BlazeVOX16 - Spring 16

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an online journal of voice

Spring 2016

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B L A Z E V O X [ B O O K S ]

Buffalo, New York


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BlazeVOX 16 | an online journal of voiceCopyright © 2016

Published by BlazeVOX [books]

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced withoutthe publisher’s written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews.

Printed in the United States of America

First Edition

BlazeVOX [books]Geoffrey Gatza

131 Euclid AveKenmore, NY 14217

[email protected]

pu l i sher o f wei rd l i t t l e ooks

BlazeVOX [ books ]

blazevox.org

21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10


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Table of Contents

Poetry

Adam Halbur Alana BensonAndroid Spit Ashley Hamilton

Ashok Smith Barrie Davies

Billy Cancel Brenda Candle

C.N. Bean David M. Castillo

David Rushmer Dilip Mohapatra

Emily Pinkerton Erica S. Qualy

E.M. Schorb Franco CorteseGlenn Ingersoll Harriett Vaine

Heather Sager Isabel Balee

Jasper Brinton Jeri Thompson

John Sweet Lazola Pambo

Kaitlin J. Pilipovic Maria Gallagher

Marc J. Frazier Mark DuCharme

Mark Young Mel Bentley

Nicholas Samaras PT Davidson

Raymond Farr Rich Murphy

Roger Craik Scott Wordsman

Simon Perchik Susan Kay Anderson

Tanya Pilumeli Zachary Scott Hamilton

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Fiction

Let Us Never Part by A. Riding

Would you plead guilty to a crime you didn’t commit to stay out of jail?by Uriel E. Gribetz

Ouvroir de L’amour Potentielle by Joan Harvey

The Yowling Cat Story by Bishop & Fuller

A Good Collection of Seashells by Emma Wenninger

Sister by Freddie Bettles Lake

The Nearly Dead by Jesper Andreasson

Kitty by Kat Hausler

Vibrational Flu by Josepha Gutelius

Text ArtIn the Palace Hotel

hiromi suzuki

‘cunt, choir"bruno neiva


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Creative Non-Fiction

Tank & Max Do America: Part 1 K.E. Mahoney

Tarice L.S. Gray

The Secrets That an ESL Teacher Keeps by Natasha Deveau

Chapter One by Caroline Allen

Acta Biographia — Author Biographies


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IntroductionIntroduction

Hello and welcome to the Spring issue ofBlazeVOX 16. Presenting fine works of poetry,fiction, text art, visual poetry and arresting worksof creative non-fiction written by authors fromaround world. Do have a look through the linksbelow or browse through the whole issue in ourScribd embedded PDF, which you can downloadfor free and take it with you anywhere on anydevice. Hurray!

In this issue we seek to avoid answers but rather toask questions. With a subtle minimalisticapproach, this issue of BlazeVOX focuses on theidea of ‘public space’ and more specifically onspaces where anyone can do anything at any givenmoment: the non-private space, the non-privatelyowned space, space that is economicallyuninteresting. The works collected featurecoincidental, accidental and unexpectedconnections which make it possible to revise literary history and, even better, to complement it.

Combining unrelated aspects lead to surprising analogies these piece appear as dreamlike images in whichfiction and reality meet, well-known tropes merge, meanings shift, past and present fuse. Time and memoryalways play a key role. In a search for new methods to ‘read the city’, the texts reference post-colonial theoryas well as the avant-garde or the post-modern and the left-wing democratic movement as a form ofresistance against the logic of the capitalist market system.

Many of the works are about contact with architecture and basic living elements. Energy (heat, light, water),space and landscape are examined in less obvious ways and sometimes developed in absurd ways. By

creating situations and breaking the passivity of the spectator, he tries to develop forms that do not follow

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logical criteria, but are based only on subjective associations and formal parallels, which incite the viewer tomake new personal associations. These pieces demonstrate how life extends beyond its own subjective limitsand often tells a story about the effects of global cultural interaction over the latter half of the twentiethcentury. It challenges the binaries we continually reconstruct between Self and Other, between our own‘cannibal’ and ‘civilized’ selves. Enjoy!

Rockets, Geoffrey


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an online journal of voice

Spring 2016

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A. Riding

Let Us Never Part

When I was your widow I was only a girl, I was supposed to lay down beside you and burn up with you but I

ran away and set myself on fire a stone’s throw from the river with just myself and a circling bird and my

strength. The last thing I saw was the circling bird coming down to know the flames which were mine,

without your body. The last thing I heard was my own voice going Oh no, oh no, oh no no, oh no, like the

water has said to me so many times, a prayer I resist and then quiet with screams, unmoving.

When I was your lover we fled together from the fire and I could not forgive you. Everything you owned was

burned and I was still alive, unsacrificed, unyours.

I crept back to sift the ash. I found the bed where we lay when the fire became ravenous. It was twisted and

scorched in brown-red like rust, charred as I wished to be.

I gather ash in my hands and pour it over the metal, wanting to make a shape, two shapes. Larger bits of

brick will stay, clumps of thicker books. Faster and faster I make two shapes and they will not stay. We are

lovers who did not die together, did not end at all, you did not let the smoke conjoin our lungs, conjoin our

flesh to nothing more than everything you ever owned.

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Faster and faster, I climb onto the bed where you saved me unasked and the springs twist my flesh and the

ash is my blanket and the blanket is ash in my lungs. I want to rise and run from the bed where you did not

save me and you are safe in a bed I don’t know, but everything you ever owned is here. I breathe fast as being

your lover, until my lungs are black and the sky falls off, just skin, oh no.

The last thing I see is the ring we stole from a bird which I found buried deep where we used to sit and

speak. It’s on my thumb and it goes into my mouth and I fall asleep faster and faster. Suckle metal,

everything is white and filthy shapes conjoined in smoke that chokes the living with our love.

When I died in childbirth, the last thing I saw was you being held by a man who scrutinized your screams

and then both of you were screaming in your eyes as the sense of hearing left me, the splitting burning

eased. You were all that existed. The girl was still caught inside. I’m not sure if she ever made it out. But I

sang to her, I sang to you, Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no no, until we all forgot again.

And then you were very sick and could not move at all, and I stayed at your side to watch you not move,

asking questions to make you more comfortable. Strength will be only a trick of the light, a small and sudden

motion, you will open your eyes and cast a shadow and exist again unsick.

Is the light too bright? You’ve closed your eyes.

An hour, a croak, your voice, No. The light is always on.

Don’t waste your strength in an answer. But I need to hear your voice which will make you more sick if you

answer.

Do you want me to turn out the light?

A day and then you surge with stubbornness to say, to shudder, No.

Should I leave everything alone? You won’t open your eyes, Is the light too bright?


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No. It’s fine. Your breath eats the whisper and starves.

The light is too bright for you to look at me again. I cannot look away from you or you will grow more old,

more sick, you will crumble if I blink. You have so much to answer me yet, to heal me with.

I take your fevered, crumpled hands, place them over my eyes, wanting to see what you now see, needing all

your sickness answers.

No, oh no, you stroke my face. I stroke your hands over my face you will not look at. I cannot see you because

your hands are over my face and I see what you are seeing. We cave into each other, making one sick

shadow, endlessly old.

I have forgotten, you have forgotten me. I don’t know who you are. You are feeling me and I am not real.

Your fingernails are filthy, you say. Your dress is dirty. You do not need a dress. Come here.

I suck the moan from your tongue, the fist from your hand. I don’t know who you are. I rake the ribs from

your cage, the eyes from your screaming, the dancing from your flame. I eat the mud from your belly and the

torrent of your loins. I don’t know who we are. My body is clean now and your body is gone.

I bury you in different places so that we may remember now that you are in pieces. I put you in with

strangers’ names and I do not remember. I hope you are happy here. I’ve forgotten where I put you.

I found someone when I came out from the woods. I am very angry. I forget why I am angry. I remember

today is my wedding. I go back into the woods to find you, someone who is you, faceless. I find someone

when I come out of the woods. I go back into the woods to find you. To find someone. Faceless. Looking for

me.

