just chugged four beers vol. 1

Table of contents

Mark Matchak…………...Routine of Spite

Cory Teese……………….8:17 AM

Maricela Guardado………The Way My Father Raised Me

James Chan………………Untitled

Cinthya Hernandez………Permanent Records

Ian Stokes………………..Reclining Nude; Party Animal

Jane Matchak…………….Slow Medium

Hank Brown……………...Stale

Cesar Coraizaca…………..Snowing

Joe Collier………………...Where Does The 25 Bus Take You In Your Town

Simon Crafts………………Quit

Jenna Littlejohn……………Michael Jackson; Susie Carmichael

Brooke Schifano…………...Disintegrations Of; Us, In Water

Paris Vasser………………...Cherry Avenue

Routine of spite by mark matchak

Michael Spite is a comedian who lives in an underground in-law unit with his girlfriend named
Warren. He will open his routine by delivering this information very quickly, only to pause and
say, “People say that isn’t Warren a man’s name.” and then he goes on to say, “So what, yeah and
I’ma Michael Spite.”
Sometimes in his routine he will refer to Warren as Warnie or Marnie. Marnie sells ecstasy and
heroin for a living, though neither of them use. Michael drinks and smokes like many stand up
comics. He has done performances where he will wait till the end of his set to finish an entire
drink and then gulp it down in one sip.
Michael claims, “Joking is always a solepcistic live act” and yet that “people are easily readable
when something’s humor is always in the back of your mind.”
After he prefaces something with “people say,” Michael extenuates in drawl, in a way that many
audience members have remarked, “renders the encounter with whoever is in question to be
inaudible.”
Sometimes Michael will say, “And America says to me.” Or after a series of difficult executions:
“and the world says to me.” Michael has closed with this line several times before, explaining it
must be drawn out from under the frantic cadence of his performances.
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“Horny’s Funeral” – For Stage
Michael starts in singsong, “Our world says to me, into the sounds of me hearing it say.”
and proceeds into a joke called “Horny’s Funeral” in which he drawls on what he hears:
(the Mourners attempt in speaking) “Life like Henry’s / to which no cathedral understands /
beguiles beyond the curtain / long past the end of this mass.” Michael explains in response that,
“Horny was fuckin’ cartoon guy and he got cartoon awe with / us / in here now.”
--------------------------------
Michael’s voice is froggy and in between, fading. He trembles a bit and then says a punch line.
Michael winces sometimes while building up the joke. Rarely does he yell though he’s raised the
microphone above his head before shouting through a layer of phlegm, “My people … Fuck the
free world.”
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“The Dice Waltz (Love, Love, … Love)” – For Stage
Michael opens in saying, “Love is non-linear and insane. Rock stars are probably good at sex but
cannot fathom the idea of being in love. There’s a chorus in response.” On which Michael
shrieks, “This band’s a members only club, / boys do we love our members.”
(Michael saunters around the stage.)
Often the joke ends here but at times making light of his relationship, Michael drawl on:
“Come to my palm Loved One / It won’t be long.” Michael in singsong, “When the lamp’s so
dim… / she sings.” Michael in drawl, “Two little crows with salt on their feet.”
“Here’s to love / or whatever goes out after the rain / perfectly dry without the insanity blanky.”
------------------------------------
Michael now rarely entertains joking about romantic perils in his set, but rather off stage has
remarked how ineffectually other comedians have turned being in love toward their own material.
Michael said once that it’s “easy to see, harder to articulate, and impossible to joke about,
‘showing’ articulation doesn’t count.” If someone who was not in effect a comedian were to
illustrate this feeling, Michael claimed it would, “come out as a greeting card, which has a shelf
life of around two days on the top of my refrigerator before encountering some disgusting mold.”
Michael has reflected on his act as an industry failure, remarking “I’m left with you here, feeling
martyr, and I’m not holding, fuck it, holding a nail to my own hand or anything … yeah Michael
Spite, all my life people told me hey Michael you’re a comedian you must see the little joys in
everything. Oh ho ho and no that’s Micky Spit. Micky Spit. Shit. Micky Spit, tells jokes, the guy,
a couple doors down at the club and really gets past the mic at you with ‘What comes after the
light at the end of the tunnel, for comedians I guess it’s a network deal.’ That’s a delightful little
Micky Spit joke. I’m Michael Spite, I can’t tell those jokes when I’m here saying, ‘Micky, which
way is the tunnel motherfucker?’ and he’s long gone into the light, wherein it’s okay for him
now, as to read the specifications of the mic’s build aloud and be out there still getting laughs.”
Michael has mentioned the fictional comedian Micky Spit in his routines several times,
positioning him as a sort of nemesis to his own act. Spit seems to represent comedy as a sort
