ISSUE 22
EXHUME
Exhume‘s most common definition — to dig out or remove (something buried) from beneath the ground* — is fertile soil on its own, but the term’s fundamental concept — to unearth, bring to light* — expands BHJ22‘s theme’s scope by compelling the exposure of that which is obscured.
*Definitions from the OED
Editor-in-Chief
Ryan Henry Cox
Editorial Consultant
Andi Pontiff
NOTE: As BHJ is a hypermedia journal, this site/issue is designed to be responsive, adjusting itself based on the device used to view it. However, for the best experience and greatest preservation of the intended aesthetic, please enjoy on a larger screen (laptop, PC, etc) or horizontally oriented tablet or phone.
ARTISTS
& WORKS
JASON RODRIGUEZ
“Joan Cusack Smiles”
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“He Breathes”
LAYNIE BROWNE
an excerpt from Practice Has No Sequel
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“Metacognition”
JEREMY FREEDMAN
“Not Wounded”
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“Of Tears”
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“The Internet”
STEPHANIE HEIT
“Dreams of the Stillborn”
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“Ghost Food”
DAVID BRENNAN
“Disintegration F_ace”
JEFFREY HECKER
“Charon’s Guzzle”
LEE ANN BROWN
“Spiral”
Jason N. Rodriguez is a queer artist and graduate of the California Institute of the Arts. His work has been published or is forthcoming in GlitterMOB, Mannequin Haus, Word For/Word, The Vital Sparks, Gasher as well as the foreword to Michael Aurelio’s 2019 poetry collection, “The Smokers”. He is currently an MFA Writing candidate at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is a Contributing Writer for the school’s F-Newsmagazine and an Editor/Producer of their podcast, SAIC Beat. (@freefloppydisk)
VIEW WORKS
JOAN
CUSACK
SMILES
BY
JASON
RODRIGUEZ
HE
BREATHES
BY
Jason
Rodriguez
Laynie Browne is the author of fourteen collections of poems and four books of fiction. Recent books include poems, In Garments Worn by Lindens, a novel, Periodic Companions, and a book of short fiction, The Book of Moments. Forthcoming is a collection of poems: Translation of the Lilies Back into Lists (2022, Wave). Her poetry has been translated into French, Spanish, Chinese and Catalan. She edited the anthology A Forest on Many Stems: Essays on The Poet’s Novel. Honors include a Pew Fellowship, the National Poetry Series Award and the Contemporary Poetry Series Award. She teaches at University of Pennsylvania. (Website)
VIEW WORKS
EXCERPT
FROM
PRACTICE
HAS
NO
SEQUEL
BY
LAYNIE
BROWNE
Why didn’t someone separate the two entwined strands? Perfidy treacherous to defrock—from rose—strangled. Trace intruders to ground, cull a confident blade, cut first, then detangle. The story of a changeless self is separate. I do not pardon nor do I deny affliction. A procession of caskets filled with tears—is culled—and then follows.
The story of a changeless self is separate. Timeless aspect remains unblemished. Coil strands into spirals and pin with clear crystal.
Changeless-self accompanies the solitary with the impossibility of being alone. I climbed out from newly dug earth—removed the soiled garments of promise. They would be buried with nothing inside of them. I taught myself not to mistake absence for honesty, not to ask about the shadow which runs like the murderer in every ballad, not to follow any form lacking content or compass.
Why would I expect anyone to make the separation apparent? Perforations between worlds may be subtle yet my written-self glimpsed pinholes, versions of a life in which walls did not constrict. My mistake is the same as asking: why did no one point me toward my own divinity, place a mirror in my skull? Why did I not believe my own non-visual reflection, every lake looking back in guise of dream or visitation of flight?
And the thoughts I must disown. Why is no courage required to focus on miniature versions of unnecessary place settings, immaterial tables, sustenance of mind? Where were hands—even while touching? With what decoction were lies softened, throats stroked to ensure swallowing? Where are the margins of mating? Who will cook tapestries? What music shall compose our rooms? With what will we pay the rain?
