Crack the Spine
Issue forty-Nine
Crack The Spine Issue Forty-Nine January 1, 2013 Edited by Kerri Farrell Foley Collection copyright 2013 by Crack the Spine
Contents Joseph Reich On the True Nature of the Hospitality Business… Spencer Golub & David Hancock The Trashed Menagerie Paul Brucker To-Do List Cory De Silva How to Become a Better Poet Stephen Koster This Moment of Accolades Colin Dodds And When They Think I’m Winning And They Pretend They Can’t Steve Ramirez After the Blackbird Whistles B.D. Feil Laurels of Perseverance Tender Bits
Joseph Reich On the true nature of the hospitality business, the world’s oldest profession, paint by numbers & suicide & love letters 1 the bride with blood splattered all over her virgin white dress strolls through the forest with a conch shell to her ear whistling and trying to make sense of it all 2 wildflowers tastefully arranged in the vase of the vestibule 3 silhouettes of freaks and thieves up and down the escalator of the suburban movie theater 4 a hit on a country club member which runs just like clockwork better to be seen and not heard and never to be mentioned again he’s left for dead at the entrance as the doormen change their whistles from metal to wood during the change of season
5 human cannonball refuses to come out of the cannon claims got no idea what it’s like to be a man out here imagines the clown without any of her costume on makeup on just buck-naked and clown shoes up in the air his tongue rammed down her throat and ordering in 6 all the gorgeous tomboys control and seduce the block as the delinquents don’t have a fighting chance 7 firesetter coughing up chimney smoke really a romantic just trying to find ways to cope 8 the decorative pear tree turns to plum wine in the scorching heat of midnight 9 blinds are brought down in the skyscraper and merchant marine super hits the bottle
10 the radio turned on to keep the timekeeper calm during his suicidal she loves me she loves me not 11 all the westerns and old black & white boxing films are put on mute and whole silent universe and city sleepwalking through smog 12 you wander through the cellophane forest 13 the multi-millionaire hotelier now literally sleeps with the dogs 14 rich girl in punk clothes delivers her drugs 15 madman bellman blowing kisses through keyholes.
Joseph Reich has been published in a wide variety of eclectic literary journals both here and abroad, been nominated three times for the Pushcart Prize, and his most recent books include, "A Different Sort Of Distance" (Skive Magazine Press) "If I Told You To Jump Off The Brooklyn Bridge" (Flutter Press) "Pain Diary: Working Methadone & The Life & Times Of The Man Sawed In Half" (Brick Road Poetry Press) "Drugstore Sushi" (Thunderclap Press) "The Derivation Of Cowboys & Indians" (Fomite Press) "The Housing Market: a comfortable place to jump off the end of the world� (Fomite Press) "The Hole That Runs Through Utopia" (Popcorn Press) "All My Born Days: the spirit of home movies" (Writing Knights).
Spencer Golub & David Hancock The Trashed Menagerie
Trace amounts of Hitler can still be found scattered across the country, soaked in the remains of Mengele’s sinister work on Monitor Pets: On a basement shelf in Venice Beach, California, next to rows of canned vegetables, a single specimen jar labeled: “Brain, infant, human-feline hybrid”; hidden beneath a Laundromat in Utah, a bunker with empty cribs and cases of pacifiers; pasted in a photograph album in the bottom right-hand drawer of Control’s desk, snapshots of children being sent away to The Haggis Home. (Mengele stands by one of the buses, culling the infants who would never reach the “Incubation Farms.”) Trace amounts of Hitler can be found in the moldy box in a storage unit in Newark, New Jersey containing numerous birth certificates. (The box is marked “Re to Ta.”) And trace amounts of Hitler can be found in a wheat field outside of Topeka, Kansas, which is growing a slightly greener crop than the neighbors’—for buried beneath the surface are the corpses of tens of thousands of dogs and cats. Unlike Control, some agents do choose to remember the history. Some human agents remember and some animals too. Thumbs remembers the history. He remembers and he passes the story on to others. Yes, Thumbs is still alive, even after dying in the car crash that killed Clara Bixby, ex-supermodel and Hemispheres’ most used “honey pot.” Well, technically Thumbs’ brain is still alive, augmented by Mengele, and now a conglomeration of the memories and experiences of so many lives. After the accident in Clara’s Mustang, the cat’s lifeless body was rushed to a hospital, where Hemispheres doctors struggled to save him, placing his cerebral cortex in a special glass aquarium. Thumbs’ brain has been transplanted from dying cat to newborn kitten so many times that he’s lost count. His own code, who he is and who he thinks he is, his perception of himself, has been cloned and saved and stored so often that it has begun to burden him. Too many lovers, too many friends, too much heartache is pounding in his head. It’s like a dozen slides of different vacations projected at once, a layering of memory so dense it creates an unrecognizable blur. Thumbs can no longer make out the individual scenes of his past. His past is a mess. His cortex has passed through many different bodies. It’s like an old super 8 transferred onto a VHS tape then burned on a DVD and sampled in a video on a high definition TV. The technology improves but does not make the original memory any more advanced. It’s grainy in high definition.
