Borderline

Vol. 2, Issue 8: William James

Sat, 26 May 2012 23:28:48 -0400

Vol. 2, Issue 8: William James

Vol. 2, Issue 8 [D. Brian Craig]

Sat, 26 May 2012 23:08:14 -0400

Vol. 2, Issue 8 [D. Brian Craig]

Vol. 2, Issue 8: Wayne Lee

Sat, 26 May 2012 23:08:10 -0400

Vol. 2, Issue 8: Wayne Lee

Vol. 2, Issue 8: Heather E. Pecoraro

Sat, 26 May 2012 23:08:04 -0400

Vol. 2, Issue 8: Heather E. Pecoraro

Vol. 2, Issue 7 [Brendan Newcomb]

Mon, 07 May 2012 01:12:00 -0400

Dakota

Hey Mr. Lennon,
tell me about the nightmares
about the jaws that wait for you
to close your eyes,
for the measuring tape to fall
from the sky
to show you
that you ain’t quite bigger
than Jesus yet.
Tell me how to start
a religion,
I’ve been too scared of the
voices in the walls
to start one myself.
I used to leave craters in
the record grooves
until you compared yourself
to Him.
You never considered what
a live Son of God could do
with thirty minutes of airtime
and Ed Sullivan introducing Him,
so I set fire to your albums,
so Cain could pick your lyrics
out of the smoke.

Hey, Mr. Lennon,
I have something for you
to speak into. It’s a microphone
turned inside out, and you
filled it with your own words.
Blasphemy isn’t so much fun
when it’s lodged in your liver,
your heart, your lungs.
For a second, I expected
spotlights to spill out of
your wounds, to bathe
me, and I would be
a righteous thief,
and I will be
a righteous icon.
I will not be bigger than Jesus,
and I will not be an ant crawling
out of the ductwork. I will be
just right. How can you identify
a God that walks among you,
when he is one of you?
I am a God that would play
by the rules, who would be fair.
All I have to do is erase false idols.

How you shined like gold, sir.

How you seemed so peaceful, docile,
almost bovine.

Hey, Mr. Lennon,
I shot you five times.

So why have you grown larger?

Why has my spotlight gone?
Why have the apostles shut off
the sun, and why are there still
guns in the name of peace
waiting for me to step outside?

Hey, Mr. Lennon,
where does the light come from?
How is glory born?

Vol. 2, Issue 7 [Cynthia Dewi Oka]

Mon, 07 May 2012 01:02:09 -0400

Vol. 2, Issue 7 [Cynthia Dewi Oka]

Vol. 2, Issue 7 [Dayna Patterson]

Mon, 07 May 2012 00:48:00 -0400

Vol. 2, Issue 7 [Karly Fesolowich]

Sun, 06 May 2012 08:03:27 -0400

A Letter To Alexander Graham Bell From His Deaf Wife Mabel:

Standing before a priest;
I still felt as though we were playing dress up,
lace soft like your breath across my skin,
no longer trying to hide the glow I have around you.
Your tie matches the green flecks in your eyes
and I don’t need sound to feel the music.

I turn to see the priest
wrap his lips around the word “husband”
—a question suspended between us—
I know what comes next,
we practiced this for hours in front of a mirror,
my lips dancing to no music
desperately struggling to match their shape —to yours.
But today no one will notice their careful movement
they will be listening for the one thing I cannot control.

Your fingers gently cover mine
but I know this isn’t because
you cannot wait to touch me.
Our audience sighs,
imagining us
two perfect plastic lovers,
created simply to adorn every white cake,
but really
the heat from your fingers
—wrapped around my wrists—
were more like a gag;
a reminder that my hands
have no place in speaking.

This was the first moment
I ever felt the weight of the word —Disability.

Saying the words “I do” without ever hearing them
is like carrying a stranger’s child;
this life was never mine
but you sure taught me how to act in it
fed me all the right lines.

Alec,
Did you ever regret teaching me to read lips?
You waited for the moments when my back was turned to tell our friends
that you believed Deaf people weakened society.
Did you picture me a stray puppy;
something you picked up off the streets
—a charity case—
that painted you a better person
for investing in it.

