Shoots and Vines

Editor's Note - Shoots and Vines is Moving

2009-02-16T07:24:00.002-06:00

It's been a wonderful two and a half months since S&V first began, a thought I had while washing dishes. :)

S&V has grown so quickly: sixty-four contributors in the online zine alone since inception.

Beginning today, S&V's new home will be at www.shootsandvines.com. Many thanks to Lynn Alexander for helping through the beginning stages of setting up the new site. I couldn't have done it without her.

New submissions addy: submissions@shootsandvines.com
New info addy: info@shootsandvines.com

New site: www.shootsandvines.com.

On the drop down bar of the new site is a list of all the contributors. Each piece of work has its own page. I hope everyone enjoys the new look, still dark and disparing. :)

Take care and check out the new site. Bookmark it, tell your friends, and keep submitting!

Thanks to everyone for making this such a huge success. I never would have dreamed this zine would hit over 5800 views in less than three months, but I also didn't have any idea how many great writers were still hiding in the underground.

Featured Writer: Julie Buffaloe-Yoder Day 3

2009-02-15T06:46:00.002-06:00

Buster Peacock & The House of Many Colors

When the city of Freeville

widened the highway,

they didn’t plow down

a single shingle in

Foxcroft

White Pointe

Golf Crossing.

Instead, they took

Buster Peacock’s land.

A blind old black man

in a felt blue hat

with a sagging shack

on twenty acres of

scrub pine and sand.

That house was old

even in Jim Crow’s day

when Buster carried

his sweet Veleetha

over the threshhold,

felt the angles of her face

the curve of her hips,

a perfect place for babies:

Buster Jr.

Scoochie

Little Toot.

Buster Peacock could feel the color

of four rooms with his fingers, the tips

of his toes—the brown creak and sigh

from tired floorboards at night.

The way the feather bed felt

like cool water blue when

the breeze blew gauze curtains

over Veleetha’s sleeping face.

That little red place in the doorway

where Scoochie bumped his head

when he got so tall, the gold notches

where Buster Jr. carved his name,

the yellow dip in the hallway where

Toot liked to slide in socks.

The silver click of the cuckoo clock

exactly eight steps from a gray hum

from the refrigerator, the green smell

of the breadbox on a hot June day.

The city could not understand

why Buster cried so hard

over a broke down shack.

They gave fair market value.

But they didn’t care that

you can’t place market value

on a breadbox or children

grown or a wife passed on.

The day they moved him

to a retirement home,

the dozer crushed

through his front door.

Buster could feel color

all over again.
_________________________________________________________________________________

Waiting For Mother

Waiting for mother was easier

before autumn crackled in

and ate the days up early.

It was my job to never cry

and light the living room fire.

I was six and alone with wood

and the sharp clear bark of cold.

The wind tip-tapped

the spider crack windows

looking for a place inside

to build its nest.

I knew Mother would come,

she would come home and see

me in the big of the dark,

clumsy with wood and the room

closing its teeth around me--

the naughty buds of fire

refusing to open and grow.

The room smiled pumpkin warm

when I coaxed the fire to raise

its broken, bloody wings.

The branches fluttered shadows

like long lashes on the walls.

Those nights were yellow glad;

I could play and wait, listen

to the purr of wind against the sky.

I liked to watch the moon

scrape across the window.

I liked to tell stories to my dolls,

hold them close to the fire,

watch their smiling faces melt.

And the moon held me.

And the smoke held me.

And the long curly hair

of the shadows held me.

And the moon made me full.

And the fire ate my fever.

And the rise and fall of flames

sang me softly to sleep.

Sometimes when I woke,

the fire left burning sores

on tangled legs of branches.

Sometimes when I woke,

the moon rattled at the window.

The cold was thorny

up and down my back.

The knots in the wood

stared like bad baby eyes,

and the clock was click click

clicking its high heels

in the crying midnight room.

I knew when Mother came home,

she would come, singing red shoes,

the pretty side of her face

an orange fire glow.

She would turn off the bad baby eyes

and the meanness of the moon.

She would listen to the falling leaves

and hear the angel wings with me.

She would fall asleep, and I

would rub her small, soft feet.

I would smell her lemon hair.

I would find her missing slipper.

I would kiss her warming temple,

never ever burn.

Waiting for Mother was easier

before the greedy winter came

and chewed up all the wood.

One night, the wind slapped hard.

I only found the skinny twigs.

One night, through the click of cold,

I filled the fireplace with dolls

and books, pennies, chairs,

stale dry blankets,

And I let the room catch on fire.

Upstairs, on my mattress,

I waited for Mother

to creep up the wooden steps

and tuck me in.

She would come quickly.

She would come warmly.

I knew she would come home

and I would not be alone.

And together we would listen

to the broken goodnight moon,

the glowing wind, and babies

falling from the sky.

Featured Writer: Julie Buffaloe-Yoder Day 2

2009-02-14T08:28:00.003-06:00

Shaqueena, Big and Tall

Shaqueena had the biggest tits

I’ve ever seen, I mean each

of those puppies was the size

of a Rottweiler’s head.

Even us straight girls

couldn’t help but stare

at them in gym class.

Soapy globes in the shower,

suntanned worlds unknown,

Shaqueena had the power

of a woman in eighth grade.

Those glamorous glands

didn’t slow Shaqueena down.

She didn’t try to stop them

with eighteen-hour harnesses

or hide them behind books.

She put them out there, honey,

for all the small girls to see.

Goddess of the braless,

large dark nipples peeking

through thin white lace.

Bouncing on the playground,

they’d hit us in the face.

We memorized her mammaries,

worshipped her jiggling temples,

wrote poems about them,

gave both of them names.

We were jealous as hell.

Shaqueena, Queen of Meat.

Sturdy, curvy, proud, loud.

When God was passing out

boobs in the lunch room,

Shaqueena took all the trays

and ran away, laughing.
__________________________________________________________
Washing Away

That old shell of a building used to be

where Jeeter Davis picked the blues,

while us girls picked the sweet meat

of blue crabs to sell for market price.

We worked with red bandanas

on our heads, and boys on our minds.

Our squeaking rubber gloves

on warm, wet wood kept time.

The mockingbirds sounded

like little boats chewing foam.

The shush of shovels in crushed ice

meant supper would be on the table

for at least another season.

Our fathers were worn out

after a good night’s catch,

their boats heavy with a living.

But they kept us full

of their stories, oh Lord, that day

Jeeter Davis sang the one about

the cheating wife and the clam bed,

we thought we would die laughing.

Now there’s a big, black boot,

some old net that needs mending,

and an upside down crab pot

floating in the tide.

There’s a rotten crate

with SHRIMP stenciled

on its side, the letters R, M, P

almost faded away.

There’s a mossy brown stump

where the oyster bed was,

the handle of a shovel,

and two rusty pennies, heads up,

lying in the mud.

There’s our old crab house

creaking in the breeze, and inside,

the briny smell still echoes

like Jeeter Davis’ cold, steel blues

sliding off the walls.

There’s glass that snaps underfoot,

three rubber gloves, a pink hair brush,

a radio that might still work,

and a guitar pick crusted with scales

stuck in a crack in the ice room door.

There’s half a receipt book,

and compliments

of Bell-Munden Funeral Home,

there’s an unmarked calendar

still opened to the year

when we lost our soul.

Across the bay,

there’s a healthy row

of condominiums growing.

They call it Fisherman’s Ridge.

There’s a billboard that has

a happy family on it.

They’re not from around here.

There’s a cartoon picture

of a boat and a shrimper

hauling in his heavy nets.

He’s bathed in light and way

too clean to be working.

They tell us maybe

we can get big tips over there

if we entertain the tourists

with our watermen’s accents

or serve imported crabs

in the restaurant

or mop their pretty floors.

So shiny, so bright,

like the Whore of Babylon

like a brand new bay.

God help us.

We’re all washing

We’re all washing away.

Featured Writer: Julie Buffaloe-Yoder Day 1

2009-02-13T07:22:00.004-06:00

Aunt Aggie and The Alligators

Aunt Aggie never had babies.
She had alligators
that floated under leaf wet logs.
She had a mud brushed shack
beside a slow moving river
downwind of Ocketawna Swamp.
She had boxes of fossils
on her kitchen counters.
Six foot long rattlesnake skins
hung as decorations
on her front porch.

Half Cherokee, half Irish,
Aunt Aggie had one brown eye
and one blue; she had two
bright silver braids that swung
past her ass when she danced.
Aunt Aggie smelled like cypress,
muddy boots and fresh mint tea.
Her hands were as loving tough
as summer collard leaves.

Aunt Aggie had no neighbors.
She had a Smith and Wesson
and ninety six root thick acres.
She had record breaking reptiles
who turned over her trash barrel
in the lapping heat
of those thick cricket nights.
She had the faded yellow skies
of August hurricanes,
not too many water bugs,
mildewed faces growing
on her window screens,
and every knick knack
Woolworth’s ever sold.

Each spring at dawn on the edge
of the riverbank, Aunt Aggie threw
leftovers, buckets of fish guts,
and rotten fruit in mossy holes
where the gators waited
for her to call them by name:
Miss Eula Belle!
Matthew-Mark-Luke and John!
Josiah Ezekiel Twain!
Old Slow Moon!
Little Bitty!

During mating season she crouched
waist deep in swamp to watch
the big ones make the water dance;
kept a two-by-four held tight in case
the young ones should try to get fresh.

Aunt Aggie had a fit that stormy day
when relatives explained the papers
that came in the mail from The State:
Eminent Domain.

They said maybe she should take
the money they offered.
Find a nice retirement home.

Everybody thought Aunt Aggie
would shoot the lawyers
and the politicians
and the real estate developers
and the police in their fat heads.
Instead, she cut all her silver hair
and let it float down the river
with the moon of the green corn.

They found Aunt Aggie the next week
curled up and brown on her porch.
The biggest gator next to her, eating
fish heads, bread and moldy cheese.
Aunt Aggie’s last supper
before her babies were put to sleep.
__________________________________________________________________________________

Snake Handling

They call him Rattlesnake,

a row of diamonds

sliced across his back

in a bar room brawl.

All the girls say he is

the best thing to curl up

on their hot back porches

since before the devil’s fall.

They say he’s so pretty

like slant-eyed danger

wrapped in gold-brown skin,

muscles the size of sin—

he smells like a man, damnit.

This laying on of hands

fathers do not understand,

this power to tread through

tall grass, groping under

the dark side of logs,

searching for an answer.

When they dare to hold him,

they shed their old souls

and are born again

beneath a thrill of stars,

dancing to the rhythm

of the rock of ages.

Speaking unknown tongues,

that ticking crescendo

of dry pinestraw is alive

like tambourines of fire.

Like strychnine shooting

through a country girl’s veins.

The sting might not kill

but it makes them feel

like it will, and even if

they swell, they don’t

give a damn—they say

it’s better than Heaven.

I've had work published in Side of Grits, storySouth, Clapboard House, The Wilmington Review, A Carolina Literary Companion, Muscadine Lines: A Southern Journal, Calyx: A Journal of Art and Literature by Women, Grain, and Pemmican.

When the Wolves Came Down the Mountain by Jason Michel

2009-02-12T08:00:00.002-06:00

When the wolves came down the mountain, we rang the bells and took turns throwing rocks at the damned wild hounds. All teeth and eyes. There seemed to be no rhyme nor reason to it all, ‘cept they wanted our blood split from open wounds onto the female earth’s holy gash.
And we damn well wanted theirs.

An aged Scotsman stood next to me, the one we called Ancient Mac Cock on account of his obsession with his withered mediocre genitalia, and launched a large stone that misfired and smashed the dull stained glass window that showed Christ’s crucifixion on the grim, hunched-over Presbyterian church. When the realization of the consequences of his wayward action hit him, he turned to me and whispered, “Might wake th’ ol’ bastard up fer once, hey lad …”

As I brought down a rock and cracked open the skull of one of the beautiful creatures, watching its pale blue eyes become shot with spilled scarlet ink and its grey purple cerebral mass seep through its ears, I noticed a little girl squatting over the dismembered stomach of a lupe and pissing all over its entrails, washing the blood away. Then I knew I was nothing more than a cell in a gigantic beast that went on forever and forever. The question was whether I was a virus or part of the immune system. As I looked around at the carnage and the numbers of the dead on both sides, I glimpsed the answer and prepared for tomorrow.

Jason Michel has been turned on, tripped up and stumbled over all around the world on an eleven year(so far)self imposed exile. He now lives in France.
He has recently published his first novel “Confessions of a Black Dog” at lulu.com and has had work published in various print and online magazines.
His work can be seen at http://beatendog.blogspot.com/

Todd Among the Nightingales by Mikael Covey

2009-02-11T08:00:00.002-06:00

Todd meanders down the street, scrawny, pot-bellied; I see he’s lost most of his hair now. Comes over to the guys outside the half-way house with a big smile on his face. They’re sitting there smoking cigarettes watching the grass grow, whatever. Friends of his, I guess.

I’m making a delivery, dropping off a package. “He was one of the Chicago Seven” I tell ‘em. Todd smiles, starts recounting the names “Abby Hoffman, Jerry Rubin...” Yeah, and Todd Obermeyer.

We used to talk about it, back when I was his caseworker, as if that’s all there was. Paging through the high school yearbook, pictures in black and white. Pretty girls in pep club outfits, Pierpoint Rustlerettes 1967.

Todd looks at the pictures objectively, distantly; tells me how shy and dysfunctional he was in school; even though his folks had money. A scrawny little mouse with droopy eyes and big ears, short hair cut. Like none of that ever mattered anyway. “I’m forty-eight years old y’know.”

Then in college, somehow in a fraternity, in with the bright young going somewhere crowd. The cusp of future leaders. Chicago ’68, when he had the breakdown. They brought him back from Canada, put him in the hospital for twenty years. Ten more after that on the outside, still that’s all there ever was.

Lives alone in a spotlessly clean apartment, government funded. Everything neat and orderly, very nice. “I got no food” he says, objectively, not that it matters. Just something to talk about, making conversation. We have to meet, we have to talk. What else is there to say.

First of the month his check comes in. The vultures swoop down and take it away. Tougher needier mental patients who prey on the weaker ones. Borrow things, like your money. “They talk me into it” he says “what can I do? He says he’ll pay me back, and he never does. Next time I’m gonna just tell him no.”

Aint gonna happen. I’d like to see Todd get really angry about it, just to see how far he’d go before he’d back down. Like a couple of pomeranians fighting each other. Or maybe that’s how we all are when you think about it.

Take him to the food pantry where people donate food so that others who don’t have any can come get some. Todd’s very picky. “Do you have...” this, that, the other, like we’re at the supermarket, anything you want. I’m embarrassed. This is free food Todd, just take what the lady gives you, okay? Asks if he can come back every month, his problems would all be solved.

I like Todd, he’s so different from what you’d think a schizophrenic would be. So quiet calm peaceful. That slight smile, like things are amusing to him, or beyond his control. Always so friendly, gentle, dignified in his own way. A pleasure to visit with him, to escape from the constant tension and stress of the job. Just to sit here in this spotlessly clean apartment, reminisce about old days.

When I get to know him better, he confides in me a bit. The color coded signals God uses to tell him things. He saw a man on tv wearing a blue suit. Blue means royalty, that was a good man. Something yellow in a magazine would be a warning. Don’t go out today. Orange is even more dangerous.

That was years ago. I’m surprised he’s made it this far. But I like Todd, I’m happy to see him. Later run across him meandering down the street, big fleshy bulge on the side of his neck. “Todd, how you doing?” “Well...I got cancer. Of the lymph nodes, I guess. They’re giving me chemo... I’m fifty-eight years old, y’know.”

Photography by Jeff Crouch

2009-02-10T07:25:00.001-06:00

Remains Day

Sense of Play

Myopia

Jeff Crouch is an internet artist in Grand Prairie, Texas. Google him.

Editor's Note

2009-02-09T08:00:00.005-06:00

It's been a great week.

S&V Print Issue 1 is at Penny Lane Coffee House. Penny Lane Coffee House is a locally owned and operated business in Evansville, IN. Local writers and musicians show up every month to read their work and play their music. Inside you'll find a reading area, fair-trade coffee, vegan muffins and soup, and great conversation. Religion and politics are not taboo here! If you are in the area, bypass Starbucks and hit this sweet spot that Heidi and Paul have nurtured into a breeding ground for underground art.

Antony Hitchen has a new chapbook out this month. It's entitled 'The Holy Hermaphrodite' and consists of cut-up poetry and one prose piece. The poems chosen all concern the over-coming and resolution of dualities (sex, race, sexuality, religion etc, etc) unified in the body of the Hermaphrodite - a symbol or physical representation of all things unified and at peace.

Shadow Archer Press has published other books by great S&V writers. Stop by to buy their books and keep an eye out for Antony's book.

Coming soon, collaborations between David Oprava and myself, and Matt Finney and myself. We selected six word prompts and went from there. I'm excited to be working with two fantastic writers. Audrey Victoria is providing the art. You can see more work by David, Matt, and Audrey in S&V's print issue 1. Both zines will be available on open book and in print. I'll add links as soon as the work is completed.

I really want to spread the word about another great place in southern Indiana which works very hard to bring quality goods to quality people.

Joe's Records in Evansville, Indiana.

