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38 Brida
Picking at the orange’s marrow, my fingernail slices thin skin open, my blood dazzling the
water. You place your mug in the sink & quickly glance, your hand ghosting across my
shoulder.
4.
One night, when the wet night blurred the street lamps damp, I found myself in front of an
inked & starless ocean, the dark eating away at the moon. I sat in front of this extinguishing
landscape, wrapped myself in its fade of visuals.2
2 Sometimes, to be a silhouette to something only means becoming no one’s particular moon, a shadow becoming a shading of something else. This, a long process of leaving everything unnamed, allowing misplaced constellations to float like haloes guttered out in the silent & shapeless center of it all.
Lockjaw 39
A VISITATION AFTER A REARRANGEMENT OF THE
DIVINE WORD
1.
an angel slashes the back of a stranger’s knees w/ a letter opener. she touches the wound w/
her fist before she leaves—under the impression that violence is a human form—rouges the
blood on her cheeks. Yellow glint from the streetlamps gives a damp glow.
she tries to sleep & wraps herself in butcher paper. she looks in the mirror—the stranger’s
red-dirt scabland against the cream of her cheeks, a necessary clash.
she cuts some tomatoes & tries to associate it w/ a human heart—tries to imagine the
possibility of having her own heart, the qualifications for ownership. she stuffs the tomatoes
inside a cow’s heart, ties it up, places it in a brown bag. she is at a loss for resemblance—
unsure if the tomatoes were more convincing outside of a heart-shaped thing.
2.
when the relic-less angel w/ wine or bloodstained lips comes to my apartment, she knocks on
the door. she asks me a series of questions: what does god look like/why is the moon following
me/how do you get a mother/where is my mother.
I know none of these answers. She lays on the couch, buries her head in my lap. I ask her
where these questions came from. she throws the paper bag on the wall. the heart falls out
from the bottom—I eat the cow heart in two bites. she is across the table & I wash the meat
down w/ a glass of milk. she asks me her questions again. I hand her the empty brown bag &
escort her out of my house.
& when I fall asleep that night, I dream I place a gold-foiled prayer card in a vat of water, stick
it in the freezer & sit at the kitchen table, reading a magazine.
Lockjaw 37
FOUR ON RÜCKENFIGUR
1.
On your camera, in the corner of the living room. Me, on the couch laying sideways & holding
a mirror.
Seeing & capturing the face from behind, a rupture of the figure.
Once the picture printed, my eyes more saturated than I could remember & I was surprised
by how soft I could hold myself.
2.
Both fragment & whole. Seeing the distant back of someone, and yet
you still name them, despite the generic shape of it all. This is either intimacy or an
interpellation of it, a wishful thinking.1
3.
You at the table with coffee & me pulping oranges at the sink, the water runs over like the lull
& snow of a fuzzy television. Flakes of the fruit’s meat caught under my fingernails—the
bright & subtle violence of morning. This sink, at the corner of lavender dish soap & the slush
sunk in my skull.
1 However, we often gloss that behindness is eternal & so this is the sacrifice in our calling. 2 Sometimes, to be a silhouette to something only means becoming no one’s particular moon, a shadow
becoming a shading of something else. This, a long process of leaving everything unnamed, allowing misplaced constellations to float like haloes guttered out in the silent & shapeless center of it all.
36 Brida
this falling/gathering of decadence was my prayer or was it my offering.
I kept vomiting blue eggs. I set a bowl on the counter & placed them there for a couple of
days.
I cracked an egg & a snail crawled out. another & a shark tooth, then a fish egg, and
finally an egg yolk. I scooped the yellow stuff into my mouth & used it like Listerine.
“22: Between Moments”
“26: Every Heart”
Lockjaw 35
Kristen Brida
_____
DREAM NOTES
constellations melted like candlewax—what once glittered was now a midnight wound or
maybe a rorschach on fire or god stigmata-ing the sky or just an inversion of place. I went
outside
& cupped my hands, the wax pooled in them, then burned through, the hole clean &
busted.
a man gave me tulips & I cleaved the green from the pretty parts & stuffed the flowers in my
mouth. he guided me to the kitchen full of roaches, burrowing in the sugar—
I scooped a handful & fed the man.
I was on the beach watching the sunrise except the sun was a ham. a few towels over a man
got up & walked in the ocean up to the horizon. he took the sun meat & ate it.
I took my towel & made a burrito out of myself.
my tongue gilded in gold. people asked me if I’m candy or a corpse & every time, a flake fell
off, collecting in my cupped hands. a stranger dipped their finger in spit & then in the gold &
then in my ear.
