Embed Size (px)
DESCRIPTION
Opium 8 is The Infinity Issue featuring a unique 1,000-year cover by artist Jonathon Keats. A graphic literary journal edited by Todd Zuniga and designed by David Barringer. Winners of the 500-word Memoir Contest judged by novelist Tom Perrotta. A special graphic-comics section featuring Dan Golden, Corrine Mucha, Jamil Mani, Jacob Chabot, Joel Priddy, Bernie Mireault, and more. Contributors include Daniel Handler, William Giraldi, Mary Miller, Alan Michael Parker, Sarah Wang, Joanna Bock, Jessy Randall, and many others.
Citation preview
OP
IUM
MA
GA
ZIN
E
2009
8
$12.00US $14.00CAN
Watch this cover for the longest story ever told.
Estimated Reading Time: 1,000 YearsISSUE THE INFINITY ISSUE
8
Heidi Jul
avit
s
Litera
ry D
eath
Match
SC
O
T T A D S I TLiterary
Dea
th M
atch
SPRING
20
09
Opium
Mag
azin
e
Is
sue #
8 ©
2009
U.S. $
12
.00
Cover & Book Design b
y David BarringerCover Art & Concept b
y
Jonathon Keats
Ink
Wil
l B
e Sp
ilt.
4 writer
s
3 judg
es
2 r
oun
ds
Featured in
San Francisco,
New York City,
Chicago,
Boston,
Denver,
Beijing...
And coming soon
to
a city
near you!
The Pen I
s M
ig
htier Than T
he
Sw
ord.
DA
NIE
L H
AN
DL
ER
WIL
LIA
M G
IRA
LD
I M
AR
Y M
ILL
ER
JAC
OB
CH
AB
OT
JOE
L P
RID
DY
CO
RR
INE
MU
CH
AC
HR
IST
OP
HE
R K
EN
NE
DY
GR
AH
AM
RO
MIE
U
1 ch
am
p
TIME
The Infinity Issue
(We’re gonna need
more space.)
8
is an artist and writer. His conceptual works have been presented at the Judah L. Magnes Museum, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and Modernism Gallery, and
documented by PBS and the BBC World Service. He’s most recently the author of The Book of the Unknown (Random House), and a recipient of Yaddo and MacDowell fellowships.
JonathonKeats
NOTE ON THE
COVER ARTIST
ABOUT THE INFINITY ISSUE COVER ART
In honor of the number infinity, Opium is pleased to present the longest story ever told, a tale written in nine words that will be revealed, one word per century, over the next millennium.
How does it work? The cover is printed in a double layer of black ink. The overlayer is incrementally screened back where the nine words are, making the letters fractionally more vulnerable to ultraviolet light, allowing the underlayer to fade away decade by decade, gradually letting the words turn gray. The precise quantity of ink covering each word is different, so the words will appear one at a time, provided that this copy of Opium is kept out in the open, regularly exposed to sunlight over the next thousand years, to be read progressively by the next dozen or so generations.
The Longest Story Ever Told was conceived, authored and designed for Opium 8 by the American conceptual artist Jonathon Keats. Copyright 3009.
issue #
issue #
The Infinity Issue
(We’re gonna need
more space.)
8
8
Todd ZunigaFounding Editor
The Future of Opium Is Infi nite
2xX@
TODD ZUNIGA
ESTIMATED READING TIME: 1 :49
E D I T O R ’ S L E T T E R
L ike pretty much all print issues of Opium, a concept that made me briefl y laugh—“Let’s turn the eight sideways; it’ll be our infi nity issue!”—came true,
driven by David Barringer’s willingness to turn my whim into his design wizardry (and beyond).
But that original concept—infi nity—started taking legitimate shape all around us. After eight years of fi scal roller-coastering, “Opium for the Arts” is seconds away from our 501(c)(3) non-profi t status. Infi nity Box #�: Check.