I take the baby into Joe's a couple of times a month to pick up music or games. Just the other day, I was looking for Ingrid Lucia's album that has the song 'Down Home', and Joe found it for me. Although I could have just as easily ordered it from Amazon or some other store, there is something special about ordering music from a locally owned and operated record store, especially when the owner sold me my first Cocteau Twins CD when I was about thirteen. Joe carries a large selection of music by local artists. If you are in southern Indiana, stop by to see Joe and tell him Crystal sent you. He'll probably tell you all kinds of stories about me from back when I wore ripped up fishnets and combat boots.

Comment, comment, comment! Let the writers and artists know when you like their work. Not only is it a good push to keep writing, but it gives us direction so we know when something works, when we connect to the reader.

This week's lineup

Tuesday: Jeff Crouch
Wednesday: Mikael Covey
Thursday: Jason Michel

Featured Writer: Julie Buffaloe-Yoder

Have a great week!
Crystal

Calls for Submissions

S&V will now be publishing a monthly zine on open book. Each month will have a different word prompt or topic.

March - Darkening of the Night

Send subs to shootsandvines@gmail.com and add March to the subject.

Poetry
Prose
Art
Flash
Photography

Featured Writer: Doug Draime Day 3

2009-02-08T08:00:00.000-06:00

Attending A Poetry Reading At The Local College

What good does poetry do? Can it stop the
wailing of the tormented? Can it end
the continual political slaughter of
millions from war, starvation,
abortion, capital punishment, racial
genocide, or territorial domination?

Poets still sit in the coffeehouses and
bars in America,
talking like badass street fighters,
though few
have ever thrown a punch
and probably wouldn’t know how to make a fist:
publishing in the
little mags only
they read, and,
to each other. They’re
content like everyone
to get drunk and
talk shit.

In other countries they lined poets up against the wall
and shot them down
like wooden ducks in a shooting gallery
or imprisoned them like wild animals

for speaking out against
the State,
for publishing poems of
protest
and dissension,
for standing up
for truth
and human
justice.

Poets in America suck on the tit of academic,
curdled lies, defending the “artistic freedom”
of submerging an image
of Christ in a bottle of urine.

*Reprinted from Doug's book: Transmissions From The Underground
Watch for it at deadbeatpress sometime in February 2009.

Featured Writer: Doug Draime Day 2

2009-02-07T08:00:00.002-06:00

Burning The Complete Works of Sylvia Plath

The suicidal Muse ran up and
down my walls screaming for
Sylvia Plath. It wasn’t my
Muse; it came with her. She warned
me about something like this
happening if my writing
became too positive or
encouraging. So, I called her
up.
“Look,” I said, “it’s running up and
down my walls screaming for
Sylvia Plath.”

“Calm down,” she said, “just turn the typewriter
off and it’ll stop.”

“What?” I said.

“Turn the Corona off and it’ll stop.” she said

The Smith Corona was a gift from her when my ancient
Remington bit the dust. I told her to hold on a minute and
went over and turned off the machine. She was right, the
thing just disappeared with a puff of smoke. Back on the
phone, I told her it worked. She was silent for a moment.

“What are you going to do now,” she asked.

“What do you mean?” I said.

“Well, I mean, you got the thing stirred up
somehow and now every time you turn
the typewriter on the Muse is going to get
out and cause havoc. Each time it gets worse.”

“No shit?” I said, shocked.

“No shit!” she replied.

I thought for a moment. “Will burning the
Complete Works Of Sylvia Plath work?”

She was thinking now. “Well, you could give that
a try, probably wouldn’t hurt to burn all the Ted
Hughes stuff while you’re at it.”

“Thanks I appreciate the help,” I said and hung up.

I didn’t have the Complete Works Of Sylvia Plath
and nothing by Hughes, so I went out and bought
them. When I got home I went outside, threw them
in an empty trash can and was about to torch them
when something like a spiritual revelation hit me.
I grabbed the Complete Works Of Sylvia
Plath out of the trash can and ran inside, turned on
my oven and baked her with the oven door open for
an hour. Then I gingerly took the smoldering books,
holding them with a pot holder, outside and threw them
in the trash can with her former old man, and torched
them good. I watched the books burn to ashes, then
emptied the ashes in my septic tank. I felt something
lifting from me and I knew it was over.

I went in and turned on the machine. It purred
like a kitten. I waited for a moment and then
typed my first line: The Suicidal Muse ran up
and down my walls screaming for Sylvia Plath.

*Reprinted from Doug's book: Transmissions From The Underground
Watch for it at deadbeatpress sometime in February 2009.

Featured Writer: Doug Draime Day 1

2009-02-06T08:00:00.006-06:00

Someday I Will Write A Poem That Will Flood The World

And I will own all the
arks, boats, ships,
rafts, and canoes,
and tug boats, ferries,
all forms of water transportation.

People will have to come
to me for their means
of survival.

The stubborn and destitute ones
will drown in my poem
sinking to the bottom,
screeching like anchors on
rusty
chains.

The rest of humanity will plead
for cut-rate discounts. But fuck them,
I’ll make them pay out
the ass. No rainbows
this time.
________________________________________

4 a.m. Reflection

If I say it was
torrid, what of love?
As my mind tosses
in memory like a
violent sea,
settling for the
pretentious
compromise of
poetry;
touching the stars
climbing the ladder
of lust. Meaning?
Love? What aches
in the heart?
Familiar images of
erotic passion
and the comfort of
someone being there. Knowing
the emptiness
and sting of
ambivalence. Why do we betray
the intimacy?
Why do we betray
the giving?

Doug Draime emerged as part of the underground literary movement in Los Angeles in the late 1960's. Most recent books: "Bones" (Kendra Steiner Editions) and "Los Angeles Terminal" (Covert Press). Forthcoming, "Transmissions From The Underground" (d/e/a/d/b/e/a/t/ press) and "Farrago Soup" (Coatlism Press). He moved Oregon in 1981, where he stills resides.

Order Doug's book and support small press: d/e/a/d/b/e/a/t press

Belt loops by Crystal Folz

2009-02-05T08:09:00.006-06:00

We go to a party at a friend's farm. The moon sits in the sky, as bright as the Skoal ring on the back pocket of my husband's blue jeans. I carry food into the house. He totes his guitar and cooler out to the weathered gray barn.

Moths whirl in the spotlights set up around the table. Laughter stirs the tassels on the corn. They play Hank Sr., Waylon, and Kristofferson before meandering into that harmonic southern rock they quietly strummed in their rooms when learning to play the guitar.

Sometimes on date night we take the pickup. Before we leave, my husband cleans out the truck. Tool belts and safety glasses and shotgun shells are placed inside the garage door. He gets a sheet from behind the seat, one that has holes cut for seat belt buckles, and tucks it in tight. I prop my foot up on the dash, and he lets me take control of the radio.

I've always wanted men, not boys - gruff and greasy men who seem to have been born knowing how to weld, whittle, and eye which socket they need to loosen a bolt.

There's little things I've stopped thinking about for a long time: the way he plays with the back pocket on my cutoff shorts when I sit in his lap; how he tucks the sheet between us on hot nights so we don't stick together; how he says my accent is sweet, secretly knowing I've spent years trying to shorten those long vowels and remember the 'g's at the end of my words; and those calloused hands, fingers that snag strands of hair when he brushes it over my shoulder.

I lean up against the truck, fixing to grab him another beer, and wonder if he wants me to be hard enough to take care of myself, or soft enough to let him drag me back by my belt loop whenever I walk away without kissing him first.

What I Saw by D.C. Porder

2009-02-04T08:00:00.000-06:00

when it first happened
dad wasn’t really that blind.
what he saw were (in his words)
“black columns” on both sides
of his vision. each day
they encroached further
towards the center
of his blue eyes like curtains
across stained-glass.

the day he lost his sight completely
we ate chocolate cake.
dad thought it would
be funny. then long strings
of tears rushed down
his cheeks. dad

cried through the night.
his eyes were worthless
except for that.

D.C. Porder studies writing at The New School. Read more at www.dcporder.blogspot.com.

Two Pieces by George Anderson

2009-02-03T08:00:00.003-06:00

On the Seine

it's raining in the
French Quarter as
we eat delicious

skewers of prawns
& mussels smash our
greasy white plates in

the fireplace later
sit under umbrellas
sipping Veure Clicquot

Yellow Label from plastic
champaigne glasses & in
the dark follow the brightly

lit tourists' boats trying to
forget Gaza where militants
fire make-shift rockets &

where schools & hospitals
at this very minute are being
bombed by the Israeli Air Force

the general election only three
weeks away our bottle dangerously
nearing the end of its usefulness.
_____________________________________

Claire

She was born
on that late Friday evening
without lips
without a nose

her left foot attached
to her knee

six toes on her right foot

her heart & lungs
sweetly pumping

the neon grey noon
collapsing
a slowly understood beauty
the handwriting describing this
barely legible

god's attempts at perfection reconfigured,
her colostomy bag one day attuned
to life's tragic appendage?

George Anderson lives in North Wollongong, Australia. Erbacce-press in July 2008 published a chapbook of his poems 'Dancing
On Thin Ice'. Check out his new blog:
http://georgedanderson.blogspot.com

Editor's Note

2009-02-02T08:00:00.003-06:00

S&V Issue 1 has been well received. Copies will be floating around this week in Evansville, Indiana. Stop by Penny Lane Coffee House, and River City Food Co-op to pick up a copy - while supplies last. It will be printed and distributed until April, when the second issue prints.

All contributors were sent copies last week. If you haven't received yours, it's because I don't have a snail mail addy for you.

If readers would like a copy of the print, please contact me by email: shootsandvines@gmail.com. I ask for $1.00 to help pay for shipping.

Coming this week, a printable Outsider Writers mini-zine which provides a mission statement and links to the group. Check out my blog on Outsider Writers later this week to print off a copy.

Kristin Fouquet just interviewed me for the OW zine coming out this spring. Keep your eyes open for more information about S&V and why I love it.

Small Press Information:

Andromache Books is a small, independent press publishing literary fiction and poetry of the highest quality. We are dedicated to the vital and delicate art of literature. We are not in it for the money. (What money?) We are in it for truth and beauty and all that. We are decidedly not the mainstream.

Andromache Books is a cooperative, not-for-profit venture, run entirely by the authors themselves. We seek to bring only the best and the brightest to light. For further information about our books contact us at:andromachebooks@gmail.com

We are:
Grace Andreacchi, managing editor
Nikesh Murali, poetry editor
Edward Hadas, business manager
Andy Scheuchzer, mascot

Out titles so far include:
Mark Edwards, Clearout Sale
Grace Andreacchi, Scarabocchio, Poetry and Fear

Coming soon: Poetry from Robin Ouzman Hislop, and our Contemporary Poets Series, edited by Nikesh Murali.

Call for Submissions:

Shoots and Vines is looking for poetry, prose, flash fiction, art, and photography for the April 2009 print issue.

The Legendary:
WE PRINT: DOWNDIRTY WORDS, UNFLINCHING REALISM, FORNICATING FANTASIES.

Team -

Jim Parks is a newsman, deckhand, farm hand, truck driver and ramblin' man. Keep him away from the fire water and don't mess with his food or his woman.

Katie Moore is a mother, writer, and wife...in that order. Sorry, husband. She has been known to plan an orgy and occasionally she feels the need to dance like Kevin Bacon in Footloose.

*Calls for Submissions and information about small presses are posted every Monday in the editor's note. If you'd like to submit your mag or press, please email shootsandvines@gmail.com. Add mag or press in the subject line.

Have a great week!
Crystal

Featured Writer: Alan King Day 3

2009-02-01T08:00:00.002-06:00

Saturday Morning
Kingdom

And the Boulevard wakes
like a child -- rubbing its eyes,
stretching to greet first light.
But you're wide-awake with

the other silhouettes inside
a darkened theatre, and
all around you -- the loud
snapping of cellophane wrappers,

cookie dough candy and gummy
bears sweetening the air.
"How come you're always by yourself,"
your father asked once. His mind

so one-track women only exist
as cure-alls for everything, even
a work-week that pounds you
like a heavyweight.

But how do you explain the rush
you get from conquering that near-empty
dark space -- the throne-sized seats,
and jesters on a screen fit for a king?
____________________________________________

Proposition

Fred picks at his batter-
fried onions, shakes his head:
She said it would never work

with me; that I know too many
women. An ex told you the same thing
before demanding you either
cut your play sisters loose or lose her

for good. And why does it always
come down to the final proposition,
as if life had a limit on possibilities?

And what happens when neither party
stops fighting the forces of arbitration?
Maybe you end up dateless on a Saturday night,
sharing appetizers with your boys

in a log cabin-style restaurant –
considering the symbolism
of a talking moose head on the wall.
__________________________________________________

The Meek

…the angels fall from heaven
…the day the earth stands still
-The System, "Don't Disturb This Groove"

like that night, skating around
a darkened rink with several
other silhouettes and Tanya
gripping my nervous hand

her skin glowing from
the purple "Couples" sign
and popping Bubblicious
behind her thick pink lips
was all I knew of beauty

and would probably be
the only time this chunky
12 year old would get
so close to divinity

to think this moment
seemed impossible,
or would be the closest
thing to knowing a man's
frustration for obsessing
the unattainable

but Tonya locking her
fingers with mine and smiling,
I'm convinced God grants
the meek a small taste
of their inheritance

like your cool older
cousins along the rail,
watching – grinning
and nodding: Yeah
I see you, playa

Featured Writer: Alan King Day 2

2009-01-31T08:00:00.003-06:00

3 a.m.

An hour before, we were laying
in your bed -- your fingers trailing
my spine, finding the pool

at the small of my back. I laughed
when you said we'd be a married
couple holding each other

on a night like this -- rain drumming
your windows, the flash of thunder
shining our slippery bodies;

my calf sore from a charley horse
pulled when we wrestled earlier.
The night breeze cooling

our bodies. Will it always be
like this? you wondered, as if
this is all it takes to keep you

here before you lose interest
and move on. All I have is how
we indulged in one appetite

after another -- the first a craving
between bodies, then the other
that's brought us to a near empty diner.

Your smile, as I call this
a "late night caper," the only
lit spot on a darkened road.

________________________________________

Cosmic Girl

even now, knowing
what you know,
you still can't shake her
from your head

almost six years since
you've seen her curvy
imprint under a sundress

when the breeze was a friend
lifting her hem and showing her
flexed calves ablaze in sunlight

you ignored your friends'
warnings, even after the third
time she'd introduced herself
by another name

now, she was Aurora Borealis –
a band of renegade stars
streaking the dark sky

and what a way to sum up
this woman of light with fiery hair
and a glass-blown body

a woman who, despite your
pleading, quit you cold turkey
and left you whimpering
in the arms of friends,

recalling the obvious signs
of trouble, like her pointing
heavenward when asked
about her hometown

and the fact her previous name
was a number reserved for God

3 a.m. and Cosmic Girl will be published in the inaugural issue of the San Pedro Poetry Review.

Featured Writer: Alan King Day 1

2009-01-30T08:00:00.000-06:00

Spin Cycle

Warm clothes out of the dryer --
the scent hooking its aromatic
arms around my neck,

like a college girlfriend
before a kiss in the laundromat.
And something, long-buried, rises

like a serpent when Seduction
blows her snake charmer's flute.
Is this why the sight of a fresh

line speedbags my heart,

like that of a child's
before summer break,
or why the smell of detergent

calls me like a lover into
the laundry room before
she pulled me between her

open legs? Her lips --
warm and wet -- ready
to take my tongue.
_______________________________

What It Is

"Good Goodness" is what Derrick
calls it. Fred says it's "The Rub,"
how lovers work at each other –

tensing in an arch, bracing for
a succession of tiny explosions.
Moist lips, interlocking legs,

blood boiling and steaming
through skin. It's laying
the rod of God on non-

believers, who switch faiths
after glimpsing nirvana in
a climax. The sore, slackened

muscles – a reminder of Fred's
wisdom: All I'm sayin', yo. Is be ready
when she put the good thigh on you.

Alan King's fiction and poems have appeared in the Arabesques Review, Warpland, The Amistad, and Fingernails Across the Chalkboard: Poetry and Prose on HIV/AIDS, among others. A Cave Canem fellow and Vona
Alum, his work was also part of Anacostia Exposed, a collaborative
exhibit with Irish photographer Mervyn Smyth that showcases the life
and energy of Anacostia.

Two Pieces by D. Garcia-Wahl

2009-01-29T08:00:00.001-06:00

The Blind Girl

She has blessed
all that has vanished into her evernight
and made forgiveness of eyes that have creased into surrender
gifting her, however,
with scraps of light and shadow.
By the cane of an arm, she stirs
and transfers patience.
By the dry weep
she gathers
the veils that make up her memory.
It is the release
of a beauty she’ll never know by mirror.
How exquisite, the gallery of shadows
museum’d in her head.
_______________________________________________

Filmatic

-for Jerry Tomlinson

“Well, I've wrestled with reality for 35 years, doctor, and I'm
happy to state, I finally won out over it.”
-Elwood P. Dowd
“Harvey”

Life,
an archipelago of breaths
Reels –
movement
or years
purposed and propelled by memory.
The theatric boast of life the eyes parade,
a silent camera, ever behind, focusing.
In patchwork scenes: childhood, middle years, old age,
death – then birth
edited
played out
critiqued.

Nothing known at the fade in
will be felt in the fade out.

