KIOSK SIXTY KIOSK SIXTY
LIT BOOK LIT BOOK
For this issue of Kiosk, we wanted to celebrate the art and artists that make Kiosk what it is. This magazine exists to give KU students the chance to express themselves as they are, emotional and messy and unbridledly passionate. Kiosk is a home for each creative ripple, each impression that these artists leave on the world. It celebrates these artists, whatever their passion may be, and helps those passions crystallize into something beautiful. Our artists are the heart of Kiosk, and we are grateful for their creativity, drive, and vulnerability, in this issue and always. These works have left their impression on us. We hope they leave their impression on you, too.
LUNATIC A. A. K HA L I Q
a strange fog overtakes me in times like these i feel the energy inside of my teeth, a cavity no earthly force can fix, my mouth is full of bees and my mind of hornets, every inch of me is a ballooning sting and the venom is a jolt to the heart more powerful than any defibrillator. kickstart my heart. again, again, AGAIN— how long i felt like the soon-to-be victim on the bridge sliding and slipping to heighten the performance, every moment an infinite reflection of the breath one takes before jumping into the river with stones in every pocket. the world weighed me down and i am guilty— i let myself drown, if only for the novelty of it all. and now the apiary of my body is collapsing again. i see the river before my eyes, the rushing of the currents muffling the agony of these thousands of miniature wounds. i am half-sick of these cyclic baptisms; the water extracts the venom, washes away the memory, and replaces it all with cold that nestles in the bone marrow, in the crevices of the mind.
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how long can the human spirit bear these violent changes? am i a werewolf, to be content with transformations at the whim of the unreachable moon, my only outlet for complaint a chilling, lonely howl? to eternally bounce from beast to human, to submit myself to the shame of nakedness, the shame of fragility, and worse, the silence! the knowledge that there is something dark and terrible within me, a secret i did not consent to keep. a secret best kept, because what hurts more than the intimacy of being known?
here is where the truth may unravel, dripped in melodrama, hung out to dry among other laments of the young person’s soul, these shallow puddles of mine—oh that i could see them as anything but great oceans! and what are you to do? do not sing along to my tune, do not critique me, do not console me. if you must look, do so out of the corner of your eye and then cast your gaze aside— my misery is not fond of company; i am too dear for it to share at all.
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MY SISTER’S COMMUNITY DAN I E L TO M P K I N S
In the Community, every door has a cross above it. Right over the
center of a doorframe, nailed into the wall like Jesus nailed onto the crucifix. Sometimes he was there too, little metal feet almost touching the tops of the door frames. I always found it strange how many depictions of one man’s death some people have in their homes.
When I reached my sister’s house, the whole family was waiting on
the porch, smiling and waving. The way they were standing— Meghan with the baby in her arms, the girls smiling in front of her; Mike to the side with William, hands pressed firmly on his shoulders to keep him from fidgeting— I remember thinking it looked like a postcard.
“You came just in time for movie night!” Meghan said as I walked up
the sturdy porch steps. “Pizza in fifteen, movie in thirty!”
Meghan and Mike let the children eat as much as they wanted, so
all but the oldest were asleep when the credits rolled.
“It’s 8:30 Halle, it’s almost time for bed,” Meghan said, glancing at
her watch.
“Go on now, listen to your mother,” Mike directed.
“Yes, sir,” Halle replied without hesitation, and ran upstairs to her
room.
After scouring the room for pizza plates and popcorn bowls,
Meghan got the other children to bed and Mike declared he was retiring early.
I sat on the couch, unsure of how I fit into the routine of pizza night.
The dog that never got walked waddled over to me and rested her head on my knee, praying that I would give her a bite of my cold, unfinished pizza slice. That day, God listened to her.
***
Upstairs was divided: boys on one side, girls on the other. There
were even two bathrooms. The girls’ got Frozen decorations, the boys’ a plain red wall. I slept in baby Jake’s room. He already had a room to himself, even though he hadn’t yet spent a night away from his mother. Next door was William’s room, filled with boxes of plastic guns and wooden
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swords, and even a mini drum set in the corner— the only musical instrument suitable for boys. Halle and Reese shared a room down the hall. They were always wary to come to cross onto their brothers’ half of upstairs, treating it like a cooties quarantine zone.
