirrel
Red bush squirrel
Red giant flying squirrel
Red-and-white giant flying squirrel
Red-bellied sculptor squirrel
Red-bellied squirrel
Red-cheeked squirrel
Red-cheeked ground squirrel
Red-cheeked pygmy flying squirrel
Red-hipped ground squirrel
Red-legged sun squirrel
Orange-headed squirrel
Orange-bellied ground squirrel
White-bellied dwarf flying squirrel
Gray-bellied squirrel
Arizona gray squirrel
Mexican gray squirrel
Mexican fox squirrel
Mexican ground squirrel
African ground squirrel
African bush squirrel
African pygmy squirrel
Mindanao squirrel
Afghan pygmy flying squirrel
Ruwenzori sun squirrel
Sunda flying squirrel
Sunda squirrel
Sun squirrel
Gambian sun squirrel
Anderson's five-striped squirrel
Leconte's four-striped tree squirrel
Montane three-striped ground squirrel
Swinhoe's striped squirrel
Cambodian striped squirrel
Three-striped ground squirrel
Himalayan striped squirrel
Coastal striped squirrel
Unstriped ground squirrel
Temminck's spotted squirrel
Tassle-eared squirrel
Tassle-eared ground squirrel
St. Thomas' flying squirrel
St. Thomas' tree squirrel
De Winton's tree squirrel
Bocage's tree squirrel
Striped tree squirrel
Striped ground squirrel
Kaokoveld ground squirrel
Perny's ground squirrel
Richardson's ground squirrel
Collie's squirrel
Barbary ground squirrel
Striped bush squirrel
Huet's bush squirrel
Vincent's bush squirrel
Smith's bush squirrel
Swynnerton's bush squirrel
Texas antelope-squirrel
Steere's squirrel
Texas oil tycoon squirrel
Least pygmy squirrel
Tufted pygmy squirrel
Long-nosed, pig squirrel
Southern long-nosed, pig squirrel
Mollendorff's squirrel
Northern long-nosed, pig squirrel
Northern Amazon red squirrel
Amazon dwarf squirrel
Davas squirrel
Deppe's squirrel
Douglas' squirrel
Northern palm squirrel
Northern flying squirrel
Oriental giant flying squirrel
Laotian squirrel
Indochinese ground squirrel
Japanese squirrel
Japanese flying squirrel
Japanese giant flying squirrel
Chinese flying squirrel
Philippine pygmy squirrel
Chinese rock squirrel
Philippines flying squirrel
Philippines squirrel
Sanghir Island tree squirrel
Selangor dwarf flying squirrel
Southern Amazon red squirrel
American red squirrel
American flying squirrel
Central American dwarf squirrel
Central American montane squirrel
Central American dwarf squirrel
Bornean mountain ground squirrel
Bornean ear-spot squirrel
Black-eared pygmy squirrel
Bornean black-banded squirrel
Black-banded squirrel
Black flying squirrel
Black giant squirrel
Kinabalu squirrel
Kintampo squirrel
Irawaddy squirrel
North African ground squirrel
North Sulawesi tree squirrel
South Sulawesi tree squirrel
Cooper's green squirrel
Cream-colored giant squirrel
Complex-toothed flying squirrel
Grizzled giant squirrel
Hairy-footed flying squirrel
Yucatan squirrel
Yellow-footed squirrel
Yellow-eared giant flying squirrel
Giant forest squirrel
Sulawesi giant squirrel
Sulawesi tree squirrel
Mountain tree squirrel
Mountain ground squirrel
Mohave ground squirrel
Mearn's squirrel
Cascade mantled ground squirrel
Great basin ground squirrel
Alashan ground squirrel
Arctic ground squirrel
Arkansas Clinton squirrel
Chickaree squirrel
Slender squirrel
Lady Burton's squirrel
Noble giant flying squirrel
Namdapha flying squirrel
Kashmir pygmy flying squirrel
Parti-colored pygmy flying squirrel
Pale squirrel
Palm squirrel
Common palm squirrel
Layard's palm squirrel
Jungle palm squirrel
Junin red squirrel
Jentink's squirrel
Javan flying squirrel
Indian palm squirrel
Indian giant squirrel
Dusky palm squirrel
Dwarf squirrel
Dwarf flying squirrel
Cuvier's fire-footed squirrel
Colombian dwarf squirrel
Emilia's dwarf flying squirrel
Hodgson's giant flying squirrel
Hagen's flying squirrel
Sipora Island pygmy flying squirrel
Mentawi Island flying squirrel
Mentawi squirrel
Tropical ground squirrel
Neo-tropical pygmy squirrel
Palawan pygmy flying squirrel
Palawan squirrel
Plaintain squirrel
Prevost's squirrel
Perote ground squirrel
Washington ground squirrel
Winston Churchill's flying squirrel
Western gray squirrel
Eastern gray squirrel
Western dwarf squirrel
Whiskered flying squirrel
Woolly flying squirrel
Vordermann's flying squirrel
Squirrel glider
Bartels' flying squirrel
Travancore flying squirrel
Phayre's pygmy flying squirrel
Phayre's squirrel
Rabor's squirrel
Ratufa squirrel
