curbside e-zine - may 2012

Curbside Splendor e-zine May 2012

Curbside Splendor May 2012

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Curbside Splendor Publishing Curbside e-zine May 2012 ISSN 2159-9475 Poetry: Forgetfulness by Chris Thomsen Here Goes Nothing by David Moran Fiction:

Changing Around by Bruno Casanova The Architect by Austin Wheeler americandreams by Davy Carren Photography and cover by Karolina Koko Faber and Leonard Vance Editor – Leonard Vance


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Chris Thomsen

is going to be a junior at the University of Minnesota this fall, studying mechanical engineering. He was born and raised in Duluth, MN and has been writing poetry, short stories, and anything in between for fun for five years. He likes to write because it gives him a chance to get all of his emotions, problems, memories, and frustrations out on paper.

Photo by Leonard Vance


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Forgetfulness By Chris Thomsen

It’s the buzz of the streets

At 2 A.M.

It’s the unexpected silence

Between spurts of everyday explosions

It’s the streetlight that hums with electricity

While all the rest hold their tongues

It’s the sound of the rain

Washing away all the other sounds with each cleansing

drop

It’s the nostalgia you feel so powerfully at random

moments

But you can’t say why

It’s the cracking of your knees

When you stand up after sitting for a long time

It’s the sweet chirping of the birds

For the first time after a long winter

It’s the feel of the grass


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When walking barefoot

It’s the comforting presence you feel

When no one is watching you

It’s the smell of the asphalt

After a warm summer storm

It’s the last fading rays of dazzling light

Casting the lake in an orange-ish glow

Signaling the end of a relaxing day

While you’re thinking about what you have to do

tomorrow

It’s all the small moments in your life

That you will remember forever, but can’t quite say why


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David Moran was born in a small Scottish fishing village. Since graduating in Creative Writing in 2005, he has traveled Asia, Europe, and North America extensively. In that time he has written and published poetry and short fiction in magazines such as The View From Here (US), First Edition (UK), and The Dundee Anthology (UK). Currently, he is editing a novel about someone who can't stop.

Photo by Karolina Koko Faber http://karolinafaber.com/photography/

http://karolinafaber.com/photography/


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Here Goes Nothing By David Moran

Someone’s tapping on the outside of my window Sounds so pretty I want to let them in, Our lips touched, tears like salty water Felt so strange to wish that I’d fall in. Featherless bird, what would it be like? To slip into a vortex, A friend once called the bed of an ocean The basement of the mind. Staying up too long’s enough to turn you blind That feeling ripples a vocal tension, Were we always submerged in water? Drowning in our bathtub blues, I remember how violent the ripples felt Like the waves, the waves, the waves, Two duvet slaves consumed by night Vamping for a fall. Midnight rhythmic dancing tribes This lust, the lust, lust lost in walls


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Cracked and always crumbling walls, I thought you’d be a natural light.


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Bruno Casanova

is an Peruvian American short story writer. He studied at Manhattanville College and the University of Pennsylvania. His short story collection, "Nunca Tan Humano" (Never so human), was chosen as one of the best books published in 2008 by "El Comercio," the oldest and most prestigious newspaper of Peru. He currently lives in New York City.




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Changing Around By Bruno Casanova

She planned every aspect of her life. It had been long since she divided her days between the demands of her career, the image that she worked so hard to keep, and the excitement of her social life. During her few moments of silence she fabricated hundreds of plans for a future that, although uncertain, she had been inventing meticulously for years. Weekends offered her the only chance to catch up with the housework she left pending in her apartment.

Saturday. The household chores found her that morning. She stood in the middle of her living room and realized they were silently waiting for her everywhere, like babies unable to look after themselves, watching her from their positions until she dealt with them.

The baby analogy made her laugh. She had not been close to one in many years.

