Black Market Re-View
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Short Fiction
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Events
Abigail Conran
Robert Edge
Black Market Re-View: Is an online literary journal based in the UK.
We only accept electronic submissions. Please visit our website for
further information. http://blackmarketre-view.weebly.com/
Copyright ©2015 by Black Market Re-View Literary Journal
Cover Art by Bill Bulloch ©2017
Published in the UK.
ISSN Number: 1759-0760.
Contents
[1 ]
Hongri Yuan
from ‘Platinum City’ I
[4 ]
Mark Russell
from ‘The Book of Gatherings’ ᚮ*
[5 ]
Mark Russell
from ‘The Book of Gatherings’ ᚮ**
[6 ]
Mark Russell
from ‘The Book of Gatherings’ ᚮ***
[7 ]
Stephen Regan
Killing Stingers
[8 ]
Darren Demaree
Trump As A Fire Without Light #105
[9 ]
Edward Little
Call Me Carcass
[18 ]
Mihails Murasovs
Gho$t
[19 ]
Mathew Carbery
(Untitled)
[24 ]
Mathew Carbery
Dprtmnt Wrk & Pnsns
[26 ]
Mathew Carbery
from ‘Song of the Bathysphere’
[28 ]
Rose Knapp
Poly Positivist Syllogism
[29 ]
Rose Knapp
Simple Syntax Structura Nightshade
[30 ]
Alec Sillifant
Jason & the Agronauts
[40 ]
Walter Savage
Mom Was Waiting For Us
[41 ]
Walter Savage
His Handsome Face
[42 ]
Walter Savage
Days Turned Into Weeks
[43 ]
Hongri Yuan
from ‘Platinum City’ II
[45 ]
Christopher Barnes
Lord Byron Joins A Dating Site
[46 ]
Patricia Walsh
A Link to Cancer
[47 ]
Patricia Walsh
She’s Dead Too
[48 ]
Walter Savage
Bumping
[62 ]
Niall Quinn
Phlebas
[63 ]
Niall Quinn
Psillapterous on a sled toasting
Bitters to Angostina A love story in
Rapturous cerulean
[64 ]
Brindley Hallam Dennis
Undiluted Shorts
[66 ]
Tom Crompton
listening to Dean Blunt I
[67 ]
Tom Crompton
listening To Dean Blunt II
[70 ]
Raif Mansell
My Favourite Game
[71 ]
Niamh McMullan
Peach Ice Tea
[76 ]
Yessica Klein & Raif Mansell
Finding Poetry in Sao Paulo
[77 ]
Ben Fine
Cuban Rescue 1942
[83 ]
Larry Thacker
A Thought While Fishing After a Spring
Storm
[84 ]
Clare Marsh
Flagfen
[85 ]
Richard King Perkins II
Freeways of Darkness
[86 ]
Robert Schuster
Waiting
[100 ]
Emily Horrex
Love Letter
[101 ]
Stephen Middleton
Life & Soul
[102 ]
John Grey
Painting Class
[103 ]
Hongri Yuan
from ‘Platinum City’ III
[105 ]
Contributors
Platinum City
Hongri Yuan
Translated by
Manu Mangattu
Ah! Of iridescent gems of time
The heavenly road you paved light.
In the kingdom of stars,
I found my home.
In that city of gold,
I opened the gate to the Sun,
To behold the godly giants.
At the Royal Palace of the Jewel
Of the prehistoric wonders I read
In an enormous, gorgeous ancient book.
By my eyes I saw
The golden words that Juan carved
A wondrous strange mystery tale;
Into a full new world I went,
To witness the seat of the holy Kingdom:
Even before the Earth was born;
The erstwhile home of human history.
时间的五彩宝石啊
你铺成了光芒的天路
在一座星辰的王国
我找到了自己的家园
我打开一座座太阳的城门
在一座座黄金的城市
见到了一个个神圣的巨人
在那宝石镶嵌的皇宫
阅读了史前奇妙的诗篇
一部部古奥华丽的巨书
镌雕着黄金的词语
一篇篇玄奇美妙的故事
迷醉了我的双眼
我走进了一个个崭新的宇宙
看到了一座座圣洁的王国
Across Time and Space in crystalline glitter
Stands this moment a platinum city –
A ship drifting leisurely,
Like a bird, resplendent in variegated hues.
在地球还没有诞生之前
曾经是人类的史前的家园
时空的水晶啊光芒闪耀
一座白金的城市矗立眼前
They sang happy songs
They danced a wonderful dance
Lanky boys and girls in pairs
As if to celebrate the splendid carnival.
I saw a circular edifice
High above the city.
Giving out a white light.
Raised ground to fly into the quiet space.
一只只飞船悠悠飘过
像一只只巨鸟五光十色
我看到一个个年轻的巨人
身体闪耀七彩的光环
他们的眼睛欢喜明亮
聚会在一座水晶的花园
A frame of platinum edifice
Creating a beautiful pattern.
The whole city is a circle
Arranged into a fine structure.
他们唱着欢快的歌曲
跳着一种奇妙的舞蹈
一对对高大的少男少女
Into a bright hall I went.
A strange instrument there I saw.
A huge screen hanging on the wall,
仿佛在庆贺盛大的节日
1
Displaying a golden space.
我看到一座圆形的巨厦
高高耸立在城市的上空
Like bits of colourful crystal gemstones!
Resplendent with variegated colours of the
city!
Those beautiful high-rise buildings
A sight better than the myth of the world.
发出一道道白亮的闪电
高高地飞入宁静的太空
一座座通体白金的巨厦
构成了一个美妙的图案
A line I saw of strange letters.
On one side of the screen flashed swiftly
Numerous young and strong giants
An effort to concentrate on the changing
images.
整个城市是一个圆形
排列成一个精致的结构
我走进一座明亮的大厅
看到一排奇特的仪器
Their look is quiet and peaceful.
The learned flame flashes in their eyes.
In a flash of clothes
The next is a whole.
墙上悬挂巨大的屏幕
显映出一片金色的太空
一座座五光十色的城市
像一块块五彩晶莹的宝石
Their stature, unusually tall.
Each one is well-nigh seven meters high.
Men and women look dignified
No age difference apparent either.
那些奇丽的高楼巨厦
胜过了人间幻想的神话
我看到一行行陌生的字母
Their skin is white as snow
With a faint flashy shine
Bright eyes as naïve as an infant’s
Kindled with a strange flame.
在一面屏幕上匆匆闪过
几位年轻健壮的巨人
专注地观看变幻的图像
They manipulate the magic of the
instrument.
A picture of the changing space.
Their language is artless and plane.
As the bell is generally pleasant.
他们的神情宁静安然
两眼闪映智慧的光芒
穿着一种闪光的衣装
通体上下是一个整体
他们的身材异常高大
个个足有七米多高
男男女女容貌端庄
As I survey the length and breadth of the
bright hall
A powerful energy I feel
Body and mind, suffused with bliss and
delight.
And it seems to be a giant.
几乎没有年龄的区别
他们的皮肤洁白如雪
隐隐闪出亮丽的光泽
I seem to understand their language.
They are exploring the mysteries of the
universe.
That in the city there is a planet
Peopled with their various partners.
明亮的眼睛单纯如婴儿
又含着一种奇异的火焰
他们操纵神奇的仪器
变幻太空一幅幅图景
Their mind they use to manipulate the
instrument
Also can to transfer data be used
他们的语言简洁流畅
像钟磬一般悦耳动听
2
Even thousands of miles apart
Also to talk free to the heart.
我端详这座明亮的大厅
感受到一种强 大的能量
A line of text on the screen
Is but a message from afar.
The whole universe is their home.
They build cities in space.
身心充满了幸福欢喜
自己也仿佛变成了巨人
我似乎听懂了他们的语言
The space shuttle they use
To take you to the other space.
Into a lightning, a moment, and you
Vanish into thin air, without a trace.
他们在探索宇宙的奥秘
那一颗颗星球上的城市
住着他们无数个伙伴
他们用意念操纵仪器
I feel a new civilization.
也可以用意念传递信息
即使相距千里万里
也可以自由地用心交谈
那屏幕上的一行行文字
那屏幕上的一行行文字
即是远方传来的信息
整个宇宙是他们的家园
他们在太空建造城市
他们乘坐的太空飞船
可以到达另外的空间
一瞬间化成一道闪电
在空中变得无影无踪
我感受到一种新的文明
3
from The Book Of Gatherings
Mark Russell
ᚮ*
Take your friends to the source
its distant bark
where the farm dogs sleep
disclose their learning
There is a herb made of words
it smells of sage
slips its season
removes our virtue
Where we stand our ground
make mistakes
fear no consequence
follow our literal hearts
4
ᚮ**
You lower yourself into my shaking hands
completely
unmistaken
upright
in strict sunlight
I am versed in the smallest acquaintances
attentive
governed
true to my need
the harvesting
We are agreed in the comforts of our business
its baffling instructions
its economies
the death-roll of kudos
terminations we demand but don’t fully grasp
knowing
suspecting
unmooring
the doubts we harbour
5
ᚮ***
Take your failures to the edge of town
where the reservoir rises away in the north
where oak and ash sweep themselves south
Walkers on the heath pay you less heed here
if you spread this vinegar-luck thick
on the ground in the lea’s fading light
Leave it to bleach in the days to come
you won’t have to check its progress
Tomorrow it will begin to cure itself
with the wilt and wasting of life well lived
Like a fur of poison on a raspberry
we can eat if we choose the right moment
6
Killing Stingers
Stephen Regan
Rob stomps out of his workplace and over to the crap hotel at the end of the lane. Janet behind
the bar pours him red wine, she flashes her sad smile. He likes Janet. Her face is so dolorous.
She reminds him of Our Lady in that picture which hung in his grandma’s parlour in Wigan
back in the ‘60s. Except for the tight blonde perm—Our Lady didn’t have one of those.
Rob heads out to the garden to smoke and to ‘reflect on life’—which is what he’s come
to call his drinking. Ha! Nice and ironic. Everything is nice and fucking ironic these days, he
thinks. A man is sat on his customary bench so Rob settles on the one opposite.
The man, a stranger, is intrigued by Rob’s liquorice rolling papers, and comes and sits
by him. The two men start talking—about arthritis, high blood pressure, failed love, property
worries, how Lancashire’s changed, and what men can and can’t do in their late ‘50s.
Rob’s new friend is Phil, and he’s about to get divorced. Phil is hoping for a new life
in Canada with his first love. But Phil’s heard that Canada can be boring.
‘Oh, yeah,’ says Rob, ‘even the word “Canada” is boring.’
Rob tells Phil all about Juney; how they plan to live together in Corralejo one day. Rob
explains how he’s determined to drive 250 miles to Norwich the next morning to attend a party
for his former workmate, Paul, who’s close to death. It’ll be a kind of wake for Paul—while
he’s still alive.
All this is said as Cilla Black’s funeral Mass takes place in Liverpool. The two men
don’t talk about that; they just have mildly sad faces. Well, Rob was always a Dusty Springfield
man and Phil preferred Kathy Kirby.
The time comes for Rob to walk back to his desk in his boring office nearby—designed
by Canadians, he’s sure—but instead he drinks more wine and buys Phil a large whiskey.
Rob looks at Phil. Phil looks at Rob. They kill two wasps. They swap mobile numbers,
each knowing that a friendship has begun.
Soon enough, they’ll meet again—for a pub lunch. They’ll kill more wasps and consider
what it means, what it really means, to be human.
7
TRUMP AS A FIRE WITHOUT LIGHT #105
Darren Demaree
Now, we vanish those that are not moving into the street. The public displays make sure that your
name will be read once they have to deal with the weight of your whole body. Now, we vanish those
that are not moving into the street. We can halve our families, and still have enough family to identify
us. It only takes one voice quietly saying your name over and over again to be remembered. Now,
we vanish those that are not moving into the street. I can be the one to say your name forever. I can
read many names aloud in the morning of every day. I can do that. I will do that. Now, we vanish
those that are not moving into the street. I can promise I won’t remember the faces I don’t see next
to me on this street. I can promise that it doesn’t matter who you were before this gathering took
place.
8
Call Me Carcass
Edward Little
Cutting into a pork loin I wipe the chunk over some mash, then over the mint sauce.
‘So fella, what do you do then?’ Barry asks as he fills his mouth with a roast potato.
I’d been by the Tate on Liverpool docks, chucking rocks at the windows, when Barry found
me.
‘I’m an artist,’ I say, poking my own roastie with a knife.
Looking at his son, Barry chews with a smirk on his face. ‘An artist, Callum.’ He
swallows. ‘What do you think of that?’
‘Cool!’ he shouts, mushing his plate full of mash in circles, pushing the hidden
pockets of peas to the side.
Their kitchen reminds me of being a student in Leeds. Checkered floors, fake, granite
countertops and random stickers covering the fridge and microwave.
‘What kind of art you into?’ Barry says. He’s finished his plate, already mopping the
last puddle of gravy with a slice of Hovis.
‘I make sculptures, mainly ones of women laying into each other.’
Callum giggles into his fingers, bits of sauce dribbling out the corners of his mouth.
‘Enough of that, kidda.’ Barry leans over and ruffles his son’s black fringe. ‘He means
people having a tussle, a bit of a scrap.’
‘It’s more than that,’ I interrupt, moving my plate to the side. ‘It’s a mixture of art:
throws, strikes and tackles. Mixed martial arts.’ I interlink both hands on the table, leaning in
and Callum does the same. ‘It’s unpredictable, a designed chaos.’
Barry stares blankly at me, then at his son’s open mouth. Dimples on his cheeks rise,
a chuckle coming out like hiccups.
‘Into ya sculpting then? Very decent, la, very decent. Me and our kid here have a box
now and then, using this bag we bought from Joe’s gym. Think you could turn us into a couple
of clay beasts?’
Callum’s mouth hangs wider.
‘Sorry,’ I say, leaning back and taking out my flask, ‘but I only do women.’
*
Winter morning rolls over my back as the door of my studio is opened.
9
The cold helps me sculpt, keeps my hands nimble on the polymer clay as I mould it
around the skeleton.
‘How do you get it on your back?’ Maggie says, scratching the bits of clay I’ve managed
to smudge near my shoulder.
I freeze because she’s never here, hasn’t caught me making what’s meant to be her.
Training keeps her away from home, she’s back sometimes because I’m her husband.
Critics love what I make. They hated my paintings: called them “unadventurous and
lacking.” I keep both palms on the clay of her leg, a ninety-degree rise of poles surrounded by
bent coat-hangers, the torso above only half coated. I have plenty to play with as the museum
commissions my work.
‘Axe kick.’ Maggie says, now standing next to her half-finished tribute.
I once saw my wife, or should I say Maggie the Masher, axe kick consciousness out of
Roundhouse Ronda, her leg swinging down like a public execution.
Mumbling a reply, I grab a cloth and crumble clay bits between my fingers. ‘You were
fantastic.’ I whisper into the rag.
She turns to me, her small nose permanently slanted from the amount of times it’s been
crushed. Her hair is choppier than usual, the blonde edges barely touching her ears.
‘Nice hair.’
‘I cut it myself,’ Maggie says, crossing her arms and circling her imitation.
My wife’s voice is sweet, but she isn’t pretty.
Next month she’s fighting in Manchester for the welterweight championship. ‘Carl
wants you to take pictures,’ she says looking at me through the skeleton.
Carl is her trainer, and my representative. Most of the time I speak to Maggie I do it
through Carl.
‘I can make it.’ I say staring back at her through the ribs.
The Tate want the sculpture done for mid-November but I’ll be finished before then.
Maggie has moved away from me, staring at where her head will be. I’ll spend the next few
weeks alone, sculpting: defining with tinfoil balls, necklace chains and toothbrushes.
Dabs of crunched up tinfoil are the best way to achieve pubic hair.
‘You don’t have to,’ she says staring straight at me. ‘To come, that is.’ She looks at the
smooth edges of her arms then back up. ‘You won’t see me afterward. There will be press
conferences, interviews.’
Soon the polymer on the legs will harden. There will be less resistance to build as it
sets, and the clay won’t collapse.
10
‘I’ll be there. I’ve never seen you win a title before.’ The corners of her mouth turn up
a little. Maggie runs her hand through her hair, then scratches the crooked tip of her nose.
Circling back to me she kisses my cheek and leaves.
I need more clay to finish her.
*
Barry collects the plates and brings dessert. Callum gets vanilla ice cream, we all get hot
chocolate.
Barry splashes bourbon in ours, Woodford. Cheap and strong.
‘We have a saying in Liverpool: hair of the dog. Get some of that down ya and you’ll
feel fresh as nothing.’
‘Hair of dogs?’ Callum says, already plastered with a chocolate moustache.
‘Our fella here is feeling yucky,’ Barry says tucking his chair in. ‘We drink up, think
about dogs and doesn’t that make you feel better?’
Callum giggles and nods, blowing the steam of his cup.
‘I once painted dogs.’ I say then blow on my drink. ‘In Leeds, during the summer after
second year. Bloody load of bulldogs, mostly sagging into the floor because I drew them with
too much skin. Messes they were.’
‘Me and my Cal would be sold if you painted German Shepherds. We had a pup called
Chip, a little scruff, now with Mum.’
‘I walked him.’ Callum says.
‘I used to have a fat Basset Hound. Couldn’t walk him,’ I say. ‘He was a puddle,
couldn’t tell if you were walking on a rug or his back’
They laugh and it’s nice how the cup warms my palms.
‘You have any animals now? Barry says.
‘No.’
I once had a rabbit in my studio, after Maggie’s fight in Manchester. It was white with
brown by its tail and Carl thought it would help. After an hour, I left it in Sefton Park and
cycled home.
‘Just as well,’ Barry says then finishes the dregs of his cup. ‘I used to be a bit naff with
pets. I’d show the dog some love and my wife would get jealous. Tellin’ ya, this is why men
can’t multi-task: we get bollocked for it.’
He slaps the table as he says it, Callum eating it up, eyes staring at his dad’s hairy
knuckles. You’d need tinfoil balls and toothpicks to make them, dabs on a clenched, clay fist.
11
‘I haven’t had much luck with women.’ I say, standing up and walking towards the cabinet
with the bourbon. ‘They tend not to like me.’
I fill my flask.
*
‘You fucking dog, get over here.’ Carl approaches, arms wide.
He wears a three-piece suit, burgundy, with oak-coloured, leather shoes. His hair is
short and black, he’s clean shaven and his head is unusually round. He says things like, mental
and describes situations as tasty.
‘I can’t believe your lass, she was fuckin’ mental.’
Maggie walks in surrounded by flashes, reporters bludgeoning her with questions.
‘What’s it like being through to the finals?’
‘This is your first axe kick knockout. Should we expect a new nickname?’
‘Do you have anything to say to Ronda or her trainer?’
Maggie strides without pause into her dressing room behind us. Me and Carl follow,
closing the door as soon as we get through, almost crushing a camera lens.
‘Brutal bulldog choke in the first round, knockout in the second. If you couldn’t kill me
and your husband wasn’t in the room, I’d fuck you right now.’
‘Enough, Carl Cranston,’ Maggie says, trying to grin with a swollen cheek that has
started to turn purple.
He chuckles, brandishing two, thin cigars, lights one and places it between my lips
without asking.
‘Chong on that.’ Carl lights up and inhales. ‘Listen,’ he croaks, blowing smoke, ‘I’ve
got a proposition for you both. We’ll soon get the date for the welterweight belt, Maggie we
need to organise a few appearances and promos, and you, my beautiful artisan, you’ve got work
to do.’
Placing both hands on my shoulders, Carl kisses me on the forehead.
‘We need a sculpture of the knockout, something bold, The Masher towering over her
opponent. Feel free to play with all that surrealist shit, but don’t go overboard with this one.
This is history.’
Carl goes on to talk about popular exhibitions accepting my work as Maggie unstraps
her fingerless gloves, the faint hint of vinegar coming from her prune-like hands.
‘Let’s just sort out the match first,’ Maggie says looking in the mirror and swabbing
her right eye. ‘The sooner the better, because after this I may be done.’
12
‘Mags, I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.’ Carl steps near her. ‘We’ll play it by
ear, win us a belt and prove to the fuckers that this title belongs to you.’ His hand is on her
shoulder now, blood sliding off her eyebrow as she dabs it with a cotton bud.
‘I gotta run,’ Carl says, almost jogging to his satchel near the door and slinging it over
his shoulder. ‘Get to grips with the game plan, and do try and celebrate, Picasso here looks like
he could use a pick-me-up.’
