Editor's Note

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

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

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