February 2012
7 posts
Vol. 2 - Issue 5 [Chris Siteman]
Vol. 2 - Issue 5 [Laura Da]
Advice to a young Indian Agent:
This country will not cradle the eye.
Lope through a buffalo wallow with only your head lolling above ground like a specter. Flickering swish of your mare’s chestnut tail. Note the map: Indian Territory—no less than six times the breadth of Ohio, and who can say we failed to provide for these souls in anything less than a Christian manner? Do not neglect your...
Vol. 2 - Issue 5 [Kate Carito]
The Toy It was in the park one day That I saw a boy about four Playing with a stuffed animal toy A bunny rabbit gray with a white button nose Its color weathered from attention Probably given to him at birth By an uncle or a God-mother Years of love had left a tare at the toy’s armpit And fluffy white stuffing poured from the hole Like the contents of a heart Oblivious to the wounds The boy spun...
Vol. 2 - Issue 5 [Jesse Parent]
Guess My Name Jonathan was no beauty, at least, not physically. His spine carved his back like a path through the Black Forest. His face so gnarled and lined with boils it looked like a jar of marbles. He was a mish mash, a goblin, a thing that made children scream through the night. Jonathan loved children. Not to eat, like the sharp looking bone crags in his mouth might suggest. He longed to...
Vol. 2 - Issue 5 [Richard Binkele]
button hole You said you were a button and I a button hole and when I begged you stop you said in a minute. There are some things you don’t forget. I am one you did, but over years I have not, can not and until I tell what you did, I will always be a hole.
Vol. 2 - Issue 5 [Gus Wood]
Plaything After Chuck Palahniuk’s “Exodus”… Take me stale from the evidence locker, all weighted and unbreathing, my body lumpy with its almost flesh. Touch me, everywhere, for days. Never shower, do not wash your hands, hollow me out mess and sweat stick. I will not object. I cannot stop you. In more ways than one, I was made for this. Vessel me, disposal me perfect....
Vol. 2 - Issue 5 [Daniel Roche]
January 2012
6 posts
Vol. 2 - Issue 4 [Joey Connelly]
My Own Midwife I am angry enough to die. Jonah 4:5 The fish was convenient. Had I fled across the desert, you would have sent hyenas to kill me or perhaps something harder, a poisoned fruit. Those three days I considered your call for death. The cost for my betrayal to become part of an underwater compost heap. I was covered with fish vomit, afterbirth ruining my clothes....
Vol. 2 - Issue 4 [Leslie D! (Rose)]
Live. Laugh. Love.
(This poem is based on the gentrification of The Mount Holly Gardens in Mount Holly, NJ.) They say we are all made of dust And we will become dust again I was formed out of the dust of red bricks, saw mill, and caulking fluids Before they kept good records and right after the Korean War I am 17 Saul Place I can still hear the laughter of the men who pieced me together ...
Vol. 2 - Issue 4 [Tyler Atwood]
A message from Hunter S. Thompson to Charlie Sheen Charlie, You are a vortex, howling outrage to dark stars, habitually loaded with potent intoxicants and a skull full of Beethoven-grade egomania. I like you. We are both a maze of complex behavioral experiments our parents find hard to explain. So, if you’re looking to be a Freak Power candidate, if you’re looking to get Gonzo,...
Vol. 2 - Issue 4 [Holly Day]
The last thing
My mother asked Was for me To please stop smoking. Please. The last thing I asked her Was please Don’t die. She died. I’m still Trying to quit.
Vol. 2 - Issue 4 [Emily J. Cousins]
My father once told me to never let anyone but family get this close to your exposed heart. He said it would not be worth cracking your sternum for them, to watch them feast on you slowly. My father is the kindest man I have ever known, but I never took anyone’s advice so badly. Because he knew then what I do not fully know now. He knew how much I always wanted to please...
December 2011
3 posts
The new issue is coming!!!
Despite a few technical difficulties, it’s on the way. In the meantime, get psyched and spread the word!!!
