POLYGON

2009-12-01T22:34:00.000-08:00

its colonial ;]

2009-11-14T10:31:00.000-08:00

♱ ♰

Quiet on the calm////////////POLYGON STRIPTEASE/SNEAK PREVIEW OF NEXT ISSUE

2009-08-21T14:45:00.000-07:00

You Got it Naw Flaunt it

2009-08-03T19:45:00.000-07:00

It seems as though we need new items to publish.

///////////////////\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\pow pow

2009-08-02T19:02:00.000-07:00

New issue in the works

Under the Shroud of Stone or Raymond Morber, What a Guy!

2009-05-27T22:46:00.000-07:00

The face of destitution is not particularly attractive. A crimson, 2-inch scar graces its cheek, and jowls dangle from underneath its chin. Actually, now that I think of it, it bears a striking resemblance to the face of my junior high p.e. teacher, Mr. Seizman, except he also suffered from psoriasis.

I came upon this hyperbolical visage for the first time while clambering over a bevy of rocks in northern Maine. I was in search of a lost diamond ring. I didn’t lose the ring, and truthfully, I don’t even think it existed. I just figured misplaced jewelry seemed like the proper motivation for a New England adventure.

As I maneuvered my leg over a particularly impressive boulder my foot slipped and became stuck in a small crevice. With one large wrench I set it free, and as I danced around in a pain-induced jig I sputtered my signature curse, “Oh, ANATOLE FRANCE!”

To my surprise, my literary expletive was answered by a mysterious something-or-other.

“You know he had a puny brain.”

“Wh-who’s there?” I squeaked, my aching appendages frozen in mid-air. “Answer me!” I tried to sound courageous, but a constant issue with phlegm has always made me sound more like an irritated kitten than anything else.

“Really puny,” the voice continued. “And I heard that after he died the doctors cut a cross-section of it only to discover that it resembled Jesus Christ.”

My eyes roamed around, trying to find the source of the disembodied voice. I was prepared to detect any form of movement among the rocks, believing that my companion must be one of those nature-seeking weirdos who dress in camouflage for “kicks”. However, the only thing I did see was a small pill bug, dancing a noontime waltz near my feet.

“Apparently some woman in Alabama got her hands on it. The brain, I mean. She was in the hospital for an emergency corn removal and somehow her nurse served it to her thinking it was just some spam. Luckily the broad saw Jesus and decided to showcase it in her house next to her collection of Pez dispensers.”

I slowly bent down toward the black exoskeleton at my toes, my head cocked to one side to listen to the insect’s mindless ramblings.

“I myself bought a toe on the black market once, thinking it had belonged to the Marquis de Sade. Turns out it was just an over boiled frankfurter.”

My hand was closing in. One more utterance and my talkative friend would be rolling along the creases of my palm.

“It’d be easier if you just looked up.”

“Huh?” My fingers closed around the pill bug, and I shook it like pair of dice just to be sure it knew who was boss.

“Up here. Unless you’re busy with that bug.”

I followed the directions and looked up. Perched on a rock like a model mountain goat was Jerry Garcia. I gasped and everything went black.

Upon coming to I realized it wasn’t really the drug-addled rock star back from the dead, but merely one of his bedraggled goonies, complete with grizzly facial hair and cloud of skuzz. He took me in with bloodshot eyes, and I stifled the urge to puke when his stink reached my nostrils.

“Tell me who you are.” I demanded.

“Raymond. Raymond Morber.” He scratched the inside of his right ear with a yellow talon.

“Yeah right,” I scoffed. “How am I supposed to believe you’re THE Raymond Morber?”

He sighed.

“Oh my god! It is you!”

Only the real Raymond Morber could sigh like Raymond Morber just did. His sighs were infamous for carrying all human emotions in one gust of air. One sigh from this guy and you fell in love.

“But-but where have you been? Rumor had it you’d leapt into the Atlantic and were being raised by a community of sea turtles.”

“Ah, yes.” he mused. “A great bunch of girls.”

“So it’s true?” I was amazed. “But why, Raymond? Why’d you leave? You had everything. You were supposed to start shooting a biopic based on the life of Señor Wences. You had the Academy practically eating out of your beautiful, tanned hand.”

Raymond Morber had been Hollywood’s leading man. We’d all followed his entire life, from when he started as Jimmy, the loveable deaf kid on the family sitcom “Crash Course” to his more recent stint as a civil war soldier gone mad in the epic, “Mr. Abolitionist”.

A few years ago Raymond began to rebuke his golden standing in the public eye. American families clustered around their breakfast tables to whisper about his delinquency. Tabloids detailed numerous accounts of his out of character misdeeds. “RAYMOND MORRIS TRIPS KATHLEEN TURNER AT FILM OPENING”; “SILVER SCREEN HUNK BREAKS THE RULES: FEEDS ANIMALS AT THE ZOO”; “MORRIS CHEATS AT SCRABBLE, DISAPPOINTS THOUSANDS”

And now I was conversing with him, the country’s most prized possession. I felt faint once again, but the frightening possibility of impaling my eye on a stony crag kept me upright. I slowly hoisted myself up next to Raymond and set my chin on my knee, looking up at him with an expression that I hoped was appropriately coy. He glanced at me and then scratched his underarm. I covertly plugged my nose.

