The Tishman Review is a magazine of
literature published in January, April,
July, and October each year. We believe in
supporting the creative endeavors of the
writers of the world. We believe in
connecting writers through interviews to
pass on hard-earned wisdom and insights.
We believe literature serves an existential
function and its value to humanity is
beyond measure. Therefore, we will
always remain open to the possibilities of
a work to take us beyond the boundaries
known today. We will strive to honor each
writer and the work they share with us,
whether chosen for publication or not. We
at The Tishman Review seek to publish
work that reflects these values, offers new
insights into the human condition, finds
beauty in the garish, and that when we
read it, we want to read it again and
again. We want to fold an issue closed and
find ourselves richer for knowing the
words contained within.
Submissions of short fiction, poetry,
creative nonfiction, art, interviews, and
book reviews accepted year-round. Please
see our submissions guidelines on our
website at www.thetishmanreview.com
before sending us your work.
Co-founder and Poetry Editor
Maura Snell
Co-founder and Fiction Editor
Jennifer Porter
Creative Nonfiction Editor
Joanne Nelson
Art Editor
Ani Kazarian
Craft Talk Editor
Charlie Crossland Lewis
Associate Editors
Steven Matthew Constantine
Meaghan Quinn
Lauren Davis
Assistant Editors
J. Adam Collins
Alisha Erin Hillam
Laura Jean Schneider
Readers
Alison Turner
Paul Gardner
Anthony Martin
Website Design
Catherine Weber
Cover Art: Of Skin and Earth by Stephen
Linsteadt
Copyright 2016 by The Tishman Review
All Rights Reserved
Published in the United States of America
Publishers
Maura Snell
Jennifer Porter
3 Friends of The Tishman Review
It is with the utmost gratitude that we extend our heartfelt thanks to the following individuals and organizations for their continued support of The Tishman Review. Without your generous fiscal support this endeavor to publish great words and art would be unsuccessful. We at The Tishman Review thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Benefactors
Judith Ellison
Catherine Weber
Todd Snell
Patrons
Anonymous (3)
Jan & Jean Anthony
Jia Oak Baker
Miriam Camitta
Mr. & Mrs. Chris Cowdin
April Darcy
Lee F. Hancock
Lisa C. Krueger
Charlie Lewis
Jennifer Miller
Gene Olson
Friends
Anonymous (14)
Cara Anthony
Joseph Anthony
Julia Ballerini
Joe Baumann
Jacqueline Beecher
Shevaun Brannigan
Eli Burrell
Willa Carroll
Martin Ceisel
Reyna Clancy
Robynn Colwell
Jennifer Crooks
Patrice Didier
Joan Ellison
Megan Galbraith
Tanya Grae
Deborah Guzzi
Jay Hodges
Laura Hogan
Frances Johns
Charles Jones
Maria Khotimsky
Lee L. Krecklow
Kathleen Lewis
Denton Loving
Tori Malcangio
Dave Marks
Frank Modica
Emily Mohn-Slate
Carreen O’Connor
Jane Fairbrother O’Neil
Susan Pagani
Bob Porter
Debra Porter
Joanne Proulx
Nicole Ravida
Karen Koza Ross
Victor David Sandiego
Jayne Guertin Schlott
Laura Jean Schneider
Mel Toltz
Susan Vinocour
Bridget West
Sally Zakariya
4 Venice Meander by LM Henke
5 Written Contents Maura Snell
Willa Carroll
John Grabski
July Westhale
Fran Moreland Johns
Elijah Burrell
8
11
12
14
16
28
Margot Douaihy
29
30
Robyn Groth
Matthew Nye
Joseph Bodie
Jessica Wallace
Eleanor Lerman
Matthew Rotando
Margaret Yapp
Felicity White
Sally Zakariya
Robin Carstensen
Susan Comninos
31
33
35
44
46
47
49
50
52
53
54
56
Jim Gustafson
60
Sudha Balagopal
Stephanie Freele
Charles O’Hay
Theodora Ziolkowski
Deborah Guzzi
Michael Washburn
Lauren Davis
Elijah Burrell
61
62
69
71
73
74
76
82
86
87
Mary Clemens
Travis M. Dahlke
Bryn Homuth
88
90
94
101
Corey Ginsberg
102
104
S.F. Wright
Marion Boyer
106
109
6 Foreword
Green Room
The Blue Melon
Amazing Grace played on a common saw
Walter Goodbody’s Picnic
Field
&
Drowning
Plumber
&
Scranton Lace
The Boats
Nox Intempesta
Hot Coffee
not the war
Ghosts are Watching Me
A Peculiar Caravan
Plum Chutney
At the Nadia Bolz-Weber Lecture
In Memoriam
Ode to Before We Were Dance and Form
Comparing Frank O’Hara’s Poems
to the Size of My Thighs
Forgotten Bread
&
Drinking with Spiders
It Means You Are Loved
The Pit
The City Is
Patron Saint
Don’t You Want Me Baby?
Lotus Eaters
An Interview with Elijah Burrell
Blood
Frogs
&
Loss of His Firstborn
Jumping Jacks
Irene & The Leviathans
Evening Harvest
&
Subzero Hunt
On the Occasion of Having Zero Dollars
and Zero Cents in My Bank Account
The Left Side
Dismissed
Alana de Hinojosa
Zach Lundgren
Lucia Stacey
Ani Kazarian
113
124
125
126
129
134
137
138
Liz
Decemberism
Luna
An Interview with Jodi Lynn Anderson
Contributors
Staff
Tillie Olsen Short Story Award
Support and Advertising
Art Contents LM Henke
Courtney Kenny Porto
Louis Staeble
Courtney Kenny Porto
Ernest Williamson III
5
10
11
15
24
25
26
Laura Story Johnson
27
32
via commons
33
39
Meg Eden
Courtney Kenny Porto
Meg Eden
Fabio Sassi
Andy Singer
43
45
48
51
55
58
Fabio Sassi
Jimmy Ostgard
Fabio Sassi
Louis Staeble
Jimmy Ostgard
Elizabeth Weaver
Leah Porter
Elizabeth Weaver
Stewart Manly
59
68
72
75
89
93
103
105
112
123
133
135
7 Venice Meander
Hibiscus
Nyad
Faceless
World Peace Held
Pathogen of Social Misery
The Giving of Genius
&
And for the Mind
Waiting for Willie
&
Untitled, Badland
Orozco Dartmouth b
&
Orozco Dartmouth c
Sesame
Mystery
Scottsdale
Frankie
Deer Bones
&
Human Frog Bones
Links
City Duct
Off Key
Cavities
Deserted House
&
Leaves
Fueling Up
Come Out of Your Shell
Malala and Me
Peacock at Di Rosa
Burmese Bookstore
Foreword by Maura Snell
diligently to ensure that the prose in each
issue is stunning. Ani Kazarian joined us
for the July issue and has been incredible
as our art editor. She has a knack for
selecting pieces that are haunting and
delicate, visceral, jaunty, funny, and
thought provoking. She will recommend
something to me, I will hem and haw,
even object, or ask her about something
else, but then I realize she’s right, and her
original suggestion is in the magazine.
Steven Matthew Constantine,
Lauren Davis, Meaghan Quinn, and
Alison Turner all have made both Jen and
me sigh with deep appreciation. Steven’s
constant care and thoughtful questions in
regard to editing has helped the prose
contributors publish the best version of
each work. Alison’s patience and attention
to detail while reading combined with her
fresh perspective has helped us in that
capacity. Lauren’s ability to question and
coax intent and detail out of poets is
amazing. Meaghan’s aesthetics paired
with her deep knowledge of verse provides
the poetry team with a compass that is
unmatched. As editors with us, these folks
are tops.
The other side of TTR is our online
presence. Catherine Weber helped us
develop the website and is our go-to-gal for
all things dotcom. She’s also an amazing
artist in her own right, creating stunning
works of art and poetry. Her investment
in the art community is immense, and for
her I am continually grateful. Charlie
Lewis joined us in May to help us (wo)man
the helm of our Craft Talk section on our
website. Her enthusiasm is boundless, and
her ideas have created an interesting and
edgy place on our website for both prose
and poetry writers to express, expand, and
exposit. We hope you’ve read the varied
and interesting works that have appeared
there, and we hope even more that they
have inspired some experimentation and
discussion out there in the world.
Charlie’s right-hand-gal Laura Jean
Schneider has helped Craft Talk bloom
One year ago today, January 15, 2015, we
published the first issue of The Tishman
Review. We called it “The Tickler” because
it wasn’t a full-length issue, but rather a
condensed version of what we hoped to be
publishing. Some serious talent loaned us
their words: Lisa C. Krueger, whose fourth
collection of poems will be out in the
spring of 2017, Matthew Lippman, who
has given us three incredible collections of
poems to date. And Meaghan Quinn who
has been nominated for Best New Poets
and her poems for Best of the Net.
We’ve been fortunate here at TTR
to be surrounded by people who love what
we’re doing and have supported us by
volunteering their time, talent, and
treasure in order to help bring us to where
we are today. Our staff is amazing. It’s
also not a coincidence that many of the
current editors now were contributors
first. I’d like to think that they responded
to our calls for volunteers because they
liked their experience when they first
submitted to us. Adam Collins is a stellar
poet from Oregon that joined us in May,
after his work appeared in our April issue.
It’s the same with Alisha Erin Hillam.
Both of these writers not only are
successful in their own right, but also
have brought to the editorial team a fresh
perspective and an eagerness to create a
magazine that serves each writer we place
in our pages.
Over the year we have met with
some challenges, too, but I’d like to think
that we learned from each experience and
that the speed bumps provided us with
enough of a jolt to make us rethink some
things, but also not too much of a jostle as
to completely upset the apple cart. Jen
Porter has been essential in making sure
we have enough money in the coffers so
that we can continue to pay our
contributors, and she has worked
8 with her attention to detail, thoughtful
insights, and stellar editing.
New in the fold are Paul Gardner
and Anthony Martin who are both reading
fiction and CNF with Jen, pouring over
your best words. The prose side of the
house seems to be an animated bunch
lately, so you must be sending in some
really great stuff.
We’re also looking for a volunteer
to act as a Marketing Specialist and work
with me to develop promotional material
for the conferences (come visit us at
AWP!), identify other conferences where
we can be in attendance in order to best
serve our readers and contributors, help
us stay active on social media, and assist
in researching and applying for grants. If
you’re that person, or if you know someone
who is, please send me an email.
With this issue of The Tishman
Review, we say goodbye to Joanne Nelson,
our Creative Nonfiction Editor. Joanne got
us off the ground with CNF, and has been
crucial in making sure we had a successful
first year. She is patient and thorough in
editing, a dedicated professional in every
aspect, and a hilarious and generous
human being. We’re sad to see her go. On
the flip side, she is a near and dear friend,
so we know it won’t be the last time we sip
the chardonnay with her. Or beer. Sláinte,
Joanne!
I feel like I need some cake, or at
least a party hat. It’s been an amazing
first year. I hope that as you read this
issue you are as inspired as I have been. I
hope what you find stirs the desire to look
back and see what you were too, and to
appreciate where you are now in light of
that. I hope it also helps you look up and
to the future, wherever that may take you.
I hope it is as bright as a horizon as I see.
Happy Birthday. Happy New
Year. And, of course, Happy Reading!
—Maura
9 Hibiscus by Courtney Kenny Porto
10 Green Room poetry by Willa Carroll
Before I'm born, they tend a garden in their city yard. Tall corn studding the driveway, silk
& tassels rustling the night wind. Father dreams he's an insect swaying on stalks, sucking
yellow milk beads.
Mother is a medicated Demeter. Father, a wolf with mange, slinks backwards into the wings.
Miles under ice, I deliver my lines.
On cue, headlights of father’s pickup truck flood the gilded ceiling like twin moons, then exit.
The garden zeroes––a theater dark for years, wilding.
Chemical revolt, insouciant flesh, loud flower. Every theater needs curtains. Mother sews the
velvet. Father is the night janitor, sweeping snow from the stage, Mahler on his boombox.
Every actor makes choices. The one I play starts on props, moves up to understudy. Paints
the Green Room black.
Spotlit in full sun: last of the mint & sage. Crushed leaves release their scents, volatile oils in
air. I cameo as the garden, pretend not to feel the weeds.
Nyad by Louis Staeble
11 The Blue Melon fiction by John Grabski
sleek like that of a fresh-shucked oyster,
the size and shape of a football. Brackish
aromas of seaweed and sand salted the air
and pushed down on him like a wet
tarpaulin, yet the sea was fourteen hours
to the east.
Adam ran to the bedroom window
of the boy next door. Joey was Adam’s age
but twice his size. “A star athlete,” Adam’s
father always said. “Born with the eye of
the tiger.”
“Joey.”
“What is it?” he asked from the
window.
“You have to see this. A melon. A
melon that glows.”
Joey dressed and bounded outside.
As they neared the chair, Joey
recoiled at the sight of the Melon. He
stopped three steps away and slung dirt
with the side of his shoe. Marveling at the
mysterious form, Adam poured water on it
to watch steam rise from its heat. He
touched the palm of his hand to its
mottled flesh. The Melon arched to meet
him like the back of a purring cat.
Joey froze, palms on the sides of
his cheeks.
“It’s moving,” he said.
“Maybe it’s from another world,”
Adam whispered.
“We should get rid of it!”
“No!” Adam said.
“Let’s set it on fire!” Joey said.
“It’s alive. We’re not going to hurt
it!”
“Come on, Katzee. Don’t be a
sissy.”
“No!” Adam repeated.
“I’ll be back with some gas,” Joey
said.
Adam followed him next door to
his dad’s garage.
Joey entered the room and zeroed
in on a gas container and emptied the last
pint into a can with the word ‘SCREWS’
painted on it. Then he grabbed his
Louisville slugger that had been leaning
against the wall. He plucked it up with his
Upstairs in the old farmhouse, Adam
Katz, a boy of thirteen, kicked at the
sheets that covered his bed. He often slept
like a stone, but on that night he could
have been a ghost, like ether, slipping
between waking and dreams. Perhaps it
was due to the moonlight that poured
through the curtains, which lolled in the
breeze. Or perhaps it was the air, sublime
and faintly scented with June
strawberries, mint, and new-mown hay. In
this half asleep state, Adam envisioned
the night sky alight with the tails of
falling stars and a single tree that faced
the garden when he was jolted upright,
startled by a crackling hum. The house
began to vibrate. The panes of his window
jostled. The wooden door creaked and
popped then sent itself ajar. He leapt from
his bed and snapped the curtains away
from the pane. A pale blue light gleamed
from the garden below. The humming
ceased. Crickets silenced their calls. Every
follicle on his neck stood quivering on end.
Like tiny darts, they pricked beneath his
skin.
Fish, swimming in the tank at the
foot of his bed, breached and splashed the
surface. Adam sprang across the room,
turned on the light, and with the flat of
his hand, swept a gentle wave in the
water.
“Sssssssh,” he whispered with the
hush of a breeze. “You’re safe in the sea.”
Without making a sound, he crept
downstairs and eased through the door to
make his way to the garden. At its end sat
an old white chair beneath a tree. Adam
stopped, too timid to approach the oblong
mass that occupied the chair. The curious
shape glowed luminescent through the
velvet night.
The shape appeared as a
throbbing star of sapphire, but sapphires
aren’t alive. Its flesh glistened moist and
12 fingertips and gave it a quick vertical lift,
then let it go to catch it in midair just like
the pros. With the can in one hand and his
slugger in the other, he started off in the
direction of the chair.
As they neared, Adam circled
ahead and jumped between Joey and the
Melon. He turned and whispered, as if to
offer protection. It began to pulsate and
change colors with each word that he
spoke. Its glow intensified and throbbed in
perfect concert with his voice.
Contentedness and warmth seemed to
emanate from its every pulse.
Joey leaned his bat against the
tree and held out the can.
“Let’s see what this thing’s made
of!” he said.
Adam spun on his heel and kicked
the can, sending it reeling through the air.
“You idiot,” Joey shouted through
the spray.
“We’re not killing it!” said Adam.
Joey raised his forearm and wiped
his brow. All in one motion he seized the
bat, hoisting it with the same vertical lift
and midair catch. He leapt through the air
and swung it high above his head and
lowered a crushing blow that exploded the
Melon as if it were a bag of jelly, covering
him in phosphorescent blue gel. As if
smeared with the bellies of a thousand
lightning bugs, he stood there glowing in
the dark.
“There,” he roared. “It’s finished!”
With bat in hand, Joey trotted off in the
direction of his house.
Adam collapsed to his knees, his
mind in a spin.
“The sea,” he whispered.
Adam picked up pieces of the
Melon until the cradle of his palm was
filled with marble-sized globs of blue. He
hurried to his room and dipped his hand
in the fish tank. One by one, the tiny blobs
slipped free and gathered to form a
school—each fluttering suspended in the
tepid liquid as opaque tentacles dropped
from hat-like domes.
Content the Melon was somehow
alive, Adam crawled into bed and drifted
asleep but not soundly—his mind pitched
with images of jellyfish strands raining
down from the sky and into the sea. He
turned on his side, his pillow doubled up
beneath his chin, and stared into the tank.
The community of top hats, now darting
every which way, seemed peaceful and at
play with the fish. Adam rose from his
bed, drew back the curtains and looked up
at the constellations. The moon loomed
translucent like the face of God presiding
over the falling stars whose tails crossed
and passed like great chariot comets
carrying secrets of Earth’s next iteration.
13 Amazing Grace played on a common saw
Blythe, C A poetry by July Westhale
Tell me, what of faith? That weather inside,
that wrecks and sings of Calvary,
that is part wind, part chill, and part something
to be watched from a small room,
a window, maybe. The answer
is a great, rusted turn of the bow:
devotion to air, because there is nothing
to see, and everything to freeze.
14 Faceless by Courtney Kenny Porto
15 Walter Goodbody’s Picnic fiction by Fran Moreland Johns
mostly steel. Never had much to say, but
whatever she set about doing you knew it
would be done. Nobody messed with Bird.
"I've seen them myself. More than
once," Claudie Sims said to Chestine
Turnbull at the beauty parlor.
"No."
"For a fact. Bird right there in the
front seat of the Cadillac."
Bird had married that no-'count
Skeeter Pugh at fifteen, produced four
babies that all died in infancy, and kept
Skeeter’s moonshine cabinet filled by
working 12-hour days in other people's
houses. What kept Bird going was the
Zion Free Will Baptist Church. She spent
Sundays, her one free day, there among
the only people who ever saw her smile—
moving through familiar rituals, praising
the Lord for whatever in the world Bird
could imagine praiseworthy, swaying to
songs about joy and sorrow. It was at Zion
years ago that she first knew Walter
Goodbody. Walter had long since drifted
away, even before Mary Lucinda died.
Folks said he'd gotten uppity and standoffish, always driving around in Mr.
Pettibone's yellow Cadillac, talking like
he'd been to some university or something.
Rowena, the Goodbodys' little girl, did go
off to the state teacher's college and later
to some universities in faraway parts of
the country, but it didn't seem to ruin her.
Skeeter had finally got carried off
by pneumonia, believed by some to have
been triggered by an excess dose or two of
rotgut whiskey that often led him to
wander the neighborhood on cold nights
with very little clothing. Bird said she
missed him the way you miss a big old
bunion after you've learned to limp around
with it and cut holes in all your best shoes
so's they’ll fit. She scraped together
enough to give him a proper funeral and
buried him in the Zion cemetery alongside
their dead babies.
Just two weeks after she put
Skeeter into the black earth, Bird had
walked slow and steady along the rutted
No one, not a single soul in town, would
have believed that Walter Goodbody
would go to courting. Famously shy,
deferential to a fault, and way too old for
such things, Walter simply did not fit
anyone's image of a romantic. Yet there he
was, in hot pursuit of Bird Pugh.
"You hear about Mr. Pettibone's
Walter?" Madge Fenright asked Claudie
Sims at the grocery store one day.
"Walter Goodbody? What about
him?" said Claudie.
"Just that he's set his cap for Bird
Pugh."
"Come on. Old Walter? You're
pulling my leg."
Walter was Mr. Pettibone's man.
Had been ever since he was hired, just a
youngster then, as valet and driver when
the Pettibones came from Williamsburg to
manage the family properties back in ‘09.
Walter knew motorcars before anyone else
in Marshall County. By the mid-thirties,
Mrs. Pettibone and Walter's Mary Lucinda
had both died, and Walter's only child had
married and moved away. So Walter had
taken over at the Pettibones' big, old twostory colonial as cook, house manager, and
general factotum. In the spring of ‘38
Marvin Pettibone built Walter his own
place on the back of the three-acre
property so he wouldn't have to go back
and forth to Careytown all the time. The
two of them, trim and dark-skinned
Walter and aged but lively Mr. Pettibone,
were an established fact of Marshallville
life.
Bird Pugh was an unlikely woman
to disrupt an established fact. Her general
appearance was as if somebody had linked
together a bunch of those kindergarten
music sticks and triangles, picked them up
willy-nilly, stuck on a head and a little bit
of flesh and coal-black skin and got Bird.
Inside her lank and angular self she was
16 roads and root-buckled sidewalks to Helga
Frith's house and her first full-time job.
Old Miss Frith was bedridden now and
needed somebody to fill in all those long
hours, and Bird had said, "No'm, ain't no
reason I can't work late or stay over, if
need be. Reckon I got nobody making
claim on my time anymore." Not many
people could get along with the old lady.
But the pay was good, and Bird got along
with those she chose to get along with:
"Just put one foot in front of the other,
keep right on a-going," was how she
explained it.
Her pathway lay along the road
from Careytown to Marshallville, by the
side of Mr.Pettibone's place where
Walter's small house anchored the back
corner. The usual route turned left and
went on along another few blocks of
sparsely scattered houses on
Marshallville's north side. Old oak trees
and sugar maples shaded her way, and
field mice scampered across the roadways
trying to stay clear of watchful buzzards.
The faint smell of wildflowers and
honeysuckle made Bird feel strangely
alive. She took it slow and easy, just so
she could breathe in and out and do some
thinking about what made life good.
On the third day of her two-mile
journey to Miss Frith's house, Bird walked
the Careytown Road just as Walter
Goodbody was out hoeing his garden.
"Mornin', Miss Bird," he called.
Surprised to hear a voice so early
in the morning, Bird peered into the long,
neat rows of staked-up beans. Had to be
Walter Goodbody. She knew that was his
little cabin out back of Mr. Pettibone's.
The slightly bent figure she spotted with
her squinched-up eyes doffed its huge
straw hat and bowed in her direction.
Bird wasn't sure about bows.
"Mornin'," she said, walking steadfastly
on.
For the next three days, Walter
was in his garden when she passed, each
time a little closer to the road.
"Mornin', Miss Bird," he would
say. Or, "Mighty fine day, isn't it?"
"Morn'," she would reply, walking
on. Or, "Ain't it so."
There was no one in Marshallville
Walter didn't know, or who didn't know
Walter. Most days he did the marketing at
Berner's Grocers, with or without Mr.
Pettibone, and he regularly carried home
grocery bags for ladies of the town who
had bought more heavily than they'd
planned, or he gave the ladies a ride in the
yellow Cadillac because it was the polite
thing to do. Often, especially since she'd
taken to her bed, he brought Miss Frith's
order from Berner's along with Mr.
Pettibone's supplies.
In her second and third weeks at
Miss Frith's, Bird found herself staying
mostly ‘round the clock, as the old lady
had a spell of feeling more poorly than
usual. This suited Bird just fine. There
was a small room in the basement with an
iron bedstead and table, and a small toilet
in the corner of the main basement
alongside the laundry tubs which those
houses commonly had built for the yard
man. If Miss Frith needed anything
during the night, she would bang on the
radiator pipe and Bird could be at her side
in moments.
Toward the end of her third week,
Bird answered the doorbell to find Walter
Goodbody there, holding a giant bouquet
of peonies, lilacs, and larkspur, fresh cut
and wrapped in white butcher paper.
"Mornin', Miss Bird," he said.
"Oh," she said. "That's a right
smart bunch of blooms there!" Bird knew
blooms, and these were rather
spectacular—still wet with dew,
unblemished.
“Yes'm. I have somewhat of a
garden, a lot of it you can't see from the
road.” He smiled, a shy smile but it
showed lots of his own white teeth.
“I'll take them back to Miss Frith,
and we thank you,” Bird said.
“They're for you,” said Walter.
Then he bowed slightly and hurried down
the flagstone path to the street.
“Oh,” said Bird. She stood staring
at Walter's retreating figure, her mouth
slightly open, the huge bouquet brushing
her chin. “Well, land sakes.”
“Who's there at the door, Bird?”
Miss Frith called.
17 “Umm.” Bird closed the door and
walked quickly to the bedroom. “Mr.
Pettibone's man Walter,” she said. “He
brought these.”
“Why, how absolutely lovely,” said
Miss Frith. “Those two old men do keep
quite a garden there. I suspect it's really
one old man responsible for the charm of it
all, and that would be Walter. You can put
them in the tall green vase and set them
over on the dresser there.”
“Yes'm,” said Bird. She found the
tall green vase, arranged the blooms, and
put them on the dresser beside the framed
photos of Miss Frith's parents. But two
fragrant lilacs, one pink-tinged peony, and
two brilliant stems of larkspur went into a
small jar that she set on the wobbly table
next to the iron bedstead down in her own
small basement room. No one had ever
given Bird flowers.
The next few times she went back
and forth to Careytown, Bird took a long
detour across the railroad tracks so she
would not walk by Walter Goodbody's
house. She could not have said why.
Walter, however, took to bringing
offerings to Miss Frith's house: spring
peas and leaf lettuce, newly dug potatoes,
small bouquets of pansies. He never again
said who they were for. He simply made
his offerings and asked after everyone's
health—Bird’s and Miss Frith's alike.
Bird would say, “She's a little
peaked this afternoon.” Or, “I'm getting
along right smart.” And always, “We
thank you. It's mighty kindly of you.”
On Sunday, about five or six
weeks into her new job, Bird went as
usual to church. The word had reached
Zion.
“What's all this 'bout you and
Walter Goodbody now, Bird?” said Sarah
Chilton.
“Oooh, ooh,” said Mae Ella
Landry, “Bird's got her cap set for the
high-and-mighty Mr. Goodbody, and
Skeeter not hardly cold in the ground.”
“Skeeter, my foot,” said Georgina
Mason. “Bird’s gonna get to ride around
the county in that yellow Cadillac? Well, I
reckon she's 'bout due for a little ease in
her journey.”
“Hmmph,” said Sarah Chilton.
“Bird, you just be watchin' out. Walter
ain't one of us any more, that's the story
plain and simple. He done passed us by.”
Bird said nothing. Soon Belle
Tindall's piano and the sweet, mournful
music of Zion's familiar gospel hymns
drowned out the stinging words. The
fluttery feeling inside Bird's taut stomach
calmed down. Late that afternoon she
walked back to Miss Frith's house, going
again across the tracks and around the far
route that dodged Walter Goodbody's
house. Bird did not hold with gossiping,
and she certainly did not cotton to being
its subject. But the long walk under
overhanging oak trees filled with
songbirds getting ready for a quiet
evening helped erase the lingering pique
over her friends’ talk.
Five days and several vegetable
deliveries later, Bird's hesitancies met
their match. She was coming out of
Berner's with two bags of supplies for
Miss Frith's larder and walked smack into
the yellow Cadillac. Walter was loading
bags into its trunk, and Mr. Pettibone
himself was seated in back beside the
open window.
“Here, now,” said Mr. Pettibone,
leaning slightly out the window. “Aren't
you Helga Frith's new housekeeper, Bird
Pugh?”
“Yessir,” she said.
“Well, here, now. You give those
bags to Walter and we'll take you right
home. Getting too hot in the day for such a
walk.”
Bird felt the blood rising in her
face. Walter lifted the grocery bags from
her arms and set them into the trunk.
“You get right in there,” said Mr.
Pettibone, but Walter was already opening
the front door of the car as if there had
never been a choice.
“How's Helga getting along these
days?” Mr. Pettibone said as Walter
turned the ignition and started the engine
purring. “Too tough to die, I'd say. Helga
and I, we're both going to bury a few more
of the gentry before they carry us off
ourselves.”
18 “She's doing right well this week, I
reckon,” Bird said. “Had a bad spell there
for a while, but she's been perking up a
good bit. Enough so's I can take a day off
tomorrow, that's how come I'm fixing all
this food to leave at the ready.”
“Well, that's good,” said Mr.
Pettibone. “You tell her I said she and I
will bury a few more in our time.”
“Yessir,” Bird said. Walter was in
his shirtsleeves, though his bow tie was
properly in place and his cap pulled down
smartly in front. She tried not to look his
way. She answered Mr. Pettibone while
staring straight ahead at a little silver
decoration perched on the hood. It
sparkled in the sunshine, jewel-like. There
was a smell of brand new furniture, just
oiled, in the Cadillac. They drove the rest
of the way across town in silence.
As the unlikely threesome neared
Miss Frith's house, Mr. Pettibone spoke
again.
“Here, now,” he said. “If you've the
day off tomorrow, you'd better just come
with us when Walter takes me to my golf
game, and you can have a picnic. Walter
tells me you've lost your husband. Mighty
sorry. Walter makes a very fine picnic,
you'll see. He's been moping around like
he needs some company.”
“Uhh,” said Bird.
“We leave the house at 11 o'clock
sharp,” Mr. Pettibone said. “Tee time at
11:45. Mustn't be late for my tee time.”
“Uhh,” said Bird again, uncertain
why anyone would be having tea at 11:45
in the morning.
“So we'll pick you up at 11:05
sharp,” Mr. Pettibone said. They had
pulled up in front of
Miss Frith's house.
“Yessir,” Bird said. “I thank you
kindly for the ride.” She stepped quickly
from the front seat. Walter had opened the
trunk and begun walking to the door with
her two bags of groceries. In the house, he
spoke for the first time as she followed
him to the kitchen.
“I'd be mightily pleased if you
would join me for a picnic tomorrow,” he
said.
“I reckon that's been decided
already by your Mr. Pettibone,” Bird said,
rubbing her sweating palms on the side of
her house dress.
“But I'd be mightily pleased,”
Walter said.
“Well,” Bird said. “Very well. I
don't know as I've been on a picnic these
last years.”
“Thank you,” Walter said. “We'll
be here at 11:05.”
“That you with the groceries,
Bird?” Miss Frith called. “I need fresh
water.”
“Yes'm,” said Bird, walking back
toward the bedroom. “Mr. Pettibone gave
me a ride home. Sure is one fancy
automobile he's got there.” She picked up
the pitcher of water on the bedside table,
its ice melted but its sides still frosty.
“Oh, I do know it. Marvin and I
used to take in the symphony in Richmond
now and then, with Walter dropping us off
and picking us up right at the door. Fine
style, I'd say.”
