p o e t r y




Two Poems
by Luke Buckham


1. This is why when I was fifteen years old I took over the world

girl said to boy
you're so gentle you're almost not there
boy said to girl
you're so rough that you give me a scare
girl said to boy
I want you to be more of a man
boy said to girl
I don't want to be much more like them
girl said to boy
you don't have to be cruel to be strong
boy said to girl
the world always says that you're wrong
girl said to boy
do you trust my love less than their hate
boy said to girl
hide me here in your hair and we'll wait
girl said to boy
I can't shield you they're big as the sea
boy said to girl


2. Recovery

For a moment my eyes were not part of a body
the lids moved open like garage doors onto
a violently sunny day that tore the roads to pieces
the light streamed through the window
an unbearable assault of absurd beauty
and I remembered my body thrown
through the windshield just before my spirit
the glass that opened like a restrained flower
into flecks of healthy blood and diamond-glint
as the hours passed like wolves across my body
on the tar where the doe I avoided hitting stared
like the mute eye of god from the side of the road
that I rose through to see the startling beauty of the wreckage
from a gentle hook that hung my vision in the sky
and my spirit winking through my skin
in the midst of hooved footseps
was like a leaping of frogs
that moved with hand-clapping sounds to avoid
a whole parade of sensual tires undistinguished from my muscles

when I woke again in the birth of sirens
that made their blue and red cascades across my flesh
I felt like a mushroom prouting limbless from the fragrant tar
the odor of my blood was a sweet perfume of sleep
and the pain my bones had made for me was distant
like a tinkling of spoons stirring in cups in other countries

I saw from the stretcher
a white plane carried by exhausted human angels
where I had no more voice to complain
that the engine that had almost taken my life
was a powerless hulk like a crumpled metallic napkin
tossed to the steaming ground by a godlike hand
tilting the telephone pole it had hit
making the wires spray their sparks to the flattened grass
detaching phones that would've called each other to advertise my death.
a shimmering, grey hole was punched in the atmosphere of summer
where my body had made a smeared angel
in the recent past of earth's fragrant surface
metallic flakes of blood decorating the long green blades
and the dandelions sprayed with viscera

all these surroundings became vivid in my injuries
my blood released brought out the color of the trees
and I saw that they were towering green flowers
and that they would someday be carved in new ways
by my own departed hand
already I could feel the colors of the gut-splattered ferns
reaching into my flesh to take my eager spirit into their brief growth

and the scenery was pushed away by slamming doors
through corridors where the fluorescent lights
fell like milk on the ache of my body
taking on improperly the weight of universe
beneath oblivious eyes that hooked me to eyeless machines
a blind world ignoring the whirling of itself
I stared through rain-smashed windows
over the pebble-covered shining roofs like fallen skies
stars put out by buckets of water and lets to cool
where the angels howled like white wolves for my spirit

heaven and hell were broken toys on the distant grasses
a mouth opened in the flesh of the earth that would never shut
I thought of all the babies that had been born
into all their screaming nerves in this vast glass house
and my body was alive with their perfect cries

I felt the nurses filing terrible information in my body
knowledge of the growth of flesh outside its natural food
knowledge of the spirit detached from the earth where it feeds
so I left my newly mechanized body
to coast over the vast gridworks of steaming tar
making their own mechanical way through the tall and angry flowers of the trees
paths that never change except to fracture

footless and without any hair on my astral body
I walked with the curious deer
who were, with their fur-surrounded
infinitely tranquil eyes,
sniffing at the blood my body had left behind

one turned her animal head in total innocence
toward my misplaced spirit standing like a flame on the bleeding road
sniffed suspiciously at the afterlife in the air and spoke
through the pinched flower of her mouth in the voice of a nurse:
"the patient is losing consciousness" is what she incorrectly said
for I had grown so large as to contain in my infirmity
not only the innocent marble mirror of the deer's eyes
but also the hungry flocks of birds making their v-shaped parades
to flatten the curve of the sky above my torched spirit
where my numb hands below their wings
had grasped the hair of the earth
not expecting anyone to re-connect
their painted nerves with the rest of my flesh

