Libby Cudmore

L.A. NOCTURNE

It’s 2 AM & we’re coffee-drunk in a Waffle House off the highway that cuts across Alabama like an old scar. We eat heartburn rib-eyes on blood-soaked toast as our waitress gives us someone’s else’s check. You pay the cost. You don’t correct an Alabama woman no matter how wrong she is.

You crack open another biscuit, watch me eat with eyes like Katrina streets. Los Angeles is a long way behind us & old names are buried among ashes of torched c-notes & cheap luggage. Your hand is a grenade; you delete your partner’s phone number from your speed-dial.

We borrow a motel room from The Joker, who wears sunglasses indoors & buys the lie that we’re newlyweds. Shotgun wedding, I think, remembering the sounds of bullets. Our life together will always be an alternate history.

You take your gun to the bathroom. I panic every time you close a door, wondering if I will hear a flush or a bang. You stare out the window when you think I’m asleep. You, my love, will sleep when you’re dead.


Libby's YouTube video reading of "L.A. Nocturne" coming soon


Libby confesses: "I went through a brief period of writing TV-inspired prose poems that vanished as quickly as it came on.This is my favorite of the three that I wrote about my favorite show, THE SHIELD, as a sort of imagining of what Shane Vendrell's life would be if he had gotten out of LA. But Shane's just the allegory; I think all of us are on the run from something at some point in our lives."

LIBBY CUDMORE is the author of THE BIG REWIND (William Morrow 2016) and the Martin Wade PI series in ELLERY QUEEN MYSTERY MAGAZINE. Her stories have been published in BLEED ERROR, ORCA, MONKEYBICYCLE, HAD, RECKON REVIEW, THE NORMAL SCHOOL and SMOKELONG QUARTERLY. She is the 2018 recipient of the Oregon Writer's Colony Prize, a current Anthony and Shamus award nominee and a four-year alumnae of the Barrelhouse Writer's Camp.

Kenneth Pobo

MURDER MAYBE

Harold Cockring Fizzlebotts got arrested for murder. He had a sharpee lawyer, who asked Harold if he had indeed killed Grady Jackson and if so why. Harold said he couldn’t remember. Yes, there was a fight over Grady’s endless playing of his records loud. Jr. Walker’s saxophone was an airplane landing on Harold’s roof. Whenever he tried to board the plane, it took off, leaving Harold looking at empty sky.

Harold had considered murder a few times over the years, like a guest you think you might invite to dinner but change your mind before making the call. He had begun to loathe Grady shortly after Grady moved in nine years ago. Something imperious about him, like a wind wrapped in gold. But murder? That seemed extreme and Harold was rarely extreme. He didn’t spice his pork chops and when he polished his many clocks he made sure they didn’t shine too much. He wanted them to tell time without bragging about it. Minimize ticking.

Still, he knew he had thought that Grady would be a good candidate to be murdered. Harold pictured him laid out in a coffin in Justicia’s Funeral Home, the guest book empty, the candy dish full. This made Harold laugh. Perhaps Grady tried to murder Harold. The sharpee didn’t say whether anyone can die from having angry thoughts sent to them like dropping someone in a hive of yellowjackets. Harold remembers one morning when he woke up with his hands around his own neck. Someone must have tried to strangle him while he was dreaming of peach trees and moth balls. Was it Grady? Or was it Aunt Olive? She often said that Harold was the family’s standard for failure. Her house on Bull Moose Lane had eighteen rooms, each one cold. She was capable of it or of hiring someone to do it.

Harold decided that you can murder someone and forget you did it. Like an item on the grocery list—did you remember to get Biz or not? There would be a trial. Grady died under suspicious circumstances. The Judge forgot to show up. The Courthouse had a heart condition and stayed in bed.

Harold went to work and sent the sharpee a check. When he got home he found that he missed Jr. Walker after all. He blasted several songs on Spotify. The moon growled that he should turn it down—it was trying to sleep. Harold Cockring Fizzlebotts locked himself deep in the saxophone and wouldn’t come out. His garage door sulked, opened on its own, and released mice to the whole neighborhood.


Ken's YouTube video reading of "Murder Maybe":



Subscribe and turn on Notifications for Channel 52.


Ken confesses: "If someone murders someone else, can they really just forget about it, like it never really happened (or doesn't matter that it happened). I used a more surreal/absurdist approach, including the main character's name."

KENNETH POBO (he/him) is the author of twenty-one chapbooks and nine full-length collections. Recent books include Bend of Quiet (Blue Light Press), Loplop in a Red City (Circling Rivers), and Lilac And Sawdust (Meadowlark Press) and Gold Bracelet in a Cave: Aunt Stokesia (Ethel Press). His work has appeared in North Dakota Quarterly, Asheville Literary Review, Nimrod, Mudfish, Hawaii Review, and elsewhere.

Harris Coverley

RED ON SILVER

It's running right out of me...running right out, beside me, onto the floor. I did nothing to him...I walked past him, the pallid and wiry guy in the hoodie leaning against the post...he asked me something, I didn’t quite get it. He pulled his right hand out of his left pocket...I felt the blade in me before I saw it retract: red on silver, shining in the streetlight, the flash of neon. And now it’s running right out of me...pooling at my side. I’m accosted by soft voices...a stranger’s coat dragged over me, smelling of alien sweat, bitter and foul, but I can’t complain. There is murmuring and chatter and whispers and giggles...the screaming has stopped, not mine of course...I don’t have much energy left to scream, or even to mumble. And it’s still running right out of me...on and on. Everything around me is a ghost, an outline, a rough blur. There’s a flashing blue light either a million metres or a thousand miles away that refuses to come any closer, and a woman with dyed black hair and dull green eyes in a white leather jacket whom I’ve never met before keeps telling me that it’s going to be okay, it’s going to be okay...okay, okay...and yet still...it’s running right out of me...into the gutter and down the drain...all those years, waiting for the languorous rain to come out of the blue night and wash it all away...