“Yes'm. ‘Most time for your
medicine now. You want some tea and
sandwich?”
“That would be fine, thank you.”
By the time Bird came back with
the pitcher of fresh water, Miss Frith had
had time to digest the events of the day.
“That Walter,” she said.
“Yes'm?”
“I talked to Marvin Pettibone on
the telephone the other day. I do believe
Walter's sweet on you, Bird.” She shifted
slightly, rustling the sheets. “I'm not
comfortable here.”
“Mmm.” Bird set the pitcher on
the bedside table, plumped up the pillows
behind Miss Frith's frail, complaining
shoulders and started back toward the
kitchen.
“Well, I've just been thinking.
We've been getting an awful lot of flowers
and vegetables these last few weeks, and I
said as much to Marvin and he told me
Walter's sweet on you.”
Bird moved from one foot to the
other. “Could be,” she said. “That’ll be all
you need? I've got the water on to boil for
19 some egg sandwiches, and some weekend
soup started.”
Back in the solitary safety of the
kitchen, Bird found herself slamming pots
and pans with a little more energy than
necessary. “Who do all these folks think
they are,” she muttered, “planning my life
like I didn't have a brain in my own head?
Who does he think he is anyway, Walter
Goodbody? Reckon Sarah and them might
be right, Mr. High-and-Mighty.” Chopping
the carrots she nicked her index finger.
“Looks like a woman can't have no privacy
to her own life these days, not a bit.” She
flung the onions into butter to sauté,
spattering just enough to make more work
cleaning up the stovetop.
The little bell beside Miss Frith's
bed jangled.
“Bird?!”
“Yes'm?” Bird started down the
hall.
“Don't forget, I don't want any
onions in the soup.”
“Sssst,” said Bird, looking up at
the hall ceiling. She fairly stomped back to
the kitchen, scooped the golden onions
into a jar to go to her own house and
dropped the pan noisily into the sink.
“Hope to die it's chipped and
chipped forever,” she said, staring at the
porcelain. It was unharmed. “Who’s she
think I am? Who do any of them think I
am? I got half a mind to walk straight out
of here back to my own place, leave the
whole mess of these folks stewing in their
own juice. Walter Goodbody included.”
Bird was moving from spot to spot in the
kitchen, hardly noticing what she was
doing. What she was doing was scrubbing
the bottom of the frying pan to a mirrorfinish shine, stirring the soup, rinsing the
spoons, mopping up wayward bits of the
rejected onions, and wiping the drain
board clean.
But later in the afternoon, the
kitchen spotless once more, one pot of soup
and another of stewed vegetables
simmering on back burners, a western
breeze making the newly-laundered
curtains dance a fresh, clean fragrance
into the house, Bird began to feel more
kindly toward the world.
“Reckon he means no harm,” she
said to herself. She took her blue-flowered
dress from the basket where it had landed
after being washed with the curtains and
began to iron it carefully, even taking
extra pains with the tatting around the
white collar.
In the morning, Miss Frith firmly
settled in with the day help, Bird was
standing at the end of the front walk at
11:04.
They drove to a place the likes of
which Bird had never seen. Two huge
concrete posts stood at the entrance, with
carved wreaths on their fronts encircling
the words, “Capital City Country Club.” In
much smaller letters below Bird read,
“Members Only.” Walter drove up the long
driveway and around the back under a
green canopy, where he stopped at a
double door with polished brass handles.
Bird twisted her hands together on her
lap, trying to keep her eyes from getting
wide. Everywhere she looked there were
men in funny-looking pants and shirts
being followed by someone—black boys
and white boys and grown men carrying a
huge long bag over their shoulders with
strange tools sticking out the top. Their
tassled shoes must have had metal on the
bottom like carpenter’s boots, Bird figured,
because they made loud, crunching sounds
as they walked across the gravel and
concrete paths. Mr. Pettibone was calling
halloos to men who halloo'ed right back.
“Same old foursome today, Ralph?”
“Hit 'em long and straight, Bixby.”
“Mighty fine morning for a game,
eh Harold?”
Then Walter was back at the
steering wheel and they were driving
slowly around the back of this palace, past
a small group of cars off to one side with
colored men in chauffeurs' livery leaning
against the hoods, smoking cigarettes. The
Cadillac swung back down the long
driveway.
“Well, Miss Bird,” said Walter,
exhaling slowly, “I do believe we can go
have our picnic now.”
“What is that place?” Bird said.
“The country club? That's Mr.
Pettibone's golf club.”
20 “Oh.”
“He plays every Saturday,
regular.”
Bird glanced quickly across at
Walter Goodbody. For a fact, he did seem
a little haughty, his nose sticking up a
little too high, talking like these country
clubs were just routine in his world, places
everybody but Bird would know.
“I've heard about golf, maybe,”
Bird said. “But I never saw such a place
outside of the Life magazine pictures of
Buckingham Palace.”
“It's pretty spiffy, I'll say. Once I
took Mrs. Pettibone in to a lunch when she
was in a wheelchair, and got to see the
whole inside.”
“You don't regular go inside?”
“Oh, goodness, no. They don't let
colored people inside, excepting the help. I
hear tell they don't let Jews in either, or
Chinese, or anybody but white folks.”
“Well, I don't know as I want to go
inside there anyway.”
“Mr. Pettibone's golf game is very
important.”
Some ways down the road, Walter
drove onto an unpaved but well-traveled
lane, hard-packed, and covered with pine
needles.
“So where are we going?” Bird
asked, an edge to her voice.
“Mr. Pettibone's friend Mr.
Lancaster has this farm right here, with a
creek that runs straight on into the James
River. I come here and fish, or sometimes
just read a magazine. I used to stay and
talk with the other drivers, but the ones I
knew are mostly dead now and these
young folks are another breed.”
“I don't know what you mean.”
“Just that I like it better being by
myself.”
“Oh.”
Bird was having doubts about the
whole afternoon. She kept hearing Sarah's
voice: “He ain't one of us.”
“Except it will be very much better
today being with company, Miss Bird. I've
never brought company here, even though
Mr. Lancaster told me I could, any time I
wanted.”
Bird couldn't tell whether Walter
Goodbody sounded indeed prideful and
uppity, the way everybody said, or just
strange.
“I've never been on a picnic,” she
said. “Except at Zion, which is not exactly
like this. And when I was a little girl.
That's a very long time ago.” They both
chuckled, and she glanced quickly at
Walter's face. It was a barely lined face
with a perfectly-trimmed mustache and
youthful smile, although the stoop of his
slim shoulders gave away his age.
Walter stopped the car on a flat
spot just off the dirt road, beside the
creek. He pulled a worn plaid blanket
from the trunk along with a thermos jug
and a basket covered with a big linen
napkin. Inside the basket were pieces of
fried chicken and sandwiches with the
crusts cut off. Ice cubes clinked in the
sweet tea of the thermos. A separate bowl,
carefully covered with waxed paper, held
shiny tomatoes and lettuce picked early in
the morning from Walter’s garden;
another bore apples from the famous
Pettibone apple trees.
Bird sat on the plaid blanket with
her dress tucked carefully in place, her
legs folded to one side, her hands tented
together almost prayerfully. A whiff of
warm chicken and biscuits rose from the
picnic basket.
“It's the most beautiful picnic I
ever did see,” she said.
“Thank you.”
Suddenly she felt she should tell
him. “I almost didn't come. I don't much
appreciate folks making my
arrangements.”
“I'm sorry. Mr. Pettibone saw me
keep on trying to talk to you. He doesn't
like for me to be sad.”
“Sad!” said Bird. “How come you to
be sad, with a paid-for house of your own,
and a garden, and getting to drive around
in a yellow Cadillac automobile.” She
spoke faster than she had intended.
There was a pause. “Don't
generally have anyone in the front seat
with me.”
Bird thought that over for a
minute.
21 “You know what they say?” she
said, her voice low.
“No.”
“They say you been bought and
paid for. They say you got no use for the
folks what used to be your folks. They
say—”
Walter's shoulders hunched
forward. “I know. I never was good at just
talking to people about nothing in
particular, like everybody does at Zion.”
“So how come you're talking to
me?”
He looked up at her. She was a
good two inches taller than he when she
sat straight, as she was doing now.
“You don't know? You don't
remember when Mary Lucinda died?”
“Sure.”
“And everybody came, and brought
food, and all the women stood around in
the kitchen hugging Rowena and making
over her, and one or two men came, but
they only clapped me on the back and then
went off and none of them even said ‘Come
on, have a cup of moonshine with us’ or
anything …”
Bird sat up straighter.
“And then you said to Rowena—I
was right out by myself on the back porch
and I heard it—you said, ‘Looks like your
daddy needs himself some supper,’ and
you fixed a tray and brought it out and sat
right down in the other rocking chair.”
“I don't much recollect.”
“And you just sat there, and we
rocked, and that's the only thing got me
through losing Mary Lucinda.”
“Well, I'm proud to've been of
help.”
“Meant a lot, that's all I'm trying
to say.”
“You know that plot where you
buried Mary Lucinda?” Bird said.
“Mm-hmm?”
“It's directly behind my babies.”
“I didn't know. I don't go there
much as I should.”
“I go there. Put pansies around my
babies' graves every spring. Purple
pansies.”
“You like growing flowers?”
“Never had much time for flowers,
'cept those in the graveyard. Seems like it
takes all the strength I got just to put up
with folks enough to keep food on the
table.”
Walter looked at Bird and nodded
his head in agreement.
“I have flowers in my garden now,”
he said. “Since two years ago, which was
the first time I ever had my very own
garden.”
Bird looked him straight in the
eye, sizing him up.
“I was hoping we could be friends,”
Walter said.
Bird thought she saw and heard
something else, something besides the
pridefulness. She wasn’t sure.
“Looks like you're pretty thick
with Mr. Pettibone.”
“He's my employer, Bird! Can't
you see? Can't anybody see?” Walter stood
up suddenly, dropping the napkin he'd
just lifted from the picnic basket. Bird
drew back.
“What kind of choices have I had?
Or you? I thought you'd understand.”
“I ...,” said Bird.
“Mr. Pettibone pays me a fair
wage, took care of all the medical bills for
Mary Lucinda, even helped when it got
hard for me to keep Rowena in college,
and then paid her way into the university.
But he's not a friend, Bird. All these
people who say “good old Walter,” they're
not friends. Even my Rowena. She comes
to town with that lawyer husband of hers,
they go to dinner in fancy houses in
Richmond, even some white folks' houses
right here in Marshallville.”
Bird had always been a little in
awe of Rowena, the few times Rowena had
been back to Careytown since Mary
Lucinda died.
“Sit down, Walter,” she said. He
sat.
“Rowena and Sherwood, they talk
about court cases and such like,” he said.
“Try to tell me there are people right here
in Marshallville—well, I'm too old, Bird.
Too old to go to dinner at some house
where I've butlered for thirty years …”
22 Walter was leaning forward now,
one hand gripping tight on the handle of
the picnic basket. Bird could see how
arthritis was knobbling up the knuckles of
his hands, matching the look of her own
long fingers. Walter stopped talking.
Bird's eyes were still fixed steadily
on his. What she saw there was familiar.
Something that said life hadn’t dealt
either one of them many choices, but
they’d learned to make do. They’d bent
under loads when they had to, and some
loads had been heavy ones. The look in his
eyes said maybe, just maybe, they could
lighten each other’s loads.
“I think, Walter Goodbody,” she
said, “we better be eating up some of that
fried chicken. Looks like mighty fine fried
chicken to me.”
23 World Peace Held by Ernest Williamson III
24 Pathogen of Social Misery by Ernest Williamson III
25 The Giving of Genius by Ernest Williamson III
26 And for the Mind by Ernest Williamson III
27 Field poetry by Elijah Burrell
There might be life on billions of planets.
In the remote field
near the back of my mind, there is.
It holds weeds like tangled tongues,
a splintered oar in the dry fork.
Also:
A woman like a dune buggy,
all frame and wheels,
a stethoscope like a jackpot,
and a viola
Jet winks above
the Space Needle
and the view from Kerry Park
spanning her city of possibility
A chainsaw in its orange, plastic
case strapped to the back
of a dirt bike with Vermont plates
A dead cardinal, one wing up
like a horse chute ablaze
I run a search. No results found.
Inside this field grows an incurable disease.
28 Drowning poetry by Elijah Burrell
I do not fear the water.
You have no idea
because, through your lens, this
doesn’t look like drowning.
Second grade, we soaked-shirt relayed in the pool
near my school. Each pal, one after the other, bound
the next in a sweatshirt like a trap, or a net.
I was last in line when the boy, whose name I’ve forgotten,
pulled the sopping shirt over my head, and pushed
me from the edge.
I didn’t flail.
I didn’t fight.
I drowned
in secret.
Today I switch off my head,
mouth dangling open, eyes like muddied glass.
I turn backstroke to backslide, the wine to water.
My body hollers, Breathe.
My arms and legs, groundless, run
up the fluid steps like ladder-climb.
Drowning doesn’t look as you’d expect.
When caught by the skin of the water, we lock
ourselves out, appear still as we fight suffocation.
The adults were angry. They could not understand
why a good, happy boy would just float, sink slow,
not fight. “Why didn’t you yell for help?” they said.
“You should have yelled for help,” they said and wondered.
I must breathe before I call for help.
I must breathe before I scream.
Do not fear the water.
Let me show you the deep.
29 Plumber poetry by Margot Douaihy
You’d never believe what I find in walls:
shot wiring, toy cars, mummified mice.
I even found a gun wrapped in a towel
tucked in a hole as narrow as a neck.
I slid it out slow, showed Sheriff.
Holy smokes, he said.
The house had been a speakeasy,
linked to the mines by secret tunnels.
Men need gin after drilling in abyss.
Deep shafts through carbon, one
over another, braided tight as hair.
Police took it down in a raid,
filled each passage with cement.
How men hate being played.
Yeah, cops ruined the fun,
but don’t we all have doors
we want kept shut, dark corridors
we’re desperate to seal?
30 Scranton Lace poetry by Margot Douaihy
Pennsylvania’s Scranton Lace Company, a premier producer of fine lace & textiles for
120 years, has sat empty since it was shuttered in 2002.
Broken windows fake awake
like marble eyes, lids locked
after the heart stops. Scranton Lace,
elegant ruin, abandoned since her last
bell rang, cutters fired mid-shift.
Time untied when the big clock broke.
Don’t fix it. Why try? There’s no next
act when you’re used. Despite fine
wreathes, doesn’t every graveyard
choke with weeds? Headstones so bored,
the undead aren’t sure where to haunt;
dates faded, names imbibed by granite.
In Vulgar Latin, Lace means entice,
ensnare. The factory tricked me every day
as I drove to school, gutters buckled
where sick rooks nested. The grandest
banisters in town flaking rust. Dust,
love letter of age, how dare you. Lace lives
in rewind, tin migraine of a glue high.
Each loom taunted by memories of spin,
gears desperate to grind. What is a blade
but an ache to cut? No money to repair it,
tear it down. Welcome sign still floats
above closed doors like elixir so old
it’s turned to poison, slow stripping inside.
In the parking lot, I slept off my first
hangover, learned how much whiskey
I needed to black out, one fist. I fell in lust
with the waitress at the diner behind the Lace.
We kissed in her trailer Friday nights
when her husband hit the late shift.
She called me T. Because I’m trash? I asked.
Because you’re tiny, she laughed.
Your hands, they’re so small.
She was new to women—I was barely one—
but we understood lace, negative space,
code of openings, frames blinking
between braids. Lace is a woman
who is here & nowhere, intact but full of holes.
Lace is an old curse & after the reverse spell
the ruined part of you never fits quite right.
Lace is a ruse, see-through, a two-sided
mirror; so many faces hiding within one.
31 Waiting for Willie by Laura Story Johnson
32 Untitled, Badland by Laura Story Johnson
The Boats fiction by Robyn Groth
pulled it in. It didn’t fight or thrash but
floated calmly along behind us, as if it
were asleep or dead. We dragged it onto
the sand so Erik could have a look.
Jerry climbed into the driver’s
seat. “Hell yeah,” he said. “Soft and warm,
I could relax here all day.”
Yes, all day and all week, maybe
all month. Jerry knew about relaxing. He
would play his guitar at bars and sing for
a few bucks and free beer, but the man
would not keep an honest job. We were
hoping Sue would stay with us at the end
of their trip, let Jerry go back alone, but
she wouldn’t have it.
“I don’t see what you have against
him,” she’d said as we washed up after
dinner last night. “Jerry works hard every
day, pickin’ and pluckin’. Have you heard
him on the guitar? He doesn’t just know a
few chords, like some people. The man is
classically trained. You ought to come to
one of his shows. You’d understand if you
saw him.”
Well, there he was in that boat,
sitting, as usual. Whether his fingers were
on a guitar, or a boat, or up his nose didn’t
Erik and I thought we could, all four of us,
take a walk along the beach and just talk
about ourselves and each other, catch up
before Sue and Jerry went back to
Wisconsin. But there were all these boats
floating in the bay, unmoored and
unmanned. They were in ocean colors—
white, bright blue, or seafoam green—with
single or double stripes around their hulls,
and each had a motor in back. Erik had
grown up here in Virginia and knew his
boats. “Bay boats,” he said. “For shallow
water.” His father had taught him to boat
and fish, taking him out about every
weekend, so we all looked to him. He
looked out at the boats, rubbed his hands
on his pants and sighed.
“Well, I guess we oughta bring one
of ‘em in, make sure it’s not sick, or if it is,
see if we can’t help it.”
Sue and I waded into the bay and
grabbed hold of a green boat. It wasn’t
very big, none of them were, and we easily
33 make much difference. Erik walked
around to the back of the boat and started
looking at the motor.
“Let’s push it into the water a
little. Start it up and see what it sounds
like.”
Jerry pushed a button by the
steering wheel and the motor started. It
didn’t cough or sputter. It was one smooth
note until you paid attention, and then
you could hear the small, steady changes
in intensity.
“Ya hear that? This boat sings
iambic!” Jerry said.
“Sounds good,” said Erik. “But
while we got her out here, we might as
well give her a thorough check-up. Let’s
hoist her up on some wheels, take a look
at her belly. Jerry, could you run back to
my car and look in the trunk? I got a little
rig back there we can use.”
Jerry hopped out of the boat and
ran to get the dolly, and I looked at Sue.
She looked out at the waves and smiled.
The breeze sent the tiniest chill down my
neck and back. She worked so hard for so
little, double shifts at K-mart to barely
pay the bills. She deserved a break. She
deserved a partner who helped out.
“Jeez, it must be nice livin’ out
here,” Sue said. “Listening to the waves.
The way the sun hits ‘em, they look like
Bible pages. I can see why those boats
want to float out there. I don’t think
they’re sick. They’re just smarter than the
rest of us.”
Jerry came back with the dolly
and Erik lifted the boat. He looked over
the boat’s belly and declared it well. We
took it out into the water and released it.
We walked back onto the shore and
watched the boats for a while. It was
strange, seeing them out there with no
direction, but they had their own lives.
And they could do what they wanted.
34 Nox Intempesta fiction by Matthew Nye
muralist, there is never the chance for a
first authorship. Placed upon a wall, the
painting stands in dialogue with the
architecture. Placed upon a site, it is tied
to history and pre-history. Even when a
work is completed like it was at Pomona
and the Palace of Fine Arts, and wasn’t
like at Miguel Aleman, it is always
fragmentary and hence historical. The
portable arts may enjoy the boundaries of
a frame and those literary the partitions
between two covers; fresco exists without
edge and without beginning. Time is
arrested, and history is one great
cataclysm. A painting is a poem and not a
story, Orozco writes. It cannot be told but
only seen. It is not an interpretation but
only that which is interpreted. “Such a
machine-motor sets in motion our senses,
first; our emotional capacity, second; and
our intellect, last.” This is not a hierarchy,
as if the intellectual connection was what
I was working toward, or what I was
afraid of, but a recognition that much of
that experience rests before the intellect
and that any fixed meaning is pushed
away. A hero in one panel is a villain in
the next. Cortez is Quetzalcoatl is Christ
is Villa is Zapata. God is man, and ancient
is modern; the sequential is anachronistic,
and linear is circular. This is not a
paradox, but fresco’s insistent resistance
to narrative. Narrowed if it must be
narrowed by what it is not, and centering
its positive force in a way that is more
naturally felt than understood.
To say then that I was afraid
while descending the stairs to the reserve
reading room is a simplification, albeit a
true one. The oak tables lined the long
axis of the nave in parallels, and the open
space against the murals served as both
gallery and corridor. It is an echo chamber
marked especially for its permanence.
Orozco took the long view in avoiding all
manner of destruction: “The wrong kind of
building materials, poor planning,
moisture from the ground or from the air,
earthquakes, dive bombing, tanking or
One evening, having seen the Orozco
murals once years before, I found myself a
quarter of an hour’s drive from Hanover
where they line the walls of the Baker
Library. And with some hours to spare, I
set off in that direction, though I do not
remember making any conscious choice to
do so. There was time left in the day and
now that seems like a reason, but in the
moment there was none, only the dictating
curve and contour of the valley, a winding
forward and a giving way. In that part of
New England between the Green and
White Mountains, rarely do the roads run
straight but climb and fall with the
topography, following the proverbial paths
of least resistance with a Hobbesian
certitude and will. The New England
greens appear all the more civilized
amongst curvilinear lines. The right
angles square off into geometric bastions
against foothills, which on the wider
plains seem to run and blur through
farming town after farming town without
respite. Perhaps that was what I was
looking for in Orozco’s humane pessimism:
Respite from what seemed to be the
common choice when it came to a loss
between denial and despair and
wretchedness. More tangibly, merging off
of the highway and recognizing a
particular bend where West Wheelock
meets the Connecticut, I thought to
myself, I’ll go see the Orozco murals, which
I recognized was precisely what I had been
doing from the first—having already
turned in their direction some miles back,
having already decided to go see them—if
you can call that having decided to do
anything.
What imprint they had left on me
was, by its nature, unvoiced. Fresco is,
after all, a medium of silence. For the
ancients, we have lost all but a
fragmentary context, and for the modern
35 battleshipping, excess of magnesia in the
lime or the marble dust.” Upon that scale,
the work of the individual appears fragile
or ironic. Its half-life becomes negligible,
and the ego turns itself over to its
collective opposite. Orozco’s mural is both
mirror and time capsule—a reflection that
resists identification and the embodiment
of a depth of simultaneity that can neither
be held nor reduced. For my own part, I
had remembered the faces in profile from
my first visit, the unison and rhythm of
their stride, the receding of the self into a
generational myth. The figures were men
but also gods, progenitors of tribe and
empire, continent and hemisphere, their
closed fists, chalked in white, their skin
toned and translucent. In softening grays,
the sky’s shift in hue pulled my eye to
those figures moving forward—the
migration releasing its energy into the
next frame and the next. In elapsed time,
which is also a snapshot, the anonymous
faces repeat. From Beringia to
Teotihuacan, their eyes narrow and widen
and stare. Ambivalent to any unified
telling, Orozco narrates his genesis not as
an Edenic fall but one in motion from the
outset, not a story of sin and redemption
that begins at the beginning, but one
always-already compromised and
compromising, redemptive and redeeming.
Unlike paintings made safe in a
museum, fresco is a lived art. It may be
ignored or attended to but it seeps into the
atmosphere regardless. Untethered, the
feeling is inhaled and stacks like
sediment—building up, unseen, until it
tips—before a nagging anxiety I didn’t
know how to account for, and didn’t notice
until it was at once unbearable, pricked
me from the insides and drew me back. In
the reading room, I was conscious of my
presence within the library, the green, the
town, the valley, its ancient gneisses and
less-ancient shale. I seemed to watch
myself from all angles as the figures in the
panel cast their unseen shadows. I
wondered if my own lineage was equally
as ambivalent—with a blank eye to the
inner room, to the periphery, to any
distraction but the march forward.
Nextlaoalli, the term the Aztecs used for
human sacrifice, means debt payment, the
ritualized act for that which is duly owed
the gods. This was where the migration
was leading: two figures on either side of
the victim pinning his arms and legs upon
a flat stone as another cuts deeply into his
chest.
“When they got them up to a small
square in front of the oratory, where their
accursed idols are kept, we saw them place
plumes on the heads of many of them and
with things like fans in their hands they
forced them to dance before Huichilobos,
and after they had danced they
immediately placed them on their backs on
some rather narrow stones which had been
prepared as places for sacrifice, and with
stone knives they sawed open their chests
and drew out their palpitating hearts and
offered them to the idols that were there,
and they kicked the bodies down the steps,
and Indian butchers who were waiting
below cut off the arms and feet and flayed
the skin off the faces, and prepared it
afterwards like glove leather with the
beards on, and kept those for the festivals
when they celebrated drunken orgies, and
the flesh they ate in chimole.”
My skin softened at the fright of it.
I felt calm before its violence. They wore
wooden masks to dull the senses—
overseen by Huitzilopochtli and
Coatlicue—son and mother—her necklace
of hearts and palms draped over a skirt of
writhing snakes. The sacrifice had no
forward momentum, its symmetry
spiraling into its own still center.
I could not date it precisely. Father had
sent me to the far yard where the view of
the porch was shielded by the back of the
house. Mother was in town with the
Ford—a car we didn’t own until years
later—so in fact, of all the places mother
was not, it was in town. She could have
been inside the house, though that seems
improbable, or across the garden working
on the clothesline, or willfully and
momentarily erased because father
needed her to be. The wind accompanied
his footsteps like static, independent of his
36 actions and what he could control, rushing
over the tops of the grasses as his
shoulders dropped, and dying into a
serene calm as his arms flexed, tearing
sheets of cream-colored paper to confetti.
In the open air, I used to love the
way the stems would brush against my
shoulders. The grasses would sing at a
higher pitch as I ran faster and drop to a
lower volume as I slowed. There was a
music to moving through it—its tempo
tuned to my stride. Mother used to say
that just outside of our door were
infinitely many guitar strings: each tied
from one end only and each sounding a
flat singular note. Every time I went into
the fields I was improvising crossings that
could never be repeated, marking the
ground with an echo even if no one was
there to receive it. On that day however, I
needed to keep a secret and ignored
father’s directions to be elsewhere—
instead circling around behind him where
I could to be invisible. Anywhere but here,
father would say, which wasn’t purely
solipsistic in the sense that to him I did
indeed still exist, but outside of his
purview, father held a low level relativism
of insignificance and benign neglect. What
constituted value or beauty—much less
evil or compromise—was limited to what
father could see.
I had been told my family had a
debt to pay, and perhaps that was still
true. For the longest time, years before
they died—mother from stroke, after
dementia, and father from causes
unknown, so many years since he’d
actually been living—I’d look to their faces
for some resemblance to my own, an
inheritance beyond the stretch of debtridden prairie and scapegoat for my own
ugliness. “This is what your grandfather
did to me when I was thirteen,” I said, and
seeing my son was afraid became even
angrier. For what it’s worth, the curve of
my own brow was nothing compared to
father’s bone-like downward hook. His
nostrils would flare on his otherwise
placid face, and instead of shouting he’d
breathe at an even cadence and look out
toward the plains as if he could see
something that no one else could. As a
child, I admired a patience I later
recognized as an inability to connect.
Stranded within himself, between
disappointment on the one hand and a
standard he could not keep on the other,
his movements were quick and
unassuming with a liveliness that
betrayed the fact that he paid no
attention. Like myself, father was judged
for better than who he was because he
kept his mouth shut. Wide reflecting eyes
promised an intelligence he did not posses
and a kindness wholly outside of his
nature. Silence, taken for depth, was only
silence, and his fits as he called them, as if
downplaying some melodrama when
compelled to apologize or rewrite the
previous day, could never be fully erased
by mother’s translations of what he really
meant.
What I felt in the moment was
silent to me. It crept forward unimpeded
until I realized something had changed.
That’s what happens when trying to
translate a language that still believes in
truth. No approximation can hold. No
equivalency is possible. As a child, it was
easier to get lost. On the flat, with no trees
to speak of save the narrow trunks dotting
its margins, there were scarcely any way
markers. The plains would rise and fall
with the subtlest discretion. A sea of tiny
stalks would fill like liquid, striving
toward the sun to the height of their
neighbors, a smooth meniscus hiding the
gently rolling layers underneath. Like the
curve of the earth it was easy to imagine
the tabletop world before Copernicus.
Travelers would mistake going up a rise
when they were in fact going down one, or
drift far from their bearing without
noticing, with a belief so strong that their
course was plumb, they’d brand those who
would tell them otherwise heretics. I
remember father directing strangers to
town, or to water, or to a neighboring
farm, only to see them carry the same
blind course forward—to die or be found,
father would say—but not for any lack of
knowledge. On a clear day, the sky could
set your truer north, but then the clouds
would hide the sun and drape their low
trolling nets of white. It could last for days
37 or weeks or longer. During summer when
the high latitudes held the light long into
evening and the glow of noon could hardly
be distinguished from dawn, time itself
slipped. One day bled into another,
winding the clock forward or back, so that
upon waking, I could never be certain
whether I had slept for four hours or ten
or twenty-four. The brightness of the day
was unchanged.
particular or real, but the platonic
fragment from which the whole is
imagined. The essence of the prairie. The
essence of my mother and father. I
remembered swimming through the
deeper fields—stooping low and touching
the black dirt with the balls of my feet,
careful to avoid the dried blades that had
fallen between the stalks. The thicker the
grasses became the harder I was to see,
though the louder the rustle and undertow
of the brush, amplifying the sound like
when a bird beside you becomes
something darker in your mind’s eye. I lay
down in the field invisible, elbows to the
dirt. Behind a screen of grasses, father
moved back and forth inside and then
outside of the house. His silhouette was
chalked in grays. Skin hung limp off his
muscles, and a rifle rested against the
outside wall of the house.
Our home was a simple cabin with
a pitched roof at a right angle. A square
and a triangle, as if designed by a child
with white walls I knew couldn’t be stucco,
but that’s how I remember it: the
sandpapered reflection of green fields and
haze of the clouds. Its tympanum painted
crimson. The windows perfect squares
without glass like San Cataldo at Modena,
the house of the dead, as if he were
preparing already for what mother and I
couldn’t yet recognize. Like the others who
had settled on the plains, father had come
to feed his appetites. We all knew of the
unspeakable in ourselves, and he was no
exception. Quietly staking off his acres to
farm and with it any obligation to the
past. Between the neighboring families, it
was taken as given that you were not to
ask anyone their history or to volunteer
your own. The motion of the fields ensured
its falsehood. To speak of yourself was to
draw another’s suspicion. To invite
someone else to do so was to invoke an
untruth. The most honest course was to
say nothing, father advised, and not
deepen the facades we held innately and
layer deception upon what was already
decrepit. He would never speak of a real
fear that he was helpless to change. Such
things were not to be acknowledged
indoors, and if they were voiced were
November 23, 1883: Orozco is born in
Ciudad Guzmán in the state of Jalisco. It
is the year of Wagner’s death: seventeen
years before the revolution begins, twentytwo years before Zapata is murdered,
thirty years before Villa is murdered,
thirty-nine years before Orozco begins The
Epic of American Civilization. As much as
the mural was a revisionist account, what
remained provided little solace. There was
no naïve good to replace an original
corruption, but one equally as black and
with greater fidelity and scope, its haze
finding order in stone, its overseeing eye
cast off for steel and torqued metal. Its
first golden age is bookended by debt and
by prophecy: wooden totems and
classically capped columns, a great
armored cross as much a crucifix as battle
axe, Cortez’s serene gaze surveying rubble
and bodies—hues of gray and taupe
forming a continuum of flesh, stone, and
wood.