“You know,” he said. “I’m not exactly sure what happened. Nothing really changed. I was just going from day to day, and then, suddenly, I started to notice this electric surge within me and I just...started to go bad. For no reason. I mean, there was that time I was struck by lightning. But other than that...”

“Sometimes these things just happen,” I promised him. “Why, just last winter I was sitting in front of my fireplace and all of a sudden I got this terrible urge to wash the dishes in the kitchen sink. And I did. Just like that. Some of us are just more in tune with the paranormal, I guess.”

I noticed by the way that he was scooting away from me that his inner strife was not being reconciled. I stuck my hand out and patted his shin, saying-

“I know how you feel.”

Raymond laughed and stood up.

“You know how it feels to be a troglodyte in Maine? You know how it feels to look at your reflection every morning in a stagnant pond and think ‘man, I look like crap’? You KNOW how it feels to remember the touch of famous Brazilian supermodels and the way your old personal chef used to warm milk to just the perfect temperature on those nights when you missed your mother? You know, huh?”

Raymond was obviously in desperate need of my help.

“Hey Ray,” I said. “Why not make a change now? Leave the caverns and set up shop with me. We could make a franchise, a new superhero team. You’d clean up well. I look good in spandex. Whaddya say?”

He looked me over with a sneer (which I knew was a front for his love) and said,

“You left your pill bug over there, behind you.”

I turned and looked on the ground and lo-and-behold my miniscule friend was sizing up a similarly shaped pebble.

“Well, hey, thank—“ I turned back to where Ray had been just a fraction of a second earlier, but all I could see was a looming rock and what looked to be a moldy hotdog carefully placed on top.

And so ended my brush with fame. At the time my heart was broken, I spent 3 long days and nights living among those rocks, crying for Raymond to return to me. Even after I returned home I was in a daze, my friends didn’t know what to do with me as I had seemed to have lost all normal forms of communication and had to resort to urinating in plastic baggies and writing out my conversations on the wall of my closet. Time proved to be the only remedy, and 2 years and 5 days later I am able to appreciate the irony of the situation; a man with a beard (my mother’s obstetrician) brought me into this world, a man with a beard (Ray-Ray) stifled my dreams, and in the future a man with a beard (a gypsy in Louisiana told me I’d meet him in a rest-home) will smother me with a loaf of bread and falsely inherit my earthly belongings. Such is the circle of life. But sometimes, when the moon is out and the wind bristles through the leaves, I think of Raymond Morber and my head starts to ache and I know, deep within my soul, that he must be thinking of me too.

_______________________---

2009-03-31T23:03:00.000-07:00

slick pearlescent afterbirth wrapped around the body of a newborn calf

interferes with his vision and movement
he lies at her feet until she licks it off
and swallows it bit by bit

after bieng pulled out of her, tied at the feet,to lie in a bony pile in the smelly wet hay

and then he gets up after a while

the trend is dead

2009-02-05T22:16:00.000-08:00

on tribularies, tributation, emutarization, nation

2008-12-14T02:04:00.000-08:00

The fragile finger , the persistent glock, the silt

March “no”, write “no”, “no more”, wrapping the stumble in the slouch, wrapping the slumber in the lope,
The false glimmering enticingly in the hot sunlight,
Everything slick.

The year winds itself about the day,
The month slides down the spine of the journey

The cold gasping trout asking, asking, asking, his gills stammer, he is an incredulous wonderer just like us
As our boots in the dust as our mules as our tall ass fences as our screens
As our asphalt

Steal us, help us, segregate us, blind us,
Crack us

U.s
.

* * *

2008-12-07T14:50:00.000-08:00

She was a dirty old woman

2008-11-17T23:09:00.001-08:00

She disregarded my attempts to discuss the plummeting economy. Instead she kept sticking her fingers into a jar of slime, snorting whenever the green sludge emitted a wet fart. I stood in front of her, amazed that those two sausages could both fit into such a small plastic container. I soon became tired of the plastic queefing so I left her struggling with it all, looking like a well-dressed ape on the verge of throwing feces at unsuspecting bipeds.

In my best Henry Higgins saunter I crossed behind her, to the silver shrine she had set up to create a sort of halo around her whenever she sat at that exact spot. Millions of glass bottles reflected my face. A fat bottle of Tequila shaped like a Mexican sombrero caught my eye. It was mostly empty, but I noticed that the worm resting in the dregs seemed to be missing half of its body. Alcohol-soaked dentures had chomped away its boozy dignity.

