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the

b’kbitchin’ kitsch

Volume 6, Issue 2February 2015

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about b’k:The Bitchin’ Kitsch is a zine for artists, poets, prose writers, or anyone else who has something to say. It exists for the purpose of open creativity.

All submissions are due on the 26th for the following month’s issue. Please review the submission guidelines on our Submissions page (www.talbot-heindl.com/bitchin_kitsch/submissions) before submitting your work.

community copies:Stevens Point readers, sit down and read The Bitchin’ Kitsch at our community locations: zest, the coffee studio, tech lounge, and noel fine arts center.

advertising:The Bitchin’ Kitsch is offering crazy low rates. Order ads on our Shop The B’K page (www.talbot-heindl.com/support_us/shop_thebk).

donation and acquisition:Printing costs can be a bitch, which is why we continuously look for donations. Any amount helps and is appreciated. We also sell back copies of The B’K. To do either, visit our Shop The B’K page (www.talbot-heindl.com/support_us/shop_thebk).

resourcesOn top of being the best publication ever created by human hands, The B’K would also like to present other opportunities that may be helpful to you as creators. If you have suggestions that could improve our list, please let us know. Resources we are privy to can be found at our Resources page (www.talbot-heindl.com/bitchin_kitsch/resources).

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On the CoverUntitledDanielle KvatekPinhole photograph

On the Back CoverUntitledBrian HardiePhotograph

In This Issue4 – The Eight-Stroke Goat, Brandyn Johnson

5 – Life, Michael Prihoda

6 – socially awkward, Linda M. Crate

Michael Prihoda - pg. 5

table of contents.

Adam Unger - pg. 17

8 – Standing by the ancient foundations of a vast house, Jonathan Beale

9 – Untitled, Brian Hardie

10 – Those Sixties, BZ Niditch

11 – Good Boy Charlie, Stephanie Jones

18 – Waiting Game, Tempest Brew

20 – Cra-Z Girl, JD DeHart

22-23 – The Mute Mariachi Novocaine Mime Troupe, Peter Marra

24 – For Better and For Worse, Jack Phillips Lowe

25 – Taconic Hills, David Sermersheim

26 - Donors and Index

28-29 - February Calendar Shot

Stephanie Jones - pg. 11

12-13 – The Teratoid, Dr. Mel Waldman

14-15 – Forging, Adreyo Sen

16 – Ivory Towers and Alleyways, Zak Patrick

17 – Judges S. Dogson, Adam Unger

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brandyn johnson.

The Eight-Stroke GoatBy: Brandyn Johnson

Before portraiting the emperor’s favorite goat the painter asked to borrow the creature to study its ways. Every day began & ended with goat. He took it on walks through the countryside, feeding it oats, smelling residue in his palm before tasting it. He watched the goat’s white back rise & fall as it slept next to him on a patch of dirt, letting its breath tickle his nose. He tied it to a post & held burning torches above it to see the full circumference of its walnut eyes, the glossy black stripe of its pupil. Out of firewood & snowed-in, he cradled the goat, face buried in its long fur chanting, the smell of the divine. With his fingernails he scraped the dirt from the ridges in its horns, scrubbing them smooth with a wet silk scarf. He carried it on his shoulders up the hill to the well, sharing drinks from the carnation engraved bucket. He let the goat chew on his brush handles & chopsticks, his sandals & shirtsleeves. They bathed together in a creek, hiding under a bridge when lightning jigsawed the clouds. After two years, the emperor visited to claim his goat & his painting. The painter shrugged, I have not started the portrait but I will now. He placed a fresh canvas on his table & smelled his fingertips before dipping a brush into black ink. After eight careful strokes, he bowed to the emperor & left the room. The emperor hurried to the table to witness more goat than he’d ever understood & collapsed.

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michael prihoda.

