wunderkammer

Marilyn

by Sparkleface

 

Strangely Enough, I Feel Nothing

mixed media art journal

by Sparkleface

 

Do a Good Job

mixed media art journal

by Sparkleface

False

mixed media art journal

by Sparkleface

Return

mixed media art journal

by Sparkleface

Not Waving But Drowning

mixed media art journal 

by Sparkleface

Writers as Kids: To Wrestle

by Paula Gilovich

Pictured: Jamie Gaughran-Perez

Enter 27 high school wrestlers.
They will stand against a flattened bleacher. It will be
the beginning of the year, and time to take a picture.
And they will photograph the beginning of year as if
it is the end of year. Coaches will remain
on the side in regular outfits. Their faces
will appear as if they have snuck into the scene.
The boys will be tight or loose in their jumpers, depending
on their luck. They will line up, kneel, make masculine their
faces, their weak shoulders, their hands on knees.
They will invariably have problems.
Things like desperate thoughts against becoming men.
Things like feelings people have told them they feel and they do not.
Things like all their wants that they will not.
Things like all that wrestling teaches them to love that they cannot.

Even when your body lives what you want it to, make sure to keep it far from mind.
Swing into sanctity. Fall into sanctity. Hold someone you don’t know from behind
in competition.

They will falter, make feminine moves, and they will scold themselves
until they drink until they puke on Friday night.

Whatever you can’t remember must be good.

Spotlight on the boy down left. He will be the example.
The truest form, the nearly Adam, the country and
the quest for something god in man.
The boy will stare into the camera light
as if it is the sun and promise to become president.
In a dirty state of mind he will promise to be cleaner,
better. The devil will get pinned; he cannot win.
The boy is a very good wrestler.

All the boys exit, except this one.
This is where our greatest tasks are at hand.
With no one to wrestle.

Writers as Kids: The Edge of Something

by Melissa Walker

Pictured: Paula Gilovich

At the place where muck grows on the edge of the lake, the bullfrogs used to croak long low planks of sounds, where now a tadpole may swim by, fat body trailing legs like weak twigs in the water, at the edge of the algae smell is a memory you can never quite get to. A thousand million stars above you, the bikes you never brought, your mom’s best friend’s boyfriend in his trucker’s hat. A roadie, you heard. Your dad who knows where. Just the kids and the moms and the boyfriend. No dogs, no cats no dads. The three girls two boys, and only one pair of each really had anything to say to each other. The others nothing except to say, ketchup please. Or just a strong swift smack on the back of his head, the stun, the silence inside and the look on his face when he turned around. Saving it up, he was saving it up to spend some day in another store where it wouldn’t cost him so much. You caught ten thousand million tadpoles that year. Became brave enough to just catch them with your hands in the water, you reached for their soft slimy skin. It was hard to believe they wouldn’t last and someday they wouldn’t live at all. So you caught them but then there was nothing to do with them, just hold them in a jar, till you hear your mom or the best friend yelling each kid’s name in a list. Hot dogs for dinner. Then may as well let the tadpoles go. Nothing to do with them anyway.

Writers as Kids: [Whiskey and old]

Writing by Catherine Maskill

Pictured: Martin Wall

Whiskey and old 

tobacco meet lavender 

perfume and the stench 

of the disinfectant bowl.

Heavy sea green, pea green 

curtains ('the owl and the pussycat 

went to sea') thick with dust, 

invisible but for beams of sunlight, 

which illuminate the mass of debris 

floating in the room. 

 

He tells you, 

"it's all dead skin". 

You don't believe him. 

"All dust is dead skin", he says. 

You slam your hands 

over your mouth. 

He laughs so hard 

that he needs the oxygen. 

 

Afterwards, you wonder if 

he is choking 

on all the dead skin. 

He assures you he isn't.

You breathe it in, moving 

your mouth like a fish. 

You feel heavier with every breath.

 

'They' take an x-ray of his tired, full lungs 

whilst early morning 

condensation snakes a path 

down the grimy glass. 

In some places, the stained lace 

curtain clings to the window. 

Writers as Kids: Invisible You

Writing by J. A. Tyler

Pictured: John Heckman Wright

Visible me, tap tap dancing, a smile on my face face. Glasses on my face face. Dark glasses making of the world a balled shadow, a fist. Us going away, the drop. You. Because there is a leg gone missing and no one laughs. Where is the thing that we had, your face erased by my face, your head consumed by my thinking. My feet tap tap dancing. My angel smile. My choking up face with kid cheeks and the hair bowl-cut and my hands magic filled. Us and our two kinds of red, and I have already taken your limbs. No one laughing when you try to ask when do we start recording and your face is half gone and it is a picture and not a camcorder. There is no recording. Jump they say jump up and dance and I do, my feet tap tap dancing on this rug that is a mute, my neck a swan, your body disintegrating. Because you stood behind all the things I was thinking and now you are only a portion of jaw. You will be the one losing your face. And I will be tap tap tap-dancing like gravestone beautiful tones, the tangle of people disappearing, the playful bodies that overtake you, the disappearing act. Our invisible, only one leg left to tap tap dance on the bones of them who still exist. Hallelujah. They clever joke and split your clenched face. Hallelujah. No one is laughing. Put the table cloth over your face and sleep. Sleep. We will hear voices and they will be asking us questions. I have the answers. You can sleep. Sleep. Me tap tap dancing. My face face face. Your face gone. My feet feet tap tap dancing. The jump as they say jump, because I will be the one who flies away, I will be the one they say visible to, I am the one they are asking questions of. Dark dark and these glasses. My face face. Feet tap tap tap. They are not laughing, Hallelujah. They get it. Letting go of these invisible hands, so hard. This visible me.