And these days, just who transplants the consciousness of Thumbs when he is ready to migrate to a new host, now that Mengele is dead and the Hh (Hemispheres headquarters) operating theatres are silent? Thankfully for our feline hero, there’s a network of underground physicians who have the necessary combination of skill, nerve, greed and moral ambiguity to perform the operation. For his latest regeneration, Thumbs used a group of rogue doctors in North Korea, experts in genetics, who were working to clone cabbage with rabbits for protein rich kim che. Unfortunately, as the old wives’ tale explains, Perimeter Cats only get nine lives. It’s something to do with their genetic material degenerating after all the transplants. And poor Thumbs is on his penultimate or eighth go round. Thumbs knows his next regeneration will be his last. But he’s not too sad. He’s seen many afternoons, some good, some bad, and he wants to leave the world soon. Living just causes him too much pain. Thumbs has his friends, and he has his hangouts. One of his favorite places to drink is a saloon in Amsterdam. It’s down a dark street, off one of the canals—an animal bar known as The Trashed Menagerie. Many of the old dog and cat spies, a few of the augmented mice operatives, what’s left of the circus crew and a once world class zoo cell (an elephant, a few monkeys, and a boa constrictor) hang out there. There are also cockroach spies, bird spies and bee spies. The species get along in this saloon. It’s an agreed upon ground rule. What happens outside in the world is one thing, but once they cross the threshold of this public house, they abandon their weapons and petty grudges on the other side. Humanity is the common enemy, men who believe that the hybrids are abominations against God. As genetically modified animals, the Monitor Pets are technically illegal. The Vatican in particular believes the group is immoral, and the Pope has sent a special branch of killer priests to hunt them down and destroy them. To counter this terror, it was decided long ago by the outcasts that they would have to stick together or perish, and so old rivalries are ignored. The racial divisions and species conflicts are on hold with this crew. In the bar, in the smoky darkness, the trashed menagerie tells each other chronicles of the old days. Each has his or her story: the dancing bear who slept with Andropov while working undercover with the Russian Circus, the cockroach that was sent to poison Chairman Mao’s green tea, a fish who lived in an aquarium in Fidel Castro’s office. Thumbs is the unofficial leader of the pack—but he doesn’t say much. He sits in a corner, drinking fermented cream. The other animals leave him alone, a reverence born of fear. Thumbs doesn’t have to earn his place here. His reputation is impeccable. This, his eighth body, is male and still has its testicles—and Thumbs likes to frequent the cathouses in the red light district where he goes for strange pussy. (“Sexual Alternation”, transplanting a Monitor Pet from a male body to a female body and back to male, is a long neglected field of animal psychology.) Thumbs lives on
a houseboat with a florist. (Monitor Pets refer to their “owners” as “beards,” because under their care the Monitor Pet can safely guard his or her identity.) It’s an easy, coddled life, and Thumbs considers himself semiretired. Tonight Thumbs waits for his oldest and dearest friend, a neutered Angora named Uncle Twinky, who lived at the Spanish Embassy in London for most of the Cold War. The door to the saloon opens. Heads turn. Uncle Twinky comes in from the cold. He sees his old friend in the corner. He limps over to him. Thumbs sniffs Uncle Twinky’s bottom. Uncle Twinky sniffs Thumbs’ bottom. Uncle Twinky is one of the few left who remembers the old days at Hh, and Thumbs likes to reminisce with him. The two order beers from the donkey waitress and sit in the shadows, reflecting on times gone by. Not all cats and dogs remember the Mengele conspiracy. The doctors tried to erase that memory from their brains. Thumbs is one of the few who does remember and considers it his mission to pass on the secret that Monitor Pets are part human. Most Monitor and Perimeter Pets believe they evolved spontaneously, but Thumbs insists that Mengele was the creator. It’s difficult to accept having a Devil for a God, however, and most of the hybrids can’t conceive of being part human, of having a piece of the enemy inside them. Even Uncle Twinky is skeptical, and Thumbs has been trying to convince the