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Issue #1
About Aux./Vox.
Contributors:
Max Bicking
Brian Cox
Emily Duffy
Isabella Esser
Eliana Katz
Dominick Knowles
Blaise Laramee
Jordan Ostrum
Annie Rus
Amanda Sierzega
Nora Sternlof
Florentine Stoop
Brian Thomas
Prose/Verse:
Visual Art:
Sean Dolan
Blaise Laramee
conditionally negative
with a continuous category of
nothing.
It is important to note that
some students will become disenchanted
while strictly speaking
on abstraction
but
will learn to construct
a sense of reality.
Max Bicking
10
oui, je taime
John is fine;
I dont know his voice
but I imagine lilacs
from lips pursed,
coffee dripping,
oozing into words;
wine and roses,
roses and wine,
thorns and drunkenness sharing poems and aurasblue with orange,
red with red.
Brian Cox
Brian Cox
11
12
13
14
15
16
I gather, I gather
up my hands, into the delicate pink knots
the small, pursed buds
dropping: another pebble that rolls. I gather.
Isabella Esser
I worried
about the naked and boney I
a slender finger held to the lips, the tongue of a gun
the graceless peels it whittles itself from
falling apart and around it like leaves, words
swiftly overturn and flutter, yellow butterflies
across the ground, the trees
a lingering, lemon peach, bursting to pieces: around us, ashes
of sorts: something burns,
something erupts. In pursuit of
gravitas, we swim
in language. Toss a fishing line
we are lost in our language: understanding
is like a very fine line, and it loops
from one tooth of mine
round yours, and swings there
like a jump rope between two children
(settling. at rest. the minimum, upon which
we build, and we swing, and we swing
growing, swellingblooming like a pregnant
womans belly. Havent you ever heard
17
18
Isabella Esser
But when my professors not here, I bring him milk. I grab his
cold tongue and pretend that his jaw is still attached to his
head. He purrs in my lap and I inspect his entrails and twist
his tail mindlessly with a finger. I speak to him softly, inviting
him to my bed with caresses to his muscles. Its nothing but
a deep muscle massage, I assure him well a nerve massage,
a trachea massage, a vein and artery massage, with a tweezers and scalpel. Youre a crunchy little kitty, I jest as I crack
his hip bones Crunch! Crunch! Crunch! Just like when I
eat cereal. And I snip and dig through muscle to crack open
his spine. He lets out a squeal and I perceive it as joy. Yeah I
just got that crick outa your back, I know, a friend helps out
a friend in need, right? I know youve always got my back
too. He tries to snatch my pencil as I scribble long words that
describe him across the page...
19
20
I switch off the lights and leave the room. I come back in the
evening and I open the door to find him rubbing his draping muscles against my naked shin. I look down at the small
intestine that trails along the floor. I glance casually at my
blue toes, and then stare. I see my chest opened and my small
intestine packaged nicely into my abdominal cavity. I reach to
touch, and see my dissected arm, my dyed red arteries and my
dyed blue veins. But the fingers remain the same, only blue,
which has always been my favorite color. I pick up the little
guy still rubbing at my feet. I grab my intestines and throw
them out. Out with the large intestine! The bladder, the uterus,
the lungs. Snip, snip. OUT! And I pick up my pal and stick
him inside. I let his little red head stick out, with his eyes half
closed and his tongue partially out, his ears smashed down,
and his nose, well thats his best feature Id say! I hear a noise.
Footsteps. And the door seeps open. Sean, Billy and Emily.
My mouth breaks into a wide grin as I fall across the lab table.
Their noses crinkle.
Eliana Katz
21
22
Dominick Knowles
23
24
Dominick Knowles
25
26
The Shore
Moving
Water below me, water beside mea wave washes away a kingdom,
a breaker buries a whole court; its nobles,
princes, clergymen, dukes,
counts, viscounts, scribes,
and one lonely jester, resplendent
in a velvet hat with three silver bells, all gasp for air,
reach a hand to me (titan on the sand, massive god)
and are gone.
Blaise Laramee
Blaise Laramee
27
28
Sendak
The phone rang, I picked it up,
held the receiver to my ear and heard on the line
the sound of geese honking, high up
in the air, tinny through miles of cord.
What is God? Is He
all the leaves shaking in red autumn
on the trees outside in the night,
the fullness of the maple, the oak?
I am watching over and over
interviews with Maurice Sendak,
that unapologetic writer,
just before he died. He said
he was making a space for a good death.
He loved Blake, he loved his dog, Jennie.
29
30
Ode to Booty
Oh! plump, self-righteous ass,
whose fumbling figure extends like overripened pear
Your mere presence turns my veins to brass
The thought of you alone and lonely? Tis a thought I cannot
bear
Such supple flesh provides a treasure trove of pleasure;
A goody-bag of chaotic lust, warm and sickly-sweet.
Your gelatinous curvature, like any delicious delicacy, I treasure
And cheek-to-cheek I strongly yearn to meet
Your pantheonic rotundity overwhelms my very being
Twin peaks, a bosom without teats, devours hungrily and
causes snowglobe flurry
A thousand kisses I blow upon your wanton mass, lying prostrate
A meal more filling than you never before have mortals ate
Booty, I worship you, Ill make clear that
And relish in you being so fucking goddamn P-h phat
Jordan Ostrum
31
32
Annie Rus
Annie Rus
33
34
35
36
Amanda Sierzega
37
38
Nora Sternlof
39
40
Guard, Mother
Paint/Drive/Drip
A shoulder molds
around the contours of my leg. Not many come
to join me, but this one sits, leaning
quietly, accompanied only by the clickclacking of keys. Her skin glistens with the sweat
of an end-of-summers day and mine
with the glimmer of sunbeams on my
metal. Ever-silent, I tower
and she, is kept safe
under my cloak.
Florentine Stoop
41
42
Addendum
Trumpeted.
Christ-like, philosophical dissonance,
I feel like Im simultaneously running
Away from and towards my salvation.
Camel through the needle.
Thumb twitch/facenumb, moved outside
To watch Max and Jamie split a cigarette
And winelaugh at the cars rushing by
Graceless and without sophistication.
The night is dark and cool, like the soil
I dug my toes into that one time in Maine.
And I wonderAm I Blakes sunflower? Am I the wine (?)
Dripping down my friends velvet throats
As we sit typing theses beneath tapestries.
The metaphor, the season, the dirt/greased
Skin of travelers who travel lonely to work,
Like I heard one time, they need poems/bread.
Brian Thomas
43
44
Brian Thomas
45
46
Acknowledgements
Aux./Vox. would like to extend its gratitude to the following:
Nic Sanderson, for helping with the editing process.
Chris Lipsett, for technical support.
All of our contributors, for their gorgeous submissions.
And our new readers, who will keep this ship afloat.
Thank you.