Changing Room

  

I’m changing rooms/again
One: cigarette smoke and stale sweat
Of last week
And last night

Now: upright- the grand ballroom of this place
Rent due,
Stove lit,
Aired out.

I’ll change rooms three more times before it’s wrote
Ink
And pen
And wall
And steps.

Hand-scratched in short stab letters
Projected on balcony-tops,
Tree tops,
Read
Left.

I’ll  take three more sips
-Inhale again.

Tell the landlord
Tell the jury
Tell them they strike the same match with me,
Tell them I’m working it out.

I’m changing rooms
To the steps outside
-with stove
And with tree
And with pen.

The borders in here are god-awful to the spirit.

 

Photo by Sadie Myers. Words by Justin David Koontz.

I wanted wine and jazz

I wanted red wine and jazz:

You brought me (smoke) (glaze) and a (headache).

I took in all you had to offer.

The drip, wisps of your gold hair glinted in the shadows and tree light.

My lungs inhaled the honey scent of your neck

and I sweetly sat with you.

I wanted calm exhales, forgetting and Miles Davis:

you brought me (leaving-behinds) (pot) and some (frustrations).

I wanted all the good in you and none of the disaster you made me.

The weight of your back pressed my chest.

My heart tried beating its way toward you,

to place its little hands behind you and show you support.

(This is what I imagined as my eyes became glassy

and our world's delicacy shown itself see-through)

The lights blurred and danced and faded and I started to hum the Kind of Blue I wanted.

You told me the low base buzz of my chest lulled your senses and made you a child.

I starred at the tree and the lights till the world became perfectly clear.

I wanted red wine and jazz.

I did not want you.

But I loved this golden, quiet moment.

But I did not love you. 

Photo by John Henry. Words by Jordan Shappell.

the flower

Most things are concealed 

inside of

fluorescent light or

inside a bubble of

social anxiety.

But some things,

silent, delicate things

(imagine a hyena's

last breath),

while not moving, can

be exploding,

and ache with a 

muted tragedy or perhaps

a perfect happiness

(Imagine a plane crash)

(Imagine the same plane 

crash in slow motion).

I JUST DON'T KNOW.

And somewhere, thousands of miles away,

the hooves of a deer trample softly

the midnight snow.

Photo by Fred Watford.  Words by Randy Conner.

onding on snaw

It's not the kind of thing you can see to explain. The refrigerator was open and snow fell outside. She had them in her hand. She said, These are blueberries. But they were not. She unpackaged them. See? she said. I didn't, and so thought maybe something was the matter. And if something was the matter, I wondered what it was. I made conditional statements. Statements that suppose or imagine. With conjunctions that join. To connect. Like transitions. Phrases like "for example" and "that is." Also images illustrate a point, or represent: The light inside the refrigerator flickered intermittently without seeming to signal. It was cold, not only outside, but also in the kitchen. Only these are words. Oh yes they are, she said. But no, they are only. Words, that is. For example, this is not a blueberry. She made a fist. The berries bled violet and red in veins down her forearms where maybe there were real ones underneath, beneath the skin. Where really there was blood. I saw no seeds. And yet, These are seeded, she said. She said, I know where you get your ideas. That's a technique I've seen: calling someone out for something they've done. She said, These are my conditions, or maybe, This is conditional, indicating "us" with her skin-stained hand. I'm forgetting something. For some reason there was snow in the kitchen, falling on the floor. I wish there was. I wish there were, she said. She said, unless it is the case, it's only hypothetical. In that case I wish there would have been, I said, more of it on the snow, all over, if that's what it would have taken. If these had taken the form of something more than statements, of anything like your seedless spheres there. There's red in it; what looks like red there inside the black then. It's not a metaphor for anything. Something inside the darkness presents itself as red. At least is how I see it. And yes, there is red in it.

Photo by Sadie Myers.  Words by Diego Báez.

Gypsy Potpourri

----------------

AS a matter of fact-

The car’s collision occurred around ten am, this placed me post-breakfast and thinking myself in circles near Third and Vine.

This placed me in the eye of the hurricane.