Someone is calling. How can no-face make a sound? Who knows my name? Not me.

Not this one.


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Now that you are gone, and I can’t remember what you look like or I look like or what we looked like

together and I can’t remember our sounds, I can say it and say it and say it and say it.

Let us never part.


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Acta Biographia - Author Bios

Alana Benson

Alana Benson graduated from the University of Vermont and is a freelance writer. She is the writer of WTF:Where's the Fraud?, and has published a thesis in classical reception. She was awarded a Prindle-Myrick grant

in 2014 to write classically-inspired poetry in Athens, Greece. Alana lives in Lander, Wyoming.

Adam Halbur

If Adam Halbur were to paint a portrait of himself it would turn out, at best, like Brueghel’s Old Woman, andat worse, a codpiece. He is the author of Poor Manners (2009), awarded the 2010 Frost Place residency. Hiswork has appeared most recently in The Fourth River’s Queering Nature, Forklift, OH, and is forthcoming in thePennine Platform. He can be found at adamhalbur.com

Android Spit

Android Spit is the alias of independent scholar-poet André Spears (pangaeapress.com ), whose recent work has appeared in House Organ, Cough (including an earlierexcerpt from Shrinkrap) and Dispatches from the Poetry Wars. He is a co-founder of the Gloucester WritersCenter, and the curator of its Maud / Olson Library, which will be inaugurated in June, 2016.

A. Riding

Ashley Hamilton

Ashok Smith

Ashok Smith is a delivery driver.

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Barrie Davies

My name is Barrie Davies and I am 38 years old. I hold a BA in Social Linguistic Theory and live with my

partner, Sarah, in Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland. My literary fascinations and interest range from ancientAnglo Saxon poetry, through to Baudelaire and Rimbaud, to Dylan Thomas, Geoffrey Hill and SamuelBeckett.

Billy Cancel

Billy Cancel has recently appeared in West Wind Review, Gobbet & Bombay Gin. His latest body of workPSYCHO'CLOCK is out on Hidden House Press. Billy Cancel is 1/2 of the noise/pop duo Tidal Channel.

Sound poems, visual shorts and other aberrations can be found at billycancelpoetry.com

Bishop & Fuller

Bishop & Fuller's 40+ plays and 200+ comic sketches have been staged by theatres nationwide. They arerecipients of National Endowment for the Arts writing fellowships, and as actors with The Independent Eyehave presented over 3,500 shows cross-country. They live in Sebastopol CA and are now writing fiction. Info:www.independenteye.org/print.

bruno neiva

C.N. Bean

C.N. Bean has published three novels, A Soul to Take, Dust to Dust and With Evil Intent. In 2011, “15 Minutes inthe Life of Joe Hagar,” was a finalist in Yale University’s search for a short script to produce through its film

production company and drama department. “Smilin’ Away the Dreams,” a revision of that script, was anofficial selection in the 2013 Richmond International Film Festival. In 2014, Virginia Tech produced “TheDream Interpreter” as its first public film. C.N.'s recent poetry has appeared in Copperfield Review, BlazeVox, and Deep South Magazine, where "Parable of the Sewer," was a Pushcart Nominee, and "Forgive Us OurDebts," was a National Poetry Month selection. The Lock Box was a recent official selection of the 2016 NOVAFilm Festival, and nominated for two awards, the NOVA Screenwriting Award and Best Drama Under 20Pages. It won Best Drama Under 20 pages. Seehttp://www.violenthues.com/2016%20NOVA%20FEST%20AWARDS%20RESULTS.pdf


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Caroline Allen

Thank you for accepting this piece. A short bio: Caroline Allen teaches literature and writing at the Collegeof Creative Studies. Her fiction and non-fiction has been published by Spectrum, Solo Novo, Lumina, Mary,

Formerpeople, and other places. She is also a painter and has recently started teaching dance classes. She iscurrently working on a memoir of her days as an outsider in the burgeoning L.A. punk scene of the late1970s.

David M. Castillo

David M. Castillo is a graduate of the University of New Mexico where he studied English with a focus onCreative Writing. His work has been published in Conceptions Southwest and on Voicemailpoems.org. He isthe editor of several independent zines, and his vices include whiskey, kittens, and motorcycles.

David Rushmer

David Rushmer’s artworks and writings have appeared in a number of small press magazines since the late1980s, including: Angel Exhaust, Archive of the Now, E.ratio, Great Works, Molly Bloom, Shearsman, and10th Muse. He has work included in Sea Pie: An Anthology of Oystercatcher Poetry (Shearsman, 2012). Hismost recent published pamphlets are The Family of Ghosts (Arehouse, Cambridge, 2005) and Blanchot’sGhost (Oystercatcher Press, 2008).

Dilip Mohapatra

Dilip Mohapatra (b.1950), a decorated Navy Veteran has been pursuing his passion for poetry since theseventies . His poems have appeared in many literary journals of repute world wide. Some of his poems areincluded in the World Poetry Yearbook, 2013 and 2014 editions. He has three poetry collections to his credit,the latest titled 'Another Look' recently published by Authorspress India. His fourth poetry collection titledFlow Infinite is currently under publication. He holds two masters degrees, in Physics and in ManagementStudies. He lives with his wife in Pune. His website is dilipmohapatra.com .

E.M. Schorb

E.M. Schorb’s prose poems have appeared in The Carolina Quarterly, The Mississippi Review, Illuminations, TheChariton Review, Mudfish, Slant, Gulf Coast, The New Laurel Review, The North American Review, andGargoyle. A number of them were also in recent issues of Poetry Salzburg Review and Oxford Poetry. Hiscollection, Manhattan Spleen, was published last year. In reviewing the book , X.J. Kennedy wrote: “ManhattanSpleen is mighty cool, I think, and if anyone writes better prose poems these days I don’t know who it is.”


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Emily Pinkerton

Emily Pinkerton is a technologist and poet. Previously an editor at Twitter, she is currently an MFAcandidate at San Francisco State University. Her writing has previously appeared or is forthcoming in

Noble/Gas Qtrly, Transfer, Gravel, LEVELER, Electric Cereal, Lemon Hound, and The Bold Italic, amongothers. She can be found online on Twitter at @neongolden and at thisisemilypinkerton.tumblr.com . Her favorite color is fog.

Emma Wenninger

Emma Wenninger received her Bachelor’s Degrees in English and Spanish and Certificate in CreativeWriting from Indiana University, where she was honored with the 2014 Myrtle Armstrong UndergraduateFiction Award. She was featured in numerous on-campus publications, and served as the Indiana Daily

Student Opinion Editor in the fall of 2014. She currently works in publishing in Bloomington, IN.

Erica S. Qualy

Erica S. Qualy was born on a warm December night 30 years ago in Johor Bahru, Malaysia. She is a self-described artistic scientist, working with every medium she can get her hands on.“Poems & Postcards” is her first book of poems. To purchase your own copy and to see more of her art-work,you can visit her website: www.ericaqualyart.tumblr.com

Freddie Bettles Lake

I was born and grew up in London, England, though I have spent the last three years studying in Norwich. Ihave recently completed my degree in English Literature and Creative Writing at the University of EastAnglia.

Franco Cortese

Glenn Ingersoll

Glenn Ingersoll works for the Berkeley Public Library where he hosts the Clearly Meant reading series. Hemaintains the blog Dare I Read? and has two chapbooks, City Walks (Broken Boulder) and Fact(Avantacular).


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Heather Sager

Heather Sager's poetry appears in Route 7 Review and NEAT . She lives in Illinois.

hiromi suzuki

hiromi suzuki is an illustrator, poet, artist living in Tokyo, Japan.A contributor of Japanese poetry magazine "gui" (Running by the members of Katsue Kitasono's "VOU").Author of ‘Ms. cried' 77 poems by hiromi suzuki (kisaragi publishing, 2013 ISBN978-4-901850-42-1).Her works are published internationally on "Otoliths", "BlazeVOX", "Empty Mirror" andNationalPoetryMonth.ca 2015.hiromi suzuki's web site : http://hiromisuzukimicrojournal.tumblr.com.

