vol 4 - screen · expanding in yellow sugar, attached to a pulled dough limb, stiff like a bird...

LOCKJAW MAGAZINE VOL 4 SUMMER 2016

EDITORS: CHRISTINA COLLINS & DAVE THOMAS

COVER: “2: LISTEN HARD” BY JUNIPER WHITE

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CONTENTS

p. 2 Juniper White

p. 5 Hannah Beilenson, Two Pieces

p. 8 Larry Blazek, Three Poems

p. 12 Rachel Edelman, A LIMINARY ART

p. 17 Ruth Crossman, The Double

p. 18 Tara Lemma, The Prize

p. 22 Ashley Miranda, safe soundscapes | anxious soundscapes

p. 26 Kristen Brida, Three Poems

p. 34 Sophie Grimes, Eight Poems

p. 53 Maria Martin, Five Poems

p. 62 Christine Robbins, Nocturne for keeping

p. 63 Contributors

Juniper White

_____

SELECTIONS FROM 100 MONOPRINTS

– 3 –

– Lockjaw//White –

Selections from Juniper White’s series 100 Monoprints can be found throughout the issue on the following pages: p. 4 (“1: Harry Said”), p. 11 (“2: Listen Hard”), p. 15 (“7: There is a Cave”), p. 16 (“12: Rings of Smoke”), p. 23 (“16: Stone Stories”), p. 24 (“19: I Want Sin”), p. 25 (“21: Where Bones Belong”), p. 32 (“22: Between Moments”), p. 33 (“26: Every Heart”), p. 41 (“36: Fear and Delight”), p. 47 (“37: Where Fear Ends”), p. 51 (“39: Dragons on the Wind”), p. 52 (“40: Smolder”), p. 61 (“42: Dreams Are Real”), p. 62 (“43: Oval Patch of Night”)

“1: Harry Said”

– 5 –

– Lockjaw//Beilenson –

Hannah Beilenson

_____

CORRUPTED BLOOD INCIDENT

What the creators didn’t account for were the animals, who could carry the disease out of

battle and infect others long after the fight. There were cities of bones. There were buildings

like monuments to the Capela dos Ossos. Chalk dusted the inside of your computer screen.

You watched yourself die. Then you came back, a reincarnation in the center of your universe,

an empty purse cloaked in velvet and placenta. A baby in used skin twitching at the touch of

an arrow. There were piles of leaves in September, bleached and cut into femurs.

People reacted to the plague differently. Ones with healing abilities would go from town to

town and offer their magic; others left the cities in swarms, opting to populate the less

inhabited countryside. You would follow walking trails of fresh flesh, tour guides would tell

you, the hike is a temporary reprieve from the problem, call this the Hotel Oregon Trail.

Some players just wanted to see it. Reporters walked into the quarantine with lead pencils

stowed under the first layer of skin. Some players wanted to spread it. They walked out.

You dropped your belongings in abandoned houses for yourself to find. You spent all your

money save for a gold-plated coin under your tongue. You walked behind death, you died

backwards, before someone with a soft spot for decomposition could watch you change.

Anyone below level 60 died. Within days, people disconnected and gameplay came to a

sudden halt. You visited only vacant towns. You only visited vacant towns. There was no

blood. Just white carpet on the cobblestones, just the ground dust of marrow.

– 6 –


Mid-evenings, say 5 or 6, out to dinner in the lingering wetness

of June, before anyone can commit to running the world,

you can see bill clinton power-walking

in a sweater-vest and sandpaper khakis,

arms curling past the water-line of his nipples,

smiling like a dead televangelist, an ordinary

whistle threaded between his tidy teeth.

Seen: a blunt woman in umber loafers,

clad in flannel and a gun and a wire

in the ticking, dirtied heel of her shoe

and bill clinton consumes as he moves,

his arms stretching thirty impossible yards

to shake hands in the shadow of a Starbucks

bathroom while he steals Splenda packets.

Imagine this: a faulty fist lingering then ramming into our window

expanding in yellow sugar, attached to a pulled dough limb,

stiff like a bird against a paned screen, jittery against

the sugar glass collapsing over its twitching palm.

He follows the knot of his arm and picks up

his limp hand in a puddle of orange sweat,

finds a bit of blood blessing his swollen cheeks.

He’d reach to greet our group but

he’s a leaking man, displaced,

a bird flapping itself into congress.

I put a napkin on his forehead

and let it soil itself, I’ve got to know.

– 7 –


“why do you live here?”

Little lady, look, your feet are bluedead

because you won’t cover the arches.

They’re old and damp and waiting to be

pulled off like sourdough bread dipped in coffee.

I’m comfortable and capable of keeping warm.

I can’t continue this case for big cities.

I’d rather chew on my glass crusted linguini

or eat butter with a kitchen knife than listen

to shit like that. So I show the president my inside

voice, take his dead hand in my mouth

and curl his fingers with a wet muscle.

Find a sweet gag under my jaw.

