Jeffrey Pethybridge—Striven, the Bright Treatise Noemi, 2013 Page Length: 194 Retail: $25 A reality of the postmodern milieu is that a work must be understood not only by what it does but also by what it cannot possibly do. Language, we know, is a flawed and failing vehicle, always falling short of the nonverbal reality toward which it might be directed. Poetry, then, as a radical engagement with language, is a radical, perpetual experiment in failure. Jeffrey Pethybridge’s debut collection Striven, the Bright Treatise (Noemi 2013) is a monumental failure, but not on account of its brilliant machinery—rather, it fails because it must—because it seeks, quixotically, in Sisyphean adamance, to confront an impossible subject: the suicide of Pethybridge’s brother in 2007. Striven is mourning: a ritual toward acceptance—a stay against the effacement of history. In the book’s Appendix we find a eulogy dated 3/17/07. It begins: “We are speaking and [...]

Treed 2. Watercolor, marker and pencil on paper, 9×12” 2014 with H. Deskins is an artist and writer who examines womanhood, motherhood, and the body in her work and others. She’s exhibited in galleries nationally and published her art and writing internationally. She is founding editor of Les Femmes Folles, and illustrated Intimates and Fools (poetry by Laura Madeline Wiseman, Les Femmes Folles Books, 2014).

Brash Ice. Djelloul Marbrook. Leaky Boot Press, 2014. 104 pages, ISBN: 978-1909849150 The boundaries of an identity become less distinct the closer they’re analyzed. It’s an existential nuance encountered by everyone from scientists defining an atom to Zen students contemplating a koan. Djelloul Marbrook’s latest collection, Brash Ice, explores that vagueness and various tangential elements such as memory, history and the way the nature of transcendence alters with the self as it encounters the harsher elements of life. The opening poem begins So this business of being you is about handling plutonium. (“handling plutonium”) The self is radioactive, dangerous to handle. It is not easy, in spite of the ubiquitous exhortations, to simply “be yourself.” There is much to fear. But it must be faced full on if to be realized. So the poem concludes . . . let intellect’s luminol reveal what fears can’t bleach, to stare at the [...]

I Came Upon a Troll By Jason Pierre Every so often, I take these hour-long walks. I drift for miles at a time. It gives me a chance to look out at Los Angeles in a way I would never have done on the bus. One thing I’ve learned about this town is that it’s very segregated. Areas are designed to be cultural pockets for different communities and pride is held in the emotional ownership of a neighborhood. And these neighborhoods aren’t small. Los Angeles is a massive place. A neighborhood is like a town. And me? I’m a man on my feet, wandering through them as a stranger; belonging to no piece of land other than the footprint of pavement my feet touch for a tenth of a second as I walk. Recently, I walked under an overpass and saw a bed of massive rocks surrounding a gated entrance [...]

Dry Terrain If I could explain your desert, I would— the spines of your beard, your shoulder as stone, the tuft of dried grass struggling beneath it. I would roll the tumbleweed across your chest, or disrupt it with my fingers. Your abdomen is the silent side of a long expanse of dune, and I would cross it. I would leave my footprint or sweep my hand to brush it out. ​Something has skimmed across your sand: pinnate leaf of foot, stem of tail. I don’t have the languages for desert. I might be the water from a cactus; I might be unreliable and bitter. Maybe I am a storm. I rage and roil and think I make you different. You take in my relief, vanish me into you. Or I am the stone ​you hold in your mouth to stave off thirst. Most days, I know, I am nothing [...]

Oozing. Acrylic, ink on white paper, 18 x 24” 2014. is an artist and writer who examines womanhood, motherhood, and the body in her work and others. She’s exhibited in galleries nationally and published her art and writing internationally. She is founding editor of Les Femmes Folles, and illustrated Intimates and Fools (poetry by Laura Madeline Wiseman, Les Femmes Folles Books, 2014). is the author of the full-length poetry collections American Galactic (Martian Lit, 2014), Some Fatal Effects of Curiosity and Disobedience (Lavender Ink, 2014), Queen of the Platform (Anaphora Literary Press, 2013), and Sprung (San Francisco Bay Press, 2012). Her dime novel is The Bottle Opener (Red Dashboard, 2014). She is also the author of two letterpress books, nine chapbooks, and the collaborative book Intimates and Fools (Les Femmes Folles Books, 2014) with artist Sally Deskins. She is the editor of Women Write Resistance: Poets Resist Gender Violence (Hyacinth [...]

iii. If man should raise hands to breach the throat of his father, feed him garlic. Who else but an imp should eat it? It’s reaper-cruel. Dog food. The pagan’s stinking rose. Hemlock in the belly, vipers in the blood. Canidia, the Grey One, had a hand in this dish, I’m sure. That other witch Medea poured garlic over Jason to help him bind the fire-bulls; its stink repelled their breath. She gave garlic to his mistress, too, then flew away on her serpent-bird. All women are best avenged with gifts. Neither the dry southern cities nor sweaty Hercules, he of the burned shoulders, know anything like this starry steam. And should you desire another springtime jest, dear Son of Kings, remember my countercurse: “May all women oppose you with hands and push you out of their beds.” iv. My quarrel is with you, [ ]. Even the wolves and [...]

