By Christopher Stoddard
I made your ears bleed to declare our end. Said goodbye to Berlin. Rebuilt the wall in my brain and bled again.
I bought a nosebleed to see my life. Sucked the straight white lines. Begged the morning for moonlight.
I gave your foreign mouth to a cabinet. Filed with the other lies. Accepted the empty bin of a recycled night.
By Christopher Stoddard
Inspired by Rilke’s “Autumn Day”
Universe: We’re ready. The last season’s ended.
Now replace the heat with hielo,
and on the sidewalk let the roaches freeze.
But first,
give the grass in parks power
over these final sun-days,
force it to thrive and multiply;
encourage it toward its fate, and stain
our white clothes with its vibrant greenness.
New Yorkers who rent now, will never own.
New Yorkers who are single, will be forever,
will work, read, shop compulsively everyday,
and hop around Brooklyn’s bars, sober then not,
hopefully, while the weather is disappointing.
I believe in the periphery of my feelings. I worship the demigods inside the meat of this blood orange and its peelings. I am a carnivorous vegetarian, starving in a once emoted world that’s been degenerated by beasts like me. When I feed I taste sweet, juicy goodness. But unlike real forbidden fruit, I rot. The maggots devour me. The flies lay their eggs, and their babies eat my decaying flesh, including my cherry heart, kidney bean kidneys and pâté liver. I am a rare delicacy, cooked on the burning outskirts of all recognizable emotions. Because we have none. We are the antithesis of your feelings. We are the true mirrors of your hate. We are the fate of dysfunctional families. Our existence is a simile for horror. Whores, borrowers of broken brothers, head-bobbing robbers of the unstoppable kind–we are unkind, our kind.
Hi all, after careful consideration, we’ve decided to say goodbye to ANTICHRIS_. Below is artwork and writing by some of the talented artists who expressed an interest in contributing to the first print issue of ANTICHRIS_, entitled “The Purple Confessional.” Thanks to everyone else for submitting. We were overwhelmed with amazing work, just didn’t have the bandwidth to go through it all.
If anyone is interested in contacting any of these artists, please email antichrispress[at]gmail.com. Also, be sure to check out White, Christian, the first novel by ANTICHRIS_ editor, Christopher Stoddard, available in select bookstores and on Amazon in mid-November.
Please enjoy our archives and feel free to email us. Thanks to everyone for visiting for the past 15 months! xx
THE PURPLE CONFESSIONAL (Art & Writing Contributions)
“Success”
“Growler”
“The Three of Us”
“Run and Riot”
Siouxzin Handschiegel
“Kelly + Sasha”
I knew he was bad as soon as he sat down.
It wasn’t how he looked.
Exactly.
Welfare glasses + hair early serial killer long.
Too skinny face + grayish skin.
But that wasn’t really it.
There are a lot of unattractive, middle-aged men.
+ they’re not all bad.
He poured me a glass of Budweiser from the pitcher he bought.
This ought to have endeared him to me.
But it didn’t.
He poured me a glass before Sebrina even introduced us.
There was something off about that. But I don’t know what.
“Sioux, this is Kelly. Sasha’s boyfriend.” Sebrina smiled + drank.
Sasha was emaciated + somewhere else.
She slowly looked up + vaguely smiled.
Sort of the way a dog will wag her tail at the sound of her name.
She won’t understand the rest of the conversation,
but the familiar syllables of her name means something.
That’s one thing she can understand.
Sasha was like that.
Sadly.
“Oh. Hi,” I said + shook his hand.
It was damp + weak + it immediately made me want to wash.
With steel wool + lye.
“I like your hair,” he remarked + didn’t let go of my hand.
“Thanks.” I gently tried to extract my hand from his grip,
but he was reluctant to let go.
He grinned + stared into my eyes.
Like he was trying to crawl up into my brain.
I finally had to pull my hand back violent.
+ try to cover the operation with an empty giggle.
Another reason not to like him.
With little desire to continue conversation with Kelly,
I took a cigarette from my pack + was about to light it.
Kelly pushed my zippo away + lit me with his bic.
The flame’s height was set to crack smokin’.
Meanwhile, Sasha had pulled a broken piece of mirror from her purse
+ was freshening her congealed make up.
She was attempting to cover a blister on her top lip
with a mixture of lipstick + foundation.
It wasn’t working well.
“Isn’t she beautiful?” Kelly asked, staring at Sasha.
I inhaled smoke deeply.
“Yes,” I answered.
Maybe she was beautiful once, but not anymore.
She was probably close to my age,
but something horrible had happened in those years.
Maybe she did it herself, maybe it was done to her
That didn’t matter because it was something that could
never be undone.
Sasha’s hair was lank + stuck to her face in clumps.
Her skin was a rough terrain of pimples + scabs.
She had track marks on her hands.
Her mouth was a cemetery + her teeth broken gravestones.
Sasha’s tight tee shirt clung to her small breasts + jutting bones.
She was a reanimated Auschwitz victim.
She was a walking disease.
She was a mother’s nightmare.
She was her mother’s nightmare.
She was me in a few years.
Apparently satisfied with her makeup, she stood up + swayed.
