Nap 1.4



  NAP 1.4

  Edited by Chad Redden

  Copyright 2011 NAP Literary Magazine and Books

  NAP 1.4

  CAST

  CARRIE MURPHY

  M.G. MARTIN

  DIANA SALIER

  JESSICA HOLLANDER

  KIT KENNEDY

  THIERRY BRUNET

  JULIE KOVACS

  VANESSA BLAKESLEE

  J. BRADLEY

  TOBI COGSWELL

  JOHN HARVEY

  MICHAEL MARTIN

  DEMISTY D. BELLINGER

  KATHRYN ROBERTS

  PARKER TETTLETON

  DANIEL ROMO

  HOWIE GOOD

  RANDALL WEISS

  ADAM GRUAPE

  RUSS WOODS

  JOHN NYMAN

  C. JAK MUSSINGTON

  MATTHEW FUGERE

  PETER RICHTER

  WILLIAM HENDERSON

  CARRIE MURPHY

  OCEAN CITY

  I pulled down my panties

  to brag to all the beachgirls

  about my fresh brazilian wax,

  my skin red as a hummingbird’s

  soft throat, & I bet in my head that

  the one with the hippie boyfriend

  didn’t even trim, always wearing hats

  & jangly anklebracelets, which was kind

  of how I wanted to be, but I wasn’t sure how

  exactly to hold my nose so I wouldn’t smell

  the rotting cast on the broken leg of the boy

  whose semen I later scrubbed off with sand

  and G. kept saying what did it taste like?

  J. plucked two flowers, one for her hair & one

  for a vodka bottle on our kitchen table. Sitting

  on the porch smoking till our breaths periwinkled,

  H. snipped the horizon up into beads for hemp

  necklaces & I braided then unbraided then rebraided

  L.’s soft strawberry hair. The cops were busting the boys

  upstairs so we hid our beers behind the big flowerpot ashtray.

  I gulped in the hazy damp dark, kissing a boy

  who listened to phantom of the opera techno,

  fingered my black cotton thong

  while I drank Malibu. O. wandered

  off to get paisley-eyed at the bong,

  K. worried her new eyebrow ring pink,

  & everyone watched as the moon

  slipped off her bikini &

  put her sunglasses on.

  EXQUISITE

  You’re a virgin who can’t drive condoms

  mold in your bedside drawer you listen

  for the beep the horn you make suck-in-skinny

  love to yourself in the mirror every

  night mousse & blowdryer love

  mornings the kiss of a metal clasp on

  your slick neck boys don’t have best

  friends but you have a thousand though the toilet

  paper at their houses is weird

  & always wrong it’s ok to bleed if on schedule it’s ok

  to wake up in a cold sweat but not ok

  to squint because glasses are ugly & you won’t

  listen to opinions you’ll only wear cut cotton

  only wear jeans with whiskers boys

  wear cargo pants because they stuff

  their pockets you carry purses taut &

  embossed.

  THE BITTEN TONGUE

  We’ll never remember the time before we grew breasts.

  Our bodies, our limbs,

  cracking skin & red,

  hips, hair, these legs that move us forward

  indefinitely, imploring

  get us out of this classroom & teach us how.

  All we have in common is our colossal boredom;

  that urge that forces us to cold cement.

  Carrie Murphy is from Baltimore, MD. She received her B.A. in English from the University of Maryland, College Park, and her MFA at New Mexico State University. Her poems have appeared in PANK, Keyhole, Prick of the Spindle, and other journals. Her chapbook, MEET THE LAVENDERS is available from Birds of Lace.

  M.G. MARTIN

  THICK WET HOT WE STUFF

  because these things happen, there is a piece of glass in your foot. it’s wet you say. it looks like red syrup coming hot from your foot i say. i offer my teeth to your foot. i’ll ply the glass from the wet line holding the glass in your foot like a socket for two balls called eyes. yes. & the line is now open, your foot wears a gash of thick wet red heat. a balloon really is nothing without the color of blood you say. so glad your foot took kindly to my hot teeth & sorry it wasn’t my foot stuck by a line of glass i say. this is the point of two smile touches. & wouldn’t it be swell if the stars turned red & drew wet lines toward each other’s heat says the radio voice. maybe, probably not we say. i put a band-aid on your foot with my teeth & say: where is the line at which we evolve into a two person poem about wet heat? i’m trying to find that line, it is where i will leave all of my me stuff. i will come back & place my eyeballs in your sockets. then, you will find that line & place your you stuff next to mine, in a pile of thick wet red hot we stuff.

