Photography" This journal has always been a good one, and now it's even better, with high glossy arty cover and seductive photos throughout." From the series Reliquary of Desire, by Frank Miller
Poetry Woodwork Redempton by James Valvis The Cashier at Hinky Dinky's Discovers Jesus by Don Winter The Dead by Dancing Bear Crime Corner by Sean Brendan-Brown Backyard Fort by Laura Oliver Woodwork Redemption By James Valvis I was eight years old and my father forced me downstairs to his woodshop when all i wanted to do was play baseball outside like my friends were doing and he backed me to a corner this man who whipped me with a bronw leather strap that snapped against my skin leaving welt marks like asps twirling around the twigs of my arms and legs and he grabbed a sheet of pine looked at me and said, "this can be anything..." and i cringed in my corner as he turned on the electric saw that squealed like a trapped pup and he began to slowly chip away began to hold the wood and turn it his hands dancing along the grain while i inched closer to him this man who drank rubbing alcohol spat obscenities across the room his fingers became fragile birds that flew and darted and laughed robins maybe they were or sparrows those hands that gripped my throat and pinned me against cold walls i drew even closer to him his elbows shifting back and forth in the dusty light of his shop this man who woke me up at midnight with Johnny Cash shaking the windows as he cried over a bottle for his mama I was almost on top of him when he pulled the pine away finished shut off the electric saw and handed me a wooden squirrel "this is for you," he said and we stood there together up to our shoelaces in sawdust the father who failed at almost everything the son who loved him the hum of the blade slowing to a stop Back to top The Cashier at Hinky Dinky's Discovers Jesus By Don Winter You tell me when she found Him. It came sudden like a slammed door. We knocked but she didn't answer. A tent of blond hair and two eyes of alien blue, and a mouth that gospelled us and the customers. She drove us to church flapping our jaws about forgiveness. She sized Jesus-talk to fit our sins. Jesus this. The disciples of jesus that. And prophesy. Frogs and snakes and blood letting blahblahblah. We sang songs about hallelujah and shooing our past sins like flies, and one where you jumped up and down for Jesus. She left scraps of scripture in every nook and cranny of Hinky Dinky's, in cash drawers and cookie jars and cupboards, even in a Bible we swore would explode, until one day geewhillikers her heart did. We all stood around at Tintop Tavern drinking beer, pushing one another and cussing. The good in us run down and left like roadkill. Us back to good-for-nothings, wrong since Genesis. Back to top The Dead By Dancing Bear The dead rise in classic form, Shakespearean and angry, to touch my body. Scavengers rattling in attics, they scratch windows moan in the old-fashioned way. The dead are transparent and naked. I give them soiled sheets to wear and they wail like bruised children. I was dead once too: swallowed their hemlock; signed their suicide pacts; filled the mass graves; drove off cliffs; swam to darker seas impelled by hollow sails. I was lonely too. Fuck the unhappy dead with their drive-bys, addicted to thoughts of escape, climbing each other over knifed backs to lay their putrid breath on my shoulder. Fuck their scrawny fingers as they try possessing my throat. We were friends once, the dead below, Where are you going? We will find you! as I burn the incense, gather the heirlooms, build a pyre and write this exorcism prayer. Back to top Crime Corner By Sean Brendan-Brown I buy cigarettes at the Stop'n Rob to talk with Marwana, the Bengali clerk. She's so beautiful, I wish I had her nose and helical eyes; but I'm a toad, her husband's an old toad—how does beauty throw itself to dereliction: for U.S. citizenship, a rat & roach infested Quickie Mart boasting more porn & beer than food? Some prize, Marwana. Outside, the children color in the dead man's chalked juggernaut; his name was Willy Beardsly he was 52, a Vietnam veteran collecting cans to supplement his VA disability pension (50% Service-Connected Undifferentiated Schizophreniform): caught one right between the eyes. They said he stared up, smiling, told the kid to fuck himself. They said he shuffled his hips to center his face on the gun. Back to top Backyard Fort By Laura Oliver There is a picture of my brothers and me taken in our backyard. It is summer, we splash in the Doughboy. The red top of my bikini filled with only water. To the left, I can see the two- story fort my brothers labored in spring to build. On a forbidden visit to that fort, I saw my first pornography. Pages filled with glistening women, between their spread-winged legs, a pink like the pumps on their feet which decorate glass tables. I returned to the house, snuck my mother's hand mirror, locking the bathroom door, to squat in the tiled corner, bare skin against cool, bathtub porcelain, knees spread. Making sure it's all in place, and hoping it might match up, I jutted my hips toward the ceiling in imitation, forming my mouth in a perfect, pink "O." Back to top |
