Utter - No. 2 by PJ Williams

UTTER no. 2

no. 2

utter

send forth the voice

MASTHEAD

P. J. Williams Cofounder, Lead Editor Kir Jordan Cofounder, Editor

CONTENTS

poetry

Allison Leigh O Dear 1

Eszter Takacs Dear Cow OHIO LAND: Tattooed, Unemployed, Working in Healthcare or Had surgery before 1992 Becoming the Girl About Football or Becoming a Girl of Lesser Means Birthday Party For Anyone Twice

6 7 8

9 10

Maggie Graber Moonrise Ritual 15 Ode to the Weather Channel 16 Kori Hensell Iteration 20

Scott Owens Reader Response 27

Michael Lambert [I'm thirteen years old & sleeping足in during 29 summer break on the top bunk of my shared room.] [I'm thirteen years old & standing on stage 30 in the Platteville Middle School gymnasium.] [I'm twenty足one years old & standing with 31 my brother on a beach somewhere in Iowa.]

fiction

Erin Lyndal Martin 3 Neutron Star

Magdalena Waz 18 Henry nonfiction

Kelly Martineau 11 Cooley's Law of Gravity

T. C. Porter 22 Sounds Like Gary Clark Jr. art & photography 4 5 21 28

Fabio Sassi Tracks on Blue Hanging Around on Blue Climate Changes Circles

Harvey Slater 14 Untitled

Sheri L. Wright 2 Mapping Orion 19 The Boxer

poetry by ALLISON LEIGH

O Dear

I can never write you letters and you can’t write me. I can’t stack and save yours like glowworms in paper boxes—

no brown string bows or envelopes crinkled with old wet.

No expense, no evidence. No generation born curious

for history to come. What history to come. No stationary—what history is

stationary—no legacy but the legacy born by keyboard, born by bored. There is no proof of us. No memory of decay, no watching the lines in your hand turn clearer in the cold. No being retold.

I can never write you letters. You understand. I can never walk barefoot through the suburbs.

You understand? This is sincere: we can never make love in the street if we’re near a dead end.

LEIGH · 1

Mapping Orion

SHERI L. WRIGHT

2 路 WRIGHT

fiction by ERIN LYNDAL MARTIN

Neutron Star

Once upon a time, a supernova collapsed.

Once upon a time, a girl was in love with a boy. The girl was a mermaid and the boy was a human, but he never noticed the difference. Once upon a time the moon controlled the tides.

When the supernova collapsed, a neutron star was left.

Neutron stars have the highest known gravitational pull in the universe.

When a supernova's crust receives a certain adjustment, it shakes and gives off gamma rays. The boy was eating curry and wearing a sweater with a big beige collar. She was looking at him. She knew he had been a science prodigy as a child, and he was politely embarrassed to talk about it. They compared an album they had both heard recently. He said it was the work of a child at a science fair project, twiddling all the knobs at the last minute. She liked this comparison very much.

They left the restaurant, filling their hands with candied anise, crossing the street to the coffeehouse that used to be a gas station. The way the supernova shakes is called a starquake.

He was talking about John Singer Sargent. He was talking about Kandinsky. He was talking about synesthesia, which he and Kandinsky shared. She worried about using the wrong words, about saying an ordinary word, only to have it taste acrid to him. She wondered if there were good words too, words like white-hot wax dripped over his skin. He ordered hot chocolate.

Neutron stars are usually found in binary pairs, often orbiting a normal star.

To be fair, he had noticed she was a mermaid, but it was not that he found her lovely or not.

To be fair, she had noticed his hair was red and his pants were worn from drumming on his thighs.

She went home and dreamed that he had shattered into many, many pieces and all of them were floating down the river. So she had to float down the river with him (what there was of him), with him saying the whole time Don't leave me all alone. In the morning, she put him together again. He was smiling, he was wearing a windbreaker, he was in a churchyard, etc. The neutron cycle is but a short phase in the life cycle of a star. Neutron stars set many records in extremities.

MARTIN 路 3

Tracks on Blue

FABIO SASSI

4 路 SASSI

Hanging Around on Blue

FABIO SASSI

SASSI 路 5

poetry by ESZTER TAKACS

Dear Cow,

Today I am swimming in flat soda. My grandmother called to say I should bring comfortable footwear to walk among tombs. Quietly, I consider the implications of being the war.

Tomorrow I will build a Wal-Mart inside of a Wal-Mart inside of a Wal-Mart. I will begin living disingenuously among the living, among Plato’s naysayers inside the cave inside my apartment which is inside of my heart. I consider the implications of leaving you, of walking past yellow churches without poetry in mind, of walking alone and holding disparaging fruit. Cow, last night I had an epiphany about being in the wrong place all of the time, like how children don’t know that trees don’t make the wind and so they watch the leaves for signs of weather and forget what the television is for, forget what life is all about.

