November 30, 2011

The world always ends when you least expect it.  Good luck, everyone!  Thanks for living on this planet!

Jennifer Tomaloff: three images

Ray Gonzalez: “The Destroyer of Compasses” (after Julio Cortazar)

The destroyer of compasses is my brother. He lies in the wet fields of war and dies young, his spirit rising above the soil to be trapped in the great books that tell a different story because magnetic north has been demolished, the master of compasses witnessing the coffin and flag draped with the glory of the weeping mothers and the lying generals that perform without the four directions turning their sweat to blood. The destroyer of compasses is my brother. He eats the same meal as I, though the bird of migration is set in its cage and cannot flee, its shriek waking the young and resolving the old. When the bird is eaten, the boy takes its compass apart, hiding the magnetic needle in his left ear, leaving the blazing feathers behind. He follows the vibration to the south where his family emerges wrapped in robes the savage priest left behind. The destroyer of compasses wants to be my brother, but I am too old to give advice, the glass on the compass touched by our father who doubted its magic—the devices of love and death hidden in the shoes of the stone men who refuse to be shown direction and drink the mud of their angry sons, the loyal followers, and the boys who insist they must defend the earth from its barren kind. The destroyer of compasses is my brother. He flies, lifting the sorrow of lies beyond the broken fields of rock where the compass refuses to point, its frenzy the dance in the engine of the heart, the compass the last circle spinning wildly before the young man finds out where he is bound. 

Nathaniel Tower: "The Arrival"

                                                                                                

            Everybody knew it would happen. It didn’t happen exactly when or how they thought it would, but nonetheless it happened.

            “I told you it would happen,” a bearded man told his wife.

            “Of course you did. Everyone knew it would happen,” the wife responded while thinking he could use a nice shave. He would be a lot more handsome with a shave.

            “Well, I knew how it would happen, too,” he said through the massive piles of wiry brown hair that surrounded his mouth.

            “No you didn’t. No one did. If someone had, then it could have been delayed,” she said, trying to picture his face hairless.

            “Well, at least I knew when it would happen,” the beard said.

            “No you didn’t. No one did. If someone had, then we would have been prepared.” All she could see now was a giant mound of hair talking to her.

            On a certain level, everyone was relieved when it finally did happen. They had been waiting a long time for it. Finally, they could relax. There was no reason for anxiety anymore.

            Some had doubted at first, but the source of their doubt was likely rooted in denial. Everyone came around eventually. Luckily, by the time it did happen, no one seemed to doubt it anymore.

            “What should we wear?” the wife asked the beard.

            “It doesn’t matter,” the beard responded.

            “But it might be the last thing we get to wear.” She was genuinely concerned, both about her outfit and her husband’s raggedy appearance.

            “Then wear something you like,” spewed out the parted patches of brown hair.

            There was a lot of variety in dress that day. Some chose to look their finest. Others sought clothing that they found comfortable. Still others tried to make one final fashion statement that set themselves apart. Regardless, everyone changed clothes when they found out it had happened. The bearded man had been right though. It didn’t really matter as long as you didn’t show up naked.

            “Should we eat before we go?” the worried wife wondered.

            “The impression I get is that the food shall be plentiful. We shan’t ever hunger again,” the beard spoke as the stomach below rumbled.

            “Should we have a snack just in case?”

            “Perhaps we had better.”

            She hoped that no crumbs would stick in the mess of mouth hair.

            Most people ate a snack before they left. It happened halfway between lunch and dinner, and people were starting to get a little hungry. The snack would tide them over until dinner. Most assumed dinner would be served a little late. With all those people, it would be difficult to serve everyone efficiently. No one considered that dinner might not be served. Everyone just expected it. Just the event itself, they weren’t sure when or how, but they knew it would happen.

            “Should we bring anything with us?” the beard parted to ask.

            “I’m not sure. I don’t think we need anything, but perhaps we should bring a few essentials just in case,” the wife said, adding Perhaps you should bring a razor to herself.

            “What are the essentials?” the beard wondered, hoping a razor wasn’t among them.

