Double Shiny

Issue 3 - Fall 2010

2010-11-02T03:53:00.000-07:00

Brandi Wells - Poisonhorse

Adam Moorad - Ashokan

Eric Nguyen - Hello? Hello?

Cassandra Troyan - Crush All We Cannot Control

Mark Neely - Performance Art

Mark Neely - A Quiet Town

A. Minetta Gould - from Oh You got the Poem & Other Poems

Cliff Young - Time to Go

Carrie Lorig - I want to look at you before we go

INFO

I want to look at you before we go

2010-10-30T05:14:00.001-07:00

Carrie Lorig

I want to look at you before we go
and guess the correct number
of healed bones inside of you.
It is a fact that the sea
will take the peninsula back.
I have always assumed it will
be an all at once kind of thing,
the total saltwater immersion package.
I see us at the beach
in a dirty dishtowel of a car, prepared
to accept jobs as haunted oyster mansions,
inventing, while we can,
a flashlight that flickers sunrise
and kites
with voice boxes in their tails.
My kite will yell “7!”
and yours will shout back, “Yes!”
just as the water winds up
cogs of waves
that will roll and grind over us.
But I guess it is not
going to be like that at all.
I no longer know the odors in my dreams.
I start to make a canoe
out of my comforter,
but the dreams say no, we don’t
do that anymore, either.
Another ghost goes
into an old olive jar
before we go out for drinks.
The jar is our tambourine
while we karaoke.
We adjust each other’s facemasks.
Water hen pecks at our fingers until
purse snatching
is only possible through several layers of band aids.
My mask nicks your neck.
I slip the canoe under my tattoo.
and release it into the back yard.
The upside-down canoe
is our dance hall
until, with one foot off
the ground and glass pooling
into your hand, you ask how
it is that we know each other.

Time to Go

2010-10-30T05:12:00.001-07:00

Cliff Young

      I hadn't kept track of the time in a while. I could tell it was late, though. It was late enough that there were no cabs on the street, I knew this because Marty would have found one if there were any. He kept looking up and down the street, his neck lurching as we walked, like walking was killing him or something. Like finding a cab would fix everything.
      "How much longer?" I asked more in sympathy with Marty’s outward display of anxiety than anything else. I didn't mind the walking. It gave me something to do.
      "It's only twelve more blocks,” he said, “but these aren’t normal blocks out here. These are shit-ass-long blocks."
      I wondered what the conversion factor was. Was “shit-ass-long” to block as “kilo” was to meter? Did the prefix make it a distinct unit of measure, or was it more of a perceptual thing? Was our fatigue turning ordinary blocks into shit-ass-long blocks? Could time and space be warped by weariness or loss?
      I must have been thinking about this for a long time, because when I looked back at Marty he was staring at me with that long-suffering look he’d developed lately.
      "Listen," he said, "you might want to think about being less mopey. I don't think it's doing you any good."
      As if I would be mopey for my health.
      "Do you have any idea why we left the party?" he asked.
      "You wanted to leave."
      "We left because you were scaring people."
      "That's absurd."
      "Jesus," Marty said, "you freaked out Dave's wife. You can't stay at a party after you freak out the hostess."
I didn't believe this was true. "And how did I freak out the hostess exactly?"
      "You were lurking."
      "I wasn't lurking."
      "You were standing behind a fern."
      "That's not lurking."
      "Then what the hell is it?"
      I knew the answer wouldn't do any good, but I said it anyway. "I read somewhere that the patterns of nature often follow progressions of fibonacci numbers..."
      Marty looked at me like I was a child.
      "...so I was counting the leaves," I said.
      I remember looking at the fern, and it was like I could see back in time, see the plant growing. I could see the leaves unfurl, the stems push from the trunk, the whole thing struggling to be free of its seed.
As we walked, the blue glow of television screens shown down on us from windows above garages, blinking with the pulse of stations far away, and I wondered how many of these played to empty rooms.
      Marty’s apartment was dark when we arrived, and we were quiet so as not to wake his wife. The place had an order to it, an order my own place had not known for some time. In the darkness I could sense life. I could smell potted plants and cut flowers and meals recently prepared.
      I lay on the couch in the silent glow of the television and listened to muffled conversation fragments stumbling through the wall.
      “...he was lurking?”
      “...a fern...he hasn’t been the same since she died...”
      “...poor guy...”
      “...didn’t know what else to do...”
      “...you’re a good friend.”
      “...it was time to go.”
      I stared at the television screen, glowing not blue but with millions of colors, tiny dots arranged into faces and buildings and cars. This was the hour when time stopped, and a minute could be a year, and a night could be a lifetime.
      I wondered if time had stopped for her, if her final moments were yet unfurling, was she still making her last decision.

