orange Q UA R T E R LY face
featuring paintings
by
ernest williamson iii poetry
by
sam sax
& more
volume ii • number ii
spring
2012
“I feel like Harriet Tubman, except I am trying to free people through underground music, to free themselves creatively and inspirationally.” — JANELLE MONAE,
The world is full of people who save us from ourselves.” — ANNA QUINDLEN,
o r ange Q UA R T E R LY SPRING 2012
face
founded in
2011
volume ii
by allison leigh
•
number ii
OQ Crew
Founder, Publisher, Editor allison leigh Art Director lidia dart Poetry Editor Poetry Editor Fiction Editor Nonfiction Editor
michael mlekoday zack crawford amielle major jessica christiansen
Web Designer ashley kolodziej Web Editor zach power Graphic Designer robby peters Marketing Manager erin bernhard Web Manager brian miles Blog Editor david kinzer Copy Editor joseph parker vanwagner Intern fatimah asghar
Orange Quarterly is published each autumn, winter, spring, and summer by Elemeno Š in Traverse City, Michigan. This is OQ Volume II, Number II, Spring 2012. Orange Quarterly welcomes unsolicited manuscripts for publication consideration. For more information, please visit www.orangequarterly.com. Copyright Š 2012 by Elemeno.
S P RIN G 2012
1 2
for submissions editor’s letter call
face by sean michael st. charles nonfiction by sam guthrie poetry by colin welch artwork by fabio sassi an interview with fabio sassi poetry by lynne potts poetry by zachary michael powell poetry by gala mukomolova poetry by kenneth e. harrison, jr. artwork by jonathan hull an interview with jonathan hull nonfiction by william henderson poetry by sierra demulder paintings by ernest williamson iii an interview with ernest williamson iii poetry by sam sax
6 7 10 11 14 15 18 19 20 21 24 26 33 35 37 41
poetry
45
contributors
CA LL
for
SUBMISSIONS
We are pleased to announce that Orange Quarterly is now accepting submissions for its next theme issue:
disposable Volume II, Number 3 SUMMER 2012
We are looking to publish work inspired by, informed by, or otherwise relating to the word “disposable,” and we’re excited to review any creative work that speaks to the theme of “disposable” in any way. Deadline: July 1, 2012
Refer to our submission guidelines at www.orangequarterly.com before sending your work. Please include the theme name in your email subject.
VO L U M E 1 I • N U M B E R I 1 1
editor’s letter
SPRING 2012
Dear readers, How can you relate the tangibility of personal experience to the masses? Through art, perhaps — through the artifice of (as Toni Morrison would call it) “rememory.” With our face themed issue — the third installment of Orange Quarterly — we sought out submissions responding to how art, poetry, and literature can reshape the personal and pull back the veil that separates art and reality. The creative work you’ll see in this issue performs two mysterious functions: it reveals and it conceals. These poems, paintings, nonfiction stories, collages, etc. — they are as private and distinguishable as age lines and freckles, yet zoomed out they expose a universal flesh, a grander image or narrative that speaks to mortal determination, common understanding, and the contemporary moment. The human need to share and touch — to connect with our fellow man — is vital to our growth as individuals and within humanity as a whole. According to Freudian psychoanalysis, the ego is the part of the mind that mediates between the conscious and the unconscious, and it’s responsible for “reality testing” and a “sense of personal identity.” Is not art, then, the language of the ego? It mediates the arguments, perils, and explorations between one’s consciousness of social reality (the superego) and one’s organic state of pure being (the id). Through art we communicate the essence of our most precious, inherent selves to an audience. Every artist has his ego, just as he has a past, a present, and a future — a timeline that’s as one-of-a-kind (and as revealing and concealing) as the image of his face. Enjoy this, our most memorable, most personal issue yet. Charmed regards, Allison Leigh OQ Founder, Publisher, Editor May 15, 2012
O R A N G E QUA RT E R LY 2
face
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If I make it to the bay poetry
by SEAN MICHAEL ST. CHARLES
alive it must be God’s pocket a fisherman once said. I don’t doubt his sense of apocalypse. The wind sang through the cracks of his small fishing boat a song like water is waiting heavily for you. There are things the fisherman knew for certain: which bait is best for Lingcod at night versus the morning, or what shade of blue green the flesh ought to look after the cleaning of the fish, before the eating. There were other things the fisherman could assume: the depth of the bay and its proximity — at least a shirt’s length from heaven. The bay was empty when he reached it, a perfect square of linen on God’s chest, meant to keep whatever speck of sand inside safe. I’m not sure it is that way. With pockets there’s a penchant for forgetfulness and who’s to say God didn’t want to lose the fisherman with the rest of us.
O R A N G E QUA RT E R LY 6
Remembering Who We Are nonfiction
by SAM GUTHRIE
“So I’ve started following a guru,” I said to my oldest friend Herb, trying to make my voice sound casual and breezy. We sat in our favorite Thai restaurant, and he had been amiably teasing me about my healthy eating habits, grinning his wide, cartoonish grin, suggesting I ask the bartender if they had broccoli juice on tap. I’d loved that goofy smile since high school and I’d never seen it fade so quickly. He put his beer down on the table. “What do you mean? What kind of guru?” “I mean a guru. A guru guru. A spiritual master.” Herb’s face hardened, making him look old and senatorial. I had always made the less conventional choices: I played in garage bands while he went to college; taught exotic martial arts while he made a grown-up income in suits and ties. My wife, Carolyn and I spoiled a parade of cats while Herb and his wife had two brilliant boys. I was the artsy, bohemian, quasi-monk; he was the affable, solid, business executive and family man. But, however different we were, we’d grown to respect each other through thirty years of friendship. We’d gone through the baffling shame of an adolescence without girlfriends, the tacky iniquities of pot smoking in high school, the discovery of then-new music like Devo and Elvis Costello. In our twenties, we’d spent long hours talking excitedly about philosophy — in those days, my man was the Indian iconoclast J. Krishnamurti and Herb was into Trappist monk Thomas Merton. We’d each been the other’s best man at our weddings (his, resplendent, something out of Jane Austen; mine, a dozen people in a park, more like something out of The Beverly Hillbillies). And as we stumbled into our late-thirties, we tussled with the usual existential crises of middleclass, middle-aged men. Now all of that history seemed to be evaporating. “Wow. Well, I just hope you’re careful.” Herb’s voice was leaden and he frowned into
his Pad Thai. I knew Americans disliked gurus, but having read Eastern spirituality books since I was thirteen, gurus had always seemed a natural part of spirituality to me. Consequently, I had never grasped the intensity of that dislike, and I was not at all prepared to see it show up on my best friend’s face. I didn’t know how to respond. “Careful of what?” I asked. Herb was almost a foot taller than me, but he hunched down over his food and looked up through his thick brows, “Well, how can you be sure this guy isn’t a con man?” “I don’t know,” I said, stupidly, “I just am. It’s hard to explain.” My face felt hot and my mind began to race. What if my guru was a con man and I was deluding myself, like one of those pitiful losers on daytime talk shows? “I mean,” he continued, “aren’t you supposed to give up your will to a guru?” “No, it’s not like that. I mean, you’re a Catholic, and aren’t you supposed to give up your life to Jesus? Christianity is basically just guru devotion,” I said desperately. “Your guru compares himself to Jesus?” “No! Well yes, but not like that. He says all beings are the same as Jesus or the Buddha.” My words were coming faster and I’d completely forgotten about the special order of steamed vegetables in front of me. “Then why worship him?” Herb said. I took a slow breath, tried to shift into an authoritative, scholarly tone. “Because we don’t know it’s our state. We’ve forgotten. Gurus are how we remember. We remember by meditating on the guru’s enlightened state. That’s how we duplicate the state of enlightenment in ourselves.” Uggh. I sounded like something out of a bad Isaac Asimov novel. Given how badly this was going, I was certainly not about to share any of the gory details of my actual spiritual practice — how I bowed before the photo of my guru and gently arranged flowers around his feet, or how
VO L U M E I I • N U M B E R I 1 7
sometimes when I meditated my whole body would soften and my eyes would become wet with tears. I was onto some new, overheated metaphor now, using words like “morphogenic fields” and “entrainment,” no longer really trying to convince him of anything about gurus; I just needed him to stop thinking I was the kind of sap who could get taken in by some cheesy huckster. I felt like yelling, This is me! Sam! The guy who introduced you to Bob Marley, for Chrissake! I wanted so badly to see Herb’s old grin again, his brows raised comically high, eyes bearing down on me with mock-diabolical glee. Just as I was about to launch into a disquisition on the guru in esoteric Christianity, Herb poked at his food, and asked, “So how’s Carolyn?” And with that, it seemed, my case was closed. We finished the dinner in stiff small talk, and he didn’t even tease me when I asked the waitress if, for dessert, I could simply get a plate of fresh fruit. Over the next few months I learned, Pavlovian style, not to tell people I had a guru. The lesson came through a procession of stony faces, brittle smiles, and most of all, an eerie lack of questions. Before finding my guru I’d been an ordained Zen Buddhist for twelve years and my friends were boundlessly curious about that. But people wanted very badly not to hear about a guru. It didn’t seem to matter that guru devotion has been revered for millennia among half the world’s population, the living heart of Hinduism, Sikhism, Tibetan Buddhism, Sufism, Taoism, and a few other assorted isms. Thanks to a handful of lunatic cults, gurus would always look suspect to Americans. Finally I got so frustrated I decided to write up a manifesto defending guru devotion (I demurely called it an “intro booklet”). I sat for hours in coffee shops, furiously scribbling away, deconstructing every possible criticism with what I felt was irrefutable logic.
