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SloughIt starts with a metronomic
drip-splat, each drop a bastinado
blow on the feet of sleep.

Floundering from our half-
cold bed, I navigate the room
like a blind albatross until the bitch
of a stubbed toe stops me.

Something gurgles,
deep in the house. Rust runnels
down walls we painted ivory.
I find the sink choking,

the refrigerator dead, puddles
rising, like stigmata, on the lino.
The kettle boils itself.

It's been three weeks since you left
this house. I thought by now
it would have stopped grieving.

.
.

A Habit Of VanishingWhen we are old we'll make it a habit
to vanish at irregular intervals,
worrying our children sick,
only to turn up tanned and fabulous,
our suitcases crammed with hotel towels.
Frittering days under umbrellas

on beaches, we'll sip fruity cocktails
served by smooth, young waitresses
at whom you'll smile graciously,
and I will not. Twice a year we'll throw
a party where nobody is permitted
to mention numbers. We'll invite X

amount of belly dancers, fire walkers,
artists, poets, loved ones
and people who think we're to die for.
Death, by then, is no hypothesis.
Out of the blue, I'll suggest
keeping Ouija boards by

HomesickDo not let them see you blink,
Mother said, so I am careful to turn
away when my eyes dry out. My grip
on the brush is clumsy. Colours speck
and dazzle, slop like foam on rocks;
the teacher dabs their brilliance
from my flaking arms. Children whisper

behind starfish hands; they go to play
in the bright, hot yard but I stay in,
as Mother told me. Below the window
there’s a tank of golden fish that circle,
circle, following their own reflections.

I dip my fingers in to scoop one up,
watch it flip and shine, cool in my palm,
and press my face deep into the water.
Membranes slide across my thirsty eyes.
I breathe, and breath

EtchingsI peek my nose
out of my laundered down
to greet the pulchritude
of dawn—
the world whitewashing itself
& the sky stripping off

its indigo robe.

I hold the key to this city
around my neck—
I feel every new crack

in the pavement

& the peeling of the
Victorian wallpaper
that graffities the buildings

like propaganda posters.

Swirling last night's dreams
in my palm
they become scratches
on my forearms

like sheet marks

to remind myself that
my name is temporary
& it all comes down to
the runes scattered
across the floor disguised as

sidewalks & freeway overpasses.

Nothing is giving in
except the cotton candy c

Beatrix PotterI remember reading fanciful
vignettes on sentient animals
and finding the strangest words
had stress laid on them. The author
no doubt, was fond of that exercise:

I go to the shops I go
to the shops I go to the shops I
go to the shops I go to
the shops the shops the shops
every fucking morning butter doesn't
make sense any more.

.vulcan.

Dug deep beneath the earth, there is no light.
No footholds to electric nights or larvae of
synthetic flights. No future. Just Vulcan,
bone lonely, with only his primitive kind of hunger
and a longing to hear something other than
the cemetery talking, walking over him. Unearthed.

This is his forge, where the flower of amnesia,
allowing one man to rewrite another, grows molten -
blown into glass, gunpowder and pyrotechnic stars.
Past, present, but only the future scars in the dark,
this life in transition. And though over and over
he's said it's over and done with, there's always
more. Always a greed, a need for hunger.

God of

ChamberScientists have been pondering the methods by which a human being could be
teleported, and one of their solutions has both fascinated and disturbed me. The idea is to
atomize the subject, beam assembly information to a new location, and have another
device instantly recreate the person using atoms found on site. The idea would revolutionize modern life and forever alter the meaning of distance.

I have only one question: once I've been atomized, beamed over thousands of
miles, and then instantly reconstructed, who will the scientists find when they open the
chamber? Will my consciousness have been transferred, uninterrupted? Will I wake

JetlaggedIf you had asked me like I always said you could I would have given you advice on anything.
I would have told you what my grandfather said to me, "You should always keep an overseas account."
Far across the expansive divide of sapphire, emerald,
and onyx waters, where unseen monsters lurk beneath the shine.

Feign trust in banks and don't stuff money into your mattress or the house will burn down
[you forget about a stove burner leaving for work instead of checking to make sure the angry red ring is off.]

and you should buy a gold watch, because people who have their lives together wear gold watches,
they drive pristine luxury cars, lau

discoursed homunculi society is made of genocide
of cardboard plates and paper forks

i'm made of carbonate
the emptiness in the bubbles

i am not worth capitalization

people are just a means of
communication between hip bones

i like to write on the bars of my cells

i think my ribcage is breaking my tibia
I am not myself

i am just the space between a line and a period
the tittle is too much of an assumption
i am not worth suspension points

or the spaces between them

dots of ellipsis are my employers
i am just the underlined apostrophes
commas hold too much command

i am not worth punctuation

colloquially, i am not grammatically correct
-an

I. Demons

The man tore down the empty, deathly silent alleyway, his feet given speed by abject terror. The Devil himself followed not far behind, red skin glinting in the occasional pool of light amidst the darkness of night. The man glanced behind him. Not five feet away was a terrible wraith, teeth glistening and dripping toxic venom, sizzling into the asphalt. Faster and faster the man charged through the gripping black. Up and to his left, the grim reaper caught his eye hovering menacingly over the abandoned rooftops, death sending its scythe whirring through the air towards its target. His lungs and legs were bur