Sophie Grimes
_____
EIGHT POEMS
“21: Where Bones Belong”
“19: I Want Sin”
Lockjaw 45
WATCH OUT, THE WORLD’S BEHIND YOU
Passing by paper pasted on school windows
the colors facing in with ever-aching feet,
a projection on some yellowed bed-sheet,
subtitled, billowed by an open window
and up, over the shoulder goes something,
salt perhaps, everyone sliding around
on the frozen porch toward the knot in the forest
finishing their bottles, sucking them down,
and then throwing them up, over the shoulder
and thud and shatter, necklaces heated to white-hot
in the firelight, you and yours/not-yours laughing,
the band in the kitchen, the refrigerators spray-painted
white on move-in opened and closed,
flapping as though trying to fly, the broken light,
sad broccoli behind the boxed wine, always
getting ready to get it, some, someone’s
birthday cake, creepy lukewarm stew, jell-o this
jell-o that, a huge vat of jungle juice, soggy wheels
and wedges of fruit, rummaging for mugs
after the plastic’s gone, tooth-chipping face-smashing
in the corner, inevitably blood, someone getting
the run-around, someone petting the terrified cat,
then coming back again into the steam and haze,
the swimming pool is lit all night, highlighting
discussions about cities never visited, the attracted
one inking a spatial calligraphy from kitchen to hallway
to fire escape to couch. Tie a ribbon around his waist
or your thoughts and they will weave a bright sweater
46 Grimes
for Sunday’s clown, shivering, hairs lifting off the plaster
of white face paint, looking for her wallet in a bush.
Behind another door a mirrored squat toilet,
a lady giving out lotion and tissue, next to the zoo
at the edge of the park, its seals swimming circles in the dark.
“16: Stone Stories”
Lockjaw 47
BLACK MARKET
“Like an ink stick dried to an ink stone the river is frozen.”
– Kim Kyung Ju
You could buy dumpling skins from people
behind a glass partition wearing jumpsuits
and covered evenly in a fine layer of flour.
They appeared to you like scientists who had survived
a lab malfunction but were doing their best to work
past the failure. Or benign ghosts, fully visible to all:
blank pages walking around, hawking their skins.
In other parts you could buy tofu or dvds, a turtle
crawling around in a kiddie pool with crabs foaming
in the face. The vendors put them all in little plastic bags.
You remember seeing people leaving, with all their bags,
some pendulous and shifting with eels.
But this was all a long time ago and you’re tired
of going back when so many other things have happened.
Why then do you insist on returning?
Your friend had North Korean co-workers.
She said they always had sunflower seeds in their pockets,
and offered her a few on the street or when they sat down for tea.
Is it because you were alone there for the first and only time?
Or because it’s yours, your memory remaking it,
like manipulating a wet clay bowl into a pretty little plate;
48 Grimes
more exotic. The market, becoming light-less,
the apartment down the street, dimming into a different atmosphere.
It is impossible to preserve something so soft,
secreted deep in the spine of your young self,
a black liquid injected there, but by whom?
You remember reading that in a Pyongyang park,
a bench was encased in glass because that was where, once,
the great leader sat, and this lodges, like a shard, in your memory,
a clean incision: often what is read takes edge, weight,
a ghost with heft, opacity, the power to puncture.
They sell this too, at your market, next to your yellowed undershirts
on wire hangers and the shadow puppets cut in your image, dumb,
but manipulated to pretend to talk in circles, to be alive
for all the children watching.
Lockjaw 29
Ashley Miranda
_____
safe soundscapes | anxious soundscapes
polyethylene. whispering. waves. the weight of others on wood floorboards. knocking. silent
vibrations. missed phone calls. sirens. wind. numbers being repeated. trains rushing by. a
needle dragging across a record. crowded rooms. cemeteries. bridges over rivers. teeth
grinding. pages. vellum. the hum of anticipation. tinnitus. saturn. lakes. shedding. mcr.
church pews. metal garbage bins. second shifts. before a word. after a question. humming
your favorite song.
28 Lemma
arms, hamburgers, pancakes, terrible steak, and distributes them with a smile. She spills
ketchup and gravy on her uniform and says it is no big deal. Charlene goes into the bathroom
to sneak a quick drag and is surprised by how tired she looks. She looks like an old tire. She
looks like her mother. Blue eyeshadow is bleeding into the cracks around her eyes, and
though her long-sleeved uniform covers the holes in her shoulder and bicep, it does not fully
cover the hole in her neck, which again seems to have doubled in size. It is positively
cavernous now and under the fluorescent lights, it makes Charlene feel sick. She wants to go
home. Not home to her mother, the old tire. Not home to her father and the top-secret kisses.
“Charlene,” he’d say. “It means beautiful,” he’d say, and even then, Charlene knew that was
not true. Charlene wants to go home to Brian. She puts out her cigarette, places it into the
pocket of her apron, and pops a hard candy into her mouth. Her mouth goes numb with
cherry flavor.
When Charlene comes out, the men say, “Charlene, Charlene! Can we have a refill?
Can we have your phone number? Do you want to come to our nephew’s football game?” The
neck of Charlene’s shirt sags enough for one customer to notice the hole in her neck, and his
eyes light up as he shakes his head, as if waking from a deep sleep. Charlene leaves that night
with an unprecedented amount of tip money and thinks, this month, we won’t have to worry
at all. Charlene goes home, realizes she has no more candy left, and falls asleep alone.
