a plagiarized sexual position from everyone I

Transcription

ISSN: 2374-2526
Issue Six Winter 2015
Crab Fat Magazine
Issue 6, November 2015
ISSN: 2374-2526
Cover:
Venus II
36" x 28"
Oil and acrylic on panel
By: Larissa Hauck
Masthead:
Caseyrenée Lopez, Editor-in-Chief
EllaAnn Weaver, Fiction editor
X. Paul Lopez, Reader
Writers and artists maintain
ownership/copyright of all
work presented herein.
a plagiarized sexual position from everyone I ever touched or
what happens when one is formed out of whitman bridge songs and gender
dislocations
or
everything about your body is a lost dialect
&
a rumination about the reservoir of language below your chest
By: Aimee Herman | 4
Charles By: Janelle Greco | 6
Share My Body and My Mind with You By: Alexandra Naughton | 7
L'appel du vide By: Larissa Hauck | 9
Ward By: Layla Al-Bedawi | 10
Revelation By: Alexandra Romanyshyn | 11
Sleepwalker By: Larissa Hauck | 13
Life, Death, and a Chocolate Chip Scone By: Claire Hagan | 14
Elegy By: Alexandra Romanyshyn | 20
The Scoop By: Anniken Davenport | 22
A Smile Deeper than Moonlight By: Bill Wolak | 23
Remorse By: Carolyn Stice | 24
Pie is a Cheap Substitute for Longing By: Carolyn Stice | 25
Molotov By: Emmett Haq | 27
{the books in my library} By: Courtney Marie | 31
Lung Copy By: Elizabeth Hynes | 32
Centerfold Versailles By: Dorothy Chan | 33
When Flesh is the Winding Sheet By: Elizabeth Yalkut | 34
Leading the prayer By: Eric Allen Yankee | 35
Azahares que Estallan By: Vivian Calderon Bogoslavsky | 36
Rodents By: Mark Rosenblum | 37
Sonnet (The Exiles) By: Gary Wilkens | 38
Beginning College in Arkansas By: Gary Wilkens | 39
Algo Oculto en cada Sensacion By: Vivian Calderon Bogoslavsky | 40
The Virginity Myth By: Hadassah Grace | 41
Occupation: Hustler By: Hadassah Grace | 43
Scenes of Leaving By: Emily Blair | 45
2
Winter 2015
Starfuckers By: Hadassah Grace | 50
How to be a Writer By: Hadassah Grace | 51
Hand Over Mouth By: Elizabeth Hynes | 52
Life Equations By: Hannah Sattler | 53
Negotiations By: Kim Hunter-Perkins | 54
Knowing By: Kim Hunter-Perkins | 55
Not Spicy By: Kenneth Pobo | 56
Mamihlapinatapai By: James Freitas | 57
Alegre Polvo Veraniego I By: Vivian Calderon Bogoslavsky | 58
In Charge By: Isaac Hunt | 59
My Heartland-Bred Moonbeams By: Keith Gaboury | 62
Between Rome and Aldebaran By: L.B. Sedlacek | 63
You've got yours By: Larissa Hauck | 64
The Relevancy of Desire By: Lori England | 65
Smell By: Mandee Driggers | 66
It’s Christmas By: Jason S. Parker | 67
Dear Neighbor By: Mark Blickley & Amy Bassin | 68
Oooooh, What Did Drake Say About a Bottle and a Bitch? By: Mica Evans | 69
Essay in Lines (Step Down Dear Goliath) By: Mica Evans | 70
Astronomical Soliloquy By: Nathaniel Duggan | 73
Born to be different By: Adorable Monique | 74
Normal Kids By: Stephanie Cleary | 75
O H By: Steven Alvarez | 78
denizens By: Steven Alvarez | 80
Alegre Polvo Veraniego II By: Vivian Calderon Bogoslavsky | 81
Ink By: Gregory M. Fox | 82
afflatus By: Tatiana Saleh | 86
Eden By: Larissa Hauck | 87
Crab Fat Magazine
3
a plagiarized sexual position from everyone I ever touched
or
what happens when one is formed out of whitman bridge
songs and gender dislocations
or
everything about your body is a lost dialect
&
a rumination about the reservoir of language below your
chest
By: Aimee Herman
When every area of a body has been rummaged
and you think
there is nothing left to learn but suddenly
the sky unfolds like an atlas of detours
and cave dwellings
& you notice that nothing
looks familiar
but in this lost
you are found
the moon could easily be called a universe of glowing haiku in the sky
in the shape of a honeydew and this air smells like October but it is
March
legs straddle the rusted history of a bicycle purchased for eighty dollars
three years ago from an old man’s trunk but none of that matters
because where I am peddling is toward you
reference : passion propeller
I study your chapters through every postcard and book leaning against wood from old
wine boxes
and there may not be any graffiti here, but you have tagged every wall
of my mind
4
Winter 2015
and what does it mean to find something you weren’t looking for but
here beneath this pile of bones and boners and bound chests and scars
and secretive blinks that stubbornly remain open
did you know that when you sleep I counted all your lashes and
threaded verbs to each one so you’d keep moving beside me and
perhaps I pressed in a noun like
home
beside two middle ones
to remind you
what this is
what is this
I can’t
I can
I can tell you that when your parietal lobe climbs into my mouth in the evening or
early morning, I feel like I am no longer a tourist in my own body.
I can tell you that my hypothalamus becomes an alphabet full of pages
you leaf through with your fingers.
I can tell you everything I want you to do to me using only slang and ropes.
I can show you how bruises form each time we create
percussion with our hips.
I can beg you to remain even when I beg you
to stop.
Crab Fat Magazine
5
Charles
By: Janelle Greco
C
harles started by drawing an atom. It looked like an olive at first, but then he drew more
rings. In stilted English he told the class that the pit was in fact a nucleus. When a person
launches into a speech about charges and electrons and energy being passed back and
forth, you don’t stop them for anything, even if you’re not sure where it’s going.
Charles is small; he has a grey beard that comes to a point. When he speaks to you about life
and gratitude and particles, he looks you straight in the eyes. There’s a charge that glistens in the
center of his irises, as if giving advice, handshakes, and details about the way cells are formed is what
he’s made for. The more he talks about positive and negative charges, the more hand gestures he
uses. His arms are widened now as if he were hugging an enormous tree or conducting an orchestra.
Charles loves quotes by famous philosophers and shuffles audibly when he comes over to show
you one he’s found.
“You’re a good and generous person,” he says. He insists upon it so much that it quiets all
doubts you have on the subject.
Charles rides the subway for eight stops in the wrong direction with you just so he can tell you
how important it is to give to others and to be alive. You can’t always understand the vowels and
syllables he uses, but you understand without fail the way his body coils and then opens up like a
star when he makes a point.
You once asked Charles if he came in pocket size so you could carry him with you wherever
you went. “But I’m right here!” he says.
The way the specks of dust vibrate in the light and air between you are proof that this is true.
6
Winter 2015
Share My Body and My Mind with You
By: Alexandra Naughton
25 Nov Based Goth Alexandra @theTsaritsa
Succumb my body and my mind with you
Isn't my body and my mind with you
Buoys my body and my mind with you
Ebook my body and my mind with you
Ditto my body and my mind with you
String my body and my mind with you
Kill my body and my mind with you
Keep my body and my mind with you
Crab Fat Magazine
7
Shrug my body and my mind with you
Save my body and my mind with you
Shape my body and my mind with you
Sever my body and my mind with you
Shaken my body and my mind with you
Absurdly my body and mind with you
Share my buddy and my mind with you
Share my body and my mind with you
8
Winter 2015
L'appel du vide
By: Larissa Hauck
48" x 24"
Crab Fat Magazine
9
Ward
By: Layla Al-Bedawi
I
lost my perfect vision and my horsetail-thick hair to my twin cousins. “Look at you,” they would
chant, “Such lovely eyes, the only green ones in the family. Such long lashes, how they curl. Such
thick, strong hair, thicker than ours even.” Everyone knew the evil eye was strong on my father’s
side. The twins moved into our house the summer before I started seventh grade, two almond-skinned
angels with matching sets of date-colored eyes and passion fruit lips. My uncle had sent them to live
with us while their country was being ravaged by the god-fearing and the godless alike. Sitting in the
back on the first day of school, I found I had to copy from my neighbor, the chalk on the board no
more than a translucent fog. A fortnight later, the new girl in class, her rising popularity in inverse
correlation with her falling neckline, started laughing at the frizzy, ridiculous mess on my head, and
the rest of them joined in, old friends and all. “Don’t show them your hands,” my mother warned
me. “They can’t leave a beautiful thing alone.” I buried my long fingers deep inside my armpits and
studied the twins from corners and door frames as they sipped tea in our living room, perfect little
feet on the Persian rug, the harmonies of their laughter a dog whistle my father couldn’t seem to help
but follow, bringing them fruit then pastries then dripping glasses of ice cold Coca Cola, a thing he
usually called women’s work. My mother stood by, out of a job. When the war exhausted itself the
twins disappeared, and I watched myself curiously as I mourned their absence. By then my scalp was
showing and I'd had to move to the front of the class because no one would let me copy their notes
anymore. My world was getting murkier every day, but I didn’t tell anyone—glasses would certainly
not help me make friends. A few months later, my father left, too. My mother refused to answer any
of my questions, but at night I could hear her cry on the phone to her sister, wailing and cursing the
twins, their spells and charms. I imagined it must have been something they said, though they never
talked much around my father, communicating with giggles and batted lashes instead. It must have
slipped by me, something like, “What a lovely couple you two make, auntie and uncle,” or, “Fatima is
so lucky to have you two. What a perfect family.” Now I cut my hair short, and my glasses weigh
heavy on my face like defeat. But my hands are flawless, my fingers like cherry branches in the spring,
my long, hard nails painted with warding spells, ready to take out anyone’s eye.
10 Winter 2015
Revelation
By: Alexandra Romanyshyn
They say the body reveals the soul. I’d like to believe, so don’t you tell me
full-figures, buxom breasts, have more to say than a slim waist. There’s no cure,
no easy fix for hollow hips or hungry lips when the cause behind it’s in my mind.
I look inside and only find I’m not enough until I’m much
much more confined.
I remember the first time
dad said
have salad
I remember the “wise” model
advising
lose the baby fat
chuckling
the camera adds ten pounds of flab
That was after hypotension, family tension, hypoglycemia, borderline anemia, social alienation, selfimposed starvation, calorie-calculation, false self-perception, eventual self-deception. I was a
nutrition recorder on the border of breakdown. I was—
disorder.
The body reveals the soul? Humph. The soul of stardom is nip and tuck. Puke
purges sins. Celebrities in magazines yield out-of-the-field dreams, because make-up
and photo-shop make them seem what I never can be.
Actually, bodies like me conceal the psyche
I buried my burdens to achieve this physique
my imagination’s machinations spurned Mom’s birthday dessert.
Mom, your cake is out of the question because my question
is how many carbs to consume when my jeans give me no goddamn room.
Happy birthday while I waste away, my waist—a model of deprivation
a means of deprecation, a method of damnation.
I’m a gum wad stretching between the bottom of your shoe
and cold concrete, one step forward and I stretch thinner
weighing my worth, I grow thinner
trying not to snap. Only
thinner, straining,
thinner
when your foot crashes down, crushes me,
I am only a blob, a bulging
slob. Your weight is my pain
my pain—my weight gain. I await your next step
to render me slender again.
Time for a new conviction. Court’s out, adjourned—the verdict turned
in. My judge’s sentence, not to judge. Sentenced to acceptance, I am no exception
Crab Fat Magazine 11
to the rule of imperfection, and as such, it is no matter of contention
that I will never be content.
just content myself to know that one day I’ll get off that shoe.
be my own shape, let myself
eat cake.
12 Winter 2015
Sleepwalker
By: Larissa Hauck
24" x 18"
Life, Death, and a Chocolate Chip Scone
By: Claire Hagan
Pieces
Small-town store
Four round tables
Scratched up floors
Worn wood
Display cases and coffee containers
That breathe out sweet sugar air
You spend the hours
With wax paper sheets
Grabbing pastries
Slicing bread on the ancient machine
Cleaning and customers
Paper coffee cups
Dim glass plates
Topped with scones and bread and cinnamon rolls
First Impression
I bike up to Douglass loop with a beat up copy of Hamlet in my backpack. I lock up my bike in
front of the ice cream shop when I hear a shout to my right.
Everett is leaning out the door of a small store, his long brown hair pulled back into a messy
bun. “Come on in,” he tells me.
“So this is Breadworks,” I say, stepping through the door into the warm store. Everett walks
back behind the counter where a young man with a black beard is wiping down the glass display
cases filled with bagels and pastries. Everett turns to the young man. “This is Clare. She was one of
my students at the Governor’s School for the Arts.”
The young man nods and raises his hand in greeting.
“What are you doing now that you’re out of college?” I ask Everett.
“Working here,” he replies, “Doing art. I’ve got a house down on Dorothy that I’m turning into
a screen-printing studio. And you?”
“I was actually just up at Big Rock. I’m getting pictures to use for some children’s book
illustrations I was hired to do.”
“Sweet. High five, man.” Everett says.
I oblige.
“Other than that, I’m not doing much. Orientation was last week, so I’m headed back to dear
old Manual soon.”
“Senior year?” he asks.
“Senior year.”
Visit: Marshall
Once I stop by the store with Marshall Berry. He’s Wendell Berry’s grandson and absolutely
hates being introduced that way. Self conscious, he hides his messy hair under a beanie cap. He is a
year older than me, a freshman in college, and he has no idea what he wants to do with his life. He
doesn’t seem to want much of anything.
14 Winter 2015
We don’t work out in the end.
Visit: Everett
I promise to meet a friend at Breadworks. Everett is there, and I sit at the metal table by the
end of the counter, chatting with him in the empty store. “Say, Clare,” he leans over the table.
“You’re pretty good at reading people. Right?”
“I guess so.”
Everett gets this far-off, dreamy look in his manic eyes.
“Doesn’t it make you feel like a god?”
Visit: Bellarmine Scholars Competition
Early morning, and I sit at Breadworks with my parents. My chocolate chip scone and
peppermint tea taste like a thousand hugs. I triple check that I don’t have any chocolate or crumbs
on my face. I have to look nice today. I wear a black blazer and low grey heels with a flowered dress.
It is the morning of the Bellarmine Scholars competition, and if I manage not to screw up an
interview, a paper, and a round table discussion, I might just be looking at college for free.
Somewhere around Here
I’m sitting at a table, sketching for the last art assignment of my high school career. I go up to
ask for my mug refill. Hanna is working that day. She is a small and compact woman with short grey
hair, Everett’s manager as well as his mother.
