Christmas 2013

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Lucas G Pinheiro

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I'm Being Covered In Person In A Dream Which Involves Seeing All My Life At Once

We are living in a vortex of strange and confusing images; reality television playing in platform shoes, public access channel into your brain that plays your birth on loop twenty four hours a day.

Nothing is allowed but everything always happens anyway.

Just let me crawl into a pile of multicolored blinking lights until no one can find me and my skin starts to melt away.

Place what is left of me in a box and wrap me up nicely

with a bow, I will make anyone happy.

I want you to give me a fever that burns my insides until i spontaneously combust.

Neurons fire and impulses travel to collide and combine into words.

I feel like I am laying naked under a portrayal of my entire existence so here I am expressing it.

I’m half scared. Only half.

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Kristie Shoemaker is a twenty-two year old student from baltimore trying not to write about sad things but thinks that’s what comes natural. she likes the idea of hiding, but you can find her on the internet avoiding ‘real life’ at 1ittlepeach.tumblr.com

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Christmas Time Is Here

I remember that Christmas well What a white Christmas it was My uncle sitting in the corner gouging his eyes out with toothpicks Ah yes it was the best Christmas ever! There I was in the basement Using the Gateway computer, that dial-up modem Deep in the dark of night I made my first Google search for porn Looked up ‘lifeguard porn’ Obviously I was new to the online porn game Put on ‘A Pinky and the Brain’ Christmas which became a post-porn ritual for me? I don’t remember Found Y2K extremely disappointing a few days later Played ‘Red Alert’ on the computer until around 7 AM Eating ‘Party Cake’ Ice Cream Nothing happened I felt hoodwinked, bamboozled, hurt Went back upstairs to my bedroom without heat Wrapped myself up in a blanket listening to ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas’ on K-Rock Slept for a few hours disappointed in an end that never came

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Beach Sloth blogs hard.

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Christmas With My Cat

i lay back on my couch because i am too stoned to do anything else

i close my eyes

i feel her paws on my tummy and then my boobs

i open my eyes

cat face in my face

i close my eyes again because now im dizzy

it passes

i open my eyes

cat butt in my face

i close my eyes again

"merry christmas"

i whisper to my cat

"i got you a can of that turkey shit you love so much"

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Breanna Hawkins

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Cookie Poem

Pug gurgles underfoot at ankles soft and socked and floured.

the big gray granite tiles are cold (your parents are rich).

the legs of a cut-out dough-man man merge with dough-bird in flight over spray-greased big flat pan

I think about how gløgg is pronounced. At first I try “gloog” then “glüüg”

I’m 17 and gay in Utah in winter.

wreath shape cookie bakes up too much; looks like a dry white asshole and the feet make it worse. Brown icing, glitter sprinkles, stars.

I think the best way to describe it is something like “glurgg” or “glergg”

I make a cookie that looks like a two-foot rocket ship covered in stoplight lights, red and green and

xmas is man-legged mittens, pug snuffles, gurgles, gløgg thoughts, the hand with cut-out dough-man man legs stuck on seamless,

and a sweet white asshole crisp, and buttery; pinched, and puckered; frosted, ate.

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Paul Christian is an MFA candidate at CalArts. His work can be found in Apex Caliente, Ellipsis…, Internet Poetry, Uut Poetry, Be About It! among other places. Paul wishes more people still thought about johnathan richman on a daily basis.

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'Tis The Season

Like a critter tied to a post I found her, hoofs curling up like vines. My cup runneth over with clear liquids. Remember that guy who sided with the Nazis in Raiders of the Lost Ark? What a jerk. He got his. HD TV DH Lawrence Everything I know about Hanukah I learned from the Rugrats Hanukah special. Everything I know about Christmas I learned from the floral print on your secondhand dress. We are the ethical consumers we wish to see in the world. Coal dust in the aching snow. Boots with the fur, different exotic fishes, all lined up in glitzy enameled dishes. Tepid metallurgists engaged in God’s grand designs until they meet their inopportune freedom. A mantis encased in a blown glass bauble, her delicate forelegs entranced by the impossibility of our existence.

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Nolan Allan has words to say and sometimes he says them @ twitter.com/nolanallan

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Waning (christmas/new year)

Fairy lights, the street’s awash, with smiling storm clouds.

Today, today, it will rain. You will forget it all, like Howard wanted.

Start a fresh, wipe the slate clean.

Goodbye old sky, don’t come back.

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Chris Marks writes poetry, short fiction, and makes sleepy music @ lakemichigan.bandcamp.com

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Santa's Lil Helper

1. One friend texted another about how shitty it is you died last night. we assumed he meant his junkie, unisex named ex-girlfriend. but you had shot your own head

2. I remember the camp site that your neighbors found, and they showed you and you showed us later. in the damp pine trees surrounding your wooded and cold neighborhood

and you blazed the firewood trail of dirt wide enough for cars to go back, except when a Volvo

got high centered. the fireplace fires you’d burn when the air smelled like that weird smell

that could either be fire, but maybe oncoming snow. you decorated

the surrounding trees (that could’ve been Christ- -mas trees, but grew too much) with beer bottle caps you crushed in the stumps like ornaments

3. I remember one of the few snow days. two hour late start, but we all still went early, and bought pop tarts at 76. we would drink gas station coffee,

in the barely and softly lit morning, when the sun is there, but undercovers of the treed hills.

the smoke from your under 18 ‘stoge’ flew upward with the help of the cloudless air.

all of our laughs and cheers, your lifted truck’s screeches, were baby blanket sounds.