The bottles seemed to reach back for rows and rows, like Bacchanalian orange groves. I was certain that if I was desperate enough, if in a drunken stupor I placed my sweaty cheek on one of the shelves and hoarsely whispered for some liquid to quench the thirst that none of the now empty bottles could fulfill, the hand of Dionysus himself would appear and tip bourbon of the Gods onto my lips...sweeter than orange juice, deadlier than a switchblade.

She must have experienced that countless times. The Lord of Moonshine had visited her with a hand-wrapped bottle every year of her life. If I reached back far enough I could find the rubber nipple-tipped bottle of port that still bears the marks of her teething.

I felt a sudden wetness spread over the back of my head. The Grand Ape had thrown the slime at me. Apparently opposable thumbs are no use when it comes to solving the immense puzzle of closing a jar of guar gum.

But that's the consideration you get when you give your grandmother her Christmas present early.

1:23 by 8:00

2008-11-16T23:20:00.000-08:00

1:23

I had bought her a five dollar box of Butter Waffle cookies, French. As she slept I placed it on her pink linoleum table, the cat didn't meow when I came in, the floor didn't creak, the air conditioner didn't stop its particular hum. I just didn;t make an enterance. Her table was strewn with magazines, balls of cat fur, keys and cigarette butts, she didnt smoke though, i noted. In the middle of it all sat a gleaming Joan Diddion anthology, with a copper cover. There it sat next to the chaos of it all. A bible of sorts, maybe a medallion of travel of the Golden State life (1:23) left behind. I placed the butter waffled cookies adjacent to the "bible". And i awaited on her cold kitchenette pastle colored chairs till early evening when she awoke, saw my face and served me coffee without a single word. The polluted sunset was a neon orange that night, partically crimsion. It bounced of her misshaped back in chuncks of blocked color. Caressing her ass, calves and neck in this apocoliptic sort of romance light. She riffled through her silverware drawer for a match. Her dark green silk garment tied around her hips

:this is my dawn isn't it wonderful like this?!"

She stopped and looked at me for ages, seemed like.

"Why?"

:because its supposed to be the treat at the end of the day. Its gluttonous to enjoy it once you awake"

"I don't believe that." She says.

"Obviously."

I don't kiss her. I never have. I cherish her. Her face pock ridden and dirty. Her eyes dull and human. I wish i could play fancy and describe different worlds between her and I. But there lies nothing. I like it like that.
Entertained by her tight green robe and the fast fading sun, I Realised she hadn't noticed the butter cookies. I pushed them close to her, as if a rustle of cardboard would maker her turn. I began changing my body position and taping my fingers against her linolem table. NOthing. She kept looking at her two plates (pink, blue) five bowls (2 porecline, 1 white, 2 green) the six cups (3 mugs, 3 fragile wine glasses) the sun was gone by now. Darkness settled on her figure and on her barren cupboards and scuffed hardwood floor.

"Turn on a light!"

She said faintly dabbing hr head with her index and middle finger.

"I bought you butter cookies."

She cocked her head towards them, creeping towards the box as if examining an exotic beast before handling it in a tap act.

"A five dollar box of cookies!" I said.

She looked timid before them. Picking up the box and reading the fonts and words about it.

"Juuuules Destrooper-Product of Belgium- Paris Butter Waffles."

Her face eased inbetween words.
Opening the silver plasitic, fondeling the fragile geomeetric cookie in her hand Digesting them before her afternoon of 8:00 pm.

a relic, an enigma

2008-11-01T23:19:00.000-07:00

who can say when it stops? 'cause the footsteps will fall until the floor caves in, and hoarse voices ring so much sweeter at dawn

the land where nothing grows

2008-10-16T18:33:00.000-07:00

the frail hands will do their best

to cradle your angular chest, to convince you of your glory

but this wealth and fear will suck the revolution from your bones,

and we all know that the spirit travels west to die.

this pair of eyes grew milky and blind

while i find i can't even remember the color they used to be.

and that's a discomforting thought, isn't it

because how could i ever know a person such as yourself

without ever having looked you in the eyes?

i'll think of you from time to time

when you are gone

and remember that i reiterated my plea over and over.

my throat went raw

my knees gave, i stumbled

and the sun burnt the nape of my neck.

i asked

no, i begged,

i begged you to stay.

do you remember the day?

no i suppose

i wouldn't have either.

as i trudge in my adolescent boots.

2008-10-06T22:49:00.001-07:00

the German Gypsies
click their heels
into dells

and
i
extinguish my
matches in
old plastic
cups
of
ice water

what of that?

the water bubbles
and out pours the jewish woman.
she clicks her heels
into your lowerlip.

and
i
spend my moments
behind the greek monuments

my shoes untied.
i get up again.
you're face is turned.
to the loose fitting shirts.

ah well.

the myth of

2008-09-24T22:36:00.000-07:00

lace crawls around from the edges of your face towards your nose

it fills your airways with spun eiderdown whiteness and spins its way down your throat into your stomach

where it writhes awhile

before slumbering a heavy slumber there.

you have no idea about the doily sheen spooling out from your eyes and weaving your body for you

a decent favor;

your cushy lace feet absorb the soil and ragged chunks of you fall off in the rain

a sodden pinata

children follow you, you haven't anuthing to give them.