That was Monday. Today is Thursday and the holes are larger still. There is a new hole
in her thigh and a new hole in her cheek. The side of her face looks as though someone took a
large ice cream scoop of flesh cleanly out of it. Charlene has not seen Brian in a few days, but
she can almost hear the reverb and hiss of his electric guitar if she holds her head very, very
still. Charlene goes out to the porch in his oversized t-shirt and no pants. She leans back
against the railing, listening to the faraway sound of neighborhood children playing. It is so,
so warm and Charlene feels like she could sleep right now. She closes her eyes and the kids
continue playing and laughing. “Charlene,” they say. “It means beautiful!”
Lockjaw 49
THE MOORISH SMOKING ROOM
after Billy Collins’ Osso Buco
and after Donald Trump
Black lacquer paneling, carved glass, gold accent, edge, gilding,
hearth, grate, spark-screen, bellows, ash-brush and shovel
all clean and of the same set, the candelabras on the mantle
have three-stems, two of them, reflected in the mirror,
become twelve. Teacups on the carved, painted table,
nested in saucers, sunburst or sunflower or something
embellished on the chair-backs and seats, the pattern repeats
on the furniture skirts, the couches, and the curtains,
which break up the orange – Spanish Orange –
wall-paper patterned with gilded orbs, this being
the wall’s lower half. The ceiling, painted to look coffered,
and below a seashell-like optical illusion of a portico, allusion
to openness in the oppressive space, a weak, beachy nod
to the Mesquita Cathedral, something lacy about it,
or a prelude to the Chicago Medinah Athletic Club
with its cryptic carvings, fountain of Neptune
in the pool overlooking the lake. Even then it was
doomed. Those people – those men – sitting
surrounded by elm burl paneling, glowing and heavy,
were, even then, looking back at what was.
The white monkey from Indonesia once
snowy-fresh, now aged, a bit mangy in the cage.
The tortoise, a balloon threaded through a drilled hole
in its shell nibbling on chives was a gift for the pretty
50 Grimes
girl who turned out dim-witted. The slaughterhouse,
the slum were only memories then. No, a step further,
the slaughterhouse, the slum, the market only existed
in the imaginations of those men, imagined markets,
the animals living in cages. When did guilt become
a social requirement? they wonder. An object’s preciousness
is measured by the amount of pain it takes to procure.
The diamond. The canned ham. The cold wine, the cotton,
the coconuts on ice, the ivory keys. If those men – they –
ever chose to listen, the bones and teeth at the bottom of the ocean
would have nothing to say to them, because they –
the bones – know they hold us up, keep us afloat
from below and we owe them everything and all
our apologies and when they – the men – die,
I will not be surprised if they select to be buried
encased in concrete, sealed so that they – the men,
their bodies, their bones – will not be damaged, vandalized,
a repercussive cause of all the damage they have done,
and also so that they cannot feel the hands holding them
up in the dirt, in death because they don’t understand
this singular tapestry of which they – the bones, the men,
the secret marrow – are all a part.
Lockjaw 27
he’s full of it.” Brian hands over the cash and leaves with Charlene, plucking a discordant
tune.
When they get home, Brian handles Charlene gently, spending more time kissing her
and looking at her than he has in a long time. He kisses her hand, the crook of her arm, her
collarbone. When his lips graze her throat, he stops suddenly with a small grunt of surprise.
“What is that?” Brian asks.
“What is what?” Charlene asks, fingers groping around. There is now an indentation,
no, more like a hole, in the hollow of her neck, with about the circumference of a pen, not too
deep, smooth, and completely painless.
“Does it hurt?” Brian asks, probing at the hole with a disgusted curiosity. Charlene
goes into the bathroom and looks at the hole, which appears to have been scooped out with
flawless precision.
“Not at all!” Charlene says too quickly, ready to forget the hole and forget everything
except Brian’s attention. The hole is nothing, something the doctor will explain later,
something she will apply an ointment to for a week or so. She turns up the music on the radio
and takes off her bra, at which point Brian stops protesting.
Charlene wakes up and the bed is empty. Brian is frying bacon in the next room. She
waits to see if he will come and wake her for breakfast, but he doesn’t, and as she listens to
the scrape of fork on plate, she touches the hole in her neck. It is much larger today, maybe
with the circumference of a dime. Charlene looks in the bathroom mirror and discovers two
new holes, one in her shoulder and the other in her bicep. She pulls one of Brian’s work
shirts over her head and meets him in the kitchen.
“I am starting to feel like Swiss cheese,” she says, looking a little fragile, as Brian
shovels eggs into his mouth.
“Go to the doctor, Charlene. Those holes aren’t normal,” he says as he finishes the last
of the eggs. Charlene unwraps another piece of candy and pops it into her mouth and as she
leaves the room, Brian turns to gape at her long, tanned legs. He loves those legs, suddenly
and strongly.
