Loose Change: Volume 3, Issue 1 by Loose Change Magazine

VOLUME 3, ISSUE 1

MARCH 2013

VOLUME 3, ISSUE 1 March 2013

All work is the property of the attributed writers and artists. Copyright ÂŠ Loose Change magazine 2013 www.loosechangemagazine.org

Loose Change dedicates this, the first issue of our third year â&#x20AC;&#x201D;our repriseâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; to our writers, readers, artists and volunteers. Without your words, ears, hands and hearts, no such magazine could survive. Thank you.

Table of Contents

Cover art, Untitled 1, by Joshua Jarrett Editor’s Letter

To The Editor, poetry by Michael Sukach

Every Junkie, poetry by James Matheson Morton Tossing Your Room, poetry by William Doreski We Need the Eggs, poetry by CL Bledsoe I’ll Cut a Bitch, art by Kevin O’Kelley

3 5

7 8

Communism, poetry by Heather Bell

An Extra Toothbrush, art by Kevin O’Kelley Tenement Life, fiction by Olga Wojitas Kitsch End, poetry by Jamie McGraw

11 14

I’d Rather Drink Poison, art by Kevin O’Kelley

Victory or Nothing - m4ww - 28 (Central MTR D2), poetry by Max Nord Pizza Delivery Poem, poetry by Alex Gallo-Brown

Only Pizza Makes Me Happy, art by Kevin O’Kelley

The Answer to All Life’s Problems, art by Kevin O’Kelley Oasis, fiction by Tres Crow

Untitled 2, art by Joshua Jarrett

Orangutan, poetry by Dave Hardin

Cocktail Hour Four, art by Dave Hardin

Someone Else’s Wedding, poetry by Heather Bell Cocktail Hour Two, art by Dave Hardin

Paolo Soleri Theater. Indian School. Santa Fe, June, 2009, poetry by Miriam Sagan Stephane Mallarmé Speaks to Me in a Dream, poetry by Howie Good Cocktail Hour Three, art by Dave Hardin

Hanover, Hohenzollern and Mecklenburg-Schwerin, non-fiction excerpt by Jan Thompson Cocktail Hour Five, art by Dave Hardin

A Price for Literacy, fiction by R.A. Shockley Book, poetry by Miriam Sagan Contributors

Editor's Letter Molly Dickinson

It is fitting that this issue came to you live from beneath the city's streets, buoyed by a current of voices rising and hearts beating below 644 N. Highland Avenue. It is fitting that it marks the Ides of March, and the almost-burst of spring after a strange, ambivalent winter. It is fitting that you have chosen, by virtue of your submissions, to fill this issue with vices; to lay bare what is easier buried; to instead put ink to pages and names to faces and, fittingly too, liquor to lips in celebration. (This would be a fitting place to make a toast.) And it is fitting to a give such a short, sincere introduction to a long and long-awaited reprise. With gratitude, with pride, with pleasure and without further ado....

To the Editor Michael Sukach

Chagrined and with regret, I must forgo submitting any of my poems for your consideration. While I had not thought it possible, the daddy and mommy poems divorced some years ago, political poems have been arrested for indecent exposure, which subsequently rendered the more radical poems for change irrelevant. Those not already serving indeterminate carceral terms have eloped or absconded to countries without extradition. My car is missing and the veterans that have stayed are wandering the house irreparably drunk. Of these latter, one has an as yet undiagnosed tumor, one keeps wetting the bed, and another will not come out of the closet. Seduction and intimacy are trysting and the cute and indecipherable have sold themselves to lesser venues. I have one that stands true, will not relent, lives wild, loves, and died once. Unfortunately, it keeps stealing off the page and slamming out the backdoor. With my apologies and sincere wish that your fine journal continue to endure all the poems wandering off the field and into your fold. Best, The Poet

Every Junkie James Matheson Morton

Every junkie in rehab has a story. Janis says, “I got plenty of time to do ‘em.” She slips the dirty laundry away from brothers and sisters, perfect strangers stumbled upon in safe, sober havens. I ask Kurt what heroin feels like. He hugs and rubs, caresses and cuddles himself. Rocking back and forth like a metronome, “It’s like crawling,” he says. “Into a giant washing machine of warm water. The delicate cycle takes your breath away at first; then the feeling lets you live in the gentle underwater swishing and swaying.” His shaking hand moves a cigarette to his lips. “The difference is after the spin cycle you aren’t clean.” I realize he is cold and damp and put himself in this dryer to come out wrinkle free. On Saturdays I chart MARTA maps for a destination to Little Five Points. I see reality without rehab’s Anchor. Tomorrow, Ms. Amy tells the story of selling her grandmother’s dentures for crack. Rock bottom they call it. We all have had slips.

Smoking at the picnic table we watch the setting sun change the sky's colors. Everyone goes away in the end.

Tossing Your Room William Doreski

Tossing your room for contraband, I find underwear large enough to decorate a rhino, glasses thick as plywood, three huge wigs clumsy as shag carpeting. Whose are these? Not yours, not anyone’s, but planted to bemuse me. Light thickens in the window. Storms approach with their petticoats flaring. A siren razors the avenue as police respond to famous crimes. I’ve bundled these silly objects into evidence bags. Evidence of your improper irony, your groping, speculative mind. I’ve also stolen your sex toys, whether plastic, leather, or bone, bagged your bags of marijuana and the vials of crack and crystal meth you hid behind the wainscoting in your spare bedroom where lovers disgruntled by your humours hide. The first sheets of rain shatter against the side of the building. Your room smells like the closets where families keep their skeletons. For years you’ve expected me to search it, leaving your door unlocked and shouting down the hall as you leave for your wild nights in vodka bars. Now I’m sorry. The wigs suggest beheadings, the glasses muddle rather than correct my eyesight, and the underwear would transform me

into the saddest of transvestites if I were fool enough to wear it even with no one looking.

We Need the Eggs CL Bledsoe

Love is the smell of milk vomit that trails you like perfume, odd-colored stains on the shoulders, a baby crying, always, somewhere in the distance. Scurrying things on the edge of vision that may or may not be. Food tastes like hurry up. A general anxiety as if an expensive vase is always sitting just on the edge of a rickety table right out of reach. Stains on everything. Joy fills the holes punched through your cells by simply considering the sun. Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be fooled: I would gut each of you, leave you in the desert to die, make a trail of your stinking, warm innards for the vultures to follow if it meant peace for my daughter. This is also love.

I’ll Cut a Bitch, Kevin O’Kelley

Communism Heather Bell

The hypothetical: if I chose not to continue as I am. Instead go to the tub as if it were the sea. Be there, wet and violet. Radiator as dramatic movie music. Scan the horizon of tile, blue at the edges, as most animals are. And there are people who need me, but not enough. And there is a cat weeping and wearing a black helmet. And the keys to the door have become a large bird smoking a cigarette and I wish to say that stuff will kill you, Arnie, but I'm in the bath tub wearing my uncle's Soviet boots, which are too big but you would not even notice if you could get in. Because I am a woman in a bath tub fully dressed as a communist. There is always the Where's Waldo? moment but if you saw me, you would disapprove of the clothing while the blood sneaked closer and closer like a spy.

