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sparkle + blink 82
2017 Quiet Lightning

cover Irene Nelson

irenenelsonart.com

Biography by Heather Bourbeau first appeared in Citron Review

book design by j. brandon loberg

set in Absara

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quietlightning.org
su bmit @ qui e tl i g h tn i n g . o r g
 CONTENTS
curated by
Josey Rose + Christine No
featured artists
Irene Nelson | irenenelsonart.com

JOE WADLINGTON My First Week in San Francisco 1

HEATHER BOURBEAU Curves 5
Biography 6
PETER BULLEN Jackie 7
STEPHEN GUAI-WU others, desires 11
MK CHAVEZ You Cant Spank the Monkey... 15
Looking & Seeing 17
Declivity, it Slopes Down 19
RAE LIBERTO Distinguished Filthy Matter 21
Ode to Inanimate Anatomy 22
ASHLEYROSE SANCHEZ Ripping Open the Curtain
Hanging from My Ribcage 23
MIAH JEFFRA To An Ex-Lover 29
SIAMAK VOSSOUGHI Tupac Days 35
ADAM MOSKOWITZ Ill Be Honest with You 41
PETER MAX LAWRENCE Whimper 43
PAUL CORMAN-ROBERTS Bernal Love Poem 49

PAUL CORMAN-ROBERTS Water for the House of Yes 53

KYRSTEN BEAN ...About Burnt Ramen 57
INGRID KEIR Presidential: A How-To 61
Id Like to Say Something Terrible 64
KATE FOLK Funeral Requirements
for Thwarted Children 67
Our Clown 70
SAGE CURTIS Symptoms 73
The Things That Keep Me
Up At Night 75
The Women in my Family 77
LAURA ZINK 2016 79
KATE SEIFERT Down in the Deep Down 85
KATHRYN REEVE Whiskey and Me 91
CASSANDRA DALLETT We Hug 97
Do not Mention Problem to Power 99
I Named You for a Rapper 101
PAUL CORMAN-ROBERTS Lines of Solitude 103
ISABELLA BORGESON For My Militant Mama 105
 G IS SPONSOR
ET LIGHTNIN ED B
QU I Y
 QUIET LIGHTNING
A 501(c)3, the primary objective and purpose of Quiet
Lightning is to foster a community based on literary
expression and to provide an arena for said expression. QL
produces a monthly, submission-based reading series on
the first Monday of every month, of which these books
(sparkle + blink) are verbatim transcripts.

Formed as a nonprofit in July 2011, the QL board is currently:

Evan Karp executive director

Chris Cole managing director
Josey Rose Duncan public relations
Lisa Church outreach
Meghan Thornton treasurer
Kelsey Schimmelman secretary
Laura Cern Melo art director
Christine No production

If you live in the Bay Area and are interested in

helpingon any levelplease send us a line:

e v an @ qui et light nin g . o rg

- SET 1 -
 JJJJJJJ
JJJJ J
JJ
MY FIRST WEEK IN
SAN FRANCISCO

Five years ago, I moved to San Francisco from Indiana

to start my new life!

And one day into my new life, I got a voicemail from

the Indianapolis Health Department asking me to call
them back immediately.

So I did.

They informed me that they had a new case of hiv

and Syphilis who has listed me as a very recent partner.
They told me to get tested asap and call them back
with the results.

Well, I didnt know anyone or what to do, so I just got

a bus to the Castro. I guess I expected there to be some
sti tour guide waiting on the corner to tell me where
I could get sorted. But I did stumble into Magnet, bless
them, but they couldnt take me until that Saturday.

So I spent one of my first nights in my new city

wandering to any place with clinic in the title,
seeing if they could take me sooner. None of them

1
could. After three hours of walking, they were all
closed so I did the next logical thing. I got ice cream.

As soon as I walked in they knew something was up.

Me and this teen who looked like shed just finished
a pregnancy test were shuffled into this separate line
where they asked no questions and gave us a bucket
without a lid. I tip everything in my wallet.

I went to the apartment I was staying at. Friends of

friends of friendsalso known as strangerswere
kind enough to let me sleep on their couch for two
weeks. They werent home because they both had
boyfriends, good for them. So I was home alone and
I sat on the couch in the dark, trying to eat myself to
sleep, and it was one of the loneliest nights of my life.

A few hours later I woke up covered in hot sweat. I ran

to the bathroom and saw that I had a rash around my
junk and up my stomach. It itched like crazy. Because
Id obsessively Googled the symptoms of hiv every
morning after a hook up for the last four years, I knew
that redness was sometimes a tip off for later hiv.
My brain, now hopelessly adrift on the anxiety ocean,
decided that not only did I have hiv, but I had a rare,
aggressive, special snowflake version that would fill
my body by morning.

I spent the next week in this way, waking several times

a night to scratch and apply lotion, almost canceling
my Saturday appointment because I was so sure of the
prognosis.
2
When Saturday finally came, I was predictably a mess.
At Magnet, I met Nurse Bob, an angel on earth, who
had also moved to sf from Indiana. He listened to my
whole story and held my hand while we waited the 20
minutes for the test to complete, then told me I did
not have hiv.

Buuuut about that Syphilis he said. Syphilis is so

bad in the city that when we know someone has been
exposed, we give them the shot right there. We dont
want to wait three days for it to come back.

And Im like, I hear that, but Nurse Bob, Im probably

never going to have sex again. We can wait the three
days.

He looks at me like, No, you seem pretty stupid. And

I was 22so, fair. I pull my pants down. The Syphilis
shot goes right in the butt. Its very full circle. And
while Nurse Bob has the needle in me, he starts giving
me life advice. He scoots really close to my ear and says,
Listen. Youre cute. I clenched up. But youre in the
big city now. And these California boys. Theyre dirty.
Yes, the needle is still in. And they are gonna lie to you.
They are gonna say anything they can to cum inside
you. And dont you let them! Dont you dare let them.

Ok, ok, I promise I wont let them. Syphilis antidote

is a very painful shot. So I kind of yelped it out and
then pulled up my pants and got a hug from Nurse
Bob and limped back to that couch in Russian Hill.

Joe Wa dli ngt on 3

That night, I woke up again, covered in hives. They
were getting worse. The next night it was the same.
And the next night it was the same. So I decide that,
not only do I have a special-Amazonian, Martian
strain of hiv, but I had a false negative. I am, once
again, beyond reason.

I go back to Magnet. I met a new NurseNurse Dave

and in five minutes he tells me, Oh you dont have
hiv (you idiot)you have Scabies. I am astounded.
I can barely remember my keys, my phone, and my
wallet and this person managed to be carrying three
different topics of interest to someone he was fucking
with no conversation or fyi about these topics of
importance?? I verbalize this and Dave assures me,
Oh, nothese are California scabies. You probably
got them on Bart as soon as you arrived at the airport.

I was delighted. California Scabies?! It all sounded

glitter-covered to me. I exited the room and ran right
into Nurse Bob. He looked at me with shock and
disappointment. Hadnt he just given me a needle-
deep, cautionary tale, about responsible sex just three
days previous? But I was too gleeful to be deterred.

I said, Nurse Bob! Nurse Bob! Its not an std, I have

California scabies! Warmth washed across his face
and he gave me a hug. Awww, welcome to the San
Francisco! he said, hugging me.

4
 HH HHHHHHHHHHH
HH H

C U R V ES

He adjusted his hips slightly as he slipped down onto

the wheelchair to kiss him. It was their first moment of
real intimacy, of touching his lover and the metal, the
dependency and independence the chair afforded him.
He felt the cold precision of the frame before his hand
slid to cradle the warm, firm and smaller than expected
curves underneath. Arms and tongues fumbled to
find the rhythm that one day might become natural,
nurturing with love lust-filled. It seemed less real, now
that he was up close, less important than their shared
hunger and finally being loved completely.

5
 BIOGRAPHY

The photographs told the whole story. Not the

smile, pucker, pout, smile, not-so-candid pose most
photographs are these days. The hyperawareness of
everything documented, not lived, was absent. Here
were photos of her sleeping curled onto one side of
his bed, sunning herself with the cat in the kitchen,
crying almost imperceptibly as she drew a bath,
reading presidential biographies, slipping into the
little black dress that made her feel not so much sexy
as empowered, in her skin. No need for push-ups or
surgery to pass, no fear that only this man will love her
for her real self.

6
 PPPPPPPPP
PPP

JACKIE

Jackie and I go way back. Id say weve been involved

for years, well anyway a real long while. Let me put it
this way, I could pick her out in a crowd. Its not a lie
about me wanting her to come over. It is a lie about
me writing a novel. When it comes to Jackie I present
one truthful thing and one falsity. How bad is that?
I think theres a kind of balance to it. Not everyone
takes balance into account and thats too bad. Every
time she phones she insists I dont need her, that Im
just making up stories about what she means to me,
instead of putting a real story into a fictional novel.
But as she points out, the novel is indeed fictional, in
the sense that it doesnt exist and it never will. Which,
she goes on to say, makes me a bloody liar. That hurts
my feelings, but also to be honest, I love the way she
says bloody liar. I dont know why. It might be the
passionate tone she employs when saying it, with what
sometimes sounds like an English accent. That trace
of an English accent is extra-exotic on account of her
being from Missouri. I tell Jackie I might be lying but
I dont want to be, which is an important distinction,
because intention matters. They tell you that at all
the yoga classes I dont go to.

