Squawk Back

2013-06-16T00:05:00.000-04:00

The Smoky Aroma
by Elijah Burkhardt

AN ONTO mountains, clouds, a cowboy with a handlebar moustache riding a horse, he surveys the sunset, orange light blazing on his face, suddenly a raised eyebrow, leans to the side, chaps crinkle, a large oblong paddle of a spongy membranous material is extracted from a burlap satchel. ...READ MORE

IKEA Romance & two more. by Demosthenes Hammond

2013-06-16T00:04:00.000-04:00

I met this girl
                (At IKEA)

Me being a sort of D-I-Y
                Kinda guy;

We talked in Swedish
                Furniture:

With complementary form
                And pencil.

I scribed down my number,
                Was about

To slip it to her but
                I found out;

(A conveniently forgotten
                Step-Father)

As my hand was in her
                Back pocket,

The Step-Dad's was in my
                Eye socket...

I had struck gold in
                A coal mine-

I left with blackened eyes
                Anyway

(She) Wears the Mask (A Parody).
She wears the mask that's green and why:
(Exfoliates cheeks and avoid the eyes)
  She'd pay a beautician- while
  I share a beer with a mate named Kyle;
  As we scratch our genitals unsubtly.

Why in the world didn't she check the price;
  Doesn't her natural beauty suffice?
  Nope,"I can only see you (she said in a rile)
        After I've worn the mask."

I had smiled, but Jesus H. Christ; guys
Don't need to get a loan or a pay rise-
To afford to have their nails filed
(Or to have smoother thighs than a child)
-But I'll give her credit because she tries
       (But I still carry a flask).

Perhaps the most inspirational Haiku ever written.
I am staring at
The ceiling fan and it is
Not moving at all.

Demosthenes has a terrible secret. Yes, he writes poetry. What you may not know about him (besides everything) is that he is a self confessed romantic. Be wary of bundles of flowers appearing on your doorsteps, cumbersome journals filled with flowery poetry being slipped in your bag or hired midgets dressed as cupid firing arrows at you and following you around. The last one in particular. @DemosthenesPoet.

I Should Have Been a Fighter. by Aaron Brame

2013-06-16T00:03:00.000-04:00

Getting your ass kicked in the ring
is one thing.
There are bandages enough
and salts and such
and a sponge you can throw when your opponent
shows he’s too tough.

And a bell chimes to let you know
your limits.
You come, you go, you fight for three minutes.
There’s always someone holding a bucket
to spit in and a guy with a belly who
rubs down your arms and says
“Stay with it.”

There’s no phone calls or beers
or doubting for years
that you ever once said what you meant.
There’s just rounds that go by—
not ladies who cry.
“He’s just too tough, man, you can’t make a dent.”

I’d like to have six inches more reach
and be just a little bit lither.
But if I’d been fifteen pounds lighter
I could have been a fighter.

Aaron Brame has been teaching English for twelve years. When not teaching, he’s probably reading something by Raymond Carver, recording new music with The Perfect Vessels, or working on his blog. He lives in East Memphis with his wife and two children.

Dear Racist in the Queue at Tesco. by Keiran Goddard

2013-06-16T00:02:00.001-04:00

You are so stupid,
You don’t deserve skin.
You should be forced to walk around all skull-naked
And ashamed.
You are so stupid
Someone could sneak up behind you,
Steam your flesh loose,
Peel it off your bones,
Make a paper plane from it,
Fly it into your stupid skinless face
And you would still keep plodding on
Like some idiot hippo on the way to buy milk.
I should shove you into a bush,
Leave your legs all akimboing in the foliage,
I should lick between your toes,
In board daylight.
You are a flat rugby ball.
You are a flat rugby ball, being kicked by a lame horse.
You rode a horse to work once,
It hated you so much it died in protest.
It just sat there and died.

Keiran Patrick Goddard, 28, was born and raised in Shard End, Birmingham, and educated in Oxford. He has worked as a journalist and editor, and now works in higher education. His poetry has appeared in various journals, most recently, Mercy, the Warwick Review and the Salzburg Review. A pamphlet, Strings, will be published this year by Antler press.

"Keiran Goddard writes with an intensity and commitment matched only by his imagistic facility. The sincerity and lyric ambition of his work place it far from the surface effects and trickery of postmodernism, navigating a terrain darkened by history, literary and otherwise. His is an original new voice that demands our attention." —Luke Kennard

white wine & words. by Lindsey M. Brummerhop

2013-06-16T00:02:00.000-04:00

on their second date, they read the encyclopedia.

Sarah had sat as far from Albert as she could, but not far enough that she seemed offensive. or offended.
with every page flip, she noted that Albert, after announcing a word at random with his equally tall voice, would inch just a little closer to where Sarah sat, short and solitary.
until SUDDENLY (and via an eleventh word): they were knee to knee.

after her third glass of wine, both of their pointer fingers were scanning down paragraphs, searching for something hilarious or new or nothing in particular at all, really. but the book sat between them like a bridge: brain to brain.

the second date also, was almost a recreation of the first.
set at the same venue, at the same late but not so late time. a date for eight, perhaps. and Albert was later than eight.

Sarah had worn a dress and heels; always a jacket.
sat outside at first, to wait on eight minute late Albert.
crossed her left leg over her right; changed her mind and crossed her right back over her left. swung her foot. pulled a book from her purse. sipped her wine. sipped her wine twice.

when Albert finally appeared, taller than any other patron on the patio, there was an awkward moment where Sarah almost stood and Albert almost stooped and then they both stopped, simultaneously.

afterwards Albert fled to the bar for a beer while Sarah laughed quietly to herself and crossed her left leg back over her right.

he was going to kiss her, tonight.

Lindsey M. Brummerhop is a full time waitress and night time author from Seabrook, Texas. Flash fiction, short fiction and arbitrary poetic journal-like musings make up most of her work. Her first piece, "Or Snake Charming", was published by BackHand Stories in September of 2010. Since then she's been published extensively in the literary magazine, Squawk Back. (facebook.com/wbylmb.)

2013-06-16T00:00:00.000-04:00

The Smoky Aroma by Elijah Burkhardt

2013-06-15T00:01:00.000-04:00

Pan onto mountains, clouds, a cowboy with a handlebar moustache riding a horse, he surveys the sunset, orange light blazing on his face, suddenly a raised eyebrow, leans to the side, chaps crinkle, a large oblong paddle of a spongy membranous material is extracted from a burlap satchel.