Carl opens the door, walks into the hall of flashing lights and kicks it shut behind him.
‘Simon, do you have anything to tell me?’ Maggie says, taking off her rashguard and
bra.
Her neck is bruised and her chest is red, the nipples roughened from side punches. The
welts will be difficult to duplicate, especially her squinted eye.
By the time she leaves I still haven’t spoken.
*
Callum was sent to bed after I started telling stories about Carl. Reluctantly he dragged his
feet towards his room, but not before looking me in the eye as he shook my hand.
‘Tasty?’
‘Don’t ask,’ I say, now drinking black coffee.
It’s dark outside, the light is low in the kitchen. Callum’s door is slightly open, spilling
a narrow bean of orange nightlight onto the floor. Barry’s denim jacket looks darker, the
flowers on his Guns N Roses patch invitingly maroon.
‘You sure do have some interesting stories, fella,’ he says, spooning some sugar into
his drink. ‘You need something to replace that hole after you’ve drank heavily, for me it’s
coffee and sweet stuff. Don’t go cold turkey, no. That’s how you fall back into habit.’
‘Drinking is new to me,’ I say, holding my cup. ‘Recently been trying it out.’ I swig
and the burn isn’t the same.
Barry leans his arms over his coffee, his fingers pushed together by his eyes, running
them down and over the edges of his nose. ‘I used to drink a lot with our Cal’s mum. You
know, few beers after work and we used to have friends round.’ He laughs sweetly, the steam
from his cup brushing his chin. ‘She was a right laugh, our Peggy. Used to sing eighties rock
tunes and thrash this cloud of ginger hair she battled to get through a comb. Aw mate, she used
to do this twirl when she wore dresses, beautiful it was. Actually tried to curtsey once, fucked
it up and fell over.’
I grin, unsure if I should be laughing.
13
‘I knew about you,’ Barry says, sniffing and rubbing his eyes. ‘What you do that is. I’m
a cleaner at the Tate.’
Gulping my drink I sit still, waiting for the heat to settle in my stomach. ‘Oh right,’ I
state weakly.
‘That was your work, on level three? I got a good look when they were bringing it in.
Great big leg swinging in the air, that mound of dots between the legs. Didn’t leave much to
the imagination, did ya?’
‘It shouldn’t be in there,’ I mutter to the kitchen table. ‘I told them to take it down but
they wouldn’t let me.’ I feel my toes going numb and my stomach churning, the caffeine
making my shins shake.
I really hate coffee.
‘If you don’t mind me asking, pal,’ Barry says, his eyes searching my face, ‘why did
you want out?’
Removing the flask from my leather jacket, I take a swig without any protest from
Barry. The room stays quiet for a while, the smell of alcohol overpowering the coffee. ‘It’s
called The Axe Kick,’ I bring the flask closer to my mouth, ‘which my wife died from last
week.’
*
The rabbit came without a cage, half a bag of feed and no name.
‘My son didn’t name it, couldn’t be fucked,’ Carl says lighting a cigarette after he
passes me the animal. ‘It’s a bit mental after being left out in the rain so it’ll keep trying to
escape. Give the bastard some telephone wires, I can tell you from experience it will spend
hours chewing through them.’
He wears an Oxford blue suit and black leather shoes. There’s now stubble on his face
that matches his hair.
‘I’ve sorted the funeral for next week,’ he says to the rabbit, ignoring me. ‘Please try
and make it. Maggie would want you there.’
He means the media want to see me there.
We’re in front of my studio, in the wooded area by my home. ‘Also, the Tate refuse to
take down your sculpture.’
‘Wait, what?’ I say, clenching. The rabbit squeals and squirms in my hands, almost
jumping but I pull it back, stroking until it calms. ‘They can’t do that…can they?’
‘You signed a three-month contract. Until January the fifteenth, they can do what they
like.’
14
The winter morning hurts my face and I’m forced to squint at Carl, his profile already
turned away from me. ‘We need to do something.’
‘There’s fuck all we can do, and once she’s buried my contract with her has ended, and
that includes you,’ he says, staring me in the eye for the first time. ‘Listen,’ he pauses, ‘just be
there next week.’
He leaves, probably to wherever he left his car. There’s more I could say, yet even when
I spoke to Maggie through Carl, I never said much.
I take my new pet into the studio and place him on the floor. It’s warmer than normal,
but not by much and the place is empty of sculptures. Bricks of clay, still wrapped, sit by the
podium and easels stand to the side. Forgotten cans of paint have started to rust and portraits
are turned away towards the walls. The rabbit hops aimlessly, knocking a painting to the floor,
cautiously stepping on top of it. I walk forward, grab the painting by the edges and lift.
Frantically it leaps into the pile of canvases and sits between a gap.
To MaggieThe writing lies at the bottom, the second name obscured by a paw print. There’s the
shaded outline of a shadow man in the middle. He has no face and his body is empty, except
for a belly button. The shading has smudged through the months but it seems to work, the
carcass widening on the frame until the shadow now touches the edges. All’s it took was your
finger to widen the charcoal outline of the man, to get him how you pictured without using tin
foil balls and coat-hangers.
I stare at my work then place it to the side. Kicking my canvasses out of the way I
finally catch the rabbit. It’s too scared to move as I cradle it in one arm, my other one controlling
the steering on my bike.
Piss covers the side of my jacket by the time I get to Sefton Park.
It’s pretty late, past midnight and we’ve given up on alcohol and coffee.
‘Well,’ Barry says, ‘I’m stuck on what to say if I’m honest, mate.’
‘You don’t have to say anything.’
‘Seemed like a cracker, your wife, and if you don’t mind me saying that Carl doesn’t
seem my kind of bloke, really. Bit of twat, actually.’
‘Yeah,’ I mutter, ‘not that it mattered. We never really liked each other’
‘Right character you are. Comes with being an artist and tha’, I bet.’
‘Hm,’ I smile, ‘not really. I put my personality into my work, especially when it came
to sculpting. It just took so much, you know? When painting, I still had bits left of me to play
15
with afterwards, I had something to talk about. I’d spend weeks making huge figures and I
would forget how to talk to people, how to be around my wife. Now I have nothing and my
main focus is you, this random stranger sitting opposite me.’
The sound of a reversing lorry echoes, the beeping just audible. Trash probably fills the
back of it, and I could just as easily climb in with it all.
‘Why did you stop painting?’
‘I…lost inspiration,’ I say, surprising myself.
The beeping stops and the sound of the lorry fades as it drives away.
‘My art didn’t sell, people said it was self-indulgent rubbish. Then Maggie came and I
started sculpting her, soon finding that I focussed on the imitation more than my wife.’
The only sounds our breathing, the slight rustle of our cuffs on the table and the rising
wind outside.
‘I don’t know if I loved her, not in the way you’re meant to anyway.’
‘Well,’ Barry says, ‘that’s a sad thing to realise. Did you make it to the funeral?’
‘Not really.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s tomorrow,’ I say, rubbing my hands through my hair.
Barry looks at me, lips tight, looks at his son’s bedroom then into his lap. ‘Listen,’ he
starts, then falters, ‘I don’t know what it is you think you need to do, but ignoring the fact that
your wife existed isn’t going to solve anything: even if you didn’t love her.’
‘What if I didn’t? I say, almost choking on the words.
‘Then I guess you get over yourself.’ Barry stands up and walks next to me, looking
down with his hands on his waist. ‘Personally mate, I don’t think resolutions exist. If you don’t
go tomorrow because you didn’t love her, it’s not going to make you feel any better.’ His hand
is on my shoulder now, squeezing to tell me that’s the end of his speech.
‘I may need to borrow your couch for the night, and ask for a brew in the morning,’ I
say standing up. ‘And Barry? No more coffee.’
He grins like he’s a friend, head downcast as his hand slaps my back.
Barry walks to his bedroom to grab a blanket, and I wonder if he’s got a suit I can
borrow by ten in the morning.
*
I met Maggie at my first art sale.
There was a room in a warehouse on Fleet Street. It was a charity event, a variety of
arts, which meant a band called Elmo and the Styx were playing an hour into my exhibition.
16
Canvasses stood to the left of the room, everyone drank rum, fosters, and I kept questioning if
I was punk enough.
‘What’s this supposed to be?’ she said, looking at the piece next to me, hands at her
sides.
‘It’s a surrealist portrait,’ I said, hovering my hand over the outline of the shadow man.
Back then her hair was longer, a small ponytail tightly fastened, revealing her
cauliflower ears.
‘Does it have a name?’
‘Call Me Carcass.’
‘Interesting,’ she said, looking at the faceless man. She looked fascinated, which was a
change from side glances from art buyers and stoned, grinning punks. ‘Any reason?’
‘It was a nickname in school. I had a bit of an unconcentrated stare in class, mouth
gawping as if I was dead.
I’d already decided to give her the piece just after she giggled. I signed it with the
hopeful sharpie I kept with my canvasses, in exchange for coffee the next day.
‘Just to warn you, my ex-husband will be dropping me off,’ she said, nearly laughing.
‘Don’t worry, he’s only my manager now.’
That night I gave away painting and made no money. Maggie left with my gift and a
month later I found myself watching her fight in Liverpool, mashing her opponent with a flurry
of punches.
It wasn’t long until I found myself in a studio attempting my first sculpture, surrounded
by snapshots and looking up at Carl.
17
Gho$t
Mihails Murasovs
18
(Untitled)
Matthew Carbery
Walking out from St Dunstan’s,
or lighting it’s said,
in which there’s no rush
but not to hyperposition
with a busker or a bricked window.
By the Stour, staring at
a highland cow, angst
at an adjacency with wires
out to Chartham Hatch and
what is more or less a friendship
in a manner of speaking
far beyond an idiom, crooked
and split across the skull
back, oozing an ochre that
whiffs of living badly, in
gnostic glow from a parish
chapel quite unsure. I’m
sat in the park between
dominos and the mail depot,
busting for an accident
to happen, the jet engine
tripped miles above and my yawn
toward as if to catch.
I’ve a whale in my belly,
19
I’m in the belly of the whale,
I’m shouting for a diagnosis
on the ringroad. Swimming
like a deposit down
the leg of the county, I’m
lost in the Liffey of the
Stour of the Tamar, to the mudflats of
Sturry out past Asda and the other
sweatshops, institutions on the hill,
crackle and kettle drum
of low pylons, and the tip
can be heard somewhere against
it, and the freely accessible
rail line, where the move from
here to a commuter inconvenience
is quick. I’m sat on the steps
leading up to the roof of
her building, I’m spying in on
the graves over toward the
smoggy cathedral, I’m taking
a selfie with a magpie to
upload to Facebook and regret
later on when the ‘memories’
function reminds me how happy
I used to be with the magpie, O
where is the Phenomenology App?
In the archway of St Dunstan’s
20
church the rose blossom collects
at the feet of any malingerer
sturdy enough to wait for
a ragman to pass by. Aside
from the monument there’s
naïve little chance of keying
the right car, or honing in
on winning over a fed up working
class who can’t be dismissed
from revolution for self identifying
as resolutely non-European,
breathing out the word “sovereign”
over and over until the idea
of being in charge of your fate
becomes itself an emission.
I’m sat on top of Konrad’s grave,
I’m whispering Brando’s lines,
I’m fingers crossed she’ll pass
by. One night like this I told
an owl I loved her, and her
mocking “who?” put me to a
hatchet before the treeline.
It’s immaterial whether the map
knows I’m here. It’s easy to
occupy open air in melancholy,
there’s no depletion of sadness
like that of its opposite, death
21
or moving to die. Likewise as
the doors of ‘spoons open and
the earbuds of cleaners come
out momentarily for muttered
hallo’s, the stock of things
to come, overheavy lyrics of
placement and astonishing erring
in the light of lone stars,
black holes somewhere metaphor out
their latest acts, and stupid
agents in stupid towns like this
carry out their stupidity without
blame or retardation of demise.
I’m here too. It’s
allocated out in fistfuls
to black toothed maws, and the
recourse for appeal never was
and any upholding of another
life to find, or an Other life to
find, finds itself a grope
for which the burden expands
into imploding matter. Carole,
52, with chestnut hair, who
enjoys outdoor activities and
films, Carole, I would love
you but it would be consolation,
like living, it would be a bad
22
solution to an awful problem.
and still the birds counted
defy numbering by merely being
aerial, by knowing nests are
never real private property, and
that depth is illusory, as a
mirroring window rejects the
wing.
23
Dprtmnt Wrk & Pnsns
Matthew Carbery
he said you don't know struggle he said
struggle isn’t what you make of it
struggling to keep his skiff afloat
with the stoved in foot well leaking
here he said help me flip it and caulk it
he said I could use a hand and I saw it then
his withered hand and he was grinning expectantly
like to say this isn’t my first epiphany of self-depreciation
and a rat darted fat and lank from his shadow to another
and I wiped my brow with my shirt sleeve
I said I had to wipe my browser because a rat had taken up there
I had more exxes than a top shelf than a fucking crate of castlemaine mate
I said I had more excess than waste being ferried out from the industrial estate off
the outer ring road
I have more x than why or zed they will not be mishandled misgendered or mystified
they said I understand the alphabet but who put the alphabet
in alphabetical order and why twenty six
she said leaning across and pulling out the rubber and chucking it over towards
but not into the bin she said did you know in the middle ages not all hours
were equal I said what do you mean she said the night was longer than the day
I said really she said really I said how did that work she said well I don't think
it did that’s why they changed it she put her sweated hair back in a pony tail
and secured it with a band one handed and said why isn’t time metric then
she said I said fuckin brexit innit tho
from above they’re saying O spaghetti junction they’re saying O what comes next
now that human satellites crush their orbits and stun reason tapering off at the end
of ejaculations in public places O what comes next now that David Bowie is dead
looking up at a chiaroscuro moon thinking did bowie ever sign on and if he did was it
in good faith did his parents always pay tax and thereby demand the right to
governmental support from the department of works and pensions I said the
24
department of works and pensions did you hear me and if not can you hear me
now
the puritan ethic the plantation ethic the human condition the plantain plantation
the shadow of don van vliet looking over my drafts the sound of a dolt like a boot
from the blue this is Manchester this is hull this is port sunlight this is new Brighton
this is Llandudno and Morecambe where the Buddhists walk in silence untouching
25
from ‘Song Of The Bathysphere’
Matthew Carbery
abyssal
that aegir above
too great as salt
packed sand
incubated
in a crevice
facing what
great blue
I guess
too heavy
not to wide
wild
& she says all
the pages
fall out
between
a borderless archive
site-specific
or perhaps
zoning a poem
and by the sea
set up at
abutments groynes
sand banks on
sand banks the
tying of moon
to the washed up
near a farm form
from here to
the jetty you
can smell salt
& shit on
the air
26
on the jetsom
ties together
weather struck out
on the lee the cut
of the wind the fleck
fed back roll outs
the walls of the marina
plastered in daguerreotype
smudge of not-lobster pots on
Oppen's island no he said
there are five families here
in five percent of the houses
the rest are holiday homes
through codex
and record
family trace
the tale of two sisters
how many my guide
told me in number &
left pauses for me to gasp
an old son singing
Thalassocracy
no less than
rock that was
and then isn't
she had it that
stylus like an oar
you couldn't hardly
read the trace
without a guide
the number was
big like real big
and in divisions
three storm seasons
and of storms
the twelve footers
27
sang of oarsmen
Poly Positivist Syllogism
Rose Knapp
If infinite Nablockovs
Then how many kens
Can Baroque Barbie
Become |straight|
Out of Carnegie?
Actuality, I'm not
Asking You Mýa
Keatzian kitsch
Or my hollow
Über Tractatus
Or maybe I am
Only because
On Fridays I'm
An amused muse
Coke stoned and
Gazing at Gatsby
Post-asphyxiated
Climax shot he calls
Me a ride we cackle
And I black out the Times
I see a Langston or another
Siren getting locked for life
When I'm not in Manhattan
28
Simple Syntax Structura Nightshade
Rose Knapp
Absurd daemons, abject maniacs, and dissociated depressives will occasionally pause
in their suicidal blood dances and crack-rock orgies to cackle for a while, letting hamstrung
ordered Oedipus objects hallucinate within their vivid theories of straight Liszt matter,
Oxford tractātae decreeing binary delusions of perfect Freudian squares.
29
Jason and the Agronauts
Alec Sillifant
‘It was me: I done it.’
‘So, you, Jason Metropolis,’ said the barrister, Rumpolios, pacing the courtroom floor, ‘are
claiming you actually carried out all the unbelievable feats in your sworn statement?’
‘Yes,’ said Jason. He flexed his much admired pecks so that his cap sleeved tunic twitched
and directed a grin to the public gallery, where a gathering of Greece’s finest young women
sat. There were muted squeals in reply and a lone, high-pitched voice shrieked: ‘We love you,
Jason’.
Rumpolios, a thirty year veteran of the legal system, smiled broadly. ‘Indeed we do, Jason.
The whole of Greece does.’
Jason ran his hand through his tousled locks and did his best to feign modesty…he failed
‘What can I say, some of us are born blessed by the gods.’
A crew of swarthy looking seadogs got to their feet and began an enthusiastic chant. ‘Jason!
Jason! Jason! A-G! A-G-R! A-G-R-O! AGRO! Jason! Jason!’
‘None more so than your loyal crew, it seems,’ said Rumpolios loud enough to be heard
over the adulation, as he cast a beseeching look in the judge’s direction. A plea which did not
go unnoticed.
Judge Dreddalus slammed his flattened hand repeatedly on his desk. ‘Order! Order! I will
not tolerate such riotous behaviour in my courtroom! Anymore outbursts and I shall have you
all fed to the Mermaids of Rhodes!’
The shouts of the men of The Agro subsided to a low grumble and they, once again, took
their seats.
‘Thank you, m’lud,’ said Rumpolios, as he took up a piece of parchment from the
prosecutor’s table. ‘By your own admission, Jason…you don’t mind if I call you Jason, do
you?’
‘Hey, why not, everyone else does. As long as you don’t call me before ten in the morning,
I might still be busy.’ Jason winked at his groupies who, as one, flushed and giggled.
‘Quite,’ said Rumpolios. ‘Jason, is it true that on the festive night of Hera you did slay a
vile, evil-blooded, snake-haired Gorgon?’
Jason grinned broadly. ‘You make it sound like I did something totally badass, man; it was
nothing.’
30
‘Jason kicks ass!’ shouted an Agronaut.
‘Silence!’ demanded Dreddalus.
The barrister continued. ‘You used stealth and a highly polished shield to protect yourself
from the terrifying gaze that would have turned you into stone. Pretty…badass, if you ask me.’
Jason swatted the air with his hand. ‘Well I don’t li—’
‘Do you recall the name of the temple in which you slew the Gorgon, Jason?’
Jason frowned and squirmed in his seat. ‘There’s been so many over the years. Temples,
mazes, caves.’
‘Could it have been…’ Rumpolios, an expert with the pause, judged his weaponised silence
to perfection ‘…the Shirley Temple?’
‘I wouldn’t like to say,’ said Jason, ‘it was quite a while back now; I was just starting out.’
‘If it please the court, I would like to submit, exhibit ‘A’.’ Rumpolios retrieved a bloody
sack from under his table and placed it on the surface. ‘Is this,’ he reached his hand inside the
rank cloth receptacle and pulled out the decapitated, slightly decomposed, head of a young girl
with tight curly hair, ‘the Gorgon you slew, Mr Metropolis?’
The courtroom erupted into screams as all present averted their eyes from the vision that
could literally petrify them where they sat.
From under the safety of his bench the judge admonished the reckless barrister. ‘Are you
mad Rumpolios?! I might not be a pillar of society but I sure as Hades don’t want to become
one this way.’
‘It is quite safe, m’lud,’ said Rumpolios, ‘for this is not the head of a Gorgon but that of an
innocent. One of many that have had the misfortune to cross paths with our hero, Jason. Look
your honour, there appears to be the remnants of some kind of sugar based treat on her
lips…and I think that might be the stick that held the self-same treat, stuck up her nose. No
doubt rammed there by the force of the nefarious and cowardly attack.’
The judge, after taking a quick peek to make sure he didn’t get immortalised in marble,
regained his seat. ‘Well, what do you have to say to that, Jason?’
Jason swallowed. Then swallowed again. ‘It’s obvious, isn’t it? Someone has tampered with
the evidence.’
The people gathered in the court for the case of the millennium, having regained their
composure, started to murmur their obvious agreement.
‘Though I would never suggest it was anyone here,’ said Jason, making sure everyone
present would notice his deep brown eyes, flecked with gold, were staring directly at
Rumpolios.
