Q uiet L ightning

sPARKLE
& bLINK
5
 Q uiet L ightning
sPARKLE
& bLINK
as performed on
Jul 7 10
@
Space Gallery

© 2010 by Evan Karp + Rajshree Chauhan

ISBN 978-0-557-53197-4

front + back cover sketches by samir chauhan

cover design by dawn andres [dawnandres.com]
edited + layout by evan karp
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 Q uiet Lightning
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Quiet Lightning
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 « contents »
jesús angel garcía

peace, love & understanding at first church of the church before church » an
excerpt from badbadbad 8

sam sax

c-wall and what i thought i remembered 11

clean getaway 15

lauren becker

the things we would not be 17

roger porter

language barrier 20

tess patalano

serial killers’ grocery lists 27

mandescending 30

kelci m. kelci

a spring of mornings looped 32

where parallels are lived 34
my mother and father 38
portrait of the muse as a young woman 40

jennifer capo

dear sugar 43
missy church
 wreckage 48
bedding down with a saint 49

charles kruger

a spanieled cocker 51
why i do it 54

mira martin-parker

an envelope full of cash 57

completely still 58
thick 59

chris cole

her olive was just a dull green

» an excerpt from the speed at which i travel 60

j. brandon loberg

taxi hour 66
 nic alea

apology 69

m.g. martin

an imagined eulogy 77
crossed eyed & full of honey 80
(children pressing knives to mother’s throat) isn’t fun 82
`
paul corman-roberts

thank god for dave 87

 Jesús Àngel García

Peace, Love & Understanding At First Church

of the Church Before Church » adapted from badbadbad,
a multimedia novel (forthcoming) » originally published in Vol. 1 Brooklyn

From his shrimp-like curl on the altar floor, the Reverend asked, “What is
the first step to happiness?”

* * *

Standing tall now at the lectern, he proposed in today’s Sunday story a

ban on the sale of sex toys within the city limits and a re-zoning of kink
clubs or “any establishment with explicit intent to arouse prurient behaviors”
two hundred yards or more from schools, churches, ball fields and shopping
malls. The city was a suburb.
Inspired by the Holy Spirit to shore up “natural bonding in the
conjugal bed,” the Reverend worked with civic leaders at Bliss U and in the
city council to draft a bill to “expel perversion and encourage sanctity in
sensual union. I’m no prude,” he said, his radioactive hair peach-bubbly in
the track lighting. “The pleasure of relations between a man and his wife are
a gift from God, an organic outgrowth of a caring, committed relationship
consecrated by the church and supported by communities of faith.”
My stomach churned. I leaned forward in the back corner pew.
“But ‘sexual enhancement devices,’” the Reverend said, “and ‘adult
entertainment’ undermine this spiritual bond while distorting physical,
psychological and emotional clarity.” He removed the reading glasses from
his scarecrow nose.
I was sure I’d throw up.
He wiped the lenses with a gold-stitched kerchief.

«8»
 Jesús Àngel García

I’d aim for the collection basket.

“What man wants to lie with a wife,” he said, “who ‘knows,’ as the
Scriptures put it, an e-penis in the same way she knows him?” He stepped
back from the lectern, stared down the congregation. “Tantamount to
adultery.”
I belched into my hands, upchuck rising in my throat.
“What wife,” he said, “wants to serve a so-called man who soils his
psyche with images of other women in unspeakable acts of degradation? If
thoughts carry the same sinful weight as deeds, then this, too, is adultery.”
He put his glasses back on, licked his finger, turned a page in the supersize
KJV.
I glanced at my watch.
“The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak . . .”
While the Reverend catalogued the wages of flesh sin—AIDS,
impotence, abortion, divorce—I itched my crotch through a pants pocket,
felt a migraine coming on.
“Is there a message?” The Reverend framed his damp pink face with
large hands. “Is there meaning in the madness?” They looked like wings
sprouting from his chin as he gazed child-like at the ceiling fan. “Most
assuredly,” he assured us. He was beardless Uncle Sam with Hollywood
teeth. “It’s up to each and every one of you to see it, believe it.” Dramatic
pause. “Vote on it.”
I snuck outside and puked in a potted hibiscus. The Reverend’s voice
shot through the vestibule speakers: “This legislation is designed to aid our
community in its war on weakness of the flesh. There’s no greater joy,” it
said, “than public service that reconciles lust and greed, the empty desires of

«9»
 Jesús Àngel García

free will, with faithful adherence to God’s law. In Jesus’ name, I urge you to
fear not! Contact the mayor and council members with your support.”

* * *
The Reverend bent down low, pretending to mark the floor with a pen lifted
from his breast pocket. He sat crosslegged on one side of the imaginary line.

« 10 »
 Sam Sax

C-Wall and What i Thought i Remembered

It was hard to tell whether the smoke rose or fell

said my friend jabari leaned up against that brick wall
we all called c wall as if knew how to hold him.

that one too many times place

outside our middle/high school
where we drank anything with a burn
where we smoked hairspray dipped
herb through an aluminum coke can
--pulling screaming poltergeists through
--a closet door
where we first really learned about metaphor.

c wall’s call to arms sounded

like the sloppy progression towards
getting too drunk to remember
whether you lost your virginity
or if someone else found it.

stumbling whalebone ivory industrial commodities.

we students. i suppose called so cause we were
supposed to be studying something.
would write our names in chalk
on that brick wall outside our high school.
cause we all knew that chalk like youth lasts forever.

« 11 »
 Sam Sax

so we’d asphyxiate ourselves on purpose

trying to stub out the very improbability of our lives.
asking each other to find the strength in
their hands to return blackness back to our eyes.
i can’t breathe
the smoke is both rising and falling.
and when i wake up again
for those twenty timeless seconds
i wont understand what i see.
and what could be more beautiful?

and somewhere between the first time

i sagged my pants to my knees
and the last time she was ever admitted to
needing me for more than conversation.
i let her fuck me like a hospital bed.
fill me with enough sickness
that i might remember
what it might feel like to feel alive.

but after we came that plan caught backfire.

and our bodies became brick walls covered in chalk
held each other like stumbling drunk
like stumbling drunk was a thing that we’d want
if we weren’t so scared to death of what sober might involve.
maybe then i would remember her last name.
or the last time i chased those screaming

« 12 »
 Sam Sax

ghosts back into the closet.

from that day forth i became a truck load

of explosives slow rolling with my ghost fleet down the freeway.
never admitting we’d need its shoulders to hold us if we ever broke down.
supposed to be born already knowing how to fix ourselves
when smoke would shoot piston fire out our broke down mouths
both rising and falling like the last full gas chamber in a gun.

at c wall.
we students would see walls built higher everyday
as classrooms became more like calendars
and my faggot perfected its swagger impression
and teachers impressed on us the importance of lessons
not enjoying to learn but learning to enjoy being taught.
i wonder if those metal detectors are searching for gold in kids hearts.
every day they pass through that machine harvests their thoughts
and we all knew that an education was just something else that you bought.

so we learned to hold each other like brick walls

like our arms were the smoke in our chests
like our bodies were two trucks colliding
so there would be some kind of explosive
impression that we left behind.

to all my friends who i don’t speak to from back then.

remember how we’d write our names in permanent marker on each other’s
skin.