elderly cat of the truth for nearly thirty years. Thumbs has even produced hard evidence of the disturbing truth about his friend’s past, a pacifier with a child’s pet name printed out as TWINKY but still his friend doesn’t believe him. “Where do you think all those infants left with Haggis went?” Thumbs asks. “Where?” Uncle Twinky asks back. “Mengele removed their brains and implanted them in us. We got the frontal lobe mostly. Reasoning and verbal skills. They left the brain stem feline. They must have used a toddler for me,” Thumbs says. “Because I’m starting to remember toddler things. Blocks of wood. Boobs. Mother had very nice boobs. Diapers. Falling down.” Thumbs also remembers Ohio, and details about his days at The Haggis Home. He can’t quite remember why he was living in Ohio, though, and the surrounding events are fuzzy. Thumbs remembers the taste of chocolate. A parade outside a chocolate factory. He remembers men in a van kidnapping him. He remembers the ride to Ohio, meeting the new children, and being told that his mother and father were dead. Thumbs remembers this because the child whose brain was used to augment Thumbs belonged to a boy called Walter Baker Hunter, son of Wesley and Diane Hunter, two of Control’s most trusted field agents. Thumbs carried the boy’s earliest, most precious memories inside his head and that made the cat very careful with the Hunter portion of his brain. He was determined to return the “borrowed” gray matter to Walter Baker Hunter someday, intact and healthy, so that the
anguished and incomplete little man could regain his childhood. This was a human being who would never know who his parents were, not even intuitively, because the cells housing those particular recollections had been snatched from him. After he was kidnapped, and used in Mengele’s Monitor Pet experiments, Walter had to start childhood all over, growing a new set of memories with a brain that had been reduced in size and shape. Fortunately, the human cerebellum is very resilient, and Walter did not lose any of his natural intellect—although his ideas were disconnected at times, like his thoughts were skipping over blank tape. (I know what Thumbs is thinking because he and I are connected symbiotically. He calls out to me at night and I find strength in his voice. No matter how much I doubt my own identity, I can count on Thumbs to guide me through my doubt. Thumbs is convinced that I am Walter Baker Hunter, although I’m not so sure. But his certainty gives me the strength to face my demons. Thumbs warns me that I have to stay underground. He tells me I can’t let anyone know of my existence, because they would use me to do terrible things. Admittedly, there is something dark hiding inside of me. It’s like my heart contains a small black box, the size that could conceal a large diamond. I am tempted to open the box, but I know that if I do I will unleash a terrible plague.) Thumbs knew things about Wesley and Diane Hunter. Important things. His brain contained a virtual recording of the two agents, as seen through the eyes of the toddler version of Walter Baker Hunter. You would think that the memories of a child would be useless to Control, but the opposite was true. Young children record reality in a nonjudgmental manner, without edits. There were no annotations and cuts in this tape. Just a pure record of life experience—what Wesley and Diane told each other in private, that is in front of their infant son who couldn’t possibly know what they were saying, but recorded everything anyway. Sometimes they made love while Walter sat in his crib, and these moments are recorded too. When he was still breastfeeding, Diane often took baby Walter with her on field operations, and so the human neurons stored in Thumbs include details about who the Hunters met with and where. Most of the Hunters’ lives prior to Walter Baker Hunter’s kidnapping were recorded, even if not remembered. But Control had techniques to extract the forgotten data, like the memory of the Hunters’ forgotten daughter, Claudia, who was taken from them at childbirth and was also raised at The Haggis Home. The Hunters had always assumed Claudia was stillborn, but I have it on good authority that, as of this writing, Walter’s sister is currently wandering the halls of Hh, searching for clues about her lost childhood. Of course, this vital information could be used by the other side as well, which is why Shadow Farmers were stalking Thumbs and why Control sent Clara to bring the Monitor Pet in from the cold.
