Leanne Carmichael

1!
kids light books on firewhile
we duck in doorways
and cover their eyes
while they pray
and all of our knees are touching

2!
they speak in tongues
and their hands are blooming
snorting lines,drawing hearts on their foreheads
these boys, they're singing
because they know what it is to loose
crying on street corners
they think of the messiah,
and are lost

3!
slips and tangles
box your ears
hollywood street prophets
transcending traditional relationships
under red aries
visible and tangible
sleeping in empty bathtubs
i am my own keeper

Oh, Men - Matt Hogan

It’s the dark corner of the bar and I’m sitting on a black sofa across from my girlfriend Sylvia who’s on the other black sofa, texting somebody, probably Joe, who hasn’t called her in a week and she’s pissed. We’re trying to stay hidden because all the guys in here are creeps tonight. She finishes her message then picks up her empty Heineken bottle and frowns at me. I wiggle my empty bottle back at her and she mouths through the deafening music, “I’ll go get more.”
As Sylvia gets up I flip open my cellphone. I missed a call, which depresses me. I listen to the message, from Cass, who says she’ll be here in ten minutes, but that was a half hour ago so she should be here by now, but she isn’t.
I close my eyes, thinking of Todd, who I regret breaking up with and remember the last time we made love, in his bed, at his apartment, before he moved away. I let my hand fall to my breast, let it linger there, feel myself getting wet, and, because I can, sit here and get myself aroused to nearly the point of orgasm, with nobody noticing, thinking of the way Todd used to kiss my breasts.
If I were a guy I wouldn’t have this luxury. A guy has to fear his own physical arousal in public. A guy can’t stand up with giving it away. He has to beware his own erection. Not so for girls.
I open my eyes and see a guy at a table staring at me. Unfortunately I make eye contact with him and out of reflex I smile, and so he gets up and sits next to me. On the way over I notice that he’s got a bit of an erection, so maybe he was watching me touch myself, letting himself get aroused and didn’t care either. Or maybe he’s got a unnaturally large bulge, or maybe he’s got a sock in there.
He says, “Hey,” in a deep, confident but playful voice, a big hand reaching for mine. “I’m Brad. What’s your name, dollface?”
“Angelina,” I say, smiling, but no teeth, trying, and failing, to let him know I don’t want him here.
“That’s a nice name,” he says. Then, “Hey, we could be another Brad-gelina.”
I take a swig from my empty beer bottle, get a drop, and just say, “Yep.”
He tries to recover, and asks, “Can I call you Angel?”
“Um,” I say, trying to look confused and unpleased, “If you want to.”
He goes on. “So what do you do, Angel?”
“I work at a clothing store downtown,” I say.
“Oh yeah,” he feigns interest. “My ex used to work at a clothing store.”
“Oh yeah?” I say plainly.
There’s a pause so he decides to fill it with, “You know, you have really beautiful eyes, Angel.”
I already knew that. I get that from guys like five times a day.
“Thanks,” I say, instead of “Fuck off.”
“Why don’t you and your girlfriend come sit with me and my buddies?” He looks at me really strange when he says this.
“No,” I say, “that’s okay.” He pouts like a little fucking kid. “We’re just about to leave, anyway,” I lie.
Just then Sylvia shows up with our beers, hands me one, and Brad says, “Oh, just about to leave, eh?”
“We’re leaving after these,” I say without looking at him.
Sylvia sits down, looks at Brad, then at me, then again at Brad, who’s got his arm around me, sort of, on the back of the sofa. Before I can signal for help she says, “I’ll leave you two alone,” and gets up, stranding me. She disappears into the crowd.
I look over at Brad, who’s smiling like a jack-ass, like he’s just won something.
“So,” he says.
“So,” I echo.
