Shady Side Review by Shady Side Review

Shady Side Review Issue II

In This Issue

THE VIRGIN QUEEN LOST HIS HEAD Neil de la Flor

STRANDED (A LOVE POEM) Angela Parker

EXPENDABLE YOUTH Mike Murphy

OUT TO EAT Gina R. Evers

SUICIDE BEACH Howie Good

WASH THE PUPPY AND BANG YOUR HEAD Corey Mesler

UP ON THE POLE Robert Campbell

THIS POEM CONTAINS BRIEF NUDITY AND MILD VIOLENCE Steve Klepetar 11 (REMIX) P.J. Kryfko

JONATHAN WEST IN THE LION’S DEN Ben Nardollili

ETCH-A-SKETCH Craig Medvecky

I WANT MY CITY TO FIND ME Sara Ries

ABOUT OUR AUTHORS

The Virgin Queen Lost His Head Neil de la Flor

I left my heart in Mogadishu. He tried (to hump) me but I wasn’t impressed by his guts or his display of affection, we were just kids of course. Sneaker pimps. What ever happened to courtesy and the value of nautical sex? The yacht and the waterbed? The German captain and his crew of muscle men? I was blinded that night, but not by love, I was too young. I was the only nineteen year-old virgin queen in Queens. Because I was shy I left my Mr. Magoo glasses at home to heighten my senses. Even though I couldn’t see that well I didn’t mind because I looked sexier without them—at least that’s what my neighbor told me. I was turned on by the possibility of humming. I made friends with witches and woolly mammoths, and a transvestite named Bob. I had a pocketknife and twenty bucks just in case he flipped. For the imagination of some men is so vivid that they think they see actual figures and appearances, which are but the reflection of their thoughts… such persons are plainly heretics. (From Part 1: Question I. Malleus Maleficarum) Ever wanted to just run run run till decorum lost its deco and the world was just fucking rum and you didn’t have to consider whether or not you should have written ‘the world was just fucking rum.’ Once, when I was sixteen, I fell off my horse and broke my thumb. Three years later I was Miss Arby’s 1999. I was in love with Sinead O’Connor. I loved the way she tore into the pope and his henchmen, little blue birds burst out of her mouth, amen. At the time butadiene was big, but during those years (1994 – 1999) I came to the realization I would never be like Busy Lizzie, i.e. no woman’s man. Love is a kind of radiation, she said, and smacked my back. It burns like giving birth.

Stranded (A Love Poem) Angela Parker

Before I let love graze my skin, no matter how much I ache, I ask a critical question, a test in which I am the dangling worm, the living bait. I wonder, If we were stranded on a sunscorched island, with nothing to consume but sparse grass blades and morning dewdrops, tell me—would you eat me? That way one of us might still be saved, and I want to be the saving muscle: take this body, sink your teeth in, the way you did as a child licking from the red pools over ridges of collarbone. Drink slowly. Lick your lips redder. Sharpen your teeth on cleanpicked bone. Chew every bit with care—let me see you savor each piece of me as no one has before you, and no one else ever will—until my eyes fade, my skin-glow snuffs out. Then weep for life’s success, the empty beauty, the stripped carcass. In fact, promise me you’ll do it, my brother: eat me in the end if it looks like I am coming to nothing, and while you do, you can describe to me the ways in which each part is beautiful. I want to be eaten, and you, who understand me without words, have promised to walk with my skins wrapped tight around you.

