killer whale journal vol. 3

KWJ VOL. 3

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Contents

From The Editors2

Contributors3

Puke Rimbaud4

i hurt trees5

At The Museo de Antioqua7

Front Doors8

Life9

Some Good Excuses10

Chapter 1611

The Apocalypse Cha-Cha12

Buddha & Co13

Beach In Winter14

The View From The Crack In The Alley15

Inanimate Seduction16

there you go again17

a beaver wrote me18

dnt yu b givin up19

& when they let us b20

At The Bus Stop21

Fibbing Sun22

Sharp Countys First Machine House23

Whale Fall25

Intendemnify26

Bios27

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From The Editors Its the magic number(ed Vol.) The solstice has passed but the nights arent drawing in. Read this Vol. on your rooftops, balconies, in your gardens, yards; read it always outside. The poetry contained moves across dams and excuses and museos and branches and ends at the bottom of the ocean. And thanks to Will Preston-George for the art direction and cover layout, and Titus Groan for the cover illustration, and Jeff Dahlgren and John Lowther for the art youll find dotted through the Vol. I will admit this Vol. was long in gestation lots of things surfacing simultaneously. No excuses next time. Its a finer vintage for it. To all the poets featured: You complete us. To the state of California: Close Seaworld already.

Samuel Rowe I often say Sam and I compile our Killer Whale Journal because we can, which has become a motto of ours. But I am not so selfless. We open new submissions three or four times per year because we enjoy it. What a great excuse to look at the superb work our peers create through words and images year after year. I want to thank everyone who submitted, even if we could not find room for your art or poetry. We kept this one short and sweet, unlike volume two, because KWJ is meant for online consumption. Reading through your submissions was a distinct pleasure. We hope you enjoy volume three as much as we enjoyed putting it together. Yes, the future is bright for killer whales everywhere. Except Sea World. Maybe next year well work with audio files to boot. And sorry for the wait--the killer whale is a master of suspense, as well as self-insulation and waiting for sea lions to leave their puny icebergs.

Alessandro Mario Powell

https://killerwhalejournal.wordpress.com

https://facebook.com/killerwhalejournal

[email protected]

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Contributors

Marissa Lucchesi

Leo Temple

Daniel de Cull

Joseph Bradshaw

Marie-Claire Serou

Howie Good

Michael H. Brownstein

Christine Lyons

Vanessa Saunders

Strider Marcus Jones

Connor Crawford

Johnnie Bicket

Titus Groan

Jeff Dahlgren & John Lowther

William & Thats On My Mom Preston-George

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Marissa Lucchesi

i hurt trees 1 it's easter sixteen springs ago and my mother tugs my hair, pressed thin with coconut oil and eucalyptus drops. we have a book of braids (only white girls are pictured) & we pick the fishtail to fin down my pink satin church dress. at Mass i press plucked magnolia buds into my palms, inhale the premature green dissect the furry hearts, the tucked underbellies of unopened petals almost a sin

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2 on repeat, the 2000 enya album and my mothers warm thigh pressed to the noncurve of my waist. her hair curlier, thick & smells like wild flowers, lychee the sweetness of pre- cigarettes. when i am older i remember the tightening. i braid it into the new synapses

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Leo Temple

At The Museo de Antioqua I have laughed constantly, grieved of myself, like rain both being and puddling. BOTERO! feeds me evening on memory emollient sleep; butter spread on nightmare; BOTERO! casts time in endless sexual position, sleeps me well the paunch of Medellin. She, the Mona Lisa, is so fat inside Colombia, BOTERO! says. Time is a belly that grows like nails. I have puddled, like time, in words like morning, contained time in language like cysts in the air; I have heard myself laughing far off uncontrollably the rain laughs constantly grieves of itself. Outside, a large man skirts his wet shirt around his belly; the paunch of Medellin grows in the rain.

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Daniel de Cull

Front Doors

Baby O dynamite mistress of the Star fish

swimming in my ears where often a Wo/Man

remains alone long to listen

Doors singing my business daily dead as a door nail into all this Channel O.O. % Ecstasy. No showing me a door opening by itself

at the End of lives forgotten when Sun is a dog cart botted with gay dogs

of the dooms day sit and dreaming of the floor of our

Nothingness sentencing: "Bakers dozen talk 19 to the dozen".

