The Apple Tree In Back

The Apple Tree In Back

My Dramatic Life As A Shut In

My Dramatic Life As A Shut In

In A Way

In A Way

Pine Trees

Pine Trees.

Live On Evil

The Latest and Greatest Surreal Drama Unfolds
Part One of Our Three Part Ensemble

LIVE ON EVIL

Glimpses of a Summertime

I've been outside for a while now.
Here are some of the more visceral fragments of this place when there's some sun that hits it.-Adam Tierney-



-Sarah McCarty-

Finals Diary

No Direction Home

For me, right now, home is a four hundred mile stretch of farms and fields. St. Paul, to Madison, to Chicago. Three cities, three bright lights. They buckle tightly across the heartland like Orion's Belt. I am lost somewhere along them, a ghost on 94 south bound with my heart all torn up in where I was and where I am going to be. There is the cold hard wood of my parents house. It smells like home. In Madison Wisconsin I walk through a surreal half-life where I know every face. In Chicago I hold my oldest friends in my arms and I don't want to flee my irresponsible and fast paced days in the city.

The St. Paul brickyards are just across the river from downtown. They are old, abandoned. Little children hike there trying to find fossils; the whole riverbed used to be submerged. There are little shelters, old buildings, from when they made bricks there and the train tracks still run alongside the river. The buildings have all broken down, leaving skeletal remains, chimneys leading to nowhere. I come back there every season, with my friends I build a fire and sit, in the snow or the leaves. I look across the river at the city I grew up in. The first bank building still flashing 1 in red neon. It's a comforting thing. When we're all back in the city it's like a little lie we all believe in. We walk in single file and laugh our hardest. It's as if we'll never leave our roots again, and when we do, our nonchalance portends the fleeting nature of our reunions. We trust that we'll convene again.

Lila ash, tells me that home is a place that only exists in her dreams for now, because she has not found it in reality. She sent me these two images to my Madison address. On March 26th, when we were both in this city for the same minute, we walked around a block in downtown Madison twice, looking for access to this house, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright:

I don't know what Lila dreams about, when she dreams about home.
I dream about a house like this,
the river and the lakes,
and the people I walked with.

long long ago.

THE GOOD OLD DAYS
I firmly believe that there was a time, age gone by you call it, when I would have found myself traveling through the ragged rural towns of southern Minnesota in an old jalopy. In a cheap vest and pants that left off a little high on my shins, I would stroll gallantly into the most bustling county fairs; I love something about the scent of fresh corndogs. Popping open my trunk I would soapbox about my finer wares: some toys for children, a miraculous machine from the impending future, or a miracle nostrum of my own invention, resting impotent, green and sickly in an old tonic bottle. I would stay until I grew sick of the flashing lights and screaming children, the loud carnival sounds, and the cotton candy sugar in the air. Or they would chase me out, mistrusting something about my patchy beard or the way my eyes twinkled. Then I would drive home around dusk to pass my time in a dark bar under a neon sign: “The Commodore,” buzzing on and off and on, in sleepy St. Paul Minnesota.
Or you could just call it “The 20s”
This is exactly the realm of my mind that Paulina Schemanski inhabits.

Paulina carries this air, as if she was straight out of a pulpy fiction rag, the kind I read on my living room floor when I’m putting off the “real” literature. It goes beyond her stoic beauty or the way she effortlessly dresses in only black. Paulina’s rugged independence and simultaneous unbridled femininity allude to a time gone by, before make-up was enriched and caked onto apes in laboratories.
I can put it like this: When I’m drinking a beer with her in her kitchen, she can talk freely about how she swoons over the old male authors, as if they weren’t part of the patriarchal cannon. She loves weddings, but doesn’t think she will get married.

All these things shine through in Paulina’s writing and her authoritative grasp upon the English Language. Paulina works as the essay editor of the University of Wisconsin Madison’s undergraduate humanities journal: Illumination as well as working on the poetry staff of The Madison Review.
The last line of this poem, Rain and Water, comes from a story told to Paulina by her boyfriend. A friend of his had decided to jump over a large post, though in attempting it actually injured his testicles. The inconsequential anecdote ended with the sentence “and that was the same day he caught a bird in his hands.” As does the poem.

rain and water
his suitcase overflowed with solid colored t-shirts and
manuscript pages with quarter notes copied
from the broken keyboard
on her carpet floor.

on the threshold:

my knees are aching from standing by you
in this moment before rain.
i’m avoiding getting wet, my darling
and you should do the same.


that was the same day she witnessed
a truck driver eating an apple
and a boy who caught a bird in his hands.