An Extra Toothbrush, Kevin Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Kelley

Tenement Life Olga Wojitas

The only light in the room comes from the red digital display on the clock. 23:23. Wooden shutters are closed over the windows, and heavy velvet drapes pulled across them. Amelia is dozing, huddled in the big armchair, until the noise starts upstairs. Two floors up, they stand half in the doorway, half on the landing, not thinking to lower their voices, which reverberate round the tenement stairwell. “Hang on, where’s my key? I don’t know, you had it earlier. Charlie, did you take my key? Don’t blame me, you’re always losing it. Hurry up! Wait, stop hassling me— ” Students. English students. Amelia would like them evicted. They don’t understand the rules of Scottish tenement life, that you keep yourself to yourself, and you never disturb your neighbors. The stair should be a place of monastic silence. Amelia feels her way across the darkened room into the hall and eases herself down behind the front door. The students slam their own front door, sending vibrations down the walls, and Amelia shudders in unison. The thumping tread of the boys and the clattering of the girls’ approaches and then stops. “Chrissakes,” says one of the boys. “Not again.” “Oh, just pick it up.” “But why can’t she put out her own bloody trash instead of cluttering the whole landing?” Amelia pokes open the letterbox. “I’m just a poor old woman,” she quavers. They freeze, startled, then a girl calls, “It’s all right, don’t worry. We’ll take the bags down for you,” and they set off, bickering in undertones. Amelia shuffles back into the living room, her arms outstretched, waggling her hands in search of obstacles. She is confident that she knows where everything is, but she bumps into the table and sends a vase crashing to the ground. She doesn’t like the vase and hopes it has broken. Happy Birthday, he had said. This will look lovely in the living room. A vase wasn’t what she wanted at all. She staggers in the direction of the armchair, embraces it, subsides into it. At least she doesn’t have to worry about treading on a cat. That was what he said to her, Get a cat. When, keeping her voice low to avoid disturbing the neighbors, she begged him not to leave her on her own. She reverts to her Happy Memory, of a little girl running across the grass in a park towards an ice-cream van playing cheerful music. Every time she remembers it, she creates a new detail. Last time, it was a circle of flower beds, with crimson rose bushes, and scarlet and gold tulips. This time, she chooses a delicate turquoise butterfly which shimmers towards the little girl and lands on her wrist like a corsage. The entryphone chimes, and she glances at the clock. 23:23. She can’t imagine who would be calling this late, but she feels obliged to answer. “Grocery delivery, hen.” “I’m working,” she says, brisk, efficient. “Just leave the bags inside the main door and I’ll collect them later.” “Can’t do that. I need a signature.” She sighs and presses the door release button. Windmilling her arms through the living room darkness, she goes to the bedroom with its bedside lamp, where she puts on her Jackie O sunglasses, a headscarf with pictures of horses on it, and a leopard-skin coat. She examines herself in the mirror. She could do with some lipstick. Pouting, 11

she stains her lips crimson, the exact shade of the roses in her Happy Memory. Someone is hammering on her door. “Hurry it up, hen, I’ve got more deliveries than just yours.” She opens the door. “I’m just on my way out,” she says. “I’m a jazz singer. Like Nina Simone.” He does not respond, holds out a pad for her to sign. She signs Jacqueline Onassis. “Heavy bags,” he says. “Do you want me to carry them in for you?” She points at the landing. “There will be fine, thank you.” She waits until the main tenement door closes behind him, then starts lugging the carrier bags into the kitchen. The shutters are closed, and she takes off the sunglasses and switches on the lights under the cabinets. She counts the cans of peas, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, and attempts to gather them in her arms. Cans keep escaping, but eventually she conveys them all to the bedroom. She pulls up the mattress to admire the neat lines of cans already there, and painstakingly adds the new ones. Not long now until the entire bed support will be made of peas, fit for a princess. Princess Nina. Princess Jacqueline. Princess Amelia. She loved being told fairy stories when she was a little girl. She would love to tell fairy stories. A child, she had said, how can that be unreasonable? The rest of the shopping is still to be unpacked. She is in the process of stashing away the oatmeal and honey when the phone shrills. She will let the answering machine deal with it. She has never changed the original message, which sounds like Stephen Hawking. It is faint, because she has stuffed the answering machine under a pile of cushions on the sofa. There is no one to answer your call right now. Leave your message after the beep. End your message after three beeps. “Susan? I know you’re there! Pick up!” Wrong number. There is nobody called Susan here. Whoever heard of a Princess Susan? Amelia doesn’t care for the caller’s tone. But she decides to listen to the message anyway. She pads like the cat she doesn’t have from the kitchen to the living room and curls up in the armchair. “...need to hear from you to be sure you understand. You can’t just wander off with a child in the park. People could have thought you were abducting her. It’s just as well your neighbor saw you...” Neighbors are supposed to keep themselves to themselves. They are not supposed to disturb other people. Those are the rules of a Scottish tenement. “...would have taught you a lesson if it had been the police and not Mrs MacLeod...” Colorful flower beds and a beautiful butterfly on the little girl’s wrist like a corsage and an exuberant puppy, a labrador, a black labrador, frisking across the lush grass. Three beeps and the hectoring voice is silenced. Amelia savors the quiet and the darkness. If the vase is not broken already, she resolves to smash it herself. She checks the clock. 23:23. She really should go to bed, toss and turn on her uncomfortable mattress like a true princess. And then the phone rings again, Stephen Hawking relays his message. Another voice this time, which she doesn’t like any better, plaintive, wheedling. “Susan, your mother’s just worried, being so far away. It was very good of Mrs. MacLeod to get in touch with us. We’re not angry with you. We just want you to ring back and talk to us, have a nice...” Amelia has crawled round to the back of the sofa and is feeling along the skirting board until she comes to the wiring. She pulls out the answering machine plug and the phone connection. Then she carries the equipment to the kitchen and deposits it in one of the empty plastic grocery bags. She ties it neatly at the top and leaves it outside her front door for the students to take down to the dumpster. The telephone calls have prevented her from storing all the groceries. There is a tub of ice cream sitting on

the table. She opens it, prods at it. It is melting but the middle is still solid. She gets a bowl and a spoon and scoops some out. Then she goes to the spare bedroom. Its shutters are closed, and a rotating night light is projecting images of butterflies on the walls. “Stop crying,” she says. “I’ve brought you some ice cream.”

Kitsch End Jamie McGraw

lie beside me on the kitchen floor sugar limbs refined pretty apples live on the table ugly apples die in pie dear youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll always have a place

I’d Rather Drink Poison, Kevin O’Kelley

Victory or Nothing - m4ww - 28 (Central MTR D2) Max Nord

Chinese Che Guevara's Skeleton yelled at me from a bus.

