Category Archives: Issue 2

TRIP by Rheea Mukherjee

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tripTRIP
by Rheea Mukherjee

The door that led into the house my parents owned in Denver needed an extra nudge for it to open. Once prodded, a bell attached to the knob jingled before you could set foot on the white tiles. This jingle, the thrust of the door, was a short prelude to the potent smell of mutton being fried in canola oil. The smell of curried meat, intense and intrusive, compared to the odorless winter air outside. Clumps of snow would fall from the sides my boots onto the floor as we took off layers of sweaters and coats.

For me there would be vegetarian dishes. My father always made sure of that. He wearing shorts that reached his knees, his elbow poking against the thickness of masala vapors, stirring his curry, a universe of flavors condensed into an offering of love. The TV in the living room was massive, reminiscent of the American suburban nineties. CNN or some other news channel would be blaring, and the house not yet warmed enough for a Colorado winter, would temper the spattering of oil.

This is how I remember my father. Not because there wasn’t more. Not because I don’t remember other things. Like him driving his car, his head attached to a cellphone, bantering to clients in Hindi or English about real estate: houses, liquor stores, another closing. Not because I don’t remember vividly him telling us ghost stories when I was eight, coddled by pillows, in the backseat of our car being driven somewhere in Georgia, one of the many family road trips that entailed pit stops at gas stations and the endless tar of an American interstate highway. Not because I don’t remember him telling me that it was not possible I had gotten three C’s in Social Studies, Math, and Science in 4th grade, I had studied too hard. Because I do remember him marching up to my favorite teacher, Mrs. Berks, who looked up my tests frantically and then realized that it was true. I had gotten straight A’s that year and she had made a mistake, a miracle I still can’t fathom. Only he knew.

I remember by father cooking in Denver because, as an adult, this was the last familiar image I was offered. His image of flesh: curly hair, thinned legs, and a curved stomach is what I knew before I saw that same flesh burnt at cremation. I saw his body still, pumped with preservatory chemicals that had made his body last through a frozen drawer in a Denver hospital and 24-hour flight in the cargo hold of a plane all the way to India. His body now in the homeland provides an irrefutable place of gathering for his transcontinental family.

An ambulance transports him to the cremation ground near Old Madras Road. He lays still, his wedding ring blunt, gold, tight against his swelled fingers. It would be nice if my mother could have this ring, but they simply can’t remove it, too tight, too ingrained into his body to remove. He won’t say anything because he is dead. The body is stunned into silence, into frozen flesh. I touch his hand. It’s unreal. It’s hardened by the absence of flowing blood. But the image, this body, I can see it wake. I can see it being concerned about me, about my choices, the way I am not doing enough. I can see it proud; I can see it hungry for his own cooking. I can see lips part into a familiar daze of sleep, like when he would prop himself on our Denver sofa. Our dinner finished, TV still blaring, his snore a reciprocal thank you because we had eaten, we were around, even though our worlds were so different and our agendas so disconnected.

My mother was made from entirely different fibers. She sat silent on many things. She couldn’t be pushed into an argument easily, and it made parts of their marriage and parenting frustrating for the both of them. Like my father, I have inherited a source of reckless passion, I will hop to a side, stick firmly to it: politics, family dialogues, right and wrong. My rationale is thick, meaty, informed, the emotions that go with it are irrational, teary, sobbing hiccups in the middle of pointed debates. The one person I don’t debate with is my father, our irrational sides emerge, my mother would be silent, and we quickly realized our differences were best met in cars singing familiar tunes and drinking coffee from gas stations.

When the cremation is done, we are left with ash and bones. Ash was expected, but not bones. Pieces of white that were harder to process emotionally than the Bollywood-suggested relief that ash offered family members. Bone reminded us that there was flesh once resting upon it. That there were thoughts, actions, and voluntary muscles that worked with a brain, coaxed a body to move, to thrive, to be able to fry meat in canola.

My father left this body suddenly, with no warning, no sign. He died alone in a city where the sun shone in spite of the winter snows. He left when I lived in a country he wanted me to know the most. He left when I was just about to figure myself out. Just about to really say I knew what I was doing and why I was doing it. About to say maybe I didn’t know what I was doing and needed him to be OK with it. He left when I hadn’t figured out how a father-figure figured into my life. Before I weighed the pros and cons of our relationship.

Plane trips and long drives, my father was always trying to escape the mundane regularity that other people found solace in. He booked tickets to Mexico and Europe, we packed, we collected stamps on our passports, and documented our travels with early-2000’s digital cameras. My father never really drank, but on vacations he offered silent negotiations: margaritas were sipped with my mother, in return he waited for us to talk more in-depth about life.

This anticipated conversation can only happen in death, when the body is no more and the threat of an argument or disappointment no longer exists. Once he has died, we are in huddles; an assortment of friends and family openly discuss the force he was, the good and bad times. We sketch his life story in anecdotes, people argue the accuracy of incidents, and his intent and purpose are surgically dissected. Grief allows a tongue more honesty than the most potent Mexican tequila. The tea being passed round is overly sweet, how he liked it.

When he was alive, our honesty held the potential of a zygote. And a zygote it stayed, a group of unaware cells unable to calculate its larger context. At the family table, my brother and I made jokes only beer-guzzling twenty-somethings would find funny. At best we offered vague observations about the architecture or the food of the place we were visiting. We cannot at this time fathom the flick of the match; the short burst of light life is, the existential crises brewing in all of us.

The physical body is a piece of the grand puzzle, whether we are aware of it or not, our physical selves are roaming the corners of this illusion in search of the heart flutter only purpose and love can offer.

This is what I think my father wanted: We were to chisel our multi-cultural existence into a beautiful sculpture, a family integrated as one, different, restless, traditional, modern, and tremendous. In a pot, blended, one day we would make sense: Our half-formed comprehension of Bangla, our non-existent knowledge of Konkani, our nine-year stint as Bangaloreans in the 90’s, our Colorado Tax Resident status, and our Christmas churchgoing habit. We were to be a family stitched asymmetrically, a lovechild of MLK and Gandhi. But we were too confused ourselves, so we did what was easier. We held to our own sides, we drew a line with chalk against each other and I created this delusion: I was worldly and internationally skillful, and my father was as industrious and as unimaginative as the Indian railway system.

◊

My father’s restlessness always kept us on edge. A Saturday family road trip to Albuquerque would be proposed on a Thursday phone call. The conflict was my friends and weekends planned around cocktails, hookah, and making snow penises outside our dorms. A friendly Friday call would be made to make sure I would drive to Denver to spend the weekend at home, which I would. The conflict was his scantily hidden judgment on independent plans I might have made otherwise. The call would inevitably come when I was in college surrounded by friends, shot glasses filled with disgustingly sweet peppermint liquor. Calls I wanted to avoid because it was here where he dovetailed into the Indian parent stereotype, the one which would demand weekends to be spent at home in a tone that revealed his weariness and discomfort for American dorm room parties. I could feel the twisting of his soul. His dichotomy in parenting always an unresolved sea between us: a murky liberal-conservative broth with no authentic roots. His decades in the U.S. had birthed a cultural cancer, an identity crisis; one that had him constantly juggling the Indo-American cultural influences he had to stand in support of. Years later, I chose India, not in rejection of American values, but in acceptance that my soul and life work lay in a city that changed its landscape every two weeks.

In the self-important moments we all give ourselves, I have imagined myself the master curator of my father’s juggling, the ringmaster to showcase his good and to facilitate the termination of his cultural confusion. In his death, I can be deluded to think I could have done this when he was alive. But this is why death becomes the purpose, a domino block that falls onto the living and allows us to create another story, another purpose, another memory. This is why my father’s death will contain my death as well, and the purpose I might leave for another here on Earth.

The parent memory is perhaps the most unimaginative and limited calculation of a person. He has left others in far more expansive ways. He has left memories of being a lover, a brother, an uncle, a friend, a problem-solver, an advisor and well-wisher. Now I know who grieves. We grieve. In tiny pockets of isolation. In private memories and images. His sisters and brother may remember younger limbs, younger skin attached to a younger smile. His wife may remember conversations and facial expressions I’ll never know. His nephews and nieces will be myopic and only see him as a generous uncle. Everyone who once knew him will grieve his mischief, his iconoclastic and rebellious ways that I had tried to imitate. People will remember him as a man who ordered a small coffee in a large cup. Five sugars. As a man who moved continents, from India to the U.S. to India, and back again to the U.S. with a mere shrug of his shoulders.

He left before I could condense our memories into tighter scenes, specific colors. Before I could transcribe his voice into an unmistakable echo. Before I could have said, Fine, I’ll come on one of your silly adventures, humor his wanton travel needs. Foster his addiction to planning road trips in Eastern Europe or driving aimlessly on deserted Indian highways.

I talked to him last on a Monday in 2012, four days before he died. I had lost a cousin that I had been close to that week, and as soon as I heard his voice I started crying. He said we had to come together at a time like this. We had to be strong. His nephew’s death had scarred his heart and he remembered at that moment what he did best: He made a whimsical travel plan, right there on the phone. A family trip to remember that life was short. He proposed that we go to Ireland next month; random and sudden, like his death. And we all had said yes and booked tickets. Not knowing we would become better travelers only after he left. Not knowing that his next plane trip would not be a European family extravaganza. It would be a cold cargo hold carrying his image from a city where he cooked warm meals for a family that used to nudge open a stubborn white door on wintry Colorado nights.

Rheea-MukherjeeRheea Mukherjee received her MFA in creative writing from California College of the Arts in San Francisco. Her work has been published in Scroll.in, Southern Humanities Review, Cleaver Magazine, CHA: An Asian Literary Magazine, QLRS, The Bombay Literary  Magazine, A Gathering of Tribes, Everyday Fiction, Bengal Lights, and Out Of Print Magazine. Her book, a collection of short stories, Transit For Beginners, is forthcoming from Kitaab International in 2016. She co-founded Bangalore Writers Workshop in 2012 and presently co-runs Write Leela Write, a Design and Content Laboratory in Bangalore. 

Image credit: lee roberts on Flickr

BABY PICTURES by Kat Carlson

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Portrait_of_an_Infant

BABY PICTURES
by Kat Carlson

We are looking at pictures of my cousin’s new baby. My cousin is nineteen. I am thirty-two. My cousin is eight months pregnant with her second child. I’m on my period.

Everyone agrees that yes, it would have been better if Carly had finished college before having two babies, but my goodness, Damien is gorgeous. In every picture he’s grinning, exposing a row of short white teeth. At eleven months he already has a head full of brown curls that would resist being flattened by a wool hat. They’re so wondrous I imagine he could frolic all day in a pit of plastic balls and not one spark of static electricity would attach to them.

I have been married for three years, but we’re not getting anywhere, baby-wise. Our apartment is too small and full of pointed angles. Our credit card balances are bloated. And then there’s our red wine habit. My husband complains all the time that we’re too poor to have children, but I’m not sure I know what that means anymore.

Once as an experiment I replied, “Maybe we’re too poor not to have children.” He looked at me and said, “I can never tell when you’re being serious.”

“He’s not completely white,” says my grandmother, passing me another photo of Damien eating spaghetti, “but that’s all right.”

I mumble something about mixed-race people being more attractive than average, but later I think that might be just as racist.

Not many of us in the family have met Donald, my cousin’s boyfriend, so it’s hard to say “what” he is. I don’t think he’s black, at least not completely. Maybe Latino. Whatever he is, he can make a great-looking baby. He’s staying home with Damien while Carly goes to cosmetology school, so they’ll look great all the time, forever. He seems like a nice kid and they’ve made their bed so we’ve all learned to stop shaking our heads and saying, “what a waste.” I, however, continue to use Cousin Carly as a punch line at dinner parties, to prove what I’m not sure.

Carly and I aren’t actually related by blood. My aunt married her father when Carly was a little girl. Carly’s birth mother is a drug addict who left Carly and her father years ago. We don’t know much about her. My aunt has no biological children of her own, but we can all see she loves Carly like a daughter. It was my aunt’s dream for Carly to be the first in her family to go to college, and together they made it happen. She made it through one semester before she met Donald.

There are easier ways to make a baby.

victorian baby

My husband and I have a plan to get me pregnant in a year or two. If we wait much longer we might have a baby that has, you know, needs. Needs we aren’t equipped to handle. Last week we bounced a check on his student loan payment, and my husband wondered aloud how we were even going to afford day care at this rate. He’s sensible, but it annoys me. I catch myself wondering if it would be easier to start over again. I got scholarships.

So far no one in the family has bothered us about it. I wait for them to eye my wine glass during dinner, but my aunt fills it nearly to the brim with Pino Grigio without even asking. I don’t really care for white but I drink it anyway, just to have something to do.

“When are you two going to have a baby?”

Sometimes it bothers me that they don’t ask. I wonder if they’ve given up on me already, like we’ve all given up on Carly and college.

“Look,” says my grandmother, pointing at the photo in my hand. I’ve passed a few along without really looking at them. “Doesn’t he look just like his grandpa there?”

And I have to admit, Damien does look just like my uncle when he laughs.

A few days later I’m standing in line at a kosher market behind a young Hasidic woman and her three children. There are children all over the store. Some of them are piling into minivans outside, some of them are clutching onto the sides of strollers like suckerfish attached to a shark as the mothers wheel through the aisles, sometimes as many as four children to a stroller. The young woman in front of me pays for her groceries with food stamps. I pay with cash. Before I have my change she and her children are out of the store and making their way down the sidewalk. A little girl with light brown curls — like Damien’s, but longer — runs to catch up, reaching her left hand out for the stroller. Four children altogether.

When I get home with the groceries there’s a card from my mother. It says “Spring Has Sprung!” on the front and inside there’s a check for fifty dollars. In the memo line she has written, “For a nice dinner.” I affix the check to the refrigerator with a magnet so it won’t get lost, and a photo of Damien and his curls that had been tucked behind bills and postcards slips to the floor. With the tip of my shoe I nudge it under the refrigerator.

Katherine-Carlson-photo

Kat Carlson

Kat Carlson is a Brooklyn-based writer whose work has appeared in Vol. 1 Brooklyn and Fiction Writers Review. After four years in the editorial departments of St. Martin’s Press and Viking, she moved to the other side of the desk to earn an MFA in Fiction from the NYU Creative Writing Program. She now teaches in NYU’s Expository Writing Program and is wrapping up work on her first novel. Follow her on Twitter:@katcarl.

THAT SUMMER by George Dila

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640px-Tomatoes_-_USDA_ARS_-_K4667-6THAT SUMMER
by George Dila

That was the summer his partner of 54 years died, brain-stroked down to the old kitchen linoleum while he, sweating under a brutal July sun, weeded their half-acre garden. They had had their lunch, remnants of last night’s dinner, a slice of meatloaf, an ear of corn, washed down with a cold Rolling Rock. She said she would clean up. He said he needed to finish outside, just a row of tomatoes and Hungarian peppers to go, yanking out by hand the deep-rooted intruders chemicals could have killed so easily. Then, he would hose the dirt from his hands and meet her on the patio, where they would pause for a while to appreciate their life and their land, their retirement dream, sitting side by side in chairs of flimsy aluminum tubing and plastic webbing, the kind of chair that folds up into thirds, not unlike the way her body had folded at the waist and knees when she fell to the kitchen floor, a branch of the basilar artery spilling blood into her brain. So she was not on the patio when he got there. He pulled open the screen door, calling her name, and found her. He knelt to her, and said “Oh, sweetheart.” She lived for two weeks in the hospital, never regaining consciousness. Even after she was gone, he continued tending the garden as she would have wanted. He harvested six bushels of tomatoes over that summer, mostly Box Car Willies and Super Sioux.

George Dila is the author of a short story collection, Nothing More to Tell, published by Mayapple Press in 2011, and the short story chapbook Working Stiffs, published by One Wet Shoe Press in 2014. His short fiction and personal essays have appeared in numerous journals, including North American Review, Raleigh Review, Flare: the Flagler Review, Potomac Review, Palooka, Literal Latte, Fiction Now, and others. His flash piece “That Summer” appeared in Issue No. 2 of Cleaver. A native Detroiter, he lived in Ludington, MI, a small town on the Lake Michigan shore. George passed away unexpectedly and peacefully in April 2016, while vacationing with his family in New Mexico. Visit his website at www.georgedila.com.

BICYCLES AND FROG RAIN by Eric G. Müller

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BICYCLES AND FROG RAIN
by Eric G. Müller

Vintage-Frog-Image-GraphicsFairyMy brother and I followed Dad to the double garage. We were about to get new bicycles – our first. Five years earlier in Basel, Switzerland, I’d loved whizzing through the neighborhood on my push-scooter. Before that I cherished my small red tricycle. While we lived in Davos, up in the Alps, our focus had shifted to sledding and skiing, and during our short stay in Cape Town we lived in the suburb of Parow where hardly anybody rode a bicycle. Here in Empangeni, Zululand it was an entirely different matter. All our school friends had bikes, and now – after waiting many months – we were about to get our own for Christmas.

Dad opened the side door to the garage. “All yours! New and ready to go.” Excitement turned to disappointment as our hearts sank at the sight of two massive metal framed balloon tire bicycles with coaster brakes, and no gears. I instantly saw all my friends with their spiffy sports bikes laughing at me. In Zululand balloon tire bikes were the bicycles of choice for rural Africans, because they were low-priced, sturdy and absorbed the bumps on the gravel roads so well. I presumed my father, who loathed the apartheid system, was teaching us not to think we deserved or needed anything better or fancier than the Africans. We were too young to think in political terms. He just didn’t ‘get it.’ We kept mum and tried to mount these Clydesdales of bikes, but the heavy horses were far too bulky for us. I was ten and couldn’t even reach the pedals. Even Dad recognized we’d have to return them.

The following week the three of us went to the local bicycle store and bought two Raleigh Sports 3-speed bicycles; blue for George, green for me. We were happy; they looked exactly like those of our friends, except they didn’t have drop handlebars. I’d fix that soon enough. The bike became my constant companion and gave me the freedom to roam. I rode it to school, the pool, friends, piano lessons, the tennis courts, rugby practices, shopping; I raced down dirt roads, along footpaths and game tracks, through sugar cane fields, everywhere.

On weekends and in the vacations my friends and I undertook longer bike tours inland, or to other towns and villages; but mostly we rode along the coast, either south to Mtenzini Beach, or north to Richard’s Bay. These were typically day trips, but sometimes we camped out. We’d set out before sunrise with a few rand in our pockets, taking breaks at various rivers, climbing up to the tops of bridges to spot crocodiles and other wild game. The highlight was to have a burger and a brown cow (coke and ice cream) on our arrival, after which we hit the beach. Of the many trips I took on my first bike, the last was the most memorable.

An uncommonly violent storm had raged throughout the night. Bernard and I almost canceled our bike tour to Richard’s Bay. We got up at 4 a.m. and the wind still lashed around the house. But we stuck to our plan when we saw stars piercing through the scattering clouds. Off we pedaled into the dark of dawn, our teardrop headlights bobbing in front of us. The ditches and gullies rushed with water, and some of the low lying roads were flooded – an unusual sight in Zululand.

Riding out of Empangeni we noticed an even more unusual sight. Dead frogs lay strewn across all the roads. Hundreds, small and large! A few twitched. We tried to avoid the frogs, but there were too many of them and heavy gushes of wind made maneuvering difficult. While frantically zigzagging I skidded and crashed. The chain came off, both mudguards were bent, and my shirt was ripped. Apart from scratching my palms and elbows I was unhurt. Bernard laughed, pointing to some dead frogs stuck to my jeans. I brushed them off with disgust, adjusted the mudguards, and put the chain back on. After that I ruthlessly rode through the slushy carpet of frogs – mile after mile of glistening little bumps of flesh.

It had literally rained frogs. They were not only on the road, but lay scattered all across the veld and sugarcane fields, thousands of shiny corpses lit up by the morning sun. To make matters worse I got a flat tire, caused most likely when I came a-cropper. Though usually well prepared I’d forgotten my tire patch kit. Bernard had his, but the tube of glue was empty.

We stood around wondering what to do when an elderly Zulu drove by on his balloon tire bike. The bike had two large mirrors with red and green plastic frames that stuck out like curious fisheyes, and four bicycle bells, ranging in size from a yo-yo to a grapefruit. He noticed our plight, and without a word stopped to help. He turned my bike upside down, removed the tube, found the hole, took a piece of string, tied it tightly around the damaged area, reinstalled the tube, and pumped up the tire. We watched, fascinated, grateful. Once done, he smiled, saluted, and rode off, ringing his bells.

Around Richard’s Bay there were no frogs, the wind had ceased, and it had turned into a warm, clear day. We enjoyed our traditional burger and brown cow on the stoep of a funky café, after which we freewheeled down to the bay, dumped our bikes in the shade of a banana tree, went swimming, and tanned in the sun. When we returned a couple of hours later to ride back home our bikes were gone. We looked all over the sand dunes, but they were nowhere. Stolen! Back at the café, Bernard called his dad, and we waited for him to pick us up. I never felt the same close connection to any of the bikes I owned after that, nor experienced another frog rain.

Eric G. Müller

Eric G. Müller is a musician, teacher and writer living in upstate New York. He has written two novels, Rites of Rock (Adonis Press, 2005) and Meet Me at the Met (Plain View Press, 2010), as well as a collection of poetry, Coffee on the Piano for You (Adonis Press, 2008). Articles, short stories and poetry have appeared in many journals and magazines. His website is www.ericgmuller.com.

MY WRITER’S BLOCK by Kathryn Hellerstein

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writers block

MY WRITER’S BLOCK
by Kathryn Hellerstein

It depends how you define writer’s block, whether or not I am experiencing it at this very moment. At sunset yesterday, as I swam my laps, I thought through this essay and decided exactly how I would start, develop, and finish it in one sitting this morning. But now it is afternoon, and the wholeness of what I’d conceived is spotty and tattered. It’s raining outside, with a rumble of thunder. I’m sure that the pool is closed.

Yesterday, tracing the line at the bottom of the pool, my body inscribing it with the rhythm of strokes, kicks, and breaths, I thought that I would start out by telling that it’s been almost a year since my mother died, and that in that year, I have not written a single poem. I have had plenty to write about—the shock of her illness, the busy, sad, loving full-heartedness of accompanying her through her last weeks and days with my siblings, my grief at her last breath, the casket-choosing, the obituary, the funeral, the shiva, the move to Cambridge for the year with my husband, the trips to China and Russia, the returns home to work on emptying the house we all grew up in, the reciting of the Kaddish Friday evenings, Shabbes mornings and afternoons, Sunday and Monday mornings, and sometimes Thursdays, too, the learning to accept. I am a poet, and I could not write a poem. I guess you could say that this is a kind of writer’s block.

It’s not that I didn’t think up poems to write. They came to me, and I said them to myself before I fell asleep, when I woke with a jolt at 4:30 AM, when I swam, and when I read or took notes for a new project or revised my scholarly book. Sometimes I wrote in a journal, in the dimness of pre-dawn, without turning on the light. I haven’t yet read over what I wrote then. I don’t know if anything I put in my journal will become a poem someday. In order for that to happen, I will have to decipher what I scrawled in the dark, find something interesting, copy it out and then type it into the computer, all the while, reading and rereading it, changing, cutting, adding words and sentences until whatever it is begins to find a shape, a direction, a form. But I cannot read this journal yet.

Instead of writing poems, I have done other things that feel something like writing poems. I’ve taken many photographs with my cell phone camera and my very good little Canon. But I’ve printed out, posted, or emailed only a very few. These exotic or familiar landscapes, seascapes, cloudscapes, sightseeing wonders, portraits, candid shots of unwitting strangers or my own grown daughter and son, still-life snaps of furniture and rooms I will soon have to relinquish, are like the journal I’ve kept—private, unedited, and unseen. I painted four canvases in an adult ed. art class. I’ve written hundreds of email letters to friends and family—filled with observations, thoughts, memories, jokes, complaints, admonitions, sorrows, delights, and empathy for their lives, their losses, too. All this activity has engaged my eye, ear, and imagination. But none of it is the actual writing of poems.

At the start of graduate school years ago, a terrible writer’s block stopped me in my tracks. It took me hours to force out the words for each sentence in the essays that were overdue for my courses on Austen, Pound, Milton, Bellow, Chaucer. Teaching a freshman English class, though, I encountered a book that saved my life as a writer: Peter Elbow’s wise, practical directives in Writing without Teachers. As I recall it (and practice and teach it today), Elbow tells his readers to separate the editorial voice from the creative voice, in order to give the latter a chance. He urges the writer to write freely and without censorship or inhibition in a method he calls freewriting. Take a piece of paper and a pen. Start with a word, a phrase, or an image. Write for ten minutes without stopping. If you pause or draw a blank, repeat the last word you wrote until something else emerges from your pen. After ten minutes, stop. Read over what you’ve written. Find something there that you like. Start with that sentence or phrase and do another freewrite. Repeating this method, and then adding more structured sessions of editing and rewriting, you can get a good start on a critical essay, a short story, a poem, even a dissertation.

Two other things I learned in those years may help me start writing poems again. First, Malka Heifetz Tussman, a great Yiddish poet who took me on as her “pupil” and became a beloved friend and mentor, told me once that when a poem needed me, it would find me and tell me how to write it. Although poems have found me this year, they have not yet told me how to write them. I am not sure how long I should wait.

Second, I studied Yiddish with Malka (and also at YIVO’s intensive summer language program) in order to learn how to translate Yiddish poetry for my doctoral thesis, and discovered that the act of translation itself is a good tool for pushing through a writer’s block. Translating a poem or a story, you write into your language a work that another writer has completed in his or hers. The subject and form have long since been decided. Your job is to read, understand, and then work out how to say again what that first writer has expressed. In the process, you engage in the most intimate conversation about writing with a writer from another culture and time. No longer alone, you break through what is blocking you. You write.

Kathryn-Hellerstein

Kathryn Hellerstein is associate professor of Yiddish at the University of Pennsylvania. Her books include translations of Moyshe-Leyb Halpern, In New York: A Selection, and Paper Bridges: Selected Poems of Kadya Molodowsky, and an anthology—Jewish American Literature: A Norton Anthology. Forthcoming from Stanford University Press are her monograph, A Question of Tradition: Women Poets in Yiddish 1586-1987, and Women Yiddish Poets: An Anthology. Her poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Poetry, Tikkun, Bridges, Kerem, Gastronomica, The Drunken Boat, and in anthologies—Without a Single Answer, Four Centuries of Jewish Women’s Spirituality, Reading Ruth, and Common Wealth: Poets on Pennsylvania.

Image Credit: Leo Reynolds on Flickr

THE PLACE OF THE RED-FOOTED ROOSTER IN THE HIERARCHY OF SENTIENT BEINGS by Mark Lyons

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THE PLACE OF THE RED-FOOTED ROOSTER
IN THE HIERARCHY OF SENTIENT BEINGS
A story from the Eleventh Year of Emperor Bunsei (1829), based on a true event
by Mark Lyons

Hokusa-MangaPortraits--#2
I am not famous, but my rooster is immortal. I am the poor son of a poor farmer, and my station in life is to take the cows to pasture, feed the chickens and collect their eggs. On Saturdays I tie a string around the feet of my young roosters, hang them upside-down on a pole draped over my shoulders and walk the half hour from my village of Yotsuya to the market in Edo. “Guaranteed cockerels! None older than ten weeks!” I sing, as I run my fingers through their feathers. I don’t shout like the other vendors of fowl in the market. There is so much competition that I have had to learn to distinguish myself. Thus, I sing of cockerels in the melody of “Uenimo Haru,”– “Plum Blossoms in Spring”– my favorite song, loved throughout this part of Japan.

Short soft combs, bright red, no barnyard nicks
Fresh cockerels! The brightness in their eyes
Says I have led a happy life
Pecking corn in the barnyard of my master.
Stewed or boiled they will make your family happy, too
Taste my cockerels, fresh cockerels!
Best with onions and plums over a plate of sweet rice.
Sweet cockerels and rice for your sweet husband or wife.

My beautiful voice singing of roosters and love draws people to me. They perhaps are reminded of their youth and past loves and spring and Buddhist holiday meals, are pleased and purchase my roosters. Sometimes they ask me to sing my song even after I have no more roosters to sell. I oblige them. We all go home happy. And they look for me and my cockerels on the next market day.
Hokusa-MangaPortraits--#3
On Saturday morning of the twenty-third day of the fifth month, there was a great commotion in the market, not the kind of noise when a fight breaks out between two drunkards or a self-important and unemployed samurai thinks he has been insulted, or there is a fire, filled with tension and fear. This was a low hum at first, then shouts of excitement and fingers pointing, necks craning. Someone important was coming through the market, surrounded by buzzing shoppers. The throng swooped along behind a bald old man with large protruding ears that had more hair in them than was found on top of his head, and arthritic fingers that pointed in different directions. He wore the cotton smock of a street sweeper or woodcutter. Hokusai! Hokusai! The great painter Hokusai was passing through our market on his way to the palace of Shogun Iyenari. Hokusai!

