Category Archives: Flappertising

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

Excerpts, Flappertising, Flappricana, Lyric Essay, Non-Fiction, , ,
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.

{ X }

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.

{ X }

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

Excerpts, Flappertising, Flappricana, Poetry, ,
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.”

{ X }

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.

{ X }

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

Tonight on AMERICA’S NEXT TOP GREAT AMERICAN NOVELIST – 1.1.2015

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Special Guest Judge Toni Morrison
Special Guest Judge Toni Morrison

Television’s #1 literary-based quasi-documentary competition program rings in 2015 tonight at 9PM on The Network Channel! Here’s the table of contents for this week’s episode:

  • Contestants’ chapters must be written while Michiko Kakutani walks around the writers’ room looking over everyone’s shoulders
  • Marphaleene clashes with Jex over what the whale symbolizes in Free Willy
  • Zong-Chae ironically says “I’m not here to make friends!” (Not “ironically” in a sarcastic, winking-at-reality-TV-cliches way, but rather in the verbally ironic sense that deep down, Zong-Chae is extremely lonely, and is in fact here to make friends, but is too ashamed to admit it, and is only saying she’s not here to make friends because she frequently pushes potential friends away as a kind of preemptive defense mechanism.)
  • Special Guest Judge Toni Morrison sneaks out after realizing she’s not on Iron Chef America

Tonight on AMERICA’S NEXT TOP GREAT AMERICAN NOVELIST – Holiday Edition, 12.23.2014

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SkippingChristmasBecause of Christmas, this week’s episode of AMERICA’S NEXT TOP GREAT AMERICAN NOVELIST, which normally airs every Thursday at 9PM on The Network Channel, instead airs tonight at 10:30. Here’s what’s in store for our Novelistestants on ANTGAN’s Holiday Edition:

  • Contestants’ chapters must contain a flashback to a character’s past Holiday Celebration, without obviously being a thinly-veiled retelling of one of the writer’s own crappy Holiday Celebrations
  • Vishy wins Immunity, but trades it in a Yankee Swap for a blurb from Gillian Flynn
  • Pilantro and Dixelle’s debate about the True Meaning of Christmas results in three overturned tables and a severed earlobe
  • Kenson declares “There ain’t no American Christmas novels worth shit,” visibly offending Special Guest Judge John Grisham

Join Our Team!

Flappertising, Flappricana

Girls_ice_hockey_team_1921The quantity & quality of submissions we’ve been receiving has escalated to a point where we’re now looking for additional Editorial Consultants– that is, people to read through several dozen pieces of slush each season & offer unfiltered opinions of several sentences in length. If that sounds like something you’d really want to do (for free), email FLAPPERHOUSE at gmail dot com and tell us why.

Tonight on AMERICA’S NEXT TOP GREAT AMERICAN NOVELIST – 12.11.2014

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Special Guest Judge Thomas Pynchon
Special Guest Judge Thomas Pynchon

TV’s #1 writer-based competition program is AMERICA’S NEXT TOP GREAT AMERICAN NOVELIST, airing every Thursday at 9PM on The Network Channel! On tonight’s episode of ANTGAN:

  • Contestants’ chapters must be told from the POV of a character binge-watching Season 2 of UNDER THE DOME (Now available on Blu-ray & DVD).
  • Squandrelle and Fentworth’s fervent one-night stand leads to messy, pretentious attempts at erotica.
  • Alexica wins immunity but loses everyone’s respect when she calls Dan Brown “underrated.”
  • Special Guest Judge Thomas Pynchon performs Iggy Azalea’s “Fancy” with his armpits.

“Invocation: Joan of Arc Reads the Crowd” – Poetry by Jennifer MacBain-Stephens

Excerpts, Flappertising, Flappricana, Poetry, , ,
The Maid of Orleans - Jan Matejok, 1886
The Maid of Orleans – Jan Matejko, 1886

“Invocation: Joan of Arc Reads the Crowd” is the first of Jennifer MacBain-Stephens‘ 5  sensational poems on the legendary Maid of Orleans, which you can read in our Winter 2015 issue.

