ISSUE 141 | SEPTEMBER 2025 NICK FLOOK, YOU KNOW WHERE I'LL BE - @FLOOKO HOLLOWSEEKER: KRYSTI JOMÉI DISTRICT 808: JONNY DESTEFANO THE ELEPHANTS: JULIANNA BECKERT GRIFFIN: KAYVAN S. T. KHALATBARI BLEAKBERRIES: CRISTIN COLVIN DIVERSIONARY SPLIT: MARK MOTHERSBAUGH MAURITS CORNELIS ESCHER: ALAN ROY FRIDGE RAID: DANIEL LANDES FRONT COVER: PAUL JACKSON, APE ON KILLING MACHINE BOSTON DYNAMIC DOG - @PAULJACKSONLIVES BACK COVER: DAVE DANZARA, WE'RE DOOMED - @LOSTINTIMEDESIGNS BEST OF BIRDY 099 OBOLITES: NICK FLOOK, JOSH KEYES, ZAC DUNN, GRANT WILLIAMS, JOEL TAGERT, JORDAN DOLL, JASON WHITE, BRIAN POLK, ERIC JOYNER, JASON HELLER, HANA ZITTEL, JOE VAUX, TOM MURPHY, DANIEL LANDES, EVAN LORENZEN, RUMTUM, MICHAEL DAVID KING, DAVE DANZARA ETHER: PAUL JACKSON, RYTIS BERNOTAS, EDOS DROCHER, SUSANN BROX NILSEN, CREATICKLE, EMILY EMERSON, ROBYN TAYLOR SILPHIUM RESIN: MARIANO OREAMUNO, DS THORNBURG, PHIL GARZA, ZAC DUNN SUPPORT OUR FRIENDS AND BENEFACTORS: UNDERSTUDY, DENVER THEATRE DISTRICT, MUTINY INFORMATION CAFE, COLORADO TATTOO CONVENTION & EXPO, MONKEY BARREL, SUNNYSIDE MUSIC FESTIVAL, MARKET IN THE PARK-ET, CITY, O' CITY, RADIO RETHINK, AIRBUBBLE, OFF THE BOTTLE REFILL SHOP, PLANNED PARENTHOOD OF THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS, BENNY BLANCO'S, TOXOPLASMA ARTS FOLLOW US – IG: @BIRDY.MAGAZINE | FB: @BIRDYMAGAZINE SUPPORT BIRDY - 6 & 12 MONTH MAILED SUBSCRIPTIONS + ISSUES + MERCH: BIRDYMAGAZINE.COM/SHOP BE IN BIRDY – ART + WORDS + COMEDY + ET CETERA: BIRDYMAGAZINE.COM/SUBMISSIONS ADVERTISE IN BIRDY + KEEP INDEPENDENT ART ALIVE: BIRDYMAGAZINE.COM/CONTACT-US BIRDY IS ILL COMMUNICATION, CRASH SITE MONTHLY ©2025 BIRDY MAGAZINE, ECHOPLEX RUMINATIONS 1
JOSH KEYES, HIDE AND SEEK
the prowl BY ZAC DUNN Black paws moved slowly past the ruins that lay silent. The bunny smelled something succulent and cautiously edged to investigate its source. They both crept from the places they slept to a window frame that had remained the same for far too long, only to wonder where the other was. The tiny bunny held minute breaths that murmured the cat's purr. Their bellies were too hungry for them to be calm — to move back to the burrows that would keep them both safe from the prying eyes they knew all too well to evade. As the panther gazed over the filthy cement ledge looking for his prey, a small bird drew his attention. Its chirps distracted his keen ears from hearing the fearful palpitations he could sense so close. The bird summoned several more that flew into the filthy bunker, filling its moldy wall with a delicate song that drove the panther mad. Yet he was starving this cool morning and pounced over the ledge to either catch one or banish the infernal ratchet from the space he felt held his next morsel of flesh oh so close. But as his paws landed on the floor the tiny bunny was much too clever, making haste to scurry back up over the ledge and into the dense brush that clung to the bunker. The panther growled and hissed at the cursed birds, but they mocked his advance with a simple tune that only made him more irate. The bunker was cold and empty like his belly now. The bunny made it back to his burrow beneath the mighty banyan tree just up the hill. To hide and sleep from the claws and paws that seek to gobble him up whole. 9:12am L BEDFORD FOLLOW FOR MORE: INSTAGRAM: @UZIEGO TUMBLR: @SAVAGESNEVERSLEEPNYC 3
GRANT WILLIAMS, HOME
MARK MOTHERSBAUGH, BIRDHOUSE HEAD No. 141
“DON’T BORE US, GET TO THE CHORUS” SHORTENED COMMUNICATION FOR TODAY’S TLDR LIFESTYLE BY BRIAN POLK DO YOU EVER HAVE TO BOIL TEA WATER FIVE OR SIX TIMES BECAUSE YOU KEEP FORGETTING THAT YOU’RE TRYING TO MAKE TEA? This happens to me frequently. I put the kettle on, find something to do in the other room, and then come back to tepid water. It’s almost as if tea kettles should make some kind of high-pitched whistle to let you know that it’s ready. Who do I talk to about that? BANDS SURE SANG ABOUT LEGS A LOT MORE IN THE PAST THAN THEY DO NOW “Legs” by ZZ Top, “Hot Legs” by Rod Stewart, “Lord Of The Thighs” No. 141 by Aerosmith, and “Girl, Girls, Girls” by Mötley Crüe all mention legs as sexual objects. I feel like it was the style at the time, because these days none of my friends will ever say anything like, “My new girlfriend has amazing legs.” And even if someone in my friend group did say that, the rest of us would respond with something like, “What a weird thing to say.” I’M STARTING WITH THE MAN IN THE MIRROR; I’M ASKING HIM WHY HE DRANK SO MUCH VODKA LAST NIGHT He responded, “Because it was fun. You should know. You were there.” That’s when I said, “Oh yeah. We did have fun, didn’t we?” ART BY JASON WHITE
