Tourism

On any given day school-children are not expected to hang themselves from light-poles. Should the time come, the closing of one's coffin is not uninviting, yet does not necessarily smell of roses, or camphor, or salt-treated lumber. We have codified laws, ratified through the blood of labor, demonstrated by logic without chasm. Here, we press our feet to the ground to feel the future, something to behold!

Your patronage is essential. In spring, baby elk wander the mountain-side caressing eager faces, soliciting donations. Let that face be yours! Let our baby elk caress you!

Our gods, they have names. Know them through your hard work, through unwavering patience in light of collective disaster—reticence and stoicism! They have ample room in their many hearts for your burdens. Availability dependent upon perceived group interest.

There are poets who have burned at the stake. Fear not such punitive action! Though we no longer allow the purveyance of verse, naturally immolation as deterrent is frowned upon.

Our national language is truth-telling. Our national sport is nameless—a distant cousin of modern whale hunting. Imports have long ceased their stronghold on the economy; citizens generate income through the deceptive employment of guilt. In fact, many families live indulgently, and most are able to provide progeny with false organs, often brand-new, so as to stave death's encroachment. Health is a budgetary concern here, and we pride ourselves on the ability to scale its pertinence to the biological level. All newborn infants are covered in protective liquid latex, head-to-toe, and carried home from the birthing-place in steel crates.

Our citizens are frequently thought to be the happiest among similar-range cohorts. Rarely do housewives aged twenty-eight through forty-nine stick their heads in ovens. We count our blissful moments with specially calibrated instruments hanging from carabiners. No one is overlooked. Our suns are brighter here. There is a joy in this place. We watch reruns and expect them to love us back.

--Nathan Blake is an elementary school teacher and recent college graduate. He has a penchant for night sailing and his fiction has been published in some boring and not-so-boring places.

PIZZA PREDATOR

This galaxy is sometimes more enjoyable soundproof,
a miracle beaming broadly, with piano key teeth,
after rising from a puddle of mud – curtsying to buxom
psychopharmacological ingredients in frilly panties: the mind's
silicon stylus would otherwise be less adjustable.
Useful otherwise only as a leech keyring, landing in your lap
and sucking on your dick
after fumbling with it in your getaway car.

Cardboard embedded with a transistor. The pizza circa 2053.
Now an asthmatic mound flickering with adorable Anime eyes:
TV bodily fluid accrued.
Pellets of clown fossil; albino crusts scattered across the floor of
an antidepressants factory after Robocop had passed through.
Bigfoot kissing in an '80s calisthenics video. 'Now respect my
embrace, bitch!' Resentment's acoustics:
polyvinyl sewn into the Victorian pelvic dashboard.

A microbial free lunch with roots in a large teeming subterranean metropolis,
as enticing to a corkscrew as that small dot marking the convergence of a
staring contest between a car salesman and a soda
vending machine. Predatory.

--Tyson Bley walks dogs, bakes cake, and works as a nuclear physicist for a living. He writes mainly about these experiences. Find him at http://soapstain.blogspot.com/.

MORNING BREATH

all-nude jail peanut butter broke jittering wooden toy bug anal probe
many uvula kilowatts Wookie uses to wake her
purgatory loves its stereo:
Heineken hates its pleats:
school teachers hate their asscheeks:

it is all cleansed and submerged in the backwash of a very spiritual B-Movie about marsupials

quilted, disposable liver!
what an insane cardio staple-gun!
how the tear ducts remain dry as they shudder!

--Tyson Bley walks dogs, bakes cake, and works as a nuclear physicist for a living. He writes mainly about these experiences. Find him at http://soapstain.blogspot.com/.

DEAN OF DAFT

Deviled eggs that contain trace amounts of a gypsy curse.

Split in separate directions: a coma growing enough false-positive corners to quilt a sleeping bag at odds with its host's tastes.

And so thanks to an empty, uncharred can of Pepsi sitting atop a heap of ash in the crematorium, the group of mourners are afforded evidence of the existence of portals.

As if the reinvention of antacids weren't enough, the question as to why the crack pipe so suited the goat's mustache was also enthusiastically tackled.

The horrible opinion of the mailman – that my Toyota has all the qualities of an enchanting conversation piece, best moved to the back of the house at the risk of drawing all the city's mailmen.
At the risk of the dandelions in my front yard being savagely trampled.

The myth of the office water cooler debunked.
It is a troll in a white UN helmet.

MC Hammer reworking his entire existence into an impossibly complicated scientific calculator – so that his buttons may be touched, but NOT his soul.

Withdrawal, cold sweats, green bumps erupting all over his neck and back – Ernie longs immediately for his wife's hand's fingers' reinsertion into the holes of the bowling ball; he's addicted to how handsome his wife's hand looks holding the heavy black orb, and cannot imagine seeing it otherwise preoccupied.

Postmortem, played on loop like artfully styled ping-pong.

'Bmeep-bmeep!': for to the brick moved slowly by telekinesis, that sound, made by the Roadrunner overtaking it in a mushroom-stalked plume of dust, sounded heinous.
Sacrilegious.

--Tyson Bley walks dogs, bakes cake, and works as a nuclear physicist for a living. He writes mainly about these experiences. Find him at http://soapstain.blogspot.com/.