Two deaths, simultaneous;

Hopefully it didn’t take these two mangled strangers

Cemented to the metal

-And the glass

Their deaths to realize their lives

[often times this seems to be the case].

At least the Egyptians always placed that sack-old brain in the most

Ceremonial of jars.

[what a buzzkill reality]

I took another sip of Luke-warm coffee.

Scribble,

 scribble,

 scribble.

I wondered if the bodies knew that I was  writing about them

[I hope they’re weren’t self-conscious].

it’s just-

The protagonist and antagonist were the same.

-the ists.

The families arrived in a gleaming blue lexus, the color of a violinist’s sunny day.

The bodies (butterfly)

The families (hurricane)

A slew of human emotion.

Don’t get me wrong-

It’s not that I didn’t feel bad,

It’s that I just knew:

That ticket would be punched eventually.

I’m still quite certain

-After heating the coffee

-After filing the report

All lifeless parties involved would have certainly

Stepped aside

Reconsidered

Existence.

It’s inevitable.

[or we bought all of that life insurance for nothing].

Photo by Randy Conner. Words by Justin David Koontz.

Please Come Back Soon

Honey,

You've been gone for two weeks now. I miss lying with you at night. I miss holding you in my arms till your sweet breath slowly fades and shallows, grows with the depth of the ocean and you fall to me in sleep. I get your whole weight then. Please come back soon.

Honey,

The image of your hair has been so sticky in my mind lately. All images of your dense curls seeps through my brain. I miss your hair. I miss the way it veiled our faces when you lay on top, your face hovering only inches from mine, our eyes parallel, noses touching and our lips quivering with the fun of kissing. Please come back soon.

Honey,

Do you remember our last kiss? It was tasty with the wine on my tongue and whiskey of your lips. You were drunk. I was not. I don't know how it was for you, but for me, it was nice. It was one of the first times I felt the true fullness of your lips. I think your drunk swagger allowed you to lean in a little closer and push a little harder into me. When you are drunk you love me more. Do you know that? I miss you. Please come back soon.

Honey,

It's been months now. I miss the way you look. I miss your cocoa eyes. I have dreams of you. In my dreams there are rows and rows and rows of you. Each face the same. Each kindly smiling and unsuspecting. I know you are thinking of me. Or, I hope you are thinking of me. I miss the way you look. Please don't let me forget how you look. It's been months, Honey, please come back soon.

Honey,

I want to hold you till our skin sticks together and I cannot get you off my fingers. I miss you. Please come back soon.

Honey,

I miss you. Please come back soon.

Honey,

Please come back soon.

Honey,

Please come back soon.

Honey,

Please.

Honey,

Photo by Shonn Sanchez.  Words by Jordan Shappell.

Smoke Rolls,

I know that.

I see from the left and the right and the center

Where it climbs over everything that can’t be had

By hands

Or by fingertips

Or

L o n g

Forgotten signals

Of the calling machine;

Underneath the seat

-Where my brain sits.

                               These things happen

Smoke: the unaccounted for

And uncontrolled

In the Universe.

They appear left and right and center

-If they are seen like they’d like to be.

But the smoke’s indifference puts to rest

Every iron

Of astute assumption

In the vein of knowing.

Bent around my hands and still ascending

a-w-a-y

from where my breath and my eyes and my words go.

I don’t take it personally.

Through windows

You can hear the scientists gathered

-They are manic

Tossed hands raised up

And palms to the sky

They are reciting old prayers and incantations.

They are guessing.

They told me there are 53BILLIONPLANETSINTHEGALAXY

They told me not to take life so personally,

They told me to smoke-

Because the Universe needs more carbon

And the typewriter is out of ribbon,

And the ribbon is out of ink.

Don’t take it personally. 

Photo by Randy Conner. Words by Justin David Koontz.

WHEEL

 

To the man who invented the wheel,

Thanks.

You gave us all whiplash.

I would let anyone 

punch me in the face

right now.

Photo by Angela Shields. Words by Randy Conner.