Expendable Youth Mike Murphy

The only place to be on a Friday night in Junior High was the YMCA dance. It ran from 7 to 10 p.m. and was advertised on bright fliers in morning homeroom, attracting 11-14 year olds for five dollars a head. Kids from both Beverly, Massachusetts Junior High Schools filled the parquet floor, mingling under dimmed, industrial sized lights. One night in seventh grade, with The Village People rattling the warehouse’s long aluminum walls, my friend Jeff tugged on my winter jacket and signaled for me to follow him. Our boots were still wet from the blizzard outside and squeaked as we headed into the bathroom. The boys’ room was a crammed, white cement cube containing a stall with its door torn off, and a urinal with bits of graffiti on the surrounding walls. Under the pale glow of one buzzing light, we stood next to a permanently scum-streaked mirror. Jeff wore a big Orlando Magic jacket with a matching black headband, and gold rings in each ear of his shaved head. His back was turned and he played with something in front of him as I looked on with rainbow colored lips from the Skittles I was eating. Jeff turned around and jerked his hand out from his black jacket, aimed a gun at my head, and pulled the trigger. The click sent a bolt of electricity from my skull to my feet, but there was no bullet in the chamber. “It’s a .22,” he said. “I don’t got any bullets here but I got a full clip at my crib.” If Jeff had overlooked a bullet in the chamber, I would be dead and my friends would still be spelling out “Y-M-C-A” on beat with their arms. He gripped the gun and popped out the empty clip. Jeff lived in a low-income housing development called Apple Village, and like any Apple Village kid, he was a phenomenal dancer on roller skates. My mom would bring him home when we had to stay after school together, but she and I never hung around. “Yo, you could pull this shit out on mad people,” he said. Jeff knew guns. Once, he told me his 17-year-old brother owned a few and used them a lot. “Shit’s for sale. Wanna buy it?” He held out the gun I saw it wasn’t any bigger than his 12-year old-hand. Chips of its maroon paint had banged off, but I stared as the gun blazed red in the bathroom’s yellow glow. I handed Jeff the Skittles and squeezed the gun. It was heavier than expected and like a machine that could start up at any moment, felt powerfully dense in my hand. “Yo, cause if you wanted to, I could hook you up for like 12 bucks. The full clip, too,” he said. “Does the clip make it heavier?” I asked.

“You can still wave it around when it’s loaded,” he said. I laughed and waved the gun in front of me. Jeff shoved a handful of Skittles into his mouth. I played with the 35 cents in my pocket, left over from the candy. “Nah,” I said. We admired the gun a bit longer. He popped out the clip and pushed it back in again. I watched, chewing the last mouthful of Skittles. “Shit’s pretty tight, though, right?” Jeff asked. “Yeah,” I said. “It’s sweet.” My voice seemed to bellow back off the grimy white walls. “Aight, let’s dip,” he said, putting the gun back in his jacket. I tossed the candy wrapper into the garbage and we walked out onto the dance floor with Ice Cube’s “Check Yourself” booming through the warehouse. “Yo Mike,” Jeff said. “Don’t tell nobody.” I nodded. We searched the dance floor and found our friends horsing around with the vending machines, next to the cashbox and the people selling blow pop suckers. On the other side of the warehouse, boys were taking turns trying to touch the basketball rim. Nearby, girls practiced dance routines. Next to me, another friend’s sleeve got tugged and I watched as he followed Jeff into the bathroom.

Out to Eat Gina R. Evers

Just drink the green tea. No one needs to know you hate the taste. Try to make this fast. The green film sticks to your teeth. Just sip, look up, and smile at him. He loves your smile. They all love your smile – you need to use that more. Why don’t you tell him you love him? He’d love that. He’d eat it up. So what if the truth is you want to plunge your stick through his eye – jerk took your fork. Just smile. With teeth he says. Give him the teeth. See that girl at the back of the room? The one with the long brown hair, kind of a smush nose? Yeah, her. She’s young. Too young, right? You think she’s glad? Think she knows his hugs are too tight? Think she likes it? Look. Who is she here with? Yeah, same smush nose. It’s not just you, ya know. Think she’s too young to say it out loud? Wrong. She tells her mom all the time. Mom thinks she lies. Mom knows what kind of a man he is. “Hey, space head. What do you see?” Smile at him. Sip your tea. Can’t seem to spit out a word, can you? Can’t talk to the guy. Some of them ask why you’re so shy. Such a sweet face. Kind smile. Shy they say. Shy! Sip your tea. Eat. Taste the salt. Hunk of food stares at you from your plate. It drips brown juice. Poke it with your stick. Look up. She’s on her way out. His touch is on the small of her back. You see him look at her. You know those kind of eyes. He has a firm grasp of her arm. Out the door they go. The bells chime as it slams. Your eyes flood. Sip your tea. Look at him. “Aww, where’s my smile?”