Paulina is studying English at the University of Wisconsin Madison.
Her friends call her Paul. I have it on good authority that she has just purchased a new ribbon for her typewriter.


photos by Logan Jaffe (http://loganjaffe.blogspot.com) care of the facebook.

Harold Shnell Sells Again: The Big Turn Around

Passion! Hope! Sales Maxims!

all these and more...
Harold Shnell Sells Again

A Supermarket in Minnesota

A Supermarket In Minnesota by Adam Tierney

What thoughts I have of this place tonight, the heartland! On my late night walk to the supermarket, feeling lusty and kind in the smaller city.
Am I feeling lost tonight? In between bright and colorful houses of the semi-energetic middle class, dreaming of their hardwood floors.
I had been running my fingers along my own mahogany molding when I had that same hungry notion. Only a few blocks away.
I was a ruddy wanderer once too! Though I was never as gay or as gray as I ought to have been… (I’ve been meaning to tell you why I only write in Russian.)
I got hung up on the revolutionaries.

I said a-HA! but the Mississippi Market was all darkened windows, and I wished after neon fruits.
In my reflection at the window I was dreamy and star-crossed
I stood there naked all night long, admiring the sexual way I grew hair on my chest.
Am I lonely? or am I more lovely this way? I wondered.
There could have been a woman lingering in front of the bulk grains!
Solemnly she would contemplate the Flax or Barley, sweeping her dark, wavy hair back and forth,
she would see me there reflected in her glasses
thinking how refreshing it was to see a man who,
so passionately, refused to enter into markets
She would admire my Walt Whitman beard and the tired qualities of my body,
when at last I would speak to the grain:

Where-O! where-O! might I be blessed at home?
O’er amber waves or in the throws of snow?
Dispel your chaffy garb without remorse,
Swoon through the rye, the miller’s hands are course.

Then waxing at last upon her timid beauty and the wonders of her pale belly, she would not be able to hear me.
I would turn for her, so the moonlight could play wonderfully off my bare buttocks, before whooping and stomping into the night.

Knowing honestly that I was more masculine and American than Charon.
I flexed my boyish muscles above the Great Polluted Mississippi River.

Paresthesia

This is what I've been up to the past week.

Goodnight, Attorney

Glenn Nestor in:
GOODNIGHT, ATTORNEY

A story of intrigue, romance, and litigation

Prologue:

It was an eerie night in the city, the kind of night that gives way to a month of who-knows-what kinda no good. The kind where the only way out is through a dozen doughnuts and a full can of Folders, detoxing with the dame who got you into this mess. Unfortunately she had skipped town, and I felt like I was the same place I’d been for the past thirty-two days. My Italian herringbone vest had a stain on it, and I had a very important deposition in the morning.

My name is Glenn P. Nestor attorney at law; Let’s Rewind a few weeks.

Day-to-Day: Spring has Sprung

Leaving the Lions

The first thing I did was walk down the row of cages, telling each of them their names. I did this in a stern voice so they would remember me well. I started with Vladik, who liked attention, and ended with Aleksey, because he was my favorite. Then I told them about all the times I thought they had failed so I would not have anything weighing on my chest, and after I told them all the times I was most proud—I even told Yadviga how I knew why she was shy in the ring. They looked at me in a very sullen way, and we sat in silence for the last hour, and when it was one o'clock I wept. The tears fell onto my moustache, and I could smell for the last time the old meat and animal fur. I would no longer wake in the night to the sounds of nobel beasts thinking about their captivity. I think they knew my hair was going grey too.
On my way from the door it was dark, their eyes looked like just a flicker of light. Mr. Tarasov told me in English, "Good luck for the journey west."

Natural Tendencies

THE SECRET MOUSE
In the 4th grade we had these two white lab rats, we fed them different things, and observed them over a period of several weeks. We loved the rats, and there was a drawing to choose two lucky students to inherit the little creatures. My most vivid memory of the rats involved my teacher who, when weighing the less fortunate one in a yogurt container, nipped off the tip of its tail when putting the lid on. I remember that it made a squeal, and I can still see the scene playing out in my mind. It made quite a lasting impression on me; we were outraged. Harming those rats was a criminal offence, but after the end of the year, it didn’t really matter anymore.
When a classmate did a project on vertebrates and brought in a mouse to prove some points Sarah McCarty, then 17, managed to hold onto the magic a little longer. She took the demonstrative mouse home where it lived in secrecy in her closet. Sarah wrote this poem about it:

I have a secret mouse.
I saved her from a terrible end.
I brought her to my house.
So she could be my friend.

