Joe is joined by B.R. Yeager to talk about his new book Negative Space, angry reviews, and More!
B.R. Yeager reps Western Massachusetts. His previous book is Amygdalatropolis (Schism Press).
You can contact the show at noisemakerjoe@gmail.com - Just put WTR in the subject line.
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Art photo by Arielle Tipa
Joe is joined by Noah Cicero and they talk about a turning point in Noah’s writing, Buddhism, and how to live in the world.
Noah Cicero is 38-years-old, grew up in a small town near Youngstown, Ohio. He has lived in Eugene, Oregon, Grand Canyon, Arizona, Seoul, South Korea and currently resides in Las Vegas, Nevada. He has a movie made of his first book called The Human War which won the 2014 Beloit Film Festival award for Best Screenplay. He has books translated into Turkish, Kurdish and Spanish. His first book of poetry Bipolar Cowboy was voted one of the best books on Goodreads in 2015. He has many short stories, articles, and poems published at such places as Thought Catalog, 3AM Magazine, Wales Review, and Amphibi.us.
You can contact the show at noisemakerjoe@gmail.com - Just put WTR in the subject line.
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Art photo by Arielle Tipa
Javelinas
I had a mission. I was going to walk into the forested part between the railroad and the West Rim road. It was probably not a good idea, no one ever did it, no one ever left the trails. But there was a part of me that didn’t care if I died. During those days, I felt like life was endless. All I could see was endless life ahead of me. There were no locations, no stopping points, there were no candles in any windows. The world had no place for me, I wasn’t even being sad, I wasn’t even having self pity, I had no interest in anyone telling me, “It is going to get better.” The banal platitudes of my country would not save me. All my friends were in Korea, or they had gone back to their homes in America, but I had no home. Where I was, I was just there, and that’s all.
On the way out the door, Dream was walking down the hall and asked me where I was going, I said to the forested part. He told me, “Man, I am scared to go there. Are you allowed to go there?”
“Hmm, I don’t think anyone will care. Do you want to come?”
He stood there thinking about it and said, “Yeah, let me get the right shoes on.”
Dream and I walked down the railroad tracks. Dream said, ‘I don’t know if my mom wants me going in here, she says there are rattlesnakes. I might run if I see a rattlesnake.”
“If there are rattlesnakes it will be okay. They won’t even notice us.”
“I don’t understand how a rattlesnake couldn’t notice us,” said Dream.
“Because they are busy. We we are afraid of snakes, we are projecting ourselves onto the snakes. We are making the snakes aware of us, but really they are snakes, and they are doing their snake thing. They have places to go and things to do, they know what they are doing, they aren’t looking for humans to bite.”
That calmed him a bit.
Right before we entered the forested part, I said, “We have to walk quietly if we are going to see something. Walk like this,” I placed my foot up and then put it down on my toes softly, and then mindfully pushed the back of my foot down. “See how quiet that is? You try.”
Dream, even though he was a big man, did the same kind of steps.
“Okay, let’s be quiet,” I said.
We slowly walked through the forested part. There were old Utah Junipers everywhere, little tiny cactus balls on the ground. I stepped on a cactus ball, I felt the spikes drive into my foot. I wanted to be angry but I didn’t care. I let it happen. Dream was like, “Oh shit, Billy, you stepped on a cactus.” I was like, “Yes.
We sat down on the ground. I took my shoe off and picked the needles out. The bottom of my foot was bleeding a little but it wasn’t bad. We stood up and walked. I realized we were lost but I didn’t tell Dream, he seemed to have full trust in me. It felt good that anyone trusted me.
As we were walking we heard noises, we both stopped. I loved hearing noises in the woods, I loved feeling the rush that something big and scary might be hiding behind a tree, ready to eat me. The desire to be eaten was overwhelming at times, but I didn’t tell anyone. Dream and I walked toward the noise. I looked back and Dream looked nervous, like he wanted to go back but he had to live up to a certain level of masculinity and keep going.
And there they were, a small family of javelinas, little pig like creatures covered in fur. There was a mom and three kids about 30 yards away. I pointed at them and Dream looked, his face lit up, our faces were full of excitement. The mom looked at us, then suddenly dashed ahead five yards toward us, stopped and made a noise. We both got scared neither of us had javelina training. We both picked trees and got up in them. We were both only four feet above the ground, but that was enough. Javelinas can’t climb trees.
The mother javelina realized we were no threat. We weren’t going to come any closer to her babies. We stood on branches in the trees, looking at the family living their lives. They were just living outside among the ran and cold and heat.
Joe is joined by Dan Hoy. They talk about poetry, books, poetry books, and more!
Dan Hoy is the author of The Deathbed Editions (Octopus Books, 2016) and several poetry chapbooks, including The Terraformers (Third Man Books, 2017) and The Tree (Solar Luxuriance, 2016). His collaboration with Mike Kleine, We R the World, was featured in the 2019 Spring Thing Festival of Interactive Fiction, and his collection The Terraformers was the recipient of an Elgin Award by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association. His work has also been featured in The Best American Nonrequired Reading, Triple Canopy, Novembre, Elderly and other magazines and anthologies. He lives in Nashville.
You can contact the show at noisemakerjoe@gmail.com - Just put WTR in the subject line.
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Art photo by Arielle Tipa
We R the World can be found HERE
Joe is joined by Brendan Vidito. They talk about body horror, illness, eye opening events, and more!
Brendan Vidito is a writer from Sudbury, Ontario. His work has appeared in several magazines and anthologies including Dead Bait 4, Splatterpunk’s Not Dead, Strange Behaviors: An Anthology of Absolute Luridity and Tragedy Queens: Stories Inspired by Lana Del Rey and Sylvia Place. You can visit him online at brendanvidito.com or on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @brandanvidito
You can contact the show at noisemakerjoe@gmail.com - Just put WTR in the subject line.
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Art photo by Arielle Tipa
A Feast of You
1. The Road Out
Ryker looked at the sky reflected in his coffee. Thick iron clouds pushed in from the city he had just fled, moving toward the diner with almost predatory purpose. He shifted uneasily in his booth. Cracked and blistered vinyl creaked under his weight. He brought the mug to his lips and drank. His hand shook so badly, a thread of coffee dribbled from the corner of his mouth. It was scalding, but he barely noticed. The only thought that occupied his mind was how he needed to get as far away from the city as possible. And as soon as the caffeine kicked in, he couldn’t afford to waste another minute. He was, after all, still within their zone of influence.
Despite its stinging warmth, the coffee—straight black and electrified with three packs of sugar—did an excellent job jump-starting his system. He hadn’t slept in over forty-eight hours and the energy now easing into his bloodstream almost brought tears to his eyes. The only thing was, he also had very little to drink in the last couple days and the coffee was beginning to fill his bladder to the point of discomfort. An itinerary formed in his mind. He’d take a piss, finish his third cup, leave the diner, drive until nightfall, find a cheap motel, unplug the room’s electronics to prevent them from learning of his whereabouts, get a good night sleep and finish up the drive in the morning. There was bound to be someplace where they couldn’t find him. He hoped with every quivering nerve in his body that it wasn’t simply a pipe dream.
The bell above the door jangled. Ryker spun around so fast his neck cracked. A family of three stood in the entrance. They looked like they’d stepped from the pages of a department store catalogue. The father had a kind but plain face, balding, the dark hair on his temples turning grey. He wore a t-shirt with the logo of some sports team Ryker remembered from his childhood. His wife was a head shorter, also plain but beautiful in her way. A scarf was knotted loosely around her neck and a purse dangled form one arm. She held her daughter’s hand, the diamond on her ring finger catching and refracting the diner’s fluorescent light. The child was clad in bright colors and in her other hand she carried a plastic, zipped container decorated with leering cartoon characters.