unfulfilling prophetic venture. Unlike Michael, he has a larger, perhaps more diverse audience,
and attempts to level the same critique with more imagined support.
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“Micky” – For Stage*
Michael explains, “I will now present you with one changing or several different shit eating
grins.” (Michael goes on to move his lips in slight and makes several attempts to draw his eyes
downward past his nose in effort to look at his own mouth.) Michael then mocks, “When I get my
smile in the rightest / I am left with you who support me / But this smile, his kind of smiling, is
too straight. / But to all who take direction / ‘left or right’ / here’s to contingent, non-deceptive
career successes. / drawn out appearances, of everything human and circumstantial / because
when it reaches its own stillness / it cannot think.”
----------
* This joke appeared previously on a compilation album where it was titled “Micky selling out”.
Michael Spite is the sort of archetypical nutjob male stand up comedian. His delivery is often
apathetic and it sometimes gets compared to that of Stephen Wright if Wright spoke a bit quicker
and was less observational. Michael’s favorite Stephen Wright joke is “I got up out of the bed and
told her I’m going for a walk and she said how long will you be gone and I said the whole time.”
Like Wright, Michael’s jokes sometimes hang on to their emptiness after the audience laughs, or
more often than not, if the audience laughs.
Michael is cynical without the brashness of Bill Hicks and unstable like Maria Bamford except
more resilient. Some of his material tempts what he describes as “the hilarity of gestural
inflation.” He has been recently lying about his associations with other more famous comedians
and then trying to denigrate their reputations under false premises. In his last performance he
talked about getting lunch with Louis C.K. who was drunk the whole time they hung out. He said
once that the hyper-masculine comic Andrew Dice Clay came onto him in a bar.
“Musn’t Post” – For Stage
Michael’s most recent material involves summoning a friend to the stage. Prior to this Michael
will claim this friend secretly booked him for the first time that night at the club. Michael’s friend
is then brought up on stage and forced to stay up there for the rest of his routine.
Michael is keen on playing the role of out-of-towner.
Somewhat in line with lying about his ties to more famous comedians Michael will often open
under this pretense he’s been flown in from out of town to perform at an open mic or local
showcase. He will make sure to acknowledge how much previous clubs have paid him to perform
but commend the audience for being more inviting than audiences in places like Las Vegas or
New York.
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“Angels Talk” – For Recording
Michael explains, “It’s the early morning in Petrarch’s Studio: / A Comedian turns on /
A Voice Actor / and against monorailist practice, all voices turn higher / And with tediousness of
pitch effaces the handle on the spatula or baseball-bat-cigar-thing / So wacky.”
----------------- --------
Michael’s family is relatively well off and this allows him to live in multiple cities at a time. He
has a brother, Jean, who goes by the family last name of Pitts. Jean Pitts is several years younger
than Michael however; he has outshone him in terms of completion. Jean acts on Broadway,
which as one might expect, Michael resents. On the radio program “So What Chicago?” Michael
called Jean a “real life Corky St. Clair” though went on to commend his efforts in the theatre.
Jean on the other hand, has kept Michael out of his comments to the press, only once regarding
his material as “currency used by the madman for escaping to the outer limits of a frame / or
contested structure, queering against it’s own earthliness.” Michael has requested clubs use this
bit as a descriptor proceeded by “Jean Pitts – BROADWAY STAR”.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"One about the Gun” – For Stage
In an evaluation of what Michael has called the “theatre of deceit” inside of which the country
acts, Michael has taken to more performative material on touchy, media-popular subjects.
Michael’s a favorite joke to tell in this vein is a very trivial anecdote about how terrible his
friend’s car sounds. It’s a jab at the NRA but for Michael that’s not really the funny part. The
joke involves him making the sound of a semi-automatic being reloaded and then fired over and
over at the audience. He closes with the line “if everyone’s muffler sounded like this, maybe the
world would seem a lot safer.”
Michael wears a black leather blazer or a very tight black t-shirt tucked into black slacks when he
performs. One performance he wore a shirt with a comic from the strip “Life In Hell” on it. He
claims to be “oblivious” to the climate of contemporary stand up comedy and says he does not
own a TV. Michael has praised the comedian David Cross for requesting a club remove all of the
chairs in the room before a show thus forcing the audience to stand for the entire performance.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

