NAP 1.4
Edited by Chad Redden
Copyright 2011 NAP Literary Magazine and Books
NAP 1.4
CAST
CARRIE MURPHY
M.G. MARTIN
DIANA SALIER
JESSICA HOLLANDER
KIT KENNEDY
THIERRY BRUNET
JULIE KOVACS
VANESSA BLAKESLEE
J. BRADLEY
TOBI COGSWELL
JOHN HARVEY
MICHAEL MARTIN
DEMISTY D. BELLINGER
KATHRYN ROBERTS
PARKER TETTLETON
DANIEL ROMO
HOWIE GOOD
RANDALL WEISS
ADAM GRUAPE
RUSS WOODS
JOHN NYMAN
C. JAK MUSSINGTON
MATTHEW FUGERE
PETER RICHTER
WILLIAM HENDERSON
CARRIE MURPHY
OCEAN CITY
I pulled down my panties
to brag to all the beachgirls
about my fresh brazilian wax,
my skin red as a hummingbird’s
soft throat, & I bet in my head that
the one with the hippie boyfriend
didn’t even trim, always wearing hats
& jangly anklebracelets, which was kind
of how I wanted to be, but I wasn’t sure how
exactly to hold my nose so I wouldn’t smell
the rotting cast on the broken leg of the boy
whose semen I later scrubbed off with sand
and G. kept saying what did it taste like?
J. plucked two flowers, one for her hair & one
for a vodka bottle on our kitchen table. Sitting
on the porch smoking till our breaths periwinkled,
H. snipped the horizon up into beads for hemp
necklaces & I braided then unbraided then rebraided
L.’s soft strawberry hair. The cops were busting the boys
upstairs so we hid our beers behind the big flowerpot ashtray.
I gulped in the hazy damp dark, kissing a boy
who listened to phantom of the opera techno,
fingered my black cotton thong
while I drank Malibu. O. wandered
off to get paisley-eyed at the bong,
K. worried her new eyebrow ring pink,
& everyone watched as the moon
slipped off her bikini &
put her sunglasses on.
EXQUISITE
You’re a virgin who can’t drive condoms
mold in your bedside drawer you listen
for the beep the horn you make suck-in-skinny
love to yourself in the mirror every
night mousse & blowdryer love
mornings the kiss of a metal clasp on
your slick neck boys don’t have best
friends but you have a thousand though the toilet
paper at their houses is weird
& always wrong it’s ok to bleed if on schedule it’s ok
to wake up in a cold sweat but not ok
to squint because glasses are ugly & you won’t
listen to opinions you’ll only wear cut cotton
only wear jeans with whiskers boys
wear cargo pants because they stuff
their pockets you carry purses taut &
embossed.
THE BITTEN TONGUE
We’ll never remember the time before we grew breasts.
Our bodies, our limbs,
cracking skin & red,
hips, hair, these legs that move us forward
indefinitely, imploring
get us out of this classroom & teach us how.
All we have in common is our colossal boredom;
that urge that forces us to cold cement.
Carrie Murphy is from Baltimore, MD. She received her B.A. in English from the University of Maryland, College Park, and her MFA at New Mexico State University. Her poems have appeared in PANK, Keyhole, Prick of the Spindle, and other journals. Her chapbook, MEET THE LAVENDERS is available from Birds of Lace.
M.G. MARTIN
THICK WET HOT WE STUFF
because these things happen, there is a piece of glass in your foot. it’s wet you say. it looks like red syrup coming hot from your foot i say. i offer my teeth to your foot. i’ll ply the glass from the wet line holding the glass in your foot like a socket for two balls called eyes. yes. & the line is now open, your foot wears a gash of thick wet red heat. a balloon really is nothing without the color of blood you say. so glad your foot took kindly to my hot teeth & sorry it wasn’t my foot stuck by a line of glass i say. this is the point of two smile touches. & wouldn’t it be swell if the stars turned red & drew wet lines toward each other’s heat says the radio voice. maybe, probably not we say. i put a band-aid on your foot with my teeth & say: where is the line at which we evolve into a two person poem about wet heat? i’m trying to find that line, it is where i will leave all of my me stuff. i will come back & place my eyeballs in your sockets. then, you will find that line & place your you stuff next to mine, in a pile of thick wet red hot we stuff.
