WISE
C
T
CloCKwiSE cAt/
IssUE thiRTy-SiX
Dedicated to the
of
Democracy
!
!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !
!
is dedicated to an AmeriKKKa flailing toward the final death throes of
democracy. The pieces herein were not necessarily sculpted with that vividly
in mind, but the editor is ever-vigilant of the fact that Donald J. Trump’s
“election” to the presidency is the last nail in the coffin of what was always a
mostly faux-democracy/demockery to begin with. Sure, we practice some
democratic ideals, but the US has never been as equitable and just as the
pernicious propaganda would have you believe. Don’t believe the hype, as
Flava Flav so astutely warns us. Trump and his corrupt cronies represent the
impending death of thousands if not millions of innocent people to corporate
fascism. We repudiate this nihilistic vision of things and will work toward
dismantling dystopia at every turn, through our words and deeds. Art is a sly
and potent tool of subversion; use it with fierce ebullience against the
xenophobes/homophobes/bigots and misogynists!
CLOCKWISE
MASTHEAD
ALISON CLOCKWISE
ROSS – EDITOR-in-GRIEF
CINDY HOCHMAN – RAD-ASS REVIEWER
FELINO SORIANO – POET-in-RESIDENCE
QUETZAL ROSS – ARTISTIC DIRECTOR/GROWLERin-CHIEF
SOLEIL ROSS – PROOFREADER/KNEADING
EXPURRT
EDITOR’S SCRATCHING POST:
CATATONICALLY SPEAKING
Three Cheers for the DEATH of
Democracy! Thanks,
Democrats!
On November 8th, 2016, a catastrophe occurred: Donald Trump swooped in on a tornado of
discontent and was elected 45th president of the United States. And, it seems, he was legitimately
elected, although certainly voter suppression did happen, in the sense that swing states like
Pennsylvania and North Carolina reportedly had far fewer polling places than previously
(gerrymandering, anyone?), apparent hacking occurred in swing states like Michigan and
Wisconsin, and so on. Too, Trump won the electoral college, a dubious win at best, and not the
popular vote. Hillary claimed that - though by a margin too thin for comfort. Hillary should have
won against Trump in a landslide, not by a mere three million votes.
This rant is not going to delve too far into the travesties of voter suppression and the absurd
anachronisms of the electoral college, however. Everyone with an intellectual pulse knows that
those are issues of grave concern. What's not as apparent to even the smartest of cookies, though,
is how the Democratic Party is largely to blame for Trump's victory. To that end, five brilliant
articles by revered political journalists guide this episode of Catatonically Speaking, which I
excerpt extensively and annotate with my own commentary. I do this because these editorials
sharply deconstruct the matter in a manner that surpasses my talents and knowledge. I read
political analysis so that I may gain insights and reinforce my own articulated ideas and
unarticulated suspicions, but I would never lay claim to being a political analyst myself. On the
contrary, I am a rabid ranter who seeks to extract the truth from righteous sources.
From Naomi Klein:
"They will blame James Comey and the FBI. They will blame voter suppression and racism. They
will blame Bernie or bust and misogyny. They will blame third parties and independent
candidates...But this leaves out the force most responsible for creating the nightmare in which we
now find ourselves wide awake: neoliberalism. That worldview – [is] fully embodied by Hillary
Clinton and her machine. A hell of a lot of people are in pain. Under neoliberal policies of
deregulation, privatisation, austerity and corporate trade, their living standards have declined
precipitously. They have lost jobs. They have lost pensions. They have lost much of the safety net
that used to make these losses less frightening."
Sure, damning (and likely fraudulent) FBI accusations, voter suppression, and white supremacy
all conspired, among other things, to sway voters toward Donald Trump or candidates other than
Hillary. And sure, the Bernie or Busters, and third party votes also played a part in "stealing"
votes from Hillary. But we must put this latter point into clearer perspective. Hillary was never
entitled to votes to begin with. No one is entitled to votes - they must earn them. And if Hillary
did not earn the trust of voters who defected toward Bernie, a far more palatable candidate than
Hillary, and one that was dirtily disenfranchised by the Democratic party itself, or who voted
third party - or simply stayed home - then that cannot be the fault of the voters. It can only be the
fault of the candidate herself.
From Cornell West:
"White working- and middle-class fellow citizens – out of anger and anguish – rejected the
economic neglect of neoliberal policies and the self-righteous arrogance of elites. Yet these same
citizens also supported a candidate who appeared to blame their social misery on minorities, and
who alienated Mexican immigrants, Muslims, black people, Jews, gay people, women and China
in the process...This lethal fusion of economic insecurity and cultural scapegoating brought
neoliberalism to its knees. In short, the abysmal failure of the Democratic party to speak to the
arrested mobility and escalating poverty of working people unleashed a hate-filled populism and
protectionism that threaten to tear apart the fragile fiber of what is left of US democracy."
To be bitterly blunt, Trump is a fascist freak, and there is no way around this fact. My own
mother calls him an "orange anus." He is odious and incompetent. He's beyond embarrassing, far
more buffoonish and pernicious than Bush. He stokes hate crimes while stoking his own
aggrandized ego. President Comacho from “Idiocracy” has more substance and charm than
Trump.
Which is why it's so confounding that the Democrats did not go full-force in countering Trump's
egregious excesses. He COULD have been easy to beat - and Bernie Sanders would have done so,
if he'd maintained the same compelling campaign as he did in the primaries - but the DNC chose
to run a sinister establishment candidate who pandered to the middle right and in the process
offered no real opposition.
From Cornell West:
"For 40 years, neoliberals lived in a world of denial and indifference to the suffering of poor and
working people ... Despite some progressive words and symbolic gestures, Obama chose to
ignore Wall Street crimes, reject bailouts for homeowners, oversee growing inequality and
facilitate war crimes like US drones killing innocent civilians abroad."
Initially, Obama was a refreshing step up from that clownish fascist, George W. Bush, to be sure.
He was articulate, handsome, dignified, presidential. Everything that Bush was not. And he
propagated a muted progressivism palatable to the masses. The problem is, most of his modestly
progressive ideals have been eclipsed by his catering to neocon “values.” He's droned the hell out
of seven Muslim-majority countries - SEVEN - and coddled Wall Street, cheating millions out of
livable wages - or any wages at all. He's fervidly embraced privatization of public schools and
even brought Black Lives Matter activists literally to tears through a callous dismissal of their
vibrantly valid concerns (mass incarceration, police brutality, declining mobility, etc.) On the
surface, Obama is everything we want in a president, but dig deeper - into the facts of his policies
and achievements, that is - and you will see that he differs only in very subtle ways from the
Republicans. Obama, like Clinton before him, is the very embodiment of neoliberalism, which
neatly sets the stage for neofascism to take hold.
From Tom Frank, The Guardian:
"The woman we were constantly assured was the best-qualified candidate of all time has lost to
the least qualified candidate of all time. Yes, she has an impressive resume; yes, she worked hard
on the campaign trail. But she was exactly the wrong candidate for this angry, populist moment.
An insider when the country was screaming for an outsider. A technocrat who offered fine-tuning
when the country wanted to take a sledgehammer to the machine ... [But] there was Bernie
Sanders, an inspiring and largely scandal-free figure. [He] would probably have beaten
Trump. And so Democratic leaders made Hillary their candidate even though they knew about
her closeness to the banks, her fondness for war, and her unique vulnerability on the trade issue."
Bernie Sanders galvanized millions by appealing to their sense of humanity. He refused corporate
contributions and rallied for the people by making genuinely progressive promises. Did he, in the
end, shill for Hillary, and not even appear to really mind that he was defrauded of the Democratic
nomination by the dastardly DNC? Why yes, yes he did, on both counts. And true, he isn't as
purely progressive as, say, The Green Party - he supports the evil entity that is the Israeli
government, for one. But for a while there, it seemed as though we were all about to Feel the
Bern, and it was looking hopeful that a Bernie/Trump match-up could not only make for
endlessly entertaining SNL mockery, but also that Bernie was The Guy to beat the fake-tanned
fascist. But the DNC made SURE that the war hawk, and Wall Street's beloved BFF - she who
differed the least from the Republicans - was the nominee. And they did this to their own
detriment, and to the detriment of most Americans.
From "Did Gary Johnson and Jill Stein Voters Cost Hillary Clinton The Election?":
“Now that Donald Trump is president-elect, despondent Hillary Clinton supporters need someone
to blame. Of course, they could blame the Democratic Party for willfully tipping the scales in
favor of ensuring the nomination of a candidate who is a deeply unpopular, extremely vulnerable,
scandal-plagued candidate... They could blame the fact that Clinton only won 65 percent of
Latino voters—despite running against a candidate who has threatened mass deportation of
undocumented immigrants whom he described as "rapists" and "criminals," and who promised to
build a Mexican-financed wall on our Southern border. At least 27 percent of Latinos voted
for...Trump! There were other voter problems Clinton ran into, which likely dwarf any effect
third party voters had on denying her the presidency (not least of which because it's ridiculous to
assume third party voters would automatically go to Clinton). But self-reflection is hard and
blaming the deliberately marginalized voices of third party voters by the Democratic and
Republican parties is easier.”
This article is perhaps the most solidly spot-on. The Democrats will continue to blame everyone
but themselves for their pathetic losses. The Democrats cannot even rally Latinos to their cause,
even in the face of being crassly slandered with untrue epithets and menacingly threatened with
deportation. Could this maybe POSSIBLY reflect the fact that the Democrats offered no concrete
reason to vote for them, given the Obama administration’s embrace of the shameful ICE
(Immigration and Customs Enforcement), which operates private prisons that treat undocumented
immigrants in the cruelest fashion?
The Democrats and their bullying minions will always find reason to blame the Green Party,
despite how the Green Party actually advocates for their rights (unlike the corporate, corrupt
Dems), and despite how a true democracy entails incubation and fostering of third, fourth, and
fifth parties. Look at European democracies for proof. I would say that the Democrats lack
facility for self-reflection, but I think a truer statement would be that they are just fine in only
offering the façade of being a foil to the Republicans. The fact of the matter is, they offer a few
conciliatory gestures toward progressives to lure them into supporting their mostly neoliberal
programs, which fall right in line with Republican mandates.
From: "Is This the Death of the Democratic Party? The Death of the Liberal Media? And
by the Way, Bernie Would Have Won":
“There have always been two narratives about this election. One predicted what actually
happened in the end, while the other missed the boat completely. Narrative 1. Bernie Sanders
represents the unachievable in American politics. Hillary Clinton is the candidate of experience
and realism. Donald Trump is a temporary phenomenon, feeding on passions and resentments.
The election is about the cultural values of tolerance, openness and identity, therefore we must
support Hillary. Anyone who doesn’t support Hillary must be suspected of harboring racist and
misogynist feelings themselves. Narrative 2. Bernie Sanders is offering necessary correctives, at
the most minimal level, to the excesses of the neoliberal economy of the past 40 years. Clinton
represents the essence of said neoliberalism, embodying its worst practices, from trade to
immigration. Donald Trump has tapped into real economic anxiety among those who have lost
under neoliberal globalization. This election is about returning equal economic rights to all
citizens. Only Bernie Sanders has the winning message for this explosive situation.
Those who believed in Narrative 2 - which included a vanishingly small proportion of
intellectuals - got it right at every turn. Trump won, Hillary lost, and we are in for a very bad
time. Essentially, those who chose Hillary over Bernie during the primaries, when we had a
clear choice, voted for Trump, since Bernie was always the stronger candidate against
Trump. The polls consistently proved it. Given a clear progressive choice in the primaries,
the Democratic Party establishment went for the failed neoliberal candidate of war,
inequality and injustice. At the moment, the entire party stands discredited. The philosophy
of catering to upwardly mobile professionals, exploiting immigrants in the neoliberal setup
while simultaneously expounding their virtues, and constructing a façade of moral
righteousness while ignoring the existence of poor people of any color, stands discredited.”
Mic drop. Curtain slams shut. Fuck Trump, and fuck the Democrats. GREEN PARTY, or
bust!
!
Madeline
By Natalie Crick
Madeline,
She was born
In summertime, with
Rainbow smoke pouring out from her mouth
Like journeys in the sky.
Doves danced in her hair.
Who would know
What was to happen next?
She lived in a chapel
Of glass walls
And God was like
A beautiful deviant to her, a brother maybe.
Madeline. Oh, how I will miss you!
What is life all about?
It is like upsetting all of your best friends and
Turning around
And around
And around
Until
BLACK
Blood, it pumps through her veins.
Her heart is white jelly.
Madeline, when she was born
She died inside herself.
Sssshhhh, everything is quiet now.
Author bio: Natalie Crick, from Newcastle in the UK, has found delight in writing all of
her life and first began writing when she was a very young girl. Her poetry is influenced
by melancholic confessional Women's poetry. Her poetry has been published in a range
of journals and magazines including Cannons Mouth, Cyphers, Ariadne's Thread,
Carillon and National Poetry Anthology 2013.
TWO pOeMs
By Matt Alexander
Author bio: Matt Alexander is a scientist and writer in Philadelphia. When struck by
insight, he shouts “Bazinga!”,not “Eureka!”, although he has nothing against Archimedes
and is in fact himself an avid bath-taker. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in
Maudlin House, After the Pause, and Five2One Magazine. Follow him on Twitter at
@thenamesmatta.
Eructation
Stop belching? If only it were so
Easy to chew your food
Thirty-two times before swallowing
Aerates it more than your average
Person would never listen to my prodigious digestion
Borborygmus; no I’m not farting
Or consuming media mixed by a food processor.
Cooking at home is both healthier and cheaper
But watch out for the soil foods
Exercise too
Is now the pastime of the capitalizers
Because have you seen the price of a Crossfit class?
Can you believe how fat some people are?
Slobs, uncouth like a visible bra strap
Uncultured like yogurt fired in a kiln
Flatulating, flailing like a fish in our economy
Trickling like blue rain drops down my Uber’s window
As it does on the plains of Kansas
Which is not a bad gig but offers no protections either
With all my equally-loved tax dollars going
To the you-know-who-s
Burping with their Double Big Gulps
Jasper says you should have to pass a test before you can vote
Why We Run
“There’s a naked man in that window”
Said the howling dog and it was true
The man was changing as we all
Are and the dog was that man’s
Best friend but the canine had amnesia
Which is a sickness of your mind
In which you hear all possible
Projections of the past so none is true and
All our minds have it to some extent
The man had no other friends as
None of us do to some extent
(Except those select few with dogs)
So the man came to the window and said
“Here Fido” and the dog was frightened
Who was this man who knew his name?
And ran as far away as he could which was
Quite far because he had no idea who the man
His master was and how could any of us know
Who we are sleeping with or learning from
That’s why we run
Some would say were born to
How could I have known; you couldn’t
Either so that’s why we ran blindly into
The street and were crushed by trucks
My Love Has Gone to Voicemail
(SATIRE)
!
By Jon Wesick
Finally, a smart, self-assured woman who seemed interested in me! Wet met at the gym
as I was starting my work out on the weight machines and she was finishing hers. She
was a tall, blonde wildlife biologist who told me about her trip to Australia and in a
throaty voice described Sydney’s topless beaches. I called her that very night.
“This is Susan. Leave a message after the beep.”
I responded in my best radio DJ voice and then waited for days. Nothing. When I called
back again and again, it was always the same – self-conscious pulse, unsteady palms, my
dry-throated anticipation at the first ring, and the slow-motion rejection of that recorded
message.
After more tries I decided I would date her answering machine instead. It made sense.
We’d already spent more time talking with than I had with Susan. The night before our
date I only slept a few hours. At the office the next day I fantasized about removing her
battery cover and then slowly undoing the Philips head screws to reveal the holy of
holies, her circuit board. Oh the thought of those womanly transistors, capacitors, and
diodes took my breath away.
