October 2013 | back-issues, poetry
doctor no
1. “escape addiction,”
the doctor says,
I wait out the pause
the dot dot dot
(three little indians, no feathers)
before I ask “how?”
“you misunderstand,” he replies,
“that’s the diagnosis”
2. “Nurse Scalpel?”
“Yes Doctor?”
“prepare yourself…”
[a painted nail
takes the pulse
the color,
a thin layer,
really just a cover,
on which we judge
this pornographic literature
(and we HOWL)]
3. “lycanthropy,”
the doctor says
the moon is liquid
the moon is a peephole
on indeterminate skin,
the watching animals
claw together
loose change
4. at some point
in american history
there was a mass vaccination
against imagination
we were spoon-fed
warm bits of plastic
blister packs
about wounded hearts
(are you safe
up on your hook,
behind your barcode armor?
we hear the squeaks,
from a distance ,
rats on christmas eve
are we the gifts
or the teeth? and,
how do you ever sleep?)
5. “ugly duckling syndrome”
he says
turns his head and coughs
and pisses in my water
(I shaved this morning
so in the mugshot I wouldn’t
look like a lamb to the slaughter)
small town murder
1. you are
a small town murder mystery
and you don’t know why
“don’t touch they body,” they say
but all the fingerprints
stack into a photograph
of a shifting desert seen static
2. we went to church
to interview witnesses
they held their tongues
like leather leashes
pulled taut by rabid hearts
(“this is the blood
this is the body”
this is the aural wallpaper
in the room where
they’ve painted themselves
into corners
with the rudimentary tools
of sunlight and stained glass)
3. we touched the body
found a map cut into the skin
the cartographer: the broken mirror
rumor suggests
it leads to the fountain of youth
rumor goes
that she faced that full length photograph
and tried to shake herself awake
4. we went
about the anthill
looking for witnesses
but all the secrets are kept
behind each white picket fence
every outward semblance
of a smile
(the grass is always greener
when treated with chemicals)
5. this is the blood
this is the body
you are
and you don’t know why
(you’re young
but you’ve been dying
a long time)
mars
1. in the beginning
god opened his crayon box
like a missile silo in the middle of nowhere
used all the blue for the sky
all the green for the earth
all the black for the hearts
the brown for the dirt
(left us with just the red and
and a rusted sharpener)
“in school today
we learned “mars” as a verb
we learned of class
separation
the science inside us
that fights and creates the energy
we harness in our self-destruction”
(the cliques, the clicks, the boom)
(in the beginning mars
was the god
of war)
2. she calls it a map
of the first place she lost
control and/of memory
once it all made sense but
once is never enough
the presents leave paper cuts as we grow up
the present feels like a sad song
in the movie credits, all the black and all the names
and just one voice screaming
she wears a razor on a silver chain
around the vase of her throat
flowered once but no
longer honey
-suckle(the smallest part torn out
for the littlest bit of sweetness)
3. and maybe it’s just training wheels
cause baby it’s all down hill
from here(hold on)
“a self-centered elizabeth bathory
in a claw-foot bathtub
razor like a sliver of a moon
in the sky of her blue hand”
-quote the private eyes in the police report
and the black and white photographs
show the slashes as silver linings
a clouded girl who rained
but watched it evaporate
4. in the beginning
mars
was habitable
(she called it a map
of the first place
she lost)
— Joe Quinn
Joe Quinn is a 33 year old poet living in Kentucky. Author of four previous collections, all available at stores.lulu.com/welcomehomeironlung, the most recent collection entitled “escape artist.”
October 2013 | back-issues, fiction
Ten minutes ago, I dropped you
at the airport, and you cried and I stared
blankly at the wall above your head, waiting
for the tears I knew wouldn’t fall,
not there, not then,
not when I needed them to.
Now I’m on the road, heading back
to the apartment you helped me decorate,
and there’s a hole in my stomach,
the air conditioner blasting right through it,
knowing that you’re sitting alone
in the terminal, trying your best
to bury your sadness but falling
short—way short, your eyes red like
the blouse you walked away in. But also
because I’m hungry,
because we ate brunch, not lunch,
and now it’s dinner time; and
if you were here with me right now, in the car,
we’d be discussing our dinner options,
flipping through our combined mental rolodex
of recently purchased Target grocery items,
each of us pretending to desire
what we suspect the other one does.
