Paris/Atlantic 2016-2017

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Paris/ Atlantic 2016 2017

6, rue du Colonel Combes 75007 Paris FRANCE

The American University of Paris

EDITORS

Alfredo Renteria Melissa Monique Halabe

CONTRIBUTING EDITOR

Siân Melangell Dafydd

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PARISATLANTIC

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WRITING

WRITING

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WRITING

WRITING

MESH

harsh words......................................................................................................................................john sargent 2 witch of heads lane......................................................................................................................alessio zanelli 4 mother was...............................................................................................................................elisabeth mulroy 5 osteopath......................................................................................................................................lethu msimang 6 maple.................................................................................................................................................john sargent 8 red woman.................................................................................................................melissa monique halabe 9 beckett barn...........................................................................................................................eleanor dickinson 12 the stare-case...............................................................................................................................maysan nasser 13 mr habib..............................................................................................................................................isabella rao 16 what it is to be loved.................................................................................................................lethu msimang 18 messe......................................................bejko, conlin, cortez, dafydd, duncan, harvey, lynch, tollitson 19 gwen........................................................................................................................................................olivia baes 20 a tavern’s venus............................................................................................................................maysan nasser 23 ()............................................................................................................................................................molly astley 28 torso................................................................................................................................................hanna gressler 29 coming alive.............................................................................................................................elisabeth mulroy 31 peach...............................................................................................................................natalie stamatopoulos 33 realism: a painting in three chapters........................................................................siân melanell dafydd 34

SALT

up to val ventina...........................................................................................................................alessio zanelli bath...............................................................................................................................................alfredo renteria the sea is the mother...........................................................................................................charles simmonds momentum........................................................................................................................................ian tollitson marijuana.........................................................................................................................................kanak kapur tissue......................................................................................................................................................alex cohen rose meat............................................................................................................................................elijah sevier mother’s perfect man.................................................................................................................khadija sanusi great holy........................................................................................................................natalie stamatopoulos beautiful things...................................................................................................................................felix purat paul’s mind....................................................................................................................................alessio zanelli there was so much we could not have guessed,.................................................................gerald fleming haram...............................................................................................................................................melina salem the way of the monk...........................................................................................................charles simmonds admonitions.......................................................................................................................l’émir omar chéhab beyond our means.......................................................................................................................jeffrey greene

LEET

40 42 44 45 48 50 51 52 55 56 60 60 61 61 66 68

sometimes..................................................................................................................................beatrice duncan 72 ments meg uram minket/spare us, oh lord....................................................................noemi bodnarova 73 voyeurism....................................................................................................................................alfredo renteria 78 potatoes for twenty.....................................................................................................................maysan nasser 79 little l33t poem..............................................................................................................................#gen3ration_Y 81 %%%%%%%%%%.............................................................................................................................ellis carter 84 californian diary...........................................................................................................................sharon hakim 86 love7.....................................................................................................................................................elijah sevier 88 binary world..................................................................................................................................sydney zorbas 94 garden in the shoulder for now............................................................................melissa monique halabe 95 the spirit of the land............................................................................................................charles simmonds 96 bubblegum pink..........................................................................................................................sarah sturman 98 things, i’m curious....................................................................................................................ainsley lundeen 106 natural augmentation.....................................................................................................................ian tollitson 111 ix

ART

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ART

mhana al-nauimi 22-23 molly astley 48-49 simay demirel viii, 34-35, 57, 101, 108-109 eleanor dickinson 10-11, 12, 15tr, 58-59, 64, 65, 72, 82-83, 93 claudia galtes 103 jeffrey greene 69 melissa monique halabe xiv, xv alfredo renteria & melissa monique halabe vii, xii, xiii, 37, 112-113 krystin haser 3 adrien lee 30, 40, 107 ainsley lundeen 84-85 jesse merchant 14tl, 28-29, 53, 67 elisabeth mulroy 4, 18-19, 24, 38-39, 92tl, 96-97, 110 sophia ann passin 114 sophie peculinas 7, 50c, 56, 62bl, 76-77, 86, 92bl, 104-105 isabella rao x-xi, 50l, 51, 98 alfredo renteria 14bl, 15br, 46-47, 54, 63, 71 charles simmonds 43, 62tl, 87 caroline thee 41

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Editorial : Melissa

Editorial : Alfredo

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H arsh Words John Sargent

She was nineteen and somber, her eyes thick and dark, brimming with unimaginable depth and severity, like black pits of ink that pooled upon her face and shimmered as she moved. Her skin was soft and pale, speckled in silvery white hairs that shone starkly on her arms, which seemed long and tender next to her body, two branches that ended in slender, elegant fingers.

I was younger, seventeen, quieter in demeanor and less imposing. Unsure, fearful. But it wasn’t that I was afraid of the world, I was afraid of myself, of what I would discover if I peeled back the layers of my own skin and probed the exposed ruby flesh with an inquisitive finger. I wasn’t ready to unlock the aspects of a self that I did not know or trust. I felt doomed to linger through life without purpose, and more importantly, without flame. There was no part of my soul in which I could locate something that burned, or even smoldered. Instead, I found reluctance and self-pity, excuses and lament.

But something softened in me through her. At first it was unidentifiable, it felt foreign and invasive like a weed, but it had purpose despite its ambiguity. I felt as though she was reaching through me, extending her hand out the small of my back to grab something I could not see, when all of a sudden she would retract her arm and tear another inhibition from my interior, leaving me hollow but stronger.

Finally it came down to a single instance, a single chance meeting on the street. We walked, exchanged few words, and finally ended up somewhere in the city, a café tucked away into the cobblestone veins of its ceaseless sprawl. This is where she dealt her death blow. It was a simple word, one I can’t remember, but it rendered me hopeless at the feet of who she was. I finally burned, and I was overcome by a brutal and ecstatic sense of yearning that broke my skull and crumpled my spine.

I wanted to grab her by her ribs and embrace her. I wanted to force myself into her sternum until I split her apart. I wanted to dive into her as deep as I possibly could. I wanted to sink and drown in her warmth, I wanted to choke on her scent, I wanted to gasp and cough as I slipped further down into her until the light from the surface of her soul faded and I was crushed by the building weight of her above me.

I wanted to get lost in the crevices and looming expanses of who she was, for in front of her I felt like a sinner standing in front of a church, a meagre thing stripped of identity and direction, a creature cast rudely down upon the stones of salvation.

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I felt like an object, something to be used and molded. And as her object I wanted to be handled. I wanted her to take those elegant fingers that dangled in front of me and shove them deep into my chest, clawing out my flesh like clumps of clay and laughing while she smeared me across the face of the sky. Never in my life had I been so beautifully and completely stifled by the raw, innate nature of another person.

Sure there had been other girls, girls who smelled nice and offered shy, ineffective gazes. And of course I’d had sex before. I was familiar with the mutual forgetting, the abandonment of memory for a brief period in order to be overcome by the clutching and the sweat, the forfeiting of self-understanding in order to be fully engaged in the animalistic futility and denial. But never before had I wanted to consume someone and be consumed by them. Never before had I want to sacrifice everything of myself on another person’s altar and say, “Please, have more.”

So we stood there under that silent cacophony of pitiless stars, the bones of our spirits borne bare to the world, feeding upon one another as the sun slipped far beneath the horizon.

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The Witch of Heads Lane Alessio Zanelli

There’s a huge stony Celtic harp on the driveway, by which a stony hooded druidess sits and stares, pensive over facing woody slopes in Ewden Valley.

The tiny house is made of blackened millstone grit just like almost every structure on the moorlands, but the weirdly elusive soul of her who lives in it stands apart from all the people’s in the milieu.

Céad míle fáilte reads a ground-fixed marble tile in plain sight right at the entrance to the premise, yet for sure nobody’s feeling welcome once inside.

No one’s ever seen the chimney smoking in winter, any courageous beastie venturing the eerie yard, any wild flower showing in the unattended garden.

There’s a witch inhabiting a cottage up Heads Lane, although most may think she simply exists as a fancy.

However, if you want to stroll the hill ridge—I daresay, you’d better hurry past the place and not be peeking.

Before being hexed the Vicar used to live a mile away.

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Mother Was

Elisabeth Mulroy

mother came down, cold and wet on my breasts & cheeks & toetips icy kisses dropping like bombs from the storm above

mother was the billowing river of incense smoke the ribbon curling in (finitely) in upon itself mother was the lime green tint of herbal tea picked fresh from the garden morocco mint & rosemary but mostly rosemary mother was the dirt under my nails that i could never get out no matter how many times i scrubbed with the little brush mother was the chandelier of dewdrops clinging gently to the pine rainbow jeweled in the first minutes of sun after a week of rain mother was the mole, squashed on the road by a car that i buried and wept over insides out, like that, red & dead so tender paws up, tongue out to the fresh-aired taste of surrender 5

The Osteopath

Lethu Msimang

The osteopath tells me my intestines are in knots, because I miss my father, now there is a hole in my heart. It has crippled the right side of my body she says, and I laugh as she speaks. She is quaint and petite, she looks like a black bird with the spirit of june.

Except I’m thinking about my lecturer, about my basketball coach, about that croaked old man with his watch and his toys. She’s wrong, I tell myself, I haven’t seen my father in years. It’s like that where I’m from, not a bone in my body aches.

— How’s your balance, she asks.

— I always trip on my right foot, it’s like that in my family, my mother does the same.

She fiddles with my hip bone, with my head and my toes. When she’s done she says I stand better, that both my feet are steady on the ground. But how could she know my heart by simply looking at my posture. She says my back hurts from a pain in my womb, that our lives are inscribed on the surface of our minds. But does she know I killed my child, or of the time I almost died, when I couldn’t see the traffic cause the sun was in my eyes. Does she know I tried to write, in a small attempt at flight, before my mentor said I ought to feel the ground beneath my feet…“get a note pad,” he said, “document concrete expressions…then write some more. ” So I wrote some more just as I was told.