Tremors

The first time Jing Mao watched the child walk he knew his personal legacy was secure. The first time the young boy created a rudimentary painting for him, with crude green paste and stinking silver pastels ground of mashed freshwater tadpoles, he became aware of the unspoken distance between his own consciousness and that of this legacy. And somewhere in between, when the boy spoke to him, when he heard the distinct nature of his voice, Jing knew that although his physical being would move along past himself, the pure psychological essence of his life, and that of his ancestors, may very well not. He could hear the distance.

So although the goat’s legs quivered and seized under his full weight, and although his youngest son squealed and gasped at the inverted showing of the future before him, as the animal all three of them had fed and nurtured was brutally filleted and left to shudder in the humid afternoon air; he felt nothing but pride. Not because the boy had felt, in his hands, in his core, in that gruesome vibration, the taking of life for life, but because it was now immediately understood that the village would always have hands to feed it and the daring to face the tasks that kept it fed.

In a sense: His hands.

Or so he thought. It wasn’t until some weeks later, after he’d seen the boy milling around the rice paddies absently and pushing younger children down with random violence that he began to wonder where his legacy was really going.

The night he washed the twin dots of drying goat’s blood off of the boys cheek, there was nothing but pure static silence between them; a stoic recognition of the things that lay between what was connected and what was not. Jing had responded poorly at the time: he stayed silent alongside his son.

And yet one evening, late in a midsummer’s soup of overbearing heat, over the evening’s hard earned dinner, to which everyone could attest, the eldest son finally made him hurt.

That night, randomly, the boy said: “The difference between our pet goat, and my friend’s throats, should I recognize it? Is it even real?”

“Respect them both, but much differently,” Jing said quickly. Reflexively. Caught off guard.

The eldest boy did not lower his gaze.

“What are the differences?” He said.

It was then that Jing knew that he had not a legacy, but a reason to stay alive and well. A reason to keep teaching.

He had a son. 

Photo by Michael Seminer. Words by Paul Oliveri.

"Tall Grass Can Be Violent"

Tall grass can be violent,

and so can a mistake.

Have you ever stubbed your toe

on a dead body?

Everyone is fashionable

somehow.

Take this grass:

Its hair is bleached 

and its knuckles are

bloody like

the jawbone of

a horse.

I'd like to show you something.

It's a word I just made up.

"Heiosueltkooawe"

It means I'm sorry.

Photo by Julia Kruy.  Words by Randy Conner.

the ocean

See.

The open sea.

Live.

Come buy a house with me.

 

I want to buy a house on the ocean.

Not on the coast, the land, but on the ocean.

We’ll never need salt again, there is so much salt in the ocean.

 

It will be smiles. Food. Joy.

Wind. Travels. People. Fish.

Until we just can’t take it anymore.

 

Then we’ll dive in,

to cool off with the ocean.

Yeah, that’ll be the life.

Immersed in the ocean.

 

 

Photo by Sadie Myers.  Words by Amanda Grupp.

... fieldgreen ... sunsetting ... earthours ... neverforgetting ...

 

 had a dream 

that i can't remember

that's what makes it exciting 

see

that's what makes it all so

fun

Photo by Sadie Myers.  Words by Dustin Whitehead.

We are tourists in Chicago

Wake from sun squeezed 

by stone and concrete

illuminating windows 

opening our eyes

to go  consume

an authentic Chicago experience.

We ride Lake Front path

with packed crate on bike 

and bag full of U-lock, lunch,

entertainment and essentials

balancing our experience of

naturous Lake Michigan

 and Chicago metropolis

on trail supported by concrete 

built over trash heaps

accumulated from e x p a n d i n g.

We exit the path and return

to feel-of-the-road directions

or Google maps stuffed in pockets.

If lost, we stop.

We buy Streetwise and

pretend that karma stopped us.

Fulfilled day of urban participation--

we re-enter bike path,

sit on concrete steps over

lake water absorbing and reflecting\

our wisdoms of the day.

 

Photo by Julia Kruy.  Words by Ciara Brewer.

"Popular Science"

---------------------------------------

A meteor cannot ever touch the ground

Or else it becomes a meteorite.

This is a fact.

So is this:

"Before mating,

The male giraffe will

Drink the female's

Urine."