            “Well, we need toothpaste, deodorant, soap, clean underwear, makeup, and…” she paused. “Maybe a razor and some toilet paper. You know, the things we can’t live without.”

            “Can we really bring all that?” he wondered.

            The wife didn’t respond. She was too busy putting all the essentials in a bag.

            No one was really sure whether or not they should bring something. It seemed likely they should. They would likely never return to their homes. Some people brought practical things. Some brought sentimental things. Some, those who were very confident about their fate, brought nothing but themselves.

            “What time should we arrive?” the woman asked frantically as she ran around the house filling the bag.

            “I think we should try to arrive early,” the beard flapped.

            “When should we leave?” The bag was overflowing.

            “Probably now,” he said before she had had time to pack the razor.

            Everyone arrived early. None of them knew what exactly to expect other than huge crowds and hopefully eternal happiness. They stood in throngs, barely room between each other to distinguish where one life form ended and a new one began. They talked among themselves, but the conversations were mostly meaningless and found themselves lost in other conversations.

            They waited for a long time before the man they could hear but not see spoke to them. “All who are presentable but not magnificent, hungry but not empty, prepared but not equipped, early but not premature may enter.”

            The crowd looked amongst itself, each member wondering if he or she met these requirements. No one spoke with their mouths, instead just offering each other puzzled looks. The silence of death hung over the crowd.

            They were still looking at each other two hours later when the gates closed.

(previously appeared in This Zine Will Change Your Life)

Michael Brandonisio: “it’s always the end of the world”

it’s always the end of the world

ever since the world began it’s been ending

prelude for it’s always the end of the world

always the world ending every so often

and so no more oceans no more monkeys

no more murder no more love songs

no more world to kick around anymore

because it’s always the end of the world

goodbye world I hate to see you go

auf wiedersehn world sayonara ciao-ciao

all this paranoia about the end of the world

for goodness sake hurry up and end already

always the world ending always finis finis

goodbye world it’s been nice knowing you

everybody keeps on waiting for the ending

always waiting for end times in extremis

encore for it’s always the end of the world

one day the world will end for sure for sure

and so no more world to bitch about anymore

but for auld lang syne hold on to your top hats

try and stick around just a little while longer

you never know what might happen next

DeWitt Brinson: “Today,” and a drawing

Today just like everyday

was uneventful for trees

as far as they can tell

trees do very little

and are very important

for us to survive

and other species

if we are ever to survive

we must let them continue

doing almost nothing all day

Howie Good: “Lost in America,” “The Hit,” and “The Fallacies of Hope”

Lost In America

Women in those days carried tear-gas pens in their pocketbooks. There wasn’t much work around even for a person with two advanced degrees. The bus departed from underneath the Port Authority building at eight that night. If you asked, I couldn’t have told you the difference between a casket and a coffin. The homeless lived in the corners of the cavernous waiting room. I should have taken something for pain. When I woke up, it was snowing in Ohio.

The Hit

1

My youngest daughter, tormented by visions of burning airships, trips the metal detector. I feel like an empty gray glove. Strangers crowd into the elevator with us. Only later do they think to ask if we’re going down. The weather has turned. Buds pop, a nation of suicide bombers in dynamite vests.

2

So this how I’ll die, stabbed repeatedly by dry droplets of fiery rain. Someone you know well will also be caught in the storm.

3

I had just put my key in the door when two men in sunglasses walked up behind me. Was it because my mother was my father as well? The one who looked most like a paid assassin made a gun with his fingers and pressed it against the small of my back. They asked each other and then me what to do next. If I have to wear a tie, I said, I won’t go. There was never a stripper named Naked Truth, but there should have been.

The Fallacies Of Hope

A guidebook

to Belgium.

4,000 killed here.

Bloodstains

that by some

strange act

become farms

and buildings.

The sun

is god

stupefied

with ether.

(Howie Good’s latest chapbook is Threatening Weather, available as a free audio book and e-book from Whale Sounds.)

