Monthly Archives: January 2015

“Siege of Compiegne” – Poetry by Jennifer MacBain-Stephens

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Capture of the Maid at Compiegne - James William Edmund Doyle, 1864
Capture of the Maid at Compiegne – James William Edmund Doyle, 1864

The 2nd of Jennifer MacBain-Stephens‘ 5 poems on Joan of Arc featured in our Winter 2015 issue is “Siege of Compiegne,” a lyrical look at the Maid of Orelans’ dramatic and scandalous capture.

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EVEN ROCKS BETRAY YOU. Chucked from above, split over silver fish helmets scampering up the wall. Not burned, stuck in the walls, keystones have nothing else to look at. So they smirk at dead bodies. When the talisman reads Joan’s transcribers’ notes it is already too late. The last group to leave the bar, the battlefield leftovers, eyes speak Guillaume de Flavy: traitor. His party trick of locking the gates behind everyone flayed facial skin. Joan’s last act in the Hundred Years’ War was meeting dirt with her face. Butcher men, sour men, like to pull things off of other things. Once, a blood orange spectrum of battering rams against torsos and teeth assaulted dusk’s skyline. Now the pillaging of tendons ends. Joan found a higher, abnormal light, put it in her pocket. No diseased white matter.  She knows her molecules will burst at a million degrees. She waits, tied up.  Meanwhile, enemy thighs squat, break bread over beef stock. Crush the crusts into the juice. God is too small.

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AuthorphotoJENNIFER MacBAIN-STEPHENS is the author of three chapbooks: Every Her Dies (ELJ Publications), Clotheshorse (Finishing Line Press, 2014) and Backyard Poems (forthcoming, 2015). Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net, and has appeared in public place in Iowa City. Recent work can bee seen / is forthcoming at Dressing Room Poetry Journal, The Blue Hour, The Golden Walkman,Split Rock Review, Toad Suck Review, Red Savina Review, The Poetry Storehouse, and Hobart. For a complete list of publications and other odds and ends, visit JenniferMacBainStephens.wordpress.com 

“Frida Entertained” – Fiction by Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois

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Self Portrait with Monkeys - Frida Kahlo, 1943
Self Portrait with Monkeys – Frida Kahlo, 1943

From our Winter 2015 issue, “Frida Entertained” by Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois is a triptych of whimsically surreal vignettes starring legendary artist Frida Kahlo.

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1.

IN NEW YORK CITY, A SCULPTOR TAKES FRIDA KAHLO to see Cocteau’s The Blood of a Poet. In the first section of the film, an artist sketches a face and is horrified when its mouth begins to move. He erases the mouth, but it transfers itself to the palm of his hand.

Frida feels for her own lips with the tips of her fingers, but her mouth has disappeared. She rushes out into the lobby, pursued by the sculptor. He finds her holding a jumbo bag of popcorn, shoving the popped kernels into her mouth as fast as she can. She chokes, but continues to fill her mouth.

The sculptor pulls the bag away. It bursts, and popcorn fills the air. Frida is sweating. The sculptor pulls out his handkerchief and wipes her forehead above the unibrow that so many men find so appealing. He wipes her upper lip, with its faint black moustache.

Frida is nearly panting. I need the taste of salt on my tongue, she says by way of explanation.

Continue reading “Frida Entertained” – Fiction by Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois →

FLAPPERHOUSE Reading #2

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On Wednesday, February 18 @ 7PM, we return to Pacific Standard (82 Fourth Avenue, Brooklyn) to host another evening of surreal, shadowy, sensual, and satirical lit.

Starring Diana Clarke, Jasper Lo, Lauren Seligman, Eric Siegelstein, & Bud Smith.

FLAPPERHOUSEreading2

“Both of Djuna” – Fiction by Joel Enos & Angela Enos

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Seated female nude - Amedeo Modigliani, 1916
Seated female nude – Amedeo Modigliani, 1916

Art and artists are always making us look at models, but in “Both of Djuna,” from our Winter 2015 issue, Angela Enos & Joel Enos make us look through the eyes of a model who’s looking at art, and artists, and how they look at models. And art. And also maybe themselves? There’s a lot of levels to navigate here.

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IT IS ALWAYS MORE INTERESTING TO BE A MODIGLIANI than a Sargent. The artist’s model thinks to herself as she sits, unclothed, on the wooden chair as their eyes all perceive and speculate and adapt her pieces and parts. It’s the interpretation itself. The act rather than the actual. Or is it actualization? Actualism?

Not for the first time she wonders if her inward view is more or less intense a gaze than that of those who view her from the outside. She’s sat for this particular group before. But today there are more of them than usual, new faces, new adaptors and interpreters. She rarely allows herself to ruminate, while sitting, on the many ways she will eventually see herself though someone else’s eyes. But with so many new eyes upon her this morning, she can’t help herself. I must distract myself from the distraction of anticipation.

