Q uiet L

ightning

s P A R K L E
& b L I N K
2.9


eOCg]

`)g
as performed on
Oct 10 11
@
the San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers
as part of Litquake

2011 Quiet Lightning
ISBN 978-1-105-08613-7

art by Zack Bowen
zackinkbowen.tumblr.com

curated by the Quiet Lightning Board of Directors

edited by Evan Karp
evankarp.com

Promotional rights only.

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Q uiet Lightning

is

a monthly submission-based reading series

with 2 stipulations

you have to commit to the date to submit

you only get 3-8 min

submit

!
!

The Greenhouse Effect

presented in conjunction with

the San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers

is

a summer reading series

this

is

volume 3

!

Contents

side Q

Guinevere Q
Glossolalia 7

Allison Landa
from Bearded Lady 13

Claire Rawlins
Rooms 19

Sarah Ciston
Guidelines for Wandering 30
first published in We Still Like

Ransom Stephens
from The Sensory Deception 34

Dean Rader
American Psalm 40
Waking Next to You on My
39
th
Birthday or The Other Arm 42

2.9

Zack INK Bowen
The Mind in Seven cover
Beauty is a Camouflage 44-45
The Creeper 46
Masquerade 47

side L

Amy Cruz
Harvest Me 48

Mira Martin-Parker
Poppies 51

Alyson Sinclair
Before that tho[ugh], if lucky 60

Chris Peck
James Brown 62

Robin Bullard
I Dont Want to Hear Your Story 66

Roger Porter
A Fleeting Daydream 74

Guinevere Q
Sock 76

Stellar Cassidy
Tenderloin Pigeon 82


Info + guide to other readings
85
7
sPARKLE & bLINK
Glossolalia

Badabehgigidapata

When the fog fails,
the sun comes in
and when it comes
it wails
like an angry infant
on a bus
or in an elevator
or from within
somewhere walled up
where everyone around
looks annoyed
but never says anything
because language is meaningless
to an infant
and to the sun.

Badagigegegagagigugubadududatawahwahwahwah

When the sun fails,
the night comes in
and when it comes
the world is porn.
Scenery surrenders
bodies blur in inkblot chaos

8
Guinevere Q
elbows come off
noses stuffed with avocados
and toes tossed and stiffened
stretched and scratched and thrusted
and screams release themselves
because language is meaningless
to an orgasm
and to the night.

AghadaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhMAGADAmaaahahahaaAA
HahooooooAHhhh

When the porn fails, you shut it off
before it resembles a surgery video.
The clichs have been stripped away
only to wall themselves up around again,
again, the sounds of screaming
high pitched in pleasure
or habit
who can tell?
Again the swell
again the smell
of lotion
familiar lavender
chamomiles fingers
staccato caress
sleep looms behind
9
sPARKLE & bLINK
like a hilltop tree
that spreads shadows on the sheets
cast back in sighs
Oh holy strobing light of naked bliss!
Oh sacred shrines of pornographic nothingness!
Because to the divine tongue fire,
Language is meaningless
this incipit ictus
this is
badachaquadameagalisshissquivish!

When the dreams fail,
awake sets in
and sometimes theres no difference
and again the world
is framed ceiling up
between lazy lashes
grasping hairs
flanking eyes
clawing out at it all
blinking escape
begging to fail again
because language is meaningless
to a sleep talker
and meaningless
without contrast to true meaninglessness

And to those joyous proclamations of the soul

10
Guinevere Q
those bursting, grunting, primal phonemes
rebellious nonsense
revel in the mess of meaninglessness
I say:
Bedebajialvanafiva!

I say to you:
Badadatakachaxibalada!

I say to your ideology, your arbitrary identity, your
exclusionary you is not me
I say relentlessly:
Batatadamaallallherrtuah!

I say to your self-image, self-esteem, self-
destructive, self-inflicted, self-loathing, self-
punishment, self-reported, self-storage, self-
absorbed, self-hatred, self-injury, self-assembly,
self-complimentary, self adaptive network entity,
self-consciousness, self-confident, self-obsessed,
selfishness:
BeBemememeyouahmeofusaMEwesheheshebeweeee
!

To your bank account! To your taxes! To your
bracket and status! To your investments! To your
career plans! To your credit! To your stocks and to
11
sPARKLE & bLINK
your bonds! To your spare change and interest
rates! I say:
AMamamamomomozomomonanaeeeee!

To your religions:
Babagodgodgadatauallapraizzahyoyoyayawahvafinat
y!

To your wars:
Mehghaxchadareimiiiiisshooolanoooeff!

To your second guess and polite request! To your
mailing address and intelligence test! To the
treatment for the side effects of your treatments
side effects! To your regurgitated, civilized playacts,
rehearsed and recited - Detached! To your methods
and customs and manners! To your great western
canon! To your college degree! To your wallet and
cell phone and keys! To your thank you and please!
To your better living through chemistry! To your so-
called land of the free! To your business strategy
and social hierarchy! I say:
Iyadabaiumefatablamehmagajeoprrreyeaiyuhpillarill
aqerwabadanadapapihedahtavyuvie!

To the rumbles and rabbles! To those who say that
none of it matters! To washing yourself in a shower
of hammers:

12
Guinevere Q
When the Baddasasa fails,
the nilllzahbafa comes in
and when it comes
I say to you
language is meaningless to you
I say to you
I know your greatness
the way a suicide jumper knows weightless
just before the impact
and in fact
I know it best
when I say to you, I say to you, I say to you, I say to
you, I say to you, I say to you, I say to you,
I say to YOU:
BulipbosaQAsadadagadabedatatatatatarirahe
oZEEXCHAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!
13
sPARKLE & bLINK
Bearded Lady (excerpt)

Dont expect to understand my family. Youll have
better luck comprehending the history of the
Middle East, or a Rubiks Cube. The answers there
may not be formal or finite, but they at least exist.
When it comes to my family, there are few
answers.
We live in northern San Diego County, a
casually affluent burn zone decorated by waves of
red tile roofs. Here people think they can beat the
inevitable by waving magic wands: money, image,
charm. Sometimes it works. Sometimes they wind
up with their homes reduced to ashes.
My parents have charm. They use it as a
strategy, a way to beat back the flames. A grin can
flash into something darker or remain in sunshine.
You never know.
My mother is Joan, but I occasionally call her
Nails. She has talons the shade of blood and hair
the color of rust. She is prone to crying fits and
lengthy explanations. These ride on one premise:
Once she had dreams, then she had kids.
She regrets moving here from the East Coast.
She claims my father forced her into it so he could
pursue his perversions. He wants to do
threesomes, my mother says, speaking in italics.
Wife-swapping. I tell him he can play a nice game
of Hide and Go Fuck Yourself.