Sweat popped on Ryker’s forehead and trickled down the groove of his spine. An invisible fist punched through his stomach and squeezed his entrails. For a moment, he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. He watched, riveted with terror, as the father inclined his head, said something to his daughter that made her laugh, and together the family made their way to a booth on the opposite side of the diner. The only other patron apart from Ryker, an older man with a grey beard and weatherworn jacket, smiled at the little girl as she passed.
Ryker tore his eyes away from the new arrivals. The clouds reflected in his coffee were closer now. He scooted to the edge of his seat, shot up and walked briskly to the bathroom. His bladder was so full it hurt, and for one embarrassed second he thought he’d pissed himself, but it was only sweat. It coated every inch of his body like an amniotic sack.
The bathroom door hit the wall with a thunderclap smash. He darted toward the urinal, fumbled with his fly, and let loose a stream so powerful it splashed back from the stained porcelain. He bowed his head, breath coming out in labored gasps. His heart hammered, gunfire-quick. Empty, he zipped up, and staggered to the sink. His long black hair was plastered to his forehead. He threw cold water in his face, made a sound crossed between a groan and a whisper. That family…they’re just people…they’re harmless. Even so, they reminded Ryker too much of them—those things he’d fled from.
He remained at the sink for another minute or two, hands grasping the edges, head bent toward the drain. When his heart rate slowed and his breathing grew steady, he straightened and exited the bathroom.
The family, the old man and the waitress behind the counter all stared at him. His throat moved. He directed his gaze at the floor. Quick, purposeful strides carried him back to his booth. He gripped the handle of his coffee mug in a quaking fist and downed the rest of its contents, wincing at a bitter taste he hadn’t noticed before. When he turned around, running a hand over his mouth, the waitress was standing inches from his face.
“Ready to settle up?” she asked.
“Y-yeah,” he managed to stutter, removing the wallet from his back pocket.
He threw a five on the chipped Formica and got the hell out of there. He had to move.
The engine of his rusted beater growled in protest before sputtering to life. He peeled out of the gravel parking lot, throwing up dust and hitting the highway at sixty miles an hour. The woods on either side blurred into abstraction, flashes of green, brown and grey as the sky leaked through between gaps in the trees.
When the diner shrank then disappeared in the rearview mirror, Ryker finally eased off the gas. The speedometer swung from one-twenty to ninety. Thankfully this piece of shit didn’t explode—and he couldn’t help but laugh. It was strained but genuine, and the longer it went on, the louder and more unhinged it became. Soon he was howling, tears blurring his vision, an open palm beating a crazed rhythm against the ceiling. Calm returned in waves until he was silent and staring at the road, his throat and chest sore from the outburst.
Silence reigned for a time before he decided to turn on the radio. It should be safe to listed to a couple songs, he reasoned. As long as he remained quiet, they wouldn’t be able to hear him over the airwaves.
The jockey said, “Now here’s a favorite of mine. I think many of you out there can use some of its medicine—especially with all the bad in the world lately. So here’s—”
Ryker relaxed his shoulders, easing back into his seat, allowing the music to wash over him. The drum beat a slow, heavy sound. The guitar was mellow and muted, the lyrics deep-voiced and lullaby-smooth. Combined with the monotony of the road, the flashing yellow lines, Ryker felt himself lulled into a trance-like state. His eyelids grew heavy, his muscles slack.
A flash in the rearview mirror. He shook his head to clear it. Another flash and Ryker recognized it for what it was: lightening. The clouds and the storm they carried were closing in.
His head was full of cotton, his eyelids dropped and his limbs were growing numb. What the hell is happening? He blinked several times, but his vision refused to clear. It was like his eyes were smeared with petroleum jelly. He pulled onto the side of the road and could only tell he was on the shoulder by the crunch of gravel under the tires. His eyes were useless and he could barely keep them open.
His breathing grew shallower by the second, the rise and fall of his chest a lulling rhythm. Oh shit. No. I can’t fall asleep now. What’s going on? He lifted a leaden arm and clumsily jabbed the button to turn off the radio. Silence except for his own breathing. Thunder rumbled not far behind. His eyelids fluttered closed, his head lolled onto one shoulder.Please. Don’t fall asleep. The plea crawled around inside his head. As he plunged into a mire of unconsciousness his last thought was of the strange bitterness in his last mouthful of coffee.
Joe is joined by Autumn Christian. They talk about politics in lit, video games, Goodreads goals, and more!
Autumn Christian is a fiction writer from Texas who currently lives in California. She is the author of the books "The Crooked God Machine," "We are Wormwood", and "Ecstatic Inferno," and has written for several video-games, including Battle Nations and State of Decay 2. When not writing, she is usually practicing her side kicks and running with dogs, or posting strange and existential Instagram selfies.
You can contact the show at noisemakerjoe@gmail.com - Just put WTR in the subject line.
Contact for Joe bielecki
Twitter and Instagram: @noisemakerjoe
Website
Patreon
Art photo by Arielle Tipa
We took his truck out to his secret place, near the creek littered with beer cans. He parked in the trees and together we climbed out onto the rocks. Their shadows hunched over
the fire of his lighter as he lit another stolen menthol. He chuckled while he told me a story about pawning his sister’s antique dolls and his mother’s Tiffany lamp for weed money.
He wouldn’t let me drink his Four Loko. Not at first.
“You’re just a baby,” he said, refusing to look over at me as he smoked. “You’ll blackout and I don’t feel like carrying you home.”
He didn’t look at me even when he said I reminded him of Daenerys, from Game of Thrones – the Mother of Dragons. I thought at first he meant because of my pale hair, long and unkempt, but then he said:
“You have a face that’s so soft, but it’s a softness like fire.” He finally let me take a sip of his Four Loko. I grimaced and had to struggle to swallow.
“Told you,” he said. “And don’t roll your eyes at me like that.”
“Tastes like fermented gasoline,” I said, handing it back to him. “My favorite.”
I needed to lose my virginity. I was already fifteen, and I wanted someone bad. I knew Spider was bad because he had a spit cup in the cab of his truck and thin white scars on his forearms he refused to talk about. We locked eyes for the first time in fourth period, his teeth hard-set, his stare like the sensation of chewing ice. He was older than me but still stuck in sophomore classes. I asked to borrow a pencil. He reached into his duster jacket and handed me one while time slowed and focused to a point in space between me and him.
“You might look pretty if you wore your hair down,” he said when I took the pencil, and his tongue touched his front row of teeth.
I couldn’t stop thinking about him since.
There were perfectly nice boys at Montamount High I could’ve lost my virginity to – boys who would tell me I look perfect with their chests about to cave in, who would straighten my hair on the pillow afterward, smiling at the way my shoulder clenched. But they didn’t have the bruised knuckles burnt with stories or a duster jacket with the arms held together with pins.
I didn’t look at those other boys and felt like at any step, I’d sink underwater, backward, bound in chains.
I read once that humans can’t help but seek out excitement - it’s why we first made fire and invented the printing press and slept with foreigners on the other side of
large bodies of water.
I liked that idea because it made me think that even a terrible mistake like Spider was cosmic destiny. Something imprinted into my DNA.
Something calling to me across the waves - through the window, after my parents had gone to sleep. Outside, wearing night time like leather, his neck lit up in oily porch floodlights. He looked good in starshine, in 2 A.M time, even with his stick and poke tattoo of an eye on his neck, his combat boots held together with duct tape. The way he tried not to smile made me smile, and after I pulled on my hoodie and my sneakers and climbed out the window, his hand
twitched, as if he wanted to reach out to me.
But he didn’t, and this made me smile even more.
Breathe in. Air feels cool. Breathe out. Air is cooler. That night my chest felt like a cavern and I could fit the whole world inside.
“How’d you find this place?” I asked.
“It’s my secret place,” he said.
“Do you bring girls here a lot?”
“You’re the only girl here,” he said.
I stretched and scooted a little closer to him. I yawned as an excuse to try to show him the cute outfit I wore, but he continued to stare straight ahead as he lit another cigarette.