The poems in Untying the Knot (Kelsay Books, 2014), by Karen Paul Holmes, detail her two-year journey through a gamut of trials that rival Job’s. As the title suggests, divorce is the over-arching disaster. With what Thomas Lux described as grace, humor and self-awareness, Holmes relates the year in which she learned that her husband of 30 years was sleeping with one of her close friends, her mother had terminal Lymphoma, and her brother had a life-threatening cancer requiring dangerous surgery. None of these griefs had been foreshadowed; in confessional, free-verse poems, Holmes reaches out to her reader, perhaps the only friend she trusts with the foreign thoughts cycling through her mind during the sanity shaking upheaval in her formerly charmed life. Unsurprisingly, the themes of this book include heartbreak, denial and anger, but the transcendent theme is the author’s flight from bitterness, which she feels might swamp her life. [...]

I used to date a woman with exceptional taste in art. She kept a steady rotation of coffee table books in her living room, my favorite of which was an enormous hardcover filled with paintings by Lucian Freud. We would be watching television, or trying to have a conversation, or making out, and I’d inevitably find my eyes and my hands returning to that gorgeous book: the incredible depths of the flesh tones—portraits that, regardless of the model, straddled the line between the beautiful and the ugly in a way I found helplessly entrancing. It became a point of contention: “Why are you still looking at that book?” “Yes I have seen that one before.” “No. He doesn’t care. He’s a dog.” Coffee table books are a delicate matter: if you want to play it safe, go with Ansel Adams or a book of funny church signs—guests will flip quickly, [...]

A lifetime ago, I sat with some dear friends in their apartment discussing literature, music, and art as we drank wine. We gathered like this as often as we could. A small group of poets, novelists, painters, and musicians; we composed our own little salon. Elizabeth Bishop was the topic of conversation that night, and we grabbed her collected poems off the shelf. We passed it around for each person to take their turn reciting the poem “One Art” out loud. It was a marvelous time. Each brought their own voice, their own character to the poem and then uttered it forth. It was a night of joy connected through art but also a deepening insight into the subtlety of the poem itself. “One Art” is not easy to recite well. One has to be almost inspired to get it right. This is not a fault in the poem but [...]

Food Addiction When you look at me what do you look at? At the outer shell? The fat, the rolls, the flesh? The over-abundance of what I am? Do you see gluttony? Do you see sloth? Do you look beyond? Can you see what is inside? The heart, the mind, the soul? The over-abundance of who I am? Do you ever question the looks you make? Do you ever question your eyes? Ask them why they can only see the outside? Do you ever question your brain? Ask it why it feels the need to ridicule? Do you ever question your mouth? Ask it why it frowns? Look inside my depression. Do you see my hurt? Can you feel my pain? Can you heal my self-esteem? Can you look beyond the outer? Too many questions? Can I let go? NO Only when you stop saying… You would look so much [...]

No Longer I am rails no longer. I have hips now, and breasts that stick out past my ribs, though the alchemy of metabolism makes them protrude, too. I am no longer whittled, though my fingers still get cold, but there is something to me now, some substance. I have content—more than just skin and bones. Meat on my bones, I signify something, am able to create. That this body could now produce a child scares me, but it’s less frightening than passing out, than the jut of hips and wristbone and no ass. And, now, when he holds me, I know it’s not just to cling to my body, but to grasp onto what’s inside. And the starved girl, the one within me, weeps, for she is filled. ___________________________________________________ An alumna of Barnard College, Marissa Mazek is currently a Creative Writing MFA candidate at Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia. [...]

Circe You walked into my garden and shook your head at the Parliament of swine there assembled. You cursed my name, called me witch, meddled with my drinks for fear of poison. Yet, you had the taste to love me first. How I lost my appeal seems unfathomable now. Were you afraid of my powers? No doubt. You knew I held infinity in the palms of my hands. Circe Ti addentrasti nel mio giardino e scuotesti il capo alla vista del Parlamento di maiali lì radunato Maledicesti il mio nome, Mi chiamasti strega, rovistasti tra i miei drink per paura del veleno. Eppure avesti il gusto di amarmi prima. Come persi il mio appeal sembra inconcepibile adesso. Temevi i miei poteri? Senza dubbio. Sapevi che tenevo l’infinito tra le palme delle mie mani. Dream I dream giraffes on fire, but the walls of my room are made of asbestos and [...]

A Sanctioned Babel: On fleshing out text, a visit with Cecil Taylor, and a re-wilding of language. “The pleasure of the text is the moment when my body pursues its own ideas—for my body does not have the same ideas I do.” —Roland Barthes, from The Pleasure of the Text … Literary rabbit holes, as all religious readers know, are real. When we read a book, we do not only activate our eyes, we use our entire bodies. But it is not just the tactile experience of touching paper or buckram, parchment or vellum, that does this, not this, although the weight and feel of a book is much more than just a sensory perk. In an article in Scientific American last year, Ferris Jabr discussed some of the research that has been going on regarding screen-reading versus reading on paper. The brain reads letters as physical objects that live [...]

Brandon Molyneaux is a visual and alternative sculpture artist from upstate New York. He uses a variety of non-traditional media, including paper, glue, circuitry, and electricity to build lighted sculpture out of raw material.