She decided to start with the easiest task. She picked up each piece of clothing spread throughout the apartment and gathered them in a big wicker basket. Bending down to pick them up induced a slight dizzy spell, unusual in her, which forced her to take a seat on her sofa. She played down the importance of the episode and, far from it, she assigned her attention to the unpleasant silence that gave her the impression of being lonelier than she felt. When she recovered, she stood up, took one of the vinyl records from


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her collection and put it on her record player to feel accompanied. The machine turned once and again producing the lilting sound that showed her with each spin the name of the song, “Round and around.” Her dizziness intensified. She took back her place on the sofa and she fixed her eyes on the clock that struck eleven o’clock from the wall in front of her. Morning moves fast, she thought. As fast as the clock’s second hand, with its hasty turns carrying out its announcement from up high, only worsening her sickness. There was little time left. Her pottery class would start two hours later. Deforming the cold, ductile, dripping clay, following the rhythm of the wheel usually relaxed her, but at that moment, just remembering the spinning of the mass melting in her hands, irritated her. A consequence of the previous night, she needed a little air, she assumed.

She took the basket and headed to the Laundromat. She crammed her clothes in the washing machine. Watching the clothes rotating gave her the impression her insides were rotating with them. It’s hunger, she thought. She remembered the small crêpes store two blocks away. Time justified having lunch and breakfast at the same time, she decided. She left the Laundromat and a hyperactive dog, obsessed with its own tail, swerving desperately in search of it, blocked her way occupying the entire sidewalk. Its owner, by its side, watched the animal’s compulsion with a smile. She made her way between them trying to get to the store as soon as possible. Her discomfort was progressing into vertigo. She decided to change her pace to help slow down her rapid breathing. Hanging from the door of a hairdresser’s salon, a tube with the colors blue, red and white rotated in an endless spiral, announcing the business was open. She didn’t want to look at the sign. Its revolutions only worsened her sensation. She tried to cross the street, but a biker cut her off taking no notice, forcing her to stop with the bicycle’s back


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wheel displaying the yin-yang symbol meeting the asphalt in a seemingly eternal swinging. She sped up her pace. The crêpes store was less than sixty feet away. She was sweating and, for the first time, she perceived in her mouth a bitter taste. Hunger, she repeated to herself. In the store, she found with surprise, that everything around her seemed like in a pinwheel; the little tables, the benches, the blackboard and even the salesclerk. Everything. She ordered a crêpe and, exhausted, took a seat in a corner.

“Are you ok?” asked the clerk noticing her discomfort, her paleness and the sweat beads on her forehead. She nodded without saying a word. The clerk looked at her suspiciously, he poured the mix of flour, water, milk and eggs on a circular surface, and with a t-shaped spatula began to spread it in circles. She watched him from her seat, smelling, identifying, each of the ingredients of the mass until she couldn’t take it anymore. Suddenly, a burning juice filled up her mouth, rising from her chest through her dry throat. She ran out of the store; she felt she had to return to her apartment. She decided not to look at anything else and walk as fast as she could, fixing her attention on the sidewalks and its exact divisions that repeated one after the other. As she walked she had the sensation of stepping on spongy cottons. When she reached the entrance to her building, she felt a slight improvement, which, unfortunately, didn’t last long. The iron figures wrought in the railing demarcating the property were waiting for her. They had the form of symmetric loops, bent like sea waves about to break, parallel to each other. Her dizziness reached its highest point, the announcement of a syncope trembled in her legs, sourness filled up her mouth, and a sudden spasm forced her to grab her abdomen. There was no denying any more of what she couldn’t have planned. The world around her was spinning hopelessly, dragging her to the infinite vortex of a whirlwind,


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wrapping her without escape, extending tragically to her insides, revolving her entrails to the unmistakable movement of what was growing in her womb, confirming that her worst presumption was true.




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Austin Wheeler

is a hairy, young, manly man who works a menial warehouse job in the industrial section of Tampa. He is a college dropout, an Army discharge, and former stand-up comic who shares a room in his parents' double-wide trailer with an adorable rat named Steve Buscemi. He writes as much as possible in the shed beside his house that reeks of urine from several animals, including humans. Writing is not a hobby for Austin Wheeler, but rather a way for his spirit to exhale the toxic air of such a modern lifestyle.

