​Nicolas Henderson CC



"Building community and nurturing your creativity is how you make a world where you can handle the pain of living, and the losses that must come, without having to take others down with you."
--Jenny Bienemann


   An emotional storm is always brewing in us. I tell you, it is two people meeting. What will come of it, a funeral or a birth? Every place I've ever been has a cold spot in the room. How do I fill it with my warmth? How do I gather in those who, like me, feel so scattered - like out of place artifacts in an emotional museum? The most important things start real small. We all want to be seen, heard, felt, received and believed. But who will truly let us in? Will it be safe to breathe in that room? Can we trust that our story, and their story, will speak into, and not onto, each other's? How do we really listen? How do we open that door? 

   I love questions. They allow me to dream the hard edges of a thing into something softer. Something I can taste: flavor in the soul of the meal. It wasn't always so easy for me to answer a question. Like: "what are you feeling right now?" "I don't know," I'd once say, terrified at the thought. But oh, how the question can make you curious. What am I feeling right now? Time is a dealer of questions. Trauma can strip the answering skin right off the bone. Some questions make you feel like you've been thrown into a battle you are completely unarmored for. Many of us weren't given the containing space, early on, to know what the fuck was going on in our homes. Are the people I depend on trying to kill me? Each other? Is love just a form of psychic murder talking pretty in public? Like Dar Williams sings, it's a war in there: growing up.

   So how do we come to community given that absolutely everything in us is at stake? It's hard to trust that we will be received given the procedural wounds we carry with us. And yet, we branch out from our wounds, make our own water in these deserts of time. Surely we will always fail each other in some ways. Will our failure be a funeral or a birth? Will we branch out or hunker down? 

   It can take years just to be able to answer a question about the feeling of the moment. It's not always safe to know what you're feeling. When you're young and terrified it's best not to know too much about it. That can build so many rooms of unknowing in us we get lost in the neighborhoods of our own bodies. If asked where I live, how can I possibly give you directions? I own 20,000 houses of procedural abandonment and pain and little emotional murders. If I can't even find my own way home, how could I ever trust that you might find the right house?

   Is there a truer home than the one we build inside a poem, a story, a piece of our heart's art? I have found in these things a kind of nest built out of the detritus of the soul's long aching highway. Maybe that's all community really is. One big beautiful messy nest that we learn to put together, piece by piece, pain by pain, joy by joy. It's nice to build a nest together rather than alone. And yes, there's an awful risk in that. But there's an even bigger risk in going it alone. In never finding, or trusting, our way back home. 

   When I read the work gathered in these issues I can't help but feel that it is one hell of a big beautiful nest we are building here together. Somehow, I think, we're trying, together, to find a way to answer those questions that built their homes inside of a terrible inner silence. We're learning here how to speak to it. How to say its name. What is its name? Once, it was pain. And only ever. But I think we're digging for water here, too. We're looking for that warm part of the room.

   There's nothing greater than feeling like we just might belong somewhere after all. Our stories heard, our poems held, our art truly seen. Or as close as we can come to that. For we are bound to trip up along the way. Funeral or birth? What community is. A question we're still learning the answer to. Let's be born. Branch out. Warm the room. Listen in. Stay a while. May there be here a few of the things you need. We see you, we hear you, we need you. We're really glad you're here. Each of you help to make this a place that feels like home. And for that we thank you. 
​

James Diaz
Editor-in-chief
Anti-Heroin Chic

     

                                   


              Time takes and time gives. All manner of things. But in the time it takes to get down to the roots of our pain, everything happens. We do not just wait things out. Of course we can and have, many of us, slowed time down through those old detours that nearly took us out of time. It's not about luck: coming out of it. It's about wanting, no, needing to know that our light is worth the fight. Recovery means to recoup what was once ours. It means the light was always there, buried deep down as it was, beneath everything that happened to us. Annie Murphy-Robinson's artwork is a recouping-reworking through and underneath the perils and pitfalls of a time once out of joint. Rejoining-rejoicing, other words that come to mind, while understanding one must pass through all the bad parts of town inside oneself along the way. Everything happens when we become such "constant gardeners," as Annie says, and because "these minds of ours need constant tending," there can be no such thing as unattended time in the end. Unbidden moments, sure, but these too come from being down on our hands and knees in the dirt, turning soil, pulling weeds, mending roots. Gratitude is the practice, resentment: the storm warning. And forgiveness, like Cheryl Strayed says, well, it doesn't sit there like a pretty boy in a bar, it's carrying the fat man up the hill, it's hard work. Forgiving ourselves. Falling into, rather than chasing some kind of grace. It's true: we grow through what we go through. We spoke with Annie recently about her art practice and her recovery journey, and the insights she offers here are one's that many of us in recovery, or in any kind of pain, could use reminding of. That the darkness isn't romantic and the light isn't easy. But if we dig: we receive, and all manner of things inside of us find their way home again. 