– 8 –

– Lockjaw//Blazek –

Larry Blazek

_____

ON A WHIRLWIND VISIT

she stuns you with her beauty

dazzles you with her metaphysical rap

disappoints you when she says

she is your spiritual mother

she points out while disrobing

the mother thing is not physical

but it only makes the anguish

of her parting both physical and spiritual

– 9 –


YOU ARE AMAZED

By the tattoos your new girlfriend

Has all over her body

She takes you on a tour

as she removes her clothes

what really startles you

are the cabalistic tattoos

upon her scalp that you see

when she removes her wig

– 10 –


THE FRIENDLY WOMAN

Is a front for a gang of thieves

While you recover your tools

from the trunk of her car

at gunpoint

other gang members

surround you

your gun does not have enough shells

to shoot them all so you shoot the leader

with a tiny pistol you have

concealed in your sleeve

not hurting him too badly

but enough to maneuver

to keep them from surrounding you

“2: Listen Hard”

– 12 –

Rachel Edelman

_____

A LIMINARY ART

an erasure

+ The early history wholly sold under cost. fever rough sense of demand for pipes to flush + The committee considered the River, well sunk. a flowing result, water plying the interests operative. + in

– 13 –

– Lockjaw//Edelman –

a tunnel in a branch in a suction well called “ well.” Worth the pressure of purchase as organ , its drill the stem + known logic is a shallow syncline, stern near its edge Springs, sand and gravel; verses in succession + page the Art Department mum on the pump page the accord of State the drill first ate

– 14 –

– Lockjaw//Edelman –

plants found in the Auction . sons all dust . no records remain

“7: There is a Cave”

“12: Rings of Smoke”

– 17 –

– Lockjaw//Crossman –

Ruth Crossman

_____

THE DOUBLE

She wasn't made of clay

in this early morning dreamscape she was just ectoplasm

it started off with pillow humping, like always

trying to summon something that would not cum until I did,

it rolled off me and then I appeared

more fleshed out than predicted and smiling like a co-conspirator

my twin—except maybe less ugly, her tits were fuller

we stood up and at the foot of the bed she reached for a shirt

I let her, but then thought better of it and made her spin instead

so I could examine the distribution of stretch marks more closely

I was afraid when she made eye contact

I lunged and when I grabbed her neck she popped

collapsed

disappeared somewhere between the bed and wall and I felt better

until my shoelaces started moving:

slowly but without mistake

like they wanted to tie themselves

– 18 –

– Lockjaw//Lemma –

Tara Lemma

_____

THE PRIZE

Charlene likes the farmer’s market mostly because it is one of the few things she and Brian do

together outside of the house. She exhales a plume of smoke, looking sideways at him and

appreciating how handsome he looks as he surveys a pile of gently used tires.

“Good tires, baby?” she asks, tapping a cherry-red fingernail against his neck. She

knows she has nothing to contribute to this conversation, but she always wants to talk. Brian

swats her away, bending to get closer to the tire.

“The treads worn out, on all of them,” he says, glaring at a Pakistani man in a lawn

chair, counting his cash. “Let’s go,” he says, pulling Charlene by the wrist. Brian tends to

touch more because of her unbelievable body, and talk less because of her childlike mind.

Charlene tosses her cigarette in the general direction of the cigarette holder, stumbling

behind Brian and not feeling a lick of guilt, because women who are loved have far greater

concerns than where to dispose of their trash. As Brian pulls her along, she thinks, this is it.

The feeling. Charlene was never willing to settle for anything less than butterflies, and after

years of searching, it seemed she had found the man that would continue to thrill her, keep

her guessing, drown out the screeching and wailing inside her head. Charlene looks around

dreamily, eyes landing on a prize machine with a big, plastic chicken inside, guarding over

plastic eggs, clucking softly.

“Oh, I love these games,” she says, pulling her hand back. “Brian, look, the chicken is

smiling!” Brian nods impatiently. “So cute!” she continues. Brian says nothing. Charlene

crosses her arms, pushing her breasts together. “Can I have fifty cents?” she asks. Brian digs

into his front pocket and places four quarters, a straw wrapper, and a somewhat melted piece

of gum into Charlene’s hand.

– 19 –


“I’ll be at the electronics booth,” Brian says and walks away. Charlene approaches the

machine, which emits a low-frequency hum and seems to be vibrating. Music plays as the

chicken spins, its beak turned up in a smile with red, satanic cheeks. Its eyes penetrate

Charlene and she is transfixed. She wipes the grime off of two of the quarters and pushes

them into the machine, stopping the rotation of the chicken and the speed of the music.

