Morning in the Room with the Cement Floor Covered with Linoleum I Shred Each Time I Move the Chair

There's no truth in words,
and someone already said that, but—
before the sunlight can cast
treeshadows rippling
through the windshield, before
there's even a reason to crank the car,
before language arrives as commerce
—mornings feel like they have a little of it in them.

In winter, I can sit between the backporch windows,
turn the space heater full blast, fry
my shins and wait for the streetlight
to turn off, take in twenty minutes of dawn
before its glow has a risen source.
Stare at my phone. Doubt language.
Prepare cover-ups, mourn the mountains
already embracing day invisibly to my right,
praise the shorelines invisible to my left
who wait a few minutes longer than me.

If this is all words can do, help us
not remember, what do we got but the moment?
The dog's itchy fur; the spouse's kiss;
the cold flanking my spine is
unrequited as it gets. Near work I'll see
a faded flag, limp on a telephone pole,
the tattered sort of sad sack that makes me wanna say,
“what a truth, what an honesty”,
but I haven't, not yet, like I haven't
put anything off and, instead, watched bodies
move across the curvature of a world
full of bodies. But aren't we all
full of bodies, bodies that die, wither to dust
as the days drag along, full of words.
There was something pure there, something
true for a moment. But I lost it.

Fortunately, every child the world gains tomorrow
will be named Dave. This will be awkward
for me in 18 years, which isn't very far off,
when I continue to never call role
and a room full of Daves practices that thing
it's learned so well and I have not:
how to exist among Daves. I'll begin.
Racoon, you are Dave. Fence, Dave.
Fenced-in area: Dave. Leafless tree: Dave.
Bushes: Dave. Truth: Dave. Dave, never
become a word, trust me, Dave be a consciousness,
before they can falsify your rhythms, use you
like a get-out-of-jail-free, return-to-center,
post-foul-tipoff, load-last-save, back-to-the-line,
as if they could collapse it all to before
things got all fuckity—

Dave, the sun's light raced how many millions
of miles to bother me this morning. Dave,
I have more to say to you than it. Dave, thank you,
but I have to go take a shower, the words have tangled in my hair.

Momotaro at Tule Lake

the peach lost
he stares—
mountain snow framed
by barbed wire
the oni still marching

The Baby

When I ask if you ever 
think about the baby

 you say 
I wanted that baby 

you tell me you 
heartless bitch 

you murdered 
my child 

I tell you 
how easily 

it could have been
our daughter 

furtive under the covers
a dangling leg 

off the bed 
like a fishhook

reading books 
with a flashlight

in her room 
late at night.

My Last Visit

Here, outside my father’s home,
the land rises square
to the horizon, the few trees
all lean, twisted. I see
cornfields raked bare, broken stalks
shuddering. Air slices deep
into my chest, my breath bleeds
out. Nothing

absolves you from winter here.

Left-Hand Bars

One million
beds between this bar and your bed

One hundred
junkies explaining kidney function
to one another,
between you and what you mean

Right-hand bars
and left-hand bars

Sneer-smile of the rich girl
almost unbuttoning her shirt
shiny legging like the blood-wet
fur of a wounded animal

No one gives their neighbor
proper credit for symbolism

A mirror above it all and pleasure
never undoes pain never undoes
pleasure never undoes

One hand for the drink
One for holding on

As usual, Father is my date. We’re late. I’m late.

His foot is tapping on the hardwood floor outside the upstairs bathroom. “Deborah, the concert starts at 8:00 p.m. sharp. It’s Mozart, Ligeti, and Bartok.”

His knuckles rap on the door. “What on earth are you doing?”

The basin tap is turned on full, the old pipes sounding like a mournful bassoon, like a ghost in the pipes. I’m kneeling, on the white bathroom rug, the diamond pattern etching a bas-relief on my knees. My first two right hand knuckles are raw. I hope Father will not notice.

“Nothing.” I wipe the vomit from my mouth and stare into the white toilet basin. I reach my hands to my crotch and press, a rhythmic ostinato. My same two versatile fingers. My shoulders hunch and my head lolls back. I am intoxicated. And maybe it’s even better because it’s secret, because I have to mute my moans—Father has pitched himself right outside the door. The timbre in my throat matches the ghosts whorling in the pipes, and we all reach climax in a pinched face and curled toe gasp of steamy furtiveness. I want to cry, but I don’t. Father is waiting.