Then my partner started to get concerned because I was talking to myself in the bathroom again. DID YOU GET THE MICHAEL JACKSON REFERENCE IN THE LAST ENTRY? I should probably stop referencing songs that are 37 years old unless I’m with someone else who’s also getting close to qualifying for AARP benefits. SOMETIMES I’LL TELL MY COWORKER, “IT’S ON OCTOBER 26TH.” AND WITHOUT LOOKING AT A CALENDAR, SHE’LL SAY, “OKAY, THAT’S A SUNDAY.” How the fuck does she do that? I FELT PROFOUND REGRET WHEN I BIT INTO A PEACH THAT WASN’T RIPE YET Unrealized peach potential is the absolute worst thing about peach season. DO YOU EVER DAYDREAM AT YOUR JOB ABOUT HOW YOU NEVER THOUGHT YOU’D BE STUCK IN A BORING 9-TO5 WHERE YOU NEVER GET USE YOUR CREATIVITY OR TALENT, BECAUSE YOU THOUGHT YOU HAD SO MUCH MORE POTENTIAL THAN THIS, BUT YOU NEVER FOUND ANY OTHER WAY TO MAKE MONEY, AND NOW IT’S TOO LATE TO SWITCH CAREERS, SO YOU HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO SAY OUT LOUD TO NO ONE, “MAYBE THIS WAS THE BEST I COULD DO?” Yeah, that sure does suck. YOU CAN’T MICROMANAGE YOUR WAY TO SUCCESS It has been my experience that micromanagers do not actually like to be referred to by any of the following three designations: “micromanagers,” “ineptly cruel bosses,” or “insufferable disciplinarians who have no clue how to earn the respect of others and therefore have to resort to using fear and shame to garner grudging recognition for their position of authority, which no one can actually respect, and so they spend the entirety of their working careers frustrated that no one likes or appreciates them.” And of course, most of them are all three. WHEN RAINDROPS KEEP FALLING ON MY HEAD, THAT MEANS MY EYES WILL SOON BE TURNING RED I don’t care what that song says, I get upset when I get rained on! OKAY, I JUST REFERENCED A SONG THAT’S 55 YEARS OLD Maybe it’s time to cut my losses and try again next issue. ERIC JOYNER, THE LAST TRAIN TO CLARKSVILLE - ERICJOYNER.COM 9
OCTOPUS FACTORY GALAXY BY JASON HELLER Henry Oxford Wallace walked through the doctor's garden with his head wrapped in mist, squinting as if seeing its verdant splendors for the first time. Sunlight streaked across the sky like soapsuds. Clockwork hummingbirds siphoned gasoline from metallic flowers. In the distance, nude children danced with animals and uprooted saplings in some kind of mindless, wind-up pantomime. This made Henry want to cry, but no tears would come. He raised his hands to his face, brushed his fingertips along his scarred and bearded cheeks. Then he felt them, smooth as bone. The dice. He remembered: He'd been given dice for eyes. "Henry?" The voice behind him gave him a start. "Henry, come back to the house with me. The doctor can help. There's too much to see out here right now. We'll come back when it's dark. It won't be so frightening then." "Yes, Eleanor," he said, taking his sister's hand. He dared to glance down at it. Instead of skin and nails, the flesh of her fingers was sheathed in waxed paper and shattered glass. When they returned to the house — the doctor's country estate, far from the gaslit streets and loud Model Ts of the nearby city — Eleanor called upstairs to their host. Dr. Islington came down, spindly and flushed, and led Henry to his examination room, shutting the door behind them. As the bigger man took out his notebook and pen, Henry stood shivering in the middle of the room, trying to avoid the large mirror hanging alongside the charts and diagrams on the wall. But a stolen glimpse reflected the same image he'd begun seeing the day before: two bone-white dice, polished to pearly opalescence, pivoting in the deep, wide sockets where his eyes should have been. The numbers six and a three were facing forward, nine tiny black dots, dilated and baleful. No. 141 "Sorry, Henry, very sorry." Dr. Islington gestured at the mirror. "I should have covered that up. It's, ahem, still the dice you see, eh?" Henry tried and failed to tear his gaze from the mirror. "Yes, Doctor. But … it's more than just that. I've been seeing other things too. In the garden today, with Eleanor, everything around me looked strange. More so than usual even." The doctor began scratching in his notebook. "Sit down, my boy," he bid Henry. "Describe it to me." Henry did. He told Dr. Islington about the carnival of visions in the garden, the odd and impossible phantasms that swam in the corners of his new eyes. He tried to put into words the children and animals, the hummingbirds and flowers, the sun and its vibrant