Everything slows down as the chicken squawks, bulbs lining the inside of the machine

flickering and flashing, and an egg is released into the chamber below. Charlene’s body is

electric as she reaches for her prize. It is a golden egg, surprisingly light, fitting perfectly into

the palm of her hand. She pops it open, chipping her fingernail in the process, and finds

nothing. The music that previously was pleasant, reminding Charlene of the circus, now

sounds threatening, too slow, sinister. The chicken’s garish colors hurt Charlene’s eyes, and

she squints angrily, letting the empty egg fall to the ground and digging for the extra quarters

in her pocket. She pushes the quarters in, presses play again, and crosses her arms, looking

the other way. Charlene loves games but she is not very lucky, and is so she is familiar with

this particular blend of disappointment and hope. The chicken squawks again, releasing an

egg, and Charlene waits a few seconds before retrieving it, as if to convince herself that it does

not matter. This egg is plain yellow, heavier than the first, and when she pops it open, a few

wrapped hard candies fall out. Charlene wishes it had been a temporary tattoo or a lip gloss,

but still, a prize is a prize, and she rushes to catch up with Brian, satisfied. The chicken

resumes its rotation, light flashing onto its painted face so fast and bright that passersby

shield their eyes.

Brian is mid-argument with a man selling an electric guitar when Charlene finds him.

“Hey Brian!” she calls. The two men look up and then promptly ignore her.

“—can’t expect me to seriously believe that Willie Nelson played this guitar,” Brian

continues. Charlene unwraps a hard candy and pops it into her mouth, enjoying the sickly

sweet cherry flavor, and everything gets quiet. The two men turn to her, looking hungry.

“Charlene,” Brian says, with a tenderness she is not used to. He rushes towards her

and holds her tightly, swaying gently and breathing into her ear. Charlene stiffens in surprise.

The man with the electric guitar calls out to Brian.

“I guess I could let you have it for a hundred,” he says, staring at Charlene’s red

toenails through her platform sandals. “My cousin told me about the Willie Nelson thing, but

– 20 –


he’s full of it.” Brian hands over the cash and leaves with Charlene, plucking a discordant

tune.

When they get home, Brian handles Charlene gently, spending more time kissing her

and looking at her than he has in a long time. He kisses her hand, the crook of her arm, her

collarbone. When his lips graze her throat, he stops suddenly with a small grunt of surprise.

“What is that?” Brian asks.

“What is what?” Charlene asks, fingers groping around. There is now an indentation,

no, more like a hole, in the hollow of her neck, with about the circumference of a pen, not too

deep, smooth, and completely painless.

“Does it hurt?” Brian asks, probing at the hole with a disgusted curiosity. Charlene

goes into the bathroom and looks at the hole, which appears to have been scooped out with

flawless precision.

“Not at all!” Charlene says too quickly, ready to forget the hole and forget everything

except Brian’s attention. The hole is nothing, something the doctor will explain later,

something she will apply an ointment to for a week or so. She turns up the music on the radio

and takes off her bra, at which point Brian stops protesting.

Charlene wakes up and the bed is empty. Brian is frying bacon in the next room. She

waits to see if he will come and wake her for breakfast, but he doesn’t, and as she listens to

the scrape of fork on plate, she touches the hole in her neck. It is much larger today, maybe

with the circumference of a dime. Charlene looks in the bathroom mirror and discovers two

new holes, one in her shoulder and the other in her bicep. She pulls one of Brian’s work

shirts over her head and meets him in the kitchen.

“I am starting to feel like Swiss cheese,” she says, looking a little fragile, as Brian

shovels eggs into his mouth.

“Go to the doctor, Charlene. Those holes aren’t normal,” he says as he finishes the last

of the eggs. Charlene unwraps another piece of candy and pops it into her mouth and as she

leaves the room, Brian turns to gape at her long, tanned legs. He loves those legs, suddenly

and strongly.

Charlene’s mouth still tastes like cherries at work, hours later, as she pours another

cup of coffee for a truck driver with an okay attitude. He doesn’t thank her but he also doesn’t

call her waitress, and that is about the best she can hope for. She stacks hot plates on her

– 21 –


arms, hamburgers, pancakes, terrible steak, and distributes them with a smile. She spills

ketchup and gravy on her uniform and says it is no big deal. Charlene goes into the bathroom

to sneak a quick drag and is surprised by how tired she looks. She looks like an old tire. She

looks like her mother. Blue eyeshadow is bleeding into the cracks around her eyes, and

though her long-sleeved uniform covers the holes in her shoulder and bicep, it does not fully

cover the hole in her neck, which again seems to have doubled in size. It is positively

cavernous now and under the fluorescent lights, it makes Charlene feel sick. She wants to go

home. Not home to her mother, the old tire. Not home to her father and the top-secret kisses.

“Charlene,” he’d say. “It means beautiful,” he’d say, and even then, Charlene knew that was

not true. Charlene wants to go home to Brian. She puts out her cigarette, places it into the

pocket of her apron, and pops a hard candy into her mouth. Her mouth goes numb with

cherry flavor.

When Charlene comes out, the men say, “Charlene, Charlene! Can we have a refill?

Can we have your phone number? Do you want to come to our nephew’s football game?” The

neck of Charlene’s shirt sags enough for one customer to notice the hole in her neck, and his

eyes light up as he shakes his head, as if waking from a deep sleep. Charlene leaves that night

with an unprecedented amount of tip money and thinks, this month, we won’t have to worry

at all. Charlene goes home, realizes she has no more candy left, and falls asleep alone.

