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sparkle + blink 77
2016 Quiet Lightning
quietlightning.org
su bmit @ qui e tl i g h tn i n g . o r g
CONTENTS
curated by
Chris Cole, Kelsey Schimmelman
Christine No + Evan Karp
featured artists
Matthew Lewandowski
lewnareclipse.com
1
this day our daily sales cloud. You are the blue arrow
pointing down to a box half-shaded in gray on the
flowchart.
Here is your cubicle, your stapler. Burt is your team
leader
through this period of consolidation. He developed
an upgrade that renders the old product obsolete
for which he received a fat raise and the right to keep
his desk utterly bare. The shareholders believe
he is an oracle, that he peers into that empty, elegant
veneer, his mind a crescendo underlying a persistent
musical pattern, the end of desire itself, one killer app
for the one Oregonian suffering under sunsets vague
lilac,
one step towards the eradication of mediocrity
among
normal children. Your team emblem is a kitten,
your alibi is that you never watched an entire
episode.
When the supervisor asks how the product has
changed
your life personally, be vague, say you dream less
of free diving with dolphins in bloody water and
more
about your fear of local elections. As you peruse
the company directory, try not to notice how many
names
have been crossed out, be grateful for the key card
hanging
around your neck even as the metrics tell a different
story:
2
what the target audience had for lunch, dinner,
dinner, lunch,
barriers to accuracy, ways to boost stamina. Dear co-
workers,
lets dress up in golf shirts and do karaoke with the
unpaid interns,
lets hold a sance on the lowest level of the parking
garage,
rewrite the cost savings report in chromatic
shorthand, go viral,
erase all the voice messages in the world, lets paint
zeroes
on our faces with printer ink and insist we are as
impeccable
as executive letterhead in ivory, as close-knit and
happy
as we appear to be in the video from last years
Christmas Party,
more efficient than anti-crepuscular rays, more
worthy
of outlasting the outsource, and lucky enough not to
know
just how narrowly we escaped the meandering
volcanic haze.
H e at he r Ju ne Gi bbons 3
BBBBBBBB
O CEAN O F M Y TEA RS
Freedom is yours
if you want it
<..>
So off I went deep into
the sacred mountains of
5
my dreams
I am 41 now
it has been 20 years
since I set out in the dark
of the night
6
a snake oil
salesman
a conguero
a healer
he wore the ram on his chest
and he locked horns with
everybody he loved and
we all paid the price
especially when he was hurting
im still paying
here we go baby here
come the tears
the tears of tomorrow
the tears of yesterday
the ancestral tears
the rain is once again
beginning to fall right
here in the bakery
Bj Du bi n 7
i will cry the peoples tears
i will walk the sacred river
of tears and sorrow
i am a ridge runner
without a mountain
i am the hawk
8
father
to fill the hole in my soul
i am raging inside
i am on fire
i am damaged and i want
to scream and cry out
why creator
why have u
let me fall
so hard
SIDE YARD
Some years
you catch
the changes
before
the changes
catch you
each season
seeps
like skin
akin
to the air
so that
it doesnt hurt
anymore
when the
neighbors tree
moves between
its shades of green
now bare
branches
now popcorn
11
stars of
white
soon the
red plums
of summer
too heavy
and sweet
to keep.
12
& THE MOON
promise, promise
promise, promise
Li sa P i a zza 13
Y YYYYYYYYYYYY
YY Y
THE COLD CASE OF
ANA MENDIETA
16
And which is beautiful? Maximalism or minimalism?
The burned girl will laugh to see the city set on fire.
Her elegant enemies, the copper squares, will erase all
of your doubts with their spare surfaces.
H O W T O SE L L
19
attention must be earned. They will like this.
You are not for sale, but you must market yourself to
succeed.
20
much skin is generally appropriate, often required.
You may become defiant. For years, I didnt shave.
Youth brings natural sex appeal. Try to possess it fully.
You can get away with a sloppiness that will no longer
be allowable as you age.
Ta ra Dorabji 21
but not too much that it is vulgar. Suggestiveness is
key here.
22
particularly if you made it clear that you werent in
the mood. You can leave while they are sleeping. You
can just pull your jeans on and walk out the door. You
dont have to say anything.
You may choose to drink during this time. You may get
tired of saying no. You may eventually fall in love, but
be careful. If you have been broken, it will be easy to
become the victim. You will find yourself trivialized.
You may be showing too much skin. You will wake up
ashamed in the morning.
You will peel hands off your ass. You will learn to keep
your elbow out on the bus. You will cram your elbow
into his bulging stomach to keep him from pressing
his hardness into your ass. You will learn not to be shy
about this.
Men are never too old. You will never be too young. It
is a timeless law. Only a few of them will actually touch
you. Many of them will make jokes about you, sitting
on their lap. They will talk about how delightful it
is to be around beautiful, young girls. Some of them
will want to dance with you. They believe it is their
right. You wont know how to keep the right amount
of distance. You may not have words for the hardness
Ta ra Dorabji 23
that you feel. You will feel ashamed. Most likely, you
will be silent and try to forget.
24
ZZZZZ
ZZZZZ
IKEA, ,
4 4 0 0 S H E L L M O U N D AV E .
EMERYVILLE, CA 94608
25
field is winning in the contest against the window
suffocated by wires and grids of anti-septic light
overhead. No one wins, but here, in the red glow of
the emergency exit sign, the picture of twilight sun
peaking through thin spaces between branches in a
thick forest is certainly beating the pictures of kids in
kids rooms pretending to play.