SO WHERE EXACTLY DOES MY ASS GO?

Enamored with the exit wound
the geometrical shape that adorned my room
Cheers to the painkiller, a fluffy minion hardwired to
the grille, psychically imparted by the exterminator
Foam scalp masturbation – wax of the spinal cord
dripping so long on hooks; one detail of the proton-pack omitted
a sort of follicle unplugged
Just an eggshell that used to be part
of the greater nausea, swimming around like
bewitched smurf spores
The blue barbeque's lair, enzymes like a fashion
to the tiny doomed aureola of charcoal
In spasmodic cellophane stacking packets of selective amnesia
that shoot lasers into the void
while crinkling like a nosebleed
On my perm's pulp adventure – an encounter with a
juggernaut which happened to be the salacious byproduct of
a rabbit. Dangling out of the poltergeist:
a cell-like endoscopic image of a hairspray canister
Afforded a bit of free time to scratch, so good, so goooooo-
an invaluable opportunity for the Ghostbusters
to stare into my gills. They'll see the crepe paper of
a tongue amid a terrible seizure, in sleep agonizing over
the exact location of the entry wound

--Tyson Bley walks dogs, bakes cake, and works as a nuclear physicist for a living. He writes mainly about these experiences. Find him at http://soapstain.blogspot.com/.

From The Book of Corporate Prayer

 
Help me to love the Corporation
that gives me employment,
to go beyond
what is an acceptable level of productivity
in corporate society,
                               and
to always do more than is expected
to further the cause of profitability
 
 
 
 
Almighty Corporation,
ruler of all the peoples of the earth,
forgive,
           we pray,
                        our shortcomings as workers;
purify our hearts to see and love the bottom line;
give wisdom to our executives
and steadfastness to our employees;
                                                       and
bring us at last to what you consider a fair wage,
whose foundations are your mercy,
your justice,
                   your goodwill,
                                         and,
                                                 above all,
your continued profitability
Amen
 
 
 
 
Use me then,
my Corporation,
for whatever purpose,
                                and in whatever way,
you may require
Here is my poor person,
an empty vessel;
                          fill it
with the grace of employment by you
Here is my idle soul;
quicken it and refresh it
for your profitability
Take my mouth to spread abroad
the glory of your name;
                                   so that
at all times I may be able to say from the heart
My Corporation needs me,
                                        and
more than that,
                        I need Him
 
 
 
 
Corporation,
you give the great commission:
Heal the bottom line and preach profits
Help us witness to your purpose
Corporation,
you call us to your service,
that the world may trust your promises
for as long as you're willing to keep them;
give us all new fervor
You may hoard as private treasure
all we so freely give
And Corporation,
you bless us with words assuring us
we will be with You as long as we serve Your ends
Amen
 
 
 
O Corporation,
when you give to us work,
grant us to know it is just a beginning,
                                                        and
will continue on down to the end,
until it be thoroughly finished,
when it yields the true glory,
Profits
 
 
 
 
And,
        lastly,
                  let us ray
for the continued complacent complicity
of the nine old men
(some of whom at any given time
will be women),
that they may keep considering us persons
now and forever
Amen

--Michael Ceraolo is a 53-year old civil servant/poet who has had one full-length book (Euclid Creek, from Deep Cleveland Press) published, plus a few shorter-length books and numerous magazine publications. The poem The Book of Corporate Prayer is part of a growing collection entitled "The Business of America."

Hungry People

Fry the bird and stuff its ass
full of fat and potato,
stuff its head with lard and butter
and sip its blood like a tall glass
                           of milk.

Uncle Eddie, take another drink,
I'll go shot for shot with you - you pour
I'll swallow.
I see that mask over your eyes, that
thin glaze of crumbling life, of arteries
clogged and love missing the ladder
rungs,
                           much like this.
                       
feel the claustrophobic china
plates - the musk of PaPa's old sweater,
but he's dead now so
I guess we won't be smelling
that stink
                           again. Put another

notch in the warped wicker
door frame; "another year
we all stayed afloat, another year
we can be together." Oh, hold my hand
PaPa, hold my whale-blimp hand
and I'll hold yours, bony and dead,
                           but not at this table.

Not now, not amongst rejecting
hearts and failing livers, not amongst
fake smiles,
stories about how Brittany is doing
in school; you don't give a fuck,
you're dying! Oh sweet end,
the table dripping with gravy the color
of milky come, turniped squash mashed with
cinnamon, arugula and basil and tomatoes
and the
                           dying.

the sweet end, the last supper
with us, PaPa, and you can't even remember
our names. You can't remember
Uncle Eddie
and how the rum ruined
his children, you can't remember
his insides as coarse as sandpaper,
you can't remember Brittany dropping
out of the nursing program, picking up
with what-the-fuck's-his-name; you can't
remember me standing next to you,
by your burnished coffin, kneeling like the rest,
pretending to moan out a prayer, when
I really didn't say anything
                           at all.

--Bryan S. Way just graduated from Bridgewater State University. In the following years, he will be living on the road and in the mountains, developing community with the precision of a vagabond, and exploring the depths of character that can only be attained through the willing rejection of comfortable living. And he will write about it.

