So this edition is about collaboration. Women have collaborated since time began. Whether it be... Informal family collaboration to aid childcare; a mother taking care of her daughter’s children to give her a well-earned break for example. Or women collaborating with their girlfriends to support a sista in need; even just getting together with wine and DVDs to cheer their friend up. More significantly the beautiful Suffrage Movement; women standing side-by-side, working as one for their (and our rights), to be heard. And in this recent viral campaign, more women supporting women, collaborating to choreograph an all singing, all dancing, in your face symbol of what’s wrong in the world. (See: http://www.upworthy.com/sometimes-things-are-not-what-they-seem?g=3&c=mrp1)

What I’m saying is we’re good at this collaboration thing! Nothing makes me happier than to see sistas working with and supporting each other. After all Madeleine Albright once said, “There is a special place in hell for women that don’t help other women”.

Bobbie Glynn

INTRODUCINGVAPID IN A DAYHola!

I’m writing this at 15.11, five hours and ten minutes into Vapid In A Day, and with only an hour and forty-nine min-utes to go before our 5pm deadline.

The idea was really simple, at Victoria Baths Zine Fair on 19th May, we would create Issue 8 of Vapid Kitten, ‘Col-laboration’, from scratch, using only submissions we received between 10am and 5pm.

We’ve set up a workshop-table and encouraged people to sit down and create something for the ‘zine; we also allowed for digital submissions via email and the #vapidinadayhashtag on twitter…and we’ve been awfully busy!

Since this issue isn’t really about us, I’m not going to say anything else, just a massive thank you to everyone who contributed, and we hope you’ve en-joyed it!

Tonnes of love,Anna&BetsyXOXO

www.vapidmedia.co.ukwearevapid@gmail.com@vapidmedia

COMMUTER

When I hear a great shipcry its ghost-cryin the night,masters of the rich world,I want to ride your waterways,until the sun sets on harpies,lying on Miami beaches.

Gary Beck

I sat on the chair and tried on the glass slipper. At first it was a chair, but then it multiplied into a series of chairs suspended from a motor-driven endless cable for conveying shoppers up to the the top floor of the department store, to the foot-binding section. I asked the salesman for a chaise longue, a seat long enough to form a complete leg rest. There was the sound of a rapid succession of stepmothers who were noisy breathers, or the slow sound of boiling meat. I turned my ankle inside out and almost collided with a clear blue window. The sky was a big glass factory. As I sat unchanged for a thousand years, a white bird came to the tree every time. Why had my father married a woman who could destroy him in a single wavelength. He was such a Macbeth, or a hollow-horned ruminant closely related to sheep. I let it be known that the sensation of dryness in the mouth and throat was caused by the number thirteen. "You could say

CINDERELLA

the daguerreotype is obsolete," I offered. I asked the salesman to show me an aspect that heightened reality, a toe shoe or a ballistic missile, still in the original box. The sole of a French designer, a heart that opens in the front. And then, for the third time, he brought a sock in the color of blood of sleeping persons at night. "Silver surface," he said. "Mercury vapor." The glass thong responded to this thievery by passing between the first two toes.

Suri Phillips

Whoever you areI’ve always depended on the kindness of strangers utters Blanche in a drawl absent any hint of the wall she’d hit in the depths in which no smile burgeoned genuine and no ray of sunshine could move her quite like her old friends bourbon and wine

and while this aging southern belle destitute and taking refuge in her sister’s home whiled away days into night losing sight of reality in dreams that scream of her a wretch with no chance leftto make do or make right the Kowalski family and friends gather as she offers a smile to the stranger who offers his arm to lead her away

DEPENDENT ON THE KINDNESSOF STRANGERS

and this very moment an aging northerner is nursing her dear friend vodka martini and musing she too may be dependent on strangers —that her children estranged from her nowmight one day come toput her in a nursing home where she likely wearing Depends will live out her days well cared for or not…

Ruth Sabath Rosenthal

AFTER THE RAIN Ebony skies obscure wooly cloudsand swallow stars, gurgling gutters gargle,blurry moony-eyed lights stagger along wet pavementbelow each streetlamp. The night is drunk with ozone –saturated, exhilarated, out of focus; headlights scan the darknessas homeward-bound cars swoosh through puddleson slick streets unaware of the hedonistic delightsthe night has to offer.

Fern G. Z. Carr

SUDDEN NEWS I heardand just as soon connecteda reach through etherto ask not of her but of you given that survivingis often the greater nightmare. You did answer. You did not do it well. But there are no performance standards. I heardthrough the hesitancythe vacated squaresof the chessboardbut all the same that cobalt corethat allows what is left of you(in rags, I know)to hold.

Maude Larke

IN A NUTSHELL

Old friends are odd things,Bound tight, but always beneath:The plates are shifting.

DIALOGUE (UNSPOKEN)

If we joined, what then?We’d fall; somehow or other.Satellites, circling.

Crystal Spencer

CONTRIBUTORS

Haimer AtkinsTom BalderstoreMarcus BarnettBen & Steph Cath BartonTom BeetonGary BecksTia ChapmanAlice ColeOllie ConinageJoe CookeCrow vs CrowLola & Sofia D.Silvia D’AubraHelen FelceyTaira FiazPaul GallagherBobbie GlynnTom GrantAmi GuestLydia HarperJessica HarrisIsobel HarropEvie HusbandsRob JonesJoseph KnightPaul LoudonJess MarshallLucy MartindaleAbigail & Ethan OssawayHebe PhillipsSuri PhilipsJim RalleyAlice RowbottomMinka StoyanduaJon (@Stawbleu)Ellie WestbrookEve Woolard