I crawled across the rocks and slipped my hands in between the chain of his crossed legs. He opened his knees when I leaned into him as if inviting me in.
I kissed him in a halo of nicotine smoke.
He gave me another sip of his Four Loko as he cradled my waist between his knees. I felt high off our proximity, like the smell and sensation of him would make me float away if
the wind blew in the wrong direction. “I know why you don’t have a boyfriend,” he said.
“Because I wear my hair up?” I asked.
“No,” he said.
It became silent, and I knew he wasn’t going to tell me why.
“I brought condoms,” I said.
He gave a terse nod.
I didn’t realize it’d be so awkward with both of us fumbling for our clothes in the dark without speaking, without touching, breathing out cool air like shiny oil slicks. Nobody ever talked about that moment before the act, when zippers got stuck and your lipgloss rubbed off on the inside of your sweater, when you laughed nervously because you had to do a weird shimmy to get out of your tights. And finally, when all the clothes were off, and all that was left was the interminable space between two bodies, there was the holding of breath like the next noise should be something tremendous, and not just the crinkling of a condom wrapper.
***
“You’re a virgin, aren’t you?” he asked.
I spread my jacket on the rocks and lay down. I shivered and the creek noise grew to a roar. I hadn’t noticed before how cold it was.
“No,” I said.
“Yeah you are,” he said. “I can tell. You think you’re being cool, but I can see it.”
I fumbled with the condom. He plucked it out of my hands.
“I’ll take care of that. Just touch me,” he said.
“Where?”
“You know where. At least, I hope you do.”
He didn’t take his eyes off my chest, although he had such an intense stare it was like he looked through me instead of at me. My nipples hardened and I felt the rocks underneath me.
I reached out, unable to control my trembling, and began touching his cock.
A swallow stuck in my throat. I thought at first that he’d remain limp, that I couldn’t get him up and I’d remain a virgin forever, but then after a good half minute I felt his cock harden.
His hands traced my ass and my hips. Then he touched me between my legs, and I flinched at his cold fingers.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Trying to get you to relax,” he said. “Virgins. Have to teach them everything.”
He pushed his cock inside of me in one fluid motion. One second I’m a virgin, and then suddenly I’m not. It didn’t hurt like I thought it would. It was more like a pressure, a fullness, stretching inside of me. He went slowly at first, in and out, and I found myself holding breath. I couldn’t see his face in the dark, but I could see the place between my hips and his that I thought resembled an abandoned alien landscape.
“Here,” he said. “Get on top.”
He rolled me over. I felt awkward and unsure of how to move. All the videos I’d seen couldn’t really prepare me for the moment I was looking down at another human being, his cock inside of me, feeling split in two but also sewn together, conjoined.
“Like this, “ he said, and guided my hips. “Like dancing.”
But it was really nothing like dancing.
Something began to build in me.
I thought it must’ve been an orgasm but this wasn’t like any orgasm I’d ever had. It started in my stomach and swirled downwards, heated, a little warm bundle of nerves inside the bracing cold. There was an intense pressure, and even when I clenched my hips together or shifted it didn’t relent. And strangely, Spider felt it too.
When I tried to stop he grabbed me again by the hips. The whites of his eyes grew like cracks of light through a darkened gate. Tears welled in my own eyes, although I wasn’t sure why. I saw the moon in double, shimmering through water, reflected off his pale chest.
I’d fingered myself before. I had my first orgasm riding a washing machine and I even bought a few sex toys off the Internet. Although sex-ed in middle school was all bananas
in latex and warnings about STDs, I watched enough porn to fill in the gaps. I’d even read part of a PDF of the Kama Sutra, although I didn’t really get it.
I wanted to be ready for this moment.
But there was no way I could’ve prepared for this. This definitely wasn’t a normal orgasm. This was an unbearable friction, a dry plain about to catch fire, a swelling, growing, heaving, pulsating, liquid swell inside of me that was louder and bigger than everything I’d ever experienced before. Nothing could’ve prepared me for the feeling of my body rumbling like an earthquake, turning my bones into tectonic plates.
I held my breath.
And I exploded.
A depth charge of intense pleasure ran through me. It spiraled out in all directions, not just into my vagina, but up through my heart, my throat, and down into my toes, moving in pulsing, frenetic, golden waves. It buzzed on the top of my skin, but also deep in my organs, my pressurized blood. It froze in my throat like black ice and seared my eyeballs. It licked the edges of my hair, curling through my scalp like fire.
Could someone die from having sex? Had I pushed a button that was the bomb inside of me, currently making its way to my vulva and my heart? I’d never heard of anything like that happening. I thought I was breathing but I couldn’t be sure. Maybe this was a rare form of sex-induced brain damage. If at that moment someone had asked me my name, my address, my birth-date, I wouldn’t have been able to answer. I’d become a frisson ball of nuclear-level sex energy that couldn’t contain a single coherent thought for longer than a fraction of a second.
God, surely I should have heard about something like this.
Yet for a few moments, I couldn’t hear anything except the rush of my own blood. I looked down, expecting to see my organs leaking out of my vagina, or a hole blown straight through my stomach. Maybe I’d even see Spider’s corpse below me, his cock still erect inside of me, his eyes dissolved into glowing goo and his tongue swelling in his mouth like a slug.
But I was intact, and Spider was intact. There was nothing missing, no injury, just smooth skin and moonglow.
Spider grabbed one of my wrists, and I realized he was speaking to me, trying to reach me through the hissing scream of my body.
After a few seconds, the noise subsided, and the flush of lightning went down to a low tremble.
“What was that?” I asked when I could finally hear again.
He spoke, his voice thin,
“Don’t stop.”
Joe is joined by Leza Cantoral. They talk about sex in lit, fairy tales, bizarro fiction, and more!
Leza Cantoral is the Editor in Chief of CLASH Books. She hosts Get Lit With Leza, a podcast where she talks to cool ass writers. She is the author of Cartoons in the Suicide Forest & Trash Panda & the editor of Tragedy Queens: Stories Inspired by Lana Del Rey & Sylvia Plath. You can find her spending way too much time on FB, Twitter & IG @lezacantoral
You can contact the show at noisemakerjoe@gmail.com - Just put WTR in the subject line.
Contact for Joe bielecki
Twitter and Instagram: @noisemakerjoe
Website
Patreon
Art photo by Arielle Tipa
MARILYN IN WONDERLAND
Don’t look in the mirror,
Don’t look because you will see,
Marilyn,
Through the Looking Glass.
Her twin brains
Glitter and digest the celluloid dream.
The forest is thick
For those who wander—
Lost and found,
Crumbling Underground.
Where does the rabbit hole end?
I wander through the streets
Of New York City.
I see my reflection
In the shop windows,
Half expecting to see
Marilyn looking back at me.
Her body might be in the Westwood Cemetery,
But her heart is in NYC.
In NYC
She could finally disappear.
In NYC
She sought refuge from the swarm—
The camera eyes that
Stripped her bare.
You cannot X-ray
A soul.
Skeleton face,
Calavera of love—
I look for Marilyn
In the Hollywood Forever Cemetery.
She’s not there
But I find the Urn of Peter Lorre,
And I wonder why
He couldn’t afford a nicer gravestone.
Marilyn, tangled in Egyptian cotton sheets,
Wound up in her telephone cord—
A Hollywood mummy,
Preserved for all eternity.
Still she haunts me,
Phantomwise,
Marilyn moving under the skies,
Never seen by waking eyes.
She’s not in the dirty NY snow
Caked to the curb.
She’s not in the radiator that groans like a mechanical beast,
From the bowels of Mordor.
She found her voice
In the Actor’s Studio,
A bookwork—
Devouring Ulysses.
In madness, she walks,
Through mirrors far and wide.
She died in beauty,
Like the night.
A psychic in Greenwich Village
Tells me that my aura is white,
But I don’t believe her,
Because my shadows eat up all the light.
