grodymag

[grodymag]

Our Fathers, Who Art in Scarsdale

by Voss Young

Cara wails as she tosses loot from my backpack. “Bastard!” A gilt-bronze candelabra hits the ceiling fan. “You robbed me!” Etruscan coins scatter across the bedspread. Nothing gets the bullshit factory humming like being found out by the person who, until that point, loved you. “Babe, I would never. I only robbed your father. The hydro-fracker of Yellowstone National Park? The wolf of the World Economic Forum? The demon-spawn of Kissinger and Ayn Rand?” A pear-sized diamond strikes my ear. I go down. The nicked fan wobbles on the ceiling. I awaken inside a cell. Beyond the bars, Cara bounces, furious and darling. “You had me arrested?” “We’re in the basement.” “Why does your freaky capitalist father have a jail under his mansion?” “To lock up guests who get too rowdy at his soirées. For their own safety.” “Sure. Everything he does is for the good of others. Pushing the power button on the Great Reset. Scrapping copper from the vacant house of the American dream. Hey, where’s my belt?” “I took it in case you tried to—do something.” Clutching the buckle in her fist, she gives the belt a waggle. It undulates, eel-like. “Sweetheart, no way in hell would I Epstein myself over a minor misunderstanding.” My cargo shorts slide down my crack. I hike them up. “I need you to give me a chance to explain—.” The basement door slams. As I ponder my next move, I pace across the cell, hitching my pants with my hands in my pockets. I hear footsteps above my head. The basement door opens. It’s Cara, my dove, my tormentor. A copper pail swings from her left arm. “Listen, kitten. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. But if I don’t get Duckie his money, I’m fucked.” She sets the pail against the cell bars. “Promise me that if you need to piss, you’ll aim for the bucket.” “What if I need to do the other thing? Like, soonish?” “Jesus. You’ve only been down here ten minutes.” “Forget it. I’m on my knees. One phone call. Maybe I can get my estranged lawyer to stop what’s about to go down with Duckie. Maybe neither you nor I need to have blood on our hands after this.” Cara turns from the door and returns to the cell. She withdraws her phone from her pocket. “What’s the number?” “Can’t remember. Google ‘Law Offices of Avarus and Plunderen.’” “This site says, ‘Subscribe to our e-newsletter for a free download of our union-busting playbook.’” “Honey bunches, give it here.” I hit the digits. The phone rings. A secretary patches me through. There’s a click as Plunderen picks up. I cup a hand over my mouth and turn my back on Cara. I never told her about him, and discretion is the heart of love. “I need your help. Hear me out, Pops.”

Voss Young lives and writes in New York.

[grodymag]

Untitled

by Rus Khomutoff

CALENDAR OF MARBLE REINCARNATION METALLIC TASTE OF ASHES BURNING FEATHER THIS SECOND HE….THE UNMISTAKABLE EROTIC LANGUAGE MUST NOT DECEIVE US/REACTION OUT OF MY HEAD/AUTUMN CRY OPULENCE LIKE A TRIANGLE & A DUEL/NEW ARCADES BECAUSE OF BECAUSE WINDOWSPEAK PLUM NUDITY & NULLITY/STORYINSOIL EXPRESS OF SEMITONAL DOORS OPEN SOMEWHERE IN MY HEART/IT’S BETTER TO TRAVEL IN AUTOMATIC PLEASURE/BEHOLD THE MATERIALITY OF THE CLOUD/CHAOS CROP BASS NECTAR SCARECROW NAMELESS DAY/PEAK RING PROXIMITY WHO WILL REMAIN/MELANCHOLY OF TRIBE SAD CAFE IMMORTAL PALOMA STEAM DEEPFEEL LAVENDER KITE SENSEFALL CAMARADERIE/A THOUSAND & ONE CIPHERS JUNGLE ASTER/SIMPLE MIND RELIIC MASS EPONYMOUS NIGHT DISCRETIONS/SERVANT OF THE SECRET FLAME CATHEDRAL LABYRINTH EXOTIC PULSE/SOUL OF SERENE PRAXIS UNDERNEATH MANIC SEAS/CANAL BREATH SUPERSCENE/CONTENT MERE OASIS SINISTER MYTH FOREKNOW/EXPERIENTIAL MODE MODERNE HOUNDS OF LOVE/SOLASTALGIA REMAIN/OCEAN MACHINE SCREAM OF SWIFTS/BY REWARD ACCENT ROAM TECHNICS & TIME THE FORCE OF THE INTOXIC/CYCLE AFTER CYCLE/YEAR AFTER YEAR/WORD AFTER WORD/CREAM TERMINAL SYSTEM OF SYSTEMS RHAPSODY PINPOINT/TIME’S FLOW STEMMED/TALISMANIC IDENTIFICATIONS & GHOSTLY DEMARCATIONS/VERMILLION DEEPCHORD GLOW THERE IS NO END My name is Rus Khomutoff and I am an experimental poet in Brooklyn, NY. I've published two books: Immaculate Days (Alien Buddha Press, 2018) & Radia (Void Front Press, 2019).  My personal site is radiaworld.tumblr.com.

