WRITING

At Walden Pond by Mitchell Grabois

| The 22 Magazine

 

My car was rolling

but it was dying

 

Mercedes and Audi wheelwomen

sped by

blaring their horns

a form of screaming

screaming a form of hate

 

We were very near Walden Pond

very near transcendentalism

 

I came out of my hotel room the next morning

and couldn’t start my car

Tears came to my eyes and trickled down my cheeks

as if I were a skilled actor

 

A nun came out of the room next to mine

and spied me crying

She came up to me and let me know that she loved me

She loved misery and poverty

and the nearness to Thoreau’s condemned cabin

 

Thoreau needed so little

He didn’t need a Japanese car

He didn’t need a nun to console him

He didn’t need a god of consolation

 

There was a repair shop down the road

and the nun put her shoulder

to the cool metal

applied her love and minimal weight

and together we shoved the vehicle down the road

 

She was sweating when we arrived

and the mechanic

in a Boston accent

condemned me for using a nun

as an animal

 

It was her idea, I said

her idea

 

A nun is like a child, he said

She has to be protected from

her foolish notions

 

Mitchell Krochmalnik Grabois was born in the Bronx and now splits his time between Denver and a one-hundred-and-twenty-year-old, one room schoolhouse in Riverton Township, Michigan. His short fiction and poems have appeared in hundreds of literary magazines in the U.S. and internationally. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, most recently for his story “Purple Heart” published in The Examined Life in 2012, and for his poem. “Birds,” published in The Blue Hour, 2013. Grabois’s novel, Two-Headed Dog, is available in print and digitally.

HOW TO READ A NOVELIST and GOODBYE TO ALL THAT at Powerhouse

| The 22 Magazine

Two terrific events coming up at Powerhouse arena focusing on writing, living, and interacting as a writer in New York and the world….

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GOODBYE TO ALL THAT edited by Sari Botton
Tuesday Oct 08, 2013

In Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving New York, edited by Sari Botton, 28 women writers take up Didion’s literary legacy by sharing their own stories about New York. With stellar contributions from some of today’s most beloved female authors of memoir and literary fiction—Cheryl Strayed, Dani Shapiro, Emma Straub, Emily Gould, Emily St. John Mandel, Hope Edelman, and more—Goodbye to All That tells the stories of their own love/hate relationships with New York, as well as the city’s gravitational pull on them—even at the worst of times.

HOW TO READ A NOVELIST by John Freeman
Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Between 2000 and 2013 John Freeman put interviews to tape with just about every major writer who published a book: he spoke with such departed legends as Norman Mailer and David Foster Wallace; the Nobel laureates Doris Lessing, Mo Yan, and Günter Grass; bestsellers such as Amy Tan and John Irving; American greats from Toni Morrison to Philip Roth; and a younger generation of novelists that includes Dave Eggers, David Mitchell, Kiran Desai, and Jonathan Safran Foer. How to Read a Novelist rounds up 55 of Freeman’s very best profiles and interviews, but it is not simply a collection of discrete dialogues between interviewer and interviewee; these authors are also in conversation with one another, with Freeman serving as a deft moderator connecting the dots of a global literary culture. And in the poignant introduction about Freeman’s experiences interviewing John Updike, he gets to the heart of his enterprise: what it means to love a writer, to attempt to live up to his or her achievements—and then to come face to face with him or her in less-than-ideal circumstances.

A Tale of Why We Are So Fucked—As a Species by Lisa Douglass.

| The 22 Magazine

Before the Baby Salty Jesus birthed us and we became our non-human selves—it is written that we had once been human. We were real live human beings that liked to kiss and tell and do the Holiest of the holies in front of the video. But that was before the spider incident which later conflates into the Satan incident, which follows:

Once upon a time, in the middle of winter, one winter when we were really fucking cold in our beds and wearing our see-through hot pink number without panties, somebody came to visit us in our rooms. It was the first night after the brand new white sheets and the first night of the spider who stared at us with his beady eyes on our bedspread—wherein we went—what the fuck?—why is that spider’s legs spread out like he is about to run the 100 yard dash and why do I feel like he is conscious and wants to talk to me about something quite important?

We were all ears.

On this night of the spider, we looked again and there was a man, this man was Satan.

Remember: Before this happened—We had known how to love one another without fear and we had understood that one text does not make or break any relationship of value and we had been unafraid to do what we liked because there was no fear to do the Happy.

