p o e t r y




east main and 4th
by m.a. littler

standing next to me-
on e. main and 4th-
an ancient child-
with amber-colored eyes-
beneath the crimson evening sky-
the child speaks to me-
of sacred skid row sanctuaries-
of tattoo parlour churches-
and of safe havens-
filled with spirits-
the child speaks of disciples-
dressed in seersucker suits-
and alligator boots-
of virgins in tight dresses-
with solitary tattooed tears-
and of the holy men-
in railroad boots-
standing at the corner-
spreading the gospel-
for the honest world to hear.
alone-
lucifer stands below-
the prophesied neon arrow-
that leads the way to heaven-
around here everyone knows-
the tracks are skid marks-
ending in the alleys-
that remind each and everyone-
that hell is never far away.

—m.a. littler. 'east main and 4th' is a selection from 'Wasteland,' Littler's book of underground poetry currently available only in Europe.






Ink Well
by Colin Momeyer

I sit at the kitchen table, listless
my discipline is falling asleep
my head resting on an open palm
tension blows through the open window
bricks on my chest and sand in my shoes
my lips jerk and stretch
a half smile rises... fades
falling asleep, I feel like I won’t get rest
I leaf through the opened mail
Apollo’s bored, he said in his letter
distraction, how mellifluous she tempts
I turn on the tv and recline
a squid swims behind glass, behind glass
on channel 32

—Colin Momeyer lives somewhere in North America. This is his second appearance on spread.






