The broken C I Sidling and secretaries A harmless three-hour tour T Y Reality TV on the Red Planet That faithful moose passes by “Darn tootin’, I love Fig Newtons” REMOTELY CONTROLLED 17 Winter 2015 ISSN 1916-3304 The broken C I W i n t e r 2 0 15 Issue 17 T Y The Broken City A r t Contributor : , ISSN 1916-3304, is published semiannually Bill Wolak out of Toronto, Canada, appearing sporadically in print, but The Broken City (“Tasting the Whispers” on the front cover and always at: www.thebrokencitymag.com. Rights to individual Love Opens the Hands “Sand Dreaming of Dew” on page 8) has just published works published in remain the property of his twelfth book of poetry, entitled , the author and cannot be reproduced without their consent. with Nirala Press. Recently, he was a featured poet at The All other materials © 2015. All rights reserved. All wrongs Mihai Eminescu International Poetry Festival in Craiova, reversed. O n t h e W e b : Romania. Mr. Wolak teaches Creative Writing at William PatersonD i s c l aUniversity i m e r : in New Jersey. Owww.thebrokencitymag.com n m o b i l e d e v i c e s : Remotely Controlled Though we arrived at this issue’s title independently, we Sissuu.com/thebrokencity u b m i s s i o n Guidelines: should point out that is also the name Cof oan n unaf�iliated t e n t s : book by Aric Sigman. Correspondencewww.thebrokencitymag.com/submissions.html: Poetry .....3-7, 12, 13 [email protected] Robot .....8 O n Tw i t t e r : Fiction .....9 Essay .....11 @brokencitymag The Broken City I n t h i s i s s u e : Breakfast Clubbed is currently accepting submissions for its summer 2016 edition: . The broken C I Sidling and secretaries A harmless three-hour tour T Y Reality TV on the Red Planet That faithful moose passes by Do we control TV, “Darn tootin’, I love Fig Newtons” REMOTELY CONTROLLED or does it control No, it’s not another food issue; the magazine is running us? Studies done in a school-themed edition. We’re looking for work the ’90s suggest the that involves school at any level, from kindergarten latter view is more to college, but we’re most interested in submissions accurate. It’s not the about high school. content that hooks us, they discovered, Is your coming-of-age �iction looking for a good it’s the medium itself. home? Show it to us! Still having nightmares that you’re late for class and can’t open your locker, twenty At least we’re years later? Tell us about it! Just this once, we’ll even 17 addicted together; Winter 2015 consider heartbroken teen angst poetry. ISSN 1916-3304 let’s lean back and The enjoy the ride. Broken City Send your poetry, �iction, essays, comics, illustrations Welcome to and photography to [email protected]. ’s tribute to television’s past and present. - 2 - Imperium In Imperio Catherine Bull Because Cookie punched BooBooKitty right in the damn face then 40 seconds of ohhellno awyeah on a red pool table! And now they’re business partners. Because �ingernails! Because murder! Because unexpected children! Because silk sheets and sidling and secretaries and seriously huge self-portraits. Because while he was dying he was not dying! Because the box they’re in is the box they’re all in together, and they go all in, all the hair all the sex, all the effoffs, all the about-faces, all the facials. Because people! Because wanting! Because entrances! Audacity! Breakdowns! The hots! Because booze and butts and begging and wily lunching and jewels the size of satellite dishes! Because rhythm! Because rhymes! Because of course! Because who wouldn’t act that way all day if they could! Because who doesn’t want to be all their everything at all times with the dial all the way up, and have no one leave the box of your life for any reason but dying and only then if you kill them your damnself? Catherine Bull’s work has appeared in , , , , Bellingham Review and other �ine journals. Her poem “On Stage At The Field The Human The Literary Bohemian The Operating Bardot” appeared in the winter 2013 music-themed issue System of . She holds degrees from Oberlin College and U.C. Davis, and lives in Seattle. Catherine is also a Seattle The Broken City Independent Bookstore Day Champion, and for an explanation of that and more, please visit www.catherinebull.com. - 3 - “Talk Show Addicts” by Roger Brown Janet McCann To live in identical houses, each with four-pronged aerials and all equidistant from the street and from each other, one or two-formed shadows, glimpsed in front of screens, in blaring yellow light. The voices that they hear are not their own and not each other’s. The voices that they hear— The psychiatrist said that the killer must have been an abused child. The political analyst blames Obama. Viagra sales