14
Allison Landa
My father is Steve, but I often think of him as
The Rooster. His combover flaps in the wind. In the
outside world he is cordial and at home he can be
every bit as aggressive as the barnyard animal. His
eyes are black as midnight. When he yells they turn
almost violet. Violet and violent.
Somehow these two came together to form me
and my brothers. I am twelve. Middle is eleven.
Jonathan is a year old. He is the accident, or if
youd rather be more tactful, the surprise. When he
pisses me off I call him the Birth Control Poster
Child. It doesnt seem to faze him.
Middle and I go to public school, but in the
countys best district. In school, the teacher asks:
What does your father do? My classmates answer:
doctor, plumber, pro football player. Then it is my
turn.
He drinks beer, I say, and watches Hill
Street Blues.
Later my mother explains: Your father is an
engineer. When I ask what that means, she
shrugs. Its not as if she doesnt know. Its more
like she doesnt care. I imagine him at a desk doing
something called paperwork, just as he does in his
den for hours with the door shut and locked.
Engineers must take home a lot of work. It must be
important, just as our homework is important to
us.
I know why work is important: It makes you
money. Money means a lot to Nails and Rooster.
Its how we have our house, and our house is
15
sPARKLE & bLINK
serious business. Its a style my mother calls French
Country Castle. She has a name for it: Jostaladjo.
Joan-Steve-Allison-Middle-Jonathan. The house
has a persona all its own. It is haughty in a
laughable way, too big for its own britches. It is
high on its own square footage. It prides itself on
its prestige.
But inside its a warren of small rooms with
locks to close ourselves off from one another. The
carpet is stained and sad, the victim of Roosters
dirty soles. When my mother complains he says,
What do you want from my life? Then he slams
into the den and does paperwork.
Our entryway is the biggest room. Its the size
of some studio apartments and gives way to a
dining room with no carpet. It flooded a week after
we moved in and they never bothered to replace
the flooring. Bare nails jut from the concrete floor.
My parents closed it off and forbade Jonathan from
crawling across the room.
By night my mother retreats to her own hiding
spot far from that cold entryway and dangerous
dining room, all the things she and Rooster have
created but cannot maintain. She locks herself in
my bathroom. There she smokes, tapping her ashes
into an empty yogurt cup. She writes in her
journal, filling pages with her classic longhand.
After the last cigarette is smoked and the room
vacated, I slip into the bathroom to read her
written confessions. Its a different Nails than I
know during the day, my tough-talking chain-
smoker of a mother. This is a tender Nails, a rueful
one. Its a Nails that makes me ache and want to
read more.

16
Allison Landa
I too write in a journal. Its nothing more than a
spiral notebook, a series of blank lined pages. I use
a ballpoint pen, pressing so hard that the imprint
of my words can be found on the paper that lies
beneath. Writing makes me feel safer than locking
my door. It makes me feel more free than when
Rooster is on a business trip. It makes me want to
write more. I chronicle the events of the day the
credit-card bill arrived and my parents fought
along with my goals. I want to meet Lucille Ball, be
a cheerleader, have a boyfriend. I want to play first
base on my softball team. I want to go roller
skating on Saturday.
Most of all, I want to be pretty. Pretty means a
small waist like Scarlett OHara, and I love Gone
With the Wind. Pretty means good hair like
Madonna. Pretty means a nice smile with straight
teeth, which I dont have because Rooster decided
not to spend money on the braces my orthodontist
recommended. I frown into the bathroom mirror,
flanked by nicotine-stained walls. I resemble
nothing so much as a human chipmunk, complete
with fat cheeks and wide eyebrows that meet in the
middle. My crooked teeth point in all directions.
My eyes are small, my nose wide, my hair
something out of Return of the Jedi. Jabba the Hutt,
not Princess Leia.
Pretty means thin. Beauty is slim and angular,
long and lissome. Everything about my body is
curved and convex, rounded and generous. My
breasts are already larger than those of most girls
my age. So are my belly and behind. In the
bathroom I run my hands along the arc of my hips,
the swell of my thighs. My shoulders are wide like
17
sPARKLE & bLINK
a linebacker. My upper arms bulge. Even my
forehead looks large, a pale fleshy expanse. How
will I do the things I want to do if Im fat? Lucy
wont want to meet a butterball. I wouldnt even be
able to fit into a cheer uniform. And no boy will
love a big girl. Even I know that.
I often vow to lose weight. The matter seems
simple: Take in fewer calories than you burn. We
learned that in Health class. Losing weight is an
issue of numbers, but Im no good at math. When
my parents fight, I fake a headache and skip
dinner. Then I go downstairs after the table is
cleared and consume: chips, cookies, handfuls of
cornmeal. I slather pieces of white bread with
margarine and shove them into my mouth. I pour
bowls of cereal and eat them dry. I belch and I
smile. Sometimes I laugh. The cheeks of my face
and butt are dimpled because eating makes me fat,
but the food feels good. It feels familiar, like a
grandparent. It also hurts, like nails going down
my throat. Scratchy. Bloodletting.
While I eat and evaluate myself, my brothers
find their own hiding places. Middle tucks himself
in his room and watches pro wrestling, taking
mental notes should he need to bust out a half-
nelson on the bully next door. Jonathan, just a
baby, chews on teddy bears in his crib. Outside the
sun grows shy and the sky dark, wrapping us in
nighttime as we dwell in our separate spaces.

18
Allison Landa
19
sPARKLE & bLINK
Rooms

I.















We, the apotropaic,

watch light lay down
when weve found,

in map or cortex, shelter,
eyes in the wood.

Time between times,
there is something to deflect.

20
Claire Rawlins
Where the fibers are worn thin or broken,
the overexposed photo of a blown out
beach, a barely visible brunette figure.


When I think about it more, I exist less.
How I fall into the crevice, how I hide.

How the nightshades lift him away with
the dark, how I am not more or less
numeric.

Lying still, afraid I might be heard, all
mysteries of the collective space return
like dark water. Static violence invests a
quiet whine. I gather the motionless ship
in my mind, I permute the wall chart of
events, I dredge the perimeter with open
hand. If will has the capacity to re-route,
if I believe that he only exists as a link
making the nebulous, if there was never
anyone else here.

The attic, again, wrung of its voices.
21
sPARKLE & bLINK
Morning that elucidates, re-calcifies the
sliding joints, re-sets the scene.


A cracked nose from the clumsy change.
A haze like plaster on the windows. In
what ways is the scenery unchanged
underneath the distortion, the
transcription?

No matter where in the diagram we claim
responsibility, voice. I am responsible for
each closed eye, the act of re-writing,
blotting the saturated moan. What
tincture drips from the ceiling? What wire
rusts the teeth?

Muteness: like a swaying telephone wire,
a crown of fog, the small movement of
drapery.
I can visualize its patchiness, the
moment it decides to grip or release. Take
for. View as. Harbor. Obligate. How we
buttress the unused verbs.






22
Claire Rawlins
Bare rafters carving a dome in the air like
bones beneath tile.


Whether outside or inside, along the
crosscutting axis that pins the house in
place, no one else is.

Whatever litter of seasons, stalk of weed,
crass loiter of fennel, I have liquefied his
print, smudge on the door, out of place
charm by the lock, flicked succulent.

The external can align even under
degrees of uncertainty.

If this is all I have to say to myself, I can
say it over and over. I can say it in
dream. I can say it in view of an opposite
truth. I can create the composite.
Whatever message the street triangulates,
whatever the closed fist reveals, can be
negated by a dual creation, can be then
ignored.





23
sPARKLE & bLINK
The new pronoun.

24
Claire Rawlins
II.



















Do I regard her as another self?