                                                                                                                                      ***

James Diaz: Could you talk to us a bit about the journey you've been on. Joyce Carol Oates calls it: Where I'm going and where I've been. In telling how and why we arrived here, often so impossibly and against great odds, the opening pages of that story touches the lives of those of us who have been there too before. So, Annie, where are you going, where have you been?


Annie Murphy-Robinson: Where I’m going is more difficult to answer than where I have been. My art is definitely influenced by both of those spaces- I continue to rewrite the trauma of the past and reclaim my identity in the process of drawing, giving meaning to it.  I am empowered through quantifying my experiences- ie) giving meaning to traumatic experiences which in turn, takes me as a victim out of the story.  When I feel victimized, there is lingering "justified" anger which for me leads to resentment- and resentment is the #1 offender for this alcoholic.

Where I am going is more of a wish, a space in which artistic exploration can occur- the masterpiece can be created. My tastes, my own stories and my outside influences also come into play in the "where am I going" realm of my art.

​

JD: You've said that art has helped you "to give meaning to the struggle," which I think many of us can relate to. And not just as artists, but also as those of us who find meaning in the work of others that helps give form and voice to our own struggles. Could you talk some about the ways in which art has helped you flesh out the meaning from beneath all the years of struggle and dark, and how it has also helped you reach for that "light through the cracks," as Leonard Cohen so aptly calls it? Have there been artists along the way whose own grappling with struggle inspired you on your own personal journey as an artist?

AMR: When I was in my disease, I had become accustomed to the dark, I reveled in it at times, it was so familiar. Many of my traumas were of my own making, perpetuated by my addictions. Some of those traumas were not, they occurred as a child. I learned to work through most with the steps by looking at my part, making amends and most of all forgiveness. What I have found after some time in sobriety is that forgiveness doesn't always make the deeper issues go away. detachment, neglect and a general feelings of not being "enough" seep through and start to emerge (for me) into other issues, for me it was bulimia.  Once again I wanted to feel in control and seen as "worthy" (ie skinny, ie beautiful) by my peers, I was not good enough. Once again I was in treatment learning tools to deal with my eating disorder and I starting to notice things.  The whys and root problems started to appear in the work- they questioned me as I created the work. I had to answer, it was inescapable.  

This "questioning seed" got started in graduate school. After learning techniques and starting to master my medium, the why naturally comes up. I kept leaning into imagery that was bitter-sweet, questioning, or in your face controversial which explains my personality. As I made the work my awareness began to grow and the act of making triggered the traumas around them as I searched for the "why".  Many artists have tragic histories, I am drawn to the Carrivagios and Frida Kahlos that have come before me, and those are just some of the "well known" artists that have created work from a place of controversy and inner pain, ie truth.  The light through the cracks is in the digging, finding the root cause of the trauma and pulling it out- This mind of mine needs to be tended, I have become a "constant gardener". the work, in its completion, still questions me and reminds me to start weeding.

​

JD: As artists, when we find ourselves in the process of creation, (and I think this is as true for writers as for visual artists) oftentimes memories, scars, the blank spaces of traumas too great to process emerge, all that we've kept at safe-distance throughout the years resurfacing to tell a story for the first time. In my experience, just to speak out loud what happened can lift a weight that we've hoisted silently, for years, with us everywhere we went. Has uncovering and giving voice to some of these soul-griefs helped you to travel lighter than before? Art's cathartic and transformative power, how have you felt it show up in your own work and life? 

