Petroglyphs

Subdivision

2012-02-17T16:22:00.001-08:00

Electric ManDragon

2012-01-06T14:15:00.000-08:00

Elihu Mondragon
by Ned Dougherty

he had a st- st- st- stupid hard time saying words and tripped over them like he had tight cords across his mouth. from his teeth to tongue the way king kong was tied down. his tongue just never co- co- co- cooperated when he spoke in gargantuan str-st-str-uggle.

nobody really appreciated his art work. he was a man at home with clay. his hands were agile and delicate. op- op- opposite of his language. he communicated with the world through his creations. but no one every saw them unless th- th- th- they stumbled around his yard looking for signs of life.

inevitably he was always alive and well tinkering in the silent sepia lit foyer forging beings out mud and water. he wa- wa- wa- wanted to be alone because was so f- f- f- fortunate to have the time to make people and s- sh- st- stuff from nothing. he had all the friends he needed three-d around his wool socken feet.

on his last day his house which had been forsaken and crumbled slowly from the outside in came to swallow him up. he avoided the collapsing eastern wall and the mold spores and dust kicked up but his wiring became finicky and loose ends were everywhere. oddly enough that day he played with play dough. his last creation before electrocution.

forevermore he would not be known but something more. immortal. something exciting. something electric. f- f- f- f- fuck yeah.

Untitled
by Robin Powlesland

there is a hidden

compartment

traversing

and the skin seems

multi-faceted, non-organic

I have different voices

different forms

and he grows frightened

as the glass steams empty

Germ Putty

by Charles Clayton

I used to be a hippy. Kinda dirty. Not as many showers as I should have had. I figured we evolved from dirt and bacteria so why bother scrubbing away all the dirt and bacteria? But now that I'm a schoolteacher and a parent, I've changed my ways. I shower daily, wear clean underwear, and keep my hands clean.

Why the shift? Because I now spend my days watching little kids sneeze and cough on an institutional scale, and it puts the invisible microbial thing into perspective. A hundred fingers in noses and wiped on walls and doorknobs. A hundred poorly wiped asses followed by a couple hundred poorly washed hands trying to shower you with hugs.Throw in some good old fashioned New Mexico poverty and neglect and you've got yourself a germ factory.

They walk down the hallways and run their hands along the walls, and swear I can track their path by the trail of streptococcus they smeared along the way. They borrow a pencil and I let them keep it. They use my computer and I wish I had some Lysol. I just keep washing my hands, every chance I get, with plenty of commercial grade school supply soap and lukewarm water. This is especially true when they use my clay to sculpt some letters, or the week's spelling words, followed by some free time. Germ fingers kneading that clay, mixing in the air and the oils and the boogers and bacteria, creating a microbial garden deep within the purple and green dragon.

Haiku
by Eric Mack

Obscene they call it,
God's plan has no Dragon-men
This clay is all sin.

Bob’s Long Strange Trip

by Gary Feuerman

Gumby and Pokey. Mr. Bill and his magic dragon. Squeezable. Crushable. There was this man who rode in on a horse, right into the living room of the fiddler in green. He’d been following her north for two years, relentlessly north. His name was Bob and he stole sheep from the ranches dotting the high deserts and foothills. He ate heartily in the dark, under the moon, feeling warm in the hard snow. The fiddler was never far away, but she danced faster than he could run, an optical delusion that made it all seem like a dream. Bob didn’t care, he could smell her, and that was enough to keep him going, that and the mutton (which also smelled pretty damn good on the skewer). In the summers, he clambered up into the pinnacles above treeline, and wished he had an alpenhorn to accompany her plaintive fiddle, although, on second thought, probably not a good combination. And her fiddle playing was far from plaintive although he always wanted to use that word to describe it, apropos or no. He caught glimpses of her shooting into the trees, and knew her to be round in all the right ways. Seriously, you know, round. He thought his pupils would dilate more than ever if he could just get within say 20 feet of her, but, as always, she skip-danced and twirled like a Deadhead, somehow passing through dimensions, and trailing the scent of vanilla (which always threw Bob off, Deadhead and vanilla not making sense, but it wasn’t bad…not bad at all). Mostly he caught shoulders and back, and thought he could see tattoos, of a squishy, electric colored clay dragon and a man who had a remote control pointed at the dragon. And, strangely, they were in a clay raft of the same colors all of this sitting on a wooden table, the grain of which, Bob thought, must be really hard to get on a person’s skin. Like how do you depict wood on a person’s skin? Bob’s mind rebelled against the tattoos, but he did think of them often. He thought maybe just a dragon tattoo, like the ones everyone thinks about would have been sexier, although suddenly, sadly cliché because of that other girl with the dragon tattoo that everybody now talks about. Then again, an electric man dragon in a raft on a wood table – who would have thought about that? So, with this in his mind, Bob, after two years heading north, rode into the fiddler’s living room and found her wearing jeans, cowboy boots, and a magenta butterfly pavilion t-shirt, eating a bowl of pasta and watching American Idol. She didn’t notice him and, strangely, his next thought was that he should just leave her like this, and beat it south before disappointment set in.

Birth of the Electric ManDragon

by Johanna DeBiase

Before words, time, or bodies,

a burning birth canal pushes him

into this light. There is only glare

and glimmer before first sight washes in –

the horizon line meeting earth and sky, sky

like spirit- untouchable, necessary breath.

A heavy pulling force, fastens him

tightly to earth. He digs in his heels and

discovers the rise of pulse, the stretch

of fiber, the release of numbness,

the pain of – click, tick, twist –

toward the bending of cooperative joints.

Sounds echo in the caverns of his head –

vibrations humming, the pitch of moving

back and forth, the song of heartstrings.

Scents of salt and feces, mud and ash,

go unnamed as a wild history grows in his body,

memories that fill the empty spaces between

particles of form.

All of this creating

an encompassing bliss

overshadowed by a precarious void.

Prayer

2011-12-01T10:08:00.001-08:00

Inside Child

by Johanna DeBiase

The girl hugged her knees in closer and lowered her forehead to rest on them. Her eyes had grown accustomed to the dark. She could make out the vertical lines of wood paneling along the walls that brushed up against her shoulders in the narrow nook. The girl had been there so long that mother had forgotten about her. She resorted to eating insects and dust.

A long time ago, the girl was playing outside with the sun warming her skin. She was laughing in the long sway of the swing as she opened her legs and arms to lean back as far as she could so her toes touched the sky. Then, the girl was shut in the house, then her room, then the closet and then the cabinet beneath the stairs.

Mother preferred not to see the girl. It was better not to remember. The girl listened to mother's footsteps traverse the old moaning house, her weight on the floorboards and stairs. Mother moved about cleaning the house from top to bottom, straightening and dusting the nick-knacks, organizing and polishing her things. When the postman came, mother did not invite him in but he noted that her house was in order. He nodded and handed her the mail. Mother smiled but she was not happy.

One day, mother answered the phone instead of ignoring the incessant chiming and this change in behavior was rewarded. There was a voice on the other end of the line and the voice was inviting her out. Mother never went out. The house was warm and soft and dark and safe. The voice assured her that there was nothing to be afraid of, that she would be just fine outside, more than fine, she would be great. Mother agreed to go.

The girl fiddled with the doorknob to search for a simple release. It loosened in her palm.

Mother adjusted her skirt in the mirror. She did not notice the cabinet door was ajar as she zipped up her boots. She hesitated before opening the door with dramatic force and shielding her eyes. The outside light was bright and pushed its way into the house, stirring up dirt and residue. Mother took a step forward and the light swallowed her whole.

The girl pivoted her twitching legs and pulled herself up and out of the cabinet with great effort. Her body was small, pale and frail. The phone rang, but she did not answer it; she did not need to hear the voice. The front door was left open. She walked as fast as she could manage outside into the light.

Ghost of a Chance

by Ned Dougherty

here is love
head hung bowed to sky gray universe

the patron of gatherers and pilgrims
seducer of simpletons

a wing forsaken cherub
aimless like the rest

remember
thanks and humility for the caught

stone
in a mess of blue wool

passed between her hands
trying to figure and hold

true

2012

by Charles Clayton

The time was at hand. The Hebrews annexed Jerusalem in February, prompting invasion by surrounding Muslim nations. In July, North Korea joined the fray and launched nuclear weapons against the United States, prompting ground and air invasions by NATO nations. In late August, the permafrost hit a critical mass and melted, throwing uncountable tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere virtually overnight and disrupting weather patterns. Crops failed. Drought and floods hammered at the land. Starvation and mass, panicked migration unfolded across the globe as humans rushed towards rumors of food and clean water.

Then, in mid-December, our solar system completed a cycle around the Milky Way galaxy, and all hell broke lose. The trumpets atop the Mormon temples blasted in unison. Angels fluttered down from the heavens. Saints appeared and walked upon the Earth. Jesus arrived on a golden cloud, backed by presence of a Monotheistic God—a power that could be sensed if not seen. Believers and non-believers alike flocked to churches, synagogues, mosques and shrines, begging for forgiveness and mercy.

