Thank you to all our wonderful Writers, Poets, and Photographers who made our First Edition possible!
Header photographic submission: "6520181E-EEA1-41C9-89C1-11BA9A1B6399" - Maky Espinoza
pissed-off cockroach motherfucker
- Parker Phillips
“oh sorry if we are being unfair unfortunately u guys murdered all the nice gays & now there’s just us: the assholes.
the queers who were nice/patient/gentle all got shot or bullied to death all that’s left r me & all the other pissed-off cockroach motherfuckers”
~Anthony Oliviera, @meakoopa, Twitter, 6/13/16
i have 700,000 ghosts on my shoulders
i want to take them to vandalize reagan’s grave
then i’ll drop them all off to haunt whomever
needs the reminders of lives they ruined
i want to take dan white’s gun away
Harvey deserved to live his blood is my blood
whenever I bleed another bullet goes into his skull
twinkies didn’t cause that that was just hate
i want to pull Marsha from the river
press my lips against hers, press life into her chest
or show the straight men who put her there
just how strong the hudson current can be
i want to castrate the men who castrated Alan
i want to jailbreak Oscar, nurse him back to health
i want to beat clinton with a print-out of
don’t ask don’t tell until he can’t tell anyone anything
i want to look through shapiro’s guts until I find
his damn “biological pronouns” and rip them in half
i want to drag Caitlyn jenner to a ballroom show
let the poor, non-white queers take their pound of flesh
i want to throw shot glasses at the ‘respectable gays’
the ones who gentrified the gayborhood, remind them
who got them there with each shard of glass
i want to break Tyler’s roommate's phone
over Tyler’s roommate’s face
i want to put a shock collar on every person who
ever worked a conversion camp
i want everyone who killed Mathew to
feel every ounce of torture they inflicted on him
i want to fill that pie with razor blades and
only then have it thrown in bryant’s face
i’d let every gay man ever called a pedophile
break one of spacey’s bones but other people have
better claim to him than us so i’ll just watch
maybe if i ask i can spit on what’s left
- Parker Phillips
“oh sorry if we are being unfair unfortunately u guys murdered all the nice gays & now there’s just us: the assholes.
the queers who were nice/patient/gentle all got shot or bullied to death all that’s left r me & all the other pissed-off cockroach motherfuckers”
~Anthony Oliviera, @meakoopa, Twitter, 6/13/16
i have 700,000 ghosts on my shoulders
i want to take them to vandalize reagan’s grave
then i’ll drop them all off to haunt whomever
needs the reminders of lives they ruined
i want to take dan white’s gun away
Harvey deserved to live his blood is my blood
whenever I bleed another bullet goes into his skull
twinkies didn’t cause that that was just hate
i want to pull Marsha from the river
press my lips against hers, press life into her chest
or show the straight men who put her there
just how strong the hudson current can be
i want to castrate the men who castrated Alan
i want to jailbreak Oscar, nurse him back to health
i want to beat clinton with a print-out of
don’t ask don’t tell until he can’t tell anyone anything
i want to look through shapiro’s guts until I find
his damn “biological pronouns” and rip them in half
i want to drag Caitlyn jenner to a ballroom show
let the poor, non-white queers take their pound of flesh
i want to throw shot glasses at the ‘respectable gays’
the ones who gentrified the gayborhood, remind them
who got them there with each shard of glass
i want to break Tyler’s roommate's phone
over Tyler’s roommate’s face
i want to put a shock collar on every person who
ever worked a conversion camp
i want everyone who killed Mathew to
feel every ounce of torture they inflicted on him
i want to fill that pie with razor blades and
only then have it thrown in bryant’s face
i’d let every gay man ever called a pedophile
break one of spacey’s bones but other people have
better claim to him than us so i’ll just watch
maybe if i ask i can spit on what’s left
Church Ritual
- Carl "Papa" Palmer
Warm unmoving August air miserable mid-morning mass penalty penance punishment
for drinking sneaked rectory wine. Entire summer every Saturday every Sunday sitting kneeling same front left pew hands folded holding plastic rosary pocket bible wearing only owned suit blue wool white cotton shirt starched scratchy itchy sweaty too tight too hot topped with one of dads clip-on ties.
Perpetual smell of faded dying flowers overly perfumed blue haired women acrid smoky yellow odorous incense unfocused eyes daydreaming downward. Alerted as I feel mothers close inspection hear her familiar forced tsk tsking sigh unsnapping the red leatherette handbag releasing familiar aroma mix cloves menthol cigarettes smelling salts Black Jack caffeine chewing gum pink dust of cracked compact powder
rattle of keys coins cellophane as she locates the least wadded tissue wets a clean corner with nicotine spit tries to wipe that newest brown freckle from my blushing sunburned cheek.
