anthologically reading...

anthologically speaking...
anthology
criticism and review
contact and comment

Casler's note: This issue, our craftsman anthologist is c a childers. Direct any commentary to him regarding this fine issue.

Anthologist's note: Progress is a beast that each writing human seems to tackle in some way or another. It is highly malleable, yet ever present, with a voice of its own that seems to speak through these gathered pieces.

Purity
chuck lipsig - <bookchuck>

I never did understand the math. Partial-dimension topology Sal called it, when we shared an apartment at the university. There's three-dimensional topology and multi-dimensional and zero-dimensional. But partial? That's new. That's mine.
But what's a partial dimension? I asked

A theoretical construct that cannot be real.

So what can this be used for?

Absolutely nothing. No applications. Not for business or war or anything. Even when everything else corrupts, my partial-dimension topology will remain pure.

Sal earned a Ph.D. in Mathematics and went from Duke to Stanford to Princeton, theorizing partial-dimension topology, all the way. I muddled through, managed databases for several companies, did the married with two kids thing, and fell out of touch with Sal.

A few months ago, a new database program was installed. When I read the documentation, I noted that the design was based on partial-dimensional topology. I still didn't understand the math, but I was able to pluck data and tie it together much easier than ever. For the first time in years, I thought about Sal.

I got my alumni newsletter today and read that Sal had committed suicide. It doesn't say why, but I know. I even understand.

journalistic
john casler - <casler>

nestled forgotten and fading between proud pompous and well-worn pages of my atlas shrugged and wealth of nations or perhaps crushed by kant's critique and a phenomenological spirit is a letter to santa lovingly number two penciled in a newfound and wobbly cursive script that stuffs the turquoise-lined tubes of that now yellowed fifth grade parchment borrowed from the binder that's only for math. along with the boys will be boys pleadings for very hot wheels and baseball glove glory and trips to zanzibar and a chair at the table that sits around camelot are the details of an adrenalin storm and a blush to rival the morning's newborn sun of my very first kiss and the embracing caress of a land unblemished by the steely-gray skyscrapers that tower loomingly over my tree-fortless modernity. smudged and illegible my unaddressed letter to santa chris kringle now feeds the dust that chokes the rust on the hinges of that bolted doorway to the north pole where houses are warm and no one has zip codes.

the memory machine
christian - <clunkyrobot>

With a crackle and an electronic hum, the low tone ramps up into a sustained oscillating rhythm.

The memory machine.

The time I got caught stealing baseball cards, no...
hockey cards. jesus...

Don't try to look right at it, it will fade. stars at night.

erp...
gone.
but not all gone.

wut hapnd?
j dithers - <dangermaus>

Everything has changed
That's what they said
Has it now?
Has it?
Talk show hosts with their
Formulaic "show-after" episodes
And Arnie gets his flop pushed back
And really bad songs get massive radio play

And our world changed
Because the things that happen
Over there
Happened Here

souvenir fragment 1
dave chong - <juv3nal>

stretching ambuscade of days, bitter offerings before the altar: incense, yellowed paper brushed with black ink. march of idleness & loose intent. the statuary's cracked visage gleams a distant glimmer of ravens perched, corners of a gate, then fades: trees, skeletal in winter, etch out spider geometries. lines deceive as easily as they delimit: the frieze depicts a haggard face, gaze askew--eyes refuse to meet ours, reaching upwards. hands offer only to scrape the fruit clean from within. awkwardness, as of children taking their first steps, hesitance that attends the same. like a gift only in the giving & even then, too often some clouded edge encroaches upon the good invested in the offering.

take the time spent aside the rotting stump of youth, crush it in your hand, compress it like ball of tin foil, add the measure of the stone on which we sat when this recognition first occurred, the canopy of trees that opened up to evanescent rain. somewhere in your hand is the gist of this: the ambling steps that lead deeper & deeper into the cave until all that remains of your entrance is a pinprick of light. & now that too is gone.

Feathers and Bullshit
josh - <peachfiend>

A world without boundaries?
Perhaps Dickinson saw it
And gave it feathers.
Hallmark put it on a card:
$1.25 to send your love.
Without boundaries?
You could've done it for free,
And better,
Shown up in person.
Playful wink and honest smile.
No feathers,
No boundaries,
No bullshit.

nostalgia gone awry
chauncy williams - <c_crit>

longing for a familiar smile. chasing laughter no one remembers. pedaling a bicycle fast and hard, panting through my teeth. i learned to cuss, i learned to be a cynic. i can't ride a bike.

A Circumnavigation
jonathan bruder - <cello>

One boy stands in a canyon, one near the ocean; one stands under a tree. The first has a thought and the second boy hears it; the third boy hears it. They lay down to sleep.

They share a dream of three girls laughing; they see three billion girls smiling or crying.

The voice of the soil beneath them speaks. "The world has changed," it says.

Two boys have switched places and the third stands in the rain. At least one of the boys is a girl. At least one of the boys will never wake up. At least one of the boys has become the mind that we will someday share.

i struggle
adrianna - <eggerspretty>

painful and lasting
you impressed your need on me
now you haunt my thoughts

radio on
<essej>

got my radio on tonight
and i'm wonderin' what you're doing these days

heard a song that always gave you teary eyes
and i remember how you'd come to me.

i've been wondering what you've been doing these days
with yourself.

no cowboy-surfers
frika kramer - <onzichtbaar>

short attention span
socialized
biological
separate from yourself
recognize the stimulus
before money: Sex
seek closure
living in a cave somewhere
cowboys or surfers, not both
a salt, a grape, no, assault and rape
rat labs
vats
manifests
consensus
normal
natural

downtown
steven wayne rabby - <sagittarianmoon>

sad dark alley, the sudden fear of cracks in the streets. rats in disaster marking territory - spreading plague. cigarettes soft like wet bread and dead bodies in the sewer. the four letter motel rank with booze and grandma whores. dealers and the empty parking lot where shit goes down. cigarette fuse burning my lips, watching cars go by like summer. electric energy invites me, to create and destroy thoughts. midnight breeds a strange creature, one of old satyr myths. the long corridor, the face that never sleeps, the city, 'downtown'. sound of a gunshot, a baby cries, the rats scatter, the devil laughs, i light another cigarette, time goes by, smoke rises, voices whisper....live now....die later.

a wall
c.a childers - <cachilders>

it was held together by rivets of hard particle light
a solid wall that seemed to bend the view ahead
we never tried to walk through it
even with the limitations of our vision
I think we recognized it for what it was
to the man that I am now
it seems silly that we ever sought to bypass it
to leave the cool grass of our fathers’ yards
for the gravel and broken glass of out there

shawn told us once
that he and some friends had made it over
and we believed
even though we had failed to do it for a solid chain
of five summers
he said they’d found a warm six pack
leaned sideways against a telephone pole
he’d already had his fair taste of the stuff by then
so he decided to shake his can and fling it at rock
we listened in awe as he told of its rocket like ascent
and of how the others were pissed that they'd drank theirs instead

thinking back
i’m inclined to believe that he did make it over
just like he said
but when I consider what came for him in the years that followed
i wonder if he ever really made it back
or if that day
the story we heard
was just a whisper on the dry august wind