NO CHAIN 1: Editor's Letter

  NO CHAIN

volume 1

Editor’s Letter

ARE you exhausted? Are you lonely? 

Do you feel that

In a Time with So Much

there's so little

to hold

turn over 

in your hands

so much to carry,

so little 

to hold you back

?

STAY TUNED

for this chain letter calling

to you, reader

there is NO CHAIN

holding us like watchdogs to this earth

but a little cause / effect

and these reaching pages

that hope to hold you

if only for a breath 

Red Wine Cranberry 

Nut Bread

preheat your oven to 350º

Adapted from Connoisseurus Veg in a 

pinch, when I, a helpless heathen, could 

not finish a bottle of red wine. 

In large mixing bowl, mix 2 cups whole wheat flour, ¾ cups brown sugar, 2 tsp. baking powder, ½ tsp. baking soda, ½ tsp. salt and spices (1 tsp. ground cinnamon, ¼ tsp. ground cloves).

Add 1 tbsp. orange zest, ¼ cup melted butter, 1 cup red wine, and 1 tsp. vanilla (if you have it—I didn’t!). Mix just until blended.

Fold in 1 cup dried cranberries (I used a mixture of these & golden raisins & chocolate chips) and ½ cup chopped walnuts.

Pour batter into greased 9X5 loaf pan. Bake about 50 minutes, or until toothpick inserted into center comes out clean.

While bread bakes, whisk glaze ingredients together in small bowl. Original recipe says: 1 tbsp. orange juice, ½ cup powdered sugar, 1 tsp. vanilla. I say: juice of a 1 orange, granulated sugar, and 1 tsp. ginger powder. Warm in the microwave, mix, and pour over for a spicy sugar crust. 

Remove bread from oven and allow to cool completely before removing from pan. Drizzle with glaze. Or just eat is right then out of 

the pan. Try not to burn yourself. 

Warn your housemates. Living

alone? Lucky you! 

It’s all yours. 

Reader, I named this zine after a line from 

Jim Harrison’s “barking”:

I was a dog on a short chain

and now there’s no chain.

I’m trying to negotiate the dualities of 

NO/CHAIN:

 

nonattachment / attachment offline / online

dropping-out / connecting effect / cause

freedom / responsibility       unstuck / stuck

one / all transcendence / presence 

individuality /community

Last night, I learned Jim Harrison was writing a poem when he died. I love good death lore, and this detail is not just touching, but valiant.

The Five Remembrances tell me I, too, am of the nature to die. To grow old. To take action. To change. To get sick; that’s what I am now. My muscles ache and my head is as puffed as a jellyfish. Between you and me, I’m enjoying myself.  I like a day off work to lay around and wallow. Everyone deserves a paid wallowing day as long as we’re linked to the workings of this world.

One day I’ll be all out of time to wallow. One day, it won’t be an easy loaf-around sick day. That whole, you could die any moment beat. Change, illness, aging, action… Dear reader, there’s a good chance I will die with a laptop on my chest watching a stranger sort through her closet. Maybe I should strike that possibility off the list. I can stop at any time. 

But no, I love the details of this mundane planet. I love the sorting through outgrown jeans and frumpy yellow sweaters, finding a favorite blazer, folding a pilled pair of running shorts, tending clothes that will never fit and clothes that keep forever in love or in spite. I’ll gladly die on that pile. 

It’s all about what we choose to keep, and what we give away. It’s also about that maybe pile. That pile of stuff we’re stuck with for a while, until we’re brave enough to make a decision. What to keep? What to give away?

Ah, but for now, wade. You don’t have to be brave.

Keep these pages, give them away. I’d like to print you and talk with you. Celebrate you, sing you, America the Beautiful, Ugly, and all its etc.

This is our chain, and then,

 there is NO CHAIN.

x, A B

Octo

I almost always believe tomorrow will be the first day of ascendance 

toward a grand emotional life.

I will cry on the beach for how like my tongue is to muscles of an octo.

I will cry not only in movie theaters, or in my darkened room over sogging popcorn, but in a room of my making.

This is where I can change color.

I read that when you start to feel invisible, it’s time to get a new wardrobe.

What is it time for when I feel I’m being watched most of the time

and I sort of like it?

This is why I come back to naming, alchemy of fixing

and disappearing into the shortcomings of signs, signaling 

I need help telling how ungrateful I can be for flutes of yellow

this hummingbird is plunging into 

and the brief spark of myself on a fatal earth.

NO CHAIN

a zine

volume 1

Editor’s Letter

Annabelle Bonebrake

2021

Happy Holidays!

📬

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