- Carl "Papa" Palmer
Warm unmoving August air miserable mid-morning mass penalty penance punishment
for drinking sneaked rectory wine. Entire summer every Saturday every Sunday sitting kneeling same front left pew hands folded holding plastic rosary pocket bible wearing only owned suit blue wool white cotton shirt starched scratchy itchy sweaty too tight too hot topped with one of dads clip-on ties.
Perpetual smell of faded dying flowers overly perfumed blue haired women acrid smoky yellow odorous incense unfocused eyes daydreaming downward. Alerted as I feel mothers close inspection hear her familiar forced tsk tsking sigh unsnapping the red leatherette handbag releasing familiar aroma mix cloves menthol cigarettes smelling salts Black Jack caffeine chewing gum pink dust of cracked compact powder
rattle of keys coins cellophane as she locates the least wadded tissue wets a clean corner with nicotine spit tries to wipe that newest brown freckle from my blushing sunburned cheek.
Apocalypse
- Michael Burrows
No prior warning, no sign of things to come. The virus spread across the world like the precious drops of milk Sarah takes in her tea, staining the landscape, covering the globe in a few short hours. For a while we held out hope for Australia, isolated from the worst of it, until they stopped replying. Then the internet went down, followed by the television and radio stations. The phone lines died.
Then the people.
Collapsing in the street, dropping where they walked, slumped down escalators. The rest of us shut ourselves up in our apartments and houses, said goodbyes to loved ones, and waited. Sarah sat with her legs curled over me on the couch, watching our final sunset over the Common.
“Any regrets?” She said, not looking away from the window.
I couldn’t think of anything worth saying. Wish I’d married her. Knocked her up. Kissed Anna in HR. Had a threesome. Eaten at a Michelin starred restaurant. Called my parents more.
“Nothing at all?” She turned to look at me, black lines streaked down her face, her eyes puffy and red.
“Cup of tea?”
“Now? How can you...” But what else could we do? Made hers how she likes it, strong, two sugars, hint of milk. We waited. The electricity went around nine o’clock. Someone in the street over played Hits of the 80’s on a speaker until the batteries died. Countryside silence in the middle of the city.
“Thanks for being here with me.” The last thing I remember her saying.
We had some candles, but they were dying, and the light was dimming. She was lying with her head in my lap, looking up at me, holding my hand so tight my fingers had gone numb. I thought, if I have to go, there are worse ways, and closed my eyes and let the darkness wash over me.
I didn’t die, obviously. But Sarah had gone to somewhere better.
I woke in pain, neck aching from the couch, the candles burned out. Went to check my phone and then remembered. The front door was still locked from the inside. The street outside was deserted. The last few sips in her mug were cold on the coffee table, the milk pooling on the top of the tea in abstract white shapes.
Knocked for five minutes on Mrs Laugans door. No answer.
I didn’t want to go outside, in case. No way of knowing if there was anyone else. No communication. Electricity flickering in and out. Phone calls ringing and ringing. I had enough supplies for at least a week, assuming I could start a fire, and an entire fridge of food to get through before it went bad. I waited.
By day five I’d given up hope of hearing good news. Finished the fresh food and was on to the canned stuff that’d been sitting in the back of the cupboard for months. Sarah’s refried beans on the last slices of stale sourdough.
Sarah’s toothbrush sitting next to the sink. Sarah’s hairs on the pillow. Sarah’s socks lying on the floor where she’d thrown them when the news starting coming through.
“Is this it?” She’d said.
“No, hey, listen. We’ll be fine. We’ll be fine.”
“I don’t know that I can.” Her voice breaking. The man on the news saying the names of cities, vast numbers of people, entire countries. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s ok,” and I’d pulled her into me, crushing her against me, trying to show her that we’d be together until the bitter end.
On the seventh day I broke down the door to Mrs Laugans flat. She was slumped in front of the television like she’d drifted off watching the news. Lace doilies underneath the china cups. Took whatever I could carry back to our flat and locked the door behind me. A packet of dark chocolate digestives, and no one to tell me off for eating the entire thing.
Sarah’s sunglasses.