Then Opium’s signature reading series, our Literary Death Match, wildfi re–spread across the country, a regular fi xture in San Francisco and New York City that secured its existence by expanding—in only a few short months—to Chicago (Opium’s birthplace), Beijing (yes, China), Denver, Boston, and by the time Opium9 sees daylight: Paris and London (and, we most certainly hope, beyond). Infi nity Box #� (fi ngers crossed): Check.
Up next: brainiac Jonathon Keats fell into our laps. After serving as a Literary Merit judge at Literary Death Match San Francisco, Ep. 13, he went to work on Opium8’s truly epic cover, one that will take 1,000 years to read. One thousand years isn’t forever, but it’s infi nity enough for us. Infi nity Box #�: Check.
Then the infi nity started pouring down from the heavens in tiny drops that we hope will make an ongoing splash: an Opium iPhone app is in development, our Literary Death Match sizzle reel is days from being TV–pitch ready, our archives are being slowly restored, our submission system was reworked, Opium Live (“live interviews with living writers”) launched in New York City, our nutty contests continue to grow. Infi nity Boxes check, check, checked.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves, aren’t we? With all this infi nity fl ying around, it’s easy to get thrust so many steps ahead, especially when the thing we’re all most excited about at Opium HQ is Opium8 (yes, the issue you’re holding right now). Every day, I’m thrilled, inspired, humbled and driven by: the quality of daring work we receive, Barringer’s ability to make it so visually irresistible, the continued opportunity to create not only this magazine but Opium’s peripheral parts, our budget-daring experiments, and the readers and fans who made us believe Opium could last until the end of time.
Bending time, space, and our pocketbook until the sun goes dim,
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5 �^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5 �^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5 �^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5�^5
�^5�^5
�^5
�^5�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5�^5
�^5
�^5�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5�^5 �^5
�^5�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5 �^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5�^5�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5�^5
�^5�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5�^5
�^5
�^5�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5�^5 �^5
�^5�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5 �^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5�^5�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
TC O N E N T S
THE CHOSEN ONE
6
LIFE SCIENCE
12
MORE SCARED OF YOU
14
WINGED BOOT
15
LEGEND HAS IT 16
STAIRWAY
32
REPORT FROM THE COMMITTEE ON TOWN
HAPPINESS
33
THE CANNIBAL
70
BIG WORLD
71
WORLD’S GREATEST BOSS
77
92 DEAR JOHN
THE PEACOCK
94
THE LONGEST TABLE
112
END OF THE TEN-FOOT SUMMER
106
OF ALL THE DEAD
93
UNT NOT INVENT SYSTEM
125
THURSDAY NIGHTS
124
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5�^5
�^5
�^5�^5
�^5
�^5�^5
�^5�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5�^5�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5�^5
�^5�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5�^5�^5
�^5
�^5�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5�^5
�^5
�^5
�^5
OPIUM’S INFINITY USA MEDIA WORLD WITHOUT END
103478
108126
OPIUM’S NETWORK OF WRITERS EXPERIMENT
3090110
TO BE CONTINUED. . .
36 �
�
MEMOIR CONTEST500�
80
MISS
113
AFTER YOUR PHONE CALL
121
THE WADING ROOM
122
I have not written about love. I have reached the age of wondering what it was I have been meaning all this time to say. I have kept busy, it’s not the same as working. A fly bumps into books. I shut the door, trap him inside with me, it’s midnight. It’s later than midnight. I was writing. Something about gods and tribes. It’s later now, the coffee, I was writing on the computer. The screen ghosting in words. Something about the legitimacy of boundaries and the sticks that mortals shake. A drowning mind, tipping into sleep, writing safe and silly into the nowhere hours. Something about the means of exclusion and the first misstep. Then that dirty snap of life. Drowsy from a thick sleep, the fly bumps into the spines of books like a lazy finger. I swat. I roll up a first draft and swing. It needs to be killed. To accept the tribe is to unite humanity against itself. I hear the buzz behind the blinds, I’m swinging at the blinds, panic shakes the mind, it’s much later than midnight. I’m the only one awake with this fly trapped and buzzing in the head of my office, here at home where I keep busy instead of working. My drafts stacked or ordered or littered. The ink smears from swatting or words smear from moving through time, something wrong with the ink cartridge in the printer. A stack of papers turned over for the blank backsides in the printer tray, another stack with both lives already used up and on the way out to the recycling bin. Something about fathers sending sons to die. I have not written about swat swat swat, the body splatters in wings and blood. My time is not infinite. I meant for you to hear.
