Unlikely 2.0


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Editors' Notes

Maria Damon and Michelle Greenblatt
Jim Leftwich and Michelle Greenblatt
Sheila E. Murphy and Michelle Greenblatt

A Visual Conversation on Michelle Greenblatt's ASHES AND SEEDS with Stephen Harrison, Monika Mori | MOO, Jonathan Penton and Michelle Greenblatt

Letters for Michelle: with work by Jukka-Pekka Kervinen, Jeffrey Side, Larry Goodell, mark hartenbach, Charles J. Butler, Alexandria Bryan and Brian Kovich

Visual Poetry by Reed Altemus
Poetry by Glen Armstrong
Poetry by Lana Bella
A Eulogic Poem by John M. Bennett
Elegic Poetry by John M. Bennett
Poetry by Wendy Taylor Carlisle
A Eulogy by Vincent A. Cellucci
Poetry by Vincent A. Cellucci
Poetry by Joel Chace
A Spoken Word Poem and Visual Art by K.R. Copeland
A Eulogy by Alan Fyfe
Poetry by Win Harms
Poetry by Carolyn Hembree
Poetry by Cindy Hochman
A Eulogy by Steffen Horstmann
A Eulogic Poem by Dylan Krieger
An Elegic Poem by Dylan Krieger
Visual Art by Donna Kuhn
Poetry by Louise Landes Levi
Poetry by Jim Lineberger
Poetry by Dennis Mahagin
Poetry by Peter Marra
A Eulogy by Frankie Metro
A Song by Alexis Moon and Jonathan Penton
Poetry by Jay Passer
A Eulogy by Jonathan Penton
Visual Poetry by Anne Elezabeth Pluto and Bryson Dean-Gauthier
Visual Art by Marthe Reed
A Eulogy by Gabriel Ricard
Poetry by Alison Ross
A Short Movie by Bernd Sauermann
Poetry by Christopher Shipman
A Spoken Word Poem by Larissa Shmailo
A Eulogic Poem by Jay Sizemore
Elegic Poetry by Jay Sizemore
Poetry by Felino A. Soriano
Visual Art by Jamie Stoneman
Poetry by Ray Succre
Poetry by Yuriy Tarnawsky
A Song by Marc Vincenz


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What You Lose When You're Weak, You Take Back When You're Strong

Part Two: A Fixed, False Belief

That's a stupid question. Just shut up and I'll tell you.

I was a soldier. A regular soldier. The Friends of Freedom killed my brother Chen when they burned down our shanty. I think I was maybe 10 or so.

I didn't need any other reasons to join the underground. I was going to kill as many of those khaki cocksuckers as I could.

SurferGirl was a real leader. I hated all leaders, the so-called leaders, they were like movie stars I never liked, but I would have followed SurferGirl straight to Hell.

Me, I was born in an old rusty car in the Figueroa shanty. My mom grew up in a real house in the suburbs. She was a good woman. She used to joke about growing a lawn on our dashboard, because it's the little things that make a car a home.

Mostly, the war was pretty easy. Now, everyone thinks we were brave, OK we were, but the rich were too cheap to pay taxes for police, they figured their gates and bodyguards and Friends of Freedom would protect them. Wrong. They forgot they lived in America, where everybody's armed to the teeth.

The regular Army, National Guard, most of the cops were busy fighting the Maoists in India. The Newsfeed said the Army won every battle, we were always winning, everything was a triumph.

What? How she died?

It was that clown Mott that got her killed. Mott was an idiot, I always hated him. All his bullshit theory about the revolt of the elites. Yeah, OK, he was stupid-brave, but he was insane, a one-car accident.

Mott grew up in the big shanty in Golden Gate Park, true enough, but that was a posh shanty, not like Figueroa where I grew up. All the soldiers grew up in shanties, so big shit.

It was goddamn suicide. He got SurferGirl got killed for no reason. They got Chingar, sure, but he was guarded by dozens of Friends.

She never had a chance. Yeah, sure, Mott died too, shit, in war people die, so what. SurferGirl said Chingar was so arrogant he drove around in an open car, like Miss Malibu at the Rose Parade. He had to die.

Yeah, true, killing the military governor in the middle of a ‘victory' parade made people notice. The Newsfeed couldn't pretend it didn't happen.

Maybe now everybody thinks killing Chingar was the first domino. Nobody knew that. How could you know what was going to happen?

Yeah, sorry, SurferGirl. She was amazing. Beautiful. Completely knew what she was doing. Shit, the way she talked, like words really mean something, like words could make you brave. I can still remember some of things she'd say.

You might as well die all at once, instead of a little bit every day.
What you lose when you're weak, you take back when you're strong.
Among the kinks, there are two submissives for every dominant. Twice as many people kill themselves as are murdered.

What? She means most people live in fear, human nature, so a fighter had to think about that and somehow get around it.

I don't care what everybody says. SurferGirl wasn't a killer. She didn't have the killer-eyes. She could have had a soft life, but she wanted justice for the shanty-people. She was a dreamer, not a killer.



Jon Alan Carroll is a fiction and humor writer, so his path is a lonely one.