Wordpress

Thinking of moving to Wordpress.

Looks, feels, more mature.

Omnia Vanitas Review

Myself and a friend of mine, Ms. Marissa Ayala, have decided to penetrate the literary world with a new lit magazine centered around, through, within literary erotica.

...Omnia Vanitas Review...

Think of us as a delicate mixture of New Narrative, Féminine Écriture, and Clit Lit. Explicit descriptions of sex written in white ink. Deflowering language. The playful touching of intertextuality. Deliberately elusive linguistic weavings. Like legs. Multiple orgasms with multiple climaxes. Words pregnant with child. With quintuplets. Words wet with formlessness. Esoterica. Etcetera.

We were thinking of our first issue as an issue for our talented friends, a space where we could all get published headache free.

So far I’ve been completely blown away by the submissions we’ve received. Completely blown away.

Our first issue’s inspiration, its cynosure, its title is the Invisible Corset. Many of our authors have written or included the corset in some manner. And though we’re unsure if all our issues are going to have a theme, our first certainly does. We will of course accept work with minimal corsetry references, and would love to read works completely devoid of corsets as well. It would go against our principle to be excessively strict.

And, of course, we're a quarterly review, or biannual, we haven't decided which. Which means, there's always next time too.

Because we’re all aspiring writers, therefore sorely lacking necessary funding, Omnia Vanitas will primarily begin as an online literary review, but there will be an option of purchasing printed copies. We’ll just be making them as they’re ordered. That being said, unfortunately we are not going to be able to pay any of our published authors, but this will be a chance for you to get your name out there.

And your name alongside some really talented writers.

And, given the content, I would not mind at all if you wanted to use a pseudonym. I thought about it. Camilla Libretto would’ve been mine. Still might, someday.

We hope to have the site up and running within a month. So the sooner you can get your short stories, or poems, or prose poems, or essays, or love letters, or anything else that might be relevant to us would be lovely. Our limit is about 5,000 words.

And please send all your queries and your submissions to: omnia.vanitas.review@gmail.com

By, near, say August 15.

And please comprise a short bio, whatever you wish, to be included alongside your work, on our site, permanently.

And. Spread the word.

And.

Thank you.

Catherine Borders

Omnia Vanitas Review

Masculinity

What attracts me most to my lover is how masculine his prose is. Every text he transmits, and this includes body language, exudes masculinity.

Sarah and I discussed this once on the F train. It is as if all space bends and moves to suit his needs. Language orbits around him, and when he writes, or even speaks (because there is a distinction) he chooses his words carefully, deliberately. It's very god-like.

And I do equate the concept of God with masculine temerity.

I, on the other hand, consider myself a feminine writer. Not at all inferior, but different. I bend, I move, I let space dictate my sentences. The void, the spaces in between the letters carries just as much importance. Unlike men, I am not penetrating the void, but playing with it.

That being said, the voyeur in me likes watching someone else penetrate it.

When he and I first made love I told him that I loved the way he maneuvered language. Then he maneuvered me.

Words That Can Never Die

1.

Not her too!

Fuck!

Not her!

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.

Of course,

she isn’t the first.

There have been Plath sightings all over the block.

Who doesn’t have the Bell Jar?

Wish they were safe in a bell jar right now?

Whatever I see I swallow immediately

Aaaaaaah!

Get the hose!

Shit!

Where the fuck

are the matches?!?

Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.

Chomp. Chomp.

Chomp. Chomp.

The eye of a little god, indeed.

She sees but she does not respond.

2.

January 20,

Still no sign of retreating, and yet I always knew this would happen. My fifth grade English teacher warned me about this. Mrs. Sherman. She never matched her socks, or any article of clothing for that matter. She spoke in fragments frequently and had a lot of obsessions. One was big garbage day, when two days a year no one had to pay for their garbage so everyone cleaned out their garages and toolsheds leaving heaps and heaps of old junk waiting on the curb. She also talked a lot about clowns, and how they were to be buried alongside an egg with their clown make-up painted on it. A clown’s make-up is very telling, you know, she would say. Each as distinct as a snowflake. Strange woman. But she was terribly frightened of books. Words that can never die, she’d say. This is why she became an English teacher. This is why she sought to master the amassing world of literature. There are far more books than people, she warned, far more books. She never owned any books. And she never, ever, under any circumstances stepped foot in a library. She read one book at a time. About one a day! Students fetched the books from the library for her. She would pay them in hard candy, but the students gladly did it to get out of her class for a couple of minutes. Everyone laughed at her. Until she had to substitute second grade one day, and the little girl, Carlotta Brown, skipping, carrying a ratty copy of Moby Dick in her arms, choked on the candy and died. Mrs. Sherman was fired. Never to be seen again. I wonder where she is now? Probably surviving. Probably the leader of a platoon.