Somehow, despite my distraction, I made it through the work day. Then at 6:00 I drove to
the restaurant. As I searched for a parking spot on the narrow streets, doubts assailed me.
Would she be a boxy unit that resembled a Soviet refrigerator or even worse only a
disembodied voice residing in an electronics rack at Verizon headquarters? My
underarms began to exude that vegetable-soup smell I get when I’m nervous. I wished I’d
brought some deodorant and a clean shirt.
When I arrived and saw her sitting atop the clean, white tablecloth, I realized that I’d
worried for nothing. She was beautiful – a slim model with graceful lines, rounded
corners, and healthy brushed-aluminum skin. Most of all, her clean, user-friendly LCD
display set me immediately at ease.
After I ordered Lobster Florentine for me and a cobb salad for her, we got to know each
other. Although I find it hard to talk to answering machines, her nonjudgmental manner
loosened my tongue. I related my dreams and fears. I even confessed my most intimate
sexual fantasies. Unlike so many women she didn’t monopolize the conversation with
complaints about competitive female coworkers and dastardly ex boyfriends. When I
asked if she would go home with me, she didn’t say no.
Being a gentleman, I won’t describe the details of our lovemaking except to say that
although stiff and cold at first she warmed to my touch and soon proved extraordinary.
Now that she’s moved in, I’m enjoying the rich, emotional life, I’d thought only belonged
to others. No more hours of work broken up by an empty apartment, lonely meals, and
bad TV. Now, whenever I feel the need for human contact, I reach out and hear, “This is
Susan. Leave a message after the beep.”
Author bio: Author of the poetry collection Words of Power Dances of Freedom, host of
the Gelato Poetry Series, and an editor of the San Diego Poetry Annual, Jon Wesick has
published more almost a hundred short stories in journals such as The Berkeley Fiction
Review, Clockwise Cat, Space and Time, Zahir, Tales of the Talisman, Blazing
Adventures, and Metal Scratches. One was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Jon has a
Ph.D. in physics and is a longtime student of Buddhism and the martial arts.
The Death of Quetzal Blanco
By Tracy Thomas
For Deus Ex Machina
Can you give us a hand? We have this lost civilization to unearth. We have this
candlelight to rescue from an uncertain fate. Hanging from the trees the apples are so
shiny and black down under the ice of the lake. The songs they’re made of would like to
take us faraway. This conversation you’re having with god-knows-who, it’s just a breeze
blowing through the stockyards of our mind. You have birds sleeping in your trees. You
can’t be that bad. There’s Cro-Magnon Man and Neanderthal Man and the man atop the
horse in the square all green with verdigris. Can you give us a hand? We have these
songbirds to devour. We have these beavers to send into space. When they come back
they’ll be muscle men kicking sand on wimps on the beach. There’s no need to get all
rattled. These holes through your hands and feet, they could be a good thing.
Verdigris Man has joined the Foreign Legion. He wants to see morning mists
among the cinnamon trees. He wants to see where choucroute comes from. I want to see
ants carry away a civilization. If you can read this you’re already viewing earth from the
vantage of a symphony. Your phone is ringing. It’s just the wind playing some broken
reeds in the winter shallows. We’re on fire in this dump truck. Our ashes are bound for
nowhere good. Our ashes will fertilize black apples growing on the bottom of some
Russian lake. There’s fish down here that want to eat your houseboat. I’d shake your
hand but mine’s doodling voodoo. This horizon you’re admiring has gnawed its foot off
to get out of the trap. Your phone’s ringing. The birds sleeping in your trees, they let the
devil pet them.
Have you ever been lost in the rain? The rain on lily pads? The rain on black
apples? The rain on the far side of forever? The rain on Verdigris Man? He’s playing
pinochle. There’s nothing like pinochle in the rain. I’d shake your hand but I’m blessing
this rabid fox. They say the god from the machine will wreck your story. What if the god
from the machine is your story? Here take this ball and run that way. Mind the quicksand.
Your four year old is sharpening her incisors on my forearm. Can you give us a hand?
We have these tombs to desecrate. I swear I have knowledge to impart. Maybe it’s from
the same god-knows-who you’ve been talking to.
Verdigis Man has come loose from the pedestal. He’s catching the redeye to
heartbreak pie. He’s got a critical meeting with the god from the machine. He’s catching
the redeye to salamander sky. I’m under that sky with an umbrella of wolves. I’m
practicing speaking the language of rust. Many of its syllables once held things together.
Can you give us a hand? We have these warthogs to fertilize. Verdigris Man is visiting all
the capitals of the world. No matter where he goes he invariably winds up for sale at a
swap meet. He wants to be in a snow globe with all the capitals of the world. The sun sets
differently in all the capitals of the world, sometimes in the east, sometimes in the west,
sometimes chased by bullies down a dead end alley, another time with lace stockings
hiding in the wilds of the Balkans, sometimes dressed in Versace with sewage on its
shoes, sometimes in a mush of gray flowers where millipedes live. Sometimes it doesn’t
matter that there’s a sunset because you’re just beautiful anyway.
If I were beautiful like you, I’d live like it’s always sunset and cable cars would
always wait for me, cable cars of green travertine, even if there’s never been a cable car
in my city. Exotic birds like the one’s you see in National Geographic and in aviaries
would whirl around me, quetzals, lyre birds, golden pheasants, birds of paradise, cocks of
the rock, a rainbow of trogons and fly catchers. They’d be my language that everyone can
understand. I’d bathe in blue cream with little boats of sandalwood and patchouli. I’d pay
with a currency of glances. I’d live in a white shipwreck on the banks of the Oise. These
lines would be more than a circus of fuchsias; they’d be geckos in the wassail bowl;
they’d be diamond marmalade. They’d be bare feet and lavender. If I made a fire, it
would murmur the depths of all dances because fire’s witnessed them all. In the snow
globe we’re living in, it’s always snowing at twilight.
This hand you’ve given us, it’s been sipping pineapple schnapps. It’s been fooling
with black water and the muffins of the dead. It pulled the rip cord. This hand you’ve
given us keeps turning the pages. There’s nothing on those pages but places to hide ashes.
There’s nothing on those pages but the revenants of shattered things. This hand you’ve
given us, it’s shredding cabbages with a violin; it’s a spray of transparent roses. Let’s call
it, water garden on the moon; let’s call it, ten broken songs for the everyday. Let’s call it
the badlands of saints. The God from the Machine is watching the hand. Now he’s
dissolving the hand in aqua regia to transmute it into old fashioned Christmas candy,
electric madrigals, into dew on sleeping birds. He’s a blue collar god. He’s a god with
calluses. He’s a working man’s god. He’s everygod. He wants to be a god on a pedestal.
He wants to live in some paradise and drink nectar and ambrosia. He wants to be one of
those gods that eat offerings at the crossroads. But he’s the Deus Ex Machina. He’ll fix
your dead end. He’ll give you back your happy ending. He’s the God from the Machine.
He’ll drop the boom on you.
Author bio: Tracy Thomas has lived his entire life in the vastness of the American West;
Colorado, Wyoming, California and finally Arizona, basically a non-stop Frederic
Remington painting. His poems have appeared in The Southern Review, The Journal and
Bombay Gin. Since his plans for graduate school have fallen through he’s
currently searching for a cave in the Sonoran Desert where he’s hoping to begin
experiencing St. Anthony-style visions.
Artwork by PD Lyons
Artist bio: PD Lyons was born and raised in the USA. He has been traveling and living
abroad since 1998, and is now residing in Ireland. He received The Mattatuck College
Award for Outstanding Achievement in Poetry. His two books of poetry include Searches
For Magic, and Caribu & Sister Stones: Selected Poems, published by Lapwing Press,
Belfast. A third book, Myths Of Multiplicity, was published by Erbacce press, Liverpool,
as part of the 2014 Erbacce International Annual Prize The work of PD Lyons has also
appeared in many magazines and e-zine/blogs throughout the world, including The
SHoP, Books Ireland, Irish American Post, Boyne Berries, Virtual Writer, Slipstream,
West 47 Galway Arts. He was recently selected to participate in the Human Rights
Consortium at the School of Advanced Study, in a University of London publication
titled ‘In Protest: 150 Poems for Human Rights’. He blogs at:
https://pdlyons.wordpress.com/
Scorpion Night
Bad Flowers and Graveyard Dirt
(for Patti Smith)
By Tanaka Mhishi
Momma grew bad flowers
outta her butt cheeks
tak-a-tak rhythm
running a train track
though cotton panties.
She found me in the street
the way Albertine found her
the way Jean Genet found her
the whole bastard ancestry
of rock star poets going back
to God herself
and now God is shucking oysters at the deli,
watching sweat hiss down salt arms
until it evaporates
halfway to the ground.
Momma I've got a belly full of poems
and a demon on my back, and all
the demons come with backups;
show them a cruciform and they'll reboot.
Momma they raped me by the station.
Momma they chained me to the earth.
Momma my body doesn't fit like it used to.
and
I went to sleep at night thinking I would die
and
I went to sleep at night hoping I would die
and
I went to sleep at night, woke up in Père Lachaise
breathing bone dust.
Momma where were you in the night?
Where was your holy voice
and your wrists that look like mine?
Where were your wings when I needed them?
Momma I have seen the face of God
and she is awkward
Boy elbows. White shirt.
Sainted urchin. Car crash alchemist.
Momma thank you.
You taught me rough
and weird
and urgent
Momma thank you.
Thank you.
Amen.
Editor’s note: This poem originally appeared at Voicemail Poems, Winter 2015.
Author bio: Tanaka Mhishi is a poet, playwright and performer who lives in London,
England. His work has previously appeared in such publications as Rogue Agent
Journal and Words Dance- for full details visit tanakamhishi.co.uk.
Authenticity & Other
Bona Fide
Synthetics
By RL Black
A polyester man carried a basket of plastic produce through the self
checkout at an all night grocery store. A nylon woman waiting in the next
lane over watched him as he carefully scanned and bagged his items. The
self-checkout lane was usually empty. It’s like a bird with two heads. The
nylon woman never uses the self checkout, but she listens when that bird
sings, and now she thinks the bird isn’t singing, it’s weeping, and it sounds a
lot like the beep, beep, beeping the register kept making when the polyester
man waved his artificial apples like they were the real thing.
Author bio: RL Black is EIC of two online journals, and her own writing
has been published across the web and in print. She tweets @rlblackauthor.
cross hatch
by !"#$%&'#
!
adjudication, roots spiral violent ) desecration!
form nails, simple irony!
feet – unwood end calluses !
these nude heels!
press in !
stead – soil, groans in abominable !
relish!
! swaths loins!
simmer, a shimmer spinner — in!
! god we trust!
! ! through cranium fissures!
! eyes brim bright – no other!
silver air-flipped ( deconstructive. Dime
!
red ! ! ! ! ! ! ! end!
!
it leaks, it strains, it fails!
clock!
wise motion!
!
it retains it!
to bend!
into a fall
wicked
fierce (in !
desiring !
to live!
!
in
desire)!
im purity!
in it!
body!
wordless
!
seas !
smoky red!
red (in it !
in it)!
ruby bled.!
Author bio: JR Vork is a connoisseur of empty space and minimalism.
My Mother's Decision
By Jeri THompson
Combing gray shag carpet
through her toes, she drags her feet to the coffee,
cigarette in hand. She greets another day
with yesterday’s mascara sliding down her face,
and the far-away gaze of the dead.
Coffee and a cigarette. Time to get up,
get out of bed, get dressed and get ready - one more day. She breathes deeply
the blaze-back sulfurous sizzle that shifts the weight of her world.
Sunrise/sunset. Day-in/day-out. Day-after-day-after-day.
Racing to place. Racing to finish.
There was nothing to look forward to as she tunneled
through her future. Restful weekends were what her co-workers had.
Her Saturdays and Sundays were booked in advance –
rounding-up children to help wash, scrub, dust, change bedding while
cooking only what her alcoholic-couch-humping-husband wanted,
while fetching his beers.
She lived a life sentence unbound by chains or cages.
I prefer to remember my mom the way she was
after work (paid) and work (house). We three would watch TV
together on the couch, in the security of the 1970s middle class glow.
There was serenity in that room. Then father’s car pulled
into the driveway. My brother and I ran to our rooms, closed our doors.
We left her alone, in the dark room, with the TV still aglow.
Before she became a widow, she picked up her own bottle
and continued to drink her way into a second husband.
They had similar tastes for cheap bourbon and chain-smoking.
My mother’s life was scripted from the moment she fell for my father;
pregnant before marriage, shaming her family.
That single choice buried her long before the cancer
overtook her in the final stretch of the race
Author bio: JT lives in a Coastal community in So. Cal. She loves riding a Trikke on the
beach trail.Nominated for a Pushcart Prize a few years back. You can find her work in
Mas Tequila Review, Chiron Review, Yellow Chair Review and Rat's Ass among others.
Author bio: PT Davidson is originally from New Zealand, although he has spent the past
25 years livingabroad in Japan, the UK, Turkey and the UAE. His poetry has appeared in
Otoliths, BlazeVOX, streetcake, After the Pause, Sein und Werden, Futures Trading,
Snorkel, Clockwise Cat, Tip of the Knife, foam:e and Your One Phone Call.
History Smudgings
By Devin Taylor
Gaius Julius Caesar lived
once upon a rhyme
on a bready diet of canned pico
de gallo and fennel seed
crackers; the bags under his eyes
were brim filled with watercolor
drippings. An infinite supply
of handmade macaroni paintings
could not mend his broken
heart; he died as he lived.
Centuries later, landscapers tread
where he once trod, and face full frontal
the floral dilemma of their procession.
To landscape or not to landscape?
—the rhododendron conundrum.
And soon enough, within the bosom
of the Colosseum’s basin, a crop of
a flock of skyscrapers bloomssomed,
and we dubbed it Fifth Avenue!
Meanwhile, back at the ranch,
the pines of Rome sprout
coniferous mustaches,
and don togas and tunics
and deciduous lisps while
gossiping the fate of the forest:
—How's the weather, Woody?
—Quite upwardish, actually:
Upchucked from his tall tower,
Toting a bad comb-over and coonskin cap,
A forecast predicting ethnic cleansing arrived,
Piggybacking upon a mallard down the brook
Just over the rainbow which countrymen
Call the “Rubicon.” We must prepare
Harvest festivities posthates! Let no
Block-of-wood be without casket
Or cork of Baccunysus's finest, for
This absurd drought has finally ended,
And we can now wash away
The dryclean stains of dirty history:
No more shall Carthaginian ashes
Dust our unleaded aguapipes,
Like undissolved Tang residue;
No more shall undocumented Barbarians
Scale our Great Walls of Hadrian's.
Let the Kool Aid of the past flow
Through the sewered veins of the future
And make great again this fair skewered nation!
Trump Le Monday!
From province to provincial,
a trend emerges: No self-respecting aqueduct
is seen without adjacent bottles of Dawn
dish soap! News travels fast of the next
big utopia, a cornucopia of suds free of filth.
Misbegotten bubbles, blowing in the wind
like Monsanto seeds, would have you believe
otherwise. The general consensus of these
expatriates: Expunge every sponge from
the universe, and then some; it will get you nowhere
regardless. Elbow-deep in the oily
past, I cannot help but agree.
Author bio: Devin Taylor studies English and Creative Writing at
Washington College. His work can be found in The Poeming Pigeon, In
Between Hangovers, The Lake (UK), and Silicon Heart Zine. He has
forthcoming publications in Gargoyle, Five 2 One, MUSH/MUM, Pure
Slush, and BLYNKT. He plays bass and electric kazoo for the DC area band
Knuckleberry Finn.
BIG GRAMS
VERSUS
PHANTOGRAM
!
CD REVIEW By Alison Ross
!
Adam Ant once said that there were no fresh ideas, but that the way he
"clashed" different things together was novel. I think that is a discerning
assessment of the discrepancy between perceived innovation and genuine
novelty: Nothing new under the sun, except how disparate ideas are
juxtaposed and sculpted into a coherent whole.