Richmond's squirrel
Townsend's ground squirrel
Thirteen-lined ground squirrel
Belding's ground squirrel
Cape ground squirrel
Columbian ground squirrel
Colombian squirrel
Venezuelan squirrel
Variegated squirrel
Variable squirrel
Brazilian squirrel
Bolivian squirrel
Brooke's squirrel
Sculptor squirrel
California ground squirrel
Geoffroy's ground squirrel
Snake River ground squirrel
Sierra Madre mantled ground squirrel
Smoky flying squirrel
Siberian flying squirrel
Southern flying squirrel
South Indian giant flying squirrel
Eurasian flying squirrel
Temminck's giant squirrel
Eurasian red squirrel
Black and red bush squirrel
Blissfield black squirrel
Boehm's bush squirrel
Alexander's bush squirrel
Allen's squirrel
Ant eating squirrel
Antelope-squirrel
Harris' antelope-squirrel
Insular antelope-squirrel
Nelson's antelope-squirrel
Rope squirrel
Baja California rock squirrel
Wyoming ground squirrel
Idaho ground squirrel
Uinta ground squirrel
Spotted ground squirrel
Thin-toed, long-clawed ground squirrel
Guayaquil squirrel
Guianan squirrel
The Lord’s squirrel
Low's squirrel
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Library Girl, by Ryan Manning
i went to the library
there was a girl
sitting at a table
she looked at me
we made eye contact
i took off my coat
i put it on a chair
i walked away
i came back
she looked at me
we made eye contact
for two breaths
i did not smile
i felt afraid
why did i not smile
i thought, that's it
she will not look at me again
i felt regret
i pretended to read
i kept looking up at her
she was writing something
a few minutes later
she gathered her things
and left
i felt sad
there was a girl
sitting at a table
she looked at me
we made eye contact
i took off my coat
i put it on a chair
i walked away
i came back
she looked at me
we made eye contact
for two breaths
i did not smile
i felt afraid
why did i not smile
i thought, that's it
she will not look at me again
i felt regret
i pretended to read
i kept looking up at her
she was writing something
a few minutes later
she gathered her things
and left
i felt sad
The Joker, by Mel Bosworth
The Joker by Mel Bosworth
I wake up depressed. I get out of bed. I pull on some boxer briefs. My legs look skinny again. This depresses me even more. I've been drinking lots of protein shakes. They're not working. I stumble into the hallway, still half asleep. I bump into Eddie. Eddie is new at the house. We don't know each other very well. Eddie likes to wear his hair in a mo hawk. He has sleeve tats and speaks with an accent. I think he's British. Eddie shoves me, his face crimped. He tells me to get out of his way. He says it angry. Then he calls me a fucking clown. I turn, try to think of a comeback, but I got nothing. I go to the bathroom and piss. The piss stinks, green. I try to remember what I ate. Asparagus, maybe. I'm bothered that Eddie called me a fucking clown. He doesn't even know me yet. More depression. Mirror. I jump. Then laugh. I fell asleep last night before showering. I never took off my make-up. I smile, happy. Depression dissipates. The edges of the burlap sack over the window glow yellow. It's bright out, sunny. It's a nice day. The children need me. I am a fucking clown.
I wake up depressed. I get out of bed. I pull on some boxer briefs. My legs look skinny again. This depresses me even more. I've been drinking lots of protein shakes. They're not working. I stumble into the hallway, still half asleep. I bump into Eddie. Eddie is new at the house. We don't know each other very well. Eddie likes to wear his hair in a mo hawk. He has sleeve tats and speaks with an accent. I think he's British. Eddie shoves me, his face crimped. He tells me to get out of his way. He says it angry. Then he calls me a fucking clown. I turn, try to think of a comeback, but I got nothing. I go to the bathroom and piss. The piss stinks, green. I try to remember what I ate. Asparagus, maybe. I'm bothered that Eddie called me a fucking clown. He doesn't even know me yet. More depression. Mirror. I jump. Then laugh. I fell asleep last night before showering. I never took off my make-up. I smile, happy. Depression dissipates. The edges of the burlap sack over the window glow yellow. It's bright out, sunny. It's a nice day. The children need me. I am a fucking clown.