Charlene’s mouth still tastes like cherries at work, hours later, as she pours another
cup of coffee for a truck driver with an okay attitude. He doesn’t thank her but he also doesn’t
call her waitress, and that is about the best she can hope for. She stacks hot plates on her
26 Lemma
“I’ll be at the electronics booth,” Brian says and walks away. Charlene approaches the
machine, which emits a low-frequency hum and seems to be vibrating. Music plays as the
chicken spins, its beak turned up in a smile with red, satanic cheeks. Its eyes penetrate
Charlene and she is transfixed. She wipes the grime off of two of the quarters and pushes
them into the machine, stopping the rotation of the chicken and the speed of the music.
Everything slows down as the chicken squawks, bulbs lining the inside of the machine
flickering and flashing, and an egg is released into the chamber below. Charlene’s body is
electric as she reaches for her prize. It is a golden egg, surprisingly light, fitting perfectly into
the palm of her hand. She pops it open, chipping her fingernail in the process, and finds
nothing. The music that previously was pleasant, reminding Charlene of the circus, now
sounds threatening, too slow, sinister. The chicken’s garish colors hurt Charlene’s eyes, and
she squints angrily, letting the empty egg fall to the ground and digging for the extra quarters
in her pocket. She pushes the quarters in, presses play again, and crosses her arms, looking
the other way. Charlene loves games but she is not very lucky, and is so she is familiar with
this particular blend of disappointment and hope. The chicken squawks again, releasing an
egg, and Charlene waits a few seconds before retrieving it, as if to convince herself that it does
not matter. This egg is plain yellow, heavier than the first, and when she pops it open, a few
wrapped hard candies fall out. Charlene wishes it had been a temporary tattoo or a lip gloss,
but still, a prize is a prize, and she rushes to catch up with Brian, satisfied. The chicken
resumes its rotation, light flashing onto its painted face so fast and bright that passersby
shield their eyes.
Brian is mid-argument with a man selling an electric guitar when Charlene finds him.
“Hey Brian!” she calls. The two men look up and then promptly ignore her.
“—can’t expect me to seriously believe that Willie Nelson played this guitar,” Brian
continues. Charlene unwraps a hard candy and pops it into her mouth, enjoying the sickly
sweet cherry flavor, and everything gets quiet. The two men turn to her, looking hungry.
“Charlene,” Brian says, with a tenderness she is not used to. He rushes towards her
and holds her tightly, swaying gently and breathing into her ear. Charlene stiffens in surprise.
The man with the electric guitar calls out to Brian.
“I guess I could let you have it for a hundred,” he says, staring at Charlene’s red
toenails through her platform sandals. “My cousin told me about the Willie Nelson thing, but
“36: Fear and Delight”
52 Grimes
SIBLING CITY
A writer I once read said:
How do you start? How do you catch
the first fish? Then answers herself:
With flesh from your own thigh.
Your own. As though there never
was the room where we all floated,
hand-knobs, size of a different fruit
every week, a menagerie of the same,
yet changing produce, walking down the
hall and seeing it, yourself, in the same
room projected again and again along
the wall in stages, a series of photographs,
liminal growth, a collage, sensitive skin-pads for
eyes before they rise out of the bricolage.
This is not yours, not yet, not ever,
and surely not, your own. The presumption
of such bait! The exploitation.
Wandering through the High Style America
period rooms at the museum, their oppressive
paneling, dim gilding, majestic clutter.
All the little wood animals pouring out
of the toy Noah’s Arc onto the excessive rug.
Someone arranged them, the elephants,
the giraffes, the couple of cattle, one with udders.
Lockjaw 25
Tara Lemma
_____
THE PRIZE
Charlene likes the farmer’s market mostly because it is one of the few things she and Brian do
together outside of the house. She exhales a plume of smoke, looking sideways at him and
appreciating how handsome he looks as he surveys a pile of gently used tires.
“Good tires, baby?” she asks, tapping a cherry-red fingernail against his neck. She
knows she has nothing to contribute to this conversation, but she always wants to talk. Brian
swats her away, bending to get closer to the tire.
“The treads worn out, on all of them,” he says, glaring at a Pakistani man in a lawn
chair, counting his cash. “Let’s go,” he says, pulling Charlene by the wrist. Brian tends to
touch more because of her unbelievable body, and talk less because of her childlike mind.
Charlene tosses her cigarette in the general direction of the cigarette holder, stumbling
behind Brian and not feeling a lick of guilt, because women who are loved have far greater
concerns than where to dispose of their trash. As Brian pulls her along, she thinks, this is it.
The feeling. Charlene was never willing to settle for anything less than butterflies, and after
years of searching, it seemed she had found the man that would continue to thrill her, keep
her guessing, drown out the screeching and wailing inside her head. Charlene looks around
dreamily, eyes landing on a prize machine with a big, plastic chicken inside, guarding over
plastic eggs, clucking softly.
“Oh, I love these games,” she says, pulling her hand back. “Brian, look, the chicken is
smiling!” Brian nods impatiently. “So cute!” she continues. Brian says nothing. Charlene
crosses her arms, pushing her breasts together. “Can I have fifty cents?” she asks. Brian digs
into his front pocket and places four quarters, a straw wrapper, and a somewhat melted piece
of gum into Charlene’s hand.