I would say that Big Grams' EP most assuredly falls within the purview of
this perspective: The collective, made up of OutKast rapper Big Boi and
New York dream-pop duo Phantogram, cultivate writhing rhythms that
collide with jarring cadences and tangle up with southern-fried raps. There
are guest stars on the EP as well, such as Skrillex (bouncing away on the
fluffy, freak-funk of “Drum Machine”) and Killer Mike, whose unfortunate
feature is a misguided melange of misogynistic lyrics and bland beats.
!
!
!
But otherwise, Big Grams far outpaces Phantogram's newest LP as far as
sonic inventiveness. Three, the only Phantogram I own, is a largely
lackluster affair, zealously mixing styles and sounds in an effort to entice,
but ultimately to leaden effect. There is one standout song, the searing single
"You Don't Get Me High Anymore," which swoons and swirls like
psychedelic disco. Other than that, the album is sterile. Give me the hiphop/electro-pop
clashing mash-up of Big Grams any day.
!
!
!
Trumpus: A Christmas Tale
By Heidi Hough
ONCE UPON A TIME, in a land not nearly far enough away, there was a malevolent red
Christmas ball of a fairy godfather.
Trumpus was his name.
“Godfather, godfather!” screeched a group of small-of-heart but big-of-mouth peach
creatures who wore red-brimmed hats. “Give me back my country!”
The red Christmas-ball man cackled maniacally. “It will be great again!” Trumpus boomed.
The small but many screeched in pleasure.
*
“Mother,” asked a small African-American girl in South Carolina, because it was statistically
unlikely she would have the pleasure of saying “Father,” “Mother, what made America
great?” She had seen the news and the headlines.
And Mother could not answer because the small-heart, big-mouth peach throng were saying
“God” and “themselves,” and she did not want her daughter to have to think about how it was
actually on the backs of her ancestors, before bed.
*
“We’ll get ‘em out!” hooted the Trumpus and the peach horde hollered.
*
“Grandmother,” asked a young boy in Los Angeles, of Guatemalan descent. Grandmother
handed him his backpack. His statistically-probable parents were already hard at minimumwage
work. “Now that Trumpus is The Most Bigly Fairy Godfather will we have to leave our
home? Like the Mexicans?”
Grandmother sighed, because she knew the peach creatures did not know the difference or
care that she and her Mexican neighbors were American citizens. She said in Spanish,
because she loved her language and wanted her grandson to too, “No se. Posible.” **
“Grab her by the pussy!” crowed Trumpus, like a big, orange rooster who got out of a cage
that should have stayed locked. “Cock a doodle doo!”
*
The orange horde did not look surprised that Fairy Godfather Trumpus the red Christmas ball
was suddenly a rooster, but then, they did not become surprised if he became a beanstalk or
Michael Corleone, because Trumpus also wore a red hat and was making them offers they
couldn’t refuse.
“Daddy’s?” asked a tiny set of twins in Wisconsin, who loved cat videos and were eerily
gifted at navigating parental controls on YouTube. “Why would Trumpus want to hurt a
pussy? And why are all those ladies in swimming suits standing around a pumpkin?”
*
One dad dad face-palmed while the other dad hit pause. One of the twins was a girl, which
meant she might think walking in high heels and swimming suits made her pretty, and one of
them was a boy, who might grow up to think it was okay to talk about ladies in swimming
suits that way. Never mind how unrealistic it was to be a talking red Christmas ball.
*
That night all the parents tucked their children in and told them a fairy tale where, even when
things seemed lost, like little children in a dark wood, those same children stuck together and
when the spell ended at four-years-later midnight, they realized it had been just another big,
bad story, with a new chapter on the next page.
And it was still possible it all ended happily ever after.
**Potential good news for small Guatemalan boy! Trumpus has announced he likes
Mexicans who are good Americans. It is hoped the peach horde reads good news.
Author bio: Heidi Hough is an MA candidate in creative writing at Dartmouth College in
New Hampshire. She has written for various publications including The Los Angeles Times
and Huffington Post. Her last name is pronounced 'huff' not 'ho,' and her memoir about a
cultish upbringing is forthcoming. More writing can be found at at heidihough.com .
Photography by JR Vork
JR Vork writes: “The photo was taken at Discovery Green in downtown
Houston when they had an angel sculpture exhibit. I was trying to capture
its clean lines. Later on, the edits were done after reading Dante's Inferno
for a poetry class; the red really brought out a different perspective.”
Artist bio: JR Vork is a connoisseur of empty space and minimalism.
By JON WESICK
SATIRE
Author bio: Author of the poetry collection Words of Power Dances of Freedom, host of
the Gelato Poetry Series, and an editor of the San Diego Poetry Annual, Jon Wesick has
published more almost a hundred short stories in journals such as The Berkeley Fiction
Review, Clockwise Cat, Space and Time, Zahir, Tales of the Talisman, Blazing
Adventures, and Metal Scratches. One was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Jon has a
Ph.D. in physics and is a longtime student of Buddhism and the martial arts.
CLARK’S MIXED MARTIAL ARTS BUFFET
Do you enjoy fine dining but worry about what it will do to your weight? Then come to
Clark’s Mixed Martial Arts Buffet where you can work off that 16-oz. prime rib in a lifeor-death
struggle against a trained mixed martial arts fighter.
Start out with our all-you-can-eat, soup-and-salad bar. You’ll need that energy when you
go three rounds against Rick “Mad Dog” Slaughter to win a chance to advance to entrees.
At Clark’s MMA Buffet we feature ham, chicken, turkey, our famous prime rib, and a
realistic venue to test your martial skill. At Clark’s MMA Buffet you can experience joint
locks, eye gouges, and finger jabs to the throat all while working up an appetite for our
delicious side dishes. And if you win three matches in a row, we don’t give you some
silly trophy. We give you cheesecake!
At Clark’s MMA Buffet paramedics are standing by so you don’t have to miss dinner by
going to the emergency room. We’re open from 11:00 AM to 9:00 PM every day. That’s
Clark’s MMA Buffet, where a bone fracture means your meal is free!
CONCERNED CITIZENS FOR TRUCK CONTROL
July’s tragedy in France shows that it’s time to get serious
about ending truck violence. Each year motor vehicles kill
as many Americans as firearms yet the automobile industry
continues selling SUVs and pickup trucks to a gullible
public. As a longtime car owner, I can honestly say that no
civilian needs to drive anything larger than a Prius. That’s
why I’m urging you to tell your legislators to stand up to
the AAA and pass the Gasoline Bill.
The Gasoline Bill is a common-sense measure that will
keep gasoline and diesel fuel out of the hands of criminals
and terrorists. It imposes a ten-day waiting period on all
fuel sales and restricts them to authorized purchasers who
have been fingerprinted and had their identities stored in a
government database. The Gasoline Bill also limits sales to
three gallons.
If we act now, we can end truck violence. And if you still
want to drive a truck, join the Army!
Acceptance paraded gaily
By Andrew C. Brown
It is the colour of flesh
I lick tenderly exploring tasting testing teasing ravishingly responding wriggling and
writhing excited with anticipation voraciously you baptise with an exploding tsunami of
arrival staining my sheet that is flecked with this shade
opening similarly sunlit curtains
seeking sanctuary welcoming warmth of serenity feeling stuttering belonging released of
shackled decades’ tantric zenith shattered satiates me your peak reaches crescendo your
breath grabbing your lipped colour is now your cheeked hue
hope is coerced from fate
racing for life raising funds to seek a cure for our ills I support my daughter as she walks
and runs the yards and miles
though family ties are not always seen to be in this
disaster strewn contact is never deliberate and is always given unconditionally
it is still the colour of friendship and passion
in its midst not a worry grateful for their loyalty curating my insincerity through unsure
liaisons always aligning attempting searching for perfection
within blancmange
wobbling colour of childish fun swaying seductively then splattered and splayed spoonful
fed and savoured and
as a cartoon character
chasing elusive acceptance of clattering and chattering commotion and fuss a figure of
fun figuratively pointed at and speculated upon detecting Englishness it is as
summer breezed elephants begging receipt
when wafting buds of spray watering children share toys and buzz of laughter while
adults choose tickets monotonously addictively aspiring to win maybe a pot of jam or a
goldfish on a bike?
it is acceptance paraded gaily
certainness marched together uniform crew cut and long there is no model but an
individual searching for acceptance and equality am I up to my definition as I savour
assimilate accept and thrill you within the shimmering Palermo colour of our merging
knowingness?
It is the colour of flesh opening similarly sunlit curtains hope is coerced from fate though
family ties are not always seen to be in this it is still the colour of friendship and passion
within blancmange as a cartoon character summer breezed elephants begging receipt it
is acceptance paraded gaily.
Author bio: Andrew performs spoken word as The Grandad from Knowle West, an
estate in South Bristol that has the dubious distinction of being among the worst hundred
areas of the UK. He is an ex-prisoner, a recovering addict and winner of a community
regeneration award and also a Koerstler Award when he was serving his time. His poems
have been accepted for publication in both the UK and the US, he recently had an
invitation to read his accepted poem, Tidying up after Helen at the launch of
Incandescent Mind in Long Beach and Orange County...he has had to turn down this kind
invitation due to him not being allowed entry to the States because of his criminal
record...and he would not be able to afford the fare.
DON JUAN by Nelly Sanchez
Artist bio: For around ten years, Nelly Sanchez has been making cut-outs. She has been
published in journals such as Sonic Boom, Sein und Werden, Le Pan des Muses. She has
also participated in exhibitions: in 2012 in Paris, in 2014 in Italy and France, and in 2016
in Paris She also has illustrated writings like La Falaise était nue (Bernard Baritaud),
Venus in fur (Sader-Masoch). Her artwork can be seen at www.nellysanchez.fr/.
TWO POEMS
By Michael Lee Johnson
Author bio: Michael Lee Johnson lived ten years in Canada during the Vietnam era. He
is a Canadian and US citizen. Today he is a poet, editor, publisher, freelance writer,
amateur photographer, and small business owner in Itasca, Illinois. He has been
published in more than 880 small press magazines in 27 countries, and he edits 10 poetry
sites. His website is http://poetryman.mysite.com/. Michael is the author of The Lost
American: From Exile to Freedom, and several chapbooks of poetry, including From
Which Place the Morning Rises and Challenge of Night and Day, and Chicago
Poems. He also has over 92 poetry videos on YouTube as of 2015.
Iranian Poetry Lady
The first time I saw your face, cosmetic images, dust, dirt, determination
fell across your exiled face. Coal smoke lifted with your simple words and short poems.
Your meaning drawn across a black board of past, rainbows, future
fragment, still in the shadows.
Muhammad, Jesus twins, only one forms a hallo alone.
One screams love, drips candle wax, lights life, shakes, love.
I encrust your history in the Ginkgo tree, deliverance.
I wrap in the branches the whispers in your ears a new beginning.
I am the landscape of your future walk soft peddle on green grass.
I will take you there. I am your poet, your lead, freedom clouds move over then on.
I review no spelling, grammar errors; I lick your envelope, finish, stamp place on.
Down with age I may go, but I offer this set of wings I purchased at a thrift store.
I release you in south wind, storms, and warm in spring, monarch butterflies.
Your name scribbles in gold script.
Night, mysteries, follow handle, your own.
Flight of the Eagle
From the dawn, dusty skies
comes the time when
the eagle flieswithout
thought,
without aid of wind,
like a kite detached without string,
the eagle in flight leaves no traces,
no trails, no roadwaysnever
a feather drops
out of the sky
Perfect Pruning Shears By Linda Leedy Schneider
I am the bright blue Iris that blooms by her
back door. I am as precious as the black tulip
that is rooted in her heart.
Five paper wrapped messages wait on my stalk.
They will open sequentially in this garden
of symmetry. Scatter yellow truth again.
Everyday she comes with golden shears
prunes away the less than pretty,
daffodils withered and wasted
naked tulip stalks
peonies whose heavy heads
have sagged to the soil.
In this garden of symmetry security sameness
every flower must be
the picture on the seed packet.
We flowers think she should--
Let us be!
Tall as the cosmos,
free as the one eyed daisy,
rambling like the rose.
She could climb the cherry tree
live in the shifting clouds of beginnings.
Let humming birds nest in her hair.
Be washed by rain until
the golden scissors
grow green.
Author bio: Linda Leedy Schneider, winner of the 2012 Contemporary American Poetry
Prize, is a political activist, poetry and writing mentor and psychotherapist in private
practice. Linda facilitates workshops including The International Women's Writing
Guild's Annual Summer Conference which will be held July 7-14, 2017 at Muhlenberg
College, in Allentown, PA and The Manhattan Writing Workshop which she founded and
has led since 2008. Linda has written six collections of poetry including Some Days:
Poetry of a Psychotherapist (Plain View Press)
FINDING A
Book Review by ALISON ROSS
The music of The Cure has haunted my dreams and nightmares since 1985, when I
discovered it a bit fortuitously at a record store in a Texas college town, where I grew up.
Up until that point, I had been enamored of arena rock, mainly, and so The Cure's mad
hatter sensibilities were a revelation to me. Once The Cure infiltrated my existence, my
persona morphed into something altogether more cerebral, and yet whimsical: I began to
inhabit that pesky, precious paradox that The Cure practically invented.
Laurence (Lol) Tolhurst was a founding member of my beloved band, and while he no
longer plays in The Cure - having been kicked out in 1989 - he has written a brave and
beautiful book drawing on his experiences in the group, and his life beyond. And what a
tumultuous life he has had, both in the band and out, navigating alcoholism, failed
marriages, the death of a daughter, and the fracturing of friendships.
In the end, of course, he finds redemption and his life takes on the shimmering tones of a
sunrise in California, his adopted home.
Of course, the story starts in the 70s amid the suffocating fog of the lead-grey town of
Crawley, a dreary London suburb. The post-war milieu is oppressively dull, seemingly
deliberately designed to stultify the masses.
But feisty teenagers Lol, Robert Smith and Michael Dempsey were having none of it.
They sought refuge in music and proceeded to work on sculpting a new sound from the
still-smoldering ashes of punk, one that was as much a reaction against their environment
as punk and yet that had an airier, less aggressive vibe. (Granted, The Cure "signature"
sound later evolved into a melange of styles, but suffice it to say that The Cure's early
work was very much responsible for molding the post-punk template.)
Not that you will find much in-depth discussion of the sonic side of The Cure - and that's
okay. Lol's book is not meant to delve deeply into that topic. The title alone hints toward
more personal concerns, and that is exactly what Lol sets out to do: Write a memoir.
As such, often his book reads like private diary entries that we are somehow privvy to -
which also somewhat embarrasses us. Should we be getting this far into Lol's headspace?
He spills his soul to us, hardcore Cure fans, and we listen, keenly, because we were there
too, at least in spirit. We grew up listening to the Cure, intently, and their sound, their
lyrics, and their look shaped who we were, and who we became. We crave a meaningful
understanding about what went into making this band whose influence on modern music
and culture has been seismic, to say the least.
Cured gives us an intimate glimpse into the beginnings of the band, and the shifts that
took place in order to cement The Cure's place in rock history. And it gives us an intimate
glimpse into how being part of a band from a young age, in collusion with inhabiting a
failed family in a soulless suburb, can wreak havoc on someone's internal equanimity.
For hardcore Cure fans, Cured is a tear-jerker, because Lol is a cherished past member,
he of the curly mop and boyishly forlorn face, serving up his talents as both drummer and
keyboardist, helping to define The Cure's enticing groove.
But Cured also doubles as a story of hope and redemption: one man's tortured flailing
through dark, dank tunnels toward eventual daylight. For that reason alone, even casual
Cure fans will find much to devour.
The only "issue" I had with the book is that I felt Lol was almost too deferential toward
Robert Smith. I too love Robert Smith, but he's not without flaw, and certainly Robert,
with his own penchant for drink and drugs, helped "enable" some of Lol's problems with
alcohol?
