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April 28, 2007
Update: Market Listing at Duotrope
As of yesterday Lingua is listed as a fledgling market at Duotrope. If you're already reading this, you probably don't need to go read our details, but check out this fabulous site aimed at helping writers and editors find each other.
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April 17, 2007
untitled by Ilya *revised*
with every step I take. I wonder how old it is, and imagine it being poured some twenty or thirty years ago.
“Excuse me; do you know where Liberty Street is?” The voice is light and sharp. I am brought back into reality and give my attention to this disturbance.
She looks like her voice, with a fine nose, smiling eyes, and light, untamed hair. I’m not sure what she was looking for that day, and I never remembered to ask. Sometimes you know right away… I have found my muse! I think about how I felt twelve years ago, when life seemed full of promise and
potential. Writing wasn’t even on my radar back then. I just knew that I had to share my inner world, my perception of our reality, with others. They didn’t see it the way I did, but they could! If only I could show them! I struggled through college until I settled on writing – I can’t draw, and I don’t have the patience needed to play or write music. All the arts are too imprecise anyway. Every painting can be interpreted in many different ways, and the only way to get across the right idea is to write a good title, or even an
explanation.
But throughout it all, I felt that I was only learning, practicing, and improving. I was preparing myself for the real thing. But after years of practiceruns, I could bear it no longer. I decided that I’ve had enough practice, and that I needed a fresh start to do some real writing. So I topped. I let my relationships lapse through inaction. And I moved to Virginia, where nobody knew me. Pretty standard “finding yourself” stuff.
I point her to Liberty Street, but keep the conversation going, and we go out for coffee, and then back to my house.
Making love to her is like being in the mountains; She is pure and sensual, and unafraid. She is eternal. She is sure of her own substance. She knows that this is one brief moment when it is insane to worry or hold yourself back.
The rest of the universe stops in its tracks to watch in awe.
We continue to see each other. We exchange life resumes. I tell her about my short-lived writing career. She tells me about temp jobs, renting month-to-month, and moving often – by choice; She has lived in more places than I have visited.
I note that she is clean for a gypsy. In fact, she is strangely clean in general. I ask her if hygeine is a passion of hers, and she laughs this off, as if it's nothing.
She seems to respect the idea of writing for a living.
This Thursday, it will have been exactly three months since we’ve met. I haven’t written a word. This doesn’t bother me.
I bring her flowers and reservations to a nice restaurant. I think she appreciates the cheesy gesture.
Her temp job at an engineering firm runs out, and she takes one at the town newspaper, and then a company that installs alarms in people’s houses. She tells me anecdotes about people who take their jobs too seriously. The sinuous quality of her skin, the almost plastic gleam, has spread to her hair.
When the alarm company job ends, she takes a break and we drive across the country. We have a destination, but we make many detours. She shows me places she has lived, and others along the way. We sleep in the back of her station wagon.
The gas stations, diners, grocery stores all blend together. My collection of supermarket membership keychains doubles after a year-long standstill.
We sit around in diners and talk for hours. Sometimes just us, but more often whoever we happen to run into that’s also looking to talk. The conversations, the diners, all coated in this mysterious sheen, this glow around the edges of all objects.
When we return – only three weeks later – my house feels foreign and small. Not just my house, but the street, the town. It feels like I have been away for years. I am startled, and I think that I may finally be able to write something that I’m content with. I try for a week straight, until I realize that I no longer want to write at all.I am content with being the only one to see the world through my eyes. I’d ratherjust see it together with her! I am ecstatic with this revelation. I’m in love! Fuck everything else!
I run out of my designated office room. She’s gone, and on my kitchen counter, I notice this mysterious pile of abaster twine…
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April 15, 2007
Liquefaction by Jesse Geno
It all seems so primitive, traveling along the various above-ground tracks and suspended docks, rock jetties—certain Connecticut towns daring to construct their piers a few feet higher than average. Haughty, if you ask me. All the darling little islands are a certain reminder of the impending liquefaction. You know if they put it in the Globe, they must have something planned. I imagine the big dig turning into Nine Eleven Two, anther national scandal turned insidious and mythical through having made an acronym. “The BD” old people will say, and sigh, thinking back to the times when they weren't old but young, and looking forward to the bright future promised them by various gleaming-tooth politicians. A symbol of Boston's progress. Predictably all gone to shit.
The marshes seem easy enough; all the discovery channel programs I’ve watched tell me that fish absolutely love moss. The trees (so valued in fall for their predictable decline—like clockwork) will perhaps provide temporary luxury accomodations. Perhaps killer sharks love living in trees.
The real pathetic thing about all this is the mobile homes sitting squat and frightened under the constant watch of Rich Hill Dwellers. You know the people living in the mobile homes have little to no capacity to actually move the things. I highly doubt any white trash or white trash populist politician is going to suggest pre-emptive floaters for all the low income housing.
The man across the aisle is staring into the abyss and laughing, laughing. Maybe that's Bill Hicks on his itunes but I don't see any headphone cords; I don't see anything but the slabs of land floating at ridiculous angles along the turbulent coast.
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April 4, 2007
High Ground by Lacy Stuart
some books i stole from libraries
and people i don't like
they are spending the summer getting mouldy
and i'd move them
its not like my karma's gettin wet
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