Mollyhouse: Issue One

By Raymond Luczak

This inaugural issue of Mollyhouse features artwork by Yusuf Yahya as well as poetry and prose by M.J. (Michael Joseph) Arcangelini | Stuart Barnes | Dustin Brookshire | Don Cellini | Steven Cordova | Alfred Corn | Theodore Cornwell | Brenton Cross | Joseph L. Cumer | David Cummer | Denise Duchamel | Arthur Durkee | Cher Finver | Stephanie Heit | Scott Hightower | Walter Holland | George K. Ilsley | Mike James | Jee Leong Koh | Petra Kuppers | Denise Leto | Sean J. Mahoney | Ron Mohring | Chael Needle | Eric Thomas Norris | William Reichard | Gregg Shapiro | Allen Smith | Victor Barnuevo Velasco | Philip Dean Walker | Mark Ward | Julene Tripp Weaver | Diane R. Wiener | Scott Wiggerman | Kathi Wolfe. The issue is edited by Raymond Luczak.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Handtype Press
• Release date: Jun 18, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463007648

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.

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CONTENTS

Editor’s Note

Brenton Cross

Denise Leto

Allen Smith

Stephanie Heit

Mark Ward

Chael Needle

Scott Wiggerman

Kathi Wolfe

Eric Thomas Norris

William Reichard

Julene Tripp Weaver

Stuart Barnes

Theodore Cornwell

M.J. Arcangelini

Walter Holland

Philip Dean Walker

Arthur Durkee

Gregg Shapiro

Denise Duhamel

Joseph L. Cumer

Ron Mohring

Petra Kuppers

David Cummer

Cher Finver

Mike James

Jee Leong Koh

Steve Cordova

Scott Hightower

Alfred Corn

Don Cellini

Sean J. Mahoney

Victor Barnuevo Velasco

Dustin Brookshire

Diane R. Wiener

George K. Ilsley

Contributor Bios

***

RAYMOND LUCZAK

EDITOR’S NOTE

The Internet is a weird beast. It can be filled with monstrous people trying to sway voters, or it can offer links to intriguing articles, like this one about mollyhouses. As something of a history buff, I was utterly fascinated by this slice of gay history.

I kept wondering what it was really like back then to deal with such an oppressive society. Then I had a startling realization. Even though things have vastly improved for LGBTQ people and other marginalized communities since then, those in power who oppressed the mollies back then are still the masters of oppression today: the white hearing able-bodied heterosexual cisgender man.

Everyone in this issue is anyone but him.

After having had such a wonderful time editing the queer fiction journals Jonathan and Callisto (thank you, Bryan!), I sorely missed the excitement of reading amazing unpublished pieces and being the first to bring them out to the world. It’s my hope that you’ll discover the same thrill of discovery I had when reading these wonderful writers for this issue. Stay safe and healthy, my friends, and enjoy.

***

BRENTON CROSS

TRAPPED IN A FORM

It done now, it’s over the time it come.

Color should not determine my worth

Oh the burden, seeking, living for some

I am a man, black man, born from the earth.

I breathe the air of my stained loss today

Garvey, Marley, McKay, immortal words

Shaping the soul, stirring, wiping away

Empty solace, flying the earth like birds

Laying on the altar, a move, to learn

Mistrust, great rage, burning intent to hate

Sullen, broken, nothing to say to earn

Bruised and, blocked from entering the white gate.

Charred beyond recognition couched in fear

Ghoulish silhouette of shame no one cares.

***

DENISE LETO

MYTHICAL MAP OF A ROOM

How long have you lived inside this candle?

I have lived inside this candle since you left.

It was cruel light in her mouth when they kissed.

Touch can be seen or unseen.

I will make you a desktop that looks like the night sky.

Your room will be a greenhouse.

I will keep you constantly under mist.

Feed your hands with my hands.

I will make things for you.

The skin just above your hips.

In your green eyes gathering.

Here are the oil paintings I made for you.

Here is the chair I carved.

And the opera I wrote.

I sewed a blanket for you.

I designed these shoes for you. Soft. Leather. Aubergine.

Black stitching on the tongue. Put them on.

I painted a room-size ocean for you.

I held you when you jumped into the bucket of snails.

I drew a turquoise cave. Your initials in the overlay.

You will never be cold.

I will make things for you.

I will make things for you.

I made this for you.

***

ELSEWHERE: A PLACE

The time her eyes looked like doorknobs

and once like sand crabs.

Count the poison dandelions,

pretend they are locks of hair.

Take your shoes off, your blouse, your cantilever.

Play the broken part: apart.

Needles, bottles, brother.

Future, tender, liar.

Hello bone urethra.

Hello stellar coroner.

Hello chipped nail polish.

If and if and then.

