by Carol Dorf

These Questions Aim at Suitable Variation

What is there but desire                       Clouds flatten the sky

 

At the end, the body's demands         Two eucalyptus trees, one pine

 

For more for the chemical                   A helicopter cuts air    

 

Compounds of pleasure                       Murder of crows rises

 

Once as a child, before gender           Rush of the freeway

 

She desired flight, space, rockets       Competing sirens

 

Later all her theories shrunk              A cat slinks into the night

 

Into a particular moment                    Streetlights sufficient

 

A clinch, the bodies momentum        Illumination

 

      


Carol Dorf has two chapbooks available, "Some Years Ask," (Moria Press) and "Theory Headed Dragon," (Finishing Line Press). Her poetry appears in  E-ratio, Great Weather for Media, About Place, Glint, Slipstream, The Mom Egg, Sin Fronteras, Surreal Poetics, The Journal of Humanistic Mathematics, Scientific American, and Maintenant. She is poetry editor of Talking Writing and teaches math at Berkeley High School.


by Carol Dorf

Gallery Notes

Headless,  

       everywhere in space 

 

at once. Brought together 

       into one venue and placid 

               place.          

 

Do you still think of me 

       as a vessel?

 

Good enough for portage, 

       but not conversation?

 

This head 

       is located in another venue.

 

But the answer to this question, 

       any question,

              is not the point, 

 

any more than the slip that holds

       clay head and body.

 

Who writes the day? 

 

     Bring

             on the picnic blanket

                        more wine.  


Carol Dorf has two chapbooks available, "Some Years Ask," (Moria Press) and "Theory Headed Dragon," (Finishing Line Press). Her poetry appears in  E-ratio, Great Weather for Media, About Place, Glint, Slipstream, The Mom Egg, Sin Fronteras, Surreal Poetics, The Journal of Humanistic Mathematics, Scientific American, and Maintenant. She is poetry editor of Talking Writing and teaches math at Berkeley High School.


by Kirsten Shu-ying Chen

Obscenities Are Make-Believe

but the grotesque is everywhere.

Did you ever think of all the pain

that went into making light?

All those cows 

and a whole day’s wages 

—for what? 

10 minutes of molten tallow?

The lowest face in a deck

of cards,    

a tree mistaken,

Dr. Zizmor’s subway ads,

misfits & mistrials, 

calloused skin, 

the manipulative tongue    

—its pink-blue underside.

Anything about the body, really:

farm the fat

live in the city 

and just look out the window.

Every living thing breathing

on another

being ground to dust

by the minute.

And if you don’t believe me

go on Wikipedia.

Read the latest whitepaper.

Look back through the window

at the globe canvassed

in a blue glow      and bowed 

as in prayer. 

Watch as it works

in the cave       is of the cave

Watch as the bed ignites

draped in a thousand pink and 

white lights.

      


Kirsten Shu-ying Chen is a New York-based poet with her MFA from the New School. She was recently shortlisted for the 2018 Disquiet Literary Prize. She leads a creative writing workshop at the Ali Forney Center and her work has been published or is forthcoming in Anamesa, Indicia, Hanging Loose Press, PANK, Public Pool, Seventh Wave, Texas Review's Gordian Review and more. 


by Kirsten Shu-ying Chen

Mapping My Mother

In other poems your disease places me.

Truth is: I’m guessing.

The ski accident—first grade—I do 

remember.

The first time I washed your hair

I don’t.

The distance between my pet traumas is not to scale.

My memory

is knotted lines near

is closer than it appears

is contouring off the map that hosts it

and shaping

the land it’s left behind.

I’m there one day on a square

of forgotten turf

when a landmark rises from the east

to confront me.

It’s not summer, but a small boardwalk still

and you and I after school

covering the whole quarter mile of it

in oversized sweatshirts.

We reach the north end in slow triumph

and you put one hand to the fence for closure.

It is the last time we will walk.

This is when I stare hard at the map.

This is when I should be able

To put a firm hand on the average rail with you

And say, I am this many years old, I have been here before,

and I remember.

But a snow-capped mountain intervenes—

and your clean hair.

I miss true North,

all coordinates run off,

all measuring errors vary again,

a concept complicated

by the curvature of the earth’s surface

a moment lapsing over the horizon

over you on a boardwalk in not-summer

and a bent sheen from which my vision slips.

Then I find myself

at the base of one site

surveying the empty plane.

Where did it go?

At any given moment, the whole map

held between terrestrial poles

waits for the altitude to shift.


Kirsten Shu-ying Chen is a New York-based poet with her MFA from the New School. She was recently shortlisted for the 2018 Disquiet Literary Prize. She leads a creative writing workshop at the Ali Forney Center and her work has been published or is forthcoming in Anamesa, Indicia, Hanging Loose Press, PANK, Public Pool, Seventh Wave, Texas Review's Gordian Review and more. 


by Georgie Newson

Piano Concerto

“I don’t like classical music,” she said. I don’t like classical music—such a trivial confession, such an innocuous remark. It would not be, she’d assumed, particularly controversial. And yet, of course, it was, according to the haughty academic who now sits beside her, who took the opinion as veritable heresy, and who duly arranged this uncomfortable outing to a—a—what? She checks the front of the program—a concerto. The sullen black letters glare at her accusatorially. A lump of panic is lodged in her throat, as if she is about to be examined on a subject she has never studied. She is unsure as to why she agreed to the proposal at all—the academic is nauseating and his company dull—and yet here they are, in this sarcophagal auditorium, waiting for the show to begin. She inhales. The air is moist and warm and bacterial, as if they are sitting inside a bloated stomach. Behind her, crowds of people filter through the entrances; she watches them bustle and fumble, diverge and disperse. The people are all the same, tweedsuited and puckermouthed, winestained and peanutgreased, clutching vinyl handbags and leather iPad cases. Their exposed elbows and bald heads glisten tenderly in the pink light, like crabmeat. She shudders. She hates it, all of it, the silent tyranny of the upper-middle classes, the tedium of this charade.

