MASTHEAD P. J. Williams Lead Editor Kir Jordan Editor
cover art by Betsy Seymour
uttermagazine.com Š2014 Utter Magazine
Contents From the Editor: "A Mixtape of Arguments (feat. Kooley High)" 2 Molly Prosser "If Jesus" 6 Tim Kahl "New Ambulance" 7 Rachel Hermans Goldman "Butterfly As Seen Through Kitchen Window" 8 Alyse Knorr "Notes on the Voyager Spacecraft" 10 Jessica Hagemann "Study of Retinoblastoma Homolog in C. elegans" 11 Jake Skillings "Red Smile, White Cheeks" 12 Mercedes Lawry "Perception of Performance in the Dimming" 15 Paul David Adkins "Saddam Hussein's Palace Recreational Lake" 16 Peter Longofono "If That Is Your Real Name" 17 Christopher Klingbeil "necessitated image" 18 Kiik Araki Kawaguchi "Two Rags" 19 Yim Tan Wong "SOS" 20 "...___..." 22
A Mixtape of Arguments (feat. Kooley High) P.J. Williams, Editor
“Hailing from the dogwood heavy hills of North Carolina, super-group Kooley High arrives on the scene with the mission to delight, electrify and ignite seas oflisteners thirsty for something new from the world of hip hop. Since they began making music together in early 2007, the six independent members have been allowed and encouraged to let their own individual talents flourish, ensuring that the sounds coming out ofthe Kooley High Music Factory are one-of-a-kind.” -www.kooleyhigh.com
I always have music on my mind. It comes up all the time in my writing, and it's an interest that has pointed me in new directions recently. I'm in the midst of writing my first review of a record for an online publication, and I'm in the process of co-editing an anthology of poetry inspired by hip-hop with poet and friend (and former Utter contributor) Jason McCall. More and more, music and writing blur, and there is a surge among publications and presses to embrace the blending of multiple art forms. Hip-hop holds particular interest for me, especially as it relates to and is engaged by poetry. I'm compelled by the popular abundance of jazz and blues poetry compared to the general ignorance and lack of popularity of hip-hop poetry, despite hip-hop's dominance of current music culture. This gap doesn't make much sense to me, and it feels important to have a hand in trying to close it. As a teacher, I've come to know the familiar groans of students when they are made to sit down and study poetry. In most high school classrooms, “poetry” means Whitman, Dickinson, Williams, Frost, and the like. Meanwhile, the hallways of the high school where I taught were concerned with Kanye, Rick Ross, and Wiz Khalifa. If we want poetry to be a conversation among students, an opportunity for creativity, an educational tool, an ethical concern, and a way to help inspire new readers and writers, hip-hop is the unlocked door. One problem that may contribute to the gap between hip-hop and poetry—or why they are perceived so differently—is related to how we think about the process of creation for each. Why is creating poetry any different from creating hip-hop? Why is creating any sort of art different from making music, regardless of genre? What follows is what I'm calling a “mixtape of arguments.” It features an interview I conducted with Charlie Smarts, a member of hip-hop group Kooley High. I asked him about process, influences, collaboration, and innovation—things with which all artists are concerned. Scattered throughout the interview are some fragments of my own—about hip-hop, about writing, about how we decide what art we find valuable. It is my hope that this mixtape gives you, the reader, a little nudge, and that it can add some more momentum to the growing conversation of poetry as it relates to hip-hop. Ifyou don't know, now you know.
WILLIAMS · 2
– Ask a group of people which musician they'd label a poet, and you'll probably get at least a handful of “Bob Dylan.” * Utter: It's clear in your music that each of you values your unique lyrical contributions to the song. Talk about your writing process as individuals and also as a group. How do you typically write and record your songs? Charlie Smarts ofKooley High: When I write alone, I like there to be no distractions. Need room to walk around and shout if need be. Looking internally for inspiration. When we write as a group it's more of an organic experience. We bounce ideas off each other 'til the best one comes to light. Both are useful and fun.
* It is certainly not my attempt to push Dylan or Coltrane or Robert Johnson out of this conversation. It's just that there's room around the microphone. I dig most old funk music, like The Meters. I get excited when I hear it sampled in hip-hop. I get excited when I read nods to Whitman in my colleagues' work, too. * U: What other genres of music have an impact on the beats you use? Which artists and genres do you typically find yourself listening to? CS: Soul and jazz affect our music greatly. We listen to all types in our spare time, from Homeboy Sandman to Robert Glasper to James Blake. If it's good, it can get run in the headphones. Usually don't do too much country or heavy metal tho.