Angel Honey, Cover Your Mouth

2008-09-24T22:04:00.000-07:00

He was a baby fresh doper

Pockmarks leaving

plateaus for

Mama's grilled cheese:

Salt & Oil,

Same things he used to

rub on his knuckles

to fight the slugs

on the stone gnome outside.

And he'd put ketchup on

his lips

And grape jelly to stain

one eye

And kick his squished opponent,

spitting Chiclets out of

his mouth.

So that it was a true victory.

Now he spends time with

thin-necked thugs.

The kind who slather their bodies

not with adolescent condiments,

But premium, under-the-table

Whale Blubber.

Slick film to slide out of

tenement windows.

And they know what it means

to look at a

cashmere blouse

And "X"-

Mark the spot.

looking the swollen sun

2008-09-23T19:44:00.000-07:00

As he sat down he bargined: I'll get you a match for a cigarette?
I decided to oblidge since the cigarettes i was smoking anyway tasted like harems.
:Sure.
He ran away.
he had no chin.
nor shoulders.
but skinny legs perched between hips.
I agreed regardless of the cigarettes in his pocket.
He got me matches.
as i wrapped myself in cinematique reasoning. He complained about life in a spit and smoke.
He stayed to say his say.
and then left.
i was left with seven cigarettes

the song & dance of glued feathers

2008-09-08T22:49:00.000-07:00

Dare we flash each other with bare breast?
tissue collapsed on jutting bone & teeth
sometimes red
others white
weening the language of fidelity out of mind, ear drum & cerebral lobe
Dare we throw question to the wind & appear?
naked under clothes
& delivery trucks
& Manhattan hurricanes?
Maybe i will spy on you.
Fly down with cardboard wings covered in Lycra
kissing those who have nothing better to do
you & I: in relative boredom: together

2008-09-01T22:47:00.000-07:00

not true, is it.
the small froth of lions laps at the corners of your mouth
whipping the violence into another storm, another storm.
---they left new orleans again, the sieve city, it holds no one.

not true, is it, the gospel truth of the wind and the rain
of the pale, amphibian wrinkles between each finger
the drunken saunter of baboons under baobab roofs

the stories that your grandfather would tell , looking out the window, convinced the plants were real,real, how could they be fake?plastic?no way,no way.

he liked boxing.

'one two punch; says life, to him, her, him and him,wearing earphones spitting into its mike
'what you gonna do baby' it says, like a funky action movie from the seventies,
black cop swinging his hips.

holy water running in rivulets out of every faucet in the nation!
or is it rust, is it blood?

is it jesus' face? what to we do, god damn, is this a sign?should i get my camera?

on her birthday she waters her cacti with wine coolers.eating smoked oysters and wearing those plastic slippers, see through, pink, kitten heels. feathers on the toes.

the light is out of the 'p' at the pick n sav and everyone has gone home.
it's small inside the car.the air is humming.

the small froth of lions laps at the corners of your mouth
the ships heave in the harbor

it's not true,but anyone could have figured that one out.

quips and social etiquette

2008-08-31T22:53:00.000-07:00

There is nothing that gets me down anymore-he says.
I don't really believe you-I say.
Well you should. Because well, its true-He says.
What do you mean? I bus full of kids that you happen to run into and kill all of them wouldn't get you down?- i say
Shut up. Of course it would.- He says
Im a bitch- I say
Yeah, you are- He says.

Hes been kissing this girl downtown, claiming that he doesn't feel any remorse any longer.
My self, the cripple, can't believe it.
I apply lipstick with my good hand, and i don't bother kissing anyone any longer.
He used to kiss me, but i wouldn't compare it to Archaic gods or linen sheets or central park. I wouldn't attempt it.

How are you-he says.
Nothing new- i say.
Good i hope?- He says.
Fine- I say.

I attempt to not squander his lovesick heir with my unearthly sickness.
The world opened up, when i lost my fingers, limbs and its steam.
It was more powerful than drugs or sex.
Suddenly my own memories were no longer mine.

So- this downtown girl- I say.
Shes really good- he says.
Good- I say.
Good kisser?- I say.
Yes. Very- He says.
Good- I say

I re birthed myself, on my own, i don't even own a cat.
I wrote songs and recorded my little voice into my computer.
I read nothing.
I ate nothing.
I just sat, listened and opened my mouth when i wanted to.
I can't say anything glorious came from it.
In fact, i most certainly know that nothing DID come from it.
Just a beautiful computer jam packed with one woman's coping method.

i like this- he says.
I realize- i say

he is gripping my good hand in his.
my hand is sweating.
The late august wind had the slightest hint of autumn, my pace slowed to an awkward dull.
In my mouth, chewing on my bubble mint gum.
My throat stings from talking, because i have been talking too much in a very long time.
My mono syllabic responses cough up the backed up flem in my esophagus.
I no longer smoke, but i did that day.