Of course, I had heard about him– everyone in our province knew about him. How in a festival many years ago he had painted a portrait of the great Buddhist Priest, Daruma. But that was no ordinary portrait! The portrait was as high as a twenty-year old cedar, stretched out on the grounds of the temple, painted with a broom and great buckets of black ink. They say he sang as he painted, dancing with his broom and swirling brushstrokes of joy. As high as a cedar! The entire festival came to a stop as celebrators surrounded his painting, walking in circles around it in admiration, cheering him on. They say that just as he finished his last brush stroke it began to rain, and the revelers all shouted, “Help the great master roll up his painting, save the painting!”

“No”, said Master Hokusai, “leave it.”

And the rain washed the ink into the street and down to the Sumida River and out to sea. Revelers removed their sandals and danced in the inky Buddha stream, and walked home with black Buddha-dyed soles. They loved him, this painter who had been an errand boy, a merchant of red peppers, a hawker of illustrated calendars, an itinerant banner painter. He called himself Hokusai the Peasant and painted all of us–the tea servers and bean-curd makers, our sake drinkers, our merchants and lonely men and ladies of the pleasure quarter, our divers and fishers, our wrestlers and woodcutters, our children, our farmers. How could we not love him?
Hokusa-MangaPortraits--#4So, yes, of course, we all knew who the great Master Hokusai was. And he was walking through our market on his way to the palace of Shogun Iynari. The Shogun,who fancied himself a great patron of the arts, was holding a public competition between his favorite artist—the old Bunchō who painted in the Chinese tradition, and the eccentric Hokusai who dared to paint twenty-meter priests. Hokusai’s assistant carried a five foot wide roll of paper over his shoulder, some buckets, brushes and paints. Hokusai was in no hurry—he loved to linger among our people, slapping our backs, eating our offerings of rice cakes and tea, sipping our sake. Suddenly Hokusai stopped and held up his hand to silence our crowd.

“A chicken! I need a chicken. No, not a chicken: a rooster!” Then he spotted me with my last remaining cockerel hanging on the pole over my shoulder. Hokusai looked me in the eye—this is why we loved him so, how he looked us commoners in the eye, then painted us.

“Is that you I heard singing so sweetly of cockerels?” He reached over and gently petted my up-side-down rooster between his glistening red shoulder blades, then looked it in the eye. “How much?” But he kept looking the chicken in the eye, as if he were asking the chicken itself how much it was worth.

“For you, Master,” I said, “this rooster is a gift.” As you can imagine, I was trembling.

“You sell chickens, right?”

“Yes,” I replied.

“Then I will buy your chicken, is forty yen a fair price?” he said as he pulled two coins from his pocket. I held up my hand to refuse his offering, but he slipped the coins into my pocket. “And what is the name of this elegant bird?”

Name? Who names their chickens, when the next day they will be stew? But of course I made up a name: “He Who Dares to Fly.”

Hokusai nodded in approval. “Our chicken monger is a poet. His chicken must be a poet, too. Come with me!” And my newly-named cockerel and I traipsed alongside ­­­­­­the great painter as the crowd parted to let us pass.
Hokusa-MangaPortraits--#5
Half the market, it seems, followed Hokusai, his assistant, me and my cockerel to the entrance of the Shogun’s palace. The Shogun, dressed in his layers of silken robes, sat on his portable throne and explained the rules: (1) the theme of the painting must be of nature; (2) no more than two colors could be used; and (3) the artist would have thirty minutes to complete his painting. The Shogun himself would be the judge.

A coin was flipped by one of the Shogun’s guards. Master Bunchō won the toss. His assistant unrolled his rice paper, and put small black shiny stones at each corner to hold it down. He then set to grinding the ink on his small polished stone, and put three brushes in a bucket of water to soak. Bunchō kneeled before the paper in deep meditation, eyes closed, hands on thighs, waiting for the painting to come to him. He was revered in our province for invoking beauty between the lines, for leaving his spirit on the paper. We were all silent as he stood and bowed to the blank rice paper, asked his helper for his large brush, dipped the brush into the ink, and then into the bowl of water to get the correct translucency of wash. He bent forward, and with great round strokes began. Transfixed, we watched as he changed brushes, mixed cloud-like washes with bold dark powerful strokes, rotated the brushes from the wet side to the dry side with a slight shift of the wrist. There before our eyes a magnificent scene unfolded, of vertical cliffs creating a narrow valley through which a raging spring river roared toward the horizon. There, in the clouds, above the cliffs—one elegant raptor, wings outstretched, riding the updrafts from the raging water, enjoying the view as if looking through our eyes. Bunchō completed his painting with minutes to spare. He bowed to the painting and then to Shogun Iynari. The Shogun returned the bow.

“The name of your painting?” he asked.

“Eagle Rides Water,” said the Master.

The great painter had silenced the crowd, and we awaited Master Hokusai’s response.
As I held my rooster and Hokusai stood with his hands on his hips, his apprentice unrolled his rice

paper, two meters by five, and placed fist-sized coarse granite stones at each corner. The assistant uncovered a container of deep blue paint and unfolded the cloth that held the brushes. Hokusai reached down and took his largest brush, then tapped it quietly in his palm with his eyes closed. Tapping, tapping, waiting for the spirit to flow into his brushes. At last he dipped the brush into the bucket with the same serenity that one drinks tea, dangled it by the tip of the handle and waited until it dripped no more. In one instant he bent down, touched the brush in one corner of the paper and sloshed a single great blue undulating curve as he skipped to the opposite corner. He stood back and contemplated his blue brushstroke for two minutes, as if having a conversation with it.
Hokusa-Manga-Portraaits--#6
The Master then uncapped a container of red paint and motioned to me, or rather to my cockerel. I handed him He Who Dares to Fly. Cradling the rooster, Hokusai took the bird’s right foot, dipped it into the can of red paint, withdrew the foot and held it over the can until the paint ceased dripping from its claws. He repeated this gesture with the left foot. He held the cockerel up to his cheek and whispered to it as if in a bedroom conversation, the two of them breathing together. Hokusai bent over and carefully placed the bird on the beginning of the blue brush stroke, then released it. My cockerel stood there on the corner of the painting as if wondering what to do. All of us surrounded the painting in silence, sharing the confusion of the young red rooster. Then Hokusai brought his hands together with one thunderous clap. He Who Dares to Fly squawked and scampered across the rice paper and into the crowd. Red foot prints cris-crossed the deep blue curve.

We all contemplated Hokusai contemplating his painting and waited for him to pick up a brush and complete his work. The Master bowed to the painting, and then to the Shogun. He had completed his task in six minutes. The crowd was silent as a winter nightingale.

“The name of your painting?” Asked Shogun Iynari.

“Red Maple Leaves Floating on the Tatsuta River,” replied Hokusai.

I wanted to cry.

The Shogun’s eyes moved back and forth between the two paintings, flickering as they made their judgment. Then he stood, and we craned our necks in silence. The Shogun bowed twice to Master Hokusai, a signal that he had won the competition. Hokusai returned the bow, then did something that is the reason we loved him so: he stood next to his painting and bowed to us, the merchants and shoppers from the market who had left their stalls and shopping chores to follow him to this moment. Four bows to each corner of the crowd that surrounded him. We returned his bow, then went crazy, dancing and singing around his painting. Then we dispersed to return to our stalls, to selling tobacco and sweets and plums and tea and sake, to sweeping the streets, buying fresh daikon and soy and noodles for our evening meals, servicing lonely men, and hawking chickens.
Hokusa-Manga-Portraaits--#7
Market day, for sale
Red maple leaves in autumn
He who dares to fly

Ichiba yori
Kouyou tobi yuku
Akino Tori
市場より
紅葉飛びゆ
秋の鶏（とり

Haiku by Mark Lyons, translated into Japanese by Hitomi Yoshida
hokusai chicken
Lightnings_below_the_summit

Great_Wave_off_Kanagawa2
Images:
1 – 6 from Volume 8 of Manga (北斎漫画) by Katsushika Hokusai, c. 1817; Michener, James A. (1958) ”Hokusai Sketchbooks: Selections from the Manga”, Rutland, Vermont & Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle Company.
2. “Rooster” by Katsushika Hokusai, painting, c. 1808 -1809; Victoria and Albert Museum, London
3. “Lightnings Below the Summit” (山下白雨) by Katsushika Hokusai, color woodblock print; c. 1830. From Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji.
4. “Great Wave Off Kanagawa” (冨嶽三十六景 神奈川沖浪裏) by Katsushika Hokusai, color woodblock print; c. 1826. From Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji.

Mark-Lyons

Mark Lyons

Mark Lyons lives in Philadelphia. His fiction has been published in several literary journals, and has been read in the Reading Aloud program at Interact Theater, in Philadelphia. He is author of Espejos y Ventanas / Mirrors and Windows: Oral Histories of Mexican Farmworkers and Their Families, written in Spanish and English. Mark was nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and awarded Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowships in literature in 2003 and 2009. Currently he is director of the Philadelphia Storytelling Project, which works with immigrants and youth to teach them to create digital stories about their lives.

KEEP THE CHANGE by Jenny Wales Steele

Cleaver Magazine Posted on by

keep the change

KEEP THE CHANGE
by Jenny Wales Steele

Pizza boy.  Howdy.  Smug leer, velvet bathrobe.  Wobble of warped vinyl, glint of mellow light on it, a diva panting towards a climax.

Twelve fifty, sir.  Thank you.

Grazie.  Keep the change, beautiful pizza boy.  Ciao.

The vinyl hiccoughs, the woeful aria snags in a groove.  The door shuts, the locks lock.  This ostracized soul.  This man’s furious paterfamilias gesturing across the ocean.  Go, I damn you.  After that incident with that cherubic urchin.  Palazzo, baroque moon.  This scenario, this flash fiction, in Nathan’s stewpot brain.  Cheap amusement, house to house.

One final delivery tonight, thin crust deluxe to yet another beigestucco house.  Parked on the concrete apron in front of the garage, a customized Mustang, black, sleekaberc.  Doorbell.  A teengirl.  Nice wheels.  The teengirl sneers, Now they think I’ll behave.  The house all metallic throb, the parents obviously absent.  The teengirl in camouflage pants, combat boots, a t-shirt with a bomb shelter symbol on it.  Eyes of ganja and the coy despair of the spoiled.  Obedience in her veins, ultimately.  Wiping daddydrool on the daddychin in the nursing home, 2040.  She slaps a daddytwenty into Nathan’s palm and takes the pizza.  Peace.

Not a bad night, not unprofitable, pockets packed with tips, tipwarmed groin.  Nathan vowing (again) not to spend it all on Sheila, that trinketkook, that sad nonfriend.  Subtract rent, food, gas, put any extra money in a dull account, trytrytry not to buy baubles and bangles, though he loves the tinny jingle as Sheila shifts and sways around him.  Maybe Sheila’s asleep now on their thriftshop futon, in their roachratty duplex, a book about butterflies spread across her breasts.  How badly she needs sleep, how she is so often insomniac.

I slept so easily as a child.  Sheila pacing one night, smashing her knuckles against her eyelids.  I was sleepy-la-la all the time.  And I dreamed in pastel.  Now this agony.

Drink warm milk.  Count sheep.

That won’t help.  She lay alongside him and sobbed against his collarbone, murmured, My sweet boy.  Boy.  Yes, he seems a boy when he’s with her, though he’s only twelve days younger.  Nathan hushed her that night, other nights, until her body was suddenly slack against his.

Splendid, bonny Sheila!  Golden limbs, golden hair.  Speckled hazel eyes, the twinkle or slash of those eyes, how they convey her moods.  Calculation of flattery or irritation if observed, if a masculine gawk traces her knee to hip to jaw.  Flirtatious, gullible Sheila.  But suspicious too.  And no dimwit, no dumbbunny, plenty of smarts, this gal.  Nathan’s gal, though neither have risked heart.  You’re my neutral territory, Nathan.  Nathan mulls this as he marches across campus.  Manly mulling, fitting the idea of neutral into an unsullied niche in his brain.

Sheila talks of getting her own place, but only maybe, Nathan, only if that lawsuit is won.  That history professor and his unlawful grope.  Scandal!  News crews chasing the professor, wee wee wee, all the way home.  But no shimmyshimmy gewgaw clip of Sheila, only a highschool yearbook snap of her.  Pustules on her chin, her cheeks, her brow.  As if I had the pox.  Medieval!

It’s a hisword/herword situation.  Rumors swirling and instant verdicts on all tongues.  Silly twat.  Lecherous creep.  Hottie wanted it.  Pig!  That ancient war.

Sheila counseled to relinquish miniskirts and tanktops and now she wears Nathan’s jeans and poloshirts.  She stands alongside him in a mirror and they seem twinned.  Nathan too has golden hair, golden limbs.  Nathan too is beautiful.  Pizza boy.  Why not a model instead?  Abercrombe & Fitch.  A sailboat scene in Vanity Fair.

Sure.  Or a catwalk fruit.  Strut and pout.

This idiotic chitchat.  Thisway/thatway.  His deft fancy.  Thisway: Nathan in a beigestucco house with a flabby bride, and on the cusp of sleep, the tiny idea of a sailboat scene, himself as captain shouting ahoy! to Sheila all jinglejangle and mock on the shore.  Thatway: himself and Sheila, senile drool in the nursing home, thrusting scrapbooks at nurses, look, here were are sailing the bay of sleepy-la-la.

Nathan gets back into his dithersputter Jetta and away from that teengirl in camouflage pants, that bribeMustang.  People’s lives!  This subdivision is Nathan’s five nights a week and he has learned these identical houses, these streets.  Sagebrush Circle, Tumbleweed Lane, Wagon Wheel Way.  This world of industrious people and their spawn.  A tricycle tipped sideways on a lawn.  Welcome mats of rubber, astroturf, bristle.  A woman in a nightgown vacuuming a minivan.  Aluminum poles with American flags (fabriqué en Chine).  Beigestucco democracies, family consultations about onions,  mushrooms, pepperoni.  Pineapple!  Let’s get pineapple!  Yes, a toss of pineapple chunks out of a plastic bucket, yum.  Their god is a bountiful god.  Massacres and famine flash on their TV screens between Crest and Chevy ads.  Pity, but what nicewhiteteeth!, what horsepower!

Oh wise, skillful pizza boy, he knows all the shortcuts and addresses, never has to creep number to number.  He scurries to doors with hot! fresh! delicious! pizza in an insulated velcroflap pouch.  Thirty minutes or less, but no guarantees.  Speed limits, traffic laws.  Red means stop, okay?  And please remember that other pizza boy, Tyler, losing control on a rainslicked road and crashing into a lamppost as he was rushing six pizzas to the Kiwanis.  Tyler a cripple now, what a cheesy drama, ha ha.

So cozy, this subdivision, but a lonely coziness.  There, on Manzanita Terrace, the house with the pine blinds always twisted shut.  A woman there, a lithe knife in severe skirtsuits and alligator pumps.  Put it there.  Sorry, ma’am, I’m not allowed to enter.  I won’t hurt you.  Okay.  A glossy 9×12 photo.  This woman with George W.  Identical smirks.  Her hand on W’s sleeve.  A madrepublican, but maybe she yearns to lure a liberalfuck.  Not on the menu, ma’am!  Though it would be so keenly Tennessee Williams.  No pizza tonight here, no triplemeat sicilianstyle.  This house already dark.  The woman tucked in, political claptrap dancing in her head.

Glimpses, zipzapzoom fictions in Nathan’s stewpotbrewpot brain.  Funny or pathetic, this humanity.  There, that house, its gross crucifix in the foyer, anorexic Jesus in dirty diapers.  This domicile’s plump matriarch, her deaddream of bathing lepers on a squalid island, but muskylove intervened.  That flabby man slouching towards TV, how he (it amazes her) had been a virile lothario.  The matriarch always verifies the pizza boy’s identify.  The peephole blinks and Nathan salutes it.  Children swarm the table, meaty aroma in their snotnostrils during joypuncturing grace.  Midnight, the matriarch tallies obscure sins, books them into her prayers, the manslob asleep, fartsnorefart.  Soon, tabloid status.  A greasy stain of the Virgin Mary in the lid of a pizza box.  Not a miracle, Nathan will tell Sheila.  I hit a speedbump too hard that night.

Silver Spur Circle, another family, a girl always clutching a kitten, a brightly beaming child, prompt with a friendly hello.  Ah, but there’s the father lurking.  The world so hazardous.  Strangerdanger/strangerdanger/strangerdanger drilled into innocent souls.  Hello!  And hello to you.  The father stepping close, licking the pad of his thumb to shuck money out of his wallet.  Keep the change.  Pizza here night after night recently, the motherwife not home, unburdened of husbandandkids.  This alarmclock mutualfund antibacterial family.  Joylessness here, the noose of normality.

Judge not!  But how hard not to judge these gentlefolk.  Sleeping, dreaming, or maybe I’m ovulating, honey, so let’s and then mechanical, unromantic copulation with never a worry about the result, Adolph, Osama, pizza boy.  Parental influence a nifty idea, but any kink in the DNA corrupted it.  That newsblip yesterday, that meek and mild boy in Idaho murdering his family, then heating a bowl of splitpea soup.  Think rubbers and pills, gentlefolk!  Think spermicidal jellies!

Back to headquarters, Blackbird Pizza, a neon cube in a stripmall.  Nathan takes the yellow beacon clipped to the roof of his Jetta and carries it inside with the insulated pizza pouch.  The bosslady, polyester centurion, greets him.  No fictions about her come to Nathan.  Her oniony gloom, her soda, slurpburp, although he is sure she was loved once.  Farewell, milady, he says and he kisses her doughy wrist.  She giggles.  You’re a weird boy, Nathan Harrow.  And so his shift ends.

*     *     *     *     *

A love child you were, are, yes, it was love.  His mother’s fusty hiss in his earhole.  But his father is a nonmemory, his father only an article snipped out of the Tribune.  Tom Harrow, local hero.  He had caught a girl thrown out of an 8th floor window of a burning hotel.  Clickclickclick of cameras (so Nathan conjures), the girl a blur of ponytail and frock, then cradled and safe against the chest of a beautiful man.  Fantasy father.  Nathan unfolds the article, brittle now, and seeks himself, but there is only similarity of eye, of jaw, of dimple, nothing of manner, of caliber.

Nathan escaped his mother’s flakysoggy moods and skippedtoaloo to a tiny U.  Corebore curriculum, but okay, this one class about the history of war.  Battles, blunders, triumphs, the consequences of victory or loss.  The professor had artifacts too: a doughboy’s identity disk, daguerreotypes of Union soldiers, a tin flask with a bullet dent.  And in this class, this sexy, sleepless girl, this Sheila.  She lingered after class once, was alone with the professor, and he touched her hip, whispered a naughty hint.  She swung the replica of a 14th-century halberd at him, sliced his eyebrow with its blade.  Blood gushing!  The professor stanched the cut with a batch of essays.  Sheila ran into the hallway.  He’s hurt (quietly), he’s hurt.  Clamor kindled, law students rallied to Sheila’s cause.  The professor denied harassment, I am not a lecherous creep, but nobody listened.  He was furloughed, his classes canceled.  So irritating to Nathan.  He veers around Humanities, avoids the females chanting shame, shame, shame.  Their mood so hot.  Sheila not involved in this, Sheila only an emblem of that prehistoric hesaid/shesaid.

One day, Nathan hunted a vacant cubby in the library and there she was, sad, hard girl, studying in a wedge of white sunlight, the flick and flash of sun on the cheap silver at her wrists, earlobes, throat.  She looked at him, candid scan.  Hi.

Hi.

You’re Nathan.

Yes.

Sorry about class.  All those notes you took.  Antietam, Iwo Jima, Verdun.  Obviously important to you.

Yes.  Not clockwatching, not blackberrying, but taking all of the professor’s words.  That lecture about Verdun, France, 1916, the mud, the blood, the rats gnawing severed limbs, the lice nibbling soldiers’ crotches.  Slaughter.  And this was to maintain civilization!  The professor had a battered steel helmet.  Put it on, put yourself there.  Nathan tried the helmet and suddenly he actually was there, a French poilu, filthy and shivering in a trench, and now he found himself here, in this library, with this girl, though hearing the whistle and crash of artillery, and he was saying, It’s okay, and a blush shunted and tacked into his cheeks and mouth.  Sheila smiling.  He took her in, her hazel eyes letting him.  Golden hair, golden limbs, pink plastic sandals, denim miniskirt, white tanktop with spaghetti straps.  Now with his clumsy tongue, What are you studying?

Swallowtail butterflies.  Maybe I’ll become a lepidopterist.

Maybe.

Are you hungry?  She tucked the butterfly text into a knitted satchel.  I’m hungry.  Nachos in the student union.  Not dirtyflirty, but serene kinship.  They scheduled themselves, their bodies, and within a month, Sheila said, Let’s try it, be roomies, sort of, with benefits.

*     *     *     *     *

Clunk, clank, and the Jetta sighs against the curb.  Nathan walks the cracked path to the duplex, fits the key into the lock.  Sheila not asleep, Sheila slumped on the futon.  The TV, its volume low, its rabbit ears tabbed with foil, Laverne and Shirley coming through, schlemiel, schlemazl, hasenpfeffer incorporated.  Nathan empties his pockets of coins, of wadded bills, dumps it all on their milkcrate table, announces, The loot!

 Good pizza boy.  Sheila pats her thigh and Nathan folds himself against her.  She is in his clothing, jeans, a black poloshirt.  He lifts her wrist, plinkplinkplink of wire bracelets, and he licks her wrist’s knob of bone, her knuckles, her fingertips, and he murmurs, Salty.  Sheila kicks the bowl of dead kernels set on the shag.  I popped popcorn.

Shirley rips away the cursive L of Laverne’s sweater.  Laverne glowers and huffs.  Stale laughter, fakey.  The picture warps now, another channel coming through, a burly chef cleavering rumproast.

Maybe he didn’t touch me.

What?

That professor.  Maybe he didn’t suggest anything.

Buzz and slant, blizzardy meld.  The cleaver flashes through Shirley’s waist, Laverne swings a pillow into the chef.  Not this, not that.  Keep the change, beautiful pizza boy.  Ciao.  Sheila plunges and Nathan catches her safely in his arms.  He imagines himself as his father catching that girl flung out of a burning hotel.

Jenny Wales Steele

Jenny Wales Steele has published fiction in The Ampersand Review, Juked, The First Line, Harpur Palate, Salt Hill, Verdad, Jerseyworks, DarkSkyMagazine, and many other literary journals, and she’s been nominated three times for a Pushcart Prize. A native of Arizona, she now lives in Tucson.

 

Image credit: Neerav Bhatt on Flickr

THE DIG by Nathaniel Popkin

Cleaver Magazine Posted on by

“THE DIG”
From LION AND LEOPARD (The Head and the Hand Press, October 2013)
by Nathaniel Popkin

Charles Willson Peale, Belfield, November 24, 1818

I woke at half past four, drank two glasses of water, and with the wind in my eyes, walked past the sleeping elk’s pen and into the barn.  There, I milked the two cows, remarking to myself on the double economy of doing one’s chores oneself.  It is apparent that many a gentlemen farmer, if that is how I am to be labeled, pays good money for his own idleness and sloth.  It is like purchasing one’s hastened demise.  The body in motion stays in motion, says Mr. Newton, the body at rest stays at rest.  I don’t need to be convinced of the better alternative.

I set down the bucket of milk, took a spade and a basket, and so I trudged, suppressing worry of danger, through the fetid late autumn field, which felt thick and even overgrown (and not winter raw or empty), into this splendid darkness.  Breathing deeply as I walked, I passed through the grazing field, our small vineyard, and ducked under the bare branches of the pawpaw and into the little apple orchard.  The sky was the black of wet ink, blotted in places where clouds showed through the darkness.  One stares into the darkness as if it is made of substance, as if it can be touched or felt or even inhabited.  Nothing in darkness is greater than darkness.  In day, the experience is opposite.  The air has no form, no mass.  It has no structure.  The air signifies nothing more than the state of the weather.  It is cold, it is humid, or it is crisp and still it is nothing.Charles-Willson-Peale-Belfield-FarmIn painting, the blue sky is not only an object of its own merit, but it carries with it various symbolic meanings.  Likewise, clouds, the rays of the sun—mostly invisible to us—become the life force of the landscape picture.  Naturally, Birch’s nautical scenes, mere paeans to war and national feeling if not for the otherworldly clouds, come directly to mind.  And so it is, yet again, the opposite when a dark background—chiaroscuro—is employed by the painter.  Darkness thus becomes, exquisitely, invisible.  Only the subject comes forth; only the person matters.

I stepped through the orchard, taking care not to trip in a fox hole.  Mrs. Peale says she will withhold sympathy for me if walking in the dark I fall into a hole and break a bone in my leg or wrench my back.  I don’t tell her that at times like this I feel myself a hawk.  (The savages who once roamed this land knew something, I believe, of the power of this feeling.)  The hawk never sees the little mouse clambering through the leaves made papery by the hoarfrost; he doesn’t have to because he senses the vibrating earth.  And thus I become the hawk and just the feeling of it increases the acuity of my senses.  So on I went, beyond the third row of trees and there, finding my prey, I planted myself, now no longer the hungry raptor but as a small child alone amidst God’s creation.  This is, after all, my own earth.  As I hunched over to begin my work, the lipid heat of mold and decay rose to warm my face.

When Raphaelle arrived last Wednesday to sit for his portrait, he was armed with a thousand diversions.  He walks slowly and now with a cane, but insisted I take him for a tour of the late autumn garden.  “You aren’t bundled well enough,” I said, but since I think it best in these cases to push on, as the will only grows in proportion to its obstacles through practice, I gladly acquiesced.  Mrs. Peale came to the door with a heavy blanket made of horsehair.  My son draped this over his shoulders, holding it closed across his chest with one hand while grasping the cane in the other, in such a way that only heightened his appearance of derangement (the blanket trailed behind him).  We made our way along the stone path now covered with a skin of leaves, past the greenhouses and, pausing briefly, I started to explain my deep appreciation for the place.  “You will note,” I began to say, “once we rise to the bluff of the summer house, how gratifying it is to sit still and ponder nothing but the glories of nature,” but as I did so, I worried that such a statement might sound to my son as an endorsement of excessive repose and so I quickly amended the statement to include a phrase on the way “such careful study of nature has improved my ability as a colorist.”  We climbed, slowly enough, up the stone staircase I had built myself, to the Pedestal of Memorable Events.  Each of the eighty events is denoted with a little engraved star, but I drew his attention to a single star without descriptor, a space left for an example of the positive progression of the American philosophy yet still to come, with the intention, while looking him over, of suggesting that the place be reserved for a notable advancement of his own.  But this too I amended on second thought.  Instead, I said, and not without truth, the space has been reserved for the glory of industrial invention, perhaps the steam engine, perhaps the prosaic, nay ingenious, mill.

While eating our small, simple dinner of boiled potatoes and cabbage—Raphaelle spent a great bit of time making jokes about the austerity of our meal (at my expense), which Mrs. Peale unflinchingly and quite calmly deflected—I asked him to tell me how he thought he ought to appear in a portrait.

Portrait_of_Raphaelle_Peale_and_Titian_Ramsay_Peale)_Google_Art_Project“I think you had better ask that question of the man with the pencil,” he responded.

“But don’t you care how you are presented to the world?”  I looked across the table.  Alas, the boy looked tired.  His ears were blotched red, his skin waxy.  Upon his arrival at Belfield, I had looked him over carefully.  He was clean, shaven, and wore a high collar and a cloak.  He carried no odor of alcohol, but seemed to mutter to himself rather frequently.

“Well, then,” he said, looking around the room, “why beat around the bush.  Paint me for what I am.”

“That’s what I do intend,” I said.

“No.  Paint me as flesh.  A good cut—Now where’s the difference? to th’ impartial eye / A leg of mutton and a human thigh / Are just the same—for surely all must own / Flesh is but flesh and bone is only bone.”

“That line of argument has already been taken.”

“That may be the point.  Surely you can improve it.  I should think a porterhouse cut with some curls of onion.”  He brushed his hair with his hand.  Did I imagine this, a hand rheumatic, claw-like?  I guided him into the painting room.  The fire in the hearth barely glowed and I took some time to stoke it.  I then arranged him in front of an easel and canvas of his own and put a palette in his left hand, a brush in the right.

“Then why not paint me as Raffaello?” he said a bit imperiously, pausing for effect.  “You don’t get me, do you?  Paint me in the style of Raffaello Sanzio.  Shouldn’t there be a drop of guilt in my eyes?  No insipid despair, what I want is guilt.  It’s more pleasing.”  He paused and I allowed him to go on nonsensically.  “Anyway, I have always desired that—as a joke, you see, what you might call a gesture.”

“You don’t need to act a fool anymore, dear boy.  Suppose I just paint the person I see before me.”

“And isn’t that the quite real Raffaello?”

For some reason he felt the need to press the point.  I tried not to resent the constant go around.  I was already growing tired of the crazy fellow.  I wished to make his portrait as a sign of defiance and if he hadn’t that capacity then I would have to provide it for him.  The portrait would resurrect him.  “I will paint you as Raffaello Sanzio, one of the cleverest members of the papish religion and, my dear boy, a master of the portrait.”

“Then I shall die in the arms of a voluptuous whore.  There will be glory, at last.”