“There you go, Darlin’,’” she says, handing me my mug. “Now didn’t Everett tell me you were
one of his students at GSA?”
“He sure did.”
She puts a finger over her lips, a line of thought between her eyebrows. “Where are you at high
school now?”
“I’m in the Visual Arts magnet at Manual, same as Everett was. But next year I’m gonna be just
down the road at Bellarmine.”
“And are you doing work study?”
“No,” I say, “I was hoping to get a job...somewhere...around...here.”
Hanna hands me a job application.
Things I Can Do Because of Breadworks
I can balance a loaf of bread on one end
Bagging it up with my other hand
I can make a latte
Clean an espresso machine
Steam milk to perfection
Talk to a stranger like they’re a human being
Remember the orders of all the regulars
Juggle
And blame everything on Steve
It is very important to blame everything on Steve.
Teachers
Half my high school teachers live in the neighborhood by Breadworks. If you think I’m kidding,
I’m not.
My first day of work, Mr. Curtis comes in with his daughter. Curtis is the photo teacher with a
shaved orange head and bright white teeth. His daughter is a blond middle school girl who shares
her father’s love of all things Weird Al Yankovic. They sit at a table eating bagels, and because the
store is so quiet in the afternoon, they stay and talk with Everett and me. “Man, you should have
seen this girl on the last day of school,” Mr. Curtis says, nodding his head in my direction. I had
gone off on this asshole for making a crass comment about violence against women. That day I
found out Curtis wasn’t mad at me for cussing a guy out in the middle of class. He was actually really
proud.
Order: 2 Bagels, one sesame, one plain. Cream Cheese. Medium Coffee.
Mr. Crain walks in with clouds around his head. He wears a baseball cap over his short grey
hair, and his eyebrows, as always, are furrowed in thought.
“I talked to Adam the other day,” I tell him. “Do you know what his major’s gonna be?”
“What?”
I smile. “Education. He says he’s going to grow up to be you, only less pretentious.”
“Less pretentious! Please. One time I walked over to his desk, asked him what he’s doing, and
he says he’s inventing his own language.”
Order: Chocolate Croissant. Small Breakfast Blend
Ms. Rich comes in sometimes as well.
Hurry is her name, and chaos runs in her wake with little red curls. I always like it when those
two come into the store. It reminds me of the girl I was. And the woman I want to be. One time
little PJ comes in with a red plastic purse that says Alexis. “It used to be mine,” Rich says. I tell her
I’m listening to an audiobook in Spanish for En el Tiempo de las Mariposas, a book she recommended
to me before she left Manual. I was just a little Sophomore then.
Order: One Country French Traditional Loaf. Sliced.
Ophelia and Lu
Second week of work
I walk in to find Strawberry Banana signs replaced with Peach
The flavor of July
Peach muffin, peach Danish, peach scone
I ate as many peach scones as I could,
Bringing them home in a wax-sealed bag from work
I will always remember that last scone
Eaten at the end of the longest day of my life
Split three ways
Between Luisa, Ophelia, and me
We drove to my familiar house. Only mouths
as we tore through the kitchen and buried our spoons in a bowl filled
with glistening ice cream, berries, all covering a warm peach scone from work
That whole month passed in peaches
And we waded through blankets
Swam in seas of comforters and pillows
all wrapped up in piles of cloth on my bed
16 Winter 2015
until
three souls breathing
we fell asleep
The next time I went into work
All of the scones were blueberry
Catalogue of Regulars (Abridged)
There’s an old French couple. The woman is stout with a brown face and short brown hair. She
does all the talking, her accent shaping the corners of her words. The man is tiny and bald with thick
frame glasses and boxy white dentures. He mimes for me to put whipped cream on his hot
chocolate, a small performance there in the store.
Order: Two Decaf Lattes. Raisin Pecan Mini Sliced
There’s a morning crew that comes in most days, a group of about four or five people, all in
their 70s I’d say. They take up two small tables, reading the newspaper and talking. It’s mostly men,
but there is one woman with short white hair who is always there. When I start working, they all ask
for my name, and remember it, too.
I hope when I am older I am like them, surrounded by friends and conversation.
Order: Mugs of Coffee, sometimes iced, sometimes decaf. Assorted pastries.
It must’ve been the second day I worked that I saw her. A woman walked into the store. She
was plain and wore no make-up, her blond hair pulled back into a ponytail. Though she seemed
tired, there was a beauty and grace about her. The morning crew all greeted her.
In her arms she held a tiny red creature, a little baby only days old. “What’s his name?” one of
the morning crew asked. “His name’s Patrick. It’s his first time out of the house.”
She walked over to order and a little nose poked out of the wrap around her shoulders.
I’m going to watch this child grow up, I thought.
Order: Blueberry oat-bran Muffin, Mug of Coffee
David is a plumber, I believe. He’s small of stature and friendly, with an everyman’s face
covered in dark brown stubble like a farmer’s hands covered in dirt. He knows everyone from the
neighborhood, and his conversation is always kind.
Order: Loaded Chocolate Chip Cookie or a Blueberry Muffin, Small Americano
My Breadworks
A couple months into fall semester
Someone starts talking about baguettes before Brit Lit
I tip my words into the conversation
Telling them to try the baguettes at Breadworks
Where I work
And Dr. Gatton’s eyes light up
twinkling as he says “My Breadworks!”
The one on Douglass Loop
I confirm
And he recommends the Irish soda bread
With a smile
Family Walking
It was the day I told Hanna I’d be in Nicaragua for two months this summer. She was excited,
telling stories of how she went to France with a one-way ticket and $300 in her pocket. That was
back in the 80s. Now it seems like everyone is leaving. I’m leaving. My coworker Alayna is leaving
for the Peace Corps, and Everett will be leaving soon to work a fish processing job in Alaska. After
that, he’s gone. Moving to North Carolina.
Larry Horton walks into the store, his small ponytail running down his back like a paintbrush.
He had to sell the hardware store next door, but it’s still called Horton’s. Hanna asks him how he is.
“I’m in pain,” he says.
Hanna had said she was going to leave—Steve should be there to take over my shift in an hour
or so—but Hanna sits down at the table by the window, talking with Larry about his back pains and
catching up with him. A couple tables over, Lucy from the frame shop next door is chatting with
someone she knows, and their conversations sound like music in the store. Light turns the tables to
mirrors; it is one of the first warm days of the new year.
Sitting at the wooden chair by the counter, I pull out an anthology of plays from my Gay and
Lesbian Drama class. I turn to the back cover, and I start to write:
“There is a kind of family here
Not the kind you trap in a picture frame
To hang on a living room wall
What we have here is a family walking
Circling round sidewalks and Highland blocks
Sharing a meal
Passing stories across the tabletops
Leaving scars along the ancient wood floor
Spelling out stories
The swinging bell sings
As they step out into the day.”
An Overheard Conversation
It is my first spring at Breadworks, the weather slowly working its way back to the July warmth
I first knew.
The little French woman comes into the store. She is alone today.
“One decaf latte with a single shot of espresso. Extra hot?”
“You’ve got it,” the woman says.
I make the latte, sure to put out the two shot glasses where the espresso comes out. Our
machine can only make two or three shots, so whenever someone wants one, the second usually
goes unused. When the French woman is with her husband, it’s convenient, because we can split the
shots into their two drinks.
I pass the latte to her across the counter, and she sits down at a round table. Then David comes
in. He peeks in the display cases. “Your last loaded chocolate chip”, he says, and I take the cookie
out of the case to set it down on a plate.
I’m sweeping seeds off the bagel cutting board when David walks over to the French woman’s
table.
“I was sorry to hear about Au Pierre’s passing. He was a good man, and I know he will be
missed.”
18 Winter 2015
“I am glad he did not have to suffer in the end,” she says, her accent touching the edges of her
words.
I remember an October Saturday when I was hanging around the store. Everett pulled down
this old model car based on some jalopy from before 1930. It lived on the top of the glistening silver
machine that steamed and hissed as our two pots of coffee brewed. The model car had delicate
detail and bright silver wheels that turned easily across the table top. “He just gave it to me one day,”
Everett said, talking about the French man.
I feel strange as I pour the second shot of decaf down the drain.
Lost libations for the dead.
I want to say something, but I’m not quite certain how.
Epitaph
I sit with Adam on the sidewalk by Douglass
The sun’s light all asleep
The streetlamps draw tangled patterns
spreading out from my bike
resting on concrete beside me
We wait for bus headlights to cut through the air
And in the peaceful minutes I sit by Adam
Across the street I see
The quiet yellow neon of the Breadworks sign
Blinking in the night
And I can still see Everett leaning out the door on a summer’s day
Mr. Crain walking his dog one warm Saturday
All the stories played out there upon the stage
Passing away
And I feel Adam beside me
This moment
We will pass away as well
But for now we are here
Breathing in the night
Elegy
By: Alexandra Romanyshyn
Twenty-three
She’s seated, feeling each knob of her pelvis.
The sore on her sit bone won’t heal. Fat
that would’ve cushioned her bones long vanished.
Twenty-two
She’s hunched over a toilet wondering
whether she has the guts to gag
because she couldn’t gulp one iota of ipecac.
Four fingers down her throat, she starts
to lurch. Her stomach’s already
too empty for anything but mucus and blood.
Twenty-one
She’s wondering how many calories are in a cocktail.
A hundred and fifty per martini,
she won’t get drunk tonight.
Twenty
She’s counting how many
dates she drove away with disorder.
Her heart is red-blooded but her belly
is yellow with fear, and she weighs her self-worth
everyday on a scale of glass so fragile,
an extra two pounds, they both smash.
If that glass were a mirror distorted to shrink
her thinner, her eyes would still lie and see her hips wider.
Nineteen
She’s eaten pizza for the first time in years.
Her stomach aches for days.
Eighteen
She’s home from college for the first time.
Her high school friend wraps two hands
around her waist and asks, “You losing weight?”
Her mother secretly sautés food in extra butter,
her aunt sends her carefully-selected fattening care-packages,
her classmates ask why they can’t meet for ice-cream.
Seventeen
She’s concerned her body will never give birth
to anything but disturbance.
20 Winter 2015
Sixteen
She’s addicted to the adrenaline of swimming,
cycling, dancing, all that elevates
the heart rate. She consumes huge quantities
of protein because it boosts the metabolism.
Five cups daily of green tea, not meant
for antioxidants, but to expend more energy.
She lives on celery that contains negative calories.
Fifteen
She feels the need to complete two hours of cardio
six days a week. She’s in constant pain because
she won’t increase how much she eats. Seeking
the best of both worlds, she competes with men’s
athleticism but eats a delicate diet fit for women.
Fourteen
She’s dizzy, like she’s already a skeleton that can’t
stand on its own, like the blood drained from her head
absconded with her ovaries either gone
or unresponsive, like she undid puberty on her
poorly nourished body. She’s the only kid to visit
a cardiologist because her heart is a poor psychologist,
mercilessly quitting due to lack of energy.
Doctor’s orders? Just eat.
Thirteen
She’s idolizing bulimic ballerinas.
A friend sarcastically calls her fat.
She doesn’t get sarcasm.
Twelve
She learns about calories,
counts them every day since.
Eleven
She sees a picture of a woman and supposes, it’d be nice to look like that.
The Scoop
By: Anniken Davenport
W
hy are you sitting there, staring at your hands? You asked for this meeting, begged for it
really. Now you're leaving all the questioning to me. You're the one who's supposed to
ask all the questions. Isn't that what people like you do? It's your raison d'être. You just
love asking questions, trying to trap your subject with clever turns of phrase, with flattery and
persuasion.
Look at me. Look up. Yes, that's it, lift that chin up a little more. You can do it. I'm not that
frightening, now am I? I'm not a monster. Or at least I don't look like one. Do I?
There. You looked. Your eyes, what a lovely shade of blue they are. Violet like the lilacs that I'm
sure are blooming right now outside my old house down in Georgia. They were so pretty, so
fragrant, so dark like a week old bruise, all purple and shiny with just a hint of goldenrod around the
edges.
You looked away again. I got carried away, didn't I? Sometimes it's hard for me. My mind just
keeps slipping down that path no matter how hard I try to focus.
What's that? I can barely hear you through the speaker. Did I do it? What do you think? You've
read all the testimony. You sat through most of it. When did you decide you were writing the book?
Was it when the news story first hit? Or did you at least wait until after the coroner claimed it wasn't
an accident?
You're loyal, I'll give you that. And patient. Barely missed a court date, which is more than I can
say for my so-called friends. Not a single character witness. I bet you even showed up for the
appellate arguments, didn't you. Yes, I thought so. Wouldn't have missed it for the world. Never
know when there's some real drama coming, do we? Don't want to rely strictly on transcripts. Those
don't tell the whole truth. They're sanitized, sterilized. Clean. No stench of death, no whiff of rotting
flesh, of vengeance.
You flinched just now. I did it again. Focus.
So what do you want to know? Yes, I know time is running out. It always does. No, I'm not
going to tell you just yet. I'm not stupid. I know you need it for the book, but you're going to have
to work just a little bit harder if you want it to be a NYT best seller.
Look at me. You need to be there. Right behind the window, looking in. I'll give you a cue at
the very last second. Only you will know the signal. I'll open my eyes wide and I'll smile in your
direction. That's how you'll know. It'll be our little secret. You like that, don't you? I saw you smile
just now. An exclusive. That's how it ends.
22 Winter 2015
A Smile Deeper than Moonlight
By: Bill Wolak
Remorse
By: Carolyn Stice
Because I mistrust my tongue and tone, because I know ice
laces my words, I tried hard not to press
my thin Puritan’s lips as I spoke. Night lengthened
and wrapped its frosty arms over our backs as we walked
through dusk. Now, standing here, I hold the kettle aloft and
wait.
Washing my hair in the sink the water
trickles like divinity, down my scalp and onto my neck.
If cleanliness is next to godliness and that is next, to holiness aren’t I
working my way, up some ladder toward reward or my next
incarnation
where I can live as a house cat free to be wild
or sweet or cruel because that is the mood that carries my day.
How do you measure the loss of that
you did not know you wanted, as you watch it speed past,
a bread truck, through the city where you have walked,
broke but contented, for years without naming your hunger.
I know
how to say yes without meaning it
because the phantom in my chest does not always plead loudly. Look,
I only want to live in this way: a dozen bowls on the table
each of them hot and sweet and filled to the brim.
24 Winter 2015
Pie is a Cheap Substitute for Longing
By: Carolyn Stice
for C.K. Williams
After the interview for a job I need
but do not really want I stand
at my kitchen window.
The semi-hard April
ground keeps freezing, and softening in turn.