I think his hair line was receding. I noticed that then, when I thought to rip his heart from his wife and from his child.

Note: This poem was previously published in The Spitton, located in Beijing, China.

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Maple

John Sargent

Tightened, bony branches, eyes and ears towards earth the first stirrings of soft roots in softer dirt.

The strength of a tree starts in the fall, when gravity imprints into the lips of the earth, the final form of future height by way of a simple seed.

Then, arms jutted out towards God at dawn, supple paper leaves casting brittle shadows that whisper of seasons to come and break upon the forest floor, as the rigid bark feels its first bite of spring. I should’ve been a maple, and known from the start where the supple buds of purpose flower.

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Red Woman

Melissa Monique Halabe

red woman, vast, extend over the ocean, stretch over the redwoods, sleep, drink sap, cry, choke, now revert back to the soft state, curl into warm bones, thighs, hear heart in palms, beat, air, polluted sky, pink, pink dream, purple worries, kaleidoscope sex, eat ego, salty, bitter like dark coffee, collapse into self, nothing & everything, the cosmos, punctured moon

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B

e c k e tt Barn

Eleanor Dickinson

After a great wind, the grass around the base of the structure is often littered with red flakes, like lead potpourri, falling on all the ground dwelling creatures, burrowing down deep into the earth away from the toxins of man. So many parts of the barn had been changed over the years, like a wealthy housewife, noses shortened and elongated, fat sucked out only to be ejected back in another place, eventually only hobbled together by stretched taught ectodermal tissue, silicone, semen and cash.

The horses were never comfortable in there; the ceilings were much too low for their towering height. They had frightened me as a child, for I doubted I could control such a beast with just my inner thighs. It wasn’t until I was much older that I had the realization that all the world is controlled by what is between women’s thighs.

It was a barn meant for cows, as the farm was meant for dairy farmers, and the large pastures which I frolicked in when I was young were meant for nourishing cows and not for frivolous play. The back of the barn always smelled like rot, like a decomposing log you can’t help but sink the toe of your boot into on a walk, wanting to see what creatures call this strange abode home; only recently did the rot show its ugly face, instead of remaining hidden in the corners and supports of beams and walls. The claws of time are more destructive than any professional, the demolition was efficient and thunderous, spooked the hell out of the horses and made it awkward to leave the back of the barn. Pools of maggots, termites and other grisly vermin were feasting on the rotten black flesh of the barn, as on a long deceased corpse.

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The Stare-Case Maysan Nasser

I want to build bridges with mouths that know how to part without hurting anyone.

I want to build bridges with men who won’t ask me questions that make my hand clench into a fist.

I want to build bridges with women who aren’t scared to linger, who aren’t scared to stay for a few seconds longer, when my arms wrap around them.

I am tired of the “I’m busy”s and “no thank you”s I want the “why not?”s and “I know”s and all the shade of the unknown in you. I want to feel like I am always at the cusp of knowing more and your lips are a gateway to a world of images that don’t quite know how to fit themselves into words, but aren’t scared to try, anyways.

And we have time, my love, this bridge I want to build might be heavy but I’ve wrapped metal arches under my tongue just so you can stay. I want to not crumble when you look at me, I want to learn how to hold that space and not look away sooner, I am hungry, my love, for all the unsaid and all the almost touch me with your glance, I promise I won’t cringe, I promise I won’t amputate every sentence, I promise I won’t cave into the noise that says you are going to hurt.

Come, blue, brown or bruised, I want your eyes in every shade of surprise every childhood story that leans on the side of them I see them, I know you know, but I won’t say anything, keep the door closed, for now, I can see the knob twist and I know from the sores under my tongue that we might have this for a little while longer.

I want to build bridges with men who don’t say my name like it’s a cough they couldn’t get rid of, I don’t want words that feel like hiccups, I want men like you, who say things like “get home safe” and yes sure, so did they, but at least your eyes don’t break away right after, at least your eyes don’t look like they’re constantly on the cusp of laughter, the cynics, the maniac imposters, the ones always sharing an inside joke with themselves, about you.

And you ask, why am I so paranoid?

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Haven’t you heard of the saying that goes: “Tell me who you’ve loved, and I’ll tell you who you are?”

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Mr Habib

He spent every Sunday at the marché, sitting on the same corner stool, surrounded by many of the same people. From his perch, he could watch the market unfold, and not miss one exchange or inquiry. On her own, Fatima had come to call him Habib, knowing well that was not his given name. One day, he came in to sit on her corner stool and had not missed a Sunday since. Removed from and personally unknown to the regulars, his presence had still become part of their scene. It was never imposing, but still necessary and respected. Sunday without Habib would feel empty, strange.

Fatima had fostered a fondness for him that she tended in the depths of her chest. He watched the crowd with such an intense gaze, a protector of their beloved marché, for reasons unknown. She wondered what compelled him to his perch and often imagined that he was waiting for someone there.

He arrived at seven promptly, when the espresso bar opened and the family descended the spiral staircase from their apartment above. They dispersed towards their duties. Fatima maintained the flow at the bar. She could pull a seamless cappuccino while rigging the machine for a row of short-order espressos. Her husband stood opposite, behind the counter lined with rows of packets. They sold different grinds and blends of coffee—whole bean, pre-ground—and each member of the family had the knowledge to suggest any product on the shelf.

Fatima’s brother stocked and restocked the supply, doing much of the heavy lifting with his capable body. Although most of his morning was spent eyeing the new hire and finding excuses to come her way. He would use the time it took to grab a box from the cave and hoist it back upstairs to think of cheeky jokes to tell her. He loved nothing more than the sound of her laugh.

“Daniel! I haven’t seen you lift a finger all morning. While the rest of us keep this family running...” He rolled his eyes at his sister’s reproach but pulled himself back downstairs.

The bar was nothing grand, lined with shelves from floor to ceiling, detailed in dark wood and coated by a pattern of grey and white tile. The copper of the espresso machine beamed proudly. It was a newer appliance that Fatima insisted would increase the quality of their drinks. She was right, of course. They had a steady flow of customers, especially on weekends. Many were neighborhood natives, or stand regulars: produce vendors and bakers. Some came, just like he came, to observe the spectacle of the market.

As customers left, they would turn to Fatima and praise her, announcing this to be the best coffee of their life, the most potent, fresh and flavorful. And she would always smile at the rag in her hands, clearing the cups and plates and wiping down the bar in their wake. That morning, the leading fruit vendor, a sun-spotted man

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Isabella Rao

who established his stall over twenty- years ago, emptied the remains of his porcelain cup. He returned it gingerly to its plated cradle and sighed.

“Well, back to work. Those strawberries aren’t going to sell themselves.” The others joined him in laughter. It was mid-January, hardly berry season. Still, each man knew that Jean, as they called him, could talk of fruit like it was the answer to every customer’s problem. “These figs will make your skin glow. Buy one kilo, and soon enough, your husband will be running back to you.” Jean pushed off his stool and fished a firm orange from his smock. Placing it next to his dish, he winked once at Fatima before turning on his heel and rejoining the crowd.

Fatima cleared Jean’s dishes and stored the orange away. It could be enjoyed later, when the market hum had calmed. She replaced Mr. Habib’s empty cup with a fresh double shot. He turned his gaze from the crowd to acknowledge the gesture with a typical reserved smile and gentle nod. She nodded politely in return, her eyes lingering on his. Steady on the counter lay his hand and she longed to reach out and stroke it. She cocked her head slightly, imploring him to speak. Would this be the day Mr. Habib imparted his intentions to her? But as the market closed down around them, the ground littered with skins and peels, the air raw with the exhausted laughter of the vendors, Habib left alone once again. He too, would thank her graciously like the others, in his own way. He always left a generous tip, well exceeding the measly price of his coffees. Fatima would divide it among herself, her husband, her brother and the new hire. It had become a ritual, bittersweet as the espresso she pulled. For she felt as though she was in a strange dance with this man, the only customer she knew nothing about, and yet the man for whom she supplied three sturdy cafés each week. Not to mention a well placed seat and a warm environment. He teetered on the border of her world and she wondered if he would ever cross over.

As they watched his back wind through the skeletons of the stalls, veering away from splintered crates and forgotten heads of lettuce, Fatima’s husband grumbled. “What a strange one. Never once opens his mouth to speak. Just sits and watches from his safe corner.” Fatima tore her gaze from the man’s back to reply, “There is a strength in silence, I think.” Her husband pursed his lips and shrugged, turning back to counting the register.

As their children piled through the open doors, a panting bundle of scarves, coats and screams, Fatima herded them to the stools of the bar and pushed away her thoughts of her Habib. Until next week. She retrieved the orange from its hiding place and began to slice it thinly. The family gathered around her as she doled out the ripe slivers and relished the sweetness of another whole day.

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What Lethu Msimang

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I call him a horticulturalist because he mows the lawn and waters his weeds because he loves to read in his garden And I laugh at every joke he tells Consider all his thoughts because I think he knows what others don’t because I love his height and his hands So each time he speaks I listen but I never understand I’d prefer it if he touched me or plucked me a rose from his garden.

I imagine falling asleep in his armchair, dreaming of a pebble in a stream loving him old while I am young planting a tree which outlives us.