from Oh You got the Poem & Other Poems

2010-10-30T05:11:00.001-07:00

A. Minetta Gould

        Most whales gave up their sense of smell eons ago
        as an adaptation to their aquatic existence.
                    —Bone Clones

There is a difference between a whale’s vertebrae & spine

I am attached to one & not the other

How hollow a whale would feel if it had feelings

*

Identify the object: echo; a whale; ________; where am I?

*

I am gone

like lunch served on a whale

’s plate

I am gone am gone am gone

I am gone am gone am gone

*

O I await a return call      rerun

See how big I am?

I’ll measure yr loudness & time

*

We are represented in harmonic composition

We are represented in pulse intervals

We are represented in call duration

We are represented in a whale

*

Yr song haunts // the very way

a whale is a whale

See how big I am?

*

A neutral investment

echo             a whale

yr song          a whale

*

Siphon I out of Yr song

*

Raw materials break songs
echo
Raw materials break songs

*

I am attached to one and not the other

A Quiet Town

2010-10-30T05:10:00.000-07:00

Mark Neely

Things were pretty peaceful here before the snows. Oh there were factories blowing up the fields and gruff traffic and giant speakers pumping the pop drag and fat men bellowing at reversing trucks, but it’s true what they say about things being relative. In 1890 a horse fart probably went off like a cannon.

The people were decent. Tiffany Sebring used to mow my lawn when I was gone for business, and me and Sam rebuilt her fence after the first bad ice.

Huge blizzards nowadays in April, May. Ten inches in June last year, another record. People can’t take it. Not so long ago, when I was a kid, we’d get a few six inch dumps in January, February, that was it. To get a proper snowball in March was tough. Yesterday the Kowalski kids built a snow fort that took up half the block. When I drove by they started raining fucking ice balls down on my windshield from behind a row of parapets.

Children make the best of things I guess.

I can’t say it was a big surprise when Jack Palermo wasted Elijah with a shovel or when they found John Jackson’s wife frozen stiff in the rafters of his shed.

People are touchy. Food is short. You have to be careful not to ogle someone’s wife in the weeks when the parkas come off. Careful you don't dump roof snow in someone’s yard and flood their basement later when the thaw comes.

If the thaw comes, I’ve noticed people saying.

Performance Art

2010-10-30T05:09:00.001-07:00

Mark Neely

I dress in cotton, rev my Volkswagen and set out, getting cut off at the first turn by a Chrysler with plastic sheeting windows and a fender of black duct tape.

In the half-empty parking lot I give a sideways look at a woman bleeping the locks of her minivan, dark roots show through her hay-bale blond. She’s wearing jeans some might find too tight for weekday shopping. I almost crash into a bicycle man with a handlebar basket full of wrinkled cans. His hair looks like wet seaweed. He steers around abandoned carts, cursing some demon nipping his pedals.

This is Thursday morning and I grieve along behind old women who block the aisles, squint at crumpled lists and hear no one behind them. Who would kiss the carrot skins of their necks? Twelve-packs of pop line the widest aisle like drawers in a colorful morgue.

