Friday, January 19, 2018

The OCTOPUS REVIEW #3: Winter 2018


Hallelujah, it's finally here! And what a fine issue it is. Thanks to all my contributors for your patience. It's my first year doing this and it turns out late December is not a great time for a project deadline : )

So, without further adieuz…it's The Octopus Review #3 --

…………….

…………………………………………………………………Matt Borczon

Cigarette

Once in
college an
art teacher
told me
the best
way to
stop ruining
my paintings
was to
walk away
often so
the coat
could dry
he said
it would
take about
the time
it takes
to smoke
a cigarette
at 19
this was
a new
way to
think about
time
in the
time it
takes to
smoke a
cigarette
paint dries
in the
time it
takes to
smoke a
cigarette
the first
girl I
ever loved
said what
are we
anyway but
two people
who fucked
a lot
in the
time it
takes to
smoke a
cigarette
a doctor
told my
father they
were taking
him off
chemo so
maybe he
could feel
good in
the weeks
he had
left
in the
time it
takes to
smoke  a
cigarette
a stroke
killed Toni
while her
family attempted
CPR
in the
time it
takes to
smoke a
cigarette
my wife’s
heartbeat dropped
below safe
level during
childbirth
in the
time it
takes to
smoke a
cigarette
stars are
born and
die
in the
time it
takes to
smoke a
cigarette
flowers bloom
in the
desert
in the
time it
takes to
smoke a
cigarette
I met
my best
friend
in the
time it
takes to
smoke a
cigarette
Jesus turned
water into
wine
in the
time it
takes to
smoke a
cigarette
my daughter
walked for
the first
time into
my wife’s
outstretched
arms

but on
that day
in Afghanistan
when we
knew we
could not
save the
baby the
only survivor
when the
car hit
the IED
Doctors mixed
a cocktail
of chemicals
strong enough
to end
it’s life
in minutes
and gave
it through
an IV
but the
child held
on for
4 days
while we
watched helpless
counting the
minutes like
beads on
a rosary
waiting and
praying and
almost believing
we were
watching a
miracle happen
right in
the middle
of the
hospital
but in
the end
the war
won again
and the
child died
but it
took 4
days instead
of minutes
because time
is an
angry bitch
you can’t
measure
with cigarettes

or tears.

COLLAGE #1 by Matt Borczon


The honest poem
wants me
to sit
in my
car all day
the honest poem
puts a
towel on
my head
after nightmares
the honest poem
reminds me
to spell
my name
with capital letters
the honest poem
puts 3 
sugars 
in my coffee
the honest poem
is better
than a
drink after work
the honest poem
reminds me
there is
life after war
the honest poem
is magic
and loss
grace and
Buddhist calm
it's salt
it's ash
it's bourbon
it's God
and the devil
it's a
strait flush
a strait
razor a
year sober
a serenity prayer
an hones poem
is a
promise
that there
is more
to life
than work
and pain
and burying
all our dead




Ron
was imitating
Sylvester Stallone
and making
everyone laugh
as he
pretended
to shoot
everyone
in the room

his eyes
were deep
black like
mineshafts
and there
was a
tiny line
of spit
at the
corner of
his mouth

that I
could
still see
the war
on his
face made
me worry
a lot
about both
of us.


Matthew Borczon is a poet and navy sailor from Erie, Pa. He publishes widely in the small press. He has published 6 books of poetry, the most recent The Smallest Coffins are the Heaviest was released through Epic Rites Press this year. He is the father of 4 kids and he works way too many hours to survive.

OMAR by Tony Egler


***********************************************Ryan Quinn Flanagan

Gene Krupa on Drums 

My father’s fingers would never stop going.
At the dinner table, against his knee, on the wall…
Drumming a tune that he would hum sometimes.
Always to himself.

I doubt he even knew he was doing it at all.
It was probably subconscious.

Maybe his father did it 
and his father before him 
and he just picked it 
up.

Children do mimic their parents 
from early on.

And my father kept doing this for years.
Gene Krupa on drums.
When I moved out some years later 
and caught myself doing it, 
I would admonish 
myself.

My father was wrong about so many things.
He couldn’t be right about this.

I imagine when he is dead and in the ground
the worms will get a drum solo for the ages.

Brain activity continues after death.
My father’s fingers likely will 
as well.