I flush the toilet and stand, staring at myself in the bathroom mirror. I rinse my mouth with Listerine, throw water on my face, and pinch my cheeks. I put on yummy pink lipstick to match my dress. I look pretty. But Father will not approve, will make me take it off, so I wipe the last traces from my lips.

I flush the toilet again. “I’m coming, Father.”

His eyes sweep over me. “You look nice. I like that dress, but have you put on a few pounds? Darling, you need to be careful. Maybe go get a sweater? How about that pretty Fair Isle cardigan your mother and I bought for you in Edinburgh last year?” He’s leaning against the wall to steady himself. I don’t think he’s had anything to drink, so it worries me. Father always prides himself on his athletic abilities; his strong, lean physique is admired by young and old. Is he okay?

In the car coming back from the concert, I must have dozed off, leaning my head against Father’s shoulder. My mouth is open, and saliva has dribbled onto my chin. I awake to find Father cradling me in his arms, attempting to lift and carry me into the house. But he doesn’t have the leverage, cannot find his footing. My graceful, athletic father, who, despite his back pain, runs half-marathons and plays tennis three times a week. I touch his arm.

“Daddy?” I have not called him that in years. “Are you okay?”

Father stands on the antique Bokhara rug in the long hallway of our house, hanging up the phone with a slight click. “Deborah, who are you?” His diction is uncharacteristically clipped, and his voice is underwater.

Dread rises, bile in my mouth. I hate to do anything wrong, yet I dread doing everything right. “Father, I’m sorry? What do you mean?”

“I mean, who do you think you are? I just hung up the phone with your college admissions counselor. She informed me that you filled out an application for Mills College,” he says with a mixture of dread and disdain. “In California.”

Why the hell had she told on me? I’d confessed to her that my parents would not want me so far from home, from them—that they relied on me. I didn’t say that they leaned on me.

“Well, yes.” I still have my book bag in my arms. Maybe I can make a getaway? Perhaps Father’s ghosts can spirit me away?

“She said you wanted to leave the East Coast. Study New Music?” He can barely utter the words.

I lift my quavering chin. “I thought I’d take a break from classical.”

Father clasps me by the elbow and steers me toward the piano. Six-year-old Deborah scrapes her feet along.

Father settles himself on the bench beside me. “Darling, you are destined to be a concert pianist. Mother and I have our hearts set on you going to Juilliard. It’s la crème de la crème.” He softens his tone. I can see his face sag, as if his muscles can no longer hold up his eyes. “And, you know, both Philip Glass and Steve Reich attended Juilliard. You’ll have plenty of room to spread your wings.”

I pick a leaf off my navy pullover. I start to tear it into little pieces, rib by rib. “What if I don’t get in?” I lean into his Shetland sweater.

“No doubt you’ll get in. They’ll recognize your talent. Now why don’t you play some Chopin for me?”

He picks up the music and sets the tempo. I notice a tremor in his hand. Tick. Tick. Tick.

When the large envelope from Juilliard arrives, Mother and Father host a brunch. Of course, I’m expected to play my signature piece, Liszt’s “Mephisto Waltz.”

Father celebrates by spending more time with his young men on campus. Mother does a new needlepoint and tries out a few new pills. I tiptoe into my room and write poems about freedom of the soul, the nature of art, the lure of death. Melancholy poems. Ere I Die, for example. I long for bruises born in a dark basement. Tender, brutal, purple. Our lives are contused by the jockeying monoliths of music and art and literature. In the music room at school, I unbutton my blouse, let it drop around my elbows to expose my bra, and bang out Ginastera. I can hear the music in the bones and flesh of my pelvis. I can play myself out of anything. I can play myself into holy ground. I stick my fingers down my throat and play myself some more.

All three of us feel the burden of my success. I tell Mother and Father that I love Juilliard, that it is a good choice for me. I tell myself I feel fine here.

I am finally free of Father’s regimentation. I have my music, but it is more like music has me. All the first-years live in the brand-new glass, steel, and stone residence hall. I’d requested a single room, but I still feel exposed in the bright light. Sure, I’ll sit in the lounge, but I hide behind the froth of Coca-Cola and talk with chips in my mouth. When guys ask what program I’m in, I respond with a staccato, “Piano.” Oon the P, saliva-coated stipples spray out.