Harris's YouTube video reading of "Red on Silver":



Subscribe and turn on Notifications for Channel 52.


Harris confesses: "This is actually a complete re-write of a poem from several years ago. There had been a massive spate of stabbings across Britain, and having just been walking around the city centre the realisation came to me that there was no particular reason why I couldn’t possibly be a victim."


"Along with previously in The Five-Two, HARRIS COVERLEY has had verse published in Polu Texni, California Quarterly, Star*Line, Spectral Realms, Scifaikuest, Novel Noctule, Better Than Starbucks, Corvus Review, The Cannon's Mouth, The Lothlorien Poetry Journal, View From Atlantis, and many others. He lives in Manchester, England.

Richard Krause

A SPLIT MIND IS CONVENIENT TO HIDE THE AXE

Nobody will identify the glitter of the buried axe in the darkness of the split mind. Nobody ever sees it wielded in the sunlight again. Instead the split mind sheathes it completely. Never mind the calluses on the hands of those who swing it. The hostility of wood in even feminine hands. And when medication makes the split mind lose control of the facial muscles, the family is as far from blaming the sharp blade embedded in the mind as they are from accounting for the disappearance of the calluses on their own hands.


Richard's YouTube video reading of "A Split Mind...":



Subscribe and turn on Notifications for Channel 52.


Richard confesses: "Poe's 'I...buried the axe in her brain' has always made a deep impression on me. I was probably also trying to account for my family's hand in the institutionalization of my uncle from adolescence to his late seventies for schizophrenia."

RICHARD KRAUSE has had two collections of fiction published titled Studies in Insignificance (Livingston Press, 2003) and The Horror of the Ordinary (Unsolicited Press, 2019). A third collection, “Crawl Space" & Other Stories of Limited Maneuverability, will be published by Unsolicited press in 2021. He also has had two collections of epigrams published, Optical Biases (EyeCorner Press in Denmark, 2012) and Eye Exams (Propertius Press, 2019). His prose poems have recently appeared in Poesis, Shot Glass Journal, Menacing Hedge, Poemeleon, and in Triggerfish Critical Review. Krause lived for nine years in Japan and currently lives in Kentucky where he is retired from teaching at a community college.

Catherine Moore's Bog Body Poetry

For Day 29 of the Cruelest Poetry Month, Catherine Moore promotes her collection Borrowings of the Shan Van Vocht. —Gerald So

Slip into a warm wool sweater, settle in, as real-life tales roll off the moors like whispered fog. In Catherine Moore’s collection of prose poems, the ‘borrowings’ in Borrowings of the Shan Van Vocht are Bog Bodies—naturally preserved corpses— displayed sometimes like sideshow curiosities in museums worldwide. These mummified bodies are titled after the bog where they're exhumed. In creating a lyrical voice for these nameless, the poet keeps in mind what modern-day forensics reveals about the nature of life and death for these bodies recovered from the bogs—the what of their diets, the ways their occupations or illnesses marked their bodies, and the how behind their death.

Bog Body Murmurs

In the encyclopedia of ends we are named for the bog, melting and churning, that exhumes us. Our stories within the tarn are tale-less. We are the many lesses— breathless, ceaseless, eyeless, fruitless, garbless, merciless, noiseless, ribless, shadowless, useless. Our only study is the wet. Only loss is the sun’s grope overhead. We become gourds of gurgled mud with murmurs that only nudge the insides of moors. When we rise, will they say corpse or say body? It matters not. Our spade-cut skin never heals, cadavers being the braille of death.


Borremose Women

He spent his hours pretending to cut peat. Digging at the same spot. A memorial to her in pitch, mud, and wind. It wasn’t the right spot though. I watched him looking out at the horizon each dusk, his boots interned where he thought she lay, and their dead child in a jar. I let him select his own grave site. If she thought she could birth the nyfødte on the bog where they met, I let her. Squat, sweat, and pant that August night. When she cried for birth, she was close to death. This was planned. The soil cooperated. When she disappeared he sentineled like a Danish Mastiff. I knew the first blizzard would not stop him. I knew by spring thaw the soil would suck him. I rehearsed the crack of his skull. I dreamt the growl in his strangled throat. It all happened in a blind of black and snow— flurry, fury, and fear. Ja, I did. I didn’t expect the bog to take me too.


Lindow Woman

I caught a murderer because his wife refused to rise. She stayed in hearth coomb, unharmed, vegetal mind. I crawled where the kesh water cheeps and lisps. Expelled his confession long due from this ruminant tarn, before my second burial.


