the aois21 annual 2016

the aois21 annual 2016

third issue

ISSN 2374-7048 (print)

ISSN 2374-7056 (online)

$6 digital download

The aois21 annual is published annually by aois21 publishing, PO Box 129, Mount Vernon, VA 22121. Printed by Printing Images of Rockville, MD. Send submissions online only through www.aois21.com/annual

© 2016, aois21 publishing, LLC. All right reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, either in part or in whole, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written approval of aois21 publishing, LLC.

Subscription price (print):

$5/year

For subscriptions, contact [email protected].

If you are a retailer and would like to order the aois21 annual, call (571) 206-8021 or e-mail [email protected].

On the cover: An Emerald Emerges from the Rough by Adam Wallick

submissions

Each August 1st we issue our call for submissions to the aois21 annual. The submission period will only be open through the end of August, but may be extended. Preference is given to aois21 creatives, and they will be given prime placement and promotion. Staff are welcome to submit works for inclusion. Acceptable works include fiction, non-fiction, essays, poetry, photography, short stories, excerpts from published materials, and other artwork. All submissions must not have been previously published (excerpts excepted), including on an online journal or blog.

Submissions can be sent in print or electronically. If electronically, they must be in Microsoft Word (doc, docx) or convertible (rtf, txt) format for written works. Photography or art should be in .tiff or .jpg format.

There is no submission fee at this time, but one may be charged in the future.

Payment for your submission will be a copy of the magazine, either print or electronic, and a share of the royalties.

Multiple submissions are welcome, but you may be asked to choose from among your submissions for final publication.

Copyright for any works published in the aois21 annual reverts to author upon publication.

By submitting your work, you grant permission for us to both include your work but also to list you as a contributor and advertise your inclusion.

All submissions must be predominantly in English.

Any work by other authors must be properly cited.

By sending us your work, you are stating that the work is your own and does not infringe on any copyright.

advertising

Advertisements are only accepted for the aois21 annual, which will be available in print and digital download. Sizes are limited to full page (7x10), half page (3.5x10 or 7x5), and quarter page (3.5x5), exact sizes based on projected page layout and are subject to change.

Prices are $250 for full page, $125 for half page, and $65 for quarter page ads.

Ads will appear in black and white in print and full color on the electronic version with live links available.

Image files should be minimum 300 dpi, flattened images, .jpg, .tiff, or .pdf files.

Payment is accepted by check, credit card, or PayPal.

the aois21 annual

something different

a note from the publisher

click to play

This device does not support the video at this location

the aois21 annual 2016

poetry

in the neighborhood boy at window               allen forrest

poetry

thunder

by bianca palmisano

I.

I saw the softest hearts of my generation carved into warriors, black gaping scarred,

burning their pasts in the brushes, starving for a flesh fight

coffee-fisted babies flying from hempskirts and village fires towards the coal-light of vengeance

who yucca-face and squalid nails bear down on ethereal poverty with smokestack judgment across the bara abandoning bloodlines,

who gnawed their knuckles raw, red-eyed alert and two pounds of nicotine, cane alcohol, and grit in rotting teeth,

who forgot algebra and graduated test tubes in the Western hemisphere like fourth-grade artifacts in the escaping twilight,

who bit into each hour with burnished Russian machetes, reciting Zulu war chants with hypnotic, heavy tongues,

who ate their own blackness and spit it out in Nimba County,

full of worms, and thorns, and abiding hate, blades and bullets and faultless steel

who marched bloodshot and heaving their chests thrown forward, glistening in retaliatory exertion

who sought redemption in the thrusting of scattered limbs

who took women and mothers and communists with hands wedged by scarlet, crusted burns and left them wailing solitary broken in blinding midnight,

pushed their seed past the gasps, teeth gnashing hound-like, faithless, eyes and cuming hard against the jawbones of former wives, neighbors, lovers' eyes blank and howling with indignity and false recognition,

heeled and ran in a cough of gunsmoke, turning up two years later in Abidjan, broken dirty and bearded, naked in the dying grass,

who journeyed to Monrovia, shot down Monrovia, killed and buried Monrovia in the clay streets with dirty shovels, with rusted shovels, who came back to Monrovia to claim their prizes, and who found Monrovia desolate and lonely without their war crimes,

who cried sticky, black tar tears full of invisible salt and cradled their machetes, whispering fear and frustrated and ugly into the grass they thought was listening,

who ate human testicles by morning and savored the pumping of puss and gore through broken hearts torn from still-mourning mud-blanket hulls by night,

who slunk away into their lack of manifesto, their lack of direction, lack of shoes and considered the politics of slaughter visa jugular or slow vie,

who held out their stained palms to receive the communion wine of familial purging, expectant of their screams washing sins into the Euphrates or Nile or Congo or mud puddle,

who were re-saved and re-salvaged and re-returned to their old empty yuccaplantanomaizeandnofishsincelastharvest lives by the savior Westernish with bigger machine guns and no knives,

and who dug new graves with shards of hospitable palm weave and charcoal kitchen spoons, demanding retribution for their incomparable night-soil madness,

with the last war pain stripped from their blood and the holy ghost of manslaughter finally receded and the last blade bitten down into the last sturdy hamhock wall and the last toe oozing resentment and iron-smelling sorrow, and the last pretense of condemnation spat into the churning pit of lost chaos home, and even that a fallacy—

a bit of eternal delusion—

ah, Joseph, while you are fetid retiring, I am also, and you are never prepared to relent,

you who, therefore, stirred the hurricane of distorted march-steps, mixed cyanide with ugali in our naïve digestive tracts,

who slept in perpetual revulsion-revolution, commanding the sawdust Trinity to bow and calculate your girth, caked in sweat and salty captainship repellant of birds and mosquitoes and fallible men,

the psychotic of malarial African certainty like a shaking traincar along Virunga and across the continent through the jungle of your own spiraling hate,

fixing the carbines of your majestical swallowing, digesting, HIV and syphilis, breathing every morning the stagnant, molting air; gathering the small and dividing their minds in infinitesimal, viral worlds,

until each man coughs out tetanus and sleeping sickness, ready to stride forward your intentions a thousand years.

poetry

intro - note to self

by michael b. judkins

intro - note to self

This device does not support the audio at this location

Click play to listen to this audio file

poetry

no monsters here

by keith f. shovlin

It's time to sleep, my darling child

To let your mind, in