The Lumberyard

Lumberyard was born out of the minds of two rural children climbing the rafters and rolling in the sawdust of a lumber supply shed in the 1970s. Their father was a carpenter, a man of hammer and nail, always a tape measure hooked to his belt. His trade: perfection. The children watched his hands and dreamed they, too, might grow up and make something beautiful. Their tools would be those of ink and paper, of word and symbol, signifier and signified. Their medium: Lumberyard magazine, a collaborative project combining the art of letterpress and the literary arts.

An excerpt from Issue #3:

Robert Balfour the Third
by Scotte Hardin

The third Bobby in ninety-six years of Bobbys left the room
before they pulled the plug on Bobby number two. Saying,
Only cowards watch a lion die on a veterinarian's table.
His sister agreed, but with the heart of an antelope,

kept applying ice cubes and Chapstick to the shrinking watering
hole of Bobby junior's lips. This made some viewers gasp
and privately root as they do for a rabbit in a dog's mouth.
No one talks about death looking thirsty, or how after

he bit the dust he had to chew it and swallow hard to make
dying stop; to be as dead as the pavement of the interstate
where Bobby The Third walked the margins in search of a good
fight or a good place to start a fire.

He found a nice ditch near some bald trees. Did I mention it was December?
Sometimes it snows in different versions of this story.

He found a nice ditch near some bald trees. The fire happened as easy
as the nurse fed the morphine drip and shut off the air, the stars,
the eyes, the tongue, the words: sit up straight son. While the fire
seethed, he was his father's son in the backyard burning leaves.

Six lanes of traffic passed by and for the first and last time in her brother's
life, no one called the cops. And no one said anything when he later
covered his dad with his jacket, infecting the clean air with the ashy germs
of shared royalty. The nurse: Tell me when you leave hon,

you're the last one.

We seek to build a new platform for the arts to speak to the world--to bring literary and visual artistry together, creating a portal for all to enter, experience, and be uplifted in our limited human journey towards understanding. We hope you will dive into these pages feet first, get sopping wet, and come back for more.

Lumberyard is a collaboration between brother and sister duo, Eric and Jen Woods.

Eric Woods is the owner of THE FIRECRACKER PRESS, a letterpress shop based in St. Louis, MO.

Jen Woods "Woodsy" is an Associate Editor at SARABANDE BOOKS, a nonprofit literary press in Louisville, KY.

Due to an overwhelming and humbling response to this project, we have temporarily closed our open submissions until the Fall of 2009. We appreciate the outpouring of interest and wish we could publish much more of the work we receive. If you have any questions about submissions, please email us at info@lumberyardmagazine.com. And don't forget to check back after the summer if you'd like to submit for a future issue!