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sparkle + blink 70
2015 Quiet Lightning
artwork Michelle Brandemuehl
michellebrandemuehl.tumblr.com
On Hans Fallachs Girl with Tarpan by E.C. Messer
previously appeared in Caketrain
book design by j. brandon loberg
set in Absara
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CONTENTS
curated by
LARA COLEY
Michelle Brandemuehl
St Denis
1
3
Cursing Lessons
11
ANDREA ALEXANDER
13
KATIE JENKINS-MOSES
Thigh Kink
23
JAMES COTTER
When Humanity
Jumped the Shark
25
On Hans Fallachs
Girl with Tarpan
31
E.C. MESSER
37
49
53
ET
QU I
G IS SPONSOR
LIGHTNIN
ED B
Y
lagunitas.com
QUIET LIGHTNING
A 501(c)3, the primary objective and purpose of Quiet
Lightning is to foster a community based on literary
expression and to provide an arena for said expression. QL
produces a monthly, submission-based reading series on
the first Monday of every month, of which these books
(sparkle + blink) are verbatim transcripts.
Formed as a nonprofit in July 2011, the board of QL is
currently:
Evan Karp
executive director
Chris Cole
managing director
Josey Lee
public relations
Meghan Thornton treasurer
Kristen Kramer
chair
Kelsey Schimmelman
Sarah Ciston
Katie Wheeler-Dubin
secretary
director of books
director of films
- SET 1 -
LLLLLLLLLL
ST D E NIS
For Gui
Aujourdhui, en haute voix, jai lu le pome Marie, le
pome qui dit que tu pourrais mourir et je ne saurrais
jamais. Aprs, jai entendu des morts, des hommes qui
ont dchir ta ville, qui sont alls aprs toi, qui ont tire
des fusibles en metal dans des os, qui voulais renverser
du sang des corps comme le tien, dans le quartier
que tu surveilles, dans le quartier o jai dit, Mais je
me sens bien ici, nimporte ce quils disent. Et jai cherch
les photos surligne pour juste un detail de toi, je me
sentais ridicule en regardant les fesses des hommes
bien blind, en pensant que je pourrais tidentifier
par mme a, que je te connais tellement bien, chaque
centimetre de toi, le mouvement de ta marche, la ligne
de tes cheveux, que je connais mme comment le tissu
te touche, comment tu le veux prs, tu veux quil se
sent comme la peau, tu veux quil te tienne entier.
Today I read the poem aloud to Marie, the one that
says you could die and I wouldnt ever know. And then
I heard about the deaths, about the men who ripped
open your city, who went after you, who lit metal
fuses into bone, who wanted to spill blood from
1
A
AA
AAAAAAAAAAA
C R O SS F I R E
The driver-side window collapses to the seat like a
shower of shattered diamonds. Mary stares at the
blue-tinted treasure next to her, distracted only by the
dim buzzing in her head and the sudden wet warmth
creeping over her shoulder.
Flashes of lightning. Thunder shaking the whole car.
The sheet metal thunder of cheap sound effects. She
and Keith had recently seen a live performance of an
old radio play with a young man and woman who
would shake a dangling sheet of metal to produce the
sound of booming thunder. The couple, fresh-faced
and deadly serious in their vintage 1930s garb, were
about the same age as her own son, Martin. Whenever
they reached for the dangling metal, Mary knew the
thunder was coming any second.
Keith. Where was Keith? The ATM. Ill be just a second,
honey.
Lightning brightens the car like flashbulbs. The
thunder comes with a rapid-fire immediacy. Less
BOO-OOO-OOM, more BOOM BOOM BOOM.
3
LLL
LLLLLLLLL
SELF-EVIDENCE
1
Underneath a drone of airplanes, I hear the chant of
clouds,
drift across the top of apartment buildings
singing songs to glass rooftops and satellite dishes
and crows
gathered on telephone wires
close to where people drink lattes with low-fat milk,
foaming
mustaches evaporate.
Long before
cataracts drifted above my head
I was a girl handing out leaflets
fingers greasy
black from mimeo machines
behemoths in every storefront where the changelings
of my generation spent summers
collecting petitions against the War in Vietnam,
marching down Fifth Avenue in a cavalcade of banners,
the Civil Rights Movement,
assassinations imprinted
on our brains, memorized the combination.
7
2
Later, I had a front row seat at the computer
revolution.
The first time I looked into a flickering CRT screen
and talked
to a stranger, the future
and its green letters
danced around my event horizon.
Real time meant wall clock time, tick tock right now
time,
But there were other times, a virtual time that lived
inside
an application, also borrowed time, stealing an integer
from one column to pay for the next, the way life and
death
are two sides of the same copper penny,
shopping carts rolling down the street empty.
8
3
Now AT&T offers the cocaine of four additional lines.