Murder65535

You can conjure weird brothers

And bonded sisters
Into a lamp bought
From Woolworth's
cheap condom bought from Virgin's
at a discounted price and tell me
Of how Al Qaeda the world
hijacked the CIA Gaza
And regaled us with
halal and cheese burgers.
Blow the dust off the Sinn Féin Tienanmen,
Hell, even bore me with an ill-fitting
Thermopylae-sized jumper
But I can tell you
How murder was typed,
Intricate and long,
With the same brand of devotion
As a wet nurse feeding off
A trough of apes piglets
Who swore at every puffy ruddy nipple
And longed for murder
That tasked tasted like a sting
From a r

DreamBefore the last words fade away, I spend a night at the interim of silence and writing. The minimal conceptions inside pearls change into the winding roads of spreading letters, for usually I tend to wear a shield of matter over the tiring maps of abysses that reason sews together.

Before the winds finally lay me to rest, I breathe a cloud upon the mirror. Speaking resonates soothingly in my bones, but words on paper look up at me intently. The creatures know where to lead me, a hand in paw, and they beg me to equip myself. But I have merely flowed here from under the door, a naked heart turned to silver in the flames.

Before the

the amplitude of a breatha suaveolent smattering of wallflowers;
a
la
k
e
by anyother name
could be placed wherever we pleased

we calculated the coolness of our
passing, avenged and averaged
by an accidentally warm tone.
a hiccup of a base truth.

a tie of emptiness
left full frontal
in the doorway upon a doorway
-an absolute we deigned to
dignify with a lack of propriety which
came a little to easily.

like an alphabeta, the right way up.
you threw a cadenza at me

tooth to claw to knee
the skin of a liquid
splintered like a fork i could not care for
or keep.

a pencil marking on a dogeared page.

maybe if we breath in time,
we'll be the sam

THERE TO CHASE MAKEA romantic mother
language supports like
an actual person

Making peanut butter sounds stick to the mouth
and bridge together what all noises
at their end want to be

The world

A cunt forever
and by no coincidence in robust colors mocking
my sleepiness

I remain in choiceless nausea of concrete

A rabbit needing to make a hole

Ask
I'll smother her
Bury the yard and stop fussing

The neighborhood queen who used to leave sneakily
on holidays I felt I was never told
to remain at candy canes length away

That space
I verse, even now, milking sex

My memory's hand

With the passion of a boring date, I came
to conquer joy

I

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Where I grew up, JesusWhere I grew up, Jesus was the shout - something to say, the sound
you make when you drop something on your foot, when you spill

the last can of condensed milk on your shoes, all over the floor. Jesus!
as if it's His fault there's no milk now, and none tomorrow, when a man

with a beard and biblical puppets comes to your school. He tells you:
Jesus is the Word. But you know this, because it's what you say

when you drop something, Jesus! like that, so the hurt spills out.
Christ! like milk. After the puppet show, you understand all about Jesus

and why we say it. Jesus Christ! so we don't have to cry.

Rehab for Roleplayers - Part 5Welcome to Rehab for Roleplayers, a series of articles aimed at helping roleplayers more successfully make the transition into writing fiction.

Part 5 - Level 99 Druid Saves the Day (and Mary Sue, too)

Our old friend Level 9 Druid has been a really fun character, so his player has decided to feature him in a novel. Good for him! However, Druid's Player has never quite understood that other people don't much like his character, and for very good reason: Level 9 Druid never, ever loses.

He's handsome, of course. Extremely handsome (even with that strategically-placed and charmingly rogueish facial scar) — oh, and smart, and brave and of

WytchwoodIn the wytchwood a lone crow creaks, the air
hums with the dreams of sleeping gods. Deep
in the wood hangs a dark, unnatural fruit:
my lover's heart, wrapped in a scrap of red rag.

Red is the colour which binds life to flesh,
and flesh to earth, all of it food for the gods
in the wytchwood. In my arms, I carry
a child. The moon is a white rabbit, fleeting

over moss and roots. The child I hold exhales
sour milk and almonds; I lay it down below
a tree and sing to it, the motherly songs
which bring a heart to peace. The forest sighs,

its breath rich with pine and cypress. Above,
my lover's heart hangs, hard and withered
as

The Art of Un-KnowingGive your burden the mane of a lion. Of yourself,
make a kraal. Split your heart
and fashion its two halves into a pair of goats.

