Brandi Wells Review

Poem by Aaron Burch

2012-01-04T15:53:00.000-08:00

The Brandi Wells Review is the Hobart AAA team!

Cats At Their Bowls Lapping by Donal Mahoney

2011-11-28T09:31:00.000-08:00

This time there’s a postscript:
“If ever I cook dinner for you,
it will be Coquilles St. Jacques
and Jefferson Davis Pie.”

Imagine Angela,
after all these years,
rising and gliding
to check on my pie,

wouldn’t that be something?
Angela, come to Chicago,
and bring all of your cats.
I’ll watch those cats

in your lap napping,
you in my lap napping,
the cats at their bowls lapping,
and I in my chair laughing.

Angela, bring all of your cats
and come to Chicago
to make Coquilles St. Jacques
and Jefferson Davis Pie.

(Autobiographical poem) Aaron Beasley gropes himself

2011-11-13T09:22:00.000-08:00

IF LIKE THEN

Is it okay if
I still think of you
while masturbating
promise I'll keep it clean

To be ironic
all you have to do is
pretend that you're not
sorry for everything

I occupied wall
street & all I got
was this lousy
semicolon

Second Language by Simon Jacobs

2011-10-18T20:56:00.000-07:00

Second Language”

The sound of bodies colliding repeatedly. I was on top.

“Could you lay off for a second, please?”

“Yeah.” I eased out and he rolled over. “What’s wrong?”

“You’re all up in my crevices.”

“I’m what?”

He motioned at his armpits. “You’re digging your hands under my arms. It’s uncomfortable.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay, just.”

“Please don’t say the word ‘crevices.’ It sounds obscene.”

“What would you prefer I say, ‘orifices?’”

I snorted. “Based on our position now, I would assume that you wanted me all up in your orifices. Orifices, you know, like”—the word ‘holes’ disgusted me, especially applied to sex—“pits.”

“Exactly. Like arm-pits.”

“I mean holes. Crevices are more like cracks or valleys.”

“Like this?” He brought his arm down to his side. “Like this, see? Something you can slide down into.”

“Okay, fine,” I said, feeling my ardor about to dim. “Can we get back to this please?”

He gave an exasperated sigh and rolled back over. I held him with one hand gripping beneath his armpit, the other planted on the floor, and picked up where I’d left off.

“Watch it. The crevices.”

I let him go and we continued hands-free, hardly touching.

Poem by Barry Graham

2011-09-30T11:29:00.000-07:00

YOU'RE SO FUCKED UP IN THE HEAD, YOU PROBABLY THINK THIS POEM IS ABOUT YOU. AND MAYBE YOU'RE RIGHT, BITCH, MAYBE IT IS, BUT YOU'LL NEVER KNOW UNLESS YOU ASK, AND I'LL NEVER TELL UNTIL YOU REMEMBER HOW TO TELL THE TRUTH

but don't worry.
none of this is about you.

Five Parrots and a Cat by Donal Mahoney

2011-08-01T07:07:00.000-07:00

Prior to bed
Maeve covers no cage
She binds the beak

of four of the five
that cruise all day
all lemon and lime

from drape to drape
while on the divan
Maeve weaves, Maeve sings

The fifth she thongs
to a porch rail
to screech

until morning
A week from now
Maeve will drown

the last Siamese
when unlike her brothers,
the cat won’t stop pacing

collaborative poem by everyone in tuscaloosa, al

2011-07-16T21:48:00.000-07:00

we really freaking

love

birds

Regarding a deep love of birds by Matthew Mahaney

2011-06-29T07:56:00.000-07:00

i wrote a fucking book
with birds in it
and shit.

On Rob Zombie's Wife's Involvement With Birds by Madison Langston

2011-05-10T06:29:00.001-07:00

I hate birds.
But I kind of
like 'Free Bird'

especially at
the end of
The Devil's
Rejects. Seems
like Rob

Zombie's wife
would love
birds. That
poetic bitch.

Birds by Betsy Seymour

2011-04-20T12:12:00.001-07:00

I didn't write a poem about birds.

birdssss by the Matthew Mahaney

2011-04-14T18:36:00.000-07:00

Last week I built some robotic birds. Not just birds. Wrens. Robotic wrens. I feed them motor oil and ball bearings twice a day, but they developed a taste for electricity. They’ve chewed through each other’s tailwires with their little metal beaks. The sparks are pretty, but more and more of them limp and flutter across the cage. Their flights are shorter, more turbulent. Landings are louder. Brighter. The sparks are almost constant now. I don’t like seeing them like this. I have to do something. I’ve started building a hawk.

Sunshine Kneads the Dough Cat by L. Kochman

2011-04-10T16:17:00.000-07:00

and the fat cat rolls back and forth slowly, over and over himself in the patch of sunlight on the carpet.

I am Michael Martone by Katie Jean Shinkle

2011-04-07T07:21:00.001-07:00

I am Michael Martone
The State of Bird of Indiana is the Cardinal,
Adopted by a General Assembly in 1933
I am Michael Martone

Birds by Greg Houser and Laura Kochman

2011-04-07T06:29:00.000-07:00

I am not a poet or maybe I just don't dig birds by Annie Agnone

2011-04-06T12:37:00.001-07:00

I don't have anything to say about birds.

My Wig is Not A Bird by Maureen Murdock

2011-04-06T06:44:00.000-07:00

The MFAliens
abducted birds
and made them sing.

Against a flock of will,
find the beat
and rave a little.

A poet can’t
dance a decade
without a DJ.

Poem that I wrote by Barry Grass

2011-04-05T11:16:00.000-07:00

B-b-b-bird, bird, bird, b-bird's the word
A-well-a bird, bird, bird, the bird is the word
A-well-a bird, bird, bird, well the bird is the word
A-well-a bird, bird, bird, b-bird's the word
A-well-a bird, bird, bird, well the bird is the word
A-well-a bird, bird, b-bird's the word
A-well-a bird, bird, bird, b-bird's the word
A-well-a bird, bird, bird, well the bird is the word
A-well-a bird, bird, b-bird's the word
A-well-a don't you know about the bird?
Well, everybody knows that the bird is the word!

Birds Don't Like Scottish Folds by Laura Kochman

2011-04-05T08:30:00.001-07:00

When cats try to look like birds
by folding their ears back
into their tiny heads
it is not cute
say the birds. It is
frightening for the birds
because they have worked so hard
to evolve earholes and the cats
are simply an accident
someone found in a barn
while the birds watched
from the rafters in fear.

Bird Syntax by Laura Kochman

2011-04-05T08:29:00.001-07:00

Birds don't need
grammar lessons or style
because birds
are already stylish with their beaks
and their wing-tips wing-spans.
I wish I could teach a bird
section of composition.

For the Birds by Laura Kochman

2011-04-05T08:28:00.000-07:00

I am a poet
and I desire birds
or the sound of birds
or bird seed sesame
sunflower in the hand
is better than in the jar
because birds
don't have thumbs
and if they did they wouldn't
be opposable.

2 by Emma Sovich

2011-04-05T07:56:00.001-07:00

Unlike bird poems,
which cannot be truly e r a s e d,
pictures of kittens
can be sent post haste
via post, email, or tweet.
Neat!

1 by Emma Sovich

2011-04-05T07:54:00.000-07:00

Everyone knows
that withholding kitten
pictures is the lowest
form of evil
...imaginable. Except
for writing bird
poems.

Birds at home by Tim Higgins

2011-04-04T06:39:00.001-07:00

There are 23 birds hanging
In my home.
16 are brass,
They clanged when I counted them.
7 are stuffed,
They once were my mother's mobile.
They don't like me much.

THEM by Eric Karin Carpenter

2011-04-01T14:26:00.000-07:00

I sing the bird
Electric I like them—
They do not sing
To me
Little birds made
Of ticky-tacky like
A landfill of scantrons
A bird and a woman and
A scarlet pimpernell
Are one—Though
I could not stop for
The wild wild laugther
Of the poet—Who
Is a loon
Not a feather
I fluttered

Love Affair by David Kummler

2011-03-31T08:22:00.001-07:00

my love affair
with birds
is a private
love affair

Solicit me by Annie Agnone

2011-03-31T07:21:00.000-07:00

I wish you would solicit me
because I love birds.

Found Poem by Juan Carlos Reyes, Brandi Wells Review Biggest Fan

2011-03-29T14:14:00.000-07:00

"i AM bird"
by Larry Bird

poets shut it
you don't know you just can't say
by way of this Bird my birds
you don't know what it's like to be the Bird
draining chasing long distance erasing
three point arcs tasting facial erasures
macing your eyes deleting trophies and banners
game winning hooks I eat all-colored plumes
with hunger enough left to swallow your pride
you can't love this you can't hold it
your heart's atria burn to be schooled by this
so watch your windows at night
toss tumble and tremble at night
pull your blankets up past your lips at night
lest I shatter the bedroom glass
crack the mirror and doom you seven years
trample your evening dreams
chew spit and shit your love
all up inside the pillows and scream
YOUR MIND IS MINE

I am Michael Martone by Juan Carlos Reyes

2011-03-29T09:48:00.000-07:00

Call me Michael
Martone, the earth's crust
I am the tectonic plate left jagged
by the rumblings and shakes I
cough up daily after
a breakfast of pigeons and turkeys and
ostrich
birds sucked whole by the sucking sound
fwoop, and you'll know ever more
Indiana was here, Indiana's fault
the Indiana Fault line of my cranium
I am at fault
call me Michael Martone, I
am the tyranny of evil ink
I am to blame for the coughed up feathers
in the kitchen sink

Another Bird Poem by Jessica Richardson

2011-03-29T07:33:00.000-07:00

I would punch a bird in its tiny cute face.

I am Michael Martone by Michael Martone

2011-03-27T12:29:00.000-07:00

I am Michael Martone and I love birds and I wrote this.

Dara Ewing is a Famous Poet by Dara Ewing

2011-03-26T09:54:00.000-07:00

Dara Ewing is neither pelican nor pigeon nor poet nor friend of yours -

do not eat your poems we will not have feather pillows.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNNl_uWmQXE

I am a bird and I love poets by Greg Santos

2011-03-26T07:13:00.000-07:00

I am a bird
and I love
poets.

They look
so tiny
from up
here.

Betsy Seymour is really really a poet by Betsy Seymour

2011-03-25T19:44:00.000-07:00

I love birds
and
YES
yes
I really am a poet.

Paint My Unicorn by Laurence Ross who has goddamn great shirt flowers

2011-03-25T19:26:00.000-07:00

Rainbows Steam
Punk Rock
Or Roll Me, Bitch
Do Or Die.

Dear Romeo,
Where Are You Now?

Pop. You’re Dead.

Doves (Poets) Don’t Cry—
At Least They Don’t Cry
For Me.

Spelled the Name Wrong by Alex Chisum

2011-03-25T14:46:00.001-07:00

I am not a poet
I am not a bird

I like Brandi

Weggs

I love birds too by Madison Langston

2011-03-25T14:08:00.000-07:00

I am a poet
and I
really
really
really
love birds.

I am not exactly a poet by Brian Oliu

2011-03-25T13:58:00.000-07:00

I am not exactly a poet
and I think birds are okay.

I am a poet or whatever by Freya Gibbon

2011-03-25T13:56:00.000-07:00

I am a poet or whatever
and I love birds.

We are poets and we love birds by Katy Gunn and Laura Kochman

2011-03-24T06:47:00.001-07:00

We are poets and we love birds.

What I thought when my cat jumped onto my lap and stared at me

2011-03-24T06:46:00.001-07:00

Sometimes I

get

skep

tical

about poets

who

indent

I am a poet and I love hand-turkeys by Matthew Mahaney

2011-03-22T07:02:00.000-07:00

I am a poet
and I love
hand-turkeys.

I am a poet and I love birds by Ashley Gorham

2011-03-22T07:01:00.001-07:00

I
am a
poet
and
I
love
birds.

"what?" by Shannon Peil

2011-03-22T06:38:00.000-07:00

This morning I was happily using a qtip
but then shortly after I was unhappily using it
because I think I lodged a piece of gunk too deeply
and now I can't hear out of my right ear
I tried to blow my nose or shake it out
I think maybe one good punch could fix it
or maybe a nail gun
but I dunno
I thought I felt it pop during a nap I took this afternoon
but I was just dreaming and now
I have to sit on the right side of my girlfriend to hear anything she says
I hope I don't die like this

FRANCIS BACON by Janey Smith

2011-03-22T06:37:00.000-07:00

It is morning. There are bottles everywhere. You think “why

does morning after party look like war zone?” You take beer bottle,

empty it, put your head under bathroom sink, then kind of tie yourself

to copper piping with elastic hair band, leave sink on. You think that

song “ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall.” You put the bottle there.

