Just Don't Look At Your Hands

by Dina Mutar

long distance phone calls to foreign boys whilst sitting in a diseased japanese maple tree, listening to bob dylan's lady of the lowlands on repeat for hours, riding bikes in the darkness down steep hills screaming, "i can feel the wind blowing my leg hairs! weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!"  laughing so hard you cry, crying so hard you laugh.  sleeping underneath a grand piano with eyes open- staring up at the stars, this is what friends are for.  realizing that eating carrots or granola on shrooms is not a good idea, realizing that swimming on shrooms is scary and nauseating.  opening throat chakras, opening the top of my head where worms are coming out, crows following me from block to block, telephone wire to telephone wire, they're after the worms!  bike riders off into the sky, huge fat guys in miniature convertibles, watching family birthday celebrations through windows from the curb.  talking to slugs, talking to flowers, talking to myself, "did i say that out loud?"  embodying past lives, fleeting emotions of deep love and intense disgust.  understanding everything, loving everything, hating everything. 

coked-out peruvian hostel workers, even more coked-out ex-israeli soldiers travelling in large, obnoxious groups all wearing headbands, listening to techno music and smoking spliffs.  one is clipping weed from a giant branch of marijuana.  they make me hold a cigarette vertically between my knees then balance the another one horizontally on top of the other with my two index fingers, now they tell me to start moving my feet up and down, "fast, faster faster!"  i feel like a chump.  "haahaahaaa, you are an elephant on a bicycle... ha haaa! get it?"  he pulls out a photo album and proudly shows off photos of at least 60 people around the world doing the same thing, "what the FUCK?"  it's a conspiracy.  i'm paranoid, i don't trust them.  "you guys are sick."  the shrooms are kicking in and mixing with the spliff, the coke is wearing off from earlier.  good thing we didn't drink the "floripondio" tonight that would really fuck shit up.  i see jesus, he is before me, christ lives!  incan designs stamped on the wall and bedspread, then knocking, the fucking israelis- are knocking on all the doors, running up and down the halls singing and chanting in hebrew.  they're packing their bags.  "but i thought they weren't leaving until monday" i'm in my head again in a mist of paranoia... "they're going to kill us- we've got to get out of here" my heart is racing.  we leave the hostel but we couldn't find the room key so we leave it open.  we catch a taxi to a hotel across town.  we stay for a while until i smell smoke, "something is burning, we are getting smoked out, the place is on fire!"  we get in another taxi and go to the house of a gay prostitute who lives in a shanty town in southern lima, we sleep on a bed with lice.  we return to the hostel in the morning when the shrooms have worn off, a picture of me is missing from my things at the hostel and i've misplaced my passport along the way.  i've got to get out of this place.

grandmother tree will save us all,  she is a pokey bitch.  possessing superhuman powers, climbing to the highest branch.  cows are holy, we should give thanks before eating them.  an uprooted tree requires emergency 911 care, "quick!  buckets of water, NOW"  water is life, this one is saved.   walking, walking, walking, walking, walking.  a missing puppy from the litter, did the coyotes get him?  "bella- take care of your fucking kids and be mother for once!  oh, here he is."  squishy sunsets and quicksand,  a train goes by- it's the strangest thing.  70's record covers.  needing to slow down, needing to just be, needing to be a plant.  we are one, god is one, god is love, we are god.  god i love shrooms!  "please don't get lost in the mirror and whatever you do, just don't look at your hands."  

Dina Mutar's favorite word in the english language is hemoglobin and her least favorite word is tether.  She can be found navigating the earth's surface in many different capacities.  In her free time she likes to vacuum, drink iced tea, grow etibles and eat etibles.  She's thinking about getting another tattoo.

 

Magic Mushroom Haiku

 by Clayton Loyd

desert night sky dream
thoughts mushrooming from the sand--
dude, we're tripping balls

my take on this is the kigo is magic mushrooms based on their natural cycle (although I'm not sure which season that is) and the dash functions as the kireji.

Clayton Lloyd is a former prosecutor (you read that right), musician, and general wannabe bohemian.  His travel has spanned the globe and his idiocy (and tendency to hang around idiots) amazes people who believe that Darwinism or MENSA membership mean anything.  He's been published in a few small journals, and featured in a couple of venues, mostly by his friends.  This week he didn't drink more than six beers one day.  That was awesome, and proves AA would be a waste of time.

What's The Story Morning Glory?

 by Robert Vaughan

Nola’s desire to self-medicate was enormous. This latest phase was nothing

new, her addiction started with Nodos in high school. The year her mom

confided about her extra-marital relationship with the local priest. That

transitioned to Dexatrim, then black beauties and pink footballs in college. By

junior year, it was mostly coke, but it was too expensive. Then Nola read The

Doors of Perception and it blew her mind. She wanted to experiment with any

psychedelic drug Nola could get her hands on, from the mundane to the bizarre.

Her favorite of late was mushrooms of the magical kind: psilocybin. She never

laughed as hard as when she experienced them and they didn’t leave her with

those ghastly lows after the come-down. Her parent’s divorce happened that

summer so she stayed in the college dorm. Got a job delivering pizza. She

bought a huge rainbow bedspread and began dating Ray, the long-haired

drummer in a new wave cover band. Toward the end of summer, the Grateful

Dead came to play the Summerfest series. Ray bought tickets then proposed the

idea to take morning glory seeds. He’d read an article in Mother Jones magazine

that explored their hallucinogenic properties.

“Why not just stick to mushrooms?” Nola asked. “They’re so much fun. We had a

blast last weekend at Letchworth State Park.”

“True,” Ray said, exhaling the marijuana smoke. “But I want to have a new

adventure.”