***

THE ARCHAIC FRAME OF BODY

Bone as an exhalation of form

glass stained by glass

Time as a mirror of negation

no help in the heap of surrender

Home as a parlor of fish

the yard in your world in duress

Words are unfavorable to infinity

we could not have known what leaving would mean.

***

ALLEN SMITH

FLY

Fly that I liberated from my house,

that would not believe I approached

with good intent,

that left only when I banged on the window

opposite the balcony’s open sliding glass door,

that had somehow gotten in

in the first place,

had entrapped itself,

you have not seen all the states

my house has been in,

myself swatted from behind,

the hitter’s buzzes

staggering him into the wall

as you had hit yourself against closed windows,

as though for escape,

like when he and I spread our legs

like wings,

our pulses flying,

me no longer hiding

my transparent parts,

windows that feet once met,

broken as your perfect legs

once house-broken,

then off somewhere,

who knows where,

through the air.

***

HE LIKED HIS MAN IN A GREEN DRESS

His words were the cure,

though that sounds absurd.

They were the cure.

They were.

He borrowed words

from Chaucer,

Fyodor,

and other authors.

I came to him

with a heart

shaped all irregular

from hurt.

My father hated me

for being other,

tried to smother

out her.

I found a green dress.

It was to twirl in.

You should buy it, mother,

I said, knowing I would try it on,

like him, forever.

***

STEPHANIE HEIT

NET CASE

I’m an external lung, silver shine & space bar clean in its peck peck. I’m a chicken cooped to the ethers. An astronaut sitting in this ergonomic chair star gazing into some triple w address. Zoom takes my breath, saves it in the chat. The world is at my fingertips in the 13" screen, but I lose my mind. Use every search engine to locate it. I didn’t back up my memory. Mapquest offers no directions when I type, I’m lost! I shutdown & cry electric tears. Wake to a full inbox. Cursorily scroll down. I hear it’s a sunny day from my duly reporting widget. Facebook generates an algorithm to share: the best day of my life.

***

GEOSYNCHRONOUS ORBITS (GSO)

early November light

bench by the river

I forget we are spinning

weight settles at my center

head tossed into breeze

dried leaf xylophone

air warmer than usual

earth tilts away from sun

ushers in winter

the river flows faster

pouring out of a pitcher

what if my brain rotates

its own planet

loose in skull & cerebral juice

left hemisphere changes to right

reptilian limbic system

gets a front row seat

I am slither & hunt

attuned senses primed

it would go clockwise

I’m in the Northern Hemisphere

brains in the Southern Hemisphere

would spin the other direction

of course

today I don’t worry

that the ground will move

away from my feet

or gravity will hang on my shoulders

like a bright orange life

jacket out of lead

***

MARK WARD

HIBERNATING

The light is too thin in winter

leaving the dark corners their secrets.

I still my body and breathe myself cold.

Air always on the edge of sleet.

I’m inhaling small crystals of ice,

grazing my throat for the sake of freshness.

Each day makes its quiet blinding.

The exhausted light whines through the panes.

I wrench the fat from myself and I eat

the memories we made. I wait

for summer’s involuntary heat

to unearth me, one brushstroke at a time.

***

CRITICISM

In my copy of Strong Measures,

a collection of formal poems,

its last owner took great pleasure

in annotating the syndrome

where the rhymes betray their ending,

becoming slant, beholden, gaunt.

He read aloud, nothing landing,

underlining, a red-penned rant.

An elective he was made take,

these poems seem to fall apart.

Not what his mother liked to read

before the cancer had taken

hold. Her endless and then abrupt

end. Words uprooted like a weed.

***

SUPPLICANT

Mafdet stalks the chamber. The snake she preys

upon escapes. She returns to her praise,

curled at his feet, a sentry. She’s a god

but thinks there’s something in this form of praise-

giving oneself to an invocation.

She imitates the way the humans pray,

their fingers interlaced, eyes closed in awe.

Behind this lid bejewelled in gold and prase,

a mortal body decays. The pharaoh

tempered her, perceiving the need to praise

those who worshipped him. And her. He would

explain their confusing requests in prayers—

Please make me rich. Please let her love me back.

Such petty concerns displayed by the prey,

her playthings. He stopped that too, amusing

her himself. Even gods can love, can praise,

but a mortal body decays. The gods

have been too long removed from direct praise.

Another snake slithers in. She lets it,

leaves him in search of worship to appraise.

***

CHAEL NEEDLE

ROCKS FOR JOCKS

Charlie climbed to the top of the Taj Mahal. He could not climb any higher. It was not an Eiffel Tower day.

He paused the stair-climbing machine, one of three at the campus gym, and backed down the steps, his sweaty hands slipping on the glossy plastic-made-to-look-like-metal railings.

Heel on the floor and toe on the base of the machine, he pressed each foot, one at a time, against the ungiving surface to stretch his shins, an old habit from his