*Aw/Al*Vol.II/Issue02*Jan2012* In This Issue... Editor’s Note Lauren Tamraz

Issue Artist Samantha Valentine

Words Howie Good, Kendra Grant Malone

Matthew Savoca, Sean H. Doyle

Jeremiah Akin, Matthew Cronin

Matthew Gasda, Dana C. Carrico

Contributors Acknowledgements

Editor’s Note... Lauren Tamraz

Lately I’ve been feeling like less is more.

Maybe it’s a New Year’s, January, clean slate sort of thing. But I suspect it has also

been inspired by a Christmas gift from my husband. I can be something of a loud dresser, with bold accessories, pink sneakers and a love for all things vintage and/or

rhinestoned/sequined. When I opened a tiny box a few weeks ago, I did not expect the

petite and sparkling earrings inside. They were beautiful—no doubt about that—but they were a quiet kind of pretty that I usually avoid. I thought they were *safe pretty*, but did

my best to smile about them. My husband could tell though, and he convinced me that they were “me”, and that I looked great in them, even without anything the size of a key

fob dangling from my ears. I eyed the box for a few days.

I decided to wear them around the house one day. I found myself watching them sparkle in the mirror when I went to the bathroom. I wore them again the next day.

In that vein, for this issue I decided to pare down the usual outline. The page count

has not really decreased, but the number of contributors has. This month we’re featuring more work from fewer writers. Also, there is only one artist for the entire issue; but from

cover to cover, Samantha Valentine’s BFA thesis project, Natural Elegance, does not disappoint. Follow the journey from creating hundreds of tiny ceramic barnacles to the

finished gown they adorn. I had the great pleasure of seeing this thesis exhibit, but the

horror of hearing a gallery-goer crush a few barnacles underfoot. It was like a bottle popping under tires. The Dorsky Museum fell quiet. Samantha handled what must have

been devastating with true grace, just like her finished product. Or, maybe she just took a deep breath and channeled this month’s mantra.

Thanks again for being here, dear readers. Enjoy the deep winter (that has not

always been feeling that way) and we’ll see you in mid-March as the light begins to grow brighter.

XO

*L

Issue Artist: Samantha Valentine

Samantha Valentine grew up in Massapequa, Long Island. While attending Massapequa

High School she spent weekends in the city attending Saturday Live, classes offered to high school students through a program at the Fashion Institute of Technology. It was at

FIT that Samantha became adept at using different kinds of sewing machines and learning how to create patterns for clothing. When she graduated, Samantha was awarded the

Leadership in Art Award.

The artist chose to attend SUNY New Paltz for its rising reputation and extensive art department. While attending college she was able to explore a variety of media and learn

valuable skills, such as welding and soldering. She also learned proper techniques for band saws for wood and metal, as well as table saws and jig saws. During her sophomore

year, after taking her first ceramics class, it was then she realized her desire to create

three-dimensional work. After taking two more upper division classes in ceramics, she applied for the BFA program. There was so much to explore and experiment with; she

gained vast knowledge on clay formulations, but especially focused on testing and creating glazes. Samantha found an important part of creating glazes was firing them

and, in turn, learned how to fire all the kilns the studio had to offer. Samantha’s interest went beyond just firing the kilns, but to physically building them through Kiln Building, a

class offered in the summer of 2009.

Samantha’s thesis show was this past December at the Dorsky Museum on the SUNY New Paltz campus. Her thesis work consisted of hand built ceramic multiples referred to as

‘barnacles’ which were attached to a gown. Joining these two craft materials created a gown that was both desirable, but grotesque and challenged the accessibility of the work

to the viewer. Find more of Samantha’s work at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/samlval

All images throughout from Natural Elegance and courtesy of the artist

My Life & Hard Times

1

He comes toward me, jingling a paper cup.

The kind of books I write

aren’t the kind that sell.

2 I stand knee-deep

in the noise of spiders. Old cuts begin to bleed.

If they won’t love me,

an angel is thinking,

they can still fear me.

3 An ungovernable city of chill and gloom.

Every street ends in an ellipsis. . .

Only a stranger, or madman, would stop here. I step down off the bus.

Vivace

O the merry-go-round music

of married sex!