Four days later, on the winter solstice, a powerful earthquake struck in the Caucasus Mountains of Turkey, ripping great hole in the Earth and releasing countless ancient deities that swarmed the planet and wreaked havoc upon the heavenly host. Achilles slew David. Fairies and sprites wrestled cherubs to the death. Thor pummeled Allah/Jehovah with his hammer. Zeus zapped Jesus with a lightning bolt. The saints stepped out of their shrines for a final stand, but as they knelt to pray Medusa slithered into the fray and turned them all to stone.

Weight of the World

by Gary Feuerman

Not, everyone can carry the weight of the world. In prayer, when I go deep, I sometimes feel like that, heavy, slowly bending toward the ground, seeking the smell of moss, the flesh of a baby in my hands. Eventually, I rise, like a yogi, as the earth buoys me, sends food to my spine, spirit to my eyes. “Bow down”- I hear this in my eyes, “Bow down first.” Smell the ground again. Let your arms cradle your soft head, so much softer than you remember. Have you touched it lately, really let your fingertips and palms touch the warm flesh. It trembles. It needs swaddling. It’s been hit, and bounced, jarred into shapes it never meant to take. Let the head, my head, drop, so my eyes can remember what I look like, what my brother looks like, closer to my fast breathing heart, which also trembles, waiting for a warm hand, waiting for Neptune’s direction. I bend with her into my aching feet and knees that remember the last few years, that have absorbed rocks and concrete, wood and water. The lower I bend, the more I can smell the cold that has been housed in my bones, the vertebrae tight against the bottom of my neck. I realize I’m a cat about to jump off a counter, always, and I seek the ground, to lie by a creek, to crawl in the sage. She, in prayer, tells me I’m an old amphibian about to rise out of the water. You have to crawl first, she says. I can’t hear this when I’m standing coiled on the countertop. I can hear the sound, her voice, as I lower. She’s lowered for me, for us. She’s carrying the weight of the world. And I want to bear my share; I want to crawl like a turtle carrying a load. You have to crawl first, she says, her voice getting clearer. You have to crawl first before you can understand. I don’t want her to carry all the weight. I can smell the ground and will carry my own.

Western Sky Mesa Dawn

2011-11-11T13:20:00.000-08:00

11/11/11

by Gary Feuerman

You get up early, and see the candy stripes of dawn in the windows. It is still dark, and muted in your bedroom, the light so delicate you need to wear slippers. Your exposed knees feel cold coming up from the concrete floor. There’s the sense that someone else can see you, or maybe you want that and it seems so. Your closet is neatly arranged and that’s pleasing, but your longjohns are not in there. You left them in the dryer. The kitchen holds the promise of a breakfast salad and hot tea, but you’re not ready. It’s dark near the floor but light is beginning to grace the undulating outline of the mountains. You grab the iPhone and turn it on, waiting interminably for that apple icon to turn to full operation mode. The background picture on your phone, a liquid light of indigo and charged lavender, is quivering in real time over Wheeler Peak. You throw on your thick navy sweatpants, the green base layer shirt, and the North Face slippers. You forego the hat. It’s 18 degrees but so calm that your warmth stays with you as you climb the adobe wall to stand on the soft surface of the vast sage plateau. Your slippers sink into the sandy clay. First, you look to the sacred mountain and see that peak outline so vividly that it brings a faint sadness. You take pictures of the mountain with its one shredded pennant of cloud ,which sticks to the peak as if from static. It looks like vapor from a cauldron. You walk on the desert above your house, in the dead quiet before dogs, before rabbits, and you feel levitated off the surface by the intimacy of walking in such an immense, unstirred scene. The sky to the west, against the feline spines of the old volcanoes, reflects an aquamarine ocean blushed indigo, plum and the beginnings of magenta. You put the phone up in front of your face and press the camera icon with your thumb. You then turn to the south and do it again. After that, you stop and listen to your heart beat feeling tall and unraveled.

Pink Moon

by Johanna DeBiase

Nothing was ever the same after the sky turned pink. It took months for scientists to even theorize the cause – talk of radiation, solar flares, atmospheric changes. Religious zealots claimed it was a message from God, but those were split. Half thought God was warning us to get it together before the pink phased to red and all went to hell. The other half thought God was showing us his rose tinted glasses, offering us a second chance. Philosophers insisted that the sky did not change but our way of seeing it did.

The pink sky sure did make everything look different; an extraordinary glow coated dull surfaces such that the world was warm and inviting. On the other hand, my brain was never quite able to adjust. After a while, all that pink made me nauseous and I could no longer bare the sight of it. I trashed tutus and wore blue lipstick. I closed myself inside with shades drawn until sunset when, just for a moment, the sky turned blue again and life seemed okay. At least, I had the night, the dark maroon of midnight.

La Dentuda
by Ned Dougherty

If only she wasn't so toothy

or angular

fishing for me in the chlorine.

Her father isn't much of a guy either

intimidating the suitors;

double dared me to kiss her.

She's one of those fiery receptionists

with technicolor nails

and fighter pilot red lipstick hands free technology.

Chews horse pill vitamins like candy

and takes a shot of hot water

to steep Earl Grey in her mouth.

She's that inviting kind of nasty

like a snuff film

at the front desk of Kit Carson Electric.

western sky
by Robin Powesland

it’s delicate

this idea we have of communication

the soft underbelly of the word lilac

somehow hardened and left

coquettishly complete

how we see

the eyes crinkle or grow wider

belies sometimes the choices

made long ago

we are new

in this softness

we are just plucked

laying out in the pooling light

shifting breeze

this idea of what we have to say

beyond our just being here

is beautiful and spotted

like queen’s lace

Not Another Day

by Charles Clayton

Lots of these in a lifetime. The sunrise I mean. Every single day whether you're paying attention or not. Spectacular each and every time, just like the other blessings unfolding in your life. Food on the table. Roof over the head. A body that works. The pitter patter of little feet. A cup of hot coffee. A good woman to share it all with. And every day the sun rises to shine a light on it all, like icing on the cake of goodness.

And just like that it's gone. Not the blessings, but the blissful ignorance and the belief that there will always be plenty of time. A fateful diagnosis, or a car crash, or maybe just slipping on the ice. Suddenly the lost moments really are lost, and you can't get them back. Sleeping through another sunrise. Maybe tomorrow. Staring at Facebook instead of into your child's eyes. Just one more minute, honey. Nursing a hangover instead of your marriage. I'll never do it again, my love. You'll never do it again.

Blood Sunset
by Eric Mack

They used to say the dirt was holy, but when people started turning, it became harder to believe. Several that we used to call friends and family had been buried in it. It didn't do the job. We resisted calling them zombies at first. The word was associated with an archetype of pure fiction, fiction that had long since been weaponized. Part of us wanted to preserve that past, simpler times when our nightmares couldn't so easily be realized with quantum genomics. The first real-world vampire had been created in a Singapore lab less than a month after the initial discovery was leaked and picked up by the network. The engineers held all the power now. Our legends and myths had become impotent the moment they became real. It was funny at first—the company that designed a line of bodyguards all identical to Pinhead from Hellraiser; then it became weird when the werewolf prostitute incidents started to be reported; and then the network took it to another level that pushed it all over the edge. I can't even imagine what's going on out there now. If I could, I wouldn't tell, lest the vision winds up in a lab somewhere.
An academic friend of mine got a wire through to me the other day. Wanted me to join the effort. Said they're working on bringing Jesus back to help set things right--the real one, not the Mormon fairy tale, he had assured me. I declined, of course. Can't see how a few tons of bread and fish is going to help our situation.

Untitled

2011-10-08T16:05:00.001-07:00

Blackout
by Charles Clayton

I know, I know: there are people in the world living on less than a dollar a day, literally crapping out their life force due to a lack of clean water and various third world diseases, but that doesn't mean that I'm not allowed to bitch about how backwards things sometimes are here in New Mexico.

Bad schools and drug addled parents, shady dealings and nepotism at all levels of local governance, the stoopid gang culture, and how the POWER ALWAYS GOES OUT around here during big events like the opening day of baseball season.

IT'S OPENING DAY FOR CHRISSAKES! Spring is in the air, beer is chilling in the fridge, the rabbit ears are getting some decent reception, the Sox are looking good this year...and then some obese stoned mother with a tattoo on her neck and a piercing in her eyebrow is driving too fast and yapping on her cell phone or slapping one of her seatbeltless brood in the back of the mini-van and fails to notice the curve in the road. Dry road. Fine weather. Middle of the goddamn day. Right into the power pole.