Clara saw evidence of The Shadow Farm when she was at The Haggis Home, and this is why she left there so suddenly. Clara had gone out one night for some ice cream for the kids. On the way home, when Clara approached the perimeter of The Haggis Home (she fancied herself a Perimeter Cat), she was treated to an unusual sight. A man was banging on the door of the Home and shouting: “There is supposed to be a support network. I am supposed to be able to call a number. Anytime, day or night.” Clara knew immediately what this meant, but what concerned her was that she did not recognize the man who had his back to her and who was shouting out these Hemispheres protocols loud enough for anyone to hear. Clara’s concern turned to fear when the man turned around, and she recognized him as being “The Moth,” a known assassin employed by Hemispheres’ rival agency, The Shadow Farm. Clara panicked and ran toward the home of retired spy Millie Oaklesby, whom she knew lived nearby. Millie was not at home, but her cat Glutens was. Glutens was a Monitor Cat and so was meant to stay indoors. Clara tripped over him on her way into Millie’s shop, so she knew immediately that he must be dead, and possibly Millie too. Fortunately, at that moment, Thumbs appeared outside Millie’s door, and Clara immediately grabbed him up, threw him into her car and took off, with the assassin now rattling the windows of the Home in her rearview mirror. Although Thumbs was not a killer, “T” (i.e., Thumbs) had, in effect, killed Clara—at the scene of the previously described car accident—as tea had so often killed in mind if not always in body other Hemispheres agents who were sacrificed to further Control’s experiments in better living through science, and, in particular, through chemistry. Clara’s only choice other than suicide on that dog day would have been to let herself be brought back to Hemispheres for torture and questioning, although you might as well substitute an “or” for the “and” to give the sense that “torture” and “questioning” were synonymous at Hemispheres, which they were. Clara would certainly be made to pay back the cost of losing Thumbs with her own life. The memory of the accident, no matter how chopped up, is still there, and it gets played over and over and over in Thumbs’ subconscious mind, each incarnation a slight variation of the previous incarnation, as if the accident recurred in each of his multiple cat lives. The tape is what causes Thumbs’ anxiety and depression, even though he is not aware of the tape playing underneath it all. Thumbs also has dreams involving automobiles and tooth loss. Dreaming about tooth loss is generally interpreted as representing powerlessness or loss of self-esteem. In Thumbs’ dream, he is in the car with Clara and his tooth crumbles in his mouth, revealing a poison worm. The whole business about spies concealing poisons in their teeth is old hat. The chemists at Hemispheres had developed a line of designer poisons. It was not so much the poisons that were
different (although they were traceless) but their means of delivery, which were specially designed to suit the taste of a particular agent and the particular circumstances in which he might find himself at the time that the poison needed to be administered. In Clara’s case, the poisons were baked inside “Kitty Treats”, to reflect her love of cats and to arouse no suspicion if they were found. If someone was dumb enough to eat something called “Kitty Treats” that he found on a corpse, then he deserved to die, maybe even more than Clara did. So that is how Clara really died. And she really did die instantly. Or did she? Claudia Hunter, for one, is tormented by the bifurcated and often conflicting versions of Clara Bixby’s death, but even the guard who conducts the night tours at Hh doesn’t remember the entire story. He pretends to know what happened—but his truth is a fiction, a delusion. His impulse is not to tell the truth, but to tell stories, to entertain, to shock, dramatize. He is an odd man, this security guard. He is different from the other volunteer tour guides, most of whom are retired analysts and insignificant desk jockeys. Claudia notices that he seems to hold himself in higher regard. His hands are locked behind his back. He looks as if he were once powerful, but now fallen. Who is this security guard? Claudia doesn’t recognize him at first; the disguise is very good. But on closer examination it becomes apparent that the man behind the mask is none other than the Old Man himself. On nights when he is especially lonely, Control likes to masquerade as one of his employees and conduct tours in the Hall of Fallen Heroes. He’s wearing a goatee and sideburns. False teeth. He uses a soft, scary voice for effect. Claudia joins a few others on his midnight tour called “The Ghosts of Hh.” The tour is advertised by word of mouth. Special business cards, left under office doors, tell interested guests where and when to meet. The group stops next to the Clara Bixby case. The bloody objects inside the case are said to be haunted. Control takes a small gold key from a ring attached to his belt and opens the case. The guests crowd around him. Control shines his