I felt small in that sno-coned parking lot in the shadow of Christmas tree hills but I also thought the world was beautiful

4. I’d been to your house more than once, but I never went in – you always preferred the outside

I never saw the room you lived, and died in, but now I never want to

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Christian M Patterson lives in Portland OR and is from Auburn WA.

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I’m sitting in a box in an attic until the month of December when they finally take me out. On top of the television set, they set up the nativity scene - I am the sleeping baby Jesus in the manger. My mother, Mary, and father, Joseph are next to me. My manger is surrounded by animals - sheep, cows, donkeys - and people who have come to watch me sleep. It’s the same scene every year. Same little figurines in their respective places. Same representation of the religious aspect of Christmas. The people who live here, they’re not even practicing Christians. They don’t go to church or pray or even own a bible. I’m just for show. Just a decoration, similar to the ornaments on the tree, but not as shiny.

This family found me at a dump. The people who owned me before were an elderly couple. Every Sunday morning I’d see them leave for church, and I’d heard them talk about their faith a lot. Five years ago, the old man had a heart attack and died. His wife couldn’t stand going to church without him, or even seeing things that reminded her of Christianity. She got rid of me along with the advent calendar and her faith in God.

It’s finally Christmas morning. The kids wake up their parents early and run to check their stockings by the fireplace. When they’re finished looking through the stocking full of candy and little toys they outgrew years ago, they turn to the presents. They destroy the wrapping paper to reveal gifts they wanted and didn’t want. Some sweaters, a couple video games, a digital camera, movies and books. A little girl fusses because the pony her parents gave her was pink instead of blue like she wanted. Something like this happens every year, the kids are never satisfied.

I look at a sheep next to me and we both roll our eyes.

Every Christmas, I miss the old couple a little bit more.

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Rebecca Upton is a college student from New Hampshire who has been referred to as “Wednesday Addams on Prozac.” She writes things at kielbasanova.tumblr.com

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It's Complicated

“Keep your fucking present,” says Andrew, “I’m sick of your shit.”

Shooting backwards and upwards at high speed, he exits the rooftop, overcoat billowing in an unexpected 45 degree takeoff. I stand in silence, watching him ascend into the evening murk, still facing me, his arms outstretched. I was unaware that he possessed any such superhuman gifts before our rooftop meeting, but feel calm and accepting of this turn of events, and do not pursue him.

After Andrew has vanished from sight, the rooftop feels very quiet. The swimming pool ripples repetitively like a looping animation. The full moon’s rainbow halo shifts silently amongst the fast moving clouds. The city below is still, in deep fog. I am alone.

I gently untie the red bow, and discard the golden halberd on the floor, sighing deeply. A terribly misjudged gift, it seems.

I reach into my pocket for my iPhone. The pocket is wet inside, and my hand settles around something smooth and firm. Looking down, I see that I’ve actually put my hand straight through my reddish fur and through a long slit in my rough skin, and am gripping one of my ribs. I remove my hand from the pocket and watch as translucent liquid drips from my claws onto the concrete paving tiles, making it bubble and hiss where the droplets fall.

I walk over to the pool and look down at the water. My long, smooth horns gleam in the reflection, these slanted eyes staring back, glowing softly with luminous green light. My ears are leathery and pointed, sticking out of the long fur that covers my head and body. I bare my teeth, and watch my wrinkled, papery lips retreat to reveal a set of yellow interlocking fangs.

I laugh suddenly at the monstrous absurdity of my appearance, and the unexpectedly hoarse, guttural croak only makes me laugh more, the sound rising until it is deafening, echoing down over the foggy rooftops of the city. “No wonder he wanted to break up with me,” I think. “I’m a hairy demon.”

I rummage around in my internal organs again, finally locating the phone. The battery is low. Opening Facebook, I start looking through the mobile app options to see if I can set my relationship status to “It’s complicated”.

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John Rogers is an artist, writer and music person who lives in Reykjavík, Iceland. He has published written and visual work via journals and magazines such as This Is A Magazine, Pop Serial, Metazen, Have U Seen My Whale, GAYNG and Internet Poetry, and exhibited via organisations including Ikon, The Centre of Attention, Fierce! Festival, D.U.M.B.O. Festival, e-2 and aas. John’s book ‘Real Life’ is out January.

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Assessment 4

How should we do this, Santa?

Should I just list them off?

That would be fine.

Great.

You know how every person has at least one outfit that repels other humans? Right? I wear that every day. When I go places that are obviously fun I have to say stuff like, This is a really fun place. I cry into my foods. Chris Hansen is the #1 television journalist I would cripple if it were guaranteed no one would find out. My asking price in the event a millionaire business traveler propositions me sexually is $2,000 or a pair of military-grade night vision goggles. The fact that I don’t have cancer is appalling to science. Some of my hairs have lost their pigmentation. They’ve become albinos. Albini, if you will. I’m 99% positive orgasmic synchronization is a farce invented by Hollywood cinematographers.

I think that’s enough, Frank.

Well?

What do you think, Santa? Can we beat this thing?

How about relaxation therapy, Frank?

I live next to a park where you buy donuts and horse tranquilizers from the same person. I know how to relax.

Chromology?

Look, Santa, I would have liked this appointment to take place in a sweet old farmhouse, and for you to be Kathy Bates. I wish I could call you Kit-Kat and put my feet on your coffee table and tell you about my black wrists. I wish we had a zany relationship, and in the end you help me and maybe I even help you. But those are wishes. Let me ask you this: Is it true there’s an extremely high rate of alcoholism and suicide among those in the profession of helping people self-help?

Please get off me, Frank.

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Kate Nacy lives in Berlin. You can find more of her work at www.katenacy.com