Dark twin
Devouring me—
Dark pairings
Of souls lost at sea.
I hear her laughter
Bubbling off the shore.
I find Marilyn in Key West,
In front of the Tropicana—
Her smile frozen in plaster,
Blowing her skirts to Cuba.
Joe is joined by A. S. Coomer. They talk about Mythical Musicians, bookstores, tattoos, and more.
You can contact the show at noisemakerjoe@gmail.com - Just put WTR in the subject line.
Contact for A. S. Coomer
Twitter: @ascoomer
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Contact for Joe bielecki
Twitter and Instagram: @noisemakerjoe
Website
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Art photo by Arielle Tipa
Flirting with Disaster
My mother lost everything
she owned
--twice--
in house fires.
She smokes like a goddamn chimney.
Always has.
I guess, we all flirt with disaster
in our own terms.
I tend to spend too much time alone.
I’m not good on my own;
you see, I got these itchy fingers
and bad ideas. I got this circling mind
and backload upon backload
of misplaced time and it all makes me
cringe.
I guess, we all flirt with disaster
in our own terms.
I know people with fixations,
addictions come in many shapes and sizes,
it’s not all brown bottles & little plastic baggies.
They tend to bumper-car through life,
shielded, however scantily, by ideology, belief,
substance or everyday wishful thinking,
leaving a little tread here,
a little rubber bumper there,
until they’re skating,
as the old proverb goes,
on thin ice.
I guess, we all flirt with disaster
in our own terms.
And isn’t this sounding like a song?
Something loud, bluesy, abrasive,
sweating right along with the cheap,
domestic light beer on top of the rattling, busted amp?
I’d make it one if I could play lead
but I’ve always been out here,
on the off-beat,
in a jerk and sway rhythm section
no one wants to listen to anyway.
“Sing it, brother.”
Yeah, all right. Just not tonight, ok?
Antumbra
For Homer
What if, when you go, you have to sit
through a powerpoint of your life?
A year-in-review kind of thing,
the lows, the highs--if you were so lucky--but mostly
just the in-betweens.
Slide after slide of indecision,
of stagnation,
of little flickers of yourself
with a finger in your nose,
waiting, watching, snoring: passive.
You’ll start to wonder
if the sun ever really did shine.
Can you recall actually feeling
the concussions of all those summer thunderstorms?
What was it like to feel the spring grass
between your bare-footed toes?
The bright December sky,
cloudless and brilliant,
becomes an abstraction.
On March 22, 2012, the greatest friend I never met died.
I didn’t know him then. Well, not completely.
See, I created him, curated from bits and pieces,
spit, liquor, rusted out guitar strings, little blue pills,
bubble gum & duct tape,
he was all fragments really,
named him after light and shadows,
an occluded body appearing shrouded in light,
a less than shipshape image of the Wanderer,
the Seeker, the Seer. And what does any of that mean?
Should it go ahead and come with a grain of salt?
Will it be on the powerpoint
as a footnote you really have to squint to even make out?
And will any of this be on the Final?
Or is this just cumulative? God, I hope there’s a curve...
The Straightening of the Path
for Michael D. Grover
Sometimes, the songs come in backwards,
the radio cinched in to the old car battery
got it wrong, maybe. The towers shooting
out their noise, ones and zeros, or bits and pieces,
got crossed with some other invisibility, perhaps
--I don’t know.
Little snatches of the way things are,
then
how they’re coming in;
at odds with the way I breath,
the way the air formulates into crystals in my mind
shrouding my lungs in a cave of ice,
stalactites and stalagmites
of purpose, the machinery in motion but with a timetable
strictly adhered to. My friend got some bad news, meaning
I, too, got some bad news.
The tunnel system is working against us,
his especially. It’s burrowing, it’s twisting and turning through the nows and thens and whens
is straightening.
It’s decided to take a more direct route.
And this hurts.
Sure, like hell, it hurts but,
and maybe only just but, will the tunnel straighten enough for him to see. To really see. Not this haphazard
thing
we struggle to complete each day, upside down
and backwards, faulty at best.
Maybe the straightening of the path
will give him a glimpse of the light--if there is a light.
Maybe there will be something there,
not your imaginary reflection, a friend waiting with hand outstretched;
an understanding, a peace,
or maybe just the mind clearing breath
of unobstructed terranean air. The sun,
the actual light of being, unmitigated and free.
I hope he keeps his eyes open.
I’m not sure how I feel about the sound
Can’t no one love you better than I did.
All these years, all those nights bright with fulfilled longing,
captured desire and twisted sheets,
to the teeth with a big fat love,
bursting at the seams, dripping with it,
slicker than any back-country road post summer downpour,
juicier than any peach you’ve tasted.
Now, it’s just a picture of a picture of the thing.
The train whistle’s blowing,
blowing right by our house
--what used to be our house--
it used to make you snuggle closer,
something so lonesome in the cry, I guess.
Well, I was always just glad it was crying,
seemed like somebody somewhere had to be,
that’s what my grandmother always said.
And the result...
Now that you’re gone
even the coffee pot don’t look right,
sitting cockeyed on the counter,
beached by grains of staled, clumpy sugar and sticky spots
where I spilled the milk.
Baby, I don’t even know why I bother to pay the electric bill;
I keep all the lights off now,
now that you’re gone. Don’t see the point
in seeing the spaces were you ain’t, cos, baby, you ain’t.
And I remember sitting in that backroom down at the bar,
swaying to the slide guitar and the gentle finger picking,
putting them away with you
--baby, we could really put ‘em away, couldn’t we? --
and, with an arm draped around your shoulders,
I swore I would never write a song like that
(I swore I’d never write a song like this),
the troubadour up there tellin’ the story, his story;
one you’ve heard a hundred times if you’ve heard it once,
but hearin’ him you knew it true all the same
and you couldn’t help but move along,
just some unaware passenger picked up and carried off
by the flash flood,
the rising waters of it, of it all, each of us dripping,
swimming in our own way,
because either you swim, or you drown,
and we laughed. Sure, we knew I’d never write that song,
a song like that--like this--because I wouldn’t have to,
because you would always be here,
because we would always be together.
Hear that?
Train’s comin’ on down the line
and for the first time in my life,
I’m not sure how I feel about the sound.
Joe is joined by John Trefry. They talk about Inside the Castle, Castle Freak, Plats, architecture, and more.
You can contact the show at noisemakerjoe@gmail.com - Just put WTR in the subject line.