That was Monday. Today is Thursday and the holes are larger still. There is a new hole

in her thigh and a new hole in her cheek. The side of her face looks as though someone took a

large ice cream scoop of flesh cleanly out of it. Charlene has not seen Brian in a few days, but

she can almost hear the reverb and hiss of his electric guitar if she holds her head very, very

still. Charlene goes out to the porch in his oversized t-shirt and no pants. She leans back

against the railing, listening to the faraway sound of neighborhood children playing. It is so,

so warm and Charlene feels like she could sleep right now. She closes her eyes and the kids

continue playing and laughing. “Charlene,” they say. “It means beautiful!”

– 22 –

– Lockjaw//Miranda –

Ashley Miranda

_____

safe soundscapes | anxious soundscapes

polyethylene. whispering. waves. the weight of others on wood floorboards. knocking. silent

vibrations. missed phone calls. sirens. wind. numbers being repeated. trains rushing by. a

needle dragging across a record. crowded rooms. cemeteries. bridges over rivers. teeth

grinding. pages. vellum. the hum of anticipation. tinnitus. saturn. lakes. shedding. mcr.

church pews. metal garbage bins. second shifts. before a word. after a question. humming

your favorite song.

“16: Stone Stories”

“19: I Want Sin”

“21: Where Bones Belong”

– 26 –

– Lockjaw//Brida –

Kristen Brida

_____

DREAM NOTES

constellations melted like candlewax—what once glittered was now a midnight wound or

maybe a rorschach on fire or god stigmata-ing the sky or just an inversion of place. I went

outside

& cupped my hands, the wax pooled in them, then burned through, the hole clean &

busted.

a man gave me tulips & I cleaved the green from the pretty parts & stuffed the flowers in my

mouth. he guided me to the kitchen full of roaches, burrowing in the sugar—

I scooped a handful & fed the man.

I was on the beach watching the sunrise except the sun was a ham. a few towels over a man

got up & walked in the ocean up to the horizon. he took the sun meat & ate it.

I took my towel & made a burrito out of myself.

my tongue gilded in gold. people asked me if I’m candy or a corpse & every time, a flake fell

off, collecting in my cupped hands. a stranger dipped their finger in spit & then in the gold &

then in my ear.

– 27 –


this falling/gathering of decadence was my prayer or was it my offering.

I kept vomiting blue eggs. I set a bowl on the counter & placed them there for a couple of

days.

I cracked an egg & a snail crawled out. another & a shark tooth, then a fish egg, and

finally an egg yolk. I scooped the yellow stuff into my mouth & used it like Listerine.

– 28 –


FOUR ON RÜCKENFIGUR

1.

On your camera, in the corner of the living room. Me, on the couch laying sideways & holding

a mirror.

Seeing & capturing the face from behind, a rupture of the figure.

Once the picture printed, my eyes more saturated than I could remember & I was surprised

by how soft I could hold myself.

2.

Both fragment & whole. Seeing the distant back of someone, and yet

you still name them, despite the generic shape of it all. This is either intimacy or an

interpellation of it, a wishful thinking.1

3.

You at the table with coffee & me pulping oranges at the sink, the water runs over like the lull

& snow of a fuzzy television. Flakes of the fruit’s meat caught under my fingernails—the

bright & subtle violence of morning. This sink, at the corner of lavender dish soap & the slush

sunk in my skull.

1 However, we often gloss that behindness is eternal & so this is the sacrifice in our calling.

– 29 –


Picking at the orange’s marrow, my fingernail slices thin skin open, my blood dazzling the

water. You place your mug in the sink & quickly glance, your hand ghosting across my

shoulder.

4.

One night, when the wet night blurred the street lamps damp, I found myself in front of an

inked & starless ocean, the dark eating away at the moon. I sat in front of this extinguishing

landscape, wrapped myself in its fade of visuals.2

2 Sometimes, to be a silhouette to something only means becoming no one’s particular moon, a shadow becoming a shading of something else. This, a long process of leaving everything unnamed, allowing misplaced constellations to float like haloes guttered out in the silent & shapeless center of it all.

– 30 –


A VISITATION AFTER A REARRANGEMENT OF THE

DIVINE WORD

1.

an angel slashes the back of a stranger’s knees w/ a letter opener. she touches the wound w/

her fist before she leaves—under the impression that violence is a human form—rouges the

blood on her cheeks. Yellow glint from the streetlamps gives a damp glow.

she tries to sleep & wraps herself in butcher paper. she looks in the mirror—the stranger’s

red-dirt scabland against the cream of her cheeks, a necessary clash.

she cuts some tomatoes & tries to associate it w/ a human heart—tries to imagine the

possibility of having her own heart, the qualifications for ownership. she stuffs the tomatoes

inside a cow’s heart, ties it up, places it in a brown bag. she is at a loss for resemblance—

unsure if the tomatoes were more convincing outside of a heart-shaped thing.

2.

when the relic-less angel w/ wine or bloodstained lips comes to my apartment, she knocks on

the door. she asks me a series of questions: what does god look like/why is the moon following

me/how do you get a mother/where is my mother.