LifeMichael PrihodaTypewriter art on paper

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linda m. crate.

socially awkward By: Linda M. Crate

i wish i had never gone to the partyjust took a swing at all myinsecuritiesreminded me that i was alone in a crowded room,and i wanted nothing more than to melt into theflooror to dance with meteors in an angry skytango with an ocean during a hurricanemy emotions surged like high tide;wanted to take a swingat everyonewith my sword sharpened tongue—reminded myself it wasn’t their fault i feltlike this,but i have never fit inmy guidance counselor told me all i hadto do was conform and i wouldn’t bebullied;i hated her—because how to you fit in when you were bornto stand out?i have always been different,and it used to hurt when they told me i wasweird or eccentric or strange or crazy;but i’ve come to accepti’m an outsiderdoesn’t make me any less socially awkwardor make me like parties—just blare some musicbecause that’s what makes me lose my inhibitionsi’ll get lost in the bones of a song,and you’ll pretend to care and my brokensmile won’t seem so out of place.

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jonathan beale.

Standing by the ancient foundations of a vast houseBy: Jonathan Beale

The idea was as infinite as the universe – as was understood.That we understood – Ovid’s voice still remaining as the painted walls.They stood, worked, and lived by stone and sweat to grow upward.The day was - as they are now - full of failure, anxiety, and trepidation.The men’s muscle eager-to-please – make homes; make safe haven –For deities of flesh or deities of the mind – that are tangible:As they watch them with sharpened eyes; drawing fault – to break their psyche.For the next - new beginning ‘as all beginnings are:’

Now, leafy parkland, where the dogs regularly do their doglike business;Unaware of their ancestors, and unaware of the need to know.And the children too, evolve into the muscled ‘them’ to break into the unvisited days.Evolving a new past.

Smoke and dust remain.The ruins grow to the surface –For breath. For light. For reason.What once was out - has seeped through to the inner sanctum –And, the outer flesh to has grown among the weeds & bracken –Now drowning

Life, osmosising its way through - as the sword cuts through the long grass,the long vowels lost in the wallpaper and the shouts of laughter -swallowed up in the dried plaster before it fell,the foundations remain - marking the statement –of the once lived in…Simply marking the air lived and lost but somewhere in the cosmosAnd life goes on – until Yesterday.

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brian hardie.

UntitledBrian HardiePhotography

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bz niditch.

Those SixtiesBy: BZ Niditch

When Warholopened his Factoryeveryone wantedhis fifteen minutesto get known,but others realizeddreams would be uprootedas entangled graffition city wallsstars in films would fall outbend and fade by morningand Andy himself in a self-portrait would bea manifesto’s assassin’s targetwithin publicity’s rangeof a once familiar face.

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stephanie jones.

Good Boy CharlieStephanie JonesPainting

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dr. mel waldman.

The TeratoidBy: Dr. Mel Waldman

After midnight,the teratoid opens the flowing curtain&inhales the soothing stars& the vastness of the night.

He prepares to leave his tiny room, below the house and garden, a cave for cripples.

Inside his subterranean prison,the mutant gazes into the gnarledmirror&slowly, meticulously covers his facewiththe fleshy human mask.

The light is his darkness, the darkness,his light,&now, when most sleep,it is time to be in the world,before the daylight returns.

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dr. mel waldman (con’t).

The pariah wanders into the vortex of thenight & vanishes inside the invisible whirlpool.

Yet he comes to me in my sleep,&whispers, “My brother, do you love me?”At dawn,I rise with a gold sun, put on my daily mask,&rush into the light.

Perhaps tonight, after dark, I will enter thevortex of the night&search for the teratoid, a familiar alienI no longer fear,for I am a stranger too, in this unfathomablecountry of Existence, where each creature of the light&darkness must wear a mask to becomehuman.

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adreyo sen.

Forging By: Adreyo Sen

I had gone to my cousin’s for lunch. At one point, she prodded her son to ask me about the SATs. She wanted him to go abroad, even though he clearly had strong reservations.

She asked me “his” questions and scowled darkly at his lack of interest. And then she asked him to enumerate the people from his school who’d gone abroad for higher studies.

I watched his nervousness as she hemmed him in.

My cousin and my mother had eerily similar parenting styles. Or rather, both mistook coercion for parenting. Both failed to realize that their moods and aggression had an almost physical effect upon their quiet and somewhat withdrawn sons, sons who’d come to see spontaneity in their own nature as somewhat criminal.

My mother and my cousin had grown up excessively attached to their fathers, while nursing hostility towards their mothers. In the case of my cousin, that hostility was palpable even today. I’d seen my mother being almost violently derisive towards my grandmother on more than one occasion.

