RETORT GALLERIES 
Tes One. (click image)
Dameon Priestly (click image)
Katherine Fiedler (click image)
Ray Caesar (Click Image)
|
 MICRO-FICTION  published by Retort Magazine, on March 9, 2010, at 9:34 am
'Fonzi just eats it. He doesn’t even look sad or embarrassed.'Fonzi gets all kinds of shit at school. There’s the name, for one. Everyone thinks it’s hilarious that a Pakistani kid was named after a character on Happy Days. I’ve tried to explain to the other kids that there’s no way that’s true, because Happy Days was a show from the 1970s. Fonzi, like everyone else in our grade, was born in 1992. 1991, at the earliest. If his parents named him after someone on TV, his name would be something like Jesse, after Jesse Katsopolis from Full House. Or Steve, after Urkel from Family Matters. Something current. But it doesn’t matter. The kids in our grade are assholes and they believe what they want to believe. So, when kids see Fonzi in the hallway, they’re always saying stuff like, “Eyyyyy….,” or doing that shit where the real Fonzie looks in the mirror and goes to comb his hair but stops because it looks so good already.
Continue reading FONZI by Thomas Mundt »
POETRY published by Retort Magazine, on March 7, 2010, at 9:50 am
WINTER CURSES
May the heated walls be relentless, pry
on your cold lies until
they shut their ears,
their patience tried.
May Love on your door knock,
disguised as a mocking beggar, dirt
on her snowflaked dress.
May you look down a fishing hole &
see a fair moon, wild stars.
Then, your own reflection.
May summer breezes warm you not.
In winter, everyone’s cold,
& you blazing hot.
Ma ever wrd yu wrte o te now los lettes.
:::::
Continue reading 2 POEMS by Tammy Ho »
MICRO-FICTION published by Retort Magazine, on March 7, 2010, at 9:36 am
Find and Replace
I.
Jen, darling Jen, I will see you no more. There is somebody new.
The fungus toes my soul. Only a flame will check its advance. Your flame smudged itself out. You are ashy and dry. Soon you’ll just be dry, babe. If I keep seeing you, the fungus will choke my soul shut.
I will never forget you. I will never remember you harshly.
II.
Three tables separate us. You looked juicy through binoculars and you look juicy up close. Your thong bobs like a crowd member praying to be noticed.
A hair of grilled cheese dries itself to your lip. You just disappoint me. Any fool knows all animals deserve respect. It’s self-evident. The cheese bounces in time with your chewing. Way to rape a cow’s dignity, toots.
Darling, oh darling, the fungus spreads, but I keep a patient temper. I will pin your soul and tweeze out its ticks. Your flame will fan more widely.
Continue reading MICRO-FICTION by Nitin Jagdish »
DRAWING published by Retort Magazine, on March 4, 2010, at 11:21 am
Trapezoid - I - full view
Drawings by Menglef
© Menglef 2010
http://menglef.org
Courtesy of the Artist and Hamish Morrison Galerie
POETRY published by Retort Magazine, on March 4, 2010, at 11:20 am
SpeedwayPenzoil /Quaker State/STP/Yokohama, Michelin, Firestone/the spit and
detonation/a weird petroleum rodeo/out in the barren paddocks, skin drying
sheds/the full moon dissolving in the clouded blue like a pill into water only to
reappear golden and whole/vicious twisted scrap and the raw exhilaration/mufflers
farting like shotguns/boiling radiators and steaming tires/the wild revving/Cougar
Martin laying it down on the backstretch just for the love of it/spraying hot dirt
exhaust pipes backfiring flame/clouds of dust and oilsmoke/bikes, sidecars, street rods
and the “Thundering Sprintcars”/lots of men in overalls, pickups flashing their lights,
tow trucks, a grader and a watering truck to keep the choking dust down/the PA
system misses every other word/foot-long hot dogs bloody with ketchup and slick
bags of fat jam-filled doughnuts, buckets of grease wet French fries and cigarettes
ground underfoot/the hardcore regulars wearing protective earmuffs/skintight
jeans, leather jackets, John Deere caps, tank tops, Levi jackets, permed hair and
painted nails/Women’s Auxiliary Raffle—sheepskin seat covers, electric frying pan
a few engine fires suffocated by hand-held fire extinguishers/drab tartan blankets and
shiny thermoses of thin black coffee/500 cc single gear bikes, the rider in the pole
position always winning/Monster Trucks climbing a mountain of cinderblocks/a far
groan from the prestige of Formula 1 racing, with sudden close-ups of gorgeous Italian
women wearing next to nothing/Valvoline and nicotine/and then
some guy named Big Dog Horton steps out zipping up
from the Porta Pottie and says to his brother who’s disappeared for a beer
“Next time we do the Suicide Derby, I want to have a lot more metal around me.”
———————————————
© Kris Saknussemm 2010
KRIS SAKNUSSEMM is the author of the cult novels Zanesville and Private Midnight. His third book, Enigmatic Pilot will be published by Random House in 2011.
Note from Ed. – In 2006 I received a copy of Kris Saknussemm’s book Zanesville in the mail for review. I read it and it blew me away – in my review I said – “ Zanesville is something entirely new, a new art form, a digital petrii dish, an uncontained biomystic disaster that is still somehow contained, somehow…” Read the review and interview in the Retort Archives
|
|
COMMENTS