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.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Monday, January 19, 2009
My Father's Advice by Howie Good
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.
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.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Featured Writer: Alan Kelly Day 3
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
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
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Featured Writer: Alan Kelly Day 2
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
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
Friday, January 16, 2009
Featured Writer: Alan Kelly
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.
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
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.
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.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Two Pieces by Wanda Campbell
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.
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.
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