The Perfection of Loneliness
by Luke Buckham

when I was very young, made of nothing but water,
waking up at three in the morning
and staring at the shivering orange digits of the digital alarm clock
was like being sheltered in the right hand of God,
and the air itself was a basket lined with cloth.
now I know all the memories that surge
of making love in hotel rooms in unnamed towns
while jet planes flew so close to the roof
that flecks of yellowed paint stuck to my back
and fell off like angry leaves when I went
to clean the bathroom mirror of its years
with a distant hand.
I wake up next to the scream of a girl
who generously includes me in her nightmares
and drive through the blonde twilight
to buy murderous condoms and chinese tea
in supermarkets that throb like the bellies of lizards
timid faces slaughtered by fluorescence
drifting like featureless rings of smoke
over the scuffed white tiles.
when I see the beautiful wrinkles
around the lunar eyes of human faces
when I see the shattered geometry of their smiles
as they line up in the noise of rain on endless airplane metal,
I to be in their midst like a smell of perfume
I want to sleep next to a coral reef
and wake up stretching limbs without gravity
caressed by the passing of electric eels
I am confronted by senseless paperwork
and wisecracking politicians with faces
made of burning newspaper
bloody thumbprints covering lost addresses
and windows that open into snow and silent birds
and I shudder when I see eternity flickering
behind the exhausted midnight face of the cashier.
I have sat across desks from senseless vampires
who would like to staple the sunset to a spreadsheet
and watched lines of jet exhaust streak
through the gentle rhythms of a girl's red hair.
I slept on park benches at the foot of great cities
pushed past orgasm by twinkling blue lights
that transcended their architecture
and woke up to write scattershot psalms
on birch bark with an aching fingernail.
I wake up to find myself alone in a silent parking lot
shaving my cold face in a strip mall's window
while the young faces at parties that have long ended
whirl around me like confetti, laughing at jokes that I've forgotten.
I am haunted by false expressions of old friends,
by the noise of useless flags whipping at the wind.
the landlord's face like a whirlwind of thumbtacks
is blurred by perfect music from unseen bells
and my bed shines like a landscape of white beach sand
while her black eyes get lost in the coffee.
I am as happy as a toddler as long as there is music playing,
as long as I can sense the way the horizon crawls past everything
surrounded by the smell of growing moss.
I am a comedian trapped in the midst of winter,
a joker going toward on a tandem bicycle
while legislative branches sway in the ice wind above my head
with a pair of lace purple underwear
wrapped around my fertile headache.
I have laughed at the funerals of overripe relatives,
spilling punch into shallow graves
and been glad that those who died in car crashes
will never have to pay their phone bill or brush their teeth again.
not to mention the wars that streak by
like stripteasers hurriedly gathering their clothes
pretending to be prepared for the next greedy guest.
there are high cliff walls of television static
gleaming on mountainsides
that I have seen from the windows of a greyhound bus
and when the captain's voice ricochets through the intercom
I am kissing the back of some girl's neck
while time waits, shivering
perched on her marble shoulderblades like a nervous mouse,
and the other passengers let their countenances freeze shut
in the merciless air conditioning.
when I visit busstop restaurant bathrooms and prepare to go out
and greet my friends again
at a table that shines like a flattened sun
covered with weaponry
my face in the ancient mirror is a waterfall
and the lipstick on my cheek burns like a fresh tattoo.
my memory puts its nerveless rooster feet
into the motionless metallic dust of an airport floor,
the payphones laugh as canned sitcom audiences
and the runway glides with distant families that never arrive.
it is the dawning of a new era
and I have spent centuries searching for my carkeys
and a place to enter traffic
while the yellow lights blur like stars too close for observing
and the sunspots make all our radios flicker
and the red lights land on solitary faces
and pinpoint them at the center of gravity itself
pedestrians going always into the unknown
while strangers make love behind second floor windows
and scatter their impatient energy on the bald heads of bums
in the pulsating alleyways, searching for the remnants of other people's joy,
searching for the scrap of metal that would make all the engines pause
searching for an oblivion that lasts under streetlights
that have been mapped by midget astronomers
with their lenses turned backward.
look at the way the fire ant crawls silent
on the long thin minute hand of the clock,
look at you lover's tongue darting in and out of her mouth like a comma,
look at the exclamation points in your parent's glistening eyes
as they retreat from your strange life,
their footsteps punctuated with millions of alien hip-hop rhythms
as your bones creak with urgent growing on a dance club floor
always completely alone
always completely surrounded.
now the joys and the horrors will line up like drunks at infinite barstools,
like heads in a barber's mirror,
like rows of convenience store customers
who are patient only because they are so tired.
in this placid fog that settles on vacant parking lots
where hands clasp together like mating reptiles
in the place where time stutters before the next dawn
and the noise of the rushing air
is like an acoustic guitar falling over and gasping from its belly
we can hear too many frigid, painted fingers
pressing too many incomprehensible buttons,
and our kisses will have to press through the corners of the brain
just to shut out the hollow sounds of unfamiliar commerce.
and I have no complaint
there is always a sacred madman standing
on shingles that slant disguised as digital ocean waves
playing a lonely saxophone for me
whose throat that only I can hear
starves every star for oxygen
as his eyelashes are knocked off by the ecstatic violence of the moon.
there is always an angel of death with his friendly neon hand on my shoulder
as I shake the scent of sex out of my denim pants,
waiting patiently to see myself climb through the numb arms
of a roadside pine tree like a de-evolving missing link,
to call to God to erase the strains of terrible pop music
from the pages of my classical symphony
that gathers in its notes like sudden ferns
at my doorway every morning
and dies in the afternoon,
cradling the notes
like a meteorite crater
filled with cigarette ashes.
I have no complaint
for the ex-girlfriends and paralyzed telemarketers that pound
the womb of my telephone
or the president that winks like an octopus
from the eye of channel zero.
I have no complaint
for the robotic newscaster
who tells me that the milky way is bent out of shape
or the or the elderly woman who groped my legs
at one in the morning in an empty bus stop.
if we are to live on scraps, let us gather them.
I have no complaint
there is always a young girl with eyes brighter than quarters
her hands, gentle and dangerous spiders,
crawling the keys of a dusty, frail piano
in the wide-open garage
of my memory.








from Deadly Pollen
by Stephen Oliver

If streets had cobblestones
blood would flow in tatters - torn
flags to a revolution lost. Streets
smoothly ease to drains. The cut deep,
and blood wakes from its blackness,
crushed as berries in the runnels
of a wagon, oozes its oil from
the body¹s casket - til flesh becomes
porcelain, perfect surface for moon,
ice, the glass-edged sky to play upon;
in silences deep as birch in the
bayoneting dark - and leaves finally
resemble paper money piled up
under the turbined lamplight.
…

A Public Works draughtsman
spent thirty years designing the City
Sewerage Reticulation System
he eventually hoped to escape through -
a masterpiece! A prairie dog would
have been proud of it. Complex of
accented runs, angles, drops, sluices,
pumps, ditches, endless unbowed
archways, treatment ponds breaking into
sunlight - the architects of Athens
would have been proud of it.
Only on paper - not one trowel lifted!
miles and miles and miles of it.

