Contents
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photography photography photography
Outrider Dance Troupe (poem)....................................................................... Christopher Mulrooney
Nala (portrait).................................................................................................. S.N. Jacobson
Now, Come and Go (poem)............................................................................Joseph Pravda
Untitled 1 (painting)........................................................................................ Kate Daly
observations from my porch #1 (poem)......................................................... e.bojnowski
Black Water: An Ode To JFK2 (poem)......................................................... Joseph Pravda
Downtown Traffic (poem)..............................................................................Benjamin Thornton
3rd Eye (painting)......................................................................................... Robyn Feeley
Ghost (poem)............................................................................................... Autumn Turley
self-preservation is a handgun, my friend (poem)........................................ e.bojnowski
generation of the humble (poem)................................................................. Christopher Mulrooney
End (photograph)......................................................................................... S.N. Jacobson
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Reversion (poem)........................................................................................ Christopher Mulrooney
HunYa's Porch (poem)................................................................................. Joseph Pravda
Oasis (photograph)...................................................................................... Gayle Suthers
Imperial Roll (poem)..................................................................................... Benjamin Thornton
Solo (poem)................................................................................................. Benjamin Thornton
Black Tree Media (video).............................................................................Black Tree Media
years ago, immediately, tomorrow (poem).................................................. Erika Bojnowski
Crossed Helix (poem)................................................................................. Jeremy Trimble
Untitled 2 (painting)................................................................................... Kate Daly
I Could Have Been Throwing a Red Rubber Ball for a Dog (poem)............ kj
Melody's (poem)...........................................................................................Brett Buchanan
The Interview (screenplay)..........................................................................Jessica Rosevear
Legal Catnip Online (cartoon)......................................................................Charles C. Sumerville
Legend of Whitmoor (screenplay)................................................................Derek Brick
Something in Common (screenplay)...........................................................Brian Renner and Jerii Rodman
Stabboard Bird (screenplay)........................................................................Tiffany Slotwinski
photography photography photography
outrider dance troupe
sad-eyed on the peripheral vision of the director
it's loopy after the fashion of men trained for the dance
an acceptable conclusion
at the fence you would say peeking about
not liking what it sees
Now, Come and Go
You, claiming
another's painterly
eye;
enfranchising your
world so artfully,
never pausing to
espy that very false
frame bordering, so
edgily, your
peripheral jailer's
mind.
Stepped into
a still painting,
have you, however
regal the stroke-ed
surroundings that
brushed you, your
whirled world onto
that strained, taut
coarse canvas;
Yes, and you, so
muscular in your
passive, nodding
narcolepsy: What
has become of your
self-slayer? Within
the clumpy caverns
of your dessicated
decorative heart,
does the Light seek
no refuge?
I say to you: come
not before you
leave, and, in that
leaving, arrive at
your beginning,
Now, in a place that
never was, nor will
be;
Now, whose face
knows neither
ancient eye's nor
hand's feeble
inquiries; Now,
eternity's
future-bound
slivered blank
ensign, that vestige
of earlier
conjurings' passed;
Take it, Now's beckoning, heed,
And Never will be Nevermore.
photography photography photography
observations from my porch #1
When does light begin to breathe, in these shady dormitories?
Along with scabs that stick themselves to the sides of a house,
we are barnacles,
we are soot,
feigning from smiling behind the receiver
we must be cool.
But I can still feel the glowing purrs in the ether,
these lit up eyes and smiles succumbed
that burrow into my pockets
cooped up with the scratching cotton for years
until unearthed like a male Venus .
I wish I knew what could polish you,
but you lay dissected before me like a lab frog ,
all those bloody mechanisms I don’t know what to do with,
sounds punching my cheeks,
my veins hot.
Perhaps if I glue candles to your limbs
and steal the stars
to line your palms,
and unfurrow your brow with my clay fingers-
struggling to remain at my sides and
not on your nacreous pool of cheek.
Black Water: An Ode To JFK2
Oar's swirling wetness stinging my popular face invisible in the revolutionary shadow called night. Death lurks around me, and we taunt each other as at play, it seeking for anonymity's escape through my unwanting embrace, as if to exchange that state of its regularity which I hunt here, in liquid hydrogen's world, sharing with me its vital gas.
Oxygen, powering me to breakdown, to breakaway, on a glide-path of its two-for-one atomic partnership with universal 'H'; we reflect each other, lap at seeming reflections quivering to dances invented new by my oar, cutting deep, then gone in time's reverse as if untouched then, ever.
You find me each night, unquestioning and new is your greeting, one hand formlessly spreading wide the way of quiet being, you knew me before time summoned me suited in mystery's wings furled against possible flight, soon. And on your silkened garment of stealth does my shadowy oar dapple with thrusting toward unknown arrivals at unknowable catapults o'er bastions of brutality's plentiful harbours.
How I long to be...as water, said the wise eastern advisor; he, Mr. Lee, may now envelope my smallish kayak delivered here nightly by him who heeds such sage advising, only to find expectancy's prize: h2o beckons as a siren the atomic substance of jfk2…
Downtown Traffic
She lilts out of the elevator...
An arabesque breeze ricocheting...
Bouncing, throwing itself
Against a brutalist horizon.
She slips past the security guard,
Who tilts his hat in goodnight...
To glimpse at her hosiery,
To watch her sway out of the monolithic doors.
It is six o'clock, ... seven o'clock, maybe.
Most children have found their excuses
To skip out on their homework. To watch TV.
She is young, dedicated.
She has no kids at home.
Her significant other will purr affectionately
As soon as she slips into her low lit, tiny apartment.
She finds meaning here.
Loose dusk hanging over the automobiles.
She hails, as if asking for forgiveness.
But her priest offers no prayers, just a destination.
She leans back against the cracked leather,
Foam jetting out of the seat.
Her reflection in the tiny camera,
Seems distant, haunted. Reassuring.
The radio buzzes in from headquarters,
She listens intently as if waiting for something genuine.
More truthful than anything she will ever here on television.
This is love, her ride home.
The moments when street lamps flicker awake.
Too bad it ends, always with a jerk, and a slight twist of her chauffeur,
She tips generously and heads upstairs.
The door creaks open.
She has not found the switch
When she hears the soft sound of fur
Crawling from under the sofa,
Affectionately purring as he heads to her.
Ghost
how long
are you going
to try
to convince
the ghost
in your chair
that you exist?
photography photography photography
self-preservation is a handgun, my friend
1.
we are in a room filled with stained teeth
and crumpled napkins-
flies are sitting on the piano
attempting to press the keys,
their feet are too weak...
2.
every now and then
I can feel things leaving the earth
in puffs of smoke
as if in a magic trick-
creatures,
vapor.
I can feel them
like they were once tethered to my limbs.
3.
stand there.
bumming my cigarettes
which you suck up like you will burn out as well-
stand there.
your hair is like a great cave of bats
swarming,
dark.
we were never shiny
like a sardine
or loud
like a can on a string
dragged in the street-
and
we do not fight.
generation of the humble
in this age
anything gilded
even a piece of shit
goes on the mantelpiece
the gilding comes off
when commodity prices rise
and then you have shit
for brains
call it dung and heat your establishment