Cow, I have decided to stay here after all to watch the great green trees turn grey while working hard to not recognize your face among their lazy drunken leaves. Tomorrow I will chase a tornado across the Badlands and I will write you about the most beautiful things. I wish you wild wishes. Goodbye, Cow. Write me soon! Love, Monster

6 · TAKACS

OHIO LAND: Tattooed, Unemployed, Working in Healthcare or Had surgery before 1992

When Ohio was first built it was brown. It was born twice and could breath under water. It had a different name then. Children slept inside the soft blowing folds of its skin to keep from freezing. Plush snow covered it in blinding whiteness. Winter became Ohio. Winter was Ohio’s first name. When you are so popular you sit in plastic and white chairs marked beautiful in gold. You sit back in the surrealist winter, acting like a country of your own, pretending to be bewildered by occupants of your hands. Drinks are flavored by types of death signals: ventricle delineation, no breath, no breathing, no heart. You are everybody. You are the friend of ten ghosts and the entire population of ghosts. You are a new poet, a diagnosis of beautiful diseases, yet unnamed but perfect for casual conversations. Online, you are friends with everyone. We know almost nothing can happen in this stillness and I become you. I talk faster in the rain. I know you. I am Ohio in the wilderness. I am Ohio on vacation without shoes or courage. I am your wishbone, cracked up the middle and benign. TAKACS · 7

Becoming the Girl About Football or Becoming a Girl of Lesser Means Try to be more like me and less like you. In the ten ways I have done. I forget so easily the here of being here in the faraway chocolate of noon. In this doorway. In your arms. In your bed. In your living room.

In the movie 300 nothing seemed to be happening in the place that never took place. Perhaps in New York on a sidewalk before then. Perhaps time travel. Perhaps it was because this town is small. As I have done, you have done. As I have gone, you have gone.

Who the fuck are you, really? You emailed me to say “Good pick!” and I fainted on the pillow. Mine. Just mine. Like a rose, like a wilted thing, like nothing. Eastern trends point to the middle of your ribcage because ribs are the thing everybody wants to see. They are like little pianos. Little fucking pianos. In the empty driveway, I am breathing

hard. I take to doing more with my hair. These days, my brain might trick me into believing there is a chance. I bought eggs yesterday. Half dozen, stupid and white. I called you. I thought maybe you were still alive. I am not willing to let go this fast. I start wearing my hair like it’s a coat. Like it’s

some really great beginning. It might be the greatest beginning. I talk faster in the rain. I know you.

8 · TAKACS

Birthday Party

We are often inside one another, bones waging war, slithering hands and wet hair. Like time and language, we are carriers of time and language. We repeat songs. Play songs over and over. The certain moments when the night air settles into the seams of our pants, the fire leaving quietly and too quickly. An armful of knowing where we will end up night after night, thin-celled and delicate. We sleep in pairs like young animals wild with need, soft with curiosity and will.

TAKACS 路 9

For Anyone Twice

It is less desperate to appear desperate. It is like being the lesser day upon the clearing, umber and daylight beyond your dark hand and ten eyes. A kite sails between the planks and moons, a foot sails between the rocks, the shoals of the river and your too big crater-head weighs on me like a million planets sleeping in disguise. We are asleep and your mouth lays open like a jilted fish, comatose and drunk. For me, it is time to forgive the Earth for appearing beneath my feet on days like these, allowing me to walk in any direction without first looking. Wet grass is everywhere and there are too many fires to put out.

10 路 TAKACS

nonfiction by KELLY MARTINEAU

Cooley’s Law of Gravity

The singer, legs astride stage left, was all gaunt angle—square chin, bony shoulders, even his white flying V guitar. But his music, while pointed and direct, tumbled out in a rounded twang to a bumbling beat. From the moment Mike Cooley began singing, backed by his band the Drive-By Truckers, I strained to catch every word, like his girl waking up “sunny side down,” the narrator “too proud to flip her over.” As the pedal steel swirled among the lyrics, I felt in my limbs that curious blend of calm and energy when a song sounds exactly as it should. The Drive-By Truckers rocked and rambled through the three-minute song during a short set for the 2006 South by Southwest (SXSW) festival. While his band mates bobbed and wheeled around the stage, Cooley stood nearly still. Mike Cooley is one of two founding members of the Drive-By Truckers, along with fellow Alabama native Patterson Hood. DBT plays a particularly diesel blend of rock and country, exploring the myths and misconceptions of the South. Cooley and Hood both write and sing lead for the band, which boasts a prolific discography, including eleven studio albums since 1999. Patterson Hood’s music originally kindled my interest in the Drive-By Truckers. His sprawling narratives, delivered in a molasses drawl, stir empathy for his downtrodden, blue-collar narrators. Many music writers refer to Hood as the front man of DBT despite Cooley’s prominent role, but that’s just because Hood is a talker. He seems comfortable in the spotlight, taking the lead in interviews and onstage. He also revels in the details of DBT’s sound, often contributing a song-by-song explanation to the album liner notes. I myself mistook Patterson Hood for the front man at the SXSW show. Introducing the band and delivering the onstage banter, Hood bookended the set with his songs, including “A World of Hurt,” which explores the idea that anything worthwhile can cause pain. Like most of his music, the song resonated with me; I recognized Hood’s need to moderate excess emotion, to shape it into something meaningful. Hood’s songs won my heart that day, but it was Cooley’s “Gravity’s Gone” that engaged my mind. The song rocked with a resigned melancholy, echoed in the chorus, “But I’ve been falling so long it’s like gravity’s gone and I’m just floating.” Emphasizing the rhyme of fall, long, and gone, Cooley drove the meter so that the final word hung in the air. The guitars and pedal steel echoed that lilting fall. “Gravity’s Gone” replayed in my head for days, the chorus repeating that clever sonic tumble. I began listening exclusively to Cooley’s songs. As writers, Hood and Cooley both explore the underbelly in their music—outlaws, excess, and the challenge of living in the “dirty South.” In contrast to Hood’s candid and impassioned style, Cooley writes with more restraint, employing clever twists of language that shine a light on characters who usually stick to the shadows. Such phrases snag my mind, forcing me to listen closely. In “Cottonseed” on The Dirty South, Cooley takes on the persona of a once powerful crime boss. He owns his crimes with taut phrases like, “I put more lawmen in the ground than Alabama put cottonseed.” This man feels no remorse, only pride in his

