Mistake House 2018
Issue 4, May 2018
Rudy Shepherd
Rudy Shepherd is a New York City-based artist who was represented by Mixed Greens Gallery for fourteen years until their closure in 2016. In addition to an upcoming solo exhibition at Goodyear Gallery (Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA), his work has been included in numerous solo and group exhibitions at Mixed Greens Gallery, Smack Mellon (Brooklyn, …
Remember that one?
Do you remember That school shooting In that specific state Where that deranged killer Massacred those innocent victims? It was the one when He just unloaded Countless magazines From his AR-15 Indiscriminately. It was the one that Nobody saw coming. It was the one that There was no way to stop. …
After the Party
When you’re around, I call my ghosts by their first names because you don’t believe in them and I’m determined to prove we can exist together. Sometimes you ask me to read out loud to you and I imagine myself opening my mouth and a thousand voices spill into cupped hands. I imagine myself …
My Heart is a Gun
My heart is a gun. I have a permit, but it makes you nervous when you see my gun in public. You’re certain there’s a bullet with your name on it, but the bullet’s for me. Any minute now your name will be in my brain forever. Can a bomb come from the heart? Is …
MAGNOLIAS
Mid-spring, we’d step into our magnolias, branches like a many-armed justice, dark columned trunks brandishing the drilled- in patterns of woodpeckers. They held us as we stretched our wildly bruised legs, leaned exhaustion against their beams, sorting the mysteries of our boyhoods, the mingled lies of parents and priests. Our wrestled explorations with the …
Around the World
Ruminations on Picasso’s Guernica How quick the damned of Guernica try to flee the asymmetry of casualty and the fire’s opened mouth masticating at their jagged flesh, how congruent the geometry of one hundred thousand pounds of explosive ordinance tessellating into them like bread, leavened with yeast and soured with corruption, being thrown into a …
A Short Movie
I’m brushing my hair and my friends have guns in their mouths. They’re making knots of barrels, sucking bullets – they’re flirting with me, all of them. They wink, use tongues to pull triggers. The dead friends stand and new friends drop out of dead friends’ mouths. The new ones talk: …
An Old Jew Hearing Der Ring After Many Years of Silence
Woden, mad berserk and hopeless drunk, Whose revenging dreams stalked that soma— That mead of poetry, that dark and esoteric truth— Gave a superstitious eye to prefigure even the ravens. There’s blood in mead. Only sight can trade for sight. Like the wax which screams at the weight of a needle, Transcribing truth upon the …
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A Natural History of the Mind
I create islands in my mind spontaneously according to random whims. I conjure biomes and terrains, raw landscapes of saw tooth mountains cross-cut with indiscriminate rivers ejecting boulders and dragonfish over basalt cliffs to a primordial ocean by the second, lands where strife unfolds in its unremarkable forms of predation on winter-stricken highlands …
Stems
the unfortunate – sadmen – my gas station earrings – you didn’t see the future in hints – the world exploded at the kitchen sink – left daffodil stems – colliding into – stacked disappointments – collections of memories per person – tabs on where we’d end – liked gas station earrings …
Shut Up or Sing
I abhor the noncommittal crooners of the world, housing hummingbirds behind dentin bars and vibrant lips where their languid tongues lie heavy-laden with forgotten lyrics and flat notes. Shut up or sing. Expand your diaphragm and lyrical vocabulary and release the deadened songbird locked within your ribcage. Exchange your borrowed breath with the wind, fly …
Ancestors
Somewhere past the planted pines and under the veil of quilted sheets. There lies a riverbed. I am buried there. Along with my pots and pans and scattered bits of bead. With the roly-polies and arrowheads. Deeper than the limestone caves and round like the wind. Don’t tell me we are not our memories. We …
Acadia, Nocturnal
The fog is shrouding tamarack and a flawless black sky as frogs trill from turbid pond water, but she doesn’t know. She emerges from our room only to eat and ask whether Andromeda chose to show over Cadillac Mountain or if Venus sailed down the Penobscot out into the Atlantic. I avert my eyes …
[Un]Defined, [Un]Labeled
Red nails, plush lips, long skirt wrapping wide hips, 42D, 5-foot inch 3. Unquestioned, your man is me. With him, a man, as our lips softly meet. With her, a woman, as our hips touch and our tongues greet. I wish for your firm lips and warm body, but your bed is left …
The Particulars of Theredness