Photo by Leonard Vance


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The Architect By Austin Wheeler

The skyscrapers had chafed their way beyond all visible beauty, and now from their elevated thrones scalped the screeching skies, as I walked in the wake of this torture with a corrosive hunger. I couldn’t sit on the bench to rest. My face used to be plastered there smiling at the world, but now the grin came from the lady who makes a fortune on repossession cases. Plus, when I sat down, the bubbling froth of acidic salivation that came from my stomach digesting itself consumed my entire brain. Pain would not let me imagine a future, and the only way I could forget about the blurry oncoming time was to progress through it with stepping feet.

I stared at the passing faces of humanoids and wondered how much food they had in their stomachs, and what percent of my caloric intake would be met if I consumed their flesh until I was full. They were so toxic nowadays it would probably be my last meal on death row.

Most of them were in a hurry, and looked very polished. The women smelled nice, like a bucket filled with the better portions of my past. I used to wear desired masks to attain such luxuries as women, but no mask could conceal who I am from humanity now. But I was the one. I was the one who created the grids of steel columns that imprisoned them without their awareness, before I myself became a captive of my own mind’s products. Reminiscing won’t feed me now, so I ask the people for quarters, but not their sympathies. I was still better than them despite their inside access to the World Wide Web and its prophetic streaming of


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information. I had to inflate myself in these moments of shame.

I kept walking in the name of my hierarchy of needs, until finally I rejoiced at the realization I had grossed over five dollars! You have to love those people stuck at red lights and crosswalks who are so frightened by your appearance that they empty their pockets into your hands so you will walk away and drag that nameless odor with you. Some lady gave me a tater tot. There was a convenience store close by. How convenient!

I barged in and the door rang to alert the store to my presence. The Middle Eastern gentleman at the counter shot me a snare, and I grabbed my dirty package and waved it at him while thrusting. I don’t know why. The few individuals in the store shifted uneasily at my existence, and I could tell I spoiled the romantic mood that they had been attempting to create. No one liked me. Why would they? I was a living reminder of the ugliness created by the system they were bullied into loving. Actually, they probably assumed I would shoplift.

I looked through the glass of the three-day-old cylindrical food rotator and grabbed the first mysterious tortilla thing I saw; that and a lonely banana from above the ice cream cooler. I was thirsty so I nearly grabbed a bottle of water, but I suddenly realized that water is free at the water fountain, and beer is cheaper and contains carbohydrates, so I picked out a large low quality beer.

I lugged it all to the counter and noticed the Sumerian cashier was still eyeballing me and probably wished he could legally not sell to me. He rang up the beer in disgust and I asked him if he was the manager. He said he was the owner. I


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inquired how he came to own the store, and he informed me he came to own the store through hard work! I snickered for nearly ninety seconds in his face, even though I knew there was no comedy in this place. The action just fooled me into feeling better. He asked me what I was laughing over, and I just told him I would come again. You’re welcome.

I left the store with my stuff in a bag, and found a concrete post in the outskirts of the parking lot so I could partake in my feast while still watching the world decay. Hard work? I think it has more to do with the faceless powers of this country blowing up his country for cheaper gas, and giving him compensation for that, or for the land his family owned, which contained valuable oil pockets. I don’t know any of that for a fact, I just have been given too much free time for thoughts and hate. The longer I remained slumped against the post in the parking lot, the more terrible I felt for exhibiting the qualities of a bigot. I had become some mutant easily tricked and further mutated into blaming my problems on the first black and white, the pale and tan differences that I came across. The real enemy was a phantom who stayed in hiding up in those skyscrapers above. Who were they though? Were they corporations, bankers, government agencies, Illuminati, Shriners, Scientologists, Communists, old men who play golf all day before having an orgy with six very classy call girls on their yachts? There are too many enemies who justify their crimes through “The Pursuit of Happiness.” They should be made to wear jerseys like I am legally commanded to wear this reflective road vest. The only people I see lately are the ones just as distracted as me. Now I am just trying to successfully stomach this artificial byproduct food, while washing it down with the oversized and delightfully friendly beer.


