Enemies of the South by Holly Pester and Emma Bennett

November 20, 2013November 20, 2013 | The 22 Magazine

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Households Heavier by Dusty Neu

August 22, 2013 | 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

August 20, 2013 | 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

August 19, 2013August 19, 2013 | 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.

VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV

Song For the Philopoets by Dan Hedges

July 26, 2013July 26, 2013 | 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.

April 21, 2013July 17, 2013 | The 22 Magazine

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.

One Night Stand: A Biblical Epic on Mastication

January 21, 2013January 21, 2013 | The 22 Magazine

By David Moody

Lord, forgive all my foxiness. Remember us humans, us cruising
to nightclubs and not braking to dead stop, us stepping—
no hand rail—in black pumps and boot-cuts up to the slut box
then forgetting to dance. Us keeping secrets. Our leaving no tip.
Sometimes in a good fuck I speak carpentry—spackle and jack
tape, Jesus rib, caulk. I awoke this morning naked as a jay bird. Buzzed,
wearing glasses, I held on to no one but my body pillow, Sacagawea,
keeping her warm. Almost a godsend, God, almost.

I confess I want guidance. Guide me to the country of Charity,
that hard-knuckled woman, her deep ankle boots. Can she have red
hair or is black a must? I imagine her hips as I often do hips—chisels
and axes that hack at a crowd thralled to some DJ.
This woman shapes through body’s rhythm her own thrumming
god. Fox beast, incisors, torso warped thing. Its own twisted shape a way
of confessing. To choke without a throat, slowly, on praise.

From what is this thing we have gnawed happiness? How
has it tasted all of our lives? God of Smudged Chins. God of
Half-Virgins. We wedge fingernails into the gaps between backboard screws
and corner beams. With a wonderful quickness we know bed as world.
God, what I’m saying is that I suspect heaven
was planned with a right hand drawing blueprints on napkins,
the left hand still-buried in some idle fur.

Forgive me but nightclubs are like your mouth, like my bedroom
with its ceiling too low. The off-kilter whir of fan blades replace
any belief in collar-starch morals. Forgive the room’s stucco.
Forgive the drunk nothings this tile floor revibes. No,
nothing’s wrong with yesterday’s meats. Sometimes, though, I am
little more than gaps found between words—good and then
morning. A click-click that lingers. I cannot tell if its high heels or teeth.
If I am flea, Lord, and not a fox, I insist one thing: you must bite, hard.

David Antonio Moody writes out of Tallahassee where he pursues a PhD in poetics at FSU. Former poetry editor for SawPalm and Juked, David is production editor of Cortland Review and Southeast Review. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Sweet, Eleven Eleven and Spillway.