American Daughter
by Daliah Angelique
I want my covered wagon
I want my prairie isolation
I want to raise the church that will spit me out
I want my dysentery quick and neat
I want my accidental hemlock, come back feeding
the fever with the same clenched jaw
I want my parochial folkways
I want my shotgun shell penitence
I want my shimmering plague of locusts
I want my tired womb folded in the hope chest
I want a testament to my suffering that is promptly paved over and
I want my mother’s trauma sold to me as Tradition, a mandatory aching,
this Next Frontier of the same failed crops,
things stole not conquered,
Sabotage packaged as hope
Indicative Material for Projection Images & Public Poetry
by Derya Dilara
To learn more about Derya and see more of their video projects in motion, visit: https://ddaglobe.com/
Untitled
by Chen Chen
The rain wants to ask me
about its sun-piercing mind—
I know.
I know this, even today
on Governors Island where even the trees’
questions are a form of heat
and I want to put on this glittery mask
as though it were a wearable mist
machine, and in fact there is a mist
machine, just a couple feet away,
but clearly that is too far
from the pores of my forehead
in which the rain, yes, is asking,
And you here? Are you the tree
I want to fall onto? To nourish?
And the pores of my forehead keep replying,
Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
This poem is an excerpt from the first Milk Happening Zine, a product of the inaugural Milk Press Happening.
Desert Duplex
By James O’Leary
After Jericho Brown
A desert has the longest memory of all.
The river finds home cut from its own making.
I own cuts I call home. The river’s making
loss until time shows itself in layers of face.
Time uncovers loss exposed on my rock face—
mesa, tabula rasa, blank slate.
Though flat like a mesa, I am no blank slate.
Thirst runs river salt over my dry, dead scrub--
I scrub salt runs with thirst, that dry, parched river
& girl as an ocotillo grows from weeds.
As a dry boy my legs grew in yarrow weed,
quiet as mesquite curls to cover home.
Hair curled to mesquite, a dress uncovers home.
A desert has the longest memory of all.
This poem was the winner of the Duplex Poem Contest judged by Jericho Brown.
Untitled
By Jason Bard
Artist Statement:
These are works of homosexual loneliness and sex filtered through the nostalgic lens of detachment that reflects on childhood substance abuse.
You can find Jason @jasonbard
Poem in Which You Are the Church
By Jorah Saint James
Real boy the love I have made to you is unremarkable,
as it should be in a perfect world, impossible to tell
where you end and I begin.
Real boy I have recessed in your nation,
your looted land, pronounced it dead,
& closed the borders I once bled for.
Real boy I dream of fist un-flung,
forever boy, I have wept on your behalf,
I have wept for the rifle that fires flowers.
I have wept for your father, his secret sorrow
I have wept for your god locked in a bottle
I have wept for the ghost you never knew.
Real boy what do you call a wolf without teeth?
a wolf without fur, exiled by bigger wolves,
a wolf greater than the lack of his parts.
What do you call the boy refracted? His salted sea,
his rivers Jordan, John, and Luke
he who must be touched to be known.
What do you call a cancer by any other creed, that
which consumes the flesh, consumes the need,
what do you call a boy by any other name?
Real boy I have missed you every morning,
your funeral of a face, your
box of shattered pearls, your
mourning for the sake of
all real boys.
No house worships you, no house builds itself.
Real boy I have prayed for your forgiveness,
I have prayed to change you,
I have divided art from artist, divided
truth and nature,
I am bruised blue and pink,
my stomach soured by the fruits of your labor.
Real boy I have been the kindling,
the kerosene, I have been the underbrush,
the evergreen, I have been the root of your disdain,
your soiled seed, Real boy I have taken you
as Hades took Persephone, made you queen
for sake of starving, made
your mother ill with worry, brought
you to the edge of ruin.
Real boy
I have imagined you in the mirror,
I have imagined our bodies intermixed.
I have disguised you
for fear of reckoning, quieted you
for fear of possibility.
I have made you the object
of my unrest. Real boy,
the boy of my invention, the boy
with ten fingers and ten toes,
always I will be here,
stirring the same pot, wearing the
same shoes, missing the same people.
And you will be here, too
regretting nothing, not even
the hair you grew. Fantastic boy,
with your edgeless axe, your petty thunder;
I hold your breath anchor heavy in my arms
and let the burden bring us under.
Come see Jorah Saint James in action as a Pride Month Micro-Resident
@ Books Are Magic, June 29-30.
