In America,
 
You can only be one thing:
One color. One religion. One sex. One body type.
One hair color.
So say the Reality TV actors and producers that
currently run “America”
and have always run “America: The Greatest
Public Relations Campaign in Existence,”
to mask a shadier form of being.
 
America, I would call you the whore of Babylon
except I don’t think you’d even allow a woman
to hold that position of power
in your big swingin pale dick United States of
America.
 
America, did you never think
there would be consequences?
Did the founders pay lip service
to all, when they really meant one type
of America (n)?
Or did they truly mean All?
All skin colors and religions and shapes of feet and
tonsils
Have we just recently fucked it all the way to
oblivion?
Or has it always been so?
Have these United states ever been united?
 
In America we believe in Christianity even though
we don’t believe in the teachings of the blue-eyed
Norwegian whose paintings we hang on our walls.
 
America, you reap what you sow and yet You
continue to sow the same seeds
of
death
and
murder
and
guns
and I
don’t
underst
and it.
 
Go back to your land of potatoes, back to Kenya
where you were born,
Excuse me: you are a brown Muslim woman? A
Congresswoman!
What do you mean guns should have limits?
 
We had never imagined this in America and
because we never imagined it…
We fear it. The women from Minnesota and
Queens most of all.
 
I have lived in America all my life and I still cannot
explain America to you probably because we
cannot agree on a common America.
 
Oh! the boredom, the failings, the trappings, the
poor, the weak, the scared, the limits,
of the white imagination. 

Levi has an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Antioch University Los Angeles and has a Bachelor of English from the University of Utah. He served on Antioch University’s literary journal, Lunch Ticket, as an associate editor for the Diana Woods Memorial Prize in Creative Nonfiction. He runs a coffee roasting company by day and lives in Salt Lake City with his wife Cat, his dog Amelie, and his socks, all of which have holes. ​

do hats have feelings, though?
by Alex Simand

what happens to all the championship hats they make for the eventual losing team on the off chance that they become the winning team but don’t? do they smolder, lonely and weeping, in a box tucked in the back of a hostile arena? do they feel the pinch of never having achieved their purpose? it must hurt to be branded a champion and then not, an entire limb of existence lopped off at the point of possibility and shipped off to Africa, where the colonial world sends all its half-made truths. it must sting in the way of gloves forever buried in the snow, forgotten to the seasons, lost among the dog shit that layers the city like an archeology site.

​

​

Panthor Dreams of Meadows
by Jane-Rebecca Cannarella

Panthor the purple panther always wished he got a say in the shit that Skeletor was doing, but he never did. Ripped from the wild as a cub, bridled and saddled and fashioned in green, Panthor only knew the service of evil. But at night he imagined green grasses that tasted like honey. In his sleep, he licked the corners of his jaws and smiled at the taste.

Every morning he despaired that his blanket was a course wool stranger instead of the friendly lambs he had befriended in his imagination the night before. 

Obedient to a fault, in another dark morning followed by a dark day, Panthor set off to war with Battle Cat: his exact duplicate. Skeletor had harnessed him too tightly and the saddle chaffed his velvety flocking while his fully articulated master sat a-trot—his shrill voice bellyaching orders for yet another poorly planned He-Man attack.

The ground erupted with bombs of dirt in another round of dispassionate brawls that left Panthor feeling empty while Skeletor shrieked “ONWARD ONWARD.” But these onwards never produced triumphs, and the battle was the same as all the clashes before. Disappointing.
​
Retreating from the battlefield after Skeletor’s failure, Panthor could hear the victorious cries from He-Man and Battle Cat. He wondered why he was left to live in silence while his counterpart could shout with jubilation, it seems only some cats are good enough for speech. The army’s humiliated flight made a drumbeat out of the battlefield and someone shouted, “We’ll get him next time, your Evil Lord of Destruction,” but even that sounded hollow.   

Panthor secretly perched on a ledge in Snake Mountain once he was back home and drew a picture in crayon of the fantasy land from his sleep. Clouds like frosting and golden fields that moved like waves. A small family that looked like they would know how to give a good scratch under the chin, plus some fluffy lamb friends. A tiny cottage with a rug in front of the fire that Panthor knew would be great for midday naps, and pantries filled with cakes—his favorite food, or so he imagined they would be. Panthor looked at his drawing. He picked up a purple crayon and drew himself into the scene, hoping that some of the magic would make his wish to live there come true.

