Listen to and Regard the past at www.wrongbrain.net

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cover and back cover By Peter Flynn DOnovan

collage_ Gannon mCCarthycollage_gannon Mcarthy//

lean closer_ bEkah wawleytree frog_ coco menk

hidden cat_ kimberly parsonsthe third shot_ matt laplante

polaroids_matt laplante// blizzard trees_kimberly parsons

tranformation_cyndle plaisted rials winter_kinberly parsons

who we are_ sean patrick mulroypoop pious_sylvea suydam

magnetized_amanda alberstonscaffolds5_karrah kwasnikurban pyramid_kara kwasnik

pig trumpet_ tamara parecollage_gannon mccarthy

what there wasnít room for_kalika bowerthree of cups_matt jasper

retribe_sara delap uwinter moon_kimberly parsons

in the river_rebecca rosecondolances_leah blanton

the erection of jesus christ_ cody john laplantegodfuck_sam paolini

the secret about brimstone_cody john laplantebrimstone_sam paolini

wrongbrain thanks our sponsors//cream arena_leah blanton

wrongbrain_6_audio

Listen to and Regard the past at www.wrongbrain.net

Edited by Sam Paolini, Greg Baldi, and Cody John Laplante

4 collage_Gannon Mccarthy

5Lean Closer _ Bekah Hawley

6 Tree Frog_Coco Menk

7Hidden Cat_Kimberly Parsons

8 The Third Shot w/ Polaroid Diptych_ Matt Laplante

9 Blizzard Trees_ Kimberly Parsons

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Transformation

It is the ear. The aural pleasure mends a sigh, you become the shaking leaf about to rustle loose

from the tree, pulled by an invisible string in an even, predestined trajectory. You want the blue of the sky, to burn by

the blowing sand, brush against the muscled, tan boy who palms a basketball over concrete. But that is not

about you. You are still hanging tense on the branch, wishing now instead to be the sweat that traverses

his lines, over his belly—bump, hollow, bump and so on

Cyndle Plaisted Rials

11 Winter_ Kimberly Parsons

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who we areafter Ke$ha

It’s senior year, and everybody has a crew, even fags like me, the trickster gods of small town southern high, velocity and pleather trench coats. Tonight, cell phones are new technology, and i-pods just a dream, so I will almost crash my car 3 times trying to switch the music on my discman from Tori Amos to a different Tori Amos. Tonight, my girl Kixie has stuffed herself into something obscenely gold a too tight lycra tube top, teenage tits defiant, slicked with glit-ter, stockings ripped all up the sides, a spider web. Tonight I’m wearing white eyeliner on my lips, because I want to look my best (don’t you know?) for Russ, the hunky goth boy from the trailer park with grey storm clouds for eyes. His best friend Josh and Charlie are racing shopping carts downhill, tonight, they’ll break their ankles while Mike works the magic to five-finger an entire sewing machine. But we steal more hearts than dvds tonight—and we steal a lot of dvds tonight, loud mouths smacking on the Mt. Dew like snorting nodoz in the gas station bathroom, like hey we’re going to throw a rave inside the abandoned house we found off of Rt. 17, do you want to come? We got party city glow sticks, battery powered boom box the roadside candy necklaces and so much hairspray. Tonight we live to devastate our haters, leave two flaming tire treads across the face of everything that wants us dead. You know they want us dead. The south swallows all the queer that it can catch. I watched so many faggots drown trying to cross the river that sur-rounds my hometown that I swore I’d only cross it once and that’s to leave. And isn’t that just like a witch? To take off like you’re being hunted; to know their god for who he is, and still got Jesus on my necklaces, this is who we are. Who we are, who we are: standing at the intersection of Hot Topic and hot mer-chandise, rebel yelling against the white suburban mob. Tonight we’re going in. Tonight we’re going hard. Tonight we’re going to light the sky illegal with our firecrackers. We’re going to kick our glitter into the face of all the varsity perfects. Tonight we let the cool kids burn. Tonight, we are ripping up our posters, ripping up our jeans ripping up our lives and ripping up these speeding tickets—it is senior year motherfuckers!Everybody has a crew, especially young fags like me: too sick for the doctor, too fabulous for hell. We turn our stereos up so loud, we have to scream. Tonight, tonight, and every night forever when that music plays, we rock, we ride again.

