Some People Do This For A Living

RJA is, by anyone’s standards, “Royal” in nature at least as far as economy class goes. Having decided to protect myself via a magical sign akin to the evil eye, I flew into the Middle East for the first time wearing my “Babylon Whores” (Swedish Goth Metal Band) t-shirt as a way to strike fear in anyone who might wish me ill, particularly given that not quite “all” my papers are yet in order, enough to get me in but one never knows how customs agents look upon people whose work visas are not completely finished seeking the “tourist visa for now.” That said, the worst customs agent I’ve ever encountered was a Canadian “Mountie” who, after not buying the truth about me driving up to an artist’s compound in Banff (art is always hard to explain, especially “conceptual art,” ironically enough), searched my car high and low with me standing inside a painted square at a designated “safe distance” and had a way of asking me questions as if it were possible to give a wrong answer to questions such as “do you have any alcohol in the car.” Well, I thought, Canadians do love their drink but—hey wait a minute fucker you’re searching the car anyway. And no, I don’t have a pet hedgehog in the trunk who’s going to jump out and maul you when you open it. Are hedgehogs violent? If I wasn’t so lazy I’d google it and see, not to mention the fact that the word hedgehog in this context doesn’t strike me as very charming/funny, which I always strive to be, almost to a fault. Okay, to a fault.

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Review: FAMILY TREE: THE NOVEL, by Andrea Carr

For Synchronized Chaos Literary Magazine

By Tony Longshanks LeTigre

“I wanted the sense of camaraderie I felt in jail,” Angel Harper confides in us a little less than half way through this slim, yet emotionally supercharged​ novella. Harper’s older sister, Lady, has always had self-control issues, but her sudden suicide comes as a shock to Angel, who spends the ensuing days and weeks attempting to trace the factors that led to this tragedy. Her mother, a beautiful but unforgiving and emotionally repressed (and repressive) woman arranges Angel’s release from jail, but what seems a respite and return to freedom ends up “out of the frying pan, into the familial inferno.” As Angel tells us (p. 29), in a passage to which some readers will no doubt relate:

‘How do you say your family is a bunch of crazies who do the best they can? When and how do you bring it up?’ I asked [my little brother Philip]. He laughed; I felt better. They are not retard or schizophrenic-crazy, everyone appears handsome & pleasant to outsiders. That’s what’s crazy about us.’

​Carr has a way of transcribing the complex thoughts of her narrator by piling one short, pithy sentence upon another in a way that sometimes looks confusing at first, but ends up ringing true: emotions, we feel, do pour out of us in these dizzying bursts, our mental processes do happen in this haphazard fashion, like socks when they first come out of the dryer at the laundromat, before they are sorted and paired.

Though heavy and largely dark in tone and subject matter, there are patches of light and laughter that break through, and we are glad Angel manages to find some solace, a sense of closure in the end that can come from the grief process. It seems, in a way, her sister’s death is not entirely in vain, in that it makes the difficult relations with her family slightly less so, for a time. We wish Angel the best, and wish we could give a warm and compassionate hug to the author, as well, if (as one suspects) she has gone through something like this in her own life.

Family Tree The Novel: Family Tree is available here: http://www.amazon.com/Family-Tree-Novel-family-tree-ebook/dp/B00HAKQB5Q/

In Response to My Touch

Letters strung, loosely held by glaring white end caps

Words dangle soundlessly, caressing new found landscapes

Trust me, Love me, Need me,

Braille etched deeply across finger tips

Sun beats down, rock beneath, sky above

Anchored securely against storms raging

Chocolate warmth spills over

Bubbling just beneath the surface

Warmth creeps, stalking, longing

Waiting, finding purchase

Youth peaks shyly from beneath cobwebs

Hoping truth rests beneath butterflies

Cloudless skies smile on blooming fields,

Springs first blush creeps across hilltops

Daggers slice grins across scarred faces,

From newness springs smiles, laughter

Scarlet sears scratches perpetrated long ago

Replenishing losses, relinquishing all

Girlish giggles escape, released into forever

Dreams dreamt, realities replayed

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Drawing by Lon Lee, https://lonicalee.wordpress.com Previously published in Pure Francis, 2011

Vanille, fraise, noir Chantilly

I asked Lord Skeleton:

“Are you sure there are no sweets left for me?”

He said: “Yes, death-finitely.”

These Words

Inhale on an impale, stale gale
Wind pipers piping light
Lubricated lyrical spirit fear
Fused amusement bemused barking
Inward swarms of pulsating prose
From embryos born for the beat,
Beat, beat of a feet shackle rattle
And cul de sac cattle nearing
Atmosphereing held so dear oh dear
Forever endeavours near temporarily
Weather clear steering, clung to
To acidic tongue less bananananana split
You were a poet and you didn’t
Know it
Down sulphuric streets
And cyanide cities sizzle pity
For peroxide prose sprouting
Roses for gargantuan razor
Behaviour eyes wander the big
Big, big blue ponderous came
Methane planes blowing fire from
Bulging bowels belated burns
Steaming cup of couplets and
Palatable plates of never late
Late, later si o nara see you
Never been scenesters blow it
You were a poet and you didn’t
Know it
Deprived dives surviving
Smoke spiralled gravel why oh
Why un ravels to manic melody
Making way for eroding doors
Exploding twinges form lyrical
Laden havens shaven sheared and
Awaken for brief spells of
Torturous teeth galloping for
The gallows of narrow headed
Sparrows carrying crieless
Cringes from tightened fringes
Abysmal whinge syringe
Intravenous on shores of Venus
Lures soul searching besmirching
The verse rises, the verse, verse
Verse rises from caricature
Curses and bullet proof hearses
Clogging holes in citrus souls
Forming storms of high pressure
Wit you were a poet and you
didn’t know it
Amidst dawns
Born the crack, crack cracking
Scorch of snapping wrists and
Pen fist kissing page after
Page in ink filled rages to
Old salty slurs squeezing brazen
Breezes and spiteful sneezes
Muscle tearing bag bearing
Coffee closeness inspires the
Fire once again, inspires the
Fire once again round the bend
To endless ruts and ifs and buts
Unleash great barrier grief’s
Falsetto stiletto walking endless
Lines breaking spineless refines
Silent ways and new dawn ages
Spitting peroxide prose
Forgetfully trodden in sodden
Grit, never know, never show it
You were a poet and you didn’t
Know
That these words will tame
You, these words will maim you
These words will shame manifested
Membrane pain the same you fell
Over feeling peeling on pulsating
Skin spinning on nonchalant knees
Spurring
These words will stir
Mountains counting blow after blow
After blow stones sew scintillating
Socked rock flock the airways
Ferocious fairway for pursed
Lips dripping sounds hounded
Down high pursuit stratosphere
Chases forged faces on brainwashed
Birds these words heroic
You were a poet

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