again and again I woke in hospital beds expecting to be a spirit
flickering against the sail of the sheets in heavenly breezes
but the machines quacked and seemed to plug themselves
back in to save my body every time I longed to wake up
somewhere to the right or to the left of all the airplanes
that churn the air above earth and all its fragile heavens
and soon I found that my theory of heaven was preposterous.
there was a great work to be done in the skies
that would call for my hands when it was ready
I knew that nothing, whether human or animal, had ever ended
but the future of our bodies was to be relieved of their strange duty to time
as the violent spirit soared to become one
in all its uncontrollable colors
both with its maker and its destroyer
a hole had opened in the sky and I did not wish to go any further.
my father waited there behind something
more vivid than a cloud that I did not care to name
and I called him a coward
for throwing himself through the sky like a bag of groceries
deliberately through the curved glinting glass walls
of a windshield and this world's atmosphere so long ago
to abruptly interrupt his journey and become
merely a rainy statue in my mind
a pair of eyeglasses filled with lying photographs

machines beeped and threw the air sideways away from my ears
a family member was thrown outside their voice in sobs
somewhere beside the realized ocean of my body
and I knew that when I woke up I would be a broken god
because I had gone through the same glass as my father
and survived the surgeon's blade thereafter
the cut that had been too much for him
and had left scarred instead a grin on me

I'd been cast through the bodies of deer and birds
been conscious painfully of the demanding beauty
that they missed with their linear instincts
in the places that they roam in mistaken peace
my human eyes causing an eruption through their feathers
toward a world where their bodies would never stop
a world outside the earthly weather

and when I awoke for the final time
my body finally stable enough to hold my consciousness
I saw I had no need of any heaven.
through the ceiling tiles and their electric branches
I felt the moon healing itself.
my father was a mask, my body was a glistening snake
beneath or above the world, I knew not which
and the tubes that held me no longer coursed with any fluid

it was so late that the occasional car passed like a soft bomb
in my renewed and sharpened consciousness
the blades of my brain were starved for the smog-laced air of the world
I felt the country and the city call for my bones
in simultaneous invitations that made
the leaves and windows quiver in my skin
to draw me outward not through the glass this time
or to fall stories to the rhythm of dead footsteps far below
but to carve my own walk in a glowing path
to cut the unnecessary centuries to ribbons by my sides
and live outside the crude predestination of the eternal plan

I walked outside through cities that had been bombed and rebuilt
around my cocoon of flesh while I slept, the feeding tubes
dropped from their purposeful puncture wounds in my body
and the bandages surfacing in unexpected places
to let out the days of death
and show the air that it was asleep
until it met the mind that festered inside my battered frame
and I and the city shimmered like flesh rebuilt from
and carved free from foggy ghosts

a man needs to be murdered and reborn to see the way I saw
a crowd of unlikely flowers in their soundless choir
just weeks after winter behind a black cast-iron fence
like a shield that hell had set up in front of their barely-dancing bodies

I rubbed my bandaged hand against the fence
let out the blood again and held my palm
like a blasphemous sun above the petals
let the red liquid drip like ancient wine
and wondered how old the blood must be inside the highway of my veins
boiling through the centuries and resisted by my ancestors
the veins clamoring for new life to bleed into all the earth

a squirrel was bunching up his cheeks on the grass
and I saw that God has let down her guard to let such loveliness
and innocence enter mortal bodies
a tear seemed to be squeezed from my whole skull
and dripped into the miracle of the flower
beneath my hand the salty tears sloshed back and forth
inside its fragile goblet       and the miracle of its dark parts
and I wondered if I had had to be killed
to see these things the way they would look
to an infant eye with adult brain

the morning came on newspapers
made meaningless in my living coma
I could not help but laugh at the eyes in cafes interested in their pages
there was no human quality inhuman
my hate before I crashed had been an illusion
but I must have met gods
different from the ones they worshipped
when I made my bandaged pilgrimage
through the unmasked world

I saw through a shimmering restaurant window
that held askew the galaxy's reflection
a girl with lips that burst inside my body
went like a tilted dream through the ringing door
and sat across the dead wood
from the poise of her unscarred humanity
letting my soul flash light prismed by pain into her posture
and as she lowered the lie that was the newspaper
I could feel everything that had been killed
and everything that lived gathering their forces
in the air around me       I should not have been able to speak in the human language
during such intensity       but my mouth flowered to meet her
in the stagnant air       and my eyes fluttered like ethereal pigeons
her face shattered the small pocket of peace in that place
in fear at my bandages
and I saw that there was a blood-streaked yellow flower
a daffodil clenched past its health in my raw hand
that was a flower in itself from the best part of hell
lying on the table       obvious in its desire to climb her like an immortal spider
because those who come back from death are often greedy for beauty.