31
‘Who’s the bastard…who’s the bastard…who’s the bastard in the rooooobe…who’s the
bastard in-the-robe?!’ Chanted one of the Agronauts, careless that most people present were
wearing robes, before he waved an apology to the judge and regained his seat to be rewarded
with many back slaps from his comrades.
The barrister ignored his verbal assailant and the accusing stare of the defendant. ‘I would
like to call my first witness, m’lud, if I may?’
‘Proceed,’ said the judge.
‘If it pleases the court, I call Cyclops,’ said Rumpolios. He noted a flash of concern in
Jason’s, momentarily, widened eyes. ‘Are you alright, Mr Metropolis; not doubting the wisdom
of electing to defend yourself are you?’
Jason screwed his face up into a scowl of contempt, expelling a huff of air between his lips.
From the back of the courtroom a frail old man, the top half of his head and face covered
with a dirty bandage, was led to the witness stand by a helpful young court official. Jason threw
her a wink and she blushed before scurrying off. The old man took his seat, gingerly searching
for it with his hand first, then rested the staff that gave his feeble frame support against the
confines of the stand.
‘Mr Cyclops,’ said Rumpolios, ‘can you confirm your occupation for the court, please?’
‘I’m a goatherd,’ said the old man, his voice audibly shot through with nerves.
‘Are you married, Mr Cyclops?’
‘No, I live alone.’
‘And where do you live?’
‘High on a hill.’
‘The exact address, please, Mr Cyclops.’
‘Yoddle-ay-yoddle-ay-yoddle-ay-ay Lane.’
‘Thank you,’ said Rumpolios, as he consulted the parchment in his hand. ‘And, in your own
words, can you tell the court why you are here today?’
‘To make sure that goat-stealing bastard, Jason Metropolis, gets what’s coming to him,’ said
Cyclops, shaking his fist, in what he assumed was approximately, in front of his face.
‘Bollocks!’ shouted Jason, and the court erupted into a chorus of voices all levelled at the
frail old man in the dock.
Judge Dreddalus drummed both of his hands on his desk demanding order. As the court
gathered its dignity once more, the judge turned his attention to Jason. ‘Objection, is the word
you use, Mr Metropolis.’
‘Sorry, my man, I get carried away when wrongly accused,’ said Jason.
32
The judge stared at Jason for a while, an expectant look on his face. ‘Well?’
‘What?’ said Jason. ‘Oh…objection!’
‘And on what point of law are you objecting, Mr Metropolis?’
‘It’s obvious, isn’t it? He’s talking bollocks,’ said Jason, an incredulous expression on his
face.
‘Overruled, proceed, Mr Rumpolios.’
‘Please, Mr Cyclops, tell us your story,’ said the barrister.
‘One night, during the time of the last “Feast of Zeus”,’ began the old man, ‘I was minding
my own business, doing what goatherds do—’
‘We know,’ an Agronaut called out, ‘we saw you shearing a goat…shearing your love with
it!’
‘That’s not true, we goatherds don’t do that,’ objected Cyclops, ‘that’s shepherds. Filthy
swine that they are…and don’t get me started on swineherds; you’d never eat ham again.’
‘Please, Mr Cyclops,’ said Rumpolios, ‘try not to get distracted. You were high on your
hill…’
‘When Jason and his cutthroat scum marched up to me, armed to the teeth, and demanded a
goat from me. Of course, I said ‘no’, but they just pushed me to the ground. I tried to fight back
but there was too many of them. Had it been that nancy-boy Jason on his own, it would have
been a different story.’
‘Boll…objection,’ said Jason, ‘you couldn’t kick my ass, old man.’
Cyclops wobbled to his feet and began rolling his fists in the air. ‘Could too; and I’ll do it
now if you like. Come on, let’s dance. Someone point me in the nancy-boy’s direction.’
Jason laughed. The Agronauts laughed. The public gallery laughed.
‘Please, Mr Cyclops,’ said Rumpolios, gently lowering the man back into his seat, ‘let
justice takes its course.’
The old man continued. ‘Anyway, while his crew held me down, he got a smouldering
length of wood from my fire and jabbed it into my eye.’
The courtroom resounded to a collective, ‘Ooooh,’ of empathic pain.
‘Leaving you blind?’ suggested Rumpolios.
‘Yes…once he’d done the same thing to my other eye,’ said Cyclops, lifting his bandages
to show the court his disabling disfigurement.
Someone in the public gallery vomited.
‘You have…had two eyes?’ said Rumpolios, unable to hide the surprise in his voice.
33
‘He also kicked me in the ball,’ said Cyclops. ‘There are a lot of misconceptions about us
goatherds.’
‘Liar!’ shouted an Agronaut but the court stayed hushed at this accusation.
Rumpolios smiled. ‘No further questions, m’lud. Your witness, Mr Metropolis.’
Jason stood to his feet and cleared his throat. He noted a buxom wench in the gallery and
gave her his favoured lopsided grin. She looked away, as he expected, but Jason failed to notice
the usual flush to her cheeks. Shaking his head, he dismissed the new, far from welcome feeling
that brushed his mind. ‘Mr Cyclops,’ said Jason, ‘can you see the man you accuse of maiming
you and stealing from you in the courtroom?’
‘Well…no,’ said Cyclops.
‘No further questions,’ said Jason.
‘But I’d recognise his heartless voice,’ added Cyclops.
‘I said...no further questions.’ Jason’s tone was tainted with angry impatience.
‘That’s the swarthy bastard!’ said Cyclops, rising to his feet once more. ‘Come on, say
something again so I can beat the crap out of you!’
Jason opened his mouth but his brain caught up just in time.
‘Where are ya?!’ screamed Cyclops, swinging haymakers. ‘I’ll rip yer bollock off!’
‘Mr Rumpolios?’ asked the judge.
Rumpolios, who was secretly grinning like a Spartan cat, shook his lowered head to indicate
he had no further questions for the irate witness.
‘You can stand down now, Mr Cyclops,’ said the judge, ‘in both senses of the phrase. Clerk,
please escort the witness from the courtroom.’
The clerk led the frail old man across the courtroom, whispering something in his ear as she
did so.
Cyclops’ head jerked back from the news. ‘Two!? They’ve got two?! All of them?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘That’s just weird,’ muttered Cyclops.
‘May I call my next witness, m’lud?’ said Rumpolios.
Dreddalus checked the sundial to see if he could call for lunch recess yet; the shadow
forbade it. ‘Proceed,’ he sighed.
‘Call…,’ Rumpolios paused and turned his gaze to the smug visage of Jason, ‘…Medea.’
Jason frowned. ‘Why does that name sound familiar?’ he thought.
The woman who entered the courtroom was stunning. So much so that the Agronauts began
showing the appreciation for her delicate, classic looks by howling like wolves and grabbing
34
their crotches. She walked in a deliberate manner, placing each foot before her as if she was
walking along a line to prove to an officer of the law she was completely sober and fully capable
of driving her chariot. This affected gait accentuated her full hips as they swung through nearly
180 degrees and sashayed in perfect harmony with the bouncing of her full bosom. Her hair,
blacker than the obsidian spewed from the furnaces that burn on the lowest levels of Hades,
was voluminous as the fashion of time (1984 BC) required. Accompanied with a double display
of leers and sneers, depending on gender, Medea took her place in the witness stand.
Rumpolios smiled at the young woman and then turned his attention to Jason. ‘Do you
recognise the witness, Mr Metropolis?’
Jason rubbed his chin. ‘No…I don’t think so.’
‘Are you sure, Mr Metropolis?’
‘Do me a favour, love,’ said Jason, directing his question to Medea, ‘could you turn round?’
Medea had nothing but contempt in her expression but she did as she was asked and showed
her back to Jason.
‘Now bend over.’
Again, Medea complied.
‘Where are you going with this, Mr Metropolis?’ said Judge Dreddalus.
‘Bear with me, dude,’ said Jason. ‘Now look over your shoulder at me and suck your index
finger while looking a little shocked.’
Medea did as she was asked.
Jason’s face dropped. ‘Oh crap, that Medea.’
Medea finally realising she was looking rather stupid, despite the appreciative calls from the
Agronauts, straightened herself up. ‘Yes, that Medea. And I’m going to take that guard’s sword
and shove it up that lying ass of yours, Jason Metropolis.’
‘Your honour,’ said Jason, ‘are you going to let her talk to me like that?’
‘She could talk to me any way she liked,’ said Dreddalus, a mesmerised glaze to his eyes.
‘Do you think you could get her to bend over again?’
‘Medea,’ said Rumpolios loudly, in an attempt to get the court’s attention back onto the case
in hand. ‘Can you tell the court how it is you know the accused?’
‘The pig promised to get me a golden fleece,’ said Medea, studying the finish on her
lacquered nails. ‘Said he’d take me away from all this and make me the happiest woman alive.’
‘Did he make good on any of these promises?’ said Rumpolios.
‘Well, he did take me, alright,’ said Medea. ‘For about thirty seconds.’
There was a disappointed murmur among the females in the public gallery.
35
‘Oh, come on,’ said Jason, ‘you knew I was under a lot of stress at work at the time.’
‘Must have been a lot of stress to cause that much shrinkage,’ said Medea, waving her little
finger in the air. ‘Know what I mean, girls.’
A giggle of ridicule washed over the courtroom and dissolved Jason’s ego.
Rumpolios grinned. ‘And what of this Golden Fleece you were promised?’
Jason jumped to his feet. ‘I got that,’ he said. ‘Gave it to her and everything, the ungrateful
cow.’
The barrister reached below his table and placed an item on its surface. ‘Exhibit ‘B’, m’lud,
a…golden…fleece.’ An audible gasp accompanied the revealing.
‘What?!’ said Jason. ‘That’s a Golden Fleece if ever I saw one.’
‘It’s yellow, Mr Metropolis,’ said Rumpolios.
‘Gold…yellow, you’re nit-picking,’ said Jason. ‘That is a class piece of kit. A Hellios
Hansenopolis; finest fleece money can buy. Even the feckin’ zip is waterproof.’
‘Medea,’ said Rumpolios, ‘is this the gift you were expecting?’
‘Of course not,’ said Medea, ‘I was expecting the Golden Fleece from the fabled winged
ram of Colchis. You know the one, it’s protected by a seven headed dragon that spits fire and
sulphur. That’s what I wanted, not some rag from a flea market.’
‘Are you insane woman, a fire breathing dragon,’ said Jason, ‘you aren’t that good a shag.
Actually on the scale of things, you’re not even worth the Hansenopolis to be honest. You were
lucky I didn’t get you a yellow pac-a-mac.’
‘And what about our baby?’ said Medea. ‘I can take the fact you dumped me as soon as your
balls were empty…’
‘Ball!’ shouted Cyclops from the gallery.
‘…but why leave our daughter fatherless in this cruel, mythologically dangerous, world?’
Tears began to roll down Medea’s cheeks.
‘Oh, Zeus on a bike,’ said Jason, ‘I’ll get her a fleece as well then, you whinging siren. You
women think you can spread your legs and then expect a bloke to cut his off. Well not this one,
love, you ain’t that good looking. I can see from your robe it’s all started to go south anyway,
right lads?’
The court fell silent. Proper grave, morgue, necropolis silent. Even the Agronauts shook
their heads frantically, drawing their hands across their unshaven throats to warn Jason that
now might be a good time to stop talking.
‘Even I nearly said ‘objection’ then, son,’ said Dreddalus, shaking his head.
36
Jason looked round the court, no one was looking at him. No one except Rumpolios, who
stared directly, and coldly, at him. ‘What?!’ said Jason, his head twitching back with contempt.
‘Mr Metropolis,’ said the barrister, walking toward the defendant, ‘I think it has been proved
today that you are a liar, a cheat, a shameful self-centred self-publicist that considers no one
but himself and his needs. In short, Jason, hero of Greece, you wouldn’t know the truth if it
jumped up and bit you on the balls.’
‘Ball! For Zeus’ sake, it’s singular!’
‘The truth?’ sneered Jason. ‘The truth? You couldn’t handle the truth!’
In a shady recess at the edge of the courtroom, Homer took out his quill and made a note of
the line.
‘Do you think it’s easy being the pin-up hero of the people?’ said Jason, rising to his feet.
‘If it wasn’t for me, you spineless scum couldn’t sleep safely in your beds. The place would be
overrun with dragons and vampire minotaurs…and…and…herpes!’
‘Harpies!’ shouted Cyclops. ‘Zeus almighty, kid’s got more ball than brains.’
Jason leapt from the dock and made his way to the table of the barrister. ‘Well, let me tell
you this. I am not taking the fall for any one of you. Yeah, I took some short-cuts, some liberties
with the truth but you don’t get to be top of the hero tree without having a few tricks in your
goat scrotum bag.’ Jason grabbed exhibit ‘A’, the decapitated head from the Shirley Temple,
and lifted it by the hair.
Rumpolios laughed first but everyone present in the courtroom, with the exception of the
Agronauts, soon joined in the ridicule of the hero brought low. ‘Mr Metropolis, we have already
established this is not the head of a Gorgon. It holds no power over us.’
‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ said Jason. ‘True, this is not the head of a Gorgon but it does
indeed hold great power. Do you remember commenting on the sticky mess on the lips, lawyerman?’
Rumpolios nodded.
‘Well, that is the honey of the Gorilla Wasps of Sicily. The strongest sealing agent in the
known world,’ said Jason.
Rumpolios smiled. ‘Another one of your tall tales, Jason?’
Jason turned to his crew. ‘Time to plug up, lads.’ The Agronauts to a man, started scrambling
frantically in their pockets and goat scrotum bags, and then they set about jamming balls of
soft wax into their ears. ‘You see, this head, is the head of a Karaoke. A monster so powerful
it will always survive, with its powers, even after horrific mutilation.’
‘Of course, Mr Metropolis,’ said Rumpolios. ‘Guards, take him away.’
37
Jason spat on his thumb and rubbed it across the lips of the severed head. ‘However, because
I am touched by the gods, I am immune to its evil but you…you are not going to like
this…one…little…bit.’
Rumpolios chuckled. ‘Don’t talk utt—’
The head hanging from Jason’s fist breathed in noisily and then let out a rolling wave of air.
It licked its lips and moved its lower jaw experimentally. ‘Me. Me. Me’ it said before coughing
its throat clear.
Rumpolios stared wide eyed at the animated head. ‘What in the name of all the gods is—’
The Karaoke’s eyes snapped open and it began to sing. ‘On the good ship Lollipop; It’s a
sweet trip to the candy shop; Where bon-bons play…’
The first head to explode in a shower of pink, red and white was that of Judge Dreddalus;
he left an impressive fan of colour behind his seat of authority. Medea was next, followed by
the clerk and Rumpolios. Then the citizens in the public gallery started to tumble; headless
corpses collapsed a dozen at a time.
‘…On the sunny beach of Peppermint Bay; On the good ship Lollipop; It’s a sweet trip to
the candy shop: Where…’ The song of death continued until the only ones left standing in the
courtroom were Jason and his gore splattered crew.
‘Has it stopped? Can we take our plugs out yet?’ shouted Pugwashulas, the Agro’s first
mate.
Jason raised an open hand to indicate patience. He placed the singing head of the Karaoke
on the table and, kneeling to scoop up some brains from Rumpolios’ shattered skull, shoved
the pink mush into the monster’s mouth instantly rendering it dumb. ‘That should hold it for
now.’ He gave a thumbs up to his crew.
The Agronauts fished out the protective wax from their ears. ‘That was a close call, captain,’
said Pugwashulas. ‘You’re going to have to be more careful with the birds, that Medea nearly
done you.’
‘Nonsense, Puggy,’ said Jason, ‘I had it all under control.’
The first mate looked around the charnel house. ‘If you say so, captain.’
‘I do,’ said Jason, adding a wink. ‘Looks to me like I’ve saved Greece from another disaster
of mythical proportions…or it will do once I’ve told the story of our brave battle in the
courtroom.’
‘You’ve got some balls, captain,’ said an Agronaut.
‘Ball,’ corrected Cyclops, who had somehow been immune to the voice of the Karaoke and
was now trapped under a stack of headless bodies.
38
‘See to that will you, Puggy,’ said Jason.
‘Aye, aye captain,’ said Pugwashulus, steeping over the bodies to get to the back of the
courtroom.
‘Right lads, where to next?’ said Jason, clapping his hands together enthusiastically. ‘I’ve
heard a rumour that there’s a winged horse, in Hera’s stables on Crete. If we can capture that
and run it in the ‘12 Guineas’ at the Hippodrome, we’ll make a fortune. Who’s with me?’
‘Aye!’ shouted the Agronauts as one. ‘Jason! Jason! Jason!’
39
Mom Was Waiting For Us
Walter Savage
40
His Handsome Face
Walter Savage
41
Days Turned Into Weeks
Walter Savage
42
Platinum City
Hongri
Translated by
Manu Mangattu
II
They have magical eyes.
They seem to be able to see the future
And can enter diverse time and space.
他们长着神奇的眼睛
他们似乎能看到未来
也能进入不同的时空
Men and women are hallowed and loving
Superior to our world's so-called love
They don't seem to understand ageing
Neither do they know about war.
男男女女都圣洁慈爱
胜过人间所谓的爱情
他们仿佛不懂得衰老
也不知道什么叫战争
Time seems not to exist
Science is just a wonderful art
Their happiness comes from the creation of
A universe full of divine love.
时间仿佛并不存在
科学就是奇妙的艺术
他们的快乐来自创造
I saw a young giant
Opening the door of a platinum –
A round, magnificent hall
Packed with rows of men and women.
对宇宙充满神圣的感情
I saw a crystal stage.
Gyrating at the center of the hall.
A dignified and beautiful girl
Was playing a huge musical instrument.
一座圆形的华丽的大厅
我看到一位年轻的巨人
打开了一座白金的大门
坐满了一排排男女巨人
我看到一座水晶的舞台
旋转在这座大厅的中央
A bunch of golden rays,
Shifting all kinds of brilliant graphics
A mysterious and beautiful music
Like the Dragon leisurely crowing.
一位端庄美丽的少女
演奏着一种巨型的乐器
一束一束金色的光芒
变幻出各种奇妙的图形
Thence I saw an enormous giant
Jump out of the dance onto the stage.
His hands held a huge ball
Shining with colourful shades from the ball.
一种玄妙动人的音乐
仿佛是龙凤悠然的啼鸣
我看到一位健美的巨人
在台上跳出奇异的舞蹈
I saw a group of young girls
Wearing a white dress
They seemed to fly lightly
Like a giant crane.
他手中托起巨大的圆球
球内闪耀着彩色的画图
我看到一队妙龄的女郎
The huge circular hall was resplendent
43
穿着一种雪白的裙裳
With clear, transparent decoration.
Like a gem of a full set.
Shining bright in light.
他们仿佛在翩翩飞翔
像是一只只巨大的仙鹤
I saw a young singer
About the golden flame
The sound was strange and striking
As if the singing was a chanting.
巨大的圆厅金碧辉煌
像水晶一般清澈透明
又像是嵌满奇异的宝石
闪耀出一种绚丽的光芒
Their music is at once mysterious and blissful
That shift randomly like the lightning
As if it’s a planet of the universe
Shining bright and light in space.
我看到一位年轻的歌手
全身缭绕着金色的火焰
那声音奇特而又优美
像是歌唱又像是吟诵
The crystal city, aloft in space
Looks resplendent, magnificent
Countless wonderful golden flowers
Bloom and blush in that flawless space.
他们的音乐欢喜玄妙
像一道道闪电变幻莫测
仿佛是宇宙的一颗颗星球
A picture of a transparent smiling face I saw
As if it were a colourful garden
The golden light from the sky
Turned it into a city of gold.
在太空中闪烁亮丽的光芒
又仿佛一座座水晶的城市
在空中矗立宏伟辉煌
无数奇妙的金色的花朵
I strode out of the circular hall
Came to a wide street with a smooth
Pavement covered with precious stones
And in line with the platinum edifice.
开满了清澈晶莹的太空
我看到一张张透明的笑脸
仿佛是一座缤纷的花园
金色的光芒从天空洒下
化成了一座座黄金之城
我走出了这座圆形大厅
来到一条宽阔的街道
光洁的路面嵌满宝石
两旁林立白金的巨厦
44
Lord Byron Joins a Dating Site
Christopher Barnes
If solitude
Release from pain
The vacant
Might thank
We loathe
Even bliss
is ravaged, a fifth wheel
to jawache below the surface of revived moons
amped-up, instinctual, top-to-toe blood-stirr
this batphone for a sample ring
the fragile lapse that’s unimportance
has its palsy to yank
Glossary of slang:
Fifth Wheel – Gooseberry
Amped Up – Excited
Batphone – Cellphone
45
A Link to Cancer
Patricia Walsh
In the life of the winter, the dark of the moon,
cigarette burns on the bedside table besides,
an open ashtray, incinerated money
awake above duty, for safe-keeping.
