Plain Jane Let America Die by F. Scott Francisco

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.