Monday, February 18, 2008

Poetry: Search and Rescue

My mother brings home an
owl with a broken wing and winces
when she wraps it in warm towels,

like a part of her is broken too--
maybe there is. I make the bed
like you will sleep there: no sheet.

It takes three days for your
lingering scent to stop lingering or
for my nose to adjust--

either way, it's gone.
The owl dies over night and
my mother begins planning the funeral.

Two birds build a nest on our porch.
I say ours but it was never ours,
now was it?

A ferry sinks on the evening news.
the water is warm and thick,
like breast milk,

so they decide to swim.
I remember the skin behind your ears
and loving you,

violently. I want your blood on my hands.
Dirt in carpet, shovel in sink,
and the owl is still wrapped,

swaddled, on the kitchen counter with
the cat pawing the back door and
mother in the yard,

whispering our father in heaven hallowed be your name.
I make up my mind to
swim to you but by the time I

make it to the Atlantic,
the notes in my pocket are too wet to read.
I forget if they were

love letters to begin with. So I swim home.
Dear mother, did the deer join the prayers
at the owl's funeral?

An obvious ending:
The men and women on the ferry later say
the search was better than the rescue.

The less obvious:
The owl unburied himself
and flew away.


Stephanie Willis

Poetry: The Consequences of Fearing Loneliness

I fall asleep in the bathtub to be closer to the ocean.
I invite others to sleep near me. Their bodies
keep me warm like water: cold, cold, cold,
and then you adjust.

October becomes November and I can't distinguish
my breath from smoke. Think of me next time
you drink lukewarm soup or touch a girl
who can't stop shaking.

I am sorry for thinking
the wrong people are wonderful,
for thinking I am wonderful, for thinking
of he and me as we.

I’m sorry for holding his shoulder when he tried to leave.
I apologize for the kiss on the mouth. Don't remember me for that.
Remember me by all thirty knuckles and strands of hair
in your mouth and Sunday mornings.

Let me get ahead of myself now. Let me think of
sharing a grocery cart and doorman greetings by name
and waking up under flannel and down.
Don’t ask to know what I am thinking.

Or, teach me to stand still. Teach me to be quiet
and steady and comfortable in this moment alone.
Teach me to stop expecting the best for me
to be what I expected.

I apologize for lingering too long. I apologize
for kissing him when I tasted only like beer.
I woke up with his elbow in my face.
I licked his elbow. I am sorry for this.

Touch my thigh in the morning. Think of the last bed
and its inhabitant— think of her short hair and lazy mouth.
Teach me indifference. Kiss my mouth and
go home and stop answering the phone.

Go back in time to a favorite moment.
The winter at the beach—the way my feet
sunk into the sand. Choose to stay here;
claim there has been nothing worth returning to.

Consider my ribcage and wrists. Consider
coin tosses and drawings passed back and forth
and the tops of my feet in the cold.
Return to me.

Stop missing the small things: toes and teeth and eyelashes
left on the pillow. Or miss them more.
Go back with me to that beach. Breathe only fog.
Reach as far as you can reach. See if we can touch.


Stephanie Willis

Fiction: Meanwhile

“Ugh,” grumbled the gatekeeper.

“What?”

“Kids. Damn kids.”

“Yeah?”

“And Money. Damn money.” He shifted in his seat. Two crows passed.

“How many?”

“How many? Two crows.”

“Kids. How many.”

“Three.” Pause. There was a creaking at the door, but no one turned his head to look. Silence. Silence. Creaking. Silence. A third crow flew by; the three convened on top of the bar across the street. Gay bar. Straight crows, though. No one bought drinks.

The air was brisk. November brisk. The air was crisp, too. Brisk November crisp. Like, if you took a step on a-not-too-city sidewalk then all you would hear is the brisk, crisp, brisk whi-crack of crisp crumpled leafs squish under boot. Floral bouquet death rattle rattle.

“You got any kids?” The gatekeeper didn’t really care; he had time to kill, and no shank.

“No.”

“You got any money?”

“A little.” It was black out. The older the years get, the less they like light. By November, two thousand five was so crotchety it locked the sun out on the porch and swallowed the key, along with some stale tapioca and cold hot tea. Ugh.