I spent most of my time there with Halle and Reese. Their cramped
room became a peaceful farm, hard plastic dolls dutifully brushing the tangles out of soft stuffed horses. I asked Halle what she wanted to do when she grew up, and she replied, “be a mommy,” without hesitation. One day we had to cut our nail-painting party short when Meghan called from downstairs.
“Come on girls, it’s time for Mommy Class!”
“Coming!” they replied in unison.
Halle let out a deep sigh as she stood to go, and held out her hand
to pull Reese along with her.
I was picking up the mess we made when William walked into the
bathroom, staring at the cartoon princesses that decorated the walls.
“Uncle Danny?” he said in a very small voice. He looked out the
door to make sure his father was downstairs. “Could you paint my nails too?”
I was taken aback. Until now, William had seemed eager to repli-
cate the macho persona of his father, who preferred dirt under his nails to polish on top of them.
I pinky promised not to tell anyone, and we got to work.
He let me paint the first few so he could see how it was done, and
then he took over. William is usually distracted easily, but nothing could have broken his concentration then. Slowly, he was turning his nails baby blue, matching the walls of the bathroom on the wrong side of upstairs. As he worked, he hummed along to a tune bouncing around his head. Then his father called from downstairs. “William?”
He turned around frantically, then looked to me in dismay. He
rushed to wash off his nails, but in his panic he knocked the open bottle of nail-polish remover into the sink. Tears streamed down his face as the liquid splashed down the drain. I knew I would never see the full extent of the consequences if Mike saw his oldest son with blue nails and tear streaks staining his face.
“He’s in the bathroom!” I hurriedly called, and got a grunt as a re-
sponse.
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There was an unopened bottle of nail-polish remover under the sink,
and in a few minutes I had cleaned William’s nails. He was worried that they would find the empty bottle, so I told him I would say I knocked it over while cleaning up. He dried his face and went downstairs to help Mike with yard work.
***
The last night I was there, Mike again retired early. After a lot of
sappy talk about farewells, I convinced Meghan to stay up and have a few glasses of wine. Once we got into it, her supply of wine seemed endless. Too quickly, we exhausted the topics where we shared common ground. She asked again how I was liking college, but we had visited this subject so often over the weekend that I didn’t have much more to say.
When I asked her to tell me about her college days, her smile was
unscripted. She wasn’t always so high strung, she assured me. She drank with her friends, but only on the weekends, and it was stupid anyway, so I shouldn’t do it. She finished her degree in exactly eight semesters, 4.0 GPA intact.
“I already had a school for my Master’s picked out,” she said excit-
edly. “I was going to be a marine biologist,” she added with a smile, staring through the glass patio door behind me.
After a long pause, she perked up and concluded, “Then I met
Mike!” and smiled again, but it never reached her eyes.
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(page break)
SATURDAY NIGHT PAGANISM AL L I S O N CAR O L L O
Last night over gas station sushi, I cast my first spell. I stitched a poppet of you from the black silk sheets you bought with me, and the hair you left in my brush.
Sticky sake fingers sewed around your throat, up your back, and filled your guts with dryer lint and empty soy sauce packs.
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I banished you from my home with basil, dandelion, and mistletoe, filled your prickly chest with incense then splintered your ribs with a chopstick.
Stoplights licked the lid of the shoebox I carried you in, dragged their colored tongues over us until we couldn’t be touched: seeped in dark swamp.
Bog-mud mashed like tofu bricks beneath rainboots, miso broth gushed through sedge grass, and I buried your box near the bullfrogs, where I knew you wouldn’t sleep.
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DIGITAL LIFE W ER M O
i really like when i stumble across, like makeup looks or art inspiration on instagram and, like, you’re there electronic encounter bumping into each-other
digitally
pic 4 pic?
send me ur location
currency of likes
language of likes
landscape of likes
psychogeography of likes
likes as visibility likes as affirmation likes as cultural capital likes as validation that u exist there are enough likes to go around perhaps infinite likes – what we are facing is an artificial scarcity but with likes.
i like likes like ernie likes the rabbits and pretty girls’ hair
that is to say i am not stingy
with the likes but i know that the egg got the most.
