To Do:

by Allison Carter

Wacky Words

by Matthew & Daiana Feuer

Warm Places

Tito vs Tito

by Allison Carter

Jacob and Julie

This is a Moon diamond sealed in blue chocolate with blue eyes lacking tapetum lucidum, a structure which amplifies dim light in the eyes of others. When you live with two siamese you wake up at six to feed them or they bark. As you leave the home or as you return, you kick your foot around the bottom of the skinny space through which you slide, preventing over and over again their escape. When you open the fridge they are there balancing on their hind legs, pawing at the meat drawer. The meat drawer belongs to them. You know this because you will accidentally eat their ham at least twice before it becomes a pattern. A pattern is only a pattern when the thing of the pattern happens more than twice. If you are sitting on a couch and one named Jacob chases one named Julie, the one named Julie will likely release her bowels on a frictionless beige carpet. You will not clean it, but rather step over the area for days until someone else notices and wraps their very own hand in a paper towel. You put out your hand and they dig their mouth into your fingernails. No one else is around and Jacob is suddenly trapped in a plastic tupperware falling off the counter. They will ask. You will deny involvement. When you live with two siamese one of the two will be cross eyed.

by Shannon Breen

Rewriting Twentynine Palms in the Bathtub

Twentynine Palms

Un Film De Bruno Dumont
Starring:
David Wissak...David
Yekaterina Golubeva...Katia

I've been thinking and
of all the stars in the
world you are the one that
shines brightest in my
sky. I would drink the
ocean to run across its
sandy bottom to be
with you. I would
chew my way through
mountains and if
I had to, I would
suffocate a thousand
petunias. If it
would bring you to me.
Tell me what I can
do to win your favor,
anything, and if you want,
you can swim through fire
and crawl through
rain to be with me. If
you want to crush ladybugs
or sew a hot air balloon out
of crocodiles and steal
the nose of an elephant
to fly to me, you
can even challenge dragons
and trolls. Or we
can meet halfway in a steamy
bog of evil, to
be together.


To be with you, I would
drown two thousand puppies,
if you wanted me to, I
would shave the heads of
angels and cut fingers
from cannibal
trolls. But, I think it's
best if we meet halfway.
I dare you to
give me the gift of your
love. You could run
across the ocean, you could
scalp a hundred dragons,
but will you do
all that and more, give an
assorted gift bag of
deeds and objects,
souls and skins, and
will I do the same. And
when it's all over, we
will be together to
bask in our
eternal glory
and the shape we've
given the world.

...to be continued

by Daiana Feuer

Ghosties

by Allison Carter

Cucumaywissar

How To:

1) Hunger becomes a form of control.

For example: We have a pet fish. Look at our pet fish. This is our pet fish. Our job is to keep him alive. Or not. Our job is to provide our pet fish with food. We represent sustenance. We own him.

He doesn't know this. Fish, presumably, have no sense of ownership. We have sense of ownership. We feel responsibility towards him. His survival is based upon our idea of responsibility. If responsibility waned, our pet fish would be dead.

This is our pet fish. Look at our pet fish. We own our pet fish. He is our responsibility.

We represent food. He consumes the by-product of our responsibility.

These things are ridiculous and crude, but we must indulge them.

In one sense, our fish's survival depends on: malformed, prehistoric apes. How does a creature act when it is able to realize and fear the intense barbarism that culled it into existence? With pleasure or agony. For example: sometimes they would shout, from the trees at one another, as the fields blew below, "I have a stick I have a stick I have a stick I can see my stick."

In another sense, it is ridiculous to think our fish's survival is dependent upon that at all. Who knows?

2) Reproduction becomes a rationale for eradication.

For example: we stub our toe. Look at our stubbed toe. It is disgusting. Our skin is missing. Look how easily we can fall apart. This is terrible.

Also, there are organisms breeding in our wound. Disgusting. Our body cannot handle this. This can be bad.

It is called infection: it happens all the time. There are things that breed and live inside of other things. We pretend this isn't something that should happen. We pretend this is something that should be stopped.

So: we get chemicals. Hooray for chemicals.

The chemicals will stop the breeding.

Millions of organisms die. Their death appears in the form of foam to us. We call this cleansing. We don't even think of this as death. We benefit from it. We survive.

