THERON JACOBS

HUMAN FEELINGS

WHAT IF FRUITS HAD FEELINGS AND IF YOU ATE THEM YOU WOULD GET THOSE FEELINGS



OR WHAT IF FEELINGS WERE COLLECTIBLE BUT YOU HAD TO KEEP THEM IN THE BOX OR THEY'D LOSE VALUE



OR WHAT IF I COULD STEAL YOUR FEELINGS FROM A GREAT DISTANCE



OR QUIETLY LEECH THEM WHILE PROXIMAL TO YOU



LIKE WE'RE ALL HERE NOW AND IM HERE TOO AND IM SIPHONING OFF OF YOU



IM STEALING YR FEELINGS LITTLE BY LITTLE AND SOON I WILL BE RICH AND DRAMATIC AND LIKE A BEAUTIFUL STORM



AND YOU WILL BE LEADEN



YOU'LL BE DEAD IN THE WATER



YOU'LL BE HEAVY WOOD SOMEONE BROUGHT OUT INTO THE FIELD TO BUILD SOMETHING WITH AND THEN FORGOT ABOUT MANY YEARS AGO



THERE YOU SIT, USELESS



OR WHAT IF FEELINGS WERE DETACHABLE, SWAPPABLE



HERE LET'S TRADE



OR WHAT IF I GIVE AWAY ALL MY FEELINGS TO A FEELINGS PAUPER AND THEN WHAT



WILL I BE LIKE A BEAUTIFUL INSECT



FREE IN THE WORLD



SOMETIMES I WANT THE FEELINGS OF A HORSE



I WANT TO BE A HORSE FULL OF HORSE FEELINGS



AND I WANT TO RUN



RUNNING IS A FEELING IF YOU ARE A HORSE AND IT IS MAYBE THE BEST FEELING



WHALES HAVE THE BIGGEST, MOST PERFECT FEELINGS



THEY ARE IRREDUCIBLE



PLY THEM WITH ALL THE MOST ADVANCED TECHNOLOGIES AND COME AWAY CLEAN



AND WITH NO DISCERNIBLE PROGRESS



FEELINGS BORN IN PRESSURES LIKE THAT RESIST US



OR WHAT IF SCIENTISTS DISCOVER A LOT OF HUMAN FEELINGS THAT HAVE BEEN DORMANT INSIDE US



AND THE FIRST PERSON TO AWAKEN THEM WINS A PRIZE



A SERIES OF RECKLESS EXPERIMENTS BORN SUDDENLY AND RESULTING IN SEVERAL ACCIDENTAL DEATHS WILL NOT DETER US



WE ARE IMPLACABLE



WE ARE LIKE THE TIDE, TAKEN TOGETHER



THE HUMAN SPECIES CANNOT BE ARGUED WITH



WE ARE CERTAIN AND FATAL



BUT I WONDER IF WE TOOK THE AVERAGE WHAT THE AVERAGE HUMAN FEELING IS



IM GOING TO GUESS HUNGRY



IM GOING TO GUESS EAGER



IM GOING TO GUESS "WANT"



IM GOING TO GUESS VAIN



WE HAVE A WHOLE MENAGERIE OF VANITIES AND WE LIKE TO PUT THEM ON DISPLAY



SO LONG AS SOMEONE'S LOOKING



WHAT IS THE FEELING OF DESIRING TO BE SEEN



WHAT IS THE FEELING OF BEING ON A LIFELONG QUEST OF TRYING TO DISCOVER YOURSELF IN OTHERS



WHAT IS THE FEELING OF WANTING TO STEP COMPLETELY AND PAINLESSLY OUTSIDE YOURSELF SO THAT YOU CAN REST



IF ONLY FOR A LITTLE WHILE

THERON JACOBS tweets at http://twitter.com/TPHD. A lot of it is about bugs or horses, thanks.