In that moment I never felt more certain that I would outlast Raphaelle—not only Raphaelle, but every last one of them.  My day that begins at half past four ends punctually at a quarter past ten.  That’s nearly 18 hours awake, a full 15 of which is spent in the act of work: six on farm chores, care and feeding of the animals, mending and rebuilding farm utensils and farm buildings, and working in the garden, six in the act of painting—I am determined that the portrait of Raphaelle will reestablish my own reputation as a portraitist—and three in the planning of my cotton mill.  Glory, I am certain, will come in the spinning of the waterwheels, even without the aid of my recalcitrant sons.

Still-Life-with-Steak

The rest is spent eating (one hour fifteen minutes spread over three light meals) and writing to my children.  And who of my children, or even my wife, 20 years my junior, comes close to this example of vigor?  Rembrandt?  He requires too much sleep.  Rubens?  He very competently manages my museum, but lives in the delicate mold of a Roman bureaucrat.  During his long supper break, he strolls aimlessly around the city or idles about the statehouse gardens.  The second Titian, I imagine, works hard on his naturalist exhibitions, but is easily distracted.  The rest I need not mention.  Mrs. Peale tells me I am a wretched father for expecting so much of my children.  “Let them be!” she says.  I tell her I don’t get her point.  “But they must live their own lives!  One way isn’t better than the other.”  I can only look on impassively, but with secret joy in my ice blue eyes.  One’s children are, indeed, like one’s piece of earth.  They must be cultivated, pruned, clipped, fertilized, and arranged to one’s liking.

With the wind beating down on my unprotected neck, now crouched on the ground beneath the apple trees, I began to dig.  A single, last leaf of the apple tree twirled around and around, making a scattered, intermittent sound, the very quality of the noise of children playing upstairs.  After digging through the raised beds beneath the apple trees, I came to realize I had estimated wrong—this patch of orchard had been harvested already.  I advanced to the last row of trees—and here was the motherload of potatoes.  So be it, there were enough to deliver with the sample bottle of wine to Tharp, a chore which Linnaeus hadn’t ever completed.  He’ll only work, he says, if he is to be paid explicitly for his services.  Room, board, and the infinite patience of his mother aren’t quite enough.  I filled the wooden basket until I could no longer easily lift it and carried it to the path that runs between our houses.  There was now enough vulgar light to see clearly and for this, and just for a moment, I felt a usual pang of sadness, for never do I feel as defiantly alive as in these earliest hours, when the world expects a man of my age and standing to be auditioning for the hereafter.  Should I be spotted doing my farm chores at the early hour by some perspicacious neighbor who thinks he’s witnessed the installation of madness, it would only be so much more of a pleasure.  Now, with the rising sun, any bird worth its weight thought it necessary to announce its presence.  Even the creek, which I hadn’t noticed while digging for potatoes, went about its mesmerizing holler and I went inside to escape the clatter.

Still-Life-With-Cake

Mrs. Peale was still asleep; in fact, the house was as dark as the orchard had been an hour before.  I drank two more glasses of water and went into the kitchen to fill and cork a bottle of wine for my neighbor.  I searched everywhere in the kitchen and then in all the possible locations inside the house.  I had already filled the bottle with good sweet, clear wine, which Linnaeus himself had crushed.  But the boy hadn’t cut more corks (or so I thought, as it’s never possible to receive from him a “straight” story).  Instead what emanates from his mouth is both diffuse and cluttered, and therefore impossible to discern.  It’s a bit like the morning’s scattered wind.  Since he was a boy, Linnaeus has driven me, with efficiency and predictability, to anger.  I won’t stand the obfuscation or the undercurrent of deceit.  It was only much later I realized his mother (and the mother of Franklin, Titian II, Sybilla, and Elizabeth) hadn’t the same studied calm as Rachel, the mother of my older children.  This certainly contributed to his instability.  But I’ve always studiously avoided taking pity on the boy.  And so he left for some time and joined the navy, despite my admonitions against war, only to return with a monkey on his back, a sword in his belt, and a sad, shit-eating grin on his face.  His sisters fall for it every time.

But now where were the corks?  It had been my intention to reach Tharp before he became busy at the mill; I lost nearly a full hour cutting down a cork from an old bottle of whiskey I found in the barn, only to have it crumble into tiny pieces and fall into the wine.  I carefully kept my temper in check during this fitful exchange, which also resulted in hitting my head on the pediment to the kitchen door.  Luckily, the slight welt that rose above my right eye was mostly invisible to the unknowing eye.  At last, I employed a decanter, whose glass top would have to suffice.  Now instead of laying the bottle down on top of the potatoes, I would have to secure it standing up for fear of spilling.  I did so, resting the basket every few paces and sweating profusely despite the chill and the wind, and now something else, a sudden soaking downpour that felt more like a remnant of spring than late autumn.  Being a hawk would no longer quite do.

460px-C_W_Peale_-_The_Artist_in_His_Museum

*       *       *

Images:
1. Charles Willson Peale, Belfield Farm, c. 1816. Detroit Institute of the Arts
2. Charles Willson Peale, Staircase Group (Portrait of Raphaelle Peale and Titian Ramsay Peale), 1795. Philadelphia Museum of Art
3. Raphaelle Peale, Still Life with Steak, c. 1816. Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute. Utica, New York
4. Raphaelle Peale, Still Life with Cake, 1818. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
5. Charles Willson Peale, The Artist in His Museum (self-portrait), 1822. Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

Nathaniel Popkin

Cleaver fiction review editor Nathaniel Popkin is the author of three books, including the 2013 novel Lion and Leopard. He is co-editor of the Hidden City Daily and senior writer of “Philadelphia: The Great Experiment,” an Emmy award-winning documentary series. His essays and book reviews appear in the Wall Street Journal, Public Books, The Kenyon Review, The Millions, and Fanzine.

 

 

I DIDN’T KNOW HOW TO SPELL SPONDYLOLISTHESIS by Mike Harper

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SPONDYLOLISTHESIS

I DIDN’T KNOW HOW TO SPELL SPONDYLOLISTHESIS
by Mike Harper

Your numb legs were just like Granny’s
in her iron lung, and you folded
slowly onto yourself before they
put you back like expensive origami.

This was when I learned what an HMO is,
and what it’s like to see both mom and dad
cry at the same time. This is also why you
will never ride a bike, and always set off
metal detectors. For a split second,

you were just like Frida, mangled in
your fluid paints, your snake vertebrae
tempting the future like Eve

Mike Harper

Mike Harper fled to Oregon right after getting a degree in English and Comparative Literature from one of those biggish schools in Southern California. His poetry has been featured in Burningword, Dash Literary Journal, Hibbleton Independent, Lexicon Polaroid, New Verse News, Origami Condom, Verdad, and a handful of zines and chapbooks. He now lives beneath your couch, hoping you won’t look under there too often. You can find more of him or ignore him at openmikeharper.com.

 

 

Image credit: Kate Renkes on Flickr

DAISY by Chris Ludovici

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DAISY
by Chris Ludovici

Rebecca Saunders was mean.
She was the meanest girl in the fourth grade, the meanest girl in school, maybe the meanest girl ever.

It wasn’t that Daisy wanted to think that way about Rebecca Saunders, or anyone else for that matter. Daisy liked to like people, her mom always said to try to see the best in everyone, and Daisy did her best to do just that. But some people… some people there was just no best to see, no matter how hard she tried.

The truth was, Rebecca Saunders was a bad word. She was a word Daisy wasn’t allowed to say but that Aunt Casey said all the time. It rhymed with witch.

Aunt Casey used it to describe Rebecca Saunders even though it made Daisy’s dad mad when she did.

“Did that stupid little (bad-word-that-rhymes-with-witch) start anything today?” she would ask Daisy when she got home from school.

Most days Daisy would shake her head no, Rebecca Saunders had left her alone, and it was usually true.

Mostly.

Daisy

She didn’t bother telling her aunt about the little things Rebecca did, how if Daisy accidentally made eye contact with her, Rebecca’s face would go into this mean little smirk, or how if Rebecca and her friends walked by Daisy at recess they would lower their voices so Daisy couldn’t make out what they were saying. That stuff hurt, but it wasn’t worth getting upset about. Everyone said that Rebecca treated Daisy the way she did because she was trying to get a reaction out of her, and the best thing was to ignore it, so Daisy did her best to ignore Rebecca Saunders and her mean friends and the stupid mean things they said and did. Ignoring meant not crying or shouting or even thinking about it if she could help it. So when Aunt Casey asked if Rebecca Saunders started anything, she said no. Sometimes though, when Rebecca had been particularly nasty, she’d crack.

“(Word-that-rhymes-with-witch)es need stitches,” Aunt Casey always said when that happened. “How’re you handling it?”

Daisy would shrug. “It’s cool,” she’d say. “I’m cool.”

If Aunt Casey asked today though, she would have a different answer. Today Rebecca had finally gone too far.

 *

Daisy never could figure out why Rebecca Saunders hated her so much.   She just did and she always had, ever since Daisy started at their school two years ago.

“Daisy,” she sneered at recess ­on the first day, “we got daisies in our yard one year and mom had to get a gardener to get rid of them. It smelled for weeks after that. I hate daisies.”

That was all it took. Rebecca Saunders and all her friends hated Daisy from then on. They wouldn’t talk to her unless it was to pick on her. They made fun of her weight, her clothes, her hair, anything they could think of. They came up with mean names for her: Lazy Daisy, Hazy Daisy, and of course, Crazy Daisy.

Her mom told her to be patient. She told Daisy to do her best to ignore them, to keep being her sweet self and eventually those girls would get tired of picking on her and then they’d stop. She told Daisy to make friends with different kids, nicer kids.

Aunt Casey didn’t think patience was the answer.

The first time Daisy told Aunt Casey about how those girls picked on her, back when she was still in the second grade and Aunt Casey was visiting from Portland, Aunt Casey told her to kick Rebecca Saunders’ (different-bad-word-this-time-rhymes-with-grass); she told her to punch her in the chest, just below her neck, in her solar plexus. That night, at bed time, Daisy told her mom what Aunt Casey said and her mom got really mad. She called Aunt Casey and talked to her for a long time; Daisy lay in bed in the dark and listened to her mom’s angry muffled voice down the hall.

The next day, Aunt Casey came over and sat down with Daisy on the front porch.

“Your mom totally put me on blast for telling you to hit that girl,” she said. “And she was right, I should’ve kept my mouth shut but look, I was mad, you know? You’re my niece and you’re perfect and it drives me nuts thinking about someone hurting you. But you can’t hurt them back.”

“Yeah I know,” Daisy said. She never had the slightest intention of punching Rebecca Saunders in the solar plexus or anywhere else for that matter. But she had liked that her aunt suggested it.

“The things with these types of… people,” Aunt Casey was trying her hardest not to swear, Daisy’s mom had really let her have it, “is that you can’t make them stop, as much as you might want to. All you can do is take it until they lose interest. Don’t do anything, don’t say anything. Just let it roll off your back, you know?”

“But they’re so mean,” Daisy said. “They’re so mean; it hurts my feelings and makes me mad. Why can’t I at least say anything back?”

“Because,” Aunt Casey sighed, “it wouldn’t do any good. No matter what you say, no matter what you do, they’re gonna be mean. That’s why you gotta be cool.”

“But what does that even mean be cool? I don’t know how to do that.” And she didn’t. Daisy was many things but cool wasn’t one of them. She didn’t know how to dress or what to watch or say or anything. She tried asking some of the other kids if they wanted to play with her at recess, tried bringing in toys that other kids might want to use. She even brought in extra Oreos to share at lunch. But nothing worked. Whatever it was at Baxter Elementary that made you cool, Daisy didn’t have it.

“It means like – look, when you’re cool nothing gets to you, right? Cause you don’t care. You’re cool. Being cool isn’t about what you wear or the music you listen to or anything like that. And it sure as (word-that-rhymes-with-spit),” she winced, “Don’t tell your mom I said that alright? It sure as sugar isn’t what those little monsters in your class think is cool. Cool is a state of mind. It’s the knowledge that you’re better than this. Better than them. They can’t touch you. Because you’re cool.”

Daisy sat silently next to Aunt Casey, considering her words. Then she said: “I’m cool.”

“You’re cool.” Aunt Casey said, “Like the song says They’re never gonna keep you down.”

“What song is that?”

“Wait, you don’t know that song? Oh man, that song’s the best. It’s all about how, life’s rough and mean and hard and stuff, but you just gotta keep going. And that’s the chorus, it’s like, I get knocked down, but I get up again!/You’re never gonna keep me down!/ I get knocked down, but I get up again!/You’re never gonna keep me down!” She punched her fist in the air as she chanted.

“Do you have that song?”

“Do I have that song? Do I have that song? Of course I have that song. I have it with me, you wanna hear it?”

Daisy nodded. She really did.

“Let’s go then, let’s listen to it right now.” They went inside, and Aunt Casey plugged her MP3 player into the stereo, turned the sound way up, and pressed play. When it finished, she played it again. She played it again and again and again. Aunt Casey and Daisy and Daisy’s mom and dad danced around the living room all night chanting along with the chorus, I get knocked down, but I get up again! You’re never gonna keep me down! I get knocked down, but I get up again! You’re never gonna keep me down!

It became her motto.

Whenever things got rough, at school with Rebecca or at home with her dad, she would just repeat the chorus over and over in her head until she was calm. She would, as Aunt Casey said, be cool. Cool people didn’t get worked up by mean girls or sad dads; they didn’t let things like that get to them. And Daisy was cool.

I get knocked down, but I get up again! You’re never gonna keep me down! I get knocked down, but I get up again! You’re never gonna keep me down!

There was a while there, after her mom died and before Aunt Casey moved back, when Daisy would lie in her bed for hours, her headphones jammed in her ears, and listen to the song over and over as loud as it would go. Cool couldn’t do anything about a car hitting her mom as she crossed the street on her way to an ATM, cool didn’t have any answers for that. But the song did remind her, that while she was down at the moment, and she was as far down as she had ever been in her life, she wasn’t going to stay down. Things would get better. They had to. Nothing could keep her down.

And they did get better. Or, they were getting better. Aunt Casey moved in, and her dad started to cheer up a little. And, while she still missed her mom it didn’t hurt quite as bad as it used to. Little by little, she was starting to feel like herself again.

 *

The problem was, the more she started to feel like herself, the more she started getting irritated again by people like Rebecca Saunders. So when Daisy lost her favorite necklace, the one she found at the flea market that her mom said looked so pretty, Daisy lost her cool for the first time in a long time.

“Miss Fantozzi?” Daisy said, “I, my necklace is gone. I think it fell off when I was on the monkey bars at recess. Can I go and look for it?”

“I’m sorry, sweetie,” said Miss Fantozzi, “but I can’t let you go outside without supervision. You’re going to have to wait until school’s over.”

“But what if someone finds it and takes it before that?”

“Like anyone would want that ugly thing,” Rebecca whispered to one of her friends and the two of them snorted with laughter.

That’s when Daisy said it.

It was weird. If you had asked Daisy, just a second before, how her mood was, she would have said she was fine. She was worried about her necklace, of course, but other than that the day had been going okay, good even. Stacey Grundin invited her to play four-square at recess and she made it to the king square. She’d gotten the report on the Pyramids back with an A; there’d even been an extra pudding in her lunch.

It was all going so well.

But then Rebecca just had to go and make fun of her necklace.

Like anyone would want that ugly thing.

That ugly thing.

Suddenly, Daisy was back at the flea market with her mom. She was at the table of homemade jewelry she liked so much and she was picking up the necklace and showing it to her mom. The necklace had a locket, it had writing on it, but it was a word Daisy had never seen, with marks above some of the letters. Her mom said it wasn’t English, she used her phone to look up what it meant. When they found out, they knew the necklace was perfect. Her mom handed Daisy the ten dollars her grandmother gave her for her birthday.

Daisy felt her mom’s hands lifting her hair up and her mom’s breath on the back of her neck as she fixed the metal clasp together for the very first time.

She felt the weight of the necklace settle on her chest.

Heard her mother whispering how beautiful she looked.

And stupid mean Rebecca Saunders.

“Shut up you stupid bitch!” She yelled in front of the whole class and the teacher and everyone.

Usually there are all sorts of noises in a classroom. If the teacher wasn’t talking then the kids were, or if no one talked there were always the sounds of pencils scribbling across paper, of pages turning, of kids squirming in their seats trying to get comfortable. After Daisy called Rebecca Saunders the bad word everything went silent. No one talked; no one wrote anything or read anything. No one moved. Daisy was pretty sure the clock over the door stopped ticking.

“Daisy,” Miss Fantozzi said after she recovered enough to speak, “I need you to come out into the hall with me.”

Forty-six silent eyes followed Daisy as she rose from behind her desk and made her way down the aisle toward the front of the class. Miss Fantozzi was standing at the door, holding it open. Daisy kept her eyes on her shoes until, halfway out the door she stopped, looked up and found Rebecca Saunders’ eyes. Rebecca looked, in that moment, stunned, shocked, a little afraid. Daisy stared right back with a look that said I meant what I said, and I’m not sorry, then she walked into the hall.

Miss Fantozzi crossed her arms and looked down at Daisy. “Here’s the deal,” she said, “I’m giving you a pass on this because you’ve had a rough year and because for reasons I’ve never understood Rebecca Saunders seems to have it in for you. But if you ever, ever, use that word again, at anybody, I will make sure you regret it for the rest of your life. Are we clear?”

Daisy nodded her head.

Miss Fantozzi said it again, “Are we clear?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Good. Now, go inside, take your seat, and look like you just got in a lot of trouble.”

“Yes ma’am,” Daisy turned on her heels and walked back into class. She kept her head down the whole way back to her desk and after she took her seat.

“Alright, show’s over,” Miss Fantozzi said, “eyes forward, let’s go.”

Daisy looked up in time to see the class tear their eyes away from her and back toward the front of the class. A moment later Rebecca Saunders glanced back at her again, Daisy held her gaze. That’s right, still here. Rebecca broke first, turned back to Miss Fantozzi and the list of state capitols on the board. Daisy allowed herself a little smile.

You’re never gonna keep me down!

Aunt Casey would be disappointed that Daisy hadn’t been cool. But then she had been something else her Aunt liked even more.

She had been awesome.

Christopher Ludovici

Chris Ludovici

Chris Ludovici has published articles in The Princeton Packet and online atCinedelphia. His fiction has appeared in several literary magazines, and in 2009 he won the Judith Stark awards in fiction and drama. He has completed three novels, two on his own and one with his wife Desi whom he lives with along with their son Sam and too many cats in Drexel Hill. Daisy also appears in the 2013 issue of Peregrine, the print journal of the University of Pennsylvania Creative Writing Program.

TWO POEMS by Nissa Lee

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Two-Poems-by-Nissa-Lee

TWO POEMS
 by Nissa Lee

BEFORE GOING OUT
after a painting by Fuco Ueda

I.
About one in every 10,000
doe-eyed girls grow horns.

These rare creatures
enjoy drawing lines in the dirt
and leaping over them for play.
When thirsty, they pause
to taste wild berries—
delight in their shades of purple,
delight in their skins’ momentary resistance.

In other girls, the horns
hide just beneath the scalp.

II.
Until this girl sheds the woolly
uniform and socks
down to her cool skin
nothing seems right.
She itches. Her black hairs
spark.

III.
Antlers clatter on the ground.
A friend dangles her feet
over the bed, deliberating
which pairs make them
look best.

Pulse flickers at the possibility
of fingertips pressed
to her temples, to those bones,
heavy ornaments
pulled from mother’s wardrobe
just for play.

IV.
They do not know
the implications of their jewelry—
the conquest, the kill.
The shearing of self
to simply fit in.

V.
The girls lie down with their heads
at the tombstone of her twin bed,
stroke the blunt tips of ivory.
Their ribs gasp shallow,
their feet forget cold.

VI.
You think
you have grabbed this
creature by the horns,
wrestled her to the ground.

AN OMEN
Past midnight, the madness of hens
drove me from bed to their house.
Moonlight caught their faces
blue-white through splintered slats.

I could see the scratched dirt of a struggle
feathers dragged through wet grass
and a white-tipped tail disappearing
into the trees.

With squawks pecking at my heels,
I tripped over the swollen ankles of oaks
and squeezed my way through
to a messy clearing where the rooster
was delivered, neck broken,
shivering against a rock.

Yellow eyes watched as I grabbed
the rooster’s legs and cursed my luck.
But the bird opened its beak,
and in a child’s voice, he sang.

Nissa Lee

Nissa Lee has poetry appearing or forthcoming in Mason’s Road, The Raleigh Review, Requited, and Wicked Alice. This year, she was named a finalist for The Normal School’s Normal Prize and received an honorable mention in Philadelphia Stories’ Sandy Crimmins Prize for Poetry. She is a graduate of the Rutgers-Camden MFA program and lives and teaches in southern New Jersey.

ROLLING EMPTY by Roger Leatherwood

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freight train

ROLLING EMPTY
by Roger Leatherwood

Walking home from the theatre starting at 11:40 at night, I’d be 20 minutes out when I passed the hillsides and into the canyon with the single four-lane connecting the suburbs, through the open land and sky that opens up over the far-off desert over San Diego county.

Singular cars drive past, a Thursday night away from downtown. Along the incountry where the railroads laid their track a hundred years ago, freight trains still run at night through here, often a dozen cars or more running empty back to terminals in LA or farther north, in approximate echoes of the freeways traced to get the commuters to the industrial center built where the water could be piped in from the bay. Inland and away.

Slow walking at night, with no buses (they’re 55 minutes apart at this time of night). To go home and only have the smell of rye and sweat, perhaps the shape of my father still on the futon couch, the TV off and a highball glass with the ice melted and his dress shirt in a ball.

Night sky horizon lined with iceplant along the hillside, I would walk off the side of the road through the dirt path where a sidewalk may one day be laid and down out of sight, ten feet below the road level. I face the far-off hills across the expanse where another road half a mile off travels slowly up towards La Jolla on the other side, marked by the occasional headlights from night trucks. And I would open my shirt and unbutton my pants, lay half naked in the iceplant open to the cold air slowly cooling and facing up at the large night. The smell of chlorophyll beneath me as I lower carefully into the low-soft greenery flattened below my knees and heels.

For ten minutes a car might come by up above, invisible and anonymous and down at the bottom of the gorge along the ancient creek a floating headlight on a freight train would weave like a low-flying UFO back and forth, weaving through the bottom of the gorge. Alone and naked in the dark I would watch it gain noise and presence hundreds of yards below and snake through the flat canyon bottom, rolling quietly and mechanically through the empty landscape, under the blind sky below my invisible body up there in the dark, in the black, on the way home, in the ivy, 20 minutes out from the Balboa intersection. Killing all the time the night holds.

◊

The sense of place, that sense of the sun, the sense of my body and how this all interacted in a mathematical equation that was part chemistry, philosophy and mathematics first boiled and reduced at the beach. Two summers of bonfires and waves crashing harmlessly on the long strip of white beaches of upper Clairemont and Ocean Beach. Sand and bikinis and wading into the warm water and beating against the current that brought in gallons of water in ribbons and seaweed and pressure and friction as we frolicked waistdeep in soaked cutoffs and underwear and discarded shirts, the girls wearing bras or tanktops to hold some semblance of chasteness, not quite convincing.
These early formulas of sexual awakening and interactions with the female of the species outside the confines of walls or watchful parents are inflected by soda in wet bottles stuck in the sand and a single joint shared among six people, and the mysteries of nature are defined by fumblings in the fading sunlight over the sound of waves with our bathing suits running up our thighs. Sex is not the hairy groins of our youth or the throbbing porn cock. Sex is the explicit and exquisite texture of sand on her nipples, my licking around and then spitting out the salt, giggling, being pushed away. And pulled aside behind the large logs near the concrete breakwater a half hour later, for a little more. Closer but never complete, near but wait later we have all summer all the time in the world.

◊

The most fun I had was a week of time, in the canyons behind our house, the carved gashes in the landscape between the desert and the beach region of San Diego county, where the silt filled in the bay a thousand years ago and the settlers built to take advantage of the wind and the access. Houses and small buildings lined the crests, looking over, the strip malls a block in serving each little neighborhood. Behind the large school ard the grassy hill was smooth and steep, leading down to the brush and chaparral broken into hard dirt and the creek that hid rocks slick with algae, salamanders and funny-shaped insects, rope swings and abandoned shopping carts and single car tires, jack knives and old Playboy magazines stashed in the crotches of trees.

Me and my brother found a refrigerator box down there one summer day, not a weekend or a weekday necessarily, no school and no schedule, discarded by some inconsiderate neighbor or pulled behind a bike until it flew off and down caught by the wind. It measured six by twelve, the largest single expanse of pressed cardboard we’d ever seen and when pulled up to the top of the hill behind the empty schoolyard and ridden down with two handfuls of the upper flap it slid like a stingray over the dry green grass in a fast wave of ecstasy the 60, 70, 80 feet down to the dirt path fading along the bottom.
The cardboard carpet was a magic appliance, a ski ride down the waterfall of grass and gravity, faster, longer easier than nodding off to sleep. It slid like a jet rough enough to be dangerous and smooth enough to have us not care. We pulled the board up and down 100 times in a row, 200 times, separate and together, from morning to when it got dark and came home exhausted, laughing, ravenous, bruised and ready to do it again tomorrow.

And for three days we rode the hill on the refrigerator box, all day and slowly wearing down the flaps, then the corners, the bottom side and then we folded it around to wear out the inside. Once two older kids walked up from the canyon and we stopped so they wouldn’t take our magic cardboard away. When it got dark we stashed it below the manzanita trees by the creek, up on the other side where it was out of sight and hard to get to.

And the third day, that day I remember, a Saturday, the board was gone. We looked around up and down the ravine hoping it had just been pulled a few hundred yards away by someone who didn’t know the fun of taking it up the hill but it was nowhere. And my brother and I tried to make due sliding on our stocking feet and a smaller box we found but no sheet compared to that refrigerator ride and never was a large enough piece of cardboard to duplicate it and it was the funnest goddam thing I think I ever did and nothing since, not wading in the waist-high waves at La Jolla, not drinking brandy in the cafes of Paris, not the licking or the fucking, not laying in the iceplant nude, or the mechanical movement through the canyons, filled me with such existential peace of being one with the canyon universe, in my world of nature flying free down the hill, sunlit wind, the smell of dried grass and pressed chlorophyll, on my jeans at the knees and along my hips, stained beyond repair. We went home and my mom wondered, for a moment, but her words faded in a haze of Miltown and the smell from her bedroom that reminded me of an aquarium gone to seed.

◊

My second job was at a Jack in the Box, a typical fast-food gig most people had right out of high school or just before they were kicked out of the house and had to start dealing with gas money and replacing those shoes that were suddenly worn, unfashionable or the wrong size. The first one was a couple years before, delivering papers on a bicycle which was thankless and harder than any adult ever realized or remembered and no one got rich or fell in love. No wonder they preyed upon 14 year olds who never did it more than one season before finding better ways to kill their summer.
My shift was the graveyard, from eleven at night to six, dead of night and after dinner and before the breakfast cycles but firmly covering the bar crowd, the late at nights, the concertgoers dumped onto Midway a couple miles up and the homeless before such a thing existed in amounts large enough to notice and then to take entirely for granted.

I was at Store 13, Clairemont Mesa Blvd. along the Pacific Highway running above the beach along the inside of Mission Bay, a quiet stretch late at night surrounded by residential, built for the war. Open 24 hours but we were lucky – we weren’t near downtown or the bases or any college campus. The railroad tracks ran along the highway as well, a remnant of the settling of San Diego late in the last century and typical of a harbor town, something I wouldn’t come to realize until I was out near Kearny Mesa and walked through the canyons and lay naked in the iceplant seeing the train’s glowing eye snake through the bottom of the gorge heading from points far east, always from or to agricultural lands.

Train traffic was infrequent along the coast and only at night did long runs of freight cars seem to roll along the tracks through the area, unhindered by traffic or citizen. The lazy wooden gates with red flashing lights bobbed down at the intersections marking their passing slowly with a metallic racket that mixed the vibrating of asphalt and heavy iron like a hammer and nails wrapped in a beach towel slinkying down an endless staircase. About once a week a long train of cars would slow to a crawl across the boulevard in the dark past the grass partition and before the sidewalk and volleyball field that fronted the beach beyond. Going as slow as possible but not stopping, two engineers jumped the engine and ran across the road and into the restaurant to place an order – five of this, five of that, sodas, a couple coffees and fries and anxiously looked at the rolling train across on the tracks while we cooked it up.

There were no other customers in the store at two or three a.m. when they came by and we’d ask them where they were headed.

“Up to Sacto.”

“You’re hurrying up, can you?”

“The train isn’t stopping,” Dan, my co-worker, would point out.

“Not allowed to stop. They have the sensors.”

And they laughed with us. The train was 20 or 30 cars long, a mismatched collection of cattle cars, logging plankers with open racks, yellow and rust-colored box cars with a panoply of graffiti freckling the sides that marked the wide course of travel and provenance. Lights on hotels from across the bay reflected in the still waters past the grass. The moon was behind us, not directly visible.

“What’s on the train? Cattle?”