Leaving nothing to predictability,
except pardon,
the film is christened and ages
in sensitivity and texture.
The stir of the heart
scripts the direction of purity,
cleaving to what we cast off,
never playing tomorrow as the strains
of another day.

What of the actor?
His lines are his to forget
-his audience to recall.

D. Garcia-Wahl is the author of ALL THAT DOES COME OF MADDEN’D DAYS and ASHES OF MID AUTUMN. His new collection of poetry, BECOMING is due out shortly. He is putting the finishing touches on three more novels, another collection of poetry, and a collection of short stories. He was recently interviewed for a new HBO documentary. He divides his time between America and Paris.

Six Month Check-Up by Constance Stadler

2009-01-28T08:00:00.000-06:00

Flashing enameled perfection

in response to my whine

crisply

she lowers the light.

I hear them
honing their Lilliputian weaponry

the sterile cabal

plans a frontal assault --

I soil myself.

The coleus on the window sill

is on its last legs --

I take it personally.

Constance Stadler has been writing, publishing, and editing poetry from the 'prehistoric' epoch of print journals to modern e-times. She was formerly an editor for South and West and is currently a contributing editor to the e-zine Eviscerator Heaven. Her most recent work appears in such 'zines as ditch, ken*again, Pen Himalaya, Rain Over Bouville, Clockwise Cat, Hanging Moss, Neonbeam, and Gloom Cupboard. Her chapbook, 'Tinted Steam', will be published in 2009. As a political anthropologist specializing in North Africa and a violinist, her influences are multiform. Work in formative years with the late poet Gwendolyn Brooks was seminal, but no less so than Sufi Dervish dancers, and the challenges of mastering Bruch's first concerto.

Mama's Fancy Christmas Shoes by Misti Rainwater-Lites

2009-01-26T08:00:00.001-06:00

After the funeral I put on Mama's fancy Christmas shoes.

They were black velvet decorated with bright symbols

of that Christian holiday that had become so unabashedly

commercialized and cheapened. Colorful glass balls.

Candy canes. Cowardly yellow stars. Balls break,

candy canes rot teeth, yellow stars portend nothing

while pretending instant holiness. It's enough to

make a cowgirl want to shoot out her horse's eyes

and hang herself in plain view of the whole goddamn

peanut munching corral. I put on the shoes, though,

because I was naked otherwise. I put on the shoes

because I wanted to feel closer to Mama who was

gone to a place I would never see. I put them on

and did a dance.

I felt like tapping even though there were no taps

on the soles of these shoes.

Suddenly I wanted to cook breakfast

for most of the world.

I wanted to marry a man who would

expect me to bring him peach cobbler

and ice cream while he sat on his ass

watching Westerns on the plasma television.

I wanted to put blinders on and trot my way

through the Valley of Denial.

I was the most ambitious cheerleader

since Eleanor Roosevelt.

I took the shoes off.

There was no one around to kiss the sores.

"Family Tradition" was on the radio.

I threw the shoes at the radio.

I missed.

Misti Rainwater-Lites is the poetry editor at decomP, the editor and publisher of Instant Pussy and the art editor at The Poetry Warrior. She has chapbooks available through Kendra Steiner Editions, Erbacce Press, Scintillating Publications and Deadbeat Press.

Ebullience Press

Editor's Note

2009-01-25T20:00:00.003-06:00

I hope everyone has enjoyed what they have read so far. This group of authors, writers, and artists have wonderful working spirits.

The schedule is changing around here at S&V beginning in February.

Monday: Editor's Note which will include call for subs at other publications, small press information, and updates on the S&V prints.

Tuesday - Thursday: poetry, prose, flash, art, and photography
Friday - Sunday: Featured Writer/Artist/Photographer

I was originally going to have a separate day for regular contributors but have decided to keep posting their work in the mix. Regular contributors will have a tag because there won't be a bio each time I post their work.

I know some are questioning my decision to post calls for subs by other magazines, but I started this zine because I wanted to read more work by my favorite authors and find new authors I hadn't seen around, not necessarily become an editor. In keeping with that idea, I'm asking online and print magazines to send information about their publications to shootsandvines@gmail.com with mag info in the subject.

I want to encourage others to utilize what small presses can offer: beautiful books and most importantly, control over your work. Small presses may send information to shootsandvines@gmail.com with small press in the subject.

I want more work. I want poetry, prose, flash, art, and photography. Doesn't matter if you have submitted here before, be it yesterday, last week, or last month. My schedule runs in a way that I can keep posting you without it following something of yours I've already published. Send submissions to shootsandvines@gmail.com with online submission in the subject.

Shoots and Vines print Issue 2 will be released in April. I plan to add more pages with the second print. Send poetry, prose, micro flash, art, and photography to shootsandvines@gmail.com with print zine in the subject. I'd like to use art this next time for the cover (must be able to be downsized to half of an 8" by 11" sheet of paper). The zine will also be available online in PDF and open book.

Shoots and Vines Issue 1 will be ready for print this week. In next week's Editor's Note, I'll include a PDF which can be printed and distributed. Issue 1 will be on display and free for the taking at River City Food Co-op and Penny Lane Coffee House. If you want a print copy snail mailed to your door, please send an email to shootsandvines@gmail.com. I'll ask for $1.00 to cover cost of mailing.

Issue One in PDF viewing:
PDF

Issue One in Open Book:

Get your own - Open publication

And some of you have asked where my new writing has found a home. Truth is, I haven't written anything new since I began S&V. In the upcoming months, I'll be working on print collaborations with some S&V writers, and a print zine of my work. Keep an eye on S&V's profile at ISSUU to see this work. I'll update you in the Editor's Note when they become available in print.

Thanks again for submitting and reading. Keep up the great work.

Crystal

Featured Writer: Christian Ward Day 3

2009-01-25T08:00:00.000-06:00

Moth

Landing on a photograph
of my father, it must have thought
the bulb of his scalp was a source
of light; just as for years I thought
the transmissions from his heart
was love.

Featured Writer: Christian Ward Day 2

2009-01-24T08:00:00.001-06:00

The Source

Now that grandfather’s tumors have started

collapsing the timbers of his organs, his body

has started to stink. Nurses hold their breaths

when changing his sheets, giving him food

and water. The daffodils in the vase by his

windows have turned away, shut their petals.

I ignore them when sitting down by his side

to read him the newspaper, tell him of daily

happenings. When it increases in intensity,

I smile and remember reading how the ark,

filled with putrid smells from 151 days

of travelling, beached itself on the summit

of a mountain and all known life crept out

from that foul smelling source.

Featured Writer: Christian Ward Day 1

2009-01-23T08:00:00.002-06:00

Winter

You cannot dream of winter

happening because it is always

there in the background,

whatever month it is. Walking

along a pier in August you

will hear it grinding against

the iron legs, in the gulls’ mews.

Sitting on the porch in April,

you will feel it rubbing against

your legs, turning your skin

white as milk. Fake a surprise look

in November when snow falls,

ignore the glimpse of ice behind

your parents’ eyes.
__________________________________________

Fulton Street

After Walker Evans' 'Girl in Fulton Street'

This is not the city Frank
wrote about. There are no
hum coloured cabs or men
stopping for a cheeseburger
and malt shake. Lana Turner
has not died and the sky
has not worn its funeral coat.
This is the city made of glass
where people wear alien nouns
like Fedora and Cloche Hat
and sniff the air like gundogs,
eager for the scent of their identity.

Christian Ward is a 28 year old London based poet whose poetry
can be currently seen in journals such as Thieves Jargon and Origami
Condom. His chapbook, Bone Transmissions, will be released in March
courtesy of Maverick Duck Press.

Inside the Snowglobe by Paula Ray

2009-01-22T08:00:00.002-06:00

You shake me up to watch
my mind fall in flakes,
your amusement.
No longer content to be
the drowned figurine,

feet glued to winter scene
never changing season.
You always churn my world
into a blizzard of thought,
unless I cry my dammed tears

all over this shelf I have allowed myself
to be placed. Among your other souvenirs.
I wait for you to toss me aside, unwanted.

The impact of the fall
will bust me
free.

Specks of glitter
will no longer be my bad luck,
my shattered reflection,
but your mess to clean.

Before I'm released, gaze at me
one last time and watch this
pretty little fantasy land piss
all over your open palm,
like your future's sprung a leak.

Paula is a musician and emerging writer from North Carolina where she teaches band, gigs about town on her saxophone, composes, and feeds her literary addiction. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in such publications as: Word Riot, Mad Swirl, Oak Bend Review, The Orange Room Review, and A cappella Zoo. For a more extensive list of her publications with links, check out her blog: musicalpencil.blogspot.com.

I Believe in Public Transportation by Ben Nardolilli

2009-01-21T08:00:00.001-06:00

I Believe in Public Transportation

@#$%...@#$&…&$%@!

I can’t listen to the music,
The sweet flowing music
Because of the trains,
The goddamn trains
Which shake and rattle and stroll
Right through my room
And never stop for me.
The goddamn trains
Which are always moving,
Always shaking
Coming like earthquakes
Magnitude 6 I believe, and green,
But not friendly to my environment.
Shaking me up and down,
Throwing everything off
A millimeter every day,
So that every month
I am losing inches.
And sanity,
Because of the goddamn trains,
The metal beasts below me
That wind up and down the stairs
Pass through the tub when I bathe,
Making waves,
Passing through my head when I sleep,
Making ripples in my mind.
Coming into my dreams, the goddamn trains,
I want to kiss the girl but her lips tremble and I cannot,
Goddamn trains,
I want to hold her
At least a little while longer before having to wake,
But I can’t,
Goddamned trains
They wake me up and shake me up,
They toss me like dice in my sleep, in my seat.
I believe in public transportation,
It’s a good thing to reduce the dependency on burning black gold,
For if we dig precious things from the earth,
We invite disaster upon ourselves,
(I heard a Hopi say,
I wonder what he would think of the goddamned trains,
if they ran through his pueblo.)
And it brings us together,
Gives us the touch of others,
The occasional acrobats on steel bars,
Children who sell candy,
Which is better than them eating it,
What with,
The epidemic going around.
The trains,
Yes the trains are a good thing,
Yes, even the goddamned trains.
In general.

@#$%...@#$&…&$%@!

The goddamn trains never stop,
They only pass through.

I am a twenty three year old writer currently living in New York City. My work has appeared in Houston Literary Review, Perigee Magazine, Canopic Jar, and Lachryma: Modern Songs of Lament, Baker’s Dozen, Thieves Jargon, Farmhouse Magazine, Elimae, Poems Niederngasse, The Delmarva Review, Clockwise Cat, Heroin Love Songs, Literary Fever, and Perspectives Magazine. In addition I was the poetry editor for West 10th Magazine at NYU and maintain a blog at mirrorsponge.blogspot.com.

Crossed Eyes by Matt Maxwell

2009-01-20T08:00:00.001-06:00

Crossed Eyes

The rivalry blossomed over time, as they became aware of the other's deficiencies. It led to a murder-suicide (which doesn't have the rhyming snap of homicide-suicide) and the man couldn't identify the killer.

The left eye could wink. Quickly. Furtively. The right eye couldn't. The right eye rarely took a punch, never stagnated a black bruise. While the man kissed Cassie, the left eye opened and drank her skin, and the right eye looked beyond, at a blank wall or the game on tv. They couldn't decide who to score the advantage.

The left eye glittered gold flecks, and women cooed. The right eye whorled gray storm clouds, and women swooned. It stood as a tie.

The right eye couldn't decipher text at arm's length but could pinpoint a thong outline at twenty yards. The left eye lacked strength to decode billboards but read without squinting, managed fine details on Photoshop.

They bantered. Mocked. Went criss-cross, meeting at the nose, to punctuate contentions. Stood at polar opposites to shun the other.

What prompted the homicide-suicide was debated, but the man's interview proves jealousy ignited the feud. The left eye read a selection of poems—horrendous, trite, inane poems. The right eye peered over the book at two high school girls in mini-skirts. The left eye cussed for having to bother with painful drivel. The right eye curtly ridiculed the whining. The left eye reprimanded, demanding equality in all sights, insidious or heavenly. Accusations became spiteful. The right eye ogled what the left saw as a blur. The left eye railed, refused to quiet. It escalated to the homicide-suicide, with the deaths seconds apart. Painful. Bloody. Too quick for the man to recall which eye first went black. The blind man blamed the deaths on horrid poetry.

*First Published in Mad Hatters' Review*

I am a schizophrenic writer, a haphazard photographer, an obsequious malcontent—tripping and sprinting and moshing to my own multi-limbed drummer. Some of my fiction has found its way into Mad Hatters' Review, Noo Journal, Sein und Werden, The Salt River Review, Flashquake, Eyeshot, Cezanne's Carrot, Defenestration, and others. I am also an associate fiction editor with Mad Hatters' Review.

My Father's Advice by Howie Good

2009-01-19T08:00:00.002-06:00

MY FATHER’S ADVICE

Wear hunter’s camouflage.
You don’t want to be
one of those people,
do you, whose goal in life
is simply to stand there
and look good?
Your grandmother was,
and the soldiers tore
a crying baby from her arms
and flung it on the fire.
Therefore, every day,
practice invisibility.
Plunge through intersections –
the busier, the better –
just as the light turns red.
Move often and without regret,
and leave no obvious trail,
no broken twigs and such, to follow.
The devil is upstairs humping
a pillow, pretending that it’s you.

Howie Good, a journalism professor at the State University
of New York at New Paltz, is the author of six poetry
chapbooks, including most recently Tomorrowland (2008)
from Achilles Chapbooks. He has been nominated three times
for a Pushcart Prize and twice for the Best of the Net
anthology.

Featured Writer: Alan Kelly Day 3

2009-01-18T07:16:00.002-06:00

The Sun is Dry

The sun is dry
and
streaming through my
window
that soft
oh so warm adulation
wanting to drive on forever
without
destination

______________________________

In Respite

grabbed the bulk of a sweetshop

Barely able to fit in my back pocket

Brought this sweetshop

Back through our kitchen window

To the kids all smiley like

An eternity in respite

They hauled it all down

their eyes all stalks

Tongue hangin’ in spite

A good thirty seconds

A fuckin’ lifetime in

Respite

Lie on the sofabed

Listening to people

Fuckin’ their veins

Fingers wrapped around

My dick

Flaccid,

20 seconds in respite

Impartial motherfucker,

Kids go nuts,

Sit with cheap beer

In respite

10 fuckin’ years,

To the fuckin’ day

In respite

Respite

Respite

Featured Writer: Alan Kelly Day 2

2009-01-17T08:00:00.000-06:00

The Bell I hear Now

There is a

Bell

That I

Hear now

Tolling

Far off

But i

Wonder

If it

Will mark

A

Transubstantiation

Or summon

My executioner

__________________________

First Love

I walked alone by the quays,

Leaning on a wall that overlooked the river

There was a boy

Swimming alone in the grey strip,

He looked at me (do I know you?)

Waved

A fist clenched by the cold water

He smiled,

the smile grabbed my shoulders

shaking me out of my reverie

He drowned

Featured Writer: Alan Kelly

2009-01-16T07:51:00.004-06:00

You have to Dig Deep to Bury your Daddy

Walking past reception was always such a task for Mary. The group of heifers from admin, who engaged in regular routines of pampering, pruning, pigging-out and petulance, would all be gathered around discussing their weekend and would invariably attempt to engage her. Mary looked at the floor and walked by quickly . She had never been the kind of woman easily tempted by novelty and catharsis.

With her neck still red from the noose’s kiss, Winnie Ferns, a gangly, flat-faced, dreamy nut of a woman, shouted Mary’s name.

“What is it, Winnie?” Mary asked in a quavering, fragile voice.

Winnie dangled a large envelope at Mary like a fisherman teasing a fish. “A note was left at reception for you.”

Mary gingerly pinched the edge of the offering with her thumb and index finger as if it might bite her. “Thank you.”

Later, Mary sat on a park bench and looked at the envelope. Enclosed within were two curious items. The first was a photo of two children, emaciated and lying face-down with their blond hair matted with dirt. The second was a press-cutting which was about the apparent murder of a teenage boy found in Phoenix Park.

Then Mary noticed a third item: something folded up in a piece of white parchment. She opened it and discovered a Union key with a ragged blue tag containing the letter C and the number 165. A message written on the parchment:
“Failure to adhere to this custom could result in serious consequences”

Mary furiously crammed the items into her bag. There had obviously been further developments in the death department. Mary saw that the rain had started.

Alan Kelly has contributed to 3:AM, Pretty Scary, Penny Blood, Film Ireland, Butcherqueers, Bookslut, GCN and The Laura Hird Showcase. His fiction has appeared in Dogmatika, Beat the Dust, Gold Dust, Sein Und Werden, Six Sentences, Parasitic, The Beat and Shoots and Vines. He works as a film and arts journalist and resides in Ireland.

Call for Submissions

2009-01-16T07:50:00.000-06:00

Shoots and Vines is looking for more work for the online zine. Send poetry, flash fiction, prose, vignettes to shootsandvines@gmail.com.

If you have been published here, submit again. The purpose of this zine has always been to give readers a place to read work by their favorite writers and new writers.

I am also looking for more photography and artwork.

Shoots and Vines Print is off to the copier this weekend. In February, I will begin working on April's issue: poetry, prose, micro flash, art, and photographs are needed. Send subs to the above mentioned email, but please put print zine in the subject.