8:17AM by Cory teese

write down your dreams

we’ll sort them out

the kettle hums

the gravel is thick

 stand over there— — —  

don’t go where it sinks

 the pines in the wind,

 these are scenes of time

 the kettle sings

they hold space

 clouds creep to our eyes.

 the sound of the fall

a black Labrador collides with my cheek

    (or did i kiss his snout?)

 our limbs linger in the bed

the subject of an exorcism;

the kettle screams.

the way my father raised me by maricela guardado

Whenever my father is sad,

he becomes a pobre campesino.

And I become

una pobre campesina

every time I am sad.

Father,

you copied yourself

in my meals

in my belly

in the fat that I find

everywhere,

            anywhere.

When I feel,

I feed myself,

writhing in pain,

and I just wish that —

just let me say — please —

oh

Apa,

I’m so sorry,

Te quiero.

But I can’t be

Your pobre campesina

for you

anymore.

untitled by james chan

permanent records by cinthya hernandez

I dont know if permanent records are real or the things I would find on mines or yours if the secrets you forgot you had or the ones ignored mattered because the past has a way of reminding you of the missing pieces and tracing your steps to where it all began to the first time I showed my pierced belly button to a girl because she had caramel eyes heavy with eyeliner and eyelashes that looked like a black widows feet her front teeth crashed into each other and her lips reminded me of a pomegranate sunset she was taller than me and when she held me I felt cradled with warmth because my house was white with green molding and broken windows she said she felt the same way about her home except that it was the washed out green carpet that felt too itchy on her skin that made her feel like she didnt belong we held each other longer and ditched class though I never got to see her apartment where she sat to read in the living room floor or the color of her bedroom walls I only dreamt about it just liked I dreamt of  swallowing her whole like a peeled grapefruit devouring every inch of her until her pulp wedged in between my teeth I dont remember the day she morphed into nothing I asked my mom if she would still love me if I liked girls she looked at the blue tile in the bathroom floor youre a dyke she asked I said no I just remember when I turned 16 I cried and thought about her even though I hadnt seen her for over 2 years these are the things no one can find in a manila folder with my name on it yet they feel more permanent than the time I cheated in mr langleys biology test

reclining nude & party animal by ian stokes

slow medium by jane matchak

There are cold nights where I walk for hours. I walk through Chinatown or to the ocean or anywhere else where the best parts are below the surface. I’m searching for places that never go to sleep, but if need be, can I sleep in your room? Have I told you that you are my favorite thing / you are the best ever / I could love you forever? I remember your mouth having the ghost of a smile, like a spirit I could never kill. I’m moving my finger along a valley on your back that I’m the first to explore, like there was no one before, I’ve never cared more.

I’ll be heaven’s first pariah, naked and unashamed

maybe we’ll be perfect and vapid and the world will take care of you

and I can finally go to sleep.

I haven’t always been this tired, my eyes are so heavy / they cradle purple moons underneath them, hanging soft and silent. My moons are quietly having an affair with the sun, so in theory, love is heliocentric. I’m spinning slender ellipses around you as Selene pulls her moon chariot through the sky. This is different from a honeymoon, there is no time for romance here, I’ll sleep until noon in this empty room, reaching for the parts of you that I cannot see

and maybe that’s perfect. You are a beautiful refraction, for example, the moonlight dancing on the ocean. We’ll be swallowed by the sea. Are you afraid of anything? There is nothing to fear, I think beneath the waves, the floor is made of linoleum

or tile

or electricity

or static.

stale by hank brown

Bread gets stale so fast

I wish I had more time to enjoy it

Sure, I could freeze it

Thaw it out some other time

But that saps it of its life

It becomes chewy, tough

Its youthful exuberance lost

As it sits frozen

Between a package of peas

And a tub of ice cream

Foods conditioned

For a cryogenic existence

snowing by cesar coraizaca

That winter it snowed more than usual. Only four or five feet overall, but it never snows much in New York City, so it was more than we were used to. It was snowing the night The Strokes were playing a show in a club down in Bowery and though neither one of us was fond of the snow, I knew that Sarah wouldn’t miss it for the world. As we walked the three blocks from her apartment to the 6 train on 110th, I tried to think of different ways to describe the snow but couldn’t come up with anything - back then I was always thinking of new words for the things I saw and jotting them down and adding them to the stories I was writing. I was in my last semester of an MFA at Hunter College and Sarah had just started her Masters in Engineering at NYU Polytech in Brooklyn.

Sarah was an intern for the MTA that year, helping to optimize their train schedules, and they’d given her a badge and a special MetroCard that allowed her to ride the subway and buses for free, which meant that sometimes I got to ride for free as well. She handed me her card and I went through the turnstile and she flashed her badge and smiled at the agent in the booth who buzzed her through the black metal gate. No questions asked. After nine months of dating her, I had learned to tell the difference between her real smiles and the facsimiles she sometimes gave to others. It was almost imperceptible, like the difference between pure white and the off-white shade of snow, but I could tell, and that knowledge made me love her even more.

The platform smelled damp as we walked along the faded yellow caution strip at its edge. I could feel the little bumps through my shoes. The train entered silently into the station, letting out a high screech only when it was forced to slow down and stop. We boarded in the first car because Sarah liked to stand near the forward-facing window and look out onto the tunnel ahead.

“You know we’d be the first to die if there’s an accident,” I said, tapping the cold glass with my thumb.

“At least we’d be the first to know,” she said and stuck out her tongue.

I didn’t know how that could possibly be a benefit.

She always had something interesting to tell about the subway, like how back when before MetroCard’s were used, thieves would put their mouths on the turnstile slots and suck out the tokens so eventually workers had to carry around chili powder and rub it on the holes in order to deter them. She didn’t know whether that had actually been successful or not. I always wrote down her anecdotes in hopes that in the future I might turn them into a story of some kind.

As we neared the 103rd St station, a white circle of light formed in the distance. I watched our reflections in the glass, and I got the sense that the people looking back were not really us but another couple on the outside of the train staring in. I looked at the reflected Sarah, translucent in the window, and noticed that she was frowning. I turned and looked at the Sarah next to me who was frowning as well.

“What is it?” I asked.

“I’m trying to remember a song,” she said. “A song my dad used to play in the car when I was a kid.”

I reached out and took her hand and she looked back out towards the tracks.