Death Was a Poem about Vultures in the Sun

I miss the blackened bones piled on the sidewalk,
          stacked in peculiar patterns,
          forming shapes that bent in the eve,
                                      as dead bodies are rotting poetry.
          They had a way of pinging themselves
          from velcroed black walls,
          sticky as labrador retrievers
                                      hopping from honey puddle
                                      to honey puddle,
          as bees would chase the beasts & succumb
          to their skin like flies on shit.
I miss when we'd bury ourselves, likewise,
          like the grubs of the earth;
          like worms in the dirt.
                                       Once, many years ago,
          I found the body of a deer decomposing
          on the side of the road,
          and pondered existence.
                                       I pondered purpose in breathing,
          the existential 'why is why.'
          the organic matter sculpted of piss and liver,
          melting on track with
                   the rest of the plunge - where can I find you tonight?
I pondered the animal's energy with the old woods,
          the ancient mantled oak flowering sweet life
          in freed spaces, and then now,
          years later, the bones are still there.
                                        Left to dry. Mummied in
          the brisk of the delegated sun;
          an orphan, naked, under a streetlight
          at the corner of roads seldom traveled.
                                        Shards of clay stripped from the remains,
          tiny piece by tiny piece,
          and still I wonder - where do you sleep tonight?
                      where do you rest your head? how many deer
                                        lay dead by roadsides? how many do I not care about?

--Bryan S. Way just graduated from Bridgewater State University. In the following years, he will be living on the road and in the mountains, developing community with the precision of a vagabond, and exploring the depths of character that can only be attained through the willing rejection of comfortable living. And he will write about it.

mi magnifico

oblong drops of coffee drip down the spine
                 of plastic cups. somewhere in between I hear the voices,
                 my parents; they call my name but their cries are distanced 
                 in paper-walled echoes.
mother on her knees weeping softly,
                 it's alright to let it out she says. your dad is strong,
                 she says, we'll get through this no matter what. outside winter
                 is being pissed on by the angry sun,
                                                  the fucking pissed off angry fucking sun.
it melts the muddy snow, the mass grows inside my father.
                 I'm here for you dad, forever, I say.
                 I know you are.
                 when night comes all is quiet, bellies spilling with
                 arrowy pigfeast, I turn and hold and believe in no magic
                                                  & no god. somewhere in the sky
there is no one laughing no one proving me wrong.
                 it is all fluttered prose. without conviction
                 the fumes run through the room, scaled in particled air,
                 filling up the sleeves of sadness like the leaky veins of a wristcutter.
                 father is sleeping now, I can hear his breathing apparatus -
                 robot pumping oxygen into his lungs. mother with a book upon her,
                                                    the dogs passed out in the neolithic night.
we bang on turtle shells
we bathe in heated coals and rocks
                 we try to stay awake through the sterile and the dying.

--Bryan S. Way just graduated from Bridgewater State University. In the following years, he will be living on the road and in the mountains, developing community with the precision of a vagabond, and exploring the depths of character that can only be attained through the willing rejection of comfortable living. And he will write about it.

The Old Rocking Chair and the Old Man Sitting in It

Incoherent and void of teeth,
Old Man chewing his gums and spitting tobacco.
A dog sleeping on the porch with his paws
hanging over the edge, strumming the scraps of wood
like paper streamers parading down
on a high school gymnasium. In the fields,
children throwing husks of corn at critters dodging past -
rabbits, mostly, but once in a great while, to their delight,
a ground weasel.

Old Man staring out into the rows of thatched vegetable,
watching the children swell through their years.
They turn into adults, then into old men, then into corpses.
Then they are born again and again.

--Bryan S. Way just graduated from Bridgewater State University. In the following years, he will be living on the road and in the mountains, developing community with the precision of a vagabond, and exploring the depths of character that can only be attained through the willing rejection of comfortable living. And he will write about it.

Dat. (dot) N and Eros

The floor plan is scribbled with tiny annotations in a non-architectural hand, hypertrophied hallways and with rooms half the width between. After a while the floor plans stood up by themselves and, without inviting suitors, were leased and sold as private spaces (under contract) in which good men might perform their hideous acts for the benefit of cedar and birch statuettes which lined the walls, also unbidden and as confused at their present situation as the now-erect floor plans were at theirs.*

(*This isn't to say that the floor plans or the blue and yellow divisions weren't pleased, just that they couldn't say either way yet.)

--Nick Willows is 20, resides in Melbourne, Australia, and isn't really anybody yet. He writes daily at IncreaseLucidity.blogspot.com.

I am a writer

I am a writer
Words are my weapons
If you don’t watch out
I’ll participle your hair with an axiom

--Robert Laughlin lives in Chico, California. Two of his short stories are Million Writers Award Notable Stories, and his novel, Vow of Silence, was favorably reviewed by Publishers Weekly. His website is at www.pw.org/content/robert_laughlin.

Borrowed time

These woods, dark in midday armor,
are barely breathing.
I walk, numb, over grass and vines
that do not move,
as if I merely hover here
on borrowed time.

I cannot see or feel my feet
or hear steps in the undergrowth.
Only smell is free to vibrate here:
pine needles, moldy, unturned earth.
Rot and sweetness fill my breath
with ancient drumming.