Of course, I couldn’t let Herb know how badly I wanted his approval, so, to get the booklet into his hands, I said I was just looking for feedback on it. Style, clarity, that kind of thing. My heart pounded with anticipation when I dropped the booklet by his house, and, in the week before we planned to meet, I sat more than once in our living room, rereading it, imagining him all aglow with new admiration for me now that he understood the greatness of true guru devotion. Four months after that first talk, Herb and I sat again at that same Thai restaurant. He handed the booklet across the table, avoiding eye contact. “Yeah, it was really good,” he mumbled into his beer. “Good writing. I made some comments like you asked.” And that he had. In harsh red pen Herb had filled the booklet with comments that sent me reeling, suspicions I never would’ve thought of in a million years. The fact that my guru had books that cost actual money struck Herb as dubious. The way the guru had changed his name several times over the years seemed highly questionable. It was as if my painstaking explanations were not even there. I flipped through it trying to look indifferent, and I began mentally lining-up my weightiest counter-arguments. But then, for some reason, I stopped. And something inside me simply gave up. If all that writing couldn’t convince him, nothing would. “Thanks for taking the time and trouble. I can see you put a lot of care into this,” I said as casually as I could manage, though I felt like crying. But then, about an hour later, the strangest thing happened. We’d finished dinner, and I don’t know if it was the couple of beers we’d had, or that we’d begun laughing about our high school years — pot peanut butter crackers before The Rocky Horror Picture Show, going “raftin’” on Lake Harriet during a roaring, treetoppling gale. But, at some point, I looked
O R A N G E QUA RT E R LY 8
down at the seat where my red-penned intro booklet lay like a mortally wounded animal, and I saw the photo I had glued onto the front of it — the face of my guru, his expression softly luminous with compassion. In that moment, the restaurant seemed homier, cozier. And I said, “Y’know all that stuff about how guru devotion works? I actually couldn’t give a damn whether it’s right or not.” “You mean entrainment in the morphogenic field?” Herb said, in affectionate teasing. I chuckled. “Yeah.” I was silent for a moment and then, suddenly, out of nowhere, I blurted out the worst thing I could possibly say. I don’t know what came over me. Certainly it was the one thing that would most freak out a cultfearing person. “The truth is I just love my guru. And when I meditate on him I get really happy. And kinder, I think.” It was such an absurd and forbidden thing to say that I laughed at myself and I could feel my face turn red.
But instead of running out of the restaurant screaming for the cult-deprogrammers, Herb smiled, put his forearms on the table and leaned in toward me. And, to my amazement, he began asking about my new spiritual practice. Before I knew it, we were lost in one of our long, conspiratorial discussions, me telling him about my strange new adventure, its mysterious joys and trials, him telling me about his secret devotional feelings for his own “guru,” feelings that surfaced not in church but while watching baseball games with his kids. At some point, our conversation wound down and we picked up the dessert menus left on our table long ago by our waitress. As I stared at my menu, Herb’s voice came from behind his, “Maybe they’ll make you a special dessert out of kale and water.” And without even looking up I knew the wide goofy grin that was on his face and I knew the mock-diabolical eyes that were bearing down on me. I knew them well.
VO L U M E I I • N U M B E R I 1 9
A Botfly, a Girl poetry
by COLIN WELCH
And then it was Sunday, and I found you beneath my hairline, caught among the new freckles, caught in the lacing of my spine, that frill of bone, and you a single tine of tooth and pulp. I called you summer maggot, a pest arrived from shoulder blades, your nave of wing, of fall — who was it? Which friend was vector and how long must I wait? How does the prognosis appear? And so my questions. The breathing tube, black and surfaced, a dun discolor, yet still unremoved. I thought perhaps you were a gift; a relic, hot and aching, something placed with cannon bone; flame, knife, squeezed from my neck all slick and grown.
O R A N G E QUA RT E R LY 10
FABIO SASSI
constellation lennon print by FABIO SASSI
cheese collage by FABIO SASSI
CO2 crunch acrylic on xeroxed cardboard by FABIO SASSI
O R A N G E QUA RT E R LY 12
outerspace elvis print by FABIO SASSI
VO L U M E I I • N U M B E R I 1 13
An Interview with FABIO SASSI by LIDIA DART, Art Director You’ve been a visual artist since 1990. Is there anything you know now that you wish you’d known back then? The use of my mind. It’s easier to state, “I let my fantasy run free,” than it is to put it into practice. I’m still learning.
Connection, by Michael Luckman, which says that Elvis was a firm believer in UFO visitations.
“outerspace elvis” is a quirky piece. Is there a story behind it? I wanted to pay homage to the King in a weird way. So I mixed what is stated in a book called Alien Rock: The Rock and Roll Extraterrestrial
Is there any up-and-coming stuff we should know about? I’m working on some series made with circles and lines using wire cables, rubber gaskets, and rubber bands.