Two giraffes sit

Side by side

In a car at sunset.

(It's a convertible, of course.)

As they inch closer,

Painted pink by sweet

Sunlight,

A meteor is on its way to meet them.

Their giraffe lips almost touching,

A dog is heard barking in the distance.

Meteor... meteor... meteor...

Meteorite. 

Every photo is a photo of the past.

Photo by Sadie Myers.  Words by Randy Conner.

Walk me, Baby

So I walked.

Spending my last impulses

on a hope that walking away would erase me.

I wanted to be started over.

Redrawn a fresh.

So I walked.

I strolled with a stumble till the blood in my body

filled my feet and I was bottom heavy.

I tilted and felt light headed.

So I walked.

I tried to breathe with the rhythm of each step

with hopes my heart would follow,

and then my thoughts would fall in line,

and I could be whole again.

So I walked,

with hopes to control myself,

to find a single place that would align,

and no more outlines of what I could be,

would want to be,

am trying to get at.

So I walked,

to try to be me,

set this free

with each step,

except my heart stayed in place.

Refused to change pace,

my ribs a case against rhythm.

Against what I was walking for.

So I walked.

So I wanted to change myself.

But my heart wouldn't let me.

It kept me

the same.

I need a new perspective on myself.

One with more color. More detail.

One where I don't have to walk so much.

Drawing by Jason Kofke.  Words by Jordan Shappell.

Locked In

 

I.

Psst. 

Over here.

II.

Little help, please.

III.

I'm locked in.

My stupid fat fucking tears have locked me in.

The molasses molecules of my heavy thoughts have slowed their stream

Highly viscous and agonizingly vicious,

They've petrified into amber bars.

I seem to have locked myself in.

IV.

Psst.

V.

There's a lock on this cage. 

Old-fashioned, for your picking pleasure.

Put down your 

Blow torch, your

Dynamite, your

Drills, your

Other fancy equipment whose names I do not know

Just pick up that bobby pin on the dresser next to the fading receipt for soy milk and trash bags

VI.

Stick the bobby pin in the lock and twist till you feel it click

Be the hero and save me from this crystalized prison.

But before you swing the gate open, befriend the animal inside.

Reach your hand in and let me smell it. 

Let your fingers travel the length of my arm and make me purr.

Stick your head through and nuzzle into my collar bone.

Deeper.

Taste test the length of it.

Run your tongue up my neck like the first ice cream cone of summer and

Disarm the red dragons guarding this sleeping beauty.

As I quiver and wake,

As I stir

As the bars melt into waxen drips, and puddle on the lap of my dress,

Leave the door open a crack and 

Please, dear, disappear.

VII.

Because when I come back I will come back with a scream.

And I shall scream and scream and scream and scream and scream.

I've been locked in for entirely too long.

Photo by Caroline Näslund.  Words by Stephanie Chavara.

endoftheline

Cold steel, have you ever touched it? 

Locomotives ------ take us west.

Or else take our souls.

(Hey ______, when you get this letter, I'll already be gone.)

Imagine, if you will, a small bird. 

He hops alongs the fence,

Meditating on the 

Way the sun darkens skin and

Lightens hair.

Guess what.

That bird is fertilizing the grass.

Suicidal sparrows are common.

I actually died once, thorax halved by train.

I remember it like I remember my first 

Knife throwing accident (it was no accident).

Everyone's always whispering

As I walk by,

THAT GUY IS GOING NOWHERE.

Now I can see why.

Photo by Fred Watford.  Words by Randy Conner

Domesticated Dog

 

satin-red lead constrains him
he watches
squirrel taunting

canine eyes
reflect image, process
id festers

wooden deck
sun descends, cold
shades of gray char

grade-e protein bowl
in-satiating, manufactured

he hunts
 

Photo by John Henry. Words by Ciara Brewer.

Morn

I wrote some shit for the

Birds today. They smiled

Flappy- and ran away

 

Haiku by Dustin Whitehead.  Ink response by Caroline Näslund.

The Punches

 

I don't like you and I don't like you.

People say I look different, well I say you look the same.
Sometimes I rock and sometimes I roll 

Most times I roll with the punches.

