RESURRECTION
MAGAZINE
ISSUE: II
CRUCIFY
Art by David Guardado
New Age by Hayley Gibbons
it was raining the day she
argued herself out of
the house;
packed away old tin hats
that still rang with the sounds
of racking sinew
her exhaled life could never
douse these ancient oilfields,
so she washed her hands
in his sodden breath and
drove where all the familiar
trees jeered in evergreen at
her receded lips in the rearview
drove to where the welcome
signs felt real;
where sweet thorn grew sparse
in the summer and people
forgot old gravestones
with ease
in earshot of the city neon,
a final box of cheap aperitif;
it tasted like splinters
and rusty iron,
her sweat smeared on the
windowpane as she
watched her single guest
leave down the street,
jangling
the surgeon’s steel flayed a
hundred years in just
a moment,
sewed salvation into her
temples, and betrayal
back into her thighs
it should last a while, he’d said;
she passed the mirror that proved
she was god without looking
poems by maestro gamin
.wait and see what grows back .
i hear you walking around in the other room
i smell you burning things as you circle
while you aim your next ploy at me
rifle thru suggestions in my psyche
press lightly over buttons with brimstone fingertip death
twirl mustache and tail like a cliche
but i’m no damsel in bondage lying supine over railroad ties
i’m no deathrow ne’er do pleading for redemption over a harmonica in the dark
these days i know you better
than i know myself
i know how you do what you do
but you win more than you lose cause i don’t always know “why”
i cut parts off from myself with a straight face when i feel
you around the corner
the pain comes later
this time i need to wait to see
what grows back to know
exactly what i’ve done.
and in the meantime,
in the time of unwhole me
i just hope i haven’t lost my head
. i’ve stopped worshipping dead things .
i should’ve said i’ve stopped worshipping dead things
stopped trying to siphon genius from the water bowl of a spent life source
stopped creating philosophy where no philosophy was in the first place
stopped piggy backing on the long-gone awards and laurels of someone else
stopped searching for self in used up movements drenched in mythologized nostalgia
that i’ve left once upon a time examples respectfully where they left themselves
i stopped digging up legacies as if they must’ve had to know who was us
i stopped forcing myself into the annals of artistic heights
and who’s who’s panting uninvited
because, same as you,
they know we have no right to be there
we haven’t earned it
and when we’re not posing, hands clasped, one boot pigeon toed, knee buckled inward,
they’ll glance when you aren’t looking and they’ll know there’s no risk no gamble and no style
fawning over things the entire world already agrees upon
there is no one way street called self-fulfillment by way of vicarious larp fetish and
unoriginal shoe sniffing
if you were there, —today, you’d sell a book about it
which is more feather dusting
than fixture,
more fraud
than threat
stop applying to be last one at the party after the party’s already gone
deal with knowing all the epic parties are over
and you weren’t there for them
allow yourself to stop swooning for a moment
over the safest way anyone
could ever express what they want to be
and invite yourself to
something real and right now
preserve
i’ve said goodbye to more friends than friends who’ve known i’ve said goodbye to
that doesn’t bring me any joy of satisfaction to know that
that i’m some phantom confidante passing hands over too many thorns embedded in the heart, inside threadbare skin that tatters toward the end year
there are periods i feel worsening as we creep further
into the solstice, the mind and body know long lost loves no longer, hugs have no weight in their hands, and kisses rush in between sweet gales over the santa ana’s
like tears and rain, past life and present, the ambition of what’s capable and the pain of those who left the show early
but i’m no slave to applause, i’m no proudmaker’s servant
i’d rather take the show with me as all the old memories crowd myself
that’s why i abandon everything but me.
i am a phantom confidante with rose thorns, brandy on the breath, and too many words but
i love harder than i need to and
assume more than an uncontainable life lets on
we are down here and we love, and we build lives, and we grow bored, and cling together
we leave a little at a time and carry on around the smell of christmas trees
stopping long enough every now and then to watch it all
happening to us, keeping
ourselves in the sweetest
preservative.
Paintings by Vian Borchert
Artist Statement:
I am an expressionist artist, I describe my artwork as a form of visual poetry. I believe art is a connecting force of good that goes beyond borders, instituting that art is a form of universal language by which all comprehend. I seek to connect with people through my visual world aspiring for the world to come together through the arts. The artwork aspires to be a bridge that intersects the connectivity of art and the environment accentuating the significance of living with nature and its benefits on humans.