Lockjaw 53
It was not a child that did the arranging
though it was arranged to look that way.
Think of all of it, the whole room transferred
piece by piece and installed again;
exhibiting how certain people lived.
My brother’s wife guides my hand
to her strange aquarium, its soft moving
walls as we look through the glass
at a clock, a ridiculous chair.
That’s hers, I would venture. Or theirs,
not yours. The kindly expression, my child.
In another room a man stands directly in front of me.
The light hits his face and his ears glow,
a pair of weird tenders, all the ears attached
to people facing the same direction,
like sunflowers facing the light, following it
with their heads along its day-arc, all of us
here leech-learning art, prettiness,
but this is not enough, we still suck,
yet stay parched, uncured by expression,
are swaddled in denim, toiling under self-designed
delights that never, don’t ever, come out right.
54 Grimes
THIS LACE CURTAIN IS MADE OF MEMORY
A layer of paint on a house
maybe represents the mind.
It is windy, the house
is on a hill, and the curtains
are sucked in and out
of the windows like a sea plant
in an eddy, or the gills of pet store
beta-fish suspended, bright,
in endless stacks of airless containers.
I remember the amber museum
with its sliding magnifying glasses.
How bright the day was, sun
streaming in, lighting up the stones,
making them look like congealed beer.
They turned on the air conditioning.
I could hear the sudden hum of it.
How I had missed you then,
in the warm exhibition hall, quickly cooling,
and miss you now, as I look at the mice.
One has fallen asleep with his face against the glass,
his snout pushing up his lip to reveal two front teeth,
like part of a doll’s ivory comb on a table in a miniature living room.
And I miss you now, too, as a child taps the glass, and a father says,
“hey now, let’s tap lightly now,” very tenderly, his hand on his son’s shoulder,
making it in no way sound like a chastisement or even a criticism.
Lockjaw 23
Ruth Crossman
_____
THE DOUBLE
She wasn't made of clay
in this early morning dreamscape she was just ectoplasm
it started off with pillow humping, like always
trying to summon something that would not cum until I did,
it rolled off me and then I appeared
more fleshed out than predicted and smiling like a co-conspirator
my twin—except maybe less ugly, her tits were fuller
we stood up and at the foot of the bed she reached for a shirt
I let her, but then thought better of it and made her spin instead
so I could examine the distribution of stretch marks more closely
I was afraid when she made eye contact
I lunged and when I grabbed her neck she popped
collapsed
disappeared somewhere between the bed and wall and I felt better
until my shoelaces started moving:
slowly but without mistake
like they wanted to tie themselves
“12: Rings of Smoke”
Lockjaw 55
WE, THEY, HERE, THERE
A breathless smell of warm black crepe. I did not know what the smell was then, but I know now.
– David Copperfield
The heads are encased in glass cubes,
mounted from somewhere inside the neck,
a pole connected to a platform
covered in velvet, and they are upright
like necklace displays in jewelry store windows,
an oval, boyish chest-front, like a black bib
where the beads or chains hang.
The image of this window after-hours.
Charles LeDray’s installation of this window.
His staggered velvet necks, black hands without rings,
soft cylinders without bracelets.
Crowded and empty simultaneously.
Not exactly the same as the heads but the glass,
the lighting, the precision is identical.
In another part of the world, statues sit and stand,
with oranges and orange shawls.
More appear through openings in the compound walls,
torsos facing doorways, lines of clasped hands
and other postures, all headless and serene.
Hair that grows. Dirt in the pores, in the heat,
the mushrooms, creamy-yellow in the shaded doorways.
Near our guest house, a monk died.
His body, in the center of the floor, was cross-legged,
56 Grimes
upright and surrounded by flowers.
To darken a door. Cold spoons licked clean and pressed
on swollen eyelids. In the room next to the heads,
a placard explains that devotees sometimes
established a physical connection with icons
by holding a rope tied to its hands.
Soothing gesture. Supple muscle.
Another displays the things sometimes squirreled away
inside the statues: miniature icons, scrolls and a reliquary,
which they have opened to show a tooth,
or amber-looking crumb, and we look at it.
“7: There is a Cave”
“37: Where Fear Ends”
58 Grimes
BEOWULF'S ADMIRER MISSES HIM WHILE HE IS OUT
FISHING AND RUMINATES ON HIS STORYTELLING
SKILLS
The metal boat.
The door-locks.
The wet mouth
of a weird road. Paved
with the sea's backblades.
Pale sea, seawolf slopes, sea-plain,
whose grasses are the dark
swimmer's whiskers.
Locked mouth, that word-hoard, with its pink fin.
Sometimes you do not belong to me.
You pull in sea-booty, or words, carve useless parts
from the bright bodycaves, hot from the heart
streams heat-steam. You leave the good,
you lave thin the language. You throw the hot gore over,
and in circles, the dark sinking banquet
of hate-bites, unblinking eye-whites,
The weary bone-locks.