For some the peaks and howls of the
prairie weighed upon their solitude. The
horizon would disappear, and its silence
could never be quieted. From an ambient
low whistle came screams that no one else
could hear. Luminary clouds cupped the
earth within a low dome, and its ceiling
seemed to drop as the light pulsed in slow
waves filtering through thicker and
thinner cirrus.
What I remembered came as if in
paper cutouts: a cube, a cone, a cylinder.
The pure form was all I could recall.
Perhaps that’s all there was, not the
38 Orozco Dartmouth b by English Wikipedia at the English language Wikipedia.
Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons
39 erased afterwards as if they never had
been.
dynamism, the feeble attempt of a
different colored dress to signal difference,
their faces are uniformly blank and
uniformly deadened.
The Year One Reed, 1519: Landing at
Veracruz, Cortez burns his ships. Torqued
bodies ball at his feet like the snakes that
had taken the white-bearded Quetzalcoatl
away to return again. Their same flames
serve as the backdrop to stillbirth and the
screams of its skeleton mother—the red of
the barn on a blanched wheat field
suppressed into conformity—the cracked
factory below the boarder and the blood
red medals of its general poised to stab the
revolutionary in the back. The outcome
could have been better.
“They should have constructed
bridges and roads. They should have
taught the Indians new industries and
sports, all in a nice way, affectionately and
understandingly. They should have
encouraged human sacrifices and founded
a large packing house for human flesh,
with a fattening department and modern
refrigerating and canning machinery.
They should have suggested very
respectfully to Montezuma that he
establish democracy in the country while
still conserving the privileges of the
aristocracy to make everyone happy.”
There is little space between an
imagined ideal and a failed reality. At
once complicit and ridiculous, the
monochrome suits and white dresses
assemble in orderly rows. The black-eyed
children encircle their grave waxen
schoolmarm. Her skin, a flatter and
darker shade of yellow as Christ’s; her
almond eyes, the deadened mirror of
Quetzalcoatl’s; and her body mimics
Cortez. They both face left towering over
those around them. Yet as he steps
forward unaffected, she is torqued from
within, leading with the same foot as the
swing of her shoulders, off balance, as if
having inherited his moral equilibrium or
having been forced to come to terms with
it. The children at her sides are the mass
of broken bodies at his feet. It is a
different kind of sacrifice: not a physical
death, but the emptying out of desire and
I remained still, which was the same as
remaining silent. Father paced on the
porch and stopped to put pen to paper
though I knew he didn’t know how to read
or write any more than his name.
Numbers he knew, and father kept track
of his accounts with a pigeon scratch only
he could decipher. Music he also knew,
engrained in his fingers, and once struck,
the strings would wheel forward like a
player piano unconscious of the names of
the notes they sounded. Easing his weight
down on the rocker, the squeak in the
boards was visible in its roll. Back and
forth—a sound that can only be seen.
Father gripped the rifle like a walking
stick and planted the butt of its stock
down on the porch planks. The white walls
reflected its brown and gunmetal. The
wind broke in upon my view like static.
And unlacing a boot with his free hand,
father threaded his long fingerlike middle
toe through the trigger, pulled the muzzle
flush against his forehead, and kicked.
I could see each alignment’s corresponding
mirror and opposite. The movement
forward was one of familiarity within
change, the mood and temperature
shifting from cool to vibrant, sentient to
lifeless, stone to metal. The images in the
mural were at once singular and
uncannily recognizable, known before
their sources are ever unearthed, and
transcendent of their original meanings to
become nightmare or heaven. When
mother’s Ford pulled onto the driveway,
its tires popped against the stones with a
fraction of the volume as any rifle shot. I
could hear it clear from the edge of the
field as if I was more afraid of mother and
confirming a truth than what father had
just done but could be buried away and
forgotten. The rifle had not gone off—his
40 face held an expression more of
puzzlement than relief. To be resigned to
life is a state of being filled with questions
of mechanics and not motive: was the
trigger fully depressed? Was the shell
faulty? Was the safety latch on? He
disappeared into the house to place the
rifle back above the cabinet. He returned
to his rocker and waited as mother
approached, kissing her lightly on the
forehead and following her indoors as if all
traces of his desire had never occurred.
Perhaps I would have begun to mistrust
my own witness and believe the same, but
there amongst the shredded paper on the
porch was a folded sheet on which father
had written his name. A suicide note in
the form of a dog tag: as if to identify him,
had his face gone missing. Or, by signing
his name, he said what he didn’t know
how to express. An open variable upon
which we could place any meaning: his
name no longer a name, but an opening
out.
how in the wind my parents’ calls for me
could be caught and scrambled or batted
down and ignored. Within a proximity
that’s close and a mental space that’s
distant, the contradictions between one
line of thought and another fire
haphazardly. The gaps remain.
During the day, the plains stretched the
boundaries I felt contained by. My vision
would continually fail before the view was
ever interrupted. Its vanishing point was
one of raw color, untethered from ground,
the sky, from any figure or form. The
space seemed to run onto infinity, and as
the sun fell, the edges of the world began
to turn inward. It was as if the universe
had reached its maximum and started to
contract, returning to the spark that set
things in motion. After the day I had seen
father from the fields, he was both the
same and he wasn’t—ramping up without
warning and jerking his whole body
upright, or when a crack of sound startled
mother or I, he would stare wide-eyed
refusing to blink, reverting back to
instincts the opposite of what was natural.
The inside of the house consisted
of three small rooms. The living space
occupied the northern half of its footprint
with two square windows on either side of
the chimney. The kitchen and bedroom the
three of us shared divided the southern
half in two. At night I lay on my mattress
pretending to sleep. Only a thin strip of
board separated my parents’ bed from my
own. The room was stale with shared
breath, and whenever I heard their
conscious inhales and exhales turn
automatic, I became afraid to move for
fear of waking them. When I couldn’t hear
anything, it was even worse, knowing they
were awake looking up at the same black
ceiling as I was, seeing themselves within
the jagged shapes and shadows where I
played god.
Mother I imagined picturing
herself as Doña Marina on a print plate,
engraved from burin onto metal. Father’s
thoughts I could never enter. He filled the
room with pressure—with red dust and
It was father who had first taught me how
to disappear. Once when walking together
far away from home, he had fallen behind
me in the open fields and ducked unseen
below the surface of the grass. It was like
a dive underwater that left no surface
ripple. When I turned I was alone. I called
for him but without answer, and a feeling
I couldn’t at first define, which began as a
pinprick, hollowed as it expanded. The
horizon I normally took comfort in became
terrifying—a jolt of blood and
percussion—an anger I didn’t know until
then that I had. It wasn’t that I felt
threatened exactly or didn’t believe that
father would reappear. A rational fear is
different from one that you cannot
understand, running free of any attempt
to temper it. At thirteen, that was how I
imagined dying would be: facing your own
solitude in a void—dwarfed into
indifference by the scale of what
surrounds you. When father did pop his
head up again, laughing his crow like
laugh with its blunt entry and vowel
sustain, I fell back into lockstep. I learned
41 rock and the march forward. I never
considered that they felt my presence in
the same way. In our family, I was the
spy. To them, I thought, I was always
asleep, blind, unconscious to the rustle
and pressing rhythm from their bed, the
inhale before a held breath and the
stretching of fibers and skin. Whispers for
silence were louder than that which they
were called on to hush. Within them was a
confession to what could not be imagined
away or folded into ambiguity. Don’t wake
him, mother would say. There was no
pleasure in it. No privacy. What pain or
embarrassment or doubt that remained
could never be acknowledged, and the
following morning they were so straightfaced and proper that I almost began to
doubt what I could not voice—what I was
too young at the time to understand and
too old to question.
Time and again, mother tried to
replace my sadness with resolve but didn’t
know how. She would play out whole
conversations in her head, anticipating
with perfect foreknowledge everything
that we would and wouldn’t say, so there
was little point in having the conversation
in the first place.
History was tied and folded. For Orozco:
The Pre-Columbian and Modern Worlds,
The Coming of Quetzalcoatl to The
Coming of Cortez, Ancient Human
Sacrifice, and Tombs of Unknown Dead. If
the mural was a time line—and it was at
least in part—its Aztec imagery predated
the Toltec. Time was out of order—
crossing and mirroring the linear with the
non-linear and drawing what I knew to be
true away from what I could make sense
of. In the reading room, I thought about
the times when mother began to forget my
name. At first, she would apologize when
she caught herself. She mistook me for
father who by that time was long dead, or
for my own son who is now, and as gently
as I was able, I’d correct her. I’m your son,
mother, I said. As her mind slipped
further however, it left her only the raw
absorption of the world. There was no
right, or wrong, or any comprehension of a
mistake. What was present in front of her
was true, and this was different than
being gullible. When someone who is
gullible is duped, the joke or danger of the
mistake is that they are too slow to find
out what is real. With mother, there was
no danger. I was who I said I was. The
present was all that exists.
________________________________________________________________________________________________
Bibliography
Benjamin, Walter. “Theses of the Philosophy of History.” Illuminations. Ed. Hannah Arendt. Trans.
Harry Zohn. New York: Schocken, 1968.
Coffey, Mary. “Cortez and the ‘Angel of History’: Reflections on Orozco’s Epic of American Civilizaiton
and ‘Messianic Time.’” Dartmouth College. Arthur M. Loew Auditorium, Hanover, NH. October
28, 2011. Manton Foundation Orozco Lecture.
Diaz del Castillo, Bernal. The History of the Conquest of New Spain. Ed. David Carrasco. Albuquerque,
New Mexico: University of New Mexico Press, 2008.
Goodrich, Samuel G. Lives of Celebrated American Indians. Boston: Bradbury, Soden & Co., 1843.
Orozco, José Clemente. "Eruption Of Paint." Harper's Magazine 225. (1962): 45-50.
Orozco, José Clemente. "Orozco 'Explains'." The Bulletin of the Museum of Modern Art. 1940: 2.
Orozco, José Clemente, 1883-1949. "New World, New Races And New Art." Creative Art 4. (1929): sup44sup46.
Orozco, José Clemente. "Fragments of an Autobiography." Magazine Of Art 45. (1952): 347-354.
Orozco, José Clemente. The Epic of American Civilization. 1932-1934. Fresco. Baker Library, Hanover,
New Hampshire.
Song of Quetzalcoatl. Trans. John Hubert Cornyn. Yellow Springs, Ohio, The Antioch Press, 1930.
Print.
Quetzalcoatl. Dir. Elias Savada. Brookshire Productions, 1961. Film.
42 Orozco - Dartmouth b by English Wikipedia at the English language Wikipedia.
Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons
43 Hot Coffee micro-fiction by Joseph Bodie
It’s not manly, my dad would say, when we met for lunch or after dinner. It was about iced
coffee that he would say this. Men shouldn’t sip from straws, he’d say. It would be 90 degrees
outside and my dad would still drink hot coffee and comment proudly about it. And because
of this attitude, because of his feelings about coffee, hot or iced, I knew I could never tell him
the truth.
44 Sesame by Meg Eden
45 not the war poetry by Jessica Wallace
this is not the war
this is unpacking
examining casings
-you shot first
-you fired back. we never talk about that
we never talk about anything
this is examining bruises
yellowed and hidden beneath collars and sleeves
this is the silence – such silence
are you thinking of me?
i’m not thinking of you.
my toes have scars
in certain light it looks like dirt
in another, when I hear your voice
by accident through the phone line,
like blood
but this is not the war
this is the child
who collects pinecones and flowers
leaves a trail of them around the house
breadcrumbs in her pockets
that must be shaken out before the wash
usually your house
your wash
but sometimes mine
i hang her little clothes with gentleness
you can’t possibly imagine of me
46 Ghosts are Watching Me poetry by Eleanor Lerman
These are shell days
Echoes in the ear have names
and what they name is on a list
of things you wanted
What did you want in those
unremarkable times when
what was in your pocket
could buy the world?
Now, every little thing that
was wasted
walks down the street in the
early morning and waits for you
at the bus stop, wanting to
hold your hand
Of course there is weeping
Years later, the letters that
came in the mail
told us this was what
should be expected
And now, in my house,
ghosts are watching me
My plan is to uninvite them
because I am not finished
I never bought anything that
I couldn’t put a spell on
and I still feel dangerous
Sometimes, anyway
So look outside
Night falls and the creepy crawlies
prowl the street, their bodies
made of stars
That’s what I expected
Sometimes, in the company of
such gorgeous maniacs
all I can do is laugh
47 Mystery by Courtney Kenny Porto
48 A Peculiar Caravan poetry by Matthew Rotando
The tiny letters that make words also travel through windshields, through your eyes, across
tables, and past mausoleum doors. Some of these letters have attained a strange resonance. Inside
the e’s, skeleton heads wobble and clack, their garnet teeth glinting in the weary glow of your
little nightlight. Someone has dropped an old green jacket on the k’s. They have fallen again, into
their sleep of uselessness. Also, the b’s and t’s are wrapped in a wild embrace. They are crying
and won’t let go of each other. You walk around all day in clothes, tiring the world. Every night,
the tree outside your window has a nightmare about a campfire. In winter, as you ready yourself
for bed, it scratches strange new letters onto the frosted glass. You dream new words with them,
outlandish shapes the world has yet to see. By morning they have all trundled off in a strange
caravan. But they remember how you laughed, your arms open wide, while you chased them.
49 Plum Chutney nonfiction by Margaret Yapp
in quivering voices. Here, your skin is
gray and you look, somehow, fifty years
old.
The women with your grandma
wail songs and circle around your casket.
It is a slow, sad dance. They touch your
body and adjust, seemingly with a plan in
mind, the petals scattered across and
around you. It is a terrifying kind of
beauty that I’m glad you can’t see, that
I’m even more glad you can’t hear as they
sing in Hindi, their voices breaking over
and over. I don’t know what they’re
saying. Our friend Jeff does. He whispers
to me that being here, at your funeral,
makes him wish he had never learned the
language. No one can understand suicide.
As they dance and sing, your
mom—dressed in blue jeans and a black
sweater—leans into the wall next to the
exit door with her whole weight, looking
like she wants to disappear. As suddenly
as it began, the dance ends and we walk
with your family to the incineration room
down the hallway, your mom lags behind
the group, her steps steady and slow, a
necessary march.
“Do you know why?” she asks us,
many times.
The time before the last time I saw
you, you were still you: saying a hurried
goodbye on the sidewalk, a late summer
sun pulsing down on both of us, your smile
the same as it had always been. Without
warning, you became gray and old, in a
casket, with a broken neck. Soon you will
be ash and dust, powdered bone and flesh,
becoming what we will be someday.
Your grandparents help carry your
casket through a door, into a room, where
we listen to the crunching and scratching
that is the burning of a human body.
Even now you make me eat Indian
food. After the funeral, after the burning,
your mom asks me and our friends to
lunch with your family. We agree to go,
and leave the funeral home, like we are
getting away from something. We follow
the directions she gives us and arrive at a
I didn’t like it, but I ate it anyway, filled
my plate with the little round gulab jamun
you loved so much, sticky rice pudding,
plum chutney because I liked the sound of
it. I played it safe with the sweet stuff.
One Friday at your favorite Indian place
we sat at the corner booth and you
explained that this is what your
grandparents cooked in your little yellow
kitchen, using all the right spices:
turmeric, cumin, coriander. It’s something
about those spices, too earthy and sticky
for me.
We used to go out to lunch every
Friday in high school, you and me and the
other boys I was terrifically, secretly in
love with. This was our time: Friday
afternoons, downtown. It seemed a secret,
our leaving school together, from the
parking lot, like we were getting away
with something. We called ourselves The
Lunch Bunch, and usually we could agree
on where to go, but at least once a month
you would woo me into getting Indian at
that place with the corner booth, dim
lights, orange walls, and a buffet. This
was the routine: I would complain, at first,
but then you’d give me an earthy, sticky
smile and I would follow you wherever you
wanted to go.
I met them twice, your
grandparents, an old couple that didn’t
like you spending too much time with
girls.
Even now you make me eat Indian
food. Only a few years after high school, I
go to your funeral and watch your family
from ten rows back as they push orange
and purple flower petals up your nose,
over your closed and long-lashed eyes, in a
rainbow circle around your head and
broken neck. Here, there is none of the
reserved somberness of the quiet Catholic
funerals I am used to. Here, everyone is
wearing bright yellow and orange, yelling
50 new Indian place: same dim lights, orange
walls, a buffet.
Inside, I play it safe, filling my
plate with all of the sweet stuff.
Scottsdate by Meg Eden
51 At the Nadia Bolz-­‐Weber Lecture poetry by Felicity White
The preacher says, “Sometimes
Jesus just hunts your ass
down and there’s nothing
you can do about it.” And you
lean in to listen. She wears a leather
moto jacket, boot cut jeans,
hair a silver-black faux hawk.
Sub-zero February but she strips
off the jacket mid-lecture, reveals
sleeve-style tattoos. One is Mary
Magdalene, the holy whore.
You imagine your face in the icon.
You on the Reverend’s ordained arm—
your scarlet tunic rippling as she twists
her forearm, reaches for a drink of water.
52 In Memoriam Griffith O bservatory, L os A ngeles poetry by Sally Zakariya
The day we threw the cigarettes away for good
we hiked up a hill in the City of Angels
newly married and glowing with good intent
we made our way through chaparral and sumac
watched by squirrels and mule deer
the day burned with the usual L.A. glare
sun blasted
smog veiled
light beating against a clouded bowl
we smoked on the way up but mindful of dry
brush toed a little divot for each butt
carefully covering it with dirt
then at the three-domed temple to the heavens
we sailed our Marlboro pack off the observatory
wall for coyotes to ponder
that night I dreamed of a cigarette in a coffin
slender and resplendent in top hat and tails
surrounded by grieving smokers
53 Ode to Before We Were Dance and Form poetry by Robin Carstensen
If you told us everything, was shattered
the most repeated word?
Did you know we would forget
the suns in gardens misting. You must have
spoken of time, time the world
would be a wall that wailed against us,
time we would be the wall
and the wailing, atomic body
stunned, remembering the space
in which it could not break for being
wave without form. Did we hold a particle
of light that became thought, and wonder
what is comfort, and debt.
What does abandoned mean.
Bereft. Fracture of the heart.
Did nothing in nothing compare.
How did we come here then, and not remember you,
could none of us, or how else would the rivulets
stream from our pod sockets down our bodies,
into our homes and cities, shatter us
into slivers straining the earth into tendrils and sores.
Some of us imagine we had come
manifested into form, knew the urge
to expand before we never thought we could
be led astray from course. Did you tell us
everything, while we ebbed and flowed
along the lush canopies, did you feel us
slipping into purpose,
imagining our dance, receding
from nothing so nothing could hear us
54 when we clamor, bringing what will
rain and tremble inside the whole
dream, listen to us think of you with care, imagine
how you flow in us and when
part of you vanished from one realm, shattered
the spectrum, became us, born.
How we fasten, how we let go. How do we
swoon like a pond beneath a gliding swan, or?
Frankie by Fabio Sassi
55 Comparing Frank O’Hara’s Poems to the Size of My Thighs a r unway m odel’s t houghts o n t he c atwalk poetry by Susan Comninos
I'm not a fan of Frank
O'Hara, and shouldn't my thighs
Be thinner in this dress? Cloth
Of suede, fuede, whatever:
Its polyester threads swell
On my legs. Form's a quick
Thinned frame. Quick
As a thong, I pull it on, frank
As underpants. Still, Frank's river swells
To the spill of my thighs
As he spatters on. Whatever.
He's cooked his word cloth
To some over-amped cloth
A tongue can't linger on. Quick
As a zipper, it pops whatever
Wants out, into jazzed gibberish. Frank,
You're like the back of my thighs:
Cellulite lumped between swells
Of moguls, under ski-jumped swells
Of ass. But no matter the cloth,
Or cut, the globes of my thighs
Bulge to phat beats that quickly
Ebb in their decade's own time. Frank,
I know you liked a sped-up jizz, or whatever
Your New York School called poems. Whatever
Scene, or Factory fabric sewed swells
Of sequins, split beads and—frank
As a cut sandwich—poetry clothes
That talked a fast, quipped
Tango, today's thighs
Love no thick lap. Not my thighs,
And not your own, Frank, whatever
You might have elfinly hoped. Quick
As a Coked-up eel, you've swelled
Clothes into a metaphor for clothes
No emperor wears now; drag, Frank,
Is the opposite of what you do, Frank,
56 Or did: you're dead. And the life of my thighs
Spreads out, splays on in a poem's clothes.
Is what we ache for just a—whatever?—
A bloated joke? Swell upon swell,
Your words dashed quicker
Than your dune-buggy dodge, Frank.
Still, your poems—beached, bitch clothes—
Natter on; tat fast; swell swells.
57 Deer Bones by Andy Singer
58 Human Frog Bones by Andy Singer
59 Forgotten Bread poetry by Jim Gustafson
At The Abbey of Saint Nicholas,
Brother Phillip forgets he’s baking bread.
He’s staring out the kitchen window
watching the last light
fall over the wheat fields.
The flour for forgotten bread comes
from these fields. He smells damp
as his mother had in summer, when they walked
home with store-bought loaves.
Her sore ankles would swell like dough after kneading.
Yeast spreads its incense through the room,
settles like a gnat on his nose. He leaves the window,
turns to the oven, his robe is his hot-pad
as he pulls the door to find the darkened crust.
The heat of hell, he says out loud.
It’s good to eat what comes from fire.
60 Drinking with Spiders poetry by Jim Gustafson
Back when I hid vodka behind the broken TV in the basement,
I knew all there was to know about two spiders who lived in the dark
tubes of its old technology. Most nights, I disturbed them more
than once, to fill my glass. Drinking from the bottle seemed too crass.
After a while, we exchanged names. They were Emily and Ezra.
We drank together and told each other stories about the webs
we spread and how we wrap the lives of others with our sticky stuff.
I made notes about the important role dust plays in the cosmos
of the underground, how the things that wait to be thrown away are vital
to the ecology of the spider’s world. It is, they told me, stillness that allows
fine lines to be drawn. Their families were immigrants. Long ago wars
drove them to big ships, where they hung in dark cabin closets and sailed
away from human screams. Cannon balls disturbed their dreams of life
alone where things of the dead are stored and old TVs sit ignored.
61 It Means You Are Loved fiction by Sudha Balagopal
Bride maintained the amalgam of
apathy and reluctance she'd brought into
the room. After five minutes, she fished a
phone out of the pocket of her tunic and
scrolled through messages.
Veda tightened her hold on the
cone to control an exasperated breath.
This promised to be a long evening. She
had begun with the left hand and would
then move to the feet, leaving the right
hand for last.
Bride used the fingers of her free
hand to text. Her attention riveted on the
phone, she expressed no interest in what
Veda did
It's her wedding and she's not
excited about decorating her palms?
Veda blinked again getting back to
Bride's hand, which rested on a large
towel protecting her clothes from the dye.
Creating the intricate lace-like pattern
called for concentration and focus.
The night before, Veda had mixed
dry henna powder with water, black tea,
and lemon juice to create a thick, puddinglike paste. She poured the paste into
plastic cones, cut narrow openings into the
tips and fashioned her henna tool.
Practice lent Veda the ability to sit
cross-legged on the floor for hours, unlike
many young women born to privilege.
Bride too sat without complaint, saying
nothing. Fingers dancing on the phone,
the young lady appeared to have forgotten
about stiffness and discomfort.
Bride's soft skin told Veda she'd
never washed a dish in her life. Shaped
into pretty crescents, her perfect oval nails
rested on pink beds. Nor could she have
written much. Her middle finger didn't
boast a soft indentation where a pen
might have rested for years.
Veda's skill as an artist didn't
extend to the keyboard. She composed,
wrote, and re-wrote each email or text
with the same formality and care she'd
given her handwritten letters as a child.
How many messages did this girl
send and receive each day? Hundreds?
A man-servant answered the door and led
Veda through a lobby dotted with
gleaming brass planters, a profusion of
green overflowing from their rims. He
showed her to a room on the right and
departed after telling her the lady of the
house, memsaab, would be in soon. Veda
shifted from foot to foot, hesitant to sit on
the plush sofa. The heavy contents of her
bag soon listed her shoulder to one side.
She settled on the floor and unpacked her
henna decorating kit.
Sixteen minutes later, the bride's
mother—memsaab—ushered her daughter
in, one hand latched onto the young lady's
upper arm. The bride wore a silk tunic
and slacks, not the usual attire when
getting one’s hands and feet decorated
with mehendi, henna.
To make her comfortable, Veda
said, “Ready for your mehendi, dear?
Come, sit. You will be lovely on your
wedding day.”
Bride—no one bothered to tell
Veda her name—shrugged in response.
Veda remained the invisible henna artist,
the woman who beautified a bride's palms
and feet. The mother didn't engage in chitchat. Before leaving, she demanded
complex designs with vines climbing,
glove-like, all the way to the elbows.
Veda began with a paisley pattern
on Bride's soft, left palm. A faint floral
scent wafting from her slender wrist
tickled Veda into a sneeze. Her hand
shook and a drip of henna landed outside
the design. Grabbing a rag, she dabbed
the excess—this dye from a flowering tree
stained skin quickly—before it ruined the
integrity of her art. She blinked to
lubricate her eyes, bent her head closer to
the mango-shaped contour she'd created
and accentuated a curve with her artist's
tool, the henna cone.
62 Veda’s in-box contained one email
awaiting her response. She'd pondered her
answer for the last two days. Hari, the
man she considered her boss, had issued a
strange, unexpected invitation. Strange,
because he hadn't sent the note. It came
from his assistant, someone called
Martha, along with information about a
bank deposit made for property taxes.
An unfamiliar discomfort in her
hips made her rock from side to side. Hari
sent payments for the upkeep of his
property—a three bedroom unit in a
suburb of Mumbai—and a brief email
every now and then. That remained the
extent of their communication.
Now he is inviting me to visit him
in the United States?
“Hey, Bharat!” Bride shouted
without warning, startling Veda into
squeezing an unnecessary daub of henna
on her client’s elbow. “Chai lao mere liye!”
Bring me some tea, she ordered an
invisible servant. She didn't ask her
henna artist if she would like some tea as
well.
Veda picked up a rag to wipe the
drip.
Bharat, the man who'd answered
the door, brought tea in ten minutes—two
fragile cups resting on saucers. Bride
grabbed the tea without comment, her
eyes scanning a message.
Veda hesitated a second, wiped
her stained hands on the towel and picked
up the cup and saucer. “Thank you!”
Her hands, tinted a permanent
orange-red from years of handling color,
contrasted against the white curve of the
cup's handle. The dye had migrated to her
nails, embedded itself in her cuticles. Her
mother, from whom she'd learned the art,
once had similar hands.
Bride's phone rang. The
unfamiliar tune sang, “Do you know I love
you?”
Veda's gaze darted to Bride. The
sullen expression disappeared. Bride's
eyes glittered, the lips transformed in a
smile and her voice rose in excitement.
“Oh, hiiiii! So, you decided to call?”
Veda listened to Bride's side of the
conversation, an emptiness yawning in
her chest. Bride spoke in rapid-fire
English, giggles punctuating sentences,
eyelashes fluttering as if the man stood
before her.
How love transforms a woman!
A pang shot through forty-fiveyear-old Veda. Her life revolved around
women, weddings and henna. She hadn't
ever received a romantic letter, telephone
call, or email from a man.
Her relationship with Hari had
remained business-like. She'd taken care
of his parents and he'd taken care of the
bills. After their deaths—his father had
passed away three years ago, his mother
last year—she continued to take care of
the flat and he paid the expenses.
Like a wayward comet flying
through the cosmos, a buried thought
escaped its orbit.
How long will he continue? If he
sells the flat, where can I go?
She'd never known love. Or
marriage. No one had introduced her to a
man for the purpose of marriage, nor had
she met anyone on her own. For the last
twenty years she'd made her home with
an elderly couple, taking care of them in
exchange for room and board and a salary,
only leaving them for short periods of time
to work on decorating palms and feet for
weddings.
Bride forgot her tea; it sat cooling
in the saucer on the floor. She chortled.
Gushing, “Oh, you are cho chweet!” she
tossed her head and moved bangs away
from the eyes.
A word hovered and teased in
Veda's head.
A coquette. That's it. Bride behaves
like a coquette.
The chattering bride didn't spare a
glance in her artist's direction.
“Rohit!” Bride shouted then
squeezed her eyes shut for a breath.
“Come on … be serious!” Her left hand
moved, reflecting the excitement.
Afraid she would smudge the
mehendi, Veda placed both her hands on
her client’s arm, holding it down. Bride
stilled her movements.
The left side complete, Veda
placed the arm to one side. She patted a
63 low stool next to her, indicating her client
should sit. Bride didn't protest. Laughing,
she continued her conversation, and with
a gesture, gave Veda permission to fold
her pants and place a protective towel
over her clothing.
The bride had pretty feet—no
calluses, no unsightly cuts along the heel
line. The delicate feet looked as if they had
never touched the earth, nor seen any
dust. Her toenails, painted dark red,
contrasted with the pale skin. The waxed
legs boasted flawless texture.
Veda traced a simple flower on the
forefoot. Most brides didn't ask for
intricate designs on the feet, their heavy
bridal attire kissed the floor. Besides, one
simpering bride had told her, the
bridegroom's attention on the wedding
night would scarcely be on his new wife's
feet.
She placed the cone on a plastic
plate and interlocked her fingers, cracking
knuckles. The antique clock on the wall
chimed eight times. Veda picked up her
cone, estimating two more hours of work
before she could leave.
Once she got home, she'd have to
respond to Hari via Martha. The
invitation mystified her. She was not a
friend; she'd remained a distant relative in
need to whom he'd offered help. Although
his parents had gone, the checks
continued to arrive. The occasional longdistance connection meant they had not
become close.
He didn't come when his mother
passed away last year—a cousin took care
of the cremation. She knew Hari as an
impatient man. He couldn’t sit for three
minutes before he needed to pace and he
used the fewest words to make a point.
