[Rad poster by Claire Lyman]
Oregon
We are going to be tabling the Portland Zine Symposium!
Come hang with us at Day 1 of the Portland Zine Symposium. It’s the Ambridge Event Center (1333 NE MLK Blvd.) on Saturday July 9th. Since starting Witch Haus it has been a dream of mine to get to table at this truly special event. We are truly honored to get to share plastic table space with some of the coolest and most creative people in self-publishing. So come down, peruse some zines, and be sure to check out our frens at Semi-Ok Collective and Antiquated Future! -Cameron
Witch Haus PDX Presents: Great Grandpa (Sea) / Twelve Gardens / Boreen!
Super stoked to finally give Issue #3 of our zine its own proper party, and I couldn’t be happier that we get to do so with three amazing bands and at one of my favorite places in Portland, Mother Foucault’s Bookshop. The show is Saturday, July 16 at 7pm. Come hang out, listen to some rad tunes, buy some zines, and read some Russian Literature. I made the poster with a photocopier and one of Hannah Turner-Hart‘s photos from the latest zine.
-Cameron
RSVP here!
Twelve Gardens (We also reviewed their album!)
A Letter From Eric at Live Again
Hi! I’m Eric Snyder. I am the co-director of Live Again, a Portland based non-profit all about starting healthy conversations that strengthen communities, increase wellness, and reduce suicides. I personally struggle with depression, anxiety, and periodic suicidal thoughts.
I know with my personal mental health struggles it is often be a daily battle that requires many forms of consistent health and self care, but if you asked what my safety net is… I would say community. I would tell you the names of people that I can turn to, people that already know me and personality, people who would listen without judgement, people that would help me even in the darkest of times. You may feel so alone right now in your struggles and I am here to tell you… you have a community that cares for you whether you believe it or not. Furthermore, you may have someone in your life who you are concerned about. Reach out now, don’t wait and don’t assume someone else will do it. Be there. Life can be so hard and often lonely, but we all deserve the right to hope for a better tomorrow, to take positive action, and to live again.
We would love to hear from you and have your voice as part of this important mental health conversation…
Website: liveagain.org
Email: hello@liveagain.org
Instagram & Twitter: @liveagainorg
Facebook.com/liveagaincommunity
Click here for a list of Portland Mental Health Resources that Eric compiled for us.
You’ve Been Nothing But A Friend To Me
An essay on Kanye West’s “Real Friends”
By Nathan Tucker
It’s kind of embarrassing to admit, but I think “Real Friends” by Kanye West is my most listened-to song of 2016 so far. I know a lot of people can’t stand Kanye, and that’s completely reasonable—he’s a dick—but this song is about as likeable as he gets. It’s classic Kanye, a song obsessed with the outsized, dehumanizing gaze of celebrity in 2016 that’s somehow the most human moment on The Life of Pablo. It’s a four minute long peace sign emoji to the world that makes you want to throw away your smartphone. Continue reading
Google Lyf
By Fiona Woodman
At eight years old, she sat on her knees in her father’s chair, her face small and keen in the blue screen light. Slowly she typed: “what is div…” and resolutely eyed the list of suggestions before clicking on “What is divorce?”
Two years older, she reached from between her mother’s arms to type: “are the tiny things that float around on your eyeballs when you’re zoning out actually microscopic bugs? ”
She rode home from school on her twelfth birthday without saying a word, waiting for her mother to comment on her sullenness. When they arrived home, she typed into their computer, “should you say sorry when you think it’s not your fault?”
Crouched on the floor of her closet at fourteen years old, she typed almost as a whisper: “porn?” She immediately slammed the laptop shut, exhaled, and with one eye closed tentatively opened it again. Continue reading
Love, Like Lupines
By Sierra Adler
If love is a longing, I have never been lonely. –
I form you here as I reach for butter,
in the worst of the house, in my summer dress,
sowing seeds through pocket holes.