"Well Hondo, looks like we're going to have to go for the glory on this one, no stopping until the prairie dog sings." ....and with that the cowboy shoves the paddle into his pants, wedging the membranous aft between cheeks, nestled safely like a mother beak between her offspring's wing, and with a laborious shudder lets two days worth of festering canned legume and rabbit tail stew in odorous excess squoze out the dirty chime hole, saturating the sponge with plumes of well cultivated stench.

Extracting the paddle, quickly shoving the end to his face, takes a whiff, his yellowed eyes tearing up, with intoxicated bliss.... tight zoom on his face...

"Captain Jack's Shit Cloud Paddle.... extra smoky aroma, extra satisfying, extra extra baby.... all the way to the Alamo".... tight zoom on Hondo the horse's face, eyes suddenly manically wide lets out a human AWRF?! Wide shot: Cowboy and Hondo riding off into the sunset, laughing.... Superimposed: "Captain Jack's Shit Cloud Paddle.... for that extra smoky aroma."

2013-06-02T00:05:00.000-04:00

Christmas This Year
by Matt Rowan

OR Christmas this year, Santa Claus is a reptile, a holiday reptile.

Holiday or not, he is a reptile. We know this for certain. We have definite proof.

Children were the first to realize it. ...READ MORE

Excerpt #$$. from Acid Shottas, a novel by Shane Jesse Christmass

2013-06-02T00:04:00.001-04:00

The Police Officer furiously unzips the backpack. A steaming pile of grease on cloth awaits him, and although contempt of legal establishments displays emotion, rarely do Police Officers and officials act as a single organization. They cover facets such as coldness, their faces, while simultaneously crossing cultures with joy, contempt and whining. Chester Patton had no identification with these blue knights, with their controlling take, and whether or not the Police Officer does accept payment, the origin of their evil species is uncertain.

“Okay, but we got to take your photograph.”

“Why my photo?”

“Because it’s just gone 2:30 am on a Tuesday morning. If anything happens in this city tonight, we’ll place it on you.”

Contempt greets the employee, these guys reverse that and give it back out again. Contempt over the world means sitting within the element, the air, utterly - police policing. The bulb stirred Chester’s half-closed eyes.

“You take a beautiful photograph, Mr. Patton. You’re all photogenic. Thanks for you time.”

Both parties departs. There’s a pallid taste of cortical whoredom upon Chester’s lips. I pick up the morning newspaper. Several scientists overseas have managed to read the mind of a man whose been in a vegetative state for the past five years. They have done this with a brain scanner and asked him “If his father’s name is Alexander”. To answer yes, he has to imagine he is playing tennis, to answer no, he has to imagine he is walking through his house. I find out that in this great age, and behind a closed door, scientists are preparing to read the minds of these people, and their remains, which is the consciousness of the living dead, and thereupon the physicians will try to share, and publish, their information, for they are aware that the presence the undead shows to external stimuli is only working to supplicate human thought, whether it be developed by a doctor, or whether it rises and will cause nerves of service to the rest of the living world is unsure.

“Will thinking I’m playing tennis ever help us.” I wonder.

The current and breathing deceased are piss-potted and bedpan strapped to life machines, in some dull and ended Nightclub in London. They’re now the subject of Emeritus Professors who first poise over their thoughts, and these Emeritus Professors burn their findings. They are causing irreversible brain damage to people the world over. Main henchman, alcoholic drug addicts who have grand plans to raise the buried henchmen in the basement, back from the dead, and in some crazy conclusion and culmination, this henchman activates the brains, like it’s something to really behold, and he searches through their musty voices, to see something within them that is nevertheless, them casting themselves into communication without an outside brain scanner. The undead truly asks, “Why thirsty land, if you are the accomplished, bring us the most high for the assessment of the true living, so that we can push us forth through this deathly misery, so that we’re involved more in life … rather than this horrible portal in our ceasing heart”. I draw back on my cigarette. I head over to the State Library. It is just after 3:00 am. I catch sleep until it opens at eight. In the morning, the peat-like sun produces lithe warmth. People sun while events like bashings go on in the street. The following is another argument against ingratitude. I am dammed if I am going to read and adore the world’s fabled knowledge.

Acid Shottas, a novel by Shane Jesse Christmass.
scribd.com/doc/135945036/ACID-SHOTTAS
facebook.com/AcidShottas
"The purveyors of consciousness expanding LIED! They told you to TUNE IN, TURN ON, DROP OUT – but they did not qualify this statement. Dropping out from what to where to what again. Dropping from sanity to madness, to bad breath, the horrible cheap tab. ACID SHOTTAS is the aftermath. It is the mid-80s. Heavy Metal is rife. It’s pre-MDMA. Tacky, inexpensive acid is on the streets. This is the decade of hate. Cold War. Reaganomics. This is the aftermath. Wolf-shot words written to Dancehall and Acid House..."

"Window Panes, Sugar, Mind Detergent, Microdots, Weddings Bells, Orange Cubes, Hits, Barrels, Tabs, Blotters, Heavenly Blue, Sugar Lumps, Sunshine, Tickets, Twenty Fives, Liquid and Liquid A. All different names for Acid … L.S.D. and then there is Thenailomen. This is Samuel Cowley’s plunge into madness / mysticism / dancehall and acid. An indistinguishable situation of controlling Cohorts and bubbling psychosis. Apparitions flickering across Samuel’s mind. Most of the women hold their Spanish Brandy breath. They do not move. This novel couches literature into counterrevolutionary measures. The essence of the mentally anguished individual stands up for what it is, pitiable. Greetings folks! You'll be approached and watched as you slip your tongue into the Thenailomen. The Nail of Men. Arterial connections. The detective agency shrills, shattering the late afternoon. Silences. Huge creatures stand, bunched like big come-ons. This horrible drug racket. Toy-like like the other sea scum. Fifth Avenue executives. Complex organisms. A yarn chain of parked cars. There’s the door to the hospital. Jittery girls moving in to embrace. Blunt jaws. A boatman comes ashore. The girl’s arms about me, mashing herself against my face, addicted to Thenailomen. Her shoulder. Stumbling among short minutes. The Shoe Co-op around 10am. You are not too caring… This is Vietnam...."