Fashion Week in Sinai

Come down from the mountain.
Your catwalk of ash and soot is waiting.
This cough is straight from the lungs.
Not tubercular, but determined.
When I clear my throat, the homeless 
population is rounded up and lead off
into guitar solos no one can seem 
to remember.

The hypnotist could help,
but he is kept under lock and key.
Groped all these women while 
they were fluttering eyelids.
Come down from the mountain.
In something closed-toed if I were you.
No one likes sand between the toes.
Not even the sand.

Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author residing in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his wife and many bears that rifle through his garbage.  His work can be found both in print and online in such places as: Evergreen Review, The New York Quarterly, The Octopus Review, In Between Hangovers, Red Fez, and The Oklahoma Review.

COLLAGE #2 by Matt Borczon


*******************************************************Juliet Cook

Not a Member of Your Snake Handling Church Organ

I want someone to love the way I am now
rather than hear someone insinuate I used to be better
in the past. More balanceable, smaller, younger.
More willing to be surrounded by hissing snakes.

Those who will never stop hissing behind my back,
I want to move their extended tongues away from me
and my cluttered open space. I refuse to lock every piece of me
behind closed doors so they don't have to look or think
about the current me and can just keep on backtracking

to back when I was easier to control. That was the past. 
They can choose to interpret themselves.
They can interpret me their own way too, but
they can't tone me down or tidy me up.
So what if I am the opposite
of their dream? 

YARN CATS by Claire Vanessa Gray


Inflamed

I clawed my neck across the carpeting again,
because that's what sometimes happens
when I have another unexpected seizure.

I end up with temporary memory issues
and wounds. A random bruise on one knee.
Rearranged books all over my own bedroom floor
with no recollection of why, when, or how.

A big messy tear in a new pair
of web net thigh highs that I bought
at a Halloween store a few weeks ago, 
hadn't worn yet, hadn't even removed 
from their package until I did so subconsciously 
or semi-unconsciously or in the midst of a convulsion
or maybe they were just born that way. 

The way things feel these days, it's probably my own fault
for having my seizure on my own floor in front of books
and thigh highs, as though I wasn't aware 
that would give some men the wrong impression.

I mean, come on, what woman buys her own
legwear at Halloween stores unless
she's an evil fucking witch who deserves to burn?

Juliet Cook is a grotesque glitter witch medusa hybrid brimming with black, grey, silver, purple, and dark red explosions. Her poetry has appeared in a peculiar multitude of literary publications. You can find out more at www.JulietCook.weebly.com.

ANXIETY by Claire Vanessa Gray


************************************************Sudeep Adhikari

mother internet 

Mother internet; the new space-time
the all-pervasive matrix
of countless digitized raves,

out of nowhere, once
told me; "On average, there are
178 sesame seeds on
each McDonalds BigMac bun".

I did not know what to do with
that mini-enlightenment. I felt like Jeff
Lebowski stranded in the middle
of a career fair.

SELF PORTRAIT by Tony Egler

hollywood goes to hell-ywood

Few weeks back I noticed my 
friend from L.A marking herself 
safe on facebook from 
harvey weinstein, like one of those 
hurricane or terror-attack thing.

And the next week, I saw blogosphere 
OD'ing on "hashtag-me too" campaign
and it was painful to realize, 
how many raptors are out there 
with a dick, but no balls. 

And this week, I met a douche 
named hollywood at a party. I asked 
him what he does. He said
"I make movies, but mostly inappropriate 
sexual advances to women and kids".

Don't blame me for blowing
up an activism's balloon here. But we
need to detox ourselves a bit, if we really care. 


Sudeep Adhikari is a structural engineer/Lecturer from Kathmandu, Nepal.   His recent publications were with Beatnik Cowboys, Chiron Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Midnight Lane Boutique, Occulum, Silver Birch Press, Eunoia Review, Utt Poetry and Spilling Cocoa Over Martin Amis. His poetry volume, ‘The Art of Changing Nothing to Punk Gigs’ was released by Alien Buddha Press in July, 2017. He is currently working on his manuscript titled ‘zen of tripping zeroes’, scheduled to be published early 2018.