“What was it about?” I asked.

“I think it was about a train,” she said.

She told me the only words she remembered.

“Trouble something, trouble something,” she said, and hummed a tune that could have been anything really but I tried my best to decipher it without luck.

Sarah’s father was one of the firefighters who died in the World Trade Center in 2001. He had belonged to Ladder 105 in Brooklyn. She didn’t like to talk about it and even though I wanted to know more, to understand her, I didn’t push. She rarely mentioned him but on the anniversary of his death, when we had been dating almost three months, she invited me over to her apartment and put on a faded CD of Is This It in her room.

“This album saved my life,” she said.

Then she grabbed my hand and pulled me under the covers and we listened to it over and over without saying another word until we fell asleep. I had my arms around her the whole time, tightly, as if I were holding her together so she wouldn’t break apart or vanish, but also gently, as if her body might suddenly crack and shatter with too much pressure. It was the saddest and most beautiful moment I’ve ever had with anyone, and my first experience of having a person feel so close to me, but also so far away.

As we pulled into 96th St, people standing in the platform streamed by, their faces hidden underneath black skull caps and scarves. When the doors opened two people got off and a girl who I thought looked like Sarah entered. She glanced at us and went to sit at the other end of the car.

“Did you know the train operator has to point to a zebra-striped board on the platform at every stop?” Sarah said, smiling.

I wondered if she really knew how much I craved her stories.

“How come?” I said.

“It’s a precaution,” she said. “If they don’t see the board in front of them, it means the train isn’t all the way in the station. They’re required to point to it before opening the doors to make sure they don’t accidentally open them when the train isn’t all the way in and then have some idiot fall out.”

I made a mental note to write it down in my notebook when I got home. Then I closed my eyes and wondered about her mystery song as I listened to the rhythmic sound of the train picking up speed. It sounded like the heartbeat of someone running.

A few years after that night, as I was riding an Amtrak in Southern California, as I hummed that same tune in my seat, as I had grown accustomed to do, a voice from the window seat next to me said, "Casey Jones.”

I turned and looked at the woman who had spoken.

“I’m sorry?” I said.

“Casey Jones,” she said. “The song you were humming. It’s that Grateful Dead song, right?”

“I don’t know.”

“Yea, about the conductor who died trying to stop his train from crashing into another. You didn’t know that?”

“No.”

“That’s a weird song to hum on a train.”

"I didn’t know,” I said. “All I knew was, trouble something, trouble something,”

“Trouble ahead, trouble behind,” she said, and smiled.

Sarah and I exited the subway on Bleecker and walked west to Bowery St and then south towards the club, stopping by to look at where CBGB was supposed to be. We had been too young to go to any shows there before it shut down and when we stopped by that night, the space had been turned into a John Varvatos store. It made me sad to think that all of that history, in a way, had vanished, and I imagined the ghosts of rock and roll bands appearing there night after night and instead of finding a stage in which to play their instruments, they’d just end up confusedly trying on the clothes instead.

"Damn,” I said, and then Sarah bent down and sat on the ground, right in the middle of the sidewalk.

“Are you okay?” I said, but she didn’t answer so I sat down next to her on the snow.

“You ever listen to The Velvet Underground?” she said, tapping her foot.

“Yea, sometimes.”

“Motherfucking Lou Reed,“ she said, and traced something in the snow with the tip of her shoe. "Sometimes I wish I’d been born in a different decade you know, like in the 70’s or something.”

The snow kept falling and against the night sky it resembled static on a television. I looked at Sarah and though I couldn’t see much more than her black coat, I could tell she was shivering. I wanted to hold her hand but she was wearing some oven mitt gloves so I shoved my hands in my pockets instead. Suddenly I felt the urge to hear another one of her anecdotes about the subway system but I didn’t say anything.

“Can I ask you for a favor?” she said, after a while.

“Of course.”

“Do you think I could go to the show by myself?”

“What?”

“I think I’d like to be at the show by myself.”

“I don’t understand. You want me to go home?”

“No. You can go too, but could we go separately?”

“Why didn’t you ask me this earlier?”

“I’m sorry.“

After a moment I said, "Okay. If that’s what you want, sure.”

Then she leaned in and kissed me. My lips were numb and I couldn’t taste her.

“I love you,” she said, and smiled.

And when she smiled is when I finally understood something. Something like: you don’t notice how much you’ve really aged unless you run into someone you haven’t seen in a long time and only then realize that if that person has changed so much, then so have you.

