FOOD 4 THOUGHT

1. breakfast menu

 

bomblette: miscellaneous refrigerator leftovers folded indelicately into an egg outer-layer.

 

crepes boozette: thin, absorbent pancake creations reputed to be a hangover cure.

 

orange peek-hole tea: a beverage so weak one must check to see if the teabag “dropped.”

 

potatoes “o’greaty”: any particularly uninspired, starchy tuber accompaniment to a meal.

 

transblendered: a smoothie which is neither discernibly vegetable-based nor fruit-based.

 

 

2. the colonel’s frank confession, or war is hormel

 

“It was back when your grandpappy was devotin’ himself to the preservation of the Onion.  I had enlisted late, so had to pack’n’wrap quickly to ketchup to the resta them hotdoggin’ fellas.  Eventually, I mustard up the courage to link up on the firing range.  It was then I received this,” he said, not without some relish, pointing to the still-tender spot on one of his buns.

 

 

3. hill o’ beans

 

Taking a shortcut to a café with my Native American friend JW.  The setting was New Orleans.  We tried to take a shortcut through a square but were impeded by a giant mound of coffee beans. 

 

JW said, That looks like fun.  I agreed.  When else are you going to have a chance to climb up a mountain of coffee beans?

 

So we scampered right to the top—but alas.  The recent rain had left pools of black liquid everywhere.  I tried to make light of the situation, joked that at least no other storms were brewing.  But JW slipped and fell, staining her dress.  And I fell too, and then she did again.  Eventually, we both gave up and just started sliding and rolling until we finally reached the pavement.  

 

It didn’t amount to much, that hill of beans in New Orleans.

 

 

4. who wants pie?

 

At Thanksgiving, we were all painfully sitting around the living room after our feast when the doorbell rang. No one wanted to get up. Fi­nally, I crossed over to the door to greet our guest, saying, Come on in and meet my distended family.

 

 

M. V. Montgomery

the one with the horses.

so you’re traveling down the road, riding, yeah, you’re riding down the road on motorbikes, no horses, you’re riding down the road on big white horses (although yours is piebald, but no one seems to notice) and you can feel the stretch in your pelvis, the way it really opens you up and the horse underneath you is solid, like a block of concrete, only it’s flesh ‘cos it’s moving and you’re moving with it, dilated and panting. and although you’re still a learner you need to gallop, you need to gallop and hope like fuck that the horse comes with you. a scentient beast, he is known as a bit of a people whisperer among his own kind and he’d like to think that he planted the idea.so consensually you dig your heels into his ribs to break from the pack, and the horse knows what you want and how to give it to you because there’s no speed like this speed as you rise up, rise up from the saddle to stand on unsteady stirrups and your legs are the champions in this scenario as you go fast, fast enough to feel the wind in your hair (only you cant, because you’re bald, though no one seems to notice). so you’re galloping, galloping fast, crazy fast and you wonder if you’re gunna keep your balance with your arms outstretched and the increasing speed and the wind and you can and it’s fucken excellent.

it’s quiet now, calm as you crest the last dune to the beach. there’s the smell of the sea and the spray of the horse and the knowing how close you came… your bloodbeat slows and the horse shakes his mane and neighs as you’re walking down the beach and you get the sense that he’s strangely attracted to your reckless naivete, so you’re walking on the beach, well the piebald’s walking, you’re just sitting there, higher than normal, sitting there stretched and swollen, chaffed like you’ve just had sex but he forgot to bring his penis, and you wish you’d bought the dildo but decide instead to explore the horse in a more physical way now that you can loosen your grip on the reins. you find yourself rubbing, using your hands to brace yourself, and his hair is rough under your palms rough when it’s rubbed up the wrong way and the right way, and your legs, though aching, are moving to the rhythm, to the pace set by the horse because he’s the one whose really in charge here, he’s the one with all the control. if he chose to bolt and throw you onto the hard wet sand close to the water’s edge – he could. if he took it into his horsey brain to end your life right here on the beach then display over your rapidly cooling body – he could. so with fantasies of your own demise you find that the warm moistness that began in your belly is spilling down through channels that are familiar, and spreading to the cloth between your legs (only it doesn’t, it lands straight on the saddle, because you’re naked, though no one seems to notice).