should I have apologized to her for the obviousness
of the terrible force that had met my body?
I wondered. There are suns bursting
like roman candles in other solar systems
and we sit here with carefully groomed expressions
drinking a terrible liquid that everyone calls coffee.
"what should we do with your beauty and my bandages?"
I asked her and she never answered.
I should have waited until my pain was less obvious than the sun
but feared that when I healed into a set of every-day clothes
she would no longer shine such unkept light into my spirit.

the hospital gown made me look like a wounded bird
my soul had been fully opened to all of earth's glories
and as her startled eyes met mine
that would never be startled again
by any action or inaction of man
I knew that if I could translate my fragile journey
into the minds of every person on earth
that there would be no more war between us.
then I looked into the glimmer of the restaurant's glass interior
and saw the most ridiculous Christ
that either of us would ever imagine.

—Luke Buckham is a spreadhead poetry regular.






Untitled
by Natalie Sliskovic

there's always the editing after the jungle bullshit/imperialist cowboys/midwestern/midlands/ flatlands/shepherd/man-made lakes/our savage love/push it/ Britain/America/America/America/ revolution/where's the revolution/what revolution/French/Russian/ American/Spanish/what revolution/my unwritten/ unwitnessed/ revolution/your revolution of security/safety erected on toxic ground/buy a house/pay with your life/shelter/educate your children/expend your blood nursing capitalism at your breast/honey, i want you/ sooo bad/take this/sign this/believe this/ infected/programmed/socially encoded/the savage/ rousseau, where are you/mind/body/ body/ mind/woman, you're holding on too tight/passos/passos pablo passos picasso passos neruda/ chile/revolution/ freedom/don't take it/responsibility/ accountability/liability/salmon-eating normality informing the masses/opt for madness/we'll show you the way/think/talk/do/ sex/sex/sex/breathe breathe breathe/and write/without deadlines/outside any jurisdiction/cause they all suck you dry/language is freedom/did chomsky say that/presentations/presenting/our empty heads on silver platters/am i mis-remembering/re-remembering language and freedom/was that/yes it was/mit/ how's the weather, noam/are you listening/is language freedom/yes yes yes/if you want to/look look/i won't fake it like the other girls/free/untouched/ unfettered/ undefined and undefining/ spilling onto the page in a bloody mess/hysterical lunacy/my gyrating womb/bleeding a violent page/lavender eyes/perfumed body/i'm writing his words/writing his language/always wanting/to rewrite/re-encode the word/the womb/speaking me into subjectivity/you've got me/tethered and chained/but you’re not the only one/with enormous hands and bleeding feet/stretching beyond the canvas of our bodies/georgia o'keefe-esque/pseudo-chagall/ warmed-over/in imitation of/a woman never writes in nakedness/ manly scars linger/i love men/women/men/i would never/be a man/I'm the man/long-term/ games/play/as soon as a rule/introduced/the fun ends/play becomes game/ xeno's arrow hits you in the ass/the shit we go through/i feel no guilt in taking/the worker/the serf/the laborer/life/ labourious/waking/labourious/i don't want to have to worry about pots and pans/a kept woman since thirteen/a perpetual fantasy/to manipulate/i thought i would never see/i didn't even know/ except/perhaps/shhhhh/write this/fictionality/a flower in her hair/poets embalmed in sedimental story/hypocrisy carries a gun/deep down/deep down/i'm waking/to overthrow your fabled classics/a mary queen/i'll desecrate my own tomb/ leave prometheus unbound/scorch him with the heavenly fire/predatory heels/don't believe in anything/be there or be square/slide on the vibe/the speeding/ electricity feels sooo good/to watch and listen/play the voyeur/detached/mind and body/when word fondles the page/detract the mind/the critical eye/bathe in language/ dance wildly up and down the logos/laugh at the convolutions of the mythos/masturbate in the echo of the omnipotent voice/blind the implied reader/ bind the hands of the implied author/resurrect authorial intent/get her drunk and play chess with her metaphors/rape the written word with a dirty tongue/let the juice run down your chin/beautiful boys will lick you/ raw/

—Natalie Sliskovic, in her own words: You want a bio...but i don't know what to say...talking about myself as if i didn't know every dirty little secret makes me uncomfortable...it seems false...so the facts...i'm 28...i just spent the last year living in split, croatia...and now i'm in toronto, canada...earlier tonight i split my upper lip playing my trumpet...which is unfortunate...because my upper lip is perfect... thanks for your time...and the site...