7
Jackie, I say, I think about you throughout the day.
She wants to know which parts of the day. That panics
me. I cant recall which parts. Maybe I could if I had
more time, but I dont, and its the type of question
youre supposed to answer on the spot. Jackie sighs in
a way that makes me think she sees right through me,
that Im not complex. I want to get out ahead of her
possible disillusionment by giving her the impression I
can read her mind. I know Im not all that complex, I
say. Not all that... she replies. Im trying to figure out
why she left the word complex out. Its an unnerving
omission. But we talk, I say, wanting to remind her
of a solid benefit to our relationship, particularly
when on account of my lack of complexity, she may
be jumping to conclusions. I want to put a swift end
to any possible jumping, because women have done
that before, jumped to lightning quick conclusions,
leaving me no time to get my bearings. In a flash they
were all conclusions and I was all history. I think
its time I reached out to you, I say, because I think
thats an affectionate sentiment with a tactile subtext.
You fucker, she says with a snort. I think its a snort,
but a snort is hard to be sure of over the phone. A
snort is super obvious face to face. I have the feeling
our conversation is not going well, which makes it a
particularly bad time for my mind to wander, but it
never asks my permission, and just goes wandering off
whenever it wants. It wanders off to a time when this
young woman gave me a free zine with the warning:
its a little dirty. I want to share this memory with
Jackie, but I think Ive lived long enough to know

8
this anecdote may not be super-well received under
the present circumstances. Then again I may not have
lived long enough. How old is the average person
before they are certain of when and when not to bring
up the subject of a zine thats a little dirty with their
girlfriend, who may be in the middle of an important
insight into the nature of a relationship she has with
a man who is lying about a novel, and adding to that
duplicity by making exaggerated claims about how
hes thinking about her during the day? Then just
to up the tension meter to a level I dont believe its
equipped to handle, Jackie asks me if I remember
where we met. I know it was around here someplace,
I say, which I know is not an award winning answer,
especially for folks who are sticklers for detail. If my
thoughts werent suddenly so focused on the young
womans cautionary note in regard to the zine she left
me with, I might have come up with a more specific
answer. Good guess, Jackie says, ladling those two
words with a good-sized helping of dripping sarcasm.
But Jackie is still on the phone, which lm thinking is
a pretty significant part of this story, in case you were
looking for a significant part. It was Joshs Diner, I
yell out like a quarterback whod just flung a winning
touchdown into the hands of an astonished receiver,
with just a few seconds left to go in the game. It
wasnt, Jackie says. Jackie, I say, figuring Im toast,
and therefore deciding to go for a bit of honesty in
the time remaining. Yes, she says. I do think about
you when youre not here. I mean I wouldnt want
you to come over, if I didnt think about you, right?

P e t e r Bu lle n 9
 The truth is, your suspicions in regard to the novel
are not unfounded. But I feel like the novel is about
to begin because something happened that I believe
might launch it. What would that be? Jackie asks.
Well, I say hesitantly, after a literary event recently
this young woman gave me a zine that she said was a
little dirty. She was being very cautious with me in
the way I am attempting to be with you now. Perhaps
she was concerned about handing a senior citizen a
provocative piece of literature, or revealing aspects
of her imagination to me on the page that she would
not share with me if we were having a cup of coffee
together. Did you have a cup of coffee together? No,
definitely not, I say. I am so happy Jackie is still on the
phone. Because she is, I feel a strange confidence in
the future of my novel, but no confidence or clarity in
terms of my future with the zine.

And thats troubling.

10
 SSSSSSSSS
SSS
SS S

O T H E R S, D E S I R E S

when you watch a youtube video,

at that very moment,
who are the other people who are also watching that
video,
who are, in a certain sense,
sharing an experience with you?

as i watch tyra banks stomp down the runway

as she opens the 2002 victorias secret fashion show
shes got so much confidence. shes a fun girl,
pretty and powerful i want to be her, and

i imagine theres probably someone who voted for

donald trump watching at that very same moment.
maybe hes got his hand down his pants and hes
masturbating.

besides sharing this experience, i wonder what else

me and
this trump voter share in common. well, im stuffing
my
face with this $4.95 trader joes frozen lasagna. he
could
be doing that too.

11
could we do that together?
watch women with a range of personas from
powerful and fun to demure and innocent
strut down the runway of a victorias secret fashion
show?

ill bring the frozen pizzas and some 40s,

youve got your walgreens brand lube and some
kleenex, right?

oh, and ill shave myself

everywhere and put on
a little lipstick, and heels,
and some lacy underwear,
ill perform victorias secret
for you.

if you like, while you watch the video, ill go down on

you, my
tongue will rub against the thick vein on your
penis, then ill lower myself further and lick your
testicles, put one in my mouth and then the
other, you smell like man.

hows the fashion show going? whos walking the

runway?
mmm god, your dick is so thick. i lick it up and down
and up and down (i can hear you panting) to get it
nice and wet.
as i do, i steal glances at your room, and feel sad for us,
and wonder, genuinely, who you think you are.

12
i want to ask you why you voted for donald trump,
or exactly what you think when someone calls you
white trash,
or if well cuddle after this,
or what you think of when you look at me,
or why you think any of this matters,
or the last thing that made you cry,
or what kind of sex would make you cry,
or who you hope to be in 10 years,
or when it all ends, what you hope your last thought
will be,
or how youd treat me in public if i was wearing the
same outfit,
or where on your body you touch first when you need
to comfort yourself,
or what you perform when no one else is around,
or what you would do if, in that burst of intense
emotion that people sometimes feel when they
have sex, i blurted out I love you - not meaning
it, but meaning something that i didnt have the
words for at that moment and an expression of
overbearing intimacy was the only language i
could conjure up in that moment,

youre so pathetic. what were you hoping would happen?

but this is just an exercise in fetishization

for all parties involved-
lets not try and go any deeper than we need to.
though judging by your cock, were going to be going
pretty
deep.
St e ph e n Gua i - Wu 13
(ive been told i have a smooth ass,
do you imagine it to be a womans?
i wonder - is it enough that im performing
submission, or would you rather i
had a vagina?) and you place yourself inside me,

you grunt, and grunt, and grunt,

i moan, i moan, i moan,
cause and effect - thats all this is. thats all this is.
i hear your gasps to the rhythm of unrestrained sobs,
as you thrust harder and harder,
harder and harder and harder...
and just as i feel the tears ripping forth,

you stop to come,

and i dont know

if its tyra, or another angel,
or me, or a sad idea,
or your father and mother,
or your guy friends,
or biology,
or fox news,
or something else altogether,
that
made you

14
 MMMMMMMMM
YOU
C NKEY
F O R E A N T S PA N K T H E M O E S I T
V E R , T H E M O N K E Y H AT

1. Like porn, casual sex will eventually get boring.

2. If the person youre considering having sex with

makes you feel dirty and ashamed before
penetration, imagine how it will feel once your
heart is harpooned and a mere figurehead on a
prow.

3. Everyone can be a unicorn if they stop being a

dick.

4. If someone has given you directions on how to

find love,
Remember that a map to the heart is the meeting
cart-tas-trophe*

5. Dive head first, heavy headed as a baby

when you come across the one,
the second and the third.

6. Try all the lovers on for size.

7. Its all target practice.

15
8. Attempting to attach order to something that
is endemically chaotic is a bunch of dopamine,
norepinephrine and serotonin.

9. Dont give up before youve reached your mark.

10. After the storm roll your hummingbird heart in

the muck until you are one with nature.

11. You must die to be reborn.

12. Imagine yourself a hunter.

13. Now imagine yourself as the last white rhino.

*Cartography & catastrophe

16
 LOOKING & SEEING

We used to wonder, (Show me.) What do you look

like?

On looker, on looking, (the meaning of voyeur is

two-fold
the pleasure, the pain)

the politics of photography

absorbed into the everyday

like a preface (private,

public,
sometimes
revenge
porn.)

Sense of possibility
makes us hurry

to strange things because familiarity breeds (a certain

blindness.)

We are a new generation,

of selfie evangelists (How do you look when you

MK Ch ave z 17
 I look at me.)

You must know, judgement is the oldest profession

Capturing the holy temple of

our bodies

(we are all that we are and more)

the risk,
multiple
focal points,

all of that gaze, all

of the glory (all our incarnations)

holes. (How do you fill your emptiness.)

18
DECLIVITY, IT SLOPES DOWN

Sweet condensed milk,

like the way it coats my lips.
Reminds me how
you make me shine.
It slopes down,
heavy weight,
we stick to the sheets
with it. Down,
heavy milk,
lick my lips,
fingertips,
sweet bits
of you & me
covered in it.
Glazed ridge,
bridge,
I like the swing
of it,
droplets
which I covet.
King,
crown, I am bound.
Slick, I bend
like deviation,
crest & axis
inclination,

MK Ch ave z 19
 cling and swerve &
curve, acclivity,
declivity. Infinity.

20
 RRRRRR
RRRRR

DISTINGUISHED
FILTHY MATTER

The law is not tempered

to the hardened minority
to the benefit of social variants
to the morality of societys dregs

We are dealing with intangibles

minds open
young and inexperienced
hands
Saphho Remembered

Thought patterns created by words calculated

to deprave morals
to excite lust
to arouse
to promote lesbianism

The problem in this enlightened age is variation

the creation of a new class
a literature and community
of distinguished filthy matter

One, Inc. v. Olesen Supreme Court documents used as source

material.

21
 ODE TO INANIMATE ANATOMY

You come in colors

as I choose.

You come clean

in neon purple.

You come hard

in frosted gold.

You come curved

or lumpy,
fat or long.