Whatever shoe I wear
these days is wrong, and I
am forced, to keep them all
on the shelf:
snow boot
rain boot
tennis shoe
so many opportunities to fail.
I spoke today, in half-truths
to convince them, to convince
myself that forty hours a week
translates to happiness.
The ravens are out, circling
the yard. Their clucking-quork
crosses property lines
echoes up, and down
our hill.
I wonder if they are measuring
time or space.
My grandmother, calling cows
in 5 a.m. November light.
My mother in her clean-room suit
bent over, a spark-plug, at midnight
while I slept in an empty house.
Is this the work of my people?
Forty hours and benefits.
What kind of person
would say no to that?
Not them.
Not my cousin scrubbing toilets
or sister, answering phones
all day, making reservations.
My father’s oil-rimmed hands.
They, would never
say no. A body
in motion
stays. in. motion.
All I can hear
inside my cabin is the gears
of the clock knocking time
forward and the scrape
of the cat’s paw, across the floor.
In thirty minutes, I will stand
at the stove again stirring
a pot, another meal,
and the dishes, will fall
dirty into the sink.
Floors, need sweeping
and clothes, sit
in tidy heaps waiting
to be moved from bed to chair.
Sure, there is pie.
but peanut butter, and chocolate, are a cheap
substitute for longing.
Or maybe I am thinking
of the many flavors of grief.
Lemon curd for the winter.
Rhubarb only in spring.
Dark mousse
when the glare of summer light
plays too lightly on the waves.
What taste
can bring oblivion?
I’ve been through it
over and again
the forty hours
of desk computer
calendar stretching on.
The curl of my pen
in on itself. I’ve run it
through my mind
so much, so often,
I feel unutterably, weary.
26 Winter 2015
Molotov
By: Emmett Haq
T
he landlord is the type of man your
couch, head propped under a commemorative
father would have called “one slippery
pillow stitched with the initials of the sorority
son of a bitch.” His moustache is too
that kicked her out, wearing one of your bras
thick for his face, drawing your attention and
and a pair of sweatpants spattered with what is
keeping it for the duration of his speeches (you
hopefully mud. She has just done a tiny bump
watch, transfixed, as it jumps and wiggles to the
and is characteristically relaxed, a languid smile
cadence of his utterances, looking like nothing
playing across her face as she watches what
so much as a patch of grease-blackened steel
appears to be a public-access program about
wool, abandoned in haste by some errant
how garbage trucks are built.
dishwasher). The bumper of his gleaming black
You feel roughly the same way about
pickup truck is unadorned, but it says all the
Mila’s heroin habit as you do about
more for its austerity—you can tell by the way
revolutionary communism and this limehe swerves around Prius drivers and barrels
colored couch: you’re not exactly enthusiastic
down the thoroughfare that his dream-team
about it, but don’t have any strong convictions
bumper sticker would read “NIXONagainst it either. You are no stranger to mindREAGAN ’16” and his vanity plate would be
altering substances yourself, though you’ve
unprintable.
never even considered picking up Mila’s vice.
He looks like someone who has done
Something about the thought of sticking a
serious prison time, someone who successfully
needle inside yourself makes your veins feel
incited a riot in his cell block,
itchy and your head feel cold in
Your girlfriend Mila
someone
whose
prison
a way you are wholly unable to
calls
him
a
fascist,
nickname was “Vinny the
articulate.
Shiv” or something equally
Your particular poison has
which would sound a
gangland. Your girlfriend Mila
bit more venomous if always been that which resides
calls him a fascist, which
just across the counter of the
she didn’t call nearly
would sound a bit more
neighborhood drugstore, where
everyone
a
fascist.
venomous if she didn’t call
the goateed, skeletal pharmacist
nearly everyone a fascist.
twiddles his thumbs, waiting for
Your girlfriend is a self-described
his pretty young assistant to return from her
revolutionary communist and does not believe
lunch break so he can resume his macabre
in the capitalist system of renting property, but
dance on the border of sexual harassment.
unfortunately must be complicit in this system
There is nothing you hate quite so much as
in order to continue living in the dubious
unpredictability, and the sniveling medicine
luxury of your shared studio on 66th Street, in
man in his white coat and tarnished wedding
the heat-hazy heart of her native Houston. She
band represents a known and stable quantity.
often wonders aloud whether or not you truly
You tell Mila what the landlord said to you
understand the struggle of the working class,
this morning. The two of you owe seven
coming as you do from a middle-class
hundred dollars and if it isn’t “in my hands,
background and participating willingly in the
signed, sealed, and delivered” by Friday
horrors of capitalism.
morning, you will be escorted from the
She is curled on the drab green sofa you
premises by the Houston Police Department.
inherited from your mother, in the ungainly
Probably not very respectfully. You lost your
position that makes her most comfortable,
job last month—“company-wide cutbacks,”
russet legs slung sideways over the back of the
said the slack-jawed pantsuit who functioned
as your immediate supervisor, just after
assuring you that it was mere coincidence that
you were being let go the day after the regional
manager watched your girlfriend aggressively
French you at the door—and there is even less
cash on hand than your usual, which is none.
Mila is not fazed. Mila is never fazed.
“We’ll burn the fucker’s house down,” she says
lazily, scooting closer to the television.
“In this way, each new truck is covered in
steel plating that can withstand head-on
collisions of up to 100 MPH,” intones the
narrator above the sounds of the construction
workers outside. You turn off the TV
(manually, since the remote has been missing
for months). Mila’s gaze shifts to you. It is not
a pleasant one.
“I was watching that,” she says, in a way
that somehow implies several other, lessfriendly sentences.
You do not like to make Mila upset. She is
good to you, or at least she makes you feel you
are good enough for her. This is not something
you have experienced in past relationships.
This eviction threat, though, cannot be ignored
no matter how compelling the construction of
sanitation vehicles might be. You explain the
situation in a kinder, gentler, wheedling tone,
implicitly begging her to care.
Mila’s eyes gain a faraway air, and she
responds, as though reading from a script,
“There cannot be, nor is there, nor will there
ever be, real freedom as long as there is no
freedom for women from the privileges which
the law grants to men, as long as there is no
freedom for the workers from the yoke of
capital, and no freedom for the toiling peasants
from the yoke of the capitalists, landlords and
merchants.”
You stifle a groan as her eyes refocus on
you. “You hear that, Amala?” (You nod
solemnly, knowing this must be played very
carefully, so as to avoid upsetting her.) “No
freedom for the toiling peasants as long as
there’s no freedom from the yoke of the
landlords. This has been going on for centuries,
you know! Millennia!”
28 Winter 2015
You continue to nod, increasing your
tempo slightly.
“Know who said that shit?” Mila’s eyes are
glossy, shining with the spirit of the Red Army,
or possibly with the glaze of heroin. She has
already forgotten all about the landlord and his
jumpy moustache. You shake your head no.
“It was Lenin. He had it figured out a
hundred years ago. But people never fucking
learn, do they?”
Tactfully, you say, “No, I guess they don’t,
but Mila…what are we going to do about the
apartment, baby?”
Her facial expression shifts abruptly. “I
can’t fucking believe this. I’m trying to teach
you something here! Don’t you care about the
proletariat at all?”
You recede into your mind, nodding and
expressing sorrow at all the right times, and
eventually retreat to the bedroom, where you
squeeze your fluff-spilling stuffed monkey
until you fall asleep to the dulcet tones of the
garbage truck program’s narrator. Sometimes
there is nothing else to do but this.
You are awoken by your cell phone’s
inoffensive text-message ringer. It is your
friend Jim, who manages a bar at night and is
rarely coherent enough to send texts at this
hour, for one reason or another. He is offering
you a job as a server at his bar (it is not actually
“his” bar, but he refers to it as such, with the
propriety of the employee who knows he can
get away with whatever he wants). You can
hardly believe your good luck.
The bar, you explain to Mila as you finish
up your makeup and reach for your first bottle
of “bad brains” medication (as you call it in an
unconvincing attempt at good-natured selfdeprecation), is called “The Mast & Mizzen,”
which as far as you can tell does not make any
sense. It is a pirate-themed bar and restaurant.
You practice an “arrrrrr” in the mirror, and
laugh softly to yourself. Mila is still angry with
you. She does not laugh. You reach for your
second bottle of medication.
“Not too hokey,” Jim assures you, in
response to your barrage of text-based
inquiries. “Ur typical bar & restaurant, just with
silly names on the menu.” This is as reassuring
to you as anything can be, realistically speaking.
He neglects, of course, to mention the
pirate uniforms.
You are hovering near a table of thirteen
evangelical Christians with a pitcher of water
when you realize your phone has been
vibrating nonstop for who knows how long.
Mila is angry with you for not telling her when
you will be home. You are always supposed to
let her know when you will be home in case it
affects her plans for the evening. You
apologize as best you are able while
sidestepping the stony glare of the front
manager. Under the oppressive shine of the
employee closet lights, which never turn off,
you fish for a Xanax in your purse. You cannot
find one among the hurricane of months-old
receipts and fraying hair ties. You fill the
pitchers of the evangelicals, who are discussing
what Jesus would have thought of the
president’s health-care plan, and narrowly
avoiding drenching the oldest and surliest of
the bunch, who sports a “Keep Christ in
Christmas” pin atop her flat-brimmed hat. You
duck to the back and take a swig of Pinot
Grigio, which is not actually for drinking but
for “Pillager’s Piccata.” You die the thousand
tiny deaths of terror and neurosis that
characterize each moment of your shift, and
for that matter each moment of your week.
You make it through.
You toss your nametag onto the dresser
(“Amala” was mangled as “Amarah” on your
first day and you were told you’d have to cover
the reprinting charge, so you’ve left it as is for
the moment) and head to the bedroom,
desperate for a bit of peace. You are,
unsurprisingly, disappointed. Mila is pacing
lengthwise across the room with a sloshing
bottle of Dewar’s in one hand and a carving
knife in the other.
“We…we gotta do something,” she says
by way of greeting you. “’S gone far enough.
We gotta do something.” She has that
particular edge to her voice that you associate
with the smell of blood and the feeling of being
discarded. Her voice turns you into a used
tissue, an empty beer can, a spill to be cleaned
up.
“What are you talking about?” You gently
try to take the bottle from her hand. She yanks
it closer to her chest.
“Talking about the landlord. Mister G. P.
fuckin’ Jackson. He’s a leech. He sucks away all
of our money, he takes the people’s lifeblood,
and he gives us nothing in return. He’s a
goddamn leech,” she repeats.
Resisting the urge to point out that G.P.
Jackson has probably used this precise imagery
to describe the two of you, you instead appeal
to Mila’s more logical side. “There’s nothing
we can do, except pay the rent and look for a
cheaper place. This is how the world works,
Mila. I’m not saying you’re wrong, but….”
“But nothing,” she says icily. “There’s
always something the underclass can do to
throw off its chains.” She turns sharply, as if
remembering an important appointment, and
picks up a hand towel from the frowzy stack
on the floor, the cleanliness of its contents
rendered indecipherable by the dim light of
your bedside lamp. She stuffs one end of the
towel into the half-full Dewar’s bottle and
holds it up to the light, as if inspecting it for
structural flaws or code violations.
“Mister Jackson,” she says slowly, as if
gauging your ability to comprehend her words
and finding you wanting, “owns a very large
office complex on Canal, just down the road. I
would be willing to bet that, like this apartment,
it is poorly maintained and would be absolutely
devastated, were an unexpected catastrophe to
occur. Like, for example, if someone were to
start a fire.”
Mila snorts perfunctorily as she cradles the
bottle which you are only just now realizing is
full of gasoline or motor oil or whatever the
hell it is that Molotov cocktails are full of, you
don’t know, you are not a revolutionary, you
are just a waitress, and really only a fair-tomiddling one at that, Molotov cocktails are not
and should not play any sort of role in your
daily affairs, what the absolute hell is going on
here Mila. You say this, or most of it anyway,
or at least the last part.
She takes a step toward you. “You are so
“Anywhere you like,” she says with a faint
fucking spineless.” Another step. “This is why
smile.
I never trust you with anything important.”
“I…I didn’t sign up for this, Mila.”
Step. “Let’s go. Quit playing games. It’s only a
“I didn’t sign up to have a cowardly
ten-minute walk.” Step. “Come on.”
capitalist-loving class traitor for a girlfriend,
Step, and then you are in the
now did I, Amala?” She is sneering
Her voice, you
middle of 66th Street, in that
at you openly now, violence
particular type of night that can
think to yourself, implicit in her bearing. “Now
only be experienced in South
throw the fucking Molotov.”
sounds like a
Texas, a blanket of gloom
Silence.
shattered by great swatches of
“Amala.”
Nickelback
neon and halogen, the plaintive
You could be at home with
concept
album
cries of overgrown insects mixing
two Klonopin and a Netflix
with the swears and horns of a about bad choices. Original series right now.
thousand angry neighbors.
“Throw it, Amala, or I’ll
Step, and you are squinting to make sure
make you regret it.” She is standing to your left.
you stay close to Mila, who is practically
To your right is the entrance to a room full of
skipping with excitement, her jangly voice
filing cabinets and hardwood desks. You still
occasionally tearing into you with halfhave no idea what this office complex actually
whispered exhortations and taunts. Her voice,
houses.
you think to yourself, sounds like a Nickelback
“Throw it, you stupid bitch!”
concept album about bad choices. You wish
You squeeze your eyes shut, dimly aware
desperately for a Valium. You realize that for
of the building’s proximity to the police station,
the last several minutes you have been powerof the heroin in your girlfriend’s pocket or at
walking down 66th Street in a pirate costume,
least in her veins, of the ache in your back from
complete with three-cornered skull-anda shift full of pirate jokes and single-digit tips,
crossbones hat.
of the fire marshal’s nightmare on your right,
Step, and you are standing at the rear
of Mila’s white-hot fury on your left.
entrance to the Harford-Bentley Central
You pick a direction, almost at random,
Processing Office, which you think is an
and hurl the Molotov.
insurance agency, but you have never actually
been sure. The office is unlit, except for the
lawn lights outside, which never seem to go off,
and the maintenance door is heavy-looking and
forbidding. The air here is even thicker with the
nightly cacophony of the crickets, or cicadas,
or something.
Step, and watch Mila scrabble up the side
of the building like a particularly odious Marvel
supervillain. She is doing something with a
screwdriver at the corner of the window.
Absurdly, there is only a screen protecting the
office’s interior from the likes of you. Moments
later, she appears at the door, beckoning you
inside.
In one fluid motion, she flicks on the
dingy overhead lights and presses the
makeshift bomb into your startled hands.