Roxy Contin

no drunken upside.

unsympathetic to death even when he’s shivering in my bed i now suffer the complex web of guilt and longing that drape like glue through my chest cavity, not in a good way. then telling the coroner she was dealing with a charismatic corpse seems to relax the situation and build a rapport. but it’s too early to remember you fondly. i view your shell still as a person because that’s the way i have to deal with it until the tattoo on your chest confirms the worst with his stillness. i have a series of flashbacks that don’t so much remind me of you as take me away to a desolate neverland, a dark cave of dank maybes. and if i have to write another shitty love pome to tell you how i really feel, don’t expect a happy ending when the best sex we had was the night heath ledger died. so no matter how much i drink there is no drunken upside and i want to remember you fondly because you had so much potential, but that was yesterday, that was before the longest night, before you delivered the final sucker punch.

 

 

 

Roxy Contin

I Am the Most Prized of the Bridegrooms

Hell you call for me and

Hell I will follow you to

You and back

And I’ll befriend the demons and

Greet the popes and

Kiss Satan my betrothed

When he comes to me as a

Hunter returns with the

Horn of plenty

 

I am glad and alive with the bloat of love

 

Luke Weldon

Phosphorescent French Fry

A french fry rests in the ashtray, nestled in a pile of butts.
 She smiles and says something in Hebrew.

       Leaning toward her, I can see the tiny bugs on her lips and in her
hair.  I reach to pick them out but she’s too far away.  Standing up
is not an option.

       Outside, the waves retract into the lake.  I wonder what doppler
sounds like in reverse.

       She’s speaking again, this time in whispers.  Her head is shrinking
in on itself.  If there is a way to save her I’m not aware of it.

       She rifles through the ashtray quickly, snatching the french fry and
holding it up for me to see.  It appears to be phosphorescent.  When
she tries to eat it her mouth has already disappeared.

       Her eyes quiver in frustration as she bangs the fry against her chin.
 I want to help, but there’s nothing to do.

 

Shawn Misener

pelicula. a pussycat splendor. 3 chapters

1.

a soft skin for
a soft silence for
a bitter calm
between between
diced radioactive music tones
accentuating
the atonal squeals on video
in reality it was a diary

mist soaks a baggy black suit
hazy hazy
closing doors
revenge revenge
it walks away
leaving leaving
and they go away

a child kneeling in shadows they
go away
the morbid discharge
the deceitful demon
their happiness was just a python constructed of nails
glowing in the backdrop at the end of the street
gently slithering forward

her eyes locked on the target of
her love. no gaze returned. a monster
smiled at the irony and at the soft tingle freeze in her spine
crawling crawling
a pleasure from a bomb,
scare streets scream

tactics were none
her plans left to fester
no silence she
grabbed atonal music, just energy medicine
a monster is clad in steel
she’s in latex
she’s in leather
her eyes burned and
flexed as her missals smoldered wet
fetishes with sweat

she talked about traveling.
a beast called her home again
now to rest
to “be in peace” inside.
she couldn’t.

left to write
to create a sight
a monster hidden from
a memory recalled.

the floor squeaked.
her fur burned as her fingernails itched
a woman was reflected in the cracked glass
and she touched it deeply for a connection

a face underneath the
wood a mildew
a rotten
a touch for
a tomb
a barter for the infernal

 2.

don’t forget to
say your prayers
black eyeshadow
black mascara
3 times before you sleep.
on your knees as the nuns spake
before you sleep ask
to be forgiven
let us now praise
illicit dreams

a monster doesn’t want it if she can’t
have it
blackness crescendo as she (her back to the
wall) licks her lips
chapped with

craving languidly
fingering an image
not responding.

toys couldn’t quite accept
a satisfying feeling of punishment
from a magick lantern.