We hold our cell phones to take selfies,
post the address of a new restaurant,
an electrified didgeridoo in the subway,
at a fundraiser reading poetry,
the rescue puppy who needs adoption,
new sketch of a jazz musician,
babys first birthday party,
graduations, baseball games, tomatoes in our gardens,
standing in front of a sign, a car, a house,
persimmons in a bowl with purple orchids,
marches on the streets of Hong Kong,
demonstrations on the streets of Ferguson,
people fleeing homes in Gaza,
and we want everyone to like us for who we are
Le nore We i ss
10
LL
LLL
LLLLLLLLL
LL
C U R SIN G L E SS O N S
Christmas eve, the kids no longer at the table, my
seventy-year old mother tells us that when she was a
girl she used to stand in a corner of a room and curse
under her breathvai a morire ammazzato, li mortacci
tua, mignotta. A string of glorious obscenities in her
native Roman dialect roll off her tongue like sweet
notes of a lullaby.
She wanted to hear the sound of those forbidden
words, feel them, she admits: I liked how they
moved around in my mouth. Saying them out loud
made them real, even if no one heard me and I never
got caught.
Its touching to hear her tell this innocent story, so
different from her typical, much-repeated, girlhood
memories of American GIs giving her chocolate.
And then she adds, with a knowing gaze, beh, si, bad
things they feel so good.
11
A
AA
AAAAAAAAAAAA
PORTRAITS OF THE
BIBLE BELT
Portrait I: of my grandmother
Over the breakfast table,
forks scraping on coronet plates
with dainty blue trim,
she was grimmaw to me,
as in, grimmaw thanks for making me oats,
or grimmaw, where is the sugar?
but roosting among
flocks of mockingbirds
I sacrificed her name to the guillotine with a flap of
my tongue
Grandma, my grandmother,
the d an axe,
the memory of d burned into the fractals of my iris
so tonight I could only speak to her
with my head bowed.
Best the mockingbirds dont know
the way grimmaws head bows,
back hunched over the butter churn until her speech
turns to whey,
whiskey floating through the room
as though her son thinks his moustache will filter
13
14
Andre a A le xande r
15
16
Portrait III:
of the family heirloom I keep in my pantry
Flour on the table edge
streaks white across her navy apron, egg splattered
against sunset air.
It smells like bacon
and sizzles like needles falling on the wooden floor
every afternoon by the window,
thumbing color swatches and old buttons.
I ate her grits and chocolate cakes
with the guilt of the floors she swept
and the sons and daughters who never called,
my arms pulley-rigged, spooning dirt into a mound
that grows behind our backs;
shields us from the summer sun.
Grass roots itself,
sticks in my bare feet as I turn around
to plow up the hill
straight into the heat of the ovens mouth, hugging
her mothers mothers cast-iron skillet, seasoning
from years I never saw
flaking onto my grown palms,
molecules of lard or collards or venison.
Below, her navy apron is still prickled with grease,
and Im licking icing off my fingers in the
morning.
Andre a A le xande r
17
19
Andre a A le xande r
21
KK
KK
KKKKKKKKKKKK
KK
T HI G H KI N K
JJJ
JJJJJJJJJ
WHEN HUMANITY
27
28
- SET 2 -
EEEEEEEEEEE
O N H A N S FA L L A C H S
33
35
36
KK
KK
KKKKKKKKKKK
STAY/COME
When you said goodbye,
your voice was as soft
and as thin as a goldfish tail.
We thought I should leave the station
before the train came,
and my feet took me outside.
I walked with an ache,
something like a pin in my hip,
sand gathering in my throat,
an empty seat.
I couldnt see you in the train
and summer ended.
Time went back to moving
the way its supposed to.
Nothing was slow,
my blood was blood, fluid and quick.
I couldnt see you in the train,
the space between us was heavy, was solid.
You sat still with salt from my eyes on your neck,
and I rocked and rocked
like a peach in boiling water.
37
JJJ
FOR
JJJJJJJJJ
A NT O N E N G LIS H
40
Joe l Tomf oh r
41
Now the boy, David, and their dad lay beneath the
glowing tree and outside a light dusting of white snow
began to fall. The snow fell without a sound until all
three, father and two sons, slept. And while they slept
still it fell through the cold and dark winter night.
This would be the last holiday season for his dad in
the house.
42
43
44
THE PHEASANT
Did you see it?
I saw it.
Did you see it?
I saw it.
They walked along the fence of the property of a farmer
his dad knew. Father and three sonsthe oldest was
twelve, the next was ten, and the boy was five. He held
his fathers big hand and it was warm. The air was crisp.
The trees had lost most of their leaves by now. Those
that clung to the withered branches were brown and
brittle. The sky was clear and blue. His father had
spotted a pheasant, the bright red tail of it.
Where is it? the boy asked.
Shh, the oldest brother said.
I see it, said the brother that was ten.
The boys father scooped him up in his arms so that
Joe l Tomf oh r
45
crisp blue sky. The sun was so bright that the boy lost
the bird in the lances of light, and it was gone to him.
The moment had ended. His father set the boy down
and took the boys hand in his warm hand. The two
older brothers ran ahead, and they all moved forward
together through the crisp morning air of their late
fall walk.
Joe l Tomf oh r
47
M
MM
MMMMMMMMMMM
SWAN DIVE
MM
51
52
CC
CCCCCCCCCCCC
A WHO
ITS, LIKE,
LE REGIMEN, M A N
53
Case y Ch i lde rs
55
57
58
Case y Ch i lde rs
59
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