Tether one to a stake. Then pull all the shades
for darkness, barricade the door,
listen for a nervous bleat, a skitter of hooves

in the mind's dirt. Feel nothing when the animal
screams. Believe: it's only a goat.
And here, the art - a bloody thorn, a twist

of hair will show you how the lion gets in, where
to dig the trap. When it is dead
burn the carcass. When the winds have drunk

the last of its ash, you'll still have one good goat.

UnsonnetUnsonnet, for the Elephant Apocalypse

Shattered shopfronts, ponds of blood. Wide,
silent paths stepped around body parts,
bulky as sofas. Some wag in the supermarket
calling cleanup, aisles three and seven.

Helicopters buzz, drawn to destruction:
strewn cars, some banked against light poles,
buckled and still, like trodden-on beetles.
The bus judders up. An inexplicable pyramid

of turd's got the back seat to itself; grey-faced
passengers hang from straps, sucking air
through scarves. On the streets, teary
pedestrians stare into cameras, heads shaking

no, we don't know, like they've just woken up
to the opposite of Christmas,

For you, this prayerFor you, but also for myself.
For I am as religious as a plank.
For I was raised in a household where Jesus was, most commonly, a cuss-word.
For my people believe in God at a substantial remove.
For they are, on the whole, dreadful sinners.
For you, then, this prayer - not because you need it, but because I must make it.
For the need to make prayer is upon me.
For my faith in you is unshakable.
For I have faith only in mountains.
For once I had faith in men and found they often shook.
For this reason, I call you 'mountain'.
For you, this prayer, though you are an Atheist.
For God is not your Father, even as He was never mine.
For

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Attachment Theory

by `salshep, Nov 19, 2010, 5:09:53 AM
Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

_{"Harlow used .... an isolation chamber he called the "pit of despair" (in which) baby monkeys were left alone in darkness for up to one year from birth, or repetitively separated from their peers and isolated in the chamber. These procedures quickly produced monkeys that were severely psychologically disturbed and declared to be valuable models of human depression."}

His face crumpled like a furry walnut, the infant Rhesus mews for his rubber teat. For mental stimulation, we offer the subject wooden blocks in various geometric shapes. His reactions are notable: at first he favours the circle, but in time shows a preference for triangles and squares. His first attempt at building stuns the scientific world; he reconstructs the Vatican. Thus we learn: deprivation fosters genius.

Soon, however, he exhibits more aggressive tendencies and symptoms of deep depression. He unravels the frame of his surrogate and uses the wire to build a crude stringed instrument, electrically powered by the nodes built into the floor of his cage for future studies in touch aversion. He starts to sulk, masturbates frequently and bites the lab technicians, forcing us to muzzle him. This leads to endless renditions of 'Fade To Black' played day and night on that damned guitar, which gives us all a terrible headache.

Appearing to slip back into passivity a few weeks later, he uses the components of his instrument to make a circuit-board. We are overjoyed, but then he blackmails the janitor into providing him with a seventeen-inch LCD screen. We only discover the purpose of this act when CNN announce a startling rise in banana shares, the lab is inundated with outraged calls from PETA and all our bank accounts are hacked.

We throw our hands up in despair.

Attachment Theoryby `salshep

Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

Silly 2.

I remember seeing those poor baby monkeys in a book in science class. Right before I released all of the lab mice into the 'wild'.

~berlinBuenosAyres Jan 24, 2011

i love the last line, for some reason makes me imagine this doctors as if old greeks, you know, hands and looks to the sky praying for any of them gods.
you should write more prose

*AlecBell Dec 1, 2010

Poetic justice indeed!

`salshep Dec 6, 2010

~tinyplaidninja Nov 19, 2010 Student Writer

We just learned about the Rhesus monkey experiment in Psychology lecture today. This made me a little bit excited. Yay!!

!Atropaean Nov 19, 2010

i remember the video of the rhesus monkeys. paragraph two is great here and really original, but i like how particularly the monkees and their experience here are a metaphorical manifestation of humans

`salshep Nov 19, 2010

Thanks! And yeah, poor lil monkeys.

~Wolfrug Nov 19, 2010

Eeehheh. Heeh. Hih.

I do enjoy stories about the human-ape relationship, always begging the question: "who's the superior being here, really?". This one is funny. And silly.

Also, did you really release lab mice into the wild? O_o And: since when have they got lab mice in school (assuming you didn't release all of your uni's lab mice into the wild. That would've been...interesting)

`salshep Nov 19, 2010

Thank you. And yes, I did. Our high school had a lot of live mice, for rudimentary experiments in genetics (and, I suspected, dissection) for the upper grades.

There were white mice running about the place for years.

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