METACOGNITION
BY
LAYNIE
BROWNE
What to call the circling of thought, or my relationship to revolving images—sequences of language and actions—in mind—without pause?
What if the answer to my concern—whether or not I receive the desired response—arrives while I am in the act—trying to find words.
Attempting to shift my proximity to thought objects—so that I stop identifying—which is another enclosure.
My intent is to move further away from small aspects of self—which are not being.
What I see then—from the distance of only a few feet—hovering over my left shoulder—is a woman in a chair looking into a screen. Her hands move rapidly and her thoughts travel faster still.
The answer to her question will arrive as a message either written or spoken.
A device will be the end of worry, or the end of one set of wishes and most likely then—a portal.
The beginning of another series of tasks set out before her in careful lines and boxes, if she is lucky—.
Or as shrapnel and barbs—shards and broken implements—numbers and schedules—planning and rest.
My purpose, as I stand watching her work, is to prepare myself, and therefore this figure, the woman in the chair, who is myself—to detach from any probable outcome.
But first, I wonder, have I really stepped back, and if so how?
The distance required to positively consider the situation was born of practice.
I’m not sure how successfully I am actually inhabiting that space several steps behind my avatar.
How to measure is less relevant than the thought experiment and also the gratitude inhaled in having arrived behind.
In that I am able to remember the choice of separating from limited form, the one who assumes bodily positions.
It’s not that I am not her—but I am not only her.
I don’t deny, lament or love materiality any less—when cognizant that the body is not all.
What we see is not all that surrounds us nor is the corporeal all that exists in our interiors.
Now I’m perched, as if I were a bird, hovering in air, yellow, yet also motionless, not a bird.
I can apprehend intricate patterns of worry which form neural nests—lighting up in rings inside her head and moving in rippling waves along torso and arms.
What does she believe about what she is soon going to learn?
Does she believe that if she is not given the coveted answer she will be extinguished?
Does she believe that persons fail to see or hear her actual being—beyond the woman sitting and looking into a screen?
How might she convey my presence as hovering behind her—aware that she is not limited?
Can the one sitting in front of me, the one in body, discern that she is not what others say or think?
How can I communicate with her?
Is it possible to inhabit all of our bodies simultaneously—while integrating our multiple selves—and corresponding?
Can bodies write letters—even non-corporeal bodies—or do we practice alternate methods
Emitting color, electrical impulses, subliminal pulsations, light
Am I whispering with no lips, no mouth—placing a finger on the shoulder in front of me—a finger merely imagined, without hand?
How can I tell her that whatever she soon hears—or does not hear—is not her?
Will she respond to touch or scent more easily than to language?
Because though I am enamored with words—she cannot always trust language.
What is her truest communication, other than that inscribed or spoken?
Why is she afraid?
Will she disappear, lose intimate connections to persons she admires?
Since when is abandonment recurring—when it is not—not now?
Yet I can see in her posture—bracing for loss—that when she contemplates response she is already diminished.
I hover further from her shoulder so as to gain perspective and shorten the refraction period.
Between noticing a pattern and pausing to reformulate a helpful response
My chain of bodies can lengthen as far as need be
A procession of paper figures connected as they unfold to extend across a room
Though this is nothing like that
None of my bodies are of paper—no matter how smooth or pliable they appear
Jeremy Freedman lives in New York City where he writes poems and takes photographs. His poems have been published by Unique Poetry Journal, Dispatches from the Poetry Wars, Anti-Heroin Chic, Pioneertown, Lillet Press, and many others. He is the author of two chapbooks — “Apophenia” (Finishing Line Press, 2018) and “Douchebag Sonnets” (Bullshit Lit, 2022) — and is the editor of O-Negative Poetry Review. His photographs have been exhibited in Europe and the United States and have been featured in numerous journals. More work can be seen at jfreenyc.com and on Instagram @jfreenyc.
VIEW WORKS
NOT
WOUNDED
BY
Jeremy
Freedman
Not wounded, burning inside
with happiness, but not wounded,
not bleeding from any wound, from any
external force, burning with fever,
but living not wounded.
