From the editor’s note:

My original plan was to write an essay about women and their relationships.

The more I studied, the more questions I asked my friends, the more I realized I am probably more upset about the state of women’s relationships than they are.

I’m not sure how many issues of this zine there will be.

I only know they will all question what I have been taught to believe about men, what I have learned from women, and my observations and experience with both genders.

That I should even have to include a disclaimer that the terms ‘men’ and ‘women’ have been generalized only…well, you know.

This zine is part of The Compost – S&V monthly mailing.

It will be available in print around the Evansville area. You can request an issue by sending $1 to cover postage to:

Shoots and Vines
PO Box 489
Poseyville, IN 47633

Love Manifesto by Crystal Folz

I left unblackened pieces of my heart in Chicago: strung out along the shoreline; on a front porch where I once drank slushies; on a mattress in the basement of a house I’ll never find my way back to.

I brought home everything ugly about myself that I could collect, not wanting to pollute the sea I found in your eyes.

Years later, I worried I’d left something behind I shouldn’t have. There wasn’t a loneliness inside myself anymore, and I hated to think I left that with you.

Sometimes, when the song is perfect, when the sun blonds the hair on my arms, I think I should have taken one or two of those pieces with me.

What good of me I left in Chicago, was everything I had with you.

~1996~