Brought to You by: Avoidable Tragedies for the Sake of Your Pride

Yesterday, I read an article
on what to do
when someone opens fire.

The author, so intelligently
and accurately, defining “when”
as opposed to “if,”
knowing at this rate,
there’s no stopping it.
As if to prepare me,
either tomorrow,
or two years from now,
how to hide from a stranger
shooting up a grocery store;
to never believe it is just fireworks
in the parking lot.

I’m so proud to be alive in a time
where the priority lies
in keeping the freedom
of trigger-happy hands,
and letting the world know
what to expect.
My kids will know better
than to leave the house
without bullet-proof vests.

Yesterday, I read an article
on what to do
when someone opens fire.
In the end, I don’t know
how much it will help.
The reality of it is
I could hear the gunshots too late,
I could be one of the first
to get picked off,
or I could not have read this article.
But thank God it was there,
I feel so much safer.

By Schuyler Peck

Biography:

Born of college-ruled notebooks and the smell of lemon grass, Schuyler Peck was raised in New Jersey, but she’ll never tell you that. Instead, she’ll tell you there are pieces of her everywhere; planted in trees and shipped off to the moon. Her poetry, however, can be found in her book, A Field of Blooming Bruises, Words Dance Publications, Literary Sexts V. 2, Rising Phoenix Press, JuxtaProse Magazine, and schuylerpeck.tumblr.com. She loves you.

An Airfield Amelia Earhart Used to Know

It’s not every day you meet a moody curator sitting on a paint can
feeding chickens, a locked up airplane museum a few feet away.
On bad days, from his kitchen window,
he’ll throw you the keys.

When he’s able to, his petal-skinned hands
point toward cases welded from rail cars,
Inside hang spring pole stirrups,
stretched and torn
by drillers’ arches,
hop-pumping oil
for WWI reconnaissance.
He describes that wildcatter’s oil boom,
men worrying more about their horses’ looks
than themselves.

These days, everyone knows oilmen doubt
they cause stronger hurricanes.
Plenty have lost it all more than once in a storm.
Now, along the town’s empty streets, gardeners
decorate with bull wheels, with drilling jars.

From tailgates, farmers make deals
with oil black clouds miles away.
Tractor-high piles of mesquite trees wait for burning,
after drinking twenty times their share of water
on drought-stricken farm land.

The second interstate highway parallels
train tracks nearby. The Bankhead Highway.
Original cracked bricks bulge against Stork’s Bill,
Lazy Susan, Queen Anne’s Lace,
and sprouting Chinaberry trees.

Row after row of empty pews fill churches
where artists and photographers build studios
in bell towers.
Or old gas stations.
Scissortail Flycatchers’ sunset-colored bellies
shiver in the late spring frost, before lifting
from trembling stalks of dried grass.

At the grassy field called the airport,
the one Amelia Earhart used to know,
the curator spends hours
pulling rocks away from
newly planted grass seed, day after day,
although he never achieved his pilot’s license.
A sick mother and falling in love
got in the way.

Tacked to the airport wall is an aviation map.
His son crafted careful circles, perfectly neat lines,
marking like streams of sunlight
every route they’d take, if they could.
Their airport isn’t on the map,
so the son drew it in, unsure exactly
where to put it.

In the airfield after dark,
the curator teaches everyone he meets to trace Orion.
A little easier in a town with mostly burnt out streetlights.

By Loretta Long

Biography:

I’ve worked as a plant potter in a greenhouse, waitress, carpenter’s apprentice, car detailer, caregiver, and massage therapist. In 2010, I received my MFA from the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University. Now I live in San Antonio, Texas where I work as a massage therapist and adjunct English Instructor.

My work has been published in online and print journals including Triggerfish Critical Review, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, Pemmican, Dublin Quarterly, The Salal Review, All Things Girl, and The Daily News.

Fleur cover art

we are overjoyed to officially debut the cover art for Fleur, the forthcoming chapbook by darshana suresh. our thanks go out to bristy – pagli rajkonna for creating the artwork and cover design for this collection.

pre-orders for Fleur will begin on wednesday, august 17th. stay tuned for more information.

INK

In 2007, they called Britney Spears “bald and broken”
after she went to a salon in Tarzana
and buzzed off all her hair. Her smile was so big
that tears dripped into her mouth.

She said “I don’t want anyone touching me.
I’m tired of everybody touching me.”

They collected her locks from the floor
set them up on on e-Bay. The bidding for her remains
reached over a million dollars.

They can keep their souvenirs of a woman breaking
beneath the pressure of so many hands
but she was never broken. A women will never be
broken. She will only be renewed
once again.

*

I once knew a girl in Hermosa Beach
whose father told her all women
with piercings and tattoos are sluts.

She punctured diamonds and hoops through her cheeks
until her face was a chandelier,
dragged so many needles across her skin,
her body became a manifesto
written in ink,

invented an identity
he had nothing to do with,

embodied everything her father hated
until it no longer had any power
over her.

*

I read the news today, about a young Kurdish girl
living in the Middle East.

The soldiers invading her village would capture her
in the middle of the night, pass her body around the circle
like a bottle of whiskey to be shared. They crushed her
like little boys crush snails on the playground, never taught
that there are some things too evil
to ever do.

She doused herself in kerosene and went to bed one night
blanketed in a flame. She needed to be ugly enough
for them to finally let her sleep,
would rather have no skin at all
than skin that did not belong
to her.

*

They say each of our bodies is a temple
and we must treat it well

but there are too many men
forcing us to believe in them as gods,
telling us how to say our prayers,
trying to fill every room within it
until there is no more sanctuary left
for ourselves.

If that’s true,
it makes sense
why so many women have to destroy their bodies
to protect it.

By Roya Backlund

Biography:

Roya Backlund is a recent graduate of University of California, Irvine with a B.A. in English literature as well as a Los Angeles-based film actress. She has been published at Thistle Magazine, Words Dance Publishing, and will be releasing her first collection of poetry this summer. She is a co-founder of Kings Zine, a literary and artistic collective. More of her writing can be found at bellydancingsmoke.tumblr.com