The music’s been turned down, but I wish it hadn’t. That way I could plausibly ignore this guy. I try my best, though, closing my eyes and leaning back, but when my head falls on his arm I spring back up, open my eyes, and see his stupid grin. Then he winks at me. He actually winks at me. I manage not to burst out laughing and just smile, which, of course, he takes as a good sign.
Slowly, trying to be sexy about it, this Brad guy leans in and starts kissing my neck, breathing uncomfortably hot, moist air on my skin. I laugh now, but again he takes it as a good sign and says, “You like that?” and puts his hand on my knee. What a dork,
I’m praying for the lights to turn on, for the bar to close, because that’s my only out. I’d tell him to stop but I don’t want to be a bitch. His necking is getting sloppier and louder. He starts to moan. Does he really think this is attractive? I’m really drunk.
Finally he stops, looks at me, smiles. I take a swig of beer and he takes a swig of his. He lifts my chin with his beer hand and kisses me. It’s the first even-close-to-sexy thing he’s done. I take another swig of beer and he looks around, maybe to see if anyone has noticed his score. He probably feels very proud.
We talk for a little while about mundane crap and he keeping mentioning his nameless “buddies” and “bros” and the cars he used to own. He asks me what clothing store I work at and as I answer he starts slurping my neck again and moves his hand higher up my thigh. What is with guys? Fucking clueless.
Suddenly he reaches up my skirt, as if I wouldn’t notice, and starts to rub the outside of my underwear, like that’ll get me off or something. Then he fiddles with my panties, trying to get crotch part out of the way so he can finger me, presumably. He inadvertently tugs at my pubic hair so I say, “Watch it,” and he laughs, as if to say, “Oh, you’re a frisky one.” No (I think but don’t say), I just don’t like getting my pubes pulled out.
I squirm a bit and spread my legs, trying to help the poor guy out (he doesn’t have a clue) and he keeps whispering, “It’s alright, it’s okay,” like my dog died and I’m eight or something.
He finally gets the panties out of the way and slides a finger in me easily, probably thinking that it was him that got me wet and not Todd. He pokes away into the side of my vagina, doing nothing for me, his curled knuckles grinding into my thigh, which feels like it’s bruising. He whispers an “Oh yeah” into my ear.
I take the beer out of his hand, the one over my shoulder, and pull it over my breast, but he just lets it lie there, limp, like a disturbingly weak handshake, and eventually he takes it off. I guess he can’t do two things at once. He’s pretty focused on rubbing the one side of my pussy. I sigh, disappointed, and he moans, “Oh yeah,” again.
I think he’s forgotten that I’m here, which is actually a relief. I reach for my beer and chug the rest, which I don’t think he notices. His bottom lip is stuck on my neck, dried there. He’s slouched over me, only his hand up my skirt is moving.
Sylvia, thank god, finally reappears. She sits back down on the black sofa across from me and gives me a funny look. I roll my eyes and she taps her wrist and I nod. It’s time to go.
I push Brad off me and he withdraws his hand from my skirt. The first thing he says is, “Where’s my beer?” so I pass it to him without saying anything or looking at him and he chugs the rest and pulls out his cellphone from its belt pouch, flips it open, reads a text message, laughs.
Sylvia and I stand up and grab our purses. I adjust my skirt and Brad looks up at me. The lights turn on and the music shuts off completely. I say straight-faced, obviously insincere, “See ya, Brad. It was nice meeting you,”, and he gives me a big, dopey, douchebag smile.
We walk out of the bar and Sylvia finally says, “Who was that guy?”
“Just some creep,” I say.
“Ugh, what is with guys?” she wonders aloud.
“I know,” I add rhetorically.
We light a couple smokes outside the bar and walk down the street. After a while she asks, “Where are all the nice guys?”
I take a long, deep pull on my cigarette and answer, definitively, “There are no nice guys.”