One Holy Fuck by Elizabeth Gade
They tried to fuck
the holy out of me,
like orgasm isn’t
the quickest
doorway
to enlightenment.
Poems by Josie Defaye
Gorgeous
…In fact it’s the back of womanhood’s hand Statues. The orchid planted in shoulder’s Knuckled bed. Gorgon: from Latin: gorgeous. Suncracked gargoylic stare. Invitation, Safety in “you’re sooooo pretty!”’s four unplanned O’s. Sequeled by hair product recs, mirror Makeouts, verbless narratives, as flower To flower speaks. Pre-admir’ng my ring band Sighs Amy’s stroke synchronized, eluci– Dating a maiden’s hand men now no longer, Meeting, kiss. No linger; no longer nip. Dirty-nailed men, their own hands measuring. Women sip juleps, rhyme, we smile tulips –buds yet thorning from my tips as I type.
A Record of June
No, only once: at 5 I tried on trying onto my hips my mother’s crops. Ashamed of the grains of wheat sprouting from my groin, to my mother’s red dress I dared not come home.
By 96 seasons for sundry reasons my kidnapped soul, she splintered in six. Mute princess of senseless winter, crying, a motherless silence’s ironing, the wrinkles from twilights. A long, long way from home
I, three decades ill, swallowed like cock my patient tongue. I was borne again shivering under unending depressions in pressures of timber phallic medicine’s unquivering sticks. Sometimes I feel
Now our thighs bleed between our knees. Look! We allow vanity mirrors to grow long from our thumbnails. Don’t you know? No cocaine was ever cut with water of Narcissus’ river. I went the past two past nights without drinking.
—I’m almost done
Compañera, speak to me again, of the back of her hand. I will listen for a thousand nights. Chronicle again its palmed stroke of my neonate gonads. Ascertain the shade of ichor which coasted through her veins. Listener, know that the tissue swaddling those lodes in that split infant second took the clothes of this princess-to-be. I was never taught manners. I eat with my hands, catch food with my knees, dirtying my jeans, closed circling consequences of helix DNA, my genes’ gift given to me, penis bestowed without consult nor consent. A long way from home
He hallucinated through 90s and oughts and 10s and tweens shades pomegranate, mulberry, mauve, swallowed Abilify for bumbles of hymns, psalms, and song. How could you give risperdal— Don’t you hear hums of Just Closer Walks? bumbles of hymns and psalms, dirge and song? I know, you know: a long way from home.
But how could you?
You made him say
I’m almost done, he said. I’m almost done, I say.
No longer need we speak from toothless sucks on crimson squirting seeds, no more morse code on Rorshach teeth, like misty bombora’s crashes. Like the time you walked home, you spoke of sick violence you saw of Pacific salt splashes. Then Seph turned worshippers into ashes.
Like you repeated to me: the ocean, my myth, my discovery. Cartography, show the nautical venue where dragons be. Thalassic fable of winding tornado, pull artwork’s swords in Excalibur stone. Victory your incestuous contest, walk your yellow brick road. A long, long way from home.
You hear no longer tin man’s audio, no broken radio, no EQ all wrong— when I was 10, you know this, a toad crawled into my throat and gave birth to this baritone: a masculinity, a basilisk, a scared, stifled monotone song.
Now, Seph murders daily the man in the corner, kisses as Blarney the Sisyphus stone, the tantalizing saliva, ours, to have and to hold. Now, free, some— sometimes— sometimes I feel I am motherful.
Proof: inside Them last midnight they ask of my dream’s title-to-be. Forgive me daddy, but in the stead of our infant’s first words, night whispers my name, my Seph, my never thought, my records of my pain, my happiness, my Poem for Haruko, my June Jordan, my June, they knight me: mama.
A record of June. June like winning song, like wedding ring, O June, how the Baptist church bells ring. How June, were we engaged in Spring. How, motherful worlds ask me unbegrudge this thing. June, I feel like a mother and child. Forgive your mother, O, wonderful child, and grant you merciful winter of fields and grain. O, motherless child: let us worship, sing, and sing. O my child, let us hold us in Spring, that way, home.