From which the gusts originate
Where the knuckle meets the hall,

a blip in the sororal terrace,
twin staircase, inverted spine.
25
sPARKLE & bLINK
Some dislike the feel of talking


the rub of voice on the air, real eruption,
exacted infinite movement of waves
forward against the walls, receding back
to the ear.

She was the unlikeliest voice because of
that rub. She kept me in her throat. She
locked the doors of a room and placed a
sheet over her head.

What needs translating? The distance
traveled between sounds, the selfhood of
ceiling, then room. Not everything

needs to be touched. Say there are too
many hands in a voice, touching cannot
coax it.
Hands in the room, rooms in the room.
Sea in the hands of the words.

that I am a wave.

26
Claire Rawlins
As if the buzzing silenced,


and she could be put away, closed up
behind doors, and I could leave the
house. If the pronoun could shift a
second time. If we are wrapped up
against ourselves, walking through the
same pattern of steps, enabling the
blocked chimney.

If I allowed the airway to build up with
soot, if I failed to scrape away the crust


sediment body
27
sPARKLE & bLINK
Night sounds rise through the filter.


The anagram sleeps. Shelter marked less
by reaching toward the sky than by
turning upon itself. A staircase to bridge
two cluttered platforms, umbilical
between ghosts.

Objects that belong to the air, a
substance which does not divide: a
jittering wall fixture, leaked water by the
stove. How many substitutions can be
made? How many glances to name?


The spiral staircase,
our gravelly tail.

28
Claire Rawlins
From therein the body holds the shape of
the structure


even once the shell is removedcorners
pushed down into roughcast seams. To
emerge takes shape of a congealed noun,
to become known in a skein of hair.

To derive methods of seclusion, become
one in the imaginary house, to create, in
the body, an assemblage of shells, to be
one in the clutter of dream.

Such contact with brief places, partial
life, inverts the spine where the liquid is
deepset.


Porcelain stave,
dust in the shell.

29
sPARKLE & bLINK
Of substructure


lit from underneath, where the
constitution is new and unerring. Each
amulet the sum of another body, another
alphabet, another ring of attached voices:
bodiless click in the next room, chains
dragging from an outside truck,
photograph of a stranger in a well-known
corner of personal space. Elements of
intimacy next to the quick uncannyhow
easy to apportion the scabbed from the
smooth, to claim foreign our own
inflection, then make intimate the
impossible: closed ceiling vent,
unguarded turret, glean of skin in the
sun.


A cluster of cellars
for roots.

30
Sarah Ciston
Guidelines for Wandering
first published in We Still Like


You are almost there.
Dont worry. Certain strategies may be employed to
prevent your arrival. Thinking, You only think
thats what you want, for starters.
Here. How about instead:
Turn left.
Draw a circle on the ground. In chalk, or in spray
paint if youre so sure. Write island in the
center. Step into specific concrete. Become
invisible from the outside.
Try walking in one direction with your neck craned
around in another until you accidentally run
into someone. On purpose.
Try thinking of the color blue. Make it a heathered
gray-blue or the deep aqua of the sea in the
pink before twilight. Think of blue moving
slowly away from you; make it everything
youve ever known.
Think instead of the wide, round globe, of it rising
up to meet you like a proverb. Think of it made
of paper, strung up in a tree, spinning faster.
Think of its longitude strands let loose across
lengthwise, tying up neatly at each end. Think
of its parallels, circling, bringing you home.
Do the opposite of what you were just thinking. The
opposite is just as obvious, of course, on the
same worn course but moving backward.
Make sure its not because youre bored. Or because
wandering is more familiar than any one
familiar place, than rest, than becoming
someone to count on.
Make sure it isnt your inertia, just another way to
punctuate your sentences.
31
sPARKLE & bLINK
Drive far enough away that you begin to see people
who look like other people their long parade
through your private moments wont stop even
if you do.
Change your plans to accommodate a conversation.
Choose your direction with a spin. Roulette blooms
broader than a compass rose. Games forget
their importance.
Pack a deck of cards.
Pack light.
Forget the ground beneath you and look up.
Dont look up anything about where youll go
before you go. Look everything up, then go
somewhere else.
Do not leave a forwarding address. But let your
mother know where youre headed. Still shell
worry. Theres no helping that. Someone
should be worrying about you back home.
Find someplace familiar. Now move through it as
someone else.
Get stuck at an airport for hours. Before youve even
left youre already gone.
Forget the order of things. First, come home. Kiss
them with the mouth you only use when
leaving. Pull the lines you long to say from the
curved capitals of maps. Reassemble Pangaea
into a love letter to your future states.
Know there is an aggregate magic in postage stamps,
in address lines obscured by the stains of in-
between, gone undelivered.
Leave before your lover fully wakes. Leave in the
half-sleep cooing warmth of morning, when the
sun and language are still slow, while the road to
the highway is still empty like a promise. Leave
who you are with her (with him) with her (with
him). Another you is still asleep, does not need
the road to shake its bones alive, does not need

32
Sarah Ciston
alone to feel holy. Another you finishes another
life another way. Another you goes back to bed
and curls into something warm, restarts today an
hour later with a conversation while coffee drips
and wafts. Somewhere instead one of you is out
there, your own lost soul finding the edges of its
orbit, searching for the trajectory that pulls you
home.
Read the books youd otherwise never let yourself
read at home, where youre expected to be
more serious, where youre expected (by
yourself) to be yourself.
Make someone promise you what you already know
is impossible. Pack before the promise is
broken.
Find disappointment by your own charts if no one
else will help all your cards stacked tower-
high in order to catch the breeze.
Except for one thing, little tomato, you need your
stake to grow. Structure sustains you. How else
do you account for how your skeleton lets you
move?
Go first. Let your speed increase up hills. Leave
what is behind.
Lean into the wind. Lean with the wind. Let the
leaning do the work.
Listen to the trains running on time, closer in the
quiet night. Know you could be on any one of
them.
Know you are here instead. Here is another form of
wandering staying.
Make sure youve got a home to return to, or else
that youve left nothing at all behind. Did you
turn off the toaster oven? Check between the
cushions?
Leave the mess. Your own wrecking crew will
33
sPARKLE & bLINK
demolish whatevers almost-built behind you.
Pack light.
Remember these guidelines. Tuck them in your
pocket. Make sure to wear a dress with pockets.
Follow no lines, least of all guidelines. You are
already lost if you are looking for the referent to
the reference. The map does not match the
story. (Reverse.)
Get lost. The reason you can get lost is that you
know where you are not.
Each time close the gap halfway. The point is you
wont get there.
Think all this. Now go.