Friday, April 3, 2009
Our Age, by DJ Berndt
DJ Berndt
Our Age
make my heart spin
so my veins get all tangled up
and blood stops going to my skin
and my skin turns different colors.
then untie my veins very slowly
so that while my skin
is changing back to its normal color
the discoloration spells out
"you are so fucked"
Our Age
make my heart spin
so my veins get all tangled up
and blood stops going to my skin
and my skin turns different colors.
then untie my veins very slowly
so that while my skin
is changing back to its normal color
the discoloration spells out
"you are so fucked"
Breakfast at Sedlac, by Jon Catron
Breakfast at Sedlac.
By Jon Catron
Let me genuflect at your pelvis, kneeling on your spine. Venerated,
your skull hangs high above, its stern, loving gaze crucifying me.
Your rib cage closes about me, an iron maiden of calcium, phosphorus,
sulfur, and heavy metals. I share the fate of your heart, bled out,
desiccated, desecrated, consecrated in this pain. Our anatomies
mingle; fluids everywhere. I drift asleep awaiting the salvation that
never comes.
Jon Catron is a standing on the rock, gathering the flock, leading me
with no direction.
He wants to say something witty, but is, in fact, a witless fuck.
(http://magazineofthedead.blogspot.com/).
By Jon Catron
Let me genuflect at your pelvis, kneeling on your spine. Venerated,
your skull hangs high above, its stern, loving gaze crucifying me.
Your rib cage closes about me, an iron maiden of calcium, phosphorus,
sulfur, and heavy metals. I share the fate of your heart, bled out,
desiccated, desecrated, consecrated in this pain. Our anatomies
mingle; fluids everywhere. I drift asleep awaiting the salvation that
never comes.
Jon Catron is a standing on the rock, gathering the flock, leading me
with no direction.
He wants to say something witty, but is, in fact, a witless fuck.
(http://magazineofthedead.blogspot.com/).
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Teaching Moby Dick, by Nathan Tyree
Teaching Moby Dick
By Nathan Tyree
nathantyree.wordpress.com
Maybe I’m trying to teach these kids about Moby Dick or some other thing that they’re supposed to read but never will. Maybe I’m thinking about telling them that it was the first work of postmodernism. Really, though, all I can think about is getting out of here and starting to drink. Lately I’ve started to feel the itch earlier in the day. I used to be able to hold it off until after six, but now I start thinking about the bottle and its amber contents around noon. Soon I’m going to be drinking in the morning before work. I don’t guess that it would be the worst thing I’ve ever done. Not by a long shot.
If you told me she was sixteen I’d call you a liar. Fifteen, maybe. Fourteen seemed like a better bet. One with even odds. There’s no line on it in Vegas, but maybe there should be. However old she was then, well she’s the same age now. When I close my eyes I see hers. Green. Every day in class I see an ocean of eyes just like those: wide and lively and beautiful. These fucking kids. They couldn’t care less about The Turn of the Screw or The Scarlett Letter. They don’t understand. Maybe that’s for the best.
When I came back it took me months to get used to the weather. It’s always cold and wet here and I was acclimated to a hundred and forty degrees of dry and sand. They wanted me back at the school and I didn’t see any other options that made sense. So I settled back to my leather patched elbows and loafers and desk. I let the kids skip all the whaling stuff and stick to the story. I give them the standard man versus nature line and let them think of it as an adventure story. I never say the word tragedy. That’s just as well. They don’t need that so early. They need time to realize what the world is.
The bombardier on the Enola Gay, the guy that pushed the button that released the bomb, he didn’t commit suicide. Maybe he had bad dreams. I can’t say. One thing I know for certain, though, is that he started drinking. And he never even saw their eyes.
By Nathan Tyree
nathantyree.wordpress.com
Maybe I’m trying to teach these kids about Moby Dick or some other thing that they’re supposed to read but never will. Maybe I’m thinking about telling them that it was the first work of postmodernism. Really, though, all I can think about is getting out of here and starting to drink. Lately I’ve started to feel the itch earlier in the day. I used to be able to hold it off until after six, but now I start thinking about the bottle and its amber contents around noon. Soon I’m going to be drinking in the morning before work. I don’t guess that it would be the worst thing I’ve ever done. Not by a long shot.