Nine Exodus Poems
by Doug Tanoury


1. The Moses Soliloquy

And it began in the wilderness
With a voice calling out to me in the night
Calling me by name from a bramble
For that is all that grows there
It was as if it was consumed in flame
For it was lighting the darkness

And I have come to know the voice
As the Lord I Am who charged me
And laid this mission on me
To lead the tribes of his people Israel
But I was afraid and told him so
To let him find another but he would not

I am changed somehow by this task
I no longer am the man I once was
But somehow I am uplifted
By the tasks the Lord has asked
As if I have climbed a lofty mountain
And have left the normal world

I am transformed by what I do
And no longer watch the flocks
In the night and no longer do
The bidding of Pharaoh and his court and
For all the wonders the Lord has done
This change is the most miraculous

For what I Am has asked I have done
When he said extend your hand
My hand was extended and
When he said raise your rod
It was raised and Pharaoh and his
Magicians were confounded

As I now am confounded by
The workings of my God
Who rains meat for our pots
And grows bread for our table
And pours water from the dry
Stone of the desert at my command.


2. August Rain

I remember an August once
When I could talk to him
But didn't and each word unspoken
Rested like a brick on the silence
That lay thick as a layer of mortar
And grew into hardness between us

These days I think of him
Mostly when rain falls in gray sheets
With a soft hiss as droplets
Paint the pavement with color
Of an overcast sky and collects
On the road in pools in brought to full boil

In summer storms with the
Sound of thunder on my skin
I recall in the air's smell and
The wind cool in my hair
An August once when rain fell
In mortar gray hardness on our silence


3. Molten Calf

This is the god of lawlessness
A god of wantonness
And animal appetites
It is a god of body and hunger
Of longing and wanting

That is my comfort
In these wild places and my banner
And standard in the battles
For I have grown weary and restless
In the shadow of this mountain

A god of singing and drinking
Of eating and dancing
A god of lewdness and wild gestures
Of revelry and release
In this desert place

And awaken my heart to the
Worship of the whim and
The adoration of the urge
In a wasteland so barren
In a world empty of God


4. Lazy Geometry

Lying prone in the backyard hammock,
In the combined shadows of the maple and the ash
I study the invisible movement of the sun toward zenith
And the afternoon light that pushes back the shade,
And when the breeze blows, just so, in the trees
I occasionally feel the sunlight on my face,
Fulgurant and fleeting,
A brightness penetrating just for a moment
The sleepy darkness of closed eyelids.

I have observed for long hours,
The serrated edges of each maple leaf,
And the teardrop foliage of the ash,
The boughs and branches rising,
Like arms of the devout uplifted in worship
They reach to touch the soft circumference
Of a summer sky,
Found only in the lazy geometry
Of a July afternoon.


5. Blue & Purple & Scarlet Stuff

And I know this for I have seen the fabric
On the shoulders of kings and their young sons
Cut and stitched and fit and formed
Crafted by the fingers of old women
With poor eyes that must hold the garment
To their noses to see their work

It is the colors of indigo and lapis
Topaz and garnet for I have seen the fabric
In the tunics of Phoenician princes
And in the capes of the captains of the Hittite hoards
The blues of royal hue in linen finely woven
Entwined and twisted

And in the embroidered pomegranates
That rest ripe on the hems of the garments
Of Aaron and his priests as they tend the Arc
Just after sunset under a sky that covers the desert
Like a cloak made with blue and purple
And scarlet stuff


6. The Tomb of Queen Amonherkhepsef

The darkness, I have found,
Comes in regular cycles
Like the inundations of the Nile
That floods the land of Egypt,
And bring a certain richness in their wake
That assures abundant harvests.

Yes, every seven years it comes,
Like the Locust that blacken the sky and
Devour everything that grows,
Both the green and the golden,
The wheat in the fields and the
Grain in the barns.

So bring me the last scribe who knows
The picture writing of the past,
To scribble out my history
In a stiff script of hieroglyphs,
A tale of timeless loss and the tedium
Of endless death and rebirth.

Wrap me tightly in these words,
Paint my lips, stylize my eyes
With charcoal lines, and brush brown irises
On closed eyelids
So I may remain awake forever
In the hereafter.

Dress me in fine linens like a bride
To meet Anubis,
The dog-faced god of death
And let the years pass like shifting sands
I will wait like Isis for Osiris, in a tomb
Until darkness becomes light.


