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Eliza Bishop
Eliza Bishop’s poetry has appeared in SLAB (Sound Literary Art Book), Can We Have Our Ball Back, The Susquehanna Review, and The Sloping Halls Review, and other periodicals. She lives in New York City with her feline friend, Firetruck.

Dependencies: tadasana. the absolute of light and dark. propioception. birth. many deaths. birth. trikonasana. fresh produce. planet earth. adhomukha svanasana. my internal landscapes. water. baddhakonasana. dialogues. my typewriter. my cat. caffeine. urdhva dhanuransana. walks out-of-doors. sense of wonder. However, I still maintain the delusion that I would be fine without all of these things.

Elizabeth Clarke Brown
Elizabeth Clarke Brown has had poetry, prose, and ruminations published in 116 Magazine, The Eye, Huffington Post, and The Columbia Political Review. She lives in New York City and works as an editorial assistant at New York Magazine.

As a high-school sophomore, I read Catullus’ poem “Odi et amo”. I couldn’t decide whether it was the truest thing or silliest thing. Over and over I've gone back to it since, no closer to a decision. “I hate and I love. You wonder perhaps why I'd do that? / I have no idea. I just feel it. I am crucified.” Can someone help me?

B.J. Hollars
B.J. Hollars of Fort Wayne, Indiana is an MFA candidate at the University of Alabama where he serves as nonfiction editor for Black Warrior Review. He’s been published or has work forthcoming in Mid-American Review, The Bellingham Review, Hobart, Quick Fiction, Backwards City Review among others.

BJ Hollars, an MFA candidate at the University of Alabama, once had such a terrible case of the chicken pox that he couldn't even walk on his own. His brother rolled him around on a skateboard until the pox went away. The chicken pox have never returned. He never skateboarded again.

Matthew Kaler
Matthew Kaler was born and raised in Missoula, Montana. In May of 2008 he will proudly receive his MFA in Poetry from the University that claims as its headquarters the city of his birth. He has lived and/or studied on the Isle of Malta in the Mediterranean, The Balearic Islands of Spain, and Oahu of Hawaii. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Camas, Left Facing Bird, and Whimperbang among others. These others include poems used in presidential campaign slogans, Norton Anthologies, cell phone manuals, and a discreet tattoo, all in his mind. He has only once seen a Grizzly Bear.

Once, while bathing in the shit of creation, I realized my consuming and bleak dependence upon tyrannic phrases that employ the sad sad word “once”, and therefore make a slave of the sentiment.

Alex Krul
Alexander Krul is a recent Columbia graduate living in New York.

This wasn't quite so laughable a few months ago, but I actually used to have a job. Thank you, law firm, for freeing me from the clutches of employment. My steady reduction to destitution has not gone unnoticed.

Colleen McKee
Colleen McKee lives in St. Louis, where she is a teacher and editor. She is the author of a collection of poetry, My Hot Little Tomato (Cherry Pie Press, 2007); and co-editor of an anthology of personal essays about women and health care, Are We Feeling Better Yet? (Penultimate, 2008). Her poetry has appread in Bellevue Literary Review, Poetry Daily, Flyway, and other publications. She may be reached at lilyofthegutter@yahoo.com

I confess I have a crush on Bertolt Brecht, even though he's dead, funny-looking, and wasn't always that nice to women. I like to translate his poems. I'm probably too proud to call it dependence, so let's just say I have a weakness for men and women who love boxing and motorcycles.

John Michaels
John Michaels is a photographer and musician. Proud son of New Jersey, he has also lived and worked in San Francisco, New Orleans, and New York. He currently lives and works in Brooklyn. Contact him at whitehorse100769@gmail.com.
*marionettes in “Madame Looking” constructed by Erik Sanko

John Michaels is dependent on the mother's milk of peer validation.

Karen Moulding
Karen Moulding has an MFA in Fiction from Columbia University. Her fiction and poetry have been published by nerve.com, sliptongue.com, the Piedmont Review, STARbooks Press, and Spectrum. Her novel, The Untrainable Heart, was a finalist in the 2007 Parthenon Prize for Fiction contest. She also has a J.D. from Columbia Law School, though she is much less proud of that than of her work as a go-go dancer in New York. She is the Author of the biannually-updated legal treatise, Sexual Orientation and the Law, published by Thomson/West, even though she no longer practices law, and does not believe in sexual orientation. She has received fellowships from the Virginia Center for Creative Arts and the Squaw Valley Community of Writers.

I’m dependent on dependency, yes. I’m dependent on the idea of myself as dependent. Without that, I’m left with just me. And possibly you. And I don’t think I could really handle that. Besides, without dependency, I wouldn’t have written this story, nor be asked to publish it here. Obviously, there is a high demand for stories of dependency. Therefore I must fit right in. And maybe I don’t need the story of myself as dependent after all. Except then there wouldn’t be...

Ashley Murray
Ashley Murray recently completed her MFA from the writing division at Columbia University. She currently lives in Charlotte, North Carolina.

My main thoughts regarding dependency can be narrowed down to a previous cathartic goal dedicated toward the extrication of all my possible entanglements. However, after a great many hours and a hearty effort devoted toward the notion of freeing myself of each and every one of these various dependencies, I found the task to be a bit more challenging than I originally anticipated--a task that, due to my overly-analytical nature, put me into an unusual state that can be described as a point halfway between frenzied agitation and extreme exhaustion.

Lisa Schumaier
Lisa Schumaier is a graduate student in poetry at the University of Montana. She teaches writing and produces the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival. Other poems appear in Left Facing Bird.

The first person who told me I was dependent was a child psychiatrist. I think she meant to say I was loyal. Some time passed. Then, another therapist confirmed that yes, I was loyal. I was loyal to being dependent. Fine--on my W2, I marked myself as a dependent; the IRS has a right to know. The last I hear, the editor of Fawlt is calling me dependent, but really they're just calling my poetry dependent. But on who? Not me. That shit hates me. Anyway me and my loyal poems, we're being proactive about it all, looking for cures in pill form.

Julian Smith-Newman
Except for a collection of verse which Julian self-published at age 12--far superior, by the way, to anything he has written since--these are his first published poems.

After trying for many unsuccessful hours to beam this statement telepathically to the editors of Fawltmag.com, I realized that all those torturous years spent studying parapsychology and telekinesis had failed. Despite it all, I still depended on words. And words are fickle partners, as everyone who uses them knows.

J. A. Tyler
Among other publications, J. A. Tyler has recent work in Pindeldyboz, Feathertale Review, Thieves Jargon, Underground Voices, & Word Riot. His debut novella is forthcoming from Ghost Road Press in 2009. Parenthetical #2 is a chapter from a novella in progress entitled “Of Violence and Being Parenthetical.” He is also founding editor of the online literary review Mud Luscious. Read more at www.aboutjatyler.com.

I'm pretty dependent on me. I'm the one who does all the eating, walking, talking, etc. I'm also the one who breathes and presumably thinks. Basically, without me, I'd be nothing.