windspeak to english — Joshua Borja

http://www.translate.google.com

WINDSPEAK:
whoosh, whish.
pfoosh!

HAROOSH.

ENGLISH:

Look at me—oh wait, you can’t ’cause I’m the wind. HAR! I loved your hair so, so much, and I ran to it with a chaos—God, I was so excited. Oh my. Too excited. You definitely felt me making love and making madness through your brown, through the pink of your highlights. Now don’t pretend you’re angry that you’ve got this unmistakable after-making-love-with-the-wind looks about your hair. What can I say: I’m the master of sweeping hairstrands off their feet, off your shoulders, I’m king. –THE WIND.

The End of the Hush — Nisha Bolsey

Young and moldable,
undecided and unsure—
I have only just arrived in life.

You see,
I don’t have to love
my country
or the one wide world.

But this is a new time,
and it seems to me that

the people are starting to realize
that boundaries and borders are fiction,
and it seems to me that

the people are starting to realize
“injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere.”

(the truth, of course,
is that there truly is
injustice everywhere)

When I realized this,
I did not love my country.
I found it a dark, silent place
in a black, boarded-up world

until I heard
it speak

up and break free—

The world took up the challenge
and screamed as it entered
the realm of the unknown
and wrought with anger, cries
echoed and echoed
over the previously soundless plain,
breaking the choking grip
of apathy

And my country took to the streets,
and stayed outside in the cold
because it liked
what it had heard

And my people,
everywhere
encountered such violence!
so they screamed louder—
they kept projecting into the night

and took the streets again the next day;
because they were not content to be silenced

by wind, rain, or oppression.
They held their spirits tight;
they did not rattle or break,
they dazzled the heavens
with raging sound.

I must say
I have never had more faith in my country,
or in the one wide world.

And so I let
making this noise
be the first thing
I am sure of.

Syncopated Summer — Christopher Barnes

singing like curtains in the wind
bind, bound, found, released       rescued
oh JAZZ!  dropped-
off-
a-
cliff-
blues
lightened by carcinogenic neon cocktails
and 1          9          3          0eeeeeeeeees
pastel chiffoned apes
bounced, bounced,                  flounced
bounced,
so real…..surreal drugland clubs
where they jazz up the Airplane
with a rocket
with a rocket the acid band
is about to land
PAINT EVERYTHING!
THE WHITE SHIRTS SHOULD BE BLACK
the kissables (and the missables)
need blue teeth
the ugly need                                 flower-facing
the beauties need                        spots…
it’s a grind, it’s a grind
it’s a giraffe

Stain — Amy Meng

There’s an attic where we practice magic tricks.
A newspaper article: Flood, 1984, covers
one nude light bulb. Our bare arms make shapes
like: owl, petrol, pumpkin seed. We’re etchings
of women on Greek vases, plump limbs tapering.
Light gets into hair and sticks there.

A broken axle lies on a crate, we call it a table.
Our eyelids are textured like someone froze us
and molded their wrinkled lips onto our skin.
A few splinters get into my feet. Our breasts swell,
we begin to burn behind the navel.
An uneven rhythm we make our feet when we
don’t know how to dance but the ceremony calls for it.

A white muskrat pelt hangs over a coat stand its
jaw rigged to open and close when pressed
under its boneless chin. I spent hours looking for
veins in its plasticized eyes. On a Ouija board
we spell STAIN over and over.
I don’t get covered in sweat. The dust doesn’t
kick up. Our nightdresses sheer as paper
the death toll lies on.

Mother, you’re awake in a stupor — Allie DeStefano

August 11^th was her parents’ wedding anniversary,
the day my father chose to propose to her
without knowing the significance
she pined to have for herself,
that crumpled and stained love that is held
within the gold oval frame around her parents’ gray wedding photo.
Now she sits on the sofa
with faded hair freshly cut to her ears
and the plastic cup is loose in her hand,
the red wine spilling down her legs
and onto the cushion.

She says the sky molded clouds
into a heart and arrow,
a sign from Jesus that found her
once each week.
She’s crying and laughing and asking
for the roll of paper towels
that’s already soaked in red.
She’s asking me for a painting of Jesus,
because from me it would mean something,
in the same way
her nightly prayers to the lord
are soft-spoken
and now she’s asking for more wine
because it’s pooling up on the floor.