MARTINEAU · 11

past, and his view of the world is as clear as his conscience. The music is equally as spare, just Cooley’s haunting voice over his acoustic guitar. Such detailed listening offers pieces of the puzzle, but the fascination remains. And I’m not the only fan hooked on Cooley’s sound. Reviewer Dennis Cook describes the music as “intoxicating,” a potent and potentially addictive substance. Whether the effect comes on slow or slams into your head like a series of shots, the music is a force that invites repetition. Writer and self-proclaimed music enthusiast Nick Hornby recognizes this addictive quality, writing in Songbook of his “narcotic need” to listen repeatedly to one song. Hornby argues, however, that the urge can be satisfied by listening to the song enough times, that “a three-minute pop song can only withhold its mysteries for so long.” I wonder if Hornby’s claim is true, if my narcotic need to hear Cooley’s songs can be met by indulging in the habit. The 2008 album, Brighter Than Creation’s Dark, provides several strong shots with which to test the theory. With a driving rhythm and warm mix of guitars and organ, “3 Dimes Down,” is my immediate favorite. Cooley claims he was trying to write a Tom T. Hall song, and critics point to Faces and Sticky Fingers-era Rolling Stones for the sound. These styles mix into a unique sonic cocktail of soulinfluenced rock with slurred lyrics packed against a strong rhythm section. Describing two girls in his speeding car, Cooley’s narrator drawls, “one out the window and the other on the other end / One belt loop away from Sunday night’s news.“ The alliterative “o” sounds effectively mimic the loose tongue of intoxication while we imagine the passengers careening out the window. And the delightfully disgusting line, “chicken wing puke eats the candy apple red off his Corvette,” captures the consequences of such a wild night. Cooley’s knack for striking imagery is key to the track, “Ghost to Most.” The chorus opens with the jittery admission, “Baby every bone in my body’s gone to jumping / like they’re gonna come through my skin.” Rather than offering the circumstances, Cooley further probes the idea, considering the plight of a skeleton in the real world, “nowhere to stick their money / nobody makes britches that size.” Closing in resignation, the chorus shifts the conceit to metaphor: “besides you’re a ghost to most before they notice / that you ever had a hair or a hide.” The unexpected image of a skeleton in oversized britches exposes the vulnerability of the character echoed in the chorus. Cooley’s song evokes the work of science fiction writer Ray Bradbury. The narrator of his story “Skeleton” is so plagued by the discovery of bones beneath his skin that he allows a doctor to remove his spine. Describing the composition later in Zen and the Art of Writing, Bradbury states that he simply turned a “perfectly obvious concept” into a story. Of course, the process of transforming a known fact into something revelatory is the act of creativity. Like Bradbury, Cooley views the world aslant, crafting his unique songs from that perspective. Unlike Patterson Hood, who often discusses the real-life events or feelings that inspired his music, Cooley rarely discloses the origin of a song. When interviewed about songwriting, he tends to sidestep questions about the source or meaning, sticking instead to process. Cooley’s reticence makes his music more enticing; by not revealing himself, he summons the listener into the song. Cooley maintains a distance with fictional narrators. However, he offers a rare glimpse at himself in my favorite song, “Zip City,” which is, according to Patterson Hood, “at least 90%” autobiographical. (It is also Hood’s favorite track on the sprawling twenty-song Southern Rock Opera.) As unapologetic as the hardened crime boss of “Cottonseed,” the seventeen year-old narrator is going nowhere but back and forth along the highway to visit his girlfriend, the fifteen year-old daughter of a disapproving deacon. The voice is taut and cool when he informs her: “Keep your drawers on, girl, it ain’t worth the fight / By the time you