I know none of these answers. She lays on the couch, buries her head in my lap. I ask her

where these questions came from. she throws the paper bag on the wall. the heart falls out

from the bottom—I eat the cow heart in two bites. she is across the table & I wash the meat

down w/ a glass of milk. she asks me her questions again. I hand her the empty brown bag &

escort her out of my house.

– 31 –


& when I fall asleep that night, I dream I place a gold-foiled prayer card in a vat of water, stick

it in the freezer & sit at the kitchen table, reading a magazine.

“22: Between Moments”

“26: Every Heart”

Sophie Grimes

_____

EIGHT POEMS

– 35 –

– Lockjaw//Grimes –

WATCH OUT, THE WORLD’S BEHIND YOU

Passing by paper pasted on school windows

the colors facing in with ever-aching feet,

a projection on some yellowed bed-sheet,

subtitled, billowed by an open window

and up, over the shoulder goes something,

salt perhaps, everyone sliding around

on the frozen porch toward the knot in the forest

finishing their bottles, sucking them down,

and then throwing them up, over the shoulder

and thud and shatter, necklaces heated to white-hot

in the firelight, you and yours/not-yours laughing,

the band in the kitchen, the refrigerators spray-painted

white on move-in opened and closed,

flapping as though trying to fly, the broken light,

sad broccoli behind the boxed wine, always

getting ready to get it, some, someone’s

birthday cake, creepy lukewarm stew, jell-o this

jell-o that, a huge vat of jungle juice, soggy wheels

and wedges of fruit, rummaging for mugs

after the plastic’s gone, tooth-chipping face-smashing

in the corner, inevitably blood, someone getting

the run-around, someone petting the terrified cat,

then coming back again into the steam and haze,

the swimming pool is lit all night, highlighting

discussions about cities never visited, the attracted

one inking a spatial calligraphy from kitchen to hallway

to fire escape to couch. Tie a ribbon around his waist

– 36 –


or your thoughts and they will weave a bright sweater

for Sunday’s clown, shivering, hairs lifting off the plaster

of white face paint, looking for her wallet in a bush.

Behind another door a mirrored squat toilet,

a lady giving out lotion and tissue, next to the zoo

at the edge of the park, its seals swimming circles in the dark.

– 37 –


BLACK MARKET

“Like an ink stick dried to an ink stone the river is frozen.”

– Kim Kyung Ju

You could buy dumpling skins from people

behind a glass partition wearing jumpsuits

and covered evenly in a fine layer of flour.

They appeared to you like scientists who had survived

a lab malfunction but were doing their best to work

past the failure. Or benign ghosts, fully visible to all:

blank pages walking around, hawking their skins.

In other parts you could buy tofu or dvds, a turtle

crawling around in a kiddie pool with crabs foaming

in the face. The vendors put them all in little plastic bags.

You remember seeing people leaving, with all their bags,

some pendulous and shifting with eels.

But this was all a long time ago and you’re tired

of going back when so many other things have happened.

Why then do you insist on returning?

Your friend had North Korean co-workers.

She said they always had sunflower seeds in their pockets,

and offered her a few on the street or when they sat down for tea.

Is it because you were alone there for the first and only time?

Or because it’s yours, your memory remaking it,

like manipulating a wet clay bowl into a pretty little plate;

– 38 –


more exotic. The market, becoming light-less,

the apartment down the street, dimming into a different atmosphere.

It is impossible to preserve something so soft,

secreted deep in the spine of your young self,

a black liquid injected there, but by whom?

You remember reading that in a Pyongyang park,

a bench was encased in glass because that was where, once,

the great leader sat, and this lodges, like a shard, in your memory,

a clean incision: often what is read takes edge, weight,

a ghost with heft, opacity, the power to puncture.

They sell this too, at your market, next to your yellowed undershirts

on wire hangers and the shadow puppets cut in your image, dumb,

but manipulated to pretend to talk in circles, to be alive

for all the children watching.

– 39 –


THE MOORISH SMOKING ROOM

after Billy Collins’ Osso Buco

and after Donald Trump

Black lacquer paneling, carved glass, gold accent, edge, gilding,

hearth, grate, spark-screen, bellows, ash-brush and shovel

all clean and of the same set, the candelabras on the mantle

have three-stems, two of them, reflected in the mirror,

become twelve. Teacups on the carved, painted table,

nested in saucers, sunburst or sunflower or something

embellished on the chair-backs and seats, the pattern repeats

on the furniture skirts, the couches, and the curtains,

which break up the orange – Spanish Orange –

wall-paper patterned with gilded orbs, this being

the wall’s lower half. The ceiling, painted to look coffered,

and below a seashell-like optical illusion of a portico, allusion

to openness in the oppressive space, a weak, beachy nod

to the Mesquita Cathedral, something lacy about it,

or a prelude to the Chicago Medinah Athletic Club

with its cryptic carvings, fountain of Neptune

in the pool overlooking the lake. Even then it was

doomed. Those people – those men – sitting

surrounded by elm burl paneling, glowing and heavy,

were, even then, looking back at what was.

