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contents/no. 6

poetry


Late Blooming reconstruction of neanderthal woman robert perchan

Some six weeks into my 51st full tilt around the Sun I find my solitary self plucking tiny hairs from a tuft sprouting on the blunt tip of my nose. 200,000 years of Homo sapiens evolution and I end up here tonight staring at my mug and a poised pair of tweezers in the bathroom mirror. 200,000 years of DNA exchanges, natural selections and unselections,

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The Affiliate AN ECOLOGY OF BIOPHILIC VALUES yvette a. schnoeker-shorb

For Stephen R. Kellert

i.

We are but planetary dreams, puzzles
of cells completed, yet unsolved,
complexes of tendencies
defined by organic associations
in Nature. Culture me not
to be engineered to desire
lifeless essentials

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Camille
CHILD OF DIVORCE

elizabeth insogna, 2005

lynn strongin

had made it the 1000 miles thru the Rockies with her daddy who is divorced, a weekend
daddy, the split seed the divided god
to deliver the car
in Albuquerque. I fried porkchops the first night, despite the heat despite being a Jew
in a scold that would melt glass
plastic
the saints

Wincing at the Beautiful

paul hostovsky

So my friend Phil is telling me how
he can't get a date
how he loves women and how
they're always giving him looks
so I ask him what kind of looks
so he winces at the beautiful
braless young woman passing by
at that particular propitious moment
giving her a look of such
longing and longevity
that she returns his look with a look
that kills his entire family tree
from the roots to the unimagined

Storm Clitoris

howard bloom, 2004

howard bloom

hormones heave
and skin receptors

gather like the black

storm clouds

and that pink

of rising sun

beneath the labial shelf of cloud

turns red

in your

stories

The Emperor's New Clothes
A REVISED VERSION

dylan evans

“We shouldn't blame ourselves. But it's like the psychologist said. Some children just never get it. They never mature enough to understand the value of lying. It's a biological condition, a genetic disease.”

Suddenly, from within the crowd, came the high-pitched voice of a child. “Look! He's got no clothes on! The emperor is naked!”
All eyes turned towards the child, and then to the parents, whose faces had gone red with shame. The father grabbed the child by the ear and pulled very hard, while the mother

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The Closer

jay santini

By now, I am resigned to it. Leaving open is simply Amy’s “way,” as natural to her as digestion or sleep. It is not that Amy prefers objects to be left open, merely that she does in fact tend to leave them open because for her the openness is not a problem.

What concerns me is the CD player. As I enter the family room sipping my morning coffee, I notice that Amy has once again left the player on overnight with its tray extended, the machine’s countenance that of a child sticking its tongue out at me ― or Amy sticking her tongue out at me. Turning my back on the player to gaze out our

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The Alien Planet of Sex with a New Man

aman resort, bali

ellen salle

A story, like a potential lover, wants — needs — to be noticed. Whereas a man might don a beautiful, deep-red linen shirt (especially when all the men are wearing blue, cotton plaid) in service of his genes, a story might don a cute, geeky, novel title in service of its memes.

I go back and forth with this title. It’s not really mine and not really my style, exactly — it’s Adrian’s — from his prescient story, “White Fur.” My editor likes it, says I should keep it, says “it’s endearing and novel.” I thought about calling it “Red Yucca” for a bit, but you might've passed by “Red Yucca” — not “The Alien Planet of Sex with a New Man,” though! How could you resist “The Alien Planet of Sex with a New

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Leo in the Attic

vien, 1765

ronald pies

I didn’t exactly volunteer to be Uncle Leo’s caretaker-in-chief. Nor had I planned, at age 27, to be living at home with my widowed mother, or working as a “sales associate” at the Borders in Newton. But after I left the literature program at Northeastern, the economy soured, I was broke, and it was either move in with Mom or hook up with my ex-girlfriend. My mother actually won out on the personality factor, and is decidedly a better cook than the ex.

“The Universe is transformation. Life is opinion.”— Marcus Aurelius

My crazy Uncle Leo lives in our attic. Today, when I offered him his cocktail of Resperdal, Seroquel, and lithium, he asked me — almost apologetically — if I had noticed that the imperfections in the glass of his dormer window formed a pattern. “If you connect the little bubbles, starting from the left upper quadrant and moving clockwise, they form a silhouette of the prophet Isaiah.” I told my uncle that I couldn’t see the pattern, but that I hoped he found some happiness in it. “Oh, yes, Joel, yes, I

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discourse


The Role of Traditional Children's Stories in Human Evolution megan jz, 2005 kathryn coe, craig palmer, nancy e. aiken, chris cassidy

A general evolutionary prediction is that traditional stories should encourage behaviors that helped our ancestors survive and reproduce in the past....We expect the majority of traditional stories will concern the most important, unpredictable, and potentially dangerous aspect of the human ancestral environment: other humans.