Day twelve. Tied an old shirt around my face and opened the front door, half expecting to drop dead. Fallen leaves and the smell of old rubbish. Nothing moving. No birds. No animals. Sarah had a thing for urban foxes, tearing apart the bin bags, screeching in the dead of night. One of those last evenings, before we knew they would be our last evenings, walking home, I reached out to hold her hand and she stopped in her tracks.
“What?” I said, walking on.
“Stop. Shhhh.”
Up ahead, the silky silhouette of a fox crossing our path, looking over at us, eyes flickering in the gloaming.
No one living in any of the houses down our street.
I walked all the way down to the station, past the abandoned double-deckers. The empty pram. Nothing. Deserted shops, like everyone had vanished mid-shift. The supermarket doors were still open, fresh fruit and vegetables rotting in the aisles. I filled two trolleys and dragged them home. That night I woke up with pain in my stomach, and threw up in the toilet. I resigned myself to death. I hoped I might see Sarah again. Nope, stomach-ache from over-eating.
One of Sarah’s hair bands.
I thought about killing myself, and talked myself out of it. Figured I owed something to the human race. Big words. I argued with myself.
I wanted to see Sarah again.
Day forty, and I took a car from outside Number 7 and drove up to the river. Nothing on the roads. No life. I made excellent time. The Thames still rolling by, dirty and broken. Some things never change. I sped down a motorway, and revved the engine like people do in movies. Thought about what it would be like to live alone for eternity. Tried to remember my first aid training.
London Bridge. Deserted. I’d kissed Sarah for the first time walking across late one night.
“It’s not a date, though, ok?” She’d said, when I asked her if she wanted to get a drink.
“It’s not a date.” I said, laughing, later, as we kissed.
“Shut up.”
I parked right up on the walkway and lay out on the bonnet and drank Dom Perignon. I recited Shakespeare to the city skyline from a book from the library. I’d had to break a glass panel to get in, but inside the stacks felt normal. It’s meant to be quiet.
My voice cracked with disuse. No one to ask what it all means. No one to make laugh with dumb jokes. Sarah in my head sighing at another bad pun.
“Please, can you be serious for once?” She’d said one night in the middle of an argument.
“I’ll be Sirius, you be Harry.” She’d walked into the bedroom and slammed the door.
I thought I could hear her laughing to herself, but she was curled up in bed asleep when I finally worked up the courage to check.
Sarah’s perfume.
Drove home drunk, swerving across the lanes because I could. Overgrown trees. Nature taking over once more. I didn’t bother locking my door. The trees in the street outside had grown so big they were almost blocking out the sky. I broke into a shed at Number 13 and borrowed a chainsaw.
The smell of petrol. The scream of branches dropping. I cleared five trees, a garden shed, three metres of fencing and a car wing mirror, and only stopped because I dropped the chainsaw when I realised I was screaming. The silence when the chainsaw stopped was unbearable.
The sound of Sarah laughing.
Day sixty-three I crossed the bridge into the city. Buildings like sculptures above my head. Piccadilly Circus empty. Trafalgar Square deserted. The smell of the bodies had mostly disappeared by now. Or I’d grown used to it. I’d taken to carrying around a long walking stick.
“What’s with the stick?” Sarah asked in my head.
“It feels right.”
“Right.” Sarah rolling her eyes. “Why do you care what anyone thinks? Everyone’s dead.”
I’m worried about my mental health. Talking to myself, having conversations, arguing semantics, making up little songs. Driving myself crazy.
“I’m dead, y’know.” She says.
I don’t know that for sure, I think.
“Don’t you?”
Wandered through the back streets of Soho where I’d worked in my early twenties, running coffees at a little café for sex-shop workers and artists. Adult Books. Soy cappuccino. XXX. Decaf latte. I stopped outside a display of latex whips.
“I miss you.”
“I’m right here,” she says.
The rustle of leaves or paper in the alley to my right.
Crunch of footsteps.
I crouched, listening, ready to spring.
Nothing.
I held my stick in front of me like a spear, like whoever or whatever might come around the corner would take one look at me and back away. But there was nothing. My imagination. Zombies, maybe. The living dead.
I caught sight of myself in the reflection. The man staring back looked wild. Thick beard. Tangled hair. The light was gone from his eyes. Smiled at myself, but he didn’t smile back.
A man in a suit walked around the corner and almost ran into me. Well-dressed, suit and tie, shoes polished and shiny. He had one of those haircuts where they shave the sides and slick the long stuff on top back with grease or gel. He looked familiar. We’d been in the same history class at university in my final year. Alex, or Axel or something.
“Hey,” he said.