The statement appeared through purple marijuana smoke, a giant beard, and an eerie nationalism

"Victory or Nothing" I wonder about Maoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Image. Would it have the same effect? That Little Red Book was for revolution. Chinese Che just wants to sell you shit.

Pizza Delivery Poem Alex Gallo-Brown

I ordered a pizza last night tipped myself excessively then felt guilty and asked you for your phone number. I had never seen a pizza delivery poem before but Martin Espada wrote two bouncer poems so I applied for security guard at a casino. They never called me back. It must have been because my scowl wasn’t fierce enough that I was too slim and untrained. The ex army or maybe navy? seal at the door said the work was cake but I couldn’t eat it too or else there’d be a dock in wages in which case the landlord might come calling asking for scotch or bourbon before spitting it into my palm because it was too strong. Which would kill the romance certainly with the girl next door the one with tranquil mirrors and pitying smile. Outside my apartment a balcony overlooks a pool of cement the only liquid the vomit my friend deposited there so gently Friday night while I dreamed of olive oil and cherry lips

and the way salad looks in a plastic bag all cramped and stunned and foolish.

Only Pizza Makes Me Happy, Kevin Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Kelley

The Answer to All Life’s Problems, Kevin O’Kelley

Oasis Tres Crow

The stars went out again. It was the third time that night it’d happened. Siri looked up at the now blackened sky and stared for a long moment, then looked back down at the pipe in his hand. He finished his turn then passed the pipe to The Bear. He opened his bag of mushrooms and took out a few caps, and he put them in his mouth, and he chewed them. Then he swallowed them. They tasted like shit. The Bear passed the pipe to The Ghost without smoking any. He hadn’t smoked anything in a few nights. Siri hadn’t asked The Bear why. The Ghost took a hit and held the pipe out to The Speaker and The Vocoder, which were not animate objects and did not smoke pot either. After a moment, The Ghost gave the pipe back to Siri. Eventually the stars came back on, and the beach was lit again, and Siri looked around at his new friends, and he was overcome with a sense of something like happiness. He wanted to share his feelings with his new friends, but The Ghost and The Bear were not looking at him; they were quiet, contemplative. It was a very peaceful moment, so Siri just looked at the fire and felt the warmth of the fire and smoked. Something that he’d been thinking earlier—a snatch of lyric from a song he couldn’t quite remember— came to him again, and he mumbled it silently, tasted the words out loud, barely. They tasted differently than they sounded in his head. The Bear looked up, dazed, and asked, “Huh? You say something?” “Annie Hall leaves New York in the end, but press rewind and Woody gets her back again,” Siri replied. The Bear looked confused. “Huh?” “Nothing. Just a line from a song.” “Ahhh,” said The Bear, and he left the fire to find a tree to scratch his back against. Siri asked The Ghost, “Have you ever seen Annie Hall?,” but The Ghost didn’t reply or even acknowledge that Siri had asked the question. Siri waited a moment, then added, “Me neither. I wonder why she leaves New York…?” He looked up and down the endless expanse of the beach, at the waves licking and lapping. There wasn’t a DVD/VHS/Blue Ray player anywhere. “I guess we’ll never know.” The Bear came back, and he sat heavily down on the log, which was his seat. He looked satisfied. He asked Siri if he could have some mushrooms, and Siri handed him the bag. He ate some mushrooms then passed the bag to The Ghost, but The Ghost did not take the bag or even look at The Bear. The Bear waited then gave the bag back to Siri, who took a few more caps for good measure. The stars went out again and the beach became dark. In the morning, Siri was woken by The Bear’s farts, which were loud and magnificent. The Ghost was already up, and Siri wondered if he ever slept. Did ghosts need to sleep? Were they always asleep? Was death just sleeping, or was it something worse? Siri just thought these things; he didn’t ask The Ghost. The sun was bright and hot, but a cooling breeze blew off the ocean. The fire was low embers. Siri stoked the coals with a stick and threw a few more logs on the fire. He didn’t know who had started the fire—it had been going when he got here—and he didn’t know how to reignite it, so he just made sure it never went out. He’d asked The Bear and The Ghost who’d started it, but The Bear didn’t know and The Ghost never answered. “Maybe it was Billy Joel?” Siri had joked, but The Bear had looked puzzled. He’d shaken his head and replied, “No, he didn’t start the fire, remember? That was the point.” Eventually The Bear woke too, and the three of them resumed their positions from the night before, the

same as all the nights that Siri had been here. He tried to remember how many it had been, but he couldn’t. It felt like it had been a very long time. He looked up and down the beach, wondering how he’d gotten here, from which direction he’d come. The right or the left? He couldn’t be sure; he couldn’t be sure of anything, really. He turned to The Ghost and asked, “How’d you get here? How long has it been?,” but The Ghost didn’t reply. The Ghost was ignoring him. After a quiet moment, he turned to The Bear, and he asked, “Did you have any dreams last night?” The Bear thought a moment and then said, “Yes. I dreamed I was next to a rushing river. There were fish leaping from the water and I was very hungry, but I couldn’t move. All I could do was stare at the fish and be hungry.” The Bear swatted the dream away and laughed a deep belly laugh. “It’s cliché. Fish. Streams. All bears have this dream.” Siri picked up the microphone that was connected to The Vocoder and The Speaker and held it out to The Bear but The Bear shook his head, so Siri held the microphone to his own lips. “That sounds horrible,” he said. Through The Vocoder and The Speaker his voice sounded like T-Pain, like a soulful machine. The Bear nodded. “It is, but, like I said, it’s common. I have the dream at least three times a month during the summer.” Siri spoke into the microphone, “Sometimes I dream about waking up and not being on this beach.” It was easier to say things that were true through the microphone, Siri had found. It was easier to let the computer voice say those things than to say them with his own voice. The computer sounded a lot more self-assured, sexy and commanding. The computer could say anything and it sounded important. “We all need to leave the beach eventually,” said The Bear. Siri opened his mouth to respond but so many things came to him at once that he couldn’t say anything. He closed his mouth and shrugged and set the microphone down. He stoked the fire. The Ghost didn’t say anything. He stroked his chin. His eyes were like black sinkholes in white sand. Siri looked up and down the beach. The sun dipped behind the trees. He cursed the rotten luck that had him stuck on an Eastward-facing beach. He hadn’t seen a proper sunset in ages. Yet he’d grown used to the steady thickening of darkness on the horizon, like the fattening uterine walls of the infinite as she grew ready to expel the stars and the universe, a daily cycle. He even found it sort of beautiful, in its own way. He stared at the fire, and he chewed on some mushrooms. He smoked some weed. The coals made faces that contorted and joked and said crazy things. The fire was their hair. It waved in the wind, which cooled Siri’s cheeks and made The Bear’s fur ripple, and which made The Ghost look pixelated and indistinct. The Ghost stroked his chin. Siri had a strange thought and like all such strange thoughts he had to share it, to make it apart from him, to bring it to life. That was why people had mouths and vocal chords and other people, was it not? He picked up the microphone, and his voice was like a soothing alarm clock or the hum of a radiator. He said, “In that one movie, Dylan said, ‘don’t look back,’ right? But that’s not exactly correct, is it? I mean, it’s not that you shouldn’t look back but more like you can’t. You can’t look back because the past is like some killer from a slasher movie. The past chases after us, nips at our heels, and waits, just waits for us to stumble or look back, waits to pounce on us and strangle us, to tear us apart.” Siri took another puff of the pipe and waited, no one responded, so eventually he continued, and as he spoke he offered The Ghost furtive, uncomfortable glances. He wondered if talk of death made The Ghost sad. The Ghost didn’t speak and didn’t look at him. The Ghost was impossible to understand. Siri said, “But we also can’t look back because the past is also like footsteps left in the sand, and with each step forward the wind blows and the footsteps shift and change. Each step forward, each new memory or