“Nothing. We’re rolling empty. ”

“The cars are delivered to different terminals,” the redhead explained. “They split them up. Each one gets a different load.”

We cooked an extra burger or two and gave them a whole bag filled with fries, plenty of time. “What if you don’t make it back on?”

“We’ll catch it. It’s only traveling five miles an hour.” Indeed we handed them the bags and the two workers ran back across the street to mount the train on one of the freight cars near the end. I didn’t know how they got the food to the front engine where their buddies were presumably waiting.

I got off work before the trains from the other direction early in the morning came by, this time headed south. I didn’t think about the trains again until the theatre job, another late night thing that allowed me to get out of the house during the endless midnights, filling my head with dreams from Hollywood, the dark air of the future, the chugging of progress. And teasing me with the quiet abyss of time and domesticity that stretched open into the night that in my young teenage years ached to escape, exposing my body to the cold and the trains that traveled through the landscape to parts unknown at the wrong speed, too slow to catch, too far away to follow.

roger leatherwood

Roger Leatherwood worked on the lower rungs of Hollywood for almost 20 years before returning to UCLA for his MFA and to print fiction, where at least the stories he could tell were his own. His feature “Usher” won numerous awards on the film festival circuit, and his writing has or will appear in Skive Magazine, Crack The Spine, Oulipo Pornobongo, Nefarious Ballerina, European Trash Cinema and others. His novella Times Two, a long-form memoir about the different birth stories of his two daughters, is available from Amazon. Visit his website here.

Image credit: Wikipedia

DUCKPIN BOWLING WITH CAITLIN AND BUFFALO BILL by Timothy Kenny

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DUCKPIN BOWLING WITH CAITLIN AND BUFFALO BILL
by Timothy Kenny

 
     Buffalo Bill’s
     defunct
                  who used to
                  ride a watersmooth-silver
                                                             stallion
     and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat
                                                                            Jesus
     he was a handsome man
                                        and what i want to know is
     how do you like your blueeyed boy
     Mister Death
                                                         — E.E. Cummings

398px-Atomic_Duckpin_Bowling_EntranceCaitlin scoots first into our local bowling emporium (small town/duckpin only), where we are met by the same musty/mildew odor that has always greeted us, despite a new birthday-view rug that rolls colored confetti and pointed hats and noise-making horns across the floor. The old indoor-outdoor carpeting has fled, leaving dead air to hang in its place, a week-old washcloth on a sink.

We grab shoes. Caitlin slides on the polished lanes, a “watersmooth-silver stallion,” which kick-starts Buffalo Bill inside my head. The bowling guy — a high school kid, really — drops the bumpers into the gutters and we’re off: first her, then me, then she, then me, back and forth, we’re counting pins, writing down numbers, carrying ones over into the next column. A half hour later it’s the tenth frame and the final score is Caitlin 73, me 72, a dad’s duckpin-bowling miracle.

We go to pay. The gray-haired lady behind the desk who earlier handed out smooth-bottomed shoes that Velcro for convenience right off the bat tells me about the senior league that meets Monday and Thursday mornings.

“You’re a good bowler,” she says. “I was watching you.”

Watching me? Good bowler? What is she saying?

“We have bowlers of all ages. Some are pretty good.” A beat. “OK, not that good but ok, you know?”

She brightens: “Some of our bowlers are in their eighties.”

I provide my impression of a smile. We flee.

An hour is slow-motion death for a person who’s six. It’s odd. People who are six have logged 52,560 hours of life, which sounds like a lot until it’s measured against my 578,160 hours, perhaps four of which have been spent duckpin bowling.
I memorized “Buffalo Bill’s defunct” in college to impress girls. It’s short. I love Bill Cody. He salted Europe with the romance of the American cowboy and was indeed a top hand himself. I love e.e. cummings more. Never mind that. “What I want to know is” not why I am silently reciting “Buffalo Bill’s defunct” but how can I stop seven?

Caitlin asks: “Why is six afraid of seven?” I don’t know, I say. I never know. It ruins everything to know.

“Because seven ate nine.” Followed immediately by, “Get it?” I always say no, asking instead: “What do you mean?”

She tells the joke again. I pause, appearing thoughtful. “Oooooo, Nowwww I get it.” She laughs, grateful for my stupidity.
In two months we’re done with six; seven looms large, another step closer to the unending march of numbers that double up the digits. The joke should be, “Why is sixty-seven afraid of seven?”

The answer is: “Because seven is three from ten, when the slope gets slippery.” I know it’s not funny. Painful things are not always funny.

No one ever said about me, “Jesus, he was a handsome man,” but I traveled and had company expense money before gravity rear-ended me. Thankfully, good luck intervened.

“Daddy,” says Caitlin, “look,” pointing: “Air hockey.” She motions me low and whispers in my ear, “I love air hockey.”
We shoo away a gaggle of little kids who are fooling around at the air hockey table but don’t have any money. Caitlin drops in four quarters. They make a satisfying ca-chunk; not as serious as the thump of balls dropped into the business end of a tavern pool table, not like breaking “onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlike that,” but then what is? Bill was a seriously good marksman.

We air hockey.

From the Midwest like I am the only thing in bowling was regular big balls, the kind with three holes drilled in, sometimes two. It was easier than these duckpin midgets.

Two weeks ago my daughter scored her “worst Sunday ever.” It started at this same bowling alley, which should be named “Memory Lanes.” Get it? That’s why we’re back. It was previously filled with tournament bowlers who lurched from lane to lane, keeping score the right way, ringing up loud strikes that threw the fat-ass little pins into the back of the alley like a crack-back block. We could not bowl, though half the lanes were empty.

Caitlin wondered why my answer made no sense.

I suggested shooting pool; she brightened. But no, renovations to the pool hall; no can do. Her face yo-yo’d. The air hockey machine ate quarters gleefully – a banker selling a balloon-payment house loan to a janitor – but refused to cough up the sliding disc or poof the pillow of air that turns a slow plastic table into air hockey.

Soured, we retreated to across the pulsating birthday floor to the nameless machine that drops a metal claw into a pile of plush animals for seventy-five cents. It did what these machines are intended to do: randomly dropped its yawning claw, closed it around thin air, wound itself to the top of the plastic case and dangled, spent and empty.
We drove to Starbucks. Caitlin ate a morning bun and brightened. Not much later soccer practice was cancelled. Thus born: her “worst Sunday ever.”

I am no “blueeyed boy” – hazel rather – from cummings’ undeniable imagination, but really, and this is the important part: Does Caitlin understand – and I say no, it’s way too early for her to get it – that I’ve finally stopped worrying. I have come to an understanding with “Mister Death.” I know he lurks. If I turn my head sharply I catch him in the distance, out of the corner of my eye: shadow-dwelling, shape-shifting sumbitch. Lurking.

Maybe he’s a duckpin bowler.

Timothy-Kenny

Timothy Kenny is a former newspaper foreign editor, non-profit foundation executive, and college journalism professor. He reported widely from Central and Eastern Europe, including Croatia and Bosnia during the early stages of the Balkan conflicts in the 1990s, and has taught journalism as a Fulbright scholar at the University of Bucharest. He lived in Kosovo for a year and worked more recently in Georgia, Kyrgyzstan and Afghanistan. Kenny’s narrative nonfiction has appeared in The Louisville Review, The Gettysburg Review, Irish Pages, The Kenyon Review Online, the Green Mountains Review, and elsewhere.

DISPATCH FROM THE CAT SHOW by Jamie-Lee Josselyn

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DISPATCH FROM THE CAT SHOW
by Jamie-Lee Josselyn

bengal cat1Pulling into the parking lot of The Riveredge, a banquet hall in Reading, Pennsylvania, a wave of glee rushed over me. I scanned the rows of SUVs and minivans for the now-familiar “I ♥ my Persian” bumper stickers and “Show Cats on Board” placards suctioned to rear windows. And, of course, there were many variations on those popular stick figure family decals: Stick-Dad with a baseball cap, a Stick-Mom with one long curly-cue for hair and a coffee mug in hand, and no fewer than three Stick-Kitties. Sometimes a Stick-Kid or two. Sometimes just Stick-Lady (Stick-Cat-Lady?) with any number of Stick-Cats. The license plates covered the Mid-Atlantic region, as well as Virginia, Michigan, Ohio, Texas, and Ontario.

cat-l-callWe made our way into the lobby, and I presented two cans of Fancy Feast to the woman at the registration table. “Oh, donations!” she said as she placed our cans in a crate heaped with tins of Friskies and Royal Canin. “So, you each get a dollar off admission.” I handed her a ten dollar bill and, when asked, told her we were already on the mailing list. We’d gotten the post card announcement a few weeks earlier.

This was our third cat show.

The previous show had also been here at the Riveredge, about an hour and a half drive from our home in Philadelphia. Our first show had been closer, just over the Delaware River at an armory in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Both Aaron, my boyfriend, and I had not expected this to become anywhere close to a recurring weekend outing. He had suggested the first show, about a year earlier, as what I assumed to be a sort of Hail Mary pass attempt in response to my wails of, “Why don’t we ever doooooo anythinnnng?” which increase in frequency every winter, when Philly is too cold to be comfortable and too warm to be majestic.

bengal cat 5

I think we were first drawn to the cat show out of that smug, even bratty sense of irony which seems more and more prevalent these days. Sure, we’re cat owners. Sure, our friends were jealous when they saw our posts to Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram chronicling the day’s events. We were doing it for the story (as evidenced here). As we entered the show hall and wandered through the “benching area,” rows of deluxe-sized, individually decorated cat carriers – adorned with fabric, ribbons, feathers, and sparkles with themes of anything from America to Mardi Gras to the Green Bay Packers – there was no doubt that we had come to look at the freaks. And their cats.

It only took a moment of gawking for me to feel guilty. Aaron, meanwhile, was snapping photos, often pretending to take an one of me, or of a cat, while really trying to capture a mulletted, NASCAR shirt and fanny pack-wearing man in jean shorts and tube socks hustling a cat with bold tiger stripes, which I would soon learn was known as a Toyger (as in, “toy tiger”), to a judging ring. “That dude is awesome. Move to the left,” Aaron told me, shifting the lens of his phone away from me as the man stowed his cat in one of the holding cages behind the judge’s table.

“It’s not a big deal. My dad probably has that shirt,” I said. I’d grown up in a small town in New Hampshire that had both a dragway and a speedway. There is something about the largely working class crowd at these shows that reminds me of home: the curling iron-induced hairstyles, the drop ceilinged banquet hall, the raffled off gift baskets of Yankee Candles, Milano cookies, and Robusto Ragu.

cat-club

“But your dad doesn’t have that cat,” Aaron said. “Look at that thing!” We took a few steps closer and stood behind the two rows of chairs that were set up to view this ring’s judging. Slowly, the holding cages were filling up with other Toygers, just as the ring next to us was filling up with their mini-leopard counterparts, the Bengals. As the holding cages, which were each marked with a blue (male) or pink (female) number card for each participant, filled, the cats’ owners settled in the chairs to await the judge.

Even after three shows, I can’t quite say how cat judging works. There are a lot of ribbons. The show hall has a number of these U-shaped “rings” around the perimeter, and each has a separate judge presiding all day. Individual shows run concurrently based on category – first, specific breeds (i.e. Persian, Sphynx, Ragdoll, Bobtail, Exotic, Maine Coon, and many, many more), then more general categories like short-haired alters (“alter” meaning spayed or neutered) and long-haired kittens, and, eventually, the coveted Best in Show.

bengal cat 3Cats have the opportunity to advance if they score well in their breed, but the great thing I’ve learned about cat shows is that every cat is a winner. The judge gave his preliminary examination of each of the Toygers, taking the cat out of the cage, first stretching the cat out (“Look at the long, tubular body on this boy. Very nice.”), then placing it on the judging table, a plexiglass-covered and frequently disinfected platform with two twine-wrapped cylinders on either end. At my first show, I waited with nervous excitement each time a cat was placed on the platform, assuming that before long, someone would get spooked and leap into the sea of onlookers, many of whom were clad in animal prints. It’s never happened and based on my own cat’s surly-verging-on-violent nature, I can only imagine how much pre-show handling it must take to prime a cat for this spotlight.

The judge held the Toyger’s face and felt his cheeks, neck and ears. “He’s got a nice strong jawline and a good ear-set, spaced good and wide.” The judge then picked up a long wand with strands of tinsel and ran it up the platform’s side post. The cat immediately pounced, his front paws capturing the glimmering foil. The audience rumbled with laughter. “Playful boy!” the judge chuckled. “Excellent shoulder definition, too.”

Some cats were unfazed by the judge’s attempts to get them to extend to the posts, and a few even hissed when the judge approached their cage. “Okay, you won’t come out today,” the judge would say, stepping back.

But still, each cat was given a place, and it was always in the affirmative. After all of the ring’s contenders had been brought out, the judge would pace by the cages, take some notes, and arrange his placing tags, which would go first on each cat’s holding cage, and then on its carrier in the benching area, often attached to a large ribbon. “We’ll start with number 287, a sweet Toyger girl with a great personality, a stunning coat, and wonderfully wide-set eyes. My tenth best Toyger today,” the judge said, clipping a tag to 287’s cage. Later, the tag would be exchanged for a “10th Best Cat” ribbon. No quiet exit for being the worst. A prize for being 10th best.

“Yaaaay,” the onlookers said, not quite cheering, but enthusiastic enough as they clapped. They always said, “Yay” as the places were called, tenth through first.

bengal cat 4There would always be a pause when it was down to the last two cats in a category. The judge took them each out, not for his own benefit, but for that of the rest of us. And probably for the sake of suspense as well. At this point, I glanced around to figure out who the two competing owners were, but had no luck. There was no clutching a co-owner’s arm or crossed fingers . It felt like everyone was waiting to hear what the judge had to say about each cat. “See how this boy’s eyes have a perfect almond shape, plus they’re this beautifully vibrant green,” he said as heads, including Aaron’s, nodded. Next cat. “This girl here has such a delicate yet solid body, and her muzzle is just textbook Toyger. She’s my best today.”

This “Yaaaay” had more pep. As the spectators in the know crowded the winner’s owner, an older woman in a purple blouse and silver tiger brooch, I caught the judge nuzzle the winning Toyger as he turned to place her back in the cage. Over the rest of the afternoon, I learned that this was his tendency. He didn’t nuzzle every cat, but about a third of his ring’s competitors would get a little affection on the way back to the cage. It was about more than structural integrity for this guy.

For the rest of the afternoon, I was less focused on the cats and how they placed, and more on the judges and how they got there. What did it take to become a cat show judge? Later in the afternoon, when Judge Chris from Toledo, Ohio urged each cat’s owner to tell his or her favorite Cat Show Story as she went through her judging. It became clear to me then that Chris and the other judges were either former participants in the show circuit, or who still competed, but in other regions. Many of them had known each other for decades. Most of the “best show” stories involved a high rank, often a first place ribbon, which came after years of showing and usually multiple cats.

uglicat

“Hi, everybody, I’m Pam. But most of you’ve known me forever.” The woman now speaking was wearing a sweatshirt with Siamese cats bedazzled across the chest in rhinestones. A “Cat Mom” button was pinned by her neckline and her thick, curly blonde hair was pulled back with a scrunchie. “You all know Tom too,” she said, as she gestured toward the back of the crowd of spectators. A man with a “Cat Dad” button pinned to his polo shirt gave a little wave. “When Tom and I first started dating, cat shows were just starting to become ‘my thing,’ and Tom made it very clear that it was not going to be his.” The crowd chuckled. “But, eventually I got him to come to one show to volunteer, and the rest is history. He’s more into it than I am now. Opening our Holly Hill Cattery was his idea! So, this isn’t really one memory, but I have so many favorites, twenty years later, much poorer, and also happier.”

bengal cat 2

Pam wiped her eyes as Judge Chris handed her Cat #71, a small female with a smushed face which I knew by now placed her in the Exotic category. Pam walked with her 2nd Best Cat back to Tom, who kissed them both on the head, then wrapped them in his arms. At the judge’s podium, Chris fanned her face with her judge’s score card, her eyes glistening. For a moment, I thought mine might too. I was still there for the story, but it was a different one than I’d expected.

click for bio

Jaime-Lee Josselyn and Primo

Jamie-Lee Josselyn is the Associate Director of Recruitment at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing, where she also teaches nonfiction writing. She holds a BA from the University of Pennsylvania and an MFA from Bennington College, where she was the nonfiction editor of The Bennington Review. She lives in the Italian Market neighborhood of Philadelphia with her boyfriend, her two cats, and her dog.

TWO POEMS by Bill Brown

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Two-Poems-by-Bill-Brown

TWO POEMS
by Bill Brown

OPENINGS
Blessed is the sick day. / Blessed are things that open / for no reason.
–Lorraine Doran

Let’s say a brother’s left hand
opens and closes on his coffee cup.
A lover’s face opens when someone
enters a room. The blessed day, being sick,
needs such nurturing, such openings—
a crocus blossom in the snow,
a door of an abandoned house,
a coffin without a corpse.
All open—
not like a switch blade,
fast and deliberate,
but like a heart valve,
its blood nutrient rich—
so the frozen crocus will re-blossom,
the abandoned house welcome
stray cats and phoebes,
and the coffin, as always,
awaits to be filled
like the blessed day waits
the unexpected so long
it becomes expected,
a birdfeeder surprised
by a chickadee that grubs
the bottom for the last seed.
A C-section births
the next day, pulled
from the night which
will not open. And so
I arise early, not sad,
but aware that a brother’s hand,
a lover’s face will one day
exist in framed squares
above some mantel, and
memory will circle a snowy sky
like smoke from a chimney
which captured by the snow
will coat the forest leaf mold
that harvests light through
scraggly limbs to bring forth
green.

 

NOVEMBER’S EDGE

Wake to a quiet rain touching the windows,
streaming down the slant porch roof
into the Rose of Sharon, a thousand blossoms
long gone at November’s edge, another
October preparing for dismissal.
Out the study window, yellow-brown
hickory, red-green gum, and maples
with their degrees of orange-crimson—
how kind for trees to dress before winter’s
vault is eased shut and locked, how sad
the word yearning is introduced to describe
the inexplicable. Something akin to shyness
accompanies the heart, a hungry child,
too polite to ask, watches the last piece
of cake served to her brother.

Bill Brown

Bill Brown is the author of five collections of poems, three chapbooks and a textbook. The recipient of many fellowships, Brown was awarded the Writer of the Year 2011 by the Tennessee Writers Alliance. A Scholar at Bread Loaf and a Fellow at VCCA, Brown has work in Asheville Poetry Review, Atlanta Review, Southern Humanities Review, Potomac Review, Prairie Schooner, North American Review, Southern Poetry Review, Tar River Poetry, Smartish Pace, Rattle, West Branch, Borderlands, The Literary Review, and Connecticut Review, among others.

 

 

Image credit: Wilson Lau on Unsplash

YOU WERE GOING TO TELL ME by R. C. Barajas

Cleaver Magazine Posted on by

records-237579_640

YOU WERE GOING TO TELL ME
by R. C. Barajas

I’m sorry – you were going to tell me something shocking. I’m ready to hear it, but I may sleep instead. I know you won’t take it personally.

I’ve been listening to music. Tiptoeing across the albums of my recent youth, times so far gone they show themselves to me in crayon colors. Of late, it’s been 60s stuff, and my stereo serves up a docile, or raunchy replay of memories. Convenient, because as you’ve seen, I doze off so easily. I’m tossed back and forth from then to now without much warning. Sleeping and waking are so entirely alike that I scarcely bother to differentiate anymore.

Reviewing my record collection behind closed eyes from left to right: Beach Boys, Beatles. Cream. Derek and the Dominoes… I drift past two decades and hear the Stranglers’ Golden Brown, that dreamy ode to heroin. It has new significance for me, wrapped as I have become in this velvety narcotic straight jacket. The thing stalks me at all hours, but if the pain is at bay, I’m content visiting old friends brought to life by whatever tune I happened to play.

I often wake with the sun shining full in my eyes and on my turquoise bandana, from which my ears stick out, gaping wide astride the peach fuzz. I know this because I’ve seen the effect in the bathroom mirror. Above me, the night’s bag of goop dangles from its hook, the rhythmic churning of its flow into my stomach ended until my next feeding. Did I wake you last night, by the way? I tried to be quiet – that sofa bed is so close to the kitchen. I keep a dish towel folded on the counter to rest my head, because it takes a while, between pills and drams and falling asleep. All those medicines at once, and so often. I have a spiral notebook that tells me what, and a timer that tells me when. The glass of ginger ale is usually warm by the time I’m finished. Well, fuck me…

I wanted to tell you about something. But the windows need washing. I hate the way they look now. Far below I can hear the traffic pulsing, scurrying to get out of town, away from this irritable heat. Lying here on these damp sheets, on the bed someone dragged over here for me, I can escape the staleness by simply pressing the button above my arm and flying back to crouch in the recesses of my brain.

I visit all kinds of things. A pair of yellow pumps. The inside of my mother’s linen closet, my giggles muffled in the folded towels. A dead dog I once saw by the road, curled up as if sleeping, his red bandana still neatly around his neck. The hot feel of smoke down my throat, gnarled oaks clawing at an endless blue sky that glowers. My catalogue of failed art.

But where was I? You all come and go, cleaning up. Sometimes I fall asleep talking to one of you, and wake up talking to another. Usually I recognize who I’m talking to. If I don’t, I pretend I do – I’m sure we were friendly once. Hey, can you hand me that jaunty little chapeau? It is so goddamn sexy.

So yes, I wanted to tell you – about the CD someone left. I’d never seen it before. On the cover was a black and white photo of a young man, hardly more than a boy. He reminded me of something, a wish. It wasn’t that he stirred memories; he was what I never dared imagine when I was young and so spectacularly stupid, when I settled for the pimply adolescent plots of others. The photo in my hand showed long hair escaping from under a felt hat, smudged stubble brushing a turtleneck sweater. Calm aware eyes.

So I slid the disk into the machine.

He was revealed in small mistakes, charming, raw, and then, because he offered the songs to me pure and roughhewn, they became mine. Soft, untrained voice, coaxing fingers – like scrawled handwriting in a diary. I didn’t drift as usual, but stayed to listen. You will think me a silly schoolgirl, but I became joyous and giddy, my heart pounding as if, long ago, a boy I had a crush on had smiled. He sat on my bed. I tell you, I felt his weight next to me – callused fingers touching my face.

So I lay, listening – and awoke a little. I looked inside the cover forcing my eyes on the words. 1970. Thirty years ago – no wait, more. I had been – two years old? Ten? I can’t retain a clear grasp on my age. The boy was now dead, which I already knew just by the sound of his voice. I searched the words to discover how he died, but past the delicacy of tone reserved for those of us who die before it is convenient for us to do so, it didn’t say. Drugs? I didn’t think so, though I bet he dabbled. Car crash? Too commonplace. Cancer? The face on the cover looked like it could suffer with grace, but still. Suicide, maybe. Maybe not. I think I slept a little then, because I found a ribbon of faded tickets in my hand, and breathed the sugar-smell of cotton candy at Field Day on the nubby blacktop of school.

When I awoke, someone – was it you? – had raised the blinds onto the evening, and the lights of the city, yellow life-like eyeballs, peered in through the glass. I pressed play again. I wanted him with me, this boy who hadn’t yet died too young.

This is what I wanted to tell you. That I cheated. I was cowardly and risked so little of value. I’ve dismembered more in my life than I’ve completed because I thought my imperfect hand showed too stupidly, too brutally. There were only a few relationships, and a few pieces of artwork that escaped my relentless euthanasia. Do you remember? You’ve seen them, I think, around the apartment. There had been problems, some had come out partially formed, twisted. I secretly liked them best but my vanity was suspicious of taking credit for anything born of mistakes. Such a fucking stupid old woman.

There they are, on the dining room table where I can see them – pelvises, scapulas, undulating vertebrae. The filtered sun warms their patinaed surfaces, their pits and fissures, hairline cracks, bubbles of porosity – and I am undone by their beauty. Drowned. With these, you know, I wasn’t cheating, and they share me in sickness and health. The soon-to-be dead boy sings in my ear: Your legacy, your dowry, your endowment are these. They are you. But you always knew that. And that was a shocking thing to tell me.

I can hear that the traffic has lessened, and the streets have purged themselves. The city races through the night heat, through my window, up my covers and onto my face.

The soon-to-be dead boy is singing as I look out. The music is over, but I listen, and wait as long as I can.

R.C.Barajas_Photo

R. C. Barajas

R. C. Barajas was born in Stanford, California. She attended college, skipping from UC Berkeley to College of Marin to San Francisco State like a rock across a pond. She eventually garnered a degree in art. For ten years, she worked as a goldsmith. While living in Colombia in the early 90s, she began writing non-fiction and short stories. She has published in magazines and newspapers on a variety of topics. R.C. currently lives in Arlington, Virginia, with her husband, three sons, and a pack of dogs.

Three Poems by Randi Ward

Cleaver Magazine Posted on by

peony

THREE POEMS
by Randi Ward

CLOTHESLINE
Thank you,
gentle breeze,
for reaching out
to me through his
indifferent
sleeves.

PEONIES
What do honey bees
and black ants discuss
inside drooping
peonies?

SPRING
Threads
its jagged hook
through my budding
backbone—
violent squalling.

Randi Ward

Randi Ward (“Peonies”, “Spring”, “Clothesline“) is a poet, translator, and photographer from West Virginia. She earned her MA in Cultural Studies from the University of the Faroe Islands in 2007. Her work has appeared in The Bitter Oleander, Beloit Poetry Journal, Anthology of Appalachian Writers, Cold Mountain Review, Vencil: Anthology of Contemporary Faroese Literature and other publications. For more information, please visit her website: www.randiward.com.

 

Image credit: Randi Deuro on Flickr

THEY SHARED A FISH by Eva Lomski

Cleaver Magazine Posted on by

 

ginger teaTHEY SHARED A FISH
by Eva Lomski

The girl wondered if he was naked under the sheet. The young man lay on his stomach on a bed trolley positioned in the sunniest spot in the courtyard. Weeds shimmied in the cracks. The girl watched, waiting for the right moment to serve morning tea.

He was on his elbows, the sheet covering his backside. Freckles splayed across his shoulders. He had a biker’s moustache and a tattoo of a snake on his forearm. The braces on his wrists resembled a street weapon. She pushed aside the sliding door. The young man’s cowboy hat didn’t move.

“Coffee or tea?” She smiled. She wasn’t sure where to look, so she looked at her shoes. Calligraphy sprouted from her feet and ran into the path where it followed the cracks in the concrete. She tripped over it, but recovered and caught a bench before she fell. “What’ll it be?”

He put a cigarette to his lips. “Coffee. Milk. Three sugars.”

“Biscuits?” said the girl. Smiled. Smoothed uniform. Disengaged sticky cloth.

He blew out smoke. “Ginger nut.”

She hurried back to the common room and prepared a large plastic mug from the tea trolley. Sugar spilled, biscuits upended themselves. Usually, she worked the kitchens in the geriatric wards. Sad people, lost in mind and body, and wandering ghosts. The spinal rehabilitation ward was something different. All male. All her age. She couldn’t meet their eyes.

“Eighty-two percent are aged eighteen to twenty-four,” the professor regularly told the media. “Motorbikes and diving accidents.”

“Can they get erections?” someone at university wanted to know. The girl didn’t confess she wouldn’t know an erection if she tripped over it.

She took the mug and a straw outside and avoided the cracks. She looked at the tray clamped to the front of his trolley. Her hand shook as it always did, brushing hair and shaking hands and finishing assignments and meeting people. “Where do you want me to put it?”

He closed the book – something by Stephen King – and patted it. She took a cloth from her pocket, wiped the trolley, and put the coffee on Mr King, who protested. “I forgot your biscuits.”

“Ginger nut,” he said.

The older women in the kitchens, they didn’t have any problems, no matter how old or how ugly they were. They simply said, “Dere you go, my darlink!” and smiled and winked, and the patients smiled and winked back. Sometimes jokes were exchanged. The girl longed to know the art of the smile and the wink, especially when it came to men. She didn’t know what made her so unpalatable. Guys looked past her when she spoke to them as if trying to spot a taxi.

“Ginger nut,” she said when she returned, and she set the biscuits teetering on the book next to the mug. Mr King pushed one off.

“Ta.” He picked up the fallen and ate it.

The girl watched his muscles work under the tattooed snake and thought of how much effort went into those muscles before and after the accident. She saw herself lip-sticked with earrings and breasts swinging, sitting astride his muscled naked back.

“No problem,” she said, and left.

***

No problem spying on him from the common room window. That resolute hat. He came from the western suburbs, she knew that. She saw the mug turn into a paint can and the biscuits into nails. The bench was a toolbox, with his name on it. Insects big as bricks buzzed about his head. A row of houses made of beer cans and frozen pizza awaited him, she was sure; a room empty but for unreturned library books, and pairs of splattered old jeans.

Lorikeets chattering in the overhanging trees crapped eggs.

***

“They are the patients,” said her supervisor, “we are the kitchen. They need we treat them normal.”

“But …”

“Everything else is for doctor. Now, no more, or I tell your mama. She worry about you enough.” The supervisor’s arms enfolded a lifetime of goulash teetering on tiny feet.