It’s ironic
that you will later be remembered as the
pioneer of communication
when you banned
the use of my language
from schools
called it barbaric.
Isolated Deaf children
in hopes that they wouldn’t reproduce
for fear of spreading
this disease.

Once after a fight
you rushed to the bathroom and threw yourself underwater.
Muffled the sounds of a world I never knew,
in hopes that a minute in the bathtub
could honestly compare to a lifetime of
trying to read a different language written only in the curves of your lips.
When I said we couldn’t communicate
I wasn’t talking about the silence.
Our marriage was always this,
underwater,
drowning.

By the time you get this letter
we will both be long gone.
You were meant for great things Alec
I was not one of them.

Borderline’s own Rob Sturma is ALSO a finalist in the 2012 Write...

Wed, 02 May 2012 14:55:32 -0400

Borderline’s own Rob Sturma is ALSO a finalist in the 2012 Write Bloody Publishing Manuscript Contest. However, in order to take home the proverbial gold, his video for “Andre The Giant Is Alive and Well and Working At The Circle K” needs your votes!

To support him as a contender for one of these ever-coveted book deals, check out this video & “like” it on YouTube. Voting only takes a second & it could literally change somebody’s life.

Oh, and if you feel like being an utterly incredible human being, you could always reblog & pass it on.

Do the right thing. Again.

Borderline’s own Khary Jackson is a finalist in the...

Tue, 01 May 2012 11:57:00 -0400

Borderline’s own Khary Jackson is a finalist in the 2012 Write Bloody Publishing Manuscript Contest. However, in order to take home the proverbial gold, his video for “Lost” needs your votes!

To support him as a contender for one of these ever-coveted book deals, check out this video & “like” it on YouTube. Voting only takes a second & it could literally change somebody’s life.

Oh, and if you feel like being an utterly incredible human being, you could always reblog & pass it on.

Do the right thing.

-The Borderline Staff

Vol. 2 - Issue 6 [Cassandra Ashley]

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 22:56:39 -0500

The Wash

[After Christophe Champenois, a 3-year old-boy who died after his father put him into a washing machine as punishment for throwing a classmate’s drawing in the toilet. Here is what the washer would say to his father.]

I was made to clean the socks. The sweat marks.
Rinse off the proof you’ve worn today
thinner, messier. Then, swallow. Hide the carelessness
of your body, from the office, the neighbors on lawns,
the wife in the boxed wine.

But where do you think the water goes?

When you lowered the boy into my mouth,
was I supposed to know how to clean boy from boy?
How to drain boy from boy? I hear tiny fists still.
Beat eardrums into me. I have no ears. Just a stomach
pumping, pulping.

I had to swallow that gurgling, that scalp splintering watermelon,
I think I ate all his seeds. Tell me you did not do this for me.
To save my lashing tongue. Oh I know the ketchup stained linens,
the spit-soggy stuffed animals, the pee on flowered bed-sheets, I know
boy breaks open into everything once you bring boy into home.

But I can’t clean this from the walls of me.
I can’t unlearn the taste of blood, a savage dog now,
wiping my lips off on your sleeves.

Oh, if I was a well, we could have called this baptism.
If I was a bathtub, we could have called this routine.
If I was an ocean, I wouldn’t have kept my mouth shut.

Letter from parking meter to ticketed driver:

Don’t say: give you more time, baby
all I’ve given is my time. All you’ve fed me with is change
borrowed from a friend, then walked away, convinced
that change is a currency of promise
that actually gains value as the minutes of your distance increases.

You know what that makes my mouth, right? A pit stop.
An off-road pillow. The tollbooth to the highway
you’ve abandoned searching for, for, now. Keep me,
unquestioned parking spot.

You never planned for stay.
Stay is an expensive word. You have to barter with
each moment is gift given, an elsewhere forsaken.

I know I was never built to be a salesman, just a shitty auctioneer.
But did you really think after enough time passed,
I’d let you stay for free?

Love letter from the window to the door:

We’re more alike than you’d think. We share the same structural integrity.
Neither of us hide behind walls, we are the wall’s mouth,
what easily opens and closes, that’s what makes us so attractive.
We bringer of the air into stagnant rooms, for visitors who do not feel home enough.
Homes can’t breathe without us.