experience, the steps behind are obscured. The past is unknowable, and every step forward makes it more so. The wind blows everything away eventually, until you have no idea how you got where you are. Does that make sense?” The Bear shook his head, a pained look on his face. He said, “I don’t think Dylan said that in the movie; I think that was the title. And I dunno if that was Dylan’s idea or the filmmaker’s. I’m not sure you attributed that correctly.” “Does it matter?” asked Siri, without the microphone. “Of course it does. Facts matter,” replied The Bear. “Without facts there is only chaos.” The stars went out, and Siri held the microphone up to his lips. He had so many things to say, but the darkness and the fire and the silence oppressed him, so he said nothing. So did The Bear. So did The Ghost. Only The Speaker made a sound; it hummed lowly to itself, a lullaby, a dirge. Siri woke the next morning to The Bear’s magnificent farts. He was hungry, and he was thirsty. He wished he had The Bear’s thick layer of winter’s fat to keep him sated. He envied The Bear. He also envied The Ghost because he didn’t have a stomach and presumably couldn’t feel hunger, though Siri couldn’t be certain that The Ghost wasn’t suffering some even more horrible agony. This uncertainty tempered his envy a little. The Ghost sat across the fire and stroked his chin and stared at the coals. Siri looked up and down the beach. He thought about leaving but didn’t act on it. For whatever reason, he’d left wherever he’d been to come here. It must have been terrible back there, so why would he want to go back? Besides, his footsteps were long gone, and he had no idea from which direction he’d come. There was a 50% chance of going right back where he’d started, which, again, must have been terrible. Additionally, he couldn’t be certain what lay in the other direction. What if both directions were worse than here? The odds were against him; only a 25% chance of betterment in leaving, but a 100% chance of things staying exactly the same if he stayed. He ate some mushrooms. He packed a bowl, and he lit the bowl. He smoked some pot and prodded The Bear to wake up. The Bear yawned and took the pipe and smoked pot for the first time in days. He said he dreamed of fish again last night. His eyes grew wistful and distant and seeing that look made Siri sad, made him feel like he was looking at the inevitable. Siri looked over at The Ghost, and he picked up the microphone and he asked, “How long you been dead? What’s it like? Are you afraid? Are you happy? Do you feel at all?” The Ghost didn’t respond or acknowledge him, so Siri stood up and walked over to The Ghost and he waved the flaming stick in his face and the stick went through his body so Siri swung the stick around. The Ghost didn’t stir. “Why won’t you talk to us?” shouted Siri, inches from The Ghost’s face. Siri’s voice sounded like a digital monolith through the speaker. “Do you think you’re better than us? You afraid you’ll give some secret away? Huh?” The Ghost didn’t respond, so Siri walked away from the circle and threw the flaming stick into the ocean, and it hissed as it went in the water and then it was gone, and the ocean was no different for the impasse. There were dark clouds on the horizon and lightning glittered occasionally. The wind whipped Siri’s hair off his face. He threw the microphone onto the ground, and the speaker made a loud popping noise that started The Bear. Siri shouted into the air. “Goddamn you half-Japanese women!” Siri shouted, and it felt good to shout with his own voice, even though the words made no sense. They were lyrics that he’d heard a long time ago. “You do it to me every fucking time!” He turned back toward The Ghost, dragging the microphone behind him. He shouted, “You won’t talk, you won’t look, you won’t even think of me! And what about The Bear? You’re hurting his feelings!” The Bear held up a paw and interjected, “Well, actually, he’s not…” Siri turned to The Bear and said, “No, don’t stick up for him. He’s being an asshole.” He turned back to

The Ghost, pulling the microphone back to his lips. “If you’re gonna stick around you gotta participate, you gotta add something, else you’re just mooching off us. Smoking my weed, eating my mushrooms, soaking up the conversation. It’s bullshit. You can’t just do that. It’s rude. If you have nothing to offer, then you need to get the hell outta here!” The Ghost looked up at him for the first time since Siri had come to this place. His black eyes were so deep Siri could see no end, and Siri rolled around in them, and it was like being in the vast vagina of the infinite, warm and terrifying. The Ghost smiled a little, then shook his head in disappointment. He rolled up his sleeves, clapped his hands, and then he was gone. There was no puff of smoke or sound; he was just gone. The Bear gasped behind Siri, “Why’d you do that? He was fine the way he was. Why’d you do that, Siri? That was just mean. He didn’t wanna talk, that’s all. Why couldn’t you just let him alone? He wasn’t hurting anyone.” Siri didn’t have an answer so he sang into the microphone, “Maybe you’re the same as me. We’ll see things they’ll never see. You and I are gonna live forever.” And his voice hummed like cicadas. Thunder rolled in the distance. The storm just hung around on the horizon, loitering at the edges of the world, barking but not biting. The Bear wouldn’t talk to Siri. Siri sang songs that he half-remembered, getting the lyrics wrong. It drove The Bear nuts, hearing words misplaced, wandering in sentences that weren’t their rightful homes. Over his lifetime, he’d memorized a large catalog of popular song lyrics. He knew the way the songs went, and he saw all these linguistic orphans, floating in the air, and it made him want to scream. It was clear now that Siri had no idea what he was doing. As the sun made its descent, The Bear stood. He held his hand out for the microphone. Siri stopped singing, and he gave it to him, and The Bear spoke into the microphone for the first time. The Vocoder went to work on his deep baritone, turning him into a millennial Barry White. The Bear looked mournfully at the sky and he said, “Siri, it’s almost Fall. I’ve been here too long as it is. I need to get back home. I need to eat fish. I need to get fat, and I need to sleep. There are other dreams bears have, dreams I haven’t told you about, sweeter dreams. I won’t tell you now. Maybe someday we’ll meet again, and I’ll tell you then. But…” and The Bear looked down from the sky, and he could see tears in Siri’s eyes. He avoided Siri’s face. He said, “Siri, you can’t stay here. It’s impractical. You haven’t eaten in weeks. You look like a skeleton. You need to move on. And I do too.” Siri wailed, “I can’t. I’m so afraid.” “Of course you are,” said The Bear, setting the microphone aside and grabbing Siri up in his great, hairy arms. “Of course you are. You should be.” Siri clutched The Bear and buried his face in his fur. He didn’t want the moment to pass. He’d wanted to hug The Bear since their first meeting. He wept openly. He said what he thought without the microphone, and The Bear listened to him and they stayed like that until the sun set and the stars came out. Then The Bear set Siri back on the sand and thudded onto all four legs and ambled toward the forest. He didn’t look back and he didn’t say good bye, but Siri watched him go until he became like the shadows under the trees. Siri looked around the campfire, at the empty logs and the microphone in the sand, The Vocoder chatting in electrostatic with The Speaker. He looked up and down the beach. He couldn’t be certain which way he’d come or which way he should go. He was alone; his friends had left him. He grabbed his mushrooms and his pipe. He grabbed the microphone, and he threw the microphone as high as he could into the air. It strangled on its cord and came careening back to earth. The microphone pointed to the right. Siri looked that way and the beach was empty and long. He put a handful of mushrooms in his mouth and he chewed them. He started walking the way the microphone had told him.