« 13 »
 Sam Sax

how we somehow knew that this was all that we’d ever meant to each other
how something that we knew was forever would either rub off or bleed in.

« 14 »
 Sam Sax

Clean Getaway

it only takes a little bit of blood

to turn the bathwater red
a good way to get the death off your hands
and still end up with the same effect.  
we left this city like the crime of a scene 
i riding your skeleton of a metal motorcycle  
you with that detergent smile
which left trees bare
clutching their leafless branches to trunk
wondering what the fuck just happened?! 
same as you did me 
in the little time we had before we left
you packed a bag
with a bathtub filled with colonialism
a metal step ladder leading everywhere but up
and paper proof of your birth 
made it hard to carry on purpose
evidence of your desire to stay 
reminded me of how i’d fill
my mother’s bags with every heavy thing
that i had to keep her from going away. 
but we had to go
the bloodhounds had found our trail appetizing
and you enjoyed the chase 

« 15 »
 Sam Sax

was why we turned from highway

to back road and river bank 
carrying your heavy on your back
with those sharp shoulder blades of grass
cutting into the fabric that held you together. 
unraveling as we walked
casting off each artifact
like taking on a new burden  
we move on
twelve steps and two years later
i watched you naked bathed in the moon’s bloodlight
your smile striped me to brittle bone and bleach
your face didn’t remember our city
and no longer knew the difference between
getting away and getting clean.

« 16 »
 Lauren Becker

The Things We Would Not Be » originally published in The

Nervous Breakdown

We are not exhibitionists.  We are confessors.  We express excruciating

moments with carefree wit. We use writing as a means to an end, the end
being someone else. If we laugh—if others laugh—those things will leave
us. We can rename those things as if they never were the way they were.
I would not have been so shy that the first day of school was the worst
day of my year because my parents named me Lauren, but called me Laurie,
and I had to tell my teacher when she called attendance. I would not have
been so afraid to ask to go to the bathroom that I peed in my pants in the
library. I would not be the one who came home on the first day of seventh
grade with her bra up around her neck because she didn’t know how to ask
her mother how to adjust it. I would not be the one who asked, mortified,
only to hear her mom laugh while telling her friends about it later.
I would not be the one who stole candy from her babysitter’s car. I
would not be the one who assumed no one liked her.
I would not be the one who ate her way through law school instead of
quitting. I would not be the one whose dad’s cousin raved about her
mother’s beauty, then told her she looked just like her father.
I wouldn’t be the one who found a napkin stuck to her boot last night
after walking across the bar to the restroom. I would not be the one who
won’t finish the novel that tells the truth. I would not be the one who worries
that nobody will comment on this introspective nonsense. I would not be the
one who worries that people will judge.

« 17 »
 Lauren Becker

You won’t be the one who didn’t go to your prom. Or who was beaten
up by a younger kid when older meant stronger. You will not have been
short, fat, frizzy-haired, tall, skinny or a late bloomer. You will have had
perfect skin and teeth. You will have been friendly with puberty. You will
not be surprised when people like your writing, or think you are pretty or
handsome or want to spend time with you. You will not be the one who ate
lunch in the library, or played fantasy games, or collected stamps or couldn’t
talk to boys or girls. You will not be the one who read words but could not
say them.
I will be the one who Brian chased on the playground so he could kiss
my hand in its red mitten. I will be the only freshman to have had a part in
the school play. I will be the one whose first submission was published. I
will be the one who makes people laugh when I tell them about the worst
things. The things I think of 20 or 30 years later. The things that still don’t
make me laugh. Not really.
We write ourselves into different stories and then edit. And edit. Until
the original is disappeared. Mostly. Run your fingers across our scars,
knotted and raised.

« 18 »
 William Taylor Jr.

Rush Hour and the Girl Who Almost Made It

Bearable

Prodded and driven on crowded subway cars

like doomed animals we are faced with it.
We are forced to see, there is nowhere
to look away. We close our eyes and there is still
the smell and the noise of it, the sick feel of it
brushing against our skin.

Humanity confronted with itself.

Sweating, sneezing, coughing, wheezing

hunchbacked and stink mouthed,
toothless, weepy, obese 
and sickly,
leering and glassy eyed,
lustful and impotent,
confused by our destination and
hurtling towards some darkness we will never
understand,
pretending we are whole and with purpose
instead of the broken things we are.

And on the seat opposite mine, crushed between two

nightmare beings whose laughter is the sound of death
is a young skinny girl with an awkward almost 

« 19 »
 William Taylor Jr.

smile, as if embarrassed by her transient beauty,

her pale hands folded to her lap, her eyes 
cast down upon them like two dying suns.

The Dead and the Living Alike

Today I read how they 
found a woman in a suitcase
drifting in the San Francisco bay
and in such instants
the true terror of life 
reveals itself
when you realize
this is how it ends up 
for all of us
more or less
at this moment
and every moment 
you too are a woman 
stuffed in a suitcase and thrown
to indifferent waters
maybe it hasn't
happened yet or maybe 
you don't remember
but the fact of it is there
and I guess that's why

« 20 »
 William Taylor Jr.

we have god
and television
drink and 
drugs
and on days such as this
I am frightened of the dead
and the living alike
the enormity of the sky
and the purity of its blue
strikes a fear in me
as I walk beneath it weeping 
for things I don't understand.

« 21 »
 William Taylor Jr.

Most of What They've Said

Friends, there's not much 

to it, after all.

Years pass, things fall away.

Most of what they've said isn't true.

There are precious few things

that need remembering:

keep bitterness at bay

as best you can,

kindness whenever possible.

Listen to the ancient music

of things,

let it guide you.

Seek out the deeper joy

within the blanketing sorrow.

Embrace it and become

whatever it is you are.

« 22 »
 Roger Porter

Language Barrier

It was a clean hit. For five hours he waited on the rooftop of the roach-
infested abandoned house. It was the same house he lost his virginity in a
few summers ago. And the same house that he, as a child, had tagged his
hood on with a bottle of green spray paint he found behind the liquor store.
But this hit, it wasn’t about his hood at all—but then it was all about his
hood. It was a much larger idea but he could only express it through the one
concept that he understood. For this teenager’s first language was his only
language and thus he saw the world with a clarity that has never actually
been.
The white man had fallen out of the car and red puddles of blood
began collecting upon the blackness that he shook upon. The hard asphalt
that so many of The People had died on throughout this neighborhood, this
town, this Republic, this world, was now the place where this man flopped
around and twisted while he cursed and screamed like … well, like a child.
It reminded him of the children he had seen at the grocery store who would
fall on the ground flailing their arms wildly over a candy bar they could not
have or chocolate milk their mother could not afford. He had waited five
hours for this man to approach the stop sign, and when he saw him roll up—
as soon as he saw him roll up, he did not hesitate.
Pop!
Only one shot but it was a clean hit because the white man had his
window down and his elbow jutted out of the car as he looked for someone,
anyone who was out of line so he could jump out of his car and put them
back in their place. The white man always wore dark sunglasses so that if he