* “I'm so tired of the same ol'. The game ol'.” - Charlie Smarts, from “Same Ol' Thing” *
3 · WILLIAMS
U: What challenges come with working in a trio in a genre that seems to value individuality? What benefits do you think there are to be had in working as a group? CS: Kooley High is more than a trio. We have six members who all play an invaluable role in our success. In any relationship a lack of proximity can create a strain where there was none before. We have members in Brooklyn and Raleigh, so it gets difficult at times.
Tunnel vision is key when completing a group effort. I don't think about individual careers when it's time for a Kooley album. Working as a group forces people to see things from the viewpoint of someone else. It squeezes the best out of you. If an idea can make it past the gauntlet of opinionated individuals in my crew, it must be a good one. * When I sit down to write, I often listen to music—sometimes with lyrics, sometimes without. I adopt rhythms. What did Whitman do? Hughes? Rich? Is all writing a collaboration? * U: What do you think you bring to the music industry—and hip-hop specifically—that's currently missing or under-represented? CS: We bring honesty and individuality. We have a makeup of man, woman, black, white, christian, agnostic, etc., but we all come together to make beautiful music. Our style brings that waviness.
* The following are canonical albums and should be “required reading”: Nas' Illmatic, Notorious B. I. G.'s Ready to Die, Mobb Deep's The Infamous, Eric B. & Rakim's Paid in Full, 2Pac's All Eyez On Me, N.W.A.'s Straight Outta Compton, A Tribe Called Quest's The Low End Theory, Wu-Tang Clan's Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), and Outkast's ATLiens. There are many more. * U: Obviously, your heritage as North Carolinians plays a huge role in your music. Talk about how that influences your work and, as natives of North Carolina, how you ended up becoming musicians.
WILLIAMS · 4
CS: In NC it's a melting pot of sounds. Without having a dominant presence in the music world we receive lots from the south, north, and the west. Underground wise, the Justus League movement had a great deal to do with our group becoming what we are. None of us wanted to have music careers initially; the stars just aligned when we all met each other I guess.
* I first heard Bob Marley sampled in a hip-hop song, and it took me a long time to learn who he really was, that he wasn't a member of the group. I cannot decide if this is a tragedy or comedy. * U: The beats you use seem to be interested in other things than what we may typically hear in top-40 rap and hip-hop. Talk about what you look for in a beat. CS: I look for a groove, a spark, and uniqueness. We don't want to sound like anybody. Oh yeah, and I like low end.
* I have only read a handful of books more than once. I have listened countless times to the same albums—hip-hop or not—and I imagine that's the case for many people. * U: Talk about where you're at now in terms of your next album, touring, and reaching a wider audience. What's next for Kooley High? CS: Kooley High is working on our next album. Can't tell you too much other than that. The release looks like [2014]. We are excited about how it's going so far. We will be playing a couple regional shows between NC and NY to try out new material but not real touring until after the new album drops.
We feel the wider audience will come if the music rocks hard enough (along with proper management, publicists, videos, marketing campaigns, free promo, college radio, etc.). Peace, Charlie Smarts
5 · WILLIAMS
If Jesus Is the Key to Heaven, I'm Just a Girl in a Basement Molly Prosser
I think I was standing at the washing machine or was it the deep-freeze doing my delicates or maybe getting dad a pound of side-pork for breakfast when Jesus our Lord and Savior smacked me on the back of my head like a drunk great-uncle at a family reunion. I’ve never had the dead stand so close behind me breathing and boxing my ears, so I shrugged and said, Okay, you obviously have something to say, so shoot. To that, the Almighty said, Shit, Molly, I’m on a tight schedule, so listen hard: Love makes life, hate makes death, and it’s easy to re-claim swamp land ifyou have the right tools.