[grodymag]

2 poems

by Nathaniel Duggan

Disqualified as a Human Being

When you know you are a false prophet failure can cling to you like cotton candy, like fiberglass on the tongue. Luckily your scars look lovely as moons. Although everything looks like a moon these days, which is to say cratered, and somewhere within your wound you kiss your sister by accident, you irradiate the baby, and the collapsed telephone poles of your suburb suddenly resemble a spine’s protrusion. The sun’s angle is entirely wrong. The angel’s wings melt. In the ruins of an hour, you order your lunch to go.

Increasingly I Feel I Have Absolutely Nothing to Say to Anyone Who Does Not Display Interest in Speedruns of the Video Game Metroid or the Role Private Equity has Played in Destroying Modern Retail

Brittle-blue skies in late autumn remind me of failing relationships and the first level of Metroid Prime, the Chozo Ruins. I look best emaciated. All of my poems start with ‘me.’ Every single one of my defeats is tactical, such as this second puke of the day. I lost something vital that summer in the Taco Bell drive-thru, ever since I’ve been mugged nightly in the shadows of a city that has no name. If tomorrow is a crushed beer can then the world is a shape that should’ve been made to fit me.

Nathaniel Duggan is a writer from Maine. His work has appeared previously in Hobart, X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, and Gay Death Trance, among others, and his flash fiction was nominated for The Wigleaf Top 50 Very Short Fictions of 2019. He can be found on twitter @asdkfjasdlfjd.  

[grodymag]

Untitled

by Rus Khomutoff

A poet must enact the shadowplay of grammar and enter the corridors of assail/the other side of no tomorrow-rearranging the feigning moments all but lost, articulating the call of the muse, the contradictory vanishes of nonexistent absolutes. A poet must dream! His dreamflesh true paradise must be the paradise like a cathedral labyrinth absent logic moon almandine hold head full of ghosts, royal umber sepulcher abrupt intrabody force majeur. A capitulation to spirit beneath the ramjet allegro temple of the night sun. Listen to the hawkwind still in the logic of the antiworld, those hydrangea wisp voodoo fictions soundtrack of an appetent wild initiating spectacle. Nevermore static shores of apex kingdoms pregnant with moonlight, delirium & the dream/blood testament life/arm of exuberance, shore of elan. Transparent infinite perimeter/melancholy body sacrilege/tattoo highway insomnia punk, passion post of the absent everyday/wonderment cyclorama/venerable plight checkered koan

My name is Rus Khomutoff and I am an experimental poet in Brooklyn, NY. I've published two books: Immaculate Days (Alien Buddha Press, 2018) & Radia (Void Front Press, 2019).  My personal site is radiaworld.tumblr.com.

[grodymag]

2 poems

by DS Maolalai

photography by Jim Zola

The desert.

walking about with shops open, soft holes in old pumpkins. the sun a hot fork from a pan on the back of your neck. tram rails laid over crossroads – hard seams; ragged coats.

Sunset drunks.

in the park by the river sprawled out with cans. the day falls apart slowly like old sneakers. apples sat out under supermarket lights; bruised left drying on a 6pm on Sunday. DS Maolalai has been nominated four times for Best of the Net and three times for the Pushcart Prize. His poetry has been released in two collections, "Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden" (Encircle Press, 2016) and "Sad Havoc Among the Birds" (Turas Press, 2019). Jim Zola is a poet and photographer living in North Carolina. His most current book is Monday After the End of the World (Kelsay Books) and a forthcoming book Erasing Cabeza de Vaca (Main Street Rag Press).