2012 Pushcart Prize Nominations!!!!
Borderline is proud to announce its nominations for the 2012 Pushcart Prize: Anthony Lioi, Syd Arnold, Gus Wood, Curtis X Meyer, Drea Kato, & Chris Leja. So much love for all that you guys do. Congrats, fam ♥
November 2011
10 posts
Borderline Poet PAULIE LIPMAN on Indiefeed
Paulie’s poem “Squeaky,” first published here at Borderline, is currently being featured up on the Indiefeed: Performance Poetry Podcast website. Click the link to give it a listen & spread the word to support the Borderline family!
Vol. 2 - Issue 3 [Syd Arnold]
Helen of Troy Sometimes I imagine myself as a vast wooden horse. I am ten stories tall, carved of oak and pine. I am polished to a gleam. A work of Art. A peace offering. Sometimes I imagine thirty men crouched inside the twisting dark of my belly. They are sharpening their knives. Waiting.
Vol. 2 - Issue 3 [Jaime Martin]
Alice at 50 Writes to her Old Friend Chesire I started to agree with the people who tell me it never happened I think it’s easier that way they say story adolescent fantasy drug-induced frenzy hallucination your floating grin, no body, no face, just eyes and teeth substitution for some face I’ve not allowed myself to see years of therapy tell me you are some sort of coping mechanism the...
Vol. 2 - Issue 3 [Brandon Amico]
Death’s Tongue When you come to me, come thrashing. Use what remains of your resources; your warrior species has always been one to squander. Smash your bottles filled with saints. Reach, for your philosopher’s pillars. Hurl dice at my eyes. Cling to the potency of your dead language, claw, reaching for the crumbling walls in Latin tenements. You forget that I am the one who’s fluent. Kick the...
Vol. 2 - Issue 3 [Amar Mirchandani]
The Last Meal A gaping hole in my sock. Spacious enough for one toe to find its way through. The prisoner runs for quick escape. Previous attempts were futile. Freedom was a farfetched notion. Dreams became distant hopes. Crying at night, hands to bars. Weeping. Daunting tomorrow. Yearning mother’s breast. Now curled up, I’m with the rest. Confined to solitary. This tree grows secluded. In the...
Vol. 2 - Issue 3 [Jeremiah Akin]
Shove
Red is center stage again. Hours spent juxtaposing the Dionysian and Apollonian and lining up the lyric with the rhythm of my right hand are all a waste once the bass comes in. With the fiery grace of a drunk and stoned Irishman he beats and plucks his poor P Bass like he is simultaneously bludgeoning a dead chicken and preparing it for dinner. Chuck plays perfect fifths over my...
Vol. 2 - Issue 3 [Hiromi Yoshida]
Speaking for Edvard Munch’s Sin
I am your sin long-haired woman coiling serpent praises round your throat: I cling to you like the fragrance you wear compulsively without my consent. I am the carbon monoxide your rattling ribcage exhales; the jeweled oxymoron; thorn in the flesh of your Achilles heel, your frailty housed in treacherous nunnery dark after vespers evaporate a catacomb stench...
Vol. 2 - Issue 3 [Amy Silbergeld]
Pillowbiter When she turned fifteen, Jane was given a special bedroom next to her fathers’. She was a pleasant but private girl, plucked her pubic hairs one at a time, ate as much as her brothers, who were large, and as private as Jane. When she turned sixteen, Jane was given a statue by her father. It was stone and erect, he showed her how to climb it, clench thighs, throw arms over its cold...
Vol. 2 - Issue 3 [Michelle Denise Jackson]
Hera’s Vows to Zeus, On Their Wedding Day
On the day when my breath becomes an ailing furnace and my skeleton is the ramshackle remnant of this massacre we call living, I hope you will still see me as I am today, a girl on a mountaintop in a white dress jumping from an unguarded precipice into you. On the day when my breasts are no longer the archetype for the planets and the humans...
Vol. 2 - Issue 3 [Chris Leja]
The Prayers of Bullets After Annelyse Gelman Forgive us our velocity, the way we can only love inside out— our piety has always been clumsy. But we still remember creation— The day you tore us from the sky, and we marveled at the thunder you had placed in our throats. This was how we knew that you would always hear us. We had named you gods long before you sculpted us from lightning, before...