« 23 »
 Roger Porter

got in your face, which he loved to do, you could not see his eyes. All you
could see was your own reflection; your own hatred, your own tears, your
own trauma, your own fear.
The teenager had not been trained but he had been told. They told him
it was the most righteous act a revolutionary could commit. That somehow
this would result in freedom for people that had never known such a thing.
Freedom? They always talked like that; Freedom, the struggle, liberation,
the movement, militancy, the people, Di-as-po-ra.
Just nod your head. Look him in the eyes and he’ll think you
understand. Remember when he said you’re different than the rest of them?
He said you have potential, you’re already a soldier but you need to be
fighting in the right war. Then he gave you that 40-year-old book about the
dude who had caught that case and was downtown at the courthouse when
his little brother came in there blasting and shot the judge—or something
like that. Anyway he said the little brother was just a year older than you are
right now. Then he said “I believe in you.” He said he believed in you and
then slowly you began believing everything that he said.
The cop reached for his walky-talky.
Pop! Pop! Pop!
The cop still shook but now he shook with no purpose. He only shook
because his body could not help itself.
The teenaged sniper now stood up on the top of the house. The barrel
of his gun smoking. The tip of his nose sweating. The inside of his chest
pounding, and pounding, and pounding. He smiled excitedly as he took baby
steps backwards trying to take in the last glimpse of the beauty which he
created. He then escaped quickly into the very short remainder of his own
life.

« 24 »
 Roger Porter

This is not murder, this is not sin, this is not wrong—this is

Revolution.
Or at least that’s what he believed.

« 25 »
 Tess Patalano

Serial Killers’ Grocery Lists » A Poem of Five Parts

I. Fred
Fred suffers from suffering. Fred was a good student at Fairmount High
school, in Wyoming, and was active in a local church, serving as vice-
president of the Youth Fellowship. He doesn’t know what makes people
attractive to one another. He, like most, is comforted to be in the same room
with something else that is breathing but prefers the creature to be
nonhuman. He goes grocery shopping and practices his faith once every
three months.

List »
Bread
Squirt gun
Pedialyte
Cat food
½ gallon of Milk
Eggs
Apples etc.
Dye remover

II. Joan
Joan is 5’8’’ and weighs 200 pounds. She is a strong and, by most standards,
an attractive woman. When she wakes up, she thinks that it is so terrifying,
waiting for the city to compose itself. She has a true love that she
corresponds with almost every day. In one of their last correspondences she
wrote: “My heart beats in wild rapture for you, my Matthew, I love you.
Come prepared to stay forever.”

List »

« 26 »
 Tess Patalano

Bread
Hot peppers
Push pins
5 boxes of Pop Tarts
Frying pan
Lemons x 3
Plastic Baggies
Feta Cheese

III. John
John is currently in the “cooling off” period between his murders. He is part
of the 60 percent who wet their beds beyond the age of 12. He is a thrill
seeker and enjoys skydiving over a jug of fierce red wine. His neighbors are
too busy to notice.

List »
Jimmy Dean Sausage Links
Shampoo
Ketchup
Coffee
Drier Sheets
100 watt light bulb
Advil
Cheap Red Wine

« 27 »
 Tess Patalano

IV. ——
No one knows ——’s name, not even her creator. She moves between
thoughts as to go undetected. The one doctor she ever visited told her it
would be easiest to forget her past, but she doesn’t remember him saying
this. She hates the color red and tries to rid the world of it in any way she
can. When on her period, she notes its occurrence in every room she enters,
“I am menstruating in the kitchen. I am menstruating in the laundromat. I am
menstruating in the coffee shop,” and so forth.

List »
Dried Apricots (2 bags)
Saran Wrap
Lean Cuisine (Sundried Tomato Pesto Chicken)
Rice
Spam
Leeks

V. Nic
Nic cannot get enough. She finds the piercing yet warm attention her victims
surrender to her comforting. Once captured, she lets her victims loose in an
open field, hunts and kills them while running memories of her father’s
smile into and out of her mind. She is gratified when thinking that there is
always more that needs to be done.

List »
2 bags almonds
2 gallons of milk
4 New York Strip Steaks
6 Valu packs of gum
3 cake mix
10 vegetable beef soup cans
12 pack Pepsi
Cheerios

« 28 »
 Tess Patalano

Ziploc bags (a lot)

Mandescending

Enters below the everyday possibility of entering

muffled by night and
to focus down and to
gently leave down
a ladder

 
 
(the lowliness cannot be overstressed)
 
 

 
he is wet with knowing flashlight beam
 
he is entering  a drip
 
I am going I am going  moon up out of hole head pitted in sink
 
there is dark work to be done  down there, there is a reticulum
 
of sludge to walk through, to reach.

« 29 »
 Kelci M. Kelci

from 52 Sundays
23: A Spring of Mornings Looped

i lean back
and watch my past
through the tip of my pen—

sylvette runs through fields

marbled with periwinkle shadows

pure lavender of the sunrise sky

fuchsia dell's buxom moss

blooms upon jesse's emergence

bruce twirls wired daisies

and tassels their minds
with all the fun drugs

bruce and jesse rub her heart

like thumbs across the flint

all three crave

gliding clouds
slow like glaciers

but they land like i landed too:

flicked specks in the crotch

« 30 »
 Kelci M. Kelci

of sidewalk and apartment

from inside
rising morning always yellows
the dew's now-instant
as sylvette strokes the couch
her crush
their catch—

i watch sylvette
count pills lines hits
and last chances
just as i knew
i counted my last chance too—

to think
in fiction
is to romanticize
my life and poetry
wants a hard edge
to buck trauma

« 31 »
 Kelci M. Kelci

44: Where Parallels Are Lived

i.
in a jumble of lethargy
bare arms and legs wilt
across patio furniture

light jitters and bursts

through tussled leaves

the atmosphere sags

heavy with vapor

ii.
did my mother wilt
like me but didn't
consider recharging

her problems
so intense her drinking
not a problem

or was succumbing simple

like sitting down
after walking

or going to bed

« 32 »
 Kelci M. Kelci

in the evening

iii.
motor noise fills the yard
as an air conditioner switches on—

i'll admit my head has been steeped

in red wine warmed
by new orleans nighttime

my body has been soused

with other sheen bodies
as we hiked the dream borne landscape

and sharpness in day

makes my mind
oscillate blankly

iv.
i never listened
to their warnings

i always believed
no one totally knew me

to think i would toast

to drinking—

« 33 »
 Kelci M. Kelci

to think
i would drink

to addiction
is totally wrong—

i drink
so dull life slips
into an interesting smile—

to talk
with others about anything
as if it really matters

when what lives

within me can only see
birth-suffering-death in spirals

v.
i wonder
if this is where
her outlook differed from mine—

her sober patience

was a tentative waiting

until her black russian

gave voice to her aggression

« 34 »
 Kelci M. Kelci

so that soon she required

the glass in her hand
to cope with her partner
the loss of her mother and father
her missing daughter