Isabel Balée

Isabel Balée received her MFA from Brown University in 2015, and her BA from Tulane University in 2013.Previous work can be found in Alice Blue, Thermos, and A Bad Penny Review. She lives in New Orleans, whereshe was born and raised.

Jeri Thompson

Jeri Thompson has been published in several lit journals: Red Light Lit, Cadence Collective, CactiFur, MasTequila Review and Lummox 4, among others.She graduated from CSULB with a BA in Creative Writing(English) and studied with two greats: Gerald Locklin and Elliott Fried. She is grateful to live about a milefrom the beach in SoCal. She is also glad that El Nino never arrived this far south.

Jasper Brinton

Jasper Brinton born in Alexandria, Egypt; was educated in the Middle East, Scotland and the United States.Over the years he has worked in publishing, printing, architecture, ceramics and wood. He lives nearKimberton, Pennsylvania in a restored schoolhouse and sails the Chesapeake in an old but seaworthy sloop.His poetry has appeared in Eccolinguistics, On Barcelona and E.ratio

Jesper Andreasson

Jesper Andreasson was born in Stockholm. Nominated for the James Kirkwood Literary Prize, he receivedhis MFA at the Bennington Writing Seminars and lives in Los Angeles. www.jesperandreasson.com


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Joan Harvey

Joan Harvey's fiction, poetry, and translations have appeared in numerous journals including WebConjunctions, Drunken Boat, Smokelong Quarterly, Reconfigurations, Bomb, Caper Literary Journal, Otoliths, Painted

Bride Quarterly, The Tampa Review, Another Chicago Magazine, Danse Macabre, Osiris, Global City Review, andmany more. She has won prizes for both poetry and fiction, and is a graduate of the Jack Kerouac School ofDisembodied Poetics.

Josepha Gutelius

Josepha Gutelius's work has appeared in the anthologies Best New Writing 2013, A Slant of Light (2013 USABest Anthology Award, International Book Award 2014 finalist), TCR (The Committee Room) Story of the

Month (best of the web 2013), stageplays.com , and Professional Playscripts. APushcart Prize nominee, Eric Hoffer Award finalist. Her play “Vaseline” was short-listed for the prestigiousEugene O’Neill Center, 2014. Full-length stage-plays Veronica Cory, Age of Anxiety, and Miracle Mile publishedin stageplays.com and Professional Playscripts. Companions plays RASP/Elektra featured in The Modern Review.

John Sweet

John Sweet sends cryptic greeting from the rural wastelands of upstate New York. He is a firm believer in

writing as catharsis, and in the need to continuously search for an unattainable and constantly evolvingabsolute truth. His latest collection is APPROXIMATE WILDERNESS (2016 Flutter Press).

Joel Best

Joel Best has published in venues such as Atticus, decomP, Autumn Sky and Carcinogenic Poetry. He lives inupstate New York with his wife and son.

K.E. Mahoney

K.E. Mahoney lives in Lowell, MA with her cats Ripley and Commander Riker. She is a technical writer for asoftware company by day and multimedia artist by night because she enjoys her luxurious lifestyle of Netflixand grifted wifi. Her writing is a cult favorite within a small circle of close friends and family who will notrest until she is a published writer.


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Kat Hausler

Kat Hausler is a graduate of New York University and holds an M.F.A. in Fiction from Fairleigh Dickinson

University, where she was the recipient of a Baumeister Fellowship. Her work has been published by 34thParallel, Inkspill Magazine, All Things That Matter Press and Rozlyn Press, and her novel Retrograde waslong-listed for the Mslexia Novel Competition. She works as a translator in Berlin.

Kaitlin J. Pilipovic

Lazola Pambo

Lazola Pambo is a South African poet, novelist and essayist. Majority of his works have been published in“The Kalahari Review,” “Aerodrome,” “New Coin,” “Nomad’s Choir,” “Black Magnolias Literary Journal,”"LitNet," “Sun & Sandstone,” and “Aji Magazine,” among others. You can follow him on Twitter @LPambo

Lynne Viti

Lynne Viti is a senior lecturer in the Writing Program at Wellesley College, Massachusetts . Her poetry has

appeared in Little Patuxent Review, The Longleaf Pine, Mountain Gazette, Amuse-Bouche, In Flight LiteraryMagazine, Silver Birch Press, A New Ulster, The Journal of Applied Poetics, Subterranean Blue Poetry, Three Drops

from a Cauldron, Paterson Review , Damfino, The Lost Country, Irish Literary Review,The Song Is…, Foliate OakLiterary Magazine, Poetry Pacific, Grey Sparrow Review, and in a curated exhibit at Boston City Hall .

Marc J. Frazier

Marc J. Frazier has appeared in The Spoon River Poetry Review, ACM, Ascent, Permafrost, Plainsongs, Poet Lore,

Rhino, among many others. He is the recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Award for poetry and the author ofThe Way Here, a full-length poetry collection and two chapbooks. His second full-length collection, EachThing Touches , is from Glass Lyre Press, 2015. Visit www.marcfrazier.org .

Mark DuCharme

Mark DuCharme is the author, most recently, of The Unfinished: Books I-VI(BlazeVOX, 2013). Other volumes of his poetry include Answer (2011) and The Sensory Cabinet (2007), also fromBlazeVOX, as well as Infinity Subsections (Meeting Eyes Bindery, 2004) and Cosmopolitan Tremble (PavementSaw, 2002). His work appears in recent or forthcoming anthologies, including Water, Water Everywhere:


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Paean to a Vanishing Resource (Baksun Books & Arts, 2014), Litscapes: Collected US Writings (Steerage Press,2015), and Poets for Living Waters: An International Response to the BP Oil Disaster in the Gulf of Mexico (forthcoming from BlazeVOX). He lives in Boulder, Colorado.

Mark Young

Mark Young is the editor of Otoliths , & lives in a small town in NorthQueensland in Australia. His work is included in The Last Vispo Anthology; a collection of visual poetry,

Arachnid Nebula, was published a year or so ago by Luna Bisonte Prods; & more recent visual work hasappeared or is to appear in Of /with, Tip of the Knife, M58, The New Post-Literate, h&, After the Pause,Zoomoozophone Review, Sonic Boom, & Word for / Word.

Mel Bentley

Mel Bentley co-organizes Housework at Chapterhouse, a reading series in Philadelphia. Their chapbook"Obstacle, Particle, Spectacle" was released from 89plus/Luma Foundation. Chapbooks "&parts" and "StubWilderness" were released from Damask Press and Well Greased Press, respectively. Vitrine released "RedGreen Blue" a tape of noises. Poems have appeared in Apiary, Fact-Simile, Small Po[r]tions and PaintedBride Quarterly. "Bucolic Eclogues" is forthcoming from Lamehouse Press in 2016.

Natasha Deveau

Natasha Deveau resides in Austin, Texas where she is a senior at Concordia University and is studyingEnglish Literature. She is originally from Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada where she received a BA with a majorin Psychology and a Teaching English as a Second Language diploma from Saint Mary’s University. Sheworked as an ESL teacher in Halifax for five years, and her wonderful students and colleagues inspired herto write creative pieces. When she is not studying or writing, she enjoys hanging out with her husband Davidand her cat Stinky.

Nicholas Samaras

PT Davidson

PT Davidson is originally from New Zealand, although he has spent the past 24 years livingabroad in Japan,the UK, Turkey and the UAE. He currently lives in Dubai. His poetry has appeared in Otoliths, BlazeVOX,

streetcake, After the Pause, and Sein und Werden. He has poems forthcoming in Clockwise Cat, Futures Trading,Your One Phone Call, Tip of the Knife, foam:e and Snorkel. His first book of poetry, seven, is due out soon.


