Issue #20 (2011) PDF - myweb - Long Island University

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where everything wakes and dies sun opens mouth on split legs, slowly illuminating paintings of blood across inner thighs. this is where everything wakes and dies. my head is hung back over the edge of the tub, heavy with thoughts of how beautiful her palms were against the ugliness of mine. my hands, my ugly ugly hands, now caught red in murder of my own womb. molding over my egg, something grows more relentlessly than cancer. i am not big enough to hold it in, but it stays. it clings to membranes, like a babe's skull in mother's hip bone. my birth canal faces the mouth of a broken faucet which leaks a dirty color gathering in a small flood to where my blood travels, ever so precariously, as this monster in my body erupts, pushing life out. silently, i watch the reflection of a fused ceiling fixture where my present unfolds in slow motion; remains of me lingering towards the open wound of an inanimate object, ready to absolve their existence because they cannot stand the decay that is me. incapable god here lies the silhouette of a stranger crawled up on a park bench across from me. his breath is searching within, deep within that shriveled body to fill something he cannot reach. i am god, unable to touch his forehead to tell him it's going to be okay. it is not going to be okay. the sky is a black hole. the ground is a war zone. there isn't a place to escape. frigid. he, i, and this night are frigid. he will wake before the sun rises and prepare to waste another day pretending to be whole. and i will return another night as an incapable god. afraid to be woman at the age of five she stands like a man bare chested and strong in the river flowing between undeveloped breasts over the body of mother sand runs through those tiny fingers curved toward god- mercy-hungry for life as pupils look into void of what was once mother's eyes it runs like blood from a sparrow's skull like man her chest must grow not with breasts to feed or above womb for home but with muscles like stone so that she will cease to be mother's daughter she will shave head burn dress and never return to woman's demise preferences of a wallflower i prefer to be depressed. and alone. to live with the blinds turned down on my face. i like the conversations of the radiator with the lights dim. the crackling of a news reporter's loneliness on the radio. the gloom that rain brings. the gray of heavy clouds. the fragility of my wrists. the splitting soles of my sneakers. the frizz limping on my head. i like to think i'm almost dead. and float above everyone, watching a bud open, the breath before a first kiss, the tears of a proud mother, the holiness of an intact home. all the things i don't have. i like to take it in and die willfully. 70
Anna Lindwasser BIRTHDAY sometimes i say it's my birthday. sometimes once a month. twice a month. twice a week. fourteen times a day last time and it wasn't even true. i say it to different people so it's not like they catch on or anything. it's not a big deal. i just want it to be my birthday, because then maybe someone would pay attention to me and i…well nobody really does because…it doesn't really matter if i'm there so…it's not like anybody notices. i calculated it. i have a lot of time to do those things. i'll be 436 years old the next time i tell you it's my birthday. i usually don't bother the same person with my birthday again and again but. i want to see if you can catch me. if you'll ask me, ―lily wasn't it your birthday like a week ago don't you remember i brought you that cupcake‖ you didn't really bring me a cupcake. you had about five of them mashed up in your bag from your birthday, so you could've. easily. you don't even like cupcakes. but you did say happy birthday. you did ask how it felt to be fifteen. this year i'm really going to be sixteen but…it's the thought that counts. i'm a little person, so I can see why you though that i was younger than you. still, if you ever paid any attention to me you'd know i couldn't possibly be any of the ages that you think i am. i feel closer to 436 than fifteen. so. are you going to remember are you going to realize i've done nothing but lie to you for every minute that i've known you, that 71
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downtown brooklyn a journal of writ
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he can see his smiling reflection i
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Magdalena slithers her key into her
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to watch vigilantly over sterile fi
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Should I reach down and cup the pac
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Alicia Berbenick STABLES I had to k
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Mr. Tate beat her after that. He be
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Wayne Berninger GUESS WHO I CUT IN
Page 19 and 20: John Casquarelli NATURAL MOTION OF
Page 21 and 22: I came searching for rain hoping to
Page 23 and 24: Alane Celeste THE HAVE-NOTS Flies h
Page 25 and 26: Nik Conklin HOLLYWOOD HILLS Hilltop
Page 27 and 28: Sing me that song of Purple mountai
Page 29 and 30: THINGS I LOVE I love fine porcelain
Page 31 and 32: Wendy Eng FOUND POEM: BEAUTY IS ART
Page 33 and 34: ―I think I‘ll check out the buf
Page 35 and 36: ―No.‖ I search for something th
Page 37 and 38: warm for this heavy cover and I‘m
Page 39 and 40: theme song to ‗The Stripper‘. I
Page 41 and 42: I’m telling you, you gotta rememb
Page 43 and 44: MAKE ME TO HEAR "Make me to hear jo
Page 45 and 46: Aimee Herman DEGREE OF DARK SPACE F
Page 47 and 48: Katherine Hogan BY THE LAKE —with
Page 49 and 50: SAPPHO TO THE MAIDENS What did Sapp
Page 51 and 52: He shook his perfect pointer and ca
Page 53 and 54: AND LATER I SPEAK in a minute I clo
Page 55 and 56: ARRANGEMENTS you can start anywhere
Page 57 and 58: FIELD RECORDINGS No pronunciation o
Page 59 and 60: Giuseppe Infante DINNER FOR TWO Onc
Page 61 and 62: ―You got a woman‖ he said looki
Page 63 and 64: Belynda Jones RED THRONES Amidst it
Page 65 and 66: Jamey Jones AVENUE VISION 1 At prec
Page 67 and 68: LIKE THIS —for Steve Bailey it‘
Page 69: Kate FOUR POEMS These poems appear
Page 73 and 74: maybe you could learn to love my ra
Page 75 and 76: even if you message me five minutes
Page 77 and 78: i don't know what living is, but i
Page 79 and 80: Elspeth Woodcock Macdonald IN CLASS
Page 81 and 82: PACKAGE Do you feel me calling you
Page 83 and 84: Uche Nduka HALF PAST ZERO no hard f
Page 85 and 86: Steve Newton DRIVING WITH ABSENT FR
Page 87 and 88: Jon L. Peacock Ferry to the Mainlan
Page 89 and 90: ―I‘m fucking going to bed,‖ r
Page 91 and 92: Nothing can be turned down, or sile
Page 93 and 94: GEESE NO MORE They killed the geese
Page 95 and 96: Beatriz Alzate Rodriguez A STORY OF
Page 97 and 98: Thankfully, the house we stayed in
Page 99 and 100: We were all in the water now. I was
Page 101 and 102: steady with both her hands and her
Page 103 and 104: Lisa Rogal SO MANY THINGS ―You ev
Page 105 and 106: ehind his back like a school teache
Page 107 and 108: Kat: Maybe you should go 2 ER Me: I
Page 109 and 110: Then she hears the crash: a sound l
Page 111 and 112: developmentally delayed. The neighb
Page 113 and 114: P. J. Salber COIN FOR CS You be you
Page 115 and 116: Micah Savaglio A VACATION WITHOUT S
Page 117 and 118: Cancer. FRITZ Pause. FRITZ sets the
Page 119 and 120: Well, level with me. I don‘t unde
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THE PARENTS OF AABB1 The parents of
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hair on a g- string sing 123
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unmentionable slink ambles able (sa
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serious cloth loath to fold to how
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Jean Verthein CONTINUE Eve disappea
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Sarah Wallen OPOSSOMOON —an excer
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or spears. Everywhere there are roo
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PESTILENCE On a swing at the park.
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And somewhere a building is going u
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According to the weather lady The c
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You are slipping away In the silenc
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io notes Ana Almurani is an alumna
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directed the world premiere of The
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