EAT ME LIKE FRUIT FLESH
you began forcing yourself into my general shape the moment you had no idea that i began looking at you. this was the first tangible moment of fruit trees. five years ago i would’ve said that you’re the reason pomegranates are poems. five years later i sit here & count your elbows, over & over. there are only two when you are sleeping. the way you step out of the shower is a variation on a theme called eat me like fruit flesh. my body is filled with empty trash bags & at the beach all of the sand moves toward your fingers. i think they are magnets. i am a variation on a theme called paper cut in my heart. one quarter of all love poems are statistics. three quarters would rather live inside of your mammary glands. i would make love to a pomegranate if you told me to. but i would do it with gusto if you would let me be your tongue. oh please let me be your tongue.
GROWN MEN CAN PLAY WITH DOLLS
if you were a real you & not a reverse voodoo doll, you would ask me to do the dishes when you were at work because we would live together. sure. i would look at the dishes & get an idea but then make a papier-mâché mold of your body using only my memory. upon drying i would write these poems on your hollowed out you. if you were a real you & not a reverse voodoo doll i would ask you when you were at work. ask you because the only certainty is that if you would let me lay behind you we would look like a very large question mark. i would look at the dishes & do the idea. & from work you would write to me: the dishes could overtake the whole of the apartment & you would still be the best, especially if you wrote poems on the dishes. but it doesn’t matter because you are a reverse voodoo doll & live in my apron & can’t read, because dolls can’t even breathe. i did the poems with food & eat off the floor.
M.G. Martin is the author of One For None (Ink., 2010). His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in PANK, Everyday Genius, elimae & >kill author, among others. Find him at mgmartin.tumblr.com & @themgmartin.
DIANA SALIER
FOUR POEMS FROM wikipedia says it will pass (The Red Ceilings Press, 2011)
THE BEST OF FRAT JAMZ 2011
i want to ask, when did you become so out with it
when did you stop laughing with me not at me?
i can't sleep past five am i miss the sounds
of your upstairs neighbors fucking lopsidedly
to the best of frat jamz 2011
the right half of my body is weird and homeless
without the left half of yours
i want to have the burgers-or-chinese-takeout
gchat debate at the end of a workday
I DIDN’T CRY AT THE END OF TITANIC
this one day you flew to berlin
and then later you flew back home
and i rode my bike to your apartment
outside it was hot and windy
we laid under your sheets
we listened to the beach boys
i made you come
i got on top and said i loved you
i should've just said
fuck walt disney you’re the happiest place on earth
let's commit a crime so we'll get caught
and do time together
let's steal puppies from duboce park
you had brought some german chocolate
you had been gone for too long
MY GMAIL MAKES YOU LAUGH SO HARD
before we break up we gchat randomly
about men on segways
cookie monster videos
what we should do for dinner
like the series finale of LOST
or finding out whether the afterlife really exists
and you say my gmail makes you laugh so hard hahaha
after we break up we gchat awkwardly
about whether things are awkward between us now
which just makes it more awkward
whether or not it was already awkward to begin with
and i say did you get my messages i kept
typing after you went away
and you say no i didn't get anything
and i make myself invisible
LET’S MAKE THE WORLD SO QUIET AGAIN
if anybody asks this is the story i like to tell:
we met in the frozen food aisle
the night the giants won the world series.
i woke up with a panda bear biting on toaster waffles
and never ate an eggo the same way again.
when you brushed my teeth in the bathtub
i crouched by your ears and shouted
baby ! you must be a facebook page because i like you.
this is the one where i meet my thoughts in a
neutral setting and politely ask their intentions.
i’m hiding my real feelings inside my underwear,
hoping you’ll just stumble on them eventually.
there was a night you texted me from a bathroom
in oakland ‘’haha i just saw us as an old couple” --
there’s a card catalog of every gum wrapper
we’ve ever chewed set to the aladdin song parody
i wrote for you. your family name
is an informal name of a former european province ,
is a sufjan stevens song ,
is a tourism website i have set on limited access.
this is a thing about you: you want to be with someone
for a long time who wants to be with you for a long time.
how long is long and what if the atomic bomb
explodes in our bed tomorrow ,
if my teeth start falling out ,
if you forget how i like my waffles
and the speed of tim lincecum’s last pitch ? ?
if this is a choose-your-own-adventure then please
tell me how i’m supposed to proceed.
this is the laser that zaps us at night: sometimes i worry
that i don't have real worries just first world problems –
like tonight there's a party at my house and everyone
is invited but the beds are hollow props so you can sleep
under the stairs, inside my coat pocket or on top of me.
are you stuck in airplane mode //
is that why i haven’t heard from you in weeks.
i heard natalie portman had a baby
and no one gives a shit
brb -- i'm going to get a pacifier
let’s make the world so quiet again
Diana Salier is the author of wikipedia says it will pass (The Red Ceilings Press, 2011). Her poems have recently appeared in Every Day Genius, 3:AM Magazine, Robot Melon, Red Lightbulbs and Yes Poetry, among other places. She lives, writes and sleeps in San Francisco, and at dianasalier.com.