The girl hoped the smile and the wink might be a matter of maturity, and not personality, because if personality was the decider, she was gone. They prepared the lunches; making salads and sandwiches the dieticians prescribed and reheating hot foods that had been trucked in from the hospital’s main campus. Today, the patients had lasagne. It looked appetising, hot and cheesy, especially after time with the geriatrics, processing meat and vegetables into brown river sludge.

“You take in the food cart,” said the supervisor, spraying eau de goulash on her wrists and reapplying pink lipstick.

When the supervisor wasn’t looking, the girl used fork-fingers to straighten her pony-tail. She bit her lips. There was nothing to be done about the orange uniform, her own deflated giant peach.
The young man was the last to come in a wheelchair to the dining room. The nurses were there, talking with patients and helping with implements where help was needed. The girl wrestled with the food cart for a plate and was about to put the young man’s lasagne on the table in front of him, when she noticed her thumbnail, stumpy, grimy, workman-like.

“Can you pepper it for me?” he said.

Her thumbnail objected to its classification and parachuted the plate from her hand onto the young man’s placemat. Meaty sauce squealed and ran amok. She grabbed napkins to mop it up and heard a snort. A pulse thumped in her ear. She decided to smile and wink.

“I thought you were a big boy,” she said, her voice breaking only slightly.

“Oh yeah.” The cowboy hat moved up and down. “I’m a big boy. A very big boy. Wanna see how big I am?”

The closest patients, even the nurses, laughed. Her thumbnail throbbed amusement. Red-faced, pepper abandoned, the girl herded the tittering trolley back to the kitchen.

***

At clock-off time, she ran through a sea of deflated peaches, sweeping aside liana vines and bougainvillea, running, until she came onto a lilac bush in full flower. She turned and stumbled down a concrete path toward a red brick house. The path was edged with olive and mandarine trees, and there was a vegetable patch, sown the year she was born, overflowing with silverbeet, spring onions and nasturtium. A scarecrow flaunted the girl’s dotted old pyjamas.

Inside the house, which was papered in olive and mandarine, garlic sat on the washing machine and lonely pots sat on the stove. Through to the living room, where a coffin sat on the sofa and a tin of tobacco sat by an empty chair. The first bedroom contained a bed cut in half.

The second bedroom was the girl’s. It was painted purple; the bed covers were purple and the curtains were white. Violets lined the floor and the desk was of twisted willow. On the dresser, in a frame of eggshells, lay a photo of the girl with her parents at Disney on Ice. She flung open a wardrobe, injuring Minnie Mouse, and rifled fitfully through a row of white herons on hangers.

***

“Incomplete T10 paraplegic. You know what that mean?”

The girl’s supervisor leaned against the still-warm bain-marie, eating leftover rhubarb crumble. The girl scraped the patients’ dishes. She shook her head.

“It mean he no walk again, but sometimes he feel something here,” the supervisor said. “In his legs. You see he still moves arms?”

The girl nodded.

“Lucky boy. Lucky to be alive. Terrible accident. You promise never to ride the motorbike? Your poor dead father would not have liked the motorbike. Promise, or I tell your mama.”

As far as the girl was concerned, her poor dead father featured far too often in conversation, but she promised. It hardly mattered. The people in her circle drove the cheapest ugliest used cars, while she fought daily with the ignition of her mother’s Morris 1100.

“How about I find you a nice boyfriend from the church?” said the supervisor.

The girl thought she was neither that ugly nor that desperate. She was outsider enough.

“He has the same body, the young man,” said the supervisor. “But he never be the same. He is so young.” A false eyelash descended. “He is handsome, no?”

“How come you know this stuff?” the girl said.

“Me,” said the supervisor. She slapped her breasts, releasing the smell of talcum. “I have arms and legs, and I have eyes and ears too.”

***

It was like a painting, the girl thought, this pose on his elbows on the trolley in the courtyard. Again, the braces on his wrists, and he was naked to the hips. His shoulders were sunburned. Hairs like spun caramel followed the small of his back. She touched the feather that lay in the hollow at the base of her neck.

“Coffee, milk, three sugars?” she said.

“Yep.”

She brought him the mug and three ginger nut biscuits. When he saw the biscuits, he put down Stephen King and pushed back the cowboy hat. Blue eyes, fringed with blonde. The girl saw the snake on his arm quiver.

“Maybe you’d like something else?” the girl said. “You like ginger nut, don’t you?”

He took a biscuit and studied it, and then it disappeared whole under the moustache. He chewed and raised his eyes as if in thought. “I like things spicy.”

“Right,” she said. “Good.” Her hands jumped into the pockets of her uniform, and she went to walk back to the common room.
“Wait.”

“Yes?”

He was up on his elbows, twisted around, staring at her face. The white soles of his feet hung limp over the end of the trolley.

“I don’t want three,” he said. “Why don’t you have one?”

Lorrikeets screeched.

“They can’t sack you for one biscuit,” he said. “I’ll say you were doing patient therapy.” He tapped the plate.

She walked up close. Smelled cigarettes and coconut oil. The cowboy hat nodded. She took a biscuit and sat on the bench. His face was two feet away. Sunlines around his eyes. He sipped his coffee.
“You always work Spinal?”

“Geriatric, usually,” she said.

“Fun?”

This, she didn’t know how to answer, especially from two feet away. Her tongue split and split until Medusa filled her mouth. She levitated above the trolley, the bench, to settle in the trees amongst the egg-crapping lorikeets. Levitating was something she did very well, particularly during funerals, exams, parties, lectures and speaking engagements. The higher she flew, the faster her skin turned to feathers.

“Have you worked in the hospital long?” he said.

Bang. Back on the bench. “Um. Since I started uni.”

“Uni?”

Her mouth kept moving. “Pays better than serving hamburgers. A friend of mine, she works in –“

“What do you do at uni?” he said.

“Arts.”

“Painting?”

And moving. This medusa of hers was moving like a demon, speaking of its own free will. Hot. It was hot in the sun. “Doing a double degree.”

“You like it?”

“The only thing I like is psychology.”

“Psychology?”

“At least you can get a job with psychology. Got to think of the future.”

His wrists stilled. “The future. Yeah.”

Medusa shrivelled. “Oh, crap,” she said. “Sorry.”

Lorikeets ran across calligraphy paths and crapped on them, and through a sea of giant peaches and crapped on them.
“I’ll take the mug,” she said, avoiding his eyes, realising she was yet to eat her biscuit. She put it in a top pocket. The spun caramel on his back glowed gold. She willed her brain to think. “You’re sunburned.”

The cowboy hat came down. “Can’t reach.”

His naked back. The heat of sunburn sitting aside his naked back. The heat of sunburn between her thighs … the coffee mug leaped out of her hand and tipped brown over his white sheet. “Oh no. Let me get that.”

So much for the smile and wink. So much for personality.

“Leave it,” he said.

“It’s my job.” She grabbed a cloth from her side pocket and swatted the sheet and the mug and Mr King, and then she bent and wiped at the coffee seeping into the cracks in the concrete. Calligraphy spelled out ‘failure’. Her neck was hot, her shoulders were hot, her hands shook. She stood back up and put the cloth back, and her free hand reached out and placed itself on his caramel shoulder. “All done.”

Hot skin. A tattoo snake undulated. Its tongue flicked, chemical receptors seeking moisture and air particles in order to analyse and respond. It struck and her wingtip was lifted and used to pry open his solitary chest to reveal a lake over which two white birds circled. They shared a fish, open-mouthed. His cheek neared her resting hand.

“Hey!” The shriek of goulash from the door to the common room. “Why you take so long? Have you forgotten morning tea?”

A hand reclaimed. ”Coming.”

His hat was lowered.

The supervisor. “What are you doing?”

“Tell her ‘therapy’,” he said. He smiled and lit a cigarette.

Medusa filled her mouth. She grabbed the tray and mug, jetstreaming smoke and feathers.

“By the way,” he said, “ I don’t burn.”

The cracks reached for her and she caught the bench before she fell. The supervisor waited for her in the doorway, making the girl decide whether to squeeze through face first, or with her back to her supervisor. False eyelashes blinked and blinked their questions. The girl went for face-to face. Halfway through, bosom to bosom, the girl looked past the supervisor as if trying to spot a taxi, took the ginger nut from her pocket and bit.

“I am, “she said through crumbs, “treating the patients normal.”

And she shook her feathers and retreated, for now.

eva-lomski

Eva Lomski

Eva Lomski lives and writes in Melbourne, Australia. Her stories have appeared in several Australian journals including The Best Australian Stories 2012(Black Inc.), The Sleepers Almanac, Kill Your Darlings, Griffith Review and Island.

 

AIR CONDITIONER by Daniel Torday

Cleaver Magazine Posted on by

640px-Hollerith_census_machine_dials.mw

AIR CONDITIONER
by Daniel Torday

I recently had a difficult argument with my Aunt Lucille about turning up an air conditioner. My wife and I were staying with my aunt in Baltimore for a weekend where, after all, air conditioning was necessary in the summer. Lucille asked if I wanted her to turn up my air conditioner before bed. I said no, I didn’t like it too cold. So? she said. So, I said, I didn’t want it turned up. She stated rather forcefully that turning up an air conditioner meant making the room warmer, not cooler.

“Turn up the air conditioner,” she said, as if using italics would solve the thing.

I speculated it meant the opposite—to turn up the air conditioner’s powers was to make the room cooler. Not turn up the thermostat. Turn the machine up. My aunt was indignant. What kind of feckless legerdemain was this? What kind of crap did they teach in college when I went—Gender studies? African handclapping? What kind of bullshit semantics was I getting into? After all, with my collared shirt and those two-hundred dollar jeans I was wearing, who did I think I was? Who really the fuck did I think I was? I said I didn’t know. I said it three times and she chopped jicama for the salad and I didn’t trust her Wusthof knife and I went to the guest room. The one with the AC. As I walked away she said, Turn that fucker up while you’re in there.

Would it help if I explained that my grandfather was diagnosed schizophrenic after the war and that he died of his sixth heart attack at forty? That in my aunt’s bathroom that morning I’d found a seemingly untouched bottle of Zyprexa? That this wasn’t the first time we’d had such a spat, over how to pronounce banal or the difference between George Eliot and George Sand? What would it change if I described the anxiety attacks I’ve been having, thoughts about their connection to my grandfather?

It wouldn’t help decide the air conditioner question.

I turned the unit in the window by the bed where I was sleeping down, or up—I’m honestly not sure which anymore, but the thing blew less cool—and came back out to talk to my aunt, who was now chopping beets. She didn’t look up from the chopping and asked what time my wife would be back from the aquarium. I said I didn’t know. My wife came back from her trip. We had dinner. No one mentioned the AC. When my wife and I were going to bed that night I relayed to her the story of my aunt’s blow-up.

“She’s right you know,” she said.

I stood up, walked across the room, and turned the air conditioning down.

Daniel Torday

Daniel Torday

Daniel Torday is the author of a short novel, The Sensualist, winner of the 2012 National Jewish Book Award for Outstanding Debut Fiction. His short stories and essays have appeared in Esquire Magazine, Glimmer Train Stories, Harper Perennial’sFifty-Two Stories, Harvard Review, The New York Times and The Kenyon Review. He is an editor at The Kenyon Review, and he serves as Director of Creative Writing at Bryn Mawr College.

 

Image credit: Wikipedia

TURID by Rachel B. Glaser

Cleaver Magazine Posted on by

turid the-bee

ant 6The girl was bored and wandered. She did not care if she was tagged, no one could force her to play. If she was It, she would not react, she would continue looking at the Wilsons’ plants, at the rows of bright flowers. She could hear her sister yelling after their neighbor. Her sister had been It for a long time.
Girl-SilhouetteShe was only a kid so could go in everyone’s yard. She spoted a stray cat and for a while tried to get it to follow her, but the cat was uninterested. She saw her neighbor running for base. Base was any large tree. The girl walked past a bunch of flowers and one of the young flowers stretched out to her and whispered, “Take me with you, my family is boring!” The girl stared, then yanked it from the ground. The other flowers were screaming. The pulled-flower cried in her hand. “I didn’t think it would hurt! I didn’t believe them,” it moaned. The flower had a raspy voice. The girl didn’t know what to do, she clutched the flower and ran. The flower was disheveled from just a few minutes in her hand. The girl had never heard a flower before.

victorian-flower-clipart-3 copyThe flower calmed down, and now began planning its new life. “I will sit in a jar of water and you can read to me all day.” The girl didn’t know what to say. For one thing, she knew the flower would only live a day or two, and also, the girl had school, she couldn’t just waste her day reading to the flower. She didn’t want to! The flower continued, “You can drive us into town and we can see a movie. I’ve never seen a movie before.” The girl wanted to scream with laughter. She couldn’t drive! And imagine taking a flower to the movies!

Her sister ran up and tagged her. The girl dropped the flower and chased her sister across everyone’s yard. Adults were coming home from work and they waved at the girls from their cars. The sisters saw the stray cat and chased it into the bushes.

The girl was mostly home when she remembered. “I picked a crazy flower today,” she told her sister. “It complains!” She wanted it back to show people.

It was coughing in the dirt when the girl reappeared. The flower said she was a terrible girl, that she had ruined all of their plans. The girl knew the flower was being dramatic, she had never agreed to any plans, she thought she was doing the flower a favor by pulling it out. She didn’t know it would hurt. She picked up the flower, who was silent. She stroked its petals and the flower was pleased, though it said nothing.

The terrible girlThe flower loved being in the warm hands of the terrible girl. It was lulled by the rhythm of her running. The girl tried to rouse it because its voice cracked her up, but the flower was asleep, so she left it outside near the dog’s stuff.

Dinner was started and her parents scolded her for being late, but laughingly. The girl felt right and happy with her family. Her Dad was telling a hilarious story about work. He was imitating the Mexican warehouse workers. He was good with imitations. One of the Mexican warehouse workers needed heart surgery, and they replaced one of his heart valves with a valve from a pig heart. This sounded incorrect to the family, unreasonable really, but the man felt beTer than ever. There was a rasping from outside, and the family didn’t know what it was, but the girl cracked up and ran out the door.

the vaseThe flower was so stunned by the indoors, that it forgot it was furious. It talked at length about the indoors. How weird the lighting was. The ceiling fan transfixed it. The family laughed at it. The Mom stuck it in a narrow vase and the flower drank the water greedily. It was in the center of the table, on display, and felt honored. The family continued talking, but the flower had no background and felt completely left out. It complained, quietly at first, but then began moaning and the girl had to shut it in a drawer.

The flower missed its family horribly. Right now they were slowly folding in their petals and quietly saying goodnight to each flower. Young flowers were being funny and saying goodnight to made-up flowers. When it was sunny, all the flowers were spread-out and ecstatic. When it rained, every flower’s center filled up with water and they gurgled when they spoke. Each family flower had a completely different personality. Some of the flowers were near silent, and just enjoyed listening to the talk of others. Other flowers were proud and articulate. The pulled-flower was closest to a set of flowers that had all blossomed on the same time day. Just standing near these flowers was pleasant to the flower, because their heads, petals, and stems, had been present for the flower’s entire life, and made the flower feel cozy in its place. The flower could picture so clearly its family mourning it. “Turid!” they would cry, for that was the flower’s given name.

The flower wore itself out in the drawer. It was startled to wake in complete darkness, with no sounds or breeze. It now understood it had made an irrevocably bad mistake. It had sacrificed everything for a girl it barely knew. It was no longer connected to anything it liked. Its petals were dry, its singy ways were over. Turid felt the dullness of a done flower.

The girl opened the drawer and Turid would not look at her. The girl plucked a petal and the flower cried. “I’m sorry,” the girl said. “What do you want? What can I do?” Through sobs, the flower requested the vase again. The girl got it and put the flower in. “Listen to me,” Turid said in a small voice, “my petal hurts because you swiped it. I thought only boys swiped petals.” Turid leaned against the vase’s glass sides. “Even though I’m in water, I feel dry. I have no more energy to be myself. I need to be planted back with my family,” it looked to make sure the girl was listening, “but first I want to see a movie.”

The girl put the vase in front of the television and found a tennis match on. “Together,” the flower insisted, so the girl sat and watched. She was going to be late for school. Yesterday, the girl had thought she’d have fun showing the flower off at school. She’d even thought they’d become friends and she could talk about boys with the flower. Now, the girl ceased to be entertained. The flower reminded her of toys she had had as a child that ‘spoke’ in jarring, staticky voices. Her parents had grown exasperated with these toys, especially when they went off in the middle of the night, chattering aloud.

tulipThe girl looked away from the television to observe, with disgust, the flower, who didn’t seem to be paying attention. “I do not like movies,” Turid decided. “Please plant me immediately.” Turid was limp. There was a gap where the girl had swiped a petal.

“I’ll be right back,” said the girl, and then she went off to school.

The flower sat in the vase in front of the television, waiting. The day was intolerable. The television showed tennis. The flower found itself wishing to be visited by a bug, and the flower as a rule hated bugs. The flower was ashamed to return to its family with a petal gap.

Turid’s family had lived from their bulbs for thousands of years. They had been traded and transplanted and the journeys had been difficult. Many times their fate seemed teetering, but they had persevered, even when planted in poor conditions. To be a flower born from Turid’s family was an honor. The bulbs had adept memories and remarkably long life spans and taught each generation of flowers about their past. Turid remembered fondly the bulb it had come from. The generous and wise nature of that bulb. Turid felt wildly lost to be disconnected from its bulb.

The indoors was a dead place, full of interesting objects. They were stacked on top of each other.
There were places for people to rest. The flower tried to describe the objects, but they made liTle sense. They were colorful and lifeless. Though the flower had looked at houses with curiosity when it was in the ground, it now understood that inside, houses were devoid of real feeling. The flower grew so bored.

The Dad came home and heard the rambling flower. He walked over to it in a menacing way, and the flower kept going. The Dad moved to swipe a petal. “You are a terrible father,” the flower said. “You’ve made a careless and unfeeling child. She promised to take me to the movies, then put me in front of this.” The television showed tennis.

the spiderThe Dad put Turid in the closet. The vase made a scraping sound against a floor tile. Then, the door shut. Dust swirled in the dark. A spider immediately visited the flower and the flower thanked god.

In the terrifying starless dark, Turid thought only about its family. It struggled to remember, and was rewarded with, memories of its own childhood. It remembered lile bits of songs they had all sung. There had been epic fights between flowers that now seemed endearing and minor. Every thought or feeling that Turid had, now felt like it was an expression or learned behavior of someone from its family.

It was hours before the girl’s sister found the flower. The flower was very disoriented. It had a web over its face. “My friend made that,” the flower said weakly. The sister took the flower and threw it in the trash.

Turid spent the day fainting. It remembered the outdoors as one being.

The next morning, the girl dumped cereal next to the flower and the flower grunted. The girl had forgoTen about the flower, and grudgingly picked up Turid and shook the filth off. “You have disrespected nature and the tradition of my flower type, and I will poison you, if you do not take me home.” The girl was so bored of this flower that she considered puTing it in the blender.

“You will die!” The flower screeched. The girl stared back at the limp flower.

urid began screeching in loud, grating bursts. The sister came in and complained. The girl grabbed the flower and stuffed it in the refrigerator.

“Murderer!” Turid yelled.

Turid sobbed in the refrigerator. My flower family has survived worse than this, Turid told itself, though unsure if it was true. Turid was so weak from pain and distress that though the flower knew all the members in its family by name, when it now tried to imagine them, it only saw them in the vaguest sense. The flower ached and another wretched petal browned and fell. The flower curled in an effort to comfort itself. It thought, A family is the best collection. It tried to think what should be its final thought.roses

The girl went upstairs and changed. She had thought flowers were shy, feminine creatures, but had found her flower to be overly proud, needy, and annoying. The flower didn’t seem to have a gender. It was not suited to be a girl’s friend, though the books the girl had read as a child had always suggested that girls and flowers could be close. The word ‘murderer’ had startled the girl. Only men were murderers. It seemed very unpopular for a girl to murder anything.

The girl retrieved the flower from the refrigerator. The flower could not move or talk. The girl looked at the flower and saw a complicated piece of trash. It looked like ruined decoration from a present. Or an inedible part of a vegetable. The girl ran down their block. Gradually, the warmth from the girl’s hand reanimated it. The flower felt like it was going to throw up.

Rhododendron“I hate you!” Turid said. The girl said nothing. Her eyes scanned for the kind of flower. The girl had a softball game later on and her birthday was coming up. She knew she wasn’t a murderer.

The flower couldn’t describe where it was from. The girl took it to all the yards on her street, but could not match the flower. The flower had no sense of direction. For the third time, they snuck around the Wilsons’ yard, looking for similar flowers. The girl grew agitated. “Here here here,” Turid chanted, leaking in the girl’s hand.

ant 4The girl tossed the flower in front of its family and the flowers were frantic. “Turid! You wild thing!” Turid squirmed in the grass, trying to obscure the petal gap.

“It is me!” Turid said with glee, “I have lived a life in only two days, and I have hated it!” The flowers were quiet. Not only did Turid have a wide petal gap, but the remaining petals were shriveled and limp. Even more startling, Turid’s head was partially severed at the stem. And the boTom half of the stem had already browned. They knew Turid had only a few more hours. The flowers tried to think of something appropriate to say. They could think of nothing.

Turid watched its flower family watching and felt distinguished. The flower could ant1hear the sounds it had grown so accustomed to. The meditative moan of the lawnmower. Leaves flapping against other leaves. A few ants began to nibble ant-2Turid and the flower did not object. I am adventurous, thought Turid.the-frog

ant-3

ant 5

Rachel B. Glaser

Rachel B. Glaser

Rachel B. Glaser is the author of the poetry collection Moods (Factory Hollow Press, 2013) and the story collection Pee On Water (Publishing Genius Press, 2010). She teaches Creative Writing at Flying Object, and paints basketball players. ”Turid” appeared first in 2011 in Issue 3 of Cousin Corinne’s Reminder, which has ceased publication.

NIGHT SWEATS by Jen Karetnick

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Night-Sweats

NIGHT SWEATS
by Jen Karetnick

They rise upon you, flood
you in the neighborhood of sleep
where once-solid canyons of breasts,
hips, knees, parched from breath, west of age,
have slipped, begun to crack.
It’s not that there’s a lack of cool
breezes or even air
conditioning; matter of fact,
it’s like you booked a room
in an ice hotel, framed yourself
an igloo. Still you melt,
puddle, a tongue so svelte, velvet
before fusing to steel,
teaching you reversal,
how to tread betrayal, ride luck
before lightning strikes, bringing rains.

Jen Karetnick

Jen Karetnick is the author of three poetry chapbooks, includingLandscaping for Wildlife (Big Wonderful Press, 2012), and six other books. Her mango cookbook is due out from University Press of Florida in fall 2014. Her poems have appeared in journals including Barrow Street, Cimarron Review, The Greensboro Review, North American Review and River Styx. She works as the Creative Writing Director for Miami Arts Charter School; the dining critic for MIAMI Magazine; and a freelance food-travel writer for various publications including USA TODAY and TheLatinKitchen.com.

 

Image credit: CIA DE FOTO on Flickr

 

from APOSTROPHES by Anna Strong

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from APOSTROPHES
by Anna Strong
Alphabet-5

“Hockey”

This poem will be mostly about force. With one finger on my knee my science teacher tells me I can
skate better than half the guys on varsity and I should really try out for the team. In class I’m called on
(caught doodling) and asked which muscle group is most responsible for the slapshot and all I want to
know is what happens when you give a poet a stick of gum, twenty cents, and point to the cigarette
burn on your wrist?

“Mouth”
In my yellow room, I slipped a spare button into my cheek and held it there all through dinner. Between
bits of carrot there was also button, peas and rice were also button, ice cream and spoon became button
despite the cold that should have frozen all else away. I was discovered when I let it click against my
incoming molars. She said there would be drastic measures. I learned drastic means winter and all the
things people will do to touch clouds with a fork.

“Nausicaa”
At the podium the poet says that she’s always talking to the Victorians. She even invites them to dinner
when she needs an idea for a new metonymy. I watch her fingers fret around the hem of her dress,
testing each seam and scar as she starts to read. My nervous tic is closer to my feet. You say it’s sweet
to see us fidget and I ask why the mirror talk can’t pay off, just this once.

“Oral Fixation”
Every chewed Barbie shoe in the house is my fault. We still find their flattened pink remains in the playroom-
turned-storage room and I pop them back in my mouth to remember why. I once wore Band-Aids on all ten fingers
to stop me from gnawing my callouses and cuticles, but I couldn’t draw with that extra numb layer. Now I’m told
to hold the wine in my mouth before swallowing.

“Touchdown”
The announcers say he got his bell rung, but what they really mean is he almost died. There are enough blood
vessels in the brain to choke the earth four times and I imagine every coiled mile of them registering pain.
My tongue is loosein my mouth and I can’t look away. I want him to get up so the game can move on instead of
cutting to grasshoppers or house paint. Tonight I’ll dream of passing through chaos at the line of scrimmage untouched.

Anna-StrongAnna Strong is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, and is originally from Haverford, PA. Her work has previously appeared in the Penn Review, the Pennsylvania Gazette, Peregrine, and Poems for the Writing. Anna also helps teach Penn’s Modern and Contemporary American Poetry course through Coursera. She is pursuing a master’s degree at Boston.

CROCODILE HANDS by Amber Lee Dodd

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shadow puppet handsCROCODILE HANDS
by Amber Lee Dodd

Like blind men feeling for pictures Anna and Chloe had felt for differences in their matching faces. Eyes closed Anna could feel the little kink in the bridge of Chloe’s nose, a dimple when she smiled that she could not duplicate and lips that curved higher into a pert cupids bow. Eyes open they were identical but eyes shut they knew every variation.

As children they had played their game of reflection as if an act of praise. Hours spent mirroring each other under the plastic garden table. Capturing each other’s grins, grimaces before turning to hands that mimicked and mocked each other. Two sets that touched fingertips before twisting and turning into other shapes, one hand trying to keep up with the other; hands that turned into white knuckled fists before springing back to open up into flowers petals. The fingers stretched back, palms cupped, only for the other to respond with finger tips that suddenly snapped against thumbs, turning into hungry crocodile mouths. And snap, snap they’d go with their crocodile hands at the people who tried to tell them apart.

It was a cruel turn of fate that separated the two then. Left Anna adrift, separate and for the first time unique. Unique is what her husband had called her at the wedding. Little did he know her desire to be one of two. To have her sister once more, sit under the plastic garden table with her. Quietly then, did she retreat into the family bathroom at night and play their old game in the bathroom mirror. Snap, snap, snap her hands went at their reflection.

Amber Lee Dodd

Amber Lee Dodd

Amber Lee Dodd  is a dual-national writer who resides in England. She studied scriptwriting and performance at the University of East Anglia, where she was funded to showcase new writing at the Edinburgh Fringe. She returned to the Edinburgh Fringe with her work performed in the sold-out show Body Gossip. Her writing has been showcased in Litro and RiverLit. She is currently a playwright for the young playwrights programme at Chichester Festival Theatre and has work published in the short story collection Bookfest 2012: Writers to Watch. She writes the serialized blogteawithgrandma.co.uk.

 

Image credit: Mary Margaret on Flickr

THE SONG IN A CLOUD by Kate LaDew

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cumulonimbus cloud
THE SONG IN A CLOUD
by Kate LaDew

Willard was always humming to himself. Whenever Tom saw him, he was humming and looking up and smiling and sometimes not smiling, sometimes looking even sad, but always humming. Tom thought Willard might be what his mother called simple and so was always very gentle when he saw him but never got very close, just in case.

One day, the day after Tom had his heart broken by Elsbeth White, a girl he had known more than half his life, he saw Willard lying on the ground in the little space of grass behind Wake’s Hardware Store. Bentley Wake owned the hardware store and always kept it very clean and orderly and kept everything around it clean and orderly too. Tom was not feeling very good because of his heart. It was only the second day he felt truly aware of it and it was broken so he decided he needed something soft and safe around him for this moment, a moment he was afraid might last forever. Willard was the first person Tom saw. He walked onto the grass behind Wake’s Hardware Store and looked down at Willard, who was looking up. Tom looked up too and saw acres of blue sky polka-dotted with whispery white clouds, like a breath you see in the cold.

“What are you doing?” Tom said. It might have been the first question he’d ever posed to Willard that actually needed answering.

Willard paused his humming. Sometimes I look up at the sky and find things in the clouds and the clouds become people and the people become songs and every person has their own cloud and their own song so that when I look up again (I am always looking up) I no longer see a cloud. I hear a song and think of a person and what they did to me or what I did to them and sometimes it makes me very happy and sometimes it makes me very sad, but I sing just the same. I am always singing. He smiled at Tom. The words were only in his head and never passed from his lips out into the world. “The clouds are people I know. Looking up makes me happy.” He wanted to say many other things but, “The clouds are people I know. Looking up makes me happy,” is all he said. Willard blinked as the sentence continued in his mind. I’ve told other people what I’ve told you. I don’t think they understand but I don’t know how else to say it. If they could hear the song– But I only sing in my head.

“I hear you hum,” Tom said. He wanted to say many other things but, “I hear you hum,” is all he said.