Except, a man of his wisdom should know better than to love a child who wants to know but thinks she knows who might not ever know

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be

Loved

M

e

s

s

e

(Overheard at the Frankfurt Bookfair. Collaborative work by Alen Bejko, Ciat Conlin, Danica Cortez, Siân Melangell Dafydd, Beatrice Duncan, Amelia Harvey, Michelle Lynch and Ian Tillotson)

Hagrid is on the elevator Yes yes they’re selling each for fifteen thousand a piece Will you be at Versopolis? Yeah yeah yeah good You’re in the zone with the turnstiles Have a nice day Çe soir You cannot buy books today Donc vous avez 5 mins pour apprendre le français This is the blue couch Take it to Bologna Taxidermy and then karaoke That’s all I have left Gertrude Stein smoked some crack and touched everything in the room I can feel it in my hands It’s just a professional interest I will let you know next week But I didn’t make it yet I’ve a friend whose half Turkish and half Swedish and she loves this stuff It will cost That other Frisian, whatshisname I’ve only read the first one We do not interfere with what the childs want Give us a few more minutes We have 13,466 islands Maybe he’s like getting something to eat or something I mean fair enough It was just the end of the world and everybody put a spoon in the peanut butter

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Gwen Olivia Baes Note: In April 2016 I was cast for the role of Welsh painter Gwen Mary John in Jacques Doillon’s Rodin (2017). As part of my research on Gwen, I read countless original letters she wrote to Auguste Rodin at the Rodin Museum. On those nights when I felt most like her and least like myself, I would sit and write these little poems as a further way out of my soul and into her own.

Gwen I Now I’m asked to stand nude, hear the sound which says I can move, go about her movements, not my own, but those of a muse.

I have waited so long and yet somehow I knew: I’d rather own than be owned, would rather be my own muse, would rather be no muse at all.

This is what is so amusing.

And to leave all things unshaved, to leave all things unwashed, to go just as I am, with nails that yellow in the sun and freckles like stains upon the white of my skin; what on Earth will I do?

Perhaps I will finally meet the painter, my maker, there in front of the lens.

He will tell me: Now lay still and be quiet.

But we speak different French.

Whatever I say I am foreign, whatever I do I am other, whichever way I blend I remain to be seen.

This has been spotted and nurtured.

There are no two ways to be a muse, first you move then stay still.

If you move too much you will be told to be still once again.

This makes me think of my dog, who, when I look away looks over, when I look over looks away; he is always pretending to be still.

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He thinks that this pleases me.

In this courtyard rain clapped down like thunder and I thought of all the minutes we have left together on this Earth and all I saw was a truckload, nothing more.

To be dumped somewhere indeterminate.

Much like Gwen, maybe.

The void and the fancy, the guts and the horror.

She turned to God but this did not bring her as much peace as she would have hoped, she would have hoped for more but God is too big a thing to hope for.

I for one have lost all hope in my body turning mute. It continues to sound.

Gwen II I want to stay near you forever, a pot, with its flower, a brush, or some plaster.

Let me be your inanimate object.

And Gwen’s letters, undated, all start with “Dear Master.”

As the years carry on, they don’t cease or trip up but get louder.

How little they know us, like the last of blue paint on a wall they just stripped to paint brighter.

See the problem with love is we label it thus, though it’s not really that: just an odd little creature with very sharp teeth and no master.

Gwen III What I’d most like to know, is how long ‘til my aura appears?

And if I sneeze, will I expel you at all?

Or can I keep you inside me like smoke?

Gwen IV Today I’m so empty, I may as well be full.

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Gwen V Here we are again, discarding our old ways, looking, always, for better means to sluice the soul.

You cannot unlearn what you already know.

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A Tavern’s Venus Maysan Nasser

I once read that sex was a momentary attempt to ease the inescapable weight of our solitary human existence. In the moment, sex, they said, offers the lovers relief from the relentless existential angst, and allows them, momentarily, to fuse into one. To escape the givens, the world that throbs outside, the churning noise of people, places, thoughts, things, of the endless abundance of what was, is and will be. It allows them the rare pleasure of being both fully within and without themselves.

Here, now, in this dim lit cave, I begin to understand. As a flickering candle bares her face a modest work of Renaissance art, and as her lips tremble and part—“This is my first time reading poetry to strangers,” I feel it. The immense privacy and intimacy of letting a stranger into your most convulsing emotions, into your most sensitive fragile parts, and letting them feast with their ears and eyes.

Deep sighs in between lines, her pauses almost a reluctance to continue, she looks up at me. “As you are in me, and the dawn behind you rising, rising because of you.”

She smiles and then shies away hiding behind the night of her thick, luscious hair.

My mind races to keep up with the words that flow, but I am whisked again into my mind, curious at how speechless I become in the face of words. How tremendously feeble I become in their presence. As they travel from her, to me, around us; as they hold my eyes, caress my ears, and allow me to be with her, in her, in me. As they cease to be the moment they are spoken, but relentlessly echo themselves with the taste of melancholy and retrospection. “Lusts of gardens. This next one is called February,” she continues. I do not pause for an interrupting, “Thank you.” She can see the gratitude in my eyes. My lips part, I notice them but don’t try to move, any little gesture can disrupt this moment, any little sigh can remind her that I am, and for now I just want to remain the silent intruder. My breaths deeper and stiller, I remember my mother’s fascination with the magic remedy. At nine years old, if any lullaby existed for me, it was spoken in rhythms and with a thick fragile voice, with pauses punctuating breaths, with music flowing in-between words. I have never let that go. And now as I breathe deeper, bite this tongue to remind myself to come back into the moment, I notice how poetry’s tongue travels and remains the same all at once. In an underground Parisian brothel, as a Puerto Rican tongue recites to me verses in English, I notice how poetry has always had the same voice.

How regardless of where it decides to breathe, pause or stop; where it decides to punctuate, culminate or halt. It remedied. How it sounded like the warmest candlelit underground Parisian cave. How it sounded like this moment. As Claudia runs her fingers across the page, tracing the lines, squinting her eyes, as she stops and asks for any special requests, as she giggles in a warm recognition at the flicker of lust in my eyes. As her eyes understand, and her lips pacify.

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As poetry renders me once again silent. Mute. As it renders this world quiet. As it blurs out, and and fades in, and spaces the silence… As—

The pimp’s knuckles harass the door to politely ask if we’re finished with this room. I nudge myself reluctantly into retreating out of the warmth. I muster up all I have in me to thank her but my lips part in the only honest truth I own—

“Thank you for resuscitating this soul.”

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PAR / ATLA

ARIS / ANTIC

()

Molly Astley

In the depth of the Sacromonte caves In the arch of the back and of the music In the breath of the dripping salty body In the tap, in the stomp, and the hiss love is animal, and it is ablaze.

In the feeling in my chest across the border.

Terracotta cracking sun, barren beach.

In the returning to some wilder taste of you at dawn I was dancing in the waves as you were fixed behind your lens, crystallising light, immortalising shape in my arms which traced the skies and welcomed heaven down.

Love is In the wanting to dissolve.

In the wanting to swell softly with the ocean.

In the turning in the diving in the fracture, love is animal, and it whimpers.

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Torso

Hanna Gressler

Once, in the palm of her thighs, a garden of raspberries flourished.

There, her legs glimmered a stream of light, the enablers of all that is seen and heard, like a violin’s bow before it touches string.

Men bowed beneath her bronze shield, hands extended as if they had something to offer, as if she was not already all that could be.

Now, no hands reach for her naked breast, crumbled above her heart like a rabid dog tearing apart his bait.

She wishes she could melt, but no mouth opens in her name.

The raspberries are rotten, her arms are stolen, and it will take centuries for her torso to decay.

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Coming Alive

Elisabeth Mulroy

coming alive rust throated and ruby and dripping diamond tears all our ugly fears laid out to be the sun is weak these days shying behind mother’s wooly skirt intimidated by the fire slowly licking up the trees I think I think too much paralyzed by over-reflection on closer inspection I think I should stop give in to the exhaust fumes churning through the streets, sour and black burning in my lungs, let them wash their coalish way through me and guzzle down that sickly sweet lemon dish soap pretend it’ll make me deliriously happy like those models on the label squeaky clean and full of shit just like me, most times could I strip off my face for a day peel it off like a blister, popped or dissolve behind a veil that turns me into dark matter (not empty, just black) carve out my eternal eyes please stop looking at me don’t see my infinity today it belongs to only me

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out OUT, darkness! worm your way out of my eyes ears slither through my purple autumn lips and don’t return I banish your part of me half-heartedly knowing you can never really leave I’ll just puke you into my words and hope they call it art brain feels trapped inside those giant metal talons that tractors use to rip up our world gotta stop smoking weed there’s a cork in my words that wasn’t there before they feel so distant locked up and away as if in the elusive secret center of a snail’s spiral that’s where you’ll find me in the elusive secret snail spiral center twiddling my swollen thumbs waiting for them to go numb and carry me up the next flight of stairs I’ll see you there I’ll see you there and carry me up the next flight of stairs waiting for them to go numb twiddling my swollen thumbs in the elusive secret snail spiral center that’s where you’ll find me spiral they feel so distant locked up and away as if in the elusive secret center of a snail’s world gotta stop smoking weed there’s a cork in my words that wasn’t there before brain feels trapped inside those giant metal talons that tractors use to rip up our and hope they call it art I’ll just puke you into my words knowing you can never really leave half-heartedly slither through my purple autumn lips and don’t return I banish your part of me worm your way out of my eyes ears out OUT, darkness!

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Peach

Natalie Stamatopoulos I am here again framed by a peachy soft fever, a viper takes a bite out of me and rests with the moon. Let’s assume that stars are aged prophets crouching in the sky, and that misshapen clouds are small goodbyes. I am missing the old cold that saved me from the night. I fell asleep once more in the morning.

