The LiteraryMary print journal is now available for pre-order for $10.00 plus shipping, which is a discount of two dollars off what we will be offering it for when we release it on January first. You can read about the first issue under the Issues tab on the home page, and you can purchase it here. We will be printing a limited amount, so if you are planning to pick one up, I highly recommend that you reserve a copy as soon as possible.
Howard Hughes Lived For a Time Among Jars of Piss, Elliott Smith Stabbed Himself Twice in the Chest
I eat less so he’ll love me
more. He does not ask me to do this.
I read messages
people send me.
None of us ever writes
by hand. We send
little messages,
sentiments. It’s okay
because they are sincere.
We all have
inboxes
full of text, we have bank
accounts full of numbers
or not.
I owe someone a letter.
A real one.
I owe Well’s Fargo
thousands of dollars.
I go
to college to pay
for going
to college.
I eat less so he’ll love me
more. He gives me compliments.
He says he loves my ass.
When I’m lying in the bath
alone, the skin on my belly is different
than the skin everywhere else
on my body.
I’ve had four children.
He’s never smashed my head
into the car window, never beat
my eggshell skull
against glass.
He didn’t scream insults
under the suffocating
sublimity of a country sky
at night.
That wasn’t him
but he also didn’t see.
He couldn’t stop it.
He wasn’t there then.
He has only seen every inch
of my naked body.
I don’t know what to say
when he tells me
how beautiful
I am to him.
Some days I eat nothing
at all, which has nothing to do
with him. My stomach burns
and I feel hyper alive.
He loves my children.
I’m afraid he’ll discover
I don’t know what to do
with a good man.
I eat less so he’ll love me
more. He does not ask me to do this.
I once met a man in a bar
who asked me if I am famous.
I once met another man in a bar
who told me he knew
where I’d been
the night before.
He thought I should call him.
He gave me his phone number.
Some days I eat far too much
and never feel full.
He sent me gifts in the mail.
He has a mother
who likes me.
She sent me cookies.
She asked how I am feeling.
He sent me chocolate and tea
and orange split peas.
He sent me a letter
he had written by hand.
in truth
People can be like a bottle
shaken up, contents
inside the plain
brown
glass
building pressure –
quietly waiting
to explode.
wilt
She sent him a letter, sat
waiting for him to arrive.
Her sweaty palms stuck
to her skirt
as she smoothed it,
biting her lip watching
the window.
It was sad to see her
jump every time
she thought
she saw him
come in, smile
fading like a street
light at the turn
of night to morning.
Frustrations of an Editor (or Some of This Shit is So Good it’s Blowing My Mind…)
Editoress? ;)
Laying out a literary journal is hard work. Don’t ever let anyone tell you differently. In fact, editing a literary journal is hard work. It’s a far cry from the, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool to do this…?’ that started me down this path. There are so many questions to ask yourself. Do I put two small poems on a page? Does that take away from the significance of each poem? Is this journal going to be five hundred pages long if I give each tiny poem its own page? What font should I use? Shit is getting weird when you are up at three in the morning asking yourself if a particular font looks arrogant. Then there are photograps to fit and resolution to think about and printing preferences and well, money to spend.
My website, LiteraryMary.com was not originally created to be something taken very seriously. Mostly, it was created as a middle finger salute to the writingforums I had been using at the time. All the sudden, we turn around and there are almost five hundred members, a hell of a lot of great writers, great writing and really great people. I remember when we knew every single person who registered, and I remember that initial feeling of weirdness when people started registering that we didn’t know.
I don’t really know why I’m rambling all this out onto the page except maybe that I have been doing layout for so long my fingers are aching to actually type something.
So the journal comes out January 1st and I’d be lying if I didn’t admit the deadline is stressing me out. I’ve never worked with a serious deadline. In reality, my deadlines are all for essays due for school, and on top of all this it’s almost finals time at school. So all the sudden I’m in a world of important deadlines. Maybe some things I just said there are contradictory, but that’s how I roll – or so I’m told anyway.
For those of you who don’t know who we are, come visit:
You may be surprised to find out exactly how addictive we are.
who’s there?
the sound
of wind
some autumn
night
w
h
0
0
s
h
i
n
g
through
the skeleton
leaves
of an oak.
Enormously Solitary
Sometimes without cause after class,
I sit on the steps in the bluster amidst
the energy of autumn leaves blowing.
The expanse of the sky is humbling
and the stars seem as a dot to dot
that, like my thoughts, cannot be connected.
Tucked inside my black wool coat
the cold cannot touch me, hood raised,
I’m freed from feigning polite communication.
The sound of the wind in the trees, fills
my heart with something almost like love,
pushing out the loneliness which clings to me,
as static, an overwhelming current
of electricity that mutates rational thought.
Nights like this, enormously solitary,
I wish to be the wind, unburdened
and fearless, impossible to ground,
freed from the weight of all thought.
Asunder
We’ve moved through a year
parallel but unsynchronized,
separate although side by side;
from inquisitive awareness
of acquaintance to love-struck
blindness and back again,
hand-in-hand, half-drunk crossing
a shallow river over tumbled
rocks slippery with moss.
Me stumbling, you steadying,
My stranded hands illustrate
tempests for you, floating them off
incomplete as corked glass crossing
the sea only to turn to dust storms
upon opening. My calloused fingers
fail to fabricate our mosaics
from sand and saline, abstractions
you somehow complete; crafting
clarity from incongruity
No, But This One’s Different
It’s like when you stub your toe
and you know the pain is coming
but it takes a minute
for it to really hit.
It arrives
while I’m walking the kids
to the bus
and for now
I zip
it up, bite my lip
for the sake
of the children.
‘Mommy it’s cold’,
she says.
I smile
and nod my head
but I don’t feel it.
Back home
I make breakfast
for the babies,
serve It to them,
then quietly shut the bathroom door
and let it go
in long
shuddering
sobs for my
stupidity.
Stupidity
for believing
the things he said.
Stupidity for
believing in him.
jenifer.wills 