OR

You come fat and lumpy and hard and long and clean
bright purple have mercy.

I pack you,
a bulge
on parade.

I strap you,
a wand,
magic rain
maker.

22
 AAAAA
A AAAAA AA
A AA AA
RIP PIN G
H AN G OPEN THE CURTAIN
I N G F R O M M Y RI B C A G E

Ever since his taillights swung around the corner

I dont let my pride roll down glittering black
diamonds
too pretty to call roads. Im tired of rain and no time
for umbrella.
Of mixed chick hair resembling snagged power lines.
Face weary of reconstructing smiles
like its a ramp on an intersectionweak
from keeping all the bull in.

Ive stood in the dark too long,

cheeks being trampled
By tears running like Wild Things
becoming twinkles in glittering black diamonds
only marred by tire tracks.
This quivering mouth still
curses out stars for not having the decency to look
away.

But saying
You dont date people like me.
Your words pull a trigger
My shotgun mouth desperate to make you bleed

23
Make you chalk outline. Body Bag.
Make you victim. Powerless.
Make you regret. Apologize.
Make you mine?

My skin is walking backwards in the snow.

Empty Bleach bottle at a crime scene.
It is in order to save us, erase any trace black was ever
here.
But my ancestors fingers picked enough cotton
to know privilege when they feel it.

How are you different from the neighbor

who gave me the same hands to carry in my groceries
that he used to hang his confederate flag?
From a Rookie cop transforming his tongue into a
chamber
because the streets picked hope out of his teeth?
Allowing inquiries to become orders molded into
bullets
sliding out of his mouth like fingers on a bowling
ball--

You all associate me with the gutter.

I am not
Mattress dancing. Shaking the sheets.
Hittin the skins. Setting the beat of
Boom-Boom-Bow-Chicka-Wow-Wow
You assume Ive got a Salt-N-Pepa mentality
makin me wanna shoop. Cook up

24
that Im daydreamin bout gettin busy
Like its Friday night at the drive thru

Quit fetishizing that Im getting some

Like people are just Big Macs with sides of fries.
Stymie your fantasy of
being under this Shake-shake-booty-spell.
The power of thumpin thighs compelling you to
melt.
You think we like going deaf, evading the question,
knowing youd prefer our name.
You think we get off on keeping it hostage,
trapped in our teethlike greens.

If I ripped off my shirt, unclasped my b cup

insecurities,
told you to explore the expanse of my back.
Youd discover my wings
are anchors mama sowed into my shoulder blades.
Bedford women are not flighty.
We got to be buoys. Steel through tsunamis while
men abandon ship.

At the shorehis sail colored fingers

wrinkled. water logged. our teethshells
wed corkscrew into our gums:
tombstones for happiness
buried in our mouths for safe-keeping.

Ha. cant give what you dont got empty chest. b-beat
people down.

Ash le y Rose Sanch e z 25

 compass dial in leather pants guides him to
barnacle women. clinging to his wood rotted side
as he swallows sintastes mermaid tails
redheads threw away to be a part of his world.

im not the devils daughter.

even davy jones came home.

When my parents declared war in the living room,

I took cover at the top of the stairs.
Smothered myself by leaving hickeys on my arms.
Thought I love you slithered out
between your fangs after you took a bite.
I can be a real asp sometimes.
Dont let it rattle you trauma is not easily shed.
But you know that, dont you?

I bet her jacket was a bag of Skittles.

You opened the wrapping. Tasted the rainbow.
It had a gold coin tang to it.
How long? Before you bore your spine
for her rendition of the Ali Shuffle?
Ignored the people forgotten like dirty clothes on the
floor
Faces bunched up like Rocky Balboas

I can see you buried under heavy-duty garbage bags

Like someone mistook you for the trash
Id gamble your clothes were inside
but they didnt fit the sameneither did you.

26
Irises stained with Styrofoam coffee cup rings
The kind a trucker leaves behind.
Her eyes hang from your rearviewballs of crumpled
excuses.
Her name keyed into your passenger seat.
Like a dead thing, your muscles spasm
into flirty smiles.

Weve all been the wreck to someones accident.

tossed caution to the side with the road kill and
picked up hitchhikers sporting Superman shirts.
Some of us just didnt notice the scythes disguised as
thumbs
until our bodies became the most used routes

I was left peeled on the kitchen counter

when my dad told me people drift.
His switchblade intentions broke my onion-skin
We cried until the room became submerged in ocean
Then he hopped on his inflatable side chick and
left me to drown.

My mom magicd herself into a lighthouse.

Every time she smiles I know Im home.
She raised me to be
A rising fist aiming to knock out the sun
Because in a blackout, everyone reaches for the
closest hand
Like their palms are both tin cansand
I just want to string everyone together.

Ash le y Rose Sanch e z 27

So this is me: ripping open the curtains hanging from
my rib cage.
I have not had sex. I cannot genuinely say I love you
to myself yet.
The closest I can come
is telling my agoraphobic heart: Its okay to let people
in.

Get close enough and youll hear a wolf man

howling under the full moon of each persons left
breast.
I want to be your silver bullet. I need to at least kill
this myth:
Not all Bisexuals love
Will wander off your body for anothers and
leave you streaking in the park.
When our hearts are returned,
We, like everyone else, disintegrate.

Maybe that is why you ignore us.

Maybe we become dust lying on your nightstand.
Begging for you to hold us.
Knowing even as we get swept up
in the soft cotton of your raggedy shirt
That this scenario ends with you
Throwing us away

28
 MMMMMMMMMMM

AFTER
T O A N E X -L O V E R
A NATURAL HISTORY OF THE SENSES

When I was sixteen, I saw an alien. True story. My

mama and I were watching television in our narrow
low-rent Baltimore rowhouse when we heard our dog
barking. Mama asks me to go investigate. I walk to the
back, flip the floodlight switch and open the door. And
there, at the end of our narrow concrete sliver of a yard,
is Eggroll, looking up at a chest-high figure with an
oblong luminescent face and large black eyes, staring
directly at my smaller-than-average, teenage, presently
and keenly vulnerable self. And immediately, without
even a flash of hesitation, I shit my pants: a small, yet
substantial, perfectly compacted brown nugget bullets
from my butt-cheeks like a backfired slingshot. I could
feel the velocity of that single turd shoot against the
lining of my poly-cotton Voltron pajama bottoms, the
betrayal of years of self-control, the pastel illustrations
of Once Upon a Potty flashing into my minds eye, as
I waddled back to my mother with a face whiter than
Ann Coulter. Ann Coulter. Wearing an eggshell bikini.
On a foggy day. In a salt mine.

Vision is a tricky enterprise. All we truly perceive

are configurations of shadows and light. True story.

29
127 million photoreceptors detect light stimulus,
becoming electrical impulse along the optic nerve
to the brain, and then a chemical, the mind, an open
file without a name. And from this, we begin to make
sense of our world.

My niece at 9 months, beginning to crawl. One day I

watched her amble directly into a piece of furniture,
head-first. She crawled with determined hands and
knees, this new function for her fat baby-limbs,
without hesitation, right into my sisters backless
Wayfair barstool. Did little Mackenzie not see the
metal legs? Why did she careen right into that pain, the
boo-boo on her forehead? It appeared as if she hadnt
seen the stool at all. Shadows and light, electrical
impulse, chemical, an open file. And then, my sister,
mommy to the rescue: Chair. Baby stare. Chair.
Baby stare. Chair. Baby stare. Now, the open file has
a name: language, a label, the sign.

Neurolinguist Richard Gregory argues that seeing is

entirely hypothesis, reliant on experience and memory.
We encounter a particular configuration of shadows
and light, and that configuration is then matched to
the closest file we have in our database. Your brain
is a file clerk, searching for the match. Whatever
matches closest is then pulled up and projected onto
our minds silver-screen. And that is what we seenot
what we perceive, but what we see. Everyone knows a
filing system is unsuccessful without explicit labeling.
Labels are language. In essence, language becomes

30
more our eyes than our eyes.

Do you know the story of the Aztec genocide? The

great, advanced civilization that initially and fatally
opened its arms to Cortes swords? They had a myth:
The god of rebirth, Quetzalcoatl, promised to return
one day from the East on a bed of clouds, to bestow
upon the Aztecs the fortunes, the white hot heart, of
the morning star. And then one day, in 1519, upon
the horizon, fishermen saw what they believed to
be, coming from the East, in billowing white, the
promises of that morning star. See, the Aztecs were
not sea-farers. And the billowing sails of Cortes ships,
well, the Aztecs didnt have a file for that, and those
sails wound up becoming a different kind of promise.

And this is how you perceived me: a promise, a myth.

I wonder what the story was that beget your creation
of me. But I was not seen, that is certain; you were
searching for a match. The language of the story you
knew before you ever knew me projected onto your
minds silver screen, before I even appeared. And the
Hollywood dream you thought you saw was all light
and shadow, along the walls of a cave. And so you
opened your heart, as if you hadnt even seen that I
was only strong enough to conquernot loveand
you careened right into that pain. I am sorry for that.

If you hadnt figured it out yet, I didnt really see an

alien. I saw a possum on our back fence. The floodlight
wasnt strong enough to pick up the chain-link at all,

Mi a h Je f f ra 31
but it could reflect the rodents iridescent fur on the
top of its head, pointed down to keep a watchful eye
on the threatening stance of my vicious Shih Tzu mix.
The pose in illumination suggested the shape of that
most common of mediated aliensthe bulbous head
and sunken long face. My hypothesis was dead wrong.
I didnt have a file in my database for something as
odd as a possum on a fence in an inner-city Baltimore
neighborhood. And, of course, what were my
mama and I watching in the living room before the
encounter? Mulder and Scully, forever engrossed in
their sexually frustrated tete-a-tetes between science
and magic. But in my minds eye, in my memory, I still
see that four-foot alien staring directly into my being
as clear now as it was then, crystal enough to make me
drop a stink pickle in my drawers.