AMR: The biggest transformative power that I have discovered through the making and showing of my art is the similarities that people have shared about their own experiences. Much like walking into the "rooms" and feeling a sense of fellowship, the work has brought that same feeling of community. I feel like another aspect of the transformative power is that it asks others to be vulnerable, speak their truth and move through their own experience as well. In my workshops I start with my story- my experience, strength and hope. I know that most people are drawn to my work have that shared experience. regardless of the incident, the root feelings are the same, the pervasive feeling of not being enough.

Uncovering the blank spots, forgiving my abusers ( I am one of my abusers) and different approaches to therapy have helped.  There is a lightness in me that I am comfortable with today, I have tools that I use to continue to live in that space most of the time.  
​
​

JD: What is your creative process like? How do works first form and take their initial shape? Is there a moment when it dawns on you that a drawing is calling out to be born in a certain way, or is it something that you find happens along the way, arriving as a surprise visitor knocking on the door of the page?

AMR: More often than not it, my process begins with a photo shoot- things present themselves there, which include the space I am using (either inside or outside) and the outfits that are used. Lighting is also important -when I look at the images (I take a few hundred to get 10- 15 usable photos) and I move from there. I look for an expression that speaks to me and also a clarity that I can draw from.  As I work, I start thinking of names for the piece which come from a narrative that I kind of create in my head. It is always rooted in either the history and plight of the female, mythology or my own past. From the story that starts to come to mind comes the knocking on the door, and that has lead to other imagery, or therapy, or both.

JD: What is the first work of art you encountered that took your breath away, that lit a fire in you?
 
AMR: I was obsessed with animals when I was young, so I looked at a lot of wildlife paintings and painters, although I cant recall names.  As a young adult I was first moved by the sculptures of Bernini and the paintings of Carravagio, namely Berninis Ecstasy of St Teresa and
Apollo and Daphne, and The Calling of St. Matthew by Carravagio.

​

JD: What advice would you offer to those who find themselves yearning to create but who do not perhaps feel they were born an artist, so to speak? Yours is such an important story of persevering and staying with it, of artistic map making in order to save your life, to transform it, and to allow that story, that" vital spark," to touch others in a way that is beyond calculation or words. What are the types of things that have helped you to move past moments where you may have become stuck creatively or felt like cashing in all your chips? Where "the doubting place" became all too real and felt? Where have you found hope to live on days like these? 

AMR: Art making makes me feel better.  There is or was never a question in my mind that made me want to quit making art. There was a point in graduate school where I wanted to quit, I felt less than and I had no idea how to deeply express myself through imagery. 

Today I know, from experience, a few things- the muse only visits after the work starts and that my visual voice has a right to exist. It doesn't matter who looks at it- it is beyond someone else's interpretation of what it means, why I do it- it is therapeutic and necessary for me to exist in this life, in this skin. When my ego gets in the way, and I start to doubt myself (usually when I compare my work and thus myself to others) and I have tools for that as well. Through the making I peel the onion, always searching, uncovering and acknowledging the feelings that arise. 

JD: Other than art, what brings you joy? What are the small blessings in a day you look and reach for? The simple, quiet, unbidden and precious arrivals? 

AMR: Yoga, sweat, sitting in quiet, working my land, chainsawing and manicuring space for my workshops there, music, making music, dancing, outdoor concerts, laughing and crying with my friends and family, being a shoulder for those who need it, discovering new friends,  teaching art, talking about quantum physics, and watching a good period drama with my mother. 

​​

JD: Do you have any upcoming exhibits or new projects you'd like to tell people about?

AMR: I'll have a few pieces in the 2021 LA Art Fair in July with Arcadia Contemporary and also have a few pieces in the Art of Paper in New York in late August, also with Arcadia Contemporary. I am just finishing up my website (two years!!!!!!!! argh!) and will have print, originals and videos available for purchase. I plan on working larger and on some work that I have recently just shot which includes landscape and more narrative.

 

All images © Annie Murphy-Robinson, used with kind permission from the artist.
For more, visit Annie's Instagram and Facebook pages.

             ​Dane CC



To 15-Year-Old Me at the Tegan & Sara Show Before I Knew I Was Trans

There’s a reason this makes sense to you.
One day you’ll give that reason a name.

You’ll recognize her in the mirror:
curly hair down to her hips,

smiling like her lip piercing
forgot how to apologize.