Stidsholt Woman

He wouldn’t want me to return. That is why I roamed. Why I burrowed in every available hole. I moved about in the wan hours when Olaf’s sight lines were shortened. His men were in drinks. Some are not right for the place we are born. Some are not rightly placed where they’re brought. My blood and brood fought our way to the table served. I was no lady. This I was reminded of each honeymoon evening, in spats, with an ugly look about him. Swollen to the size of an ox. My battle-burst tongue spoke too passionately. My skull throat resisted his grip. A cunner and vixen I was called. With my sharp ears I overheard whore, raving mad, and they said I would howl myself to death. Olaf knew my will was strong, strong enough to draw the hunger back to one's body, as a draugar risen from the grave in wisps of smoke or foxfire plume pushed through solid stone. Still, a soul cannot survive without a body. On the 30th day Olaf removed my ring and veil, and rushed me. My headless body fell to its knees, sank into the ground where he had been standing. In the end I was not immune to his weapons. The good men, fools and minstrels, stood by, turned their eyes at the sword. Olaf ordered them to bury my head in the bog, burn the body, and dump those ashes in the sea. No resting place, no possible self- exhumation. He wouldn’t want me to return, carrying my hideous head, mouth agaped, hair tarned reddish as fox brush, eyes blackened to onyx, covering the short distance between mine moor and his howe.

You will want more than candlelight when you read this collection.


Excerpted poems from Borrowings of the Shan Van Vocht by Catherine Moore

ISBN:978-1-950730-27-8. Poems within this collection were nominated for The Pushcart and The Best of the Net literary awards. Available through your favorite indie book shop: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781950730278. Also available in E-book on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Smashwords. Audio book coming soon.

Linda Lerner

POLICING

I drop my mask, prepared to lift it up over my mouth and nose when necessary, caught by someone passing a safe distance from where I was, in no danger of catching anything from me on this nearly deserted street. I catch her disapproval. The same look I once got in a grocery store when telling the sales woman, “plastic if fine.” Of course it isn’t, aware of the harm it’s doing to the environment, our oceans, but that’s not the point. Nor is the point to discourage people from wearing a mask to stem this pandemic. What is, is the silent policing continuously going on among people looking to catch someone at something, to show they are one of the good, law abiding, ones; others trying not to be caught, become overzealous in an attempt to prove it. And, we’re back in 17th century Salem, prepared to hang another witch. Of course, I’m exaggerating. Of course. I’m not.


Linda reads "Policing":



Subscribe to Channel 52 for first view of new videos.


Linda confesses: "Even in the most liberal circles, I've found that there’s a constant, silent—sometimes not so silent-- monitoring going on. That covers a range of things form politics to something like surprising someone I ran into one day, on my way to see a 20’s or 30’s musical at City Center; it just didn’t fit my bohemian artists’s image; another is being caught reading the NYPost sometimes to get an opposing view. People are often put into categories, and are expected to adhere to certain things. While I’m praying that Trump doesn’t get elected, and not voting for him, I might have, agreed with something he said at one point. This is anathema. It’s that kind of thing."

LINDA LERNER is the author of 17 collections including Takes Guts and Years Sometimes (2011) and Yes, the Ducks Were Real (2015) from NYQ Books; recent chapbooks include, When Death is a Red Balloon (Lummox Press, 2019 and A Dance Around the Cauldron (Lummox Press, 2017), a prose work consisting of nine characters during the Salem witch trials, brought into our own times, nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her poems currently appear in, or are accepted by, Maintenant, Café Review, Trailer Park Quarterly, Wilderness Literary House Review, Gargoyle, Home Planet News, Cape Rock, Illumination Magazine, Piker Press, Patterson Literary Review, and Chiron Review. In addition to poetry, she’s published essays, short prose and book reviews in magazines throughout the country. In 2015, she read six poems on WBAI radio for Arts Express.

Richie Narvaez

I DIED A THOUSAND TIMES: DEATH #4

"Mrs. Allagash is here," Violet my secretary buzzes from the outer office, I say, "Gimme a minute," eager to tell my stunningly wealthy client how I’d confronted her husband about his plans to eighty-six her, how in the ensuing brawl I took a kick to the gut, a punch to the ear drum which still rings and rings, how we tangled over a .38, how he took 1-2-3 bullets and flatlined, I say, “Gimme a minute,” eager to tell Mrs. Allagash she was free of her greedy spouse, eager to ask her if she’d like to celebrate, night on the town, she deserves it, why not, I need that minute to check my teeth, shake the weasel, do a few pushups on the floor of the can, fix my satin tie, check for bats in the cave, blow my nose, then march to the outer door, and there’s the nubile widow splendid and platinum, and she raises her gloved hand and I raise mine to shake it, and at the same moment we both see the wet toilet paper pieces left wadded on my fingers. "I...," I say, "Gimme a minute, I..."


Richie reads "...Death #4"



Subscribe to Channel 52 for first view of new videos.


Richie confesses: "I recently re-saw Jack Palance's 1955 movie I Died a Thousand Times, and it made me wonder about what each particular death could be. This poem's death was inspired by something that happened to a friend, yeah, that's it, a friend."


RICHIE NARVAEZ is the author of the anthology Roachkiller and Other Stories and the urban thriller Hipster Death Rattle. His next book, the YA historical mystery Holly Hernandez and the Death of Disco, is due out in May.