You mention that the news inspires you for some of your pieces. Are there any world events inspiring you at the moment? I made a collection inspired by the crisis that’s still in progress, but I’m also concerned about I couldn’t help but notice that you live in Italy. environmental issues. Were you born there? Yep, I’m Italian, born and raised in the bootCould you expand on the “crisis still in progress”? shaped country. Unfortunately, yes: the crisis that’s still in progress, at least in Europe, is in Greece, Italy, and Spain Working with American publishers (like Orange right now, with different degrees of gravity. Our Quarterly and Madswirl), do you find your art is governments are raising taxes very quickly but interpreted differently overseas? are so slow in reducing their expenses and Yes, definitely, yes. The American publishers are benefits. more open-minded to the self-taught artists like me and to the weirdness in art. What would you like people to take away from your work? With that in mind, do you create work that is directed A good mix of colors and ideas. more toward an Italian audience or an American audience? Or do you decide the appropriate Is there a certain detail in your work you’d like your audience once your piece is complete? viewers to recognize? No, I don’t make difference among potential The small drops of acrylic paint. audiences; I just work following the mood of the moment. Do you have a favorite method of printing? I mostly use the stencil technique with spray What is your creative process like? paint acrylic, but sometimes I mix it with My creative process starts from an idea born rubberstamping. through reading the news, surfing the internet, browsing through my patterns — or all the three What does your work environment look and feel things together. Sometimes I start with a title that like? can be a word game or have weird assonance.The A big room full of stuff, spray cans, patterns, goal is to create an unusual or surreal composition. leaflets, books, notes, etc. Disorderly. Often I think about new subjects while cycling.
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What Happened, You Ask? poetry
by LYNNE POTTS
sky
spear rock skin
cairn horn
trance
cave bison
blood smoke
Seed soil drought
spelt
womb
plough
goat
garden
sorrow
thrash Isis
harvest
ossuary travertine pestle
halum
(cont.) village god waters incantation road pot
wailing
curtain
blanket
vow
underworld
man/woman
prophet bed mouth
footsoles
tent
parchment alter
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dog
flax
baby
ocarina
hood
war
number battle
scroll
cypress trees
seraphim
mumming eaves ziggurat
market stall
incest
ivory comb
gold
trumpet
argument
basin
lament
gossip
door handle catafalque carillon chant vat flying buttress hairdo Pinot Grigio diadem
shoe lace
nun
sonata
deadbolt
toll road
surgery
shoehorn
crop rotation
corset with baleen museum fisherman’s cap
code
crypt council
broom
whore
poultice
universe cantilever bridge
downspout copper coin dingbat
thermometer button hole chocolate
podium
silver ewer
deduction
bird feeder valance
stethoscope
parody
love letter
vellum
city sewer
brassiere
Assembly line Novocain Dow Jones average jockey shorts company convention cyclotron cool fiberglass insulation paperback camping trip oncology department automatic dryer water cooler tickertape parade chocolate ice cream with jimmies strip joint vacuum-pac roller coaster trash pick up cigarette butt vending machine butt fuck plane reservation astro turf golf cart zip-lock plastic bag rubber ducky cement mixer nuclear deterrence paper cup flap escalator cocktail menus legos to-do list Afro peace talk stand-up comic velcro future face, quadruple bypass surgery, auto-flush toilet, hydrochlorothorocide, remote-control-crib-monitor, auto-online-payment, laser-eye-surgery, inflatable girlfriend, TSA full-body pat-down, liver-transplant, purple-orange hair; chemo-with-radiation, in-vetro sperm donor; hedge-fund-management, made-in-China condom, blog, DeepQA’s Watson, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder; Heat Max Hothands; gay-divorce, YouTube, genetically-altered barley, suck, bozons, texting O R A N G E QUA RT E R LY 16
The Train Keeps poetry
by LYNNE POTTS
The train keeps face — windows silvered sky scissors cut on black-out as back drop: moon and caboose. Keep a light on. Click a dee click [ ] Click a dee click [ ]. Slot between cars. Giant mesa walls Rails and silver dash as doors he train keeps closed. [ ] Clickered stainless clasp [ ]. Let’s do the diner. Around bends we lose the caboose. Buffalo on lamp [ ] shade like buzzards. Keep track. Brackets in moon light between mountain [ ] wall stones round canyon echo, echo. O [ ] [ ] Diner soup salt and pepper, silver salver with French baguette. Cigarette. Snack car in two-four time. Sleepers too. You choose. Take what keeps face. I wander off [ ] ponder caboose as lost sleep a way to keep track of where I’ve been and couldn’t: [ ] again.
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Skyscraper Attendant poetry
by ZACHARY MICHAEL POWELL
I want stormdrains to flow into these indoor spaces, these elevator bombshelters where people pack and wait. What can I rename these rooms? I’m a janitor here. Read the name badge. See the clearance passes. While I sweep the floors, labcoats make viruses in the basement that can eat through a monkey’s eyeballs. Doors: Bubonic, Smallpox, Anthrax, Ebola. In the rednight of the topfloor, dogfights occur in an animal dance, swirling the clouds in their machinegun dark, and the planes fall like Christmas on the Highway. Perhaps, I am dead. My ghostself cleaning the memories of these rooms and rooms in rooms, like a restroom trashcan where one bag swallows another, and barbarian hordes grow in the mirrors behind the sinks. After midnight, the lobbies sprout tentacles to clutch out at my squeaking feet, and I think of that man holed-out in the jungle: Japanese. It was the 70s, of course, and he in his cave asked if the war was still on.
Floors: Dreams, Forgetfulness, Words, Forget-me-nots. If my mop was to die in my arms, hair wilting cold over my face, I would know my life for sleep at its end, and I’d wake smiling to death. So let fall the tiny cowboys perched atop their nuclear shells, let them spiral upside down to topple these buildings where no one seems to be able to put their butts in the ashcan. Stairwells: Coal, Ash, Sky, Your Finger. To the outside city, my body’s smoke will fog the office windows with the way cooked flesh smells, and perhaps my mouth will release into all these sewer holes so Audie Murphy, late in his cubicle, will blink an insomniac code to the ceiling that the saddest part of living is holding a corpse like a receiver. Emergency Exits: World. Mother. Father. Perceiver.
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Return poetry
by GALA MUKOMOLOVA
Brighton, of mothers buying fresh fish, rising over the din of car horns. Homecoming, helmetless bicyclist moving through traffic like a vulnerable raptor. Babas gossip, pressing their furred hoods together almost kissing. Her daughter, mouth full of salt air and broken Russian. Coney Island, a freak show act — trying to swallow the wrong sword.
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Elegy poetry
by KENNETH E. HARRISON, JR.