34
Ransom Stephens
The Humbli ng of Earths
(second) Greatest Predator
from The Sensory Deception

Moby-Bupin does not sleep. He doesnt know
sleep. His is semi-conscious relaxation, just awake
enough to remember to breathe.
The eye is done. From now, the world will be
dark on one side of his body. There is worse
damage to his ability to visualize. The hole in his
snout will be slow to heal and until it does, his
ability to project the high volume sound rays
necessary for sonar-imaging will be inhibited in the
direction immediately ahead of him.
With the sun low on the horizon, he sinks into
the decadent rest of a glutton.
Lingering in that state of semi-consciousness,
the harmony of life on earth satiates him as much
as his squid-stuffed belly. He feels a warm current
and, by reflex, casts sonar rays in different
directions every direction but forward, damn
blind spot. Nothing is moving but the occasional
ice floe and a few schools of fish. It takes a long
time for the question to form: where have his
gentle baleen cousins gone? Why are no other
whales about?
As the question forms, the frequency with
which he projects sonar increases. Is a pod of orca
about? He nearly chuckles inside. With the trail of
oily spermaceti still leaking from the wound in his
head and the wisps of blood and ooze from his
dead eye, he might give the appearance of being
ready to meet his grim orca reaper, but he still
packs enough fight to take half a dozen bull orcas
down with him.
But there are no orcas nearby. With the sea so

35
sPARKLE & bLINK
empty, hed hear their sonar. He lumbers his great
aching head to the side so that he can image the
region before him damn blind spot.
A star-bright flair ignites the sky around him
followed immediately by a crack.
A blast of adrenalin jerks Moby-Bupin wide
awake. Time slows. He curses himself. The answer
to that lingering question: a death-ship, no whales
for miles means death-ship. It had always meant
death ship. Even his stupid plankton-eating
cousins were savvy enough to disappear.
The rockets trajectory comes from the death-
ship floating directly in front of him. Had it not
fired, hed probably have floated right into it.
Stupid!
The adrenalin washes the aches down his back
to his flukes and away. He rolls to his blind side,
exposing his remaining eye to the screaming-bright
missile. The trail of white fire strikes the water
where he had been a half second before. He thanks
the squid in his belly for taking his left eye, had he
rolled the other way, hed be dead.
When it impacts the water surface, the grenade
at the tip of the rocket explodes. The water boils in
both temperature and sound. The flames burn his
back, but that isnt the worst of his wounds. The
universe goes immediately silent. His sonar is
useless.
Another burst of adrenalin, but this one brings
panic. His body is as long as the death-ship. His
brain is three times the size of the man who fired
upon him. He has lived almost 80 years in these
seas and has skirted the death-ships a thousand
times.
A thick line of rope trails the harpoon. When
the grenade-tip explodes, the sleek rocket-shape

36
Ransom Stephens
expands in a set of barbs that cuts into, but doesnt
grab hold of, Moby-Bupins hide. As the harpoon
sinks, the rope falls across his body.
Blind but pissed off, Moby-Bupin drives his
flukes. With each motion, up, then down, then up,
his speed builds. It took hundreds of thousands of
years to develop his mind into the most powerful
imaging device on earth. Though he cant see right
now, cant create new images in his mind, he has
all the necessary data to calculate the position of
the ship, still dead ahead.
As he accelerates, the rope attached to the
harpoon catches his flukes, but rather than retard
his motion, it excites greater anger.
What the image in his mind lacks is a measure
of the robustness of the ships hull. It is easy for
him to see whether a hull is sound or not. The
death-ships once reflected his projections with a
sturdy echo indicating impenetrable stolidity, but
that was decades ago. Now they return the sound
of dissolving iron, rust and decay.
He reaches full speed fifty feet from the ship.
This power and speed, the frothy wake against his
flukes, the sensation of pushing water ahead, the
streaming flow along his body, it is all his. He
owns this ocean. His anger feels righteous and
wonderful. He pulls his left flipper slightly lower.
His body shifts a couple of degrees to port so that
he can see his target. He retracts the flipper and,
with one last mighty thrust of his flukes, he
collides with the center of the hull.
Seventy tons at thirty miles per hour against a
rusted sheet of steel less than an inch thick.
Moby-Bupins final emotion is a paradoxical
combination of satisfaction with his world and
outrage at the incalculable injustice of evolution.

37
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His last thought: I am the worlds greatest
predator and this is not how I should die.
* * *
It was only dark for a few beats of his heart. The
light came back on. He floated in gentle water, next
to a beach. He looked at his hands, flexed them,
positioned his feet on the ground, stood and
walked up the beach.
The immersion tank opened and Ringo helped
Bupin sit up and remove the virtual reality helmet
and gloves.
Bupin looked around but didnt focus. Ringo
was talking to him. The distraction of his anger
prevented him from discerning the words. Still
righteously pissed off at the universe, he also felt
small and insignificant and as alive as he had ever
felt. Seconds ago he was the most powerful being
in the world and now he was a man. Another man
among the billions. Another man carrying
evolutions curse on both hands. He looked at each
thumb. Hed always believed that gray matter
processing power was mankinds providence, but
evolution brought processing power to lots of the
mammals. It was nothing but folly.
Evolution had played a joke on this planet, a
joke that would be funny were it not tragic. He
stared at them, remnants from when his ancestors
swung from tree to tree. Appendages that
remained even after those strange apes left the
safety of trees to run across savannah. In the same
way that whales evolved the processing power
required for sonar: humans developed gray matter
for sight. The apes who couldnt see, died. The
survivors could see farther and understand faster.
But humans tree climbing forebears left them with

38
Ransom Stephens
the ultimate weapon: thumbs.
Bupin buried his face in his hands. His thumbs
covered his eyes. He was just another man with the
illegitimate power to slay any other animal on a
whim.

39
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40
Dean Rader
American Psalm

Give me the sheriff star pinned to the mermaid
and that tiny piece of wood from your throat.
Give me the saw blade, the plastic cats eye.
Give me the flash drive of your tongue:
I want to save everything. Even the goat horns
you strapped to the skull of the little girl,
and yes, both of her hands. No, I dont really
know what that means, but so what?
Ill take the boneyard and all its yellow flowers,
Ill take the pisspot, the necklace of petal fire,
And while Im at it, Ill take the bodys wafer:
Ill take whatever breaks down beneath its own sad
weight
whether its this life or a bad party. Your tangy
pelt, your twitch. You want my sandwich,
hey, get in line. This isnt the Army, but Ill march:
I want your shoulder holster and your mouth of
bullets.

41
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42
Dean Rader
Waking Next to You on My 39th Birthday
or The Other Arm

The bed we share is a ship.
You are the captain
in a big blue hat.
We sail all night
like crazy Odysseus
thirsty for Penelope undressed on the shore.
I am the bearded sailor
who wants to take you below deck:
ropes, canvas, hooks:
The heavy sails above,
the heavy waters beneath.
Your bottom arm even heavier.
Your fingers turn purple,
and your hand,
a helpless fin sinking in the darkness.
This bed of ours is the sea,
and I am a one-armed swimmer.
You wriggle up close like a dolphin.
You slide in next to me like a fish,
a small shark, maybe.
You are hungry, and I am trailing blood.
This bed of ours
is a boat,
and with my only limb, I row us to shore.
The other, fast asleep under your back,
numb in its tingly case:
Hard,
like the bottom of a hull

43
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or the wooden slats of a frame.
Its always the same problem:
what to do with my other arm:
Id like to unhook it at the shoulder,
and set it on the nightstand.
I could use it to scratch your back
or your feet,
all those places your fingers cant reach.
With me its the left one,
you,
the right.
We know the ritual:
your am slides under my neck,
you crawl onto my chest.
and for five minutes:
moss on rocks.
But then it happens,
the hot stings of the jellyfish
on forearm, in fingers.
We roll over into the vastness of covers, blankets,
and I am floating alone
on the worlds smallest raft.
The waterbirds circle and keep circling.
I see you across the wide spread of distance.
This bed of ours is an ocean.
I could tread water until morning,
but we dive in to drown.
I want you to walk me out on the plank and push me
over.
Like a severed anchor,
I want to sink





48
Amy Cruz
Harvest Me

Harvest me.
Turn my ground.
Give me bees
to fly around.