Familiar and tinny, but jaunty, too,

passing through the skin

with leaps and spins

and diabolical little curlicues.

-Howie Good

Tiny Little Good for Nothing Tiny Man

we’ve caught ourselves in this silly little circle

where my current life goal is to become you

and it seems to me your current life goal

is to become me but i could be reading

into this, as i tend to do when you are so quiet

it’s convenient that we

wear the same size jeans

though and similar t-shirt

and dress sizes of course underwear too,

i like how yours cling to my thighs which are just

the littlest bit bigger than yours

did you know

in france it is considered a bit stylish for a woman

to be slightly taller than her male lover?

but we won’t move to france

for a few reasons and don't worry

no one will ever notice because you hair makes up

for 3 inches of your height which officially makes you taller

depending on how arbitrary you measure

and i'm sorry that when i wear my heels

i like to pull you close and stare down your forehead

making growling dog noises in my bedroom

and ya ya,

i'm still sorry i bit you last night

so do you think people are

buying into our inside joke?

the one about how cruel i am to you?

i think sometimes people forget that

persona ends sometimes at night

and sometimes in the

morning and i think we forget

that persona is always a little bit there too-

that's what i was thinking

last night when i was looking out the window

and then asked you what you were thinking about

only because i wanted to be asked in return

i still can't decide

how badly i want

people to notice how tall i am compared to

you me, being slightly

tall for a woman you, being slightly

short for a man and both of us being

thin for the time being thank god

i own six inch heels for work

in case my decision slants that way

-Kendra Grant Malone

poem at the beginning of summer

on the roof i stare at trees and wonder what i should do

in general i'm afraid to call you

because we spoke an hour ago oh wait you're calling me right now

you're saying “guess what i just did i did the dishes.

and then i saw that the sink drain was really dirty

so i bleached it and then i saw that the pan below the

dry rack

was really dirty so i put all the dishes in the tub

and then i bleached it and then i saw that the toaster oven was

dirty so i took all the components out

as many components as i could and then.......

i bleached it”

i laughed each time you said bleached it and then you sent me a picture

of yourself wearing baby blue lingerie that your friend gave you

and you laughed and said “i look like a figure skater

i don't know why i'm still wearing it why am i still wearing it? matthew, i'm

still wearing it!” i laughed each time you said wearing it

and then half-sung “what would brian boitano do?”

“he's canadian, right?” you said

and i agreed but then found out later that he's american, born in california

eventually we hung up the phone “i'm not going to call you again tonight”

you said “ok” i said

but then you called me back and told me all about your bank account

-Matthew Savoca

poem at the end of summer

it's 11:09 pm on my bed today and you are in another state

texting me dollar signs in reference to why you aren't wearing panties

“i was naughty” you said “i bought a red bra and panties

AND that coat” smiley face a while later you asked my permission

to drink a beer

i said two would be okay but check back in with me before the third

i watch half an episode of saved by the bell on the computer

and come to the realization that some of the people i talk to on weekends

are far too young to even know what saved by the bell is

i'm waiting for you to call me when you do, it's with another man's mouth

enclosed on your foot his name is georgio

and he's giving you a pedicure, apparently, with his teeth or something

i think he's laughing, you said,

because my other foot is on his stomach and i just felt it move

later i'm eating a snack and get a text saying 'asshole'

which is quickly blamed on your roommate and it occurs to me

that i might be the first person to ever give you a chance

-Matthew Savoca

M is for Martha

Back in the mid-‘90s, when I was still

living in Phoenix, I met this girl -- Martha --through the singer of the band I was

in.

Actually, I didn’t really meet as her as much as I heard about her. Supposedly,

she used to come to all of our shows and just stand off to the side of the stage and

watch me play. She and the singer had met through some weird circumstances -

- I think when he was still in the straight edge band he used to front they played a

benefit for some riot grrl zine she and

her friends were trying to keep alive -- but had stayed in touch. She was a

senior in high school, and was deeply involved in everything I was not --

veganism, straight edge, feminism, the riot grrl scene, political activism.

Me? I was sort of teetering on the edge

of hedonism, I suppose. I smoked a lot of pot and was not shy about being

someone who was willing to lay down with almost any woman who was willing.