I send Nathan note after note on heavy paper, little pink envelopes scented with roses, only to receive an occasional curt note stating how busy he is.

I have no real friends, only competitors. I stand in line for two hours to score the practice room with the best piano. Then I hear, in the next room, on a lesser piano, the latest wunderkind playing the same piece. Only better.

I am adrift, alone, no moorings.

And then I come home to the melancholy summer heat of Cambridge.

Father’s tremor is worse, his thoughts garbled. My brilliant father is calcifying before my eyes. When I play my Steinway, it is discordant, off-key. My hands—inflamed and angry and raw—have little cuts from jamming my fingers forcefully into my mouth.

Father spends more time in his study at home, less time on campus. He dedicated his life to cultivating minds and bodies, and the thought that he will gradually turn to stone, to petrify, is insufferable.

Mother and I sit in the breakfast nook, our hands around cups of Scottish breakfast tea, and we watch Father make his way down the hallway. His steps are faltering, indecisive, as if he is a man in shackles. Mother and I both stare into the tealeaves, willing the future to change.

One August day, the six couples of Philology Club sit on the veranda and lawn of our Cambridge house, nibbling lox and bagels. Nathan is engaged in an earnest conversation with his mother, Giselle, who always seems to have a hand on his sleeve or his cheek. Oedipus and Jocasta. I hover over the cucumber sandwiches trying to ignore him, to ignore them.

Mother is perched on our porch, a gin and tonic in her hand and more than a few pink pills under her belt. Her voice carries across the lawn. “Arthur, look at Deborah,” she says, draining her glass. “She’s too smart and too shy.”

Father leans over the porch rail to steady himself, to stop his palsy, to stare. “Augusta, have you seen how Nathan and Deborah look at each other? Or rather, how they don’t? Let the children be. They’ll sort it out in due time. After Juilliard.”

Mother walks down and pulls me aside by the elbow. “Nathan’s a good match for you, Deborah. You know how much we adore his parents.”

“Mother, I know.”

“It would be wonderful to call them family. You and Nathan are our only children.” She straightens my Peter Pan collar. “Don’t hide your luminescence behind your piano keys, darling.”

“Mother, please, you’re embarrassing me.”

She loops her arm in mine. “Think about it.”

Nathan’s mother gives us sugarcoated slices of lemon cake. “Nathan, why don’t you and Deborah go sit under the chestnut tree and chat?”

I accept the lemon cake.

Year two at the hyperbaric chamber of Juilliard.

My life was always in C-major. I played myself like the white keys on my piano until the discord of my second year.

Sixty-eight years old, Father finds himself acting out his dreams of death, his bedsheets black with sweat. Mother and Father joke it away, referring to him as Lady Macbeth. They aren’t far off. His delusions and his tremors and his stiff movements are no part of the normal aging process. He has Lewy body dementia. At least that’s what they think, but they can’t really tell until they spool the brain out of your skull.

Father will close the heavy mahogany door and spend hours alone. He bought a hospital bed and moved it into his study so he wouldn’t have to use the stairs. He spends long nights agitated, cranking the electric bed up and down, looking for comfort where none can be found.

He has been hoarding medicine for years. He has a nice collection, which he keeps in the right-hand drawer next to his Montblanc pen and his Smythson stationery. He opts, instead, for nitrous oxide and a plastic bag. Arthur thought it was the antidote to the taste of blood and dust and ash that had long been accumulating in his throat. When they remove the bag, his body exhales reflexively and his libretto floats up among the ghosts, blending into their story, chapter and verse.

Father, a man of endless words, had left not one word of explanation. Not on the Smythson stationery. Not with the Montblanc pen.

I am not there when it happens. I am at Juilliard in the lounge watching Seinfeld. Or rehearsing for a studio concert. Or listening to Suzanne Vega on my Walkman.

I am not there.

The ghosts hold shiva for my father. The college holds a formal service on gold gilt chairs, with samovars of tea and coffee, the room abuzz with those same splayfooted scholars my father had mentored. For seven days, instead of renting her widow’s weeds, my mother wears a little black grosgrain ribbon, torn partway up.

I can’t shake the feeling that I, too, need to be a ghost. I return to my piano for solace. I feel Father in the room with me, standing behind me, following the score, caressing my hair, running his fingertips down my back, hands on my throat.