Stephen Michael McDowell

every astronaut i've done sex with

the first astronaut i did sex with
lay naked lit by reflected
photons of earth
while i stood in the dark
afraid and alert and almost not there
the night before the 2-time
league champion
lunar eclipses
lost in a crippling upset
to the brooklyn nets

the second astronaut i did sex with
showed me a photo on her instagram
of her doing a thumbs up
standing next to george bush jr’s
cybernetic minotaur body
his brain was visible
which seemed bizarre, unintentional
but if your head is a cow’s head
and your body is a trillion nanobots
arranged to look like
adriana lima from the neck down
and you’ve been emperor of
pluto for more than two millennia
and you’re standing less than two feet away
from an award-winning fellatio courtesan
a brain is at best an ornament
at worst a sort of sad relic

the third astronaut i did sex with
told me to put my big earth cock
into her little venutian pussy
but awareness that she was born
somewhere near the center of orion’s belt
distracted me and i went flaccid
so we watched paola rey’s
‘maquina del amor’ for a while
on pornhub until i was mostly erect,
the last message i remember getting
on myspace
was her saying she found my wallet
under her futon

the fourth astronaut i did sex with
kept asking if i was finished,
mars was in transit against the sun
and her husband was doing an interview
for the europa aeronautics and space administration
and would want to know later
if his hair looked good on spreecast
suffice to say
he didn’t see her in the chat
and i got deployed
to the inner solar system
before we reached the dark side of jupiter

the fifth astronaut i did sex with
was from a planet i hadn’t heard of
and couldn’t pronounce the name of now
if i tried
she called me the other day on skype
and said she felt afraid
we’d never be in the same system
at the same time ever again
i said that seemed probable
but the fact that we met at all
was grossly improbable
and not to linger on math
that that was why we phased it out
‘infinity was a dumb idea’ i said

the sixth astronaut i did sex with
still believed in astrology
it’s been three-thousand years
since anyone’s cared
if sagittarius is compatible
with cancer,
she said it said online
that we should ‘take it slow’
but since she left for a mission
to andromeda
after only two titanic months together
and i’m not willing to wait
5 million years for anyone
i guess we’ll never know

the seventh astronaut i did sex with
spoke spanish fluently
i don’t know why
it was confusing because
no one had spoken at all in decades
and the standard telepathic
language at the time
was entirely derived from
the lyrics to psy’s ‘gangam style’

the eighth astronaut i did sex with
asked me to move with her to mars
i did
i don’t regret it
but the anti-ultraviolet injections
mandatory for extended stays on that planet
made my organs turn metallic gold
they still kind of are in parts
so i don’t now, but at one point did
have ‘all gold errythang’
nahmean

the ninth astronaut i did sex with
seduced me mid-solar storm
we had lost control of our ship
and were the only crew members left alive
i couldn’t tell if it was hot because our bodies
were colliding
or because our ship
was about to do the same thing with a star
so when the simulation stopped
and i realized it had all been a cogency test
i said ‘come on guys’ and kept going
and got promoted to corporal
which is a level of responsibility
i never wanted to have

the tenth astronaut i did sex with
had never done sex
with another astronaut before
she got freaked out
and made me stop
because she was scared
she’d get internal gamma ray poisoning
in her vagina
which isn’t entirely ridiculous

the eleventh astronaut i did sex with
i felt sure was an alien
until they took off their waste
recycling apparatus,
turns out,
they were only half alien

the twelfth astronaut i did sex with
was from the same system, planet,
and city as me
i subtweeted her ‘#rare’ for a couple months
until my girlfriend on mars
figured out how twitter worked
and started subtweeting her ‘#whore’

the thirteenth astronaut i did sex with
wasn’t really an astronaut
she was an amorphous spacebeast
disguised as one
she kept saying in crowded places
during an interplanetary space convention
‘does anyone want to do sex to me!’
and flashing her breasts enthusiastically
most people laughed and engaged her
i think they mostly thought she was joking
she wasn’t
we went to a secluded part of the space station together
and it turned out she was an alien
ostracized by her species
who wanted another lifeform to firmly squeeze
her gelatinous form for a while
she projected into my dream that night
and showed me her homeworld
i wanted to learn more about it from her in the morning
but her body suit wore off
and her mothership came and beamed her away
before the rest of the crew woke

the fourteenth astronaut i did sex with
was a spacemom
nice

the fifteenth astronaut i did sex with
didn’t orgasm or pretend to orgasm
or seem interested in orgasming
she was more interested in trying to quantify
how many positions we could achieve
given zero G’s and 10 cubic meters
in her— ironically limited space
for something considered a ‘space’
especially since it was built
specifically for launching into space
—’artist’s space’

the sixteenth astronaut i did sex with
was one of those genetically enhanced
amazonian super-babes
bred especially for living
on tiny, dark, dwarf planets
her skin was bioluminescent
and her forehead was enormous
the gravity was so low
that when she arched back
while coming
beads of sweat launched from
her prominent frontal lobe
and lingered in the air for a moment
like diamonds in the sky