October 2011
12 posts
Vol. 2 - Issue 2 [Curtis X. Meyer]
Straight And Upright Position “A couple who spent a little too long ‘making out’ in the bathroom of a Frontier Airlines plane set off a security alert on Sunday, the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. When passengers noticed they had been in the bathroom for a suspiciously long time, crew members alerted the captain, and authorities dispatched a pair of fighter jets to accompany the...
Vol. 2 - Issue 2 [Anthony Lioi]
Hermes to Persephone, After the March: May 1, 2006 —for Sarah Avery Listen, sister, don’t get me wrong— I like it that the dead followed you from hell to the Washington Metro, that you surfaced at DuPont Circle and gave those fascist anti-immigrant bastards the finger. The finger is a good thing. Here in Jersey, it means don’t fuck with...
Vol. 2 - Issue 2 [Angelique Palmer]
A Viscous for a Warlock Dear Warlock: Come here. This is the pail where we will make wine out of raisin’s tongue Conjure-call the 7 sisters nearer to red clay invite them to watch the trade of cadence and lightning the bend of the book and cauldron smoke and chant and chant, and chant, and chant. My Enchanted: Find a place on me to put your spells I’ll tuck mine where ever...
Vol. 2 - Issue 2 [Jeff Scolley]
The Boy Who Spoke to Stars There are parts of life that we don’t understand. Certain things are simple like why is it harder to enter than exit something. Some are not so easy. Michael lived not so easy too often and it showed on the scars beneath his eyes where he used to scrap tears away with a sandpaper crease in his arm. You know, when he was seven, Michael had a dream that his ears were caves...
Vol. 2 - Issue 2 [Christine Reilly]
We Spend So Much of Our Time Going In and Out of Bathrooms I search every ladies’ room in New York City. The toilets look like upside-down teardrops on a dirty face. At night in the bars the restrooms are smoky-discreet, waiting rooms for the homeless. I stopped putting up the signs —Have You Seen Gretel? — having found them defaced with word-slurry, marks drawn on her...
Vol. 2 - Issue 2 [Jon Sands]
On the Bus in Queens
She tells me, The MTA is mafia. People don’t keep their receipts on them metro cards. Stupids. Then the card don’t work, and whadyou got? She’s speaking my language right now. My card don’t work, right? I just tell the booth lady or whatever, and each time they give you this envelope, right? “We’re sorry you’re card don’t work and shit, here’s the form you got to...
Vol. 2 - Issue 1 [Gabe Moses]
The Two Boys From Neverland
You named your home after mine like you thought that would help you get here, but you could have come any time you wanted. We know you here. We put your face on a postage stamp and spin “P.Y.T.” at all our dance parties. Us lost boys know our own.
Maybe our stories are a little different. I tried to stitch my shadow to the soles of my feet to keep...
Vol. 2 - Issue 1 [Robert Zenz]
The Sound of Becoming
Sometimes it is a bang. A thunder clap inside the heart—an earthquake. An idea so strong it spasms, ripples through the body like the body is a blue-moon rock-kissed lake. It might be a shotgun blast. A buckshot boom goose-bumping its way outwards, towards feet and fingers like a prison break revival spreading through you from the deepest of your centers. ...
Vol. 2 - Issue 1 [Tara Nicole]
After Your Operation You speak slowly, your voice maple drawn from tree bones. You throw away all of the clocks and start believing in the sky. You ask if I will sleep with you like I did as a child. This time, I read you stories and stroke your hair. The television is in the garbage with the clocks and the car and the microwave and every old photo of you. Said you didn’t want strangers in...
Vol. 2 - Issue 1 [Catherine Owen]
Excerpts from the Diary of Johann Hauser’s “Woman” (1985)
Bonn Psychiatric Facility January 14th/1986 Today, I played the piano with my breasts. Why not? They are like torpedoes, like the bosom of God. I played Chopin and the crazy man turned the pages for me. We tried to play a duet but my hips are too...
Vol. 2 - Issue 1 [Paulie Lipman]
A QUIET MEDITATION ON ART (and its impact on the artist)
1 2 3 4!
Poets and punk rockers age worse than gov’t cheese and Thunderbird And I’m both So, fuck it sour grapes and shitty baked macaroni it is.