12 · MARTINEAU

drop them I’ll be gone / And you’ll be right where they fall the rest of your life.” Neither does he spare himself, closing the song by admitting, “I ain’t got no good intentions.” Cooley’s voice turns flat suddenly on the last note, the only crack in the cool resolve of his character. It’s no surprise that a man capable of such smart and spare lyrics was the kind of teenager who considered his girlfriend, “just a destination, a place for me to go / A way to keep from having to deal with my seventeen-year-old mind all alone.” The genius of the song is that he captures the outer and inner world of a teenage male: both the swagger—the image he’s working to project—but also the restless energy for which he finds no suitable outlet. Cooley’s onstage stance is as much a clue to his characters as anything he might let slip in an interview. Concert reviews often note his cool presence, how his cigarette ash collects on the tip, undisturbed by his focused attention on the guitar. Recalling the 2006 show, I picture him: his long limbs rooted to one spot. While his music filled the room, his movements were barely discernible. The secret of that sound is that Cooley has learned to harness the edginess that plagued his youth, to force the energy through the sieve of time into song. His skill at turning a phrase is evident in the wry grace of lines like, “Don’t ever let them make you feel like saying what you want is unbecoming / If you were supposed to watch your mouth all the time I doubt your eyes would be above it.” Cooley is certainly not afraid to speak his mind. He just isn’t going to say anything without taking the time to say it right. The same is true of Cooley’s characters. For four minutes, he brings them to life in the tight phrases and taut guitar work. He lets each speak his piece. Like Cooley, they compel attention not merely for talking but because they have something to say. Of course, good writing always leaves us wanting more. Even after studying Cooley and his music, I still feel my body hum when I hear the opening strums of “Zip City.” I know every lyric, but I love to listen to him deliver each detail as he builds the story. Cooley’s music just doesn’t seem to give up its secrets like the standard three-minute pop song. I think Hornby’s wrong; some popular music can remain a pleasurable enigma. I’m with Hornby’s contemporary Sarah Vowell, who has since renounced her adolescent notion that she could “figure … out” songs by Louis Armstrong and other great musicians. In a 2005 interview on the Powell’s Books blog, she calls that notion “ridiculous,” arguing that, “The whole point of Louis Armstrong is that no one can really figure him out.” It is precisely the puzzling nature of an artist’s sound that keeps us to returning to the music. Cooley himself argues that the writing process is inherently mysterious. In a rare moment of candor, Cooley admits in a 2007 interview for Durham’s Independent Weekly, “A lot of times, it takes me a few years after I write something … before I really know what I’m talking about.” And he argues that the writing is better because of it: “You would probably say it bad, if you knew exactly what it was. You wouldn’t be nearly as clever…” The value of looking at something askew, from an odd perspective, is that you see the angles that most people don’t. A stretch of highway as the key to a teenager’s sanity. The vulnerability of a skeleton so jittery it has jumped its human shell. A man who has erred so many times that he’s beyond the reach of gravity. When it comes to Mike Cooley’s music, I don’t want to be subjected to dogmatic truth, to the quantifiable forces of the world. I can tell you why the songs are great, hopefully in a way that awakens a narcotic need to listen, but I don’t want to figure everything out. I just want to keep falling.

MARTINEAU · 13

Untitled

HARVEY SLATER

14 路 SLATER

poetry by MAGGIE GRABER

Moonrise Ritual

Fill a tub with salt water and soak your feet for three hours. While soaking your feet, write an apology to the dinosaurs on behalf of outer space. Breathe through a harmonica. Imagine living in a village of sand-houses.

Today a bird perched on a rainbow. A satellite photographed the 37th second of a pie-eating contest. There is still time to paint

your nails the color of fire or grass. The guitar could have been paper. If folded correctly, paper turns into lotus. When the three hours are finished, smell your feet for traces of ocean. Do not dry off with a towel.

Run to the nearest school or bank and string a bed sheet to the flagpole. Pulling the rope toward you, raise this new banner to the wind—mud between your toes, fabric of sleep

rippling like waves, your heart drumming beneath the hush of your hand—and pledge allegiance to the yoga of the tides.

GRABER · 15

Ode to the Weather Channel

It is more than the local on the 8s, the jazz music in winter and salsa on July mornings. It is the map of a nation covered in cloud, countless acres filled with rainwater, saturated

with something you could call love—if you want. Because today at 5:17, the Doppler showed me all of Indiana was green, meaning, it rained. Not over Ohio or Illinois, but for at least one second only Indiana and its flag of blue and yellow stars. And outside, the air felt thick and the dirt became 75% water, which means we are more alike than I thought

and another warm front arrived from the West which may have something to do with the 311 tornadoes already this spring and tomorrow that number will rise

like the floodwaters in Missouri and Arkansas. But at least there is some warmth in that I know it is 76 degrees right now in Madrid, where I have a friend who I imagine is happier today than he was yesterday when it was 52.

And yes: I am aware that this heat stretching the globe is not desired completely. I am aware of this as I place my feet into sandals. Instead I like to remember the giant globe spinning

on the ground floor of the largest building from my college campus that rotates so quickly, you can stand still and watch one day pass in 15 minutes, and if you want you can even pretend you’re the sun although you should be aware 16 · GRABER

you will burn out in about four billion years so yes: this life will not last, but thank goodness for the button on the wall next to this earth and its sign which reads: Press Button To Hesitate Revolution so for once, we can stop where we are, still

in this space, and listen to the rain tap the window like static, and not worry that there are still dishes to clean, food to eat, and clothes to change.

I’d like to tell someone this: the next person walking by perhaps with a song in his ears—

I want to get his attention and watch his finger press the pause button in the middle of some refrain

so I can show him this sign and wait for the moment on his face that says I understand. I want to do this—and then watch how that same finger presses that same button to start everything magical moving once again.