DISHWAREInfinity
Keep a Little on the Side.
BUG SMACKERInfinity
Kill Time . . . & Bugs.
SILVERWAREInfinity
Chew Tools for Chow Time
BIKINIInfinity
Infinity Is a Thong Time.
MOUSEInfinity
Time Takes a Clicking.
SMOOCHInfinity
Lip Linger, Love Longer.
DANCE CLASSInfinity
Life Is a Short Shuffle.
Opium’s Infinity USA Media World Without End
Love is infinite . . .
. . . for the species, not for you personally.
GATED HOMESInfinity
Infinity May Not Have Boundaries, But You Do.
I want to look like I have a little time to kill. So smoke Infinity Cigarettes. I have a job to do, and I’ve got a long way to go. So fill up just once with Infinity Fuel. Be alert. Stay nervy longer with the new Infinity Bottomless Coffee Mug. It refills itself wirelessly. Need money? Of course, I do. Who hasn’t been a sucker for the last ∞ years? Get some Infinity Money. It can be taken from me over and over again, just like my investments. Not everyone needs to know what I look like before, during or after the heist. Hide my face behind the Infinity Balaclava, now in itchless cotton. Relax. Don’t feel rushed. It took them twenty years to take my money, my job, and my house. There’s no need for me to panic. With Infinity Clock, I’ve got all the time I need. In fact, if some of the customers in the lobby are feeling weak or stressed, sit them in the Infinity Chair. Explain to them that comfort has no limits, although my patience does. Once everyone is seated in an Infinity Chair, invite the employees to play the Infinity Bongos. They just might want to bang on the drums all day! Or strum the Infinity Guitar. While I’m blowing the bank vault, they’ll be just fine with three chords and the sad truth. As I go through safe-deposit boxes, be sure to pick out a nice pair of Infinity Earrings for my girlfriend slash getaway driver. Bling is just the thing when love is on the lam. Anyway, I really need to be wrapping things up. Before I rush out the back, don’t forget to bring a buddy. Don’t call him a hostage! Now it’s easier than ever for friends to stay in touch with the Infinity Tether for Two. And the rest of you, back the fuck up.
FUELInfinity
Go Away.CIGARETTESInfinity
Nothing Left to Lose
CASHInfinity
Not Just for the RichCOFFEE CUP
Infinity
Bottomless Travel Mug
CLOCKInfinity
All the Time You’ll Ever NeedBALACLAVAInfinity
Muthafuckas Be Scary Warm.
CHAIRInfinity
Sit Down and Stay Down.
BONGOSInfinity
Endlessly Annoying
EARRINGSInfinity
Or You’ll Never Hear the End of It.
GUITARInfinity
String Theory Rocks!
TETHER 4-2Infinity
The Buddy Belt
Opium’s Infinity USA Media World Without End
Recession is finite. Hope is boundless.
Book your infinity trip today at ∞.com.
14 | opium8*
opium | 158*
More scared of you than you are of them
xXGRAHAM ROMIEU
is the creator of the books Bigfoot: I Not Dead, In Me Own Words: The Autobiography of Bigfoot, Me Write Book: It Bigfoot Memoir, Cat & Gnome, and 101 Ways To Kill Your
Boss. His illustration work has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Harper’s, and many other publications. Graham resides in Toronto. Visit www.roumieu.com.