I parse rotting veggies (ORGANIC), cracking slabs of tuna (FRESH) on beds of ice, rows of cereal boxes (NEW!) and cracker boxes (WHOLE GRAINS), and cookies lying below their packaging like the crosses at Normandy. Everything is NEW! to we gnus drifting sluggish through fluorescent fog.

Above the deli case with its ovals of impossible turkey, its impossible roasts of beef, I sample cubes of swiss and pinkish ham, then reel through a maze of wine and beer (alas, no samples there), to checkout where my cashier bleeps each bag and carton in rhythm with her smacking gum.

I drive home steady, slowing long before red lights and drag in my haul of plastic bags, which whisper like sea foam on the kitchen floor. I throw out old cereal and taco shells and pack each thing away on its shelf or in its translucent drawer and all the while I never scream.

Crush All We Cannot Control

2010-10-30T05:07:00.001-07:00

Cassandra Troyan

I. In The Largest Scheme Of Things

Today is
the sort of day
when I march around
gleefully stealing
all the parking tickets
off of Mercedes luxury model
sedans.

A day when I seek out some
moment of mischief
as a distraction.

When I have to destroy
all illusions of semblance
or place.
Someone help me.
Will you help?
Will you help smash this place to shit with our fists?
We’ll get wasted and live
out all the potential clichés.
Trash the plastic
lawn furniture,
steal all the portable
phones from someone’s
parents’ house,
and pass out
in the middle of
the high school football field
on the 50 yard line.

Whatever I am I am so much of it,
actions of regressive denial
kicking myself in the ass
while
running backwards.

Falling
down a sand dune, high
on LSD, dressed in a snow
suit in June
the sky feels like
a cat’s tongue moving over
dry skin,
awkward,
but with the intention
of pleasure
trapped inside.
I look out at the ocean and
I see an entire
fleet of trumpeters
calling me home.

II. Only Able To Speak A Single Word Or Sentence

I think it is still good
to be white in America
and know that there
are places where
I don’t belong.

The Mexican women
outside are throwing
around their big floral
skirts, and I am peeking
between the broken
plastic blinds.
By trying
to be respectful, I
am alienating them again.

You then said something about
once you start to see white
people jogging in the neighborhood at dusk
that means you know
gentrification has set in.

I smile slightly, glad that you even know
what gentrification is.

But I am the one running down the
street and someone is calling me
beautiful, or talking about my ass,
or just shouts, LEGS!

Everyday I feel violence.

III. Paranoia/Acceptance: Philosophy is the pain that caused life

I systematically think of all the
horrible things that could
happen to me.

Violently crushed by an SUV
while biking down the street.
Stabbed in a back alley
during an evening jog.
Stepped out in front of a bus.

Once we realize the potential
of people and things
moving at
varying speeds
we have nothing to fear.

But still I
can’t ignore how
I used to write letters
I used to sign my name
I used to sleep at night.
And despite the fact of
doing it everyday, how
strange it is to be a human
sleeping in a bed
struggling against blankets,
against the images
plastered inside
your eyelids
of people
or things you were doing
and even then you
didn’t know why
you were doing them
or it.

We are still waiting
for the moment
when we can watch
our skin in repose
and then move
to un-pause.

Hello? Hello?