“I gotta go to work,” she slurred resigned.
She leaned over Kelly + gave him a kiss that missed.
“Be careful, baby,” he grinned.
He slapped her ass as she walked away + almost sent her reeling.
Another reason not to like him.
“What kind of work does she do?” I asked him,
curiosity getting the better of me.
He smiled. “What do you think she does?”
“Uh.” Stupid + naïve? Yes.
“Sioux, she’s a prostitute,” Sebrina said gently.
“Oh.”
“I told her I would support her,” Kelly said quickly.
“But, she loves it, you know?”
It hadn’t looked to me like she loved it.
But then I’ve never seen true job satisfaction,
so maybe I just didn’t recognize it.
Kelly leaned over me intimate.
“So, do you have a boyfriend?” he asked.
He was apparently done talking about his girlfriend.
“No.”
“Want one?” he smirked + tried to hold my hand.
Another reason not to like him.
I left in search of the bathroom + neglected to come back.
I apologized to Sebrina the next day.
She forgave me, but disagreed when I said Kelly was an evil bastard.
“Oh, you just got to get to know him, Sioux,” she said.
“Sometimes he comes off a little strong, but he’s harmless.
Really.”
I was still unconvinced.
I told her I thought that there were dead bodies.
There were dead bodies that owed their condition to him.
I hadn’t spoken to Sebrina in a week or more.
She called me to invite me out to a show.
We met at 8.
At the dive bar, waiting for the band, Sebrina bought me a beer.
“By the way, I guess you were right about Kelly.”
“Really? Wha, he kill someone?” I laughed, bringing the can to my lips.
“Well, actually…”
I put down my beer.
“See, Sasha’s friend came over. This guy Kelly never really liked much. I guess Kelly was jealous of him or something. So, when the guy left their apartment, Kelly followed him. He stabbed him to death in the park.”
“He stabbed him?”
“35 times.”
Another reason not to like him.
“What a Drag”
“Rip Me Apart”
“Antichrist”
Hi ANTICHRIS_ visitors, this is the second poem from a small chapbook of Christopher Stoddard’s old poems that he’s found and rescued. Enjoy.
By Christopher Stoddard
My heart beats like an American haunting. Your love spooks me, my caged kin and buried brethren. You are the ghost of yesterday who loves the ghost of me tomorrow. My heart beats like yours, only faster and harder until I can’t breathe, like I just made love to my dead brother, like my dad just made me when I lay next to you, or when you held my wired hand in the emergency room. I have room for you in my nightmares. I have room for you in my heart.
By Christopher Stoddard
Before or after reading this, listen to You Wanted a Hit by LCD Soundsystem
This is for the cool kids who are not that cool. This is for the cool kids who associate with the cooler kids but are not as cool as them. This is for the cool kids who dress like the cooler kids but are not wearing the same clothes as the cooler kids. The cool kids are not the cooler kids. You might even consider the cool kids to be semi-cool and the cooler kids to be cool
You’re cool but you’re not that cool. You associate with the cooler kids but you’re not as cool as them. You dress like the cooler kids but you’re not wearing the same clothes as the cooler kids. You’re a cool kid, not a cooler kid. It’s probably safe to assume that you’re semi-cool and the cooler kids are cool.
I’m cool but I’m not that cool. I associate with the cooler kids but I’m not as cool as them. I dress like the cooler kids but I’m not wearing the same clothes as the cooler kids. I’m a cool kid, not a cooler kid. You might even say that I’m semi-cool and the cooler kids are cool.
Hi ANTICHRIS_ visitors, this is the first poem from a small chapbook of Christopher Stoddard’s old poems that he’s found and rescued. Enjoy.
By Christopher Stoddard
It amuses me the way I let you into my house, left open my front door, you found me hiding in the corner, hyperventilating, exaggerating, debating and degraded, but you kept creeping near me, to feed this fiend the needs it eats to be sort of something like pornographic comedy. It abuses me the way I let you into my body, left open my mouth, your lips found every other route, breathing, wheezing, mistreating who’s seated, heartbeat-speed repeated, leaving me with chest heaves and faint of empty sex grief. I don’t believe my needs I eat to be meet the sort swallowed in pornographic comedy. No, I don’t want to complain, but what I’m trying to say to you is, “What the fuck, just sex, no love? No hugs? Just these rug burns on my knees, wasted skin to keep you pleased?” Yes, it’s easy for eyes to see your weak hetero tendencies. I still deserved to receive a small kiss, a respectful wish for the things I did, drinking down the glue of you I should’ve spit in your face. I should’ve made you taste this disgrace I have been dealing with all morning.
After reading this, listen to I’m Still Your Fag by Broken Social Scene.
By Christopher Stoddard
You box yourself
But don’t know the sport.
You box yourself
With white lines,
An open organ
And multiple mongrel tendencies.
Your 3AM amen’s don’t
Help you much.
Oh, the sacrifice of Standard
You, that body bruised.
You box yourself.
Daily prayers,
You make yourself
Then defy your King.
You deny yourself
With begging why’s,
Unconscious dereliction
And self-served replies.
You bash your health
But skip the fistfight.
