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« contents »
meghan thornton
the seduction 7
ana elsner
incubation 15
flirting
16
shideh etaat
steven gray
roger porter
church folks
33
sam sax
bed.bugz 39
fran san frisco 43
julia halprin jackson
tatyana brown
impact 53
depth perception 56
keely hyslop
maisha johnson
island home
67
sharon coleman
zone 71
scott lambridis
abort 75
jennifer barone
love noise 81
Meghan Thornton
t HE s EDUCTION
» I’d love to meet my mom.
» Yeah?
» Yeah, I’d love to ask her what the hell she was
thinking when she slept with my dad.
» You don’t?
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» Oh.
» Yeah.
» Well?
» True.
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Meghan Thornton
» Doubtful.
» Why?
» Look at him!
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» You’re a dick.
» Sure.
» I guess.
» Whatever.
« 10 »
Meghan Thornton
trouble.
» Yeah, whatever.
» No?
» No.
» Really?
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Meghan Thornton
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Ana Elsner
i NCUBATION
And isn’t it made seductively easy for us to
overlook these clusters of embedded larvae,
voracious maggots, laid in the moist corners
and dark crevasses of our ignorance? How
madly our heads were set spinning by the
pollsters and the carnival whores, bewitching us
with shameless spectacle and boisterous
campaign, while entrapping us with the viral
confetti of tinsel clad and laminated lies.
Remember, this invasive blight of systemic
depredation took hold with little or no
resistance, and began gestating in the body
politic well before the lobbying and the song
and dance, when we were festooned with the
dankness of our sweat, with the yellow ribbons
of our fear, with the ravishing and chronic
blindness to an un-masked reality, which had
been coming on, which was going on, which is
on-going. Face it, these implanted pupae of
calamity, hosted by the soft tissue of our minds,
they await awakening, excubation in unison, sly
maturation into a clandestine army, that is self
deployed to game out the thin membrane of our
fortitude, to deconstruct intelligent compassion,
to eulogize our innocence, and inject a powerful
anti-coagulant so our seeping wounds can never
heal.
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f LIRTING
Stony Sweetheart,
grazer on meadows
of skin,
WHO chimed you into Sunday,
the one day when there is
no bloodshed?
Flirtatious Dominatrix,
subject of our
fascination,
now unsleeping,
now raised up
from the darkest soil
of heaven.
Say you wish you were a
Seraph,
but slice through our sinews
with the gold tipped blade
of your song,
your deliriously hypnotic siren song,
that cripples our feeble
attempts
at gasping for life.
Sunday.
No bloodshed.
And you are inscrutably a
wanton Seductress,
approaching from far
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Ana Elsner
away,
yet never far enough away
to save us from the
predictable outcome
of our dangerous contrivances,
and let us go
unclaimed.
Yours is immortally a love that is,
needs be,
all consuming,
all exhaustive,
deliciously fatal to our bereft
existence
Yet all our new days
we will be,
we dream of your touch,
secretly,
craven.
All now flirtation.
All.
Now.
« 17 »
Shideh Etaat
u NDER t HE f IG t REE
Feyzolah Delshad was an athletic man with a
thick, black mustache that looked like a brush
stroke above his eager eighteen year old
mouth. And as his last name suggested he had
a happy heart. The King, Reza Shah was starting
to build the Trans-Iranian Railway and had even
visited Isfahan, where the Jews had first settled
because the land reminded them of Israel. Reza
Shah was personally sympathetic towards the
Jews, even praying in their synagogues, putting
on a yamakah with an Aleph sewn onto it,
boosting the confidence and status of Iranian
Jews everywhere. It was easy to change the
laws of the land, but the mind and hearts of the
people, less so. It was only a minority of Iranians
who would ultimately treat Jews better than
before the Pahlavi Dynasty when a Jewish man
or woman wasn’t allowed to enter a Muslim
man’s shop, but had to stand outside and point
to the fruit he or she wanted to purchase. Their
contaminated fingers could never tap a melon
to see if it was ripe for eating, put it next to
their ears to hear its hollowness, or put an
orange to their nose and inhale. It was only a
small amount of people who would stop
believing that Jews were considered najes or
untouchable and weren’t allowed outside while
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Shideh Etaat
responded.
“Bacche sayyâb-râ mazan, khargush-e
dashtom râ mazan. Khâb-e khargush be khâb-e
yâr mimunad, bale- Don't kill my dog nor my
rabbits, for the dream of the rabbit reminds me
of the dream of my lover, oh yes,” Feyzolah
sang to her, urging the hunter in the song not to
kill the animals on his field because they
reminded him of his lover. Mahvash twisted one
of his curls in between her fingers and he looked
up at her face, upside down from where he lay,
and he thought- this is a woman to love.
