All rights to the works included in this magazine remain with their respective authors. All rights to this issue’s cover art (“vertigo myrtle beach 2015,” 2015) remain with the artists kathy jones beamer and billy bob beamer. Zoomoozophone Review is an online literary magazine dedicated to publishing contemporary poetry. It is edited by Matt Margo. http://issuu.com/zoomoozophone_review http://facebook.com/zoomoozophonereview zoomoozophone@gmail.com
Our twelfth issue is dedicated to the memory of Mark Baumer, a poet who collaborated with the world.
Claire Walker and Nina Lewis The Puzzle of an Ending
6
Howie Good and Dale Wisely Umbrella Dreams
7
CL Bledsoe and Michael Gushue Note Found in a Back Issue of Giant Nude Foot Squishers Quarterly I Told You
8 9
j4 Safe Beach The kite still did not fly Spreading the virus
10 11 12
Mike Busam and Grace Schaffer it should be snowflakes falling
13
Matvey Tarchutkin and Alexander Limarev Object A Object B Object C
14 16 18
billy bob beamer and Jim Leftwich Excerpt from Pome (2014)
20
Texas Fontanella and Jim Leftwich Untitled
21
Texas Fontanella and Mason Keys Scan 533
22
Texas Fontanella and Sean Burn wonder rags edge
23
Nathan Spoon and Jamie Thurman flaky (yuck, yuck)
24
Nathan Spoon and Sammantha J. Prychodko Cloak on the Road
25
Julie Naslund, Susanne Margono, Leslie McKay, and Ingrid Bruck permanence
26
Lauren Suchenski and Zackary Shelton Spacetime
27
DC DeMarse and Brittany Swenson : ELECTRO-CONVULSIVE THERAPY, “HALF A SCENE,” [PREFACE,]
28
Contributors
30
This will be the day. You sense it at the twist of dawn. The sun cuts through your window, curtain rises on your empty rooms. Here, you have birthed a thousand little deaths, trusted each one to silence; your life mapped by shadows. You harvest the seedlings that thrived in this dark, replant their roots on his side of the bed. You slip the pieces into place; take nothing into daylight but an opening line, before the full stop is written.
No one planned the Umbrella Revolution. Protesters, with faces full of pepper spray and lungs full of tear gas, dumped raw meat into a pot on a hot plate, singing dirty songs. An umbrella in your dream means you should ask for help when you need it. This is a good dream if the umbrella is open. In all of Dallas on that sunny morning, there appeared to be exactly one person standing under an open black umbrella. And that person was standing where the shots began to rain into the limousine. Can anyone come up with an explanation for this? Hmm? Seed texts: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/22/magazine/hong-kongs-umbrella-revolution-isnt-over-yet.html http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2013/1122/JFK-assassination-Why-suspicions-still-linger-about-Umbrella-Man http://www.auntyflo.com/dream-dictionary/umbrella
A candle loses nothing by setting a house on fire. Everything that shines also burns. What’s the point of making a fetish out of wisdom, or intelligence, or knowing anything? You can drown just as easily in a shallow personality as in a ghazal by a Persian mystic with a drinking problem. Either way, someone’s getting laved and someone’s getting paved, but it isn’t you. Next time you guzzle grain alcohol, boy, do I have a puddle of water for you to lie facedown in. I hope your eyelashes can backstroke. There’s no real fear of drowning. There’s only drowning and the opposite of drowning which is something like flying. They’re both accidents, but one takes a lot longer to be a Wishbone episode. It’s no accident that I call my sourdough starter Mother. When I feel lost, I put her in the oven and watch her swell. The fumes spread. Desperate multitudes knock politely. I let them in, light the candles, then lock the door behind me.
The world is burning. Throwing hundred-dollar bills into the flames won’t put out the fire. The movie ends, but the film still jumps the sprockets like two animals fucking. We’re asleep in the aisles, wanting another theater with more popcorn, better seats, a movie we can learn to love. Every spring, the lilies of the field grow more cynical. They don’t like us hanging around all the time. The fish in the sea, and the fish in the air, and the fish stuck in rush-hour traffic all have the same tattoo: Not What I Expected. Because this is not the kind of elevator shaft you can step into and get a four-course meal at the bottom. Instead it’s laundry baskets as far back as the worst day. The doors open to a man screaming that Jesus doesn’t like you anymore; that’s why all your calls go to voicemail.