Fields too distant to call the dogs back in daylight whose edges crack the garden against the grass against the house shone like the hand lay down trowel or trumpet the smell of lilacs inching farther out than sheets on the clothesline divided a world the bees hole into or nest a broken tractor alone with its hair speaks to the thicket curled under afternoon’s robe too wide to let the children roam —
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JONATHAN HULL
13 collage by JONATHAN HULL
Xvinci collage by JONATHAN HULL
O R A N G E QUA RT E R LY 22
Pink collage by JONATHAN HULL VO L U M E I 1 • N U M B E R I 1 23
An Interview with JONATHAN HULL by LIDIA DART, Art Director What brought you from Australia to New York? The juxtaposition inherent in collage seemed an I came after college; most of my friends were ideal way to capture this experience. moving here. I didn’t have any clear direction, and it seemed like the best place to go. Do you have any favorite stories behind any of your pieces? Do you recognize any major differences between I got into making these collages in kind of a quirky the art communities here in the States and there, way. I’ve always used visual elements in my fiction down under? and nonfiction writing, but until a few years ago I’d I left Australia when I was fifteen, so I can’t never taken the leap to create purely visual work. comment too much on the art community I was taking a class as part of my education degree there. New York is obviously a center of the art on using art to work with special needs students. world, with many art schools, galleries, auction For our final project we were given a sketchbook houses, and museums. There’s so much to see and told to fill it. I blanked on the assignment — here — too much for anyone with a demanding I really had no idea how to move forward. The job and a family like myself. But it’s comforting teacher had offered us a bunch of art supplies to know it’s there, even if I don’t make it out to — pastels, charcoal, fabrics, watercolors, and see it. magazines. I noticed a Sotheby’s catalog in with all the magazines, and I started flipping through In which category did you receive your New York it. Eventually I figured I should start cutting things Foundation of the Arts Fellowship? That must have out. I liked what I’d done; some of the pieces are been memorable. What was it like, winning? still up on the blog. Once the class was behind I won the NYFA fellowship in nonfiction me I headed down to the Strand bookstore and literature for a piece about a Turkish painter and picked up a bunch of used auction catalogs for a archaeologist.That piece, like much of my writing, few dollars a piece. The catalogs themselves are made use a blend of words and visual elements quite beautiful — they’re about trying to convince to tell the story. It came at a great time for me — people to buy something — and so they’re the I was discouraged and felt that a lot of my work perfect source material. Since it’s become a habit, wasn’t going anywhere. My salary as a museum and I go fairly regularly to the Strand to get new guard wasn’t exactly generous given the cost of catalogs. living in NYC, so the money that came along with the NYFA award made a huge difference. Is there a certain detail in your work you’d like your viewer to recognize? Your collages are impressive. What inspired you The work isn’t so much about details standing to alter classical pieces in such a quirky way? Did on their own as it is a celebration of unexpected working as a museum security guard play a part in combinations, of moments of intersection. I break your creative process? a piece into fragments and recombine these into Thank you. My time as a museum guard definitely something new that’s unexpected but feels right. inspired this work. No matter how many times I patrolled the same carefully curated spaces along What would you like people to take away from your the same proscribed route, I was always struck work? by an odd detail in an artwork I’d never noticed I like to indulge in certain big ideas about my work. before or never seen in quite the same way. At I like to think that I’m in some way reclaiming the end of a shift I’d end up with a jumble of the high-priced, inaccessible commodities these images that would blend together in my memory. works of art have become — they’re mostly O R A N G E QUA RT E R LY 24
being sold from one private collector to another via auction houses. In the catalogs each piece has been carefully assessed and categorized, with its measurements, dates, and provenances all carefully presented to the potential buyer. But the best art has a sense of mystery and strangeness that defies this meticulous classification. You might say these collages are about reclaiming this mystery from the certainty of the market and the auctioneer’s hammer. But I’m not too attached to this way of thinking; I’m happy enough for people to find some beauty in these pieces.
It’s my living room. Under the coffee table you’ll find a heap of auction catalogs: Sotheby’s, Christies, Phillips de Pury. Dorotheum out of Vienna is a particular favorite. Exacto knives and glue sticks. A cutting pad and sketchpads. Easy to unpack and start working, easy to pack away.
Is there any up and coming stuff we should know about? I just had a show at Spattered Columns gallery in New York with Swipe Magazine — a magazine devoted to the work of museum guards. Also, I’ll be in a group show at Five Myles Gallery in What does your work environment look and feel Brooklyn in June. like?
Siblings collage by JONATHAN HULL
VO L U M E 1 I • N U M B E R 1 1 25
Alice’s Evidence nonfiction
by WILLIAM HENDERSON
My wife, Holly, who has just entered the third trimester of her pregnancy with our daughter, Aurora, needs help climbing the steep stairs leading from the sidewalk to the courthouse in this small Massachusetts town where you live. Three men stand on the steps of the courthouse, smoking. One man isn’t wearing shoes. Holly reaches for my hand, albeit mostly out of habit I think. I hold the door open for her. A guard waves us through the metal detector. He seems bored. You don’t live far from here. Each time I drove to and from your apartment, I would pass this courthouse. I haven’t seen or talked to you in five weeks, the longest we’ve gone without talking since we met nine months ago. Holly and I have not lived together in a month, and her mother asks everyday if Holly will move to California with our son, Avery, and unborn daughter. Let Will enjoy his homosexual life in Boston, she says. Even if Holly has come to accept that I not only had an affair with you but also fell in love with you, her family has not, and probably never will. Can you blame them? Holly will not take my children away. Even if she wanted to, an attorney told her that in Massachusetts, a judge would call taking my children away without my permission kidnapping. Holly squeezes my hand. Are you OK? she asks. She is holding my left hand; you can still see a strip of white skin marking where my wedding band had been. Am I bad person? I ask Holly. You’ve done some bad things, Will, she says, but you’re not a bad person. Have I ruined my future by losing him? I ask. He wasn’t the one for you, she says. He isn’t the one for you. What if he gets in trouble? I ask her. He didn’t think about the fallout from taking a restraining order out against you, she says. You cannot think about what being here will do to him. You have to think about yourself and your family. We need you.
Holly takes my hand and puts it on her stomach where our daughter is elongating and stretching. He. No one in my life says your name. My close friends, the ones who helped put me back together when I felt torn into ribbons, call you RODA, an acronym for restraining order drug addict. A woman I work with calls you the psycho who works up the street. How unfair, the proximity of where you and I work and live, now that we are on the outside of each other’s lives. The Mystic River separates where you work from where I work. The times I drove to you during lunch, or after work, the times you met me at the train station, we traversed the river. We crossed over. There was a crossing. And maybe I crossed a line when I staged on my one-man intervention. I don’t feel guilty, not about what I did to you — for you? — and not about what I did to Holly. I cheated on her, and even though my marriage to her had ended years ago, she deserved more than my cheating on her, especially my cheating on her with someone like you. How nice, thinking about you as someone like you, as opposed to the you with whom I woke up some mornings, and the you to whom I would say: Waking up like this certainly doesn’t suck. No, rabbit, you would tell me, waking up next to you certainly doesn’t suck. I think I should continue talking to Holly, if only to ease the tension in my stomach, but Holly and I have run out of things to talk about. We are still drawing the boundaries of our new relationship. I am no longer afraid of living as an openly gay man. And she will not want to hear that my second date with you included a brief interlude outside this courthouse, even if I am thinking about that second date and how much possibility it had held. You and I had stood near a corner of this courthouse. Christmas lights still hung on storefronts, even though Christmas had been nearly a month earlier, and from the stairs of
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the courthouse, we could see lights on houses in the distance. I have something to say, you had said. The way you had said I have something to say drained the night of its magic. I used to be a crystal meth addict, you had said. Here’s the other shoe, I’d thought. I’ve been waiting for its fall. Never mind my marriage. That was not the other shoe. I could get out of it. I wanted to get out of it. I had been afraid to get out of it. I haven’t used in a while, but when I use, nothing else matters. And the last time I used, I destroyed my life, hurt people I loved, and almost died. Crystal left me with nothing, and I know if I use again, I will not come back. I will use until I die. But you don’t use now, I had said. The way I had said but you don’t use now seemed like I was asking, not telling. No, but I like to occasionally get high. I only recently started smoking. I never buy it. My roommate gives it to me. Will, I don’t know what we’re becoming, you had said, but if we’re becoming anything, if you ever think I’m going down that path again, if you think that I may even possibly use crystal, or if you think my drug use is growing out of control, then you have to promise that you will do whatever stopping me takes. You had wanted me to know who you were up front. You had wanted me to know this large fact about you because you believe this large fact defines you. And maybe it does. In time, I defined you by this large fact. You are an addict, and I felt responsible for keeping you safe. From the beginning, you had asked me to. OK, D, I had said, even though I hadn’t known what we were becoming either.You had been able to tell I was cold. You had unwrapped your scarf from around your neck and tied it around my neck. You had said, there, that should keep you warmer. You were standing close enough that I could smell you. You had kissed me. I see you walk into the courthouse. Holly and I are sitting on a bench near a staircase. You put an envelope on the conveyer belt. I nod in your direction. There he is, I say. She
had told me she would never recognize you. I am surprised that you are alone. I expected you to bring your best friend, who must be happy that I am no longer in your life, or that you would bring your roommate, who is your dealer and who doesn’t like me, even though in the beginning he seemed to. My attorney arrives. He walks in front of you and blocks my view of you. We’re on the third floor, he says.He’s here, I say. Where? my attorney asks. I nod in your direction. Holly and I walk up the stairs in front of my attorney who is walking in front of you. How surreal, I think. We’re walking up these stairs to see whether or not a judge will vacate a restraining order you took out against me because, without your knowledge, I had recorded you and your best friends getting high and snorting pills. Whatever it took. You had made me promise. I loved you. I thought I was fulfilling my promise. Only after you had ended our relationship, made sure I knew you never wanted to see me again, and took out the restraining order, did I make sure you found out that I had been married the entire time. I didn’t want you to know to hurt you; I wanted you to know so you would understand how much I had been willing to give up for you, and how disappointed I had been that you had not been willing to make the same accommodations. I had told you Holly would never let a drug addict raise her children. You had promised to quit once we lived together. But you had asked me not to make you pick between me and the drugs. I know you wouldn’t have picked me. My attorney introduces himself to you. Can we talk? he asks you. I cannot hear what you are saying. I do not want to hear what you are saying. If I look at you, I will cry, and if I cry, then you will know that my heart continues to break. Our coupling and uncoupling has no middle ground. I am not ready for the questions the judge will ask. Who stole the tarts? No, not that question. Where is my heart? The heart you gave back to me is not the same heart I gave to you. I want that heart back.