scum of lemony foam. But that wasn't all, Henry continued. Earlier that day he'd sent the doctor's servants out of the kitchen so that he could cook breakfast with Eleanor. They'd loved cooking breakfast together as children. But as Henry cracked eggs into a bowl, each yolk appeared to him as a jellied ocean squirming with swarms of unborn stars. Then, just as his knife was about to descend into a loaf of dark rye, it turned into a little, slate-shingled house bustling with the members of a soberly dressed and Lilliputian family. His sister, of course, had seen only eggs and bread on the table before them, and could do nothing but clasp her brother's hands and coo into his ear as he whimpered in confusion. "It's getting worse," Henry concluded. "Can't you figure out what's the matter? Don't take me wrong, Doctor. I'm grateful for the operation, to be able to see again. And you've been very generous letting Eleanor and myself stay here while I recuperate. But I … I fear I'm going mad. I haven’t had the blessing of sight since I was seven-years-old. The world looks strange enough to me as it is. But now? I can't tell which visions I should heed as reality and which I should dismiss as apparition." OCTOPUS ROSE GARDEN BY CARLIE EYES BY MARK MOTHERSBAUGH
Dr. Islington put down his pen and steepled his fingers. His eyes twinkled under a heavy brow. "Henry, I can't tell you with certainty what's happening to you. But I do have a theory. This procedure I used on you, as you've known from the beginning, is an experimental one — a marvel only possible in this enlightened new century. But rerouting the channels of your brain to bypass the tissue damage that had blinded you all those years ago … to be honest, I was operating a bit blind myself." The doctor gave a low chuckle then shifted himself in his chair as Henry, unaware that he was staring, bore into the man's face with his eyes. "What I believe is occurring,” Dr. Islington went on, avoiding Henry's gaze, "is an awakening. A rebirth of what the philosophers have called the mythopoeic mind. See, Henry, before science eclipsed the scientist himself and recast the human psyche in its own rigid image, our minds were much more fluid and intuitive. Our perception was wildly subjective. Long ago, for instance, two individuals from two different tribes of man could look at the same object — a stick, say, or a snake — and see two wholly different things. The wars of that pre-scientific era weren't simply conflicts over resources. They were battles between epistemologies, between distinct interpretations of sensory input, between irreconcilable empirical realities. In a way, men fought over the right to see the world the way they wished, and to populate that world with objects and gods of their own invention." The doctor paused for a moment to peer out the window of the examination room, his eyes lingering on the artful arrangements of shrubs and stones in the garden beyond. "What I'm proposing, Henry, is this: These are no mere hallucinations you've been witnessing. They are what I would classify as mythopoeic manifestations. In short, sir, they are metaphors." Henry rubbed his temples in hard, small circles, as if trying to accelerate his inner processing of the doctor's ideas. "If you're right," Henry said eventually, his voice rising, "then what about my eyes? What are these dice supposed to be goddamned metaphors for?" The doctor answered with Henry an unreadable expression. Then he smiled at the younger man. Henry made every effort not to scream as the doctor's face suddenly flowered into a violent, bruise-colored cloud. The smoky mass spread upward from his starched collar to the ceiling, seething all the while with tiny figures that appeared to be either locusts or vultures. "Why, it's obvious, Henry," the doctor's voice echoed from deep within the purple nimbus that had been, just a moment ago, his head. "The dice symbolize uncertainty. Everything that is not yet known. Wasn't your entire operation, after all, a gamble?" That night Henry laid awake and listened to the apple trees beyond the garden swish in the stiff wind of an incoming storm. The trees, he comforted himself, at least sounded like trees. 11 NICK FLOOK, CELESTIAL FALLS - @FLOOKO