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Raymond Farr

Raymond Farr is author of Ecstatic/.of facts (Otoliths 2011), & Writing What For? across the Mourning Sky

(Blue & Yellow Dog 2012), sic transit—“g” (Blue & Yellow Dog 2012, 2016), Poetry in the Age of Zero Grav(Blue & Yellow Dog 2015) & 2 e-chapbooks, Eating the Word NOISE! (White Knuckle Chaps 2015), & AJourney of Haphazard Miles (ALT POETICS 2016). Raymond is editor of Blue & Yellow Dog, now archived at

http://blueyellowdog.weebly.com & publisher/editor of a new poetry blog The Helios Mss attheheliosmss.blogspot.com

Red Collins

I am a twenty year old from Ireland who works in the office of a catering company and seeks to become a fulltime writer.

Rich Murphy

Rich Murphy has taught writing and literature full time at colleges and universities for 27 years. His fourthbook “Body Politic” will be published this year by Prolific Press. Murphy’s credits include three books

Americana Prize Americana 2013 winner, Voyeur 2008 Gival Press Poetry Award, and The Apple in the MonkeyTree; chapbooks, Great Grandfather , Family Secret, Hunting and Pecking, Rescue Lines, Phoems for Mobile Vices,and Paideia. Derek Walcott has remarked, “Mr. Murphy is a very careful craftsman in his work, a patient andtesting intelligence . . . .”

Roger Craik

Roger Craik, Associate Professor of English at Kent State University Ashtabula, has written three full-lengthpoetry books – I Simply Stared (2002), Rhinoceros in Clumber Park (2003) and The Darkening Green (2004), andthe chapbook Those Years (2007), (translated into Bulgarian in 2009), and, most recently, Of England Still

(2009). His poetry has appeared in several national poetry journals, such as The Formalist, Fulcrum, TheLiterary Review and The Atlanta Review.

English by birth and educated at the universities of Reading and Southampton, Craik has worked as a journalist, TV critic and chess columnist. Before coming to the USA in 1991, he worked in Turkishuniversities and was awarded a Beineke Fellowship to Yale in 1990. He is widely traveled, having visitedNorth Yemen, Egypt, South Africa, Tibet, Nepal, Japan, Bulgaria (where he taught during spring 2007 on aFulbright Scholarship to Sofia University), and, more recently, the United Arab Emirates, Austria, andCroatia. His poems have appeared in Romanian, and from 2013-14 he is a Fulbright Scholar at OradeaUniversity in Romania.


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Poetry is his passion: he writes for at least an hour, over coffee, each morning before breakfast, and he enjoyswatching the birds during all the seasons.

Scott Wordsman

Scott Wordsman holds an MFA from William Paterson University. His poems have appeared or areforthcoming in THRUSH, Spry, Black Heart Magazine, Main Street Rag, Crack the Spine, The Puritan, TheQuotable, and other journals. He is a poetry reader for Map Literary, lives in Jersey City, and teachescomposition.

Susan Kay Anderson

Susan Kay Anderson, 2017 MFA candidate in Creative Writing at Eastern Oregon University, is a 2010National Poetry Series Finalist, and was the poetry editor of Big Talk in Eugene, Oregon, a free publicationin the early 1980s which showcased up-and-coming NW punk bands. She earned degrees in anthropologyfrom the University of Oregon (BS) and English Literature/Creative Writing from the University ofColorado, Boulder (MA & Jovanovich Award). Her thesis was directed by poet Edward Dorn. She worked inHawaii as an educator and interviewed Virginia Brautigan Aste. Her recent work is in Concis, Caliban Online,Beat Scene, and forthcoming in Prairie Schooner. Her poetry blog is: Hawaii Teacher Detective

Simon Perchik

Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, The Nation, Poetry,Osiris, The New Yorker and elsewhere. His most recent collection is Almost Rain, published by RiverOtter Press (2013). For more information, including free e-books, his essay titled “Magic, Illusion andOther Realities” please visit his website at www.simonperchik.com.

Tanya Pilumeli

Tanya Pilumeli received her B.A. and M.A. in English from John Carroll University. When not travelling tofar off places with her family like Egypt and Namibia, she lives near Lake Erie in Geneva, Ohio, with herItalian husband and three children where they run an Italian restaurant. Her poetry has appeared and wonawards in The Blue Collar Review, Time of Singing, Wild Violet, and other journals. She was the first placewinner inTime of Singing winter 2015. Her middle grade novel, The DragonFly Keeper, was a finalist for the2008 Best Books Award. She most recently won second place in Cleveland's Hessler Street Poetry Contest 2016.


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Tarice L.S. Gray

Tarice L.S. Gray earned an MFA in Creative Nonfiction writing from Fairleigh Dickinson University and isnow an editor of Nonfiction books in New York City. The former NPR journalist is married to Rodney, and is

the mother of an oft times exceedingly energetic daughter. Tarice is also an associate member of the Writers'Guild of America, West.

Uriel Gribetz

I was raised in the Bronx. Since 1988 I have worked as an attorney representing the indigent in the Bronxaccused of crimes. My first novel Taconic Murda, featuring Sam Free an ex homicide detective from theBronx, was published in 2014 by Moonshine Cove Publishing and it is available on Amazon. My second SamFree novel titled Hunts Point is to be published later this year by Perfect Crime Books. The opening chapterof another novel was featured in Noir Zine in the UK. I have also had short stories published in Blaze VOX,as well as Orchard Press Mysteries.

Zachary Scott Hamilton

S i 2016


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Adam Halbur

This is a self-portrait of an elderly feminist dressed in hand-me-down clothesphotographed in the style of Dorothea Lange:

“There might’ve been a few that could’ve you know

because I’ve been attacked by oneI know what it means to have someone come at mewith their hands like this ready to get at my facebecause some of them had comeall the way from Mexico and El Salvador and spentthree months traveling and some had done thatone woman from Guatemala had done thatthree times and brought her whole family upshe had been married and the guy was a drunk

so she decided to make for herself a life and sheshe was picked up by border agents once but uhanother woman who made her way it took her monthsand when she came she had this childand to talk about what people will do to try to better their lifebut here was this woman she would holdthis baby and this little girl would reachinto her blouse and try to nurse because she was soyou know and she had this big pot belly full ofparasites and the hair streaked with brownyou know right away she was suffering such malnutrition soso I would sleep with them overnight at the shelterat least one of us sisters didbecause we got a real feel for their needsthe needs of the women and what was going onin their lives and I would say it was a goodexperience but it wasn’t always easy you knowbecause I had to lay down the law or howshould I say I think I was a real demon at times

and still they you know”

Spring 2016


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This is a self-portrait of a physician's assistant fishing the mouthof the Columbia River, Oregon painted in the style of the 1982 Wisconsin trout stamp:

“Jim asked me one day about AIDSbecause by that time I was a PA,but he never said anythingabout his father, who was aquiet man who kept to himself --he never socialized with Mom or Dador took part in church events.I used to cross the fence linesover to his farm to fish. He hadfour spring-fed ponds -- the first,mostly bullhead, the second, trout,and the last two, bass. He let us atthe first and sometimesthe second. Jim and I helped himdrag that one once --to clean it out and start over --we on the one side and heon the other and the whole timefish flipping from the net.

He showed us how to scaleand gut them in the steel sinkof the milk house. He’s howI learned to tie a fishing knot,the one I taught you, and howto fry and eat a day’s catch,how to pick through the bones andlick the butter from your lips."

Spring 2016


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Alana Benson

-30°, or, Emily Dickinson Unhinged

What about the kid? It’s time the kid got free.

- The Love Club

Acidic glow Grows wariness— but Go—so what of a Girlish scare? Lights suggest a happy house—Strain and trace the Walls of a nightmare—

Dangerous Temperatures— they cry, and call for cold, Hesitations—and Me—couched—

looking at you look Old.

Only I sat up all night—pitched, Bare, and Barely sheltered from the Frozen Lake—youwere Gone—drowned

down your Own ice Hole, or on a late-night ship of Pain Perpetual—as She said, you

haven’t stopped smoking all night.

Curtains of crystal hang outside, crystal guillotines, Sublime— Crowned, I wear my Fear— caged and chained by Love Divine.

The Dog and I are left—gentled by cushions and comforters—See when you leave, my Mind returns,

Shamed by shackles, Utterly Un-Free.