It hurts. You keep confusing “knocking one over” with “rubbing one

off.” When you get to “69” you lose interest.

One more Poem by David Kummler

2011-03-21T18:43:00.000-07:00

My love for birds
is like a sack of flour
that someone loves very much
because they are going to make pancakes.
I love birds.

Some shit I did not read by David Kummler

2011-03-21T18:41:00.000-07:00

A Hypothetical Review of a Hypothetical Review Hypothetically Republished in the Brandi Wells Review Hypothetically Reviewing the Brandi Wells Review for 300 Reviews

The review of the review previously published by 300 Reviews reviewing the Brandi Wells Review needs to be reviewed. And thus I re-review. One read through the review previously published by the Brandi Wells review concerning the Brandi Wells Review makes abundantly clear that the reviewer failed dramatically to actually view the Brandi Wells Review. His views are untrue, rude, and at times rather lewd. The attitude of this dude who claims to have viewed the Review disgusts me and makes me blue. He wishes that the Review would eschew policy to refuse to choose to lose even one submission.

This, of course, is downright laughable.

Further, our reviewer claims to have reviewed a slew of reviews from Black Warrior to Blue, but I appeal to you, dear reader, my muse, to peruse the reviews of reviews this reviewer has reviewed. The reviews are obtuse and certainly loose, centered on a few views concerning only how reviews choose to choose. I feel bruised by reviews that choose to abuse reviews for their decisions to choose or not to choose. But what offended me more was his views on the Jews and his disgusting attempts to place them in pews. The Jews can choose how they feel about pews, and for that matter also about brews and booze. But this is not about Jews or brews or booze but about reviews. And I must say tha reviewers who write reviews of reviews that have problems with Jews or problems with booze or problems with brews ought to be bruised and abused. People whose views refuse to let others choose or choose not to choose should not write reviews.

This, of course, is downright obvious.

I’d like to conclude by urging you to review the review of the Brandi Wells Review republished here after 300 Reviews. And after that, please review my review and choose whose review you would like to eschew. But know that who ever you are, Gentile or Jew, my review of the review of the review is written for you. <3 xoxo

A Pharmacy Tale for that Bird-Hater, Mandy by Jenny Gropp Hess

2011-03-21T18:39:00.000-07:00

A Pharmacy Tale for That Bird-Hater, Mandy
(A poem I have been working on for years)

Mandy, here’s a cream

for yr bird allergy, this

poem-tube with a picture

of boss on it saying “I creamed

the corn of that jimmy crack-

ed corn-cracked hyper-jimmied

bird-shake(r) with jimmies

so squeeze here & rub & get yr

feckin’ freedom fighter fingers

around that bird bump and pop

its lungheads free for everyone!”

($3.99)

Thing by Eric Carpenter

2011-03-21T18:37:00.000-07:00

I like the FUCK out of that by Farren Stanley

2011-03-21T16:25:00.000-07:00

I am a poet and I love birds.
I really really do.

Brandi Wells is a Mountain of Tar by g. houser

2011-03-21T16:08:00.000-07:00

Brandi Wells is a Mountain of Tar

Brandi Wells is probably,
made of sunshine,
dipped in tar, then,
shaped into mickey,
mouse ears

Birds Don't Make No Sense by KATIE JEAN SHINKLE

2011-03-21T15:03:00.000-07:00

Birds Don’t Make No Sense

Dr. Phil says to carve kids out.
Cutting kids is not OK—
boxcut, a cut inside a peanut
shell, two pods of potential allergy—
this product was made in machines
exposed to wheat, soy, gluten,
cockroaches, blueberries, fat girls
in pink dresses. Yes I just said
fat girl. This is not a sizeist poem.
Don’t even try it.

Another Silly Poem by Joshua Helms

2011-03-21T10:55:00.000-07:00

Another Silly Poem

The other day I was making a sandwich.

Some of the jam got on my index finger

& I mistook the jam for blood.

I wiped it away & inspected my finger.

I found this tiny C-shaped scar from when I was twelve.

I also found a freckle & we had a conversation.

The freckle told me about how it feels to be alone in a field of flesh.

I grimaced. I told the freckle that sometimes I forget I’m human,

sometimes hours pass & I can’t remember breathing.

The freckle said it knew how I felt.

I forgot about my sandwich.

I woke up an hour later & my teeth were sore.

This happens a lot when I nap.

I have to stop napping.

-Joshua R. Helms

I am a poet and I love birds by Barry Grass

2011-03-21T09:22:00.001-07:00

I am a poet
and I love birds.

-Barry Grass

I am a poet and I love birds by David Kummler

2011-03-21T09:21:00.000-07:00

I am a poet and I love birds.

-David Kummler

I am a poet and I love birds by Emma Sovich

2011-03-21T08:57:00.000-07:00

I am a poet
and I love
birds.

-Emma Sovich

Neither Alpaha nor Omega by Jon Catron

2009-11-09T17:56:00.000-08:00

I slip farther into the Abyss;
my eyes fixed in a downward gaze, mesmerized in comforting horror,
that is but sparsely broken by glances only to the cherubim in my arms.

Beatific.

Glorious.

Her perfect eyes, eternally cast upward toward her Heavenly Father,
do not see me.

My touch taints her. My hands, soiled and befouled,
smear and stain her deep. But still she raises her voice to the holy ghost,
that heavenly phantasm,
in praise and longing.

AVI!

But my trajectory, my tragedy, is prophecy.

And there has never been any other choice, for either of us.

Unhipsterish Earnestness by Greg Santos

2009-11-09T17:54:00.000-08:00

i do not like to write my poems using only lowercase letters

i feel like i am not cynical or hip enough to do so

the poets who write like this are way cooler than i am

If I wrote like them I would be like that creepy old guy

Who crashes a dive bar where all the cool college kids hang out

And I would be standing around all uncomfortable and self-conscious

With the wrong kind of alcoholic drink cradled unironically in my hand

And trying hard not to wince too much at the unrecognizable music

And I would secretly be hoping that Dave Matthews Band or Coldplay were playing instead.

Even though I am not that much older than they are but just old enough

To realize my tucked-in collared shirt and boot-cut jeans are too earnest and sincere

And sincerity is a big no-no lest I be trying to say something meaningful

And the world is too fucked up to write about love and the soul or the heart

And even swearing in the last line seems forced because I never swear in real life

And seeing it written down makes me regret I put that in the poem in the first place

But I will not remove it because it gives the poem street cred

And I am really dying for some street cred right now.

I feel old.

I will take anything I can fucking get.

just a poem by steve calamars

2009-11-09T17:52:00.000-08:00

a duet

hemingway played

a 12-gauge

like a trumpet

lips wrapped

around the barrel

cheeks inflated

like dizzy gillespie

he blew a solo

of buckshot and

brain-parts all over

empty white walls

times have changed

but not really all that much

i now cling to a glock

instead of a shotgun

i punch the keys

of a laptop

instead of a

typewriter

i too strive for

sparse prose and

poems clean as

erector-sets

and i routinely

squeeze the trigger

of an empty gun

perfecting my technique

and warming up

my fingers

preparing to

close my eyes

gather my will

and play a duet

menacing as a bull fight—

Shya Scanlon Chapter 21

2009-09-24T08:42:00.000-07:00

Forecast is being serialized semiweekly across 42 web sites. For a full list of participants and links to live chapters, please visit www.shyascanlon.com/forecast

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Until she rolled through the revolving doors and onto 5th Avenue, Zara maintained her composure. She parted the stream of people pouring down the hallway toward her without even the smallest insult or shove, and joined the crowd whose show had just ended without visible impatience, its glacial pace pushing her forward, her face a crystal of expressionless ice. Though I'd only begun to watch her, I already had a sense of how rare this was. I turned up the volume, hoping to catch an invective, and mother-hovered over the monitor.

Zara hit 5th and broke into a little jog to release energy. She made it to the South corner of the block, stopped, and turned back with the same bewildered expression she'd worn when dismissed from the theater. She still didn't quite understand what had happened. She'd been distracted enough by the theater itself, by the great cavernous space and the awkward formality, by even Asseem's ease in such a foreign environment, that she hadn't paid much attention to Luke's warning--or rather, she'd heard it, but hadn't understood its place in the intricate fiction around her. Zara paced back and forth on the corner, now without the grace that prevented her from bruising up against people on the way out of the building. Mothers gathered their children and veered to the side. Fathers slowed down and looked between her and the eyes of other men, glad she wasn't one of theirs. Should she go back and wait for him outside of the door? Give him another shot to the gut for being an asshole? Zara began to grow angry at the fact that she'd simply walked out when asked. Why hadn't she protested? Why hadn't she challenged Asseem, or even Mr. Stiles? Who the fuck did that guy think he was? She grew increasingly worked up, her face like a fist. No. She wasn't going to wait around for him. Fuck that. Why let him know that she cares? She thought of the books on S&M her mother had given her, and how power could be held by the “bottom” despite their physically compromised position. She needed to maintain a balance. But she couldn't think of anything to do that didn't feel reactive. Run away? Wait around? Lash out? Cry? She felt sick to her stomach. Her parents would love this, she thought. Their daughter, hysterical on the corner of 5th and University, flailing around and scaring the plebeians. Though Zara was never sure whether their ridicule in circumstances like this was due to a natural response mechanism or an intentional “parenting” approach they'd read about--or developed--either way she never heard the end of it. She watched the families amble by, each more insipid than the last. The more she watched them, and the more she considered her own, the more she realized that her afternoon would, in fact, make a good story. At her expense, but still. She could tell them about the punch (the punch!) and how he'd bought her food despite being completely broke (which she could tell by his expression of profound loss.) They'd be thrilled by the awkward intricacy of her courtship ritual. She could see them, then, laughing as she described her own look of horror at being excused. Dismissed! She'd play it up--she wasn't above teasing herself. It was ridiculous anyway. All of it. How love in loving tries to undo the very thing that undoing proves. Zara was now walking quickly south down 5th. They'd howl at her scathing description of the back of Mr. Stiles' head, and offer her a glass of wine--she was wound up--and ask her to tell the story again.

Marshall would scold her for even stepping foot in the theater--an abomination, he'd probably say. Jennifer would delight in the details Zara would give about the strange costumes worn by the theater employees, and make raunchy fetish jokes about popular culture. Zara normally loathed such jokes, and her mother for trying to “bridge the gap” by telling them, but she thought of it warmly now as she marched east after having made it to down to Jackson.

As she headed toward her neighborhood Zara grew less tense and her pace slowed. She passed by the familiar, broken faces of people she'd walked by a thousand times, and by the fire cans--still unlit in the early evening--smelling like the trash from last night's burn. She passed by a man stooped over a bunch of brightly colored paper, all torn and crumpled, and watched him stuff as much of it as he could into one of the cans, smothering what may have been left to smolder. She thought about that breezy tap on the shoulder she'd received after school, and of turning to find Asseem, smiling, for a moment unbearably innocent. Zara stepped over a few torn sheets of the paper being gathered for tonight's fire. Was he schizophrenic?

Perhaps she was being too hard on him, and the poor kid just wasn't in control of himself. She'd seen his parents. She'd seen the source of his scowl--his father's hardened face too serious for parent-teacher night. She'd seen his mother, or rather, not seen her, plain grey cloth covering every inch of skin. Zara crested Jackson Street and was about to break off the arterial and head toward her house when she passed a pole completely covered in the loud paper she now realized, after taking a look around, was everywhere. She looked up and down the street. It plastered most of the poles and several abandoned buildings. It was all over the ground, torn down by people wanting to tear something down. And by those needing something to burn. It was being collected not only by the man she'd passed, but by all the men and women on the street for all the fire cans in sight, which now glowed as brightly stuffed with unlit paper as they would later lit by flame. Zara walked up to the nearest pole and looked closer.

Seattle has always had a rather coarse approach to propaganda. Very little nuance. Very little to mask the crude point being made. And an excessive use of different fonts, underlining, bold, italics, and misplaced quotes. Zara's eyes bounced around between the various fluorescent colored sheets until she landed on a shade that didn't result in an immediate headache. It was an official notification. She rolled her eyes at the idiotic Indian head used to indicate Seattle's “brand.” As if the chief would have wanted anything to do with this colossal cooperative failure! The notice was unbearably cheery. It read:

Citizens of Seattle! A revolution is upon us! An energy revolution! Emotional transfer is now a “reality,” and Emotional Transfer Machines (ETMs) will be placed in convenient locations throughout the city.* Each citizen will receive a converter and personal energy storage device.** The ETM location nearest you will be on 15th Ave. and Jackson St. Check with a city official for a complete list of locations. Get ready for the end of darkness! Get ready for emotional energy!!