Paintings by Mark M. Mellon
Mellon’s work reaches inward and outward; toward the furthest depths of inner consciousness at an attempt to understand the significance of the time span of our collective human history. His works are of consciousness and observation, not just of the world around, but of world’s unseen. Subjects and themes found in his paintings are broad and open to interpretation— allowing the viewer to find their own unique bond to the imagery.
Orison by Dimitris Passas
“A man’s character is his fate”, I heard the hoarse voice hissing from a place beyond time.
It was the umpteenth time that my request for contact was answered with this short aphorism. I was livid; it was so typical of him to throw mantras at me when my arguments cornered him, and they always rang pretentious and irrelevant, most often leading to a full-blown quarrel that left both of us reeling. Even beyond his grave, the old man opted for quoting a Heraclitean fragment rather than pronouncing an authentic, subjective response. I was yearning for bona fide human contact with the man who gave me birth and transformed me from a possibility into an actuality nearly 40 years earlier. And what did I get? Prefabricated answers.
The night was gradually giving way to the light of day, the perfect time to make my first-ever attempt to pray, something that would seem inconceivable a few years back when I thought that I was ascending to a higher plane of existence just by snorting a few lines of smack. I was so caught up in my personal drama that, seen from the perspective of an outsider, my life looked like a perpetual process of introspection or in other words a grown man addicted to self-loathing while staying constantly transfixed on the sight of his own wounds. I’ve never even read the Gospel; he did. In the rare times when he deigned to share something with his family, he recited passages from The New Testament, delivering his lines with a grandiose style that irked me since I was a little boy.
It was my mother who took me by the hand and patiently instructed me with respect to the unfathomable depth of religious thinking and the miracles only faith can propagate. Wise folk say that women are like tea bags. You don’t know their strength until they’re in hot water. Whoever coined this saying must have had my mother in mind. After the death of my father, she deep-dived into a major depression and only got better after reading theology. I enormously respect and admire her revival and I wish I had followed a similar spiritual path instead of getting wasted and surrendering to decay for so many years. A few months back, I promised her that I would try to ask for God’s guidance as in a prayer. So now I’m at my knees, feeling more lost than ever before as the only thing I get in response is not divine wisdom but the banalities of my dad.
“A man’s character is his fate”. Is this really my father’s voice? I remember everything regarding his intonation, however as I’m mulling the cryptic words, I can’t be certain that this is his tone or if there is a whole different entity speaking to me.
Looking back makes me realize that my relationship with my father was difficult from the get-go, even though during my early childhood years I’ve never challenged him, not so much because I was afraid but because I believed that it was futile. As I was growing up, the vague sense of awkwardness that I felt when I was beside him mutated into aggressiveness that led to symbolic acts of defiance. Nevertheless, they were not received by him as expected. Subconsciously, I was provoking him to extract something true out of him, thus his stoic attitude every time I got into trouble underwhelmed me more than a man can imagine. I was craving for one-to-one confrontations that would force him to remove the mask and reveal his innermost thoughts. Not only about me. I feel like my father never knew the entirety of me and until now I thought that this was solely his responsibility. Today, I am not so sure.
My brother is the most precious life companion of mine, it’s like we were born joined at the hip like Siamese twins, even though there is this 2-year gap that interjected between his birth and mine. The lack of communication with Dad affected him equally I suppose but, surprisingly, he didn’t ever see it as a problem. Perhaps because he resembles him so much. Even from when we were little kids, everyone in the wider family saw him as a spitting image of our father. And that’s the grand mystery that I must solve, how much me and him are alike. If a man’s character is his fate, is my destiny already sealed? Dying without leaving any substantial imprint on my loved ones?
You can’t escape parental influences, even if both aren’t experts in communication. Just because my dad never let anyone look a little further and know him better, I remember every single word uttered by him that hinted at some form of subjective truth. Frequently, my memory wanders around the few times that I saw him relaxed and ready to disclose a part of himself to the others. These moments now feel so sweet, like a long wet kiss full of promises. I wish I had him in front of me, in flesh and blood; I would do anything to unlock the secrets of his essence. I can only look at myself and speculate, hypothesize, and project my own merits and flaws onto him. I now realize that our binary feud wasn’t about hate but about pain. The pain of not being able to connect. I can only pray my words to God and hope that He will pass the message to my long-gone father. I stand up and immediately bend down again, my knees so deep set in the wooden floor that hurt. I whisper:
My beloved Father,
I can’t stand knowing that we never talked as sire and son.