Spring 2016


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On the Discovery of Pericles’ Winecup in Kiffisia July 30th , 2014

They found his cupin the suburbs,smashed—superb,a one-of-a-kind find.

Someonescrawled an ostracon,(were they plasteredwhen he was turned on?)

Ariphronmust’ve taken him out, hitthe bars with his brother(I pity their departed mother).

His beard was probably just growing in, head full of marble—

idealistic in his rich civility—primed for democratic garble.

Did they tilt their chairs,(woozy from the wine)leave a souvenir behind,autographed his family line?

May he have had one

night of peaceful host,full of belly-laughs andwinestains, the future strategos.


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Philhellenism

!"#-"$%&, f. –!"#$%&'( or –!"#$) : aor. I *!+!",$' :!

to throw the head back, in token of denial (which weexpress by shaking the head), Hom., Hdt., etc. 2. c. acc. rei, to deny, refuse, Il.

!"#$%&' () !"'"$($ *"+,"-& ($#. /0&!!12., #4() 5" 6781'"& 9:; 7!18'", 8, -&. *?(#. @+#&-# >"!A', B (C (12-1+#. 5!D#&.

Achilles made signs to the Achaean host, and shook his head to show that no man was to aim a dart atHector, lest another might win the glory of having hit him and he might himself come in second.

Iliad, Book 22, Line 205. Trans. by Samuel Butler

Are you hungry? I ask into space.He clicks his tongue and I feel his facenod up against the phone, beard crackling,

and a sweet, softly-accented cackling.His hair and eyes are Turkish, dark,but his no is Greek at its core, the arc

that sealed Achilles’ accepted fate,a true Hellenic, gestural trait.My butcher knows it just the same,

it’s how he tells me he’s out of game.Come back tomorrow, it’s late, good God.All this I get from a single nod.

The acquisition by the barbaroi

in tailcoats did not happen at Troy.If it had they would have seen

the Swift Footed one’s upturned mien.Translators seem to prefer the gist—why harry the half-blind Classicist?

Beloved and beautiful Athena, the cutthroat(she’s not so dangerous in a footnote):now she sports an unyielding stench


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of city in summer: a piss-covered bench,home to pigeons and hornets, the shutters,stray cats, and dirty gray gutters.

The signal, the nod, born in these streetswhere teenaged boys push, jostle and compete,and mothers chat across laundry lines,

hides between the jasmine vines.The streets knew the secret, watched howhistory buffs could disregard the marrow—

though the word alone betrays the deed(the only Greece that they can see).True, I, myself cannot fight the long-

learned indication—nurture’s strong—how nods and shakes have becomeso innate as to make the motions drum

on without thought. And though allof history is on his side, I’ll forget the call,

boil more pasta rather than less,simply because I thought he said yes.

Spring 2016


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Android Spit

SHRINKRAP

Spring 2016


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Ashley Hamilton

From: Taiwan in Ten Lines

16.玉花 Intersections

Hot spring upon us, everywhere I seedrooping cream magnolias danglingfrom the swollen fingers of men andwomen at fussy intersections. Dotingwith a hungry seagull's patience, hawkersin large straw hats under cow-heavy rainclouds. With silent bells draped and

swinging, they waft nuptial fragranceto rounds of strangers in hopes theirslow toil might payoff by sundown.

p g


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20. Beethoven's Garbage

Classical tunes ripple downstreets the melody circusbent. Some dredged downsibyl, aged soppy charisma, yesa drunk wallowing accordion tostake out the faces it glides past.Innocent, it's wake in truth acaroling alarm - it's lyrics goput all your garbage here whileyou've got the chance. Not in America.


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22. Hiding on America’s Independence Day

Twenty minutes into my final morning

class a frantic canary voice through cracked

door orders I go upstairs this instant. With haste

I ascend passing rooms full of quiet academic

soldiers, still knolls, while others host galloping

smiles and ricochet the sounds of innocent

tomfoolery. Stowed away on the fifth floor, I wait hunched

over, beading sweat from the humidity. Subdued, I listen for the canary

to call "safe". A clandestine American in your territory;

recipient of your earnings and your little one's Sunday illustrations.


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24.

Steady train pulling us along hot greased

tracks before noon, stacked knees laid up

against the black rubber sill, on my islet of

dark thoughts, these stag hangovers start

most Sundays. At harbor, we move slow in the

dense coastal air, become merpeople and make

to the barnacle crusted rocks, exposed grave

sites. Dropping into Poseidon's cobalt realm, we

laze with bright interest at the reams of sea

creatures; beacons losing time in the busy dimensions.


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26. On the MRT in Taipei

Heaping throngs of goers chockfeather tight into this manmadefortune, slinking forward and backad nauseam for it's lively commune,torsos slant and lock on this publiccavalcade. Three senior women whoseblended aroma I catch, gruff madly absorbedin exchange. From behind their pulpy teethfiery Mandarin darts, shingling my nosyforearm with staccato breaths


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32. Drinking the Snake's Body

Three shots just 1 hundred N T dollars, the blood bile and venom, a

handsome trifecta. The blood, lackluster watermelon, dull

sweet-tart hinging gasoline on the palette; dregs like

micro red sand, and now were Swammerdam amateurs

reaching for the next..

Bile, transparent kiwi hue down the hatch, similar

in sweetness to the blood though a lingering cholic

acid, mouth now dark bitter curtains, compliments

of some anonymous gallbladder. Venom, filmy

cement, taste buds waving the white flag two shots ago, catatonic.

Spring 2016


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Ashok Smith

The Early Days of Blood and Water

In the days of voice

Blood bit his tongue.

In the days of silenceBlood gave vent.

In the days of lightBlood cowered in bone.

In the days of loveBlood rushed in.

In the days of musicBlood danced.

In the days of darknessBlood lost his way.

In the days of depth Water rose.

In the days of shoresBlood stumbled to higher ground.

In the days that followed, Water lapped, waiting for wind.

p g

Callow Blood Callous Water


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Callow Blood, Callous Water

Blood rushes into greet water:

“Are you my brother? Where is your salt?”

Water hurries byclose but heedless.

Blood reddens.“Come back memories!”

“I did not mean to leave you there:Did I leave you?

Or did you leave me?I can’t remember.”

Blood’s embarrassed,gawping at skin’s door

at the callousness of Water -“even stone hates you!”

Stone’s eroded head shakes,drips free themselves, and fall.

Lessons of Water


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Lessons of Water

Blood boiled. Water rose above.

Blood rushed. Water showed the way.

Blood drained. Water left him to it.

Blood pooled. Water gave a level.

Blood stained. Water washed away.

Buckets Of Blood


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Buckets Of Blood

Blood frowns:“Water you’re loud.”

Water chuckles,copiously filling silence.

Blood reasons:“silence is silent.”

Water shrugs,“buckets is buckets.”

Blood winces,“noise is noise.”

Blood Cries Unheeded


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Blood called on water Water sloped off

Blood rallied tears Water cried off

Blood roared “insult!” Water chuckled:

“it’s all downhill from here!”Blood shuddered.

Blood Is Thicker


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Blood Is Thicker

Blood said thickly

“Water, you're thinner than me.”

Water chuckled

“Blood you clot!”

“I'm also deeper.”

Blood ran cold

Blood ran away.

Blood Brothers


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Blood Brothers

Blood met wine

“At last! My brother, join me!”Blood and wine walked around together

Arms over shoulders.

"Who wants to be in our gang?" They sang.

Sun came by and joined them.

Water crossed their path, silver.

“Don’t cross me, water!”

Sun blazed.

Blood was spurred by wine and sun.

“Yeah! Don’t cross us, water!”

Water retreated.

Water waited.

When night came on

Sun slunk off in a pool of red.

Wine fell asleep in a pool of tears.

Blood alone stood unsteadily

Railing drunkenly at moon

As she rose slowly from her table,

Drawing water up

Behind her.

Water Shows His True Colours


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Blood was roving,

He was fuming With water.

“Water you look off colour!

Ha ha!” Blood grinned

At his joke.

Water ran over golden stones

Water reflected sky's blue Water fell and split into light

Water darkened the well.