I croaked back a “Hey”.
“Are you ok?” He glanced across at the latex whip display and back at me. My tongue felt huge and thick in my mouth. He seemed to soften his stance, relaxing his shoulders.
“Shit, I heard about you and Sarah. I’m sorry, man.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything. I looked down at my hands, scabbed and dirty, blood under the nails. Back at his face. He felt sorry for me, you could see it in the big wet corners of his eyes, the way he kept licking his lips.
“I’m fine,” I said, “I’m great, doing great, really great. Fine.”
“These things are always hard,” he said, like it’s that easy. The stockpiles of canned food back home. The chainsaw. The locks on the front door. The phone ringing out to eternity. “Let’s grab a beer sometime, yeah? I’ll message.”
He disappeared behind me before I could think of something witty to say. I hated his haircut.
Sarah’s special teabags in the cupboard.
I picked up a few things and headed home. The rubbish bags had been taken out of the hallway where I’d been throwing them and the door was locked where I’d left it unlocked.
Inside, the kitchen had been cleaned, the pillows back on the couch. I could hear Mrs Laugan turning on the evening news.
Sarah’s side of the wardrobe empty. Sarah’s teabags gone.
“Is this it?” She’d said, as the airplanes dropped from the sky and the stock market plummeted and the earth opened up and the plagues descended and the fires raged and the titans walked the earth and the seas rose and the sickness spread.
“Please don’t.” I pleaded. I knelt on the floor in front of her and held the bottom hem of her blouse in my hands, crumpling the thin silk between my fingers. She looked up at the ceiling.
“Please,” I said, “I can change. I can be better. Please, let me try.”
I pulled her against me, crushing myself into her small body, trying to hold us together.
“I don’t know that I can.”
The thick plume of black smoke rising over the Common.
I can smell Sarah’s perfume on the cushions on the lounge, on the missing cutlery, in the gaps on the bookshelf.
She’s pushed her keys back through the letterbox. Definitive.
The milk in the fridge has gone off, white and speckled when I pour it in my tea.
- Michael Burrows
No prior warning, no sign of things to come. The virus spread across the world like the precious drops of milk Sarah takes in her tea, staining the landscape, covering the globe in a few short hours. For a while we held out hope for Australia, isolated from the worst of it, until they stopped replying. Then the internet went down, followed by the television and radio stations. The phone lines died.
Then the people.
Collapsing in the street, dropping where they walked, slumped down escalators. The rest of us shut ourselves up in our apartments and houses, said goodbyes to loved ones, and waited. Sarah sat with her legs curled over me on the couch, watching our final sunset over the Common.
“Any regrets?” She said, not looking away from the window.
I couldn’t think of anything worth saying. Wish I’d married her. Knocked her up. Kissed Anna in HR. Had a threesome. Eaten at a Michelin starred restaurant. Called my parents more.
“Nothing at all?” She turned to look at me, black lines streaked down her face, her eyes puffy and red.
“Cup of tea?”
“Now? How can you...” But what else could we do? Made hers how she likes it, strong, two sugars, hint of milk. We waited. The electricity went around nine o’clock. Someone in the street over played Hits of the 80’s on a speaker until the batteries died. Countryside silence in the middle of the city.
“Thanks for being here with me.” The last thing I remember her saying.
We had some candles, but they were dying, and the light was dimming. She was lying with her head in my lap, looking up at me, holding my hand so tight my fingers had gone numb. I thought, if I have to go, there are worse ways, and closed my eyes and let the darkness wash over me.
I didn’t die, obviously. But Sarah had gone to somewhere better.
I woke in pain, neck aching from the couch, the candles burned out. Went to check my phone and then remembered. The front door was still locked from the inside. The street outside was deserted. The last few sips in her mug were cold on the coffee table, the milk pooling on the top of the tea in abstract white shapes.
Knocked for five minutes on Mrs Laugans door. No answer.
I didn’t want to go outside, in case. No way of knowing if there was anyone else. No communication. Electricity flickering in and out. Phone calls ringing and ringing. I had enough supplies for at least a week, assuming I could start a fire, and an entire fridge of food to get through before it went bad. I waited.
By day five I’d given up hope of hearing good news. Finished the fresh food and was on to the canned stuff that’d been sitting in the back of the cupboard for months. Sarah’s refried beans on the last slices of stale sourdough.
Sarah’s toothbrush sitting next to the sink. Sarah’s hairs on the pillow. Sarah’s socks lying on the floor where she’d thrown them when the news starting coming through.