GRABER · 17

fiction by MAGDALENA WAZ

Henry

Henry arrives at a woman's house, and I'll later know she's Mary. They look at each other unevenly, at odds, and when Mary says something, Henry doesn't react because her house was just steaming. And the mother doesn't care for the intruder on the squeaky side of the couch. So when Bill, the father, enters the room, he provides what we think at first will be comic relief, but the words he speaks become nonsensical, unrelated to his facial expressions. He is angry. No, he isn't. The train, though, it's angry as it thunders past the house, rattles the pipes, stirs up a barking dog, the one nursing squealing pups. When the dogs barked outside, were they barking at me? Henry asks himself. When the steam steamed something strange through the window, what did it obscure? No one notices that the stove is on an angle, and they put poor grandma behind it. And they didn't let poor grandma out. But Henry doesn't know that. All he knows are the baby chickens in front of him that spew dark fluid and wag their naked wings on a bare plate. Long shot, half-empty table. Bill's got a smile on his face you can see from where I'm standing. Bill's going to do something weird. Or really, he'll just freeze as Mary cries behind him. He'll raise his eyebrows just a tiny bit higher. Maybe this is the time for Henry to leave. The electricity's going, and Mary can't talk. And her mom is somewhere. No one knows where. Probably behind the pipes. She's asking about sex. She wants to know what they should do with Mary's baby. Mary says they don't know if it's a baby, but they kept it at the hospital anyway. I'm not sure if the baby chickens were really baby chickens. Or if Mary's mom meant it when she started gnawing on Henry's neck. Maybe she wanted a non-baby of her own. Maybe she just wanted to smell him. And now Henry's nose is bleeding, or leaking the same stuff the chickens were. But no, he doesn't mind getting married. Doesn't mind at all.

18 路 WAZ

The Boxer

SHERI L. WRIGHT

WRIGHT 路 19

poetry by KORI HENSELL

Iteration

Hungry is a swelling mother. Say behold. I’ll lift my eyes And find you draped in singing power Lines, electric wreaths of supposition, Hair sparkling with the breath Of a hundred collapsing stars. Say stay and I won’t. Your bosom so Ineffectual, such terrible silence Within the cloak of the sun.

You love me and more and most and I believe you. You plod elephantine, Trailblazing the shivering fragments of My thorax—a long way to go for no reckoning. There is nowhere at spine’s end. Ants carry their queens On leaves of zealotry, build cities For their Mater Dei and find But half-filled plates of stale Light. An embrace is a crumb. Hungry is a swelling, mother.

20 · HENSELL

Climate Changes

FABIO SASSI

SASSI 路 21

nonfiction by T. C. PORTER

Sounds Like Gary Clark Jr.

What are you listening to? Huh? Ear buds! Take out your ear buds. She said, “What are you listening to?” Gary Clark Jr. I saw him on Leno! Let me listen. I’ve known him since forever. I saw him on YouTube playing at the White House last year. I heard this at Starbucks. (Dramatically over-singing, out of key:) “Ain't nobody else like me around.” Nobody like him around? (Sarcastically.) Right. Except Robert Cray. And Black Keys. And Albert King. And Muddy Waters. And – The Blues Brothers. Bro, they're dead. My point exactly. The Fabulous Thunderbirds. For real, guys. He's a SRV knockoff. Robert Cray? Who’s that? Serious. Watch this YouTube video of Alicia Keys having an orgasm all over the microphone and then backing him up on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” Whoever can shred like that on guitar and sing Falsetto is a capital-g God! You said fellatio. Hey, while you’re up, get me an iced mocha venti chip soy latte. And one of those free song download cards for Bret Michaels. He’s like the bully at school. (Reading track one lyrics on Spotify free trial TuneWiki app on iPad.) “You're gonna know my name.” Only insecure people announce how great they are. Dude, it's a song— Hey guys! —not a psych evaluation. And the chorus says, “Bright lights big city.” That was a novel. Whatcha talkin about? A novel! He’s so deep! Gary Clark— Jr! Love that guy! Finally. One other sane person at this table. You mean, everyone here has not bowed to His Royal Highness? The man is a copier of copycats— Treason! —a photocopy of Lenny Kravitz, who was a very cheap photocopy of Prince, who ripped off Hendrix and Lionel Richie's baby— A jpg scan of Little Richard! (High fives.) (Spitting out drink.) I wanted skim milk in this mocha. You said soy. Little Who? You told her soy. I heard it. 22 · PORTER

