mo(nu)ment
a blueprint paperback

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moment and monument -
the fleeting and the solid,
motion and matter,
the present and the past.

the connections between them:
the moment that induces a monument,
the memory both leave,
the momentum they hold.

& the nu of it.

said the call for submissions for this theme issue. in return, street stories, pyramid photos, tower tales, plane parables and mountain myths started to arrive, filling the pages of the issue to be, connecting in unexpected ways.

for a peek into the issue, here some of the first paragraphs:

monument #34
when i sink/ Lys Anzia
Call the heart a shape
of words made
for a tree. Call
the rock a sweeping gesture.
Call it what you like.

monument #14
Natalie / Zdravka Evtimova
“Will you go to Natalie's again?” her mother asked her more than a year ago. “Yes,” Veta said and went out.
That was how her fib-telling started and she'd kept it up ever since. There was no Natalie. She named her loneliness Natalie so her mother did not worry that Veta was alone all the time. Most often she remained in the library where the air smelled of beautiful paper dust, of poems which slept between the pages, of writers, forgotten long time ago between the thick dusty covers of the books.

monument #30
Sierra de Chuacús / Mark Lavorato
'For thirty-five years
None of this was safe.'
His hand sweeping along the skyline
Then sinking
Moon-slow
Into the tiny plaza

monument #20
Replicas or Reality / Smitha Murthy
Xian. The site of the eighth wonder of the world. Or at least that's what the brochures and books claim. Moving from the east to the northwest China, the bus drops me here in this sweltering city, even as the cooler climes of Lianyungang still cling to me.

monument #55
Past Insignificant / Kelvin Bueckert
Alive in satellite vision
pulled in earthbound orbit
tripping out
over past the new moon
a tiny stone hiss
tv static flutter
outline defined flash

monument #33
Fire / Peter Dabbene
“So how do you like your new home?” Kathy Alonzo asked, her eyes beaming with expectation.
Agatha tried to forget her troubles and take solace in the fact that the contractors had indeed done well for her. They had created a near-perfect replica of the home she had lived in less than a year before. It was, by any account, a remarkable achievement, and she looked forward to moving out of the hotel. But she wondered now, after exploring the new home from the outside, if perhaps this had been a mistake.

monument #53
Boreal Forest / Kyle Richtig
I've anchored myself
Amongst the needles and erratics
And crooked creeks
Begging for bare feet