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as for me, ive slept with an egg a real humpty dumpty bald big blue eyes a body without organs rhizomatic sexuality orifices springing up without prediction or predication predetermined by nothingness or
lack of nothingness
or infinity a container that cannot be contained a chalice gushing clean water for the public yummy! but what does it matter if its just on a screen. if its just on a screen like this poem paper is a kind of screen you know. flat
neoliberalism perpetuates itself on reflexivity art —> commodity art subverts commodification then the act of subversion refusal overcoming is re-commodified, recuperated back into the neoliberal system exploited and sold back to you as a porno titled jouissance i keep waiting on something to change but nothing seems to do so, or if it does it leaves me feeling like a passive spectator, lurking i have swallowed so much lately i have become swallowed by my swallowing self in burgundy happenstance
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satan’s on my back his red hot-sauce face snail-shell grin the little slug my tongue held out against my will i gag, i cannot hold my waist it wanes in my hands turned basalt eyes rolled back flippantly dashing in pink pearls the lymph node earrings stuck out god hates fags and eats them too he shits them out straight forward in a linear motions but i want to cup your parabolas in these gloves with the finger out so you can still use your iPhone and the spirit of the laborer it contains the blood and hot tears like oil slick and dark crystal screen sheen dirty water you can not drink you can never drink you will never drink again the water will dry up and everything will be forgotten spoken like a rope the throat drawn tight like curtains tight on a rod crunched fabric and stray gold fibers
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withstood cold bus engines hum squeak brake white plume of exhaust breath mingle spicy aesthetic pollution migration pattern opera ting under the cement paradigm fossil fuels leverage expendable population, what body, what secrets? monogamy scare ring as choker for the phallus wedding cake smeared on asscheeks swollen pocket of skin what is encased within? humming bugs and nomadic strings: the falafel within i wanna be negated here we all are voyaging toward death and away from‌ what? a slower, comfier death?
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DEAR SHOWER HEAD, SPE NC E R FR ANK
I’m sorry for only coming to you when I need something, but lately
my favorite thing to do is sit with you and pretend that the water is coming from your face instead of mine. I’ve always admired your ability to start and stop: you turn on and off when your handle is turned, and when you heat up, it’s not all at once, but a gradual climb from a simmer to a boil. I like it when you get like that, when you burn my shoulders and kiss my neck, leaving crimson scratches behind. I don’t always see you when you feel cold, but when I ask you show me, and when I flip your handle the opposite direction and brace myself, you remind me what it is like to be awake. You have mastered the art of crying. I wish that I could start and stop and burn and freeze as easily as you.
I’m sorry for only coming to you when I need something, but I know
you’ve seen me naked, and you’ve washed my hair anyway. I know you’ve seen the drawings and patterns that I rub into the glass door, and I know you’ve tucked them away into your fog, before someone I trust less can see them. I promise that the next time you hear me singing, I will be singing to you, not for someone who never wanted to listen in the first place. I won’t just be singing because no one else can hear. I’ll give my voice to you, let it burst out vibrating between our wet faces.
I’m sorry for only coming to you when I need something, but lately
I’ve been needing a lot at 3:00 am, because your tears feel like arms and I desperately need that. If there was a time when I could sleep without being held, I have forgotten it. My blankets and my bed and my ceiling fan’s breath are too loose with their grip, and I need you to hold me. I need you to hold me and I need you to run your long fingers through my hair and brush away the dust I’ve collected and the dirt I’ve become. You’ve always been able to wipe away the parts of me that shouldn’t have been there, and lately I can’t tell where they start and I stop. S i n c e r e l y, Someone who is tired of waking up alone at night
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CAVERN DWELLERS MAD I DE FR A I N
Red dirt mountains climb the skyline Reaching beyond the horizon of the windshield Coated with moths and bees and the rich red dirt Until my father pulls over on winding roads to release The view from the staining of blue blood and Clay mud packed tight along the window.
My mother tells me to close my window As winding begins again and the bugs hit with force Saved for tiny deaths left unremembered By the mountain and its red dirt roads Turned to dust in the drying seasons Then back to mud black tears in filthy rain.
Can the bugs fly through the teardrop rain? Or do they drown alongside the road Melting swiftly along the mountainside Heaving and swaying in quenched thirst Forcing our baby blue van into the scenic area Where all that is left to view is the downpour.
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We miss the bats’ escape caught in the downpour And my mother cries in vacation meltdown When the sun leaves the sky black and hollow And we are miles from the caverns bats seek When the bugs are eaten and the horizon clean; No trace of bat flight when morning dawns.