JESSICA HOLLANDER
MISVISION
Next to me at the DMV, you made sense of blurry letters. You saw lights flash temple-level. You bragged about missed speeding fines, then mentioned that time I left-turned from the wrong lane and got a ticket. Like charm is a part of it.
I once mistook a stop sign for a basketball hoop. You took air shots, cheered yourself on. Sometimes I can’t make sense of words at the grocery and I remember my mother applying mascara a quarter-inch from the mirror. Gunky streaks on the glass. I’m tired of trying to focus. When scanning the baking aisle I ask you where the hell is the brown sugar, you point, you smile, like you know something special. Really you are dumb and forget several things on the list.
Same smile when I stuttered through letters at the DMV, couldn’t see the red lights flashing until the woman clued me where to look. Don’t tell me I need glasses. Don’t tell me I passed because she felt sorry for me. I can gunk up the mirrors and still be charming when I want to. For different reasons than you think I get a lot of relief from closing my eyes.
GROCERY STORE DECISIONS
Grocery store decisions are better made together we scour aisles, follow lists on paper scraps marked with vertical checks are half-arrows, lines with elbows, pleased kinks fissure quickly; will you show me your list careless qualities, butter beside meat this plastic-torn broccoli, black-holed strawberries, too many boxes in the cart your belongings to the curb tonight for once the fridge is packed tight and if you hate is exhaustion. I have food for a weak-breathed as you go, I don’t wish to see your elbows again even when next week shopping alone means skimming eager-eyed products of a decade promoting needs knocked around in the cart, ill-fitting, not wanted and for consumption anyway.
Jessica Hollander recently received her MFA from the University of Alabama. Her work has appeared in over 50 journals including BLIP, the Cincinnati Review, the Journal, >kill author, Pank, and Web Conjunctions. You can find Jessica at jessicahollanderwriter.com.
KIT KENNEDY
SNAILS
hard
& soft
& wisdom
when to stay
so why am I thinking
fountain pen or how boundaries are
reflexive pronouns
NINE WORD NOVELLA
I ate the meal then I ate the cook.
COMMA DIRECT ADDRESS YOU
talking to nature a ramble
of self. Think nesting dolls, largest
squeezing into two sizes smaller
out of orbit. No go.
Going forward, polite conversation
an image consumes the larger
until nothing requires swallowing
up. Boundaries unnecessary.
Little to redress to the spent.
Moon can do on her own.
You, let go. Scurry.
A pail in one hand.
Thimble of salt in the left.
EITHER IT RAINS TOMORROW OR IT DOESN’T
a theorem Einstein worked on
but abandoned.
Where would we be
had he disproved ennui?
So tell me, am I losing you
to night’s generic hunger
or someone?
Kit Kennedy co-authored Inconvenience (Littoral Press)) and Constellations
(Co-Lab Press) with Susan Gangel. While Eating Oysters is published by CLWN WR
Press. Work has appeared in Ambush Review, CLWN WR, Runes, Shot Glass Journal, Uphook Press, Super Arrow, Tak'Til. . She lives in San Francisco.
THIERRY BR
UNET
FOUR POEMS
contentious shrieks -
during postmortem
examination - made
steel structures -
respectable again
smooth surface of this tortoise
shell – dusty debris that fly
off – at closest approach – a
venture will include the making
of an orb
the astronaut renamed himself
Tycho to pass through the eminence
in all directions – like vestiges
of velocity – the stitches were
a sign of annihilated kickback
wandering with Heraclitus –
you can futz with obscure
innocence - the riddler generates
“the death of fire” – “the birth of air”
Thierry Brunet currently lives in Antibes, on the French Riviera. He created Nova Cookie & Frozen Hell, an experimental journal publishing only very short stories in 6 words. His poems and illustrated texts appear or are forthcoming in Cricket Online Review, Word For/ Word, WORK, Sous Rature, Danse Macabre, Alice Blue and elsewhere. His first full-length collection, Waste, has been published by BlazeVOX.
JULIE KOVACS
ENTER THIS ONE
//Write your dreams here
Debug.That.DreamBoard (“in-and-out”)
rainy driveways {water dripping $east and $west}
Hitchcock mystery at the train depot
no body found yet?Past nine post meridian
Alligator in the lake behind the house ~ ~ ~
another round of Guinness at the bar with a dartboard obscuring
a photo of Bettie Page
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