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Joseph Bradshaw

Life How many Bart Simpson dolls have I seen in the trash, lying in piles of trash on the street, the heads of Bart Simpson dolls? Only beautiful trash lies in the street as I walk past a split open condom, a few Bart Simpson heads poke blankly out. I love creating beauty in life. What makes Bart Simpsons head appear so big? One Bart Simpson head is at least the size of two of mine. Or one Bart Simpson heads the size of one of my heads plus three, no, two of my penises.

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Some Good Excuses Ive been apartment hunting Ive had mono I had a bad childhood Im not that gay/straight I dont believe in self Im trying to be honest I assumed you hated me I dont wish for anything This body is all I have left Eventually it will be gone Eventually my name will be gone And then I will not have existed Its a dress perfect for any occasion

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Marie-Claire Serou

Chapter 16 When the gradient of f is equal to F it is said to be independent of path. This is

useful in fluid dynamics. Supposedly. Physics works out beautifully whether or not

there is a God. However, when you get into applications of math none of the

variables are purely independent. Where x intersects the y-axis, it can only intersect

z where y and z both equal 0. There are practical applications. When Mary kisses ----

and ----- in the same day, she thinks only she matters. Nihilism is a self-fulfilling

prophecy, you too can be too cool forToday, I decided to make a friend less

arrogant than myself. I saw a girl so skinny and washed she looked nothing like an

animal. She was wearing only true black. I wanted to tell her, but I had bangs and a

math joke written on my wrist: A vector field that is independent of path is called a

conservative vector field. I address a Bible to God. Dear Lord, I dont know if youve

seen this. Signed, MC. PS. Are you a wool sweater or Superman? I receive no reply.

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Howie Good

The Apocalypse Cha-Cha

Often eyes become red, and all because four-hundred bullets per minute go roaring

off on joyrides. Thats when I start thinking, Whatever happened to the right to be

lazy? The world has developed a taste for the miserable, the beheaded Christian

prisoners who cant quite get things together. Theres actually a kid in full goalie

pads outside the Stop & Shop collecting money for a pantheon dedicated to them.

He might be better off if hed been shot in a fracas and instantly killed. My life also

seems kind of Laurel and Hardy, a kiss of fire accelerant, the whole jamboree

vulnerable to the odd stick of dynamite. Souvenir hunters wont even bother to wait

until the ashes cool before they begin searching through the wreckage.

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Buddha & Co. Exposure to long winters has erased the face of the garden Buddha. I shouldnt compare, but Van Gogh also had most of his teeth pulled. In the dark subzero hours of early morning, I have been woken up by yips & squeaks, coyote pups trying to keep warm. I lie there and listen, & then I am no longer the color of tears.

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Beach in Winter Nothing here, and no one, only seashells and pebbles and pretty ferry lights casting shadows that form a sentence.

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The View From The Crack In The Alley A wild moon over the timber wolf trees, the injury of silt within their branches, plastic sawdust forced into block and stone: Here is the arithmetic for everything mammal, the vagina curl in waves hitting scorpion sand, ancient trees carved out of mud and brick: One boulder leans against pebbles for support.

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Christine Lyons

there you go again chewing through the forest like you own the place snapping trees

the way id snap your neck

i couldve used that lumber filed it into a toothpick picked flesh between pearly whites

& i could use you too beaver wear you like a hat serve you on a spit sell you for a buck twenty

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a beaver wrote me a song once when our bellies were full & the moon was full

coyotes howling at the bone eye

her fingers plucked the grass tail slapped the water

she sang about last thursday hiding her mouth underwater

to keep herself quiet when trappers trapped her momma

sheared her mommas fur off & left her naked

floatin round somewhere now this beavers pluckin grass like a guitar & im the only human who hears her song the others just dont listen: bievers r jus aenimels

they say tht wil nvr chanj

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dnt yu b givin up on me now beaver

i kno it gets cold up here nd water drops freezin

be low but yu jus keep swimmin even wen yur feet get tired nd the hair on yur back

freezes yu jus

dive d o w n

cause we all need a little break

but keep on workin beaver chomp down on wood build yur dam tuck yourself into yur lodge

nd when yu sleep yuk no ill wake yu up S M A C K my tail gainst the water when sumthin floats by

h old yur breath nd hide underwater

lil beaver lets hope this is the day they let us b

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& when they let us b lets meet in the forest somewhere in northern ntario wher thers only

w i d e green space

d e e p

blu waters listen to cars / crickets watch satellites / stars remove the distance between

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Vanessa Saunders

AT A BUS STOP, a blind man puts his head into his hands. Why has this

happened? I don't know. A tree is truncated in the storm, but there is no great

surprise. Do you prefer function over form? The body collapses in the street. I

prefer form, he said. I'll take my dinner in the dry Pacific.