2010-10-30T05:06:00.000-07:00

Eric Nguyen

    It is way past midnight and the new boyfriend is snoring again. The worst part is that he keeps his computer on too, so while the monitor's on, I see a light against the wall. It keeps me awake. The snoring and the light. Outside, it looks like it's almost daybreak, you see it getting brighter a little bit, at least brighter than pitch dark, but when you stare at it long enough, you pretend things happen. I look at the clock and without my glasses I can't see the time, so I don't try to make it out. He snores louder, the new boyfriend.
    I remember nights when Travis used to lie next to me. He didn't snore. I don't think he moved at all during the night. I remember feeling embarrassed when he told me I snored. I giggled a bit, but he said he thought it was manly and cute. He thought everything about me was cute. From that certain way I held on to my side burns to the fact that I was a homo-socialist and he was a Log Cabin republican. He thought my ambition was cute. I thought his was obnoxious.
    I thought I loved him. I think so. It's that feeling you get in your chest, when you think your heart's stop beating, and you try to wrap your mind around that: that your heart stopped beating and here you are, still breathing and still living. That's why I think I loved Travis.
    I know for sure I miss him though. It's nights like this, sleepless nights, that he wanders like a ghost in my head. So I decide to go to the bathroom and I carry my phone with me. I go to the bathroom and gently close the door. I leave the lights off and it becomes darker here than I could ever imagine.
    I flip open my phone and in the mirror I can see a glowing, almost as if it's from no where, like an orb perhaps. And I dial my voicemail. I left the message there ever since he went away that Tuesday and never came back. He said he was going to work. I said, see you later.
So I dial the phone and I let the phone ring and wait through the messages I never answered. I delete the one from my mom. The one from work. The one from the new boyfriend telling me we're out of milk again.
    And then there's Travis's message. His last one. It goes like this:
    “Honey, I don't know what's happening right now...But baby? Hello? Hello? I think I'm breaking up. Hello? Baby? Can you hear me? There was a plane. We're not sure what's happening, but there was a plane. And they're telling us to go back to work. I don't know. I think I'm okay. I'll be okay. I just wanted to call you, to hear your voice, you know. I love you, that's all I wanted to say. That's it. Hello? Hello? Can you hear me? Hello?”
    I remember I missed the call because I was in the bathroom getting ready for work, but I got distracted because there was toothpaste stains on the mirror. I was annoyed that he didn't clean it up. I was already late. But then I heard it on the radio on my drive and I stopped on the side and put on my hazards. I looked at my phone. The voicemail sign was blinking.
    Sometimes I play it over and over, pretending each time is the first time I'm hearing it. I say Hello back, but he doesn't hear me and he repeats himself. It's like an echo, his voice first, then mine, then his again. But he never hears me.
    And I do this over and over again until I can fall asleep.

ASHOKAN

2010-10-30T05:01:00.001-07:00

Adam Moorad

i grew up pickled
in backwater tubs of moonshine

that was when we still had oceans
when we actually swam and slept in dark beds beneath the sea
with out hands folded around one another
and around us there were bubbles of air to breathe

if i knew there would never be any oxygen again
i would have done something different with my life

i want you to do something different with yours

i want you to order me take-out
when i’m hungry
and feed me cold beer
when i’m thirsty
and smother me in pillows
when i want to fall asleep
alone in my car
in a parking lot
of a ruby tuesdays
on a monday night
with my seatbelt unbuckled
and my skin covered in lipstick
and sharpie tattoos

some of which will bear your name
and some will say ‘i’m sorry’

when this happens
the moon will look robust above us
and i will not tell you anything
i’m feeling
inside of me
and it will be an amazing feeling

Poisonhorse

2010-10-30T04:59:00.000-07:00

Brandi Wells

Poison does not make my horse weaker. It makes him stronger. Dangerous. A few drops of his saliva may be enough to melt the face of a child. And I have seen some children. They peek in my windows, trying to get a look at my poison horse. They watch us sleep. My horse has long slept across the foot of my bed and has grown accustomed to it, but these children are obsessed with it. These children are not regular children. They are nasty things. They don’t wear clothes and they shit where they stand and where they sleep. Sometimes, I find a handprint on the front door. Sometimes, a smudge on the doorknob. Once there were tracks down the hallway.

We set traps around the house. Bear traps for the older children and fox traps for ones that might be small and dull enough to crawl inside. Some mornings we find a severed foot in one of the bear traps, but no dead child nearby. Children run and hobble on stumps and parts of feet. They grapple with parts of arms and pieces of hand.