[grodymag]

Uninspiring

by DS Maolalai 

perhaps he tried late to convince as an artist. instead was a character in the novels of various friends – and yes, he had swagger and a taste for young women, an unashamed interest in novelist friends. he left them in paris, and came home and told us like bragging of gas bills he'd been meaning to pay. DS Maolalai has been nominated four times for Best of the Net and three times for the Pushcart Prize. His poetry has been released in two collections, "Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden" (Encircle Press, 2016) and "Sad Havoc Among the Birds" (Turas Press, 2019).

[grodymag]

PRAISE BE TO GOD

by David Sprehe

photography by Jim Zola

Little waves touch along searching for sparkles searing lines over and around. Lines loop over waves, rings bursting from their surface swelling solid then falling to tiny tiny pieces exploding themselves and coating the waves. The coating pulls together the waves into itself. Everything settles and someone looks at it after having opened the wrapper. Takes a bite. “This is shit,” the small boy says. His mother beats him to death. Police arrive at the grocery store almost immediately and block off the aisle with DO NOT CROSS tape. Curious customers passing along are interrogated for information. “We’ll have to write you a ticket,” a small girlish policeman says to the mother. Mother is aghast. She points to the dead shitty child. “Four years old,” she stammers out from her bullshit teeth. “Surely…” The ticket is presented. $500 for cunt mouth. Fem-copguy gives a sharp impatient sigh. Mother takes the ticket. “All my savings,” she trembles. Everyone laughs except for one thin old man leaning on his cane in front of the automatic entrance doors facing in. He nods over and over and over and over and puts a hat on his head. He turns with a flourish of his cane, lithe, and carefree. The doors open. His chest explodes where his heart is and out flies pudgy angel boy who spreads his wings and farts his way to heaven.   david sprehe types in soilus Jim Zola is a poet and photographer living in North Carolina. His most current book is Monday After the End of the World (Kelsay Books) and a forthcoming book Erasing Cabeza de Vaca (Main Street Rag Press).

[grodymag]

pangea

by Sean Kilpatrick

photography by Jim Zola

god frames his lava in the sky  so we crush him in Versailles defrocked by ballooning polygamists  spin the pills till they’re a crown and tomorrow clowns its ligament we like planets let them live put Pangea on a bib here’s where each hearse gets capitalized here is where the fap becomes rhapsodized pilgrims wriggle in dreck necking money  bills spread on a slide  those were the days the day wore on gravid like malefic pawns hours kinged recalcitrant by the humming dawn versed in stroke-patter moss  yeast cough gator broth bones that itch below their cake abscessed consumption libretto spread these flaks of mismatched birth this conspiracy above the worms absence is its tallest symptom tape a couch cushion on each reel  elongate stanzas moshing without clothes beaming through your asthma moms go by on blood pressure machines  with PowerPoint in their screams all plotted distress and fine hairs touch me fast forwardly ejaculate through my stand up show take decay for example menstruation gave it a vein explain my control to me crack my knuckles in my sleep  so they stop growing Sean Kilpatrick studied forensic photography, holds a Master's in writing, is published or forthcoming in: Boston Review, Columbia Poetry Review, evergreen review, NERVE, FENCE, LIT, VICE, BOMB, DIAGRAM, New York Tyrant, Sleepingfish, Obsidian, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, The Quietus, Hobart, Gay Death Trance, La Petite Zine, Pindeldyboz, Expat Press, tragickal, fluland, Terror House, NOÖ Journal, Jacket2, Exquisite Corpse, MiPoesias, Tarpaulin Sky, Forklift Ohio, Arsenic Lobster, Melancholia's Tremulous Dreadlocks, Sixth Finch, Epicenter, Skidrow Penthouse, The Lifted Brow, Black Sun Lit, elimae, Alpha Beat Soup, and completed several small books with various presses. Jim Zola is a poet and photographer living in North Carolina. His most current book is Monday After the End of the World (Kelsay Books) and a forthcoming book Erasing Cabeza de Vaca (Main Street Rag Press).