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Fibbing Sun when this fibbing sun, dips below this planted plate of fields- and waits to bob back up tomorrow: solitude, sucks the colour out of crimson clouds, and stars begin their movements over night's black curtain. thinks. this dance of being born- to live and die in sacred elements swirling in dust and gas, in beauty and folly that repeats itself to what purpose- does this engine and design make civilisations form then fade with gods and demons. there must be more to Michelangelo's ceiling- than creating orphans and leaving them, to grow old in fostered orbits.

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Connor Crawford

Sharp Countys First Machine House they bought the new house at Sears, the morning it got delivered down Campbell road, Ravenden, Portia and Williford all watched tip-toed from behind the tin fences, little ones atop the cattle straining to see the tractor tugging the machine-made home its floors drooping over the trailers edge, bowed plywood scraping unbranched red leaves and side mud when the road narrowed so the neighbors took bets on which corner it would crumble, but no one made a cent these farmers and their families also watched from the front row the night the old house burnt down their faces lit up like sunset Rapa Nui, flames in their pupils no seaworthy buckets around to fetch, to douse that night, the chimney got the only life raft, reached land charred and gasping for air in his black brick lungs the post office girl gave him water and a bath, and boiled his clothes out back

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the burns cooled quickly, he got back to work for his meals hayed the field with his pops tilled in imperfect circles until there was just a mattress- sized patch dead center of the field where all the bunnies slowly relocated, but he spared them he yielded buckets of bear oil into the tree trunk trough by the Spring river preparing for cold, dipped his raw hands in the frigid current to wash up for that nights Spamburger supper on the patch of rubble where his grandfathers old kitchen and stove had been an Ozark winter with a new house picked out from a catalog: not ready cut Honor Bilt Natoma, Modern Home No. C034, $191.00 she cleaned him up and ragged him down one last time, built a fire in his guts the night before the Sears house came.

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Johnnie Bicket

Whale Fall The boughs of ribs, a sculpted skull, vertebrae dissembled, a column toppled to sections: imprint of hugeness. When living, it saw through the glum aphotic with music it made through organs, thundering across centuries, sounding out the murky globe. It sang through internal chambers with air stolen away from the breathing world. When swimming the ring of the southern ocean, whales chant ballads about the sometimes sun, the moon silvering the shallow waters, songs that outlast the chug of ships. But, this whale recanted descends through miles, through currents, before nudging the sea-bed with a slack jaw, the body falling in behind. Quiet in abyssal squeeze, its bones are quarried by worms burrowing for food, no darker plan. Smell water and gather; they say out over the bed, well build a city out of this.

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Bios

Marissa Lucchesi

is an economics graduate student at Tulane University, 22. She is just

beginning to self-identify as a poet. She hopes to publish a book of poems

someday.

Leo Temple

grew up outside Bridgwater, Somerset in the Quantock hills. In Liverpool he

broke a budding football star's ankle. The boy now plays for England. This

incident threatens to be Leo's most notable act. He writes poems.

Daniel de Cull

is a Castilian and Aragon poet. He is highly involved with natural life and

love. He is popular and often quoted. He is editor of the cultural reviews

Gallo Tricolor and Robespierre.

Joseph Bradshaw

is a caca Jesu

Marie-Claire Serou

is a forth generation New Orleans native. She likes poetry, f(r)iction, boiling

summer days and civil disobedience.

Howie Good

s poetry collections include The Complete Absence of Twilight from MadHat

Press, and Fugitive Pieces from Right Hand Pointing Press.


has been widely published throughout the small and literary presses. In

addition, he has nine poetry chapbooks. Brownstein currently is the English

Specialist at Lincoln University.

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Christine Lyons

is Canadian first. Writer second.

Vanessa Saunders

is a graduate from the University of East Anglia. She enjoys green tea and

Paul Celan.


is a poet, law graduate, ex civil servant and Salford born and bred. His five

published books of poetry are modern, traditional, mythical, sometimes

erotic, surreal and metaphysical.

Connor Crawford

is AWOL.

Johnnie Bicket

is unemployed and lives with his mother. He dislikes contemporary jazz, fish

from rivers, and moral objectivism. He likes Tony Gash, dumb-phones, and

defecating in open country.

killer whale journal vol. 3

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