****************************************************Tim Anderson

BLUNT FORCE TRAUMA

It's said a child can't remember      
    he did
    all of it
Darkness into light

Being bathed in a sink
First steps around the coffee table
Men who were not his father
     kissing his mother
Screaming, clutching her skirt
     innately understanding
     she wasn't coming back

It became an acquired skill
The art of disassociation

Pushing past the ruins
A bourbon enhanced father
wielding a leather strap
    sharing his pain
    on the son



He struggled with the day
  he always did

Tepid water escaped his face
mixed with lucite tears
falling from his fingers
       back home
to a pockmarked porcelain sink

Immobile in thought
          frozen
blindly dancing
  with who he was
         becoming
How long before he dreamed of
        electric sheep

"You’re in a desert Leon
 walking along in the sand
 when all of the sudden
 you look down and see a tortoise
 It's crawling toward you
 you reach down and flip the tortoise
 over on it's back Leon
 The tortoise lays on it's back
 its belly baking in the hot son
 beating legs trying to turn over
 but it can't
 You’re not helping
 Why is that Leon?”

He looked up 
into the mirror 
and had to laugh

The reflecting glass
above the sink
spiderwebbed in disbelief 
as his forehead slammed into it

He laughed again

Tranquil
  he sat cross legged

With the same slow deliberation
   of the passionate
      lustful
         pause
  between new lovers kisses
He picked each bullet up
immersing it into the willing clip

He stood erect
concealing the weapons
and headed for work

Today, tortoises were going to bake.

Tim Anderson originally from Memphis TN spent a great deal of his youth with his back-pack on traveling the States. Having a penchant for honky-tonks, free spirit women and roadside taverns there are many of these States where his welcome was worn out.

CONSTANTINE by Claire Vanessa Gray


***************************

ARTISTS:

Matt Borczon holds a degree in fine arts from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania. See his poet bio above to learn more about him.

Claire Vanessa Gray is currently an art student living in Florida. Check out her gallery of work here https://www.instagram.com/fwooshcox/ 


Tony Egler is an electrical estimator. Before he was an electrical estimator he was an architect. Before he was an architect he was an artist.

Friday, January 5, 2018

Full Circle: The Octeaux Twines Around the Tines of a Forklift

HAPPY NEW YEAR FRIENDS:

How are you? I am fine.

Well, I’ve been meaning to stop in here and make some profound statements about how transformed I am by the madness that was 2017. How scared I was at this time last year, and how much stronger I feel now. 

So, YES, I am transformed, but I can’t even begin to put it into words. Yet. (I know—some writer I am). 

When I say I almost did not survive 2017 I’m not exaggerating in the slightest. Someday I may tell that story, but I’m not ready to visit it yet. Let’s just say that nothing went as expected—on both the microscopic & macroscopic levels. The Trump presidency didn’t play out in quite the technicolor splendor I had envisioned, but it was bad enough to ruin each & every day in some fashion. I’ve never called/written more Senators in my life. In the past I’ve voted, protested, spraypainted, boycotted, zined, blogged and otherwise stood up to the Powers in a creative, independent way. But there was no room to be creative or subtle in standing up to the Trump admin’s BS. I’m not one who likes such a direct, pragmatic approach but… I got some practice doing it this year.

The Obligatory Portrait of Alters 2017


As for my own personal goals in ’17? None of them worked out quite the way I envisioned either—

Publishing? After a streak of good luck in ’15-’16 I got zero (0) submissions published in ’17. I had a manuscript shortlisted at two (2) small presses all summer but, days apart in Oct, they both sent rejections. Then all the single submissions I sent out in defiance of that were rejected too. So I spent the whole holiday break revising my idea of what kind of writer I want to be. Do I want to be a famous internet poet? There are already a lot of those (who are admittedly more exciting than me).

I’ve decided I’m going to go back to automatic writing for awhile. I really feel the need for it. I know it’s not a respectable form of WRITING, but it’s what I do. And I’m considering ditching poetry for fiction. And POSSIBLY returning to my old screenplay (which I’ll remind you of later. Though I did just read of an alleged ‘L Word’ reboot in the works. Why all the reboots?)

Anyway, one amazing terrific thing that happened on the publishing front—that I had no idea would happen at the beginning of ’17 —was that The Octopus went indie! I was so inspired by the contemporary poetry scene I found online and wanted to become more a part of it. So I sent out a call for submissions, thinking I would be ignored & overlooked (as usual :)) but NO!! I got so much response from such a great group of people. I was stoked to share the words & images of so many talented people right here in my humble slice of the internet.

You all can look forward to the Winter issue of The Octopus Review coming out any day now—just waiting for those artist submissions to straggle in!