My bad hand is wrapped in a bandage, it is like a sculpture, erupted into bubbling skin, and twisted flesh and bones.
He doesn't acknowledge im sick, or deformed.
I don't either.

Stop!- i say.
Are you okay?- he says.
Yes, i need a cigarette- i say.
I'll buy you some- he says.
Really?!- I say.
Yes, do you still smoke camel lights?- He says
No, i say. I smoke whatever you're smoking- I say.
Oh i don't anymore, ms. downtown doesn't like kissing me when i do.- He says.
oh- i say- camel lights are fine- I say.

In a matter of seconds i get a pack of cigarettes, and tell him to open it for me.
Its in my lips lit, fresh and deadly.
In my virgin lungs again, i feel like my old self again and suddenly my memories are mine again.
He walks past me to through away the plastic off the cigarette pack.
His back looks the same, like when i used to kiss him, and when we'd lie in bed pretending
what we had just done was far more astounding than it was.
I remember the child i took care off after school in college, that is now fourteen.
Anton, he had corn silk hair, he liked Jacques Cousteau.
We made up songs and we went to the movies together.
These two moments, relinked from the dark organ tissue lost from a month of pity.

I open my mouth, and nothing comes out but smoke.

A hurricane is gonna hit New Orleans- He says
I just read it in the New York Times- He says
Right there- He says

I open my mouth, spread my lips and tongue to attempt audible sound.

Shame it is- He says.
Awful news- he says.

i remember the dim lights of parties.
And the one man i loved to kiss at parties.
I remember the books i read.
Whitman, walden, camus.
I remember the incense at college i would burn when i was depressed or high.
I remember the dress of gingham i would wear on dates.

it is- I say
it really is- I say.

I wrap myself in my shawl and begin to cry in my head. a deep cry. inaudible, reverberating in my skull.
deep belly sounds only slightly shaking the tissue of my brain.
The cry transfers down my throat out my nose.
floating down my nostrils, dripping onto my upper lips.
He wipes it for me.
i show him my hand.
we don't kiss.
but i sleep easy that night.

Lemme Show You A Couple Of Tricks

2008-08-26T17:50:00.000-07:00

You say it's your first time around these parts?

Well welcome in, buddy, let me show you around.

I'll say hello and high five your belly

Send that putty-stomach operating

with delight.

Once you see these sights

The truthfulness of All Time

Will make your cranium shake,

Send your brain syrup squirting around

To a thoughtful funk rhythm.

This is it.

Don't show me that side of your life,

I don't wanna see shadow on that jaw,

wisps of foam on your upper lip,

eyes glossed over with a

thin mist of soul.

I'll hit you hard on the back

And you'll fly-

Landing straight & tall in a

cosmic inn

Then you can order up all the...adoration you need,

Suck it all up

With one Hungry proboscis.

The swallows have come back.

2008-08-19T18:34:00.000-07:00

Its isn't fair I scream to Guadelupe.
She is easy on the eye- i think.
She gives me options of destruction- cocaine-a hammer-a clogged artery.
I take the cocaine.
But stow it away in the bottom of my stomach hoping the green balloon doesn't pop in the lining of tissue inside me.
And then I met you, had a fit of it all trying to cheat Guadelupe's request.
i read Cotazar, ate pudding, smoked opium, went to paris, kissed women.
The women i kissed you took pictures of naked in college.
Claudia was pretty and had thick legs.
Guadelupe found me in a bordello you left me in, she told me to pop the balloon myself.
But i stabbed her and insisted that I loved you umblasphemously. She writhed in pain as blood cascaded down her leg like a nick when you shave. I thought she was a sissy.
And i ran away. And didn't stay to take pictures of you with the cross dressing prostitue we decided to hideaway with in the Bordello. They would have been nice pictures. Blue, red, negative images of eachother.
I took your old Jesus and Mary Chain albums on the plane back with me. I also took your gray coat.
I will send it back to you before winter comes.
Gabrielle sent me his worn out horn in the mail this morning. I guess thats a sign. Its quiet beatup for someone heavenly and all, pathched up with sap and spit and chewn up gum wads: chipped to reveal the brass bits under its gold paint.

2008-08-19T02:06:00.000-07:00

I got this blood and hair crusted all on my ear, I was cutting my hair with kitchen shears .
It’s boy hair now, boy hair for a long droopy neck and a bloody ear.

You could wrap the world in cellophane we wouldn’t miss a thing.

----Have you ever felt like those pigeons, the ones who sat on their wings, or the bald ones, or the gimpy ones, have you ever felt like they were trying to say something to you? Their iridescent neck feathers flashing and they look you right in the eye.

I ate pigeon the other night in a Chinese restaurant and that didn’t even occur to me then.