[grodymag]

drkmtrtml

by Sean Kilpatrick

photography by Jim Zola

in dark matter timelines the universe rewinds inside its spawn begins with sibling cells to try its hand at hell and fails into us confab regions copycat heartburn soil inveigled scat and rape the reeds upon the seven seas till monkeys bloom one throat charley horse says its part the choad is woke to toot without a voice and hammers spatter down like wigs of rain to slay the maiden thought crying first first first till we eat em up groped on trays tectonic beddie byes with lightyear styes figurine-tongued and donut prone as mindsets come and groan what’s pwned paddling through the sapiens plural with red innards flaunt swabs of beer standing on a shank that twirls us here via vomit from a lord (god vomits on the globe to help it spin we rotate round a chicken bone acidic with latitudes longitudinal greens the primal stripe god vomits on his throne to sit higher booster seat of leftovers we are a vertigo of regurgitated nutrients) jesus porked us up a river fork then finger one bottomless trigger redecorates our news hiatal vultures edit the sky they’re swallowed by this squeamish breed of vampire should toss itself like tampons in a hamper we pop curds hats atop the dirge crap below fur expiration mints a sentience grid by grid Sean Kilpatrick studied forensic photography, holds a Master's in writing, is published or forthcoming in: Boston Review, Columbia Poetry Review, evergreen review, NERVE, FENCE, LIT, VICE, BOMB, DIAGRAM, New York Tyrant, Sleepingfish, Obsidian, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, The Quietus, Hobart, Gay Death Trance, La Petite Zine, Pindeldyboz, Expat Press, tragickal, fluland, Terror House, NOÖ Journal, Jacket2, Exquisite Corpse, MiPoesias, Tarpaulin Sky, Forklift Ohio, Arsenic Lobster, Melancholia's Tremulous Dreadlocks, Sixth Finch, Epicenter, Skidrow Penthouse, The Lifted Brow, Black Sun Lit, elimae, Alpha Beat Soup, and completed several small books with various presses. Jim Zola is a poet and photographer living in North Carolina. His most current book is Monday After the End of the World (Kelsay Books) and a forthcoming book Erasing Cabeza de Vaca (Main Street Rag Press).

[grodymag]

Untitled

by Rus Khomutoff

My name is Rus Khomutoff and I am an experimental poet in Brooklyn, NY. I've published two books: Immaculate Days (Alien Buddha Press, 2018) & Radia (Void Front Press, 2019).  My personal site is radiaworld.tumblr.com.

[grodymag]

Paradox

by Connor Orrico

I fear the power of my weakness as weary bones drag me along this present darkness. Connor Orrico is a student and field recordist interested in global health, mental health, justice for the oppressed, and how we make meaning from the stories we share with each other.

[grodymag]

Predator/Prey

by Connor Orrico

Phantom of piquerism, flayed flesh of Aphrodite the mask I kiss as my skin severs. Connor Orrico is a student and field recordist interested in global health, mental health, justice for the oppressed, and how we make meaning from the stories we share with each other.

[grodymag]

Internal Disparity

by Connor Orrico

I sit in my room and think and feel and am. In front of me are study materials I cannot reach, a Haitian flag I have forsaken, a calendar of racial injustice I cannot turn, stuck in endless moments of a six-year depression, a lifelong insomnia. To the right of me are shelves of literature ("an archive of longings", I think Susan Sontag said) I have read towards no impact on the world: How To Survive A Plague by David France; Getting Wrecked by Kimberly Sue; Infections and Inequalities by Paul Farmer. Behind me is my bed, womb of despair, tomb of decumbiture. To the left of me is the world map, my college banner, and encouraging quotes, parts of global health pursuits which my paralysis of will only watches sunder. Inside me passion does not pale but love is not enough. Purpose became pain; I am surrounded by ghosts. Connor Orrico is a medical student, field recordist and noise artist interested in global health, mental health, justice for the oppressed, and how we make meaning from the stories of person and place we share with each other, themes which are explored in his words in The Collidescope, hedgerow, Otoliths and X-Peri, as well as his sounds at Bivouac Recording and Skull Hill Recordings.