A lot of friends tell me they wish they had my job or at least the hours and I do give praise to the Great Sky Conductor for every day I’ve never had to origami...
Issue 11...
… is coming.
Look out for it tonight.
September 2011
1 post
It's time...
SUBMIT! to Borderline
DEADLINE FOR SEPTEMBER ISSUE = SEPTEMBER 19TH
DEADLINE FOR SEPTEMBER ISSUE = SEPTEMBER 19TH
DEADLINE FOR SEPTEMBER ISSUE = SEPTEMBER 19TH
DEADLINE FOR SEPTEMBER ISSUE = SEPTEMBER 19TH
DEADLINE FOR SEPTEMBER ISSUE = SEPTEMBER 19TH
DEADLINE FOR SEPTEMBER ISSUE = SEPTEMBER 19TH
DEADLINE FOR SEPTEMBER ISSUE = SEPTEMBER 19TH
DEADLINE FOR SEPTEMBER ISSUE = SEPTEMBER...
August 2011
8 posts
Vol. 1 - Issue 10 [realproperlike]
excerpts of a mime’s day at the therapist (in the key of dynamic hand gesture)
i) i guess … i feel that i am always, forever, battling, a personal tug-of-war, every day against an invisible bully – i never win … i end up with my rope snatched from me repo’ed from my grasp i end up with my feet kicking or in a tailspin before falling face first into cold callous concrete even...
Vol. 1 - Issue 10 [Curtis X. Meyer]
Dorian Gray to Heidi Montag “If I could get back my youth, I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.” – Lord Henry Wotton, in The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde Impotent child, did I just hear you say the word, Regret? Ten surgeries in a day, and now you think you’re being excessive? Brow, nose, and ear-work; a chin reduction; a second breast...
Vol. 1 - Issue 10 [Mark Skrzypczak]
An Open to Heidi Montag from Joan Rivers Dear Heidi, Darling you look fantastic Coming from the Queen of Plastic Surgery herself I was the guinea pig behind your success I’ve had everything go wrong And that isn’t including Melissa Had so much done Can’t even imagine what my old face looks like Don’t even know even know if my body Could pass off as flesh or as a double in...
Vol. 1 - Issue 10 [Jennifer Donnell]
Whatever Comes Next “Will an asteroid strike the Earth!?” reads the inflammatory headline, the apparent date of impact listed as next week. I scan the column for confirmation. I have lunch plans that day, and an asteroid would really foul things up. Can you imagine the conversation? Either we’d exchange frantic conspiracy theories about the asteroid being a myth put out by bottled water...
Vol. 1 - Issue 10 [Brandon Whiting]
Appendix Do you speak English? Are you Christian? Then you’ve just died. My name is Jesus And I’m taking you to Heaven. The bad news first: The light you saw at the end Of the tunnel Is actually the beginning Of a reverse cosmic funnel, Meaning it gets colder And darker from here on out. But now the good news I promised: Because of your faith, Instead of counting backwards From a hundred,...
Vol. 1 - Issue 10 [Rachael Salter]
“It’s our corpses that bring us together. It’s our souls that tear us apart.” - Robbie Q. Telfer Cause Of Death I am not buried six feet underground. I reside above and beyond these overcrowded soils. I have two mausoleums here and a Summer cemetery on the beach where I visit all my deadbeat friends. We roast marsh mellows in crematory fire pits; make smores in...
Vol. 1 - Issue 10 [Eileen Russell]
Weaning
Each time the goodbye is different but no less a loss. With the first, I was the initiate; my apprentice barely put up a fight. It was my idea to end it this way, dictated by the instruction manual, floating a trial balloon. That night, his father carried him to the crib after more than a year of my dreamland send-offs. I resisted the pull, that nagging tug set in motion with the...
CONTEST ALERT!
Borderline has big news!
In honor of our upcoming 1-Year Anniversary in September, we are putting out a special ”Best of Borderline” issue- our first-ever PRINT edition, featuring the most prolific voices to grace our magazine this year, as indicated by readers, editors, and contributing poets, alike.
Want a free copy of the issue?
HERE’S WHERE THE CONTEST COMES IN:
1. If you...
July 2011
13 posts
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