Not one to roll quotes in your absence,
no one to inherit a life's consequence,
Murdering time to salvation, a prediction smitten,
Peacefully fighting what intransigence pays.
Dragging employed heels of late,
Kept out of trouble by getting with the programme,
as was requested of me, satisfied?
Able to do better, wasting prophecy.
Burns on the coat lining, topped for reference
beside the fire, heating to a zenith,
the smoke cascades to a dirty ceiling,
no wisdom falters on an addictive habit.
Inoperable, it is said. The slow grief
percolates through hubris, the comfortable chair,
finity summoned with due care and attention,
nursing a small god in his minutes of need.
46
She's Dead Too
Patricia Walsh
Raised silvery scales define your physique
A hatred of like-minded women is yours
For the stealing, staring, sleeping arrangements
with the favoured, by others, after dark.
Not eating, not sleeping, I exist away
continually punished by exclusion at home.
A long time has passed, lift an embargo
on trust destroyed by a guilty kiss.
You had everything that favour allows
Holding flowers on hands, an inside track
on nuptual joy, a gift of your own
comes home to you satisfaction, a beatified event.
Distance is welcoming, let it stay that way.
The law of the cafeteria no longer governs me
nor does it poison atmospheres, a long line going
Laughing at the long time, needing a friend.
Not one for compliments, am I, restricted by sincerity,
nor one who outlines current problems
with incessance, only to bug those at hand
coffee holds the tension, snapping at ankles
Ranking rebuffed, a friendship, eradicated.
Let me end to the conversation with a lighting ship
drinking to merriment, but only for the elect,
to avoid the holy show in the making,
To injure, insult in a falling star's journey.
47
Bumping
Walter Savage
There was something different about the sense of urgency I felt that morning. Having lived
with the anxiety for some time, I began to notice a certain positive influence it had on me in
some areas. For example, while it made me somewhat scattered at times, I seemed less
forgetful. I had always been forgetful. It was as if going to the car had no relationship with
having the keys to operate it. I would simply get there, pause, and realize the next step would
be impossible without keys. It annoyed everyone but me. The truth is that I became somewhat
good-natured about it. I’d even laugh. Then, I’d go back to the house and get my keys. Often,
I’d repeat the process with my briefcase or something else I’d need. But that morning it
occurred to me that preparation had somehow become a by-product of the stress.
It would only be fair to say that the ominous feeling that came with the urgency
probably began with the dream. Suffice to say, if I’m not going to find my way through
these…these problems in some way, it’s only natural to at least consider some sort of final
solution. That is, before these things become the province of others to decide for me. I’ll not
be forgotten to death in some institution or wander off, only to be absorbed into the ranks of
the homeless. Be that as it may, the point is that dreams of ending my life should not be looked
upon as anything other than a logical progression in the cavalcade of ‘what ifs’ which are still
mine to ponder. So, in getting back to the dream, the list of what I would not do in such a case
seems endless. No guns, knives, razor blades, ropes, and heights could be involved. Death by
car or train, or in any manner likely to cause pain, however momentary, could not be given any
consideration. Upon eliminating all possibilities of a scene where people might gather, we are
left with pills or some kind of asphyxiation or suffocation.
In some way, the pills I’m taking have kept me just this side of the next step in the
process of being dealt with, I suppose. To that extent, they’ve bought me time. By that
reasoning, and still acting upon the hope that my condition may improve, it would, somehow,
seem ungrateful for me to seek my demise with the very medications that have allowed the
time and reasoning to affect it. Therefore, cessation of breathing functions in one of its forms
is what we are left with.
I’m not sure, having never been there, but Santa Catalina has always seemed more to
me like Bali Hai from South Pacific. Not Bali Hai itself, of course, but the picture of the
tropical paradise painted on some flat in some community theater production. State of mind
48
rather than a grid coordinate. And, it occurs to me that for my state of mind, deteriorating
though it may be, to seek an ideal on the horizon, never to be achieved, smacks of a poetic
lucidity that soon may be well beyond me. In the simplest of terms, I’d go for a swim from
Huntington Beach to Catalina. I’d never make it, but I’d die trying. It could be a last quiet
struggle, the kind I used to enjoy such as college, marriage, the service, and my other demons.
Some won; some lost, but with all the motivational tools brought to bear in achieving an end
from a beginning, or finding a beginning after an end, as the case may be.
And so I dreamt that I was swimming to Catalina, and it came to me like a revelation.
But then I felt it. As soon as I did, I told myself that I didn’t. Then I felt it again, and it seemed
so impossibly unfair. All I wanted to do was swim to Catalina for God’s sake! I certainly
couldn’t make it. I’d drown, but I’d spend myself in a final celebration of splendid nonsense.
But now this! I felt it again, and the next thing I would feel, or perhaps the thing after that,
wouldn’t feel like splendid nonsense at all. It would feel like death by shark and, before it was
over, would make me wish I’d been run over by some Orange County prick in a speedboat. It
was a bump. They bump before they bite—most of them. Not the big ones, of course. They’ll
suck you down whole or cut you in half or any damn thing they want. But nearly all the rest
of them bump into you to see if you might be something to eat. They don’t see well, I heard
once. I woke up murmuring to myself, ‘Well, it’s always something.’ It made me laugh. I
laughed about it later, too, but couldn’t remember the reason for the laughter. That stopped it!
But I find this condition more curious than sad at the moment. In the time I have left, if I don’t
improve that is, I need to follow that curiosity to a conclusion. I’m just not sure about Catalina
anymore. I did like the idea though, thinking it to be masculine and extroverted. Two things
I’ve never been, sadly, but there’s no point in becoming deranged if you’re going to stand on
ceremony.
Quite a bit had changed by that time. I was still driving my car but not on the freeway.
Actually, I was driving less and less, and it seemed my gas gauge had broken. It never appeared
to go down; therefore, I’d fill it up nearly every day. Once it was seventy-one cents. I pay by
credit card, so I didn’t need to explain. Still, I suppose that I’m explaining it to you now.
I was on medical leave from work. They knew that but kept calling anyway. It’s not
as though they were concerned. It was more like they were trying to catch me at pretending
there was something wrong with me.
‘We’re just concerned, that’s all,’ she’d say.
49
‘I don’t think you are,’ I told her once. ‘I think you’re trying to catch me pretending to
be sick. That’s what I think.’
When there was only silence on the other end, I hung up. Minutes afterward, I thought
of so many good things to say and called back. But I couldn’t remember her name, and after a
while on hold, I couldn’t remember why I was calling. I did later.
I took my medication though. I’ve never been much for that sort of thing—a pill
regimen. But I did. Then I’d wait. After awhile I’d forget what I was waiting for, but so far
I’d always remember before I needed to take them the next time. They gave me a chart. That
helped. It seemed silly at first. I don’t think I could do without it now.
The worst part, apart from what was happening to me, was the loneliness. Deprived of
my other interests—and I’m sure I must have had some—what began as boredom turned to a
certain melancholy, and finally, I’d get lonely. What few friends I had were really little more
than acquaintances. I mean you can’t really count the guy at the video store. He’d always been
friendly but that’s not really the same thing. It could be, I suppose. But, while I was always
grateful for the friendly exchanges, the fact that they were compartmentalized into brief
commerce transactions would have required me to make some effort to break out of that. And
what motive might I have had? I wasn’t lonely then. So, for the most part, I was left with my
housekeeper. Her name was Tina or Maria, but in fairness, I kept getting that mixed up before
this happened. Anyway, I think I did. I can’t exactly remember how she gets paid, but she
keeps coming so I suppose she does. If I had to write a check or something, I’d probably
remember. So there was my housekeeper and Loren, too.
Loren’s attentions were never welcome for what they were. But he was good-natured
about it, and while it was always there—what he wanted that is—once I said no we went on to
other things. He liked music, and he liked to drink. I can’t drink anymore. I really don’t dare
with the medication. I need to stay sharp for as long as I can. I haven’t seen him lately. I think
something happened. I woke up the other night wondering if it was because, not thinking, I’d
run out of scotch; I mean, not thinking that he still drank, he’d have thought me rude. But I
had scotch. Maybe something else happened. I can’t remember, but I can remember I haven’t
seen him lately.
Then there was a call; I think, recently. I remember the voice sounded familiar.
‘Mr. Bernard?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ I said.
50
‘Mr. Bernard,’ he began again, ‘you probably won’t remember me. My name is Eddie,
Edward Rosenthal. I had you for American History at Johnson High School some, ah, twelve
years ago. I’m sure you don’t remember me but, well, I was just calling to thank you. I’m a
teacher myself now. I might have been something else, but your class had an effect on me.’
I didn’t know what to say but made an attempt.
‘Well, hello Edward. I’m sorry. Your name rings a bell though. Tell me, what are you
teaching?’
‘American History,’ his voice sounded as if he might be smiling. ‘I teach American
History in Barstow now. I know this must seem strange, my calling like this. But, well, as I
said, your class had an effect on me. I understand you don’t teach anymore. That’s what they
told me when I called the school. What are you doing now, Mr. Bernard?’
‘I work for a company. It’s not very interesting. I’m not working now. I’ve been ill
but will be going back soon.’
His response was sincere. ‘I’m sorry to hear that you’ve been ill. Anyway, I didn’t
want to bother you. I just wanted to tell you that, well, your teaching made a difference in my
life. It took awhile. But, well, what I’m trying to say is that I became a teacher because of
you. I want to thank you for that.’
‘You’re very welcome, Ronnie. I’m glad things are working out for you.’
‘Eddie, sir,’ he said.
‘Eddie, yes,’ I repeated. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘It’s all right Mr. Bernard. I just wanted to thank you. Have a good night.’
I’m not sure, but I think he had the wrong number. I wasn’t sure, you see. I was sorry
later. I am Bernard. But he must have meant another Bernard. That’s probably what happened.
That’s the thing about this condition. It can fool you into thinking you’re forgetting something.
That is, if you can’t remember, maybe it didn’t happen. That’s a viable explanation certainly.
I do know my history though. I suppose I could have taught history. That certainly would
account for my knowing so much about it. But I can’t believe that I could forget something
like teaching.
It would have to be soon. Possibly today, maybe tomorrow! I’ve noticed there’s a
rhythm to my affliction and the medication’s ability to pull me back now and then. I may be
51
going crazy in a literal sense, but I’m not stupid. The last time I spoke with the doctor, I asked
if there was a hope of getting better. Now, that part, what he said exactly, I can’t remember.
But I do seem to remember the substance of his argument. He seemed to be saying that simply
because no one had ever recovered, there was no reason to think that someone might not
recover and that person might be me. Living with the alternative offered no comfort; therefore,
I suppose, deteriorating as I have been, he probably felt that putting a bright face on a hopeless
condition was a magnanimous gesture of sorts.
Again, his exact words escape me;
nevertheless, his raised eyebrow and continuous nodding in an assumptive manner, assured me
that whatever he was saying was bullshit and that I was in a lot of trouble.
From moment to moment, the preparation I spoke of earlier, that is, not being as
forgetful at least in the short term, was going to be of no use if my demise was somehow not
affected because of it. Little things must not be allowed to defeat me. As I have outlined, I
haven’t many friends and haven’t seen Loren at all recently. My housekeeper gets paid
regardless and as to anything else: wills, insurance, the phone bill; those matters can be sorted
out by the people who would have decided my fate under other circumstances. In short, no one
to say goodbye to and nothing to worry about except waiting too long. That, of course, meant
that I wasn’t going to be getting any better, only worse. It was a sad realization to come to, but
I was grateful I still could. Realize it that is. I decided right then that I needed a plan. Since I
had no real alternative plan, the other plan would have to do. I only remembered it in part, and
the rest I could figure out. I would go to Huntington Beach. I’d need a bathing suit, and I’d
have to risk going on the freeway. I’d take my medication early so that I wouldn’t lose my
way. I’d go at dusk and arrive in the dark. I’d leave the keys in the car.
The first thing that got crossed off the list was a bathing suit. I don’t know if I ever had
one. I must have sometime but maybe not since I was a kid. My under shorts would have to
do. They were dark. Someone bought them for me. I’d have never bought dark underwear
for myself. Who would buy me underwear anyway? Who would buy me anything? It’s
strange, but somehow I remember opening presents, even recently. If I hadn’t any friends, who
gave me presents? Well, Loren, of course, and Adam. Adam, yes, he was my wife’s son.
That’s always nice of him, too. She only married me to have someone pay for Adam. She
made me promise to adopt Adam, and when I did, she divorced me. I had to pay child support
for fifteen years after that. It was okay. I had the money; the money wasn’t the problem. But
I never saw Adam again. He was a nice boy, quiet like I was as a child. He always sent me a
Christmas present. He’d have
52
bought me underwear. He was smart, too. Though his mother wasn’t very bright, he was. I
don’t remember her name though.
I thought of leaving a note that day, but the idea seemed ridiculous. Moreover, it would
be something tantamount to an admission that I was lucid enough to do away with myself. I
wasn’t sure if anyone would miss me or even take pleasure in my death, but I wanted no part
of any act that would please some insurance company. Hopefully, somewhere along the line,
I said it all at one time or another. If not, it was rapidly becoming far too late to worry about.
As I left the house with my keys, I paused for a moment and thought that I should have
had a pet. I’d never had a pet. Adam had a turtle once. Lucy got rid of it one day during one
of her cleaning frenzies. That was her name, Lucy. I had read that pets were wonderful. I
wasn’t exactly sorry that I wouldn’t be finding out how wonderful. But it tripped something
in what was left of my mind, because I started thinking about several things I never had or
wouldn’t be trying. Some sort of melancholy, I supposed, and quite natural under the
circumstances. As long as it didn’t get in the way, it would be fine. The next thing was gas,
but I felt the elation of a breakthrough when I decided to trust the gas gage and simply head for
Huntington Beach. Fearing the radio would confuse me, I decided to keep it off. The traffic
wouldn’t matter since I’d get there sooner or later.
Sure enough, as I reached the 605 south, it seemed clear sailing. I was making good
time, but I couldn’t understand why it was still so light out. It was only four o’clock, but I
thought it was more winter. Perhaps spring happened when I wasn’t looking. I smiled to think
of it. Winter or spring, it didn’t matter. That’s why I lived here. It was perfect most of the
time. It was light out though. I might have to enjoy a final sunset before…before whatever I
was going to the beach for came back to me. That made me smile again.
I got a little confused in Long Beach. I missed Studebaker Road, and when I drove past
the college, I thought for a moment that I might turn in. Long Beach State I called it. It was
really Cal State Long Beach, but I liked Long Beach State better. I went there once. I’m sure
I did. I remember something about the Revolutionary War. Yes, and about Francis Marion in
South Carolina. Certainly, I must have gone there once. Anyway, with these things floating
around in my head, I nearly missed my left turn on Pacific Coast Highway. But I didn’t and,
as I turned, I realized I had made it. It was a few miles away, but there would be no more turns.
What did they call him? It…it was the ‘swamp fox.’ Yes, that was it.
53
I was feeling very good as I pulled up to one of the meters. It was a nice day, and even
if I was a little early, that was okay. I forgot three things almost at once. First, I forgot to leave
the keys in the car. Then, when I put them back, I forgot to leave the doors unlocked. Finally,
I forgot that I didn’t need to worry about the meter and put about three dollars in it. There was
a fourth thing, but it really was the first thing because I had left my wallet at home when leaving
there. Had I filled up the tank, I’d have realized that I left it and gone back. But there, on the
bluff overlooking the beach, I decided none of that mattered anymore. I walked down to the
shoreline and stood there. The sun was low to my right, but there was still an hour or two of
light. As I looked out on the ocean, I saw some boats; however, there was something else I
couldn’t remember. I mean…there was something out there…something I was forgetting to
look for or wasn’t seeing somehow. I decided it didn’t matter and that being in Huntington
Beach was enough.
After a pleasant exchange with several people passing by, I decided I might become
distracted so I walked back and found a nice rock to sit on. It was beneath the cliff, somewhat
off the beach. I was trying to remember what it was that I should be looking for out in the
ocean when I felt a puppy, a young pit bull puppy, sniffing at my foot. I petted him, and as he
looked up, I realized in his look of trust and love that benevolence was all he knew of humans
so far.
‘Hello,’ she said from behind me.
I think I must have smiled. ‘Hello. What a nice dog. How old?’
‘Three months,’ she said, but I’d forgotten what I asked and got a bit confused.
‘Her name is Lucy,’ she continued, leaning up against a rock next to me.
For no particular reason, I said, ‘I was once married to a woman named Lucy. Seems
kind of strange.’
‘You’re not married now?’ she asked.
‘No, I’m not.’
She sighed before speaking with some resignation. ‘I’m getting a divorce.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
‘I’m not. Actually, I’m kind of glad it’s over. He cheated on me.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that. Did he do anything else?’
54
Looking puzzled, she asked, ‘What do you mean?’
‘I’m…I' not sure,’ I said, but continued anyway. ‘Before he cheated on you or before
you found out, was it…was it better then?’
‘Of course,’ she replied.
‘Well, I mean, were you actually happy with each other before that?’
She paused before replying. ‘I guess so. But what does that matter now?’
I didn’t know, but had another question. ‘Are you the one getting the divorce?’
‘Yes, I could never put up with that.’
‘Look at your dog,’ I said. ‘Look at her smiling at me with her beautiful face. I’ve
never had a pet, too busy I guess. I have the feeling your dog could love me.’
Ignoring these comments, she went back to her problem. ‘Are you saying I shouldn’t
get the divorce?’
I felt lost. I couldn’t remember what we were talking about and so I was quiet.
She asked another question. ‘Could you forgive someone if they cheated on you?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Well I can’t. How could you? How could you forgive someone knowing they cheated
on you?’
‘Because you might not get a second chance to forgive. What I mean is that if you let
things hurt you too badly, you won’t do them anymore. That’s fine when it comes to touching
a hot stove or driving too fast and getting in an accident. We learn our limitations that way.
But if you let love keep on hurting you, without trying to get used to it, you might give that up,
too. Then you’ll be alone like me. It’s okay. I don’t mind.
But I can’t remember anyone loving me anymore. Maybe they did. I just can’t remember.’
I think I answered her last question, but I couldn’t remember it. When I looked over at
her she was crying, and I thought I had said something wrong.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I said. ‘I haven’t been well lately. I didn’t mean to upset you. I
hope…hope that I wasn’t out of line. Please forgive me.’
55
She struggled to speak through her tears. ‘Oh, no, you didn’t say anything wrong, but
what you said about not being able to remember is so sad. I just don’t know if I can forgive
my husband. I know it couldn’t hurt me this badly if I didn’t love him. He begged me. I just
don’t know if I can. It’s not supposed to be this way.’
I only caught the last part about whatever she was talking about; she said that something
was not the way she supposed it to be.
‘Nothing ever is,’ I said with a sigh. ‘Not in my life anyway. I can’t think of one thing
that was the way it was supposed to be. Sometimes better, sometimes not, but different every
time.’
‘What’s your name?’ she asked.
‘Bernard,’ was all I could come up with at the moment.
She extended her hand. ‘I’m Sandy.’
I shook her hand, thinking she was such a lovely girl. She seemed to have been crying.
‘Is there anything I can do to help you, Sandy?’ I asked, not knowing what might be bothering
her.
‘I think you already have, Bernard.’
I didn’t know what she meant. It seemed like something Loren might say—like
something with two meanings. Of course his double meaning always had a sexual overtone
and, confused though I was, I knew this young woman couldn’t mean that.
She gave me a thoughtful, questioning look. ‘If I gave him a second chance, I don’t
know if I could trust him. That’s the part that worries me.’
In my confusion I simply said, ‘Worry is the only issue. Just don’t worry and everything
will take care of itself.’
Her next few words made no sense to me. ‘That’s right… isn’t it?’
Though a question, it didn’t seem like a question for me. I didn’t know what to say;
therefore, I decided to be quiet for a while. She seemed lost in thought, and so I was pretty
sure being quiet was right. There was a dog at my feet.
56
Suddenly, she spoke. ‘I hope you won’t think this too personal Bernard, but did you
and…and Lucy have this problem? Did you ever, you know, cheat on her with another
woman?’