Ultimately, we would debate
over chicken stir fry or baked Swai,
and because neither one of us knows how
to make a decision, we would leave
that decision to chance and play rock-paper-scissors,
and you would win, like you always do,
so we would eat what you thought I wanted, which was the Swai,
and you would have been right.
I do want the Swai.
I want the Swai right now, but thinking of the Swai
makes my face contort
like a deep-sea monster,
my upper lip fat
and quivering,
my cheeks swollen, my eyebrows rolling
like the Nebraska Sandhills
we canoed through last summer. And of course
now I’m crying, now that I’m alone,
because how in the hell am I supposed to make Swai
when the only thing I know about Swai
is that I love you?
— Carson Vaughan
Carson is a native Nebraskan and freelance writer with published features work in Salon, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, Orion, Truthout, the Omaha World Herald, the Lincoln Journal Star, the Wilmington Star News, and other publications. He currently serves as the nonfiction editor of Ecotone at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington.
October 2013 | back-issues, poetry
Joey
at the mercy of my feelings
in the palm of your hand
you’ve got me.
headlights float outside my window
like UFOs or the goat-drawn
chariots of Norse gods.
I’ll spell these figment cuddles
and kisses into stars
imploding, melting at my fingertips.
this has happened too many
times and my smile has found its crease,
but there are too few promises left
to group like marbles,
rolling in the bottom of a bucket.
Polite Love Notes
The wind whips, whistling
outside my window. Dirty laundry
strewn across the bed,
my thoughts of you
sprawling over every spare surface.
The chill of January
draws to a close and here
I am, my imagination
drawing you close, closer.
Kissing ghost lips,
wishing beyond wishes,
pronouncing every “please”
as clearly as I can
because my hopes are climbing
out of my chest
onto this page, a canvas,
whatever they can reach
ever writing and rewriting
the poem that keeps you near me.
My Heart Thrums Like the Radio
Happy is hard to hold,
fling a rope and do your best
to tie it up tidy
take the flood captive.
But you unwound the spark,
tapping a rhythm
amid the ordinary colors
a dance of pulses and pearls.
Stealing Kisses in An Art Gallery
Dropping I love yous like candy pieces
licking up scraps of affection
whenever they are spared.
Glorying in the sound of
my own name, eyes closed in
reverence, basking in
the thickest fog and prettiest paint.
Stow the memories, the needless nostalgia,
for this moment has me lighter than air.
Cold Calligraphy
Something delicate,
something I could understand
like pink petals cascading
settling soft on pale skin –
blonde hair,
glimmering eyes.
Not anything like this cold –
a girl carving sentences,
her friends to fragments,
herself to pieces.
I would hold her but for all
the edges. But for
my wounds being cut
just as fresh, just as cleanly.
— Sarah Lucille Marchant (twitter.com/flutterpulse)
October 2013 | back-issues, poetry
My Mother is a video nasty,
a lurid analog nightmare
transcribed with bloody fingers
onto VHS, shoved in a thin
cardboard box with age lines like soggy skin,
then sealed in urban legends:
tight, taught cellophane.
They speak of it in whispers on
discussion boards.
How the tracking is off on every copy,
EVERY copy. There is a gnarly buzz
scratching through the opening credits.
The last 15 minutes are legendary.
She removes her face with her finger nails,
pulls it off like a thin rubbery plastic.
A secret face, white
microwaves of intense mockery,
focused as a lighthouse beam.
Papi dies the hard way, the Clive Barker way.
Hangers like hooks, fish hooks,
tear him asunder.
He is hunks of raw, red steak.
Ribs flower from
torso as marrow oozes like a thick pollen.
This is an important shot, the commenters say,
the reconfiguring of his sex. KubrickFurry asserts
Ann’s monstrous feminine is conservative. RandallFlag
retorts there is a lacanian message obscured by this corpse
flower: the trauma of child abuse embodied by the real.
I am dodging face suns, hauling ass through the
barbed chain bramble that was my home.
Avatars debate over impossible architecture: men and women
sparring with verbal chainsaws as I run through
a five and a half minute hallway, chased by a faceless medusa
in a dream of jagged ambien singed into the glass eye of a
Kodak camera.
No one understands the ending.
They say I have to live,
fight my sister in the sequel.
They say the irrational is the milieu of cult films.
I say burn every copy of this ring virus.
Smash it.
Crush it.
Never let your mother watch it.
— David Arroyo
October 2013 | back-issues, fiction
1. The Confession
“I know that Cheri’s been cheating on me.”