“I want to kiss you down there,” Feyzolah
told her, because Ramin his friend had told him
that girls fall in love with you when you do that.
And she let him because she was feeling
slippery inside and she worried that everything
inside of her would soon fall out if something did
not make its way inside of her. She would’ve
spoken, but there were no words invented yet
for this. Feyzolah moved down below, parted
the thick hairs, tangled like a web, darker, if you
can believe it, than the hair on her head. And he
kissed her like he meant it, because really he
did. He slipped inside and then outside of her,
and it reminded Mahvash of the rhythm of the
song they had been singing together minutes
earlier.
Let's go to the mountain. Which
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mountain?
He continued even though it was windy
and the figs knocked wildly on their bodies.
They didn’t mind. He looked up asking with his
eyes, his mouth wet with her and Mahvash
nodded, inviting other parts of him inside of her.
The same that has deer, oh yes. And my
dog has a rope on its foot, oh yes.
The branches were soon bare and
Mahvash moaned as she began to feel empty,
blank, free inside her own body, and she dug
her sweaty hands into his curls and allowed him
even deeper inside of her.
Don't kill my dog, nor my rabbit, nor my
deer, for the grace of my deer reminds me of
the grace of my lover, oh yes.
And before she could even think of her
friend Nasrin who had hung herself in her room
months before, afraid what her father might do
if he found out she had slept with Babak and
was no longer a virgin, Mahvash’s body began
to pulse as if possessed.
“Allahu Akhbar, Allahu Akhbar. Ash-hadu
al-la Ilaha ill Allah,” she cried out to Feyzolah to
God to the tree and the sky and the birds that
flew in flocks above, it was afternoon after all.
Time for prayer. Feyzolah rested on top of her,
their wet bodies slipping against each other. He
put his head into the curve of her neck.
“Don’t move,” she said, “we may be able
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Shideh Etaat
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Shideh Etaat
« 25 »
Steven Gray
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Steven Gray
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h ANSEL a ND g RETEL
Once upon a time there was an old woman who
would kill teenagers and eat them. She lived in
Marin and her home was covered with
marijuana plants. When the high school
students would come up to her house in the
woods to get some pot she would invite them in,
get them stoned, and when they were so high
they couldn’t see straight, push them into the
oven. Considering they were full of THC it was
like making pot brownies, except it was smoked
high school students.
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Steven Gray
« 31 »
Roger Porter
« 33 »
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humming.
And I promise that I
Will serve him ‘til I die,
Cause I’m on the battlefield for my lord.
The last part of the song always moved
Mrs. Brown. She closed her eyes while she
hummed, sucking hard on her peppermint
candy. I watched her sway her body gently, her
lavender hat with the pink rose moving side to
side to the rhythm and I listened as her deep
voice grew husky after Lamont got killed. The
last note of the song started sounding painful.
She would hum it as she folded her arms across
her chest like she was hugging herself. Lamar
would always look down at the ground; he never
sang a word. He had a Sunday service routine
that he would follow; during 8:00a.m. worship
he was silent and good. Then during 11:15a.m.
worship he would twist and turn in his seat, he
would bend up a Martin Luther King church fan
or keep trying to talk to me even though Mrs.
Brown told him to be quiet. If it was communion
Lamar would spill the blood of Christ on the
church carpet. The girls that went to school with
us would look at Lamar and giggle, the boys
would smile and whisper “dang Lamar hecka
bad,” the old ladies in church hats would look at
all of us and then stare at Mrs. Brown. The
deacons, even the reverend, would squint his
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Roger Porter
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Roger Porter
« 37 »
Sam Sax
b ED . b UGZ
if sleep is the cousin of death
then death must be
my schizophrenic cousin daniel
who reads talmud
claims our family are direct descendants of god
and sleep
drinks alone in bathrooms
claims his brain cells are not destroyed
they are merely expanded
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that morning
daylight straight razored my gay nightlife
and i wished i hadn.t told bedtime to go fuck
herself
that walk home i thanked my lucky now hidden
stars
that i had no one to come back to
« 40 »
Sam Sax
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mom.
we are all just searching for ways to finally
rest in peace.
« 42 »
Sam Sax
f RAN s AN f RISCO
When that big wave finally comes
to swallow the sunset
i.ll be waiting.
open armed
on the sunrise side
of the golden gate bridge.
« 43 »
Julia Halprin Jackson
t HE p OLITICS oF i
NHERITANCE
The will lay before me; an unfinished draft.