*Please refrain from bothering or distracting the ETM crews. Each crew will be monitored and protected by a city Protective Services officer.

**Certain batteries may also be used for storage, so empty out your “junk drawer!”

Zara tore the notice down, dropping it at her feet. Great, she thought, walking again. Handpepper will be grossly overjoyed. She flashed on his creepy enthusiasm and could almost feel it seeping through the classroom air as it would, no doubt, the next morning, his orange curls aquiver as he'd describe in borrowed authority what little he knows about the city's implementation plan, his leatherwear tightening around his testicles as he talks. Yuck. The man needed to be put down.

Zara finally reached her street and smiled at the dull light sifting through the curtains of her house. They were home. She walked more quickly. As she approached the property, she noticed that the pathway from the street to the structure had been cleared. Weeds lay to either side, uprooted and simply dropped. In some places an actual tool had been used. Writer's block? Marshall had begun to paint their bathroom once after encountering some kind of difficulty in his work, and had, after having one of what he liked to call his “ah-ha moments,” abandoned the project mid-wall. The paint sill clung to the wall in patches, applied too thickly and stuck in mid-slide. Zara climbed the front steps and grabbed the door knob. Her body lurched against the door. It was locked. Her anger spiked.

“Mom! Dad!” she called, banging.

Zara tried to look through the high window adjacent to the doorway but all she could see was the ceiling and one row of books. Two if she stood on her toes. Zara's third instinct drove her ear to the door, and she held her breath, listening to footsteps and indistinguishable murmurs. Zara's parents never locked the door even if they weren't home--they'd always told her that it was an expression of trust in their community, though she'd always suspected it was just because they grew up so rich they'd never learned the habit. Either way, to be actually home with the door locked was practically a silent scream that something good was going on. Zara reluctantly drew a breath. Ear to wood and face to the street, she gazed back down the trail carved in the lawn from the front steps to the sidewalk and remembered the only other time they'd cleared a path like that. It had been for a friend of Jen's parents, a large, lumbering woman wearing too many clothes and jerking her head around nervously while her car waited, running. Her father had had the idea of getting some money from this woman somehow, but hadn't been able to contain his judgment of “all she stood for,” and after a series of insults he hadn't bothered to explain he'd simply kicked her out. The house had been silent afterward, both parents retreating to different areas, sulking. “The ash of bridges makes great fertilizer for the growth of independent pursuits!” Marshal had finally said, in a raised voice, to no one in particular. Her mother had only gotten piss drunk and curled up with a crisp clean copy of the Communist Manifesto.

The doorknob clicked and Zara leapt back. She took a seat on the stairs and summoned the most sincere expression of boredom she had. The door opened to her father's voice in mid-sentence, saying “…everything to us.”

Jen agreed, “Yes, Professor, thank you.”

“Not at all,” a throaty voice responded. “I just thought it was right.”

A pause followed, and Zara felt the wood sag behind her. This guest was fat too.

“Ah, Zara, hello.”

Zara didn't turn around. She was bored bored bored. “Hey.”

The throaty voice let out a throaty laugh. “She's so big!”

Big? What's that supposed to mean? “Watch it.” Zara said.

“Oh! Watch it!” more throaty chuckles. “Indeed I will, young Zara. Consider me warned.”

She didn't like this man, and she'd never even seen him.

“Goodbye, then, Marshal; Jennifer.”

The sagging body moved to the side and began down the stairs, then a blurry figure brushed by. Zara avoided looking at him. The man smelled old. Once he was past her she stood up, turned around, and bumped by her parents, heading for her room. She should have known her parents were going to be preoccupied with their own fucking lives just when she'd wanted to tell them about hers. How stupid could she be? Zara stormed down the hallway and almost screamed at how clean her room was, recalling in disgust the length to which, just that morning, she'd picked things up and put things away and thrown things out and it all mounted inside her like a giant fucking injustice and she reached over and swept her arm across the top shelf of a bookcase by the door. The books and papers and odds and ends made an incredibly satisfying crash, cascaded across the floor, and shot under the bed with Zara right behind them with a leap. She landed on the mattress and bounced, bounced, her face buried in soft oblivion. How her parents managed, every single time there was anything important to tell them, to cap Zara's story with something bigger, more interesting, or more important, was beyond her. But it was like clockwork. She was an idiot for expecting to be taken seriously, or taken anywhere at all for that matter. Zara screamed into the pillow and kicked her feet to get another bounce from the springy bed, its motion known to calm her.

Her parents had come to stand at the open bedroom door, knowing better than to enter.

“Honey…” her father began, “Honey we're sorry about the lock.”

Zara remained silent.

Her mother took a different approach, “Zara come on. It wasn't like you were out there all night.”

“Zara dear,” Marshall continued, “we know you're probably curious about who that man was, and, well, your mother and I have discussed it and we've decided that rather than lie to you--”

“Which we could have easily done!”

“Jennifer. Zara dear rather than lie to you we've decided to simply not tell you who that man was.”

“Nothing gained, nothing lost,” added her mother, clearly misusing the phrase.

“Idiot,” thought Zara.

“Soooo dear if don't have any questions I guess we should just, you know,” Marshall was at a loss.

Forget about it!” said Jennifer.

“Right. Forget. Remember what Nietzsche said about forgetting. It's just a--”

Zara rolled over, unable, finally, to contain herself. “A way to make room for new things. Right dad. A total fucking misappropriation of Nietzsche's idea, but let's just go ahead and use it since hey, we're on a roll with stupid misappropriation.”

This behavior was not at all abnormal, of course, and Zara's parents took it in stride--in a way much more comfortable dealing with their daughter's anger than with her pain.

Jennifer stepped in to defend her husband. “Fine. Don't forget. Obsess about it if that's how you'd like to cope. We're not here for a philosophical argument, Zara.”

“Well that's good because you're ill-prepared.”

Jennifer stomped off, knowing the limits of her patience.

“Zara dear we're sorry about this, really, but please respect our right to keep this information from you. Don't pretend you don't keep things from us. We're just being up front about it to set an example.” Her father stood by the door, a worried look puckering his face but his arms akimbo, trying for an authoritative pose.

Zara made him wait. As curious as she was about the man who'd been in her house, what she really wanted was to redirect into her sob story about Asseem. But with Marshall no doubt hoping for just such an opportunity to, as he'd put it, make room for new things, Zara knew that bringing up her afternoon would meet her father's needs, and let him off the hook. It just wasn't fucking fair.

Zara glowered at her father and clutched her comforter for comfort. As he stood there, vague and helpless, she had a chance to really look at him, full body--the kind of stock-taking that doesn't normally happen between people who live so closely together. Marshall was most often either a lower body spilling out from behind a newspaper or a head and torso sitting at the table. Both versions of her father, in leaving parts of him to the imagination (his expression, his height) conferred some authority. But just then, standing at her bedroom door with his worried eyes and his ear-hair, with his short legs ending in absurd hedgehog house slippers she'd given him years ago, with his plaid shirt patched at both elbows, just then he seemed so small and harmless that she couldn't stay angry, and her glower slowly melted into a fond warm glow. Which she kind of hated too, but not as much.

“Oh dad,” she said, and threw a pillow at Marshall which he failed to catch.

“My precious girl,” he said, sounding old, and bent over to pick it up. “You know your mother and I care a great deal about you, dear. We'd never keep anything from you if it wasn't absolutely necessary.”

The warm glow dimmed. “Yeah, whatever.” Zara didn't want to be reminded of that. In fact, she'd almost convinced herself to stop the conversation altogether until she flashed, once more, on Asseem's flat voice following him down the aisle toward the fat man, toward Mr. Stiles, after nodding for Zara to see herself out. Her cheeks burned, bringing the heat full circle, and seeing that her father was turning to leave, she made her move.

“Dad?” Zara paused, watching her father's expectation. The small man stood well within the doorframe. He leaned against it. What the hell was she doing? How could this person understand the last 24 hours of her day? Zara thought about the ridiculously romantic story her parents told about how they met: the long walk, the soapy hands, the tent. She thought of the forced, impractical way her mother had always tried to raise her--propping Zara in front of books beyond her own grasp, a mysterious and desirable Other that had somehow become equated with emancipation. But Jennifer wasn't emancipated. Neither of her parents were. Not really. They were the psychic equivalent of an R rated learn-from-my-mistakes nursery rhyme, quick to reveal the limitations of their imagination, and quick to point out how their privilege was at fault. What a bunch of fucking bullshit.

Besides, if they were going to keep secrets so was she.

“Never mind,” she said. Marshall shrugged and disappeared down the hall. Zara understood then that the most difficult part came next. It made her vaguely ill just to consider it. The only person she could think of who would understand her pain and frustration at that moment was the exact person who caused it. How could this be? It was like getting kicked to the curb and reaching right back up for a hand. As if one embarrassment wasn't enough. The whole notion was revolting. Zara lay on her bed and listened to the pointless murmur and shuffle of her parents. She looked around her (mostly) clean room, and down at the things she'd thrown to the floor. How could she even look Asseem in the eye? She swung her legs around to the floor, knelt down, and picked up all the books to put them, one by one, back on the shelf.

The next morning Zara pulled herself from bed and pushed out of the house. She'd slept terribly. She set out toward school but her feet formed unions with the passing grasses and root-raised cracks, protesting her movement with stumbles and trips. Zara plodded forward despite it, and paid no closer attention to the ground. She tried not to think about the day before and thought about nothing else, growing more sad and more angry by turns, finally settling for a comfortable tense resignation. This was not what she needed. It was difficult enough to drag herself back to the dopey dysfunction of Mr. Handpepper each day--now she'd made it worse. Why had she even considered the possibility that two people who share nothing but their outsider status would have any hope of getting along? She kicked a stick that was a root, stubbed her toe.

Mr. Handpepper was sitting on the corner of his desk, and Zara could see him nonchalantly grinding the steel point into his rectum as he welcomed his students to class. She walked by him and said, Go easy on it, cowboy, but he didn't hear. The kids already in class were already surfing the web, and the disgusting ETM was already gone. Zara was already sorry she'd come. She found a desk and watched Handpepper slowly rock back and forth on his little corner, smiling and greeting most kids by name. Zara, who'd made a point of forgetting everyone's name, listened to the stream of novelties pour from Handpepper's mouth: “Dope, Hate, Hickey…” She turned to look out the window, feeling increasingly hopeless. How could their parents let them change their names to these absurdist spectacles? Or had they actually named them this way? The thought almost brought her to tears. “Miss Miss, Chimp, Nice, X…” It had become foggy since she'd walked to school, and the fog was tangled in trees. Zara watched as it slowly overtook what was left of the leaves, and rolled in closer, across the parking lot, the thick blur engulfing cars and signposts. She tried to think of the last time she'd seen fog like that, and couldn't remember. It seemed extreme. “Tinette, JewBoy, Pistol…” No, she was sure she'd never seen fog so thick. She looked down and saw that it was actually depressing the grass and weeds as it slid by. It had actual heft. She saw something dark a few feet from the ground, and as it grew closer she realized that it was a tiny bird, pinched inside the fog. It was unsuccessfully trying to flap its wings, and chirping. What the hell? “Kinky, Gerbil, Asseem…” Zara bolted upright and looked toward the door. Sure enough, Asseem had entered the room. He passed by Handpepper, still rocking, and without looking up wound his way through the aisles, through the rows, growing closer to Zara's seat beside the windows. Her heart beat faster. She looked back outside but the fog had miraculously lifted, the bird was gone, and she turned back just as Asseem took the seat one row over, right next to her. He didn't speak, he didn't even look at her, but she knew. This was it. He was the one.

Chapter 22

by Paula Bomer

2009-08-29T14:31:00.000-07:00

“People are born to be angels.” Swedenborg

Worry Not Sons of Mine, Heaven Is

And who knew that choking on a piece of toast that morning, gasping, running, you children running after me, the noise in my head, the silence of my voice, the not being able to say, I’m choking, I’m choking, the falling down, poor boys, poor boys, my sons, stop crying, stop, who knew that the last sensations of sharp daggers in my chest and the wet, coolness of blades of grass caressing my neck and arms would lead to this.