vi.
now in the heavy
new orleans afternoon i come to
slapping away flies and mosquitoes—

the image of her alcoholism grows faint

but it will never disappear—

i'm finally startled awake

to let in the brakes

i just want to decelerate

and feel ok for a while

« 35 »
 Kelci M. Kelci

50: My Mother and Father

he strums
a drifting chord
with a nightmare

he pounds
an echoing piano
with a bloody heart

he asks me

what will you do

now that your mother and father are gone

he sings
a vibrating lyric
with insatiable fate

tripping
each beat threatens
rhythmic collapse

and i answer him

if only
my mother and father were gone

« 36 »
 Kelci M. Kelci

that pied piper

peels back
layers of armor

he weaves
a two-step trot
to an unforgiving altar

he inspects
inside my chest
all that decay

reads my eyes
their drunk scan
across his face

and i confess

i don't know how to get along

with my mother and father

please just pound

that piano

just cast that voice

to waver in my soul
i'll figure out

how to get along

« 37 »
 Kelci M. Kelci

» in conversation with "Your Mother and Father" by Cass

McCombs, off the E.P. Not the Way

31: Portrait of the Muse as a Young Woman

this is her teepee face

playing keno on the brink

your chroma cheeks considered

perihelion in this state

your eyes glint oxide

stained winks tangy

kisses half smile puckered

in kiwi kink

a tatty smooch stings

the talking chorus

kinetic baby
bathes in tahiti

« 38 »
 Kelci M. Kelci

glinting, pours zaffer

my alarmed cunt teeters

in teary choler

threatens cocky kibosh

smear of lips
tense and stocky

in landscape of
katydids and stalactite
tallies, sexy chica tie-dyes
her aura
performs tai chi
for flies

check out your tektite

chest
tits tight

yes yes you nod

tilt head-back

« 39 »
 Kelci M. Kelci

you kickstart joy

with unparalled gleam

no no always
i percolate choky

want to blow
kisses not dicks

listen to me

pesky stunts aren't

fuck worthy

« 40 »
 Jennifer Capo

Dear Sugar

It’s a warm summer afternoon and my ex-boyfriend’s dog gets run over by a
beautiful man’s SUV. I live a few blocks from the ex, and I am doing a 10-minute
abs workout on the VCR in my living room, as it’s happening. At age 34, I am still
doing high school girlish things to make myself feel better about being passed on
in this last relationship. I’ll never outwardly admit that it’s his decision…but I
knew he thought I was a little too wild and unsettled. I should have had my doubts
about him as he looks me in the eyes after a month of dating and says, “I want to
be sexually liberated.”
All women know that the best medicine for a break up is looking good. So I
pop in the workout tape and Susan appears, the over-jazzed hardcore workout
instructor with super white teeth. “That’s it, you can do it, breath in for five then
out for five.” She says as she makes her cheeks look like a blowfish. I’m
embarrassed to do the breathing, but I want Susan’s abs so I follow and with each
crunch, I blow for five as I push past the place that I think is my limit -while Susan
counts from ten. I lift my leg for the scissor abs and with each kick, I decide -I
deserve better. Another kick, I wanted to break up way before he did. One more
kick, I want a hot summer body to parade ½ naked for summer festivities. Three.
Men. Uh. It’s an all-girls summer. Two. I won’t settle on mediocre. One. My
friends agree.

***

Rick was his name and it’s an amicable break-up. The first actual drama-less break
up I’ve had. A simple situation. I read the book, ‘He’s Just Not That into You’ and

« 41 »
 Jennifer Capo

I realized he fit the profile…not to mention, that after six months of serious dating,
he claims he is capable of loving his dog, but incapable of loving me.

***

I’m half way through the ab crunches that are now my revenge crunches and I’m
holding my breath, trying to look as good as most of the women on the tape that
make it look so easy.
I know this tape by heart but I still stare mesmerized with envy at the girl in
the tight pink top with the big perfect boobs and effortless smile. I wonder if Rick
would like her and tell her that he loves her. Someone that dresses in pink, girly,
stars in workout videos. Perfect cheerleader. I decide that he would love her and
that most men are looking for this kind of girl, not a quirky, brown-haired
wanderlust like myself. I’m ashamed of myself for having these feelings.
The phone rings and I ignore it.
The phone rings again and I want out of this workout pain and run up to grab
it.

It’s Rick’s voice coming through the earpiece.

“Kim,” There’s a heavy silence. I hear him cover the phone and burst into a
sob and than come back on. “Sugar was hit by a car. She’s dead.”
I’m frozen. I never thought I’d hear these words. I’ll admit I fantasized
numerous times about her disappearance – her picture tacked on telephone poles.
One eyebrow up. Rick petting ME, kissing ME, telling ME that I’M the best girl in
the world—not her.
“Where are you?”
“I’m in the back alley by my street.” He bursts into tears and doesn’t stop.

« 42 »
 Jennifer Capo

“I took her off the leash to chase a cat and she just ran in front of an SUV.
It’s all my fault.”
I listen and feel embarrassed for him. I’m suppose to be MAD at him. I’ve
ALREADY made it through the break up withdrawls. Why now? Then I realize
something. This is the moment I’ve been waiting for. Sugar’s gone. Rick needs
ME. I toss the phone at the ground and run out the front door. I sprint barefoot on
my tippy toes with perfect running form. My hands are like razors cutting through
the air at full speed. In less than a minute, I round the bend and see Sugar’s lifeless
Pitbull body in a driveway, on her side, not a scratch. An SUV blocking her at an
angle. The sun shining through the trees that line the street. Rick crouched on the
curb with his head resting on his bent knees. He sees me and jumps up as if I’m his
only hope, I open my arms and he head dives into my neck. He grabs me so tight,
water on my shoulder. Snotty nose running. He smears his hand across his face and
wipes away his nose drippings so he can breath and out of his comes a small
mouse like squeak comes. What kind of person am I? How could I wish this on
him? How many times I told my friends that Rick will never appreciate me until
Sugar dies. My stomach drops and turns. I’m a terrible person. And it hit’s me. I
don’t deserve Rick. I don’t deserve love.
Everything is still and calm…like a photograph. Sugar peacefully lying on
her side. It’s a perfect bbq beach day. The grass so green. The breeze so faint. I
stand here ashamed of myself as I look around…and than I see him. The dog killer.
He’s hiding off to the side of the driveway near the SUV. He’s the most beautiful
creature I’ve ever seen. He has a pile of brown curls winding in all directions. I
can’t believe I have never run into him before. He looks like a statue I saw in
Rome. He has both of his hands in the front pockets of his jeans like a model in a
diesel ad and he’s looks raw, conflicted, -guilty…like me. All I can think is that
here I am with two manly men that are in a rare moment of emotional display. This