Hooray for survival.


by Gerard Olson
photo by Daiana Feuer

Direction

click on the picture for direction

Dr. M on Suicidal Wildlife

• They don’t seem to want to them, the xenopendages. They lick their wounds for days on end until they no longer feel the external pain; the sensation of the tongue on hair slowly subsides until it is dull once again. The scars don’t really show themselves, at least not to the naked eye, as enzymes in the saliva slowly clean and aid the healing process.
• In Vivo, the tissues attempt to mend themselves. They grasp at readied fibers or connective strands, wanting and needing to feel the pulsing sensations of acceptance, of wholeness but this isn’t always a success. It has always been hard to foresee the ways in which a patient’s immune system will interact with the foreign appendage, whether the proteins and enzymes present will coexist. More times than not, the patient’s immune system will attack the new appendage seeing it as infecting body. I have tried through drug therapy to counteract the process of total rejection and have come across the perfect drug cocktail of anti-proliferates, corticosteroids, and mTOR inhibitors but one problem still exists.
• As the hair grows over the surgery scars and the nervous tissues regain impulse transmission, the muscles slowly regain function. I have rehabilitated the patient’s motor function and it can now use the new appendage to execute simple functions such as holding cups, pens, and a cell phone. I am confident that after a few more weeks I will be able to train the patient to successfully dial a number on the cell phone.
• If all goes as planned I will be able to stop this patient from meeting the same fate as the last three hundred.
• I find them on the side of the road: muscles torn, nerves severed, and bones broken from the impact of metal and flesh. I bring them back to the lab with me, take leftover, harvested appendages and try to fix them. Nobody notices an arm or a leg missing from the racks.
• I try to give this animal a new opportunity, a new chance at a new existence, but somehow things always end up the same.
  
• It runs into the machines head first, always when given a chance, ripping from its body the foreign appendage. Its body left on the side of the road, newly mutilated and bleeding. I do what I can. I retrieve the foreign limb and leave the body on the side of the road, hoping that its soul will now be at rest.

by Rene Ledezma

Buffavobrie

Animism

Fetch

a. criminal minds

b. nobody puts baby in the corner

c. ok

d. we can be genuinely anything, wrapped in blankets, blankets with snags, blankets with pockets and bricks and saw dust, magic appeal, boiling blankets

e. I actually hate the idea of you considering that I might be less, and mind you, "a lot less," you easily tend to stifle the same smile that you add

f. I'm usually right

g. I am walking along a sidewalk with what used to be my fetch. Were we involved? We used to be to certain specific degrees and then we were on terms. My hand looks gray, I said, and the fetch, or former fetch, but also the only fetch, does not nod. My hands and arms below the elbows are out and about in the light today, a t-shirt sleeve on each side is orange and keeps my shoulders and pits beneath cotton. Also the rest of the area usually covered by a. The kind of hungry I am is a pregnant hungry, I suggest. Former Fetch might nod but I don't even glance over to check out head and neck status. Why should I? A gaping. Growls. Turbulence. I had dindin and lunch and a morning meal as well. I had interim things like carrots and jalapenos. I am most likely eating for two and that isn't a great aspect amid the here and now. Under the tree stooped over sick and green, and, also, a stinging inside the esophagus region and on the mouth's roof. From the peppers, I recall a murderous snack, and the anti-Fetch isn't holding my hair back. You used to be there for me. Puke. You used to be there. Puke. But really I know full well I used her. I sent her out to contest items in the world I didn't know how to confront. Go out come back. Go back and when you come here give me better news this time. For instance, he loves. Do you see what I am getting at? Or more importantly, what Fetch-that-once-was is no longer willing to get at? Gray skin. I'm carrying you for someone else, I admit looking down at myself sticking out. But then I realize it was a hungry week, that's all. And next week I won't be or I still will be either way. F sat on a bench most likely and decided not to get up because I don't feel it here any more. Maybe thought I might eat it or wrap it in slinky or put it in plastic pink heels or cheat in go fish or peek or hide in a high spot on top of a white shed (1) or crispy pie or lay out for hours or ant bites or soaked cereal or walking away in my sleep or downstairs or demons perched on bedposts or slip onto one or crawl or cranky. (1) things to do in and around a white shed while thinking: haunt, paint doll houses blue, lock friends inside, fall asleep standing up, tie shoe, float along happy go lucky, chew gum, chalk design, can food, store items, cats, dinosaur, hit tennis ball against it

h. 'twas exciting
and at the same time, old hat
slip and slide
Zamboni driver

i. like slowly digesting the irresolute underpinnings of your hop-scotch


by Shannon Breen

S: Monday

I spent Monday in the waiting room. The air: frizzed. Combed? A very white hole. What goes in it? I sat in the room, folding the air, and S walking there. The room strung lengthwise behind him.

A familiar goat: I sat in the feeding room. The metal tag, its getting chewed. Where is S going? My face observing this general feeling: What are you doing?

Airports don’t age. I folded the air on the line in the air in between us. Sitting in the current seat. My lazy face – lazy stringing. Lazy bones. My lazy eye. I love you. Lazy bones?

