Brendan Joyce

two poems

Snickers Commercial

The Marketplace never texts me
before I’m broke. The marketplace sends
only commands. I’m dead broke in the clavicle

of midnight. Dead broke pulsing with
moon flashes. I get paid in relation to what
is dead. The relationship between broke & dead,

it’s complicated, an inch of cloth.
An inch of cloth pulled between now
& the end of my life.

Here I am anyways: a Snickers bar
& pack of Marlboro Reds away from
destitution as the night snowglobes

& takes the face to the precipice
of shatter. The clouds’ purple eyelid
light prophesies & prophesies. The

pallor of the streetlamp is crisis
colored-- ultralight Pall Mall. The
relationship between orange &

purple is my life. My life-- a commercial
for the in between. Here, take this
inch of cloth, here, take this ominous

color, here take this pinch of dusk
spread across the sky for six months.
My life, a set of commands. Iron

Man does not like to be handed things.
Sounds like a billionaire to me.
The market texts me a picture

of the sunset & my dumbass gets
charged $20 to look at the picture
of the same sky that haunts each & every one of my days.

we need to start climbing refrigerators

fascism needs an apocalypse
like the kool aid man needs
a wall like I need a drink
like I need to quit drinking
addiction is a silly simile
since its invention relies
on its comparison’s existence
I’m not saying that under
communism I wouldn’t be
a drunk I’m saying that
under communism it
would be easier not to
drink & I have to say
I haven’t had a drink in
six years feels sometimes
like how politicians will
say how long it’s been
from the last time the
government committed
an atrocity always pointing
toward the next time they’ll
have to make an admission
to a pattern of wrongdoing
as a concession or distraction
from their current wrongdoing 

I’m uncertain of the strength
of my body against the weight
of history so I’d like to talk instead
about the persistence of my cat
in insisting I feed her regardless
of the last time she was fed

If I am writing as I am now she
knocks my hand from the page
& the pen out of it & pushes her
head between my hand & the page
& in this way she makes clear
her power over what I’m trying
to produce & though I refuse
to feed her until it’s dinner I still
feed her & honestly some days
I feed her early & honestly I
wonder if she can’t at some
point just climb the fridge &
knock the food bag over
& feed herself & honestly
I’m pretty sure she can
& most of the peace in my
house relies on her not doing
this

what I’m saying is we need
to move past the stage my
cat is in & start climbing
refrigerators but you’re smart
& you knew that already &
even still I’d like to say it again:
we need to start climbing
refrigerators.

Brendan Joyce

Brendan Joyce is the author of Character Limit (2019) and is working on his debut full length Leave Land.

Twitter: @nicetryofficer

Scout

“commiserating in a target parking lot”

the question is one of acquisition
and the preferred sex is pinafore
in denim and corduroy, crept up
each promised martyr’s dusky finger
every ensconced fourteen year-old
who dreamt of being whipped by Christ
the venerable
underfed virgin of catholic history
her nose now a cave, slid off her
face into a fine powder that we snort
in the bathroom of an all-ages show
sharing coltish looks with high schoolers
ducking down to stretch their calves
and dodge entrance fees
the key is to think godly thoughts
and bring brass knuckles into the mosh pit
we don’t really wish we were younger
like unworkable and denied entry
sipping on something with
fruit flavorings, a thick ring in
each ear—no, what we want is
to be dressed in stiff linens
and not yet broken into, asking each
other “are you really saying that? and
what am i saying” losing each word
as it light up, folds over, dies

SCOUT

is a vegan in specialty cheese, a marxist working in retail. lying in wait for the day when these contradictions are resolved.

