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#13August 2012
TURNING DESIRERuss Hampel
Turn a page
Turn a trick
Trick a page
Turn left
No I mean right
Recalculating
Turn your partner
Do-si-do
Turn a corner
Corner a tern
Turn on a dime
Turn on a friend
It’s a turning point
There’s no turning back
You are now leaving
Sodom & Gomorrah
Turn your head around
Turn into a pillar of salt
Salt-N-Pepa
Turn out the lights
Turn over
It’s your turn on top
Turn the soil
Soil the turn
Turn the tables on them
Turn, turn, turn
To everything there is a season
Turn over the steak
Add more seasoning
One good turn deserves another
It’s your turn to shine
Hug the turns, baby
Hug the turns
17If feathers are wishes...
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Copyright Notice:Articles and Illustrations with by-lines are: © 2012 or previously by their creators.
Unsigned material is: © 2012 by The Wormwood Press.
No part of this publication may be reproduced without permission of the contributor responsible for the work.
ISSUE #13 EDITOR: Cheryl Welch
CONTRIBUTORS:
Linda Benninghoff
page 12
Stephen Caratzas
page 5
Mary Clancy Mango
inside front cover and
pages 8-11, 14
Ryn Gargulinski
owls on page 1 and
page 18
Russ Hampel
inside front cover
Chloe H. Mango
page 19
Jackie Post
page 4
Christine Repella
page 13
Jessica Small
page 18
Alena Sullivan
page 16-17
Alice Underground
page 15
Arleeta Viddaurri
page 19
Cheryl Welch
covers and pages 2-3,
6-7, 20-inside back cover
Rae Welch
page 7
THE WORMWOOD PRESS / August 2012 The “PIVOT” Issue
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Timorous at first, then grabbing
“She is burnt umber,” I whisper...
Harris & Dan present “Pivotal Moments in MouseHistory” (part 1)
From the series “Eastern StatePenitentiary, Philadelphia”
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3
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Jackie Post
5
WHEN I SAID MY WORLD, MY RULES I MEANT TO SAY YOUR WORLD, YOUR RULES
Stephen Caratzas
All or nothing posture
Clashing with cash gifts
A daily reckoning
With the fine print
Weekly updates like clockwork
Devil Dog aesthetic
And rightly so
$1,000 gets you
The rest of your life
Lacquered tears
Might yet come in handy
Generosity ruined in the womb
Fresh out of crematorium
Gift certificates
When I said
My world, my rules
I meant to say
Your world, your rules
Thinking this is easy
Lord you’re right
Saw you passing
Notes through turquoise bars
Cracked envious
Wishing my gate
Would swing similarly
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The rich warm colors, reaching afull two inches out from the
deep green wall, play a game with mychildish intellect. Are they real? Does thepainted woman have blue and purple stripesof intensity beneath her skin? Are these her truecolors, or an artist’s opinion of who the subject shouldbe? I’ve only just met her, and yet, I love her. Shecould have been my mother, my sister, my favoriteaunt. Instead she is my father’s girlfriend and thispainting of her fills my heart with overwhelming joy.Simply seated in honest beauty, I could live in thispainting I think. I could stay here and be happy. Burnt umber, yellow ochre, raw sienna—these wordsare exotic and mysterious as my father calls them outto me. “She is burnt umber,” I whisper to myself, “sheis yellow ochre.” If I were her daughter she might havenamed me Sienna, and I would be a warmer andmore welcoming girl. People would smile and say my name while touching my arm to feel my colors.
“Does she love me?” I wonder.
As the morning quietly parishes in cups of tea and isreborn in the wind of a blue-gray day, we build ourkite. My father has the dowels and string. She has thepaper. “How about this?” she asks, pointing to a posterof Bob Dylan on the wall. We sail him over waves ofcloud broken only by a slim, yellow ochre, stripe of sunlight.
“How could she not love me?” I think. I belong tomy father and now my father belongs to her. We are acombination of colors that blend perfectly and washacross a new canvas. This canvas, this painting of us istoo, too beautiful to see. It will hang in our hearts and
be exhibited in our deep crimson smiles. My birthday. She gives me a pair of
earrings—tiny cameos, ivory against ovalsof coral—for the pierced ears that I do not
have. We play our guitars together and laughat our mistakes before heading to Piper’s Alley to
gasp at the tiny mice dioramas built in wooden cigar boxes.
October turns the city into her painting, brushedwith deep colors of sky and trees. She walks with myfather, slightly ahead, so I see them in perfect shapeslit by the sun’s setting magentas and mauves.Something feels different about them tonight. Shestands a little apart from my father and moves herhands to help say what she means. The pizza we sharein communal silence is tasteless and the buzz from the florescent light is making my ears ring. I feel dizzy and afraid to look at them. I want to leave thisplace, to go see the painting and have some tea.