Suicide Beach Howie Good

1 A woman shouting over the black static of the waves asks what I lost. I straighten up. Nothing. The man with her stares angrily out at the water. I’d been searching through rooms of seaweed and broken sea shells for mirrors of sea glass. I open my palm. It’s something I used to know, dying stars burn the brightest. 2 With my hair and beard, I look like a mug shot of Karl Marx after a three-day binge. Every object is a history of its function. For example, guns. Born in one century, I’ll die in another, waiting for the rain to move off.

3 She built a nest inside of me. Other women also floated by the upper windows. She wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t the prettiest, but she was the most beautiful. 4 My heart felt as it often feels, like a deserted warehouse on an abandoned stretch of track. What will you do all morning by yourself? She asked. She already had the door half-open. Search for words that love one another.

Wash the Puppy and Bang Your Head Corey Mesler

for Rebecca Domesticity sings in the air like electric hum. The chickens have all gone elsewhere to roost. They have gone elsewhere to roast. The chickens were afraid. I am afraid. The afternoons when the men come, the men with serious chinwag, I roll up in the covers like a cigarette. I wait for you, the final comfort, with your hands and your wordless songs. I am a puppet. I am the farmerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s puppet. Meat hangs in the shed but I will not think about it. Instead I think about Minnie, her hairy sex, her thousand hounds. Domesticity sings in the air like a wordless song. You tell me, all things lost are equal.

Up on the Pole Robert Campbell

Up on the pole, Michelle was magical. Suspended above us she had complete control. She had short blond hair that dangled in the red glow of the lights. She was floating, weightless. She looked down on us and we were captivated by such precision, such grace. There above us, she opened her arms wide like an upside down crucifix, inviting us to see everything about her. And we threw money on the stage thinking that was enough. Earlier, it was summer and she was just my neighbor who lived with her boyfriend in a ground floor apartment. She was a receptionist, her boyfriend a day laborer. Above them was my friend Brian, and above Brian, was me. Me in a studio apartment where I didn’t own a bed but did own a large television and couch. During bar hours the men pissed standing between needles and vomit; the women hovered an inch above the toilet seat. Our neighborhood bar. A bar with a sign on the wall declaring that customers were forbidden to spit on the floor, forbidden from bumming drinks, forbidden from selling drugs, forbidden from prostitution. There was a sign for the employees saying, Do Not Let Hookers Use the Bathroom, That’s Where the Needles Are Coming From. A bar that never cut you off, never stopped you from drinking, sometimes even after the front doors were locked for the night. We loved this bar. There were two nights I remember most in this bar, one good and one bad, but I often reverse the labels. The first night, Brian had an hour to kill before his AA meeting. Michelle and her boyfriend were already there. The night air was perfect for patio drinking, and the four of us sat outside. Brian left for his meeting and came back a little while later with a better understanding of Jesus. We closed the bar and three of us ended up at my studio. The boyfriend couldn’t make it up the stairs, and soon Brian was in his apartment below us, sick off Crown Royal. I had never seen a pierced clitoris so Michelle showed me hers. Because I had no bed, she bent over the arm of my couch. Afterward, we drank a beer in silence as she held my hand. The second night at that bar, it was just Brian and me. Everyone was buying him shots, because he was a brand new father. He thought it was great, this fake announcement, this fake baby. All night we raised our glasses to the new baby, to the spectacle of life. The summer was ending and I didn’t want it to. I wanted this joy every night, the slapping of backs, the camaraderie felt when you shout for the bartender to “put this round on my tab!”

After the bar, alone in my apartment, the proud new father sleeping a floor below me, there was a knock on my door. There stood Michelle, her nose and bottom lip busted, her neck scraped where the boyfriend had punched her with a fistful of car keys. “I have nowhere else to go,” she said. Inside, I held her hand around the shower curtain while she washed off the blood. I felt so guilty for seeing her naked that I gave her one of my favorite T-shirts and she curled up on my couch to fell asleep. The next morning, she walked back down to her apartment and her boyfriend. I didn’t say a word. Classes started and there were less nights at the bar. When I did walk down there, I didn’t stay very long. There was a stench like wet cigarettes I hadn’t noticed before. The old men sitting alone started to depress me. Brian had other neighbors to drink with, and Michelle had midnight-moved with her boyfriend soon after the night at my apartment. Eventually I stopped going there all together. It was a year later, stopping in for lunch at a strip club off University when I saw Michelle again. Up on that pole, that pole that looked a 100 feet high, she was upside down and breathtaking. Her legs were crossed around the pole; her piercings glinted in the red light. She spread her arms for us and we cheered and clapped, never wanting her to come down, never wanting this moment to end. She closed her eyes and relaxed her legs. Slowly, ever so slowly, we watched. We watched as she inched her way down, eyes still closed, arms still open.