Blood skulked off,

Sulking.

Blood’s Champion


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Love threw open the door

And stood on the threshold.Blood rose to greet him

Flushed with anticipation.

Stone and water did not look up

But continued their game.

Love was dismayed.

Blood rallied, spluttering"Gentlemen, look

Here is love!"

Stone and water did not look up

But continued their game.

Blood took love's arm

And drew him forward to the table.

“Hey you oafs! Here is love,

He conquers all!"

Blood said with a flourish.

"Well done love," murmured water,

Concentrating on his game.

"But," blood blustered, "didn’t you hear me?

Love conquers all!"

Water looked up

His eyes like pools

"And after love has conquered all


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Who will be left to love?"

"I will love myself!" said love.

Stone settled further in his chair

"No doubt you will,

No doubt you will.”

Spring 2016


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Barrie Davies

HARVEST

Axis of seasons, a whirl of blondeAt the sway of scythe through wheat and the girl on the end of a three sheetsTo the wind arm.The black and brown centrifugal energyof this patch of earth...Watered by the black and brown at the blue smoked bar,Mundane in the offeringAn unremarkable contemplation of a growing genius

And the farms are transfigured by the crop.

A baker appears at the loaf shaped windowA spectre in flour.His bread is sent out like apostles,Nourishing mouths to gossip lifeAnd offer a lilting comfortWith hard wrestled wisdom and strong tea

To anoint the common agonies of their kin.

DECARTES' GHOSTS


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Body mind's surplus

all evolves sui generisex nihilo from a bloody crumb

Mind the excavated hole...cesspit in phantomHallucination of body

Why the excessof even the seed of a carefor either interloper

on existence?deadpan and notever that honour

any world doesn't begin to laugh

RUNES 1


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Genesis of Adam's alphabet

Fish and river living only as Weird and Whit

At deep midnight,Clear eyed in the settled mead

Death shall not touch you.

One who all canCures with phoenix incenseSwabs screaming terror wound-despisers

Wierd and Whit reveal to the rune guesser

A rune word, a rune hoardA heart sacrificing runes.

At deep midnight,Death shall not touch you.

RUNES 2


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Time's flow stoppedWater frozen to the bone

Father's bearded foamSnow dropped

Ships far from homeWonder-locked

Sailors in face and moodSky blue

Eager to sweat for the roodBut cold, carved statue.

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Billy Cancel

as cartoon squelches emit from your mouth i see this less as a freeze frame of interior motion

more a warning against frugal patience comparable

to a rapid glance at the bullshit tax it wasa cold bust primary query relatingto something else came down last

wednesday put the ace in ache but kind of felt settingplastic was uptown from sewing outlines married

into a family of balloon handlers raucous visceral werebuffed classification complicated the interlock fromthen on never get tricked into energeticconfiguration plentiful

vale industrialterrace you’ll come infrom there all mashed up nothing to show do yourhog tie time & motion sheet amen corner stuffed withgimmicks then you’ll punch a cloud & it’ll befull ofwind &piss

bizarro calamity howler brackisht th h b th d hil


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water through both ends meanwhilethe disturbance spreads to south

gloucestershire corners of dorset ain’tchomping at the jaw for any anarctic10 jutting into my set-up off to cabbagetown red petal park brown sky toundermine my ownprecision yes

in silver letters cream background adornedthe far wall of indecisive’s panic room as he dreamt

kite barely visible amongst the blossoms then boogie

man through videosynth modulator all pastellime formal tension thought i’d be someinvasive exotic but

caughtnoballseekingunobtainium

yuppie larva techno optimism got spared fromsalami attack traditional methods compounded


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salami attack traditional methods compoundedby clean lines overall sense never once were they

upon a 3-legged stool at the crossroads all franticwide of high octane brood stock tonight in sophisticatedneon idealized place dead tech circuit edges are allsmoothed down ready for e-waste gallery chat no

fooling around helmsman your comparative eloquence amongst the dross pink orange browns someof the crowd were into it a little to wear away thedust your characteristic grinning technique & somepot valiant & ham fatter pairing off please all

stand for thedetritusanthem thank you now

on with the kludge twilightcommission let me point out that not

everything that works underground is amole for example your eyes weep teargas you all have caterpillar treads

boss clown this formal vanish is grimcracked out work makes me all the more


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cracked out work makes me all the morereluctant to switch masters & my wonky

prism grayed with insects turbulent smudgeless active charm my wonky prism grayed witheffort in a troubling mode of laugh ‘n’scratch rock-in-the-box they write you off as

an entrance fever conduit you should snapa candle turn yellow fancifully boom yeah showthem & there’s a kid’s show for the lot lice coollyoff-hand artificial & there’s a kid’s show for thelot lice anyways back to the long con my man

on the ground you walk backwards outof the garden stumble into green blue yellowred shriek don’t we all live in the age ofnervous water? sprouting cousins keyed intothe zeitgeist at the carnival of acronyms my

trousers split my tooth falls out at the carnivalof acronyms i becomeantarctic 10

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Bishop & Fuller

The Yowling Cat Story

by Bishop & Fuller

I run off at the mouth. I always have, since I was a little girl. My friend Chrissie took a psychology

class and said it came from having three brothers so I kept talking so my mom would notice me. That was

like a bolt of lightning. I said hey, that’s true, it’s like I keep talking to get a little love. Chrissie said realizing

that would cure me and now I could shut up. But it didn’t. I still run off at the mouth.

That’s not why Sonny and I broke up. We hardly ever talked and when we did it was all about the

sonsabitches where he worked. I never talked about the sonsabitches where I worked because there wasn’t

room at the table for all the sonsabitches. We broke up because I can’t cook for crap and he’s too stupid to

live and the sex wore us out. It didn’t have a thing to do with talking. Or with love.

I just have stuff to say and nobody ever to hear it.

The first thing I did when Sonny moved out was to get two cats. I needed that more than a husband. I

never had to wash their cat food dish, I’d just fill it back up. I could talk and talk and pet’em and talk and

they loved that, whereas if I petted Sonny it always led to other things.

How I got them. Max, there was an ad for free cats and there was a children’s book which I really

loved where the little boy was Max. So that was Max. And Cleveland, I got Cleveland from the pound and she

was fixed already. Then I got Max fixed so they were both fixed. Like me and Sonny, it struck me. That was a

pretty strange thought.


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So I would put up snapshots of Cleveland and Max on Facebook. Everybody puts cats up there or their

kids. And I had stories about Cleveland and Max but nobody really wants to hear about your cats, it’s like

moms telling how smart their kids are, I don’t want to hear that. I don’t have kids and if I did they wouldn’t be

smart.

Though I guess other people also have stuff to say and nobody listens.

But I got an email about this “storytelling” night in Nevada City, which is where I live outside of. Gold

Rush Country they call it to tourists but I joke to my cousins in Omaha don’t rush for the gold cause I never

saw any gold. There’s a community center where they do plays and music, I guess, and they have a night

where people tell stories.

You can sign up to tell a story. It has to be true and you have three minutes to tell it. If you take too

long there’s a piano player and he starts playing and then you have to stop. You don’t have to have talent,

anybody can do it. Most of the stuff that happened to me over the span of my life took longer than that to

stop hurting, but I talk pretty fast. This month’s theme was Creatures and I thought, well, Max and Cleveland

are creatures. So am I.

So Friday night I fed the cats, and I said, hey, I’m gonna tell everybody what funny cats you are and

you’ll be famous. And they both meowed, like saying Right on! They were a lot of love. Though you never get

enough.

They called it “Story Time for Grownups.” Maybe sixty people on folding chairs, just a plain

assembly room but they’d put up some nice India cotton hangings on the wall behind this podium and mike,

piano at the side, and you could buy wine or coffee and cookies at a table but I didn’t — five bucks for a little

dinky glass of wine. I found the old lady with the sign-up sheet and signed up. I was halfway down the list.

Starting out they had three storytellers with ten minutes each. I guess they were more experienced.

One guy talked about his dog dying and I was crying at the end. Then a fat lady told about her aunt who


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collected fossils, which was funny, she paid a lot of money for a fossil rat. Then some guy with a hassle about

his credit cards but that one cut too close to the bone.