  EAT ME LIKE FRUIT FLESH

  you began forcing yourself into my general shape the moment you had no idea that i began looking at you. this was the first tangible moment of fruit trees. five years ago i would’ve said that you’re the reason pomegranates are poems. five years later i sit here & count your elbows, over & over. there are only two when you are sleeping. the way you step out of the shower is a variation on a theme called eat me like fruit flesh. my body is filled with empty trash bags & at the beach all of the sand moves toward your fingers. i think they are magnets. i am a variation on a theme called paper cut in my heart. one quarter of all love poems are statistics. three quarters would rather live inside of your mammary glands. i would make love to a pomegranate if you told me to. but i would do it with gusto if you would let me be your tongue. oh please let me be your tongue.

  GROWN MEN CAN PLAY WITH DOLLS

  if you were a real you & not a reverse voodoo doll, you would ask me to do the dishes when you were at work because we would live together. sure. i would look at the dishes & get an idea but then make a papier-mâché mold of your body using only my memory. upon drying i would write these poems on your hollowed out you. if you were a real you & not a reverse voodoo doll i would ask you when you were at work. ask you because the only certainty is that if you would let me lay behind you we would look like a very large question mark. i would look at the dishes & do the idea. & from work you would write to me: the dishes could overtake the whole of the apartment & you would still be the best, especially if you wrote poems on the dishes. but it doesn’t matter because you are a reverse voodoo doll & live in my apron & can’t read, because dolls can’t even breathe. i did the poems with food & eat off the floor.

  M.G. Martin is the author of One For None (Ink., 2010). His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in PANK, Everyday Genius, elimae & >kill author, among others. Find him at mgmartin.tumblr.com & @themgmartin.

  DIANA SALIER

  FOUR POEMS FROM wikipedia says it will pass (The Red Ceilings Press, 2011)

  THE BEST OF FRAT JAMZ 2011

 

  i want to ask, when did you become so out with it

  when did you stop laughing with me not at me?

  i can't sleep past five am i miss the sounds

  of your upstairs neighbors fucking lopsidedly

  to the best of frat jamz 2011

  the right half of my body is weird and homeless

  without the left half of yours

  i want to have the burgers-or-chinese-takeout

  gchat debate at the end of a workday
br />   I DIDN’T CRY AT THE END OF TITANIC

 

 

  this one day you flew to berlin

  and then later you flew back home

  and i rode my bike to your apartment

  outside it was hot and windy

  we laid under your sheets

  we listened to the beach boys

  i made you come

  i got on top and said i loved you

  i should've just said

  fuck walt disney you’re the happiest place on earth

  let's commit a crime so we'll get caught

  and do time together

  let's steal puppies from duboce park

  you had brought some german chocolate

  you had been gone for too long

 

  MY GMAIL MAKES YOU LAUGH SO HARD

 

  before we break up we gchat randomly

  about men on segways

  cookie monster videos

  what we should do for dinner

  and all this mundane that suddenly feels

  like the series finale of LOST

  or finding out whether the afterlife really exists

  and you say my gmail makes you laugh so hard hahaha

  after we break up we gchat awkwardly

  about whether things are awkward between us now

  which just makes it more awkward

  whether or not it was already awkward to begin with

  and i say did you get my messages i kept

  typing after you went away

  and you say no i didn't get anything

  and i make myself invisible

  LET’S MAKE THE WORLD SO QUIET AGAIN

  if anybody asks this is the story i like to tell:

  we met in the frozen food aisle

  the night the giants won the world series.

  i woke up with a panda bear biting on toaster waffles

  and never ate an eggo the same way again.

  when you brushed my teeth in the bathtub

  i crouched by your ears and shouted

  baby ! you must be a facebook page because i like you.

  this is the one where i meet my thoughts in a

  neutral setting and politely ask their intentions.

  i’m hiding my real feelings inside my underwear,

  hoping you’ll just stumble on them eventually.

  there was a night you texted me from a bathroom

  in oakland ‘’haha i just saw us as an old couple” --

  there’s a card catalog of every gum wrapper

  we’ve ever chewed set to the aladdin song parody

  i wrote for you. your family name

  is an informal name of a former european province ,

  is a sufjan stevens song ,

  is a tourism website i have set on limited access.

  this is a thing about you: you want to be with someone

  for a long time who wants to be with you for a long time.

  how long is long and what if the atomic bomb

  explodes in our bed tomorrow ,

  if my teeth start falling out ,

  if you forget how i like my waffles

  and the speed of tim lincecum’s last pitch ? ?

  if this is a choose-your-own-adventure then please

  tell me how i’m supposed to proceed.

  this is the laser that zaps us at night: sometimes i worry

  that i don't have real worries just first world problems –

  like tonight there's a party at my house and everyone

  is invited but the beds are hollow props so you can sleep

  under the stairs, inside my coat pocket or on top of me.

  are you stuck in airplane mode //

  is that why i haven’t heard from you in weeks.

  i heard natalie portman had a baby

  and no one gives a shit

  brb -- i'm going to get a pacifier

  let’s make the world so quiet again

  Diana Salier is the author of wikipedia says it will pass (The Red Ceilings Press, 2011). Her poems have recently appeared in Every Day Genius, 3:AM Magazine, Robot Melon, Red Lightbulbs and Yes Poetry, among other places. She lives, writes and sleeps in San Francisco, and at dianasalier.com.