One of the best things that happened in '17? A bunny showed up on our doorstep & lived w/ us for a few days (until s/he went to live w/ our friends who are bunny experts)


Another thing I planned for at the beginning of ’17 was to do a run (either a 1K or 5K) by the end of the year. My mom & I were training in Jan & Feb, then in Mar I broke my foot and couldn’t run for 12 weeks. So that kinda broke my momentum, and I never quite regained it. We’ll see if I ever find it again, but so far I have no plans to do a run this year.

At the start of ’17 I was pretty depressed because I’d been on T(estosterone) for a year and was still not passing AT ALL. In fact I was getting called ‘ma’am’ more than ever (probably because I look really old now). I was seriously doubting my ability, and my very right, to be doing a transition like this. I know that sounds transphobic, but all my doubts & fears are about MY transition, not yours. 

Because I was so discouraged, Moonchild & I decided to do a dining out venture where I could experiment with my appearance & presentation and find out what was working & what wasn’t. I work at home and don’t get out around people much, so I was a bit clueless about how to present “masculinely.”  I spent so much effort “feminizing” myself in my 30s, so it’s kinda like knocking over a jenga tower and rebuilding.

We had a hurricane


When we started our dining adventures, I got ma’amed no matter what I wore or how my hair was styled. It was demoralizing but I knew I needed the honest feedback. About 3 months in, I started getting gendered correctly some of the time (not quite half). It was like that for a few more months, but finally at the end of ’17 I started getting called “him” or “gentleman” or “sir” everywhere I went. I walked into the shoe store the other day & the woman at the counter said “Welcome to Acme Shoes, sir.”  I don’t think it’s my fundamental physical appearance that’s changed so much as I’ve learned how to carry myself & dress more guyishly.

[And just as an aside—why does “ma’am” seem like a veiled insult (no matter your gender identity) while “sir” seems like a title of respect?]
Eloise died...


WHAT ELSE? What else went on in ’17? Oh yeah — Adventures in Ethereality

I had a big crisis of faith this year. That was no secret. I wrote all about it & bored the shit out of you and made you think I was even crazier than I really am.  But the fun thing about spiritual crises is that you grow from them. Like a gorgeous tulip, my spiritual awareness has bloomed again after being dormant for quite awhile.

I always thought of myself as a spiritual person, even when I wasn’t actively pursuing or practicing anything spiritual. I had a wake up call regarding this assumption—beginning with a tree limb that almost fell on my head, and ending with me coming out as a mystic. (are mystics even more hated than trans people? Well, mystics are FEARED, trans people are HATED. Does this mean I’m intersectional now?)

I am still offering FREE TAROT READINGS for this year, or until I feel I am worthy of the going mystic rate. I’ve done exactly one (1) reading since I made that offer and I think it went pretty well. This is another thing I hadn’t planned on for ’17. I had no mystical ambitions in Jan, but I had one of those subconscious breakthroughs with The Cards, where you achieve a next level of understanding through dreaming about something.

So please hit me up if you want a reading. Don’t be AFRAID. I know I said in my last blog that I may be able to do this over the technology (Skype, phone) but I really prefer to do it in person.

I did the first episode of Shelter Cat & Trust Fund Baby. I should reprint it & then do the next one!


*******************SO?????????****************************

What’s up for ’18????????

I really don’t know. I’m hesitant to have too many predetermined goals. Still gunshy from last year. In fact, 2014 —17 have been so busy, noisy & exciting, I would be thrilled if ’18 is BORING AS FUCK!

When I was writing the Distressica Prequel, I found an Adventure in Reality I started in early ’17 about Trump & Putin trading shit to destroy the world with. I abandoned it about 3/4 of the way through because it seemed too dumb & juvenile for the current situation. But I think I’ll revisit it, and do some art to go with it.

[I did a lot of “art therapy” in ’17. I anticipate more to come in ’18.]


Okay, I know my life is boring as shit & I have no right to bore the crap out of you —oh wait—I DO have the right to bore the crap out of you HERE in The Octopus Diary!!! You have the right not to read. And please don’t “hate read.” That’s so 2013. When I do my end-of-year blogs I always feel like that relative who sends out the Xmas Newsletter—detailing what their family has been up to all year!!—and everyone groans & makes fun, but I secretly love the newsletter & wish we were all required to do a sort of year-end life-report and send it out to our respective social circles. 

(laughter. laughter. snort. laughs)


All right. No matter what’s going on in the macro, I hope everyone’s micro is just scopacetic.