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I want to not have given you my heart. I want to not have met you. Lies. All lies. No lying on the stand. Swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Did you love him? Yes. Do you miss him? Yes. Are you sorry? Am I sorry? You know the story — our story — and you are mad at me for the part I played in our story — your story — and sometimes I’m mad at me for the part I played in my story, because my story was supposed to be your story was supposed to be our story. All I needed to do was divorce my wife, get you to stop using drugs, and then I could enjoy our ever after happy ending. Have you noticed I’m wearing the engagement ring I bought you, the ring I hired a metalworker to make for me, for you? Had I not incorrectly guessed at your ring size, you’d have this ring, which you would have worn for one month, and then you would have taken off this ring, and never worn this ring again. Even after the metalworker re-sized the ring, it does not fit my ring finger, not exactly, not quite. We are here, in this courthouse, outside of which I started falling in love with you more than nine months ago, and I do not want to be here inside this courthouse, outside of which I started falling in love with you more than nine months ago. But we are here because we have to be here, because if we are not here, then the restraining order you took out will remain in place, and I will have to look for you in crowds and subways and at concerts and restaurants, never knowing if somewhere I am is where you will be, or are, and whether I will have to cut short my time in this somewhere, because you will be, or are, there. I am at a concert, and even though you never expressed any interest in this specific band, I can’t help but look for you and your friends. I look for you because if you are here, you will call building security, show them a copy of the restraining order, and have me removed. I can’t live like this, I think after the show.
I ask Holly what she thinks about my filing a motion to reconsider the restraining order, and asking a judge to decide if the restraining order was validly granted, since I was not there to present my side. I do not feel you deserve to have that power over me. I will not make decisions about where I go based on where I think you may go. You were never afraid of me. She says she’s wanted me to do that all along. The clerk of the civil court where you got your restraining order listens to my story and explains how I can file a Motion for Reconsideration. Holly holds my hand. Avery will not stand still. He runs around, and finally Holly sits with him outside. The clerk hands me some paperwork and says I can take the paperwork out into the main area and write out there. I tell her thank you. She seems kind. I’d like to think that she believes me and feels the restraining order was issued without merit. Maybe she has to make everyone believe that that’s how she feels because she never knows which person’s story is the more correct version of the story. I write: On the date of the hearing, I was at St. Elizabeth’s completing a partial hospital program. I never received notice of the extension. D was in regular contact with my wife, Holly Henderson, during this time. On August 5, D sent me an email and I thought the restraining order had expired. At this time, he still had belongings of mine, and my son. On August 16, I called the local police department to ask about the restraining order and they said they had no record of it. Later that day, he gave my wife my stuff, sent me messages through her, and then had a four-hour text message conversation with me. We continued to talk the next day and the day after we met for coffee. He told me at that meeting that the restraining order had been extended. The next day, we texted most of the day and that night, he, my son, and I met for ice cream. That night he told me he loved me. The next night he told me he wanted to marry me, raise children with me, and get to know my wife, who I have since separated from. The next day, August 21, he told me he loved me, but when I said something he didn’t like, he sent me a picture of the restraining order and said he’d have no problem having me arrested and
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taken from my child if I contacted him again. Two days later, he told my wife that if she ever contacted him again, or went into his place of employment, he would take a restraining order out against her and have me arrested. He told me he took out the restraining order because he loved me and he knew if I had contact we’d get back together, not because he was afraid I’d hurt him. We broke up because I had recorded his roommate selling him an ounce of marijuana; D turning around and selling half an ounce to a friend; he and two friends smoking half an ounce of marijuana; and then snorting prescription pills. While I didn’t have his permission to record him, he had given me keys to his apartment and given me an open invitation to come over when I wanted. Also, D is a former crystal meth user and early in our relationship he made me promise that if I ever thought he and his marijuana use was getting out of hand to do whatever I needed to do to help him because if he started down that path he’d never come back. After receiving a copy of the extended restraining order from him, I verified it with the clerk of the civil court and have not had any contact with him. I am not the first ex-boyfriend he has taken out a restraining order against, and I do not feel it was issued under the right circumstances. We never had a violent relationship, and I would never harm him. In the e-mail he sent threatening my wife, he ended it by saying he would do whatever it took to protect his roommate and his friends.
I tell Attorney the story. He listens. A secondyear associate takes notes. I have brought e-mails and text messages and phone records, anything that may help him prove you did not take out the restraining order because you felt I was a threat. Attorney looks at Holly. You’ll write an affidavit supporting this? he asks. Yes, Holly says. You can attest that Will is not a violent man and has never threatened you? That you have never felt afraid of him? Yes, Holly says. Attorney looks at me. You know you have that one in a million wife. I know, I say. I reach for Holly’s hand and hold it. Not many women would sit next to a husband who is defending himself against a restraining order filed against him by his exboyfriend. I know, I say. I have to tell him about St. Elizabeth’s and what led me there. He doesn’t react, just says he hopes I’m doing better and that I’ve realized I had, have, other options. You will get through this, he says. Second-year Associate reads the text messages we exchanged that week in August, what Judi still calls my relapse week. What’s the deal with the rabbit references? she asks. He called me rabbit, I say. I know you will think about me when you hear the word rabbit. I do not tell her that I called you horse, and that when I’m feeling most bitter, I think that I did not call you horse as in hung like a, because you are not, hung like a horse that is. After Second-year Associate finishes reading through our text message history, I ask her if I made a mistake. Did I royally fuck up or did I dodge a bullet? He was intense, Will, she says. I also ask Holly. She is tired of answering this question. She may not use the same words, but her answer is essentially the same. You didn’t fuck up, she says. D did what he did to protect himself. She uses the words maladaptive behavior. She says you have been taught to react like this when you are hurt. You did the only thing you knew to do.