I must tell you; this is not your journey.

But these are my words;
I am carving them now, on strips of bark
that bleed into my opened hands.
The hard-bitten syllables open arteries
of copper; they snake along my wrists
to soak into death-ready ground.

This forest is not safe at night.

I think it is thwarted. The river is thick,
sluggish with blood and offal.
My hand, plunged below the surface,
unlocks lament that keens beyond its sound
as I search, without a point of reference,
the long-dead maps now visible above.

I don't know why I hurl the bark
into the distance. I throw it as far as I can,
and with it, I sling blood from my hand
in a fan-shaped arc. It hovers,
weightless in dense air,
hanging, a bloody rune
that muddled, dying bees
mistake for lavender.

You are not safe here.

I know I am not.
I have come too far and these woods
are dangerous; there are no constants.
I have lost my way, lost the words.
I have forgotten something I knew as a child.

You cannot trust yourself, not your senses,
not in this forest of rot and sweetness.

I cannot, though I am tired and cold.
I want to sleep, but I cannot
rest in these dream-filled woods,
in a forest that slips from consciousness
into icy voids that slice into night.

Once I carved words into memory.
I try to summon them now but they are lost.
I threw them into coppery graves
filled with dead things, with dead bees,
and I watered them with poison rivers.

They were irreplaceable,
and I let them go.


--Susan S. Keiser is a writer and editor, living in Key West, Florida and dabbling in pastry and literary marketing. Her work has been
published in SpokenWar, Haggard and Halloo, Carcinogenic Poetry, The Camel Saloon, and Orion headless.

Untitled

It's ladies night, all the girls drink for free
So they're hugging, and crying
A friend asks a question: Will I get what I deserve?
And falls asleep. I carry her home.

Take off her shoes
Lay her in bed
Wonder should I leave her dress
Check she's still breathing
A hand under her nose
Despite the rise and fall of her chest

--Nick Willows is 20, resides in Melbourne, Australia, and isn't really anybody yet. He writes daily at IncreaseLucidity.blogspot.com.

Calliope Nerve Interview Series: Kyle Muntz

Kyle, how did you become an author at such a young age?  How long have you been writing?

I started writing when I was really young—I’m not quite sure of the exact number anymore, but I’m pretty sure it was somewhere around 14 or 15. The first three novels I wrote were really terrible, and then after that something just sort of clicked, and suddenly, after a little while, I was able to reread my work without cringing. I’m really glad I was able to reach the point, or I never would have been able to begin submitting anywhere.



Tell us about your book "Voices."  Why did you write it?

I went into Voices intending to write something completely unpublishable—to a pursue a certain experimental strain that had been appearing in my writing up until that time as far I could. A lot of things that I was feeling and thinking around that point ended up becoming really apparent, personally and emotionally—and then, on the intellectual side, the novel was built around concepts drawn from semiotics, existentialism, and poststructualism, then put together sort of like science fiction. Even though on it’s very much a “formless” book and one reliant on concepts drawn from philosophy, I was hoping to create something with narrative drive and real emotional intensity, as opposed to the “cold formalism” associated with experimental fiction. I couldn’t believe it initially when Crossing Chaos excepted the manuscript, but I’m really glad they decided to take the chance.



And you have a new book out, "Sunshine in the Valley."  Tell us about it.  Why is it important?

Sunshine in the Valley was one of the books I’ve I always wanted to write, though I’m not sure if I knew it at the time. On the surface it looks less experimental than Voices, but I think it’s more conceptually sophisticated and polished stylistically, and also has extremely prominent elements of “plot” in the most complex sense. I’ve always thought the move away from narrative is sort of a mistake. People have been taking the novel apart for over 70 years, but I think we’re at the point now where we can begin putting it back together, or hopefully give it a try, at least.

The novel itself is about a village surrounded by living walls situated somewhere in what might be the impossibly distant future. The approach I ended up taking was something like fantasy with heavy elements of mythology, and then building from that to take the novel in as many directions as possible. It’s not at all a “genre” piece, though it uses a lot of elements traditionally associated with genre fiction. I had hoped the experience would be really surreal and elaborate, and also engaging like a traditional novel, but in a very different way. I’m really interested to see how people will respond to it since for the most part it’s very different from Voices (and also from everything I’ve done since).

Do you consider yourself prolific?

To a certain degree, though there are a lot of people who write much faster than I do. I generally complete one or two novels a year, though most of the really early ones I’m not interested in publishing. The compulsion to write is always there, but I’ll generally take a few months or so off between each novel, with the goal of being someone completely different before I try something else.

You've been labeled as avante-garde.  Is that a fitting expression for your body of work?

To an extent. I have two novels—Voices, and another unpublished one called Green Lights/Purity of Vision—that fit more firmly in the territory of the avant-garde. Other than that, I like to think of myself as incorporating elements of the avant-garde into a kind of hybrid form. Since the subject matter changes a lot from book to book, recently I’ve felt compelled to move more towards something a little different, since I noticed I was sort of writing myself into a corner, but there’s always an influence from the avant-garde in all my writing, because that’s usually the type of material I enjoy reading the most.

Who/what influences you?