When you dont collect much data, you dont have

much in your database.

Recently, after watching a performance on YouTube,

Ann Coulter called out Beyonce for her salacious,
female-demeaning lyrics, as an ironic parallel to the
accusations of Trumps equally recent gender blitz.
Ann tweets: Beyonce, cited by Michelle Obama as
role model for her daughters, sings about pussy
curvalicious, served delicious. Oh my. I just fainted.
End tweet. Ann was probably promenading victorious
at this burn, this apparent demonstrated hypocrisy
of the smug liberal elite. However, what Ann didnt
realize during that cock-sure strut in her proverbial

32
 pencil skirt, was that the woman she perceived
mouthing those lyrics was not Beyonce at all, but
Nikki Minaj. Ann defended her mistake by saying,
they look so much alike.

Black woman. Beyonce. Black woman. Beyonce. Black

woman...

When you dont collect much data, you dont have

much in your database.

This tells me how we perceive one another: educated

guesses, inaccurate file names, projected images,
subservient to language. This tells me that if we are
to see clearly, to see all people clearly, then we need
to learn the language for all people. This tells me that
we need to learn the language, the languages, of the
whole world, as much as we can. This tells me that if
we commit to thisyou and I, all of usmaybe then
we will escape the shadows of the cave.

Mi a h Je f f ra 33
 S SSSSSSSSSS
SSS SS

TUPAC DAYS

We werent trying to look tough. Who would we be

trying to look tough against? We were trying to be
tough towards life. But that didnt have anything to
do with how we looked. That was something internal.
We listened to Tupac and we felt how becoming tough
was going to mean becoming harder and becoming
softer at the same time. We didnt know how to do it.
Except silently. Silently enough that when we drove
through our town and listened to his songs, we made
a space inside ourselves for his songs to fill utterly.
There wasnt much in the world that was trying to
become harder and softer at the same time, so when
there was something that was, you had to let in every
last part of it. Somebody had done it, and he had died,
and we were stuck in the world hed left behind, but it
was the same world he had done it in.

You couldve told us in those days that we both had to

go to the dentist to get a root canal, and my sister and I
wouldve thought, well, at least we can listen to Tupac
in the car. At least the journey from here to there will
be everything it should be. At least it will take in the
heights and depths of human experience. At least all
that.

35
We felt like good people then. We felt like there
was nothing about our sorrow that was distancing
us from life. It felt like the opposite. We felt like we
were getting closer. Only we were getting closer from
underneath, from underneath America. The overland
route couldnt do it anymore.

We were Iranian, and we had grown up in white

America, where your sorrow put you in a corner. It
put you outside the main action. We listened to Tupac
and heard how your sorrow could not only be the main
action, it was the main action, easily and effortlessly,
because what else could you have that took in
everybody? White America had given us nothing.
It wasnt interested in taking in everybody. It was
interested in remaking them. There wasnt anything
there for us in that regard.

Tupac started from the present moment in his songs.

The inarguable truth about the present moment was
that it was finite, that life would end in death. I was
glad to hear somebody say it. Death was the thing that
allowed a person to become harder and softer at the
same time.

I wish everybody talked about death as much as Tupac,

I said.

We were driving up the hill to our house. We had gone

to Seattle to do Christmas shopping. The afternoon
was dark and beautiful in a way that we knew and had

36
grown up with and remembered.

I dont know if everybody is as close to death as Tupac

was, my sister said.

I think they are, I said. It doesnt feel like it when

were Christmas shopping, but I think they are.

My sister wasnt the kind of person who asked you not

to talk like that. She knew that what you were getting
at had to do with life. The life it had to do with was
very hard to see. It was all around us too, which was
why it was very hard to see.

It was easy to think that the world he sang about was

a different world. But it was the same world when it
came to death.

I was glad that my sister and I could listen together

because I didnt have any idea how to take an awareness
of death and stretch it over a life, but when we listened
to Tupac together, that was a start.

That was the start of saying that my sorrow doesnt put

me in a corner, in America or anywhere else. It puts me
inside and underneath, and thats not a position that
anybody talks about as something to aspire to. They
talk about outside, and they talk about above. They
talk forever and forever about above. But they can
keep above. There is no above when there is death in
the way that Tupac knew there was death. There was

Si a ma k Vossou gh i 37
 only inside and underneath, which was why his music
got inside and underneath us. It was the only way. Try
writing a good song to somebody you feel above. Try
writing a good story like that, I thought. That was
what death did. It kept you underneath.

And yet somehow the subject was still life. Wasnt it

comical then to write stories about life when you were
trying to be as underneath as death? Yes. Yes it was. But
what is wrong with being comical? Did you think that
comedy had to die just because you wanted to write
with an awareness of death? Did you think that Tupac
didnt keep laughter with him all along?

There was a way. There was a way to keep everything

driving in the car with my sister and listening to Tupac.
There was a way to keep the fight we heard in his songs
and there was a way to keep the peace in them. It had
to be both. If it was only one of them, we would be
trying to fit the world into our story. We couldnt do
that anymore. Both were true. And the bothness and
fullness of the world was something we didnt know
what to do with, but we listened and told ourselves, let
it in, let it in.

There was something about the person you had been a

child together with that made it seem like you should
not talk about death. Tupac helped us to do it. Death
could be a song too. Everything could be a song. If he
could make a song about the people trying to kill him,
then we didnt have any excuse. We were going to have

38
to make some things too. We were going to have to
make them with the same urgency of death.

Its all right that they dont talk about death as much
as he did, I said. Anyway I cant really wish for things
anymore.

What do you mean? my sister said.

It hasnt gotten me anywhere, I said. Anyway

everything I need is here.

Everything?

Everything to write a story. Theres life and theres

death. Thats everything.

It was good to talk about death with the person you

had been a child together with. Back then there had
been only life, and because that was all we knew,
we would be wishing left and right. We would be
wishing for life to be what we thought it should be.
It was almost a constant wish, and we thought that in
articulating it, we were getting closer. It had been a
beautiful time. It had been some of the best wishing
two people had ever done. It had almost seemed like
it wasnt even wishing, because we thought we were
articulating something that was the worlds wish.
That was what two people wishing together could do.
But as good as it had been, we drove around in those
Tupac days listening to him and thinking that we were

Si a ma k Vossou gh i 39
 going to have to have something other than wishing
together from here on out, and we didnt know exactly
what that was, but it was all right to have it be silence
sometimes, because that silence could be filled with a
music that believed in life so much that it believed in
death too, and that was important because it was the
truth, and you didnt lose life when you let in death,
almost everything we had known up until then said
that you did, but it wasnt true, it only took one man
to show us in his music that it wasnt true, and it just
meant that you had to learn to be lonely, you had to
learn to be lonely because you couldnt wish together
with anybody anymore, even if you had been a brother
and sister and you had been able to wish together like
you were leaving a trail of beauty wherever you went,
like you could follow that trail back to everything
good, no matter where you went. Even then. You had
to learn to be as lonely as death, and you wouldnt be
lonely anymore.

40
 AAAAA
AAAA AAA
AA
ILL B E
H O N E ST W I T H Y O U

Listen, I wrote this for you. I wrote this for tonight.

Ive never met you in my life. Does my voice sound
just right? Just right for tonight, just right, and right
during all the parts? I wrote this for you. Im reading
this tonight. Im so full of love. I want you to know.
Whoever you are. I couldnt possibly know. Who needs
to know. This is love were talking about. Love doesnt
need to know. Lets not need to know. Love knows
everything there is to know. Please keep listening.
This thing might end soon. Its a paragraph. Its one
paragraph long. Its not a poem. Listen, I literally just
made a decision. I only write paragraphs. If I call it a
poem then it has to be something. Something better.
Maybe thats false. I bet you would say thats false. But
I dont know about poems so you tell me. And thats
my story and Im sticking to it. This is a paragraph.
Paragraphs are all I write. I seriously just decided this
tonight. Im a paragraph-er. Except my paragraphs
are weird, and always alone. There will never be a
paragraph before nor after. What do you think of that?
I hope you like it. Especially because I just decided,
while writing this paragraph, that from now on I
shall only write like this. Only in paragraphs. And
only ones that are alone. And maybe only ones that
are about love.
41
 PPPPPP
P PPPP PP
P PP PP

W HIMPER

I saw the worst minds of my generation elevated by

pseudo sadness, belly-full calm naked,
sprinting through cracker-caked streets at dusk
looking for a happy pill prescription,
demon-legged innocents yearning for the ancient hell
connection to the sunny stutter in the organics of
night,
who riches and tailors and satiated and low stood
down clean in the imagined light of
hot-salt curves sinking near the bottom of farms
disregarding hip-hop,
who brained their bars to Hell under the magick and
saw Allahs angels standing on mansion driveway
darkened,
who slunk through grad-school with salient warm
eyes
sobering Kansas and Miller-like adventures
apart from the zombies of peace,
who were granted access from the bums for clear &
publishing prayer odes on the wall of the foot,
who stood tall in clean fields sharply dressed,
saving their money in breadboxes and ignoring
to the true paradise through the hall,
who got honored in their Sunday suits staying on