His communication with her could be
distilled to a set of instructions: take care
of the broken window, replace the
bathroom heater, ask the doctor to send
me an email, call me when you know the
diagnosis.
Why is he inviting me? And
offering to pay for the ticket as well?
Gratitude?
She shook her head to find focus,
to stop her monkey mind jumping from
thought to thought. Focusing on Bride, she
ran over the instructions she should give:
Squeeze lemon juice on the henna, wait for
henna to dry overnight for strong color to
take, cover hands and feet in plastic bags
before bedtime to prevent sheets from
staining. While she could wash out her
hands and feet the following morning, too
much soap would rinse away some color.
When she left after a job, she
didn't offer the standard good-bye or
congratulations. In a personal statement
to each of her customers, she said, “You
know what they say, 'If the final color
turns out to be dark, it means you are
loved!'”
Here and there, a glorious orange
peeped from under the henna on Bride's
left hand. In a few hours the orange would
deepen to a dark red, almost maroon.
“Please, try and understand. My
mother has arranged my mehendi today. I
can't leave the house,” Bride said on the
phone.
He was eager to be with his brideto-be. Despite the fact they would be
married two days later, he wanted her to
leave the house for a rendezvous. To him,
Veda imagined, forty-eight hours loomed
like forever.
What does it feel like to be so
desired?
Questions scurried in Veda's head.
How did they meet? How did they decide
they must be married? Was he tall or
short, handsome or bright, a banker or a
doctor or an engineer? For that matter
what was Bride's career?
Bride: delicate, sometimes giggly,
sometimes dour, at other times so
obviously with her head in the clouds.
Veda couldn't see her as a doctor. She'd
never known a doctor who tittered like
Bride did. Nor did the young lady speak
logically enough to be a lawyer. She didn't
believe Bride could be a teacher either.
Children were perceptive and sensed a
lack of control. Veda envisioned chaos in
her classroom. Bride with her beauty
could have been a model if she were six
inches taller.
“Listen to me,” Bride's voice
became shrill. “You don't get how hard it
64 is. I can try tomorrow. I cannot get out of
this today.” She stopped for a breath, her
eyes fixed on the milky skin of the tea in
her half-filled cup. “The other ladies will
be here for their mehendi tomorrow, so
tomorrow will be also be difficult.”
She listened for a bit and shook
her head hard, pony tail swinging from
shoulder to shoulder. “No, no one asked
me. My mother fixed this up. You know
how she is. Maybe morning … I'll send you
a message.”
Another pause. Bride blushed and
said, “I don't think so. You're just saying
that. Stop it!” Mirth returned.
Such a special relationship, he
couldn't stay away for one evening. Veda's
hand shook and created a wobbly line on
Bride's ankle.
She bent closer, examined the
crookedness and decided it could stay.
Good luck trying to escape
tomorrow with a house full of guests.
When she started on the left foot,
they were still talking. They hadn't
arrived at a consensus, no time or meeting
place decided. Words floated above Veda's
head in bubbles: insubstantial, indecisive,
frothy. She heard “Maybe,” “I can try,” “If
I find the time,” “What can I do?' and,
“You tell me,” several times. Bride
alternated between giggling, gushing,
flirting. Every now and then, she pulled
out the helpless card.
“Listen to me. It cannot work. It
won't work,” she insisted.
Veda finished both feet, waited for
the right hand, reluctant to break into the
conversation.
He must have asked her why,
then, she had continued to speak with him
for so long.
“Because I love you, you silly dolt!
Don't you get that?” She hung up after
that, chest heaving.
Veda gestured, asking Bride for
her right hand. She felt the hand tremble
under hers and noticed the rapid pulse at
the wrist. With both hands out of
commission, Bride could no longer answer
her phone. It sang, “Do you know I love
you,” over and over again. Through the
corner of her eye, Veda saw 'Rohit' appear
on the screen. When the ringing stopped,
the phone dinged to indicate a message.
Bride said, “Ooof!” then raised the
index finger of her left hand. Veda
understood. She nodded. These were the
ways of young love. If the mehendi on the
tip of the index finger fell off, she'd re-do
that part before she left.
With a sigh, Bride read his
messages. Using the one available finger,
she responded, leaving green henna marks
on the instrument. He sent more messages
and Bride continued her one-fingered
typing.
Tomorrow promised to be a long
day with the bridal mehendi party.
Although not as elaborate as Bride's
palms, there would be at least twenty-five
women to work on. She needed to mix a
big batch of henna when she got home.
A clock chimed ten times. She'd
spent four hours on this young lady. She
made a note to herself so she could draw
up her bill appropriately. As she left, she
gave Bride the standard instructions. Her
client’s expression regressed to the
preoccupied, uninterested expression she'd
worn earlier in the evening. Annoyance
overwhelmed Veda. “All this beautification
is for your wedding day, dear,” she almost
said.
As she left, she issued her parting
line. “You know what they say, if the final
color turns out to be dark, it means you
are loved!”
For the first time Bride looked
directly at her. She laughed.
She laughs?
“Yes, I am loved,” she said. “I
know.”
Once home, too tired to cook an elaborate
meal, Veda made some instant noodles.
She didn't turn on her computer.
If Hari sells this place, where can I
go?
She looked at the wall calendar
over the computer—the local pharmacist
gifted her one at the beginning of each
year—where she marked her
appointments in red. Tomorrow's square
65 glowed ruby-red, but the next five days
stared back at her, blank.
“No. She didn't speak much to me.
She was on the phone for a while, texting
and talking. But she seemed okay.
Preoccupied, that's all.”
Should I say her sullenness
disappeared once her fiancé called?
“Think hard. Did you hear a name,
a plan, anything? If not,” the mother's
tone hardened, “I'll send the police to you
for questioning. You must remember
something. The wedding is tomorrow and
the bride is missing.”
Threats? Police?
“I don't know anything. Believe
me.”
“Think. Something will jump into
your mind. I'll call you back in an hour.
Vivek and his family don't know. This is
terrible. It's embarrassing. Don't open
your mouth and don't talk about this to
anyone. Just help us find her before the
wedding tomorrow.”
Veda hung up. She needed coffee.
Sugar scattered over the counter and the
milk boiled over before she managed to get
the beverage ready.
She took the first sip and a name
plopped into her head. Rohit. She took
another sip and ran her mind over Bride's
conversations last evening. Not once had
the name Vivek cropped up. Not in
conversation or on the phone's display
window.
The coffee eased tension. She
turned on the computer and logged into
her email account. She read and re-read
Martha's message. No question about it.
The email invited her to the United
States. It also instructed her to pay the
property tax. Money had been wired to her
bank account.
An invitation to visit the United
States. A tantalizing respite from angry
mothers.
She decided to bathe and eat. It
would give her time to formulate her
response.
An hour later, she'd made her
decision. She sat in front of the computer,
ready to compose her response, when the
mother called again.
As usual, the lady dispensed with
formalities. “We've informed the police.
Her mobile phone rang at 6:00 in the
morning, shocking her into wakefulness.
She tried to reach a heavy arm over and
across the bed. By the time the muscles
cooperated, the caller had hung up. She
turned over onto her stomach. Clients
didn't contact her this early in the
morning. For a moment, quiet reigned.
When the shrill tones reverberated
a second time, she managed to pick up the
phone. Her upper shoulders and neck
ached from bending over Bride's hands
and feet. An unfamiliar number lit up the
display.
“Our daughter is missing,” Bride's
mother said without preamble.
As if she was her commanding
officer, Veda jumped out of bed, her legs
struggling to find balance.
“You were the last person she was
with last night. Did she say anything to
you?” the lady demanded.
“What? No …”
It didn't make sense. A happy
bride-to-be, so in love she couldn't stop
talking to her bridegroom. A man so over
the moon, he couldn't wait forty-eight
hours to be with the girl he adored.
Why has she disappeared?
Veda felt a pang. A stab of
jealousy, of envy, of wanting to feel
something she had never experienced:
being so precious to someone, he wanted
you in his life every pulsing moment.
“Hello? Hello? Are you there?”
“I don't get it,” Veda said. “When I
left, it was about 10:00. I gave her my
instructions, told her how to take care of
her hands and feet and she seemed to
understand. You say she's gone?”
“All I can tell you is that she's not
in the house this morning. When I checked
her room last night, it was dark and I
thought she was sleeping. We are in a
panic. Is there anything she said? You
must have heard or seen something? Did
anyone come to see her?”
66 Did you remember anything? Who did she
talk to while she was with you?”
Bride has flown the coop, gone to
her love.
Veda's fingers hovered over the
keyboard. She removed them, closed the
window.
She didn't want to travel to
America.
“Hello? Hello?” Bride's mother
didn't like waiting.
“I'm sorry. I really don't know
anything.”
67 Links by Fabio Sassi
68 The Pit fiction by Stefanie Freele
his preoccupation with fusty odors. The
pit, the pit, the pit. Admittedly, sometimes
she wants him to get down there, get it
over with, quit being restless. That way,
without his niggling agitation, she can
look up at the blue sky all day and only
glance down now and then to watch her
footing.
As usual, he expects her to stretch
her arm down and hoist him back up, that
is, after he rolls in the mud, licks grime
from the bottom. Haul me up! he
demands, when he is sufficiently filthy.
He, like the others, won’t grab the
white spotless rope, which hangs there as
silent as a mountain. If any pit-jumpers
wander close to the line, the others yank
them back with the strength of
multitudes. Even with their influence,
once in a rare while they miss. Someone
polluted and bulging with shame may
willingly escape.
Grab the blasted rope, she shouts.
It’s hanging right there in front of your
face.
But he doesn’t. He pouts, grows
surly, throws clods at her, taunting her
with demise.
In the past, she continuously
overextended her arm, strained to grasp
his hand, but lately, her back is giving her
trouble, like an old reliable three-hundredthousand mile car that just can’t make it
anymore. Her spine, as she begins to
kneel, rasps loudly. It is clear, this time,
he’ll be too heavy for her weakened bones.
She shakes her coconut-mango
hair while carefully backing away. Then
she runs: in and out of whitened birch
trees, leaping over rocks, racing up and
down green hills with burning legs,
scaling wooden fences, scrambling over,
and running again. Eventually, sheltered
by trees, she rests. Sitting on a log in the
forest, breathing heavy, she is consumed
with astonishment. Before today, she
always dragged him out.
A yellow-rumped warbler lands on
the thinnest branch causing it to sway.
Despite the long cautionary gaze from his
wife—a look that says do not jump and do
not blame me—the husband jumps into a
murky pit. Must we do this again? He
leaps silently, arms at the side for good
aerodynamics. The way down—faster than
he remembers—terminates in a
crunching, nauseating thud. Welcome to
stagnation, a familiar combination of fetid
scents: decay, mildew, celery. The wet
bottom accepts him gently, the way a lily
pad accepts a frog. But, his feet are sore.
You can only jump and land a certain span
of years before the body protests.
Far above exists a singular shard
of light. There it waits, that other world.
When his eyes adjust to the seedy
conditions, he finds other men and a few
women, too: pit-jumpers. Some crow when
he arrives, some reach for him. Two shake
their heads and call him a fool. You’re here
again, fool!
Leaning over the edge, his wife
dangles it all: curly hair, the smell of
coconut-mango shampoo, accusations. Her
face is several shades snappish,
maddened. Her eyebrows are not
surprised. Her mouth: sad.
From the very brink, a clean rope
hangs. It is about as thick as a fist and
knotted every foot or so. This is the rope
any of the pit-jumpers could grab. A crew
at the top would pull them toward the
world of blue sky and fresh watermelon,
but these pit-people gather at the other
end of the gloom, shunning the rope with
exaggerated suspicion. They’d rather
huddle, putrefying, rotten.
The man yells at his wife, blames
her for tossing him in. Your fault, you! She
doesn’t admit anything, but acknowledges
that maybe, just maybe she nudged him
closer. After all, she was fatigued by his
constant dialog about the pit, his
insistence on walking past “Just to look,”
69 The mossy rock under the cascade is not a
rock but a turtle. The breeze brings the
rustle of trees.
The drumming of her hardworking heart subsides as the sobs and
laughs of a creek take over.
The afternoon turns to squirrels,
pinecones, a high-flying hawk.
There’s movement at the edge of
the woods. It is her staggering husband
with arms open for an embrace, I’ll never
jump again.
She has heard this before, these
assurances. Instead of tenderly bathing
him, she points to the rumbling creek
where he can lie down in the water until
the stink and the evidence has floated
downstream. The water is cold.
70 The City Is poetry by Charles O’Hay
The city is alive, twitching like a rat at the end of an electrode—
visceral, embodied, steaming with blood terrors
the city is a train speeding through a tunnel that has no end
and only the sparks from the wheels for light
the city is acetone and kryptonite, abandoned coal piers
kneeling in slow surrender to the river
the city is the smell of fresh-baked pretzels
dipped in antifreeze
the city is spires that tell time by watching their own shadows
cross the boulevards, no steeple clocks required
the city is a man with pant legs so long they broom the pavement—
his eyes diamond drills in the sandstone afternoon
the city is part chicken soup, part angry teenage boy
cutting the initials of his name into the bus stop shelter
the city is new lovers trying to forget old lovers
or two pigeons on a frozen warehouse roof at dawn.
71 City Duct by Jimmy Ostgard
72 Patron Saint poetry by Theodora Ziolkowski
Aiming a .22 at the logs,
my heart a nest of crows
in anticipation of the blow,
I consider how foresight
was what lost Saint Lucy
her eyes. In the 1980s,
thieves stole all that remained
but her head. From icons
I’ve seen of the saint, I get
the feeling that the virgin
understood. Pull the trigger,
my husband says—
I miss the bull’s eye by a hair.
73 Don’t You Want Me Baby? nonfiction by Deborah Guzzi
Door rushed by the weight of plate glass, I advance on Hong Kong. The sheen of day presses
across my skin like shrink-wrap. Darkness—a lash flash away—descends. The chartreuse
fluorescence of neighboring neon enters the hotel’s lobby with my exit—along with the odor
of Chanel. It’s a five star night. My ivory winter skin reflects the war between tangerine and
violet as I pass the shop windows.
three Ching coins
tied with a red ribbon:
spirits rise
Yen rules, mine goes with me and the other chic chicks who glam the boulevard. Limos and
top drawer Mercedes troll. Polished chrome and glitz harangue the unkempt side streets.
The evening rings with desire. But there’s only me lolling in the heat, horns, and haze of
Ashley Street. Sympatico sounds: bike bells, bus honks, subway rushes—uttered raucous
screams of Try me! Buy me!
With green-bread plump in my purse—I search. The pupils of my eyes blown to dies upon
white dice, my cheeks: flushed, damp, turned on—tuned up. I meet the crowd’s press,
needing nothing, wanting everything.
74 Off Key by Fabio Sassi
75 Lotus Eaters fiction by Michael Washburn
making eye contact with him. The sun
caught Matt so directly, the force of the
carnal moment was so strong, that these
things obliterated his entire sense of self
and he felt he was not from anywhere.
Twenty minutes later, the middle
third of the beach was empty. Matt
studied the northern third long enough to
determine that his family and most of the
Germans had retreated to the houses on
Corn Hill. After a final survey of the
beach, he ascended the black wooden steps
encrusted with sand and bits of seashells
until he stood atop the dune where he
seemed to command the highest position
on the planet, feeling like a Greek god
from one of his coloring books as he
overlooked all the dunes and seas of the
earth. He ambled up the sandy path
between the thin green stalks until the
row of cabins came into view—cabins
where affluent doctors from Boston sat
drinking Chilean and South African
wines, and lawyers, who scarcely dressed
down even on vacation, sat emotionally
exhausted after hours of quarreling with a
spouse, and people like Matt’s parents
were grateful for a chance to assert their
middle-class status by renting space for a
week.
Nobody was visible on the row of
porches as Matt sauntered to number 7
and walked into a modest living room
where his mom sat talking to a woman
he’d never seen before. They were
discussing books. Immediately Matt
noticed that they were both smoking and
thought the visitor must have encouraged
his mom to resume a habit she’d kicked
the year before. With an inward sigh, he
climbed the wooden stairs to the second
floor, entered his room, with a window
facing the dunes and approaches to the
beach, and lay down on his bed. He
thought of the women he’d spied on and
felt the inexorable reactions within his
young body begin.
From where the boy sat on the dune, it
was easy to take in the middle third of the
beach and the nude sunbathers. He
watched them move up from the waves
crashing on the shore to the space near
the foot of the dune, just beyond a
depression and spread of thorny bushes. If
he looked to the right, he saw the far more
crowded public section where nobody was
naked, and if he turned his gaze the other
way, to the north, he could just make out
colored specs near the foot of Corn Hill—
the shapes of his parents and the German
family with whom they spent most of their
waking hours here on Cape Cod.
But he seldom shifted his gaze
from the women below, one of whom had a
clipped punk haircut. The others were
brunettes whose locks cascaded to the tops
of their bare shoulders. They were
relaxing on blankets in the sun save for
one of them who was trying, not very
competently, to steer a narrow one-person
sailboat twenty yards out at high tide.
Another woman stood at the edge of the
water, yelling suggestions to the one on
the boat. The boy, Matt Sills, a lanky kid
with sandy blond hair, had tried to spy on
the sunbathers from a position not far
from his parents and their friends, but
whenever he walked close enough to get a
good look, one of the women would grow
suspicious and stare at him, forcing him to
pretend he was retrieving a shell or a
piece of driftwood before retreating north
up the beach. Now he had an ideal
position, with a comprehensive view, a
place no one could reproach him for
occupying—a wooden platform halfway up
the dune with a bench on it.
Suddenly one of the sunbathers
got up, and Matt could see most of the
front of her body as she covered herself
with suntan lotion. Though it was hard to
tell at this distance, she appeared to be
76 The next day, his mom, Karen Sills, asked
if he’d run an errand. She’d lent Nicole,
the woman who was there yesterday, a
copy of Orion, the literary journal his
mother wrote for, and today she needed it
back. She wanted Matt to run down to
Nicole’s cabin on the other side of Corn
Hill. So the boy headed into the perfect
day where all was silent. The fronts of
cabins were like faces staring in the
knowledge of his prurience, making him
hot and nervous in every pore as he
proceeded down the hill.
As Matt entered the cabin, he
reeled from a sweet smell that he would
have instantly recognized had he been
older. Directly across from the front door,
Nicole sat on a couch, barefoot, in a black
shirt and dark trousers, her blond hair not
tied back as when he’d seen her yesterday,
but falling past her shoulders, not rich
like his mom’s, but kind of wispy. A
television stood on a table beside the door,
but she hadn’t been watching it. On the
coffee table before her were an overflowing
ashtray, issues of Cosmopolitan, and a
couple of paperbacks. She gestured at the
latter with the expression of an
embarrassed pupil explaining why she
hadn’t done her homework.
“I promised myself I’d read MobyDick in its entirety once I got here,” she
said, “but I put it aside after a few pages.”
Matt glanced at the fat novel lying
face-down on the glass beside the
overflowing ashtray.
“That’s a few pages more than I’ve
read,” he replied.
She made eye contact with him.
“What sort of stuff do you read?”
she asked.
“Oh, Greek myths. Mad magazine.
Comic books.”
“You’re into the good stuff,” she
said, the smile evolving into a grin. “What
can I do for you, Matt?”
“I, uh … My mom asked me to pick
up the magazine she lent you yesterday.
She needs her editor’s address.”
“She needs her editor’s address?
My God. And I thought she was here at
the Cape to relax,” Nicole said.
“Well … she is. But she also types
stuff and sends it out to editors. So she
needs the magazine.”
“Yes I know, she’s quite a literary
sensation,” Nicole muttered with what
sounded like jealousy.
His gaze wandered over the
ashtray and the three others in different
corners of the room that Nicole had
equally neglected to empty, the dog-eared
paperbacks, the heaps of notebooks filled
with a crabbed handwriting, and the
bottles in a cardboard box by the foot of
the kitchen counter.
“Are you a writer?” he heard
himself ask.
“Heh. Is someone who casts bait
all day and never catches anything a
fisherman?”
“Huh?”
“Nothing. Yes, I’m a writer, but
not quite in Karen’s league. I’m an
aspiring writer, if you know what I mean.”
Light came in the east window.
“Here’s the Orion issue—and tell
your mom thanks, and I thought her piece
about Paul Celan was wonderful.”
Matt accepted the magazine and
turned to go when he heard Nicole say,
“One more thing, Matt.”
He turned around and faced the
woman who sat all by herself in this house
by the sea, smoking and thinking about
things.
“Do me a favor.”
She turned and reached for
something behind the couch then turned
back to the boy and extended a stack of
typed pages bound with a paperclip. When
he approached her, that cloying smell
assailed him once more.
“Could you give that to your mom
and tell her I’d be grateful—if she can find
just a moment—for her opinion on it.”
The boy nodded and left the house,
quickly mounting the slope of Corn Hill
toward the row of neat cabins in the
setting sun.
The following evening, Matt’s
parents had decided to entertain the
German family. Gerhard Epp was there
with his wife, Ulrike, and their three
daughters. Matt hoped to avoid the
77 “How do you know what I was
doing?” Matt felt an invisible hand begin
to close around his esophagus.
“We could see you, both of us. And
I think your parents noticed you too,
before they went back up. Your dad was
really embarrassed.”
“I was minding my business. I
wasn’t watching anyone.”
For the first time, Katie spoke.
“Don’t you think if you’re going to do
something, you should be brave enough to
be open about it?” she asked in the
precise, elegantly modulated English the
three girls shared.
“If you think it’s funny that Allan’s
brain-damaged, it might have something
to do with your own insecurities.”
“How do you know we were talking
about Allan?” Anya said.
“Never mind,” Matt answered. “Is
there something funny about him?”
“There’s nothing funny about him
at all, Matt. It’s just something our father
said the day we got here—”
Now for the first time, something
tentative crept into Anya’s voice.
Matt glanced over at the jovial, 54year-old computer scientist standing
between Mary and Vincent Guillemin and
Matt’s parents, holding aloft a glass of
Chardonnay and pontificating about
something President Carter had just done.
“What did he say?” Matt said.
The girls looked at each other then
thirteen-year-old Marc Guillemin came
over and asked whether he could interest
anyone in a game at the ping-pong table
on the back porch.
Over by the punch bowl, Matt
noticed that his brother was drooling
again.
embarrassment of people seeing Allan, his
brain-damaged older brother, prance
about and twitch his fingers maniacally as
others nervously carried on their
conversations. At the moment, things
were not quite so bad. Allan lolled against
a wall, the one with the “First I lived here”
inscription, staring ahead without
seeming to register any of the buzz of
conversation or the shuffle and pouring of
drinks all around him in the comfortable if
spartan cabin. But one of the German
girls gazed at Allan and whispered into
her sister’s ear. Matt loathed whisperers.
He’d crush their skulls if he could get
away with it. Besides the German family,
the Guillemins were there—a
mathematician friend of Matt’s father who
taught at MIT, his wife, their son and
daughter. Matt overheard snatches of the
banalities thrown about:
“—have an essay coming out on
the early Sontag—”
“—that’s my father Sherry’s
Festschrift, everything he published at
Harvard and Chicago—”
“The couple in the cabin next door
are an active couple, if you know what I
mean—”
“It gets so damn crowded in July,
you’d think you were on the Côte d’Azur!”
“Why don’t we get away, go to
Provincetown on Friday?”
Yet like a gull circling back to a
shape that had piqued its interest on the
rocks below, Matt’s gaze returned to the
younger two of the three German
daughters, Anya and Katie, standing on
the fringe of the crowd of guests, with
looks suggestive of a shared knowledge
denied the adults. He wandered over and
confronted Anya, the middle daughter.
“Don’t you think that if you have
something to say, you should say it out
loud, to everyone?” he said.
“Why?” she asked with a look of
affronted innocence.
“Because you’re doing something
sneaky.”
“Weren’t you doing something
sneaky when you spied on those naked
ladies on the beach?”
Matt sat in the hot crowded car wishing to
hell that his father had not made the
decision to visit Provincetown today. On
his left, Marc Guillemin sat staring out
the window, while on his right, Allan sat
and gibbered, repeating bits of phrases
he’d heard from the other three in the car.
Everyone ignored Allan or gently reached
78 out to push his spasming fingers to his
lap.
On the exit leading to
Provincetown, Matt realized that his mom
had planned to have the Epps over again
while he, his father, Allan, and Marc were
in the coastal town, and that he’d left not
only his Mad issues but other of his
cherished possessions—his baseball cards,
WWII comics, and the radio with which he
stood in the corner of the spare wooden
room trying to follow Red Sox games
through the static—strewn on the chair
and dresser and floor where those horrible
girls might walk in and find them, and
God knew what they’d do. The riders were
approaching the bustling downtown,
where investment bankers in white
designer shirts and tan shorts strolled
with their arms around the waists of
women ten years their junior, kids
munched on pink and white and chocolate
ice cream, and guys in their early 20s
gathered at counters buying draft beers
before sauntering over to the boardwalk to
take in some skin.
After they’d parked, Marc said
that he wanted to linger at the nautical
museum, so Mr. Sills said fine, and he and
his sons set off in the direction of the
boardwalk. At intervals, some of the
attractive young couples turned and
stared at Allan, who hopped like a
kangaroo, clapped for durations too brief
to have meaning, and gibbered and
drooled in the clear air. For just a
moment, Matt found himself able to stop
thinking about the party and the girls who
were like the talking idols of one of the
more caustic deities in his coloring book. It
was a good thing. Ever did those girls
drive home the awareness that he wasn’t
terribly bright. When the three got to the
promenade, Matt gazed out into the blue
with a sail just visible here and there then
they walked to the end of the pier.
“Matt, why were you so rude to the
Epps last night?” asked Mr. Sills, in the
sententious academic tone his son loathed.
Matt protested that he wasn’t
aware of having been rude, or at least of
having initiated any rudeness, which in
his mind was by far the more important
consideration.
“Yes, but when we have guests
over, you need to act with forbearance.
Their interests are more important than
yours.”
“Forbearance?”
“With patience. You have to go out
of your way to be a good host. Do you get
what I’m saying?”
“Sure I do. You’re saying people
can be as nasty as they like to me, and I
can’t say anything back to them.”
“Something like that,” said Mr.
Sills, gazing at the boy through those
glasses that made him more distant than
the sails way out there in the blue.
“Well, that’s easy for you to say,”
the boy said.
“Come on, Matt. I’ll buy you and
Allan some ice cream in a minute. I’ll be
your Ahab if you be my loyal Starbuck.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning you have to repress
whatever rebellious impulses you may
feel. Not necessarily succeed all the time,
but try.”
Matt wished he were back at the
nautical museum with Marc.
They started back toward the
promenade. Suddenly the sky was not in
the right place and Matt felt his whole
body keeling violently to the right, farther,
closer to the edge of the pier.
“Allan! Allan! No! Stop!”
His grinning brother was pushing
him hard toward the 20-foot drop to the
water, green with scum at the fringe of the
rocky shore.
“No!” he screamed.
He jolted the right half of his
trembling body forward fast enough to
grasp the chain linking the stone pillars
that lined the pier before his body spilled
off. He swung his left half and then his
ankles around the chain as Allan leaned,
murmuring nonsensically, still with a grin
spread across his face.
“Hey!” the father said, after
realizing his sons were not anywhere near
and turning around to see Matt hanging
onto the chain.
79 Cursing and crying hoarsely, Matt
disentangled himself and got up and faced
his brother and negligent father.
Minutes later, they stood on the
sidewalk holding ice cream cones, Allan
letting the ice cream fall and dribble
across his chest, not really enjoying it, and
Matt not inclined to help him. When they
had finished the joyless ritual, their father
rounded them up, along with Marc
Guillemin. As their car wound through the
hills away from the perfect town in the
undiminished afternoon light, Allan
snorted and muttered his mush of
gibberish and the names of relatives and
pets. Matt glowered at the brain-damaged
boy as they turned into Corn Hill, toward
the row of nearly identical cabins.
Within minutes Matt sat on the
edge of his bed, wishing he could hit that
gibbering retard who did enraging things
and then sat there with a doltish look,
rocking back and forth, letting out the
name of a cousin or a cat that had died
five years before. Matt sat there, his
hands like those of a man desperate not to
be tossed from atop a bull, ignoring his
father when called down to dinner. No one
seemed to appreciate how close he had
come to plummeting off the pier and
dashing his head on a rock or being
impaled on a sunken anchor’s hook. At
length, the boy grew tired of sitting and
went down the stairs and out onto the
wooden porch. He descended onto the sand
and looked around. As it sank, the sun
appeared like the tent of a circus whose
final act was to set everything ablaze. The
cabin shadows seemed enormous and he
wandered southward until he came to a
porch where one of the neighbors, a man
Matt didn’t know by name, languished on
two front steps with a glass of something
potent beside him, wearing a straw hat.
He was the type who might have had a
copy of the Wall Street Journal in hand if
seated on his couch back home, but he’d
come here to disregard everything and
partake of the sky and the view like that
from Mount Olympus, and Matt scarcely
knew how to construe his odd expression.
The boy tried to imagine the scene behind
the façade of this cabin, a woman and
maybe a guest or two seated at the table
in the rear sipping Chardonnay and
chatting about what they’d purchased in
Truro or Provincetown, or maybe the wife
was out with friends and a kid sat
scratching away at the wooden walls,
something short and caustic that rhymed.
Matt wandered away from the row
of cabins toward the bush where the
buzzing rose and fell like the heave of a
startled man’s chest, the only manic sound
in the dunes glowing in the orange light,
the dunes where no one walked, the last
nude sunbathers having retreated into
their cabins in the last hour or so. As the
boy listened to the waves rising and
smashing against the shore strewn with
random footprints hundreds of feet below,
he inhaled the crisp air and felt his rage
dim ever so slightly. He could not
maintain his wish to kill his brother; he
felt those moments on the pier blur and
distort into the present moment of clarity
in which he sensed that the sun fell on a
body that had not been designed to suffer.
How much more acute was the awareness
of the adults around him, how much more
precious the aesthetic, evanescent
perfection of each moment, each gesture
and word in this place, as the memory of
the pier fell and smashed into millions of
fragments and he knew he could no longer
hate Allan, could no longer harness the old
revulsion in his gut. It was just like that
moment on the hot wooden platform
halfway up the dune. The sensations that
came now obliterated motive, memory,
identity.
Matt walked back into his family’s
cabin and climbed the bare wooden stairs
and marched into his room, lying down
and allowing thoughts of the women on
the beach to flood his mind once more, the
individuals bathers segueing into a
carousel of sensual delight as a breeze
found its way through the window and the
mellow rustling of the curtains lulled him.
On the following evening, with two
more days to go at the Cape, Matt’s
parents organized a final party at the
cabin. His father poured drinks and let out
a classical allusion, a Homeric reference
Matt would not grasp until years later.