I was grateful for the last part of the question. I didn’t know what she was talking about.
‘I can’t remember if I did, but I don’t think so. I was never much of a Romeo. I’ve
never had much confidence about that sort of thing.’
She was quiet again, but it wasn’t an uncomfortable silence. I knew she was thinking,
but I had no idea what about. How did I know her?
Finally, she said, ‘I just don’t know. Everybody says I should divorce him.’
‘I’m not sure what you mean. But I do know one thing and that is ‘everybody’ doesn’t
know a damn thing. You’re all that matters.’
For just a moment, the clouds parted, and I remembered why I was sitting at the beach.
I remembered driving here, and that I was wearing dark underwear for some reason. And that
it was a thesis I was working on at Long Beach State—a thesis in history. I didn’t know this
young woman, but she was divorcing her husband. And her dog liked me and was friendly,
and I was waiting for dark. I remembered that, too.
‘Are you okay, Bernard?’ she asked.
‘No,’ I replied. ‘Sandy isn’t it?’
She nodded.
‘No,’ I repeated. ‘Sandy I’m not okay. I’m sick and I’m not going to get better. But
don’t worry; it’s okay. What were you saying dear?’
‘That no one, except you, thinks I should give him another chance. I just don’t know
what to do.’
‘You’ll choose between me, who you don’t know and will probably never see again,’ I
began, ‘and ‘everybody,’ who knows you so well that they feel qualified to tell you whether or
not you should end your marriage. I think you want to give him another chance, or you
wouldn’t have brought it up and stayed here after I said it was no big deal. But, you need to
ask yourself how important the judgment of your peers is to you in regard to your marriage?
They may be right, after all. One thing is certain; whether they are or not, they’ll be around to
keep telling you that you did the right thing if you divorce him. If you give your husband
57
another chance, you’ll probably be on your own. You’ll have to be happy with that. And if he
cheats on you again, you may be faced with the same question all over again. But if you cheat
on him and find yourself in the position of having to explain that ‘it was just one of those things
and didn’t mean a thing’ and all of the excuses he gave you that you were having none of the
first time around, you’ll still be the bigger person because you forgave him whether he forgives
you or not.’
Her smile was genuine. ‘How do you know so much?’
I shook my head back and forth. ‘I don’t. I’m generalizing and theorizing. That’s all
we’re ever left with anyway: our intellect, our heart, and sometimes our instincts. Ask Lucy
here. She knows as much as any of us when it comes to love. She loves you and I suspect she
loves your husband, too. She won’t know why he isn’t around to love anymore if you divorce
him, and you may find yourself wondering the same thing.’
She was quiet again. It made me sad for her. She was lovely. The rules for her were
different. Things were a lot harder for her because of it. I never knew that problem. I was
never good looking or popular, and the only person who ever wanted to go to bed with me was
Loren.
‘It should be easier, you know.’
I agreed. ‘It seems it should. I’m sure it can be. I’ve never figured out how though.’
‘Thank you Bernard,’ she said. ‘I think you were an answer to my prayer somehow.
No matter what I decide, thank you.’
She came over and kissed my cheek, and Lucy put her paws in my lap, stood up, and
smiled. I petted Lucy a final time, and they walked away. As they did, I began wondering
what the significance of my dark underwear could be. Sandy and Lucy. Seems like I knew a
Lucy once. I can’t remember though.
The sun was about an inch from the houses down by Seal Beach. It would be getting
dark soon. That’s what I was waiting for, but I wish I could remember why. It seemed like
Huntington Beach, dark underwear and after the sun goes down was enough information to put
something together. There was definitely a purpose to all of this. I wouldn’t have ventured
this far from home without a purpose.
I reflected on how my medication, if that’s what it was, just sort of kicked in for a while
there while I was visiting with that girl. I hoped that she would be alright. I couldn’t blame
58
my exchange with her for knocking me off track. I think I was unclear when I got out of the
car. If I could remember when I decided on this course of action, I could piece it together, I’m
sure. I came to the beach to do something. I watched some surfers. They were nearly in front
of me now. I don’t think I moved. The waves were breaking farther down the beach when I
arrived. Now they were in front of me but a little farther out. Behind them, there was a boat—
several boats actually. No speed boats or jet things though.
I decided to go for a walk. I’d walk down by the water, and maybe I’d remember. As
I did, I noticed the sun was already halfway beneath the rooftops. It was beautiful. I’m not
much for that sort of thing. But it was beautiful and was my last sunset. That was it! I
understood about the underwear and the ocean and the speedboat and Catalina…Santa Catalina.
It was the kind of problem solving joy that I hadn’t felt in many years. Like the look on a
student’s face when he…when he finally figures something out. A student. My students!
There were so many faces, so many years, and all the papers. It was too much, and it was too
long, and it brought tears to my eyes. I stopped and looked out to sea. For a moment I
visualized a surf breaking at the top with all of the papers: the hand-outs, the schedules, the
purple-blue froth of mimeographed quiz booklets tumbling as the three pages pulled against
the staple. There was the butcher Tarlton and the Bacon Rebellion and Benedict Arnold. He
rode that day, ignoring the pain, and rallying already broken lines at Saratoga, the blood from
his leg smearing the underside of the gray. With a wink here, a vote of encouragement there,
his valor alone would lead them to cross that line that mortal fear keeps sane men away from.
With victory, they would say to one another, ‘General Arnold, there was a man.’
I hadn’t cried at all. But having walked away from it, I hadn’t been the same either.
Now I cried. What a loss! Not this, a life without a life! And it killed me as sure as I stood
there. It made me insane, and now it was far too late. Perhaps Eddie Rosenthal would keep
up the good fight. God knows he fought me enough. If it wasn’t paper clips and rubber bands,
it was bubble gum and a CD earpiece. I never held his attention for ten seconds consecutively
that year. Now, he’s teaching American History in Barstow.
But, I wanted to tell you; I
cried and cried and felt much better. I forgot my wallet. I don’t remember if I told you. I
didn’t carry money. It wouldn’t have hurt me to put a twenty in it and leave it behind for
somebody.
The surf, where moments earlier I visualized my life’s work crashing to the shore, broke
over my body and pulled my dark under shorts down to my ankles. I pulled them up quickly,
but I’m afraid if anyone was watching from the shore, they were on the
59
receiving end of an unintended salute and brief commentary on the life I was trying to escape
with yet some dignity.
I wondered, in those first few strokes, if it was possible to forget how to swim. Not in
the case of some muscular dysfunction, of course. I mean forgetting mentally of which I’ve
accumulated some experience of late. Could you forget how to swim? Clearly, I hadn’t and
to this point, it felt wonderful. I turned around and took a look; it was only a few hundred
yards. There really wasn’t much to see. I turned around again and tried for a moment to peer
through the mist and perhaps see Santa Catalina. I couldn’t, of course, nor would I likely come
within sight of it. I could see a buoy marker of some sort and thought I’d make an initial goal
out of it.
A friend of Loren’s told me of a video he purchased in preparation for some triathlon
he was doing. He spoke of ‘totally immersed’ swimming or something like that. My idea of
swimming is, and has always been, propelling oneself through the water with one’s head out
of the water in order to breathe. ‘A passé concept,’ he said, explaining that all that resistance
was unnecessary to maintain breath. He went on and on and finally said, ‘You’ve never done
a triathlon have you?’
I said, ‘No,’ and resisted the temptation to add that I’d never taken it up the butt either.
In a way I wish I had—said it, that is. Anyway, the substance of his concept was that,
if you rotated your head just right, you could keep it down all the time, expelling breath
underwater and taking it in on the up-turn. I made a brief stab at it and wound up coughing up
seawater as a result. It made me remember that Catalina was my goal in name only and that
what I was really up to would acquaint my lungs with enough seawater to end a lifetime.
I began to tire rather quickly, within, I’d say, fifty to a hundred yards of the buoy. Also,
the buoy was lit, and I thought for a moment that I saw some movement on its base, possibly
seals. I wasn’t sure they’d understand. That and a rest was something I really didn’t want.
Soon, there would be all the rest in the world. Against my instinct, I turned a bit further south
and before long was beyond it. I was very tired but fought the urge to turn over on my back.
In the end, perhaps it was true. Perhaps I lost my nerve. Maybe I didn’t feel the bump.
I thought I did but in my fatigue, perhaps not. In any case, it seemed like only a moment later
when a boat came by, shining a light on the water. I waved. Whether or not it was a shark that
bumped me, I’ll never know. A woman and her dog, who said she had talked to me, came back
by and saw my clothing by the rock. She told them I said I was sick and wouldn’t be getting
60
better. They initiated a search. I got pretty far actually, a few miles anyway. I told them I’d
gotten disoriented, but they were having none of it.
So, now, I’m here. It’s not as bad as I imagined, and I’m better off than most. Loren
came once. He explained that he wouldn’t be coming back. He said it was the place and that
he just hated me being here. I’m sure it was partly true. What he didn’t say was that I was no
longer a potential conquest. In my deranged state, even if only at times, he’d feel perverted by
just flirting; it would be as if he were somehow trying to take advantage of a child. I told him
I understood and thanked him for coming. He cried.
This nice looking young woman came to see me. She asked if I remembered her and I
said yes; however, I’m sure I never saw her before. She said she had a dog with her, but they
wouldn’t let her bring her in. That was somewhat confusing, but I asked if I could go out so
she could have the dog. They said ‘maybe later’ which is institutionalese for ‘not in this
lifetime.’ She told me that she and her husband stayed together, and she thanked me for that.
She said I had advised her and that I was right, and it was going well. She was very good
looking, and when she asked me if she could visit me again, I told her I’d like that. One day,
after a visit, I saw her husband with the dog waiting outside by the car. He looked like an
asshole. The dog was a cutie though; there was something familiar about her.
But as I said, on the whole, it isn’t that bad. This new medication they put me on brings
it all back at times, parts of it anyway. I’m not too sure how it all happened or who some of
these names I have floating around in my head belong to: Maria and Ronnie and Lucy and
Allen or Adam or something. The food is not that bad, and as I said, I’ve got it better than
most so they mostly leave me alone. I read a little but only for a sitting. There’s nothing on
TV, but this one guy down the hall has a great collection of old music. I don’t know what
you’d call it exactly. I’ve never been much for music. But I like his music. When he acts up,
they take it away, so I try to calm him down sometimes.
I’m not sure how long I’ve been here, but I feel pretty good. I’ve come to believe that’s
not too bad. What occurred that brought me to this point seems less important to me now. I
think it was important once. I’m not sure why.
61
Phlebas
Niall Quinn
He had shouldered his burden out into the waistdeep and felt his kidneys begin to freeze in the
black waste, the mouths of tiny fish snap at the
brainless breathing man succumbing to the silent
tide. . .the piergirders groan and the swallows'
feathers batten in the noiseless breeze — he knows
the ocean to be men's tears, echoing silent deep
green. Of course you enjoined separation from the
others, and now that you have alit only the barren
outposts of the unfigured landscape trawl into
vision. Homogenous, hard and pimpling with a
cold, nervous diluvian energy — eden or the scarred
horizon ceding its black dreams into your tightened
heart, outcrop eternity, scurrying lizard in the
human size moving windwise evilly ashore. A step
further in the blind sound and the shelf will give
way in sand and mossy rocks to death and the old
city where your choked lungs and fever reckon
with the corpses of lamias bound down by clinging
weed. The burnished world bellows in your salt eye
and the night sets below the peopled oceans
heaving interior, lungless driven grave. Opening
and closing the water, the world of a bubble gives
and the cold grips the bodies turning worlds
darkness moaning rich notochord.
62
Psillapterous on a sled toasting bitters to Angostina
A love story in rapturous cerulean
Niall Quinn
Scherzo
A leverage into 16 thrones
amazing circles unproofed
moist abjure on the return
ten gutters emptied of bluebells
charges of knights on denizened
steeds. Whitewater rafting de
rigueur. Closed toasted masters
blunted entry on salivation. Cue
the rostered Rosario, rampant ego aforementioned priapic impulse
another rorid matador of the
blunt member quivering in the preen
scene.
Limp account on cavalcade.
Jettison all cartilage to boot.
Baleful renditions on the carved lute
Savour savvies on entry. Call it
tickle the ear and the slithery
hoot, a balloon, tired withers
slippings of a terminal trick echoing
on the delicious arc of an exit.
jism epically. Forested caverns and
wooded seas elate in the piercing
Enticed entirely by the glorious
hot radiant dew of a Spanish
Jade and azure carpet of insect
morning. Toast jasmine. Allcomers
sun Angostina scrolls a palimpsest
of erotic moment, exact return
have you seen the stone I left
pumped serried lover ascending duly inscribed in lurid cathedrals, draped
to the Allplace once eyes have
pleats of purple beneficence rolled
tingled orange in the light. un
parched sepia-blend before you were
starling parade
born?
Pity to forget your name. The room He was there with the note in his
will-do. Kiss me then Shanghai you pocket, silent, allowing chic
little whore. No? Then I You. Yes,
breeze to jar a pleasant chord
just there on your pink jewel.
for her dry ear. Poor Psillapterous.
Poor
parasol.
63
Undiluted Shorts
Brindley Hallam Dennis
Mondays I don’t even look in. It’s the quietest day of all. Billy and Sue look after the lunchtime.
I never like to have just one on duty behind the bar, even on quiet days. You never know what’s
coming through the door. Monday evenings it is Irene and Gary. Gary has been in the business
long enough. He’s perfectly capable of locking up and looking after the takings.
Tuesdays I skip the lunchtime. Instead, I come in early for the evening opening. Gary hangs on
until I arrive and we do the paperwork then. Jill works the Tuesdays with me.
I stand the lunchtime session with Irene on Wednesday, and with Billy for the evening session.
Thursday Maureen and Jim handle the lunchtime, and Gary and Sue do the evening. I take a
look in to see how they’re getting on.
Friday we are all there. Right the way through. Tamsin, Malik, and me.
Saturday is the same.
Sunday we use a couple of students. People think they are called “hey you”, but their names
change so rapidly.
We get a different crowd each session.
Monday evenings it’s the broken hearts. The guys tell it all to Irene. Gary watches from the
end of the bar. Sometimes you get a middle aged woman drinking gin and weeping on his
shoulder. Gary knows I’m depending on him though, for the locking up, and the money. He
tells them he’s off tomorrow evening, but they never come back.
Wednesday, and I don’t know why this is, but we get the shoppers. You can’t move around the
bar for the bags. The gossip makes your hair curl, or it would if I had any left.
Friday evenings it’s the drinking frenzy before they go home for the weekend, and then it goes
quiet for an hour or two before the late night crowd comes in.
The weekend, you’d think we’d moved the bar out of town. We get people you never see during
the week.
There are one or two regulars who come in night after night. There are one or two come in day
after day. Gary says you can categorise them by the stories they tell. I say, who needs to
64
categorise them? He says, reason not the need, and then looks disappointed because I don’t
comment that he’s quoting Shakespeare.
He doesn’t say so, but I know they tell different stories to the different bar staff. Stands to
reason they would. I mean, Irene and Sue? You wouldn’t go telling them the same story. I
know all the stories. I’ve heard them all before, but that was a long time ago. Maybe I’ll hear
them all again. My name’s Halcrow. Some people like to call me Birdie.
Sometimes I think they’re going to tell their stories to me, but I can see that they’re not sure
which ones to tell. Sometimes I wonder if I could tell my story to them.
65
listening to dean blunt I
Tom Crompton
broke and
frontal
I wrote you one in d. blunt
It goes tom
against everything
tom in black &suited
grade tom in chordal aspiring
to the baby
pink
above metal town
where father
blue crop
with chords in alternate
never died
in the garden
we are worth
our metal slides
away like butter
from our knowing
worry about nothing
baby pink
shading pink
is november 7s
backdrop a pink sky frame
from the tubular
surrounded in the company
by visionary
angles of strung robin& jay
66
o we babble too
let you know
still warm if you’re coming
closer too
67
listening to dean blunt II
Tom Crompton
lush red
grain is painted leather
forever crook
in a thigh
asleep in her light on the floor
like a moments sculptured
sculptural hang
hung over
(and hung touch
through wigan
before the outline of
travelling
blue
materialisms (an
Alsatian with
big hesitating tongue
crushed in the book
was this
kit for shining
dial
crucify and repeat
her blue-green
our foundation
bomb
laid down in secret patterns
like the founding
camera floated
In worm position
in the garden of
taken sound
the shelves take
68
on concrete where
broken
where house is hole for rearranging
our
broken
waking
common broke
hair of a white rabbit coming
69
My Favourite Game
Raif Mansell
Pluck each box from its cage, disembowel
and strip to flat-pack pick furthest recycle receptacle, launch
with flicked wrist. The bar busied, bankers upstairs
equals opponent; as sport dictates, broaden contrasts
between teams. Throw softly. Land
softly. Position yourself both as player and as dewy eyed fan
either side of the stands; their tokens of restlessness,
their belief as importance keeps them returning.
70
Peach Ice Tea
Niamh McMullan
It was a sunny Saturday afternoon when we first met. Flip flops and board shorts, aisle 10,
inspecting a box of eggs. My friend introduced us. They hugged and laughed at a private joke.
I stared at the curve of her ear.
She painted about the sins she felt in her sleep.
‘So like, surreal things?’ I asked. The cafe was loud around us.
‘I mean, what does surreal even mean?’
I hummed into my coffee.
Through the chaos; my heart thumping in my throat, she grabbed my arm. Room full of bass,
beats, and bodies, sweat dripping off the walls. Her eyes were dark and my stomach felt heavy.
I realised that fear and longing felt exactly the same.
She was the flame, and I – I was happy to burn.
Soon, my life was filled with her.
Mid-morning coffee, library visits, a night in a gin bar, a night at hers learning about
constellations.
She smelt of ocean air and laughed with her entire body.
We kissed one night.
Warm breeze in the air, we were both a little bit hazy from the cocktails.
She took my hand. The view from the bridge was clouded, all I could see was the way
her thumb brushed against the back of my hand.
My life became devoid of her. Mid-morning coffee became early morning coffee because I
couldn’t face her.
I missed when she ran upstairs two at a time, and how she spoke in lists when something
annoyed her.
-
71
The air was clear when I saw the constellation she loved the most.
The first time we argued was the first time I had ever seen her face fill with ice.
Something stupid, how she didn’t call me after that night, but how I didn’t call her either. I
caught myself confessing to her shoes.
I looked up, and so did she.
The fog sank around us, and her eyes had never seemed heavier before.
My arm wrapped around her, she kissed my throat and murmured an apology.
I whispered into her hair, ‘do you like to break hearts?’
Somewhere in the depths of her dreams, she cried, ‘only yours.’
We’re in the woods when I start to feel that vibration again.
She smiles when we find a lake and she jumps in. But I stay at the side, my trainers soaked.
She rises out of the water, smiles indulgently and then kisses me before submerging again.
She finally says it, when the sun is at its brightest and it’s as though she can see my dreams,
because she breaks away from me and sighs. Her eyes are dark again and my heart is beating
softly in my chest.
She feels like home.
She grinned at me from across her gallery. My stomach dropped, my feet felt numb.
‘We’re gonna be late,’ I said, stood at the front door.
She's grabbing her shoes and lipstick and probably an encyclopaedia because when we’re late
she loses her mind.
‘I know-I know,’ she hissed.
‘By all means take your time,’ I said, fiddling with the heel on my shoe.
She glared at me, a strand of hair covered her eye and a little red in her cheeks.
‘Because it doesn't actually start till half past,’ I finished, wincing as she pales.
We arrived at quarter to, but the redness in her cheeks isn't from anger this time.
-
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When she worked, she tucked pencils into her hair, behind her ear and balanced on her upper
lip.
Inspiration would strike; she’d jump up with excitement and lose every single pencil under the
sofa.
I leave for work early, but later than I should.
She was fast asleep when I got in the shower, but when I got out, she's sat up, sleep in her eyes
and holding the pillow I put in my place.
‘I'll see you tonight,’ I murmured to her cheek.
‘Yeah, you will,’ she said, as a grin devoured her face.
She took pictures of me waking up, arms flung over my head. I could hear the shutter when I
was cooking, when I was in the bath.
‘I suppose we won’t hang that one up,’ she said, grinning from her place leaning against the
door.
I rolled my eyes and flushed the toilet when she was in the shower.
She kissed me with delight, eyes wide and heart open when I pulled away. She grinned and
brought me back to earth, grabbing my hand and the dog lead.
‘I’m thinking of dying my hair,’ she said, one lazy morning.
I mumbled something about seizing the day from the mattress.