Before lights out, as Skeletor’s court made plans for another fight against He-Man—fighting is the duty of the aristocracy of Eternia and Skeletor’s favorite hobby—Panthor named each of the figures in his drawing, he kissed each one goodnight in lieu of being able to say it to them aloud. He hoped they could feel love through the paper.

On the course wool blanket, Panthor thought of Battle Cat and how he could talk. If Panthor could talk he would say that he didn’t want this life anymore, no war / no more fights with Battle Cat / no Skeletor. But he wondered if he actually could speak, would anyone listen? Counting the friends from his drawings like sheep before bedtime, Panthor knew he was not made for the dark side of Eternia.
​
And that night, like all nights since he was a cub, Panthor dreamt of meadows.

Q1. What was the last Netflix show that your book binged? If not on Netflix, why does your book hate capitalism? 

A. Oh Cactus hates capitalism all right. Capitalism is a big ol’ problem for Cactus. However, after years of wearing black bandannas, living in failed polyamorous intentional farmstead communities, and eating out of dumpsters, the book has resigned to a sort of existential depression that centers, conveniently enough, around having its sister’s Netflix login. The last show Cactus binged was Sex Education. This is because all the characters at least TRY to be kind to each other, which is something Cactus needs to believe in. Also, Asa Butterfield was in that movie Ten Thousand Saints (Dir. Bergman & Pulcini, 2015), which is about punk rock, and Cactus all about punk rock. Or at least it used to be.

Q2. How does your book take its coffee after a one-night stand? Why is your book having one-night stands? Is it a commitment thing? Does your book fear commitment? 

A. Cactus fears even committing to answering this question. Cactus fears expectations. Cactus fears letting everyone down. Cactus is having one-night stands in a last-ditch attempt to resurrect the ghost of a feeling of self-worth. This is why Cactus doesn’t drink coffee the next morning. Cocaine wakes it up just as well and is more effective for temporarily prolonging the ego boost provided by mediocre sex. Coffee is for later in the day.

​
Q3. How would your book introduce itself to my parents? 

Q6. When your book was in high school why did it get in school suspension? 
 
A. In high school, Cactus had slightly different tastes. It got ISS for tagging “Ska Rulez!” in all the bathroom stalls. It’s girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend turned it in for the reward money, which was offered daily on the morning announcements. The next day, Cactus’s girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend walked around with a new pair of Adidas, saying, “Cactus bought me some new shoes.”
 
Q7. What is your book's sun sign / rising sign/ moon sign? And for fun, what is your book's sign in Venus because I wanna make sure that the bang-down is compatible, book knows how it is. 
 
A. Venus in Aires, dude.

Q8. Sometimes I sit in my bed and rock and cry, would your book understand that compulsion? 
 
A. Cactus didn’t think it was going to live to be 30. Then it went into the desert, took a bunch of mescaline, and everything changed. Cactus would understand. Cactus would recommend trying mescaline.

Q11. Has your book ever gotten into a fight with a professional sports mascot? If so, which? If not, why not? 
 
A. It’s a little bit more complicated than that. Cactus tried to take a selfie of it kissing Gritty on the mouth, and got its ass beat by security. Cactus is no stranger to ass beating. Who doesn’t want to kiss Gritty on the mouth though?
 
Q12. What movie makes your book cry? 
 
A. The movie that MOST RECENTLY made Cactus cry was Big (Dir. Marshall, 1988). That scene when Tom Hanks’s character is all sweet and innocent and sleeps on the top bunk and gives Elizabeth Perkins’s character the glow-in-the-dark compass so she won’t get lost. Goddamn.