Two Pieces by Wanda Campbell

2009-01-15T08:00:00.000-06:00

Illinois Traveler

When I see Kentucky sunrise,
when fog rises over hills or
rain falls on the knobs,

when I see an out-of-state license plate,
when the moon is full and clear
or the wind blows from the north,

I long to hear your voice,
soft like prairie breezes and
I wish to hold your hand,

weathered by years of
farm boy days. I think
maybe, we could drink
a simple cup of coffee,

but even then I fear the world
would end.

_________________________________________

The Jungle is no Place for a Fairy

I knew a word weaver
who wandered away

from her woodland home
in search of shiny tokens.

Lost and disheveled,
foolish and floundering,

she walked alien beaches
and bleak city streets, begging

for foreign bread crumbs
and strangers’ appraisals,

Barbarians stole her wings
while cannibals ripped her dress.

Vampires lurked in shadows,
waiting to taste her blood.

She fled beneath a rock
where she dreamed of home.

In dawn’s light she scattered
tainted tokens in the dust

and left only her footprints
for the vampires to drink.

Wanda D. Campbell, alias Nochipa Pablio, is an elementary school teacher, award winning poet, novelist and freelance artist who makes her home in the Appalachian foothills. Her work has appeared in various publications such as StorySouth, New Madrid, Mid-South Review, Pegasus, Other Voices International, Coal: An Anthology of Poetry by Blair Mountain Press, Instructor Magazine and many others. Preserving a heritage for future generations is to Wanda, therefore, proceeds from any sales made on her poetry go to help fight mountain top removal and to enrich the lives of the peoples of Southern Appalachia.

Two Pieces by Ray Succre

2009-01-14T08:00:00.002-06:00

The Talk

The Talk arrived late, six months in,

and the question I dreaded rode in on fairly pure wings.

"How many?" she asked in a squint of chaste suspicion,

whereafter I was expected to profess a certain something

near virginity, my own chaste integrity with the past.

I had moved about in some horrid shade, however.

Woods of shade-makers. No denying it.

So I stated.

She winced.

"I had no idea you were like that." she said.

"I wasn't. They were."

"It's disgusting."

A freeborn man knows once is once again,

shade outstretched to roll in his flames,

until he considers but one, holding this tightly,

the great one after all the once-more ones, a finality.

The official proposal came later, and to great tolerability,

marriage, and all throughout it, other sorts of talk.

_____________________________________________________________

Eventually I Stopped Believing in Myself

Naps aren't my thing, but I had one. When I woke in the afternoon,

there was fruit rotting in the mesh basket in my kitchen,

the air was horrid hot and reeked of pits in the earth,

and I found an eel twisting about in my bathtub—

you know, horrific imagery to welcome my new self.

Perhaps most upsetting was that my clothes no longer fit,

for my legs were covered in goat hair and my feet had transformed

into hooves.

"Oh hell. People will think I'm sinister, now. There'll be no more

trust to be had, no parties, no coffee shops, no cheer. I'll seem evil

because of this, and up to no good."

My wife returned home and shrieked.

"You're the Beast!" she shouted, leaving me.

"I didn't mean it." I muttered, alone in my apartment, the new Hell.

I decided to be a social beast, then.

Devil or not, alone or not, I still wanted to hang out in town.

Perhaps I might be able to change the general view of me.

They ran all directions, terrified.

This made me a terrorist, one who caused terror,

and some brimstone piddled down.

I didn't feel as if I'd done this, invoking brimstone,

but supposed I must have. Who else?

The first person to try and follow me was an entertainer.

He told me he was a poet, would serve me with wicked rhymes.

I kicked his khaki sack high onto a roof.

Had the world made me a great foe,

or had it ignored me so much I had grown to work against it?

My hooves clopped the streets, my breath rotted the air.

History had built my form from pagan gods,

to convert people religiously, and the name of my home

was stolen from the Norse.

I didn't do any of that; they did. I chose to abandon evil, then.

Becoming human again, and thought good, turned out to be

simple enough:

I just started believing there was a devil for me, as well.

Ray Succre currently lives on the southern Oregon coast with his wife and son, as a stay-at-home dad. He has been published in Aesthetica, Gloom Cupboard, and Pank, as well as in numerous others across as many countries. His novel Tatterdemalion (Cauliay Publishing) was recently released in print and is available most places. He tries hard.

For inquiry, publication history, and information, visit me online: http://raysuccre.blogspot.com

The Wrath of Provincialism by Colin James

2009-01-13T08:00:00.002-06:00

The Wrath of Provincialism

Take two pens
and hold them in your left hand.
Let the ink lines
move lightly over the page.
Pretend you are in a village
in the north of England,
and pray that fat gentleman you created
buggering anything that moves,
is accepted here
as one of the locals.

Colin James has had poems published recently in the following magazines, Ditch, Waterlogged August, The and Snow Monkey. He works in Energy Conservation in Massachusetts having migrated from the north of England which he revisits whenever the Scottish landscape painter, John Mackenzie, has an exhibition of paintings.

Two Pieces by Harry Calhoun

2009-01-12T08:00:00.002-06:00

Fireplace

The first few fires upon the hearth

beneath our belt in our warm winter

comfort-food belly

the coffee ready in the morning-timed

pot ready to please us again

the warmth we know is arising

planned, set or just ready

for some warmth, fire in the evening

coffee in the morning

we need this and want this

a planet cannot go around without

somebody chopping, working,

setting fire to something

maybe something we hadn’t seen before

and noticing what warmth

arises
____________________________________

Sing

or, what keeps me writing

the only security is in security

is in keeping yourself sane and happy

with your security blanket poems

keep bangin’ ‘em out

again and again and if

it’s the same thing over and over

well isn’t life like that anyway

except if you don’t

speak up you have no voice

and that’s how it is

when you die, they tell me

and I can’t remember but I’ll bet

it was that way before I was born

Harry Calhoun’s articles, literary essays, book reviews and poems have been published in magazines including Writer’s Digest and The National Enquirer. He has had recent publications in Abbey, Chiron Review, Still Crazy, SNReview, Abandoned Towers, Dante’s Heart, Yippee! and Word Catalyst, for whom he writes a monthly column. He also has poetry forthcoming in LiteraryMary, The Dead Mule, Nefarious Ballerina, &c, A Common Thread, Buk Scene, Neonbeam and others. Harry writes an online wine column about quality affordable wines called Ten Dollar Tastings.

Featured Writer: Audrey Victoria Day 3

2009-01-11T08:00:00.002-06:00

Thoughts of the overworked

Whatever reason aside,
I am tired of pulling the wagon of everyone else's skeletons, still.
The goats escaped from the ropes but one must still be around, somewhere.
One day, as I lower my stick into the wet, weakening ground below,
I will dress the goats up in satin! The skeletons will rightly be placed underground,
next to their erupted, blossomed
skin bag brothers and sisters.
Skeletons are only material but yet some continue
to carry them, afraid to leap into the abyss that which they
pray upon and think about continually. That invisible post
which has all of the answers yet none at all.
As virtual reality overtakes your senses and it becomes more normal
to be stabbed in the chest, I continue to eat apples in the morning.
Bodies, desperately trying to stay alive, soak up the liquid from
coffee filters. The bleeding caffeine is trying to run the heart again.

Featured Writer: Audrey Victoria Day 2

2009-01-10T08:00:00.001-06:00

Seeing red

today i am red. i am a bull's target
a charging ram, a walking witch's brew
bubbling with charm and interpose and
calm, quiet shuffling, light rose
fragrance and the docile demeanor of
a fantasy-ridden dandelion.

hark! the light has gasped and the clank of the hooves
comes with a waddle and a yellow-beaked version
of fly me to the moon while running out of gin

sold! the last of my patience, my temper, to the wind
it goes through the red rocked cliffs
tobacco smoke rings and love from
my living room.

wherever you go, my dear, my love
my honey, brown-sugar
a trail of empty red hooves will follow you.
the last of the mirrors will meet you
along the way. your reflection will be
entirely too vile for your own, inflated ways

for the bull who forgets he is alive
is a child cowering the midst of a
crisis in slavery where all of humanity's treasures
were born. sloughing, pain and suffering
of your animal siblings has brought
you memories of your perceived freedom.

do you feel like a cave now? you were not free.
turn off your fucking phone before the charge.

if emptiness for emptiness sake
makes you feel alive
then the dawn, the mist of rising
primrose will beckon any last rounds of
forgiveness.

Featured Writer: Audrey Victoria Day 1

2009-01-09T08:00:00.002-06:00

Twins

if i could watch the sun rise pavement
on your rested pores

if i could meditate on these words instead
of brilliance coming while sitting on a toilet

if i could make sense out of finger waves
and a myriad of choices in the movie aisle

i would dump this life smelling of my
mother's bad, coffee in the morning breath

i would settle in the lush white of
missouri winter's dappling skin in the morning

i would quiet the guilt of spending my life
separating from my reflection's responsibility

(because i know what's good for me)

i'd watch heaven instead
i'd drink less
because i made up a lie

if i could find solace

i would dunk my white lies in horseradish

if i could watch you undress
because of me, on repeat
then i wouldn't wait for the grass to get greener
to grow, to feed the birds in the winter

i'd sit maiming my hair
in born satisfaction to break open
a small, new leaf in this mid-location
of dreams, never fulfilled for normalcy

if my feet touched the ground and my skin
wasn't still contracting hives from this new paper
i'd brush my hair with winter grass instead

(all awful, this trembles me to the bone
as the last of us receive our awards to flood out into a new world
gasping like infants, we pray we receive enough to
even favor someone with a minute of advice)

i would quiet the guilt.
i'd separate from my reflection's responsibility

Photos by Abigail Folz

2009-01-08T07:19:00.003-06:00

Two Pieces by Puma Perl

2009-01-07T08:00:00.001-06:00

t shirts

I knew his clothes were still there
It had been almost a year since
I bought him the packs of white t shirts
It was right after I did his laundry and
Threw a navy blue sweater in with the whites
I lowered my head when I told him
So I wouldn't keep laughing
Figured he'd never ask again
But then I felt a little bad, not much
So I bought soft velvety white towels
And the t shirts, size medium
Then I called him and ended it
He never wore the shirts or
Felt how soft the towels were

In the closet there were
Two pair of black socks
Two sets of underwear
A thermal shirt that made me sad
A worn pair of levis that fit me exactly right
He would have hated that they fit
He didn't want me to lose weight
An attractive feature in a man
I held his socks and underwear
Wrapped them in an old blanket
Felt like I was about to drown kittens
The t shirts fit the man I'm waiting for
He'll be happy that the jeans fit me
He never questions
My endless supply of white t shirts
I always give him the soft white towels
At first he didn't want to use them
Said they were too nice
I told him they were just for him
_________________________________________

in the mayor’s house

I planned to leave the
golden man's house at
7:45 He lived
ten blocks and five dimensions
from gracie mansion
He didn't want me to go
He loved my tall walk
down his hallway
I left at 8:15

In the mayor's house
on world AIDS day
there is an open house
by invitation only
guests devour
sandwich triangles
bland, tasteless slivers
served on silver trays
tired red ribbons
wilt fresh pressed shirts
are you anybody?
narrowed eyes wonder
no, they decide
i'm nobody

everyone takes pictures
on the good side
I find new friends quickly
through the common language
of provocative subversion
the mirrors hang high on the walls
we bounce without reflection
irrelevant as promises

the line creeps listlessly
little mayor mike b poses
looking only into camera=2 0eyes
as he shakes my hand
hot gold morning cum
runs down my leg
staining my appropriate
black suit

Puma Perl lives and writes in NYC. Her work has been published in cause & effect, MadSwirl, Trespass, Red Fez, Gloom Cupboard, the Oak Bend Review, and other publications and anthologies. She has been a featured reader in various New York City area venues. Her first chapbook, Belinda and Her Friends, was recently published by Erbacce Press. She is a firm believer in the transformative power of the creative arts.

Three Pieces by Joseph Goosey

2009-01-06T08:00:00.005-06:00

EVERYTHING SHAMEFUL

There are holes in the walls
of my mouth. I get nervous, well,
not nervous but frightened
of conversation sometimes
as though the other person
will immediately, without warning,
begin to list in chronological
order everything shameful
I have done or
will do and it is night and
cold and a good time
to observe cars passing
and old deteriorating women
stealing the companies' petunias
from the pots. The wind sounds
a bell and I might not be around
to bury my two cats,
Oscar and Katy.

__________________________

Bookstore Credit

It is 9:20AM
and I am scurrying along
the walls
of downtown.

There is a crate in my hand.
The crate is filled with hardbound books.
Some books were purchased
for one dollar, others for thirty.
Some books were found,
others stolen.

I am going to see
if maybe I can sell
any of them
back to a used
bookstore
from which I take
free beer
in exchange
for reading poems
monthly.

It is raining.
I don't think I have ever seen
so much fucking rain
on a Florida
street.
I am shielding the books
from the rain with the shirt
off of my back.
I might be crying but
I wouldn't know
one way or another
because
of the rain.

There passes a lawyer,
here a doctor,
a gallery owner,
a maker of sandwiches.
Some look in my direction,
others pretend
not to.

I walk into the bookstore.

A bell sounds
to signal
my arrival.

The man, the dry man,
puts most of the books back
into my crate.

He says
we have
these

titles.

He asks
cash or book-
store

credit?

I want the credit
so badly but
I need the cash.
Without it,
I may not make it
home and
my girl might go
feral.

He says
9 dollars
cash.

I say OK but
it really is not
OK at all.

My crate and I
venture back out
into the rain.

There is nothing, really,
that can be written
in response
to such
circumstances.

________________________________

No Family

Cars go streaming by
with Church
cut Christmas
trees
tied firmly
to their
roofs.

There is a hole
in my lip
from
holiday
nervousness.

I spit pink upon the bricks.

Hello.

Yes. You do the same.

No. No family coming in.

Yes. It will be
quiet.

Joseph Goosey recently discovered how little joy can be found in the
fruits of literary labors. Also, he has a chapbook available via
Poptritus Press.He thanks you for reading.

Might? by Felino Soriano

2009-01-05T08:00:00.003-06:00

Might?

If the garden could tongue a
circle around the human, the
specific one who too often yanks
without conscience
roses for the cliché symbolic
photographic embrace,
might the vernacular be
a begging to conjure newly formed
gifts, a manmade devotional plan, a finding
elsewhere without scented thorn or without
burgeon meant to dangle loosely
within the wind's altering direction?

Felino Soriano (California) is a case manager working with developmentally and physically disabled adults. He is the author of two chapbooks "Exhibits Require Understanding Open Eyes" (Trainwreck Press, 2008) and "Feeling Through Mirages" (Shadow Archer Press, 2008), an e-book "Among the Interrogated" (BlazeVOX [books], 2008), and has a chapbook forthcoming "Abstract Appearance Reaching Toward the Absolute" (Trainwreck Press, 2008). The juxtaposition of his philosophical studies with his love of classic and avant-garde jazz explains his poetic motivation. Website: felinosoriano

Featured Writer: Matt Finney Day 3

2009-01-04T08:00:00.001-06:00

miles end

the streets are leaking blood and i'm here waving goodbye. a cage in a forest or an amputee camp. the television is on in an empty room and i all i dream about is your skin. winter fading and some endless war covering this town. the days are thick with fear and i've forgotten my father's face. all i'm trying to do is explain who i am. what i want is for it to matter.

_______________________________________

details

you're here or somewhere else. these dark houses and the way the clocks run backwards. how long it's been since you were immortal. your face pressed hard into the ass of a god you never believed in. the windows break but not the fever. any faith in the future is steadily diminishing.

Featured Writer: Matt Finney Day 2

2009-01-03T08:00:00.001-06:00

coda

contrails hanging as the skyline and the walls are burned black. misshapen crosses and the streets have lost direction. the pills have wore off and we've reached a point where nothing is beautiful. where we hate no one more than ourselves. the truth is what we've always been afraid of.
___________________________________

efrim

rumors of war hanging and everything you know has turned to dust. these moments that never come. dead flags and moving cars. breathing poison and trying to understand emptiness. waiting for an ending while i get married, mortgaged, and divorced. the lights are sucked from every room. the walls are collapsing. the weight of these words and how i'm ready to give into silence.

Featured Writer: Matt Finney Day 1

2009-01-02T08:00:00.002-06:00

waco

the sound of my heart in these claustrophobic spaces or a dark wind blowing. my hands without anything to offer and these words are distortions. lungs full of ashes and who i dream about is mcveigh. all of this gore in the name of freedom. the violent ease of one century moving into another.

_______________________________

ancient

the war torn towns and abandoned cars. all of the miles that were driven in silence. our small addictions and dying religions and i can't make the clocks move forward. every action is driven by greed or fear. the blankets hold infection. the machine's stomach is bleeding out. this is the end result of history.

&(forty-six) by J. A. Tyler

2009-01-01T08:00:00.003-06:00

The girl, flying, she mingles with the white of doves and clouds, the blue, her lithe arms swinging, the spin of oars, moonshine eyes in motion. She smiles, charms at them, their flapping wings, the tongue of sunbeams. Her mouth the shape of the earth, the tilt of an axis, her pelvis reclined invisibly, soft back on sweeping, the billowed air, the sky. She flies.

Inside a womb she was an egg. She was a circle. She was a sphere. She was a ball. She had a shell made breeze gentle. She was she was she was.

Now she is flying. Clouds and blue. The iris.