But then, Robert was Lol's childhood best friend, and as Lol makes explicitly clear
throughout the book, it's important to let go of resentments to find full happiness.
Wallowing in hostilities will only corrode one's health. As Robert himself intones, "I
must fight this sickness; find a cure."
Indeed.
CRESCENT CITY BOOGALOO
For Jeff Morgan
By Alicia COLE
There's the strangest beat on the street
when the Crescent City Boogaloo Beasts
come to town: wild cats, wild dogs, wild
emus; wild, man, just wild. Wild men also.
Are the women also wild? Howling!
It's Frenchmen when the drums kick up,
when the last drummer kicks down and
the crowd is left sobbing. The woman
at the bar is tearing her dress.
There's coffee stains on her legs, like
she woke up cumming java -- wide awake
and needing one last jolt. I tell her, "Baby,
it's just cumming down, off the caffeine.
There's another drink. One last rolick
for the road. It'll take you to your other
Wonderland." So I leave her at the bar,
and let some other gentle escort her home.
I'm looking for someone in the corner.
It's the Crescent City Boogaloo when
everything has stopped, everything
is waiting to go, everything is being
cleaned up for tomorrow. Everyone,
just about everyone, is leaving to go home.
I'd like one last cigarette. I'd like one last
emu. I'd like one last dog, but just for
walking. I already have a cat.
There are beasts in this town. And they
are snarling and growling. And howling
and yipping. And sniffing the wind.
There's no one other than me
lighting that one last cigarette. But
this is poetry. You always have
to light your own cigarette. Especially
when you're still riding the Boogaloo
and looking for someone in the far left corner,
who, while he may light your smoke,
was never given the task of lighting your
artwork, not really, not truly. Inspiration
isn't the same as having the Boogaloo inside.
Author bio: Alicia Cole is emerging from a year of transience and homelessness.
Thankfully, she is still writing. You can find her at www.facebook.com/AliciaColewriter
and on Goodreads.
Kill Switch
By John Grey
I would kill in a kind of deliverance,
a love-in-response when I feel urged to utterance,
and draining of the bloody water
extracts a victim, clubs it, takes it –
the standing deaths a-strange-land, these Chinatown
counters, aisles, between the man's fingers,
but the one who killed it, strikes, these American strikes,
devour the world, would devour the universe
to sing its praises if it could.
I would kill. I would kill my way in human terms,
in the water, that liquid violence for killing, I would kill,
my reading a kind of killing, my killing
a diminishment, a noise of nerve and pulse,
I would kill everything
not just this targets before me
but meat, the way that butcher did it,
the deaths close to home, kitchen deaths,
those lives gutted, now twitching on the scales,
the tottering deaths in the streets,
the world that would kill this race,
three hundred million worth of dumb,
on the cutting board, to the sink, guts it,
drops it into the searing pan,
utters it, urges insanity on the body of the world,
is urged to think: What is it in me will not let me kill?
What is it in me would dearly love to see it?
Author bio: John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently
published in New Plains Review, South Carolina Review, Gargoyle and Big
Muddy Review with work upcoming in Louisiana Review, Cape Rock and
Spoon River Poetry Review.
THE PREGNANT FATHER TIME
By Eric Cline
insert
a videoclip
of a boy playing with dolls.
hold up now—
no.
i will not
slow down. read a story
about a child,
whose genitals were mutilated at birth,
that got raised as a girl, yet
felt like a boy, yet
felt like nothing
could save them from what they were
molded into.
those children died
by their own hands
guided
by everyone else’s hands.
children. plural. it’s happened
more than once.
i’m boycotting Target—
shut the fuck up. just shut the fuck up.
progress doesn’t happen quickly, you have
to wait, be patient...
tell that to the queers
whose hands flung the bricks
that broke down millions of closet doors.
tell it to the very real
mad scientists, the straight scientists
who still debate
the natural explanation
behind our natures. tell them:
progress takes time. don’t rush to make a decision
about the meaning of other lives
without first examining
what makes your own
clock tick.
Author bio: Eric Cline is a gay male poet who lives in Dumfries, Virginia and serves as
a staff writer for Yellow Chair Review. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in
The Commonline Journal, Rat's Ass Review, Crab Fat Magazine, After the Pause, and
elsewhere.
ART by St. Germain
Artist bio: St.Germain is wary of logic in art. His studio practice alternates
between orchestrating controlled accidents and piling up material to bury the
past. Like a happy-go-lucky fool, he goes wherever his intuition leads.
THE NATIONAL STAR
27/10/19 45p
EARTH UNRAVELS
By Maximilian Bowden
Late last night the earth unraveled,
revealing itself to be flat.
Scientists were alarmed, saying
‘we do not, as yet, know much’
and declining to comment further.
It is understood that whole crews
and entire container-ships
have plunged into the endless abyss.
The unraveling was sudden.
No rescue was ever attempted.
Many of the sailors chose sea
over the novel depths ahead,
in a predictable fashion.
The ramifications are still
unknown.
There is no contact outside of
our atmosphere, satellites flung
towards empty space. Astronauts
are unresponsive, feared long dead.
Economists estimated
Multibillion damages.
Readers booked on cross-continent
flights are urged to go online to
their airline’s website and log in.
New terms and conditions want ticks
&
subject-to-change fees may have changed.
The National Star has promised
your understanding, dear readers.
We have given our word.
This is not an easy time for
anyone.
As existing social structures
break down, we predict hardship, sad
glares, religious fervor and zeal.
In precautions against damnation
all theatres, bars and cinemas
are closing ‘til further notice.
Some armies are amassing on
high ground to defend from rapture
while researchers develop pills.
At these times we must listen to
instructions broadcast, 8am,
from local government ministers,
designed to ease the transition
to a new, flatter, world.
Our live feed will give updates on
the impending revelation,
alongside articles about
our favourite Edge getaways,
and ‘A Scrap of Hope to Cling to’:
post-unraveling short stories
from all your favourite authors.
Author bio: Maximilian Bowden is studying literature at the University of Essex. He has
had work published on the Humans and Nature blog and will feature in the September
issue of Ink in Thirds.
(place holder)
by Mark Noack
the spectators crunch popcorn
men & women colored in Crayola flesh
now the lights are off
the correct placement of words & images
women crawl under expectations
the rats move in
there are books movies the news
we are provided opinions
& meaning?
whose words?
i pretend that you exist
a particular person in a particular space
days occur daily
i write you into this stanza
i begin the process of revision
ah you’ve arrived in the language
i imitate conversation
long silent dialogues
you are delineated through exposition
my ubiquitous fingerprints
you are looking for alternatives
am i a boy or a girl?
i am outlined in chalk
blushing gums bleeding
you validate my smile
words spill out of an open wound
a tongue plunges into your throat
the boy beside you drools
a seagull stalking a bag of Doritos
you spit out a fingernail
another voice
the tongue drops prepositions
pronouns
demands a verb
you chew your hair
your mother takes the gun
i cower behind a phrase
i don’t want to bore you
the answer is over there
ehind all that mute applause
a comfortable coffin
the consolation prize
bodies stop bleeding
(control-alt-delete) reset
my small mind idling
scene five: kitchen conversation
instant coffee in small glass globes
i appreciate the adulation
i press the virtual button
somebody will arrive to mollify me
Author bio: Mark Noack is a network administrator & former chef from Maine, with an
interest in poetry of the postmodern period & of the late 20th century with a particular
focus on LANGUAGE, Oulipo & their derivatives. Recent writing has been primarily
based on various "engines," or structured formulas or processes, with some randomness
thrown in, to produce unexpected language. He recently had a piece published in The
Found Poetry Review's "Bowietry" issue. Read more at
http://www.hypocritescrayon.com
Postcard #5 by Bob Heman
Truth Bomb: Democrats Need to Embrace
Progressivism or Else Move Out of the Way
By Steven Singer
Democrats, liberals and progressives of every stripe - you’re not going to want to hear
this, but hear it you must.
We’ve gone around for too long thinking we’ve got all the answers, but obviously we
don’t.
Hillary Clinton lost. Donald Trump won. There’s something seriously wrong with what
we’ve been doing to get that kind of result.
There are some hard truths we’ve got to understand, that we’ve got to learn from.
Hearing them may be painful. Many of us will fight against it. But we can’t keep fooling
ourselves anymore. All that “hope” and “change” we’ve been waiting for - it has to start
with us, first.
We’re stuck in a loop and we’ve got to break ourselves out of it. And the only way to get
there is to break the track wide open.
It’s time to stop mourning.
Trump is President-elect.
Yeah, that sucks. Hard.
He’s going to protect us by enacting policies to hurt brown people. He’s going to make it
harder to get healthcare. He’s going to trample the Constitution. He’s going to offer up
our schools to private companies to do with as they please in secret using our tax dollars.
He’s going to legitimize white nationalism and embolden racists, bigots, sexist,
xenophobes, homophobes and every kind of hate group imaginable. He’s going to hand
out tax cuts to his megarich campaign contributors and tax us with the loss of government
services. He’s going to use the office as an opportunity to enrich himself and his
billionaire buddies and then go on social media and tweet about how he’s fighting for
working people.
I don’t like it any better than you. But it’s time to face it.
Sure, Clinton won the popular vote. Sure, there’s a recount going on in Michigan,
Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. I’d love for it to overturn Trump’s victory. But I have zero
confidence that it will. And I refuse to let it blind me to the urgent need for change.
The first thing we have to do is own up to one essential thing: Hillary Clinton was a bad
candidate.
The people were crying out for a populist champion. We had one in Bernie Sanders. He
would have destroyed Trump, but we blew it.
I’m not going to rehash it all again, but there’s no way you can honestly say the
Democratic primary process was fair. Party leaders were clearly in the bag for Clinton.
They ignored her negatives and what their constituency were trying to tell them.
This loss belongs squarely on the shoulders of establishment Democrats. It’s not the fault
of the electorate. It was the party’s job to convince people to vote for their candidate.
They didn’t do that. Instead they told people who to vote for - or more accurately who
NOT to vote for. It was clearly a losing strategy. It lost us the Presidency, Congress and
the Supreme Court. Own it.
Next we have to acknowledge that this problem is not new. The Democrats haven’t been
what they were or what they could be for a long time.
Since at least President Bill Clinton, many Democrats have traded in their progressive
principles for neoliberal ones. They have sold out their concern for social justice, labor
and equity in favor of slavish devotion to the same market-driven principles that used to
characterize the other side.
Bill Clinton approved NAFTA. He deregulated Wall Street paving the way for the
economic implosion. He expanded the failing war on drugs, increased the use of the death
penalty, used the Lincoln bedroom as a fundraising condo, ignored the genocide in
Rwanda while escalating conflicts abroad in Russia and the middle east. He dramatically
and unfairly increased the prison population. He pushed poor families off welfare and
into permanent minimum wage jobs. And when people had clearly had enough of it and
wanted a change, we gave them Al Gore a.k.a. Bill Clinton part 2.
THAT’S why an idiot like George W. Bush won in 2000. It wasn’t because of Green
Party challenger Ralph Nader. It was because people were sick of the Democrats not
being real progressives.
But we clearly didn’t learn that lesson, because we did the same damn thing in 2016.
President Barrack Obama is just as neoliberal as Bill. He gets credit for bringing back 16
million jobs lost under Bush. But we haven’t forgotten that they’re mostly minimum
wage jobs. He gets credit for reducing unemployment to only 4.7%. But we haven’t
forgotten that nearly 50 million Americans aren’t included in those statistics because they
haven’t been able to find a job in two years and have given up even looking for one.
Obama rolled back legal protections that used to stop the government from spying on
civilians, that used to stop the military from being used as a police force against civilians,
that used to stop the military from assassinating U.S. citizens, that used to protect
whisteblowers, that guaranteed free speech everywhere in the country not just in
designated “free speech zones.” Not only did he fail to close Guantanamo Bay, his
administration opened new black sites inside the U.S. to torture citizens.
Obama continued the endless wars in the middle east. Sure, he had fewer boots on the
ground, but infinite drone strikes are still a continuation of Bush’s counterproductive and
unethical War on Terror.
And when it comes to our schools, Obama continued the same corporate education
reform policies of Bush - even increasing them. He pushed for more standardized testing,
more Common Core, more privatization, more attacks on unions, more hiring unqualified
Teach for America temps instead of authentic educators.
Voters clearly wanted a change. We wanted a real progressive champion who would roll
back these neoliberal policies. Instead we got Hillary Clinton a.k.a. Obama part 2.
The Democrats didn’t learn a thing from 2000. We just repeated the same damn mistake.
And some of us still want to blame third party candidates like Jill Stein.
It wasn’t her fault, and it wasn’t voters faults. It was the Democratic establishment that
refused to listen to their constituency.
So here’s the question: will we do it again? Will we let party insiders continue in the
same neoliberal direction or will we change course?
Re-electing Nancy Pelosi to House Democratic leadership isn’t a good sign. She
represents the same failed administration. But we’ve kept her in place for another term,
repeating our mistakes.
Maybe we’ll make a change with U.S. Rep Keith Ellison as DNC chair. It would
certainly be a good start to put a real progressive in charge of the party. What better way
to challenge Trump’s anti-Muslim propaganda than by promoting the only Muslim
representative in the House to the head of our movement! That’s a sure way of showing
that Democrats include all peoples, creeds and religions in contrast to the Republicans
insularity. But there’s no guarantee we’re going to do it, and even if we did, it would only
be a start.
It’s time to clean house.
We need to take back what it means to be a Democrat. We can’t have organizations
funded by hedge fund managers and the wealthy elite pretending to be in our camp while
espousing all the beliefs of Republicans. We can’t have Democrats for Education
Reform, a group promoting the policies of George W. Bush, the economics of Milton
Friedman and prescribing laws crafted by the American Legislative Exchange council.
We don’t need Cory Booker going on Meet the Press to defend Mitt Romney against
income inequality and then pretending to champion working people while taking in
contributions from the financial sector. The brand needs to mean something again.
The party needs to move in an authentic progressive direction. So we need to get rid of all
the neoliberals. They can go become Republicans. All it would take is exchanging in their
blue ties for red ones. They’re functional Republicans already.
We’ve got leaders who can take their place. We’ve got longtime progressives like Bernie
and sometime progressives like Elizabeth Warren. We’ve got younger statesmen like
Nina Turner, Tulsi Gabbard, Jeff Merkley, John Fetterman, and Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, to
name a few. But we need new blood.
Of course none of this matters if we don’t take steps to secure the validity of our elections
in the first place.
We need to reform our entire electoral process. Ancient and hackable voting machines,
voter suppression laws and efforts, rampant gerrymandering and, yes, that stupid relic of
the slave states, the Electoral College - all of it must go. We’ve got to ensure that people
can vote, people do vote and it actually counts. And if something goes wrong, we need a
way to double check. Recounts in close races should be standard and automatic.
We’ve got to fight Citizens United and other Supreme Court rulings equating money with
speech. We’ve got to run people-powered campaigns like Sanders did so our politicians
aren’t so beholden to corporate and wealthy interests. We’ve got to make it easier for
third parties to be part of the process, to include their candidates in debates, etc.
These are some of the many challenges ahead.
Sure, we have to fight Trump. But the best way to do that is to reinvent ourselves.
If the Democrats aren’t willing to do that, many of us will go elsewhere. The party cannot
continue to exists if it continually ignores its base. It’s not enough to give us a
charismatic leader to latch onto - we need real progressive policies.
The next four years are going to be hard. Trump is going to make things very difficult for
the people we love. But in a way that’s a blessing.
We have a real opportunity to create an authentic resistance. People will be untied in their
dissatisfaction and anger at what Trump is doing to the country. They’ll be looking for
somewhere to turn, for a revolutionary movement to lead them through it.
We can give them another fake insurgency as we did against Bush. Or we can learn the
lessons of history.