his afternoons sifting through his memories to catch every last ghost of his youth kept him somehow sane, even as it left him buried in notebooks, filling page after page with verse he could not see. Notebooks. That thought shook Henry out of his reverie. Of course. As he reached for his robe in the dark of his room, a crack of thunder rattled the house. Henry swore his sister's laughter rose from out of the garden to join it. The doctor's examination room was shuttered and unlit. Henry, however, was used to negotiating the dark. He crossed the room in stocking feet and stopped at the edge of the desk. Soon his fingers found a drawer and, in it, Dr. Islington's notebook. As Henry groped for a candle and then lit it, letting his eyes adjust to the flame, he remembered the doctor's metamorphosis of the day before, the terrific sense of awe it had instilled in him. Then he flipped through the notebook until he found Islington's most recent entry: Eleanor had been right. The night was much easier for Henry. As the doctor had explained to them soon after the operation, while Henry's eyes were still bandaged, less light means less visual stimulus entering the brain. The closer Henry could come to his previous state of absolute blindness, the less he was prone to these terrific visions. Even then, there seemed always to be a glee the doctor exhibited in hearing about and recording in his notebook Henry's latest phantasmagorical episode. A hiss from outside his window jolted Henry out of his thoughts. "Brother, it's me. Come down." He parted his curtains, and even in the dim light he could see Eleanor's long, pale hair undulating in the wind. As lightning danced in and out of the racing clouds, her locks took on the appearance of tentacles. Henry squinted. "What are you doing out there?" he whispered back. "You'll wake the doctor. Come back inside." He heard her laugh, the same mischievous giggle she'd had since they were children. Then the luminous mass of her hair — now blonde, now green, now blonde again — bobbed away in the lightning-charged darkness toward the garden. As Henry slept that night, he dreamed he and Eleanor were both children again. They played upon the gleaming new tracks the rail company had stitched across the fields behind their grandmother's house. All manner of beasts, machines, and combinations thereof crawled along those tracks as Henry groaned and turned in his bed: steam engines curled first into nautili, then into pachyderm-shaped gramophones, and then into electric-eyed cats that licked their sparking fur with ferrotype tongues bearing images of comets and atoms. Around that mad factory, that assembly line of illusion, Henry and Eleanor darted and laughed, gorging themselves on the ripe, metallic berries that sprang as if by magic from their footprints until their lips were blue and their bellies sore. Henry awoke with a start, the storm still raging and the sky like ink. As he savored the already fading images of his dream, he remembered what their mother had said years ago after hearing Henry babble wild tales of the menagerie in grandmother's fields: "You will be a poet someday, Henry. In the age of steam and electricity, a poet. God help you." That was before the auto accident, before he'd gone blind. True to his mother's prediction though, he did become a poet of sorts. Not one of any particular stature; more of a hobbyist really. But spending No. 141 May 18, 1913 Today, a breakthrough profound enough to make the philosophers proud! Our young man Henry has far surpassed anything of which we could have dreamed. But let's not pervert Henry's magnificent new state of being by speaking of it in terms of dreams as the quack Freud might. Rather, Henry's apparitions are of true mythopoeic significance. They are a new epistemology, an epiphany! This man, his sight denied him for so long, has leapt both forward and backward in psychic evolution, as befits the cyclical nature of our human consciousness. And even better: This evolution seems to be accelerating at an exponential rate, a feedback loop in which his visions feed on themselves. We must give eternal thanks to Eleanor for volunteering him for the operation; finding the perfect candidate such as Henry — a man who had lost his biological sight yet retained the innate eye of a poet — was not easy, and Henry has been more than worth every penny we paid his sister. Here Henry stopped reading. Paid? Eleanor? She had told Henry that she'd depleted most of the family's savings to pay for Dr. Islington's operation. There had been no mention of her getting paid. Puzzled, he reached to turn to the next the page of the doctor's notebook — but he stopped as he heard footsteps in the hallway outside. Before he could think of hiding, the door of the examination room opened. It was the doctor. "Henry? What are you doing in here, my boy?" Islington was wearing pajamas, and his thin hair