All the hours spent lying in bed watching the house shift,
the solar spin, the swamp lilies that bloomed too soon.
It was February, just a plea to fill the emptiness;
by March they, forgotten, lie like rotting stones.
But, where love is longing plants lavender in the backyard;
like how we look with our books, in the back room,
in our brown chairs. Nights to climb up the planters,
lay vertebrate-to-vertebrae just to weed the hurry,
my sweet pea confection. There;
nestled in my forearms, where the sky paints porcelain,
where you willed forget-me-nots,
love, like lupines, unadorned.
Sierra Adler’s writing is built out of long bus rides and big skies; it’s amalgamations of water weight and wanderlust. She likes to collect moments in little notebooks and string them together to make things suited for bigger notebooks. This piece can be found in Witch Haus PDX Issue #3. Continue reading
Fragments Of The Obvious
By Harrison Smith
Gripping a fork in one hand
and thrusting it into the wall socket.
With the other,
you hold mine.
The gaps in my teeth,
replete with clumps of
fruity flesh,
lips plump and itching.
The adder circling my inner thigh,
delirious for juices dripping.
Down my frontside,
those poignant droplets
feel like little lances.
And you, standing nude,
in your solitary way,
bristling with electric current.
Our hands bound together,
I kneel, head bowed.
Harrison Smith is Portland’s biggest Weezer fan (sike did you read my fanfiction yesterday). His music can be found at turtlenecked.bandcamp.com. This poem was published in Witch Haus PDX Issue #3.
Life Looks Like This
By Ciara Dolan
My brain is a lemon and every day I go to work and squeeze it for hours and hours. Sometimes I squeeze so hard my eyes turn red. These are the drips, all the little drips that drop when I’m not squeezing.
Closing my eyes, monsters casually walk back into the foreground of my mind like guests on a talk show.
Lidless eyes stare at me as I sleep, as I eat, as I watch cartoons, boring holes into the foundations of my life. I want to fucking gouge them.
All these condos sure would be nice if anyone could afford them.
I used to lust after those old houses but now it’s the shiny condos—they don’t wilt and sigh. I need to forget about everything wilting and sighing while I’m trying to live.
The city’s blooms dump bubblegum colored confetti in the streets, a seasonal party.
Joined a gym, partly for the air conditioner.
I’m afraid of heights. Succumbing to gravity, crashing into earth sounds like the worst way for the terrestrial and the cosmos to meet.
When the consumer becomes a character in the mythology they used to worship, nothing looks as gilded.
Ciara Dolan is a writer and editor living in Portland. In addition to editing Witch Haus PDX she is currently the Music Editor of the local alt. weekly newspaper ‘Portland Mercury.’ This poem was featured in Witch Haus PDX Issue #3, available now for $5.
on being there when they need it, and wondering where our fathers were.
By Emily VanKoughnett
I don’t know how friendship is born. It seems to come like knowing. Like the steps of our house in the dark, familiar and unexpected.
I knew you for just three weeks
but i knew i would know you for a while
so I held your hand as you cried on the kitchen floor. Rivers have not wept so much but we tried to dam it up anyways with vodka and spiteful words. Things we know do not last, things that do not hold. The door still open and stammering.
Lately it seems there are things blooming in our ovaries and the folds of our brains that make us cry – unwanted and sickening. The linings of our uteruses blooming, growing unkempt and wild. Side effects that sneak in like whispers, on the backs of other things.
Us girls, we eat circular pills colored like candy necklaces. We plant metal in our arms and put wishbones between our thighs. We compare results and stories like regularly scheduled programming. Conversations for closed doors, the comfort of your best friend’s sheets.
My father has never seen a bloodied piece of toilet paper, but he used to wipe the blood from my knees.
Emily VanKoughnett is a writer from Minnesota who lives in Portland. Her piece ‘tectonics‘ can be found in Witch Haus PDX Issue #2. This piece is included in the newest zine Witch Haus PDX Issue #3.
witch◇haus◇pdx 