Altar-ed Reality

Nature Worship

by Johanna DeBiase

         She folded her knees beneath her and hung her head over her praying hands, “Please, please, Mother Nature, not now, I'm not ready.” She made the altar in art class when she decided that she did not believe in God anymore. Without proof of a kingdom in heaven, she was unwilling to be part of the hoax. Instead, she decided to believe in Mother Nature because there was proof of her all around. She used old wood scraps for the base and glued on pictures of plants. In the center, she glued a silver fairy to represent Mother Nature. She was pleased with her project and so was her teacher who gave her an A.

        At night, she knelt at Nature's altar and promised to be good if only Desomnd would fall in love with her, for she learned in school that love was just hormones and hormones were part of Nature. When Desmond kissed her under the bleachers, she knew her altar had worked so she asked for more. And Desomnd called her his girlfriend and Desomnd asked her to the dance.

       But the night of the dance, Nature betrayed her when blood, red as the plastic chili peppers she glued to her altar, ran down the inside of her thigh. She cursed Nature, throwing her altar across the floor before begging God to make it stop.

Ralph Lauren

Riding High

by Charles Clayton

It had been a hard road. Hostile takeovers. Congressional hearings. A bit of pay to play down in Jefferson County, and the constant threat of investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Things looked bleak for awhile, but he pulled through, just like always. Even Madoff and Kennyboy Lay had dropped the ball when things got too hot. Not him. Not ever. He was tough. He was a maverick. He was a goddamn cowboy banker, and nobody could ride out the storms the way he did.

But he’d had enough. He claimed his bonus, cashed in his impressive stock options, and headed west. If I can make it in New York, he laughed to himself, then I can make it anywhere, even in the rugged Colorado mountains. He picked up the ranch for a song—35 million, with water rights and a 10,000 square foot ranch cabin—and settled into his new life of fly-fishing and horseback riding.

The property itself was perfect, and not too far from the Koch place—now there’s a fellow who knew how to wheel and deal a good land swap with the Feds. His love life was good, now that his lawyers had finally settled things with his ex-wife. No serious health problems now that he’d cut back on the cocaine. Back in touch with his daughter too, something he thought might never happen. All seemed well, yet something wasn’t quite right. Something was missing. One final piece of the puzzle.

It was the trip to Aspen that did it. A bit of window shopping with the new missus—a hot piece of ass he’d met through the realtor who handled the ranch sale—and there it was: the mother of all belt buckles. Rugged yet classy. Rich yet down to earth. A perfect combination of high finance and high mountain living that symbolized his success…Outlaw Chic. He had arrived.

Buckle Under

by Johanna DeBiase

        He decided to retire to Ecuador because he had spent the last thirty years of his life working in a cubicle, because his pension was measly and he had no savings, because it sounded exotic and his life had never sounded exotic.

       He did not realize until he arrived in Ecuador (after selling all of his belongings) that everyone spoke Spanish.     He felt stupid for not thinking of this. He did not speak a lick of Spanish. He could have taken a class but he was cheap and instead he moved into a neighborhood referred to as Gringolandia and frequented ex-pat bars and cafes like Inca Bar, Cafe Austria and Eucalyptus. He went to the mall and ate at KFC and Burger King.

       One day, he went to the market where a man was selling leather belts. He saw a buckle with a silver bull encrusted in diamonds. At closer look, he saw that it said Ralph Lauren. He knew the name of the designer because his ex-wife coveted his clothes in fashion magazines though they could never afford them.        Fortunately, the buckle was labeled with a price since he did not know how to ask. Forty-five dollars seemed extraordinarily inexpensive for a fancy brand name. It was a lot for him, but he bought it anyway and felt like a king. If only his ex-wife could see him.

       That night at the Inca Bar, he talked with fellow chain-smoking Americans about life in Ecuador. One over-weight woman commented about the unfortunate high-expense of imports.

       “What do you mean?” he asked, “Everything seems so cheap here.”

       “Well, yeah, groceries or services like taxi rides or Spanish tutors, but anything you want to buy that was imported like electronics or clothing has been taxed the hell out of.”

