a baltimore-based lit and arts mag
Chrissy Stegman
As Joel and Clementine meet for the first time on the train ride to Mauntak, you can see a raccoon in a baby bjorn carrier nestled against the chest of a sleeping man in a pink terry cloth bathrobe. He is seated just behind Joel. The raccoon is wearing a collar that reads, Pinky. The footage was dropped as an outtake. At the end of this scene, you can still see a tiny raccoon paw behind Joel’s head as he faces Clementine who has turned around in her seat to talk to Joel.
Douglas William Mowbray
GUESS LIST
A gust is a guest unwelcome and
welcome all the same nevertheless is
not is nor not is not is a gist is
anyone’s guess is anyone’s kiss list is
anyone’s guess mist is anyone’s guest
wish is all gussied up is a
manifestation of gestation is a gesture
a gush on a crush with a blush whose
rush is all hush mush with gusto a
pull and a push to ashes to dust if
you must get dusty with dust neither
just nor unjust.
DUST BUNNIES TO DUST BUNNIES
Another one sweeps the dust.
Another one sweeps the dust into little piles.
Another one sweeps the little piles of dust into a dustpan.
Another one dumps the dustpan full of dust into a trash bag inside a trash can.
Another one removes the trash bag full of dust and waste from the trash can and drops it into another trash can full of full trash bags.
Another one picks up the trash can full of trash bags full of dust and waste and dumps it into a truck full of full (and half-full and partially full) trash bags full of dust and waste.
Another one dumps the truck full of trash bags full of dust and waste onto a landfill.
Another one drives a front loader through the landfill and covers the trash bags full of dust and waste with dirt and other waste.
Another one surveys a plot of land where trash bags full of dust and waste will go when the landfill is landfull.
Another fool fills a trash bag full of what is no longer filling.
Another fool fills a trash bag full of what is no longer fulfilling.
Another full fool is fooling themselves with something else more fulfilling.
Another fool is staring at the trash can and wondering if it should go out since it is only half full.
Another fool is staring at the trash can and wondering if it should go out since it is only half empty.
Thom Hawkins &&& Michael Yowell
Dr. Berry had a set agenda: watch the empty chairs. On Wednesdays, people experience pain of increasing intensity—transhumans with foul tofu intestine soups where a dentist pulled a phantom tooth. The dental practice prices doubled after extracting the uncultured—before altars level up to bend, pirouette tuxedoed wrestlers use their limbs for a seat.
Berry slouched into the corner he used to schedule patients. They could afford only eighty-five percent of a dental surgeon, let alone a receptionist. But now here was Russell, and with him the drugs. “Hmm. You know, I used to have a plaster head with leopard offspring. Well, in it, there is a mirror bisecting a slaughtered rabbit (beheaded), and a bladder bag’s roast package-hoard, held back by insurance for lack of information.
“As his body dolefully worshipped a set of corns with no physical cause,” Russell continued, “he refused to take a satiated brunette to a topiary (or, as said brunette insisted on calling it, ‘a decorative garden topology’).”
At the assemblage, tobacco-stained feet booked an urge. Lost limbs procrastinated on the corner, opposite close range. “A Dubuque dental lab,” Dr. Berry explained.
* * *
Back at the office, Russell began to regain consciousness, brushing off the baraka mold chains around his brain. A burst pluribus unum a reminder—a sudden, stabbing pain. He noted the troublesome tooth gap left behind after the pain.
“I haven’t heard about how the gas affects the poor,” his voice distorted by fur and frequency. “If I tell you his tooth was oversized, you would feign disinterest in the message,” he heard Dr. Berry’s voice coming from the corner behind him, rinsing his attention.
Dr. Berry continued, “Like limbs, teeth are thinking appendages.” As Russell continued his pain—there must be cruelty—Dr. Berry pursued his conversation with an invisible interlocutor. “I’m afraid of his mouth. It’s beset with brown eyes.” This as Dr. Berry toweled off tortillas bearing a selection of saint’s relics.
Russell immediately draped himself below the chair, fracturing his skull gratis to dull the sound of Dr. Berry’s local conferences: “I’d like him to be checked in.” Russell’s skull tingled where he’d dinged it. Dr. Berry brandished the user manual for recycled souffle rice bowls, at least verbally. “I’m imagining a pram laced with untried shoes.”
Even the best doctors sweat.
Martin Thompson
Someone, either shadow or babysitter with a flashlight,
once sat me down in front of TV (big tube TV)
where Wonder Twins played.
And here I was given Wonder Twins
(form of … a bucket of water)
form of … inscrutable copper wire of a memory
forgetting the sitter’s name. But in the kitchen
glazy eyes watched the water boil for linguine
ceramic tile cooling her feet,
when somebody knocked at the door.
Two decades later and we have a cavity.
Does it bother you (the cavity)
and are we so young to ache at the fingers … wizard digits crackling
shaking them from wet?
Who was that, asking to be let in?
Whose attention drafts
your attention through a sieve,
graspy scarecrow hewn from the door, where you
must have turned them away.
we believe that the door to closer intimacy with life is generally found around back. the strange, the inexplicable, the challenging moments of uncertainty or confusion: these are what give way to depth and expansiveness in our lives. literature and art are deliberate occasions for confrontation with this depth. reference mollusk publishes work that guides you, gently or not, around the house to the back porch. step in and see what you find.
❤ dan
reference mollusk 