#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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Jackie Post

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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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Che

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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

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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

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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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