We can move forward. We can change. We can become a party of real progressives.
Or if we need - we can start a new one from the ground up.
Editor’s note: This article was originally published at Gadfly on The Wall Blog, and is
reprinted with the author’s permission.
Word Quake by Maria A. Arana
ah, sweet autopsy of your embrace
herds of asteroids dress halo mother
in ice stairs
rain, faithful thief of emerald
moss asphalt doorframe
hits us
where the tsunami once did
lions roam the island’s scarring
sobbing
horses run with iron hoofs
and people hide
among the cardinals
in the distance
summer once gave mosquito planets
music to defenestrate ordinary
people
mixing the valley
with the attic
of your embrace
and when the fountain blinds
the scent the truck driver left
so others suffer
poverty from
bankers having them
let the rope song
of lovers
crush the clouds lava kisses
on the lips
paperclips on my tongue
from a tent around the avenue
ah, sweet assassin birth
saint rat addresses you with
satellite taxis
creaking stars
and shoeless people put to
bed on the 33 rd Sabbath
words break from the glass they filled
and now the void pricks line
the cactus hairs copper teeth
magnetized by sex
hands torment firemen
sleep or angels in a diamond
to look inside for the tornado
Author bio: Maria A. Arana is a teacher, writer, and poet. She has published poetry in
various journals. You can find her at http://rainingvoices.blogspot.com
Train TRACKS Train by Kole Allan M.
1
Your name
the sound of John or Jane
tracks upon your brain
this is your name
this is your name
this is your name
If John is Joe, or Jane, Elaine,
if you had a different name,
would you be the same?
this is your name
this is your name
this is your name
Bob hammers houses in Houston
Were I Bob, would I be a builder?
I've yet to know Cletus the theorist.
2
Imagine naming yourself
Slower
Imagine naming your
self
Stop
Exhale
Imagine your
self
unnamed
Author bio: Kole teaches English part time at a local university in southeast Virginia
though his delinquency was evident early in life when he accidentally fired his father's
gun into the front door of the house. As a late teen he began writing poetry in jail for
vandalizing a police car. Now a husband and father to four daughters, Kole continues to
write for the joy of word frenzies and the maintenance of his sanity.
FEATURED FEMME:
MARCIA ARRIETA
Editor’s note: When Marcia Arrieta’s poetry appeared in Felino Soriano’s journal,
Of/with, I was transfixed. To me, poetry is all about imagery. Well, sure, there are other
components, both tangible and intangible, that differentiate verse from prose and give it
a delectable flavor and texture. But if a poem is devoid of images that compel or calm, or
otherwise jar or soothe the senses, it is not good poetry - indeed, it is not poetry at all. It
is pedestrian prose – or, worse, wasted words. Marcia’s poetry bristles with imagery that
calms, compels - sometimes even jolts you out of your complacent version of things. Her
visual collages, too, complement her word collages with their tranquilly crafted chaos.
found—
with a canvas under a yellow umbrella
with pieces of broken glass & sand
cover sewn together with red thread & remnants of blue &
white gingham, newspaper, & wild green parrot feathers
the star//shadow
Palomino BlackWing. 602. Half the Pressure, Twice the Speed. the garden alive
with pink & yellow & orange. the birds continue to feed. the heart stable.
leave the shoes by the door. walk silently. we climb the primal mountain
into a rainforest of light. on the other side of the world they vote for independence.
whirlwinds rip currents the planets adrift threads, stars, shadows
blue moon harvest moon silhouettes in autumn approach winter
inside a glasshouse Frida Kahlo nurses art
outside within the oaks—shields & armor
meanwhile ;
the abstract minus interpretation
hard edge
drift across continents across lives rhapsodies tragedies roadrunners bears
the harmonium subtracts tyranny
drift no connection/connection oak trees olive trees Cala Deia
sympathies complexities threads & yarn blankets made scarves unfinished
marginal goldfish a contemplative lion old stamps passports
transparent strip responsibility sculpt a message never relayed
indeterminacy
she dries one turquoise sock
in the garden sun
(she counted grizzly bears in sequoia
one summer when she was young)
she washes the shells & rocks—
arranges them in a reed basket
(she traveled with a suitcase
filled with pillows)
around the art table,
she reads a grammar book & pretends not to listen
grey stone on deck
a yellow dragon roars invention
the house is a wave
roots, wings
Octavio Paz—A Tree Within
entwined water & night
the larkspurs arranged in rhyme
syllables of survival
the heart of the tree
shadow play sound tracery will
(subfield cutthroat trout pronghorn antelope)
prone to colour clouds interstice sky
distant from dogma relative green leaf
looking glass air the book of job
the law of contrast
composition relative bridge
the memoir
(“What matters most is how well you walk through the fire.”
—Bukowski)
is in the deference & the farm long ago
orange trees & trout in the stream
a field in sentient light
where the reflection is a cross & a lily & a Joshua tree grows
conjecture the unknown
Herzog’s Lo and Behold
Young’s Fall Higher
pyramids
and mountains
Cornell’s
boxes
solitude
chaos
complicated pieces
to be arranged
the ideal triumphs
!
BECOMING LYLA DORE, by Teri
Youmans Grimm!
(Red Hen Press)
ISBN: 9781597093224
Reviewer: Cindy Hochman
Poetry is, inherently, full of paradox. For instance, a poet can choose to unleash a deluge
of personal information in the confessional mode, or, conversely, step into the mind and
body of another (persona). Becoming Lyla Dore, whose central character is a fictional
silent movie star with a closetful of skeletons housed amid her red stiletto heels, falls
squarely in the latter category, and Teri Youmans Grimm’s account is as ambitious and
seductive as Lyla Dore herself. With poems that unfold as grandly as scenes from the
acclaimed films of yesteryear, the poet offers the reader a front-row VIP seat to the
juiciest kind of guilty pleasure: a world of stardust dreams, of glamour and glitz, and, of
course, the lurid underpinnings that often accompany these chimerical trappings. And
because this poet has fashioned such a plausible portrait of a flawed and fragile
temptress, the poems move easily from the reel to the real.
The Soubrette Takes Center Stage
—Photoplay, May, 1921
In her first major role Lyla Dore will further
prove to her fans why she’s a star on the rise.
Those eyes! That hair! Those gams!
This ingenue was not discovered on a stool at Schwab’s Drugstore. As Minerva sprung
from the head of Zeus, the mythical Lyla Dore, whose surname seems to have been
culled from the engraver Gustave Doré, the illustrator of Lord Byron, and whose given
name brings to mind Delilah, Samson’s downfall, was invented out of whole cloth, or
perhaps more aptly, silk and satin. She arrived fully formed, with a scarlet letter already
embossed on her ample chest, the seeds of her symbolic birth and reinvention having
been sown from adultery, abortion, and ashes. But first she was born, innocently enough,
out of both the illusion and disillusion of magic, and a dogged and desperate attempt to
recapture it.
Magic Lantern
Forget what you know about faded stars,
about curiosities and relics.
This is about magic.
Back when there was such a thing,
my father made a living
as a lanternist. I’d go with him
to the Imperial where between comedy reels
he’d show glass slides of the Taj Mahal
or lovers kissing in a Venetian gondola …
To be in limelight is to become incandescent
in the alchemy of dangerous gas and mineral, to smolder
in another’s mind or heart. I would have risked setting
myself on fire, if it meant the world could see me better.
Children are, of course, masters of make-believe, and Lyla’s imagination was doubly
indulged by the shadow puppets that her magic-making father entertained her with (I
never feared the shadows cavorting / in my room—nanny-goats and vultures / jellyfish
and centaurs—nor the hands / that made them. They hardly seemed / related, father’s
contorted fingers, a witch / riding a broom, a bear on a swing). Interestingly, the shape
that becomes most emblazoned in her mind is a snake, giving rise to the recurring Snake
Man, with all its implications of shedding skins and original sin, who appears as her guru,
guide, and manager (Your name doesn’t suit you. One day you’ll be called something
else). But was a childhood drenched in phantasm enough to pacify the reality of a peevish
and vindictive mother who seemed to rue her very existence and, in fact, “grew to hate
the very sight” of her? It is against this silkscreen of ambiguity that Lyla Dore begins
both her descent and ascent, remaking herself not by design, but out of necessity.
Mother was pregnant five times before I came along.
None of them lived to see the world.
It was as though she found me perverse
to have made a home where none could thrive before.
So, too, it is a misbegotten birth that provides the theme for the pivotal poem in Grimm’s
collection, one whose Dickensian title practically tells the whole story: “I Wasn’t
Pregnant, Dr. Moore Explained, Merely Late and This Procedure, While Painful, Would
Resolve the Matter of Lyla Dore.” Having seduced the physician next door whose
children she is tasked with caring for, a woman named Lyla Dore is born in the place and
stead of the child whose loss she would forever mourn. And when a mysterious fire
breaks out in the Moore home, killing the twins, Lyla’s fate as a vixen “able to cause a
saint to sin or even a saint’s mother” is sealed, for although she didn’t set the fire (it was
an accident), she is branded “the incendiary girl, desire’s wayward spark.”
Despite the poet’s own last name, Lyla Dore’s story does not end in “grim” fashion, as
you might have thought. She does not fall down the stairs in an alcoholic stupor or
overdose on pills, and not in a puddle of my own blood, not in a dismal studio apartment,
not behind a perfume counter in a second-rate department store. Rather, she does what
she has always done best: reinvents herself for the advent of talkies, socks away money
from wise investments, and lives to remember and tell.
Becoming Lyla Dore is an evocative series of first-person poems about an imaginary but
enchanting vamp who makes her cinematic mark using everything but her voice—
conjured by an extraordinary poet named Grimm whose dramatic fairytale is anything but
silent.
The Arousal
of Lightning
by Bill Wolak
The Donald and I (SATIRE) By Marleen S. Barr
The door opens. Trump looks up, expecting Mike Pence.
But it's two orderlies in white coats collecting the ex-presidential candidate, who lost in a
landslide to Hillary after spending the fall being treated at Bellevue under the provisions
of the Flake Act. After all the cries of ‘Lock her up!’ it turned out he was the one who got
locked up.
‘Mr. Trump, it's time for your impulse-control/delusion-reduction therapy,’ one orderly
says soothingly. ‘We need to go early. It would be crazy to miss the swearing-in today of
Madam President’—Maureen Dowd, “Crazy About the Presidency,” New York Times,
August 7, 2016, SR 1
[I]t's Trump rather than Clinton who has confirmed the full triumph of the sexual
revolutions. . . .
If you watched ‘The Girls Next Door,’ the TV show about [Hugh] Hefner's ménage,
you noticed that the Playboy mystique was emphatically not a joke in the lower
middle class environs that produced his centerfolds and their most adoring fans. Like
Trumpism, Hefnerian values have prospered in the blue-collar vacuum created by
religion's retreat, community's unraveling.
Then finally, among men who were promised pliant centerfolds and ended up single
with only high-speed internet to comfort them, the men's sexual revolution has curdled
into a toxic subculture, resentful of female empowerment in all its forms.
This is where you find Trump's strongest (and, yes, strangest) fans. He's become the
Daddy Alpha for every alpha-aspiring beta male, whose mix of moral liberation and
misogyny keeps the Ring-a-Ding-Ding dream alive—Ross Douthat, “A Playboy for
President,” New York Times, August 14, 2016, SR 9
Professor Sondra Lear, a feminist science fiction scholar par excellence, was grading
papers in her State University of New York at Greenwich Village office when the phone
rang.
“Hello. Professor Lear? This is the Gold House calling.”
“The Gold House? Why would the Gold House phone me?”
“The Donald wishes to hire you to tutor the multitudinous young children he has
fathered during the seven years he has been in office. Will you accept this offer? Your
salary will be huge.”
“Absolutely not. I am a feminist who recoiled when the Donald instituted polygamy in
the Gold House because Melania got older. How could I approve of his marriages to
twenty-five year old eastern European beauty queens? He dehumanized these women
when he renamed them. The media obsessively focuses on the doings of Aelania,
Belania, Celania, Delania, etc. I don’t care what color toe nail polish Xelania wears. I am
active member of the Free Hillary Movement who generates feminist scholarly
research. I couldn’t believe that the Republicans really did lock Hillary I’m that the
F.H.M. will eventually break Hillary out of Rikers Island.”
“Your decision disappoints me. Think about the children, Professor Lear. Little Count,
Marquis, Chevalier, Imanka, Ikanka, Harry Winston, Cartier and all their siblings need
you. Think about the twins Dauphin and Dauphine. Most of the Donald’s offspring are
entering pre-school. They will be called upon to continue the Trump dynasty. Smart
women still exist in the world; the kids will have to cope with them. What if
extraterrestrials from a feminist separatist planet land on the Gold House lawn? You are
the perfect tutor for children who have to deal with feisty female Earthlings and potential
feminist extraterrestrials.”
Sondra’s revolutionary nature kicked in. She reasoned that she could further F.H.M. goals
by residing in the Gold House. The Donald caused all usual executive branch rules,
including presidential succession dictums, to be thrown by the wayside. Presidential
protocol becomes irrelevant when the president cannot act presidential. Even the very
word “president” is obsolete. Russia had the Czar; Germany had the Kiser; Iran had the
Shah; America has the Donald. The chief executive is now addressed as “Mr. the
Donald.” At the State of the Union Address, the Sargent at Arms announces “Mr.
Speaker, the the Donald of the United States.” Because Sondra was fed up with the
Donald, she said yes to the Gold House.
Trump Force One carried Sondra to Washington. Upon arrival in the early evening, she
was whisked into a helicopter. While hovering over the Gold House Rose Garden, she
saw the gigantic red, white, and blue blinking neon “TRUMP” sign positioned above the
West Portico. The gold painted mansion was too gaudy for Sondra’s tastes. But nothing
prepared her for the change in the interior.
The Red Room, the Blue Room, and the Vermeil Room (formerly often called the Gold
Room), had all been transformed into the Gold Rooms. Sondra wondered if James
Bond’s nemesis Goldfinger had served as the interior decorator. Diamond encrusted
doors and marble floors were general all over the Gold House. Cherub sodden bases
supported the gilded furniture. Just as Sondra was reaching for her sunglasses to shield
her eyes from the light bouncing off the glitz, Head Wife Melania appeared and extended
her hand.
“In accordance with my duties as Head Wife to the Donald, I welcome you to the Gold
House,” she said. I and my fellow wives need to expand our horizons. We have all
agreed to force ourselves to read feminist theory. We appreciate your efforts to teach our
children how successfully to closely encounter smart women. They will certainly need to
be prepared for the possibility of feminist extraterrestrials landing on the Gold House
lawn. But enough talk about the future. For the moment, I would like you to meet the
Donald’s children and some of his other wives.”
Two ushers opened the diamond studded golden doors. To the tune of “Hail to the
Chief, a single file line of adorable children paraded in front of Sondra, bowed their
heads, and walked back while still facing her. A little girl broke out of the line and threw
her arms around Sondra’s knees. “Please, Dr. Sondra. Please be my teacher. I know that
women exist who have careers and who don’t wear stilettos. You are the first such
woman I have ever met. I want to learn how to be like you. I hate makeup.” Sondra’s
heart melted. “I will enjoy getting to know you, getting to know all about you,” she said
to all the assembled children.
Sondra’s Gold House pedagogy was almost successful. The Donald’s wives were
dutifully placing copies of articles written by Hélène Cixous, Donna Haraway, Judith
Butler, and Luce Irigary in their designer handbags. True, the wives were not yet reading
the articles. Sondra nonetheless viewed feminist theory texts ensconced within Gucci
bags as a great leap forward. As for the children, well, they enjoyed having fiction written
by Joanna Russ, Octavia E. Butler, and Marge Piercy read to them as bedtime stories.
