“Rules and Secrets” – Poetry by Judith Skillman

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Violin Player to the Moon - Hans Thoma
Violin Player to the Moon – Hans Thoma, 1897

Judith Skillman‘s poetry soothes and spooks us, often at the same time. We enjoy her work so much that we’ll be publishing one of her poems in each of our first two issues. Here’s “Rules and Secrets,” which will appear in our Spring 2014 Issue, now on sale for just $3.

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THE MOON RISES FULL OVER,
constructs its premise of light,
followers, hangers-on, into August.
Glints in a tree, its hunger for clothes
left from the first two who fled.

Moon-sultan. Wicker baskets fixed
just so inside the house, where sleepers lie.
This gift of reflection—how long the breath
of lemon balm, cut, exhales & inhales
through an open window.

What was fresh is sullied.
A man and a woman discuss philosophy
in a bedroom, in fluorescence.
Insinuations.  Institutions.  How many days
left in the domain?

The moon continues south over sleepers.
River harbor colors of stones.
This month passes like a dream into the season
of gathering.  The lemon will rise like the sun,
the schools will fill.

Moon of corn, of don’t-tell.
Perfection-moon, rimmed, haloed, dogged.
Moon of not playing the violin with a newly-haired bow.
Of never being good enough to live in the body
that continues to die.

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JudithSkillmanJUDITH SKILLMAN is the author of fifteen books of poetry. Her work has appeared in Poetry, The Iowa Review, Northwest Review, Midwest Quarterly Review, Southern Review, and Prairie Schooner. Visit her website at JudithSkillman.com

Sprocket SchmO’Brien For America’s Bathroom Libraries

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The second ad in our campaign to promote Bathroom Reading features our favorite critter in all of Animalia, the adorable Sprocket SchmO’Brien.

SprocketReads

“Dare” – Poetry by Lauren Seligman

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Flamenco Dancer - Sonia Delaunay, 1916
Flamenco Dancer – Sonia Delaunay, 1916

 

From our Spring 2014 Issue, we proudly present Lauren Seligman‘s sultry, swaggering “Dare.”

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SPLIT ME WIDE OPEN, an egg on the side
of a dish. Eat me alive, attack
without permission. I dare you to
come. Godzilla on the prowl for me. Turn over
billboards, trucks on your way. Take me by
the shoulders, shake me
hard, a natural disaster. Burn down

forests thickened in black
ash so villagers choke. Collapse houses into
the pea green ocean. Do not flash, a lightning
storm, be no mumble of thunder that a midnight
shower can bust. I am a flamenco
dancer standing in an adolescent boys’
choir, exotic in my obsessions and intuitions. I am dark

Poland, fragrant bark on the backyard beech
tree I climbed, crouched in the fork, scars on my
knees the color of persimmon fruit. I am July-hot
Washington Square Park, those gypsy
guitar tunes played at sticky night time, London’s
Cheshire Street stones slicked with moss where I
slipped, laughing on my back. I am veiled

Continue reading “Dare” – Poetry by Lauren Seligman →

“The Root of Everything Arty” – Fiction by Jenean McBrearty

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The Truth at the bottom of a Well Jean-Leon Gerome, 1895
The Truth at the bottom of a Well
Jean-Leon Gerome, 1895

The truth about ourselves is at the bottom of a well, says Donnie Babcock in “The Root of Everything Arty.” Jenean McBrearty‘s story is a droll, twisted riff on art, violence, vanity, and the subconscious, co-starring Gala Dali. Read it alongside other exciting lit in our Spring 2014 Issue (FLAPPERHOUSE #1), now on sale for just $3.

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“AN APPOINTMENT IS IMPOSSIBLE, and Salvador wouldn’t keep it anyway,” Gala told Mrs. Green, the crinkled-lipped woman who had roused her at ten. It was too early to juggle American dilettantes. The Dali Ball had been tiresome after the first half hour. Dali’s glass case and brassiere, worn on his chest to shock the fawners, would work well with the press, but would soon be followed by a what’s next? from the American public.

“I spoke to him about my nephew. Donald. Bunny Babcock’s son. He’s an artist.”

“I know my husband’s an artist, Madame.” Gala was at the phone about to order breakfast.

