Manifesto Toward the Impossible
[Sarah Ciston]
Why make manifestos? Why is it so important to declare, to reinvent?
In this brave new era of breakdown, we see opportunity! We have a chance to shed the status quo for everything we’ve always wanted. Why not? Even our most tempered, realistic expectations didn’t work out quite the way we were told they should, so we refuse to temper our expectations any longer.
We want. We want everything — fully, openly, more.
Why want this?
Because there is nothing else.
Because everything will quickly fade.
Because both the pain and the bliss of life will pass from us too soon.
Because it is no longer worth being patient against what you deserve.
We will ask for and expect nothing less from the world. We will no longer listen to naysayers who speak of the impossible like it can’t be done, like it does not exist as much or even more than anything else.
San Francisco’s Been Chucking Rocks at Me from the Other Side of the Moon
[Zulema Summerfield]
San Francisco’s been chucking rocks at me from the other side of the moon. This is real conflict. It’s like having animals descend upon you, alighting on your outstretched arms, your face turned up to the sky… but then they turn on you and tear apart your face, shoot venom into your mouth and claw out your eyes.
San Francisco’s chucking rocks at me, also shooting guns into the air outside my window, stealing my mail, posting shit about me on MySpace. The internet breeds conflict between San Francisco and me. A trolley car rolls over the vulnerable side of my heart (the tender side, the side that lives in fear, the side that’s already swollen and bruised), and the city just stands there, points and laughs and stares. I think, Maybe it will be better if I move? But prices are too high, and really, there’s nowhere else to go.
So I escape into the forest for a few days, survive on foraged mushrooms and squirrels I hunt myself with a slingshot my brother gave me. A couple of hours later, a ranger shows up. He’s got a telephone whose cord stretches all the way across the forest, to the far horizon where his cabin is. I can see the lights blinking there.
The ranger shakes his head, clucks his tongue. “Them mushrooms’ll kill ya.” He hands me the phone. “Sfer you.” He’s the kind of man I’d have loved in another life — moustache, doesn’t talk much, hides things under the bed. But then he walks away.
“Hello?”
The city is buzzing on the other end of the line.
“You can run but you can’t hide…” I think I can hear the sound of knuckles grinding, or at the very least being popped.
Birds are out here somewhere. They’re just shadows in these shadowed trees. Those birds?
There’s no getting away from those birds. They’re all just waiting for their chance.
But god! My eyes are so tired. Vigilance is costly. Vigilance is a million dollars on which I haven’t got a hold.