I resent the fact that I’ll never get to know you for real.
The only thing I can do is write for and about you.
An elegy of love.
After the Storm by Lucy Whalen
You weren’t made to be alone
But I was not made to love you.
Some nights I think I made you up
Mistook a star or a lightning bolt
For an angel,
Falling from the sky
With shredded wings.
It was easier to say goodbye in the storm.
When you were dying, did you think of God?
Or did you remember the day
You told me where Eden was
And we ran across the desert,
Hand in hand to preach our cause
Only to find you’d lost it.
When he hung you up there,
Did you pray?
Or did you look down to see me mouth
The words
You sang to me those days
When we hid in the cracks
Of temple walls.
He came back for you just in time,
Didn’t he?
Halo in hand to hang from your head
While you, my darling,
Locked the garden gate behind you,
And sent a storm to say goodbye.
Poems by Andrew Buckner
—I REFUSED TO BELIEVE IN YOU. I STILL DO.—
I swear I heard your voice, Heavenly Father,
Telling me in daydreams and in nightmares weeks beforehand
To take another route, switch to another lane
That fateful rain-soaked January
When time slowed to a crawl
And the front of my car became scattered metal
Gleaming in flashes of red and blue lights.
Yet, I refused to believe in you.
I still do.
I’ve glimpsed you, Heavenly Father,
And felt your presence
In a quiet movie theater, my personal cathedral
(As blasphemous as it may sound),
In moments of great art:
Pasolini’s The Gospel According to St. Matthew,
Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ,
Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc,
The silent features of DeMille
As well as
The poetry of Shakespeare, Alighieri,
Ginsberg,
The songs of Tupac, Frank Zappa,
The worlds pulsating eternity
Through my own fingertips, writing,
The attempts to nail myself to my own cross
And preserve my bleeding body
For the masses
In vain.
Yet, I refused to believe in you.
I still do.
My childhood was filled with Sunday services, Heavenly Father,
Communion, giving and receiving Christ,
Hearing your holy word,
Singing songs of praise for you,
Drinking your blood,
And still your name rings hollow
Around the edges of my veins,
My heart, my soul—
A gossipy whisper in a church pew.
Because I refused to believe in you.
I still do.
—I’M BEING CRUCIFIED—
My feet slump,
But remain stiff, sturdy, strong,
Upright.
The weight of the world,
My bloodstained cross,
Is fastened tightly to my
Pierced, aching flesh!
I’m being crucified!
Bills, labor,
Manufactured ambitions
Cast into a pre-conceived
Idea of happiness—
A smile, plastic, addressed
To my accusers
For they know not what they do!
For I know that I, we, humanity
We’re meant to do
Better things,
Serve as better vessels
While aboard the seas
Of physicality!
We
Were meant to create, commune.
Yet, all I see, sense, feel
Is mutiny!
I’m being crucified!
And no one hears my cries
As I struggle for movement,
Temporary comfort.
And no one hears my cries
As the nails of time, judgment
Hammer my hands, feet, art into place
And all I get is rejection from publishers,
Peers
Because the visage I craft
Is either “too normal”, “too weird”,
Or “too in-between”.
It doesn’t fit into the commonly accepted,
Trendy mold of what is unique.
A notion that is, in itself, generic,
Tired, routine.
But thoughtlessly accepted by most!
I’m being crucified!
I try to teach to a crowd of no one
And all I get are jeers, ghosts,
Glares from the robbers, thieves
On both sides of me!
I’m being crucified!
I scream at the god, father, muse
That has forsaken me
In my final breaths!
But, no divine form, hope
Manifests
To carry me away!
I’m being crucified!
But, resurrection will come!
I will walk out of the tombs made for me,
Leave these physical constraints
Forcing the wind, the rain,
The masses to follow!
I’m being crucified!
But, resurrection will come
In just a few days, years, lives,
Centuries time!
I’m being crucified!