I drank a lot. I dabbled with a lot of other drugs as well. Cocaine. Meth on

the few rare occasions when cocaine

could not be procured. Because my father was the manager for the

apartment complex where I lived, I would use master keys and go into the

apartments of some of the elderly when they were in and out of the hospital and

steal their morphine pills and their valium. Basically, everything I was -- a

not-very-nice, drug-taking-type-of-person – was diametrically opposed to

everything Martha stood for.

Martha used to write me letters even though we lived only three or four miles

apart.

I’m not sure who gave her my mailing

address, but this is how we began to

communicate. She would send me these

handwritten letters -- long-form missives and volleys, really -- that would only

have the letter “M” and a PO Box for a return address.

At first, because I was such a stoner, I

wasn’t able to put two and two together and realize this was the infamous Martha

I had been hearing so much about. She never signed a letter as Martha, she

always signed them with “Respectfully, M.” For a while, I kept on going through

my mental Rolodex trying to figure out if

during my travels I had met a woman with impeccable handwriting and

communication skills who had an M name. I was quite sure that when I was

in the military I did not meet such a woman. The M who was writing me these

letters was trying to relay something bigger, something much more important

than some past lover or confidant who was

trying to reconnect -- these letters were full of her thoughts on feminist theory

and how it related to her sending letters to a guy in a band that nobody knew

about who embodied nothing more than

“pure testosterone with a guitar strapped on for the ride,” her thoughts about

animals and why I should consider no longer eating them, sexual abuse, punk

rock and the power within it to heal all wounds for all freethinking people.

One afternoon when we were rehearsing

for an upcoming show, I made a joke about getting bizarre letters from fans.

The singer was standing there and then suddenly a beer bottle came flying

toward my head.

“You really are an asshole, Sean. The least you can do is answer her letters

after she pours her heart out to you.”

“Jesus. Fuck -- you know her? Did you

give her my address?”

“It’s my friend Martha -- the one I’ve been telling you about. Why are you

such a fucking moron?”

“Oh. Shit. Okay, I’ll write her back. Sorry, man.”

The drummer and bass player looked a

little confused, but the singer gave them the quick version of events -- she had

come to one of our shows because he

had invited her, witnessed the hurricane I turn into as soon as there was volume,

and subsequently felt the need to start writing me letters. They rather enjoyed

this, and started to rib me about it quite a bit.

I felt like a total asshole for not realizing or responding.

******

In one of my response letters to Martha,

I included my phone number. I told her that as much as I enjoyed her letters,

she was more than likely going to get slow responses from me. If she wanted

to talk, my phone rang twenty-four hours a day.

******

“Have you ever been with another man?”

“You mean sexually?”

“Yes. Have you ever been with another

man -- sexually?”

“When I was younger I was confused and I experimented a bit. I realized pretty

quickly that I wasn’t gay. If that’s what you’re asking, then yes -- I have been

with another man sexually, even though we were boys.”

“Most guys won’t admit that, you know.”

“I’m not ashamed of anything I have ever done in my life.”

“I’ve noticed.”

******

Martha would usually call me at roughly the same time every night -- just around

midnight. By then I was half in the bag, so she didn’t have to dance around all

the usual conversational trappings people have to dance around, and could

ask me about anything she wanted and I would almost always answer as straight

as I possibly could. She liked to ask me about my sex life a lot -- she seemed to

be fascinated with my middling promiscuity. I tried very hard to be a

gentleman and not flirt with her, but it

was very hard to deny that animal part of me that flirts with anyone up to and

including the sixty year old bank teller who I would see once a week when I

cashed my paycheck.

Martha and I had still not met in the flesh, or at least I was full of the belief

that we had not. Every time my band played a show I would scan the crowd for

a girl/woman who fit the physical description she had given me over the

phone. The singer of my band was of no help to me, because for some reason he

felt it important -- at times it came

across like it was his sole mission in life, really -- for me to be learning about

something greater than myself in this

oddball situation.

Martha was the one who tipped me off on the phone that the band had been

auditioning other guitar players behind my back. She told me that the singer

had had more than enough of my inebriated antics, and she told me that

most of the guitar players they were auditioning could not figure out how I

was able to play so many moving parts as if there were more than one guitar

player.