« 43 »
 Jennifer Capo

could possibly be an emotional ménage a tois, which on my female level is at the

height of all of my womanly fantasies. Forget about Rick. I hated Sugar. Sport
Center sucks. I’m a good person. I do deserve a chance.
My hold loosens and Rick backs up to the curb and crouches down again.
And It was this moment that I did the strangest thing. I walk right over to beautiful
dog killer, without hesitation, and I put my arms around him. At first he pulls back,
but then, he rest his hands around my shoulders. He’s tall, and I just turn my head
and rest it on his chest. I feel Rick’s eyes glaring behind me and I ignore them.
Been there, done that. This might be my only chance. This just doesn’t happen
everyday. I’m getting older, I don’t have time to waste. The smell of suntan oil and
sweat swirls up my nose. His hard pecs on my face. He’s strong. He can hunt. I can
gather. It’s perfect. I wish I could just stay here forever, but his arms drop. I’m left
with my both my arms around his waist, hanging on, trying to figure out why I
have my head on his chest in the first place. Weird. I take a step back and try to
figure out what’s happening. Oh, Sugar’s dead. This guy ran her over. Rick’s over
there. My name is Kim. I’ve lost control and I have to recover—fast.
So I touch both of his arms, lift my head, look at him with sad eyes. Blink.
Blink. And say, “It wasn’t your fault.”

« 44 »
 Missy Church

Wreckage

Do you want to fuck me? 

Will you take me down with your relentless intent? 
Will you peel me of these dirty night clothes
And gently fold them along their creases? 
Will it be you who runs your supple fingers along my
Thick rough stretch marks, swollen with
Spent sentiment that still wildly writhes from misuse? 
Will you mop up the rivulets of pus
Leaking from my swollen groin, that resembles
A plate of undercooked, pounded flesh
Which has been sifted through the rusty holes of a meat grinder? 
Will it be you who takes thread to needle and
Delicately stitches the angry fascia back together
That throbs beneath a layer of skin that grins
From hip to aching purple hip? 
Will you bind my weeping nipples—
Thrust then into my breasts with
The rationed gauze of convention? 
Will it be you who gathers up my regrets like
A wilted bouquet of week old sentiment? 
Will it be you who takes responsibility for this wreckage? 
Do you want to fuck me?

« 45 »
 Missy Church

Bedding Down With A Saint

When the city slowly sighs

At the five o’ clock hour,
She becomes an entirely different beast.

A beast of glory and sauntering persuasion,

A beast who lets you cum in her mouth and
Sleep well past noon … in ‘her’ bed.
She won’t ask you for your number or
Drag you out to the local night-after-show for breakfast.
In fact, she’ll even wait until after you’ve gone
Before she strips the well-worn sheets
From the sweaty night bed.

If you make the mistake of offending her—

Asking for her facebook name,
Crapping in her toilet without a courtesy flush,
Not asking when using her toothbrush or
Letting the “L-word” slip.
You know, stuff like that—

If you do make a mistake, she’ll let it slide

Because she’s cool like that.
She’s cool like silk in the palm,
Like an aged whiskey,
Like perfectly tuned jazz

« 46 »
 Missy Church

On an early Sunday afternoon,

Like the smell of your first kiss, like
The sight of the exact person
You want to see at that exact second—

She is cool like that,

San Francisco.
She is a beautiful beast
With secrets seeping from her concrete hair
That flows from her salty shores to
The shallow muddy bay.

She has a million lovers.

If you are graced enough to become one
Treat her like the beast she is and
Take her down like Santo Amor upon a
Thick sultry bed of urban desire.

« 47 »
 Charles Kruger

A Spanieled Cocker

sparkles like candle flames point directions

flapping wings on current
moving trains along dusted pockets
last ditch efforts mingle in ecstasy
the road to laughter
in the geometric morning 
stripes accumulate and meanings
challenging Jack O'Lantern grins
taking us heavenward and
nothing topples the beatitudes
like sex in the afternoon 
rough tackles crunch bones peripherally
and zoom to futures droning cat balls
and limericks that last
like all day suckers
fingering our throats
until the final vomit 

the bird flaps a ribbon in the air

and two eyes appear to stare
from the twin tits of twin peaks
accusing me of committing poetry 
another bird

« 48 »
 Charles Kruger

an oversized eagle
winks at me
with Jimmy Cagney's pug face
as it flies past carrying in its talons
the Doyly Carte Opera Company
singing H.M.S. Pinafore 
I strain to see more clearly
through my speckled window
a murder of crows (is that right?)
collides in a rainbow of black
fluttering onto a lamppost
that bends under their weight
like a vaulting pole springing them
into the sky
like pies set to splat
in the face of the sun
I can hear them laughing 
in a back woods clearing in North Carolina
Good ol' boy Will spits into his palms
where the stigmata stings
and bends a branch of willow until it snaps
as loudly as a gun shot 
the report wakes me where I was sleeping soundly
in a dirigible floating over Lake Michigan 
“is the tapioca ready so soon?”
I ask the attending wolf
whose tongue lolls out at me

« 49 »
 Charles Kruger

dripping grape kool-aid

the wolf smells of my mother's talcum powder
it cradles my head in its hairy paw
and begins to speak 
in Coconut Grove handsome Jeffrey is jacking off
after shaving the hair off his arms, legs and chest
and fitting himself into Patsy's bra and singing panties
it is so delicious he thinks he'll
swoon too soon from the perfume of her honey sweat
and it is the eye of the hurricane so hot
it hums like an electric wife 
the dust dances fairy patterns outside my window
and I hear a rooster crow at the traffic
and the neighbor's cocker spaniel shouts “Good Morning”
at my star spangled cock
so I slap my face to wake up
drink more coffee
and totter into the day

« 50 »
 Charles Kruger

Why I Do It

Desperation begins this poem

Where the hell is my voice? 
Fearful Sunday wake up
Worried about lost job and
Lonely in my morning prayers and
Masturbation 
Grade the last student paper before
Moving on from failure 
Sitting to write
Empty and scared 
So I drive the car
Searching for voice
Along new roads
Cruising California Delta first time
Redneck towns
Country western motorcycle bars 
And—
I'm not making this up—
A spam festival and cooking contest:
Artificial food for the artificial poet. 
I eat Chinese in an old river town
Red walls and paper lanterns
Ancient grandmother chopping in the kitchen
Forever

« 51 »
 Charles Kruger

Pay and drive off 

Looking for my voice 
Finally Sacramento bookstore
And Ginsberg's last farting poems
And a beautiful boy at the cash register
Who tells me
He has begun a metaphysical novel
But he is not really a writer because
There are only two chapters 
And I tell him: 
You are! 
If writing is worth doing, I tell him,
It is because
The action itself is good
The urge is good
And who cares about product 
You don't refuse to shit,
I tell him,
Because it isn't chocolate
Do you? 
And we love, we love
I tell him
Fascinated by his eyes
We love because
It is good to love and
Not because
We are good at it 

« 52 »
 Charles Kruger

And don't ever say you are not a real writer

Because you are
Because you do it
Not because it is good or you publish or
anything else 
And he says
With a smirk
I see
Whatever 
And I buy Ginsberg's book
And eat double chocolate cake
And write him this poem.