Sean Patrick Mulruy

13Poop Pious_Sylvea Suydam

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Magnetized

“magnitized . . . energetic waves of . . . elusive behavior. outside eyes come forth. . . awaken my eyes to many paths of desire. . . cloud the path of determination it is easy to isolate. . . intangible fluidity of boundaries. broken. bound. or free... “

Amanda Albertson

15Scaffolds5_Karrah Kwasnik

16 Urban Pyramid_Karrah Kwasnik

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18 Pig Trumpet_Tamara Pare

19collage_Gannon Mccarthy

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What There Wasn’t Room For The people were in the apples and the apples looked so pretty. They were wondering where tears sleep and started peeling they thought, they thought about seeing. They did it because the apples were falling from the trees and the apples looked like falling apples. When the apples had fallen there was a thought, a fogless place replaced. There were overgrown graveyards the apples rolled towards. The apples fell because they fell in love. A rain started, washing away almost all of the words that could complete the fallen apples but they were given the word completion. They fell in love because of the place eyes squint for, but can only ever feel in blindness. Their eyes would look like semi-colons; they would try to make entrances for decay they would fall through; abandoning themselves, leaving behind children who find mooring in non-specific pronouns. And still, what is the grass but a place apples fell? Seeds haven’t forgotten the apples. Apples haven’t forgotten the trees. The graveyards are only where we rest. It is safe to detach ourselves like this.

Kalika Bower

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Three of Cups

She spits up pearls from oceans she’s never dived in, goes to drive-in movies wearing dresses that rise like a curtain to reveal

a scene as lovely as the day is long when it stretches its yawn to a span that contracts a string of events to just one containing all that has come before.

She opens her voice so wide all share her throat, drown dull sermons in accidental song.

She twines her arms together as she walks. The wrists bend and interlace, Then flutter away like halved wings.

He watches to see if she does it even when there is no way for her to know he is watching her.

Still, she sends the birds of her hands to flutter and he knows she has

flown to him from all the dreams he has ever had of loves ladled out into mouths that open— swallowing even hunger.

Matt Jasper

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Retribe

Quiet nights in country undergrowth snagged on saturnine straw and a bumpkin sentimentality, there is so much movement in such a still place.

Tasting of earth and natural oils the swingset in your backyard is poor and cute in its way it’s a big world and it’s important to stay out of the woods.

Mortar and brick in cities

replace elm and oak but they continue to surround us, sardonic toward our inefficient lumbering and tight schedules. a dead tree may be the apex of our satisfaction in theory

we are the kings of the planet and can barely reach the lower trunks

without jumping toward the abyss of open sky but the ground - its raw complacence jaw-first and waiting.

Sarah Delap U

23Winter Moon_Kimberly Parsons

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In the River

When I fall in the river I’ll make sure you aren’t close I’ll hold my breath And open my eyes

I’ll settle down soft in the mud

I’ll whisper to catfish And sing with the silt I’ll mutter to grasses

I won’t blink or budge

Until you can’t distinguish me from a rock

Rebecca Rose

25Condonlances_Leah Blanton

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the erection of jesus christyes i see myself in jesus christas he’s hung staring down at me so pathetic from a concretepedestal overgrown by weeds

he looks pretty cute lean as a slave but handsome as a hero and i imagine he wouldn’t let outa peep of fake protest but i confess it’d never happen

it’s daddy’s greatest sin sin to be with any man but him

who are you to denysuch a powerful guy?

o jesus it’s not right our fathersshould have such powers over uswho made them gods? who made us responsible formistakes they invented?