But, what happened was we wanted to be cool, more than we wanted our hearts deepest desires and Satan knew that on some level when he came to us in the nighttime while we were fast asleep in our angelic poses in our beds without wrappers or crumbs but still in a cute outfit. On that night that Satan came, we opened up our beautiful orphan eyes and said to the Bad son of God because he was more competitive than Jesus and corrupted souls through deviant means:
“hi.”
Satan the Lord of Darkness had a little contract with him and he was charming and good looking.
and Satan goes: “hi.”
We felt our wholeness right then and there. We were no longer ordinary—we were visited by Satan and that fed our enormous but undeservedly so’s ego.
It was terrifying how like a human Satan seemed and how handsome and how we hoped he would text us the next day. (We smoothed our hair in the face of it).
But we weren’t scared of new things at that point, we were still innocent with pure hearts.
What Satan said was hey, you seem cool and I’ve been watching how everyone else kind of looks to you as the model of cool and how you have a hard time with commitment and significant others, so I was thinking you might want to join a club:
The Club of Not Feeling or Caring and Impure Hearts but Look Cooler Than Everyone Else Club.
We thought we might.
He made it sound so fancy.
So, Satan the Lord of Darkness made us sign a commitment to not feeling human emotions at the expense of our inbred coolness. So, we were like: “OK, what do we have to lose anyway, we are always trying to avoid feelings and stuff by eating too much or too little or buying shoes and obsessing on how to wear our hair in order to be neat and different.” But, really we just said, “OK.”
Because we want to be considered cool and like we aren’t over-thinking this shit.
And we signed.
The contract basically said, anyone who loves you from here on our will be seen as the enemy and Lo and Behold it motherfucking was.
After that our hearts were closed off. God and the Baby Salty Jesus were disturbed and kept sending us people who wanted to love us, but we only saw them as suspects in a larger scheme of our newfound paranoia of all things cute and adorable and we read into everything with the one thought: What can this person possibly want from me? Fear Fear Fear Fear Fear Fear Fear Fear Fear Fear Fear I’m Scared, Etc.
Only to be cured with copious amounts of anonymous sex and vast amounts of designer shoes for the girls or car stuff for the boys.
And that is how we became non-human and unable to love.
Please send $200 to Lisa Douglass at her PO Box
PO BOX 48342
Los Angeles, CA 90048
For this most important fact that is unchangeable and why we are all so fucked.
The end.

Lisa Douglass spent her summer watching a stalker through her window and wondered if she could go outside via the roof. Only, whenever she tried there were sheets of chocolate lining the stairs and it seemed so messy. Lisa became tired and unclean. She hoped the stalker was eating well and that he had a change of clothes, adult diapers and all. Lisa Douglass was trapped, and that meant eating copious amounts of Nutella and sleeping all day under her makeshift indoor rain device. Sometimes she had visitors and they got wet, but no one knows what she did with them after. Just that during the visitations they learned to talk in baby dinosaur language and how to fashion a trap for a medium sized human being.

Households Heavier by Dusty Neu

| The 22 Magazine

please look through the boxes

in the basement and keep

searching through all your breast

pockets          youd learned nothing

from digging         nothing from

being dug

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

youd gone on

another long trip with

worthless cassettes and great

coffee flashlights rolling

on the floor untied shoes

heaviest in deepest

forgetting imagine

the ground getting up and

walking around

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

between

backyard you               everything

you youd think so look at

multi me dancing so

toothless so youd say free

then coming home to a

bedroom that had just been

tossed through the air         just one

room in your interesting

home had been tossed through the

air while              youre breathing          you

were away at a voice

lesson or digging deep

pits in your neighbors yard

and now you think my

health has even left my

skeleton              you smile tight

>>>>>>>>>>>

>>>>>>>>>>>>

Dusty Neu was born and raised in California’s rural San Joaquin Valley, but has spent the last few years in San Francisco. He has been a featured reader at the Velvet Revolution, Brainwash, and the Living Room reading series and his work has been published in Transfer, Pear Noir!, and VOLT. He now lives and works in Rome where he is a regular contributor to Revista Input.

365 by Owen Lucas

| The 22 Magazine

The last days were difficult.

That central joist had been

Removed, and the big top

Fell, billowing, and he was

Not much further from us,

In truth, but transposed in

An uncertain way, become

A stranger. The words he

Spoke had an antic quality,

And his face moved beyond

Itself, as to the limit of its

Physical properties. The new

Medicine worked him down,

And he would cry bitterly,

As children do, without cause,

Unreasonable to himself,

And call to God and mother

Indiscriminately, thinking

Them perhaps to be one.

His brothers drank whiskey

And smoked and spat from

The porch and spoke softly,

Coming in to him and staring

For a few minutes twice a day.