Then she got up and disappeared into the snow.

where does the 25 bus take you in your town by joe collier

Where does the 25 bus take you in your town

if you have 1

how many buses do you have

in my town I can get the 25 or the 26 all the way to the university

they go different ways

(by my old house

or my old girlfriends house)

but they both go to the university

then they wait reading papers and smoking cigarettes and then they turn around and then they come back to the city

that’s where I live

how many buses do you have

I have so many and I only use 2 (the 25 and the 26)

if you don’t have any I will give you some of the ones I dont need

you can have the 501 I never go to 501 town

I would even give you the 25 or the 26 but not both

I will speak to the bus driver and say hello friend you are needed elsewhere can you please go to [your town]

they would like to go someplace often and they cant afford a car

but all the 501 townspeople looked at me without saying anything

waiting for me to realise they couldnt afford cars either or they couldnt drive them anymore cos their hands got too cold

and they wanted to go back to 501 town cos it was warm there and they never heard of your town

if you do have a 25 bus or a 38 bus or a 7 bus where do they take you to

if you have a 3-digit number bus (like 100 etc) do you actually have that many  buses (minimum 100)

thats so many directions you must live in a big city

how many do you take

is your life complicated

how do they decide what number is on what bus do they sorta say

this feels like a 53 kinda road and other boss bus driver says I think it’s more like 765 and they flip a coin

like when they named words how confusing that conversation must have been who needs it

us, in water & disintegrations of by brooke schifano

Us, In Water

 Remember when we burnt the book? that summer we

            spent all day running in the sand and in the ocean, later

                                    we’d find pieces of sea plant in our suits

            and our hair

winged creature

butterfly/bat

            human being

in the water, the kelp looked like us

            or like brown hair on blue, in shadow

                        in the morning we drank tea and grape juice, walked

                                    over the train trestle where you always said those things

lagoons and inlets on the edges. the spaces are lakes

in addition to us, there was little but you

            the book was about discovery and about growing

                        older and we burnt it by the house next door where no one lived

                                    put out the fire and forgot. all the pages and the dust they made

                                                                                                salt water streaks in our hair

see: dead cockroach                 spaceman                     two couples lying down

the trestle above the lagoon with the sea gulls

            and the people at night sleeping in trees and in

                        carts. we’d walk across with our feet split even, waiting

                                    for land or

                                                            air, water

here are their legs and arms                  heads thrown back                  doing a dance

see: two girls dancing               pelvic bone                  angry pigs w/ teeth

 we’d find pieces of it

in our suits and hair

in one: woman w/ woman

little girl and sheep dog

shadow man’s head

house                           on fire

this is the man

with the funny face, tell me

                        it looks like

                                                us, like

a piece of snakeskin

spaceman with helmet

 we

turned red        sun-pinked legs             arms   

on the grass until our skin cracked                   our eyes burnt, til

clouds covered the bright spot and           

                                                                                    us

Disintegrations of

I’m tiled green, yellow wallpapered

            trace the lines with the tip

                        of a finger        feel

dust composed of skin cells and           us

he says he’d cast a line to the earth                              

all the sand that holds in those central valley               trees

I’m the panels on the roof that catch the sun

                                                            and make it

                                                                                                electric

            he wants to be an astronaut

                        says the word moon like something

                                                                    closer                              

                                                            sides and a body and bits

                                                            of human in it. In me

when you drove away

                                                                                                I ran after

I’m

                        my mother’s and grand

mother’s and yours

                                    dust calloused, trees

in rows and rows (then)

            I put on the boots and we flooded the earth

                                    he says, once he gets there, he’ll cast us

                                                a line and pull up

                                                            the big fish

it’s made of the

            skin on my heels, I

            wish you could smell

                        what the dust does in June, how

                                                                        the birds land on the wires

                                                                        you said you were afraid

of the water

of the earth     

where the sand burs

dig      

                        here, where the big fish

                                                                        swim   

quit by simon crafts

I'm never going to quit smoking

like I'm never going to stop being poor

I need a reason to go outside

to feel simultaneously worse and better

than everything going on out there

I need a thing to do with my hands

Sometimes I pretend

I am a tourist

On this same sidewalk everyday

all my friend's teeth worsen

today I notice the trees in the plaza

were these just planted?

So it's a funny way to pass the time:

to rub up on things

for the friction

for the heat

for their resistance

and it is juvenile

it is not romantic

but it is true

that I am very tired

of talk about quitting.

when we are not actually talking about quitting

we are talking about our teeth

we are talking about regret

ever having started and later

ever having quit

when we could be talking about anything

So I do not donate to the fight to the end of cancer

at Walgreens I'm too broke and besides

they're not looking for a cure

so what am I buying?

A fight?

they don't sell cigarettes at Walgreens

And it doesn't feel bad to admit

I'm not such a good person

neither are you

we don't have to be

it doesn't have to be such a good life

to enjoy it

michael jackson & susie carmichael by jenna littlejohn

Michael Jackson

 Dear Billie Jean,

Is it jimone, or jam on, or c’mon, or shamone

it doesn’t matter

it still makes me recognize my pride

still doesn’t change the fact that you have

two first names . . ...

but if the kid

is mine

then I will love him

Please tell junior

he can visit me on the moon

when he learns to walk away

from this strange

loop

Susie Carmichael

was a friend to

several

jewish

babies

cherry avenue by paris vasser

There was a swing set on the corner of Cherry Avenue where I would sit and stare into the face of God at night. Tonight the air was pure from the rain that washed away the thick layer of smog that painted the sky and I made sure to suck in all the air I could as I sat on the wet blue swing.  The water seeped through my skirt and touched my thighs making those tiny bumps poke through my skin, chilling my body.  I stared at the black mass in front me and began to pump my legs back and forth to try and get as high over the building as I could. As I gained speed the breeze picked up my skirt and chapped my lips and with every kick of my legs I was over the church and under it. The tip of the cross rose just above my feet before I fell back down to the gravel and scraped my boots along the rocks, only to swing my self in the face of Him again.  This was the highlight, when I could see the roof of St. Paul illuminated by the whiteness of the swelling moon and how small it looked when I was closer to the stars.