80 Besides the usual crowd, another guest
wandered among the Epps and
Guillemins. Matt recognized this new
arrival as Nicole, the woman with the dogeared books and overflowing ashtrays,
who had asked his mom to comment on
her piece of fiction. Clad in black from
head to foot, her slender aging figure
maneuvered among the guests, dipping
and turning in lithe movements, keeping
her drink aloft, slipping in and out of the
boy’s vision like a frog in the reaches of
buzzing green stalks. Nicole always knew
exactly what to say, whether her
interlocutor was a twelve-year-old girl or a
middle-aged mathematician. For a while
the boy stood around restlessly then he
spotted Marc with a grown-up drink in his
hand, and slid over to his quasi-friend.
Marc’s mind flitted among levels of
intelligence that seemed permanently offlimits to Matt, who was alternately eager
to ingratiate himself and put off by the
bespectacled boy’s superiority. Matt made
some remarks about the Epp girls—he
could hardly decide which of them was the
worst—to which Marc countered that Matt
wasn’t mature enough to know and
understand them.
“It’s not them I’m really interested
in,” Marc said.
“Huh?”
“How old would you say Gerhard
is?” Marc asked.
“Oh, I dunno, fifty-four maybe.”
“You may be right for once.”
“So?”
“Heh. Typical Matt response. ‘So.’”
“What’s your point?”
“There’s no point really, I’m just a
little curious about Gerhard, the Gerhard
we don’t see in front of us here.”
Matt gave up hope of interesting
conversation and walked about until he
found his mom tending to Allan, who
seemed as remote as ever, lolling against
the wall and making a mess with his fruit
punch. Brushing up against his mother,
whispering and receiving her whispers,
Matt finally learned of the subject matter
of what he’d brought over and thrust into
his mother’s hands. It was an account of a
woman who took Seroquel and Depakote
daily to stave off attacks of debilitating
depression, the revulsion at finding
herself trapped with an aging and
deteriorating body while her friends fell in
love, got married and brought children
into the world, the horror at her position
in time and the impossibility of grasping
anything in her wasting and weakening
hands, the humiliation of dates with men
who dismissed her even as she gazed into
imaginary vistas in which she bore their
names, futures that could never begin to
materialize. Nicole had written an account
of one day when this character failed to
take her meds because of the toll they
exacted on her creative self. She’d
wandered into one of the most risqué cafes
in Brooklyn Heights, where the sights of
closed windows led her to the conclusion
that all the diners, the wealthy men and
women of the Heights, had engaged in a
suicide pact, poison gas being the tool of
choice, and it was up to the protagonist to
open the windows. After the waiters told
her she was making a scene and tossed
her out, she got a ride from her
responsible and successful brother to her
mother’s house in one of the toniest parts
of Greenwich, Connecticut. Things went
fine until she wandered the streets,
encountered a big stray dog, and followed
it into a rich spinster’s apartment. She
thought the dog was desperately hungry,
but she left the apartment with several
hundred dollars’ worth of goods, calling
her parents later that night from a jail
cell.
Now about $30,000 in debt, thanks
to legal fees, the protagonist of Nicole’s
story hoped to find peace and tranquility
and serenity conducive to good writing in
a quaint cabin near the beach.
His parents were sophisticated
readers, but even without the story, they’d
known exactly who Nicole was.
“Have another glass of
Chardonnay,” Matt’s father said,
extending a glass to the aging but still
shapely woman in black.
“Thank you,” came the raspy voice.
81 An Interview with Elijah Burrell by Lauren Davis
told me my daughter had announced in
class she wanted to write books like her
dad. “Isn’t that wonderful?” she said. I
smiled politely—that was a nice thing for
her to have told me—and thanked her for
making the effort to let me know. As we
drove off, I asked my daughter if the story
was true. “Kind of,” she said, “but I’m not
sure I’ll write poems because I want
people to read my stuff.” She’s a quick
study.
The Skin of the River has helped
me connect with people in new and
different ways. I’ve met so many
wonderful people at readings, and
reconnected with so many old friends I’d
let slip away. It’s been a great experience.
LD: Do you have any new feelings
toward your book now that it has
been in the world?
Elijah Burrell
EB: Absolutely! I constantly see things I’d
like to change—a line here, a word there. I
change those things when I do readings.
Why not? Many of those poems have been
with me for a long time, though, so I guess
their complexions change like old
friendships might. I see new things in
them. I recognize who I was when I wrote
them with greater clarity. I’m really proud
of the response the book has gotten, so
that also was a relief.
At Bennington, Elijah Burrell was among
the most genial of my peers. It became
obvious, shortly after our introduction
there, that he is a father. He has the
demeanor of man who has been forced, by
love, to remain open and receptive to
every movement in his surroundings. This
disposition proves itself in his poetry. I am
honored to ask about his experience with
the publication of his debut book. He is the
author of The Skin of the River (Aldrich
Press, 2014) and teaches creative writing
and literature at Lincoln University. He
holds an MFA from the Bennington
Writing Seminars, where I first met him.
LD: Did you find that promoting your
book came naturally, or was it a skill
that needed some refining?
EB: My experience is if one tries to be an
active member of the literary community,
as someone who truly supports other
writers in kindness and encouragement,
self-promotion is a bit less important. I’ve
been overwhelmed with the support the
book has gotten from folks I’ve met all
over the country. It seems to be something
they want to share with others. I also have
two or three friends on social media I’ve
asked to let me know when I self-promote
Lauren Davis: What was it like when
the one-year anniversary of your
debut poetry collection, The Skin of
the River passed? How has your life
changed after publication?
Elijah Burrell: I pick my daughters up
from school every day. A few weeks back,
a teacher came running out to the car and
82 too much. I’m very careful not to
overwhelm people with the sales pitch.
keep going, to keep exploring what comes
next. If you look at your own favorite
albums, you’ll probably see what I’m
talking about—bridges from one
movement to the next. With Revolver it’s
“Good Day Sunshine”; with Blonde on
Blonde “Just Like a Woman.” With Kid A,
a shorter album, you’ll find the sixth track
working as the bridge with “Optimistic.”
Great albums finish strong, too. They
leave a lasting impression. End on an
image, I tell my students when they write
poems. Would Nevermind be the same
without the final “Something in the Way”?
Think about this whole idea in terms of a
book of poetry. An album is to a song what
a book is to a poem. If all the best poems
are right up front, there’s less joy for your
reader as she works her way to the end.
My manuscript needed to have
movements. I wanted it to feel like music.
You don’t want to think of any of the
poems as filler. Each poem needs to stand
on its own strengths. The trick is finding
where those poems' strengths happen to
fit best within the arc of the book.
For The Skin of the River, the
“album” didn’t feel right until I pushed the
poems called “Plague Songs” to where they
are. Those poems provide a new way to
look at sorrow and unrelenting fear.
Imagine the biblical plagues of Exodus
exacted today on a small town in the
Midwest. I tried to make the poems
horrifying and sad and jubilant and funny
all at once. Of course, they were about my
mother and her illness, and of course, I
wrote them to try to find something
positive in the entire situation. But I had
to remove her from them, and remove
myself, as well. I never wanted to mention
the cancer by name. The speaker, instead,
is unlucky Randy Fairlow, a made-up
man. I think this section of poems is my
track seven or eight. It’s the thing—the
“Good Day Sunshine”—that keeps the
reader moving forward.
LD: What is a book tour like? Did you
learn anything about your
relationship to your writing while
you were on the road?
EB: A very established poet once told me
not to expect to sell a lot of books every
time I read someplace. She said she once
drove four hours to read for two people
and neither of them bought a book. That
was a crazy thing to be told just before I
was slated to start the line of dates I’d
agreed to. This was good advice because,
honestly, it doesn’t get more disappointing
than that. Another way I’ve learned to
always feel a reading is successful is to
travel to a place near a friend. This makes
a reading feel like a vacation where you
catch up with folks you love.
When on the road, or in the air, I
love to just think about new lines and
sounds and images. What’s strange is that
I think about these things day to day, but
not at the same level as when I travel.
Sometimes I’ll go fifty miles of highway
just rolling a couple slant rhymes around
in my mouth. I’ll even build phrases
around them and devise enjambments
that might look interesting. Many of the
poems in the next book came as a result of
travel.
LD: What was it like putting together
a manuscript? Is it similar to creating
a single poem, or is it a completely
different process?
EB: I always think of it as similar to
trying to figure out the order of songs on
an album. We live in an age of singles,
downloads. I hope the experience of
listening to “the album” isn’t lost to us. A
less successful album front-loads all its
hits to the first few tracks, and pushes any
“filler” to the back end. A successful album
spaces all its good songs out and
progresses in movements. I always have
this weird thing about tracks seven and
eight on an album. The bold quality of
these tracks has to convince a listener to
LD: What was the submission process
like before you found your publisher?
EB: Lengthy. I submitted the manuscript
to several publishers and contests, over
83 more than a few years, with varying
degrees of failure. Editors occasionally
said nice things as they responded “no.”
Submitting to prizes over a few seasons
gets to be expensive, but I believed in the
book. I knew it had to catch on, so I kept
submitting. I’m one of many, many writers
who have learned to deal with rejection, so
I won’t ever complain about it.
EB: I have a lot of support. I’m truly lucky
that way. Before my mother passed, she
was certainly at the top of that list. It’s
hard for me to do wrong in the eyes of my
wife and kids, of course. My dad and I
have gotten even closer since Mom died.
He still wants to buy handfuls of my books
to give to people. I have several friends
(writers and not) who have done the same.
LD: What are you working on now?
LD: You have mentioned, in another
interview with The Clarion News,
that you wanted your book published
before your mother passed away.
What was it like to share the
acceptance of your manuscript with
her?
EB: I’m almost done with the second book.
I’ve been writing it, rewriting it, scrapping
stuff, and patching stuff back together. It’s
somewhat different from The Skin of the
River. The theme of the book is going to be
how human beings adapt to dramatic
change. It’s not all depressing. I think it’ll
end up being an interesting mix of new
ways to say old things and old ways to say
new things.
EB: It meant everything. I can still
remember what her hug felt like, and the
precise way she phrased how proud she
was of me. It was a beautiful moment. She
was always interested in the details, so
she wanted to look at the letter and the
contract. It makes me smile to think about
how she looked out for me through that
kind of curiosity. Dad read the poems to
her when she lay in a hospital bed for
weeks, delirious from a terrible reaction to
treatment. When she came to, she let me
know how beautiful she thought they
were. I knew she was close to the end, at
that point, and the book became the least
important thing in my entire life.
LD: You are married with children.
How do you communicate to your
family that you need time or space to
write?
EB: Rarely do I try to romanticize the act
of writing or being a writer. Much of the
time, when I’ve rattled something around
in my head for a week or two, I wait until
everyone in the house is asleep, then shut
myself off from them and write. We are a
busy family. I teach a 4/4 load at Lincoln
University, so my students are like a
second family to take care of. The time for
writing comes whenever I can get it.
Here’s the romanticized part, and it’s true:
Sometimes I walk out into the woods and
write. I have a creek I like to sit by. I live
right near some rivers, so I like to go and
watch them while I write. I have a dog,
and there are some cows just off my
backyard to keep me company if I’m
lonely. I like to write like this for the
obvious reasons, but also because I don’t
have much distraction while I’m in these
spaces.
LD: Have you made any moves or
choices in your career as a writer
that you ended up regretting, and
that have taught you invaluable
lessons?
EB: That’s a difficult question to answer. I
have all kinds of regrets, but very few of
them have to do with writing. The ones
that do—that I might have learned
invaluable lessons from—I can’t call
mistakes. I can’t bring myself to regret
much that taught me something.
LD: What do you think of the term
"writer's block"?
LD: Who is your biggest cheerleader?
84 EB: For me, it doesn’t exist. I tell my
students the same. I think writing is like
any industrious activity. You either make
time for it, or you don’t. If the next line
won’t come, find something to make your
mind open up: take a shower, mow the
lawn, take a walk or run, drive down the
road a ways. The words will come—you
just have to want them to.
scared to send it out and face possible
rejection?
EB: Get your work out into the world. I
hear this kind of fear all the time. I don’t
understand it. Rejection can be difficult,
especially when you believe in your work.
A writer just needs to remember that the
more editors reject a manuscript—or even
a single poem—the closer, statistically,
that thing gets to being accepted. Actually,
I’m not a math person. That might not be
true.
LD: Do you read widely or do you
focus on reading poetry?
EB: I’ll read just about anything. I’m no
different from anybody else—I like to read
a lot at one time. Right now I’m reading a
book about the rock singer Alex Chilton
and a bunch of old Greil Marcus essays. I
started reading Melville again a few
months back. I need to pick that back up.
The list never ends.
LD: Do you have a resource or ritual
you consider indispensable to your
writing?
EB: Music is my answer to everything. I
love to listen to music just before I write.
I’m sure it has something to do with the
rhythm in it, the instruments’ sonic
textures, the way the voices sound, the
comfort in knowing it’s always there
waiting for me.
LD: What would you say to writers
who are sitting on a manuscript, too
85 Blood poetry by Elijah Burrell
We tossed the rods to our feet
when the fish burst
the skin of the river:
blue cat, crappie, walleye—
scales stained red, eyes dulled.
Andy pointed to the water’s new color,
gone mud to blood.
That afternoon: the smell.
The news lady retched on camera
when she asked me how
the river rusted.
My moment before the world.
A fish priest in the left hand,
string of far-gone fish in the right,
I said,
We were on the boat. It just happened.
The taps ran red, too.
The sprinkler silence in the gated neighborhoods
said the blood covered everyone.
They could’ve changed the town’s name
to Evian or Perrier.
Folks fought seven days
to answer the question of how, not why.
This poem first appeared in The Skin of The River, by Elijah Burrell (Aldrich Press, 2014). Reprinted
with permission from the author
86 Frogs poetry by Elijah Burrell
Basked on the riverbank,
clopped down the turnpike,
clattered atop tin roofs.
The science teacher stocked
and stacked
glass jars floor to ceiling
in his basement before he ran out
of formaldehyde.
The churches held frog fries
Wednesday and Sunday.
At our church, the deacons dropped
fifty-three steel tubs of plague
on the gymnasium floor.
The preschoolers snipped the feet from the legs
with safety scissors. The altos
kitchen-sheared the loose, hardy skin
near the waists. The diabolical boys
from the youth group had gathered pliers
from garages around the afflicted community,
and set to yanking all the skin free.
When the rivers stopped frogging,
the fire department and National Guard
made a mound of the carcasses and burned them.
My eyes grew bleary as the frog fog covered the sun
like a sackcloth blanket.
This poem first appeared in The Skin of The River, by Elijah Burrell (Aldrich Press, 2014). Reprinted
with permission from the author.
87 Loss of His Firstborn poetry by Elijah Burrell
Before You made the light, took the light
away, hovered over the waters, bloodied them,
grew flowers from nothingness, sent locusts
to plunder them, forged the livestock,
struck them to the ground, made men,
rained fire upon them,
did you see her
pray to You in the darkness,
though we couldn’t tell day from night?
sing songs to You into the black blankness?
Her body slackened, the moon shone,
the stars glimmered again three days
after You’d extinguished their shine.
In the first glimpse You afforded me, Lord,
her eyes looked back on me in peace.
My human ears, accustomed to quiet,
heard the despondent harmony rise
from every home—a death in each house.
Your ears knew their final heartbeats, Lord,
Humbler of Men, Creator and Destroyer.
Will my eyes look upon You in peace
after you’ve extinguished their shine?
This poem first appeared in The Skin of The River, by Elijah Burrell (Aldrich Press, 2014). Reprinted
with permission from the author.
88 Cavities by Louis Staeble
89 Jumping Jacks fiction by Mary Clemens
“You were going to tell me
yesterday.”
He stares at his cereal, his spoon
automatically moving between the bowl
and his mouth.
“If it’s a math test I can help you
study.” Daniel’s class is being introduced
to fractions and he doesn’t understand
how parts can equal the whole.
“It’s not math.” He gets up quickly
and puts his bowl and spoon in the sink.
He has left a little bit of milk in the
bottom.
“Pour it out,” she says, brisk but
not unkind.
The rest of the day is per usual for
Earlene. She tidies the house and goes
grocery shopping. She will make stew and
salad for dinner. At the market, Earlene
buys very small potatoes that she picks
out of a bin. Same for the carrots. She
never buys a bulk bag of anything.
All the same she blames herself
for Daniel’s weight. He was not heavy
when Jerry was alive. They did too much
roughhousing, played too many games for
that.
Earlene allows herself to
remember the summertime, the green
lawn on which the two of them rolled,
Daniel straddling his father’s legs, Jerry
allowing the restraint. Daniel whooped
and raised his arms in victory while
Earlene, sitting on the porch steps, smiled
and clapped. Jerry turned his face to her,
laughing, and said, “Don’t encourage
him! He’s getting too strong for me.” And
they both smiled at the same time. It
stretched between them like a bridge, her
love for Jerry and for his son easily
passing across.
She knows the terrible aftermath
of these memories so she rarely allows
them. She hurries to the car pursued by
the ghost of that bright, specific
happiness. It envelops her and muffles the
world.
That evening, after dinner, she
hears repetitive thumping from Daniel’s
“On Friday we have to take the test,” says
Daniel. He is clutching a glass of milk in
one hand.
“What test?” Earlene, his stepmom, is trying to open the box of
raspberry-filled cookies that Daniel likes
so much. She picks out a pair of scissors
from the open junk drawer and cuts
through the flap. Daniel stands perfectly
still while she does this, his eyes on the
box.
It is long after she puts one cookie
on a plate and gives it to Daniel, long after
she puts the box on the tallest shelf in the
pantry, that she remembers her
unanswered question. “What test?” she
murmurs and goes to Daniel’s bedroom
but he is asleep.
Daniel looks much like Jerry, his
father. Both on the short side, thick,
though Jerry was dense with muscle.
Daniel does not have muscle yet. He is
only nine.
Daniel is a little heavy. He has a
pot belly and doesn’t like to wear knit
shirts. His biggest fear is that he will
develop breasts like a girl. He has never
told her this, but Earlene knows. It comes
to her while she watches him play,
hunching his shoulders while he runs,
refusing to jump over anything.
She turns back to her room and
sits on the bed. She undresses and slides
beneath the covers. She reaches over to
pat Jerry’s side of the bed then steals his
pillow and puts her head gently on it. She
pretends her head rests on his chest.
The next morning she asks Daniel,
“What test?” while he is eating his cereal
and she is making his lunch.
“Oh.” He hesitates. “It’s nothing.”
Earlene loves his transparency,
how easy it is to see that nothing is
something.
90 room. They both really liked the stew and
they both endured the salad. For dessert,
each had one raspberry-filled cookie.
She left the cookie box on the table
while she brought dishes into the kitchen.
When she came back both the box and
Daniel were gone.
She has no energy to pursue him,
she tells herself, but she knows this isn’t
the whole truth. She wants Daniel to have
what he wants, almost at any cost. And, a
bit closer to the truth, she needs to see
him happy.
She knocks on Daniel’s door and
the thumping stops.
“What’s that noise?” she asks.
Daniel speaks through the door.
“What noise?”
“That thumping.”
She can almost see him thinking
about it. He is in a private world, one
where she could never hear noise he made.
“I’m exercising,” he finally says.
“For the test.”
“Do it in the basement,” she says,
knocking lightly and opening the door.
“There’s too much furniture in your room.
You could knock into something or hit
your head. And what’s this test?”
Daniel stands with his feet wide
apart. His forehead is moist, his face red.
He doesn’t answer and moves quickly past
her. He is wearing a t-shirt. She can see
the little swells on his chest beneath his
nipples.
That night, Earlene talks to Jerry
in bed. She is afraid for Daniel. This test
looms gray and gritty as if Daniel will
soon be buried in cement. She asks Jerry
what to do.
“I’m not really his mom and I’m
certainly not a man. Help me help him.
Please.”
But she feels no response. Her
plea scuds across the ether like a skipping
stone. She can feel something vague and
beautiful taking shape in her mind, but
then—nothing.
When Daniel comes to the table on
Friday he looks flushed. Maybe he’s ill and
can stay home Earlene thinks.
“I don’t want cereal,” he says,
standing behind his chair and hitting its
back with the flat of his hand.
He has stopped stealing cookies.
He has exercised down in the basement
every night all week. Once she caught him
staring at himself in the long mirror in
her room. He saw her watching and
blushed. He ran past her into his room
and slammed the door. After a while she
went to him. He was playing battle with
his plastic soldiers. He looked up.
“Who’s winning?” Earlene asked.
It was a stupid question but she didn’t
know what else to say.
“Nobody.” Daniel kept his hands in
his lap. The static soldiers were scattered
about him, one cluster of men locked in
combat. Earlene pointed.
“They look like they’re winning.”
“They’re not,” he said.
She backed out of the room and
closed the door. Maybe she could have
made up a story, told him his dad had the
same worries as a child. “You’ll outgrow
it,” she could have said.
“Are you’re sick? Let me take your
temperature,” she says.
She gets the thermometer and
brings it to the kitchen. Daniel has
stopped hitting the chair. He opens his
mouth and they wait. They both hope he
has a fever. But the thermometer beeps
long before it would have if he was
running a temp. His shoulders stiffen as
she removes it.
“I know,” he says. “I got to go.”
“Well … if you don’t feel well, you
could stay home, even without a fever.”
Daniel shifts from one leg to the
other. He holds onto the chair and
considers.
“What is this test anyway?” she
asks.
“All the kids have to do it.”
“Yes, but what do you have to do?
What are they testing?”
“How many of the exercises you
can do. Sit-ups, they’re not so bad.” Daniel
shrugs. He can do sit-ups. He is partly,
fractionally, okay. “Then you do jumping
jacks. For a long time. That’s how it ends.”
91 His shoulders slump.
“What’s wrong with jumping
jacks?” Earlene bites her lip and waits.
When Daniel says nothing she adds,
“You’ve been practicing” although that
seems irrelevant.
Daniel turns away. He looks out
the window over the sink as if he’d love to
escape through it. But the world would
still be the same for him.
“Stay home,” she says urgently.
“I jiggle,” he says. His face
crumples. He turns to her blindly, fiercely.
“Why can’t I be like Dad?”
“You are, you are.” Earlene croons,
tries to gather him in her arms but he
pulls away.
“I’m not,” he cries. “I don’t have
any of him. I’m soft.”
She can’t use that fake story
now—your father had the same problem,
ta-dum, ta-dum, ta-dum. Daniel will see
through it. She feels helpless, standing
there facing the stark world that cannot
be kept at bay by their clean kitchen, their
healthy diet, their happy memories, even
by their embrace. What can she say about
that to a nine-year-old?
“You’ll grow, Daniel. You won’t
jiggle. You’ll get muscles.”
He flushes and scowls, red shame
covering his face like a caul.
“Stay home,” Earlene pleads. “You
don’t have to do that today. There will
always be another test.”
Daniel turns away and slogs off to
his room. She hears him opening the
closet, getting dressed. He knows there
will be other tests.
“Wear a sport shirt,” she says. The
fabric will be stiff enough to hide his
chest. He appears in the doorway.
“Can’t. We got to wear t-shirts.”
He walks to the back door and
picks up his backpack.
“What’s my lunch?” He looks up at
her.
“Tuna on wheat and an orange.”
She smiles, though she doesn’t want to.
“See you later.”
He steps off the back porch and
walks with his head down, shoulders
hunched, a hint of a waddle. Earlene stays
at the door long after he is out of sight.
She will pick him up in the car at the end
of the school day. Until then she can do
nothing. She sits on the edge of the bed.
Ghosts gather.
92 Deserted House by Louis Staeble
93 Irene & The Leviathans
fiction by Travis M. Dahlke
"So, yeah. They burn her body and four
hundred years later we see the beach,
except it's summer homes and surf shacks
and kids with melting ice cream. They
focus on this middle-aged woman with her
goggles and a one piece. She's swimming
way out beyond the docks, you know, like,
getting her exercise, when a shark just
tears her leg away. She's floating there all
crooked and the shark keeps coming back
for more. It's so gross, but yeah it's the
witch. She comes back as a shark to
terrorize the shore. Then somehow they
figure it out and sink her. But yeah, you
sound tired so I'll let you go. Ok. Alright. I
love you. Bye."
The phone becomes a remote and
her facial expression reads vacant in the
glow of the blood red Netflix screen. She
dwells in the eye of a two-bedroom
apartment on a young, possibly frostframed street.
"Were you telling him about that
Sand Witch movie?" says a voice from the
kitchen, with a joint or cigarette in
between now human teeth.
She asks for ice and the voice
returns with a plate of sauce, lemonade
mixed with something in the bourbon
family, and a paper towel, which he folds
neatly on his lap. No ice. His nametag
says 'Ahoy there, I'm Forrest,' and he
moves hesitantly within baggy pajama
pants. A swordfish on his front pocket
watches over the rust-colored swamp on
his plate. Irene's not asking about his day.
“Wait. What is this, is this that Blackfish
documentary? With SeaWorld and the
mamma whales?”
“I don't know, it was like a
suggested thing,” she says with renewed
interest in her phone.
“Nope, nope, no way. This is too
heavy and everyone always says it's just
way too sad. I mean, I'm around tortured
fish all day, right, so why do I want to see
more when I get home? Frankly I would
rather we just watch another shark-witch
movie.”
"So there's this sea hag-type lady who
lives in a little cottage by the shore, and
it's on Cape Cod or some place like that.
She was banished to live there by her
colony, because, well, she's a witch and
they banished witches back then. A kid
had disappeared, so the colonists march to
her cottage with hatchets and chains and
that sort of stuff. And I swear one of the
villagers was that guy from Home Alone 2,
but I haven’t looked it up yet.
They walk through what seems to
be a permanent fog, right up to her front
door. And she’s already waiting for them,
with a hood concealing her face. They look
at her with disgusted looks and drag her
out to the beach. And then the minister,
who I think is the Home Alone guy, starts
reciting something from a book about
casting devils back to hell and devils
taking over the bodies of weak old women.
They're all gathered on the sand and they
tie her up in chains before putting her in a
wooden coffin that they float out into the
ocean. Oh. But before that they pull the
hood back and her face is all messed up
and she has these black eyes and little
jagged rows of teeth. She's all: I'm going to
return in four hundred years for your
children! or future ancestors or whatever.
And they put her in the floating coffin and
they set it on fire. Wait, hold on."
Irene moves the phone from her
ear to her shoulder. She's curled up on a
couch, washed in cheap lamplight, when
the door unlocks. A figure reeking of
hurried smoke breaks and fried shrimp,
stands behind a grandpa chair and drapes
his sweatshirt over the corduroy.
“Don't eat anything on the stove
yet, it's not done. It just looks done, but
it's raw so don't eat it,” she tells him.
94 But Irene has stopped paying
attention to him, and she is sending a
series of texts prompting her girlfriend to
come over. “I gotta shower in case Larissa
wants to do butt stuff,” she says, pausing
the stream and floating away with a
crumpled blanket in her wake.
Forrest is insulted he was not
offered a fancy beer and sits diligently,
refusing to surrender his armchair.
“Good god damn this is Blackfish,”
Larissa states as a question, leaking a
bottle with her keychain and throwing the
cap on the rug. “This movie is so
important.”
Forrest eats the rest of his sauce in
silence, reexamining things in the
apartment and suspiciously eyeing indoor
miniature palm trees that bow
whimsically like the flora in a Seuss
drawing. Every exposed surface is coated
by functional families of dust bunnies that
sometimes die in the comfort of pixels. His
thoughts perish with them, in the
crossfade of an orca with something gold
and shimmery. It's obvious that Irene is
shaving her legs and he gets this feeling of
dread that The Girlfriend will arrive
before she returns. Forrest briskly shovels
sausage into his mouth in hopes of
retreating to a different room. He races
toward the warranty of solitude with
every scrape of his fork against porcelain.
But he can hear designer hiking books
hopping up the stairs and it's too late.
Her hair is a pale hue of magenta
and she has cat-lady glasses and she is
already drunk. “You smell like you still
work at Red Lobster. You still working at
Red Lobster?” Forrest makes a deflating
kind of sound.
“Yup. I'm a manager though. So
...” The Girlfriend, Larissa, stretches out
on the couch and lazily claps her toes
together. “And Billy Fin's bought it, so I
mean it's not even really a Red Lobster.
It's much nicer.” A cloud of vanilla oat
body lotion explodes into the room as
Irene emerges with her hair matted in
some purposeful mess.
“Here, I brought these beers. The
fancy kind,” Larissa declares while
cocking a six-pack slightly askew.
“Larissa, what the fuck, bro, thank
you so much,” Irene says, embracing her
and crumpling a floral skirt. “I love this,
where is this from?”
Their downstairs neighbors discuss
matters in muffled Russian trespassed
with English. Forrest strains his ears to
listen but is diverted by the plight of killer
whales. Dorsal fins that dip below
Alaskan waters and people with 90s
haircuts and neon wetsuits envelop the
water in his eyes. He's too tired to fight it.
The screen finishes them off one by one.
Several empty glass bottles amass on a
cork surface and cover the grinning
catalogue models with rings. Irene asks
Forrest to get his stash tin because, “You
have better drugs and you still owe me for
the gas bill.”
They pass around a pipe
resembling a lizard’s elongated face.
Nothing kicks in until well after the
epilogue text. “You know what, like fuck
that,” Larissa says while folding her arms
and lying against Irene, now drawing
straight lighter fluid fumes from the
chamber. A wider crescent of cleavage
emerges.
“I've never even been to
SeaWorld.” Forrest is locked to his chair
by some unseen force.
“It's alright,” Irene coaxes her,
inventing a constellation in Larissa's arm
freckles with her fingertip. Trying to pull
her back to the material world. “This guy
is beat,” she says while laying the
reptilian totem pipe to rest on the table.
“But someone should do
something, like they can't get away with
that,” Larissa says. “There's probably a
petition online.”
“I'm findin' it.” Irene unfolds a
scoffed-up MacBook and Forrest exhales.
“No, no no. We gotta like.
Something bigger.” Used furniture is
eating their bodies. Forrest's sweatshirt is
95 half over him like a blanket and he
whispers the word bomb.
“Pipe bomb,” he says, making a
tossing motion with his entire arm. “We
bomb them.”
“Well, you do possess a weird
Eastern European terrorist face. And your
beard is terroristy, as well.” Irene
struggles to rise, but Larissa gets up first
and stands before them to talk at a
transparent podium. A motivational
speaker adorned in pawnshop floral.
different thought occurs to him and his
body races from the room.
“This is simply another business.
Just another medium of greed.” Larissa's
eyes are wide and unblinking. “Like,
someone should do something.”
Forrest returns with an empty
glass skull and displays it proudly. “Isn't
that Dan Asteroids vodka?”