The morning of the concert, a tribe traipsed to Dunkirk Seed Company. They

were colorful, like a traveling band of gypsies.

“Do you have morning glory seeds?” Ray asked. His long raven hair was pushed

back in a white bandanna.

The saleswoman eyeballed them, raised one penciled-on eyebrow. “What do you

want them for?”

“Science project,” Nola piped up, surprising herself.

They transported the seed packets back to the dorms, ground them in a blender,

added chocolate milkshakes from the Campus Cove. Twenty minutes later, Nola

was in the girls bathroom clutching the sides of a toilet. Ray held her hair while

she wretched. A half hour later, when they started to trip, they were in Ray’s

room staring at his Ski the Bumps poster. It started to undulate, like staring into

the Pacific ocean. Nola loved to sing, so she stood and pretended she held a

microphone. She started to sing along with Bruce Springsteen’s Thunder Road.

She imagined she could see the notes as they left her mouth, floating into the

room, pasting a colorful design on the ceiling.

“Show a little faith there’s magic in the night,

you ain’t a beauty, but hey you’re alright…”

She was completely swept away by the song, then looked over her shoulder at

Ray. He stretched out on his dorm bed, his feet dangled off the end. His head

was cocked oddly, eyes completely white, rolled back in his head. Before Nola

rushed to him, she knew it was too late.

Robert Vaughan’s plays have been produced in N.Y.C., L.A., S.F., and Milwaukee where he resides. He leads two writing roundtables for Redbird- Redoak Studio. His prose and poetry is published or forthcoming in: Short, Fast, and Deadly, 50 to 1, Tryst, Clutching at Straws, Blink/Ink, Heavy Bear, The Lesser Flamingo, Negative Suck, and Sleep. Snort. Fuck. He is a fiction editor at jmww magazine. He published a poem on 7/4 at The Camel Saloon called "regarding kay"  which honors his mother. It made him burst with pride. His blog: http://rgv7735.wordpress.com.

Sock me in the stomach until I forget it. Down, down, baby. Down by the roller coaster.

by Tia Prouhet

She wants to be an apple on a stick, a mop and handle, a brain attached to bones. She is glazed and smiling, fingernailing toward dust, but more importantly, perfection. Since multivitamins and biotin are enough to sustain her active lifestyle, she will eat half an apple before she runs into the streets filled with asphalt rumbling Tejano and eyes that hold her too long. Half-moon pupils on oily skin, and she swallows against coffee and mushrooms in her throat.

 She can feel herself losing it. She is a hot road, air bending into puddles as she pinches and pulls—hair, thigh, shirt. Somewhere there is a memory; mirage, mirror, admire, mire. Make my tummy go two forty-six. Skipping rope with eight year olds and punching herself in the leg while pissing; she can wiggle she can wobble—but that’s just it, isn’t it.

Once, something horrible happened. More specifically, something horrible happened to her and she doesn’t know it but it isn’t her fault that she is any of the things people whisper. She keeps trying to origami into spaces, but look—an ankle, an ear. Her voice is too loud and her clothes are all wrong and you have to know you have to know you have to know it is someone’s fault. It is her fault. It is—is not—is is. 

Tia Prouhet cried while watching a lifetime movie today and did not go to the store for toilet paper even though she called out of work and had no excuse. And she's pretty proud of that.   

You're The Reason God Made Jupiter

 Magic Mushroom story #1--FICTION


by Misti Rainwater-Lites

Warm rain dripped down like snot from God's titty baby nose. We were naked in the garden because we were on top of a mountain in California and there was a fence and even if somebody saw us they wouldn't give a flying fuck. Ebullient self-expression free from censorship flows like exceptionally spicy pinot noir in that part of the universe. "Crazy Love" by Van Morrison played. Then "Wild Horses" by the Rolling Stones. Then "Brass Buttons" by Gram Parsons. Then "I Feel You" by Depeche Mode. Then "Go Insane" by Lindsey Buckingham. Finally, my breath fresh green onion powerful, I looked into his numinous sea monkey aquarium eyes and told him what I had wanted to tell him for several years.

"There are two kinds of people in this world. We're the same kind of retard, darlin'...we're the kind who pine for the sea while delirious on top of a mountain and dream of the desert while sippin' cognac and smokin' cigars on the deck of a boat big enough for two on the glassy onyx sea. We've lost our powers in this world because we have forgotten how to use them," I murmured, sliding my arms around his neck like babyish anacondas.

"Baby, what the hell are you talking about? Do you think the pizza rolls are ready?"

"They're ready when you can smell them. We are spiritual kin. You do realize that, don't you? When I'm lost at sea...I hear your voice and it carries me. E.T. phone home. Mr. Webster could never define this communion."

"I'm discombobulated, too. Let's try to keep our booties cool."

"We are in agreement, boo. Our booties need coolin'...let's go eat some Cracker Jacks and play with your toys."

"No sex, right?"

"Absolutely not. Sex is out of the question. I've brought enough trouble to your tacos. You don't need that."

We laughed as we munched on the sticky popcorn and peanuts and watched some stupid horror movie made in 1970something. Giant killer rabbits on the loose, men in cowboy hats philosophizing about the casual carnage in dipshit monotones.

"Even with magic mushrooms this couldn't be any funnier," he said.

"I couldn't be any higher than I am right now, man. I'm on top of a Venusian skyscraper lickin' pink clouds," I said in between snorts of laughter.

There was some weed in his Japanese jewelry box but we didn't need that, either. "To Ramona" by Bob Dylan was in heavy rotation.

Misti Rainwater-Lites writes like her ass is on fire. Misti's ass is not on fire. Misti's booty is tres cool. This week Misti is proud of herself for riding BART alone like a big girl.