Gail Aldwin

PICNIC

Mist hung in the air; the lake glinted silver in the early light. Turner wore a suit, but the trousers were creased where his knees buckled. His fingers were spread in surrender and stiff. Gerri bent to examine his face. She knew that lying eye too well, but the gaping socket made her wince. Bits of brain like scarlet frogs' spawn spewed out. On the blanket, champagne spilt from the glass. Trust him to start on the booze. He'd arranged the plates, two of them, but the food had been scavenged by wildlife and the linen napkins gnawed. Over on the island, a heron flapped its wings, the only witness to the killing. Walking to the car, Gerri made a mental list of the possible perpetrators. She ignored the bird's pink-tinged beak and the splattering of droplets that stained its feathers.


Paula Messina reads "Picnic":



Subscribe to Channel 52 for first view of new videos.


Gail confesses: "The idea for 'Picnic' came during a visit to a wetland centre where there were herons strolling about. My young son was naturally inquisitive and as he was roughly the same height as the bird, I panicked about a possible attack and dragged him away."

GAIL ALDWIN's poetry is published by Ink Sweat and Tears, Slamchop, Words for the Wild, and Underbridge. Her poetry was commended in the Mother’s Milk Books Writing Prize 2017. One of Gail's poems appears in the Beaumont Park permanent poetry trail in Huddersfield, UK. In 2016, she won first prize in the Bournemouth National Poetry Day competition with an entry titled “Starlings”. You can find Gail on Twitter @gailaldwin and WordPress.

David Spicer

YOU TELL ME

Some people need killing. You know who my object of opprobrium is: the plump-faced misogynist who moved in down the street. Besides being a misogynist, this mutt has eyes for ten-year olds, and he’s a xenophobe, a cripple-hater, a racist. This mutt could be as bad as… You tell me. This mongrel’s so vile crocodiles won’t eat him after an assassin tosses his bloated body into an Okeefenokee swamp. Am I advocating murder? You tell me. I bet you’ve thought about it. But nobody gets away with murder, you tell me. Or so we’d like to think. I could tell you how to get away with murder, but I’ve never wasted anybody, so I’m not an expert and you’d be a fool to take my advice. First of all, don’t confide in anybody. Never. Not even your spouse, not your fuck buddy after a wet night in bed, not when the twilight’s so beautiful in Flagstaff you can’t resist upchucking your secret to the person closest to you. Don’t have accomplices because at least one of them will be stupid and have a big mouth. And when you’ve finally decided to do it, for Christ’s sake wear gloves and a forensic-measured, paper kill-suit. Shave every bit of hair you have. I’m probably leaving something out. All perfect murderers do. Have you ever wanted to kill anybody? Come on, you can tell me. Has somebody raped your little girl in such a brutal way you don’t want the scumbag who did it to share the air with everybody else? Have you ever read a newspaper account of a home invader who walked away on a technicality? Oh, you tell me, I wouldn’t stoop to the level of somebody like that. Maybe not. But you know as well as I do we’re all capable of anything. Sin on the side of beauty, you advise me. You’re right, I know. Watch the sun gradually rise up from the ground in beautiful increments of bright color until you have to turn your eyes away or risk blindness. Don’t think about disgusting human beings, you tell me. You’re not perfect, you tell me. Otherwise you wouldn’t be writing this. But you’re human. Resist the urge. Hope somebody else has the balls to off this one-off, because admit it: you’re just all talk and no action, aren’t you? I imagine somebody’ll try soon, though. Then we can breathe freely again, then we can think about the future, then we can close our eyes and smell the mince pie baking in the kitchen instead of being afraid all of the time. We can be happy to be human again instead of ashamed, instead of thinking about murder, instead of thinking someone’s so despicable that he needs killing, can’t we? You tell me.


Gerald So reads "You Tell Me":



Subscribe to Channel 52 for first view of new videos.


David confesses: "I felt the present political and social climates were ripe for a piece homing in on a specific perpetrator against women and that the piece would be more effective if a misogynistic and pedophilic criminal resided in the speaker's neighborhood, making the immediacy of crime more heartfelt and intense."

DAVID SPICER has had poems in The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Gargoyle, Mad Swirl, Reed Magazine, Slim Volume, The New Verse News, The Laughing Dog, In Between Hangovers, Easy Street, Bad Acid Laboratories, Inc., Dead Snakes, and in the anthologies Silent Voices: Recent American Poems on Nature (Ally Press, 1978), Perfect in Their Art: Poems on Boxing From Homer to Ali (Southern Illinois University Press, 2003), and A Galaxy of Starfish: An Anthology of Modern Surrealism (Salo Press, 2016). He has been nominated for a Pushcart and a Best of the Net, and is the author of one full-length collection of poems, Everybody Has a Story (St. Luke's Press, 1987), and four chapbooks. He is also the former editor of Raccoon, Outlaw, and Ion Books. He lives in Memphis, Tennessee.

Karlo Silverio Sevilla

CARDBOARD JUSTICE

Dawn greeted by corpse of seventeen-year-old girl on sidewalk, bearing signs of torture, placard on her breasts reads, "Drug pusher, don't imitate."


Gerald So reads "Cardboard Justice":



Subscribe to Channel 52 for first view of new videos.


Karlo confesses: "This poem is largely based on the Philippine news item: “Rowena was found dead...Strung around her neck was a piece of cardboard with the words, 'Don’t emulate, she is a pusher.'" She is another extrajudicial victim of a 'nationwide orgy of summary killings apparently inspired' by the government’s controversial drug war."