Contact for John Trefry
Twitter: @trefryesque
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Inside the Castle
Contact for Joe bielecki
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Art photo by Arielle Tipa
Eating Nadia’s Pig
— I'm Of The Perception And Orientation That These Gallant Beasts are Deserving Of Our Gratitude, But There is Nothing Remaining Of Them For Honoring, A Few Teeth Perhaps, Even Those are Useful In Babyrattles, I've The Consideration Of Interment Of The Slaughtering Knives, Although That is Wasteful And I've The Intuition That It's Not Desirable To The Beast, So I'm Simply Spading Over The Dirt Behind The Home With A Small Marker Stating The Day Of The Cadaver's Maximum Valuation, Recollection Of Slaughterday is Always Difficult, And Quite Earnestly Irrelevant —
on the table in the dining nook of the kitchen is a candelabra with goldenbrown tapers that otherwise is devoid of bouquets and decoration—no condiment vessels, no napkins in tasteful arrangement, no napkins, no radishes—only the blankness of thick gray cheese from precipitating vaporization of cookingoil on the boardinghouse table softening in the stifling warmth, gold and minium twotone damask is lavishly festooning ornate plastercast brackets spraypaintingly antiquey in oldgold is flaking flakes are limply tenuous from the volutes in the congealing clogging lardsludge and dustfur, adipose saturation of the fabric is drawing particulate and fibrous suspension from the stagnant air casting the pleats with waxen immobility framing the operable picturewindow looking out over the derelict garden below with pathways of gold acetate confetti and the little pond in the middle of the lawn with a shoreline of pyrite nuggets and filled with gold plastic sequins floating on sepia, the ordinary shrubs at the fenceline behind neighboring dwellings beyond the supersession of ginkgo shrubs in flowerpots swarmingly spangly in the preservation of golden desiccation of fluttering papery foliage clicking into the clattering and clanging of the viands in <<service à la russe>> on gold circumference tableware, the woman in traditional garb, jugular is pulsating and sweaty gazing out the large window to the garden and beyond to finer homes through the thin trees is hurrying about the stifling kitchen silently thunking her forehead on cookware hanging from racks hanging from the ceiling is carrying the first course on goldleaf chargers toward the empty table where the master of the house is sitting is staring at his sullen tenant—her hair patchy and face sinking into its orbitals—and the meal is commencing and the meal is coming only to his position and the table and from the right is coming the course of oral amusements, a textural grandtour of mouthtreats is consisting of cold items—glistening head cheese, spleenwurst, thinslice of cold tongue with panzanella soggingly vinaigretty, a timbale of eggy sawdust & luncheon tongue reconstitution of mechanical tongue separation—on soupplates containing ice shavings are melting into the meatfluids and vinegar soaking through a small interceding scrap of cloth, garnishment is a pithy wedge of exceptionally obscure Catholic limone, & tepid servings—the cubic solidification of blood fryingly crispy, fuet, julienne of ear cracklings with ramekins of spicy mustard—unadorningly heaping on chargers, & sweaty bainsmarie servings—spareribs with hedgeapple and sauerkraut, ribs in paprika & tea sauce with sourcream & mushrooms & taproot—in long boats of congealing sauciness are leaving from the left and from the right is coming the steaming soup course, bathingly titillating the palate and gumline and farreaching musculature of the jaw as far as the temple and hairline—a boiling preparation of porcine snout & trachea with turmericroot in a crock with whole potatoes, stewy vinegar preparation of porcine organs with saturation of particleboard chaff, soup of chunklets of tripe with bellpeppers & onions & cabbage, heart goulash with nutmeg & liver dumplings—steeping in the bondage of a napkin—and garnishing with quark cheese & croutons & ham caramel, a turine of trotter porridge with lemon and cinnamon on a charger with concentric arrayals of hot green and yellow peppers & fermentitious cucumbers & fresh black radishes & savory lard truffles & fresh nettles and dandelion, luxuriously bilious sour tripe soup—are leaving from the left and from the right is coming the hot statement course with organ meat & connective tissue and skeletal connections in a series of rectangular glass bainsmarie on trivets beading up with condensation—shortshank, hindshank, steamship leg, porcine osso buco with rosemary, a porkbowel curingly tough and spicy with chilis & paprika & thyme & fennelseed, cubes of blood coagulation in a preparation with onion and tomato sauce, chitterlings and sourcream, braising the kidneys for cynadry, stuffing of abdominal membranes for drob—are leaving from the left and from the right is coming the maincourse with meatcuts on vermeil platters with restraint for inspection of the butchery most purely showcasing the simplicty of the meal's central ingredient—pork blade steaks with smoky catsup, ham, porkloin with lardons and rye croutons, picnic shoulder, tenderloin, leg sirloin—are leaving from the left and from the right are coming the intercourse removal introductions of saucy meat and vegetables or preparations whose conceptualization is dependent on the jus lingering in the empty halves of the maincourse platters—pork kebabs with hedgeapple & onion, kidneys & onions panfryingly soaking in Baldick oyster sauce, a boiling preparation of porcine maw full of barley & sawdust & nettles & garlicky collagen & bacon is fryingly indulgent with caramelization on bedding of yogurtstewy leafy fragrant greens, the casting of a carrot & brussels sprout & mashy potato trifle inside a porkheart, stewy lungs with plum dumplings, <<savoury ducks>> of sage and blackpepper seasoning porcine heart & liver mincingly frying in a sac of its own epiploon—its caul, its great omentum, its omentum majus—on a bed of fiddleheads, ear in bean broth, scrapple—are leaving from the left, the picturewindow is sliding ajar full of the fir filtration of neighboring neighborhood noises, the picturewindow is sliding sealing against its jamb and from the right is coming fresh cutlery with the respite and repose of the toddy and sorbet course—a vermeil goblet of fresh blood and mulling spicemix with frothy baconbits, a glass sundae cup of dandelion honey granita melting into sweet sow colostrum—is leaving from the left and from the right is coming the burdensome roastcourse is playing against the relief of the sorbet with wads of meat and organs in deep hot pans standing above the table in vermeil casserolecradles—sedimentary rashers of bacon barding a rayroast with rosemary & bay, immersion frying a foreshank is a crispy delicacy on a pike in radiating sheaves of crispy pigskin, porcine liver with onions, grilling kidney with carrot and peas, black pudding of spallings of particleboard & porcine blood in its own intestine—is leaving from the left and from the right is coming the deescalating refreshment of the saladcourse—palate cleansing with unctuous yellow marrow custard, black truffle shavings over dandelion greens, celery in baconnaise—is leaving from the left and from the right is coming the palate titillation and mild textural composition of the cold dishes, somewhat more tepid in their passage through the sweltering kitchen nook, sweating the same greasy perspiration as the gourmand at his table setting his butterknife into—tongue in flavorless aspic with mushrooms, piftie of legs and ears in garlic juice, garnishing a pâté of sow liver & lard & anchovies on rye toastpoints with fermentitious beetroot & cucumber & spicy mustard—and lolling the orbs of two eyes from a gelmold on the prow of his tongue gazing across the table at his dinner guests through the removal of all dishes and all accoutrements from the table where all that is abiding is the gray cataract of griminess occluding the woodgrain and upon this dull surface is the arrayal of the sweetcourse—bacon & lard truffles, peaches & candy porktongue in chartreuse jelly, sweet lard truffles, honeyroasting of porkfatback tart, soft warm apple roasting in a sow cranium with myrrh and cinnamon sticks in sweet whey—and from the right is coming the introduction of a distribution of cheeses in the vacant spaces of the sweet trays—pork cheese forcemeat, a platter of wild strawberries & fig desiccation with bacon stuffing & porcine whey cheese—, the tenant is silently weeping across the empty table the landlord is lollingly comatose with sausage digits and his countenance lying sideways on a broad white collar draping his offal body, the oiliness and spiciness of the bespoke meal permeates the room, gurgling snoring through lardthroat, the difficulty in the acquisition of all of these offals is their generally industrial dedication to catfood.
Joe is joined by Shawn Garrett, Alex Hofelich, and Karen Bovenmyer of PseudoPod. They talk about horror, running a magazine, Artemis Rising, and more.
You can contact the show at noisemakerjoe@gmail.com - Just put WTR in the subject line.
You can find PseudoPod right here!
Contact for Joe bielecki
Twitter and Instagram: @noisemakerjoe
Website
Patreon
Art photo by Arielle Tipa
Joe has Dean Swinford on the show and they talk about Metal, coming of age stories, academia, and more.
You can contact the show at noisemakerjoe@gmail.com - Just put WTR in the subject line.
Dean's Death Metal Epic books can be found through Atlatl press or on amazon.
Atlatl
Book one
Book two
Contact for Joe bielecki
Twitter and Instagram: @noisemakerjoe
Website
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Art photo by Arielle Tipa
3. Juan Bon Joker
“You realize that Valhalla is still under contract, right?”
I pressed the phone to my ear and covered my head with my hand as I hunched over the Booksalot help desk. All I could think about was the contract. I asked Claire for advice. She said I should call the label and try to get out of it. I didn’t really want to get out of it, because then what would I have? What would I think about during the endless hours of pulling each and every book to the exact edge of the shelf? How else would I stave off the pernicious sounds of Paul Simon’s Graceland, which streamed from the store speakers on infinite repeat? But she had a point. You can’t make an album and go on tour with a band that no longer exists. A dead metal band.