I have a list of absolute favorites authors whose influence, I think, is apparent in lots of my writing—Samuel Delany, Haruki Murakami, Borges, Gene Wolfe, Thomas Pynchon—and then in general, I’m usually heavily influenced by anything I read or watch. My writing is generally very separate from who I am as a person, particularly the narrators themselves, so I draw less from my day to day experience than certain permutations of images/ideas/themes that I encounter in other people’s work.

What's on your recommended reading list?

“Sayonara Gansters,” by Genichiro Takahashi, is possibly the best thing I’ve read in the last few years. A few more exceptional titles would be “Apostrophe/Parenthesis,” by Frederick Mark Kramer and “The Zoo Where We Are Fed to God”, by Michael Ventura. I’m also really looking forward to “The Day We Delay,” by Michael J. Seidlinger, and “The Infinite Library,” by Kane X. Faucher, though in the interest of honesty, both of these guys are friends and label-mates of mine, so I’m fairly biased….

Believe in writer's block?

Definitely. I seem to get it all the time, usually when I’m somewhere around 2/3rds of the way through a piece. It sucks, but it generally goes away. The thing I’m most of afraid of, I think, would be a time when it doesn’t….

Define success.

“Success”—a shapeless, insubstantial thing that exists only in the imagination.

Listen to music while you create?  Who?

I used to listen to music all the time, but a little less now. Some mainstays are Radiohead, Sigur Ros, Maudlin of the Well, and then ambient music in general. Not so much anymore, though. The “silence” of writing is something I’ve really begun to get in touch with, recently.

Do you have a "creative ritual" before or while you write?

Coffee, or something else with lots of caffeine in it. I usually try my best to look for the impulse behind writing in myself. Most of the time I find it. Those are the good days.

What does the future hold for Kyle Muntz?

I’ve got another novel coming out next year, VII (or) The Life, Times and Tragedy of Sir Edward William Locke the Third: Gentleman, which is actually a historical novel (of sorts), and very, very different from anything I’ve released so far. When I originally came up with the concept, I envisioned the coming together—in a very abstract sense—of the elements I enjoyed from Artaud, Nabokov, Borges, and maybe John Barth. It’s sort of a mix of classical surrealism and the theatrical avant-garde with metafictional overtones and even a hint of fantasy. It’s also very much an “evil” novel, as distinguished from everything else I’ve done, much darker and with heavier polemical overtones.

Tree of Pearl

There across the clearing
Of rising grass and weeds,
Parallel to our dinner train—
The rushing highway.

Beyond stands an army,
Soldiers dressed in green,
Lined to form a wall,
The battalion ready for war.

Out in front and to the center
A ghost is standing.
Such contrast against the emerald line,
Pearl-white and gleaming bark,

Leafless branching;
It looks as bone.
The trunk splits,
A twin is formed;

Conjoined, they share the roots,
And drink as one.

--Wesley Dylan Gray is a writer with a flair for the dark, the twisted, the beautiful, and the strange. He resides in Tarpon Springs, Florida with his wife Brenda and daughter Elizabeth “Ellie” Jadzia. His poetry and prose has appeared in various small press magazines and anthologies. Find him online at www.wesleydylangray.com.

Dark River

The dark river churns;
It sings to lonely hills,
And sweeps the babbling brooks.

The dark river burns;
It bends the mind
With turns, forks, and hooks.

The dark river flows;
It beckons to shadow,
And holds mountains in its palm.

The dark river runs;
It speaks to wild places,
Of faded lights, and whispers, and song.

--Wesley Dylan Gray is a writer with a flair for the dark, the twisted, the beautiful, and the strange. He resides in Tarpon Springs, Florida with his wife Brenda and daughter Elizabeth “Ellie” Jadzia. His poetry and prose has appeared in various small press magazines and anthologies. Find him online at www.wesleydylangray.com.

Preposterous

search
mornings internet
explorer

can hear
download music

do my duty
- upload

device
a relationship-

bunking
thoughts on chat

love tactfully
on skype

earn fameflakes
status updates

learn
a little
about
the Beatles

a lot
about sexual positions.

Google refreshes
me to me

wakefullness
multiplies
time into speed.

login

to father figures,

logout

of bedrooms.

distract
to books
to words
to parents
to fingers
to eyes

--Shivani Mutneja straddles between Delhi and Ghaziabad in a normal week. She teaches English Literature at Delhi University. She holds a degree in Cinema Studies from School of Arts & Aesthetics in JNU and is thinking about pursuing a PhD.

Coffee House Layouts

Chai is a thick brand of
bourgeoisie snot.
Track lighting
throws itself around sticky.
Heroin addicts with running mascara
take a booth by the uni-sex bathroom.

They are caricatures.
Smokers cling outside
every entrance.
Standing close in the cold,
sometimes laughing,
babes enjoy Cloves and cappuccino.

--Charles Clifford Brooks III has been published in The Dead Mule, Eclectica, Gloom Cupboard, The Smoking Poet, Red Fez, vox poetica, Asylum, Otoliths, Contemporary American Voices, Prick of the Spindle and Journal of Liberal Arts and Education. His poetry has been featured on the Joe Milford Poetry Show, Not Your Mother’s Poetry and vox poetica’s 15 Minutes of Poetry. Charles Clifford’s first book of poetry, Whirling Metaphysics, will be published by Leaf Garden Press. He lives in Athens, Georgia.