GrahamRomieu
xX
14 | opium8*
opium | 158*
Winged Boot
%6�^5
2xX@
2xX@
BEN MIROV
ESTIMATED READING TIME: 0:21
P O E T R Y
I live in an X-ray created years ago by a boy named Ben Mirov.If I peer through the years that separate us, I can see him fletching a piece of the gloaming running across a parking lot hopelessly failing calculus plenty of broken tennis racketsbridges of honey and Q-tips gossamer diet of heartbreak and lamplighttripping over his parachuteto deliver to himself a map of 1998.
lives in New York. He has poems forthcoming in Fou and Lamination Colony. He is editor of Paxjournal.com. Sometimes he blogs at isaghost.blogspot.com. His email is
[email protected]. He would like to thank his headphones and tacos for saving his life.
�^)))))))))))5
BenMirov
16 | opium8*
opium | 178*
Here’s where my life story goes haywire and more than a tad willy-nilly: I, Charles Nesbit, a middle-classy gent from New England,
much in debt to those tricksters at Visa, and very much in love/lust with my onetime, AWOL fiancée Gillian—her name!—had found myself in Washington state on a Bigfoot hunting expedition—I’m serious—with an African American rogue/hunter named Romp. He said I could win back Gillian if I captured a creature and made headlines, and my swamp of a heart believed him. So—this admission causes me shame, but admit I must: Romp located the Bigfoot and tussled with the feral stink of it, and I, in my terror and perplexity, retreated like an anorexic squirrel. Yes, I abandoned my semi-friend Romp in the abysmal green of those woods, left him to be devoured by the jaws of some primeval abomination not known to science or the empirical data it deems proof. Call me a coward; you won’t be the first.
I had a heart harassed and was much in need of sweet kisses from a certain double X chromosome there in the Seattle area. So I retreated from those ancient woods in Romp’s slick SUV and hustled down to the suburbs outside Seattle where I knew a gal named Sandy McDougal who had once granted me a date or two when she still lived in Connecticut, before I crashed headlong into my iceberg in heels, Gillian Lee. In addition to needing moderate doses of female attention—any slob in my situation would—I needed counsel: Sandy was a psychotherapist with advanced degrees in Freudian this-and-that, knew the alchemy of an astronaut called Jung, had published papers in journals with long names. People, I was a frantic insect now at an impasse, my Sasquatch plan having failed me large. If I was going to get Gillian back—she was
Legend Has It
%6�^5
2xX@
2xX@
WILLIAM GIRALDI
ESTIMATED READING TIME: 30:03
S T O R Y
16 | opium8*
opium | 178*
just then in New Zealand reveling in the spotlight after she had netted the first ever living giant squid—and calm the clamor beneath my breast, I required the acumen of this gal who once said I was cute, my whiskers Western in a Wyatt Earp way.
With technology courtesy of those eggheads from Apple I located Sandy M. in just a matter of hours after arriving at an upstanding county library, the well-funded sort that attracts the unemployed and otherwise unambitious. At the doors to the library, some bookworm on welfare recognized me from the color photos that have been printed next to the stories I scribble for newspapers and weekly slicks—all about Gillian’s quest for the giant squid, and the assault she unleashed upon me when she dismantled our engagement to pursue this legendary ocean item. The forty-year-old Seattle native—a squinting non-athlete in glasses who was also, no doubt, loyal to his mother and the pies she baked him—provided me with the much needed directions to Sandy’s homestead, just twenty minutes east of where I was standing.
“So Charles,” he said into the sun, “your Gillian found the giant squid in the gelid waters near the pole. Her life’s passion. When will you be reunited? I’m waiting for that part of the yarn.”
“Stranger,” I said, “you and me both. Right now I am in want of quick bliss and a hiatus from all things giant squid and Gillian. I am withered and just a cha-cha away from wasted, so if you don’t mind, step aside and watch me go.”
“I read this week’s story!” he yelled after me. “How could you have abandoned Romp? That Bigfoot ate him!”
Over my shoulder I showed him a middle finger as I fiddled with the beeping hand-held thingy that was supposed to unlock the SUV. I ended up squirming in through the back hatch when the other doors refused to open. Some passing teenage joker in a hemp getup said to me, “SUVs ruin the environment, pal,” to which I replied, “Ruin has a twin named Dread, and the despots rule the earth, you twit, so write that down and remember it.”