“Use your words,” she’d said, flipping through a copy of Maximum Rock and Roll. “And don’t let Lisa see you.”
Lisa was the rule-obsessed manager, constantly writing up employees for the smallest infractions.
I tried.
“Yeah, I totally realize that, Sean, it’s just that I’m basically the lone Viking left manning the Valhalla ship.”
“David, we need an album. Soon. Besides, a new one will help sell the old one.”
“It’s not like I can make an album by myself.”
He continued like he hadn’t heard me.
“And you still have your touring obligation. We put out one record and so we’ve got to get you guys going on a tour and a second one. At the very least you need to tour this summer, get your name out there. You don’t even need the whole band for that. Otherwise, all of you are in violation of the contract, a legally binding contract.”
I thought of John romancing some poli-sci major by the Sof-Serv ice cream machine in the university cafetorium, chatting her up after handing her a flyer for the next Smokey the Band jamfest. And me, every day, toiling away in this place. Clock in. Shelve books. Man the register. My every action accompanied by the endless loop of Paul Simon’s voice, one world beat Möbius strip of sound. I tapped a paper clip against the desk.
“Uh … excuse me … can you help me find a book?”
A customer. And a jingling sound, like the help bell that only true assholes ever rang. It wasn’t loud enough to be the bell, though. It sounded like some distant reindeer herd.
Was it Santa Claus from the mall?
I sighed. Why can’t people just browse?
“Sean, I promise I’ll talk to the guys. I’ve got to go.”
“Remember: legally binding.”
I hung up. The jingling bells still reverberated across the help desk. How was that going to work?, I thought. Who ever heard of a one man metal band, live and on tour?
“Can I help you?” I hissed, my paper clip now a mangled mess.
The stress was getting to me. I needed to cut down on coffee, free or not. A Renaissance fair refugee stood in front of me. It wasn’t Santa from the mall, but it could have been one of his elves. This guy, short and Latino, wore a billowy frilly smock of the kind last sported by Percy Shelley. He’d topped the smock with a brown leather vest fringed with tiny bells. He was dressed to board frigates.
A taffeta headscarf, cut from a flag, or maybe a blood red prom dress, contained a shock of wild black hair. He’d cinched the scarf, Rambo style, right above his thick black eyebrows. A plaited ponytail hung halfway down his back.
“I’m looking for a book.” He was courteous, his voice more cultivated than the average Miamian. He sounded as suave as George Hamilton looks.
“It’s called The White Goddess. It’s by Robert Graves.”
“Graves … Graves ….” I typed the name into the computer. I could feel his hard stare at my chest. I had on an old Candlemass shirt, the one for Ancient Dreams. I got it when John and I first started playing music together. He and Phil had it on gatefold vinyl, put a couple songs on those early mix tapes, and I thought the cover, an Edenic garden scene, sky blue and gold, taken from some 19th century painting, looked so classy in contrast to the therapy art used for so many other album covers.
Something the parents would approve of, I’d thought at the time. Something to show them the piano and guitar lessons had been worth it. They’d almost canceled them when I sat at the dinner table in the first metal shirt I’d bought, a Slayer shirt with a throned goat presiding over a trio of bishops bobbing in boiled blood.
“I like your shirt.”
“Thanks,” I said absently, scanning the computer screen. “Graves … here it is. Mythology. Follow me.”
I stepped around the desk. His costume was comprehensive. He wore fringed knee-high moccasins. As we walked across the store, he swished and jangled like a belled cat. He even had a brass bell hanging from one ear. He had a tiny acoustic guitar, ukulele-sized, but with a compact, nearly triangular body, strapped to his back. I’d never seen a guitar quite like it; I wondered how it played.
“Are you into Lore?”
The way he said it, I thought he meant a band. “Lore.” It sounded doomy, like Candlemass. Something forlorn and direful.
He didn’t let me answer.
“You seem like you might be. Not many people are, these days.”
“Lore?”
“You know, the imaginary, the stories and images that never really die, but keep repeating, even here in this ridiculous city. That’s a Thomas Cole painting on your shirt. ‘The Course of Empire.’ He would have loved painting this place, shown it swallowed by the sea.”
If you’re not from Miami, you’d be surprised how many locals hate the place. And not just the ones, like me, indentured to its service economy. We stopped at the mythology section, a shoulder-high half shelf topped with a plastic ivy in a “Greek urn” and a squat stone gargoyle, the bestial offspring of a bowling ball and a garden gnome.
I scanned the shelf, found the book, and handed it to him. It wasn’t hard to find. The spine was bright yellow with black writing, like a traffic sign.
“I’ve been looking for this for a while. I thought I’d have to special order it.” He started flipping through the pages.
“What’s it for?” He’d sparked my curiosity. The book was thick. It looked serious. Unlike most of the books people actually bought, it had no pictures, except for a sketch of some weird symbols, three ladies, a snake, a pentagram, on the cover.
“I’m doing a bit of reading for a tattoo I’m getting. It’s going to be of the Ouroboros, here, around my heart.”
“The Ouroboros?” I had no clue. It sounded like the name of a sandwich. An Ouroboros deluxe, extra pickles.
“You’ve never heard of it?”
“No. What is it?”
“A mythical creature. No—more importantly—it is the mythical creature, the creature at the center of every story, a creature that lies at the center of the underworld and the heart of the empyreal sphere. A creature that does both simultaneously whilst roiling beneath the toiling waves of the ocean.”
I stepped back. Dude used the word “whilst.” Another very un-Miamian move.
“It’s the serpent that lives in the water, that marks the equator, not dead but dreaming, the tip of its tail in its fang-filled jaws. When it awakes, it will drown this city.”
Just then, Lisa stormed past.
“David, are you on break?”
“No.”
“This isn’t the time for personal conversations.”
“He’s a customer.”
“If you’ve finished helping the customer, we need you in the back room. A shipment of books just arrived.”
She hustled past, her hair helmet swinging like a clock pendulum on speed.
I wanted to talk more to this guy. He told me his name was Juan. He said he’d be in the cafe, reading.
I wanted to ask him about that guitar.
• • •
Joe has C. V. Hunt on the show and they talk about extreme horror, running small presses, Hunt's great books, and more.
You can contact the show at noisemakerjoe@gmail.com - Just put WTR in the subject line.
Contact for C. V. Hunt
Twitter: @CVHunt
Website: http://www.authorcvhunt.com/
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Art photo by Arielle Tipa
Chapter 6
The grocery store parking lot was a nightmare of honking horns and pedestrians who either looked lost or angry as they pushed their bounty to their cars or, in some cases, toward the bus stop ten feet from the door. The horde of people was mainly comprised of angry tricenarians dressed like teenagers from fifteen fashion seasons past or quadragenarians rode so hard on prescription pill abuse, alcoholism, and sheer depression they looked either homeless or thirty years older than what they actually were.
I maneuvered my car around a homeless man standing beside an empty parking spot. He held a cardboard sign with ‘will incert things in my anus for fuud’ printed in very straight and neat script which indicated any money given to him might actually be used for something useful and he wasn’t experiencing withdrawals from whatever drug of choice most people in Daxton chose to numb themselves with. I avoided making eye contact with the man with the sign as I exited my car and made my way quickly and cautiously across the parking lot.
I dodged out of the path of a few cars with raging drivers who honked at me and screamed for me to get out of the fucking way. But escaping the rampaging paths of the pedestrians with carts was always more difficult.
One woman who looked like she’d lifted herself off a barroom floor before coming to the store braced the handle of her cart, glared at me, and came rushing at me. I jumped to the right and she corrected her cart to keep me in target. I dove to the left, fell, and did a half summersault before righting myself. She missed me and plowed the cart full force into the back of someone’s car.