—Stephen Oliver is the author of six major collections of poetry. His recent collection, Night of Warehouses: Poems 1978-2000, covers five volumes of poems and spans two decades. A poetry chapbook, DEADLY POLLEN, is to be published by Word Riot Press in 2003. Recent work taken for Alba, Catalyser Journal, Comet, Snow Monkey, Failbetter, San Francisco Salvo, Kitchen Sink, Pemmican, Get Underground, Comrades, Can We Have Our Ball Back? Illuminations, Omega, Orbis, Peshekee River Poetry, Prague TV, storySouth, etc. Forthcoming: a CD of poems titled, KING HIT Selected Readings— written and read by Stephen Oliver to original music composed by Matt Ottley, for international release. Stephen is a transtasman poet and writer who lives in Sydney. http://people.smartchat.net.au/~sao/



















p r o s e




[fiction]
Magic Mountain
by Asim Rizki


1.
Above a town nestled in a dry valley lived a hermit. His hut stood on a hill at the end of a dirt track. He was mad. Yet the mayor of the county considered him to be wise. He was sometimes employed as a special advisor to the Council. His pronouncements would be unintelligible to many. However, others were in awe of his words and some of these people were influential in local life.

Two ethnic groups populated the area. Their differences were more historical than rooted in present day life. But it was true to say that the Brancos outnumbered and held more important positions than the Vonnes. The mayor was naturally a Branco. His deputy was a Vonne and there were a few more in various posts in the local government. As a rule, though, Vonne were mostly farmers who worked the land around the valley.

Now, the hermit was a Vonne. His own had little time for him, not knowing whether he was lunatic or genius and not caring. However, once the Council began to pay him with a weekly supply of food and sundries, he attracted others’ attention. No one said anything, but he was eating better than the poor farmers and their families, especially after a bad harvest.
This payment was dropped off at his dwelling by children of senior officials. Though the daughter of the deputy mayor had done her chore the week before, the girl who should have gone this time was pretending to be ill, so she had to go again. It was a half hour walk up a steep path on a hot afternoon. By the time she got to the hut she was in a bad mood.

She hammered on the door, then pushed it open. The hermit was sitting in a corner in the darkness. He started shouting. The language he used was colourful, to say the least. The deputy mayor’s daughter turned and ran back down the hill. She was not really shocked or offended but that was not how she was going to play the situation.

She reached home out of breath. Her mother was scandalised when told what had happened. She insisted that her husband do something. The deputy mayor frowned. He did not like confrontation.

However, he called his boss. The mayor was of the opinion that no one should speak to a girl the way the hermit had done, though he did not know the exact words used. Neither did the deputy mayor nor his wife. They agreed to visit the hermit and insist that he apologise.

The Vonne were spiritual people. Their head adviser on these matters was called the mufti. He had been quietly envious of the hermit’s standing with the mayor. He got wind of the coming rebuke and called the deputy mayor to say that he should be present too.

The next day the three of them set off for the hut on the top of the hill. The mayor explained to its owner the purpose of their visit. The hermit swore at him. This reaction was not wholly unexpected. The crazy man’s position as an adviser and the regular donation of supplies would have to be terminated.

The mayor and his deputy turned to leave. The mufti, however, stayed to comment that the hermit was clearly in need of spiritual guidance and should take more interest in his community’s activities in this area. Their host then insulted an ancient spiritualist whose teachings the Vonne followed.

For a moment the mufti was paralysed in shock. Then he stormed out and marched down the slope. That evening he called a special meeting of his junior spiritual advisors. He explained that they were not to get overly worried, but a public figure had attacked their historical leader. They became very grave.

The mufti suggested that a dignified response would be for a delegation of them to speak to the hermit who was clearly in need of guidance. They would not insist on an apology, just that he attend a few enlightenment sessions.

The next day ten men arrived at the hut. Its owner ignored them and pottered about the plants in his front garden. The younger ones in the group felt embarrassed and awkward as the mufti explained what he wanted and the hermit hummed to himself as if they were not there.

For a moment the spiritual leader lost his composure, and snapped at the crazy man. This attracted his attention. He said quietly that he was not interested in what they had to offer him. The mufti countered that he had a duty to his people. The hermit then aimed an insult at the race they were all members of. This comment highlighted the lower social rank of the Vonne.