History of Everything - Matt Hogan


motherfucking right: post-dated last month: upper-crust soufflé, lower-case Table: west-side divide: something to do with slime: unique in its effect: why not a parlez-vous if that’s what they call it?: suddenly there: a tetrahedron is a shape: masculine mass killing: motherfucking right: a tetrahedron is a shape: high and low: game old same old: ravens and stuff: ghosts get real: happy ending: motherfucking right: homohomohomo: some people are all like Ah yeah, but it’s all relative to: and on the TV: or biology, neurology, science that really doesn’t: the desire to sleep: entire collectives spun around a bunch of times: motherfucking right: there’s big circles and little circles: big penis telescopes: motherfucking right: Atlantis, maybe: Back to the Future: the one about sticks and stones and bones: they keep telling me to lose weight: goats can sing: math and myth look alike: a place for everybody and everybody in their place: motherfucking right: then the lights went out, the baby-sitter got killed, usually: stereos and fridges, today: magic is long gone, Moses: you can’t really dig to China, can you?: if I believe I have laser beam eyes I have laser beam eyes: nobody notices no how in your note pack, fool: it goes one, two, three, four, hit it: there’s some people outside: it was all quiet after words: sanitizer in your eyes: just another dinner party with the neighbours: don’t you wish you had a carpet so your dog could pee on it?: infrastructure is a big thing: the colour green and the colour blue: there’s no need to shout: I never liked sci-fi but when the aliens came down I believed them: everybody has prostitutes: motherfucking right: worms don’t have it so bad: but unfortunately, I have to float: pliers are stronger than some things that aren’t pliers: motherfucking right: the good life: greetings: very intellectual: overalls, too, but not the shape.

Spencer Powell – Slices of Life

Lazy Monday

“Don’t you have work?” Cisca said to the lump on the couch. He stretched lazily, grunting with the knowledge turning over would be the most strenuous task he’d undertake that day.
“I’m bringing sexy back.” he said, eyes still closed in defiance of an encroaching afternoon. “I can see your balls.” she said.

Mirror

The man in the mirror looked at himself looking at himself looking at himself for a time, pondering whom, of the two, was the subject of narration. “Not I” the man said to himself, to which he replied “Not I”. “Aye-Aye” they quipped.

Shower

He watched the water cascade down his body and jet off the edge of his elbow. With the subtlest movements of his arms and head, he controlled the blasting torrents of searing water. Rivers moved at his command over follicle cliffs and forests of dense pubic hair. For those fifteen minutes, he was Mighty.

Contact Lens

The contact lens sat nestled in the deep and dirty scrags of his Barely Used® shag carpet. John searched desperately, late for work, weighted already by the world that had unfocused long before he’d started Sweating to the Oldies. In that blurry self-sufficient living compartment, he groped and pleaded and wept, but never found it. The lens stayed there, tangled in dog hair, refracting the world.

Commute

Silver slivers slipped through the slit; smelly men slapped their knees loudly smiling sincerely. A six-pack sat in the seat beside him, speaking sad stories of Saturday-night solitudes and week-day salvation. The singer behind him started something Salish, and he was gone.


Paprika

“You know how, like, they're always rewriting the bible and shit? And, like, what they find is actually different from what it was, like Jesus was actually a magic mushroom or something? What if, like, it wasn't stigmata? You know, with the holes and shit? What if it was –get this- paprika and Jesus just had spicy hands or some shit?" he said, trying to pierce his own hands with the bloodshot gaze of the prophet-manifest and the intensity of the enormously stoned.
“Shut the fuck up.” Barry from accounting said to the palm-staring Shift Leader for what he hoped to God was the last time.

The Management

“Bitch, where the cheese at?” Stacy said, the words dropping unpleasantly from his mouth like the star-shaped result of dark orange Play-Doh forced through a plastic mold. Like the Play-Doh, they coiled in uneven piles.

Pale Mauve

“I think we should go with pale mauve” she said to her dull-eyed companion, unaware any person unsatisfied with the inherent dullness of mauve itself would be doomed to a world of pale mediocrity. He kept the thought to himself and took her colour sample to the paint mixer.

Mayonnaise

The mayonnaise clung to the sides of the tub, battle-hardened and ready to fight. Where other tubs had succumbed to consumption, this one had remained; its fortress the crevice at the back of the fridge. It is there it had held its ground since time immemorial and lest Mother came, it would remain.