And we’re screwed into this
never being more than our limitations
but always willing to ask a passing hand to try our limited options.
Admire the way our tongues click lock when asked,
and don’t secretly unlock when no one’s looking.
Or unlock when asked, and don’t secretly lock
when the rain begins, when we let them leave, the way they could not do
without our hands churning possibility.

What keeps me up at night is the thought
of the one side of you I’ll never be able to see.
You can see though me so easily. I’m an unveiled mirror
capturing all the places beyond me you could go.
I’m more frame, than body. Veneer polish and fraying wood.
I am bark with the heart of a carpenter.

But when I do dream, we become a river.
These hinges and nails melt. We move sideways
too busy to think of anything beyond the discovery of hips,
that dip and rise, a coo of waves into each other.
We move like bodies learned how to trust in bending.
We are only all the hands we’ve never used.

But you aren’t a river. You are a door.
The proof of a pillaged forest.
But if I could become river, for you,
I’d convert this splinter, to water
to a life spent of coming apart and together
molecule by molecule, whispering: let me show you
the promise of float, your body forgot.

Vol. 2 - Issue 6 [Rachel Voss]

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 22:56:30 -0500

Polyphemus

“…thy love afar is spite at home…” (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

You took my light, faith
that the heavens right

the earth. I am a brute,
but you are not a god. I seek

neither women nor treasure—home
is woven into my being like a story.

Neighbors warm themselves
at your hearth, your wife’s loom

full of grief. I prefer
my meadows, sheep,

sheltered cave, the beach—
the open seas frighten me.

You court terrors like lovers,
treat love like fear.

I wanted a family one day—
kin to call my own, to place

me, affix my strangeness to the earth.
Home is your rock, wandering

your hard place—why do you run
from those whose arms embrace you?

I am alone, yet I stay, rely
on my strength, my singular

vision—but now that has been taken,
I mewl in the dark like a child. I’ve never had

the wit to dissemble, as you do,
nor the gall to call upon

gods as if they were servants
of mine summoned by a bell,

no Athena to roll out onto the stage,
set things right before the curtain

falls. Only my father came
to lick my wound, primal and paralyzing.

I am cruel because the world
has set me apart. When they think

you monstrous and shut
you out, bar the door,

decline bread and water, bed
and roof, trust

nobody. Your bed this very moment
sought after like a mirage

in a desert, an island in an open sea.
Take care—women

are as changeable as the tides,
as valuable as blood on a battlefield.

You will soon know what it is
to protect your way of life,

to set the world on fire
to do so, to have nothing

but your mind
to pick through the ruins.

One day you will be unmasted
as I am, struggling to see in the firelight,

telling the old stories, incantations
against oblivion.

But now—you leave me here still
freakish, even more solitary,

terrorized by the feel of shadows,
a word on no one’s lips.

Vol. 2 - Issue 6 [Robbi Ramirez]

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 22:56:25 -0500

Death by Chocolate

Go ahead, try me.
I dare you.
Just one bite,
and you won’t be able to resist me.
I see you, all eyes and stomach.
I see you rip through my friends with abandon.
The plate of nachos
you pretended were for the table.
The porterhouse steak
you licked clean to the bone.
Oh, but the fries,
those you didn’t finish.
You need room for me, after all.
Not room in your belly, mind you,
but room in your arteries.

I have more calories in my frosting
than you have dollars in the bank.
I have more cholesterol in my butter
than you have clogging your enlarged liver.
I don’t dare you to finish me,
I dare you to survive me.

Because the meal doesn’t end with me.

The real meal is in the back,
after you drop dead from your elegantly plated heart attack.
The rich libertines,
the real clientele of this establishment,
are hungry for you.
You are the fatted calf.
You are the porterhouse
that will strangle their own aortas
and keep the cycle going.

But we’re not done with you yet.

That tree in your garden
you want to be buried under,
the worms nibbling at its roots,
they see the festivities unfolding before them,
and they want the scraps.