Holly reads my statement, and I ask her if I’m doing the right thing. I don’t have to do this, I say. She says I have to do it, and if I won’t do it for myself, then I have to do it for Avery. She says that I have to protect my family. He’s crazy, she says. You don’t know what he’s capable of. I thought he was capable of loving me, I say. Restraining orders and love do not usually go together, she says. I turn in the paperwork and ask the clerk for copies. She gives me the copies. She says she will send you notice of the hearing. A friend recommends an attorney. I set up an appointment. Holly meets me at the appointment. She can only stay 45 minutes; she has a doctor’s appointment after. Another sonogram I will miss.
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He loved me. I loved him. I didn’t mean to take over his life. I was just trying to help. I know, Will, she says, and I think he felt that way at the time, but it’s easy to twist stories so that facts mean one thing one day and something different another day. I won’t do that, I say. The story is the story. I don’t need to change what happened in order to look or feel better. You don’t look very good in the story, she says. I know, I say, but I’m starting to look better. She snorts. I’m almost as tired of hearing about how thin you’re getting as I am hearing about how broken you feel, she says. I hug her and kiss her hair. This is as close as we get to physical intimacy. I love you. I love you, too, she says. A week later, Attorney sends me and Holly our affidavits to sign. I read through my affidavit twice. Here are the facts of our relationship, how it was never violent; how you were in touch with me and Holly after you took out the restraining order; how we had gotten back together; and this, the last fact to which I am attesting: On August 21, 2010, D texted me: I know you’re it. My it. Us. You, me, Holly, Ave and Aurora. Then: We can and we will get there. Then: I’m yours. And: You’re mine. Rabbit. Yours. Mine. Ours. Invisible cords, once taut; now not. I can’t believe the fact that he called me rabbit is going to be part of the public record, I say to Holly. How did this become my life? How did a term of endearment become a reason why the restraining order should never have issued? How did this happen? And she says it is kind of funny that rabbit is part of the public record. You have to go through with it, she says. He didn’t care about what the restraining order would do to you and your life. You have to do this to protect yourself and get your life back. I say, I know. But really what I want to say is, You’ve read what he said to me. You’ve read how convinced he was that I was his family. He meant it then. At least I think he meant it then. And five weeks later we’re about to meet in court so I have the chance to convince a judge that I’m not a physical threat to him. How did this happen? How did I let this happen?
Attorney talks to you, is talking to you. In your hands are the materials you thought relevant to why the restraining order is just and should remain in place. I cannot look at you. Holly reaches for my hand and squeezes it. Five weeks ago, you and I were getting back together. And now we’re here. I know nothing about your life. You know nothing about mine. I assume you’ve slept with someone, and are probably dating someone. I am now a footnote in your dating history, if I warrant a story. Aurora is moving, Holly says. She pulls my hand to her stomach and presses in. I feel nothing at first, and then there it is, a kick, and another kick, and a third kick. I think that already she loves me and is waiting to meet me. I breathe. Regardless of today’s outcome, everything will be OK. A bailiff asks you and Attorney to talk elsewhere. No conferences outside of the courtroom, the bailiff says. Attorney takes you out into the hallway. My stomach hurts. My heart hurts more. Holly and I do not talk. There is nothing she can say, and because there is nothing she can say, there is nothing I feel I can say. Attorney comes back. I don’t want to hear you respond, but he says you followed him into a parking lot once. And you, he says, looking at Holly, sent him a bunch of papers. I am stuck on you followed him into a parking lot. Really? I think. You blamed yourself for that happening. You thanked me for not giving up on you. You told me that you never said I wouldn’t have to chase after you. You said that you’ve learned that sometimes shutting up and getting into the car is in everyone’s best interest. Today, that same moment is why you need a restraining order? However, Attorney says, I think he will agree to vacate the restraining order. I told him that if it remains in place, you will not be able to go on field trips with Avery, and that it will harm your ability to play an active role in Avery’s education. He said that that was never his intention. OK, I say. He wants both of you to sign an order of nontrespass banning you from his home and where he works. I don’t think he’s really authorized to ban you from the store, though.
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I don’t care, I say. If that’s what he needs, we’ll sign it. I’ll have to write up the order, Attorney says. I think that permanently ending our relationship — our affair — and undoing the time we spent together is costing me a lot of money. Attorney goes back to you to iron out remaining details. At least he thinks I sent the journal, Holly says. There is that, I say. She is still holding my hand. My heart continues to break, even though I had thought that there was nothing left to break. He wants you to write the statement, Attorney says. He wants you to have no question what he is asking for and what you are agreeing to. Fine, I say. Attorney dictates what I need to write. He suggests adding a clause that if I see you in a public space, that I will leave. No, I say. I do not want that. I will write that I will avoid and ignore him, but I will not leave. That’s part of why I’m here. I do not want to base any plans I make on whether or not I think he will be there. No. That should be fine, Attorney says. I add that I will stay at least 50 feet away from you. I think that I should say I will stay at least 57 feet away from you, but only because I think you will see the inherent irony in my using that number. I think I could smell his lotion on the paper, I say. You could not smell his lotion, Holly says. I think you will not stay in the area much longer. You routinely pick up and go once you have exploded your life in one city. Moving away is how you heal heartbreak. I think about the ex-boyfriends you told me about. These men are my brothers. They survived you; I will, too. Line us up as we were at the end of our separate relationships with you, and I think we would each have the same haunted look in our eyes. I think you will move home to be with your mother, who lives next door to your grandparents, so you can help them too. And with her cancer spreading, and your apathy about your job, along with losing me and Avery, I think you will consider
your life more exploded than it has ever been. Or if you don’t move home, I can picture you and your best friend moving to New York. Or, as you and I learned while I was inviting people to your birthday party, the woman who moved to Boston with you is now in college in Los Angeles. I can see you moving there too. Attorney returns. You have agreed to the wording. Now you want the paper notarized by someone other than him. You have to write a motion vacating the restraining order, which Attorney says you’re doing. While the clerk finds someone who will notarize my statement, Attorney says that you told him that you feel very betrayed by me, and you need no contact in order to heal. I think you telling Attorney this is odd. There’s nothing left for you with him, Attorney says, just in case you weren’t sure. I know, I say. I am still holding Holly’s hand. She squeezes. She knows, perhaps better than anyone, how badly I hurt. I’ve known there is nothing left for nearly two months. I think I have known there is nothing left since the morning at the Charles River when I listened to you tell your friends your plan for inviting the man from your doctor’s office home to get high. Six-and-a-half months, a very long relationship in your world. Focus on your family, Attorney says. I will, I say. Attorney brings the statement, once notarized, to you. Then Attorney comes back and asks me and Holly to come upstairs. We go into the courtroom and take seats near the back on the left-hand side of the room. Attorney comes in and sits next to us. Do you have the key to his door? The key? The key to his front door. Yes, I say. It’s in a box. But I have it. You need to mail it to me. OK, I say. I’ll put it in the mail tomorrow. Attorney leaves again. You walk in. I realize only now that you are wearing a pair of shoes that we each bought and a belt that we each bought. I think you chose to wear these items purposefully. You are wearing the white plugs in your ears that you wore on our first date. You sit down in a seat diagonal from us on the right-hand side of the room. I see you wipe your eyes. You are crying.