Here, at her 87 years of age, Mamma had to
exercise her final act of control. Her
possessions.
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Julia Halprin Jackson
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Julia Halprin Jackson
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Julia Halprin Jackson
“What?” I say.
« 51 »
Tatyana Brown
i MPACT
The first time I hit you and knew that I meant it,
my fist caught the soft spot just below the
cartilage of your sternum, and kept moving into
you so quickly a pathetic puff of air broke free of
your mouth and you let out the kind of wounded
animal sound they edit out of nature videos
because everyone knows the only way to love a
wild thing is if it has some semblance of dignity.
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« 54 »
Tatyana Brown
you,
but I am not looking for forgiveness in the
hollows I’ve dug out. It is the spark of you I miss
the most.
I keep looking for the place that held you when
you ran away. I am hoping you will find your
own way back.
Speak now.
Your body is your own again.
The only thing missing from this revival
is your breath.
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d EPTH p ERCEPTION
On the weekends we would set
the parakeets free inside the apartment,
and wonder at their failure to understand walls.
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Tatyana Brown
« 57 »
Keely Hyslop
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Keely Hyslop
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f RANKENSTEIN
Grandpa was Frankenstein
staring eyes half-lidded
leaden legs lifting dropping
rigid arms reaching forward
nerveless fingers slicing through air
and I was Elizabeth
stumbling away running
being caught by the creature
shrieking in terror
I was 7 and I loved to scream
my screams could pierce ear drums
I was going to be in the movies someday
and Grandpa loved to help me practice
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Keely Hyslop
« 63 »
Maisha Johnson
i SLAND h OME
well, wouldn’t you be afraid if you were her?
with memories slipping from your skull
like the warm sand of your island home
falling through the cracks in your brain,
and you clutching all you have left
by your ribs while you sleep, waking each
morning
to find someone tugging your treasures away?
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« 66 »
Maisha Johnson
« 67 »
Sharon Coleman
z ONE
In a crevice
where brown mountains
lined with orange minerals
drop to the desert floor,
just under and therefore
out of sight
of sharpshooters
who spit bullets
at dawn and dusk
into their own shadows
as they migrate
across sand and dust
and sometimes hit
the living who find
themselves covered
by a shooter’s blotted form,
here in this crevice,
directly below
and therefore out of sight,
I inhabit a place,
half cave, half wooden thatch,
that looks onto the arid valley,
half exile, half home.
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« 70 »
Sharon Coleman
« 71 »
Scott Lambridis
a BORT
She wasn’t pretty. I don’t even remember first
seeing her. She was small. She had, as my
friends told me, great big tits, though I really
didn’t care. It was spring in the Midwest—I was
a sucker for short skirts and cleavage and large
wide smiles. I was also a sucker for adventure
after a nasty break-up and six months of post-
college nothing. I didn’t like that this made me a
“dude,” but then maybe I did. It’s never a good
idea to get involved with someone in your
office, but the taboo-ness of it was a hint of
what I needed from her. She taught me how to
fuck when I didn’t want to learn anything else.
She was the perfect girl for the wrong time of
my life.
She was brazen. When she was sober, it
was intoxicating; when she was drunk, it was
nauseating. After my boss fired her because she
wasn’t as good as me at calling off sick, I got to
see her in her element at the department store.
I wondered if we would have sex in the
changing rooms. Or if we would even make it
that far, considering the density of all the racks
and turnstiles covered with clothing. We might
duck below them right here, on lunch break. My
friend Billy warned me over pasta and
breadsticks at some chain restaurant to stay
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« 74 »
Scott Lambridis
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« 76 »
Scott Lambridis
« 77 »
Jennifer Barone
l OVE n OISE
A slow, repetitive squeaking
begins to reverberate
over my head
in the bedroom
“finally”
I whisper to myself
all alone with this sound of my neighbor
who I can’t really picture
making love
but I try
nothing
I close my eyes
still nothing
can’t picture him
but I know what I feel
happy
finally
that the squeaking has returned
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but now
that sound of joy has arrived again
that soft
monotonous sound
like a little mouse jumping on bed springs
brings me a sense of relief
It depends
on where I am in life
that sound
has made me feel so differently
« 80 »
Jennifer Barone
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« 82 »
Jennifer Barone
but today
I lay in bed
in the middle of the afternoon
trying to be quiet enough
to hear this proof of love existing again
becoming ever so vibrant
and real
above my head
quietly squeaking
the repetitious love mantra
of my neighbor
finally back to life
« 83 »
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