once i had a dreamall these soldiers in uniform skirtscut well above the knees sleevelessbreastplates shiny shiny shinyboots of leather i received this image

from pictures i saw with you they stormed us they captured us the onlookers were taken abackby how well we obeyed as they tied us to faggots as they cursed and spit on us as they dragged us through mud

humiliated but somehow notpride-wounded submitted butsomehow not outraged dominatedbut somehow not wronged

as if the muddier and morebeaten we became the more we glowedas if each soldiers’ blow brought uscloser to redemption

i woke up rebaptized feeling very religious about havingtruly worshipped and we had noteven got up the hill yet! we had noteven been penetrated by nails erectedor crowned with ultimate dejection!

in the tenth station i saw you stripped of all but your loincloth

it was left there in disgust as you hung your believerswept with the breath beforeyour forgiving last you tried

telling them how blissfulit was finally paying the ultimate pricefor the infinite sins we committedby deviation from our father who artwhere we aren’t that’s the secret you never said

it is not so bad it is not so bad believe me, we were made for this having lost the fight just make it saintly and worship his might

the silent mouth cemented on your facepromises all the blissful suffering in the world

yes i see myself in you jesus but i am too stuck under god’s thumb

Cody John Laplante

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as if the muddier and morebeaten we became the more we glowedas if each soldiers’ blow brought uscloser to redemption

i woke up rebaptized feeling very religious about havingtruly worshipped and we had noteven got up the hill yet! we had noteven been penetrated by nails erectedor crowned with ultimate dejection!

in the tenth station i saw you stripped of all but your loincloth

it was left there in disgust as you hung your believerswept with the breath beforeyour forgiving last you tried

telling them how blissfulit was finally paying the ultimate pricefor the infinite sins we committedby deviation from our father who artwhere we aren’t that’s the secret you never said

it is not so bad it is not so bad believe me, we were made for this having lost the fight just make it saintly and worship his might

the silent mouth cemented on your facepromises all the blissful suffering in the world

yes i see myself in you jesus but i am too stuck under god’s thumb

Sam Paolini_Godfuck

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the secret about brimstone what you’ve never heard about hellis how pleasurable it can be for the sinnerwho has really committed himself to the lifeof the pleasure vice the vice of the pleasure lifethe pleasure vice of life for him is the paradise of torture and suffering punishment and humilityintensity and immortality the vivid sensationsof dying stripped of the consequence of livingstripped of the day to day that was never his cycleanywayto him heaven would be but a giant empty buzzinga great colossal nothing punctuated by the marchingof the angelic army exactly opposite from where his souls yearn to take flight too bright too sterile like being resurrected in a hospital bed after trying to make yourself dead

in hell you are burning your blood is bubblingyour brain is boiling your skin is petroleum your bones are splintering and charring within fire licked by the momentum of eternal heat no longer do you haveto look yourself in the eyeno longer do you have to wake up and put your neck in a tieno longer do you haveto say your hi how are yous or your fine thank yousyour body is but a puddle of pain your nerves stretch and pop on top feeling more than they’ve ever felt your consciousness turns to ashes glitchingsmoking sparking melting fireworkhallucinations still screaming for the submissionit can never quite escape your musclessizzle and sputter becoming steaks and whenyou are medium rare the demons strut throughthe recently rejected looking for good-looking legsrich rib cages and tender little wings to rip-offand snap up laughing joking poking at scrapswith sharp agile tails splashing in puddlesof rotten souls with no heavenly beauty butall of the earthly stuff that drives you nuts and to think what a beast the devil must be so proudthey are to serve him his feast! You

Cody John Laplante

29Sam Paolini_Brimstone

the secret about brimstone is it burns with the awesome fire of every sin ever committed and once you feel it you have to worry nevermore about anyone hoping that someday you’ll turn good because you have become all the bad you have ever yearned for at once and forever

become less and less just fodder for the flames a filthy grate the devil’s gate awaits you with tiny rusty holes used by countless sinner’s soulsand when the burning liquefies you you seep into the hot belly of the devil where you steepand groan as his evil acids sink your most meagermorsels down into his bowels like a foundrythey pack you into sturdy black pelletsand push you out into the pit where still consciousstill burning still teeming with excited memories of being devoured you become pellets for the ever flowing fire of sin assimilating such souls as are fit to be the devil’s shit

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Peter Squires

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enjoy WRONGBRAIN audio vol.3:

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