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He’s crying, I whisper to Holly. I have someone to whisper to. You have brought no one. I want to get up, sit next to you, wrap my arms around you, and tell you that everything will be OK. I want to say, I’m here, horse. Why are we doing this? Are you OK? Holly asks. I will be, I say. We will be. But fair warning, I’m going to break down in the car. OK, she says. You can. The judge calls two cases before ours. A woman wants her boyfriend to stay away from her and stop bothering her family. The judge rules in her favor. A woman wants a restraining order against a man who could be her boyfriend, or her fiancé, and since he has not shown up, the judge rules in her favor. I think that this was you two months ago. He calls our case. From you and me to you vs. me. You stand on one side, and I stand on the other. Attorney stands between us. We have reached an agreement, Attorney says. The judge asks for our names. You give yours. I give mine. Attorney says his. The clerk asks us to raise our right hands and solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. You say yes. I say I do. I realize that this is as close to saying I do as I will get with you. The judge asks if you have agreed to vacate the restraining order on your own accord, and if you knew you could come back, even if the order is vacated. You say, I do. The judge vacates the restraining order and bangs his gavel and the case, and we, are done. You leave quickly. You do not look at me and Holly. I cannot tell if you don’t look at us because you hate us or because looking at us is too painful for you. You are crying again. Attorney tells me and Holly to wait. He follows you outside. I think he is making sure you leave the building before Holly and I leave the courtroom. He comes back in and says we can leave. Attorney talks to us about our divorce and custody issues. He thinks we’re handling our “situation” very adult-like.
I don’t know how else to handle it, I say. Being here is nothing like me. I know, Attorney says. Thank you for giving me back my life, I say. Don’t overdramatize it, he says. Make better choices next time. Attorney gets a copy of the vacated restraining order and suggests I carry it with me. If I do, I think, I will carry it in the wallet you gave me, which is the wallet I use. Holly and I walk to my car. If I wanted, I could point out the spot where you and I had stood on our second date when you had asked me to promise to do whatever I thought necessary to keep you safe. But there’s no fixing something that doesn’t want to be fixed. I should never have tried. I haven’t driven more than three blocks before I start to cry. Holly starts crying too, but mostly because I am crying about you. The new Sara Bareilles album is playing. The album goes from track 11 (“Not Alone”) to track 12 (“Breathe Again”). I consider this album our break-up album, even though I don’t know if you’ve even heard it. Do you think I will ever love again? I ask. Yes, she says. Will I ever find a man as beautiful as he is? You shouldn’t be thinking about finding your next boyfriend. Focus on yourself. And when you find him, focus instead on his inner beauty. Outer beauty fades. But really, have you ever dated someone who wasn’t beautiful? No. I guess I haven’t. He was beautiful inside and out, I say. He loved me. He loved Avery. He was ready to love you and Aurora too. What if he was the one and I totally fucked it up? Will, if he was the one, he wouldn’t have taken out the restraining order, and you wouldn’t have been here in the first place. He wasn’t your one. He wasn’t the right match for you. But I know you will find him. I hope so. Don’t hope, she says. Know.
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The Origin of Breast Milk poetry
by SIERRA DEMULDER
It started after the rape of St. Agatha, a woman of God, imprisoned in a brothel for a month for rejecting a suitor. She did not cry, even as the shade was drawn on the first night and the worst and most tired parts of men found themselves at her bedroom door. Her first lover was a boy, no older than fourteen. Her second, a blacksmith. Her third tasted like wet stone and looked like her brother. Her fourth, a drunkard, a widower. In the morning, while Agatha slept, women throughout Sicily suddenly dropped their baskets of fruit and pots of boiling water, their hands curiously grasping their chests: a wetness, spilling, soaking through every blouse. The doctors were called, even the midwives. Women began fastening cloth around their torsos with twine. Months later, months after Agatha’s breasts were cut off, one woman weary with a colicky babe untied the twine, pushed the angry mouth to her nipple. The child coughed at first, then quieted, and it was all so familiar. It was the way it had always been but gentler, the taking, the giving.
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The Origin of the Bathrobe poetry
by SIERRA DEMULDER
Queen Mary stopped bathing after her first miscarriage. She refused to change her bedding, damp with the wetness of labor and loss. It was a compromise, at least, to air them out to dry. They hung like huge watercolor paintings on the trees, plumes of sweat, blood, the spill of what did not come. By her seventh, the chambermaids began wearing scented scarves around their faces. The Queen’s nightgown now stuck to her belly and thighs, stiff, more red than white. She seemed always pregnant and always not. The ladies-in-waiting were not foolish. They understood. If a man were to see the Queen, soiled, pacing ghostlike, no woman would wear the crown again. They pulled down the curtains and bed canopy, measured their bodies by lying like dead angels on the floor. Twelve matching house coats, adorned with pillow tassels and petticoat lace. Under one, a stained nightgown. A tapestry of grief.
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ERNEST WILLIAMSON III
Shunned Idealist painting by ERNEST WILLIAMSON III
Crafter & Subject painting by ERNEST WILLIAMSON III O R A N G E QUA RT E R LY 36
Silence is Golden painting by ERNEST WILLIAMSON III
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An Interview with ERNEST WILLIAMSON III by LIDIA DART, Art Director As an artist who has a Ph.D., you must have some perspective on the role of academia in the art world (and vice versa). What are your thoughts? Having a PhD in Higher Education Leadership is a stark indication of academic discipline and expertise that has opened many doors for me outside of the art world and since education is an art and a science, academic and creative freedoms converge and will converge even more so, nicely.
of Gustav Klimt. Do you draw any inspiration from his work in your own? No, I rarely look at the artwork of other artists nowadays; I want to be oblivious to what has been done; my main concern is own work, to my dismay or continued to success. What would you like people to take away from your work? I would like viewers to experience intrigue and a sense of passionate novelty.
What is your creative process like? I must paint while listening to classical or Old School R&B music. I paint chaotically at first, then Is there a certain detail in your work that you’d like I study the “mess” and situate it based on what I your viewer to recognize? see in the “mess.” The multiplicity of perspective. How and where do your artistic and academic spheres intersect, if they do? I am, first and foremost, an artist. Nothing can or will change that reality; my father is a noted musician and my brother is also a noted composer and musician; it runs in the family. Nevertheless, studying higher education and learning about topics such as academic disidentification, the globalization of higher education, qualitative and quantitative research methodologies, etc., has greatly expanded my appreciation of science and the necessity of constructing theoretical frameworks for my creative endeavors.
You have an impressive collection of work. Ten galleries! How long have you been using this stylized approach to portraiture? Seventeen years. Then you’ve been making art for quite some time. Is there anything you know now that you wish you’d have known back then? I am beginning to appreciate the depth of admiration other individuals have for my work. Initially, when I began painting, I never knew how important it was to take both positive and negative criticisms extremely seriously and to persistently strive for perfection in my artwork.
The people you paint, although abstract, harness a great deal of personality. Are they derived from real people in your life? Or are they strictly fictional? The individuals are mostly fictional; sometimes I abstract the human forms of people I know or have known.
