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bone tax viii

october 2014

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Featuring

Poems & Art by

John BeerKevin SampsellWendy BourgeoisZosia Wiatr

Photography by

Jeannie Yoon

Bone Tax is

Ross RobbinsZachary Cosby

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John Beer

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My main advice to Heidegger would benot to become a Nazi. But you cantlive somebodys life for them. I learned thatyesterday, Id just finished another story,

it had the same basic idea as all my stories,guy travels a long distance to visit his oldcollege roommate, they go to the Angels Share,but I always call it the Angel Hair, because(namedrop alert) I think of Lewis Warshas a bit of a mentor, they talk about thatmysterious professor of symbology,soon the room begins to blur, by the way,Antonio, the roommate, tells him,you can come back to my apartment, but youshould know, theres kind of a problem,

my dead sisters buried under the floor,and the more I think about it, the more Im suretonights the night shell be clawing her wayback up. Hotels in Manhattan beingsuper expensive, they end up at the apartment.

Its not the greatest story.

The One Where I Go Down with the Ship

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After I threw it away,a call came that Id been expecting.

You think youre making decisions. You walkthrough the forest trying to follow the sun.You listen to a tape of yourself a decade oldsaying the exact same words, but you cant tellwho youre talking to. The voice cracks,

starts receding. Every nightclub,every school the scene of a crime.

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Next year the new devices promise to be real game-changers.Whatever you need to know you can pull from the cloud.You can meet anybody. Step into a market, step into the park,

step into a darkened rehearsal space. A long time agounimaginable fire swept over the face of the earth.Every breath a reminder, a holocaust averted.Yesterday I held out my arm. Remember how somebody smiled,someone passing on the bus. You have to keep living.Some infinities are larger than others. Georg Cantor proved that.He died in a sanatorium. He died before you were born.

Nobody can tell what one person means to another.Step into the bedroom. Her glasses on the table.You might need to take a break. It starts to seem like yesterdaywill swallow tomorrow. Im washing a frying pan.

Stay

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You dont have to give me any more reasons. Thats the definitionof poetry. Across the street theyre playing soccer

until the cloud cover gets a little threatening. Right now somebodyslooking into somebody elses eyes. You can changeyour future except you cant even change your past.

The street where you were born blocked by construction.Today youll probably get a friendly message from someoneyou barely remember. Maybe they need a favor youre not exactlyprepared for. They might need a ride or to borrow a soap dish.

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I walked a dozen milesA dozen miles toward some kind of townMy hygiene got questionable

Search terms love money happinessNothing buys you nothing but a searchI could walk a thousand milesIm writing to register a complaintYou dont think it applies to youSome sentences can never be finishedI was walking one step then anotherLater thats me waiting for a roomNothing buys you nothing and thats that

A sky with two clouds three cloudsHave you ever ended upThe language I was telling you about

I Dont Have a Friend in This World

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I spent my life a question to myselfI could have walked another twenty miles

Have you ever

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Kevin Sampsell

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I found an octopusin my closetHe was dehydratedSo I gave him water

Let him eatone of my fingersI picked a bad oneHe saidit tasted likea shoe

Octopus Fingers

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I found a dogin the swimming poolhe saidwhere are your lips

I mumbledI dont knowI made it looklike I didnt have lipsMy teeth talked at him

Dog Lips

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Youre not as Norwegianas you soundhairy bushblacking out

an array of ear muffsiceto keep you warmsnowto melt intothe shape ofa fat leg

Melted Snow

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I think this fruit smoothieis giving me a heart attackIt reminds me of when

I had a strokeopening a candy bar

Strawberry

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Youre not as Norwegianas you soundhairy bushblacking out

an array of ear muffsiceto keep you warmsnowto melt intothe shape ofa fat leg

Melted Snow

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I think this fruit smoothieis giving me a heart attackIt reminds me of when

I had a strokeopening a candy bar

Strawberry

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Memoirs of 46

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Wendy Bourgeois

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Guard dogs and the Irish Curse keep watchOver the hearts kitchen, the cunts oven. DumbLuck and Perseverance Tell me a story in whichOne or the other walks to the back fence some

Evening to feed the rabbits while the stars riseIn simple language, please.It doesnt have to be so hard but it is feisty Itdoes go down swinging. It doesnt mean to.Its kind of like a Neil Young song in there, resignAnd the same fifty pages. Wet earth. Buried body.

Only the meanest dog can smell what makesThe dahlias grow. Barefoot or high heelsThats how she roll Yes theres always somethingFunny in my poems. Things die. NobodyUnderstands how bleak loyalty is save hell hounds

And single moms popping Xanax in the sunriseWe are all ants in the peanut butter they hum in chorusIn a thousand terrible rentals overlooking the freeway.Little children make men eventually, and your mother

Loves you so much she would let you eat her.

Intimacy is Creepy

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Zosia Wiatr

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The universe conceivedan image of handsthen, without them,meticulously crafteda brain. It turned out sloppy,but beautiful.

Then of its own accord,a neurotoxinexisted, which soon thereafter

found utilityas weapon.

The universe flipped overto regard

such delicate violenceto intelligence,

From After Eve A. Laramees Dustball as Model of theUniverse

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fabulous architectureof perception, bulb ofa white flowercarefully un-blooming overand over.

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Eurydice could place a shadowanywhere, like Kid Pix stampsor Virna Haffers desolate chair,or every forest branchand all sunlight.Orpheus would sing them eachinto movement.

Distracted by nakednessor succumbed to wallowing,

his melodies made the shadowsgo madthey shot ice into earth

at the edge of civilization,who walked toward it with shovels,

with brushes, with charcoal, with trowels,

bows, umbrellas, keys, and telescopes,with arms, with ambiguousdetermination, proclaiming

Lyre Spots

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to be masterfulbut not a masteris arts outrageous imperative.

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John Beeris the author of The Waste Land and Other Poems(Canarium, 2010), which won the Norma Farber First Book

Award from the Poetry Society of America and the chapbookLucinda (SPORK, 2013). A graduate of the Iowa Writers

Workshop, he lived on the Greek island of Patmos for two yearsin the late 1990s, where he served as literary assistant to RobertLax. Beer edited a collection of poems by Robert Lax, Poems(1962-1997) (Wave Books, 2013). He currently teaches creativewriting at Portland State University.

Kevin Sampsell is the author of the novel, This Is BetweenUs, and the memoir, A Common Pornography, as well as shortstory collections, and various chapbooks. He runs the press,

Future Tense Books, and also writes a column about collage art(called Paper Trumpets) for The Rumpus.

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Wendy Bourgeoisis a mom, a published poet, and a creativewriting and comp teacher. Her writing regularly appears inPropeller, and she likes to write letters.

Zosia Rose Wiatrwrites poems and works in a small bookshopin Portland, OR. She earned a degree in poetics and 19th c.French cultural history from The Evergreen State College. Herpoems exist in a handful of journals, most recently Weekday,

Lexicon Polaroid, and Jerkpoet.

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