Mollyhouse: Issue Three

By Raymond Luczak

This third issue of Mollyhouse features artwork by Aleatha Lindsay as well as poetry and prose by Ken Anderson | Mark Bromberg | Brad Buchanan | Jackie Chou | David Cummer | Beau Denton | Francis Goodman | Cait Gordon | Randall Ivey | J. Ivanel Johnson | Lilah Katcher | Travis Chi Wing Lau | Van Ethan Levy | Stephen Lightbown | Cali Linfor | A’Ja Lyons | Mary McGinnis | Daniel Edward Moore | Maurice Moore | Cath Nichols | Naomi Ortiz | Felice Picano | Steven Riel | Gregg Shapiro | Karl Sherlock | Nicole Taylor | Antonio Vallone | Patricia Walsh | Mark Ward | Jamieson Wolf | Kathi Wolfe | Dan Yorty. This issue is edited by Raymond Luczak.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Handtype Press
• Release date: Jul 17, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005070441

Raymond Luczak

Raymond Luczak is the author and editor of twenty books. Titles include The Kinda Fella I Am: Stories and QDA: A Queer Disability Anthology. His Deaf gay novel Men with Their Hands won first place in the Project: QueerLit Contest 2006. His work has been nominated nine times for the Pushcart Prize. He lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He can be found online at raymondluczak.com.

Book preview

DAVID CUMMER

TO ALL THE BEAUTIFUL CARELESS IRREVERENT BEAUTIES OF THIS WORLD

To cut a lemon into

sl ic es,

to put ice tea into glasses,

it took her by surprise.

***

MARK BROMBERG

BUDDHA SAYS

Open your palm I want to give you a stone.

The stone may be wisdom

or it may not, it depends

on what you do with it.

some stone waits to be sand

waits to be mirror

waits to be telescope glass

waits to be mud

what is below the mud?

dirt

dust

gravel

but the stone waits to be stone again

try and spend a lifetime asking

the right question

instead of seeking the wrong answer

try to ask the stone

why it wants to be stone

and you will have your answer

***

LILAH KATCHER

STONES

When we were first learning each other, we discovered

we each had a stone for rubbing away worries.

That first weekend you visited, we compared stones.

Dark gray, oval and smooth, they could have come

from the same riverbed. We traded them, and held

the unfamiliar stones, each feeling traces of the other’s touch.

Later, we sat on my bed and talked for hours,

and our stones remained together on the nightstand.

***

ACTAEON

Today, I offended the wrong goddess,

and when she flung her cursed water

my senses sharpened at the first drop:

I heard the water splash

against my chest and trickle down,

felt an alien pressure at my temples

and the wet rip

as bone broke through,

smelled the succulent leaves

and the blood running

down my face,

tasted its metal,

heard you, my loyal ones,

snarl and bark, and felt

teeth pierce the muscle of my calf.

As I fell into your writhing mass,

I saw for one second a familiar brown eye.

I felt the brush of fur against my palm.

***

DOCUMENT

By the bathroom sink is a Petoskey stone.

Formed from life in Devonian seas,

when forests were young. This stone holds a secret

document of life and time long past. The stone’s code

can be broken by the element it came from.

I hold the stone under running water

so its surface comes alive:

dark hexagons, coral skeletons.

***

TRAVIS CHI WING LAU

TO WHAT DO I OWE THIS PLEASURE

from the clumsy mingling of bodies

neither of us truly owns—here

are we defrocked to our shabby relations,

more borrowed than we like to admit

because debt is shared tissue—

proof of barest living in worlds

teeming with ceaseless owing.

a pair of dirtied hands

wrapped about another:

this work of shared holding even

as we worship the bleaching of

porcelain made for sullying. but what

could erupt from this dirty state

that has accompanied us long enough

to forget cleanness itself was traded for

in good faith in good exchange?

we lay remembering filthily

owing,

owing,

owing.

***

CALI LINFOR

MARRIAGE BED

I had to dismantle the bed the week after your funeral.

The mattress shaped by the years of our bodies

side by side, the dip in the middle, collapsing springs,

a stain from my period, another from a fever sweat,

and that one maybe from sex or a spilled drink.

We had planned to replace it soon anyway.

You constantly stubbed your toe on the footboard.

The wood of the headboard scratched and nicked

by the cats or me or both. I am not careful.

The bed was stupidly high. My feet dangled.

Our dog went suddenly lame, my love.

So, I needed to be on the ground like your futon

after we broke the frame in your place on Locust St.

The snapping of the pine louder than our laughter

when you tossed me in the air and followed me down.

The dog needed to spend months in a crate

recovering from spinal surgery. No one’s fault.

A genetic abnormality. I needed to be close.

He isn’t used to sleeping alone either.

I am now a disabled person with a disabled dog.

The emergency vet told me taking care of him

would likely be too much for me. For anyone.

Too costly. This dog who saved your life

making you get up every day and walk just a little.

He runs so fast in his cart I can’t catch him.

Strangers admire his spirit. His pluck. Ask for pictures.

Say every fucking thing they want. He doesn’t even care.

We should all be like him. Doesn’t want to just die.

Keeps going. So cute! He is cute. Always has been.

You should see the dog chase a rabbit careening on one wheel.

At the hardware store, the clerk asked to see my hands.

I thought I might somehow have paint on my palms

so I raised them up for her to examine and inspect

forgetting there is anything unusual about me.

How do I work all of me into an online dating profile?

My new bed is hilariously femme. Turquoise. Tufted.

New mattress. Purple sheets. Low slung for the dog.

Piled with my favorite soft blankets and bright comforters.

The ones you gave me as anniversary gifts.

I am trying, my love, to integrate past and present.

We made our baby in that old cherry bed. You sat impatiently on the end

while I peed on a stick with the bathroom door wide open. A habit

that irritated you every other time. We waited, flopped back, together,

thigh to thigh, for that precious double line to appear.

I sold the frame to a mom and her teenage girl for a 150 dollars.

I think you would like this new bed. It’s pretty and sturdy just like me

you’d say. Whimsical and hopeful. Cozy and warm. Everything good really.

I read there. Write there. Watch movies and eat ice cream with our child

who is becoming a man. Listen to music. I rest. I cry.

The dog will always be paralyzed and you will always be gone.

It took your son and I 10 hours to build the damn thing. I swore a lot like I do.

Him too. He’s 14 now and allowed. You know how much I despise an Allen wrench.

We impressed each other, raged at each other, were silly with each other. Worked

well past midnight. The dog dancing at our feet. None of us ever giving up.

This bed is a good memory too.

***

RANDALL IVEY

EPILOGUE FOR ALL POEMS

I.

I see a mountain you cannot see.

I want to go there and be lost.

I feel a cold rain you cannot feel.

I want to bathe in it ‘til it grows warm.

I hear a song you cannot hear.

I want to gorge on it and choke to life.

I smell a flower burning at graveside.

I want to follow its roots to hell.

I taste the last of the winter