             There were three black bees in the puddle beneath my boots.  They looked like a large black mass, huddling together in a clump.  I could see their bloated bodies floating in the water and the thought of the wasted honey inside of their stomachs made my eyes sting.  One of the bees floated away from the others, grazing the edges of the puddle with its now useless wings that twitched in attempt to fly. 

            I looked to see the church doors open and started to walk over.   It’s midnight and my mother still hadn’t noticed I was gone.  I made my way down the dark house of God and a faint smell of smoke from the candles crossed my nose.  As I got closer to the alter, that’s when I saw her. She was spread with her legs open on the stairs like she was making snow angels on the red carpet.  I remember the girl from the corner store on Brunswick St. She would stand in front of it every day with a lollipop in between her lips wearing a fur coat that looked like the skin of a brown bear had been sewn together to keep her warm, while she waited.  Her skirts were always two sizes too small, and the same pair of dazzling green heels strapped around her ankles made the skin fold over the rhinestone straps. One time I saw her inside the market buying gum and I saw a gold rose necklace around her neck and I told her it was so pretty I wanted to rip it off her.  She laughed and told me her son gave it to her and that she never took it off, not even to shower.  Sometimes she stood outside for hours, before a car pulled up and she grabbed her bag and stuck the cherry lollipop in her mouth and walked knees slightly bent to keep from falling over in her heels into the awaiting car. 

            The moon shining through the stained glass windows lighted up the Church.  The Virgin Mary’s face was illuminated by the light and it made red, blue and yellow prisms along the walls of the church, making it look like a kaleidoscope held by God’s hands. 

            “Are you okay?” I asked the body already knowing she wouldn’t answer.  I knelt down by her head.   The smell of her baby powder perfume, and the glitter on her cheeks made me think of the people who would miss her.  How beautiful she looked lying there in a plain white cotton dress that I’d never seen her wear before; her neck was bare and the lights from the window painted her cold body.   My stomach began to cramp and I felt the waves sloshing around in my stomach and the tears of the whore began to seep out of my eyes.   By her left hand there was a compact mirror that had naked cherubs painted on the top.  I stuck it in my pocket and sat on the stairs, twirling a piece of Mary’s soft brown hair, and called the police. 

            The officers prattled on about how they weren’t surprised at Mary Sinclair’s death. Everybody in town knew her; she was our friendly neighborhood dirty secret, reminding the godly folk that people of this town still had sin no matter how many times they’ve been wiped down with the blood of Jesus.  They’d still keep a hooker from going out of business.   The cops asked me questions like why I was there and if I touched the body in any way.  I told them I was there to pray and I didn’t touch the body, but they would find a pile of fresh throw up somewhere around her hair.  The big-bellied officer gave me a ride home and told me that they tried calling my mother, but no one answered. 

            The next morning the death of Mary had spread around town and when I walked into the kitchen I found my mother sitting at the table in her silk robe, talking on the phone.

            “Yesinia found the body!” she yelled into the receiver, pride dripping from her lips.  The headline on the news was ‘Murder on Cherry.”  My mother was cackling, so I walked over to the TV and turned up the volume.  They showed the church with caution tape all around it and a mob of suburban moms and dads with crossed arms and smug faces. 

            “The cops have been calling all morning-“ my mother covered the end of the receiver with her pale manicured hand and turned to look at me for the first time since I entered the room,

            “Turn that off!” She said, hitting her hand on the table. I glanced over my shoulder to see her face pinched, exposing the deep wrinkles in her forehead.

            “I want to know who did it.” 

            “Nobody knows. That girl was in and out of so many cars I don’t know where the police are gunna start.”  She was back to talking on the phone and giggled at whatever the person said.  I grabbed a red apple from the bowl on the table before turning off the TV.  I walked away and my mother yelled,

            “Take your meds before you leave the house!”  I heard her sigh under her breathe and explain to the phone how her daughter was on three different medications each of which was more expensive than one her car payments. 

             I stuck my headphones in and grabbed the white bottle that sat on top of the stool right by the front door.  I popped two baby blue pills and put the bottle in my bag before slamming the door behind me.  As I walked, I took the mirror from my pocket and played with the latch, opening and closing it.  My mind kept filling with images of Mary’s body spread open at the alter.  Her white dress looked like the baptism dress my mother dolled me up in when I was seven.  I remember coming home from my sprinkling and my mother yelling for me to take off my dress before playing.  I ran to my dad and he winked and told me his princess could wear it for just a little while longer.  I never felt more beautiful than I did in that white dress and I remember running around the living room pretending I was an angel. 