Marwin Vos: “Very little trees left” (poem and animated treatment)

in the middle of the woods

there's almost no life

there's almost no

middle in the woods

more woods

will be cleared tomorrow

lots of people in the woods

they occupy the woods

because the woods are weak

vicky the viking comes

to the rescue

and follow the link to the animated treatment:

http://www.marwinvos.nl/very_little_trees.asp

Doug Draime: "The Earth Is Exploding Where Lawrence Of Arabia Once Slept” and “Trip to Nowhere”

The Earth Is Exploding Where Lawrence Of Arabia Once Slept

where he fought

and fornicated

where he turned

his heart to blowing sand

blood lust

running through

his aristocratic veins

his blue eyes full of

the murderous

future

Trip to Nowhere

Where I found answers I

could not find questions

for. The middle was not

in the middle but off

to the right side, positioned

like an open grave. Voices

spoke In English making

no grammatical sense. I

grabbed hold of

the edge

of something freezing and fierce, 

which took off all my flesh up

to my elbow. There was no moon

or sun or stars or sky

only rain and movement all

around me like

speeding trains on

rusty tracks. No entrance, no

exit, no way of telling light

from dark. My bones

broke like pencils

against monolithic structures everywhere

I turned

and everywhere was nowhere

and somewhere was slaughtered with

no purpose and no direction. 

Suddenly there was a sound like

millions
of breaking windows, 

smashing in echo chambers

over and over. I knew then, somehow, I had broken

through and that my bones would

heal, I would form new skin on

my arm, and the questions were something

in the middle once again. The moon, the

sun, the stars and the sky were

there too.

("Trip to Nowhere" was previously published in Ken*Again, 2008)

Tim Van Hook: “Leave"

Our tangled pair bubbles out from a point,

Till the dark mass pulls us in to rejoin.

Space winds up time in a place we can stay,

Red shift of light can’t diminish the day.

I only grieve so I find you anew.

I only leave so I fall back to you.

Once we were one in the hot salty sea,

Split but the code sits in our memory.

Ere the begats that the garden expelled

You were my sister on African veldt.

I only see as I look through you too.

I’m only free as I bind fast to you.

Slip of a girl and a boy tongue-tied tall

Kiss inside us through our grown up disguise.

Tucked in below children long to recall

Two old folks young in their soft focus eyes.

I only cry so the tears clear my view.

I’d only die so I rest next to you.

        (Previously published in undrian.com where you may find other of Tim’s work.)

“Leave” by Tim Van Hook, 2010

Brian Beatty: "Fenced Out"

The early morning graffiti

of fog doesn’t lift here

in London, CA.   

Geography is a fear —

a vast pornography of voter

abstraction 

& discontent. 

Why not riot? We're expert

at following arrows.

We are what remain of all

that we can’t see for the forest’s 

proliferation of trees/posts.

This goat the world's

been parenting as a metaphor

has turned out to be

a dreadful substitute.

Or maybe we're learning 

(again) that we’re poor hosts.

Peter William Stein: “The End”

The end is near

The end of the world

No.

The end of us

Or maybe just me

Armageddon

Mass destruction of society

The death of an ego that thinks it is the world

She will be fine

Nothing she hasn’t endured before

She has boiled with fiery skin

She has hibernated under mountains of ice

Her seed is still at the bottom of the sea

And we are a dead branch of Darwin

That will someday fall

And decay into fuel for the roots

That will build another limb

What we call Nuclear Holocaust

She calls chemotherapy

This greenhouse we are building

Will lead to little green fingers

Cracking and pulling pavement apart

Ivy entwining skyscrapers

And the emergence of a new metropolis

With canopy trees and prehensile tailed tenants

Organic beast ripping the urban machine to shreds

This process is not evil

She does not hate us

It is only survival

And we are to be recycled into samsara

It is no surprise that I will die

And so will the WE,

And someday she too will break through

This mortal plane as fuel for a sun

Expanding too rapidly for its own good

Jordan Kapono Nakamura: “Slow Sun Exile”