30 Winter 2015
{the books in my library}
By: Courtney Marie
will outlive me.
and if i collect enough of them
they will convey convincingly
the interesting
intellectual
well-rounded person
i wish i was.
and when i’m dead
someone can buy the lot
for one low low price
and maybe for one moment
they will reflect on what an
interesting
intellectual
well-rounded person
i might have been.
Lung Copy
By: Elizabeth Hynes
Collage with wax
32 Winter 2015
Centerfold Versailles
By: Dorothy Chan
1.
In elaborate we trust:
As in Fragonard, put me on a swing—
as in centerfold, put me in the nude,
save for a pastel garter with bow.
I lift my leg can-can style,
swing overlooking the well-trimmed gardens.
Let that garter bounce right off
for him to catch, looking up my leg.
2.
And I enter the gardens:
flower motif over nude body—
the Marie Antoinette fantasy
of making love in the grass,
not letting the soot get in your privates.
The light and shadows hit me—
I play coy, go into the flower bush:
flowers over V, flowers over size C.
3.
Make me majestic,
stand up straight for portraiture:
hands on hips, purple bra
falling off, garter belt to match—
no panties.
I suck my stomach in,
giving me the pout.
Hair like a lion’s mane,
the chandelier’s above me,
illuminated—the room vast,
the king’s bed messed up—
golden, golden golden:
candles burning, my ass is one fire.
They open the curtains—
Majesty’s now in the room.
I take off my bra.
When Flesh is the Winding Sheet
By: Elizabeth Yalkut
Something in the kitchen catches fire
and a city starts to burn. That's what happens
and I'm not sorry. Who wouldn't want to be an emperor with a violin,
fingers strewing notes like gasoline
along the road to Rome? Apologies are for the people walking backwards on the road,
let me tell you a story instead. It's a good one,
incest and rubble and a plate full of dormice with a glass of red wine.
We are all rodents, eyes gleaming and tails flickering like flame,
flinching from loud noises and birds swooping down, fragile bones inside a velvet sheath,
heart fluttering inside the cage of bones.
Sometimes you have to split yourself open as cleanly as a ripe apricot,
expose the dry kernel inside. Sometimes bones aren't protection for the softer tissues,
sometimes flesh is the winding sheet around the body.
What was I saying? Oh, death.
Boring. Obvious. Everyone tells stories about death, about love, about how they're
the same side of two different coins, one the inside of a Möbius strip,
the other the outside. Have another glass of wine, darling,
the Klein bottle isn't empty yet. We can stay here a while longer, go on talking.
The other day, I was walking
by the river (it isn't a river,
just salt spat out by the ocean, but let's pretend) and I thought I saw
a firedrake swimming under the bridge, all pupil-less eye and many-jointed
wings.
But the river isn't burning, we're safe here,
the city is only buildings and people arranged in an orderly three-dimensional grid,
and other such tidy lies. You're good at that,
aren't you? You're so pretty. I've never felt like this before. I want to spend my life with you, sweetheart. Baby. Princess.
I forgot — that's not my name. I don't know who I am but that isn't my name.
That’s only one of the things I’ve lost along the way, one
of the least important. The pen that ran out of ink when I was alone in a bus station
and it was snowing,
that was frightening, like being abandoned by my shadow. Somewhere
my shadow is sitting in a cathedral made out of light, a smudge in the midst of
alizarin crimson, cerulean blue, harlequin green, amaranth violet. Somewhere
I am already there. I have already been rescued.
The self-rescuing princess does not need armor, a horse, a sword. The selfrescuing princess doesn't have long golden hair or blue eyes or skin like cream. The selfrescuing
princess chews glass and peels her own oranges.
There is an orchard full of lemon trees which is my kingdom: pucker up. I woke
this morning covered in blood
again. Every month, this happens, and every month
I'm surprised all over again.
34 Winter 2015
Leading the prayer
By: Eric Allen Yankee
I.
Immigrant Spirit
On September 11, 2001
I led the prayer
I was a student of Religion
Learning the ways
In which humans have
Tied, fastened, and bound their spirits
We stood in a warehouse of immigrants
Me – a suburban white boy
Recent immigrant to the city
Two Puerto Rican Americans
One Mexican American
We held hands and mined our fear
For the words to chip out comfort
II. Is this America's new immigrant song?
First tower struck
Ground the fleet
Block the borders
America America America
Has no room for you
Has no womb for you
Second tower struck
Give bombs to the police
Let the streets wear armor
Has no flower for you
Has no hour for you
III. The sea is my home
My grandpa was born
On a boat.
Azahares que Estallan
By: Vivian Calderon Bogoslavsky
40in x 30in
36 Winter 2015
Rodents
By: Mark Rosenblum
S
olitary in my secluded garden, quiescent on my lounge chair of interwoven human hair, I
observe the squirrel. He gnaws with fervor on an acorn, but I know he is surreptitiously
watching me. When I hurl my prosthetic leg at his furry little cranium, he scurries up the oak,
hiding behind a cancerous wooden bulge humping the tree. Soon the costumed rat emerges from
behind the middle finger limb flipping off humanity. He slinks suspended, upside down; tiny claws
arousing infected bark. He is a fellow scatter hoarder--a kindred spirit. He hid my soul last spring
when he spied me bury you under the tree.
Sonnet (The Exiles)
By: Gary Wilkens
Striking outward from the galaxy’s rim,
velocity a little less than light,
the few Last Ones try with parched minds to limn
what the void whispers, the shape of the night
that will not have a dawn. A century
they built these last ships, generations worked
and died to craft these engines. Undersea
they grew the great habitats. Nearby lurked
the planet stabber, the death head. This last
world he vowed to take. The myth enemy,
the old terror scratched on cave walls. Cast
like fortune-telling bones, forced like rats to flee,
they tell their young a story of return,
of exiles, of a billion ways to burn.
38 Winter 2015
Beginning College in Arkansas
By: Gary Wilkens
My first concentrated task in college
was picking raspberries on a sustainable
farm, plump bright brains among jade
leaves. They smushed easily and bled
down my fingers so I went ahead
and munched many more than I
collected. Oh how they burst, fat
and tart. I saw sweetness. I took it.
I was not ashamed. Along the row
I walked long into twilight, hands
smeared crimson. Later inside with
the other students on the orientation
trip we sat in circles on the floor
and sang Brown-eyed Girl.
It was here that Melvin admitted
casually that he was gay, the first
openly gay person I had ever known.
He was slim and handsome
and gentle. Damn but he was unafraid.
I saw that his black hands
were streaked with sticky juice too.
We had both killed
hundreds of berries, and we were
unrepentant.
Algo Oculto en cada Sensacion
20in x 20in
40 Winter 2015
The Virginity Myth
By: Hadassah Grace
When was your first...?
I was twelve, we climbed over the fence, into the playground of Wairaki Primary school at midnight,
his lips were cold.
No, wait, I was seven. I told my next door neighbor we should practice for when we both found real
boyfriends. We hid in her closet. I pressed my chest against hers, even though she didn’t want to.
Well how old were you when you lost…?
I was fifteen, her body felt like what I was made for, we stumbled through each other's clothes and
over each other's feelings
But that doesn’t count, when did you...?
I was sixteen, born again and committed to the straight and narrow, so we could only use our hands
and mouths, we soaked the sheets in guilt
But that's not right either.
I was thirteen, he told me he loved me and that everything would be OK, he was twice my age
I was fourteen, the concussion lasted for days, I caught the bus home bleeding
They say you can never step in the same river twice
that the body completely renews itself every few years so
I was seventeen, reaching out to take what I wanted for the first time
I was seventeen, he bought me a vibrator for my birthday
I was seventeen, a single bed is too small for three people
seventeen was a good year
OK, but have you ever...?
I was 20 he'd never been with a woman before. He opened for me, I was scared to hurt him, and I
did
I was 22 she’d never been with a woman before, she tasted like cumin and honey
I was 22, he’d never said ‘I love you before’
I was 22, he’d never been with anyone before
22 was a good year
Maybe we lose things in layers
Snakes, shedding skin that's been touched, making the fingerprints part of our pattern
Maybe we find ourselves in pieces
tangled in sheets, waiting for others to give us what we've always had.
Maybe I'm still a virgin
Maybe there's no such thing.
42 Winter 2015
Occupation: Hustler
By: Hadassah Grace
I'm the stripper who made Ben Moynihan squirm
frustrated on the lap dance couch
whispering, "Every girl is a kind of slut."
making it rain crumpled dollar bills and bullets
But I’ve seen the look a virgin gets, when I take off my G-string
like they found the secrets of the universe between my thighs
Loneliness won't make you hate women, but hating women is a lonely sport
He asked me, “How should we do this?”
concussions blooming like petals stitched into the stained upholstery
And I am advised to be cautious
carry a weapon
head straight home after work
don’t make your blood a birthday present
keep your thighs wrapped tight in dirty sheets
walk with keys between fisted fingers
I'm the whore who made Elliot Rodger cry
I swiped left on tinder
even though my description says I'm dtf
His all-caps cursed that I was a
FAT UGLY DYKE DIDN'T WANT YOU ANYWAY FUCKING CUNT GO KILL
YOURSELF I HOPE YOU FUCKING DIE
he wanted me to know he was a real alpha male
As if a dog with its teeth bared is what I'm looking for
And I am advised to be smart
meet in a public place
look for early warning signs that might indicate danger
the creeping spread of black mould on the insides of his mouth
the half moon scars his nails have left on the soft skin of his palms
be vigilant
I'm the bitch who made Rusty Houser punch
a hole in the living room wall
we got into an argument at three in the morning
in the comments of a status update about abortion rights
by a friend of a mutual friend
he thought I should keep my opinions to myself
but that my insides belong to everyone
He told me truth and death will always go hand in hand
but some people will kill to keep their eyes sewn shut
And I am advised to stay quiet
don’t be divisive
smile more, say less
train your teeth with superglue
so you never provoke the kind of anger that leaves you in pieces
44 Winter 2015
Scenes of Leaving
By: Emily Blair
H
e built his peace with Plexiglas and
Saran wrap and fishing wire, all wet
cotton and translucent insubstantial
sandwich bags and clotheslines strung empty.
His peace was a mobile hung beneath his skull,
crystallized in amber. He caught women like a
Venus fly trap, throwing themselves against the
bird cages of his fantasy, growing feathers on
the sides of thin faces and picking each other
bloody. He built his peace with the bones of
the dead, doorframes of tibias, skinned hands
housing incandescent bulbs.
He falls out of love with these fallen
goddesses at high noon and cries,
shaking windows and cracking his heart
into four equal pieces,
a leaking blood orange, all pulp and no
play.
I am his latest woman. I am pure and
whole and human.
I am the one who will live forever and ever
and ever and.
***
He is the sun in late afternoon—shadowmaker, wind-breaker,
protector against loneliness.
Who else would ever love me? Who else
would even try?
He holds me with both hands and insists
that I text him when I get to work every
morning, a sign of caring, of something that
smells like love.
I move into his place almost immediately,
my own room gutted, my roommates joking
that I have died; they call me The Ghost and I
see it as a point of pride.
I pour myself into car trunk and side table
and the space between his bed and wall until I
have nothing left. He is the sun in late
afternoon, earth-scorcher, fire-starter. My
passion knows no bounds; his passion is
measured.
***
He is pine tree grown inward. He is blue
pine hiding between skin and organ, pores
seeping sap and needle-nose-hairs and great
stretching arms of arcing boughs—
a whole forest of fir, and I am nothing.
Trees are our ancestors made immortal,
I’ve heard.
Untouchable, he sits on the side of a
mountain just to contemplate his majesty.
I worship at sprawling roots and shake
holy water from a tin bottle onto the ground
around him. His gaze does not waver from the
horizon, never smiling down from this throne
on high, while I chant his legacy under my
breath, stretching his stiff spine an inch more
with each added tale.
My mother asks how he’s doing and I say
great. Fantastic. He’s getting a lot more work
these days, and soon, money won’t be the
insurmountable burden that it is now. I eat
Saltines and jalapenos and drink vodka in
lemonade, cauterizing myself from the inside
out, and it’s all fine, and I love him.
***
He exists in the space of a short breath just
before the word “and.”
He is the longest sentence ever said or
thought or written.
And another thing—And just so you
know—And I just think it’s funny that—
He walks through the house throwing
phrases behind him, carpet-bombing the
bathroom, leaving mines in the bedroom, the
kitchen covered with one more things.
His pockets hang heavy with slight
offenses from months past, a sneer here, an
unenthusiastic orgasm there.
Do you want this? Is this what you
wanted?
He threatens to take me down with him,
as if I would not willingly break his fall with my
whole body, with everything I think I have.
***
His gaze lingers on our waitress and I
wonder what he was like before I met and
caught and made him.
***
He is an ugly bird whose name no one
I am supposed. I am ought. I am bending
knows. He is not goldfinch or cardinal or blue
and never breaking. I am the surface of soft,
jay or even that lovable villain crow.
dry snow.
What is he? Angry. What is he? Infectious,
I buy only his favorite beer and bring him
parasitic, a boil.
one still-cold from the market fridge because
What is he? All encompassing, blocking
he wants to know that I have gone nowhere
out the sun. Oh, how I love him.
else. He carries in the groceries to see if I have
I watch him from my
bought anything he dislikes,
He carries in the groceries to make sure I am not
window and he does nothing
from dawn to late evening,
wasting his money on shit.
to see if I have bought
caught in a state of perpetual
This behavior is, of course,
anything he dislikes, to
movement, swirling around
completely normal, because
make
sure
I
am
not
wasting
the same branch for five
I am nothing but a stain on
hours, wailing and shrugging.
his finances, social life,
his money on shit.
His whole body shivers with
existence—nothing
can
the effort of doing so much for no reward.
come from me but problems. His favorite beer
I decide to give him a soul. I have enough
is a craft IPA and twice as expensive as
soul and he has none. I pour myself through a
anything I would choose to spend money on,
sieve, me into him, my marrow working
but that is more than okay.
overtime, my heart weak and easily caught—a
three-legged dog heart, low flying and
***
wounded.
I feed him out of my cupped hand and he
I wake him up in the mornings slowly. We
never bothers to learn control. My palms
call them li’l kisses. He laughs and rolls and
become pockmarked, covered in weeping
moans in faux anger. I smile and kiss every
scabs and half-formed scars.
exposed inch of skin. Oh I love you, I sing. I
He laughs deep in his body when I wince
love you love love you oh I love you so.
away from him. He is not a small bird.
And I do. I feel as though I found him in
some long forgotten corner of the world and
***
brought him to the light.
What would we ever do without each
He orders our dinner. He knows I hate
other?
olives and orders me a Greek salad.