We rise to meet the winding mountain the next dawn Refreshed by the water now cleared from the sky And we race through the red brown mud To meet the stalagmite looming like dark icicles Deep in the cold cavern depths we seek; Excavating below to fill the hours before the bats.
I hear the crickets roar before I see the bats Flying from daylight covered caves to feast On the moths and bees over mud mountains Thousands of inscrutable brown bodies soaring Just out of reach from my tiny prying hands Our daylight drive to their midnight flight entwined.
The downpour of rain on my window begins again at dawn When the bats are no longer entwined with the skyline.
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(page break)
THE BIRDS AND THE BONES MAD I DE FR A I N
daylight recedes later as the wind picks up and the tulips sprout and I am not lonely once the winter leaves my bones and the cardinals nest in the honeysuckle bush outside my bedroom window where their eggs will hatch then grow from flightless to creatures incapable of staying pinned down much like me during warmer seasons when I trace the train tracks through the thick woods and find deer bones and other crumpled bodies I can no longer identify after time’s decay but at least they remind me I am both the birds and the bones when I am caught between thorned branches once again
Inspired by “Three Screws” by Carol Gloor
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did you drink to forget or forget to drink forget to pick me up and forget to drink forget that you had to drive to pick me up forget that my car doesn’t work that we only have the one car and we don’t have the money to fix it to get a new one to buy another to rent another cause all our money’s gone where did it go I sure don’t know but maybe it went into all of those broken bottles in the bins all of that goddamn drinking and now you’ve forgotten to pick me up and pick up the kids your kids pick them up an hour ago and we’ve been standing in the cold and the rain cause we don’t have another car we only have the one our bank account’s near empty near collapse you drank it dry drank the money drank it all away and I should have listened to my father I know we said our vows in our sickness and in our health but really it’s your sickness that’s ruining my health and now me and the kids are wet the kids are cold the kids were waiting for their daddy to pick them up their dad to pick me up in the cold fucking cold fucking rain but instead today DRIPPING WET IN THE KITCHEN
you were drinking and last week you
ON TUESDAY AFTERNOON MIC A H FAU L DS
were drinking and—
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our anniversary! you forgot our date forgot me forgot the dinner and our anniversary there was no surprise for me I bought you a glove a vintage baseball glove you loved playing as a kid and for my present you got me tequila the tequila that you already drank the tequila that was thick on your breath when you got home three hours after our date had ended the date where I waited and sat alone and the waiter gave me free breadsticks and a thirty dollar bill and then you got home at one in the morning and our anniversary was over and you gave me nothing but the tequila that you threw up on my shoes and on our floor and on our anniversary and today you threw up all of this rain that we’ve been standing in me and the kids have been standing in cause you forgot to pick us up and we only have the one bulky ass car that bulky ass small as a rat’s ass car and we can’t get another one we don’t have the money my sister has the money my father has most of the money you drank away all of our money and now soon we will be gone the kids and I we might be gone soon soon we will be gone cause today and yesterday and last week and the past three months and years and on our own anniversary you decided to drink us all away.
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PLANTING THE RED, RED STRAWBERRIES WITH MY GRANDMA ON THAT ONE DAY IN THAT ONE MONTH WHEN MY MOM AND MY SISTER LEFT FOR SCHOOL KAY L A J A NE L L E C O O K
I want to eat from a garden Instead of from “Paper or plastic?” I want to feel the warmth on my face from my grandparents’ fireplace Instead of The heat from a physical electric bill that takes up too much space in my apartment I want to swing until I’m afraid to fall off the edge of the hill Instead of Scrolling through a screen until I’m afraid of being alone with my thoughts I want to sing to the music strummed by my uncle’s hands Instead of Processed sounds from speakers, my voice hidden by someone else’s, someone I will never meet I want to pose in front of my aunts then shake the black-and-white square the camera spits out Instead of Looking at myself in a rectangle, posing for 54 likes, maybe 57, with the right filter I want to run to my mother’s bed after a nightmare Instead of Lying awake, consuming media, wondering when I stopped having dreams
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But maybe what I really want is My uncle to really know his family My aunt to be free of debt My other aunt to make peace with her childhood My sister to be free of debt and make peace with her childhood My grandpa to miss them less My grandma to be alive My mother to be alive And myself to Really know my family Be free of debt Make peace with my childhood Be free of debt and make peace with my childhood Miss them less Be alive Be alive —
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FOREVER KAY L A J ANE L L E C O O K
Your postage stamps say “forever”. Rip paper with chrome, Inside, a letter: Our new home. Rip paper with chrome, Fingertips on your handwriting’s indents— Our new home— It only makes sense. Fingertips on your handwriting’s indents, Your words compare me to an ocean, then the sky. It only makes sense. With each comma, I hear your sigh— Your words compare me to an ocean, then the sky, The pen strokes thick and thin. With each comma, I hear your sigh So many letters within.