I like to sit, once perhaps — Jessica Kagansky

in the bathtub with the shower running
hot, and kiss the hot
flowering stream as it beats down in two alternating
distinct rhythms, major and minor chords always
the same key in the same season, winter’s a shriller
shade.

the trick is to let your mind wander. imagine you’re
giving yourself a pep talk. don’t talk. listen to the
advice your brain regurgitates after years of soaking in
all the stuff you’re supposed to tell yourself just
before you pop a little miracle out of you, like seeing
your frosty breath write your name in front of your cold
eyes and one like sticking your head out the window at
night and winking at the moon so that a juicy piece falls
on your outstretched tongue all nutty and crumby and you
realize well i’ll be damned she really is all cheese

it’s the same with kissing. think about the times you
kissed your pillow when it was leslie howard, a porcelain
doll, and also when it was paul newman, an angel and a
piece of the most beautiful steak. run your hands down your
sides and waist to check for wrinkles and then confidently
lean in. first taste the waters, let them tell you what
they’re in the mood for tonight, maybe they’ll just want to
trade pressures or maybe tonight’s the rare night you’ll
get to take a drink

Cut Brake Lines, and the people who ride with them — Eric Silver

At a summer party in a cheap motel in Huntsville, Ontario, I suggest that maybe, in possibilities of all possibilities, one day I might tell you, my girlfriend, how amazing you look in your wedding dress. You, my girlfriend, said we’d never get married.

I didn’t ask you to marry me. No one proposed. In fact, I recommend you not to. Please, don’t marry me. Word on the street is husbands need reason.  I got as many logical facets in my entire body as I got superpowers, rocket ships, and low-post moves in a pick up basketball game combined. That number is one.

When you broke up with me, I asked why. You said we were too different in too many ways, and that end point, years from now, with the chipped cup holding two toothbrushes and a shared set of pots and pans, you didn’t want to get there with me.

I know love isn’t a contest, but I could have sworn I was getting close to the high score. I hoped for some warning before a Game Over jingle and being played off screen. Even by jilted arcade rules, that just doesn’t seem fair.

I might be too much. I’m all mountaintop and death valley. You are a plateau embarrassed by my elevations, but I cannot be anything other than these extremes. There’s a reason flat lines mean your heart ain’t fighting anymore. I do not regret my excess. I’m going over to the Salvation Army later to donate all this extra excitement I have about chocolate pudding and buying new pens. I don’t want to apologize for throwing my hands off the steering wheel air drumming to punk rock music, or finishing your leftovers while you sleep, or never holding on to a scarf for more than three days. I know I am too much. But I hear there are girls waiting for a surplus, girls with more freckles and full-length skirts than you ever had, who won’t look so ashamed when I try to kiss them in public and would forgive me for not getting along with their annoying little sister.

I hope you find someone who fits with your landscape. A guy who is awkward in large groups and only tells you how pretty you are when every room in the house is empty. He’ll be so confused when you ask him 100 days in a row for a bedtime story, and will have no idea how to calm you down when you start sobbing at the airport because you left your cell phone at home. He will forget the name of the town where you were born, and only know what’s going on in Africa because it’ll make you happy. As for me, well, I got a broken bike and a wide-open afternoon, so I’m flying downhill without a helmet

CLICK! FLASH! BANG! — Travis Hill

CLICK! FLASH! BANG!

248 pounds; his beard two days untrimmed and eight months unshaven, Louis trudged down 3rd street past the under-construction Gap store in Manhattan. The over-birthed cart ahead of him made a sour and thick lactic acid pressure in his forearms as he pushed it. The chapped white corners of his hands illustrated, in contrast to his dark skin, all of the asphalt that he had lost body heat to and all the subway stair rails that he had tightly gripped at one in the morning.

The Kansas family saw the city as a museum in itself. So far from home that they could’ve sworn that no one had ever taken a picture of Grand Central Terminal from the angle that they took it, and were therefore: great photographers. Everything in the city was paid to be there for their experience similar to that of Disneyland. The cast members of Manhattan were the Souvlaki stand purveyor who washed his hands in creamy water, the Taxi cab driver who makes a clicking noise with his tongue when there is traffic as if to say “tisk tisk”, and the team act of the girl who stands next to her boyfriend on 10th street while he gets his drugged up rage out of his system by yelling at passersby.