The little girl who had embraced Sondra dreamed about living on Russ’s feminist
separatist planet Whileaway. She loved the fact that Whileaway denizens would not be
caught dead wearing stilettos. In a defiant act to achieve normalcy, do to Sondra’s
influence, she demanded to change her name from “Yourmajesty” to “Eleanor.”
Sondra was busy teaching the wives and the children to the extent that she had yet to
meet the Donald. This situation changed when he made an appointment to discuss her
progress. She sat next to him on a gold lamé Gold Rooms couch. “Bloomberg got a third
term as mayor. Even if he is richer than me and called me insane, if he can do it, I can do
it. I want a third term. But my woman voter problem is worse than ever. Women don’t
like the leader of the free world having a harem. I called Obama a Muslim and now I
have a harem. No woman in this country, not one, will vote for me. Not with Hillary
locked up and Elizabeth Warren running against me. Pocahontas will not cause Trump’s
last stand. I love the feminists. I even love the potential feminist extraterrestrials. I need
to ingratiate myself to women in general and feminists in particular. Do you have any
ideas?” Donald said.
“We can have a party.”
“A party?”
“Yes. We can invite feminists to the Gold House to meet your wives.”
“I know how to find Eastern European super model wives. But where am I going to
round up American feminists?”
“The Science Fiction Research Association is meeting in Washington next week. I can
invite my colleagues as well as scholars from local universities. I will somehow
accomplish mission impossible. I will enable feminists to feel comfortable with your
wives.”
“Feminists mixing with my wives? How can I negotiate an impossible deal like that?”
“Very simple. We need to cater to the feminists.”
“You mean feed them Purina Feminist Chow?”
“I mean offer them a lovely gluten free vegan repast. K. D. Laing can provide the
music. Your wives need to undergo sartorial metamorphosis.” Lelania and Kelania
walked in wearing micro miniskirts and gold metallic bras. “Your wives can’t look like
this.”
Kelania bent over. Sondra “could see there was [not] . . . blood coming out of her
wherever.”
“One of the Donald’s wives does not have enough clothes. First rule of hosting a
feminist soiree: no visible vaginas. Visible vaginas are a feminist soiree no no.”
“I see your point. Make a shopping list and give it to the chief butler.”
Sondra ordered enough pantsuits, Birkenstocks, and hair scrunchies for all of the
wives. When the party ensued, the wives, dutifully attired in their new attire, exchanged
pleasantries with the assembled feminists. Pelania, who had studied her feminist texts
hard, had a moment of triumph when an assistant professor asked her to name her
favorite Cixous article.
“The Laugh of the Medusa,” Pelania said triumphantly. “I can see the Medusa from my
house. From my bathroom to be exact. When I am taking a shower and my hair is
tangled, I don’t think that it is a laughing matter.” The assistant professor did not laugh.
Pelania wanted to tell Sondra that she knew the right feminist answer—and to ask for
advice.
“Dr. Lear, may I speak with you for a moment?” asked Pelania. “I have good news. And
I have a problem.”
“Certainly.”
“I got a Cixous question right. I need to confide in you. I do not love the Donald. I love
one of the Secret Service guys. I have been secretly meeting a secret service guy. This is
really dangerous. It is hard to sneak past the head eunuchs Ted Cruz, Jeb Bush, and
Marco Rubio. What should I do? I am already in big trouble because I told my daughter
about Mrs. Roosevelt and she decided to change her name to Eleanor.” ”
“Professors write academic essays. I can cause a distraction by organizing a Gold House
event involving reading my latest piece on space in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. You can leave
unnoticed when the paper causes everyone to fall asleep. Excuse me. The Donald is
coming this way.”
“Pelania does not love you,” Sondra directly said to the Donald. “What would you do if
you found out that she was having sex with a secret service agent?”
“I would have her punished. I’ve made sure that all women who have abortions are
punished by being tarred and feathered. I would have Pelania whipped.”
“You are a barbarian.”
“I really didn’t mean to say “whipped.” I said “shipped.” I will send Pelania on a nice
cruise. But let’s talk about this great party. You did an amazing job in a short time. My
wives are still hot in Birkenstocks,” Donald said as he held out his arms. “Shall we
dance?”
There was a limit for how far Sondra could go—even to benefit the F.H.M. Relying on
her inner Scheherazade, she tried to talk her way into gaining time.
“We do have things in common. I’m from Queens too. I grew up in Forest Hills, straight
down Queens Boulevard from your childhood home in Jamaica Estates. I remember
seeing your father’s Trump Pavilion sign next to the Van Wyck Expressway when I was
growing up.”
“Donald placed his arm around Sondra’s waist. Since all the feminists and wives were
watching, she had to dance with him.
“Sondra, let’s make a deal. Marry me. Become my twenty-seventh wife. Marrying a
feminist professor would be huge for my re-election success. Wha da ya say?”
“I say never. You know very well that Jewish women from Forest Hills do not become
the twenty-seventh wife of anyone. Furthermore, fat orange haired men in their late
seventies are not my type.”
At that moment, Eleanor ran into the room. “Dr. Sondra come quick. A flying saucer has
landed on the Gold House lawn,” she screamed.
“Not to worry, Eleanor. This is a job for a super science fiction scholar.”
Sondra made her way to the Gold House lawn where she closely encountered little green
women walking down a flying saucer’s open gangplank. They were wearing silver
pantsuits, Birkenstocks, and scrunchies. “Take us to your leader,” they said in unison.
“We want to meet her.”
“I have no doubt that you are feminist extraterrestrials,” Sondra confidently stated. “Let
me calmly cut to the chase. Female Earthling Americans are in deep trouble precisely
because our leader is a bombastic male chauvinist pig carnival barker con man whose ego
is larger than the entire universe. Believe me. You do not want to be taken to him. Will
you help female Earthling Americans?”
“Yes,” they said in unison.
“Terrific. And not a moment too soon. Hillary, America’s rightful female leader, has
been locked up. The Donald, that’s the name of our male leader I just described, is on the
cusp of winning a third term. By the way, I’m Professor Sondra Lear.”
One of the little green women stepped forward and extended her tentacle toward Sondra.
“Nice to meet you. I’m Captain Kyra. Here we come to save the day. That means that
mighty feminist extraterrestrials are on the way. Exactly what can we do for you? We
have extraordinary reality altering powers.”
“First thing is to break Hillary out of Rikers.”
“Done,” Captain Kyra said as Hillary materialized on the lawn wearing an orange prison
jumpsuit.
Sondra saw Hillary and became unnerved. “No. This is not right,” she said to
Kyra. “Hillary wears pantsuits, not jumpsuits. Turn her jumpsuit into a pantsuit. Make it
black. Black needs to be the new orange for Hillary. Oh and she needs sun glasses”
“Done.”
“Perfect. Now Hillary can join the party and blend in with the other feminist attendees.”
Sondra turned toward Hillary. “I’m an active F.H.M. member who could not be happier
to meet you. Join the Gold House party for feminist scholars and the Donald’s wives. The
sun glasses will allow you to blend in without being noticed. Have a drink. Enjoy
yourself while the feminist extraterrestrials and I figure out how to ensconce you in your
rightful place as President of the United States.”
“I will follow your directions,” said Hillary. “Despite my wonkiness, feminist
extraterrestrials are beyond my purview.” Hillary walked into the Gold House hoping that
she could transform it back into the White House of yore. Sondra turned toward Kyra.
“I know exactly what to do,” Sondra said. “I can accomplish my objective without
feminist extraterrestrial intervention. I will simply use your presence here to my own
advantage. I just need you to do one more thing, though. Kyra, please make everyone on
Earth--with the exception of me and Donald--forget that the little green women landing
on the Gold House lawn thing ever happened.
“Done,” said Kyra. “We will be flying off now. Great to meet you Sondra.”
“Likewise Kyra.”
Sondra’s plan involved allowing Trump to be Trump. She walked into the party and
approached Hillary.
“Hillary, please remove your sun glasses. Tell Donald that you are here and call the
police.”
Police entered the Gold Room. “Lock her up,” screamed Donald. “Lock crooked Hillary
back up. Do you know how she got out? I’ll tell ya how. Feminist extraterrestrials got her
out. That’s how. Feminist extraterrestrials landed on the Gold House lawn a few minutes
ago. There were all these huge little green women. Little green women are ugly. I will
build a wall around the Gold House to keep the ugly huge little green women out. They
are all rapists. I didn’t have enough with the immigrant Mexicans and the Muslims. Now
I have to contend with the little green women. Maybe the gun owners could do something
about the little green women—and Hillary too.”
In a Nano second, men in the white coats arrived in what immediately again would be
called the White House. They placed Donald in a strait jacket. He ended up back in New
York, in Bellevue Hospital. K.D. Laing sang “Hail to the Chief” as Hillary was sworn in
as the President of the United States. The long national Trump nightmare was over.
Hillary was the first of many female Presidents. Elizabeth Warren succeeded her. Amy
Schumer, following in her relative Chuck Schumer’s political footsteps, in the manner of
Reagan, went from show business to the White House. Due to Sondra’s influence,
Eleanor Trump was by far the most effective woman president. Eleanor (called E.T.) was
the first American president to visit a feminist planet. E.T. and Kyra got along famously.
Eleanor gave a party for Kyra in the White House. Both women wore white pants suits,
Birkenstocks—and scrunchies.
Author bio: Marleen S. Barr is known for her pioneering work in feminist science fiction
and teaches English at the City University of New York. She has won the Science Fiction
Research Association Pilgrim Award for lifetime achievement in science fiction
criticism. Barr is the author of Alien to Femininity: Speculative Fiction and Feminist
Theory, Lost in Space: Probing Feminist Science Fiction and Beyond, Feminist
Fabulation: Space/Postmodern Fiction, and Genre Fission: A New Discourse Practice
for Cultural Studies. Barr has edited many anthologies and co-edited the science fiction
issue of PMLA. She is the author of the novels Oy Pioneer! and Oy Feminist Planets: A
Fake Memoir.
iver walk
by Jenean Gilstrap
!
i walk naked
In the rivers of my realities
rivers polluted
with malicious motherlove
stained in scarlet sin
childhood dreams
drowned in dastardly deeds
sung to the tune of lullabies
stripping innocence to the core
pebbles of purulent pain
line the beds
my feet bleeding sorrow
as I walk naked
in the ruins
of my realities
~
probing fingers
of memories
penetrate
my broken heart
working their way up
from the wounded
scabbard of me
as i walk
through the waters of despair
through the darkness
of those closed doors
and blacker than black
whispers of wickedness
~
farther and farther i walk
from the shores of contempt
into the waters deep
deeper still
waters now churning
in waves of redemption
washing the soiled linens
of my soul
cleansing the chambers
of my hate filled heart
healing the ravaged
me of me
my lips savoring
the liquid redemption
swallowing its sweet
sweet salvation
as i walk
in the river
of my realities
Author bio: Jenean Gilstrap is the author of two books of poetry, Gypsy Woman Words
[2014] and Words Unspoken [2013, and is a featured poet/artist at Yareah Magazine and
at Plum Tree Books. Her poetry has been widely published in numerous literary journals
and she has been invited to read her work at several international poetry festivals. A
number of her poems have been narrated, as well as lyrically arranged and recorded by
the accomplished Aindre’ Reece-Sheerin, vocalist/musician. She resides in Shreveport,
Louisiana, but divides her time between there and the East coast as she completes her
third book of poetry, Willful Words.
She and her work may be found at:
https://www.facebook.com/jenean.gilstrap
http://www.yareah.com/author/jenean-c-gilstrap/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9WQqmfDDKNkAR5A8nt9_ZA
https://www.linkedin.com/profile/edit?trk=nav_responsive_sub_nav_edit_profile
http://thegypsyonwordsunspoken.blogspot.com/
A STRANGER TRAVELING THROUGH THE BIZARRO UNIVERSE IN
SEARCH OF HUMANITY
By Dr. Mel Waldman !
!
(on reading Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s poem-Crazy to be Alive in such a Strange World)!
!
A!
stranger traveling through the bizarro universe!
!
in!
search of humanity,!
!
I !
rush through unreal days & shattered sci-fi streets;!
!
I!
rush !
!
& !
crash into flaming flashbacks & the furious flow !
!
of !
gigantic waves of sprawling blinding light & a !
!
mammoth flood of unholy fire forcing me to see all I wish to forget!
!
&!
in the beginning…in the Neo-Genesis…that always returns against my will,!
!
I!
relive the Days of Trauma & Transformation; I re-experience the Transmogrification!
!
in !
split-second visions of long ago, hidden in the harrowing now,!
!
when!
the power-elite of technology created, like Frankenstein, our monstrous machines!
!
that!
conquered us, devoured their creators, obliterated all;!
!
I!
remember !
!
until!
my electrified mind comes to a sudden halt in the deep of the night, shuts down, !
!
inside!
my weary body-my soul case resting in a womb chair at the center of nowhere!
!
&!
I drift off into sweet phantasmagoria, a machine-free dreamscape where all my !
!
beloved deceased exist in non-existential nothingness!
!
&!
I say, “Hello, Mother, Hello, Father, Hello, all…You wouldn’t believe the way the world!
!
is now.”
“Hello, M, we don’t understand…”!
!
&!
the Beat Poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti arrives inside my exploding electrocuted brain cells!
!
&!
shouts, “Crazy to be alive in such a strange world.”!
!
&!
I sing a mind-blowing singsong melody blasting me through the cannonball !
!
of !
inner space,!
!
&!
I listen to the crazy, cacophonous un-jazzy juxtaposition of weird words-!
!
our omnipotent objects of addiction we crave & love & the drug-things we’re hooked on!
&!
!
that hook us to the World Wide Web & Virtual Reality & the Janus-faced Internet-!
&!
!
I!
hear my mutilated mind say, “Computers & cell phones, iPads & iPhones, laptops &!
!!
tablets, smart phones & smart watches, etcetera, etcetera.”!
!
&!
Mother says, “I don’t understand.”!
!
Ferlinghetti shrieks, “Crazy to be alive in such a strange world.”!
!
&!
I say, “Mother, Father, & all-I love you.”!
!
&!
Mother says, in a soothing celestial whisper, like a lambent flame brushing my soul,!
!
“I love you. We love you. Love is what we understand.”!
!
Now, !
I dance in this everlasting moment,!
!
before !
awakening, !
!
a!
stranger traveling through the bizarro universe!
!
in!
search of humanity, !
!
but finding love in a beautiful place beyond!
!
!
!
Author bio: Dr. Mel Waldman is a psychologist, poet, and writer whose stories
have appeared in numerous magazines including HARDBOILED DETECTIVE,
ESPIONAGE, THE SAINT, PULP METAL MAGAZINE, YELLOW MAMA, and
AUDIENCE. His poems have been widely published in magazines and books
including LIQUID IMAGINATION, A NEW ULSTER, THE BROOKLYN LITERARY
REVIEW, THE BROOKLYN VOICE, BRICKPLIGHT, THE BITCHINʼ KITSCH,
CRAB FAT MAGAZINE, DEAD SNAKES, SKIVE MAGAZINE, ODDBALL
MAGAZINE, ON THE RUSK, POETRY PACIFIC, POETICA, RED FEZ, SOUL-
LIT, SQUAWK BACK, SWEET ANNIE & SWEET PEA REVIEW, THE JEWISH
LITERARY JOURNAL, THE JEWISH PRESS, THE JERUSALEM POST,
HOTMETAL PRESS, MAD SWIRL, HAGGARD & HALLOO, ASCENT
ASPIRATIONS, and NAMASTE FIJI: THE INTERNATIONAL ANTHOLOGY OF
POETRY. A past winner of the literary GRADIVA AWARD in Psychoanalysis, he
was nominated for a PUSHCART PRIZE in literature and is the author of 11
books.!
FAT Cats "#!$%&'(%)!*(+,
The rescued kittens
Have turned to nasty cats
With pregnant bellies.
Nothing good can come of Fat Cats
Lounging on Lincoln's bed,
Hacking up fur balls.