The stars went out and everything went dark, but Siri didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t need any lights. He felt the sand between his toes, the footsteps he made. There was only one direction to go anyway.

Untitled 2, Joshua Jarrett

Orangutan Dave Hardin

I dreamed of trees last night, sunlight a slow liquor seeping through the stacked canopy to pool amber in low places, bending to my reflection, look of feigned surprise fixed, fading into the long shadow cast black shell curing at twilight, blanketing the leaf wrack, pooling about my matted autumn robe, sending me to the highest limbs, my long arms elegant paired levers.

Cocktail Hour Four, Dave Hardin

Someone Else’s Wedding Heather Bell

Papaya is served. There is a quiet during which he touches her at the ovaries. This morning, I tied my husband's tie in the parking lot and we napped, looking like a portrait of two dead people. The bride is too skinny, her hair looks big enough to go to slaughter. Now is the time: I have been married for long enough to know a thing or two and the wine is complimentary. I dance and I am victorious, yelling like a warrior. I think I lost some friends by the end of the night. Yelling like a warrior. I suppose that was my gift: to say it is good to drink too much wine. It is good to throw your hair around like a lazy snake. It is good to ruin the expensive photos by grabbing stranger's backsides just as you see the eye of the camera. It is good for them to see my husband hold me up on the dance floor, my legs loose as a spritzed perfume. It is lovely, drunkenly pressing my face to his chest, smelling the cypress and tiger there. I stop at the wedding table and hold her hand, notice the way it is much smaller than mine. I want to tell her that her heart will be scattered like pieces of leaves and that reading National Geographic is as close to God she will ever get with her husband. But I'm too drunk, I want to go back to the room, slip in a comedy DVD. The bride's dress is snagged on the chair, there's an old unhammered nail that was overlooked and I choose not to tell her.

Cocktail Hour Two, Dave Hardin

Paolo Soleri Theater. Indian School. Santa Fe, June, 2009 Miriam Sagan

The band sounds like Austin in the '80s, like heroin, like what I didn't know About myself It never fails to surprise me How you've managed to stay dead Even all these years When you could barely make it through a rainy afternoon Without re-arranging the furniture Don't you remember That illegal rave down Cerrillos When I was so pregnant And that girl gave you the eye And I cut her with a look How suddenly the group of Indian kids Picked up a pile of green boughs And started fancy dancing with them And for just a minute we were in that other world Until they started slamming again I haven't remained So ignorant I know now That other world Is also this one And we are one Citizenryâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; The living and the dead.

Stephane Mallarmé Speaks to Me in a Dream Howie Good

To name an object is to suppress three-quarters of its beauty and be forced to share the rest with strangers. Don’t say what happened exactly or exactly how what happened felt. Rather, say something like “The black cat cried to be fed.” Make every passage you write a foreign city, where readers can grasp only an occasional word, just like you that time you took another Klonopin because you forgot you had already taken one.

Cocktail Hour Three, Dave Hardin

Hanover, Hohenzollern and Mecklenburg-Schwerin Jan Thompson

British royalty was my first obsession. It took me awhile to realize it. When I was in third grade or so, I was given a current events assignment. This was supposed to have something to do with the news of the day, I later discovered. But I found a magazine, probably an old Life, full of black and white photos of Queen Elizabeth II as a kid, (these would have been from the 1920s and 1930s) and I was suddenly licked by a strange fire. I cut and pasted photo after photo onto thick pieces of construction paper, poked holes in the margins and bound them together with a shoe lace into a booklet, wrote titles under each photo (tongue protruding) embellished the cover with drawings done with colored pencils, and topped it with gummed metallic stars. Obsession met obsession. All the early signs of the budding crafts person were in evidence, the signs that identify the future crocheter of toilet roll covers, the painter of little lead dudes who dabs with a two-haired brush the correct regimentals of long dead armies. (Note: The symbol of this guild is secret: it is the image of one unblinking eye, humorlessly enlarged in a lit magnifying glass. Mice are the mascots of this guild, and the crafts people work, as mute as mice, late at night at kitchen tables, at garage benches, at desks in the basement where time is measured by the slow drip of the leaking pipe,under the scrutiny, and the guardianship, of their mascots.) By the age of eight, all the traits had manifested themselves in me. The fixations and the OCD were the result of centuries of evolution. DNA, under the pressure of culture and economics, (starvation, humiliation, hard knocks, unbearable loneliness, agonized deaths) had produced a race of humans who can beaver away in one spot for hours on end at the loom, the sewing machine, the assembly line, without looking up, without complaining. But my bonnet buzzed not just with the piece-worker's zeal, but with the loyalty of the courtier, the passion of the crusader, the genealogist's relentless search for verifiable facts. (This was before video gaming allowed every nerd to live out their heroic fantasies in the solitude of a closed room.) I was definitely primed for some niche. Back in the day, I might have engraved prayers on the heads of pins, or painted miniatures so small and perfect they could only be appreciated by myopes. (Query: Do fantasies compensate for the tedium of repetitive tasks? Weeding turnips, weaving cloth, plowing a field; these tasks allow the thoughtful worker to create brighter worlds, plot revolutions, figure out how to build a rocket or a bomb. All in their heads. Human nature finds a way to rise above every impediment. Pompous pronouncements are perfectible...when the mind is freed by hands busy with rote work.) Well, I presented it to the class at show-and-tell, this opus, right after one of my classmates gave a presentation on Sputnik, and another little girl talked about her hamster, which she had smuggled into class under her sweater. My project had obviously occupied me for hours, and exhibited an interest that was either precocious or disturbed. In those days, who could tell? The teacher commented in a reserved voice that I had certainly collected a lot of pictures of royalty. I had never before shown that much enthusiasm about anything, she hinted. I agreed, without saying so. It struck my teacher as amusing/troubling, and I was sensitive to that sort of thing. My teacher's attitude, however, did not dampen my new enthusiasm. It continued (grew, flourished, became huge and gorgeous) but now I knew I had to be secretive about it. It was the first time I realized what an obsession was, that I had one, and that maybe it wasn't normal. Ever since then I have wondered about its source. I didn't get it from my parents, or my grandparents, either. It sprang from nowhere and took hold. Meningitis is less tenacious in its grasp. But I had to go underground with it. I learned that a long time ago. Usually, whenever I tried to talk about it (the way you do about your most cherished interests) it was as if I'd locked eyes with an acquaintance at a