Can a dormant crash wake and collide and create a more modern storm? A fruit fly heat for the summer? A brooding knucklehard winter? It’s oh so sad when the peach is so hard that it breaks your teeth, when at night it’s too cloudy to see. The viper hatches newly born from rain and sleet, a kind of girlish bending that blooms despite its own disbelief. And I, bathed by modern light stay the bruised peach punctured by her teeth. the bruised peach punctured by her teeth. disbelief. And I, bathed by modern light stay girlish bending that blooms despite its own newly born from rain and sleet, a kind of night it’s too cloudy to see. The viper hatches is so hard that it breaks your teeth, when at hard winter? It’s oh so sad when the peach heat for the summer? A brooding knucklecreate a more modern storm? A fruit fly Can a dormant crash wake and collide and night. I fell asleep once more in the morning. missing the old cold that saved me from the misshapen clouds are small goodbyes. I am aged prophets crouching in the sky, and that with the moon. Let’s assume that stars are fever, a viper takes a bite out of me and rests I am here again framed by a peachy soft

Natalie Stamatopoulos

Peach 33

Realism: A Painting in Three Chapters Siân Melangell Dafydd The Angelus, Millet We are in the Musée d’Orsay looking at the nineteenth century. God is not there.

There’s huger for divinity, for the reverence of God right there in a potato field in the modern world, with a wheelbarrow and working people on a week day. There: a hope for God. A gold frame.

This painting, relatively small, shows two people in the potato harvest at Barbizon with the church tower of Chailly-en-Bière in the distance. Places of earth.

To commemorate the Annunciation of Christ, the two mortals stop digging and pray. The man holds his hat, the woman looks to her feet. Their tools are all around, pitchfork and cart, sunset in the distance. The horizon, dove blue, yokes their chests to each other.

Millet’s painting is about land and living on it. From dust to divinity in potatoes and solid clogs. It says, look here at what we do. Our eyes go straight to the horizon. The couple is backlit. They have no features. That’s the point.

Neither can the painted bells be heard, but these two pray in the foreground: proof, ringing reaches ears – so the ringing, though silent, is real. This exchange between church bells and humans sparked another sort of adoration in the nineteenth century. Money, in giant sums was exchanged for it.

By the twentieth century, a reproduction of The Angelus hung from the corridor wall of Colegio de los Hermanos Maristas, in the Catalan town of Figueres, more than eight hundred kilometres from the bells of Chailly-en-Bière. Candlelight bounced from the field of hay, back into the corridor and onto the brows of schoolboys. One of them, passing underneath it between Catechism and the Canteen swore that, in the painting, he saw death.

Nobody listened to the boy. ‘Idiota,’ they said. ‘This is the Annunciation: Jesus is coming. Have faith.’

Still he saw a praying mantis in the mother’s silhouette and drew her all over his arithmetic and in the margins of poetry.

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His name, Salvador Dalí, meant something twenty years later, in Paris. On his insistence, the Louvre Museum X-rayed the potatoes. So, what did they find? A dead baby. It had been in its casket under the potatoes all along.

‘Three euros because the frame is real wood.’

The twenty first century now. A young man buys a reproduction of The Angelus at a car boot sale. It will add weight to the bedroom.

His wife says, ‘what are we looking at, exactly?’ as he hangs it up above the bedhead. He looks it up online over dinner. It is the pause just before a baby is born, a – let’s stop everything including work, and wonder – a hesitation at the top of the breath before you say ‘wow’ or ‘Amen’. And this painting becomes more beautiful for it. ‘The Angelus, Jean-François Millet,’ they say, together, as if by doing that, they seal the soon to be born baby into its painted place. This painting was meant for them.

The potatoes glow even at night. City dark is orange. It lights the potato field, the inside of the wheelbarrow wheel too, and the praying mother’s red sleeve.

There is a prayer for a baby. That prayer lights the blades of hay again. In the morning, they do not smell the sleep fug as they drink rooibos and eat white bread with chestnut jam. In the morning light, sometimes, one of them notices that The Angelus has been printed on too thin paper and it wrinkles slightly like fingertips after a bath, right there in the sky-space between the couple’s heads and the church tower. They don’t mention it. In the morning, they do not smell the sleep fug until they’re out of it, with the cars and buses and school-run scooters and they’ve gone their separate ways. Slung between them is the length of day, cigarette trails, blue pollution, and the baby, the baby is there somewhere. That is all they know.

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Up to Val Ventina

For Bigio, Moncio, Cindu and many others...

Alessio Zanelli

Hello, good pals of mine too soon gone by!

I seem to hear your chuckle echo mid the drops of rain still trickling from the larches, down remotely swooshing torrents, over my unrhythmic footfalls.

Firstly I had hoped I would have met you further up, across the silent basin, where the meadows nearly touch the glaciers.

Yet I’m happy that you wished to stay with me from the beginning of the muletrack all along the lone ascent.

At last I’m pretty sure: whenever I return to this alpine recess, beneath unshaking peaks, fatigued moraines, erratic snowfields— either trudging or apace, and even on the run— I can encounter cheerful friends of old I would no longer chance upon in any other place, as well as former selves— the child, the boy, the younger man— elsewhere dissolved and never coming back.

Thereat no stranger may intrude or have a say.

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BATH Alfredo Renteria Because to think of Bath would be, in the same instant, to think of the never-visited hill from which the façades of the stone townhouses would hit the eye, with strength, but not with violence, and to see the image, within the thought, of the circus that I have not yet walked and within which the sounds of the man’s automobile though, in the image the sound is absent, could not reach me, at least not before the color of the city, which to me seemed so bright, so vibrant, would envelop the hills, the townhouses, the wheels of the man’s vehicle, the circus and river and spires which, ever-reaching, could not evade nor burst through the grey, the fauve, of an essential atmosphere that could still spill over the automatic frame of the photograph which captured that bister and the spires; and,though rendered in a murky grey and a mottled grey, could none the less pierce my heart, already so swollen with a reverence and a love for the name and the hill, and so when I was struck by the place that I have never visited, a deluge of me, of Bath, of a mixture of us both, would burst forth from the wound engulfing me, containing me; and yet, though without breath, the sweet and numbing scent of the hyacinth in a garden secluded by a fluvial bend would still reach me; thus did the name affect me, then as now, for when that sphere rolls down the ear canal, reaching my tick-tock brain, still I see before me a woman of the city trimming the verge amongst silken gardenia, their whiteness shining through the grey.

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The Sea is the Mother Charles Simmonds

The sea is the mother & I am in her womb The sea is the mother & she is healing me Rocked back and forth & told to remember That I will always be the child & that I too am divine The sea is the mother & I roll in infancy Upon her sun kissed womb The Ocean of her power Handles me with playful grace I am the small heart Within her palm of ancient rhythm The sea is the mother & she wills my heart to know She holds me close The sea is the mother & I am in her womb 44

M o m e n t u m Ian Tollitson

Not just Newton’s law. It’s life. Running through alleys.

Drifting cars in street races.

Waiters catching water glasses about to fall. It’s inevitability.

It’s the end all and be all. Zero Kelvin exists only in theory.

Particles move, collide, bounce off everything. Blood pumps in veins. Adrenaline fuels lives.

Hearts going going going. The body never stops. Shadows move around constantly. Not just the physical.The spiritual.

Specters dance in minds. The wheel of reincarnation. Wheel of fortune. Wheel of earth.

Charon’s got a speedboat. Most active. The cries for stillness.

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Inevitably leads to a lot of reticent typing in the corner of parties / that time Maddie from Stanford announced, “I’m doing this ironically,” before French kissing a bottle of tequila for a good fifteen seconds / later that night when she interrupted a very large conversation to ask, “Can I just say that I don’t think Hamilton is a great musical?” / the end of that night when I texted Pascal and waited for answers I had already planned out – as if communication was a game where one side could lose.

Noun / usually stuck to the bottom of an overused ZipLock bag / accompanied

by Frank Ocean and a small bonfire / more often accompanied by the members of a group-chat titled “Politically Incorrect Squad” / was once found in a canister at the bottom of Academy Hill to which Miles Williams, a devoted stoner, responded, “Damn.” / often brings about a distinct craving for the town depicted in Gilmore Girls / sometimes with the need to read Hillary Clinton’s memoir / more recently with an urge to move to Ithaca and begin a career in musical theater.

Kanak Kapur

Marijuana—

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Love becomes, then, that one cold bench on the Palos Verdes cliffs where everyone knows his and her assigned seat / the sad way that we laugh when we talk about where we wish we were by now / David’s mother’s shrill voice when she smells what “I’m having friends over,” really means / the recurring and blatantly erroneous idea that I could have a musical theater career / the red of Pascal’s eyes / when nobody remembers to look poised when they eat / Frank Ocean and that small, small bonfire.

Also guaranteed to leave a trail of phlegm and a vague, often depressing rumination concerning the nature of love / easily cured by green tea and in more severe cases, text messages such as: “Your dad’s gambling habit is no big deal,” or “I’ll bring over some chicken.”

Always comes with a lot of questions; these include: Am I wasting my time smoking weed? Am I surrounded by good company? What would I consider good company for my own children? Was it immature of me to tell my friends about dad’s gambling habit? Is oversharing a flaw? Why do I feel upset when I get under fifty likes on a photo? Why is Kylie sleeping with the number of guys she’s sleeping with? What do non-idealized women look like? How do cameras work? Have I convinced myself that I don’t want Pascal because I know he doesn’t want me? Is there anything wrong with settling for someone’s company? How did grandma die?

Tissue

Alex Cohen I am naked in this dim, honeyed room warm with linen fine and perfumed.

Her hands, though thin, are soft, and whose touch, so feminine, smooth knots: clues,

secrets that no one could know; they hide— my limits do.

Time is slow, but only for a while “Rose, Coconut, and Chamomile.”