I had nothing left to say to the gatekeeper, and he had nothing left to say to me, so we kept talking. What was said was not important. There was silence. Another crow passed. Landed on the bar. Fat crow. Fat enough to be on a diet, because this crow didn’t buy a drink either. Now there were four crows on the bar, but the bar probably thought there were five, because one of the crows was so fat.

It started snowing.

“God is a bird, I think,” the gatekeeper muttered, “I think.”

“Yeah?”

“Because his shit is white.”

It stopped snowing.

Benjamin Korman

Fiction: The Magic Of Cinema

The director’s chair was found six years later, folded up and broken down in a pile of trash among a roll of posters, a wobbly coffee table, and a towering wooden sculpture of the moon with a crack running down the middle. In six years, it will have been three places. The first place is a film studio, where M transformed it into a mountain on whose peak he would stand and command his minions. The second place is a stockroom, where M brushed past it every time he had to use the toilet, whose chambers could only be accessed that way. The third place is the trash pile, where M discarded the director’s chair to the wind, the rain, and the rag and bone man. If wood could wish it could weep, then in six years the chair would surely wish it couldn’t wish anymore.

M sat on the chair with so much exuberance that it stopped creaking and began to squeal. The director removed his masculine paw from the arm and raised it at his crew.

“Heave, you sons of bitches!” M hurled a violent gesture at the workers, who were in the process of utilizing a series of pulleys that they had constructed the previous day to lift a tremendous wooden model of the moon. They tried, and again they failed.

“It’s heavy,” remarked the portliest crewman with the most ill-fitting of caps.

“I know it’s heavy, it’s the moon! The moon is heavy! God put a lot of cheese in there, and I expect you vermin to respect every last morsel of it, because so help me if this thing splinters or cracks you’re all fired.” M staked his reputation on fantastic inclinations, and keeping up appearances was his favorite hobby.

“Harrumph,” harrumphed the fat man; intent on receiving a paycheck at the end of the week, he went back to work.

M did not like the workers because he was certain they were all anarchists. And he did not like anarchists because he was certain that they all had no beliefs, not even that there was cheese in the moon. The negative end of his passion that he reserved for anarchists (and unwashed hands, and unwaxed mustaches, and wobbly coffee tables) was offset by his admiration for the moon (and sharpened wits, and pretty women, and mildly pretty women), which he studied from afar like a philosopher studies immortal penumbras. The moon was big, and wise, and it could not be conquered. M’s admiration was unending. But M was not an astronomer; he would never visit the moon and peel its skin, revealing the soft mushy flesh underneath. Nor could he taste the silver cheese M was a film director, and with his current production he intended to sap the moon of all its mystery using genius, using brilliance, and using the magic of cinema (Although M didn’t believe that cinema itself was magic; to him, the magic was in the hands of the director).

The tentative title of the film was “The Great Voyager,” and it recounts the tales of a creative, adventurous young man whose hands were as clean as his moustache was waxed, born and raised in the heart of the Future. After battling and defeating the wicked-hearted “Emperor of Futureland,” the daring young scamp goes on to meet, woo, and trounce upon every pretty and mildly pretty woman in the whole of the Future. He then builds a time machine, and, with unceasing bravado, proceeds to meet, woo, and trounce upon every pretty, mildly pretty, and entirely plain woman in the entirety of history. Returning to The Future, the young man brags about his escapades and becomes a national hero. When asked what he will do next, the hero replies, “I plan to voyage to the moon!” He builds a spaceship and, taking ten of the most mildly pretty women in the land with him, he sets off for new frontiers. Upon reaching the moon (a trip lasting three years— noted by the dozens of toddlers who joyfully teeter out of the ship after landing), the brave young man battles and defeats the entire indigenous population of frog people, miraculously and unexplainably grows to the size of the Sun, gives a long soliloquy about the importance of dreams, and puts the moon in his pocket, where it stays until the end of time, which, by fantastic inclination alone, he causes. Roll credits. M wrote the script himself, and he was very proud of it.

He leaned back in his director’s chair and muttered a garbled curse at the staff. After another fifteen minutes of nihilistic bungling, the crew finally lifted the moon onto the set, and M commanded the cameraman to begin rolling. The film sped from canister to canister; he directed his actors.

“Thomas, you are playing a brilliant man! Stand like a brilliant man would stand, like a bear standing at the mouth of his cave!”

“Yes, sir.” Thomas stiffened his back and forced the air into the chasm of his chest.