When I quit the band the next day, the

singer angrily told me -- “You might as well go out and buy a drum machine and

a four-track and just do everything yourself, since you seem to think you’re

a musical genius.”

When I told Martha that night on the phone that I had quit the band I could

hear her crying softly on the other end of the line.

******

I didn’t hear from Martha for a couple of

weeks after I had quit the band. I would

sit at my kitchen table with the phone next to me, waiting. It never rang at all.

When the mail was delivered, I would check it to see if there was anything

from her, but there wasn’t. I called her number one night to see if she would

pick up, but it rang and rang so I set the receiver down and went back to drinking

and smoking.

******

I saw a flyer in a record store for my old band. They had a show coming up at a

new warehouse-type venue. I knew I

would not be welcome at the show, but my mind immediately thought of Martha

-- maybe if I went she would show

herself to me. Maybe if I went she would

speak to me and tell me why she had disappeared.

When I got home, I picked up the phone

to see if there were any messages. There were three.

The first message was from the bass

player in my old band, telling me he was sorry that I had quit, but he understood

why I had to -- he and I had played in many bands together, and I almost

always quit each band. Throughout my teens and my early twenties he was

probably my only real friend. He also

mentioned in the message who they had replaced me with -- a peripheral

acquaintance named Kyle, who was very close with the singer -- and about how

hard it had been for him to teach him all of my guitar parts. He also mentioned

they were playing a show, and it would probably be best for everyone if I did not

show up. I deleted this message.

The second message was from Kyle, the new guitar player. He apologized to my

voicemail for the awkwardness of the call, but he had some questions for me

about some of the guitar parts, and felt

like I was the best person for him to ask. He said he was willing to come over to

my place and have me show the parts to him, since nobody else in the band was

happy with his attempts at figuring stuff out. He said he knew everything was

really weird and that we didn’t know each other very well. He also said the

singer urged him to call me and ask me for help. I deleted this message.

The third message was from Martha. She

apologized for not being around, and she also mentioned how she felt it was weird

that the band had replaced me with Kyle.

She called him a “hippie weirdo,” and she mumbled something about how he had

tried to make out with her at a party

once and his face smelled like eggs being cooked. Again she apologized for not

calling or writing. She also told me that she would try and call me back again

later on that evening. I saved this message.

I waited.

******

The next time I heard from Martha, she told me the band had broken up for

good. This was another week or so after their attempt at playing one show with

Kyle as my replacement. Obviously, it

went horribly. Martha then told me that Kyle was moving to San Francisco to go

to some recording school, and had convinced her that she should come out

and see him when he got settled out there.

“Are you and Kyle a ‘thing,’ Martha?”

“I don’t think so. Why, are you jealous?”

“A little. I’m more jealous that I have no

idea who you really are, and all of these people I know are aware of who you

are.”

“It’s probably better that way, Sean.”

******

Martha decided to hitch her way from

Phoenix to San Francisco. I advised her that she would probably end up dealing

with a lot of creeps and freaks on the road, and that it might be best for her to

invest in some pepper spray or even allow me to teach her how to use a knife

to defend herself. She laughed at me and told me she would be fine. I made her

promise me that she would call me

collect every night so I could know she was okay. She agreed.

******

For the next five nights, I would receive

a collect call from Martha. Each time, I would ask her immediately if she was

okay. She would usually then begin to ramble like someone jacked-up on truck

stop coffee about the events of her day. How she was able to grab a ride out of

Phoenix that took her all the way to Yuma, and that the kid who gave her a

ride was a really nice kid who was going to medical school in Tucson and he had

semi-decent taste in music and never once tried to hit on her or treat her like a

piece of meat. She told me about the

Mexican family she met at a gas station and gave her a ride from Yuma to Indio,

and about how amazing it was to see the Salton Sea and the badlands of that

part of California while sandwiched in the back seat of a car between two beautiful

children. She told me about the old woman who took her from Palm Desert -

- where she had taken a bus to from Indio -- all the way into Pasadena, and

about how she kept on telling her over and over again how she should be in

movies because she was so smart and pretty, and how the woman also gave

her sixty dollars to take the bus out of

the Los Angeles area because she felt Martha was “too precious to hitchhike

without being raped.” Martha then told me about how the bus from Los Angeles

to Fresno was terrible -- full of screaming children and meth-addled faces. A man

got on the bus in Bakersfield who decided he was going to make Martha his

“old lady,” and he kept on offering her pulls off of his bottle of Old Granddad.