“Is this it?” She’d said.
“No, hey, listen. We’ll be fine. We’ll be fine.”
“I don’t know that I can.” Her voice breaking. The man on the news saying the names of cities, vast numbers of people, entire countries. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s ok,” and I’d pulled her into me, crushing her against me, trying to show her that we’d be together until the bitter end.
On the seventh day I broke down the door to Mrs Laugans flat. She was slumped in front of the television like she’d drifted off watching the news. Lace doilies underneath the china cups. Took whatever I could carry back to our flat and locked the door behind me. A packet of dark chocolate digestives, and no one to tell me off for eating the entire thing.
Sarah’s sunglasses.
Day twelve. Tied an old shirt around my face and opened the front door, half expecting to drop dead. Fallen leaves and the smell of old rubbish. Nothing moving. No birds. No animals. Sarah had a thing for urban foxes, tearing apart the bin bags, screeching in the dead of night. One of those last evenings, before we knew they would be our last evenings, walking home, I reached out to hold her hand and she stopped in her tracks.
“What?” I said, walking on.
“Stop. Shhhh.”
Up ahead, the silky silhouette of a fox crossing our path, looking over at us, eyes flickering in the gloaming.
No one living in any of the houses down our street.
I walked all the way down to the station, past the abandoned double-deckers. The empty pram. Nothing. Deserted shops, like everyone had vanished mid-shift. The supermarket doors were still open, fresh fruit and vegetables rotting in the aisles. I filled two trolleys and dragged them home. That night I woke up with pain in my stomach, and threw up in the toilet. I resigned myself to death. I hoped I might see Sarah again. Nope, stomach-ache from over-eating.
One of Sarah’s hair bands.
I thought about killing myself, and talked myself out of it. Figured I owed something to the human race. Big words. I argued with myself.
I wanted to see Sarah again.
Day forty, and I took a car from outside Number 7 and drove up to the river. Nothing on the roads. No life. I made excellent time. The Thames still rolling by, dirty and broken. Some things never change. I sped down a motorway, and revved the engine like people do in movies. Thought about what it would be like to live alone for eternity. Tried to remember my first aid training.
London Bridge. Deserted. I’d kissed Sarah for the first time walking across late one night.
“It’s not a date, though, ok?” She’d said, when I asked her if she wanted to get a drink.
“It’s not a date.” I said, laughing, later, as we kissed.
“Shut up.”
I parked right up on the walkway and lay out on the bonnet and drank Dom Perignon. I recited Shakespeare to the city skyline from a book from the library. I’d had to break a glass panel to get in, but inside the stacks felt normal. It’s meant to be quiet.
My voice cracked with disuse. No one to ask what it all means. No one to make laugh with dumb jokes. Sarah in my head sighing at another bad pun.
“Please, can you be serious for once?” She’d said one night in the middle of an argument.
“I’ll be Sirius, you be Harry.” She’d walked into the bedroom and slammed the door.
I thought I could hear her laughing to herself, but she was curled up in bed asleep when I finally worked up the courage to check.
Sarah’s perfume.
Drove home drunk, swerving across the lanes because I could. Overgrown trees. Nature taking over once more. I didn’t bother locking my door. The trees in the street outside had grown so big they were almost blocking out the sky. I broke into a shed at Number 13 and borrowed a chainsaw.
The smell of petrol. The scream of branches dropping. I cleared five trees, a garden shed, three metres of fencing and a car wing mirror, and only stopped because I dropped the chainsaw when I realised I was screaming. The silence when the chainsaw stopped was unbearable.
The sound of Sarah laughing.
Day sixty-three I crossed the bridge into the city. Buildings like sculptures above my head. Piccadilly Circus empty. Trafalgar Square deserted. The smell of the bodies had mostly disappeared by now. Or I’d grown used to it. I’d taken to carrying around a long walking stick.
“What’s with the stick?” Sarah asked in my head.
“It feels right.”
“Right.” Sarah rolling her eyes. “Why do you care what anyone thinks? Everyone’s dead.”
I’m worried about my mental health. Talking to myself, having conversations, arguing semantics, making up little songs. Driving myself crazy.
“I’m dead, y’know.” She says.
I don’t know that for sure, I think.
“Don’t you?”
Wandered through the back streets of Soho where I’d worked in my early twenties, running coffees at a little café for sex-shop workers and artists. Adult Books. Soy cappuccino. XXX. Decaf latte. I stopped outside a display of latex whips.
“I miss you.”
“I’m right here,” she says.