You closet rockstar.
You’re almost there.

The first time you hear your chosen name
on the lips of a best friend you’re going to fall 

in love with her guitar. Find yourself 
running red lights in every city, 

screaming along to the first song 
that made you feel bigger 

than your hometown.
You’re almost there. 

A trembling phoenix in some starlit bar.
Scarlet dress ablaze under the stage lights.

A stick-n-poke spitfire brandishing
your busted-up six-string

like a can of pepper spray.
You’re almost there.

Chain smoking in a motel parking lot. 
Eager for another sunrise to spark
 
your lucky like a lesbian crush whispering
pretty girls don’t light their own cigarettes.

Aching for another twelve-hour drive 
to the next show. Belly laughing 

at every billboard threatening hell 
to the girls who riot in stiletto heels.

Blowing kisses at their reflections
disappearing in the rearview.

Gaining on the horizon.
You’re almost there.

Stargazing in a Texas desert. Your glittering heart
spilling poem after poem in perfect cursive.

Writing love songs to the girl
you met back in Portland.

Writing love songs to the girl
you always knew you were.





She’s Running Home

with grass-stained cargo 
shorts and dirt under her nails 

to tell us all about the ladybugs.
Laughing like a grasshopper.

Bloody knuckles clutching
wildflower bouquets.

Strawberry freckles
and a rat tail.

Missing tooth.
Tracking mud.

Still daydreaming
about tire swings.

Pockets full of skipping stones
too good to throw away.

Boasting with both hands about
the biggest crawdad she’s ever seen.

A stubborn storyteller smiling 
through scraped knees,

refusing a Band-aid
until she’s alone.

Cul-de-sac warrior,
friend of the honeybees,

the daughter we will never have
growing up to be just like you.





My Hometown Translates What I Couldn’t Tell You

When she says I’m sorry I’m late 
what she means is she takes the long way 
into town to avoid the roadside grave 

of a drunk friend, still waiting 
for him to come home.

When she apologizes again
I’m sorry if I’m a little off today
it’s because she cannot look away 

from the windchimes left hanging 
from an oak tree in her mother’s backyard

after the bank took everything. Cannot forget 
how they would shimmer like used needles she found
playing barefoot in the creek,

how there were so many small things
the floodwater forgot that year.

When she asks can we go slow she’s trying 
to warn you: there are cicada nests sleeping 
inside her, old habits waiting 

for your April weather. She knows her scars
will bloom too quickly beneath your hands.

Your Appalachian charm will break her 
open, like it always does, into a thousand 
little mistakes she will struggle all season

to bring back together. When she says I feel 
safe with you, she wants you 

to know she used to float down the shallow 
Potomac on her back with her eyes closed 
and ears underwater, pretending 

she was dead for an entire summer, knowing 
that at any moment if her body grew 

tired of this balance she could grasp 
the riverbottom with the tips of her toes 
and escape back home.

When she finally says yes she means 
                 you are the river.
​

​

              Jane Rahman CC



​
Interstate Love Song Ode

Everytime I hear Interstate Love Song, I am back in 
the nineties taking laps up and down 
the three mile drag, sitting shotgun. 

Everytime I hear this song, I light up 
a smoke. Daring 
the prop to outrun the grave. 

When you died, we became 
family- more night sky than blood,
more lovesong than interstate. 

To say the gunman wrings himself around the revolver 
automatically is to say, I have loved 
more than I have not. Is to ask who we are when not in cars
fogged with windows like secrets 
at the end of a sentence knowing
I am here for life. Is to say, the next time, 
talk to me in hard times. Before 
there is nothing left to say, which 

means I am still waiting 
for a Sunday 
afternoon. 





​On Returning

Hurry heart, sit down
beside the steaming teacup
before it grows cold in hand.

Returning is not failure. 

I have your eyes and cannot pretend 
they haven’t seen good in you. 

Have we estranged for the right reasons? 

I remember climbing what my young mind remembers were pyramids in South Dakota. 
These ancient ways in which we grow familiar and distant. Which is to say we are no
longer closer than we are mere foothills just waiting for footing. 

I remember driving south to the end of the papermap.
I remember the Sedalia rain falling on my face at nine. 
The Mexican dances, that you wanted me to find a good
first or second generation boy with skin like mine- sparkles
in his intent eyes.