Other people have problems too, I guess the lesson is from that.

So they worked their way down to the amateurs like me. The ones before me were okay but I

thought, well, I won’t disgrace myself. The one thing I know how to do is talk. Shutting up is something else.

The story was about how Max got lost and my being so scared and the funny way I found him. I had

only three minutes so I wasn’t going to tell why Cleveland was named Cleveland because the river caught

fire in Cleveland even though the fire was before I was even born. At the pound they called her Sophie, but

she hopped up on the stove and got singed by the flame, so I named her Cleveland. But I told that part

anyway. People laughed. That felt great.

Then I told how Max disappeared and Cleveland started meowing and meowing, it must be she

really missed Max. They’d fight a lot, not really fight but squabble like me and Sonny till we just got sick of

the squabble and split. But still I missed the poor dummy so maybe Cleveland missed Max. Love hangs on.

I looked under the porch, back yard, out in the neighborhood and we were going to put up signs but

we didn’t. Maybe we being me and Cleveland. When I was a kid I wanted a sister, not a cat, but my point was

that Max was gone and Cleveland started meowing and then I realized I had about thirty seconds left to tell

the story.

They had a timer where you could see it.

People seemed to like the story but kind of wondering where is this going so I tried to make it faster

but I had to explain that Max was a moody cat so I was worried. But Cleveland kept yowling all night and I

thought maybe she needs to go out. When I was seven we had a dog named Buster, he always had to be let

out, the back yard was full of dog turds but Cleveland had a cat pan. I got her some water, thought maybe

she’s hungry but I was almost out of the dry cat food they have on sale at Safeway but this week they didn’t


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and I was almost out. They put some chemical in to give it the taste of chemical fish.

People looked like I was getting off the subject.

So Cleveland was yowling and yowling and I tried to go back to bed but she kept on so finally I got

up, went out, put her in the car and locked the car. Damn cat, I’m thinking, I love her but I just can’t stand

the yowling. It must have been like my mother felt. There were four of us kids and always raising hell and

she didn’t have enough love to spread around.

But I got back to bed, I thought omigod she’s going to be so cold out there on the vinyl seats. So I got

up and went out to take a couple of pillows out there, it’s a ‘92 Honda, good mileage although it looks pretty

bad but it’s red which is maybe safer cause people see you coming. Not that I wanted a red car, we’d had a

big old clunker but it was a shame to go to the grocery store with that.

Then I heard the piano. Just a tinkle. The signal to stop. I’d gone way over.

I never liked to get up in front of people. In school you’d have to give book reports but I didn’t know

what to say except that I’d read it so mine were pretty short. And we did a play and I had three lines and

forgot my lines and just stood there till I remembered and said “I wonder when the doctor’s going to come”

but the doctor had come in already. I just needed to finish this damn story.

So Cleveland was in the car, I went back to bed but I heard this meow meow meow that sounded like

Max. This was like four in the morning and I had to get up early for dental work at the clinic, they charge half

what a regular dentist does and I brush my teeth and I floss but I needed two molars out and a crown. My

mother lost all her teeth.

The piano tinkled again. They were trying to get me off, get me to end this horrible story. Horrible

story, no, it wasn’t horrible story, it was a very funny story, it wasn’t funny when it was happening but when I

told it to people they always laughed, at least they tried to be polite, and I went on and on and then I notice I

need to go to the bathroom.


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I’m about to tell how I went to the garage and there’s Max. He’s perched up on the hood of the car,

he’s looking at Cleveland inside the car, she’s got her feet up on the steering wheel, and they’re both yowling

away. I had to laugh.

I start to tell it but I’ve been talking forever and I see people out there, they’re shuffling around, and

from that point on I don’t remember what I said, I just went on and on. I talked about my mother and her

teeth, how she worked all her life and she went to the tax office when they wanted to dun her for taxes about

her teeth and all I was trying to say was that I went to open the door and it was Max, it was really Max and I

was really happy then, I was really moved but I couldn’t stop, I needed to finish but I couldn’t stop.

I look out at the people out there. The audience. They’re deathly pale. Rigid, like in front of a firing

squad.

And the lady who’s the host that introduces people, she doesn’t know what to do. The piano player

makes more tinkles and he’s ready to bang into big tumultuous chords and I’m just trying to end a sentence,

just stop it, not even end the story but just end the sentence but it keeps on like the monkey swinging on

vines from branch to branch that can’t stop without falling into the lion’s jaws and on and on and I can’t

even remember the name of my cat.

Then he hits a big heavy chord and I start screaming, screeching, ripping things, India cotton hangings,

ripping them down and the clip lights on a pole crash down and people holding me down but I just keep

screaming and screaming and screaming—

I did not do that, actually. What I did when the piano player started playing Climb Every Mountain

was to say that at four in the morning I went out to the car and found the cats and brought them in. Then I

made a cup of coffee. People gave a little bit of applause and I sat down. I listened to one more story then I

left.


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The screaming part was in my dream that night. Next morning I had to go down to the Safeway and I

was so embarrassed. I didn’t see anybody I knew but I don’t know many people. Somebody would walk past

without looking at me, which is what people do, but it felt like they couldn’t stand to see me. I really needed

to scream but I had no opportunities. We all have that problem once in a while, I guess.

Max died a couple of years ago. I’ve still got Cleveland but she’s on her last legs. I wish I hadn’t

named her Cleveland, it was funny at the time but then you live with old jokes. Sophie might have been more

personal, the whole point being you want some love. At least I take better care of my teeth.

The story was just one night my cat was yowling and I put her out in the car and then the other cat

was sitting there. That was the story. After that time it never seemed like much and I never told it again.

Funny coincidence, I guess I thought. And some kind of crazy yowling love even though they were fixed.

Three minutes is pretty short. I still get the shakes.

And my friend Chrissie, I never told her, she would have had some kind of interpretation. She talks

as much as I ever did, I think. There’s a need to.

###

Spring 2016


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Brenda Candle

I still believe Words Are Awkward

# Stanza 4 (starting with # Stanza 4 (starting with # Stanza 4 (starting with # Stanza 4 (starting with # Stanza4 (starting with # Stanza 4 (starting with # Stanza 4 (starting with # Stanza 4 (starting with # Stanza 4 (starting

with # Stanza 4 (starting with # Stanza 4 (starting with # Stanza 4 (starting with # Stanza 4 (starting with“After taking a rest After taking a rest After taking a restAfter taking a restAfter taking a rest After taking arestAfter taking a rest After taking a rest After taking a rest…” ),

in in an awkward Japanese awkward Japanese awkward Japanese awkward Japanese awkward Japaneseawkward Japanese awkward Japanese awkward Japanese awkward Japanese awkward Japanese awkward

Japanese accentaccentaccentaccent→ in in the awkward Japaneseawkward Japanese awkwardJapaneseawkward Japaneseawkward Japanese awkward Japaneseawkward JapaneseawkwardJapaneseawkward Japanese awkward Japanese

# Stanza 2 (starting with # Stanza 2 (starting with # Stanza 2 (starting with # Stanza 2 (starting with # Stanza 2(starting with # Stanza 2 (starting with # Stanza 2 (starting with # Stanza 2 (starting with # Stanza 2 (startingwith # Stanza 2 (starting with # Stanza 2 (starting with # Stanza 2 (starting with # Stanza 2 (starting with“Another Another Another Sunday SundaySunday…” ), the last line ), the last line), the last line), the last line), the last line), the last line

the order orderorder of chivalry of chivalry of chivalry of chivalry of chivalry of chivalry of chivalry→ the

Order of chivalryrder of chivalryrder of chivalry rder of chivalry rder of chivalry rder of chivalryrder ofchivalryrder of chivalryrder of chivalryrder of chivalry