       He began to sweat nervously. When he returned to his room, he immediately took out his new belt buckle and smiled at the sparkle and shine that entranced him into buying it in the first place. But as he fitted it onto his favorite belt, his smile turned around. He noticed something peculiar that he did not see before, the spelling: Ralf Lauren.

Noon Fishing Report
by Robin Powlesland

Tommy H on tennis socks
and lobster flattened between
kraut and miracle whip
road sign become water way signs
and we drive up and down
back and forth - two lost fronds
slipping between the palms

Love in Ruins

The Whole Town Cleanse

by Ned Dougherty

because the gardens are beds of straw blanketing

rows of garlic and onion in hibernation

there is a run on

kale and rainbow chard in the produce aisle

the corn stalks are brittle beige, and the ears

all husked and buttered

but there is no more dairy

only ancient grains and steamed broccoli

the hunter’s moon’s come and gone

the crimson stained stone of the slaughter

steaks trimmed and frozen in the meat locker

but the body isn’t primed for stew

just cabbage and pale carrot

parsnip puree with cubed jicama

the beautifully bone-dull hued meals

and the transparent bottles of vodka for the liver screaming just in case

all shedding excess as the days wane into winter

see them skin and skeleton

before the holiday party plump

when they sip spiked ciders along the farolito redbow wreathed streets

Painted Face

by Gary Feuerman

There might be some beauty out there. It’s hard to tell where it is when everyone’s in face paint. The haunting of this darkening and deadening time of year is upon me. Despite the sun shining relentlessly as October turns into November, the fields are mute and matted, the stiff stalks ready for the sudden changeover to snow and ice. Darkness now descends before 6pm and my limbs are heavy, resenting the responsibility to do anything. The ancestors are around. I have had the hollow of my belly filled with their tugging presence, importuning me to stop and acknowledge the unseen, or even the seen which I’ve not been seeing. Dancing with the dead, in my head, on the dance floor, on the road that leads to the gorge, I am avoiding their message, yet wishing for their blessing. Painted faces are all around, heads swaying, music luring me into the dark. I don’t know who they are, but I’m curious. I’ll walk with them into the broken yard, but first I have to finish some stuff.

Modern Love

by Eric Mack

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I'm Feeling Romantic

by Robin Powlesland

I’m feeling romantic

reading romantic things

about edna st. Vincent millay

reading renaissance out loud

having read this book before

on my twenty first birthday

and I feel so new

yet that I haven’t begun

is it that I’m taking so long

or that certain things begin awkwardly

and join hands along frail lines

there is very little about where I am at now

that could have been set down

when I first read this book

and possibly I hungered then

for things I am just now slowly beginning

and yet I don’t know what is most important

where the starving flower lives

that needs my certain attention

I can’t seem to discover what question

is voiced loudest or

with that tinge of desperate impatience

I would I think go to him – if I could

even if he would not have me

I would try to lay quiet pride and misgivings

feel only his nearness – his solidity and heat

but in all the not knowing

in the letting the years go by

I angle also towards far away places

and remote islands

where I can keep busy

and still this constant need for change

Untitled

by Charles Clayton

It was a shotgun wedding. Sort of. Neither of them knew it at the time, but she was pregnant. Morning sickness gave it away—nausea during the honeymoon, and not, as he thought at first, from the free-range beef tacos at the reception. There was definitely a baby on the way.

The life plan had been to keep doing what they’d been doing: writing poems, painting canvasses, traveling, with a bit of carpentry and waitressing now and then to pay the bills…the slacker dream, extended well beyond reason, with the added bonus of wedding rings. The love plan had been straight out of Kahlil Gibran—filling each other’s cup but not drinking from the same cup, spaces in their togetherness, that sort of thing. But the hand of Life intervened by fashioning a noose out of cloth diapers and hanging the couple’s nearsighted visions and high falluting philosophies from the nearest playground slide.

They stood at the altar together, unaware that the moment was one of the last that would be solely about them. The wedding was the beginning of the end. The end of avoiding a real job. The end of restful nights. The end of long days of coffee and books and long nights of wine and sex. The end of their lives as they knew them…and the beginning of something better than either of them ever could have imagined.