Magnifying Glass

Henry flipped through microfiche prints and newspaper clippings, scrutinizing them with a folding magnifying glass his parents had bought him when he was a boy. He’d begged for it every Wednesday as they shopped passing the novelty and toy shop on the corner. He’d reasoned without it, there would be evil in the world. It had finally come in a kit with a decoder ring and a notebook, both of which he had long-since lost.
At 4 A.M., he slipped the magnifying glass into its pocket and tucked it and the newspapers and microfiche prints snugly away in the locking nightstand by the bed between an old Reader’s Digest and a loaded .22.

Mountains

Jagged and sharp, they cut the sky and tear its flesh away. It bleeds out sun that pools and spreads down the edges and into the sea. Only cosmos remain.

Big World

He sat in his darkened living room lit only by the small fireplace, an empty bottle of gin by his side. His hollow eyes glared into the dance of the fire before him, each lick of flame a memory of what he’d done. A pile of turtle shells stacked carefully in the corner of the room –each one polished-, a few dozen coins lying across the table at his back; these were the things he lived with now. A bloodied hand reached to the bowl on the coffee table to his side and pulled back a hand full of dried mushrooms which he ate slowly, savouring their bitterness. Sarah came in the door cautiously, wary of the rancid smell of iron and rot.
“David? David, are you alright? You havn’t been returning my calls.”
“David’s isn’t here.” he said, eyes anchored firmly to the fire. He forced another handful of mushrooms into his mouth. With otherworldly resolution, some power forced him up out of his seat and with Lovecraftian measure turned to face the one he’d loved so very much.
“Oh my God David. Are you…” she said, unable to finish the thought. David approached, hopping forcefully towards her. The horror of that moment was intensified not by what she could see, but what she could hear; the cackling of the fire, the strained, shallow breathing of her fiancée, and the screeching sound of the rusted springs attached to the bottoms of his shoes.
“It’s-a me…” he said in little more than a whisper. “…A-Maaaario.”

Norvena Vitet

Distraction

messy bun – ponytail
swift fingers wound with hair
comfort level – own skin
a flash of neck reveals
perform for us this smooth caress
your dancing follicle art
what freedom do you calmly feel?
this touch display – entrance
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
a Moustache that Tickled Pink
cold lips unmoving
there is nothing here of you
what swollen resemblance
this wax figure notion
where is your laughter?
the one thing they
should have embalmed
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Asshole

this is
a fine rage
I’ve gotten into
this energy of anger
projects me on
to greater deeds
of disarray
and useless fury
project on me?
project this projectile vomit
hurled your way
special compliments of
this overreacting woman
you think
is interrupting you
even though
you started talking
long before
I had finished


Carpe Diem


Where is your laughter? Where does it go?
You were raised a Catholic, but made fun of them, and your best jokes
were about the Pope. You laughed like a naughty little boy.
Your moustache looks fake against your still lips,
and your face is inflated. Is that
what embalming fluid does?
You look so serious now.
Nobody called Willy, past the age of six, should
ever stop laughing.
Why aren’t you laughing?
That’s how
I know you…remember you…want
you to stay forever.
Your wife is crying. She has lost
her English. in her grief. What little she had is
gone. You learned to speak Spanish, so she had less
need of English, but more
need of you
and now you are laying in your only suit, which seems
uncomfortably tight
and I am so sorry
you have stopped laughing.