My piano teacher whispers to the other faculty, often within my earshot, “Do you think Deborah’s handling her father’s death? She seems driven. Too driven. I’m worried that she might harm herself.”

She taps the window of the practice room and gives me a thumbs-up. I can’t stop playing long enough to respond.

The trees are barren of leaves and the notes sing at me, demanding to be heard. I have to play the fact that I had a father who sang codas into my soul and would not stop, even after he himself had stopped.

I play my sorrow and my anger. I play my pride and my shame. I play Father’s silent, empty room with the solitary hospital bed.

Ghosts in silk dresses and tails swirl around the room. They twirl their mustaches and hold hands and circle around, sometimes singing minor key tunes they barely remember while cackling, “D’vora, bubbeleh, how we have missed you! Play ‘The Blue Danube’ again. Ve love to valtz!”

I feel my dress binding me, constricting, almost a straitjacket, so I strip. I shed my body. I caper with the ghosts, linking elbows, a dreidel spinning through the air as I watch the other Deborah. Her hands go down, down beneath her panties, to her soul, and she plays her own music and tries to play the stars back into the sky where they belong. She came to prove she still could, still could feel, still could cry out, and she does it over and over again. She can’t stop.

Love is a dark sun without warmth.

In the silence above your grave a butterfly
waits for your eyes to open, hears
their pollen living off the darkness

and for a long time this way and that
returns with dirt in its mouth
to find who buried you—not yet a bird

it sifts for step by step though the ground
is still breathing in the smoke
fires don’t want anymore—from memory

one wingtip will follow the other
loosen the huge stone looming over you
as cradlesong made from wood and side to side

as if there is a name for afterward
some ashes will still cover the shoes
mourners unlace just for the sound.

Peephole

Clock says 6:17 through the peephole. It’s a tunnel for air mostly. Through it comes the sound of a whistling man at the curb. I see his hard hands. The truck makes a bad sound. This should not be allowed in the morning. My ankle bones are grinding together. Push a cool pillow down the thighs. Between the knees and ankles. Do it before the sun can see. This half sleep. I’m light as dead sea floating.

I could be dreaming. Imagine this in cross section: The bunker has an air vent that comes up in a quiet, snowy forest. The pipe there next to a cluster of boulders. Among old high trees. Never to be found. Picture it beginning to rust. Now see the hikers finding it. The sound of their nylon jackets scratching in the cold. The pipe jutting out of the ground like an arcade bird. They try at it but it won’t come. They call something vulgar down the pipe. Thirty feet below, bathed in generator light, I hear them. I hold very still over my pancakes.

In fifteen minutes, I’ll repair the collapsed peephole. I can feel more than hear the garbage truck a block over. It’s dented everywhere from endless work. Like an old bruised slave hymn. The man is whistling signals at each stop. Some secret tongue. I can see the clear Velcro pocket holding his union card.

I might be awake and wondering how many generations until you’ve been dead long enough to never have existed at all. Three? At two generations you’re probably still a memory to someone.

“Did I ever tell you about your uncle? He had a successful map printing company.”

“Yes, Mom.”

“He made official maps for the state…very successful—”

“Uh-huh, you told me.”

“…Please pass the gravy.”

Two generations and what’s left of you is a series of sounds that live for a moment around the half-chewed turkey in a fat woman’s mouth. You’re a hazy topic to move on from at Thanksgiving.

I think I’m awake. More trucks have passed on the street below. Raising one knee has the effect of vacuuming in pornographically sweet air. I’m considering a new tunnel project at the foot of the bed. I’m setting some time aside this afternoon.

Yesterday we had NW pit detail. They call NW punishment detail. Frank fucked up Saturday, so we got the shit poke. At the bar they told Frank to stop coming in with his work boots. Said the lye is ruining the floors. He apologized to the bartender all polite, said it wouldn’t happen again; then he took a shit in the urinal. Bad scene when they found it, but he’s pretty proud of those boots. One of the bureau guys from admin happened to be there. Word got back as it does. Anyway, Frank’s a good guy, and proud of our detail. Never lets anyone forget we’re “selected for special character and demeanor.” Wears his gear off the job a lot.