Her head snapped in my direction and she spat, “Crazy bitch! Didn’t you see me?! Get the fuck out of the way!”
“Sorry!” I said and took off in a half jog toward the store.
A woman who looked like a rabid soccer mom was next. Her bobbed and stacked haircut was accentuated with multiple unnatural chunky streaks, each streak a different shade of natural hair color, none of which were her own. She braced the handle of her shopping cart like a linebacker and came barreling at me. I rolled across the hood of someone’s car at the last second to avoid being hospitalized while the woman screamed, “What the fuck is the matter with you?!”
I managed to make it to the door without being trampled by one of the many angry shoppers as they made their way to their vehicles. I was almost hit by a car as I played a Frogger-like game at the last stretch of asphalt separating the parking lot from the semi safety of the store’s sidewalk.
As I reached the doors a man’s voice rose out of the chaos.
“Miss! Miss! Miss!”
At first I ignored him. I couldn’t imagine someone using the endearing term to refer to me. Miss was what one would call a pretty and young girl. Not an overweight, forty-year-old woman. But the man’s insistence increased as I was about to cross over the threshold and into the store.
“Miss! Miss! Miss!”
I turned and spotted a rail-thin man approaching from the direction of the bus stop. He wore a baseball cap, an oversized baseball jersey, and satiny basketball shorts. The sensors for the doors I was standing in front of triggered and opened the glass doors and I managed to move out of the way just as another shopper hurled out of the store with their cart and screamed obscenities at me.
The man stopped five feet from me and said, “Miss, do you happen to have a cigarette?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t smoke.”
His face twisted into fury. “Well, you’re a fucking bitch.”
“Okay,” I said and entered the store.
The entryway to the store where the shopping carts were normally stored was empty except for a handful of ransacked racks that normally housed some local free papers, three kiddie vending machines someone had shattered the glass to and emptied, and a few broken carts. I picked the cart with the most amount of wheels—which totaled three since the front right one was missing—and struggled with it as I entered the store.
The din of the parking lot could not compare to the cacophony of noise inside the store. The first thing I was confronted with were the checkout lanes which was a mob of cashiers and customers bitching at each other, mingled with the sound of several wailing children. I tried to make quick work of passing the area but the absence of the fourth wheel on my cart made moving quickly impossible. I was forced to pull back on the handle on the left side to keep the front end of the cart from dragging on the floor.
At the end of the row of checkout lanes a man wearing either a police uniform or a security uniform resembling a local police officer’s uniform was beating an elderly woman relentlessly with a night stick while she lay on the floor surrounded by broken and smashed produce, shielding herself with her arm.
I passed the beating and barreled into the produce section. I threw some overpriced and wilted lettuce in the cart along with some slightly moldy tomatoes. I gave up on the produce section once a man decided to repeatedly ram his cart into mine and call me a cunt because my cart happened to be sitting in the exact spot he wanted to stand so he could stare at the carrots.
Next was the bread. Two men were fist fighting in the bread aisle. There was no bread on the shelves but several loaves were on the floor, smashed and trampled and flecked with blood as the two men relentlessly pounded each other’s faces. The fate of the bread was becoming more compromised by the handful of other shoppers tromping down the aisle and picking through the wreckage. I became one of those people and snagged up a loaf of unmarred bread without inspecting it and later found out it was stale and moldy potato bread.
I emerged from the aisle and found myself in the meat and deli section. There was a line of people shouting at the deli employees. And I spotted a person clad in all black with a black umbrella, which hid their face, standing by the greenish cuts of beef, motionless. I pushed and pulled my cart in their direction. I grabbed handfuls of random half-spoiled meat and tossed them in the cart, trying to get a look at the figure’s face. I was certain it was the same person living in the shed even though I hadn’t gotten a look at their face then. But the figure managed to turn and disappear into the crowd, keeping their face hidden from me the whole time. Someone rammed my cart with their own and I knew it was time for me to move on.
We needed toilet paper but I wasn’t able to find it since the store had taken to rearranging the location where everything was stocked on a weekly basis. I did happen to find some napkins, which would have to do, after I abandoned my cart for a few brief seconds and squeezed by a group of three shoppers who’d decided to stop in the middle of the aisle, blocking any other shoppers from passing, to have a conversation. They’d become engrossed in their own conversation and grown oblivious to their surroundings. I’d shouted ‘excuse me’ five times before sidling by them. I was certain I would be able to pass them without any incident because they seemed unaware of me but one of the people from the group glared at me on the return pass while I held the napkins above my head and tried not to disturb them.
I grabbed a handful of random canned goods from the shelves I passed, struggling with the integrity of my cart and fending off other aggressive shoppers, and made my way toward the end of the store.
A small child sat on top of a shelf and threw cans of tuna at the shoppers, laughing hysterically if he happened to hit one in the head. He didn’t manage to hit me but he did deposit several cans in my cart. I passed a large man choking a woman as she hit him in the head with a package of diapers and an infant wailed wildly in an abandoned cart. Once I made it to the end of the store I knew I was at the worst part before the checkout lanes . . . the pharmacy.
A man was shouting at someone cowering behind the counter in the pharmacy pickup area while waving around a lit cigarette. Someone with a backpack and a ski mask hopped the counter and started shoving random bottles of pills into their bag. The other pharmacy technicians pelted the masked person with random bottles and objects within their reach.
Shoppers in the raided aisles of the over-the-counter medicine and aids and bandages shouted random questions at the workers in the pharmacy.
A woman shouted, “I have herpes! Will calamine make my vag stop itching?!”
An old man shouted, “Can I swallow suppositories?! I’m not an ass pirate and I’m not sticking anything in my ass!”
Another person. “I have a rash!”
And another. “My kid has a fever of a hundred and seven!”
The masked man raiding the pharmacy pulled a firearm from the band of his pants and waved it around. The technicians all hit the floor. The shoppers continued their endless questioning as I hurriedly passed the havoc.
“What’s causing this rash?!”
“Where’s the lube?! My pussy is really dry!”
“Oh, god! I just shit myself!”
I made it to the checkout lanes before I heard the gunshots and screams. I held onto the cart handle and put my head down, anticipating what would happen next. Half of the people in the store rushed toward the doors in a panic, knocking over the display cases for energy drinks and trampling small children and the elderly in the process. Most of the shoppers on line to check out abandoned their carts and joined the mob.
“Amateurs,” I muttered to myself.
The group of people milling about on the observation deck above the front doors cheered. A woman in an evening gown, draped in expensive furs, raised her champagne glass and laughed loudly as she watched the mass of people below her. A man in a tuxedo beside her raised a paper ticket and was shouting he had the correct time stamp as a few other men around him crumbled their tickets and puffed on their cigars. A servant wearing a tux with tails approached the luxurious couple with a covered silver platter. He lifted the lid and exhibited banded stacks of cash and displayed the platter to the ticket-holding man with a flourish. The woman picked up one of the stacks of cash and rubbed it against her face with an expression of pure ecstasy and I wasn’t able to hear her over the din but I imagined she was moaning as she did so.
When the dust had cleared and the people who had rushed the doors were gone the employees hidden under the registers slowly lifted their heads, checking to make sure it was all clear. They didn’t bother to make sure the shooter was gone. The shooter most definitely had disappeared into the mob anyway. The employees were only checking to make sure the stampede was over.
I wasn’t the only person who’d taken their chance and stayed. One dirty and disheveled woman had continued to haggle with the cashier about the price of a can of corn as if she were at a flea market instead of a grocery store.
The dirty woman berated her cashier. “I don’t care if it scans seventy-five cents! I’m only paying fifty cents for that! It has a small tear in the label!”
A female cashier who appeared exhausted and wore smudged blue eyeliner and had slicked back her hair into a high ponytail emerged from under the register. “Ma’am, you can’t barter for your groceries.”
“These prices are ridiculous! I demand to see the manager!”
