-Sam Hickel

-Leah Roth

Meanwhile, On the Edge of Space

-Richard “Wolf” O’Brien

[four]

[The number four indicates this poem's position chronologically in a series still in process.]

to drink the puddlewater
of the only available context
isolatitude
otherwise     to dry out of thirst
scooping the oily film
     in my palms
to reach with the lips
the thin layer of waterinbetween
the black asphalt
and the putrid metro vapor

to curl up in bed
to remind me of my
body

 electronic letters
.....
blinking cursor is
urges to act
dragged/drugged
 by the information rope
to attempt
to synthesize sleep
feverish static
interferes
...no choice but to...
i keep isolating and selecting
the flash images.
S and d
like a growth in flesh
i slide amidst circuits
adrenal pinch through a dream
reaching hand to touch
you
there is only data.
inbetween
blinking and blinking

a breath, a sigh
suddenly there are ribs
suddenly there is animation
movement does not yet
thaw
the cold limbs

(and i wanted to ...
... but the meaning isn't weaving)
somewhere in the distant
backyard of memory
there is a smell of
pulverized bone
insects on a windowsill
anamnesis

here there is only
the smell of a burnt blender
lungs taste of
plastic soot

listen.... ....
.... the house is breathing
lift your gaze...
there is life in radiation
laughter....
....all i hear is laughter

the scientific
absolute zero

your heart stops its quiver

the sun keeps pulsating

-a zavyalova

The Origin of Red

Red started out as a hankering in Little Momma’s gut—a hankering for revenge in the form of a fuck, come to fruition in a gas station bathroom at 3 a.m. on a Sunday with the help of a frisky gas station attendant Red’s momma seen once or twice up at Bud’s Tavern smoking cigarettes and shooting pool.

Little Momma was the capricious type. Sometimes she spent all day curled up on the couch, thumbing through Babies ‘R’ Us catalogs, cooing longingly, a momma hen keeping her egg warm. But other days you’d find her out on the back porch in one of them plastic beach chairs half-asleep, menthol cigarette burning between her lips, cap missing from the half-finished bottle of Captain Morgan resting at her pedicured feet. “I’m gettin’ this thing outta me,” she’d holler. (“This thing” being Red.) “I’m callin’ the Clinic tomorrow.”

But she never got around to calling the Clinic, and months later Red ripped through her like the tiny rocket that she was.

Little Momma thought she might give Red up for adoption, but she couldn’t— wouldn’t—after she’d held all five-pounds of Red, her premature, soft pink flesh and blood, to her bosom.

Little Momma named her little baby Collette Jolene McCutcheon, but that didn’t matter because everyone only ever called her Red.

Red was a healthy baby, mostly. Tiny and bubblegum-colored with a tuft of fiery hair and a strong grip for something so little.

She never did have ten fingers, though. Nor did she have ten toes. She had six digits on each hand and foot and each digit was stuck to the next with a soft, veiny webbing.

Her eyes were funny. Bright blue, milky around the edges. Daytime was too bright for Red. Little Momma suspected it was because she was born at night.

Down Red’s back a growth, which most would call a tail, hung between her legs. It grew as she did, and as she got older she learned to control it. She swished it behind her when she walked, and it could be kind of sexy if you were into that kind of thing—girls with tails. More people like it than you might imagine.

Other than the extra toes and fingers, the webbing, the eyes, and the tail, Red was an ordinary girl. She went to school until she didn’t. She messed around with boys now and then, got her heart mashed in, and mashed in a few hearts herself before she found herself a job. She was a lifeguard at Lake Chattahootchee or someplace like that. She liked it alright. Minimum wage to sit by the water and people-watch.

As you might imagine, though, Red much preferred being in the water to being out of it, seeing how the sun dried her skin out and the water kept her eyes shaded better than any sunglasses could do. She could see better underwater, to tell the truth. But management didn’t care about Red’s sore eyes or Red’s dried out skin; they just cared that state regulations said her ass needed to be firmly planted in that lifeguard stand at all times. They fired her midway through July.

It was about that time that Little Momma got diagnosed with emphysema or one of them smoker’s ailments like that, I can’t rightly recall which one, but the bottom line was that Little Momma needed money if she was gonna pay for treatments, she was too sick to make money in the only ways she knew how. So, Little Momma turned to her child.

“Red honey,” she told her. “You got all the makings of a call girl. It’s in your blood, Baby. Look at you. You’re exotic. You got the same cream-white skin I got. You got that fire red hair to catch their attention. And you got all your special parts.” She prattled on. “They call that Darwinism or Creationism or something, Hell, I can’t remember all that book learnin’ shit. But generations and generations of the best hookers money can buy are in your blood, Baby. You was custom-made to be the best call girl there ever was. I guarantee it.”
Red was nervous about this proposition, but she knew her momma was desperate for the money, so she went through with it.