You amuse yourself
With false gauze,
Bloody applause
And broken sublime.
You fight yourself
But don’t know why.
You box yourself
With gloves in white-
Powdered defender
Of mortal diseases
And terminal feelings.
You’re an amateur forever,
For as long as you’ll remember.
By Christopher Stoddard
I know this isn’t what It feels like, but I keep seeing you anyway. The anxiety in my stomach that steals my breath and appetite, it’s not It. Hours later, I hear from you. We meet. We drink. We fuck. We eat breakfast. We talk about nothing. But I remember your lips on mine, your cock and mine, yours inside me. Put it in my mouth. Put it in my…I like doing those things. I like waking up to you in the morning, even if we didn’t hold each other at night, even though I spent the entire night having vivid dreams of a liberated you, when you’re sleeping on the other side of my bed, so far away from me that you’re practically hanging off the edge, the dreams seem so real, so much so that I begin talking in my sleep, and it wakes me up and it wakes you up, you grumble something and move even farther away. With your back turned to me, you’re my Berlin Wall. But it’s my fault. I keep seeing you. I keep feeling you. I keep waiting for you. I don’t even know you. I only know that you want me. But you keep me away, far away from your friends and your truth. You’re a stranger who lives in a closet. You come out of your closet to see me sometimes then go back into your closet, and I’m so fascinated by your closet because we live in New York City. I didn’t think they had those here. The apartments are so small, everyone knows everyone’s business and nobody cares. You don’t have to hide in there. This isn’t the Midwest, this isn’t your hometown. But maybe you don’t belong here. Maybe you should move back home where there are mostly cows and cowards, big hunks of meat and ignorance. Maybe that’s what I like most about you, your beautiful body, your deep voice, your brusquely masculine mannerisms, the way you, in a drunken stupor, bodyguard me when we visit my kind of bars. You protect me from the rainbow scavengers like I’m your meal for the night. Guess I am. But I’m not dead, I’m not a rump steak that you bought at Gristedes, no, I’m an animal that you’re eating alive. I get off on reverse-cannibalism. Sometimes I cry out in pain, and when I do, you either ignore me and keep chomping and chewing and spitting the cud of me, or you just disappear until I stop screaming. Then you come back for seconds and thirds and fourths and fourteenths, and I allow all this to happen. I want this to happen. Finally, I die. I tell you that I’m going to join the rainbow ghosts, who are really just rainbow scavengers who have seen too much, been eaten to the bone and left with nothing but jadedness and what some might call experience but what I call The Black Veil. It covers my eyes. Now it’s always night to me. Even when it’s sunny, it’s always night to me. I get scared of the dark as soon as I die, so I beg for you to bring me back to life, I want you to eat me again. I know there isn’t much left but rotting flesh and brittle bones with dried marrow inside, but I need you to eat me, I can’t be left alone. I can’t be left with the dead in this hollow city. I can’t become one of them. Scavenger or ghost, each is an unappealing fate. Each is filled with pain and regret and loss and confusion and filth and solitude and broken men. I now realize why you live in a closet in New York City, why you only come out in sporadic spurts to meet me, to drink with me, to fuck me, to eat with me, to talk to me about nothing. I now understand why you refuse to publicly associate yourself with people like us. Why you deny being one of us. I hate us. I lust you. I want to move into your closet.
By Christopher Stoddard
I wrote it down on a piece of paper. Every itch. Every scratch. Every part that leaves me feeling left out. The last kid picked on the dodge ball team, something trite like that. Every dying young. Every nitpick. Every debilitation. I wrote it all down and hid it in the front pocket of my black backpack, folded meticulously and tucked in between a pack of Stride and a pile of wrinkly napkins that resembles a flimsy novel, a cheap book, something I’d have written.
My doctor told me to do it. She wanted to see my list. Maybe to grade it? I don’t know. I never showed it to her, just kept it hidden away. I never even thought about it—not the list in particular—but I did think about all those things I’d written down.
Even after I stopped thinking about the letter T and the letters after T that form that name. That name, I realized recently, is interchangeable. It could have been or can be any letter in the alphabet combined with any of the other letters in the alphabet that form any name.
During a quest for gum to neutralize the aftertaste of a flavorful lunch, I found that old paper, crumpled but still legible. I remembered those things as if they were siblings of mine, attached to my head as are some of those conjoined babies that doctors like to separate. Not because I have that good of a memory, no, it’s just because I’ve been thinking of them this whole time, feeling them, even though I no longer read about the letter T and the letters after T that form that name, even now, as I peruse the pages of the letter J and the letters after J that form that new name.
I’ve decided to save the piece of paper. Every itch. Every scratch. Every part that leaves me feeling left out. Every dying young. Every nitpick. Every debilitation. I’ve returned it to the front pocket of my black backpack, folded meticulously and tucked in between an almost-finished pack of Stride and a pile of wrinkly napkins that resembles a flimsy novel, a cheap book, something I’d have written.
Give me any letter combined with any other letters that form any name, and I’m in alphabet love again. After reading this, listen to The xx remix of Florence and the Machine’s “You’ve Got the Love”.