“You have demanded to see the manager after every item I’ve scanned up to this point because you don’t want to pay the stickered price. And I will give you the same answer I gave you when I scanned the previous”—the cashier turned to look at her screen—“thirty-seven items. Our manager quit over a week ago. If you have an issue you need to call our corporate headquarters.”
“Fine!”
The cashier placed the can of corn in the accumulating bags and grabbed the next item, which appeared to be the second to last item in the woman’s order. She scanned the item and the dirty woman went on another tirade of refusing to pay the price the computer had displayed and demanding to see the manager.
I left my cart and began clearing the carts out of one lane with a waiting cashier.
When the other woman was told her total she began to haggle that price also. And then they moved on to her twenty expired coupons.
Once I had all but one cart out of the way I swept the remaining items of someone’s abandoned purchase into the cart with my arm before roughly shoving the cart out of the lane.
The employee stationed there was a pimple-faced kid. Or maybe he was covered in meth sores. It was hard to tell anymore. He watched me with a scowl as I fought to push my three-wheeled cart through the rubble.
I unloaded my cart onto the conveyer and told the cashier to start a new sale as multiple sirens grew louder outside. The customer in the other lane asked if she could write a check and the group of people on the observation deck broke out into a fit of hysterics.
Joe has Mike Kleine on the show and they talk about showing results, plays, video games, categorization, life, and more.
You can contact the show at noisemakerjoe@gmail.com - Just put WTR in the subject line.
Contact for Mike Kleine
Twitter: @thefancymike
Website: https://www.mikekleine.org/
Contact for Joe bielecki
Twitter and Instagram: @noisemakerjoe
Website
Patreon
Art photo by Arielle Tipa
The artist appears around 11:16PM.
There’s smoke and fog and haze and purple lights.
The artist begins his set with what Andre would later describe to Sara as, “Soft and simple music.”
Just floating Farfisa organ sounds and scattered swatches of heavily reverbed pads. Almost like a sound check. A lot of it, unassuming.
(Let it be said,) Andre is not impressed.
And then it picks up a little bit, after a few minutes. And the music itself turns out to be pretty good. Andre realizes that in a live setting, the artist’s music is nothing like the iTunes tracks he previewed.
The music becomes much more powerful. More immediate. Visceral, even. Almost palpable.
The music is loud and enormous.
Onstage, the artist’s setup is minimal. You might never think a table with just a handful of custom synths, a Farfisa organ, some cassette decks and a few effects pedals could produce such great sounds.
Andre stares hard at the artist.
Compared to a more dynamic performance, from like, say a rock & roll band or even a full orchestra, watching one man on stage for something like ninety minutes, just pushing buttons and turning knobs might seem like an uninteresting activity to the layperson but to Andre, this was heaven.
The cold electronic blips, the distant ambient washes, the high definition surround-sound atmospherics, the languid synth swells, the deep rumblings of the Farfisa organ, the over-saturated tape hiss, the drippy cavernous echoes, the other-worldly wind chime sounds, the hazy buzzing effects, the hushed murmur and din of unintelligible human voices and side-conversations (happening), the waves of static—it doesn't matter to Andre anymore what anyone has to say about music.
This artist is a prophet!
It’s at this point that Andre begins to have a moment of higher consciousness.
He closes his eyes and succumbs to the ambiance of it all. He lets the sounds transport him to distant places.
Andre thinks about the universe, his essay, about his interminable desire for recognition, about his unrequited love for all things music, his passion for deep research, about all his failings and abandoned projects, his broken dreams, his student loans, his noticeable lisp, his receding hairline and about everything Marfa said.
He sees planets, a parallel universe with colours extending far beyond the visual spectrum, a place that should not exist (where Andre and everyone else is made of metal and archaic circuitry), images upon images of broken statuettes and floor plans of destroyed museums.
Andre sees the beginning of the universe, hears planets exploding, witnesses black holes disappearing (and then reappearing), more planets exploding, moons and atmospheres and rain clouds and dust storms and undiscovered pressure systems and earthquakes and tsunamis and interminable warp barriers.
Andre tries to open his eyes, in an attempt (albeit futile) to escape these (to him) terrible visions, (as he now feels as if he is about to have another panic attack) but all Andre can see when he opens his eyes, is fire and smoke and clouds and dust and bright lights.
And then all of a sudden, almost out of nowhere, bass sounds exit the room and what’s left is pure static, empty warped cassette tape and the intermittent sound of a fog horn, all warbled and masked and obfuscated by sheets and layers of dense pink and white noise. And then nothing else.
Andre feels like he can’t breathe.
He grabs at his face because it hurts so much.
The artist bows to the crowd.
Andre cries.
Joe has Katie Dooley on the show and they talk about the recent Sherman Alexie scandal, instagram poetry, editing (or lack thereof), poetry, and more.
You can contact the show at noisemakerjoe@gmail.com - Just put WTR in the subject line.
Contact for Katie Dooley
Twitter: @katielisabeta
Contact for Joe bielecki
Twitter and Instagram: @noisemakerjoe
Art photo by Arielle Tipa
These Homes Were Once A Dream
by Katie Dooley
until the ghosts took over.
I thought I emptied my jar of ashes because god knows
how often I fall asleep with my hands
wrist-deep in soot.
I didn’t want to kill
the photo version of myself
but she wouldn’t stop haunting me,
tapping on my skull until I unlocked
the door next to my temple. I do not know how to let go
of promises. I take them to bed
and let them die.
I had to stop making them in fear of oversaturation.
I love the popping
sound punctured blood makes
but I can’t admit that.
Out loud, I’ll say I love red roses.
Even when I don’t. Even if I do,
I pretend to push everyone away
like a revolving door and I have done my job
right when at night I see my shadow pacing alone
against the wallpaper. This house
might’ve once been a dream but I don’t dream about home.
I think about leaving but the ghosts need company
to prevent complaints from neighbors.
Joe has B. R. Yeager on the show and they talk about audience, the process, noise music, call centers, and more.
You can contact the show at noisemakerjoe@gmail.com - Just put WTR in the subject line.
Contact for B. R. Yeager
Twitter: @br_yeager
Contact for Joe bielecki
Twitter and Instagram: @noisemakerjoe
Art photo by Arielle Tipa
The End In Lists
by B.R. Yeager
13 Videos Of Idiots Getting Owned By Pit Bulls
8 Sure Shot Ways To Ruin Your Job Interview
5 Photos of Dictators As Children
19 Public Displays Of Affection That Will Make You Hate Your Situation
5 Of The Earth's Fastest-Adapting Diseases
10 Reasons Drinking At Work Makes You More Productive
13 Photos of The Worst Cities In America
23 Sexy Actresses Who Died Too Young
5 Of The Dumbest Ways People Are Hording Water
6 Signs Your Neighbor Will Probably Invade Your Home
30 Pictures of Teens 'Doing It' At Prom
8 Movie Stars Who've Run People Over With Their Cars
15 Videos of Animal Abuse That Will Make You Bawl
10 Reasons You Should Embrace Poverty
23 Photos Taken Seconds Before Their Subject Died
17 Back Alley Plastic Surgery Procedures That Will Give You Night Terrors
5 Videos of Drought Fires That Will Blow Your Mind
12 Professions That Will Make You Chronically Ill
11 Haunted Graveyards And The Things You Should Never Do In Them
7 Pictures Of Children Who Played With Firearms
27 Animals That Have Gone Extinct Since You Were Born
21 Teen Selfies That Will Make You Want To Die
13 Drugs That Might Make You Shave Off Your Genitals
5 Machines Making Your Career Obsolete
22 Photos Of The Least Inhabitable Places On Earth
5 Colleges With Higher Suicide Rates Than Salt Lake City
11 Fruits That Won't Exist In 2021
5 Of The Weirdest Paintings of War Criminals
10 People Who Made Terrible Decisions In Life
7 Reasons You Shouldn't Swim In Stagnant Bodies Of Water