“Demons” by Rosemary Griggs

“Developing the Dew Claw” by Rosemary Griggs

“Poppies” by Rosemary Griggs

“To the Werewolf on the 14 Bus” by Lindsey Wolkin

“History” by Susanna Kittredge

“Shopping Carts” by Sona Avakian

“Untitled” by Michelle Puckett

“Bare Hands” by Michelle Puckett

Visit the Audio Library to hear the readers’ live performances.

In honor of this January’s presidential inauguration, the second BANG OUT reading, on Saturday, January 17th at Amnesia in San Francisco, featured work by local writers inspired by the theme “Change.”

Matthew Zapruder is the author of American Linden (Tupelo Press, 2002), and The Pajamaist (Copper Canyon, 2006), winner of the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America. He is co-translator of Secret Weapon, the final collection by the late Romanian poet Eugen Jebeleanu (Coffee House Press, 2007). His collaborative book with painter Chris Uphues, For You in Full Bloom, will be published by Pilot Books in 2009 and his third book of poems, Come on All You Ghosts, is forthcoming from Copper Canyon in 2010.

Rosemary Griggs received her BA from University of Iowa and her MFA from San Francisco State. Her book Sky Girl was published in 2003 by Fence Books. She has recently completed a provocative, political new manuscript of poetry for which she is seeking publication.

Paul Dertien lives in San Francisco. He has studied and taught creative writing at San Francisco State University. He is currently working on a crime fiction novel. His work has been previously published in ZYZZYVA and Six Little Things.

Sona Avakian was recently awarded a grant from the San Francisco Arts Commission. Her stories have been published in Instant City, ZYZZYVA and other journals.

Lindsey Wolkin is a graduate from the MFA Fiction program at San Francisco State. She is the recipient of a 2009 San Francisco Individual Artist Commission Grant and is currently working on a novel.

Susanna Kittredge holds an MFA in Poetry from San Francisco State University. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in 14 Hills, Sidebrow, Parthenon West Review, Shampoo, 580 Split, and the anthology Bay Poetics (Faux Press, 2006).

Michelle Puckett’s poetry has appeared in the Naropa Summer Writing Program Journal, N.U.T.S., and she has participated in readings in both Boulder and Prague.

the shape of my head. Sinister thoughts
at the xerox machine. A chat with a retired
torturer. Now the sharp blade. Apparently
some solar wind pushed a few specklets of actually

not red but grey Mars dust through the seal
into the vacuum where the very tiny oiled hydraulics
of the light from the distant future collector seized.
What was it my brother said to me once? Like

a vampire bat on a unicorn Change rides
every moment. Houston is full of dead elephants
and empty labs experimenting on silence, open any mouth
and out blows some hope in a binary data stream.

Copyright © 2009, Matthew Zapruder.

I turned the corner and there they were, Tracy and her pretty white teeth and her friends, laughing at my inadequacy.  Her sister was laughing at me.  The one with the white eyebrows who works every angle to make sure she belongs was pointing and laughing at me.  She was pointing at my heart.

I wanted to take a rock and smash it against Tracy’s teeth and make her bleed.  And bang her head on the ground and punch her eye sockets and spit in her mouth and elbow her ribs and stand over her and kick her and kick her while she writhes on the ground and say in a speaking voice Isn’t this funny.  Don’t you think this is funny. And I thought about how the Good Book says it’s just as much of a sin to think about committing a sin as it is to actually commit it.  And my body lunged for her.

Tracy’s friends just stood there stunned by the beating.  I was pounding her into the ground,  further and further into the ground.  The Pastor ran up and yanked me by the neck and slapped me across the face and called me a wench and Tracy’s friends huddled around her on the ground stroking her hair, eyeing me with repulsion.

The Pastor dragged me to the house and locked me in a little room and said This is all your fault! You’re filled with the Devil! and he was right.  I threw myself on the floor and screamed and pulled my hair no words could come no thoughts could come just hatred and disgust.

I spotted the beautiful, dainty clock on the wall and I grabbed it and smashed it against the floor.  I kneeled down and pressed a wooden shard to my lips and sobbed.

Copyright © 2009, Rosemary Griggs.

I wake to a beautiful day angry it isn’t for me personally to manicured
trees and yellow grasses wavering.

When they finally crept out of the sea, wolves walked on 5 toes, dwelt in
forests, and probably lived in trees.

We were almost the same then.

But some beings wandered onto the plains and others preferred the
comfort of leaves.

A spider creeps from a knot in the wooden beam. It begins its descent
towards me maneuvering its strong, thin legs.

Today I don’t feel like walking amongst organized trees to gather the
breakfast fruit.

I don’t want to wash the Pastor’s white shirts and hang them on the
line.

I don’t want to prove myself to the others or feel their eyes upon me.

When a wolf becomes stronger, the pack becomes stronger, and vice
versa. There is no contemplation of the self succeeding or existing
without the group.

I try to understand. I must want to learn to belong.

Copyright © 2009, Rosemary Griggs.

