“Well, if it doesn’t jell, it isn’t aspic, and this isn’t jellin’!”
—Psycho
Brine shrimp spawn a galaxy in a fishbowl.
Ergo, sea monkeys exist.
So do Higgs bosons and demodex.
These last look like scorpions
and live on the canopy of your eyelashes.
The difference being they’re not sold
at toy stores as a novelty item.
PETA has so far remained notoriously
mum about sea monkeys.
Long before that Nazi sympathizing
corpolite von Braunhut patented his presto shrimp
aquariums in the late ’60’s,
Kubla Khan’s gift to Marco Polo when they first met
was a porcelain bowl of sea monkeys
swimming in unfettered motility.
Michaelangelo sculpted a frieze
of sea monkeys once.
It’s now in one of the nine circles
of the Vatican, next to Pope Joan’s feeldoe.… ...continue reading
The past year gives one the suspicion that American society is dysfunctional. Our Congress is useless, our institutions inept. Faced with the terror of existence, young men react with violence. Faced with manageable problems such as reforming health care, our democracy self-destructs. Anger is everywhere; understanding is nowhere.
Although a democratic society cannot function unless its citizens are able to rationally debate one another, rationality is missing from American politics. We assail our political enemies with intractable opinions and self-righteous anger. An ugly bitterness pervades everything. Meanwhile, our country is slowly but surely committing suicide.
It seems to me that this dysfunctional political dialogue, which stems from the iron certainty we grant our opinions, is the most pressing problem confronting 21st century America. In fact, it is a crisis.… ...continue reading
A bird spills its codes into the air,
resting in the long arms of a tree.
You, stranger bird,
who set you singing
in the secret leaves of coming summer?
It’s busy work, stitching the sky to the river.
Some think the job’s done
when cloudy stories turn the great wheel
and currents sweep deep disturbances.
But as the river shoulders its way to the sea,
the pattern’s still weaving.
Foam is written on the water,
calligraphy, a certain alphabet peculiar to
this river of specificities.
Rain is coming.
Mountains shrug against the horizon.
A branch shudders with its burden.
Eddies swirl in the water.
– Carolyn Adams… ...continue reading
I levitate to the thirteenth floor
each time I proclaim how desperately
I covet connection,
and once the capsule jerks to a halt,
and my stomach drops,
the light blooms,
the imperceptible chime rings,
but the door won’t budge
because sincerity is too much,
and the floor was never there.
– Brontë Pearson
Author’s Note: “Triskaidekaphobia” was written for a poetry exercise called The Fish Tank of Rage, where you are given an abstract emotion and a random object and must craft a poem combining the two. “Triskaidekaphobia” was the product of “the elevator of rejection” and plays upon the idea of many buildings lacking a 13th-floor due to superstition. … ...continue reading
Alex Andy Phuong earned his Bachelor of Arts in English from California State University—Los Angeles in 2015 while also serving as an editor for Statement Magazine.
What were your duties as editor for Statement Magazine?
Statement Magazine is the literary magazine that has been part of California State University—Los Angeles since 1950. As an editor, my job was to read over a hundred creative pieces that consisted of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and hybrid forms. We did not exactly categorize the writing, though, because the staff wanted to celebrate the creative writing talents of the entire university. The editors also had the judge each written piece to assess whether or not the writing is of a professional and literary quality. Other staff members also judged artwork based on photographs that artists submitted, and then the entire staff celebrates the production of the magazine at an elaborate launch party during the spring academic term.… ...continue reading
Evans, whose object would have been
to draw the biographer’s attention away
from the business of being photographed,
might have asked Edel to interpret
Eliot’s encomium on James:
that he had “a mind so fine
no idea could penetrate it.”
Edel, distinctly self-conscious,
might have laughed this off
as modernist hagiography,
allowed as how James
had plenty of big ideas:
Innocence, Europe, Art.… ...continue reading
She finished her spiced-rum gimlet,
placed her toenail clippings
in the glass with the ice cubes
dissolving.
Such was her resolve
to drink no more
that night,
and the hi-fi played
calypso,
island songs so old
that the brown girls
locked inside them
were skulls and misplaced photographs.
She dreaded going to bed,
yet she dreaded standing there
alone,
near the open window
where the entire physical world
might disappear
in a bullfrog’s throat
or worse,
might not.
– Glen Armstrong… ...continue reading