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The pen strokes thick and thin, The sky greys, the ocean dries— So many letters within. A poem cries. The sky greys, the ocean dries, Try to find the light— A poem cries. Make a rewrite. Try to find the light— “Return to sender” was stamped. Make a rewrite, The envelop cramped. “Return to sender” was stamped. Inside, a letter, The envelope cramped. Your postage stamps say “forever”.
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WHEN YOU HURT ME, (OR) WISHES IN THE DARK A. A. K HAL I Q
i wish i could show you the wounds inside me that make me shrink back when you reach out to me in the way i remember without fondness but those loci are sealed off by my own hands, walls caved in to destroy the poison of memory and the way it wreaks havoc on me i wish i could tell you how it hurts, how i cave into myself with agony because it is not you hurting me.
my own hands drive the knife in.
because i can’t forget it. how small i felt, and at once how gangly and big— an oaf and an idiot with nothing of worth to ever add or subtract. when you hurt me—oh, when you hurt me! it isn’t even your fault, but still i slink off to sulk and simmer in my own poisonous brew, it’s all i know how to do; be myself slowly and slowly and then all at once, and then shrink back with vehemence and violence when i feel that you feel
i have misstepped.
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i am the gatekeeper of this bond between us and you see the truth before i can hear its echo.
ah, that you love me still.
ah, that i trusted you from the beginning; that i trusted you now, to never bore of me, to never tire of me, to never hate me. i wish i could carve your love into myself like a rune of protection, i wish you could save me from myself. but this is no fairytale, you are no prince— i have destroyed myself with my own hands, and i shall build myself back up with them, too.
i promise.
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(page break)
THE GARDEN OF EDEN PAT R I CHE R S O N
A dream from last August sometime: you slithered from under the shed glistening between thirsty blades of gold and green grass. You and I
were parched.
You shed your skin and hissed a song I could not comprehend. You slipped into the ground so quick I could not follow, you who will never know the burden of tired legs. I placed my hand into the earth, and you bit me when I reached for you. I watched your teeth sinking into me and like your teeth I sank. Falling deeper into you choking, sputtering
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VOICE LIKE OCEAN WAVES MICAH FA U L DS
At first, his voice was ocean waves. Coral reefs sprouted on his lips, his tongue layered with warm yellow sand. Every time he opened his mouth, gentle salt water spilled out. At first, I dipped my toes into his voice, into the water, coldish wavy ocean water. Come in farther. Take a swim. And I swam. When he whispered to me, salty breeze sprinkled my face. When he spoke, the sails of navigators billowed and lurched forward, waves of his breath lapping at the worn metal of their hulls. When he sang, swimmers danced across his ocean surface and seaweed clung to my heels, begging me to stay. And the longer I listened to his voice, the less I heard his ocean breeze whispers and seaweed songs and the more I heard his talking, subtle currents talking, his ocean wave voice grabbing a discussion about where to eat and sweeping it into how he wanted me to love him, love being in his ocean everyday; told me I needed to spend more time with his voice, his voice that didn’t whisper as much as it used to but instead had begun to shout, begun to whisper-shout-scream. And when he screamed, fish and whales and jellies swarmed and tumbled from his mouth, the tentacles of squids and octopuses clung to his teeth, and I could sense could feel could hear a passionate storm brewing on the horizon. The longer I listened to his voice, the less I saw land. It’s all ocean now. I’m surrounded by his ocean. May I see the land. No. Can I call my mom, the lifeguards, let them know I’m okay. No, not today. But today I think I want