              I ended up at the church and I noticed how different it looked from last night.  Now it was covered in buzzing voices gossiping about the defilement of their Lord.  News vans and reporters scattered the green grass trying to get information from the cops.  I stood next to an old woman who I recognized as the deacon’s wife.  Her name was Ms. Anna and she always wobbled around with her cane that had a dove’s head carved into the top.  She would poke girls with it and say things like, ‘“Hell is real and it burns, baby girl, and the devil is waitin’ to grab you any chance he get.” Her face was brown and caked in thick makeup that sunk into the cracks on her skin.  Her lips were pulled back into a satisfied smile and she said to a plump woman next to her, 

            “We just can’t question the Will of the Father.” I snorted and looked at me, scanning my body and stopping at my chest; Ms. Anna let out a chortle before saying,

            “I don’t know how your mother lets you out like that.” Before turning her attention back to the scene in front of St. Paul’s.    I walked over to the swing set and opened the mirror.  I sat with my back towards the church and lifted the mirror to see brown skin like my father had and a mess of bottle red hair.  Through the mirror I saw the neighbor boy, Andrew, come up behind me and he plopped himself down in the swing next to mine, shaking the entire set. He was four years older than me, but had the face of someone in his thirties.  A long face, with rough black stubble on his chin, his skin was a soft white that I often kept my hand from touching.   Andrew dug his feet into the wood chips and said,

            “Did you hear she had a kid” He looked up from the ground, his black hair falling into his eyes and let out half a laugh. Andrew’s eyes were a dark blue that always looked tired, with wrinkles in the corners of his eyes.  I told him he was too young to have wrinkles, and he said that age was never a concern of his.  When my mother saw him in church she would tell him how she could see the light of the Holy Spirit in his eyes and each time she said this Andrew’s eyes would darken slightly so I don’t think my mother could see. His knuckles would turn white as he clenched his fists behind his back, and his cheeks would turn red before smiling a smile that never reached his eyes and said, “That’s because I ate Him.”  This made everyone laugh and my mother laughed the loudest. 

             I told him I didn’t know she had a son as I thumbed the mirror and noticed my fingers were beginning to feel the familiar numb sensation, making it harder to open and close the latch.  Andrew stood up from the swing and reached out his hand telling me to come over to his house.  I reached for his hand noticing dots on the back of it that looked like teeth marks. He was staring at me the way a cat stares at a mouse, waiting for it to make the first move.  I put the compact in my pocket and put my hand in his.

            Andrew and I sat on his hardwood floor in his bedroom with bags of hot Cheetos surrounding us.  He took his pet snake, Eddie, from the tank, wrapped it around his forearm, and told me to touch it.   I stroked the snake’s skin as he watched and felt the roughness of its body and felt how cold it was on my fingers. I noticed Andrews fingers, stained from the cheetos and they looked like Mary’s.  Her fingers were long like Andrew’s and when I found her body her nails were stained a deep red as if she had been finger painting, the way I used to do in Sunday school.  I remember dipping my fingers in the paint and imagined Mary, in her white dress doing the same, dipping her dead hands into a can of paint and drawing a heart or an angel, making sure not to drip. 

              Andrew stopped me by taking my hand and moving it the other direction, saying that it would feel smoother if I rubbed it the other way.  This reminded me of when I was at my job in the mall selling lotions and beauty creams from the kiosk next to the pretzel stand. I stood there, shoving lotion samples on to people who complained about the flakiness of their skin.  I liked when they swatted my hands away like the bees.  I remember Mary coming to try a sample of lotion and I poured the rose scent cream into my hands and massaged it into her skin.  She giggled and told me that roses were her favorite flowers because they still smelled sweet even after they died. I could almost smell the baby powder again when Andrew asked me what I was thinking about.  I told him I had never touched a snake before.

            “He’s not so scary is he?” he asked before looking down at my hands and let out a small laugh, showing his teeth and saying how he loved how the Cheetos left a stain even when his hands were washed.

            We sat on his floor for hours, watching Eddie slide around the room, not saying anything to each other, only listening to sounds of our breath escaping from our chests.  The room was dark now; the only light was a dull yellow from the streetlights outside.  Andrew was sitting so close I could feel his breath on my skin.  His eyes caught he light from outside and he whispered in my ear, “She was beautiful.” I looked at his face and the light made his skin look like yellow wax and his eyes were empty.  I wondered if he was even really there and I put my hand on his face, hoping it would melt away and I would be back in my room with no one noticing I was there, but my fingers were met with his warm skin and my body went cold.   There was a crunching noise in the room and I was able to take my eyes away from his.  Eddie was in one of the bags on the floor and I stood up and walked over to the window, watching the lights from my house across the street.  As I stared past my reflection in the window, I saw my mother sitting on the couch with a magazine, not thinking of me, not thinking of anything at all.   Andrew stood behind me, his reflection in the window next to mine, and he let his stained fingers rest around my neck.  I stared at his face in the window until all I could see was my own. 

            On my way home from Andrew’s I stopped back at the swing set.   I threw my bag down and my dad’s old Woody Allen matchbook with the words, “I was thinking about Christ,” printed on the front and the white pill bottle fell onto the wood chips.  I put the matchbook into my pocket and picked up the container and saw something glistening in the wood chips.  I picked up a golden rose necklace and felt the cold metal in my hands, thinking of Mary, dead in the church, and of Mary in the cars of men who wore suits and drank from the communion wine every Sunday, and Mary, naked, covered only with the shame of forgotten wives.   I stared at the necklace and my stained red fingertips and my eyes began to sting.  