The rustle of leaves or paper in the alley to my right.
Crunch of footsteps.
I crouched, listening, ready to spring.
Nothing.
I held my stick in front of me like a spear, like whoever or whatever might come around the corner would take one look at me and back away. But there was nothing. My imagination. Zombies, maybe. The living dead.
I caught sight of myself in the reflection. The man staring back looked wild. Thick beard. Tangled hair. The light was gone from his eyes. Smiled at myself, but he didn’t smile back.
A man in a suit walked around the corner and almost ran into me. Well-dressed, suit and tie, shoes polished and shiny. He had one of those haircuts where they shave the sides and slick the long stuff on top back with grease or gel. He looked familiar. We’d been in the same history class at university in my final year. Alex, or Axel or something.
“Hey,” he said.
I croaked back a “Hey”.
“Are you ok?” He glanced across at the latex whip display and back at me. My tongue felt huge and thick in my mouth. He seemed to soften his stance, relaxing his shoulders.
“Shit, I heard about you and Sarah. I’m sorry, man.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything. I looked down at my hands, scabbed and dirty, blood under the nails. Back at his face. He felt sorry for me, you could see it in the big wet corners of his eyes, the way he kept licking his lips.
“I’m fine,” I said, “I’m great, doing great, really great. Fine.”
“These things are always hard,” he said, like it’s that easy. The stockpiles of canned food back home. The chainsaw. The locks on the front door. The phone ringing out to eternity. “Let’s grab a beer sometime, yeah? I’ll message.”
He disappeared behind me before I could think of something witty to say. I hated his haircut.
Sarah’s special teabags in the cupboard.
I picked up a few things and headed home. The rubbish bags had been taken out of the hallway where I’d been throwing them and the door was locked where I’d left it unlocked.
Inside, the kitchen had been cleaned, the pillows back on the couch. I could hear Mrs Laugan turning on the evening news.
Sarah’s side of the wardrobe empty. Sarah’s teabags gone.
“Is this it?” She’d said, as the airplanes dropped from the sky and the stock market plummeted and the earth opened up and the plagues descended and the fires raged and the titans walked the earth and the seas rose and the sickness spread.
“Please don’t.” I pleaded. I knelt on the floor in front of her and held the bottom hem of her blouse in my hands, crumpling the thin silk between my fingers. She looked up at the ceiling.
“Please,” I said, “I can change. I can be better. Please, let me try.”
I pulled her against me, crushing myself into her small body, trying to hold us together.
“I don’t know that I can.”
The thick plume of black smoke rising over the Common.
I can smell Sarah’s perfume on the cushions on the lounge, on the missing cutlery, in the gaps on the bookshelf.
She’s pushed her keys back through the letterbox. Definitive.
The milk in the fridge has gone off, white and speckled when I pour it in my tea.
Morte Ad Astra
-Anonymous
So… Here we are, at the very end of it all, quite a sight to be beholdin’. The belly of the beast.
For all of its mechanical wonder I would have thought it to be a more elegant design of interweaving parts working together in perfect harmony. I barely come down here.
So this, mishmash of wires and bolts is a bit disappointing... It’s like they’ve lost their way and ended up here, bent and forced into every nook and cranny available by some sadistic engineer who wanted to take out the anger of a failed marriage onto their work. It’s not exactly a surprise considerin’ the rest of this… coffin. But I would’ve liked to have seen something a little more… planned out, before I died.
As I sit here on this rusted floor, I wonder how my life could have been, maybe if Earth hadn’t decided its little blue rock wasn’t enough and abstained from reaching towards the stars. If we’d decided against tearing apart the halo of rocks in our small system and sending them back home down the well. Perhaps we wouldn't be caught in the splash zone of molten rock and plasma that now makes up the once great cradle 0f humanity. We came out to the stars thinking we had a stake in the very fabric of what composed our being. Stardust much bigger than we. So can we really blame a couple of stupidly drunk technicians who may have sped up the rock a bit too fast? Yes we can. And yes we will. For the next hour or two.
I wonder what it was like down there, to have been basking in the light of a Winter’s fog only to have night encroach upon the sun’s domain. See it take back the freedom it once enjoyed with a champion of conglomerated platinum and gold with fire and brimstone. A fortune in almost any other occasion, but this. Because this little holiday bonus became death incarnate.
So, as I watch the bleeding rock formerly known as Europe hurtle towards my little freighter I can all but wonder one thing.
Why…
Why the hell are they playing jazz over the speakers.