She finally got him to relent by telling him she was on her way to see her

father who she told him was in prison -- Pelican Bay -- and that got him to leave

her alone. She told me that when she

arrived in Fresno at dawn it was like a George Romero movie, and she

had never felt superior to other people

before in her life and felt really guilty

about feeling that way. She said the bus depot there was like a tomb for the

homeless and the drug-addicted. Martha then told me about the girl she met in a

Denny’s in Fresno who was going to San Jose who gave her a ride. The girl was a

student who was the first member of her family to go to college, and they talked

the entire time about things that Martha loved -- feminism, being vegetarian,

being sexually confused. Martha told me that when they got to the girl’s

neighborhood, she parked the car and asked Martha if she could kiss her.

Martha said it was the best kiss she had

ever known, and she kept on thinking about it after she got out of the car and

walked toward the bus station to make the rest of her way to Kyle in San

Francisco.

Each one of these collect calls felt like a postcard.

******

On the sixth night, the phone rang

differently.

******

“You have a collect call from ‘Martha,’ will you accept the charges?”

“Yes.”

“Sean? Sean. Oh, God. Sean.”

“What’s wrong, Martha? What happened?

Are you in San Francisco now?”

“Sean -- Kyle is dead. Kyle is fucking

dead.”

“Wait -- what? What are you saying, Martha? Slow down and talk to me,

okay?”

“Fuck. FUCK. I got here this morning. I tracked Kyle down at his school because

he doesn’t have a fucking phone. I found the address of the school in the phone

book and I went down there to find him. I found him and he was so happy to see

me. He decided he needed to ‘celebrate,’ so we went into some really gross area

of town – I have no idea what it was

called -- and he bought some heroin for himself.”

“Oh God, Martha. What the fuck happened? Are you alone?”

“I am at one of his classmate’s

apartment building. Sean -- we went back to Kyle’s shitty apartment and we

were making out. I have no idea why I came on this trip. We were making out

and he decided he wanted to shoot a little dope and then go show me the city.

He went into the bathroom to do it because I told him I couldn’t watch him

do it. FUCK.”

“I’m so sorry, Martha. I am so sorry.”

“He was in the bathroom for a long time

and I didn’t know what to do, so I went and knocked on the door. I couldn’t hear

anything other than the water in the sink running. I opened the door and he was

on the floor and his face was purple, Sean.”

“Martha? Can you stay with his

classmate for the night? I do not think you should be alone there.”

“Sean, I had to call his parents and tell

them. They didn’t even know who I was --they thought I was some friend of his

playing a joke on them. I feel so fucking

terrible and sick. I don’t know what to do. Sean, what do I do? Why did this

have to happen right now?”

“I don’t know, Martha. I’m sorry this happened to you, and I am sorry that

Kyle is gone.”

“Kyle was an asshole, Sean. I’m freaking out because I came almost one thousand

miles to see someone I just kissed, dead on his bathroom floor. For what? I can

never come home again. Ever.”

“Martha, slow down -- okay? What do

you mean you can never come home again?”

The next sound I heard was the dial tone.

I never heard from Martha again, and to

the best of my knowledge -- nobody else did, either.

--Sean Doyle

Strip

Gold Rush City 2010. I am enveloped by airbrushed bosoms and buttocks.

Gauntlets of card clickers thrust escort tracts at passersby,

and I picture the apocalypse or a nuclear blast turning towers of slot machines to mountains of dust. Strip

lights up at dusk while the Bellagio fountains twirl and dance

like Rockettes to “The Star Spangled Banner.” A neon Moloch casts a red glare on my glasses, and I wonder if this is what America means

—a thousand blind pedestrians gawking by the waters of Babel. Strip

smells like a Malibu-marinated sorority girl in a candy store. I get a coffee at the Hard Rock and wish I had a Camel cut to salt the air.