Little Richard. Do you have no sense of history? Don’t blame Gary Clark Jr. if you people aren’t sophisticated enough to recognize a guitar soloist virtuoso. Foo fooey. I have never heard those three words strung together in the same sentence. I think he means the blues has become fine art. It’s dated and specialized. It’s boring! Funny you mention Kravitz. I’m watching a Hulu of GCJ on ABC News, and I swear his drummer is Kravitz’s lead guitarist. Look at the hair! Let me see that. I said skim. I didn’t say soy. I wouldn’t say that. If I did, I would have known it. You can’t do that. That’s almost racist. Follicle-profiling. The guitar solo on “Bright Lights” is pure bottled liquid emotion. It’s a human soul crying in the desert, building to a crescendo. A heartfelt, bleeding— He has a point, there. It’s not right to stereotype people for their hair. You’re likening a sound to a liquid, something you can bottle. That’s a mixed metaphor. You’re a follicist! You dirty rotten scoundrel. It’s like a serenade to God, sung on guitar, with Gary’s fingertips. His fingers are little tongues petitioning to the heavens, crying out for something much deeper than words. Crying for mercy. Beckoning for a miracle, a rapture, an orgasmic apocalypse. An orgasmalypse! Skim and soy are not very similar. Skkk. Ssss. Maybe a little similarity at the beginning of the words. But then -oooy … -iiim. How could you not hear what I said? Skkkiiiiim. During an orgasmalypse, would all but the follicists be raptured? I lie on the floor and listen to that solo and loop it, over and over. It makes my spirit yearn for the reconciliation of all peoples. And I guarantee you: not a one of you haters has even listened to a nanosecond of “The Life.” For if you had, you would be sitting there in NYC on the set of Good Morning America, stage-side, next to that MILF holding her baby. Peoples. That’s just a dumb word. Say, “people.” You don’t need the s. Groovin’ to the movin’ with Mr. Prez and his lovely wife. But she heard the same thing as me. Soy! You said, “soy.” MILF. Please. Enough of that one already. I don’t write the dictionary. I don’t make the rules. But it’s peoples. With the s. That is who we are crying out for here. Gary Clark Jr., crying on behalf of all peoples. But not Gary Clark Jr.’s voice – his fingers. But don’t forget – brother can sing! And I can assure you that at some point in 2013, “The Life” will be a ubiquitous radio smash. Everywhere you go, children singing in the streets, women dancing, men hugging while lip-syncing in arms. (Badly, off key.) “I can’t go on like this, knowing that I’m just getting by.” Must we always say the Junior? It’s just too many syllables. I think three syllables is about the max on recording artists. Gary Clark, period. Six syllables is at least three too many. I’m noticing how many ad spots there are on the ABC performance. Which is to say nothing of the whip cream on the top. What the fuck! Did I ask for whipped cream? No. Can you confirm this, Miss Witness? Whipped cream? Not. Junior is two syllables. Like, june-yer. So his name is only five syllables. You said six. So what if he sounds like, say, Billy Gibbons? I’d give a nut to sound like that. As for copycatting – all music is copycatting. It’s all seven notes. That's all music is, every song you've ever heard. Blues progression. It’s language man. A-B-C-D-E-F-G. Nothing new under the sun. What do you want? Everyone’s a copy cat except Elvis. Chuck Berry. How far back shall we go? Do you think Obama really likes GCJ. Or was this a political ploy, him playing at the White House? Best Buy. Levi’s. Fender. PORTER · 23

club?

And do we all agree, his name is just Obama now? Like he’s fully enshrined into the single name

Listen to his solos for two weeks. You’ll be singing them. Ba dah dat da da bop wha. That’s the mark of a great guitar player, that you feel compelled to sing his solos. Barack. You said ubiquitous. What’s that? What’s radio? June-i-yer. Could be three syllables. Just too many, either way. That’s what I’m saying. You’re an artist, you have to come up with a three syllable name. Five or six is too many. Not to mention the iPhones that are placed frikin everywhere on the set. Like, does Apple need to brand themselves, ever again? Jun-yer is two syllables. Look it up. The Fender thing isn’t an add spot. It’s a logo on the guitar amps. And I’m pretty sure that’s a Best Buy store across the street. You’re just ubra-sensitive to marketing. Get over it, bro. We live in the capitalist empire of America. I think everyone has a little Apple tattoo on their ass. Pretty sure. And if you don’t have it, you’re a commie. Or an illegal. I’m glad you brought that up. Because I’m feeling manipulated into liking Cary Marks Jr. Make sure to check out track eleven. It’s an arena rock instrumental merged with bombastic power ballad. A hidden gem. I hope he opens his set with it. I so hope. What’s the problem with marketing? Would you have discovered Lady Gaga if she wasn’t shoved down your throat? No. You need highly compensated, perk-laden professionals to bring you her brilliance. Cream rises to the top, man. The good musicians will be known. We don’t need these big megajigacorporations imposing mediocre copycats on us. You watch. He’ll be playing the Super Bowl before Tony Romo. My point exactly. The corporations have you hypnotized. They’re your puppet master and you don’t even feel the strings. It’s like the publishing industry. They’ll tell you we need four big companies finding talent for us. And the big newspapers owned by the four big media companies, who are also the four big entertainment companies, and own the four big book publishers, they’ll tell you that the reason their reviews are all FSG is that, well, all the good writers are at FSG. You did say fellatio earlier, didn’t you? FSG? Cream. I heard you say cream. Twice. We’re the New York Times. We only review books from big presses, because all the good writers are at these four publishers. Bar none. And it works the same way in music. Here is your blues musician. We have chosen him for you. Now buy him from us, but we still own him, and you will like what he comes up with next. Not cream. I asked for skim. Big difference. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. (Badly butchering Giroux.) Not everyone gets all your literary references, bro. Nobody’s mentioned “Travis County.” I think that will be his most enduring hit. Totally. It will go down with “Tuff Enuff,” on the blues pantheon of hits, for sure. I’m going to get this drink replaced. I’ll talk to the manager if I have to. Is there a redemptive message here? Is there anything to say? Or is it just bubble gum? You have not been listening. What’s wrong with bubble gum? I’m okay with maybe even the Robert Cray insinuation. But you really have to stop comparing him to the Fabulous Thunderbirds. It’s insulting, and a low blow. He’s actually talking to the manager. Look. About his drink. He’s complaining to the manager about the soy. Like comparing Carl’s Jr. to Hardees. GCJ has been around a long time, you know. This ABC thing says Blak and Blu is his debut album. 24 · PORTER