Vol. 2 - Issue 6 [Yvonne Blomer]

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 22:56:08 -0500

Is it Opera?

Where are my clothes and why must everyone look at me?
Death of the body, flight of the spirit, drown every inch of me
in the language of analysis: colour of skin, sample taken;
pubic hair, sampled too. What laugh lines form around each incision?
It is a Comic Stage, my laughing belly. It is a Tragic Play, my grinning clitoris.
Smeared here, swiped there and what?
Oh, you want to linger on the beauty of the body or
keep it clinical, but, it was mine; I was attached to it.
Stomach contents: rice and lunch’s white wine.
They’ll send that for further analysis. My blue fingers curl their slow wave,
my grey toes release theirs. I corpse the position, in spirit take a deep breath and
give a chill to the woman in the lab coat now trimming my fingernails.

Vol. 2 - Issue 6 [Paul Brucker]

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 22:56:01 -0500

Ten minutes and 14 seconds with Edgar Allan Poe

Just because business is business
and should be done in business-like way,
because by accident I put my right foot into my left shoe,
because justice is a poor joke
and hope a promise yet to be broken,
is that sufficient reason
for the sun to depart,
absorbed by the stream
and the trunk that gave it birth,
is that sufficient reason
for darkness to fall,
and reclaim dominion over all?

That said, you must never lock in the dead
or keep them in the dark.
You must never leave the sick
until they are dead,
unable to anticipate or impair
the behavior of other dead
and soon to be dead.

For now, if you are like me, then
you are present, reporting for duty,
two-thirds dead, maybe three-fourths dead –
requiring no difference but the ability
to savor the difference,
no ability but to distinguish
one degree of truth from another,
to take a calm, inquisitive interest in everything,
to gaze reposefully, which only begets regret
as family secrets are revealed by servants
in candlelight insufficient
to illuminate you or thwart the shadow,
the slim-legged, shovel-footed shadow
that follows and fleeces all.

When the specific quantity
of your body
is greater than the water it displaces,
the body must settle at the bottom –
it makes small difference
whether or not you love the water
or if the water is fifteen feet or five thousand feet deep.

That said, let us celebrate the stream
which flows without song from Edmonton to Enfield,
unloved stream which then flows, as best it can,
from Columbia to North Cherry,
and grows less pure, less peaceful
until a body is found,
a body that strains with all its power,
all its resources,
to produce a cry,
a cry you clearly hear and understand,
a cry you choose not to respond to, nor acknowledge.

What’s peace but a set of experiences,
not something that has those experiences.

How I labor, how I toil.
How I brood, bottle and coil.
The iambic follows the Sapphic.
Slights of pen and deformities of language
sully the fair paper,
paper soon worth less
than the price paid for said paper.

How unblessed and unimportant I become, how impatient
with the efforts necessary to get the desired results
as relationships between thought and object,
subject and object, people and object,
become mere response, mere results,
the flow of blood,
not spontaneous expression or coherent view,
not a clear indication of meaning or purpose –
just a frightened head concealed from view.

I used to possess faith.
I used to believe I could manage
the distance between what is and what is desired,
what is longed for and what is long gone,
the minimum dose of a drug
necessary to produce the desired effect.

Now I see another mouse by the path,
lonely, unloved mouse,
denied a sliver of sun,
dying without sign of injury or disease
which makes no difference
because it must become
a few sticks, twigs and bones,
a little string, a little salt –
all that’s left to represent religion.

Maybe that’s why I’m always a step
or so behind the others, essentially left out,
unclear of purpose, of what to do or say
as the hands of menials
prepare another menial for the tomb.

Maybe that’s why I always try
to apply magic, wisdom or, failing that, terror
so the language of the world –
my world – shall not perish,
though all language falls short,
all trying falls short:
an unfair exchange –
all that represents you
left under a roof full of holes,
insatiable holes that hold dominion over all.

I wear a dark mustache, scrupulously kept.
I express the symmetry of my person
with the ease and grace of my carriage,
with coat, gloves and boots
from better days
as the coffin reaches the lynch-gate
to be received in the churchyard.