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Across the avenue, I saw an auto shop quick lube establishment, and a kid I recognized from some certain memory was singing and dancing by the road while twirling a sign which read: “Free Oil Change with $49.99 Tune Up!” His actions were very successful because he looked as if he were raping the sign while his libido was being fulfilled. He wasn’t fooling anyone. That is modern day defeatist depression at its glory.

Suddenly I placed the connection to the young man’s face. He used to have an impressive beard and led one of the liberal youth protests a few years back, when the overwhelming knowledge swept the nation and some people still had the energy to try and change it. He was a very charismatic and powerful speaker on the steps of the big bank. He had a cardboard cutout sign that was very clever, although I have no idea what it said. He must not have been able to handle the sacrifices on the streets or the alienation from friends and family. Now, he essentially does the same thing while getting paid for it, and affects a larger demographic of people with his message. He was still just a singing, dancing sign post. Nothing changed.

I finished my beer after all of the food, and I thought about the hilarity of time as short term happiness rolled in with the obstructed sunset. I decided to go home. On the way back, I witnessed a small team of noble Mexicans working hard to rapidly erect a franchised cube. There was no time for genius or innovation anymore. I remember back when Liz still stuck around she said she couldn’t understand how the skyscrapers were able to stay up. I laughed in her face, but I never answered her question, because honestly I had no idea. All I did was use a system of equations and formulas to sketch it onto the grid, before handing it to the foremen who commanded the men who worked for minimum wage.


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I made it down to the Roosevelt Hotel, my fifteen year

old son, and I took the premature turn into the dark alley beside it. In between the dumpster and the fire escape against its wall, waited my castle, the 5x5x5 postal supply box that I had fashioned a Styrofoam truss for a roof on, and wrapped in clear cellophane with strategic ventilation holes poked in. I was so proud to see it still faithfully there and decided it was my favorite thing I had ever built. Technically it was the only thing I had ever built.

I crawled inside on top of my cozy mountain of bubble wrap and stared through the cellophane ceiling at the sliver of sky beyond the telephone cords and satellite dishes as it melted from purple to black nothing. There was only one star visible in the night, and it was a miracle of hope’s installation. I began to get drowsy.

I was one of the most successful architects in the country and I built a good portion of this material world, but I am still that architect. Now was the intermission before the scheduled demolition of all of my buildings of pain. Get your sodas and concessions. Once it was gone, we could be free. I dreamt of that flawless future. I am the architect who has melded with the visionary. Now I will redesign the framing of my mind, story by story.


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Davy Carren

was born in barn, raised in a circus, and currently resides at the top of a good-sized hill in San Francisco, California.




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americandreams By Davy Carren

Well, this guy, he’s a real no-nonsense kind of guy, you know? And, you see, there’s this flowerpot on the brick windowsill of an old tenement building that we are all walking by one day. The bricks are real sooty, those deep-red bricks, almost like copper, and old too, real gritty and weathered, like they’ve been chipped at with a spike. Some of the bricks had turned white in places, like they were maybe bleached by the sun. I don’t know how bricks get that way. The bricks were also pretty uneven in places, like they’d been set crookedly, and so some were jutting out here and there, kind of like the sides of an uneven Lego wall. And around the edges of the windowsill with the flowerpot there is like a coat of black grime, which seems to create this dichotomy, this odd juxtaposition, this image of the lone flowerpot sitting there on the ledge against a charcoal-stained background. And you know what? It’s got a fucking daisy growing out of it. A god damn Bellis perennis with its white ray florets shining their way straight up into the city’s muck and smoggy skies. So, this bastard, who like didn’t take shit from anybody, he gets it into his head to climb up there, and, I don’t know what he’s thinking, maybe he’s going to shimmy up a drainpipe or something. But this guy he makes a real effort. He starts like scaling this fucking tenement building. He’s got his handgrips, you know, in the nooks between the bricks, and his feet start to dangle at some point, and he’s just holding on with his hands, and we are all looking up at him going like what the fuck, you know? This guy is a nut job. Oh, and of course, since he’d just gotten off work, this guy was all dressed up too; you know, suit and tie, argyle socks. So, he keeps on climbing, going past people’s windows, and the