3.

Mr. Sherman may or may not have died in a car crash or because of colon cancer. He may or may not be thinking of Linda in these bizarre times, as he would have undoubtedly called them. But one thing’s for certain, he certainly is not here, and for this, Linda is exceedingly grateful.

She used to mutter to herself a lot but now she outright speaks. “Mother fucking Dahl! The children’s books are always the worst!” The least likely to die, she means. They’re built like tanks, made to withstand the smudges, the rips and the tears, the banging, the throwing, some, even the bath! They’re almost indestructible, as they’re used to being used as weapons. And there’s something unsettling about the juxtaposition, like an adorable little kitten that murders.

Books can only utter the words within them, nothing more. So when One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish comes screeching, barking there’s something uncanny in the words: From there to here and here to there, tiny things are everywhere!

Even worse, the army of Bibles.

“Thou shall not kill! Thou shall not kill!”

Some mistranslations: “Thou can not kill!”

(No one should ever, ever be caught dead without a phial of holy water.)

Mrs. Sherman saw the signs. She felt the low rumblings on the steps of the public library. She heard the groans, the creaks from the pews. They were just waking up.

She tried to warn everyone. She tried.

She came out of the woodwork. She walked the streets, Mrs. Sherman, now just a little old lady. Marching. Yelling. She told them the end was nigh. Nigh, she said! They all laughed again.

They laughed and they laughed until the first book fanned open all on its own, without a breeze or a fan. It just popped open with a tiny vibration. Curious, the reader thought. Thinking it was a sign, he moved the book he was reading aside and turned his gaze toward Mein Kampf. Naturally, it was Mein Kampf, people said.

“The broad masses of a population are more amenable to the appeal of rhetoric than to any other force!” It shrieked and then it ripped the head off the poor professor’s body with one single bite.

This is when she put her plan into action and moved to an island. Because, as everyone knows, water damage is lethal to a book’s livelihood, save for a few industrial strength children’s copies.

But this was only step one. Wouldn’t you like to know step two? Aren’t you wishing you didn’t laugh at Mrs. Sherman?

by the way...

my novel doesn't have cancer anymore.

It underwent intense radiation therapy.

And intense psychotherapy.

Technically, it's done.

Done but not dead, or undead, if you believe books are zombies.

Heart pumping. Still alive, still desiring. Please read me, it says.

Currently, my two editors are on the case.

I love my two editors, by the way. Very much.

love, that word...

Love for the sake of love.

L'amour pour l'amour.

Once, more than once, actually, I fell in love with a boy, who was nothing in the end, except a pure representation of love.

He looked like love. He smelled like love. All the five senses were covered.

Until they weren't.

And I was unsure why I was so keen on falling in love, with someone else, though, ostensibly, with love.

This was a realization I loved to make. And accuse others of. Especially friends that needed to dump their lovers. Or boys I didn't really like.

"You're not in love with me! You only want to be in love! I could be anyone!"

No one ever agreed to this on the spot. They would seem foolish if they did. Instead, they defended their position, as if to the death.

[Till death do you part.]

I never understood love that wasn't reciprocal.

Unrequited love seems impossible, unless one of the two suddenly falls out of love. Suddenly or gradually. Usually the latter then the former.

But, of course, what do I know? Unrequited love is what poetry is all about. Or at least pop music. But still, usually it's not unrequited, it's on the brink of discovery.

Sex dangling like the sword of Damocles, which it always does.

Dangles.

But love, that word...

Love is a whore, a word that gets passed around without as much as an afterthought. A word that is said only to be heard.

"I love you."

"I love you too."

I saw a father with his two children approach their apartment door. All of these facts are assumptions until the daughter stops and rings the buzzer. When I walk past I hear the intercom speak: "And?"

"And I love you."

"And?"

"I love you."

"And?"

The son approaches. "I love you!" He's enthusiastic.

"And?"

"And I love you," both her kids say in unison. I think the little boy is laughing.

"And Father?"

Exhausted. Tired of this game. Tired of this game three weeks ago. Carrying a sack of groceries. Annoyed that he is without keys. He speaks quickly, head hung low. "I love you."

They're buzzed in.

None of them are allowed inside this woman's house, within her chamber walls, unless they profess their love.

I'm not even sure she began this charade with an I-love-you herself.

Is this a sign of insecurity?

What is?

Writing?

L'art pour l'amour.