Twitter: @a_dumb_broad

jamie hood

“while pillow talking w the man i’m fucking i call my/self bimbo”

*

& he tells me he knows


i cannot believe this;               reminds me

of proust (in french!)   peering back from my shelf

says he’s willing to bet           on the status of my interior

                        & i think

how this is the thing men are best at              betting

whether or not i have an interior         i pick up the proust    

hold him          little mama’s boy                    before my face

                                                           dramatically

                                                upside-down

i am citing my place in all of this       i am locating my         self

i’d do well to mind what i am good for

                        & how


            tired

already                        of her dumb blonde image      marilyn held

a book like this on camera in the 1953 triple bombshell vehicle

how to marry a millionaire     (a class faux-pas         tsk tsk MM)

her gesture an inside joke                   a compromise

to person/a       how her public required such naturalizations             such

calcifications of animal intelligence               or else its lack             as though

all that peroxide might go on leaking back    in                    materially rearranging

her from the inside out                       

                                                later;

when photographed on set                  as her               /self

reading ulysses            No One believed it possible

thing is            acclaimed set photographer eve arnold emerged from retirement

to correct the smug university professor

who so smugly disputed the likelihood of monroe’s reckoning

w joyce’s notoriously dense text        by remarking

how marilyn would read it aloud                    yes

& out of sequence       MM “loved the sound of it”    & so in this house

we are ALL ABOUT EVE


                                                now


on instagram

inspirational quotes     are inaccurately attributed

to her               although done w care n longing

& when i was a girl     i remember how i wished

MM had lived             laughed           & also              Yes

loved longer

plus of course i still wonder how the FBI killed her

YES    for knowing too much            (bc Arthur?)    that tell-

tale prick in the skin    its spherical bruising   so apparent on The Body

the whole damn world worshipped

in the autopsy              also photographed      also leaked

such beautiful bodies we have            how the world loves to see us

            yes                                           ruined

how the world loves to hear the sound of       the needle

pulled from the record            a scratch          & then



silence


(yes)


my man’s guess is i’m externalities

                                    all
                        the

            way

down

to grief            is the belief

to let a man enter

might conjure his staying

good god        


how many years am i

opening           how many

rose quartzes worn down                   

to breaking

o how i adorn my décolletage             w their replacements

dab lavender between my tits

another dumb prayer


now when this man cums inside

he places his palm       against my navel

steadies me                              tenderly there

against his franticness


o i love & i love & i love & i love his need

how it distances him

/self     from him/self   & i sigh

beneath his weight      this its sort of tenderness

if i beg him to linger

until some god reminds me

YOU ARE HERE

& i near to weep

w his pressure              pressing

in my cavernous belly                         o soft place

                                                of no forward

there    at my root        is no sacred

to give             no        not to him nor anyone

still i ask if he thinks he knocked me up

still i say call me your baby mama

still i am the world’s mother and will ever be no one’s

i think how badly marilyn wanted to conceive           yes
i think how the doc botched the operation                  Yes
i think how this is a real fuck of a goddamn world    YES

i love picturing her reciting penelope

& i for one have a bet of my own       that

that old fart drinking pervert joyce woulda loved it too

in any case

in some far-flung dialects am i named

                                                                        ending

i read   yes       that the continental slope is what it is called

where the cliffedge drops off in the sea to

                                                                        endless

when he releases in me

to where

does it                         

tumble

o lord               i           am

getting ahead of myself again            

for now

he fucks me &

i am still

as night jasmine

at high noon

& i lie

in wait for some shoe to drop

by which i mean there is always room

atop my neck for         more shoes
                                    more boots
                                    more cocks

to fill the damned throat to choke out

my name & i shall give it to none of them

thus am i Bimbo          destroyer         of ongoingness

yes       every proper Bimbo    is an end

in                     her                               /self     YES

men fill me

w misnomers & say i should delight in these

pigs in shit       old sad circe    et cetera           the plush

consonants      o          that pin prick

of another terrible vowel

bruising merrily across my surfaces

            yes

menfolk listen for my ripple               my echo           Yes

& i am beginning to prefer it this way            distant

unable  now to burble

over in the dumb fact

of my desire

jamie hood

is an ex doctoral candidate, ex hooker, ex girlfriend, & current insufferable twitter e-girl. she's finishing a manuscript of poetry, essays, & miscellany on assault and rape culture, called RAPE GIRL. she lives, writes, dog moms, and bartends in brooklyn.