Her mother was a statue of reproduction. It was this, her mother’s womb, where she existed as an egg, a circle, a sphere, a ball. It was her mother’s womb that entrusted her with a thin exoskeleton, the luster of potency. Her mother had tangled hair and slick fingernails, the shine of beauty. Her mother was beautiful. Her mother was never her mother. Her mother was a woman who nodded back to a man who nodded to her. Her mother was a woman shaking her head at a shaken head. Her mother was a woman, was not her mother.

Until now she is sky, she is blue, dipping fingers in clouds, flying.

And the man was her father, was not her father, was the man who nodded at the woman who was not her mother. A handsome man. Knuckles of his father’s, sawdust coming wrinkles. He never touched her, this man to this woman, this father to this mother. They nodded heads to one another, passing footsteps on the dirt of a road, almost daily, enough to know, enough to get, but they never said a word. His mouth opened in the gape of fish breath, but he did not speak. She did not hear anything. She did not turn a word into a phrase, a sentence into a long running paragraph, a day into a daughter. They did nothing.

And she flies now, this girl, their girl, this woman and this man, this mother and this father, stumbling past each other’s calves, pushing on. And she becomes the sun. She is the sun. She is a circle and a sphere and a ball. She is a gentle breezing shell of a girl. The imagining. She is imagined. She flies, rowing oars, swinging arms, speaking sun-tongue to the white of flapping bird wings, clouds, the blue sky iris of her mother, this woman, this womb, the one who walked past another, her mother and her father, not her mother and her father, tripping down, stuttering beyond a girl of blue and clouds, flying, rowing oars, unliving.

J. A. Tyler is the author of THE GIRL IN THE BLACK SWEATER (Trainwreck Press), EVERYONE IN THIS IS EITHER DYING OR WILL DIE OR IS THINKING ABOUT DEATH (Achilles Chapbook Series), & SOMEONE, SOMEWHERE (Ghost Road Press). He is also founding editor of MUD LUSCIOUS and ML PRESS and was recently nominated for a Pushcart. Visit www.aboutjatyler.blogspot.com for more info.

Two Pieces by Michael Lee Johnson

2008-12-31T08:00:00.004-06:00

Charlie Plays a Tune

Crippled with arthritis

and Alzheimer's,

in a dark rented room

Charley plays

melancholic melodies

on a dust filled

harmonica he

found abandoned

on a playground of sand

years ago by a handful of children

playing on monkey bars.

He now goes to the bathroom on occasion,

relieving himself takes forever; he feeds the cat when

he doesn't forget where the food is stashed at.

He hears bedlam when he buys fish at the local market

and the skeleton bones of the fish show through.

He lies on his back riddled with pain,

pine cones fill his pillows and mattress;

praying to Jesus and rubbing his rosary beads

Charley blows tunes out his

celestial instrument

notes float through the open window

touch the nose of summer clouds.

Charley overtakes himself with grief

and is ecstatically alone.

Charley plays a solo tune.

-2007
_________________________

Raindrop Baby

I'm a raindrop baby

silhouetted in the night,

single-ringed single person

minus the 24 carat gold.

A harvester of night life,

star crystal,

a gather of sluts in my imagination,

a wild driver of the

anal sinful products of sex.

I run the highways drunk

as a skunk with his anus high in the air

in search of what I wished

or dream wild factual fantasy about.

Offended I simply piss somewhere.

Where does the highway buckle up:

DUI, DUI?

Are these your initials lover

on my driver's license

or just a pained memory

the morning after my dream

turned to real piss?

-2008-

Michael Lee Johnson is a poet and freelance writer from Itasca, Illinois.

His brand new poetry chapbook with pictures, From Which Place the Morning Rises and his new photo version of The Lost American: From Exile to Freedom is now available at: lulu. He also has 2 previously published chapbooks available at: lulu. The original version of The Lost American: from Exile to Freedom, can be found at: iuniverse.

He has been published in USA, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Scotland, Turkey, Fiji, Nigeria, Algeria, Africa, India, United Kingdom, Republic of Sierra Leone, Israel, Nepal, Thailand, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Finland, and Poland internet radio. Michael Lee Johnson has been published in more than 280 different publications worldwide. Audio MP3 of poems are available on request.

He is also publisher and editor of four poetry flash fiction sites--all presently open for submission:

http://birdsbywindow.blogspot.com/
http://www.poetriclegacy.mysite.com/
A Tender Touch
Wizards of the Wind

Author website: poetryman

Author email: promomanusa@mail.com

4th of December she wore a beret by Dan Gee

2008-12-30T08:00:00.003-06:00

4th of December she wore a beret

for just seven pounds!

a bargain apparently we are told;

in the credit crunch,

but then it seems a liberty to pay

only seven pounds;

Go and buy clothes made from people not old

Will they get some lunch?

So Mrs Brown why did you buy the hat?

Because it was “Cheap”?

100 packs of noodles for that price

even in these times,

The Daily Mail’s front page where you sat

With people who weep

Inside we see unaffordable rice

Even in these times.

That beret’s not cheap, it comes from somewhere

Accumulate loot

In today’s green mint weaving industry

In the credit crunch

So, about Mrs Brown’s hat do I care?

Do we give a hoot?

Will they taste your rich and glossy honey?

In the credit crunch

Most of the time I dwell in his room writing poetry and prose about nearly everything and anything, but occasionally, like all creative minds (and students), I’ll destroy my body with excessive amounts of alcohol. Poetry is a form that before this year I had hardly touched, but now I write poetry everyday, with the occasional splattering of flash fiction and play writing. Cheers!!!

Plain Jane Let America Die by F. Scott Francisco

2008-12-29T08:00:00.003-06:00

America was born on Independence Day 1976. He had a troubled childhood. His father, George Chevron Washington, was arrested for gun smuggling around the day of his birth. His mother, Janette "Plain Jane" Hancock, never told him the truth. Instead she explained that his father had been one of the last good men to die in prevention of The Communist Domination of Southeast Asia.

When Plain Jane stopped breast-feeding, America went on hunger strike, dumbly staring at the microwaved formula. Until she again nursed him naturally. At thirteen, armed with cobblestones picked from Lexington Market, he and his friends wildly ran the streets of Baltimore smashing car windows and stealing radios and hubcaps until they were caught, arrested, and taken to jail where they refused to call their parents for bail.

America did poorly in school for apparently inherent refusal to conform to its mannerisms. He left his year-late graduation early to get stoned with two fellow graduates.

Plain Jane blamed America's attitude on his father. She would write George Chevron the occasional letter to document their son's progress.

America woke the day after graduation, smoked a cigarette scratching his head and balls alternately, lay his head down, and fell back to sleep.

The following day he decided to sell drugs for a living, and did so without interruption for the next ten years. It was his calling: he'd plenty of charm and little fear.

On unrelated charges around the ten-year reunion at his high school, America began a one-year sentence.

For another five years he sold until he was shot and robbed clean by a favorite customer, Axle President. He lay dying for a day before Plain Jane made an unannounced visit and saw her son on the floor, perhaps fatally wounded.

She offered ice to him, drinks, home-cooked food, to change the television station: all in the hope of easing his pain, making him more comfortable--as if he had simply come down with a case of the flu. Plain Jane acted as if she didn't notice the blood trickling out of her boy into the carpet, as if everything were in perfect order.

Although she had come in her Toyota Camry, which her son had bought for her with ill-gotten gains, she did not offer a ride to the hospital to her son; and although she had one of the newest cellular phones available, she did not call emergency people.

America's last coherent thought was that she had perhaps hired the hit.

America's story came to a quiet end.

Plain Jane never spoke of him again, and when folks asked about her son, she acted confused, as if she had never spoken of him before.
And America was soon forgotten.

f. scott francisco (b. 1981/tampa bay), postal employee, writes occasionally. reads daily. he began submitting writing in 2008. e-mail fscottfrancisco@gmail.com or see his site at http://fscottfrancisco.info.

Featured Writer: David Mclean Day 3

2008-12-28T08:00:00.001-06:00

culpability and punishment

there is no crime but being born
said my body, no guilt
but existence,

and there is no wrong you do
but breathing; dreams
are innocent, always,

whatever you do in them.
and the only thing sinful
is being women and men

and living, every sin
beyond that is supererogatory
devilishness, though welcome,

not wrong in any sense.
for you, barely breathing,
breath is a crime that cries

to heaven. everything
you do beyond that
is just shit that happens -

there are no victims,
just other criminals
guilty of living

____________________________

trees and clouds

the trees would pin the clouds to ground
like pizzas condemned to live in cartons
instead of roaming their natural
habitat, the forests in which they swim

with their children, kebabs and cigarettes
and lampshades. the trees are like mothers
who blind and cripple children, so nothing bad
happens to them, so they see nothing

to frighten them, so they don't get into danger,
don't go anywhere, the trees worry
about the clouds and their madness
as they dance for the mad moon

and go wild with desire under her;
but the clouds don't seem to care
they are like feckless boys, these vapors,
they only listen to their dealers

and dealers never lied to me, at least,
they give me exactly what i need -
clouds and moons and beasts
above all the miserly motherly trees

Featured Writer: David Mclean Day 2

2008-12-27T08:00:00.002-06:00

scream

the scream is in the carnivorous throat
and the death we put there mourns itself
which is rather wretched

the stones smell like memory
and mourning worn like a priestess
dressed in black robes

and the taste of salt on the tongue
cold as coke in the nose
black as stone

and hope screams in the meat
the throat stores screams it needs
to believe in

so that there is approximate
passion, and some body
feels something

it is exquisitely easy to see
this is life and it is living -
there's no such thing as victims,

every body deserves everything

______________________________

fingers and eyes

i found my fingers in the trees
and my eyes on the mountains
inside their resonant skull
rapped by the sun's knuckles;

though they were still lethargic,
like snakes who are the genitals
of gods unusually reluctant
to rape. i found my memories

in them. they were not married yet
and knew where the mustache grew
from the sold flesh that shrinks from it,
resilient flesh of night

clothed in time, and loath to go back
to fingers in the trees, groping for my eyes
on the unholy slopes, loath to go back to life
and be mine

Featured Writer: David Mclean Day 1

2008-12-26T08:00:00.005-06:00

looking for

you were looking for me
and so was i
but all we saw
were memories and things¨
somebody else said,
probably lying, reflecting
themselves, and sort of expected
me to be,

so i wasn't, obviously.
but i found all these absences
inside me, if we shall talk,
metaphorically, of interiors
and interiority

when i am a surface,
a thin film over the world's
plenitude of emptiness -
stones and trees and all of history,
murder, crime, night and humanity,
and a few other things to which children
listen

a dead crow lost
at a long gone goddess's
breast forgotten, there i found me
that i did not leave or need
to be, reasons for existing
were absences and just
not listening, love was
ignorance and memory blood,

all the surfaces were enough

______________________________

winter drags

night's winter drags the body of an injured animal
behind it, calling it history, because social movements
and whatever happens there are the contortions of sexuality
and heaven is but a relieved bladder.

it is a wounded beast that crawls through us
and sweats its desperation on the page,
it is an open wound that never heals,
but bleeds and give us no pain

or forgiveness. it is being, because hearts
are leaky vessels in several senses,
it is a night and its injured animals
are people who are dead forever

already, but slow to understand
that the coffin coughs up
no truth for us, and real injured animals
are much more important than man

and all the nothings he understands

David McLean is Welsh but has lived in Sweden since 1987. He lives there in a cottage on a hill with a woman, five selfish cats, and a stupid puppy. He has two full length books out. One, pushing lemmings, at http://www.erbacce-press.com/davidmclean/4527659941 and another, Cadaver's dance, available at Alibris or Amazon.com. There is even a self-published book of poems at Lulu called eating your night - http://www.lulu.com/content/2756039. Details of other chapbooks and round 680 poems in or forthcoming at round 290 places online or print over the last eighteen months are at htpp://mourningabortion.blogspot.com. A new chapbook, La morte vivante, is available from Shadow Archer Press. Another chapbook is free online at http://www.whyvandalism.com/ebook_poems-against-enlightenment08.html. He also features in a special issue of Instant Pussy available as a free download at http://www.lulu.com/content/4389526. Two more chapbooks so far are coming in 2009 from Rain over Bouville and Poptritus Press, he has recently been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Unspoken Words by Marie Gornell

2008-12-25T08:00:00.003-06:00

Sleepless
whilst wind howls
outside window
first instances of
loneliness reach
even my womb;
blood shreds
from cervix
preparing my tomb.

Maybe its hints
of spring awakening
something deep
seeds i hoped
planted;
If you hadn't
been so weak.

Wind reminds me
i should mourn,
death of you and i
located deep in
my bones.
Like a lost child
again, waiting to
be reborn.
Even after all your
hate, am tired
knowing this
dilapidate is
part of moving on.

Why still i miss
your presence;
so scared of
solitude.
In the end its
always this way
after all.
Melancholy
a shroud of
bereavment
haunts;
sloth was
our downfall.

Yet i loved
you motionless
lips smile, as kisses
explored soft skin;
tense muscles
relax as my fingers
knead over over
again;
Bittersweet
memories all
we have left;
what could have
been, what was,
now gone.

Never had the
opportunity;
to show
my love,
everyone thinks
you deserve
nothing more
than
click
bang
gone;
yet i know
what i felt
in this brief
sojourn.

Contradictions
in emotions
from hate to
eternal love;
i cannot express
no more,
intimacy i crave,
yet with you
impossible.
What i couldn't
say in last words
i utter now
i care regardless
of all thats passed;
Te amour
i wish you luck.

'Meet you on the other side'

Maria Gornell has been writing seriously for 2 years, after having a breakdown
and leaving university, she became a recluse for a while and found writing to
be therapeutic. After a while people began to comment on her gift and invited
her to open mic nights where she now reads her poems to audiences all over
Liverpool. She works voluntary with the wild transformation movement and is training
in counselling. She has been published in various online zines such as the beat,
Blacklisted mag, opiumpoetry, unheardwords, Heroin love songs and in print in
Liverpool 800 poems anthology, Heartbeats poetry journal and Agua issue 1.
She has also done various spoken word projects in collaboration with musicians
on myspace and is on 3 music CDS 2 with poetry over music and one with the
Musician Manic M from the Netherlands. She lives in Liverpool with her 15 year
old daughter.

Happy Holidays

2008-12-25T00:10:00.002-06:00

Thank you to all the writers, photographers, artists, and readers who have made this zine a success. In a little over a month, we've already had over three thousand views.

Hope you all have safe trips and warm holidays.

Crystal

Photographs by Matt Maxwell

2008-12-24T08:00:00.000-06:00

I am a schizophrenic writer, a haphazard photographer, an obsequious malcontent—tripping and sprinting and moshing to my own multi-limbed drummer. Some of my fiction has found its way into Mad Hatters' Review, Noo Journal, Sein und Werden, The Salt River Review, Flashquake, Eyeshot, Cezanne's Carrot, Defenestration, and others. I am also an associate fiction editor with Mad Hatters' Review.

Tin Roof by Crystal Folz

2008-12-24T07:58:00.000-06:00

Tin Roof

We hear him skulking in the backyard. He lingers over the snapped branch, and I imagine his eyes brittling like ice. We don't know when he will speak so we stand in the backyard with our fingers entwined, listening to his heavy breathing and the rain misting the treetops.

It occurs to me that I haven't been this still for a very long time, and I think if I could reach out and touch them both, I could mold this moment like a piece of jewelry to wear a groove around my finger. Then the rain comes down hard and soaks the trees until they are black and wet like my insides, and I know I have to move or shake or let go of his hand.

We walk up the hill together, one of them on each side of me, and I want us to keep walking past the parked cars outside the bar house, cross the road, and stop for a moment at the pond. There, we could stand beside each other and stare at our distorted reflections as the rain comes down and laughter leaks through the windows in the bar. We might be happy, the three of us, gawking at the smiling faces in the water. I know I would.

Instead, we go inside and sit at a round table. They talk about the noise on the tin roof, and I buy the three of us double shots of whiskey. I should feel caught or busted but I don't.

The waitress brings a shot of Jagermeister, compliments of the gentleman at the bar.

They shake their heads as I drink it down. Cold, black, and wet, it coats my throat, feeling like victory inside.

Then there's just us, the empty shot glasses, the last of the acorns pouncing on the tin roof, and the man at the bar patting the stool next to him.

Photos by Christopher Woods

2008-12-23T08:00:00.003-06:00

Christopher Woods has published a prose collection, UNDER A RIVERBED SKY, and a collection of stage monologues for actors, HEART SPEAK. His photographs can be seen in his online gallery, www.moonbirdhillarts.etsy.com, which he shares with his wife, Linda. He lives in Houston and in Chappell Hill, Texas.

Cremation by Nicole Nicholson

2008-12-22T08:00:00.006-06:00

someone's dream or
obligation just died before the
eyes of commuters

blazing car belches
cotton explosions of gray smoke
into the air

a sacrifice to
the ghosts – I silently hope
the inferno grows

our car floats
in a sea of moving
masses of pain

which crunch to
a slow, hesitating, rubbernecking halt
burn, baby, burn

roadside funeral pyre
she'll wear a burned shoulder
news at eleven

Nicole Nicholson is a 32 year-old writer and performance poet who draws inspiration from history, legends and folklore, people, nature, and the voices in her head. She blogs frequently at ravenswingpoetry and in July 2008, self-published a poetry chapbook, Raven Feathers. Her work has recently appeared in Young American Poets and she was featured as a Poet of the Week on Poetry Super Highway as well as a favorite writer in June 2008 on Poetry Dances, a web site featuring online poetry by emerging writers. She lives in Columbus, OH with her fiance.