“No, Donald’s an artist.” Although just sixteen, he was also a high school graduate and his Uncle Marion’s protégé.  “Senor Dali will remember, I’m sure…”

It’s clear why time melts under the persistence of memory. Americans seemed to have infinite recall capabilities no matter how much gin they consumed, and their persistence jellied the nerves. “Could you bring tres huevos and toast?” she said into the phone, and gave Mrs. Green a nod. “Perhaps this afternoon.”

Mrs. Green hoisted a brown leather portfolio case in front of her. “Donald gave me this. He’s says they’re his best portraits. You could tell me if Dali would be interested in them.”

The woman in the crepe dress and open-toed shoes was giving her a way out. She’d take a quick look and deliver a swift dissuasion. “All right.” Gala removed the white porcelain vase stuffed with orange and yellow gladiolas from the table and set the case on it, untied the laces and peeled back one side. She turned the separators slowly, as though reading a manuscript, feeling Mrs. Green’s expectation at her back.  “Have you seen your nephew’s portraits, Madame? They’re all pudenda.”

Continue reading “The Root of Everything Arty” – Fiction by Jenean McBrearty →

FLAPPERHOUSE #1 Now On Sale

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 UPDATE:

The PDF of FLAPPERHOUSE #1 is no longer for sale, because it is now available for free.
Click the cover to enjoy.

FLAPPERHOUSEwhitecover

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“No More Poems About Resolutions,” “A Highly Magnified History,” “When A Poet Wants To Date You,” and “Yelp Review – Total Wine” – J. Bradley
“CRYONICS” – Mariev Finnegan
“The Puddle of Romeo’s Tears” – Luis Galindo
“The Thrill of a Lifetime” – Phyllis Green
“Window Glass” – Mila Jaroniec
“Stage Manager” – Rebecca Ann Jordan
“What Really Drives You To Drink” – Jeff Laughlin
“Rebel, Rebel” – T. Mazzara
“The Root of Everything Arty” – Jenean McBrearty
“Stanley Kubrick’s Shit Happens“ – Joseph P. O’Brien
“The Better Cowboy” – Todd Pate
“Angels Howling in the Trees” – Misti Rainwater-Lites
“Dare” – Lauren Seligman
“Rules and Secrets” – Judith Skillman
“Reach” – Tom Stephan
“Axis Mundi” – Cameron Suey

“Rebel, Rebel” – Fiction by T. Mazzara

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ChargerBe warned: T. Mazzara‘s “Rebel, Rebel,” one of the short stories from our Spring 2014 issue, contains some extremely salty language. But beneath all that salt there’s also tremendous tenderness. 

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for Shawn

I GOTTA GET TO NEW YORK BEFORE 3 AM or Big Meanie, Jimmy Dread, is gonna fuckin stick-rape me with a broom handle and feed my bones to his bulls, gonna cut off my ears and chop off my head. I been driving this route and driving it drifted for two years now, trying to buy the ticket on dad’s ranch house. Buy it back from my sunk-headed Moms. She’s got not a marble left and they’re gonna take the dump from her, she don’t get square with the bank. I been driving this route since Jean Genie bit the big assfuckin farm on it. That’s my cousin, Jean Genie.

Jean died when his box truck launched off this elevated road (that’s Route 17 East to New York-fuckin-Shitty). Jean buried truck and driver in the woods just betwixt Beaver Kill and Roscoe. And that’s Roscoe “Trout Town USA.” Upstate. He buried Jean Genie good too. Fucker was a mess of blood and knotty, greasy hair and white meat and wood and red meat and metal splinters, buried in bark and sticks and branches, cloaked in wet red and steam and smoke and brake lights. Twisted metal, twisted Genie. Twisted sister. Jean Genie. Ziggy Stardust.

I’m carrying a load of H (and some blow on the side). All packaged neat in 50 pound bags of organic flour. Genie still talks to me. I’m the Jazz. It’s something I do. It’s something I do for the Dread. It’s something that’s done.

I’m passing Slaterville Springs, now. Bug zappers zapping and flashing and it’s 35mph thru here so they’re easy to hear over this godawful loud engine. I’m still on east 79. It goes up to 55mph after here and then I’ll be headed thru Richford and past Robinson’s Hollow Road and there’s fuckin nothing out there.

But there is a red Dodge Charger here now and he’s been behind me and beside me and I’ve passed him real careful-like, twice now, and he’s weaving like a motherfucker. There’s drunks at night out here. Small town, not much to do at night. Day too. Not certain if this one’s a drunk. Can’t never be certain of anything, really, Jean Genie used to say. But Dodge Charger keeps slowing and I pass him and then he’ll waggle in my rearviews and he’s in and out of lanes and I lose sight of him around a bend til he guns it and smashes past me, suckin wind and shakin the Bigtop.