was disheveled. Henry almost didn't notice the pistol in his hand. "I think I'm the one who should be asking questions here, Doctor." He held up the notebook. "What is this? What does this mean? Am I your patient or your, your guinea pig? What have you and my sister been keeping from me?" Islington lowered his pistol. "Henry," he pleaded, "you misunderstand." He crossed the room to where the younger man stood at the desk, his steps light and careful. "This has been the arrangement all along, see? You're not simply regaining your sight. You've been given the truest sight of all, your birthright as a human being — the godlike perception that's been clipped and corrupted by this sick and scientific world. "We're wielding science against itself, don't you see? There are many of us, men of learning and wisdom, and we've put you on the path, we believe, to the ultimate vision, to bear witness to the ultimate RYTIS BERNOTAS, COSMIC LIGHT
metaphor." He grabbed his notebook off his desk where Henry had been reading it. "But you must stay with me, Henry. You must tell me what you see. Before this is all over, you may very well gaze upon the face of God, of Creation itself. You must tell us what form it takes. You must allow your poet's mind, that delirious eye, to be our microscope aimed at the heart of the cardinal metaphor!" The doctor began waving his pistol in the air as his voice climbed in pitch and ardor. Henry froze. On impulse he glanced at the mirror across the room, the one the doctor had always failed to cover up. He saw with alarm that his eyes were, in fact, no longer dice. Instead they had become fireworks, kaleidoscopes, maypoles, merry-go-rounds, all at once, spinning and sparking and spitting more colors than he ever knew existed. Henry lunged across the desk and grabbed the pistol from the doctor's hand. It turned to raw meat in his grasp, its wet weight flopping across his knuckles. Then he turned it around, found a trigger made of gristle, and pulled it. A putrid jet of jellylike lymph arced through the room, stinking and steaming in the air. As serpents and vapors spewed from the whirlpool that had once been the doctor's head, Henry heard his sister's scream come from outside, from the rain-swept garden. He walked through a giant mouth that had opened in the wall of the room, careful to avoid its dripping teeth, and went to find her. "Eleanor!" he yelled into the storm as he trudged through the lush muck of the garden. The soft patter of rain had picked up once more, and the wind blew black clouds across the faint rinse of sunrise on the horizon. He realized he still had the gun in his hand — only the meat had melted into the flesh of his hand, and his hand had in turn become the gun, his thumb the barrel, his bitten nails the bullets. Caught by the gale, the very substance of his new eyes streamed through the wet spring air in front of his face like egg whites in a pot of boiling water. Each of his eyes, he realized, could now see itself, and Henry felt proud at having achieved such an exquisite paradox. He could also see that his eyes had begun to change form every few seconds: now diamonds, now jellyfish, now testicles, now nebulae. In a spasm of inspiration, he severed the thin tethers that rooted them to his head; free at last, they hovered balloon-like above of him. So bemused, Henry at last saw Eleanor among the trees, naked and dancing with the animals as those haunted children had the day before. He reached out to her with his new hand, and it screamed at her. She fell. Ribbons of seaweed sprouted from her lips, and the mud of the garden sucked at her body like a mouth. Day broke. Henry looked down upon his sister, his new eyes bubbling high among the apple blossoms, and he saw that she was good. She was, in fact, no longer his betrayer, no longer sister, no longer little Eleanor — but a giantess throbbing with the probability of every woman, every human, that had been or could ever be. She was at once an octopus, a factory, a galaxy, and she raised her muddy, myriad arms in a sensuous spiral to him. Henry scooped a bed out of the wet soil of the garden and took this monster, this mother, and he joined her, as he only should in this world of cubes and colors, his new eyes smiling and crawling with larvae in the raw sugar sun. 13 EDOS DROCHER AKA KITOHODKA, GIVE U ORANGATE SKULL