So she looks back at them.

The young one with the wispy mustache that isn’t quite there won’t know any better than to be realistic. He’ll document every line and crease until he’s pushed me into a hard middle age. He hasn’t yet learned to take liberties with the canvas. The fear of being incorrect leads to harsh premonitions about my life.

The one that looks like a sea captain, with the cap on to shade his eyes, he’ll paint with period flair and later realize that he’s made me look like a snapshot of his mother from before he was born. I’ll like it, even though it won’t be me. 

The academic, the one with the accent– Belgian? Germanic? From parts uncharted of Meso-Britannia? She cannot imagine him existing outside of the geography of this studio. He’ll paint me truly and honestly, with the angle of my nose unflattering and the curve of my waist in precise brushstrokes. It will not be beautiful, but I will recognize myself in his work, even through his fingerprints in the oil. 

There is only one woman other than the model in the room. She sits away from the other artists, her easel not part of the half-moon cluster around the model’s stage. The model knows that this woman will work quietly on her own in a cloud of honeyed tea and turpentine in china cups. I will never see her work, but she will thank me at the end of the pose and disappear even faster than I do.

And perched on all of the easels, whether clustered or not, are her cousins. The two-dimensional women all share certain familial characteristics in the shape of their mouths, the protrusion of ears, but they are all distinct individuals. The model feels unsure whether any of her cousins are actually a representation of her self. But she knows the women on the easels are inarguably the girl on the stage. They are all Djuna in this moment, before signatures and initials have been scratched onto their surfaces and varnished into permanence. My part in this process is questionable. I am at best muse, but I might not be art myself.

Continue reading “Both of Djuna” – Fiction by Joel Enos & Angela Enos →

FLAPPERHOUSE : Year One

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Coming soon in soft, pulpy paperback.
Stay tuned…FY1F&BCs

 

“Domestic Mini-Horror” – Poetry by Juliet Cook

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Centipede - St. George Jackson Mivart, from "On the Genesis of Species," 1870
Centipede – St. George Jackson Mivart, from “On the Genesis of Species,” 1870

Sometimes domestic life can be as unsettling as a pipe full of creeping centipedes, as Juliet Cook shows us in her wry & visceral “Domestic Mini-Horror,” one of two poems she contributed to our Winter 2015 issue.

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WHY AM I SUDDENLY GETTING DOMESTIC
roaming charges while talking on the phone with my mom
who lives fifteen minutes away?

Why am I crowded by too much normalcy,
with not enough uncanny ghost wings
flying underneath my sheets?

Who tossed my streaks of clairvoyance
all the way down into the damned garbage disposal?
Whoever you are, this won’t last forever.

If I concentrate hard enough, I can create
my own onslaught. I can shiftily rise myself
out of that slimy, dirty hole.

Centipedes will start maneuvering up
out of that disposal, dripping red,
but still crawling.

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IMG_1359 - Copy (2)JULIET COOK‘s poetry has appeared in many literary publications, including Arsenic Lobster, Diode, ILK, and Menacing Hedge.  She is the author of more than thirteen chapbooks, including POISONOUS BEAUTYSKULL LOLLIPOP (Grey Book Press, 2013), RED DEMOLITION (Shirt Pocket Press, 2014), a collaborative chapbook with Robert Cole, MUTANT NEURON CODEX SWARM (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2015) and a collaborative chapbook with j/j hastain, Dive Back Down (forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press in 2015). Find out more at www.JulietCook.weebly.com.

“Poison House” – Poetry by Cassandra de Alba

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haunted-house-1858
Haunted House – Thomas Moran, 1858

Our Winter 2015 Issue is home to a number of wicked buildings– like “Poison House,” one of three deliciously eerie poems contributed by Cassandra de Alba. 

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WOOD PANELING SO DARK IT’S ALMOST BLACK.
Vines that grow when your back’s turned,
greedy for more noxious air, the shimmer
of purple-green haze in all these rooms
empty in the middle, edged with low,
plush furniture that might conceal
knives, jeweled cages where snakes
and lizards lie with one eye half-open.
Heavy curtains on the windows,
blood-red velvet you’re afraid to touch.
Old-fashioned light switches,
two buttons, and none of them work.
When you get the nerve
to force a curtain open, you’re greeted
by a wall of foliage against the glass,
stalks and leaves twisting toward you,
away from the sun. A bird
caws once, then goes quiet.
You let the curtain fall back into place.
The noise of the house, silent at first,
seems to grow and grow –
a rumbling whistle like a teakettle
seconds from boil, a clicking
of mandibles or molars, a little voice
that whispers from every corner
all the secrets your loves
thought they’d kept from you.

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stcCASSANDRA de ALBA‘s work has appeared in Skydeer Helpking, The Nervous Breakdown, and Vector Press, among other places. She is a grad student in the greater Boston area and can be found online at outsidewarmafghans.tumblr.com. 