7. Autumn in August

The unthinkable came to me
One night,
I felt her gone as a dream vanishes
Upon rising and gathers up its memory
In its wake.
Her touch is summer wind
In Autumn trees,
A passing out of season,
Like leaves in August
Turning brown and crimson
And dropping off
On to still green lawns.
A thing out of step,
An order confused,
A long pattern of seasons
Broken and gone.

"She is not dead. . .
    But only sleeping."
I say out loud,
Certain that
Autumn cannot arrive in August,
As I make loud radio static
And breakers on the beach
By walking alone through dead leaves
That bury the grass gone dormant
In days of dark clouds
That sit on the horizon
Like cats on a window sill
In the zenith of twilight.


8. A Slave's Life

They say go and I go
They say do this and I do it
They say gather and I gather
They say sow and I sow
For I am but a common slave and
They a cruel and capricious master

Who cares nothing if I live or die
For my daughters are like sheep and goats
And my sons like camels and oxen
All my children in the fields
Are bent by this burden
And bear the rod of the taskmaster

And at night by the fires
Amid the smoke from the smoldering pots
I pray to the Lord who is my freedom
And my deliverance
Whose reach is greater than the Nile
And whose bounty flows more freely


9. Poem For My Father

My father was the simple man,
Who wanted things to fit his plan.
Not highly lettered this I know,
He never wrote a word although
He held strong views on many things
That dealt with cabbages and kings.

You see, my father felt that all good verse
In rhyme and meter was immersed,
That poems be written and constructed
With long tradition unobstructed,
And built with blocks called foot or feet
With meter pounding out its beat.

And so he wanted poems to rhyme
With meter locked in perfect time,
And all my verse not to his taste
Was ridiculed right to my face,
And they were set aside unread
Like much between us left unsaid.

And so this poem so long in making
With all the rules it is now breaking,
The lines have taken years to craft,
A life long journey toward final draft,
And all the words now come so free
And sing in tethered melody.

So Father here's a poem you'd read,
One penned by your poetic seed.
It winks, it giggles and it grins.
It two steps, tangos and it spins,
And as every word now tows the meter,
I hope rhyme wiggles past St. Peter.

—Doug Tanoury is primarily a poet of the Internet with the majority of his work never leaving electronic form. His verse can be read at electronic magazines and journals across the world. Collections of poetry by Doug Tanoury can be found at Funky Dog Publishing and Athens Avenue. This and other ebook collections of poetry by Doug Tanoury can be read and downloaded at http://home.comcast.net/~dtanoury1/Tanoury.html. Doug grew up in Detroit, Michigan and still lives in the area. He credits his 7th grade poetry anthology from Sister Debra's English class, Reflections On A Gift Of Watermelon Pickle And Other Modern Verse, (Stephen Dunning, Edward Lueders and Hugh Smith, (c) 1966 by Scott Foresman & Company) as exerting the greatest influence on his work. He still keeps a copy of it at his writing desk.






Two Poems
by Irene Koronas


1. just because he's standing don't mean he's dancing at night

soft hard notes behind spanish
spoken here, workers wait
for a boss to open the restaurant
in this wealthy city, they sip coffee
in the same place as...

streaks of red on black hair
orange makeup and a fushia
witch's stroll, she cackles
a call for a restroom, the same
tap tapping foot judging
rain. she blushes in true
tradition. he scowls perfectly flat,
sagging hippie stands on
his feet and it don't mean he can
play piano or kneel to pick up the debris
of autumn swept into his guitar

skeletons hang on so many windows

mother teresa for sainthood and a leaflet
left on a low table by a local astrologer

who is feeding the emptiness?
where are the grasshoppers, echo bridge,
public restrooms?

the persistance of childhood in a world
strawed-up, waving a white flag


2. coming to understand the father of dada

without places to turn,
too small to maneuver,
the seats swivel

wide petal from a juniper
stuck between her hands
in fold position, the good girl
communicates about 'those'
people inside, who open the top
of their heads and always allow
edible nights to feast on styrofoam,
briefcases full of shopping bags
full of titles full of lucid documents,
digital music. a sentence ends.

trying to fill this bag, exactly. here are
a few words to flatten the bottom, to make room;
evaluate, atoms, ruse, jargon, abstract, cliches
and to end or begin to fill bags, competence. hours
capture this converstation.