‘I don’t know, maybe I wouldn’t look good with red hair,’ she mused. She got out of
bed and looked in the mirror. ‘I just think that change is good. That and staying the same.’
‘Staying in bed is good,’ I said, sitting up.
She was in checked shorts and an old Foo Fighters top. She grinned at my reflection.
‘Staying in bed is good.’
Thoughts of dyed hair were lost in between the blanket and pillows.
On Sunday, we had a shower and ate poached eggs on toast.
Late hours became the new normal. I grew accustomed to pot noodles and eventually, just a
meal deal; cheese and pickle on rye, prawn cocktail crisps and a peach ice tea.
She would crawl into bed, 1am, 2:33am, 3:07am, until one night she didn’t.
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I saw her in the studio, sat cross-legged, paintbrushes and pencils stuck in her hair. Three coffee
cups on the floor, one overturned.
Sins lined the walls.
One morning, she ran out of the house without a second glance at me. I was making coffee
when she rushed passed.
My cheerful greeting was met with a slamming door.
I didn't see her for two weeks. And that was fine. Except nothing about this was fine.
It’s Christmas Eve, and I see her in the gallery, laughing and clutching a champagne flute. Her
hand on the bicep of an Armani suit, filled with high cheekbones and IQ.
The winter winds swept me away.
She’s furious. With me.
The clenching in my stomach eases, but only because my heart takes the brunt.
My coffee is cold.
I found her at midnight, lit by only the moon – struck down on the bathroom floor, long limbs
tangled and eyes confused.
I sat down beside her.
She cried until sunrise.
I'm leaving when I see the photos out of the corner of my eye – one of me curled up on the
sofa, clutching onto the blanket her aunt Sarah made, the one that smelled of cigarette smoke
and liked to play dominos. Another where I'm exactly the same, but her face takes up half the
picture – beaming and her eyes crinkled like I hadn't seen since Christmas Eve.
I shut the door behind me.
When the New Year’s first snow glistened around my feet, I snapped.
The first one was soft and full of empty promises.
His eyes were bright, but he didn't like to fill silence with inane chatter.
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Number four woke with dry kohl on her cheek, regret stuck in my throat.
Saturday came and my friend kicked down my front door, made me coffee and let me cry.
‘She rang me seventeen times yesterday,’ she said, tight-lipped. ‘To ask if you’re okay and are
you seeing anyone else and how the dog is – why did you leave her?’
My bones felt like ice.
Number five was a dreadful encounter – fumbling in the night followed by a hasty exit.
There was nothing wrong with her.
I was in bed when it hit me why no one else would ever compare. The dull thud in my stomach,
the muddy waters that my mind had become – you’re in love with her – and then nothing.
Days passed, as days often do.
I found echoes of her in everything I did. Her pencils underneath my sofa, a hair on the
pillow on the wrong side of the bed, her damn encyclopaedia.
Weeks passed, as weeks often do.
I felt her against me as I slept, and when I woke to an empty room, my eyes stinging in
the 3am darkness, I fumbled for my notebook.
FORGIVE ME FATHER
FOR I HAVE SINNED
SOMEONE TOOK THE TIME
TO CARVE IT UPON MY SKIN.
I was stood in the train station when I saw her again. I had missed my train by a second, and
watched it pass by me.
She was stood on the platform opposite me. For a split second, I nearly ran across the tracks to
her. Her hair was wet and my hands were numb.
She saw me.
Mouth open, about to take a drink of her coffee, she saw me.
75
Finding Poetry in Sao Paulo
Yessica Klein & Raif Mansell
76
CUBAN RESCUE 1942
Ben Fine
War is so much more than battles and strategy. Amid the clash of armies, common people are
caught up in the crush of events and the narrative of their lives swirls about the conflict and
death that happen during the fighting. Among wars, World War Two was so vast and so
horrific that it had thousands of such stories far from the battlefield. This is one of those stories.
My father, Reuben Fine, was an international chess grandmaster. He died in 1993 but
still is considered among the top five all-time greatest American chess players. He won the
United States Open Championship seven times, played in thirteen major international
tournaments, won seven of them and had a legitimate claim to the world championship. Within
the chess world he was and is considered a great enigma since after World War Two he walked
away from competition, went back to school, and became a psychologist.
His playing career was mostly in the nineteen thirties before the Second World War put
a temporary halt to international chess competition. The world champion in the late thirties was
Alexander Alekhine, a Russian who moved to France and became an anti-Semitic fascist. In
those years the champion chose his own challengers and Alekhine refused to play for the title
against any Jews or Russians. Luckily for him the majority of the next ten strongest players
were either Russian or Jewish or both.
Frustrated by Alekhine and his weak choices of challengers, FIDE, the World Chess
Federation, put together a tournament in Holland in 1938 that was sponsored by the Dutch
broadcasting company AVRO and therefore is known as the AVRO tournament. It featured
the eight strongest players in the world: world champion Alexander Alekhine, former world
champions Jose Capablanca of Cuba and Max Euwe of Holland, future champion Mikhail
Botvinnik of the Soviet Union and challengers Reuben Fine and Sam Reshevsky of the United
States, Paul Keres and Salo Flohr of the Soviet Union. It was the strongest chess tournament
ever held. My father tied Paul Keres for the tournament victory and hence both had claims on
the world title, although nothing was done during the war. When the war ended, FIDE invited
my father to play Mikhail Botvinik for the title in a match in Argentina. They also tried to set
up a tournament with the remaining AVRO players with Vasily Smislov replacing Flohr. My
father, in graduate school at the time, refused to participate and walked away from chess. FIDE
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held the tournament with the five remaining AVRO players. It was won by Mikhail Botvinnik
who held the world title until 1963. A series of Russians then held the world championship
until Bobby Fisher defeated Boris Spassky in Iceland in 1972.
There wasn’t much money in professional chess during the thirties and before the war
my father had to scramble to earn a living. He wrote chess books and worked as a chess
correspondent. For a while, he lived in Mexico and was offered a job teaching Mexican Army
officer’s chess. Mexico and the Mexican government were strongly anti-American and several
senior officers complained about paying an American, so my father received a commission as
a Captain in the Mexican army so that he could be paid. He stayed in Mexico for almost a year.
He lived in Cuba for a time as a guest of his friend Jose Capablanca the former world chess
champion from 1921 until 1927. In Cuba, my father gave chess exhibitions and became a hero
to the Cuban intelligentsia, something that will play a part in the remainder of our story.
Jacob Keesing was a very wealthy Jewish Dutch publisher who handled chess books.
My father worked as a correspondent for Keesing who then translated several of my father’s
books into Dutch. Through Keesing, my father met Keesing’s daughter Emmy, who became
my father’s first wife and the love of his life. My mother was his second wife.
When the outbreak of the war brought a temporary end to international chess
competition my father brought Emmy back to live in New York and then took a job in
Washington D.C. for the United States Navy as a translator. He spoke seven languages fluently
and for this Navy position he needed Dutch, German, Spanish and Italian. Italian he knew the
least but being fluent in French, Spanish and Portuguese he could translate Italian.
Emmy may have been the love of his life but my father had a wandering eye. Within
our family the same thing was said about my father as was said about his father, Jake, ‘he had
trouble keeping his pants on.’ He and Emmy were divorced in 1941. In Washington my father
was offered a position with the Navy in a special group, consisting of mathematicians and
engineers, whose purpose was to study war-related problems. They were part of an admiral’s
staff and worked in a Washington building that was designated a ship. My father had the Navy
rank of lieutenant, had a master’s degree in mathematics and was ABD (all but a dissertation)
in mathematical logic. This background, combined with the chess background, led to his
invitation to be in this select group. The group was led by Norman Steenrod, a well-known
mathematician from Princeton, who was one of the founders of modern algebraic topology.
The group itself, in studying transport and strategic problems, worked on an area of
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mathematics called Linear Programming and out of their work the mathematical discipline
called Operations Research developed. Operations Research or OR is now an important part of
business and mathematical curricula in many large universities.
In late 1941, before Pearl Harbor, as the Germans took control of Holland and the
horrors of the Nazi regime became known, Jacob Keesing led a group of other wealthy Jews
out of Holland on a ship to America. When Keesing’s ship arrived in America, the State
Department refused to allow the refugees to enter the United States, and turned them away.
The movie Voyage of the Damned chronicled a similar refugee ship which went back to Europe
and the vast majority went on to die in concentration camps. It is one of the shameful episodes
in American history that the Roosevelt administration basically turned its back on fleeing
European Jews until it was too late.
Keesing, rather than return to Europe, had the ship go to Cuba where he had many
contacts, both Jews and non-Jews. He was well-known in the publishing world and he thought
that the educated community in Cuba would welcome them.
In 1942, Fulgencio Batista was in charge of the Cuban government. He had assumed
power in a military coup in 1938 and then was elected Cuban president from 1940 until 1944.
He subsequently went in and out of power until 1959 when Castro finally ousted him for good.
For much of the late forties and early fifties Batista was in the pocket of the American gangster
Meyer Lansky who controlled prostitution and the casinos and paid off the Cuban officials.
As the Keesing ship entered Havana harbor, Batista discovered that this band of
refugees was extremely wealthy. He allowed the group to disembark but then imprisoned them
in a camp outside of Havana and demanded a ransom for their release. The refugees could have
handled their ransoms but after fleeing Nazi-controlled Holland the bulk of their individual
funds was not available to them.
The American Jewish Congress (AJC) managed to raise the money for the ransom and
needed someone with some credibility in Cuba, as well an ability in Spanish, to go to Havana
and negotiate the release. They contacted my father who was a given a leave from his Navy
job to travel to Cuba with an AJC team to handle the negotiations. This was a secret mission
because the AJC did not want to embarrass the State Department, knowing that they would
need the support of the U.S. government for future refugees.
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It took three months and two trips to Cuba in what my father described as a cloak and
dagger mission. He and the AJC reps met with several shady Cuban officials, with bribes at
each point, but didn’t actually meet with Batista. Ultimately they managed to get the funds to
Batista and arrange for the release of Keesing’s group. In the meantime, the AJC had negotiated
with the Mexican government to allow the refugees to go temporarily to Mexico. Released
from the internment in Havana, Keesing led his group to Mexico where they spent the
remainder of the war. After the Nazis were defeated and Holland was liberated, most returned
to the Netherlands; one Holocaust experience less tragic than most.
After the rescue, my father returned to his Navy position in Washington. When the war
ended, he moved to Los Angeles and entered graduate school in psychology at the University
of Southern California. In 1948 he earned a Ph.D. in Psychology and then moved back to New
York, became a psychoanalyst and formed his own institute in New York City.
My father revealed the details of this story to me in the late 1960’s, however it was
never officially written or made public because of the secrecy that surrounded it. In the late
1990’s, after my father’s death, someone at the History Channel discovered my father’s work
in the Operations Research Group and his involvement in the ransoming of the Dutch refugees.
I was contacted by a representative from the History Channel who told me that they were
developing a series on the Second World War and they wanted to include these incidents. He
asked if I could verify them. I related the story to him over the phone but I don’t believe the
episode was ever filmed or aired.
My father was never secretive and he liked to talk about his life. He spoke many times
about his chess career and his life both during the thirties and then after the war. Yet, he spoke
very little about his wartime experiences. This changed dramatically during the late nineteen
sixties. It was during the Vietnam War, I was in graduate school in mathematics, and subject
to the draft. Healthy and an athlete, there was nothing to prevent me from going into the service.
As I waited to find out about my induction status, my father opened up and spoke in detail
about his part in the Second World War. Beyond telling me what he did, he further told me of
his feelings and from this he and I had long conversations about the military and war in general.
As part of the OR group he read many secret internal reports that were never revealed
to the general public. The horror and stupidity that he observed affected him deeply, much as
if he had been on a battleship, rather than a “ship” in the middle of Washington. His
observations were a major reason that he turned to psychology. It was an effort he told me to
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try to understand the cruelty of humans and why the world went collectively insane for ten
years. The Nazi Holocaust was the ultimate evil insanity but it was by no means the only one.
Millions died in the Russian Gulags, and the Red Army, as it swept across Eastern Europe
when the Nazis retreated, was out of control. American representatives had to beg their Russian
allies to stop the Russian army rapes of civilians. The Japanese Army killed an estimated
twenty million Chinese civilians, several hundred thousand in the Rape of Nanjing alone. My
father read reports of massacres from all over, most never made public He told me of a massacre
of nine thousand Serbs by the Ustashi, the Croatian Nazi allies, a massacre repaid fifty years
later by the Serbs. The callousness and cruelty of the dictator Batista, in extorting money from
people facing almost certain death if they were sent back, seemed minor in light of these major
events.
Perhaps surprisingly my father fully supported the use of the atomic bomb. In early
1945, with the war in Europe almost over, he was given the task of evaluating how long it
would take to finally defeat the Japanese. Given the ferocity and fight-to-the-last-man
philosophy exhibited by the Japanese army in Iwo Jima and Okinawa, it was determined that
only a full-scale invasion of the Japanese homeland would end the war. They estimated that
this would result in over two million deaths, mostly Japanese. My father claimed, as many
others have done, that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the subsequent quick
surrender of Japan, actually saved over a million lives. Whether it was worth opening the
Pandora’s Box of nuclear weapons he never commented on.
He also told me that through his work with the OR group he had access to classified
information and analysis on strategy and on the capabilities of the generals and admirals. His
contention was that one of the reasons that the United States was so successful in World War
Two was that, in his words, ‘the civilian leadership in the War Department realized how crucial
victory was, so that the conduct of the war could not be left to the professional military.’
Therefore they chose leaders based on ability rather than seniority. Eisenhower, for example,
jumped over thirty-two senior officers to become the commander-in-chief; something that was
greatly resented by many of the senior military. Based on this classified internal information
my father had a low opinion of Patton, MacArthur and Halsey.
I urged him to write down all of his wartime experiences and his opinions. He was a
prolific author with over fifty books in both chess and psychology. His chess books still sell
thirty years after his death and are considered classics. His book The History of Psychoanalysis
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was given a front page review in the New York Times ‘Sunday Review of Books’. But he
refused to write up anything about the war. He told me that his opinions would be controversial,
especially criticizing such American heroes as MacArthur, and he didn’t want the hassle.
As for me, I wound up being drafted out of graduate school in 1969, but stayed stateside;
all part of a different tale.
There are several small codas that accompany this story. He married my mother Sonya
Lebeaux, an artist and social worker, in Los Angeles in 1946 and in 1949 the two of them went
to Cuba through an invitation of the Cuban chess federation. My father gave several chess
exhibitions and he and my mother were guests at an official state dinner given by Cuban
president Juan Prio. During the dinner my mother sat next to President Prio’s wife. At one
point, Mrs. Prio suddenly said to my mother, off-handedly but with obvious pride, ‘Friday is
my day in the lottery.’ My mother nodded but with no idea of what the President’s wife meant.
After the dinner she had my father ask and he was told that all the proceeds of the Friday Cuban
lottery went directly to Mrs. Prio.
Prio was ousted in 1952 by Batista, who returned to power, but Prio took several
hundred million dollars with him into exile in Spain. Batista, after his final ouster in 1959, also
managed to leave Cuba with a fortune; taking it with him into his final exile in Portugal.
Also on that 1949 trip to Cuba my father and mother had dinner with the famous
gangster Meyer Lansky. Lansky, despite being a thug, considered himself a liberal intellectual.
Hearing that there was a famous Jewish chess player in Cuba he invited him to dinner. My
father said that Lansky was friendly and knew a bit about chess.
In 2009 I was contacted by Miriam Keesing, Jacob Keesing’s granddaughter and Emmy
Keesing’s niece. She introduced herself as a “sort of relative”. She was writing a book on her
grandfather and wanted to include material on Emmy and my father. She told me, ‘Everyone
in the family loved Uncle Ruby and were sorry that he and Emmy divorced.’ She then asked
me, ‘I know he must have married your mother, but was he ever married again?’ By the time
he died he had been married five times, forever having trouble keeping his pants on.
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A Thought While Fishing After a Spring Storm
Larry Thacker
Muddy water in early spring isn’t such a bad omen.
They say muddy water in dreams is a death sign,
but that’s about as far as people go. No details,
really. Just a dread infused into our potential dreams.
Perhaps we’re afraid of what might be under that
water’s roiling surface, the vanished equally rough
whitewater we enjoy seeing, setting us at ease, but
the tarnished version, muddied and dark, robs our
confidence in our knowledge of the friendly water.
Mud in water is like blood. Unavoidably invades
the crystal of our future seeing, it camouflages
the river monsters we’ve forgotten we left behind
in childhood and other lives. We fear these beings
will resurface, up from the boiling brown of flood,
up from where we’ve buried the blessed and cruel
reminders, up from the most ignored corners we’ve
scooted out of sight from our sleeping eyes. Spring
is different, in my version of the folk saying, fresh
and full of what mights and what ifs and whethers.
The green up over that muddy scene tells us a thing
or two about promise, might honor a lesson on living
for those willing to stare out over to the other bank
and into the black of an unknown tree line, maybe
dip our vulnerable hands down into the muddy tide
and be OK with what we pull up out of the question.
83
Flag Fen
Clare Marsh
Under the distant hum of the power station
ancient posts protrude, stumps of rotten teeth.
A waterlogged causeway of oak, ash and alder
overlays a Neolithic track in a liminal landscape
where boundaries blur between earth
water and sky— the living and the dead.
Broken bronze daggers, spearheads, swords
purposely put beyond human use.
Potsherd offerings, jewellery,
even a wheel, all cast into peat-dark water
from an island platform— ritual sacrifice
at the threshold of belief.
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Freeways of Darkness
Richard King Perkins II
The night expels me;
I release insects from my heart.
The pulpish earth is grasping like tomorrow.
Pleasure is always in the anticipation,
the serendipity of bursting open
which excites the neurons to crest in white.
The sunken living room
intersects its descent with forgotten mines,
freeways of darkness seep outward
like clouds of ash.
Portent offers an opposition to one’s pleasure.
Why do I question my stated intention?
Will the moon someday be found criminal
for its ageless thievery?
The soul is a vivarium, a breeding place of motive
and I listen to the earliest prenatal bleating
drifting like intertwined fingers
within the first identity.
Sadness arrives on a blanket of dew.
Core samples of love
indicate a monobloc of suffering.
The only thing I fear is leaving you;
and so much more than that—
you leaving me.
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Waiting
Robert Schuster
Alex, who was not more than a warped twig, re-read the message glowing in the dark of the
office. The walls flickered blue-white, bathed in the wash residue of the light from the computer
screen that bounced off of his cheeks, his slack mouth, and the strands of hair that he had to
brush from his wet eyes, as he sat tired and sunken in the middle of the night. He tried to make
out the hum of the computer against the tapping of the rain on the window, the patter of water
from the whirr of the fan and actuator arm on the plate.
The response had come days late, when he had given up hope, resolved to forget he’d
stepped into the whole thing in the first place, deliberately. But there it was in front of him,
after he refreshed the page, logged out and back in again, checked the inbox and junk mail for
some sort of follow-up: ‘haha just kidding’ maybe coupled with ‘im not a fag’ or some sort of
threat of retribution. But none of it was there, just the short affirmative punctuating the date,
time, and place. No number to call. It wasn’t that serious. Or maybe he was as skittish as Alex
was. But three days, Saturday, that was serious. Definitive.
He pushed his hair from his eyes again, brushed it behind his ear, and ignored the
clumped sensation spreading from just below his stomach. What would he say? He deleted his
fifth attempt at a reply. It might have seemed too overeager. Or not eager enough, the way the
response he had expected was, insulting, disgusted, downright combative, or worst of all
dismissive.
He pushed back from the desk in the rolling chair, careful to stay on the carpet. The
wheels were ineffective that way, but also silent, a trade-off he’d discovered through years of
clandestine computer use. It was the first among many compromises: headphones only or no
sound at all; no bookmarks, write nothing down, always delete your history, remember what
you were looking at or at the very least how to find it again; be ready with the cordless phone,
be ready with an excuse for why the first call didn’t go through, be ready to knocked offline
during peak hours; use toilet paper, not tissues, so you can dispose of them without a trace. The
phone issue had luckily been solved when they finally installed a splitter so that Dad could
work from home after-hours, but Alex still kept the cordless within arms’ reach.
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The system seemed to work well. The only time he’d been caught, it was videogames
instead of homework, though it’s possible there were other times, other things that no one felt
the need to bring up.
