ABOUT

CONTENTS

EDITORIAL

ARCHIVE

LAGNIAPPE

MAST

SUBMISSIONS

Five Poems
by Peter Davis


Hitler’s Mustache: An Overview

It is possible that no one in my family knows the cape curdling around my neck, this long black furry noose, or rooms with such wounds, as a simple plot of a thousand or so German hairs above a failed postcard artist’s upper lip. Did he have this thing in war as a youth? When he wrote in prison? I’m too lazy for this sort of research when the next mustache could be mustache. The swerving this mustache does as it barrels through this mustache after mustache, lining the roads mustache, corn, jug of cider, pumpkin patch, mustache saluting, marching mustache, machete mustache, mustache stiffening, mustache alert, muscled mustache, mustache ground to a mustard, put in pies, stuffed in rolls, in pouches, in salads and fruit slices. Toasting mustache in the toaster one morning, covering the house in mustache soot, covering the roof of your mouth with soot, mustache cigar ash, from cat gut mustache and trashed musky mustache. I’m slinging this thing by its ankles for a reason, for a mustache, a movie film made of mustache, mustache engines and mustache cars, mustache disease too. A mustache doctor that heals wounds in the jungles of Africa, swatting flies—


Hitler’s Mustache: The Portrait of Henry Darger

What is perfectly mustache is an apartment cluttered with newspaper clippings, magazines, etc. I’m sure mustache lived in the walls, crawling through the filth, shimmering through the I-beams and 2 x 4’s. I’m sure there were sexy female mustaches in floorboards, luring some in and strangling them if possible, except, otherwise, as if every male is female and every female is male. All mustache equal mustache. Not a sliver of guilt more plausible than a smidgen of revenge. Not pedophile more probable than pedophile less possible. Sticky situation.

If it were a curse stuck in a collar, dart-like and pricking blood from the neck, if it were something similar, like Jimmy Rodgers is compared to Merle Haggard (who I understand considers himself an inferior singer, but has a beard equipped with a voice box)—If this sort of comparison had any impact at all...Who grows this particular mustache? This mustache grows Henry Darger.


Hitler’s Mustache: The Confession

I feel like a bad mustache a lot of the time. With no friends, and for good reason, greedy and mean and not worth the time. I recognize this sensation often as the symptom of mental mustache but more often as the truth. Who knows about masks? Not me. I’m moving at the speed of light and the occurrence of seeing light gets mustache, etc. I want to tell something about myself, but, mustache.
         And of course you’ll consider me rude and histrionic and mustache, but it’s the truth. For a whole lifetime a person is a human. A person is a person whether they know it or not. And if they do, if they feel as if they have a chance, even Superman can’t see through lead. So they might find it, snuggled as if children under flannel sheets, huddling and gaining strength, jumping out from closed closet doors and yelling “Boo!” It may remind them of their own children or of mustaches they can’t put in their cranium and lull to sleep. The whole time becoming blacker and more like a doorway or trapdoor, removing doubt about devout thoughts. There is a mustache. There is one and we all know it. Call it a black, square magnet, or a black square mustache—still this chalkboard is full of chalk. Some mustache has stood in front of this room for a long time with the back of his shirt un-tucked and sweat in his armpits, jotting some mustache code.

Hitler’s Mustache: The Predictable Response

Dear Sir,

         Thank you for your civil rejection letter. I don't know if I sent you my new cover letter, with my name in bold print, underlined, centered at the top of the page, to mimic the letterheads of mustaches; but what I've noticed over the years (I started submitting about 19Mustache and was printed in several mustaches that ultimately went out of business, and haven't submitted anymore until just this past month, for which I've now got about seven or eight mustaches, including yours…) mustache, I've noticed is that (you are a rare exception!) there is a very strong implication that mustache exist so that there can be mustache, and it strikes me as rude, incorrect, foolish, dull (and you know what mustache said: “the dead are the dull, and the dull are the damned”). Also, it is frightening and enlightening, in a very dim way, to be told by one of the mustaches that they receive about 35,000 mustaches a year, and print I think it was 10. I was a volunteer mustache editor for the Sacramento Mustache in the '70s - what a mustache that was, reporters going behind my back to sabotage the little space I was given by the editor, due to his confidence in my work, and our mutual affection for Dietrich Bonhoeffer; the reporters apparently hated mustache and believed there could not possibly be a place for it in a mustache – and, as mustache, I received hundreds of approximations of mustaches, generally mustache, with absolutely no saving mustache whatever, literally hundreds, for the one or two that could pass for mustache. Mustache was not at all difficult for me to see what lines and images possessed quality, mustache what those qualities were, and which lines and stanzas absolutely did not. What I'm saying is that there is not enough taste to make the Experience of mustache in America in mustache way relevant. But I started this letter (mustache) simply to tell you how much I mustache your civility, and sincerity, and sensitivity, which are all mustache in your letter. Congratulations for maintaining your mustache in the face of the sorry odds against American mustache, I'd say at least 35,000 to one - but more likely 30,000,000 to one. Oh, and I note that I sent you mustaches that reflect my mustache, and want you to mustache I have all kinds of mustache, some of which you no doubt must ache enjoy. And if it isn't impossible, how about mustacheing along one of yours, perhaps a mustache one, of which you are particularly mustache. I'd very mustache like to see the kind of work you mustache.

Sincerely,

Mustache

Hitler’s Mustache: The Short Story

Important arrangements were to be made. The party would not plan itself. She sat on her square, black sofa, dreaming about the decorations and imagining the caterer and even some of the clothes her guests might be wearing. It made her happy to think like this. But, soon enough, her grand hopes began to settle like soft snow on the warm floor of the situation. She didn’t have much money. A. would never get behind her on this. Her sister-in-law would drink too much and break her black, square heel and throw her purse in the swimming pool and fall asleep in a lawn chair. There were bills that needed to be paid now. If only she had never met mustache. If only he hadn’t mustached her aunt in a furnace, or
breaded her over an open mustache.
          That evening while her husband and children ate the food she had carefully mustached for them, she got an idea. Perhaps, she thought, if I were to mistake something for mustache. It seemed perfect. It covered all the angles. A. would get behind it because he needed that mustache. Her sister-in-law would take care of the bills. The cold snow began to melt. As a metaphor for her mood the cold snow no longer made sense and began to drift upward, out of the story, out of the poem, existing only in the past, in another time, one that seemed much bleaker.
          The next morning she packed the children’s lunches and pressed A.’s shirt for him. After the kids were on the bus, and A. kissed her cheek and drove the Volkswagen down the long driveway, she fed the mustache and packed her baggage. She called the mustache. Put a note on the door for the mustache, and left, making sure she left the mustache slightly cracked so the mustache would be able to mustache the mustache.
          The day was hot and by the time she reached the airport she was sweating through her shirt. She fanned herself with a mustache and nervously surveyed the situation. There were two guards near the mustache. Each mustache looked like it held mustache. She ordered a cup of mustache from
the mustache who worked behind the mustache.
         Mustache knew that she couldn’t mustache about this forever. She’d have to make up her mind mustache. She studied the mustache. She thought about all of the mustache in her mustache. All of the mustache. All of the mustache and mustache and must ache and mustache. She thought about the mustaches when her mustache was put in mustache. She took one more mustache of mustache. She mustached. She mustached her mustache and with every mustache of her mustache, mustached.