But he’s had several albums back to 2004. This is only his major label debut. Presto! Which is precisely my point. Which is? The whole thing’s a sham! So it’s like he was at the small press, but now he’s made it to Random House. Now you can buy him! Dude, this is not Hunger Games. You are not living in one of the districts. Carl’s Jr. is Hardees. They just have different names in different regions. Look at the star logo. The same. They’re the same thing. Again: My point exactly. GCJ is SRV is Robert Cray is ZZ Top. The manager is looking over here. … is FSG is Macmillian is McGraw-Hill. Which is a privately held publishing company. You make it sound like they are owned by Disney or something. Don’t mess with ZZ Top. This is the Games, baby! These are the Hunger Games and we are the players and we’re all going to die except one of us. I just want to listen to the very end of “Numb” all day long. The ringing of the guitar’s distortion. I want to put my ear up to that Fender cabinet on the ABC News set and let it bleed all over the Good Morning America viewers. “She’s got legs. She knows how to use them.” Leno is so old. Isn’t he Fallon’s grandpa? They so screwed Conan O’Brien. Who are they? The Capitol! I’m not buying it. They’re cramming this vanilla blues-soul player down my throat. No one with his pedestrian talent can debut at No. 6 unless all the corporations are conspiring as one to create a cash cow while making us all fat patrons of the cruise ship on WALL-E. And since they own him, he’ll never be able to make an artistic statement. He will only be able to pump up our base instincts of sex, coffee, and plastic Apple accessories, made in China, shoved into our ears. You sound like Jonathan Franzen. Guys, I’m gonna have to ask you to leave. Do you want us to turn down our music? No, I don’t mind. I actually like Robert Cray. I have to ask you to leave because— Not Robert Cray. It’s Gary Clark Jr. You’re gonna know his name. “And you know what I'm talkin' about. Just let me know if you wanna go … to that home out on the range. (As aside:) They gotta lotta nice girls, ah. (Pantomimes drums, then guitar.)” Franzen shares this in common with Clark: They’re both distributed by mega conglomerates. But again, FSG is privately held. See that sign? We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason. Your friend is threatening me because he says one of my baristas gave him the wrong milk in his beverage. And I was about to offer him a new drink. But I don’t appreciate being called Bret Michaels. I might perm and frost my hair, but I am not a David Lee Roth wannabe. Here. Take a listen. Seriously. You’re wooing him with a copy of a copy of a copy of Nile Rodgers? Speaking of conglomerates. Which café are we at, again? Joe’s Java, locally owned and operated since ’04? I think it’s more like Empire Coffee! One world, one café – a billion coffee slaves! (Under her voice:) This manager is kind of hot. “Cuz every girl crazy ‘bout a sharp dressed man.” He’ll like it. Just watch. Everybody likes Gary Clark Jr.: Paul McCartney. Eric Clapton. Dave Matthews. Alicia Keys. Sheryl Crow. Rolling Stone Magazine. The Fabulous Thunderbirds. Obama. The Pope. Jesus. Plato. E.L. James. Ron Burgundy. PORTER · 25

Very nice. Sounds like Maroon 5. No! Nothing like Maroon 5! Well then like John Mayer. No. Not even close. Fabulous Thunderbirds. I would like to leave now. You can’t leave. I’m kicking you out. Now, leave. All of you. “I got a girl, she lives on the hill. She won't do it but her sister will. When she boogie (air guitar), she do the tube snake boogie.” You can’t kick me out. I already left! He sounds nothing like any of those artists. He is purely original. His fingers bleed! We will leave. And we will never come back. None of us. Not to any of your stores. Yeah. And we’ll never listen to any of your music. We’ll never download any of your free singles again, or so much as stream a single audio file from any musical artist ever pushed by a single one of your stores. Or drink your coffee – your responsibly grown, ethically sourced beans – we will never consume here again. Your responsible purchasing practices … your farmer loans and forest conservation programs … you can have them! We don’t want them! None of us will ever come here again. Not even with disguises. I will. Yes, me too. But none of the rest of us. Except me. And could I still have that Bret Michaels download?

26 · PORTER

poetry by SCOTT OWENS

Reader Response

I wrote an essay once regretting all the things I’d said about my dad because he’d left my mom twice, thinking, perhaps, like Robert Hayden, what did I know of love’s austere and lonely offices. I mean he seemed to have grown considerably more human after his heart attack and triple bypass surgery. He walked, he cooked, he laughed, he hugged, he kept himself in shape, he told us how proud he was of what we had become as if his life and ours really mattered now. He even seemed to appreciate my mom. But then, after she spent years nursing him back to health and his humanity, after she talked us into forgiving and caring, after I wrote and published the essay comparing my father to the misunderstood father, the one everyone thinks might have been mean or abusive, and comparing myself to the misunderstanding son who learns to appreciate his father’s sacrifices despite apparent roughness, after it was too late to call the essay back and just say Never mind, my father left my mother for the third time.

OWENS · 27

Circles

FABIO SASSI

28 路 SASSI

poetry by MICHAEL LAMBERT

[I'm thirteen years old & sleeping-in during summer break on the top bunk of my shared room.] I'm thirteen years old & sleeping-in during summer break on the top bunk of my shared room. Brett wakes me up with the sound of his sneaks. He tells me he's figured it all out, just like before. Im so bored at public school that my mind has drifted into obscure topics: locksmithing, birds of prey, samurai knowledge. I dig until my fingers bleed. I can pick the lock to my mother's van & start it. Peregrine falcons are my favorite bird. When Brett returns from the house I unlocked, he's holding money. We buy blowguns, cheeseburgers. Tip the Wal-Mart cashiers. I bet I can slingshot that bird颅feeder first, he says. When I hit it, he hands me twohundred dollars in $20's. Much later, at the truck stop diner where I worked, I met the two old men whose money we'd been stealing.