My Time Away

2008-08-14T22:39:00.000-07:00

The fog is stuck on my eyelids, but what a beautiful city it was, I suppose. My ribs hurts with the thought of home, and coming back made me never want to blink again. Change is a strange animal.

dreamin' on that leather

2008-08-10T18:42:00.000-07:00

you know the feeling! i dream about it night and day, about it hugging my sides, whispering tough secrets into my ear if i wear it with a dress and growling hooligan howls into my bones f i wear it with creepy creepers or glittering glamming 70's stripper platforms.

it would lead me to old dives and teach me to dance like a wildcat prowler, hissing and spitting punk lines to a jealous moon.

yes yes yes. yes yes yes. i almost found a perfect one in a seconhand store in either frisco or berkely i dont remember---- it was a bomber, perfectly worn, black, nubbly faux fur on the collar and spangled with zippers. it would have been mine but the armpits were too baggy.i was just short of crestfallen.

This is for Lali.

2008-08-03T15:47:00.000-07:00

A black leather bomber jacket. I ain't no 70's punk, but that item of clothing has permeated my dreams for years. The worn-in leather, soft at the touch, streaks of white appearing where the black has faded. The black rubbed away by countless bodies leaning against rough-edged buildings in the middle of the night. My mouth waters at the thought of it. Countless trips have been made to second hand stores and underground lairs, eyes straining to catch sight of the tough holy grail. Hoping to experience the bright light of discovery and the sweet, sweet, oh so sweet feeling of unadulterated power. It has to be perfect. Has to fit right. To hang on the body with ease, not too tight, not too loose. Just with ease. Loose upon the shoulders, thin and subtle. The item that I could pack away in a cardboard box before it was worn to shreds and unpack decades later, bringing out the jacket and the forgotten memories of sordid nights and sordid people. Memories of driving in a car at night and hearing someone utter the words- "We're on Teenage Blvd., heading straight to nowhere." Coins jangling in the pockets, the pockets that were widened as years of hands were shoved inside. Defiantly. Justly. the zipper hanging on by a thread, rust tainting the edges. Sewing up the skin.

In This Place That I Call Home

2008-08-03T00:23:00.000-07:00

My brain is a perennial abode, housing Venus flytraps that snap at the frayed edges of phrases and pictures, clutching onto those buzzing sentiments with two dripping incisors. the makeshift gears that calculate numbers are bound with Red Cross gauze, allowing steam and equations to hiss and mingle and slip through spongy crevices.

Ever since I was little I would view the world with a unique scrupulousness, constructing reasons and stories and plans for whatever was in my peripheral vision-

A woman wearing a butterfly print sweater, holding a beige umbrella in the middle of a bright August day: My mind would become a tilt-a-whirl, rolling around my skull, doing ecstatic somersaults as if my eyes were spoon-feeding it some sort of sweet ambrosia.

A young boy staring forlornly at his plate in the midst of other crackerjack kiddies with hedonistic ideals: Me, firmly understanding his disapproval and wants. My brain, floating in a gelatinous pool, soaking in that knowledge with a relaxed grace.

My mind hosts its own recreational picnics. Doo-wop mantras find their way into the stocked shelves of nothingness, stocked to the brim with flea market junk and upper crust marching orders, jumbling it up even more, so that in the middle of the night I awake with a start and feel the blinds behind my eyes go up and down and up and down.

I don't know whether it's honest or whether it's merely a jaded expansion, displaying white cylindrical light fixtures to "mod it up" like a bad film set. I don't know how it functions. Does it use a sparking electrical outlet or a weather-beaten rodent that keeps the excercise going as long as gouda is suspended in view?

I live in my brain. It's philosophically ancient and nebulous and sometimes the A/C goes out, but it's the troglodyte's dream cavern. An instinctual Kangaroo pouch.

2008-08-02T19:41:00.000-07:00

My mother jitters as she speaks of Texas Women's Death Row. As she contiuously pours the silver liquid in her gold lined shot glass. She pours the fizzy water into the glass and shoots small sips into the warm pink lining of her mouth. She shows me pictures of the womens family she interviewed, the lesbian murders and the aunts with crunchy hair and honest eyes and teeth. A silence hushes the room and she changes the subject.

Joshua Tree

2008-07-28T17:55:00.000-07:00

Assignment: Write a bilingual poem, with the subject matter of your choice.

The desert sands glowed with a dusty light

Gleaming from beneath

The sun only a meek competitor

Against the fire of the earth.

Los guerreros de la arena,

Mi seguridad

Tu seguridad.

We hoist our lives onto our backs

We plunge into another world

Where the earth becomes the sky

And death is a friendly hand

Placed lightly upon your shoulder

El sol te cubre,

Tu sabana de fuego

La luz, y el calor

Te cubren.