In the mouth's door,
the lock's saltsore.
Lockjaw 19
plants found in the Auction . sons all dust . no records remain
18 Edelman
a tunnel in a branch in a suction well called “ well.” Worth the pressure of purchase as organ , its drill the stem + known logic is a shallow syncline, stern near its edge Springs, sand and gravel; verses in succession + page the Art Department mum on the pump page the accord of State the drill first ate
Lockjaw 59
Your loaned bone-house works
on that unsteady blue foundation,
arches of the bodycave flushing
in deep-bosom cold: a nightlong space.
Memory is a comfort-case.
You can build there a pile of wooden boxes,
velvet lined, each with a soft-gold locket
that is a woven-story, that if you bite,
you can mold.
60 Grimes
OF THE MONSTROUS PICTURES OF WHALES AND OF
MEN’S SOULS
Dampens from within & wets the flesh,
a centipede moving along a thousand legs,
& along inextricable intricacies of rope & is the rope
& everything that has to be done everywhere.
Awful & bright: pure element of air,
spouts, chimneys, horizon of some mid-sized city,
heads, tossed bubbles, unearthly idiot faces,
huge sea candy whose blood muddies the blubber room.
Pong of something rich & strange, velvet
shark or goldbeater’s skin, scented canoe hidden in the hold
whose wood could only be American, filled with the milk
that is very sweet & rich. It has been tasted by man.
It might do well with strawberries. Food of light and
forward flowing, a wide expanding circle commanded
at so high a height from the ship named “The Delight”
& the beef they served was fine. Tough, but with body.
Some say it is bull, others dromedary but we do not know
for certain how it was. Our kin a mob of unnecessary duplicates,
sucker-less as we grow, pulling up the ladders of our island pulpits,
thoughts whirling like squirrels in a cage then unlatched
then hovering on the brow & drinking at the lake of the eye,
anxiety, thirsty, for all to see. No artist has yet captured
the Sperm Whale’s forehead, the junk, so plain & pure.
No artist has hinted at the mass behind, the case, the internal cistern,
jostling, changing as we speak, like a lifeboat from a coffin.
Lockjaw 17
Rachel Edelman
_____
A LIMINARY ART
an erasure
+ The early history wholly sold under cost. fever rough sense of demand for pipes to flush + The committee considered the River, well sunk. a flowing result, water plying the interests operative. + in
“39: Dragons on the Wind”
“40: Smolder”
“2: Listen Hard”
Lockjaw 63
Maria Martin
_____
POEM FOR THE POSTAGE BACK
You didn’t even have to like it. Just take off your clothes,
look yourself over, there’s no rush for it.
Where is your sense of urgency, I thought I lost,
and look you are pillows, you are pillows,
four pillows, you’re stacked with a head.
Like the body of something that should not be dead, that’s you.
Lay on the ground with your soft parts out. We are coming.
And in your house you have a piece of paper
written on by four dumb hands that want to wait until we’re married.
Sleep with them —just—
sleep with them.
At least you make something to want. I see,
you hold your cap out by the brim, you think it’s funny.
Just like a dance, so do it again. When the women took the stage
they wore coats and angels. One took the poem you loved out for a spin,
and there!
leave you them.
And yes,
I know you like to show things while they’re hot,
64 Martin
cha-cha. But what was a prayer then? There’s no big move.
Here’s a big laugh for this sick, thin, soon-to-be lost yellow duck.
Look at the duck, cluck. Look at the thin, yellow duck.
Lockjaw 13
THE FRIENDLY WOMAN
Is a front for a gang of thieves
While you recover your tools
from the trunk of her car
at gunpoint
other gang members
surround you
your gun does not have enough shells
to shoot them all so you shoot the leader
with a tiny pistol you have
concealed in your sleeve
not hurting him too badly
but enough to maneuver
to keep them from surrounding you
12 Blazek
YOU ARE AMAZED
By the tattoos your new girlfriend
Has all over her body
She takes you on a tour
as she removes her clothes
what really startles you
are the cabalistic tattoos
upon her scalp that you see
when she removes her wig
Lockjaw 65
WOMEN’S SONG
Sometimes things seem to be lost! lost!
but here they are lady, like your feet
and the cat that I fed, inside our fence
you’ve stacked your dead. And here is
the place that you grew up in,
and I have more space since you’ve started
to die. It was all the new thoughts of so much
good things coming that have made us now
feed the dead. If we can understand this death,
(and it’s understood here to mean stable)
then I think it should mean
that the bad things done, laught after hup!
they aren’t no news to us.
They sink and they swim just like us
66 Martin
(things such as this with such good things coming)
can take a girl fast and away; floats the grass.
Lockjaw 11
Larry Blazek
_____
ON A WHIRLWIND VISIT
she stuns you with her beauty
dazzles you with her metaphysical rap
disappoints you when she says
she is your spiritual mother
she points out while disrobing
the mother thing is not physical
but it only makes the anguish
of her parting both physical and spiritual
Lockjaw 67
RETURN OF THE LOST GIRL
It is time to get dressed.