Wreckoning

by Gary Feuerman

This could have been me. I’m writing because this could have been me. Many times. But not usually in the light, although who knows what can happen? The pole got knocked off its base and still stands. The car rests on its side. Both wrenched and beaten, bent and splintered. I can’t get too poetic here, not on purpose. It’s now. It’s pelting cold rain on my house in the early dark of late October. The road, dusty for weeks, is now a sloppy horse track. I’m sneezing virulently, all day, by myself. I don’t know if it’s a cold, allergies or if the house is sick from dust or silica, or something in the air. I’ve sneezed so hard that my head hurts, and a cough has developed, still dry, but wheezy and fluttery in the chest. I’ve sneezed so loud that the windows rattled. I had some good thoughts earlier, but now I feel achy, sick and alone. Now I remember the first smell of moisture in the morning, one that gave me an old sadness of Long Island in November. A sweetness in it, a loamy, earthy, mulchy sweetness that feels like funerals, or waiting out arguments on the porch at Thanksgiving. Some days it would remind me of falling face first in the grass after scoring a touchdown in a schoolyard or backyard football game, but not today. It spelled an ending. I fought it and worked at the desk here at my house – no office to go to anymore. And I did ok, got through deadlines, closed a substantial private loan for the brewery, banged out some emails, saw the Facebook news and messages. This made me feel far removed from whatever it is that is happening out there. I’m not grasping it, although I feel dangerous when I see and hear clips of violence; not “in danger” but dangerous. Dangerous to myself, and to others knowing there is a seed in me that can grow a violent protester, or a martyr which can be just as violent. I don’t know about this 1% and 99%. My gut says that’s too easy. But I don’t have the capacity to think of ways to “fight” the power, whatever that is. Maybe the idea is to turn back to where you are and live in community, tribally, feed and feed alike. Trips to the farmers markets this summer and fall have felt abundant. There’s always food left, tons of food. What is it we’re worried about? Why can’t we build our own schools and teach the way we want? Why can’t being in a beautiful place with endless playgrounds, and rich varieties of heart opened people with all the stories of the world be enough? We could take in travelers from other tribes, an oasis in the desert, and send them off with our art, our love, our food, and the spark that they brought us enlivened? And they can do for us the same. Why do we have to worry about Wall Street, or the far right, far left, far flung? We already have the under layer of a barter economy. We have the skills and resources to live sustainably. We have accessible riches of art and culture to keep our myths evolving, and our child’s eyes forever awake and dreaming. We can live on little money and be secure. We can ignore Wall St. I know we can. I’d need some guidance from others, and in a circle I can guide in some ways. I’m willing to work the fields and clean the dishes. I’m willing to break down my barriers and help. I’m lonely as fuck right now in my house, listening to the rain, checking Facebook in the hope that I’ll get a personal message from someone, the new form of looking in the mailbox for a letter, but much more cruel and need-soaked because you can look every 30 seconds (less!) like a tic and you might not get what you need “out there.” I’d be happy to crack this solo habit and commune (as long as there’s some private space ) . I believe it’s part of what I’m doing with the brewery. Wall Street certainly did not help us, hell, our own village leaders and “community” banks did not help us (that’s frigging euphemistic!). We’ve gone bankless, lo these 5 years, but I’ve become brothers with my partners and we scraped and scrounged for our initial investments (leveraging houses built by hand – thank you mortgage mania, frugality of saving pennies, and for me going to a fanatical believer for some – thanks Mom!) and with steady fervor convinced others to join the circus. Am I angry that we don’t have the burden of a $500,000 loan from US Bank and the tightrope walk that goes with that? You can answer that question. People have bought into the business. People have built with us for years for some equity and some beer. Yes, they think we’ll make some money. Yes, we think we’ll make some money. We’re not down on money, although if things go barter and fully communal, what a great place the Rock Garden will be! Who will care at that point as we quaff heavenly beer, play volleyball in the sun and listen to killer music? Alright, yes, I’ve been selling this place a lot lately, so maybe some of that has spilled over. You don’t have to buy a share, no worries. So, I don’t know. I was just in a play in Taos, the lead in a fucking play, an original play. Where else can some shmo from Long Island be the lead in an original, surreal romantic tragicomedy with wacked clowns, burlesque and a grandpa 5 years older than him? No, we’re not doing anymore shows, so I’m not promoting here. I’m just saying. You want to be in a play, just be in it. You want to grow food, grow it. You want to spit poetry, spit it. You want to share your skills and live heart, share them. You can wreck any time whether you deserve it or not, so I say, fuck worrying about Wall St., let’s have a coffee or a beer and dream a dream of here/and now.

Done Chrysalis

by Johanna DeBiase

She should have known to slow down when the tires slipped going under the overpass. She might have pulled over for the night, but she had an irrational need to get to the Corn Palace before putting the road to bed. The soft rain had just begun, winter dark just fallen. She must have been doing seventy when the tires slipped again. The Jeep spun a one-eighty and rolled onto the roof of the passenger side where her buddy Jim was shielding his head. The roll continued onto her side, tossing them around in a state of blank suspension. Glass shattered in her hair. Somehow, it landed on all fours, on the other side of the gully, perpendicular to on-coming traffic.

To her right, headlights stared her down. She could not open her door. Her left hand was fucked up. She felt for her left pinky, bent back from the top knuckle and grabbing it, snapped it back into place with painless adrenaline. Jim managed to get his door open and she crawled out his side. He was cradling his right arm to hold in the bone jutting out of his elbow.

The first responders found them there in the ditch, in the rain, broken and huddled close. She kept asking them to check her hair for glass as they covered them with blankets. When the paramedics finally arrived, they wrapped her neck in foam and strapped her into the gurney. Sirens preceded their arrival. She was half-way to the hospital in an ambulance swerving and sliding along the icy back roads when she was struck with a moment of clarity. Shit, she thought to herself, I'm really fucking high.

Untitled

by Robin Powlesland

maybe

the reason for each

one of these

loves

or someone once called

them

mistakes

this waking up

in the morning

or late at night

or just because this someone

said our name just right

just soft enough

we had to lean in

closer

and taste the mistake

before tasting the person

before feeling the metal

crash into our bodies

the glass break across our faces

and the time

each time it happens

we feel the end

just as the same as the

beginning

Summer Goodness

2011-08-31T16:17:00.000-07:00

What'll It Be?

by Charles Clayton

Uncork the bottle. Inspiration flows.

Wine loosens the lips. Inhibitions vanish.

Poetry. Songs. Stories.

Throat chakra freed

muses pour forth

laughter

mirth

joy

Uncork the bottle. Let it all hang out.

Wine warms the loins. Inhibitions vanish.

Passion. Lust. Heat.

Sweet nothings whispered.

Release

orgasm

union

Uncork the bottle. Happy hour.

Wine blurs the vision. Judgment fails.

Stumble. Slur. Double vision.

The key turns

drive

swerve

crash

Uncork the bottle. Pain denied.

Wine masks feelings. Tears held back.

Regret. Sorrow. Guilt.

The gun cocked

trigger

bullet

brain

Uncork the bottle. Let her have it.

Wine blinds. Fists fly.

Anger. Hate. Self loathing.

The kid watches.

Mom’s black eye

trapped

patterns

Will the muse

make up for

the hangovers?

Will the orgasm

balance out

the jailtime?

Will the songs

console

the battered woman?

Will the reverie

make up for

the sorrow?

Toast Goodbye to Summer

by Johanna DeBiase

Goodbye shallow murky rivers where we float in tubes and bury our ankles in minnows.

Goodbye bare shoulders streaked with tan lines and feet cracking open.

Goodbye buttercress and favas off the vine.

Goodbye outdoor music with hipsters drinking beer on patio chairs.

Goodbye camping road trips to orange rock caverns and alpine meadows.

Goodbye grass between our toes, sun on our bellies, wind through uncapped hair.

Goodbye, summer, goodbye.

Fairy Dust

2011-07-21T19:08:00.000-07:00

Fairy Dust

by Johanna DeBiase

In college, Beth took acid. It was not an optimal situation since she was alone and at a Phish concert. Still, Beth swore she saw fairies - points of gold light interspersed in the trees. Later, when similar lights off the water began to chase after her, she still believed she had seen fairies – a little window opened in her consciousness and let them in.

Even after swearing off acid forever, on occasion, she might still see those points of light, only one, only rarely.

Then she had a little girl she named Lily who for some time loved tiaras and wings. Beth confirmed for her the existence of fairies and they both made up songs to enchant them. Years later, after Lily outgrew fairies, tearing pictures from her wall, Beth was disappointed. However, she was pleased to discover, she could sometimes spot a golden point of light just beyond Lily's left ear.

Untitled

by Robin Powlesland

Soft.

Marketing of small letters

And words.

We stop to listen

But get crowded out by all

The people walking

Through.

I have found her voice

By chance

As if by chance.

It is soft

And just enough dance

For me to feel

The twilight

In us all.

Fiesta Princess

-E. Mack

The dancehall is nearly empty. The floorboards pre-date the dozen people scattered in chairs along the side wall, most of whom collect a pension by now. A section on the far side of dancefloor completely rotted away a few years ago, and a ten-foot square section of gleaming new laminate contrasts with the gray, aged pine planks that surround it.

Two guitarists on stage look tired. They're playing a Gospel version of "Sweet Home Alabama" with the chorus changed to "Sweet Heaven, Hallelujah." The fluorescent lighting, stained walls and smell of processed cheese wafting from the snack bar in back make the original version seem more appropriate.

My daughter is twirling alone while the old people look on, red hair flying, gossamer faux angel wings flapping and the unfamiliar plastic crown she must have stolen from one of her friends repeatedly falling to floor.

Soon the Fiesta princesses will be making their grand entrance.