the seventeenth astronaut i did sex with
lived in a space commune on a satellite
in orbit around the rogue planet melancholia
when i asked her if she felt bad
that they were on a collision course with earth
she said ‘only if there’s nothing left there—’
‘except fields of orchids—’
‘and a mountain range of dachshund puppies—’
‘or i guess, maybe, if my klonopin runs out’

the eighteenth astronaut i did sex with
is a space poet
so i guess we have that in common
she also currently lives
with her parents at a space station near
where she was first discharged into the universe
so i guess we have that in common too
she sent me a message on gmail chat
that i was in cryostasis during
it read:
‘hi—’
‘lol—’
‘this vice thing’

Stephen Michael McDowell is a Maryland-based artist acutely obsessed with Sonic the Hedgehog. He is the author of a novella, Treees, a novel, Male, Black, and a forthcoming piece of science-fiction titled Planet. He has a website.

Laurens Verdonkschot

I once expressed this: 'your skin is
dark like a pastry, heavily egg-washed and baked'.
you thought this was
funny so you let me eat you out.

on the night I was your favorite rnb singer I expressed
that we were somehow the same being. in a moment we
will inhabit the same body and other such sex things
that were untrue on an atomical level.

i enjoy being the discreet movements between you and me.
we play a game called lets see how close our faces get
without kissing and it depletes
me of everything.

Laurens Verdonkschot is a writer who lives in Brighton.

Matthew Baker Thompson

i am the cowboy-with-a-black-hat
-hiding-behind-a-boulder of this party
if you’d like me to come over there
and say a lie to you.
i suppose i have trouble with all of that
every now and then,
but if i have a life motto, it is probably,
“you win some, you lose some.”
so i rattle my spurs and ride across the floor.
you turn your head and i have
morphed into a diamond pendant.
you turn your head and i am
back to normal.
now you are showing me pictures of your cats.
thanks for showing me these cats.

---

we sit by a pond and you
arrange the pens in your shirt pocket.
you have two colors of pens.
you say you feel sorry for things and begin
to cry.
i am thinking about the pond and wonder if
it can see you cry.
how sad it must be to be a pond
just sitting around waiting for tears.

Matthew Baker Thompson is a jerk but sorry no muscles :-( He did a goof called Matt Romney and used to write a lot of things.

Theo Thimo

Selected Haikus

coworker while high:
"love getting high, in fact, i
wish i was higher"

__________

:/ this is my faceface
this is all the time my face :/
blarf guess i miss u

____________

don't talk to old friends
just make eye contact with them
and then look away

__________

idgaf
idc smd yo :/
idgaf

______

juxtapose me/you
fuck you/fuck me/fuck you/me
i'm retarded shit

_________

Newspaper headline:
"You desperately need help,
seek a therapist"

___________

Newspaper headline:
"a former child actor starves
to death in basement"

___________

blaze em 4/20
erryday erryday yo
get high suicide

__________

being confident
try killing ur friends
murder murder nice :/

Theo Thimo is 18 and lives in Worcester, MA.

Giancarlo DiTrapano

Do You Feel Bigger Than What You Are?

I found the twitter feed of a gainer a couple of months ago.

He started at 205lbs in 2002 and is now at 560. He doubled his weight in exactly five years and hit 500 in March of 2011.

The feed led to a formspring where he has been documenting his gain more extensively. He has many fans, people who like to follow his progress. He posts headless photographs of himself standing in the same position (one foot up on a chair) and in the same pair of shorts (which he wears exclusively for the photo documentation).

It is a mistake to think that this is entirely sexual, but it is also a mistake to think it's entirely not.

He visits the doctor regularly, and there are no signs of serious health problems. He is still young. He will reconsider when problems arise.

Eating is done more out of the desire to gain than out of hunger. His appetite is satiated several plates before his desire to grow is. When his body tells him he has had enough food, he tells it, "Then you'll be able to turn this right into fat, won't you?" and continues to eat.

At his unsexiest moments he still wants more size. When he was younger he was confused, because he thought he was only attracted to bigger men. Once he found a bigger man for himself, he realized that what he wanted was to become one. He doesn't yet feel like himself. The bigger he gets, the better, the more like himself, he feels.