a year can now be measured in weathered candles

five o’clock tea has been a bad friend

i’ve never had

for months they’ve been quiet in the frat houses

cupping hands around the fire, squinting at the chessboard

“Trade for my Queen, please,”

the pawn is replaced which is not a pawn

but a bottlecap no one bothers to find the pieces

that slip below the table making no sound as if the floor was the

bottom of a yucatan cave 200 feet deep

fallen leaves scrape the door

with the noise of tiny claws

the scent the promise of wax

wanders by like holy men

before the good Samaritan

Before Derrida, Pollock,

before the pirate bay was closed down

my mother would sing hymns to make me dream

and i would try to feel small

then later

i had mountains make me feel small

but we can no longer see any mountains

i found a page ripped from an old story

there were just nine sentences.

but it was enough.

Kyle Hemmings: “The Problem with Watching TV Reruns When You're Too Sober on Cold Pizza”

I kept my mother's TV, one that I'd never throw out, black and white, equipped with old cathode and vacuum tubes. Only occasionally did something smoke. Maybe it was me. So I was sitting there, watching The Last Pony Express Rider, a close up of both man and horse, one desperate to leave St. Louis, the other so needy of sugar cube and water. Both horse and rider jumped out of the screen and into my room of clutter, paper designs of failed rockets, my old love letters written when I still believed in the future of science. 

The rider, dusty from the trip, handed me the letter. His horse was still panting.

My dearest Harold. Forgive me my poor judgment. It was not meant to be that I would become the fair headed and lisping stage actress of Sacramento, the rage of failed gold miners. Alas, I am stranded here without money or promise of sustenance. Shall I sell myself to the angry moon and die hungry? If you could but come to my rescue one last time, I will never leave your side. Already, the dirt streets of St. Louis ring in my ears sweet as a choir. In my own unfathomable way, I have always been loyal to you. We are both creatures of what rustles through our brains at night--A Love So Unworthy--Wanda Tarrington-Cates.

The last name belonged to my mother's side. My mother, who in her precociously shut-off days in a hospital that resembled a resort, painted Impressionistic paintings of sunsets in crashing colors. Over time, those paintings, with an acquired cult following, commanded exorbitant prices on ebay.

I made out a check to Wanda Tarrington-Cates and proceeded to hand it to The Last Pony Express Rider. But his horse had turned to glass. His show being cancelled, he was nowhere to be found. From then on, I vowed to live on a diet of cold pizza, black coffee without sugar. The old TV set no longer worked, but its black rectangular eye kept watching me, as if someone far away, perhaps behind that screen, still needed me. 

Stephanie Matson: “Suicide Bomb at a Volleyball Match in North Western Pakistan”

The pearl slips through

Wrinkled finger pads.

Water flowers over the bedrock

Which contours limbs

To mold my pearl

Melting away.

The coal I had saved for you.

A reversed Vandenbergh effect

Set up in my mind;

Saying hello to Eddie Haskell

As I drive down Cornell.

When your medication decreased

I prayed for an eddy.

For Riff Raff and Magenta

As our lips sat peeled back

Like the skin of a fruit.

Prayed for an abyss which would take me away

From the hallucinations which made you cry

From the stickers of your faded emblem

When I needed you most.

Well, it's the fractions in our heads—

The analogous mental disorders—

That I thought would lead to our fusion.

But I fed off of your suffering,

And deteriorated to spite your recovery.

Holding to you as a leach

Looking for warm blood

From a lizard.

These were the days when I was better off dead

Air pressure not strong enough to offer suction

To swallow the last bit of liquid

Needed to satisfy my thirst to obtain,

For my catalyst had long since evaporated

bl pawelek: "snake and peyote" and "swallowed"

he rolls himself

constructs tight against the six stalks

grinding encompassing consuming

diamonds roll the back

and shape head strong

the snake and peyote

await the divine light

the signal of pilgrim luck

move west

over the mountains

to the water of final ends

push the dirt

push the sand

accept the prayers for rain

Jeff Grunthaner: "Dead Fish in a Lithograph"

The fat lady is singing because her heart

has broken both its legs. Bloody murder

rains out in a brassy chorus, where the

radio is useless machinery you can cry. 