Caldera is a Cauldron-like Volcanic Feature Usually Formed by the Collapse of Land Following an Eruption.

by Johanna DeBiase

She first noticed it in the car, on the way home from a party where she spent the last hour sitting on the couch and pouting because he was ignoring her pleas to go home. A small chasm existed between them that wasn't there before. She knew then that their relationship would not last. Just as any rational person suspects that love can not last forever, that the myth of growing old together belongs to the religious or a long gone era.

Ecuadorian folklore suggests that even the volcano gods, rising up from the earth together, laughing ecstatically as their lava ceremoniously burns the pastures below, even their love will decease. On cold nights, Volcano Imbaburra leaves his mistress Cayambe snowcapped as his betrothed Cuicocha watches on.

The road rose up the mountainside. Shifting gears, he seemed oblivious to the distance that now settled between them. How much longer? she wondered. Shivering, she rolled up the window.

Blue Moon

A Triangulation of Images Over the Course of One Weekend

by Johanna DeBiase

1. I noticed the approaching ambulances did not have their sirens on. Three firemen stood around the wreckage of an SUV, upside down in the middle lane of the highway. Even in the rubbernecking traffic, there was an eerie silence as we passed just a few feet from the accident. I wondered how it happened. Only the front portion of the roof was crushed. The window was rolled down. And then I saw it, a sight that still haunts me, a sleeve of a plaid shirt, much like the one my husband beside me was wearing, a torso folded over itself.

2. It was watching us as if it heard our old truck coming from way down the dirt road. It just stood there staring, its eyes following our path along the bend. “Stop the car. What is that?” “A dog? A fox? A coyote?” “I've never seen a coyote that wasn't running away.” A minute passed in that long pause before it turned and ran back into the forest. “Yep, that's a coyote.”

3. The blue moon rose over the mountains. My daughter and I laid in the river, the water rushing over us, cooling off from the hot baths, giggling. “Mama, why does the moon follow me?” “To watch over you.” “Why does it watch me?” “To keep you safe.”

the sound wing makes on air

by Robin Powlesland

coconut husk 6ft away 

from compost barrier

crow sucks air above head

an ant crawls across dirt

in front of concrete where 

I sit in front of sitting

there is a distance between words

and what crawls where

there is a distance

between what crawls in mind

and what crawls green

egg shells on dirt

and dried husks of what was

metal piles of drying string

empty and unstrung

the spot where the old Chilean

hammock hung

has only dried thread

and half broken clothes pins

the crow makes known

#22 Jose Pacheco

and distance streaks

between the branches

it's home wherever

we/I go

this place outside of

my skin itches

with the insects

and my breath hardens

with the air

I can go wherever

I want to

Hurricane Morning Clouds

Untitledby Charles Clayton

Soon, Man, Soon
It’s as predictable as the weather. June rolls around, the sun shines bright, and everybody starts complaining about how hot and dry it is.
The refrain: “We really need the rain”.
Of course we do. We always need the rain because we live in a DESERT. But don’t start whining about the lack of rain in June because IT’S NOT SUPPOSED TO RAIN IN JUNE…not in our neck of the woods anyway.
June is hot and dry.
JUNE IS HOT AND DRY.
I once lived in Northern Utah, where the entire summer season was hot and dry. Creeks disappeared. Meadows turned brown. Forests burned. They really did need the rain up there, but they never got it, not until Autumn.
So relax. The rains will come to New Mexico, more than likely anyway. The interior of our continent will warm, thanks mostly to that blazing June sunshine, and that heat will literally pull moisture up from tropics. Towering cumulus clouds will form over parched mountains. Thunder will rumble. Rain will fall.
Of course, our reliable monsoon rains will one day fail, as they have in the past. Just ask the Anasazi.
Things can happen:
A subtle shift in ocean salinity off the coast of Nova Scotia.
Deforestation in the Amazon Basin.
The eruption of a mega-volcano in Indonesia.
And quite suddenly the monsoon stops, and it doesn’t return for many centuries.
Give thanks for crops that aren’t failing.
Give thanks for cities that aren’t abandoned.
Give thanks for cannibalism that isn’t happening.
Be glad for the rains of July and August.