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not so much you said = at least it is soft, tho = confectioners’ sugar shaken = from somewhere above maybe = by then the cake had burned = it is what you said, too = don’t expect me to eat this = i have a very sensitive palate
into: the crosshairs
of smothering comforts. annexed the crosshairs of sanctioned comforts.
i didn't expect what was detached
and deflected.
that is some william blake cake. honestly who gives a rotten cabana how she wears a hosanna. [ this goon's tone speaks hard.
dead.
pretty proffered
]
like stolen moonstone.
exotic rock. this gift of contrition comfort, annexed
here: my body, a death trap.
something. cold in intimacy
muscular silence sea of sage and bitterbrush arid clarity chrysalis time unfolding petrified sea gardens rise southern alps secret red mistletoe a thousand years old sea of white sand barrens knee deep in pines pygmy shade dusky juniper berries mimic the sky pulsating springs scattered leaves vanish under calcite layers
transcend pretension stepping-stones to lilly-pads or up for there is he above cloudy clouds in spacetime moonlight cracks the whiskey jar open
Little places in-between the damned crux waged, waged a force bereaved, sauntering plaques of men go into hiding for, from themselves: give me a salutary ego or two. But at a just fine distance. Cramped are the desolate reaching selves they square up to fight for and fidget. And rage against. I am nothing. I am the nothing. Saith him who does naught for himself but leaves it at naught. Shrill bounces bounce off of huddled bodies – the man that is nothing, he peers, leeringly. He peers over into the circumference light betrothed to mean something once. To mean the latent, sore self. To mean that again amongst fern and folly, awaiting a forest of dissections that follow backwards to the end of time. For we are backwards all again, mute and peering over into the significant deepness. Calloused in motion, the forlorn that revisits in pivoting gales – dissect the branch that smites what is a scar already– blood poureth from his babying flesh, steepeth and from the trees that ignite such revelations in fire a deep knowingness forbids him from fleeing this
circling is this unknown lacking, these graces, these penetrant rays hallucinating an eclipse of the sun, as they wiggle in, like heaps of darkness. And the others reach for edges impalpable. To white flagged redemptions they come, sniffing them out, like the armies of grass they are. They like it. Pronoun run ragged, fill me in, make of me a ‘they’ – I am not afraid of the temptor’s questioning lure as it is tossed out with the mighty garbages my discontent wages into nonexistence, and I to waltz with defiance against this. I challenge thy temptor with a snarky chuckle for the plains are riddled with death, soot rains: atop the brave scene’s lark, an animal sunshine. There is uh a way it wants to be there. A consciousness to the rays that pummel these human eyes, the withering of flesh, you go congealing the tragedy of defeat no more, no matter explosive bravery. Aloft on its good graces it makes wind of flesh, water of air for within these elements, a freedom takes reign the cries of the warrior paint the grounds with unheard terrors, unheard triumphs and the men are but ants, lacerating their little hills with the ammo of ego: loot their spirit willya, be a ‘they’
Alexander Limarev is a freelance artist, mail art artist, poet, visual poet, and curator from Russia. He has participated in more than 500 international projects and exhibitions. His artworks are part of private and museum collections of 55 countries. His artworks as well as poetry have been featured in various online publications including Expoesia Visual Experimental, UndergroundBooks, Boek861, Tip of the Knife, Bukowski Erasure Poetry Anthology (Silver Birch Press), M58, Briller Magazine, Brave New Word Magazine, Simulacro, Zoomoozophone Review, Iconic Lit, Caravel Literary Arts Journal, Metazen, Maintenant, The Broken Plate, The Gambler Mag, La Volpe, Degenerate Literature, Tuck Magazine, Ekphrastic Review, Sonic Boom Journal, Mush/Mum Mag, Utsanga, Bateau Ivre, Killer Whale Journal, etc. billy bob beamer continues his experimental music, writing, small drawings, installations, and digital asemia/visual poetry. In summer 2015, he exhibited selected works at the Fine Arts Center for the New River Valley in Virginia. His current digital images can be seen in Jim Leftwich’s online collection at https://www.flickr.com/photos/textimagepoetry/collections (“pansemic playhouse 2014-3”). Recent graphite drawings can be viewed at The Nevica Project Gallery in Chicago (thenevicaproject.com). Brittany Swenson is a writer living in New York City. Her work has been featured in Maudlin House and Abyss & Apex, among others. CL Bledsoe is the Assistant Editor for The Dead Mule and the author of fourteen books, most recently the flash fiction collection Ray’s Sea World and the poetry collection Trashcans in Love. Bledsoe lives in northern Virginia with his daughter. Claire Walker’s poetry has been published in magazines and on websites including The Interpreter’s House, Ink Sweat and Tears, Prole, And Other Poems, Emerge Literary Journal, and Clear Poetry, and in anthologies such as The Chronicles of Eve and Element(ary) My Dear. Her debut pamphlet, The Girl Who Grew into a Crocodile, is published by V. Press. Her website is https://clairewalkerpoetry.com. Dale Wisely co-edits White Knuckle Press. DC DeMarse is a writer living in Gloucester. He writes extensively about metaphysical mumbojumbo and has had work featured on a variety of blogs, including HOUND Lit, Reality Hands, and Fruita Pulp. Grace Schaffer is Mike Busam’s daughter and lives in Butler County, Ohio. Grace is developing her artistic “chops” and is continually working with different media. Howie Good co-edits White Knuckle Press. Ingrid Bruck lives in Amish country in Pennsylvania, a landscape that inhabits her writing. Since retiring as a library director, she has dedicated herself to writing short forms and short poems.