He considers his weight only in sets of five pounds. He doesn't consider three pounds to be a gain. He has to gain five, and then keep it at that number (or higher) for more than a week to consider it an achievement, to consider it as coming any closer to who he feels he is.

His fans ask him questions. He tells them, "Actually it's the contrary, because it used to bother me. You'd be surprised how many passing cars yell, 'Hey fat ass!' Especially on weekend nights, which I avoided going out on. But now the bigger I get, and the closer I come to feeling myself, the less I care about how others view me, or what they say."

He knows how insensitive the world can be. "It's the last accepted prejudice. A lot of the time people don't know they've hurt someone with what they've said. I feel like I've gotten beyond where anyone can hurt me anymore."

"Can you retract your prepuce when you urinate or is your pubic fat too large now? When are you going to have your prepuce circumcised?" As one body part grows, nearby body parts (and their functions) can also be affected. This must be dealt with. He is saving for the procedure.

He is exactly as round as he is tall, but he is indifferent to this fact. When it comes to numbers, the only ones that excite him are those of weight, not length or width.

Gainers dating civilians is not recommended. He dated one, and it was a disaster. He tried dating encouragers and feeders, seemingly perfect matches, but never found one he got along with. Now that he is alone, his life is going more smoothly. When he reaches his goal weight, dating a civilian would be more feasible. He would like to be happy with himself first.

He has a goal weight, but he doesn't know what it is. He'll know when he gets there. Gaining has allowed him to think less about his body as he goes about his daily life because he doesn't ever have to worry about being wrong.

"Do you feel bigger than what you are?"

Plateaus are reached and can be discouraging. Weeks will go by where he doesn't gain. He theorizes that a plateau is an amount of time given to his body, by his body, so that it may prepare its infrastructure for the next big gain.

He doesn't like having a body. The fact that it's a big body is the only reason he keeps it.

He remembers his unhappiness when he was less than half his current size.

Do you feel bigger than what you are? Do you feel what you are? What you are do you feel? Do feel are you?

He wants to one day step into his bathtub, lie down in it, and fill the tub to the rim with his flesh.

Giancarlo DiTrapano is 6ft, 200lbs, blond-Italian, straight-acting, 7inch, cut, top. He is the editor of the New York Tyrant and Tyrant Books.

Chad Redden

I came here
in my mind
a steady rain
since breakfast
I don’t want
to die but
the ceiling
matches the fog
in the skylights

---

we’re unthinkable
bombs now numb
mountains cohabitating
in our crowded kitchen
once we were
lights in branches
before mountains
our shadows
killing dogs below

---

a nudist couple
stood nearby
under blue twilight
looking almost alike
both had muscles
lacked the usual scars
shaved similar places
their credit cards
hung from necklaces

---

today was
strangely long
like mowing grass
through Iowa
or walking a mile
I think that way
about a mile
this mile is
strangely long

---

we’re bombing earth
rocks into orbits
never imagined
an older technique
making little luxuries
for homesick earthlings
from cities and parents
who only knew of
stars on television

Chad Redden has a website, edits NAP, and is an awesome guy.

Angela Shier

I forgot that time exists
I forgot that it gets darker this time of year.
I will come over to your place,
and we will eat pizza in your bed.

---

Someone made a chicken potpie in the office toaster oven today.
I am smelling the potpie.
A woman who works here is allergic to smells.
If she smells this potpie,
she could probably die.

Angela Shier (@angelashier) loves cats and the internet. http://oftheshier.tumblr.com // http://themallmag.tumblr.com

Anna Lei

You Fill My Head with Pieces of Paper Kites

Darling the monsters are more than internal
Darling the blackness; my thoughts
Darling I'm afraid that if we take off these unicorn heads we'll have to start playing pretend
Darling there is a dead body in the bathtub
Darling the clouds are not for us to devour
Darling what if I painted my lips with black glitter?
Darling remember the time I told you I was a murderer in disguise?
Darling the body now bones
Darling why is it so hard for you to understand me?
Darling even my best friends don't understand me?
Darling even I don't understand myself?
Darling my mother kneels at night and prays for my mind
Darling your black heart a swamp a crushed tissue box a tongue in a glass box a TV left on; blue light; artificial reality: a want made real through squeezing eyes + fists

Squeeze those eyes squeeze those fists, bitch (This isn't Kansas, this is South Bend, Indiana.)

