Unlikely 2.0


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Editors' Notes

Maria Damon and Michelle Greenblatt
Jim Leftwich and Michelle Greenblatt
Sheila E. Murphy and Michelle Greenblatt

A Visual Conversation on Michelle Greenblatt's ASHES AND SEEDS with Stephen Harrison, Monika Mori | MOO, Jonathan Penton and Michelle Greenblatt

Letters for Michelle: with work by Jukka-Pekka Kervinen, Jeffrey Side, Larry Goodell, mark hartenbach, Charles J. Butler, Alexandria Bryan and Brian Kovich

Visual Poetry by Reed Altemus
Poetry by Glen Armstrong
Poetry by Lana Bella
A Eulogic Poem by John M. Bennett
Elegic Poetry by John M. Bennett
Poetry by Wendy Taylor Carlisle
A Eulogy by Vincent A. Cellucci
Poetry by Vincent A. Cellucci
Poetry by Joel Chace
A Spoken Word Poem and Visual Art by K.R. Copeland
A Eulogy by Alan Fyfe
Poetry by Win Harms
Poetry by Carolyn Hembree
Poetry by Cindy Hochman
A Eulogy by Steffen Horstmann
A Eulogic Poem by Dylan Krieger
An Elegic Poem by Dylan Krieger
Visual Art by Donna Kuhn
Poetry by Louise Landes Levi
Poetry by Jim Lineberger
Poetry by Dennis Mahagin
Poetry by Peter Marra
A Eulogy by Frankie Metro
A Song by Alexis Moon and Jonathan Penton
Poetry by Jay Passer
A Eulogy by Jonathan Penton
Visual Poetry by Anne Elezabeth Pluto and Bryson Dean-Gauthier
Visual Art by Marthe Reed
A Eulogy by Gabriel Ricard
Poetry by Alison Ross
A Short Movie by Bernd Sauermann
Poetry by Christopher Shipman
A Spoken Word Poem by Larissa Shmailo
A Eulogic Poem by Jay Sizemore
Elegic Poetry by Jay Sizemore
Poetry by Felino A. Soriano
Visual Art by Jamie Stoneman
Poetry by Ray Succre
Poetry by Yuriy Tarnawsky
A Song by Marc Vincenz


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Three Poems by C. Derick Varn

Being in Motion

I. Inertia

My stomach shifts as my girlfriend sweats,
whispers about locked lips with a cross
dresser she met in Savannah.  I-75 North

propels us towards the mountains.  Dragon
flies spread across the windshield, puss spectral
like glare around Atlanta, or like the dew dripping

from wilting lilacs.  She continues. I breathe,
a being in motion with a 1967 Colt .45 hiding
in the glove box. The safety broken as we hit

seventy barreling towards North Carolina. Words
push forward, like a lily rising through kudzu.
A brake squeal.  The car stops. I reach for the dash.

II. Friction

Motion erotic, abstract glaring             of headlights
through   weeds.        She may             say his lips
taste like cinnabar.
   She may             say his hips
drip like the ice of Mars.
       I               taste bile
pull my hand away.  Her words,            machine
washable as each could easily             turn
into  questions.     The bullets lie           dormant as
she mouths forgive me. Hazard            lights strobe
in an abyss the dragon eyes of             eighteen
wheelers    glare as I taste the               burn
rubbing between the there                     and not-there.




Reflections in a Cracked Rearview

Here are a few fragments:
blood on a blue dress, a cracked windshield,
father smiling, a red curtain hanging against
a white wall.  Perhaps a young man
in blue jeans and an Atlanta Braves cap.  Here
grass grew taller, yes, definitely, the grass
looms around the knees.

                                       We drove east until the
                                       tires of our truck drifted
                                       on the tide.  The highway
                                       passed like a worm inching
                                       in silt.


Here time ticks much slower
now that the grass eats
the sky, twisting its blades
around glass shards and a few
carefully arranged drops of
blood.  The grass remembers
the snap, and the shattering,
but can’t recall any particulars.

                                       We drove east until
                                       sand glassed    underneath
                                       burning wheels.  The Highway
                                       markers fade like the flicker
                                       of memory.


Here Jeans armor
against concrete.  My
memory can die on the
roadside with the twist
of a wrist.  I can say
speed a lover
of curb and median,
that father’s smile
could quickly, yes,
oh so quickly, turn to
shattered teeth and
broken gums.




Fear of Music

An LP swirls like a galaxy caught in lilted hum
The vinyl spins Talking Heads over the
shag carpet. This ain’t no disco rings from my
father’s speakers. Lonely, how these things work:

my father’s mohawk scalped by time, his
denim moth eaten, his LPs sun-faded,
father’s memory turned to a motive behind
burning old photographs. The Polaroid burns
into absence, yet guitars warble in my ears

Memories Can’t Wait croons David Byrne,
but he lacks the DNA of desire that lingers
in the genes of a comet. A montage of voices
peering through the ice of Jupiter and into
the memory of a boy playing with the music of
another age.

The notes repeat like bursting starsi endure for
millennia after fires die. The vocals cool
super-heated memories: the music of empty
calloused hands that never picked me
up to watch the Sex Pistols play CBGB’s,


Good-bye to Jimmy Carter, to punk’s
half-dead battle cries, good-bye dad. I take
the record, crack the edges in my palm.
The past’s nebulous gases linger
in each melody, no matter the discord.


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Derick sincerely believes that everyone needs to dance around their house naked at least once a week; in addition to that, being declared an ethicist has made him a general misanthrope. Most good ethicists are. He loves tomatoes and thinks that loving such fruit is profound. He does not like to speak in third-person because he understands that it is a sign of true insanity, but so is literature. He has vowed no longer to be witty in biographies that are included in literary journals of any medium.