Outside I watch a waitress through the diner of windows she’s in yellow in the middle of the night Debacled in sameness, placed particulars Serve platters of tuna on rye …
Animalistic
People look most peaceful when they eat, shit, fuck, kill the need to answer their alarm clocks in the morning, flay themselves of their suits— the artificial hides of the bull market—on the coat racks of meat lockers to linger in their earth-given nudity, and still, people look most peaceful when they drink, piss, bleed, …
Grandma Allen
Her arms were supple and reminded me of the soft bread dough I pinched as it swelled in her kitchen. She pressed butter-covered marshmallows and rice into teddy bear molds I can still taste, and nothing now compares. Colorful jars adorned her kitchen countertop, bottled pears of pink, of green, of blue. …
Unknown
*Series of haiku A tribute to the soldier buried at Camp Floyd Cemetery, Fairfield, Ut vertical white stone a shield deeply indented curving words imply loneliness glimmers forgot in winter’s frost, cold like steel, alone, lost light cracks across grass, day breaks like brittle bones, heat burns in mourning sun warmth caresses rock moisture thaws …
(Ass)=U+Me
there’s a guy that sits at the intersection of MacArthur and Fairmont in a black leather jacket and black leather hat, never smiles until one day I’m holding a Fleetwood Mac record in my hands and he stands up off his crate and yells “Fleetwood Mac is the shit!” …
INTENT
I. what does this mean: that this destruction will be radical? what does it mean, when the idea of a gesture, like a single hair fallen from the head, becomes the field of a problem? this impression of being seen: the center of the spider work of facts. II. but the fact is: your breasts …
Daybreak After Nightfall
When noble dawn arrives After a lecher of a night— A night that feels Like the millionth coat of paint On a wall that never existed— It seems the weight of one more day (For what is a day but a shade, A kind of color that bleeds into the last and the next) Might, …
What are Chickens For?
I’d like to have a chicken as a therapist, but only if the chicken has a PhD. But only if the chicken is funny and fond of dental floss. (Maintaining oral hygiene is a hobby of mine.) I want to know who chickens dream about. I want to know how it feels to floss a …
Rajiv Mohabir
These days poems come to me through image first. I notice small things: on the road a flattened bird flaps its wings as a car drives by, on the lake two herons trumpet and tangle their necks, a dog coughs up worms. For me this has been the hardest part, I mean the hardest part, …
SIX METAPHORS FOR SUICIDAL IDEATION
1: The flowers rot on the windowsill. I never expected to be the person who needed reassurance that they are loved, but it terrifies me to think about waking up without the stench of decaying roses. I am too afraid to ask for new ones. 2: I want to believe that there …
The Perfect Goodnight
The noise never changes. Not quite the stroke of midnight, Not quite the hour of day; It’s traffic, restless motion. There’s time for that. There’s time for money And time for duty, A time for obligations And a time for necessity. But, right now? Now is the time to sit and listen, …
They Held God’s Funeral
</em> <!DOCTYPE Hymn> <Hymnal> <head> <title>They held God’s funeral</title> on the Saturday after He died. </head> <body> They had long since known He was terminal. <h1>His first Son asked him if He was afraid to return to the place from whence He came. God said no. God said: </h1> <blockquote>I knew it was over when …
Rajiv Mohabir
Forced Conversion beti linepath school jaye, kheti kaun kari beta christianwa bhaye, pani kaun charai Not by the sword’s nose, but with books and cash, to make an army in the colony with one aim, the English decreed: “Those wanting to letter their tongues must fetter their hearts by drinking blood and …
groundless
when nightfall sheathes your eyes and surrenders sight to sound, can you hear the red-breasted songstress housed within your bosom, drumming against your cage, beating against your chest? can you feel the vibrato of her muffled freedom-song, seething the rivers rushing beneath your flesh, pulsing earworms through your skull? lifetimes ago, when ions were …
Razors and Canals
1 Dawn percolates into storm. The concrete fishing pier a straight-razor edge up, ready to shave time or cut me in two. I pass homeless people quieter than the fish for whom Mexicans and Asians put out lines I pass in hope to snag my aloneness in the roiling …
A GOOD WALK
onedaynine The earthen pier curls comma-like from the land. Better yet, it’s an apostrophe marking possession, converting the loch into a word absorbed in water. At its barbed end, a girl takes up handfuls of rock, the substance of its body, and chucks them with machine-like precision, a whirling varmint raising holy hell. I …
Cat Hour