Just as the sun and moon and earth pull at one another, God himself washes away our sins as we pass, just as Christ washed the feet of his people, in a moment so minute and so infinite, from one world into the next. I am in heaven, children! In Heaven! Free of fear and rage and pain, my soul risen and blended and forever and always in eternity in this afterlife, back to where once I came and you came and we all come from, free from all guilt and shame. I am with you, children, always and I’m back, gone back, to my mother, my father, and God himself wears a crown of glory and that glory is and is and is, it drenches every molecule of earthly life and split second of time. All my sins, all my impatience, all my pettiness, my hardened heart, all is washed clean upon my ascent to this place, this heaven. Cry not for me, sons of mine. Your mother is in a better place, a place where we will live in eternity together.

And when you see a mouse crawl through a hole in the house, or feel a cool breeze on your cheek and something inside you stirs, believe, believe, because yes, it is a sign. When a shadow appears and startles you and you look and it is gone, yes, it is me. When you walk across the very field where I died and you hear a bird cry out so beautifully it stops you in your tracks, know it is me. I am everywhere, haunting you with my love. Don’t fear these feelings; embrace them instead. Because God does not only throb inside me, but infuses the world you live in. A never sleeping pulsing light, upon our death God burns away all the pain and suffering of our earthly existence with his hot white flame of love. Water, light, fire and love. It is true, the Holy Spirit does reside within and in the end, we are freed from the weighted chains of mortality and the gravity of the earth. The earth is heaven tainted, washed and lit with God, but heaven itself,
children, is to be beholden. It is all water and light, oceans of bright hot love. It is eternity and bliss and you know it when you come, you know it all over again, because it is from where you came and where we all belong.

Something so trivial as a piece of bread contains the magic of God, the magic to bring us from one world into the next. How we fear death! Every day sons, I will guide you, as God does as well, and listen listen and watch, for the path to heaven is where we lead you and like all mortals, you will make missteps. I beg you though, when you wake in a sweat, startled and heart racing, the night storm thundering around you, and you sit up, gasping and confused in the dark bedroom next to your wife, and the vision of me flashes in your mind, the words spoken from me echo in your head, “And who knew that choking on a piece of toast that morning, gasping, running, you children running after me…” and you are confused as to where you are and what it is all about, I say believe, believe, believe. It was no dream, my son. It was no dream.

Jerk Neck Turkey Leg by Jeff Dahlgren

2009-08-29T14:30:00.000-07:00

Flowing text scrawled by insane delicate fingers. Yellow and bright on the side of a big red top circus tent. The wind picking up and the words rippled. A grey sky dropping in values quickly,the lighting was still such that legibility remained for the little girl. She listened to the grunts coming from inside the tent. She read the text, working up the nerve to just go in and tell the man inside she was pregnant.A zephyr perhaps or hurricane related,maybe just the backside of a heavy metal generator, a billowing guffaw ripped and baffled the line of colorful words n the canvas big top's side. The words made about as much sense to her as the notion of raising this thing growing inside of her. Mostly staring at the script,she read them and shifted from foot to foot. She'd gone to this much effort to follow him. Had stayed hidden long enough. Clutching her chest. Crying. The words reduced to sounds to repeat like an alien mantra. This wasn't happening. A flowing hand-painted row of words:
"Barn warped bark Larvae
in the midnight sun.
Axle master Space crust
on the dark side
Vamp candor moo fumes (in toner cartridges)
over there
Lumpy owned Morse thunder food coloring
in the wet cement
Amps lung notates poor summations
on top of old smokey
Purple tire tracks through play Doh
around these here parts
Moon pewter tomb tummy Teddy Ruxpin
in the end.
Barn warped bark Larvae
in the midnight sun.
Axle master Space crust
on the dark side..."

Carbon Mollified Bat Raton's Traveling Flesh Fairwellers had seven over-sized seagulls tied to their tent.
Up there,where God's bumped ideas and uglies,the blade laced wings ripped through the air. Their eyes scanned the horizon.The traveling act accrued monikers and routines, the same way they added and dropped lives.
Life drove them and sources of shelter and nourishment were plentiful.
Their theme had been:
"Leathery wings and emulsified fingering reasons for bullheaded eyelidless raspy smoker's values".
Until they were sued for copyright infringement.

"You don't have to stretch the muscle." said the Lion Tamer. He was up on a ladder feeding a large malformed aquatic creature in a clear walled tank.
The Strong Man lifted a leg while curling weights and let a loud flat sound from his ass. He shot the Lion Tamer a look that said "Shut the fuck up." He had been plotting a way to kill the Tamer ever since the Oakland fiasco. His death had to look like an accident,though.Ancient tattoos and sun-wrinkled skin faded and expanded with each extension,each hinge on his elbow joint from acute to right angle. Repeatedly. In lightning and in faulty swinging overhead lights.A pattern emerged to his grimace and his distracted thoughts, leaning into the grunt.

Strong Man had rancid spidering vein rot networking across his body. More than a few parts needing to be removed before infection spread. His legs were showing black fungal root patterns. It looked like the mold's epicenter was the most dense and spreading from the crotch of his red spandex. The little microscopic fingers thickened as they passed under and around un-busted leg sores and pimples.
The Strong Man would laugh with his bad breath and slip off into the nowhere corner of any and every town. Bottles clinking and breaking in some distant alley,like a sort of theme music that followed him. No matter where he was,he'd find the dirtiest bar. Maybe the dirtiest prostitute. And more often than not, the biggest ugliest guy to fight.
As they sat in silence,attending to their tasks under the tent,the Lizard Dwarf Twins meandered in sideways, clutching a piece of tattered paper. They were attached at the skull and at one knee. The clutched paper aged and loved and scribbled,erased and re-scribbled, care -worn fingers taking it beyond the texture of tissue. it bore words in baby blue and bright deep red ink.
One half had a high pitched voice and the other stuttered.
"When we passed through Gibsonton last week, we got an idea for a poem. Would you guys like to hear it?"
They didn't wait for a response. The overhead lights in the tent seemed to choose moment to flicker incessantly.
"Oh donor mutate mandibles and planets. For plants and cannibals masturbate.
Baby mashed and ransom letters masticate,sand paper bananas and traffic panties...
emancipate.
Oh gonad plaster cannister Trafalgar pilgrimage in winter tit mouse drips.
Press the snake piss in lullaby manure tumors, tokens of appreciation.
Only Mona
eyebrows smuggle
volume in a munchy laughter gall gumption.
Take my omnipresent love letter to sarcasm's ranch
and jerk hot sauce on monastery lawns."

They didn't really wait for a response either. The twins scuttled crab-like out the door as quickly as they had come in. The Lion Tamer and the Strong Man just looked at each other and looked back to what they were doing.
The moment was too long for the Lion Tamer,though. His watery friend,waiting impatiently for more food took action that seemed correct to it.

"Jeeeezuz Christ! Ooooh..!" Was the sudden scream,but it ended quickly.

The Strong Man did not suddenly turn at the man's wailing. The scream had been short with a distinctive snapping sound. The sea beast was reaching from beyond the top edge of the pool. Using its one human arm, it had taken a sincere grip on the Lion Tamer's neck. Broken and still fidgeting slightly,his body hung at an extreme and awkward angle. His broken neck a fleshy mess for a fulcrum, the creature struggled to pull the body into the water with it.
"Don't . Don't. ...just don't." The Strong Man walked over to the creature. "Drop him." He still carried his dumb bell, working the bicep as he walked over to the water's sloshing edge.

The pregnant little girl walked in as the twins left. They had made her feel nervous and she pulled the flap back as soon as it had shut behind them. She saw the creature grab the Lion Tamer and the blood drained from her face. Small pale hands dropped to her sides. The Strong Man had not noticed her.
As if animated on psychological strings beyond her and she was, she meandered into a shadow and watched,bottling a scream as her body did as it wished and she followed.
Clambering up and swatting for obedience the strong man used the back of his hand on the beast in the water and the body dropped with a thud. He noticed that he was still moving with curiosity and then over a broad shoulder his eye suddenly turned and saw her standing there. From down the ladder he glared frozen and stopped moving,
She stared back and then he dropped a hand to his present firmly on his side. Hers went to her mouth,as if she were in a school dress clutching a teddy bear or a tissue. A heavy boot met the worn flat shoveled and packed dirt floor. Of the circular confines and wind rippling,the sound of her voice uttered one word.
"Tennis.." She said and then her eyes became very larger with horror.
Her hands went to her stomach and doubling over, a scream and something trailed form her face into the dirt. Blood and thick in a stream, she continued to scream.
The Strong Man walked slowly over to her,a sideways stride the upper portion of his body leaned away. Caution dawned on the oval shape of his mouth.

Then, like a piece of bubble gum, going super-nova elastic stingers, she expanded with sickening jabbing lengths. Her flesh ripped through the feminine outfit in an odd globular levitating mass. Extensions sprang and undulated,wavering as if in a comic book of horror.. Tongues of strained pink and then it ripped, splattering and shooting extremely skinny marrow thin spikes. White things,needles of bone shot in all directions, spears piercing tiny holes everywhere. The tent in thousands of place had exit wounds and new supporting harpoons, tiny stiff filaments.And the earth rooted there, her spines filled the entire area densely .The pool with beast bleeding inside frozen in a leaking spot,the earth beneath it turning a ruddy mud texture. The Strong Man, a lifeless statue in mid-motion drained and sagged,making a complicated mess.
A Baby, bare, pale and perfect crawled up out of a strange vibrating epicenter of the big top. A vacuum of air gone fleshy and making sucking sounds,covered in coagulating living fluid. She flopped into existence using Darwinian fists and blind squinched eyes to waddle, naked and sweaty gleaming of birth struggle. Into the Strong Man's mess, her father she lapped up her first dream with an undercurling tongue and went to sleep.

Napkin by Darby Larson

2009-08-24T14:06:00.000-07:00

Napkin

My best friend poet, one of:

my eyes ears oh

Whole poem.

He said he thought universal and I subthought it. Something along there.

Wallace sent him postcards thanking him for applying. "Thank you," I joke him. "Oh my ears," I joke.

"What's with the beanie cap?" he answers me.

"What about it?"

"Hate you."

Aw.

Less liquid staining us raw still.

We sucked each other's cocks but I want to make it clear Lowell and I did not live together though what follows

"The awful cap stays awn."

Cute.

"Come on out," I say.

He finished shaving and came on out in.

"Check this in out," he napkins me.

"Horrible," I say.

"Carl's cute."

"What's Carl like now since?"

"Kinky like."

"A prize fighter?"

"A fighter."

"A prize one?"

Rest of the morning, napkining his bloody throat.

3 things by Adam Moorad

2009-08-17T17:54:00.001-07:00

#1

my mouth is full of lava
a miniature eruption
leaks from the corners of my
lips identical
fire rivers meeting at my chin

i try to divert the flow
by laying on my face
by turning off the television
by closing my eyes

when i hear my heart beat
i don’t want to be anyplace
except someplace else

#2

it's sunday
and we hide
with a bottle of Southern Comfort
behind our motel

evey time you move your feet
i think about fellatio

#3

i like to pretend my brain
is a piece of playdoh
jesus stuck in a microwave,
cooked on high for 45 seconds
and forgot about

all is forgiven and spinning by Sasha Fletcher

2009-08-13T07:26:00.000-07:00

and all is forgiven

“Is there breakfast?”

“Sure,” he says. “I can make breakfast.”
“
Oh. Good.”

They eat breakfast. It is cold. The weather. The breakfast is cereal and some honeycrisp apples and coffee and toast. Outside a tree branch hits the window. Repeatedly. Many times. While it hits, the leaves all grow in in red and orange and yellow. They look like they are on fire the way the wind is blowing. The wind is blowing hard. Then, after they look like they are on fire, the leaves go real stiff and don’t move anymore, except down to the ground, where they fall, and just lie there, and everyone thinks wow that was fast and rakes them into huge giant piles, and from the rooftops they jump into them. A deer runs past everyone and into a windshield. It continues to run.

spinning

Outside it was cold enough to snow but it didn’t. No amount of threatening would change anything. Shotguns and pleas. I offered them a Nintendo Game Cube. I went on E-Bay and told the weather Look if you will let it snow I will buy this Nintendo Game Cube for you. The weather says nothing. The weather is not impressed. The weather is indifferent to my funds. I asked if she would show it her breasts. “Will you show it your breasts,” I asked her. She said she would think about it, and I for one believe her.

Work & Girl by Jeff Dahlgren

2009-08-12T09:10:00.000-07:00

He laughed and smiled and said, "Good Morning " The mirrored armour fractured partially. He was exposed in the orange capped bottle. It wouldn't close, the white spots dissolved and full throttle thought. I can't.

"Tears tear palimpsests depression anecdote" He said. "The velour,the vellum bristol,the grinding machine and the blue solvent smell."