On that thought, he scooted back up to the computer, cleared the history, closed the
browser, and shut down the computer. Saturday, three days from then. Actually, only
technically two if the blinking clock in the corner were to be believed. But sleep was far off
with his stomach being nudged and twisted from the bottom up.
He closed the door to the office, keeping the knob turned and then letting it back out
slowly until he felt it slip into place with a tap just like the rain outside, convenient, and the
door wouldn’t budge. He padded down the hallway, barefoot, each step deliberate, avoiding
the creaks and whines of the house by memory where carpet wasn’t available. Holding the
railing to keep control down the stairs but practically flying, not wanting to lose momentum
lest he be unable to regain his stride, on a roll.
The kitchen was black highlighted in blue, the occasional flash of yellow as the trees
waved outside and a streetlamp shone just so through a gap in the leaves, between rain streaks.
Alex drew a glass of water from the tap; the refrigerator revved up when it dispensed filtered
water, and the tap water tasted fine, a bit like sulphur, damp beyond just the wetness of water
like the smell of mud after the rain has just begun to evaporate. Drinking the entire glass without
tilting it down for a breath, he realized his lips and mouth had been dry, as though he’d just
ended a frantic sprint away from something, a coach, a scout leader, a group of jeering fellow
Seniors hoping to rope him in, in the dark familiarity of his home. He poured another glass and
downed it.
His innards were still wrapped around themselves, tightening in places where he didn’t
know they connected. Putting more into his stomach probably wasn’t such a great idea, or
maybe it was just that water wasn’t going to calm anything down. He felt it move, heard it
slosh, and leaned himself against the counter, breathing slowly, deep. Saturday afternoon. Two
days. Less than three, he could even count down the hours now without losing his place.
Did it matter what he wore, what he brought? Would they eat in? It wasn’t a date, but
maybe it would be a good idea to respond, suggest they meet somewhere nearby, a fast food
place, a diner, somewhere he could make an easy escape when his brain inevitably flipped and
his body followed suit and he made some transparent excuse to step outside and run to his car
where he would feel his date’s, not a date, his hook-up’s eyes on the back of his head as he
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sped off back home. That way, at least, he wouldn’t feel the pressing need to tell anyone what
had transpired, because nothing would have transpired. He’d close his email account before he
even had a chance to see the disappointed, haughty response waiting for him, or wait for it to
show up. I knew you’d chicken out. Don’t bother with an excuse, because I don’t care. When
you grow up, you’ll realize what you missed. Have a nice life.
Alex reached on his tiptoes for the cabinet above the refrigerator. He didn’t need a step
stool this time, though he still couldn’t quite see what was in it. This was the best it would get,
just beyond eighteen, about as tall as Dad. He swept his hand from one side of the shelf to the
other, searching for the clink of his nails against glass. Last time it was vodka. He and Stuart
were bored.
‘We’re in luck,’ he said as Alex grabbed it down by the base, ‘My brother says vodka’s
the best to start out with. You start there and you ease up to the heavier stuff. He was lucky
too. Before they stopped drinking, that’s what our parents had the most of.’ Neither of them
could cough their way through more than a couple of sips, though their torsos were warm and
pleasant and loose, and the bottle went back up into the shadowy corner.
This time, it was different. The base was wide and round, decorated with shallow curves
and grooves. Even in the blue dark, he could see that its contents were brown. Or red, but
definitely not the viscous clarity of his sixteen-year-old foray into his parent’s liquor cabinet.
He held the label up close to his eyes, brushed his hair out of his eyes, squinted at it. Brandy.
That would have to do. His stomach made a sound, jittered. Two days, closer by the minute.
He pulled the corked cap and took a sip. It was hot, but pleasant, burnt caramel and the
faintness of fresh paint or a gasoline pump down the street. He gulped and immediately started
coughing, arm over his mouth, muffling himself into the rain that continued outside. When his
throat calmed, he capped the bottle and pushed it back into the cabinet, unable to see exactly
where it was or had been in the first place. They wouldn’t notice the arrangement of it, how it
was rotated, which side it was closer to, but he did his best to estimate, nudging and turning it
with his fingers. There. No. There.
Freshly warm, wrapped in the flickering ribbons of dark and streetlight, he was relaxed
again in his own home. Two days isn’t so bad. Enough time to be ready.
He made his way up the stairs, feet flat but put down with care, one at a time, in silence.
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*
He had to break his leave-no-trace rule at home to print out the directions. The only
thing worse than having anyone find out at home would be someone finding out at school, in
the library, pulling the sheets off the printer before he could get to it. There was no good excuse
for driving out to the exurbs on a Saturday; he wouldn’t know what to do but own up. One of
the librarians chiding him on the misuse of school resources. Ms. Hollinston, giving yet another
inappropriately mixed prescription of concern, support, advice. Principal Hollinston,
expressing his disappointment, calling his parents in for the first time to have a serious talk
about Alex’s disregard for his health, his future. Kalan or Karen or Harrison holding it up to
ask him a question that was more an announcement than anything: where are you going? Stuart,
not being able to look at him anymore without wondering if there was something else going on
from their very first childhood moment together.
Better for the old family picture to be the only witness. Chelsea in that photo was
everything he wanted to remember of her, and nothing he didn’t. No snooping in his room, preteen requests to play house with her, watch a movie, go outside, when he felt he had all the
reasons in the world not to. Just the good things: the sister who would keep secrets, because
she knew Vanessa would tell Stuart; the sister who learned to leave a closed door closed, who
asked Mom to read her the same books Alex was read, who understood every word, and asked
every question but the ones she knew he didn’t know. The sister who learned how to drive
alone in the time it took him to finally remember to put the parking brake on so the car wouldn’t
roll down the driveway and into the bushes again. Who raced him across the golf course while
people teed off, laughing at their scowls, hiding in the woods, following the deer and looking
up to see the tips of the pines all reaching up to the same point in the same swathe of sky.
He put the directions in his backpack, between two textbooks, mentioned softly in
passing that he was going to meet Stuart at the mall, smiled and nodded at Mom when she told
him to be safe, smiled and nodded at Dad when he paraphrased Mom. ‘Tell him we say hi.’
The highway out of town was empty for a spring Saturday. It would have been nice to
have it that way when he’d taken this exit, Dad in the passenger seat, onto the highway in the
Honda for the first time, missing fourth gear while he was checking his mirror and putting on
the left blinker to merge. He didn’t have to account for anyone else this time, speed up, match
speed, hope someone would be kind enough to allow him to share their space for as long as it
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took him to fit in, meld into the highway traffic sending people in every direction, to every
place imaginable, away from home.
No one was out with him this time. He entered the highway still going forty-five and
took his time pushing the car to fifth. One hour, and maybe a few minutes. On time, there’s no
rush. He glanced over to the paper directions in the passenger seat, arranged neatly so he could
see them. He would throw them away at his regular gas station, a mile from home, on his way
back, whatever the time of night.
Four exits, and then state route the rest of the way. No rush. Can you be fashionably
late to a one-night stand? Probably, if you’ve done it enough. But first time should be by the
books, whatever books those are.
On the off-ramp and over the overpass, Alex saw the glint of the sun off the river,
through the trees. It snaked off to the ocean, splaying out into the marsh, swamps along the
banks sinking and rising under the tides. The road mimicked its path as closely as concrete
could to water, two lanes each way, one toward the highway and then on to home, and the other
out alongside the water, maybe even to its source. He had never been out this way before; he,
his family, everyone he knew, only needed to drive on the city roads, or the interstate, to get to
anything they felt was important, to the immediate outskirts of town, the suburbs and the strip
malls. Without intending to, he’d come to a new frontier on his way to an intentional one.
What really was out this far, just beyond the gaze of his world, his and everyone else’s
immediate field of vision? He would find out, explore, be the trailblazer to arrive home and tell
everyone just what he’d discovered on the other side of their collective isolation. Would they
be surprised, frightened? It wouldn’t matter; he’d have been there, and no one could take that
away from him.
And if he turned now, he wouldn’t have to worry about undeserved fanfare when he
got back. He’d walk in the door, Mom would say, ‘Welcome home,’ Dad would repeat it from
the den, Chelsea’s picture on the entryway table and on the coffee table and the kitchen wall
and the office desk and Mom and Dad’s room and everywhere he could think of would smile
a small smile forever implying what their parents had just told him and hinting at some
understanding of each other’s plans and indiscretions, the kind that curled up under some old
headlines in the dusty back corner of their minds, the little part of being siblings that comes
forward through a glance or nudge that says, ‘I know what you wanted. I know what you were
trying to accomplish. It’s alright that it didn’t work out.’
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As the pines flashed by him just inches from the shoulder, the familiar twist at the back
of his spine reared its head. Roadside signs appeared with more frequency as the sun sank in
the sky and everything turned purple and orange; they warned of railroad crossings, sharp, dark
curves and sudden drops in recommended speed, deer that would see the flashing headlight
cones and inexplicably dash onto the asphalt toward them.
Where was the brandy when he needed it? Why was it in the trunk? Of course there
was really no good reason to have it in the car, in fact every reason not to, but the pull of his
intestines, the joint between them and bottom of his stomach didn’t cease. About twenty
minutes, now.
When the sun was just blood on the horizon, Alex pulled over onto the side of the road,
pulled the parking brake, and put on his hazards. He pulled out his cell phone, only for use in
case of emergencies and for notifying his parents of his whereabouts, and for the first time ever,
he lied into it.
‘Just getting to Stuart’s now.’
‘Honey, don’t call while you’re driving.’ Mom sounded fuzzy, more distant than he
expected.
‘Sorry. Just. Wanted to let you know.’
‘I trust you honey. Just be safe.’ He heard a rustling on the other end. ‘Going to watch
some movies?’
‘. . . Yeah. Maybe. We’ll figure it out.’
‘Alright. Your father and I are just having a quiet night in.’
A pause. He thought he could hear her breathing, inhaling before saying something, but
she never did. He didn’t either, until finally he started to crack, steadying himself against the
wheel and pulling his legs up so his feet were flat on the floor for the moment when he would
admit what he was up to. She spoke first.
‘Tell them hi for us. Have a good night.’
‘You too Mom.’
‘Love you.’
‘You too Mom.’
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He anticipated the hang-up, but he ended up pushing the button first. They knew, didn’t
they? How, who knows, but what else could that . . .
Alex looked up out of the windshield to the spot of asphalt and grass ahead of him
illuminated by his headlights. There was nothing there, a few pebbles of loose something or
other, gravel maybe, dirt, flakes of bark and rotted pinecone fragments too far gone for the
squirrels. A spark further down the road caught his attention, disappeared, something glittering
in the scattering of the headlight beams. Another car, or a bird, or a buck or doe, or a fawn who
didn’t know any better than her parents not to stop to stare at something mysterious, investigate
something intriguing.
He put the car back in gear, dropped the parking brake, and took off again.
A few minutes late it is, then.
He can wait.
I can wait.
*
The trailer looked the same as the rest around it, resting on a foundation of cinderblocks
covered in squares of decorative trellis. They served only as another easy purchase for kudzu
which was overtaking the remnants of some other vine, something that may have flowered or
even had leaves once. Why the man he’d been corresponding with, planning for, lived out this
way was anyone’s guess.
Alex walked up the wooden staircase, holding the brandy in one hand, in a bag, in case
it was unwelcome, seemed rude. Who carries a half-full bottle of his parent’s liquor over an
hour away to meet a hook-up, anyway? It was the best he could do given the circumstances;
his unseen friend had to understand that. It was more for him than for anyone else, anyway, the
only thing that would drown the swarm of butterflies flailing at the bottom of his lungs, pushing
his heart into overdrive.
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He went to knock on the door, hesitated, squared his feet, swallowed, swallowed again,
went to knock again, and the door opened. He dropped both his hands to his sides, unsure of
what to do with them.
‘Hey.’
‘Hello.’
‘I was worried you’d bail.’
Neither of them knew what to say to that. They couldn’t make small talk; they didn’t
know each other’s names, which was part of the agreement. Alex was going to insist on it, but
the opposite party brought it up first, suggesting it either as ‘the way things usually go.’ What
did that mean? What number was he, and why did it matter at all, given the inherent nature of
the situation. It was just an experiment in the most scientific manner possible: there was a
hypothesis he wanted to test, but without any sort of community support, this was the best way
to get results. At what price, knowledge.
Alex finally offered up the brandy, a queer sort of housewarming gift, but his
counterpart held up his hands.
‘My parents are out of town too.’
Alex swallowed and nodded. He turned to go back to his car, where he would return
the brandy, sit in the driver’s seat and inhale and exhale and inhale again until his not-date got
cold feet, got impatient, worried about his sanity, and he could drive home to a sneering
electronic message.
He felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned to look at his not-date. He couldn’t have been
much older than Alex. They were both gangly, off-kilter. He had the awkward beginnings of a
beard; Alex was clean-shaven by school dress-code decree. That’s who lives here in this home
that is not his. A kid like Alex who has nowhere else to go because he doesn’t know where else
he can be. Neither of them knew any better.
‘Hey, hey. Thanks. Let’s go in’
Alex nodded and followed him through the door, clutching the brandy in both hands,
crunching and wrinkling the paper bag around it. The room was narrow, with a low ceiling, a
couch. A door at one end, the kitchen and another door at the other.
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‘So how do you want to do this?’
Neither of them knew any better.
*
His name was Jack.
‘Thanks.’
He was expectant, leaning out the door on the tips of his feet, holding onto the frame,
arms wide. He wasn’t smiling outwardly, but Alex saw it in his eyes.
‘Oh. Sorry. Alex.’
‘Nice to meet you, Alex.’
‘Same. Jack.’
‘See you around.’
‘You too Jack.’
Alex turned away from him and carefully pulled himself down the stairs, toward the
car. Whatever it was that they’d had to bring the tension down was wearing off but still there
leaning casually on the backs of his eyeballs. Hopefully it would be gone by the time he got
onto a major road. It should be gone by then.
As he pulled away along the gravel drive, away from the trailer, he looked into the rearview mirror, caught Jack with his back turned, closing the door in the dark. That was it.
Where his anxiety had been, romping about his innards and snarling at his throat, a
totality of nothing took up residence. That was it. Was that it? Was he running or being pulled
back, or neither, or something else entirely that he couldn’t pin down because of it abstraction.
The only way he could clarify the contents of his brain, stop them from slow-dripping down
his spine to pool in the pit of his stomach was to summarize them, even more unsure than
before, as ‘I don’t know.’
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He didn’t know. And that was it. The sky was overcast, grey-black by that point. The
dash clock silently switched to five past eleven. Earlier than he’d expected, but later than he
thought. Would he write Jack back? Just thank him for his time, the bare minimum of
politeness, say he’d had a good time, was glad he came out. He didn’t know. Who knew at all?
*
Fifteen minutes from home. That was all it would take to be back, and Mom and Dad
would wake just long enough to recognize they’d been woken by their son returning, safe and
sound, the quiet opening and closing of the front door and the soft shuffle of shoes coming off
and coming to rest by the doormat.
It had started to rain while Alex was approaching the edge of the salt marsh, a couple
of drops at first, fat and loud on the windshield, and then a group like a spray from a hose, until
finally the single massive cloud overhead had had enough, rolled over and split its head open,
a snap of lightning, shuddering boom of thunder, and Alex found himself driving headfirst into
a curtain of water. The road ahead was rendered down into greasy slurry, mixed together in the
low beams in front of the sedan which he pushed onward over the speed limit. Had any
unknown stragglers been left on the road before, they were gone now, driven indoors by the
forbidding clouds and subsequent downpour.
He squeezed the wheel at ten and two, pulling up on it like a much older man, hunched,
peering through the bottom edge of the windshield that was slowly fogging up. He reached up
to wipe the condensation away, using the base of his palm where he had no spare sleeve. The
glass was cold to the touch, and the water smeared across it, mixing with the sweat and grease
from his hand. Inside the car was a strange mix of heat and frost, wet coming in through the
vents meeting dry in the roof of his mouth, the back of his tongue.
As he breathed, the glass fogged up again, and he shivered, squeezed the steering wheel
tightly with his left hand, and reached for the aircon switch with his right.
Through the stripes of rain in the grey-black sky ahead, he saw the road veer off into
the marsh, a turn-off to a fishing spot below a bridge, a lone truck parked there with its lights
on and wipers going furiously at their futile job of keeping the glass clear in the middle of the
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storm. He saw, in the rear view mirror, lit up by the interior lamps, a figure hunched over the
steering wheel, a cup in one hand and a cigarette in the other. The truck’s cabin was hazy and
bright, and he tried to make out the driver’s face, but then it was dim, dimmer, cut across by
rain and splashing slashes coming up from the road, and then he couldn’t see it anymore.
He turned his eyes back to the road and his headlights caught a white-brown flash, a
tiny, mad dash directly across the asphalt in front of him. He defied years of supervised, teenage
experience, pages of the driver’s manual, Dad’s repeated advice, and put both feet down on the
brake. Under the water noise, he heard, felt, the wheels squeak and give up, and then a heavy
ba-thump that carried up through his legs and back. Whatever it was, a squirrel, a possum, a
rabbit scurrying off home as fast as it could – did it see him coming? He hadn’t seen it. How
close was it to where it was trying to go, and what sound did it let out that he couldn’t hear
underneath the engine, the tires, the brakes, the rubber and the water on the road surface. A
little spark of something in the headlights, eyes shining fierce and yellow.
When the car came back down an inch, off the body, in that fraction of a second, he
remembered – let your foot off the brakes, off the accelerator, don’t touch them, turn into the
skid, maintain control of the vehicle, relax.
And whatever it was that went right under the wheels was hopefully dead, and quickly,
without even realizing it.
After he’d come to a stop, he sat there, the car’s interior lights on and the engine stalled,
and he breathed, heavily, counting down from twenty, and then back up. He was still on the
road, which was good, and pointed in the right direction, probably. That was good too, in this
weather. Just start the car again and get going. Only a few miles. You’re still dry, and only a
few miles to go.
Instead, he turned the keys back toward him in the ignition, keeping the lights on, pulled
the handbrake, opened door. His arm and leg were soaked through before he even turned to get
out. The rain was thick and lukewarm, heavy and aggressive humidity, and he stepped into it
lightly, flinching, like getting into the shower without testing it first. One foot and then the
other. He slammed the door shut, but it was just a tap amongst many on the road.
Whatever it was, it was thankfully, definitely dead. It was only a car length away, a
crumpled lump of wet fur near the solid center line. It must have rolled, tumbled down the road
along with him. Or he hadn’t skidded nearly as far as he’d thought. When he came up on it, it
96
was soaked so dark that it looked like it hadn’t even been hit. Where was the blood – it was
just water, so much water. He could only guess that he’d been right, and it was a rabbit, and
not a big one either.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and turned back to the car.
When he went to open the driver’s-side door again, he paused. In the roar of the storm,
there was a small whine, something he hadn’t noticed before. Was something wrong with the
car, something leaking from it, decompressing? It wasn’t high-pitched, or piercing, or low and
rumbling, but it cut through between each of the thousands of millions of raindrops the
spattered on his head and arms and the ground around him. Tiny and desperate to be heard. He
walked around the car, rubbing his arms and pushing the pooled-up water off of them to make
way for more.
There it was, still. He kneeled down on the ground and leaned down, head sideways, in
a puddle, the car and everything he could see all around him was in the puddle with him. There
it was.
Huddled and rag-wet in the crook between the passenger’s front tire and the tarmac was
a cat. It had wedged itself against the rubber, its open mouth the source of the whine. A calico,
white and brown in spots, not a kitten, but not much more than one. White and brown, and then
the rabbit’s dash across the road in front of him made sense – stalked by the hunger-stricken
cat, tired and soaked, spooked by Alex Andrews, who was not more than a warped twig, as he
sped confusedly past on the road home. I’m sorry, he thought again.
He reached out to the cat, arm bent awkwardly to the side as he lay on his side against
the car. It shivered, sniffed at him, shrunk from him, mewling the whole time.
‘Psst. It’s okay. Psst. I’m here.’
The cat cowered, shoving itself further into the gap between the wheel and the
pavement.
‘Come on. It’s okay. Psst.’
It swiped at him, and he yanked his hand back, bashing his arm on the underside of the
car, scraping it as he pulled it to his chest. The cat shot out from its hiding place, veered around
him, and ran off across the road, into the grass shoulder, down toward the marsh. Alex followed
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it, holding his arm, checking to see in the fading light from the receding car if he’d cut himself,
if he was bleeding or if it was just the rain rolling over and over down his skin.