“Sometimes it’s so much it just spills out,” Willard shrugged. He looked at Tom and his eyes asked a question. But then, you might understand?

Tom moved his head to the silent question, but it was neither a yes nor a no. He did not understand at all but Willard looked so hopeful he couldn’t disappoint him. His broken heart fluttered, little shards scraping his ribs like cicadas singing. Tom felt Willard must have lived a whole life Tom did not see so he took up a spot on the ground next to him and looked up at the sky and decided maybe if he thought a little while, he might understand. He tried to find Elsbeth White in a cloud and looked for a very long time. Just in case.

Kate LaDew

Kate LaDew

Kate LaDew is a graduate from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro with a BA in Studio Art. She resides in Graham, North Carolina with her cat, Charlie Chaplin.

WASH, RINSE, REPEAT by Carly Greenberg

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Kitten washing clothes

WASH, RINSE, REPEAT
by Carly Greenberg

There are so many cycles to choose from. Bulky, delicate, perm press. The dial shifts from one setting to the other. Darks, whites, colors. It turns clock-wise and back. Hot, warm, cold. A tablet is loaded, a button pressed, the lid lowers with a click. Time seems to drag on with just a few grumbling quips, this metal box mocking you for your peculiar fixation. A few moments more until you hear it- the rush of a miniature tidal wave. The metal cube begins to shift and scrape and tear at the Spanish tile beneath its feet. It is time. You slowly lift your hands until they hover over the clear yet reflective lid. To hold them for a moment, to feel the humming of water, metal, and tile on the soles of your hands. A forceful push past the magnetic hovering and you transcend the barrier. Your delicate palms lay flat on the glass. You feel it buzz through your skin, through your veins, and into something greater. A young soul vibrates with power that cannot be obtained outside of this small yellow room. Face presses to glass with eyes wide. You have entered the fifth dimension. Time runs backward, your irises swirling to keep up. The sweater you wore to grandmother’s funeral. The socks soiled with grass from sliding to second. The bra that Mr. Morrison accidentally saw when you bent over to grab your Algebra II textbook. The shorts that always get stuck over your thighs. They are running in circles to chase away time. Blue. Yellow. Black. Red. Blue. Yellow. Black. Red. Blue. Yellow. Black. Red. Blue. Yellow. Black. Red. Green. Black. Red. Green. Black. Red. Green. Black. Red. Green. Black. Red. Green. Maroon. Green. Maroon. Green. Maroon. Black. All smiles, sweet sighs, vibrating arms and cool cheek. Another sweet afternoon with the memory machine.

Carly Greenberg

Carly Greenberg

Carly Greenberg  is an undergraduate English student at the honors college, New College of Florida. In addition to studying, she interns as a reader for the New York City-based Charlotte Sheedy Literary Agency. When not reading for the agency or writing essays, she is completing a humorous YA manuscript on the marvels of summer camp. This is her first published piece.

BiPRODUCT by Leah Koontz

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BIPRODUCT:
Drag, Societal Identity, and Gender Equality
by Leah Koontz

BiProduct is a project I embarked on which considers drag queens, art, female expectations, and the media. This series features four of my works which address gender roles, equality, and social construction. BiProduct features sculpture and performance, created from nylon, spandex, foam, digital media, and plastic. Drag Queens possess many progressive qualities. However, I feel that certain aspects of Drag should require more careful consideration. Over the past two decades, drag has transformed tremendously. What exactly is drag in 2013?

2013_BiProduct_Slideshow

A drag queen is a man, usually homosexual, creating a female illusion through clothing and performance. This illusion ends when the costume comes off. There are many genres and subgenres of drag. Not every drag queen agrees or identifies with all of the categories and genres that have been named. Some queens do not approve of various terms that are currently used in certain gay communities. Sometimes these categories can divide the drag community, which some feel is unproductive. Certain genres of drag queens aim to be “fishy,” meaning as close to a biological woman’s aesthetics as possible. Other genres are more “androgynous.” This genre relies on gender bending, the act of confusing preconceived notions. There are many types of drag. Check out Misty’s definitions of drag genres:

In the eighties, the gay rights movement took off, and drag queens began to hold drag balls in Harlem, NY. These balls were a place for drag queens to come and express themselves. This was a positive alternative to drugs, prostitution, and becoming an HIV statistic. Due to the prejudice that the gay community experienced for existing outside of what mainstream society thinks of as normal, many gay individuals lived in poverty and were forced into living undesirable lifestyles. This set up a standard where it was nearly impossible for those who identified as gay to be treated as equals.

The work that drag queens do can be a productive rebellion and commentary against patriarchal society. When a man dresses as a woman, he is making a brave choice to exist outside of what is considered normal. He is, therefore, broadening the definition of normality. Drag queens perform as females and an androgynous queen potentially be identifying with both sexes during their performances. This is accomplishing new realms of possibilities for the roles of gender in society. Female illusion empowers women and allows femininity to be positive and celebrated instead of oppressed.

Some forms of drag exhibit qualities which I think should be seen as fine art. Contemporary art is valued for its aesthetics as well as its ability to educate and push the audience to think critically. Androgynous drag helps us progress and serves as an art medium manifesting itself to make important statements. This is not just art for art’s sake; drag accomplishes the unique goal of being true to itself and making social commentary at the same time. The alluring visuals of a queen’s costume and makeup reinforce whatever concept that they are addressing. These queens are able to achieve their goal through simply being their character, which serves as the art medium. Drag that is androgynous blurs the idea of what is feminine and what is masculine. In doing this, we reach the conclusion that we cannot separate the two and privilege specific ideas within these categories.

Performance drag should be viewed as fine art as well. Many queens in this genre implement criticality and magnificent aesthetics in their performances. Drag queen Sharon Needles, who is from Pittsburg and was popularized on Season Four of RuPaul’s Drag Race, is known for his controversial and critical performances, as well as his spooky androgynous drag looks. Needles’s performances greatly consider context; he carefully thinks about the space and audience before the performance. Pre-Ru Paul, Needles had been known to dress up like a blond female Nazi and lip-sync to Walt Disney songs during his performances. This caused great deal of controversy but as a Jew I do not find myself offended. In this performance, Needles is outing Disney for being anti-Semitic, while making a mockery of Adolf Hitler. Needles shows his careful consideration (he is not just being controversial for the sake of it) by using his identity as a drag queen performing in controversial costumes to point out the absurdity of Hitler’s frightening ideas. Needles is relying on his open minded audience (they are there to see a drag queen after all) to understand this message. Some of these scary ideas are the Aryan race, the final solution, and the idea that any human being could be less than another. I think Needles is also making a comment on the lack of civil rights and equality in America today, especially for to women and the gay community. He stated that he is not “just wearing these things for no reason.” Oftentimes during performances, Needles speaks about uplifting those who are not accepted in society:

Drag should be considered fine art for its alluring visuals. Needles has previously based his illusions or looks off of women who have had excessive amounts of plastic surgery. Some of these have included bandaging and even a syringe, which is held up to his lips and used to mimic collagen being injected. I feel that this is intense commentary that shows the pressure that the media places on body image. This pushes an unrealistic idea of beauty onto ] society. People should be able to choose what they want to do with their own body, and not feel forced into anything. This artwork reminds us of the controversial performances of Orlan, a woman who has committed herself to a life of repetitive plastic surgeries in the name of art. Orlan’s project and its place in the art world are often debated within the art community, while the work of Sharon Needles is not even on the radar of most people in the fine art community. Needles makes advanced and sophisticated artistic critiques, which are being overlooked by the art world.

In my art, I explore questions surrounding female expectation and equality. I think critically about drag queens and their role in this conversation. This can be understood through the works’ formal qualities. BiProduct Photos from Performance documents a one-hour performance, which is done in solitude. BiProduct: Containment was created first; it showcases a clear glass jar containing excess foam, which was made from the process of sculpting foam pieces from other works in the series.

BiProduct_Containment

BiProduct Containment

BiProduct Performative Objects was created during the one-hour performance. This piece consists of the nylon and foam wearable products that were used during the performance. These are now installed as an empty skin on the wall. Separately from these works, BiProduct: Pile was made, and these sculptures are responsive to the other works in the series. BiProduct: Pile is wrapped with a range of neutrally colored spandex, which wrinkles and restricts around the foam.

BiProduct Objects from performance

BiProduct Performative Objects

BiProduct aims to examine some of the sub genres of drag and break down the commentary that particular categories may make about women in relation to society. In “BiProduct: 40 Images from Performance,” I apply a sculpted idealized padding, created from foam, to my body. Padding is a practice done by some drag queens in which foam inserts are applied to the body in order to obtain an idealized female form.

Drag21

My padding is applied directly after binding my torso in a duct tape corset and casing the rest of my body in restrictive nylon and spandex. This is also a practice observed by some queens to achieve a feminine body. Next, I spread bright drag-inspired makeup onto my face. I then dress in loud revealing clothing to finally create my version of the overly idealized female through the lens of a drag queen.

This is not an acceptable way of viewing women. Placing importance on the physical body over intellect is offensive. It is important not to flatten women into one dimensional beings. BiProduct explains to the audience the dangers that come along with stereotyping of women, members of the gay community, and, in particular, drag queens.

Drag5 Drag9

The negative view of these groups is socially constricted and perpetuated by the media’s reinforcement of negative stereotypes, and old-fashioned ideas. It is not only unnecessary, but also harmful for anyone to participate in the advancement of negative ideas, particularly from one marginalized group to another.

BiProduct uses materiality that is raw, neutral, and tactile to reinforce its ideas of body image, social construction, and expectation. These materials are both visually exuberant, as well as stale and muted in color.

This allows the project to discuss both the positive and negative sides of this conversation. In doing this, the conversation between drag queens and women is promoted as important. This is essential in order for both parties to grow and make progress toward equality. The constructive process directly references the notion of a constructed norm. Its raw immediacy and materiality recalls something which is void of preconceived notions or attachments. This forces the viewer to consider societal expectations and social acceptance.

The idea of hypocrisy is closely considered in BiProduct, especially relating to drag queens and women. The project highlights genres of drag that depict women in a stereotypical light which might present a limited understanding of femininity. BiProduct also considers genres of drag which are portraying a more progressive illusion. The objects in BiProduct are representative of female body parts which, in turn, objectifies women. This points out how objectification is manifesting itself in many places within western society, including the drag community. For the majority of our community, men control the way women are viewed. The notion of an ideal body constructed through the male criteria reinforces the idea that a woman should be valued through male criteria. This removes women’s power and forces unrealistic, negative expectations of women in society.

Drag that reinforces negative views of women shows one-dimensional characters and values the physical over the intellectual. In this case, the individuals depicting this view are promoting one minority and demoting another. This is not as successful as a drag queen that can promote minorities and deconstruct socially constructed norms. Often times, we can participate in contributing to these stereotypes if we are not self-aware.

While critiquing the narrow definition of femininity, BiProduct also challenges drag which perpetuates outdated ideas. It also begins a conversation about the topic at large situated in the context of related issues. It is important that all groups of people be viewed as equal and that society participates in taking action to make this a reality.

BiProduct Pile

–Leah Koontz
June 2013

Leah Koontz

Leah Koontz

Leah Koontz grew up in Louisville, Colorado near the foot of the Rocky Mountains. In the early 2000s she moved to Philadelphia, where she lives now. With the support of her amazing family, she was able to connect with her love for art. Currently she attends Moore College of Art and Design where she is majoring in Fine Art and minoring in Curatorial Studies. She expects to receive her BFA in 2014. Leah spends her time creating art, reading books, protesting patriarchy, and of course attending local drag shows.

CAREFULLY WRAPPED FESTIVAL OF DISCOVERY by Rich Ives

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Carefully-Wrapped-Festival

CAREFULLY WRAPPED FESTIVAL OF DISCOVERY
by Rich Ives

There was a sadness and hearts went in there
where it was waiting               a small boat on the riverriver of what’s next                 the rope you can’t see
rope with a private moon at the endthere was a consideration of smallness and it grewa hat enclosed certain structures of thinking               what it did to us was living in its
imaginary thimble              a hat enclosed inside itself
still room for a thought                                   the head wound round with it
the hat saving us from certain conclusions

there was an ancient winged accommodation             which flew inside
the sadness and attached itself                        to the rope and the river
and the moon at the end                      all at once like the private hat
and it could wait for a long time                     we knew that

there was a recognition of recovery and it left us
a private rope with certain privileges at the end

the ones who were sad enclosed certain structures of acceptance
and the rope was waiting                    wound round the boat like a thought
knotted in its ancient whispers                       thimbled out to us
drifting endlessly on the private stream where you entered

a small boat on the river                      at the end of a rope
a rope that was waiting to become a rope

a private moon at the end of a discovery        holding what we knew
there was a consideration of smallness and it grew

 

Rich Ives

Rich Ives is the 2009 winner of the Francis Locke Memorial Poetry Award from Bitter Oleander and the 2012 winner of the Creative Nonfiction Prize from Thin Air magazine. His book of days, Tunneling to the Moon, is currently being serialized with a work per day appearing for all of 2013 athttp://silencedpress.com.

 

 

 

Image credit: vision chen on Flickr

JOURNALISM by John Carroll

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Books

JOURNALISM
by John Carroll

No one in my family talks about Uncle Terry, or why there never was a funeral. We did have a wake. We gathered at his house. The priests came in turtlenecks and polo shirts. My mother hovered by the basement door, ushering me away when I pleaded for just a minute at the pool table. My cousins suffered a similar fate. We soon gossiped to one another, only to find we’d been told the same story: Uncle Terry was working in the basement and accidentally stuck his finger into an electrical socket, a Saturday morning cartoon turned fatality.

This lie, which we later individually pieced together, was pre-meditated, passed around in the hours and days after his death. It was a family contract: if they couldn’t know why, we wouldn’t know how. The coffin we never saw was stuffed with the facts of his life. I’ve still yet nothing further to report.

John Carroll

John Carroll

John Carroll  has published fiction in Philly Fiction 2 (Don Ron Books),Versal, Interrobang!? and The Battered Suitcase. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from American University in Washington, DC. He completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, where he was born and raised. He is a former staff member of the Kelly Writers House, as well as the former Arts and Culture Editor of the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin. He currently blogs at OhJohnCarroll.com, as well as maintaining the Poetry, By Google Voice web site.

 

Image credit: Johannes Jansson

MEMORIAL DAY by Luke Stromberg

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memorial day

MEMORIAL DAY
by Luke Stromberg

When you were a boy, did you dream that street
And wonder where it was? Did you dream
Of death in an exotic locale?
Iraq— its bicycles and minarets. Its men
And their sweat-shined, mustached faces
On the television. Women in the hijab,
Weeping in debris. Did your temples throb
In its dry desert heat? A roadside bomb,
Assembled there—in that ancient, wasted place—
Scheduled you and others for oblivion,
Claimed you, even at home in Conshohocken.

We’ve never met and never will,
But this afternoon, I sit at a picnic table
Under a tree with my brother and nephew
And think of you. The street parked up
On both sides for a soccer game.
Cheers rise harmlessly above the music.
Strangers here are less strange.
Nothing here is quite mysterious—
Even the shadow pattern of the branches
On the walkway. This is the life I know.
And, for you, I wonder: would I die for even this?

 

Luke-Stromberg

Luke Stromberg has also published work in Rotary Dial, Victorian Violet Journal, Tower Journal, Shot Glass Journal, Lucid Rhythms, Philadelphia Stories, Think Journal, Mid-America Poetry Review, and on Ernest Hilbert’s blog E-Verse Radio. His work has also been featured in The Philadelphia Inquirer on multiple occasions. He lives in Upper Darby, PA, and works as an adjunct English instructor at Eastern University and West Chester University.

 

 

Image credit: bigbirdz on Flickr

BEATING PLOUGHSHARES INTO iPODS by Anya Lichtenstein

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ipod family wikipedia

BEATING PLOUGHSHARES INTO iPODS
by Anya Lichtenstein

As a Conserva-dox Jew by upbringing and agnostic by nature, I don’t know whether I believe in the afterlife. Sometimes I’m certain that we are all just worm food. Other days I can feel my grandparents looking down on me from heaven while I’m opening a grad school acceptance letter or trying on dresses at Bloomingdales (my maternal grandmother believed above all in the god of retail).

In my hunt for a compelling afterlife scenario, I found that several cultures have done a thorough job figuring out where to send their dead and how. The ancient Norse believed the soul could wind up in a number of places: Helgafjell, the “holy mountain,” where the dead go on with their lives pretty much as usual; Hel, which is not as dreary or painful as its fiery Christian homophone; and Valhalla, which is essentially a Gold’s Gym, a predominantly male realm where fallen warriors pump iron in preparation for the last great battle, Ragnarök. Much like the Egyptians and their pyramids, the Norse sent the dead off on a 1,400 ºC funeral pyre with practical instruments. The packing list often included weapons and the dead person’s slaves, sacrificed for the journey.

The Ashanti of Ghana believe in Asamando, an underworld that resembles an Ashanti village on earth, only without famine or drought. The dead still have to farm and tend animals, though, so the Ashanti equipped their dead with farming tools. They also dance at the burial in order to enhance the survivors’ connection the next life.

Medieval Christians thought that both body and soul contained the essence of the human being after death, which explains why they preserved the severed body parts of saints in intricately carved boxes.

The Jewish afterlife as presented to me at synagogue, Jewish day school, and sleep-away camp is far less straightforward. The term for the afterlife is olam ha’bah, which literally means the world to come. I learned about gan eden, the garden of eden (a version of heaven), and gehenom, which any Judaic studies teacher will tell you “is NOT hell,” but is really pretty much hell. At seven years old, my friends and I must have already internalized some concept of life after death. We used to sing, “Lashon ha’rah, lamed hey, go to gehenom the easy way,” which translates roughly to, “Gossip is the easy way to eternal damnation.” Unlike the ancient Norse and medieval Christians, though, Jewish tradition places the human essence fully in the soul, which severs from the body in death to begin its afterlife journey. You can’t take your slave with you to olam ha’bah. There is nothing remotely corporeal or material about gan eden or gehenom.

Seeking a more glamorous transport to the next life than Judaism’s strictly no-frills, wooden coffin, I stumbled across the latest trend in afterlife accoutrements: the CataCombo Sound System. Fredrik Hjelmquist, a Swedish music equipment store owner, has designed a surround-sound coffin with a 4G connection and electronic display system. The family of the occupant can craft a tailor-made playlist for their loved one, perpetuating the shout-out, “This one’s for you, baby,” for eternity, or at least until they die, too.

If this description hasn’t piqued your interest, the latest television advertisement for the CataCombo might. In the opening shot, a pinup blonde in a black shift and white elbow-length gloves stares intently at the high-tech vessel and runs her hands over its glossy black exterior. A deep male voice asks, “Do you believe that music is a universal, supernatural phenomenon?” and touts such amenities as “God-like comfort” and a “divine” eight-inch sub-woofer to ensure “life after death entertainment.” The whole thing is reminiscent of a Lexus commercial. I guess it’s only appropriate—if this coffin’s your ride to the underworld, you’d want it to be pimped out.

What does this $38,000 coffin say about the Swedes? Turns out, not much. There has been little interest in the product domestically. The birthplace of the Volvo is too practical for such consumer-driven frivolity. Or, perhaps—considering Volvo’s trademark of the phrase, “Drive Safely”—the Swedes are more concerned with preventing death than facing it. Most interest in the coffin comes from Canada and the US, from inquiring minds like mine, albeit with far deeper pockets. So what does this phenomenon say about us?

It is already passé to sigh, shake heads, and gripe that there is no escape from the plugged-in world. Every iPhone-carrying, headphone-donning twenty-year-old will tell you to f*** off if you do. Now that the final frontier of technological adopters—35 to 80 year-old women—are carrying iPhones too, few demographic groups are still complaining about hegemonic technology. And everybody likes some kind of music, be it classical or dubstep, live or in mp3 format. I like to think that I could listen to Beyonce until Judgment Day. Music is a “universal, supernatural phenomenon,” the CataCombo commercial proclaims. It’s a fact of life; why shouldn’t it be a fact of death?

What really trips me up about the CataCombo is the practical details. I want know what happens if you get a lemon. I don’t like to think of the lengths (and depths) a handyman would have to go to replace a faulty sub-woofer. Or what would happen if a particular track didn’t stop skipping? Does the deceased’s final resting place then become her own cacophonic torture chamber? If I’m going to spend eternity in a human boombox, I need a divine guarantee of battery life.

Then I think of the Ashanti and the Norse. For the Norse, grave goods were an investment in a very real future, insurance for safe passage into the next world. For the Valhalla-bound, insurance meant their sharpest sword. The Ashanti were similarly practical, but they also understood that dance and music were a powerful means to connect to those beyond the grave. What if, of all the possessions in this famine-riddled, war-ridden world, we chose music, not hoes and swords, to take with us into the next?

The Catacombo, then, might be a way to unplug not from technology, but rather from harsher practicalities. If we start thinking more musically about the next life, what might the repercussions be for this one? If it turns out there is an olam ha’bah and I bypass gehenom for gan eden, I hope Beyonce is there, too.

Anya-Lichtenstein

Anya Lichtenstein recently graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, where she received the Rittenberg Prize for Best Undergraduate Student in English. Anya is the former chairwoman of the Pennsylvania Players Board of Governors, and recently performed the role of Kate Monster in Penn’s Quadramics Theatre Company’s production of Avenue Q.

IN VERY LITTLE TIME ON THE NILE by Christopher X. Shade

Cleaver Magazine Posted on by

In Very Little Time on the Nile

IN VERY LITTLE TIME ON THE NILE
by Christopher X. Shade

In the distance where the sky met the great desert hills, or mountains, or whatever the Egyptians called them—Howard had no map to reveal what those great masses of land might be—where the sky met the land, it was nothing like Howard had seen in Colorado where he’d grown up among the Rockies, and he was sure it was nothing like he’d ever seen in film, in paintings, in any art anywhere.  What he saw where the sky met the land was the shutter mechanism of a great camera, snapped closed in this instant.  All this was a mere instant.  It was an instant that spanned his existence and all existence he’d ever known and all he could imagine, all of which amounted to little more than nothing in a greater immeasurable passage of time.  Where the sky met the land, it was his own smallness evident there, indeed he was but microscopic, and when this struck him he ordered a second whiskey drink from the man behind the bar on the deck of this little cruise boat on the Nile.

Howard could not look into the distance again but instead, closer in, to the land’s incongruous green swath along the Nile, and then to the water, and then much closer in, to the table before him, and his Egypt guide book with its requisite Sphinx cover image.

Howard began to consider a new film, nothing like any of the films he’d ever made:  a woman on a Nile cruise boat to Aswan experiences what he’d just experienced when she looks into the distance where the sky meets the land, and she wouldn’t be able to shake the profound impression of it.  The experience alters the very mechanics of who she is.  She must set herself on a new course.

As Howard swelled with the stirred emotions of this inspiration, as the possibilities and even a storyboard for the film gathered in a great cumulonimbus cloud range inside of him, there came a wind at those clouds, a knowing that it was too ambitious—it would not succeed—and this again was his smallness evident, the smallness of his work.  Roiling now with anger, he downed what was left of his whiskey drink.  Really, he hated the work of film.

Laughter, cutting into the quiet, startled him; it may as well have been a gunshot.  The laughter was from a group of four at a table some distance away, an unfathomable distance because neither he nor they belonged and this was all they together had in common.  Among the four of them, French speaking, one woman in particular: slender, a scarf, dark hair.  Her hair may or may not have had some gray in it.  It was impossible to distinguish her age but certainly she was younger than he was.  Her name:  Anne, or Marie, or Claire.  He guessed that she’d bought the scarf in Cairo’s Khan el-Khalili market, probably the same day he’d been at Khan el-Khalili, he’d been at Fishawi’s having mint tea, and closer in, probably it had been during the time he was at the corner table reading a Naguib Mahfouz novel, while an American couple at another table held hands, while along the wall four Brits in dinner jackets risked a sheesha, while an older Egyptian man in a galabeya walked in and out of the café a number of times anxiously expecting someone or something that could not be found there, while nothing really of significance was happening for Howard, she was in one of the stalls on the Sikket lane that led into the quarter, she was running her hands over scarves, and then she found this scarf with its rich stripes of orange, brown, blue, and green, more colors than at once apparent, certainly handmade, and its soft fabric, spun by bedouin perhaps, the highest quality.  He expected she had negotiated price.  She would be a tough customer.  There was something disarming in the way she looked at you—he saw this now in a glance from her over the unfathomable distance between them.  She gave the shopkeeper extra Egyptian pounds after these negotiations.  Howard had done the same for the man who sold him a glass Arabian ornament.  She’d probably seen the shopkeeper feed a thin cat from his own plate.  Howard had seen this.  Or had she counted out precisely the negotiated price?  Either way, certainly she’d said shokran, as he had.

Among the market stalls of Cairo’s Khan el-Khalili:  How much is it, she would ask, “Bi-kam da?” and she would say “Maashi” and she would say, no, she does not speak Arabic but could understand a few words, inshallah, please speak slowly, and la la la la, she would say, Maashi.

All this while he sipped the mint tea at Fishawi’s and marveled at all he did not know, all the histories and cultures and peoples and languages, while he was suspended there in the scene unfolding at Fishawi’s, while scenes unfolded everywhere else that he could never know, because he was not omniscient, and yet if he was so limited how could he draw from a reservoir of experience to craft relevant work?  All this while she browsed Arabian tin lamps and onyx baubles and silver necklaces in stalls on the Sikket lane so near to Fishawi’s asking “Bi-kam da?” while inside the mechanics of her experience were more than those of a shopping tourist, one could tell this when she looked at the shopkeeper and told him in her limited Egyptian Arabic with a French accent that she could speak a few words, she could understand a few things, there was much more she wanted to be able to understand, as she negotiated the price with him and counted out her Egyptian pounds and told him it was too much, wasn’t it, she wasn’t speaking of price now, she was speaking of the human struggle, one could tell this, she didn’t understand well but she understood well enough to know it had been too much.

And had she in the Souk al-Attarin stopped to smell pyramid-shaped mounds of cinnamon, cloves, cardamom?  While he was nearby in the Souk es-Sudan passing through aromatic clouds of perfume and incense, while exhausted, rubbing his eyes, searching for names of these medieval lanes, searching for the way to Midaq Alley because he’d been reading Naguib Mahfouz at Fishawi’s for some time, so he was searching, asking one man, another and another, Which way to Midaq, “Feyn, feyn Midaq?”  And always a different answer: this way, no behind us, no, that way, until he turned onto a side lane and climbed steps and found what he thought must be Midaq Alley.

On his way out of the alley hadn’t he seen this woman, this very same woman, wearing this scarf wrapped once around and one end tucked, the same way he wore a scarf?  And then he’d browsed the same market stalls.  They crossed the same stones, touched the same objects appraisingly, one after another, and in these moments they were, in a sense, together, in a kind of union, in Cairo’s Khan el-Khalili.  Hadn’t he seen her glance at him across the unfathomable distance?  Their gaze locked for an instant, a mere instant, an instant that should have amounted to little more than nothing in a greater immeasurable passage of time.  Would she remember the American man who walked alone?

The bar man came around and set a fresh drink on the table before him.  Howard said, “Shokran, shokran,” and was feeling the second drink in his head and his heart was pounding in step with the rhythmic hum of the boat engine.

The sun was lower in the sky, there were fewer people at tables on the deck, and the cruise boat was still on its way to Aswan—he did not know when it would reach Aswan—and there were other cruise boats, too, one ahead of them and one behind, and of course there were more, there had been many boats at the previous stop, Kom Ombo.  There were many more boats.

Howard guessed that in Cairo she’d covered her head with this scarf at the Mohammed Ali mosque, as women tourists were required to do, and probably she had lifted the scarf over her head and tied the loose knot before entering while he was on his way there, while he was following the wall as the guidebook said to do, following the wall she had followed, crossing the same stones, climbing the same steps to that summit of the citadel—and on those ancient steps to the Mohammed Ali mosque, she had given coins to an old Egyptian man selling postcards.  Probably she had said to the Egyptian, “Sahlan” or “Assalaamu aleikum,” with a smile, respectfully, because she did not have the Arabic to explain well, to express, that these coins are a gift and please watch over yourself and your children and your grandchildren for they are loved.  Wasn’t she, as she seemed, full of love?  Had she the capacity to love all the world, despite all she had experienced and all she had learned on her journey of self?  He was certain that she had noticed this Egyptian was in physical pain.  Something was wrong with one of the old man’s legs.  It was possible that the femur had fractured in a fall in some other part of Cairo, perhaps in Tahrir Square, a fracture that hadn’t been treated well because he could not afford the time away from work.