The white monkey from Indonesia once

snowy-fresh, now aged, a bit mangy in the cage.

The tortoise, a balloon threaded through a drilled hole

in its shell nibbling on chives was a gift for the pretty

– 40 –


girl who turned out dim-witted. The slaughterhouse,

the slum were only memories then. No, a step further,

the slaughterhouse, the slum, the market only existed

in the imaginations of those men, imagined markets,

the animals living in cages. When did guilt become

a social requirement? they wonder. An object’s preciousness

is measured by the amount of pain it takes to procure.

The diamond. The canned ham. The cold wine, the cotton,

the coconuts on ice, the ivory keys. If those men – they –

ever chose to listen, the bones and teeth at the bottom of the ocean

would have nothing to say to them, because they –

the bones – know they hold us up, keep us afloat

from below and we owe them everything and all

our apologies and when they – the men – die,

I will not be surprised if they select to be buried

encased in concrete, sealed so that they – the men,

their bodies, their bones – will not be damaged, vandalized,

a repercussive cause of all the damage they have done,

and also so that they cannot feel the hands holding them

up in the dirt, in death because they don’t understand

this singular tapestry of which they – the bones, the men,

the secret marrow – are all a part.

“36: Fear and Delight”

– 42 –


SIBLING CITY

A writer I once read said:

How do you start? How do you catch

the first fish? Then answers herself:

With flesh from your own thigh.

Your own. As though there never

was the room where we all floated,

hand-knobs, size of a different fruit

every week, a menagerie of the same,

yet changing produce, walking down the

hall and seeing it, yourself, in the same

room projected again and again along

the wall in stages, a series of photographs,

liminal growth, a collage, sensitive skin-pads for

eyes before they rise out of the bricolage.

This is not yours, not yet, not ever,

and surely not, your own. The presumption

of such bait! The exploitation.

Wandering through the High Style America

period rooms at the museum, their oppressive

paneling, dim gilding, majestic clutter.

All the little wood animals pouring out

of the toy Noah’s Arc onto the excessive rug.

Someone arranged them, the elephants,

the giraffes, the couple of cattle, one with udders.

– 43 –


It was not a child that did the arranging

though it was arranged to look that way.

Think of all of it, the whole room transferred

piece by piece and installed again;

exhibiting how certain people lived.

My brother’s wife guides my hand

to her strange aquarium, its soft moving

walls as we look through the glass

at a clock, a ridiculous chair.

That’s hers, I would venture. Or theirs,

not yours. The kindly expression, my child.

In another room a man stands directly in front of me.

The light hits his face and his ears glow,

a pair of weird tenders, all the ears attached

to people facing the same direction,

like sunflowers facing the light, following it

with their heads along its day-arc, all of us

here leech-learning art, prettiness,

but this is not enough, we still suck,

yet stay parched, uncured by expression,

are swaddled in denim, toiling under self-designed

delights that never, don’t ever, come out right.

– 44 –


THIS LACE CURTAIN IS MADE OF MEMORY

A layer of paint on a house

maybe represents the mind.

It is windy, the house

is on a hill, and the curtains

are sucked in and out

of the windows like a sea plant

in an eddy, or the gills of pet store

beta-fish suspended, bright,

in endless stacks of airless containers.

I remember the amber museum

with its sliding magnifying glasses.

How bright the day was, sun

streaming in, lighting up the stones,

making them look like congealed beer.

They turned on the air conditioning.

I could hear the sudden hum of it.

How I had missed you then,

in the warm exhibition hall, quickly cooling,

and miss you now, as I look at the mice.

One has fallen asleep with his face against the glass,

his snout pushing up his lip to reveal two front teeth,

like part of a doll’s ivory comb on a table in a miniature living room.

And I miss you now, too, as a child taps the glass, and a father says,

“hey now, let’s tap lightly now,” very tenderly, his hand on his son’s shoulder,

making it in no way sound like a chastisement or even a criticism.

– 45 –


WE, THEY, HERE, THERE

A breathless smell of warm black crepe. I did not know what the smell was then, but I know now.

– David Copperfield

The heads are encased in glass cubes,

mounted from somewhere inside the neck,

a pole connected to a platform

covered in velvet, and they are upright

like necklace displays in jewelry store windows,

an oval, boyish chest-front, like a black bib

where the beads or chains hang.

The image of this window after-hours.

Charles LeDray’s installation of this window.

His staggered velvet necks, black hands without rings,

soft cylinders without bracelets.

Crowded and empty simultaneously.

Not exactly the same as the heads but the glass,

the lighting, the precision is identical.

In another part of the world, statues sit and stand,

with oranges and orange shawls.

More appear through openings in the compound walls,

torsos facing doorways, lines of clasped hands

and other postures, all headless and serene.

Hair that grows. Dirt in the pores, in the heat,

the mushrooms, creamy-yellow in the shaded doorways.

Near our guest house, a monk died.

His body, in the center of the floor, was cross-legged,

– 46 –


upright and surrounded by flowers.

