Photography by Jeff Crouch

Remains Day




Sense of Play



Myopia



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

Editor's Note

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

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

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

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

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

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.