LAMBERT 路 29

[I'm thirteen years old & standing on stage in the Platteville Middle School gymnasium.]

I'm thirteen years old & standing on stage in the Platteville Middle School gymnasium. It's my first basketball practice at the new school. In one week, I'll have acquired both braces & glasses & lost my girlfriend of twice that time. One kid pokes me until a caterpillar crawls out of my mouth. He tries to punch me in the locker room & I shrink until nobody can see me. My head feels hard. I shrink until I disappear completely.

30 路 LAMBERT

[I'm twenty-one years old & standing with my brother on a beach somewhere in Iowa.]

I'm twenty-one years old & standing with my brother on a beach somewhere in Iowa. The sand is wet & the boats are drunk & the storm is fast approaching. We pitch a tent in the chaparral, drag our canoe from the water. Rain breaks from the monolith cloud. He leaves the tent, returns mostly naked & shaking, hands me a bar of soap. The storm is a monster waiting to play. Slow at first, I walk to the water, push the rags to my ankles. This is the realest dream I've ever had. My legs take to running. My body leaves the ground.

LAMBERT 路 31

Maggie Graber grew up in Valparaiso, Indiana, a city 45 minutes southeast of Chicago. She is lifelong friends with Lake Michigan, the avocado, and pop-up books. Her work has been featured or is forthcoming in Avatar Review, Black Lantern Publishing, Black Heart Magazine, and Yes, Poetry. She is currently pursuing her MFA at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. Kori Hensell is a graduate of the University of Alabama. Her poetry and essays have been published in Dewpoint, Big Lucks, Tuscaloosa Runs This, and 300 Reviews. Michael Lambert is currently living in California. His work has appeared in Mixed Fruit, Hobo Camp Review, Symmetry Pebbles, Red River Review and elsewhere. In 2011 he was selected as a finalist in UWMadison’s Lit Fest, and in 2012 received the Thomas Hickey Creative Writing Award at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville. Allison Leigh thinks and makes art and writes poems and pop music and was born in Bakersfield in 1989. She won an Academy of American Poets Prize in 2010 and is publisher and editor of Orange Quarterly. Her own poems have appeared in Evergreen Review, The Collagist, Michigan Quarterly Review, Red Lightbulbs, Burner Magazine, Dunes Review and elsewhere. With a BA in English from the University of Michigan, Leigh now lives in Traverse City, where she works in the public schools. She volunteers for the National Writers Series and the Traverse City Film Festival, and she teaches poetry and blogging workshops at Northwestern Michigan College. Erin Lyndal Martin is a poet, fiction writer, and music journalist in Madison, WI. Her work has appeared recently in Gulf Coast, Bat City Review, dislocate, and Peripheral Surveys, and is forthcoming in Whiskey Island and Used Furniture Review. Kelly Martineau holds an MFA from Spalding University. Her work has appeared in The Licking River Review, Barely South Review, and Quiddity. She lives in Seattle with her husband and two daughters. More information is available at www.kellymartineau.com. Scott Owens' tenth collection of poetry, Shadows Trail Them Home, is due out from Clemson University Press this fall. His prior work has received awards from the Academy of American Poets, the Pushcart Prize Anthology, the NC Writers Network, the NC Poetry Society, and the Poetry Society of SC. His poems have been in Georgia Review, North American Review, Chattahoochee Review, Southern Poetry Review, and Poetry East among others. He is the founder of Poetry Hickory, editor of Wild Goose Poetry Review and 234, and vice president of the Poetry Council of NC. Born and raised in Greenwood, SC, he teaches at Catawba Valley Community College in Hickory, NC. T.C. Porter's flash fiction, “The Last View of Earth,” appeared in The Speculative Edge and won the September 2012 reader's choice award. He writes a monthly blog for San Diego Writers, Ink, where he also hosts a weekly event called Room to Write. His as-yet-unpublished novel is everything he lives for, besides his wife and kids. 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. He CONTRIBUTORS

uses logos, icons, tiny objects, discarded stuff and shades. He often puts a quirky twist to his subjects to give them an unusual perspective. He lives in Bologna, Italy. More of his work can be found at www.fabiosassi.foliohd.com. Harvey Slater has been traveling since he graduated college. His photos and prose have been published in a few magazines. His blog is inbetweensubtleties.tumblr.com.

Eszter Takacs is a first year MFA candidate at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. Her poems have appeared in elimae, Full of Crow, Mixed Fruit, The Dirty Napkin, ILK and Birdfeast. She also has poems forthcoming in Barn Owl Review, Phoebe, Burntdistrict and DIAGRAM. She plays the flute and has a photo blog at ethula.tumblr.com. Magdalena Waz is a graduate student at Miami University. She never stopped writing fan fiction. Pushcart Prize and Kentucky Poet Laureate nominee, Sheri L. Wright is the author of six books of poetry, including the most recent, The Feast of Erasure. Wrightâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s visual work has appeared in numerous journals, including Blood Orange Review, The Single Hound , THIS Literary Magazine, Prick of the Spindle, Blood Lotus Journal and Subliminal Interiors. In 2012, Ms. Wright was a contributer to the the Sister Cities Project Lvlds: Creatively Linking Leeds and Louisville. Her photography has been shown across the Ohio Valley Region.

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