Shane Jesse Christmass is an Australian author. He edits the journal Queen Vic Knives. He’s also a member of the band Mattress Grave. He also firmly believes that the future of the word, the novel, will be in synthetic telepathy. His writing is archived at Lupara Publishing.

Your Call Is Important To Us by Kendall Defoe

2013-06-02T00:03:00.000-04:00

You have reached ________________________ . Unfortunately, we are unable to take your call at the moment. Please leave your name and address at the…

*

You have reached ________________________. Unfortunately, we are unable to take your call at the moment. Please leave your name and number at the tone, and we will contact you as soon as possible.

*

You have reached ________________________. All our lines are busy at the moment. Please enter the extension number of the person you would like to reach. If you do not know the…

You have reached the offices of ____________________________. All our lines are busy at the moment. If you need to speak to ________________________, press 5. If you need to speak to directory assistance, press 9.

*

You have reached _______________________. All our lines are busy at the moment. Please enter the extension number of the person you would like to reach. If you do not know the number, please enter the last name of the person you would like to reach using your keypad.

You have reached the offices of ___________________________. All our lines are busy at the moment. If you need to speak to ________________________, press 5. If…

You may leave your message after the tone.

You have decided to leave a threatening message on our voicemail. This is clearly a violation of several laws pertaining to the rights of individuals to be free from harm and the threat of violence. Please await our response on this matter.

You have discovered the well-armed squadron of soldiers now surrounding your home. In a few moments, they will begin to remove your front door with force and take you away to the proper authorities. We recommend not resisting this action. They are authorities acting within their legal rights.

You have now been incarcerated by our team of soldiers and are now free to leave one message for one particular contact. We recommend contacting a lawyer first before speaking to your family. He or she can provide relevant information to help you in your present situation and save you some embarrassment from the inquiries of both families and friends. Your message will be forwarded to them as soon as possible and you may keep your cellphone for further messages (the signal has been blocked for the last hour for your protection).

You have chosen to contact your lawyer and be aware of your rights in this situation. As stated in a previous message, you have threatened the occupants of the office of _______________________________ with violence and have, therefore, broken the law. Your lawyer has advised you that we were completely within our rights to incarcerate you and deny access to telecommunication with family and friends. We regret to inform you that your family has now been made aware of your situation and will be able to visit you at an undisclosed location in 6 to 12 weeks. You may keep your cellphone and thank you for using the services of _______________________. Good-bye.

*

You have reached the offices of _____________________________. All our lines are busy at the moment…

Writer/Reader/Poet/Dreamer... Kendall is a college instructor, experimenter with the written word, and someone who thinks that books are worth saving. (Also: librarians and snail mail—damn you, Canada Post and certain school boards!) I just hope that someone gets a laugh and enjoys my work...

Somewhere His Brushstrokes Strike by Caleb Andrew Ward

2013-06-02T00:01:00.002-04:00

I hadn’t read the document all the way through. I only knew, at the time, that his name was Jerry, he was five-foot-two, owned a BluRay player and fifty related discs, had his own furniture, and loved the band Jack’s Mannequin. These were all acceptable factors, although to be honest I could have done without the Jack’s Mannequin part. He applied via my Craigslist ad and had been the only seemingly normal one to do so.

When Jerry appeared at my stoop he was wearing a thick brown jacket; Wisconsin in October already screams long sleeves. He seemed normal enough from his overall demeanor, and without hesitation I shook his hand, thanked him for coming by, and asked him when he could move in. In three days, my I had a new tenant residing with me. We worked at very different times: I was still tending bar and would sleep most days, often I would be waking up for work just as Jerry headed for bed. He worked part-time at a grocery store down the street. I would occasionally pop in and say hello as I snagged a few snacks and such for the apartment. Things were moving smoothly until we found ourselves at home together for the same duration, for the first time.

Our conversation began normal: talk of women we'd had and should have had and why we didn’t have them now. Finding out about Jerry’s hobbies felt like extracting a confession from the Clinton administration. He said he grew up in a small home and I found that he took to painting quite a bit. I asked him why I had never seen any of his paintings and he said he wasn’t supposed to show them. “Painting is the epicenter of the creative eye and it is only with that eye that we can see just how dark or bright the human soul is,” was what he left me with before I headed for work. The hell did that mean? I needed to see the paintings, that would be my answer.

Being unable to see what Jerry had been working on began to prod at me. Like being teased as a child, my only goal became, to see his paintings. The locks on our room doors were completely different and the first time I attempted to break in I noticed Jerry had put more than a few locks on the inside of his. What had he been hiding? It wasn’t going to be easy to break in, but I had a mission and I knew I would achieve it.

It wasn’t easy at first, but learning where each lock was, and how to unlock then re-lock them back before Jerry got home, became easier and easier. I had saved up quite a few sick days from work so I used them to get the intel I needed for Jerry’s locks. He had four. It took two days for the first two; a simple Schlage and an American Lock. A week after cracking the first locks I finally opened what Google told me were unbreakable locks made by Keye & Toole. The moment I popped the last, I felt euphoria rush to my stomach. I was overwhelmed by the ability to finally see into Jerry’s soul, and see if it was either bright or dark.

When the door at long last creaked open, a sullenness overcame me: the room was relatively bare, save a bed and small desk, and yet in the middle of the room, shrouded by a beige cloth was a singular canvas. I wasn't able to see what was underneath, so I walked slowly, so as to not disturb any booby traps my paranoid mind was certain Jerry had placed around this masterpiece. I surveyed the placement of the cover so that I might be able to identically replace it when my work was done. The canvas was light and my blood rushed swiftly through my veins as it fell to the floor only to find the canvas considerably naked. No Rembrandt or Dali, no Marc or Kandinsky was being protected in Jerry’s mind, but an almost totally blank canvas and a black painted smear of a smiley face in the middle. Just a simple face, now seeming to mock me for my attempt at true spiritual satisfaction. The face in eternal giddiness reminding those who see it, “Everything is A-O.K., buckaroo!”

Caleb Andrew Ward is the genre-bender editor of Treehouse Magazine who currently resides in Wilmington where he is working on his undergrad at UNCW.