  JESSICA HOLLANDER

  MISVISION

  Next to me at the DMV, you made sense of blurry letters. You saw lights flash temple-level. You bragged about missed speeding fines, then mentioned that time I left-turned from the wrong lane and got a ticket. Like charm is a part of it.

  I once mistook a stop sign for a basketball hoop. You took air shots, cheered yourself on. Sometimes I can’t make sense of words at the grocery and I remember my mother applying mascara a quarter-inch from the mirror. Gunky streaks on the glass. I’m tired of trying to focus. When scanning the baking aisle I ask you where the hell is the brown sugar, you point, you smile, like you know something special. Really you are dumb and forget several things on the list.

  Same smile when I stuttered through letters at the DMV, couldn’t see the red lights flashing until the woman clued me where to look. Don’t tell me I need glasses. Don’t tell me I passed because she felt sorry for me. I can gunk up the mirrors and still be charming when I want to. For different reasons than you think I get a lot of relief from closing my eyes.

  GROCERY STORE DECISIONS

  Grocery store decisions are better made together we scour aisles, follow lists on paper scraps marked with vertical checks are half-arrows, lines with elbows, pleased kinks fissure quickly; will you show me your list careless qualities, butter beside meat this plastic-torn broccoli, black-holed strawberries, too many boxes in the cart your belongings to the curb tonight for once the fridge is packed tight and if you hate is exhaustion. I have food for a weak-breathed as you go, I don’t wish to see your elbows again even when next week shopping alone means skimming eager-eyed products of a decade promoting needs knocked around in the cart, ill-fitting, not wanted and for consumption anyway.

  Jessica Hollander recently received her MFA from the University of Alabama. Her work has appeared in over 50 journals including BLIP, the Cincinnati Review, the Journal, >kill author, Pank, and Web Conjunctions. You can find Jessica at jessicahollanderwriter.com.

  KIT KENNEDY

  SNAILS

  hard

  & soft

  & wisdom

  when to stay

  put

  so why am I thinking

  fountain pen or how boundaries are

  reflexive pronouns

  NINE WORD NOVELLA

  I ate the meal then I ate the cook.

  COMMA DIRECT ADDRESS YOU

  talking to nature a ramble

  of self. Think nesting dolls, largest

  squeezing into two sizes smaller

  out of orbit. No go.

  Going forward, polite conversation

  an image consumes the larger

  until nothing requires swallowing

  up. Boundaries unnecessary.

  Little to redress to the spent.

  Moon can do on her own.

  You, let go. Scurry.

  A pail in one hand.

  Thimble of salt in the left.

  EITHER IT RAINS TOMORROW OR IT DOESN’T

  a theorem Einstein worked on

  but abandoned.

  Where would we be

  had he disproved ennui?

  So tell me, am I losing you

  to night’s generic hunger

  or someone?

  Kit Kennedy co-authored Inconvenience (Littoral Press)) and Constellations

  (Co-Lab Press) with Susan Gangel. While Eating Oysters is published by CLWN WR

  Press. Work has appeared in Ambush Review, CLWN WR, Runes, Shot Glass Journal, Uphook Press, Super Arrow, Tak'Til. . She lives in San Francisco.

  THIERRY BRUN
ET

  FOUR POEMS

  contentious shrieks -

  during postmortem

  examination - made

  steel structures -

  respectable again

 

  smooth surface of this tortoise

  shell – dusty debris that fly

  off – at closest approach – a

  venture will include the making

  of an orb

  the astronaut renamed himself

  Tycho to pass through the eminence

  in all directions – like vestiges

  of velocity – the stitches were

  a sign of annihilated kickback

  wandering with Heraclitus –

  you can futz with obscure

  innocence - the riddler generates

  “the death of fire” – “the birth of air”

 

  Thierry Brunet currently lives in Antibes, on the French Riviera. He created Nova Cookie & Frozen Hell, an experimental journal publishing only very short stories in 6 words. His poems and illustrated texts appear or are forthcoming in Cricket Online Review, Word For/ Word, WORK, Sous Rature, Danse Macabre, Alice Blue and elsewhere. His first full-length collection, Waste, has been published by BlazeVOX.

  JULIE KOVACS

  ENTER THIS ONE

  //Write your dreams here

  Debug.That.DreamBoard (“in-and-out”)

  rainy driveways {water dripping $east and $west}

  Hitchcock mystery at the train depot

  no body found yet? Past nine post meridian

  Alligator in the lake behind the house ~ ~ ~

  another round of Guinness at the bar with a dartboard obscuring

  a photo of Bettie Page

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