This Poem Contains Brief Nudity and Mild Violence Steve Klepetar

The old story is at least half-crazed. Shadows of shadows, flicker of firelight on slick cave walls. Two cowboys meet at a wooden bridge. They have lean, hard faces and have ridden a long way. Desert sparkles in their empty eyes. One is Anubis, jackal-headed god, the other Ra, old as sun. The air around their bodies lingers, shiny and cold, their breath blurs to white fog beneath a giant globe of moon. On Raâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s black shirt, someone has stitched the evil eye. Spurs jingle, boots crunch in hard packed snow. Violence trails in the air like smoke. In dark river, naked fish smell fear and blood. Lovely voices echo in a honeycomb of caves. Coral dust sprinkles rocky shore. Bound to the mast, a king has forgotten his name. For seven years he has lived as a beggar in strange lands. His queen has mourned him for dead and moved on. His winged boat, sailing over sea of tears, has passed the gate to her kingdom. Her marble tombs will shudder and bring forth what she cannot name. She has taken a lover from the sacred ranks

of gods, a beautiful youth with hands of silk and face of hawk dying in love. All night he spits poison in the ribs of wind. Across Fifth Avenue My Father Sings Across Fifth Avenue my father strides toward the park out across southbound traffic December gray swirl of bus exhaust rising to wool-gray sky. Ducking cabs he sings, “I wanna girl just like the girl that married dear old daaad!” and just like that we are soaring across the rainbow bridge and his green eyes are filled with tears and loose skin hangs from his neck and his battered fedora has sailed off behind us into the dark ravine. Ravens whisper our names. “The dinner wasn’t good at all,” he lets me know, shouts, “This is the last time I let you choose the restaurant!” I’ve never known him so adamant about food, so disappointed in soft crusts of butter chilled to little pats of stone. “You’re gonna need me some of these days,” he sings. Looking at his gray-creased slacks, I realize I have never seen him wearing jeans, or noticed how his soft white hair could bend the doorway of wind. He holds me

in his wrinkled hands, but itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hard to stand and I slip three times before the lights come on. I read his future in the black and red grit of his wine.

(Remix) P.J. Kryfko Like Sands-Sands-luh-luh-like sands The bass kicks in with a steady beat, so low it sends waves and ripples through the wooden dance floor. You don’t dance, you don’t stand. Easy choice to make. It’s not long before a snare comes in on tenor, bouncing a simple melody, building the anticipation. An explosion was coming. We could all feel it. Like Sands-sands-like sands Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh! It’s a woman’s scream. Bloodcurdling and deafening as it’s pumped from a wall of speakers and rains down on the dancers. No sooner is the terror past then the real hooks arrive on cue. A chorus of chirps, beeps, trumpets, flutes, didgeridoos and synthesized versions of instruments that may never have a physical equivalent. I was clinging tightly to the cheap plastic cup holding my swishing beer. It was a different swaying gold that had captured my attention. A blonde in tight jeans was bobbing and shaking to the melodious din. I was dancing. She was dancing. We were not dancing together. But Doctor-d-doctor Amnesia! Duh-d-doctor-but-but doctor Amnesia! The sampled dialogue was repeated again and again as the cacophony of sound beneath it waned and settled in on a simpler, softer pattern. Joining the status quo were new voices in the harmony; all breathless, all female, all moaning a thousand poorly faked orgasms and sighs of satisfaction. She and I turned out of sync and my beer fell on our moving legs. It wasn’t me! It was my evil twin! The explosion was coming soon. The music dropped to a whisper. The same bass and tenor from the beginning kept feet moving and melody alive. It built softly, almost invisibly. The crowd smiled with a lover’s anticipation. Soon. Like Sands “Sorry!” Even now she had to scream to be heard. She moved in closer. I turned to greet her body with mine. Our beer stained legs began to rub together. I was dancing.