My blossoms
are blooming,
my sprouts
are out!

Harvest
my dreams
& compost
my doubt.

My soil
is dark,
and my roots
are strong.

I'll be drowning
in mustard
greens
before too long.

Thank you

49
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for the water
and your sprinkling
of seeds

But know
I'm your
garden,
and I have needs.

Please cut
my arrugula,
don't let
it bolt.

Put it in
a salad,
with oil, lemon
and salt.

Just please
don't forget
all this bounty
I've got.

Let this beauty
go to waste?
you
ought not.


50
Amy Cruz
no pressure
there's still time
I'll be here
waiting in line

for your
attention.
I'll wait
my turn

for you to
Harvest Me!
I'm your land,
man!

and these
fruits and
seeds are
all yours.

51
sPARKLE & bLINK
Poppi es
If a friend of yours needed help, would you sit
around and do nothing?
If a good pal of yourssomeone you knew
from way backwas in trouble, and you knew
it, would you turn your back?

When I was a little girl, my dad owned a rug
shop. He used to travel to Iran to buy
carpets. He specialized in tribal pieces. The
Gabbeh was his favorite. Theyre woven by a
nomadic tribe called the Qashqai. He loved
their bright colors, and nave, almost
childlike style.
When my parents divorced, he closed
down his store and moved to Iran to study
the Qashqai.
He came back a year later with an
Iranian wife.

The other day I heard a man being interviewed
on the radio.

We were flying from Iran to Canadamy son
is Canadianbut someone on the plane got
sick and they had to make an emergency
landing in Puerto Rico. We didnt have a visa
to enter the United States, so they brought us
to an immigration detention center. Then they
sent us to Texas and put us in another
immigration detention center.

It used to be a prison.


52
Mira Martin-Parker
They make my son sleep alone in a cell next
to a bathroom at night. He is only nine.

Your dad has a lot of Middle Eastern
sanskaras, my mother used to say. He
must have been an Arab in his last
incarnation.
It was true. My dad behaved like a
Bedouin, and we lived like nomads.

Recently they covered a story in the news
about five Israelis who were standing across
the Hudson River, in Liberty State Park,
filming the planes as they flew into the World
Trade Center buildings on 9/11. Each time a
plane hit they all cheered and high-fived each
other.

A woman saw it all from her kitchen window.
She called the police and they caught them.
The driver (Sivan Kurzberg, age 23)
immediately got angry and began yelling.

We are Israelis. We are not your problem
your problems are our problems. The
Palestinians are the problem.

It turned out they were living here posing as
art students and working for a company
called Urban Moving Systems.

They found in their possession: multiple
passports, $4,700 in cash stuffed in a sock,
and several maps of Manhattan (with certain
key sites highlighted).


53
sPARKLE & bLINK
It is believed that Urban Moving Systems was
a front for the Mossad (immediately after the
arrests, the company closed and the owner
fled to Israel).

They held them in jail for few weeks, then let
them go.


When I was little we ate our meals sitting
around a brass Turkish tray. We all held
hands while my dad said grace. He thanked
God for our health and for our food. He
prayed for everyone we knew and he prayed
for peace.
It was a real grace. He didnt just blindly
repeat words, he actually meant what he
said.

I heard a man on the radio explain that this
level of violence is not unusual in Afghanistan
(nine members of the same family dead, 35
others injured). The U.S. bombs villages all
the time.

Soldiers forced news photographers to delete
footage of the blast.

At night we slept on futon beds. The whole
floor of our studio apartment was a sea of
bodies. Dad, Shirin, and the baby slept on
the other side of the bookshelf. Elija and
Noah slept in the isle. And Chandra and I
slept beneath the front windows.
In the morning, we folded up our
blankets and stacked them neatly outside
the bathroom door.

54
Mira Martin-Parker

One day, not long after 911, I walked into a
small carpet shop near downtown. Like all
carpet shops, it had a jewelry case near the
front door full of heavy silver necklaces and
earrings, and long strands of lapis and amber
beads. I was admiring a necklace through the
glass, when an old woman came up to help
me. She had slate grey eyes and was wearing
a shawl over her shoulders. She wanted very
much to sell me the necklace and insisted
that I try it on. She even offered to give it to
me at half price if I paid cash.

Then I did something stupid, I asked if she
was from Afghanistan. She looked at me and
at once her eyes went cold.

She walked away and left me standing there
with the necklace on and the case wide open.

When I passed by a month later the store had
closed down.

Every now and then dad would take one of
us kids into town with him while he took
care of business. He would throw a few old
kilims in the trunk of his car and wed spend
the day driving around West Hollywood
visiting his carpet dealer buddies.
At lunchtime he would take us to see
his best friend, Wali. Wali owned a huge
warehouse full of carpets just off Wilshire
Boulevard, in the Miracle Mile district.

After 9/11, the U.S. hired Afghan warlords to
take care of the Taliban. In one village they

55
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herded them all into shipping containers then
stood outside and shot at them with machine
guns. They left the men insidethe living and
the dead togetherfor days in the hot sun.
Those that survived were sent off to a prison
somewhere.

We dont know where.

Fifteen minutes of no-touch torture (gloves,
goggles, and earmuffs) can result in complete
mental breakdown.

Under a large white drop-cloth , just inside
the roll-up gates of his warehouse, Wali kept
a 1956 Cadillac limousine that used to
belong to the King of Afghanistan. In every
way the car looked as if it belonged to a king.
There wasnt a ding in its massive chrome
fenders or a scratch in its coal-black paint.
The seats were big as theater couches and
done in plush gray velvet, and both the
dashboard and the rear paneling were made
of solid mahogany. In the back there was a
bar with an elaborately carved crystal
decanter on top, and tucked inside the front
passenger-side door was a hidden
compartment just large enough for the
bodyguards gun.
There was also a small cream-
colored1960s Mercedes SL parked next to
the limousine. It belonged to the kings son.
There were three bullet holes in the rear
fender. He was assassinated inside.
I stayed away from that car.



56
Mira Martin-Parker
I like to come in early to work. I settle into my
cubicle, put my lunch in my food drawer,
comb my hair, powder my nose, then I turn
on my computer.

My homepage is the companys intranet site.
Off to the side they list their recent press
releases, below that they offer a few industry
highlights, and at the very bottom they post
the top news stories of the day.

I dont like to read them, but I feel compelled
to.

There were five of us kids, three brothers, two
sisters. We each had a different mother.
Dad had a violent streakhe fought
with his women and he fought with us.
Usually the utilities were disconnected and
there was no food in the house.
We all dropped out of school as soon as
we were old enough and started working
full-time.
Once we saved up enough money, we
moved out.

They interviewed an American soldier last
night on the radio. He cant sleep anymore. He
dreams about the women and children he
killed. They were trying to run away from their
homes to escape the bombing.

But unlike the rest of us, Noah didnt move
out. He just stopped coming home.



57
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They also interviewed the soldiers mother. He
calls her at night with a gun in his mouth.