Most Darwinists would agree that modern Darwinian theory can shed light on cultural behavior, including the behaviors of composing and telling stories. Where Darwinists interested in literary narrative might differ, however, is in the definition of what should be included in the category of literary narrative:, i.e., does literary narrative refer only to the fine arts or are stories told in tribal societies also examples of literary narrative?. Another place where such Darwinists differ is in their view of the function of literary narrative. Those who focus on literature as fine art argue that literary narrative has a cognitive

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Perfuming the Mind
THE BIOLOGICAL LOGIC OF PHYSICAL ATTRACTION

james v. kohl

All mammalian sexual behavior, including human sexual behavior is driven by pheromones. Since only humans make conscious associations (e.g., think), men and women are likely to think that their sexual behavior is driven by visually perceived physical attraction. This erroneous thinking defies biological logic, and consistently fails to offer an explanation for many aspects of human sexual behavior (e.g., paraphilias, and homosexuality).

People tend to think of "seeing" or "observing" directly with their senses, as if what we see, hear, touch, taste, or smell directly determines our overall impression of the world around us. Few people think about unconscious affect, which by its nature does not require any thought.

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Intersecting Worlds
ON GRIEF, CLAIR-SENTIENCE, AND PLACE

megan jz,, 2005

deborah denicola

Was this my projection of the moving energy field around me, one based upon quantum physics, that hypothesized connection between science and faith, the machinations that made me aware of invisible dimensions? Could my unconscious mind have given me an image of "The Butterfly Theory" with its understructure showing the interdependencies of intersecting worlds? Was I influencing my own reality by projecting British physicist Rupert Sheldrake's idea of "morphic resonance," where the present overlays the past? Einstein helped us understand that time is only a construct, past, present and future are all happening at once in the Now.

The sun was just coming up at five a.m., the sky, a finger-painting of mauve and tangerine, when my guide deposited me at a lone cabin atop a hill. My expansive vista included overgrown and wind-torn grasses as well as the churning

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reviews

Signposts for a Naturalist Criticism

william benzon

Whereas the Darwinists have explicitly talked about the value and importance of science and of the need for a scientific approach to literature, Moretti never talks about science at all. Let my imaginary funding decisions stand as a comment on the intellectual value of professing science as opposed to gathering data in the pursuit of a naturalist study of literature.

A Naturalist Imperative

The two books under review present alternatives to current methods of literary study. In Graphs, Maps, Trees, Franco Moretti opts for “distant reading” where “distance is however not an obstacle, but a specific form of knowledge: fewer elements, hence a sharper sense of their overall interconnection. Shapes, relations, structures. Forms. Models.” Among his structures are growth curves from quantitative history, though they could be from population biology, and phylogenetic or genealogical trees. The Literary Animal, edited by Jonathan Gottschall and David Sloan Wilson, is biological through and through, justifying the ways of biology to students of culture and arguing that story tellers have known it all along.

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Boggling the Mind

todd i. stark

If I’m wrong and our reality truly is filled with materializations, anomalous information transfer, and direct physical effects from human intention, then Tiller’s model may well be the greatest conceptual breakthrough that we have ever imagined.

Some Science Adventures with Real Magic conveys a simple and familiar idea in an unusually complex way. The goal is to define and explain broad domains of anomalous phenomena in a way consistent with modern science, and to show what it all means for the future and potential of humanity. These efforts have typically been pigeon-holed by hard-line physicists and others as "New Age" mysticism, while

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art

Let's Go!

monica d. church

42” X 30“ mixed media on rives bfk, 2004

I am keenly aware of areas where domestic life intersects with intellectual curiosity. I began researching fertility and birth rituals while I was pregnant. Seeing Pre-Islamic Kyrgyz and Uzbek suzanis (marriage bed quilts) feature circular motifs in vibrant reds, pinks, oranges, that represent the sun, moon, the heavens, flowers, or pomegranates—all symbols of fertility—resonated deeply with me. Many cultures use circular imagery to represent the cycle of life. Today, in modern day Bukhara, a "moon-sky" motif is still appearing on circular loaves of unleavened bread, as it has for hundreds of years. Thus, motherhood makes for strange inspirational bedfellows. In addition to the centuries-old fertility and childbirth objects, simple domestic objects serve as creative sparks for my paintings: Hula-hoops, bubble wands and potty chairs.

photo: robin poritzky

Untitled (tomatillo, opening)

silver gelatin print, 15" x 15", 2001

megan pinch

photo: melissa frazier

This piece is from cadence, a body of work which combines different elements to create a visual narrative. Cadence is a visual poem about balance - light and darkness; form and texture; sharpness and softness.