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to go back to the sandy beach, back to the paved streets, to my family’s house on the shore. No. No no no. The ocean blue sky begins to sink to an indecipherable gray-navy blue-black. Do you not love me enough to stay here. Water wrinkles my fingers. I promise I do, do love you, do love your ocean wave voice. The stars’ reflections disappear from the surface of the water. You don’t want to stay with me though. You’d rather leave me, leave me here all alone, you don’t love me enough to stay. Water fills my cheeks, salt stings my nose, salt settles in the cracks of my lips. That’s not true. But inside, I know it might be true: this water leaves me thirstier. I tell myself I need more of the Atlantic and Pacific stirring in his voice to stifle my thirst, yet it only makes me thirstier. And still I say, I love you, I’ll stay with you. I promise I’ll stay. I thought his tongue was warm yellow sand, but when he screams, I can see that it was only the tip that was sandy. I see his coral reef lips are decaying, and that his tongue fades from beach towel sand to the sand of lobster-sea urchin waters, his tongue shifting to rough, rocky underwater ocean basalts, his tongue disappearing down a dark underwater abyss, an undiscovered trench. And the riptide that carries his words also carries me out to sea, away from the shore and the swimmers, away from the people I know. Can they hear me raw-voice raw-throat shouting. Can they see me shooting my arms up and side to side. Do any of them see my body swept out with the current, or that I’m beginning to dip beneath the water. Will the water choke me. Will it feel okay. Is this where I belong. Is this where I stay. His voice was like ocean waves.
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OLD MAN SUITCASE CH R I S TI AN BO U D RE A U X
We all called him “suitcase” Square-shaped, Leather-faced, Worn-out We would ride our beach cruisers ‘round the neighborhood,
Enemies of the block,
Terrors with whistling cards in our spokes
We rode down cracked concrete Until we made it to Suitcase’s house
Faded blue walls,
Chipping paint We would park and devise his life As if he was a monster in bedtime stories,
The troll under the bridge,
A giant in the beanstalk
We waited to see him in windows Or come out on the porch,
An old boxy man,
Sweeping away We would only see him if Nate, A blonde, lanky boy, threw things
Rocks at doors,
Sticks on the roof
We ran as Suitcase hobbled His lead foot out on the lawn,
Back arched,
Shotgun in hand
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We would ride like the wind And stop at Matt’s house,
A rather rotund boy,
Who almost always got left behind
We drank stolen beers And recounted encounters like fishing tales,
“He almost grabbed me”
“We almost got shot”
We continued this tradition Throughout the entire summer,
Stalking his house,
Prodding the beast
We were rebels of the streets Until Suitcase stopped coming out,
Sticks pilled up on his roof,
Rocks gathered on the porch
We figured he stopped caring, Gave up fighting till we stopped
Waiting for him,
Harassing the house
We never knew what happened Until we saw the ambulance,
Weeks later,
Outside Ol’ Suitcase’s place
We rushed to see him, His body on the stretcher,
Stiff like a board,
Face as pale as milk
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We were told it was old age, But word was he offed himself
Drowned in his tub,
Took too many drugs
We had never seen a dead body, Moreover, we never knew anyone who died,
Not anyone close,
Or close to us
We stopped biking together, Nate, Matt and me,
Afraid of what we saw,
We found new friends
We didn’t talk about it
For a few years
Maybe five? In high school? We didn’t know what to think Of old man Suitcase,
And we figured,
We never would
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(page break)
OIL SHAPED ENDING RAC HE L ATAK PA
1. when will you tire — my dead-mouth longing abstains — how quickly presence leaves 2. peel back canvas eye lids, overflowing, thinning shape of oculus 3. we were unleading perhaps, surely returning when comet met Cain 4. struck sister siphons tears into currents into seraph sighs of sin 5. forsaken darkness unravels in furls, pitching pity toward healing
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PHANTOM PAIN A L L I S O N C A RO L L O
Tricked by the gap in my teeth, I recall hulled barley, sorghum, spelt, spilt on tile where I tripped over cardboard boxes, sprawled by a stock clerk in the Kroger flour aisle. I press my tongue to stiffened gums: ellipses between bone, a canyon I cracked by colliding with tiled vinyl on supermarket floor. This is my marker of our meeting place: pitted gum guiding memories back in frame. So even now my empty spaces can spill unwanted thoughts and I’ll remember our first-date clothes, and how flour and blood clung in pink peppercorn clots. And like the phantom pain of an amputee, I felt your sting though you’re not with me.