(the syringe prevented him from
being susceptible to physical experiments)
The clinical authors ordered to reduce her
he died in another glass shattering scream.
and was hidden about his life
under two more quick bursts,
under two more assertions.

 3.

she wants it to be cloudy today
and to rest and to rest some more
they could not help both of her
“this summer it will be different:
surf-city/ nathan’s hot dogs/ and bicycles”

 

Peter Marra

angel pulp

sitting on a desert island waiting for the rain to fill my nostrils with cocaine i wonder if i’ll ever see that time again, that time when i was flying. i want to ride my bike for profit, not fun but where did i put my keys? if it’s up to the midgets the outcome looks grim. but in the washup, after the pin-ups have been worshiped and adored & the aging screen sirens have been packed into their nursing homes i wonder if there is a school i can go to learn what i really need to know or whether i just get it beaten into me for $500 an hour. i wanna win an i pod and join the next generation but the sales assistant is speaking in a foreign language so i take my business elsewhere by which time i’ve done my dough (doh!) on drugs and doggies – races that is, not style. traveling through my imaginary landscape cos i’m too agoraphobic to leave my bedroom i decide to take a trip to disneyland, well euro disney, cos i’m actually allergic to americans. but it’s all in my imagination which turned on me a week ago tuesday so the ghost train contains real ghosts and the roller coaster can never reach it’s destination.

 

okay, so it’s another day and i’m still on the bus hoping to make a connection but this everlasting gob stopper that i have been saving for harder times only leaves a bad feeling in my belly so i donate it to the museum of unnatural artifacts and i feel a little better. there’s a church along the wayside but i have spent all my coins on this bus ticket so jesus gets 2 minute noodles for dinner again. and that’s okay for him but an entity as big as the lord has responsibilities and muscle mass to uphold, not to mention a full social calendar and just where do you think all those loaves and fishes came from, huh? 

wracked with guilt i scoot to the atm where i am mesmerised by the flashing lights and it’s passive aggressive demeanour. by now it’s tuesday and all the plates are all licked clean. but realising that i still have a god fixation i tank up and go to the local night club for some random orgiastic sex and ritual killing. the sex is okay but the white lights flash blood red when there’s no one around who remembers your name.

 

Roxy Contin

a night at the greyhound.

the pain sluts huff paint

while the bitchwhipping

continues – just because it

hurts doesn’t mean i

don’t want it bad. i’m exploring

the pomegranate to find

a new kind of evil.

dig a little deeper, baby

you might make me cry –

every interaction is serious.

step away from the counter.

 

you may catch more flies

with honey, but the last time

i put cunt juice behind

my ears the chick next

to me pulled a root. but

dogs behave badly anyway

and i’m too miserable to

masturbate unless it’s to a

nasty rape scenario –

everything looks better

in black and white.

step away from the counter.

 

there are things i can’t catch

in a butterfly net, but i love

my answering machine.

bad news delivered through

a sieve, recorded to play

over and

over and

over and

over and

over –

“you are not included.”

step away from the counter.

 

 

having time on my hands i

teach myself to piss

standing up, but it’s just a case

of renaming my dead horse

to flog it for marketing purposes,

of looking for clues after

the crime’s been solved.

so sew my lips shut and

call me silent susan –

i’ll have my day in the

coroner’s court.

step away from the counter.

 

 

i’m in the pursuit of happiness

but he’s a fucken fast runner

in the moment between

the screech and the crash,

with bed partners as

temporary as my sanity

it’s not until i’m at the top

of the silo that anybody’s

interested in my victim

impact statement. this

could only have been

painted by a mad man.

step away from the counter.

 

Roxy Contin

wild at heart.

dismounting the last train

to walk the secret paths of memory and longing,

turning in circles around the real issue,

which is forgetting.

and the moon will supervise the exorcism

as you laugh with the junkies and cry with the

saints when you know it should be the other way round,

but it’s like walking up a really steep hill, or a

dingo, all you want is to be wild at heart.

 

Roxy Contin