The other night I dreamed I saw Noah. I was
driving along the freeway, heading towards
the city, and I happened to glance over into
the car next to me. There he was, riding in
the backseat of a late model Buick. When he
saw me he laughed. Then all of his gangster
friends looked over and laughed at me, too.
They were driving fast, and they swerved to
try and hit me.

Then I woke up.

The story about the Israeli high-fivers was
first covered in The Forward, the oldest Jewish
newspaper in the United States. Nothing
became of it.

They were going to publish a piece on it in The
Nation magazine, but it was pulled at the last
minute.

Noah didnt live far from me, maybe fifteen
minutes away. But I hadnt seen him in
years.
I didnt want to.
He had a problem.

The Taliban banned drugs and as a result
opium production was dramatically reduced.

I used to have three brothers.
One had a problem.
Now I have two.


58
Mira Martin-Parker
Since the U.S. has taken over in Afghanistan,
cultivation is up 90%.

Poppies.

59
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60
Alyson Sinclair
Bef ore t hat t ho[ ugh] , i f l ucky
David Rivard

we will climb the whipping tree,
breaking each branch with purpose,
on our way down.
We will learn to forgive our fathers
vocal cords; we will learn to separate the man
from the body. Brother will handmedown a hickory
for a collarbone.
We will grind the bones of a cuttlefish into a life balm.

Gather together everybody, anybody,
all the bodies. There are no saints to write about.
No one without a lung. We atone for our anti-sins
in the quarry below. I will kiss the father on both cheeks,
sir, like forgiveness. Forgivable. Forget.
Every headstone will read:
an unmarked roadmap away from the childhood home.

Gather round it is time to unlearn the language:
raccoon, barbwire, bobcat, fath-er, fa-th-air, farther, and further
than the actual air. A bellyful of actual blankness.
Words are birthstones we must carry in our mouths
(do not swallow) maybe poisonous. Hold them theyre heavy
to talk on slow like biography. Aint got time. Aint got no
native

tongue. No proper english. One hundred years of dialect is hard
to memorize.
is painful to forget. My sleep voice says: fah from heah.
The narrative demonstrates the mill continuative.
The hickoryswitch mouth will learn to make
full sentences some-day, -where, -time, -place:

61
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will always be a part of an accusation. A flame for
thermography.

There are regions. There are bodies. Things are quick-like,
slow-like, proper-like, improper like striping the tree bark.
The back of childhood. The back hand of it.
We will find our language covered in spit, long-drawn out,
shining like a new city.
We will forgive and talk southern to one another late into
the night.

We will crack pecans and warm our bellies in the sweat-heat of
a Carolina July.
In the piedmont of humidity, branch-broke, we will not whip
the tree.
No purpose. No reason to break and climb back up.
Before that though, if lucky we will recognize restraint as love.
We will separate our hate from our bodies.
And defend our dialect from our father memories:
from a limb stripped of its bark soaking in alcohol for
infinity.
We will learn to forgive the tree.

62
Chris Peck
JAMES BROWN

where were you? when the witch docta first shockd ya?,
and set you free from the sex machine, and bought you
a brand new bag?
were you there? can you tell a story to me?
cast like a bronze-age oral history?
man, I got a gold record deep in my brain
To pay a homage to the name of the James

james brown died on christmas day
gave back the wiccans what they owned anyways
talking bout the longest winter night
thinking bout the strongest shade of starlight
who triggered the death of the birth of the cool school
inspired and fertilized the birth of the bitches brew
miles caught him live at Newport and he knew
what he had to do with a chosen few

so where were you?
when the witch docta first shockd ya?
and set you free from the sex machine,
and bought you a brand new bag?
hah, and set you free from the sex machine,
and taught you what you didnt need to buy, cause you
already had
and gave you a brand new bag

wish I coulda seenm, with my own two peepers
heardm without the help of a screen or speakers
danced with the hot pants lady, maybe freaked her

63
sPARKLE & bLINK
sat behind the mixing board, maybe spiked the meters
cause man knew how to hurt a microphone with a
shriek,
now he speaks from the grave through the records he
made
SO GO TO HEAVEN WITH YOUR BAD SELF, JAMES

wish I coulda seenm put the vibe in the air,
out in Zaire, putta shock in don kings hair
seen the dancers jump higher than the highest ferris
wheel at the biggest county fair
were you there?
were you there?
can you tell a story to me?
cast like a bronze-age oral history?
maaan I gotta gold record deep in my brain,
to pay a homage to the name of the James

an old dog taught a new trick to me
a little bird chirped me a history
down by the bottom of the deep blue sea
waves repeat a mystery, blissfully blister me
with lessons of a time missed by me

cause my momma hadnt made me yet
family tree hadnt given its shade to me yet
I waited forever, to be born at this right time
and ever will I lie when its my time
the same fate awaits us, that befell James
so dont forget to mention his name


64
Chris Peck
where were you?
when the witch docta first shockd ya?
and set you free from the sex machine,
and bought you a brand new bag?
hah, and set you free from the sex machine,
and taught you what you didnt need to buy, cause you
already had
and gave you a brand new bag

65
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66
Robin Bullard
I Dont Want to Hear Your Story Because Youre
a Disgusting Piece of Shit

1878 Market street? I asked him, just to make
sure Id heard it right.
Yeah, he said. Then he turned back to her. Is
that it?
She was a cutey, Ill say thatif a thoroughly
toasted cutey. White girl, maybe twenty-five.
A pale, perfectly formed little face that
reminded me of a mink. In hindsight, make it a
weasel.
Black hair. Tattooed arms. A whorish
contemporary outfit with a wrap-around black
thing that covered her top half. More or less. A
taffeta miniskirt and complicated stockings below.
Id taken it all in as she stumbled into the cab with
A guy, wearing a wool beanie despite the warm
weather. Shirt tail out, a half-assed beard. A super-
cool bike messenger bag slung around his neck.
The two of them were about the same age Im
pretty sure but, compared to her, he looked like a
kid.
Its the a d d r e s s I said be-fore, she slurred,
grabbing a cell phone from his hand.
Cant you fucking show me?
In the tilted rear-view mirror she pushed the
glowing cell phone into his face like she wanted to
wipe his nose with it.
Just go through your texts, he said to the
bluish light, fending away her hand.
What button do I push? Cant you do it for
me? Im fucking completely hammered, dude.
Cant you just look for me?
The boy took the phone from her hand. Okay,

67
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he said. But you do have your money though,
right?
Yes! she hissed at him. I have my fucking
money, but I dont have my fucking cigarette! She
slapped the vinyl. I dropped it. Now I dont know
where its gone.
She flopped back and grabbed his arm. Do you
have a cigarette?
Yeah, he said.
Can I have one?
When we get out of the car.
I want one now!
You cant smoke in here, I said.
Scuse me? Shed suddenly detected another
life form.
You cant smoke in the car, I said again.
Listen, driver man, she said. My fucking
elbows are bleeding, although I hadnt asked
about her elbows. Theyre bleeding and broken!
Really? I said. But I guess she didnt care to
elaborate.
Instead, she slapped at the phone in her
boyfriends hand. Go to it and show it! she
demanded.
He pushed the phone towards her.
Dont hand it to me! Just show me. God. Im
going to lose my mind, bro!
She screamed at the top of her weasily voice.
We rolled on. Shed stalled out momentarily,
but I was pretty sure I was traveling with a bomb.
Market Street. Tartlet Street. Gauntlet Street.
Hot skillet Street. The street on an angle thats got
no angle.
Sketchy looking shufflers in black hoodies.
Scraggily trees, clip joints, strip joints, crappy-
looking signs. All I wanted was to get someplace,