​Nathaniel Kennon Perkins is the author of Cactus (Trident Press, 2018) and the ongoing literary zine, Ultimate Gospel. He lives in Boulder, CO, where he works as a bookseller. His creative work has appeared in Triquarterly, Maudlin House, Keep This Bag Away From Children, decomP magazinE, Pithead Chapel, Timber Journal, the Philadelphia Secret Admirer, and others. He is the recipient of the High Country News’s 2014 Bell Prize and has gone on two US reading tours, one with the sound artist Braeyden Jae in 2015 and another with the emo band Tall Boys in 2018. nathanielkennonperkins.wordpress.com

Cactus is available for purchase on Amazon and through Trident Press's website.

And here's a little bit about Trident Press: "Our publishing interests are as varied as the books we sell in the Trident Bookstore: punk rock travelogues, occult spiritual texts, weirdo fiction, anarchist political philosophy, and vertiginous poetry, among others. However, the releases from Trident Press are more alike than they are different. They are all half-funny, half-heartbreaking, and always beautiful and inspiring. "

a rustling of love letters
by Alex Simand
​
I have a shoe box of knickknacks and love letters under my bed. turkey feathers. bandannas with maps printed on them. watercolors of song lyrics. little fossils of affection. they’re growing dust motes like mohawks spurting from their scalps and a bundle of spurned kitten fur and I wonder if I’m a neglectful father or if I should toss them into the trash next to last week’s lasagna. why do we keep these little trinkets of past loves? do we betray our futures by keeping truncated tokens of adoration within arms reach? I don’t know. I don’t know most things, but least of all of all this.

the last time I moved apartments, the box spilled out and I stood agape at the flood at my feet. arms spread with helplessness. I couldn’t scoop it up any more than I could hold a puddle in my palm. what do I do with every feeling I’ve ever had? what does it mean to have collected the sand from a beach for another person? there it was, spilling out of the topless jar that held, seeping into the hardwood, becoming hardwood, fading it, softening it, filling it with rot from the inside out. my skull is as squishy as a newborn’s head. 

I have a rustling shoe box under my bed. from time to time, it slides out as if to say, hey. hey, remember that time you were tender? yes. remember when you were loved so hard they wanted to leave a mark of it? yes. I want the box to push its lid off like a boiling pot. I want to feel it ticking under my sleep. I want it to elect its next president, someone kind, like what a whisper looks like on a page. move over turkey feathers. there’s always room for one more.

[sticker by a Philadelphia sticker graffiti artist] 

post-it notes
by Jane-Rebecca Cannarella
​

There are days when I’ve loved you like a mirror and I’m hypnotized; you’re my reflection’s self. The other night, laying on the couch opposite-ended like the grandparents in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, you took a photo of me with your phone when I wasn’t looking and texted it to me. We were playing time machine, which is when minutes don’t tick by while under a blanket that resembles a Hershey bar. Sometimes boredom and comfort look very similar.

I looked old, and dry, and tired. I didn’t love you like the mirror of me having learned to thank my parts as I stared at the phone. Suffocating and sweating under the burden of the blankets, we became strangers.

I’ve been known to love you like we’re halved. Asymmetrical. Pieced together to make a whole. We’ve replaced letters with texts and the one on my phone with my face yellow in the lamp’s shade filled me with an unrecognizable feeling. The closest emotion to give it is loss. How can looking at me make me feel the loss of you? We aren’t under the blanket anymore. In the days following, sometimes I would look at the texted photo of the strange woman.

​I have piles of post-it notes I’ve written to myself periodically throughout the years scattered all over my home in various rainbows of aging beige. Memories of my moments, and when I read them I can see how I actually look. Or at least how I think I look. In the mountains of fluttered sticky notes, sometimes I see a shadow of our asymmetrical features never quite touching. I need to take the time to read them in order to see this. I don’t do that often.
​

Are my love letters filled with truth or lies?
Do they cause highs or cries?
I would surmise, that you agonize over words that jeopardize yet hypnotize.

While you demonize, I attempt to moralize
While I revise, you militarize.
Is it you, or is it me that dramatize and oversize the problems that are pint-size?

I write letters that reprise and justify
But they only terrorize and galvanize
I write to apologize, you say I only finalize and eulogize, not humanize

I try to revitalize and romanticize
But you don’t empathize or recognize,
So, our relationship is an illegitimate enterprise, so I internalize and compartmentalize.

​