{ X }

SOME MEN DESIRE SAUSAGE NAILED TO BARK just for kicks.
Joan prefers sorting iron deposits to culinary remonstrations.
That’s the true way to heathen caballus hearts.
Never downed a brandy
Talons took her liver in the after-life.
Her face a gossamer sheen of life’s never haves
Like Chrissie Hynde, that brass in pocket left months ago.
Self-hacked curls are racy to ravens.
Joan would rather cut her fingers off than caress a waxen cheek
and it’s all what time should we meet up after the war?
Primp the ocean with a poorly crafted ax swing.
Mouths ravage sound waves.
It’s her voice that mounts the men–
Wingless mongrels with clumsy carbon footprints
I chose you for your pulsing qualities
Wikipedia left that part out.
Arm to stone to crushed ladder leg
Burning hair multitude and it’s 1-0.
Joan thinks about hell and the
Spears secret guts spill out.
Maniacal reds, virgin whites, pink pudding.
Grapefruit spoon in throat
King Charles laughs a little boy laugh
looks down at all the feet.

{ X }

AuthorphotoJENNIFER MacBAIN-STEPHENS is the author of three chapbooks: Every Her Dies (ELJ  Publications), Clotheshorse (Finishing Line Press, 2014) and Backyard Poems (Dancing Girl Press, forthcoming, 2015). Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net, and has appeared in public places in Iowa City. Recent work can be 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 

“The Store” – Fiction by Mari Ness

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By QuentinUK (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons
Shop Until You Drop – Banksy, 2011; Photo by QuentinUK  [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

With the holiday shopping season in full swing, it’s the perfect time to browse the curious wares in Mari Ness‘ flash fiction “The Store,” from our Winter 2015 issue.

{ X }

THE STORE MOVES AROUND. Sometimes discreetly, sliding in between two other stores; sometimes flamboyantly, planting itself firmly in a previously empty lot, with glowing “GRAND OPENING” signs and flags.  In times of economic prosperity, it enjoys nestling in quaint streets dedicated to antique shops and art galleries; during recessions, it often inserts itself into dying strip malls, or leans next to grocery stores and pharmacies.

She never moves.  Not that anyone can see, anyway.

She sits at the cash register near the front of the store, a register that seems to change slightly each time the shop moves.  It had been one of those old fashioned types, and now sports a computer screen that would put many larger businesses to shame, a screen that seems somehow out of place.  Her most noticeable quality: an utter absence of color, with excessively pale skin, nearly as white as paper, white hair, and colorless eyes.  Not pink, not pale blue, but literally colorless. The effect might be caused by contact lenses and makeup and bleach, but somehow, few customers ever think this.  The eyes move, to watch the customers, and her hands move, to take money and credit cards, but her body never shifts, though she must eat and drink and sleep. She must.

Where she might do this is less certain.  Certainly no one has ever seen her eat or drink inside the store, or leave her seat for any reason.  Indeed, she gives the impression that she is not just rooted to, but part of her chair, which in turn seems to be part of the floor.

Not that anyone checks too carefully.

What the store sells, it is hard to say. The merchandise shifts whenever the shop moves, and somehow, few customers seem to linger over the items.   Ordinary things, knickknacks, and jars of jam, and scented candles, and piles of music and books. Books that when opened tell of Jane killing Mr. Rochester by eating through his neck; where the Heart of Darkness is a river eagerly sucking away at the waters of the jungles, leaving a place of dryness and death ripe for fire; where Alice cuts her wrists with the shards of the looking glass. CDs where no one ever hears the secret chord that David played to please the Lord.  Small statues of fairies and angels, their eyes and mouths glued or sewn shut. Brilliantly colored flowers with grey edges that feel cold to the touch. Surprisingly delicious soup mixes, bringing delirious joy when prepared.  Jewelry, rich and strange and delicate. Candles labeled with never-known words. Continue reading “The Store” – Fiction by Mari Ness →

“Buried Treasure” – Fiction by Ashley Lister

Excerpts, Fiction, Flappertising, Flappricana, ,
The Caran d'Ache 1010
The Caran d’Ache 1010

The grand finale of our Fall 2014 issue is Ashley Lister‘s Choose Your Own Adventure tale “Buried Treasure.” Is it an amusing literary diversion spoofing a once-popular genre? Or is it a bleak satire on the illusion of free will? YOU DECIDE!