KARLO SILVERIO SEVILLA is a freelance writer who lives in Quezon City, Philippines. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Philippines Graphic, Philippines Free Press, Radius, Pacifiqa, I am not a silent poet, Eastlit, Spank the Carp, Quatrain.fish, Indiana Voice Journal, Shot Glass Journal, The Fib Review, Rat's Ass Review, Pilgrim, Rambutan, Razorhouse, Yellow Chair Review, Eternal Remedy, Awakened Voices, and Kitaab. In his spare time, he coaches in wrestling and does volunteer work for the labor group Bukluran ng Manggagawang Pilipino (Solidarity of Filipino Workers).

Ruth Danon

HABITUAL

In light that interrupts winter the writer pursues foreign mysteries. This statement is not metaphor. She, the writer, has become obsessed, it’s fair to say, with mystery novels written by people she doesn’t know about places she’s never seen. The crimes are appalling – serial murder pursued as nothing less than performance art. Spiked apples, upside down snowmen, and so on. Heavy on archetype. Some readers may recognize these allusions. It doesn’t matter, though, the point is clear. Murders in books are acts of imagination, though after a while the crimes become quotidian. The writer acquires mysteries with increasing frequency, first delaying the purchase to avoid the guilt, then purchasing one mystery almost every day because the pleasure is too intense to refuse. She learns that serial murderers start to leave less and less time between crimes because the kick doesn’t last. She understands this. The body gone, there is only language. Serial murderers leave notes, write in code. They grow increasingly impatient. They hate the dark. They want to be found.


Ruth reads "Habitual":



Subscribe to Channel Five-Two for first view of new videos.


Ruth confesses: "Two preoccupations converged to produce 'Habitual'. It was summer and I was binging on Jo Nesbø crime stories and I had also committed to an adventure called 'The Grind', that requires me to write a poem each day of the month I had signed up for. I started thinking that the writer and the serial murderer had some things in common—or at least that's what I discovered writing the poem."

RUTH DANON is the author of Limitless Tiny Boat (BlazeVOX 2015), Living With the Fireman (Ziesing Brothers, 1981), Work in the English Novel (Croom-Helm, 1985), and Triangulation from a Known Point (North Star Line, 1990). Her poetry and prose are forthcoming in Post Road and The Florida Review and have appeared in Versal, Mead, BOMB, The Paris Review, Fence, The Boston Review, 3rd Bed, Crayon, and many other publications in the U.S. and abroad. Her work was selected by Robert Creeley for Best American Poetry 2002. She has been a fellow at the Ragdale Foundation, the Corporation of Yaddo, the Ora Lerman Foundation, and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. She teaches the Creative and Expository Writing Programs that she directs for the McGhee Division of the School of Professional Studies of New York University and is founding director of the Summer Intensive Creative Writing Workshops at NYU’s School of Professional Studies.

Richard Manly Heiman

GUNSELS NEED NOT APPLY

Distraught blonde bombshell seeks detective. The usual tropes. Cheating husband gone missing. Accounts emptied. Late night tires squealing. Shady customers with accents lurking near garden wall. Can't leave town.

You—snubnose type private dick. Sardonic, witty repartee required. Steep-shouldered. Cliff-like jaw with two-day stubble. Aqua Velva or Old Spice. Sharp dresser or a little disheveled—silk jacket, black oxfords, loose-knot tie ending well north of high belt line. Beer, bourbon, or scotch, you're poised and when you slap a minion he stays slapped. You'll saunter in, pick up the tab, quick with fists, wisecracks, a rough supple kiss, or to give a gal a light.

Me—apple honey dripping through silhouettes. Stubbornly high-breasted. Keep lipstick, eyeliner, mascara, décolletage just so, even in heaving sobs or violent struggles. Stiletto heels a giveaway from alley or street below your run-down-office window. Husky whisper, signature alto laugh. May or may not change hair color daily. Either from old money New Orleans or nouveau riche Houston— you pick. Calculated histrionics always perfectly on cue. Will keep you waiting, nursing your drink. Possibly homicidal, potentially that girl on your arm at Santa Anita or Lawry's.

Hasty discretion essential.


S.A. Solomon reads "Gunsels Need Not Apply":



Subscribe to Channel Five-Two for first view of new videos.


Rick confesses: "'Gunsels' was born out of a love for the mystique of the private detective, veneration of Jack Webb in Dragnet (especially voicing the intro), and homage to the immortal Bogart. It was great fun researching the details, from Santa Anita to John's Grill to the etymology of 'gunsel' itself."

RICHARD MANLY HELMAN lives in the California "Gold Country" where there is little gold and no water from which to pan it. He works as a substitute teacher and writes when the kids are at recess. Rick is pursuing an MFA with Lindenwood U. His work has appeared or will, in Mulberry Fork Review, Pilgrim, Bop Dead City, and other publications.

Bruce Harris

UP AND DOWN AT THE EMPIRE STATE BUILDING

103 stories - 34 suicides - he slid the note into her coat pocket in the world’s 9th fastest elevator — 1 more suicide – 1 more story


Gerald So reads "Up and Down at the Empire State Building":



Subscribe to Channel Five-Two for first view of new videos.


Bruce confesses: "Everything about the Empire State Building intrigues me. The contradiction of taking one’s life at this architectural marvel is disquieting."

BRUCE HARRIS is the author of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson: ABout Type, published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box.