dinner party and said, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Do you know the Lord?â&#x20AC;? (Except for one time, when I attended a Christmas party at the home of a German psychiatrist who worked at the VA hospital in Tuskegee, Alabama. He was a short, fat, genial man whose first name was Albert. His last name, if genuine, would mark him as the descendant of one of the oldest royal houses in Europe. His house, the one he lived in, was decorated with really big portraits of Louis XIV and other royalties, and when I walked beside him and identified them by name, he took both my hands in his, and we sat together for an hour or so, ignoring every other person in the room, talking about royalties and the possible illegitimacy of Czar Paul I...which he poohpoohed, throwing up his hands at the blasphemy!...and this and that. He said he was descended from Queen Victoria. I could never, later, confirm this, and believe me, I gave it a good-faith effort. How I cherished the warmth of his tiny hands, descended as they were...so he said...directly from Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, royal consort of QV. Royalty buffism takes strange turns, I have found, even among the well-educated.) Royalty buffs, on the whole, come in three varieties. The first variety stalks royalty, shows up at all their scheduled appearances, stations themselves at the forefront of the roped-off areas where the royal persons (the expected ones!) will process toward the performance of some ceremonial duty: a ribbon cutting, the laying of a foundation stone, the planting of a tree, etc. They, the stalkers, maintain a death-grip on the ropes lest they lose their places to the equally mad royalists pressing against their backs. Bursting with the strength of the possessed, they take their positions in the queue long before the ropes are strung, at o-dark-thirty, when boots ring on frozen ground. I remember seeing photos (on a royalty forum) of one extreme example. It was a woman who stood frostbitten, hands frozen to the ropes, hysteria on her face and an ecstatic grin, the look of one who has lost all sense of how she might be seen by strangers on the street, owlish eyes made even larger by crooked glasses, dressed in clan tartans and the sashes of royal orders...unearned...beside her a girl of about ten similarly dressed, similarly unaware of her own apparent lunacy. While her mother held off the countless royal buffs who stood behind her (gouging her secretly with knees and elbows) the girl waved a British flag with one hand, and with the other held a camera at the ready waiting for the exact instant when the Queen of England, in this case, walked directly into her line of sight. Harmless, maybe, except to the psyche of the child once she grows to reason, if that should ever happen. One can see how a true royal buff could be cured of scrofula...or death, even...when the old monarchs were performing the laying-on of the hands (touching for the King's evil, it was called, which went out with Queen Anne). These, the true believers, are not always so over-the-top. But they have one thing in common: in their eyes, royalty can do no wrong. They believe in fairy princesses and royal saints. Every princess is beautiful and good, every prince is self-sacrificing and dashing. These are the Poloniuses of royalty buffs. Some write blogs. Their writings vary in quality, but never touch on the one pertinent question, the one that cries in the wilderness like an elephant in the living room: why are you, the writer, expending your days obsessing about the doings of people who are rarely blessed with beauty, charismatic personality, saintliness or any form of creative genius? Is it because they are blessed instead with that which you count to be the most precious quality of all, i.e., royalty? Do you ever reflect on how much of your life you are expending on this...thing...this, whatever you want to call it? Vanity of vanities, all things are vanity. Others go to the opposite extreme. They too are obsessed with royalty, but they try to cover it up by writing nasty blogs and joining libelous forums that invent and exaggerate every royal foible to the level of a felony and/or fatal flaw. Some have the fervor of Russian anarchists of the czarist period. Their venom can spew to frightening heights. These people are clearly conflicted. These are the Iagos. The Poloniuses and the Iagos can change places, depending on...well, whatever. Royalty buffism is probably a spectrum disorder. Some of us succeed better at blending in. But no matter how well we cope, maintain, compensate, the obsession takes its toll. The amount of time we, the royally obsessed of all persuasions, waste looking at the latest pictures of royalty on the web, reading piffle about clothes and traffic tickets and dynastic disputes between rivals

fighting over non-existent thrones that have been abolished for a hundred years...well, it says something about the way human beings value their limited hours on this earth. Yes, I too am obsessed. Is my own interest materially different from that of the believers and anarchists? Maybe. Maybe not. I've cut my teeth on the same forums where we all go to chew the fat. The kudos and outrages have helped define my views. My avatar, I've discovered, may be the guy who stood behind Caesar in the chariot as he rode to a triumph after a military victory. This guy was the official wet blanket. While holding the golden oak wreath over Caesar's head, he was also whispering into his ear the special words aimed at pricking the pimple of ego, tamping down the grandiosity, counteracting the poison of praise that fed the tyrant, â&#x20AC;&#x153;(Remember, baldy, you come from nowhere: you are a scrawny gangster, you rose by clawing up the ladder over your rivals with your dirty toenails, and you will fall just as hard.) Glory is fleeting, all glory is fleeting...â&#x20AC;? Come to think of it, maybe it all has to do with reincarnation. Even today, as a grown up, I feel as if Queen Victoria is part of my genes. Spiritual genes, of course. Her family is my family. I gauge all other royalties by their relationship with Queen Victoria, or their lack thereof. I have examined thousands of photos of QV and her relations, studied her family charts, read the stories of her children's lives, her ancestorsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; lives, the lives of her relations by marriage. I know more about her family than I do about my own. So when I come upon a new group photo of her extended family, it is like finding a gold earring in the sand. Somehow, it is comforting. It is also a challenge, like a crossword puzzle. Children, especially, are hard to pin down. And they are all so interrelated, it is sometimes a shock to recall that so and so was not only a cousin, but a brother-in-law, and an uncle, etc. Family shots are also a reminder that the royals are just people, with families, who get together for picnics and sit down together for group photos, kids on their laps, wearing disreputable hats, with bruises on their shins and uneven parts in their hair. The photo attached below is an example of a group photo which will lull me to sleep quite effectively. It's like counting sheep. All the people in this photo are related to Queen Victoria... and each other...many times over. Perhaps it's the convolutedness of those relationships that makes this picture such a good anodyne for insomnia. (Sometimes the royalties even invade my dreams. Sometimes I dream that I am meeting Prince Philip, Queen Elizabeth's husband and cousin, and a great-grandson of QV, and it is a high point in my life. Why my unconscious has chosen Prince Philip for this role is another question. Is it because of the number of crotchety and emotionally closed-off men who inhabit my life? Do I gravitate to the devil I know, even in sleep?) This photo commemorates a gathering of close family members who are royal to their fingertips, with royal ancestry dating back through the mists of time and through uncounted intermarriages between cousins, uncles and nieces, until some of their genealogies dwindle to one single pair of enumerated great-grandparents. Some of them could be their own sisters, their own mothers. It stretches the imagination beyond the comfort zone. It is the result of an institutionalized system of interbreeding practiced not just by the royals, but since their records are better than ours, it's easy to blame them for it. It, the system, which is still practiced by some families, can be characterized in negative terms. Maybe these need to be attributed to the original founders of the system, while their offspring can be let off the hook because they were just following the rules. It combines narcissism, the urge to commit incest, the desire to maintain a hold on the family wealth, snobbishness and xenophobia, on a sliding scale, depending on the preponderance of those particular interests and qualities within a generation. What was good about the system? It produced advantages for the family, and nobody else. Is this ambivalence attributable to my plebeian genes? To my own xenophobia, to a sense of outrage perpetrated against my own? A grievance bred in the bone by ancestors who worked, lived and died without leaving a written trace in the annals of the poorest chapel, whose names were unchiseled on tombs, too humble, and too rooted in reality, to aspire to anything but a bowl of soup at the end of the day? I'm not saying these people, my working class ancestors, were saints. If put into the shoes of the exalted, they would, some of them, have exhibited