Twitter: @veryhotmomm

Ioanna Mavrou

“The Year our Dreams Went Public”

It was the year our dreams went public and like a lot of people I could no longer sleep at night. I'd keep waking up, opening one eye to see if he was looking at me knowingly, of the dreams I'd never share but now were there for anyone to see: our minds at night available to anyone with an app downloaded for 1.99.

What about privacy? People protested when the whole thing started.

What do you have to hide? Politicians replied, and slept in bunkers with blocked wi-fi.

*

It was the year our dreams left our minds, generating cash for corporations that used them to sell advertising.

I didn't care about the rest of the world and what they thought or would think about me and my dreams. I never had before. But I cared about him, sleeping next to me every night. Sooner or later he would get curious, it was human nature, and then I'd have to explain my unconscious that wasn't always thinking of him.

I tried to preempt. I asked him about it, hypothetically.

"This is nonsense," he said. "We can't control what we dream."

"But what if…? What if I dreamed of other men? Wouldn't you hate me, hypothetically?" I asked and was grateful that he never watched the TV or the newspapers that now streamed our inner worlds for supposed entertainment.

He waved me off. "This will all blow over soon," he said, "you'll see." People will get tired of this."

I didn't dream of other men. It was worse than that. I dreamed of other places, whole lives elsewhere that I led without him. Happy lives. Long detailed dreams filled with them.

"We can't control what we dream," I said back to him.

*

But people tried anyway, to control their dreams. With our Circadian rhythms broken we became tired fragmented versions of our previous selves, with dream recorders in every building, self-censoring machines by our nightstands, the battle more than most could handle. New pills were invented, a lot of them, most of them lousy with side effects.

I should have never started taking them. I know that now.

At first no one considered how dreams contained things often hidden even from our own selves. Things we might not want to know. The pills gave me dreamless sleep at night and made me lethargic when I was awake, so I didn't notice how he changed. I didn't notice the circles around his eyes, the demented smiles. I didn't notice him watching his own dream contents, not until it was too late.

On the TV someone called it the potential end of the human race.

"I know all of the things that you think I don't," I heard him say in his sleep one night. His eyes were open and staring at the ceiling, the retinas moving rapidly, dreaming with his eyes open, trying to hide from himself, but failing.

Ioanna Mavrou

is a writer from Nicosia, Cyprus. Her short stories have appeared in Electric Literature, The Rumpus, Paper Darts, Necessary Fiction, The Letters Page, and elsewhere. She runs a tiny publishing house called Book Ex Machina and is the editor of Matchbook Stories: a literary magazine in matchbook form.

Twitter: @ioannaonline

Cade Leebron

“NO NEW FRIENDS”

Pain makes me salty jokes go harder. I am sharpened distracted. What was I
saying did you say about a gun. Paint my nails glitter throat hydrocodone.

Too cold to go into the night like I want. I know I know I’m bad on email.
Good on Twitter shy on the phone decent in person. Solid 5/10. What did

you do with your last decade like I said what was I saying. Lost it. It’s been
hard salty I mean it that way. Doctors told me I couldn’t fuck that. Pain made

me sharpened split focused. T— says imagine the shit you’d get done if
you were healthy thanks I hate it. He means compliment sounds like a

threat. Paint my throat glitter nails dipped hydrocodone. Good in bed bad
at sleeping. Pain makes me sweeter more likely to hold you in sleep less

interested in small talk leave a party go off into the night. Cold is good
for me glitter hydrocodone a burned down decade it all keeps me warm.

Cade Leebron

is a disabled writer living in Columbus, OH. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, American Literary Review, Electric Literature, and elsewhere.

Twitter: @CadeyLadey