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Rose Meat

Elijah Sevier in the supermarket plastic red roses bud from slabs of blood-blushing meat the butcher handles cow kidney with the same quiet kindness he shows himself after his wife lends him her compassionate kiss, and her back just to look at. she reminds him of those plastic roses. kind of a limp-skinned signifier— but his knife is rather dull to her employees must wash hands he plays at hedonism with earnest knuckles, like a fucking champ! he knows a good cut of lamb is still baahhing at the cross yes, motherfucker.

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Mother’s Perfect Man Mother, I will walk down the aisle to your perfect man for me, but forgive me for the night I might come banging on your door, hopeless as I will be—shivering, screaming, crying, marks on my neck, a Ghana-Must-Go bag in one hand, my crying baby on the other — begging to be your daughter one more time.

Khadija Sanusi 52

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Great Holy

THE MAD LINK BETWEEN THE POETIC & THE CHEERFUL IS THE ~GROUNDWAVE~ LIKE, THAT FUTURISTIC HOOP YOU JUMP THROUGH TO GET TO THE MIDDLE OF SOMETHING. SOMETHING BETTER & ENDLESS & CHARMING. YOU JUMP THE FENCE INTO THE WATER. SEE JUST HOW CURVED YOUR BODY CAN BE. THE WATER HAS A DENT NOW THE SHAPE OF YOUR SORROW. FLAT BUT FRINGED & FIREY. WONDER GROWS GRADUALLY, LIKE THAT GAME OF HANGMAN YOU LEAVE FOR LATER. EXCEPT, YOU COME BACK TO IT & THE LITTLE MAN HAS ESCAPED. THE ACROBAT HAS FLED TO THE HOLY ISLANDS. HE MIGHT HAVE CAUGHT THE TRAIN FROM THAT ONE HOLY STATION. TAKEN A PLANE THROUGH THAT ONE HOLY SKY. YOU KISS YOUR HANDKERCHIEF & WAVE IT IN A HOLY GOODBYE. YOU HAVE A TWIN SET OF HANDS SAVED FOR THE NEXT ONE, WAVE MINDLESSLY, EXPERIENCE THE CULTURAL RUST UNDER YOUR FINGERNAILS, YOUR HANDS MIGHT BURN IN THE SUN. THE POETIC HAVE THAT SAME ADRENALINE, LIKE THE CHEERFUL WITH THEIR ADDICTIONS. THEY BOTH GIVE IN. & THEN FIND SOME REASON TO REVOLT AGAINST THEMSELVES, BOLDLY, WITH ALL OF THEIR HORSEPOWER. THEY MIGHT KEEP A TIGHT GRIP ON THE SIDE OF THAT ONE HOLY BRIDGE. THEY LIKE TO TALK ABOUT THE TRAGEDY OF THE HURDLE. BUT THEIR PALMS GET SWEATY, THEY MIGHT MISCALCULATE THE OUTCOME. FALL VICTIM TO THE COMPANY OF THAT GREAT HOLY SPLASH!

Natalie Stamatopoulos 55

Beautiful Things, Pt. I Felix Purat

Watching beautiful things outside my window Arrays of them in blurring winter disarray

I hibernate in stale, postmodern halls with Computers, examinations, limp beef ramen

The banal flavor activates paradox Paining me with the feeling of distant redwoods

Pristine, dripping with moisture from A smoky, drizzly Humboldt morn

In my condition, I have to accept that beautiful Things no longer rot on accessible shelves.

Beautiful Things, Pt. II

Beautiful things are dished Out like cheap edibles from A red-soaked Россия where I Wait with murderous impatience;

Finally beholding eastern front Casualties, only stale crumbs lie and die atop linoleum desperately dreaming to embody echoes of Enya.

The survival of beautiful things grows harder When your stomach screams in its torture chamber to an Eivør song I am too damn spoiled and horrendously anti-lingual to maximally appreciate;

The beautiful finally transmogrifies into the ugly, Too common and unable to amplify its meager twinkle Winks are more contextual to the 21st century At least I have something shiny to hide.

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Beautiful Things, Pt. III Beautiful things race through my wired mind; split second beehives, for these eyes once gazed on beauty; one friend’s brief assistance

for unknown reasons; souvenir from a past travel that

now I can never reveal; somebody whose lips never left

their souvenir on mine, as I could not afford it; slim pickings following a global desecration and mutilated aesthetics but still, this dog had a day long ago when days were still days when simplicity had not yet evolved from past complications, nor had beauty.

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Paul’s Mind

Alessio Zanelli . . . nil . . .

Out of it: all!

Us! What!

If! What if!

Shape . . . ω . . . Shape If what?

If? What?

Us? Out of all: it? . . . nil . . .

Note: Paul is physicist and cosmologist Paul Steinhardt.

There Was So Much We Could Not Have Guessed, Gerald Fleming

nothing that our best effort, deepest psychological study, any Bible, any knee-blistered hours of prayer, shock of plum blossoms, cobbled streets, whitewashed buildings, donkeys at the fence, whiskered crones, any hike to promontorial seasides, any whisper, rise of voice, harmony, notation could have practiced.

We knew this, though, didn’t we: if not in our brains, in our bones. We knew it would be us the words came from, our own throats and lips, and we knew that our arms around our daughters, sons, brothers & sisters, friends, would be a joy beyond language, beyond dialect—a fuel, really, to help us on.

And surprised at last by your surprise: raven cries came from it.

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Haram

Melina Salem

Haram, he is homeless. Haram, you stole from the supermarket. Haram, he shot children in the elementary school. Haram. A word for the elders. A term to give the religious ones peace of mind. Haram. It means forbidden or proscribed by Islamic law—that is how Wikipedia describes it. I had to Google the term. I was curious as to how the term should be used since I had never used it correctly. GoogleFrance says that Haram was used most during the 1800s and slowly fell. Now, in 2016 it is more popular than it was in the 1950s. I find that interesting. Haram now is used as a way to ridicule Islam; in this day and age it is not shocking. Even my American friends will use the term loosely; it makes them feel comfortable with the culture. Now it is, ‘Haram, my Uber driver was so excited about Drake’s new album, he almost cried.’ That is what the sacred term has changed to—materialistic and shallow.

Commonly misused by the newer generation, the generation of the Internet and social media. It is almost an act of rebellion, using this term freely. For us, for me, we have changed the meaning of it. Something beloved by the old has been taken and changed by the young. They merge it into their English and create a hybrid language that only their generation, the Arab children, can understand. Now it is a term to shame anything that is not the true Islamic dream. It is no longer my grandmother’s term of endearment and worry, it is my term of foolishness and sarcasm.

The youngsters will become the elders, and what will become of them?

That, my friend, is truly haram.

The Way of the Monk

Charles Simmonds Walking on velvet lingering absence The monk whistled annihilation Ignored god’s call to dance He chimed the bells of polite refuge Accepting in vain The echoes of death 61

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Admonitions

L’émir Omar Chéhab

Time makes a fool of pompous declarations Of savvy words and lacy formulations That queue up, bless them, for canonizations By virtue of their own, preachy relations.

There are those who testify demonstrations Reasoned, seasoned to support their contentions Joined by no less than seven explanations For how unfailing their argumentations!

Then there are those of such wealthy proportions That they must be above justifications.

Surely, must these impressive expositions Bear witness to deep philosophizations!

Only the brave, whose laudable decisions Somewhat lack the proper Sophistic-ations, Will put to rest the well-groomed prepositions, The skulls and glorious commemorations.

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Beyond Our Means Jeffrey Greene

By my desk is a black and white self-portrait taken before a costume party of my brother dressed up as Mercury.

The drape of the cloth, his silver spraypainted shoes, a chiton pinned at his left shoulder, the folds lit bright silver are in precise focus as is the scene, the passage between the oak-paneled dining room and the salon, the symmetry of multi-paned windows on the back porch in darkness, and faint light catching fire.

The chandelier is a flare of small bulbs, its own inner celestial cluster above his passing just beyond his winged head as he flies between rooms, holding a home-fashioned staff in front of him, the caduceus, twined snakes facing each other, topped with wings. With his wand in hand, he could put the awake to sleep and the dead to dreaming.

My brother was in his early twenties, lean, and muscular, balanced as he bends forward.

He could represent the alchemist of commerce and the flashy protecto of liars and thieves. He’d be dancing, Hermes filled with tricks. He set the camera on a tripod to frame the square of the salon entry off center.

With a timer, he caught himself on one foot, falling from left to right with the setting of the flash, the light glinting off his eye, a speck, a knowing glow.

A good photographer understands the inner narrative and

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transcends luck to capture the improbable, what feels just beyond our means.

He would see none of it, the cumulative accidents of light until days later when he wound the film in the dark on a spiral reel, placed in its matching stainless steel tank, agitating it with developer, stop bath, and fixer. Only then could he see the thickness of film, the quality of

the exposure, the emulsion of silver halide crystals, the latent image revealed chemically, salts turned black by light.

Note: Reprinted from Beyond Our Means (2016).

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S ometimes Beatrice Duncan sometimes I have a cock in the parc and metro in the morning and afternoon it’s there at night in an empty bed and if in good company it meets your touch (touch that builds shelves that opens doors that clinks pints hands taught to feel this is all wrong that we are dirty) hands that tell new stories sometimes I have a cock and it slides up your thigh and your breath rushes up each wall and sometimes I have a cock and sometimes it gets to be ours sometimes I have a cock and it’s my new language I understand but can’t yet speak

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Ments Meg Uram Minket Spare Us, Oh Lord Noemi Bodnarova Uram, irgalmazz Lord, have mercy Krisztus, kegyelmezz Christ, have mercy Uram, irgalmazz!

Lord, have mercy!

Uram, hallgass minket s Lord, hear us Uram, hallgass meg minket Lord, graciously hear us Ments meg Uram, minket!

Spare us, oh Lord!