He would recede and I would grow strong
What, you don’t like it? Weren’t you
and lithe without stoop. I would flower into
supposed to be dieting, anyway?
something like the person I thought I would be
He orders a burger and I don’t consider
one day, when I was naïve and didn’t know
saying anything about how he stopped
what love felt like.
exercising a month into loving me, having me.
I leave his coffee beside the bed and close
It doesn’t cross my mind to dislike his soft,
the door softly on my way out to work.
hanging stomach, his lack of sex drive, his
heavy breathing even while sitting still.
***
46 Winter 2015
No light escapes from him. He is the
reverberation of ten thousand big bangs, of
five hundred birds screaming over plucked-off
wings.
I am sorry! I am sorry! I am sorry!
He is forgiveness. He sets the sin and
forgives. He builds the maze and rejoices when
I make it through. Oh, he is grace personified.
He is the perfect lover I never earned. I try and
try and never earn, in debt up to my eyebrows,
nose barely bobbing above the water, his grace
only so buoyant, my mistakes egregious. I
cannot work this off. I’m sorry. Oh baby I’m
sorry. Thank you, I’m sorry, thank you, thank
you.
***
He is threatening to kill himself again. He
threatens to kill himself a few times a month
when things fall into a groove, when I am
breathing too easily.
I must not contradict. I must walk softly.
I must assure him that he is my moon and
stars, and urge him so gently to eat something,
please, for me. Stay, for me. Just a small bite,
for me.
I pick up comforting him like old knitting,
my fingers swift on this familiar pattern. I can
comfort him and let my mind wander, petting
his head and thinking of the housework that
needs doing while saying,
Never leave me, never go. I don’t know
what to do without you. I love you, love you, I
will always love you.
He never kills himself. He never even
tries.
***
We stop having sex. We are not in a slow
spiraling dive down, a lessening in frequency,
passion eventually petering out as we slowly
grow accustomed to the pitch and roll of the
body beside us. It is immediate. It is distinct.
When I try to engage him, he sighs and looks
away. His body reacts but he does not. He has
not looked me in the face in three months. Six
months. Eighteen months.
He asks if I am so weak, that I need sex.
If I am so animalistic, disgusting, trashy.
I remember when we used to kiss. Is it as
simple as that? Can I claim the mask of
innocence to say that I miss kissing my lover,
miss the way he used to look at me? I would do
anything, I think, if he would let me.
***
I went to the ocean three weeks after I met
him. He was obsessed with me, and I needed
it. Drank it up as if dying from thirst, as if
drowning, as if my gut could absorb him
whole, like salvation. Drank like I had never
tasted anything so wonderful in my life.
He called twice a day and I would leap
from the pool or dinner table to take the call.
When I got home, he had sent me a bouquet
of flowers for each day I was gone. My house
held the scent of sweet decay for a month
afterward.
He came by to check on me at night, called
it tucking me in. Once I was picking up a pizza
and when I got back he was slamming on my
door with both open palms, screaming himself
hoarse.
I thought you were gone, I thought you
were gone, I thought you were dead.
I held him up with the full weight of my
body as he squeezed my sides until I could
barely breathe. Baby, I would never leave. I
could never leave you. I’m so sorry.
I never knew what I was apologizing for,
only it’s what you do when a man is sobbing
because he cares about you.
***
He is an overwhelming roar of emptiness
between ears.
I hear nothing over the ringing.
I feel nothing but the roar of that sound,
my body a tuning fork,
vibrating within my own skin.
I stand up straight, choke on occasional
breaths, feel my heart pound against
every inch of skin.
Oh baby, I didn’t mean to.
I am sweating, heart hard, body aflame. I
will die in this fire, my heart a stone.
Honey, I’m sorry.
I fall into him, stepping off a cliff. Who
would believe me?
My ears ring and I see nothing and feel
nothing and my entire body is suspended in tar,
suffocating on darkness fully formed.
We’re in the shower and the water is hot.
The water is very hot.
I make a joke about his body. Something
about his penis, how sad it looks unaroused.
Something not meant to hurt him.
He shoves me into the side of the shower,
hard, smacking my head against the wall. I’m
sorry. Sorry. I stay on the floor of the shower.
I can feel the hot water running down my
back and the hard, grimy bathtub beneath
knees and palms and I know what has
happened but can do nothing.
He picks me up and wraps my wet body in
his own.
My legs no longer work. I am so sorry.
The side of my head is hot, a knot
forming, all of my blood rushing to under my
tongue, in my ear, deep in my stomach, heat
coming off of me in waves.
He wraps me in a towel and lays me on
our bed, half exposed, my bare leg and hip and
side not enough to merit a reaction, my body
an offering, too scared to shift the towel, too
scared to make his kind gesture look anything
but majestic, staring at the wall, my joints filled
with lead.
He goes back to watching TV and gets
another beer
like nothing happened.
You know I would never hurt you.
I nod and nod and nod and.
***
He is the slant of sun at 4 p.m. at the
beginning of winter. He glares
48 Winter 2015
but offers no warmth. He is storming
through the glass door of our living room and
doing nothing. It’s windy. It’s too cold.
He is the one who brings false hope of
warmth.
Can you pick up some dinner?
I’ll pick me up some dinner.
He eats a calzone in front of the TV. His
flesh is distended, uneven. His entire body is a
temple crumbling, and I wonder what he once
looked like, what he looked like when I first
saw him. I look at him without blinking, and
do not go blind, and eat pretzels and peanut
butter for dinner, and I do not glance away, as
if I am someone too.
***
Where’s my work shirt? My favorite one,
the blue one. Where is it?
I don’t know. Did you wash it? When did
you last wear it?
Monday.
Well, did you do laundry?
What the fuck do you think? Of course
not. When do I fucking do your job?
Are you going to work for me today?
Fantastic.
He throws a coffee mug at me. It makes a
crater in the drywall.
I am living on the moon. I am made of
wept stars. He puts on a red shirt and does not
look toward where I have rooted myself when
he leaves twenty minutes later. I will die leaning
against this wall in our bedroom. I will never
make a noise again. I stand for five minutes
after he leaves and I could stand here for days
more, years, a woman petrified, my weight
threatening to sink this whole building,
fracturing floors and buckling foundation.
***
Nothing keeps me upright but the desire
not to die. Living, maybe, is the optimist’s goal,
but not dying is the structure around which I
plan my escape. I will hold this body upright
and continue and scheme and squirrel away
money and know that the end will not be death,
not for me. Not in this case.
Dying sounds like an emptiness I cannot
fathom, and having once been happy, having
once wanted food, having once been kissed
softly—
I know that life has the ability to sing.
***
He is banana peels and apple cores and
chicken bones and bread heels
and not even a dog would pee on him.
And I hold bitterness close to my
breastbone, clutching it for fear that letting go
will mean forgiving, and I am not ready.
I have never tasted forgiveness but it
sounds like castor oil, good for me, hell on
earth, look how fucking great I am, that I might
be able to forgive. I fill my legs with bitterness,
heavy, concrete, lead, bones bowing.
Is this holding on? Is trying to hold the
tides in my arms holding on? Am I wrangling
the moon, shooting down the sun, screaming
into the sky like I have finally seen the scars on
my skin from being set aflame? Is this holding
on?
I tried vomiting, starvation, shaking
hands, smiles ripping the edges of my mouth.
I tried emptying myself onto city streets,
and new men touching me as if I were made of
glass.
My gynecologist told me that I had
scarring in my vagina, but nothing, in her
words, too serious. My doctor asked if I
thought I needed pills for this, and I figured
that wouldn’t be so bad, a mellowing agent take
a sander to my hormones to discover
something beautiful and forgotten beneath it
all.
My mother told me that she had known all
along when I told her, when I only told her,
that he could raise his voice sometimes.
Starfuckers
By: Hadassah Grace
We went to the Carter observatory, to learn about planets and constellations, and all I could think
about was fucking you.
Don’t get me wrong, I know the magic of the cosmos.
I’ve read all the Carl Sagan quotes - you know the one about how we’re made of star stuff?
8 years old I was top of my class in science,
my teacher kept me after school so I could listen to a recording of the radio waves produced by a
pulsar
it kind of sounded like a fat kid trying to tap dance on a trampoline
but it still made my toes curl
I was listening to a star
But next to you, arms barely touching, heads tilted back tourist style
at the horsehead nebula splayed across the ceiling
I swore if you threw me one more diastemic grin
I would strip you bare and boldly go where no man… actually, I don't know, are you into guys?
anyway space
it’s the final frontier, right?
the unfilled spaces between us
riding the air, you push out and out and out
no matter how close we press ourselves
there’s emptiness in between our bodies
where the curve of your stomach fits the small of my back
there are galaxies of gaps to fill
Have you ever noticed when the moon wanes, it looks like its being swallowed? Call me the night
sky and I will devour you.
I'm willing to bet there's a universe of poems full of metaphors about stars. I didn't mean to write
you one, honest, but astronomy turns me on. And the only word for my attraction to you is gravity
I try to pull away but there are forces at work
Fuck Shakespeare, we’re not star crossed lovers
Let's be starfuckers
Drive out where city lights have faded
wait for darkness, set up the telescope and forget to use it
50 Winter 2015
How to be a Writer
By: Hadassah Grace
Step One: Call yourself a writer
Find a job that embarrasses you. One your parents told you never to do. Something so pointless and
demeaning that when people ask you what you do, the truth will stick in your throat. You’ll feel it
bubble up like blood through clenched teeth. In a panic, throw your shoulders back and shout, “I’m
a writer!” and hope that someday you might win a poetry slam, with enough prize money to pay
your power bill, so you won’t feel like such a fraud.
Step Two: Stay up late.
Get high too often, fuck too hard, eat until your stomach hurts. Find men who think they don’t
deserve you, and treat them badly until they realize how wrong they were. Play music loud, read
books from start to finish with no breaks, call in sick to work so you can finish all seven seasons of
that show you hate. Don’t let your mind rest so you never have to sit in silence and remind yourself
of all the reasons you didn’t commit suicide.
Step Three: Sit in silence, and remind yourself of all the reasons you didn’t commit suicide.
Remember when your dad stopped trying. Weeks before his heart operation, the pills untouched in
their little white bottles. The way you sat by his bedside reading T.S. Elliot, in case he could hear you
through the coma. Later your mother will call it ‘medicide’ and the word is a fist to your stomach.
There were reasons, remember? You had them tattooed on your thighs, carved them into bathroom
walls, muttered them under your breath as you bit into the skin around your nails. Remember that
the reasons came from a book your dad gave you, on your birthday the year before he died. They
didn’t work for him.
Step Four: Go out walking.
Late at night, after your boyfriend has gone to bed, even though you know he wishes you would
follow him. Choose uncomfortable shoes, and a jacket that isn’t warm enough. Find a hill steep
enough to make your lungs ache, and don’t allow yourself to slow down. In darkness, think about
rape and murder statistics. Or zombies. Or that creepy girl from The Grudge. Do this until your
cramped computer desk is the only place that feels like home.
Step Five: Call yourself a writer.
Say it to yourself this time. Write poems like brushing your teeth. Every day, or something starts to
rot.
Hand Over Mouth
By: Elizabeth Hynes
Collage
52 Winter 2015
Life Equations
By: Hannah Sattler
We make a science of the stars and the constellations
inside our hearts, as though there are
definite answers and love
is just a solution,
an inevitable conclusion of certain sums,
this syntax of science.
You + me = we.
Attraction2 = love.
("#$%&'(*+&,-(–/01/#$"$%&'()0(%3%4",%$%/(
= relationship
5'#/,$"%'$6
But numbers and equations tangle in my mind.
All I know is what I see.
Gravity works still. Don’t worry. I checked.
We humans can’t grow wings
no matter how we wish to fly.
And in the skies the stars commit suicide.
789:;<=:>?@
x −𝑐𝑙𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑦 = no real solution.
?A@B>C:@
Even science proves there is not
always an answer.
Negotiations
By: Kim Hunter-Perkins
I rest my cheek against her naked thigh;
night air cools against my liquid face
as you kiss the echoes of her orgasm,
fingertips tangled in my hair.
54 Winter 2015
Knowing
By: Kim Hunter-Perkins
Our lips crackle on contact
Lightening and cherry bombs
Illuminating the narrow
Corridor of books where
the air is heavy with a need
Driven by ten thousand taps of the enter key
(ten thousand breaths of anticipation)
the press of your knee against mine,
eyes slipping from my ankles to thighs,
and recognition of like calling itself by name—
We snap apart, stunned.
Then I grab your tie,
pull you back for more.
Not Spicy
By: Kenneth Pobo
Y
ou go to Popeye’s for chicken. You’ve been hungry all morning. This was not a good day
to ignore breakfast. At the funeral home, the dark-suited man who wrote down when you
would pick up the ashes and asked if you needed more death certificates looked sincerely
saddened by your loss. It’s not like he has a choice. Some people sell hamburgers; others sell how
to handle grief. It’s expected.
Your stomach kept growling while he was stripping your sorrow naked and rubbing word lotion
all over it. If you could have told your stomach (your husband refers to it as a tummy) to quiet
down, you would, but that would only have confused the dark-sleeved one.
The “loved one” was your sister, Maggie. No one else would make “arrangements” for the
family’s black sheep. At 39, she died of drugs and drink and maybe a few other things. There
wouldn’t be a funeral. You’d scatter her ashes around the Peace rose. She wasn’t a peaceful person
and roses meant nothing to her. You’d may as well stuff her in the trash and wheel the receptacle
out for the garbage men. But that wouldn’t do. You aren’t sentimental and neither was she, but no,
not that.
When your mother told you Maggie was dead, she sounded as if she were telling you about a
school that had closed. Her voice, a phone wire with no electronic sizzle. She had disowned
Maggie, had been hurt enough for one lifetime. She asked you to “take care of it.”
“It.”
So you did. The drizzly day smelled faintly of cooking fish. You took the day off, not to grieve,
just to get things done. Maggie had ripped you off many times. You felt sorry for her even when
she did it. She was a mess. You tried to get her to seek help. She called you a “Shithead” and hung
up. She was partly right. You know you can be a shithead though you hide it better than some.
At Popeye’s you said you wanted it mild, two wings and a thigh. And a biscuit. And a watered
down-Coke. You studied your fingernails as they got your order. You drove home. Oh no. Spicy.
Crap! You hate spicy. But you didn’t want to go back. You ate it and cursed, blamed Maggie and
your mother. Your dad is dead but you blamed him too. Your tongue felt unnaturally warm.
You looked out the window which looked at you. It knew you would soon be breaking.
56 Winter 2015
Mamihlapinatapai1
By: James Freitas
I was happier
than I thought
I ought to be.