The chiming of old-timey music is really

the chimera of an idiot’s derision, like

a call to conscience from before when radio

was invented. It surges into awareness

without any message, & translates the staccato

of experience into ice, numbed by musical

phrases woven with the strings of violins. 

The discordance of life-styles is projected

like the several notes in a single chord,

where living is a technique like television,

an approximate profession, wholly digital,

& experience more or less an encumbrance,

like the passive thrills found in watching

a bad movie. Personally, I’m wedded to

my sorrows, which brought with them some 

momentary surprise, tainted by laudations

promised when the bars had closed, & text

messages that reply: “Sort of fun. Ur cool."

Ray Gonzalez, "The Mark"

The Mayas believed we all have a face and a mark. They believed the invisible mark is more of a face than our own face. They said all humans will be known by their mark. My mark is not invisible, but hidden somewhere in the territory of the mind, a place of markings where I have never gone. Last night, I dreamed I was eating fried lizard meat out of a McDonald’s container. It was not a nightmare, but a quiet dream of ritual where I ate the lizard meat and felt stronger. When I woke, I told my wife about this and she said it was a sign I am getting well. It is my mark, the sign of the creature leaving marks on the sand, that distance that has nothing to do with my face or the way I look because I am looking older and the mark trumps my face, the lizard meat prepared by an unseen face and served in a fast-food carton to warn me many people are searching for their marks. I also told my wife the next brief dream last night had me listening to her play her violin. She is taking lessons and getting better at it—the soothing air of the instrument leaving its mark on me as I slept and got the closest I have ever been to recognizing my face with my eyes closed. 

Laura LeHew: “Should We Vanish”

          “you may drive nature out with a pitchfork but she will always return”

            ~Horace

1.

To Whom It May Concern:

By an unfortunate error we’ve

misidentified civilization. It was,

in fact, not created by the deity or

deities known sometimes as God

but by Mrs. Charles [Anne] Hobart of Kansas City,

Missouri head of the Abstinence For You-All Coalition.

We sincerely regret this error

and offer our apologies.

~Jesus Tran-Rodriguez

  Transitions Director

  New Directions in the Great Urban Outdoors

  Building Bigger and Better Prisons

2.

maybe she wanted him

the impossible dialog

Something Imagined

3.

Write your name

in a veiled raven.

4.

the sun detonated

it made a lot of noise

it was over                                                                                                                                        

5.

An error has occurred.

The feed is probably down.

Try again later.

6.

flick off the light switch

7.

The ghosts are laughing

I still have hope

One more skilled adventure—whatever

it is that fuels the stalled machine

and sends the pilot on his starry quest;

whatever it is they hope to find

out there—an emptiness, a stillborn

terror, but it is not love.

-John Haines, from NEAR Travels Far to Find Eros

The phoenix mourns by shaping, weighing, testing, hollowing, plugging and carrying towards the light.  He seems to take a clear view of necessity.  And…maybe he comes to see the immensity of the mechanism in which he is caught, the immense fragility of his own flying—composed as it is of these ceaselessly passing shadows carried backward by the very motion that devours them, his motion, his asking.

-Anne Carson, from Nox

Joyce Lautens O'Brien: "September 27, 2001"

Everything will be all right I tell myself

At first I couldn’t sleep it hurt couldn’t

believe

everything was changed nothing

the same ever again men weeping

on television in full public view too

awful for words lives buildings peace

everything normal gone forever ground

to gritty dust and ash but sixteen days after

flags flying a resurgence of hope I laugh

with friends take Giuliani’s advice and

spend I buy a watch I had my eye on

before

a luxury item gold plated with Roman numerals

to mark the hours I check my portfolio down

but not too much not too much to bear

and the economy improving by the second

by the second quarter no doubt back up

to speed people flying through the air just

like they used to no cares in the world

everything the way it was what lies

we tell ourselves

what lies ahead

(this piece first appeared in Connecticut River Review)