For the Monsters by Eliana von Krusenstiern

2013-06-02T00:01:00.001-04:00

the hot pink clouds my vision
as I race ahead to the continuously moving finish line.
Cheshire cats grin from ear to ear,
their sallow smiles taunting my footsteps
as if daring me to intrude on
their wonderland perfection.

I know all too well that
boys prefer silver
but pewter is cheap and dull and
even as a little girl runs by my side
screaming nonsense
She wants to
tell me to escape
and return to the empty lot
where flowers drink moonshine
and their half lives are short
and a little old lady comes once a month
to clear the weeds.

Eliana is a high school student from the Boston area. When she is not writing poetry she can be found playing violin, sleeping, and eating ice cream.

2013-06-02T00:00:00.000-04:00

Christmas This Year by Matt Rowan

2013-06-01T14:26:00.000-04:00

For Christmas this year, Santa Claus is a reptile, a holiday reptile.

Holiday or not, he is a reptile. We know this for certain. We have definite proof.

Children were the first to realize it.

They went to the mall to sit on Santa’s lap, to tell him about all the many things they’d like for Christmas. When they got there, though, it wasn’t difficult to see through the Santa Claus-looking facade.

It wasn’t a human but a human-size Reptile. Lots of the children cried, but those who didn’t managed to keep their wits and state plainly to Reptile Santa what they wanted for Christmas. Occasionally Santa would lick around with a forked tongue and the children would pretend not to notice, or that would finally be enough to make them cry.

Parents noticed the tongue and the other reptilian features, too. They were quite rightly concerned. They became more concerned, much more concerned, when one of the most naïve and unaware of the children sat on Reptile Santa’s lap, and almost parodying Christmas’ clichés, pulled on Santa’s fake beard. But it wasn’t a fake beard, it was a white garbage bag filled with human remains, which tumbled to the ground, half-eaten with bite marks. The child started crying but kept his wits somewhat and hurried away.

Parents scooped up their children and ran screaming from the mall.

Reptile Santa skittered off, making a sound which mimicked brooms’ many bristles rubbing against the floor. We knew he was disappointed in himself. He’d ruined humans’ Christmas, or at least for the many humans he’d encountered in the mall. And we knew and he knew that, of course, humans would come hunting en masse. They would hunt him for his freakishness, and also because he had evidently eaten some humans, or most of some humans. And most of some humans was enough. It really wasn’t an overreaction by the humans.

He couldn’t blame them.

They had a right to expect their Santa Claus be human, and that said human Santa not be guilty of eating people. Reptile Santa didn’t know why it happened exactly, other than his hunger.

But it didn’t have to be for human flesh!

Yes, yes it did, he finally acknowledged, as we knew he eventually would. We knew he was an especially aware humanoid Reptile. We knew there was nothing he hungered for more than flesh of humans, too.

But that didn’t mean he was without conflict. These humans having so much culture, society, so much delightful infrastructure—had that need be destroyed? Hopefully not. And absolutely hopefully not by him, Reptile Santa. There was a lot about Reptile Santa we might deem commendable, despite his flaws.

We also knew there were still things to be done yet.

He’d found his way to in front of grocery store. He carried a bell and had a red pot used for collecting donations. It was dark now, so it was harder for people to immediately see he was something different from the average human being. Some teenagers saw him, and as is typical of teenage wont, they harassed Reptile Santa, thinking him some poor slouch of a regular human Santa.

Like in every horror movie, the teens were soon killed. In this case they were killed by Reptile Santa, who did, indeed, eat most of their bodies.

And we wondered what was to be done after that? Would it just be killing and eating, while dressed as Santa, for the humanoid Reptile? Couldn’t there be something more to what he was and what he did? Especially considering the spirit of the holiday season?

Matt Rowan lives in Chicago, IL, He edits Untoward Magazine with Ashley Collier. His fiction has appeared in (or soon will) PANK, Necessary Fiction, Big Lucks, Vector and Another Chicago Magazine, among others. His story collection, Why God Why, will be published through Love Symbol Press in June.

2013-05-19T00:05:00.000-04:00

Ooks by AE Reiff

go, Id, Oedipalism, Anima, replaced the fairy folk of the country confined in cities. Trolls, brownies, Leprechauns, doff their country costumes for the abstractions of new folk."

The Scar in the Setting by Spencer R. Martin

2013-05-19T00:04:00.000-04:00

An overwhelming depression. I thought I would be riding high on this ripe Florida sunshine forever, but as ever did the clouds hit me; the heat, drag me down eventually. I sit out in the sunlight, reclined and drinking the bleach of all bleach, hoping the poison soaks all my cells and I die slow and painfully.

I watch the turtles scurry past my line of sight, and into an alligators mouth, its jaws crunch through shell, rip through spinal cord with no effort at all. I see this, but I don't follow the scene, I am severely indifferent to the nature around here. Once I might have been interested, now I only sink into the clouds of a melancholy heaven, a cruel game that tickles my feet.

“You lay your hands on me one more time and I swear I'll kill you and that whore of yours!” she says with a stale tone of loathing. She's not talking to me, though, but to one whose ghost raises a weakened fist. Everything's drying up in the sun here. Even tattoos of abuse. We're no longer human, but withering plants. I sing wearily to the bottom of my bottle.

The fever dreams hit me again tonight, my eyeballs in a fly covered toilet, floating around and looking right up at me with a daunting sense of amusement. I reach in and start trying to fish them out, flies and cockroaches crawling all about my hands as they drift away from me and down into the dark abyss. My mothers voice calls from somewhere off screen, maybe even in my head. She claims that her grave is being robbed, I see it clearly as two lovers dance upon her corpse. One lovely platinum blonde lady in a sundress, giggling with a great joy that I can feel in her warm smile, which if not for the circumstances would have made me myself smile along with her. The man is a boney twig of a man, eyes baggy and yellow instead of white around the irises. They use my mother's hands to pleasure one another, while at the same time slipping the diamond encrusted rings off her hands. He whispers in her ear and she giggles more, which distracts her from dipping a slimy, translucent hand into his left pocket. He comes out, sand spilling from the open ends of his fist as he brings it to his face, extends it in front of his dry and cracking lips. Open handed he blows a fine dust into her face. Her face goes limp; pupils dilate, and now she's a pale ghost of a woman, even her vibrant sundress seems slack and grey in the purple moonlight. My vision blurs, and I can no longer watch from my vantage point, a scream and a blistery starry swirl.