Struck by the smell of her hair;
the little things I learned,
standing in the sillage of her spirit.
In that embrace.
A rooftop encounter—really
a prolonged
mamihlapinatapai.
A hair-width between hands,
nervously shaking. I’m an edition on reserve
unavailable
(in different senses of the word)
but she seized me: my feeling.
Nobody could pry it away.
Still
nobody can.
That fuzzling first gasp of asphyxiation—
I felt.
(waking from falling in a dream)
mamihlapinatapai.
She kept my smile
and so did I—
gorgonized.
Awake all night in sleepless vorfreude2,
itchy anticipation
for
another
another
Hoping
erlebnisse3—
mamihlapinatapai.
from the Chilean Yaghan language. a look between two people sharing an unspoken but private moment.
German, joyful intense anticipation that comes from imagining future pleasures.
3 German, the experiences positive or negative that we feel most deeply and through which we truly live.
excerpted from Wikipedia.
1
2
Alegre Polvo Veraniego I
12inx12in
58 Winter 2015
In Charge
By: Isaac Hunt
T
he paper road map we’d picked up from
California. Our oldest daughter had just given
one of the multiple rest areas was
birth to our first grandchild and we weren’t
spread in front of me, propped against
going to let the two thousand miles between
the steering wheel and staring me in the face.
Davenport and Canterbury Row stop us. My
I’d been looking at it for over five minutes,
wife hated flying and I hated driving… so it
while my wife of thirty years drummed her
was decided that we would drive to California,
fingernails on the glove box and stared through
see the sights along the way and take our time.
her sunglasses at the deserted parking lot of the
It wasn’t exactly that I hated driving; it’s just
service station and beyond that to the even
that I’d spent thirty years as a state police
more deserted road. I felt tiny beads of sweat
officer in Iowa, driving eight hours a day, five
trickle down my temples and onto my cheeks.
days a week. The calluses on my butt had just
Any second now she would ask one of two
started to wear away after six months of living
questions, “are we lost” or “do you want me to
off a pension and now I was expected to sit in
go in and ask for directions?” I was almost
a car for thirty plus hours with a million other
concentrating more on the digital clock above
lunatics on the road pulling boats and campers,
the radio, than the multiple
semi-trucks taking up two lanes
roads twisting all over the map
and soccer moms yelling at a
Voices would get
in front of me, trying to time
dozen kids. All this without the
raised,
doors
would
get
when my wife would open her
legal ability to arrest someone.
mouth and cause me to open
I-80 proved to be less
slammed and feelings
mine and thus start the first
scenic than we’d thought and we
would get hurt.
argument of the return trip
wound up pushing through to
home.
Monterey in two and half days,
The little green numbers flashed to eightthe sights and leisure be damned. And what do
fifteen and my eyes instinctively darted over to
you know, Miss I-don’t-like-to-fly drove
my wife, anticipating that now was the time.
approximately two hours. In thirty years
Her fingers were still drumming on the glove
nothing much had changed.
box, but I heard her sigh and I knew it was
Being a grandparent was amazing. I got
coming. With three to eleven words she was
puked on, peed on and somehow in the ten
going to openly question my manhood and my
days we were out there, my daughter and soncontrol over the situation and subsequently
in-law never had to get up in the middle of the
send me into a feeding frenzy of retorts and
night. It was amazing... The little guy was cute
excuses in an attempt to salvage my pride and
and his middle name was James after me, so I
retain my right to hold my man card. Voices
couldn’t complain too much, at least out loud.
would get raised, doors would get slammed and
We didn’t get to see the kids very much
feelings would get hurt. Three to four hours of
anymore and they didn’t have any other family
silence would ensue, broken only by the
within six states, so the new parents were glad
occasional pothole or rumble strips on the
for our help. But at the end of ten days, I was
highway. All because my manhood wouldn’t
ready to shove off and make the journey home
allow me to admit that I didn’t have a clue
to my recliner and my wet bar in the basement.
where we were and I didn’t have a clue how to
My wife cried the first hundred miles and
get where we were going.
sniffled the next hundred after that.
It was our first vacation since I retired and
I suppose it is my fault that we got lost.
we’d decided to drive, all the way to Monterey,
Before we were through the Sierra Nevada
Mountains, I made the innocent suggestion
that maybe we should take a different route
home, take a few extra days and do what we’d
intended to do on the trip out there, see the
west. I was newly retired, my wife was a school
teacher on summer vacation and our three
daughters were out of the house (although our
youngest was threatening to come back). We
had no obligations and no reason to be back.
Through the sniffles my wife agreed. I turned
off of I-eighty and my wife pulled out the map.
We got part way through Nevada then
decided to go to Idaho on a whim from my
wife. While I drove, she googled bed and
breakfasts and off the beaten path tourist traps
on her new smart phone. On the same whim
she picked an old fashioned bed and breakfast
south of Boise in some little town that I can’t
even remember the name of. We could see
mountains out both windows in our room,
snowcapped peaks and clouds that seemed to
be resting on them. The moon had been nearly
full and we’d stayed in bed watching the stars
touch the mountains. We made love for the
first time in several weeks. It was a good whim.
Back on the road we went cutting through
northern Wyoming and headed for South
Dakota. We didn’t make it. My wife was
humming along to the radio and searching for
our next stop, while I tried to estimate our gas
mileage in my mind before hitting the
information button on the display screen to
confirm or usually deny my estimation.
“I’ve found it!”
My mind had been wondering and I was
suddenly jerked back into reality. I swerved
onto the rumble strip on the right side of the
lane and then quickly corrected. I shook my
head and then grinned sheepishly at my wife
who was shaking her head at me.
“We’re getting twenty-eight point two
miles per gallon.”
“Uh huh, well congratulations. I’ve found
our next stop, Mama Smith’s Old Time Bed n’
Breakfast.”
Sounds miserable… “Sounds fantastic
honey, I’ll pull over and we can plot it out.”
60 Winter 2015
We’d only seen sagebrush and cows for
the last thirty miles and I debated just stopping
in the middle of the road. As I slowed to a stop
my former career kicked in and I went ahead
and pulled onto the thin gravel shoulder and
put the car in park. My wife was already
pouring over the road map and plotting a
course in her head.
After two hundred miles, two detours, and
a two-hundred-dollar cell phone with no
service, I was really wishing the course she’d
plotted had been written down somewhere
besides on her smart phone or in her head. We
were somewhere north of Casper, Wyoming, at
a tiny service station with two pumps and a
bucket of greasy looking water that I presumed
was for washing the windshield. I had no idea
how to get where we were going and daylight
was fading fast.
I’d been able to stall for a few minutes
while I filled the car up with gas, the old
fashioned pump motors humming louder than
any gas pump I’d ever heard before. When the
handle on the pump clicked and the pump
motor stopped humming, it was time to face
reality. I went inside the station long enough
to pay the grizzled old owner his forty-two
dollars and then walked back toward my
impending doom. I stepped inside the car,
grabbed the map and spread it in front of me,
acting like I was an expert cartographer and up
for the challenge.
The numbers on the digital clock flashed
to eight-sixteen and she finally broke the
silence. “I’m going to use the bathroom, or
most likely the outhouse. Do you want
anything from inside?” I kept staring at the
map and shook my head, dumbfounded that
the two inevitable questions had been ignored
and the formula for the rest or our trip had
been shattered.
She pushed her door open and stepped
out, I braced myself for the slam, but it didn’t
come. The door shut quietly and she walked
away adjusting her purse on her shoulder. I
watched her in amazement as she walked away,
seeing her for perhaps the first time in many
years. She was still tall and slender, the gray in
her hair was dyed away monthly and she had
tiny wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. Three
kids and thirty years of marriage to me were
visible in her shoulders and hips, but she never
looked more beautiful. I wondered how I
looked in her eyes, my hair was thinning, my
six pack was twenty-five years removed and if
I didn’t trim it regularly, then the hair grew out
my ears and nose. I watched until she
disappeared inside the tiny service station,
berating myself for judging her too quickly and
supposing that she would dare do something
so sinister as to question my manhood and
relinquish my control by asking for directions.
I looked back at the map for a few more
seconds and then slowly folded it back into a
tiny rectangle. Without thinking twice, I tossed
it into the backseat and then started the car. In
thirty years of marriage I’d been through all the
ups and downs imaginable. There were times
when I wanted to pull my hair out and times
when I knew my wife wanted to pull my hair
out. I wanted to laugh at how something as
trivial as not wanting my wife to ask for
directions had caused so much inner tension in
me. I could remember her leaving me
countless lists of step by step directions for a
hundred projects over the years and somehow
still screwing them all up. If I couldn’t manage
something that simple, how could I expect her
not to question my map reading abilities?
As a man I wanted to be in control, I
wanted to be in charge. As a retired police
officer it was that much worse. I’d spent nearly
my entire adult life living with four hormonal
women, going through puberty, college, two
expensive marriages, hot flashes and now a
new grandson. That ancient inner voice that
was passed on through a thousand generations
that whispered and sometimes shouted for me
to hunt, kill, make fire, and be a man, was quite
often suppressed. Through it all I somehow
avoided a midlife crisis.
My wife stepped into the car with an
armload of snacks and beverages and I
watched her with a smile, while she organized
her hoard carefully and methodically. “I got
you a Diet Coke and a bag of peanuts, unsalted
and also a snickers bar. If you have to use the
bathroom I suggest you wait until we get into
the country, if the men’s bathroom is in any
way as disgusting as the pit I just walked out
of.” When I didn’t answer she looked at me
and raised an eyebrow. “You ok?”
“You bet.”
“Do you know where we’re going?”
I shook my head and smiled. “Nope. I’m
lost, but as long as you don’t care, then neither
do I. Let’s find the first motel that doesn’t have
cockroaches sneaking out the door and then
let’s stay up all night making love.”
She blushed and then smiled, shaking her
head. “James, you are something else.”
I buckled my seatbelt and put the car in
drive and then pulled away, leaving the dingy
service station behind. “Yeah, but you love
me.”
She leaned her head on my shoulder and
put her left hand on my leg. “Well, somebody
has to.”
I guess I never really wanted to be in
charge, I just forgot that I didn’t have to be. I
had a wonderful partner and a blessed life. As
we drove down the road with the moon ahead
of us and the setting sun at our backs, I realized
that my manhood had never been in danger
and that the only one who had ever questioned
it, had been me.
My Heartland-Bred Moonbeams
By: Keith Gaboury
I cannot spit out a lie
under a potbelly Moon.
Three moonrises ago,
I slapped down a Ben Franklin
for a waxing gibbous hit
to spike into the Kansas
pores of my fucked-up prairie brain.
My dealer smirked in the spread
of my Heartland-bred moonbeams
liquefying in a milk carton bottle
right outside Wichita
where Lord’s Diner
and that speed trap meet.
Brown bagging on I-35
through a chigger-heavy night,
I wobbled forward, swallowing
swimming photons
born in the Sea of Tranquility
at half past one. Thirty minutes on,
lunar dust
gathered onto my chestnut skin.
After the black particles hitched a ride
on the beams’ flight, they spread
across my forearms and femur
with every gulp I swigged back
along a shoulder of traffic-strained eyeballs.
On the highway’s exit ramp,
I winced at the sting of the bottle’s
final drops, my head swirling
at the intersection of host and desire.
Who am I? Must you insist? My dirty self
collapsed within a Universe of split lips
opening wide for a strawberry June shine
spilled across
the only home I will ever know.
62 Winter 2015
Between Rome and Aldebaran
By: L.B. Sedlacek
When the space probe Pioneer 10
crossed the orbit of Jupiter,
the Gladiators had long since
retired without a pension plan
their weapons never
leaving the solar systems.
Pioneer 10 crossed the
asteroid belt between Earth and
Mars without fighting
to the death or
letting the bloodthirsty
crowd give a thumbs up
thumbs down to
say whether it would live/die
some 8 billion miles
from home. Rumor has it,
a few Gladiators
avoided the
branding of the body, the hot
iron on the flesh
used to make certain
they were dead. The Gladiators
escaped to the star, Aldebaran.
Aldebaran -- a K5 III star
orangish and large.
Known as the Bull’s Eye.
The Gladiators’ retirement
packages transferred
fully intact. And
Pioneer 10 should
reach Aldebaran in
about 2 million years.
You've got yours
By: Larissa Hauck
24" x 18"
64 Winter 2015
The Relevancy of Desire
By: Lori England
It's irrelevant;
as it's been eleven years,
since your lips last locked with hers,
since you ran your fingers across her flesh.
Felt her soft kisses along your spine.
Eleven years since you cried in the crashing rain,
over an admission, never again acknowledged.
It's irrelevant;
as it’s been ten years,
since you met him and were jolted by the sudden current of your love.
Since you watched your future map out down long, smooth roads.
Erasing all trace of
trails not taken,
with your new collective consciousness.
It’s irrelevant;
as the buds you have planted begin to bloom
since you are unlikely to uproot the life you have grown together
as you watch your branches blossom upwards
Incessantly intertwined.
But as you idly ponder the faces of strangers,
smiling at the curve of a hip, swooning slightly at long fingers,
arching your ear to catch an arresting accent,
you do not differentiate your passing desires
between he or she or them.
It is not greed, like your mother said
Not confusion. Or a phase.
It is woven into you, root to tip.
Smell
By: Mandee Driggers
Her womb was a speakeasy.
New plastic, warmed by electricity.
A dead gerbil in the fallopian tube
of your apartment. Smell of
exploding biological clocks.
66 Winter 2015
It’s Christmas
By: Jason S. Parker
I
t’s Christmas. Sitting by the fire, your back begins to burn. You hear the song in your head
about chestnuts roasting by an open fire. Except it’s your back that’s roasting by an open fire.
So you move to the sofa. You watch Bobby strip the wrapping paper off the toy boxes, a glass
of eggnog in your hand, making you feel too tipsy for a Christmas morning. You better slow it
down. You don’t want Bobby to remember you like this on Christmas 2015 and one day realize
you’re an alcoholic.
Uncle Ernie puts on a CD, Reba McIntyre’s Christmas album playing Jingle Bells through the old
stereo system. Dumb redneck woman, you think, but Uncle Ernie, the lifelong tobacco farmer, wants to
hear it. You let the hick music play in your home, though you’d rather be listening to 50s style
Christmas music, classy tunes by legendary Jazz musicians like Frank Sinatra and Louis Armstrong.
Meanwhile, Scrooge is wrapping up his encounter with the Ghost of Christmas Past. The CEO
of Toys R Us is sleeping in, atop a mound of cash. A kid is jamming a corncob pipe into Frosty’s
face. The racist family from A Christmas Story is laughing at an Asian family signing, “Fa ra ra ra ra ra
ra ra ra.”