flashlight in the case and illuminates the objects. Some objects attract ghosts, he explains. If your house is haunted and you want to exorcize the evil spirit, all you have to do is get rid of the object it’s attracted to. The ghost will leave you alone. You can even bury the cursed relic near a church if you want, just to be sure. The object inside the Clara Bixby case that has the most paranormal activity associated with it is a faux fur-covered steering wheel splattered in blood. This is from the red Mustang Clara was driving when she crashed into the tree. The blood is Clara’s. Control explains that Clara Bixby’s ghost has been spotted recently, floating in the hallways of Hh. She is unsettled about something, although Control didn’t know what. Control explains that manifestations of heads are very common in the spirit world. Doris Day’s head is also seen floating
around Hh—and Gregory Peck’s. The halls are filled with the heads of dead film stars who, over the years, worked undercover for Control and sacrificed themselves for his mad dreams. Control reaches into the case and removes the steering wheel. A loud moan is heard somewhere in the walls of the museum. He passes the steering wheel to those who will take it. When it’s Claudia turn, she clutches the steering wheel against her chest and feels the violent shaking of a car crashing into a tree. Clara’s head floats by. It passes through Claudia. Is this a gimmick? Claudia’s heart skips a beat. She swears she smells Clara’s perfume. The audience touches the wheel, feels the dried blood on their hands. It is melted on the fur. Clotted. Sticky. Dried. Or is it? Is the blood flowing again? Is that the sound of a heartbeat coming from the display case? And what is Control’s motivation in all this? Why tell these carnival stories? Is there a genuine feeling of loss for his once favorite honey pot? When Control speaks of Clara, there is a tear in his eye. Or is that too a charade? Does Control have a deeper, truer love for Clara Bixby? Is he filled with regret? If he could bring her back, what would he ask her? The head hovers in the room, perhaps. Perhaps not. But, if Clara’s spirit has returned, what should Control ask her? Should he beg for forgiveness? Control certainly has regrets about what he and Mengele did to the children. He perhaps wants to help Walter Baker Hunter, the monster he helped to create. Control wants to find him and give him refuge. Control does seem genuinely sad. He, above all, knows that agents should not form bonds. They should not feel love, because betrayal is everywhere. Betrayal is under the covers and in cups of coffee. Betrayal tints the lenses of sunglasses and flavors lipstick. He knows this, and yet he is still suffering from Clara’s absence. Claudia finally notices something familiar about the guard, although she still doesn’t recognize him as being Control. She sees the guard’s eyes water, she watches him for additional signs of weakness, but sees none. This is the face of a man with a deep inner strength. He is a confident man. He may be dressed as a security guard, but she knows that there is something special underneath. A man on the tour asks what the blood-covered steering wheel has to do with the recent hauntings. Control explains that Clara’s dead body was discovered clutching the faux fur-covered steering wheel of her car, as if seeking some final solace in the comfort of animals. She touched the fur hopefully, like we find hope in the matted fur of a Wooly Mammoth frozen in a glacier. But in the end Clara could only clutch at fake fur, like Control had often clutched in the dark at a fake supermodel, hoping her skin, her flesh, her sweat would transport him back through childhood to his own mother, forward to his daughter, to his own immortality. But all he found in the dark was fake fur and heartburn.
Control senses that the end is near. He knows that someday soon, Shadow Farm operatives will sneak into the museum and change these artifacts forever. Which is why these days he spent his nights with the display cases. These inanimate objects have never failed him in the many ways that people had.
Spencer Golub Spencer Golub is professor of theatre arts, performance studies, comparative literature, and Slavic languages at Brown University. His books include the semi-fictional film memoir Infinity (Stage) and the Callaway Prize-winning The Recurrence of Fate: Theatre and Memory in Twentieth-Century Russia(University of Iowa). He is currently completing a book on Wittgenstein, anxiety and performance behavior. David Hancock David Hancock has received two OBIE awards for playwriting (The Convention of Cartography and The Race of the Ark Tattoo). He is the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award, a Creative Capital grant, The CalArts/Alpert Award in Theatre, and the Hodder Fellowship at Princeton. David’s recent fiction is either forthcoming or published in Interim, Permafrost, Wild Violet,The Massachusetts Review, Ping Pong, andAmarillo Bay. More of Golub and Hancock’s co-authored work is forthcoming or published in Petrichor Machine, Danse Macabre, Bluestem, West Wind Review, Otis Nebula and scissors and spackle.