from East/east/west Hot pavement witness: the gypsy-cursing funeral-converted Cadillac, hatchback wide open outside city hall, a haunting moan through the century like the train over Monroe. The sun, day peaked, as everyone opens doors, leaving their office on a single track there and back, for lunch, for post, for bank – or …
The People’s Temple
My best friend Christine has read three books on Marxist theory, and owns more books on religion than my father, a priest. Jim Jones was also an avid reader of Marx, though he created his own religion, something Christine is far too lazy to do. Her dog Ruby got out on the same day Anton …
Rajiv Mohabir
Mistake House: Much of your writing is imbued with images of migration—images of displacement and replacement, origin and refuge. What is home to you? Rajiv Mohabir: I think home is a series of dislocations—I’ve learned that to claim a physical place in the United States or the Western Hemisphere as home is to participate …
The Sounds of Ash
The wind carries whispers, words unsaid, and now I know it rasps from my father’s voice. We let him go from a monolith, on the slope of a world, with a city like a bonfire—an ember nucleus nestled in twigs and logs and leaves— below. The sound dins from the grains of desert …
Unstructured Observations, Introspection, Exposing Actors
Acclaimed assholes always act after aggressing Bouncing breasted, bubble butted, B-movie beauties. Beyond Cat-calls, ‘cause crude call-outs can’t cause crooked consent. Despite defiling demure dames, downfall’s disdain doesn’t deter derelict dicks’ Exonerated edicts. Everywhere, everyone, especially entertainers encroach every Female, flashing fame for a fast fuck for four failed films. Going, going, gone, great going, …
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Matron Misery
Motherliness masked Mama’s mentally manipulative manner My mother misunderstood me Many moments Mama muttered “Mama makes men” Ma’dear misled Mama Mama misbelieved misogynistic, …
One Ramadan
8 hours later: On the day of the nightclub shooting I held myself, alone, in a house of six. 15 hours later: When the lowered sun dimly lit the Masjid’s asphalt, my lips were sealed, lest my grief be revealed. 5 days later: Every week he slammed terrorists on his mimbar, but today, not a …
Rajiv Mohabir
Rajiv Mohabir is the author of The Cowherd’s Son (Tupelo Press 2017, winner of the 2015 Kundiman Prize) and The Taxidermist’s Cut (Four Way Books 2016, winner of the Four Way Books Intro to Poetry Prize, Finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry in 2017). In 2015 he was a winner of the …
Deciduous Dreaming
A stack of turtles sleep atop my dresser Resting somewhere between peace and panic Across a page split down the middle A creek caresses the cricks of their shells From higher than my vision believed Trickling washed words and shallow lines And steadily eroding the space between A fall of words ricocheted and …
BENEFICIAL NEMATODES FOR TILLED SOIL AND GARDENING
You should not have opened this box. Now you will never be rid of me. I am waiting underneath your fingernails to infest your ants, your grubs, your skin. I, assassin, wound-maker without knife, without teeth, slippery body corpse-silent, I, unremarkable ambush predator, am part of a family business. We …
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Marriage
You used to be a whale and then you ate a whale and now you’re a cannibal. I used to be an avid pogo-stick-er and dream that my bones were liquid cheese, a real nice fondue. I’m always breaking into the maintenance closet thinking it’s a stairwell. I’m always making eye contact with the mop …
Current Staff
Editor-in-Chief, Sky O’Brien Managing Editor, Sami Corbitt Soap Bubble Set Editor, Elizabeth Hagenlocher Fiction Editor, Samantha Frank Poetry Editor, Nolan Saylor Faculty Advisor, Dinah Ryan
Conversation Overheard at the Upscale Market
–I just don’t agree with the whole premise really. –Premise, Sue? –That a product, any product, no matter how rare, unique or expensive, no matter how lovingly-made by local organic elves paid a living wage in handmade gold pieces bearing the inscription In, umm (stalling) In Good Goods We Trust! –I get your drift, Sue. …
Bedtime
Not just a regular routine but saying goodbye over and over and over. You enter the dark room to go on vacation— sometimes it is days until morning. We lie with eyes closed, Au Revoir, and we’re running and running and running, miles at a time. Running impossibly away from life, only to return again …
WITH FLYING COLORS, WITH BEAT OF DRUM
in the mirror slighted, in its glistening little cracks, dare not tempt God’s providence by fire (as here in a photograph, as not funded meanings, as a veil just half withdrawn), dare not forge globe of burning sky distinctly out of literal (mounting not toward morning sky) turning inside, dare not in the here to …
The Flood of ’94