He pointed at two dragons fighting in the sky. Band aids spandex philanthropists possum tick tock theory dripped in candle wax on the shag carpet.The wallpaper turned into strange shapes.

"Treasure is their best album and changed lanes" He had said. She didn't even look. A smile from the bedroom and words came up and out and actually manifested on the air as the floated. She cut two of her fingers on the snooze button.

The car would swerve and repetitions thud thud tripled up then quadrupled. A muddy reverb. Coffee. The reflection said shave and wash. And concentrate.

Paint buckets with dying butterflies flopping in the Day-Glo mess. Farting fangs with rainbows. Butterflies eat dead things,he thought in passing.

A row of fuzzy stuffed animals sat on her bed. Next to it, the shadow of a full grown zodiac bear patiently sighed and stared at the bathroom door. With novels under his belt and fur painted yellow, it was wearing red shorts. He punched its tar and it had a baby. Scum on the edge of the bottom of the toilet. Twenty years ago with the grinch and vodka. And a torpedo dog chewing on thoughtlessly disposed of feminine products.

"Please pull me six of part number 1234gf from aisle b-c-3", He said and got on the forklift. He spit.

"What do you want to do for dinner tonight? I don't know what do you want to do?" He said. She said. The bathroom had fog.

The mirror shed its skin. A thick disease of ancient customs. Learned behavior and he looked down into the sink.

Thinking. Treason police weeds and particle contraindications. Lacan waffle house at 4 AM. Testicle sheets and Crimean wars. Brad Pitt. Answer the first question. Polite is the morning. Inspired is the work.

He walked out and down the driveway and woke up .The mustard tentacle,the ocean memory of webbed feet. A hockey mask and a Mickey Mouse gas mask. Dental visits for parts of teeth collected on lap tops. Hop scotch and Osage oranges. The defragmented nightmare of somebody else's heaven bullied clouds and partied.

"Sand my shoe laces when you get home tonight " He thought her heard her say and go into the break room for a donut.

His armour was British today. Polished and covered in text. He let all the girls lick it clean. Just in time for his personalized parking space to be moved to a small room in Canada.

Chrome ponies and more animals. More food.

"If you are not satisfied with the services being provided, I can't help you. Other doctors may entertain some grandiose notion of childhood verbal abuse fantasies-but I see us a two adults." His long coat was wrinkled. You could tell he woke up late. He was not organized. He was not happy. If he was a Barber, his floor would be hairless.he would call about his blood at 9:30 PM.

Movie producers having their body's washed and bullets flying through college campuses. Manimal and garbage chargrilled chicken sandwiches. The turning signal and the seatbelt alarm.

"I wish they made eatbelts." He thought.

Themes to shows blurred with songs from the 80's. Traditional toilets.

The lid came off. The palm and the Dixie cup logo. Designed by Saul Bass. He also did the storyboard for the shower scene in "Psycho". The tilt forward (not back) of the neck to swallow. Skin so soft and Christmas music. The slippery carport and football hand held video games. God's barking. Dirty silverware. The dripping wet towel on the shower curtain. The black and white blood.

"But I haven't got another cat." He said to a co-worker spitting off the side of his forklift.

The interstate was backed up. So he put on his holiday cd and rolled down a window. He was thankful the day was over. He would stop by the grocery store to pick up one of those cheap boxes of fried chicken. Or maybe a couple of sub sandwiches. His cholesterol was at 231. Fantasy of the small room again.

Canadian bears hibernate and they don't shit in the woods. In the distance, you can see trees wobbling when they scratch their backs. Sharks jump in boats.

The bathroom door opened and she came out dressed for work.

"Don't forget to turn off the coffee maker before you leave" She said and pet one of the stuffed animals. She was tracking paint and he briefly imagined a large flaming chunk of dragon falling from the sky outside his bedroom window.

The chicken sat on the forklift and he tried to answer his boss's question regarding the lack of organization to aisle b-d 2. " It's time I learned how to move the forklift while wearing this armour"

"Armour?" He had said and laughed nervously. "Well...suck it in buddy" He had rode a horse into the horizon and punched a giant clock in the sky. The sun was coming up and the day would soon be telling him it was time to go home.

Tornado of cats on a plastic Parker Brothers suicidal mystic pixie sticks and lunch fish. The ballast and the construction worker. I have to dodger and hand my co-worker purloined letters. It's time to her eyes are so amazing. The packaging tape juxtaposed balloon tumors juice newton pure guava jolly time. Labelled for shipping chicken. Rubber murder.

Mountains were the place to be. He went home and sat down. Then he laid down on the couch and felt her washing his hair. He wanted to shave.

He wanted to cry and the phone rang. But it only furthered his confusion. The swimming cycle of a song by the president of the united states of america.

He felt tears burning troughs down his soft gooey cheeks. A bacon sizzling sound and the smell of burning hair.

Armies in rows carried letters together. Spelling as they marched,eggs in pockets careful to not break. They moved silently tied to clouds over them. He whispered to each one in a row. The boulders in their paths broken from children on augers or pogo sticks. Or both. The ground made of cellophane with the bluest water beneath. He tried to start his engine. He left for New Orleans down Airline Highway. Her peacock hometown had a legacy. She was Catholic.

He cried and looked at his white powder covered claws and walked over to the window. A butterfly sat on the edge outside smoking the smallest cigarette he had ever seen.
Bars on the window kept the maggots in the field. The paperwork. The presses that never stopped. He imagined putting on his turning signal and threw a temper tantrum like that tennis player from so long ago.

"I don't feel like fried chicken tonight" She had said,rubbing black grease on her new dress.

The couch was uncomfortable. When he tried to sit up, a rope-like cramp seized his entire body and he quickly reclined again.

"I'm afraid we're going to have to let you go" He said.

"I can't continue like this" She said.

Pomegranate by Cami Park

2009-08-11T20:27:00.000-07:00

You're so pretty and

eccentric and I don't know

what to do with you.

the lump by Steve Calamars

2009-08-11T05:39:00.000-07:00

Charlie Greene can feel the lump on his inner right thigh. He steers his car with one hand and pushes on the lump with the other. He prods the thing going down the road, experiencing strange, foreign sensations while maintaining control. Charlie can feel that the lump is not hard or stationary, but soft and transitory, being able to move the mass beneath his skin either down toward the knee or up closer to the groin. He pulls into the parking lot and backs into a space. Charlie checks the mail and walks upstairs to his apartment.

He drops his keys and a few envelopes on the kitchen counter. Charlie immediately walks into the bathroom and removes his gray slacks. He sits down on the side of the tub and inspects the oddity. It is the size of an egg beneath the skin. He pushes on the lump and moves it along the leg. He experiences an awkward, unidentifiable sensation. He has no prior memory of the lump and has only been aware of it since his lunch break, when he was using the urinal in the restroom. Persuaded more by curiosity than fear, Charlie now stands up and walks over to the medicine cabinet.

He takes out a straight-razor and sits back down. Opening the instrument, he holds the lump steady and makes a small incision. He rips off a clump of toilet paper and dabs the blood, before poking his finger inside and feeling around. Charlie runs up against an object, a structure, soft, scaly and warm. He removes his finger and wipes the blade clean. He holds the lump steady and expands the incision meticulously. He is now able to work two fingers inside and grip it.

Stretching the incision open with one hand and gripping with the other, Charlie is able to remove the lump. He pulls out a small, plump goldfish with tiny black speckles and massive black eyes. He holds the fish up in the light and looks at it. The fish looks back at Charlie, mouth contorting, gasping for air. He experiences an uncomfortable sense of sympathy for the fish, dropping it quickly into the toilet to stop its suffering. It breathes deep and swims small figure-eights in the bowl. Charlie watches warmly as his leg bleeds out onto the bathroom floor.

He opens the medicine cabinet again. This time he takes out band-aids and a bottle of iodine. He uses iodine-soaked clumps of toilet paper to clean the incision and applies numerous band-aids to contain the bleeding, which continues to flow from the surgery. Charlie checks on the fish and finds it still swimming small figure-eights. He knows a toilet is not an appropriate home and walks over to the tub.

Turning on the hot and cold faucets, Charlie begins to fill the tub with water. He is exacting with his adjustments, aware that if the water is to warm or to cool, the fish will die immediately upon entering the tub. He stabilizes the temperature and cuts off the water. He wipes blood off of his leg and walks over to the toilet.

Charlie submerges his hand in the water and the fish seems almost to swim into his palm. He carries the thing carefully and releases it into the tub. It breathes deep and swims large, slow figure-eights. Charlie sits and watches quietly.

The fish, breaking its figure-eights, comes to the surface of the water. Mouth contorting, it stares up at Charlie. He thinks it might be hungry, whether correct or incorrect, he gets up and goes into the kitchen. He opens a loaf of bread and removes a slice. A small pool of blood collects on the kitchen floor. Charlie wipes his leg with a dish towel and returns to the tub.

Tearing off bits of bread, he rolls them into tiny white balls and drops them one at a time into the water. The fish eats the tiny bread balls and hovers near the surface. It eats the entire slice of bread, before Charlie begins to get dizzy.

He looks at the thin stream of blood running down his leg and coagulating into a small puddle at his heel on the floor. Charlie manages to wipe some of the blood away before finally losing strength and falling. He lies there peacefully and gradually loses consciousness. His eyes close, his breath shallows –

In the tub beside him, well-fed and content, the fish breathes deep and swims long, slow, meditative figure-eights.

The Dispersed by Eggtooth

2009-08-11T05:38:00.000-07:00

Grey as the day and its haze ripping through the salty air, his beard long and in the wind was the same. He dispersed sentences and demanded truths. Ramming a finger towards the cliff's edge. Towards the ocean one hundred feet below. The man he gestured to was to dive in the morning, but presently had other more pressing challenges.

Gnarled and poignant with wisdom,the sentencing finger had three gold rings molded in points on its length. It turned from the wiry muscular man,tied to a stake and directly pointed to a walrus-like beast straining against a chain in the ground. Not 3 yards out of reach, it salivated a thick black mucous,heaving and shitting and slipping in its own mess. It wanted to eat everything in sight. Oily black scales shimmered and flipped as it breathed. Odd omnidirectional eyes bulged from sockets. Crab's eyes grafted into its head in some strange lab,the mutated thing probably even hated itself.

White robed men untied the thin gnarled man from his post. He seemed as stiff and stout as the thing he was bound to,with hands calloused and tough as edges of rock. The fingers were lengthened and came to points with sharp dark nails. They stepped away from him and clambered up off the mountainous plateau to a higher one. To observe the fight that was about to take place.

The Disperser levitated, and in doing so struck down and released the slobbering awkward beast from its chain. It didn't hesitate. For its massive size and weight it was agile. Cumbersome on land,it was still dangerous. Without warning it turned, slinging a pink knobby fleshy rope from its anus, attempting to wrap the man with it. A barb on the end bloated with poison slung madly through the air. The man a lanky blur,rolled and bounced against the nearest wall and with webbed feet,he sprang claws out and was on the rubbery beasts back.

In a blink the watching men missed what had happened. He was gripping its tentacle beneath the stinger with a crushing hold, keeping it from retracting back into its foul orifice. The beast shifted its body and rolled,wanting to crush the man,but smooth movements harmonized and went with its direction. He arched his entire body a circle through the air and planted his feet on ground, jamming his black finger tips into the tough beasts hide. It howled and rolled the other way, yanking the man and catching him by surprise. Fear registered and he realized in this moment he might be killed.

The tentacle came loose from his grip and instead of striking, it retracted. They were both hurt. The beast shifted back and the two stared at each other. The man's hand dripped blood from where his tips were ripped off, buried somewhere in the thing's fatty thick skin. He knew not to wait to react to its attack and moved. Before anyone observing or the beast itself knew it, his hand was in its brain. A fist sized hole in its skull.

The beast quaked on the end of his arm,convulsing it howled and the eyes wobbled and extended in shock. It still wanted to fight and perhaps still tried to execute bodily functions ,but nothing registered. It sagged heavily and its face slid from his fist.

The wiry man heaved and looked down at his hands, one covered in his own blood and the other gripping yellow bubbly tissue.

"You've completed this." Said a voice close to him as if from nowhere.
The Displacer stood before him with an empty stare. The beast still died,shivering and making gasping sounds from parts of its body.

"Tomorrow you complete what you started for them. You fulfill your broken promise."
The man looked down at the ocean and knew he looked at his death. Boastful lies had finally gotten the best of him. Winning trust with fantastic tales of accomplishments earned a living. Now it would earn his death.

