altlitgossip:

SCREAMING SEAHORSE FIVE

SCREAMING SEAHORSE FOUR is now online!  Great stuff from Russ Woods, Matt Margo, Johnny Vulpine, Nathan Masserang, Beach Sloth, and many more!  Check it out!

ISSUE FOUR GOES LIVE TOMORROW! SUBMIT WHILE YOU STILL CAN! SEND ALL SUBMISSIONS TO SCREAMINGSEAHORSESUBMISSIONS AT GMAIL DOT COM

excerpt from a new ‘short story’ by walter mackey

You see, the best part of working in a photo lab is the feeling you get that you are not alone.  You know people.  You know entire families.  You share their intimate moments and details with them and you become part of their family.  You celebrate their birthdays, their weddings, their new pets, their old pets, their sex games, their 50th wedding anniversaries, their fishing trips, their trips to Cancun, their trips to nowhere at all, their pictures of their feet, their pictures of their hands, face, eyes, lips.    It feels easy to blend into their photographs and become a little snippet of their 4 x 6 lives.  Most people don’t realize that their film will tell a story, paint a picture of a stranger to a stranger.  We’re not supposed to really look at the photos, we’re supposed to be fast, efficient, develop the product and get it to the customer in less than one hour.  But I look.  I stare.  I make friends with the nameless faces.

There’s Mrs. Cavour, who only manages to take pictures of her cats—Emily and Charlotte, named after her two favourite writers, of course.  It’s clear that she was never married, or maybe she killed her husband.  I’ve never seen her hair not in a messy bun.  She reeks of cat piss.  I want to tell her it’s okay, but I don’t think she understands human words.  Once, I swear I saw her open a can of cat food in the pet aisle and taste-test it.  I had a nightmare once that Mrs. Cavour stopped coming in with her cat photos because she had died and her dead body was being slowly consumed by her starving cats.  I can see this becoming a reality in the next five-to-six years.

click-through the photo to read a new short story by me published over at #imgaypress

or click these words

Jay-Z Baby Blue Eyes

Well, it’s official. Beyoncé and Jay-Z have released pictures of their newborn baby, Blue Ivy Carter. The punch line? It’s via Tumblr. Yes, you too can follow the Blue Ivy Carter baby Tumblr blog at helloblueivycarter.tumblr.com.

Now, my first thoughts of looking at Blue Ivy Carter’s baby photos were: ‘damn, that’s a lot of hair’. But, then again, I realized that her mother is Beyoncé so it is probably just a baby-weave. They sell those down the street, right?

When you first visit Blue Ivy Carter’s Tumblr blog, you are greeted with what seems to be a .jpg of a handwritten note that thanks you for respecting [Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s] privacy during this ‘Beautiful time in our lives’. It is signed as ‘The Carter Family’ and for a second I had to stop and think just who is ‘The Carter Family’. I guess when you go through your entire life and career known only by your first name it is a little off-putting when you sneak a last name in there for PR purposes.

To the right of this message, you see the very first picture of God’s bundle of love—little Blue Ivy Carter sporting what appears to be the cutest pixie cut ever. Very chic. Now, I know Rihanna did this a few months ago, but hey, cut Blue Ivy some slack. She hasn’t even said her first word(s) yet. In fact, part of me wonders just what her first words will be.

Here is a list of Blue Ivy Carter’s possible first words:
● Mommy/Daddy
● Beyoncé/Jay-Z
● Sasha/Fierce
● My dad is washed-up
● Louboutins

I love baby Blue Ivy Carter a lot. I can’t wait until she grows into ‘toddler Blue Ivy Carter’. Actually, I can’t wait until she grows into ‘awkward pre-teen Blue Ivy Carter’. Maybe she will be the next Willow Smith. ‘I Whip My Rattle Back and Forth’. It could work, right?

I am not lying when I say that I couldn’t be more jealous of Blue Ivy Carter. I wish I could have worn Prada since birth. Damn.

How I Got Engaged in the Second Grade

There was this girl named Brittany Kelly.  She was in my class since kindergarten but then moved away after the second grade.  She looked kind of native.  Her skin was tan and she had dark hair and beautiful brown eyes.  It seems like I can only picture her smiling while wearing a pink one-piece tracksuit.  I am ~95% certain that she owned one and wore it daily.

Brittany Kelly fell in love with me.  She told me she loved me one day.  We used to write notes to one another from across the classroom.  She would sit on one side of the classroom and I would sit on the other.  She would pretend that she was going to the garbage can but really she would walk over near my desk and slip a note in my lap.  It was really sweet, now that I think about it.

One day she came to school with a big smile on her face.  She handed me a large plastic ring that was emerald green and had a fake diamond glued to the top.  She gave it to me and said ‘okay, we’re going to get married now’.  Next, Brittany Kelly took me by the hand and we hid away behind a bookshelf.  She gave me a kiss on the forehead.  This was my first kiss.

After the second grade ended, Brittany Kelly moved away.  As I grew up, I heard stories that she had joined the witness protection program, died under mysterious circumstances, was abducted by extraterrestrials, changed her name to ‘Missy Elliott’ and moved to New Zealand.  She was actually just really poor and had to move away because her family couldn’t survive on the amount that the social assistance program was providing them with.  My friend Tiffany said that she went to Brittany Kelly’s birthday party once and one of the ‘pass the parcel’ prizes was a sponge.  My other friend named Brittany said that Brittany Kelly had a bowl of pennies on her coffee table that her mother saved up for cigarette money.

I don’t know where Brittany Kelly is at this exact moment in time but the last time I heard about her she had eloped to California with an obese man and she now has three kids.  She is twenty-one years old and lives in a trailer in Western Arizona.

I Was Born Inside Of A Toaster

It was a really cold morning.  It was sometime around November.  Or maybe it was in January—nobody really remembers the specific date or time.  A person woke up and the person felt very hungry.  A person decided to go into the washroom and wash their face and hands.  Another person came into the washroom and decided to wash their face and hands.  Both of the people looked in the mirror at their reflections and frowned.  One person frowned more than the other person.  One person went to the bathtub and turned on the water.  Another person left the bathroom.  The person filled up the bathtub and got inside the bathtub.  The person washed their body parts.  The person scrubbed there, under there, over there, and inside there.  The other person was busy in their bedroom trying to find an outfit to wear.  The other person showered before they went to bed and decided that it would be foolish to wash their body parts again.  The person got out of the bathtub and dried off their body parts.  The person put on a pair of underwear.  The person put on a housecoat.  The person met the other person in the hall to the kitchen.  The people said something to one another.  The person went into the kitchen and took a raisin bagel out of the freezer.  The person said something to the other person.  The other person did not hear the person.  The person spoke a little louder.  The other person said something and the person put two bagels in the toaster.  The person watched the raisin bagels turn brown.  The person took the raisin bagels out of the toaster.  The person put butter and cinnamon on the raisin bagels.  The person gave the other person a raisin bagel with butter and cinnamon on top.  The people ate the bagels.  The people did not say anything.  The person took off the housecoat.  The person put on a dress.  The person grabbed a purse and left the house.  The other person grabbed a briefcase and left the house.

I stayed behind.  I am a raisin that fell out of a bagel.  Nobody knows that I am here and nobody will remember the exact time that I was born.  I will die over a period of time.  I will die by being burned to death.  Other bagels and pieces of toast will visit me from time to time but I will be in the bottom of the toaster forever.  I will scream.  I will be burnt to a crisp.  I will turn to ash.  I will cry.