« 53 »
 Mira Martin-Parker

An Envelope Full of Cash

You never know when it will arrive. That’s what makes it special. Most of
the time, you just wait. Day after day you go downstairs and check the
lonely box, the only time you dress and leave your apartment. You put on
lipstick and a clean shirt. You brush your teeth and slip on some sandals.
But no, there’s nothing waiting for you when you get there. Just a book of
supermarket coupons, a catalog with ladies in bras on the cover, a
depressing little tidbit about disconnection, a note or two about
cancellation, a threat of legal action, a jury summons, and a postcard from
somewhere you will never go. So you head back upstairs and sauté some
leftover brown rice and put a little mayonnaise and mustard on a cracker,
and day after day it goes on like this—the powder, the lipstick, the trip
downstairs, the box full of solicitations and ladies in bras, the lunch of
crackers and mayonnaise and then one day, damn it, for no reason at all, a
hand written letter arrives. You recognize the writing (it’s from him!). So
you run upstairs and sit down at the table and tear the thing open and they
start falling out, greenback after beautiful greenback. Then life is good
again and there’s ciggy butts and beer and bread and cheese and the phone
is turned back on and maybe even the lights and damn it, don’t say it can’t
happen. Please.

Completely Still

Walking through a residential street in Westchester, Los Angeles. It’s about

sunset, or just a little after. See the little succulent gardens? See the 50’s

« 54 »
 Mira Martin-Parker

tract homes? In the yards there are flowering tulip trees and tropical palms
here and there, to suggest a cocktail or some wrongdoing. There is a
mixture of cars both old and new. But the truth is the car painted the exact
color of the house it belongs to. The truth is the car the same age and color
of that house. The one with the sea plants lined along the front window. The
one with the pale green living room.

There might also be a rose bush the same shade as both the car and the
house. And a woman inside the house named Pearl, with pale skin and ash
blonde hair.

It’s the blue hour and the colors are disappearing.

It’s the blue hour in Westchester, Los Angeles.

« 55 »
 Mira Martin-Parker

Thick

I like ladies with thick legs. See that lady, the one over there, the one in
pink with that thing in her hair, she has thick legs. Her ankles are logs of
wood, loaves of bread, they work. They come out the bottom of her skirt,
they hit the ground hard. Yes, that’s her. That one over there, the big girl.
She’s got thick legs. I like them like that. Thick.

« 56 »
 Chris Cole

Her Olive was Just a Dull Green

» an excerpt from The Speed at Which I Travel

My only real friend in Elysium, Iowa was Peter Porlucas. He was Italian, but
he wasn’t, cause he was adopted.
His mom was a one-woman assembly line of food, feeding us cheese-
laden, breaded dishes bathed in olive oil with names that I couldn’t begin to
pronounce, let alone spell. Tastes so different from anything I had ever put
in my mouth, I was never sure they were supposed to be eaten. She had hair
in places that you normally saw bare, and there was something around her
eyes, a Mediterranean depth that belied any Midwest roots. Her ankles were
as big as my father’s, but she had an olive beauty that you could make out
beneath the surface.
His Dad was stout and had a Boston accent, despite being from
Missouri. He always sat by the TV with a pipe and nodded at Peter and me
as we’d go in and out of the house, tapping his pipe loudly on the end table
if we forgot to shut the door behind us. Peter had reddish hair and freckles,
with a rabbit’s overbite and the build of someone who tried hard to be
athletic, despite all that nature had held back. You could see in Peter’s body
the things he tried hard to be, they reached out like arms grasping for
something perpetually out of reach. It earned him the nickname “little Italy.”
One afternoon, behind a dead barn, Pete taught me how to masturbate.
I pretended I didn’t know how. We plowed through the arcana of boyhood
archetypes together and he made me promise we’d always stick together and
never let the outside world get to us. We were both outcasts, me by choice,
sort of, and him by defiance of his will. He tried so hard to fit in, that it made
the chances of such a thing happening hopeless. I’m not sure if he settled for

« 57 »
 Chris Cole

me or if there was some kind of magnetics that brought us together. Either

way, he would shed tears in front of me, about his brother who beat up on
him, about his height, about everything that he kept inside. He’d always end
these confessionals by pretending it was all in jest. But there was a spark of
knowing in his eyes, a silent pact he was making with me. When we were at
school, though, and the kid’s would get bored and start picking on him, he’d
turn on me. Every time.
“Hey, I saw Indiana taking a bath with his mom.”
Things that had no basis in fact, but would do the trick in re-routing
the attention and ridicule from himself for a few minutes. For my part, I
would take it in stride, either letting it wash over me, or in braver moments,
murmuring back to the biggest kid who would ask me, in a mocking bellow
so that everyone could hear, “Is it true, you take baths with your mom?”
“No.” I remember answering one day, after my father had
disappeared, “It was your mom.” That incident sent me to the nurse’s and
then to Dr. Handler’s for stitches.
Peter would never disclose to the others any real confession I made to
him. The ones he’d let loose were from out of nowhere. I wonder if they
were, in part, things that were true about his own life, things he was
embarrassed about. I figured he’d never let slip anything we had talked
about, thinking it would maintain the bond of trust we had. Whenever we
were alone, we’d never discuss it, why he’d turn on me and make up those
lies. Partly because I think both of us knew why, but the words weren’t
ready for our pre-adolescent lips.
One day we were playing war in the woods behind his house with his
father’s old army gear, which we’d snuck out from the garage. It had just
rained the day before and everything was mushy, except the air, which was

« 58 »
 Chris Cole

crisp. I had captured him and was standing over his body, his arms pinned
under my feet. He kept saying I could wear the gear next, but it would
always be “five more minutes.” I held in my hands the hard metal helmet
he’d been wearing and we looked at each other. It was a dull, brown green
and I held it over him, examining it like a spoil of war, as he looked up at me
from the ground. I caught his eye and, both by accident and on purpose, I let
go of it. The hard stained helmet came down on his face, catching his buck-
rabbit teeth and making a clink that echoed like a bee-bee gun hitting a bell.
I watched the sound escape through the branches above, like a bird fleeing.
He let out a loud “Ahhhhhh” that rose in volume, as he got up and felt his
lips, which were bleeding. I was frozen with shock, not quite believing what
I had just done.
“I didn’t do that” is the first thing I said.
When he took his hands away from his mouth, I could see that both of
his front teeth had been chipped.
“My mom’s gonna fucking kill you.” He lisped.
I watched a speck of blood fly out, as he spoke, and land on my
soiled, white t-shirt. In between the dots of mud, it almost blended in. And I
thought to myself, maybe no one will notice.

By the time they found the cancer in his stomach, it was the size of a
baseball. He spent four weeks at the hospital up in Iowa City and then died,
the day after our eighth grade graduation party where I kissed Sally Potter,
behind Ed Nance’s Gazebo. I never visited him in the hospital, not once. Not
because I was scared or angry. Not because I didn’t love him. Things were
just moving, in their own direction. And I didn’t know I had a choice, or
maybe I didn’t want to know.