If you told me she was sixteen I’d call you a liar. Fifteen, maybe. Fourteen seemed like a better bet. One with even odds. There’s no line on it in Vegas, but maybe there should be. However old she was then, well she’s the same age now. When I close my eyes I see hers. Green. Every day in class I see an ocean of eyes just like those: wide and lively and beautiful. These fucking kids. They couldn’t care less about The Turn of the Screw or The Scarlett Letter. They don’t understand. Maybe that’s for the best.
When I came back it took me months to get used to the weather. It’s always cold and wet here and I was acclimated to a hundred and forty degrees of dry and sand. They wanted me back at the school and I didn’t see any other options that made sense. So I settled back to my leather patched elbows and loafers and desk. I let the kids skip all the whaling stuff and stick to the story. I give them the standard man versus nature line and let them think of it as an adventure story. I never say the word tragedy. That’s just as well. They don’t need that so early. They need time to realize what the world is.
The bombardier on the Enola Gay, the guy that pushed the button that released the bomb, he didn’t commit suicide. Maybe he had bad dreams. I can’t say. One thing I know for certain, though, is that he started drinking. And he never even saw their eyes.
16, by Crispin Best
16
1. So.
2. Brandi Wells
3. 'The Anti Sausage'
4. Ms. Brandi Fitzwilliam Wells
5. She sets up a 'review'
6. Things are submitted to the 'review'
7. Brandi puts things on the 'review''s website.
8. She practicises her moonwalk in front of the mirror
9. A song by Lil Wayne is on the radio.
10. Brandi clumsily moonwalks around Statesboro, click-pointing at people and winking.
11. Back at home Brandi really feels like she has achieved something.
12. I show up at Brandi's house with a six pack of Guinness.
13. Brandi is surprised to see me because I live in London. I say 'Hello'.
14. She says 'Oh. I don't like Guinness. I guess you should have called first?'
15. Brandi's beefcake Mexican boyfriend pushes me down the stairs, laughs and says something in Spanish.
16. I walk around Statesboro. I try to do the moonwalk. Some kids laugh. I feel bad.
1. So.
2. Brandi Wells
3. 'The Anti Sausage'
4. Ms. Brandi Fitzwilliam Wells
5. She sets up a 'review'
6. Things are submitted to the 'review'
7. Brandi puts things on the 'review''s website.
8. She practicises her moonwalk in front of the mirror
9. A song by Lil Wayne is on the radio.
10. Brandi clumsily moonwalks around Statesboro, click-pointing at people and winking.
11. Back at home Brandi really feels like she has achieved something.
12. I show up at Brandi's house with a six pack of Guinness.
13. Brandi is surprised to see me because I live in London. I say 'Hello'.
14. She says 'Oh. I don't like Guinness. I guess you should have called first?'
15. Brandi's beefcake Mexican boyfriend pushes me down the stairs, laughs and says something in Spanish.
16. I walk around Statesboro. I try to do the moonwalk. Some kids laugh. I feel bad.
I Never Saw It, But I Feel Like I Did, by xtx
I Never Saw It, But I Feel Like I Did
My brothers found the dead man while fishing.
At first, they threw rocks at it.
The sun was just setting up leaving everything to the imagination. They thought it was anything else.
Later, they turned him over, using sticks for hands, holding their breaths. They told me he his eyes were gone. They said his skin was rotting off in opaque white strips, trailing in the water like streamers; his stomach pregnant with gasses stretched tight against his white t-shirt.
Crawfish in his pant legs. Crawfish in his mouth.
No eyes…I kept thinking.
The newspaper article was 2” x 3”. My mom framed it and hung it on the wall.
“Dead Body Found By Two Local Fishermen.”
“They’re meanin’ ‘my sons’…” she’d tell everyone who asked about it.
My brothers found the dead man while fishing.
At first, they threw rocks at it.
The sun was just setting up leaving everything to the imagination. They thought it was anything else.
Later, they turned him over, using sticks for hands, holding their breaths. They told me he his eyes were gone. They said his skin was rotting off in opaque white strips, trailing in the water like streamers; his stomach pregnant with gasses stretched tight against his white t-shirt.
Crawfish in his pant legs. Crawfish in his mouth.
No eyes…I kept thinking.
The newspaper article was 2” x 3”. My mom framed it and hung it on the wall.
“Dead Body Found By Two Local Fishermen.”
“They’re meanin’ ‘my sons’…” she’d tell everyone who asked about it.