SAMMELBAND
By B.A. Van Sise
The written word is, at its core, not a word at all, but an unmouthed, unheard image- the idea of a word, itself the idea of a thought, itself the idea of a person: some stranger trying to turn a glimmer of fleeting conviction into a forever-thing. No, the written word is not a word, but a pressed impression of ink, set with weight into paper, that we view as we view one another: a series of abstract lines and curves, that we interpret into something we feel we can understand.
When the Poetry Society of New York offered me a residency at the New York Public Library, I struggled to understand just what I might do with such a thing. I am not a poet. I cannot tell you the first thing about iambs or enjambments, let alone know what to do with them if you threw them at me by the bagful. However, after three years photographing poets, I know a thing or two about translating poetry into visuals, and about translating total strangers into new media.
So, for one day this spring, I took over the New York Public Library at 42nd Street -or at least a small corner of it- and dragooned several dozen New York City library patrons into my service. I used projections of pages of the books they themselves had with them as my light, and as their story, casting their learning and entertainment onto them, creating jumbled pieces of found poems on the patrons themselves.
In the end, I found that I had created a sammelband- a book, as it were, comprising a number of separately printed, unrelated works, subsequently bound together, a portion of which is presented here. The people, it turns out, are poetry.
why I pierced my nipples
an explanation for my father (who never asked)
by Calvin Claudio
In short, I want to moan harder than you ever, ever will.
I want to moan so loud that the earth arches its back
and quakes with pornstar begs of mercy.
The long version. I pay forty dollars for a tattooed man
to flick my tit and stick a needle in deep,
a hot blue bullet catching fire to my bile.
The long version. I want to know if you’ve ever seen
a man and bawled over the landscape of his lips.
I want to know if you’ve ever tasted another man’s tears.
In short, I write to you in threes.
The father, the son,
and the ghost between them.
The long version. I want you to know that when I seem to
blind you, like Saul was blinded, it gives me a god complex,
and I must sacrifice myself on behalf of your ignorance.
The long version. The tattooed man tells me some do it for
the pain, cleansing chaos to gleaming silver. I want you to know,
I am not in pain. I am good. I am holy.
In short: When I spread myself on crisp white sheets
and tell a man to worship my nipples,
all night long I see white lights.
You can find Calvin at @calvin_claudio
Mirror of Multitudes
By Armoni Boone
A shutter can seal timelines like *click*
we can measure time with light
conversation. We were always just
kids, right?
We understood blood sacrifice early on
*click* Sure, different masters, but we both believe in honest work.
To see a new destiny on the other end of a lens
is to hold hands with God across an unwritten stanza.
*click*
*click*
*cli--
Artist Statement:
Lately, a lot of my work has been tied in building a creative universe, something as ambitious as Tolkien's or Pratchett's across multiple mediums. As a result, exploration has always been a key aspect of my work. Whether that is the exploration of concepts or merging mediums, much of my publicly facing works are either filled with questions or trying to flush out my universe.
You can find Armoni Boone @im.armoni and @armonionly
Anemone!
By Kaleem Hawa
there’s a bulldozer on the beach!
and it’s not making itself any friends
its crisp staccato gagging the rush
of wind, the crash of synthetic on
mineral flattening the salted chew, shoving
the grit into their mouths, until
no one has a choice, until
they grind up the granules, spit-coating
the mulch until
it’s a sandpit after the rain,
Sullivan’s dessert, a brine-saturated treat
for a starving family, served sous-vide
what did you say? there’s a bulldozer on the beach!
I have to remind myself, before I jump in
that the ocean’s not their friend,
that it’s a death sentence for a bulbous people
bobbing up and down its neck,
that under the skin, there’s a dripping reef,
the feet struggle to avoid, seeking out firm ground,
generations who’ve forgotten how to swim,
the Acre fishermen, the Haifa seamstresses,
lives gutted and cleaned and sold
so the creature can continue its purring
progress—goddamn—there’s a bulldozer on the beach!
it’s hard to walk, when you’ve stepped on anemones
—they crack the skin, break sensibilities,
puncture tires, even, rewrite stories, often—
but walk I must, for when my teta
passes I’ll return her to that
plot, I’ll repurpose
that black machine, carve out a piece of her
land, I’ll bend her earth to my will,
yell out across the indifferent light, crying salt,
chewing stars, begging the world to look, to finally
stop it, because: there’s a bulldozer on her beach!
and dead bodies in the water
The Power of the Click
By Lala Drona
Titles: Clickbait, Ctrl+click / Cmd+click, Ctrl+V / Cmd+V
Can a click on a virtual body invite transgressions on real body? Do we exploit ourselves in exchange for clicks, and does that exploitation manifest differently across age/race/sex/gender? This triptych examines the actions we take on women’s bodies in the digital world, and their impact on the real world. The seemingly inconsequential act of clicking while interacting under the mask of anonymity, behind the screen. In a world where clicks are the new currency, how do we avoid inflicting or perpetuating suffering on others though our clicks? Is it possible to empower ourselves through the action of clicking?