The great granite monsters are piled high

One atop another

Broken relics of a lost age

Their jagged silhouettes pierce the dusky moon

As we slap the cold from our fingers

And our breath goes sharp in our throats

Los ojos del desierto nos miran

Con furia, con tristeza, con amor

Y aunque nuestros ojos se cierran

El desierto jamás duerme

Es el vigilante permanente

Con sus ojos

Reflejando el mundo.

moody in june

2008-07-18T23:51:00.000-07:00

Sadness, or this dull throbbing
Has rendered me slow and heavy.
Dragging thru the days like a dishrag

Punctuated by real emotion, for no, I am not a zombie! Not the undead. I feel stuffed tho.
Mounted, on a plaque or base.
Posed in my most natural postion in a box, painted to look ike my natural habitat

Where have the days gone?
Me a slow, comatose, cumbersome character.
Unsavory.
Ignoble.

What to say , are there real words?
There is lead
Where my vital organs should be.
I’d love to sleep in the sun, for years, months. Void. But not death, to feel the warmth of the sun.
Just void. Or perhaps to cry.
But not to sit, alone, cracked like dry desert mud, with nothing to expend.
I cant explode, for I am merely smoldering.

Who replaced my eyes with beads?
Who filled my veins with stones?

Who painted my life beige….who.

Sawdust, sand and granite all have more meaning than I.
I would not float in the Dead sea.

My summer soaked rant.

2008-07-17T12:15:00.000-07:00

The old leather box containing the 1930's typewriter grazes my knee, as i bang away and the ungrateful pang of these plastic keys. The door to the toliet is open and the resedue of sourdough pretzels lines the pink insides of my mouth. Its a summers day, i am silent because I feel as though there is no noise needed. The sun is shaded by the murky sky outside, toning the ivy behind me in varing layers of illuminated greens. A list of phone numbers lay beside me, next to the krazy Glue i used to glue my bosses broken plate together. Phone numbers range from Pasadena, Van Nuys, New Jersy, West Los Angeles and Brooklyn area codes, beyond the list of estranged numbers associated with my list of friends lies a list of phone numbers of Psychics. That was my job today, psychics, finding ones good enough that would cure a writers block. This hasn't been glanced at yet, which is most of my feats here, only looked upon after the editors meetings, or the soundtrack teastings ecetera. Its nicer that way, because i hate when people read something i wrote infront of me, its the feeling of being mortally naked. As thier faces expand and wither with each word or concept you conveived and the perpetual neuroses of what you THINK they're thinking. I put on a Sylvia Plath outfit today, as i walk around in it i feel uncomparativly fashionably backward than anyone on the streets of Williamsburg. Was Sylvia Plath gone with that Gwenith Paltro film? Must i only wear gladiator sandals and jumpers? It is common in a Plath reader that you take upon her characteristics, I suppose in this moment of noise absence i have. Which is quite funny because im not really all that depressed. So the sun moved lighting this small apartment differently, allowing me to hide from its rays.
Im off to a studio..(i like when brits say with a linering j. Studjio: sort of like that)

anyways.
my rant.
thank you.

A Memoir Class Quick-Write

2008-07-16T18:18:00.001-07:00

My mom's neck is not unusual.

Sometimes I'll lie awake at night and think about African women with those rings around their necks, stretching them so far up that they look like ebony cranes, and I wonder if they work in libraries: the perfect helpers to grab those books at the top of the shelves.

My mom does not have that neck.

DMV, you a dirty mistreater, a robber, and a cheater

2008-07-10T10:40:00.000-07:00

Stepping inside of the DMV is like hurtling into the alternate universe of 1950's futuristic ideals. Lines of people bisect each other and move in diagonal conveyer belt formations, like some sort of avant garde production on the utopian freeways of the Jetsons, people symbolizing the pea pod automobiles.

And in front of a flickering, 24-inch TV showcasing a plain blue screen with appointment numbers scrawled in block letters are a group of automatons seated row after row, all eyes strained toward their impending turn. I had the feeling that if I put a lighter underneath one of their noses wax would slowly drip off the tip and form a puddle on their lap, proving that I was actually looking at an exhibit in Madame Tussauds.

The DMV made me inch closer to unlawful driving, if only to spite what I think is a house of horrors. A place filled with salivating teenagers straining against their harnesses to grasp onto a driver's license and shame-faced adults enduring chastisements from bureaucratic evil-doers.

Im far from it.

2008-07-10T08:54:00.000-07:00

Last night I was caught in a New york rain storm. My copy of Bell Jar got wet. The black dye from my skirt seeped onto my legs. And I left my journal as i rushed away, in my friends bag. Everything was cinematic then.

Well, what does that mean?

2008-07-09T11:57:00.000-07:00

For whatever reason, my recent dreams have been saturated with spit curled suffragettes who lindy hop their way down city streets. The kind of women who gather as many admirers as the number of glass beads that are draped around their necks, keeping those sailors happy with their penetrating, bedroom eyes. Whether these girls are living in the damp underground of the subway station or are playing figure study on a spread polar bear rug, they encapsulate the feminine prowess that all precocious minded little girls dream of attaining as they toss sand in a red-cheeked Junior's face. Already getting ready for the later tarpaulin of makeup with a

smile from grape juice purple lips.