« 59 »
 Chris Cole

I saw his mom. She came to our graduation and wailed the whole time
like the women in those spaghetti westerns or The Godfather would, dressed
in black and huddled in the midst of consoling arms. Her olive was just a
dull green now. I avoided her the whole time, like I had when she’d come to
our house, offering to take me to the hospital so I could see Peter. I was
always gone, or hiding, when she came. My mom never pressured me,
maybe because my father. Maybe for some other reason I don’t understand. I
was coming out of the bathroom after the service; everyone had left. I was
staying back to help clean up in exchange for a missing P.E. credit I had
needed for graduation. She was there waiting. No one else was there in the
gym where our ceremony had been. The silence ricocheted off the walls like
the sound of basketballs dribbling.
I was cemented to the ground with the bathroom door swinging
behind me. I wondered where all the women were that had been consoling
her, propping her up. It hadn’t seemed that she could stand on her own
before. She had looked like a black cloud being carried along. Now she
stood squat, suspended by those ankles, girders propping up a leaning tower.
And I wondered if it was evolutionary biology that gave her those ankles,
knowing she would one day have to support herself under a weight that
normal anatomy would never have allowed. She broke what seemed to be an
infinite silence.
“He loved you. Gary. He loved you.”
I wish I could have cried, broken down right there and held her, or at
least have her hold me. But I was silent. I couldn’t even move. After what
felt like minutes, she left me standing there. And I continued to stand there
for another half-hour, unmoving, unblinking, until my mother came in
looking for me.

« 60 »
 Chris Cole

“Gary, I’ve been waiting outside for twenty minutes.”

“I’ll walk, Mom. Just go.”
As I watched her leave, I thought of how he’d turned on me, those
moments on the playground. I wondered if, somehow, some part of him
knew we’d need this balance. But it didn’t really seem like balance. It just
seemed like air. A distance that was there, but that I couldn’t see.

« 61 »
 J. Brandon Loberg

Taxi Hour

In moonlit eyes from a Marin hill

Filament streets etch deeping fissures 
In the darkened cityscape,
Constellar reticulation where the land folds furrowed
In a care-worn Himalayan brow
Above cracked-plaster Byzantine eyes
Welling tears between crossed lines
Where the life passes 
Two headlights at a time

It's taxi hour
And i'm walking.

Tripping the cool breeze and clouds

Lit silver under a midwinter's moon,
The lost Third Street bums
Morose and juxtaposed 
On a park bench
Over wine
To the sound of an out-of-tune guitar

And there's a cold sweat,

Unlike discontent 
When the chords swell
And we're abject,

« 62 »
 J. Brandon Loberg

But the light pools on the pavement 

Splashes flashing with every passing car
Each solitary passenger
Nexus of myriad explosions
Innumerable as the stars.

And likewise
On a midnight drive
They pass silent under silhouetted trees
Fading to dust trails
As eventually we do.

This is a prayer canto

For the habitually broken-open,
The hot tea soothes the throat
When you've misspoken

So,
Put all your eggs in one basket
Take the last train to the edge of the world
Wind up and toss it
Headlong into the ocean
With the sun on your back in the morning—

It's taxi hour
And the night
Is young.

« 63 »
 Nic Alea

Apology

part i.
is me talking to myself
like some fit of vanity

(this part was

written by the charred
limp wrists of an 18 year old
power pop anorexic,
it goes along the lines of):

what did they call me

the night before the storm?
what did they call me in
bathroom stalls
and in parked volvos
across the valley?
did they call me by
name or by
selected identity?
did they call me?
did they dress me
in fabricated words, tell me.
did they rip street
signs off posts

« 64 »
 Nic Alea

just to show me
that there’s part of
me that lives across
the interstate,
lies deep in riverbed,
and i should have apologized
then,
but i think i want
to just glow full tonight,
i just want to act
like the moon tonight,
try to steal satellite
messages off the rafters
of some closeted children tonight,
i apologize
that
this is not a real story
but i’ll spin it around so it sounds true.

part ii.
do you know what it’s
like to hate yourself
for the majority of two decades?
 
(this part was written
by the cracked hands
of some boy worker

« 65 »
 Nic Alea

from an appalachian farm town)

between the first

intentional cut
and girl on girl
internet porn
is a spot
along the highway
that has two gravestones
behind a vacant barnyard

and there he dress like his mother,

take rags from the stonewall basement
he dress like his mother in rags
he dress like banjo frequency
plucking strings of front porch whiskey,
yes, those are real,
yes, those are real wounds from a
from a small town gay bar
cat fight.

he spend hours
struggling with striped overalls
memorizing the shape of the moon
through outhouse carved crescent
wishing that those curves
were on his own body,

« 66 »
 Nic Alea

feel his own body,

do you
feel your own body?
do you say,
baby,
it’s ok,
you’re ok,
baby you are ok,
do you feel your own body?
and he dress like his mother,
he writes poetry
from the backyard
into his wishful fists
hoping that all his apologies
can be lifted like sky
dust winged angels
because someone has to break
the cycle,
by writing romanticized poetry
about transphobia
and suicide
so he sticks lead pencils
into his mouth to grind his teeth
loosen the strain
of carrying a closet door
on a chain around his neck
and he apologizes

« 67 »
 Nic Alea

for his poetry

because no one will ever read it
and he apologizes
because he can’t help
but dress like his mother
and this isn’t a real story
but we’ll just let it be.

part iii
i write more apologies
than love poems

(this last part was written

by someone i don’t know)

and he held me
and he held me
in his fucking hands
way before the moth light drew dim
and he wrapped new pieces of lace
around a switchblade
dropped me into bathtub
and said,
“this
is the heaviness
of a purgatory life”,
and everything tastes

« 68 »
 Nic Alea

like copper these days,

everything so metallic these days
how are you these days?
how are you yourself these days?
what is your name?
what is your sign?
baby,
i’m asking you what
you know about yourself these days,
what do you have to say about
mopping dust bowls
with wire brooms,
i say
his pa woulda
left him on the highway
i say
his pa wouldn’ta been
proud of his hemline
but i say
a lot of stupid
shit i don’t mean,
so throw this dog fur
around my shoulders,
i need to walk to the mountains
bury myself beneath a flannel
blanket
and i apologize

« 69 »
 Nic Alea

because i just want to act

all holy like crater face tonight,
and i apologize for things
i shouldn’t associate with apology
like,
i’m sorry
but i have to go home early tonight,
you know gotta go sleep;
i’m sorry
if my honesty threw you off tonight,
but it’s embedded in me
like,
i’m sorry i got all emotional
and was my full self in front of you tonight,
and i’m sorry,
more sorry
than flat bedded trucks
with a license plate holder that says
“this is heaven”
under a rifle bed
and i apologize
because this isn’t a true story,
except that it is.