At the intersection of Broadway and Astor, Louis pushed forward. His shirt was stained deep with deep fryer oil from the place that arguably has the best fries. Cheap, unhealthy eats serve as temporary enjoyment for others, but a cursed sustenance for Louis. His stomach is large from saturated fats, but also from unhealthy growth and swelling. Look at his eyes. No one ever paints his eyes and puts that in a museum, but each wrinkle around them tells a story such as “The Gingivitis Adventure,” or “The Fantastic Escape From Delta Urgent Care After Getting Stabbed By A Drunk, Getting Picked Up By An Ambulance and Being Expected To Pay A $98 Hospital Bill When His Bed Is A Pile of Lost-and-Found Hoodies.”

The Kansas family determined that it was time to get some dinner, but where? So many options were available. Ooh perhaps that nice Italian place with the mural. It was rated by Zagat. The humidity played on the father’s neck and the youngest threw a fit.

The father held the Nikon. Of course they had bought the extra memory card. It was just ten dollars more at Wolf Camera back home. It was almost sunset: the time that makes every aspiring photographer think they are God’s chosen photographer. Every single photograph with the pink and purple sky makes skin and building look superb. Such artistry.

Louis trudged underneath the construction frame. The family pulled in tighter. The father was ready. He raised the Nikon and shot Louis. The father had made sure to get the “Help Wanted” sign in the background because he thought “My God, what a metaphor.”

When the flash hit Louis, he let go of the cart. He went up to the family that was already reeling back in terror and said, “PUT THAT DAMNED CAMERA AWAY. I AM NOT A FREAK.” Well. That’s not entirely what happened, at least not then anyways.

When the flash hit Louis, he kept walking but was paralyzed. He kept walking because he had already told his body that no matter what happens (whether that be stomach pain, leg pain, tooth pain, or headache), he would keep walking. But yes, he was paralyzed.   

In real time, when Louis yelled to put the damned camera away, he yelled it at me, your humble writer. I had no camera, but the picture of that family from two months before had plagued his memory until the flashbulb paralysis had melted and he had summoned back the strength to roar.

apocalypse — Emma Stockman

n., the-truest-love-story

“the world is going to end tomorrow,” you say, raise your eyebrows, cross your arms.
“what would you do?”

i would sleep with you.

i would watch the way my legs fan out from the bone, thigh skin spreading like butter when you press me,

i would count the ways in which all of this felt different than living.

because at the end,
in your apartment,
the windows would be thrown open so wide that no sound could get in
so there would be nothing else left to hear,
just the way my own blood sounded in my ears and the click of your shoulder,
torn inside,
straining every time you moved your hand to my face, and back,

and in the vacuum left by the absence of all functional noise we would be able to hear our own fingernails growing together, amplified, even, by the mimicking metronome tick of our skulls, the sickest love story:

at the end, the last thing i want to find is empty the last thing i want to feel is clean the last place i want to be is safe.

at the end,
there would be no space for God or fear of nothingness,

because all i would be able to see
is your skin,
melting from your bones and onto mine,
my own hands,
touching cheeks like paintings,
sweating gaping pores i smooth with my fingers,
your open eyes,
jarring like a dead body,
looking at me the way we were always
meant to be looked at
:
in pieces.

the separation of
shoulder     breast     stomach     knees     ankle

would be so irrefutable,
that even as the world broke in half
in conjunction with
simultaneous
inner
earthquakes

there could not possibly be any other way to exist than here.

no one speaks;

in my apocalyptic fantasy, it is about your skin, not about love,

and the world is reduced to breath and rhythm and blood, just the way we started.

Aging Omen — Allie DeStefano

In nineteen years I have plucked, at the very least
10 silver gray hairs from the crown of my head.
Wisdom is working its way backwards
and my hair is turning old too quickly
for my experience to catch up.
I tried to rise from his arms
but my hair caught under his weight
and it tore out in a clump.
I cut my bangs bi-weekly
and the short wisps have become embedded
into my blue filigree-patterned rug.
I find long strands in my bedsheets.
The chunk I cut off from the ends
I saved in plastic dime bag
to give to someone, but then again
who would want that relic of me?
I remember that my sister’s hair
is hung up on the refrigerator
at home in New Jersey;
it’s neatly braided and invites you to hold it,
and I know it’s still waiting
to be donated, though I’ve asked
to have that piece of Isabelle’s hair,
that rubber-band held chunk
that seems to still be growing,
just to keep.