“No! You look like a bullfrog! Become a bear. Rip the webbing from between your toes, walk out of the swamp, and grow some balls!”

“Yes, sir. You’re right. I’m sorry.” The actor cowered apologetically. M took a brief moment to sigh, and was suddenly overcome with rage. He swallowed his sigh and spat out an apoplectic grunt.

“Where is my tenth maiden? Where is my tenth maiden? When the hero voyages to the moon, he brings ten voluptuous maidens with him, and I count nine! Will somebody please enlighten me as to where I can find my tenth maiden?!” A delta of veins emerged from M’s forehead and started to pulse. His face turned red. An actress was missing.

M considered himself to be a person possessing all of the attributes that a woman should ever need to find desirable. Healthy, rich, intelligent, mustachioed, and, above all, not bald. For these reasons, he considered his relationships with the actresses in his films to be a sort of charity to which he was donating. Of the nine women currently standing on his stage, he had slept with six. Two of the six he had deflowered, and for that he was terribly proud. Two more, who did not wish to be deflowered, he had allowed to perform fellatio. This was another of M’s charities. The woman on the stage who had not yet experienced M surely would by, or possibly during, the film’s premiere. Four of the nine women on stage were from Kansas. Another two traveled together from Nebraska. There was another from Wisconsin. One was from Maryland, and the last one trekked from Canada, which M assumed to be a vast wasteland of scenery and pleasant living.

M was their savior because he had, in one hole or another, given them class. And without class, they were nothing but the weathered feces of the Middle West.

Furious. In an act of raging indignation that would only hinder the production further, M grabbed his chair and threw it into the stockroom, where it would remain for the next five years and eleven months.

“I’ll be back!” he bellowed, and stormed away.

The missing actress was named Catharine Pless, and she did not audition for her role. Ms. Pless made M’s acquaintance at a party, and her visage burrowed deeply into the furrows of his brain. She was not impressed by his career. Her left breast was slightly larger than her right, and it made several attempts to escape her evening gown. There were knots in her hair. She ate and spoke at the same time. M asked if he could meet Ms. Pless again, and she answered with stern indifference, a raised eyebrow and a piddling snicker.

When M arrived at her apartment, he spent fifteen minutes boring her to death about artistry and passion and cinema magic. She spent four minutes in the bathroom, and then they went to bed together.

They proceeded to hump for eight minutes. Ms. Pless yawned audibly and asked to be excused for a moment to powder her nose. M began to get very anxious. When she returned from the bathroom, she carried in her hand an electrical appliance roughly the size and shape of a toy pistol. A rubber cone was situated at the long end of the appliance and, when it was given power, it would, presumably, vibrate. M frowned.

“You’ll need to use this, or else I’m going to go to bed.” M’s eyes gaped semi-sideways. All of the blood suddenly rushed back to his brain, and he clumsily recounted all of the encounters with women he had ever had and realized that at this moment they meant absolutely nothing. A ball of phlegm became snared in his throat, and it grew thicker each second he could not answer her. Finally, he submitted. He used the appliance and in twenty minutes she was asleep. He saw himself out. That night he lay in bed for two hours without blinking, and the next day he appeared at her apartment again and offered her a role in his film.

He snatched the handle of her dressing room door and tugged it open. Inside, she sat and read a magazine. Her jowls were wrinkled with the stains of boredom. She did not notice, or did not seem to notice M’s presence. He opened his mouth, but only a thin spray of air escaped. She turned the page of her magazine. A moment passed, and she turned another page. More time, and another page still. M slowly backed out of the room and silently closed the door. He stood against the door, empty, for three minutes, and listened to the pages rustle inside the room.

When M returned to the set, he informed his actors of his brilliant decision to include only nine maidens on the young hero’s voyage to the moon for very important kabalistic reasons that were only now occurring to him. He stood, and together they all went back to work.

Ben Korman

Saturday, February 09, 2008

New Updates

Hey everyone,

There's been some new updates to the blog as some of you may have already noticed. Links have been added as well as new pieces updated weekly. If you have anything to offer, events, links, related to writing or art, please feel free to offer. Send these ideas to ubiquitous.submissions@gmail.com. We'd greatly appreciate it.

To check out the newest links, scroll down looking on the right side of the homepage.

Enjoy.