Red Riding Hood watching     in a dream state     from the

foothills     of the mountain       in the fish air     substance and shadow

the pack of wolves      strangle with a neckhold        their prey

crushing and tearing     flesh sliced up in the jaw     the hunters are worthy

death is appropriate     it is okay to encounter     to have risen from the sea

Copyright © 2009, Rosemary Griggs.

It is just before dusk in December, the bus driver has pulled over at 12th street, and she’s talking to another driver, they’re chatting it up, laughing about the full moon, and the 14, and the crazies who get even crazier on a night such as the one we will have. We’re late. Off schedule. But they reminisce on the man who swallowed three nitrous balloons, and the woman in socks and a bath robe talking to an empty dog carrier; they talk about tweakers and zombies and men with no shadows. And because it is winter and because of the particular angle of the earth, the moon will be closer than usual to our city, and will appear 14% larger over the winking skyline and 30% brighter than normal moons, and I’ve known about you for a while, and I prayed for the bus to go and the bus driver sang Mississippi John Hurt. She sang Mmmm hmmmmm. No no! ohhhhh sweet baby! I don’t want to go! Yea yeahhhhh…

But we do go, finally, the bus shifts forward and you grab the metal handle on the chair in front of mine and I saw that thatch of hair on your knuckles, dark thick hair on your fingers, just before you thrust your hand back into your pocket.

I see now that you were nervous-maybe just as nervous as I was. The sun sets early in the winter months. At 24th street I imagined that you are the right sort of werewolf-a tameable werewolf. I could take you to my home at the top of the Hill, I could take you by the arm because some werewolves can’t help it, some are kind and gentle in human form. I’d keep you underground, locked in storage for this night. There’s a dead bolt on the door.

“Excuse me,” you said to the lady sitting next to me, “Excuse me, do you know where this bus goes?” You had removed one of your silent earbuds and it dangled and swung at my cheek like a pendulum. The woman was smart and did not answer you and so I waited the requisite moment and then looked into your face, and maybe you recognized me because you nodded, and you tap tap tapped even louder after you put your ear-bud back inside your ear.

You grumbled something.

I said your welcome even softer.

What was that strange accent-was it Russian? Were you born on Christmas Eve? Were you the seventh son of an Argentinean? Were you attacked and bit in the night overseas? It probably isn’t such a sad story. No, I’ve seen inside your bag: you carry a copy of the Omnivore’s Dilemma, and what was that warm bit of color?-a fur, the skin of the Bernal Hill wolf you draped over your naked body in your shitty apartment in outer mission, the smell of wild dog coating everything-the couch, the lamps, the wine glass, the bed sheets, you had to bathe in tomato paste, you had to scrub your floors with arm & hammer. The neighbors complained. Then they were never found.
My heart skipped as we passed the Precita stop. You had moved to the back of the bus, and I pretend to be asleep.

“Back door!” You said tugging at the bus door poll. “Back door, back door!”

“Let him out!” I yelled.

And the bus slammed on the breaks, Mission traffic honking and you pushed your way out and, I rose and followed you, powered by some insane jolt of courage. I could lie at your doorstep and expose my jugular, just as the last slice of sun sizzles green over the ocean. Or I could gather silver and mistletoe and mountain ash leaves or the yellow wolfsbane flowers watered by the saliva of Cerberus when he was brought to the surface world, and lay them in a heap at your feet. But I have cheap earrings, nothing silver at all, and besides, deep down, I want to watch the transformation. To see if the old genre movies have it right, the stretching of the skeleton, your spine thrusting forward, the sound of trees falling, fabric tearing, your jaw bone reaching inch by painful inch, the hair on your fingers suddenly everywhere, you poor man cursed by lunar cycles, sent into this state. I think now that you can even hear my thoughts, you are walking faster, you are trying to avoid me. You spend the night boarding up your doors, your windows are sealed in cement. You nail the final planks across your front door, the nail gun popping like a giant, panic-y heart. Your construction permit glows, crooked in the window. I suppose this method works and we are safe: The bus drivers continue to sing, they hate zombies, and tweakers and people who enter the back door without paying, and the busses are always late and your downstairs neighbors are phoning in their noise complaints, and no one, I mean no one, is saying anything about werewolves.

Copyright © 2009, Lindsey Wolkin.

The moon is a crescent – scimitar, scythe.
“Cut yourself free of yourself,” it commands.
“Grow a new head.  Rise above your own chaff.”

But every morning I take the same bus again
and two old women sit next to me, speaking Russian.
“The price of meat these days!” says one.
“Trees quiver with the quaking of history!” cries the other.

And in the evening, it’s a woman with her baby.
“The sun sets ever earlier,” says the infant.
“The world grows dark and cold.  Soon it will always be night.”

Empirical little creature; she hasn’t learned yet
how the future is a hydra with a thousand terrifying heads.

Copyright © 2009, Susanna Kittredge.