I’d basically figured that out myself, so he left me there, feet getting cold on the basement concrete, melting meat or fabric softener propped on my hip, feeling pretty pissed off, since I didn’t get to ask him what I wanted like, should I get me some of that ole’ time religion? And just where can I find the Museum of the Invention of Mankind? And when will I stop living like someone’s looking? Living like I have a theme-song and a laugh-track? And where do all the broken bits of hardware and silicone and Swedish foam mattresses go when we stop needing them? And is there a place where our mess is folded and molded into something new like re-constituted tires turned into playground padding, a place where hours of bedroom-eyed flirting with truckers becomes five blameless twenties under the salt shaker and taillights on the highway?
PROSSER · 6
New Ambulance Tim Kahl
shrapnel from victims used to build sculpture of small casino safari adventure through RV Park bags four suicidal teens unable to attend University of Superlotto mold on infant recliner traced to wilderness beach no statement from Google chairman chicken hawks release Stuxnet intelligence officers insist on gender-neutral packaging dog-sharing group travels on big cruise ship schnauzer-shaped holes in mid-deck duct work chef notes my knife
has been good to me
gifts new ambulance to distant city of ascetics
7 路 KAHL
Butterfly, As Seen Through Kitchen Window a sestina story
Rachel Hermans Goldman
You are seven and when you wake up it’s the middle of the night and red and white and blue lights spin through your bedroom window. They could mean the circus, but then you remember where you are, hugging your stuffed animal, which is a butterfly. It is scarier when you remember it’s real life where those colors mean the police and make you want Dad. You say his name but nothing happens because it’s a big house. Beneath the sheets you curl into a ball. But more than anything you are thirsty and want a drink. Standing on tiptoes you make a cup of water and then you drink. Police lights twirl in through the kitchen window. From the darkness by the sink you look out into the backyard that is lit yellow in street-light and scattered with what you forgot to clean up this afternoon: your jump rope and pogo stick, all your Barbies and Joey from next door’s whiffle ball. But also there, by the garage, is something that reminds you of your butterfly. It has wings, you think, but it’s all black and you can’t tell where it has legs and antennae or where it’s just part of your house. You want Dad. But you remember: you’re still mad at Dad. That earlier today when you wanted him to read more out loud he ignored you and instead sat in front of the TV with a drink. The blue can crackled when he sipped, a sound you could hear through the whole house. You imagined Joey hearing it down the street, the crackle running away through the open living room window. When you got tired of asking, you curled up on the couch with your butterfly. You lay on the couch and tore up Dad’s favorite magazines and crumpled them into one big ball. Outside on the lawn the colored streams of light shine against the whiteness of Joey’s whiffle ball. When you look closer at the butterfly that could be real or could just be part of the backyard you realize it’s a person and for a second you wonder if it’s Dad. Your hands are sweaty and you wipe them on your butterfly. You hadn’t realized you’d brought her with you but you’re holding her and your drink. You press up against the window. The reds and whites and blues flash against you as they dip into the house. You can’t tell if the butterfly-man sees you, the butterfly-man crouched in the backyard behind your house. You wish it was back when you thought the only things out there were the jump rope and pogo stick and Barbies and Joey’s whiffle ball. But you can’t not look through the window. You look until your eyes adjust, until you can see his scraggly hair and mustache and you wonder if, for some other seven-year-old girl in the world, he is also Dad. Because you’re nervous, even though you’re not thirsty anymore, you drink. You stare at the man and how he is wearing a poncho like it should be raining, which is what made you think he was a butterfly. In your arms is your own butterfly. You are glad that of the two butterflies yours is the one
GOLDMAN · 8
that’s here with you in the house. You know you’ve seen the man before and you remember what was on TV when Dad was sitting there watching it and ignoring you and crackling his drink. A wanted man, a runaway, a mustached, scraggly-haired face, which is when dad said, Jesus, PD, do your job, and switched back to the channel with basketball. News about the police isn’t good for Dad. He used to be a cop but then lost his job, which is when he started staying inside and watching TV like he was looking out into the world through a window. You know Dad would want to know that what’s out in the backyard isn’t just your jump rope and pogo stick and Barbies and Joey’s whiffle ball. But you remember how, this afternoon, when all you wanted was to hear his voice he made you feel alone, like you were the only one in the house. So instead, you stare into the backyard at the butterfly-man and neither of you blink and you feel strong knowing you don’t need Dad—you don’t want Dad—and even though it’s late you stay there until it’s even later, until the lights are gone and the butterfly has climbed over the fence and disappeared so it’s only you there, holding your drink and holding your butterfly and staring out through the kitchen window.