 

Beside her, the academic coughs slightly and settles into his chair, self-consciously shifting from one buttock to the other. He swallows, and she can hear the mucus in his throat. You’ll want to turn your phone off, he remarks, and embarks upon a rambling anecdote about a concerto he once attended in which one oblivious audience member did not turn their phone off and was forced to face the apparently disastrous consequences. She sighs and reaches into her pocket. Will they not have some sort of announcement about it at the start? she asks. The academic looks at her. I don’t think so, he says plainly. Then he turns away, smiling, all teeth and complacency. You’re going to love this, he says.

 

She suddenly realizes what this occasion is. It is not a date, as she first feared it might be misconstrued as. It is a debate. I don’t like classical music, she said, and now she is here to be proved wrong. The academic will demonstrate to her not just that classical music is enjoyable, but that it cannot be anything other than enjoyable, that she cannot not like it, that her position is simply incorrect. He will argue and he will win. She knows it already. He has the whole weight of history on his side, the incontestable authority of capital-A Art, the velvet-coated, gold-plated, alabaster-encrusted decadence of this entire institution. What does she have, comparatively? A subjective opinion—flimsy, slippery, inconsequential, like a sliver of soap. I don’t like classical music, she thinks desperately, but this crowd, this pulse, this matted fabric of bodies, seems to murmur: yes, you do. Yes you do.  

 

The stomach heaves; the lights are dimmed. In this softened state, the audience becomes a single creature—faceless and nameless, blurred and shifting, inhaling and exhaling collectively. How comforting it would be to feel at home in this vast body, to know one’s role and to perform it, to intuit every unspoken rhythm and convention. But she can’t. She is not inside the crowd, but pressed up against it, unable to be enveloped. She pushes herself against this experience as if it is a door that will not open, certain that, were she able to reach the other side, there would be some great surprise waiting for her, some tremendous surge of emotion or belonging. And yet—and yet. She smiles at the academic. The smile tastes like the swing of a blunt axe. I don’t like classical music, she thinks. But the crowd, as the violins begin, whispers back to her: you’re wrong.

 

*

 

Well, says the academic, when it is over. 

Well? she asks. 

He stares at her. Wasn’t that incredible?

Yes, she replies. She studies the crowd, which has loosened in the sudden brightness and begun to disperse. Yes, it was.

She watches a woman of about her own age rise slowly and make her way towards an exit. The woman is wearing a leopard-print coat and smiling in a self-satisfied manner. Her hair is so black that it seems iridescent, like a beetle or an oil spill. She navigates the crowd with ease.

I went to a wonderful concerto on Friday, she imagines the woman telling her friends, her partner, her colleagues. How satisfying it would be, to become this woman, to speak with authority on such a subject, to reveal a casual appreciation for something so esteemed. To be able to sigh: Oh, it was incredible. To feel as though it was incredible. She flinches. The academic is still talking. The crowd ingests the beetle-haired woman.

 

The bodies around her stretch and jostle. She looks behind her, towards the exits, where smug faces peer and preen. They all look so pleased with themselves. Narcissists, she thinks. And, really, she herself is no better, because she wishes she had loved the concerto. Because then she could be someone who loves concertos, someone who could challenge the academic—be someone like the beetle-haired woman. Maybe it is impossible, she considers, struggling to free her jacket from the gap between seats, to separate the enjoyment of art from the enjoyment of the fact that one is enjoying art. She tugs down her skirt and absent-mindedly turns on her phone. Perhaps she has never been moved—really moved—by a work of art. Perhaps she has only been moved by the possibility of being moved.    

 

The academic is still talking as they rise from their seats. I mean, that final crescendo—God, wasn’t that brilliant? It takes years—decades—to be able to play like that. Decades. My god. Were you watching his face? He looked as if he were about to transcend. Well, I would, too, if I could play like that. And those violins at the start—they were practically weeping.

Like a wound, she suggests.

The academic looks at her strangely. Shall we go to the bar? he asks.

 

She can feel his breath on her neck as they make their way down the long, arterial stairway. She knows that, later, he will try to kiss her. She knows that she will probably let him, and his tongue will taste like vinegar, and she will be able to feel the smirk in his mouth. Her own mouth will still hold the heavy metal of her blunt axe smile. He will awkwardly brush a few strands of hair from her face, then step backwards to regard her with satisfaction, as if she is a project he has just completed. I knew I’d be able to convince you, he’ll say. 

 

Why weren’t you around yesterday evening? A friend will ask, two days later.

I was at a concerto, she’ll reply.

A concerto? The friend will wrinkle her nose. Was it any good?

Oh, she’ll sigh. She’ll dig her fingernails into her palm, so hard that the skin threatens to rupture. The back of her throat will taste metallic. Oh, she’ll sigh. It was just incredible.


Georgie Newson lives in Oxford, England, and is currently studying for her A-levels. Her work has been published in Mslexia and various zines.