Newlyweds at the next table take out menthols and a light. A wedding dress bought at ten is on the floor by midnight

-Jeremiah Akin

On Losing a Spring Baby

during the vernal stretch you grew like an arctic bulb

an any-daisy or an amaryllis—

vibrant carmine perennially lit by a sun-tint embedded deep

like its tiny vessel-roots

late April sweetpea,

my early June hyacinth— (planted like a school of dead starfish

longing for the royal thistle shade)

calling Girl, Girl, Girl

forgetting about you & i

-Matthew Cronin

The Loft Apartment

Empty the rain of thunderstorms. Or

Just kiss me now, finally. The nights

Here have always been strange. Full of A longing that wakes you up terrified.

Mandrakes crying for blood. Birds that Suddenly stop singing.

Memories are rooted in the deep of you,

Like butterflies that will not Dust off their wings.

How could so much life go out of us? You set the alarm for later in the morning.

All these days are like falling out of love.

-Matthew Gasda

How It Was

The sky was never dark and it was always early. The road to my house was

empty and Leadbelly’s words in my voice bounced around the valley and back to

our feet where they lay, bruised and bloodied, like our soft soles from the

shards of glass all mixed in with gravel

on the shoulder. Your clothes were dirty – wet – sweat soaked and steeping in

pheromones. I had blood twining down my left leg from a cut on my knee. It

left little spots of red behind where my heel was.

I smoked too many cigarettes and you could hear it in my laugh. I laughed a lot.

Loud. Booming. Happy. I was happy. Your breath was trapped, stale, but like

candy in a jar on a hot day. Sweet. I liked how you shot it down my throat

when we went to kiss, kissed my open

mouth, all of my teeth, my smile.

You didn’t have smokes so we shared mine. Passed every couple hits. I liked it

better that way. Not because we were partners in some physical crime but

because we were enjoying the same thing, at the same time, in the same

place. I like novelty, liked it then, am a

sucker for it still.

The grass under our feet was dying in September’s heavy air. Your spackled

boots looked silly next to my bare feet and I rested my toes on your steel tips.

You giggled. You have a great giggle.

I loved you and you were indifferent. But I don’t trust linear conceptions of time,

so every moment is both the first and the last, always. That’s how I loved you.

Like every moment was both the start and end of something beyond fallible

language. But you were indifferent and

when we were still, motionless, and kissed, nothing lined up, nothing was

perfect, no synapses fired. I was self-conscious about that. It didn’t seem

right, was not fitting, because when our chests pressed together, all sticky with

the day, everything was beautiful – seemed to promise to always stay

beautiful – and the taunting forever forever taunting was not overwhelming,

but infinite and huge – lovely, exciting, wonderful. It was this fracture that

brought my attention to the indifference. It gnawed at first. Then it became

choking. It’s still choking.

When I looked in your eyes, my face

twitched. It twitches now, thinking of the endlessly passing past. You didn’t look in

my eyes. Didn’t look at me at all. Not since the night we flooded our bodies

with chemicals and twined together in my bed. Not since you looked at me, on

top of you with our necklaces all tangled and knotted, and whispered, “you’re so

beautiful” – as though in awe. As though your eyes were actually open. As though

you actually meant it.

But you are indifferent, so I now know

better. You were very unlike any other. They

had sharpened edges – synthetic,

trained, polished - but you, you were

rusty - different, naturally dangerous - and it made me think of scrapping in the

woods to pay off the debt from living in a society that requires greenbacks for

entry. Made me think of running madly through poisons and prickers but being

immune to their sting. Made me think of all the other items that could hurt me,

because of their very make, but wouldn’t if I was delicate and smart in my

movement. If I just kept my head spinning, remembering always that it

turns, I would be fine. I told you I’d be fine. I’m fine.

Yes, it was your rust all along. I could smell the iron on your skin when you

sweat.

But this is really how it was – this is what all of the other excellent lovely sunflower

moments prove to be –

We were at a picnic bench by the river. It wasn’t late. It was always early. We rode

bikes there and where we sat, we were hidden from the road 100 meters away.

It was the road I lived on. You had walked it with me before. I was making

love songs out of cigarette smoke and

you were lying back on the table; our heads together, bodies pointing in

opposite directions. I asked you to kiss my face and you said you couldn’t

that night. I said, “you cant right now?”

It just didn’t make any sense to me.