F.J. Bergmann

UNFASTENING A HOOK STUD

You would be the groom, cleaning the bridle conscientiously, taking the whole thing apart to wipe off the dirt and sweat and metal oxide and then apply neatsfoot oil and saddle soap before putting it back together. Or perhaps the bit is being exchanged for a different one. The horse died or was sold and the bridle is needed for another horse who doesn't know or care about the previous wearer; a new bridle has been purchased because the old one broke or didn't look nice enough for competition; the horse has become less, or more, difficult. You push on the bit loop with your thumb and pull on the strap end of the cheekpiece or rein with the opposite hand. The L-shaped prong slides from its round hole forward into the slit, allowing the head of the prong to slip free as the leather bulges upward, and then you pull the strap free of the two keepers on each side of the stud. You check the bend in the leather for wear and cracking where the bit ring rubs. This is where you take a razor or very sharp knife and cut part way through, carefully making sure that nothing shows on the outside. The next rider is in for a surprise.


F.J. reads "Unfastening a Hook Stud:



Subscribe to Channel Five-Two for first view of new videos.


F.J. confesses: "I've been a groom in show stables, a low-paying position that involves cleaning a lot of leather tack. The horses' prices ran up to six figures, and their owners were sometimes unpleasant. Initially, the poem only described a bridle part, one non-intuitive for beginners. Then it went a step further."


Guest editor Terry Trowbridge's ruling: "This prose poem chills me. Bergmann reminds the reader that part of sabotage is a private moment, defined by touch and smell and a coincidence of normal things turned into opportunity (horses have moods, untested equipment). The motive and the victim are ambiguous, and yet Bergmann's methodical and clear description makes her opening words, "You would be" seem creepily plausible."

F.J. BERGMANN writes poetry and speculative fiction, often simultaneously, appearing in Kaleidotrope, New Myths, On Spec, Quantum Realities, Silver Blade, and a bunch of literary journals that should have known better. She is the winner of the 2012 Rannu Fund Speculative Literature Award for Poetry. Out of the Black Forest (Centennial Press, 2012) won the 2013 SFPA Elgin Chapbook Award. The editor of Star*Line, the journal of the Science Fiction Poetry Association, and poetry editor of Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, she frequents Wisconsin and fibitz.com.

Sasha Swarup-Deuser

MARILYN MONROE

After her death, a forty kilogram wax double was made. Her dress and her underwear, alone, totaled $1,500. Viktor Zharkovsky, the sculptor of the encaustic replica, invited the public to view his latest. Muteness. Gasps! Vandals had struck! Marilyn was completely naked, her arms torn off, her legs broken. Specialists examined Marilyn—her artificial body was covered in semen. Sperm was discovered on her dress, on the frill adorning her pelvis. According to police, the exhibit had received teenage visitors. (The prime suspects.) Zharkovsky was beside himself, looking at his girl. It is very difficult to take the clothes off a fragile, wax statue. Even we professionals take quite a bit of time to complete this process. They were in a hurry; one of them tried to spread Marilyn's legs apart. There is now a huge crack forming at her pubis. They damaged her arms and legs while they were trying to lay her on the vinyl flooring. Now, the idol needs to be recreated. Reformed. In fact, the whole figure will have to be remade. On top of everything the fetishists stole, Marilyn’s couture lace panties were snatched. Zharkovsky worked on Marilyn's figure for nearly six months, studying hundreds of her photos and films. Her dress was custom-made with Indian silks and Egyptian cottons. He bought her lingerie at the Wild Orchid. And now he must start all over again.


Sasha reads "Marilyn Monroe":



Subscribe to Channel Five-Two for first view of new videos.


Sasha confesses: "The idea that art can capture the quintessence of beauty to such a degree that it could trigger criminal behavior is fascinating. That an object made in the image of beauty can bring such a range of complicated actions and emotions is simply human."

SASHA SWARUP-DEUSER is a poet whose work has appeared in The Squaw Valley Review, DASH, and Calliope.

P.M. Pearce

AUNT JEMIMA AND ME

I hear my heart pumping. No car in the driveway. Door’s open. Walk right in, head for bedroom, open top drawer. "They should have a sign: 'Take one,' like the mint dish at the Chinese." All open trays of gold jewelry, the real stuff. Fill my pockets 'til I have a double boner of solid gold. It's good. It's all good.

On the kitchen counter a box of pancake mix, that little picture in the corner looks like Nana.

Eyes follow me like the picture of Jesus in Sunday school. "Fool! What are you doing in that white lady's house? Fool! Dump that stuff and get back on the train!" That box is blazing red. Stop. Stop. Stop!

Hotcakes, butter, syrup, dripping forkful headed for my mouth. Watering now, swallow, smell them. Stomach growling (never eat before a job). Put my thumb over Nana's picture, look for butter, egg, milk, syrup. Listen for a car.

Pat my pockets. Earrings, cufflinks, rings poke me. I did good. I deserve pancakes.

"Be a good boy, Michael, and run that dishwasher. Let's be neat." Let's be neat. Full belly. Try that lady's lounger. See if it feels anything like Nana's.

Next thing I know, cops standing over me, guns out. Laughing. "What have you got in those pockets, genius? Pancakes?"


Gerald So reads "Aunt Jemima and Me":



Subscribe to Channel Five-Two for first view of new videos.


P.M. confesses nothing.


P.M. PEARCE's poems, essays and reviews have been published both in the United States and internationally. Recently, two poems have been chosen for upcoming anthologies.