-Anonymous
So… Here we are, at the very end of it all, quite a sight to be beholdin’. The belly of the beast.
For all of its mechanical wonder I would have thought it to be a more elegant design of interweaving parts working together in perfect harmony. I barely come down here.
So this, mishmash of wires and bolts is a bit disappointing... It’s like they’ve lost their way and ended up here, bent and forced into every nook and cranny available by some sadistic engineer who wanted to take out the anger of a failed marriage onto their work. It’s not exactly a surprise considerin’ the rest of this… coffin. But I would’ve liked to have seen something a little more… planned out, before I died.
As I sit here on this rusted floor, I wonder how my life could have been, maybe if Earth hadn’t decided its little blue rock wasn’t enough and abstained from reaching towards the stars. If we’d decided against tearing apart the halo of rocks in our small system and sending them back home down the well. Perhaps we wouldn't be caught in the splash zone of molten rock and plasma that now makes up the once great cradle 0f humanity. We came out to the stars thinking we had a stake in the very fabric of what composed our being. Stardust much bigger than we. So can we really blame a couple of stupidly drunk technicians who may have sped up the rock a bit too fast? Yes we can. And yes we will. For the next hour or two.
I wonder what it was like down there, to have been basking in the light of a Winter’s fog only to have night encroach upon the sun’s domain. See it take back the freedom it once enjoyed with a champion of conglomerated platinum and gold with fire and brimstone. A fortune in almost any other occasion, but this. Because this little holiday bonus became death incarnate.
So, as I watch the bleeding rock formerly known as Europe hurtle towards my little freighter I can all but wonder one thing.
Why…
Why the hell are they playing jazz over the speakers.
Without
-Elizabeth Schultz
There is a wooden cutout of a dog, a wolf maybe, and it rotates with the wind A hindfoot is missing, but it points steadfastly on Towards a shore it will never see, secured by a pole to the mud-sand beach
It taunts her freedom as it wavers with the breeze, You are untethered, still you sit Staring off into the distance as I do
There was a time it would have bothered her more A time when the poem would have been about that wilderness shore So close but so far For now she merely watches the wolf-dog tussle with the wind
The grey-brown beach is cluttered with children and their chatter stirs something unnamable Something that maybe isn’t there Their shouts are familiar, but distant, foreign Their parents the same: predicted, rehearsed No better understood
She startles The wolf-dog moved in the wind For just a moment its wooden nose pointing directly at her, accusatory It looked real
She searches for something In this Friday afternoon Memorial Day picnic Bright clothes against dark skies This darkness has settled over her heart She is out of place
At this party In this world There is no future here in kids in swimsuits and husbands grilling Not for her There never was Her hand settles over her stomach, pulling her own self close
She knows how they talk about people who shake things up There was a time when she was young and yet to be tamed Yet to break free
She is wiser now But she doesn’t pretend She merely sits at an empty picnic bench, watching the wooden cutout of a dog waver in the breeze
-Elizabeth Schultz
There is a wooden cutout of a dog, a wolf maybe, and it rotates with the wind A hindfoot is missing, but it points steadfastly on Towards a shore it will never see, secured by a pole to the mud-sand beach
It taunts her freedom as it wavers with the breeze, You are untethered, still you sit Staring off into the distance as I do
There was a time it would have bothered her more A time when the poem would have been about that wilderness shore So close but so far For now she merely watches the wolf-dog tussle with the wind
The grey-brown beach is cluttered with children and their chatter stirs something unnamable Something that maybe isn’t there Their shouts are familiar, but distant, foreign Their parents the same: predicted, rehearsed No better understood
She startles The wolf-dog moved in the wind For just a moment its wooden nose pointing directly at her, accusatory It looked real
She searches for something In this Friday afternoon Memorial Day picnic Bright clothes against dark skies This darkness has settled over her heart She is out of place
At this party In this world There is no future here in kids in swimsuits and husbands grilling Not for her There never was Her hand settles over her stomach, pulling her own self close
She knows how they talk about people who shake things up There was a time when she was young and yet to be tamed Yet to break free
She is wiser now But she doesn’t pretend She merely sits at an empty picnic bench, watching the wooden cutout of a dog waver in the breeze
New Beginnings
-Carl "Papa" Palmer
My Mother’s Day card has become a jumble
of crooked letters, sloppy coloring, crumpled,
torn, smudged with smeared eraser divots.
Observing a child’s total frustration, the first
grade teacher suggests I need a “do-over”
to start again with a fresh, new sheet of paper,
a new beginning.