Elevation

by Eric Mack

It seems important to at least mention that there are no hurricanes in New Mexico.
I haven't even seen the drink around here, save for in a few "bayou-themed" restaurants marooned in oceans of pavement on Albuquerque's north flank.
But there are the refugees who fled here following Katrina. Those that packed up what they could and pointed west, headed for higher ground, didn't stop until they'd traversed the entire length of Texas, just to put a few state lines and a few thousand feet in elevation between themselves and the destruction.
The summer after the levees broke, I met one of these refugees. She smiled from behind a weathered face when she spoke of her odyssey from the land of crawfish to one of chilis. She had set up a table at the local flea market in Taos where she hawked numerous items from what she now referred to as a "former life."
"Never going back. Never again. One storm too many," she said. Her flight was to be permanent.
Many of the items on the table sported water damage. I asked if she had gone back to retrieve them after the hurricane flood waters had receded.
"What, this stuff? Oh no, these got damaged when the floods hit my storage container down in Albuquerque."
Weeks before, flash flooding inundated some of the lower-lying areas of the Duke City. 
A slight grin betrayed her recognition of the irony, but returning the expression seemed too cruel.
"Wow. Well, welcome." 
She smiled wider. "Uh-huh."

Shifting Breeze

by Johanna DeBiase

She is the weather. A soft rain that feels refreshing and adventurous at first until I have to shield my face from drops plopping on my lids like fingers poking. I say, “Not the face,” and “What did I tell you about the face?” When I say the latter one, I sound like my mother. She is also a lot like sunshine, shaking off the chill, welcoming a new day, creating possibilities for fun, growing things. But, sometimes sunshine can be too much fun. Sometimes, I just want to stay inside and read while it beckons me out. As a child, I broke out in a rash when I played too long in the sun. Red splotches itched from my second knuckle to my shoulder tops. Nowadays, I slather my child with sunscreen and watch her brown. She can also be like a storm – a dirt devil or a torrential. I can not control the weather. I must take it as it comes. So I have learned to come prepared. Instead of a rain coat, I pack a sturdy array of patience. Instead of snow boots, I bring crayons and paper. Instead of gloves, I pack time-outs. I wait for the perfect days when the sun and wind feel just right, the sky an azure blue, showered with nothing but love.

just to talk to you
by Robin Powlesland

 - everything would be right

during the days and nights I do not talk to you - for real

I keep talking to you - all these window dressings to share

pacings and insights I want you to take on as well

and it’s just like it always was

you are far away and our love is a story I tell myself

in the afternoons - the storm comes

the storms keep coming

even having had you here recently

even knowing that I am going to see you soon

even amidst all this planning

it’s a story I’ve told myself

I am going to cut open

more orange fruit today

pull out the pits - leave them to the goats

you are far away

to bring us together again

seems too big to know

wash sheets and tear up

old ones for scrap

wipe down shelves and pack your clothes

between the words - spoken

I want you to understand - know me

even if we can't know the distance

I wish I could take my red wagon

all the way to california like I was walking down the road

to play with a friend

I need to feel that words are important to you

that these are to you

my words

important

empty hard backed suitcase - moss green

light blue train case - little bottles of whiskey

haven't even told you what my name will be

talk everything could be easily clean and right

keep talking - days and nights I have not talked to you -

for real

Eclipse

According to Google, on June 11, 2012, "Eclipse" refers to (in order of algorithmically determined relevance/importance):

by Eric Mack

1. A film in the "Twilight" series.

2. A project aiming to provide a universal toolset for (software) development.

3. An astronomical event that occurs when an astronomical object is temporarily obscured.

4. A manufacturer specializing in car navigation and audio systems.

5. The most efficient jet on the planet.

6. A novel in the "Twilight" series.

7. A small recording company

8. A special edition 2-disc DVD set of the film in the "Twilight" series.

9. A Blu-Ray version of the film in the "Twilight" series.

10. A regular edition, single DVD of the film in the "Twilight" series.

Twice

by Charles Clayton

There was a solar eclipse when I was in the first grade. It must have been wintertime because we stayed in our second story classroom and watched quietly as the morning sky darkened and the clouds turned fiery orange and red. The entire experience exists in my mind as a single moment in that room, gazing through the window panes at a kind of light I'd never seen before: Ashen and gray, yet strangely luminous.