I am among the people
you are among –
people to love and judge,
people to ring the bell
(nine strokes for a man, six for a woman, three for a child),
people who must show credentials
to be admitted by the agents in charge.
People who wonder, will they catch cold
if they leave their window open
(like F. Michael Vershoor waving a flag –
once divine, now deceased and despised).

Sick people who try their best to appear normal.
“That’s a nice shirt you’re wearing,
white as leprosy,
a nice color for you.”

I flash a hypocritical smile
and argue about trifles
in a high key with violent gestures.
I pound my fist on whatever’s near at hand,
and recite jokes to divert attention
and if that fails, forge tears.

That said, even under the best of conditions,
you must watch your mind,
must observe every alteration in countenance,
and pretend to be interested,
to give a shit.

“Ahem!” someone says.
To which you reply, “aha!”
as if, by golly, we’re wonderful people,
merely wonderful people, all of us, living
in a wonderful age.

See the self-centered shits with immense heads,
apparently holding many brains –
who think no good comes
unless it advances their purpose.
Where have their hands been, I wonder.
What have their hands been up to?
How can they help
with constitutional infirmities
akin to my own?

Little men eaten by the less little man,
a neighbor with teeth and claws
who despises me,
who will outlive me
unless I help him
assume the distinct look of repose
from strife and sorrow
and enter the state of absolute rest
that besets all objects,
never telling him why.

Because then, as well as now, there’s no difference
between friend or foe,
no distinguishing marks or features –
merely foes that ask no longer to be
considered foes.

The best way to separate bodies
is to add a third
and the only discourse possible
is inconsistent with your objective
because the man superior in intellect
makes enemies at every turn.

And so on until there’s no one left
to borrow from,
no one left
to give the benefit of doubt,
no one left to represent you.

I dread all –
marginal metaphysicians,
collywobbly clerks,
muttons dressed as lamb –
for none is so weak as me.

I dread the trumpet-tongued,
bedeviled in books,
with enough hardihood to share
his heart laid bare.

Maybe that’s why I inspire hard looks,
snide remarks,
indications I’ve been written off.

For now, will you be so good
as to send me a copy
of the history of Tacitus –
it’s a small volume,
also some soap.

In the quivering of a leaf,
a blade of grass,
a gleaming of dewdrop or hue,
walk with me,
feel the wind mingle with your breath.

Walk where the paths narrow,
and grow more intricate,
past the kindly, protective elms
and the wisp of willows
where a fox or hare hides
because it hides his scent
from the hounds.

Walk among shadows,
open your eyes in the dark,
decide which shadow to trust,
which to follow, which to fear.

Sky fretted ceiling adorned with gold.
Grass, short, springy, sweet-scented.
You, the most desirable one
in terms of look, smell and carriage,
possessed of every possible charm.

A well-shaped slender figure, noble head
so fine in proportion and expression,
with grace of step, rustle of robes
slivery-silken, with eyes of purple and pearl,
pervaded by a dim, religious light.

Nevertheless, your hands – too large,
not as beautifully formed,
nor as clean as I wish.

One touch to heal,
one to destroy.

An interesting spot
where your mouth used to be.

I’ll pay 12 dollars for the furniture,
two for each embrace.

But what does it matter
when all that represents you
will no longer be you?

For so long, I fought and swore
not to sell myself
for less than my asking price,
for less than I paid.

So what if I cannot handle
or deserve my misfortune?
So what if I pass from sipper to tippler,
from gulper to guzzler?

If you remove false judgment,
there is no other judgment.
Fine wine turns bad in an unopened bottle
and what you think
is more important that what you know.

Just because my shoes grow more shoddy,
too tight and out of style,
because no one hears me,
understands me or cares,
because death renders us all alike,
is that sufficient reason
for the intensity of the beam to vary
as the square of the two planes of transmission,
is that sufficient reason
for someone, perhaps you,
to laze or linger
over the ground
where my grave will be.

That said or as good as said,
blame not your feet, the earth
and the ensuing silence
for they must sound like feet, earth
and ensuing silence.

For now, do me a favor.
Breathe evenly and deeply into this moment.
Pretend there has never been a better moment.

Pretend now, at last, no one can harm us.
Now, at last, we cannot harm ourselves.