Since then I’ve had plenty of beginnings.
My folks moved a lot while I was young.
Each new town a new house a new bedroom,
new schools with new teachers, new friends.
All beginnings, but not really new beginnings,
and definitely not do-overs.
I started squirrel hunting with an old friend,
began high school band with a new friend,
took up coin collecting with an older new friend,
all being beginnings, but not really new.
In my teenage years I began smoking,
began dating, began shaving, began working.
After graduation I entered the Army,
became a husband, a father, a civilian again.
New Year’s resolutions, vows for new beginnings,
promises for fresh starts, ends of old habits,
a retired sergeant and retired technician.
Now a new grandfather, new Hospice volunteer,
new president of a new city committee,
a new member of several poetry and writing groups.
All new and all beginnings,
but even yet, not really classified as a do-over.
Not that kind of new beginning.
Yet this is where I discovered my true new beginning.
In my writing and poetry groups
where I can have as many do-overs that I need.
With each story, each poem, each time I write
each time I rewrite I redo new character, new subject,
new situation, I am a writer, an old beginner of new beginnings.
-Carl "Papa" Palmer
My Mother’s Day card has become a jumble
of crooked letters, sloppy coloring, crumpled,
torn, smudged with smeared eraser divots.
Observing a child’s total frustration, the first
grade teacher suggests I need a “do-over”
to start again with a fresh, new sheet of paper,
a new beginning.
Since then I’ve had plenty of beginnings.
My folks moved a lot while I was young.
Each new town a new house a new bedroom,
new schools with new teachers, new friends.
All beginnings, but not really new beginnings,
and definitely not do-overs.
I started squirrel hunting with an old friend,
began high school band with a new friend,
took up coin collecting with an older new friend,
all being beginnings, but not really new.
In my teenage years I began smoking,
began dating, began shaving, began working.
After graduation I entered the Army,
became a husband, a father, a civilian again.
New Year’s resolutions, vows for new beginnings,
promises for fresh starts, ends of old habits,
a retired sergeant and retired technician.
Now a new grandfather, new Hospice volunteer,
new president of a new city committee,
a new member of several poetry and writing groups.
All new and all beginnings,
but even yet, not really classified as a do-over.
Not that kind of new beginning.
Yet this is where I discovered my true new beginning.
In my writing and poetry groups
where I can have as many do-overs that I need.
With each story, each poem, each time I write
each time I rewrite I redo new character, new subject,
new situation, I am a writer, an old beginner of new beginnings.
Yes To Year
-Joseph Powell
Say yes to another year
yes
to new possibilities
new opportunities
new memories
say goodbye
to mistakes made
words said
that should not have been said
say yes
to love
say yes
to love
say yes
to love
say goodbye
to what could have been
to what should have been
to those we’ve lost
because their presence
was required elsewhere
and not in the coming year
except as memories
of when you said yes
to love
say yes
to moving forward
though it may be difficult
and your steps not as quick
say goodbye
to resolutions you were never
going to keep and were never
meant to in the first place
say yes
to what will be
to what must be
yes,
you must dream dreams
yes,
you must see visions
but
you must also live
and
you must also love
and
you must be present
for whatever the future holds
letting the past
be what it was
In this new year,
say yes to life
say yes to love
say yes to being present
say yes to the new
say yes to being human
because you’re going to make mistakes
and you’re going to say words
that should have not been said
and you’re going to lose people
whose presence will be required
elsewhere
say yes anyway
say yes
say yes
say yes
say
yes
-Joseph Powell
Say yes to another year
yes
to new possibilities
new opportunities
new memories
say goodbye
to mistakes made
words said
that should not have been said
say yes
to love
say yes
to love
say yes
to love
say goodbye
to what could have been
to what should have been
to those we’ve lost
because their presence
was required elsewhere
and not in the coming year
except as memories
of when you said yes
to love
say yes
to moving forward
though it may be difficult
and your steps not as quick
say goodbye
to resolutions you were never
going to keep and were never
meant to in the first place
say yes
to what will be
to what must be
yes,
you must dream dreams
yes,
you must see visions
but
you must also live
and
you must also love
and
you must be present
for whatever the future holds
letting the past
be what it was
In this new year,
say yes to life
say yes to love
say yes to being present
say yes to the new
say yes to being human
because you’re going to make mistakes
and you’re going to say words
that should have not been said
and you’re going to lose people
whose presence will be required
elsewhere
say yes anyway
say yes
say yes
say yes
say
yes