"Tomorrow we will turn you over to them to carry out their sentence. To have their game with you. As you had your game with them."

The Disperser left every one's sight,retreating into a cavern opening in a grey wisp. The man felt his body go limp from science or spells,then hands on his arms. They chained him up again.

Tomorrow he would either discover other mammals or he would die.Or both. More likely simply the latter. The rest of the Disperser's effect soaked in and he was asleep.

The next thing he knew was the three looming hunched beasts before him hissing and grinding. It was morning and the sun was up.

"I think we should remove his other fingernails." They laughed and remarked about his wounds. Hanging with arms practically wrapped twice around his body,his one hand still dripped. The Disperser was there and nodded.

"He is yours to do with as you please. We offer him to you and hope it maintains our peace."

One of the needled black shapes whipped back a pitch black cape and out came a gaseous form of a hand. It shined sharp edges that came to invisible hair-like tiny points. Thousands of thin tips for teeth gleamed in its darkness. An evil mouth,the man didn't know why mammals didn't declare war on these foul machines.

There was sudden pain and a grip as his hand was bound and a fingernail on his good hand removed. He kept dead eyes for them. No pain shown.

"He likes to tell tales of mystery....Doesn't he?" One said and hovered in his face.
"More of your kind... are there? Magical kind? Watery kind? Astral Kind? ...Gods?"
It spit on him.

"Today you find out." It said tersely. Another fingernail ripped and he almost flinched.

From above and hidden, the Disperser silently whispered and cast fingers at the man. Superstitious and hopeful. Curious. He mostly just figured, "What the hell...maybe there are some ancient evolved ancestors down there somewhere...." He gave the man some incentive. Some oxygen.

"Why not?" He thought.

Then walked away to catch up with the rest of his day.

Strange Maidenhead by Eggtooth

2009-08-05T15:41:00.000-07:00

Seeing thin sheets of light from thirty feet beneath. The emaciated man was a diving mindless spear. Pointed purpose. Through clear blue watery disturbance,wonderful bright white and yellow and his browned ragged stick of a body. Solar ripples of life giving energy and the haze of its strength carved with him deeper..

The sun burned through aquamarine and refracting,bathing his path clearly. A dreamy green and transparency gleamed. On another day,it was beautiful.

A sea of angles and deeper with fingers white and wrinkled. Pulling yearning to reach the bottom. To get away. A dream cave deeper down somewhere and air,and big smiles and fuzzy hugs of mammalian warmth.

A clawing swimming desperation. Through a mental disease,brushing past rubbery minuscule masses of tentacles. Darker pulling and pressure squinting. Being checked out by tiny tendrils and watchful saucer glowing eyes. Sea fingers tickled and inspected and encumbered.

His anxious fleshy tips ripped down to the cuticle,trailing ten streams of red in the water. Scuba flippers fashioned from the toughened hide of some alien beast,strangled ankles held them in place with intestinal length,still bloated with feces. He swam naked and rib caged bare. Deeper.

The sun faded but the high-pitched screeching chants of anger pierced through everything.

From above, their self-generated cooling sleet poured over the shoulders of haystack shaped shadows. Needles for teeth,clear and dripping, they gritted and grind as they sweat. Pulling a 12 foot thick sheet of glass over the ocean,they dirged and hovered above the water's jagged tiny waves. Observing the man scramble deeper. Sonar eyes in needled shades billowed black cloaks over the ocean. Arching negative lines in the wind with odd ugly jagged points. The monstrous shapes giggled and pointed at the futility beneath them. They dropped living wriggling charges as they pulled the sheet of glass. Demonic scaled and chomping teeth with razor scales that propelled through the water.

Beneath and reaching,the expanse went black. Blindly the man pulled in a direction he hoped against Hell was in fact the correct way,the last direction that made sense. Kicking with hands raking and fanned open,still bleeding a steady beacon to anything with a hunger and a nerve ending. A 100 mile radius. They could see him and he silently hoped his rabies contaminated rail thin body offered no meat of consequence.

Ache and confusion clouding thoughts,the man damned all else and pushed harder from within,through this darkness that never seemed to end. Something sharp screamed on his calf and then another at his heel. They were everywhere the living depth charges. Their signal red eyes suddenly the only source of light. He stopped and reached with a quickness. Unnatural perfection of his claws exactly into this evil things eyes. Then another in his other hand. Crushed and extinguished,two others sentient enough to know hesitation watched as the man quickly swam again. They followed and zig zagged,knowing his skin held within it alien potions, a current through his bloodstream like an angelic lightning. Tearing his mind and amplifying his body. Glorified and confronted with a purity that was too much. His mortal body stripped down almost to bone and perfection. Sinuous muscle and desire to build and create. Interference with ocean,this bipedal hairy mind of machines. It must be destroyed. It must be eaten.

Foreign oxygen in his body,the man pulled for another eternity. He began to notice mountain-like shapes and almost smiled. They revealed themselves in moments. Almost mirages,but he certainly saw them. The visuals inspired him further and soon enough- a blessing of sorts. A light source appeared,saving him from plunging face first into a strange shape. A mast of dense cracked wood and barnacles.Broken and slimy amongst other sunken pieces.Coated with time and blowing in the deep with seaweed. A rotting maidenhead glowered at him and he planted hand and foot on her shape to stop for a second. Mouth clutched shut pulling on trained placements of pockets from within. Oxygen stored, attached by alien serums to blood cells, waiting to be called on. He pulled in the silence,preparing to dive towards the light source.

Letting go and floating he turned and prepared to pull when a sudden lessening in pressure gave him pause. A groan in the water and a massive looming shadow. Slowly with confidence it revealed itself beyond the wreckage. It blocked out the light with its shape. A yawning chasm of a mouth filled with sharp icicle stalactite teeth. They dripped an oily substance and it hissed black bubbles through the water at him. With a massive twist it swung something like a tail or fin,breaking the ancient ship from where it had rotted into oneness with the slimy ocean wall.

It came out of the sea ridge. The networked mountain ranges possessed elaborate and subtle developments. Miles long and ornate with naturally formed age. Producing the highest peaks and hiding thousands of caves. And hiding beasts of unknown wisdom and size.

to be continued.....

3 shorts by littoralis

2009-08-05T10:17:00.000-07:00

Death Grip

Fuck you, she said. He looked at her and sneered.

She held the knife with a tight grip and stared at his throat. She
imagined the blood spurting out of his neck like he did when he came
on her face.

Come on and fuck me, then, he said.

She chopped the cabbage on the board but she wanted to feed him the knife.

Bed

She was warm in the bed but he wanted her out. He told her to leave.
She got dressed and left like he said. He told her what to do and she
did it.

She didn’t know where to go so she went to the mall. She watched the
people and thought of him in the warm bed and wished she was in it.
But she didn’t think of him being with her in the bed. It was his bed
and it wasn’t all that warm when he was in it. He made the bed hot and
she never got any sleep.

Life

Darby couldn’t stand how he looked anymore. His face was prickly and
he smelled like shit. Not real shit but shitty. She was reading her
magazine when he walked in and the place smelled bad all of a sudden
so she knew he was home.

“What are you doing?” he asked Darby. Darby didn’t answer back but she
wanted to tell him he smelled bad and he needed to shave. But she knew
if she told him that he would smack her or call her a fucking slut or
something. Darby knew she was a slut. She fucked around on him and he
knew it too. But Darby didn’t give a fuck what she did. She could do
what she wanted even if he smacked her for it.

He grabbed her magazine and threw it against the wall. “You stupid
fucking slut!” he screamed. She looked up at him and kicked him in the
knee. He screamed again and grabbed his knee and bent over. She
punched his head on the side and he fell over still grabbing his knee.

Darby loved it when she put him on the ground. She got on top of him
and bit him on the neck hard. She left a bloody mark and stood up. She
watched him in all his stupid fucking pain and then she smiled. But
her smile wouldn’t stay for long cuz he would smack it off when he got
off the floor.

It was the story of her pathetic fucking life and she told it to
herself over and over so she could believe it was real.

Submit (unless your name is Meg Pokrass)

2009-07-30T12:28:00.001-07:00

Send in submissions.
brandiwells at gmail dot com

Do it.

Even though you never got at prize.

Feeling rejected? I won't reject you. Well, unless you're seriously creepy. Or your name is Meg Pokrass.

Two poems, by Jordan Castro

2009-07-08T19:25:00.000-07:00

Like.

i was outside drinking
coffee and i heard a
girl talking loudly,
on the phone

she was talking
like,

"he like, asked her like,
if she like, liked him,
and she said, like,
yeah.

[pause]

i like, don't think so!

[pause, longer than the first]

like, whatever. he
can like, just go fuck himself."

she put her phone
into her pocket,
(the phone was
sticking out because her
pockets were so small)

and I asked her,
"Why do you say 'like'
so much? it makes
you sound stupid,
i think."

she said (with 'likes' interspersed)
that she doesn't know
what is actual and
doesn't think that anything
is real or absolute, and
if it is, she doesn't
know.

she said (with 'likes interspersed)
that how can one know
if their action is good or
bad? is right or
wrong?
is even an "action" in any
sense of affecting anything
at all? did this "action"
affect the course of
anything ‘in the grand scheme
of things’?

yes?
no?
how do we know?

while she said all of
this i absentmindedly
drank all of
my coffee, and
had to pee

she continued,

"If I say, for example,
'T.Ping this person's
home is a bad choice,'
how can I know that,
for sure?

How can I know that
T.Ping this person's
house will not cause
a heart-felt, epiphany-
ridden, realization
within the homeowner?

something about people
needing to look out for each
other?

huh?
how can i know?!

but if I say, for example,
'T.P-ing this person's
home is, like, a bad
choice.'

then i am just guessing,
it is 'like'.
it is relative.
it is not absolute."

------

I was wrong to have
said that, i thought.

then i went pee and felt
proven wrong.

proven like,
very, very,
wrong.

there is not a period in this poem ‘for a reason’

i am a worthless human being and everything i do is arbitrary

i am fucked no matter what

drunk bitchesssssssssssssssss

vodka 7s bitches

fuck jesus crhist like a twat

wet

everthing is so dumb and i am so dumb

the more i know the morer i know tht i know nothing

brandon gorrell is the onl person who seems to ‘get me’

feel sarcastic because of saying that

asshole = me

i talk to much i feel burt it doesnt mater because someone else taling is jus as dumb as me talking

feels true

seems like i justify stuff for ‘no reason’

every thing is for ‘no reason’

fuck me so hard so i can feel something

i need a blowjob

i need something

bitchessssssss

bitch bitch bitch bro bro bro bro bro btch tich bitch

stich my soul

itch my itch

dddddddddaaaaaaaaaammmmmmmmmmmnnnnnnnnnnn

damn damn damn damn dan dan dan erbach. dan mcmahon.

i want to kill myself then be reborn as someone who has a lot of sex and doesnt think a lot

seems sweet

fuck my life

fuck evberthing

i am going to go eat something

i am hungry

fuck fungjfjks

bitch

i was you

seemed fucked

i am me

still semeed fuck

dk is a sweet beast

word up

sweet

bye

Eaters of the Dead, by Krammer Abrahams

2009-05-16T09:15:00.000-07:00

Eaters of the Dead

Somewhere someone is eating horses. I smile. It’s been a week since I tracked down my last mule. The freezer’s full. End up tossing most of it to the dogs. A nice man knocked on my door. I gave him a popsicle and half the back right leg. I wish more mice people knocked on my door. I don’t want to sit in front of the stove all winter eating mule bones like my father. I disgust most people. They say, “But we’ve put horses in space.” I laugh and remind them we put chickens in space too. I leave while their face scrunches and they try to remember what mission I was talking about.

My mother called a few days ago and asked if I wanted to come over for dinner. I made an excuse. She sighed. She realized I was still eating horses. Before she hung up she said, “Please just don’t start eating humans.” I blushed remembering the previous Halloween and hung up.

Some people sympathize with me. They call it a phase. I appreciate their support and thank them while I throw a grenade into pasture of horses. Most of them are smart and run, but I blow off the back legs of one and am able to drag it back to my condominium. I make sure to bag it first. My condominium is run down and in a bad neighborhood. People are always dragging things back to their apartment in trash bags. Everyone knows not to ask questions.

At my high school reunion it got out I was eating horses. Some people ignored me. Many avoided the subject and asked about my mother. Finally, the girl I took to prom came up to me and said, “So, I heard you’re sodomizing horses.” I winked and she laughed. I took her back to my condominium in a trash bag. When I let her out she punched me in the arm. I winked again and she laughed. I was starting to get the hang of it. She asked if I had anything to drink. I couldn’t remember and told her to check the fridge while I changed. She ran out screaming. I winked but she didn’t come back. I forgot about the horse’s head next to the milk. Usually, I throw them away, but I tend to hold onto them for a few weeks in case I think of anything to do with them.