Who am I to say it wasn’t enough, it might have been your best. 

Who am I to say you fathered the others better
than you fathered me. I might have been
the luckiest one.​
​

​

           half alive - soo zzzz CC




San Diego Has a Meth-Related Death Every 23 Hours

The first goodbye came the day I found the meth-pipe on your nightstand.
It was a dead-end sign in a short cul-de-sac: too obvious. A dirty piece
of glass with a strange weight to it. Time thief, stealing my father.
 
I struck the pipe with a gasping fist. Stray fragments splintered
the soles of our feet, cut open by my futile attempt to save you. 
Destruction was not the help you needed.
 
I am your only daughter, a minor when I first testified on your behalf
beneath the ragged tick of a plastic office clock. I could recount
your story before I learned how to speak my own.  
Your visitor amid the syringe-scent of at least a dozen hospitals; 
I could call your nurses before I could write my name in cursive. 
Teachers shook their heads as I traded pretty words for your survival. 

But we had a pact and a secret handshake. We ate takeout burgers and milkshakes
off the dashboard of your truck at the duck pond. We snuck onto the drive-in
movie lot and projected our home-videos on the big screen. 

You recorded my birthday parties and the second half of every play. You were never on time.
Your love was not perfect. But it was more sure than the blanket of stars above our heads. 
It still keeps me warm. So let this be your keepsake, an unbreakable heirloom of warmth. 

Now you are gone, and our house is sold. My grandmother gives me your wristwatch.
I spin its empty hands counterclockwise as if I could move time in reverse: you
rise up from the grave, put down the pipe, and walk back into a steady job. 

Your mother recalls a story about her dead son. Once, you were small, and
you thought the church bells were the sound of an ice-cream truck. You ran
down the aisle in the middle of mass. I choose to stop the watch right there:
You, full of hope, as you run towards your future.
​
​
​

           Dane CC



Slaughter-house. 

When Grandma passed away three sisters, one golden shepherd and a cooler filled with bologna on rye climbed into the back seat of Dad’s 83 Volkswagen Rabbit.

Sarah was only seven. Even then she did not believe in Jesus, or Heaven, or the saying Big Girls Don’t Cry. She does not remember our old dog Rusty who died in the summer of 89 or how mom buried him in the backyard. Mom told us all he was helping tulips grow. Sarah does not want tulips, she wants grandma Ruth. She sobs the first thirty miles on our way to Vermont. 

Dad hums along to Billy Joel and mom turns up the radio so he can comfortably sing along. Dad has been unemployed five weeks now and when he is home we’re not allowed to play soccer or use the karaoke machine. Mom says there is nothing more valuable a girl can do than learn when it’s best to keep quiet. So we bite our tongues and paint our nails. Each brushstroke an anxious echo.

Dad passed Grandma’s exit so he could show us the house he built in Montpelier. He was only twenty-one and had a different wife then. They were married eighteen months before he sold the farm and came home to Long Island.

When we pull up to the old farmhouse dad tells us it’s exactly how he left it. It has its original wood, army green window shutters, and the barbed wire chicken coop. He heads towards the barn and we all trail behind. We listen carefully to our footsteps so we don’t crunch and crinkle old leaves too loudly.

Ten feet from the coop sits the Slaughterhouse. It's a run down shack with blood stained floors. Jessica, the oldest says it smells like periods. Dad bends down & traces the tin-like metal floor, fingertips collecting dried blood. 

This is how I remember my father. Pulling mom in by the waste for a kiss while searching for a cleaver. Beaming as he says Look what a man’s two hands can do.
​


Kathleen is a writer and women's rights activist from Long Island. Her first published piece was published by Anti-Heroin Chic on International Women's Day. Since then she has been featured in Mused, Shot Glass Press, and The Long Island Literary Journal. 
​

              ​Alexandra Frolova CC
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​
towers

you’ve spent your wasted youth growing up too fast, keeping company with college kids and middle-aged flakes. you smoke your first blem with them – trade zoots after dark in the local park. you spend the era at the bottom of a shot glass. fuck boys who grow green just to get a free feed, smoke the ‘samplers’ on their sweat-stained sofas. they might touch you in the dark without your permission, but when they taste you, they drink what’s left of your inhibitions. you pretend to be lovers, or friends, but you know they’re all just one-night stands that never seem to end. so you drink each other’s fluids, swallow each other’s pride, and sex is nothing but a cycle now of empty threats and unread texts. the spirits you swill dilute your own, but you blow smoke rings to stop yourself from saying no. besides, they’re the type of men that can’t be told. snort a line of codeine before they leave and never ask to stay. oh, but if only they would wrap their arms around you, the right way. how they’d feel you aching. as if your body were a cage.




