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.

Tin Roof by Crystal Folz

Tin Roof

We hear him skulking in the backyard. He lingers over the snapped branch, and I imagine his eyes brittling like ice. We don't know when he will speak so we stand in the backyard with our fingers entwined, listening to his heavy breathing and the rain misting the treetops.

It occurs to me that I haven't been this still for a very long time, and I think if I could reach out and touch them both, I could mold this moment like a piece of jewelry to wear a groove around my finger. Then the rain comes down hard and soaks the trees until they are black and wet like my insides, and I know I have to move or shake or let go of his hand.

We walk up the hill together, one of them on each side of me, and I want us to keep walking past the parked cars outside the bar house, cross the road, and stop for a moment at the pond. There, we could stand beside each other and stare at our distorted reflections as the rain comes down and laughter leaks through the windows in the bar. We might be happy, the three of us, gawking at the smiling faces in the water. I know I would.

Instead, we go inside and sit at a round table. They talk about the noise on the tin roof, and I buy the three of us double shots of whiskey. I should feel caught or busted but I don't.

The waitress brings a shot of Jagermeister, compliments of the gentleman at the bar.

They shake their heads as I drink it down. Cold, black, and wet, it coats my throat, feeling like victory inside.

Then there's just us, the empty shot glasses, the last of the acorns pouncing on the tin roof, and the man at the bar patting the stool next to him.

Photos by Christopher Woods

Christopher Woods has published a prose collection, UNDER A RIVERBED SKY, and a collection of stage monologues for actors, HEART SPEAK. His photographs can be seen in his online gallery, www.moonbirdhillarts.etsy.com, which he shares with his wife, Linda. He lives in Houston and in Chappell Hill, Texas.

Cremation by Nicole Nicholson

someone's dream or
obligation just died before the
eyes of commuters

blazing car belches
cotton explosions of gray smoke
into the air

a sacrifice to
the ghosts – I silently hope
the inferno grows

our car floats
in a sea of moving
masses of pain

which crunch to
a slow, hesitating, rubbernecking halt
burn, baby, burn

roadside funeral pyre
she'll wear a burned shoulder
news at eleven


Nicole Nicholson is a 32 year-old writer and performance poet who draws inspiration from history, legends and folklore, people, nature, and the voices in her head. She blogs frequently at ravenswingpoetry and in July 2008, self-published a poetry chapbook, Raven Feathers. Her work has recently appeared in Young American Poets and she was featured as a Poet of the Week on Poetry Super Highway as well as a favorite writer in June 2008 on Poetry Dances, a web site featuring online poetry by emerging writers. She lives in Columbus, OH with her fiance.