After what happened last night, by Chris East
After what happened last night
I said I was sorry for
Hitting you with the chair
I just wish you would stop going on about it
I said I was sorry for
Hitting you with the chair
I just wish you would stop going on about it
poem 3, by Thom Young
poem 3 by Thom Young (famous writer)
betting the house
and all that entails
it might mean starving
death
sudden blunt objects
to the back of the skull
risking the contents of your tired
soul
hitting fast forward
everyone
it isn't something you would want to see
for the house is mad
made of cards
with many dealers
others are pulling their collective
strings behind closed doors
called liberty
freedom and mundane existence
but yet the words must be spoken
to those with deaf ears
called revolution and vigor
the drummer marches
in a demented circle formation
digging for fires that remain unlit
and silent
called the public
people and cattle
for must give account in these days
standing on the dawn of what
demons and fiends have awaited
through the ages in forgotten
dances of death and kingdoms
by the beast
betting the house
and all that entails
it might mean starving
death
sudden blunt objects
to the back of the skull
risking the contents of your tired
soul
hitting fast forward
everyone
it isn't something you would want to see
for the house is mad
made of cards
with many dealers
others are pulling their collective
strings behind closed doors
called liberty
freedom and mundane existence
but yet the words must be spoken
to those with deaf ears
called revolution and vigor
the drummer marches
in a demented circle formation
digging for fires that remain unlit
and silent
called the public
people and cattle
for must give account in these days
standing on the dawn of what
demons and fiends have awaited
through the ages in forgotten
dances of death and kingdoms
by the beast
Seven, by Darby Larson
Seven
Boy happened in the park near dog under the tree of bark. Seven, large and inevitable. Seven approached boy and boy said, Seven. Seven approached owl above boy and boy ate worm. Before boy happened, nothing came. Now that boy happened, owls come. Whale brought boy from nowhere. Whale jumped from the ocean and flew above the park and out squirts boy. When boy was in whale, whale enveloped boy and flew from ocean to ocean looking for Seven. Boy ate undigested plankton. Seven was never found until he approached boy and boy saw and said, Seven, yes. Owls, yes, come and come, hundreds above the bark of dog. Dog barks at the bark above. Bark. Owls look. Owls catch worms and rain worms down to boy. Whale flies over and girl happens, squirt, and girl meets boy and Seven.
Boy happened in the park near dog under the tree of bark. Seven, large and inevitable. Seven approached boy and boy said, Seven. Seven approached owl above boy and boy ate worm. Before boy happened, nothing came. Now that boy happened, owls come. Whale brought boy from nowhere. Whale jumped from the ocean and flew above the park and out squirts boy. When boy was in whale, whale enveloped boy and flew from ocean to ocean looking for Seven. Boy ate undigested plankton. Seven was never found until he approached boy and boy saw and said, Seven, yes. Owls, yes, come and come, hundreds above the bark of dog. Dog barks at the bark above. Bark. Owls look. Owls catch worms and rain worms down to boy. Whale flies over and girl happens, squirt, and girl meets boy and Seven.
AN EPISODE OF THE HILLS SPANS ALL CONCIOUSNESS, by Gene Morgan
AN EPISODE OF THE HILLS SPANS ALL CONSCIOUSNESS
I learned a long time ago that it takes time
to become a sentient being.
Everything is repetitive and decaying. You write a poem,
you repeat. The one thing I need is a few nice people
I care for and respect around so when I die, my last thought
isn't "Why was I a such an asshole?" or "I should clear my cache."
It's stupid to say love is everything. Love is a vague word
and means so little except for when you say it to your wife or kid.
Love is a practical term for a hawk choking up food for hawk babies,
and has been ruined by overuse and a vague definition.
When fish were crawling out of the mud, they didn't think
"I love land!" They thought nothing. They reacted.
They evolved, and then they died.
Everything is irreversible.
When I'm sitting in my desk at work, I think about lunch
and my inevitable death, and why I'm wasting time in a chair
talking about work when I could be rubbing my naked body
on the ground outside, being who I really am.
When I work a job, I don't think "Money is great!"
I think "I am wasting my life in abstract darkness,"
and "I need more coffee," and "bathroom break."
I listen to old records by old bands like Steely Dan, and think of my future
based on what their future has become. I don't know anything
about Steely Dan other than their music. I don't like bands as people.
I have a son, and a daughter on the way.
I've worked a job, and done poorly. I've done drugs with strippers.
I'll probably deteriorate slowly, and noticeably.
The act of living is a fluid, purposeful endeavor
if you think of it as a fluid, purposeful endeavor.
I learned a long time ago that it takes time
to become a sentient being.