9 · GOLDMAN
Notes on the Voyager Spacecraft Alyse Knorr
An icebox slung to blackness drifts through one last sheath of sunlight, one last ring of pull. Twenty-eight hours away, men in polo shirts fiddle with controls, counting the years it can still hear them and chirp back where it is, what it has seen. Ambassador, time capsule, billion-year driftwood. When we find it again, so far ahead we’ve forgotten why we sent it, nuclear energy spent, antenna beaming home no data—I hope it’s left alone.
KNORR · 10
Study of Retinoblastoma Homolog in C. elegans Jessica Hagemann
Sunday morning and I'm in the lab and you're at the microscope watching segmented bodies fluoresce green in the blue, then squirm in the yellow. They eat bacteria but don't always digest it, some of them mutant worms with malformed intestines. They binge and then die of starvation. The rest live a refrigerated existence, incubating just below room temperature. The externally chilly spring of a week. I'm looking at pipettes and remembering titration and the sterile wonder of latex. On the bench a bucket of petri dishes, agar fertile wetly. Left outside the cooler to die, they are destined for the trashcan. Nano additions to a chemical detritus. You're behind the wall and I can't see you but I hear you, singing, and the whir of a centrifuge and I'm swimming in DNA. Worms loose and inching but I can't see a one of them and I think it's so ironic that once I ran experiments and now I write experimentally. You dream in neon constellations and I mutate words, matings of an intimate-ology. In my Eppendorf tube, lexical arthropods. Like yours, they self- and cross-fertilize, are immune to solvents, and, lacking a central nervous system, are disposable. For example, I could feed the page to the flames and be myself purified. You could wipe your name and number from the dry erase board and go latent. The law of conservation of energy talks of constants, but even "pendulum" is a word, fragile. We are the proof that disproves. Around you, my potential energy always equals my kinetic, even though we lean to the left. Action in the moment of actualization. Spinning, we're on a Gravitron at the Illinois State Fair. Put our scales on a slide. I hope they're squamous.
11 路 HAGEMANN
Red Smile, White Cheeks Jake Skillings
1.
Say for instance the clown at the 7th birthday party of your life had thick red makeup applied to his face to give an eternal smile, say he wore ratty overalls with polka dot patches and carried a bindle over his shoulder out of which he retrieved doves, and silk scarves in multicolored shimmers of green and purple and orange. Let’s say he brought a cake, and the cake was impeccably frosted, had a fat candle in the shape of a seven. What would happen when he lighted the candle and it spread to a low hanging silk scarf? What would happen if the fire spread to the bindle and puffed into a ball of flame? Would you say the escaping dove exploded into light then rained down on your friends in ash? Did the clown stand and melt, or was it just the memory and the terror? 2.
The boom of a cannon and someone is flying. Billows of smoke clearing and drifting to join the clouds. The man kicks his legs in the air on the ascent and holds together in a dive as he lands in the water. Everyone in the stands cheer. I clap, I’ve seen it before, I clap. He'll be fine, he makes a fine living at it and tonight he'll eat dinner with his fine family: his tiny wife and large sons, his apple eyed daughter and gray whiskered pooch. He'll ask me to join him because he thinks I need it, but I don’t. I appreciate it and tell him with an earnest grip of the hand. He'll tell me about the meal in the morning, like he always does. The oh you should have seen it’s, the steaming dumplings. Key lime pie the color of cartoons. Red meat that falls off the bone. Homebrew stout that foams over and down the glass just right. I'll prepare the crumbly hills of gunpowder and pack it in the cannon with the nonchalance of moving a lawn. “So where did you end up last night?” he'll ask me. 3.
Say for instance you were really interested in card tricks, with illusions, with rabbits and hats and saws and mirrors. And after your birthday party you pretended to put all that behind you, to grieve appropriately, to show your parents it was traumatic. I'm done with that, you said and insisted on taking up basketball. You were no good at basketball, but stuck it out. Practiced a jump shot on the brand new backboard and hoop mom and dad bought with their savings. Everyday shooting and bouncing. The metallic rubber hum of the dribble and cement, the bang thud of a missed shot. The sometimes swish of a made one. You did this for them, to be a good son. You would sit on the ball, balancing, eat a raspberry popsicle, watch it melt red down the stick and to the ground, finish with a smile, break the popsicle stick in half and toss it in the trash. They noticed when you took shots with eyes closed, thought you were a funny child. Making a basket with eyes closed was something like magic, a poof and a swish and then came the rush of something else.