"i had a dream last night," she tells her mate
"no you didn't," he says

the end of a stack of newspapers
stacks of fruit juice bottles, bagels,
where is the integration of what is known,
even hugo ball, the father of dada, 'took
flight out of time.' a jar of tips. a basket of limes.

her hands in movement, he continues to pontificate. who
are they. they sit by a window sipping gourmet coffee. social
democracy, snippets of their being in a democratic
process, indian gestalt, cultural cretans, a bicycle decorated
with empty cans. no paper shopping bags here, only cloth sneakers.

the adulteress covers her head with a proverbial
container. she is not by a pond. it is not raining. a typewriter
clicks. a woman who works at the thrift store walks by
every morning at the same stride. an accent of bleach. we lose
control over impressions. no place to turn around. we bag it

—Irene Koranas is a US-based multimedia artist who writes poetry and essays after hours of earning money doing something else. Her essay "The distance of difference" appears on spread vii (coil).



















p r o s e




[fiction]
The Dearth of the Author
by Henri d'Mescan and Davis Schneiderman


Police sirens speed down the streets of Post-America, and through the myriad apertures that have long ago replaced windows-through keyholes and cameras, through the slit of the stapler, the ski mask, the piano wire, through a man's fingers splayed forcefully over the eyes-flashing red or blue or white strobes riding efficiently in the air. The sirens are disconnected, ghostly, without chassis below. This is peephole ontology. Everything moves so fast that it can jump through the playback machine like the Pullman car sliding effortlessly from its outmoded groove. Sloe-gin can be administered for relief of cold sores and implementation of the viral record. Sloe-motion, solely for effect.

That is, into a burst of regular speed.

Through the slats of tomorrow's newspaper and virtual inkpad clipped with the absent scissors and censored by dark marker, through the piles of fast-food excrement and leftover sweat from the anus of basketball stars, through the splice of the dumpster roof against its casing, through the walls of the alley mashed by ubiquitous astigmatisms into the illusion of ovals-I can see the sirens and its coterie of flash, cleaving the grim partition of the night as it slides over the streets, intent upon the corner of a chafing mouth rotten with sores, or a thin slice of jaundiced skin slowly healing like a crack in the ice from a sharp skate, on the surface or the lip of a patriotic national face.

Through the perspective of an alley, Davis Schneiderman's penis is shrinking everyday. In time, it will disappear into the space between his legs. In Post-America he serves time for sins committed by the interlocking appendages and orifices now filled-in by his so-called neat-and-tidies. No one believes his protestations. Asymptotic differences are eliminated with the alchemical formula of a bathtub philosopher's stone. Do not believe him when he proclaims your innocence. Partisans tear the clothing from the body of the factory and observatory squeaking backward to Quark generation points only 800 million years on the brink of the big-bang precipice. The next step is to tattoo the patterns formed by the charges igniting tiny receptor nodes in the bandoleer onto the skin in a pain-ritual reminiscent of the calculation continuum of the Etruscan calendar, a 10,000-year cycle only now reaching a pre-apocalyptic fruition. Yes, a fantastic moment, seeing yourself in the author's place. It starts in the gut, as described, but life is nothing before expulsion through the mouth, having smothered the tongue and teeth, covering everything in a veneer of broken promises and industrial sludge, just as today, in Post-America, it is difficult to substantiate the most enormous historical events let alone the tiniest death throes of a no-good collaborator. The idea of the past is an amalgamation of the present perceptive apparatus and the projected need of the future. Alternative pasts fail to promote alternative futures so long as the present apparatus remains in control of all projections. The police, my friends, can reach back into your womb for their evidence, pushing scissors and knife through the sweet gash of vagina stretching to the limits of breath and gene. They will cut the child from the aperture without a warrant, brand their indentations onto the soft, spattering skull of the prison-house, the garret, the sideward glance of the video camera that is always recording itself for a cum-shot. Space crackles with a pulsing electric energy-reason enough, for those still in the slit, to fear for their eventual shape.

—Davis Schneiderman is Chair of the American Studies Program and an Assistant Professor of English at Lake Forest College. His creative work has accepted by numerous journals including Fiction International, The Iowa Review Web, Clackamas Literary Review, Exquisite Corpse, Diagram, 3rd Bed, Diagram, Quarter After Eight, The Little Magazine, Gargoyle, and Happy. He is co-editor of the forthcoming critical collection Retaking the Universe: William S. Burroughs in the Age of Globalization (Pluto Press, 2004). Dr. Schneiderman is currently co-editing an anthology on contemporary uses of the Surrealist Exquisite Corpse, as well as co-editing the new literary journal Potion.