43
Law School with a belt of beers for the Step-Parents,
who drank water in Five-Star hotels or ate flax seed
in
Purgatory fields, life, or heaven sexed their
six pack abs day after day
with nightmares, with vitamins, with nocturnal
emissions,
sobriety and vagina and endless walls,
copycat clear: dirt paths of calm sky and
thunder in the eye resting still blocks of Black &
Decker,
darkening all the moving planets of death around,
Church mushy of ceilings, front lawn green tea
nursery
dusks, grape clear head under the earthen soil,
backdoor boroughs of coke-head stern bleak
static solo dark, moon and sun and rock
still in the quiet summer dawn of Panhandle,
trashcan philosophy and mean queen dark of cock,
who tethered themselves to pickup trucks for the
ending
stand from Castro to evil Cole Valley on wheat-grass
until the quiet of gears and seniors took
us up quivering cock-soothed and
rescued hope of torso all recharged of despair
in the brilliant dark of Savannah,
who rose all day in aeroplane shadow of Honigs
sunk down and ran around the fresh wine before
midnight outside crowded boutique, ignoring from
the hole
of glory on the oxygen ipod,

44
who listened briefly seven minutes in building to
break from yoga to Sausalito to junk-shop to the
Golden Gate Bridge,
found brigade of promiscuous mutes standing still
up the cellars on windy sta-cations on windmills
on village hut out of the core,
blahblahblahing whispering indulging screamed
fictions
and forget-me-nots and diseases and bellybutton ticks
and soft palate pleasers of living-rooms and
basements and peace,
half dumb reassembled in vapid storytelling for
fifteen minutes
and days with dulled lips, grain not for the
Vatican solo on the grass,
who appeared into everything discombobulated
Oregon arriving a
wall of opaque ironic greeting cards of Portland City
Hall,
eligiastic Western numb and google map-find-ings
and
blissy kisses of North Korea above sober-indulgence
in Medfordss shiny vacant dungeons,
who stood still and stale at noon in the
airport lobby pondering where to hide, and seek,
staying yes mended souls,
who damp cigars in smartcar smartcar smartcar
humming
through rain behind sardine-packed superstores in
grand-child day,
who ignored Aristotle Wolf St. Jude of the Boss for-

P e t e r Max Lawre nce 45

 giveness
and pop bible because the dirt naively
stilled at their head in California,
who grouped it behind the streets of Pennsylvania
avoiding science
cowboy devils who werent rooted cowboy devils,
who bought they werent only insane when Jurez
darkened in pleeb boredom,
who fell in trash-truck with the Chairman of the
board on the delay of summer midday forrest
heavy metropolis sunshine,
who alerted satiated and multiple around Detroit
seeking classical or guild or bread, and lead the
idiotic Canadian to espouse about Africa
and Temporary, a hope-full journey, and so took ship
to America,
who appeared under the mountains of Iceland
arriving
ahead everything and the light of dresses
and the bark and leaves of hate gathered in birthplace
Topeka,
who disappeared on the East Coast ignoring the
c.i.a. in costume and pants with small hawks
crotch gross in their light skin waking up articulate
novels,
who froze pipes valley in their legs supporting
the medicine grass clarity of Socialism,
who confiscated Supercapitalist websites in Crowd
Circle stoicism and grooming while the silent snakes
of Mumbai raised them up, and raised
up ditches, and the East Bay ferry also raised,

46
who fixed up laughing in black hospitals clothed
and still before the nature of my exoskeleton,
who kissed victims in the thigh and giggled with
despair
in get-away-cars for avoiding no justice but their
others calm raw pederasty and sober,
who whimpered on their knees in the light rail and
were
hoisted on the cieling static brains and dollar store
dvds,
who let themselves be loved in the mouth by devilish
egalitarians, and sighed with pain,
who filled and were fawned by those inhuman
gelasis,
the truckers, needling of Pacific and Hawaiian love,
who dosed in the evening in the mornings in slept
parking lots and the pavement of private drives and
gardens gathering their shit secretly to
whomever leaves today,

P e t e r Max Lawre nce 47

 PP PPPPPPPPPP
PP PP
PP P
B ER NAL LOVE P O E M

Forbidden love, taboo love

brings us to life like nothing else.

We feel most alive

when affection and tenderness
are rendered into contraband.

We are suddenly so gifted

with social arrangement
we are not merely flirting
with an other

we are breaking the rules of Death

flipping the bird in the reapers face
because we dare to serve ourselves
extra helpings of life.

And the reaper, quite naturally

celebrates along with us
because we are also
flirting with danger:

of losing ourselves
in some other world
not our own
49
 another life that has seen fit
to envelop our life.

Like colliding stars.

And collisions always change us.
We are no longer the same star
a new star birthed.

Now the others planets

have become your comets
your dark twin
the others nemesis.

But it always seems worth it.

Newly shared energy
feels/looks as a rebirth
of old orbits
and someone, somewhere
will always feel like
the risk, the consequences
of such connections, somehow
the gravitational fallout
will always be worth it.

And in time we will know

but by the time
that knowledge comes
we will realize the verdict
was decided long ago
by others
we hadnt taken into account.

50
- SET 2 -
 PP PPPPPPPPPP
PP PP
PP P
HOUSEWAT E R F O R T H E 2016
O F Y ES 12 / 3 /

it starts with everyone smelling smoke

wispy tendrils of bad news coalesce
a tsunami breaking over three eyes
an enveloping wall of poison accumulate
hella copters for days

there is no further information

there is no further information
there is no further information

you may as well check out now

you can set your watch
by the knee jerk rage
and finger pointing
fingers running over
running over names
names you know

there is no further
there is no further

swipe
swipe

53
 contact contacts
frantically push buttons
send
send
send

wait
wait
wait

there is no
there is no
you want so badly to check out
you want so badly to disconnect

you cannot.

wait
wait
wait

the third eye is always first

to give water to the dead
you didnt even know
once the reservoir opens
the rest of the mirrors
cannot hold back

wait
swipe
text

54
send
wait
swipe
text
send

there is
there are
arms floating
above a gangplank
arms in space

give
give water
water for this house of yes
give water for a demon dog
turned loose on the streets of Oakland
give water for lovers lost and found
give water for the sound of buckling beams
give water for messages sent in faith
I may never see you again
I love you

and then

give silence
the silence of dozens
in a fast food parking lot
is hallowed ground
give blankets
give food

Pau l Corman- Robe rt s 55

 give me your arms
this one last time
give me your love
this one last time
and Ill give you mine
to protect us
from the coming storm
as our vessel drifts off
into the ocean of night

text
send
text

now

the sun has set

just like it did last night
but tonight
is nothing like last night

last night there was hope

we just hadnt realized it
yet

there
there

text received:

Mama we are going to die.

We love you.
56
 KKKKKKKKK
KKK
POE TS
M C RE
ATED FROM H E C O MMEN
SE NTE N C ES I N T
O F AN
A R TIC L E AB O B EI N G
R E D -T U T B U R NT R A M E N
A G G E D AFT E FI R E
R T HE G H O ST S H IP

heaven knows what those inspectors found

in that den of finger-painting space cadet
government cheese eaters.
If the Ghost Ship is any indication with
its mannequin hands reaching from the ceiling
pirate ship gang plank stairwell and let us not
forget
condom chew toys.
But this is a straight attack in the name of
gentri-fi-cation.
Whats misunderstood is often persecuted
throughout history.
Its not for you to judge whether blow-up dolls
are art or not, or whats
a visual joke.
I was writing creatively and saying
heaven knows what.
An accident
a tragedy in Oakland happened
now
politicians are cleaning up the neighborhoods
in the guise of safety

57
 This isnt a scene people get into
or a lifestyle we choose
Ive seen too many lives lost to suicide and
addiction
Ive witnessed first-hand these little communities
save people from that crap.
The streets are rough
many of us dont survive them
its not for you to judge
whether blow-up dolls are art or not.
But would you want those documents released?
Item #1 some kind of (this is hard to describe,
see attached photo) conglomeration of blow-up
sex dolls with paint attached and ornaments
cant speculate about the artistic meaning but
it is highly flammable and partially blocking the
exit.
Item #2 piles of bedding, growing black mold
Item #3 just see attached. Do not circulate.
Circulation
of this photo may violate state laws.
These are not the same things. And
neither of these goals required
Mayor Tom Butt was not required
to send code enforcement to summarily
evict people from their homes during Christmas.
Having volunteered at Burnt Ramen in the past
I want to say that places like this have long
provided
safe haven and a sense of family
to people who may not get it elsewhere.

58
Conglomeration of blow-up sex dolls?
What on earth is Charles talking about?
I was writing creatively and saying
heaven knows what those inspectors
found

Ky rst e n Be an 59
 IIIIII
IIIII

P R E SI D E N T I A L :
A HOW-TO

After Zoe Leonard

I want a president who rides a bicycle, who has been

evicted for being an artist, who bounces to Digable
Planets and hums DAngelo as prayer.

I want a president who says om shanti mother-

fucker, both stretch and flex, to the dudes in the
room who talk over her, who wont turn up the mic,
who accuse her of not smiling enough.

I want a president who has Covered California and has

been told, sorry, we dont take that insurance by seven
different doctors.

I want a president who has given birth at home, in a

car, or a parking lot, one who knows that Pitocin and
Cesarean are not the only choices.

I want a president who had an abortion at 19, and

doesnt feel guilty about her choice because it was
hers.