Everything is repetitive and decaying. You write a poem,
you repeat. The one thing I need is a few nice people
I care for and respect around so when I die, my last thought
isn't "Why was I a such an asshole?" or "I should clear my cache."
It's stupid to say love is everything. Love is a vague word
and means so little except for when you say it to your wife or kid.
Love is a practical term for a hawk choking up food for hawk babies,
and has been ruined by overuse and a vague definition.
When fish were crawling out of the mud, they didn't think
"I love land!" They thought nothing. They reacted.
They evolved, and then they died.
Everything is irreversible.
When I'm sitting in my desk at work, I think about lunch
and my inevitable death, and why I'm wasting time in a chair
talking about work when I could be rubbing my naked body
on the ground outside, being who I really am.
When I work a job, I don't think "Money is great!"
I think "I am wasting my life in abstract darkness,"
and "I need more coffee," and "bathroom break."
I listen to old records by old bands like Steely Dan, and think of my future
based on what their future has become. I don't know anything
about Steely Dan other than their music. I don't like bands as people.
I have a son, and a daughter on the way.
I've worked a job, and done poorly. I've done drugs with strippers.
I'll probably deteriorate slowly, and noticeably.
The act of living is a fluid, purposeful endeavor
if you think of it as a fluid, purposeful endeavor.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Grand-Fathered In, by C.J. Krakeel
Grand-Fathered In
It’s a rejection repeated over and over again. A simple intersection between where you live (physically) and where your mind takes you when you say, “home.” Back to the woods of Georgia running barefoot in May or sitting in a cold apartment eating noodles and wondering why the phone never rings. Time is assigned by human culture. Sometimes you sit with a razor-blade… (Thinking about becoming modern art?) You wear a t-shirt saying Fuck-Art-Let’s-Dance. You use recycled metaphors and similes, myths used to make you seem successful, stressful, hopeful. (This is not your fault.) You’ve been grand-fathered in. One spring one of your mothers poems was about drinking Jack and driving head-long in to a Peter-Built. The next winter her obituary paralleled her poem. They asked if you wanted her cremated remains, you said you weren’t hungry. Your father drank too, Mimosas at breakfast, drawing moustaches on people in the paper while working on the crossword in the back. He is still alive, has a nice cardboard bed and makes his way around the city. The guy at the tattoo shop calls him Hippie, the man behind the counter at the Army/Navy store calls him a vet, you don’t call him daddy anymore and he hasn’t called you in years. You just sit. Read. Write. Cope. A resolution is found in ink and in the pages you write. And sometimes, many times there is no resolution, no answer, only writing and sometimes even that is grand-fathered in. The definition of insanity is repeating the same action and expecting a different outcome.
It’s a rejection repeated over and over again. A simple intersection between where you live (physically) and where your mind takes you when you say, “home.” Back to the woods of Georgia running barefoot in May or sitting in a cold apartment eating noodles and wondering why the phone never rings. Time is assigned by human culture. Sometimes you sit with a razor-blade… (Thinking about becoming modern art?) You wear a t-shirt saying Fuck-Art-Let’s-Dance. You use recycled metaphors and similes, myths used to make you seem successful, stressful, hopeful. (This is not your fault.) You’ve been grand-fathered in. One spring one of your mothers poems was about drinking Jack and driving head-long in to a Peter-Built. The next winter her obituary paralleled her poem. They asked if you wanted her cremated remains, you said you weren’t hungry. Your father drank too, Mimosas at breakfast, drawing moustaches on people in the paper while working on the crossword in the back. He is still alive, has a nice cardboard bed and makes his way around the city. The guy at the tattoo shop calls him Hippie, the man behind the counter at the Army/Navy store calls him a vet, you don’t call him daddy anymore and he hasn’t called you in years. You just sit. Read. Write. Cope. A resolution is found in ink and in the pages you write. And sometimes, many times there is no resolution, no answer, only writing and sometimes even that is grand-fathered in. The definition of insanity is repeating the same action and expecting a different outcome.
How a tree attacked me and The Loneliest Man in History, by Andy Riverbed
How a tree attacked me (and I fought back)
I was unlocking my bike
after my routine
typing-shit-shift,
and I lowered my head
giving the tree above me
the chance to attack me.
He swiped a trunk as large
as a fireman’s axe
down to the right of
my head.
He told me he wanted me dead,
that I was sucking his
oxygen, that I
was contaminating his energy.
I took his trunk,
his arm or leg or
dick,
and fronted the
tree. I
swung
back;
I would not allow the tree
to defeat me.
His limb broke
into three pieces.
