Spork Spotlight
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spork 2.1 (AUTUMN 2002) spork | thesafehousequarterly Bookplate: This Is Your Bookplate is published twice a year by Mike Micropolous, 2002. __________________________ Artwork by Tom Walbank ADVISOR appearing on pages 443–450: Timothy C. Hayek W. C. Handy, 1997. EDITORIAL brush, india ink, and Richard Siken ballpoint pen, 9” x 12” Jason Ott Little Marion Walter Jacobs, 1993. Robert Hepworth brush, india ink, and Drew Burk ballpoint pen, 9” x 12” PRODUCTION Tommy McClennan, 1995. Drew Burk india ink and stick, 9” x 12” TECHNICAL Robert Nighthawk, 1996. Aaron Triplett brush and india ink, 9” x 12” __________________________ Charlie Patton, 1992. brush, india ink, and correctional fluid, 9” x 12” Single issues of spork are not as expensive as they look. Available Mahalia Jackson, 1996. at select bookstores worldwide brush and india ink, 9” x 12” (check website for current list), Bukka White 1992. at our not-so-secret headquarters: brush and india ink, 9” x 12” 4024 East Speedway Boulevard, Mance Lipscomb 1993. Tucson, Arizona 85712 brush and india ink, 12” x 9” or online at www.sporkmag.com. A map is a thing and a rooster is Please address all correspondence, a thing and a spork is two things business and editorial, to spork, at the same time the way a 4024 East Speedway Boulevard, hammer is a hammer is a tool. Tucson, Arizona 85712 or to [email protected]. Materials published in spork may not be reprinted, in whole Submissions read year-round. or in part, without the written No manuscripts can be returned permission of the editors. nor any query answered unless Copyright © 2002 by spork accompanied by a self-addressed, stamped envelope. 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'3,&!9'.,*3)! ! 0Q?S! =IQ! 1%$2!@+3;! !! T#3%'$! !! ! " ! " ! " ! " @#/!&"3&''#$" "" 7&=.&"_'&;"c"G8"NT&&%$&''" "" ! " *,#"'!1&,(&,! " DK%&."7/$%&."0+%5"R#6&'"N-./$4"N#",CX/#C'" 2Z2" 3&+.$/$4"N5#.%5+$;" "" _'&)&''",/+4$#'/'" "" 08"D.6)&''"G.#%5&.='"W.+8&."3/'%"\O#%"/$"I.;&." "" #K"96-#.%+$!&]" ! " )"%"'!'&35! " N5+H&$" 2[[" ! " %'"6$(!4/%("--! " U#$/$"D-#!.8-58" 2[<" ! " 4/+4!(%"$,."'+! " ,&*#%/#$" 212" ! " ! " ! " #'"8!./'5! " O#%&'"#$"R#$'%.C!%/#$" "" ! " !! " ! " ! " "" "" !! ____________________________________________________________ !"#$%&'(#)*+,-"%) ) ) ) ny system open to freedom is also open to degeneracy. Create a place for things to happen and inevitably they will. There were A mistakes. There was drift. There was mind-changing in subtle and grand ways and things broke forever, or broke and got mended, and we broke some things on purpose and felt sorry about it later or didn’t. We wanted five issues a year and ended up with three and a radio play. We designed colorful covers and the t-shirt shop went out of business. We had plans, made promises, pledged opulent things and spelled people’s names wrong. I shouldn’t be surprised. I am, but I shouldn’t be. We love you with a fierce and sloppy love, dear reader, but these things happen. So here it is, Issue 2.1, either the fourth spork or the fifth, depending on how you’re counting. To thicken the gravy further, we’ve decided to have only two print issues a year—Autumn & Spring—to give us more time for live events. Notice the new binding? Expect it to change every year. Please also put your attention to the page number we’re starting with—it’s 355. This should indicate at least two things: 1) We’re committed to continuous page numbers for the duration, even if—should we be so lucky—we end up with numbers in the tens of thousands; and 2) We lost a page. Okay, we didn’t lose it, but we ended on an odd page last time and we needed to start on an odd page this time. Perhaps we can consider the radio play the missing page. Then again, we may just take missing page 354 and jam it in somewhere, sometime in the future. "!#!$%!&!'!()!!!*!+!,!"!)! ____________________________________________________________ ./")01(#)$(&)2/1%3)14)53) ) ) ) ou have been watched from a distance for some time now and now you are being watched from even farther away. Anyway, you’d like Y to believe it’s true. Who wouldn’t? Just because a thing’s invisible doesn’t mean it don’t exist, you think to yourself, but still, there is no valid way to test it. And then one day you fall asleep on the train on the way home but you get home anyway. You close your eyes and nothing happens. You close your eyes every now and then, just to test the waters, and find you’re still moving, being moved, walking through the tunnel with your eyes closed, held up and carried along by the crowd. Not love or joy in any traditional sense, but a gentle kind of peaceful rocking that gathers together the single flowers to make a garland. The lights flicker and the wheels clack. No one on the train can tell who’s driving, so you let go of the imaginary wheel. You lean back in your plastic seat and let your shoulders relax. In the seat across from you, a man is reading a newspaper. His ears look familiar. And the woman standing by the automatic doors—her wrists, how she moves her wrists strikes a chord deep inside you. Look at the teeth in the mouth of that little boy in the parka! You know those teeth! You’ve seen those teeth in somebody else’s mouth! All these parts trying to assemble themselves in front of you, as if to say Let me in, I’m still here, hello hello, you know me, you know… Here I am in a rabbit run, here I am in a valley of pine, waiting for you to find me. I could pretend I’m speaking to everyone—assume a middle distance and transcend myself—but I’m taking to you and you know it. There was one time, we were on the subway then, and I had just gone somewhere inside my head—Where did you just go? you said—and I had come here (buzz buzz) and didn’t need no static offa you. It doesn’t always matter where we are but here I am and I say hello, sitting next to you this time, just pretend I’m sitting next to you this time. You would like it here. Maybe you would like it here. I think that maybe you would like it here. I work my jobs, I take my pills. Knot the tie and go to work, unknot the tie and go to sleep. I sleep. I dream. I wake. I sing. I get out the hammer and start knocking in the wooden pegs that affix the meaning to the landscape, the inner life to the body, the names to the things. I float too much to wander, like you, in the real world. I envy it but that’s the dealio— you’re a train and I’m a trainstation and when I try to guess your trajectory I end up telling my own story. But you are my nomad and I love you sideways daily. Sideways because I have to beam my love in all directions, hoping it bounces off something and eventually finds you. You and all the other secret agents caroming underneath the radar, sending your documents back to Mission Control— which is me, I guess, because I have a permanent address. I’ve been rereading your story. I think it’s about me in a way that might not be flattering, but that’s okay. We dream and dream of being seen as we really are and then finally someone looks at us and sees us truly and we fail to measure up. Anyway: story received, story included. You looked at me long enough to see something mysterioso under all the gruff and bluster.