“Copulatory Lock” – Lyric Essay by j/j hastain

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Hyenas - Martiros Saryan, 1909
Hyenas – Martiros Saryan, 1909

Until very recently, we at FLAPPERHOUSE had no idea that the mating practices of hyenas were so subversive and transcendent. If you’d like to learn more, allow j/j hastain to explain it all to you in “Copulatory Lock”, one of the four lyric mini-essays by j/j that you can read in our Winter 2015 issue.

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SEXUAL INTIMIDATION DOESN’T HAPPEN IN HYENA CULTURE. If it’s not consensual then it simply is not– end of discussion.

Based on the location of her masculinized genitalia (shaped like a penis, but hanging flaccid between her legs) he literally has to squat and dance behind her, moving into her squat, in order to even penetrate her penis with his. Her sexual center is pointing ahead; his follows from behind, into her and through her to the degree that she wants it. She is the stipulation here. She is his direction.

Aware that some gymnastics are required in order for mating to occur, if the female is keen on him, she will lead him up the hill or out to the brink where there is the most likelihood for safe copulation. He follows her to their spot. At the moment of intromission the hyenas’ bodies literally lock in order for exchange to occur. This locking makes fruition and impregnation possible at the same moment that it dramatically increases the risk of the two being seen as a lager body of flesh and then eaten with excitement: a predator’s conglomerate meat.

As the lion nears he does not have a choice. His hormones are raging in response to their hormones raging. With doubled flesh before him, he rushes the magic to engorge on something more integrated than yin and yang. Yin and yang have that curved line between them, indicating their difference. The hyenas’ copulatory lock means, in her choosing to let him, they have found their way beyond the line.

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Bio Next2j/j hastain is a collaborator, writer and maker of things. j/j performs ceremonial gore. Chasing and courting the animate and potentially enlivening decay that exists between seer and singer, j/j simply hopes to make the god/dess of stone moan and nod deeply through the waxing and waning seasons of the moon.

j/j hastain is the inventor of The Mystical Sentence Projects and is author of several cross-genre books including the trans-genre book libertine monk (Scrambler Press), The Non-Novels (forthcoming, Spuyten Duyvil) and The Xyr Trilogy: a Metaphysical Romance of Experimental Realisms. j/j’s writing has most recently appeared in Caketrain, Trickhouse, The Collagist, Housefire, Bombay Gin, Aufgabe, and Tarpaulin Sky.

“Cue the Lutes” – Poetry by M.A. Schaffner

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Sunset on the Seine in Winter - Claude Monet, 1880
Sunset on the Seine in Winter – Claude Monet, 1880

Our Winter 2015 issue has no shortage of the dark, weird, sexy, funny lit you’ve come to expect from us. But with this latest issue, we also tried to have a little more heart than usual– like in M.A. Schaffner‘s wistful and exquisite poem “Cue the Lutes.”

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IT’S THE SMALL THINGS I NEVER QUITE FORGET:
the wild orange clouds after a dark dank day
as sun came out just long enough to set.

Your question at the moment we first met
about the train — then, if I’d show the way.
It’s those small things I never quite forget.

Our first free evening, and my world upset —
how busy our lips with nothing to say.
The sun came out just long enough to set.

Outside, the rain; inside, how warm though wet —
your hair a path from which I couldn’t stray.
It’s the small things I never quite forget.

A few short nights enclosed me in a net
that melted when touched by the weakest ray.
The sun came out just long enough to set.

I never saw you since without regret
for the bloom before my dawning gray.
It’s the small things I never quite forget.
My sun came out just long enough to set.

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M. A. SchaffnerM.A. SCHAFFNER has had poems published in Shenandoah, Prairie Schooner, Agni, Poetry Ireland, Poetry Wales, and elsewhere. Other writings include the poetry collection The Good Opinion of Squirrels, and the novel War Boys. Schaffner spends most days in Arlington, Virginia or the 19th century.

Tonight on AMERICA’S NEXT TOP GREAT AMERICAN NOVELIST – 1.8.2015

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GRRM
Special Guest Judge George R.R. Martin

The competition is heating up on AMERICA’S NEXT TOP GREAT AMERICAN NOVELIST, as we’re now down to the Final 27 Novelistestants! Here’s what’s on tap for them on this week’s episode:

  • For the flash challenge, writers must produce compelling Tinder profiles without mentioning height, travel, hookups, yoga, tigers, or their favorite alcohol.
  • Contestants must begin writing their chapters at the very moment when Beyonce & Radiohead leak their double-album collaboration that the internet is totally losing its fucking mind over
  • Gevlin & Rophy come to fisticuffs over whether Ernest Hemingway or Norman Mailer was suppressing more latent homosexuality
  • Everyone’s pissed off that Special Guest Judge George R.R. Martin still hasn’t finished writing his critiques