In the Interview Room with Rauan Klassnik

I'm happy to introduce this occasional feature by interviewing of Rauan Klassnik, who was featured at The 5-2 in August 2012, and whose second book of prose poems, The Moon's Jaw, has just been published by Black Ocean. His first, Holy Land, came out in 2008. Rauan lives quietly in the Pacific Northwest.


Gerald So: How did you find The 5-2? Why did you decide to submit?

Rauan Klassnik: Your tweets referred me to The 5-2, which I enjoyed and then submitted to because, well, I thought I had material that was a good fit. (In fact you may have hintingly replied to one of my tweets saying something like that would be good material for a 5-2 poem. But maybe that's just an invented memory).

GS: No, I did. I find your poems full of visceral imagery and largely unpredictable, as if they come to you in stark flashes. Is this an accurate description of how they come to you?

RK: I think that's accurate as my mind, when creating, building, daydreaming, does sort of naturally move and progress in stark flashes. Sometimes these flashes (images and chunks of language) come nicely arranged into units that don't require any radical makeover but usually I do need to painstakingly enact, over many attempts, a major overhaul. A major overhaul of language, sound and polish, and of the images themselves. And here, in this revising, the options come again to me in stark flashes.

Suddenly inside the river all foam and rock. Birds drift up. Artillery smoke. Your hands around my throat. Mountains crumbling, and dogs howling to clot. I'm walking up through the snow. A dove's tail dipped in blood. An old man dying in peace. His dry, cracked mouth.

(Holy Land, 44)

GS: The first section of The Moon's Jaw is influenced by the concentration camp at Auschwitz. How did the place or the Holocaust inspire poetry?

RK: The first thing I thought of when I read this question was an image from All Quiet On The Western Front where a butterfly lands on a skull in the barbed wire wastelands between the trenches of WWI.

But, anyways, to write I often need a real spur, a real push. I have always been haunted by death, bad things, etc,, and I think it was a book on suicide (A. Alvarez) that introduced me to Tadeusz Borowski and his writing about his "experiences" in Auschwitz. Borowski's work (This Way For The Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen, and We Were in Auschwitz, which also included contributions by Krystyn Olszewski and Janusz Nel Siedlecki) was a revelation for me. One of the poems from The Moon's Jaw's first section is basically a reduction of Borowski's short story "Supper Time":

& now, some lined up ghosts—Behind each a soldier (SS, of course) w/ a gun in his cold white hands. & they've kneeled them down now. Heads arched forward. (Shadows, Twisting&Into, Each, Other. Grinding&Starved. & Blue. Crawled—Up, Out, Of, a Pit. Whining. & Trembling.) & they've fired up thru their heads. Brains—Splattered—All over the pavement. That’s how we're fed.

(The Moon's Jaw, 4)

Much of the horror of the Holocaust, I think, lies not in just how the Nazi perpetrators acted but also in how the victims reacted: what men and women were capable of under the most extreme pressures. Predictably (because, sadly, it's all predictable) some folded, committed suicide. Others turned to debauchery. Some were brave, selfless and heroic. Others sold their bodies. Others were "crematorium vultures" who traded in gold teeth and eagerly waited for the trains, shower cleanups, etc.

GS: Why write about crime as opposed to other subjects?

RK: Well, I do write about other things besides crime but it's said (and I agree) that you should write to your obsessions and I guess I just have a creative taste for darker subjects. I'm not of course alone in this. There are, for example, TV shows devoted entirely to True Crime stories. And some cultures are even more bent to this obsession than ours is. I lived, for example, in Mexico for six years and every morning when I walked into the main downtown plaza I was met with stacks of tabloid papers on the covers of which, invariably, were ghastly color photos of murder and suicide victims. Decomposing corpses found months after the fact, etc, etc. The bloodier and more ghastly the better, it seemed.

——Paws Outstretched——Gray As A Pile Of Rubbish——
——Too Bright To Lick——The Wind——Thru The Statues——
——Grows Rarer & Rarer——Broken Clanging——
——Glinting Quickening——An Orchard——Of Flowers——
——Swaying——
(The Moon's Jaw, 25)

Why are people, some people, so fascinated by crime, death, violence, gore? The answer’s obvious of course. Life and death, good and bad, safety and danger, are intertwined dance partners moving interminably through the ruts of Time. You can shy away from darker and more grisly aspects. Or you can gravitate towards them.

GS: Whose poetry, if any, is the biggest influence on your own?

RK: There are so many great poets that I’ve really loved and who I am sure have exerted influence on my work. And I’ll name some here:

Sylvia Plath, Aase Berg, Paul Muldoon, Gary Young, Robert Penn Warren, Catullus, Pablo Neruda, Seamus Heaney (his own work and also his Beowulf translation), Dylan Thomas, Anne Carson, etc.

But, probably Ted Hughes is the biggest influence. I came to his work in my late teens and thrilled immediately to his dark subjects, grim and unsugared outlook, and his Crow creation poems. I also was dazzled by his dark, muscular and grotesque verbal constructions.


My thanks again to Rauan. If you are a Lineup or 5-2 contributor and would like to be interviewed, email G_SO at YAHOO dot COM.

And now a look at the book trailer for The Moon's Jaw, which Rauan warns is explicit and violent:

Rauan Klassnik

[UNTITLED]

She crept up behind you & tied yr hands behind yr back. Pulled yr pants off, & started to jerk you off. Fields of clouds, striped red & yellow, springing up all around you. This, anyways, is what you told the police. & how it hurt. & how it really hurt. Till she was bent up against a tree. A temple reclaimed by the jungle. If she was alive now, you said, she’d apologize. & then go at you again.