Tahlia McKinnon is a wild writer, myth-maker and the Founding Editor-In-Chief of Hecate Magazine. Her work has/will be placed in The Daily Drunk Mag, Wrongdoing Magazine, Nymphs, Radical Arts Review and others. Tahlia’s prose often centres on haunted love, the colour and chaos of nature, exultant spirituality and her experience as a trauma survivor. You can find her online @tahliamckinnon and read more of her work via tahliamariamckinnon.co.uk

             gordonplant CC




THE ONLY STATION UP THERE

played country music all-day and 
how Jesus can save your marriage
all-night

late in my bedroom bush basement
I’d twist the plastic Sears clock radio dial 

searching and receiving 
and one night I got lucky:

a station from Seattle
came into me from
                                                  the edge 
                                                  of the world
with my skinny legs
and creeping shyness
that had never 
seen the ocean

so a mid-winter gift 
of the weather:
the ionosphere 
escorting music 
over foothills 
and wheat fields
and highways filled 
with tanker trucks 
of bitumen

strange sounds
like scattering waves of animals 
running through 
the interior of the night 

Thurston Moore sighed 
through his alien transmission
all buzz and skin 
and New York steam:

Don’t you remember
you told me you love me, baby? 

the slow drizzle of car lights
across my bedroom walls
as slow static turned clear 
and back 

and from that night
an ache spread 
behind my ribs and 
between my hips
for places I’ve never seen 
for sounds and words 
and for desire itself 
now gestating 
in the great lake below my heart

the smell of Dad’s Player’s Lights 
burned down the back stairs
and the neighbour boys
slammed their car doors
 
and a cool blonde bang 
fell over the planet
of Kim Gordon’s right eye
 



​
​HUNTING PARTY

Your hunting buddies took you out one last time. They packed groceries and booze and two shotgun
shells filled with your ashes. They walked through muskeg in your honour and stalked moose and they
talked and they all agreed: the whole deal is bullshit. You get your head straight and your body
disintegrates. You work fifty years and die on a weekend. The black ink of your name will rub off of all
the objects and the people that you’ve claimed.

The dark hills had turned over in their sleep, their curves like hips rotating, sent the animals back into the
deeplands. Shit hunting luck and no meat. But they had whiskey and cigarettes and someone played
Sympathy for Devil from the cab of his truck and the fire grew to the height of a man and digested the
body of a pine tree into ash.

They sat, their foreheads hot against the fire and the music and felt you in a heavy ghost space. Then they
​loaded you into a rifle and pushed you back into the sky. 
​
​
​

               Jane Rahman CC

​

             half alive - soo zzzz CC



might as well

the night it laughs
in on the joke

stars wander
thru glint and gleam

beneath this blanket of dark roses
we make do with what can be found

in a look
in a poem
in a kiss
in a bottle of lightning

always needing something to do the trick
we can no longer do ourselves

down in holes of our own making
walking into walls, off cliffs

tripping into shopping mall ponds

oblivious to everything we need
and chained to everything we don’t.





refuge

fierce winds
call to arms

others eyes
see other ways

we are not
who we think we are
to everyone

only parts
of another whole

maybe meaningful
maybe hardly remembered

significance is relative

just be kind
in whatever chaos
you find yourself in

be true of stride
and open of heart

bring your light
wherever you go

and the rest
will take care
of itself.





sparrows in the eaves

morning dogs 
dodge the diving bombs

impatience cries in the bathroom
while she puts on her face

cold lasers may dull the pain for now
but we’ll really never know

much like needles and car rides
everyone is alone

at the beginning and at the end

all we need to remember
is that love is the only thing

that can make everything in between
matter.
​