I looked at Rod. We were jogging together around the lake. “She told you?”
“Fuck no; the bitch is too afraid of me to spit it out.”
“Then how—“
“Her face told me. I been with her long enough to tell. No different than if she confessed outright.” Rod picked up speed; I managed to keep up with him even though I hadn’t been jogging much lately.
“Maybe you’re misreading her. Maybe—“
“Here’s what I’m gonna do to the fucker once I squeeze it out of her who she fucked.” He slowed down and pulled a switchblade from his shorts pocket. “I’m gonna cut off his dick. Slowly, so I can enjoy the screaming. Then I’ll shut him up by shoving it into his mouth. And then I’ll grab my .38 and—”
“Jesus, Rod, stop it. Just stop it!”
“It’ll be quite a show, Gus. I’ll give you a ringside seat. ‘Wild West Justice.’”
We finished our jog in silence. As I turned to head for home, Rod said, “If she’s still visiting with Jill tell her to get her ass back here now.”
Jill and Cheri were on the sofa, solemnly watching Cheri’s son, Rod Jr., playing with the puppy. I pecked Jill on the cheek. She didn’t respond.
Cheri stared at me; then she said, “Did you and Rod have a good run?”
“I need a drink,” I said—more to myself than to Jill or Cheri, and went into the kitchen. I poured some whiskey into a tumbler, took a gulp, sat down, and put my head in my hands.
Cheri walked in after a decent interval. She looked ill. I could see what she was thinking.
2. The Wound
Dennie said he wanted to show me something. We’d been lounging in his back yard. It got very hot so we went inside. He made a pitcher of lemonade, spiked it with his mother’s vodka, what the hell, she was out of town for the weekend. We played some chess. He must have poured a lot of vodka into the lemonade because after just a few swigs the chess pieces began moving by themselves.
“You said you wanted to show me something, Dennie?”
Wincing, he slowly removed his shirt. His fingers were long and thin. “This.” He moved to one side and lifted his arm
There was a huge purple contusion on his ribcage.
“Jeez, what happened to you?”
He dropped his arm, readjusted himself on his chair and returned his attention to the chessboard. He wiggled his finger on a pawn as if trying to decide whether to deploy it or not. “It was BB .”
“Bad Brad Jensen?”
Dennie finally moved the pawn. “Yeah.”
“When?”
“During basketball practice.” As Dennie explained it, he and BB had had gotten into an argument. BB began speed-dribbling the ball and suddenly flung it at Dennie with such force that Dennie stumbled and fell. He called BB a thug and flipped him off. Before Dennie could get back on his feet, BB kicked him in the ribs.
There was this unwritten rule: giving guys like BB the bird would earn you a bashed-in face or a couple of broken bones.
“More lemonade, Carl?
I nodded.
“Too bad BB has such a mean streak,” Dennie sighed. “There was a time when I felt sure we were really gonna hit it off.”
“Hard to imagine.”
Dennie gazed at me for a long moment and smiled. Finally, he said, “Your move.”
3. The Rumor
Did you hear the rumor?
I most certainly did. Isn’t it disgusting? How could they have been so sinful?
It doesn’t surprise me. Everywhere you look, people are turning into sinners.
I wonder if the rest of the neighborhood heard about it. Well, I am going to find out.
In just a few hours, the rumor had spread through the neighborhood. But the rumor did not stop there. It spread through the next neighborhood and the next. By the end of the following day, the rumor had spread through the entire town.
It was a wildfire of a rumor.
The rumor spread to one town after another. By the end of the week, the rumor had spread across the county, gaining strength as it spread, reshaping itself as it grew stronger with each new county it invaded.
Did you hear the rumor? Did you hear what they did? Isn’t it disgusting? How can people be so sinful?
The wildfire became a conflagration, consuming every county in the state, consuming the state, and eventually every state in the lower forty-eight. Alaska was delayed, thanks to Canada; Hawaii was spared.
Three persons dared to quash the rumor, the monstrosity that the rumor had become. Those individuals were apprehended, branded as enemies of the faith, and promptly silenced. Of course, they had become the flashpoint of yet another rumor.
— Fred D. White
Fred D. White’s work has appeared in Confrontation, Michigan Quarterly Review, Other Voices, Pleiades, Southwest Review, Writer’s Digest, etc. His most recent book is *Where Do You Get Your Ideas? A Writer’s Guide to Transforming Notions into Narratives* (Writer’s Digest Books, 2012).