[grodymag]

pH 5, Mildly Acidic

by Grace Dilger

I do presume you’ll buy them fresh even though I buy them frozen, even though I’m forced to freeze them after just two days they’re worth it for that tart pop, that sweet, squish, and seedy crunch. Did you know the seeds on the outside of the strawberry are actually each individual fruit? Did you know I see the high renaissance in your morning face? Thank you for buying me berries. Years ago you’d say you don’t eat bananas. They give you heartburn. Curious. I’d read they do the opposite. If you tongued an ember, would you find it soothing? Suck this dandelion back whole again. In french, dent de lion—lion’s tooth. It’s not about the fragile sphere at all but the jagged leaves. As a child I blew. If you managed to disperse the petals in one blow it meant someone out there loved you. Then my lungs were burly seed sacks. Industrial farming grade. I have tried to quit inhaling. The smoke is gracious, still air, too. Grace Dilger is a poet, educator, and MFA candidate at Stony Brook University. Her work has been featured in the Brooklyn Quarterly, Peach Fuzz Magazine, the Southampton Review and forthcoming issue of  Southeast Missouri University Press's Proud to Be: Writing by American Warriors vol. 9.

[grodymag]

The Cunt Stew

by Grace Dilger

I remember Vatican City like it were a playhouse. Chocolate coin foiled stone tombs, the metallic scent of the sacred and ancient, and all the angels making eye contact. I thought they were all boys. They all looked like boys to me. My Grandmother called out to the Pope as if hailing a cab. A dutchman lifted me to John Paul II and I handed him the transparent box containing my rose-scented Rosary. I did not understand the vernacular in which he blessed my necklace. I was staring at the spit strings between his oral corners just like my Math teacher’s that made me think of chunky yogurt which caused me to pout at the Vicar of Jesus Christ. My rosary smelled like roses for half a decade. It may have gone on had it not burnt in the fire I woke up in. On a highway on Long Island I nearly rear end a Corolla reading its’ bumper sticker. Prayer hands wrapped in a Rosary, the way they wrapped my grandmother’s, her fingertips yellow and brown from a half a century of smoke. The sticker read: Pray A Rosary           and underneath it: To End Abortion. I briefly had a procedure on the books, but I never made it. In New Orleans they’d call what spurt from me the Holy Trinity of Vegetables: celery, bell peppers, and onions. My miscarriage looked like Gumbo. It was as much a baby as Jambalaya is a baby. In the Catholic church, the Rosary is the prayer and the Rosary is the string of beads. What you practice synonymous with what you touch. When I thought of my life anchored to an infant while I myself was a still a girl, I thought of being force fed, of bread shoved down a desert throat, of a mouth, canned, like Bumble Bee. When I scooped the goo from my underwear with my pointer finger and slicked it with my thumb, I knew I was emptying, and I felt I was teeming. Grace Dilger is a poet, educator, and MFA candidate at Stony Brook University. Her work has been featured in the Brooklyn Quarterly, Peach Fuzz Magazine, the Southampton Review and forthcoming issue of Southeast Missouri University Press's Proud to Be: Writing by American Warriors vol. 9.

[grodymag]

They Can See In Color

by Grace Dilger

In Puerto Rico I counted spaghetti straps wishing I had the breasts to strain them. They Houdini’d off my shoulders with per- nicious skin flakes; we kids were torched. Mom wrapped us in towel skirts, scarf turbans, zinc. To the pool iguanas whose toes were long as old women’s, sharpened and pointed too. They swam in circles while we clapped. Next stop fruit bats in luminous brush. Virgin daiquiris in the shade. Twisty, crazy cups we wouldn’t keep. Grace Dilger is a poet, educator, and MFA candidate at Stony Brook University. Her work has been featured in the Brooklyn Quarterly, Peach Fuzz Magazine, the Southampton Review and forthcoming issue of Southeast Missouri University Press's Proud to Be: Writing by American Warriors vol. 9.

[grodymag]

momentum

by MJ Szalay

MJ Szalay is a writer from Des Moines, Iowa. She recently graduated from Dowling Catholic and plans to attend Grinnell College in the fall. She has been published at Expat Press and Cavity Magazine. She can’t skateboard yet, but she’s working on it.