They’d gone on to produce very similar sons: meek, self-effacing and near-invisible, men who tried to leave as little of a footfall as possible, who tried to make the minimum noise when placing a cup on the table.

Their idea of a good son was a good domestic servant. Indeed, my mother would mistakenly call me by the name of whichever servant was in her good book.

First, we’d been criticized for excessive emotionality. Hit for any deviation from our parent’s narrow definition of the norm, we’d learnt to live with high levels of anxiety. Our mothers were our jail wardens, not the repositories of confidences. We learnt to keep our thoughts to ourselves.

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adreyo sen (con’t).

Like prisoners, we let go of agency. We wore what we were told to wear; parroted nice little compliments to neighbors. If we protested even mildly, we were seen as ungrateful, quarrelsome and criminal.

Of course, most children would have protested. Of course, most children would have rebelled and by doing so, forged successful adult identities (while retaining the traditional ambivalence towards the parent they came into conflict with.)

But both my nephew and I were children of a particular type, children who took their mothers’ (harsh) words at face value and reacted excessively to their meaning. In our case, our mothers’ parenting was disastrous.

My nephew’s younger brother still cries often, roused to tears by his mother’s harsh words. He will grow up to be closed, like his brother.

My mother and my cousin are not related. Their similarity, so marked, is the result of the conjunction of the parents they had and the manner in which they engaged with those parents. The same is true for my nephew and I: already built a particular way, already (even when tabula rasa) a strange codex of genes and personality traits, we are, and will always be in the process of becoming, the product of domineering, over-involved mothers and largely absent fathers (in his case, adoptive, not biological) who are also similar lazily genteel connoisseurs of books and ideas.

Our children will also be very similar (perhaps even nearer congruence than we are).

Ad infinitum.

Now, isn’t that a frightening thought?

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zak patrick.

Ivory Towers and AlleywaysBy: Zak Patrick

Emaciated children gather down the road kicking flat footballs and riding rusty bikes past abandoned carsYou wouldn’t like it ‘round ‘ere.

Junkies smoke pipes and share needles down subfuscous alleyways where the cat’s eyes blink like stars

You wouldn’t like it ‘round ‘ere.The pavements are cracked and the streetlights only work as much as

the people.The language is tedious, repetitive and in need of a pabulum.

You wouldn’t like it ‘round ‘ere.You just stay there

Sitting comfortably in your ivory tower high above usWell, when you fall, you will fall far and hard.

It’s a long way to the bottom from all the way up there squire!

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adam unger.

Judges S. DogsonAdam UngerPainting

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tempest brew.

Waiting GameBy: Tempest Brew

they played the waiting gamefor the sound of little feetuntil they could wait no longer

until their house and boneswere dust while the druggiesand whores around them gavebirth after birth, strung-out kidswandering the road at nightmessed-up kids without hope

they sat in their checkered pastelworld watching the rooms staycold and empty.

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www. ta lbot-heind l . com

500greatestalbumsever.tumblr.com

“Dancing Girls in Colourful Rays” Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

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jd dehart.

Cra-Z GirlBy: JD DeHartjasondehartjustliving.blogspot.com

She always signed her namejust that way when she was notteaching youngsters how to shoplift.Or reading strange books.When they said stay inside she suddenly had the urge to leave,when they said go play, she remaineda stone.Always played her own instrument,never kissed much.Her wheels spun on a spiny roadlate at night, flicking the wheelhere and there,casting shadows of someone closewho perished, and I could only thinkof young dying. Night accidents.She yearned for new music no oneelse had heard, or the rare cult moviemost had not seen.In this digital age, I am sure she isout there (somewhere) but whyfind anyone now.

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peter marra.

The Mute Mariachi Novocaine Mime TroupeBy: Peter Marra

they began broadcasting illegal musicin all her dominant glorythe “urban” form of allografts quick and painful soothed by her euphoric and addictive qualitiesforcing the shortening of tunessuch as serenades, and performances, that go beyond what was anticipated

little more than an isolationlicked her to stop the swelling and allergic reactionunified the nervous system

Fuck this invasion.

delivering blood to capillaries swelling burstingintroducing the trumpet and the tubaremoved their voice boxesthe scars are evidence ofsomething altogether bigger and more serioustongueless instruments sing as the mute mariachi mime troupe witnesses a slaughter that came from her body and was released during the forced shortening of tunes and extended exploits in anesthetics

an invasion of fucking a swirl of skin

(the room was repeated.