26
KKKKKKKKK
KKK
T R YIN G S
TO MAKE F RIE N D
27
there are monkeys in space, or when someone says the
word kalamazoo. i just miss sandra with her frizzy hair
and when we talk, stoned with cigarettes and wine and
our legs up on the table, for hours.
Sandra song
28
the woodturning stove
and youre sitting there in the shadows
knowing nobody likes you not the way they like
sandra
and thats just the way it is
you cant do anything about it
but sit there with your eyes open
your eyes open
you see it there
you usually pass over it but this time you caught it
there like a little duck you grabbed it by its neck
and it went quack
and out of its mouth it came the feeling
that is the feeling
and honey roast plums and cinnamon nigel slater
pudding cake
that is not going to help you now
cause nobody likes you not the way they like sandra
and your sight goes out of your eyes like the suns of
the desert
your sight goes out of your eyes like the wide expanse
of the desert
it is the sight of the truth
nobody likes you not the way they like your friend
sandra
all around your head there is millions of miles
millions of mices speaking the truth speaking the
truth
with suspenders, theyre railroad mice
stoking the coals of the steam engine of your head
one of thems got his hands on the side of his hips, his
Ka re n P e n le y 29
hands on the side of his head, hes saying, fuck
and heck and lets get something going here,
something besides this
meaningless drone of truth.
30
MMMMMMM
M MMMM MM
MM M
I BELIEVED
IN THE JATERNA
31
I did my best to encourage its arrival. I made lists of
my misdeeds, writing them in Mothers many voices
and turned them to smoke so that they could travel
wherever The Jaterna was. When she found all the
fuel in her lighters used up and my blistered and ashy
hands she threatened me with The Jaterna. I could not
stop smiling, no matter how much it angered her. And
that anger was fuel too was it not? We burned there,
together.
The Jaterna did not come but Baluk did, with his
singsong voice and inability to walk a straight line. He
came for Mother, but she was not home and so I let
him in.
32
the many cups hooked around his many fingers; you
could not help but join him. His energy was short
lived though, and Mother took so long to come home.
He collapsed on the dusty rug from the waiting. I did
what Grandmother had told me to do if ever he entered
the house without an invitation; I gave him cookies
and tea and showed him the open window and the
bright new day. He couldnt stay. The Jaterna would
never act with such a sensitive audience. Besides, it
was exhausting trying to keep someone happy just so
the furniture didnt start to float in the chain reaction
of tears.
Ma r g a re t Sp i llm an 33
belief I saw the shadow he left behind. I could sense
him in other houses. Jealousy was my bread.
I knew The Jaterna came for the boy with the clicking
jaw and mealworm colored sweater and cauliflower
ears. I sensed when the girl with the black teeth and
the girl with the gray toes stopped walking along the
sidewalk. No one counted them but me. There were
always other explanations, ways to turn those gobbled
into runaways or neverwases.
34
to be. I have heard rustlings under the floorboards
beneath Mothers bed. There is a veil of smoke that
will not leave the house. It stays because The Jaterna
is almost here. It is coming just like the stories always
promised.
Ma r g a re t Sp i llm an 35
BBBBBBBBBB
BBB
6 P OEMS
Your voice:
37
Cars turn onto Franklin from 3 rd Avenue.
The smell of laundry in the air.
The moon cool and clear as middle C.
In a second-floor
apartment,
a poet is watching.
Laundry!, middle C!,
the poet is thinking.
The poet is also drinking.
38
Wind in Longfellow, Minneapolis.
Wind in the laundry lines,
wind in grass.
Wind through the branches and bats.
Wind in the shadows of cars,
in the silver sails of the moon,
in grass.
Here it comes through the branches.
Here it comes behind the bats.
Bri an De Ma rco 39
RRRRRRRRRRR
RR
I Y I T II
41
H HHHHHHHHHHHH
HH HH
HH H
D IS A SS T H E B R A I N M AY
E M B L E ITSE L F I N S L E E P
43
of lichen and caribou hair. Its heart slows,
its lungs slow, its temperature dips below freezing
and electrical signals vanish in many areas of its
brain,
but dont worry. Soon it will awaken and return
to the surface of the earth, hungry and eager
to mate, just as you will wake up with creases
on your face on a plane still circling airspace,
waiting for permission to land, just in time
to see clouds unraveling magenta, your brain
nicely blank but for vague pulses of light.
44
DDDDDDDDDD
S T IL L L
IFE WITH GRATITUDE
45
same core heaving it outward, as though what
destroys
redeems, what collapses also radiates, not unlike
this life, Love, which we are traveling through at
such
an astonishing speed, entire galaxies racing past,
universes, it is as if we are watching time itself drift
into the cosmos, like a spinning wall of images
already gone, and I realize most of what we know
we cant see, like the birdsong overhead or the
women
in China building iPhones or the men picking
strawberries in the early dawn or even our sleeping
sons in the other room who will wake up and ask
for their light sabers. Death will come for
us so fast we will never be able to outrun it,
no matter how far we travel or how heavily
we arm ourselves against the invisible,
which is what Im thinking, Love, even though the
iron
in the blood that keeps you alive was born from a
hard
star-death somewhere in the past that is also the
future,
and what I mean to say is that I am so lucky
to be living with you in this brief moment
of light before everything goes dark.
46
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