I wash my hair, stand in the mirror,
shake. Look here, my little white shoulders.
See my knee caps move up and down.
There is a rain on.
It cools the windows, my room.
Last night I was all creature, a weird one.
I woke up a creature too.
And, if someone is listening:
This is how I will laugh at jokes,
stand with a glass in my hand,
find my seat.
This is how I will greet strangers,
greet old ones,
say things about my mom,
and—when the time’s right—
say, I am so. GLAD.
Say, I could swallow you.
And the music doesn’t make
a difference,
I could swallow that too.
68 Martin
SLEEPING ON THE COUCH
Because I have to get up early to make you coffee
to take you to coffee to feed you—Cereal. 2% Milk.
And Anna has eaten all of my bread in 2 days
while I was distracted. Gas Station,
I mean corner store, I mean $2.48,
or last time anyway which I guess would make it 2.27
before tax.
Don’t forget to wipe down the kitchen before bed,
no but listen, Maria, listen. And I am tired.
I am tired and tired and stuff about getting up
like normal people,
and God-infinite wisdom-
the choice to give choice, come on.
And really, this whole time, I’ve been thinking about
Buffy the Vampire Slayer and her new haircut. What
Spike said through plastic teeth, You do not change.
Demons never change—and that’s true. Demons
don’t change they only move. It’s what makes them
unforgivable.
Sal is beside me and Sal is a cat.
He is combing my hair with his paw, the bangs I didn’t want
and he stops and put one paw on my shoulder watching me
like he has something to say/I have something to say.
Lockjaw 9
“why do you live here?”
Little lady, look, your feet are bluedead
because you won’t cover the arches.
They’re old and damp and waiting to be
pulled off like sourdough bread dipped in coffee.
I’m comfortable and capable of keeping warm.
I can’t continue this case for big cities.
I’d rather chew on my glass crusted linguini
or eat butter with a kitchen knife than listen
to shit like that. So I show the president my inside
voice, take his dead hand in my mouth
and curl his fingers with a wet muscle.
Find a sweet gag under my jaw.
8 Beilenson
Mid-evenings, say 5 or 6, out to dinner in the lingering wetness
of June, before anyone can commit to running the world,
you can see bill clinton power-walking
in a sweater-vest and sandpaper khakis,
arms curling past the water-line of his nipples,
smiling like a dead televangelist, an ordinary
whistle threaded between his tidy teeth.
Seen: a blunt woman in umber loafers,
clad in flannel and a gun and a wire
in the ticking, dirtied heel of her shoe
and bill clinton consumes as he moves,
his arms stretching thirty impossible yards
to shake hands in the shadow of a Starbucks
bathroom while he steals Splenda packets.
Imagine this: a faulty fist lingering then ramming into our window
expanding in yellow sugar, attached to a pulled dough limb,
stiff like a bird against a paned screen, jittery against
the sugar glass collapsing over its twitching palm.
He follows the knot of his arm and picks up
his limp hand in a puddle of orange sweat,
finds a bit of blood blessing his swollen cheeks.
He’d reach to greet our group but
he’s a leaking man, displaced,
a bird flapping itself into congress.
I put a napkin on his forehead
and let it soil itself, I’ve got to know.
Lockjaw 69
He rubs my face until I cannot look at him.
70 Martin
DREAM
Once, a pale-headed angel appeared
before me, but she had no claws.
Dreams should be made of sterner stuff!
I said, and kicked her teeth in with my elbow,
it was easy--forgetting she would not move--
like Jesus, who invented the long, silent stare
before teaching it to her, not as a joke.
Lockjaw 7
Hannah Beilenson
_____
CORRUPTED BLOOD INCIDENT
What the creators didn’t account for were the animals, who could carry the disease out of
battle and infect others long after the fight. There were cities of bones. There were buildings
like monuments to the Capela dos Ossos. Chalk dusted the inside of your computer screen.
You watched yourself die. Then you came back, a reincarnation in the center of your universe,
an empty purse cloaked in velvet and placenta. A baby in used skin twitching at the touch of
an arrow. There were piles of leaves in September, bleached and cut into femurs.
People reacted to the plague differently. Ones with healing abilities would go from town to
town and offer their magic; others left the cities in swarms, opting to populate the less
inhabited countryside. You would follow walking trails of fresh flesh, tour guides would tell
you, the hike is a temporary reprieve from the problem, call this the Hotel Oregon Trail.
Some players just wanted to see it. Reporters walked into the quarantine with lead pencils
stowed under the first layer of skin. Some players wanted to spread it. They walked out.
You dropped your belongings in abandoned houses for yourself to find. You spent all your
money save for a gold-plated coin under your tongue. You walked behind death, you died
backwards, before someone with a soft spot for decomposition could watch you change.
Anyone below level 60 died. Within days, people disconnected and gameplay came to a
sudden halt. You visited only vacant towns. You only visited vacant towns. There was no
blood. Just white carpet on the cobblestones, just the ground dust of marrow.