Now. . . the most prudent part of me declared that before delivering myself to Sandy’s doorstep I needed to bathe and perhaps clothe my frame in threads that were not stained with the various loam I had rolled through on the Bigfoot expedition just a few days earlier. I took a motel room near the highway and trekked behind it—I save gas when I can—through unsightly weeds and scrub, to a trusty Kmart looking majestic in the midday’s sunny blaze. The heat was everywhere and unseasonably outrageous; I longed for an arctic blizzard that would chill
8* 8*
ROYAL ALVIS was told by KURT VONNEGUT.MY KIDS.”
STAY IN YOUR ROOM,
WORK HARD,AN
D
KEEP AWAY FR
OM
“JACK
SWEN
SON
was told by AN
TON
CHEK
HO
V.
“MY OWN EXPERIENCE IS THAT ONCE
STORY A HAS BEEN WRITTEN, one has to CROSS OUT
THE
&BEGINNING
THE END.
IT IS THERE THAT WE AUTHORS
DO MOST OF OUR LYING.”
of the living.”HENRY MESCALINE was told by DAVIS SCHNEIDERMAN.
T H E O N L Y REAL WORDS DEA are D WORDS.“ They are pieces of material, PLASTIC REALLY, THAT WILL
LET PERFO a sort of brazen necrophilia
UPON THEIR BODIES. YOU DO NOT
E WORDS LIFE, FOR THEY AREONLY A SPATIAL SIMULATION
GIV
RMYOUBARB GYLES was told by
“OMIT WORDS.” N E E D L E S S
BERT BROOKS.
JACQUE LYNN SCHILLER was told by TOM SCHILLER.“Or UST GET YOUR
WORK BANNED.” J
reasons.BEOWULF SHEEHAN was told by MARJANE SATRAPI.
WE“al lCRyFOR
THE same reasons, BUT weugh LA fordi fferent ”
“CAN THE POEM BE ITSELF, BE ITS ESSENCE, WIT
HO
UT
ITS LAST LINE?? LAST
LINE
IF YOU FEEL THE
IS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY TO THE POEM...
THEN CUT IT.”
ANDREA KNEELAND was told by BENJAMIN HOLLANDER was told by LARRY KEARNY.
KATAMAY was told by B. A. RAY.
“You C A N T write’
THE NEXT STORY UNTILYOU WRITE THE
”FIRST ONE. KAJA
30 | opium’s network of writers experiment
“I
40.
absolution,EVEN IF YOUDON T
UNTIL WRITE A THING
YOU’RETOM SCHILLER was told by HENRY MILLER.
YOU GRANT
”
LINCOLN MICHEL was told by NEIL GAIMAN.
F I N I S H tHings“
”.
THIS PAGE was typeset by DAVID BARRINGER.
8* 8*
JAMEY GENNA was told by JANE ANNE STAW.
NORA MAYNARD was told by JOSEPH CALDWELL.
JUSTIN BONSEY was told by SALMAN RUSHDIE.
R. DEAN JOHNSON was told by RON CARLSON.
ROSALEEN BERTOLINO was told by SUZUKI ROSHI as told by ED BROWN to the SOFA SO-GOOD SANGHA.
J. TANNER CUSICK was told by BEN MARCUS.
RACHAEL HANEL was told by SUSAN ORLEAN.
RYAN SLOAN was told by NICOLE HEFNER CALLAHAN.
VINCE DONOVAN was told by MARY ISSACSEN-BRIGHT.
“ WRITE! WRITE! WRITE!”
C ”UT THE LAST FEW SENTENCES.
IT MAKES YOUR STOR YMUCMORE
POh WERFUL.“
EGINNING WRITING B Anovel
is like
parachuting into the
jungle thout awCOMPA SS
or amap.i“
”
First ofall,if youneedadvice,youshouldn’tbeawriter.Ifyou’reawriter,youknowit,becauseyou
alwaysgobacktoit .”