Magellan

You wish I'd look at maps with you,
that I'd watch the way you navigate,
avoiding polar icecaps and subtle obstacles.
But if I did, I doubt I'd ever really find
the shortest distance between two points,
since a straight line is unlikely to inspire me
when the wind is on the water, on a
pure blue sea of anonymity.

Still, I like the tan edges of islands, with
curving lines of latitude and longitude,
and currents clearly marked for seafarers,
or for iniquitous dives into the forbidden.
The ocean is a shade of blue perfection, and
the feel of folded paper in my hand is salt
and something like tears.

Would you mind if I just tore this loveliness
into random shapes that might mean something,
if only to me?

--Susan S. Keiser’s checkered past includes a stint as a high school English teacher, a docent gig in a museum dedicated solely to the poetry of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, ongoing commitment to a highly specialized literary marketing outfit and a brief fling as a pastry chef. She also spent years as a bank executive. Her poems have appeared in Carcinogenic Poetry, Orion headless, Haggard and Halloo, Right Hand Pointing and SpokenWar and she is at work on a book in which both kudzu and ice fishing figure prominently.

Stronger Than Dirt

When I'm bad
hurt, forget all
mercenaries...
physicians?

hell, listen:

take me to the sax
player's bungalow, bell tower
on the corner of Marine Drive
around midnight, color of rose
quartz, six stories below
the power station.
When nothing else
helps, before extreme
unction, so's to hear
sax man blow

the screaming
coda solo from Touch Me
by the Doors. Been said this
reed man, he done it before,
really heals

frozen arteries from a house
on Marine Drive, in the style
of summer wind on sea cove,
on a long stem, he blows
those glissando
arpeggios.

When I'm maximum
hurt please drop me
at sax man's wash, toss
these breaths in the bell
of his horn, bathtub coda
for the clean
unborn.


--Dennis Mahagin's poems and stories appear in Juked, 42opus,Exquisite Corpse, Stirring, Absinthe Literary Review, Northville Review, elimae, Night Train, Storyglossia, and Smokelong Quarterly. He's also a staff editor at FRiGG magazine.

Calliope Nerve Interview Series: Kenneth Weene

Ken, tell us about your books Widow's Walk and Memoirs From The Asylum? Why are they important?

There are lots of books which are great to read but are not important. They hold our interest and keep us laughing or guessing. However, they do not get us to really think. To me books should be both good reads and important; they should get the little gray cells working.

I try to write books that are both good reads and important.

In “Widow’s Walk” I ask the reader to think about religion and spirituality, about the conflict between personal desire and responsibility, and even about what God wants from us. It is an important book. Is it also a good read? The folks who have reviewed it certainly seem to think so. It is a good story peopled with interesting and realistic characters with whom the reader can empathize.

The characters in “Memoirs From the Asylum” are even more compelling. They – staff and inmates alike – are caught in the world of the asylum. Yes, it is a psychiatric hospital, but it is also a metaphor for the ways in which people hide from reality. This is a novel that finds its roots in existentialism and in the terror we all feel as we consider real freedom.

“Memoirs From the Asylum” is written in a tragi-comedic voice. I believe that we cannot face such a momentous issue if we cannot recognize the inherent humor that is part of the human dilemma.

For those who look for unifying themes within a writer’s work, I should add that the tragi-comedic perspective continues a very important idea in “Widow’s Walk.” If we are to cope with the underlying angst that is being human, we must hold a notion of life’s purpose. If, as the characters in “Widow’s Walk do, we look to God for that notion, then we must ask ourselves about God’s sense of humor.

Of course, when people read both books, I hope they will share their thoughts that are elicited with me.




How do your create buzz for a book? (How do you promote your work?)

For one thing, I do interviews like this one. I also do any radio shows I can. I am very active on social media, and I offer to write guest blogs. One thing that is very important in my efforts is getting stories and poems published since such publication means people read my work and may want to find more.

One thing that sets me apart is that I don’t have a blog of my own. Why not? Because the people who read a writer’s blog already know that writer. The goal has to be to get new exposure.

My publisher, All Things That Matter Press, is very encouraging of a mutual effort among its writers. Although we are from all over the world, we are friends through an Internet group. We support one another in many ways. For example, I will mention many of the books whenever the opportunity comes up. Incidentally, I have met three of the other ATTMP authors in real life, and they have been every bit as delightful as I could have wished.

Why do you write?

You might ask why I breathe. It is just a part of who I am. I get up in the morning and spend some time at the computer. (My handwriting is so bad that using a pencil is generally counterproductive.) I don’t set a time limit or writing goal for the day; I just let myself go and try to enjoy the process. Some days I work at editing and correcting. Some days I can get huge chunks of writing done. Perhaps the best days are the ones on which I write just some small bit but a bit that really makes me happy.

How did you become an author?

As a kid I loved to read. By fourth or fifth grade I had ideas of becoming a writer. Being a “good” child, I didn’t grow up to be a writer. It wasn’t until the end of my professional career that I decided it was time to go do what I had always wanted.