Do you have anything up-and-coming that we should know about? I’m thinking about pursing another doctorate at Drew University; I may be applying for the Doctor of Letters program in the upcoming weeks; and as always I will be creating art, music, Something about the face to background ratio and poetry, and love as much as possible. the colors you use in your portraits I find reminiscent
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The Conductor in the 9th Movement painting by ERNEST WILLIAMSON III
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The Confident Coversationalist painting by ERNEST WILLIAMSON III
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california law poetry
by SAM SAX all but the second to last stanza are or used to be in the california law books
in california sunshine is guaranteed to the masses. it is a misdemeanor to shoot at any kind of game from a moving vehicle, unless the target is a whale. women may not drive in house coats. it is illegal to drive more than two thousand sheep down hollywood boulevard at one time. in los angeles you may not hunt moths under a street light. it is illegal to cry on the witness stand. it is illegal to set metal balloons afloat in the air. in san francisco law prohibits elephants from strolling down market street unless they are on a leash. it is illegal to wipe one’s car with used underwear. persons classified as ugly are banned from walking down the street. it is illegal to mistreat anything of great importance. bullets may not be used as currency it is illegal to molest butterflies the penalty for jumping off a building is death. coins are not allowed to be placed in one’s ears. in california my friend owes over a hundred hours of community service to a community he doesn’t live in. prisons are big businesses. the maximum sentence for a police officer shooting an unarmed black man in the back is two years. the men who sleep on my steps once lived in my building. a single hollywood film costs more money than the entire oakland unified school district combined. long-term solitary confinement is still regularly used as torture. in california sunshine is guaranteed to the masses
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the hunger artist poetry
by SAM SAX
this was found written in his cage: it’s no simple feat being able to eat and never fill. the bizarre quarry in my stomach that knows no bottom. before the town would gather to watch as i swallowed alarm clocks and sundials whole. they would bring me the most obscure objects from their homes just to watch them disappear like a coin in a well. the rusted wrenches, the stamp collections, their great aunt’s terrible casserole. mouths agape, the children would slip their homework through my cage to watch equations solve themselves in my throat.
my craft, since butchered at fast food restaurants, on every screen that feeds greedy eyes. all i ever wanted was to live like a gutter. no one comes around and no one cares how the garbage disposal turns. no one wanted to watch me shrink before mirrors like a starving child. it is only when they stopped feeding me that i grew invisible and huge. it was their neglect that filled me like a miserable balloon. years later, when i was forgotten, they unleashed a dog in my cage. the town gathered around to watch it feed on me and pace in artless circles. and i scream and i scream quiet as a foghorn breathing in.
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handgun discourse on beauty before my mirror poetry
by SAM SAX
how terrible to say nothing like an old woman undressing — james l. white
instruction: first remove the bows, the brooches, and gold pins. all that gleaming ornamentation that tells others this body is still full of life. interior: to be just canvas again skin impersonating a wrinkled suit. girl you’re meat in a butcher.s window girl you’ve got sneakers hanging across your tongue instruction: next the cloth the zippers and buttons unlocking in your hands watch these fall to the floor a head writhing with snakes. interior: to be just skin again adorned in an orphanage of scars girl you smell like a tea kettle moaning girl let me hyphenate your birth name instruction: the wig is the last to go. a hooked finger fit between scalp and sweat freeing the skull like a birdhouse under the weight of a polished steel shovel. interior: my bruises grow like ripe tomatoes my shoes reveal a bed of dancing worms it is always high noon in my bedroom faced off before the mirror the man looks nothing like me. in my eyes i am a wrinkled old thing.
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pistols naked at our waists the clock strikes like a match he aims at my neck. says, girl i came here to paint your walls red and you look best dressed in silence.
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SPRING 2012
FACE SIERRA DEMULDER is a two-time National Poetry Slam Champion and the author of The Bones Below, published in 2010 by Write Bloody Publishing. Her forthcoming book, New Shoes on a Dead Horse, will be released in January 2012. When not writing poetry, she enjoys making and imbibing coffee, making full use of public transportation, and waxing on and on about feminism.
SAM GUTHRIE is a nonfiction writer who lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota with his disconcertingly hot novelist wife of twenty-odd years and their two cats, Tiberius and Oblio. He is also a Rolfer, a martial artist, a raw food guy, and a Russian Kettlebell fanatic. KENNETH E. HARRISON, JR. poems have appeared in Denver Quarterly, Drunken Boat, elimae, Packingtown Review, Pleiades, TYPO, and elsewhere. He teaches English composition, literature, and poetry at Webster University and Florissant Valley Community College in St. Louis, Missouri. WILLIAM HENDERSON is an MFA student at the University of Montana and a native of Cambridge, Massachusetts. He has previously been published in non-fiction on PBS’s History Blog, “Inside American Experience.”
GALA MUKOMOLOVA was raised in Coney Island within a Russian Jewish immigrant family. She is working on a manuscript entitled Durak (the fool), which aims to plumb the depths of that oceanic adolescence. Holding a BA in Women’s Studies and Creative Writing, she moved to Portland, Oregon, and dedicated her time to “the youth” and also unlicensed social work. After spending two years pretending to be really one with herself in the Northwest, she relocated to the University of Michigan MFA program. As an MFA candidate, she spends her time living the dream and examining the market value of feelings.
JONATHAN HULL was born in Australia and now lives in New York. He has worked as a writer, a teacher, and a museum security guard. His fiction has been published in the Indiana Review, The Reading Room, and Swipe Magazine. His artwork has been featured on Design*Sponge and exhibited at Breukelen Art Space and Spattered Columns Gallery. He is the recipient of a New York Foundation of the Arts fellowship. New work is posted regularly at lowestbidderx.blogspot.com.
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SPRING 2012
FACE
LYNNE POTTS’ poetry has appeared in Paris Review, Southern Poetry Review, New American Writing, New Millennium Writings, and Denver Quarterly, among others. She is currently Poetry Editor at AGNI and was formerly Poetry Editor of the Columbia Journal of Literature and Art. She lives in Boston and New York.
ZACHARY MICHAEL POWELL, after teaching high school English for three years, is currently pursuing my Masters in English at Kansas State University.
FABIO SASSI has had several experiences in music, photography, and writing. He has been a visual artist since 1990, making acrylics using the stenciling technique on canvas, board, old vinyl records, and other media. Fabio uses logos, icons, tiny objects and shades to create weird perspectives. Many of his subjects are inspired by a paradox, either real or imaginary, and by the news. He lives in Bologna, Italy. His work can be viewed at coroflot.com/fabiosassi. SAM SAX is a bay area based writer, educator, and performer. He is Oakland’s first queer grand slam champion, which is currently ranked top ten in the nation and represented that city at the 2011 Individual World Poetry Slam. Sam curates a bi-monthly reading series in San Francisco aimed at producing new poetry/poetics and has toured internationally, performing at universities, slams, basements, alleyways, and amphitheaters. You can read some of his work in Rattle, Muzzle Magazine, The Evergreen Review, and other journals.
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SPRING 2012
FACE SEAN MICHAEL ST. CHARLES is a fiction and poetry writer currently residing Ann Arbor, Michigan. He earned his BA in English Language and Literature from the University of Michigan in 2011 and hopes to begin study as an MFA candidate in the fall of 2012. His work has appeared previously in Xylem, Fortnight Literary Press and Wonderfort.
COLIN WELCH is a page poet, slam poet, and software engineer living in Reno, Nevada. He graduated from Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, with a BA in computer science, and represented Macalester at the College Union Poetry Slam Invitational, helping his team take third place. He has an eternal love for terrible fantasy novels and brews far too much beer in his free time.
ERNEST WILLIAMSON III has published poetry and visual art in over 320 national and international online and print journals. He has work forthcoming in The Columbia Review, Bricolage: University of Washington’s Literary Arts Journal, and many others. View more of his work at yessy.com/budicegenius.
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founded in
2011
volume ii
by allison leigh
•
number ii