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.
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.
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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j/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.
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. 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.
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
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
As 2014 has been careening through its homestretch, our Flappers have been even more prolific than usual, getting their work published across the internet like there won’t be a 2015.
FLAPPERHOUSE 