Rauan reads:



Subscribe to Channel Five-Two for first view of new videos.


Rauan confesses: I like to watch crime documentaries and sometimes, in the heat of the moment, I scribble down notes that may find their way into my poems. One night, in my Vegas hotel room, scarfing down tubs of ice cream mixed with hot Doritos, I jotted down such notes.

RAUAN KLASSNIK lives in the Pacific Northwest as a conscientious lumberjack. His first book, Holy Land, released from Black Ocean in early 2008. His next book (The Moon’s Jaw), also from Black Ocean, is due out by the end of 2012.

Brett Peruzzi

IN A FLASH OF LIGHT

His memory is frozen in a department photo—thick mustache, tall bobby's hat, tunic buttons gleaming—the camera's flash foreshadowing the single shot that killed him when a stranger slipped away into McGrath Square, then behind a curtain of rain, never to be found.


Brett reads "In Flash of Light":



Subscribe to Channel Five-Two for first view of new videos.


Brett confesses: "Reading a history of Framingham, Massachusetts, where I live, I learned about William H. Welch. The only police officer ever killed in the line of duty in Framingham, his 1923 murder remains unsolved. Seeing Welch's photo, the similarity between a camera's flash and muzzle flash lighting the night stuck with me."

BRETT PERUZZI's poems have appeared in numerous publications, including Sahara, Pine Island Journal of New England Poetry, Frogpond, Brussels Sprout, and several anthologies.

Ray Succre

TWELVE APOLOGIES

Mr. Arnolds, my neighbor five years ago: It was me. I'm the one who ran over your cat. I didn't even see it. I'm sorry that I suggested your daughter may have done it. I'm sorry.

Jan Arnolds: See above. I'm sorry.

Grandma J.: The coat you bought me last year? The one I always say I've just taken off whenever you call? I drunkenly lit it on fire five months ago. I'm sorry.

Amad, my old friend: Remember when I threw that monstrous party and you passed out, and by morning, some measly person had stolen your cigarettes and poured soup on your crotch? They gave me some of the cigarettes not to say anything, and the soup was my idea. I'm sorry.

My ex, Andrea: When I lost my job because of corporate cutbacks? That was a lie. I told my boss that if she talked to me that way again, I'd piss on her head. She fired me. I'm sorry.

Bookstore On the Bay: It was me. I stole all those books. I figured out how to remove the magnetic strips, and would do so while chatting up your clerk. I did this daily. He thought we were pals. I read all of the books I stole, at least. One a day for almost an entire summer. I'm sorry.

Little Lisa: We only went out for a single day in the third grade, and we broke up because I wouldn't give you my pen. Listen, I told everybody we did it. I'm sorry.

Laurel, a waitress in Olympia, Washington: That guy who stole my wallet off the counter while I was in the restroom, which made me unable to pay for my coffee that one time? I didn't own a wallet. I'm sorry.

Safeway of America, Inc.: I was the one who stole Eraserhead. I gave you the wrong phone number which truly was an accident because I'd just moved into a new place with a new number, but you didn't check my I.D. and when I was about to sign the little rental agreement, I noticed the phone number I'd given had pulled up the first name "Esther", so, quickly and unfortunately for Esther and your company, I signed it "Antonio Banderas" and never returned the video. I'm sorry to you and I'm sorry to Esther and I'm sorry to Mr. Banderas, as well.

To a certain couple: Red fruits don't cause Alzheimer's disease. I made it up. You can start eating strawberries again. I'm sorry.

To Aaron from sixth grade: Though it’s been twenty years, I've still got your Nintendo game, Bionic Commando.  I convinced you I had given it back and that you had lost it, but I just hadn't beaten the game yet. I moved to the other side of the country with it. I'm sorry.

To Kat, a neighbor in a high-rise apartment building I once resided in: Sixteen years ago, I needed to make a local call and my phone service had just been disconnected. You had offered to let my use your phone for local calls. I knocked but you weren't home. Later, I found the telephone service grid on the second floor, so I spliced into your line with my room's phone, thinking that it wouldn't really matter as long as I switched it back when I was done. When I picked up to make my important call, you were home and you were ordering something on it. The salesclerk couldn't figure out what ordering number your item was supposed to have, so you had to explain to him (and though you didn't know it, to me) that it was the jelly-apparatus on some page 36. The Rhino II, I think it was called. I didn't mean to overhear it. I hope everything worked out and I'm sure blue was a wonderful color. I'm sorry.


Ray reads "Twelve Apologies":



Subscribe to Channel Five-Two for first view of new videos.


Ray confesses: While confessional poetry is not my flavor, I decided one afternoon to try some, wanting to be as basic and pure about it as I could. The result: Twelve Apologies. Honestly, I have enough of a past that I could have made it Fifty Apologies.

RAY SUCCRE is an undergraduate currently living on the southern Oregon coast with his wife and son. He has had poems published in Aesthetica, Poets and Artists, and Pank, as well as in numerous others across as many countries. His novels Tatterdemalion (2008) and Amphisbaena (2009), both through Cauliay, are widely available in print. Other Cruel Things (2009), an online collection of poetry, is available through Differentia Press.

For inquiry, publication history, and information, visit Ray online: http://raysuccre.blogspot.com.