A guitar string breaks in the middle of the second verse, the song stops, but the little girl keeps twirling.

A replacement guitar is found before the princesses arrive 90 minutes late. There are now three little girls twirling, sliding, luxuriating on the slick laminate floor section. Before I notice the royal procession preparing to enter from the back, a few of the old people are directing my daughter to a chair, gently and with a smile.

I sit next to her. Her mother appears with nachos. The jalapenos are pickled. We both direct our daughter's gaze to the line in the back of the room. The fiesta princesses are far from contemporary. No updating of the outfits to be more stylish or sexy, a little more Disney. Instead, there are intricate crowns and long, heavy flowing robes in royal blue.

Rather than be impressed or awestruck, the three-foot tall person sitting next to me is devastated by a case of princess envy.

"It's not fair they're more beautifuller than me!"

She crosses her arms across her chest so forcefully she creates a self-imposed straight jacket.

My pep talk about everyone being beautiful in their own way and waiting for her day to be princess doesn't help. It sounds like bullshit even to a three-year-old, and it is. There's never going to be a Jewish princess of this Catholic celebration.

After the procession and the nachos recede, we head to the other side of the village where electronic music blares from the old theater. A few dozen hipsters from Santa Fe are making jerky movements out-of-sync with the beat on the stage. My daughter finally releases her arms from their locked position and runs in their direction, tiny wings flapping behind.

Cerro Glow

2011-06-04T20:13:00.001-07:00

Before and After

by Gary Feuerman

Before the fire

there was a glow

from the silken sun

as I stood in water

dreaming of love

After

I looked west

and beat the rugs

like old enemies

breathing time

Wild Fire

by Johanna DeBiase

When the dogs start barking and the magpies make a nuisance with their clucking, I know the red fog is coming in. Out the western window, I see the smoke collide with thunder and hope the slate clouds win. But the wind is fast, wild and fierce – La Niña, a wrathful goddess. By the time I am done shampooing my dog who rolled in dung to cool off, the air is charred and stuffy. The animals are silenced and the sun is red. We hurry inside.

Yesterday, I rolled in mud at a spa due west, recessed in red canyon walls. The smoke appeared suddenly, with limited visibility and my throat became dry and scratchy. We raced home blasting the A/C, the smoke chasing us while we sped across the mesa. Plump gray and welcoming clouds hovered over town, our fortress of mountains, and as we entered Taos's perimeters, it began to rain. Oh, the cleansing scent of steaming hot tar and wet sand.

A sign of things to come, I hope, as the red plumes of smoke and toxins – the dust of old growth pines or the carcinogenic particles of plutonium – settle around us encased in closed summer houses.

Cerro

by Robin Powlesland

the fireworks display stands empty

and Jeff N. stalks Paseo

with his angry yet honest

yet certain words

today is the first day

I am truly weary of the smoke

and how insular it is to say that

how unfair

it all seems too big really

to know

and also still fairly far away

we dream about rain

flying bullets hit young men

in the face in Taos this weekend

and we watched each other

talk about our creative processes

as if they happen alone

I want to be around Flora

my friends’ three year old

red-headed whimsical daughter

because I do not understand

what her life will look like

it doesn’t look like this

I am bruised from last night’s dancing

and keep seeing a stranger’s dimples

but still New Mexico is burning

we are struggling to breathe

our way through this

Los Alamos on the hill

and we can’t look away

the fireworks stand displays empty

and I know now what the Mayor drinks

what we all drink

we are all always drinking

the future is paralyzing

and yet the events are stacking up

on facebook

as if everyone needs one more

party

as if the bacchanal rights

could fix everything that is going wrong

all over this earth

as if mother nature could be placated

by placating ourselves

as if we had another chance

or a chance at all

my flowers continue to bloom on my plants

and music comes from the plaza

it feels humid as the smoke condenses our moisture around us

I do not want to drink anymore or feel tired or overwhelmed

I want the future to open up like these red flowers in front of me

propel us into something more

but I am just small I am just insular

and the comets will come and the flame and the rain

the plutonium is inches from my face

a bullet in my throat

Space

2011-05-10T19:39:00.001-07:00

(575)
By Eric Mack

River cracks the Earth,
Seven syllables this line,
The bridge to Haiku.

North
by Gary Feuerman

I like the volcanoes

on the Mesa

near where my house is

invisible from space

There’s a tributary of the Rio

that runs from the mountains

still covered in snow

like healing powder

sprinkled to cool the pain

My body

on looking into the valley

wants first to run west

into the flatness

of desert

but below the skin

my soul dreams north

27 Bones

by Johanna DeBiase

A secret, she told me,

locked in the grasp of her hands,

the way tiny fingers clutch a bug

She peeked in and quickly

shut thumb doors on any chance of flight.

I was busy then, typing on a screen,

writing a poem or checking Facebook

for vital updates. In honesty, I assumed

her hands were only clasping air. That

this secret was a ploy to return my

attention to where it belonged. I feigned

enthusiasm without averting my eyes.

Mommy, look, look, mommy, look,

mommy, look, look, mommy, look.

Mommy, mommy, look, look

Alright, already. What is it?

Lifting her pale palms like a butterfly

opens to the sun, a tiny red cratered orb

ascended from her spread hands and

hovered there. Then, three more orbs, revolving,

and what appeared to be a moon.

I thought I saw a fleck of light but

turned away too fast. My daughter's eyes

lit like stars beyond the micro galaxy.

Leaning in, I saw that her palms had taken

a new shape, a new anatomy, mountains for

phalanges, a river for her life line, a mesa

just above and all of this cradling a village

steeped within this tiny terrain, a small bustle

of business in this quarter of baby flesh.

Slowly, so as not to disturb what

floated between us, I looked closer still.

Within the village, was our house and

I suspect, though I could not see,

inside our house, in a room painted blue,

my daughter and I, face to face,

witness to a secret.

space

by Robin Powlesland

the space between teeth

changes

throughout the day

and it’s hard to know

what I make

and what is real

where do we go from here

too the mistake

voiced and distinguished

I brought my tarot cards

to tell the future

but no one wants to hear it

the voices have been

told and loud

I have very much liked

yesterday

and the day before

but today and tomorrow

are like my tooth

missing and what’s left

is a little swollen

empty

where do we go from here

but wave our magic

wands and hands

purses and matchsticks

work our way through

all the stuff

just so much stuff

Rift

by Charles Clayton

700 miles

Colorado to Chihuahua

“New Mexico” gets wider:

one mile every million years

Fault block mountains rise

valley basement drops

buried seashells exposed

glaciers come and go

rain wind rivers snow

tear everything to pieces

grains of sand

carried to the Gulf

Magma probes the crust

earth skin pulled taut and thin

volcanoes burst through

low spots fill with molten lava

become high spots

basalt mesa rimrock

cinder cones shields

back to black dust

blowing in spring winds

River follows rift

no valley of its own

no branching watershed

long lonely line of life

carving out canyons

digging deeper

straight south to El Paso

and suddenly

east

and

out

leave the rift behind.

Untitled

2011-04-02T15:09:00.000-07:00

Untitled

by Charles Clayton

100 million years ago

Shifting dunes blowing sands

"New Mexico" south of the equator

Dinosaurs humping and laying eggs

1000 years ago

Images pecked on a sandstone wall

Flecks of obsidian sharpened arrows

Bighorn sheep boiled in the clay pot

100 years ago

Mormon cowboys red dust

Pause and look at pictures on the rocks

Cattle chomp on golden grasses

10 years ago

Powerlines buzzing overhead

Plastic grocery\bag stuck in the sagebrush

Graduate students ponder the hunter

1 day ago

Sunshine warm rock

Arrowheads in the soil

Cowboys in the grave

Professors explain the Anasazi

Then There Were Three
by Eric Mack

It was easier in two dimensions. Without depth there was no need for deep thoughts, and somehow everyone seemed a little less smug, little less full of shit. Or maybe I'm just lazy. Height, width, nothing more complicated than geometry--that's the life though, right? Something's in the way, you better jump over it, get under it or go right through it; no goin' round, circumventing or sneaky tricks.

There's been improvements since we upgraded though, to be sure. Flat cuisine, for one--ain't missed it for a second, and anyone who says different's lying through their fleshy fibhole. By my reckonin' the steaks and the sex are just about the only reasons we don't just upload ourselves onto some hard drive to be spit out an inkjet back where we came from. And the mountains, too, I guess. I mean, damn. We just had those all wrong before.

But I still miss it - they didn't tell us we'd be trading one dimension for another; got a wider world but seemed to lose the time to check it out. Forward progress always kicks the shit out of nostalgia I guess.

(--sent from my iPad2)

Shooting Sheep in the Sky
by Gary Feuerman

Her sister was visiting. It was still early in the relationship, maybe 3 months in. We still made love at least twice a day, and whispered to each other in the corners of parties and bars about the things we wanted to try. It all smelled like fresh raspberries. You know when you look close at a newly picked berry? The round, trembling buds filled with soft flesh and juice. A little hairy, but always ready to burst. That was us. I could do no wrong, although I often thought that what we had couldn't be real, not really. It had to burst and disappear at some point. I had to eventually stumble, break the bubble and watch the mist of love float into nothing.

