Aberration Labyrinth : July, 2012 : Issue #001


A note from The Editors:

Welcome minions and potential minions of Aberration Labyrinth. Please read and enjoy our first issue. We had a great deal of work to sort through, and we feel this first issue is a great representation of what's to come.

Write On!


How to open a hot dog stand
Mark Brunetti

You may open up a hot dog business
and your passion may be hot dogs
and you may love the hot dogs
that you make and perhaps you
like hot dogs with whipped cream
or maple syrup and that's fine
you can have those hot dogs
readily available when someone
wants to try something new
but have your sauerkraut
and baked beans and ketchup
and mustard and let customers
relish in the type of hot dogs
they know and love. Then
when they are tired of their
usual hot dogs you give them
a hot dog or two for free
with peanut butter and let
them discover your creation
on their own. They'll love
that it's something new
after all the comforts
of the old and your hot dog
stand will profit and one day
you may own a truck shaped
like a hot dog. That's how
you start a hot dog business.


Rasputin Bio
     Paul Hostovsky

Much has been written
about his improbable
rise

to the place between the Czarina’s
ear and hemophiliac
son,

and thence the demise of the whole
Russian Empire.
And yet

this new biography I can’t put down
focuses on the intertwining
twist

of his spirituality and sexuality, and hence
is getting me all excited
about history.

It argues this: that one hard fact among
all the apocryphal stories
stands out

alone and unassailed—namely
the man had an enormous penis
whence

all his confidence and rise to power
and insatiable sexual appetite,
which he tried

to inhibit and failed brilliantly
throughout his long unlikely career,
sprung.

I picture him surrounded by noblewomen
attending one of his spiritual salons
in St. Petersburg,

conspicuously erect beneath his Siberian
tunic, speaking piously and passionately
about the war

between the spirit and the flesh, his famous
ravening eyes grazing the tent
in his lap

as it strained beneath the wind of his gesticulations.
He seduced them with the purest
ambivalence:

“Help me, sisters. Relieve me of this great
fleshly burden I carry before your
heavenly eyes…”

And because they desired to help the holy man,
and because they desired,
they obliged

and he got laid
more than any soul in Russian history.
I always like

to take something away from a good biography
when I turn back from it
to what is my own.

Gleason, 2010
Rainbow Fate
     Miya Kressin

Rainbow orbs weighting my palm,
Dancing across the table as they tumble through fate.
Numbers spin and colors shine,
Sparkling in the game master’s eyes.

Stories spun as numbers decide,
Voices twist the tale.
Misfortune to those who touch another’s dice,
Givers of weal and woe.


The Bear
      Kyle Brosnihan

(Ben Mohr, 2012)
At the circus I saw a bear
It walked and sat and danced like a man
Trapeze swinging, juggling,
and one-arm hand stands

When the bear roared
The crowd jested, laughed, and cheered
At the entertainment that was once
something inherently feared

The bear drew a painting
Of a beast tearing a man apart
It was sold in a lottery
as ad hoc “Art”

Oh, what a marvelous piece
Beauty and beast so strangely inverted
The comical sight
Of fear perverted

Even more, after the show
My money was proved well spent
I saw the bear emerge
from inside the tent

The bear had no chain
Paced alone into the woodsy dark-green
Wearing no collar,
having forever been free

The bear held its head
Pulled off the mask of grizzly skin
Preforming yet another trick:
revealing a man within.


Will someone please shut up that screeching kid, please?
Eddie Raebel

Santa Claus is not real.
There's no bunny with a basket.
No fairy with a pouch full of quarters and teeth.
And the only things going bump in the dark
are your parents fucking in the next room. 

NIMH ONLINE STORE
Jeffrey Park

How did we
survive without
the internet?
So easy now to do
your shopping,
just click through
the catalogue,
click the items into
your basket:
panic disorder,
high-functioning autism,
ADHD, PTSD, OCD –
Bi-polar? Why not.
Online special
on eating disorders
this week, don’t forget to
copy and paste
the redemption code.
My siblings
sometimes rail
about my
shopping habits.
“You don’t need
all that stuff.”
As if that
had anything to do
with the price
of magic beans.



Sense of slip

       Christine Kiefer

In eighth grade, after I was moved to the front,

but before we watched the shuffle separate in two,

there were lessons on New Madrid.

I’d imagine standing in my plaid uniform only to

find myself doing an Armageddon-type of split

looking down at flames and pitchfork yielding monsters

confirming the lesson of 5th hour guilt 101.




One funny thing about classroom lessons is this:

I have never since heard such talk of earthquakes.




And when I think of young fright I realize this:

Unlike my children, I never knew the word terrorist

Unlike my father, I never feared the communists.




Things I no longer believe include:

Mine will be a death by earthquake.

There is a god who punishes.




I do not jolt upright at two a.m. thinking of the devil peering

into my open and bare private parts as I straddle a moving fault line,

girls do not do acrobats with the ground moving beneath them.

I will never look down at my hell-fate shouting

I should have known better and left Missouri!

I am not brave for staying here and this is not a danger zone.

There are much graver faults than those that lie

beneath my home state crust and my sense of steady and balance

has not been intact since long before 1986.

Overpopulated, For A Time
Gleason, 2010 
Jessica Gleason

This place is insidious,
A trap, for the mindless--
the tourists, a different kind
of scum.

Bistro tables cluttering
sidewalks much smaller
than in a big city
where this sort of thing
is popular.

So, the already crowded
sidewalks have sweaty
civilians rubbing their
moist bodies against one—
another in an awkward
cramped shuffle.


Not An Illusion Any More
Ryan Keller

I imagine who you really are,
not who you pretend to be.
Not an illusion any more,
I cry tears of sadness
that gather into pools of happiness.

LIU GUANGZU HURRIES HOME
Jeffrey Park

Liu Guangzu hurries home, handlebar in
one hand, the other clutching a box
of takeaway Canadian food – hot, delicately

spiced and tasting like nothing so much as
the pristine air of the Yukon, with hints
of caribou breath, pine and Aurora Borealis.

As always, Liu’s family will linger over the
aroma of the great white north, but for sure
they’ll be hungry again in an hour or so.
_________________________________________________________________________
©2012 This work is the property of the individual authors within.



   

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