“Yup. Imagine filling this with
gasoline and chuckin' it right through that
Atkins guy's living room window. This is
exactly the type of thing I was saving this
for. I stole it from a party in Bangor last
year, and I just always had it.”
“You don't go to parties.”
“It was just, like, a get together.”
“184 Sycamore Cove Drive. That's
Jim Atchinson's address,” Irene confirms.
“Fucking typical.”
“No, but we have to. Like
tomorrow. I don't really have to go to
class, I don't think.” Larissa looks up as if
the answer is written in water stains on
the ceiling.
“You can skip grad school classes?”
Irene asks Forrest if they can take
his car. He weighs this and puts his skull
on the floor. Strange, stoned logic of a
seafood chain shift-leader.
“Just call in sick.” He makes a
prayer formation with his hands over his
nose. Sea-Eee-Oh.
“Orlando's not that far from New
Jersey.” Irene made the nine-hour drive
once when she was young. Recalling the
humid interior of roller blades charms her
and she feels weary but euphoric in the
spell of it—of natural heat in place of the
radiator brand. Imagines herself happy
somewhere far, some nostalgic, orange
place in her mind that glows from her
cheeks in an unexplained form of phantom
tanning.
“We never do anything we say
we're gonna do,” Irene says through a
yawn.
A low, plodding downbeat rises
steadily from the room below, where the
Serbians are practicing the calls of swamp
mammoths. Irene and Larissa clear off a
space on the coffee table and start
“Yeah, we should. Here, wait.” She holds
the computer like a drunken nanny might
hold an infant. She types with one hand.
“The fuck is a pipe bomb?” Irene
seems exhausted. It's getting late and she
has to clear a space in her mind before she
speaks. “What are those bottles with
towels in them? You know you light the
towel and throw it.”
“Molotov cocktails. You want to
Molotov cocktail SeaWorld?” Larissa's
fingernails clack and her cat eye shaped
frames make malevolent shadows on her
brow.
“Well, no, that's where the
animals are. We don't want to hurt
Tilikum. We have to access the problem's
source.”
“What if we somehow fed Jim
Atchinson to Tilikum?” Larissa whispers.
Probably over-stoned, Forrest surmises.
He begins to ask who Jim Atchison is, but
is interrupted.
“He's the CFO of SeaWorld. The
Caucasian male with the three-hundred
dollar haircut profiting from the park's
nefarious business practices,” Larissa
says.
Nefarious? Forrest knows her type
and considers speaking rudely to her.
Those girls with their bachelor degreebought vocabulary. He used to hang out at
the communal coffee shops with
repurposed mahogany tables and have
conversations about that stuff, too. He
thinks of the graying doughnut shop next
to Red Lobster. Or Billy Fins. But a
96 drawing things on a paper towel: A map
from New Jersey to Florida. They check
the weather. They draw a white male with
devil horns and green sharpie goatee.
“I think the couple downstairs is
full on fucking right now.”
“Do you remember that guy with
the goatee?” But Forrest has already
fallen asleep.
“No one really notices all of the
drownings because they happen over such
a long span of time,” Larissa whispers
with closed eyes. Speaking from a dream.
“That's it, I am gonna take a sick
day and we are doing this thing. I have
friends down there.” Irene swallows
whatever alcohol is left, and it courses, but
does not swim, to somewhere deep inside
of her.
“There it is.”
“She's such a flake, you know? I
hate that.”
Some kids at a bus stop hit each
other with their backpacks and laugh in
triumph. Irene concentrates hard on
scraped whale flesh and neckties. She
moves the glass over in her hands, feeling
the firm yet delicate cheekbones and eye
sockets. A bus churns the corner and its
shifting gears still give them pangs of
dread in their stomachs. Its yellowness
churns another bout of vomit in Forrest.
“So it's probably too late for either of us to
show up at our respective places of
responsibility.”
“Let's go to Orlando,” Irene says
while shooting her finger through the air
to point down the street.
Turn off all appliances. Forget to
water a plant, and overfill another
straight from the tap. Before locking the
front door, Irene decides to leave the
bottles and balled up napkins. In case
they don't return, those objects will be
relics to the museum built in their honor.
She wakes to the sound of vomiting.
Larissa? No, it sounds too beardy. She
rolls over to deserted sheets and bathroom
tile acoustics that amplify what could be
someone pouring minestrone into a
shallow puddle. In the morning the paper
towel is half crumpled. The Girlfriend and
her boots have snuck out. A fruit fly
bathes at the lip of a beer bottle and does
not stir whatsoever at Irene's discontent.
Outside, their dark sweatshirts
absorb the sun but are still thin and
ineffective against autumn's early cold
front. Irene listens to a voicemail and
glances around at opened-mouthed
recycling bins. She turns her back in some
makeshift form of privacy, but Forrest
detects the strained apologetic voice of
The Girlfriend.
“Eh, fuck her. I knew she'd do
this.”
“Do you still want to go?” They
stand like two bank robbers in matching
black next to a champagne-colored Honda.
He pulls something wrapped in velvet out
of a ratty backpack strewn with patches
documenting a span of ironed-on skulls
and Ska bands to the logo's of urban indie
folk outfits.
“A vodka bottle shaped like a
skull. That's our bomb,” Irene says.
The interior cabin hum of the freeway is
some strange comfort that they had both
forgotten about. Irene wipes donut glaze
on the thighs of her jeans and sits to a
cycle of adult contemporary. The familiar
apartment spice of cheap candles and dust
is now completely absent from their
sinuses. It's terrifying. Exhilarating to be
free of it, though their fabrics still retain a
little. Standin' on your Mamma's porch.
“This is great receptionist music,”
Irene tells him.
“What is receptionist music?”
“It's like, I don't know, they sit
there and muddle over resort banner ads
tracked from their search history.
Constantly reminding them of vacation
and drunken hot tub sex.”
“Receptionists and their drunken
sex.”
“What do you have against
receptionists? They're perfectly nice
people.”
97 The highway throws them further
into the South, as their bomb watches
from the backseat and wavers with the
rolling swells of pavement—more childlike
than ominous.
“Those Jacuzzi air bubbles will
travel right up your vagina and kill you.
Right to the bloodstream,” Irene warns
Forrest while they scan dinner options
from a complimentary Citgo periodical
that also advertises cheap diesel oil and
snowmobile insurance. Her fingers graze
over pages that feel permanently damp.
“Look at this: Eight dollars gets
you a large popcorn, medium drink and
admission to a full length feature. Maybe
these nachos too in the picture, but it
doesn't say. Tortuga is playing in fifteen
minutes. The Quebec Tribune says this
film is like March of the Penguins meets
Anaconda (1997).”
The theatre is off Exit 81,
somewhere near where Maryland and
West Virginia start melting into one
another. They park in a ghost plaza also
inhabited by a tired-looking Cantonese
buffet, complete with a birds nest in one of
the big, burned-out letters of its neon sign.
Tortuga is spelled out on the marquee, but
is missing its 'u.' They don't mention
SeaWorld, though it hangs overhead
somewhere with all of the missing vowels.
Yelp has no reviews of the
theatre's fountain soda. No posters
promote Tortuga outside. The kid who
sells tickets tells them to enjoy, and they
tell him the same. It's dinner and free
heat for two hours. Irene says they found
a bargain, even if greasy men talk to
themselves in greasy accents during the
whole thing and incessantly check over
their shoulders to see if Irene and Forrest
are making out. The popcorn coats their
fingerprints in salt and their identities
disappear for a while.
Then a blurrier world cuts in when
they go back outside and it's dark. Forrest
mentions that it's a gut wrenching feeling.
The Honda's engine can't turn over and
the windows won't even go down. They
begin to drown in the synthetic butter that
has clung to their clothes. The surround
sound leaves a throbbing pain in Irene's
wisdom teeth.
Neither of them really remembers
how they got this far out of state. Irene
says that Florida will always be there, and
neither knows how they'd decide who
would actually fill the skull with kerosene,
let alone who would throw it. There had
never been any roller blades or old friends
down there. She had just waited in the air
conditioning with the storms and
mosquitoes fat with the blood of geriatrics.
Irene pleads with a local garage, with her
tongue nursing the back of her mouth. She
prods at a cockroach wing-thin kernel. She
leans against the beached vehicle, but
drifts off to a farther sidewalk in order to
make another call to someone else. It's
just closer and easier to turn around than
it is to keep going.
The final moments of his beer are
metallic, orange blood, married with a
flavor of tater tots thawed in oil used to
cook prawns. Forrest sits still. He remains
on corduroy, while a scratched-up skull
looks on from the top of a speaker tower.
Poinsettias stuck through its brain hole.
In the kitchen, Irene toils with a recipe
while Larissa multitasks between her
phone and a semi-annual holiday lingerie
catalogue. She tells Forrest that the
perfect ass has just a hint of cellulite.
Something about Photoshop and art
school. The air outside is thinner while
inside the impending dread of Christmas
covers them all with a familiar brand of
fuzz.
It's the same principle as the
chemicals from a Burger King
smokestack, Forrest says, halo'd by a
wreath saturated in cinnamon stick
scented Glade. From the kitchen, it
sounds like she's talking to herself, but
Forrest is all too familiar with that
luminous accent she uses. The kind
reserved for parents.
“Who is she always talking to?”
Larissa gives up on the bras for a moment.
“She's describing a movie we saw a
98 little while ago. It's her dad.”
“Her dad? She never talks about
her dad. Let alone to him.”
Forrest lowers his voice to an
urgent whisper, jubilant to be able to
confide something in someone. “Her dad
was out jogging one day. Years ago, when
Irene went away to college. He slipped
backwards on some sand and landed right
on the back of his head, or his neck. You
know like how they put on the roads when
it's icy? Guy was comatose for a few days.
They weren't even sure he would pull
through, but now he has permanent brain
damage and doesn't really follow
everything. At first she would go on about
her life but then she kind of ran out of
things to say. So now she just describes
these movies.”
At first Larissa looks as if she
swallowed something angular, but it
succeeds to impartial bargaining. “Man I
wouldn't mind being him.” She raises her
eyebrows at a fern that is now beyond
saving. Forrest exhales and the camera
pans out slowly.
“Basically, it follows the life of a
boy from his childhood all the way until
he's an old man. He grows up on a lake
and in the lake is a monster” Irene says
through a torrent of steam. “But it was
cool because the whole thing was like a
nature documentary, narrated by this
kind of all-knowing voice. You know how
nature shows have an English guy talking
about the lions stalking the antelope?
Saying these scientific yet poetic things
about nature and the ecosystem and the
cosmos. Well, it actually starts when the
boy is working on a dairy farm, where
some of the cattle die of a disease. They go
dump the steer in a bog that native
Pequot descendants, who are the
farmhands, claim is haunted. Back then it
was just a small natural reservoir created
by beavers. But it's deep, abyss deep,
which is why they use it as a dump.
Everything just disappears. As they
discard the cattle, you see something
moving in the bog, and one of the Pequots
gets pulled in. They shoot at it and the boy
is like, what is going on right now.
And then they show how the lake
gets created. It's all just by damning and
diverting a river to power a textile mill
and for irrigation type stuff. There was
even a little town in the valley that they
had to flood. All of the townspeople are
devastated because they don't want to
leave their homes, and some of them even
off themselves. Most of the buildings burn
down, so there's barely anything left. The
basin is stocked with fish and an island
floats in the middle. Everything is
connected by underground artesian wells.
Miles of underwater caves."
Dishes are quietly shifted in a
stainless steel basin, but the drain is still
clogged. A grease rainbow wobbles on the
surface. Shipwrecked skillets with reefs of
breadcrumbs clinging to them.
“So the boy befriends a gang of
teenagers, but they're basically just girls
who follow around a James Dean kind of
guy, who the boy idolizes. You know with
the white beater and slicked back hair.
He's got a rough exterior and is essentially
a young alcoholic, but he looks out for the
boy's well being. One night they go
swimming, and James Dean gets pulled
underwater and stays there. He seemed
immortal and the boy looked up to him so
it's especially traumatizing because the
kid was too afraid to rescue him. And this
is all narrated by the voice, calmly
describing what's happening as if it's all
just part of the food chain.
But the boy grows up a little and
we have summer families and 60s lake
life. He falls in love with a polka-dot bikini
girl and then they see her mother dragged
under after a Memorial Day picnic. After
their first kiss. And it is gory, like I can't
believe they show it. Close-up of her face
being stabbed by her own severed bones.
Guts drifting out into the water with lily
roots and fireworks masking the
screaming. The cinematography overall is
super artsy.
Then finally the kid moves away
after being totally and completely
traumatized by the whole thing. And I
think like twenty years pass, where he
goes off to college and finds a career in the
99 city. Meanwhile they show how the
ecosystem of the lake changes, and how
the economy in turn changes the
community. These nice 60s lake houses
deteriorate, low-income rednecks with
sparklers and beer koozies take over. Boat
engine gasoline seeps into the water with
swaying seaweed stuff. Some of the shots
where they dwell on a snail or some
wildflowers in a sunset are just so
beautiful. It's actually kind of neat to see
how the architecture evolves, too. A lot of
the houses look like Grandma’s did. That
A-frame, cabin-chic style. In between this
kind of foray into cultural anthropology,
an arm washes up on the beach covered in
pond scum, but you don't really know who
it belongs to.”
Irene turns off the burner and sits
alone in the kitchen. Deep in the street,
passing cars see her silhouette in the
window, but it is mostly frosted over. Baby
shower and wedding invitations from last
year plaster the fridge door. She stopped
putting new ones up. Synth drifts up from
a Serbian radio station and she is a
gargantuan, solitary thing floating in
yellow.
“But he finally comes back as an
adult, because his parents leave him their
lake house. Except now of course he's
married and has two kids of his own.
They're all real excited to visit in the
summer, but he's totally paranoid and will
not let his kids go in the lake. Everything
seems fine and there's even a drought, so
the lake starts drying up. We see how the
sediment becomes compacted, and there
are herons swooping down to pluck fish
out of the marshy edges where the church
steeple is becoming exposed along with
trees from the old town that they had
flooded. Do you know what a lentil
ecosystem is? Or maybe its lentic.
But then it rains for days and the
lake is engorged with water and Bam. It's
a man-eating snapping turtle the size of a
rider mower. The turtle kills a drunk hick
in his inner tube. Drags him into the deep.
But like no one really notices all
these drownings and disappearances
because it happens over such a long span
of time. They say the lake has been cursed
by natives forever. Oh, there's another
part where he runs into his old childhood
polka-dot bikini girlfriend at a Dairy bar
place and she's all strung out on drugs
because they both saw a turtle murder
somebody when they were young. I mean
she's still pretty, but you can tell she's had
it rough. She's a manager though.
At the end, the boy is an old man
and his wife has passed away. His
children are all grown up, so he's just back
at the cottage in his chair. A bunch of
rowdy college kids live next-door, and one
night they go drinking on the main dock,
to the dismay of the old man. This one
James Dean-looking kid takes off all his
clothes and jumps in. Another kid tries to
save him because, of course, the turtle is
right there, so they are both like gazelles
in the lion's den. Gunshots come out of
nowhere, and the old man rescues them
from grisly deaths.
Eventually it turns to winter and
the lake freezes solid. Algae and
waterweed have gone dormant. He's alone
in his chair and the narrator very
solemnly gives a monologue about being in
the winter of life itself. The man goes out
on the ice to an island, where he kind of
knew the turtle was all along, and there it
is. The turtle’s asleep in hibernation, but
it's all wrinkled and decrepit like him. It
had taken everything from the boy but he
still puts the rifle down and walks away
into the snow.
Some kids find the gun in the
spring when everything thaws out, but
you don't see what happens. The last
monologue is great. He slowly walks back
over the frozen lake, back through his own
footprints. It's just closer and easier to
turn around than it is to keep going."
100 Evening Harvest by Bryn Homuth
A combine headlight filters
through the underbrush of night,
a lighthouse for the land-locked,
the single beam higher and brighter
than surrounding sets of two,
a beacon for the field,
for the work to be done there—
slow claw of the plow,
seeding, watering.
Today, though, harvest heaves open
the heavy cellar door of the dark,
highway travelers oblivious,
wearing blinders of a twilit journey,
no glance toward the furrowed acres,
to stalk and seed, to drafty barns,
to homes where laborers sleep.
This farmer is awake,
churning through crop, rousing himself
with each wheel turn,
as he rouses the ground itself
at the hour when even the land
seems to close its earthen eyes.
Here begins the bread of tomorrow.
If we were wayfarers of a buried age,
there would be no way
to know the other was there.
Even yards apart, the swish of his scythe
or the brush of his winnowing fork
would have sounded just like the prairie wind
passing over my ears.
101 Subzero Hunt by Bryn Homuth
I trace a boot-stamp furrow
through the tree line
and cabin lights dwindle to thin haze
before headlamp and trail
are my only guides,
the beam whetting edges of muddled tracks,
labyrinthine in their aimless wind,
some hoof, some heel, some overlaid,
some touched by wolf paw’s tireless tread
and I almost hear them when I stop—
a distant howl, a cracking twig,
a low, serrated growl,
roiling in dawn’s starving belly,
but there is only heartbeat and hum;
squirrels scale bark,
mice nose out from brush,
I whisper wild breath
—rustle, snap, crunch
up the stand to chair—
my rifle snug to palm and shoulder,
heft of metal,
the single shot within
and there is a pull
to the immobile
that the cold can’t ignore,
inhabiting stowed reserves
of warmth beneath flesh
and so begins my meld with the backdrop of the land,
another fallen log, another branch
sheathed in frost, another acorn or apple core
cratered in snow
when the deer bed down with the day,
I start a noiseless descent
and think back to that morning wait,
and the patience of the wolf,
if I am predator, or prey,
and if a piece of me remains,
never to thaw,
frozen to the roost.
102 Leaves by Louis Staeble
103 On the Occasion of Having Zero Dollars and Zero Cents in My Bank Account
poetry by Corey Ginsberg
There is a balance
to being exactly
broke. Call it
precision, or
fragile equilibrium.
A week
from payday,
and no room
to indulge
in toll booths
or gas station gum.
One penny
separating overdraft
from revenue.
The art of being
insolvent
took two
master’s degrees
and a mortgage
to perfect.
According to math,
zero is a real
number.
According to math,
it is rational, too.
What math leaves
out is the story
of why
the ouroboros
always chooses
to eat her tail
when she could
stand tall, teeter
to one side,
and be counted
as one.
104 Fueling Up by Jimmy Ostgard
105 The Left Side fiction by S.F. Wright
seemed to hear me. “But I don’t know if I
can fix it.”
The woman smiled. I couldn’t tell
if she’d heard me or hadn’t heard me. I
wondered if she was drunk.
She gestured for me to follow her.
Her apartment smelled of
cigarettes and incense. An old brown
couch sat in front of a coffee table covered
with magazines. Next to the couch stood
an end table with a telephone and an
overflowing ashtray. The TV was in a
corner on top of a stand.
“It just stopped working,” the
woman said. She stood behind the couch
as if hesitant to go any farther.
I tried turning the TV on with the
remote control. Then I attempted turning
it on with the buttons below the screen. I
checked to see if it was plugged in. It was.
“I don’t know.” I felt useless and
ridiculous since I’d done what I assumed
the woman had already done—what
anyone would’ve done.
“It’s the funniest thing,” she said,
brightly, but also as though in a trance.
She stood with her hands resting on the
top of the back of the couch, staring at the
floor.
It occurred to me that we didn’t
even know each other’s name. Of course I
could’ve asked for hers or given mine, but
it felt as though she should’ve been the
one to do that considering the situation.
The phone rang.
The woman looked at me. “That’s
probably Michael.”
I nodded slowly, not sure what she
expected my reaction to be.
“I’m sure it’s Michael,” she said,
more to herself as she picked up the
phone.
“Hello? Yes, honey. I know. Well,
that’s good. Hmmm? I don’t know.”
The woman seemed to have
forgotten I was there.
“Okay, then,” I said. I stepped
toward the door.
“What?” the woman said.
I’d had a four day weekend and hadn’t
done anything but drink Coke and
bourbon, surf the internet, and order
delivery. Now it was Monday night. I
knew I should get off the computer, but I
just sat there, surfing.
Then around eight there was
knocking.
I looked through the peep hole. It
was the old woman from across the hall.
We’d say hello when we saw each other in
the hallway but nothing more.
“Sorry to bother you.” Her eyes
were glassy. “I don’t mean to trouble you.”
I nodded, hesitant. “It’s all right.”
“But my TV’s not working. It
turned off while I was watching
Jeopardy! I tried to fix it, but I don’t know
anything about TVs. I thought you might.”
She looked at me uncertainly but
hopefully.
I’d always been terrible at fixing
things, and I was embarrassed that I was
terrible at fixing things. So, knowing I was
helpless to this woman and feeling piqued
at being reminded of how mechanically
uninclined I was, I shrugged and said,
“Not really,” in a way to suggest that not
only did I not know how to fix a TV, but
knowing was a dumb thing.
The woman looked forlornly at the
floor.
I suddenly felt horrible, even
responsible. “I mean,” I quickly said, “I
can take a look at it if you want. I doubt
I’ll be able to fix it,” knowing I wouldn’t be
able to at all. “But I can look at it if you
like.”
The woman stared at the floor, as
if thinking about something else. But then
she nodded and looked at me and said,
“Yes. Thanks. Can you look at it? Do you
think you can fix it?”
“I can look at it,” I said, trying to
conceal my annoyance that she hadn’t
106 I turned. But she wasn’t talking to
For some reason before I answered
I looked at the kitchenette. From where I
stood I couldn’t see the woman.
“My name’s Sean.”
“Okay, Sean,” the voice said. “My
name’s Michael.”
I didn’t know what to say. I was
going to answer flatly, “All right,” but that
didn’t seem right either, so I said nothing.
“That TV is very old,” Michael
said. “Did you try banging the side?
Sometimes that works.”
I shook my head, although he
couldn’t see me of course. “No,” I said, and
thought, “How do I get myself into these
situations?” “I didn’t try that,” I said.
There was a pause. Michael said,
“You want to try that?”
I sighed in exasperation. “All
right.” I put down the phone.
I pressed the “On” button again. I
banged the side of the TV with my palm.
Nothing happened. I hit the “On” button
again and hit the TV once more. The
screen remained blank.
I picked up the phone.
“Didn’t work,” I said, with curt
finality.
The woman returned. She carried
a glass with ice cubes and what looked
like scotch. She sat down on the couch and
took a sip from her drink. She looked
straight ahead but not at me.
“Did you hit the right side or the
left side?” Michael said.
“I hit the right side,” I said,
though for a moment I couldn’t remember
which side.
“Well,” he said, and I heard him
take another drag from his cigarette, “try
hitting the left side.” He spoke as though
he had all the time in the world.
“I hit the left side also,” I said,
even though this was a lie. “I hit both
sides. It’s not working.” I was angry now,
though mainly at myself for letting this go
on so long. “I don’t know what else to tell
you.”
Michael was quiet. I thought he
was insulted, but apparently he was just
thinking. “Hmm,” he said. “It always turns
back on after I hit it.”
me.
“My neighbor. He’s a very nice
young man. He was trying to fix my TV. I
don’t know. It just shut off. Hmmm? I
don’t know.” The woman looked at me.
“Were you able to fix it?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know
what’s wrong with it.”
“No,” the woman said. “He says he
doesn’t know what’s wrong with it.”
I again stepped toward the door.
“I don’t know,” the woman said.
“All right. Okay.” She again seemed to
have forgotten about me. I put my hand on
the doorknob, confident I could leave.
But then she said, more loudly,
“Excuse me?”
I sighed, knowing she was talking
to me, and turned to her.
“Michael wants to talk to you.”
She held the phone out.
I tried not to show my annoyance
and walked over and took the phone.
“Hello?” I said, suddenly
wondering what I was doing there.
“You’re over to fix the TV?” a
man’s voice said. It had a lisp and a
bitchiness to the tone I didn’t like.
“I just came over to take a look at
it.” But I sounded more belligerent than
I’d intended, and I added, more benignly,
“I live across the hall. I don’t know what’s
wrong with it.”
I heard a soft crackling sound in
the phone’s receiver, like when someone
takes a drag from a cigarette. The woman
walked into the kitchenette.
“And what’s your name?” the man
said.
“Excuse me?” I said, not because I
hadn’t heard him, but because I didn’t
want to answer.
“Your name,” he said, irritated.
“What’s your name?”
Now I felt justified being curt. “I
live across the hall,” I said. “I was just
over to take a look at the TV.”
“I just wanted to know your
name.” The sudden hurtfulness in his
voice made me feel guilty but at the same
time absurd for feeling so.
107 I’d had enough. I had to end this. I
held the phone out to the woman, but she
stared at the floor and didn’t seem to see
me. “Here,” I said. “Michael wants to talk
to you.” I left the phone on the table and
walked to the door.
“Hello?” the woman said.
I opened the door.
“Well, I don’t know then, Michael.
He’s leaving, though.”
I shut the door, walked across the
hall, and returned to my own apartment.
The only sound was the faint
murmur of the computer. I turned it off. A
glass a quarter full of Coke and Evan
Williams sat next to the keyboard. I
picked up the glass, put it to my mouth,
but placed it down without taking a sip. I
walked over to the window and looked out.
There was nothing but a brick wall. I
stared at the bricks anyway.
I was 29 years old. I had to start
making some serious changes.
108 Dismissed nonfiction by Marion Boyer
church while she starts a film for us about
our responsibilities.
At 9:45 a.m. the bailiff parades us
to a much smaller, less imposing
courtroom and frets over adding a chair to
accommodate us. A judge enters,
introduces the court recorder, two lawyers,
and himself and tells us this will be a civil
trial likely lasting no more than three
days. He wants to know who might be
grievously burdened by serving on this
jury. A few raise their hands, speak about
missing work, losing pay, but the only one
excused is a young mother of twin babies
who says that being up all night
diminishes her ability to concentrate in
the daytime. I'm envious she can slip
away.
The court recorder calls off names
and potential jurors fill the seven padded
chairs. The prosecutor asks how many of
us watch legal television dramas. Hands
go up, sheepishly. He cautions that this
isn't CSI or Law & Order. It's not a
criminal case. His client suffered a broken
elbow and separated the rotator cuff in
her shoulder while shopping in the local
supermarket. His intention is to show the
store is responsible for her injuries. The
decision will be based on a “preponderance
of evidence” rather than “beyond
reasonable doubt.” He describes the
pertinent details of what a jury can expect
to hear then warns everyone he has
personal questions to ask, apologizes that
he'll address each person by number
instead of name.
We learn that juror Seven, a
compact woman with a serious expression,
works in medical records for a hospital.
Not Borgess Hospital, no. Bronson. She
has no contact with patients. Not ever.
She's familiar with medical terminology.
She's not a nurse. No, she hasn't served on
a jury before. She has two children.
They're grown. Yes, she would call their
relationship close.
The young teacher, Juror One, has
a substitute for her seventh-grade class,
I've never been to the Paw Paw
courthouse, which is small-town
impressive. It has an egg-shaped dome. I
pass my purse through a scanner and
myself through the metal detector, and am
waved on to the second floor. The stairway
sweeps upward with stone treads worn
down at the centers. A large painting
hangs above the stairs of a round and
serious woman, reclining. I assume she
personifies Justice. There seems no
justification for her blousy dress to be torn
open down to her waist, her breasts free
and independent.
Most court cases are dismissed
before they get to trial so I assume I’ll
escape, but no, I have to report for jury
duty. My mind sprouts with a little
curiosity about jury selection, but I tamp
that down and cultivate hope for a lastminute settlement. The large courtroom's
ceiling vaults high, with enough gold
embellishment to seem heroic. Dignified
paneled walls, a grand carved platform for
the judge. The witness box is raised high.
The circle pattern on the carpet suggests
official seals. About forty of us wait on
wooden seats, spacing ourselves so that no
one shares an armrest. I look around and
muse about what it would feel like to be a
criminal. I think about walking up,
leaning toward the microphone in the
witness box.
Only the bailiff looks pleased to be
here. She's the chirpy woman in heels and
a pencil skirt calling roll. We clear our
morning throats to answer “yes” or “here.”
I watch her project a balance of warmth
plus authority, the same balance I strove
for on the first day of classes before I
retired from teaching. I struggled then to
fasten names to my college students' faces
and often failed. The bailiff mispronounces
several names. Apologizes. Smiles
pleasantly. The courtroom's solemn as a
109 but they're facing national testing in math
on Friday. She hopes she's prepared them
well enough. She believes, yes, a
corporation and a person are basically the
same. She understands what
“overwhelming evidence” means.
Juror Two sits forward eagerly. He
is a welder. Big machines. Five years now.
Married, yes. He wants to know if the
judge's instructions will be something on
paper he can look at if he needs to. He
thinks cash awards are fine, if that's what
the facts show.
Juror Six works in the courthouse.
No, on the other side of the building. She's
done some work as a court recorder. Yes,
well, she doesn't own a business but
manages the inn her parents left to her
and her sister. It's not a big inn. Some of
the rooms connect, like for a wedding
party. Most people come back year after
year. She has some medical background.
Maybe it's something she'll do in
retirement. She understands “reasonable
expectations” when alluding to a
business's responsibility to a person
“invited in.” She has never been called
before for jury duty. She has two children.
They live in Colorado and Georgia. She
sees them twice a year—once they come to
her and she travels to see them the other
time.
Juror Five falls apart. She was
sure she could do this, but the prosecutor
is representing a woman, sorry, who looks
just like her mother, oh, so sorry, her
mother died five months ago and she was
sure that she could handle it, but, sorry,
sorry . . .
She's dismissed.
The new Juror Five's day began at
four-thirty. He's left his job of feeding one
thousand children their school lunches to
his assistant and he's worried. He admits
his mind would be divided listening to
testimony. He has two children. One's in
college, the other in high school. The one
in college hasn't picked a major yet. Today
should be okay but he also has a catering
business, and Thursday, see, there's a
luncheon to cater for one hundred people,
besides all the kid's lunches, and of all the
weeks, this one isn't good. But, he
understands. Everyone here has
something. He'll try.
The Prosecution asks he be
excused for “cause.” Defense disagrees.
The judge dismisses him.
Now, Juror Five's an electrician.
Today there's a power outage. There are
other electricians, well sure, but his boss
isn't happy. Yeah, he's been to that
grocery store. A few times. He doesn't
know how many. He didn’t shop there two
years ago though. No, he wasn't ever in an
accident that resulted in a lawsuit. Side
jobs? Well … is he under oath? Okay,
then, okay, a few. That's right, his
sweatshirt says “America.” Yeah, he's
patriotic. Two kids. Not married,
currently. He's broken some bones playing
sports. Yeah, they still bother him, but,
he's getting up there and everything's
kind of going, you know?