You never can be sure of much. Jean Genie used to say black holes was planets that had evolved some species into machines that needed to eat and needed power to eat and they then went off and e’en everything. And it wasn’t like astronomers said and what the hell did astronomers know? They had theories and observations. Hell, we could make theories and observations. We could make observations and theories all we fuckin wanted, but unless they could magic his ass up to the center of the galaxy and let him stick his finger in a supermassive black hole, he didn’t believe in black holes and thought the center of the galaxy must just be filled with unicorn farts and marshmallow fluff.

He always said that the world as we know it was coming to an end and that everything that is just now, even as I say this sentence here, is now the past and everything back then is questionable and every configuration of us was different from one moment to the next. Or some shit like that. I think I said it right. I don’t know. He was a confusing shit and I was faced when he told me that.

Never seen you so faced.

Continue reading “Rebel, Rebel” – Fiction by T. Mazzara →

“Stanley Kubrick’s Shit Happens” – Review by Joseph P. O’Brien

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Kubrick

Only in FLAPPERHOUSE could you read a review of Stanley Kubrick’s least-famous Lost Film, “Stanley Kubrick’s Shit Happens.” Hey look up there: Stanley Kubrick took selfies.

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IT’S EASY TO FORGET THAT STANLEY KUBRICK, the pensive, punctilious director of 2001 and The Shining, was also the cheeky, impish ringmaster behind wickedly funny films like Dr. Strangelove and Full Metal Jacket.  Read any critique of Kubrick’s work– even a favorable one– and chances are you’ll find words like “clinical” and “icy-balls.”

Perhaps that’s because so few have ever seen (or even heard of) this esteemed filmmaker’s least-famous Lost Film.

SHITHAPPENSLegend has it that after wrapping up The Shining in 1980, Kubrick was, as you might expect, hungry for a more jocular project.  One night he rents a stack of videotapes, comedy movies he’s been meaning to watch for a personal film festival. About 20 minutes into the first film there’s a loud, plasticky smash. Kubrick’s daughter hears it from all the way up in her bedroom, and she runs to her father’s screening room to see what’s the matter. “I’m fine,” he tells her, standing over shards of shattered videocassette. “Just  disposing of some dreadfully boring cinema. Don’t be alarmed if you hear it again later.”

Sure enough, Kubrick’s daughter hears the smash of VHS-versus-wall roughly every 20 minutes for the next couple hours. Until she hears laughter. Ecstatic, soul-saving laughter, like she’s never heard her father laugh before.

He’s watching  Airplane!

Continue reading “Stanley Kubrick’s Shit Happens” – Review by Joseph P. O’Brien →

Teaser #1

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We tease because we love.

The Flapper Is Growing Stronger Than Ever

Flappricana

ZeldaThe flapper is growing stronger than ever; she gets wilder all the time… She is continuously seeking for something new to increase her store of experience. She is still looking for new conventions to break– for new thrills, for sensations to add zest to life, and she is growing more and more terrible.

– F. Scott Fitzgerald, in BF Wilson’s “F. Scott Fitzgerald says: ‘All Women Over Thirty-Five Should Be Murdered,'” Metropolitan Magazine 58 (November 1923)

“No More Poems About Resolutions” – Poetry by J. Bradley

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Fingerprints In Smoke - Alibi Jones, 2014
Fingerprints In Smoke – Alibi Jones, 2014

According to Factual Science Magazine, the average New Year’s Resolution is abandoned by January 14th, at approximately 11:38 Greenwich Mean Time. So now that, statistically, you’ve probably already given up on yet another feeble attempt at self-improvement– that is if you cared enough to make a feeble attempt in the first place– please enjoy J. Bradley‘s “No More Poems About Resolutions” below. (This poem, along with 3 other poems by J. Bradley, will appear in our Spring 2014 Issue, which you can pre-order here for $3.)

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You learn the metric system
to wear new kinds of weight.

You hold career day
for your lungs, show them
all the types of mines
they could collapse as.

You bend love like a hair pin,
treat zippers and buttons as locks.

There are names waiting
to become bricks; how gingerly
will you walk over them?

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jbradleypicJ. BRADLEY is the author of the forthcoming graphic poetry collection, The Bones of Us (YesYes Books, 2014). He lives at iheartfailure.net.