I am in the sunlight, my face lit up with a smooth pair of sunglasses. I'm in the park, a dog nibbles a treat out of my hand. I seem to have a perfect recollection of getting to this place, and I don't question it at all. Children laughing on a playground, swinging on a swing set and a short haired beauty in a nice vibrant sun dress eyes me as she pushes a stroller. She walks towards me, “Can I take a seat mister?”

“You most certainly can darlin'. Whats your name?” I shift uncomfortably and another dog treat falls out of my hand. I start to wonder how I acquired them in the first place, “Is that your kid?” I inquire softly.

“No” “Then who...”

I rub my eyes again, open them, and still the same beauty. Those same big beautiful doe eyes, magnificently pulchritudinous swirling eyelashes, but this time I reenter the world in a seedy motel with cracks in the walls and scurrying cockroaches. I scan the room, a dusty, yellow-tinted window sits to the left of me. Outside of it I can see a flashing sign: SAROSA MOTEL: YOUR SLUMBER IS OUR-- I can't see the rest of the slogan.

If you look close enough in any motel room you'll ever have the misfortune of setting foot in, you'll find it, outside or inside, the mysterious cracks and holes, the contours of some sort of mistake, a tale once played out, a language that describes so much you'll never understand: the scar in the setting, languishing forever in its framed glory.

So I scan the walls. To the back of me there is a giant hole, in that hole a twitching eyeball peering in at us. I lock my eyes with it.

“Goddammit!” I exclaim as I hop up and tear across the room with an outstretched thumb ready to punch the anonymous eye into the head out of which it pokes, but it blinks and jumps back from the wall before I reach it, I jab my thumb in to no avail. I get down on my knees and peer back through. The room is pitch black, I hear the scurrying of cockroaches. I get up and look through the drawer of the beside table: the bible. I flip through and find the story of Cain and Abel, I tear it out, reach into my pocket. Perfect: duct tape. Why do I have... I place the page over the hole and tape all around it.

Back to this questionable scene. Now she looked displeased, as if this were an interrogation room.

“Whats wrong, dolly,” I whispered as I sat down, cracked a beer with my left hand, and placed a warm hand on her right cheek, caressing her like I would one of my favorite lovers. The doe eyes went dim, she put her head down and started to weep.

“I'm only a passenger,” she whispered with a hiss as her voice cracked and wavered, “My feet are long dead and gone, they crack and peel with every step, and I haven't even walked in years.” She's tip toeing across my underestimated psyche, she wants to say something but cannot. I see myself reaching out and grabbing her by the wrist, without the intention of being malicious. But I suppose it came across that way, she gave off a shrill scream that put the pain she felt upon me. Her skin sizzled under my fingertips, smoke seeping out from under them, and with that I knew what she was trying to say, and for some reason it angered me. I pulled away, leaving a welting red mark in the print of my hand. She fell back on the bed, tears rolling down her cheeks, but this time she did not weep, but just stared at the yellow ceiling with carrion eyes, as that melancholy water poured out. If there was any trace of teenage effervescence left in that splendid late-twenties world of hers it was gone now. It had to happen at some point before she hit her thirties. And I didn't even feel bad that it was my existence that came to take it out of her. I just stared at her, sipping my drink, without a flicker of feeling in me.

My ears jumped as I heard a tearing of paper, I looked over to see a stubby thumb poking through the page of the bible upon which Cain and Abel's twisted fate was scrawled. “That's it!” I mumbled as I turned and rushed to the wall. I reached it and tore off the page, peering through the gate to the next world over that I had reopened. What I saw made my heart stop on the spot.

I saw myself sitting on the same soiled motel bed that I rested on moments before. The movie that was my life was projected in front of me, as if I were God sitting on his cloud and gazing down. I saw myself rubbing my eyes and staring into those, gorgeous, that had shined so brightly when I had first come across them. And she looked back at me with admiration, when the lights flickered.

I jumped up and looked to the lamp, went and jiggled the plug in the wall. I stood again and stared at the limp beauty, with an even greater detachment now at what I had done. I staggered, peered through the hole just in time to see myself gathering the contours of my setting. I saw myself staring back, rising up and crying out, an outstretched thumb, ready to attack. I admonished myself of the thought of jumping back, I was ready.

And then the lamp went out. I stood still, eye open and willing to be jammed out, but nothing came, everything was still. The only sound, the scurrying of cockroaches. I pulled back, something was covering the gateway to the next world. I paused, curiously, for just a moment, confused, but sure, of what I would see.

I grabbed the flashlight from my key chain and peered in. As I expected, the story of Cain and Abel.

And so I sat, and I read...

The Newsletter of the Asylum and Four More by Jason Visconti

2013-05-19T00:03:00.000-04:00

Work hard
And you'll be on the board too--

That's in the event
Of your unsmearable record

That you haven't broke bonds
Repeated on loudspeakers

Or cried into the night like a fool--
Certainly your pajamas have not walked off on their own

You have not risen up like a foul animal
In some stage of revolt

And claimed the unclaimable chair
The chair that does not exist in the hall

And said "This is my bridge I will build to unite all the rooms"

Though if you did I suppose you'd get a pass in
For a newsworthy story.

To be commensurate all at once

And then also to allow

Division to be a timely crow
Whose measured sentence sings outloud

To otherwise no one.

The street's judgement has flickered on

and we are equal with our fair gavels

we who watch him teeter on the cusp of the moon:
beware he prepares his oath in the courtroom of the stars

and we, a jury of his peers,
behold nothing like these good lanterns.

I Made Every Attempt to Destroy the Hourglass
On the operating table

And me a surgeon--
Leave my bubbled glasses for real times of war

Since time is only silly putty
And who including the sand even cares?

Euphoria in an Everyday Way
When you see those soap bubbles
Like so many white eyelashes

Flirt,
You have stretched the image--

But no matter
The sink will gargle at you to swallow up.

Christopher Barnes'... Filming ‘Blood Shot Silk’ – Deleted Scene (33)

2013-05-19T00:02:00.000-04:00

Wide-horizoned tower.
Haemal fountain’s gargoyles
Slurping by convolvulus.
Suntrapped at velvet curtains,
Sabrina Roper squirms brainsick.
One rootless leaf in backwash.

