The Nu Bohemia is the world’s first 7-dimensional journal, featuring poetry, essays, short fiction, artwork, fashion, music, and dance created by New Jersey-based artists. It is our intention to bring Jersey into the forefront of the American arts arena, and to shine a spotlight on some of our generation’s best kept secrets who just happen to reside within state lines.
For more information, see our Submit page.
…and we apologize, but technical difficulties have made things somewhat hectic on this side of the computer screen. Please be patient, and we will get this out to you ASAP. Sorry for any inconvenience. Thanks!
Calling all page and performance poets age 21-and-under: The First Day of The Rest of Our Lives is gearing up for it’s third issue, and we want you to show us what you’ve got!
Keeping with the tradition of three being the charm, we are now accepting submissions for our first-ever double issue.
*Interested poets should send an email over to rhapsodyinblu@gmail.com with their name, short bio (1 paragraph or less, in third person please), electronic contact info (email/website), and 3-5 poems attached as a .DOC or .WPS file with “First Day Submission” in the subject line.*
The deadline for submissions for this special issue is Friday, September 24th at 12 P.M. E.S.T., and selected poets will be notified by Friday, October 1st, with the issue slated to be published on our Tumblr page on Monday, October 4th.
Spread the word and submit!
(>-) + <3
Jennifer-Leigh Oprihory
Editor-in-Chief/Publisher, The First Day of the Rest of Our Lives
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After the last meteor shower tumbled
through the sky like downhill rolling races,
and I still did not have
an absolute purpose
and a wisecracking Shetland pony
named Chesterfield Arthur, Esquire,
I quit wishing on stars
kicked out of their parents’ basements
in the cul-de-sacs of outer space.
Instead, I perch on front steps
like a gargoyle commissioned for someone
who had never seen a gargoyle before and assumed
they were squishy,
and wait for thunderstorms.
When the sky lights up like a Vegas dream sequence,
I imagine it’s the day of the storm’s daughter’s wedding,
and I can avoid the Marlon Brando and mafia guilt
to just ask for the favor,
hanging in humidity
like an accent that’s all lips and dense pastry.
I can never tell if it’s granted
but there’s always response,
a belly laugh,
the kind reserved for men
who have at least two sandwiches named after them
and can rattle off the entire roster
of their high school football team
like they’re totally gonna kill South High this Friday.
Getsi, nosetackle.
Maggi, cornerback.
Cardi, linebacker
Three miles.
Give me the ability to slow dance in a burning room
and still be the hottest thing indoors.
I’d text the clouds couplets about
farmers’ daughters,
evergreens,
city air stickier than diner pancake syrup
reassuring images I thought a tempest would dream of,
want to think about before exposing its soul
to unsuspecting grass and unlucky people.
My brother texts back,
“Stop sending me this poetry shit.”
Sorry.
Tyler and Typhoon are next to each other
in my contacts list.
I don’t stop.
Burns, defensive end
Pickel, running back
Two miles.
Give me a movie made about my life.
Cast Brad Pitt as the lead.
It’s Fight Club, but the opposite.
Roy C. Sullivan’s heritage was
one part Dixie,
one part scrap yard,
and two parts Murphy’s Law.
This explains his affinity for bathtub moonshine
and electric discharge.
Seven times, his intestines coiled like Tesla’s
and he wore extra electrons
like normal people wear warm mittens.
To a direct current secretary,
he said “I can live through lightning bolts,
but I can’t live without you.”
When she rejected him,
he shredded his ConEdison bill
and aimed a bucktooth shotgun
into the power plant his brain had become.
After each static haymaker,
Roy should’ve wished for a girlfriend.
Cylenica, quarterback.
Less than one.
Give me a Monopoly game
that doesn’t end in fighting.
I’ve lost too many good thimbles that way.
Somewhere in Texas,
football rosters number hundreds,
and a girl pounds her steel string palms
across a keyboard, hoping the letters
will rearrange themselves
into the right words for wrong e-mails.
She knows better that to trust a meteor,
and asks me for some thunderbolt wishes.
I got less sway with the elements
than a rusted rooster weather vane,
but maybe I can crack some godfather belly laughs
and bolt her some wishes westward.
My best friend is an alcoholic with a raised fist
The backbone of his muscle clenched like static
We like to listen to the radio
It’s all static
And check
I’ve abandoned all reality
Subtle chit-chat clings to my marrow like a fallen promise
Make it stop, it is flesh-eating the way I once loved him
The things we’ve done in the silence is sickening
See, there are not many things I know about myself
He took most of them the night he left
the night we piled each other’s limbs in the back closet and forgot we were alive
But I found three in the parking lot next to the garden that reeks of being forgotten
1. I am frequently forgotten. At birth, my father forgot I was alive. He would drink often. The choke-hold of his vodka trickling off his jolly beard told me to never grow up. Daddy, if you can hear me, if the gravestone isn’t barren enough for you I do exist between graffiti and cardboard. Write to me soon, will ya?
2. I am full of shh, it is very difficult for me to be honest. Try falling in love with me again and again. Grapple with that 4-horned beast until the sun explodes. Until we are apart of something, like an illusion. The first piece of us was found in the towers of Chicago, barren in each other’s arms. Today, I am found in the sky scrapping away what is left of him.
3. I do not sleep often. Give me a treasure chest full of regrets and reruns. I’d like to think his hands found the holes into my body by accident. That the sacristy of my flesh awkwardly placed beneath his was a sin against God bodied twelve feet deep. I think I swallowed an ocean that night. There is nothing beautiful about me now. I think I have a gravestone for a heart and a chainsaw for a mouth. I am deadly by default.
I don’t come as a threat to most people
Because most people do not know who I am on most days
Most days if you are looking for me, I am in the flesh I bore yesterday, all 114 lbs. of it
Sacked over my shoulders like a ram’s carcass
Buzzing with the intentions of death
I died yesterday
Told myself I won’t let the other half of me out
I shut him in and keep him quiet
Like the night we stole the bodies and placed them in our back closet where most our identity is laid hidden
I hear so many voices all of the time
Their midnight whispers keep me awake all of the time
Today, call me Gacy Jr.
John Wayne for short
Tomorrow is a different story
Always is, with it’s multiplicity and questions
I am two notches too low to ever know what it is to be found
I begin to decompose at sundown
Tell my mother that I am sorry
Tell her that the meatloaf wasn’t dry, it was the air that was thickening
The bodies of them boys will never be found
But when I return I expect to know who I am
Congratulations to the first voices from The First Day of the Rest of Our Lives:
Submissions are now open for the August issue!
The submission period for August has just been extended from Thursday, July 15, 2010 to Monday July, 26, 2010. Submissions will close at 12 midnight, EST, on the 15th. Poets will be notified within a week of submission as to whether or not they’ve been accepted, and the August issue is scheduled to hit the interweb on Monday, August 9th, 2010 at noon.
Again, congratulations to the newest members of the First Family (hehe), and good luck to all potential submitters!
Track of the Day: “Little Lion Man” by Mumford and Sons