It’s July. My original plan was to quit the minute school ended and get a job at the air-conditioned movie theatre making popcorn. A fun job. Grace is annoying. She claims her grandmother kissed the man who first said over the PA, “Elvis has left the building.” Big deal. I wonder about all the people who are Elvis impersonators. Did they have those jobs when he was alive or change careers after he died? That’s what interesting to me. The pavement is killing me, a black wave of heat, stinging my bare legs and melting my sneakers. My mother warns me about germs on the handle of the shopping carts. More than a vial of smallpox, and I must wash my hands vigorously before I eat anything. Grace’s hair is getting steadily blonder in the sun; mine is just getting straggly. When I told her to shut up her big balloon cheeks got even bigger like she’d been stung by a bee on the inside and I wished she would have a bee sting her and then drop off in her mouth.

Gary the manager here hates me. Like it’s my fault my sister’s pregnant. He offered me the job, but that was before. Now he barely looks at me. I can feel him giving me the fish eye to my back when I go into his office to punch in and out.

Misty has been staying inside since April. Every day she gets glossy pamphlets in the mail. Happy, small-featured, white people standing close together-wedding rings real obvious, looking at their new bundle of joy while a plate-faced nun with gold wire rims looks on. She doesn’t know what she’s going to do or who has signed her up for these things. Misty thinks she’s Buddhist, pretends to meditate every night. But she’s shoplifted way too many shades of lipstick to be a Buddhist, even I know that. Once she called me stupid when we were in the city and I saw two Islamic women and thought they were nuns, made the sign of the cross. Now they think you’re racist against them, she said and pulled me away by the skin on my forearm.

I wasn’t counting on the movie theatre not hiring because of all the cheerleaders getting jobs there first. They’re probably eating popcorn all day long-unbuttered, low salt. I’m getting really strong from pushing these things around. One cart is light; two, three-even five are manageable, but I have to hunch over, throw all my weight into it and they’re unwieldy in front of me. Wheels that turn out are a bitch. Beyond five I have to double back. Grace can’t handle more than three or four. The sound of these things crashing into each other. I should scream out here; no one would know.

At home the house is dark. It’s the opposite of when you come out of a matinee on a sunny day and are surprised it’s still light out. Misty is sitting on the couch watching soaps, “One Life to Live” and “All My Children” and eating cheese and crackers-American and Ritz with the shades drawn. Her life is like a soap opera only way less glamorous. She made me go into Marshall’s to get her old lady underwear. As if this pregnancy weren’t cramping me enough; I sort of know how Gary feels. Tomorrow we might go to Baby’s R Us and buy stuff. A car seat, a playpen and other things that keep your baby confined. Misty says babies smell good. Except for when they don’t my stepfather Johnny says.

At dinner everyone’s quiet. We’re having steak, because Misty needs protein and asparagus, because she needs folic acid. It’s all I can do to not burst out, You ain’t nothing but a hound dog. Just for something to say, but then my mother says, “This too will pass,” to Misty’s forehead. “It sure will,” Johnny says to Misty’s stomach and she gives him a look you could fry an egg on. My mother swats away an invisible fly. She can sit at the table for hours and hardly eat anything. Her fork scrapes the plate. “Excuse me,” Johnny says and pushes back. Since when did he get so many manners? He can’t even stand to sit at the table with us for one second after he’s done.

Nobody’s bothered to try and find our real dad to tell him he’s going to be a papa. There’s no point. Johnny’s in the basement listening to the radio. Country music twangs up through the floor. My mother looks at Misty, then to me. Misty looks at nothing. I can’t stop the sound of the shopping carts in my ears. In the fall when the cheerleaders go back to cheering, I am going to get a job at the movie theatre. Grace can herd all the shopping carts all by herself.  I am going to request to work shifts when black and white movies are shown, ones where women wore classy dresses and pearls, and said things like Dahling. I probably won’t be home much what with all the free movies I’ll be able to see. Until then, the three of us will sit here after dinner every night, a triangle of despair, with a little hope mixed in, but not much.

Copyright © 2009, Sona Avakian.

in the beginning, Ripe Tomato. in the beginning, all full
to bursting. born mature and sweet because of it.
no spot too dry.
Dendrobium answering an affectionate
sun like a satellite
(blink) Empty Glass (blink, blink)

Kafka Matches the vlatava.
Millennia
After fruit. one thousand museums, like with timelines, each
Side, a different world. the fallacy
Of a line.
Narrowing.
Ashtray beside Red Leather Luggage:

WE ARE GOING NOW
motel rooms layered with
the film left by people on the phone
Lesbian TV Show left on mute.

he wants to say something. we are indifferent.
we don’t believe like that, now.

Copyright © 2009, Michelle Puckett.

as the villain, a muscle, they have been repeated, omitted
in order to show the tenderness like the evil, a muscle
was duplicated to part, to indicate the tenderness as with pain
a muscle they fissured         moved away to reveal that tenderness

have you never seen a daybreak’d?
a fish into half with naked hands?
never seen a crack; to fissure a fish with the means of hands?

it is remarkable.
remarkable.

the vegetation, the celestial arcs for a half,
the bud, the rainbow for a second, goes smooth, then gray
the shooting on sides, the arcos-íris, then ashes

Copyright © 2009, Michelle Puckett.