j4 is a collective of four persons, all given names beginning with j, who are compelled to explore transindividual composition. Jamie Thurman’s poetry appears in Abramelin. She lives on an organic farm near Nashville, TN. Jim Leftwich is a poet and networker who lives in Roanoke, VA. He is the author of Doubt, Spirit Writing, Death Text, and Six Months Aint No Sentence. Collaborative works include Sound Dirt with John M. Bennett, Book of Numbers with Márton Koppány, Acts with John Crouse, and deer rug with John M. Bennett and Jukka-Pekka Kervinen. Since 2010 he has been editor and publisher of the micro-micropress TLPress, specializing in tacky little pamphlets, broadsides, PDF ebooks, and related ephemera. Julie Naslund lives and writes in the high desert of central Oregon. She feels that poetry is an act of translation. kathy jones beamer - retired, photographer, wife of billy bob beamer. She lives in Vinton, VA. Lauren Suchenski’s poetry has most recently been published in Dark Matter Journal, Red Fez, Stoneboat Literary Journal, Five 2 One Magazine, Unbroken Journal, Gambling the Aisle, Vine Leaves Literary Journal, Centum Press, and more. In addition, Lauren was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2015. Leslie McKay is an Aotearoa/New Zealand poet and writing teacher. In 2015, she won the Caselberg International Prize and her work has been published in anthologies and online. She is currently working towards her first collection. Mason Keys is a Chicago-based mail artist that gets his ideas by chewing up crayons and spitting them out onto paper. Matvey Tarchutkin is a Russian guy based in Auckland, NZ. He does all kinds of things related to the design-tech field and is currently pursuing a career as a user experience designer as well as doing front-end web development in his spare time. Could describe himself as a multidisciplinary practitioner. He’s also totally into yoga, road cycling on a track bike, and philosophizing about the questions that are never going to get answered. Michael Gushue runs the nano-press Beothuk Books and is co-founder of Poetry Mutual/Vrzhu Press. His work appears online and in print, most recently in Beltway Poetry Quarterly, the Michigan Quarterly, and Gargoyle. His chapbooks are Gathering Down Women, Conrad, and Pachinko Mouth (from Plan B Press). Mike Busam is Grace Schaffer’s father. He lives in Butler County, Ohio and works for the Lane Library Bookmobile.
Nathan Spoon is a bookseller at Parnassus Books. His publications include Oxford Poetry, Mantis, Reflections (Yale Divinity School), From the Lighthouse, and X-Peri. He’s been anthologized in What Have You Lost? (HarperCollins) and is the recipient of a Tennessee Williams Scholarship to the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. He is the Research Editor of X-Peri. Nina Lewis is a UK poet. Her poems have been published widely in literary journals including Under the Radar, Silhouette Press, and Abridged, and in anthologies such as Schooldays and Remember. Nina performs nationally at poetry festivals and runs a free writing retreat every October at https://awritersfountain.wordpress.com. Her debut pamphlet, Fragile Houses, is published by V. Press. Sammantha J. Prychodko was born and raised in Buffalo, NY. She studied creative writing at Warren Wilson College and now lives in Murfreesboro, TN. She is presently learning the way of southern-spun tale, studying writing, and reading on the lives of women. Free PDF ebooks of visual poetry http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/burn_sean.
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Susanne Margono, born in Germany, resides in the United States. She writes poetry in German and haiku in English. Her article on the early poetry of Dada performance artist Hugo Ball appeared in Hugo Ball Almanac. Don’t mess with Texas Fontanella. Zackary Shelton lives in Washington DC and loves Belgian beer. He originally hails from Boston and loves to dabble in writing and the written word.