Darling I love you
Darling fuck you and your featherstone heart
Darling I know I'm a fucking paradox and my inner complexities are the holes in your wall and the reason you bought a motorcycle, but love me, anyways?
Darling LOLZ jk, I don't need your love. I'm a motherfucking feminist.
Darling this is the climax of a story with no hero
Darling I'm trying to stop the whispers from seeping into the veins of my hellhole heart
Darling don't think for a second that these feelings swirling in my mouth are cotton candy
Darling believe me I tried swallowing, but they remain
Darling believe me shooting fish does nothing for your general health
Darling I pulled the words from my teeth and placed them in paper lanterns and placed the paper lanterns into the river and watched them float and flow and disappear
Darling these songs are haunting me
Darling you are in the eyes I see when I look in the mirror
Darling I am sorry I hopped on a plane and flew half a country away
Darling I'm scared to return; I'm scared of the tangibility of change
Darling I know I've always struggled with acknowledging reality, but even I can't keep imagining you.

Anna Lei lives in London.

Marshall Mallicoat

Poem

I'm the best man in this chatroom
I'm the worst minstrel dancing for you
I'm the worst friend for sending you bad links
My best rappers are wack to you—
My girlfriend on the edge of this time zone
I can feel you in this zip code and in every zip code
I can sing your telephone number
I want to email you and CC the world

I'm cleaning up the condo
I'll turn up the air conditioner
I'll do your math homework
I'll lay you out on my queen size bed
I'm so rich I will love you for handshakes, for eyelashes
I will love you for nothing
For love I will love you
Love your thumbnail slideshows
Love your scrolling text messages
Love your mpegs on loop

I'm out in god's country
Gathering pop tabs on a string, on a great necklace
To gift to my wife on our wedding night
So she might be proud, and you are
And the sky is your color
And the shampoo smells like your hair--
This is my email to make you love me
At least when drunk and on drugs and asleep and offline
Love me like I love your green fingernails
Love me like I love the cigarettes on your lips and the hairs on your ass
Love me like I love the shoes on your feet
Love me like I love my trailer park queen

Marshall Mallicoat's tumblr is http://youtubedotcom.tumblr.com and his twitter is http://twitter.com/marshallmallico.

James Ganas

enstasis

On the margins of every moment in your life

are vibrant stars that clash, collapse
then become a part of you
your lens is not only perfect but celestial
and soon you will become a constellation

unrecognizable to the untrained eye

you are everything you have ever taken in
you are the amalgamation of 20 years’ hard work

the seams of the visible spectrum
are reproduced to you as your own essence
seeing is the origin of the process of becoming


surround yourself, then, with the brightest colors possible
and let the plane fold back to permeate you

---

tally

in the 23 days since

you last
slept in my bed
I have smoked 14 cigarettes (unfiltered)
run 17 miles (quite fictional)
and have taken in 46,000 calories (not enough)

all I do is tally until the day that you return

---

James Ganas is the author of James Ganas Was My Best Friend And Im Sorry He Died So Young Of Cancer.

Michael Inscoe

Untitled


Your belly hair, like hundreds of little spiders' legs, will pass lint up from your underwear to your bellybutton

It's like an assembly line

One January morning when I am thirty years old, I am at work and I take the garbage out to the dumpster

It is so cold out

I walk to the park across the street and sit down and watch cars park in the parking lot and people walk in to get coffee or lunch or something

I watch my breath fog in front of me

The last girl I had sex with said she thought I was "gonna go crazy on her"

She told me I could touch her anywhere except her vagina because she has a boyfriend

She said she could do whatever she wanted to me though

She went down on me and then we had sex

She said she tried heroin for the first time that day

Mark locked me and Rachel in the bathroom with him and told us about how Zack said he could beat him at wrestling but that he would definitely win if they wrestled

I asked Rachel if the girl who tried heroin for the first time that day was still at the party

We went to look for her

I found her and said "you can sleep on my couch if you need a place to stay tonight"

She said "I'm going to sleep in your bed"

The next morning we went to eat breakfast and she paid for it with her mom's credit card and when I mentioned Fraggle Rock she said "I think I'm a little too young for that"

Then she said the thing about me going "crazy on her" in a really nonchalant, calm tone

There is a button you can click on Facebook that then offers you the choice to 'Block' or 'Poke' the person whose page you're looking at

Lint gathers and travels up your pelvis and dust shatters like broken glass

I pick the lint out when I am in the shower and someone said the discovery about dust shattering will help people predict the weather

In the shower I let the water hit my beard for a long time because that is one of the best feelings I can have

Petting the dog and hot water on my beard

Dust shattering and lint traveling

Some scientist who says this will help predict the weather

My dog who is sometimes bothered by how often I want to lay with my head on her stomach

Michael Inscoe is the author of Don't Die Alone. He edits the literary site Unsure if i will allow my beard to keep growing for much longer.