Filming ‘Blood Shot Silk’ – Deleted Scene (35)
Anticipate Camera 6
Releasing itself
From all its characters,
Discernibly wandering
Upon a speckled floor,
It’s destined to scrutinize the overblown mirror.

The past continuous
Is restored…

Sammy limps – apparelled in an evening dress,
Leg-o-mutton sleeves –
Gore smutching lips,
Ensnared in a simple frame
Where chicanery is spared.

Filming ‘Blood Shot Silk’ – Deleted Scene (36)
Manola Dean waddles off, screen right.
We crushingly grasp as much as she.
Sammy moves near, looming at the door.
Bone chair, reddening cushion.
One maimed bass drum. The fluently bogus clop –
Geldings on cobbles.
Earwig headlong over lampshade.
As the credits bleed
Camera 2 loiters.

In 1998, Christopher Barnes won a Northern Arts writers award. In July 2000 he read at Waterstones bookshop to promote the anthology 'Titles Are Bitches'. Christmas 2001 he debuted at Newcastle's famous Morden Tower, doing a reading of his poems. Each year he reads for Proudwords lesbian and gay writing festival and partakes in workshops. 2005 saw the publication of his collection LOVEBITES, published by Chanticleer Press, 6/1 Jamaica Mews, Edinburgh.

On Saturday 16th August 2003, he read at the Edinburgh Festival as a Per Verse poet at LGBT Centre, Broughton St.

He also has a BBC web-page.

Christmas 2001, the Northern Cultural Skills Partnership sponsored him to be mentored by Andy Croft in conjunction with New Writing North. He made a radio programme for Web FM community radio about his writing group. October-November 2005, he entered a poem/visual image into the art exhibition the Art Cafe Project, and his piece Post-Mark was shown in Betty's Newcastle. This event was sponsored by Pride on the Tyne. He made a digital film with artists Kate Sweeney and Julie Ballands at a film making workshop called Out of the Picture, which was shown at the festival party for Proudwords. It contains his poem the Old Heave-Ho. He worked on a collaborative art and literature project called How Gay Are Your Genes, facilitated by Lisa Mathews (poet), which exhibited at the Hatton Gallery, Newcastle University, and included a film piece by the artist Predrag Pajdic in which Barnes read his poem On Brenkley St. The event was funded by the Policy, Ethics and Life Sciences Research Institute, Bio-science Centre at Newcastle's Centre for Life.

He was involved in the Five Arts Cities poetry postcard event which exhibited at the Seven Stories children's literature building. In May he had 2006 a solo art/poetry exhibition at The People's Theatre. The South Bank Centre in London recorded his poem "The Holiday I Never Had"; he can be heard reading it on poetrymagazines.org.uk/magazine/record.asp?id=18456.

He has written poetry reviews for Poetry Scotland and Jacket Magazine, and in August 2007, made a film called 'A Blank Screen, 60 seconds, 1 shot' for Queerbeats Festival at the Star & Shadow Cinema Newcastle, reviewing a poem. On September 4 2010, he read at the Callander Poetry Weekend hosted by Poetry Scotland. He has also written art criticism for Peel and Combustus Magazines.

Vegan Vampire Attacks Trees! by Jenny Howard

2013-05-19T00:01:00.000-04:00

For years I’ve been what society calls a “tree hugger”: a regular EPA local meeting attendee, a recycle-crazed neighbor, and I’ve given out seeds for kids to plant on Halloween for the last six years. My name is Tony Arbor and, needless to say I’m not everyone’s favorite guy on the block. Last year though, when the trees were being gnawed on, causing them to break, fall, and crush cars along I-17, the Holly Ridge community turned to me to find a solution. But the culprit sat right here in my living room: she’s my sexy, blonde, curly-haired wife, who's sipping coffee and reading the funnies. She's also a vampire.

Don’t misunderstand: this isn’t a tragic story of death and the consumption of human beings, nor is it intended to be a frightening tale of life with a bloodsucker. Elizabeth, my wife, has never tried to eat me or any of our guests, because she is a vegan vampire. She consumes trees, plants, and other photosynthesis-loving objects.

I met her on a Tuesday while I was strolling through the park, admiring the rather large oak and through my daze, I heard a small cry. I looked away from the tree and there she sat, alone on a bench, crying because she had a splinter in her lip.

“Now,” I said, “how does this happen? You haven’t been kissing trees?” She blushed and looked down at the ground; I know now the reason: that she was choking back laughter. You see, she hadn’t been kissing trees, but had been chowing down on a narrow twig when a sliver became jarred in the side of her bottom lip. After a few seconds of foot-shuffling silence, I told her about my experience with wood and offered to take her home where I could remove the sliver.

I drove her home where I very carefully removed the beautiful splinter, jarred it, and it has sat on our mantle ever since. After we’d been married a few months, I started noticing leaves in her hair, dirt stains on shoes that had been clean. And an unmistakable smell of pinewood on her breath. “It’s my mouthwash,” she claimed. “Pine is the new mint. My dentist said so himself.”

One night I quietly followed her out of the house. She slipped into the woods, with a speed and sense of direction of having done this before. And I lurked, silent, behind a distractingly immaculate pecan tree, and watched as my dainty wife tore a thousand pound tree from its place in the soil and begin to chomp on its limbs.

Leaves flew around my head like mosquitoes and the sound of her teeth against the hard wood was like a dentist's drill—it shook my body. The lips that I had kissed each night were now littered with the debris of the disaster she had created.

I watched her straighten her blouse, pull a twig from her perfectly white teeth, swallow it, and head back to our home. That magnificent, innocent, perfectly growing pine tree! Gone! Gone! My head spun as I watched the scene over and over in my head. I felt betrayed, sick, and heartbroken. How many trees had been destroyed at the hands of my beloved?

Hours later I found myself back in the house, I dragged myself into my bedroom where Elizabeth lay in bed, happy, content, and full bellied. I crawled in, inching as far from her as I could, and went to sleep. The next morning, I woke up early, unable to feign sleep any longer; I walked around the house and noticed the things I should’ve noticed all along: small bite marks on the coffee table, rips in the wood paneling that Elizabeth had insisted upon all those years ago, and bags of hickory wood chips that I assumed were for cook outs. Though meticulously covered and patched, my wife had acted as termite throughout our home for years.