NICK ANTOSCA was told by JOHN CROWLEY.
ME WELL.”
REVISION “ SHOULD BE A TRIP BACK TOTHE sa
H E L L IS PAVED WITH
S P E A K H E R S H A M E .”“Tw r i t e r’ s jo b is t o
he
opium’s network of writers experiment | 31
“TELLTHESTORY you’re
TERRIFIED OFGETTING
WRONG.”
“Drinking WITH WRITERS IS
NOT Writing, NO MATTERHOW Much you dRINK.”
one.“STOP WRITING LIKE
THAT. We already had ONE JAMESJOYCE
ANDDON T NEED anoTHer ”
“The road to unfinished novels.”
THIS PAGE was typeset by DAVID BARRINGER.
’
36 | opium8*
To Be Continued . . .
%6�^5
2xX@
2xX@
INTRODUCTION
ESTIMATED READING TIME: 26:32
G R A P H I C N O V E L S & C O M I C S & S U C H
“Scents of the Spaceways”“The Bug-eyed Monster”
“Language Meant to Entice”“The Mighty Skullboy Army”
“Swoosh!”“The Cheese Mongrels”
“Breakups”
JOEL PRIDDY
BERNIE MIREAULT
CORINNE MUCHA
JACOB CHABOT
JAMIL MANI
BERNIE MCGOVERN
DAN GOLDEN
My only regret about my reading life as a kid is that I did not spend more
time in the comic-book store. As lax as my mom was with—well, everything—she didn’t approve of comics. For years I read and reread the few books I’d bought on a dollar-a-week allowance, until they fell apart in tattered heaps under the bed. Later, I moved on to thick, pictureless books along with other rebellions.
So it is a real honor to have co-curat-ed—with the tireless and talented writer Joshua Mandelbaum—this first-ever graphic-novel/cartoon/comics section for Opium. We are giddy about the art-ists featured on the next pages, from Joel Priddy’s gosh-darn charming stick fig-ures that capture all that’s good about life (even when it’s lined with bits of sadness) to the artful doodles and conversational
tone of Corinne Mucha, who makes you feel like you’re listening to someone you’ve known for years. With hilarious, nightmar-ish comics, Bernie Mireault knows how to tap into the right place in the brain that both unnerves you and makes you think. Bernie McGovern’s works are like chilled-out, fun Sunday-afternoon trips. Jacob Chabot’s characters jump from the page in playful curiosity about the world. Jamil Mani im-bues heart into every inch of his masterful balance of space and ink. And of course, Dan Golden’s quick, sharp lines and sharper wit are always on full display.
They’re terrific artists and terrific story-tellers. We hope the following pages grow to be nicely tattered from your rereading.
Terry SeluckyJoshua Mandelbaum
36 | opium8*
8* 8*66 | opium | dan golden
8* 8*dan golden | opium | 67
70 | opium8*
opium | 718*
The Cannibal
%6�^5
2xX@
2xX@
ZACH WENTZ
ESTIMATED READING TIME: 0:03
P O E T R Y
They say:you arewhat you eat.I wantedso badlyto behuman.
has published work in Nerve, Fiction International, Golden Handcuffs, In Posse, Pindeldyboz, Mad Hatter’s Review, Word Riot, and Smith Magazine’s six-word-
memoir anthology Not Quite What I Was Planning, among other publications. His first novel The Garbageman and the Prostitute was published by Chiasmus Press.
�^)))))))))))5
ZachWentz
70 | opium8*
opium | 718*
My father did not like my sister’s orange hair. He knocked once, pointlessly, on the window and said, I guess I just like things the
way they’re supposed to be, which made us laugh. How was anything sup-posed to be? The three of us were in the living room, trying not to look at each other. I got up and called my ex-husband to let him know I was in the state. How long? he asked. I’m leaving tomorrow, I said. The whole point was to let him know he’d miss me. I went back into the living room and took my seat. The stereo was playing at an irritatingly low level like the music was in my head.