Dave Shaw

The Limbs of the Thing

It is morning and the sun is up and Will had watched it come up through Anna's window. Anna is asleep in her bed and Will is lying next to her, on his back, looking at the sun through the window. His eyes feel strained but it will be worth it, he thinks. I will literally burn this moment into my retinas. I will have it forever. He smiles to himself. It is late August and the room is warm and Will and Anna had slept naked and covered by a thin white sheet. Will thinks of what Anna had said last night, she said sex was a just a limb of their whole thing. Will had laughed at her, and he had kissed her, and later, while she was asleep, he had thought about what she had meant.

Earlier that summer Will had read a book by John Updike, in which a man is having an affair and confesses to his wife that he is in love with another woman, and his wife asks, later, if when he's with this new woman, if they come at the same time. She asks it like a taunt. When Will read this he had tried to google it to see what she meant but mostly just found porn sites and erotic fiction blogs.

Will looks at Anna and she is asleep and looks beautiful. He kisses her shoulder and then leans forward to the foot of her bed and takes her MacBook and opens it. She has fifteen tabs open in google chrome, thirteen of which were different recipes for green tea cupcakes. Will smiles. One of the tabs is twitter and it is still signed in to Anna's account. Will tweets 'I have fifteen tabs open and thirteen of them are recipes: this is how I live my life'. He feels satisfied. He opens a new tab and absently googles 'john updike' and then 'David Foster Wallace' and then 'DT Max' and doesn't really focus on what he is reading. David Foster Wallace shit-talking Bret Easton Ellis. Who cares. David Foster Wallace isn't even alive and Bret Easton Ellis is still shit-talking his dead body. The body of the thing, the bit with all the organs, what is that, he thinks, what part is that. Will had always viewed love as something half-heartedly or almost sarcastically pursued, something like the future, which by definition could not be obtained, but is desired as if by default. Love was like the thing at the bottom of an infinitely deep pit that every living human had thrown him or herself into, something you were falling toward without any hope of actually reaching and the rate at which you approach it is the same whether you want it or not. This feels comforting, like the sun. Just don't look directly at it and you're okay. And just how many limbs are there, on this thing.

When Anna is awake they will make coffee and drink coffee together in Anna's bed, and then they will go to that breakfast place, the one Anna had talked about last night, and they will look at each other’s faces without urgency, with confidence that like the sun, their faces will always be there to look at, and, like the sun, their faces will only hurt each other if they look too directly. And Will will ask Anna what she meant about the limbs last night, and she will say she meant just this, that there were limbs and there was a body and that they didn't need the limbs but they were nice to have, and then she will tell him that love is like the prize of a Japanese game show that no one actually understands but the colours are bright and compelling, and it is so literally foreign that no one asks questions, and that metaphors are just tools for dummies like Will that are too absorbed in their little brains to look right at the thing. Like the sun. Then she will stand and lean across the table in the breakfast place, and she will kiss Will's forehead and smile at him, and he will feel confused but good and smile and they will eat the rest of their breakfast and talk about Jim Henson.

When Will was young his teacher had told a story to his class about a deer with no legs that was alive only because a person adopted it and fed it every day and cared for it. It was a wild animal but it didn't need to be wild as long as someone loved it, was what the teacher had told the class. Will had asked if it mattered that the deer didn't know that it was loved, or even understood what love was, and the teacher had told him that it was only a story, as if that were any kind of answer at all.

Dave Shaw lives in Canada. He writes stories and plays music. You can be friends with him on the internet here: http://facebook.com/davveshaw.