Later that day, I went to the weekly local chapter meeting of the EPA. When they began to talk about an all-night hunt to catch the animal destroying the trees, I hung my head in shame, having previously always been the most outspoken at these meetings. Elizabeth and I were the first to volunteer to host benefits and children's days. I got fired up about paper companies and spoke out openly about the people in our neighborhood who refused to recycle, leaving “Please save me” stickers on their doors with drawings of sad X-mas trees. Naturally, I had been tapped to solve the town-wide problem. Now I froze. Slowly, I looked up, trying to appear firm, determined, “Sure,” I said, “let’s catch this bastard.”

That night the volunteers and I went out looking for my wife. Our hometown team of volunteers looked like a bunch of witch hunters with their improvised defensive gear. Andy Slim, a third grade teacher who lived just down the street from us, had what appeared to be a colander atop his head, and a baking sheet across his chest like a bullet proof vest. There were lanterns, baseball bats, a vast array of homemade contraptions with which to capture the creature my one hundred and ten pound wife.

I led them far from where I’d seen her last, hoping to avoid the awkward stand-off that would surely follow the capture of Mrs. Elizabeth Arbor, committee member of “Trees are friends, not paper!” and devoted wife to the EPA local chapter treasurer.

“Over here!” one of my companions shouted. My heart shrank deeper into my body, surely beating straight through my flannel jacket.

We stood before a fallen tree, the unmistakable doing of the “animal” for which we were searching. It pained me to recall the scene of Elizabeth's inflicting such damage to the pine. The searchers separated to cover the perimeter; as I took a left to search, I saw her, hiding behind the roots of the collapsed and dying oak, trembling and poised to run.

“Anything over there?” asked Brandon Linen, a newer member of the EPA, but no less motivated than the rest of the search party. I looked into my wife’s eyes as she awaited my answer, knowing it would decide her fate. She stared back into mine and with the smallest shrug of her shoulders and a raised eyebrow, she silently mouthed, “I love you.”

I know I should have chosen my wife over a tree—a large, mature, and wonderfully aromatic tree that would never dance with the wind again. It was as though she sensed my hesitation, I heard a twig break beneath her shoe, and in an instant, she was gone. Before I had the chance to give her away, everyone turned in her direction. All we saw was a small hourglass figure running into the thick trees. We all ran into the darkness after Elizabeth and I knew we wouldn’t catch her, because she had been running these dark woods for years.

After an hour, we gave up looking. “Did you get a good look at the perpetrator?” another leading member of the search party asked me. Luckily, the woods and night sky provided cover enough for her to escape, unrecognized by the people who think they know her so well.

I hesitated: she was my wife. I loved her and she was who I had to go home to at the end of the day.

“No,” I answered him, “it was dark and that son-of-a-bitch was fast. Maybe we scared it off though.” I vowed to plant a tree as soon as I had a chance, I had to right this wrong to Mother Nature—I don’t want to get stuck on her bad side. Grudgingly, they all headed for home, hopeful that tomorrow’s hunt would be more fruitful.

I knew that if I just talked to Elizabeth, got her side of the story, that I could stop her without involving my overzealous fellow environmentalists who would surely be out for a conviction, if they even got close enough to notice it was she before brandishing their weapons.

I wondered what would happen when I got home: I had just seen Elizabeth tear a hundred year-old tree from its roots without messing up her nail polish. I was one hundred and fifty pounds myself, imagine the damage she could have done.

I pulled into the driveway, meandered slowly up through the yard, fumbled with my keys. And as I opened the door, I saw her cooking dinner in the apron I’d given her for her birthday: it had a willow crocheted on the front, and its weeping limbs were now very appropriate for my mood.

“Welcome home, Tony,” she said in her sweet accent. “Any luck?” She peered into my soul, I think, daring me to challenge that she had been at home all night, frying chicken, mashing potatoes. She knew very well how the search had gone, that she'd seen me; I, her. We talked about my boss, about the Girl Scout whom she’d bought cookies from that day, about the possibility of dinner with my in-laws later in the week. I just never worked up the nerve to say, “Hey, I saw you eating trees last night.”

That night, I went to bed with Elizabeth, knowing she would get up in the night to scavenge, and hoping to catch her once again and confront her—but this never happened. She dozed next to me through the night, and while I looked into her beautifully sleeping face, I remarked the tiniest splinter in her lip, and I smiled a little, recalling the day we met: she was exactly the woman I had married all those years ago.

At breakfast, as I prepared toast and eggs for her, I saw Elizabeth slide into her chair at the table. “What’re you making?” “Just toast. Did you want some?” I didn’t want to look directly into her eyes, I didn’t want to talk about what I’d seen. I wanted to make her toast and I wanted her to read me the stupid comic strips without compelling me to address that my wife was a hybrid between a termite and a Cullen.

“No, it’s okay,” she said. “I’ve been gardening, so I’m full,” she said with a sideways grin. I turned around, pulled her to me, and kissed her; I poured my heart into her lips, silently pleading with her to not destroy anything that I loved so much. She leaned over the counter with tears in her eyes and took a bite of toast.

My name is Jenny Howard and I live in Houston, Texas. I just finished up my junior year at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington and am now studying at the University of Houston-Clear Lake.

2013-05-19T00:00:00.000-04:00

Ooks by AE Reiff

2013-05-18T11:57:00.000-04:00

"Ego, Id, Oedipalism, Anima, replaced the fairy folk of the country confined in cities. Trolls, brownies, Leprechauns, doff their country costumes for the abstractions of new folk."

Three Ooks lived in DutiBilly.
Turk was the papa, Dama was the mama,
and Sue Ook baby looked like her dad.
Each Ook ate a sausage quietly,
excluding the belch.
Ook means passionate desire.

Ma Ook had lots of names,
Dame Belcher, Guapa Pop.
When she ate SueLit and her dad,
who retired from publishing
and married Mama for amor,
she was the second Ook
who wrote a mystic tale.

Mama belched at Turk’s 800 pounds
when he and SueLit drowned little dogs
in their footprints in the park.
They had gone to PupPote.
Proverbial dismemberment caused Mama’s eeing
when pups ate off her floor.
It’s a lot to feed an Ook to an Ook
as Turk was feeding Sue to Dame!
Part of the recipe,
like big ducks
slaughtered up
boggles the mind, served as remains.
Turk published this
And made her the Ook of fame.
Special meanings are contained

PupPote, Park and Ook^[1].