As for me, I’m standing on the tin roof of the colonial brick home I grew up in. I can’t stand
spending another holiday minute in that house. It’s too quiet in there. If I had the money, I’d move
in a heartbeat. My brother was shot in the kitchen. He had come home past curfew one night. My
dad didn’t recognize him in the dark and shot him in the forehead with a twelve gage. My mom
came down the stairs in her nightgown and, in her despair and anger, she took the twelve gage and
pulled the trigger on my dad, spreading buckshot across his chest. Then she stuck the barrel in her
mouth and pulled the trigger.
It took the cops weeks to figure out what happened, the order of events. They knew my mom
had clearly committed suicide. They didn’t know whether my mom or dad had shot my brother.
They didn’t know whether my brother or my mom had shot my dad. They had to bring in a
detective from Nashville to figure it all out.
This colonial house is two stories with an attic. If I were to fall off this tin roof, I’d easily break
a leg or an arm. Maybe if I took a swan dive I’d break my neck and die. I don’t want to take the
chance of breaking my neck and living in a wheel chair. So I suppose that idea is out of the question.
But, as cold as it is out here, drizzling snow accumulating in the treetops around me, I won’t go back
inside.
Dear Neighbor
By: Mark Blickley & Amy Bassin
Watercolor and paper
68 Winter 2015
Oooooh, What Did Drake Say About a Bottle and a Bitch?
By: Mica Evans
I’m lighting spiffs as if the taste could take me
back to childhood. Should have been a stripper.
Could have been a rapper. The hyacinths are growing
walls around me. I’m alone smoking a sour sativa
and searching recipes on my phone for the scones
I wish I had, but there’s a crow's nest in my gut
getting bigger. I’m a bad bitch, and that’s good.
I’m a fat bitch, and that’s bad. I love a girl like earl grey
tea with supper. Evergreen trees pop up when
she talks to me. I’m graphic, fading graffiti
She calls me a work of art, but I’m a piece of work.
She’s a garden of earthly delights. She’s a bar fight
about jazz theory. She’s my sweaty, full beard
in the middle of August. On the dock at Devil’s Lake,
I love her. Like fast fingers on a fret board,
I love her. I’m afraid that if I cry I’ll never stop.
Essay in Lines (Step Down Dear Goliath)
By: Mica Evans
New friends are important, but really.
I just want to kiss her on the fists, mouth.
On a stark afternoon in a parking lot near Capitol Hill.
Really, I just want to close my fingers.
Slowly wrinkle the silk of her vintage blouse.
I would love myself more If I could sew
new sequins onto this backless, black dress I bought to impress her.
Draped across red sheets, I’m so afraid of ending up cold.
In the morning after moisturizing, I cry out the chipping window as I lift it:
I am in the oven and won't stop smoking
until somebody attends to me!
This is a lie; however, I'm still overdone.
Over five months ago Brendon resigned
from our year and two weeks of relationship with
a letter which he delivered to my room.
I've lost four pounds and still
his position has been difficult to fill.
Four pale ales pounded the floor and spilled
all over my catalogues and socks today,
before my mid-day workout. I pray
for peace or at least some shiny, leftover
shards of glass around the door.
*
It's Friday and I want desperately for someone to love me tonight.
I wrap my fat body in tight fabrics which highlight my ass and thighs.
This can be considered attractive because I’m black.
All the little white boys and girls will rejoice and react
when they see my black ass dance past them.
All the little white kids will relate to my ass,
because they’ve seen it before at Summer camp,
in dirty magazines, on TV.
I’m getting ripped and I slide bright gloss onto my big, black girl lips.
A painful little piece of glass sticks to the skin on my right foot
and I wait ages to pull it out but don’t know why.
So I’m watching music videos and getting high by myself
in preparation for the evening ahead.
I’ve had 3 beers but still
70 Winter 2015
have trouble looking myself in the eye. Right
when I thought I could keep sharing myself, Brendon went back on the deal.
And I’m still so hard on myself.
And he had always been using the wrong script.
*
Once, Brendon was running his skinny, pale fingers through my hair
and he asked me if I was black,
I laughed and said yes babe but the question was strange:
Who had he been seeing for 12 weeks?
I sometimes dream of placing an ad:
Sad Sista seeks someone to have and to hold.
Perhaps a pretty Pisces girl
or a sturdy Taurus Moon.
Maybe an Aquarius to sit in silence with.
Or a verily passionate Virgo with a beard.
Oh, and I’m Sad Sista, I want someone to hold,
but I’m beautiful so don’t be afraid.
*
I want someone to be excited by me.
I want someone to be impressed.
I want to have sex without someone’s plantation fantasy playing out.
Right now, my hair is blue because I’m carrying a sadness that could sink you.
I put on black shoes, an electric jacket, and I leave to drink someplace new.
I’m going out to send flirtations to this girl that I adore,
I’m going through the motions with perfume and booze, preparing for her party.
She’s a stand in crush because I’m lucky enough to know that my body doesn’t repulse her
I smoke my cigarette leaning
on the white shingles of her house
before going inside.
I try to blend in but
everyone notices me,
and they tell me about how I look.
I’m not scary, but I’m frighteningly beautiful.
My big limbs command the attention of a room.
*
A cigarette smoked to the end rolls back and forth on the asphalt outside Her house,
and a full figure fumbles across the threshold with a grin.
His fists are anxious and clenched. His clothes don’t fit on his large frame.
His fat red lips are menacing in the light.
Stomping upstairs, his big limbs swing like saddle bags,
and the white people look on in awe.
He throws his Technicolor coat to the ground and bounds his black body towards Her.
Happy Birthday, says the giant, and a heavy silence falls.
He is frightening, but there’s something that draws them in.
She thinks he might be charming, so reaches up to grab His arm.
Clenching his brown flesh with Her fresh, white hands,
She is the bravest of her kind.
His wide nose and wild hair are really turning her on.
There is music, and it’s thumping;
She wants to see the monkey dance.
He likes the bass line, and starts pumping,
his fist, like a club, in the air.
Little white bodies writhe all around him, their heads up to admire the beast.
He feeds off their fantasies of knocking him down.
He grows taller and stronger on the off beats,
he gets bigger and blacker on the down.
The crowd’s eyes close as they sing louder: Monster;
no good blood sucker! Fat mother fucker!
His black face looks mad with joy, as he gesticulates, and bounces in time.
He is grooving, and jiving, and growing, and free.
The villagers are opening their eyes.
Their white hands stop wiggling and the music turns off.
They look up at him in horror, and awe.
He bumbles up onto the table and starts to hum his favorite hymn.
Is he hungry?
Someone feed him.
The villagers whisper and draw back.
He sings and his black throat rumbles: How Great, How Great Thou Art!
The villagers back far away and cannot look at him anymore.
He beats time with his hands like a club against a skull,
and when he’s done, all the villagers can say is:
You are wonderful to admire, but frightening to confront.
Step down dear Goliath, step down.
72 Winter 2015
Astronomical Soliloquy
By: Nathaniel Duggan
Dust twirling in the fat pool of sunlight warming
my lap and you beside me warming the room
from the hearth of your chipped desk
and Mr. Magri yapping about how dust is
made from stars and we’re made from stars
and everything we call matter glowed a million billion
years ago in the gooey plasma hearts of stars
and gravity is a trampoline with the bowling ball
spheres of stars in the center twisting and bending
everything and even light particles smaller than dust
cannot help but fracture and weave against that pull
and the stardust twirls in the sunlight pooling
in your lap and I cannot resist your pull
for even though it is invisible as the stars
a million billion miles away it wrenches my heart
and I want to be your satellite and drink your molten flares
and circle you endlessly but even the eternal lock-step
of orbit wouldn’t quench my desire
and maybe the moon feels something similar
for the earth it must never touch and perhaps
the splintering of comets colliding is a kind of joy
in which two motes of dust forged in the same star
and separated at the winking start of the universe
finally converge and glitter and weave
and dance together to the loving rhythm of physics.
Born to be different
By: Adorable Monique
Acrylic over canvas paper
74 Winter 2015
Normal Kids
By: Stephanie Cleary
L
et us consider a pregnant woman.
Inside her womb, a gestational sac
becomes a multitude of specialized
cells, each doing something important to
develop a baby. An embryo the size of a pen
point is already forming a head, legs, and an
umbilical cord. At just six weeks, there is a
beating heart. In the seventh week, the sex is
determined. This is a fact. A gene is either
triggered to produce testes and becomes a
boy, or the embryo develops ovaries and
becomes a girl.
In the next months, the embryo grows
and changes. At 10 weeks, it is a full-fledged
fetus. At 11 weeks, changes in hormones
trigger the production of external sex organs.
At 19 weeks, a female fetus will produce her
own teeny tiny uterus. Eyebrows and lashes
grow between weeks 23 and 26. Every week
something new and amazing happens, and
every new and amazing thing is already
known. Ultrasounds will confirm everything is
going as expected.
On January 22th, 2005, Ronnie Paris, Sr.,
and his wife rushed their three-year-old son to
the hospital. Little Ronnie had fallen asleep at
Bible study and slipped into a coma. He never
woke back up, and died on the 28th.
During his short life, his father worked
on “toughening him up” because he worried
that little Ronnie was gay. He did this by
smacking him in the back of the head,
slamming him into walls, and “slap-boxing”
with him. The matches were so intense that
the poor kid would shake, cry, and wet
himself. This systematic abuse went on for
months before his defeated body finally gave
up.
Despite all of this knowledge, every
pregnant woman still holds a mystery. Who
will this fetus be when he is born? What color
will his eyes be? Will he have a fluff of downy
hair or will he be bald for months? After the
birth of their son, parents will be amazed by
him, kissing his fingers and toes, brushing
their lips against the soft skin of his forehead,
stroking his cheek with their thumb.
Parents, grandparents, relatives and
friends will all take turns pointing out that he
has his father’s chin, or his mother’s almondshaped eyes. So many people will love him. So
many people will dream for him.
On April 6th, 2009, Carl Joseph WalkerHoover made the tragic decision to hang
himself. He couldn’t take the constant
bullying about being gay. He used an
extension cord. He was 11.
As the baby grows, his parents will look
for milestones. They will check his progress
against information they find in the doctor’s
office and the internet. They will compare his
progress to other couples’ babies. They will
want to make sure everything is as it should
be, that their baby is normal.
At just two months, he will recognize his
parents faces, and smile in response to their
voices. At four months, the sweet sound of
baby’s laughter fills the house with joy. At
nine months, the little baby boy knows that
waving means “bye-bye.” Soon, he will be
crawling around looking for things to put in
his mouth. Around his first birthday, he will
start talking, saying, “Mama!” and “Dada!” It’s
only the beginning.
“Faggot,” “pussy,” and “gay” are just
words, but when two middle school kids
shouted them out at Kardin Ulysse, they also
chased him around his school cafeteria and
beat him. The whole event was captured on
surveillance camera. Several cafeteria workers
witnessed the event but weren’t authorized to
stop student brawls. Kardin’s glasses were
injured that the man originally thought
broken into his face by the younger boys,
Matthew was a scarecrow. In the hospital, it
damaging his cornea. Five surgeries later, it is
was discovered that Shepard’s skull was
still unlikely Kardin will ever see correctly
broken in the back of his head, and in front of
from that eye again.
his right ear. The beating damaged his brain
In the blink of an eye, the baby boy will
stem so severely that his body wasn’t able to
be a toddler, riding a trike, building with
regulate his temperature, heart, rate, and other
blocks, and learning to color inside the lines.
vital functions. He was hurt so badly that
The toddler who wants to marry his mommy
doctors weren’t able to do anything. He died a
and is afraid of the dark will become a little
few days later, shortly after midnight on
boy who is proud of himself for eating all the
October 12th.
green beans on his plate at dinner. He will
start school soon. He will make friends. They
But he will not be the same as the other
will all play in the backyard, brandishing sticks
boys. He will play Army in the sandbox, but
imagined into swords,
sometimes he will play with
while their mothers drink
his sister’s Barbie. Once or
On October 6th, 1998, 21coffee on Saturday
twice, he will get caught,
year-old Matthew Shepard
mornings and plan play
and slightly scolded for
got into a truck with Russell sneaking into her room. His
dates around the hectic
schedules of busy
mom will decide not to
Arthur Henderson and
families.
mention it to his father,
Aaron James McKinney.
The little boy will
thinking it’s just a phase,
have a birthday every
not a big deal. Certainly, she
year, and the line his parents mark on the
will decide, her son is still normal.
doorframe to the kitchen will inch it’s way up.
As the boy enters high school, his parents
On his tenth birthday, he will be four feet,
will worry that he still hasn’t had a crush on a
seven inches tall. He will look like all the other
girl. Girls will call, and he will hang out with
boys, same haircut, same baseball uniform,
them, going to the movies on weekends and
same Old Navy casual school clothes. His
out for pizza on Tuesday nights after Drama
super-hero backpack will hold the same books
Club. But there won’t be any of that awkward
and homework as his classmate’s bags, and he
tension, that heightened awareness of
will watch the same cartoons as everyone else
personal space and boundaries between this
when his school day is done.
young man and the teenage girls he makes
friends with.
On October 6th, 1998, 21-year-old
Matthew Shepard got into a truck with Russell
On September 22, 2000, Ronald Edward
Arthur Henderson and Aaron James
Gay asked a restaurant cook emptying the
McKinney. He met the pair at the Fireside
trash for directions to the nearest gay bar.
Lounge, a bar in Laramie Wyoming. They
After being pointed in the right direction, Gay
buddied up to Shepard, and offered him a ride
opened his coat to show off a gun, telling the
home. Instead of taking him home, they
cook he was going to “waste some faggots.”
drove out to a rural area where they nearly
A couple minutes later, he walked into the
killed him. They tied him to a fence, pistolBackstreet Cafe and opened fire, killing 43whipped him, beat, whipped, and tortured
year-old Danny Overstreet and wounding six
him. After fracturing his skull, they left him to
other gay men.
die alone.
One day, his mom will pick up his phone
A cyclist found his badly beaten body
while her teenage son is in the shower. She
eighteen hours later. He was so grotesquely
will see the websites in his browser history,
76 Winter 2015
and she will cry. She will cry not because her
son is gay—she will have suspected it long
before and she won’t care. She will sit at the
kitchen table and weep because she will
worry. She will worry for years, because all
moms do (they worry their kids will be sad, or
get leukemia, or struggle in school or have
acne and be teased, or fall in with the wrong
crowd and do drugs, or be kidnapped by a
stranger, or molested by a friend, or text and
drive, or drink and drive, or have sex—worse,
unprotected sex, or get hit by a bus, or catch
cold and die) but now she will have to add to
that long list of fears.