Juror Four used to be a wrestler,
heavyweight class, and played football in
high school. He lists five separate places
he's broken bones. Yes, his shoulder. Yes,
the dominant arm. He works for a
landscaping company. It's real busy right
now. Yep, mowing, planting, but most of
their work is high end. High end meaning
they put in patios, stonework, barbeques.
No, never shopped in that grocery. He
went to college. Ball State. Married two
years now.
I am Juror Three. I answer that I
have two grown sons and four
grandchildren.
The defense attorney says I smiled
when I said that. He assumes we're close.
I say sure and he asks where they
live, if I see them often.
Detroit suburbs, the other one's in
the Cleveland area. We visit fairly often.
The back of my mind smirks, I
have pictures, do you want to see them?
but I remain quiet, fold my hands. He
wants to know which Detroit suburb. I tell
him. He nods, it's familiar territory. His
interest is ingratiating.
Then, he drills down on my
teaching experience. Communication
courses?
I list Public Speaking,
Interpersonal Communication, some
110 writing classes. Yes, working with groups
is part of what I taught. He wants to know
all the places I've taught. He assumes
I liked teaching. Loved it, I respond, and
begin to wonder how a jury foreperson
is selected. I start fantasizing I'm sitting
around a table in the jury room, trying
to draw out Juror Five, sensing his
hostility …
Would serving on the jury be
enjoyable for you?
No, I say and the room, even the
judge, laughs.
No?
I'd say it could be “interesting.”
Are we sparring now?
And how do you feel about cash
awards as compensation for injury, if the
facts are there?
Whatever is right, fair, and not,
extraordinary.
You used the word, uh, what did
you say, “un...?
Extraordinary.
How do you mean? He smiles to
the jury, spreads his hands. His face is
reassuring, reasonable. Let me just say,
this is not California. Settlements for
hospital bills, doctor bills, perhaps
rehabilitation.
Yes, I agree with that. Whatever is
determined fair, certainly, what the group
decides is right.
Have you ever broken any bones?
I tell him both ankles, but it was
years ago. They're still a little stiff, I
admit, but not painful.
The prosecuting attorney has been
amiable, apologetic, and serious.
Unhurried. Deliberate. He's questioned us
for forty-five minutes, one by one,
collectively, and again up and down the
row. The plaintiff, a woman perhaps in
her late seventies, sits beside him and has
to turn awkwardly to peer over her
shoulder at us. She's seated directly below
me. She seldom turns but gazes at the
judge, composed. Her thinning hair is
someone's idea of strawberry blond, very
pale pinkish. She's thin with a sharp nose.
Seems pleasant. I wonder if she fell
accidentally and blames the store or if the
poor woman has waited months and
months, suffering. Medical bills ruining
her life. Didn't the attorney allude to two
years ago? And, if the injuries are to her
dominant side, how might that ratchet up
a settlement?
The defendant is another woman,
maybe in her sixties with dull black hair,
a round face, a frowzy dress. It's been
made clear to us she represents the store’s
parent corporation. Her chair is angled to
face the jury. She checks her phone and
puts it away. She glances at each of us,
follows along without apparent concern
then catches my eye and smiles. I don't
feel empathy for her, and I worry about
that.
A hand shoots up in the audience
of left-overs, the ones still in the wooden
seats, not picked for the jury. A pale,
sweating man needs to leave. A moment?
he pleads. The judge calls a five minute
recess. I get a drink and return to my seat.
Juror Two chats with me in a friendly
way. I ask if he thinks the trial might
begin after lunch. He guesses yes. I tell
him it seems like we're already trying the
case as we've learned this woman was
injured somehow at the grocery, and
required surgery. He quietly reveals that
one of the lawyers was standing by the
drinking fountain, listening, he thinks, to
what people were saying. But, maybe not.
He doesn't know. I ask the landscaper how
difficult it is to maintain a pond. It
depends on a lot of things, he says. He
begins to enumerate them and then the
judge returns.
He's released the sweaty, pale
man for illness. Are there any objections?
No one objects.
The defense attorney rises,
buttons his blazer. He expresses
appreciation for our service. He promises
he won't take much time as he's carefully
listened to our previous responses.
Would you be able to deny any
cash award to this plaintiff if the facts do
not show negligence? In other words, do
you have any hesitation about this woman
receiving no money at all, if, according to
the evidence you hear, it is not warranted?
He regards each juror in turn. I wonder
111 Who gets to be Juror Three now?
how hard it might be to tell this
strawberry blond grandma, tough, no dice.
No. No. No. No. No. No, I would
not. No.
It's nearly twelve o'clock. The leftovers will be released soon and I'll be
stuck here until five o'clock and back all
day tomorrow. I wonder how complicated
the medical records will be. I'm wondering
what she claims caused her fall. Wait, I
don't actually know if she fell. Can I get to
Wendy's and back in an hour? A medical
mistake likely happened because the
prosecutor asked Juror Seven if where she
works she's ever seen errors when she’s
reviewed medical records. I can't forget to
buy some bottled water during lunch. Why
all those questions about whether or not
we have kids?
Juror Three is excused, the
prosecuting attorney announces.
Everyone stares at me. I feel
exposed. Did I break a rule? I reach for my
purse, half rise, look at the judge.
The judge says, Cause?
I sit down. I want to know cause.
Why am I being expelled from court?
No cause, the attorney answers
blandly, never looking at me.
You're dismissed, the judge says.
I go down the worn steps,
underneath half-naked Justice, past the
security guards and out to my car.
What happened?
I sit in the car and wonder why he
didn't he want me. Did he resent me
saying it wouldn't be “enjoyable.” Was it
because I used the word “extraordinary?”
Was he concerned I'd maneuver myself
into a leadership role in the jury? Does
this kind of jury even have a foreperson?
Maybe someone overheard me tell Juror
Two I thought the trial was already being
tried. Was someone in this trial a former
student of mine?
Would he say I was prejudiced?
Am I?
Was it because the corporate
woman smiled at me and I automatically
smiled back?
Did the prosecuting attorney think
I'd be stingy? Unsympathetic?
I start the car and pull out of the
parking lot. I remember the bailiff
mentioning as I left the courthouse that I
am required to phone in for the automated
message again on Friday.
I wonder if I'll be called in again.
Chosen again.
Come Out of Your Shell by Elizabeth Weaver
112 Liz fiction by Alana de Hinojosa
I so rarely have nightmares that when one comes to me in the dark of sleep I
often don’t recognize it for its cruelty until much later. The other night, for
instance, I dreamt of lying naked along the sands of that mythical beach La
Boca del Cielo, where Luisa and her two rabbit-fucking boys from that film Y
Tú Mamá, También found a temporary haven from their disillusions and
childish heartbreaks. And there along the mother of pearl sand I sunned
myself, allowing those southern rays to penetrate deep into my skin. In this
dreaming moment the film’s viejita,1 Doña Martina, suddenly approached me
from the direction of the ocean, her fingernails dirty with sand, curves of
seaweed wrapped around her wrists like bracelets. She stood in front of me,
blocking the sun, her face covered in shadow, and as I turned to face her she
handed me the figure of a white mouse with a woman’s name on it—the same
little mouse she gave Luisa in the film.
“It belonged to my granddaughter, Luisa Obregon, who died of
heatstroke crossing the Arizona border with her parents,” Doña Martina said,
as if scripted, in a salty voice.
And before I could tell her that I was not Luisa, but a different
woman named Liz who crossed through the California desert and lived to tell
her story, I looked down at the stuffed animal. “Liz” was embroidered in pink
thread across its chest.
I only remember the names of three of the five other women who were with
me those three days in 2005—Hilda, María and Sonya—though perhaps I
should not call them women. Neither they nor I were older than fifteen at the
time.
I remember Sonya best because she was also from Colonia de
Guadalupe, and I had often seen her sitting along the stone fountain outside
our town’s church, combing her long brown hair that she always wore down
and loose. But the desert heat was so hot and cruel during those three days
we crossed north that Sonya had pulled her hair into a bun and clumsily
clipped it to the top of her head as a way to keep it from the drops of sweat
building up on the back of her neck. As I followed her from behind, el coyote
cautioning us on how to evade the cameras and sensors that la migra2 had
buried in the ground, I remember thinking she looked prettier with her hair
and its weighted history in México pulled back and tucked away. It seemed,
at last, she could see clearly.
But perhaps I remember Sonya best because of the way some of the
men brushed by her like she was desert trash when on the second day she
dropped to the ground, and, resting her head on a rock, cried that she
couldn’t move her legs anymore. “No más,” she said repeatedly, her voice
A small old woman 2 The border Partrol 1
3
“No more. No More. Go.”
113 struggling to convey her exhaustion. “No más. Váyanse.”3 I remember that
her hairclip snapped in half under the weight of her head against rock.
Many of the fifty or so men who were walking north with us argued
that we shouldn’t pay her any attention, that we should go on without her
because if we didn’t she would hold us back and we too would die under the
sun. Many of them began predicting how long it would take for her to die.
They claimed the only thing we could do for her now would be to drag her
dead body to the nearest road (either interstate 8 or one of those border
patrol roads carved in the desert sand) so at least her body would be picked
up and sent back to México to be properly buried. I couldn’t understand how
this was all we had to offer her.
I had carried so much hope and happiness inside my heart until that
moment, for not only was I seeing the way our hearts can turn to stone, but I
couldn’t help but wonder (and fear) what would happen to us if we didn’t
cross. Who would we be then?
In reality, crossing the border is not anything like what the majority of
people say. It is very sad: clothes on the ground, dropped food, torn water
canteens, bones that aren’t clearly animal or human, backpacks left behind
that have already been rummaged through by desperate hands, sometimes
you even find small pieces of paper with telephone numbers or addresses
scribbled in faded ink. I remember wondering, what happened to these people
that they forgot all their things? Of course, I was too young to understand
these things as death’s leftovers.
Tantas cosas tristes.4
2 de deciembre, 2014
A mi querida Mamita,5
The other day your grandson asked me why I don’t have a mother.
We stood in the kitchen. I was cooking eggs. “¿Cómo puedes
preguntarme eso?”6 I asked him, as he knows very well that you and I
speak by phone weekly, let alone that you speak to him also. His
response hurt me Mami, and still does: “Then why do we only speak
by phone?” He went on: “And why do I only know her voice, and have
never seen her or Abuelo?”7 And after I told him you are far away in
México and that I don’t have the proper papers I need to take him to
see you, he didn’t ask the question I thought a child of his age would
(“What are proper papers, Mami?”). Instead he asked me if I love you.
“In the same way you love me,” I told him, “I love my mother.”
Don’t worry Mami, time passes, and I will see you soon. I will make
up for all the hugs I should have been there to give you. I will tell you
how much I love you face to face. Don’t wait for me, but I’ll be there
soon.
Tu hija, siempre,8
Liz
“No more. No More. Go.”
So many sad things.
5 To my dear mother
6 How can you ask me that?
7 Grandfather
8 Your daughter, always
3
4
114 Crossing the desert I thought of my siblings: Anayeli, Alejandro, Jorge Luis
and Hugo. Like my mother, I remember them as I left them: standing outside
our little house made of cardboard and mud, waving goodbye to me in the
blurred night. Under the wrath of heavy desert rain, plucking cactus spikes
from my clothes and skin, I carried this image through the desert. I can still
see Anayeli’s braided pigtails and the yellowed sleep caught in the crevices of
Alejandro’s eyes. Sometimes I feel the warmth of my mother’s last hug
around my arms and across my chest.
The day I told my mother I was to leave for the United States, I saw
for the first time how the phantoms of hurt and betrayal can tremble across a
woman’s lips. (“Mira, no tenemos dinero, no tenemos oportunidad para
estudiar, no tenemos un futuro aquí, porque, no hay.”9) She had tried so hard
to make a life for us, to make the most out of our nothing-of-sorts town where
some families were so poor they harvested cactus to make money. Their
children, I remember, would sit about the street plucking the cactus thorns
and splinters from the callused palms of their hands. No, Colonia de
Guadalupe wasn’t enough for us to keep moving forward, to progress.
(“Madre, necesito que me eches tu bendición para poder irme. Y tu bendición
me va a acompañar siempre.”10) Our hunger hurt her, as did my departure.
But today she and my family live in a new home: one with a red tile roof and
bread, milk, and eggs, sometimes even butter, on the kitchen table. Anayeli,
Alejandro, and Jorge Luis are on their way toward getting an education. All
of this because I came north, because I made it so. But sadly, many years
later, Hugo followed me north because even with me working in the U.S., it
was not enough.
Mami says she forgives me. I am unsure if this is true. (“No te
preocupes Mamá, me voy a portar bien y hablaremos todos los días. Y un día,
Mami, me regresaré.”11)
Está bien, mi’ja. Voy a dejarte ir. Ya eres un pajarito que comienza a
volar. Abra tus alas y vuela. Recuerda que aquí está tu familia. Llámame
todos los días.12
The year I left for the States was shortly after my first heartbreak. Jaime, a
small but strong man who would hold me up in the air when I’d asked him if
it was possible to see Heaven, had a way of removing the white wood clip
from my hair and making it uncurl and fall steady into his hands. This made
me feel loose and dreamlike. And for these reasons and many more I came to
love him very much. His nineteen years to my fourteen meant very little, as
we understood each other very well and would sit along the stone fountain
outside our church holding hands and touching each other’s cheeks like one of
us was the tamed and the other the tamer. It was often unclear (and I know
now this was the nature of our love) to know who was who. Sometimes, as we
sat along that fountain, I liked to picture us as lovers turned to stone, a
single statue forever under the blessing of God. The few moments of beauty
9 “Look, we don’t have money, we don’t have opportunity to study, we don’t have a future here, because,
there is none.”
“Mama, I need you to give me your blessing so I can go. And your blessing will accompany always.”
“Don’t worry Mama, I will behave myself and we will talk every day. And one day, Mami, I will come
back.”
10
11
“Ok, my daughter. I will let you go. You are a baby bird that has learned to fly. Open your wings and
fly. Remember that here is your family. Call me each day.”
12
115 in Colonia de Guadalupe were with him.
But as the wind began to take on a different course and the moon to
usher in different waters, the season became fall, and in October Jaime left.
He went looking for Las Vegas. “The city of lights,” he said, holding me. And
over the course of the five months I waited for him to come back to me, he
called me three times:
The first call he said he would come back. “Wait for me,” he said.
The second call he spoke of the desert, and said it was a place with
sounds you could never imagine. “You hear bodies moving that you cannot
see,” he said, “as if apart from yourself, there is someone else in the darkness
with you ... someone far away in the sun.”
The third call he said so little I cannot recall what he must have said.
The other day I thought about Jaime as I tended to the garden
outside my home in Everson, Washington. My children, Andrés and Saraí,
chased each other through the grass. And as I pulled a weed from the bed of
lilies, I realized something: In Jaime’s three calls to me, never once did he tell
me about his life in the U.S.
In a dream I meet my mother. She is sitting along the edge of the fountain
outside our church, dipping her right hand into the muddled water, singing:
“Abre tus brazos fuertes a la vida. No dejes nada a la deriva del cielo nada te
caerá … trata de ser feliz con lo que tienes. Vive la vida intensamente,
luchando lo conseguirás.”13 Behind her in the center of the fountain are two
stone figures, a woman and a man, whose bodies seem to be curling around
each other in a slow dance. The man is reaching out to his woman, the tips of
his right fingers barely grazing her cheekbones. Her hair is down and loose,
though she clutches a hairclip that resembles a seashell. His gaze is fixed on
hers, and while she looks toward him, she seems not to return his gaze. My
mother continues singing—her voice taking on the hints of exhaustion, its
strength moving in and out like the ocean tide: “Si cuando llegue al fin tu
despedida, seguro es que feliz sonreirás. Pude haber conseguido lo que
amabas. Por encontrar lo que buscabas porque viviste hasta el final. ...”14
I stand watching her from the dark wood panels of the church
entrance for what feels like a very long time. I don’t know if such a thing is
truly possible, but in this dream there is great happiness where my heart is
usually empty and hollow.
But when I call out to my mother so she will see me, so I can join her
in song, like I always had as a little girl, she doesn’t hear me. I take a step
toward her, and then another and with each step, rocks and fish bones begin
to form around my ankles. The stream of a river begins to trickle and flow
over my feet, its current growing stronger and stronger.
I take another step. The river picks up speed. I run. The river follows
me. I swim. The river tries to drown me. And when I almost reach my
mother, the river’s current grabs my body and pushes me downstream. Just
moments before the river takes me around its bend, my mother sees me, and
Lyrics from “Vive” by José Maria Napoleón (1976) – “Open your arms with strength to life. Don’t
leave anything to chance, nothing will fall from the sky … Try to be happy with what you have. Live
life intensely, fighting you will receive.”
13
Lyrics from “Vive” by José María Napoleón (1976) — “When finally you come to the end, it is
certain you will smile with happiness. You could have acquired what you loved. By finding what you
were looking for because you lived until the end.”
14
116 as I move away she calls out to me: “Remember how you used to sing to me
when I was sad, mi niña? How come you don’t sing to me anymore?”
I try to answer, but Andrés’ voice pulls me out of sleep—
“Mami, Mami, I realized something! México is one large river with
many people fishing ... But this is sad because all those fish are my friends!”
Everything Jaime said about the sounds of a desert night proved to be true.
But he failed to warn me about the wind, because in reality it was the wind
that brought us all great sadness. The wind carried with it moans from near
and far. These sounds, to this day, echo in my head.
Crossing the U.S. border, there was no use in sleeping since sleep
didn’t come because the body shivered throughout the night. Nuestro coyote
kept telling us to huddle together, that we would be warmer this way, but it
made little difference.
God’s gift of sleep, let alone a dream, is impossible at la frontera—
that is, unless He means to give you dream as a gentle entrance toward
death. But a boy named Mateo who crossed with me (and whose squareshaped head and curious dimple on the left side of his cheek reminded me of
Jaime), showed me once how man can sleep with death and still return alive.
On the second night, he fell asleep not four bodies away from me, and when
we rose in the morning, no one, not even me, noticed his absence.
There was no way of knowing we had finished crossing the border
when we arrived to the U.S. There were no buildings so tall and skinny they
reached the sky. There were no beautiful women in red dresses hailing cabs.
It was the same as it had always been: desert, hills, mountains, and rocks.
For this reason, when el coyote turned to me and said, “Este es el regalo de tu
cumpleaños,15” I did not understand him.
“¿Pórque dices eso?”16 I asked.
“Porque ya estamos en los Estados Unidos, y hoy es el 23 de febrero.
Espero que aproveches, que cumplas tus sueños, que vayas adelante.”17
“Wow,” I said, because it was indeed my birthday and he had
remembered it. “Wow. This is the best gift.”
“Where’s Mateo?” someone asked in the distance.
12 de septiembre, 2009
Mi Liz,
¿Cómo estás? I hope that this note finds you and your family healthy.
I wrote this letter to tell you how much I miss you and that we will
wait for the day we see you again.
Tu mamá,
Elina
“This is your birthday gift.”
“Why do you say that?”
17 “Because we have arrived to the United States, and today is February 23. I hope that you take
advantage of it all, that your dreams come true, that you further and better yourself.”
15
16
117 16 de septiembre, 2008
A mi mamita bonita,
Today I am tired, Mami. I am tired often. There are times when
things are hard for me and I miss you so much. I tell myself that I’m
going to come back to you, that I give up. But then I think and know
that if I go back we will be in the same situation as before—and I
don’t want that Mami.
I have much hope that one day I will return to México. I know you
understand why this moment cannot be now. But remember, Mami,
that the distance and the time should not prohibit you from believing
what I tell you. I mean every word that I say.
Soon,
Tu hija, Liz
23 de febrero, 2012
Querida Liz,
Como me hubiera encantado compartir mi adolescencia contigo para
andar juntas. Te extrañamos.
Feliz cumpleaños, hermana.
Tu hermana, 18
Anayeli
4 de marzo, 2010
Ay mi niña,
I still remember all the things you did when you were just a little girl.
How beautiful you were, and how when you saw sad people you
wouldn’t know what to do, so you would smile at them. But me each
time I was sad, you sang me a song. Do you remember? There was
one time I had hurt my foot so badly I couldn’t walk, and you sang
about a man with one leg who could not stop dreaming of walking
again. Your song made me laugh so hard I cried from pain. I
remember this, mi’ja. I remember it well.
I miss the mornings I brushed your hair and tied it away from your
face, and told you over and over, “Eres mi niña.”19 Is it odd of me to
still think of you this way? As if ten years have not passed, and you
are still you and I am still me?
The other day government officials came and informed us that our
street now has a name: Calle de los Ángeles.
Mando todo mi amor, y más.20
Tu mamá,
Elina
P.D. We received the money you sent us. Thank you, mi’ja, it will be
well spent.
18 Dear Liz,
How much I would have loved to share with you my childhood so we could be together. We
miss you. Happy birthday, sister.
Your sister,
19 “You are my little girl.”
20 I send all my love, and more.
118 I had it in my mind that I would come to this country and support myself so
that I could help my family. But life here was not easy, and without the
support of my parents, without the support of my family, it wasn’t possible
for me to achieve all of my goals. I was a woman alone.
I was unable to continue school because I needed to work for food and
rent. I found a job picking blueberries in a field not far from Los Angeles.
Later I moved north and began working picking carrots, broccoli, chard, and
many other things. Things were endlessly hard, but some days were harder.
But receiving letters from my mother that she sent to my friend’s house
because I didn’t have a mailbox was one of the very few things that made me
happy. I loved to see my mother’s voice put to pen and paper. But the letters
themselves were full of missing and longing, anxiety about my well being and
about staying safe and away from those that could destroy all I had worked
for here. The letters hurt my insides and made me ask myself if our sadness
was worth anything. Other days Americans were so cruel to me I wanted to
spit at the ground that the world calls golden, and cry. I remember the voice
of an angry American woman with black hair as dark as the desert night:
“You earn nothing because you are illegal. Can’t you see we don’t want you
here?”
“Remember, Liz, if you fight for what you want, you will achieve it. And when
you think you cannot fight, listen to my voice saying that you can, and you
will.”
And though life here is hard, and I feel I might give up, sometimes I surprise
myself and find my strength:
“You are right to say I am illegal in this country because I do not have
papers,” I told the woman. “But the papers are not what work. What work are
my hands and my mind, and because you are an American you don’t know
the kind of work I do. It is grueling and it is hard.”
Andrés was born on a gloomy day in February, and Saraí on a rainy day in
November. Ever since their lives entered mine, not only was I able to
understand the worry my mother has lived with since the day I left for the
U.S., but I was able to understand why that young mother I met in Mexicali
had brought her baby with her to cross the border.
I remember that half-day in Mexicali well, not because it was the last
time I had both my feet in México, but because the image of that mother and
her baby boy not more than four years old, curled tight into her arms, still
haunts me. She sat at a yellow bench outside a taquería, holding her
pregnant belly with one hand and in the other her bebito. His feet looked like
they had been cooked in boiling oil—so red, the flesh full of water.
I cannot recall how it was that she and I entered each other’s lives in
that brief moment, whether I asked about her baby or whether she asked how
I had come here; but, in our fleeting moment together she told me she had
tried to cross the border many times. And each time, she said, she and her
babies hadn’t made it. She said she had asked every coyote in Mexicali to
take her across, and that she promised to pay well; but no one would do it.
The weight of killing two lives (or possibly three if no one looked out for the
baby) if she were to fall in the desert was too heavy. Even for men like them.
“We have been waiting for nearly a month for a coyote to take us,” she
119 said, readjusting her breasts as her bebito chewed on a torn piece of
quesadilla. “I am waiting for a coyote who even in his dreams does not fear
God.”
“Why not go home?” I asked, though now I would know better not to
ask.
“¿Para qué?” she asked.
Back then I couldn’t understand the pain of a child and mother
separated. But now I know it is a pain greater than death itself.
14 de junio, 2013
Mami,
Here are photos of Andrés and Saraí. I know these photos aren’t
enough to make up for their absence, and I will not pretend they do.
But, here they are. These are the photos of your grandchildren and
whether I was here or allá21 I would still give their photos to you.
The other day Andrés referred to you as his “abuela de México.” He
tells me he wants to go to México one day and that he imagines it as a
large, full river with many fish. I do not tell him otherwise. Next time
you speak to him on the phone tell him how blue our country is, will
you?
Andrés’s wish to see México helped me decide on a name for my farm,
the little garden of vegetables I grow outside our home. I will call it
‘Mariposa Farm.’22 It makes so much sense, Mami, because we
Mexicans do exactly what the butterflies must do when they arrive
here. We migrate to this country and so many people die along the
way and never return. But here is what is beautiful: the baby
butterflies, to complete the migration, return to their parents’ home.
It’s like a circle. And people seem to like the name. At least, they buy
in plenty when I sell at the farmer’s market.
Mami, three days ago three young people without papers—one boy
named Carlos and two girls, Renata and Evelyn—went to the border
to be reunited with their mothers. They were separated by the fence.
The newspapers called it “Mariposa Operación.”23 I could not read the
story in detail because it was in English, but the photo made me cry. I
thought of including it here in your letter, but then thought
otherwise. I do not want to make you cry, Mami.
Te quiero,
Liz
A little more than a year after I arrived in the U.S.—on a day in late April —
a woman I worked with in the fields of southern California told me about an
article her husband read that morning that had made her very sad. She had
asked her husband to explain what the article said because she didn’t read
English and had noticed “Nogales, Mexico” in the first line. Nogales was su
pueblo natal24, she explained. Her husband had lived and worked in the U.S.
over there (in this case, México)
Butterfly Farm
23 Operation Butterfly
24 Her hometown
21
22
120 for eight years before she came north to be with him, and therefore he was
able to roughly translate it to her:
NOGALES, MEXICO—SWADDLED IN DIRT IN THE
NIGHT, THE NEWBORN TREMBLED AS A
STRANGER STRUGGLED TO SNIP HER UMBILICAL
CORD WITH NAIL CLIPPERS. A SMUGGLER AND
OTHER MIGRANTS HAD BOLTED WHEN THE
BABY’S 18-YEAR-OLD MOTHER SCREAMED IN
LABOR.25
“Mi marido26 told me a baby was born in the desert, Liz, and that its
mother was abandoned by her coyote as she gave birth,” she said.
BUT LILIA ORTIZ COULDN’T JUST LEAVE THEM IN
THE HARSH ARIZONA DESERT. ORTIZ, 23, HAD
WALKED TWO DAYS STRAIGHT TO GET THIS FAR.
BUT SHE KNEW WHAT IT WAS LIKE TO STRUGGLE
AS A MOTHER ON HER OWN.
“Pues … mi marido said the mother and baby are in a U.S. hospital.
But they sent the other woman back to México.”
COLLAPSED ON A BUNK BED AT A NOGALES
SHELTER, ORTIZ RUBBED HER LEGS, WHICH WERE
COVERED WITH CACTUS THORNS. SHE SAID SHE
LEFT HER ABUSIVE HUSBAND AFTER HURRICANE
STAN SWEPT AWAY HER FAMILY’S HOME IN
CHIAPAS LAST FALL, AND DECIDED TO HEAD
NORTH. “I HAVE A 6-MONTH-OLD GIRL, AND I’M A
SINGLE MOTHER,” SHE SAID. “I FEEL SAD AND
DESPERATE. I HAVE NO MONEY AND HAVEN’T
BEEN ABLE TO GET WORK AT HOME, AND NOW I
CAN’T GET TO THE OTHER SIDE.”
“That baby is a U.S. citizen now,” I said, under my breath.
We continued working. There was little else to say. But I couldn’t
help but think about the pregnant woman I had met in Mexicali and wonder
if maybe, somehow, that had been her.
ORTIZ SAID SHE WOULD TRY THE CROSSING
AGAIN IN HOPES OF A BETTER LIFE FOR HER
DAUGHTER, WHO IS STAYING WITH RELATIVES.
There are times when I ask myself if my life here in the U.S. has brought me
closer to death or farther from it because when it comes to intimacies with
death, I can think of many: I could have died along the border desert. I could
be deported any day without notice or the chance to kiss my children one last
An excerpt from the April 28, 2006 Associated Press article “Female migrants journey perilous way
to the U.S. Note: the following capitalized text is also excerpts from this article.
26 My husband
25
121 time and tell them I love them—which in my eyes, is just another kind of
death. Here I live a bare life, where I am told I am unworthy of healthcare
and work and shelter simply because this country understands me as illegal,
as alien. In many ways I am invisible here, and this makes me wonder how
much invisibility has to do with death. I’d like to ask, if I could, someone who
could answer me: When will the U.S. learn it misunderstands its acts of
killing?
But it is what my husband calls my “living will” that reminds me of
how close death stands next to me. For if, or when, I am deported, here is
how I would like my things to be distributed:
Photos from México — Andrés and Saraí
Letters from México — Saraí
The backpack Hugo gave me to carry my things across the desert — Hugo
All the flowers in my garden — Mami
Sonya’s broken hairclip — Saraí
My gold cross necklace — Andrés
Address book from México — Andrés and Saraí
Wedding photos — Mami
Mariposa Farm — todo mi familia (and the butterflies)
(¿Qué es la muerte, verdad?)27
Neither Sonya nor Mateo died in the desert. They both crossed into the U.S.,
though I truly believe God is the only one who could have made this possible.
Lifting Sonya on each side, two young men carried her to the border.
The entire third day she continued to say her legs were unresponsive, that
perhaps they had died without her. The other women and I walked beside her
as we had grown close and had promised we would stick together in hopes of
evading the evils of migrant legends that say women who cross the border
alone must exchange sex with the smugglers for a safe journey. Sonya and I
told ourselves that since we were both from the same pueblito we could fool
the border spirits and appear we had come together as a couple. But, just to
be safe, Sonya and I sprinkled gelatin powder on the inside of our panties,
which stained our panties a reddish brown color.
Later, once we had crossed and it was noticed Mateo was missing, one
of the coyotes went back to look for him and found him in a deep sleep where
we had last seen him: sleeping within the hills. When el coyote went to wake
him, Mateo woke in tears. He thought la migra had finally come to get him.
“What happened?” el coyote asked.
“I had a deep dream where I didn’t know what happened to me,”
Mateo said. “I don’t remember anything.”
“Bueno, levántate.28 Memory will not serve you here.”
When my mother calls I say I am happy. I am a mother and wife and the
grower of my own garden. I am a sister of three educated siblings in México
27
28
What is death, really?
Ok, well, get up.
122 and the daughter of parents who know I would cross every bridge to care for
them.
“I’ve learned how to ir adelante para ti misma, Mamá,”29 I say. “I’ve
changed for the better.”
Yesterday I remembered my dream from the other night along La Boca del
Cielo and the way Doña Martina came to me from the sea. But this time I
remembered her hair was pinned back by the clasp of a white seashell, and
when she handed me her little mouse, I accepted it without protest.