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flowerpot is like up on the 5th story of the building, so he’s got some hardcore climbing to do. He’d get up to one window, set his feet on the brick of the sill, and stretch himself out over the whole window, reaching high up for some more handgrips in the brick. Just imagine some dude in his apartment looking out his window to see this well-dressed, urbane, rock-climber guy going past. Weird shit to say the least. So, he’s fucking scaling this building, and people down below are starting to take some notice, and are stopping to stare up at this guy, who is by this point like up above the 2nd story windows, grabbing onto the stucco and terracotta tiles and standing on the head of a frieze of a lion carved into the façade. It was quite the sight to see. We were all egging him on, of course. Out in front of the building a few people were standing by the front gate, which had some really ornate grillwork going on, and they were holding it open and looking up at him. The fire escapes were all rusted with paint peeling off of the metal in strip-like slivers, and crumbs of brick were coming down from where he was scraping them off with his shoes from the building’s side. Now, the reason he couldn’t just climb up those fire escapes was that the flowerpot he was trying to climb to was not near the fire escapes, but was about three windows down. It was a large building, and the fire escape was attached to the middle of it. The daisy in the flowerpot was on a windowsill at the corner of the building, so even if he climbed up the fire escape, he still would’ve had to like spelunk his way over about three windows to his left. Actually, I don’t really know why he didn’t do that. Maybe he didn’t think of it until it was too late. Anyway, he kept right on climbing, slowly but surely, and by the time he got up past the 3rd story, quite a crowd had formed on the street below; some people hollering at him and stuff like that. Luckily nobody threw anything at him. That’s what I was really afraid of; some numb-nuts throwing an apple core at him, and knocking him off, you


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know, sending him plummeting to the ground. Also, people were starting to poke their heads out of windows in the building, and the buildings across the street. Everyone wanted to see what all this fuss was about. It kind of reminded me of this Norman Rockwell painting I’d seen in a magazine as a kid. I think it was a picture of some soldier coming home from the war, and the whole neighborhood was like hanging out of windows and off of fire escapes and gathering in the street and waving and stuff like that. It was kind of like that, but not at all like that at the same time, if you know what I mean; if my drift there is being caught. But this no-nonsense, rock-climber guy, I couldn’t believe how much concentration this guy had. He was distracted by none of this. Moving along with these tight and subtle motions, his whole body rigid, every muscle tense, he made his way, inching along, not looking down even once, just kind of nodding his head a little, hunching his shoulders from time to time, and pulling his body carefully upwards. It was really something. I remember he even sneezed at one point, and everyone watching below kind of made that hushed, sudden taking-in-of-breath sound, like an all-at-once gasp, but he hung on tight, wiped his nose on his shoulder, and kept on at it. We are all mightily impressed by this. There really was no turning back for him once he got up to a certain height. I mean, somebody might’ve called the cops, and maybe a fire truck would come and extend a ladder up there to get him down, or some good Samaritan might open up their window for him and let him in, but none of those things seemed imminent at the time, at least they hadn’t really crossed my mind at all, and anyway, he seemed a lot more than a little intent on getting to that flowerpot with the daisy in it. Who knows why? Myself, I’d stopped caring why. I was having too much fun just watching him go after it. I remember he was up by the 4th story window when one of his feet kind of slipped a little, and again we all gasped down below. But he