Fiction: Backward

Backward


So Marco and I drive to Fashion Island because American rag is having a sale and I've been eyeing these Ksubi Dee Dee Ruff Rockers ($295) for a long time and I have the absolutely most perfect pair of double Identity White Patent Leather sneakers ($195) to match with them because the jeans taper at the ankle and I think I'd wear them sagged a little bit because my American Apparel Deep V-Neck is one-size too big (on purpose, $26) and the Ksubi Block sunglasses ($198) I bought from American Rag goes well with them too.

So Marco and I park in the Fashion Island parking lot and walk out of it and on the way we pass this girl named Cherie who is one of those hippie chicks who really likes Devendra Banhart and Joanna Newsom and she says Hey to us and keeps walking but she doesn't even look at us because she's a dumb bitch who isn't very nice and I think she fucked Marco once at a party in Corona Del mar or something and there are some polaroids of it somewhere on MySpace or Facebook. Something inside of me resents Marco for this because Cherie might be a dumb bitch but she is pretty hot and she has nice legs and tits and I would just love to squish my face between them and smell her possibly (probably) sweet skin of Chanel perfume and then fuck her on my Tempurpedic mattress and then listen to Devendra or maybe Sufjan or some Modest Mouse. But Marco is a good guy and we get along alright so I let it pass and continue walking to American Rag.

So we're in American Rag and I go straight to the back of the store where the Denim is and I look at the Ksubi wall and there are six shelves of Ksubi jeans which is amazing because Ksubi is my favorite Denim brand and they make amazing clothes and they are really pushing the envelope in the world of up and coming fashion houses. But they don't have my size. They never have my fucking size in these Ksubi jeans. I don't why I keep coming back. Maybe because there is this girl that works here named Kati and she is super skinny and is super chill and I would just to take her out one night and get wasted with her then come back to my place and drink some beers and then fuck all night. Marco is looking at the PRPS jeans but they are a really weird company because they don't make skinny jeans and what kind of Hip fashion label doesn't make skinny jeans? So fuck PRPS and all those other companies that don't make skinny jeans because they make clothes for Bros and fuck Bros because all they wear are baggy clothes and “LRG” shit and it makes me disgusted with Orange County and everything in it. Where did the culture disappear to? This whole place is just full of True Religion wearing Bro Hos who don't know the difference between Chekhov and Dostoevsky. You'd think the least these dumb, uncultured bitches could do is read some Eggers or Bukowski or something. This county has to get some culture.

So as we're walking around the store this girl in my English class passes me and I think she has a crush on me (her name is Marcy or something) and she tries to make eye contact with me but I keep my eyes fixed on the Rag & Bone T-Shirt ($85) hanging on the rack and I think she says Hey to me but I ignore her and keep walking. She isn't very cultured either. She really likes Dickens or something along those lines that doesn't have anything to do with today's world and today's society. Fuck her too.

We finally walk out of the store empty-handed and I turn to Marco and say What now and he says lets go to Laguna to that one book store that is really chill and I say OK and we walk back to the parking lot and get in my Audi ($30,000) and start driving.

We're on PCH. The sun is starting to set over the water and I think about what I am bringing tonight and if I will get laid and how much weed I'm going to smoke and all of the hot bitches that are going to Rich's party back in Huntington and what I'm going to wear since I didn't get those Ksubi jeans but I have old pairs of Ksubi so I guess it's alright.

Somewhere on PCH on the way to Laguna Marco and I decide not to go to that book store so we turn around and head back to my place in Huntington but I kinda don't want to because my mom might be home and I don't want to run into my mom because it will delay going to my room where my clothes are and I need to pick out an outfit for Rich's tonight because Marie might be there and I might want to fuck Marie tonight, I don't know yet but I need an outfit for tonight. Marie is this girl in my art class with very nice slim legs and an ass to match that wiggles and sways perfectly as she walks and the J-Brand 10-Inch Indigo Blue jeans ($172) look so good on her because she is tall for a girl and the J-Brands show it off very well. Her lips are pouty and her make-up is perfect and every time I see her I think about her lips sucking my dick and her tongue moves up and down along it and it is pretty amazing and then I imagine fucking her from behind and she's playing with her pussy and I'm pulling her hair and she's about to cum but right now I'm driving and I'm starting to get hard so I stop imagining so I don't crash my Audi.