Vol. 2 - Issue 6 [Tod Caviness]

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 22:55:48 -0500

X Boyfriend

Dear Jeannie, my phoenix,
my marvel girl.

The first time you died I saw you
in that split second before you went up like a sun.
I blinked
because you gave me no choice
and by the time I opened my eyes
you were dust.
I closed them again
and kept them shut the full ten minutes it took
for the burn of your face to heal.

The second time you died
I closed my eyes, and you weren’t there
until I opened them again.

The 14th time
you told me to Live, Scott!
and I said, yeah
that’s what I’ve been doing.
Guess it comes more naturally to some of us than others.

What I mean to say is, it’s not you.
Hell, it’s not even me.
You say it’s this force that keeps bringing you back
this thing so elemental
it was there before the elements, this power
that loves life so much it will burn
to make room for new things to be born
and you say, Scott
who are you to tell the universe we cannot be together?
And have babies?

But hey, have you ever seen me
without rose-colored glasses? Who knows?
Maybe there’s a place our kids are happy.
Some future they’re not always coming back from
like a shitty summer camp, some alternate universe
where the stories end, Jean.
At the ending.

But here you are again
and don’t get me wrong
it’s a fucking miracle.

You told me once
you wouldn’t apologize
for loving me like
crazy, well
I loved you like completely sane
and I guess I am a little sorry for that.
I only have so many lifetimes in me.

You date enough telepaths, you begin to learn
how little your secrets are worth
so I will write you this note only once
then I’ll read it
in the perfect light of my bare eyes.
It will be here in my head
the first place you look when you get home
right behind those shades
I always wore to bed.

Run Boy Run

Ain’t so many who believe anymore
and them that do, they ask me:
Would I take that bet again?
Like they was never 17 before.

I been down the road a mile or two
since then, and when I get back down Georgia way
it ain’t Dixie no more.
Go up to the holler, you got your young’uns
smokin’ the brimstone
skirts up, britches down
no treble at all in the love songs, just
thumpin’ away
scratchin’ each other’s names in that hickory stump
like a contract.
Come morning, I look out the window
and I don’t see no cherry southern sunrise
so much as fire on the mountain.
But then, my vision ain’t so good.
Hindsight works just fine, though.

Take it from an old hand
still got some twist in the wrist:
Fiddle ain’t happy ‘less she’s crying
and she’s gonna do it
whether you work that bow like a switch
or a pen
makin’ your sweet little porcelain promises.

Guess which kind
the devil prefers.

Rock & roll heaven
my ass; ain’t no guitar slinger
or honky tonk honey I know
lookin’ for a joyful noise
‘less it’s a moan up close in the ear
so don’t pay no mind to a folk tale.
Devil don’t run no casino
and a soul ain’t no poker chip.
I told that sonofabitch
I was the best that’s ever been, he said
Damn straight, Johnny.
Don’t never let no bitch tell you otherwise.

I never did sell that fiddle,
damned if I know why.
Every other Friday
the ex brings the kids around
and I’ll break it out now and again
when they get to pesterin’.
Dunno what they expect.
Thing don’t play for shit.
Draw the bow across
and the sound jes’ hits them golden walls
and drops
dead and forgot.
Whatever racket come outta that thing
it’s worse than tears.

I watch ‘em blink and stutter
and I tell ‘em what my daddy told me.
Proper fiddle takes a little sacrifice.
You take a tree
hollow it out
carve a woman’s curve into the heart.
Gut a lamb
and stretch it tight across.
You practice good and don’t worry none
about your fortune.
Take it outside and serenade a dead stump,
let the trees cry them leaves.

Somebody bound to come along.

Vol. 2 - Issue 6 [Jake Sheff]

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 22:55:05 -0500

Family Trips

I. Olivia Bolivari

Stephen dove into the sleepy river
180 feet off the bridge 5 minutes after
our minivan drove over on its way
to Dollywood.

Music of the Happy Goodmans played
softly. Paul steered the new Chevy
round the bends as grandma and baby Danny
slept in back.