68
Robin Bullard
just wanted to get rid of an irritant to the brain, just
wanted to get on with my mundane life while this
unseen hand was ratcheting up my nerve fibres
while I begged for just one green light. Una luz
verde! The streetcar in the center lane trundled
along about as fast as you can walk, while the sad
sack drivers who drove on the right had a weird
agreement among themselves to drive at the exact
same speed as the streetcar. The human race is
cows. One after another, nose to butt, content to
shuffle along to pasture, to the barn or to the
freaking slaughter
Eighteen something, Sir, she suddenly
blurted. Between Laguna and whatever.
He knows where to go, the boy said. Dont
worry about it.
I think its ridiculous, by the way, that we
cant smoke in your fucking cab! she screamed at
the back of my head.
You need to chill out, the boy said.
Fuck you. Ill walk home, she said.
I pounced on this.
You want to walk home? I said. Thats great
news. Ill let you out right here.
Dont fuck with cab drivers, the boy said to
her.
Do you want to get out? I was suddenly so
enthusiastic.
No. I dont want to get out, she said. But do
you want to hear my life story?
I laughed. I have no interest in hearing your
life story! I said. Which was a phrase Id never,
ever said to anyone before.
Exactly! You dont give a fuck about my life
story.
I looked over my shoulder. I had been, so far,

69
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the driver of this tin toy taxi, attached to the
vehicle, the hollowed-out control module fused to
the seat, but now, I was coming undone, my metal
neck twisting, the flesh-colored shellac cracking as
I rotated partly towards her. I dont want to hear
your life story because youre a disgusting piece of
shit!
I pointed my eye balls at her sharp-toothed
little face even while the car rolled forwards. Do
you want to get out or not?
No I dont... I just want to go to that fucking
house.
I turned back to the wheel and tried to snap it
off.
Then stop being so fucking rude!
Im not
Youre a fucking little brat! I know Im a
brat.
Youre a fucking idiot! All I
Shut the fuck up! Goddammit, the boy
said.
Listening to you is like listening to someone
puke! I screamed. I could feel the blood rising in
my face.
Its like listening to someone shit!
I was screaming as loud as I possibly had ever
screamed in my entire life. Youre just fucking
disgusting!
I know Im gross, she said. So shut the fuck
up! Youre my favorite cab driver ever, the boy
said.
Yeah, hes fucking rad, she agreed.
Thank you, Sir he said.
I was driving a car, holding on to the wheel to
save my life. I felt utterly adrift.
So wheres the number? she said. I cant see

70
Robin Bullard
it. Is it further?
Were almost there, dont worry about it, said
the boy.
And then, miracle of miracles, she found it on
her phone. 1878 Market Street, Seior!
Two more blocks, I said.
Well, thank you very much.
Nobody said anything for two seconds.
I appreciate your help, she said. Im sure
youve dealt with a lot worse than me.
Not lately. No.
Well, Im sure you will. And youll have to do
it because youre just a fucking cab driver
There it is right there! I said, shaking my
finger at the dirty four-story blue apartment
building with the beat-up security gate at the
corner of Market and Laguna.
Eighteen seventy-eight. You see that?
Thanks, she said in a tone like shed just
taken a big whiff of sewer. I appreciate it. Im a
brat. She looked at the boy. This guy doesnt
even know me, bro! I go to USC and the Academy
of Art. He doesnt know me! Yeah. I have enough
money to pay him extra, if I wanted toWhat the
fucks this!? Its my bag, the boy said.
Wheres my bag?
Its not here. You didnt get mine?
No. I didnt know I was supposed to.
Fuck! She kicked the back of my seat three
times in quick succession.
Then there were three beats of silence.
What you have to do, she said almost
sweetly, is take us here and take us home...
So if you could wait outside thatd be really
extra cool.
Yeah. Thatd be really extra cool, I said.

71
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If you want your money, youre going to have
to wait. she said as she flung the left door open in
traffic. Somebody honked as she stumbled around
the back of the cab and reappeared by her
boyfriends door. Hed opened it, but hed paused
to tell me something.
Who you talking to? she yelled at him.
He made a pained face. Getting his dick wet
tonight didnt seem like such a gigantic deal now
maybe.
Go investigate! he yelled to her, gesturing at
the building.
Its stupid, she cried out.
Its not stupid.
He pulled the door shut. I could see her
through the window waving her arms. Spinning
around to look at the building and then turning
back again to face the cab like some sort of
pirouetting demented ballerina while I couldnt
stop myself from checking out the 2 or 3 inches of
lush white thigh that showed between the tops of
her complicated stockings and her fluffy little skirt.
Closer to me, he sat there shaking his head. The
meter read $8.15.
I know, I said. You dont have any money
with you, right?
But before he could answer, she jerked the door
open from outside, so that it creaked like it was
going to come off. If there was any damage to her
elbows it didnt seem to have affected her colossal
strength.
Where the hells 1787? she wailed. I dont
know where the fuck Im going, dude! I dont
know where Im going. Ive never been here,
dude!
Go with her, I said. I dont even care about

72
Robin Bullard
the money.
He doesnt want to wait? Is that it? She was
utterly unstoppable. Does he want to go?
Shes so annoying. I said to him. I dont
know how you can stand it.
I am annoying! she screamed.
I looked directly at her. I honestly dont know
how he puts up with you.
I honestly dont know how you can be a
fucking cab driver! she countered.
You should thank him, I yelled, pointing at
the guy who was still sitting there between us.
Fuck your mom! she shrieked.
The shit that he has
Fuck your mom!
Being around you is torture.
Fuck your mom! She screamed it again. She
screamed it twice more.
Good night! I said turning back to the wheel.
Bad night! she said.
Please take her away, I said to him.
Yeah. Take me away. Take me away! Free cab
ride!
Shut up! the boy said.
Dont push me, Daniel!
The boy with the beanie turned back to me.
Im really sorry, he said. Then he stepped out of
the cab.
Hey Asshole! I heard, as the door / slammed
shut.
I pushed the gas and made a quick right.
Immediately a guy, a greasy-looking guy with a
ratty mustache and a long coat stepped out of the
darkness holding up his long red hand. He got in.
Howya doin, he said.
Fine, I said.

73
sPARKLE & bLINK
Take me to the Hi-Tide, he said.
The one on Geary? I said.
Yeah, he said.
Okay, I said.

74
Roger Porter
A Fl eet i ng Daydream

Sometimes when Im in the midst of
people-watching while at a caf or
walking down the street, I admit to
having very random thoughts. Often
times I see people who are mentally ill
talking to themselves and blurting out
obscenities or whatever else comes to
mind and I become envious. I know how
strange that must sound but I cannot
deny the truth.

