Featured Writer: Alan King Day 2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.