My mom isn't hove so Marco and I go straight to my room and I put on the rare Joy Division record I just got it's the Amsterdam show from 1980 and it's their best show ever and has most of my favorite songs on it except Warsaw which was Joy Division at their most punk. I don't know if Marco likes Joy division but he is a dumb bitch if he doesn't because they have done so much for music today like, um, well I can't think of anything right now but they just did. Marco sits on my bed with his shoes and I say What the fuck, Marco, take off your shoes I just washed and febreezed those sheets and your lame Nike Sbs ($80) are filthy you really need to take care of your shit better. Marco immediately jumps off the bed and says sorry and sits on my Black Leather Crate and Barrel couch ($2,100) leans back and pretends to drum on his knees. I sigh and pull out three pairs of jeans: a pair of Ksubi Van Winkles ($220) APC New Cures ($140) and Nudie Dry Black Organic Grim Tims ($225) and then three T-Shirts: two APC T-Shirts ($50, $120), and that American Apparel Deep V-Neck I mentioned. I stare at each outfit I've put together and I pick my Black Ksubi Van Winkles and the American Apparel Deep V-Neck because they'll go really well with my Double Identity White Patent Leather sneakers I talked about and I'll wear my Black Lucite Lightning Bolt necklace from Alex & Chloe ($56). I turn to Marco and say wait here I'm going to change and go into the bathroom and take off my clothes then I put my new outfit on and come out and ask Marco What do you think he says yeah that looks sweet I say sweet lets get to the party. Marco says okay and we leave my room and get in my Audi and start heading towards Rich's.

So Rich lives the next block over but I wanted to take my Audi because it's so much easier than walking and my ass is a little cold so I turn on the seatwarmers and Marco asks why did we drive and I tell him that my ass was cold and I just felt like taking the Audi because it's easier than walking and he says oh, alright and by this time we're at Rich's so we park and get out.

So at the party I see Rich Megan Drew Alison Cody Oliver Ryan Michael Marco and my reflection and my outfit looks really put together and it's better than everyone else's in the room. There are some other people but I don't know their names and I don't need to know their names because they don't matter and I can tell that the names I don't know belong to people who don't read and appreciate music and the arts like Rich Megan Drew Alison Cody Oliver Ryan Michael Marco and I do but even Marco really doesn't appreciate music and the arts that much but I guess he reads a little and that's why we're friends because he's smarter than your average kid. There is no sign of Marie yet. Some kids are on the ground playing twister and spilling Jack&Coke everywhere and actually it's kind of embarrassing because I think these kids are freshmen and they have no idea what they're doing at a party like this because none of the other kids are talking to them or trying to be friendly because they are freshmen and they don't even know how to handle themselves when drunk yet so I think it's going to be bad news for them tonight. Rich comes over and says Hey glad you could come and I say wouldn't miss it for the world and Marco agrees and Rich starts talking about this poem he is working on that doesn't have any verbs or conjunctions just nouns and it's slightly annoying because his massive forehead is eclipsing half of this hardbody's face and it looks like she is a solid hardbody with a tight build and a firm ass but I can't see the rest of her because Rich is in the way so I move out of the way and pretend to grab a beer because this girl is standing right next to the beer. I catch a glimpse of her and she really is a hardbody with a tight body and a firm ass and very nice slim legs and she is kind of tall so I say Hey how's it goin' and she says Not too bad and I say my name's Truman and she says I know, we've met and I say We have? And she says Yeah, don't you remember? Last time at Rich's? You called me Priscilla but my name is actually Marie? We have art together? You burped in my mouth as we started to make out? And I say Fuck you, you're not Marie and she says Yeah, I am, asshole and I say Fuck you, bitch and walk away and crack open the beer and take a long gulp and walk outside and light a cigarette.

The moon is up. There is a freshmen lying face down in the lawn, a puddle of green puke spreading out from his face. I think about helping him but I don't think I could do anything of great significance to help him. As I'm staring at this kid lying face down I realize I lit my cigarette filter and not the tobacco.

Ryan Chang

Monday, February 04, 2008

Art: "Landscape and Pattern" & "Study of Disaster"



"Landscape and Pattern"
80" x 72"
acrylic, metallic paint oxidized with the artist's urine and saliva,
and dirt on canvas
2007



"Study of Disaster #7"
13" x 12"
paper, acrylic on broken maple board
2006

Edward Schexnayder

Art: Final Piece



Evand Schmidt

Art: "I Unpetalled You"



Aldrin Valdez
http://aldrinvaldez.blogspot.com