61
I want a president who has been locked out of the
house, car, store or escorted out of her workplace by
security because she speaks the truth.

I want a president who put that cheatin liars clothes

in a pile on the lawn and channeled Angela Basset
while igniting the funeral pyre.

I want a president who has miscarried twice and gone

with her bereft sister to Walmart to get pads, dark
chocolate, and tabloid magazines as distraction.

I want a president who at eight months pregnant gave

birth to a stillborn baby girl. A president who lived
through the blinding pain to tell this story to the two
baby girls who came after, but always holds the first in
her hearts center.

I want a president who has watched her partner live

under the weight of depression and addiction. A presi-
dent who has been touched by suicide and has inter-
rogated the jagged scars left in the wake.

I want a woman-bachelor president who doesnt give a

fuck about being married.

I want a gay president with two moms or two dads

and non-binary children. I want a trans president who
owns a teal low-rider with hydraulics.

I want a president that is a combination of Kathy Ack-

62
er, Jessica Valenti, Eileen Myles, Sharon Jones, Rox-
anne Gay and Quest Love.

I want a president who was raped by an athlete while

she was intoxicated and stood up in court to speak her
truth in a letter that made us weep and weep and weep
because of her strength and resilience.

I want the Prince to reach down from the clouds and

rename the white house the purple house and croon
and remind us of humanity and rain and tears and ad-
diction and the unmistakable oooooooohhhh.

I want Bonita, Bonita, Bonita for president.

I want a president who smokes weed and inhales.

I want a president who has lost a child or a parent or

a sister or brother to gun violence. A president who
knows what it feels like to fear for her life if pulled
over for a routine traffic stop.

I want a president who once lived in a trailer or under

a freeway overpass in a tent.

I want a president who is a believer in eradicating lone-

liness. A president whose face is on the currency of
kindness.

Ingri d Ke i r 63
 ID LIKE TO SAY
SOMETHING TERRIBLE
Men explain things to me, still. And no man has ever apologized
for explaining, wrongly, things that I know and they dont.
rebecca solnit

Id vote for fewer translations of femaleness.

Do not eclipse us.
Let us stop honeying interpretation.

Need I remind you: pussy grabbing and nasty woman

are now in our lexicon.
My body, claimed as open season for cruel experi-
ments.

How easy it would be to get distracted,

while in our country, murder swallows pregnant
women.

The heart jolts when footsteps follow too closely in

the parking lot.
I hold keys, poised, one between each finger like a
lovers.

For I have seen more penises exposed

on the New York subway than ever in bed.

64
As the death sentence leaps out of the screen,
Dylann absolves himself.

As the odious orange marmot burps lies,

the wall of shame cannot contain us.
The rabid, spliced by a series of alternative rights.

Oh grave of light, where to take shelter,

where to rest ones eyes.
Swaddle and hold me like a babe,
remind me what it is to be alive.

Ingri d Ke i r 65
 KKKKKKKKK

FUN
E R A L R EQ U I R E M E NTS
F O R TH
WARTED CHILDREN

They were having a funeral for her blighted ovum.

The state now required funerals for all fetal tissue, but
blighted ova were sort of a gray area, was what Mike
discovered through Googling. Better safe than sorry,
he figured; the minimum fine for improper disposal of
thwarted children was $500.

How it happened was, Barb came out of the bathroom

this morning with a lump of gray tissue in her palm,
glistening like oyster meat. They put it in a bowl
between them on the kitchen table, a smoked glass
bowl they used for olives. Barb sat all folded up on the
chair, moaning about cramps.

They hadnt known she was pregnant. She wasnt,

really. A blighted ovum contained no embryo. It was
just a worthless sack of cells, a fertilized egg that
eventually sloughed off the uterus like a dead fruit.

Lets just flush it, Barb said. No one will know.

The law is the law, Barb.

67
They drove into nowhere, found a good patch of earth.
On the trucks dashboard, the blighted ovum had
started to seep through its jewelry box. Mike made
Barb pick it up and drop it in the hole and wipe down
his dashboard with an old t-shirt. Then he filled in
the hole and said a prayer over the mound. It was July,
West Texas.

Its hot as fuck out here, Barb said. Lets go home.

But there were additional procedures. They had to give

the fetal tissue a name. They had to write a narrative
essay detailing the biography of the thwarted child.
Texas.gov was very clear on the requirements of this
essay. Lots of sensory detail, minimum of ten double-
spaced pages, with an honest attempt at showing
rather than telling.

They got a table in the back of Starbucks.

Do you think it would have been a boy or girl? Mike

said.

Neither. There was no embryo. This is a total fucking

waste of time.

Lets say boy.

Mike started typing. He was annoyed at Barb. She

wasnt helping, and the law explicitly stated that the
mother was required to collaborate.

68
Once he got started, the essay really flowed out of
Mark. The blighted ovum would have developed into
a boy named Patrick who plays football. In high school
he hones his skills as a wide receiver and is recruited
to a big ten school on a full scholarship. In college he
gets several duis and is kicked off the team, losing his
scholarship, at which point he knocks up his slutty ex-
girlfriend. From there Patricks disappointing life fell
into place so easily, it was like he was a real person and
not a blighted ovum.

After three hours Mike was ready to submit the essay.

Barb went to the bathroom and when she came back
she announced that her nipples were leaking milk.

Youd better save the milk just in case.

In case of what?

That milk belongs to the state.

Mike was making stuff up now. He was annoyed

by Barbs lack of respect for the new legislation. No
wonder she was always getting parking tickets.

Barb was looking dangerously pale, probably due to

her stubborn insistence on a vegetarian diet. Mike
made a mental note to tie her up later and force-feed
her a ribeye.

Kat e Folk 69
 OUR CLOWN

We dug a pit and threw the regions depraved clowns

in.

One of them survived and started living in our

crawlspace.

He was pretty badly injured.

We all knew he was living in the crawlspace but no

one talked about it.

We pretended he wasnt there.

In the winter we each separately brought him food

and supplies. I went down there with a blanket and he
already had one.

I never asked him what was on all our mindswhether

he was going to murder us, and if so, how soon, and by
what method?

He was very polite. One time he gave me a tiny polar

bear carved from his own broken tooth, with a little
hole I could string a chain through.

Or maybe it was from the tooth of one of his victims.

70
At least it was no one from the house. We were all still
showing up to breakfast.

I told myself that the pit had probably cured him of his
murderousness. Or that we had reformed him through
our subsequent kindness.

But then Shelly disappeared.

We still didnt talk about the clown in the crawlspace.

Hed been in there six months and it felt weird to start
talking about it now.

After a week I poked my head in and the clown was

bleaching a skull with a toothbrush.

Is that Shelly? I said.

No, the clown said.

I went back upstairs.

Kat e Folk 71
 SSSSSSS
SSSS

SYMPTO MS

A little before dinner, the lilt starts.

I dont tell her the news I want to share.

Memory is a wine glass

in this house, we break
at least one a week,
just buy new ones at

Tuesday Morning,
pretend it never happened.

Twenty years ago, she stared

and asked me to close
the already lowered blinds
on the front window. I wonder

what memory was playing

against the accordioned fabric.

Living here is a series of ultimatums:

dont trip climbing the stairs. Or else
there will be broken glass and red
stains on the white carpet.

73
 Not to mention
the broken bones.

I try not to leave my room

past midnight when theres a risk
of turning a corner, finding
a naked shell of her, roaming

the halls, backlit by streetlights.

Every moon has a ghost.

Functioning is a metaphoric picket

fence, waking up in the morning,
making it to work, picking the kids
up from school, putting on a pot

of water to boil. I find her

standing vacant in the middle of the kitchen,

pasta in hand. Its not even dinner

yet. We have to eat
or else. Its like Im shaking
her awake

74
THE THINGS THAT KEEP ME UP AT NIGHT

red wine lipstains, the grease

spot on the hem of my green dress,
my leatherjacket straightjacket,

watching her light up

an American Spirit & sunglasses,
laced up boots, an exposed

breast on a balcony above a dumpster

surrounded by city lights.
Its two am.

If I find myself in the woods,

Ill find a way to lure myself back.

The neon signs & streetlights & barstools

are landmarks. A silver 24-ounce can
is a North Star anywhere.

The stumble happens late night

along the Milky Way. If the moss
is growing purple, go toward it.

Maybe Ill never get out alive. The wind

is holding its breath with every gun
shot & explosion.

Sa ge Cu rt i s 75
 The North Star booms into itself,
all thats left is avenues lined

with insomniacs like me.

76
 THE WOMEN IN MY FAMILY

The women in my family hit the bottle hard,

hit our men with closed fists & side-eyes
& sharp tongue hard.

No romance novels and candelabras. We say,

I dont believe in soul mates & hold on to grudges
& smoke pipes on a dark dark beach,

lose cellphones in the waterhard sand.

The women in my family run away to California,
North
Dakota, to Florida & New York.

We are running high octane, on high stakes,

on full throttle, nonstop juice. We run in little red
four-doors with a cat in the passenger seat,

in trailers hitched to a truck, all we own

falling on the floor with every bump, in Mustang
convertibles with tearing leather

and empty water bottles. The women

in my family tell stories about biting boys
for crossing a line & leaving a man

stunned with divorce on the bank

Sa ge Cu rt i s 77
of a Bayou & packing up the last box not a day too
soon
& getting the fuck out of some still hometown

& putting a fist into a chest to break

the heart of the man behind it. The women in my
family
like to tell these stories as a myth

of where we come from. The women in my family

wont stop their hitting & their running
& their middle-finger-up moments.