Skin by Mieke Versyp, Illustrated by Sabien Clement, Translated by Sammy Koot (2025) Belgian artists Mieke Versyp and Sabien Clement’s 2025 graphic novel, Skin, shows what can emerge when the skin of your old life is shed and you become closer to your true self. Rita is separated from her husband and her daughter has moved out, leaving her to live in solitude. Detached from her previous life, she boldly decides to start nude modeling for a drawing class, feigning previous experience. Arranging these classes is Esther, a brilliant illustrator who sees beyond what is in front of her, drawing the essence underneath each subject. At home, she takes care of stick bugs, tiny creatures that cannot stay in one skin, molting and reemerging multiple times as they age. In the process, they can lose a leg, unable to regrow this lost part unless they are young. Ester is plagued by past trauma and anxiety, rarely going out and connecting beyond her art classes. Slowly, through this chance meeting, the two women form a bond through their idiosyncrasies and urge for human connection. Illustrated with soft watercolors and line drawing, and arranged with varied comic frame placement, Skin is a delicate collage of imagery sprinkled across each page. Sabien Clement draws her figures in a way that makes them seem larger than life while being slight and fragile, perfectly matching the essence of Mieke Versyp’s portrait of friendship, aging and change. A sweet glimpse into the vitality of connection, Skin is a beautiful ode to the human ability to grow closer and closer to our true selves. Grand Tour by Elisa Gonzalez (2023) Figs in the tree, figs on the stones. Stains of rotting fruit spread and shadow at the sun’s whim. The steady dissolution of body into form that signals the progress of a masterpiece. Elisa Gonzalez’s 2023 debut poetry collection shines with elegant prose centered on grief, family and memory. In the second poem in the collection, “After My Brother’s Death, I Reflect on The Iliad,” she moves through the range of pain after her brother’s murder. Gonzalez’s grief follows her, purposefully present when she replays the news footage of his murder, but always lingering no matter the daily task. As she explores this grief, mixed with memory and childhood reminisce, she mirrors it with the grief of Priam in The Iliad. In another standout poem, “Epistemology Of The Shower,” Gonzalez tells of uncovering her queerness, of youthful sexual discovery, and the shame that overshadows these moments, created through societal expectations and religion. “I learned you can separate pleasure from / disgrace, through / it’s hard to make a habit of pure happiness, / when there’s so much / to know.” Elisa Gonzalez has yet to release another work, but her 2023 collection is a noteworthy debut from a poignant, new poet. Her work has also appeared in The New Yorker and The Paris Review. No. 141 By Hana Zittel
ISSUE 107 COVER BY MARK MOTHERSBAUGH | PHOTO BY ZAC DUNN
JOE VAUX, HAWKMEN FLY TOO CLOSE TO AQUARIA - IG + BSKY: @JOEVAUX
21 Band Names Or The Road To Hell Paved With Chum By Zac Dunn Knife Callus Conspiracy of One Unknown Unknowns Crafted By False Digits Sorry Not Sorry Waffles 'n' Concrete Poor Choices A Go Go Splash That Grain On The Fire Blood Right Diaper Pillar of Filth Pantheon of Pitiful Forgiveness Soul Sucking Peloton Mom Short Straw Big Issues Liver Eating Johnson No. 141 Dumpster Fire Epiphany Taco Truck Botox Smash The Feels Bingo Goat Slayer Headpiece of Staff Infection Bodega Dream Weaver Medieval Dentistry Revival
Omitted Additions So Long And Thanks For All The Rabies, Kabuki Bunny Soldier, I Farted In Your Face Mask, Super Jerk Reunion, Satan's Rusty Trombone, Sloppy Sleepover, Cold War PBJ, Bucket Dipper Always, 2x4 Face, Witch Dr. Wayzout, Reckless Sushi Chef, Cold Cold Cold, The Force Is Not With You, Ever Fatal Flaw, Sorest Loser, No Woman No Sly, Mortal Foe BFF, Big City Chum Love, Mutineer Mascot, Commando Sub Puppy, Tool of My Faulty Vision, Bashful Flasher, Socks Over Slippers, Shitty Attitude Job Interview, Messy Breakup Power Lunch, Guido Von Shizer, Hammer Hunchback of Ego Pain, Scabs At Work, Puppy Glove, Hamburger Stand Nemesis, Make Up Sex Quiff, Sucker For Fudge, Chrome-Plated Buster Unicorn, Basic Face Mute Evangelist, Claus Claus Claus