(Or DO you?)

{ X }

YOU ARE ONE OF SEVERAL PEOPLE SITTING BEFORE A SOLICITOR. You are in the room that was your late Uncle John’s home office. It’s a sombre day because you’re attending to hear the reading of Uncle John’s will. Uncle John was one of your favourite relatives. He made his vast fortune from writing Choose-Your-Own-Adventure stories.

Do you attentively reflect on the incongruities and peculiarities of all the other beneficiaries? (GO TO SECTION A.) Or do you tell the solicitor to hurry the fuck up? (GO TO SECTION B.)

 { A }

The walls bear framed covers from Uncle John’s many adventure stories. The room is dominated by a large old-fashioned desk that takes up half the room. Behind the desk sits the small, bespectacled solicitor.

The other half of the room is crowded.

Aside from being a popular writer, Uncle John was something of a ladies’ man. It’s been suggested this is what probably killed him. Your parents had always advised you to never eat at his house, especially not anything from the fruit bowl. Your mother always said he had more STIs than readers – and she made this remark after Uncle John had been on the NYT Bestsellers list. Your father claimed the coffee at Uncle John’s house tasted of rohypnol.

Many of the female beneficiaries are dressed in black. Some of them are sniffling into delicate, lace-edged handkerchiefs. Most of them are giving evils to each other through smudgy eye makeup as though only one of them is entitled to feel bereaved.

The most obviously upset is Dorothy.

Dorothy had been Uncle John’s off-again on-again girlfriend for the best part of a decade. She’d been living with Uncle John and putting up with his peculiar ways for the past five years. It’s widely known that she has forgiven more unforgivable indiscretions than the last three Popes. With jet black hair and jet black eyes and a jet black dress she looks like she’s auditioning for the role Morticia Addams. Her lips are thin. Her eyes are tired and bloodshot. And she’s glaring at the redhead wearing skin-tight leather pants.

The redhead is deliberately ignoring Dorothy. It’s likely the redhead was the most recent of Uncle John’s indiscretions. If there is any truth in the stories about his body being found in a wardrobe, with a shoelace round his balls and an orange up his arse, then it was probably a wardrobe in the redhead’s house. Even though she looks the sort who would introduce citrus fruit to sphincters, her tears look genuine.

There aren’t many men in the solicitor’s office.

You’ve met Tommy before. Tommy was Uncle John’s simple best friend. He’d read all of Uncle John’s Choose-Your-Own-Adventure stories and proudly told  anyone who’d listen that each new title was another book all about him and his exploits. You suspect the scars on Tommy’s forehead are the results of corrective surgery that was possibly too invasive.

You also recognise Uncle Jack, Uncle John’s brother. Uncle Jack is a police officer although he inspires no trust. He’s the type who will likely one day have to take early retirement under the embarrassing cloud of a bribery accusation, or the discovery of his improper involvement with a cache of controlled substances. Uncle Jack keeps glancing at his watch.

You clear your throat, ready to tell the solicitor to hurry up.

 { B }

Before you can speak Uncle Jack shouts, “Hurry the fuck up, man. We haven’t got all day to put up with you and your fannying around.”

A handful of those gathered chastise Uncle Jack for his coarse turn of phrase but there seems to be a consensus that the solicitor has been fannying around. Suitably motivated, the solicitor polishes his wire-framed glasses and then begins to read out the contents of Uncle John’s will.

Do you listen attentively to the final will and testament of your beloved relative? (GO TO SECTION C.) Or do you doze for a while and come back to your senses when you hear your name being mentioned? (GO TO SECTION D.)
 Continue reading “Buried Treasure” – Fiction by Ashley Lister →