Every day, she will have to worry if
someone will hurt her son because of who he
loves.
OH
By: Steven Alvarez
thing known don’t know—know—no—don’t know
do not know but H knows
so know
still—though—still do not know
what’s known is only this—that this thing stays unknown
H knows—know car horn howls & know buckling
clouds & that without doubt know smog of daysky
too H knows—knows buildings—continually walk by—
H knows—knows six train—knows hot stuffy subground
transport—&knows words—O words—know—know—H
knows—know how a dirty down-&-out man without food sits with a sign saying
“I ALLOW INSULTS FOR $2.00” out on 34th—&know
how folks pass without looking but actually looking—
& know how various dirty down-&-outs know how to unlock & gain casual & quick withdrawn
looks of apathy & lack—know that this dirty down-&-out man holding I ALLOW INSULTS has a
lack
but don’t know that that lack is not this lack—not knowing still not knowing—
no do not know but Fra L.p.g.am knows—as know—
this—know—distinctly—know—saw a man in a tux passing this down-&-out
man on 34th & that this down-&-out man took a buck from tux man without insult—
H says know this too—know how tourists flock to buy postcards
I ♥ NY t-shirts at six for $10 & snap photographs of that big
building on 34th & 5th staring upward
not watching as walking & bumping into folks & not at all saying pardon—
a past passing tourist H knows sd pardon—
H & . . . & know that that big building on 34th & 5th
displays distinct hot colors at night occasionally
hazing clouds a colorful clinking curtain bliss& that that shining light this building puts forth all
night costs cash—much in comparison to say how much a dirty down-&-out man
can amass in many months at two bucks an insult—& that that is all just—& know dignity all
right—
know shiny lights at night so that is all right all right—
H says this is not a lack at all no not a lack at all—
this is a lack though—
& not a lack too—
alas a lack now for to know don’t say
“O I know” —do not know—& do not now say
know—but this thing—do not know—H says right now—
that “O” just sd is truly hollow—for in fact—do not
know—shall know—shall find—soon as L.p..r.. & stop—
know now sift to find alas—¿sift & you shall find? alas—
will know
not-knowing will subsist nothing
nothing not to know—know but—shall know
78 Winter 2015
think—do a Po..d—& now only say “sd” for “said”—
no Po..d wouldn’t know—
a tourist L.p.g.a. knows sd “sd” —as you know—sd that past tourist sd as that tourist
sd pardon—
no Po..d wouldn’t say pardon—
Po..d might say “Paaahradoon” —
know Po..d sd things such as that—in that fashion—in his mail
H knows—knows Po..d was mad
that way . . . stop . . . ¡lack! . . . want . . . wait what says what this H knows now . . .
H knows—wants—now—now what—wants to know—warmly—
& that knowing to know is truly moving—
truly moving—
& this thing out of sight—that that thing out of sight—
is what is missing in this childish thing sd—a not knowing construction truly
a thing not constantly a consonant but a thing similar to a consonant
round as a consonant
“eeeeeeeoahahahghghghghgh” sd H
spit-dink
denizens
By: Steven Alvarez
listen up now yr labor’s instrumental to live opportunistic
taking what comes & precariously insecure
yr wd be fictitious family / kintracted
flexibility has four ayes
anger
anomie
anxiety
alienation
now this to you
focalized to you
you do not do what you are not
you define yrself by what you are not
structured word
by what you cd not be
less what cd be
faceless & sighted
worms
copper
telephone removed
brick
global transformation
1975 2008
disembedded financers disrobed
individuals competed to touch their toes
for individual mobility
to open them ass doors flexible
say it now: we cd all be richer
w/ workfare fare on yr own
who cd bend over furthest for less
& who cd resist commodification
& who cd hiss this deregulation
but instead regulation regurgitated rewritten
& who cd not argue real wages will not rise or be a means of reducing inequality
80 Winter 2015
Alegre Polvo Veraniego II
12in x 12in
Ink
By: Gregory M. Fox
W
e were happy, weren't we? We were
happy. It's been so long, but I still
don't know what happened. I
don't…but I think I might be starting to
understand why Roya would…I think I
understand how you can want something so
bad. I wonder, is that why you…what do you
want? What did…do you think we could
ever…no. Everything's a mess. I want us to be
happy. We were, weren't we? We were happy?”
***
Long before all that, we're carving our
initials into a tree: KE+BE. We laugh at the
difficulty of carving the curved lines of a heart
around the letters. It's our wedding day.
***
in?”
“I told Roya she could move in.”
"You did what?" I ask.
"Brandon, we talked about this," Kit says.
"We talked about helping her, but moving
“If she's going to get out of this affair with
Lucian, she can't stay in an apartment he's
paying for. Besides, you said yourself that this
house has more room than we need.”
And I just can't say no to her. “It's only
temporary, right?”
“Just until she finds her own place.” She
kisses me on the cheek.
***
Roya has marks on her wrist. I know that
they are scars, little white hatch marks that you
can only see in the right light. But when she's
bored, Roya draws over the lines with pen. She
connects and adds to the lines until she has
spelled out words. Once it's THINK. Another
time it's LOVE. Often it's profanity. One time,
she wrote lots of very skinny letters to spell out,
ALL THIS INK IS MAKING A MESS.
Kit worries. She feels like Roya's not
handling her situation maturely or like she's not
mature enough to handle it. She worries that
staying with us might make Roya depressed
about how her life is screwed up and about
how ours is happy. She worries that Roya
might try to contact Lucian. And when she
worries, she drinks.
***
Jordan is an electronics sales rep. who
visits our branch about once every quarter to
pitch the latest products. This time he's selling
some new phones—not his best offering. I'm
the one who has to give him the bad news that
we're not making a purchase. “Maybe next time
you'll have something we need,” I tell him. “It's
nothing personal.”
“Oh of course. I know that. But if you're
feeling guilty, you can make up for it by buying
me dinner.”
We chuckle. “I don't know, Jordan; that
sounds like a conflict of interest.”
“Hey, I can be discreet.”
I blink. “Jordan, are you asking me?”
“Is that too fast? How about just drinks,
and we see where it goes?”
“Jordan, I'm not—I have a wife,” I say,
holding up my left hand.
He shrugs. “Like I said: I can be discreet.”
I'm too taken aback to speak. Jordan takes my
hand with both of his and gives it a firm shake.
“I'll see you later, Brandon,” he says while
walking away. “Let me know if you change
your mind about those phones.”
He had slipped his business card into my
hand with his cell number written on the back.
I crumple it up and put it in my pocket, then
leave work early to surprise Kit.
***
82 Winter 2015
I'm picking up extra groceries at the
store—just a few essentials. We run out of
things more often now that Roya is staying
with us. She tries to buy her own groceries, but
she can't afford a lot, and things like milk, eggs,
and bread tend to disappear quickly.
Wine has been going quicker too. I'm
trying to pick out a couple bottles when
suddenly he's right beside me: Lucian. I've
never met him, but thanks to Roya, I've seen
plenty of pictures. Maybe he sensed that he was
being looked at because he turns my way, and
we make eye contact. It's only for a moment.
He nods and then grabs a bottle of wine and
walks away. I have no reason to suspect he
knew who I was, but to have such a casual,
insignificant interaction almost upsets me
more than all I know about how he's treated
Roya.
I follow him, trying to look casual. In the
next aisle, he is walking beside the woman I
know is his wife. They're smiling. And I
wonder, are they actually happy together? How
much does she know? How much has already
been ruined?
***
Roya's moving out. She has a new job, new
apartment, and new tattoos on her wrists. One
is a flower and the other says something
inspirational in Chinese.
“They're reminders,” she says, “about
who I am and what I've been through. And this
way, I won't do anything to my wrists so that I
don't mess them up.”
Kit has still been worried about Roya. She
would worry more if she knew that Roya had a
text from Lucian in her phone.
***
It's my first time with a man, but it's not
Jordan; it's a different work colleague. There
was a regional meeting in Milwaukee, and
afterword, several of us went out for drinks.
We've done this plenty of times before, but
something seemed different today. Or maybe
there was something different about me.
After a few beers, I excused myself and
headed to the bathroom. Feeling jittery and
rebellious, I went into a stall, took out a pen
and wrote BOOBS on the door. The immature
act felt strangely liberating.
When I came out, Asian Mark from the
Twin Cities branch was the only one left. He
had been the only one left for an hour. We call
him Asian Mark because Mark just seems like
an unusual name for a Chinese American. But
I'm not calling him that now. In the back of his
Cadillac Escalade, I'm moaning “Oh Mark,”
and he's whispering, “Yes, yes.”
***
I don’t say much at the hospital because
I'm in over my head, and she's Kit's friend
anyway.
“Has he called yet?” Roya asks.
“No,” Kit answers. “No one's called.”
“Do I have any messages?”
“Roya, don't keep asking me that.”
“Could you just check?”
“I did. Five minutes ago.”
Roya is pale and shaky. The day before,
she called Kit and admitted that she had just
swallowed a bunch of pills and was saying
goodbye. An ambulance got to her in time, but
she's still in rough shape. Her eyes are red,
watery, determined. “He's going to call, I know
it.”
“Why would he call?”
“To see how I'm doing.”
“I thought you guys broke up again?”
“He cares about me,” Roya says. “And I
want him to know I'm okay.”
“Roya you tried to commit suicide because
of him. Why would he call? Unless … Roya,
you didn't.”
“Look,” she says through fresh tears, “I
know it's not the best way—that it's not exactly
right, but he still knows. He'll be worried, and
then he'll call, and he'll finally leave her so we
can be together.”
“And if he doesn't?”
“He will.” Roya's looking down at her
hands, or maybe her arms. She's gotten more
tattoos on them since she moved out of our
house. “Will you … will you let him know
where I am?”
***
We end up at the same bar where Mark
and I first hooked up. Not wanting to spoil
things, I don't mention it to Stefan. However,
just out of curiosity, I revisit the bathroom stall
I had vandalized that night. My graffiti has
been covered over with a slightly different
shade of paint than the original. I take out my
keys and scrape the word BUTT into the wall,
pushing hard to leave deep scratches. Even if
they paint over it, those grooves will remain.
I return to the bar and Stefan greets me
with a kiss. “I'm so happy, Brandon,” he says,
“I hope this day lasts forever.”
On the drive home, we get stopped by a
train. It's going slow enough to read the graffiti
spray painted on the cars. Most of them are just
stylized names, sometimes overlapping each
other. The word SEX is written on a number
of cars with varying techniques and skill levels.
One ambitious tagger had clearly been
***
interrupted while writing in big black letters:
TIME IS A DICK AND
I'm sitting at a bar in San
WE'RE ALL—it's easy enough
Antonio,
and the whiskey is not
“Yeah. I've been
to figure out where that was
working fast enough. I came into
feeling great. No
going.
town for the company's national
“Why do people always
depression, no
conference, and of course, I ran
mess things up?” Kit asks, and I
into
Mark. In half an hour we're
reminders. I feel
know she's thinking of Roya,
supposed to meet for drinks at the
like I'm actually in bar across the street. I'm not sure
not trains.
When we get in the house,
control of my life.” what to expect, but I want to be
Kit immediately pours a glass of
good and buzzed before I go over
wine. I tell her that I've been
there. I order another whiskey.
thinking. I tell her that we should consider a
“Brandon?”
separation—that we both need some space. I
It was a woman's voice. I turn around to
tell her that it's obvious we're not happy. But
see who's addressing me. “Roya?”
Kit is shocked. While I pack a suitcase, she's
“In the flesh,” she says with a smile.
yelling and throwing old keepsakes out the
“Mind if I join you?”
door.
“Yeah. I mean, please do.” She sits beside
me and orders a beer. “What are you doing
***
here?” I ask.
“I live here now.”
Stefan is my third lover. Mark and I had
“You do? When did that happen?”
continued our affair, having rendezvous at
“About a year ago. I was trying to get away
every regional meeting with the occasional
from…well, you know. I thought a change of
weekend in either Minneapolis or Milwaukee.
scenery would help get everything out of my
But eventually he got transferred to a position
system.”
out west. We didn't even try to make it work.
“A year…” And I realize it's been over
After him, there was Corbin, but we couldn't
two years since I've seen Roya—not since that
stand each other unless we were having sex.
day in the hospital, the same day I left Kit.
Stefan is nice, but I think he is hoping for a
We're still technically married, but we've hardly
bigger commitment, and I'm not sure I'm ready
talked in all that time. “And has it helped?” I
for it.
ask, “The change?”
84 Winter 2015
“Yeah. I've been feeling great. No
depression, no reminders. I feel like I'm
actually in control of my life.”
“That's great,” I say. “And you look great
too.” She's lost weight, and she's dressed much
more stylishly than she ever was in Milwaukee.
Her sleeveless knit dress shows off the
elaborate tattoos that now cover her arms.
“And what brings you here?” she asks.
“Oh, work,” I say, glancing quickly across
the street.
“Ah. And are you and Kit still…I see. Do
you want to talk about it?”
To my surprise, I do.
***
Roya has the sun tattooed on her right
breast and the moon on her left breast. A
tattoo on the top of her right thigh reads, all we
are is just ink on a page, and one on her left thigh
reads, all this ink is making a mess. I bury myself
between those sentences, grope wildly at those
celestial spheres; we devour each other. Roya is
the only woman I've been with since my wife.
In the morning, we are quiet. I know it's
not just the hangovers. When Roya gets in the
shower, I check my phone. There's a missed
call and a voicemail from Kit. She couldn't
know, could she? But why now? I play the
recording: “We were happy, weren't we? We
were happy.”
afflatus
By: Tatiana Saleh
We settle the terms of our disagreements
through scribbles on a napkin
passing it back and forth, its torn edges
and scrawled excuses,
You take my poetry and
wipe the ketchup from your collar.
That last morning, after I ordered eggs and
you ordered nothing, your waitress
with a wandering gaze
forgot to leave utensils, so we ate with our hands,
let the syrup dribble over our lips, covered the table
in a sticky mess. My reflection in coffee
scarcely recognizable, like an infant’s first high,
hungry for attention, as if to say,
“This will not be like the last time.”
This is not the first time.
And if I am to be sincere
I must deny myself of you, you,
your grisly hand
sliding up her skirt,
sliding up mine.
A hand on my knee, unwashed,
an eye on the waitress, oh,
your vagrant magic I wish I’d plucked it out.
I take a used pen to scratch
adieu into your receipt no time to edit
or spellcheck
for this brand of poetry
is best served now,
the process one
I know so well.
86 Winter 2015
Eden
By: Larissa Hauck
16" x 20"

a plagiarized sexual position from everyone I

Transcription

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