Our teacher told us that solar eclipses happened every few years so I expected to see one again, but never did. Seems you have to be in the right place at the right time to witness the spectacle. Eclipses came and went, and I read about them in the newspaper or saw clips on the television, but the experience eluded me.

33 years later, the stars aligned—or one star, and one planet and its moon, and the life trajectory of a single human on that planet—and I found myself at the proper latitude and longitude at the proper time of year. The setting couldn't have been better: The first days of summer vacation, on a front porch with my wife and child, surrounded by friends, right at the foot of the Southern Rocky Mountains.

Everything was in place, and before we knew it the eclipse was happening. Golden rays radiated through scattered puffs of clouds. The orbs lined up and the light faded into that crisp, ashen hue….the exact same light I remembered from my childhood.

Near the peak of the eclipse, I walked into the backyard and gazed at the mountains as they silently basked in the ghostly light. The mountains had seen it all before, and would see it again. I'd like to think I'll be around next time too, but I might not. That moment on the porch may be the last memory I'll ever have of that otherworldly light—the rare light of a moon shadow.

Eclipse

by Johanna DeBiase

I am the sun.

I spin in the world of rays --

rainbow prisms across nursery walls,

glares from pinwheels on garden posts,

beams stretched through rain clouds.

I am the mid-afternoon light

that reminds them why they live here

that makes the plein air painters sigh

and the poets toast.

At twilight, I put on a show, paint the

clouds with shadows, steal the

promise of June flowers,

splatter their faces with impermanence.

I am the sun. I grow them like

eager buds, but I can burn them, too.

I know the spot, between their

shirt hem and waistband,

or the place behind their ears

where their spine ends its traverse

across their neck.

I am the sun. They will not

stare into me. They hide behind

brimmed hats and dark glasses --

rims around their eyes

where I colored their faces.

Only once (per season)

do I disappear from them

a little trick I do with the moon

and they laugh and dance, but

they also remember.

.

The earth. The earth is their

humming sphere and they

labor for it – their sheltered souls,

their juvenile antics.

I am the sun

the way they see in the light,

the way I am blind in their night,

yet the galaxy burns for me.

Southwestern Ambrosia

Roasted
by Charles Clayton

The longer I live here the more depressing it gets. The murders, the rapes, the gangs, the heroin, the corruption...a cauldron of darkness that simmers just below the happy surface of art galleries and organic espresso. It's always there, probably always has been, and nothing here seems to get any better or worse—just more of the same. So don't expect bike paths any time soon, or quality public schools, or an end to the nepotism and cronyism in the halls of power. Not now. Not mañana. Not ever.

 It can be frustrating, but occasionally that centuries old inability to change is a thing of beauty. A slaughtered pig bouncing in the back of a pickup truck. Huge mounds of firewood outside of so many homes. Grandmas plucking chokecherries from neighborhood trees. Battered old trucks and cars held together by bailing wire and necessity. Families gathering pinon nuts each fall. The throng of women in front of Super Save at the end of summer, their shopping carts lined up and overflowing with burlap sacks of green chiles begging to be roasted.

Green Chile

by Johanna DeBiase

I lived life as a rancher in a small village along the banks of the Rio Grande, the same village that I was born in. I never married or had any children. I was shy and unfortunate in love. All my nieces and nephews moved away to the city and never bothered to visit me after my parents died. I loved my horses, but they were poor company, always keeping to the pasture. I spent everyday in the same way, repeating the same tasks over and over until I was like a machine. They may have replaced me with a machine after they buried my stack of bones in the cluster of graves behind my house. A lapsed Catholic, I always suspected I would float away to some place not quite as dull.

Instead, I came back as a chili pepper, a green hatch strain, raised in the greenhouse of some bohemian types where I shared space with their pot plants. At first, I was not sure what to make of it all. They chopped me up and fixed me into a mean salsa. They tossed me on everything from tacos to enchiladas to eggs. They savored me with every bite and I was finally alleviated. 

taos springs life-like

by Robin Powesland

the smell of rain on sage

I tell him is special

it's why we are here

I think he gets it

what's special

small in-decisions

dirt in rows waiting

there is always a leaving

coming from inside

it's why we are here

I think he gets it

why we love each other

that the sun is a stronger friend

one that stammers shamelessly

days are open shortly

and I already see the waves

washing us ashore this new kind

of desert

Video from Pecha Kucha Night Taos - Volume 5

Pecha Kucha Night Taos vol. 5 - Petroglyphs from pechakuchataos on Vimeo.