Back at her apartment, after she lights the candlesand turns on the single living room lamp that she’scovered with a silk scarf, I can clearly see that her colors have faded. Her black dress seems too geometric as she sits, her edges bent, at the table. Notquite lovely but still loved. The green walls, dimly lit,make me feel ill as I struggle to understand what haschanged while I was busy painting our future livestogether in a secret part of my imagination.
“Tea?” she asks.“No thank you,” I answer, feeling an unbearable heaviness in my throat.
The painting is not on the wall, but in my father’shands as we leave.
The Painting and the KiteBy Cheryl Welch
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Pho
to:R
ae W
elch
;Illu
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Che
ryl W
elch
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AA CCeelleesstt iiaall SShhiiff tt
Linda Benninghoff
You tell me you have prayed
for me to heal—
and I wonder how I will,
of the broken shifts in my body,
the doubt,
become at one with myself,
and love—
the way a dog loves the grass,
and stops there,
or a deer loves the woods,
timorous at first, then grabbing
the sugary bark,
sap flowing through her system,
to her hooves, the dark corners
of her eyes.
Illus
trat
ion:
Chr
istin
e R
epel
la
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UNSAYABLE THINGSAlice Underground
You know who you are
This isn’t a Carly Simon song
So understand this
I’m not playing the game
With you anymore
You’re not making me feel bad
for making the choices I made
There is no white flag on
my side of the wall
You can’t say whatever
You want to me and
I will laugh it off
Because I hurt you once
And somehow should pay.
I am not pretending
I don’t understand your
Veiled nasty comments
About my breasts
Yes they are big and
You like them small
But I like them fine
No you can’t tell me
I will never be what
I could have been with you
I am so much more
Then that now
If I am such a mess
If I am so awful
Why haven’t you
Disappeared by now
Why don’t you
tell me the truth and
tell yourself while you are at it
The things unsaid
you need to say
and then go away
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If feathers are wishes, then I guess I have wings,
And I'll fly forever just to hear you sing,
And you know, you know I'd be
Anything at all you asked of me.
But oh, I've already lived those lies,
And you've already passed me by
A dozen times, you're all the same;
One person with new faces, voices, names,
And my crows tell me you're a lesson,
But I can’t quite remember why.
I'm just feathers, rhymes, and bits of swollen sky,
And you, you'd scrape the stars dry,
Skin them for wishes ‘til they bleed their soft light,
‘Til they're afraid of the dark except for at night.
And it rains, and it rains, and I don't know how;
I was drowning in sunshine up until now.
Puddles are holes to the sky and I'm falling in,
So I'll rip off my feathers and learn how to swim;
I only wear them to honor the girl that I've been.
It doesn't matter when the sky is this thin.
You're a shadow in my reflection,
Obscuring and tainting me,
But I'm always moving, I'm just like the sea:
Irrevocably lonely and feebly free.
My skin is just shards of mother of pearl;
I am the ocean, I'm not a girl.
Alena Sullivan
17
If you turn your head, your feet will followAlena Sullivan
Corpses Making Love
They say open spaceis relieving;but, when I write in the cityI am free
from my cocoon where I count your eyelashes—I’m a beige shellwrappedtightly slightly
drunk with love and moaning your forgottenname;I think it’s time
to wake up now.With a beer glazed smirk andidle handsyour soil-coloredeyes
widen and squintwith eachpruned wordthat escapesyourlips
that say, “Never againhurts the most.”Condescension bleedsinto screamingseas ofcrimson silk
and hides beneaththe stained sheets with sweatywordsof resonance.
Jessica Small
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DELIVERANCE
Walking out of your armsI embraced myselfprotecting what was leftof my naivete
Moving from the shadowof your eyesI saw myselfas the gullible nymphyou turned me into
I found myselffascinated by whatI had become andwhat I had to offerfrom inculpable youth
I crawled back to myselfwith the longingonly a child would haveto return to the womb
Where nothing is as it seemsAnd I love youand the promisesare more than just schemes
Arleeta Viddaurri
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MY HOUSECheryl Welch
My house is falling down
Crumbling with truththat will not lay buriedwithin its trembling walls
It is time to rebuild
I will throw open the windowsand let the breeze rustle the curtains freeof their history
I will unpack the years
And examine which memories to keepto give away to burn
I will patch the holes
And fill the cracksuntil even my trained heartcan’t remember where they were
I will furnish my new house
With a chair to rest ina book to learn frommusic to dance toa future to dream of
I will open my door
I will invite you in
And we will plant a garden
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