Are you late? What is home? Where you often went. Home for what? A list. Where do you think you’ll arrive? Really, and for what? On those lazy bones. How far will they taxi you? Take a seat. Sit in it – take a room in it. Take a room in it and look at it, us, the collapsible slacks off.

Folded in half, the person has difficulties with moving. Would you say you are late? Would you say that you missed it already?

The folding, what, acuity? The what? Did you say heart? Would you consider it “time sensitive?” Would you consider it personal in that way? The lazy room extending, what, caught on your shoe? And then me. Making a list. Not couch but chairs. Not couch but waiting chairs. Folding the last seven years in like a map.


There are limits to what you can fold. There are limits to how far it will take you. Take the eye in. Comb the eye twice a day. Comb the lazy bones to collapse. Fold the home into your forehead. Say it is my eye, my shoe. And even knowing that, still knowing what to do.


by Allison Carter
photo by Daiana Feuer

Birds and Lizards

It's troubling, I'll admit. We can wake up in the mornings and count our teeth. We can eliminate the organisms breeding on our teeth, with chemicals. We can call each other on the phone. You'll say, "What do you think of lizards?" and I'll say, "They're fine. Get some. What do you think of birds?"

Then, you'll go get some lizards and I'll let my bird loose and he'll fly around the room. I'll have visions of the origins of birds. A pulsing, writhing mass striding across the earth, vomiting up species, left and right. From fish come amphibians come lizards come birds. I'll make a note that birds emerged from lizards. My bird will shit on the floor and I'll stick him back in his cage.

I'll call you, later that evening, to find out about your lizards.

"Did you get the lizards?" I'll ask and you'll say "Yes, I did. I got two. They make me curious. I like them." I'll tell you about how lizards turned into birds at one point. "You're always trying to justify your position," you'll say, "You aren't a better creature than me just because your bird is more evolved than my lizards."

Then, your mom will call you to dinner and you'll have to go.

I won't talk to you for weeks. Instead I'll take walks in the park. I'll fill my pockets with bird feed. The pigeons and seagulls will go nuts. In my backyard, there are small lizards. I'll kill them and stuff their carcasses with bird feed. The pigeons and seagulls will go nuts for these.

After awhile, I won't even need to kill the lizards. The birds will have acquired the taste. The little lizards will try to scamper; there will just be too many beaks.

Finally, I'll call you. I'll say, "I know its been awhile. I've been thinking. Not just about you. About all sorts of things. Lots of good ideas, though. I'm going to make it big, soon. How are your lizards? I think it would be good for us to meet up and clear the air. Go for a walk. Maybe take your lizards along. What do you say?"

And then we'll make a date and I'll go in the bathroom and stare at my face and all the flesh drooping down.


by Gerard Olson

Creature from Mars?

An alligator is impaled by a seashell from Mars and becomes...Sheilagator. She's big, she's strong, and she likes to lurk in bushes. A man on a stroll with his four year old daughter passed Sheilagator nestled in ferns. Mistaking the alien reptile mutant for a piece of artwork, the man placed his daughter on the beast's back for a photo.

Sheilagator did not even blink. Dear old dad fumbled for his camera, checking every pocket as he searched the tree tops for perfect lighting. The child tapped her tiny velcro sneakers against Sheilagator's sides. The girl twirled a curl and stared at Sheilagator's thick toenails before a buzzing pulled her attention to the reptile's neck, where a larger than average mosquito proceeded to land. This mosquito was as big as a kiwi...it was about the size of the girl's hand.

The mosquito took its time, stretching, flapping and wiggling its sharp needle face. Dad wasn't sure what setting to use on his camera. And how was the flash turned off? Sheilagator purred gently beneath the little girl called Megan. Megan's eyes were crossing. The mosquito was a swinging pocket watch and the hypnotist voice rose from beneath the girl, through her legs and hands up into her mind from Sheilagator's stomach.

At a distance, Park Ranger Doyle's eyes were glued to his high power binoculars. Not only had he spotted the rarest of rare alligators, some even say, a mythological creature, but on the animal's back there was a cute little girl-child. Was she from another world? Or had she been lost in the woods and raised by a beast purported to be so vicious, it chewed up victims and spat them out, just for fun?


by Daiana Feuer

An Autobiography

So mom said, “Don’t forget to take out the trash.” After that, I closed my eyes and I thought of different types of pie. There are three different types of pie that I like: apple, apple and chocolate and pumpkin.

Once I had a cherry pie and I threw up all over my Uncle Stu, who lives in a lighthouse on the Oregon coast.

Sometimes my mom would take us out to visit the lighthouse and Uncle Stu would give me and Boopy some taffy, but then they found a body out there, so we don’t go there anymore.