When we left that night, I went right and you went left. You told me to be careful

and I couldn’t make sense of that either - it’s a clumsy imperative - sometimes it

means avoid danger, sometimes it means keep your head, sometimes it

means nothing at all, particularly if

you’re indifferent and I think that you are.

It occurs to me now that it’s just the

human necessity to make special that has caused all of my problems. I’m

lighter with the realization that you owe me nothing at all. Unbearably lighter. But

the sun is rising higher and higher and the plants need watering. It’s still early,

never late, and I have things to do. Things that make me happy, make me

sweat, sometimes smile. I have cold beer in the fridge and warm whiskey by

my bed. After I made you so big that you

blocked the sun, I came to understand

that it’s the little tiny wisps of light that make it all worthwhile anyhow. It’s the

flowers. The dirt all around my toes, in my toenails. Those scrapes and bruises

that were all over the body that you called beautiful. The moon. Sound, no

matter its tone – touch, no matter its texture. Pheromones. The little things.

I told you that I’m fine. I’m fine.

-Dana C. Carrico

Howie Good, a journalism professor at

SUNY New Paltz, is the author of the 2011 poetry collection, Dreaming in Red,

from Right Hand Pointing. All proceeds from the sale of the book go to a charity,

which you can read about here: https://sites.google.com/site/rhplanding/

howie-good-dreaming-in-red

Kendra Grant Malone's first book of poetry Everything Is Quiet is available

from Scrambler Books (http://thescrambler.com/eng/books/kg

m-ms/) and her second collection of poetry, Morocco, co-written with

Matthew Savoca is available from Dark

Sky Books. (Ed. note: Morocco was on Awosting Alchemy’s year-end book list.)

Matthew Savoca was born in Pennsylvania in 1982. He is the author of

the poetry books long love poem with descriptive title (2010, scrambler books)

and Morocco with Kendra Grant Malone (2011, Dark Sky Books). He lives in New

York and Philadelphia, building and fixing things for money. (Ed. note: Morocco

was on Awosting Alchemy’s year-end book list.)

Sean H. Doyle lives in Brooklyn, NY. He

works hard every day to be a better person. Find more of his work here:

www.seanhdoyle.com

Jeremiah Akin is an undergrad at the University of Idaho majoring in English

with an emphasis on creative writing and poetry. He is a music minor, and

released his first full-length album last year.

Matthew Cronin is a student at SUNY

New Paltz, majoring in Philosophy and English.

Matthew Gasda lives in Brooklyn, NY. His first book of poetry, The Humanist, is

available now on Amazon, from Literary Laundry Press.

Dana C. Carrico is a graduate of SUNY

New Paltz. She utilizes her degrees in English and Philosophy to perform as

your typical genius waitress at a small Mediterranean restaurant. To flex her

intellectual muscles, she also works as a research assistant for a local flustered

graduate student.

Acknowledgements

There are so many individuals and businesses without whom Awosting

Alchemy could not exist in this form. Thank you to David Friedman & Barner

Books of New Paltz who have supported the project from Day 01. Special thanks

to The Yoga House of Kingston, NY who hosted our Paper Anniversary celebration

this month. Thank you, talented & diverse band of contributors, for doing

your art & word thing so well here in the

Valley and around the globe. Aw/Al exists because you exist! And thank you

again, dear reader, not only for beginning at page 01, but for reading

through to the end. We hope you enjoyed your journey and will be back for

the next issue in March 2012.

* * * Submission Guidelines * * *

Thanks for choosing to send your work to Awosting Alchemy. We’re writers and

artists too, dutifully sending our work out

into the atmosphere with our fingers

crossed. We truly appreciate what you do and your decision to include us in your

efforts. Always check our website for updated submission guidelines &

contests. Submit through Submishmash, our wonderfully easy and helpful

submission manager. You may also feel free to contact us with any questions you

have at AwostingAlchemy@hotmail.com. Our response time is fairly swift. Expect

to hear back from us within about a

month. Thanks again. We look forward to your submissions. Send us things you

had to write or create because they were nowhere else in the world, sharp and

new and not yet worn out by others. Strive for a new set of fingerprints.

* * * * * * * Read: AwostingAlchemy.com

Submit: AwostingAlchemy.submishmash.com

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