Issue #14 contains 2 poems by Charles P Ries.
Bio: Charles P. Ries lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His narrative poems, short stories, interviews and poetry reviews have appeared in over two hundred print and electronic publications. He has received four Pushcart Prize nominations for his writing. He is the author of THE FATHERS WE FIND, a novel based on memory and five books of poetry. Most recently he was awarded the Wisconsin Regional Writers Association Jade Ring Award for humorous poetry. He is the poetry editor for Word Riot (www.wordriot.org). He is on the board of the Woodland Pattern Bookstore (www.woodlandpattern.org) and a member of the Wisconsin Poet Laureate Commission. But most of all he is a founding member of the Lake Shore Surf Club, the oldest fresh water surfing club on the Great Lakes (http://www.visitsheboygan.com/dairyland/). You may find additional samples of his work by going to: http://www.literati.net/Ries/
Any art, video, writing etc is Copyrighted, 2008. The poems are read by Daniel Shapiro. Most of the photos/clip art are from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page this link will take you to a list of all used under common copyright. Here is a google doc showing the direct links to each pic http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=d92t5mg_21g3h2fddp
Here is the text of the pieces:
KILLING SEASON
I did what I had to do. I had no choice. I was the son of the man
who raised them. From kittens in May to an early death in November.
Our mink dressed the fashion elite. We cared for our animals like
they were our furred children.
We gave them a good short life and a quick painless death. We'd drop
them like quarters into a wooden box containing cyanide powder and
wait a few minutes until they expired, slowly, silently, into eternal sleep.
We didn't always kill them that way. We used to break their necks.
But it took a big man many hours to break 10,000 necks each pelting
season. So we changed with the times and went with cyanide.
This allowed me, at fourteen, to become the chief executioner.
I wasn't thoughtless. It never became like breathing or picking corn.
I'd run wheel barrows full in to my father who peeled their skin off and
readied them for New York furriers who'd select the best for full length coats.
My prolific ability at killing 40,000 mink over four seasons left me hanging
when I filed for Conscientious Objector status with my draft board. They
asked me, "If you had no qualms about killing thousands of mink, how come
you have a moral problem with killing the enemies of your country? I mean,
killing is killing, ain't it son? Aren't you just a natural born killer?"
The purity of their logic confused me. I had always been an absolutist, like
those Jain monks who see God in an ant. Who, when inadvertently stepping
on a beetle see a sentient being crushed to death.
If I could kill mink, why not men?
SEX FOR LIVER
It was the cosmic glue of our love. The outward
expression of my inability to be romantic. We
transcended irritation, bad weather and snow
storms locked securely in our love capsule.
Until the day her anti-depressant kicked-in.
Until the day a posse of post depression Greek
sex bandits named Lexapro, Paxil, Prozac and
Zoloft rode down the middle our bed and blew
up our love nest.
Seeking the balance that medication brought her,
but wanting the pleasures of intimacy, she searched
for the right pharmaceutical drug. Promising sex,
with only the side effect of liver damage or death
(only one of every 250,000 actually die), she came
upon Serzone.
"Yes, but what if it kills you? Or ruins your liver?"
Maybe my desires, my passions would kill her?
She'd already given up drugs (at least the illegal ones)
and alcohol too. She had surrendered her anxiety
disorder and depression to popular medication, but
chanted "God damn it, I'm not giving up sex!"
I loved her perverse sense of justice. It wasn't based
on logic, but rather on passion. "Well, as long as it's
going to wreck your liver, why not just start drinking again?"
"No, I'm staying sober." Again her perverse logic.
The unpredictable universe between her ears.
The broadest canvas a writer could hope to find.
She was better than my fiction. I awed at the vistas
I saw in her. The river of tears that coursed through
her sleepless sexless nights as she clung to a life that
had gone ipso-flipso.
She knew what she was willing to sacrifice.
We knew what we had to do, and that night
had liver and onions before going to bed early
in order to get a few extra rounds in. It seemed
like the only holistic, metaphoric thing to do.
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