Cori Chaisson Yule - Wisconsin

Nine years have past since I was stopped at the border and told never to come back. I was treated to a good dose of American authority; there’s nothing like a strip search to keep a young woman from getting argumentative.
I’m legit now, married and employed. Not a flamboyant teenager looking to party it up in Seattle. I bought my plane ticket and I have every right to visit Wisconsin. I am not a criminal.
“Passport?” The customs officer holds out his enormous hand. I place my passport, ticket, driver’s license, and itinerary in a neat row on the counter. He picks up the passport, holds it up so he can look at me with one eye and the passport with the other. He looks for a long time. I feel too self-conscious. I decide I should stare back.
“Why are you going to America?” He asks, still holding up my passport.
“To visit my mom in Wisconsin.” I am speaking too fast. Just be calm.
He picks up my driver’s license and holds it and my passport up, not breaking eye contact.
“You work?” He asks, tapping my ID on the counter.
Shit. I didn’t think about having to tell where I work: A vegetarian restaurant started by draft dodgers called The Naam, and here I am talking to an enormous beef-fed proud American.
“I’m a chef.”
“What’s your specialty?” He straightens up in his chair.
“Vegetarian.” My mouth is dry. His face remains expressionless.
“Vegetarian chef.” He says flatly. I nod.
“Do you ever make that, uh… that tempeh stuff?”
“Sometimes, yes.” I answer.
“How about vegan pancakes?”
I can’t tell if I’m smiling.
“I like that tempeh. S’good barbecued. Have a nice time in Wisconsin.”

Eli Kosarin - Liar Poem

How many people would write me off imedetly as an idiot if they knew what I really thought?
Shakespear in the style of redneck.
things are held together with duct tape
Sports minded and team oriented
Daily shower.
It feels good
Legos waiting to be assembled.
Nomohori.
Trees at the bus stop.
We are bees in a bee hive.
Speeding tickets - parking tickers - improper lane change ticket - expired tags. – Berocracy.
Spitting on concrete. Dream Deprovation. Spider webs of inbisible power lines.
Snake eating it’s tail.
white jungle anacondas want to feed me muffins heated in a microwave so they can study me.
Something funny you can’t laugh at
13 baktuns coming to an end.
The meaning of life on a bumper sticker.
Growing ears on the backs of mice
Passivly offensive
“have you heard? Money is the root of all evil!”
Flowers for the blind. Plush young trees.
Video games prepare the next young suburban generation to deal with a state of total chaos.
Memory fragments.
the Umintakeable things –
Life is Sex.
Life is Music
Life is Good.
Made in cambodia
“Just do it.”
Coke and pepsi on the same side.
2 ended fish hook.
Beer and wine stores
Boy who cried wolf,
A wolf in sheep’s cloths.
constantly struggling with the reaper for your soul,
Finding the light.
Your pain is eased by our laughter.
life is god, anyway you worship.
Oh, and
Don’t mind the man behind the curtin.
Report in for your shock treatment, or your microchip gets turned off.
World under a magnifying glass
We’re cows in a factory farm,
eating geneticly modified food..l
Sleeping while cities burn with couruption
People herded too.
sell us lies, control, and A.D.D.
Error.
Fight or flight with no opositioner in sight.

the liar submissions

Bita Joudaki – In My Dreams

When We Would Pretend to Fly

In my dreams,

I don’t remember the violent sounds

of my next door neighbors

or of the mothers being arrested at birthday parties.

I don’t remember the ex-husbands the forgotten medication

or the neglected cats.

Not the addicts

alcoholics

or drop-outs.

I don’t remember my brother on the verge of going crazy.
No, in my dreams,

there are countless Maury Povich episodes

playing Barbie’s until I’m 14

and my brother

walking me home from school

and forgetting his keys.

I remember the night time bike rides when we would pretend to fly.



Bita Joudaki - Knot

deep deep deep into my gut.

i had a stomach ache.

the ache turned into a knot.

the knot dug

deep deep deep

into my gut.

i pleaded with it. i bartered.

i wanted it to go away, but it refused.

i soothed it. i rubbed. i tried to sing it to sleep.

the knot dug

deep deep deep

into my gut.

so, i became angry.

i punched it. i jabbed.

i violated its space.

this only made it laugh.

now, i was in more pain than before,

and the knot had a new bruise to fall in love with.



Bita Joudaki – Dear 1988

dear 1988

the city is fed up with you,

the almost dead, as you confuse the streetlights for the stars. she's leaving you gifts with notes

attached that read:

You deserve to be really happy.