Howard imagined that she’d been moved to tears in the mosque.  The tears had been unexpected, however they had come, so suddenly, from wherever they had come, perhaps from the experience of being in this mosque, of being so far from home, perhaps from something about the Egyptian selling postcards on the steps, but certainly from somewhere deep inside of her, no one could really know the source but her—and of course she knew from where inside of her it had come, one could tell that she knew.  Grateful for the scarf from Khan el-Khalili, she pulled it even further forward and hid under its low hood for some time, crossing her arms, separating from her friends to walk alone under the opulent domes and multitude of glass bowls of light strung overhead.  It confused her to feel so much in this place.  She scolded herself.  She did not belong.  This emotion did not belong here.  It was simply her sensitivity, heightened as a result of that which she did not want to think about, that loss, that absence of a loved one—or it was simply the allure of the mystery of this place—this place had touched something inside of her—she was telling herself these things—she was telling herself it had nothing to do with the death of her father—

—while Howard walked from the steps to the courtyard and then stood for some time admiring all of it and appreciating the effort it had taken a devoted people to create such intricate structures, the alabaster stonework, the arched naves, the pillared and domed ablution fountain, while he felt a stirring inside of him, an anticipation, though of what he did not know.  In that moment he did not attend to what he felt.  Probably it was only the tremor of thrill at experiencing something so important as this place.  He took a deep breath.  Hands in his pockets, he passed some time in the courtyard.

When he’d removed his shoes and entered the mosque, yes there was the beauty of the mosque that took his breath but there was this woman, too, this woman wearing the scarf—hadn’t it, hadn’t it been this very same woman, her scarf?—the only one lying on her back on the carpets under the great dome among others who were sitting, the only one lying and staring up into the dome’s majesty, probably her tears had stopped some time ago, probably she’d pulled the scarf back a little from her face, she’d come out from the low hood, she’d walked from her spot alone at the wall to the center of the mosque, with the soft carpets under her bare feet, and there she’d stood for a long moment looking up before sitting and then lying on her back though no one else was doing this.  Howard regarded her for a long moment.  She was like a camera someone had placed for the perfect shot.  He wandered under the domes and the strung lights, crossing the same carpets she had crossed, while probably she noticed this American man walking alone, and then he stood for a long moment looking up into the majesty before sitting and then lying.  It was an unreal sensation, it seemed like it shouldn’t be possible, like lying on water under morning light.  He was some distance away from her but near enough to turn his head and see her, too, lying nearby, and then she turned to him—hadn’t their gaze locked for an instant?—while he could see that she’d been crying—while she could see something about him, too, something no one could really know but her.

It would be morning, he guessed, when the cruise boat would arrive in Aswan.  By late morning she would be on a felucca sailing around Elephantine Island, in the Nile wind, her scarf tied in a knot or the wind would take it, sitting among her friends but leaning away, her gaze on the water—would she remember the American man who walked alone?—while Howard strolled along the water, hands in his pockets, regarding the swooping egrets, regarding the sails on the Nile, knowing that she was among them, and this would be worth enough to matter in the immeasurable currency of time’s passage and of all he’d ever known and all he could imagine.

 

Christopher X Shade

Christopher X Shade

Christopher X. Shade has a novel set in Spain and France in agent circulation, and lives in New York City. His stories have appeared in numerous national and small press publications; recently, Poydras Review, Arcadia, andPrime Number Magazine. His book reviews have appeared in New Orleans Review andSaint Ann’s Review. Visit his website at www.christopherxshade.com.

Image credit: Andrew A. Shenouda on Flickr

ON BEIGE by Prairie Markussen

Cleaver Magazine Posted on by

On-Beige

ON BEIGE
by Prairie Markussen

She is a palomino in the Nordic countries,
her hair scorched to a glow. She is the Northern
ice floe, the delicate drip, the dusted broccoli top
that slips downward into the sensual sliver.
She is the slick of that sliver. She is waylaid at the switching station,
the drear, the mold, the scaffolding at the church’s
steeple, all within sight and none too dear.
She hunches into her polar collar. Boys scoff and scratch
at their wrists and blaze into their cigarettes,
and push the cold clear of their faces with a match.
They are blinded by her flaxen; beautiful, she is
imagined into their arms, she is positioned for their
deserts—they have deserved this for centuries.
There are headstones she will not see, flecked
with the writ of farmers, and theirs is a hatred
that holds; theirs is a right to destroy themselves
against a white light.There is a horse, old, dusted with the dust of the desert,
waiting at the edge of the sea, hitting its hooves along
the promenade. It has long been trained and twitches
at the delay. There is nothing for it—she is
caught in a central slumber, caught between
the gnawing sea and threads of want, running like steel
through and through this bumbling backwater.But she is a palomino in the Nordic countries, she is
the fairest prize, forever sitting for the upsweep of oil strokes.
(There is a golden-toothed father that gloats
and gathers her in with his arm.)
She is the edging of sand beneath the horse’s
thrusted breath, the meat of the aspen beneath
the broken bark, the shimmering
tip of the moth’s wing as it shudders along
the breeze. She is the dust, the incandescent dust,
of wing ash dispensed between
Northern fingers.

Prairie Markussen

Prairie Markussen is a poet and college teacher living in Chicago. She has lived in and written about lots of different places and would like to live in and write about more places, which means a change in location is always on the horizon. She likes imagist, war, and confessional poetry, and in her own writing tries for a confluence of personal and cultural experiences. Her works appear in Atticus Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, The Fiddlehead, Louisiana Literature, and other journals, and in an anthology of short poems called Bigger Than They Appear published by Accents Publishing.

 

Image credit: Mona sin restricción on Flickr

THE PAIN by Caleb True

Cleaver Magazine Posted on by

THE PAIN
by Caleb True

I felt a sharp pain in my abdomen. At the moment it was pain but sometimes it was just a sensation. I sat down at the edge of the sidewalk and leaned over to puke. Didn’t. I stood, continued to walk. The twinge came back. I pressed two fingers into my abdomen. Pressed and pressed until I felt bone.

I googled appendicitis. Scrolled through symptoms. No excruciating pain. No vomiting. The pain wasn’t getting worse, and sometimes it wasn’t even pain. I wondered if I should stop weightlifting with my neighbor. I knew he had an anger problem. Weightlifting is no anger management strategy, but he also had a gym membership, so.

Did I work too much, masturbate too much? Too hard? I thought constructively about masturbating. Zoning out, I cupped my hand near my dick, deep in thought. Like this? I thought.

Like this?

I thought about calling my doctor. Called my mother instead. She said to call the doctor. My doctor was a wonderful woman, looking good for almost fifty and coming out with another book on the joys and wonders of natural birthing.

I woke early for the appointment, took a hot shower, put on clean clothes. I moved gingerly, not because there was pain but because my senses were attuned to that spot deep inside my abdomen where the pain would be, if it was. At the moment it wasn’t. I stepped outside. Hunched my shoulders against the cold. Clenched my teeth. My dentist had mentioned clenching. She was a wonderful woman too, also looking good for nearing fifty, with a Bosnian accent and a glorious overbite. Her daughter worked reception, but her daughter wasn’t nearly as beautiful as she was. She said if I kept clenching, I’d need jaw surgery.

The doctor told me to sit on the paper bed. She lifted my shirt and placed her stethoscope on my belly. She told me to breathe in. Hold it. Let it out now, she said. She kept putting the cold mouth of the stethoscope to my body. Soon it was lukewarm. Again, she said, about the breathing. Again.

Again.

She unplugged the stethoscope from her ears and wore it like a necklace. Put its mouth in her breast pocket. Massaged my neck with the tips of her fingers. Palpated my lymph nodes. When does it hurt? she asked. She smelled like pine. I told her. She said Hmmm. How often do you exercise? I told her not much, but I started lifting weights with my neighbor recently. Oh? she said. I told her I walked to work. How far is work? she asked. One block, I said. She stopped touching my neck and said she was going to give me a hernia test. I’d thought of that, but the internet had mentioned an intestinal bulge. Turn and cough, she said. I coughed. No hernia, she said. Could you sit back on the bed? I did. She slipped her cold hands under the waistband of my jeans, about where I said I felt the—not pain exactly, but twinging, sometimes, like when I’m at work or walking or something.

Huh, she said. She kneaded with her fingers like my abdomen was pizza dough. Does this hurt? she said. No. Does this? She pressed hard, as hard as I’d pressed. She got to the bone and pressed and pressed. Ouch, I said. Was that it? she said. Or was that the bone?

I woke with a start. The pain pulsed. I laid a hand in the curve of my hip, probing. Trying to make it hurt more or hurt less. Trying to make it something. The doctor said it was strange there was pain when I was active—standing or walking—and not when sedentary. Well here it was, now, while I was sedentary. Sedentary. The word begged disease. Who gets strange pains that turn into cancer, into appendicitis? Who gets a hernia? Sedentary people who lift heavy objects. A desk. A guitar amplifier. Or in my case, a crate of dinner plates, not with my legs but with my back. Oops—maybe. But there was no bulge. And someone who works standing up isn’t sedentary. I was so, so young. I thought again about masturbating. It wasn’t like I was lying facedown on the floor jamming my dick into a warm towel—apparently that was how my roommate liked to do it. It wasn’t like I was doing it more than, say, once a day. And give me a break: my Ex was sending me all these texts out of the blue. Say she bought a new sweater. Kind of a small-talky, normal sort of thing to text about. But the accompanying picture would be her in the sweater, which was white, without a bra. And no bottoms.

What was I supposed to do, make a sandwich?

I thought about cancer again. Could I feel cancer, if it was tiny and inside of me? Cells are so tiny. I googled cancer cells. They looked like meat. This made me hungry. I made myself a sandwich. I took out some roast beef, but then remembered about red meat and cancer. Got out turkey instead. As I ate my sandwich I remembered something on the radio about cell phones and cancer. Something like: Using a cell phone makes a person three times as likely to get cancer! No, not so specific. More like: Populations with significant cell phone usage have three times the incidence of cancer as populations without significant cell phone usage! No, no, no. It had to be: Recent studies reveal that cell phone users, over a ten-year period, develop three times the incidence of cancer than do ordinary populations! That was it. But, ‘ordinary?’ What was ‘ordinary?’ Heavy cell phone usage for one thing. I vowed, eating my sandwich, to stop carrying my cell phone in my jeans pocket. I decided to keep it in my breast pocket. I never heard of anyone getting heart cancer.

I decided to test my theory about masturbation. I pulled up one of my Ex’s sexts and got my thing out. I worked with utmost caution. Didn’t tense up or go crazy. I was relaxed. It took a conscious effort. I felt like a woman being delicate and dexterous with her lady parts. There was some stuff in the Kama Sutra about relaxing during sex. Men in particular were supposed to take the hint. I thought about that for a second. When I was about to come, I didn’t tense up or flex or point my toes. I stood up and pushed and prodded the spot in my hip where the pain would be, if it was. Nothing. Maybe not tensing up was the way to go.

I went to a party that night with my roommate and my neighbor. Ordinarily I wouldn’t go, but I thought being social might help lose the hypochondria. Not that waiting tables wasn’t social. I had to be social or else I wouldn’t make any goddamn money. Also I would be fired.

The party would be social but not work-social. Maybe that was the trick. Maybe the pain was some pea-sized epicenter of my body trying to tell me work was unnatural. Heh, well. I didn’t need a vestige to tell me that. My body had evolved to tell me the only sensible activities for a human being were foraging and reproducing. Eating and fucking. Working for money, in theory, met the same basic needs, but working in a restaurant I sure as hell wasn’t making the kind of money that translated into a steady stream of reproductive work. So my body was in protest, and my appendix, maybe, or the pain, or whatever, was crying out: Hey, stop doing all this shit and go live in the woods and eat berries and snails and wild roots and sleep on dirt and defecate in holes and wipe yourself with leaves and make love to the moon and to Jupiter, when it’s in conjunction with the moon, for good luck!

The party was lively. There was a microbrew drowning in icewater. I rescued it. There was a mess of people dancing in the living room. I stood in the corner, clenching my teeth, clutching my beer. I realized I was clenching and stopped. Massaged my jaw. I opened it and it clicked painfully. What are you doing? a girl behind a laptop said. She was the DJ. I could barely hear her voice over the music. I yelled, Nothing! Then I yelled, What’s your name?

She yelled, What? I waved Nevermind and left the room. Went into the kitchen and saw my neighbor there. He was talking to a drunk stranger who was grasping for words to make a point. Hey, I said. My neighbor acknowledged my presence then turned back to the stranger. I knew why he was listening so hard. He was going to absorb what the stranger had to say then refute the shit out of him. He was going to deploy platitudes like ‘You’re missing the forest for the trees,’ and ‘Throw the baby out with the bathwater,’ and work himself into a frenzy over a point with which, chances were, the stranger probably agreed. It made me clench my teeth. I finished my beer and left.

Hands crammed deep in my pockets, I walked home. With one hand I pressed and prodded the pain until I wondered if I was causing the pain with all the pressing and prodding. I arrived home and called my Ex. Her voice was unexpected.

Yeah?

As in, What do you want?

She said, I’m studying for a Chem final, what do you need?

I thought hard, for a second, about need. I pictured her trying on sweaters and taking pictures of herself, like that was her life. I had the pictures already, so did I really need to talk to her? If she wanted to talk, then the pictures made no sense. The pictures were fooling around, and talking, well, that was what people who still love each other do. Not people fooling around. Did I still love her?

Um, I said. I hung up.

The next day the doctor called back. She wanted to do an ultrasound. When should I come in? I asked. We can’t do it here, she said. You have to schedule an ultrasound at a radiology center. I can recommend you one. Do you have something to write on? Yes, I lied. I scrambled for paper.

I made an appointment for an ultrasound the next day. If that didn’t reveal anything the doctor wanted to do a blood test. I don’t like needles. The last time I had blood drawn, the nurse couldn’t find the vein. Oops! Looks like it moved on me! the nurse had said, jabbing the fat needle into my arm until he found the vein. Make a fist to help the blood pump, he’d added once the needle was in. I looked at the nurse like he was crazy. The blood test throbbed like a headache the size of a pin in the crux of my arm.

The receptionist said, Can I see your referral? I said I didn’t have one, but told the receptionist the name of my doctor, the one with the books about natural birthing. Yes, she’s very well known, said the receptionist. I took a seat and stared at the other people in the waiting room. They were old, sick or pregnant. With two fingers I poked myself, trying to see if the pain was there. It wasn’t. It hadn’t been for a couple of days. I hoped I wouldn’t have to pay for the procedure. I was beginning to think an ultrasound was unnecessary. The pain was turning into another hypochondrial symptom scared off by sheer proximity to medical professionals. The receptionist said, Please go into the changing room and put on a tunic. She pointed. The tunic was paper-thin. It stayed on by hooking around its own left sleeve. I went into Exam Room 2. I sat on the bed. The technician came in. She was pretty. All business. Lie down, she said. She said, Are you wearing boxers under there? I said No. The technician grabbed a sheet and told me to lift up the tunic and cover myself with the sheet. She rubbed goo all over my stomach. She said, Exams usually run ten minutes to half an hour. She turned the machine on and began to knead me with the ultrasound wand. I relaxed and closed my eyes. It’s good to relax, the technician said. Have you had anything to eat in the last eight hours? A beer, I said. No, said the technician, to eat. No, I said. She kept kneading. She moved from the top of my belly to my sides, then down to my abdomen. She nosed the wand under the sheet. She got more goo. I’m about to fall asleep, I said. Please don’t, said the technician. She replaced the wand on my abdomen. She began the gentle kneading again. I opened my eyes and watched her work for a long time. She was glued to the computer screen. Her eyes were large and bright and intelligent. I wondered if all her patients watched her work. The concentration she wore was enviable. She guided the wand entirely by feel. I closed my eyes again and said, I’m so relaxed. Good, said the technician. Tell me if anything hurts.

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Caleb True

Caleb True  lives everywhere and nowhere. He holds a Master’s Degree in History. His fiction has appeared in The Madison Review, Yemassee and some other cool places. He exists online at Calebtrue.tumblr.com.

THE MODERNIST CABIN by Emily Steinberg

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THE MODERNIST CABIN
by Emily Steinberg

Modernist Cabin click to enter
I began creating graphic novels or illustrated stories in 2005.
I realized that I not only wanted to make visual imagery, as I do in my paintings, but I wanted to tell stories as well.

I found that the combination of words and images created a visceral way of storytelling.

Most of my material is autobiographical.
Stories that have happened to me along
the way that have shaped my being.

Emily steinberg studio photo

Emily Steinberg in her studio

The Modernist Cabin
is a story about my family
set against the pristine lines
of a modernist cabin
on Cape Cod.

The architecture
and the story
serve as
companions
to each
other.

They are
independent of
each other
but dependent
nonetheless.

 

 

 

–Emily Steinberg, June 2013
Photography by Paul Rider

Emily Steinberg

Emily Steinberg

Emily Steinberg is a painter and graphic novelist who earned her MFA and BFA from the University of Pennsylvania. She has shown at 55 Mercer Gallery and The Westbeth Gallery in New York, and has exhibited at several Philadelphia area venues, including Mangel Gallery, The Borowsky Gallery, The Woodmere Museum of Art and the Michener Museum of Art in Doylestown, PA. Most recently, she exhibited in the solo series at the Abington Art Center and at The Crane Arts Center in Philadelphia. Her graphic novel memoir, Graphic Therapy, can be read online at Smith Magazine. Her short comic, Blogging Towards Oblivion, was included in The Moment (Harper Collins, 2012). She currently teaches painting and the graphic novel at Penn State Abington. She lives in Philadelphia with her husband, photographer Paul Rider, and her puppy Gus.

THE STRAIGHT WARP OF NECESSITY by Mark Mondalek

Cleaver Magazine Posted on by

pacemaker

THE STRAIGHT WARP OF NECESSITY
by Mark Mondalek

Seated on the examiners table, I hold a mouse pad-sized monitor in place over my left breast with assorted electrodes leeched upon my arms and chest and my pacemaker’s memory bank is successfully tapped dry. All my secrets electronically spill onto a sleek computer screen for only my cardiologist to read and the zigzagged data codes become lost in translation to me. I’m soon told of what my nurse described as a tiny short circuit in my electrical system; an intermittent junctional rhythm, to be exact.

“Something new,” my doctor keeps repeating rather intriguingly as he continues tapping away at the results. It seems my heart has never done this sort of thing before.

He deliberates with his two assistants and begins to adjust my settings with a series of quick taps on the screen. “You might feel a little light-headed for a second or two. Do you feel anything?” he asks, but no, no I never do, and then another––tap-tap-tap, and he says I should feel my heart speeding up a little and I feel it a little I do.

Mark Mondalek

Mark Mondalek

Mark Mondalek  is a Detroit-area writer and editor. He previously worked as an assistant editor for South Loop Review: Creative Nonfiction + Art, a national literary magazine published annually by the Nonfiction Program within Columbia College Chicago’s English Department, interviewing authors for publication and approving final manuscript submissions. He graduated from Columbia College Chicago with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Fiction Writing.

THE LAW OF CONSTANT ANGLES by Jason Newport

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THE LAW OF CONSTANT ANGLES
by Jason Newport
Illustrations by Sarah Andrew

I prop one boot on the Mustang’s running board. The car creaks as I lean staring across its soiled white roof at the honey. Freezing November winds off Lake Michigan blast our faces, fluttering her yellow hair like a pennant. She hasn’t looked at me since I paid for her shoes. She isn’t reaching for the passenger door again.

Hands buried in my jacket pockets, I try not to let too much hope crimp my asking, “What about after?”

“Can’t,” she repeats, already turning away. “I have to work.”

Photo (c) Leslie Kalohi via Flickr Creative Commons

 

“No, after,” I urge, inviting, not desperate. “Can we?”

“May we?” she murmurs, walking off. Or else, “Maybe,” and me too chickenshit to holler after her, hear it the wrong way again.

45-degrees copy

She takes careful, even steps because her shoes are new—brown patent leather that’s stiff, unblemished, her toes already blistering just from wearing them out of the store, she’d said. In the paper bag dangling at the end of her pink-sweatered arm, in the box with the freshly cancelled price tag, she carries her stilettos with the broken heel from last night. Whipping her wild hair back, swaying her pearl skirt, she takes careful, even steps away across the parking lot, avoiding puddles of this morning’s rainwater and matted clumps of autumn leaves.

My watch must be lying wherever I dropped it, probably beside the bed. A bank clock across the mall lot reads 12:08. I can’t believe I just spent half a morning watching a woman try on shoes, or that she picked the most expensive ones just to walk home in, or that I’m still not ready for last night to be over. I yank the car door open. Lukewarm air gasps out. Kicking to life with a snarl and a burst of exhaust, the red Mustang lurches onto the boulevard, shouldering aside two lanes of traffic in a clamor of horns. She might see it go. Her head doesn’t turn.

Through the first stoplight I grind the gears a little, ease off. More flow, less fight. Schopenhauer. Plus maybe Jay-Z.

Preppy bitch—but no, not actually . . . though she’d rather walk all the way back to campus alone, under threatening skies (or catch a bus, or summon a cab to pluck her from some innocuous corner), than have me see which Greek-lettered house she cribs in or chance any venomous sister checking scary-ass me dropping her off. Me without her number, her e-mail, her last name . . .

But no, can’t be pissed at her for what I don’t get: Is one not supposed to trip the shops after a one-nighter or drop half a G on blister-inducing shoes? Is it logical to get coldshouldered after that? What delimits the etiquette of a newfound sexual relationship? And what says it has to stay purely physical? Or one night? How the fuck else does anything get started?

Honks from behind prompt fresh gear-grinding. Creases from her thighs and back still dimple the red vinyl passenger seat.

Quicksilver drops flash across the windshield, corroborating a voice giving wet-weather reports over the crackling radio. I flip stations. No music anywhere, only voices, do this, go there, don’t have unprotected sex, buy Pepsi.

I sling my unprotected Mustang through the rain to the Jif-E-Mart for a pop.

60 degrees

“ ’Sup, Bigs,” drawls Al behind the counter. “Shit ain’t free, man.”

I suck a long time on my straw, staring at Al’s cadaverous face, his lank hair dangling unwashed around black-circled eyes. Al shivers nervously, dings up a customer’s purchase on the loud cash register, glances back at me, his dusted eyes sliding sidewise. When my straw broaches air under naked ice, I belch, grinning. “Want it back?”

“Shit,” he mutters, his swollen, pustulated fingers pawing his Jif-E-Mart apron. The zombie clerk from hell, doing his little court-ordered employment. So stupid. But at least it keeps his caseworker happy, and it does make the best damn cover for touting deals with our real customers, most of whom are too young white suburban to venture readily into our haunts, so who am I to complain? Smear a little Vaseline on the security cam, and we can bank more in an hour than the fricking store does all day. American convenience at its one-stop shopping finest: get your gas, biggie gulp, and a party’s worth of high right on your way from school, work, or home. We’re positively patriotic.

Legit spenders ring up, so I fade back to the soda fountain, refilling my cup, hanging till Al’s clear again. He asks, “Tap that honey last night?”

I nod, drawing on my straw again. “Sweet.”

“Yeah?” Al eyes me for truth. “You don’t figure her type, Chief.” His weepy fingers tweak the overhead smokes, popping me down a couple packs of Marlboros when the other clerk, some dumb Abdul, isn’t looking. I slip the packs in my pocket, tip my chin.

“Know what they say. Love is blind.”

“Shit ain’t cheap though,” he leers, rubbing his nostrils fitfully.

Thinking of stiff new Jimmy Choos, I raise my cup and mutter, “Amen to that.”

Softer I add, “We up yet?”

“Little left,” Al says, looking out at the gas pumps, as if we’re not even talking to each other now, just moving our lips absently.

“Tonight?” I wonder. Waggling his hand equivocally, he nods, still facing away.

Another customer comes. I go, Al hollering after me, “Check you, bro! Hey—least it came cheap last night, huh?”

In the doorway I shake my head, then step, drawing softly on my straw. The Mustang peels out on the wet cement.

No, it wasn’t a payoff. She needed the damn shoes. But was it the way she said she liked them, giving me the look over her fuzzy pink shoulder, that bare leg extended in the hands of the suited sales guy kneeling at her feet . . . was that wistfulness in her eyes? A pout?

Are all desires so cheap in her world? Is she? How far apart are we then, really?

Fuck, I think, trying to find a clearer station on the rain-smeared radio. Fuck analyzing this shit to death.

Don’t figure her type. Pissant Al, bringing that honky crap up. Didn’t matter to her last night. She looked right in my big face and didn’t make any Kemo Sabe jokes. Maybe it never occurred to her.

Anyway, the load sells out, the crew gets paid. Shoot a little stick, roll a few numbers, get fucked up before the next batch is cooked and cut and it’s heigh-ho, heigh-ho, back to work we go. Could be a nice meet-up, I muse, slamming the gearshift into fourth, flooring the pedal, watching the rev needle spike. Could be time for a change. Could be . . .

75 degrees

Home, the Mustang slips into its ruts worn in the gravel lot backing the apartment house. Stepping out into bitter wind, I lock the car, pitch my wadded fountain cup trailing its melted ice like a comet, and take the wooden stairs behind the old building—the shoe-heel-turning stairs of last night—two at a time to my dead-bolted door.

Dark inside. I kick my boots off. I can smell her on my pillow as I lie down. Something on the sheet crumples under my hand. I have to think for a moment before turning a lamp on.

A note, on pink paper. Her handwriting has flair, like she writes party invitations for a living. Bullfeathers 12:30?

Rainy afternoon becomes night. I sleep a while, fitfully, dreaming of her. Wakes me hard as old ivory, the luminous clock showing six. Jerking off would only make me feel more alone.

Six-fifteen, Al calls like always. He’s a prick but a damned regular little prick.

“Bullfeathers,” I insist. “I buy first.”

Enough for Al. I order a pizza, wash it down with a two-liter of Pepsi and another chapter of Kierkegaard. Do it or don’t do it—either way you’ll regret it. I ponder that over a few hours of Mario Kart. Then I strip and shower and dress again with care. My last girlfriend, Robin, moved back up to the rez a year ago after she found out I wasn’t enrolled in any of the philosophy classes I kept dragging her to. I haven’t been with anyone since. Until last night. Outside, evening wind messes my thick black hair. Time enough to straighten up before I’m seen again.
90 degrees

At the frat bar down on the lakefront, the men’s room mirror is greasy, but I clean up good even in stale light. I stake one of the green tables for our board meeting: Big Chief (aka yours truly), supply & delivery; Doc, production; Al, sales; and Jack-Tar, accounting, the collection man.

At a quarter of twelve, Al and Doc haven’t shown. J-T racks while I get pitchers. Just off campus, the bar has a Saturday crowd awash in animal musk, pierced with laughter.

“Lose any?” I ask while J-T goes ahead and breaks, too, the bastard.

Blond and buff, a beardless Viking, J-T lines up his shot, muttering into his chin, “Al’s pals—fuckers shorted the usual.”

He sinks a yellow stripe, misses the follow-up. I ease around, eyeing my chances.

“What was that honey’s name from back when?” I ask over the clack of balls. “The redhead.”

“Who?” J-T inquires, drinking leisurely, waiting for me to shoot again.

“That Greek Row chick. The money honey.”

“You mean Deb?” he murmurs, moving in for his shot.

“Yeah.”

I stand aside, toying with my beer. “What’d you do with her?”

He glances up. “Like, did I chain her in my basement? What do you think? We jacked a while.”

I grimace, checking the lay of the table.

“Assed her and passed her,” says J-T, sighing. “What else? Fucking waste.”

“That all she want?” I shoot abruptly, get a lucky carom off the rail.

“Why?” asks J-T. “You got her on the pipe now?”

“Not that,” I sniff, lining up a combination solid in the side. “Just, y’know, this honey last night . . .”

“You’re poking ’em again,” he says, shaking his head as the combo goes awry.

J-T lines his pale cheek up with his ebony stick, the shining white cue, and a blood-red stripe, his golden hair tumbling down over his purple-jerseyed shoulder so it brushes the green felt. Nordic eyes squinting, he says, “Listen, Bigs—it don’t mean nothing. Nothing means nothing.”

He runs the rest of the table. I rack again.

“What means nothing?” I finally ask, watching him break. The balls flee, falling down into dark corners, giving him his choice of which to go after.

J-T looks up with a hysterical, wheezy giggle. “Nothing, dammit! No harm no foul—bip, bam, what the fuck, Ma’am?”

I shrug and lean back against scuffed paneling, peering through the reflection in a windowpane half hidden under the gigantic, creepy shadow of a stuffed moose head. A black expanse where the streetlights end marks the open lake, fringed with tiny lights moving up and down the college drive. Twenty after twelve on my radiant Indiglo.

105 degrees

“What are you?” she asked me at the club last night, her beery breath pressing into my ear to be heard over the noise the DJ was mixing.

“Oneida-Menominee,” I said. “What are you?”

She laughed and downed more of her drink, then smiled with her whole flushed face. “An anthropology major,” she shouted. “We like getting close to natives.”

“You’re in the right place,” I said.

“I just did a paper on the Menominee. It got an A. What’s your name?” she asked, brushing bright hair back from her ear in an effort to hear better.

“Charles,” I told her. I could have drunk the sweat from her hair, her neck.

“Kalie,” she said, offering her slim, soft hand. It disappeared in my paw. She didn’t let go.

“Let’s dance,” she cried, tugging me off my barstool and out onto the floor where the mob and the beat crushed our bodies together.

120 degrees

I kick my heel to the old Eminem joint spitting from the Bullfeathers juke. Dumb to bring the crew here. Better I’d cut out early from someplace else, leave them wondering, than have them all watch my play. J-T stalks the table, scratching at his temple and chalking his cue. Where the fuck is Al with the roll? My steel-toes hammer impatiently, out of time with the thumping bass.