Turk longed to ook. Dame longed to ook,
although the sense is not the same.
Little dog PupPotes longed to be best sellers in Ook.
So this ook wasn’t long
before not just breakfast, but
dinner with T.V. they cooked,
modem in the left, forkem in the right,
broadside big as a ham.

What do you eat when you eat the ook,
anthologized stew?
It’s the cure what ails ya.
Indigestion?
Try milk in your poem.
Sleep aid? Hunger?
Roast PupPotem in your home.
Sue Ook is a beauty cure.
What don’t SueLit cure?
She a grape of the huge alone.
Get a piece of the bone and the world will be one!
One peace, one world, one home!
But where has she gone?
That’s what we’re here to show.

This secret came out when goats named Billy,
tied to the Dame’s blue Olds,
wrote with their Nanny and kids,
abba daba dab on the bumper.
Dame kept PupPotes in the back,
little Schnauzers, Pomeranian and a Pifawa pop.
To sum up,
Ma Ook took a gingerbread house
with smoke coming out the top.
She fattened up
Turk for the kill.
That smoke is a sign of an ook.

When Turk went up it was a loss
to little dogs as much as Ooks,
he being the source of their food.
Why would Dame fatten and kill what made her live?
But when Ms. Ook hungered she just ate PupPote.
There was plenty of Ook in the freeze.

In that warning about Ooks called
Ookem!
the goats said
these things were indigestible.
Everyone knows by now what they are.
With the mess and gravy
the beauty of Ookistry
is that these tales tell all.
What’s an Ook?
I’m not going to tell.

1. ^ PupPote-poetry, Park-language.

AE Reiff, the fictional persona maintained by the Artist’s Collective of the New Ibsen Canal, has no known means of contact except weekends in the courtyard, at least it says that in the brochure. We have determined there is an index of this writing, and more, at Encouragements for Planting...

...this we recommend you avoid. If you must have something, he is the present editor of the Kurk Wold papers on the end of biological civilization, and other such artifacts at HISTO POSSUM TROY HORSE NEPTUNE WAR ROUNDUP, or the History Impossible World ThoughtNot Bot Roundup, a Cartoon UBoo-ty of Experiments of the Head History of the West Faerie Tale Fro Gromets Severed From Collections in A Fictional History of the Future Fan Faux NonFic Hypno, Mysto, Crypto Possum Starchitect.

2013-05-05T00:05:00.000-04:00

Parasite, here partially excerpted, is a novel by Stephen Boyer

am not sure where or how or when, in all my mind's wandering, I first came to Positive Wishing, but I believe it was near the outset of my choosing to stop adhering to my parents’ reality. Not that linear constructs matter, and I don’t mean to give linearity power when I address it, and I’m aware that with every beginning comes an ending and endings only signify the beginning. ...READ MORE

Laura Grodin's... The anatomy of my autonomy

2013-05-05T00:04:00.001-04:00

is not a place, although you hang flowers from my shoulders. Upside down they'll last longer, pollinate crevices in the grass to mark where I once was.

Memorialize me, paperboy, who crossed too quickly, now slicked on a silver pole, your face almost lost in a tattered sheet.

You too are covered in flowers.

Someday we'll plant ourselves, bury our feet in deeply to whatever soil will take us. Your vice
will be simplicity, mine will be touching the sides of your face.

There are things I should do first- measure the inches between my forehead and Philadelphia, seed a pomegranate front to back, count the scars on your body that are like my body-

And if none of them match, we can paint a scar, chin to chest, a solid pulpy line
like the street you couldn’t cross, and if we don’t paint it, maybe you can imagine

the line, still wet, and press yourself against me, and we can both imagine
a knife that left us warm and draining blood.

The Hand Writing the Eye. by Connor Fisher

2013-05-05T00:03:00.001-04:00

Each time that I
Begin is enough.
Each start etching a
Motto over doors
And windows. Words
Turned and gently
Resting on my hands
On my knees my lap
In my mind held in the old
Cup of my stomach my
Strength and sadness
Gripped in my teeth
My trembling little
Fingers my thoughts my
Thoughts my eyes and
Each eye apart a
Bit of my small view
My small call and my
Guilt or worry my lips
That part that snap or
Speak that soften with
Light and touch or
Time my sound my
Own sound my outside
Hum and shout my weepy
Nose and tongue and
Face my silence and
Private art of anger my
Private license my useless
Parts that glaze my age
My age in a year my
Age then again my holy
Hands my swung arms my
Difficult hair my difficult
Mind and shoulders and
Combined sides that wither
That ache and thin that
Contain, partition the heart
And the other hearts from
A lung, that trouble
My rest my troubling
Dreams my gaping pupils
That blink and blind my
Gaze my open face and
Straight lines my curve of
Gravity and curving
Body my peace my peace
That slips away my
Peace that fails me that
Falls into my open arms
Surrender secret my secret feeling
My knowledge of plants,
Growths, hidden caves, animals,
Bridges, violence and regret,
My watery touch and human
Smell my heavy foot my
Lingering foot or tripping
Heel my hidden waist my
Hidden hips and chest, eyes,
Teeth, head, my wrist for
Motion, my silence is strength and
My glass hoops to stutter
Through are my small hats for
Facing out my hands my coy
Blink lazes and turns and turns.

Connor Fisher was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and currently lives in Denver, Colorado. He has a MA in English Literature from the University of Denver and is working towards an MFA in Creative Writing—Poetry from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Connor does not currently own any pets, but plans to get himself a cat one way or another within the next three years.

if the human centipede had been constructed exclusively from mouths, leaving in reality a sequence of only two people with their mouths sewn together, not kissing but breathing in whatever air was stuck in the other's throat, and never able to pull themselves away we would have spun (with spin of golden thread, or, maybe once a month, of dizzy fall, too gone to care, to count) and coiled together. lying spiraled, pale, cramped: like root, or tight-crossed fingers—not twin lines, praying for fortune, but meddling digits, scratching after scabs. By Eric Eich

2013-05-05T00:02:00.000-04:00

Eric Eich is a student, writer, and filmmaker who recently found his way to the Bay Area after eighteen years of incubation in Georgia. His work can be seen in Camel Saloon and Keep This Bag Away from Children, as well as at ericeich.com.