Paul Brucker To-Do List Gotta rub eyes, take deep breath, thank lucky stars, shit, shave, shower, select shirt with no smudge around collar, apply underarm protectorate, regret thinning hairline, regret folly of my -- and mankind’s -- ways, hear travel time between Mannheim and the Junction (if necessary, adjust course and collar), fluff up pillow, tuck sheet under mattress (as if I’ll have -- no, must have -- my immortal beloved tonight), replenish water in cat bowl, enjoy God and the information God provides, twist doorknob right “18,” left “9,” right “35,” harm the fly, then forgive the fly, look both ways before crossing and while crossing. Gotta clear throat for take-off, cross street with dainty bounce, duck under tree branch, be more than bit player, stop wishing life were different, be bold in purpose and plan, make a promise -be happy, insist on happiness no matter how unhappy, no matter weather, economy, traffic pattern, cop on corner, fender bender on Expressway, strange faces, mouths moving, eyes popping, words not want to hear, thoughts not want to understand. Gotta make this time my time, hold tight to happiness -- a piece of gold in my fist that cannot slip or erode
no matter how the bumblebee bumbles, no matter daily special, secret box score, pertinent truths, magic word, ultimate outcome. Gotta look legit, show security badge, push button for fourth floor, absorb good eye contact and give it back, say “I’m terrific, and it keeps getting better,” walk briskly as if I’m going places and have people to see, imagine my coworkers are fascinating and there’s wisdom in whatever they say, but no one, my dear, is as important and urgent as you. Gotta keep pencil sharp and wingtips tied, hang up coat in coat hang-up area, make a place for everything and everything in its place, shake tailfeather, answer phone with smile in voice, ensure Mr. Bernstein catches me doing something right (avoid nervous grin when he does not), suck in gut, do bang-up job, watch my back, align myself with the winners (not whiners), spend less time at water cooler, but keep abreast of gossip, keep above fray, get to heart of matter, check, double check, triple check, win one for shareholders, wave ecstatically at the phonies, acknowledge their deafening applause. At lunch, gotta use firm handshake, stop slouching, be people person, an I’m OK-You’re OK person, pretend the glass is half full and the glass is perfect, not spit, belch, fart or wink like dork, cool my jets, close my mouth when chewing, then chew well before swallowing resentment
(because no one gives a shit), trust that every action will have an equal and opposite reaction, lick lips, itch left earlobe to denote interest, think thoughts of Don Juan (not Don Rickles), imagine color and texture of your underwear, remember how I got here, remember starving children in India and Indiana, remember dreams, be grateful for watered soup, dim light and unlisted ingredients, eat vegetables for a change, be member of clean plate club, wait for you to express your deepest little girl’s need, go with flow, leave room for Jell-O, say you look pretty, like you’re my kinda girl, position myself as the fixer who can fix your life, do the watusi and, if appropriate, the boog-i-loo, check time, not overstay my welcome, make you want to come back for more, make sure cashier doesn’t give me more Canadian money. Then, back home, gotta keep up good fight, screw in new light bulb, honor ancestors, read fine print, ante up before I bellyup, be lord of all I survey, renew subscription to the Great Outdoors, refill cat’s water bowl, fill up the dryer, turn on dryer, make sure dryer is working, then (when it’s time), empty dryer, keep my collar and side of street clean, take out garbage, smile (not laugh or leer) at Mrs. McGillicutty, immortal beloved as she bends over (no underwear) to pick up my Canadian coins. Gotta continue to teach myself to be teachable (and be apple of the teacher’s eye), close blinds before undressing as if for last time,
do belly flop, stare hard at spot on wall until its meaning no longer escapes me, give myself good PR when I think back on my day, believe the worst that can happen won’t happen again (at least, not so soon), give the flies a decent burial, be the man I was born to be, not rest until land and sea are free, then do last, most important and urgent thing I must do today – unclasp and look at happiness, protect and nourish happiness, no matter how rumpled silly, squalid or squashed, no matter how little and doomed my happiness compares to others’, how beside the point, how off the shelf and off the mark, gotta love my happiness, gotta breath life into it gotta fluff my pillow and thank my lucky stars for it.