As it turned out, Little Momma was correct; her daughter was suited to be a creature of the night. She no longer had to worry about the sun drying up her skin or the daylight hurting her eyes. She found that she saw best in dim, smoky rooms and pitch-black alleyways. Though, it was really her tail that got her famous—the ways she learned to use it.

The business seemed hard to break into at first and the job itself downright terrifying, but within a year Red had made it. You could say she had some regulars, but really it was more than that. Red had couples flying in from halfway across the country to fuck her, she had married men ready to leave their wives after half an hour of lovemaking. What she really had was a cult of loyal worshippers ready to drop their drawers and hand over their wallets at the flick of her tail.

Eventually, this became a problem as it drew a little too much attention to Red’s business, but she got off with just a warning from the Sheriff before she packed up and moved to Las Vegas.

Red did well in Vegas. She made piles of money, which she sent home in briefcases to her momma, keeping only thirty-percent of her earnings for herself, a little more when business would allow. Red was the best little hooker in Las Vegas, and after some time she got picked up by an agent who got Red her own seduction show. “The Exotic Little Miss Red Bares All—From Head to Tail!” the signs read. During the shows, she swam naked in a tank like a mermaid, and then emerged from the water, dripping and covered in plastic jewels. She danced herself dry to old timey sailor songs, swishing her tail sensuously to the music.

A few years went by like this, and one day Little Momma called to congratulate her daughter on her success. “I just wanna thank you, Red Honey. And tell you how proud I am of you. I always knew you was gonna the best. It’s in your blood, Honey.”

Red blushed at her mother’s praise.

“Now listen, though, Baby,” Little Momma told her, getting serious. “These treatments ain’t workin’ for me no more. I didn’t wanna tell you before, but Doc says I ain’t gonna make it past next week.”

Red’s tight little jewel-encrusted belly tied itself into a tangled mess of a sailor’s knot as she burst into tears. She made the arrangements, canceling next week’s shows, explaining the news to all of her regular clients, and booking a flight back home.

Every day and night, Red stayed by Little Momma’s bedside, and though Little Momma was barely able to speak by the end of it, her dying wish was for a grandbaby she could watch from Heaven. She told Red, “The secret to making a baby come out special like you are: McCutcheon family blood, reckless indecision, and a whole lotta Captain Morgan. And don’t never listen to what nobody else tells ya, ‘specially doctors.”

Red arranged a lovely funeral after her momma passed on. Gerber daises of every color, Little Momma’s favorite. It was a small ceremony. They didn’t have much family, but a few people from town stopped by to pay their respects, and Red thought Little Momma would have been satisfied with it.
The week after Little Momma was buried, Red went back to Vegas and started up with her shows again, but it didn’t feel the same with her momma gone.

At the end of the year she decided to retire. She settled down, and one of her regulars made an honest woman of her. She had three kids of her own. All three of them brown-haired, brown-eyed, tail-free, no-webbing, five-fingers, five-toes, the spitting image of their granny, may she rest in peace. So normal and innocent it would’ve broken her heart, had she lived to see them.

The family lived in a big two-story out in California with a finished basement and a pool in the backyard. On warm nights, Red liked to sneak out of bed and go for a swim all by her lonesome. She’d creep out of the house without a towel, peel off her nightgown, and dive in. Her eyes would open as soon as they felt the water.

At the end of her swim, she’d dance herself dry on the patio, humming those old sailor songs and swishing her tail to the tune. When she was dry enough, she’d get on her knees and say a prayer for Little Momma. Then, she’d scamper inside and rejoin her sleeping husband in bed, tail swishing behind her as she went.

–Holly Combs

Three Poems

“Myself When I Am Real”

first things to emerge from the crater
 long legs and
 long hair and
 *piano* fingers and and
 because of a dust storm
 the torso gets short-changed

hear! I writhe

“it’s ok”

fine

the man at the bar hands me another
but his fingertips don’t brush my hand

stingy tip
motherfucker

yo paste up the dew drops for me will ya
but I say f***** **f and pour the glass on her head

all over
all over her shit dumb head

you want some more pop
you want some more pop music

“yes” oh she likes me all submissive
oh she likes me all subs missing targets

all the policeman missing their subs
give me dirty looks as I drool myself

over to the bus stop on Wabasha
on some late morning last week, next week

same diff
eat your fucking green

so the bus comes but I decide to get off early
and find another bitch to pour my shit all over

she says you look like you could use a pop
you look like you could get used to pop music