The shoulder sloped down in an embankment several feet down from the road before
flattening out into shrubbery, stubby scattered trees, and clumps of reeds in the mud. The old
salty rotting of the waterway floated up to him the further out he ran. Eventually, as the mud
began to suck at his shoes and he pushed through the reeds, the sulphurous air overpowered
the metallic smell of the rainstorm that had gradually let up, and then he was in the thick of it,
wading up to his ankles and then his shins, and then his knees, in the dark, pock-marked swirl
of the marsh water. He’d lost sight of the calico, searching in the twilight for a swift-moving
patch of white that would give it away, not sure if his eyes had adjusted yet or the illumination
he was seeing was just his own imagination, filling in what he thought he might see out there.
In the daytime, this place was full of obvious life: egrets and herons standing one-legged on
top of silt that would give way under anything else, single shocks of feathers at attention;
lizards, salamanders, snakes swirling their way through the shallows, in between the reeds,
their heads up just above the surface and leaving a momentary trail to ripple out into nothing
behind them; a solitary alligator, or a pair of dolphins spooling about just out of reach of a
fisherman’s line, surrounded by unsuspecting, jumping, frantic schools of fish; a doe, a buck,
and two fawns, heads down, and then up, simultaneously, staring in the same direction, poised.
In the dark, he knew all of it was still there, all those eyes on their own and then suddenly aware
of and on him. He had no way of really knowing, but he knew. It was all still there, just outside
of his reach and the little sphere of his peripheral vision.
He stopped, clutched his arms to his body and rubbed then with his hands, wiping and
flinging the water from his body. He held his breath while he twisted the wet out of his shirt,
listening for any sound in his wake as he let it hang wrinkled and damp against his chest. Behind
him, there was the fuzzy glow of the car’s headlights, scattering into mist. There it was again,
that’s it, the cat, a faint, sharp whine, unsure. It was lost.
Alex turned to his right, then his left, and there it was, nestled in a patch of reeds, just
above the waterline, bunched up in a tight curl, a little patch of white broken up by splotches
of brown and the swaying lines of the reeds. He waded over to it, shuffling his feet underwater,
pushing them through the mud and over pebbles and no doubt the frogs and salamanders and
fish whose home he’d entered.
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This time, the cat didn’t back away. It was shivering and dirty, soaked through. It was
much thinner, more ragged than it had looked before, almost run over, dripping from the rain
underneath the hot metal undercarriage of his car. It continued mewling as he approached.
‘Shh. It’s okay.’
He reached out with one hand, then the other, pulled himself up onto their little island
and scooped it up into his arms in one motion. He turned around and sat down in the mud, his
lower legs still submerged, freezing, his back crossed by reeds. They were soft enough to give
way when he leaned against them. The calico squirmed in his arms, paws splayed, extending
and then contracting, but shortly it stopped mewling and relaxed. It curled into a ball, its face
pressed into the crook of his arm, its tail in the curve of the other. His head hurt, and he closed
his eyes and started rocking the cat slowly, swaying back and forth, repeating to it in a whisper,
shh, it’s okay, shh, it’s okay. He thought he could hear it purring.
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Love letter
Emily Horrex
I woke today to the news of my death, and the rumour that you don’t take sugar in your tea
anymore. It’s warm here. I didn’t know eggs could go off so fast, I assumed they continued
but I had to throw them. I stubbed my toe last night.
Flowers grow still; I made a bunch yesterday. Funny, they smelt like you a bit.
I am aching this morning, like a fallen oak and I want to tell you
how long my hair has got and about my death
but you are not here and I am tired.
I want to trim your beard, like I said I would last week
but you won’t be here for a long while yet and I am tired.
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Life & Soul
Stephen Middleton
Life and Soul (Licensed)
Almost qualifies
As outsider art
“And what exactly is that?” She says
Henry Darger, Harry Partch
Ornette?
Or not?
The cluttered margins
Brave laughter
Currency and form guide
“…doesn’t pay the money
But he makes us laugh.”
Entering, perhaps, a dormant phase
In any case
Too cognisant of trajectory
And dreaded torpor
A quiet spell
For a boxed in outlaw
Without war stories
Silent…
The visions still from hell.
101
Painting Class
John Grey
My painting teacher is absorbed by
idea and resolution.
It's not enough that I'm slapping paint on canvas.
I'm not getting it, he informs me.
if my background's more upfront
than my foreground,
my weights defy gravity,
my colors get in each other’s way.
He doesn't understand
that I know what this is.
It's not a landscape poorly configured
but my surrounds.
It's not a house architecturally unsound
but where I live.
It's not a woman badly represented
but who I have for constant company.
It's not a self-portrait
but an artist grimly painting one.
102
Platinum City
Yuan Hongri
Translated by
Manu Mangattu
III
Terrestrial trees none I find here.
But they are in full bloom.
Sparkling with rich incense,
Shaping a garden at the center of the street.
在这儿没有人间的树木
却盛开各种奇异的花朵
浓郁芳香又闪闪发光
形成了一座座街心花园
Some strange flowers were there.
The branches as transparent crystal
Flashing all kinds of brilliant colours;
A bunch of round golden fruit too.
这是一些奇特的花木
枝干透明仿佛水晶
闪烁各种奇妙的颜色
还有一串串金色的圆果
I saw a huge statue.
It was like a spaceship.
Clustered around by shining stars,
Aloft at the centre of the street.
我看到一座巨大的塑像
仿佛一个太空飞船
高高地耸立在街头中心
周围闪耀一颗颗星球
I saw a column of dazzling fountain
In a huge circle in the square;
An elegantly modelled statue
Was there portraying a holy giant.
我看到一柱柱晶莹的喷泉
在一座巨大的圆形广场
一座座造型优美的雕像
A soaring magnificent edifice
Ran round the circle square.
There were some garden villas
There was a white steeple.
刻画出一个个圣洁的巨人
一座座巍峨壮丽的巨厦
I saw a wide river
Girdling this huge city
The bottom flash reflected transparent Jinsha
There were sundry colourful gems as well
The planning of tall trees on shore
And a long crystal corridor
A big multi-coloured bird
Three five one group on the surface of the water.
环绕着这座圆形的广场
巨厦的上面是一些花园
还有一座座白金的尖塔
我看到一条宽广的河流
怀抱着这座巨大的城市
水底闪映出透明的金沙
还有一颗颗七彩的宝石
岸边排列高大的花木
I saw a vast forest
The swaying tree, a tree of gold
The trees with towering spires
And as some platinum Pavilion.
和一条条水晶的长廊
一种色彩亮丽的大鸟
三五一群在水面飞翔
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我看到一座广阔的树林
I saw some giants along the walk,
Some male and female bodybuilders.
At the water's brink or in the forest
Like birds carefree and relaxed.
摇曳着一树树黄金的树叶
树林中耸立一座座尖塔
又仿佛一些白金的楼阁
An ideal space as bright as crystal
Embraced this platinum City;
A giant, white and bright ball
Flashed boundless light into the air.
我看到一些漫步的巨人
男男女女健美潇洒
或在水边或在林中
像鸟儿一般逍遥自在
It resembled a huge sun
And like a man-made planet
The whole city was shining too
To weave a rare breed of magic.
奇妙的太空亮如水晶
怀抱着这座白金城市
一只一只白亮的巨球
A strange speeding train circled
About the city back and forth;
There seemed to be a kind of track in the sky
Like a shiny silver curve.
在空中闪放无际的光明
仿佛是一颗颗巨大的太阳
又像是一颗颗人造的星球
整座城市也闪放光芒
形成一种神奇的景象
They seated body white buildings
It was a dreamlike maze
Huge urban anomaly;
Could not even hear the sound of the wind.
一种奇特的飞驰的列车
在城市上空回环往复
天空中仿佛有一种轨道
I bade goodbye to the platinum city.
Near a golden space
Stands another city here
A huge city of gold.
像一条银白闪亮的曲线
那一座座通体白亮的巨厦
仿佛是一座座神奇的迷宫
巨大的城市异常宁静
The building here is also huge.
But it's another beautiful shape.
The whole city is glittering
Golden edifice as beautiful as sculpture.
甚至听不到风儿的声音
我告别了这座白金城市
奔向了一片金色的太空
Here there are some other giants.
As if from another nation
They have boundless wisdom.
Like a golden, holy civilization
在这儿矗立另一座城市
一座巨大的黄金之城
这儿的建筑同样巨大
却是另一种美丽的造型
整座城市金光灿烂
黄金的巨厦美如雕塑
这儿生活着另一些巨人
仿佛来自另一个民族
他们拥有伟大的智慧
像黄金一般圣洁的文明
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Contributors
Christopher Barnes co edits Interpoetry and has written reviews for Poetry Scotland and
Jacket Magazine and art criticism for Peel and Combustus. His collection LOVEBITES was
published by Chanticleer Press (2005). Winner of the 1998 Northern Arts writers’ award,
Christopher has read and had work exhibited at a variety of events, including: the launch for
Titles Are Bitches (2001) and the Edinburgh Festival (2006). Each year he reads for
Proudwords lesbian and gay writing festival.
Previously, he worked on a collaborative art and literature project called How Gay Are Your
Genes, facilitated by the poet Lisa Mathews, which exhibited at The Hatton Gallery. He was
involved in the Five Arts Cities poetry postcard event which exhibited at The Seven Stories
children's literature building and The South Bank Centre in London recorded his poem ‘The
Holiday I Never Had’ and I can be heard here.
Additionally he was involved in The Creative Engagement in Research Programme Research
Constellation exhibitions of writing and photography which showed in London (2012) and
Edinburgh (2013) see – here. For more: BBC site BBC Site 2
Bill Bulloch is a conceptual artist and poet, studying towards a Masters and currently
working on an internship with the Edge Hill Press. Recently he curated ‘And the Word Was’,
an exhibition of the creative object in relation to writing, at the Edge Hill Art Centre. His
abstract photographic art captures static instants in the continuum, left behind on the shores
of consciousness as the tide of time sweeps inexorably sweeps by. Previously, he was The
Wolf Magazine’s artist in residence. His photographic work can be viewed online here.
Matthew Carbery is a poet and associate lecturer working at Plymouth University. Recently,
his first monograph was completed on phenomenology in the long poems of 20th century
American poets– namely: James Schuyler, George Oppen, Nathaniel Mackey, Susan Howe,
Lyn Hejinian, Leslie Scalapino, Robin Blaser and Rachel Blau DuPlessis. He has had poems
published in Tears In The Fence, Blackbox Manifold, CTRL ALT DEL, Otoliths,
Stride and Dead King Magazine. He edits EPIZOOTICS! Zine, and is also Editorial and
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Marketing Assistant of Periplum Press. Additionally, he runs the Plymouth Contemporary
Poetry Reading Group. For more visit.
Tom Crompton lives and works near Preston, Lancashire. His debut pamphlet is due out
with The New Fire Tree Press later this year.
Darren Demaree’s poems have appeared, and are scheduled to appear in numerous
magazines/journals, including the South Dakota Review, Meridian, New Letters, Diagram,
and Colorado Review. He is the author of six poetry collections, most recently Many Full
Hands Applauding Inelegantly (2016, 8th House Publishing). Darren is also the Managing
Editor of the Best of the Net Anthology and Ovenbird Poetry. He currently lives and writes in
Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.
Brindley Hallam Dennis lives (precariously) on the edge of England. He writes flash fiction
and short stories, and, as Mike Smith, writes poetry, plays and essays (mostly on the short
story form). His writing has been published, performed, and prized.
For more visit: Blog Vimeo
Twitter.
Dr Ben Fine is a mathematician and professor at Fairfield University in Connecticut (US).
He is a graduate of the MFA program at Fairfield University and the author of twelve books
(ten in mathematics, one on chess, one a political thriller) as well over 130 research articles.
He has published several short stories, as well as a novella about pirates. His memoir, told in
interwoven stories is Tales from Brighton Beach: A Boy Grow in Brooklyn and details
growing up in Brighton Beach, a seaside neighbourhood on the southern tip of Brooklyn
during the 1950’s and 1960’s. His story ‘August Eighteenth Nineteen Sixty-Nine’ appeared
in the Green Silk Journal and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
John Grey is Australian born short storywriter, poet, playwright and musician. He has been a
Providence RI resident since the late seventies. His work has appeared in a variety of
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magazines, including: Weird Tales, Christian Science Monitor, Greensboro Poetry Review,
Poem, Agni, Poet Lore and Journal of the American Medical Association as well as the
horror anthology What Fears Become and the science fiction anthology Futuredaze. His
plays have been produced in Los Angeles and Off-Off Broadway in New York. He was
the Winner of the Rhysling Award for short genre poetry in 1999.
Yuan Hongri, born in China in 1962, is a poet and philosopher interested particularly in
creation. Representative works include Platinum City, Gold City, Golden Paradise, Gold Sun
and Golden Giant.
Emily Horrex is a young poet, originally from Oxford. She recently graduated Liverpool
John Moores University with a degree in Creative Writing and Drama. She has previously
been published in Heroine Zine and In The Red 14 and channels her ideas of mental illness
and womanhood into her poetry.
Yessica Klein is a writer and artist based in the UK. She holds a MA in Creative Writing
from Kingston University. Her first collection of poetry is due to come out in Brazil later this
year.
Rose Knapp is a poet, producer, and multimedia artist. She has publications in Chicago
Literati, Visitant, BlazeVOX, Bombay Gin, Para·Text, and others. She currently lives and
works in Manhattan. For more visit.
Edward Little is studying for a Masters at The University of Chester. He studies Creative
Writing with Publication and actively hosts and performs at open mic events.
Raif Mansell is a Creative Writing teaching assistant, cocktail bartender and poet. He has
recently moved back to Liverpool after living in London. His poems have appeared in Noise
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Medium, Kingston University Student Anthology 2016 and he has been involved with The
Enemies Project twice. He is due to have visual poetry exhibited in the Museum of Futures
next year. He also runs a Creative Writing workshop in the Jacaranda club.
Clare Marsh is an adoption social worker and has written many professional reports based
on extraordinary life stories. From children abandoned in overseas orphanages to multiple
murders. She lives in the Weald of Kent where she is an active member of local writers’
groups. She is currently studying for MA in Creative Writing at the University of Kent. She is
at her most ‘creative’ when taking lengthy showers, on monotonous road journeys or
anywhere she can’t reach for a notebook. Sadly, this doesn’t seem to apply to domestic
chores - so she ignores them as much as possible. She has enjoyed success in flash fiction,
poetry and short story competitions, and is now writing her first novel. For more visit.
Niamh McMullan is a pseudo-scouse English and Creative Writing graduate who likes folk
music, breakfast and making food and drink metaphors about her sexuality. She is currently
based in Merseyside and working on her first novel. For more visit.
Stephen C. Middleton is a writer working in London, England. He has had five books
published, including A Brave Light (Stride) and Worlds of Pain / Shades of Grace (Poetry
Salzburg). He has been in several anthologies, among them Paging Doctor Jazz (Shoestring),
From Hepworth’s Garden Out (Shearsman, 2010), and Yesterday’s Music Today (Knives
Forks and Spoons Press, 2015). Previously he was editor of Ostinato, a magazine of jazz and
jazz inspired poetry, and The Tenormen Press. His work has appeared in a variety of
magazines worldwide, including Gargoyle (US), Ambit (UK), Cutthroat (US), Acumen (UK),
Otoliths (Aus). His current projects (prose and poetry) relate to jazz, blues, politics, outsider
(folk) art, mountain environments, and long-term illness.
Mihails Murasovs is a Latvian photographer and self-proclaimed explorer. Currently
studying in Canterbury, he is the creator of Big Tight Zine and co-creator of Let's
Communicate Zine. His photo. ‘Gho$t’, included in this issue, was made with a build-ityourself kit camera, that doesn't wind the film properly. View more of his work here.
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Richard King Perkins II is a state-sponsored advocate for residents in long-term care
facilities. He lives in Crystal Lake, IL, USA with his wife, Vickie and daughter, Sage. He is a
three-time Pushcart, Best of the Net and Best of the Web nominee whose work has appeared
in more than a thousand publications. Including: The Louisiana Review, Plainsongs, Texas
Review, Hawai’i Review, Roanoke Review, Sugar House Review and The William and Mary
Review. His poem “Grease Poet” was a recent prize winner of the Woodrow Hall award for
enduring excellence in poetry. His poem "Nemesis" recently won the Songs of Eretz Editor's
Choice award.
Niall Quinn published However Introduced to the Soles (with Nick Macias and Nick Laight
(UNKN, 1995) described by Andrew Duncan as ‘the most astounding debut of the decade’.
Selected entries from Soles were republished in Foil - Defining Poetry 1985 - 2000 (Etruscan,
2000). His work also appeared in the periodical Angel Exhaust (issues 15, 18 and 21). Poems
and readings can also be found Here.
Stephen Regan’s poems have been published in: Envoi; Best of Manchester Poets Vol 2
anthology; Reach Poetry; Killing the Angel; The Provo Canyon Review and DoveTales. His
poem ‘Red-bricked’ is part of a permanent art display at Wallgate rail station in his home
town of Wigan, Lancashire. His flash fiction has been published by Flash Fiction Magazine
and by National Flash Fiction Day. Stephen is also a journalist. He used to write a daily
satirical fiction serial called ‘Partners’ for Today. For many years he wrote a cult national
column for ITV ORACLE and Teletext services – as SAM BRADY: the many they can’t
gag! For more: Facebook
Twitter
Write Out Loud
For Stephen’s writings as Sam Brady
Mark Russell’s first collection Spearmint & Rescue was published with Pindrop Press
(2016). He has published two chapbooks with Red Ceilings Press, ‫( ا‬the book of seals), and
Saturday Morning Pictures, and a further chapbook, ℵ (the book of moose) with
Kattywompus Press. His next collection is due to be published later this year with
Hesterglock Press. View more of his work here.
Walter Jack Savage is a retired broadcaster and educator. He is the author of seven books
including Imagination: The Art of W. Jack Savage. To date, more than fifty of Jack’s short
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stories and over nine-hundred of his paintings and drawings have been published worldwide.
Jack and his wife Kathy live in Monrovia, California. View more of his work here.
Robert Schuster spent most of his childhood in Norway and Singapore before returning to
the United States. He received a Bachelor of Arts in English, Creative Writing, and Politics
from Oberlin College and an MFA in Fiction from the Creative Writing program at George
Mason University. His poetry and fiction have appeared in Blast Furnace and The Magnolia
Review. He currently teaches English at Stuart Hall School in Staunton, VA. Previously, he
was the Fiction Co-Editor for George Mason University’s feminist literary journal, So to
Speak. He has also worked as an Adjunct Professor of Composition at J. Sargeant Reynolds
Community College; as a volunteer teacher for 826, a non-profit K-12 educational
organization; and as a standardized test teacher and tutor for the Princeton Review. He lives
with his fiancé in Charlottesville, VA.
Alec Sillifant is into his sixth decade and highly miffed about it, there was so much more he
wanted to do when his limbs worked properly. Over the many years he has seen some
publishing success (picture books, chapter books and a YA novel) but the rug of beckoning
stardom was ripped from under him by corporate, rather than artistic, ripples in the universe.
However his books, some of them, are still available and he has dabbled with self-publishing
some of his very early works that saw the light of day in magazines way back in the
1990s. Today he still struggles on despite the many hampering and hurdles the gods have
seen fit to put in his way. To call him a modern day hero would not do that overused word a
disservice but on the other hand, and in a very big way, yes it would.
Larry D. Thacker’s poetry can be found in over seventy magazines and journals including:
The Still Journal, Poetry South, Mad River Review, The Southern Poetry Anthology, Mojave
River Review, Mannequin Haus, Ghost City Press, Jazz Cigarette, and Appalachian Heritage.
His books include: Mountain Mysteries: The Mystic Traditions of Appalachia,
(Overmountain Press, 2006) and Voice Hunting (2011) and Memory Train (2015), both with
Finishing Line Press. His next book Drifting in Awe, is due to be released later this year.
View more of his work here.
Patricia Walsh was born and raised in the parish of Mourneabbey, Co Cork, Ireland, and
holds a MA in Archaeology from University College Cork. Her poetry collection Continuity
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Errors, was published by Lapwing Publications (2010) and her novel The Quest for Lost
Eire, was published by AuthorHouseUK (2014). Her work has appeared in a variety of
magazines & journals. These include: The Fractured Nuance; Revival Magazine; Ink Sweat
and Tears; Drunk Monkeys; Hesterglock Press; Linnet's Wing, Narrator International, The
Galway Review; Poethead and The Evening Echo. She was also the featured artist for June
2015 in the Rain Party Disaster Journal.
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