2008-06-30T18:04:00.000-07:00

a sodden, heavy pirouette---
An oak leaf falls. You press it into your palm…the spikes make little craters in your hand.
Years pass,
you are crying
so the world will go round,
the craters fill and the Indians grind their hard, purple corn in them.
They scoop out the meal, mix it with your tears
And feed their children

Little estuaries spring up, geysers from the crook of your elbow
The children pinch their noses
Men come
And build boardwalks
you are rubbing dust into your
eyes, you are
folding spores into your skin
your muddy marrow and your salty blood
Your bitter lips and your spiny ribs.

The souvieners of McCollister

2008-06-29T22:29:00.001-07:00

Last night i had a dream: it depicted my dead grandmother, whom which i share the same German legs as her. In the dream she was resurrected.

A few weeks ago my family's hometown of Louisiana Missouri was choked under the muddy waters of a Mississippi flood. The ghost like town inhabited by my family for generations, floating under murky waters. So, alone in a search for something tangible i find as many things in family lineage dies or gets wet, lost, torn, burned, disintegrated. Today, I found in the crevasses of my fathers oak sock drawer, pictures of a phosphorescent New Orleans, of children with beautifully pure faces mussed up by the bayous heat. I found my grandmothers legs, twine and a winter prayer from a congregation my father seeked in Louisiana for i guess guidance. This is what small towns do, lull you to a Huckleberry coma until something dies, your mother, until the floods hit again and you have to find a sin city to scoop you up, get you melancholy and drunk and parade you into a humid state of loveliness, where nothing has recognition, where everything is blurred by the past, your subconscious and the absinthe you drank, with the reefer you inhaled, with the fat man you took pictures of. Until the loss of your town and your mother doesn't hurt and spirits become steady in your skull.

A summers prayer.

Not My Family

2008-06-29T18:10:00.000-07:00

Your sons are spoiled rotten. Their blond heads are matted with tears, running and dribbling over their eyelashes to come and rest in the dimples on their cheeks. Each time you unwrap a shiny new plastic toy, all you will be rewarded with is gnashing teeth and flailing limbs, kicking, beating, biting, filling the air with electricity and panic. How dare you let me into your house? Each time they call you, "Mommy, Mommy!," your jaw clenches in fear, screaming back at them. You look at me apologetically, gently nudging them from the room. The finger paint coats us thinly, in my nose, my mouth, my eyes. They have become smudges in my eyes, little dark whorls on the lawn. Your husband tries to keep them out of the laundry chute.

"Great, I'll be back Saturday, Mrs. ______"

declarations----spring of last year

2008-06-29T14:28:00.000-07:00

you used to wade in the brackish estuaries

you used to lick the resin from the trees

you used to be the desert

you used to jump and the milk in your belly became butter

you used to sing a song over and over

you used to have bark and branches

you used to perform for the wild animals underground

you used to feed the roots

you used to cull the fools gold from all the mountain streams

you used to fuzz all the newborn peaches

you slept in the hoof-prints in the snow

"Just a biting bug been following me from town to town"- Ma Rainey

2008-06-28T19:26:00.000-07:00

Virginia bluesman Luke Jordan

It's when your soul starts melting inside and slides out of your eyes and ears and nose like spoonfuls of hot oil. It's when your heart starts beating a mournful epitaph in 12/8 time. It's when your saliva becomes a harsh gin, burning your throat and shooting out between your lips while you howl and wail the same bitter line over and over and your fingers pluck the guitar strings till the blood's pounding at their tips.
Or it's a playful beat crushed into wood floors with quick-tappin' feet. It's spit-shine salutes to the underground minstrels who puff on the top of moonshine jugs. It's an 80-year-old mama who uses the grey hairs on her head to count her chores and whistles to her rough-kneed kids.

True blues music has passed, but that doesn't mean the left-over proof of that period of strained heartstrings can't be enjoyed these days. Sometimes, when my mind's hurting and my head just feels so heavy it might drop onto the floor and roll away, or even when I feel like a rugged, southern farm girl who justs wants to put her feet up and close her eyes to the tune of pure enjoyment (which happens more than you'd think), I'll listen to those recordings and the only action you'll see me perform is the slow nod of my toasty head as the strums and grumbles send me soaring.

My blues pick of late-
"Cocaine Blues" by Luke Jordan

barbapapa

2008-06-28T12:26:00.000-07:00

by jean-robert cuttaia

Kneecaps and harriet the spy.

2008-06-28T11:58:00.003-07:00

There is a lovely thing that happens when a young girl reads Harriet the spy she become increasingly aware of the cuts and scrapes on her, awkward silences, beautiful urban objects and commodities, she becomes a walking sarcastic goddess whom has interest with curiosity for the world. J'elle aime.