The group went back down the hill in silence. Each returned to his family and recounted their story. Ten varying versions of what happened and what was said went round the community of farmers. The Vonne were unified in their shock and horror.

Action was demanded. Normally demur people were becoming tense and aggressive. The mufti advised calm. However, a mob assembled to go up to the hut. None of these people had been members of the previous group. There was an even split now between men and women, old and young. Naturally, the mayor and other government officials heard about what was going on. Members of the local security force were sent to accompany the latest visitors to the hermit.

He would not answer his door. The mob was sure he was inside. They debated about whether or not to break in. The security officers suggested that they return home, not for the first time. Suddenly a creaking sound came from the front of the hut. Everyone fell silent and watched.

A man with a scraggly white beard stepped out. Most of the people had never seen the hermit before. Strange monosyllabic grunts were now being addressed to them. They looked around at each other. It was more than likely he was mocking them.

Then a woman stepped forward and proclaimed that Vonne were good people but they could not be pushed around. Others were arousing themselves and shouting at the hermit. Those that were neutral sensed it was time they took sides and moved to surround the crazy man so that the mob could not get to him. He started speaking in a high-pitched voice. No one understood what he was saying but everyone presumed it was insults.

The security officers realised that they would have to escort the hermit away. He did not want to budge. The chief argued with him. People were pushing forward. A rod was raised. A young man went down. A woman screamed.

For a moment everyone stood still. Then the original perpetrator of the incident was grabbed and bundled down the hill.

The injured man was conscious, with a dripping gash on the side of his head. The mob saw that he was all right then ran after the hermit and his protectors.


2.
The mayor wanted a full inquiry into the assault. This was a peaceful community. Violent incidents and mass demonstrations did not happen here. But now a lot of people were angry. They did not want the hermit to be protected. Most of the officials did not want to protect him. He insulted any of them who came within hearing range, including the mayor again.

He was not in prison, far from it. He was occupying the visiting dignitary’s suite in the government hotel. An armed guard was at the door. He was not permitted to leave.

The mufti and deputy mayor had been denounced as weak and ineffective. The Vonne had found spokespeople previously unknown to the wider community. They were not hard workers, but they always found reasons to complain about how unfair life was. Now, for the first time, people were listening to them.

It was decided that there should be a permanent vigil outside the government hotel. On the first afternoon some 30 people stood under the window of the hermit’s room. There was no sign of him. By the evening 10 were left. Two stalwarts kept their position through the night.

Early the next morning a window creaked open and a rock was thrown at the two remaining boys. They could not be sure it had come from where the hermit was staying, but who else would have done such a thing? This was the general feeling when more Vonne arrived later.

A representative of the mayor came to tell them that the security officer who had caused the injury outside the hut had been identified. He had been expelled from the force and the victim was to receive a substantial payment in compensation.

They did not care. They wanted the hermit to be punished. A law existed among the spiritual advisors that no Vonne should ever say anything abusive about their ancient teachers. This was mostly told to children. No one remembered any instance of it actually being invoked. Now, however, it was being constantly quoted along with the punishment. This was a bare back whipping of ten lashes.

News of the affair had reached the neighbouring county and its mayor. She already knew about the hermit and had been impressed by his advice to the Council. A safe home in another town was offered to him. He considered and agreed.

The Vonne heard about the offer and were incensed. In the middle of the night a government car arrived at the hotel. A handful of protestors watched. A circle of security officers came out, with the mad man in the middle.

Suddenly he broke through his protectors and ran towards the Vonne group. They were astonished as he stopped in front of them. One had a long sturdy stick. The hermit turned to him and made some odd barking noises. The weapon swished through the air, making sweet contact on the side of his face. He fell.

The officers ran after the Vonne. The crazy man lay in the dust, a puddle of blood around his head, life fleeing from his eyes.


3.
The mayor and his deputy both resigned. None of the Vonne who had been present at the attack on the hermit would admit which one dealt the blow. So, they were all freed. They were welcomed back by their people as heroes.

The hermit was paralysed and unable to speak. He had his own room in the government hospital of the neighbouring county. He could write. The mayor often read the words he put to paper. She was always impressed by his wisdom and insight.


—Asim Rizki lives in London. He has had fiction published in Richmond Review, 3AM Magazine and Word Riot. Go check his website, The Sound at www.asimrizki.com. It's worth the trip.