She was dancing. We moved together. Like Sands through the Hourglass-ow-ow-hourglass As the music grew, new and old elements found their way into the crescendo. Melodies few of us could identify but all of us recognized, were woven together as the volume increased and heads began to bob up and down with more force, patiently waiting for the coming moment of release. A feeling of nostalgia swept the floor as everyone involuntarily found themselves flashing back a few years to sick days from school curled-up on our mothers’ couches. “What’s your name?!” she asked. Luh-luh-luh-luh-like Sands “Paul! You?!” Sands through the-through the-through-Sands through the “Jess!” Sands through the hour-sands through the hour It was coming. The volume was at its peak. The crowd could not be asked to simply bounce in place any longer. All of us could feel the explosion coming, could feel the beat inside of us. We knew the exact moment it would arrive. Soon. Soon. Suh-Sand-Like sands through the hourglass “Who are you here with,” she shouted. “Some friends. You?” “My friend Kay comes here a lot!” She pointed across the dance floor to a girl with short brunette hair grinding the air with her back towards us. Like sands through the This was it. The big moment. A scream rang from the crowd. Several kids jumped, shook, and threw their arms in the air to the climactic downbeat. The downbeat that never came.

The DJ withheld our climax with a few seconds of additional silence, reasserting himself and reminding us that we are the minstrels here. He started the core melody again before the people could start moaning their disappointment, and like a dog with a dirty nose the crowd fell back into place before they could even process the betrayal they had suffered. “Wait, you’re friends with Kay?!” The music faded back once again to the bass and snare. Falling faster than it was built. “Wait, you’re that Paul?!” Fading, fading until it reached nothingness. Nothing but the voice. Like sands through the hourglass…so are the days of our lives I liked the next song better.

Jonathan West in the Lionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Den Ben Nardollili

They have asked him to read the writing Conveniently placed upon the subway wall, And now that he has told them it is a stain, A symbol, and no human expression, They have locked him up again, Hoping that he will be impaled on a wine bottle. Byzantine Rite Mr. Lazarus, you were there with me, Though I was dressed better, Wearing a pearl gray suit, three piece, Not quite a morning coat, no top hat, But my neck and locked jaw Were in place thanks to tie and pin. I had a drink in my hand, white wine, And we walked down to the church, A ruin, you thought, but no, I convinced you it was alive inside, Celebrating its rising mass By means Anglican and catholic. Inside, we stepped into the congregation That was bursting into halos, Lazarus, you claimed it was golden From the mosaics, tiles sparkling Like small Polaroids of sun, Either way I enjoyed my wine better. The young man in scarlet, looking Feverish except for his blonde hair, He escorted me and you out, Seems they hated my wine, though I tried to convince them white Would have kept the savior healthy.

Etch-A-Sketch Craig Medvecky

As I approach the city, the grayness begins to glow. Seattle appears in the night sky as more and more city lights come into view, a scribbly connect-the-dots drawing of window lights on buildings. When we turn off the highway, around the curve of the off-ramp, gravity tugs my bones, fatigue pushes through my body with a slow squeeze, and the spiraling galaxy skyline rotates to the back window. I wish I could stretch out on the seat, stretch until the tendons and ribs all disconnect from one another and drift apart like stars.

I Want My City to Find Me Sara Ries

Food break at counter one where plates are set to be scraped and ready for bus pans, with unwashed hands, I dip pita in tzatziki sauce. How many mouths, hands have I touched this morning, just by touching napkinsI watch Elmwood Avenue scuffle in the salad table glass, feet along the stubborn smudges where my hand can never reach with Windex. The whole city just passes by these creamers and Greek dressings. A man with a dozen roses walks from Mother Nature florist, broad shoulders softening along the way to his pickup truck. Tonight, when I untie my soup-caked apron, a face will blush from flowers as someone discovers love but far away.