The tree laughed at
me; he said I couldn’t
hurt him; he told me to
leave and continue
smearing the ground,
that I was petty. And it
hurt that I couldn’t
hurt him like he hurt me.
It hurt a lot. The tree
had defeated me.
The Loneliest Man in History
In the world there was no man lonelier than Faro. He was so lonely that he died because he never knew he was diseased. He never shared a room with another being that saw his back. No one told Faro he was ailed.
It began as a petty zit, as if upon the skin of an active twelve year-old. But Faro never noticed his backside. He never attempted to turn his back to the mirror. This harmless zit, what he thought could be prevented through cleaning and frequent changing of the sheets, grew as a conscious being, a dictator invading territories.
First it was just a small peck of pus covered by a thin layer of skin, but day by day, the pink circle that surrounded the zit became redder, and spread gaining circumference. Soon Faro’s complete back was red and covered with openings revealing pus, but Faro never noticed.
The last time he brushed his teeth, he felt a little weak. He walked out the door with the plastered smile he’d developed throughout the years of dealing with existence’s bureaucracies. He lifted his hands to say hi to his neighbor, a gorgeous brunette with tanned little freckles. He fell forward and she gasped, “Oh my God!” and ran to him. She lifted his shirt revealing his rotted flesh, whiteheads ready to burst. She touched him for response, and Faro exploded. He exploded his body onto her and died.
I was unlocking my bike
after my routine
typing-shit-shift,
and I lowered my head
giving the tree above me
the chance to attack me.
He swiped a trunk as large
as a fireman’s axe
down to the right of
my head.
He told me he wanted me dead,
that I was sucking his
oxygen, that I
was contaminating his energy.
I took his trunk,
his arm or leg or
dick,
and fronted the
tree. I
swung
back;
I would not allow the tree
to defeat me.
His limb broke
into three pieces.
The tree laughed at
me; he said I couldn’t
hurt him; he told me to
leave and continue
smearing the ground,
that I was petty. And it
hurt that I couldn’t
hurt him like he hurt me.
It hurt a lot. The tree
had defeated me.
The Loneliest Man in History
In the world there was no man lonelier than Faro. He was so lonely that he died because he never knew he was diseased. He never shared a room with another being that saw his back. No one told Faro he was ailed.
It began as a petty zit, as if upon the skin of an active twelve year-old. But Faro never noticed his backside. He never attempted to turn his back to the mirror. This harmless zit, what he thought could be prevented through cleaning and frequent changing of the sheets, grew as a conscious being, a dictator invading territories.
First it was just a small peck of pus covered by a thin layer of skin, but day by day, the pink circle that surrounded the zit became redder, and spread gaining circumference. Soon Faro’s complete back was red and covered with openings revealing pus, but Faro never noticed.
The last time he brushed his teeth, he felt a little weak. He walked out the door with the plastered smile he’d developed throughout the years of dealing with existence’s bureaucracies. He lifted his hands to say hi to his neighbor, a gorgeous brunette with tanned little freckles. He fell forward and she gasped, “Oh my God!” and ran to him. She lifted his shirt revealing his rotted flesh, whiteheads ready to burst. She touched him for response, and Faro exploded. He exploded his body onto her and died.
Duffle Bags of Vicodin, by Ben Mirov
Duffle Bags of Vicodin
for Brandi Wells
I wish I had a sister. We'd probably hang out on the couch together. Once in a while, we'd go to Applebees. She would get a Grilled Shrimp 'n Spinach Salad and I would get a Riblet Basket and it would be funny for like ten minutes and then we would have to get drunk. I hate you, she would say. I wouldn't say anything back but my feelings wouldn't be hurt. I would drink another cranberry margarita and stare at her. I can't wait until you die, I'd say. I'm going to pour hundreds of Riblets on your grave and mom and dad won't say shit because they know it's the right thing to do. Then we'll sit in silence. After a while she will say, do you want to take acid with me and go to the football game and I will say maybe.
for Brandi Wells
I wish I had a sister. We'd probably hang out on the couch together. Once in a while, we'd go to Applebees. She would get a Grilled Shrimp 'n Spinach Salad and I would get a Riblet Basket and it would be funny for like ten minutes and then we would have to get drunk. I hate you, she would say. I wouldn't say anything back but my feelings wouldn't be hurt. I would drink another cranberry margarita and stare at her. I can't wait until you die, I'd say. I'm going to pour hundreds of Riblets on your grave and mom and dad won't say shit because they know it's the right thing to do. Then we'll sit in silence. After a while she will say, do you want to take acid with me and go to the football game and I will say maybe.