I am aware that most people are either
repulsed by the mentally ill, indifferent,
or sympathetic; however, you must be
aware that Im not most people. I
honestly think that it takes a lot of
courage to walk down the street wearing
whatever clothes you want to wear,
unkempt hair, and an unshaven face
knowing that people are going to point,
laugh, or stare and not care at all. I
admire the people who we tend to call
crazy in a way because no matter what
happens they continue to sing their song.
They refuse to fall in line like the rest of
us and do normal things, and have
normal ambitions, and wear normal
clothes. Assata Shakur once wrote; Only
the strong go crazy. The weak just go
along. Therefore the mentally ill people
who we see on the streets may not have

75
sPARKLE & bLINK
families or homes like us sane folks but
they have something that we dont have
the strength to go against the grain.

And on these days I just want to give up
my laptop and roam the Earth until my
shoes get holes in the bottom. I want to
wear a full-length leather jacket in the
middle of July and walk around shirtless
in the winter not caring if I live or die.
Then maybe Ill meet a friend that no one
else can see but me and well have
lengthy conversations about love,
hypocrisy, sweet potato pie, and The Little
Mermaid. And when we walk down the
street people will clear the way and give
us the whole sidewalk because they
respect us that much. And we will have
peace of mind, we will have healthy souls,
and we will truly love ourselves. People
will look at us and shake their heads as if
to say what a shame, and we will have
pity on those poor unfortunate souls
because both of us had the foresight to
jump out right before the whole thing
exploded while they all died in the wreck.

Then my daydream ends. I save my
document, logout, and close my laptop.

76
Guinevere Q
Sock

Just be yourself.
Those were the last words the left sock
ever said to the right sock before the hands
commanded by the brain up in management
terminated the left sock because the hole had
spread embarrassingly wide. Swiss cheese
feet. In some ways, the right sock was
thankful for the recession. If it werent for
being broke, the right sock wouldve been
thrown away, too.
But still, he was lonely. And maybe that
was worse.
Myself. How can I be myself? Thought the
right sock, who lately had played the role of
the left with other mismatched pairs. Ive
never been myself. Sure, I wrap up feet to
keep them warm, but thats just what socks
do except for those unfortunate radicals
whore forced into the subculture of sock
puppetry. They make a mockery of sockery at
large.
The right sock then amused himself for
awhile, entertaining ideas about how much
more miserable some other socks are: some
are rocked off, hed heard, some stretched
thin with pathetic, warn elastic, some are

77
sPARKLE & bLINK
plaid, and some carry an odor that never
quite leaves no matter how often the beastly
washing machine beats them, and other still
are humiliatingly hung from mantles and
stuffed with cheap plastic crap once a year
before being tucked back into boxes. How
dreadful. Imagining the ways other socks
were worse off than him cheered the right
sock up for a time, but then made him feel
even more lonely.
Hed grown tired of empty distractions
and wished the toes would want him to keep
them close together for company on a walk.
Little pastries in the oven.
How can I be myself when Im not myself
anymore? No other sock folds up with me the
same. Wool, striped, thick, business casual
mostly all one night stands.
And so the sock thought he ought to write
his dear, missing left of the pair a eulogy. But
that was too depressing. So he settled for a
story.
The sock wrote, once upon a time, and
then scratched it out. This was no fairy tale.
And besides, it was all more than once. In
French, theres a verb tense for states of being
in the past that occurred continuously but no
longer happen. Thinking about it made him

78
Guinevere Q
tense. The French socks always seemed so
seamless and smooth nylon, sheer, silk, and
sexy.
The sock wrote, in the not so distant
time No, no, no! Its all wrong.
He poured himself a drink. Just to stretch
the fibers.
The sock looked around the drawer and
saw all of the other pairs embracing each
other. He poured himself another drink.
Its the feets fault really, decided the sock.
Another drink. And then another.
The sock got hotter. Fucking feet. I should
slice off the left and then therell be no need
for 2 socks at once. The sock, for a moment,
tried to stop his plot against the foot, but he
couldnt heel. He was toe-tally engrossed in
his plan.
Drunk and angry and consumed with utter
rage and despair, he sang, this little piggy
went to the market and this little piggy stayed
home, this little piggy had roast beef, this
little piggy had none, and this little piggy ran
all the way up the Achilles and attended to
the ankle and hacked it off and watched it
bleed with dangling veins fizzling like hoses
all around exposed bone

79
sPARKLE & bLINK
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAA!!!!
Laughed the sock.
Shh trying to sleep! said the
underwear. Fucking neighbors, said the
sock, who poured himself another drink.
The next morning, the sock awoke in his
own piss and vomit. Naturally, he was taken
to the Laundromat to rehydrate and clean up.
Exhausted and dizzy and feeling even more
alone amongst the rest of the soiled clothes,
the sock hopped beneath the dryer to re-
evaluate his life.
Thats when the music came. Trumpets
and joyous drums a real New Orleans jazz
sound. Brass with sass. The sock squirmed
further beneath the dryer with the quarters
and keys and bus transfers. Vibrant colors
and dancing and food so much spicy,
delicious food! There were clowns and
acrobats and strippers and pies and smiles
that burst out of eyes - the sock wiggled closer
and closer and closer to join the circus but the
dryer was so hot, that he caught on fire and as
he burned to ashes with fabric smoke that
smelled of singed cotton the last thing that
sock thought was, I can never just be myself
because Im defined by others like me.

80
Guinevere Q
This was quickly forgotten, of course,
because it wasnt very profound. If you find
something, you have to have lost it first.

81
sPARKLE & bLINK

82
Stellar Cassidy
TL Pi geon

There is a pigeon in the Tenderloin who thinks

shes a dove
which is to say that perhaps she is
which is to say that when I found her,
lost and wandering in a tiny alley
she was most likely having an existential
crisis.
Which is to say that she had just found
freedom
Or something like that
Because she doesnt know
that she too is a pigeon,
like the ones
she would watch
in the alley below
from behind
the third story
glass window
where her gilded cage
disguised as a throne
hung near.

There is a pigeon in the Tenderloin who thinks
shes a dove
which is to say that someone must have
treated her as such
which is to say that her keeper most likely fed
her well
while the pigeons below her fought over scraps.

83
sPARKLE & bLINK
And her keeper kept clipping her wings
so that she couldnt fly free
But somehow, she still managed to get away.
Which is to say that I fell in love with her
Because she was beautiful
and broken.
And by broken
I mean domesticated,
and until then
I had never seen
a domesticated pigeon.

There is a pigeon in the Tenderloin who thinks
shes a dove
Which is to say she doesnt know which way is up
Which is to say that the other pigeons cant
recognize her
Nor her, them.
And she is lonely,
for her keeper only wanted a muse
who could sing pretty songs,
and she is satisfied
with mediocrity
because it is easiest to love
things that are easy.
There is a pigeon in the Tenderloin who thinks
shes a dove
which is to say she doesnt sing the same song
which is to say that perhaps she may have
once had
which is to say that she cannot sing any longer

84
Stellar Cassidy
which is to say that I wish she could, so that I
could hear her speak
which is to say that I wish she could capture
all of the agony
of captivity in her voice, so that maybe the
pigeons will understand her.

And although I wish it,
I dont expect it.
For she is shattered
yet stuck
somewhere between freedom,
and the captivity that comes with it.
But I wanted so badly to save her
Yet, she was not mine to save.
And all I can do
is sing in broken high notes
as the pigeons circle
high above her
and create moving shadows
for her to watch.


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