Hannah Fantana

01/04/13

i went to the DMV today, felt like a human
i'm finally a human now
thanks

i let you come over and hold me because i find the way you trace my arm fascinating
and the way i can never be happy around you
and the way my pillow smells of your curls long after you've left

we lie down on a mattress on the floor and instead of being nice when you wrap your legs around mine, i am apprehensive

you nuzzle me into you
i think of something ridiculous and i laugh
but i can't articulate it
and i feel a little bit farther away from you

lie down under these christmas lights with me
even though it is not christmas
and you have pointed this out

you never let me hold your hands
so i put them next to yours and move them around a bit
you never let me be happy so hug you a little less
i move my fingers up and down and around yours, lightly grazing them
and i swear i could do this for hours
you say 'dopamine' in a small voice two times so i know you're still there
you tell me about your hands and your grandfathers hands and of churches and gods

i tell you i don't write poetry anymore
but i guess i was lying

whisper deep spanish mumbles into my ear and remind me:
i am only a dove

you tell me all the things i've said to you and i feel devoid of emotion
funny how you can make all the boys seem like little paper cranes
you take it away and you fold it all wrong
but i guess that's how that works, isn't it?

i will let you come over if you promise not to let me fall in love with you
you can't make me want to know you

Hannah Fantana is a writer from San Diego. You can find her at hannahfantana.tumblr.com and @sadderall.

Crispin Best

david foster wallace-themed softcore porn titled 'infinite chest'


i saw one ladybug
on the inside of a window
and one on the outside
just circling
one another

so basically
they're in love
on the internet

---

dick

my dick
is so big
it looks like
a close-up
of a dick

Crispin Best lives in London and at crispinbest.com.

Mike Bushnell

fuckfame imma human secret


I don't wanna take the items of your life and pile them up and burn them on a barge floating away from the harbor

did I brush my teeth yet did I get enough sleep

I hear drills a dozen eagles carry a duffle bag of money above the water tower

I am not important I reject mastering fame because water drips from the umbrella

there are bars on the window there's bars on these windows bars are on the gotdamn window metal bars while the makeup stays in the shape of a face and the arm reaches into the lamp light suddenly wire hangers sway in the closet

how many pieces of fuzz must come off the gloves before the gloves come off

I whistle to the windy I confess I have eaten bubblegums my heart is just a ziplock full of bloodly

bag in a box in a bag smiles move within these structures made with calm wrists I walk under the scaffold as you build it

A forest of calliopes a forest of churches a forest in the heart of a desert where I drop to one knee and look you in the eyes

it isn't all so pretty

big deal

I want to go up the escalator toward the illuminated billboard toward the hand holding my dreams I jump for them I wave my arms no luck jewelry dangles from the body into the cold night

inside is epicly and romance and this lifetime is just a forest full of furby it's okay you mourn your loss I'll mourn mine and in between we can spin at the top of the hill laughing toward the airplanes circling until they are cleared to lower their gears and land on the runway and hit the breaks and feel the g-force of return in our graceful machines

Mike Bushnell is the author of Traumahawk.

Keegan Crawford

A candle melting all the way down until it's nothing but a wick


Watch me turn into a bat

and fly into a cave,

I will light candles by my bed

on the ceiling,

to feel no remorse for killing something

feels strange and alien,

my wings are long and I won't know the difference

between having arms and having wings after a while,

I don't want to drink blood but it's necessary for my survival

---

Play Duality by Slipknot


cut me in half with a chainsaw (think of the sound of a bone breaking)

when you cut something



you are actually putting something very small

between other very small things

to separate them



put your hand between my hands

Keegan Crawford lives in Portland, OR, where he makes music, writes poetry and prose, and wears black.

Chris Dankland

Infestation

Juliet Dink woke with a snort, instantly sitting up in bed. Something was inside her mouth. She spit, letting the hard object fall into her hand. It was a wet, black thing. The room was very dark, and for a moment all she could do was stare with dreamy unbelief at it. It was a small, half-chewed cockroach. “Fuck!” she screamed. Her arm started flapping like a trapped animal, flinging the cockroach away.

Juliet sat in bed opening and closing her mouth in silent pain, like a fish dying in air. She pushed her fingers inside her mouth, touching every corner and cavern. She walked to the bathroom with a nervous expression and brushed her teeth, rinsing her mouth out with Listerine many times. As she was brushing her teeth for the second time, she caught herself scowling at her reflection in the mirror.

“Diffphuthing,” she said. A shiver of pure revulsion pulsed through her body. She spat into the sink again and again.

Like most pretty girls, Juliet Dink wasn’t used to having small insects crawl out of her mouth in the middle of the night. It was a very shitty way to get woken up at two in the morning, especially considering that she had to be at work very early the next day. She needed to go back to sleep…but how can somebody go back to sleep after something like that? She was wide awake.