“no” oh she likes me all in-denial
oh yeah she likes me all in the Nile all pale and pharaoh-skinned

so I dip into the shitter hoping if I vom hard enough
a pharaoh will be resurrected and save the Mid-East

or at least save big money somewhere
so I pretend to wash my hands, walk off like a criminal

and get to another bus stop where this new bitch is listening to pop
funneling pop all into her ears so much too much

that it drips out chunks and all, all over the curb
and I forget to pay attention and look down at my shit-covered foot

“ugh” oh I like me all forgetful
oh yeah I like to not remember any shit is happening all over everything

i guess

“early morning”

I saw an old woman ready to wring out her extended family
took them out back, yes
                                    yes
this will do just fine
so she rolled out the red carpet
and took an axe to her worries
snitch                snatch
bitch                  flatch
flitch                  bitch again

just like this old woman did to her cousin Dolores
just like this old woman did to her cousin Odelle
her hands were clean so she rubbed it

one whitish hair
one gray hair
one blackish-gray hair
the gristle of senescence
you could call this a bring-down

hey
Angel
morning

twitch                twatch
itch                    atch
clitch                 snatch again

and in the melloyellodramatic light of the hospice
Angel opened her crusty eyes
and faced her reality:

a young as shit nurse
g-string peering out from hospital scrubs
and a gray plastic tray
take your pills, Angie, yes
                                     yes master
this will do just fine

-Mary Scott

Song of Space

Consolation is discipline from impermanence and space worship
We are energy in the midst of material
Death is present in the mirror
We whisk our beards together
God is dead

A punk rocker, empty of all but guts, meat, bone,
Set for outer space on a rocket
With words, a loudspeaker, a can of beer
Moving up, he says, to space, into heaven
His bible set to exodus
His amplifier set to explode

And her blanched earlobes
Rocking for music
Of the galaxies
Forting for fantasy, harmony, sweet harmony
With a voice, a guitar, a comb—
Flesh starving for the grace
Of the holy dance
To saint Salome, sweet Salome,
Forever fleshless and pirouetting in hell

And near a river, one
Scripts fiction in silence,
In reverence to belief,
building an imaginary space,
The body suffering
In its placement —
His bright daft curls
Lionized by the machines,
His holy nervous system colonized
Closed tight shut about the words to be

–Tony Malangone

Dandelions

It comes up face first out of the water, gray and round and all blubbery sway. Shaking its head its whole unsubtle mass quakes. A harsh savannah wind tosses the river reeds about wildly then settles. The hippo pauses and mulls something around in its mouth, placid and blank as a dairy cow. Turning to face the river it gives a little semivoluntary flick of the tail then posts up and begins to fan it to and fro.

Shit slides out the beast’s backend and, making contact with the tail, fireworks out across the dusty grassland. Shit speckles and stains the plain to the back of the hippo. An earthy, primitive kind of shit, tossed ecstatically outward, frothy spumes and heavy gobs of it arcing madly up toward the mountains, landing wet and heavy in the dirt where the meerkats and giant ants live. Shit seems to come forth forever.

Finally it stops, and the giant hippopotamus, satisfied, turns back around, slides into the river, and with an unimaginable grace floats downstream.

Here the tableau freezes. The whole episode has lasted 1:57. Eric, Kyle, and Brandon, huddled around a laptop in Eric’s dad’s living room, howl with laughter. Kyle, shaking, gently glides his middle finger across the computer’s trackpad and taps the replay button. They watch it again, giggling at the creature’s utter reserve and dignity as it jettisons its foul payload. They laugh at the sheer amount of shit, its duration. They laugh particularly at the amateur videographers making indignant little noises behind the camera, innocent holidaymakers who wanted nothing more than an uncomplicated home movie of an exotic beast of the safari.

The hippo swims away and Kyle starts it over. The boys have been at it all day, watching shaky videos of strange things shitting; their friendship is fundamentally anal. Once more the animal lumbers out of the water and pauses seriously, dark birds circling overhead. Once more the wind rustles the dry African grass, a pixelated wave rippling off to the horizon, to the top of the video frame.

Again, the hippo pauses, still chewing. Its leathery bulk is weightless behind the 240p upload. The boys are silent for a moment, transfixed, weary with laughter. The hippos blasts its shit. They scream with joy. Meanwhile, out past the front windows and the lush green shag carpet lawn, sprouting up tentatively in the narrow place where the sidewalk meets soil: dandelions.

-Lucas Oleen-Junk