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SUNSHINE NIKOL E R O DR I G UE Z A B E N S U R
I’ve spent a considerable amount of time trying to answer a very simple
question my mother asked me once when I was twelve (and kept asking since then):
“¿Que te paso hijita?”
What happened to you, sweetheart?
I remember looking at her, confusion etched in every crease of my face.
“What do you mean?” Something happened to me?
She explained that, until sometime after I turned eight, I used to be
bright. In the “She’s such a little sunshine! You are so lucky to have her Goretti!” kind of way. So she wanted to know why I no longer...was all of those things. She said it with hope in her voice, and I could see it in her eyes too. There was another hidden question there:
What can I do to bring her back?
So without thinking, one day I blurted,
“Wasn’t that like, three years after Jas was born?” I regret even suggesting it out loud. Not because of the way my moth-
er’s smile fell, as if realizing she finally had her answer and regretted ever asking.
No. I regret it because it makes sense, because once I started to think
about it I couldn’t stop. Because, Jas being born (and everything that happened afterwards) certainly marked a point in my life, in our lives.
The facts are these:
My sister has cerebral palsy (medical negligence, they were absolved).
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She can’t talk, she can’t walk (but she can laugh and she can smile).
As of today, she’s fourteen years old (and would be taller than me if she could walk).
I love her (and I don’t mean it in an uncomplicated way, or as a thought-
less statement, I love her and it is the truest thing I can say, the most immutable part of myself.)
I love her, and I hate when people tell me “I’m so sorry,” like she’s some
kind of tragedy that befell on me and my family. I hate when they look at her with pity in their eyes, or worse, when they look at me that way.
Because nothing happened to me, I’m fine.
I’m fine.
And yet.
And yet.
I can’t deny the way I drown in my own bitterness sometimes, over all
the things that happened after my sister was born, all the things that were done wrong. All the things I resent.
I resent (hate, hate, hate) the nurse that slept while she stopped breath-
ing (five minutes, it only took five minutes) “God watches, god punishes” but you don’t care that he watches and punishes whenever the fuck he pleases, who cares about what happens after the bitch dies, she’s alive now, she’s talking, and walking and making choices for herself and you can’t fucking think about it without thinking of–
I resent the people in the streets (for staring, for their ignorance)
“Don’t look dear” “What’s wrong with her?” they whisper, like your sister has the plague. You look at them, you make them uncomfortable, you stare at them, gaze unwavering because how dare they, who fucking dare they make her feel like– I resent the doctor (who thought it was okay to tell us “she won’t make it past a year”)
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Your mother cries, while your father goes silent. From that moment on you imagine her death, you try to get used to the idea, “guerra avisada no mata soldados,” so you try to pace the grief, try to cry before it happens, it’s been thirteen years since then and you still do it, you still wait, wait
I resent my father (for making me pick his slack, for yelling “I’m sick of all
of you” and expecting me to apologize) “Estoy harto de ustedes” he yells and after that he doesn’t talk to you for months. You are sixteen, the beginning of your last year of highschool and you breakdown in front of him, crying because it hurts, it fucking hurts and he says there nothing to cry for, like his silence didn’t mean shit, like he had nothing to apologize for, like he didn’t fucking care– I resent my mother (for expecting me to be the same happy little girl despite everything) “Eras un solcito” she says, like she hasn’t said it a million times already, pretending that you don’t notice the blatant attempt at guilting you into being nicer, kinder, brighter. But you can’t be any of those things, not in the way she wants you to be, there’s too much of everything else, too much anger, and hurt, and resentment that could drown you from the inside out and how can she even ask you, when it’s her fault too that–
I resent everyone (but not her, never her.)
You look at her, you try to swallow everything down but it comes back up, up and you yell
(Or maybe sometimes her, because I can’t deny the misplaced anger,
the frustration. Because she didn’t have to deal with father’s bankruptcy, mother’s expectations, the yelling, the fighting, the silence.
The crushing reality of being responsible for more than just her life.
But it’s misplaced. Because none of that was her fault, none of that
was under her control. There were no choices given to her, and if anyone is allowed to resent the other, it’s her.)