SKILLINGS · 12
4.
My parents stopped attending my acts once they died. It seemed so natural. My parents loved people. They loved wine, barrel aged whiskey, scotch with two cubes of ice, champagne, stout beer. They loved to drive their top-down convertible. My dad wore sunglasses with pride. My mother had skin like an olive. The highway was closed down for hours that day. The people waiting in traffic were infuriated. Some had to exit their cars and urinate in the ditch. People missed job interviews and baptisms and dinner dates. The road crew used large black bags for cleanup, had to use large hoses. My parents were identified by their teeth. I heard all about the scene months later in a bar. A man had been there and said, laughing, that “their heads popped off like fucking beer caps”. He was drunk and did not know my parents, so I couldn’t blame him—I couldn’t blame him for telling the story with a head shaking smile. 5.
If anyone knew about your 7th birthday party they would recommend you see a therapist. They would go wide eyed and look at you differently, and forever. Anytime you weren’t smiling they would assume. Every time you released a dove they would think of nothing but fire and ash. They already don't bring up car wrecks. A few weeks after the accident they sold the go-carts you used for the confetti crash spectacular, claiming the budget just couldn’t handle it anymore. They think you are still too young to handle the things that constantly happen in this world. They think you are darling. They think you have one of those souls just because you're a bit quiet. You've always been a bit quiet. If anyone knew about your 7th birthday they could not handle the imagined unbearable vulnerability of you. 6.
I sleep in the big top tent because I want to--even though I have money. Bundles and rolls of green twenties stuffed into my father’s old leather boot. I spread out my sleeping bag and fall asleep every night counting the rainbow bars of the big top. When the moon is full it shines through in that one magnificent spot, a glow of color fading out in blurs. This is the type of thing that keeps me from sleep. All alone like the wonder is just for me, the ball of rainbow light barely making it through. The whole place smells of popcorn and candy and hay. It's the smell of closing my eyes, what I've come to know as closing my eyes. 7.
Say, one night you left the tent. It was a full moon and you felt that you had something to do in the future and so were compelled to meet it. There were whims. You applied your red make up, your white face paint. You wore the eternal smile of the clown, but not only that, you smiled underneath, on your real face. You walked into town, face glowing
13 · SKILLINGS
against the moonlight. You shuffled your cards as you walked, came to the nearest bar and ordered yourself a drink. The bartender seemed to be used to this, didn’t mention a thing. You weren't surprised. It was just you and him. He watched the baseball game like watching a sunset, that dull but concentrated slack of the face. You drank a beer, one of the few in your life. A man walked in with wind burned face and thick stubble. He ordered a drink. They knew each other, the bartender and him. They got into conversation. The guy brought up the story of highway wreck from a few months ago, laughing in a sort of horror as he told the story. He noticed you. It brought a smile to his face, and the worried look of the car crash story left his brow. He stared at you in childlike wonder. “Would you like to see a magic trick?” you asked him—and he answered with the nod of someone falling off a building.
SKILLINGS · 14
Perception of Performance in the Dimming Mercedes Lawry
Too late. Too late. The ancient bells were only a dim idea oozing from a failed script. She wove around the pond as if beckoned by Ophelia. What cumbersome language! Alas for the toads. Thick, luscious weeds – she could don them, crown herself with a damp and royal flourish. Oh, such fun to let the mind zig and zag outside of time and comfort. No regard for the clobbered riff raff lumbered by their hesitant ways. I am a glut of green, she decides, a spongy siren without wear and tear. I cannot return or sing back the morning. Her voice rose and fell like silvery hills as the light gave up to the darkness. She wore no shoes and there was no one at the windows of the house, watching.
15 ¡ LAWRY
Saddam Hussein's Palace Recreational Lake Paul David Adkins
After the war it’s just a square of water near the empty palace, a brimming limestone pit. Shore-side palms shed brittle fronds in dust. Hussein sailed here once. His son Qusay and pals boated with brides they kidnapped from Baghdad weddings, then raped to exhaustion amid rolling empties of Faridah beer on a foredeck slick with piss. But as I stood that night, with Saddam set to be hanged, Qusay and Uday stuffed crumpled as old newspaper in their unmarked graves, no boats passed, just spastic bats buzzing a nearby streetlight, and black skimmers unzipping the water with their bills, its surface all moon and palace light meshed like net scraps floating in their separate, imprisoned driftings.