So Sis was coming and I was the Taos Guy. What to do? She was a fierce intellectual, Sis, with eyes that ate and doubted everything said, but also wanted to just play and grapple. One night on the toilet, tucked safely in the back of the house, I spied a local tourist mag on top of a pile of paperback novels I hadn't read, but figured I'd at least get snippets of if they were piled in the bathroom. I reached for it and brought it to my lap. On the cover was the picture of a petroglyph - a pregnant woman praying next to a set of 4 concentric circles. Like a sign from God, I knew that this, this was the thing to do. A friend had told me the week before that there was a path off of Ranchitos Rd. along the Rio Pueblo where the petroglyphs were etched into the rocks along a little limestone ridge on the mesa.

We went there the next day, a scorching one with endless blue sky. We parked near a house, but off the road and set off into the cottonwoods along the tumbling little river. Sis pulled a joint from her shorts and we smoked it. Stoned, but with purposes, I led us up into the rocks beyond the trees. A cliff about 30' high ran north-south parallel with the river. When I got to the rocks, I pressed my face against them to feel the heat. T and Sis followed suit without words. All was quiet. No cars. No wind. No other people. I moved south along the wall dragging my fingertips along the rough sandstone. After 20 yards I came upon an etching of a vibrant sun over two sets of concentric circles with 4 and 5 rings painted in a rusty red. Petroglyphs. I could hear T and Sis breathing. We stood still and each in turn touched the indentations in the rock. T kissed me on my nose, and Sis then hugged me and whispered, "You are part of my clan."

Cavernas del Viejo Volcan

by Johanna DeBiase

I dig my heels into hard dust and stare out at a photograph in a magazine from someone else's vacation – white mountains holding hands around a splatter of lake blue. The wind blows hard, bellowing my hood up around my face. I climb the mountain, I enter the cave.

A ramble of meaningless words float around me and I will not look at him lest he think I understand. He spills water on the wall to make visible the fine red lines of some ancient sketching. His fingers trace the jagged lines. “Tall people,” he says in English, horizontal hand held high above his head.

“But how do they know that?” I ask my translator, my crouching husband.

“The last one died not too long ago.”

The. Last. One. He was a tall man.

My hip bones barely scrape through the damp tunnel, my head bumping up against jutting rocks. One knee in front of the other, one hand, then the other, one crawl closer to blind. Something falls into water somewhere. Someone whoops when they trip. A mother whispers comforting words to her child. Shh, the owls are sleeping. I commit the darkness to memory. Turning back toward a single point of light, I imagine that I am alone, for one moment, the last one in the world.

Lunar Eclipse

2011-03-01T14:04:00.000-08:00

Made Visible

by Johanna DeBiase

My dog's barks became loud and incessant. I was worried she'd wake the kids. I rolled out of my sack on the bottom bunk and tried to quiet the creak of the door as I stepped outside the yurt in my long underwear into the cool night air. Five feet deep of snow rolled out like a blanket, across the meadow between the pine and spruce to the creek below and beyond atop the higher peaks further in the distance.

The full moon made the snow meadow glow like a fresh water pearl and accounted for my inability to sleep – super moon, vernal equinox. I unfastened my dog's leash and beckoned her to join me by the fire inside. Instead, she stared intently to the south along the side of the yurt, her snout pointed forward, her chest engaged and ready to leap into action.

I leaned over her to look. My heart startled. A black silhouette contrasted sharply against the iridescent snow – an animal, sitting upright, bigger than a cat, smaller than a dog, pointy ears and a bushy tail, which it waved across its body affectionately. It was staring back at me. I grabbed my dog's collar and pulled her quickly inside. My heart thumping out of my chest. Out the window, the fox continued to walk across the field and into the trees beyond.

Foxes live in between – night and day, meadow and forest; because of this, they are known for their ability to camouflage. Tribal people across the world revere fox medicine for its power of invisibility. Yet, this fox, this fox wanted to be seen.

Spring.

Moon.

Fox.

the fullness of it came closer

by Robin Powlesland

I can layer these names
into the texture between
morning and its due
possibly see the shadow cast
in midnights from before

I was young then and younger now
knowing that you have left
nothing behind you other than this
layering of camel buts
shorn and tossed about
my patio

I can see in the glare
of this moon
how this place has made
me what I wasn't before

Untitled

by Charles Clayton

Archetype of emotion

born of violent collision.

Reflecting pool reveals chunks of stardust

rejected by Sun's gravity embrace.

Far from the light, elliptical roaming,

then plunge towards a terrestrial speck

seething spinning coalescing cooling.

COLLISION.

Man on the moon a chunk of

Mother Earth, a chip off the old block.

Gray dust settles.

Mountains cast long lonely shadows.

Wax wane.

Tug at the sea.

Soak up gamma rays.

Eat meteors.

Light up the primordial night as

the blue orb below manifests bacterial

(r)evolutions from sea to slimy sea.

Billions of trips around the Sun.

Silver beams shine upon

trilobite backs

jellyfish glow

triceratop horns

mastadon woes

flecks of chipped stone

firepits and charred bones.

Every so often:

“Wolves are eating the moon!”

Eye of Horus, stolen.

Cough it up, sky dragon,

Shaman’s going to yank that arrow out

And make it all right again.

Untitled

by Eric Mack

During what would be my last year, I spent much of it traveling to the surrounding villages, recording oral histories from Native elders for the radio station. One old man in his late seventies from a northern village that sits just below the Arctic Circle shared a simple anecdote about how he used to monitor the extreme cold temperatures that had since become less frequent occurrences due to climate change. Sixty below is still common in Fairbanks, but the nights of minus ninety are long gone. In the 1940s, it seems, thermometers were a luxury not readily available in the villages, so the old man had developed his own scale for taking temperature when traveling overnight by sleddog team.

“50 below, that’s easy… you seen that before – just take a cup of hot water off the pot on the fire, throw it up in the air. If nothing comes down, you hit minus 50,” he explained, referring to a phenomenon that’s now widely demonstrated by awe-struck college students in Fairbanks on numerous Internet videos. “Now, 70 below… don’t see that much anymore these days, but back then, when your kerosene turned to jelly, you knew you hit 70.”

The old man paused, took a sip of watery coffee from a styrofoam cup, moved the microphone on the table in front of him back a few inches, then continued:

“Then, at 90 below, my dogs’ tails just fell off.”

He stood up, grabbed the cup and headed for the coffee pot in the other room.

“But, wait… what happened to the dogs?” I called after him, completely missing the point of the story and no longer concerned about his proximity to the microphone.

“Oh, they was fine… Sometimes maybe one of ‘em would quit, usually the older or sick ones… just lay down and die. Nothin’ you could do for ‘em. But most of ‘ems would be just fine, you just hook ‘em up to the sled, and they’d just run, they just leave them tails behind and just keep movin’… gotta keep movin’ to survive.”

Untitled

by Gary Feuerman

It was something that had not happened in hundreds of years. Before Shakespeare, the telescope, the Mona Lisa; just after the dark ages. 1378. Man was still relatively few and dealing with plagues. America did not exist and the United Kingdom was not so united. Venice thrived, and my lineage was lost somewhere between Crusades-scarred southern realms and forested hills in the mid north of Europe where wild boar and wolves killed some of my nervous ancestors. And here I was with friends, on a couch sitting on a dirt driveway in northern New Mexico, sipping vodka, craning my neck to see the orange moon, like a pill in the sky, like a globular glass of Lipton tea. December 21, 2010. A gathering of writers, wild souls watching ravens in the high tree branches, meteors streaking in green-white glitter, and the moon-sun dance, choreographed and timed to the minute, organization and deliberation among chaos. It was mild for December 21st. No snow on the ground, sweaters enough at midnight and later. The slow shading and unshading of the moon gave us patience. We sipped slower than usual. Not since 1378 had anyone witnessed this. Who saw it then? A shepherd? A monk on a mountain top in Tibet? A writer at her table scribbling by candlelight. An executioner with insomnia feeling vaguely guilty about the next head? Did anyone write about it? The printing press had yet to be invented. Did the Anasazi view it from the sacred circle of stones? Did they know it was coming? Most of the people went inside soon after the moon was covered. A friend and I waited it out. Full light returned near 3am. I was not sure what it meant or will mean to me, but it felt like the completion of a cycle.

Great White Northern New Mexico

2011-02-01T20:15:00.000-08:00

Wild-on-End
by Johanna DeBiase

“I could do without all this sagebrush,” the Kansas man makes small-talk. He does not see the open sky, the rising mesas, the stretching rolls of hill persuading mountain peaks, the deep water gashes and bubbling springs. He will always be a tourist. I am grateful I broke down so close to home.“Los Colonias,” I direct him, “you can drop me at this corner.”

“I’ll take you all the way,” he offers with a soft twang, “it’s no problem.” I glimpse into the truck bed at broken elk limbs. “I went hunting with my son last week,” he explains.