What scares me most is not that I accepted her death-fated gift, but
that the moment I did Doña Martina turned toward the sun and came out of
the shadows. She had the face of my mother.
— Adiós, hija.
— Adiós, Mamá.
Malala and Me by Leah Porter
29
“I’ve learned how to go forward for you, Mama.”
123 Decemberism poetry by Zach Lundgren
Dinner at the only restaurant in town,
we watched one another
like thieves
/ a hand over your chest.
On your birthday, we engraved our names
into your bedsheets; blood freckles
blossom to rust. We fell asleep
on the floor
/ your hair in wildfire across my chest.
Walking home that night, you took
my wrists for examination
and almost quit
/ sleepless nights ripen as raspberry vines.
I still don’t know why there are so many stars
124 Luna poetry by Lucia Stacey
You will forget the way
sardines taste and how
to peel shrimp and the difference
between your and you’re.
Deep blue veins
will canopy your body.
You won’t miss your teeth
when they fall from your head.
You will play only Chopin.
You will read only Whitman.
You will forget my name
but I will feed you mangos—
hand you bright sweetness
to suckle from stone—
and on whiter days I will slip
hot water-bottles into
your bed before you sleep,
while you’re still
puttering around the garden
in the bluing light
waiting for the moon-vines to blossom.
125 An Interview with Jodi Lynn Anderson by Ani Kazarian
have time, energy, creativity, and
children?
With these questions, I reached out to
Jodi, who became the mother of a
beautiful boy just over a year ago, and
continues to write often, and well. Here's
her take on being a writer and a new
mother.
AK: When did you begin writing? As
in, how old were you or is there a
specific moment you recall as being
"the one" that alerted you to the fact
that you're a writer?
Jodi Lynn Anderson
JLA: As a kid I kept obsessive diaries. We
moved to Hong Kong when I was 13, and
before we left I buried them all in the
woods behind my house (in New Jersey). I
think the burying had a lot to do with why
I was writing in general. It was my way of
pinning things down– I was a nostalgic
little kid and I hated that time was
passing and I wanted to hold onto things.
Jodi Lynn Anderson is the New York
Times bestselling author of Peaches, Tiger
Lily, and the May Bird Trilogy. Her latest
book, My Diary from the Edge of the
World, was released in November 2015. I
had the extreme good fortune of meeting
Jodi several years ago during our first
residency at Bennington College. We
started our MFA together and graduated
together—an experience for which I will
always be grateful. Over the residencies,
we climbed trees together, chased fireflies,
drank wine at the “End of the World,” and
practiced prenatal yoga in her dorm room.
The Jodi I've come to know is every bit as
magical as her writing. Her thoughts and
actions are guided by intuitive insight and
a rare honesty. I am thrilled to have her
as a dear friend, and honored to have done
this interview with her.
I’d say it’s only recently that I’ve started
to think of myself comfortably as a writer.
When I started getting published, there
was this huge gap between what I was
writing vs. finding my own voice and being
honest. What I knew how to write for
publication was really different from what
I loved writing for myself. I think these
days my stories are starting to line up
much more with what’s inside and what I
care about most deeply; that makes me
feel like a writer more than anything else
that’s happened.
AK: Your most recent books, and,
really, the majority of your books,
seem to center around friendship and
community wrapped up in magic. Do
you do this consciously, or are these
the things you naturally hold most
dear to you?
As a woman in her thirties, I don't know if
I want to have children. But I'm positive
that I want to finish my novel and write
several other books. Although I know
many women who have children and
successful careers that they're passionate
about, I still harbor a deep fear–how can I
be a writer and a mother? I regularly feel
overwhelmed in life as it is, how does one
126 JLA: I still see things pretty similarly to
how I saw them as a kid—I’ll be driving
along the highway and see a curled up rug
on the roadside and my first thought is,
“Oh a zebra got hit by a car!” I tend to see
things a little magically, for better or
worse. So I try to be true to that as much
as I can, though I’m really not sure how. A
lot of my journey as a writer has been
trying to figure that out. How do I weave
magic into stories that have emotional
depth? What’s real about the idea of
magic—like, why do I care so much? Same
with writing about time and time passing
and how magic seems to come into play
there. There’s something that always pulls
me back to those things but I’m not sure
what. I don’t know if I’ll ever get there. I’m
trying.
JLA: Before I had my son, I kept a
traditional work day and work week so
that when most of my friends were free, I
was too. That took me a long time to
learn—that keeping a traditional schedule
made my quality of life better. Now I write
for five hours, four days a week, because
that’s when I have a babysitter. My days
were much flabbier before. Now I get to
my desk and charge. It’s actually nice in a
way to have that pressure. It makes me
focus.
With friendships, etc. … I think coming
from a young adult background, I started
publishing when there were so many
young adult books coming out about
romantic relationships—especially
relationships with the guy who seems like
an asshole at first but isn’t. I wanted to
write about girls loving each other, or
about loving guys who seem like assholes
who actually turn out to be assholes. I
think that’s how I started writing about
friendships.
JLA: I experience a lot of days where I
hate the book and feel like a huge idiot
and I just sit and Google things that make
me feel terrible, like this woman who
wronged me in the late nineties and is
hugely successful. I don’t know—is that
writer’s block? I don’t run out of ideas but
I run out of ability to get anything down
intelligently, and I get lazy, or I just go
into this hole of … how can I have been
doing this this long and not be better at
such and such? It’s like Molasses Swamp.
But it’s temporary.
AK: Do you have a favorite one out of
all of your books?
AK: How do you pull yourself out of
it?
JLA: I really like my middle grade book
that just came out, My Diary from the
Edge of the World. I drew from a lot of
experiences with my family but threaded
it with fantasy. And the process felt really
organic—I didn’t feel like I was getting
lost in the weeds trying to create a plot.
The characters seemed to create the plot
and vice versa. Usually I’m left feeling like
much of what I wrote wasn’t completely
necessary. I like it when it all feels
elemental—like none of it is extra. But
that hardly ever happens.
JLA: Sometimes walking away works. I
used to run a lot and that helped, big time.
Music. Anything to take a brief vacation,
where I’m mentally away. But sometimes
the only thing is to sit and sit and feel
miserable until something comes loose.
where do you write, when do you
write?
AK: Do you ever experience writer's
block?
AK: And you recently had a baby
(congratulations!). How did that
change your writing routine?
JLA: My writing time became scarce and
specific. I can’t go a minute over-time
because my babysitter’s got to go to other
jobs or get her own stuff done. But I’m
lucky enough to have her twenty hours a
AK: For the last ten years or so, what
has been your writing routine? As in,
127 week. And those hours are so precious
now, and I appreciate them a lot more. I
also end up emailing myself from a phone
all day while I’m watching my son—
thoughts that I can’t sit down at my
computer to flesh out. I go through my
emails to myself every few days and
transfer everything to all my documents.
AK: What do you do when you sort of
feel like you need a break?
JLA: After Owen goes to bed, we watch a
comedy and have a drink. It probably
sounds boring but it feels incredible.
AK: A lot of mothers mention feeling
guilty working instead of spending
time with their children, is this
something you've experienced?
AK: Do you feel that being a mother
has changed how you view writing?
JLA: There’s a lot less angst about it, I
guess! My ego has mostly shriveled up for
the short term and I’m not as worried
about feeling exposed or all my mistakes
or blind spots, partly because physically
I’m literally covered in poo and unshowered so much of the time, and partly
because my self-consciousness has taken a
backseat to this human I got lucky enough
to be put in charge of. I mean, my creative
failures matter to me but they don’t
wrench my guts right now.
JLA: I don’t feel guilty with work. I feel
guilty about a ton of other things (like, it
seems every time I put Owen down I
knock him over). But not work. I try to be
careful about feeling guilty because it’s
such a trap.
AK: Has being a mother changed
what you want to write about?
JLA: I’m coming from such a uniquely
privileged situation—with childcare
designated just for writing time and an
income that comes from my work—that I’d
feel pretty silly giving advice. I have mom
friends who can only write in their spare
moments … at naps, at night, after work,
before work … and all I know is that it’s
this daunting and rigorous thing.
AK: Is there advice you can offer to
women writers who maybe think
about having children but are afraid
it will take away from their writing
life?
JLA: Not yet. Not at all. Sorry, boring
answer!
AK: What have been some of the new
challenges that you've experienced as
a new mother and a writer?
JLA: I think the biggest challenge, and
what really surprised me, was how hard it
is to mix nursing and working. And that’s
coming from the luxurious position of
working at home where I had every
advantage to make it happen which I
know is rare. And then nursing becomes a
slippery slope because it becomes being
the one with the baby all day, which
means being an expert on all the baby
behaviors, being the one getting up all
night. … My husband is a great partner
and we do our best, but it’s never
completely equal. That my physiology
should have such an influence over my life
was something that, for some reason, I
wasn’t prepared for at all.
_____________________________________________________ BIO:
Jodi Lynn Anderson grew up in a lake town in northern New Jersey where she spent much of her time wandering the woods with her cat. She's been an admirer of stories and all things magical from an early age. Her recent release, a middle grade novel entitled My Diary from the Edge of the World, is a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2015 and an IndieNext selection. She lives in Asheville, NC with her husband and their young son, and holds an MFA from Bennington College.
128 Contributors Sudha Balagopal's (fiction) recent work has appeared in Gravel Magazine, Superstition
Review, and Gemini Magazine among other journals. She is the author of two short story
collections: There are Seven Notes and Missing and Other Stories. Her debut novel, Love After
Loss, is forthcoming from Roman Books later this year.
Joseph Bodie (fiction) lives in San Francisco, where he is pursuing his MFA and working
on a collection of short stories.
Marion Boyer (creative nonfiction), an emeritus professor for Kalamazoo Valley
Community College, has published three poetry collections: Green (2003, Finishing Line
Press), The Clock of the Long Now (2009, Mayapple Press), and Composing the Rain
(Mayapple Press, 2014). Her essays have appeared in Paddler, American Whitewater, Canoe
& Kayak and Great Lakes Review.
Elijah Burrell (poetry) is the author of one collection of poems, titled The Skin of the River
(Aldrich Press, 2014). His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in publications such as
AGNI, Birmingham Poetry Review, Iron Horse Literary Review, Measure, Sugar House
Review, and many others. He resides in Jefferson City, Missouri, with his wife and two
daughters, and teaches creative writing and literature at Lincoln University.
Willa Carroll (poetry) won Tupelo Quarterly's TQ7 Poetry Prize, judged by Brenda Hillman,
and Narrative Magazine's Third Annual Poetry Contest. She's also been a Pushcart Prize
nominee and semi-finalist for the "Discovery" / Boston Review Contest. Her poems have
appeared in Tin House, Tuesday; An Art Project, Poemeleon, Structo, Free State Review, and
elsewhere. Her video readings are online in Narrative.
Robin Carstensen’s (poetry) recent poems can be found in BorderSenses, Atlanta Review,
Southern Humanities Review and many others. She teaches creative writing at Texas A&M
University in Corpus Christi, and is the founding editor of The Switchgrass Review: A
Journal of Women’s Health, History, and Transformation. Otherwise, she’s feeding the porch
cats and possums that rule the hood.
Mary Clemens (fiction) lives and writes in upstate New York. Short stories, and most
recently, short-shorts comprise the work she loves best. Her fiction has been featured in New
World Writing, Upstream, and The Uses of Narrative.
Susan Comninos's (poetry) work recently appeared in Subtropics, TriQuarterly, Quarterly
West, The Cortland Review and Nashville Review, among others. In 2010, she won the
Yehuda Halevi Poetry Contest run by Tablet magazine. Her poetry currently appears in The
Malahat Review and Hobart; later this year, it's forthcoming in the Harvard Review Online
and Subtropics.
Travis M. Dahlke (fiction) has been formally published in 'Love on the Road 2013' (Malinki
Press), with other work appearing in Five Quarterly, Verbicide Magazine, Dead Beats
Literary Blog and his own site, Manatee River Bank. He has a degree in Graphic Design
which he currently uses as an immense coaster for beverages.
129 Margot Douaihy (poetry) is the author of the book Girls Like You (Clemson University
Press, 2015) and the chapbook I Would Ruby If I Could (Factory Hollow Press, 2013). Her
poetry has been featured in The Madison Review, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Sow's Ear
Poetry Review, Catamaran Literary Reader, The Moth Magazine, The New Guard Literary
Review, The Common (Amherst College), Bloodstone Review, Philadelphia Stories, Soundings
East (Salem State University), The Four Quarters Magazine, and Belle Reve Literary
Journal.
Meg Eden's (interior art) work has been published in various magazines, including Rattle,
Drunken Boat, Poet Lore, and Gargoyle. She teaches at the University of Maryland. She has
four poetry chapbooks, and her novel Post-High School Reality Quest is forthcoming from
California Coldblood, an imprint of Rare Bird Lit. Check out her work at megedenbooks.com.
Stefanie Freele (fiction) is the author of two short story collections, Feeding
Strays, with Lost Horse Press and Surrounded by Water, with Press 53. Stefanie's published
and forthcoming work can be found in Witness, Glimmer Train, Mid-American Review,
Wigleaf, Western Humanities Review, Sou'wester, Chattahoochee Review, The Florida Review,
Quarterly West, and American Literary Review. More at stefaniefreele.com
Corey Ginsberg’s (poetry) work has most recently appeared in such publications as Third
Coast, the cream city review, and Nashville Review, among others. Her nonfiction has been
listed as a notable in the Best American Essays in 2012 and 2014. Corey currently lives in
Miami and works as a freelance writer.
John Grabski (fiction) is a long distance runner who chases poetry and fiction down the dirt
roads of New York. His work has appeared in the Boston Literary Magazine, Unbroken
Journal, Crack the Spine, Eclectica Magazine, The Harpoon Review, Foliate Oak Literary
Magazine, Cyclamens & Swords, Ash & Bones and a splendid cast of others.
Robyn Groth (fiction) has an MA in linguistics and is a fanatic of lifelong learning
and autodidacticism. She lives in the Midwest with her husband and three sons and writes
poetry and short stories. Her work has been published in Blue Monday Review. More at
robyngrothwrites.wordpress.com.
Jim Gustafson (poetry) holds a Master of Divinity from Garrett Theological Seminary at
Northwestern University and an MFA from the University of Tampa. His chapbook, Driving
Home, was published by Aldrich Press in 2013. He is a 2013 Pushcart Prize Nominee. He
teaches at Florida Gulf Coast University and Florida Southwestern State College. Jim lives
in Fort Myers, Florida where he reads, writes, and pulls weeds. www.jimgustafson.com.
Deborah Guzzi (creative nonfiction) is a healing facilitator specializing in Shiatsu and
Reiki. Her poetry is published in the UK in Existere , in Canada in Tincture, in Australia in
Latchkey, in New Zealand in Cha: Asian Literary Review, and in China, India, France, and
throughout the USA. Her new book The Hurricane is now available through Prolific Press.
Alana de Hinojosa (fiction) is a PhD student in Chicana/o Studies at UCLA. She
approaches her studies as a storyteller. Her most recent pieces are concerned with listening
and attending to the silences of female family histories, oceans, and rivers. Alana is from
California. "Liz" is from a larger short story collection: Rivers Inside Her Name.
Bryn Homuth's (poetry) work has recently appeared in Jabberwock Review, where his poem
received a Pushcart Prize nomination. His piece "Bandaging" from Ducts was a finalist for
the 2013 Best of the Net Anthology. Bryn currently teaches composition and literature for
Crown College while working on his first full-length poetry collection.
130 A lifelong newspaper & magazine writer, Fran Moreland Johns (fiction) has published
fiction, nonfiction and several books. She currently blogs at franjohns.net and on Huffington
Post. The mother of three and grandmother of five, Johns lives in San Francisco where she is
active with social justice causes.
Laura Story Johnson (interior art) photographs nature and people. Her work explores
senses of place and the language of environment. Born and raised in Iowa, she has lived and
photographed in New York City, bush Alaska, Mongolia, Boston, Austria, west of the
Zambezi River in Zambia, and in Chicago. She currently resides in Seattle. More at
laurastoryjohnsonphotography.com
Eleanor Lerman (poetry) is the author of numerous award-winning collections of poetry
and fiction, most recently, the novel Radiomen (The Permanent Press, 2015). She is a
National Book Award finalist, the recipient of the 2006 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize from
the Academy of American Poets and has received both NEA and Guggenheim
Fellowships. More at eleanorlerman.com.
Stephen Linsteadt (cover art) is an artist, writer, and poet. His creative work is an ongoing
exploration into the study of Cosmology, Alchemy, and the archetypal symbolism of Carl
Jung. He is a published poet and the author of the non-fiction book, Scalar Heart Connection
and the poetry collection The Beauty of Curved Space (Glass Lyre Press).
Zachary Lundgren (poetry) earned his MFA in poetry from the University of South Florida
and currently resides in Greenville, NC, where he is pursuing his PhD at East Carolina
University. While having lived all over the country, he grew up in a small town in northern
Virginia, a region that still informs much of his writing and inspiration.
Stewart Manley (interior art) is a law lecturer at the University of Malaya in Kuala
Lumpur, Malaysia. His photography has appeared in Human Rights Defender and Gravel.
His poetry will be featured in Queen’s Quarterly.
Matthew Nye’s (fiction) fiction has appeared in Chicago Review, 1913: A Journal of Forms,
Fiction International, and elsewhere. His first novel Pike and Bloom was awarded the 2014
Madeleine P. Plonsker Prize and is forthcoming from &NOW Books/Lake Forest College
Press. He lives in Athens, Georgia.
Charles O'Hay's (poetry) work has appeared in over 125 literary publications including The
New York Quarterly, Cortland Review, Gargoyle, West Branch, and Mudfish. His two
collections of poems, Far from Luck (2011) and Smoking in Elevators (2014) were published
by Lucky Bat Books. He lives in Philadelphia.
Jimmy Ostgard (interior art) resides in Apple Valley, Minnesota and has been a
photographer since 2004. Jimmy has had his photographs in gallery exhibitions in both
Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota. Images that Jimmy produces portray a personal
vision and cover numerous subjects. He's been published in The Ruminator Literary
Magazine, The Saint Paul Almanac, FishFood and LavaJuice Literary Magazine, Stone Path
Review (cover Spring 2014), Blue Earth Review and Meat For Tea: The Valley Review. More
at jimmy-ostgard.artistwebsites.com.
Leah Porter (interior art) is 16 years old, a junior, and lives in Charlotte, North
Carolina. In her free time she enjoys drawing, painting, and cooking. This is her first piece
of published art.
131 Courtney Kenny Porto (interior art) has been featured in numerous publications,
anthologies, blogs and television interviews. Her favorite honor thus far is being featured as
Maxim Feminine Hygiene’s “Fierce Woman”. She was recently featured in Omaha Magazine
and is currently nominated for Best Visual Artist, Best 2D Artist and Best Solo Exhibition by
the OEA Awards.
Matthew Rotando (poetry) has degrees from Duke University (BA), Brooklyn College
(MFA) and The University of Arizona (MA & Ph.D.). He thinks in long looping geologic
perambulations. In 2008, Upset Press, of Brooklyn, published his first book of poems,
The Comeback’s Exoskeleton. Upset will publish his second book, Hail, in 2016.
Fabio Sassi (interior art) makes photos and acrylics using tiny objects and what is
considered to have no worth by the mainstream. Often he puts a quirky twist to his subjects.
Fabio lives and works in Bologna, Italy. His work can be viewed at fabiosassi.foliohd.com
Andy Singer (interior art) is a freelance cartoonist and illustrator. His cartoons appear in a
small number of alternative weekly and monthly publications in the USA, Europe and
China. Occasionally, they make it to more mainstream publications like The New Yorker,
Esquire or The Washington Post. More at andysinger.com.
Lucia Stacey (poetry) is a graduate of Davidson College, where she won the Charles E.
Lloyd Award for Excellence in Creative Nonfiction. She has had poetry and flash-fiction
published in Out of Our, Columbia’s Catch and Release, Ozone Park, The Atlas Review, and
The Chicago Quarterly Review. Lucia works in tech and lives in New York City.
Louis Staeble (interior art) lives in Bowling Green, Ohio. His photographs have appeared in
Agave, Blinders Journal, Blue Hour, Red Sowing Review, Revolution John, Rose Red Review,
Sonder Review and Your Impossible Voice.
Jessica Wallace (poetry) is a writer, researcher, and content strategist in Vancouver, BC.
She received her MA from the University of Sussex. Her poetry and short fiction have
appeared in several international literary magazines and her first novel Meet You There was
just published this fall.
Michael Washburn (fiction) is a Brooklyn-based writer. His fiction has appeared in
Rosebud, The Brooklyn Rail, The New Orphic Review, The Bryant Literary Review, Stand,
Still Point Arts Quarterly, Raven Chronicles, Prick of the Spindle, Meat for Tea, The Wend
Fiction Review, and other publications. More at michaelwashburn.virb.com.
Squaw Valley Community Writer and two-time semi-finalist for “Discovery”/The Nation
award, Elizabeth Weaver (interior art) received her graduate degrees for poetry. Her work
appears in several journals and anthologies, including RATTLE, 5AM, Quick Fiction.
Elizabeth’s art and writing is at elizabethweaver.wordpress.com while photographs by her
novel-in-progress’ main character are at bonegirlpix.wordpress.com.
July Westhale (poetry) was a finalist for a Creative Writing Fulbright, and has been
awarded residencies from the Vermont Studio Center, Lambda Literary, Sewanee, Tin House
and Bread Loaf. She has been published in burntdistrict, Eleven Eleven, Sugar Mule, 580
Split, Quarterly West, and PRISM International. She is the 2015 Poet in Residence at the
Dickinson House. More at julywesthale.com.
132 Felicity White (poetry) recently completed her MFA at Creighton University, specializing in
poetry and essays. She lives in Omaha, Nebraska, with her husband and children. Last year
they down-sized to a rental property across town because it was within walking distance of
an ice cream shop.
Dr. Ernest Williamson III (interior art) Assistant Professor and Coordinator of the English
department at Allen University, Ernest Williamson has published creative work in over 600
periodicals. His work has appeared in journals such as The Oklahoma Review, The
Copperfield Review, The Columbia Review, and New England Review.
S.F. Wright (fiction) teaches at Hudson County Community College and Union County
College. He has an M.F.A. from Rutgers-Newark, and his work has previously appeared
in Foliate Oak Literary Magazine and Thieves Jargon.
Margaret Yapp (creative nonfiction) is an Iowa native currently living and working in
Minneapolis. Her essays and poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Midwestern Gothic,
Driftward Press, The Rectangle, and elsewhere.
Sally Zakariya’s (poetry) poems have appeared in numerous print and online journals and
won prizes from Poetry Virginia and the Virginia Writers Club. She is author of
Insectomania (2013) and Arithmetic and other verses (2011) and editor of Joys of the Table:
An Anthology of Culinary Verse. Zakariya blogs at www.ButDoesItRhyme.com.
Theodora Ziolkowski’s (poetry) works have appeared or are forthcoming in Glimmer
Train, Prairie Schooner, SHORT Fiction (England), and Gargoyle Magazine, among other
journals and anthologies. She is the author of the chapbook A Place Made Red (Finishing
Line Press).
LM Henke (interior art) is a photographer, card player, and tea drinker from another place
and time.
Peacock at Di Rosa by Elizabeth Weaver
133 Staff J. Adam Collins (Assistant Poetry Editor) In addition to his work with TTR, J. Adam
Collins is also a book editor for Night Owls Press and a freelance book editor and designer in
Portland, Oregon. He is a West Virginia native and holds an MA in Book Publishing from
Portland State University. His poetry has been featured in Bodega Magazine, Cactus Heart
Review, Gobshite Quarterly, Black&White Literary Magazine, Unshod Quills, Floating Bridge
Press Review #5, and PDX Magazine. Find out more about Adam at www.jadamcollins.com.
Steven Matthew Constantine (Associate Prose Editor) is a writer living in Boston, MA,
where he teaches at Northeastern University. He received his MFA from the Bennington
Writing Seminars and is currently working on his first novel. In his free time he tends to
fruit trees in a small orchard.
Lauren Davis (Associate Poetry Editor) is a poet living on the Olympic Peninsula in a
Victorian seaport community. She holds an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars,
and her work can be found in journals such as Prairie Schooner, Spillway, and Split Lip
Magazine.
Alisha Erin Hillam’s (Poetry Office Manager & Senior Copy Editor) work has appeared in
such publications as decomP, Architrave Press, Prick of the Spindle, Midwestern Gothic, and
Passages North. She is the recipient of several literary awards from Purdue University and is
a Best of the Net nominee. Originally from Indiana, she currently resides in Massachusetts
with her family.
Ani Kazarian (Art Editor & Assistant Prose Editor) writes essays, short stories, and
screenplays, and she is currently at work on her first novel. Her research interests include
diaspora communities, trauma, literature, and psychology. In her free time she dabbles in oil
painting, baking, and making lists. She lives in Los Angeles, CA with her husband.
Charlie Crossland Lewis (Craft Talk Editor) has been a business and technical writer and
editor for more years than she cares to admit. She holds an MFA from Bennington College
and is still in the long, slow process of putting together the pieces of her life lived in the back
seat of a series of Fords, Chevys, and a pink-finned ’62 Cadillac while following her steelguitar playing father around the West Coast.
Joanne Nelson (Creative Nonfiction Editor) is a writer and psychotherapist living in
Hartland, Wisconsin with her family. She's published both essays and poetry and is
currently most excited about developing and leading several community writing programs.
She is a recent graduate of the Bennington Writing Seminars. She often feels she is in need
of a vacation.
Jennifer Porter (Co-Founder and Fiction Editor) grew up in the Motor City as a GM Brat
and rock n’ roll enthusiast. Her work has appeared in over a dozen fabulous literary journals,
including The Dos Passos Review and Old Northwest Review and is forthcoming in Fifth
Wednesday Journal. She likes to hide from the effects of global warming with her cats and
dogs in her imaginary conservatory.
134 Meaghan Quinn (Associate Poetry Editor) is a poet from Northampton, Massachusetts. She
teaches creative writing and literature at The MacDuffie School. Her poems have been
nominated for Best New Poets, and her poems have been published in 2River, The Free State
Review, Triggerfish Critical Review, and Adrienne.
Laura Jean Schneider (Craft Talk Assistant Editor) is an MFA in Writing candidate at
Vermont College of Fine Arts. She won the inaugural Big Snowy Prize in Fiction in 2014.
Her essays about living on a remote working cattle ranch appear regularly in Ranch Diaries,
her ongoing web series for High Country News.
Maura Snell (Co-Founder and Poetry Editor) has published poems in Inside the Dome, Red
Paint Hill Quarterly, The Bennington Review, Brain, Child Magazine, and has work
forthcoming in MomEgg Review and in The Golden Shovel Anthology honoring Gwendolyn
Brooks (University of Arkansas Press, 2017). She holds an MFA from Bennington Writing
Seminars and when she is not reading or writing poetry she works with incarcerated teen
girls teaching poetry writing and critique. She lives in rural Massachusetts with her
husband, daughters and two rescue mutts.
Alison Turner (Fiction Reader) was born in the mountains of Colorado, where she learned
to spend large amounts of time outside. She has an MA in Comparative Literature from the
University of Alberta, and an MFA in fiction from Bennington College. She lives, works, and
plays in Denver.
Catherine Weber (Website Design) is an award-winning poet and artist who works with
encaustic, photography, paper, and textiles. She was raised in upstate New York, Indiana,
and Connecticut and now lives in central Massachusetts. She holds a BA in Communications
from Emerson College and an MA in Critical and Creative Thinking from the University of
Massachusetts, Boston. In 2006, she won first prize in the Worcester Poetry Contest for her
poem “Still Life Without Pear,” and shortly thereafter won third prize in the Annual Clinton
Artist’s Guild Juried show in Clinton, Connecticut, for her painting by the same name. She
regularly performs poems and short stories at Wake Up and Smell the Poetry in Hopkinton,
MA.
Burmese Book Store by Stewart Manly
135 Tillie Olsen Short Story Award Short Stories 1971 and several journalistic
pieces from the 1930s about the struggle
for economic justice. All of these works
have been newly gathered by the
University of Nebraska Press – Bison
Books.
Olsen was born in 1912 on a
tenant farm in Nebraska, the daughter of
Russian Jewish immigrants. Early in her
life, she began crusading for worker
rights, jailed for organizing packinghouse
workers and for participating in strikes.
She continued working as an activist her
entire life, especially in her San Francisco
community. She and her partner Jack
Olsen suffered under McCarthy’s witch
hunt. Olsen died at the age of 95—a
mother, grandmother, award-winning
writer, feminist, and human rights and
anti-war activist.
Tillie Olsen was the author of the
short story collection Tell Me a Riddle, the
story Requa I as seen in Best American
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137 Some things on our bookshelf this year...
... I have The Mare, by Mary Gaitskill, who was an acquired taste for me. I actually
stopped halfway through a short story collection of hers. But once I picked it up, and
finished it, I was amazed at how she uses language. I also have Clare Vaye Watkins'
Gold Fame Citrus. I'm interested in women writing from and about the West. Joy
Williams' The Visiting Privilege is going to make me explode with joy, and I'm afraid
to start it since I know that then the end is in sight. Love Joy Williams. Trying to read
women authors more and more. Loving it!...
... I'm not sure that this counts since it's such a classic, but on my shelf I have
Tolstoy's War and Peace–I have the Constance Garnett translation and the newer
Anthony Briggs translation. I will read both (ideally), but I think I'll be starting with
Garnett's translation. It feels silly to explain why I'm eager to read War and Peace, I
imagine anyone reading this right now has already read it or is just as eager to read
it. Still, this holds first place on my shelf for 2016 because Tolstoy is the best writer I
have encountered. When I read Anna Karenina I thought, Now this is literature ...
... On Boxing by Joyce Carol Oates. What is it about boxing that draws, in particular,
writers to the ring? And how is it that someone who has never boxed a round could
write such a renowned and respected collection of essays on the sport? As a boxer
myself, I cannot wait to learn about the psychological and human aspects that give
boxing such depth ...
... As sort of a palate cleanse I like to start the year off with something short and lean
(and often a bit noir-ish or pulpy) or nonfiction/essay/historical. I've started Fat City
by Leonard Gardner, a 1969 novel lean like the welterweight scrappers of Central
California it depicts. I'll likely follow with Lafayette In The Somewhat United States
by Sarah Vowell, who, if you couldn't tell by the title, is a cheeky and witty historical
author that explores the nuances of history and how it can reflect in our modern
consciousness. In March I look forward to The Throwback Special by Chris Bachelder,
whose novel U.S.! is a favorite of mine. 2666 by Roberto Bolano is a challenge off in
the distance, and The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner has also been sitting near
the top of my pile for a year now...
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