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..:: CONTENTS ::..
   Volume VI, Issue I

..:: POETRY ::..


..:: PROSE ::..
..:: OTHER ::..

..:: ETC ::..
   Contributor's Notes

..:: ARCHIVES ::..
   Volume I, Issue I
   Volume I, Issue II
   Volume II, Issue I
   Volume II, Issue II
   Volume III, Issue I
   Volume III, Issue II
   Volume IV, Issue I
   Volume IV, Issue II
   Volume V, Issue I
   Volume V, Issue II

 
Prose


In the end, there will be koans written to my asshole
Ryder Collins

     

There is no shitting in fiction
I get up to take a shit, my head and insides fuzzy from that bottle of wine I couldn't stop myself from drinking. "Oh god," I say. The min pin stares at me as I strain.

Where'd the hell did he come from?

Asshole asshole burning bright
It burned burned burned like a ring of fire…a ring of fire.
I wanna my rim job…hey digi digi…
I wanna my rim job, hey, c'mon
I am so goddamned mature. Just ask me. Or my fearful symmetry.

There's not enough shit in fiction?
James Joyce wrote about anal birth in Ulysses; I think it was in the Circe section where he modernist-mashupped, mongrelizing words. In letters to his sweet sweet Nora, Joyce describes fucking the farts out of her. Somewhere someone in Dublin's taking a shit and reading Ulysses right now, and someone's fucking and farting, in love. This is not profound or ironic; I'm just saying.

I think there was shit in Scorch Atlas, Blake Butler's apocalyptic vision, but I think Butler called it "manure." Manure raining from the heavens seems more earth-friendly than shit. More old-fashioned and harmless. Nostalgic even. I don't think that was the point. Maybe it's a POV thing. Maybe it's a guy thing. Maybe it's a god thing.

In the post-apocalyptic collection I'm creating in my head, William Blake plays one motherfucking angry Judeo-Christian Yahweh manifested in the form of a burning min pin who defecates long turds of shit on those who don't have the faith. James Joyce and the scheisse freaks scream with delight, which just goes to show one man's treasure…Ironically, it is post-postmodern humanity's inability to think beyond adages and clichés which pisses poet-God old Tyger Tyger Blake/Yahweh off in the first place.

If you see Kay…
Bukowski talked about his beer shits frequently; I also happened to be a connoisseur of cheap beer at the time. My girls and I would buy rounds of piss pitchers at the dive bar a block from my rental that had somehow become fashionable. The bar, that is, my rental will never be fashionable, especially since the Lithuanian old school landlord sold it to a hipster-wannabe who painted the door some weird off-magenta, a color that suggests severe vaginal inflammation or baboon ass irritation, and no, our cheap beer wasn't really that highly successful American pisswater, that American simulacra of some kind of hops concoction, it was darker than piss and saltier. Like piss with blood in it, maybe. A blue collar immigrant's version of Coors or Pabst: we could taste workers' sweat and tears, I swear. I'd always wake up with my tongue stuck to the hard ridge of the top of my mouth. I'd always wake up and check to see who was in bed with me. It could have been anyone, but my girls kept me from some real doozies. They also kept me from the winners I think. A fair trade, I guess… bitches. Now, the dive bar's back to being a shithole. I've gone there looking for my ex-marine, but all I've seen are roaches scurrying over the Rose's Lime Juice to get to something sweeter. I don't drink cheap beer now if I can help it; I also don't get laid ever anymore. Especially not in tin tubs or with ice cube foreplay; it's a goddamned shame.

There is too much shit in fiction.
I will bleach my anus until it is white white white. When I bend over it will be like a revelation. Buddhists will write koans to my asshole. The only thing I'll ever know about Buddhism is transmigration. Perhaps my asshole is a portal; perhaps souls pass through it every second. To get the soul gunk off, I'll have to bleach and floss frequently, which will cost me a pretty penny. Damn souls. I may have to go back to cheap beer, which might get me laid again. But can the souls withstand a rim job? Am I responsible for their safety if I'm just an instrument or something?

Two buttocks flap and there is a sound; what is the sound of one buttock flapping?
If I were uber wealthy, I would have a secret bathroom hidden behind my master bath. To enter it, you would have to find the secret retinal scanner that opened the innocuous-looking mirrored wall behind my double stainless steel Kohler lavatory wading pool sinks. There would be a waterfall and a flower garden and an aviary and a full bar and a library and a robot programmed to know what kind of book/drink combination I'd want each morning. A mimosa and Murakami, a bloody mary and Melville, a whiskey manhattan and Brett Easton Ellis; the possible combos are endless. It would get to be so that I wouldn't know if the robot were psychic or if I'd lost the capability of choice and hence, free will. The robot would also have laser eyes to shoot and kill anyone who tried to access my secret sanctum. Cause no one but me's allowed in this one. Not even my ex-marine. He'd be killed and then what would be the point of him having survived Gulf War 1? Or all the knives I threw at him that one time he broke up with me on my bday and ran away to join the circus or some shit?

The Buddhists say that's the point; there is no point. Accept it. Which of course, makes me duck back into my secret bathroom for a quick binge and purge fest of twinkies and not-dogs and cucumbers and anything else phallic but not too sexual. The Buddhist asshole says nothing while allowing souls to traverse its sphincter. Without bleaching. The Buddhist robot says, Goddamn it, get off the pot and bring me a fucking drink some time. The Buddhist robot's caught up in Samsara, if you couldn't tell. Poor guy; poor ungendered thingy. But the min pin just stares and says nothing, because in min pin's head he's an original housewife of Orange County and doesn't talk to anyone who can't enhance her wealth, celebrity, fuckability, or fearful symmetry.

I would like to play chess with Sam Pink and talk about writing and shit but the pieces would probably become miniature grenades and blow our digits off
& that has nothing to do with the ex-marine, Buddhism, robots, or one pervy-diety min pin. I could make an ass wipe joke here, but I've been accused of taking things too far before. The ex-marine, when I pulled him to me by his leather coat lapels and blew smoke into his face, was one time. When I broke up with him again in a Tiki bar and hula-ed, grass skirted, bare foot, coconut bra-ed, and suddenly Hawaiian, out the door, another. When I pretended to be Marlene Dietrich in that Orson Wells movie and blew smoke in Charlton Heston's face and told him the ex-marine was some kind of a man. When I pulled the ex-marine to me by his leather lapels in the middle of the disco and tried to inhale his soul. Too far, he said, too far.

  

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