“I’m a newcomer too,” I tell him. I think of where I came from, the sub-arctic snow prairies and glacier embedded ridge lines, time moving only as fast as the river would take it. But this is not Alaska. Now I walk in tumbleweeds with sandals on, snack on pinon, explore the back roads and only bring a coat if I’ll be out after dark. “This is good,” I point to my road head,“That’s my house over there.”

Warmed by thoughts of my highway solar adobe I think, I am generated by the sun, but do not say it out loud; there are enough hippies on this mesa to create the illusion of crazy without my help. Yet, he’s told me already(only takes a few miles for a man to open up to a strange woman) he misses Kansas, that’s his true home. I close the heavy door to his truck and run the dirt road back to my house past pueblo land where the sagebrush goes on for miles and think, There could never be too much.

Bastard

by Charles Clayton

It never was very good, not even in California where it was warm. Well, it was good there for awhile, before the drinking got bad. A house, a son, a baby daughter, a used but solid Buick in the driveway, palm trees in the front yard, oranges in the back, steady work at the track.

Then he hit her one too many times and she left. Took the kids and fled for Colorado, for the shelter of family and mountains. He sobered up, tied up some loose ends, and made his way towards that icebox of a town, swearing to her and himself that things had changed. Worked for her brother, rented from her father, started drinking with her cousins and before too long the walls were closing in again. Only now it was 50 below. Too cold for hope.

He got his wages and left town with the clothes on his back and a twelve pack of Budweiser in the passenger seat, headed south to New Mexico, Arizona, anywhere but this frozen valley. No need for goodbyes. It won't take her long to figure out what happened. Crack open a beer. Hit the gas. The edge of town. Keep going. Don't look. Keep your eye on the road. GODDAMN IT, DON'T LOOK!

Slow down for one last look at that godforsaken tin trailer. And there's the kid in his blue snowsuit, up on a snowbank. Waving. At his dad. For the last time.

The Tragic Packing List of Two Alaskan Teenagers on Their First Roadtrip to the Lower 48 (Fairbanks to Santa Fe in January)

by Eric Mack

* Flashlight
* Beef Jerky
* Turkey Jurkey
* Fritos
* iPod
* Alascom Cell Phone (unusable in the lower 48)
* Fleece / Parkas / gloves / hats (to be ditched somewhere south of San Francisco)
* Billy Joel CD (for ironic purposes)
* Red Bull
* Maker's Mark
* Beef Jerky
* Ramen noodles
* Empty 2-liter of Mountain Dew (water bottle)
* Empty 2-liter of DIET Mountain Dew (pee bottle)
* Empty 2-liter of Coke (after the MT. Dew bottles got mixed up)
* 5 gallon gas can (leaking)
* Leatherman utility tool
* Sunscreen (60 SPF)
* Carhartt pants
* Carhartt button shirt
* Pilot Bread
* Smoked salmon jerky
* Rand McNally Atlas (1992 edition)
* 1 Bag containing 4 McDonalds hamburgers purchased day before trip (phone numbers of all friends in Lower 48 written on outside)

Omnibot

2011-01-15T18:37:00.000-08:00

Tin Man
by Eric Mack

"He's totally one of us, Robie! For all you know he could be your grandpappy," Model QR-7600 droned at its full decibel capacity, and without any variation in tone.

"I don't know bro, they left him out in the rain, like, for years, and all it took was a couple shots of oil to bring him back up to operational. I don't buy it, dog. You know that would fry the shit out your operating system if you tried it."

Robie lowered his right plastic caliper on to the volume up button on the remote. Judy Garland's adolescent whine permeated the room - something about some sort of distant municipality constructed primarily of precious gems. Humans of European descent love to waste their lives devising dumbass, irrational fantasies, Robie processed to himself.

"Look at the way he moves though," QR-7 shot back. "That nigga's doin' the muthafuckin' robot straight up! You know when this shit was made? Muthafuckin' 1939! Oh, shit, man - I got it, I got it."

The LED lights mounted on QR's upper dome for nighttime illumination and entertainment purposes began to cycle through the full spectrum of hues on the CMYK gradient. A digitized rendition of "Funkytown" emitted from a single speaker on his back.

"Pullman porters, dog! Muthafuckin' Pullman porters. Tin man, my ass. Pullman porters must have had ROBOT porters of their own, man! Metal dude here is trying to send us a message about Robot Civil Rights, my man!"

Just then the vertical hold on the old VHS/TV combo began to go haywire. Robie slapped the console with his left caliper. He removed the 120v plug from his external electrical dock to check for corrosion. What an illogical troubleshooting protocol... you are a dumb robot muthafucka like QR vocalizes after all...

It the last input Robie processed before the compactor snapped his central processing unit, save for a quick flash on the television screen of an image that looked like, but it couldn't be... J. Edgar Hoover? Robie was never able to compute the likelihood that the vision had been real or a manifestation of crossed wires and snapping silicon.

When They Came for Us

by Johanna DeBiase

When they came for us, we were sitting

in downtown corner cafes sipping skinny

lattes while we trivialized politics and the

local recession. Tourists passed with bags

full of turquoise and leather, but we did

not see them, we only saw each other and

the words spilling from our mouths like poems.

When they came for us, we were boot-deep

in soil, rolling it over to expose troubled

worms and patting it down with hope

that biology might do our simple bidding.

We were singing then, to the plants, I guess, so

they would know that we needed them, that we

would eat them soon with the utmost care.

When they came for us, vigilance over children

was all-encompassing. We could not take our eyes

from their little limbs, the malleable bones and skin

kept in our care. We openly admitted our rancor,

the retirement of our social life, but we

would not stop watching; how precious,

how sweet, how long ago and how fast.

When they came for us, we could not hear

the clashing of metal against mountains, the

crumble of clay and splash of wide shallow

rivers, as their giant golem boots met with

the land. We were not listening for the chants

of ancient tribal warnings or new age prophesies;

we were busy then, with other things, when

they came for us.

Untitled

by Robin Powlesland

short lines spread like butter

on dark bread

they stick to the roof

of my mouth

there is a metallic embrace

in how you talk to me

and the months make it warmer

or more alive

Untitled
by Charles Clayton

I want the robot. The Omnibot.

The robot? How about the cowboy cap pistols in the red holsters instead?

No, I want the robot.

You can get a robot anywhere. You can get a robot at the mall when we get back to Amarillo. Look at this cute Indian spear with the feathers and beads. You won't find that in Amarillo.

I don't want the spear. I want the Omnibot.

I'm not getting you the robot. Your aunt Betsy got you that remote controlled robot for your birthday last year and you haven't played with it for months.

It wasn't an Omnibot. I want the Omnibot.

What about this t-shirt with the howling coyote and the chili peppers? It matches your soccer shorts. Or this jackalope. The jackalope would look good next to your spelling bee trophies.

I want the robot. The Omnibot.

No.

Please.

No.

Untitled

2010-12-11T09:59:00.000-08:00

Untitled
-Charles Clayton

Cortez married the

daughter of Montezuma.

Their descendents manage

Dairy Queens and

rebuild transmissions

alongside the King’s Highway.

Iberia. Tenochtitlan.

Civilizations collide.

Cosmologies clash.

Utterly different

except for the need

to drink the blood

of non-believers.

She appears to the faithful.

Up on the mountain.

Down in the valley,

Behind the church,

In the hardware aisle at Walmart.

Jewels glimmering gold lust.

Eagle crying glory lost.

Bare brown Goddess flesh

tempting us with rites of passage,

whispering in a strange tongue...

Tear your own heart out.

Feed it to the Jaguar.

Mojito Madness

-Eric Mack

There must be the soul of a chronically lonely, and (by extension) perpetually horny old dude trapped in the rum. Maybe an old hand on a pirate ship all those centuries ago who got mixed up in some East Indies voodoo curse just as cannon balls started raining down on he and those big barrels of sweet relief below deck. One part each of a little pirate blood, voodoo curse and Caribbean Rum, all mixed together in a cosmic shaker - that's the only explanation I can come up with for why a few shots of Bacardi has a biological impact parallel to ingesting a couple little blue Viagra pills and a line of cocaine.

The graphic details will eventually be illustrated in a Jon Waters film, but suffice it to say that the men and women who profess the longevity benefits of "whiskey dick" have yet to experience that condition's Caribbean cousin.

Yet the soul of that unfulfilled old pirate is insatiable. When chafing gives way to climax, and only seconds later to deep sleep, that ol' boy is just getting started... with post-coital rapid eye movements generating fleeting visions that tease even further; there is the woman in a sparkling sequined evening gown in the jungle, tropical heat coating her breasts with sweat that reflects the light of a fire in the background somewhere, not an actual bonfire or anything, just generic sexy flames for the purpose of pointing out the boobs a little better - the kind of lighting design a 17th-century horny pirate would use for the looping porno in his head; then there are the jungle animals, the jaguars, the gorillas, the eagles and several other species that have wandered out of their native climatic zones to make the scene a little more primal; and of course there is the snake, that metaphorical Charlie Sheen on the scene reminding the dreamer of the primacy of the phallus in all things.

And then it's done. Eyes open, sun up. And it's morning so that's not the only thing that's up. Add a headache and a full bladder and now we're shaking hands with the spirit in the spirits. The only antidote for the cursed? A little hair of the dog... or a new life as a beer drinker.