I am saying we are hard-wired this way:

to hide our wildness in bodycon & stilettos
& spit. All the wild in our thick lipstick.

We are not fit to be caged, house broken

or wifed-up. Im not saying this to say sorry.
The women in my family,
we like being this way: our packed suitcase,
tucked away bottles of booze & a set of car keys.
We are not going to say sorry or mean it.

78
 LLLLLLLLLL

2016

It was the perfect place to dieWest Grand Avenue

and San Pablo in Oakland, California. Rowdy.
Cacophonous. Charles rolled by in his wheelchair.
He passed hoards of people, withered people, people
ducking in and out of liquor stores and the St. Vincent
de Paul, people waiting for buses, people pushing
shopping carts, their shoulders tense, their eyes
hesitant and scanning the surroundings trying to
locate lifes next sucker punch or kick to the ribs. They
were prisoners in their own suffering, all condemned
to shuffle down the streets, zombie-like, their brains
shellacked and lacquered with years of illegal chemicals
and alcohol, with a tangle of freeways casting shadows
over their tent encampments as commuter cars raced
overhead and escaped.

They were hopeless, so they could be trusted.

Not the drivers. The streets were cluttered with them.

Charles watched from the sidewalk, noting their misery,
their impotent attempts at control. They looked like
they were going somewhere that they didnt want
to go, the strain of such and their endurance of
it providing ample reason for detesting even the

79
slightest error or spot of negligence from those around
them. The blonde woman in the Mazda 6 rolled her
eyes at the ball-capped and sunburnt fat man driving
the rusted Ford F150. The dreadlocked guy in the
Buick Century with the spinner rims glared at the
bespectacled bearded lad with the white earpiece in
the Toyota Prius.

Seeing them, Charles felt a delicious tickling in his

stomach.

Oh, their will to live, he thought. To move forward.

God, it made them fucking hate each other!

Everything around them was blistering inconvenience

the thoughtless pedestrians, the arrogant cyclists, the
hazard-light-double-parkers filling every right lane,
the galling prospect that no one knew how to make
a left turn correctly, the inconceivable fact that the
yellow lights had some kind of abstract meaning no
one could agree on, forcing everyone to wait light
after light after light after light. Charles pictured their
anger as water, lake ripples shoved forward by the
wind until they soared into ocean swells, rising against
the floodgates of their minds, the pestilent thoughts
swirling and crashing at the lip. The ugliness of their
sentiments mixed with the car exhaust, the cloud of
buzzing agitation corralled and pent up behind the
horrible power of a red light. All they needed was an
excuse, just the tiniest infuriating gravity to tear down
their defenses and send their rage crashing through.

80
Charles smiled. It was time.

He slid his hand down the armrest and fiddled with

the joystick. His wheelchair rolled into the crosswalk,
rumbling and bumping this way and that over potholes
and bits of trash. He kept the joystick pressed down,
the chair moving him into the center of the street
where three lanes of cars threatened to burst forward
at the change of the light.

And there, he stopped.

The light turned green.

Horns blasted as drivers punched them down.

Impatience bubbled, boiling and spilling over in curses.

Asshole!

It was beautiful.

Fucking retard!

Divine.

You crippled piece of shit!

Worthy to be slaughtered, Charles thought. He dared

them to try.

The hateful euphony cresting around him, he stayed

Lau ra Zi nk 81
 his position and urged them on. He knew they wanted
it. Their vitriol was everywhere. But which movement,
which sound would be the harbinger of his death? He
perked his ear to the rhythms.

Would it be from that truck swerving out of his way,

the jerk of the movement causing the engine to roar
and the tires to grip the road with a punctuated squeak?
Or would it come from the man whose hand smacked
the roof of his car in clamorous bangs? Or would it be
from the lady thrusting her head out her window to
scream goddamn it I got to pick up my kids motherfucker?
Or was it hidden somewhere else deep within that
broken chorus of curses and commands and cries
and horns? They were zeroing in on him now the
pedestrians, the bicyclists, the drivers, the workers, the
standers, the sidewalk sitters, the vagabonds peaking
their heads out of their tents lined under the freeway.
He was the center of everything! All eyes and thoughts
and fears and resentments were all on him! They were
his! his!

He moved his slow and shaky hand to the recliner

switch. He pushed it and leaned back, relaxing into
their fury, looking up to the blue sky, the cumulous
clouds drifting across it, the summer sun shearing
through them like knives, the blades of light shining on
his smiling face. He waited, tiny prayers for personal
Armageddon seething from his lips.

Im ready, he said. take me now!! he screamed.

82
But the horns began to dissipate. The yelling calmed,
the anger draining from it like water through a sieve.
The cars and trucks and motorcycles and bicycles
parted ways around him. A few odd curses and pieces
of trash pelted him as they rolled away and left him
behind.

Charles ignored the growing quiet, and kept waiting.

He stared at the sky. It was all fluff and light and pretty
colors. It was just an illusion, wasnt it? Just a fragile
shield of atmosphere that temporarily protected them
all from being sucked out into space.

Lau ra Zi nk 83
 KKKKKKKKK
KKK

DOWN IN THE
DEEP D O W N

We swayed like barley in the field to the tune of

mamas blues. Our clocks ticked to her bouts of
happiness, and inevitably, incapacitation. We needed
only to peek into her eyes, our eyes, to see what
time it was. Shed rouse us in the early morning and
announce that days adventure. We felt her love enter
our doorway before she uttered a word. The endless
tick. Our sense of time folded into the whims of our
mothers heart, beating in our chests.
scatter
told ourselves shed be alright wed be alright
everything will be alright

left light hanging shadow over her frame

curved our tiny bodies inward so as not to get
wet

let our splashed cheeks speak what we could not

mama was there and she was not

was awake and sleeping

she looked like us but we did not recognize her

85
 could not match the well in her eyes to the woman
who took us on adventures told us to be wild
always believed us in us

that mama wasnt this mama

loose like fall leaves trodden upon

remembering the tree she fell from

scattered

daddy nervous everyone be good

well get pizza mama needs rest

blue
blue skies
blue seas
blue babies
blue eyes

baby blues
mothers arm
blue eyes turn to black

coal black on her daddys palm

black like tar on country roads
leading nowhere

home
blue home

86
baby mother cries the blues
no one told her colors vary

there was gold in the barley fields

blue in her chest
and black in her heart

black out

with eyes closed his blue gaze isnt real

cant touch you
will seep into you long after
flesh becomes ghost

tune out sister cries

cant hear brother blues

mama knows youre black and blue

but looks through you like youre clear blue ocean
soon you become like water
turn into yourself until you are so spread apart
you dont know where you begin and end

mama needs coal black hands

like he needs amber bottle

mama sees your blue and lets you drown

dead women cannot revive blue babies

little girl blues ring the truest

Kat e Se i f e rt 87
 you hold on baby blue
look at the sparkle on the grain
see how it sways like the sea

in the tall grass

let your blue bleed out there

same red blood as coal black hands

daddy dies blue
skin and bones
amber bottle by his side

you wept silver tears

as dirt and rock settled over him

holding your blue-eyed baby

infant as woman
mother as daughter

she took with her your power

she took with her your blueness
wounded by crimes committed
to a body unlived in by her

lays her walls high

brick by brick

sometimes little blue baby

falls deep into her well

water splash

88
cry for mama
makes it five feet under

you pull her to the surface

wring out navy pebbles from her hair

weighing her down

pulling her down

you tell her this blueness is our fate

my baby
but this blueness is also our power

we were born into a sea

more turbulent than most
we can be ripped to the bottom
at any moment

but we are not without hope

cobalt takes turns
we must dip our arms into ink
when we see one of our own sinking

wring out the pebbles

unsoak her veins

remind her that you cannot drown those

who were born to breathe water
remind her
she inherited blue

Kat e Se i f e rt 89
 she is not crazy
she is not alone

amber bottle does not mix with blue hearts

she cannot gulp it away

she must reach out

blue-tipped fingers will be there
when shes ready to come up for air
let it sear her lungs

the next one

will need to be revived

because mothers cannot tuck blue babies

back into the womb
and run, and run, and run

90
 KKKKKKKKKK
KKK

W HIS K EY A N D M E

Whiskey holding our six year old neighbor CC above

his head and swinging him around upside down and
CC laughing and laughing and saying again! And
Whiskey saying one more time and then setting him
down gently on the sidewalk.

Whiskey wearing a neon green plastic belt and me

wondering about where he gets his clothes.

Whiskey telling me he got his nickname because hes

from Wisconsin. And that he was the only one in his
High School to graduate while living in an abandoned
brick factory.

The first time I met Whiskey, I was wearing a white

lace dress with fake flowers glued to it and later that
night most of the flowers fell off onto the wet weedy
grass.

Stumbling into Whiskey on Frenchman Street late

one night. He was sitting on the curb eating a snack
cake out of its plastic wrapper and there was white
icing smeared all over it. I realized for a moment
he must have found it in the dumpster. I said hi to

91
Whiskey and he said hi back and it felt familiar and
also like we were strangers.

The first night, making out in the sagging hammock in

our backyard and Whiskey unzipping my shorts and
when I asked if he had a condom he shook his head.

The second night, Whiskey shook me awake at two

am and said Lets go swimming!. I was nervous the
security at the car lot across the street would see us
scaling the fence to the apartment complex but they
didnt or didnt care.

The feeling of cool water in the sticky air and the pipe
that poured water into the tiny pool and dunking my
head under and laughing.