The mouse lived for about a year, it lost all its hair, fell very ill and died.

Two years later Sarah McCarty’s affinity for the natural and slightly bizarre manifests itself less with secret pets (though she has a few, among them a rather charming snake named Claude) and more with her very talented illustrations. Sarah is a natural. Her work reflects her experiences with friends, pets, other artwork, land, and family. This particular piece comes from a collection entitled “Accordions: As Seen On TV!” an homage of sorts to her grandmother Diane Pautzke. The accordion, Mildred, is one which belongs to Diane. Just one part of her collection of beautiful instruments. The two of them share a special bond, and Sarah has related countless tales about their adventures, one of which details the occasion they pierced their noses together at her grandmother’s home with the aid of some sage and a healing crystal.

THROUGH THE GRAPE VINE
When I asked Sarah to make me something with a story behind it for this zine, she related this to me:
When she was younger a huge tree grew in her backyard in Trevor Wisconsin. There was for one summer a grape vine that grew from the top of it yielding the sweetest and best tasting grapes, she contends, she has had to this day. On one unfortunate night the tree was toppled by a severe storm. Distraught, she climbed the tree the next day and passed its entirety in the toppled tree, mourning, and eating all the grapes she could find.



Sarah McCarty lives in Madison Wisconsin and is studying Art History at the University.
Her grandmother visits frequently.
She still eats grapes.

Getting out of Rockford

Emma Baker was five years older than me. She lived down the street, in a white stucco house owned by her mother. Mrs. Baker worked all the time, but I would see her some Saturday mornings in the front lawn, waiting for her boyfriend smoking a cigarette or reading a magazine. My mother must have felt for Emma because she was prone to bringing her up in a moment of spontaneity. “She’s such a nice girl,” she would mention wistfully. I suppose she’d always wanted a daughter.
It was no surprise then that even after the awkward play dates of our earlier years Emma was ever present in my life. Up until she turned twenty she would be in and out of my house about once a week, a dramatic decline from her daily presence when I was in middle school. Her presence was always simple, bordering on homely. She must have been well read or brainy, because from my understanding she associated little with her peers. After she finished high school, Emma worked at the Burger King. When my friends and I would stop through out on some mischief, she’d wave a small wave at me from the drive through. I didn’t sit with her and play Legos anymore, but some Sundays she would float into the kitchen with an air of purpose and, seeing me there, would stop and smile her wan freckled smile, “Hey Billy-bear.”
The summer after my first year of high school she left Rockford for good. She had finally put together money to start college at Illinois State. The day before she left, Emma told me that I had been like a brother to her, though my fifteen-year-old self felt emotionally unaccomplished. It was a brief farewell, but I remember it clearly, down to the way her straight blond hair hung past her shoulders, making her pretty on our summer lawn. My mother cried those tears of feminine obligation as she hugged Emma, “Be good honey, you’re such a smart girl.”
I only ever saw Emma one time after that, though my mother told me she wrote on and off. It was two days after my thirtieth birthday in a Starbucks on Clark Street (I had moved to Chicago after graduate school). Her familiar smell caught me off guard, and I saw her slip out the door into a grey winter afternoon. As she walked past the window I still saw that warm silence, reassuring like when we watched movies in our pajamas, twenty-five years ago.

Yellow Cloud

(Click it to Read it)

The Short Bug

The tricky creature was sitting on my window sill all morning. It had been sitting there for what felt like days, but my fever accounted for, it was probably closer to a few hours. Its stout qualities were masked by its lengthy antennae and every—I guess four to seven minutes—it would make a strangled click sound. Apart from those two things, the only other insight I gained into my companion's life was when, without warning, it jumped to the dusty end table and promptly drown itself in my glass of cherry 7-up.
Much of my own worldview then was predicated on higher and lower order beings—and seeing as it was just an insect—I was inclined to discredit the whole thing. Even after I had recovered from that short bug, the flu or whatever it was, I did not talk about it much.

Day-to-Day

Day-to-Day:
a semi-autobiographical, semi-surreal, semi-serial comic.

Preface:

Our symptoms is an online storytelling zine focused around significant anecdotes, captivating fiction, lusty comics and all the limitless imaginative breadth of humanity.
enjoy.