A fiatalsรกg hargjรกtรณl, ments meg Uram, minket From the anger of youth, Spare us, oh Lord!

Spare us, oh Lord from the anger of youth! anger that makes the victim the torturer and the torturer the victim. anger that burns villages and eradicates histories. spills ink on memories, sours the taste of raspberries. strangles sweet moments, fouls the smell of violets. sees relief in cruelties, curses and screams ferocious voices.

Od hnevu mladosti, Osloboฤ nรกs, Pane!

From the anger of youth, Liberate us, oh Lord! young anger, almighty anger.

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just anger, powerful anger.

Ments Meg Uram Minket Spare Us, oh Lord devouring anger, unjust anger. obliterating anger, disgorging anger. anger, bottomless ocean, anger, incautious wrath. ill-advised rage, muscular outrage. reckless fury, infernal roar.

Od hnevu našej mladosti, Osloboď nás, Pane!

From the anger of our youth, Liberate us, oh Lord! the anger of the desert, the anger of hurricanes. sandstorms and thunderstorms, anger of disturbed waters. mad indignation, unstoppable craze. gun carrying madness, unsatisfied passion. Ó, ments meg Uram minket!

Spare us, oh Lord! non-discriminating, all destroying, from the youthful anger that ignites itself by its own burning. that finds no calming. that puts into flames weeds with the crops. makes the rain fall back into the clouds. anger that whips the messenger, anger that has no ears. knows no moderation, swipes away all pleas. anger that laughs at mercy, pierces the hearts of baby birds. pushes the sun to retreat, breaks the legs of fawns. forces the night to sprawl on its knees, haunts lovers in their sleep. anger that lacks the wisdom of the old, the innocence of the child. tears down the highest damps, stabs the marrying souls. blinds all bystanders, 74

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Because it happened offstage aI cursed myself for my mistake shot that missed andintact you avoided my violent gaze still which V oyto myeur now is advantage as Ito have ism my crystal bowl once more fill with scenes wherein you spurt and collapse onto inthe goose down wings tucked the point of your joint sticking into the feathers sticking out a refraction jumping off your cut side for then Ionly would be jumping off of you to resume my practice and intent upon intent not sotocruel as to shatter you nor even maim you it is not the skin fear of a broken shard piercing nothing so redundant the marrow has already enveloped the tip of yourfor particles indeed I have no need shards when your base already rests between my kidneys on an artery like a tightrope walker should you then shatter into pieces and coat and dress the adrenal glands the place our sexshards could your exist Ipieces amonly convinced your which covering myglobes small pyramids like mirrored requiring of course areflect geometric transition would still only you someday we will move you to a more elegant stand I would have you aonjerky a mandible if I and did not fear movement the swallow which wouldofprick and nick the soft tissues my throat unlike the determined prodding of Iyour prick instead a bowl which cannot shatter and which makes the room collapse Alfredo Renteria into itself the shards falling into you crystal bowl throwing itself onto down the a rigid prick goose whichfeather never poked eye Because it happened offstage I cursed myself for my mistake a shot that missed and you avoided my violent gaze still intact which now is to my advantage as I have my crystal bowl once more to fill with scenes wherein you spurt and collapse onto the goose down wings tucked in the point of your joint sticking into the feathers sticking out a refraction jumping off your cut side for then I would be jumping off of you only to resume my practice and intent upon intent not so cruel as to shatter you nor even to maim you it is not the fear of a broken shard piercing skin nothing so redundant the marrow has already enveloped the tip of your particles indeed I have no need for shards when your base already rests between my kidneys on an artery like a tightrope walker should you then shatter into pieces and coat and dress the adrenal glands the only place our sex could exist I am convinced your shards your pieces which covering my small pyramids like mirrored globes requiring of course a geometric transition would still reflect only you someday we will move you to a more elegant stand I would have you on a mandible if I did not fear a jerky movement and the swallow which would prick and nick the soft tissues of my throat unlike the determined prodding of your prick instead a bowl which I cannot shatter and which makes the room collapse into itself the shards falling into you crystal bowl throwing itself onto goose feather down a rigid prick which never poked the eye and never made it past my kidneys

Because she aches in silence, I don’t hear her more often than I do.

Because her street vendors, Mahmood, Hassan, Ali all wear the same shade of sun-burnt kindness, I don’t retain their voices within my memory.

Potatoes For Twenty Maysan Nasser

I a ed ch ve fill urt se nt he on en ou nd as m en so dy es ds sts ry ld nd ds ist ur all es ric ly ou ld id nd ck my eda nd se to elf id ye

“Batata bi Ishreen, baladi, baladi,” – an echoing of their merchant calls.

Their voices, shades of the same color, their carts, always a wheel screech ahead of their splintered sandals.

Potatoes for twenty, local, local.

The wooden creak, the wheels as the cement crumbles beneath.

Mahmood, Hassan, Ali, are their own time of day.

The phlegm coated shouts, remind my grandmother’s swollen feet of their daily walk to the medicine cabinet.

Right before the grating of rusting hinges as windows open to answer; right before the clatter of coins in outstretched fragile palms.

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Potatoes for twenty, local, local.

Mahmood, Hassan, Ali, used to be, always, a safe twenty minutes before the green mosque’s call for prayer.

Their voices warm, distant, from my trembling desire to remember what my city sounded like before her screaming missiles, howling guns, and wailing mothers.

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%%%%% Ellis

I have eaten my whole life Under caves; the obscure portions of reality I am passing; the destroyer of worlds That godhead lift the seals of eternity I caper on the edge of a volcano, child The breaches of the universe stretch before my eyes My knowledge invokes my faunal smile Within instinct and predation, something replies— I am a drop in a lake over a space in the world I label libel the appraise of plastic concaves I see in the strings micro-chasms of furls, And in minds, soft buffers of fictional brave Noble gasses cause fission in my mental sage Centennial billions relate photons with no age Photogenesis of skin, I expand and throw away Decay and transference are my solace and breaths in a day Our knees bend and snap under Gaia, the oxidate Pillars detach – pain never reached her And, in a catch, all that what I ate Blind scream longways as a universal preacher!

Bravo; my young ward To dictate and redact These chronicles of confusion With poetic tact…

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%%%%% Carter

But where are the flowers?

I don’t seem to recall…

I pace only hours Before the leaves fall…

Falling besets the whole of us And changing scares me deeply For every night that I look up at the stars I see them open and willing, fruitful and large— That each point within an expanding tension Gives possibility to a will, and forces to a start We are aversive at our point; playing in the large Perhaps today we can advocate trying And try again later For a forgotten still Within the reminding _ In the end, I am what nature permits of me Golden flakes of geologic ceremony When even in the dark foundations of memory There lies a swift passing of tempered energy But still we tread the worthwhile curse, The infinite tetris of falling universe

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Californian Diary Sharon Hakim

I’m eighteen. My hair and the fringes on my cow-boy jacket are tossed by the wind. It seems like we go faster than time itself. Who am I? Who projected Men onto Earth thousands of years ago?

Our fathers, who made our conception possible, and our mothers who brought us into the world, have nothing to do with it. They are themselves the victims of that ancestral abandonment which is the common lot of human kind.

Where am I going? For now, I only know Hunter’s car charging on the Californian

highway between Long Beach and LA, Hollywood and Long Beach. Hunter is older. The deafening music from the radio is like a buoy under our hands, clasped by despair. Hunter sings, screams, and beats the wheel like a damned man. I’m a frozen icon behind my pink sunglasses.

We drive for hours like the road matters more than our destination. The evening

sun illuminates a sky so beautiful I could rip my eyes out. It appears and disappears behind the dancing palm trees. Hunter drives in that golden light. Sometimes, he kisses my dark mouth and caresses my leg under my dress.

Hunter has a girlfriend and we call her Buggy. At night, they drive me around in the

backseat of her car without telling me where we’re going. They want to have sex with me. Both of them at the same time. I listen to them fighting, or talking about her musicals. She’s going to be a star.

On the Hollywood Walk of Fame, girls look like whores.

“Take me out, tonight,” Morrissey keeps singing in my head.

“Driving in your car, I never, never want to go home because I haven’t got one.”

He’s right.

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In California, everything is bigger. Especially forgetfulness. Did I have a life before

coming here? The angels of the city cradle and put my suffering soul to sleep. Soon, they turn into sirens but never loosen their embrace. On the leather couch at Buggy’s, in underwear sitting next to her, it’s been three in the morning for days. Hunter sings songs for me. It’s been a week. I still wonder what I’m running from, vaguely suspect that it’s myself.

On the weekends, I go back to Long Beach, to my friends. We cook together and

say we love each other. At night I sleep with Eric. He doesn’t speak much but caresses my hair when he knows I can’t sleep. Sometimes, Jennifer and Danielle sleep in the bed with us. In the morning, we eat ice-cream and play music.

I see our lives—slender pieces of existence indiscernible in the infinite.

We are dust already. It seems like we could merge into the decor, dissolve our

chimeric beings into the absurdly steady stream of what our impotence makes us call Life.

Roads, mountains, buildings will stand longer than us.

Are You here, hidden somewhere? Do You watch over us, Your children?

Then Hunter comes back to pick me up and we go again. On the road, I fear not to

find a way to make the ride last forever. Sometimes, a moment of inattention and reality catches me back, crashing against the back of my head. I remember my life in Paris. The people I know who study law or business. My head is spinning; the night caught me by the mouth. I made a robe out of the darkness. It’s 10 p.m. They wake up to go to their nice, quite lives. Through the open window, the wind still blows in my hair.