Rubbing her nose, Juliet turned on the main light in her tiny apartment—really just a single room with a bathroom and a kitchen. She squinted her pale blue eyes and scanned the apartment from left to right, looking to see if more roaches were around.

Cockroaches are sneaky little fuckers. If you see one, you can be sure that there are others. You can never really know how many cockroaches might be hidden all around you at any given moment—hidden in the walls, in the cupboards, in corners, under beds. Cockroaches don't have ears or brains. They don't make any noise. They come out when everyone is sleeping, or gone. Their hard black bodies creep out from the shadows like manifestations of darkness itself, like tiny bits of Night that have grown legs and antenna and gone out into the world.

Juliet looked and looked but no more cockroaches could be found. She didn't sleep that night. She couldn't. Sitting in her favorite chair she read a fat novel alone, occasionally glancing up from the pages to check the apartment, her eyes stabbing left and right, her face jerking around like a bird's. Finally the sun came up, and she got ready for work.

*****

When she got back home, Juliet threw off her dress, crawled into bed, and fell asleep instantly. Her transition from waking life to sleeping oblivion was dreamless and complete, like turning off a light.

She woke up feeling something moving inside her mouth and jerked up, screaming and spitting and spitting and screaming. The cockroach fell on the bed on its back, its hairy legs franticly clawing the air. “You fuckerrraahhh!” Juliet picked up her giant novel and smashed the bug again and again, until it was nothing but a greasy dark smear on her Pink Panther blanket.

Her hands were shaking and her mind was racing so fast she could hardly keep up with it. She couldn't believe it. Was she dreaming? No, she was not. Did she imagine it? She glanced back at the greasy smear on the blanket.

Cockroaches are sneaky, stealthy, disgusting little things and they might be hiding anywhere, at any time. They are scavengers and can eat almost anything. They can even learn to eat poison. They breed like dividing cells, and can take over an entire building in less than a few weeks. Once they've infested and taken root, they are very difficult to get rid of. They are tenacious, and they are legion. They can crawl on walls. They can survive for an entire week with their heads cut off. They like dark, moist places.

Chris Dankland is from Houston, Texas. During the day he is a public school teacher and at night he writes stories, some of which have appeared in Metazen, New Wave Vomit, Keep This Bag Away From Children, and have u seen my whale. He blogs at Neato Mosquito Alt Lit Fireworks Show and dankland.blogspot.com.

Kelsea Basye

i stopped being in love with you so i don’t know what to write about anymore

fifty thousand people, shrieking
tear me limb from limb from limb and ship my body parts to different continents
existing everywhere on earth simultaneously
fifty thousand people repeating the word ‘fuck’ over and over
in monotone
seven billion eighty-eight million ninety-three thousand people standing silently
hundreds of sleepless nights trying to remember the names of every sea

Kelsea Basye spends most of her time staring at the various bugs that decide to die on her floor.

Heiko Julién

Ashland Jesus

Yesterday, as I was waiting for the Ashland bus, a drunk belligerent man approached me aggressively.

He Stepped to me.

He stood close to me and we stared into each others eyes for a little bit. His face was covered in sores and he had long hair. I thought it looked cool even though it was very greasy.

After a minute I asked him “what happened,” because it seemed like something had.

He told me that I looked like Jesus and I laughed. Not sure if he thought I was laughing at him or not, but he became a lot calmer. He asked “what happened to the world?”

I told him I wasn't sure.

He told me “you drink, you fuck your life up.” Then he demanded a cigarette from an old man and smoked it while the old man and I boarded the bus and rode away.

---

We Melt

you say i like Asian Things
i dont know how to respond
when you scraped off your semi permanent gel nail polish at mcdonalds
while i was trying in vain to download mulan from their wifi
and it started raining
and you said your stomach hurt
and the movie was at 6 percent and there were 5 minutes left
before close
and that big employee lady was standing by the door staring at us because she wanted us to leave
and it was raining harder
and you smiled at me
and left the nail polish chrysalis on the table
i melted
and it wasnt our problem

we melt together all the time
these days
in different ways
i promised i wouldnt say that you are better than me anymore
so i wont

Heiko Julién lives in Chicago and is the author of 3 ebooks: am i cool, I Am Ready to Die a Violent Death, and There is No Reason for Tigers To Be Beautiful, They Just Are. He also does music as Spooky Cheddar.