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peter marra (con’t).

inside the rain would never stop. it wasn’t really rain, but more of a light drizzle that would change to mist without warning,

then change back to rain, then to drizzle. the water could be heard cascading down the gutter pipes. the bloodstain in the window hung gently allowing 3 flies to walk through it.they eventually got stuck and couldn’t move at all. they struggled briefly then froze.

an odor of leather permeated the room. people stared at each other, their feet trapped in a bloodstain. eventually they stopped and just talked at the walls. eventually they stopped talking altogether.

the room was repeated.)

delivering blood to capillaries swelling burstingintroducing the trumpet and the tubathat transformed her into a gorgeous hysteric that repeatedly preached about the benefits of infection

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jack phillips lowe.

For Better and For WorseBy: Jack Phillips Lowe

Matt’s admission pierced Shannon’s heartlike a blade forged from ice.The rest of her body burned as a million nervesfired at once, screaming at Shannon to get upand run out the door, without looking back.

“Silent was the last thing I thought you’d be,”chuckled Matt, nervously, from his end of the couch.

“I thought,” Shannon said coolly, folding her arms,“that you were going to pop the Question.”

Matt used his sleeve to wipe sweat from his upper lip.“And, and I wanted to. I will, when the time’s right.”He reached over and touched Shannon’s shoulder.“I just wanted to come clean first.We’ve always been straight with each other.”He coughed as he said that last line.

“How did you get into this—profession?” asked Shannon.

Matt scratched the stubble on his chin.“The first time was a favor for an old friend.I guess word got around becausesoon, people started approaching me.I surprised myself by being good at it.”

Shannon’s eyes narrowed as she twirleda lock of her long dark hair around her forefinger.“So. . .what kinds of people do you kill?”

“Drug dealers, gang-bangers, rapists and perverts,”said Matt, using his forefinger to jot an imaginary liston the palm of his other hand. “Just them. No others.”

Shannon’s brows lifted ever so slightly.“And you’re well-paid for this work?”

“Yes. The victims’ families see to that,” Matt answered.“Between five and six figures per job. Strictly cash business.”

Shannon fell quiet again for several long moments.Gradually, the corners of her mouth turned up into a modest smile.“Okay,” she whispered, taking Matt’s hand. “Okay.”

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Taconic HillsBy: David Sermersheim

a fleeting shadowbrushes a craggy hillsideas a shroudclearing a wayin advance ofits wake onan unimpeded passagethrough tangled bramblessilent as amirage whose presencemight be imagined

a soul could die here living on dry bonesand empty thoughtsriding on draftsprobing Oblong Valley draws

david sermersheim.

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we love our donors!We love our donors, and to prove it, we’re going to let you know who they are. Without their generosity, the Bitchin’ Kitsch would probably not make it through the year. If you would like to become a donor and see your name here, email chris@talbot-heindl.com and make your pledge.

acquaintences of the bitchin’ kitsch ($1-10) - Colin Bares, Casey Bernardo, Teri Edlebeck, Stephanie Jones, Eric Krszjzaniek, Dana Lawson, Jason Loeffler, Justin Olszewski

friends of the bitchin’ kitsch ($11-50) - Charles Richard, Kenneth Spalding, Tallulah West

lovers of the bitchin’ kitsch ($51-100) - Scott Cook, Keith Talbot

partners of the bitchin’ kitsch ($101-1,000) - Felix Gardner, Jan Haskell

parents of the bitchin’ kitsch ($1,001-10,000) - none yet, become a parent!

demi-gods of the bitchin’ kitsch ($10,001 & up) - The Talbot-Heindl’s

artistsBeale, Jonathan 8Crate, Linda M. 6DeHart, JD 20Hardie, Brian 9, 30Johnson, Brandyn 4

donors, index.

Jones, Stephanie 11Kvatek, Danielle coverLowe, Jack Phillips 24Marra, Peter 22-23Niditch, BZ 10Patrick, Zak 16

Prihoda, Michael 5Sen, Adreyo 14-15Sermersheim, David 25Tempest Brew 18Unger, Adam 17Waldman, Dr. Mel 12-13

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