Subdivision

Suburban Home

by Charles Clayton

Blue Meannie records was a windowless cave of a record store right around the corner from my house. Owned and run by aging hippies (hence the Yellow Submarine inspired moniker), it was the quintessential mom and pop store, and they had a nice fat PUNK section chock full of hundreds of records that promised countless hours of perusal and serious discussion. No job, at least not at first, rarely any money, at least not 8 to ten bucks at a time, so if there was enough cash in your pocket to purchase an album then it was done carefully and deliberately. 

It might take two hours to decide on an album, standing there comparing song titles, cover art, and photos of the band (long hair usually meant cheesy speed metal guitars—avoid)…debating between the Adolescents and The Dicks, the Germs and the Battalion of Saints, Discharge and Minor Threat (AND WHAT ABOUT this compilation album with 20 different bands on it?) bands that (at first) you had never heard but maybe you’d spotted a filthy SNFU t-shirt on the homeless gutter punk who (literally) just crawled out of the sewer, or noticed that the guitarist for a band you did know was wearing a GOVERNMENT ISSUE t-shirt on the back cover of one of your trusted albums, or maybe you had a 5^th generation hissy bass heavy recording of an unknown G.B.H. album dubbed over (scotch tape covering the protective slots on the cassette) an old Styx tape so you make your best guess and give it a try, plunking down your single ten dollar bill for 12 inches of vinyl record—but there was no way to be sure about your purchase until you got it home, ripped the shrink wrap off, and put the needle to the vinyl.

That was the moment of truth. The slight popping as the needle found the first groove, the hint of buzzing through the speakers, a few spins of the record, and then THE CHORDS OF ESCAPE, CHORDS OF REVOLUTION, CHORDS OF ANGER, CHORDS OF HOPE blast through your bedroom and change your life forever and ever.

There is no sound on earth as powerful as an electric guitar. 

The Heights of Subdivision

by Gary Feuerman

I’m from Subdivision. Levittown was 20 minutes away, the first symbol of suburban sprawl, and the first of the big developments. I lived in East Norwich, NY, on Long Island, in a little development. The house my family moved into in 1966 (built in 1960) when I was 2 1/2 was a brown, wood shingled, 4 bedroom colonial at the top of a rise looking due west to a high hill dense with tall oak trees. It was that hill and the massive cumulus clouds sailing the sky above it that first reminded me that I loved mountains. I’d never seen mountains, but I knew I needed them. 

When my parents bought the World Book Encyclopedia collection from a traveling salesman in 1970, I immediately hunted down and committed to memory the tallest peaks in the world and the highest points in each state of the union, which is how even today if you ask me for the highest elevation in New York State, I’d tell you Mt. Marcy in the Adirondack State Park at 5,344’. Yes, 5,344’. I’d never been close to Mt. Marcy – the closest we got in my childhood was the Catskill Mountains, which top out around 4,000’ but are mostly in the 2,000’ – 3,000’ range. And it didn’t matter that 5,344’ was unimpressive, even puny compared to Mt. Everest (29,028’ back then) and the other Himalayan peaks, the Alps, the Rockies, the Andes – hell even Mt. Mitchell in North Carolina was over 6,000’ (6,684’ comes to mind), as was Clingman’s Dome in the Great Smokies (6,643’) and Mt. Washington in the Presidential Range of New Hampshire’s White Mountains (6,288’). 

I have to stop here. Is it me or do you notice that all of these peaks have a double number (other than Everest which had consecutive numbers 29/28)…Time to play the lottery? Am I giving away the fact that I have a gambling compulsion that runs in the family and that my dad taught my brother and I how to play craps by the ages of 6 and 8 on a mini crap table in the semi-finished basement (off white with a brick pattern and classic go-go era wood paneling) playing with chunky red die from Caesers Palace, Las Vegas and a giant glass pretzel jar filled with shiny pennies for betting loot.