Monthly Service, by Eric Balaz

2009-05-15T11:20:00.000-07:00

Paying the Phone Company

I was walking down the street when you stabbed me. Not once, or twice, but stabbed me retroactively and for future times when I may or may not be walking down your street. Well you picked up my blood like you needed some, but I could tell you didn't from your giant veins.

Paying the Gas Company

I was enjoying this blanket when I froze to death. But I didn't die. I soon will though. Then maybe you will get what you want.

Paying the Electric Company

I invited you over. But I didn't want you there. I was just told you had to be there. You entered my house and beat me with a wire. I felt that was rude. I became unconscious. You stole all my light.

Paying My Tuition

I was sitting in class when you with your suit fancily kicked the shit out of me. I wasn't angry, I wasn't even slightly sad. I even thanked you for giving me a reason to work the rest of my life.

Paying for Admittance into Heaven

I sat on a bench when a plate was passed around. I ate its contents and everyone was mad, they must have been hungry also. I agree I was acting like a piece of shit. So I said I was Jesus. Everyone laughed. I left them behind.

Three Poems by wiredwriter

2009-05-15T09:18:00.000-07:00

sharp

cutting my lip
on the edge

of the lid i
realize nothing

matters more
than blood

vulva

the door opened and he came in
opened the fridge doors
thought of her
she was on the road
business
he grabbed a beer
the tv didn't work
he couldn't watch the news
it was snowing
and she was gone

body

the body died
in a corner
it sulked as it
died and it

told everyone
of its wishes
as it lost
its life

Sam and Brandi's Bogus Journey by Nathan Tyree

2009-05-15T08:37:00.000-07:00

Sam and Brandi's Bogus Journey
by Nathan Tyree

This is not a tragic story. You can, you will, bring your own interpretation to it, but if the word tragedy enters your mind it is just because you spent too much time mulling Sophocles and Shakespeare in college. If you have those sort of inclinations, you should stop right now and go read some Pynchon before you finish this.

The fist time I met Sam Pink he had ragged bloody flaps of skin hanging from each cheek. I was at Jake's. A bunch of us were playing poker in his garage when Sam came sloping through the door looking like something out of a Romero movie with blood and pus dripping down on his threadbare T-shirt. After some perfunctory introductions Sam explained that he had spent the whole morning building a bike ramp out of plywood and two by fours. He had placed it in the street in front of his house then he rode his bike down the block. He had turned and ridden at full speed at the ramp, but from the wrong direction so that when he hit it the force upended the bike and sent him flying. He had hit the pavement face first and slid several feet. When he went inside and saw what his stunt had done to his face he went back outside and did the whole thing again. This time he leaned to the left so that the other side of his face would take the damage and create symmetry.

After that day I didn't give Sam a lot of thought. I was busy drinking and chasing skirt. Then one night at Skip's place, Sam called. Me and Skip and Freddy were trying to talk this girl into getting out of her clothes. Brandi was her name. She was a hot skinny little college girl that we had lured home from this crappy little club with the promise of Vanilla Stoli and a new CD by the 5, 6, 7, 8's. This girl was cute in a dark way. Smart. Smarter than any of us and she kept talking about literary theory and Harold Bloom and how Claudius was really Hamlet's father, but none of us cared about that. We were in a race to see who could nail her (or maybe we thought that we could all nail her- maybe two of us would end up spit roasting her and the third would have to wait his turn). Anyway, Sam called Skip's cell to invite us to his restaurant.

Sam had rented three buildings right next to each other. He had spray painted the words Pink's Palace across the front of each boarded up shit hole and announced to everyone that Pink's Palace was the hot new eatery in town. He didn't have a stove, and there was just some strung out junky bink in a bikini that he had convinced to act like a waitress. He was despondent in a Holden Caulfield sort of way about the fact that he didn't have any customers. Skip told him to come over. Since he didn't have any menus he decided to take him up on it.

Skip told me that Sam had inherited some money from his grandmother. That was how he
afforded all of his odd schemes like the restaurant.

By the time Sam showed up Brandi was almost unconscious and Skip had a nasty look in his eye. She had been making out with Freddy and then she let Skip feel her up a little, but then she fell back in the recliner and wouldn't talk to anyone. Her hair was mussed.

When Sam got there he came through the door with a rubber chicken in his fist. His Mohawk had fallen over to one side. The boy was like a tornado. Loud. Brandi snapped back and somehow gravitated to the weird kid. It did not take long before the rest of us realized that we had missed our shot with her. After a while we started a poker game but Brandi and Sam had vanished.

I said something about needing to piss and went looking. When I opened the bedroom door I saw Sam flat on his back, naked. His engorged cock was sticking up like a flag pole with a bend in it. Brandi was straddling him, holding a roll of paper towels and forcing them into his mouth. She had one knee on each of his wrists, keeping him from fighting back as she pushed harder and harder forcing the paper deeper into his mouth and down his throat.

When he stopped struggling she stood up, slid her pant and panties off then stood over his face. She squatted and started to piss directly onto the roll of paper towels sticking from his rigor mouth. It was then that I realized that Sam was dead. When she saw me watching she turned to look at me, still pissing and said "So, you wanna get fucked or what?"

WINNER

2009-05-15T08:16:00.000-07:00

Everyone is a winner.
Send me a mailing address to brandiwells at gmail dot com and I will mail you a super awesome prize.

And since the deadline wasn't actually until tonight, you can still send in your submission. And be a winner! And get a prize. So do it. I never win anything. Except scrabble. I am an excellent scrabble and boggle player.

Feather Pistol, by Darby Larson

2009-05-15T07:44:00.000-07:00

Feather Pistol

There's enough feathers glued to the pistol already. Cut it out. The thing could fly. Get a broom maybe. The phone is ringing. The whole story is as follows: Gregory dumped Jane for her Janeyness. That is all. Are you listening? Another story happened and went because you weren't listening. There's more feathers on the ground. Get a broom. More stories I will tell the class. Maybe if you'd stop, listen, you'd hear the stories. The end. Don't point that at me. Answer the phone, it's for me. Look at all these feathers. Okay, there's a phone call for me I have to take it. Real quick, here is the story: Gregory dumped Jane. Some details: Gregory loved and dumped Jane and loved her after, but for her Janeyness, no. That is all. Okay. Here is the story: Gregory loved Jane and wanted details which she wouldn't give due to her Janeyness. No. Hand me the phone. Here is the thing: Janeyness fell in love with Gregory inside their respective wombs. Here: Jane and Gregory fell in love and got married and had children and grandchildren and died together and Jane's Janeyness was never an issue because she wouldn't give Gregory details so he loved her and dumped her and loved her more after, happily ever. Hello?

Flippant, A Bosworth/xTx Joint

2009-05-15T07:42:00.000-07:00

Flippant

A Bosworth/xTx Joint

The boy met the girl on the internet, or maybe it was the other way around. The boy had the power of word which impressed the girl who had the same power which impressed the boy, or maybe it was the other way around. Emails and, eventually, pictures were exchanged, or maybe it was the other way around. Trouble ensued.

“Show me your cock!”

“Show me your cooch!”

“Let’s fuck!”

“Let’s fight!”

“This can’t go on!”

“This must go on!”

And it did go on or it didn’t go on, long and strong til the break-a break-a dawn, when finally the boy or maybe the girl had an awakening where thoughts unfurl and half-rhymes sputter sans end.

“Give me your address! Something I must send!”

Then the arm wrestling began.

“I can’t!”

“You should!”

“I won’t!”

“You will!”

Three rounds, four, until forearms became sore and the girl broke down and gave him:

Three six niner Seaward Way.

Followed by city.

Followed by state.

“Plainly wrapped please!”

Then wrestling turned to wait.

What to send or what not to send, impatience and madness an imperfect blend. Inspired by Van, perchance by Gough, the boy brought forth the razor and sliced his fucking ear off. Wrapped up in foil, a cross-country toil, one deafened ear shipped in a package of stitching.

The parcel, crusted with the smell of rust, was opened with Christmas day enthusiasm. Holding the disembodied ear to her own, the girl strutted and posed, radiating coruscate shivers.

“This means something,” she said confidently to her three-eared reflection, chime of her voice filled with west coast inflection.

“I love it!”

“You do?”

“So beautiful.”

“Your turn.”

“I know…”

Not wanting to disappoint, the girl reached internal. A tooth she plucked, the theme sought: eternal. Kissing enamel with reverent adieu, she wrapped up and stamped, “To My Sweet You…”

A tooth, an ear, so quaint, how queer! Expertly sewn, nimble fingers kept pace, the girl laced his ear to the side of her face. With hammer and spike, the boy buried her roots, dicing his gums while stomping his boots. Turning her cheek to his words on the screen, “I think of you, sopping,” sounded far from obscene.

It didn’t stop there, within weeks more did come: an eyelid, a nipple, a nostril, a thumb. Piled up boxes, destitute and devoid, their treasures removed, then gainfully employed. His parts now hers and hers now his, the question emerged, “Is that all there is?”

A ticket, a plane, two mutants did meet. Children ran screaming all over the street. A knock, a push, a kiss, a kick, the girl dropped her panties and hefted his dick.

“What wonderful work!” he said with her lips, heavy with gloss a quarter-inch thick. With a wink and a giggle, the boy flopped on the bed, then spreading his legs, the girl gave herself head.

In a sickening writhing of guttural sound, the boy fucked the girl, or maybe it was the other way around.

several things by Jon Catron

2009-05-15T07:40:00.000-07:00

Content?

by Jon Catron

8 parts Hydrogen
4 parts Oxygen
4 parts Carbon
1 part Iron
1 part Calcium
assorted heavy metals and pollutants

Mix liberally with Isolation and Doubt

Stain
by Jon Catron

Cheap moments splatter from my cup like cheap wine, staining the cloth.
You toss the glass across the room with a torrent of expletives as your back storms
away from me. Soaked and shattered,
I do not see the waste of it all.
And you have always deserved better.

I Cannot Swallow
by Jon Catron

I walk away, kicking up dirt.

The dirt beneath my heels
is the dirt on my tongue.

I cannot swallow.

So I walk away,
kicking up more dirt.

thirtee n per spective break s
byJon catr
on

Blurred eyes slide
pieces of a jigsaw face
into finely m i n c e d detail.
Knuckles bleed silently,
white and sparkling.
The mirror screams
angry
words that I cannot say.
It breaks
for me. It bleeds for
me.
God does not heed either of us.

FLEDGLING TAXIDERMY, by Eric Beeny

2009-05-15T07:38:00.000-07:00

FLEDGLING TAXIDERMY

Carlton fed his dog.

Then he kicked it.

The dog yelped, and Carlton punched it in the face.

“I’m not advocating violence against household animals,” he said.

Carlton thought he might prove a point, that if his dog was a wild dog and it was legal to hunt wild dogs on the street he’d have every right to shoot his or any other dog.

“So there,” he said.

The dog bit Carlton’s calf, clamped his fangs down like a stapler into the meat.

The dog thought it might prove a point, that if Carlton fucked with a dog a dog would bite him.

Carlton bought the dog from the pound three months ago, this dog out of so many other dogs crammed into cages, breeding and breeding, and never enough people to adopt them, never enough to love them.

Carlton got the dog because he wanted a friend around the house.

Also, because he heard somewhere that the happiness a dog could bring a human would help him live longer.

So far, Carlton was very pleased with his purchase.

He was convinced it was working.

He’d never felt so alive, and never ever so young, so vibrant.

Carlton grabbed the dog’s ears, yanking them.

The dog yelped, locked his snout around one of Carlton’s forearms.

“I’d have you stuffed if you weren’t so lovable,” Carlton said, kicking his dog in the genitals.

Indelible Figures Slouching Towards an Interpretation, By Andrew Borgstrom

2009-05-15T07:37:00.000-07:00

Indelible Figures Slouching Towards an Interpretation

A deer absent a midsection. The knees on its rear legs
rubbing against the calves of its front legs.

A naked woman. Her midsection also missing.
Her young breasts already resting upon her lap.

One pig. With horse genitals.
Pierced and swaying in your wind.

Seven men. All naked and sitting in a circle.
Carved midsections and pig genitals.

A rat knocking on a door. A gun in the rat’s coat pocket.
Fur coat. An artist.

A globe of stick-ninjas with missing limbs
singing between the extremes.