J-T, poised for a killer combo, barks, “Re-fucking-lax!”

I shrug. Thankfully, Doc sidles up to me with Al twitching in tow. Doc wears tennis shoes so white they hurt to look at, baggy black pants, an oversized Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. T-shirt, and a fat gold watch. His mocha arms are so much lighter than mine that next to him I look like the black one. The lugubrious way he blinks through his granny glasses means he and Al have downed a few shots of their own somewhere else. “Big Chief,” he murmurs. “Who’s what?”

“Solids,” I grumble.

Doc chuckles. “You’re losing.”

“No shit,” I snarl, sizing up the table and leaning in.

Doc grabs the butt of my stick and yanks me lower by the seat of my jeans. He warns, “Get your ass down where you can see the angles, then take your shot. You always got to be looking.”

I put my chin to the table and loose the cue, dancing the orange five into the side.

J-T eyes the dark-paneled ceiling. He says, “Guess there’s room for improvement, huh?”

“You tell me, Jack,” I challenge. “Deb called lately?”

“Hey, what?” asks Al, lowering his beer.

The ceiling fan turns lazily, its shadow crossing Jack’s gleaming hair as he leans over the table for a left-handed shot. “You putting something down?” he answers Al instead of me, so Al counts out four piles of bills, and from then on we’re playing for stakes, a much more banal illegality than allegedly accepting shares in sales of narcotics.

“Where’d you learn pool?” I ask Doc, pouring him a beer. Accepting the cup with a grave nod, Doc says seriously, “Crystals.”

J-T and I exchange glances. Doc’s a motherfucking genius at labs, but someday his nattering will get his ass indicted, and it had better be his ass alone.

“Law of nature,” he declares, hiccupping. “When crystals grow, the angles inside always stay the same, dig? Once they’re set, that’s it; the ratios don’t change, only the mass multiplies.”

Seeing me frown, Doc apologizes, “I forgot, you’re a metaphysics dude.”

“Epistemology,” I mumble.

“Who’s pissed?” asks Al.

Doc nudges him. “You, ugly fuck!”

“Law of nature?” I repeat.

Doc blinks. “It’s a well-documented phenomenon,” he says, his voice lazy as syrup. “Outside of non-chemical circumstances, the tricky part is crystallizing right in the first place.”

“Damn, non-chemical circumstances,” laughs Al, slapping Doc on the back, sloshing his beer. “What’re those?”

45-135 degrees

J-T sinks the eight; I rack, and he breaks hard again. I peer out the window. Quarter of one. I swallow my beer.

The frat boys bellow at ESPN on the bigscreen; their honeys line the barstools. Al, scoping the row of tight skirts, cries, “Holler up some booty, Doc!”

Doc moves aside, cell to ear. He knows the sickest women.

“What?” demands Al, catching J-T’s smirk.

“Booty,” scoffs J-T as he shoots.

Al gets defensive. “ ’Sup, then? Huh? You on that Deb freak again?”

“Nothing’s about it. That’s the goddamn point! She don’t call cause I ain’t hearing it.”

“Who?” offers Doc, off his call, gazing at the constellations on the green felt.

“Some careless twat,” J-T snaps. “A liability. Like you dumb shits.” He makes the cue ball jump a barricade, sending its victim spinning into the hole.

I line up my shot, bending low.

“Ain’t too dumb to make good bank, now, are we?” Al’s voice loses its terseness as he nuzzles his beer.

“More?” asks Doc, draining the last of the pitchers.

“Nah,” I say. By the bigscreen, a honey’s voice flutters up in anger, bawling, “Fuck! Off!”

Grabbing her coat from the bar, she starts for the door, but some gel-haired dude catches her to make nice. The frat and sorority quorum joins in cajoling her till she relents, tipsily.

I’m turning back for my shot when a flash of blonde and pink at the door freezes me like a stroke, like a heart attack in slow motion. She’s obscured for an instant by the big Greek brother holding her elbow as they squeeze into the crowd, more couples pushing in behind them.

Through the press of shadowy, moving bodies, her eyes find me, her teeth flash in surprise, setting me in motion like a well-aimed cue. I take one bounce off the green table, fisting my bills over J-T’s complaint, cross to the burnished bar for two full glasses, and roll right into the hard-faced, laughing crowd. Is she smiling at me or that college fuck? I have trouble keeping her in sight, but I see other things so much better now. The pastel paper fluttering unnoticed from her bag while she got her makeup this morning, a reminder to herself from yesterday—someone else’s invitation—except she and I came together at midnight on another dance floor, leaving which frat boy wondering at the very sensation I feel growing in my chest I can just guess. It doesn’t matter. All that counts is now. No sweater this time, but her blouse and skirt and towering heels are shatteringly pink, screamingly pink, pink as the earliest morning light and the curve of her ear and the pocket I’m aimed straight for, not about to allow myself to miss.

“Hey,” I hear Al around the corner behind me, from a direction I can’t alter, “what about Deb?”

Either way, I think, as I hand Kalie a glass, her fingers touching mine, and everything freezes around us.

angle105

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jason Newport1

Jason Newport recently received an MFA in creative writing (fiction) from the University of North Carolina Wilmington. His short fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction have appeared in many fine journals, including Chautauqua, where he is a contributing editor. He is currently revising his novel manuscript with a terrific agent and working on a short story collection.

BEYOND THE BLUE RIDGE by Grace Maselli

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BEYOND THE BLUE RIDGE
by Grace Maselli

BlueRidge_wide2560x1600

In spite of the anxiety that flares in my stomach, I get ready to move 300 miles away. The upcoming relocation fills my gut with disturbances—tiny cyclones whirring counterclockwise through the commonly known organ. These feel like hundreds of small cyclones the size of my grandmother’s Lucite earrings, humming and moving excitedly through this interior terrain. It’s a state of abnormality, a place with no homeostasis. I know inherently that my stomach is an environment that prefers the company of dinner rolls, it’s the part of my physical “instrumentation” that would rather be soothed by my fat Nona’s hands smelling of yeast, her body reliably covered in a clean-smelling cotton dress, not the bitter pill I call change.

Instead I’m forced to brave a major adjustment (a commotion) that comes at me like a wind-and-pressure system, when what I really want is this: to lean into someone’s muscle and skin while I eat toasted almond slivers and wear three-quarter-length evening gloves, like an imaginary Audrey Hepburn in love with a man who’s a father figure. What I want is ease rolled inside luxury, topped with a dollop of passivity—my life as calendula petals lazing around beautifully inside a garden salad. I want to idle away time on a velvet chair with an iridescent ribbon in my bushy hair, while a cello plays darkly yet softly in the background. Instead of coping with change, I want to be surrounded by people with manners, the kinds of social graces that come with good breeding and a strong sense of curiosity.

But there are no three-quarter-length gloves I can easily find. They are beyond my reach. Instead there’s me, alone, staring across a basement of corrugated boxes soon to be filled with the perfunctory objects of my daily life, and the other more precious things I keep— talismans to elicit something longed for: good futures for my children, a promise from the universe that I will never be confined to a bed in the Intensive Care Unit of a hospital. I long for a trip to the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, and time to write from an Urgent Place. Moving only interrupts the flow of everything. My capacity to desire anything is divided by displacement into tiny pieces of colorless confetti.

These goods I own I will allow to be packed by a team of strange men within forty-eight hours and hauled inside the sunless cargo area of a big truck. This truck will pass horse farms, Guns & Ammo shops, and the hazy condition that makes the Blue Ridge Mountains blue. This will be the trip up and over the Mason-Dixon Line into my once-again northeast.

But what I want is to take the north out of it completely. I want to kick concern and vigilance in the teeth. What I long for is due east in the direction of Ravello, a town in the Mediterranean hills vaulted high above the Amalfi Coast. It’s a place where the zest of lemons moves deliciously, surreptitiously, into the heart and settles like a small white feather on my honeymoon memory, a long-ago trip that fills me with delight. Birds in Ravello chirp like happy, balking ladies in pink girdles reaching gently for the last arugula sandwich on a plate. Following the rules of nomenclature, we made love in Ravello more than once at the Amoré Hotel—with the long-ago man who smelled like powder and green tea from a freshly opened pouch. I want to go back there again and feel that freedom and desire more than once.

What I really want are days that stretch into nothing but what I want: the under-cooked piece of scrod handed back to a waiter and an existence where bonbons are placed deliberately and reliably in my candy dish. I want guilt-free desire. And a life of disdain for clutter in the house, in the mind, in the heart, of disdain for the deadness of conversation packed with nothing I want to hear. I want only what can fit in a small box, a wise woman once said to me—the deed to a debt-free home, prospectuses on issued stocks, a locket with the faces of my children.

What I want is to guillotine the hungry ghost of guilt that comes with my deepest desire. I want to trick it with an invitation to a séance that tells it like it is, gives me what I want without strings attached. I want the wit and wisdom to quell the ghost with scones and a true story about contentment and willingness to roll with change. With an open heart I want to laugh in the ghost’s face, sneer at its cruelty, do a hokey-pokey turnaround with a dirty but luck- drenched penny in my pocket, and a dream stashed in my new shoe 300 miles from here.

Grace Maselli

Grace Maselli is at work on a collection of essays and poems. She studied for seven years in New York City at the Writers Studio founded by American poet and author Philip Schultz. Her work has recently appeared in 42 Magazine, Poydras Review, Streetlight Magazine and is forthcoming in The Penman Review. She lives outside Philadelphia.

OF SNAKES AND STONES by Jennifer Pullen

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OF SNAKES AND STONES
by Jennifer Pullen

I

Medusa still dreams of being beautiful. At night on her sheep skin-padded but still cold stone bed she remembers combing her hair, its dark sheen, the heavy still weight of it. She used to rub her hair with olive oil to keep it shiny. Once she had a lover who liked her to wrap her hair around his neck until he almost couldn’t breathe. He said he liked his women dangerous. She thought he was silly, but she indulged his desires so that afterwards she could lay her head on his knee and he would sing to her of meadows and myths. For some reason, whenever he sang she could taste honey on her tongue. Sometimes when she wakes up and feels her hair hissing and whispering along her neck she runs to the corner of her cave and vomits, as though she could expel this reality and bring back the one of her dreams.

When her siblings visit, they tell her she’s delusional, they tell she has never been beautiful, never been human, and besides, who said snakes were ugly anyway? The scales are so shiny, so green; it’s like having a head full of jewels, they say. Sometimes she hates them, and imagines what it would be like to cut their heads off—they’re not mortal anyway. She’s the only one with that distinction. Her mortality is why she thinks that she was once human; in a time so misty and long ago that everyone else has forgotten. It’s the proof she strokes in her mind like a worry-stone. She’s always glad when her sisters leave. It’s exhausting never being able to look at each other, dancing around the cavern with eyes averted.
Medusa_by_Caravaggio_2

II

Her only pleasure is the statues in front of her home, all of the would-be heroes frozen in their last moments. So many beautiful but unmoving young men, their curly hair, their armored chests, they are her own very boring harem. She loves their horses with proud arched necks, nostrils flaring, and ears perked. She sits on them and tries to remember riding. Her favorite statue is the one she caught by surprise, he doesn’t even look frightened; he’s standing at the edge of a cliff looking out at the sea. His chest is bare, his tunic down around his hips, his hair clinging to his face. He looks like he’s just finished bathing in the nearby stream, probably some sort of ritual before he comes to her cave to kill her. She likes to stroke his stone cheek and embrace his stone chest. She tells him stories, and pretends he’s her husband. She’s named him Achilles, because she thinks Achilles would be brave enough to marry her, if anyone ever would be. Besides, unless she looked at his heel, he’d be safe.

She brings out cups of wine, one for each of them. She asks him, how was your day? She closes her eyes and tries to feel his hand on her breast. She wants more than anything to be touched with tenderness. When her eyes are closed he sits on the ground next to her, crosses his legs and reaches for a cup of wine. He tells her about going to a city, bustling with people, about the women wearing clothes dyed scarlet or ocean-blue. He says, I brought you some silk. He places the cloth around her shoulders to frame her face. I hope our children are as beautiful as you one day. Then she opens her eyes, her fancy-weaving ability stretched as far as it will go for now. She stands on tip-toe and kisses behind the statue’s left ear. She supposes she must be thankful for small blessings—she could be as imagination-less as her sisters, after all.

III

One night she wakes from her dreams to the earth vibrating beneath her ear. She sits up in bed and the wind is a Siren outside singing of destruction. She can hear the ocean crashing against the cliffs, restless with its boundaries and ready to crawl across the earth. The snakes in her hair writhe and twist and she holds her hands to her head to try and still the scaly bodies. She wonders if the wind is really that strong tonight or if there are actually Sirens outside? Should she stop up her ears with candle wax like Odysseus? Can one monster be killed by another? She feels ridiculous in her fear, as though someone somewhere is mocking her. As pebbles on the floor rattle she tells herself a story about a young shepherd who got meet the god Pan. She’s certain she had a mother who told this story once upon a time; a very mortal mother with kind eyes and hands with calluses from weaving.

She must have fallen back asleep because she wakes again to silence. The wind is resting from its labors and the world is still. She gets up from her bed and goes outside. Then she sees her statues. The ground is covered in rubble, in bits and pieces of horses and men, a tail, a muscular arm, an armored torso; all shattered, all broken. She doesn’t stop to assess the damage fully, she runs towards the cliffs, even though she knows what she will find there. If these statues farther from the sea are broke, surely her Achilles will be too. But what she knows and what she wants won’t shake hands, so she runs. At the cliffs there is almost nothing to see, the only thing close to whole is his head. She holds it to her chest, pressing until it hurts. She wants to cry but her eyes are dry, and her hair dances triumphantly. The snakes are glad to see beauty destroyed, she is certain. Ugliness loves ugliness. She carries the head of her make-believe husband back to her cave, a plan gestating in her mind. She will take the knife she uses to pry open oysters to the snakes. She’ll cut herself free. She will she will she will.

IV

She can’t cut the snakes, she puts the knife to one and presses the blade home and then collapses from the pain. She tries again, her hand a quavering rabbit and then she cries the way she hasn’t been able to cry for her statues. Now she recites a mantra before she goes to bed, before she eats, before she goes outside to relieve herself. I am the snakes and the snakes are me. She puts the stone head of Achilles in a corner, its face turned towards the wall. She doesn’t dream. She waits for another hero to come, as they always do.

V

She isn’t so good at keeping track of time anymore, but it feels like an age and half before another hero arrives. She hears his footsteps, hears the gentle clank of his sword against his armor. She can see out of the corner of her left eye his shadow against the wall of her cave. He says, I am Perseus, and I have come to slay you. She smiles to herself, because heroes are always so foolish, with their ideas of honorable combat. Once, she would have simply turned around and turned him to stone where he stood. She would have savored the moment of looking at his youthful face while it was still flesh and blood. She can see by his shadow that he’s carrying something circular, something that isn’t a shield. Are you afraid, Medusa? His voice carries mockery. He’s trying to taunt her, to make her act foolish. Now she understands the circular object in his hands: he’s going to try the mirror trick.

Others have tried before him. But lucky boy, she’s going to make him famous. She waits, she listens to his breath, and she fancies she can hear his blood thudding in his veins. The snakes on her head are quiescent. He steps in front of her and holds up the bronze mirror. She smiles again and glances at Achilles in the corner. She says, did you know, Perseus, that I once had a lover?

Image: Medusa, Caravaggio, 1597. Uffizi Gallery, Florence.

Jennifer-Pullen

Jennifer Pullen

Jennifer Pullen grew up in Washington State surrounded by trees and books. She graduated from Whitworth University with a B.A. in Creative Writing and Literature, and received her MFA in Creative Writing (Fiction) at Eastern Washington University. Presently she is a PhD candidate in Creative Writing and a teacher at Ohio University. She writes with the loving support of her husband, mother, father, and a large orange cat named Widdershins. Her current project is a collection of myth-based stories which have appeared in Going Down Swinging (Australia) and The Rubbertop Review.

RITHIKA MERCHANT, Works on Paper: Comparative Mythology

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RITHIKA MERCHANT
Works on Paper: Comparative Mythology
I began working on a series of paintings dealing with Comparative Mythology about two years ago. My work explores the common thread that runs through different cultures and religions. Similar versions of many myths, stories and ideas are shared by cultures all around the world. I use creatures and symbolism that are part of my personal visual vocabulary to explore these narratives.

I am currently continuing in the same vein but focusing now on a branch of Comparative Mythology that deals with Joseph Campbell’s theory of the Hero/Monomyth. The Monomyth refers to the journey of the Hero. There is a pattern that involves seventeen steps that the hero passes through during his journey.

The seventeen step journey is spilt up into three phases– the departure, the initiation and the return.

This pattern is found in many narratives from different cultures and religions and time periods. I am making a series of paintings based on this, but I am re imagining this story from the perspective of the Heroine instead. It is my personal and contemporary interpretation of this theory.

Supernatural Guides is the third step of the departure phase. My Heroine has encountered her supernatural helpers, who will guide her and help her when she is in need.

3._supernatural_guides
Meeting With The Goddess and Apotheosis are both part of the initiation phase. In Meeting With The Goddess she encounters the all powerful unconditional love of her mother. It is her return to her creator to which is inextricably linked and whose power fuels her.

7._meeting_with_the_goddess
Apotheosis is the period of rest in the journey, right before she begins her return. The heroine takes the time to enjoy the peace and fulfillment of her journey so far. She is seen leaving behind the material realm and ascending to the spiritual realm.

10._apotheosis
The Magic Flight and The Return are both part of the return phase. In The Magic Flight she must escape with the boon she has fought for. She is able to make her escape, closely guarding the boon while the baser creatures who only value power, fight over it.

13.the_magic_flight
As she reenters the world, she is now faced with figuring out how to share and integrate the wisdom her boon brings with the others. In The Return she offers the boon to the masses, which symbolized by smaller simpler versions of herself who are similar to her state in the material realm of Apotheosis.

15._the_return
Through the course of her journey, my Heroine transforms her state. Her colours and patterns reflect her inner being as well as the outside influences. Sometimes two versions of her are shown the same time and demonstrate her evolution from one state to the next.

Supernatural Guides, 2012, 70 x 70 cms, Gouache and Ink on Paper
Meeting With The Goddess, 2012, 80 x 70 cms, Gouache and Ink on Paper
Apotheosis, 2013, 100 x 70 cms, Gouache and Ink on Paper
The Magic Flight, 2013, 50 x 70 cms, Gouache and Ink on Paper
The Return, 2013, 70 x 50 cms, Gouache and Ink on Paper

–Rithika Merchant
June , 2013

Rithika-Merchant

Rithika Merchant

Rithika Merchant is an Indian visual artist. She was born in 1986 in Mumbai, India. She graduated with a BFA in Fine Arts with Honors from Parsons the New School for Design in New York City in 2008. In 2006 she traveled to Greece to study painting and conceptual art at the Hellenic International Studies In the Arts in Paros, Greece. Following her graduation, Rithika has exhibited widely in Europe as well as select venues in Mumbai, New York and Montreal. She had her first major solo exhibition in Mumbai in 2011. The following year she was represented as a solo art project at Swab Art Fair in Barcelona, Spain. Rithika is currently preparing for her second solo exhibition, which will open in October 2013 in Mumbai. She divides her time between Mumbai, India and Barcelona, Spain. See more of her work at www.rithikamerchant.com

AFTER DINNER by Katherine Heiny

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After Dinner

AFTER DINNER
by Katherine Heiny

After dinner, Maya steered the minivan through the icy streets to their own house, Rhodes silent next to her in the passenger seat, Nash fussing in a low-level but constant way.

When they got inside, Rhodes suddenly became drunkenly exuberant. “Merry Christmas, wife, child!” he said, hugging Maya and Nash at the same time.

Maya had been peeling Nash’s snowsuit off and now the baby and the snowsuit were caught between them. Nash made a startled noise of protest and Maya propped her free arm against the wall so they wouldn’t all topple over.

Rhodes kissed her, and then Nash. “This is the best Christmas ever,” he said.

Maya couldn’t decide whether she agreed or disagreed, so she just kissed him back. “Go to bed, honey,” she said. “I’ll be there in a little while.”

Rhodes staggered away toward the bedroom. Maya tugged Nash’s snowsuit off and threw it over a chair. Then she carried Nash into the kitchen. She tried to put him in his high chair but he clung to her like a barnacle.

“Okay,” Maya said softly. “We’ll do it one-handed.”

She held him on her hip, and began making two bottles of formula, one for now, one for the middle of the night. Nash fussed and she hitched him up so his head could rest on her shoulder.

“Merry Christmas,” a voice said and Maya spun around.

“You startled me,” she said to Mouse McGrath, who stood in the doorway. He’d been passed out on their couch that morning and Maya had covered him with Christmas tablecloth so he wouldn’t be visible in the photos of Nash unwrapping presents. The tablecloth was still over his shoulders.

“Sorry.” He wiped his nose with his sleeve. “I woke up when you came in.”

“How do you feel?” Maya asked.

“Not so hot,” Mouse said, and Maya smiled at the understatement.

“Can I get you something?” she said. “A cup of tea, maybe?”

“I’d love a beer,” he said.

“Help yourself, they’re in the fridge,” Maya said.

Mouse got a beer and sat at the kitchen table with it while Maya put the tops on the bottles, crooning softly to Nash and patting his back.

Mouse took a drink of his beer. “So is Christmas over?” he asked suddenly.

How long did he think he’d been sleeping? “Pretty much,” she said. “It’s after nine p.m.”

“Good.” Mouse nodded. “I don’t like Christmas.” He paused. “Stressful.”

“I think everyone finds it stressful,” Maya said.

“Yeah, well.” He took another drink. “I’m happy it’s over and done for another year.”

“Me, too,” Maya said, and realized she meant it. “Would you like something to eat, Mouse?”

“Could I have a grilled cheese sandwich?” he asked.

She was a little startled by the specificity of the request but that was easy enough, and she’d made them one-handed before. She got the butter and cheese out of the refrigerator.
“Kevin,” Mouse said suddenly.

For a moment, Maya didn’t know whether he was calling her Kevin or asking if Nash’s name was Kevin or speaking to someone over her shoulder.

“My name is Kevin,” Mouse clarified. “Not Mouse.”

“Oh,” Maya said. “I didn’t know that.”

Mouse shrugged. “It’s what I get for hanging out with people from high school.”

Maya put a frying pan on the stove and began melting the butter. She got the bread out of the cupboard.

“You don’t hang out with your friends from high school,” Mouse (sorry, Kevin) said.

“Well, no,” Maya said. “But I went to high school in California. None of my friends are here.” This was the first actual conversation she’d ever had with Mouse and she was beginning to think all the hours Mouse and Rhodes had spent smoking pot in the janitor’s closet might have had some long-term effects.

“Oh, true,” Mouse said. (It seemed impossible that she would ever think of him as Kevin.)

“They do friend me on Facebook, though,” Maya said after a moment, putting a slice of bread into the frying pan. “Which to me is sort of the ultimate Facebook conundrum: Are you more sophisticated if you don’t want to be friends with people from high school, or more sophisticated if you’ve outgrown all that pettiness? I can never decide.”

There was a moment of silence and then Mouse said, “What’s a conundrum?”

“A puzzle,” she said. “Like a riddle.”

“Oh.” Mouse frowned. “Well, basically, it sounds to me like you don’t trust anyone who can’t hold a grudge for fifteen years.”

Maya was strangely pleased by this summation. “I think that’s exactly right,” she said.

“Rhodes isn’t like that, though,” Mouse said and Maya thought he was right about that too.

She thought there were people like Mouse, who trailed high school around forever like pieces of toilet paper stuck to their shoes, and people like her, who cut themselves away from high school as cleanly as you’d cut a slice from a block of cheese (here she remembered to flip Mouse’s sandwich) and then there were people liked Rhodes, who were so integrated, so at ease with themselves, that high school was just part of who they were. He could go back there without risking getting stuck. And lucky Maya, she was married to Rhodes.

Nash fell asleep on Maya’s shoulder. She felt him go all at once, his body relaxing against her. It was like holding a puddle of baby. Maya kissed the top of his head.

Mouse finished his beer and got another one without asking. In the living room, the lights from the tree, which Maya now realized they’d forgotten to turn off this morning, twinkled in gently rotating prisms of green and red and blue. Nash’s neck smelled like milk. The butter sizzled in the pan. Maya stood at the stove, unfathomably happy. This was her life, and she was living it.

Katherine-Heiny

Katherine Heiny

Katherine Heiny has published stories in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Glimmer Train, Ploughshares, Seventeen, and many other publications, presented on Selected Shorts on NPR, and performed off-Broadway. Her short story collection, Single, Carefree, Mellow will be published by Knopf in 2015. She lives in Washington D.C. with her husband and two children.

 

 

Image credit: Benjamin J. DeLong on Flickr

THIS FILM OF MY LIFE IF I’D PAID MORE ATTENTION TO FRENCH CINEMA by Brian Baumgart

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The-Film-of-my-Life

THIS FILM OF MY LIFE IF I’D PAID MORE ATTENTION TO FRENCH CINEMA
by Brian Baumgart

Scene I:
In the foreground
she leans in, plucks her front
teeth with her thumb, music
like a finger piano, only
echoed tones.

A man with large fingers
and furred knuckles hangs
the boom just overhead,
listening for any little click
that doesn’t fit the narrative.

Scene II:
Mise en scene, cluttered
like a pair of overlapping jungle gyms:
the spider web of youth. Reviewers
want to use the word entwined, as if
the sex between us tied us.

The director’s assistant smokes
nondescript cigarettes from a white box,
blowing tendrils across each camera’s lens
for texture with little nuance.

Scene III:
Waiting at an airport, except
there is no airport anymore. No,
I’m waiting at the clinic for bloodwork.
No, I’m done waiting.

Brian Baumgart

Brian Baumgart directs the creative writing AFA program and teaches English at North Hennepin Community College just outside Minneapolis. He holds an MFA from Minnesota State University, Mankato. His fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have appeared in or are forthcoming from various journals, including Ruminate, Sweet, Diverse Voices Quarterly, and North Chicago Review.

 

 

 

Image credit: Lukas Budimaier on Unsplash

TWO POEMS by M. A. Schaffner

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TWO-POEMS-by-M.-A.-Schaffner

TWO POEMS
by M. A. Schaffner

WE HAVE TO TALK
Returning to this planet from the road
I find the plate tectonics have become
disturbingly unfamiliar. But you know
how Teddy Bears come home to roost, and how
it just becomes awkward for everyone.
I used to know a girl, I used to know,
I used to, oh well. Dust covers my hands
and blood just thickens it. I find my words
turning into little time bombs that sit
unobtrusively among other souls
before their lethal petals unfold, and
the solar wind sweeps over the surface
carrying me to a rest stop on Ninety-Five
where we all look friendly for one day only.
Some era, sagas will sing of our exploits
on the quiet wards, ones without laptops.
I won’t be there, but driving, still en route.

 
WITH AN ‘OON IN IT
The name our wind doesn’t have must be long,
sonorous, and evocative. Our wind
plays in a special way with shrubbery
and bewildered household pets. In the eaves
its songs remind us that we do have eaves
that can fall like those of other peoples
in different lands and demographics.
You ask what it has to say about that
but it’s only wind. We do the saying,
wondering, and fearing. No wolves bring it,
only butterflies and gaseous cattle
from far, far offstage. In the end it goes;
leaves subside in piles and pollen descends.
Summer will be long, though some enjoy it.

M.-A.-Schaffner

M. A. Schaffner has work recently published or forthcoming in The Hollins Critic, Magma, Tulane Review, Gargoyle, andThe Delinquent. Other writings include the poetry collection The Good Opinion of Squirrels, and the novel War Boys. Schaffner spends most days in Arlington, Virginia or the 19thcentury.

 

 

 

Image credit: NASA on Unsplash

THE TAO OF WORDS by Timothy Kercher

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The-Tao-of-Words

THE TAO OF WORDS
by Timothy Kercher

To my daughter Buddha
is a baby. Most everyone
is a baby unless you are ma-ma
or da-da or dog. Cows she knows,
as they stand in high-mountain meadows
in the Cimarron, laughter follows
our vehicle. Which is bee-eep,
these words and parts of words
that come and go with the waves
of vocal folds—her larynx learning
to move, to harness the power
of a puff of air, to launch thought
into the buffer zone between
beings. At two years old, she
is a blacksmith forging words
that will help her on the journey
she doesn’t know she’s on yet—
the more she empties herself,
the more the words
will come to fill in those spaces.

Timothy Kercher

Timothy Kercher lived overseas for the last six years—four years in Georgia and two in Ukraine—and has now moved back to his home in Dolores, Colorado. He continues to translate contemporary poetry from the Republic of Georgia. He is a high school English teacher and has worked in five countries—Mongolia, Mexico, and Bosnia being the others. His poems and translations have appeared or are forthcoming in a number of recent literary publications, including Crazyhorse, Versal, Plume, upstreet, Bateau, The Minnesota Review and others.

 

 

Image credit: Barbara Backyard on Flickr