the criminal flaws and banal failings of their lords and masters. They, too, were human, after all. (Not that that's an excuse.) Often they were separated from the mighty by the thinnest of veils: a rape, a seduction, financial catastrophe. Not that some of them, the so-called humble, didn't exhibit the worst traits: robbing, cheating, beating their wives and dogs and kids and neighbors. There's always an outlet, no matter how poor you are. But there's also the question of entitlement, just desserts. The Marxian principles swirled in the waters for centuries until the words formed themselves on the surface. Where would royalty be without the commoners who sew the raiments, who chisel the tombs, who curry the hunting horses, who fringe the surrey, who gild the baptismal fonts, who erect the palaces and pave the royal roads? â&#x20AC;&#x153;Look, people! The emperor has no clothes!â&#x20AC;? And yet, what truth would the truth teller have to tell, what would he have to point his finger at, what would he exclaim about in a dramatically uplifted voice, if weren't for the mighty who give him all that exalted subject matter? Town gossip is sad stuff compared to the golden manure you can pick up in the stables of the mighty.

excerpt from the full essay by Jan Thompson

Cocktail Hour Five, Dave Hardin

A Price for Literacy R.A. Shockley

Herman knew who'd done it—Fatnose Morehouse and the two jerks who ran with him. As a trio they defined the epitome of brainlessness at Blythe Middle—at least that’s what Herman had thought yesterday. Now he wasn’t so sure. Knowing his enemies didn't help, though. It was cold down here. His breath had turned visible only in the last hour, but he could swear that each cloud he exhaled swelled thicker than the last before dissolving into the growing darkness. He was the one who’d been stupid, he realized. Liking a story they’d read in Mrs. Lamsky’s lit class was one thing, but saying so, especially saying it so enthusiastically, had been a fatal move. Fatnose had seen his chance, and Herman could still hear him snickering in the back corner. It’d been an evil snicker, punctuated with one quick snort through his namesake. As hard as it was to believe, he’d underestimated Fatnose. He’d always judged the bully’s intellectual capacity as microscopic, but even Fatnose had responded in his own perverted way to Stockton’s “The Lady or the Tiger?”. Herman wasn’t about to offer him any new respect given his current situation, but he couldn’t deny the evidence that Fatnose had actually been listening. Herman watched the dust drifting up toward the cellar’s filthy joists, each speck luminous in the sunlight that streamed, nearly horizontal now, through the lone, barred vent just below the ceiling. That dust had been invisible two hours ago, before the sun had sunk so close to the horizon. He'd never been in Blythe's cellar before—hadn’t even known that the school had one. He wasn't, in fact, certain that that's where he was. The walls had the same brick as the school, though, the same messy, communityvolunteer mortar in its joints. That was the first thing he'd noticed when he'd finally squirmed out of the burlap sack they'd stuffed him into. There wasn't much else to look at—just an empty cellar without even a furnace. He shivered and decided not to think about the missing furnace. For the hundredth time he almost yelled for help, and for the hundredth time he stifled himself. The embarrassment would be too much. There were the two doors, after all, right in front of him, side by side in the far wall—at least one of them had to be a way out. Also for the hundredth time, Herman asked himself Why? Why would any cellar have two doors, side by side? He worked at piecing together the school's layout, trying to imagine what room configuration would account for such a need. But he couldn't even remember how many halls and rooms the ancient building had. Quiet. It was so quiet now. Everyone would have gone home hours ago. He doubted that even Fatnose would have waited this long to play the game out. He was alone, alone with a choice. Again, Herman marveled at Fatnose’s ingenuity. In fact, he almost damn admired it. It was that realization, he supposed, more than anything else, that kept him sitting on the floor, leaning against the far corner in the growing cold. If Fatnose could invent this predicament, what could he have imagined to leave behind the frigging doors? Not a tiger, but something bad, of that Herman was certain. "Fatnose!" He'd screamed without thinking, startling himself with the loudness of it. He steeled himself against whatever would come next, whether nothing or embarrassing rescue. Only silence. He nestled back into the corner, thinking the walls' closeness might help him conserve heat, then moved away