Paintings by Claire Amadea
A MAN OF MANY NOTHINGS
by Rye Brayley
I am nothing
if not nothing
so nothing
therefore I am
A man
of many nothings
with nothing
left to spare
Who’s need
of something
is nothing
And that’s nothing
but quaint
and rare
A man
of many nothings
and nothing’s
all I share
I am nothing
if not nothing
so nothing’s
all I’ll be
A man
of many nothings
there’s nothing
here too see
the holy ghost by Laughton J. Collins, Jr.
the holy ghost
moves unnoticed
through the sky
through the trees
the wind blows
and the holy ghost
hides—
disguised as a breeze
no one can see—
the holy spirit
slipped in unnoticed
when no one was looking
when no one cared—
the holy ghost
saw the act of creation
first-hand
but bears witness
to second-hand
salvation—
that no one needs
and no one wants
the holy spirit
moves quietly through
time and space
space and time—
never seen
never heard—
but always on time
the holy ghost
locks the door
the holy spirit
picks the lock
the holy ghost
kills a man
the holy spirit
resurrects him—
the holy ghost
is an apparition
the holy spirit
a fiend—
the two are one
they are the same
the holy ghost
is a fiend
the holy spirit
an apparition—
opposite of crucifixion by Gerard Sarnat
imagined (modestly
embellished) tapestry
since Corona virus:
this mostly Portola
Valley Northern
California indoor
house tabby home
nobody; backyard
morning swim done
along with family
business and social/
climate justice work;
pick a few mature
guavas then wait on
your local pot store
daily delivery before
mosey into adjacent
studio some afternoons
to spin verse gossamer
when we aren’t playing
with one pet Pyrenean pup
plus up to six grandkids;
or take short walks from
front door; meet up with
buds in virgin forest; cold,
windy November, clouds
part, glorious sun comes
out now so we bask…Later
I spend my cozy night inside
dear wife making whoopee
— Jeezus, ain’t half bad!
Resurrection iBodies by Mark D. Stucky
I laundered my iPhone the other day,
left in a pants pocket bound for washer glory.
After all the agitation and spin ceased,
below the damp graveclothes,
I found its corpse, cold and dead,
circuitry and battery drowned.
Ashes to ashes, suds to suds.
How our lives seem to rely on our phones.
How anxious we feel about sudden loss!
But fear not,
iCloud carried a backup.
After purchasing and registering a newer model,
restoring from the heavenly Cloud began.
Soon, all my old apps, photos, and music
miraculously appeared on my new phone.
My old phone’s configuration,
its personality, its spirit, its soul,
resurrected in the new model.
The same soul in an upgraded body,
newer, sleeker, faster, better,
more glorious.
A promise to us all.
Vigils by Ed Davis
Piddling, my late mother
used to call her midnight
hauntings, of no value
to anyone but herself—
except maybe to God.
I’d never thought of that.
Ghosting our rooms,
she’d smoke in the dark,
fold and stack tissues, mutter
to my father, long gone,
her schizophrenia diagnosis
still decades away.
Maybe piddling was her prayer,
else how’d she endure a life
of everlasting disappointment:
mate fled, a son to raise alone.
She comes to me now,
two years after her passing,
roaming the early morning dark
of this dim-lit church, where
monks sing and chant psalms.
I can almost glimpse smoke
from her cigarette curling
as if from a priest’s censer,
swinging scent on the air,
candles glowing on the altar
like embering ash.
I am the red skittle by Andrea Aldrete
Crusted candied surface, cherry,
blinding white middle.
An abomination.
Escaping little hands, rolling beneath
the pews. Their hands all raised in praise,
the preacher hears the commotion
and looks that way. Everyone
is looking now, as the child throws herself
onto her hands and knees
to retrieve me. The parishioners choke
on their gasps, as the grandmother pulls
the child back. The look in their eyes
says it all.
And she’s guilty, her face
painted in shame.
Red.
She doesn’t know
how to pray
but she’ll spend her whole life seeking
redemption,
trying to rid her mouth
of the sweet betrayal
she tasted
that Sunday.
Eventual Machine by Frederick Pollack
Purgatory resembles
Dubai. Inadequate sewers.
Innumerable tanker-trucks
draw shit from towers. Work is done
by abused executives
on loan from upper hell. Food, booze
arrive via elevators
but we in the towers can’t taste them –
trying day and night to make contact.
“We have a terrible life,” she said.
Her little girl looked fed, warm,
and hopeless. I remember a CVS;
it seemed as cruel as a jewelry store
in that wind. I gave her five dollars,
frantic to get away.
Now I must reconstruct
who she was, how much was needed,
who all of them were, and my name.
RESURRECTION mag 