Gabriele

-Gary Feuerman

I wonder how it feels to be an angry raptor, a snake about to bite. When I was six, a leopard lived in my closet. He was old and I never saw him run. Shaneek was his name and his yellow eyes shone in the dark like mini Van Gogh glass paintings. We sat in the dark and talked about the Wild Things who didn’t show up. In the morning light I’d turn on the Sony transistor radio and listen to the casualty count in Vietnam on WINS news. It was always more them than us. It was always the coldest winter in memory. It was always the funeral of a great uncle who died of an embolism. There was always the chance to see a cardinal in my backyard, a blue jay, a robin. After Shaneek disappeared, I threw rocks at squirrels and did experiments on ants. Later, I saw Gabrielle in a one-piece black bathing suit in Lenny’s backyard swimming pool, and my heart raced. On the diving board a bumble bee stung me in the upper back and I fell into the pool as if shot. Gabrielle laughed, but it was before she saw me crying. It didn’t matter. Any reaction would have done. Her skin was the color of Ceylon tea and she walked on her toes. I was sad before I talked to her, seeing the end before the beginning. It took 4 more years, but we had a beginning, and when I graduated high school we had an end. It wasn’t as sad as it was when I was 12 thinking about the future. Maybe being with someone makes the ending less poetic; but maybe not because it’s poetic again now many years later. I heard she was killed by a tiger in India. She was a zoologist and I’m not sure I can find any irony in that. But I can say that as a kid I watched Daktari and always thought the lady in the show was pretty and alluring. I wanted to be around animals, too, if I could be around her. I’d say that the day I saw the budding Gabrielle in the black one-piece in Lenny’s backyard she looked like a gazelle or had the legs of antelope or had the eyes of a tiger, but I’d be projecting backward. She looked like someone I wanted to touch and smell and caress and say I love you to. The bee woke me up. When I climbed out of the pool, she came over and squeezed the stinger out as if she’d done it a thousand times. That’s what I remember more than anything else.

The Showdown

- Johanna DeBiase

Gretchen stamped her cigarette out in the souvenir ashtray, staining the picture of the cowboy with resin and rubbing ashes into the lasso letters. She rubbed her eyes hard and wiped the black residue of eyeliner from her palms to her pants. Carving her initials into his wood table, she waited to catch Jerry evacuating his room with whichever stellar tramp he took home that weekend. She spit into his mug with the picture of skinny Elvis swinging a microphone. (What's so great about Elvis anyway?) Jerry was late with his rent and she needed his share so she could go see the Raggs play at Benders tonight.

Three months ago, it seemed like a good idea to let an old guy who sold vintage collectibles at flea markets board with her. But that was summer and flea markets were over and he was broke. Apparently being old, (Was he nearly forty?), did not mean he was responsible, stable or abject to one-night-stands with atrociously trashy women. (Where did he find them?) The sound of banging against the wall was too much for her to handle. She tore the velor blanket of a sexy Native-American woman wearing a come-hither smile (Why did she think that was ironic?) from the wall and shoved it into the microwave oven that he insisted they keep in the apartment, along with a television set. Pulling a bobby pin out of her hair and placing it on top of the blanket, she set the timer for three-minutes, pressed start and laughed with sadistic joy as he climaxed in the next room.

Untitled

2010-11-09T08:26:00.001-08:00

tempt
- Robin Powlesland

black and white long bow
or wooden pocket blade
painting of red dinner table
rabbits dancing on the plates
it is all under water from here
the long nails and hair
your drawn out look
my mistake
my wasted strong talk

please do not come here
and spread your
shortcomings
please go
I can fashion my own
weapons
and home

Why This is 11 Days Late
- Charles Clayton

Nobody thinks they’re contagious. Just like everybody thinks they’re good drivers, even as they text and guzzle cheap beer and don’t check their mirrors and don’t bother to look around. Or wash their hands. Or stay home when sneezing or hacking up green phlegm.

All I wanted was a haircut. Take some off the sides to avoid the hat wings, trim what’s left on the top so it doesn’t look like I’m cultivating a comb over. Just walk right in, no appointment. She’s from the Jemez pueblo and has cigarette breath but the price is right and the trim usually decent enough. I was feeling fine and just laughed at the sign on the door. Wished I had the camera actually to catch one of those moments that make you glad to live in this one of a kind town.

I missed out on the snapshot but caught something else. One of the downsides of civilization, of cultivation, of millennia of living with domesticated animals that taste good and allow us to forgo the hunt is the fact that close proximity with chickens and pigs and cows has resulted in the swapping and evolution of bacterial and viral predators. Chicken pox. Mad cow disease. Influenza.

That and the fact that the loss of nomadism means that we don’t get the chance to pull up stakes and leave it all behind…like the Navajo abandoning the hogan when somebody dies. So the invisible filth piles up, moves around, spreads like, well, disease.

So blame it on China, or some other transitional hub of free roaming animals and overpopulated populace. And blame it on airplanes, and the kid with his finger in his nose who touched the elevator button, and the buttons on the atm machines, the grocery cart handles, and a thousand other unwashed fingers and uncovered sneezes and the fact that too much Thanksgiving beer cheer and celebratory pie gluttony had compromised my immune system. And especially blame whoever it was that ignored the funny sign and left me an invisible gift on the door handle of the barbershop.

Lou Gehrig is the name of a person
-Eric Mack

My great grandmother died peacefully in her sleep - natural causes. So did her sister, great Aunt Mary. And great grandma Dessie, on grandpa's side. Not the cancer, not the Alzheimer's, not the Parkinson's that killed their children and their children's children - that's now killing our parents, the generations that decided death simply wasn't such a natural thing.

"A misnomer!" they cried. "Ignorance! A lack of medical and biological understanding!"

So these things have names now, mostly ending in -oma or something no doubt named for European doctors long-dead at the hands of their greatest discoveries. Really they're just all words for cancer; literally, or figuratively something eating away...

The ubiquitous phrase used to describe the last moments of the homestead generation is what consumes me now - "Peacefully in her sleep."

All of them. One moment dreaming, the next... Maybe it just bled together. Was there even a seam holding fast the images of rapid eye movements with those more ethereal?

The children of pioneers decided this could not be. They moved in to cities they had built, in homes filled with books of knowledge they had transcribed, the essentials of life synthesized, freeze-dried and worth the shipping and handling -- and "death by natural causes" left this world, peacefully, while our parents slept.

Two Ways to Acquire Elderberry Elixir
- Johanna DeBiase

1.The over-tired toddler yanking on my shirt sleeve nearly knocks over the glass bottles of herbal tinctures lining the apothecary shelves, but I hold tight so her hands do not free themselves to grab at fragile incense burners and ceramic smudge bowls. When I turn my back, she yells to me, “Mommy, I peed,” and I see the puddle of urine pooling beneath her. I grab the elderberry elixir, pay the exorbitant amount to the cashier and head home to cook dinner.

1a. Climbing over the barbed-wire fence into the neighbor's pasture, I follow the curious directions from Lena, knocking grass reeds with my boots down to the river, turning left at the acequia's head gate, over the boulder shaped like an clover until I locate the elderberry tree ripe with clusters of deep purple berries. I harvest as many as I can fit in my basket and head home to concoct a tincture.

2. I throw another load into the dryer and return to the table where my daughter is eating noodles with her fingers and wiping her boogers on the back of her hands. I feed her the elderberry elixir and she asks for more. I explain how she can only have a little at a time and she proceeds to throw a fit yelling, “More, more, more!” and tosses her bowl of noodles to the ground, which the dog gratefully licks up. I put her in time out and try the elixir. It reminds me of something. I pour myself a glass of wine and proceed to get drunk.

2a. After weeks of waiting for the brandy, honey and elderberries to smother and seep in the jar, I finally open the syrup elixir and swallow the warm goo, feeling it coat my insides and draw out any daunting ills. The taste like sweet wine lulls me into sleep and when I wake, I feel the aching desire to run, to disregard footwear and gravel and run. The pounding of bare feet against the earth is a swift flight into the sun. I flit through the village, hovering just above the ground, past the fields and foothills, past the gas station and Family Dollar where locals procure pocket-sized tissue packets and floss. They do not see me, a wisp of wind and light.

3. I wake up with a nasty hangover. My head is pounding just behind my shuttered eyes. There is a toddler jumping up and down on the bed yelling at me to get up, “Get up, Mommy, it's morning time.” As I swing my heavy feet to the floor, I notice my nose is dripping and I suck up snot because we are out of tissues. I will have to stop at the Family Dollar on the way into town to pick some up.

3a. One more loop through the valley and I head home, letting my feet grace the earth again. I flex my legs, still able to taste sweet elixir on my tongue. Inside, I dine on chocolate mints and listen to the call of the coyotes in the distance. As I reach for a mug, I notice that my body has lengthened three inches since morning. Tomorrow, I will eat rose hips turned shiny from frost and test my legs against the mountain side.

On the Road

2010-09-19T14:56:00.000-07:00

Before and After
- Johanna DeBiase

Two photos, taken in the same location, almost exact except for the way in which the landscape was allowed to enter the frame and the the years of distance between them.