again, thinking they might absorb it from him instead. That had to do with the second law of thermodynamics, he recalled. They'd covered that in science last week, but Mr. Ragsdale’s explanation wasn’t helping much. An hour ago he'd managed to touch the handle of the first door, but only the once. His hand had fallen from its tarnished steel, commanded by a brain far wimpier than he had ever imagined his own to be. He hadn't even approached the second door, more afraid of repeating his first pitiful performance, perhaps, than whatever Fatnose had left behind it. He tucked himself further into the corner, shivering constantly now, and slept. When he awoke, there was only darkness, cold, and quiet. He tried to rise, managing it on his second attempt after first falling from the stiffness in his joints. He knew the direction of the doors, or at least knew he could find them by feel if he had to. He had to get to them—the cold had become a physical pain that seemed worse in the deadly quiet. He could no longer hear even the occasional car on the highway that he knew lay only a hundred yards across the athletic field. He made two steps, three, then four, but the fifth wouldn't come, no matter how hard he tried to force it. The fifth would bring the doors closer, too close. He might touch one again, might even open one, but then what? If he chose right, he might still be locked in the school until dawn. If he chose wrong . . . what? From outside the cellar walls he began to hear loud, cracking noises, some followed by muffled crashes. He welcomed it, this break in the awful silence, until he realized its source. Ice. There was ice in the oaks, breaking limbs to splinters and dropping hundreds of pounds of wood and water to the ground. Ice. For a moment the realization hid another, even scarier awareness. He could no longer tell where he was, could not decipher the direction to the corner, doors, or vent. He dropped to his knees, then lay on the freezing floor, reaching out with his long legs and shuffling on his belly until he kicked a wall. He crawled to it, then along it, praying. He wept when he realized that the prayer was only to once again find his corner. Along the joint between the brick wall and floor he felt wetness, a cold, hard, slick wetness. Desperate, he reached along the wall into the darkness. Nothing. He reached further still, willing his arm to stretch beyond anything it should have been able to reach until, finally, his fingers touched a wall perpendicular to the first. His corner. He crawled to it, cowered into it. He could feel the border of ice along the joint, could feel where the ice yielded to water, and, through the night, where the border moved further across the floor. He felt the ice, the cold, the darkness, the aloneness, far into the morning hours, felt it all until he could feel nothing more at all.

Book Miriam Sagan

a map of Manhattan a phantom phone call Â Â voices in the street what if this is only one book? why must it be perfect cuts from Arches paper unfolding the city's skyline in silhouette or setting a line from Rilke? why can't it be made from ice or glass why can't it sometimes be blank as if writing were reading? what if books were arranged on the shelf no longer by color but by bird feathers, or Coptic binding, petals, guitar notes, buttons, beads paperwasps' nest folded fan? what if this were a spirit book which is just a basket of two sisters together the reader and the writer

Contributors

Heather Bell Heather Bell's work has been published in Rattle, Grasslimb, Barnwood, Poets/Artists, Third Wednesday and many others. She was nominated for the 2009, 2010 and 2011 Pushcart Prize from Rattle and also won the New Letters 2009 Poetry Prize. Heather has also published four books. http://hrbell.wordpress.com

CL Bledsoe CL Bledsoe is the author of the young adult novel Sunlight; three poetry collections, (Want/Need), Anthem and Leap Year; a short story collection called Naming the Animals, as well as five forthcoming books. A poetry chapbook, Goodbye to Noise, is available online at www.righthandpointing.com/bledsoe.

Alex Gallo-Brown Alex Gallo-Brown is a poet, essayist, and fiction writer based in Atlanta, Georgia. His work has appeared in publications such as The Rumpus, Salon, The Brooklyn Rail, The Collagist, Bookslut and many more. He is an MFA candidate in fiction writing at Georgia State University. www.alexgallobrown.com.

Tres Crow Tres Crow lives in Atlanta with the two people he loves most in the world. He's been published in such places as decomP, The Foundling Review and Loose Change. You can find him at his blog Dog Eat Crow World. www.trescrow.com

William Doreski William Doreski teaches at Keene State College in New Hampshire. His most recent books of poetry are City of Palms and June Snow Dance, both 2012. He has published three critical studies, including Robert Lowell’s Shifting Colors. His essays, poetry, fiction and reviews have appeared in many journals. Maggie Ginestra Maggie Ginestra curated the art for this issue of Loose Change magazine, as well as for its previous issue. She earned an MFA in Writing from Washington University and was the Editor of Staging Old Masters and Staging Reflections of the Buddha, two collaborations between Prison Performing Arts and the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts. Recent publications include poems in Drunken Boat, Thermos, SuperArrow, Forklift Ohio and With Scale.

Howie Good Howie Good, a journalism professor at SUNY New Paltz, is the author of five poetry collections, most recently Cryptic Endearments from Knives Forks & Spoons Press. He’s written numerous chapbooks, including Elephant Gun from Dog on a Chain Press, Strange Roads from Puddles of Sky Press and Death of Me from Pig Ear Press. http://apocalypsemambo.blogspot.com

Dave Hardin Dave Hardin is a Michigan poet and artist with poems published in 3 Quarks Daily, Literary Kicks, Pocket Thoughts, The Drunken Boat, Epigraph Magazine and Detroit Metro Times. He contributes work to Scrum,

http://scrumsideup.blogspot.com, a blog of poetry and satire and self-published A Ruinous Thirst, a collection of poems, in 2012.

Joshua Jarrett Joshua Jarrett grew up all over northwest Georgia and moved to Columbus in 2009 to study fine art at CSU. His southern heritage is of great influence to him as is his literary background. His artwork generally concentrates on the quiet and personal using loose lines and softened color.

Jamie McGraw Jamie McGraw lives in and sometimes leaves Charlotte, North Carolina. She enjoys watching YouTube videos of baby animals eating spaghetti, and also sometimes writing poetry.

James Matheson Morton James Matheson Morton is an undergraduate writing and linguistics student at Georgia Southern University. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Linden Avenue Literary Journal, The Lyric and the Blackshear Literary Journal. He is the intern-editor of Clapboard House Literary Journal and a reporter/photographer for the Thomaston Times.

Max Nord Is a romantic free for all with a cursed digestive system.

Kevin O’Kelley Kevin O is a Georgia native and currently resides in Atlanta. It is in this sprawling city that he received a B.F.A. in Printmaking from the Savannah College of Art and Design with a Minor in Film and Television and currently works at Danger Press.

Miriam Sagan Miriam Sagan is the author of twenty-five books, including the poetry collection MAP OF THE POST (University of New Mexico Press.) She founded and directs the creative writing program at Santa Fe Community College. In 2010, she won the Santa Fe Mayor's award for Excellence in the Arts. http://miriamswell.wordpress.com

R.A. Shockley R.A. Shockley’s stories have appeared in Emrys, The Del Sol Review, Scribble and Smoking Poet, among others. He has also received a best manuscript award for a novel at the Maui Writers’ Retreat and a writing residency at the Wildacres Retreat in NC. Literary workshops he has attended include Bread Loaf, Sewanee, Wildacres and The Kenyon Review.

Michael Sukach Mike Sukach’s fiction and poetry appears in The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, The Hamilton Stone Review, Ontologica, theNewerYork, Cellpoems, The Bicycle Review, The Blast Furnace and The Citron Review. He currently resides at seven thousand feet in the Cheyenne mountains in relative accord with wild turkeys, bears and mountain lions.

Jan Thompson Jan Thompson spends most of her time thinking about and working on a big, complicated fantasy and cosmic conspiracy novel. The rest of her time she spends tending to her chickens. Last week she had to save them from a marauding pack of coyotes. The chickens keep her grounded.

Olga Wojitas Olga Wojtas is a journalist and writer in Edinburgh, Scotland, where she attended the school which inspired Muriel Spark's The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie. A number of her short stories have been published in literary magazines and anthologies in the US and UK.