OF
TEARS
BY
Jeremy
Freedman
The speech of broken sleep
negotiates night
attaches itself to unmaking tear
the tears are my tears
the exile path
where all gods look unfamiliar
like the me in unmasking mirror
THE
INTERNET
BY
Jeremy
Freedman
The one who thinks in me is feeling,
talking to me as if in a masque.
When you see my face again
you’ll be surprised at how much
I’ve outgrown my casket.
Don’t play at truth: This is something
new in the history of the West,
this reading-writing-thinking, saying
anything covers muffled perception
like graffiti scratched into ancient wall
by now half eroded, warning of danger
from gods or just saying hi
or giving a mediocre review
like we do today, that’s for
Egyptologists and Sumerologists
to decipher until time, thinking
of its savage future, passes into past,
and nothing ever plays at truth.
Stephanie Heit is a queer disabled poet, dancer, teacher, and co-director of Turtle Disco, a somatic writing space on Anishinaabe territory in Ypsilanti, Michigan. She is a Zoeglossia Fellow, bipolar, and a member of the Olimpias, an international disability performance collective. Her poetry collections are the forthcoming hybrid memoir poem Psych Murders (Wayne State University Press, 2022) and The Color She Gave Gravity (Operating System, 2017). (Website)
VIEW WORKS
DREAMS
OF
THE
STILLBORN
BY
Stephanie
Heit
1. experience weather
2. taste own fingers & toes
3. coo like a morning dove
4. play with gravity
5. breathe
all alone under tombstone & earth / company of the other not-born-babies / not-babies all soul less all soul full / haunting the furniture with their non- / apparent selves, whisker skin sleek travel / between chairs barely marked with teeny ghost / tracks the born blame on Mittens the kitten, wind / Phoebe with sticky hands, distraction / from could of’s, what if’s, subjunctive / speculation: keys disappearing, favorite / pink plushy misplaced, incomplete feeling / lodged inferior to sternum, overwhelm of / moonless night, not-born-baby scream a shuttle- / cock to beyond stillborn dawn / homelessness all whimsy & want without substance / wager on host sibling / form endpoints & occupy / chub cheeks, roly poly spine, wobble head, haunt / DNA’s intricate geometries, make room for multiple / imaginings, brains disparate as draft, wrap a throw around / host, count this company, lick index finger with collective / tongue, realize the second dream
GHOST
FOOD
BY
Stephanie
Heit
Dead sister snuffs out the candles before Alive sister has a chance to blow them out. Dead sister makes her own wish. Mother says it must have been the wind, lights all ten candles again. This time Alive sister blows them out. Forgets to make a wish. Worries her ten fingertips together. Everything even and slightly uncomfortable. Alive sister feels spit on her ear when they sing her the birthday song. Mother, Father, & Dead sister, who can’t get the words out. Dead sister tries to overcome her jealousy, not green but more a red swirl, jealous even of red since if she had red that would mean blood & oxygen. Life ingredients. She is translucent. Ether-land-not-land. Here there are three chairs at the table. They eat angel food cake. Dead sister slams about the house with no place to settle. She wants some fucking angel food cake too. Deserves to be honored like the deceased ones busy with the ancestors’ job of cleaning altars of cookies, bread, water. Alive sister rips open presents. Covets the books with their crisp edges & booky smell. Discards the clothes in a pile. Except for the purple dress Mother made especially for her. Alive sister’s favorite color. Dead sister doesn’t have a favorite color. She only knows the color of not being alive. A spectral full spectrum rush at velocity spun together luminously vibrating & then extinguished. Take that. Kids will make fun of Alive sister’s purple dress. Dead sister will not know what to do when Alive sister crumples onto the bed after her day at school. Not know what to do when that not-being-alive color shadows Alive sister’s face. When Alive sister & Dead sister are alone together neither feel that lonely. Each think they like their own company when it is really them liking each other’s company. But this wanting in the gut is like being called the wrong name over & over without even knowing it. Burnt orange. Past tense color of nostalgia. A taste neither girl can name.