A Call for Submissions/Featured Writers Updated

2008-12-22T07:58:00.002-06:00

Beginning December 12, we will feature a writer throughout the entire weekend.

Featured Writer Line Up:

December 12 - Scot Young
December 19 - Tim Morris
December 26 - David Mclean
January 2 - Matt Finney
January 9 - Audrey Victoria
January 16 - Alan King
January 23 - Christopher Ward

New posts Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

If you want to see this blog updated everyday with a new piece of writing, submit and tell your friends. I want more, more, more!

Thanks for helping me out and keep that work coming.

The Guild of Outsider Writers

2008-12-22T07:55:00.003-06:00

I love this group of fine people. Please stop by to have a look and meet fellow writers, some of whom you'll recognize from Shoots and Vines. Lots of things get done here and everyone works hard to spread the word and encourage other writers. OW was the inspiration behind my zine because of the quality of work I saw there everyday.

Outsider Writers

If you have trouble with the format or questions, send an email my way and I'll do what I can to help you out.

Scroll down Shoots and Vines and on the bottom of the right sidebar is a link to my profile. Leave me a message and let me know you found Outsider Writers from Shoots and Vines.

Hope you all enjoy the group as much as I do.

Notice: Regular Contributors

2008-12-22T02:26:00.005-06:00

Regular Contributors will begin in February. Every Monday, there will be posts scheduled throughout the day written by the regular contributors.

Tom Sullivan
Audrey Victoria
Scot Young

If you have already been published in Shoots and Vines and would like to be a regular contributor, please send an email with regular contributor listed in the subject.

If your name is on the list, which I will update in this post throughout January, and you do not wish to be a regular contributor, let me know.

If we discussed this in the past and you agreed but don't see your name, that is because the email has drifted off somewhere. Please shoot me an email.

Thanks. I love the work you all have been sending me. I haven't read a book in almost a month.

Crystal

Featured Writer: Tim Morris Day 3

2008-12-21T08:00:00.003-06:00

it's happening

somewhere,
in a sedated florescent glow,
rows and rows of pornography
are being molested
by curious hands...

somewhere,
between guilt-ridden tiles,
a boy fondles himself
in the mirror over a sink...

somewhere,
in the aromatic light of dawn,
a woman fingers the delicate labia
of her entranced lover...

somewhere,
in the drone of tomorrow,
a man on his knees sweats
at an altar, asking for his wife's
quick and painless demise...

somewhere,
in the overwhelming shadow of a cross,
a woman sucks at a bottle of gin
while spinning a razor blade
between her teeth...

all the while
carousel horses dance
to their happy, happy song.

Featured Writer: Tim Morris Day 2

2008-12-20T08:00:00.002-06:00

The Prisoner

twilight.

in the rain.

twelve rupees sit heavily
in my pocket
and i can finally
walk the garden
with my head held high,

but still...
i find it necessary
to peel flesh
from around my fingernails
and suck at the blood.

the moon...
ah, the moon,
her virgin hole not yet
pricked by indiscretion,
stretches lazily from
around the corner,
uncertain of her true conviction.

the air,
anesthetized,
lays like lead on my skin
and a hunger swells
in my veins.

fingering the coins in my pocket,
one for each of the twelve pairs
of blood-stained lips,
i find myself at a table,
twisted and tired,
eager to be of use,

but i see the chains,
rusted and sanguinary,
and am afraid,
because the promise
has proven to be fraud...

in the shadows,
soothed by night's lithe fingers,
children dance to kalimba music,
the beauty of their laughter
an atrocity.

Featured Writer: Tim Morris Day 1

2008-12-19T08:00:00.003-06:00

It's That Time

the time has come to roll the bones.

nero's ghost is perched on the hill
sawing at an archaic smile.

morphine drips from the moon.

go on ahead and roll them bones,
let's just see what the future's got
before jesus laughs himself silly
watching the preachers play drag-ass
to the grave.

roll the bones and watch them grow
important in the public eye.

we find ourselves wanting to eat the stars.

machiavelli's prince takes center stage
illuminated in a glow of our desire;
a man-beast twisted in a maelstrom
of poetry and lies.

roll the bones...
roll the bones...
place your bets and roll them bones,
dance on the devil's grave.

the war machine grows fond of your face.

the sad old sage plucks his komun'go
in the belly of this gluttonous day.

so roll the bones.
see what you get.
the sun is about to lose its race.

Two Pieces by David Oprava

2008-12-18T08:00:00.002-06:00

ITCH

he licks
the superego
wounds
wondering
what his seed
tastes like,
some salty drops
sticky like want,

rolling in tongues
over the barely
fallow bed,
he whispers
to the rough
wooliness
of her words,

are your prickly-
pains
just for me,
or anybody?

Fucking the smell
of the blanket he groans,
shallow bitch,
left him blue-balled
and itching.

TEACHER

I fuck a first grade teacher,

because

if a first grade teacher's
apple pie smile, butter cream hands
and need to care for the infantile
can't make me feel good about myself,

who the fuck can?

davidoprava.com

Ballad of a Rich Man by Tim Murray

2008-12-17T08:00:00.001-06:00

If you stay up late enough
(say 4am)
You'll know the answer to everything
Yes
Everything
Because (it seems) the Western mind
Is trained to believe
That knowledge is a mere
Compendium of memorized
Tidbits, dates, names
With the occasional anecdote
Tossed in for a bit of intellectual spice
That being said
Your noggin full of
Categorized Pitfall scores
From Intellivision II tournaments
Should come in handy
In the event that you
Find yourself strolling along
The gray October sidewalks
Of Indiana where
You are sure to come across
A small cigarette smoke filled bakery
Named Sue's
At which time you'll be unable to fight the
Urge to order
A large slice of double chocolate cake
Simply because it is
A large slice of double chocolate cake
And the lady behind the counter
Will seem annoyed that
You actually wish to purchase something
But thru her grimace
She will neatly package
Your freshly baked
Slice of double chocolate cake
In a nifty little plastic container
And she'll slip it into a
Convenient brown paper sack
And she'll drop your
13 cents change
And receipt in behind it
And the belt of
Real live Reindeer bells tied
To the door handle
Will clang and jangle
As you exit
Returning to the
Leafy brown afternoon
One large slice of
Double chocolate cake
Richer
In the Earth

Tim Murray, b. 1977, is a lifelong resident of Northwest Indiana. His poetry blog can be found at www.myspace.com/kidmonk

Alleys are the Footnotes of the Avenues by Peter Anderson

2008-12-16T08:00:00.005-06:00

The old man paused, his brimming shopping cart rattling to a stop. A window just above stood a few inches open, the apartment’s inhabitants tentatively seeking spring’s first warm wisps of breeze. The man himself had more than enough breezes, along with the bitter winds of the preceding winter just passed, none of it impeded by any window’s barrier.

The long alley he had traversed, veering slowly side to side to peek into trash cans and dumpsters for things of interest and maybe of value, ended in a T which he followed toward the street. There was no dumpster to be picked through here - nicer buildings kept their trash in chain-linked pens to discourage men like him from lingering, silently imploring him to take his business elsewhere.
He stopped, not ready to return to the street. Low sounds emanating from the window drew his attention, but he listened with eyes cast downward, the pose of a tired man merely pausing to rest. He knew that looking up at the window might mark him as a peeper, drawing the ire of neighbors and bringing the police.

He already had enough hassles in his humble life without bringing another upon himself.

~

The television murmured, excited putdowns and canned laughter occasionally rising through the living room’s slumbering lull. Bluish light flickered through the shadows, illuminating a middle-aged man who slumped in an easy chair, stockinged feet propped up, a half-empty highball glass within his reach. He dozed, having lost interest in the sitcom’s inanities, its forced mirth.
Before sleep came the old familiar words eased through his mind, the words of the essay he had pondered for so long, the treatise which would finally put television, and everything it represented about our culture, in its place. Down where it belonged, far down.

The medium numbs the senses, lulling us into dull complacency, cheapening our discourse down to a blather of catchphrases. Laugh tracks have taught us how to respond—uproariously at the more outrageous stunts, chucklingly at rare instances of subtlety. But laugh tracks teach us nothing about how to respond to seriousness, to sadness, and thus we have become immune, no longer caring, no longer sympathizing. If we can’t laugh we don’t respond at all. We have become disconnected from the world outside…

But the words, so often thought but still unwritten, soon gave way to the whiskey’s strength. He slid into heavy-lidded torpor, then finally into sleep. The words would remain unwritten for another day, another month, year, perhaps forever.

~

Outside the window, the sounds from within no longer held the old man’s interest. He reached into his cart, again securing a bag of soda cans, obsessively tightening the handles as he had done repeatedly throughout the long clockless day. Satisfied, he grunted quietly and leaned into the shopping cart, moving slowly toward the street.

As he cleared the building he felt a jolt of wind on his weathered face, the air turning colder as night fell steadily around him.

Peter Anderson's stories have been published in many fine venues besides this one, including Storyglossia, THE2NDHAND, Wheelhouse and RAGAD. He also has three novels-in-progress that may or may not ever be finished, depending on his whims, and a completed story chapbook that is desperately in need of a home. He lives in Joliet, Illinois, with his lovely wife Julie, charming daughter Madeleine and two literature-averse cats.

Revival, reunion when I think of you by Audrey Victoria

2008-12-15T08:00:00.002-06:00

I drop down fifty flights of stairs and the moon beckons me nowhere except
where a sight-seeing tourist from the inside is exploiting my garnered limp.
His gullet is adorned with crumpled skin and mole colored jewels.

Inside my nose is stinging and I take it as a sign that the
scorpion has just crawled inside. And my tongue will speak words
of models drawing out my past vision of vernacular suicide.

I crawl to the coffee shop and order shots of espresso until my chest explodes.
I wait for you by the front window but you're nowhere to be seen.
I assume it's because I gained weight again and I feel fat again.
Since I quit mind surfing I don't ride as smooth anymore.
I must confess, back when abyssinian hands stroked my laden back
I used to mind fuck you in the alley and you didn't know it.

Limping and leaving, my heart stops and I am clutched to a street light.
The fat gullet trumpet vine has wrapped around my bronchial tubes again.
Manipulation is a tired tactic and I prefer pure fucking instead
I will wait for you half past five next weekend if I am not dead by then

I will merge into you but not frighten you.
I will sing to you gently but there will be no song even if you ask for one.
There will be no moment for images because you will be blindfolded
I will leave you one foot to find in the garbage. Most importantly
I don't know how to love. It's your crumbled clutch, displacement
with boring sentiment. Yeah, it's that role I play.

Inside I know that flash you want of that woman standing sprawled
dripping clean with wet and glitter all over your mommy's blanket.
What a coward you've become. God, all gracious, the women
The women just want to screw you all over. The vision of their
Robert Plant Fantasy. Go on, bro, grunt and give them your disease.

My skin is still smooth and I still flutter like a pixie
all over your jewels, stealing them. The yawn of the guitar still runs down my leg
and as the new moon raises the energy depletes from your
soul merging with mine accordingly.

Most likely you will have a nightmare about me tonight.
a hallway will rise up in magenta and run like a trumpet vine,
run from your toes to your abdomen to down your trachea
where then you will blossom orange, finally spreading
something half beautiful, even if you're still a weed.

Featured Writer: Scot Young Day 3

2008-12-14T08:00:00.000-06:00

covered in dust waiting for rain

this old truck tucked
just into the woods
off a dirt road
cedar growing
through its skeleton
used to haul
people
wood
field dressed deer
during season or not
sometimes moonshine
up and down these
ozark roads paved
in mud and chert

old man penley
left it here one day
got pissed off
cause it wouldn't
pull the hill
loaded full of wood
backed off in trees
and just said
fuckit
came back a half
dozen times
stripped it clean
nothing left now
but a speedometer
one chrome bumper

just sits
permantly parked
sometimes a summer
home for roadrunners
but always rusting
a shell of the 50s

neighbors pass by
occasionally
nod toward the truck
and say
that penley
he was a crazy
sonofabitch

Featured Writer: Scot Young Day 2

2008-12-13T08:00:00.002-06:00

hey jude

most everybody
had a shitty childhood
not that every minute
was a fucking nightmare
but the shit seems to stand out
stays fresh and
rubs off on your clothes
when you walk
too close to yesterday

i'd say you wear it well
like a yellow star
pinned to that dirty shirt
so others can
pick you out

tomorrow
bribe the guards
with what you got
to avoid the showers
because the smell
of shit is still better
than standing in line
______________________________

bar time

been watching her for an hour
other end of the bar
stripper tits
blouse tied underneath
i caught her looking
bedroom eye lashes
like pulling down
the shades
guy walks in
buys her a drink
sits down
i moved closer
she lit a cigarette
told the new guy
through a cloud of smoke
that the lousy
sonofabitch she had last
night couldn't keep up
she wanted a man
to go all night
knowwhatimsayin
who wasn't afraid to give
a woman what she wants
knowwhatimsayin
holding a full beer
he looked over at me
I shrugged
looked at the clock
knowing
it was still early
and i was closest
to the door…

__________________________

28 days of kama sutra

1972
teenage car sex
under a cheesy moon
eight track plays
croce low
love song
sets the mood
top down to give
us more room
you borrowed
yr sister's
kama sutra
had 20 minutes
before the porch light
came on
we were on day 1
I prayed for 27
more just like
this one

Featured Writer: Scot Young Day 1

2008-12-12T08:00:00.012-06:00

The Early Years

In 1954
my father bought

mom a new pink &
white dodge

she loved that car
so much she painted

the house to match
the mills brothers sang

you're nobody til
somebody loves you

that night
I was conceived

after a couple
of cans of heidl brau

and for a brief
moment

all was right
with the world

_________________________________

Before Girls

we would push our bikes up
the steep hills
then zoom down zig- zagging
like daredevils
wind in our face
drying out the butchwax
made to wear by dad
until we couldn't roll any farther

like a thousand screaming locusts
the maris mantle and mays
rookie cards clothes-pinned
to our spokes turning
our schwinns into
wannabe triumphs
old man smith would yell
as we flew by
you little dumb asses
was all we could make out
for that summer we were
the wild ones spitting
gnats from our teeth

_______________________________

First Day of Girls

in seventh grade
first hour I saw
carmela occhipinti
big itailian smile
ta-tas to match
orange mini dress
off-white pokla-dot s
are there bombshells
at 13?
never saw this
in grammar school--
those chocolate eyes
cut right to the center
of a 7th grade
boy's heart
nothing else mattered
before or after

that polka dot image
was burned into this
kid's brain
testosterone &
awkwardness
raced to every corner
of my body
as I stumbled
into the chair beside her
--slouched in jeans
white t-shirt
checked her out
through the corner
of my eye
checking me out
through the corner
of hers

today I learned
on some reunion site
she had died--
breast cancer
of all damn things
it made me sad
I hoped her life
was good
as I saw her
in that mini dress
and remembered
how many times
I dropped my pencil

In another life Scot Young used to be a construction worker but for the last 19 years he has been paid to hang out with kids. He started writing poems again after a 30 year absence and has published one or two. He may be the only school principal in America to have all of Christopher Robin's books and occasionaly teaches a poetry class to the Breakfast Club. He once sang with Kenny Loggins and wrestler Dirty Dick Murdoch, but mainly he just puts bread on the table.

Stop by to see more from Scot on Saturday and Sunday.

Shoots and Vines Compost: Scot Young

Window by Zsuzsi

2008-12-11T08:00:00.004-06:00

Two Pieces by Alan Kelly

2008-12-10T08:00:00.001-06:00

Dawn

I watched the building opposite

the hotel

Fill with sun

making bright

eyes of its bare windows

The palms of my hand

On the eerie pane

He made small

Cuts

On the back of my legs

And the scream that my mouth shaped became full

with squares of light

_________________________

In Her Head

In her Skull

Are

Halls

And

Walls papered by flesh

And

Halls

In her skull

Of

Walls

And

Halls carpeted with veins

Lined with

Daguerreotypes of Dead Folk

Glaring out

At her

From jaded

Frames

Serious, ridiculous, overblown, pretentious & warped, Alan K has written for Film Ireland, Streetwise, The City Guidebook, Pretty-Scary, GCN, Penny Blood, 3:AM and ButcherQueers. His fiction has appeared in Beat the Dust, Lit Up Magazine, Gold Dust, Parasitic, Dogmatika, The Bloodied Quill and forthcoming in Sein and Werden.

Shoots and Vines First Print Zine

2008-12-10T07:50:00.003-06:00

Shoots and Vines first print zine will be available in January. Eighteen pages of black and white art, prose, poetry, and flash fiction.

This is a grassroots attempt to distribute the work of our contributors and get their names out to the public. I have two places already that will let me distribute the copies. All copies are free. We are keeping the zine short in the hope that people will make copies and distribute to their friends.

Submissions are now open. Please add Print Zine Submission to the subject of your email. Remember that the zine is ten 8" by 11" pages folded in half. Long pieces of poetry or fiction might be rejected due to length. I want to put as many writers in the zine as I can. Artists can submit small images to decorate the pages. I'm also looking for two larger black and white drawings, plus a cover design.

I'll put a copyright on it for the contributors, but this zine may be printed many times and I can't control where it goes after distribution.