NW pit detail is tough. Lots of wrecks because of the school zone and the badly timed lights. Three accidents involving school busses last week. It’s tough to see kids subject to the squad, but the law is the law. Crashes are down from last year’s numbers, but they still happen. I guess because they’re accidents.

I hear the phone and I know by the sound of the ring Frank is calling. I can hear him already:

“The fuck, bucko? You’re SHIT late. I’m not doing NW by myself with the new guys, so cut the self-pity shit. Get here—NOW!”

Etc.

Once you get to know him, he really is a good guy. I let it ring.

I’ve opened a tunnel with my foot. The phone can ring until Jesus dies. I’m not answering and I’m not getting out of this bed. I wonder how long until they send someone from bureau? I’ve heard they send a team with K9 when someone cracks up. But I’m not cracking up. I’m just not getting out of bed today.

I might be dreaming my submarine has its bridge in the low decks. Deep in the steel. The periscope shaft had to be lengthened. I need to have as much steel and titanium and whatever above me as possible…then the water above that. Miles and miles of water up to the sunny surface where seabirds circle and cry. They’re so far from land they can’t get back if they try. Birds that live above the quiet blue. Their wings on the air with a hush. Quiet as a photo of Saturn.

Bureau has a new brass recycling program, which means NW detail is now a twelve-hour day. After you bury the crash offenders and tamp them down, call in the lye truck, resurface, mark out the next day’s pit, quick paint over the blood spray, kick any skull fragments into the grass, then collect the bullet casings…well, it’s a long day. At least we don’t have to sort out who caused the wreck. Everyone gets the same, so that’s something. We shoot more crash offenders in NW than all the other freeway districts combined.

SW is the suburbs. No one wrecks their car in the suburbs. Everyone is careful. They never take a chance. E is campus district. College kids don’t drive, so not many accidents. E detail is cheesecake. If you get one in E, it’s usually a car v. ped situation, so only two holes to dig. Easy.

Converting the ambulances over to Justice Trucks was easier than everyone expected. Most were four-by-fours already, so there’s that. Heavy-duty too, and the air conditioner in the roof was easy to swap for the machine gun. A sheriff cruiser with a backseat guy always rolls, flashers on, with the truck for anyone who tries to run, but most don’t. Their cars are usually too smashed up from the wreck. Most just give up and wait for it. Sometimes they’ll try to get away on foot, but they’re usually dazed from the wreck, or carrying a sobbing kid, so they’re slow. Anyway, the truck crew always carries a scope rifle guy. Frank says the worst part of the job is dragging the runners back to the pits…because, he says, “they’re heavy…’specially with the kids.”

The blanket. The perfect womb. Breathe. It must be around noon? Imagine putting my head out now. In the shaft of light through the bedroom window, a million floating lives in the dust. How many worlds there? How many traffic jams? How many jobs that demand working? Nature demanding constant action, or face starvation and death. Cities designed with green spaces that are actually for pavement drainage. City codes against impervious concrete and asphalt. If you consider the relative scale, we’re just and only dust. Dust mote civilizations floating there to the sound of endless church bells.

I’m dreaming of bells.

The kitchen has white porcelain tile. In my dream a cat knocks over a juice glass, startled by the doorbell. He’s so white he disappears against the tile. I’m not going to answer. Now they’re ringing again. A cozy dream of bells. Holy Mozart harmonies. Angel horns. Armageddon. I’m dreaming a dog is barking too. The neighbors will complain. I’ll have to explain this.

In my dream, there’s an animal at the door. I don’t have a dog, but I hear his collar, and the harness sounds like horse tack. Now see his vest. Yellow-lettered BUREAU on one side, DANGER STAY BACK on the other. Or maybe no patch at all.

Internal affairs have no insignia.

Thirty feet down in my bunker. Behind the reclaimed bank vault door (sixteen bolts: four per side: steel as thick as Pepsi cans), the dog tries, but can’t get in. His nose is fooled by the simple incredible mass of it.

Shouting at the front door. Fists against the paint. The walls ring like your ears after anything. I’ll tell the neighbors it was all a misunderstanding.

I feel the battering ram as it finds the sweet spot to the left of the doorknob, just below the bolt. I painted that door last summer. A picture falls from its nail. That frozen moment shatters on the floor. I’m dreaming again. Pull the pillow between my knees.