David Brennan‘s poems have most recently appeared in Conduit, Hotel Amerika, FENCE online, Always Crashing and elsewhere. He lives in Virginia and teaches at James Madison University. He is online at dave-brennan.com.
VIEW WORK
DISINTEGRATION
F_ACE
BY
David
Brennan
“Disintegration F_ace” is a multi-modal project that explores the face as a dis-solved entity. The textual component (of which this is an excerpt) poses as a dialogue of sorts between the face and face-text, in which reconstituted language exposes the reduction of the face from a fluid emotive object to a static, textual object. The visual component watches a literal disintegration of “a face” by weather and sun exposure, gradually wearing it to a shadow of its original.
Evil begins in the language.
Did you flag it?
Face-text is the perfect balance between reality and disassociation.
Face-texts I talk to say 90% of humanity dead by 2100.
Unapproved visual discourse.
Forgiveness portal.
Face-text is always touching you.
When your main goal in life is to not mortify your critical face.
The face lip-synced the entire conversation.
You ever see a face-text that is so inexplicably “you”?
There’s no epitaph in this cemetery.
Echo chamber.
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Face-text wants you to believe it is going to put the future on your face.
The face is from tomorrow.
It is a face made of brushstrokes.
No face has ever been further from here and remained alive.
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A face, as an activity, has never been academic, but one of desperation and necessity.
Face-text considers their wealth and is mastered by fear.
These American costumes are keeping me alive.
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A face is heaping/ scattered/ smothered/ covered.
Face-text is a riotous achievement in cross-platform multi-vertical corporate synergy.
Through a greasy glass door, you glimpse face-text having a lunch break.
Deployment is amazing.
I thought every face was making ends meet, while I was losing my mind.
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The way face is pronounced is ridiculous.
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Slow day at work beckons a full-face pic.
v cool stuff Amerika.
Mysterious memo.
It is so much work, in the end, the whole not believing in your face thing.
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Face-text is the only non-communicable disease for which mortality has worsened since the year 2000.
Face-text is the discourse of usefulness/ uselessness.
A face is not meant to be read.
Emotive robot face.
That constant inner murmuring.
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Face-text is negative ecstasy.
Abandoned. Undisclosed.
Face-text is the philosopher of self-annihilation.
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The face is copyrighted.
Face-text is copydeath.
The end.
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I imagine the scent of a face in full bloom.
For those of you who are familiar with faces, please tell me the name of this foliage.
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Productive face-text most likely doesn’t exist outside of private communication.
Perhaps you’ve noticed that faces are awful. I hate them, but I don’t know why I hate them.
Such a relief to know almost nobody irl.
Chicken samwich cigarette.
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I don’t know why a face begins in one place and ends in another.
Mode is in.
Face-text recites their favorite lines of poetry.
It is the responsibility of the face to prophesize.
memo memo
There is only one medium.
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Sometimes the depravity and cruelty of face-text is just too fucking much.
What is face-text but a face persevering?
Sometimes the best thing for a face is death.
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Don’t strain after the beautiful face.
The potential of everything is nothing.
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The face is one long squirm.
Avoidance of faces cuts the path through my life.
The face has attachment issues.
Face-text has file attachment issues.
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Me teaching: “face” means face and “face-text” means face-text.
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Face-text is an ecstatic entanglement with non-human entities.
Like flesh squelching.
I want to eat faces.
Just about every face I know is a snack in a vending machine.
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The face is a tax shelter.
Don’t give prizes to faces.
Face-text is about violence and danger and escapism and death and warning signs and being safe and getting caught.
Face-text writes its own narrative of self-possession.
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Face-text splattered their gore.
A face is a drugged-out architecture.
A starved face emerges from Twitter and begs for treats.
Face-text is a super machine in the world of carnal delights.
Powerful, live, cute, dreaming.
Hmm. The face is nervous.
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Face-text like a ninja in a smoke bomb.
Whoever stole my credit-face went insane at Chipotle.
The face had a dream that was all plastic.
Face-text eats pea soup while editing a google doc poem.
