Ataraxia
Vol. 6• June/201 4
selected literature with illustrations
Body Language by Colin James
We went for a walk to the quarry and saw a man killing a dog. He was wearing denim jeans and a long blue coat. A truck parked nearby idling. The air was dense and uncooperative. One lone steel cable sagged overhead. In the summer swimmers risk everything.
240.
by Grace Thorton Firefly cigarette swings into the fake-light night, whose smoker fancies herself a fairy. Fuming fairy of the fake-light night, for whom do you swing? For whom do you get your cigarette lit? Anchor your rope swing and drag. Drag. Drag. Fumigating fairy I see you from the stairs (I face them down, they bring me up) My ear is bruised from pressing it into the sounds you might make under your breath out of pleasure. In this fake-light night you swing as a child, you smoke and swing as a child. Fecund (I imagine) flame fueled fairy your lips (as I see them) move with quiet incantations of (the way you remember) Dylan Thomas. From the stairs I search for the syllables you’ve lost to the fake-light night and stuff them down my top. They tumble into my bed when I take my shirt off to shower your smoke from my hair.
“Stay there. Stick to my skin as I sleep, you children of the fake-light night� In dreams, our bones slither inside the walls of our bodies as we dance.
that faint subpoena feel by Michael Prihoda
I hear Marilynne Robinson give a reading in a distressingly empty theater, half-stricken with the set of next month’s performance, her grandmother voice wilting between her and the twelve rows to me, her words vessels for the pain I still kept in little jars from my grandmother’s death. the softest shattering played cello to accompany acoustic tears like an oil spill life couldn’t quite absorb, the lines of Marilynne’s face like the borders I never crossed, wanting a fictitious passport, no fuel for a broken-winged biplane and she began answering
questions in the quiet, my timidity chaining my tongue from asking “are you proud of me?� suddenly I knew why people entered defeatist affairs with untenable, unattainable ideals at stake and I waited until questions ceased with the sputter of a dying rhinoceros (almost embarrassed by his final moments as if he distracted by living) before leaving with the faint subpoena feel of having an enormity left unsaid
“Thinking ofYou (Woe-Is-Me-Type Drivel)� by Keenan Schott
Strands of feces That didn't drown in the first flood Swim circles around each other Like koi As I stare limp-dickedly At the pulled pork-esque BM remnants And hate myself For never figuring out a way to keep you in my life.
Immigrant
by Josh Greschner One’s life work Is the curved iron of a minaret, Others, a blood splatter resisting departure on an immigrant ship From the setter’s smooth concrete. But he forgets all sets in stone Plundered from the Islands, W o m b s o f n a t a l b o n e. The setter spins the tongue in ovals When slides are suffice And the crew knows he hides His chagrin with gin and ice, Behind closed blinds l e a k i n g l i g h t. The chiseler, the witness, the mythmaker Of the inscription defying expected passé, Shall win back elusive day. When righteous man sees the conquered plane Upright, When righteous man sees the conquered plane Concave.
love in this mall (feat. Jeezy) by Hammie Fay
I want to mallwalk with your essence I want to windowshop with your aura When we are holding our iphones at the same time It's like we are walking hand in hand Into an instagram eternity I want 2 share u With all my followers Because our love is Evolved. He can have ur body But I will always have ur cybershape.
Ataraxia is a monthly zine organized, edited, and printed by Rasasvada. We publish various projects online and in limited paper copies. Find more poems, stories, articles, art and info about submitting your own work at rasasvada.net
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