THE WEIRD AND WONDERFUL WORLD OF SUSANN BROX NILSEN THE MYSTERIOUS MURDY BIRDY Based on a true story. When my husband and I lived in the countryside, we experienced something quite mysterious and unexplainable. For the record, this was Norway during winter time, meaning excessive amount of snow and polar night darkness. One night, we woke up to the most horrendous scream outside our bedroom window. We heard it several times, and to be honest, it sounded like human torture. The scream quickly moved from one place to another outside — it almost seemed like a flying bird. We nervously looked out the window, but it was pitch black. Since it sounded like a bloody murder, and we imagined it was some kind of bird, we named the mysterious creature Murdy Birdy. We heard Murdy Birdy once a week, and always during the night. Every time we tried to get a glance of it, we couldn't see anything because of the darkness. This made us question its appearance, so we discussed what it could look like. This was a fast-moving thing, so it probably had a very large wingspan. The scream was out of this world, so the throat had to be thick and muscular. We were convinced that this wasn't a creature with a vegetarian diet, the menu was most likely red, fresh meat. The only color that fits this description would be black and white. And last, let's throw in some dead eyes with small pupils. After some time we got used to hearing Murdy Birdy now and then. But when spring started to arrive, it suddenly disappeared! One No. 141 day, later that year, my husband came across a video on YouTube by coincidence. It was a sound clip of an Arctic fox doing mating calls. It was the exact same sound as Murdy Birdy! The case was now solved, but had a bittersweet end. For a while it was kind of exciting to have a supernatural pet living outside our window. RIP Murdy Birdy. CHECK OUT SUSI’S WEIRD AND WONDERFUL CREATIONS: INSTAGRAM: @SUSI_THEWEIRDANDWONDERFUL WEIRDWONDERFULSUSI.BIGCARTEL.COM
21 ART BY CREATICKLE - @CREATICKLE | CREATICKLE.ETSY.COM
BY TOM MURPHY BOLONIUM – FONEY Replete with now archaic cultural references — “Avoid the Noid” being well past its due by date — a song titled “Outta Touch” weaves those other such pop culture relics in perfectly. Including an homage to lovable arch nerd Pee-wee Herman, this “accordion rock” album manages to work against all odds. It takes the concept of being self-aware and irony to new levels while not sacrificing an eccentric musical vision that could be pure gimmickry, except for the superb musicianship and detailed attention to songcraft. Are these people super into Zappa, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, and They Might Be Giants? If not, it sounds like it’s aimed toward fans of all three. FLUTTER – WHEN YOU LOVE SOMEBODY On first listen this EP is like taking a time machine back to the late 70s or early 80s when the memory of Big Star and the Raspberries were fresh and The dB’s were in that lane innovating the sound of power pop. But Flutter’s guitar has a little more garage rock grit and punch behind the jangle and melodies, evoking 2010’s vintage sound. The lyrics about the travails of love and yearning for connection are refreshingly free of modern notions of self-awareness, and hit as utterly sincere as delivered by Josh Colpitts’ Phil Lynott-esque baritone. JEFFREY WENTWORTH STEVENS – MY MYLAR LUNGS As summer transitions to fall, these songs are like a catalog of the more mundane moments of warmer months. If you take a moment to pause and appreciate, you’ll find the elegant beauty in the details of experiences and stimuli you normally take for granted and pay no mind. The minimal techno beats are as much texture as route to deliver the calming rhythms and harmonic interplay of tones coming into the foreground and fading back. Like Stevens was able to imagine the changing of larger patterns of weather and season, while creating the musical equivalent of that subtle shift. It’s a deeply calming and introspective set of ambient compositions that are beyond nostalgic to capturing eternal and recurring emotional resonances as sound collages. RUBEDO – CITRINITAS Recorded at RARE Records in Winchester, TN, one imagines a touch of the kind of soul and pop music produced in Memphis and Nashville absorbed into these songs. Rubedo has always had a gift for crafting a hook. But here, the music has soulfulness — an extra level of thoughtfulness and introspection — that’s long been there, but is now much more at the forefront. The first side is tender songs about a love, with an expanded spiritual aspect to its expression, elevating the sentiments well beyond cliche. When “Oligarch Slank” kicks in, it’s pure righteous outrage thrilling in rhetoric and its fiery, fuzzed-out arrangements. Side Two is thus a little dirtier in tone with more aggressive and noisy songwriting, yet still informed by a love of human struggle for a more nurturing world heard on Side One. TIME – RADIOLARIAN BALLET All of Time’s albums — including those as Calm. with AwareNess who does some production here — are like