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recovered nicely, swinging himself around and up a little bit more, trying to get a better grip up there. Now, he probably didn’t have on the best footwear for climbing up the side of building. Not that they make shoes for this express purpose of course, but his patent-leather-soled wingtips would definitely not be recommended for doing any kind of physical activity apart from walking into a business meeting or dancing at a wedding. So, his feet slid around a little, and did slip from time to time, though his recoveries were always quick, calm, and smooth as can be. For some reason I started thinking about Rampage, which was this video game I’d played a lot in my early teens. It was quite a popular game around then. A lot of kids were playing it. It involved these giant creatures. I think they were like King Kong and Godzilla, climbing up the sides of buildings in various cities all over the world. You controlled the creatures, and made them climb up the side of and punch through the buildings, eventually causing the buildings to fall down and crumble into a heap of rubble while you as the creature leapt to safety. It was fun causing all that destruction. You could even eat people who were in the windows and who were running around trying to shoot at you with tiny guns from the ground. It was damn fun. Anyway, I was thinking about this video game, and was also wondering if the no-nonsense guy had ever played the game, if maybe that had been a kind of inspiration for him to start in on this climbing of buildings. It didn’t matter. I was just thinking about it absently. It wasn’t a big deal. So, he was getting close to the 5th story and the flowerpot. The crowd was becoming a little unruly, but was still pretty rah-rah about the whole thing. There was a lot of heckling going on. People were shouting stupid things like, “Don’t jump,” and, “I’ll catch you,” and, “Come on. Get a move on it. I got somewhere to be. Quit stalling.” Just inane things that people tend to yell when they’re in a crowd of strangers trying to be funny, trying to show off. Un-original crap. It


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didn’t affect Mr. No-Nonsense up there. He kept at it. Some joker kept doing bad imitations of him, grabbing onto the building’s bricks with his hands while his feet remained on the sidewalk, really hamming it up for the crowd. He wasn’t a very good impersonator, and he stopped after people started paying less attention to him. So now the flowerpot is almost within reach. I’m mostly wondering what the hell the guy is going to do with the flower once he gets there. Is he going to grab the whole flowerpot and climb back down with it? That would be a really incredible feat, but also much more dangerous than his climb up, probably impossible. I figured he was probably going to grab the flower and climb back down with it in his teeth. That’s what I’d do, if I were him. I thought it would be a pretty cool thing to do. But, it was really hard to tell with that guy. He was so no-nonsense about everything. Maybe the person who lived in that apartment with the flowerpot on the windowsill would like open the window and scream at him, “What the fuck are you doing stealing my flower? That is my flower. Hands off, Bucko!” Or something like that. And then maybe they’d let him climb in the window and make an exit down the building’s stairs. Maybe they wouldn’t. Maybe they’d be really pissed off at him. Maybe nobody would be home. The tension was really starting to build in the crowd. Everyone was wondering what would happen next. The sun was glinting off the windows, kind of getting in my eyes, and I put up my hand like a visor to shield them, but it was hard to see. The bricks looked really pretty in the fading light. Everything was kind of melting into this sepia-tinged color that comes around just before twilight, when the sun is fading, but night hasn’t really started in yet. The wind was picking up a bit. A few leaves were becoming unhinged from the wiry branches of sidewalk trees and were getting blown down into the gutter and off into the street where cars would come by and crush them into the macadam. I looked around at all the old


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buildings around there, spying a few weathered signs sprouting from their sides with cracked, unlit neon letters. I remember how distinct everything seemed. How I could separate this vision of things from anything else in the world. This way things looked, the way it made me feel, like an old black and white photo of a bustling street scene, the way the shop awnings hung there, the unique angles that the buildings’ shapes gave to shadows, the steepness, all the people gathered around and sticking their heads out of windows too, the way it felt to be alive just then, at that particular juncture in my life. And then there is that no-nonsense guy up by the 5th story window of that building, dangling there, right by the ledge where the flowerpot is, this flowerpot with a daisy in it. He’s up there so high. It doesn’t really seem possible. And we are all down here, alone. He is above us and he is just another part of this landscape. Nothing more than the protrusion of a bay window, or a concrete entrance canopy with its Doric-column stanchions, or a car parked on the street, or a band of pigeons rooting on a telephone wire, or a loose manhole cover clanking under the massive wheels of a bus going by, or a clarinet leaning against the side of a garbage can, or a white petal floating in midair, or the heavy thud of something going kerplunk on the sidewalk…


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About the Photographer

Karolina Koko Faber

is a Polish-born artist living in Chicago. Her work spans across a variety of media ranging from painting, to photography, and a broad variety of graphic design. She also has an immense passion for music and enjoys photographing Detroit's Electronic Music Festival on an annual basis. http://karolinafaber.com/photography/



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curbside e-zine - may 2012

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