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LOVE7 ElijahSevier redistributing love is imperative among us all it is a dry kind of sloppy so that you are left by the sand dunes wearing a thong, talking about the idiosyncratic liberties that impede your comfort and the myth of the underwear line beneath jeans the only effective way to teach a child is through repetition you need mothers for children, and an earth for mothers if sex won’t save us what kind of urge will? to destroy and explode, seeking different kinds of force because even though nobody ever thought violence would get boring, it did. if we are kind first, I heard it is OK to be cruel later. would you yell at a piece of fruit to get sweeter? freedom is not interchangeable with escape we want freedom, not from the cage but from inside of the cage it would be nice to operate within a structure like Kafka’s ape. we can adapt to any kind of isolation even if we must become separate from ourselves incarnate as a means for survival, and perhaps the ability to thrive we must abandon the natural, and even learn to forget it there are beautiful contradictions, but this is not one of them. look for someone to blame, and if you can’t find them among your friends, look to the government if you find them first among your friends, fight it out with spitting and formal interrogations until you find a common enemy if the snake’s legs were removed as punishment for tempting Eve to the apple, it is funny how thousands of ancient paintings ignore this fact and paint the snake as if it had always slithered.

Raphael told Adam not think of outer space, that God made man with limitations capacities for thought that would never be fulfilled man distracts himself with war so that he is not forced to think of space yet it all closes in on him anyway.

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certain war criminals live so long that we grow ashamed to hate them anymore we yearn for second-rate sadness what makes us weep are first the victim’s tears and then his strife separatism becomes appealing. retrospect has alarming toxicity even the rose wilts at its former beauty most “visions” contain a carnal red, and we prepare instead of prevent if there’s milk in the bloodbath, it becomes a spectacle again beauty itself begins to envy the prodigious fullness of hatred baser instincts promote jealousy even among the senses eyes claim they can hear more than ears but all the while the mouth stays shut. what in us really wants truth? we wonder what makes truth better than untruth, or doubt what makes truth better than ignorance? we tend to believe that the falsest assessments of our selves are the truest we like to remember ways in which we’ve been wronged, a bit of grief can last years. once the ego is fed however, its belly swells with fatal hunger, demanding fattier praises. we are under the impression that to abdicate false judgments would be some kind of self-abandonment a denial of life itself, when really it is the most simply attainable freedom. nothing is more fleeting than the idea that we might find permanence of our own accord permanence is thrust upon us if it were our choice, why would we not simply put an end to it? permanence is endlessness in its essence we do not get to adjust its application to our own selves in order to provide any comfort permanence surpasses family and romantic love blood implies a lot, but it is as much a social construct as beauty it is sad and also a relief to acknowledge this.

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can true desire exist without some kind of familiarity? the visceral and new are intriguing, but also hollow we can claim plausible deniability with eyes rolled so far back, in boredom or ecstasy, how could we really see? a screen says it will provide clarity the color of the world changes, so we get moodier and no longer care to meditate upon our own mortality. a blurred meaning is much less painful to grasp insert confusing anecdotes to deter yourself from ever making the sense you are told that we must all try to make: HIGH-RISE HOLLY HIT OFF HER HIGHHORSE HALF-WAY TO HELL— HURT, BUT MOSTLY SORE— SHE GIVES HINTS LIKE A HOT CHICK, BUT SHE’S A BORE EVEN WITH HEAVEN AT HER HIPS AND EYES THAT SINK SHIPS HOLLY’S HATE WAS BROUGHT TO HER BY A FLUORESCENT CUBICLE, AND THE CARNIVEROUS HANDS OF FATE HOLLY HARBORS HER MOTHER’S HEARTLESS HEAT, THE MOVIE-KIND, THAT KNOCKS MEN OFF THEIR FEET. logic is constraining but pervasive reconstructing or even beginning to define a “logical response” to crisis is anti-human. our nature lies in whatever we do, so it is at once homogenous and absurdly individualistic. the attempt to unite must be met with the acceptance that a common aim does not rule out the evil-doers and the obstructers of joy. there are seven kinds of love and all seven of them are capable of murder is it logical to be in fear for your life at all times? if you cannot touch the people capable of ending you, all you can do is go home and think about how to behave amongst total absurdity. how could our future be so stupid? it is humiliating to watch the innocent be caught and killed, but our second-hand embarrassment cannot gauge death against tripping over a backpack and falling in a high school hallway.

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if projected into space, and allowed to hover next to certain celestial bodies we might truly understand no-resistance wherever our feet might plant we could call a predestination. there is no prophecy but there is an end-date our infinite is unpalatable and immeasurable because we only have rulers and measuring tape. we try to remember tenderness, and to be soft when we can although it is fun to walk sometimes, as if we have no bones and to have our heads fried in the off-limit areas of construction sites what kind of modern clown would still believe there is solace in anything but sleep? bodies lie out on the sandy beach, some of them dead and some of them soaking up sun rays it is a pleasant sight for those who built the dunes and live behind them. some of the men who sell the single roses in Paris steal them from graveyards and it is that business that will persist in equal harmony with the roaches postapocalypse.

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Binary World

Sydney

Zorbas

Green that swallows the earth, drinking her morning dew Growing through the thick and thread Green the joining of yellow and blue Orange that warms the sky, laying her evening bed Opening the heavens anew Orange the union of yellow and red Purple that blooms the spring making her afternoon brew Pulling through the winters old Purple born of red and blue Why do we name shades of jade, gold or tell sienna, scarlet is the only name to hold Do we look at yellow and call them green or tell violet she is rose, her mother’s gene Are we only half, but still whole, as one Can the father be separate from the son What does the union of yellow or red Change inside your shallow head Why do they make us pick and choose Whether we are simply reds, yellows or blues

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Garden Shoulder Melissa

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there is a garden growing in the crook of my shoulder ripening in the summer light with thick & sour citrus lips at times prodded by thorns at times filled with the natural sweetness of fruits & you i am so warm like the sun i am as fresh as the seasons allow me to be pale fire like peaches vibrant electric like lemons a woman in bloom, the garden flourishes upwards as i do

Garden Shoulder

in the For Now Melissa Monique Halabe 95

The Spirit of the Land Charles Simmonds

In the heat we become different In the cold we become raw Beyond the borders of the sick mind Poverty flourishes in spirit & strong skin The sun’s love slowly cradles healthy genes In the political frost of digits The northern borders become stale Bless the sand Bless the sun & the sea The mysterious unspokens Between great unknown men on hills of dust & bone

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Swelteringly timeless Are the nurseries of our chemical being The west with its plastic hearts & screen saver souls Strikes a poison arrow into the heart of our primordial galactic Animal truth O seep into Zulu O seek mother earth Africa Africa Desert & Jungle Africa & East The borderlands of Afghan, Iraq & Timbuk—Toulouse Share the spirit hit the drum Congo Congo Congo Yum Yum Yum

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B u b b l egu m P i n k

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One could argue that it started in third grade, when Peter’s class learned about blood. Blood was red, his teacher had said, when it had oxygen and blue when it did not. That was when Peter realized he was special, because the blood Peter had seen wasn’t always red. Sally Yates’ was more of a deep plum red while his was a round apple red. Gina Turner’s blood was bright green, Peter had seen when she scraped her knee. And when Adam Finney got a papercut, yellow blood beaded at the tip of his finger. Peter asked his mother if she saw different colors of blood too. She took his temperature and sent him off to bed.

In high school, Peter discovered painting. He itched to capture the many brilliant colors and shades of blood, but restrained himself. In college, he got a flat all to himself in the shitty part of town. The first night, he woke at two in the morning to incessant groaning down below the fire escape. It was an older man, likely homeless, and bleeding out. His blood created a bright puddle on the concrete, bubblegum pink leaking out of his gut. It only took Peter a minute to give in to the itch. Slowly, he climbed out the window and down the fire escape, two empty soup cans stuffed into his sweatshirt. He waited for the pink man to die, then crept up and collected as much blood as he could. Halfway back up the fire escape, Peter remembered his manners.

He climbed back down, closed the dead pink man’s eyes, and squeezed his shoulder in thanks. Back in the flat, Peter took one look at his dull pinkish paint purchased from the art supply store and threw it out. The bubblegum blood replaced it. Nobody had to know.

One could argue that was when his career truly started. Peter’s art professors didn’t appreciate his canvases looking like they had been smeared with blood, so it didn’t become a career so much as a hobby. Or a habit. As he collected more blood from hospitals and morgues and crime scenes, mind you, nothing too bad, Peter the painter trained his eye to pick up on the subtler nuances of color. This one wasn’t blue outright, there was a tint of grey to distinguish it from that purplish one. That one over there wasn’t so neon yellow as the one beside it, and the greens ranged from forest to lime and back. Peter’s pantry was stuffed with jars of blood next to meticulously organized cans of peaches and beans. Not a precious drop was wasted.

One could argue that the end started with the white blood. Peter first saw it in/on the subway when someone fell and scraped their hand on the platform. They left behind a smear of white. It was crisp and pure and Peter couldn’t tear his eyes away. By the time he thought to find out whom it came from, they had boarded the train and sped away. Peter cursed to himself, and

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then promised that he would find that color again, no matter what it took.

He took to hanging around that same metro stop, pouncing when someone fell or hurt themselves. After two weeks of frustration, he branched out. He went to morgues, prowled hospitals, blood drives, police stations, children’s playgrounds. The person with the white blood had to exist somewhere. No two people shared the same blood color, there was no alternative. Peter had to find them.

The end came closer when Thea moved in next door. She was incredibly sweet and nosy and chatty and not at all Peter’s type. Yet she seemed to think it was alright to knock on his door every other day and invite him over to bake cookies or play checkers. To appease the gods and Thea’s incessant knocking, Peter joined her on Friday the first of May. They watched Toy Story and made peanut butter cookies. It was sickeningly normal and decidedly blood-free. Peter loved it.

Two months and ten get-togethers later, Thea cut her thumb in Peter’s kitchen. White seeped onto the cutting board and Peter froze. Thea rinsed her cut, bandaged it, and continued to chop the carrots.