STUFFED CHILDREN, by Joseph Goosey
Joseph Goosey
STUFFED CHILDREN
We had won so many stuffed animals and some were neon but more often they were taupe. We named them and we named them as though we lived together and had been for years and rarely fought and when we did fight it was about what kind of tea to put on. Shomburg, Langston, Frompton, Eedles, Lowry. Goddamn! Such upstanding names!.What fine parents we are! My cigarettes turned to lemons in your fingers as it began to pour. I couldn't see the road and all I had to do was get you and the stuffed children back safely, after that I would be free to slip off the bridge or receive my long over due D.U.I. Circumstances hardly matter in your absence. Lowry is the softest and I am appointing him as my surrogate to touch you in the morning if you choose to wake up.
STUFFED CHILDREN
We had won so many stuffed animals and some were neon but more often they were taupe. We named them and we named them as though we lived together and had been for years and rarely fought and when we did fight it was about what kind of tea to put on. Shomburg, Langston, Frompton, Eedles, Lowry. Goddamn! Such upstanding names!.What fine parents we are! My cigarettes turned to lemons in your fingers as it began to pour. I couldn't see the road and all I had to do was get you and the stuffed children back safely, after that I would be free to slip off the bridge or receive my long over due D.U.I. Circumstances hardly matter in your absence. Lowry is the softest and I am appointing him as my surrogate to touch you in the morning if you choose to wake up.
Today Brandi Wells' Cat Fell Out of a Tree But He Was Not Upset, by Bradley Sands
Today Brandi Wells' Cat Fell Out of a Tree But He Was Not Upset
by Bradley Sands
The tree grows bitter fruit. It does not enjoy its flavor. It washes away the taste by snickering at the atrocities of gravity. Children like to climb its branches. They do not like to fall down, but they cannot help it. They cannot help bleeding and crying. The tree nourishes itself on blood and tears. Blood and tears wash away the bitter fruit. Blood and tears are delicious and overwhelming. Brandi Wells' cat does not like to bleed and cry. Brandi Wells' cat likes to climb trees. When he climbs a tree, he does not see a tree filled with bitter fruit. He sees friendly bee squishy toys hanging off its branches. Brandi Wells' cat makes nice with a friendly bee. He makes it go squishy. He makes it go squeak. He makes it go squishy and squeak and he loses his footing. He falls out of the tree. The tree prepares to wash away its bitterness. But Brandi Wells' cat does not bleed. But Brandi Wells' cat does not cry. Brandi Wells' cat is not upset. He is not an atrocity of gravity. While the falling children felt air and emptiness, Brandi Wells' cat made nice with a parachute of sunshine in an atmosphere of cotton candy.
Bio: Bradley Sands is the author of the novel, It Came from Below the Belt, and the editor of Bust Down the Door & Eat All the Chickens. His work has appeared in The Bizarro Starter Kit (Blue), Lamination Colony, No Colony, Opium Magazine, Robot Melon, decomP, susurrus, Thieves Jargon, and elsewhere. Visit him at www.bradleysands.com.
by Bradley Sands
The tree grows bitter fruit. It does not enjoy its flavor. It washes away the taste by snickering at the atrocities of gravity. Children like to climb its branches. They do not like to fall down, but they cannot help it. They cannot help bleeding and crying. The tree nourishes itself on blood and tears. Blood and tears wash away the bitter fruit. Blood and tears are delicious and overwhelming. Brandi Wells' cat does not like to bleed and cry. Brandi Wells' cat likes to climb trees. When he climbs a tree, he does not see a tree filled with bitter fruit. He sees friendly bee squishy toys hanging off its branches. Brandi Wells' cat makes nice with a friendly bee. He makes it go squishy. He makes it go squeak. He makes it go squishy and squeak and he loses his footing. He falls out of the tree. The tree prepares to wash away its bitterness. But Brandi Wells' cat does not bleed. But Brandi Wells' cat does not cry. Brandi Wells' cat is not upset. He is not an atrocity of gravity. While the falling children felt air and emptiness, Brandi Wells' cat made nice with a parachute of sunshine in an atmosphere of cotton candy.
Bio: Bradley Sands is the author of the novel, It Came from Below the Belt, and the editor of Bust Down the Door & Eat All the Chickens. His work has appeared in The Bizarro Starter Kit (Blue), Lamination Colony, No Colony, Opium Magazine, Robot Melon, decomP, susurrus, Thieves Jargon, and elsewhere. Visit him at www.bradleysands.com.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
