Farren Stanley

FROM LUCIO FONTANA'S “SPATIAL CONCEPT, WAITING” (1960)

The surface cannot hold so just

give it a little tap

tap tap  

The shape in the distance stretches and sighs, suggests

a mountain, the fin of some predatory

fish, the encroaching tooth, a horizon  

(trees, corn) (razed fields)  

by destroying the document you can force the eyes behind,

and through

the document becomes artifice and the wall, performance

here you can find a muscular red expanse and  

off-centered, the slit, one freedom contaging

into another,

or  

document of violence. (I used

to call you the Big Bad Blond Wolf.) You could

think: streamers twisting in a birthday wind. You could

think: the empty chorus mouths, you could  

think: curtains you could turn sideways and  

slip through. Behind that red curtain waits Abraham,  

your lover, a commuter rocket to Mars. Flack mouth in a  

Red world. I will meet you there.

Click this link to view Lucio Fontana's "Spatial Concept, Waiting."

Farren Stanley's place-of-origin is Santa Fe, New Mexico, though her heart has followed her body to Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where she is a MFA candidate in Poetry and Editor of Black Warrior Review. She lives under a massive Magnolia tree with a dog, a cat, seven orchids and the occasional lizard. Her work is published or forthcoming in Marginalia, Caketrain, H_NGM_N and at Greying Ghost Press.

Brian Oliu

BOSS BATTLE: MY BROTHER WHO CONTROLS THE WEATHER

When I arrived, the music changed—all notes go silent:  the only thing audible is the hum of a soft rain, constant though we are inside, and for a moment it is peaceful, something we can sleep through, something that makes us turn off everything else so we can hear water on windows, on slanted roofs.  You appear in a flicker, fast strobe first, then slowing to a gentle spin, arms out stretched and palms upward like you are receiving something—that someone who loves you will place a gumdrop into your hand so you can close your fingers around the jeweled sugar and place it between your teeth in a dirty scarfing.  

This is where the lightning starts:  dry heat from the sky and into your hands leaving burn marks on skin, smoothing over heart lines like you have no heart, though I know it is there.  The bolts, jagged like raised veins come together in front of your stomach and slice towards where I am standing, speechless.  The outcome is uncertain:  the voltage runs over my body like a pulped orange turning everything I am into something I am not, or it doesn’t.  The current springs back upon you, knocking your helmet off of your head to reveal a face like mine, or it doesn’t.  The wind changes direction:  I know this because I cannot stand still—I must pick up what is left, I must hold your blackened hands.  I know this because for once I can see the rain slanted downwards:  falling in grey lines like the ghosts of our loved ones shooting towards the earth.

Brian Oliu is originally from New Jersey and currently lives in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.  His work has been published in Hotel Amerika, New Ohio Review, Ninth Letter, Sonora Review, Puerto del Sol, and elsewhere.  His collection of Tuscaloosa Craigslist Missed Connections, So You Know It's Me is available through Tiny Hardcore Press.

Jessica Millnitz

NOTES

So it's motorcycle on the city jail at half past after all like birds' nests. Ice cream calliope. April. Floods over onto sidewalks and stalled waiting stoplights crosswalks, paying attention poorly only to the way potholes erode, all winter, down to the cobblestones. Magnolia tree and windy. Monochrome and not all there. Or it's carefree weather and careless, brick walls and concrete, digging in my heels.

NOTES

It’ll be back to brick blockade if anything. It’ll be bicycle coast into no truck with cobblestone, iron manhole-covers. Clogged out on stuck friction loosing the construction citing old hat path ways. Padded for class. Hand break the wind, tunnel under an overpass downtown. Copper grating over sides walking or back pedal. Stocking slip a hard hallway or two. Imagine a mandatory coda. It keeps you in its cross-hairs.

Jessica Millnitz assists in the appraisal of commercial real estate. She earned a BA in English and film studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where she was an editor of the  journal Laurus from 2006 to 2009. Recently she’s become a partner in Sp_ce, a writing studio and art gallery housed in downtown Lincoln, Nebraska’s Parrish Project collaborative.

Jennifer Kronovet [Part Two]

A PERSON

We made ourselves through words

for each other for years. Like trees

almost make the sky. But now—

not words—just their effect.

Acting out being a person

who is excited about dogs.

Acting out eating while

eating, touching. This sounds much

worse than it is. More like

how the car makes the road.

Or the runner across the field

in the park—I love him.

Jennifer Kronovet is the author of Awayward, published by BOA Editions. She is Writer-in-Residence at Washington University and lives in St. Louis, Missouri.