I started writing some poetry and a few short stories. I even had some essays published in local papers, did readings, put together some chapbooks. However, I couldn’t get to the next level. I realized there was a problem in my psyche. My father had never been very supportive, and my internalized father-imago was standing in the way. I knew that I had to deal with that block before the old man died.

Having retired and moved from the East to Arizona, I decided I had to force the issue with myself. With my wife’s support, I put together an anthology of my stuff and published it with one of those pay-your-own-way houses. I called it “Songs For My Father.” When I gave him his copy, I felt a great sense of freedom. Once “Songs” was actually on Amazon and people were reading it, I knew that I had reached my goal. Since then not only “Widow’s Walk” and “Memoirs From the Asylum,” but also many short stories and poems have found their way into the literary world. Wow! I’m a writer.



What other careers have you had besides writing? How does your background affect your work?

I have to own up; I’m trained as a shrink. I practiced as a psychologist for years. I have also taught at the college level (and one year in middle school).

I should mention that I’m also an ordained minister in a small Protestant denomination, The Congregational Church of Practical Theology. Our denomination is primarily concerned with providing pastoral counselors.

What inspires you to write?

There are always two inspirations that come together when I actually produce something. The first is a story idea (or for poetry a metaphor idea). The second is the larger questions that I want to address. For example, the relationship between fear and freedom that I explore in “Memoirs From the Asylum.”

Believe in writer's block?

In my experience there are two kinds of writer’s block in my mind. The first is the kind of neurotic issue that I had to confront by putting together “Songs For My Father.” Often I will run into moments of self-doubt; the psyche is not an easy opponent.

The second kind of writer’s block has to do with working oneself into a corner and not seeing a way to resolve something. I have a book started and on which I have been blocked. The title is “Remembrance of Things Present.” It involves a science fiction book within the larger novel. The principle character of the novel is a writer looking back on his life, and that science fiction book was his great success. The problem was that I needed to have a clearer idea of how that science fiction book mirrored the issues in the larger work. Recently, I had an epiphany; I see how the book will work.

Fortunately, I have a three-week stay at the Writers’ Colony in Arkansas coming up this fall. I plan to use that time to get a lot of “Remembrance” done.

What tips do you have for budding authors?

Write, write, and write.

Find a group of writers where you can share. Don’t be afraid of criticism, but rather relish it. The best of those groups are honest. It is also best if you read your work out loud in the meetings.

Be sure to have an editor, somebody to check your work once you think it’s finished and before you try to publish it. I have had occasion to judge books for prizes and to review them for various settings. It always amazes me that so many of them have not been edited. By the way a good editor goes beyond grammar and such; your editor should make sure that your voice is consistent, that your logic works, and that you don’t somehow lose the reader’s attention.

What's on your recommended reading list?

I can only suggest a few books that I have recently read that have kept me thinking about what I want to achieve as a writer and what I think good writing is about.

Tim O’Brien; The Things They Carried

Paul Harding; Tinkers

Jose Saramago; Blindness (even in translation a great work)

Of course I love many of the classics. Conrad, Dostoyevsky, Kafka, Faulkner, Steinbeck. You get the idea. I also like to read and attend plays. I love good dialog and try to write it. Becket, Pirandello, Lorca, Miller, and Brecht are among my favorites. I also read poetry regularly. If I had to pick a few poets, I’d go with Thomas, Ferlinghetti, Ginsberg, and Milton.

In case your wondering I don’t recommend too much Shakespeare or the Victorian novelists because they tend to bring out the verbose in us. That doesn’t mean I don’t think they write beautifully.

Last, of course an aspiring writer should read Weene.

How do you feel about publishing/reading tech today? (i.e. Blogging, ebooks, LULU, on demand publishing, I-Pad... etc.) How do you feel technology affects readers and publishers? Will e-books replace the real thing?

Most of this is stuff I avoid thinking about. However, I do have an opinion about e-books. I prefer print. More importantly, I love bookstores. It is so terribly difficult to browse in a world without actual physical books. Also, I think from the selling point the quality of covers can help tremendously. All Things That Matter Press has done dynamite covers for me. When people see them, they pick the books up and look inside.

One nice thing from an author’s point of view about e-books is that they can’t be resold or gifted – at least it can be set up that way. This means that we are likely to get more royalties. Of course the actual size of royalties is usually minuscule.

Why is the small press important?

I don’t think too much of self-publishing. Why not? Because the products are often poor quality – especially poor editing. That is why many review sites and contests won’t accept self-published work. A good small press will make sure there is a decent product. The publisher should have skin in the game. For example by providing editing and cover design. If they expect you to pay for those services, you are simply self-publishing and doing it in a way that will even more severely limit your royalties.

One problem with small presses is that they seldom can place your books in stores and cannot offer marketing campaigns.

What's next for Ken Weene?

I’ve already mentioned “Remembrance of Things Present.” There are two other novels that are close to publication.

“Tales Form The Dew Drop Inne: Because there’s one in every town” is set in a bar in Albuquerque, I town in which I have spent three nights. It is about people at the bottom of the social ladder, not bums and homeless so much as those who are hanging on for dear life and trying to find social connectedness and a sense of family. This one is ready to go.