I feel how you should feel, by Ben Brooks

2009-05-15T07:35:00.000-07:00

I feel how you should feel.

Sometimes when I feel like I love you I stand in front of the mirror in my room and say “what the fuck” over and over again until it feels like I probably don’t exist.

Sometimes when people I know walk over to say “hi” or “you stole my money” or whatever I wait till they get real close and then just run away. It makes them look really stupid and annoying.

Sometimes when I write things like this I feel like people wont "get" them and I can probably kid myself into thinking its because i am of "above average intelligence" or "have a way with words" but really its just stupid.

If you put the words in a similar order all the way through a book then people will smile and talk shit about how funny it is.

My favourite job would be correcting spelling and grammar on myspace bulletins.

My least favourite job would be a waiter.

When people say "halloa" in Dickens its really funny.

My neck hurts.

There is no such thing as art.

Today America fell into anarchy and half the population fled via "swimming". Nobody died but seven people were injured. The constitution is being re-written by a "legalise dope" collective from New Mexico.

Tungsten light is cooler than the sun.

All women are clouds.

Yours,
Ben Brooks

Two poems by Michael Martin, who googles himself

2009-05-15T07:32:00.002-07:00

Intermediate Fourplay For Experts

she compared her lipstick tube to
you know what
and I suddenly wasn’t in the mood

I compared her frontside
To my frontside
And told her it was a perfect match

She was still in the mood, so
I told her she was a woodpecker
In a past life until she was shot down
And hit every ugly branch on the way

She was still in the mood

To Santa Claus

Will you buy me a
smoke, or teeth?
Buy me eyesight,
or simply an honest to goodness
heart of wood
which splinters but does not wilt?
Thank you Santa
for the soul in a box
for the energy spinning old atoms
Thank you Santa
for unwritten legend
and vampires, they are what you are:
real if you close your eyes and hate.
Even Santa dislikes.
Will you send me to Hell?
I don’t believe in it
though fire burns me to coals

The Bathroom In A Bar Downtown by Jay Holmes

2009-05-15T07:32:00.001-07:00

I don't know if it's suppose to be some kind of joke or what.

The toilet is perched on a dais at the top of some rickety stairs.

The prospect of standing to take a piss way up there is totally out of the question so you sit to pee and your feet dangle free.

Some of the steps are missing and you can only see darkness below, perhaps it goes down to the basement or underneath the city.

When you flush the toilet you can hear screams for help.

Hole in Sky, by Michael Boyle

2009-05-15T07:30:00.000-07:00

I think it was spring of ’79 when her father came to pick her up. It must have been spring. She told me about it. How her grandparents had a cottage by a lake upstate, that they rented it out but in spring and late fall, they all went there. I was sad. We were still living in that rooming house/commune I’d described as the house of the rising sun, and it was getting worse. I didn’t want her to leave. But she did. Don’t be sad, she told me, “It’s just for a few days.”

Bad things happened in that rooming house: junkies, ex-cons with guns, gunfire in the hall, more than one dealer living there. Girl who rented the place moved out taking the money we gave her for bills, then no heat or hot water… we were among the last to leave winter closing in.

Then it’s fall, 1980, and we’re driving up there. We’d gotten a little apartment, and I’d gotten my car back after leaving it parked at my parent’s house for the longest time because I couldn’t afford inspection or insurance. We both finally had full-time jobs; we’re driving up there, and she’s telling me how her father wouldn’t ever pull over for a piss stop. “All about TIME with him, gotta make TIME.”
“What. You want me to stop somewhere?”

“No, I’m just saying. He had us piss in a bottle, we had this bottle of piss, and lemme tell you, it’s way easier for a boy to piss in a bottle.”

Okay, she has two brothers, parents divorced, one brother still with her mother, the other in the navy. It becomes understood that the cottage is from the fraternal side, that her and her siblings don’t like their new stepmother, or her kids, but love their grandparents, and this place we’re driving to.

It’s a long drive that keeps going up in altitude. She directs me to the exit off I-81 way above Scranton, we drive miles of back roads into the NE corner of Pennsylvania. “Slow down,” she tells me, then directs me to a turn onto a dirt road. I drive down dirt road, come out in clearing, cottage there, lake there, park.

“This is it!” she says. She gets out and does a little dance, she is beautiful, this place is beautiful. Her grandmother comes out and she yells, “Nanna!” runs to her. I get out of the car and they go inside. I stand there. I go inside, meet the family, and after some hellos and nice to meet yous, her father says finally. Then I’m out there with her father, we’re taking the dock in for winter, we get wet dragging it up on the shore, it’s a little cold, and he’s saying things about ice crushing docks, that “I’m not sure my daughter told you I’m a civil engineer.”

I’m not sure I like him after the piss story, but say yeah. We work it, get it secured on the shore for winter. We say things people say when they’re working. It seems good. We change out of our wet clothes, hang them on the line, then go for dinner. Good food and talk and they don’t ask much, I like that, I like them. Later that evening, she and I sneak out to smoke weed. She says that was funny and I say what.

“I brought boyfriends here before and my grandparents grilled them. But not you. They liked you right off.”

The next day I’m out there clearing the lot of brush with axe and saw. Don’t know what to do or say so I’m out there, while they’re inside talking, doing whatever they did. Her grandfather comes out and looks at me. He walks down by the lake, comes back, says good. “My granddaughter says you play in a band.”

“Did. It fell apart. Things fall apart.”

He walks away humming to himself. I go back to chopping and clearing brush. He comes back, says I played bass in a band way before you were born, “The Lehigh Three, bass, drums, and this whacky guy who played trombone. We thought we were great. Nobody else thought we were great. Trombone player went off to do a stint with the Dorsey brothers. Last I heard, he was in L.A. driving a taxi. Okay?”

I’m holding the axe. I look around, nobody is around. “I could kill you,” I say. He laughs at me. “Balls,” he says. He goes back inside.

I go back to clearing brush.

It’s years later. Years of taking in the dock and putting it back out. The whole melodrama of her family, the stepmother, her kids. Her brother out of the navy, up there, we’re up there sawing down trees that crowd the little dirt road. We’re running to that old bar in Orson, sawdust floor, mountain folk. We’re running to Thompson, to the general store, for supplies. Days swimming in the lake, nights with the bonfire by the lake, older folks saying inside, just me, her, and her brother out there, smoking weed, drinking, talking. Mass of stars brilliant up there in the hills, never saw stars like that down in the megalopolis, in the valley, never knew anything like this with my family.

A year later, we’re engaged, and her grandparents let us have the place for a week, late summer. We have the place to ourselves, and I have some acid. My new band is gaining momentum and I’m in my Jim Morrison phase. I’m tripping, I’m skinny dipping in the lake at night yelling, “COME ON IN.” She doesn’t want to, says I’m crazy. She stands on the dock.

I swim further out, thinking about what is down there, fish, maybe monsters, don’t. Dark below and above. Swim to yonder shore, get out, walk around naked. I’m a ghost. I’m creeping around the shore, I’m looking at cottages, in cottage windows, I’m being a creep. I’m laying on beach looking at sky, hearing music in my head. I’m hearing night sounds. A light comes on, I dive back in and find center of lake. I’m pretty sure it’s the center. I float out there, look towards the dock, don’t see her. She should have come in. I’m floating between sky and water in lake. There’s no moon. Sky cup of stars makes a crown, I’m lake monster wearing a crown.

Dreaming of a Changing Bat by Jonny Kelly

2009-05-15T07:26:00.000-07:00

Me and Ferox-Holocaust-Cerebellum-SalivaGland-Theory-of-the-big-bang-testicles-deep-red-cannibalman had a chat about our dreams yesterday. His was about cannibals, but
mine was very different.

Here it goes: I was walking in a street completely populated by
Forest Whitakers, Robert Englands (not in freddy costumes) and a
sleeping bat. The bat was sleeping on a book, and snoring. The book was Volume 1 of
Clive Barker's Books of Blood series. At the point of looking at the
sleeping bat I noticed that all the Forests and Roberts had all ran
off, all 10 of them.

I stayed and watched the bat wake from its sleep, it got off the book
and stared at me for a few seconds. Then suddenly the little bastard
went for my leg, I actually felt pain in my dream. I looked down at my
knee and the bat's small head inflated into a massive round
balloon-like head.

That's when I woke up with Clive Barker's Books of Blood on my lap,
and a cold sweat running down my nose.

Win

2009-05-08T06:36:00.000-07:00

I've decided that the person who sends me the best submission between now and Friday the 15, will win a prize. It is a secret prize. It is either a good prize or a bad prize, but it is secret and that makes you want it, yes?

Anyway, send one word/symbol to 20,000 words and if I like it, you will win the secret prize. If you don't win, I will still post your entry on The Brandi Wells Review.

PRIZESPRIZESPRIZES

send all submissions to brandiwells at gmail.com

Spurned, by Nathan Tyree

2009-05-08T06:35:00.000-07:00

Spurned

by Nathan Tyree

The thing is,
I never thought that she
would come back.
I never would have
moved on quite so completely
if I had known that she would
show up here at
my door.
I guess I should have
buried her deeper.

Suddenly, by Greg Santos

2009-05-03T14:39:00.001-07:00

Suddenly

The phone rang. The Ghost of Christmas Past was drunk again and needed a place to crash. I hid under my sheets and whistled a grisly tune to drown out the noise. The condor sleeping at the foot of my bed woke with a start and asked for some water. No dice! The alarm clock glowed midnight so the condor reluctantly complied and turned back into a pumpkin. I furiously tried to lick the back of my hand to get the ball rolling but the darned limb was broken. I’d never get to Kuala Lumpur at this rate. Dick Tracy slid open my window and offered me a hand but I refused: one mustn’t accept candy from strangers. The phone rang again. It was Ben. Where are you? I’m in a cornfield. Duh. It was a lovely winter evening. The Denver Broncos (clad in their always lovely chiffon nightgowns) were quietly practicing on the front lawn. The neighborhood possum was catching snowflakes on its tongue. The snow tasted of nostalgia. Maryn popped out of our walk-in closet and ran around the room so fast her hair caught fire. It was December and seven months ahead of my birthday but man oh man was that one heck of a birthday party.

Orange Cock, by wiredwriter

2009-05-03T14:38:00.000-07:00

Orange Cock

Martin left one building and entered another then told the girl at the
receptionist desk he was there to see Mr. Evans. The girl asked for
Martin’s name and Martin said his name was Martin Richter. The girl
looked in a book and then looked up at Martin and smiled.

“He’ll be right with you,” she said, “so you can have a seat.” Martin
knew she would say that because that is what girls who sit at
receptionist desks say when someone arrives to visit their bosses.

Martin took a seat and thumbed a magazine that was five years old. The
articles in the magazine had nothing to do with Martin or anything in
his life, so he decided to close the magazine and wait for Mr. Evans.
But just before closing the cover he noticed a photo of an orange
pylon. The pylon was part of an ad about buying stock and the tip of
the cone was inside a woman’s mouth. The woman was shouting something
through the pylon but the ad didn’t say what she was shouting.

“Martin Richter?”

Martin threw down the magazine and stood to his feet. He shook hands
with Mr. Evans then entered his office, giving the girl at the desk a
receptive smile as he passed. The girl smiled back.

“Why do you want to work for our company?” Mr. Evans asked. Martin
hesitated then said he loved working for companies with pretty girls
at receptionist desks and would it be okay if he asked his
receptionist out sometime. Mr. Evans asked Martin to leave his office,
so Martin stood and left, grabbing the five-year-old magazine on the
way out.

When the evening came Martin dreamed of pylons with arms and heads the
shape of desks.

horse wallpaper, by Rachel Gollay who has extremely cute hair

2009-04-27T19:05:00.000-07:00

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

Mr. Peterson and the Bully Boy, by Mel Bosworth

2009-04-27T06:17:00.000-07:00

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.

About Mountains and Shit, by Andrew Borgstrom

2009-04-27T06:15:00.000-07:00

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."

Fishhook, by Nathan Tyree

2009-04-23T12:18:00.000-07:00

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

Death Poem, by wiredwriter

2009-04-23T12:17:00.000-07:00

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

Sometimes he punches me in the arm, by Jon Catron

2009-04-22T13:41:00.001-07:00

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.

Ten Things Wrong (Six Through Ten), by Paula Bomer

2009-04-22T12:50:00.000-07:00

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.

Ten Things Wrong (One Through Five), by Paula Bomer

2009-04-18T16:00:00.000-07:00

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.

I Am Trying To Remember You, But It's Not Working Out The Way I'd Hoped, by Josh Kleinberg

2009-04-18T15:59:00.000-07:00

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.