November 2010
13 posts
19 tags
[Derrick Weston Brown] - Vol. 1 Issue 2
Halle Tells How They Broke Him From The Sweet Home Men Series For Toni Morrison
“Let me tell you something. A man ain’t a goddamn ax. Chopping busting every goddamn minute of the day! Things get to him. Things he can’t chop down because they’re inside!”- Paul D I. Churn Churn My brains is soured all the rich gone. What is left that they ain’t already taken? Think you got say-so they break they...
9 tags
[Jesse Parent] - Vol.1 Issue 2
Hooked Cross
Little brother, Look what they’ve done to me.
For millennia I have woven myself into humanity’s dreams, Racing comet-like across their collective consciousness. As basic as a circle, A hooked cross. A child of lines And busy hands. Simple. Recognizable. They called me Swastika.
I was everywhere. Even the one place I wish I wasn’t.
I admit I was jealous of you,...
28 tags
[Shannon Cavanaugh] - Vol. 1 Issue 2
Regarding the Piece I Didn’t Write on the Blank Pages at the Back of The National Audubon Society’s Guide to North American Birds
push, write so much static-
Third aisle of the supermarket iPod lost its juice. Kept the buds in my ears. Couldn’t handle full-on reality. Passed an old woman with like ten packages of Depends in her cart looking weary and smelling of urine.
Five minutes...
7 tags
[Paul Adkins] - Vol.1 Issue 2
WAR STORY # 76: Iraqi Girl with Prosthetic Hands What could I think of air turned fire? The pressure of the blast, waking with no hands when earlier I had carried candy. It has been years — first stumps then hooks. I have relearned using spoons, turning pages. I can write twelve letters, even words. I can wrap a scarf. Who would marry a woman without hands? On our wedding night, ...
13 tags
[Ezra Stead] - Vol. 1 Issue 2
CAMERA
My camera is a sponge, soaking red.
Yellow desert dust permeates everything - even the sky here is yellow, sun-bleached so dry it sucks out water from every pore not yet clogged with sand; I swear the sand is even inside my skull.
Memory is a daily horror, so each night, in our tents, we fuck to forget; sleep is what we did back home, under air-conditioned ceilings with only birds and...
11 tags
[Christina Murphy] - Vol. 1 Issue 2
Poem for the Poetry Contest Judge
I have read your poems and see that your major theme is failed marriages and unfulfilling relationships. I have lived this theme too, when defeat in love is like cutting your finger on a hacksaw and the blood flows into numbness and the efforts to stitch the flesh together only strengthen the scar. Disillusionment is more than the curtain coming down. I know you...
15 tags
[Mckendy Fils-Aime] - Vol. 1 Issue 2
Dracula to Mina Harker The first bite was a gift, teeth burrowed into skin, your body shaking like a beggar’s hands. Veins sighing with every sip. You were a fountain I couldn’t stop mining. Your neck looked like home, my mouth, a doomed village living off your hope. There were no promises there, just regrets in gulps. I wanted you then, the meat of ourselves...
10 tags
[Rob Sturma] - Vol. 1 Issue 2
Christopher Robin’s Break Up Note.
goodbye, winnie the pooh.
you told me this day was coming,
and you were honeypot spot on.
i am now too lanky and large for the jungle gym.
all my toys have been sold for books and tobacco.
pixie sticks just taste sickly sweet.
and i met someone.
she’s not stuffed with fluff, pooh bear,
she’s warm and maybe a little meaty.
but I like...
10 tags
[Megan Rickman] - Vol. 1 Issue 2
(via YouTube)
Love Letter from a toilet to the bulimic:
It is cold here without you Most nights are spent praying against the bathroom floor Shivering my tears into the shallow cracks of the tiles Trying to figure out how you think you could leave me Baby you haven’t held me in 26 days And I miss you
Come cradle me against your chest like you used to Waterfall cascading hair down upon me...
10 tags
[Khary Jackson] - Vol. 1 Issue 2
New York There are too many cracks in this shell. My brothers are wary of me, even when we joke. They glance at my polished sais, my headband nearly as red as my eyes, their smiles widen and fade. I like it this way. Our home is underground, a marvel of tunnels and waste. I love the fumes the humans call air, the blackened water, heavy and slick. I wonder if I’m too in love with New...
12 tags
[Emily Kagan-Trenchard] - Vol. 1 Issue 2
In 1997, a con man in Spain posed as a young boy who had gone missing from his home in Texas 3 years prior. The missing boy’s mother and brother wanted nothing to do with him, so the sister was asked to fly to Spain and confirm the man’s identity.
The Sister Flies to Spain
I never expected much for her or my brother Jason, two broken kettles left empty on the fire, not a shriek of steam left...
6 tags
[Christian Drake] - Vol. 1 Issue 2
Werewolf
They call me werewolf, and I got my own beauty. I smile like a butcher shop, my tongue dangling like flypaper to lick your sweat off the air, my fur wild as the beard of God, the old one, back when He was a bad dude. I’m a handsome animal and a hell of a kisser. I’m a field that’s gone to seed, so pretty with little red flowers tangled all around my snout; don’t they...
21 tags
[Curtis X. Meyer] - Vol. 1 Issue 2
Staff Sergeant Patrick Thomas is scheduled to return to Jacksonville, Florida in November 2009 after serving two months in Iraq with the U.S. Air Force.
In the meantime, his girlfriend Anne Schollard is showing her support by taking a life-size cardboard cut-out of Thomas wearing sunglasses and a bathing suit almost everywhere she goes, posing with it, and emailing him photos from various locales...