A mouse click on a virtual body can be an act of affirmation, an act of curiosity, or an act of violence. However, above all, a click today represents an exchange. One sees this in our tendency to value ourselves and content through the “likes,” “friends,” and “followers.” In a world where the virtual overlaps with the real, it is vital that we become more conscious of the impact of this value system on our daily lives.
Artist Bio:
Lala Drona (b. 1988) is a Venezuelan-American painter and videaste, born in Denver, Colorado. After receiving a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Colorado, Lala Drona has since published and exhibited her work from North America to South America, and from Western Europe to Asia. Her paintings, videos, and writing explore the themes of identity, women’s bodily experience, and the Internet's effect on society, all media combining together to create a cohesive universe. She is currently based in Paris, France.
Louise Bourgeois’ sculptures are full of legs
By Tali Cohen
Louise Bourgeois’ sculptures are full of legs
and I’m not thinking of the spiders right at
this moment but more specifically of SEVEN
IN BED — all of them with their pink plush
patchwork bodies, all their complicated limbic
entanglement — and what is greedier than legs
bending just to say I need you a little bit closer?
Maybe mouths, open and panting, or hands
closing to a fist. It doesn’t matter — what
I am saying is the body is greedy. It is always
asking to be fed and taken for walks. Washed if
you can remember. Loved and adorned. It doesn’t care,
it just wants touch. Stimulation. I am so bored of my body.
It’s not good company. It’s too selfish of a lover.
Louise Bourgeois’ sculptures are full of desire. Even
THE SPIDER who sits on a birdcage. Yes, even her
— who left the birdcage door cracked open, placed
an armchair in its center. Even the cold wire of it says,
come inside. Be selfless. Put your body on display for me.
You can find Tali Cohen @tatatatatali
Pressed Upon a Pane
By Anna Gregor
Oil paint on Canvas
2019
36 inches x 60 inches
Gregor’s paintings suggest interior architectural spaces that enclose the viewer – walls and windows, corners and doors – that teeter on the edge of dissolving into abstraction. At moments like these, when the idea of a represented object and the perception of the material collide, the suggestion of architectural space transforms into swathes of paint in the imagination of the viewer. These uncertain “spaces” that refuse comprehension foreground the act of mental construction fundamental to seeing: one attempts to understand what is depicted but is ultimately frustrated. The viewer is left with the sensuous beauty of paint applied to ground and a self-awareness of a mind that wants to understand. These paintings beg the question: what is really real — the material from which we construct our ideas of the world or the ideas at which we arrive?
[THE OWL]
by Sophie Gregory
Glued a voice to the ear. Left its shoes on the mat. My father’s Japanese movies. Imprinted
stomach scars. Showed the thing what was there. Not much. Blue ripples. Oars in an Italian
canal. Two blind pianists. A bucket of Elmer’s. Far from the factory laughs were miracles.
Sounds of pasta boiling over. The brakes were shit. Cave cases. Instruments of brass. Made
forts. Kept together with glue. The roof got sticky. If it dripped the moon was giving us milk.
Summers went. Everything was beautiful. Winters went. Tied false with the perfect bow.
Layed in the snow. Quiet. The head voice even in the stillness. Falling in the fishing hole. Got
buried in frozen water. Wet glue. Even kids know to keep water away from fresh crafts. Took
ill in the bathtub. Sometime between glances. Changes happen. Cheaper stuff. A month. Glue
peeling off your palm. A person’s fleshy funeral. One meant for the corn snake. The days that
wilt. Chrysanthemums. Real pirates. Didn’t think much kept its beauty anymore. Sunflowers
have been off the map for weeks. Don’t need it to see. Water over the ribs. From bathtub to
bed. Sun shined on horseshoe prints in my skin. Repeat. Turned nocturnal. Name means
wisdom. Invisible ink glows through highly lit eyes. I am the insomniac detective. Needle
coffee in the morning. Nights too. These days. Dizzy. I am. I am still. Thank space. The Owl.
This piece previously appeared in Jet Fuel Review.
Cat on the Ginger Carpet with Playmobil
By Gavin Shepherdson
Shepherdson is a designer and artist from Lanchester, Durham.
His paintings aim to capture memories and moments from his everyday life as a way of documenting the little parts he might otherwise forget. The paintings so far are mostly of his cat and looking for cars with his son.
His artwork has recently featured in print in Porridge Magazine Issue 2 and Penny Thoughts Issue 9.