The door gives way in an explosion that smells of sweet pine sap high in the mountains. Crisp New Mexico air. We should’ve brought jackets.

Now the truth of the dog’s tight, clipped nails on the stairs.

His wet, sweet breath. No barking or growling. Just moving. Fast. Doing what he must do. He’s unable to escape the joy. But I know, if I’m still, the peephole will stay open. If I move my knees up a bit, the air comes in.

Pleasant and cool.

I could stay here forever.

Brothers, Sisters—

Our parents’ cars’
sun visors held old mail and receipts
from funeral parlors when
we were left behind. Nothing ourselves, we moved
into their vacant houses, claiming deeds
and feasting on landlords. Curio cabinets,
filled with dead birds,
hid under the cobwebs. Behind the cardboard
boxes jittered the cold woman
with moons for eyes. Even after sweeping, sometimes
still a wind pierces
the batdoor into the attic
and all other things
pass through us.

Our neighbors are
a refrigerator box
& a dead microwave
in the alley where
college kids piss
when the bars close
their doors hours after
closing. Nothing can live
in the empty sockets
of a sparrow's
brittle ornate skull,

but we leave the windows
open
for the owls
and the gods alike, and everything
they may have pecked clean by morning.
When the moon falls
through the attic's octagonal
window, I will become
a witch, like my
grandmother, and weave
the yard's tall grasses
into halos
to ring all the children
of our land. I have already chopped down
the lamp posts. In my dreams my friends
accept my apologies and Verizon
texts to say I’ve used 90%
of my data, I’ve been looking at pictures
of abandoned subway systems. I am not
returning any calls
until the sun sets forever, I am
not returning any calls.

Poetry by Jayce Russell, Morning in the Room with the Cement Floor Covered with Linoleum I Shred Each Time I Move the Chair, & Brothers, Sisters—

Jayce Russell presides as Poetry Warlock for Outlook Springs and teaches English at a community college. He lives in North Carolina with his spouse and dog. He built a fence.

Jayce reads his work at 4:53 and at 56:39 in The Conglomerate Radio program.

Artwork by Jeremy Szuder

Jeremy Szuder is a born and bred California native, raised with a tender and dedicated loyalty to poetry and the arts. His works have been published in Fine Print Literary and Visual Arts Publication, After Happy Hour Review, All The Sins, Home Sick Zine, several issues of L.A. Record Magazine, as well as fifteen years of art shows from galleries and organizations such as Cannibal Flower, La Luz De Jesus, Copro Nason, CoLab Gallery, and many more. Szuder lives in Glendale California.

Jeremy’s answer to the question ‘Why is art important?’ can be heard at 9:05 in The Conglomerate Radio program.

Poetry by Lisa Shirley, Momotaro at Tule Lake, & My Last Visit

Lisa Shirley’s poetry has been published in Crack the Spine, Sidewalks, Mascara Literary Review, Rougarou, and Waving Hands Review. She has an MLS from the University of Arizona and an MFA in poetry from Sarah Lawrence College. She has studied with esteemed writers like Vijay Seshadri, Billy Collins, Tom Lux, and Jack Driscoll. To pay for her poetry habit, Lisa works as a librarian.

Artwork by Ohab TBJ

Ohab Tochukwu Bernard Johnbosco , better known as TBJ, is a Nigerian born visual artist & illustrator. In his creations, he utilizes intricate lines, patterns and designs often found in Ankara fabric. TBJ has been featured in several exhibitions in USA and several African countries. Find more of his work on his website, and on Instagram or Twitter.

Ohab’s answer to the question ‘Why is art important?’ can be heard at 11:22 in The Conglomerate Radio program.

Poetry by Emily Hyland, The Baby

Emily Hyland’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in armarolla, Belle Ombre, The Brooklyn Review, Mount Hope Magazine, Neologism Poetry Journal, Sixfold, The Virginia Normal, and Stretching Panties. A restauranteur and English professor from New York City, she received her MFA in poetry and her MA in English education from Brooklyn College. Her cookbook, Emily: The Cookbook, was published by Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House, in 2018. She is a member of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers and studies writing with Mirabai Starr at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico. Emily is the co-founder of the national restaurant groups Pizza Loves Emily and Emmy Squared Pizza.