              I opened the bottle with the white label that had Zoloft printed in bold black letters.  The first time I saw these I was six and sitting in my dad’s office playing with the blue-eyed Barbie dolls my mother bought me for my birthday. I remember ripping the heads off of the dolls and delicately placing their headless bodies in the purple plastic convertible and pushing them around the room.  With one hard push the car went flying across the room and rammed into my dad’s desk sending pens and papers and the white pill bottle to the ground. I couldn’t pronounce the name them so I called them Daddy’s blue candy.   I only got to hold it for a few seconds before my father took it from my small hands, patted me on the head, and told me he hoped I would be a better driver when I was older.

            As I sat on the swing, boots digging into the wood chips, I popped open the cap and I swallowed.  I swallowed the eyeballs that rolled around in my mother’s eyes when I talked, I swallowed the ink from the pen that Doctor Yu used to prescribe and fix me, I swallowed the thin wafers and the thick blood of Jesus, I swallowed the tears and the mucus building up in the back of my throat after the boy next door zipped up his pants and said I should go.  I swallowed the baby blue candy like my daddy did and I swung through the air until my hands turned white and red from the cold and I couldn’t hold on to the rusted chains anymore.

            I don’t know how I made it home.  All I remember is being shaken awake by sweaty hands and of my mother. The church was on fire. My mother dragged me out of bed and back to the church.  The building was crumbling fast and the same mob that had been there earlier that day was now gazing into the flames.  I reached for my mother’s hand, but she was gone.

             I left the crowd and sat down on the swings, looking at the way the fire crept up behind the stained glass window and highlighted the cheekbones of the Virgin Mary and the somber color in her lips. I thumbed the golden chain around my neck and as I began to sway softly with the breeze and the muffled shouts of the firefighters a quiet giggle slipped past my lips when I saw that Mary had never looked so alive.

author bios

Hank Brown graduated from San Francisco State University in 2015 with a degree in Creative Writing. Perpetually trapped within the spiraling cavern of his own mind, Hank strives to one day not overthink things too much and learn how to make decisions in less than ten minutes. In his poetry, Hank enjoys finding meaning in the mundane and tends to stray away from flowery language like "veranda" and "trellis”.

James Chan lives and learns in San Francisco. He keeps a diary, takes photos and does not truly hate anything. He can be found around.

Joe Collier came out of his mom possibly late or maybe at the right time in England, but liked American poetry better. So he went there, where this zine is from and made friends with its mom and pop. That’s why he’s in here. They call it nepotism but he isn’t their nephew, more like a creepy British cousin.

César Coraizaca grew up in Ecuador and New York City. He has a B.A. in Creative Writing from SFSU and has been published in SFSU's Cipactli and Transfer Magazine.

Simon Crafts is a poet and bookseller who lives and works and writes in San Francisco. He is a graduate of San Francisco State University and you can find him on the internet.

Maricela Guardado is an actress, playwright, and writer. Her latest play This is How the Pacheco Brothers Make Their Mama’s Chicken Soup will be appearing in Occidental College’s New Play Festival. She lives in a small cottage in Los Angeles.

When Cinthya Hernandez isn't busy working she likes to draw, write, and play music.

Jenna Littlejohn writes poetry and comedy. She works/reads at Bird & Beckett Books and Records (in Glen Park/SF) and encourages everyone to go to the stores' weekly jazz shows.  She is also trying to cut out smoking and dairy from her daily routine. It's probably not gonna work out. 

Jane Matchak studies English at SF State, she gets inspiration from female authors who write about pain and religion. Her only tattoo is a drawing of her own golden retriever. Some say she bowls better than she writes. 

Marc Matchak is an artist currently living in San Francisco, California. Recent past work has been shown through Pamela’s in Kula, HI and the Time Based Arts Festival in Portland. Writing has been published through The Volta, GaussPDF, Split/Fountain, Muscle Beach, and Amur-Initiatives. Marc is interested in comedy and love as interruptions or abstractions of the world around us. 

Brooke Schifano lives in a yellow house in San Francisco. She is the recipient of the Ann Fields Poetry Prize.

Erin Stokes is from San Diego, California. Her art is very personal and depicts a lot of her life.

Cory Teese has been able to legally chug beer for 10 months and lives in San Francisco. He doesn't think San Francisco is sunny enough. He writes and releases music under the moniker Flowers On The Fence and will be releasing a LP this year. Cory loves sparkling water and tacos.

Paris Vasser is a 23-year-old student from Los Angeles California. She is in her last year studying Creative Writing at SFSU. Paris is working with other artists on short films that show case her interest in horror and the dark arts. Other than writing, Paris enjoys free wine tasting, idolizing Joyce Carol Oates, and watching every Nicolas Cage movie ever made. In the future she aspires to become a psychological horror movie film writer full time and continue to work with the other artists in her community.