So what about Mt. Marcy? Well, it was over a mile high, so that was cool, and it was a lot higher than the high points in New Jersey or Connecticut or even Massachusetts, Delaware, Maryland and Pennsylvania. We had Vermont beat, too. I’m all over the place like a dream, and I’m thinking that although the gut response to Levittown or even East Norwich and our ¼ acre lots lined with sapling maples and oaks and the beat up “station cars” our fathers drove to the trains that went to the City is one of disgust and despair over the monotony and homogeneity of this branch of human evolution, it is from this place that I knew I was for and from another place. And for that I am grateful – to the forested hill to my west above which I gazed many mornings after climbing on top of my wooden, nautical-style dresser and pressing my face against the window as if I were standing on the pitch of roof where I once saw Santa’s reindeer and prayed to God that Pamela Maloney would be my girlfriend, and later wished that I would find a place where I didn’t have to make believe the clouds were mountains.

Ticky Tacky

by Johanna DeBiase

Each driveway, each yard, repeats itself over and over like the turning spokes on my bicycle. I know Nellie's house from memory. Unlike people who don't live here, I can identify it by minute details – the rose bush entwined around the fence post, the American flag just slightly askew, a welcome sign with banjo playing frogs hanging next to the door.

I drop my bike on the curb. I know no one will disturb it. No one around here needs an old bike. Most kids get a shiny new one each year. I ring her bell as a formality, but then I walk right in. Their entryway is identical to my own, the split ranch stairway – up to the living room, only used when guests are over; down to the den, used the rest of the time.

Nellie's room is downstairs off the den because she is the oldest child and earned her privacy and own bathroom. I head down there and find her in front of her computer listening to Adele again. She's on Facebook. She looks up at me. “Come check this out,” she says. She is looking at an aerial photo of a slum in India. Children below, kicking around a ball. It is a punchline to a joke and she thinks its hilarious.

I laugh awkwardly. I can't help noticing how, from this perspective up above, the roof of the shacks lined up in such a way, so close together, so similar, they remind me of this neighborhood. I imagine if I built our giant houses from cardboard boxes, stuffed our mattresses with plastic bags, and landscaped our yards with bottles and old clothes. Candy wrappers, banana peels and tin cans line our sidewalks where cows graze and defecate. It would only take a strong breeze, one big gust of wind, to shake this delusion of security.

Taylors Mill, Devonshire, Laurel Glen

by Ned Dougherty

each house looked the same

and averaged that quirky number of children

we read about in parenting magazines

the fathers all left in their sedans

right near eight

and returned to dinner on the table

the neighborhood could field entire teams

for street hockey or football

or lawn manicurists 

quasi friend-neighbors 

who wave from opposite 

sides of the street

one yard had a rock like an island for GI Joes

the other a hill larger in memory than true rise and run

and the last that iconic picket fence

what do they create

these collectives 

aside from adolescent dreams of great distances

these places we run so far from

returning to kiss our mothers

and tackle the list of chores waiting for us since we left

making connections

by Robin Powlesland

stunning the geographic distance 

between myself and what is acceptable 

in structures of light and glass

filtered species of thought

giving way through cloud and sky and flight

it stretches as far as my finger outlines

the scratched surface of thick plastic

and diamond shaped soil

stunning how odd I am in the stepping off

of curb and pretending that street is mine

that space is mine and thought is mine

remixing the replication is a new form

of education and it's all surprised by shopping

the activity of hunting and gathering

and then of course eating with strangers

and loved ones and then sleeping

it's a fought for reality between the haves

and have nots - the right to talk about education

to relinquish small tools for larger ones

to access other countries through soap stars

quickly layered one after another

sitting in rows - silently typing our speaking

questions to shout out to each other

sitting next to one another - strangers

and loved ones and then sleeping

mica in short spurts on sidewalks 

bringing what was out here distantly

to what is now through conversation

remaking of dialogue and connected learning

I can no longer live inside those walls

that still contain us now

foraging meals and conversation

picking through best practices and strangers

losing loved ones and then sleeping

Electric ManDragon

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

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.