« 70 »
 M.G. Martin

An Imagined Eulogy

when the person in the reality

television show about writers
who is the worst writer
makes a comment about the irony
of owning the “freshest & fastest”
typewriter: I think: of the blue
music of a fastwearingpredictablepoeticrhythm
& also of a series of words
written by a sibling of mine,

“Animal Heart”
In this moment we are one
we are all things of nature,
we are the birds and the trees,
the long grass swaying against the african sky.
we are the thing that tells the lion to leap,
and the gazelle to run,
watching in the distance the lion’s eyes sharp as it’s teeth,
taste the flesh and blood before the skin has broken
and the heart has stopped.
we are the drum beats deep within the forest,
the song of our ancestors singing to the stars.
we are the moonlight like a fire that has turned blue, and still,
we are the wind that blows between your ears,

« 71 »
 M.G. Martin

hearing the moans of all animal creatures.

in this place we have many bodies
many names and faces but we are one warrior.
that warrior spirit that speaks of survival, slowly moving our limbs up and down,
bending back to the earth,
breathing beneath the sky,
slowly inhaling the sunrise in our broad chest,
we are all one,
in this moment.
balanced,
for every moon,
the earth will give us
a sun.

a sibling of mine who may or may not

still be taking breath
into his or her lungs
whom i obviously love
whether or not this all may be true
including the poem within
this poem which is certainly not
a double negative
meaning: he or she is
not speculative.

« 72 »
 M.G. Martin

Crossed Eyed & Full of Honey

it’s easy to waste

time when you
sharpen wood
filled w/ graph
ite then opt
out for plastic
called BIC
or change your
mind again &
switch to a
box filled w/
wires made
in china aw
but paper is
so charming
so now you’re
at a loss
for words
which are what
you’re try
ing to gen
erate in or
iginal type
ways so why

« 73 »
 M.G. Martin

did the iamb

cross the page
the hell if i
know is a
bad joke
like this was
te of time
called try
ing to be
a poem but
i’m happ
iest when
you cross
your eyes &
dot your tea
w/ honey
ilu.

« 74 »
 M.G. Martin

(Children Pressing Knives to Mother’s Throat) Isn't

Fun

when a skunk flexes rectum

& it’s anal scent glands
spurt:
the bravest of wolves
& bears
flee,
 retreat,
take heed: phobic, indeed,
of rotten egg garlic burnt rubber cologne, an exodus:
 spewing,
spouting,
 erupting
out of the bunghole
of Pepe Le Pew! 

human beings
 seem to be keen on
gasoline! 

 as a matter
 of fact, the fact
 of the matter
 is: if as much time
$cha-ching$ &

« 75 »
 M.G. Martin

energy 

 were spent feeding the mouths

of
the hungry, 
 as the aggregate of time
$cha-ching$ &
energy 
 spent feeding the bellies
of s.u.v.s
oily tankers
jumbo jets
& submarines 

 i wouldn’t grumble
 or gripe, no
 as a matter
 of fact, the fact
 of the matter
 is: i just might, perchance,
be alright
with
gasoline! 
 
gasoline! gasoline!
so obscene is gasoline! 

« 76 »
 M.G. Martin

* * *

don’t you see that i am older than art? 

i can out break a wave
i can out dance the devil
i can out set the sun
i can out croon a canary
i can out run the horizon
i can out talk your tongues
i can out phantom a shadow
i can out venom the viper
i can out-weigh gravity
i can out naked an infant, but

 i can’t
out live eternity 
when you smother me
choke me
gag me
squelch me
asphyxiate me
with your onyx moonshine. 
The smog of your urban haikai:
an acidic conjuration
of empty language & vertigo image
dispersing into my body of renga:
a garden of truth & echo

« 77 »
 M.G. Martin

dangling behind the eyelids,

nestled like an hourglass
in my belly. 
 
* * * 
 
don’t you smell my ancientness, bawl for me:
linfen, tianying, sukinda, vapi, la oroya, dzerzhinsk, norilsk, chernobyl, sumgayit,
kabwe.
but,
i don’t mind vietnam, where
gasoline doesn’t reign supreme
& isn’t so obscene, where
bicycles are still the paramount
instrument of transporting: children to the circus
& rice cakes
to the marketplace 
i don’t mind vietnam, where
 it is said all men & women suffer
only four diseases: drinking
gambling
prostitution
& smoking. 
 
barbarous vietnam may seem
balanced beside your
gasoline disease

« 78 »
 M.G. Martin

it’s romantic juxtaposition to your

petroleum malady, your
maniacally draconian vampiric craving 
 
 
gasoline! gasoline!
so obscene is gasoline!

« 79 »
 Paul Corman-Roberts

Thank God for Dave

- » In loving memory of Reverend Sam, who assuredly
changed my life

Alas.
I am not a good soldier.
I got bored.
I abandoned my post.
I went to my Squadron Commander’s private washroom.
I stroked off thinking of the Commander’s daughter.
I got my nut thinking of his wife.
I washed up.
I decided to go to the bank.
I needed to deposit some drug money.
I got horny again halfway to the bank.
I decided to stroke off again.
I reached for my dick.
I made a chilling discovery.
I had left my dick in the Commander’s private washroom.
I had left my dick on the sink counter.
I faced a choice.
I decided money was more important than my dick.
I continued to my bank.
I got to my bank.
The bank was closed.
I knew I was wrong.

« 80 »
 Paul Corman-Roberts

I knew my dick was in trouble.

I knew it was my fault.
I hurried back to my post.
I hurried back to the Squadron Commander’s private washroom.
I went inside.
My dick was gone.
I looked for it in the garbage can.
I looked for it out the window.
I looked for it down the sink.
I reached for it down the toilet drain.
I still didn’t have my dick.
Oh well.
I would need to get a new one.
Hopefully I could fool my wife.
Then I had a disturbing thought.
What if my Squadron Commander had taken my dick?
What if the Commander’s secretary had taken it?
What if it had been taken by a foe?
What if it had been taken by a friend?
I had left my dick in a vulnerable position.
Politically and personally.
If someone had taken my dick, would they know it was my dick?
It didn’t have my name on it.
But it was covered with my fingerprints.
It wouldn’t be hard to figure out whose dick it was.
It could have been found only by friend or foe.
It was possible I was going to get fucked in the ass by my own dick.

« 81 »
 Paul Corman-Roberts

I was powerless.
I couldn’t say anything.
I could only wait.
I didn’t have to wait long.
Only half an hour.
Talk about fuckin’ lucky.
My co-worker Dave had it.
Dave was a friend.
Dave turned out to be a good friend.
Dave had sucked my dick many times.
He knew it like the back of his hand.
He gave back my dick.
Without wanting to put it in my ass.
Without wanting to suck it.
I let him suck it anyway.
I knew he wanted to.
I was happy to let him.
Even though Dave’s not my type.
But Dave is a good, good friend.
Thank God for Dave.
Thank God for friends.
A soldier can’t have too many friends.
One foe is one too many
for a soldier like me.
And I’m not a good soldier.
Alas.

« 82 »
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