My sister and I were home for our uncle’s funeral. He had been nice to us growing up, unlike the rest of them, who didn’t believe we would ever be anything but small. Before he died, he heard bells. The priest said it was God calling him home. I thought about the day before when I’d taken my trash into the alley and a homeless man looked right at me and said, I’ll take that, and I gave it to him and he said, Thank you, which undid everything that had been so carefully done inside me.
The small dog pushed her bear into the middle of the room and started humping it.
What’s she doing? I asked. What I meant was why. She was fixed. She never humped anything. My sister answered without thinking. I coughed; she fingered a buttonhole on her sweater. We relocated to the den where there was a focal point, the television. My father wanted to watch the news but it had been preempted by the weatherman talking about an unhealthy line of storms. Unhealthy was good, he assured us. He drew squares around the bad areas, which were lit up red, and the whole thing was very soothing, the needless repetition, how slow he
Big World
%6�^5
2xX@
2xX@
MARY MILLER
ESTIMATED READING TIME: 12:07
S T O R Y
112 | opium8*
opium | 1138*
The Longest Table
xXCM EVANS
xX
112 | opium8*
opium | 1138*
The place was dark, cold, closed. Sal should have turned around right then. Instead, she stepped inside and thought of a television show,
a crime show, that she watched sometimes. That’s what it felt like. In the first scene someone would be babbling on with a life, two character actors right before the opening credits. And then a hush, an expectant hush. “Jim?” or something. And then they’d find Jim’s body and the story of the show would begin.
The windows were huge and there were no lights on, just whatever sun could light up a place when the rain’s full blast. Tables, napkins, candles ready for dinnertime even though it was lunch they were there for. Sal’s husband was next door settling the check for coffee—one of those places where they bring you the check, just for coffee. It was where they always met. It was one p.m., or ten minutes after. Sal’s watch was screwing up lately. She reached out for no reason really, and put three fingers on the top of the A-frame sign. It should have been on the street. It said on it, Open For Lunch.
Another good time to go back. “Miss?” A guy flipped on the lights and then there was music, too. He did not apologize—he was maybe the surly, rebellious son of the man who might own the place, who usually bubbled a little small talk Sal’s way—but he sat her down. She touched him, too—to stop him from taking away the napkin and chopsticks opposite her. “Two,” she said again. “My husband is settling the check. Next door. In a minute he’ll be here.” The rebellious son was already walking away with his hands in his pockets. The music was dribbled with—Sal thought it was koto—the shorthand on television for Japan or even Asia. She put her soaked coat on the back of her chair and then stood up for awhile with
Miss
%6�^5
2xX@
2xX@
DANIEL HANDLER
ESTIMATED READING TIME: 17:09
S T O R Y
OP
IUM
MA
GA
ZIN
E
2009
8
$12.00US $14.00CAN
Watch this cover for the longest story ever told.
Estimated Reading Time: 1,000 YearsISSUE THE INFINITY ISSUE
8
Heidi Jul
avit
s
Litera
ry D
eath
Match
SC
O
T T A D S I TLiterary
Dea
th M
atch
SPRING
20
09
Opium
Mag
azin
e
Is
sue #
8 ©
2009
U.S. $
12
.00
Cover & Book Design b
y David Barringer
Cover Art & Concept by
Jonathon Keats
Ink
Wil
l B
e Sp
ilt.
4 writer
s
3 judg
es
2 r
oun
ds
Featured in
San Francisco,
New York City,
Chicago,
Boston,
Denver,
Beijing...
And coming soon
to
a city
near you!
The Pen I
s M
ig
htier Than T
he
Sw
ord.
DA
NIE
L H
AN
DL
ER
WIL
LIA
M G
IRA
LD
I M
AR
Y M
ILL
ER
JAC
OB
CH
AB
OT
JOE
L P
RID
DY
CO
RR
INE
MU
CH
AC
HR
IST
OP
HE
R K
EN
NE
DY
GR
AH
AM
RO
MIE
U
1 ch
am
p
TIME