the literary successor of insurgent poetic artforms. His most recent records have deeply personal stories in which he finds ways of tracing experiences into larger social narratives and analysis. It is critical pedagogy in practice, minus the pretension of assuming he can enact transformation in others. Instead his work encourages our own honesty and truth in finding ourselves in the constellation of human consciousness that has the power to enact change. And yet, the melancholic and layered beats is what draws you into these complex yet accessible stories and keeps you listening. ZEPHR – PAST LIVES The glittery guitar tone that carries the melody of “Rome,” and the dual vocals with an enthusiastic momentum, hits the brain like a wonderful fusion of Hot Water Music and Hüsker Dü. It evokes the raw exuberance and thrill of being alive even with its challenges and disappointments. Throughout the record, the band vividly captures working class life and the struggle to find joy and meaning when the carpet gets yanked from underneath you by late capitalism. That despair cuts into your friend circle, yet finds a way to embrace what’s vital and sustain a sense of personal dignity. FOR MORE, VISIT QUEENCITYSOUNDSANDART.WORDPRESS.COM
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NICK FLOOK, NOIR NIGHTS - @FLOOKO
MIDLIFE IN THE CITY ... BY DANIEL LANDES When the storm rolled in, I was unprepared for its severity. Consumed as I am with the immediacy of my reality, I missed the warnings. Had I visited a rooftop I would have seen the clouds forming way out on the Eastern Plains. Rolling grey clouds, illuminated by intermittent flashes of lightning, dragging the earth with wispy tendrils of rain. From the rooftop I would have seen where the city ends and the vastness of the eastern horizon flattens out. Looking west to see the immediate presence of Mount Blue Sky bumping base with the foothills outside of Denver. Mount Blue Sky was previously named after former Colorado governor John Evans who proved himself to be a murderous bastard when his declarations to “kill and destroy” hostile Indians lead to much death; including women, children and the elderly at the Sand Creek Massacre. Mountains, unlike monuments to Confederate soldiers, can’t be torn down, but you sure as fuck can rename them. Had I not stopped paying attention to the news (my mental real estate is not available for just any developer to bulldoze), I could have heard the weather forecast predicting the intensity of the storm that was coming. Instead I’m down here on street level getting soaked to the bone looking at old photos on my phone wondering why me? My depth of field has shrunk to the end of my arm. I cannot see beyond my fingers. My world is small and immediate. Unimportant yet urgent. I carry the anxiety of someone who has actual responsibility to something greater than the economy. The rainwater is rising in the gutters and I feel no agency to move. My parents have both died within the last few years. I miss my mother. She gave me comfort since before I could crawl. My father is buried alongside all the conversations we were both too afraid to have. I miss my father too. Not because he gave me comfort. Quite the opposite. I miss him for what was not said, like the opportunity to find out about his intentions and motivations. I am left with my assumptions. Over the years I have assumed his positive intent. It’s easier that way. I feel lost without them. My sons, who I kissed a million times when their wrists were fat and their fingers chubby, have moved out of the house. Cleaning out the closet, I found a box filled with their childhood arts. I will never live to experience a joy as great as those times. Halcyon days indeed. They do not have a childhood home to return to so they come and sleep on the couch and feel awkward about raiding the fridge. When I was young I climbed the highest peaks in the Rocky Mountains. From the summit I could see for miles, the mountain ranges beyond mountain ranges all beneath a half dome sky. I haven’t climbed a mountain in many years. My world is now so small and immediate. What I know is this storm will pass; the storms always pass. The sun will come out, my clothes will dry. But will I remember? Remember to climb? To expand my horizons and see beyond my immediate situation to see what is coming? Or will I stay down here on street level, content with my distractions, and act caught off guard when another storm rolls in? 29
EVAN LORENZEN, LAYERS - BEST OF 075 No. 141
RUMTUM 31
ROBYN TAYLOR, DESERT ALIEN WORLD
1 Publizr