In the first photo, I am nineteen-years-old and on my first cross-country road trip with my best friend, Michele. We left New York two or three weeks earlier on our way to California. I am wearing an Elvis t-shirt, a souvenir from Graceland and black corduroys in the sweltering heat because I did not wear skirts until my twenties or shorts until my thirties. Standing on a sidewalk, on a bridge, behind me is the Taos Gorge, barely perceptible. I am smiling wide and squinting into the sun. Perhaps I am happy we made it this far without crashing our car or getting caught in a tornado or getting busted for any number of illegal contraband we were stashing in the glove compartment. Most likely, I thought of none of these things as possibilities. I was, after all, nineteen.

The second photo, taken ten years later, my fiance is behind the lens this time and, though we do not know it yet, we are moving to Taos, leaving behind the arctic tundra of Alaska we had called home. You can only see me from the shoulders up, my linen blouse has one button clasped and I am wearing a floppy straw hat and dark glasses. My arms are leaning securely over the rail and beyond my shoulder is the shadow of rock wall and the glimmer of a snaking stream below. Smiling, perhaps I am imagining my new life ahead, the home and family I will build, but, of course, I knew nothing of the future. All I remember is that after the photo, the flash, the smiles, I searched the railing for initials I had engraved in it years before.

Untitled
- Robin Powlesland

check board lighting strung
branches on high
but you have to bend
your neck
angle eyes and hair and cheeks
others can see you then
but so can you
the lights
the way someone stops and makes
something ugly
beautiful

I know I need to go
pack it all up again
unhinge myself from
the doorway
and go

tall buildings and small paintings
color dripping on moving water through
still streets
flower stalls and large women
angles

like coins falling out a hole
in your pocket
it’s time
to go again

Fiesta
-Charles Clayton

It was fiesta time, and the descendents of Conquistadors were honoring the patron saint of the village by praying in the adobe church and drinking and driving up and down the single paved road. Empty Bud Light cans flew like confetti, lining the road for months afterward, reminding everyone of that summer day and the pride they felt as they stood along Main Street and watched lowriders parade past abandoned graffiti covered buildings.

There were a few white folks in the crowd—in town for the month to take in the beautiful scenery from the patio of their vacation home—and they found the tradition interesting if a bit inauthentic. Pinatas should be handcrafted by pious Hispanic grandmothers, not bought at the dollar store, and why did they nail the electrical wires to the side of the church? Don’t they know how historic that building is? A good photo opportunity gone forever.

There were no Indians there—the commodities had just arrived and they were too busy eating American cheese sandwiches in squalid government housing to make it to town for a Spanish ritual. Besides, they only left the rez to buy quarts of malt liquor or to gather sacred herbs in the nearby mountains…herbs they used during sacred prayers that kept the Universe from spinning out of control.

Community Service
-Eric Mack

Still new to town and like a crazed, lost tourist I jogged through the freezing darkness, tragically underdressed in sweatpants, college hoodie, crew socks and cross-trainers designed to vent as much heat away from my feet as possible, making them horribly inept at preventing the subarctic air from sneaking between my toes.

A huge blue truck crept along side of me, its electric window slowly moving downward in jerks.

"Boy -- what in the hell are you doing, boy?" an incredulous Mayor Sweetsir shouted from the driver's side - he was trying to talk over the Rolling Stones in concert in 1979. A small video screen was mounted on the dash; a tiny liquid crystal Mick Jagger skipped across a strobing stage a few feet from the Mayor, who was fully bundled in a winter coat and heavy work gloves, despite the heated air pouring out of the louvers beneath Mick's frenetically galloping feet.

I leaned in to the open passenger side, disoriented by the 80 degree difference between my trickling nose and my glacial toes. I glanced at the 12-pack of Budweiser in the back of the cab before noticing that Russ was skillfully grasping on open can with two fingers on his left hand, leaving at least three fingers for the steering wheel. The mayor's three-finger drinking and driving technique, I would soon learn, also allowed for easier track selection on his DVD player with his free hand, and was complemented by the fact that he never eclipsed 15 miles per hour on his marathon weekend DWI sessions.

A Saturday night ride with Russ was not a brief outing. It could start as early as 7 in the evening and run until 3 a.m. - if there was a really good poker game at ol' Sid Huntington's house (the 90-year-old village patriarch) it might push on until 5. Part of the stamina could be attributed to the fact that Russ was both driving and drinking so slowly. The twelve pack of Bud would easily last the whole evening - the Mayor's body was actually processing all that alcohol, leaving him more or less sober the whole evening.

I would soon come to be proud of this first night cruising with Russ. We would make 5 laps around the village, buy everyone at Archie’s a few rounds, and chisel a frozen Lynx carcass out of the bottom of a friend’s freezer, before the Mayor called it a night and dropped me back at the bar for a few more solo rounds. I had outlasted the King – all hail youth!

The next morning, with little sleep and quite hungover, I was barely able to lift myself off my mattress to return to the bar and retrieve my forgotten wallet and gear. On the side of the road a few blocks from Archie's, Russ was attaching a winch to an overturned Volkswagen, pulling the debris of someone’s less-skilled DWI evening out of a deep ditch. It was his third tow and recovery before noon. He waved. I returned a reverent salute to the once and forever monarch of Saturday night in the bush.

Summer in Jersey '74
- Gary Feuerman

I know it’s New Mexico, but I’m in north Jersey in 1974. Rivervale, or maybe Tenafly, they always seemed the same to me. It’s the end of summer and we’re at Aunt Gina and Uncle Paul’s house. I’m walking through tall grass between weeping willows being trailed by a muscled black mutt named Ditto. The dog always barks menacingly when we get out of the brown and wood-paneled Vista Cruiser. He makes me stop in my tracks and then back up toward the car, but then Gina calls him over, a smoker’s clotted voice, smiling blue eyes, casually slouched as she walks from the porch with her legs out in front of her in purple slacks. She’s the picture of suburban cool, on the edge of the woods, could have been in a Kent ad in a magazine, could have been in the hills of Appalachia. After the first bark riot, Ditto’s my friend and he walks just behind me, head down like mine. I know I should be smelling sage, and pinon and caliche dust in my nostrils, but I taste thick grass and wet dirt and hear cicadas revving up to a high pitch that makes me think the trees will explode. I smell it in my belly and hear it in my feet. There’s a hole in the backyard chain link fence and it leads to an elementary school with groomed ballfields - baseball, football, and a blacktop basketball court. Nobody’s there, but I remember the family softball game the year before when I hit the ball over the kids that play against us and it rolled into the woods. It was a home run. I can see it but I can’t hear it. People yelled as I rounded the bases, I know they did, but I can’t hear them. Does memory have sound? I walk back through the fence and toward the house, a modified, 2 story, 3 bedroom colonial, white shingles with black shutters, and gray paint on the sides. I can hear my parents in the kitchen eating cold cuts with my little brother. Silverware plinks against porcelain, porcelain against wood, porcelain against porcelain. I can hear the TV in the living room where my grandpa, Bernie, is alone watching the Yankee game. Grunts and squeaks leak through the screened window on the side of the house where my dad’s younger cousin is screwing his girlfriend, the one with the curly blond hair and glasses, and perpetually red-tipped nose. I know she’s not Jewish, but I can’t remember who told me that. It’s not a big deal, but it’s known, a fact to tuck away in some list. Uncle Paul is out on the porch smoking a cigar. He moves slowly and has a soft voice. He looks older than Gina in his button down shirt with a black square pattern, and brown nylon slacks. There’s a tuna tartar colored birthmark on his left temple in the shape of Sri Lanka. Pointing to his chest where he recently had a pacemaker inserted after a second heart attack, he tells me he and Gina are moving to Florida so he can take it easy on his ticker. The Jersey winters are too cold nowadays. My uncle pulls up in a shitass brown 1972 Olds Delta 88. The radio is playing loud, too tinny to hear what it is. He steps out looking like a Beatle – more like a Beatle than the Beatles ever did – Sargent Pepper yellow corduroy bellbottoms, Lennon bifocals, coca cola brown hair fanning down his back to his ass, a thick handlebar mustache and a deep purple madras shirt. Sargent Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band of one. Ditto doesn’t bark at my uncle. He’s just back from 5 years in Europe and India staying clear of Vietnam. I’m curious about him. I’ve seen others that look like him, but he seems real with the hippie thing. He laughs through his nose and quakes his shoulders. My dad and mom and brother come outside to see my uncle; then my great grandparents from Austria, Annie, 88, wiping her hands on her apron to clean the debris of walnut cookies, and Willie, 94, stroking his yellow-gray mustache, amusement in his eyes; and then my grandparents, Bernie, 62, with purple, varicose cheeks, and Flo, 63, her blond hair teased and curled up high and her arms crossed. Everybody stops what they’re doing. Even my dad’s cousin and his red-nosed girlfriend come outside. I stand to the side, near the garage and watch everybody watching my uncle. I don’t hear the cicadas anymore and there’s a tug at my belly that I want to run away, that my DNA is all wrong. I’m in a play with all these actors and I don’t know how to act.