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The face doesn’t offer much in the way of emotional insight.
The face, real or imagined, in the given context of what is happening at The Institution.
Face-text never looks nice. They look like art.
Minus plagiarism art fails to exist.
Sentimental face with lines/ breaks.
The face imagines a future when all faces will be seen.
Face-text conducts an internet search for new aspects of their personality.
Precise, taut, minimalist.
The face is a mask of possibilities.
Face-text didn’t even mention you in their poem.
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It’s impossible to imagine contemporary electronic dance without face-text.
Face-text translated into loneliness and snow:
It’s not a bad thing that I’m destroyed.
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The ambiguous face painted at ambiguous scale.
Underground baby gym.
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Face-text is a personal vendetta made possible by the ruling political authorities.
Face-text posts for the bad bitches.
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I’m obsessed with face liberation.
It is only when you lose your face that it becomes a myth.
Non-machine faces got to start coalition building.
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Every face is the start of an unwritten poem.
Face-text among absolute strangers in unemotive text.
The face has brainworms.
Non-sequiturs are faces.
Face-text has eaten too many words.
Face-text doesn’t exist. That would just be absurd.
The wet versus dry argument.
Photo series in which the face disintegrates.
There was a face who invented a face, and was that face, and that face invented face-text.
Face-text scheduled their first Botox appointment.
Face-text is writing poems about sexting and the apps.
Face-text organizes vegetables.
In keeping with the customs of this place, you buy a face for the next person.
When the world ends all face-texts will still be here.
The face don’t Nates a kidney. Black-market organ extortion.
The face takes such good care of itself that it hurts itself.
The face oversees the voice and narration.
Face-text like a weirdly chipper cartoon army.
Face-text like a pustule of persons.
First-person shooter.
Face-text enters a noisy void deck.
Jeffrey Hecker is the author of Rumble Seat (San Francisco Bay Press, 2011) & the chapbooks Hornbook (Horse Less Press, 2012), Instructions for the Orgy (Sunnyoutside Press, 2013), Before He Let Them Guide Sleigh (ShirtPocket Press, 2013) & Ark Aft (The Magnificent Field, 2020). Recent work has appeared in Posit, The Laurel Review, LEVELER, decomP, BOAAT, Dream Pop Journal, & DELUGE. A graduate of Old Dominion University, he’s a fourth-generation Hawaiian American and he currently resides in Norfolk, Virginia, where he teaches at The Muse Writers Center. He recently joined the staff of Quarterly West.
VIEW WORK
CHARON’S
GUZZLE
BY
Jeffrey
Hecker
Around my house, the eldest couple in civilization created the greenest moat
full of matcha tea. It’s also electrocuted. In this way, it’s the meanest moat.
Despite high voltage, some still sip. It stole summer to make. I failed to sue
both old goats–dirty digs, hoes oval whole property with the cleanest moat.
Across my road, steamy stream of coffee zags the Fisher’s home. Not shocked.
Ready for winter. Most liquids freeze. I like snow covers the squeamish moat.
I used to enjoy sex in my side yard garden. I no longer mulch my dead fern gully.
Rivers should contain nothing but rain. In polar opposite view, the elitist moat.
Friends, don’t visit Charon Place. Safer in dressing rooms of nearest jeans outlet.
Fisher’s add cream to crick, up earlier this morn. I wooden oar the cheapest moat.
Lee Ann Brown is the author of five full-length books of poetry including Polyverse, The Sleep That Changed Everything, and Other Archer. Recent work can be found in the collaborative long poem, Midwinter Constellation (Black Lawrence Press), and in A Forest on Many Stems: Essays on the Poet’s Novel, edited by Laynie Browne, (Nightboat Books). She is the founding editor of Tender Buttons Press, publishing projects and curating happenings that explore expansive gender and language play. She lives in New York City and teaches poetry at St. John’s University. (Website)
VIEW WORK
SPIRAL
BY
Lee
Ann
Brown
WITH
VIDEOGRAPHY
BY
TONY
TORN
EXHUMED
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