The signal flame and its dark

Remnant. Fuel, and a caulk

Of wax petals, drooping out.

He wore a white nightshirt

Like a child’s, sweat it yellow.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

An instant rose to him, one

Morning. He drew upright and

His mouth opened and he

Shuddered and smiled and

Fell back to his pillow—

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

“Es ist ein Traum,

Ich will ihn weiter träumen.”

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Owen Lucas is a British writer living in Norwalk, Connecticut whose poems and translations have featured in journals and magazines on both sides of the Atlantic. His recent work can be read in Agave, Off the Coast, Burningword, Pacifica, Electric Windmill, Clarion, and RiverLit. In September, Mountain Tales Press will publish his first chapbook, “Afterworks”. For more, visit owenlucaspoems.com

The Inhabited World by Mohamed Chakmakchi

| The 22 Magazine
…………………………….
Ptolemy on the banks of Egypt’s Mediterranean shore, old drunkard,
weaning from the cosmos a guide for his treatise of relics.
This matter of the sciences, the natural philosophy that led him
to me, and conversely, me to you, to this, this inhabited world.
…………………………….
Each hour, those constellations blink and spurn knowledge,
I laugh out loud, hissing “thunder creaking forward into brains,”
like a splinter of thoughts, or an ice particle, in deference to
winter’s end, melting towards the center of reverie and vice.
…………………………….
Now on Ptolemy’s Alexandrian port where the ships led us to you,
And us to Syria there is a booth–Yes, that booth there!–where a boy selling
fruit hides in his pocket, buried beneath his linty smile, the truth.
That Eve was lost- the apple his now, inside it a worm for Ptolemy.
…………………………….
The stars only twinkle when the devil in his pocket smiles
Back his fanged hiss and hammer. The worm, spurned, swallows
The lint in the boys pocket and takes whole the form, the color,
Of Eve’s apple. “Why, the poor thing didn’t even know it was gone from her.”
…………………………….
So I speak in tongues and release the boy. It is my rotten apple now.
You keep the stars; their lives are not mine to hinder. But here
as Ptolemy wanders the barren fruitless ports of Roman Egypt,
Greek Alexandria sleeps a mid-day slumber, pockets for lint remain.
…………………………….
Tired and barren in our inhabited world. The devil has it!
…………………………….…………………………………………………….
Mohamed Chakmakchi is a writer of Iraqi origin who has lived in the US,
Europe, Iraq and the Arab Levante. He studied at NYU. When not raising
his cup with friends, he works on his novel, poetry, theatre and essays.
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Song For the Philopoets by Dan Hedges

| The 22 Magazine

The world has crowned you with the phrase

‘industrial unit’, and despite the economic

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

surround, you strive to grow into

the term ‘philopoet’. In this struggle to

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

be free, you repeat the words to yourself,

“don’t let the intellect bully the heart.”>>>>>>>>

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

It is clear that she has nurtured numbers,

and you have preferred imagination,

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

all this time, and will never regret it.

She will never appreciate that it takes bird

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

aesthetics to sanctify the light, though she

never noticed the light of her noticing to begin

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

with. It is, after all,

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

the case, that we are using words to absorb

the severe angles of our sacrosanct madness,

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

not to mention our nether-space visions that

shuffle into the haunting tense.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

We are using words as nether-space conduits through

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

which we cause to fortify the god metaphor with

linguistic spells of lucid somethingness.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

We are mischief in the Nietzscharium, and

she is the reason for our semantic word harvest,

in the first place.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

‘She’ is the world, and ‘you’ are you.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Suddenly, the conundrum breaks into it’s

mathematical parts, causing stare-downs

with the Fibonacci entry points into

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

all abstract semantic buzz.  Instead of

closure, it all ends with urgency.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Dan Hedges is the editor of  HUMANIMALZ Literary Journal. His writing appears in The Monarch Review, The Apeiron Review, and more than ninety other journals.  He writes out of a small white house in rural Quebec.  He teaches English near Mont-Tremblant, Quebec, Canada.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

 

Semantic Rhinestones by Dan Hedges.

| The 22 Magazine

crop
Dan Hedges has been teaching English in private and public schools for the past ten years.
He is the editor of HUMANIMALZ Literary Journal. His poetry is published in over one hundred
online and print journals. He has been nominated for awards, including the Pushcart Prize.
His poetry embraces the topics of synchronicity, singularity, animal spirits, perennial philosophy,
lucid dreaming, shamanic journeying, bio-energetics, transpersonal psychology, mysticism, the
so-called avant garde, and field-guide aesthetics.