To darken a door. Cold spoons licked clean and pressed

on swollen eyelids. In the room next to the heads,

a placard explains that devotees sometimes

established a physical connection with icons

by holding a rope tied to its hands.

Soothing gesture. Supple muscle.

Another displays the things sometimes squirreled away

inside the statues: miniature icons, scrolls and a reliquary,

which they have opened to show a tooth,

or amber-looking crumb, and we look at it.

“37: Where Fear Ends”

– 48 –


BEOWULF'S ADMIRER MISSES HIM WHILE HE IS OUT

FISHING AND RUMINATES ON HIS STORYTELLING

SKILLS

The metal boat.

The door-locks.

The wet mouth

of a weird road. Paved

with the sea's backblades.

Pale sea, seawolf slopes, sea-plain,

whose grasses are the dark

swimmer's whiskers.

Locked mouth, that word-hoard, with its pink fin.

Sometimes you do not belong to me.

You pull in sea-booty, or words, carve useless parts

from the bright bodycaves, hot from the heart

streams heat-steam. You leave the good,

you lave thin the language. You throw the hot gore over,

and in circles, the dark sinking banquet

of hate-bites, unblinking eye-whites,

The weary bone-locks.

In the mouth's door,

the lock's saltsore.

– 49 –


Your loaned bone-house works

on that unsteady blue foundation,

arches of the bodycave flushing

in deep-bosom cold: a nightlong space.

Memory is a comfort-case.

You can build there a pile of wooden boxes,

velvet lined, each with a soft-gold locket

that is a woven-story, that if you bite,

you can mold.

– 50 –


OF THE MONSTROUS PICTURES OF WHALES AND OF

MEN’S SOULS

Dampens from within & wets the flesh,

a centipede moving along a thousand legs,

& along inextricable intricacies of rope & is the rope

& everything that has to be done everywhere.

Awful & bright: pure element of air,

spouts, chimneys, horizon of some mid-sized city,

heads, tossed bubbles, unearthly idiot faces,

huge sea candy whose blood muddies the blubber room.

Pong of something rich & strange, velvet

shark or goldbeater’s skin, scented canoe hidden in the hold

whose wood could only be American, filled with the milk

that is very sweet & rich. It has been tasted by man.

It might do well with strawberries. Food of light and

forward flowing, a wide expanding circle commanded

at so high a height from the ship named “The Delight”

& the beef they served was fine. Tough, but with body.

Some say it is bull, others dromedary but we do not know

for certain how it was. Our kin a mob of unnecessary duplicates,

sucker-less as we grow, pulling up the ladders of our island pulpits,

thoughts whirling like squirrels in a cage then unlatched

then hovering on the brow & drinking at the lake of the eye,

anxiety, thirsty, for all to see. No artist has yet captured

the Sperm Whale’s forehead, the junk, so plain & pure.

No artist has hinted at the mass behind, the case, the internal cistern,

jostling, changing as we speak, like a lifeboat from a coffin.

“39: Dragons on the Wind”

“40: Smolder”

– 53 –

– Lockjaw//Martin –

Maria Martin

_____

POEM FOR THE POSTAGE BACK

You didn’t even have to like it. Just take off your clothes,

look yourself over, there’s no rush for it.

Where is your sense of urgency, I thought I lost,

and look you are pillows, you are pillows,

four pillows, you’re stacked with a head.

Like the body of something that should not be dead, that’s you.

Lay on the ground with your soft parts out. We are coming.

And in your house you have a piece of paper

written on by four dumb hands that want to wait until we’re married.

Sleep with them —just—

sleep with them.

At least you make something to want. I see,

you hold your cap out by the brim, you think it’s funny.

Just like a dance, so do it again. When the women took the stage

they wore coats and angels. One took the poem you loved out for a spin,

and there!

leave you them.

– 54 –


And yes,

I know you like to show things while they’re hot,

cha-cha. But what was a prayer then? There’s no big move.

Here’s a big laugh for this sick, thin, soon-to-be lost yellow duck.

Look at the duck, cluck. Look at the thin, yellow duck.

– 55 –


WOMEN’S SONG

Sometimes things seem to be lost! lost!

but here they are lady, like your feet

and the cat that I fed, inside our fence

you’ve stacked your dead. And here is

the place that you grew up in,

and I have more space since you’ve started

to die. It was all the new thoughts of so much

good things coming that have made us now

feed the dead. If we can understand this death,

(and it’s understood here to mean stable)

then I think it should mean

that the bad things done, laught after hup!

they aren’t no news to us.

They sink and they swim just like us

– 56 –


(things such as this with such good things coming)

can take a girl fast and away; floats the grass.

– 57 –


RETURN OF THE LOST GIRL

It is time to get dressed.

I wash my hair, stand in the mirror,

shake. Look here, my little white shoulders.

See my knee caps move up and down.

There is a rain on.

It cools the windows, my room.

Last night I was all creature, a weird one.

I woke up a creature too.

And, if someone is listening:

This is how I will laugh at jokes,

stand with a glass in my hand,

find my seat.