I certainly say that I'm not like you.
I certainly say, I certainly say

You don't have to listen to emotions.

Photo by Amanda Grupp.  Words by Lear Bunda

I see you, Hill

You are cold
Gluten free 
Cuz it's summer time 
Stolen bottle of wine 
A fist dance 
And a short film 
Who will make the plan

I'm waiting for a decision 
They take too long 

Bastards 

Maybe if I walk up to the top of you I can take off my boots and socks and shows and scabs and feel the sand beneath the snow between my toes

Just a thought

I'll stay climbing 
I know the summer will Fall
That's what I dig about philosophy 
Everyone breaks suit
Nobody could be unoriginal 
Even twins have different names 

I'll eat eggs 

Not today 
Not next week 
Not next year

But I'll try em again 

I guess I should say here that I've never been perfect- but by golly- I'm trying to melt the layers

Alright Sun, it's your turn 


Photo by Sadie Myers. Words by Dustin Whitehead.

KASASA...

 

*Chicago, IL. 
Assaria, KS. 
Love
Life
Lavender
Lavendar 
Calendar
April 7, 2011
I love you
I miss you
I’ll kiss you
When I see you
Next week
This week
Is
Wedding dress
Invitations
Phone calls
Long drives
Through green pastures
On this side
It’s always greener
Especially in springtime
Fun time
Birds sing
Long days
Long walks
Down dirt roads
With mom and pops
It’s a good time
To talk
And walk
And learn
From each other
Before the moment is gone
I’ll remember
I’ll watch the sun set
And snap a photo
On my mind
Georgia
Wedding in June
Got a plane ticket
And a man
He's in Chicago 

About this piece:

I wrote a poem.  I asked Brandon to draw a picture to go with it.  He and his classic scented washable markers went to work.   He showed me his drawing.  I took a picture. 

Is that Kansas?

It's KASASA
 
Kasasa?

KASASA has yellow roads and blue gardens and red grass.

Words by Sadie Myers. Drawing by Brandon Baker.

my little brother's shoes

A twisted style in a fury felt

Like being inside a blurry avalanche fall

Melt Cautiously to the reflect

And inspect only what we expect

There were always rules but we never followed

I used to match my shoes with my shirts 

He'd give me the okay

His always matched better

He was always cleaner 

That's okay

I'm a confident fellow

None of my brothers know how to compete 

Neither do I

Maybe they are why

But he was the cool one 

With the shoes and the style and the happy and the smile

We used to stay up late 

His laugh is a heaven sound

Who built that? 

Watch as we grow 

Photo by Sadie Myers.  Words by Dustin Whitehead.

Future Well

When it ended we had it nothing. 
We had each other by ourselves
When it ended, 
it all ended
by each other 
by ourselves

Photo by Angela Shields.  Words by Lear Bunda.

I might be rough

Forgive me, where I come from is gritty.

My tongue is rough and I bite all too often.

Im used to trial by fire

and being shaped by the hands of an angry God.

so if any expression of how I care about you comes out a little harsh,

or a little sideways,

I need you to know where I come from...

Here.

This is my brother and I.

At a certain point we divorced from our family

(because we knew love sounded differently).

We held hands, got on bikes and chose to ride parallel lives.

This is us. And our home.

We built that.

My brother provided a roof because he always protected me.

His cracked hands constructed each shingle

and wiped away every single sad tear.

I provided the warmth inside our home.

My heart pumped blood for the both of us,

so our cheeks could still stretch out and smile at each other.

We made it for the two of us

to share and trust,

to rebuild what all was lost.

This is my brother.

This is my home.

You can see its faults in full

because we wanted to hide nothing.

We fall apart daily, help each other up

and crumble for fun.

This is my home.

It will never leave.

Here.

I give you this.

My brother and I.

Because I need you to know where I come from.

That I am nicked and bruised,

never smooth

and always wanting of sun

and your laughter

and the gaze/blaze of your eyes.

Here.

This is my brother and I.

This is my home.

I want you to have it.

I want you to know what its like to be home.  

Photo by Michael Seminer.  Words by Jordan Shappell.