# Stanza 5 (starting with “ # Stanza 5 (starting with “ # Stanza 5 (starting with “ # Stanza 5 (starting with “ #Stanza 5 (starting with “ # Stanza 5 (starting with “ # Stanza 5 (starting with “ # Stanza 5 (starting with “ #Stanza 5 (starting with “ # Stanza 5 (starting with “ # Stanza 5 (starting with “ # Stanza 5 (starting with “ #Stanza 5 (starting with “ My love may beMy love may beMy love may beMy love may beMy love may be Mylove may be My love may beMy love may beMy love may be My love may be…” ), Line 2 ), Line 2), Line 2 ),Line 2

what in the world what in the world what in the world what in the world what in the world what in theworld what in the world what in the world are wordsare wordsare wordsare words are words are wordsare

words→what in the world what in the world what in the world what in the world what in the world what in


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words→ what in the world what in the world what in the world what in the world what in the world what in

the world what in the world what in the world words are words are words arewords are

# Stanza 5# Stanza 5 # Stanza 5# Stanza 5 # Stanza 5, Line 3 , Line 3, Line 3, Line 3

But I still believe I still believe I still believeI still believeIstill believe I still believeI still believeI still believeI still

believeI still believeI still believe… → I still believeI still believe I still believeI still believeI still believe I still

believeI still believeI still believeI still believeI stillbelieveI still believe…

PagePagePagePage

Spring 2016


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bruno neiva

Spring 2016


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Caroline Allen

Chapter One

In which the main character realizes that the old adage from the cheerful poster from the days of yore (her

childhood in the sixties), "Today is the first day of the rest of your life," is not only true, but depressing. So

much better was the poster of the Siamese kitten struggling to right itself on a horizontal bar, back legs and

tail dangling in the air "Hang in there baby!" with it's eyes wide open, as if astonished to even be alive, what's

more grasping a bar mid-air because life itself depends on it. But "Today is the first day of the rest of your

life," either means: the rest of your life is going to be a lot like this one; or stop wasting time wishing you were

doing something else and just do it. After 56 years of hanging in there, the main character feels that eithermeaning is true and they are not mutually exclusive, the struggles of yesterday are the same struggles of

today-- with variations, to be sure, because life is better at middle age than it was in childhood, she has more

power and money and personal freedom and self-knowledge; but still she finds herself that same ten year-

old girl of a summer afternoon wondering, "What's the point of all this?"

Which, in a ten year old is a bit sad, but probably just means that she has nobody to play with, her mother's

at work, her sister is off with her own friends, and she's bored. In this particular fifty-six year-old it means

she's lost her focus, she doesn't feel like writing about her adolescent self and all the trauma of her first love,

her painting isn't particularly exhilarating, and though she's proud of having gone to a dance class and

actually moved her whole body, she knows it was a way to avoid writing. And it gave her that Ventura

Feeling.

Ventura Feeling: noun. 1) A sense of astonishment at how weird and uncool and dated and provincial every

building, person and pair of shoes one lays one's eyes upon is. 2) The horrible realization that one belongs

there without really fitting in 3) A state of driving through streets which trigger memories that are both vivid


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there without really fitting in. 3) A state of driving through streets which trigger memories that are both vivid

and banal, as if Ventura were only capable of creating vibrantly mediocre experiences. 4)The suspicion that

fascinating new art movements and musical groups are blossoming three thousand miles away. 5) A sort of

blank unknowingness.

Now she must ask herself, "What was it about the dance class that gave her that Ventura Feeling?" She goes

over the sequence of the morning's events. There was the stop at the light after the exit, staring into the

distance at that same bright pink house with the tall palm tree in the yard. How many times has she sat there

in her air-conditioned Honda and thought about painting that pink house, wondering where she would set

up the easel, where she would park the car, if anybody would bother her on the street-- when suddenly the

light changes and she drives on and forgets all about the pink house with the palm tree! She parks in the

Carl's Junior parking lot next to the dance studio. She sees one of the regular dance class patrons sitting in

her car talking on a cell phone with an ear bud in her ear. A friend who used to go to this dance class calls

the woman, "The Angry Pixie". She also calls the class, "Prancey Dancey", which our main character, let's callher Sheila, has always found objectionable, accurate though it be. Now Sheila finds herself at the doorway

staring into a large room with a padded orange floor, the kind of floor made for martial arts studios, and

many people standing up, sitting down, stretching and talking. It's a big class today, about thirty people,

maybe more.

The teacher, a tiny muscular woman with brilliant blue eyes and blonde hair calls everybody to stand in a

circle. She's smiling and making announcements when a big bald man breaks in and says, "This is a very

special day. I happen to know it's somebody's birthday" and he stares at the teacher. The teacher says,

"Thank you, Len," and then announces that it's not only her birthday but also the birthday of another person

in the class, the beautiful Maureen, a pale willowy woman with long thick yellow hair rolled into a bun. The

two birthday girls stand in the center of the circle and the class sings Happy Birthday. Then the class does

The Whoosh, where they all bend down with their arms to their sides, swing their torsos up so they're

standing upright with their arms in the air like young gymnasts and all together yell, "Whoosh". They repeat

this three times. Then the teacher says she's at least ten years older than Maureen and Maureen denies it and

the teacher says she's turning 53 and Maureen is turning 41 and Maureen says she is not, she's turning 46, and


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the teacher says she s turning 53 and Maureen is turning 41 and Maureen says she is not, she s turning 46, and

everybody is so shocked because they both look so young. Truly dancing keeps one looking good. That,

thinks Sheila, and not getting fat. She, herself, has gotten fat. But she prefers not to dwell on it.

"Today we're going to work on strength," says the teacher. "Because I love strength. I love my body's strength,

I love the strength of my will, the strength that brought me here to Ventura, the strength that's kept me

going." People clap. "And along with strength we have flexibility, those two go perfectly together."

Sheila is glad to be there but thinks about how weak she's been feeling lately, and stiff, and that this class

may be just what she needs or it may be much more than she needs and maybe she should just take it easy.

But as soon as the music comes on and she recognizes the song she knows she won't hold back, not now

anyway, she's just so full of how that music wants her to move, and the teacher leads them into stretches and

bends and arm circles to warm them up and pretty soon they're jumping and kicking and prancing around

the room and the music changes and they're all kicking up their heels, mingling, making eye contact as theygoofily sing along with Mary Poppins' "Supercalifragilisticexpialidotious."

Sheila loves this kind of silliness and participates whole-heartedly, but there's a part of her that stands

outside the group and notices that Len, the big man, is making the face he often makes when he free-dances,

a sort of prissy, nose in the air, chin up, affectation of an old lady at a tea-party with an exaggerated hand-

flap. Len, a tall, broad-shouldered giant of a man has recently taken to adorning his smooth bald head with a

thin scarf across his forehead, a long tail flowing to the side. He sometimes wears robes. Len has dated or

tried to date many of the women in the class and has hinted that his feelings are hurt when he feels that the

women in the class aren't as friendly with him as they are with each other. Sheila sees him dancing toward

her and smiles; he's making the funny teaparty face, long upper lip, eyes half-closed. Then he shimmies up

beside her, leans over to rub his shoulder against hers and laughs, "hehehe" with a lecherous intonation and

raise of the eyebrows. He quickly pops back into the prissy nose in the air flappy-hand character. They both

move on. That shimmy rub and her acceptance proved she wasn't prejudiced against him; now she can avoid

his gaze with a clear conscience.


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Sheila remembers how her old boyfriend never danced, how he was a musician and thought people looked

funny when they danced, "like fish flopping," were his words. Her step-father, in reference to this comment,

said, "He's an asshole." Well, yes, he was an asshole. His most salient feature. Assholetry. Assholedom,

Assholistic? The quality of aggressive self-confidence based on sharp and mean-spirited criticism of others.

She must've liked it at the time. If he could see her now! Skipping around with these sweet, sad, nutty

people-- Angry Pixie is doing her best to express joy, smiling broadly, softening her angry eyes, waving

happy energy around the room. Beautiful, winsome, 46 year-old Maureen follows close behind, dancing like

a real dancer, Sheila thinks. But aren't they all real dancers? That's the problem. They are on one level, and

aren't on another. There are so many experiences in this one room, who can follow or

BlazeVOX16 - Spring 16

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