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This resentment has been living with me for years now and it’s an in-
trinsic part of myself. It has changed me in ways I don’t necessarily feel, but others can see. I know I should try to get some kind of closure, but I can’t.
(I don’t know who I’d be without it.)
I’ve realized none of it matters though, not when I can still hold my sister
close, can shake my head against her neck and make her laugh.
(God her laugh, if there is anything divine in this universe it’s her laugh). I think that’s all the sunshine one needs in their life.
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LAS MUJERES DESAPARECIDAS RAC HE L ATA K PA
in the midst of mourning poetics I am searching for pieces
to a script
to deliver, what should be an elegy with enough space to hold at least fifty two thousand two hundred and ten cuerpos1,2
que están esparcidos por
la frontera entre aquí y
allá
o,
¡ay!
no hay thirty-some, odd years
3
laboriously remembering time spent not here, there
spinning webs without underworlds
searching for tangible, for
swallowed breaths or warnings
decomposing into, between, the slip de
las lenguas espesas con la pena que da
report (news: describe), reportar
“the war correspondent was becoming
tired of reporting and wanted
to write poetry instead”
transl.
“el corresponsal de guerra
estaba cansado de reportar y prefería
escribir poesía”4 porque
“it is difficult
to get the news from poems”5
aun así, don’t you see
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“men
for lack
die miserably every day
of what is found there”6 in receptacle of
spectacle
for lack
of hallowed bodies painted
alive, or dreaming
at least
breathing loud enough that we know where they are where we might go
too
mourn pieces we wish had been left behind, tracing phantom praises of living amongst,
space to return
1 UN-Women. “Femicides Surge in Mexico as Cartel Violence Soars: Report” last modified December 14, 2017, telesurtv.net/english/news/Femicides-Surge-in-Mexico-as-Cartel-Violence-Soars-Report-20171214-0025.html. 2 Ortiz, Lu. “One Woman Is Behind the Most Up-to-Date Interactive Map of Femicides in Mexico” last modified June 15, 2017, globalvoices.org/2017/06/15/one-woman-is-behind-the-most-up-to-date-interactive-map-of-femicides-inmexico/ 3 UN-Women. 4 WordReference.com, “report,” accessed April 01, 2018, wordreference.com/es/translation.asp?tranword=report 5 Williams, William Carlos. “Asphodel, That Greeny Flower [excerpt]” in J ourney to Love(New York: Random House, 1955). 6 Ibid.
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(page break)
LATELY I’VE FELT LIKE PIECES SPE NCE R FR ANK
Not like a puzzle, but more like LEGOs. Every morning I build myself into a new form, rearranging yesterday’s blocks into some new combination And pulling off the ugly growthsI shave my face And comb my hair And cut my fingernails. As I build, I’m more aware of the spaces I leave open than the ones I fill. I build myself into a half-shape, Because I’d really like my parts to fit with your parts. I want to make Your eyebrows jump a little higher when I enter a room And I want to make your hair wish that it was brushed Even though I don’t care And I want you to wonder if your fingernails are too long– to lace your fingers with mine, So that we might try and see if our hands click in with that– satisfying LEGO snap.
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FALSE PROSCENIUM J ACK Z I M ME R M A N
crossed and hunched fear seared in a pop-off spotlight reverb and ring droop wail underneath all eyes no longer jettison life-shrapnel into the mezzanine easy read from back tap on boards iron-soled shoes splinter fibers hide goosebump skin in front of a ghosted active curtain false proscenium foreboding
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HOME TO SPARE? WER MO
a wishing within me to become like a magnet,
furious
with the weight of my own tongue,
salvage nothing but wreckage.
the world chiming within me.
jurisprudence honeybees
made it like vinegar
slowly and with due process
end of the wheel
farm-lumper. tooth-picker. nose-turner. tooth-turner. nose-picker dream-seeker, do what you will with that strung bow that full quiver of sheer avalanche of the light switch switching onto on another circuit completed for now but how long til the power runs out
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PERENNIALS MOLLY HATE S O H L
If I start thinking about something while forsythia is blooming I wont get around to it wont feel comfortable doing it wont act on it until after the hollyhocks have burst and withered Sometimes that has to be enough Sometimes you have to be okay with that And even then you might just have to wait until mums begin to appear outside your local grocery store.
There is always next year.
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