Poetry by Colin Dodds, Left-Hand Bars

Colin Dodds is a writer with several acclaimed novels and poetry collections to his name. He grew up in Massachusetts, and lived in California briefly, before finishing his education in New York City. He’s made a living as a journalist, editor, copywriter, and video producer. Colin also writes screenplays, has directed a short film, and built a twelve-foot-high pyramid out of PVC pipe, plywood and zip-ties. He lives in New York City with his wife and daughter. You can find more of his work at thecolindodds.com.

Colin reads his work at 11:58 in The Conglomerate Radio program.

Fiction by Harriet Garfinkle, Hyperbaric Chamber Orchestra

Harriet Garfinkle is a painter, dancer, actress and choreographer. She choreographed an award-winning theater piece, Purple Breasts, and was the associate producer for the film based on that play. Her writing has been published in OPEN: Journal of Arts and Letters. She has attended the juried conferences of the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley 2017 and 2018, the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference 2018, and Lit Camp 2019. Her story Someone Else won third place in the Women’s National Book Association Bay Area Writers Conference in the fiction category. She currently is seeking an agent for her novel, Play Me to the Bone, from which Hyperbaric Chamber Orchestra is an excerpt.

Harriet reads her work at 13:45 in The Conglomerate Radio program.

Music by Menno Roymans, Son Tus Ojos, & Minor March

Although trained as a guitarist, Menno Roymans (32, The Netherlands) is an all-round musician. He has appeared on international stages as a guitarist (and with various other stringed instruments), a singer, trombonist, percussionist and DJ. His fingerstyle guitar pieces are a result of two years of solo-travel. He is currently involved in the following projects: Solo guitar - www.mennoroymans.bandcamp.com; Komodo - www.facebook.com/thebandkomodo; ¡Pendejo! - www.pendejoband.com; DJ Mais Non - www.mixcloud.com/djmaisnon.

Both songs are written and arranged by Menno Roymans, between 2017 and 2019. They were recorded November 29th, 2019 by Thijn Moons at the HKU-IBB studio's in Utrecht, The Netherlands.

Son Tus Ojos can be heard in The Conglomerate Radio Program at 34:20; Minor March at 51:50.

Artwork by David Rufo

David Rufo’s paintings explore visual oscillations and pattern structures. His work is informed by the hyper-kinetic shifts of the Op Art movement and the viscous psychedelic imagery of the 1960s and 70s. Most recently, he has integrated meandering ribbons of text into his paintings that allow the viewer to engage in multiple readings. The passages present excerpts of narratives taken from bygone pop songs or novels from the Western canon while at the same time providing compositional structure, color, and form to the work itself. David is an Assistant Professor of Education and Program Director in the Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences at Cazenovia College in upstate New York. Previously, Dr. Rufo was a Clinical Assistant Professor at Fordham University’s Graduate School of Education at Lincoln Center in New York City. Additionally, Dr. Rufo has two decades of experience as a general elementary classroom teacher and an instructor in the Department of Art Education at Syracuse University. He has published articles on the creative aspects of teaching and learning in a variety of national and international peer-reviewed journals. His writings may be found at cazenovia.academia.edu/DavidRufo and his artwork at davidjohnrufo.com and on Instagram.

David’s answer to the question ‘Why is art important?’ can be heard at 38:37 in The Conglomerate Radio program.

Poetry by Simon Perchik, ‘In the silence above your grave a butterfly'…’

Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, Forge, Poetry, Osiris, The New Yorker and elsewhere. His most recent collection is The Rosenblum Poems published by Cholla Needles Arts & Literary Library, 2020. For more information including free e-books and his essay “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities” please visit his website at www.simonperchik.com. View one of his interviews on YouTube.

Fiction by Jon Fotch, Peephole

Jon Fotch is a member of the Writers’ League of Texas and dreams of a world where cowards are shamed, art is rewarded, and jobs are optional, but frowned upon. He writes short fiction and poetry, and he insists on chocolate-frosted donuts, come hell or otherwise. His work has appeared in Avatar Review, Carbon Culture Review, Euphony Journal, Menda City Review, Mudlark, Whistling Shade, Green Hills Literary Lantern, Boomer Lit magazine, Litbreak Magazine, The Hungry Chimera, and Evening Street Review. He lives in Austin, TX, where he spends most of his time repurposing fireworks.

Jon reads his work at 41:10 in The Conglomerate Radio program.