“Time To Try the Soul of Man” is a combined conspiracy and coming-of-age novel set in New York City during 2000 – 2001. Yes, it is in part about 9/11, but it about much more. It is In part my paean to newspapers, and it is also about lust, greed, and the seamy side of life. I am currently working on the rewrite; after that comes the editor. (I hire one before I send my work to the publisher; then they get to do their editing. Makes for a better product.)

Meanwhile, the short stories and poetry continue to flow. I just can’t resist the urge to keep writing and publishing.

Deus Ex Machina

They walk side-by-side alongside the river. They look out across the horizon of diamond ripples then up at the sun that blinds their retinas and makes them sneeze behind reeling lids of violet polka dots.

“Oh god, bless you.” He says.

“Thank you,” she chuckles. “God bless you.”

They meet then reflect in each other’s eyes as Seraphim anew as a flock of unseen Robins “tweet” melodiously; their hands morph into silver-tipped red horseshoes; their heads balloon and float into the sky.

“We just start all over.” They agree, continuing along. “Not look back.”

But the eggs in their stomachs from breakfast suddenly hatch into molting caterpillars that become a flutter of nervous butterflies; beads of salty liquid come to a rolling boil in their hands and demagnetize them. Their heads pop into ragged pieces of rubber.

“But--” She says.

“Yeah I know.” He says quickly.

A breeze snatches a red leaf from a passed tree and whirls up her strands like the snakes of Medusa and reverberates through his vocal cords as he picks the leaf from her hair.

“But I love you.” He says, presenting it like a flower.

She smiles and then pauses, small waves of unrelenting remembrances washing across her face and forming a reptilian skin over the dark gray water. The sun hurls itself toward the horizon like a Molotov cocktail and ignites the earth.

“No, you love that stupid--!” She blurts and neutralizes into a pillar of salt.

Turning round, he looks into the scorched tree at the burning angel hissing and tweeting with laughter.

--Kindra J. Ferriabough is a dilettante and; therefore, frequently confused. Some of her stuff can be seen at DOGZPLOT, Ken*Again, Unlikely Stories and Clockwise Cat.

End Time

At the end times
a tightrope dancer performs
above the crowd in Ararat.
Lightly leaping feet
and hurrahs of children
while old men sip
pomegranate wine
and nibble
garlicky misov boereg.

On the mountain
a woman gathers sticks
as her grandmother once
gathered for the clay oven
where prayers and bread
celebrate God.

--Kenneth Weene has appeared in numerous publications – most recently featured in Sol and publication in Spirits, and Vox Poetica. An anthology of his writings, Songs for my Father, was published by Inkwell Productions in 2002. His short stories have appeared in many places, including Legendary, Sex and Murder Magazine, The New Flesh Magazine, The Santa Fe Literary Review, Daily Flashes of Erotica Quarterly, Bewildering Stories, Red Fez, and Stymie.

AT THE BLUE PUSSY

Wan faces of the pale waitresses
Palace of solace
Seekers of some kind of
Enlightenment
A small diversion
Here we sit
Blue Pussy Café
The good gray poet
Stroking his whiskers
Watching the tenderloin
Undulate between his fingers
Musing
Larry the Clown
Playing with the maitre d’ again
Ripping off his face
Replacing it
With a red bohemian mask
So slim a margin
Between death and life
The champagne cocktails
Hold us at their mercy
For ransom

--Steven Gulvezan is a disciple, in words, of the great sculptor, Alberto Giacometti. At their best he hopes that his stories and poems are able to cut close enough to the bone of truth to make them worthwhile to read. He’s recently been published in Underground Voices, Gutter Eloquence, and The Battered Suitcase. Links to some of his writings may be found at: http://www.mysterywriters.org/user/607.

Day of Articulated Presence

Pool of sustained dust
she climbed and began post-theory swam
            purple
veined and plummet persuasion, hidden.  At noon
this
                        was
advantageous
oracle of human desperation
pardon                         peculiar          realm of thoughtful
predilection former wears of wearing bone
shave and topical extrapolation.  Instinctual passive
persuasion renouncing alone
                                                then the I heals
circumstance relit amid superstitious faculties of a neoteric device. 

--Felino A. Soriano (b. 1974) is a case manager and advocate for adults with developmental and physical disabilities. In 2010, he was chosen for the Gertrude Stein "rose" prize for creativity in poetry from Wilderness House Literary Review. Philosophical studies collocated with his connection to various idioms of jazz explains motivation for poetic occurrences. For information, including his 44 print and electronic collections of poetry, over 2,700 published poems, interviews, and editorships, please visit his website: www.felinoasoriano.info.

ON THE OCCASION OF SEEING THE FACE OF JESUS CHRIST BURST FORTH FROM A PRINT OF EDWARD HOPPER’S NIGHTHAWKS UPON MY BEDROOM WALL

“Jerusalem!” I cried
Threw myself upon the floor
With a big black coffee
And a corned beef to go

--Steven Gulvezan is a disciple, in words, of the great sculptor, Alberto Giacometti. At their best he hopes that his stories and poems are able to cut close enough to the bone of truth to make them worthwhile to read. He’s recently been published in Underground Voices, Gutter Eloquence, and The Battered Suitcase. Links to some of his writings may be found at: http://www.mysterywriters.org/user/607.