“What—” Peter breathed.

“Hm?” Thea looked at him, “Whoa. Are you okay?”

Peter’s vision narrowed. He slowly took Thea’s hand and unwrapped the fresh band-aid.

“Did I do it wrong or something?” Thea joked.

Peter squeezed her thumb between his fingers. White blood crept out.

“Ow, Peter, what are you doing?” She was on guard now.

Art is beautiful, Peter thought. Art is everything. It’s nothing personal.

“Peter, you’re hurting me,” Thea gasped as he tightened his grip on her hand, “It’s just blood, what are you so freaked out about? What’s wrong?”

Something in Peter’s head flipped a switch and he looked up at Thea.

She didn’t have a family, she had told him. A house fire, five years ago. She had dropped off the map and was trying to start over but it wasn’t easy. She had nothing.

“Nothing,” Peter said.

Nobody knew about her.

“Peter?”

Nobody had to know. Peter eased the knife from Thea’s other hand.

He didn’t mean to go so deep, but how else do you go about doing this sort of thing? Thea was silent, for a change. It lasted.

Five months later, Peter was down to his very last can of white. The obsession returned, and Peter visited all his old haunts. He knew no two 100

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people had the same blood color, so he didn’t expect to find anything, but he searched all the same. He took up pub crawling, starting fights in bars and simply moving onto the next one when he was kicked out. The subsequent weeks were the most colorful and the most painful that Peter had ever endured. Yet, each morning he came back to the flat and the sight of that last can of white restored some vigor to his veins.

One could argue that the end was the table’s fault. Peter was slammed into it in a pub brawl and this time he need stitches. The nurse at the hospital didn’t have a filter.

“You have beautiful blood,” she said.

“Yeah,” Peter said, still slightly drunk, “like an apple.”

“No, more of a sea-green.”

That sobered Peter up very quickly. “Sea-green. You say my blood is sea-green.” The nurse looked up and then shook her head. “Sorry, ignore what I just said. It’s been a long night.”

Peter caught her chin and brought her face up to look at his.

“Sea-green. And yours?” He asked.

“My husband... says it’s white,” she gulped. Peter immediately took her needle and pushed it into her finger as she yelped. The blood beading there was sunflower yellow. Peter told her so. “You lied.”

“It’s complicated.” She went to take the needle, but Peter stopped her.

“Tell me.”

The nurse eyed him. “I’ll have to stitch you up as I do.”

Peter let go of her.

“My husband and I have been doing some theorizing. We think that there are three... constructs, if you will. One: each person’s blood is different.”

“Yes,” Peter said.

“Two—,” she tugged and Peter hissed his discomfort. “Sorry. Two, your own blood looks apple red to you.”

“Yes.” Peter swallowed.

“And three, your soulmate’s blood looks white to you.”

Peter stopped breathing.

“Are you alright?” The nurse asked gently, “What’s wrong?”

Peter shook his head. “Nothing,” he breathed. “Everything. But it was so beautiful, I didn’t know—”.

“Easy, easy,” the nurse crooned. She tried to ease Peter’s wayward hand off her shoulder, but he only gripped her tighter. Peter stared at the white walls that were too blinding as the nurse struggled. “Sir, please remove your hand,” she gasped.

“No—” Peter choked. He grabbed onto her neck, willing her to stay, 102

needing to touch something to make sure the white walls didn’t swallow him whole. As he gripped the nurse, a white silence built up in his head and threatened to overwhelm him. He needed some noise, he needed someone to talk, why didn’t the nurse just talk, why didn’t she say something? Peter turned his wide eyes to her and found her mouthing for air. He snapped back and let go and she doubled over, rasping and coughing. Peter ran.

Three times he fell, running from the hospital to his flat, and his side was a mess of red when he finally collapsed into his kitchen. He reached blindly for the can of white, the last bit of Thea he had left, and when it spilled on the floor all he could think of was how quiet the world seemed.

He couldn’t hear his own heartbeat, couldn’t hear the ragged breathing that had followed him up the stairs. All he could see was white, all over his hands and his pants, white on his shirt making his apple red turn bubblegum pink.

Peter watched as he bled out, one finger straining to mix the red and white together, to find some balance of color, until the finger stilled. Vaguely, Peter wondered if he should groan for someone to come with an empty soup can and take this beauty that pooled around him and close his eyes with respect.

No, he decided.

Nobody had to know.

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Things, I’m Curious Ainsley Lundeen

I could come up here and say anything for six minutes – I wonder how long it would take you to stop me if I started reciting Hugo Ball’s phonetic poems I didn’t quite see it/myself when I was inside of it – it was a bubble and I was performing my functions – it took the space to understand it – & just maybe the same thing is happening now, having to come here and speak about how we functioned within the structure in the last years because we will soon be out of it & I think we will find that that will continue happening to us – only understanding once we’re outside – whether with friendships or jobs or cities or mindsets we find ourselves in.

So, I’ll introduce myself at the end of my stay here I believe in: Performance – body versus mind – scared of stuttering, sure of gravity dance got me out of my head I didn’t like reading until high school, the winter in Connecticut (Running With Scissors, Fake Palindromes) my eyes can’t see my eyes habits are what make a person excellence is not determined from a single event production staring intensions & perceptions balance of what is flesh (love me some body) versus what is metaphysical Kafka has a case of derealization movement flashbulb memories visceral & let’s stop making sense opposites finding another focus that keeps me close to the body, though, keeps me out of the mind – a focus so deep that the whole world melts away reproduction (in many forms) scale language (I live in love) mimetic associations & what’s that other word not a metaphor but, ah, metonymy paths crossing need to scatter, reassess, to reassemble like the feeling when for a split second you think you’ve understood the world and within half a second it slips away same with the feeling of pure love when you look at someone & then you snap back into real life (Jonathan Ames) instability creates color & synesthesia sound & memory a lot happens but things don’t change really days you need to dunk your head in the sea glad to be unhappy/recognize unhappiness/recognize that I’m recognizing unhappiness Fille née sans mère (Picabia) la machine is female some people think they can change the world by being astronauts, some teachers, maybe I’ll change the world by reminding people of simpler lives – slowed down, home grown The Human Comedy & what do we do with our eyes indeed? Feeling of flipping over, wave, airplane swoop? What to do with our eyes when we land?

What do we do with music?

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Scallops anchors crunching like rustling scallops or the other way around he loses one of his senses at night lets his eyes leave this world so he pulls my face close to his to his sea sprayed lips we could just rumble down, try to eat air I went looking for the sea the closest thing I found was Hyde park

Documentation how do you say slice of the street the future lies to us (long ago in the past?) oriented perpendicular to the dominant winds I was gurgled down there were worms on the floor before you got here why have you waken me up this night, prosit it’s the backlash of American imperialism you’ve been lucky, I noticed say yes take it, make it, do what you want 108

Look at These Senses, or on the Bus to the Floating City I close my eyes Now I have bokeh eyelids, moving through sunlight Hard to tell if there’s a draft or if the music gave me chills Note the stress on the syncopated beat (2nd) And the sense that someone’s opened a bag of puffy cheesy things Opposite windows reflect in this big one while room-temperature water flows down this virgin morning-esophagus. It lands at the base of my stomach Maybe I could smell the texture of the leaves on the trees lining the highway if I tried hard enough, or breathe through my ears The confusion brought on by the black jet passing overhead almost made me forget about how badly I need to pee

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Natural Augmentation Ian Tollitson

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Meat’s weak you know? You gotta make it better somehow. What’s that old quote? From Robocop? ‘We have the technology; we can make him better?’

Well I did that. Difference between me and these other dumb-ass cybered up meatheads (heh, get it) is I took my inspiration from nature. Nature comes up with crazier shit than we, as people, ever will. Let me run this down for you.

Start with my eyes. Look normal enough, yes? Maybe the slight red glow disturbs you? We can’t be perfect unfortunately. Ignore the less than pretty looks, its functionality that’s the key. Shine a light in my eye. Go ahead, do it, I don’t mind. See how the light reflects? I got the idea from my cat, Socks.

Socks is adorable. Socks is the ultimate predator. It helps me see in the dark.

That’s not all with my eyes. I can read that asshole’s book from across the room. John Green? Ugh, not to my taste at all. Took this idea from the owl.

Owls can zoom in with their eyes, like binoculars. Fucking wicked, right?

That’s not the real cool part about my eyes though. The cool part is I can see colors that you can’t see. From what I saw on National Geographic, the average shmuck has three color cones in their eyes. It’s how humans see color.

Well apparently there’s this animal called the mantis shrimp that has sixteen color cones. Sixteen fucking cones. This means—

I can see in infra-red, ultra-violet, almost any wave-length. Combined with all the other shit, means I have the best eyes in the world.

Onto my hands. Hands are delicate things, you know. Gotta be careful messing with them, or else you can’t use them anymore. Well, I got a super-duper self-defense system. Watch this. See these claws coming out of my fingertips, they aren’t just claws. The bones are hollowed out, and inside is a reservoir of venom. Right now, it’s Black Mamba. It’s some of the nastiest shit in the world. Sometimes, when I feel especially mean, I swap it out with Box Jellyfish neurotoxin. Should probably put this away before anybody else takes notice. See how they retract, another idea from Socks. Remind me when I leave to give Socks some more kibble.

The rest of my body’s simple. Sometimes less is more, you know.

The muscles in my torso, arms, and legs are hyper-dense. More fibers per square inch of muscle. My legs are reinforced so I can jump higher and farther. Gazelles, man, gazelles are cool like that. I can go on and on, but I can see you’re impressed enough. Or bored? Are you bored? Shit, maybe talking about how cool I am isn’t the best way to talk to people...

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