We catch a small one inside a fox trap, but he’s dead. Probably frozen, his cold body is curled into a ball and his fingers cling to the inside of the cage. I pry him free, drag his body away from the house and lay him at the edge of the woods as an offering. A warning.

* * *

I find my poison horse outside, a few feet away from the children. They stumble and crawl toward him, hands reaching, trying to grasp at him. And he’s kneeling as though to meet them. My poison horse, kneeling to meet these children.

I don’t shout or run toward them. The children are too close to my horse and I worry I will not be fast enough to part the group. In order to save him, I shoot my horse. The bullet only grazes him, just slices through a bit of his right flank. It scares him and he falls back, hooves scraping the ground, neck straining, twisting. Blood excites the children. They run at him faster, hands stretched out, mouths open, drool dangling from their lips and making sounds that mean something primal. Something lustful. I shoot three of the children dead before the others scatter. Even the ones that run away stand a long time at the edge of the woods staring at us.

* * *

We go into the woods less now. It isn’t the children that keep us out of the woods. They mostly stay away. It’s the trees. The children have begun to decorate the plain ones with weird ornamental things made of sticks and leaves and trash they probably collected from outside my home and other homes. There are paintings on the sides of big trees, depicting a horse being carried away by a group of stick people. Blood drips from their bodies and pools around them. In the drawings, the horse on his back looking up at the sky is smiling and his face is blood stained.

* * *

My poison horse still dreams of the woman in the cistern though I have stopped whispering dreams to him. She has become a part of the cistern’s décor. She is a chair, a rug, or a lamp with light shining through her teeth and radiating from her gums. He awakes screaming, not neighing. It frightens me. Such human screams.

At first I appreciated this new companion. This brother, this child, this lover, my lover. But I worry he doesn’t understand his place in our household. I research and attempt to teach him appropriate horse behavior. I tell him I have domesticated him. If it wasn’t me, then some other group of people domesticated him. If it wasn’t him, then some other group of horses was domesticated. But he is domesticated because of me. He is able to eat soup and lounge by the fire and read short novels BECAUSE of me. He ought to know that.

I want him to be a horse, but a proper sort of horse. I show him diagrams of horse muscles, bones, the nervous system, the circulatory system, the reproductive system and more. We watch videos on proper etiquette and which fork to use and who ought to walk on the outside when a man and woman are strolling down the street.

He doesn’t look at me while I talk. I tell him he is insolent, like a child. I tell him I hate the way he rubs his nose and face against things in order to smell them. I hate the way I find him eating old socks. The way I have to scrub shit off the toilet seat.

* * *

The next day there are handprints across the fridge door and smeared inside on the shelves, milk jug, and condiment racks. My horse refuses to sit in the room with me or help me prepare breakfast. I remind him of the ways I have helped him. I offer to take him again into the woods to climb trees. He agrees, but balks when I try to rub arsenic on him. I worry about the contents of his blood. I worry his saliva and semen have become harmless.

In the woods he does not stop and stare at the drawings on the trees like he normally does. He trots along and I have to lengthen my stride to keep up.

He stops several miles into the woods and children gather around us. They slither and slide toward us, humming and gasping for air until I run away, leaving my poison horse behind. Come on, I yell to him. Come on. As I get farther away I see him rise up on his hind legs. The children gather around him and hoist him into a tree. With such a large group it appears effortless. He stands on one of the high branches and for a moment we make eye contact.

Poison Horse

2010-10-30T04:52:00.000-07:00

<<Brandi Wells>>
Poison does not make my horse weaker. It makes him stronger. Dangerous. A few drops of
his saliva may be enough to melt the face of a child. And I have seen some children. They peek in my
windows, trying to get a look at my poison horse. They watch us sleep. My horse has long slept across
the foot of my bed and has grown accustomed to it, but these children are obsessed with it. These
children are not regular children. They are nasty things. They don’t wear clothes and they shit where
they stand and where they sleep. Sometimes, I find a handprint on the front door. Sometimes, a smudge
on the doorknob. Once there were tracks down the hallway.
We set traps around the house. Bear traps for the older children and fox traps for ones that
might be small and dull enough to crawl inside. Some mornings we find a severed foot in one of the bear traps, but no dead child nearby. Children run and hobble on stumps and parts of feet. They grapple with parts of arms and pieces of hand.
We catch a small one inside a fox trap, but he’s dead. Probably frozen, his cold body is curled
into a ball and his fingers cling to the inside of the cage. I pry him free, drag his body away from the
house and lay him at the edge of the woods as an offering. A warning.