are slumping: why? Some countries in Europe have low sperm counts and births are dropping there. Many believe wallabies make good pets but they don’t; they jump over fences and can leap right into neighbors’ houses, and they punch! I love my wallaby, he’s gentle as a lamb. Thatcher was Ronald Reagan’s friend, America was closest to Britain then. It is true that the one pair of penguins is lesbian but they have to have sex with males to produce eggs, one of them will make the sacri�ice. They can’t just ring up the sperm bank, ho ho! in their identical houses, where the voices they hear are not their own and not each other’s do the lights go out at once, or does one blink out at a time until the frame is dark? Find the Roger Brown painting here: http://chicago-outdoor-sculptures.blogspot.com/2010_04_01_archive.html - 4 - Listening to Emily Dickinson’s Poems in a Bar While Watching Ultimate Wrestling on Mute Janet McCann Shaved heads, fangs, He kindly stopped a woman and a man in mortal for me. erotic combat. I dwell in possibility Violent colors and screaming. and the tattooed brunette throws the bucket A fairer house at the blonde, who seizes the brunette’s �lap of hair than prose. and yanks. My life You can’t turn it off, closed twice. that huge screen over the bar. What a resounding slap, If immortality unveil mute but you see the patchy color rising on the white face. the gleam of oiled muscles, costumes �lashing electric colors. Rivers of blood �low over her face, between her breasts, into her eyes, I felt a funeral in my brain. someone is thrown into the pit. Wild nights! Wild nights! Whirl of heliotrope and orange, stillness. Medico! Janet McCann is a Texas poet who has been teaching creative writing at Texas A&M since 1969. Journals publishing her work include , , , , , Kansas Quarterly , , , , and , Parnassus Nimrod Sou’wester The Christian Century Christianity and among many others. She was a 1989 NEA Creative Writing Fellowship winner. Literature The New York Quarterly Tendril Poetry Australia McCall’s Her most recent collection: , Lamar University Press, 2013. She started teaching in 1963 and just dismissed her last class! The Crone at the Casino - 5 - The Agony of Defeat B rent Raycroft The things we used to see on TV, my brother, my sister and me. Vanuatu tribesmen, for example, diving from a wooden tower with vine ropes tied to their ankles. Each mortal tug made the make-shift tower sag and though the line was duly shortened sooner or later some poor sportsman would hit the ground head �irst. Or so we hoped. Or was the level ground a pit �illed with twigs and topped with moss to make the tourists think the danger worse than it was? The spectacle reenacts (we did not know it then— that would take the advent of another medium) the legend of a woman held captive in a treetop bower harried by her cruel mate to the brink and over. Diving after her he died because he didn’t use a vine. But he won’t be fooled again, will he? The things we used to see on TV, my brother, my sister and me. Brent Raycroft lives north of Kingston, Ontario and has published poems in , , , , , , Arc Prairie Fire Vallum Freefall and other magazines. He doesn’t have Grain The Walrus The Broken City a full-length book out yet, but there is a manuscript rising (he imagines) through various slushpiles. , a single- The poem chapbook, was recently published Subtleties of Divine Creatures by Thee Hellbox Press. - 6 - Fifties’ Child Nels Hanson Where did they go, kind companions of defeated different father or mother. The curved-nosed elves sailed childhood, their constant cheerfulness who they sea of milk and �loating rice, bergs waiting for Titanic. really were, happier than any parent? Bucky Beaver Lowing Bossie, Elsie never met, separate pastures, each no one made fun of, brushed and smiling, big teeth in thrall to competing dairies. Sweet Sugar Bear, casual white and strong enough to fell a tree? Strange Reddy stoned cartoon Bing Crosby crooning—his coated oats Kilowatt, monopoly PG&E’s electric robot boy in cultured cavities and made you fat that anyway future free comic book each Spring? Does he live or falter, time would do. Towering but gentle Jolly Green Giant, memory fail, against his better judgment �ly his kite half human, half vegetable, grew peas and broccoli into high voltage line? Was it intentional? Sharpie you hated and never ate though still you admired his the Gillette parrot, my best friend, no howling coach size and strength, vast legs spread, my Colossus of or principal, sang smartly, “Look sharp, and feel sharp Rhodes above fertile valley like yours so you wished too!” between rounds, rugged Gene Fullmer, shaved- a friendly monster to set things right.