This is how I will greet strangers,

greet old ones,

say things about my mom,

and—when the time’s right—

say, I am so. GLAD.

Say, I could swallow you.

And the music doesn’t make

a difference,

I could swallow that too.

– 58 –


SLEEPING ON THE COUCH

Because I have to get up early to make you coffee

to take you to coffee to feed you—Cereal. 2% Milk.

And Anna has eaten all of my bread in 2 days

while I was distracted. Gas Station,

I mean corner store, I mean $2.48,

or last time anyway which I guess would make it 2.27

before tax.

Don’t forget to wipe down the kitchen before bed,

no but listen, Maria, listen. And I am tired.

I am tired and tired and stuff about getting up

like normal people,

and God-infinite wisdom-

the choice to give choice, come on.

And really, this whole time, I’ve been thinking about

Buffy the Vampire Slayer and her new haircut. What

Spike said through plastic teeth, You do not change.

Demons never change—and that’s true. Demons

don’t change they only move. It’s what makes them

unforgivable.

Sal is beside me and Sal is a cat.

He is combing my hair with his paw, the bangs I didn’t want

and he stops and put one paw on my shoulder watching me

like he has something to say/I have something to say.

He rubs my face until I cannot look at him.

– 59 –


DREAM

Once, a pale-headed angel appeared

before me, but she had no claws.

Dreams should be made of sterner stuff!

I said, and kicked her teeth in with my elbow,

it was easy--forgetting she would not move--

like Jesus, who invented the long, silent stare

before teaching it to her, not as a joke.

– 60 –

“42: Dreams Are Real”

– 61 –

“43: Oval Patch of Night”

– 62–

– Lockjaw//Robbins –

Christine Robbins _____

NOCTURNE FOR KEEPING

Wait. When the bees return, their husk bodies

Will grieve the uncut grass, the boxes

Empty on the roof, the white paint chipped.

Like any dead, their eyes are unspecific –

A hexagonal glare, a prism for the light

That remains. Old honey comb smells

Of an over-ripe sun.

– 61 –

CONTRIBUTORS

– 64 –

– Lockjaw –

This is Hannah Beilenson’s first publication. She is currently studying English and Jazz at Washington University in St. Louis, and is an intern at december magazine. She also runs The Sexy Fisherman blog (she likes it, and hopes you do too)!

// This is Larry Blazek‘s first appearance in Lockjaw Magazine.

// Kristen Brida is an MFA candidate at George Mason University, where she teaches composition. Her work is forthcoming or has appeared in Glass: a Journal of Poetry, Bone Bouquet, The Round, and elsewhere. She's currently the assistant editor for So to Speak. She tweets @kissthebrida.

// Ruth Crossman is a writer and English teacher based out of Oakland, California. Her poetry has appeared in Dryland literary magazine and her fiction will be featured in the upcoming issue of Full of Crow Review. Her first chapbook, a collection of memoir, prose, and poetry, will be published in the fall of 2016.

// Rachel Edelman grew up in Memphis. She taught environmental education in Maine and Colorado before settling, for now, in Seattle. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in The Threepenny Review, Poetry Northwest, Fairy Tale Review, and others. She tweets @rachelsedelman.

//

Sophie Summertown Grimes holds an MFA in Poetry from Boston University and has poems published or forthcoming in The Literary Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, Forklift Ohio, and AGNI Online among others. Author of the Chapbook City Structures she writes poetry reviews for Publishers Weekly.

// Tara Lemma is a writer and a recent graduate of Temple University. She now works as a K-12 tutor. She loves her one-eyed cat, avocado rolls, and other various comforts. She tweets somewhat infrequently @ilovetaralemma. This is her first published piece.

// Maria Martin lives in Charleston, SC where she works as a nanny and spends her days reciting poems to a helpless baby on beautiful John’s Island. She tweets @pideybot.

– 65 –

– Lockjaw –

// Ashley Miranda is a poet from Chicago. Her work has appeared in pioneertown., Hound Lit, and the Denver Quarterly. She tweets impulse poetry @dustwhispers and an archive of her impulse work can be found at agirlaloof.com.

// Christine Robbins has an MFA from the Rainier Writing Workshop. She has poems recently published in Bellevue Literary Review, Barrow Street, The Georgia Review, Los Angeles Review, The Missouri Review online, New England Review and TYPO. She lives and works in Olympia, Washington.

// Juniper White is a letterpress printer, woodblock carver, teaching artist, and writer with a MFA in Creative Writing who teaches and cultivates handwork in northwest communities. Learn more at dwellpress.typepad.com.

– 66 –

Lockjaw Magazine exists in part thanks to the support of our readers. Learn more at

www.lockjawmagazine.com/support or email us at [email protected]

//

Thank you to those of our donors who contribute $3 or more per month:

Josie Banks-Watson

Eric Shonkwiler

Sibyl Thomas

Ian Wajand

– 67 –

– Lockjaw –

– 68 –

an angel slashes the back of a stranger’s knees w/ a letter opener.

vol 4 - screen · expanding in yellow sugar, attached to a pulled dough limb, stiff like a bird...

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