Paul Brucker, a marketing communications writer, lives in Mt. Prospect, IL, where "Friendliness is a Way of life." Active in the early 1980s Washington, D.C, poetry scene, he put a lid on poetry writing when he went to the Northwestern University grad ad school in a questionable attempt to think like a businessman and secure a decent income. Nevertheless, he has succumbed to writing poetry again and has been recently published in Audio zine, Barefoot Review, Borderline, The Clackamas Review and the anthology, The Pagan's Muse: Words of Ritual, Invocation and Inspiration.
Cory De Silve How to Be a Better Poet Stay home, sit on your couch, unplug the television, wear dirty clothes. Ignore phone calls from friends. Shower only when you have to. Close the blinds. Get out three lined pieces of paper. Write nothing. Go to the library. Find & study Shakespeare, Keats, Shelley’s “A Defense of Poetry.” Memorize part one of “The Waste Land.” Understand poetic schools & movements. Figure out which ones you want to be a part of & which ones you want to avoid. When this bores you, take a break. Peel open the door. Go for a walk. Think about birds bending telephone wires. Return to your couch. Examine the empty sheets of paper. Fill them with sonnets, sestinas,
& pantoums—anything horrendously difficult. Do this until the lines sing with syllabic strength & discipline monitors your craft. Allow your thoughts to speak in iambic pentameter. Then, when everything supports you, purchase a book by Bukowski & watch all your perceptions of poetry be destroyed.
Cory De Silva’s first album, Someday When I’m Young, was released in March 2010. He co-edits for Bank-Heavy Press in Long Beach, CA, and writes poetry and fiction. His second album, Beginnings, is scheduled for release in late 2012.
Stephen Koster This Moment of Accolades
Her lips that were drawn and sudden; her lips that shone or glistened; her lips that were soft if you touched them with a finger; her lips that were never dry or broken. They were the lips that expressed words and formed beautiful French even though she only spoke English, and they performed the same music day in and day out that was the best music you had ever heard. They were the lips that kissed the foreheads of children or kissed your cheek when you left the house or when you’d done something sweet; the lips you could believe would be the lips of a mother but you could still think of as sexy. These lips were built of honey, they could sometimes stick but then could separate softer than linen from skin. I could imagine stealing that apple for her—taking it from the tree that knowledge put here. I could imagine hanging from an inverted cross and enduring torture and bleeding from my head for her, as the blood filled up my eyes. I could flee the Romans. I could cross endless bright seas on silent tall ships to find her. I could watch her from a tree outside across from her balcony and see those lips breathe. I could climb down and see the fires from the city. And with all the country burning, I would throw myself against the door and we could escape. We could reappear a hundred years later in a city far away, on a pilgrimage to where the houses are made of the earth. Then finally those lips could touch me, when we were safe; while white knights pounded on the doors and breached walls and towers fell and people burned in their homes. We could meet again in the sixties, and her lips would be obscured by cigarettes, lightly touched by dust and ash as if she’d rolled the countryside up and lit it. We could write songs that would never be sung again after we’d sung them and then we could lie down in a stolen apartment with stolen blankets under stolen time and we could confess everything to each other, even though we would know that too could be stolen. Then we would turn old in the nineties, and come to a close now,
and those lips would not shrivel or turn slowly blue or white. Her face might crease but the lips would not change. And when I feel the lips now I can think back to when the country was alive, when the graduates of war had not brought back their grisly spoils, to when mother and father were not names only fascinating people that existed shortly and brightly. I could look into those eyes as every other eye had been, but I could pretend and still know it was every time different. And then I would kiss those lips and we would both die.
Stephen Koster was born in the Ottawa valley in the imaginary land known as "Canada." He resides in a fictional house, with a fictional wife, and four make-believe cats named Who, Where, What, and Why. He is recently graduated from University and only twenty-two, so there's still plenty of time for him to get a real job, Mom.