ADKINS · 16
If That Is Your Real Name Peter Longofono
My grandmother, afraid of water, afraid of my grandmother, turns to milk. As I choose to watch her miles stripe, milk the matriarch sponges. My, my, Grandma, you're a thirsty place. A bag of you unhooks from its artful fixture. All the mutton in Stalingrad worked to a broach, a satisfied walk through digestion, clouding the way milk doesn't. Places, bindlestiffs. There'll be enough of her. The forceful poor will knead her pastries underfoot. She pencils an attractive shade at her eyelids; I want to taste the graphite. I do, I stripe my tongue, I finish with milk: it's a Soviet newsreel, a scratchgirl, depot-bound, hourglassed in parachute silk. Her toughluck scuffs the road until it cakes. He's dashing, doubled in the canal just so. She uncorks a false eyeball, lobs it over the bridge. He kisses her anyway, as if taught to, prompting a dutiful bridgekeepers' clap. This is where I choose to stopwatch.
17 路 LONGOFONO
necessitated image
Christopher Klingbeil
that is to say the image necessitated of itself as you might comprehend meiosis to understand the meaning of yourself. name a device for perpetuating a recurrence of yourself. name the noun the series holds captive in a smog of missing parts. how might the story unfold. precisely. imperceptibly. most times the story holes up as a narrative of a place you can’t remember if you’ve been to. I’ve heard the purpose of rearranging drawers in a dream is for reducing clerical error. classification continuity. for later on. yet I’ve yet to wake to the name as it’s changed therein. as much, a certain family of stellar jays still follows us along the pines. tinge of blue still in the faintest imagining of birds in the needles
KLINGBEIL · 18
Two Rags
Kiik Araki Kawaguchi
By evening I've located the word I drag the word to where I sleep I hide the word one world over Behind the left eye my word unravels It is a moth uncoiling Its flight is a stone knocking sparks Off the unlit border wall It carries two rags submerged in fire Behind the right eye it is the oil-stained Moth devouring the world Its darkness is a throat coughing honey The moth's head is a broom Sopping up the nocturnal pollen
19 路 KAWAGUCHI
SOS
Yim Tan Wong
Why don’t we save our silence for another time? Right now, let’s talk it out. Let’s run and jump, save our sloth. Let’s walk it off. Save stamps, sugar, and save our meager savings. Save soldiers and senators. Each autumn, save one hour. Save some songs, too. Sing songs a capella and sell these songs for 99 cents on the corner. Sing our songs as they join our hands and the slipstream. Set our sights on new stereos. Set our stereos on high. Then on fire. Set our selves like books on the shelf to read later. So that we may lug, like torches through the underworld, our postponed sips of Lethe’s water, we must save spoons. Yes, save more spoons, so after that amnestic sip we can recall that we have forgotten. Save our salt. Don’t throw it
WONG · 20
over our shoulders. Yet, why not save superstitions? Save simplicity, syrup, squares and circles. Save our sun, please, even if it means offering as fuel our own bloodwarmth. Save sleuths and mysteries, so that without end, we have war. Save our distress so there’s something to wear us down, so our disappeared trunks and limbs will release and relieve us, then confound us. Our sense of smell, save that as well, so we can recognize each other in the next world. Save our scraps, so we can write the survivor’s how-to-guide to outlast Life and Hell. Save this list, so we may rise to writhe like green shoots from a seed to cogitate to write about this later, if we get a later after this.
21 · WONG
...---... Yim Tan Wong
Deflated, they collapse in a pond into lily pads of skin, arteries sprout floating roots as day after day dust collects in the interior, where birds bathe and small hands build soft castles for the rain to demolish, where dust writes no SOS in the sand, where vacationing ribs draw letters out of love for the old interior, letters that harden from the sweat of writing with cramped hands. For souvenirs, they scoop up dust, seal it in envelopes, and label each one with “Once, I was here.” And into the beach of dust, they carve with a stick the words “Thank you, Heart. Good-bye.”