This photograph from that trip: Danny’s hair
is red as sunset or autumn leaves, Gram’s
a shade of blue blending in to the backdrop
at the Smoky overlook

and rest-stop, 10 miles before the bridge
we crossed from which Stephen leapt.
That call from the cops to identify his body:
My partner in infidelity.

II .Paul Bolivari

Olivia? Gone again. Since burying her mother
in her father’s shared plot her insomnia’s
nonamenable to warm milk, sedatives or brandy.

Same as when her father died, and Stephen
told me sometimes women like to grieve
alone, which I knew was wrong. My mother

said I ought to cancel our vacation, but Danny
and Southern Gospel were shared loves for her
and Olivia to bond over. Mom, look over here!

Danny, smile for the camera. And Olivia
missed out on the picture. She isn’t well, dear.
Wherever she was, I knew she was missing

her father, and now it’s her mother. I left her
to grieve alone for one moment, giving Stephen
a chance. So sad how he died; falling

doing what he loved: those Smoky Mountains’
trails. I won’t make that mistake again. I’ll go
downstairs, when I hear she’s off the phone.

III. Isabella Bolivari.

I remember when Paul was just a baby.
Isaac said he’d sleep through bombing raids,
so making love and blasting music was

no problem. Baby Danny’s dozing off
so his parents talk quietly up front, but Paul
doesn’t seem to notice the Missouri tag

a few cars behind us since we left
Springfield, though I’ve not seen it myself
for several miles now, not since Olivia

said hello to the fellow traveler
at the rest-stop. Paul was such an easy baby,
easy child. Isaac said I’d always be

the prettiest girl in Springfield, wrote it
in letters from California, New York, prisons
down in Mexico. Danny got his red hair.

IV. Marianne Bolivari

The wind blows white
forelocks in his face
as Daniel stands motionless
before his parents’

graves. It’s the only place
they’d ever sleep
together, he told me
that first visit, after Paul

took us to the plot
he’d share with Olivia,
not far from where
Dan’s grandmother laid.

He reaches out to rest
a bouquet of roses against
the headstones; rising
he turns and looks at

our daughter. “Olivia
and Isabella are such
pretty names,” she says.
And Daniel asks her

pointedly, “What about
these roses?”
“White is all right,”
Vivianna supposes.

Vol. 2 - Issue 6 [Dane Kuttler]

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 22:54:50 -0500

It Gets Better

Rachel, Poughkeepsie, NY, 2010

Hello? Hello. My name is Rachel,
and I would like to tell you something.
My granddaughter, who is beautiful
and smart, and finished top in her class
at Vassar College told me about this project
where adults tell young people how life gets better,
so they shouldn’t kill themselves.

I think this is a stupid idea if I ever heard one,
because I don’t believe it’s true. Life is life.
The only thing that makes it better is love.
And if you want to kill yourself,
an old lady with a face like a prune
who talks to you from a box
probably won’t do much.

But I will tell you something
that may be helpful for you or your parents to know:
when my daughter was your age, she told me
she loved women. And I’m not a hateful person,
but I couldn’t face it, couldn’t even repeat the
‘I love you’ I told her every day for sixteen years,
so she left.

For twenty years,
we didn’t talk. Not at her father’s funeral,
or even the birth of my beautiful granddaughter here.
Not until the death of someone else’s child
did I find the courage to call her.

I thought she would never forgive me.
A mother is supposed to always be there
for her children, and I thought - I thought
I didn’t deserve her anymore. But I was wrong.
She came to visit me less than a week later.
And I went to visit her. She introduced me
to her friends, and we ate tofu and bok choy
and she played angry guitar songs about feminism,
but you know what?
It was a good start.

It took twenty years for anything to happen,
let alone get better, between the two of us. And
who knows - maybe if I’d called her after two weeks,
it would have been okay, too.
And so I’d like to say that maybe it’s not hopeless
for you, either.

Why are you crying, Shoshannaleh?
I’m glad I could help your project.
Now, should we go to
that place with the scones you like,
or would you rather cook here?

The new issue is coming. Stay tuned.

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 09:40:39 -0500

The new issue is coming. Stay tuned.

Vol. 2 - Issue 5 [Chris Siteman]

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 21:14:00 -0500