The fire ants were the first to know. Grain by grain they stacked their hills five feet high. Deep reds and brown towering over my head. But no one seemed to notice them. We packed our belongings, and moved them to high ground, of our few leftover things, only an old dusty sofa turned on …
Eustace
1. Eustace at Lunchtime According to Eustace’s lunchtime reading material, heroin is becoming quite popular, even though it often makes a person utterly uninterested in things that aren’t heroin and commonly leads to poverty and/or death for the person using heroin. The decision is made to never try heroin no matter what and Eustace …
Totino’s Triple Stuffed Pepperoni Pizza Rolls
i am evicted from bed again last night i dreamt of something meaningful probably maybe it was the unspoken truths of being that lurk in the shadows of our words or the silence that dwells in the pauses of our voices our vices why do we lie in bed trying to find reason behind stacked …
From the Editor’s Desk
“Home is where we return to,” says Czech writer Václav Cílek, “and we leave it only so that we may return.” Cílek is talking about the natural landscape of our home, the earth, the “flux in which our spiritual and natural sides mingle,” but his words transcend context. If you are returning to Mistake House …
A Petition
The next word I lightly scribbled on my bit of scratch paper was “Rose.” Needing yet another reprieve from the clipboard on my lap, I looked up to see pairs of newlyweds peppering the gaudy office furniture. They must have either been too practical or too in love to plan their moments far in advance. …
Overburden
Hello? Hello? I — Hey? Hello? Lord? — I gotta question for you. Sorry, I, uh — Hi. Hey there. I feel like you might be confused right about now. Are you confused, man? You’re probably confused to find me here, strung out good on a spoil pile south of the Mason Dixon. I know …
Habitual Motion
A woman stands in a bright yellow kitchen. She is present in the life that he built with her though he is no longer alive, there in their little house. She puts on a kettle and warms the coffee cake made for two yet she sits down as a party of one. Outside the kitchen …
Sea Music
The sea speaks its own language: one of woosh, swish against the rocks one of boom against the balustrades, and the soft fffrmpt of foam on the beach; luminous echoes following every wave; its voice is muffled by grains of sand as under grey skies it whispers in green, and in the nights sings a …
New World
First comes the weight, then the ringing, then the scatterplot of electric light strung out along the riverbank through the window. Your hand stays immobile on the bed because, who knows? It could have been some bandage pressed tight against the skull by a mindful nurse doing her job, as in stanch post-surgical bleeding with …
Hounds of War
(the child soldier speaks) What will you say that will sever the head from the neck, held in arms, peering into a future foretold, that if I run to the warlord—that I will—I must bleed and tear my skin to stand between the gun and Dad, explain to him the sight of blood redder …
The 2013 Holiday Letter
“Joni, there’s no easy way to tell you this, but I’ve got an accepted offer on the Blue Lake cottage.” I’d been dreading telling my daughter, but when the time came I blurted it out. I could tell from her face that it was painful news. “I’m very sorry.” “No, that’s great, dad. Did you …
Speak Fire
I ran to the other side of the world to get away from myself. It’s not that I really thought I could escape myself through travel; it’s that I needed a transformation and there was no way I could have one in the confines of my town or my high school. I’d spent my whole …
Rudy Shepherd
Over the past 10 years I have been making work that explores the nature of evil through the mediums of painting and sculpture. This exploration involves investigations into the lives of criminals and victims of crime. I am exploring the complexity of these stories and the grey areas between innocence and guilt in a series …
Rudy Shepherd
Mistake House: You titled your recent exhibition at Smack Mellon in Brooklyn Everything in the Universe is my Brother after the title of a poem by Sun Ra, an American writer and jazz musician who embodied the Afrofuturist movement in his work. You also captured his likeness in your series, The Healers. How does Sun Ra’s “otherworldliness” inspire your work and how do you engage with the movement of Afrofuturism in your practice? Rudy Shepherd: …
Rudy Shepherd
In the Summer 2017 issue of Art Papers Magazine, painter and critic Paul Ryan wrote: Recent tragic events and individuals on both sides concerning racial profiling and police brutality—such as Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman, Darren Wilson, the Ferguson riot, Eric Garner—are common subjects for Shepherd…[He] works from a conscious position of neutrality and places his …