If you are interested in receiving a copy of the zine so you can make copies and distribute, let me know. Again, this is grassroots work. I don't get paid. You don't get paid. Contributors do not get paid. What we will get is the opportunity to help fellow writers and artists.

The back page of the zine will have a link for each contributor so readers can find more good pieces of work online. Contributors will receive one copy to do with as they please (hopefully make copies and distribute).

Thanks,
Crystal

The Air-conditioned Speed of Sound by Andrew Taylor

2008-12-09T08:00:00.001-06:00

Take cover for I am on the

prowl again. Dredging through

past gardens of placidity, seeking

out any chink of light which could

pierce the armour which encircles

what was once my heart.

I pace the floor and ignore what

convention holds. 'Night time is for

freaks and ghouls' - welcome to

the ghoulish freak show. Rule out

driving out to the coast, the weather

is unkind and besides, my flask is broke.

Arm my bedside table with Norfolk

Punch, Melatonin and Chivas Regal

and sit on the bed awaiting the

challenges that are to come. Open

the notebook, tattered and torn, to

a free page and begin to write.

Silence wraps its cool arms around me.

I ponder wiring my headphones to

the stereo and listening to Chet Baker.

Nothing could kill this silence.

Better this than the heat and sweat of

a nightmare.

catman by Steve Ely

2008-12-08T08:00:00.002-06:00

i know this guy all his life he killed cats the first time he was eight years old

he dropped a litter of kittens into a half filled bucket and shoveled in dirt until the mix stopped quaking

there was one up a tree in his garden he got lucky with a halfbrick and watched it bounce off every branch before it hit the ground he finished it with the flat side of the shovel

he killed a tabby with a bat playing cricket on the street it just walked past and he slogged it in the head he said it was a six

his staffie roofed a tom on a shed up bull lane he knocked it down with a branch the dog crashed face first into the brambles swaggered out with it limp in its grinning jaws

he chased one tree to tree in the graveyard throwing sticks and stones until after minutes or hours it came tumbling down the dog ripped it apart or maybe that was a squirrel far as i know he had nothing against squirrels

this warehouse had a problem they were breeding among the pallet stacks he took a 4.10 terriers jawtraps poison he showed me a photo four cats six kittens lined up dead

a grey one crept in the bushes near his feeders leaping out at the robins and blue tits he took aim from the kitchen window and shot it through the eye with a .22 pellet gun

he drove his car off the road and dented the wing swerving to hit one on the a638 outside upton

a black one walked in through the open front door and curled up on his hearthrug he couldnt believe it he coaxed it into a sack and drove out to the reservoir

he never tied fireworks to them because that was just cruel and he didnt do it for the cruelty just to kill them

i asked him why do you hate cats so much and he said i dont know i just do dont you hate something if you had a rat in your house wouldnt you kill it or maybe its music bagpipes perhaps i cant give you a reason theyre sly i hate cats

are you answered

Extracts from Steve Ely's massive poem JerUSAlem, have been published in a range of litzines, including Beat the Dust, Laura Hird Showcase, Dogmatika, Black Mail Press & Paper Cut. Other poems and short stories by Ely have been published in Literary Chaos, Lit Up, Lilies & Cannonballs Review, the Savage Kick, The Slab of Fun, Magma and elsewhere.

Stalking Dana by Paul Corman-Roberts

2008-12-07T08:00:00.003-06:00

With a bottle of pink hearts gripped firmly in my
right hand, quivering, like I was jerking off and…I
suppose I really am after all.

There must be a hundred of these little heart shaped
pills scored by my flaxen haired roommate from one of
the most “reputable” pharmaceutical firms in Tijuana.
She told me I could take a pill or two whenever I
wanted and since I’ll always be home before she is I’m
not seeing anything particularly wrong with a few
consecutive whenevers.

I swallow four, one right after the other, light a
clove cigarette and try to look innocuously through
the window of my innocuous ‘83 Nissan Sentra from my
innocuous parking stall, and into the storefront
window of the Al Phillips Dry Cleaners, only all too
conspicuous in my innocuousness.

She’s at the window. There’s no mistaking the
freckles, the all-American girl next door pony tail.
Kimberly Drummond: convicted of robbing a video store
six months ago. But I fell in love with her years ago;
endless masturbatory sessions in my grandma’s shitter.

It’s not like I don’t have business on this side of
town. My agent on a shoestring got me an audition
down the street forty five minutes from now and I have
uniforms that need to be pressed and creased. It’s not
easy holding down a bohemian lifestyle while passing
for a government employee.

The tell tale heartbeat and adrenal flow begin their
all too familiar buildup from my toenails all the way
up until they hit the top of my teeth which then begin
sliding across the surface of my bottom teeth with a
consistency known by Hell’s Angels and a long standing
ritual engaged in by many a pathetic lonely young man
since the advent of the industrial age.

Am I proud? No. I feel dirty. Would I rather be doing
anything else?

…

Hell no.

I hold the uniforms under my left arm, the clove in my
right as I make my way through the front door.

I’d found out she works here at my job, when a Tech
Sergeant said that washed up drug addict actress they
busted last year pressed his uniforms. How to break
the ice?

“Hey, I’m an actor too.” She doesn’t work the counter
though. I’m stuck with the homely woman who in turn
looks longingly at the slot machines being serviced by
a tech guy on the far side of the waiting room.

I place my order loudly. I want her to notice. Notice
my pungent clove cigarette, which always pisses off
the old Vegas service crowd. She looks right through
me though. My hair is too short. My face is too clean.
I get my suits pressed and creased. She wants a bad
boy. She wants long hair. She wants weed. She wants
blow. How do I tell her?

“Hey, I have weed. Hey, I can get blow from Evil
Knievel. Hey, I’m an actor too. Hey if you quit this
job, join my newly founded theater company and move
into my shared room apartment it’ll help out both of
our careers and you can have the pleasure of knowing
that I am your wonderful savior every time I crawl up
on top of you just to see that crease in your brow.”

Transaction ends. I’m going back to the Sentra. I look
back hoping to find her staring out the window after
me. Too late; she’s at the counter talking to a guy
with a pony tail. Is it…? Goddammit, yes, it’s the
service tech guy. He’s got a pony tail.

Years later of course, I find out what Dana really
wants is something neither myself nor the pony tail
has. Years later I find out she turned down the role
of Regan in The Exorcist and the role of Violet in
Pretty Baby; years later when she overdoses in her
in-law’s bathroom. I still like to think I could have
been all those things to her, a way for opportunity to
translate into, if not happiness, at least a
manageable contentment; a warm body that makes you
laugh & can be counted on to be there.

If only it were that easy.

For now; brain bubbling in a primal cauldron and eyes
exploding, I head to the auditorium at the Summerlin
Public Library for the most prestigious community
theater organization in Las Vegas, which is the
artistic status equivalent of the most prestigious
pantomime troupe in Los Angeles. In front of an
audience of two dozen competitors, a girl younger and
more beautiful than Dana, which is to say less
experienced, melts down completely at the beginning of
her improv assignment and stalks off the stage “I
can’t I can’t I just can’t do this & I guess I’ll see
you guys down at the mall or something.”

I nail my improv. I get the spot in the prestigious
workshop. I know now what I’ll say to Dana. I come
back the next night to pick up my uniforms from the Al
Phillips Cleaners with my rap and my approach down
pat.

Dana’s not working that night, something about a hot
date. Heading back to the Sentra it seems to me this
particular dry-cleaning shop does an incredibly lousy
job of pressing and creasing my uniforms and I swear I
will never return to this place for my business again.
I try to convince myself that I am somehow different,
that I am somehow better than the meltdown girl at the
audition sure to be hanging out at the mall I am now
headed towards with a handful of Pink Hearts.

Paul Corman-Roberts toils in a boiler room next
to the edge of a major-interstate highway. "At least
it's job security!" Shoot him if you get a chance. Or
check out his site & stuff at
www.paulcormanroberts.com.

Abacus: A Love Story; Or, the Concept of Zero by Donna D. Vitucci

2008-12-06T08:00:00.002-06:00

She thought about the way water shapes stone. Face it, stones take a battering over time. She wanted to put the stone on his tongue, but instead she put it in her mouth and sucked on it. It tasted of the sea and every element of the sea—-grit and rain and brine and live creature, fish, cousins to fish, snails, kelp, microbes, algae, a living universe that swims to reach light.

“Why have you so many ideas of violence?”

“I don’t.”

“Yes, you do. When an expectation is created your head, you prepare yourself for assault, blood, mayhem. When really, all that’s around the corner is disappointment, is love.”

“You make it sound like those are the same thing.”

She raised her eyebrow, held her tongue, bit down on her next words to keep them hid.

“Maybe it’s my career in law enforcement,” he said.

“Maybe you don’t want to be happy.”

“No, I do want happiness.”

“You seem to avoid it.”

“I do not.”

She let him hear himself.

He paused, and said, “You don’t know me like you think.”

“This could be true. I can admit that. So inform me.”

She motioned him toward her but he knew it was a gesture meant to go with her next words.

“Give over something important. Something I can begin building you on in my unconscious. A base, a foundation, a pedestal, something you-true that won’t erode.”

“Now that sounds esoteric.”

“You think so?”

The way he cut a glance to her and away, the thrust of his profile insisted, “You know it does.”

She guessed it implied “Quit harassing me,” but she wasn’t about to quit. She was just getting started. And she wouldn’t call it harassment anyway. Again, she’d call it love.

She even spoke this aloud: “I call it love.”

“What?” The very word flailed. She’d pitched him into the middle of a sea, water over his head, choking salt and gulping for air. She did that, she stole his share of breath.

She’d been talking around the stone in her mouth, a pretty neat trick. She had an adept tongue and good concentration. Thoughts didn’t sidetrack her, but emotions might. The stone was to help her focus. The stone was enduring.

She took it out of her mouth and closed it in her fist. She tugged his arm to make him stop walking this beach, to stand still with her. With her hand at the back of his neck she drew his face down to hers and kissed him. When they stopped kissing to breathe she again reached to his face, the back of his jaw. She ran her fingers along the line to his chin, pulled his chin down. She curled her fingers over his bottom teeth and pressured him.

His slackened jaw felt like it might widen and engulf the sea. He would not resist the need to lick her knuckles.

She set the stone in his mouth, on his tongue, a squid-like sea creature as it appeared to her. She closed his mouth, that gaping trap.

In the stone, he tasted her, he tasted the first earth, the first waters, the angels and hell. He tasted what was cast out, what was cast away, what was saved; the violence she abolished in him, her salt, his own blood. He tasted the New World and the seas that spanned her globe.

This was only their first day on the beach. There would be more. They tallied blocks of language and suffering and desire, not numbers, and so they abandoned the tools like calendars and diaries, that documented gain and loss. They counted on nothing. They had one stone between them.

Donna D. Vitucci lives and works in Cincinnati, Ohio, helping raise funds for local nonprofits. Since 1990 her stories have appeared in dozens of print and online journals. Recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Front Porch Journal, Juked, Night Train, Ginosko, Insolent Rudder, Smokelong Quarterly, mourningsilence and Another Chicago Magazine. Abacus was written after walking the shore of Lake Michigan during a very special artists’ retreat this past September.

by Seth Trimble

2008-12-05T08:05:00.001-06:00

(Click image to enlarge)

100% spray paint

The Look of Love, Take Two by Ben Tanzer

2008-12-05T08:00:00.000-06:00

It is late. The sky is meringue. The dress is retro. The hair which is sometimes highlighted, and sometimes shaggy, is without bangs, and there are little pigtails bleached at the tips, wildly jutting out from each ear. She has a crooked nose and a crooked smile and she makes it work. She listens to The Sadies and reads George Eliot.

You warily move around each other at the office, almost stalking one another. Or do you? Maybe it’s all in your head.

Still, there are times when she looks right at you, through you, with longing and desire, both humored and intrigued.

Tonight she sits there on the bumper of a van outside some club where a work event has just gone down. Her eyes are half-open. Coin slots on the uneven plain of her face. She’s been drinking again.

“Sit down,” she says patting the spot on the bumper next to her.

“How’s it going?” you say as you take a seat.

“I need to stop,” she says laying her head on your shoulder.

“Why?” you say feeling the heat from her cheek burning a hole through your shirtsleeve.

“I have a problem.”

“Do you?”

“My husband says I do.”

“But do you think there’s a problem?”

“Yes, and I need to stop if I want to save the marriage.”

“And do you want to save it?”

“Yes, no, I don’t know,” she says briefly looking up at you.

Is that an invitation, or is that just defeat? Her head drops to her chest. It looks like defeat.

Ben Tanzer is the author of the novels Lucky Man (Manx Media, 2007) and Most Likely You Go Your Way and I’ll Go Mine (Orange Alert Press, 2008) and the short story collection Repetition Patterns (CCLaP, 2008). He also blogs at This Blog Will Change Your Life, which is the centerpiece of his vast, albeit faux, media empire, and edits This Zine Will Change Your Life, which you should totally submit to. Cool?

Resurgence by Charles Brooks III

2008-12-04T08:00:00.004-06:00

Taking turns guessing where songs start,

Hank Mobley records get shuffled with Led Zeppelin

while window fans scatter acrid smoke.

LP's deliver Kerouac's drunken haikus

and Nat King Cole's Unforgettable.

Discolored cardboard, unsellable in back rooms

a decade ago, two decades,

now vinyl redeems itself.

Real disciples always keep a table

spinning for Saturday afternoons,

or a Wednesday night.

You can turn it on and dance alone,

realizing Ray LaMontagne sounds like winter.

Charles Clifford Brooks III is a poet and freelance writer living in Georgia USA. He was inducted into the National Creative Society his senior year at Shorter College where he also obtained a BS in History\Political Science with a minor in English Literature. Along with his creative endeavors, he also contributes articles to several magazines and a newspaper. He was recently brought on as Poetry Editor for Literary Magic Magazine. In August of 2008, Ghost Shadow Press picked up his first book of poetry “Whirling Metaphysics” to publish in 2009.

Casaubon and Amparo by Aleathia Drehmer

2008-12-03T08:00:00.001-06:00

One day, she plants a great tree

in the image of man, culled

tiny brown seeds taken from cored bounties

leftover, pies baked and eaten warm.

She moves fingers through rich soil,

spayed earth moist and gathering

under nails; places each polished hope, gingerly.

Nestled in the corner, guarded by old

weathered legs, crossed keepers of the rains

and snows and sun-dappled summers.

Starling's golden tritons between blacktop brambles

all gorging till beaks come away

berry-stained and full.

She waters his roots with her purple can,

speaks to him in kind

while trimming long blades with shears,

laughing at herself, to him,

and blushes cheeks into apples.

She drips ruby nectar down his throat

stolen from the hummer's bell feeder

when his branches begin, buds curling out,

and iridescent bodies swirl around her,

new northern lights.

When he comes to her strong and constant,

she lies beneath him, rusty fingers reach

to touch her face, gold tears floating

in the brush of reality.

And she reads him volumes of Poe and Pound,

questions the universe and space, knowing

he won't ever answer her the truth,

but attempt every time.

He is there when seasons turn,

their heart growing, in him and he never

pushes her back or away,

and she will smile,

one day.

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

Aleathia Drehmer is currently trying to hibernate for the winter, but not having much success. She is an active staff member for The Guild of the Outsider Writers. She lives with her darling daughter and crazy cat, Carrot, in rural Painted Post, NY. She has been lucky enough to be published in many online and print journals over the last few years. She is even luckier to have great friends and one damned patient boyfriend.

Mardi Gras Man by Aimee Nelson

2008-12-02T21:14:00.000-06:00

Communiques for Xanadu by William D. Freeman

2008-12-02T08:00:00.004-06:00

Like Marco Polo,
I traveled here and there,
touching distant shores
and seeking aces in the trees
from Anchorage to Florence,
falling in love in Rome,
while my best friend shouted,
"Hello, Yates,"
perched on the precipice of the parapet
of Blarney, claiming to see Killarney
and reciting 'Kiltartan's Cross'
three-sheets to the wind
while Kitty gazed up,
wiping whiskey from her face,
ruddy and fair,
dreaming of cold nights
of warm debauchery in Munich's streets,
strung out, passed out and stoned
while passers-by muttered, auf Deutsch,
"Why must youth be wasted on the young?"

I graduated from Randolph-Macon College in 2006 with a BA in English Literature. My poems have previously appeared in The Duke's Dispatch, The Stylus and online in LitUp Mag. My freelance work has appeared on
linux.com. In addition to poetry, my interests include travel, photography, blues and jazz guitar and free software advocacy and I
currently work for a web hosting company.