***

I find my poison horse outside, a few feet away from the children. They stumble and crawl
toward him, hands reaching, trying to grasp at him. And he’s kneeling as though to meet them. My
poison horse, kneeling to meet these children.
I don’t shout or run toward them. The children are too close to my horse and I worry I will not be
fast enough to part the group. In order to save him, I shoot my horse. The bullet only grazes him, just
slices through a bit of his right flank. It scares him and he falls back, hooves scraping the ground, neck
straining, twisting. Blood excites the children. They run at him faster, hands stretched out, mouths open, drool dangling from their lips and making sounds that mean something primal. Something lustful. I shoot three of the children dead before the others scatter. Even the ones that run away stand a long time at the edge of the woods staring at us.

***

We go into the woods less now. It isn’t the children that keep us out of the woods. They mostly
stay away. It’s the trees. The children have begun to decorate the plain ones with weird ornamental
things made of sticks and leaves and trash they probably collected from outside my home and other
homes. There are paintings on the sides of big trees, depicting a horse being carried away by a group of stick people. Blood drips from their bodies and pools around them. In the drawings, the horse on his
back looking up at the sky is smiling and his face is blood stained.

***

At first I appreciated this new companion. This brother, this child, this lover, my lover. But I
worry he doesn’t understand his place in our household. I research and attempt to teach him
appropriate horse behavior. I tell him I have domesticated him. If it wasn’t me, then some other group of
people domesticated him. If it wasn’t him, then some other group of horses was domesticated. But he is
domesticated because of me. He is able to eat soup and lounge by the fire and read short novels
BECAUSE of me. He ought to know that.

I want him to be a horse, but a proper sort of horse. I show him diagrams of horse muscles,
bones, the nervous system, the circulatory system, the reproductive system and more. We watch videos
on proper etiquette and which fork to use and who ought to walk on the outside when a man and
woman are strolling down the street.

He doesn’t look at me while I talk. I tell him he is insolent, like a child. I tell him I hate the way he
rubs his nose and face against things in order to smell them. I hate the way I find him eating old socks.
The way I have to scrub shit off the toilet seat.

***

In the woods he does not stop and stare at the drawings on the trees like he normally does. He
trots along and I have to lengthen my stride to keep up.

He stops several miles into the woods and children gather around us. They slither and slide
toward us, humming and gasping for air until I run away, leaving my poison horse behind. Come on, I
yell to him. Come on. As I get farther away I see him rise up on his hind legs. The children gather around
him and hoist him into a tree. With such a large group it appears effortless. He stands on one of the high
branches and for a moment we make eye contact.

SPOOKEY EX_GIRLFRIEND HALLOWEEN ISSUE

2010-10-27T21:59:00.001-07:00

poems by matt mahaney, carrie lorig and brandi fucking wells.

2010-10-10T20:25:00.000-07:00

Double Shiny is a new online journal of poetry and flash fiction.
We are currently reading submissions for our fourth issue due in winter/spring 2011.

Submissions are read year-round. Please send 1-5 poems or pieces of short (flash) fiction along with a brief bio in a WORD attachment to: doubleshinyreview@gmail.com

Translations are fine, as are simultaneous submissions, just let us know if something gets taken elsewhere.

All rights revert to authors upon publication, and works can then be subsequently published. Feel free to mention Double Shiny as the place of initial publication. No previously published work, please.

doubleshinyreview@gmail.com