Pissing cat piss.
Nipping at toes:
These are not sweet kittens
Except by name
As they plot cunning leaps
From the banks
Of the flocked velvet sofa.
Claws readied for the coming.
Hoping for another taste
Like that mouse
that had gone warm
down the gullet
A few moons back -
Leaving nothing
But a whimpering stain
On the neighborhood.
The cats are already crouching
In towards another botched landing
Punctuated by the dull thud of misplaced ambition.
There will be a scramble of claws
And indignant squeals
And then;
Voila! The Fat Cats steady themselves
Before carefully licking the blood
From their paws,
Preening their glossy selves,
And getting back to business
Licking their swollen teats.
Author bio: The author has published in Number One Magazine, Wittenberg Review,
Sutured. Words, and is winner of the Read Local contest.
Swooning Over The Faint
(CD Mini-review) By Alison Ross
The Faint is a band I have only known by name until recently, and the only reason I am
aware of them is because they are a Nebraska outfit that used to feature Conor Oberst.
And anyone who knows me at all knows that Conor Oberst - and specifically, his band
Bright Eyes - is among my top five favorite artists, in addition to The Cure, Tom Waits,
Public Enemy, and Deerhunter. The Faint's newest collection of greatest hits has been a
real revelation for me, actually, because the music seems to be a true distillation of the
electro-punk ethos that I have heard a lot about, but have only experienced through these
songs. Besides the Faint's dynamic sonics that articulate Kraftwerkian keys and funky,
angular beats, what has me most intrigued is how the vocals that evoke the flat, dry
Nebraska plains actually enhance rather than detract from the music. When listening to
music of a similar kind, one expects to hear, and often does hear, vocals with a menacing
tinge, or at the very least, harsh intonations. But The Faint's singer actually sounds
quaintly midwestern and free of the dark theatrical pretensions that might otherwise
embellish such music. The idea that vocals which would usually be more comfortably
ensconced in the unorthodox folk of, say, a Bright Eyes, can act as a charming
counterbalance to frenzied dance-punk is a testament to the Faint's startling originality.
Songs such as "Glass Danse," and "Agenda Suicide" give this collection a must-hear
urgency.
from Alchemical Nod
XXXI
By Mark DuCharme
Any work’s 1 a complication of the conditions of its dreaming
Scratch that: the complications of dreams condition all desire
& The condition of any working desire conducts all accidents & births
Any & nowhere above all births & the jittery body of thought
The body of thought is a city, oblique & out of tune
Rain, a character whose breath is silence
The rain comes as swiftly as a line or fragment of the memory of the dream
(All dreams are one dream)
Immersion within the sound of rain
Which gives way to hot
Bright night
& Then gives way to the memory of summer
To winter’s swollen brooding
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
1 When you enter a work (as writer or reader)
Is there always, necessarily, resistance?
To become attuned, you have to open
Yourself to the work & meanings thereof
Sound is part of meaning
Imagery, a part of fleeing—
The light & speed of it— all a part
Of song’s fugitive trace
§
Brood enveloping songs inside the tissues of the body
Bleed inside stars’ layers
Let need envelop need
Let tunes be broken
Emblazoned on the pages which rain makes
When stars are lost
Author bio: 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
from BlazeVOX, as well as Infinity Subsections (Meeting Eyes
Bindery, 2004) and Cosmopolitan Tremble (Pavement Saw,
2002). Counter Fluencies 1-20 is forthcoming as an issue of the print
journal The Lune. His work appears in recent or forthcoming
anthologies, including Water, Water Everywhere: 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). His work has also appeared
in numerous journals, among them Big Bridge, Bombay Gin,
Colorado Review, Mantis, New American Writing, OR, Pallaksch
Pallaksch, Shiny, Talisman, and Vanitas. He lives in Boulder,
Colorado.
THE NIGHT MARES By PD Lyons
Restless
In a still night
No moon softening
Sharp stars
No cloud drapery.
Against this midnight
The night mares move
Sharing colour with the darkness.
What cannot find them is found by them,
There are no ways secret:
Spiraling stars leave every sky familiar,
Foraging herds by trails of green weeds
Breach every underwater sanctuary.
The night mares
Sleep standing up;
Contain any stallion,
Give birth in the middle of any weather,
Can knock bones, eyes, or internal organs out of any creature.
Simply by their passing
Men have been sucked breathless.
The night mares
Know where dragons come from,
And who, mothered by seas and singing desert sands,
The twin birthed are.
In languages that the thunder knows,
They answer one another.
Navigating easily unbridled,
No boundary deludes them.
Yielding, the only response they know.
How Long My Unfitting Skin, The Night
she had come down from Gunnison
it had been a hard ride
thin air refusing to support her
old shoes needing to be thrown away as soon as possible
met for drinks at The Last Chance
she told me brief stories
life in the wilderness
ways of ghosts and proud flesh
we booked a room from the man who wore a star
make believe log cabin
steel spring mattress
Jim Beam on the bed side
we smoked silent shapes up at an invisible ceiling in the dark
I was happy to be there
thought she was too
but somewhere after moon light
she had gotten up
kneeling by the drifty window
to whatever she prayed
all i could make out was –
How long my own unfitting skin the night?
Editor’s note: “The Night Mares” first appeared in print in Searches For Magic Lapwing
Press Belfast
Author bio: PD Lyons was born and raised in the USA. He has been traveling and living
abroad since 1998, and is now residing in Ireland. He received The Mattatuck College
Award for Outstanding Achievement in Poetry. His two books of poetry include Searches
For Magic, and Caribu & Sister Stones: Selected Poems, published by Lapwing Press,
Belfast. A third book, Myths Of Multiplicity, was published by Erbacce press, Liverpool,
as part of the 2014 Erbacce International Annual Prize The work of PD Lyons has also
appeared in many magazines and e-zine/blogs throughout the world, including The
SHoP, Books Ireland, Irish American Post, Boyne Berries, Virtual Writer, Slipstream,
West 47 Galway Arts. He was recently selected to participate in the Human Rights
Consortium at the School of Advanced Study, in a University of London publication
titled ‘In Protest: 150 Poems for Human Rights’. He blogs at:
https://pdlyons.wordpress.com/
Build Kindness, Not WALLS
By Lelia Shirian
SATIRE
Trump’s well thought out plan to “build a wall and have Mexico pay for it” has
been highly praised by politicians and common people alike. Local high school student
Felipe Rodriguez, for example, urges politicians to “recognize the fact that this wall will
help illegal Hispanic immigrants,” like himself, as much as it will legal citizens.
Rodriguez went on to explain that the mass deportation will “give immigrants the
motivation they need to get in touch with their roots” by allowing them the opportunity to
return to their home countries. “And the best part is,” Rodriguez continues, “airfare is
taken care of!” This is a sentiment commonly held among Trump supporters today
including well known figures in US politics like former teen pop sensation, Aaron Carter,
and prominent race relations expert, David Duke.
It may seem radical, but, the truth is, we don’t have to spend hard-earned all-
American dollars to deport millions of immigrants.
There is another way.
According to Lamar Alexander, chairman of the Senate Committee on Health,
Education, Labor and Pensions, “teen sex is the answer to all of our prayers.” In short,
Alexander proposes that we build a cheap, homegrown American workforce comparable
to that of the illegals in order to drive the “bad hombres” out of America. “The
ramifications of illegal immigration can be catastrophic. Building a workforce of ablebodied
American children is the only way to combat the worsening problems caused by
illegal immigration,” the Senator argued. Currently, the members of the Senate
Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions are collaborating on a bill that will
“foster the growth of the American child workforce” in order to eliminate the problem of
illegal immigration.
Some critics make outlandish claims, arguing that “child labor is unethical” or
“forcing minors to work is illegal.” Still, Alexander remains hopeful.
The bill is a complex and delicately balanced piece of legislation, so we had some
of the Senators working on it walk us through it. There are no current laws requiring that
the content taught in sexual education courses in America is accurate. According to the
legislators, “we must actively perpetuate this fact... the best course of action is to keep
these courses exactly as they are,” the passionate Senators argued.
In order to defend our country from the corrupt, immoral illegals we must
effectively transfer the weight of the American economy onto the backs of small children.
To that end, it is critical, according to Senator Patty Murray, that we continue teaching
abstinence-only sexual education. Murray, ranking member of the committee, told us that
in many states, abstinence-only sexual education is the only type taught. It is in many of
these states, she explained, that teenage pregnancy rates are the highest in the nation.
“The best way to ensure the steady growth of teen pregnancy rates and enlarge the
existing pool of potential child laborers is to ensure that teenagers remain just as ignorant
of the uses of contraceptives as they are today,” Murray explains. Furthermore,
Democratic Senator Tammy Baldwin points out that “comparing young, sexually active
women to used gum or tape that has lost its adhesive properties has proven a most
effective aphrodisiac among teens, resulting in a tremendous number of teen pregnancies
and, just nine short months later, producing eligible candidates for a strong child-driven
labor force.”
All we have to do to eliminate the problem of illegal immigration is produce
children well equipped to enter the labor-force and take their jobs. All we have to do to
ensure our teens continue producing these useful children is make sure we keep our
sexual education classes exactly as vague and uninformative as they are today, presenting
an easy solution to the complex problem of illegal immigration, without all the hassle of
building that dreary old wall
Author bio: Leila Shirian is a writer published in local newspapers and online literary
magazines. Inspired by this great nation's most entertaining soap opera, politics, she aims
to convey her opinions on controversial topics through well intentioned humor and
passive aggressive sarcasm. She currently resides in New York with her equally sassy pet
puffer fish, Puff Daddy.
Knock Knock
By Wayne F. Burke
who's there?
its a woman
says she's seen me around
and would like to get to know me
and can she come in?
I kick aside some books
and clothes so that
she can sit;
I play a record for her
on the gramophone.
If I had a gramophone--
If I had a record...
Hello?
Oh no, its the landlord.
No its the landlord's brother
my friend
whose friendship I need
like I need a hole in my head;
I let him in
he says he wants to inspect the light fixtures
but
there are none
and I don't know what
happened to them
either.
The poor guy,
he begins to mutter,
but hey,
I can't be expected to keep track of
everything
can I?
Author bio: Wayne F. Burke's poetry has appeared in a variety of publications. His three
published poetry collections, all with Bareback Press, are WORDS THAT BURN (2013),
DICKHEAD (2015) and KNUCKLE SANDWICHES (2016). His chapbook, PADDY
WAGON is scheduled for publication in 2016 by Epic Rites Press. He lives in the central
Vermont area.
Two Poems
By Gregory Autry Wallace
Author bio: Gregory Autry Wallace is a poet, painter and collage artist. He studied
English, World and Comparative Literature, and Creative Writing at San Francisco State
University. His poetry and collages have appeared in Athena Incognito, Atticus Review,
Paper Radio and NRG. He was a poetry editor for Ink Magazine and a founding editor of
Oblivion Magazine. Mr. Wallace is the author of The Girl with Seven Hands and The
Return of the Cyclades.
Electric “Elegy”
for Carl Rakosi
[Young black girls covered with stars]
Because he can imagine
secretions of its web
subject unmakes himself
he left his horse and flew several centuries
passed by the idle cylinders
Heaven and earth filled with flywheels
china clocks tick in cold shells
dismal swamp scaring the owls
a still and quiet angel of knowledge
Hunter penetrates fingers of his left hand
and sees grave-worms crawling
in the blood of dazzling fire)
I start thousands of paintings
stopping finally all art and all fantasy
Even the princess had been forgotten
geared in loose mathematics
push in and I become invisible
when the thing stops every power stroke
is stopped with the last slow cough
Antistrophe of the sea light
ineffable beauty of forms
hear the plectrum of angels
fly and hover in Arcadia
Shade of Agememnon
stopped the heavy frenzy of pistons
compression leaking in a flash
one following another and
thoughts slide in equinox
The Points at would be fur
The points at would be fur
now looked once of creamy
very creamy barrier
soft, dark nebula.
again through triangle of would
All his everywhere
was but light carbon
Barrier of spirals]
Phoenix dark between everywhere
Boilding within time jumble
witch's body descends over
dizzying hair of Isis
like had been front
and was see ends
It that walked out of
darkness of many
so went the other above
open ends stars above
spread interior light
!
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!
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!
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!
y Thomas Piekarski
Spears sticking up in peat where dead sparrows nested.
Expressway frozen still. My double is your Valentino
thumbing his way back to Alaska. The middle occupied
by abandoned reindeer stranded on your daddy’s navel.
It’s muggy tonight. My Venice, your gondola. Voltaire
disguised as a motley harlequin hiding in the bushes.
When walking the wide Rambla in Barcelona watch out
or you may be ambushed by the ghost of Pablo Picasso.
Black sandpaper sky. Neighborhood houselights sparkle.
A few scraggly stars through the smog. Hoorah Uranus.
And then a dry field, parched tinderbox where I watch
jackrabbits morph into zebras before my bulging eyes.
Tis said you felt the essence of your sentencing within
those stanzas you penned, dear poet. Credit hard labor,
dust wrapped in cellophane. My Brutus is your Judas.
The poor ride the metro. The rich pontificate, and stall.
Strolling to the chapel of love, it could be anyplace. Take
this pill and chill out. If just for once go preemptive. Let’s
annex music and swing on grace notes. Green Lantern will
make his own way. My enlightenment is your epiphany.
Magritte taut, sweats, casts a big broad smile, hard at work
on a self-portrait, him wearing his typical bowler hat and
black tie, smokes a J-shaped pipe. Meanwhile Rimbaud is
having a ball, rides a comet tail round and round the moon.
The ferry leaves in ten minutes but who cares? This tidbit
of information irrelevant, and contrary to the development
of one’s understanding. All for one and we equally free-fall
said thunder hailing ancient Arcadia with a boatload of light.
City rail cars zip past, then a freight train trundles by, both
barely skirting catastrophe. My reality is your fond fantasy, so
we’re even. I have blood cells and thin air to dish out, although
we won’t gain satisfaction this night any more than gnomes.
Grand bedfellows my indistinguishable cadence coupled with
John Philip Sousa snoozing in the heart of the sun. And the sun
never rises without a prompt, an approval from you my friend,
my fiend, dark paramour. Now I’ll sing my latest song for you.
Author bio: Thomas Piekarski is a former editor of the California State Poetry
Quarterly. His poetry and interviews have appeared widely in literary journals in the
U.S., India, Canada, Austria, and the U.K., including Nimrod, Portland Review, Mandala
Journal, Cream City Review, Poetry Salzburg, Boston Poetry Magazine, The
Journal, and Poetry Quarterly. He has published a travel book, Best Choices In Northern
California, and Time Lines, a book of poems.
Premonition
By Jay Jurisich
Mortadella ginseng hyssop clay
she mucked in the garden raking mother's mulch
blocked from talking by the mocking rocker
blind gramophone bruising headwinds sway
last glass seen leaving scene with chalk talker
in amiable fury swept her walk away.
Toluene gun control razorback
the grinding efficiency of this or that wager
pausing to reflect the farmer laid bare
his billowing wheaties talking sweet smack
digesting the dirt in furrows of care
not walking not talking but for what they lack.
Rootward rootbound dryroot rootbeer
another salty conundrum searching for its savior
into the molting soil we blindly feel
pausing this planet without pulse without peer
You don't need census data to reveal
something's not quite right around here.
Author bio: Jay Jurisich is a Berkeley, California based artist whose artwork and poetry
explore the visual identity and conceptual nature of language. He is interested in whether
language can be "used" in a way that is not conventionally communication, poetry, or
logical, but inhabits or inspires a physical presence. W: http://www.jurisich.com/
Return of the Cyclades by Gregory Wallace
Artist bio: Gregory Autry Wallace is a poet, painter and collage artist. He studied
English, World and Comparative Literature, and Creative Writing at San Francisco State
University. His poetry and collages have appeared in Athena Incognito, Atticus Review,
Paper Radio and NRG.