WONG · 22
Contributors Paul David Adkins lives in New York and works as a counselor.
is a writer and photographer living in Tempe, Arizona. She is currently working towards her MFA in fiction writing at Arizona State University. Rachel Hermans Goldman
is an award-winning author from the Midwest. She is a professor of art and writing, though her secret love is science. Jessica may be contacted at j.hagemann.1@gmail.com. Jessica Hagemann Tim Kahl is
the author of Possessing Yourself (CW Books, 2009) and The Century ofTravel (CW Books, 2012). His work has been published in Prairie Schooner, Indiana Review, Ninth Letter, Notre Dame Review, The Journal, Parthenon West Review, and many other journals in the U.S. He appears as Victor Schnickelfritz at the poetry and poetics blog The Great American Pinup and the poetry video blog Linebreak Studios. He is also editor of Bald Trickster Press and Clade Song. He is the vice president and events coordinator of The Sacramento Poetry Center. He also has public installations in Nevada City and in Sacramento. He currently houses his father's literary estate--one volume: Robert Gerstmann's book of photos of Chile, 1932. earned an MA from UC Davis where his poetics thesis was titled "THE JOY OF HUMAN SACRIFICE." He is a current graduate student at UC San Diego where he is working on a collection of counter-internment narratives, tentatively titled, "EVERYDAY COLONIALISM." His work has appeared or is forthcoming in iO, Washington Square, Alice Blue Review, The Brooklyner, CutBank and The Masters Review. "two rags" is dedicated to the poet and graphic artist, Rachel Lee Taylor. Kiik Araki Kawaguchi
has toured the American West as a government lumberjack and forester. He took MFAs away from Boise State and Colorado State University. Once, he took an Honorable Mention in The Atlantic's Student Writing Contest. Recent works include poems and stories in or forthcoming from Alice Blue Review, Anvil Lit Review, Salt Hill, Slush Pile, and Smoking Glue Gun. His chapbook, evaporatus, is soon due out through ELJ Publications. Christopher Klingbeil
is the author of Annotated Glass (Furniture Press Books) and Alternates (dancing girl press). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Denver Quarterly, ZYZZYVA , Alice Blue Review, Caketrain, and The Southern Poetry Anthology, among others. She received her MFA from George Mason University. She is a co-founding editor of Gazing Grain Press and teaches at the University of Alaska Anchorage. Alyse Knorr
has published poetry in such journals as Poetry, Prairie Schooner, Rhino, Nimrod, Poetry East, The Saint Ann's Review, and others. She's also published fiction, humor and essays, as well as stories and poems for children. Among the honors she's received are awards from the Seattle Arts Commission, Hugo House, and the Artist Trust. She's been a Jack Straw Writer, a Pushcart Prize nominee, and held a residency at Hedgebrook. Her chapbook, "There are Crows in My Blood," was published in 2007 and another chapbook, "Happy Darkness," was released in 2011. She lives in Seattle. Mercedes Lawry
received his MFA from NYU, where he edited international content for Washington Square Review and served as a Goldwater Fellow. His poems and criticism have appeared or are forthcoming in H_NGM_N, The Bakery, and Coldfront. He lives in Brooklyn. Peter Longofono
is the Visual Merchandise Director for ModCloth.com, an online fashion retailer that recently launched a literary journal called The Written Wardrobe under her direction. She holds a BA in English from Penn State and an MFA in Creative Writing from Carlow University, where she has taught literature, writing, communication, and marketing. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Weave Magazine, Blast Furnace, Sugared Water, Soundings Review, and I-70 Review. She currently lives in Pittsburgh with her husband and their mini dachshund. Molly Prosser
Betsy Seymour lives in Asheville, North Carolina.
lives in Minneapolis, MN. His work has previously appeared in The Los Angeles Review, Spork Press, The Ampersand Review, and Revolver. Right now he is finishing up the last grueling edit of a story collection tentatively titled, "Everything's Fine All the Time" or "Oh, Let's Go Live on the Moon." Jake Skillings
is a former Kundiman fellow and holds an MFA from Hollins University. Her first poetry collection has been a finalist for Four Way Books' Levis Prize as well as the Alice James Books/Kundiman Poetry Prize. Some journals where her poems have appeared include Sugared Water, A capella Zoo, Phoebe, RATTLE, Sakura Review, Redactions, Tidal Basin Review, Mascara Literary Review (Australia), Crab Orchard Review, MARGIE, and Michigan Quarterly Review. Yim Tan Wong