Whiskeys hand on my spine and him getting hard

and wanting to have sex underwater and pushing him
away and saying we have to use a condom.

Whiskey talking about starting a Food Not Bombs

chapter but its just so hard to get people organized
around here.

The rush of the wind and the night in my wet hair and
the smell of jasmine and the feeling of flying on my
bike down Esplanade Avenue.

Whiskey saying lets get a beer and some cookies at

the all night corner store in the Quarter, and I said I

92
didnt bring my wallet. And he looked at me with a
quiet intensity and said I have money.

The sound of the bullfrogs who lived in the broken

kayak in the backyard until one day the water dried up
and they shriveled and died.

The warm swish of the last sips from the tall boy can of
Mad Dog as the first rays of sun glared off the rooftops.

The Xs that marked the date and number of bodies

found spray painted on the front of each house.

Mold.

Covering my head with a pillow at 8am when Liz

listened to her messages on the answering machine
because she didnt believe in cell phones or sleeping
late.

Our Danish roommate, I forget her name, drawing

crop circles at the kitchen table using a compass and
a ruler.

Seeing two cockroaches hump each other on the

kitchen wall and walking right out of there.

A cockroach crawling over my foot while I slept.

Whiskey telling me about his court date and thinking

about how cute he must look in a suit and with his hair

Kat h ryn Re e ve 93
 pulled back.

Riding my bike with a crooked wheel and just getting

used to it. I saw Whiskey and he said wait here and he
ghost-road it over to the bike collective right before it
closed and trued the spokes and brought it back to me.
It made me think about what it must be like to have a
real boyfriend.

Potholes.

An old man named Woo telling me I was a mermaid.

A man in the Frenchman Street Park inviting Michelle

and me to his house for crab cakes and to see the mural
he had painted on his walls. At the entrance was a
mermaid who was crying and every day before he left
the house he would spit on his fingers and touch the
tears to make them wet.

Getting a job at a coffee shop because the manager was

so impressed that I showed up on time to the interview.

Tom, who would play the exorcist soundtrack on the

cafe piano every day until a customer would complain
and I had to ask him to stop.

Our house getting broken into in the middle of the

night while we were all sleeping and no one even
woke up.

94
Day drinking for the first time in Congo Square.

One of the girls we sublet from smiling and saying

Whiskey was a good kid and he lived at Termite and
Vine, an established squat that was pretty well run
although she still didnt like to visit because she didnt
want to get scabies.

Learning what scabies were.

Getting my bike stolen and walking home from work

in the middle of the street.

Arguing with my roommate over if our street was

called Columbus or Colunbus and then realizing that
one of the street signs was misspelled.

My roommate telling me that when she got home

from work Whiskey was in the front yard drinking out
of the hose and she didnt know what to say.

Laying sprawled in bed and Whiskey turning to me

and saying you are so beautiful and believing that
line for the first time.

Walking home heavy and slow from the Sunday free

dinner at the Hare Krishna temple and Whiskey
staying behind to help them with the dishes.

Cold drinks.

Kat h ryn Re e ve 95
Military police and armored cars and curfew.

Going out of town for a week, and when I got back

my roommate told me Whiskey was in Orleans Parish
Prison.

Mosquito bites that turned into pussing, yellow welts.

Leaning on the counter during a slow hour at the

coffee shop and writing Whiskey a letter. I remember
drawing pictures all over the envelope, but I dont
remember what it said.

Ignoring the fungal infection between my toes.

Michelle telling me she visited Whiskey at OPP and

he seemed fine, but for some reason I never got all
the forms filled out to see him and I was leaving soon
anyway.

Liz told Gabe who told me that Whiskey responded to

my letter and she had it at the house. I liked to imagine
what it said, but I never went to pick it up.

Whiskey whispering his real name into my ear:

Benjamin Patrick Miller.

96
 CCCCCCC
C CCCC CC
CC C
WE HUG

for Alonte
There is a bag between us
plastic filled with shit
we call so many things shit
but what of a life
aged twenty-one
when you carry your excrement
neatly under your shirt

he had so wanted a girl friend

so wanted a nurse
grown from puppy he was
falling over size thirteen feet
paws hanging awkward at his side
lips poked soup cooler
could he be held by a women now
will he, I wonder
has he crossed over and out of desirability
before having arrived

so much stacked
homeless
penniless
sleepless

97
 feeling dumb in school
classroom replaced with cell
cement blocks and bars I warned of
so this is where he learned to drive his vessel
this brown body
chewed up
with metal
and methamphetamine
killer cops
and homeboys too scared for fist fight
guns everywhere
death is a way of life
shit bags are not sexy
and what can I give the hole in his gut
but a hot plate and a hopeful hug

98
 DO NOT MENTION PROBLEM TO
POWER

inspired by Social Skills Training By Solmaz Sharif

and the Facebook posts of several friends

no worries has replaced no problem in an effort to

soften
problems of paychecks
of waiting and waiting for a piece of paper with
numbers on it
while management has direct deposit
of reprimanding Spanish speaking baristas
we speak English here
while you foam coffee from Latin America
picked with hands that look like yours
dont let the black guy make my coffee please
dont concern yourself senor
we would never want to worry your free-range North
Berkeley
gray haired well-read head
get back in your Prius and persue peruse
piss off Im double parked and hazard is more than
my lights can scream
service jobs prepare you for fuckery
maybe thats why my son is so naive
Im the service worker under our roof
an ass wiping professional

Cassandra Da lle t t 99
 you put it down I pick it up
washed folded and dried before you roll to your side
we raised them so they wouldnt have to know how
it is
for people who look like them
every day I say
do you have license? registration?
drive slow son
they shootin
in my house youre a king
but out there
you fit the description.

100
 I NAMED YOU FOR A RAPPER

On a sailboat radio in the Caribbean

a proper British voice announced the passing of
Biggie Smalls
I was holding you son, a baby born soon
after Tupacs death
we were traveling on Welfare
a chubby single mom tanned turning a page
a sea of see-through jelly fish
left red welts, an island of iguanas stole our food
when the cabbie yelled at us you are Americans you can
afford it
how could I explain our poverty
when we had so much
a round brown baby who never stopped smiling
back then we ate on a hundred sixty in food stamps
and formula from wic

back then it was stretched out before us

a boat at sea without Thug Life to guide us
the absurdity of rapped lyrics becoming real shots
fired
we had nothing but a pearlescent purple diaper bag
and a stroller pushed onto the train
but sometimes we got these plane tickets to fly far
away
live on a boat with my folks

Cassandra Da lle t t 101

 every country thought you their own
a mixed baby can pass as Bahamian or Venezuelan
the kids on the beach called you El Nio and Rude
Boy
you ran head first into surf with me chasing you
one night we dingied out drunk
I missed the boat and fell in to the water
my body turned missile
shooting through the oceans surface
I threw you into my mothers arms

later you were a teenager

before each school year we shopped malls
full of Biggies crowned face on T-shirts
Tupacs image long worn into the thrift stores
his mother died the other day
the news said nothing
we play Dear Mama for Afeni
watch reruns of The Fresh Prince
turn up the bass on our Trap songs
and contemplate bringing
Malcolm X and Africa medallions
back into style.

102
 PP PPPPPPPPPP
PP PP
PP P
LI N E S O F S O LIT U D E

My kingdom for a planet populated with matriarchal

justice warriors.

My planet for a city populated with drunken singing

gutter poets.

My city for a single lover populated in my orbit.

Light does not apologize for its awkward presence in

dark matters.
And why should it?
When taken as a whole, everyone knows its
nobodys fault,
the invisible weight
of these invisible arrangements.

The infinite death bout

between appetite
& vanity
between desire
& ego.

We lust.
We transact.

103
 We are disgusted.
And we didnt even have sex.
What could possibly be more German?

Oh what short term phantasmagoric cures

can we brew up for the public consumption now?

Just some strange physical hustle

of intermingled mashed up identity
that didnt quite take.

We mean what we say, but we dont say what we

mean.
Sure we are sad, but secretly:
more comfortable alone.

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 II IIIIIIIIII
II II
I
FOR MY M
ILITANT MAMA

brown fingers pickin lice with fish bone comb

coconut oil hair stretchin the earth of her back tongue
unforgiving as ocean child of swinging fist punchin
any school boy who dare serenade her bintana cursin
Irish nuns at Assumption High School for charging 10
centavos to students caught speaking Waray
balik diin ka gikan, sister go back to where you came
from militant like my lolo chasin pedicabs down
Sta. Isabel street when he catch her braiding hair back
for another fight jumpin off roof to dance with her
barkada beneath full moon of Real Street

college dropout marchin past spraying bullets of

martial law curfews who did not flinch when 5
plainclothes men pushed her into unmarked white
car forced her to watch two kasamas tortured with
wooden poles and angry fists

for my nanay who haunts the 4th grade teacher that

told my kuya his brain wouldnt develop properly
because mama speaks to him in Tagalog for my mama
who sleeps with a crow bar beneath her pillow
cracks open lechon skulls with bare hands gave
me my first pisaw sharpens the five-inch blade as I

105
 practice piercing air til my hands no longer wobble the
wooden handle of my inheritance

mama, you be a village of brown womxn Warriors

dancin in mother tongue you who cook me whole
who braid me sea salt hair & sing me Waray my 10-
year-old fingers pluckin gray hairs from the rice fields
of your scalp chargin 10 cents for each white root I
find climbin auntis roof to pick you fresh calamansi
singin all your stories to our moon.

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- february 6, 2017 -