Colin Dodds And When They Think I’m Winning
And when I think I’m winning, think that I’m a thoroughbred, they take me behind the supermarket and shoot me in the head. And back on the wooden floor, long since anything was sure, there is me and you, they and us, and a sound like creaking and shrieking— the sound of the circuitry of life reaching but not quite connecting. Both Mom and Apple Pie are suspects. But choose to see. Church windows or trees in a storm explain better than me how daylight turns to warring forms.
Colin Dodds And They Pretend They Can’t
And they pretend they can’t read the highways. They say they never heard the story about a man with no arms and a man with ghosts for arms who fought hard and long ago. They say they don’t see how those men twist the highways still.
Colin Dodds grew up in Massachusetts and completed his education at The New School in New York City. Norman Mailer wrote that Dodds’ novel The Last Bad Job showed “something that very few writers have; a species of inner talent that owes very little to other people.” Dodds’ novels What Smiled at Him andAnother Broken Wizard have been widely acclaimed by critics and readers alike. His screenplay,Refreshment – A Tragedy, was named a semi-finalist in 2010 American Zoetrope Contest. Two books of Dodds’ poetry—The Last Man on the Moon and The Blue Blueprint—are available from Medium Rare Publishing. Dodds’ writing has also appeared in a number of periodicals, including The Wall Street Journal Online, Folio, Explosion-Proof, Block Magazine, The Architect’s Newspaper, The Main Street Rag, The Reno News & Review and Lungfull! Magazine. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife Samantha.
Steve Ramirez After the Blackbird Whistles We were talking about the dead birds over dinner. Our older boy said it was a sign. A kid at school told him, gave him a copy of the Watchtower. My wife snorted, her face drawn close like a fist. She's pale, makes me think of ghosts. Our younger son said it might have been an inside job. He stared at his reflection in the soup. I don't know how often people blink, but he's well below the average, especially when eating soup. My wife flashed me a look, her eyes bulging a bit, the way they do. I swallowed, let the conversation pull to the curb, then asked him to explain. My wife and I keep our talks structured, teach our children to argue from logic, not emotion. We have an example to set. Our younger boy shifted in the chair, watched his brother in the reflective surface of his meal. His spoon hovered over the dark, red liquid. The wood creaked. They have poor night vision, he said, it might have been an accident, but look at the facts. The birds were in Arkansas. It was New Year's Eve. Would you want to be stuck there on New Year's? The birds might have painted the sky dark with their panicked wings after the fireworks went off. One bird could have let its wings crack, levering its body from the earth until they felt like they'd break. It would be easy, he said, to turn its face and plummet, aiming for the ground as the rest of the birds dove after him, not suspecting what it planned. He scooped a spoonful of soup into his mouth. A spot clung to his lower lip. He said he thought about it during P.E.. How it would feel to power his way to the front, veer away from the track and crash headfirst into the brick fence. What it would sound like as the rest of the children splatted against the wet gray bricks, one by one. Our child told us he knew it wouldn't work... some kid would figure it out. It's a long way from the track to the wall, but the birds... that's a different matter. Steve Ramirez hosts the weekly reading series, Two Idiots Peddling Poetry in Orange, CA. A former member of the Laguna Beach Slam Team 2000, he's also been one of the organizers of the Orange County Poetry Festival and member of the Five Penny Poets in Huntington Beach. Publication credits include Pearl,Crate, The Comstock Review, Lummox Journal, Aim for the Head (a zombie anthology) and Incidental Buildings & Accidental Beauty.
B.D. Feil Laurels of Perseverance
These unfrayed shiny leaves lose all weave and content dropping singly by one and ones scattering on any good wind blowing free from annointed heads touched heads crowned heads well-scrubbed brows expecting more than the simple long roads the one right turn ahead the other back left on straight on straight through dust and mournful heat and beyond maybe tedium as reward the crank and grind into perpetuity as we all fold into horizon
B.D. Feil Tender Bits
As in all things that matter in fights at meals with love in playing the villain go for the tender bits seek them out find their hiding places hurl yourself directly on head down with all resolution grab hold doggedly snap at them with graced fervor bite down in ancient faith with all art and flourish do it heartily and savor
B.D. Feil has credits in Slice Magazine, New Plains Review, Margie, and is nominated for a Pushcart this year. He lives in Michigan with quite the brood.
Visit www.crackthespine.com to review our submission guidelines or to subscribe