Heathen by A. Razor

2008-12-01T08:02:00.001-06:00

I am on the run tonight

from the memories of

past judgment and

failed futures

I cut the lines that

run down the middle

of the road

with wild swerving

maneuvers that are

barely cloaked in

the luminescent

darkness that

shrouds the industrial

part of town

I sense a pervasive

Sense of life’s coil

unwinding

as the road

rolls by in torrents

of blackness lashed with

iridescent lines that promote

some order to my direction

I am tempted to lose control and

drive into walls and objects

but the feelings pass almost as

fast as the lights and the painted stripes

that seem to demarcate my life from my end

and as the all that life and feeling and light and

world trail past me

I feel like I might have lost what was

in pursuit of me and

what I had been in pursuit of

all at once

and I was left to wonder

which I would miss more

and which I would need less

as if the whole thing could be

divided that easily

into separate sides

of reality

when you are

traveling

at this

speed

A. Razor was born in Brooklyn, NY in 1963. He was soon brought out to southern California and raised in areas ranging from Yuma, AZ to Las Vegas, NV to Hollywood, CA to San Bernardino, CA. His early experiences living on the streets of Hollywood and Venice Beach, CA and his later institutional experiences as an inmate and parolee as well as a squatter and homeless rights advocate inform his writing with a perception of a marginal and disposable existence in a society where life is cheap and hope sometimes seems unattainable. However bleak it may seem, there is always an element that speaks to the spark that the writer believes to be the essence of the human experience. He has read his works and been published in many places by many people over the years. A short film, 13 Cuts Of A Razor, will soon be available on the internet and at bookstores. Excerpts of the archived footage can be seen on YouTube.

This Man by David Erlewine

2008-12-01T08:00:00.002-06:00

The man sitting across the desk once offered me $20 to run down his block in my underwear. He never paid. Such moments still snake through me. He ends his phone call, holds out his hand without standing up. No blink at my fake name (thank you, chemo!). Before I can answer, he informs me I look like a Lexus guy. It is quite possible this man has never given me another thought. I find myself unable to listen to other things he goes on to say. This man will listen to many, many grievances during his final hours.

David Erlewine has flash fiction and short stories published in a variety of print and web lit journals, including HOBART, IDENTITY THEORY, IN POSSE REVIEW, LITERAL LATTE, PINDELDYBOZ, SLOW TRAINS, SMOKELONG QUARTERLY, and WORD RIOT. Most recently his work has appeared in the anthology "WHAT HAPPENED TO US THESE LAST COUPLE YEARS?"

He lives in Washington, DC, with his wife and two children. When informed that Daddy writes, David's son exclaimed, "And he does dishes!" Thankfully he didn't reference Daddy's unhealthy time spent refreshing Facebook.

Notice, Submissions

2008-11-30T17:12:00.007-06:00

We've only been up a little over a week and already we've had an overwhelming number of submissions. I'm pleased to say the majority have been wonderful to read.

LiteralMinded is working on a new site: new format, new writers, forums, and much more. Some of you who have sent submissions but were not published will receive an email very soon informing you when LM will be open for submissions. Many great writers, but the content isn't what I'm looking for.

I started this zine because I read pieces from writers whose work should be visible. If you are a good writer and can give me something different each week, I'll take it.

Although we've had a great response by way of submissions and viewers, I want to clarify what I am looking for when it comes to publishing those pieces.

I like dark pieces. I'm not into vampires, or goth, or the supernatural. When I pick up a book of poetry or a piece of fiction, I want to look inside and see the darkness we all have within us.

I like writers who are so true to themselves and what they know that when I read one of their pieces it's like thumbing open a rib and climbing inside.

You might be a great inspirational writer or technically sound, but I want to showcase work that is gutsy and edgy and poetic or shows me what other writers have been writing around for years. It has to be real and honest.

Thanks for all the submissions, views, and comments. I hope I continue to receive the quality of work I have seen so far.

I Thought We Had A Friend In The Diamond Business by Thomas Sullivan

2008-11-30T08:00:00.000-06:00

The jewelry ad glitters and gleams
Sparks of light radiate off an oversized polished diamond
The jumbo rock perches atop a pure silver band
Beckoning the fortunate in an insolvent world.

The pitch emanates from a huge callout bubble
“Make her ex-boyfriend hate you even more”
When did getting people to hate each other become a marketing strategy?
Maybe with Cheney, Iraq, and Halliburton.

I thought we had a friend in the diamond business.

When you see her ex on the street in front of Saks
He won’t look down at your fiancé’s hand and hate you
He’ll smile at you with silent gratitude
For helping him dodge a serious bullet.

Thomas Sullivan writes short essays from his home in the Pacific Northwest. His writing has recently appeared in a number of webzines and magazines, including Eleventh Transmission (Canada), Lit-Up Magazine,The Short Humour Site (UK), and Backhand Stories. Thomas was a finalist at the 2008 Pacific Northwest Writers Association contest for his memoir Life In The Slow Lane, which recounts a hair-raising summer spent teaching driver’s education. Contact the author at tmpsull@hotmail.com.

Collapsed Dependencies by Matt Douros

2008-11-29T08:00:00.000-06:00

He was a tall, thin, rakish figure with a long face and nose, and skin almost pale as paper. Though young, there were a great many creases radiating down from the corners of his lips like cracks in mud. And he wore black. All black: shining black leather shoes, a black suit with a black shirt and tie. Hair? Black. Eyes? Well, they were a dark-chocolate sort of brown, but you may as well call that black, too.

The children, filthy and playing in the rusted hulks of a thousand broken cars that were scattered throughout most of the streets in the city adored the fellow. Children do tend to love the strangeness of anachronisms they don't recognize, after all.

None of the children knew his name, and there was a legend that he didn't know his name, either. As a representative of another time, they called him by names of things from the vast and growing linguistic tumor of antiquated vocabulary. "Lighthouse," they called him, for his height and the stark contrast of his skin and his garb. "Bard," they called him, for his habit of wandering and the ease with which he'd tell a tale.

He had many other names, and some were only whispered. There was also a legend that he was a ghost, because nobody, not even the adults, ever saw him eat, or sleep, or take a piss. Even the children were afraid to ask him if he truly was a ghost. These were very superstitious times.

Instead, the children took the role of paranormal investigators. They would ask him questions to see if they might imagine some his personal insights--reflections of the distant past. They might ask, "Bard, what happened when the net went down?"

He would look then into the child's eyes and something would change, almost imperceptibly. Those with keener perceptions would later say that, while his lips would always maintain that dour expression, in those moments his eyes would smile. His voice was clear, sharp, deep, and precise as he recited:

"The dark day the net went down,
It used its lips and tongue.
Only clergy wore fixed frowns,
As the whole world did moan and cu--"

"That has nothing to do with the Great Crash!" the child might cry. "Tell us of the old times! Of the net!"

"Mm. I just told you more about the net than you realize," he would look then to a shattered tower of rubble on the horizon, and add, mostly to himself, "It's lucky for me that my little poem is going to go over your head for a few years."

Faces bent under the pressure of confusion and changed subjects would follow, "Ma says I'm growing like a weed." The child would then pause and wrinkle up his face in the melodrama of his transparent manipulation as he would probe, "What's a weed?"

The man would reply, "It's a plant people may use to make themselves relaxed and stupid."

Incredulous responses, being the domain of children no matter what era you're living in tends to produce things like, "Why would people want to be stupid?"

With the eyes of a cat playing with a trapped mouse, the man would say, "Life is sometimes fun when it isn't clouded with questions."

"You sayin you want me to stop pestin you with questions?"

"Only if I run out of answers."

"Oh," the child would say, and the man's eyes would flicker and he would turn and walk away without a word. Depending on the size and nature of the crowd that would then be dispersing, there might be some further pondering of the mystery of the strange man from a time long gone. Or maybe children would launch themselves into playing in a shared fantasy prompted by such ancient recollections, as children sometimes do.

No Regrets by Scot Young

2008-11-28T09:55:00.003-06:00

Scot Young couldn't write a creative bio if his life depended on it.
Recent rumors of his death were blogged to sell his work and
should not really be taken seriously.

Worst by Mikael Covey

2008-11-27T21:56:00.004-06:00

the mom
holds up
a photo
of her dead
girl
Nikki’s Fund
the caption
reads
in
front page
news
for students
who need
money and
a reason
not to
kill
themselves

I hope
you’re feeling
better Nik
imagining
your mom
with your
dead photo
funds
your name
and
nothing
nothing
nothing
of her
girl
who went
away

Mikael Covey is editor of Lit Up Magazine. His writing has appeared in a number of on-line and print journals, including Storyglossia, 3AM Magazine, Laura Hird Showcase, Word Riot, and Dogmatika.

Photo by Richard Batka

2008-11-26T05:32:00.006-06:00

I'm a 26 year old IT worker in Bloomington, Indiana. I just graduated last May with a degree in Kinesiology, though my interests are wide-spread. I enjoy martial arts, triathlons, pretty much anything outdoors, philosophy, physics, psychology and of course, photography. I have been photographing seriously for the last 4 years, but I am just starting to send out portfolios to art galleries. My photography is strongly based off my moods and views of the world, and my goal is to communicate a mood, emotion or sense of atmosphere to the viewer.

In a Kansas City Walk-Up by Lisa Winett

2008-11-26T05:21:00.006-06:00

housed in the corner
i never see it change position,
its sensitivity to climate,
nuances of atmosphere,
as though i lived amongst subtle genius.
assuring the appropriateness of sleevelessness,
i recognize devotion.

1996-1997

Lisa Winett was born in Herrington, Ks. in 1971. She received her Bachelors of Fine Arts in Art History at the University of Kansas. She writes, and acts.

Conversation at 80 Feet Above Civlization by Cory Folz

2008-11-25T13:00:00.005-06:00

Jim Graw and I were perched in the basket of a construction lift, fastening aluminum to the front of an old downtown building. It is the kind of task that can become rather mundane if it weren’t done 80 feet above the sidewalk. It’s times like these you start thinking about why you had to chase girls and smoke pot in high school instead of studying for a more grounded profession.

As the sun makes the yellow brick facade into a retina frying mirror, we hear Pearl Jam’s 'Even Flow' come out of the speakers of our small, portable, radio.

"Did you ever play drinking games when you were younger?" I ask.

"You mean like quarters and stuff?" Jim replies.

"Yeah. I have these things about vocalized pauses in songs." I answer.

Jim’s brow furrows. "I’m not really following you."

"Vocalized pauses are things we say when we are stalling to find the right thing to say. Instead of waiting and gathering your thoughts before speaking, you say uh, um, er, yeah, but, well or something totally useless like that."

"What does that have to do with drinking?" Jim queries.

"I have always wondered why otherwise talented songwriters would put vocalized pauses as lyrics in their songs. When I was younger, to get drunk quick, we would take shots of beer every time a singer would sing a vocalized pause."

Eddie Vedder interrupts, "Even flow, thoughts arrive like butterflies-Oh, He don’t know so he chases them away-yeah-ooo-Something gives, he begins his life again-ooo-whisperin hand, gently gives away-him away,him away-yeah-guitar riff-ooo-guitar riff-auhuu-guitar riff-unintelligible mumbling."

Jim listens intently then speaks. "You were drunk a lot back then weren’t you."

"Uh-huh."

Cory Folz would have been a rock star by now if it weren't for his wife. :)

A Collaborative

2008-11-25T10:08:00.004-06:00

We want a piece of art to inspire our writers. Writers will submit their written interpretation or inspiration based on the selected image.

If you have a photo or artwork you would like to submit, please send to shootsandvines@gmail.com along with a bio.

Three Pieces by Scot Young

2008-11-24T07:54:00.003-06:00

first gig

we were a teenage cover band
playing louie louie
wipeout & house of the risin' sun
from the back of a hay wagon
right behind the original
jc penney
hamilton missouri
my mama's town
my family tree
sitting around squinting
into the setting sun
great uncle whit
just starched overalls
pointing one shaky finger
at me singing
said—oh hell them there's city boys
turned and spit brown juice
into an empty cup
ten feet away

Chinatown Jazz

sax man blows
slow note jazz
corner of Kearny
& California
bubbles up like
a slo-gin fizz
in a hip pocket
flask
sun glasses on
case open
accepts loose change
from tourists
walking too fast
to feel
the jazzman's
wail
that wraps the walls
of Old St.Mary's

The Midnight Club of Lonely

She sits behind the computer screen at midnight and takes comfort in the light as it warms her face. Numb to the vodka she chills in the freezer, she types sad poems and blogs them to other lonely people in this world. She writes how she can't go on anymore the way things are going and other midnight poets tell her to hang in there and she is loved. Sometimes, she visits my site and says my lonesome poems make her feel sad, but at least they make her feel something.
She rattles the half full bottle of pills and takes a drink not sure if she has had enough.

Scot Young couldn't write a creative bio if his life depended on it.
Recent rumors of his death were blogged to sell his work and
should not really be taken seriously.

A Standard Pack by Kristin Fouquet

2008-11-23T16:28:00.009-06:00

(click image to enlarge)

“No TV,” my wife said. “I want this week to be just about us as a family.”

That’s how my vacation started, with a television ban. We never seemed to have any money to actually go anywhere for it, so we’d just cocoon, you know, become mad reclusive types and not even answer the phone. Before my son was born, I’d take my week of vacation and we’d rent around twenty videos, buy bottles of booze and comfort food, and prepare to shut out the rest of the world.

Back before my son, she and I would get drunk watching whatever was on the tube or maybe a movie. Then, if we were in the mood, we’d just have sex right there on the sofa, maybe on the rug, but you know, right there, right then when we wanted to. After, I’d fix us some refresher drinks and we’d sit nude in the blue glow of the set. It was the best, like a hedonistic marathon. Sometimes, we’d forget what day it was. Oh Man, how I looked forward to that week off.

That Friday before my vacation was the greatest; I would be so psyched. We’d run our errands: video store, liquor store, drug store, and grocery store. We called it getting our supplies. We had no real plans but we’d try to set a festive mood. Like one year, we did this Mexican theme where we drank margaritas and did tequila shots…licking the salt and lime off each other’s lips. The two of us have these crazy straw hats we call fajita hats for no better reason than we wore them while eating fajitas during our Mexican vacation. Then there was our Greek vacation when we got stupid on Ouzo and ate gyros. The Italian one sucked when I blacked out on Strega and cut my foot wide open on a piece of glass on the kitchen floor. And the vacation themes weren’t limited to just a place. One year we did the 007 thing and watched every single Bond film out on video, even Casino Royale. My wife shook vodka martinis wearing nothing but a white tuxedo shirt. Man, that was one great week.

Well, it was just the two of us for ten years, one wild decade. After my son, there was no more booze because she breastfed him for a couple of years. She’d loosen up sometimes and have a glass of wine but she never really let go like in the old days. What we ate changed too. God-awful rice cakes one year; trail mix the next. Holy crap, carob.

So, we got our supplies of healthy snacks and red wine but, instead of videos, she told me we’d “read about other places, locate them on the globe…play games, tell stories, you know just talk- as a family.” She got her way, alright, for a few days, until the outside world came knockin’. It was our neighbor Stan wanting to know why we hadn’t boarded up yet.

He asked, “Y’all are headin’ outta the city, aren’t ya? I mean they’re sayin’ this could be the big one. Category 4, maybe 5 by the time it gets here.”

By nightfall, our street is abandoned. We decided to ride out the hurricane. We had food and wine but, no money or place to go. We boarded up. My wife made X’s with masking tape on the little windows. We filled the tub. In light of the situation, she even lifted the ban on the tube so, we watched the coverage of the mass exodus. The dismal fact was that many would be trapped in traffic when the storm hit. The rain and wind really picked up but we were fine, even after we heard the boom of the transformer blowin’ out. We listened to the radio and got by with flashlights. My son thought it was kinda fun till the batteries started burnin’ up. He took the last working flashlight and put it under his pillow before he went to sleep. We decided to conserve the radio batteries so, we shut it off.

It was pitch dark and all we had left were birthday candles. She came in the bedroom with three little swirled candles stickin’ out of a slice of bread. We sat cross-legged on our bed, the plate with the bread and candles between us. We sipped some wine. My wife stared at the little flames. She was beautiful; it was like I hadn’t really looked at her in years. I entwined my fingers with hers and she rewarded me with a smile. Damn, it had been ages since I’d seen that. I kissed her and ran my hand down her hip.

She said, “What’ll we do when these burn out?”

I said, “Light the rest.” I tried to lose my face in her chest.

“Those are it,” she said.

“Standard 24 pack?” I asked stupidly.

She answered, “Yeah, why?”

Then what I said next ruined everything. “Well, if he’s five, then there should be six left, right? I mean with these three and…”

She cut me off and yelled, “Patrick is six, Ron.” My wife spat, “Six.”

“I know that, just got confused.”

She didn’t buy it. Her face was eerie looking. “I can’t believe this.” She screamed, “It’s like you’ve missed an entire year of your son’s life. Where were you, Ron?”

I tried to defend myself. I said, “It’s not like I just took off for a year or something. Goddamn, Pam. I was here. I just forgot, right?”

So, we just sat in the dark. All I could hear was her breathing and that’s when it hit me. I flicked the radio back on. The storm turned. It went east of us. They said we had been spared. They said it would’ve been the big one.

Photo by Kristin Fouquet

Kristin Fouquet, a native of New Orleans, was born an anachronism. Having reached adulthood but, not necessarily maturity, she is also a writer and fine art photographer. Her work has been published both in print and online. Fortunately for Kristin, she lives in a city rich with mystique, offering up many intriguing subjects. More about her can be found at Le Salon: http://kristin.fouquet.cc

Le Salon

Regular Contributors

2008-11-23T12:26:00.006-06:00

Shoots and Vines Zine is seeking regular contributors in order to establish a weekly fan base. If you are willing to submit quality work on a bi-weekly basis, please send an email to shootsandvines@gmail.com

We want to keep the site updated on a daily basis and until we establish ourselves in the writing community, we will be soliciting work. (Probably even after we establish ourselves because some of you are too good not to be seen regularly.)

Regular contributors would provide material in addition to the submissions we receive. At most, a regular contributor would be published three to four times a month.