About Our Authors

Robert Campbell received his MFA from the University of Idaho and has published stories in The Iconoclast and The Pacific Review. Neil de la Flor earned an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Miami. His first book of poetry, Almost Dorothy, won the 2009 Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize and will be published in January 2010. His literary work has been published in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Barrow Street, Sentence, 42opus, Court Green and others. In 2006, Facial Geometry (NeoPepper Press), a collaborative chapbook of triads, co-authored with Maureen Seaton and Kristine Snodgrass, was published. He currently lives in Miami and teaches at Miami Dade College and Nova Southeastern University. He can be reached at neildelaflor.com. Gina R. Evers is a current student in the MFA Creative Writing Program at American University. She works full time as a writing tutor for non-native speakers of English, and she helps run one of the many alumni magazines at American University. Gina grew up in and around Chicago, IL and received her bachelor’s degree from Ithaca College in Ithaca, NY. Howie Good, a journalism professor at the State University of New York, is the author of nine poetry chapbooks, most recently Visiting the Dead (2009) from Flutter Press. Steve Klepetar teaches writing and literature at Saint Cloud State University in Minnesota. He is a four-time Pushcart Prize nominee. P.J. Kryfko is a graduate of the University of North Texas undergraduate creative writing program. He is a former editor, critic, journalist, and a published comic book writer. Ain’t It Cool News described his comic as “atypical and original.” Craig Medvecky teaches English at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where he is also currently a dissertator. Having received a Master of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing from Emerson College, his creative work engages imagism, the photographic, collage, Surrealism and the collaborative spirit with a healthy dose of postmodern information anxiety. Recent writing can be found in Contemporary Literature and Sentence: A Journal of Prose Poetics, The Burnside Review, Mirage/Period(ical), and The Strange Fruit among other places. Corey Mesler has been published in Turnrow, Adirondack Review, American Poetry Journal, Paumanok Review, Blood Orange, Barnwood, Yankee Pot Roast, Monday Night, Elimae, H_NGM_N, Center, Poet Lore, Forklift OH, Euphony, Rattle, Jabberwock Review, Tarpaulin Sky, The Pinch, Smartish Pace, others. He has two novels from LivingstonPress: Talk: a Novel in Dialogue and We are Billion-Year-Old Carbon. His first fulllength collection of poems, Some Identity Problems, came out in 2008 and his short story

collection, Listen: 29 Short Conversations, appeared in March 2009. He has two new novels, Following Richard Brautigan and The Ballad of the Two Tom Mores, scheduled for the dim time-to-come. He has been nominated for the Pushcart numerous times. He owns Burke’s Book Store with his wife. He can be found at www.coreymesler.com. Mike Murphy is 25 and from Beverly, Massachusetts. He is pursuing an MFA in nonfiction writing from Columbia University. He enjoys writing short stories about hi-jinks, excess, getting boisterous and his hometown friends. Other men know him as a bull, while women find him dangerous. He sleeps on an air mattress which has a hole in it, so he wakes up on the floor twice a night. Mike also enjoys bombing around on BMX bikes and listening to Jane’s Addiction. He has lived in the Bushwick area of Brooklyn for the past two years. Ben Nardolilli is a twenty- three year old writer currently living in Arlington, Virginia. His work has appeared in Houston Literary Review, Perigree Magazine, Canopic Jar, Lachryma: Modern Songs of Lament, Baker’s Dozen, Thieves Jargon, Farmhouse Magazine, Elimae, Poems Niederngasse, Gold Dust, The Delmarva Review, Underground Voices Magazine, SoMa Literary Review, Heroin Love Songs, Shakespeare’s Monkey Revue, Cantaraville, and Perspectives Magazine. In addition he has worked as poetry editor for West 10th Magazine at NYU and maintains a blog at mirrorsponge.blogspot.com. Angela Parker is interested in memory and its reconstruction and the strangeness of life that can make one feel displaced even in familiar surroundings. The possibilities in darkness excite her. Also, she has an MFA in poetry from Chatham University. Sara Ries is an MFA graduate in poetry from Chatham University. Her work has appeared in The Buffalo News, Artvoice, The Trident, Empower, Tangent, Elm Leaves, Writer’s Compass, and Broadside.