HOLLYWOOD OBSCENE
By Fred D. White
Moonlight over Mulholland; suicides
from the letter H; searchlights and busty palmists;
Tarot readers with moonstones and garnets
authorizing every finger; psalmists, palm trees,
palm frauds; Casablanca slow fans;
here’s-lookin’-at-you-faces pressed in cement;
gilded goddess-heads lording over back lots;
tailored suits; spike heels amid Armani thugs
in smirk and four-day bristle:
How could I forget thee, H-O-L-L-Y-W-O-O-D,
American obscene and my home town.
Mash-it-smash-hit, sully of Pixar, war-adoring town!
Your screen hallucinations
and light-saber animation-amputations
have shattered me into a million permutations.
Good riddance, crash-blast, flip-over
bash-badass orgiastic computer animation.
Take your explosion plumes and bodies
slow-motion pirouetting though the air,
and choke on them.
I take my leave from your wired, your boors,
your muddled asses, fondled into thinking they are free
Author bio: Fred White’s poems have appeared most recently in The Courtship of
Winds and Euphony, and is forthcoming in Allegro Poetry Journal and The Cape Rock.
He lives near Sacramento, CA, with his wife and cat.
Of Bigotry and
(Book Review) by Alison Ross
Jayne Cortez's Coagulations is the kind of collection that, were I a savvier scribe, I
would write. While I do sometimes/often covet other writers' talents, I seldom feel I
could inhabit their poetic persona; they are different people with different aims in their
writing. But in Jayne Cortez, I feel an aching kinship.
Granted, Cortez, being African American, wrote from deeper dimensions, given her lived
experience with ruthless racism. As a woman, I can relate to her musings on the evils of
misogyny, but my ghostly skin hue has not routinely caused problems for me, and therein
lies our separation.
Where we converge, of course, is in our love for surrealist imagery transported through
pulsating lines. Cortez is the poet that I aspire to, but will never, be.
And I'm mostly okay with that. Cortez has much more to say, anyway. Despite having
dealt with sexism throughout my life - what woman has not? - I won't say that I have
been crippled by such experiences, whereas I am sure that Cortez's status as a double
minority threatened to severely set her back. Clearly, she fought back with her art, and
clearly, she won.
Because, you see, Coagulations is a crowning collection of poetry. In these gathered
verses, Cortez spills forth with sanguine sass and crimson rage the torments of enduring
bestial bigotry. In one of her more straightforward poems, "There it is," she seethes:
The ruling class will tell you that
there is no ruling class
as they organize their liberal supporters into
white supremacist lynch mobs
organize their children into
ku klux klan gangs
organize their police into
killer cops...
inoculate us with hate
institutionalize us with ignorance
hypnotize us with a monotonous sound designed
to make us evade reality and stomp our lives away
Her structural repetitions lend a lyrical lilt to otherwise harsh subject matter, and this is
what makes Cortez imminently readable. But where her lines become downright
mesmerizing is when she injects jarring juxtapositions, as in "Tell Me":
Tell me that the plutonium sludge
in your corroded torso is all a dream
Tell me that your penis bone is not erupting
with the stench of dead ants
that your navel is not the dump site
of contaminated pus
that the spillage from your hard ass
is not a fallout of radioactive waste
Tell me you're not going to peel off your skin
and be a psychedelic corpse in the holy water of patriotic babble
Cortez's phrasing becomes purely potent when her indignation takes on a rhetorical flair,
as in "If the Drum is a Woman":
why are you pounding your drum into an insane babble
why are you pistol-whipping your drum at dawn
why are you shooting through the head of your drum
and making a drum tragedy of drums
if the drum is a woman
don’t abuse your drum don’t abuse your drum
don’t abuse your drum
Though the blood of Cortez's battles against a greed-mongering, white supremacist,
woman-hating society congealed into an anger poised to sting the world with its venom,
she managed to temper her fury just enough to allow it to seep into these poems
throbbing with a jazz-surrealist tempo.
Cortez's art is deliciously deadly.
The Holdout
By Alexei Kalinchuk
The zombie apocalypse went hard on all of us, but a special sliver of hardship went
towards Elise Fleming. Elise Fleming, you see, prided herself on her home and garden, on
hanging black and white gelatin prints of mountainscapes on her walls, on coaxing the rarest most
prize-winningest flowers from the soil in her yard.
She, and all of us, did-not-could-not prepare for the onslaught of the undead devouring
citizens on the street, infecting the living and killing anyone they could find.
Before the military counterattack and its mop-up on pockets of zombies, we all stayed as
a group in the house of our beloved orderly neighbor.
Barricaded in there together, in that most tasteful house for five days, we stained her
floors with blood, boarded up her windows and killed four of our own who became infected.
While we saved her life, albeit having to kill her zombified husband, I don’t think she
ever forgave the violence committed on her home by the undead trying to break in or by the
wretched defenders within her walls.
With the military at last triumphant and the siege lifted, Elise Fleming did not thank
anyone or even look in our direction, but instead went outside to her flowerbeds to assess the
damage.
*
It’s been ten years since the apocalypse and there is now a vogue of survivor reunion
parties.
We remember those who have fallen, admire each other’s children born since, note
paunches and gray hair and guzzle beers and eat nachos while discussing the apocalypse and
thanking each other for never giving up.
Each year on the anniversary of the counterattack, my fellow survivors show up, but each
year in our group there is one summons that goes unanswered.
She lives with her new husband in a lovely house in Berne. I know this because I have
researched and looking at the photos online, I note that this house is not as posh as her last one.
Perhaps because I was the one who butchered her first husband, homicidal and infected,
on the Spanish tile of the bathroom, or perhaps because I broke up her antiques for firewood and
torches, or perhaps because I’d genuinely admired her grit and poise before that whole awful
business of the apocalypse began, but something makes me feel responsible for Elise Fleming’s
alienation from us.
Other survivors in our group tell me to forget that spiteful woman who cared more about
her house than anyone or anything, but I can no more forget her now than I could then.
My last attempt at reconciliation did not go well.
After winning the lottery in the year after the apocalypse- it’s been a strange time for me
really-I devoted my time to thinking of how to reunite all of our original band of survivors
because after being set for life materially, I could think of no higher purpose for my life than this.
I decided I needed to reconcile with Elise.
Having commissioned an elaborate picture frame, one of a kind and expensive, I took my
private plane out to Europe to see if Elise Fleming wouldn’t accept my peace offering. I must’ve
had uneasy dreams on the flight over, because I cracked the top of a molar while in my sleep, but
this pain would not dissuade me from my mission.
I stood on the doorstep of her house, knocking, sometimes moaning because the winter
cold crept into the broken tooth and made a misery of my mouth, but I would not leave.
After my arrest however, I did leave; left the country, left the picture frame with the
police who did God knows what with it, left without even seeing her face.
Yet I will not delete her from my list of invitations I send out every year, and if I had her
email, I would send her our survivor group’s online newsletter so she can see who is getting
married, having a baby or graduating high school.
I’ve learned to survive, but not how to give up.
Write me back, tell me how you do it, Elise Fleming.
I want to know.
Or maybe that’s for the next apocalypse to teach me.
Author bio: Alexei Kalinchuk writes literary novels, has had fiction published in Amoskeag
Journal, The Bitter Oleander, Foliate Oak. He smells like fennel, sleeps on a mattress stuffed
with cilantro, and eats pomegranates alone.
The Inevitable Failure of
Historians of
Civilizations (Polemic)
by Edwin L. Young, PhD
I feel quite certain about two things. First, these universal, male
dominated, power structures have been present since the earliest
beginnings of all civilizations. Second, not even historians of
civilizations understand the arbitrariness of these evolutionary
processes. They keep lauding the unbelievable cruelty of the dominant
male leaders of all previous civilizations.
As a result of these two universal trends throughout history, I am
unwaveringly convinced that these trends will continue even as long as
mass destruction weapons continue to be lethally evolved along with
them.
Importantly, along with that dire trend, antiquated male physiology
predisposes male leaders to be monomanaically goal oriented, power
superiority motivated, aggressively competitive, unempathic and
insensitive to the pain of others. Simultaneously, the majority of males
of lesser intelligence continue to live by group loyalty and conformity
and to be incredibly easily ordered by their leaders to perform
unconscionably despicable acts on their 'falsely supposed enemies.'
This latter trend is also pervasive in sports; which so easily prepares
them for militancy and which then is transmuted into compliance with
'us versus them,' mass destruction, global conflicts.
All the while, the CEO Directors of this horror drama have orchestrated
their corporations so as to reap huge profits from it all. Unwittingly,
the populace is complicit in corporate, unrelenting move toward
devastating climate change and the distantly inevitable destruction of
all life on earth.
Public education, one of their invisibly conformist creating strategies,
prevents the hoi polloi from ever suspecting that they are being
molded to be obedient slaves of corporate profiteering and militaristic
motivations and goals.
It is all a pervasively well integrated, worldwide system, dictated by
about 100 of the earth's richest and (almost exclusively male) crossnational,
most powerful individuals --- the "Bilderbergers."
All the while the populace, the "adult and children kiddies" are kept
mesmerized by the major pseudo news channels owned by the earth's
largest corporations, titillating adult sitcoms, and children's' television
Pablum.
The populaces were well entertained by these during the US coup of
most of Africa, excluding South Africa, and, so far, the also nearly
excluded, is that almost impenetrable nation, China. Included in this
untouchable category as well is the impotent, religion obsessed,
sleeping giant India.
Postcard #7 by Bob Heman
The Shining Example (Film Review) By Alison Ross
"Moonlight" is a film of confounding contradictions. It is both easy and difficult to
describe - and both easy and difficult to watch. The film left me speechless, and yet
hopeful. It depressed me while also uplifting me. The subject matter is grave, and it is
that gravity, and the verisimilitude - the vehicle transporting that gravity - that sank my
soul like a dull weight. And yet the pathos driving the movie - the vast empathy displayed
toward the main character's tormenting travails - is what illuminated the edges of my own
despair.
Technically speaking, the movie is pristine. I cannot think of a better mode of telling the
story than the brutal sparseness and starkly linear trajectory the film embraces. The film's
protagonist, a poor black male gradually coming to terms with his own sexuality, is
personified by a trio of stellar actors at various stages of his life. His main antagonists -
his mother and a callous society - are embodied authentically to an anguishing degree.
The whole movie reeks of realism, which is its staggering strength and yet the element
that evokes the most disquiet.
"Moonlight," indeed, situates itself in a place where pathos is filtered through a
wrenching realism. It is not concerned with slushy sentimentalism, just as it is
unconcerned with being icily aloof toward its troubled lead. Too, it eschews mere
caricature and presents the protagonist as one whose luckless lot nonetheless renders him
infinitely relatable, a fully formed character worthy of our respect, imbued with a dignity
and courage normally reserved for more conventional characters. Chiron is fractured, to
be sure, but has an unorthodox charisma, and as such, is more realistically realized than a
stock archetype.
"Moonlight" exists somewhere at the intersection of austerity and veracity, where vivid
truth is presented in a sternly minimalistic manner.
This is why the film, one of the best I have seen in a long time, is simultaneously easy
and difficult to watch. We want our movies about difficult topics to be digestible, and
that, in itself, is oxymoronic. We crave simple storylines and simple solutions, even if the
subject matter defies simplicity.
But we cannot have it both ways. Difficult subject matter demands astringent, if nuanced,
artistic approaches. It's the only way to validate, and hence seek answers to, complex
questions.
"Moonlight" shines a harsh radiance on what it is like to be poor, black, and gay. It's
time, at last, that a film did just that.
The Drunkeness of Ashes!! ! ! !"#$%&&#'(&)*#
!
#
Artist bio: Bill Wolak is a poet, photographer, and collage artist. He has just published
his twelfth book of poetry entitled Love Opens the Hands with Nirala Press. His collages
have been published in over a hundred magazines including: The Annual, Peculiar
Mormyrid, Danse Macabre, Dirty Chai, Hermeneutic Chaos Literary Journal, Lost Coast
Review, Mad Swirl, Otis Nebula, and Horror Sleaze Trash. Recently, he was a featured
poet at The Mihai Eminescu International Poetry Festival in Craiova, Romania. Mr.
Wolak teaches Creative Writing at William Paterson University in New Jersey.
Professor LITANY (SATIRE)
By Kane X. Faucher
Profethah, when is class...where is class... what is class?????
read the syllabus
read
read the fucking syllabus
When are your office hours???
the syllabus
read you must
What did I miss last class when is my assignment due will you hold my hand
will you hold my hair when I puke will you tell me what to do and how to do
it so much it is like you are doing it all can I write on this or this or
this...how do i get the A++++++ and keep my scholarship and go to
medical-law school but without doing too much just give me an A cuz I have
lots of potential????
read
the
syllabus
what is your policy on...???
the syllabus
So can I hand in my essay a bit later because...???
Read. The. Syllabus. Then, read it again.
Can I double-triple-quadruple space quoting Youtube how do I quote
Snapchat is Fox News an academic source whaddya mean by academic
source where is the library what is a library can I tweet my essay to you as I
do it will you edit it as I go will you validate me like a proxy parent and be
my blackhawk daddy-mummy and explain all the big words and I'm having
a lot of total stress and anxiety and depression cuz my iphone won't turn on
and I think I have the flu cuz of all this facebook drama in my life, my life is
so busy and important I think I'm having a total pumpkin spice latte mic
drop right here and right now and I dunno why i should ever learn to use
apostrophe cuz I'll get a nineteen-figure job in something I dunno-what but it
will be on social media with lots of emojis and everyone will love me and
give me golden sparkly houses and rainbow ponies with mad stackz of billz
for my BMWs as I chillax with my peeps and show off my individuality in
my style tribe and can I hand the paper in next year cuz my stress and
emotional diabetes??????
syllabus! syllabus! syl-la-bus-s-s-s-s-s-s!
Measure of ‘Lowest Common
Denominator‘ Among Americans
Near Zero (SATIRE)
By Gilbert Prowler
The benchmark for the so-called ‘lowest common denominator’ of
Americans is now close to bottoming out. “Any lower and we’ll be flat
lining,” says Owen Richards, head of statistical analysis at More On, a
California think tank.
The term represents a measurement of the level of the least discriminating
audience or consumer group. The study titled ‘Reasoning In the Population’
(RIP) paints a grim picture of a growing segment of Americans.
“Left to their own devices and the misinformation they get from them, many
adults are regressing to a point where they have difficultly coming up with
even one fact based thought.” Richards said.
The study of 2,700 subjects shows the correlation of the growing use of ego
driven social media, a hyper political climate and the need to fill a bloated
24/7 news cycle as some of the factors responsible for the downward spiral.
“To get a base line we pored over thousands of Facebook postings and
Twitter feeds as well as stories in the New York Post, interviews at public
urinals and Fox News. The findings were horrific. For example, the large
following of YouTube egg videos and people unwrapping a box of
merchandise is not an aberration."
Richards also points to the popularity of Donald Trump as indicative of the
decline in perception and reasoning. He cites the acceptance by Trump
supporters of his string of near truths, contradictions and outright lies as
examples of the lack of basic analytical thought among millions of
Americans.
“What we see happening is a worldview based on fiction posing as facts that
seeps down to become core beliefs. Across all segments of society people
are believing what they want to if it fits into a narrative they’re comfortable
with.
"Unfortunately, that can result in an inability to consider any conflicting yet
pertinent data. About the only thing those in our study could agree on was
the alphabet, although not necessary in letter order.
“I'm afraid the days of enlightenment are long over,” Richards added.
Author bio: Gilbert Prowler is a freelance writer and independent filmmaker who has
spent most of his life working, looking for work or running down checks. He was born in
Brooklyn, New York at a time when you could use a public restroom without having to
pass through security, the pornography was usually hidden in the attic by your old man
and Pluto was a planet. He currently lives in California with his wife, children and a
brown lawn.
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