“42: Dreams Are Real”
“43: Oval Patch of Night”
“1: Harry Said”
4 White
Selections from Juniper White’s series 100 Monoprints can be found throughout the issue on the following pages: p. 5 (“1: Harry Said”), p. 15 (“2: Listen Hard”), p. 21 (“7: There is a Cave”), p. 22 (“12: Rings of Smoke”), p. 31 (“16: Stone Stories”), p. 32 (“19: I Want Sin”), p. 33 (“21: Where Bones Belong”), p. 41 (“22: Between Moments”), p. 42 (“26: Every Heart”), p. 51 (“36: Fear and Delight”), p. 57 (“37: Where Fear Ends”), p. 61 (“39: Dragons on the Wind”), p. 62 (“40: Smolder”), p. 71 (“42: Dreams Are Real”), p. 72 (“43: Oval Patch of Night”)
Lockjaw 73
Christine Robbins _____
NOCTURNE FOR KEEPING
Wait. When the bees return, their husk bodies
Will grieve the uncut grass, the boxes
Empty on the roof, the white paint chipped.
Like any dead, their eyes are unspecific –
A hexagonal glare, a prism for the light
That remains. Old honey comb smells
Of an over-ripe sun.
Juniper White
_____
SELECTIONS FROM 100 MONOPRINTS
CONTRIBUTORS
VOL 4
Lockjaw 77
This is Hannah Beilenson’s first publication. She is currently studying English and Jazz at Washington University in St. Louis, and is an intern at december magazine. She also runs The Sexy Fisherman blog (she likes it, and hopes you do too)!
// This is Larry Blazek‘s first appearance in Lockjaw Magazine.
// Kristen Brida is an MFA candidate at George Mason University, where she teaches composition. Her work is forthcoming or has appeared in Glass: a Journal of Poetry, Bone Bouquet, The Round, and elsewhere. She's currently the assistant editor for So to Speak. She tweets @kissthebrida.
// Ruth Crossman is a writer and English teacher based out of Oakland, California. Her poetry has appeared in Dryland literary magazine and her fiction will be featured in the upcoming issue of Full of Crow Review. Her first chapbook, a collection of memoir, prose, and poetry, will be published in the fall of 2016.
// Rachel Edelman grew up in Memphis. She taught environmental education in Maine and Colorado before settling, for now, in Seattle. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in The Threepenny Review, Poetry Northwest, Fairy Tale Review, and others. She tweets @rachelsedelman.
//
Sophie Summertown Grimes holds an MFA in Poetry from Boston University and has poems published or forthcoming in The Literary Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, Forklift Ohio, and AGNI Online among others. Author of the Chapbook City Structures she writes poetry reviews for Publishers Weekly.
// Tara Lemma is a writer and a recent graduate of Temple University. She now works as a K-12 tutor. She loves her one-eyed cat, avocado rolls, and other various comforts. She tweets somewhat infrequently @ilovetaralemma. This is her first published piece.
// Maria Martin lives in Charleston, SC where she works as a nanny and spends her days reciting poems to a helpless baby on beautiful John’s Island. She tweets @pideybot.
78 Lockjaw
// Ashley Miranda is a poet from Chicago. Her work has appeared in pioneertown., Hound Lit, and the Denver Quarterly. She tweets impulse poetry @dustwhispers and an archive of her impulse work can be found at agirlaloof.com.
// Christine Robbins has an MFA from the Rainier Writing Workshop. She has poems recently published in Bellevue Literary Review, Barrow Street, The Georgia Review, Los Angeles Review, The Missouri Review online, New England Review and TYPO. She lives and works in Olympia, Washington.
// Juniper White is a letterpress printer, woodblock carver, teaching artist, and writer with a MFA in Creative Writing who teaches and cultivates handwork in northwest communities. Learn more at dwellpress.typepad.com.
CONTENTS
p. 3 Juniper White
p. 7 Hannah Beilenson, Two Pieces
p. 11 Larry Blazek, Three Poems
p. 17 Rachel Edelman, A LIMINARY ART
p. 23 Ruth Crossman, The Double
p. 25 Tara Lemma, The Prize
p. 29 Ashley Miranda, safe soundscapes | anxious soundscapes
p. 35 Kristen Brida, Three Poems
p. 43 Sophie Grimes, Eight Poems
p. 63 Maria Martin, Five Poems
p. 73 Christine Robbins, Nocturne for keeping
p. 75 Contributors
Lockjaw 79
Lockjaw Magazine exists in part thanks to the support of our readers. Learn more at
www.lockjawmagazine.com/support or email us at [email protected]
//
Thank you to those of our donors who contribute $3 or more per month:
Josie Banks-Watson
Eric Shonkwiler
Sibyl Thomas
Ian Wajand
LOCKJAW MAGAZINE VOL 4 SUMMER 2016
EDITORS: CHRISTINA COLLINS & DAVE THOMAS
COVER: “2: LISTEN HARD” BY JUNIPER WHITE
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an angel slashes the back of a stranger’s knees w/ a letter opener.
vol 4